Disclaimer: Watsuki Nobuhiro owns everything here taken from the Rurouni Kenshin series – including certain names, characters, items, places, canon storylines, swordfighting and martial arts techniques, and other devices – and retains all rights and privileges. Everything not found in the Rurouni Kenshin series is my own creation. This work is not intended for sale or profit.
Author's Note: This work of fanfiction is a slashfic, meaning it features male/male pairings. If this bothers or offends you, don't read it! Simple. If it doesn't, feel free to read and hopefully enjoy the story. Comments and criticism welcome (and encouraged)! Also, a thank you to Maigo-chan's Rurouni Kenshin manga translations at /ruroken.htm, and much gratitude to Kuroiyousei, Kikue, Leah, Queen Yokozuna, MsJadey, Ironpuncher, FarStrider, Nora, and Tattie for their invaluable feedback and support, and for writing their own fabulous and wonderful stories.
UNTITLED
CHAPTER 1
"Ahou."
"Please, Hajime… Don't leave me. You two just have an arranged marriage; Tokio's just the woman you're forced to wed! Hajime…!"
He looked scornfully over his back at Sano's pleading features. "As opposed to what? You being the boy toy I like to fuck? Hnh." Flicking the ash from his cigarette, he turned once again to leave.
Sano, however, ran past him, blocking the exit with one arm outstretched and the other clenched into a fist in front of him. His whole body was trembling with rage, and his eyes gleamed, though from tears or anger, Saitou couldn't tell. "Is that all this meant to you? Don't lie to me! I'm not just some casual fuck to you, I know it!"
"Oh? Do you?"
Sano's eyes widened as his hands dropped to his sides. "No… It can't have just been sex to you. It can't have been! You… Bastard!" The shaking of Sano's body intensified as he yelled, before he suddenly charged at Saitou with raised fists.
Casually, he deflected the blow, grabbing Sano's wrist and throwing him against the wall. "It's not too late for you to realize it now. I don't ever want to see you again."
The boy's tear-stained visage was the last thing he saw as he walked past the fallen Sano and out the door. They were tears after all…
Saitou shakes his head a little, clearing his mind of the memory. At the time, he told himself that it really was just a sexual relationship to him, but it wasn't. And at the time, he thought that Sano would be the stubborn persistent fool he always was, and continue to fight for him against Tokio, but he also hadn't.
Ahou.
He turns his head slightly downwards to look at the sleeping form of the roosterhead next to him on the futon. The kid is snoring slightly, his mouth open and a bit of drool oozing from it onto the pillow, hair in disarray (more so than usual), blankets bunched up at his waist, sprawled out in oblivious abandon on the futon beside him.
But that had not been this ahou.
That ahou, for once, listened to him, and since that last encounter, never came to see him ever again, much less sleep in his bed. That ahou completely disappeared after the Bakumatsu, without as much as a word of goodbye to him. That ahou had not been heard from in more than ten years.
He reaches for his pack of cigarettes and box of matches from the pocket of his uniform on the floor beside him, lights one, and takes a long, deep drag.
That ahou would be too proud and dignified to ever fall asleep in such a ridiculous position as the roosterhead lying next to him now. But in many other aspects, they are very much the same. If he examined his motives for being with the roosterhead a little closer, as he usually tries his hardest not to do, he could probably pinpoint this fact as his motive. But of course, the replacement could never substitute the original ahou.
The original ahou. The one he loved.
Harada Sanosuke, the 10th captain of the Shinsengumi. His comrade, and for a time, his lover.
--
He is interrupted from his thoughts by an arm flung over him as Sano turns in his sleep, and he stares at the hand resting on his chest as if it might hold all the answers to his inner turmoil. Then he tears his gaze away and takes another drag on his cigarette.
Dawn's rays begin to enter the room through the window, and Saitou grinds out his cigarette. Carefully lifting Sano's arm from his chest, he gets off of the futon, picks his uniform off the floor, slips it on, and fixes his sword at his waist. He takes one last look at the roosterhead as he leaves, lingering in the doorway, and then wonders why he does so. After all, this is not the ahou whom he loves.
Loved, he reminds himself, as he leaves the house and heads off to the police station.
Sano yawns and stretches as he pushes the blankets aside and glances around the room. The sword propped against the wall is now gone, he notices, and the clothes they threw haphazardly on the floor the night before are all his. Slowly, he gets up, and picks them off the floor.
Hm, looks clean enough, he thinks to himself as he shoves one arm through a sleeve. Wonder when Hajime's comin' home from the station tonight. And what should I do before then? He debates going to visit Kenshin and the others, or perhaps Katsu, knowing that they'd probably just reproach him for his relationship with Saitou like they always did. Still, I haven't seen 'em in a while… And I've got nothin' better to do…
--
Half an hour later, Sano is sitting on a tatami mat in his friend Katsu's house and deeply regretting his decision, as he once again is subjected to Katsu's speech of how Saitou is unhealthy for him, how Saitou is only using him, how Saitou is going to hurt him.
"Katsu," he says tiredly. "I've heard all this before. Ya know that nothin' you say will change my mind 'bout Saitou. And I didn't come to visit to hear ya bad-mouthin' him all day. So let's just change the topic, 'kay?"
"Sano, listen to me! I'm telling you, nothing good will come out of your relationship with that bastard! He doesn't love you at all!"
Bristling with anger, Sano growls a warning. "Katsu…"
"Once he gets tired of fucking you, he'll just toss you aside and… Sano?"
Sano had gotten up and was now sliding open the shoji. "I don't wanna argue with you, Katsu. I don't care what ya say about Saitou. I'm not leavin' him. And when you think ya can talk to me without fuckin' insultin' him, you know where to find me."
"Sano!"
--
His visit to the Kamiya Dojo doesn't turn out much better.
"Sano, I just can't help worrying about you and Saitou being together, de gozaru."
"What do you think you're doing, living with a man like that?! Are you crazy?!"
"Yeah! Normally I don't agree with the busu, but anyone can see that he's an asshole! And he's mean and ugly too!"
"Hey, who are you calling busu?!"
"You, busu!"
"Why, you little-"
"Kaoru-dono, perhaps you should calm down."
"You're even uglier than Saitou, busu!"
No one notices when he leaves.
--
After bumming another meal at the Akabeko and a few rounds of gambling with friends, Sano wanders through the streets of Tokyo, bored and restless. Guess I'll head on over to the station… even though Hajime told me that I shouldn't… Oh well, whatever, not like it's nothin' I haven't done it before.
At the station, meanwhile, Saitou stares at the reports in front of him blankly, not really seeing any of the words on the pages. Instead, Harada's face materializes in his mind. Suddenly, he slams a fist down on the desk in frustration.
Why am I thinking so much about him now? I've always thought of him before, but recently I seem to be thinking about him every single minute! It's gotten to the point where it's even affecting my police work. This has to stop.
A knock on the door startles him from his thoughts. "Fujita-san? Is everything all right in there?"
"Yes, everything's fine." If you call obsessively thinking about your former (and most likely dead) lover and sleeping with his look-alike fine, that is.
"Well, uh, you have a visitor, Fujita-san. Should I send him in, or tell him to come back at another time?"
"Send him in."
For a split-second, he sees Harada standing in the doorway to his office, leaning against the frame and smirking at him.
"Sano?"
"Who else would I be, old man?" Sano replies as he casually walks into the room and comes to a stop in front of Saitou's desk.
Annoyed at Sano for coming to the office even after being told dozens of times not to, and annoyed at himself for his slip-up, his words come out distant and harsh.
"What do you want, ahou?"
"What, I'm not allowed to just visit ya?"
"I've told you before a million times. You shouldn't come here to see me. I have important work to do, and I can't waste my time holding meaningless conversations with you. Not to mention you have a reputation as a street ruffian and your numerous appearances here don't exactly improve my image or my standing with the rest of the officers and my superiors."
"Yeah? So you're sayin' that you'll allow yourself to fuck me, but not to be seen talkin' with me, is that it?"
"Basically, yes. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't announce the fact to the whole station."
Sano's eyes narrow as he spits the words out. "Ya know what, Saitou? Katsu and the others were right. You are an asshole." Turning, he walks out the door and slams it behind him as forcefully as he can.
After staring at the closed door for about three seconds, Saitou turns back to the paperwork lying on his desk. Yet, as he attempts to force himself through them, his mind once again has other ideas.
--
Upon his arrival at the Kamiya Dojo, he observed a young man clothed in white and wearing a red bandanna around his forehead sitting on the steps. From his appearance, he appeared to be the one named 'Sagara Sanosuke' described in his reports. As he approached, the youth looked up, and he was thankful for his smiling mask as shock spread through his mind.
Harada?!
No, of course the young man sitting on the steps was far too young to be Harada, and it would be impossible for Harada to associate with Battousai. He felt foolish for thinking even for a moment that-
"Who are you?" The boy's voice was slightly rough, but oddly pleasant-sounding in the way the words seemed to rumble and roll through the air.
"How do you do?" He replied the boy with ease, smile firmly in place. "I'm a peddler from Tama. I have some unusual medicines called Ishida powder." He took off his cap. "My name is Fujita Gorou." Here he paused, carefully scrutinizing the young man.
He really does look almost exactly like Harada, though he's a bit taller, and his hair is of a slightly different shade. Part of him felt strangely angry at the striking similarity between the two, as if in some way this young boy tainted his image of Harada, or disgraced Harada somehow.
"How about it?" He continued. "Ishida powder works on bruises, even broken bones…"
"Hold it, hold it," Sagara interrupted. "I don't live here. They're all out now."
"Oh, I see. That's too bad."
Abruptly, the young man looked up suspiciously at his eyes. "Hey, you. What's with those slanty eyes?"
"These? Haha, I was born this way."
He was surprised when Sagara suddenly grabbed his hand and flipped it over.
"You're no medicine peddler. Those are sword calluses. Who are you?" The youth demanded angrily.
Straightening up, he dropped the smiling façade. "You're a clever man, Sagara Sanosuke. So Battousai's not home. In that case," he said as he drew his sword from behind his back, "I'll just have to leave him a present."
"You were hidin' that thing… That's what you came for from the start!"
How astute of him to reach that conclusion.
"All right! I accept! I'll ask who ya really are with my fists!" And sure enough, the boy charged forward with his fist.
He allowed Sagara's punch to hit him, and it knocked him back a pace. He then assumed his Gatotsu stance. The boy's shock at his apparent lack of damage in his attack was evident on his face and inwardly, he smirked.
"I see. You have a good punch. You deserve the rumors that say you're a good fighter." After a slight pause, he continued. "But these are rumors from the Meiji world of peace. In Kyoto during the Bakumatsu, a punch like that would mean nothing!" With that, he leaped forward, stabbing the young man's shoulder with enough force to smash him through the wall of the dojo and to snap the blade of his sword. As he turned to walk away, he tossed it aside, slightly annoyed.
"It's convenient to carry a swordcane, but they're about as strong as toys. The Japanese sword is, after all, the best-"
A voice behind him broke him off short.
"Where're ya goin', you slit-eyed bastard. We're not finished yet."
He turned back to Sagara to see him bleeding from his wound, but slowly standing up.
Resilient boy, isn't he?
"You show good spirit. But it'd be better for you if you just quietly went to sleep. The wound is not life-threatening, but it's deep."
Close to a rage, the fighter charged once again, yelling. "Shut up! I may be wounded, but your sword's broken! The fight starts here!"
Hmph. Resilient, and also very foolish.
He blocked the punch, and deftly shoved the fragment of sword deeper into Sagara's shoulder, causing the boy to reel. Taking his wrist in one hand and grabbing his head with the other, he smashed him into the dojo floor.
"Sleep."
--
Stop it already!
Shaking his head vigorously for what is probably the twentieth time today in an attempt to clear it, Saitou takes the reports in his hands and starts to read in determination.
Slamming down what is probably his twentieth cup of sake, Sano growls to himself. "Cricket-faced bastard," he mutters under his breath as he pours his twenty-first cup.
"Well, you look like you've had a real shitty day."
Looking up to see who was speaking to him, Sano's eyes widened as he saw the face of an older-looking… well, him… staring back, and he almost thought he'd had too much to drink.
"Name's Harada. Care for a drinking companion?"
CHAPTER 1 END