Title: It's in His Hair
Fandom: Samurai Champloo
Characters: Jin, Mugen, some Jin/Mugen
Prompt: Fragrance
Word Count: 1,715
Rating: Teen for some language
Summary: Historically, it is recorded that Samurais would place cherry blossoms in their helmets before going to battle. That irrelevancy aside, Mugen observes Jin's relationship to flowers, post war years, with aversion and disbelief.
Author's Notes: Samchamjam challenge. Very new to this fandom, and was very discouraged by the lack of fan fiction. I'd love to vid to it, which is perhaps where most of the fandom is, but I can't find hq sources currently D:
"That is the gayest shit I've ever heard."
"No, you are simply just the foulest creature to walk the planet."
Jin didn't award Mugen's heated glare with any attention. He simply continued to weave the cherry blossoms through his clothes.
"I don't know what sort of lady would want to bed a guy that smelled just like her.", Mugen spat, slightly horrified.
"Because so many wish to bed a stranger who may be virally contagious merely through their breath.", Jin countered.
Mugen fumed, and would have launched himself at pretty boy's rear had he not seen the elder samurai grab his hilt ever so casually.
So instead he huffed, and walked out of the room with a stomp.
He spent the next several hours lounging around drinking establishments and subsequently getting kicked out on his ass from drunken fighting and on one or two occasions drunken passes at female Yakuza whores.
He wasn't sure how, but much later into the night he saw Jin being spoken to by several women of varying young ages and similar beauty constructs, yet he remained passive, like the asexual bastard Mugen swore he must be.
He landed himself in an alley after one too many drunken and hazy fights, and Fuu was yelling at him in some incomprehensible language. It was wet, and he realized he was sitting in mud, followed by the realization that it was raining and his tangled mass of hair was sticking to his face in an unpleasant way. Fuu was screaming a little too loud for comfort, but Fuu was always a little too present for comfort as it was, and Mugen felt the impending need to hurl all over her pretty pink kimono, with a subconscious vendetta against all this cherry blossom shit.
When he attempted to, however, he felt a large slap connect with the back of his head, and the vaguely familiar fragrance of said cherry blossoms.
His head snapped forward, pitching his entire frontal body into the mud beneath him.
He could hear Fuu moaning and screaming and she might have been kicking his head with her thick sandals but it was also completely understandable if his head was pounding on its own.
He felt a suddenly dry and warm embrace haul him up, engulfing him in a pleasant lulling scent which sent him straight to drunken sleep.
It was only five minutes, he swore, just five minutes he had closed his eyes, before he was dumped into the fucking Arctic Ocean, freezing him out of his stupor and making him wonder how the hell he had landed himself there.
He felt a force submerge him under the freaking ice and possibly attempting to drown him, so drunken stupor be damned his survival instincts kicked in and he kicked up against the force.
He was slightly shocked when his underwater feet touched a bottom that felt strangely hard and not cold, and was suddenly beginning to gape, open mouth taking in water faster than a falling brick.
When his head finally resurfaced, he wished that a brick might fall on his head and he coughed and sputtered and choked for air.
"Ah, good, you're awake." Some smug asshole said. Unluckily for him, it was his smug asshole partner.
Feeling sick and looking at Jin sourly like a drowned fish, he opened his mouth to yell something equivalent to what an asshole the guy was.
"Urgh"
He had never actually vomited until that moment, and Jin immediately steered his head towards a dirt floor, partially yanking half his body out of a barrel tub.
When his stomach was done purging itself of the benefits of Saki, it left him with all of the bad after effects of a crack addict, and all the strength of an ant.
"What are you doing?" He moaned, not looking away from the ground.
He could feel Jin's pitying look aimed towards his back. "You smell. You're going to bathe before we leave this area."
He echoed a heartfelt groan and allowed himself to be hauled back into the tub and given some soap. He then realized there were things floating in the water with him, and almost jumped out of his skin.
"Flowers?" He looked slightly bewildered, before remembering this morning's conversation, and sent a glare at a victorious samurai.
"Wash." Jin frowned, and gave a look that left no room for argument.
"People will think I'm weird." He all but begged in the freezing water and was pretty sure his hands were turning an interesting shade of blue.
"They'll think you're not an animal." Jin prevaricated, suddenly taking out one of his swords in an alarmingly fast rate that, to the posthumous brain of Mugen's, made people want to hurl again from disoriented eyesight. He then withdrew a stone at a much slower speed, and this was followed by the sound of sword against stone.
Mugen huffed, contemptuous of any possibly intimidation contests, and after several one sided glaring contests he relented and started to use the soap, arguing and grumbling that it was because it smelled nice. This comment, he would later realized, was what started to lead him down the wrong path all along.
When he was done, and it was a while before that because Jin was very specific about the ratio between which place was washed and how much time should be given to such a place, he threw the now worn down soap bar to the ground and demanded his clothes.
"Fuu's washing them." Jin supplied with a smile. In response to Mugen's rapidly reddening face of fury, he gave a shit eating grin and threw a small drying cloth at him. "When you're finished, you can wear this." He held up one of his outer layers of clothing, the blue and white diamond outer robe.
It happened to be particularly chilly that night, and Mugen was already hitting with only half his marbles by having spent the last hour or so in a sopping wet and cold state, so he hurriedly and stubbornly and a little bit angrily dried himself before donning the dubbed asshole's clothes.
Jin was taller than him, and definitely broader in a sense, so it made the wearing awkward. All he wanted to do now was to hide under the sheets of their bedding and disappear.
But after wearing the alien clothes for a small while, he kind of…didn't mind at all. Sort of…liked something about it. He felt somewhat refreshed, a little naked but nonetheless very…relaxed.
He noted the crushed scent of the cherry blossom and was slightly ashamed when he found himself sniffing the sleeves to take in more of the pleasant smell.
Maybe…maybe Jin had something going there.
He slid the door open to the room and was vaguely surprised to see Jin rolling out different bed sheets and preparing the large floor mat with new colors.
"Whats…what's with all this?"
He noticed the room seemed cleaner too. The corn cob a few weeks ago, for one, was gone from the corner he had thrown it at.
Jin, ever serious and stoic Jin, looked at Mugen with lips slightly parted and eyes vaguely widening.
Mugen could have sworn he even saw a shimmer of red on his cheeks, but he couldn't himself believe it and so shook it off as a remnant from alcohol poisoning.
He walked over and sat across the bedding watching Jin finish it's making. "If you didn't know, and I suppose it's easy to lose track, today was the first day of spring." Judging from the lack of any heat at all, Jin was being completely sincere and NOT mocking Mugen for his lack of knowledge. It kind of threw him off guard.
"Oh."
When Jin blew out the last candle, and they were under the covers, and it was pitch black and Mugen swore the other Samurai was asleep, he leaned in, just a few inches, towards the other man's direction .
He reached out with his nose and couldn't help himself, smelled Jin's hair.
Maybe this was the biggest case evidence for his argument, that even him, a guy, was sniffing another guy's hair because it smelled nice, like women did.
But he had to admit; even the ladies didn't smell this nice sometimes. Growing up on a fugitive's island, foul smells were the only thing known. Dung was sweeter than dead fish, and dried sweat preferred to the biting and dry salting ocean cracking open wind whipped skin.
Jin…his hair didn't just smell of one thing. It was a combination of something spicy and warm and sharp and sweet and hazy…elegant. Like Jin.
Then he thought to himself, maybe Jin should consider a career as a male prostitute, but immediately refuted the idea because it was followed with the notion of buying Jin which was totally out of the question.
He let his nose sink in slightly to the flow of hair. Jin let his hair loose when he slept. It was the only time he had really ever seen Jin in such a way, and he had to admit the pretty boy could look really…daunting bare-chested and tumbling hair. Even Mugen had to admit it wasn't so much feminine as...powerful. A dragon.
But he turned his attention to the sweet smell again, trying to expel thoughts of the person who the scent belonged to.
Maybe Jin was asleep, and maybe he was having one of those dreams involving those sorts of movements, because suddenly, as if reacting to Mugen's movements as the movements of a stranger in a dream, Jin's body shifted and very suddenly Mugen was trapped in an embrace.
What freaked Mugen out even more was his own automatic reaction, which was to see what Jin's neck smelled like.
God, how many flowers did this guy collect, he had to wonder. And he wondered if maybe Jin would ever consider teaching him the names of all these different scents, and their sources.
He found that, despite his internal anti-Jin campaign, he relaxed into the steady breathing and warm smells that radiated from the taller man, and, telling his internal conflict to go fuck itself, fell asleep in that position, after all it was a damn cold night and he was selfish enough to take someone's else's heat when offered.
When Jin awoke the next morning, he was wildly alarmed before gently touched by the sight before him.
Disbelief
Mugen, sleeping and defenseless Mugen, asleep in his arms…in Jin's clothes… smelling pleasantly like soap mixed in with Mugen's naturally spicy scent which rarely got its chance to peak out given all the filth it was usually buried under.
Mugen stirred but relaxed again, his head resting on Jin's arm.
Jin lifted his other arm from it's hold on Mugen's waist, and smiled a devil's grin when he withdrew a pink little blossom from somewhere within the recesses of his person.
He placed it in an area where it clearly stuck out of Mugen's wild hair, and completely juxtaposed its elegance with Mugen's chaotic rugged looks.
It would be hours before Mugen would figure out why all the men in the town seemed to be giving him weird glances.