A Marriage Is Two Parts Violence, One Part Stupidity
"We should get married", Okita says between one punch and the next.
[Okita/Kagura - violence - a Yuletide 2012 fic for highboys]
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"We should get married", Okita says between one punch and the next. He lunches forward, hopelessly in love and trying to hit the shadow that twirls between him and the setting sun.
Kagura steps back, steps forward, even faster than Okita can follow and her fist stops half an inch from his chest. Game over. "Why?"
"Because," Okita says and touches her fist, holds it between his damp hands and pries her fingers open. She could crush mountains with the strength of them, kill him in a heartbeat. "I can name at least five tax benefits that come with it."
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"Are you insane?" Hijikata asks, voice bouncing from wall to wall to the ceiling and every corner his absurdly neat office. Okita recognizes the signs of an impending headache which will spread with all the force of Hijikata's temper tantrum, eventually covering the Shinsengumi headquarters like a curtain of bad mood and Okita's glee. "She obviously is."
Kondo-san's hand is heavy and warm on Okita's shoulder and his voice is thick with tears and snot. He'd cried, Okita had known he would, and it had been better and worse than he'd thought it'd be. "Be nice, Toushi. Sougo's getting married!"
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The blade on Okita's throat is cheap and made of weak wood, but the will behind it is like forged steel, a rare luxury no money can buy.
"Well if it isn't Souichiro-kun," says Sakata Gintoki and the timber of his voice is that of a demon clad in white and death. Okita is oh so careful not to swallow or twitch a muscle. "Just so we understand each other."
Nothing else but Okita reads a bestseller between the words, all the ways his remains would and wouldn't be found. He doesn't blink. "I'd do it myself before you could."
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"Over your dead body," Kagura says, hands on her hips and the tilt of her head spelling stubbornness and just-give-in. Her eyes narrow and add a footnote written in a font made of stones and spears. Or-else.
It'll be a beautiful argument that'll destroy the ramen stand and send Hijikata into budget related despair. Okita can hardly wait and who knows, he might even win this argument, possibly in some other universe far away from here. "Necrophilia? That's a new one."
She looks at him like he's something dead found on the roadside. "At least your corpse will be well-dressed."
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Whatever it is on his plate it's clearly not fit for human consumption, no matter how gamely Yagyuu eats it and doesn't die.
"Kagura-chan's dress is absolutely lovely," Tae says, sitting down and smiling sweetly, as if she's not trying to poison Okita in a full view of witnesses. He understands now, finally, why Kagura listens to her every word like it's gods speaking through her. "I can't tell you any details, of course."
Okita sees his future marching in front of his eyes, an endless line of lethal family dinners and smiles like knives, and picks up his fork.
{&}
It doesn't feel like a betrayal, is the thing, and that almost makes Okita cancel the whole thing. She was nothing like Kagura, she was frail and stubborn and beautiful and strong and worth everything and okay, clearly he hadn't thought that one through.
The little thing dangles from his fingers and catches the light exactly like a diamond. By all rights it should've hung between her collarbones on her wedding day first, but you can't get everything in this fucked up world.
Sometimes he regrets that she never met Kagura. Other days he can't think of her at all.
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"I respect your traditions," she says and this is so unfair in so many ways, Okita can never think when she's wearing nothing but her pale skin and long hair, it's like his mind is empty of all but her. "Even the stupid ones."
"I don't give a shit about those either," he says, but he's already lost this and he knows it as surely as he knows her weight on his hips. "I want to get married, not mauled, you violent lunatic."
"Oh, that was almost sweet." She leans down and kisses him, slowly and thoroughly. "You'll do it."
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If he were someone else, Okita might refuse, might sheathe his sword and bow down in front of the man who'll be his father-in-law, and ask for her daughter's hand. He's not, though, and he attacks and attacks and attacks, blade like a sliver of light itself, hairbreadth from Umibouzu's stony face.
"Try harder," is the only thing the old man says and his umbrella is even heavier than hers. "You won't get her like that."
Okita grits his teeth and forces out a grin every father hates, tells a sweet, sweet truth like it's something filthy. "I already did."
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Everything smells like antiseptics and cigarettes, and Okita wants to sleep and heal and throw up, killing Hijikata optional. Speaking is like tearing his throat open inside out but he has to know. "What-?"
"That's your lovely bride out there." Hijikata is black on blue sky and white walls, standing in front of an open window. "Beating her father to the ground."
Okita's laughter is a pained gurgle that tastes like iron and Hijikata meets his eyes, for once looking less like an idiot and more like something else. "Moron. It was enough that you agreed to fight with him."
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"Bears," Shinpachi says, three drinks beyond just drunk and firmly in the 'will dance on the table any second now' stage. Okita can hardly wait, he already has enough photos of everyone else for a life-time's worth of blackmail and torture. "Can't hunt aliens here so it's bears."
Okita sips his strategically non-alcoholic drink and avoids looking at the Shogun and his underwear and whatever those other idiots are doing with them. "What?"
Shinpachi rubs his eyes and looks up, tries to focus on him and fails. "It's a Yato tradition. Proves that you can live on your own."
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The newspaper has enormous headlines, screaming wanton destruction and helpless and hapless police forces, indecent acts committed by people no one will describe or name. Okita scans the pages for any mentions of red hair or robot maids or masochistic ninjas or anyone else he might recognize, but all the details are lost in the sea of singing okama, Yoshiwara's beauties and, strangely, gigantic mechas.
His own party had never even left the hostess club.
"I don't want to know," Hijikata, on his fourth cup of coffee and mayonnaise, says and holds his head. "Shut up or I'll kill you."
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Okita is good with his weapon, is the best with them really, and when he fights, he's breathing and bleeding and living through the sword, it becomes a vital part of him like his arms and legs. It's not like that with her and watching her makes his heart sing, a battle hymn for the fast and the dangerous and the deadly.
She is both the warrior and the weapon, dancing on the fine line between instinct and reason and under the blood that rains from the sky, staining her skin.
"Nine," she says when the slaughter is over. "I win."
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It's not the Joui because there'd been a note on their gate a few weeks before this. A very patriotic and not quite sane note that had reeked of Katsura Kotarou and his particular brand of weird. A temporary truce to honor Kagura's upcoming nuptials, he'd said.
Okita's pretty sure that one of these days he'll have to face the fact that his wife-to-be is actually friends with a wanted terrorist. This isn't the day.
This is the day he's supposed to get married. This is also the day his car blows up on the way to the reception hall.
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They're a bunch of assholes with bad plans and a horrible timing, and Okita says as much because they should know that while they're still alive. The smack hurts and his teeth cut his lip, a sudden rush of blood in his mouth and he spits it at their feet, grins wide and red and as sharp as a sword.
The biggest asshole kicks his broken leg, a smart choice for such a stupid shit-for-brains. "Yeah, your little girl's gonna cry when she gets your fingers back."
And then the stone wall behind him crumbles down. Her timing is perfect.
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Okita knows there's nothing wrong with his ears, that they're the only places that don't hurt and bleed, but still. "You took the priest with you?"
"You can't die before we're married," she says and touches him, gentle fingertips like soft snowflakes on his face. She draws them back and wipes them on her tattered dress. "I heard there's a widow's pension."
Her smile is the most wonderful, fragile thing Okita has ever seen in his miserable life and he won't die here, he's sure of that, but when he will die, he knows this is the moment he'll remember.
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The stairs are steep and long, and right now Okita hates his youth and health and all the stupid, sensible reasons they'd had for choosing this out of all the places they had seen. If it weren't for this particular night, he'd choose to sleep in the Shinsengumi headquarters, leg safely in a cast and in no danger of breaking it any further.
Kagura looks at the stairs and then at him, a calculating look Okita can read too well and no, just no, "Absolutely not."
"How else are you supposed to get there?" she asks and Okita hates her so much, the gleeful tone and the shit-eating grin and who the fuck taught her all about those fucking traditions anyway? Okita will slaughter them in their sleep. "It's fine."
"I'd rather crawl." Possibly into a hole to die.
"Shut the hell up," she says and grabs his dirty shirtfront, pulls him closer and her breath is hot on his face. Her eyes are burning like twin supernovas and when she growls, a rumbling sound deep in her delicate throat, Okita wants to kiss her so bad he can taste it. "There's no one here but us. It's my wedding night, you shitty brat, and I want to spend it in bed with someone. I will spend it in bed with someone. If not you, then-"
And he does kiss her then, swallows the words from her lips and somewhere behind him, his crutches crash to the ground and wake their neighbors but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters but her and maybe this is a humiliation Okita can live with, it's not like she's not holding him up every day anyway.
"Okay, okay," he says finally, throws his arms over her shoulders and squeezes hard. "Carry me over the threshold."
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