Author's Note: The italics at the end is quoted from the opening of the Tale of Heike. And I think I'm falling down the slippery slope of OOC. I'll try to do better next time!
Nagakura Shinpachi may not have seemed so at first, but he was an artist.
In fact, it should have been obvious.
He prided himself for this, as well as many other things—he had every reason in the world to be smug. He was an artist, he was art.
Always with an unmatched deliberation, he seemed to cut his way through life with a carefully guarded intellect, cropped hair so uncommon for any samurai that always fell in the perfect messy pattern (and he was a samurai through-and-through, as if to illustrate this irony). It was obvious in his clothes, if you looked enough; the the swirling patterns that wound up the white trim on his coat; the careful balance of deep purple and emerald green, the fascinating necklace he always wore (when nobody else had even considered such an odd accessory).
It was in his swordsmanship, in the way he laughed madly but his eyes were clear as ice when he faced you down, and then you knew that this was even more of an extraordinary man than you had originally thought. It was in the way he had chosen his swings: as well-planned countermeasures against virtually any kind of attack, in addition to the movements that would best build and accentuate his sculpted muscles.
God, what a vain man.
Or so Harada Sanosuke thought.
Some people did not recognize the trademarks and value of art. The painstaking deliberations in each movement, word, and appearance were like pearls before swine, or Sannan's spectacles on a tiger (both pointless and odd). It had been Shinpachi who had first coined that particular phrase.
It was in the details, of course, just small things: unintentionally nice handwriting, clothes bought for comfort that looked good anyway; an easy, relaxed manner with women that was by no means an affect. Harada was a terrible liar and lacked the interest in the subtleties that so delighted his friend.
This probably explained his preference to the spear—aside from those meticulously choreographed dances that Shinpachi had mastered, the goal of the spear was simple and universal.
Poke a big hole in the other guy before he gets you.
Of course, in some things, Nature hadn't equipped the spearman adequately. In such cases, their difference was almost painful for Shinpachi and equally confusing for Sanosuke. For instance, some of the thing the latter was wiling to eat with his sake...or the odd, blank look that filled usually vibrant golden eyes when The Romance of Five Kingdoms was even mentioned...
"Hey, Shinpachi, having fun in there?"
The older man was sitting in his room, slowly turning over a book he had borrowed recently.
He looked up, unhurried, to face his uncultured, red-haired friend leaning comfortably against the door frame.
"Do you ever read books?" he asked lightly, trying unsuccessfully to restrain the megawatt grin forming. Sanosuke raised one of his weird eyebrows, somewhat taken aback.
"Nah, not really."
Leaping up, the swordsman grabbed a bandaged arm and yanked his friend ungracefully to the tatami.
"That's gonna change today," he declared in that perfectly imperious tone of his. The bemused spearman only stared.
"The sound of the Gion Shouja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline..."
"Ever seen the Gion Festival in Kyoto before?" Sanosuke asked softly, barely above a whisper.
"Nah," his educated friend mirrored, well aware of the irony, but the redhead just smiled.
"Then, we should go, some time."
"Yeah, we should."
That wasn't art, but it was still beautiful.