It was hot. So fucking hot. Hijikata Toushirou clicked his tongue, irritated as he fumbled through his inner pocket for his pack of cigarettes. It was bad enough that he could feel his clothes sticking to his skin from mere perspiration; he could also feel a migraine coming on from walking in the blazing heat for a good few hours now.
He was in the midst of a cross-city exercise in the neighbouring town of Kawaguchi. Apparently there had been an outbreak of some sort of virus, and it had claimed the lives of a few hundred people in just this town alone. The virus itself sounded fantastical - poetic even; people with an unrequited love would have their lungs constantly filled with flowers, and they'd keep coughing up petals until their love is reciprocated, or until their respiratory system is choked with so much flowers that they suffocate. He'd also heard from the reports that people stricken with the illness could undergo a surgery to remove the buds implanted along the walls of their lungs, but they'd lose all memories of the person they love in the process. Sadly not a lot of people opted for that, hence the increasing death rates in the town. Wait. Isn't this a thing? He swore this was a common trope in certain literature, but he couldn't be too sure. He'd have to go back and read up on it when he had the time.
Anyway, it was suspected to be of Amanto origins and nobody was sure if it was contagious, but Hijikata had donned on a thin, black mask just in case. It was just too bad that the discomfort the mask came with made him more irritable than he usually was. Maybe that's why as time went on, the team he had arrived at the town with ended up as far away from the vice commander as they all possibly could as time went on.
Wiping away a stray drop of sweat on his temple with the sleeve of his jacket, Hijikata's fingers finally found themselves around a single cigarette stick and he made his way towards the nearest alley to light it — just in case he got ragged at by a concerned citizen for being inconsiderate. He was in an unfamiliar town, after all.
Pulling down his mask, the cop placed the stick between his lips and held up the lighter to his face. Before he could set his thumb on the sparkwheel, however, he was interrupted by a loud, obnoxious hacking. It sounded ghastly-like, as if it came from the mix of a bridge troll and an old drunk that's on the edge of puking out a night's worth of debauchery. Turning his head towards the source of the noise, Hijikata fought back the urge to throw a disapproving look but stopped immediately at the realisation of what was presented before him.
He realized two things.
Firstly: how he described the sound seemed to be quite accurate against the reality, since Sakata Gintoki was indeed an old, depraved drunk. Secondly: it actually was Sakata Gintoki, in the flesh. What? The last he heard of this asshole was 2 weeks ago; the china girl and the spectacle boy were kicking up a fuss because he had apparently left their office without a single word and had been giving them nothing but radio silence till now. He himself had clearly been disquieted by the Yorozuya boss's sudden disappearance as well; one of the reasons why he had agreed to this exercise was so he could either find an excuse to look for Gintoki or take his mind completely off the matter altogether. The unsettling multitude of emotions that drove him here disturbed him immensely, and here the subject of his worry was - pathetically heaving on all fours in a random alleyway in another town, and is he drunk right now…? In the middle of the fucking afternoon…?
For a second, Hijikata wrestled with a turmoil of emotions. It was a grotesque mix of relief, worry, disgust and anger, but he brushed it off as quickly as it came. Abandoning his initial task, he took a few steps towards the silver-haired samurai and was just about to call his name when he noticed a haphazard array of white chrysanthemum petals along the floor under the wall Gintoki was currently pressing his forehead against.
His voice lingered in his throat, and he managed to let out a hesitant "yoro-" before the man in front of him swivelled his head at the interruption. Hijikata saw Gintoki's eyes go wide at first, and he swore he saw a flash of fear before it was visibly forced into the same cavalier look he was so familiar with.
"Ohh, Oogushi-kun. What a coincidence meeting you here." Gintoki remarked as casually as he could between strained coughs.
"That joke stopped being funny two chapters after it happened." Hijikata deadpanned. He contemplated helping the other man up, but something in his mind told him to stay rooted and he happily obliged. "The hell are you doing this far away from Kabuki-cho?"
A pause. Ignoring the question, Gintoki straightened his back and turned his body to lean against the same wall, "what are you doing here? You following me? What, you miss me or something?"
Oh, fuck off . Thank god he didn't actually show any inkling of concern for this bastard, or he's definitely going to harp on that for the rest of his life. His vein throbbed. "I'm here on a job, asshole. You didn't answer my question. Seems like everybody's looking for you." Me included .
Gintoki clicked his tongue and started, "I was-" suddenly, he dropped to the ground coughing once more, each wheeze more raucous than the one before it. Another flurry of white petals descended upon the concrete, accompanied by splatters of dark red. Alarmed, Hijikata saw the other's shoulders go limp and he instinctively dove under the body to hold his weight up.
"Oi— ! Don't faint on me, I'm taking you to the hospital-! "
"…no."
"What?"
"No hospital."
Heaving an annoyed grunt, Hijikata draped an arm over his shoulder and wrapped his own arm around Gintoki's waist before hastily making his way out of the alley.
It was hot. Scorching, fucking hot. And here he was, dragging a 70-kilo deadweight on his back with no single clue on where he should go next. The sun's rays seemed to increasingly blind his vision as time passed. The other samurai was murmuring slurred nonsense along the lines of "no hospital" and "not going home", and to be quite honest, Hijikata was stumped. He was tired, sweaty, and fuming. What the hell was this asshole on about? He obviously had caught something bad in this town while he was doing god knows what, and now he's refusing to go back to the people who'd care for him? Is it his pride or something ?
It soon struck Hijikata in the middle of his physical struggle that the situation was more serious than what he initially perceived it to be, and he pushed the bloom of unwanted thoughts to the back of his mind. What he witnessed had forewarned demise, and he sure as hell wasn't ready to deal with that yet.
The vice commander struggled aimlessly for a few minutes while trying his best to ignore the stares thrown his way, before he finally settled his eyes on a rundown hotel just a street's turn away from the alley.
Well, the sooner he could get rid of this literal burden on his shoulders, the better. He made his way towards the building.
—
It was needless to say that the short journey from the first floor of the lobby to the hotel's third floor was a torturous one: the hotel receptionist's judgmental glances seemed to burn a hole into Hijikata's forehead as he kept his face down while checking in, refusing to meet her eyes even when she wished him a happy stay. For some ungodly reason, the hotel's elevator was stuck on the fifth floor and Hijikata — with his impatience eating at him from the inside — decided to lug the other man up two flights of stairs instead.
He unlocked the room door with great difficulty and almost literally threw Gintoki onto the bed. The action seemed to wake the latter instantly, and he protested with a muffled yell as his face hit the pillow. After some grumbling, the silver-haired man calmed down and watched Hijikata as he gathered his valuables in the same hurried fashion, as if to leave the room as quickly as he came in. "Why did you bring me here? You could have just left me there."
Hijikata glared at him briefly before swatting the dust off his jacket. "It's my duty to not let a citizen get eaten by rats, no matter how much of a piece of trash he is."
Giving the room a final once-over, the cop turns to leave. "Don't move from here, you got me?" He ordered. "I'll be coming back to check on you."
"Oi, is this your own personal idea of a prison? I don't need your pity, by the way," came the reply.
Ignoring the unwarranted rudeness for the sake of his own temper, Hijikata closed the door behind him without another word and went on to make a call to his subordinates saying that he'd be on his way to meet them soon.
The sun was still unnecessarily bright when he exited the building. He made a mental note to himself to return to the hotel when he was done with what he needed to do, but as it turned out (as it almost always does), his plans were thwarted with a last-minute tip-off on some suspicious Amanto behaviour, and he presently forgot about his unofficial promise.