a/n: I ended up shipping this ship a lot harder than I wanted. I don't even understand.

Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me
Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison

Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction

- Katy Perry, "E.T."

-x-

There are signs. When he picks up the telephone and dials her number, it isn't Tsukuyo who picks up, it's another woman in the house. The scent of the Shinsengumi dogs lurk nearby. He picks up his pipe, lights it up, and asks Kamui to come with him to the inn tonight.

He doesn't remember the last time he was fixated on a woman. Idly, the memory of him and Gintoki fighting over the same prostitute once upon a time, years and years ago, flitters into his head. Amusement quickly follows when he remembers that his past self had been too frightened to do anything more than to sip his alcohol in silence.

Things are different now. The hunger from physical lust could be satiated by other people. He knew he jeopardized things when he saw her more than once. But something had truly resonated with him the day he had found her almost dead.

Alone, not afraid to die. Having to bear a weight on her shoulders. The lone wolf of a city.

He remembers a time where he hid himself from everyone else. Man of an army of a failing cause. Nowadays he doesn't give a damn. The only thing he cares about is making sure the world is going to burn into flames. When that day comes, he'll sit on top of a mountain and have one final smoke. He'll enjoy the heat and the ash and the screams of the people who are dying. And then he'll throw himself off that mountain the way he should have done the day Shoyou-sensei died.

It's that reasoning that makes him push her around. Of course he's curious about righteous people like her. Could people like Tsukuyo ever break? So he pries into her, asks her about her past in the dark. The lull of the night has always been soothing for people like them. He once imagined playing a shamisen to her and then breaking her neck.

Every time there's a moment where he thinks he could do it. Just one, painless swipe to her neck, right after she comes - now that would be ideal. Or maybe he could stab her in the side when she falls asleep next to his side, right after she runs a hand through his hair. After all, he could kill her. And he's incapacitated her before. She's fast - he's faster.

But he doesn't do it.

He can categorize the type of women he encounters in neat slots - there are whores and bimbos, geeks, harpies, bitches, broads.

Tsukuyo is a rare find. Here is a woman of exceptional, fine spun beauty, but she is woefully unaware of it. She smokes, wears high heels, dedicates her life to this stinking cesspool of lust, gives up on all hope of true love, but admits her biggest fears to a state sanctioned criminal.

Her life has absolutely no significance to her whatsoever. And that's something they both have in common. There are goals. Vague goals, maybe not even achievable ones to have. But in retrospect, they don't give a shit whether they're dead or alive. If in the meantime a kunai pierces her heart, and Gintoki stabs his chest, it won't matter.

Nothing mattered in the end, really.

It's my fault for wanting the things that I can't have. That's his final thought before Hijikata bursts into the room.

-x-

She pretends that when she patrols the west side of the city, that she is not secretly hoping that he will have picked up on the signs. It is wrong and sick and twisted, to love such a man, and the shame burns through her veins.

But by the grace of God, fate allows her see him under the guise of moonlight, bloody and mangled, and his lone green eye moves to catch hers. Someone else is with him. Her kunai are ready to be thrown at a moment's notice.

"Kamui, go to the ship," he orders, though his voice is surprisingly mild for how terrifying he looks.

There are police sirens in the background. Tsukuyo's hand trembles. All she can do is to look at him, letting his image sear into her brain. In another life, they could have been more. More than just his muse, more than a temporary escape.

And she realizes she is weak in this moment when she says, "I'm sorry."

There is no anger in his voice when he replies softly, "Don't be. It's my fault for wanting things I can't have."

The instantaneous thrust of metal in between her ribs is short and precise. He withdraws his sword, flicking away her blood, and sheathes it back.

Before he leaves, he presses one kiss into her lovely hair before turning away. He doesn't look back. It's the first time in more than a decade that he can't bear to look back at the mess he's made.

-x-