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rainsometimesFic title: There's No Together, There's No Apart, There's Only Impossible Longing
Chapter: 1/3 5 (plus prologue)
Chapter title: Raging Fire, Clear Water, And Pure White
Word Count: 3156 in this chapter
Fandom: Gintama
Fic status: in progress
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura/Takasugi: Gintoki/Katsura, Katsura/Takasugi, Takasugi/Gintoki
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Setting: Starts before canon, ends after it. Final chapter will contain post-manga scenes and be very spoilery for the manga ending.
Flavour: Angsty, but hopefully with a relatively happy ending (that's the plan at least)
Summary: A story about Gintoki, Katsura and Takasugi told through various scenes and fragments.
Author's Notes and disclaimer in the prologue post
Katsura's touch is like an autumn leaf right as the wind finally deposits it down on the ground. It's melancholy but not insistent, leaving Takasugi room to breathe. That's the only reason why it's still tolerable.
Zura treats Takasugi like a burden he can't quite let go of, like a duty he still carries close to his chest, in that stubborn Zura-like way. If Takasugi was a whole person, if he was a kind person, that taking on burdens might have bothered him. He is not whole anymore and he was never kind, and it's only the attachment Zura still shows that's a lingering irritation, one he will have to deal with eventually.
Is Zura a whole person? Takasugi finds that doubtful. Whether he tries to play at being whole or tries to play at being as cracked and broken as Takasugi, he's not convincing. A fraud either way, unable to commit. His voice comes close like the smell of the rain. There are things he will never be able to know.
Perhaps he’s too singular for madness to truly claim him; perhaps, strange to say, he’s not real enough for that. Not like Takasugi. Not like Gintoki, even. They both used to cling to that comforting unrealness, and now Katsura is the one who's lost, without those hands tugging at his kimono.
But that is none of his concern.
He keeps quiet, tonight, putting the shamisen aside after only a few minutes of playing. Then he sticks to just smoking, drinking and watching Zura, making no move to reach out even in the vicious, self-centred way that is all he allows himself. With all his flaws and frustrations, Zura can still keep usefully silent on occasion, and this evening is a time for silence and quiet.
Zura also doesn’t seem interested in anything physical tonight. He’s focused on some official records that have been surreptitiously copied for him by a supporter, making notes to himself, sometimes muttering under his breath. The faint smell of his cheap shampoo gets slightly stronger with a sudden breeze from the window, making Takasugi’s nostrils flare.
I'll have to get rid of that one day, that annoying smell, he thinks to himself, but he's still preoccupied by his own meandering mind and when Zura rises to go it takes him by surprise, just a little.
“Already?” he says, keeping his tone indifferent.
“Nothing more to do,” says Zura, putting on the monk robes. He looks at Takasugi for a moment as if he’d like to add something, then just shakes his head to himself. Then he nudges the pile of papers with his foot, “I don’t need to keep these. You can give them to your strategist if you choose, I’ve noted down or memorized the important bits.”
Takechi may well get some use out of those records, although they didn’t seem to cover any area of immediate interest to him. “We don’t need your handouts,” he says anyway. “We have a lot more resources than you do, these days.”
Zura frowns. “So I’ve noticed. You’ve made some curious alliances.”
“Your scruples aren’t going to do you any favours,” says Takasugi, wondering but not caring which particular group Zura is referring to; as if all of his own financial backers are morally upright. For that matter, they share several well-off supporters between them. “It doesn’t matter if the vermin think I’m on their side, they’re all going down eventually.”
“At least keep those ties secret. They reflect badly on the movement as a whole,” mutters Zura, putting on his monk hat.
“’The movement’”, Takasugi mocks him, knocking out the ashes of his kiseru. “There’s not been one movement since the war.” Zura thinks in terms of overturning the top of the country and building something new. That’s why he will fail. It only works if you focus on tearing it all down.
Zura sighs. “I don’t believe that,” he says earnestly (but that earnestness is a front, Takasugi thinks, even if he doesn’t see it himself: he’s dumb but he’s too smart to be that dumb), “but there’s no reasoning with you. Good night.”
He slips out through the door, and Takasugi lets him go. It’s a quiet night, no need to get the last word in this time.
Something is making his wound hurt more than usual. Perhaps it’s those recent reports from spies in Edo, about a white-haired samurai making his living as an odd jobs man. Perhaps such reports have been poking at Zura’s buzzing mind as well. ’See? He doesn’t care about you at all, or he would have made his presence known by now.’ Takasugi might have mocked Zura like that, if he’d brought up the issue (which might have been why Zura didn’t: a more pleasant explanation than him being distastefully considerate of Takasugi).
“And things were being so nice and quiet,” he says to the empty room, then chuckles at himself. He doesn’t think he will sleep well tonight.
“You need to stop thinking we’re friends,” Takasugi had told him calmly one night, that time in Chiba, eight years after the end of the war and two years before Gintoki was finally found again. Katsura remembered how there had been no light in the room except for the moonlight from the window and the dim glow of the firepot, reflecting in Takasugi’s eyes while the smoke was felt more than seen as it circled up to the ceiling.
“We’re only on the same side,” he had continued. “For now. But I do things my way now. You need to stop interfering.” There had been no warmth in his voice, not even the heat of anger.
“Then that goes the same for you as well,” Katsura had retorted curtly, hiding the hurt as he folded up the letter he’d been reading and put it inside his kimono, right next to the old green schoolbook. “You are not to interfere in the doings of my group either. And that includes carrying out attacks on the same target without coordinating our forces when you had been pre-informed of our plan. I had two men captured the other night, and one badly injured. That needn’t have happened.”
“You’re being too fussy and soft with them. You should be clearer right from the start what they can expect; then the three men you just lost would have been instantly replaced by double the amount.”
“My men are ready for sacrifice if it’s necessary,” protested Katsura. “But I don’t expect them to die. I expect them to fight hard and survive, for Japan’s sake. And not be lost because of careless actions from an ally.”
Takasugi sneered. “See? Already thinking more like a civilian than a general.”
“I haven’t changed my thinking since the war,” Katsura insisted stiffly, arms crossed.
Takasugi only smoked more deeply on his kiseru pipe and said nothing. The room was full of unsaid words; unlike the smoke, they couldn’t escape through the open window.
Katsura inched closer. “I want to kiss you,” he announced, tone still curt.
Takasugi didn’t look surprised. He leaned back against the wall, lifting one hand lazily in a beckoning gesture. Katsura’s fingers closed on the kiseru pipe, determined to stop that mouth from smoking for a little while at least.
It's going to end soon, Takasugi knows, and surely Zura senses it as well, for all his delusions. It was a foregone conclusion to start with, but he can tell it’s approaching faster now, ever since Gintoki resurfaced from his hiding place. Whether the irreversible line between them will be drawn by Takasugi's sword, or events will force the break to happen a different way, this cannot continue much longer.
No more will he feel Zura's hands on him, the shuddering strength of those limbs, or the pesky presence of his grating concern, unwanted compassion; nor his silences, simultaneously tense and (uselessly) restful. No more will he feel that particular scent next to him as he wakes up, or see Zura's drowsy morning face framed and obscured by long uncombed hair as he sits up, his kimono hanging open for once. Nor will sunrays streak through shutters or blinders as they fuck just one more time before leaving, and Zura will no longer be tainted by Takasugi 's words or bloodstained fingers - that, at least, is something of a pity.
He thinks the break, when it comes, will be more of a relief than anything else. Still, until then, he suspects Zura also thinks, like him, It's okay for them to have this now, because it's going to end soon.
Katsura has never been entirely sure if Takasugi hates his concern and compassion entirely and utterly, or if he finds those traits useful for manipulation, which could mean he tolerates them to some extent. Katsura tends to keep that side of him down for the most part, not speaking of his worries all that often.
But when they do peek through, it’s not always due to his own lowered defences. Sometimes it’s out of spite. If Takasugi will keep on with his dark nihilistic mutterings against the world, Edo, and Gintoki, Katsura will feel free to annoy the man in his own way.
"I know I'm not the one you truly need,” Zura told him once, his eyes looking even larger and more sorrowful than usual in the blurry grey light of the early dawn. He'd been standing by the door by then, putting on his outer robe as he was getting ready to leave. Takasugi wanted to hurt him.
He snickered coldly instead. "There's nobody I need who's still alive, except as mere tools. You’re neither needed or wanted, just tolerated.”
"There is one," said Zura, turning away as he bent down to put his shoes on.
The smile left Takasugi’s face for a moment. It had only been a few weeks since his plan to use the forlorn roboticist on the summer festival had failed. He leant towards the wall and crossed his arms. "All I need from that guy is to hear the crack of his spine shattering under my sword, to feel his throat crushed between my hands. Now, that's something I want."
Zura put on his hat and said nothing, just gave him a look of hurt disapproval before he opened the front door that made Takasugi chuckle. But there had been disbelief in it, too, as if he didn’t think Takasugi was serious deep down.
Well, he’d learn, eventually. Takasugi finished the cup of tea Zura had made to wash away the sudden, bitter taste in his mouth.
He came once more to Takasugi’s current place in Edo. He couldn’t help but notice that his lodgings seemed to increase in quality for each time he had to move, which didn’t seem to be as often as Katsura had to change his own dwellings and meeting-places. Takasugi’s talent for finding and holding onto rich and influential sympathisers was more apparent than ever.
It wasn’t long after Katsura had spent time hiding from the police in a ramen shop. The words and actions of Ikumatsu still haunted him. She, who had let him stay there while he was injured, even though she had been widowed by an action of the Jôi…
Gintoki hadn’t been wrong, after all. If he kept on with the bombings like he had so far, regardless of what more innocent casualties that might result, that would just lead to more night, with no dawn to come. But it wasn’t easy to decide how to fight instead. What he needed was to find more people around him whose spirit could inspire him, who didn’t let themselves get beaten down by injustice but were able to give courage to others. People who were able to create instead of destroying.
So why, on this cold evening in spring, were his feet seeking out the one person who most certainly wouldn’t be able to provide for any of that, let alone show any understanding for Katsura’s new course?
He couldn’t understand it himself. Yet here he was, sitting down in yet another well-guarded but pleasantly furnished and decorated room, having brought a few nuggets of information and questions as pretext, even though he could easily have sent one of his followers for that purpose instead. Here he sat quietly waiting, while his host played a few desultory notes on his shamisen without looking up, while that damn tobacco smell filled up the room, while a servant came by with two cups and two bottles of sake. He could have been at home with his new trusty companion or gone to spend time with Gintoki and his two young people, yet here he sat, wasting his time with someone he knew, deep inside, wouldn’t care for what he said and would never let him into his heart again.
Takasugi didn’t care about etiquette, so Katsura had to fill his cup on his own, grumbling. As his fingers closed around it, he thought of Gintoki’s shoulder bumping into his the other day, and the warmth of his hand under Katsura’s the last time there’d been an excuse to seize it to drag him along. They were reunited now, they were reconciled, things were fine… but Gintoki hadn’t reached out to kiss him even once, let alone do more than that. And Katsura had been unable to make himself take the first step. He knew he wanted that, his body ached to feel that closeness again. And he didn’t truly think it would be as unwelcome as all that on Gintoki’s side. Even if he were to be rejected, it would surely be with kindness.
But still he wouldn’t go and sit by his side nor put his hands and lips on him, on someone he could take strength and comfort from. He went here instead. And not long after he’d finished the first cup of sake, his arms were reaching for Takasugi -- shamefully quickly, really.
You need to stop thinking we’re friends…
Maybe that was what he needed. The hurt that would make him tougher. He’d decided the need to take a new course, but that didn’t mean he could let his heart grow as soft as a fluffy little kitten.
Takasugi’s gaze was more unreadable than ever, and there was a weighing moment when Katsura felt almost sure he would be pushed away, but in the end Takasugi drained his second cup to the bottom and grasped Katsura with familiar impatience.
Normally, he’d start with roughness and was just fine with Katsura being rough in return, only eventually letting a gentleness he didn’t ever seem to acknowledge into his touch. This time, his hands softened more quickly as usual, but his expression was distant, as if his mind was thinking of other things (of larger fires? of another set of hands, no matter how hated…?). It took a lot of fervour and energy on Katsura’s part to finally overwhelm him with pleasure, stuttering and moaning hoarsely just so and glaring grumpily at him for it, too. That glare of his was an old habit that Katsura always liked to see again.
Katsura’s own head was spinning; he sighed and leaned forward for a moment, breathing the other in. Then abruptly he sat back and let go.
(Later, after Benizakura, he looked back on that night and wondered if both of them had known, at some level, that it was the last time.)
After he’d washed and dressed himself, he returned to see Takasugi looking at a large sheet of paper, one with designs of some kind on it, which he folded up as Katsura stepped closer.
“You’ve been ill recently, haven’t you?” Katsura said, having taken note of Takasugi’s paleness of skin and a raspy tone to his voice. “Was it a winter cold? It’s disappointing that you can’t be more careful.” He did his best to put a sneer into his voice to make the concern less obvious.
“Not as disappointing as a grown man who’s obsessed with mothering other grown men despite being so abjectly bad at it,” replied Takasugi coolly.
Katsura huffed. “Even Gintoki is at least smart enough to come out of the rain these days. He’s been healthy the whole winter, you know. You’re the only one who’ll never learn.”
An unkind smile flashed over Takasugi’s face. Then he rose and stepped very close to Katsura, grabbing him by the shoulder none too gently, leaning in close. A shiver ran down Katsura's back, but he gave Takasugi a flat unimpressed look all the same.
"He doesn't need you these days, right? Isn't that it? Isn't that why you come here?" Takasugi ran his fingers through Katsura's hair. "I don't need you either, but at least I tolerate you, I don't push you away the way he does."
That wasn’t entirely true. Tonight he’d been accommodating, but at other times Takasugi was adept at giving Katsura a cold shoulder when it suited him -- not that he could be said to ever truly offer warmth these days, only a blazing conflagration of destruction…. But Katsura didn't feel the need to point that out.
He grasped Takasugi by the wrist, holding it up, thinking of how Takasugi would turn vicious in a heartbeat when Katsura was the one to bring Gintoki up - as if Takasugi wasn't constantly invoking him with every spiteful word and brooding gesture.
“Believe what you want,” he said, keeping his tone even. “But you’re not all wrong. If there’s someone he needs from the past, it’s more likely to be you than me.”
“If he’s feeling suicidal, he can seek me out anytime,” said Takasugi, his tone light and easy. “I am going to kill him one day, you know. It would be fun if you could hang around to watch it. But without being able to intervene.” He smiled. “I think I would like that.”
Katsura wanted to tell him, Just wait. If I can’t bring you back, he can. But that felt not just like too much provocation, but too much naked hope to put into spoken words and let out into the air like tobacco smoke.
Instead, he just closed his eyes in a tired expression and let go of Takasugi’s wrist, shaking his other hand off his shoulder. “You’re impossible,” he said. “I don’t even know why I come here.”
“I just explained it to you.” Takasugi dropped the smile and took on a bored tone. “You’re just lost as usual, Zura. Futilely trying to look for a place where you’re needed.”
Katsura looked at him quietly for a long moment. He wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong, but…
I can still be strong enough. He turned and left without another word, with more weight but also more purpose to his steps than when he’d come. Sometimes Takasugi’s underestimation could be oddly motivating.
Continues in Chapter 2
Chapter: 1/
Chapter title: Raging Fire, Clear Water, And Pure White
Word Count: 3156 in this chapter
Fandom: Gintama
Fic status: in progress
Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura/Takasugi: Gintoki/Katsura, Katsura/Takasugi, Takasugi/Gintoki
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Setting: Starts before canon, ends after it. Final chapter will contain post-manga scenes and be very spoilery for the manga ending.
Flavour: Angsty, but hopefully with a relatively happy ending (that's the plan at least)
Summary: A story about Gintoki, Katsura and Takasugi told through various scenes and fragments.
Author's Notes and disclaimer in the prologue post
Katsura's touch is like an autumn leaf right as the wind finally deposits it down on the ground. It's melancholy but not insistent, leaving Takasugi room to breathe. That's the only reason why it's still tolerable.
Zura treats Takasugi like a burden he can't quite let go of, like a duty he still carries close to his chest, in that stubborn Zura-like way. If Takasugi was a whole person, if he was a kind person, that taking on burdens might have bothered him. He is not whole anymore and he was never kind, and it's only the attachment Zura still shows that's a lingering irritation, one he will have to deal with eventually.
Is Zura a whole person? Takasugi finds that doubtful. Whether he tries to play at being whole or tries to play at being as cracked and broken as Takasugi, he's not convincing. A fraud either way, unable to commit. His voice comes close like the smell of the rain. There are things he will never be able to know.
Perhaps he’s too singular for madness to truly claim him; perhaps, strange to say, he’s not real enough for that. Not like Takasugi. Not like Gintoki, even. They both used to cling to that comforting unrealness, and now Katsura is the one who's lost, without those hands tugging at his kimono.
But that is none of his concern.
He keeps quiet, tonight, putting the shamisen aside after only a few minutes of playing. Then he sticks to just smoking, drinking and watching Zura, making no move to reach out even in the vicious, self-centred way that is all he allows himself. With all his flaws and frustrations, Zura can still keep usefully silent on occasion, and this evening is a time for silence and quiet.
Zura also doesn’t seem interested in anything physical tonight. He’s focused on some official records that have been surreptitiously copied for him by a supporter, making notes to himself, sometimes muttering under his breath. The faint smell of his cheap shampoo gets slightly stronger with a sudden breeze from the window, making Takasugi’s nostrils flare.
I'll have to get rid of that one day, that annoying smell, he thinks to himself, but he's still preoccupied by his own meandering mind and when Zura rises to go it takes him by surprise, just a little.
“Already?” he says, keeping his tone indifferent.
“Nothing more to do,” says Zura, putting on the monk robes. He looks at Takasugi for a moment as if he’d like to add something, then just shakes his head to himself. Then he nudges the pile of papers with his foot, “I don’t need to keep these. You can give them to your strategist if you choose, I’ve noted down or memorized the important bits.”
Takechi may well get some use out of those records, although they didn’t seem to cover any area of immediate interest to him. “We don’t need your handouts,” he says anyway. “We have a lot more resources than you do, these days.”
Zura frowns. “So I’ve noticed. You’ve made some curious alliances.”
“Your scruples aren’t going to do you any favours,” says Takasugi, wondering but not caring which particular group Zura is referring to; as if all of his own financial backers are morally upright. For that matter, they share several well-off supporters between them. “It doesn’t matter if the vermin think I’m on their side, they’re all going down eventually.”
“At least keep those ties secret. They reflect badly on the movement as a whole,” mutters Zura, putting on his monk hat.
“’The movement’”, Takasugi mocks him, knocking out the ashes of his kiseru. “There’s not been one movement since the war.” Zura thinks in terms of overturning the top of the country and building something new. That’s why he will fail. It only works if you focus on tearing it all down.
Zura sighs. “I don’t believe that,” he says earnestly (but that earnestness is a front, Takasugi thinks, even if he doesn’t see it himself: he’s dumb but he’s too smart to be that dumb), “but there’s no reasoning with you. Good night.”
He slips out through the door, and Takasugi lets him go. It’s a quiet night, no need to get the last word in this time.
Something is making his wound hurt more than usual. Perhaps it’s those recent reports from spies in Edo, about a white-haired samurai making his living as an odd jobs man. Perhaps such reports have been poking at Zura’s buzzing mind as well. ’See? He doesn’t care about you at all, or he would have made his presence known by now.’ Takasugi might have mocked Zura like that, if he’d brought up the issue (which might have been why Zura didn’t: a more pleasant explanation than him being distastefully considerate of Takasugi).
“And things were being so nice and quiet,” he says to the empty room, then chuckles at himself. He doesn’t think he will sleep well tonight.
“You need to stop thinking we’re friends,” Takasugi had told him calmly one night, that time in Chiba, eight years after the end of the war and two years before Gintoki was finally found again. Katsura remembered how there had been no light in the room except for the moonlight from the window and the dim glow of the firepot, reflecting in Takasugi’s eyes while the smoke was felt more than seen as it circled up to the ceiling.
“We’re only on the same side,” he had continued. “For now. But I do things my way now. You need to stop interfering.” There had been no warmth in his voice, not even the heat of anger.
“Then that goes the same for you as well,” Katsura had retorted curtly, hiding the hurt as he folded up the letter he’d been reading and put it inside his kimono, right next to the old green schoolbook. “You are not to interfere in the doings of my group either. And that includes carrying out attacks on the same target without coordinating our forces when you had been pre-informed of our plan. I had two men captured the other night, and one badly injured. That needn’t have happened.”
“You’re being too fussy and soft with them. You should be clearer right from the start what they can expect; then the three men you just lost would have been instantly replaced by double the amount.”
“My men are ready for sacrifice if it’s necessary,” protested Katsura. “But I don’t expect them to die. I expect them to fight hard and survive, for Japan’s sake. And not be lost because of careless actions from an ally.”
Takasugi sneered. “See? Already thinking more like a civilian than a general.”
“I haven’t changed my thinking since the war,” Katsura insisted stiffly, arms crossed.
Takasugi only smoked more deeply on his kiseru pipe and said nothing. The room was full of unsaid words; unlike the smoke, they couldn’t escape through the open window.
Katsura inched closer. “I want to kiss you,” he announced, tone still curt.
Takasugi didn’t look surprised. He leaned back against the wall, lifting one hand lazily in a beckoning gesture. Katsura’s fingers closed on the kiseru pipe, determined to stop that mouth from smoking for a little while at least.
It's going to end soon, Takasugi knows, and surely Zura senses it as well, for all his delusions. It was a foregone conclusion to start with, but he can tell it’s approaching faster now, ever since Gintoki resurfaced from his hiding place. Whether the irreversible line between them will be drawn by Takasugi's sword, or events will force the break to happen a different way, this cannot continue much longer.
No more will he feel Zura's hands on him, the shuddering strength of those limbs, or the pesky presence of his grating concern, unwanted compassion; nor his silences, simultaneously tense and (uselessly) restful. No more will he feel that particular scent next to him as he wakes up, or see Zura's drowsy morning face framed and obscured by long uncombed hair as he sits up, his kimono hanging open for once. Nor will sunrays streak through shutters or blinders as they fuck just one more time before leaving, and Zura will no longer be tainted by Takasugi 's words or bloodstained fingers - that, at least, is something of a pity.
He thinks the break, when it comes, will be more of a relief than anything else. Still, until then, he suspects Zura also thinks, like him, It's okay for them to have this now, because it's going to end soon.
Katsura has never been entirely sure if Takasugi hates his concern and compassion entirely and utterly, or if he finds those traits useful for manipulation, which could mean he tolerates them to some extent. Katsura tends to keep that side of him down for the most part, not speaking of his worries all that often.
But when they do peek through, it’s not always due to his own lowered defences. Sometimes it’s out of spite. If Takasugi will keep on with his dark nihilistic mutterings against the world, Edo, and Gintoki, Katsura will feel free to annoy the man in his own way.
"I know I'm not the one you truly need,” Zura told him once, his eyes looking even larger and more sorrowful than usual in the blurry grey light of the early dawn. He'd been standing by the door by then, putting on his outer robe as he was getting ready to leave. Takasugi wanted to hurt him.
He snickered coldly instead. "There's nobody I need who's still alive, except as mere tools. You’re neither needed or wanted, just tolerated.”
"There is one," said Zura, turning away as he bent down to put his shoes on.
The smile left Takasugi’s face for a moment. It had only been a few weeks since his plan to use the forlorn roboticist on the summer festival had failed. He leant towards the wall and crossed his arms. "All I need from that guy is to hear the crack of his spine shattering under my sword, to feel his throat crushed between my hands. Now, that's something I want."
Zura put on his hat and said nothing, just gave him a look of hurt disapproval before he opened the front door that made Takasugi chuckle. But there had been disbelief in it, too, as if he didn’t think Takasugi was serious deep down.
Well, he’d learn, eventually. Takasugi finished the cup of tea Zura had made to wash away the sudden, bitter taste in his mouth.
He came once more to Takasugi’s current place in Edo. He couldn’t help but notice that his lodgings seemed to increase in quality for each time he had to move, which didn’t seem to be as often as Katsura had to change his own dwellings and meeting-places. Takasugi’s talent for finding and holding onto rich and influential sympathisers was more apparent than ever.
It wasn’t long after Katsura had spent time hiding from the police in a ramen shop. The words and actions of Ikumatsu still haunted him. She, who had let him stay there while he was injured, even though she had been widowed by an action of the Jôi…
Gintoki hadn’t been wrong, after all. If he kept on with the bombings like he had so far, regardless of what more innocent casualties that might result, that would just lead to more night, with no dawn to come. But it wasn’t easy to decide how to fight instead. What he needed was to find more people around him whose spirit could inspire him, who didn’t let themselves get beaten down by injustice but were able to give courage to others. People who were able to create instead of destroying.
So why, on this cold evening in spring, were his feet seeking out the one person who most certainly wouldn’t be able to provide for any of that, let alone show any understanding for Katsura’s new course?
He couldn’t understand it himself. Yet here he was, sitting down in yet another well-guarded but pleasantly furnished and decorated room, having brought a few nuggets of information and questions as pretext, even though he could easily have sent one of his followers for that purpose instead. Here he sat quietly waiting, while his host played a few desultory notes on his shamisen without looking up, while that damn tobacco smell filled up the room, while a servant came by with two cups and two bottles of sake. He could have been at home with his new trusty companion or gone to spend time with Gintoki and his two young people, yet here he sat, wasting his time with someone he knew, deep inside, wouldn’t care for what he said and would never let him into his heart again.
Takasugi didn’t care about etiquette, so Katsura had to fill his cup on his own, grumbling. As his fingers closed around it, he thought of Gintoki’s shoulder bumping into his the other day, and the warmth of his hand under Katsura’s the last time there’d been an excuse to seize it to drag him along. They were reunited now, they were reconciled, things were fine… but Gintoki hadn’t reached out to kiss him even once, let alone do more than that. And Katsura had been unable to make himself take the first step. He knew he wanted that, his body ached to feel that closeness again. And he didn’t truly think it would be as unwelcome as all that on Gintoki’s side. Even if he were to be rejected, it would surely be with kindness.
But still he wouldn’t go and sit by his side nor put his hands and lips on him, on someone he could take strength and comfort from. He went here instead. And not long after he’d finished the first cup of sake, his arms were reaching for Takasugi -- shamefully quickly, really.
You need to stop thinking we’re friends…
Maybe that was what he needed. The hurt that would make him tougher. He’d decided the need to take a new course, but that didn’t mean he could let his heart grow as soft as a fluffy little kitten.
Takasugi’s gaze was more unreadable than ever, and there was a weighing moment when Katsura felt almost sure he would be pushed away, but in the end Takasugi drained his second cup to the bottom and grasped Katsura with familiar impatience.
Normally, he’d start with roughness and was just fine with Katsura being rough in return, only eventually letting a gentleness he didn’t ever seem to acknowledge into his touch. This time, his hands softened more quickly as usual, but his expression was distant, as if his mind was thinking of other things (of larger fires? of another set of hands, no matter how hated…?). It took a lot of fervour and energy on Katsura’s part to finally overwhelm him with pleasure, stuttering and moaning hoarsely just so and glaring grumpily at him for it, too. That glare of his was an old habit that Katsura always liked to see again.
Katsura’s own head was spinning; he sighed and leaned forward for a moment, breathing the other in. Then abruptly he sat back and let go.
(Later, after Benizakura, he looked back on that night and wondered if both of them had known, at some level, that it was the last time.)
After he’d washed and dressed himself, he returned to see Takasugi looking at a large sheet of paper, one with designs of some kind on it, which he folded up as Katsura stepped closer.
“You’ve been ill recently, haven’t you?” Katsura said, having taken note of Takasugi’s paleness of skin and a raspy tone to his voice. “Was it a winter cold? It’s disappointing that you can’t be more careful.” He did his best to put a sneer into his voice to make the concern less obvious.
“Not as disappointing as a grown man who’s obsessed with mothering other grown men despite being so abjectly bad at it,” replied Takasugi coolly.
Katsura huffed. “Even Gintoki is at least smart enough to come out of the rain these days. He’s been healthy the whole winter, you know. You’re the only one who’ll never learn.”
An unkind smile flashed over Takasugi’s face. Then he rose and stepped very close to Katsura, grabbing him by the shoulder none too gently, leaning in close. A shiver ran down Katsura's back, but he gave Takasugi a flat unimpressed look all the same.
"He doesn't need you these days, right? Isn't that it? Isn't that why you come here?" Takasugi ran his fingers through Katsura's hair. "I don't need you either, but at least I tolerate you, I don't push you away the way he does."
That wasn’t entirely true. Tonight he’d been accommodating, but at other times Takasugi was adept at giving Katsura a cold shoulder when it suited him -- not that he could be said to ever truly offer warmth these days, only a blazing conflagration of destruction…. But Katsura didn't feel the need to point that out.
He grasped Takasugi by the wrist, holding it up, thinking of how Takasugi would turn vicious in a heartbeat when Katsura was the one to bring Gintoki up - as if Takasugi wasn't constantly invoking him with every spiteful word and brooding gesture.
“Believe what you want,” he said, keeping his tone even. “But you’re not all wrong. If there’s someone he needs from the past, it’s more likely to be you than me.”
“If he’s feeling suicidal, he can seek me out anytime,” said Takasugi, his tone light and easy. “I am going to kill him one day, you know. It would be fun if you could hang around to watch it. But without being able to intervene.” He smiled. “I think I would like that.”
Katsura wanted to tell him, Just wait. If I can’t bring you back, he can. But that felt not just like too much provocation, but too much naked hope to put into spoken words and let out into the air like tobacco smoke.
Instead, he just closed his eyes in a tired expression and let go of Takasugi’s wrist, shaking his other hand off his shoulder. “You’re impossible,” he said. “I don’t even know why I come here.”
“I just explained it to you.” Takasugi dropped the smile and took on a bored tone. “You’re just lost as usual, Zura. Futilely trying to look for a place where you’re needed.”
Katsura looked at him quietly for a long moment. He wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong, but…
I can still be strong enough. He turned and left without another word, with more weight but also more purpose to his steps than when he’d come. Sometimes Takasugi’s underestimation could be oddly motivating.
Continues in Chapter 2