![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainsometimesI wanted to write something fluffy for Gintama. There's an idea for a scene I've been having for a while now, but I'm not sure if I'll end up posting it to AO3 one day as part of a longer fic or if it will just end up being this scene.
If it ends up as part of a longer fic, it will probably be called something like "[X] Times When Kotaro Katsura Fell Ill And [Y] Of The Many, Many, Many Times When He Didn't".
But for now, I'm just posting this scene on Dreamwidth. Constructive criticism is very welcome. The ending especially could probably use some more lines (maybe something from the morning next day, even).
Name: Us Idiots Who Can't Catch Colds [temporary title]
Word count: ca 2300
Setting: Shôka Sonjuku flashback
Spoilers: Some vague backstory reveals up to episode 320, but nothing really spoilery in nature
Characters: Katsura, Shôyô, Gintoki, Takasugi
Summary: Gintoki and Takasugi are sick. Katsura and Shôyô are not.
Shôyô-sensei peered down at his sick student and put another spoon of his home-made potion into his mouth. “Gintoki, this mixture has a good reputation,” he said, his forehead creased in mild worry. “But it will only work if you do your work in staying quiet and resting. No getting up to try to sneak anything sweet. No starting fights with Takasugi. Just stay right here in your own corner and rest. Look, I brought you a manga magazine.”
Gintoki groaned and tried to flop down on his futon, but Shôyô held him up. “Two more spoonfuls, first.” But he did give him the magazine to hold in the meanwhile.
“Sensei, Takasugi seems to be sick, too.” Katsura stood in the doorway, looking from the two of them out to the adjoining corridor. Shôyô fed Gintoki the rest of the medicine and got up to see Shinsuke wobblingly hold onto the wall, a bamboo practice sword in his hand, frowning in angry but not very focused concentration.
“Where are you going with that?” said Shôyô. “Shinsuke?”
“I’ll show them,” muttered Shinsuke. “I’ll make them see they can’t make fun of me, I’m stronger than that-- Uh, Sensei?” His anger dissolved into blank confusion as he looked up at his teacher.
“Who are you even talking to?”said Shôyô, hands in sleeves and looking down at the boy with a bemused smile. Then he put a hand on his forehead. “You’re running a high fever. Come and take the medicine I just made. Good thing there’s a lot of it left.”
Takasugi had grown red with embarrassment, realizing he’d been caught in a mistake although he didn’t seem too clear what the mistake was about. “There were some dumb boys here,” he muttered. “I don’t know where they went…”
“Everyone but you three went home half an hour ago if not earlier,” said Shôyô. “Your mind’s been playing tricks with you because you’re sick.”
“I tried telling him that,” huffed Katsura, arms crossed.
Takasugi just glared at Katsura instead of coming up with a rebuttal, even more evidence he wasn’t feeling well. He did manage to keep from toppling over, unlike Gintoki earlier, but he was unusually meek as he sat down on the futon and Shôyô fed him six spoons of the freshly made potion with the excellent reputation.
“Maybe those new Amanto pills could have helped, too,” Shôyô said thoughtfully, “but I don’t have any at hand and every shop is closed. If you two get worse in the night I’ll get some for you, if there’s any of those things to be found in this village. For now, keep yourself rested and bundled up tight and don’t fight. Here, have some more blankets than usual. You are to rest in separate corners of the room, otherwise there’s too much risk you’ll start something. Kotarô, you will sleep in my room tonight.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” said Katsura, blinking. “I never get sick. Not for years and years.”
“He’s right, you know,” Takasugi piped up, now buried under three warm blankets. “Zura never gets sick. At most he might cough or sneeze a little when everyone else is dropping like flies. He can sleep in the middle like a goody-two-shoes as usual.” But his hoarse voice didn’t have the edge it usually did.
“Guess it’s because he’s such an airhead,” Gintoki mumbled from his corner, one hand on his manga protectively even though he seemed too tired to actually read it. “He might seem like a smartie in school but now the truth comes out. That thick head’s too empty. Nothing for colds or flus to latch onto in there.”
“Since you’re a sick invalid I won’t kick you for that,” said Katsura haughtily, ignoring how both the other two growled at him. Then he added, not haughtily, “But Shôyo-sensei, I really will be fine. There’s no way they can infect me.”
Shôyô looked at him for a long moment, smiling, then said, with gentle but very undeniable firmness, “Nevertheless, you’re not sleeping here.”
Katsura opened his mouth once more, then shut it, realizing that their teacher had made up his mind and would not be persuaded otherwise. He rolled up his futon carefully, brought another manga magazine to Takasugi’s corner so those two would have one less reason to fight, tucked in their respective piles of blankets, took his futon and his sleepwear and padded into the corridor and from there into Sensei’s bedroom.
Shôyô-sensei caught up with him, carrying a candle into the room. “This spot will be fine,” he said, helping Katsura roll out the futon in one corner. He lowered his voice, “I know you won’t get infected. I didn’t want to say anything to the other two -- they get more sensitive than usual when they’re sick, have you noticed that? --but I thought you should be able to get some sleep in peace, instead of being surrounded by two coughing boys with running noses whose heads are all muddled with fever.”
Katsura blinked. It would not have occurred to him to think of it that way. “...Thank you, Shôyô-sensei,” he said, smiling a little.
He took a spare candle and went over to the bathroom to brush his teeth and washing himself for bed, changing for sleepwear too. Then he returned, sitting down on the futon and looking around. He didn’t really feel tired enough to lie down yet. Sensei’s bedroom was no unfamiliar territory, of course, he’d often come here with tea or swept the floor or aired the tatami mats in it. Gintoki had slept here before when he had a bad tooth and Sensei wanted to keep an eye on him. Takasugi also had been here not too long ago, after having fallen out of a tree and breaking his arm, and once or twice before when he got hit over his head real hard during kendo practice. That last had been daytime only, though.
Come to think of it, something like that had happened back the very first time Takasugi had talked to Shôyô-sensei, hadn’t it? Though that had been another room in another house in another town. Katsura had been spying on them at the time.
He drew a little bit of a sigh, thinking of those other times and similar ones, like when Gintoki had fallen through the ice into a small lake in the next village over. “Those two are so troublesome, they always need attention,” he said.
“This time, I don’t think it was really their fault,” mused Shôyô-sensei, who had now sat himself down at his low writing-table and seemed to be writing a letter. He'd lit an oil lamp, giving better light than the candle could. “Children in groups simply tend to get infected and fall ill ever so often. It’s worse in the cities, as I understand it.”
“Oh… I suppose,” Katsura conceded. “I was thinking of some other times when they’ve been hurt or ill from being careless. Or eating too many sweets.” His teacher’s profile as he bent over his writing board showed a definite wider grin than usual at the last one. “I’ve heard there are more infectious diseases these days,” Katsura added. “Because of the Amanto.”
“Actually,” said Sensei consideringly, “I’ve heard that most Amanto species don’t carry viruses that are harmful to humans. Their biologies are too different from ours. However, some Amanto species are more similar to humans, and it’s their viruses that can cause such havoc. But there’s also the more mundane foreigners from other Earth countries that have started to come to our shores in recent years - they bring illnesses too, unfortunately.”
Katsura’s eyes widened. “I don’t even know what ‘viruses’ are,” he confessed. Or ‘biologies’.”
Shôyô laughed a little. “I didn’t use to know, either! Until not all that long ago. I met a physician in the woods once. He had been working with Amanto doctors and was full of new big words and learning. But that didn’t stop him from making unwise choices himself; he had wandered off the road and was completely lost. I gave him some food and took him to the right road, and in return he told me what he’d learned and showed me his notebooks. So I learned some fancy new words and ways of thinking about illnesses that way.”
“Huh.” Katsura considered this. “Can you teach me more someday?”
“Of course.”
“I thought mostly the Amanto just came here to lord it over Earthlings and steal our resources and get the government to do what they want,” Katsura observed. By now he had laid down in his futon.
“Mm, hmm, well. There’s Amanto and Amanto, one could say. But even with the powerful Amanto -- they bring gifts of sorts, some good and some not so good, as well as taking things and exercising power. The true difficulty is really about time and the lack of equality. They cause things to happen much too quickly, I would say, and without leaving us much of a say in it.” While he spoke, Shôyô kept writing, till he folded the letter neatly, put it into an envelope and sealed it. However, instead of putting his writing gear aside, he took out a notebook and started to write into that one instead.
Katsura hid a yawn, a sleepiness starting to settle in his head, into his limbs. “We’ll have to change that one day,” he said. He felt confident Shôyô would be able to do something, once Katsura and the others were big so he didn’t have to worry about them anymore. Shôyô could do anything. And Katsura would help.
Shôyô glanced over at him and smiled. “I suppose we are discussing rather big topics considering you were supposed to get some sleep away from those two.”
Katsura was quiet for a moment. “Sensei, I told you before, but…” He paused, trying to put his words into the right shape. “I guess it’s weird that I don’t really get ill. Or if I do, I only feel weird for an hour maybe, then I’m healthy again. But I think my grandmother would say it’s all right. Because I’m a general.”
“Many generals fall sick too,” Shôyô-sensei remarked, his pen scritch-scritch-scritching by the light of the oil lamp. A comfortable sound and sight to fall asleep to.
“But isn’t it good if they don’t? Because then they can take care of their soldiers all the better.” Katsura was just thinking out loud now.
“That’s true,” Shôyô-sensei agreed. “Even so, they should still try not to overdo it.”
“Do you ever fall sick, Sensei?” Katsura ventured a question he might not have felt comfortable asking ordinarily, with everybody else listening.
“It happens very rarely,” said Shôyô slowly, pausing from his writing. His gaze was unfocused for a moment, as if trying to remember something from very far away. “Not for a long time, now.”
“How long? Since before you met Gintoki?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“I see…” Katsura trailed off, rolling over on his side to find a comfortable position. Over in the other room, Takasugi was coughing loudly.
“I’ll look in on them in a little while,” said Shôyô reassuringly as Katsura raised his head towards the noise.
He settled down again. So, he thought, Gintoki had never seen Shôyô fall ill, then. True, sometimes grown-ups could be very tough. When he was little his grandmother had never been ill that he could remember. It wasn’t till some time after he got the scholarship to attend the elite academy that she’d fallen sick. But after that she hadn’t ever gotten well again.
“If you ever do get sick you’ll have to tell us which medicine we should get for you, Sensei,” he said. “Even if it’s expensive, we can get it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s very unlikely to happen,” said Shôyô, laughing a little. “I’m like you, Kotarô, only even more so. You should know that Gintoki has called me an airhead too, at least once.”
Katsura stared at his teacher. “He did?” That time must have made a really big bump on Gintoki's head, he thought.
Shôyô laughed again. “He is a boy full of surprises,” he said, very fondly. Then he put his notebook away and also put his writing-table away into one corner. He rolled out his futon in its space but didn’t blow out the lamp yet. Right, he was going to go check in on the other two soon, so it was dumb to let it grow dark now. Although Katsura was sure Sensei could move easily in the darkness in any case.
“Sensei,” he said, sleep tugging at him, “if I ever do get sick one day after all, you should try giving me a kitten or a puppy to hold. I’m sure I would get better just by that.”
“Oh?” said Shôyô.
“I don’t mean like keeping a pet, I just mean for a few minutes,” Katsura clarified. “I’m sure” -- he yawned uncontrollably -- “I’m sure it would help. I didn’t have any ulterior motives!”
Shôyô-sensei leaned over and ruffled his head. “Of course,” he said. “It would be at the top of my list of cures, that’s for sure. Go to sleep now, Kotarô.”
“Good,” mumbled Katsura, satisfied that his teacher had been understanding him correctly. “Good cure. Not going to need it but-- Fluffy doctors, fluffy doctors are the best.” He wasn’t really sure if he was talking out loud or just thinking anymore. He had to admit it was nice to be able to sleep in peace like this.
He drifted into an almost-sleep that lasted for a while, until he’d heard Sensei get up, go into the other room, then come back very soon. That was confirmation enough for Katsura that the other two would be okay, otherwise Shôyô would have stayed there longer. He fell into real sleep shortly afterwards.
If it ends up as part of a longer fic, it will probably be called something like "[X] Times When Kotaro Katsura Fell Ill And [Y] Of The Many, Many, Many Times When He Didn't".
But for now, I'm just posting this scene on Dreamwidth. Constructive criticism is very welcome. The ending especially could probably use some more lines (maybe something from the morning next day, even).
Name: Us Idiots Who Can't Catch Colds [temporary title]
Word count: ca 2300
Setting: Shôka Sonjuku flashback
Spoilers: Some vague backstory reveals up to episode 320, but nothing really spoilery in nature
Characters: Katsura, Shôyô, Gintoki, Takasugi
Summary: Gintoki and Takasugi are sick. Katsura and Shôyô are not.
Shôyô-sensei peered down at his sick student and put another spoon of his home-made potion into his mouth. “Gintoki, this mixture has a good reputation,” he said, his forehead creased in mild worry. “But it will only work if you do your work in staying quiet and resting. No getting up to try to sneak anything sweet. No starting fights with Takasugi. Just stay right here in your own corner and rest. Look, I brought you a manga magazine.”
Gintoki groaned and tried to flop down on his futon, but Shôyô held him up. “Two more spoonfuls, first.” But he did give him the magazine to hold in the meanwhile.
“Sensei, Takasugi seems to be sick, too.” Katsura stood in the doorway, looking from the two of them out to the adjoining corridor. Shôyô fed Gintoki the rest of the medicine and got up to see Shinsuke wobblingly hold onto the wall, a bamboo practice sword in his hand, frowning in angry but not very focused concentration.
“Where are you going with that?” said Shôyô. “Shinsuke?”
“I’ll show them,” muttered Shinsuke. “I’ll make them see they can’t make fun of me, I’m stronger than that-- Uh, Sensei?” His anger dissolved into blank confusion as he looked up at his teacher.
“Who are you even talking to?”said Shôyô, hands in sleeves and looking down at the boy with a bemused smile. Then he put a hand on his forehead. “You’re running a high fever. Come and take the medicine I just made. Good thing there’s a lot of it left.”
Takasugi had grown red with embarrassment, realizing he’d been caught in a mistake although he didn’t seem too clear what the mistake was about. “There were some dumb boys here,” he muttered. “I don’t know where they went…”
“Everyone but you three went home half an hour ago if not earlier,” said Shôyô. “Your mind’s been playing tricks with you because you’re sick.”
“I tried telling him that,” huffed Katsura, arms crossed.
Takasugi just glared at Katsura instead of coming up with a rebuttal, even more evidence he wasn’t feeling well. He did manage to keep from toppling over, unlike Gintoki earlier, but he was unusually meek as he sat down on the futon and Shôyô fed him six spoons of the freshly made potion with the excellent reputation.
“Maybe those new Amanto pills could have helped, too,” Shôyô said thoughtfully, “but I don’t have any at hand and every shop is closed. If you two get worse in the night I’ll get some for you, if there’s any of those things to be found in this village. For now, keep yourself rested and bundled up tight and don’t fight. Here, have some more blankets than usual. You are to rest in separate corners of the room, otherwise there’s too much risk you’ll start something. Kotarô, you will sleep in my room tonight.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” said Katsura, blinking. “I never get sick. Not for years and years.”
“He’s right, you know,” Takasugi piped up, now buried under three warm blankets. “Zura never gets sick. At most he might cough or sneeze a little when everyone else is dropping like flies. He can sleep in the middle like a goody-two-shoes as usual.” But his hoarse voice didn’t have the edge it usually did.
“Guess it’s because he’s such an airhead,” Gintoki mumbled from his corner, one hand on his manga protectively even though he seemed too tired to actually read it. “He might seem like a smartie in school but now the truth comes out. That thick head’s too empty. Nothing for colds or flus to latch onto in there.”
“Since you’re a sick invalid I won’t kick you for that,” said Katsura haughtily, ignoring how both the other two growled at him. Then he added, not haughtily, “But Shôyo-sensei, I really will be fine. There’s no way they can infect me.”
Shôyô looked at him for a long moment, smiling, then said, with gentle but very undeniable firmness, “Nevertheless, you’re not sleeping here.”
Katsura opened his mouth once more, then shut it, realizing that their teacher had made up his mind and would not be persuaded otherwise. He rolled up his futon carefully, brought another manga magazine to Takasugi’s corner so those two would have one less reason to fight, tucked in their respective piles of blankets, took his futon and his sleepwear and padded into the corridor and from there into Sensei’s bedroom.
Shôyô-sensei caught up with him, carrying a candle into the room. “This spot will be fine,” he said, helping Katsura roll out the futon in one corner. He lowered his voice, “I know you won’t get infected. I didn’t want to say anything to the other two -- they get more sensitive than usual when they’re sick, have you noticed that? --but I thought you should be able to get some sleep in peace, instead of being surrounded by two coughing boys with running noses whose heads are all muddled with fever.”
Katsura blinked. It would not have occurred to him to think of it that way. “...Thank you, Shôyô-sensei,” he said, smiling a little.
He took a spare candle and went over to the bathroom to brush his teeth and washing himself for bed, changing for sleepwear too. Then he returned, sitting down on the futon and looking around. He didn’t really feel tired enough to lie down yet. Sensei’s bedroom was no unfamiliar territory, of course, he’d often come here with tea or swept the floor or aired the tatami mats in it. Gintoki had slept here before when he had a bad tooth and Sensei wanted to keep an eye on him. Takasugi also had been here not too long ago, after having fallen out of a tree and breaking his arm, and once or twice before when he got hit over his head real hard during kendo practice. That last had been daytime only, though.
Come to think of it, something like that had happened back the very first time Takasugi had talked to Shôyô-sensei, hadn’t it? Though that had been another room in another house in another town. Katsura had been spying on them at the time.
He drew a little bit of a sigh, thinking of those other times and similar ones, like when Gintoki had fallen through the ice into a small lake in the next village over. “Those two are so troublesome, they always need attention,” he said.
“This time, I don’t think it was really their fault,” mused Shôyô-sensei, who had now sat himself down at his low writing-table and seemed to be writing a letter. He'd lit an oil lamp, giving better light than the candle could. “Children in groups simply tend to get infected and fall ill ever so often. It’s worse in the cities, as I understand it.”
“Oh… I suppose,” Katsura conceded. “I was thinking of some other times when they’ve been hurt or ill from being careless. Or eating too many sweets.” His teacher’s profile as he bent over his writing board showed a definite wider grin than usual at the last one. “I’ve heard there are more infectious diseases these days,” Katsura added. “Because of the Amanto.”
“Actually,” said Sensei consideringly, “I’ve heard that most Amanto species don’t carry viruses that are harmful to humans. Their biologies are too different from ours. However, some Amanto species are more similar to humans, and it’s their viruses that can cause such havoc. But there’s also the more mundane foreigners from other Earth countries that have started to come to our shores in recent years - they bring illnesses too, unfortunately.”
Katsura’s eyes widened. “I don’t even know what ‘viruses’ are,” he confessed. Or ‘biologies’.”
Shôyô laughed a little. “I didn’t use to know, either! Until not all that long ago. I met a physician in the woods once. He had been working with Amanto doctors and was full of new big words and learning. But that didn’t stop him from making unwise choices himself; he had wandered off the road and was completely lost. I gave him some food and took him to the right road, and in return he told me what he’d learned and showed me his notebooks. So I learned some fancy new words and ways of thinking about illnesses that way.”
“Huh.” Katsura considered this. “Can you teach me more someday?”
“Of course.”
“I thought mostly the Amanto just came here to lord it over Earthlings and steal our resources and get the government to do what they want,” Katsura observed. By now he had laid down in his futon.
“Mm, hmm, well. There’s Amanto and Amanto, one could say. But even with the powerful Amanto -- they bring gifts of sorts, some good and some not so good, as well as taking things and exercising power. The true difficulty is really about time and the lack of equality. They cause things to happen much too quickly, I would say, and without leaving us much of a say in it.” While he spoke, Shôyô kept writing, till he folded the letter neatly, put it into an envelope and sealed it. However, instead of putting his writing gear aside, he took out a notebook and started to write into that one instead.
Katsura hid a yawn, a sleepiness starting to settle in his head, into his limbs. “We’ll have to change that one day,” he said. He felt confident Shôyô would be able to do something, once Katsura and the others were big so he didn’t have to worry about them anymore. Shôyô could do anything. And Katsura would help.
Shôyô glanced over at him and smiled. “I suppose we are discussing rather big topics considering you were supposed to get some sleep away from those two.”
Katsura was quiet for a moment. “Sensei, I told you before, but…” He paused, trying to put his words into the right shape. “I guess it’s weird that I don’t really get ill. Or if I do, I only feel weird for an hour maybe, then I’m healthy again. But I think my grandmother would say it’s all right. Because I’m a general.”
“Many generals fall sick too,” Shôyô-sensei remarked, his pen scritch-scritch-scritching by the light of the oil lamp. A comfortable sound and sight to fall asleep to.
“But isn’t it good if they don’t? Because then they can take care of their soldiers all the better.” Katsura was just thinking out loud now.
“That’s true,” Shôyô-sensei agreed. “Even so, they should still try not to overdo it.”
“Do you ever fall sick, Sensei?” Katsura ventured a question he might not have felt comfortable asking ordinarily, with everybody else listening.
“It happens very rarely,” said Shôyô slowly, pausing from his writing. His gaze was unfocused for a moment, as if trying to remember something from very far away. “Not for a long time, now.”
“How long? Since before you met Gintoki?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“I see…” Katsura trailed off, rolling over on his side to find a comfortable position. Over in the other room, Takasugi was coughing loudly.
“I’ll look in on them in a little while,” said Shôyô reassuringly as Katsura raised his head towards the noise.
He settled down again. So, he thought, Gintoki had never seen Shôyô fall ill, then. True, sometimes grown-ups could be very tough. When he was little his grandmother had never been ill that he could remember. It wasn’t till some time after he got the scholarship to attend the elite academy that she’d fallen sick. But after that she hadn’t ever gotten well again.
“If you ever do get sick you’ll have to tell us which medicine we should get for you, Sensei,” he said. “Even if it’s expensive, we can get it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s very unlikely to happen,” said Shôyô, laughing a little. “I’m like you, Kotarô, only even more so. You should know that Gintoki has called me an airhead too, at least once.”
Katsura stared at his teacher. “He did?” That time must have made a really big bump on Gintoki's head, he thought.
Shôyô laughed again. “He is a boy full of surprises,” he said, very fondly. Then he put his notebook away and also put his writing-table away into one corner. He rolled out his futon in its space but didn’t blow out the lamp yet. Right, he was going to go check in on the other two soon, so it was dumb to let it grow dark now. Although Katsura was sure Sensei could move easily in the darkness in any case.
“Sensei,” he said, sleep tugging at him, “if I ever do get sick one day after all, you should try giving me a kitten or a puppy to hold. I’m sure I would get better just by that.”
“Oh?” said Shôyô.
“I don’t mean like keeping a pet, I just mean for a few minutes,” Katsura clarified. “I’m sure” -- he yawned uncontrollably -- “I’m sure it would help. I didn’t have any ulterior motives!”
Shôyô-sensei leaned over and ruffled his head. “Of course,” he said. “It would be at the top of my list of cures, that’s for sure. Go to sleep now, Kotarô.”
“Good,” mumbled Katsura, satisfied that his teacher had been understanding him correctly. “Good cure. Not going to need it but-- Fluffy doctors, fluffy doctors are the best.” He wasn’t really sure if he was talking out loud or just thinking anymore. He had to admit it was nice to be able to sleep in peace like this.
He drifted into an almost-sleep that lasted for a while, until he’d heard Sensei get up, go into the other room, then come back very soon. That was confirmation enough for Katsura that the other two would be okay, otherwise Shôyô would have stayed there longer. He fell into real sleep shortly afterwards.