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rainsometimesGinzura Week fic, prompt "kiss". Katsura POV. Mention of Katsura/unnamed women in the past.
Title: Eating Udon Outside On A Cold Night Can Make A Man Reckless
Characters/pairing: Gintoki/Katsura
Word count: around 1980
Spoilers/Setting: It starts during the war then leaps ahead, doesn't get as far as the Shogun Assassination Arc. No real spoilers
Rating: PG
Concrit exceedingly welcome!
This fanfic was written for entertainment purposes also. The characters of Gintama belong to Hideaki Sorachi. This story may not be reposted elsewhere without my approval.
There had been a smell of thunder in the air, he remembered later. He and Gintoki had been walking through dense brushwood after being separated from the rest of their group. They were weighed down with what pitiful loot they could carry from their recent skirmish – some guns, bombs and swords, a few instant meals, and some shoes, but no water – and they were exhausted and sweaty. It was all Katsura could do to remind himself to walk quietly, breathe quietly, not to give away their position just in case they ran into a stray enemy soldier.
Gintoki didn’t seem to need reminding. As loud as he could be at other times, here he seemed to just naturally find the most discreet footing, his breath controlled; just as his shape fit in so well with his surroundings even though you’d think all that white clothing would stand out. He didn’t even seem to need to think about it, he just moved effortlessly in the most easily quiet way possible, something like a great cat on the hunt. Even though Katsura couldn’t help but to envy that warrior ease, he also felt an obscure kind of sadness at it. When he wasn’t simply pragmatically exploiting it, that is.
Then they took a break in the shadow of a mountainside underneath a willow where they put their burdens down for a few minutes. Gintoki leaned back against the treetrunk, eyes shut, chest heaving. His face was so close that Katsura could almost have counted his white eyelashes. He didn’t really smell badly, right now. They’d been able to wash hands and faces in a creek a half hour back. He smelled of fresh sweat and tiredness and summer, not of blood and filth and too little sleep.
His cheeks looked weary but his lips looked innocent and pretty, just a little open. Katsura had leaned closer, not quite near enough to touch, his tired mind running thought loops in his head.
The thing that held him back hadn’t been anything as praiseworthy as respect or even as understandable as fear of rejection. It had been, Maybe it won’t feel good. Maybe it wouldn’t feel right. And then what is there left for me to dream about? As paltry as that.
A strange thought, because Kotarô Katsura had in fact a great deal of things to dream about and fight for, from the shining image of his country freed of foreign invaders from space to seeing his teacher’s smile once more. But those goals were so far away now, right here in this forsaken landscape.
He shifted his face away slightly and closed his own eyes for a few seconds, breathing in Gintoki and let his hand brush against the other’s, as if by accident, letting himself rest without trembling (although he did feel like trembling) in that tentative, cowardly desire. And do nothing.
In his dreams, later, for years to come, he imagines himself having made a different choice.
His first kiss didn’t even happen until several years later. A married woman whose husband was sympathetic to the Jôi movement and let him hide in their storeroom for a week. She’d come around to feed him – it was really a perfect set-up, one might think, but she wasn’t his physical type at all and she didn’t seem sad over being put aside or misunderstood by her husband, only a bit bored and eager for something new. Even so, her perfume was nice and her breasts were full and it had seemed churlish to pull away when she reached out for him and she did so much to help him already. And as she actually pointed out herself, he had to learn about these things someday, didn’t he?
It might be for the best that she didn’t look like the raven-haired widows and housewives he’d been admiring from afar in the past – he might have become too caught up in an absurd fantasy, then, unable to focus on all the new things she taught him. He was embarrassed, moved, grateful, and ashamed that his feelings weren’t stronger than he thought they should have been.
After her, there were a few other moments over the years, a couple of other women for whom he had come along at the right time and right place, just when they were lonely and feeling adventurous. Maybe he could have made himself fall in love with them, a foolish and doomed kind of love, if it hadn’t always been for the need to move on and keep the struggle going. He took refuge in romantic daydreams and far-fetched but moving scenarios instead, where he didn’t even need to take a part, only be a sympathetic observer.
It’s well over eleven years later since that time in the brushwood in the war when nothing happened, and it has in fact been well over eleven years later for quite some time now, because Gintoki has become the main character of a manga and dragged them all with him into it in the process, and now nobody is aging.
It’s perhaps a bit odd how easily Katsura’s mind takes to the concept. When he finds things a little too disquieting, he turns to contemplate the soothing presence of his new pet, a mysterious but delightful gift from Sakamoto. He doesn’t know how old Elizabeth is and is unsure if it would be responsible or impolite of him to ask.
And maybe it’s because of this strange state of affairs – the days don’t rush away endlessly into the future; they are able to move and do and learn things without time pushing them relentlessly forward – that it seems to be ever more possible in his mind to at least attempt to get closer to Gintoki. Maybe he can go out drinking with him sometimes. Maybe alcohol can loosen both of them up. Maybe he’ll be able to smoosh Gintoki’s adorable cheeks together and taste his lips like he’s wanted to do for so long now, and to embrace him with his whole body, and to learn each other's pleasures. In short, to seduce him.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if it’s not exactly like how he’s been imagining. Gintoki is not perfect and never has been, he’s a real mess; but Katsura wants him to be his imperfect mess.
The first time he does go out drinking with Gintoki in Edo, however, he just gets stupidly drunk and throws up in the men’s room. Gintoki doesn’t even have the decency to come with him and hold his hair for him or something. Actually that might be for the best, Katsura doesn’t want to look that pathetic, and he can stumble back to where they sat by the counter on his own after washing his face. He gathers his dignity and pays the bill. When he leaves the place on unsteady legs, Gintoki does come with him.
But they only trudge around talking about inane everyday things and trivial childhood facts under the moonlight, hands in sleeves and pockets. Gintoki picks his nose and doesn’t look at him much. After a while, Katsura’s head feels a little clearer and his feet steadier, and he knows he’ll be able to make it home by himself.
He turns to go, and Gintoki puts a hand on his shoulder for a moment as if to send him off, a mild tap rather than a hearty clap. The warmth from his hand seems to linger the whole way home and longer.
It’s a crisp, cold winter evening months later. Returning up from a secret meeting with his men in the Akiba underground district, Katsura stops by a stall to have some udon, and finds Gintoki standing in line for the same thing.
He’s done some thinking, by then. “Gintoki,” he says in a clear voice once the two of them have found a bench on the street to retreat to, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I do want to try.”
“Ehh?” Gintoki shoots him a confused glance. Then he grins and goes, “Oh, I see, if you’re finally ready to get some brain surgeons to unscrew your head and get that brain of yours explored, that’s fine by me.”
Katsura glares at him, too preoccupied with slurping down the hot udon to retaliate properly. When he can talk again, he wipes his face and says, “I never found out back then. Maybe it doesn’t taste right, but if I never even try, I will keep wondering.”
“Ooh, you’re finally ready to try some strawberry milk?”
“That’s not what I – actually,” he stops to consider, “Yes. In a roundabout way. I want to kiss you.”
Silence. Katsura slurps down more udon and doesn’t look at Gintoki. His cheeks are hot. But this is the only way, isn’t it? If life doesn’t create opportunities, you just have to put your cards on the table. Even if they’re not a Draw Four.
He puts the bowl away and finally turns to look at the other. Gintoki has put his bowl down without finishing. His eyes are unusually wide.
Katsura puts his head to the side, waiting.
“Why?” asks Gintoki finally. Just that.
Katsura shrugs. “I couldn’t say. It’s just something that seems right for me.” He considers a moment, then offers, “Maybe I just want more screentime.”
Gintoki gives a disbelieving snort. “Why would you… You’re such an idiot.” A beat, but he notably doesn’t say something like ‘Pass’, or, ‘Why would I agree to that?’ like Katsura half expected, if not outright loud laughter. Well, if he’d been laughing Katsura would probably have had to slug him.
Instead Gintoki says, in a low, considering voice, “That’s just impractical. We’re broke and we’re both living with other people. And I’m not kissing guys on the street.”
“It’s not guys in general, it’s Katsura.” Katsura finishes up his udon, wipes his face again and goes to toss the disposable bowl into the garbage. “Of course, we don’t have to. I just raised the possibility. But I do know of a hideout in the area here we could use, if you want to.”
Gintoki opens his mouth, shuts it, face reddened by now. He seems on the verge of giving out some loud tsukkomi outrage. Katsura frowns to remind him to focus, and Gintoki takes a deep breath and seems to hold it in.
Then he gets up from the bench and shrugs.
“Fine, then,” he says. “Lead the way.”
Their very first kiss happens ten minutes later, not even inside the actual hideout but in the narrow alley leading up to it, empty buildings on both sides. Gintoki lost his patience right there and grabbed hold of him, and first he ran his fingers through Katsura’s hair before leaning closer – his fingers were trembling again – and slowly starting to taste him, so soft at first before Katsura pulled his head closer and they both put more pressure into it.
“It just tastes of udon,” said Katsura breathlessly, as they broke it off. “I’m dizzy.”
“I told you you shouldn’t expect much, you idiot,” muttered Gintoki, although he had said no such thing that Katsura could remember. His hand was trailing down Katsura’s back. “You’re just tasting of udon too. And lunacy. And you’re smelling some dumb soap.”
“At least I actually use soap.”
“Hey!”
Katsura kissed him again. “Well, I want to taste it more,” he said. “Let’s go inside.” He reached out for Gintoki’s hand and led him the last few meters onwards. Let me just drown in you for a while, before I have to swim to the surface again.
But if he was underwater, it must have been in a spot where the sunlight was coming through, because his chest felt so warm and full of light. Again and again and again. It had been stupid to wait, but it was worth it.
Title: Eating Udon Outside On A Cold Night Can Make A Man Reckless
Characters/pairing: Gintoki/Katsura
Word count: around 1980
Spoilers/Setting: It starts during the war then leaps ahead, doesn't get as far as the Shogun Assassination Arc. No real spoilers
Rating: PG
Concrit exceedingly welcome!
This fanfic was written for entertainment purposes also. The characters of Gintama belong to Hideaki Sorachi. This story may not be reposted elsewhere without my approval.
There had been a smell of thunder in the air, he remembered later. He and Gintoki had been walking through dense brushwood after being separated from the rest of their group. They were weighed down with what pitiful loot they could carry from their recent skirmish – some guns, bombs and swords, a few instant meals, and some shoes, but no water – and they were exhausted and sweaty. It was all Katsura could do to remind himself to walk quietly, breathe quietly, not to give away their position just in case they ran into a stray enemy soldier.
Gintoki didn’t seem to need reminding. As loud as he could be at other times, here he seemed to just naturally find the most discreet footing, his breath controlled; just as his shape fit in so well with his surroundings even though you’d think all that white clothing would stand out. He didn’t even seem to need to think about it, he just moved effortlessly in the most easily quiet way possible, something like a great cat on the hunt. Even though Katsura couldn’t help but to envy that warrior ease, he also felt an obscure kind of sadness at it. When he wasn’t simply pragmatically exploiting it, that is.
Then they took a break in the shadow of a mountainside underneath a willow where they put their burdens down for a few minutes. Gintoki leaned back against the treetrunk, eyes shut, chest heaving. His face was so close that Katsura could almost have counted his white eyelashes. He didn’t really smell badly, right now. They’d been able to wash hands and faces in a creek a half hour back. He smelled of fresh sweat and tiredness and summer, not of blood and filth and too little sleep.
His cheeks looked weary but his lips looked innocent and pretty, just a little open. Katsura had leaned closer, not quite near enough to touch, his tired mind running thought loops in his head.
The thing that held him back hadn’t been anything as praiseworthy as respect or even as understandable as fear of rejection. It had been, Maybe it won’t feel good. Maybe it wouldn’t feel right. And then what is there left for me to dream about? As paltry as that.
A strange thought, because Kotarô Katsura had in fact a great deal of things to dream about and fight for, from the shining image of his country freed of foreign invaders from space to seeing his teacher’s smile once more. But those goals were so far away now, right here in this forsaken landscape.
He shifted his face away slightly and closed his own eyes for a few seconds, breathing in Gintoki and let his hand brush against the other’s, as if by accident, letting himself rest without trembling (although he did feel like trembling) in that tentative, cowardly desire. And do nothing.
In his dreams, later, for years to come, he imagines himself having made a different choice.
His first kiss didn’t even happen until several years later. A married woman whose husband was sympathetic to the Jôi movement and let him hide in their storeroom for a week. She’d come around to feed him – it was really a perfect set-up, one might think, but she wasn’t his physical type at all and she didn’t seem sad over being put aside or misunderstood by her husband, only a bit bored and eager for something new. Even so, her perfume was nice and her breasts were full and it had seemed churlish to pull away when she reached out for him and she did so much to help him already. And as she actually pointed out herself, he had to learn about these things someday, didn’t he?
It might be for the best that she didn’t look like the raven-haired widows and housewives he’d been admiring from afar in the past – he might have become too caught up in an absurd fantasy, then, unable to focus on all the new things she taught him. He was embarrassed, moved, grateful, and ashamed that his feelings weren’t stronger than he thought they should have been.
After her, there were a few other moments over the years, a couple of other women for whom he had come along at the right time and right place, just when they were lonely and feeling adventurous. Maybe he could have made himself fall in love with them, a foolish and doomed kind of love, if it hadn’t always been for the need to move on and keep the struggle going. He took refuge in romantic daydreams and far-fetched but moving scenarios instead, where he didn’t even need to take a part, only be a sympathetic observer.
It’s well over eleven years later since that time in the brushwood in the war when nothing happened, and it has in fact been well over eleven years later for quite some time now, because Gintoki has become the main character of a manga and dragged them all with him into it in the process, and now nobody is aging.
It’s perhaps a bit odd how easily Katsura’s mind takes to the concept. When he finds things a little too disquieting, he turns to contemplate the soothing presence of his new pet, a mysterious but delightful gift from Sakamoto. He doesn’t know how old Elizabeth is and is unsure if it would be responsible or impolite of him to ask.
And maybe it’s because of this strange state of affairs – the days don’t rush away endlessly into the future; they are able to move and do and learn things without time pushing them relentlessly forward – that it seems to be ever more possible in his mind to at least attempt to get closer to Gintoki. Maybe he can go out drinking with him sometimes. Maybe alcohol can loosen both of them up. Maybe he’ll be able to smoosh Gintoki’s adorable cheeks together and taste his lips like he’s wanted to do for so long now, and to embrace him with his whole body, and to learn each other's pleasures. In short, to seduce him.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if it’s not exactly like how he’s been imagining. Gintoki is not perfect and never has been, he’s a real mess; but Katsura wants him to be his imperfect mess.
The first time he does go out drinking with Gintoki in Edo, however, he just gets stupidly drunk and throws up in the men’s room. Gintoki doesn’t even have the decency to come with him and hold his hair for him or something. Actually that might be for the best, Katsura doesn’t want to look that pathetic, and he can stumble back to where they sat by the counter on his own after washing his face. He gathers his dignity and pays the bill. When he leaves the place on unsteady legs, Gintoki does come with him.
But they only trudge around talking about inane everyday things and trivial childhood facts under the moonlight, hands in sleeves and pockets. Gintoki picks his nose and doesn’t look at him much. After a while, Katsura’s head feels a little clearer and his feet steadier, and he knows he’ll be able to make it home by himself.
He turns to go, and Gintoki puts a hand on his shoulder for a moment as if to send him off, a mild tap rather than a hearty clap. The warmth from his hand seems to linger the whole way home and longer.
It’s a crisp, cold winter evening months later. Returning up from a secret meeting with his men in the Akiba underground district, Katsura stops by a stall to have some udon, and finds Gintoki standing in line for the same thing.
He’s done some thinking, by then. “Gintoki,” he says in a clear voice once the two of them have found a bench on the street to retreat to, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I do want to try.”
“Ehh?” Gintoki shoots him a confused glance. Then he grins and goes, “Oh, I see, if you’re finally ready to get some brain surgeons to unscrew your head and get that brain of yours explored, that’s fine by me.”
Katsura glares at him, too preoccupied with slurping down the hot udon to retaliate properly. When he can talk again, he wipes his face and says, “I never found out back then. Maybe it doesn’t taste right, but if I never even try, I will keep wondering.”
“Ooh, you’re finally ready to try some strawberry milk?”
“That’s not what I – actually,” he stops to consider, “Yes. In a roundabout way. I want to kiss you.”
Silence. Katsura slurps down more udon and doesn’t look at Gintoki. His cheeks are hot. But this is the only way, isn’t it? If life doesn’t create opportunities, you just have to put your cards on the table. Even if they’re not a Draw Four.
He puts the bowl away and finally turns to look at the other. Gintoki has put his bowl down without finishing. His eyes are unusually wide.
Katsura puts his head to the side, waiting.
“Why?” asks Gintoki finally. Just that.
Katsura shrugs. “I couldn’t say. It’s just something that seems right for me.” He considers a moment, then offers, “Maybe I just want more screentime.”
Gintoki gives a disbelieving snort. “Why would you… You’re such an idiot.” A beat, but he notably doesn’t say something like ‘Pass’, or, ‘Why would I agree to that?’ like Katsura half expected, if not outright loud laughter. Well, if he’d been laughing Katsura would probably have had to slug him.
Instead Gintoki says, in a low, considering voice, “That’s just impractical. We’re broke and we’re both living with other people. And I’m not kissing guys on the street.”
“It’s not guys in general, it’s Katsura.” Katsura finishes up his udon, wipes his face again and goes to toss the disposable bowl into the garbage. “Of course, we don’t have to. I just raised the possibility. But I do know of a hideout in the area here we could use, if you want to.”
Gintoki opens his mouth, shuts it, face reddened by now. He seems on the verge of giving out some loud tsukkomi outrage. Katsura frowns to remind him to focus, and Gintoki takes a deep breath and seems to hold it in.
Then he gets up from the bench and shrugs.
“Fine, then,” he says. “Lead the way.”
Their very first kiss happens ten minutes later, not even inside the actual hideout but in the narrow alley leading up to it, empty buildings on both sides. Gintoki lost his patience right there and grabbed hold of him, and first he ran his fingers through Katsura’s hair before leaning closer – his fingers were trembling again – and slowly starting to taste him, so soft at first before Katsura pulled his head closer and they both put more pressure into it.
“It just tastes of udon,” said Katsura breathlessly, as they broke it off. “I’m dizzy.”
“I told you you shouldn’t expect much, you idiot,” muttered Gintoki, although he had said no such thing that Katsura could remember. His hand was trailing down Katsura’s back. “You’re just tasting of udon too. And lunacy. And you’re smelling some dumb soap.”
“At least I actually use soap.”
“Hey!”
Katsura kissed him again. “Well, I want to taste it more,” he said. “Let’s go inside.” He reached out for Gintoki’s hand and led him the last few meters onwards. Let me just drown in you for a while, before I have to swim to the surface again.
But if he was underwater, it must have been in a spot where the sunlight was coming through, because his chest felt so warm and full of light. Again and again and again. It had been stupid to wait, but it was worth it.