Chapter Text
There is an awful symmetry of things where Gintoki and Hijikata are concerned. Hijikata is fairly convinced that it will end by killing them both. The first instance is when Gintoki visits him at Shinsengumi headquarters after a raid gone terribly wrong.
Hijikata turns his face away from the sliding doors and pretends to sleep, evening the rise and fall of his bandaged chest.
"I know you're awake." Gintoki says, and his voice is carefully empty and devoid of emotion. "I brought you some things."
Hijikata rolls his head on the pillow to face him. "Sorry."
Gintoki is sitting by the side of his futon, a bundle of what smells like bread and sweet rice cakes beside him, covered slightly by his haori. He looks windswept and unkempt. His chest aches.
"What are you sorry for?" Gintoki reaches forward and pushes his hair off his forehead, hand lingering on his skin. Soft enough to make Hijikata feel that he's made of blown glass.
The rims of his eyes are red from exhaustion, or crying, or both. He smells like outside air, clean wind and an edge of frost.
"For getting hurt. For making you worry." Hijikata grabs Gintoki's hand in his own and brings it down to his mouth and presses a kiss against his knuckles, red and raw from washing kimonos and the cold air.
"You idiot," Gintoki trembles, and a small drop of wetness hits Hijikata's cheek, like rain. He's squeezing his eyes shut, clenching his fingers hard around Hijikata's.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Come here," Hijikata touches hesitant fingers to his cheek and guides him down towards his mouth.
Hijikata calls his name softly as the space between them shrinks and dilates like a tide, growing searing, unbearable, choked with love and shared breath.
"You almost died. They didn't let me see you until today, they said you - you were hanging somewhere between living and -"
"Hush," Hijikata kisses him again. More salt. "I'm alright now, aren't I? No need to fret."
"I'm not - fretting - I was just - " Gintoki drops his head onto Hijikata's collarbone, nosing against the ridge of bone. "They told me you were hanging on by a thread."
"And I'm alright now."
He receives a pointed look at the bandages on his chest and around his arms, but Gintoki gives an explosive sigh and tucks his nose against his jugular. A moment passes. Two. Hijikata lets himself drift. He's moored to him - moored to Gintoki. A bright spot of warmth and constant light and someone like a mirror - someone who knows how to read him just like Mitsuba or Kondou-san did.
He's losing it. He's losing people in his fights, and not because he's killed them or lead them into a fray - simply because he turns away at crucial moments and they slip once - and they're gone. Mitsuba died waiting for him, and he'll never forgive himself for that. Kondou-san died defending a keep while he was injured, when it was his job, and both himself and Okita will never forgive him for that. Two threads.
"You'd find me again, right?" Gintoki whispers, his voice cracking.
"What?" His memory vignettes to when they met - sharp winter. Gintoki had been running errands with the two kids that orbit him like he's their sun, and Hijikata had seen him from across the frozen river while he was on patrol. White hair and pale skin to match the weather and the skies. Eyes that burned with a silent sort of strength, one that had thrilled Hijikata but also scared him to his core.
"Gran told me that," he hesitates. "That we're fated, or something. To meet again and again because our souls are tied together or something."
Hijikata blinks.
"I know it's stupid," Gintoki says in a rush, and Hijikata shakes his head hurriedly.
"No, no."
"Hijikata -"
"It makes sense." He says quietly.
Gintoki's mouth is open, bottom lip trembling like the words are building up at a dam, waiting to spring free.
"Of course I'd find you again." Hijikata brushes slow fingers through the other man's hair, dragging fingernails gently against his scalp just to feel him shudder in delight. "But don't say it like we're gonna be parted soon."
Gintoki looks up at him, his eyes painfully empty. "I'm just making sure," he whispers. He knows - Gintoki's lost more people than Hijikata, drowns in their names and their memories at seemingly random moments but refuses to talk about them. Sometimes they will spend the night together and Gintoki will wake up and won't be able to go back to sleep, or he will be gone at dawn without warning, only to return in the evening and fall into a deep sleep.
Hijikata will emerge from Gintoki's small room and wander in the halls above Otose's teahouse where he works for room and board, where she trains geiko; young women will brush past him, makeup in various states of completion, chattering vividly about nothings as they leave the scent of camellia flowers behind them. Otose will wave him downstairs, and more often then not he will find Gintoki nursing a cup of tea at the table, shoulders hunched over bittersweet heat.
He doesn't think that he will ever know him completely, but he doesn't think that he wants that, either. It seems cruel, to be able to know someone and chase them towards their deepest recesses to seek refuge from someone. Where they are now is enough. More than.
"Lie down." Hijikata says, shifting over and lifting the thick blanket. Gintoki slides in beside him, careful not to jostle him.
If only time would take mercy on them and slow her ever increasing march! Gintoki closes his eyes and tries to memorize him before the nagging knowledge that he has to be back at Otose's comes to dominate his mind. Black smudges of lashes, longer than you would expect, around blue eyes that were always either creased with strain or thought. Ink black hair that shines like the wing of a raven in cold sunlight, skin that becomes freckled in the summer along his shoulders and across his nose and cheeks during high summer. The rise and fall of his voice through bamboo doors, through the echo of a hall, through the hush of Gintoki's room. Against his throat. His shoulder. His mouth.
Like a heartbeat. If only. If only.
He always feels like they are running out of time.
Otose drops off a letter after a couple weeks have passed. Hijikata has written to him - that he hasn't been doing patrols because he is busy, and would he like to come to his house for dinner? Gintoki inks his reply neatly on a new sheet of paper - he would love to come over - even though the discrepancy bothers him. It's not like he hasn't been busy before - on the contrary, Hijikata is a very busy man. It's that he is being invited to dinner by a man who often works late into the dawn that sticks wrong with him.
But he doesn't complain; that's waiting until the actual night.
He walks towards the river, where the night market is about to close, to pick up last minute vegetables for Otose. He passes a single Shinsengumi officer, his heart jumping at the familiar black uniform jacket before sinking back as the man turns around and nods at him, very clearly not Hijikata.
Less officers. More unrest in the government, but Gintoki doesn't hear enough of it to care as much as he should. Kabuki-cho was resilient and calm. It was sheltered, it always rose back, according to Otose, who had never left.
Less officers. More unrest. Less Hijikata. More emptiness.
The last of the leaves fall from the trees and the air seems to be holding its breath. Mornings bring frost on the grass and by mid-morning it is slick.
A couple days pass. There is soon snow on the ground and his breath steams in front of him as he walks to Hijikata's small house in one of the neighborhoods by the river. The door opens before he can knock and he is tugged inside and greeted with a gentle kiss. Warmth slams into him like a physical wall, and he feels the breath punched out of him.
Gintoki's eyes cross as he tries to keep him in his field of view, and Hijikata laughs into his mouth before slipping away.
"I missed you." He says, taking Gintoki's haori from him.
"I missed you too." He sniffs the air appreciatively. "Smells great."
"Come sit down." Gintoki follows his broad shoulders into the main room. His yukata is loose around the back of his neck, and as he bends his head down to arrange the cushions Gintoki can see a pale triangle of skin.
His movements are still ginger and strained from his wounds. Some of them must be barely on their way to healing when he was released. The sight of Hijikata holding his side gently as he bends to check the rice makes a roil of anger and worry rise to the back of his throat.
It feels like he is choking. "How come you invited me for dinner?"
"I can't see my lover for dinner?"
"It's not that," Gintoki bites out. "You said you were busy. You can't drop by for patrol but you can cook for me?"
A slight shadow crosses Hijikata's face but he leans forward. "It - It was important. I couldn't tell you in passing on the street."
Gintoki bites back a small retort but nods.
"Help me set the table?"
There's fish. And a heaping bowl of rice, and soup, and fried mushrooms and crunchy seaweed, tangy radish and sesame tossed noodles that he says he learned from Saitou.
He isn't hungry, but he likes the gentleness in Hijikata's eyes when he watches him eat, so he eats a lot anyway, even asks for seconds. He makes appreciative noises - and he's not lying, it really is good, but what Hijikata said earlier is stuck on him like a bramble, itching and making him want to snap and tear at it.
They talk about nothing, at first. It drives him crazy. The weather, if Gintoki has been eating properly, the sweet shop across the street that closed down. Hijikata takes his chopsticks and splits the fish down the middle, cracking through the fried skin and into soft flesh. He picks the bones out and transfers pieces into Gintoki's bowl, keeps talking about nothings.
Maybe Gintoki puts down his chopsticks a bit too hard, because Hijikata falters.
"Sorry." Gintoki says immediately, guilt seeping up inside him.
"No," he waves the apology away. "I shouldn't be distracting from it."
"Then?" He pushes.
Hijikata looks down at the plate they set aside for the bones of the fish, picked cleanly out from white flesh.
"Do you know Goryokaku castle? Southern Hokkaido."
Worry is pooling in his stomach. "Yes."
"There's some trouble. They want me to go down there, take the castle for us. For the shogunate -"
"When?"
"Next week." Hijikata closes his eyes. Next week is the anniversary of Kondou-san's death. He was going to be in mourning, but they would rather move him to Hokkaido dressed in black war clothes instead.
"No!" Gintoki says sharply.
"No?"
"You're not going," His voice shakes. Worry is strangling him, fear, anger, frustration. "You - you just got out of the hospital, you can barely move. How are you going to - to fight?" How are you going to come back to me?
"You know I have to." His voice is flat in an effort not to stoke the sparks into a wildfire. To keep him calm.
"The shogunate is dead," Gintoki scrambles. "You're hurt, you can't fight like this."
"It's not. Not yet. If they die, I'm going to be there. It's our last stand." If not for himself, then at least for Kondou-san. He wants to see the reason for which his men fell with his own two eyes.
"You're not going." He says again, and he hates the way he sounds: plaintive, childlike, whiny.
"I have to. If not for the shogunate - then for Kondou-san." His name hurts to say - it hurts to remember his clear hazel eyes, the crows feet and laughter lines around them. He feels like he is being pulled apart from different directions.
"Why won't you stay for me, then!" Gintoki says, his voice climbing. Crumbling, ever crumbling.
"Gintoki."
"Please." Shaking, he lowers his head. "Hijikata. Please."
"I'll come back. I promise. I'll come back to you. Always."
He feels a gentle touch on the crown of his head. "Please raise your head. I'm going, but I'll always come back to you."
Gintoki looks up, grabs his hand before he can pull it away. Hijikata's fingers curl around his, gripping him as tightly as he is him.
"Next week when?"
"Thursday."
Gintoki's fingers squeeze tighter. That's less than 9 days.
"Stay over tonight?" Hijikata asks. "I'll lend you clothes, I just want more time with you."
"Aren't you working?"
"I've got Tetsu to take care of a lot." Hijikata leans down and presses his mouth to the backs of his knuckles.
"Okay." Gintoki whispers. He gets a bracing grin in return.
They finish dinner quickly, and Hijikata clatters the dishes in the sink before turning to the bath. Gintoki can hear water running, hear the groan and clanking of the water pipes as they heat.
"Go on." Hijikata says. He hands him a folded yukata for sleep. It's patterned with little cranes in flight.
"Come with me." Gintoki says. "Please?"
The look in the other man's eyes is terribly soft as he agrees. They undress amid the steam and damp of the bathroom, and Gintoki bites his lip as more and more of Hijikata's wounds come into light. A huge scar across his chest, running diagonal to his shoulder. Silvery white scars on his thighs, old ropy scars on his back and on his arms. The one on his chest is tender and still pink. The stitches are still visible.
They wash each other carefully, their touches as hesitant as if the others skin was paper, or blown glass. When they get into the bath, Hijikata pulls Gintoki to his chest so that they face the same way. Gintoki protests.
"Your chest -!"
"It's alright." Hijikata drops a kiss against his shoulder. "Hush."
He lets himself relax. He likes the way their bodies curve together, how close he can let him get without flinching. He lets himself lean into the lull of this painful domesticity.
For a brief second, a bright, flaring thought rears its head. What if he went with him? They would ride to Goryokaku. He doesn't know how to fight, but he does know how to ride a horse, how to shoot a gun. He does know how to stand next to Hijikata and - and -
He would only get in the way, a sly voice whispers. Maybe he would even get killed, and Hijikata would die needlessly, distracted by removed pain.
The thought of it makes him cold.
Just as bad; the thought of leaving Shinpachi and Kagura behind in a world that does not care much for runts like them, young and still learning. Shinpachi cannot live with his older sister, who is barely old enough to be taking care of herself on top of their sick father. Kagura's father travels and her brother drops by sporadically, leaving money behind for Gintoki on behalf of their parents.
The world is edging into winter now. Children are going sick and hungry and Gintoki works himself to the bone and he knows that Otose is kind but she would give them to a children's home, and he would rather cut off his own hand then subject them to that.
He shivers and Hijikata's kisses pause.
"Are you cold?"
"No," Gintoki reaches over his shoulder to stroke absently at Hijikata's cheek. He forces levity into his voice.
it can't last it can't last it won't last
"You're trying to distract me." Gintoki says, but his voice is weak. He can't help leaning his head back against his shoulder.
"Is it working?" Hijikata asks with a small laugh.
"Nngh."
"Let me wash your hair."
They don't speak; he suspects that there has never been the need to. Hijikata's fingers are soft, hot points of pressure, working soap through his hair and slicking oil through the strands, ever so careful. Gintoki melts into him, shoulders unknotting. He doesn't want to think about it. Next Thursday is too close. He can't think about it. He'll go crazy. He can't. He has to wait - and that seems to be, maddeningly, the only thing that he does where they are concerned.
"Sit up." Hijikata is saying, fingers pressing gently into his back. Gintoki shifts, water sloshing over the edge of the tub. Hijikata grabs the small bucket and rinses his hair, a low hum rising discordantly from his throat.
"Feel good?"
"Yeah," Gintoki's reply is nearly a moan and that draws a laugh from the other man.
Still humming, Hijikata works camellia oil into his hair. The gentle scent is stifling, but Gintoki breathes it in anyway. The moment is so domestic and quiet and Gintoki wants to live in it forever, never mind that his skin would get all pruney and wrinkled from the wet; it's a reminder of how far they've come together, just an accumulation of their love and trust.
He shakes his head. He's being too sappy.
Hijikata pulls his hands away at the small shake of Gintoki's head. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No! I mean - well - yes, but not in that way. Just touch me more. Other places."
He laughs, and kisses behind Gintoki's ear. "Insatiable."
"Hurry," Gintoki groans out, and Hijikata's hands sweep over his stomach and his chest, down to where he wants - neither of them are very patient. He can feel Hijikata getting hard behind him, pressed against the small of his back. Hijikata's hand is calloused from holding and swinging a sword. It wraps around him and strokes, all the blood rushing downwards and leaving him dizzy in the pressed heat and pleasure.
His breathing quickens as Hijikata touches him exactly the way he knows he likes it, all his awareness shrinking down to the warm yield of the water, the heat and pressure of Hijikata behind him. The two of them melting, melding into one another so that they are indistinguishable. Inextricable.
He comes and he feels like he is floating away from his body, anchored to Hijikata like a kite to a string. He lets himself close his eyes for five minutes. Five minutes before he has to wake up and get out of the bath. But when he opens his eyes he is in a warm yukata and under a thick blanket, in a room full of half shadows.
"Hijikata." He groans, debating whether or not he should sit up. The pillowcase is a little damp from where his head had been resting.
"Mmh." He's sitting by the window, a single candle illuminating his desk as he writes - something. His inkstone is almost dry. A kiseru sits in its stand beside his waving brush.
"What - what time is it?" He raises himself up on his elbows.
"Half past ten. You fell asleep in the bath." Hijikata sighs and pushes his brush away from him, pinning the sides of the paper so that the ink can dry properly. He moves over to Gintoki and kisses him. "Sleep. You're tired." His thumb brushes under Gintoki's eyes, where he knows bruise-like shadows sit.
"What about you?" Gintoki asks, watches the other man lean down and brush his mouth against the backs of his knuckles.
"Let me finish something and I'll be right over." He says, and he nudges Gintoki's shoulders so that he lies down again, retreats to his desk.
Gintoki turns onto his side and watches the brush wave around, tracing designs in the air. It lulls him. He lets himself drift - he's doing that often. The hiss of the brush over paper stops, and he blinks himself back to the present, shifting and watching Hijikata clean his things.
"How long?" Gintoki asks sleepily as he lies down beside him, shuffling the covers over himself.
"Mm?"
"How long will you be gone?"
Hijikata looks at the ceiling resolutely. "As long as I have to be." He rolls his head to look at his lover. "But not too long."
"I'll hold you to that." Gintoki whispers, and his eyes shut and he sleeps.
He dreams of his kids that night - Shinpachi and Kagura, who look up at him like he's the world. They're alone. He's alone. They fit together.
Thursday comes far too quickly. Hijikata is half in his armor and he drops by Otose's to say goodbye, pressing a searing kiss to his mouth and pressing their foreheads together.
"I'll come back." He whispers, and Gintoki aches for him already.
"You better." Gintoki grits out, and he tightens his fingers in the grooves of his armor before forcing himself to let go, and pushing Hijikata away from him. "Go. Save Edo. Make a better Japan." I love you.
"For you." Hijikata bows his head, kisses the back of his hand chastely. A tether. I love you too.
Hijikata is lucky. Or - he doesn't believe in luck. But he does know that you can be in the right place at the right time, and he has a knack for doing so. He barely escapes a collapsing barricade, with only his foot getting caught in some rubble.
A dark cloud overshadows his thoughts. He cannot shake the feeling that - no. He can't think about it.
All he can do is pray to be in the right place at the right time, again and again, as long as it takes for him to get back to Gintoki. He needs a days rest to be back on his feet, and he composes a poem and cuts a lock of his hair to tuck into a small silk bag. He takes out his tanto too, and his kiseru, and entrusts them to Tetsu, who he orders to guard the flank, near the back. He writes three letters: Gintoki, his older brother, and Okita.
When his foot is healed he rides back out into battle. Goryokaku is proud and domineering, the mouths of cannons peeking out over the walls of the castle, pale stone shining like a beacon at dusk.
He does not know that there has been trading with the west and the soldiers at Goryokaku. They have guns. He can hear then snarling and ripping through his men like paper. He does not know that there are enemies approaching from the rear. It is not until they are pinched between the yawning cannon mouths of the castle and the rear guard that Hijikata feels his dread solidify and condense, drop and sink into the pit of his stomach. Still, he raises his sword and rallies his men to him, until they dwindle and he is forced to retreat.
He is a bad general. Kondou-san was much better suited, knew how to disguise his worry and his fear in the wry curve of a smile and lead men onward and escape the hungry maw of death but he can't think about that now else he'll be overrun.
He brings up the rear. He does not see the horsemen galloping at full tilt towards him - he hears them, though. He thinks it sounds like his heartbeat, like Gintoki's when they are together and vulnerable and yielding. He hears shots go off like firecrackers during festivals. He tastes blood in his mouth and salt from sweat, and he can see the drawn tendons on the horses neck as he urges it to outrun their pursuers.
(Gintoki Gintoki Gintoki; sweat at the hollow of his neck, the clarity and strength in his eyes, his gentle but unforgiving resilience)
He feels a hot pinprick of pressure at his lower back where Gintoki so likes to touch, and then he feels the ground beneath his cheek, and then he feels nothing at all.
Sakata Gintoki. His, his, his.
A letter arrives for Gintoki at the end of the month. Tetsu delivers it personally, his eyes red and watery. Gintoki takes the envelope from him, his fingers turning numb. Tetsu presses other things into his hands; a silk bag, a long, rectangular case, and a sleek tanto. A poem. Gintoki won't open that until the next month. He feels like he's had boulders strapped to his feet and dropped into a fathomless river.
It's cold and dark.
He takes out the kiseru with still, sure hands once he is inside his room. He shakes out a stringy ball of tobacco, and pours sake into two dishes. He packs the bowl gently, like he would.
(A thousand moments; in sunlight, in moonlight, in the light of fireworks and lantern light, all with smoke coiling around him like a veil)
The first inhale makes him cough. He waves away the smoke and knuckles his tears away, and stoically takes another drag.
Hijikata was his. No one had any right to steal from him, to punch the breath out of his chest so thoroughly that he would be gasping for rest of his life.
His lungs fill with smoke and he is choked by grief and memory, and he dumps ash into the second dish of sake set on his windowsill. He bends double; suddenly the pain is unbearable. He chokes, stuffs the sleeve of his yukata into his mouth and screams into it. He is so angry. He is so angry. He is alone. The one who truly understood him - the stars had dropped him in front of him and just as easily ripped him away.
Hijikata Toshirou. He said he'd come back. He said he would come back.
(His his his, all Gintoki's)
He burns, but at the same time he is full of ice and hollow shadows. Hot tears soak into his sleeve and wet the kiseru he holds clenched between his fingers. He presses his mouth against the back of his knuckles in a quiet mockery of his lover, now dead, now in the earth, now parted from him.
Spring is coming soon. He can feel the thaw in the air around him, but he knows that inside of him it will take a lifetime to thaw.