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Gintoki sometimes felt like crawling out of his own body. His hair had been covered in blood, his fingers had torn through other people’s skin, and his mind ached at the mere thought of it. Gintoki “the white demon” who shreds his way through battlefields like he was born from a pile of corpses—which in a way, he was. Not that it bothered him. After all, he’d never known much more than the sweat and the rain that stuck to your body in the midst of a fight for survival. Now that the war was over, he couldn’t get rid of this second skin.
In the middle of the night, lying on his back as he drifted back and forth out of reality, he saw Takasugi's face, sometimes with an eye missing, sometimes, still whole. These visions were tainted with anger and fear. Sometimes, a frowning child with black hair stared at him with disdain. ‘Look what you’ve done to me.’ Katsura? Or Takasugi? Both at once, most likely. The war had blurred together everything that they’d been into a distant, painful memory.
And then Katsura showed up in person. They’d lost Takasugi’s trace after he’d gone ballistic. In a sense, Gintoki was relieved to know the stupid wig was still around. He’d not stayed the same, but at least he’d stayed in Edo. Gintoki knew that they both had changed more than they cared to admit, but at least there was still a remnant of the old life, the good days. A lifeline to grab onto during these nights when reality felt like a bed of nails.
Zura had become another version of himself. Gone was the pesky little boy with the girlish face who’d pester Gintoki and Takasugi to eat their veggies, to wash their faces before bed and to sharpen their blades before battle. What remained was a distorted image of what he’d been—bent and twisted out of shape by the hours spent kneeling in trenches and cleaning the blood of comrades out of his own face.
The night he first showed up, Gintoki had barely moved into what would become his home in Kabukicho: a run-down little apartment that sat precariously above a bar, looking one gust of wind away from collapsing on itself. Gintoki could admit it, he’d been deceived by the promise of a meat bun, on a night when the hunger had eaten its way to his bones. He’d been sitting in an empty graveyard, in the snow, looking like one more tombstone among the rest. And then life yanked him out of the graveyard and into Kabukicho. Funny how that happens.
They’d stared at each other for a hard minute. Zura was shaking. Blood dripped from a spot under his eye. The snow which had been falling, thick and wet, for the past two days, had soaked his hair.
Gintoki would later figure out that he’d escaped the Shinsengumi’s custody (a first, at the time) and he’d managed to drag his battered body across the city, asking around to figure out where his old comrade now lived.
What happened next was a blur. Gintoki recalled this day with fondness, despite everything. Zura’s bruised skin under his fingers, the bathtub filled with blood-soaked clothes, Zura’s quiet pants, gauze and bandages lying around the bathroom floor, Zura’s eyes, like the eyes of a wounded animal, glowing with a spark of rage that Gintoki had never seen before. God, Gintoki loved this feeling. Zura’s skin burning under his touch, so pliant and pure that it made his heart ache.
There was nothing between them. No love, no friendship, no bond they could really put a name on. They were nothing.
But in the dead of night, when Gintoki came home dazed and drunk, barely able to hold himself up, he hoped Katsura would be waiting for him in the living room, having climbed through the window (or however the hell he managed to break in). Gintoki would lie next to the black-haired man, curling up against him pathetically so that they would breathe the same air.
And one day, this delirious idea came true: a month had passed when Zura came again. He was clean this time, with his hair combed to perfection.
If Zura was born to lead, then Gintoki was born to fight. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he wanted to say. He opted for a better option: corrupt the perfect demeanor that Katsura prided himself on.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he huffed, pulling at Zura’s hair to tilt his head back as their bodies rocked somewhat brutally on his futon. “You missed this, right? I know I have.”
Zura gasped weakly, face drenched with sweat. At least this had never changed: he would only let himself go inside Gintoki’s room, when the door was locked. He gazed down at where their bodies connected, hair clinging to his forehead. “I missed you so much,” Zura said.
Gintoki didn’t reply.
He gazed at his handiwork. The rebel leader’s body shook underneath his own, covered with marks left by the white demon’s own hands. The vision got to his head and, overwhelmed with pride and with a sinking feeling that he couldn’t quite identify, he kissed Zura. Perhaps this would make him stay.
But trying to restrain the rebel leader had always been like trying to hold sand in your hands. No matter what you did or what you said, he’d slip through your fingers and leave no trace when morning came.
The third time was different, however. After almost two months of radio silence, Gintoki came home to find Zura’s kimono strewn across the living room couch. Gintoki called out his name, hiding the anger in his voice as best as he could.
“God, I hate you,” he mumbled. He took a few steps inside the empty room, dumbly looking around for a sign of the black-haired man.
He was in the bedroom, no surprise there.
And he was frustratingly breathtaking in full “Zurako” getup, lying on his side upon the futon like he was meant to be there, as he flipped through the jump issue that Gintoki had purchased a day prior.
Gintoki wasn’t especially surprised by the female attire. After all, during the war, Katsura had often used his charms to pass off as a woman when he needed to gain intel or sneak into distrust zones undetected. The joui samurai all knew that he was off-limits. Takasugi and Gintoki would flay you alive if you dared to look at him a little too long when he was dressed up. Both men knew that Zura’s dignity as a commander was at play, but more importantly, that soldiers tended to lose their minds when they’d gone too long without being with a woman.
Katsura’s lips were cherry red and Gintoki would have kissed them until the makeup smeared and until they were both panting and out of breath.
“The fuck are you doing here?” He asked instead.
“I needed a place to stay,” Katsura said. “Furthermore, I’m here to convince you to join the ranks of the rebels again. Shall I proceed with the formal invitation?”
Gintoki walked over and tore the jump issue out of his hands, placing it on top of the comic book pile that had been growing in a corner of his room for the better part of a month. “Get out.”
Katsura turned to him and Gintoki’s eyes rested briefly on his lithe waist. He never bothered to hide how aroused the trusty Zurako attire made him feel.
Amused, the black-haired man insisted. “We need you, you know.”
Gintoki eyes rolled. “What you guys need is to let it go. War’s over. Now get out of my house and don’t bother me with that shit again.”
Katsura slowly rose from the futon, stretching. The silk kimono that he wore slipped along his shoulder, exposing his collarbone. He drew closer to the other, moving across the floor quietly and never breaking eye contact. In these types of moments, he slipped into the part of a siren luring her prey. “And if I said I needed you?”
“You need to fuck, more like. I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work. It’s stupid. Now fuck off, I’m done hiding you from the Shinsengumi. Let them catch you next time.”
Katsura slipped an arm around his shoulders, leaning dangerously close. His lips brushed along Gintoki’s neck and up to his ear. As much as he wanted to, the silver-haired man couldn’t gather the strength to push him off. He was helpless and under Zura’s spell. “Please do me this favor, Gintoki. I’ll do anything you want.”
And Gintoki obliged. He flipped the joui commander around, trapping him between his arms with his back pressed to Gintoki’s chest.
“White Yaksha, why that’s unbecoming of you.”
“I’m giving you what you want.” Gintoki’s hands roamed the other’s body as he let himself be entranced by the fragrance that Zurako always wore. “What is that, perfume? You wear that for the enemy or what?”
“Only for you,” Zura murmured, head dropping back to lie on Gintoki’s shoulder as his body was thoroughly groped.
They ended up entangled on the futon for the third night that year, with Katsura chanting his old friend’s name as he gripped the sheets, fingers clenching and unclenching until his knuckles turned white.
Zura’s creepy wide-eyed sleeping face greeted Gintoki first thing in the morning. There were worst things to wake up to, granted.
A year had passed.
The silver-haired man sighed and rolled around to lie on his back. The futon was warm and cozy, and under normal circumstances, he would have gone right back to sleep. But the circumstances were as abnormal as they could get: for once, Katsura had stayed.
This was the middle of December, and the war had been over for more than two years now. They’d began to see each other more and more often. And although they’d been friends since childhood, becoming close to post-war Zura was like taming a wild animal—as if Gintoki had to befriend him all over again.
And today, for the first time since they’d started their nighttime meetings, Zura had stayed over. Maybe the exhaustion had gotten to him. Whatever it was, Gintoki wouldn’t pass up this opportunity in a million years. He’d relish every blessed second spent at his side, even if it cost him a morning’s sleep.
So he lied on his back and stared at the ceiling, where golden light seeped through the blinds. Then he looked at Zura, eyes tracing the curve of his nose, the outline of his cheekbone, all the way to his naked shoulder.
Katsura was the type that could pet one of the filthy stray dogs that roamed Kabukicho’s back alleys, not caring where they’d stuffed their nose, but who would fuss about a speck of dirt on his sleeve or a nail that got too long to his liking.
During the war, the one who’d earned himself the nickname ‘rampaging noble’ would never rampage very far from a stream and a bottle of soap. He’d keep his body clean regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of how it’d piss off the soldiers who spent their days stuffed behind spaceship carcasses, avoiding enemy fire by rolling around on the dirty, muddy, dusty battlefields of the Amanto war. ‘Thinks he’s so much better than us,’ some of them spat—which Gintoki thought made them sound like whiny cunts. He’d never bothered to pick a fight with them. Reputation to protect, scary white demon, yada yada. And for once, it wasn’t worth the trouble. He didn’t have any business with most of the soldiers anyway. Aside from Tastuma and Shinsuke, he barely spoke a word to anyone, back in the day.
And of course, there was Zura, whose skin was infuriatingly clean. Gintoki wasn’t pissed off in the same way that his fellow cannon fodder was. He was angry to see Zura clean the blood from his hands so easily. He would go down to some river, or a shabby medical tent like they used to build out of scraps, and come out looking like anything other than the lowly rebel warrior that he actually was.
Gintoki was another story. The very scent of blood followed him around no matter how long he spent scrubbing himself red after battles.
If he spent more time with Zura, just the two of them alone like they were the only people left in the world, maybe he could feel clean for once in his life.
“Staring is bad manners, Gintoki.”
With a huff, the man broke out of his trance. “There’s no way to tell if you’re awake or not, thanks to your creepy eyes.”
Katsura stretched, then proceeded to rise into a sitting position and wrap the covers around his shoulders. “You still snore, by the way.”
“You drooled on my pillow.”
The black-haired man hummed. “Serves you right. I’m hungry, and I’ll be going now.”
Gintoki covered his eyes with his arm, attempting to block the onslaught of the sun as it rose behind the blinds. “Go downstairs and ask Tama for a gallon of oil or something.”
For a second, he thought Katsura had left. He attempted to smother the sorrow that crept its way through his body.
Suddenly, there were lips on his cheek, pressing a feather-light kiss against his skin.
Gintoki could have died in that moment.
In a daze, he opened his eyes to behold the sight that had haunted his fever dreams for the past two years.
Zura moved to straddle his waist, his eyes burning with that sparkle of ardency that made Gintoki’s heart throb. The latter rose upright, supporting himself with one arm as the other slipped around his lover’s waist.
The White Demon was uncontrolled, kissing and nipping at the skin along Zura’s neck like a desperate man. Like a drowning man gasping for oxygen, or a soldier fighting for survival. He brought the battlefield wherever he went, there was no point trying to deny it. Arms around Gintoki’s shoulders, Zura let his fingers wander through the thick, curly silver hair which had earned him the infamous nickname.
“Join the rebels,” he breathed.
“Fuck off,” Gintoki managed, hands wandering along the shape of Zura’s waist. “God…”
Zura gasped as he was maneuvered on his back, laid bare for Gintoki to consume. “What is it?”
Now straddling the other, Gintoki bent down to let his lips brush against his ear. “You’re perfect.”
“Is that right?” Katsura feigned disinterest and gazed indifferently to the side, arms still lying above his head. He knew exactly what buttons to press in order to drive Gintoki mad.
Eye twitching, the latter pressed a hand down on Zura’s chest, gentle but firm. “Yeah, that’s right.”
Would that make him stay for good? A pretty picture, but unlikely.
“You flatter me. Join the joui rebels and we’ll get to do this every day,” Zura crooned. The siren act was back on.
Gintoki’s fingers lightly seized the other’s chin, forcing their gazes to meet.
Zura’s eyes locked with his, and his gaze felt like the cool of a dagger. Gintoki willed his heart to remain unmoved.
“Stay with me.”
There was usually no way to tell what went on in Zura’s mind. In gamer terms, he’d become diamond-level at concealing his feelings. The commander title and his newly acquired position as leader of the rebels had both required it. Yet in that moment, genuine shock flashed in his eyes.
‘Why so surprised?’ Gintoki thought. Can’t you tell I spend every day of my life tortured by visions of you? What’s going on in your head?! Can’t you tell I’ve been dying to hold you in my arms for more than a goddamn night? Zura, you’ve killed me more times than the enemy has!
All this, he kept quiet. They were grade-A government threats, and they were soldiers, and soldiers just didn’t say that shit.
His heart ached, as if crushed by a white-iron grip. Any minute now, he would either spit the speech out in a desperate attempt to keep Zura here, or die of embarrassment.
The rebel leader was quiet. Silence grew between them, painful evidence of the words left unsaid.
“Why Gintoki,” Katsura finally spoke. “I never took you for a sentimental.”
The White Yaksha tsked. “Don’t mock.” Outside, thick white clouds had covered the sun. Snow began to fall softly. Upon seeing this, Gintoki rose to his feet. “If you stay over, just for this morning, I’ll make you some soba or whatever,” he managed.
Katsura pretended to ponder, tapping his chin lightly. He was still gloriously nude, entangled in the bedsheets like a damn Greek statue. “A tempting offer, but I don't seem to be hungry anymore, for now. How about…” With a mischievous smile, he softly pulled Gintoki by the arm to lie back down with him. “…Staying here for a minute?”
Their bodies met and their lips locked. Every time felt like the first time. Gintoki’s lashes fluttered, and he felt Zura chuckle lightly under his touch. He was utterly spellbound. Perhaps Zura would never stay. Most likely, he’d be gone the next day. But Gintoki knew that next time, he’d stay a little while longer.