Chapter Text
Sougo had met Kamui at a bar, strangely enough, strangely as in Sougo didn’t frequent bars often, and Kamui didn’t drink, thank God.
Feeling sick, he’d felt his way out through throngs of people and a jammed open fire exit situated in the back end of the building by the toilets and piled himself into the back alley, loosely illuminated by a couple of busted streetlamps and a dull, flickering neon sign from the building opposite. He’d been kneeling down, arms wrapped around the front of his knees trying to stave off the waves of nausea rolling through his gut when someone had made a grab at his hair.
Sougo’s head snapped up a little too quickly and he’d gagged, leaning backwards to brace his arm against the wall behind him.
“What the fuck?” He’d rasped, eyes struggling to focus on the body attached to the hand petting his head.
“Oh! Hello,” the person started. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”
He glared. “Because I am. I’ll throw up on your shoes. Stop touching me.”
“Ah, isn’t this helping?”
“…No?”
The stranger stopped. He had long hair, plaited, seemingly nearly down to his waist, and Sougo briefly wondered how long it took him to get ready every day. “Oh. I must have been lied to. What a shame!”
The weight on his head had actually felt a little nice, Sougo thought, now that it’d been taken away.
“Wait.” Blinking blearily, he fumbled a grab at the other man’s hand. “Continue.” The stranger seemed to shrug, and wordlessly resumed petting his hair. In that moment Sougo had felt like crying, or maybe like jumping to his feet and knocking the other person to the floor and punching the shit out of him, or more realistically, actually being sick on his shoes.
“I’m Kamui, by the way!” He’d exclaimed, face brimming with a wide smile.
Kamui was pretty looking and strange, his eyes were blue, probably, and his hand seemed to be burning a hole in Sougo’s skull.
“You’re pretty strange.” Sougo fumbled.
“I got it from my father. I’m hoping I don’t also inherit his rapidly accelerating male pattern baldness,” Kamui looked entirely serious at this. He shook his head somberly and caught Sougo’s gaze. “I don’t want to be bald. I think my head might be a weird shape.”
There’s a moment where, amidst his bleared, drunken haze, Sougo feels a sharp fishing line tug of something way deep down in his abdomen. There’s something fizzling there that he wants to squeeze into a pulp with his bare hands, and it might just be Kamui’s neck.
“Gimme your number,” Sougo slurred, nuzzling up into the feeling of the pressure on his scalp. It seemed physical human contact had erased any sort of previously established personal safety he may have picked up over the years. He poked a finger into the flesh of Kamui’s thigh when he felt him falter.
“Uh, what.”
“Your phone. Number, that is. Here I’ll,” He sorted through his pockets as fast as he could, stopping once his fingers came into contact with the slippery smoothness of his phone screen. “Just give it to you.”
He unlocked his phone and lifted his head up to stare at Kamui until he did the same.
He didn’t.
“Your phone. Get your phone out.”
“Ah, so demanding! See, I don’t remember where I put it.”
Sougo blinked slowly. “Check your pockets.”
“Wow, you really want my number, huh?” He grinned and motioned to sit down next to Sougo, narrowly missing planting his ass directly in the middle of a puddle of some unidentifiable liquid. Kamui removes the hand on Sougo’s head to pat him softly on the cheek. Sougo felt his face warm slightly. “It might be in here. Give me a second. ” He gestured to the left side of his jacket, and started rummaging through. He’d been humming something under his breath as he’d done it.
“I feel like I’m regretting this already.” His face was burning now. He’d drunk way too much. He felt feverish.
It took a second before Kamui let out a triumphant hoot, and brandished what seemed to be the world’s smallest, most antiquated flip phone in front of Sougo’s face.
“Ha! Got it!” He paused for a second. “Now to see if I remember how to do the contact thing. I make my sister do it for me, usually.”
Sougo snatched it from his hand and flipped it open. The phone didn’t have a password, thankfully, and Sougo had to take a second to do a double take at the wallpaper, which was a blurry image of what seemed to be a coyote, taken at night.
He really didn’t think he could take an explanation for this without keeling over and throwing up everywhere. He didn’t even know there were coyotes in Japan.
He felt Kamui’s eyes on him as he tapped his phone number into the keypad, and hit the call button. His own phone buzzed in his other hand.
“Ah. Did it.” He exhaled, half out of relief, half out of general motion sickness, and slumped back against the wall a little. Kamui took his phone back, eyeing the screen with suspicion.
“Is that it? Hmm,” Kamui turned to stare at him, eyes dimmed and heavy under flickering lamplight. “You never told me your name.”
Sougo blanched, face paled by the blue light of his phone screen. His finger hovered over Hijikata’s number.
Ah. “It’s Sougo,” He blinked slowly. “And I need to go home, I think. I’ll call you, probably.”