Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

With the logic of a child-still, part of him has so far refused to believe Gintoki was the type to ever get sick.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so worrisome — a fever, a summer cold that otherwise would be perfectly ordinary. But Gintoki always seems so otherworldly strong and healthy (frustratingly so, Takasugi wants to add, when you have him as rival on the mats) that it’s the ordinariness of his illness which has everybody in the school losing sleep over his condition.

On the other hand Gintoki has had a lot of it by now, sleep. Ten hours straight where his fever hasn’t gone down. Shouyou has even sent Katsura to the nearest town to buy some medicine (with what secret funds Takasugi doesn’t inquire, they’ve been eating broken rice for the last month).

“I’m not worried,” Shouyou explains as Takasugi sits beside him, guarding Gintoki’s labored breathing. “But I felt Kotaro would appreciate feeling useful right now.”

Shouyou said nothing when Takasugi came into the room, accepting as natural that the boy would want to be by his classmate’s side at such a time.

It smells of sick in here, a particular acrid scent that Takasugi has trouble associating with Gintoki, who always smells of open fields and summer sunshine. He watches the other boy —has been watching him all this time— mesmerized by the way Gintoki’s eyelids tremble even closed, as if he was having a particularly intense dream. So different from watching his nightmares when they’ve all gone to bed. There’s a film of sweat covering every centimeter of the skin on his face, except for his lips, which look dry and cracked. Takasugi’s gaze moves to the sternum, following the rise and fall of the breathing, the way even unconscious Gintoki seems to be having trouble with it.

He has been so focused on this — as if watching Gintoki breathe is his only assurance that he will continue to do so — that for a moment he forgets Shouyou is in the room. Their teacher makes a soft sighing sound and reaches his hand to Gintoki’s hair. He threads his fingers through silver locks with infinite tenderness, his thumb drawing a line over the boy’s forehead. Takasugi always marvels at this: how Shouyou is the deadliest swordsman he has ever seen, and the softest person. Takasugi still wants to be like him, like that, but he’s afraid that particular combination is out of his reach.

“He’s getting too old to let me make a fuss as I'm doing now,” Shouyou says, in a confessional tone, looking at Gintoki’s sleeping face. “I don’t enjoy seeing him sick, but taking care of him like this feels like a privilege that’s quickly slipping through my fingers.”

His voice sounds really bittersweet about this. Takasugi thinks he knows what he means — Shouyou always seems to despair at Gintoki playing grown up, and the boy always seems in a hurry to become a man already. All this time together Takasugi has seen this unfold. Since he occupies the cot right next to him Takasugi has noticed how, once upon a time, Gintoki would abandon the common bedroom almost every night, going to Shouyou’s side as dawn started illuminating the few steps from his classmates to his teacher. But that has been happening less and less often of late; now the norm is that Takasugi wakes up in the morning not to an empty bed by his side, but to Gintoki snoring loudly and obnoxiously, sheets a twisted mess, limbs splayed all over Takasugi’s side as well.

So yeah, he knows what Shouyou is talking about, he knows the man is losing something precious and nameless here. He knows what it means for him to share that fear with someone, with a kid that he knows will never tell Gintoki, not even to try to help.

“Come here,” he tells Takasugi.

He is already sitting right by his side, but Takasugi knows from his tone that’s not what his teacher means. He means for Takasugi to copy his gesture, repeat his caress to Gintoki. Takasugi hesitates, still watching those closed eyes intently. It’s different, he thinks. He knows Gintoki would probably pretend he doesn’t want Shouyou’s sweet attention while secretly cherishing it, but he would absolutely not want Takasugi’s touch.

Takasugi looks back at Shouyou. His teacher gives him a soft, knowing look that Takasugi feels is meant as encouragement. Knowing of what exactly? Takasugi can’t tell. But he finds himself jealous of Shouyou and for the first time this ugly feeling has nothing to do with his fighting skills, with being a samurai. Takasugi can’t put his finger on it but it doesn’t matter, he does as instructed. Gintoki’s hair is damp with sweat, Takasugi can feel the fevered heat of his scalp against his fingers. His hair is damp, but Takasugi thinks it’s soft anyway.

Chapter Text

They take turns keeping watch; to guard the scorched remains against scavengers, against rats and wild dogs. Zura quickly took on the task of bossing everybody around. He’s still at it, gathering half burnt textbooks and copying the remaining wisdom they might offer, making inventory of the little food the fire didn’t ruin. He’s even talking about finding somewhere nearby with a roof and preparing classes for the poorest kids, to keep the school going. Takasugi can’t understand how he is able to think about anything else but rescuing Shouyou from the claws of the government right now, but then he remembers this is what Zura has been doing of late, how Shouyou has been letting him help out by teaching the younger children, turning him from his pupil to his colleague while nobody was looking. Takasugi knows Zura has responsibilities towards Shouyou other than saving him. He resents him for it, but he understands.

At least Gintoki has finally fallen asleep, right after dawn has broken, though surely this has happened against his will — the beating he received from the Bakufu officials (because that’s what they were, right? though Takasugi had never seen government dogs dressed like that) no doubt compounded by their meagre efforts to put out the fire, and an emotional exhaustion Takasugi doesn’t even want to guess at.

If Takasugi’s whole body burns at the idea of losing their teacher he can't bear to imagine how Gintoki must be feeling right now.

So it almost seems an unearned respite, that he’s fallen asleep and Takasugi doesn’t have to watch the expression on his face he’s been seeing all night. The way he knows that set jaw of Gintoki's didn’t mean anger, or resolve to rescue Shouyou somehow, but self-recrimination.

Takasugi sits close by, watching Gintoki and watching over Gintoki and watching the morning light make the extent of the damage on the school grounds painfully evident. He licks the blisters all over his hands for some measure of relief and perhaps antibacterial healing if he remembers his lessons, the skin on the palms of his hands peeled off from trying to rescue textbooks trapped under scorching rubble. Takasugi couldn’t care less about the books themselves, but he had enough of Zura soundlessly crying over burnt papers tonight and burning his hands and arms seemed like a cheap price to pay to stop that. His clothes too are singed now, blackened by all the ash still dancing in the air around them. It hurts to breathe that air, but it would hurt more to just walk away from the debris. They all want to stay here a little longer.

Gintoki is resting against a half-fallen post, head tilted back, his hands tightly gripping the hilt of a wooden sword even in his sleep. One of their practice swords. Where is his sword? Takasugi wonders. Probably taken by the Bakufu. Something else taken from Gintoki. But for his hands and the black soot all over his hair and clothes he would look like a normal teenager like this, asleep, without the hungry look on his face that singles him out as something more dangerous than just a kid. Caught in the middle of an awkward growth spurt that has left his legs and arms too long for the rest of him but getting there. He’ll stop looking like a kid soon — he’s stopping right now, under Takasugi’s gaze.

He’d look like a normal teenager except for the lingering marks on his neck. They make Takasugi look away, remembering last night — with shame, because when he and Zura arrived at the scene, before they could take in what was happening, Takasugi’s first instinct of fear wasn’t for the figure of Shouyou being forcefully lead away from his students, but for the way Gintoki was being held back, the staffs pressing dangerously against his throat. Takasugi didn’t like this intimate hierarchy of fear, the choice it forced out of him.

It will be a relief, then, when he watches the bruises fade from Gintoki’s neck.

Chapter Text

“I guess it’ll be useless to offer to relieve you of your post watching over him,” Zura declares when he enters the room they use as makeshift field hospital, formal enunciation as always.

Takasugi has no idea what the fuck that’s supossed to mean.

Maybe he means there are things that Takasugi is supposed to be doing instead of this, and he’s neglecting his responsibilities. He’s most likely right, not the least because Zura normally is. He’s probably particularly right tonight. The Kiheitai probably need guidance, after the beating they received yesterday. They should all be plotting a counter-attack, so that the enemy doesn’t assume they can walk all over them like this. They can’t afford to look weak right now. Takasugi couldn’t give a shit. He knows that’s war and that’s the world, but it’s not the world he’s living in now.

Because Takasugi’s world has been reduced to the sound of Gintoki’s breathing, sharp and impossibly difficult, a drowning gurgling noise from time to time that drives home the fact that the Amanto sword really went through his lung and it was as bad as it looks. Their mostly-self-taught doctor — a skilled but easily spooked kid Tatsuma found many villages and battles ago — does what she can, draining the blood when it threatens to choke Gintoki, but they can all see on her face that this is serious.

The troops are freaked out. They barely believed the White Demon could be cut down like this. They act as if one of the tenets of their faith had just collapsed. Gintoki has been wounded before, of course, horrifying injuries that could kill the strongest warrior in the land easily, and that Gintoki usually shrugs off with one of his stupid grins. He’s been wounded before but never put out of commission like this. Takasugi narrows his eyes at him — it seems like he’s sleeping now, rather than just unconscious — wanting to put the blame on Gintoki himself for getting hurt. For not living up to his brutal reputation. He’s so close to him, crosslegged right next to the head of the cot, that even in his sleep Gintoki can probably feel the other man’s ire towards him. Good.

Then Zura sits by his side as well, apparently abandoning whatever task he was in a hurry to take care of. Takasugi can’t remember a moment in their lives when Zura didn’t look in a hurry to take care of something incredibly important nobody else wanted to bother with. They have kept the doors open so that there’s fresh air for Gintoki to breathe, and Takasugi can see the night breeze biting goosebumps into Zura’s skin. But Zura doesn’t move to close the door or grab a jacket.

He gives the wounded man in front of him an uncomplicatedly loving look.

“Considering what Gintoki is like, he probably wouldn’t want us doting on him like this,” Zura says, full of fondness and frustration towards his friend. “He wouldn’t even want us seeing him like this.”

Takasugi wonders if the light tone is for his benefit, if Zura is trying to assuage his fears. Anyway it doesn’t work.

“Who the fuck cares what he’d want,” Takasugi mutters.

He knows what Gintoki is like, too, the image he wants to project. They are all a bit like that, and it makes them envy Tatsuma all the more, Tatsuma who has no problem wearing his weaknesses and hurts openly, has no problem receiving comfort from others, even asking for it.

On the other hand it’s stupid to keep certain illusions during a war: the way they have all bandaged each other’s wounds, and set each other’s broken bones. They have seen each other slash an enemy’s corpse just to vent frustration, they have seen each other bury subordinates, they have seen each other cry and not cry, knowing which one was hardest every time. They have guarded each other’s nightmares and woken each other from the very worst ones, though they never talk about those times. Modesty in a war is dumb when Takasugi knows how many scars Gintoki has on his body, even the ones received before they ever met, in a childhood Gintoki will never speak about. It’s even dumber among the three Shoka Sonjuku students - as over the years they have seen each other puke and shit and pick their noses and have listened to each other jerk off at night and they know there was a time when none of them had the cold eyes of a soldier.

If Gintoki still has any illusions of modesty, of hiding whenever he’s hurt, Takasugi is only too happy to dispel them. If Gintoki has a problem with that, well, then he should just wake up already and punch Takasugi about it, like he does about everything else.

He wonders if Zura actually means to relieve him here, from how he is sitting next to the patient now. It’s ludicrous, of course, that Takasugi would leave Gintoki’s side before he’s absolutely sure the other man is going to survive. As ludicrous as the idea that he has to keep watching his sleep, that if he tears his eyes from Gintoki even one second his lung will fill up with blood again and he’ll drown for good this time. There’s also the uglier thought pressing at the back of his mind, making him sick to his stomach: that he should look at Gintoki as much as he can, that he should burn his image into his brain, in case this is one of the last times he gets to look at him.

What a waste, Takasugi thinks hysterically, grim, all the time he spent not looking at Gintoki.

Zura touches the sleeping man’s head, combing his hair so that it doesn't look so messy. A gesture so natural, as if he does this all the time. Takasugi knows that’s not the case, that Gintoki wouldn’t let him, but still the caress looks so… easy for Zura. Like he doesn’t have to think twice. A friend is hurt and he runs his fingers through his hair as he rests, hopefully recovering. It’s simple, if he thinks about it. But if Takasugi thinks about this a memory he can’t place dislodges itself from his insides, and for a moment he really hates Zura a lot. Not even for doing this, but for not having to think twice.

But then Zura turns towards him, regarding Takasugi with a very serious expression on his face, those times when Zura’s face can seem simultaneously very stern and very gentle, when he looks like he must be somebody’s mother.

“One of these days his legendary luck really is going to run out, and then it will be too late,” he says, eyes locked with Takasugi.

“Too late for what?” Takasugi asks.

Zura gives him a look, harder than he’s ever given him, harder than Takasugi ever believed possible or Zura capable of.

“Nothing,” Zura mutters.

Now he just looks disappointed.

And even though Takasugi can see it pains him, physically pains him, to leave Gintoki’s side so soon, he does, getting up and leaving through the open sliding door, mumbling something about raiding a Bakufu post for more medicine, and Takasugi can tell he is itching to do something, anything, for Gintoki, just like he is. He also knows it’s a different kind of itching.

Chapter Text

It’s the longest he’s been able to look at the other man in many years, and Takasugi only allows himself the luxury because Gintoki is asleep.

He looks different, of course. They all do, they are all adults now. But Gintoki has always had an annoying knack for growing into himself quite spectacularly. Like his skin just fits. Takasugi can't imagine the feeling; he’s always been at ill ease in his body, even before that body became crippled, and even before it became a walking corpse.

He also looks different from when they last saw each other two years ago. Something haunting him, and after hearing his story about how he came by Shouyou's heart Takasugi doesn’t wonder what that is.

If there isn't such a thing as fate, he ponders, why does Gintoki's life sound like such a long and cruel joke? It's hard to believe it's all coincidence, and unfair to believe it might be karma.

Takasugi is about to say something about this, something perhaps commiserating of this latest hand the other man has been dealt, when he realizes Gintoki has dozed off at some point in their sparse conversation, right in front of the other man, the crook of his own arm for a pillow, resting happily for all his protestations about being nervous surrounded by water and Takasugi.

This is not the sleep of the guarded child Takasugi once knew, or the rest of a soldier in a doomed war. It's the sleep of a man who now knows as many peaceful, inconsequential days as days full of blood and fury. All that time playing house has left a mark on Gintoki’s face, and Takasugi can’t say that, for all that he vowed to take those very things away from him, it’s a bad look on him.

Then again Takasugi is bad at keeping his promises: the promise to protect Gintoki, or the promise to kill him, he’s failed at all of them. He has little illusion that with the scarce borrowed time he has left he’ll fix that, save Shouyou (for Gintoki, for himself), but he has to try.

The boat ride to Edo is long, so Gintoki does well to take advantage and rest, even in such unfriendly company. It makes Takasugi realize how far away their school grounds were, how removed from the center of power and still the Bakufu saw it as a threat. In turn the idea makes Takasugi feel proud of Shouyou, of himself for having been part of it all — of something that, no matter how far from the government buildings in Edo, how far below the Tendoshu spaceships, was considered worth burning to the ground.

He also knows Gintoki wouldn't like that line of thought, that he would resent the idea that their teacher died a romantic death. Shouyou was fond of talking about Gintoki in front of Takasugi, for some reason, and he once said something about Gintoki being a survivor. Takasugi didn't understand until years later, and now he thinks he disagrees with his teacher: Gintoki is not a survivor but he values survival above all. Maybe that's why he did what he did. Maybe he thought he and Zura would understand his logic and be grateful he gave them that, survival.

No, of course he never expected understanding, let alone gratitude. That's a sick idea. Takasugi always knew that the other man believed he had already lost him and Zura forever, the moment he lifted his sword to cut Shouyou down.

“Leaving me all alone again, uh?” Takasugi whispers with gloomy humor to the night air, the scent of the river, the strange solitude of having someone else in here with him. It's not just his body disintegrating minute by minute, it's his thoughts too: scattered, too sentimental, or too cold.

The boat journey is long and once upon a time Takasugi might have used the time to practice his shamisen skills, but these days he can’t bear the sound of an instrument once gifted to him, has learned to detest its particular timbre.

Coming to Edo has never felt like coming home for him, but he supposes that's exactly what it is, for better or worse, to Gintoki. Space is not home either, but Matako and Takechi are — so maybe he shouldn’t have judged Gintoki so harshly for his domestic delusions. Perhaps Takasugi is still as weak as he always was, that he should hate something as harmless as a shamisen, that he can’t stop himself from watching the same man sleep over and over, even after all these years.

Then Gintoki wakes up suddenly and for no apparent reason — there was no loud noise from outside, no particularly shaky motion of the boat. It just looks as if he has finished his nap. He scratches his ankle absent-mindedly, like he was in the middle of his own living room. A pleasantly brattish quality he’s never lost, the way he seems to fill whatever room he’s in.

“Very careless of you to lower your guard like that,” Takasugi comments, inexplicably annoyed at the show of trust.

Gintoki rubs his eyes so thoroughly and with such abandon Takasugi fears he might bruise a cornea.

“Mm why? We have the same goal here. It’s not like this is enemy territory.”

Takasugi clicks his tongue. “Do we? Have the same goal.”

He knows he’s just taunting him, and it’s unfair. He just wants to know he’s not alone in this. Or reassurance that, this time around, they will not fail Shouyou.

“Sure,” Gintoki says, not taking the bait. Takasugi guesses he’s grown up a bit since they were children, after all. That also annoys him, he really is tired of being left behind all the time. Gintoki scratches his ankle again, oblivious. “It’d be good if we could do other things while we’re at it.”

“Like what?” Takasugi asks.

“Fix that stupid body of yours.”

Nevermind, he hasn’t grown up. Not one bit.

Takasugi lets out a joyless chuckle. “Didn’t you learn anything from last time? Dividing your attentions is what made you lose everything.”

He can sense Gintoki’s frustration with him in the way he goes from scratching himself to picking his nose. He plays this game very well, but Takasugi remembers the rules.

“Everything? Is that what it looks like from where you are?” Gintoki asks him, uncharacteristically straightforward.

It’s not something he wants to consider, but the bastard is going to make him. What’s the point, since his time has all but run out? What difference are a few hours, a few days, going to make? He might as well think he has lost it already. Whatever Gintoki is offering here, he’s not brave enough to take it.

“It’ll still be a while until we reach Edo,” Takasugi says instead. Instead, he finds that word funny all of the sudden. He and Gintoki, they’ve had a lifetime of insteads. “You should get some more rest.”

Gintoki regards him with a dead-eyed stare.

“Yeah, you’re annoying me, I’ll go back to napping,” he says without much bite.

And he does just that. This time he turns his back to Takasugi, in a way that he can’t tell if Gintoki is sleeping or not. He chooses to believe he is.

And Takasugi goes back to watching him, to guarding an old classmate’s sleep, an old comrade’s sleep. And if these are some of the very last hours of his life then… well, they feel much less of a waste than many things Takasugi has done with his life.

Chapter Text

Gintoki didn’t fall asleep on his lap, that would be an unbearable cliché, but he only just barely didn’t.

Barely because Gintoki is still asleep on the couch, and still close enough to Takasugi (the crown of his head pressed against his thigh, his body loose and relaxed in an unmistakable way that his clothed state cannot conceal) for it all to be a technicality. Takasugi’s pride can live on that technicality, while the rest of him is content to watch Gintoki sleep, to watch his body hum with contentment. He’s splayed out on the sofa, filling every corner as if he was liquid, or a cat, probably already nursing a hangover with how much he drank during their lunch out in town. Not all of his body is relaxed, Takasugi notes, avoiding the easy dirty joke: Gintoki has his arm spread against one of the cushions, bent so that his hand is curled into the folds of Takasugi’s kimono. In his sleep Gintoki holds a vicious grip on the other man’s clothes. For all that every other muscle in his body seems as aloof as the expression he normally wears on his face, Gintoki’s fingers tell a different story.

“You know, I can’t just idle an afternoon away like this, some of us are working men,” Takasugi leans over to whisper in Gintoki’s ear, very aware that he won’t hear it.

More lip-service to his nonexistent pride, and then he leans back again, resting his head on the back of the couch. Perhaps Gintoki has had the right idea here, Takasugi ponders, and closes his eyes.

But then he hears the front door sliding and his eyes open, and for a moment he tenses and wonders if he should move, if he should break up this embarrassing picture and pretend some semblance of decorum here, though he obviously has no respectful reason for being in the Yorozuya premises in the middle of the day, and whoever is coming through that door know this and will know what a sleeping Gintoki greeting them means, whether Takasugi moves to the other couch or not.

Also, inexplicably, he’s gripped by the fear that the noise is going to wake Gintoki up, and he doesn’t want that, irrationally and possessively doesn’t want anyone disturbing the man’s rest.

Then he remembers Gintoki’s hand twisted into his clothes and he guesses the decision is made for him. It’s almost comforting, in this second life of his, not having an exit strategy when it comes to Gintoki.

The noise of the footsteps approaching reveals that, at least, it’s someone civilized interrupting them today. And thankfully Shimura knows how to move quietly and then he takes one look at the situation and understands the need to not disturb his boss’ rest.

“I’ll make us some tea, Takasugi-san,” he says in a low voice.

Takasugi mouths a thank you.

And he means it.

This young man is a balm in Takasugi’s visits to Edo, an oasis of peace and politeness among days that include a Yato girl more like Gintoki than if they were actually blood related, and also her head-chewing pet, not to mention Zura’s progressively odder behavior and extravagant disguises.

Soon the room fills with a sharp and pleasant scent; lately the Yorozuya office seems perennially stocked with the particular blend of tea Takasugi favors, and he hasn’t inquired about this, though he doubts he has Gintoki to thank. Maybe it’s enough that Gintoki allows this courtesy from his more thoughtful junior. That’s fine by Takasugi — he has no illusions about Gintoki changing for him, if only because he doesn’t want him to.

And sure enough in a few minutes that thoughtful junior is placing a cup in front of Takasugi, and taking a seat opposite him. Takasugi likes that he is not expected to make conversation with the young man, and that the two of them being left alone is not a grueling chore for either (Takasugi has no personal experience so far, but he shudders to think what being left alone with Kagura would be like).

They spend a few very companionable minutes in silence.

Then Shimura throws a fond glance at Gintoki’s sleeping form, as if he has suddenly remembered he’s in the room with them.

“Like that he doesn’t look half as devious as he really is, don’t you think?” he jokes.

Takasugi looks down and thinks about it. Gintoki is not resting his head on his lap, not quite that. Close enough. Takasugi can feel the warmth of the top of his head pressed against his thigh.

He reaches out and grabs a handful of ludicrously silver hair, fingers playing with locks that feel as soft as summer light right now. It’s shameless, especially doing so in front of another man, and Takasugi knows he should feel shame.

“I disagree,” he tells Shimura, not tearing his eyes from Gintoki’s sleeping face. He smiles, aware of how ridiculous he sounds, how ridiculous he’s acting these days. But maybe that's how one should use a second life. “I think he looks just as devious like this.”

Shimura makes a soft, amused noise, but noncommittal enough that Takasugi doesn’t feel judged or patronized. The grace youngsters have these days, he reflects. He and Gintoki were absolutely boorish as teenagers. They still are, in many ways. Takasugi guesses they just never grew out of it.

He moves his hand from Gintoki’s hair to his face, brushing his fingertips against the cheek. Gintoki twitches for a moment like it annoys him, still deep in sleep, and then settles against the warmth of Takasugi’s hand, lips curled unconsciously. Summer sunshine peeks into the room through the office’s shoddily built windows, and he watches as it turns absurdly silver hair golden. He watches and watches.

Yeah, Takasugi decides, there are some things he never grew out of at all.