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The eyepatch makes Heisuke look even younger, the one eye Chizuru can see brimming with worry as he holds out his Shinsengumi haori. “We wear them for visibility, you know? If I can’t be there anyway-” He swallows, and Chizuru feels bad for him, but he was the one who bet Nagakura couldn’t hit him with the chopstick at ten paces. He’s lucky there wasn’t any damage that a couple of days with a bandage won’t heal, but a one-eyed swordsman is a danger to everyone around him. “I’d feel better if I knew Okita wouldn’t kill you by accident in the dark.”
“I don’t kill anyone by accident,” Okita says. Nobody pays any attention.
“You don’t think Commander Hijikata would object?” Chizuru’s hand reaches out and brushes the cloth, but she can’t quite make herself take it from his hand. It’s thicker than she’d thought it would be, with the way the officers’ coats bell dramatically in the wind, but still just cloth.
“He said it was okay.” Heisuke doesn’t wait, just drapes the haori over her arm. She hugs it to her chest to keep from dropping it in the dirt. “It’s clean, too, I promise.”
“Try it on, Chizuru,” Harada urges from his spot in the shade. It may be late afternoon, but the heat hasn’t lessened one bit since midday. Giving into temptation is easy, when there’s a good reason for it, and she swings the pale blue coat over her shoulders.
Nagakura’s snort is the first response. “It’s a little bit wide,” Harada says, more politely. “Nice to know that Heisuke isn’t exactly girl-sized.” A laugh tugs at his lips, and Nagakura turns over to stifle his guffaws against the ground.
Heisuke just buzzes around behind her, centering seams and straightening cords. “It’s not that bad,” he growls. He won’t meet her eye, though, and she has a very strong suspicion that she looks like a child playing dress-up in her big brother’s clothing. “But the important question is- can you draw?”
It’s a bit nerve-wracking, doing this in front of three captains of the Shinsengumi - the only bright spot is that Okita already left - but if there is one skill she practiced until the motion is graven in her bones, it is this one. Her kodachi flashes free of the sheath, and the sleeve of the haori swings out in a perfect arc. She feels invincible. Heisuke nods proudly. “I knew it,” he says.
She’s just supposed to be running messages this time - she knows she’s no warrior to be charging into battles where she doesn’t belong - but the shouts and the ring of steel from inside the inn leave her shifting from foot to foot, anxious. The soldiers who were supposed to guard the door plunged into the fray at Harada’s shout, and she can feel the hostile eyes behind slitted windows all down the street.
She’s alone in the moonlight, the only Shinsengumi target in sight. The door beckons to her as the pitch of the battle tapers off just a bit, but overhead a screen slides open with a stealthy scrape. Chizuru presses herself against the wall beneath, and a shadowy figure drops from the second floor to the road just beside her.
The man takes no notice of her, just runs a hand through his hair with a quiet chuckle and strolls off into an alley.
This is exactly what they were there to prevent- the Choshu ronin were to be contained and every single one brought in for questioning. For all she knows, this could be the leader himself- she’s across the street, exposed in the mouth of the alley before she realizes she’s moved.
The road is still empty, every one of the Shinsengumi soldiers still busy within the inn. The grunts and blows of combat still hum from the interior and she makes her decision. She’s not about to let a suspect get away just because there’s no man there to take charge.
The taps of her sandals on the earthen road are louder than the scrape of her kodachi leaving its sheath and the silent steps of her quarry. “Halt!” She shouts.
To her surprise, he actually does.
“Your friends have inconvenient timing,” the shadowed man says, as casual as if they’re meeting in a teahouse in the middle of the day. By the leisurely way he wraps his mouth around the words, perhaps that’s what he has in mind. It would not be the first time he’s tried to entice her with food. “Any chance I could convince you to come back tomorrow? I’ve been trying to set this up for weeks.”
He’s actually complaining. Of course he is. She holds her sword at the ready, stalled with indecision. She expected resistance or capitulation, not - small talk.
Saito doesn’t have to deal with this, she strongly suspects. “Turn around and go back to the inn,” she orders, and her voice barely quavers.
“But we just got here, and I haven’t seen you in so long,” Ryouma Sakamoto says, his voice too big and bright for the nighttime alley. His eyes sweep across her body, teeth flashing when his gaze dwells on the bright haori. “Surely there is time for some pleasure before business?”
Her sword tip wavers. But the longer she is away from her post, the more chance someone will notice she’s gone- she needs to be resolute. “No, Sakamoto. I need you to come with me.”
“Ah. Is that the terms we’re on tonight, then?” He’s quieter now, lips curling around his defiant words, and she wants to lean closer to hear him better. “Then I’m afraid you will have to arrest me, because I have no intention of going back there.” She stiffens her knees and holds her distance, but her tongue can’t find words to reply. There must be more to this than simply telling him he’s under arrest, but she has no idea what comes next.
“I take it this your first time?” Chizuru’s breath catches in her teeth. “Arresting someone, I mean.”
He shouldn’t sound so gleeful, and she’s certainly not about to answer that but if it’s that clear to him it would be clear to anyone. “It’s a shame they didn’t prepare you better. Do you need me to talk you through it?”
“You’ve been arrested before?” As soon as the words leave her mouth she thinks better of them- anyone in his position who hadn’t been would have to be far lower profile than Sakamoto. He may be slippery, but he makes a splash wherever he goes.
“Oh yes,” he says, and the way his mouth curls around the words is mesmerizing. His weight shifts and Chizuru steps to the side, cutting off his exit- she’s not going to let him distract her. His eyes follow her every movement. “It was in Oita, and it had been raining for days-”
He stops himself, cocking his head to the side. “I’m not so sure this is a good time for that story.” He doesn’t wait for her to reply, holding up the entire conversation himself. “No, you should be searching me for weapons.”
That doesn’t sound right. “You’re not wearing a sword.” He must have had to leave his at the door of the inn. Her kodachi dips.
“That is true, but what if I were carrying a gun? Could you cut me down before I shot you?” She suspects the answer is no. He spreads his hands as though he expects her to embrace him, and that grin on his face- it makes her heart skip a beat every time she sees it.
Like a fool, she stares, and it takes a moment to drop her gaze back to her duty. “It’s right there in your belt,” she says, because of course it is. He always has it.
The look on Sakamoto’s face never falters, never betrays anything less than cheerful confidence. “You should also check for a knife, because surely I’m carrying one.”
“Are you?” Her palms are wet, but she’s afraid to take either off her hilt to dry it.
“You’ll know when you find it, won’t you?”
After a moment of calculation, Chizuru spins her kodachi into a backhanded grip. It lets her lean in closer without taking the blade off target, and he stands appropriately still for her to do it. She doesn’t want him to resist, certainly, but something about all of this seems a little off. With her free hand she pinches the edge of his sleeve. His kimono is worn thin, a bad day’s luck away from threadbare, but so soft against her fingertips. There’s no lump of a knife in the sleeves and none visible under his belt, just an enameled box held up with a triangular netsuke- she touches the little wood carving with her fingers, and it’s a sailing ship.
Her lips twitch, but she shouldn’t be smiling, not here and now. More confident, she runs a hand along the lapel of his kimono, feeling the warm solidity of his chest beneath but no signs of a knife. Beneath her fingers his breath is steady and taut- it hitches as she edges closer, feeling along the thickness of his belt.
The smile on his lips is more calculating than gleeful now. He arches his back as her fingers cross his side, and she quashes an inappropriate curiosity. In a less fraught situation would he laugh? “Turn,” she orders, and he twists enough for her to feel along the back of the belt as well, and she’s nearly distracted by the breadth of his back, the grace in the way he moves- yet no other weapons come to light. “No knife?”
“Tricked you,” he says, but the words are gentle and teasing.
That leaves only the obvious. Her hand closes around the hilt of his gun- it’s warm against her fingers, smoother than a sword’s hilt- and carefully angling it not to poke him with it or shoot him with it, given that she’s never used one before, she starts to pull it clear of his belt.
It barely shifts before his hand falls on top of hers, trapping it. His palm is wide, enough to hide her whole hand, and warmer than she would have imagined on such a chilly night. “I’m torn, Chizuru,” he says, and his expressive voice has dropped into another register. “I want to submit to your orders, and yet I can’t allow you to take that.”
Perhaps this is the resistance she was expecting- he’s been cooperative so far, but he always is, at first. She wants to try to convince him, but the moment she tries he’ll talk circles around her. She flexes her fingers, but the way Sakamoto’s hips sway away from her says he noticed. With two hands she could grab his lapel, pull him closer and take the gun.
But she can’t forget that he’s a trained samurai. He could have her on the ground in an instant if he chose. His height, which has never menaced her before, suddenly feels like a danger, and she grips her kodachi harder to keep from backing away. She may have gotten herself in deeper than she meant to.
But there’s no point in worrying what might happen if she’s not willing to take control of the situation here and now. She would still be alone in Edo if she were the kind of person who gave up when faced with difficulty. Smoothly she brings her blade around and steps forward, and as though she’s pushed him Sakamoto steps back. His back hits the alley-side fence, jostling him, and even as his eyes are fixed on the blade in front of his face, his hand falls free of the revolver’s handle.
Chizuru draws it out, less careful this time about the way it scrapes across his hip, and then nearly drops it as she steps back. It’s heavier than she thought it would be, and awkward in her hand. Nevertheless she pulls it away, stepping back in case he grabs for it.
He doesn’t, just bracing himself against the wall, which leaves Chizuru standing there with both hands full of weaponry. The gun is warm from his body heat, and more complex than Chizuru had expected- she hasn’t seen one up close before. She looks from the gun to Sakamoto, who’s just watching her with wide eyes like she’s done something surprising, and trusts that everything he told her about how safe and easy a weapon it was was true. She stuffs the gun into her belt, where it makes a very uncomfortable lump against her ribs.
In the corner of her eye, she sees Sakamoto move, and once again he’s looking down the length of her kodachi by the time she finishes turning. The startled look from before has passed, but now his hands are outstretched, sleeves dangling so she can see all the way to his elbows. He has nice forearms. “Now you tie my hands so I can’t get away,” he says.
Yet again she’s not prepared, but the cords from Heisuke’s uniform should do. She purses her mouth a moment, weighing the risk of his moving against the odds of her tangling her own sword in the cloth, and sheathes the kodachi to pull the cords over her head. “Hold them together,” she says, and he rests the heels of his hands against each other.
His hands dwarf hers- it’s hard not to notice as she’s looping the cord around them. “Not that I want to get away from you, Chizuru,” he purrs, and she nearly drops the cord. She wants to wrap her hand around his wrist, wondering if her fingers would even touch. He splays his fingers as she pulls on the cord, and she can see the edges are lined with white scars and calluses. Those aren’t a swordsman’s hands, they’re a sailor’s.
“This must really matter to you, to take you away from the sea.” The thought slips out past the professional barrier she’s trying so hard to hold up. But he could so easily be happy with his black ships, not dealing with dangerous insurgents and getting chased through dark alleys. “Why?”
“Because it matters,” he says, and there’s suddenly a in his eyes she’s never seen before. He always shows her a playful face, but she understands now that this is always lingering behind it. “You could come with me, let me show you.”
Her mouth opens again- she’s not not professional at all, she doesn’t want him hurt and doesn’t want this moment of truth in his face to end- but he looks away, down at the knot she’s tied in the cords around his wrists. He tugs once, the knot holds, and there is his grin again. “Any of the others would hit me a few times, so I don’t get any ideas about resisting.”
“I’m not going to hit you!” She’s appalled that anyone would do that to a prisoner they’d already secured. There’s another tug on the cord, and before she can reel in the slack, he lifts his arms up, looping them over her shoulders.
He’s so close she can feel the rumble of his voice. “And I’m not going to resist you.” His tied hands rest against the small of her back, and he leans in, and she can hardly breathe for stretching up to touch him. For a singular moment his hair frames her vision and ever so lightly his lips settle against hers. Her eyes flutter closed-
“Hey!” Nagakura’s voice echoes off the alley walls.
“Time to go,” murmurs Sakamoto, lips brushing Chizuru’s before cold air rushes in to fill his absence. Feet are thundering in the alley as Chizuru opens her eyes, the cord dangling empty from her hand and the gun gone from her belt. She can’t see Sakamoto anywhere.
Nagakura pounds up to her side, and together they look up, just as the last tip of Sakamoto’s boot disappears over the eave of the building. Nagakura jumps for the rope, but it’s pulled up just past the reach of his fingers and he lands with a grunt.
“That was Sakamoto Ryouma,” Nagakura says, as though she hadn’t noticed.
“I tried to arrest him,” she says. It comes out petulant, and certainly she’s frustrated but she doesn’t have to sound like an irritated child. Perhaps the night is dark enough to hide the flush on her face, and she takes her time gathering up Heisuke’s cords and slipping them back on.
Nagakura just looks from her to the edge of the roof. “Huh,” he says, and it’s every bit as damning as any commentary could be. When he looks down at Chizuru she can feel him measuring and cringes. At last he sniffs and turns away. "Come on, they’ll be waiting for us."
The stale breath Chizuru’s been holding puffs out at last. “You’re not- mad?”
Nagakura doesn’t look down at her, but the corner of his mouth twitches. “The uniform- has that effect sometimes.” He shrugs. “You know.”
No, Chizuru doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand a single thing, and she doesn’t know where to start. Her hand sneaks up to touch her lips, as if protecting them will make the memory of the kiss last any longer. “But you’re giving that back to Heisuke,” Nagakura adds, and she has to agree. Clearly the uniform of a Shinsengumi officer carries dangers she’d never suspected.