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The day that Sakata Gintoki, the White Demon of the patriots, deserts the Joui campaign is anticlimactic. He doesn’t plan in advance like Sakamoto does, counting his coins and making sure he’s got enough to effectively disappear in the dead of night; he decides one afternoon that he’s had enough of this. He feels disassociated with himself when he swings his sword, he sees himself move but he doesn’t feel it. He remembers the feeling with Sensei, but he can no longer pretend he’s doing it for some worthy cause because he can’t seem to remember why he’s doing it in the first place. He is tired, so tired. He vaguely thinks he should leave a note, being commander of an entire squad, but he knows that in the campaign’s best interest, the patriots won’t stay in one place for too long. Inevitably, they will move camp, with or without him. So he begins walking, out of his tent and toward the guards keeping watch around the perimeter. The guards acknowledge him and he nods back, but they don’t stop him and they don’t ask why he’s leaving. He walks away from the camp with their voices at his back and into the nearby woods. Any moment, he anticipates someone calling out to him, the sounds of footsteps running at him and telling him to stop. His heartbeat pounds in his ears and he prepares the sort of tirade he’ll give, because he’s cowardly and will take the fool’s way out - he’ll say he just had to go to the bathroom, nothing suspicious about it. He thought he saw movement in the trees, just went to inspect, no intent to jump ship. They won’t have their blades at his neck, they won’t think he’ll leave them. He tells himself this as he places one foot forward with each pace. He walks and walks and walks until he reaches the outskirts of a small town, very far from the camp since the patriots nobly attempt to minimize civilian casualties with each skirmish. He turns around and no one is behind him. He is alone.
[=]
More times than not, Katsura is the one who seeks Gintoki out. Out of all those times, Gintoki aims to avoid him more times than not, because they’re unannounced and bothersome but mostly propagandist toward Katsura’s moderate Joui faction. Gintoki would feel bad usually, because it isn’t like him to purposefully snub a former comrade and a current friend without due cause, but because Katsura makes himself so available he doesn’t mind because he knows he can reach out and grasp Katsura’s arm whenever he feels like it. On one cold night when Kagura chases him out of the apartment for being moody and difficult, he finds Katsura wandering near the docks and offers to treat him, both knowing that even during the proposition, Gintoki barely has enough money to his name to buy himself a better coat. “I’ll bite,” Katsura says, two servings of warm sake and three appetizers later, because that’s all their combined wallets can afford at the moment. “What’s on your mind, Gintoki?”
“School projects,” Gintoki says. “When the going gets tough. What a total asshole, right, if you’re sorted into a group for an assignment and everyone starts out working together and having fun but then when it’s time to turn in the report the next morning, suddenly one of the members just stops responding to your emails and messages and you still have so much work to do. That’s truly an atrocity. I’d kick that guy’s ass any day, you know?”
Katsura looks into his sake cup thoughtfully. “Sure, that’s what I might think at first, but the few weeks before the deadline, we were all working together, right? Circumstances might be unexpected, and I would never fault someone for not rising up because he isn’t able. If I knew my group partner was the type to abandon the rest of us, I wouldn’t have trusted him with a large part.”
“You’re naive, Zura. That’s why you’ll be taken advantage of.”
Katsura’s hair is long and soft under his fingers. He remembered they always picked on Katsura, who had resisted numerous haircuts after being inspired by Shouyo to keep and maintain his long hair for more than purely aesthetic purposes but always sat pleasantly for Shouyo to trim his hair - Katsura’s hair always grew fast, hanging past his chin mere weeks after his last touch up. He always said Katsura had a factory where his brain was supposed to be that constantly made hair. Takasugi said only perverts had hair that grew so fast. Katsura always ignored them, though his fists flew whenever anyone pulled at his hair. Gintoki runs his fingers down one black tress and brings it up to his lips. It smells like smelling salts and perfumed oil. They’re on a threadbare futon, lumpy in some parts and completely fabric in others, in a room that Katsura knows about in a building nestled deep within the slums. The tatami is torn up in various places. There are holes in the walls, deep craters where a fist might have fit or where a blow might have taken a whole chunk right out. Katsura is on his back, catching his breath. “I’ll choose when I’m taken advantage of,” he says. “So the responsibility of what happens afterwards falls on me.”
“Fool you twice,” Gintoki begins to say. Katsura’s hair falls out of his hand and back into the beautiful mass around his shoulders.
“I don’t forgive those who betray me,” Katsura says. “But I still want to offer you discounts on your membership with the Joui, you know?” The stretched out rectangle of light from the moon outside the window casts a dull sheen on Katsura’s hair. Gintoki has a feeling he’ll find strands of it in his clothes the next time he does laundry. For the fun of it, he leans over and kisses Katsura’s lips. They’re thin and chapped.
[=]
One afternoon, a thick column of light suddenly falls around Gintoki as he’s going between the store to break his larger bills and the pachinko parlor and he feels himself being lifted up into the sky into a space ship. He’s brought into a small room through the floor, which closes up once he’s inside and won’t open no matter how hard he pounds at it. He hears footsteps approaching and he’s about to beg for his life, that he’s got fluff for brains, look at his hair, and he’s got no skills of which to brag about and so he’s a very unimpressive human and deserves to be left to rot with the rest of the populous. But it’s only Sakamoto, laughing like it’s going out of style, who says, “Hello there, Kintoki! Sorry for the rough snatching. But I found this astroid belt with the neatest collection of liquor stores and refineries that once I saw, I thought, ‘Well isn’t that the bee’s knees? I’d bet Kintoki would love to crawl through that with me’ and so here we are.”
“Don’t you have work?” Gintoki asks. “Did you forget about the hostess bar? Didn’t you remember that you impose on my life, not force me to impose on yours? More importantly, don’t you remember my actual name?”
Sakamoto laughs in reply. He laughs when Gintoki waits for him to finish before opening his mouth to speak again. He laughs so Gintoki can’t get in a word edgewise. Mutsu steps into the room from behind him and Sakamoto leaves to throw up. “Never-ending apologies for the boss,” she says, although she sounds like she’s only going through the motions. “He wanted to give you a surprise, so he’s kidnapped you for the day.”
“I have a job!” Gintoki yells. “I have children waiting at home for me! They’ll be sitting right next to the door waiting to hear my footsteps! They’ll be desperate without me!” Mutsu only bows her head and leaves him to lament by himself. Sakamoto only returns, slightly pale in the face, when they reach the first astroid. After visiting the only bar on that astroid - really the only establishment on the place - and two drinks in to loosen up, Gintoki stops complaining. They zigzag and hop astroid to astroid. Sakamoto fucks him into the mattress in a tiny motel on the seventh astroid, laughing between breaths. He says he needs to stop and get used to his feet on solid ground. The reality is he just doesn’t perform as well in bed when he’s on a ship. Gintoki laughs too, because his head is spinning but even then he doesn’t want to give Sakamoto the satisfaction of eliciting erotic sounds from him. Sakamoto is built like a ship, sturdy and thick, and he’s got the best aim out of all of them.
Afterwards, Sakamoto sits pensively on the bed, breathing quietly. His sunglasses are strewn somewhere. Gintoki finds an abandoned pack of cigarettes with three left under the bed. Nicotine tastes sweeter when it comes into contact with artificial oxygen, and he uses the lighter Sakamoto has attached to his ship’s keys - really! A keychain and a lanyard for Sakamoto and his damn ships’ keys - and blows out a mouth of smoke. “I had a dream about the war,” Sakamoto says, softer than he usually speaks so he’s actually speaking normally. “It felt like an out of body experience. I saw everyone running and fighting but it wasn’t from my body or any body. I was just watching everyone from a disembodied pair of eyes.”
“The next time you feel like that, you don’t need to grab me to tell me that,” Gintoki says, tapping the ash onto the small pile of condom wrappers on the table next to the bed.
“I thought you would understand,” Sakamoto says.
“Seeing everyone but not being there yourself?” The room smells like sweat, smoke, and sex. “Distance?”
“You hate me,” Sakamoto tells him. “You and the rest of them. I was just a boy who didn’t even have anything to fight for. I came late and left early and I still don’t want to stay in one place for too long.” He hangs his head, picking at one of his chest hairs absentmindedly.
“No,” Gintoki says. “Hate would make it sound like I cared that much about you.” He puts out the cigarette on the metal part of the headboard. Sakamoto is looking at him. “War was and isn’t your area. No one was surprised you left. What you saw didn’t suit you, and you knew your limits, so you stopped.”
“You make me sound so responsible.” Sakamoto cocks his head. His hands are in his lap, on top of a pile of bedsheets around his waist. “How about you, Gintoki? How did you justify it?”
Gintoki makes a face. “I didn’t.”
[=]
On certain nights where Shinpachi and Kagura stay at the Shimura residence and Gintoki leaves the window behind his desk open, Takasugi will steal in in the middle of the night when Gintoki is laying out his futon and they will have frenzied, impatient sex in the office. Takasugi comes in through the window because that’s the kind of person he is and going through the door when customers are streaming in and filing out from Otose’s Snack Bar is too conspicuous. He doesn’t bother saying anything; Gintoki will check in the main room at the sound and Takasugi will pull him over - to the desk, to the couches, to the table, it doesn’t matter. Gintoki’s had sex with him almost everywhere in the apartment by now. They go at it fast like rabbits but they go for it round after round until Gintoki winces at the thought of moving his hips and Takasugi’s eye is glossy.
Because of their height differences and the fact that Gintoki has lifted the world on his shoulders, he easily takes Takasugi up in his arms, yukata bunched up because Takasugi’s practically falling out of it at this point, and brings him into the kitchen. Gintoki sets him down unceremoniously on the counter and gets himself the carton of strawberry milk in the fridge. He brings an unopened bottle of water to Takasugi. Takasugi looks back at him almost blankly; he’s collected his yukata back around him, but he’s leaning almost spineless against the cabinet behind him.
“How are you doing?” Gintoki asks softly, pressing the water into his hand. “Does your eye hurt?”
Takasugi throws the water back at him, although in his current state, Gintoki catches it without much trouble. “My eye hasn’t hurt in years. Stop being like that; once I leave, you’ll be after my neck like always.”
“My house, my rules,” Gintoki shrugs. “Drink this water. Let me be nice to you.” He holds out the water bottle. A few moments later, Takasugi takes it and uncaps it, slowly. Gintoki settles himself up against the counter between Takasugi’s knees. It earns him a half-hearted kick against his thigh. “Do you know why I treat you like this afterwards? It’s because I know it annoys you.”
“I hate you,” Takasugi says.
“I’ve always gotten under your skin.” He splays his fingers out on the counter on both sides of Takasugi’s waist, lowering his head so he knows Takasugi has view of the back of his neck. It’s as vulnerable as he’ll ever be. Takasugi doesn’t move. “Sometimes I wonder, and I know it doesn’t matter because you can hate me to high heaven and I wouldn’t give a damn, but I wonder if you’ll ever forgive me.”
The kitchen is still, everywhere. There’s the sound of the water bottle being placed next to his hand and Gintoki’s eyes are lowered so much he may as well be closing them. He hears Takasugi’s hands move and they tug down his head, closer to Takasugi’s chest. Gintoki knows Takasugi keeps a blade in his sleeve, because he’ll never be unprepared, so for a moment his heart stops but he closes his eyes anyway. He feels Takasugi press a kiss to the back of his neck. “I haven’t killed you yet,” is all he says.