Work Text:
There are a lot of things about Earth for Kagura to like -- dogs, people, the skyscrapers in the center of Edo, the sound of Otose yelling at Gin-chan for not paying the rent, waking up to warm rice and egg for breakfast every morning, the soft patter on the yorozuya’s windows during the rainy season. She even loves the sunlight, no matter if she has to hide from it most of the time.
But she also just loves how humans seem to find a reason to celebrate anything and everything. The Yato celebrate little -- victories in battle, the anniversaries of important deaths, but little else. But humans celebrate everything . Even life is celebrated for every person once a year and Kagura didn’t even have a real birthday until Gin-chan helped her pick one out, but now she has a reason to celebrate, too.
And Christmas is something special -- she doesn’t really understand what humans are celebrating, but she doesn’t really care , either. She doesn’t think even the humans understand what they’re celebrating. Gin-chan doesn’t care about Christmas much, she doesn’t think, but he always cares enough to satisfy Kagura, and that’s all that really matters.
It doesn’t make shopping any easier, though.
Personally, if she could do away with her half of gift-giving, she would. She’s much more content to let the sukonbu and dog food roll in until she and Sadaharu are both two inches bigger around the middle, but that’s not how Christmas works. Shinpachi is ridiculously easy to buy for, because as long as there’s something new with Otsuu-chan’s face on it, he’ll be ecstatic, and he’s never really expecting anything from anyone either. Otose-san is always happy with foreign liquor (always purchased by an adult, of course) and the customers it will draw in, and Catherine likes anything shiny. Otae likes flowers and anything pretty, Kyuubei likes seeing Otae happy, those bastards at the Shinsengumi don’t deserve presents just on pure basis of being friends with a sadist, and Gin-chan likes… well. That’s the problem.
Gin-chan likes Jump and sweets and naptime and strawberry milk, but he has too much of those already. It’s all fine to say she’ll just get him a parfait but she doesn’t really have any money of her own that doesn’t come through him first, and it’s not like he can afford an extra parfait anyway, and she knows better than to suggest it. He already owns every copy of Jump and Jump SQ for the last year, and it’ll be off for a week anyway for Christmas, which she knows because he will moan about it every day once he’s finished reading the last one.
Even worse, he wears the same clothes every day , and there’s nothing interesting in getting him new socks or underwear because it’s not like she can prove he appreciates it without ripping his boots or pants off, and somehow that just doesn’t seem appropriate. He’s like her bad Earth father who can’t get off the couch long enough to get a job but means well and tries hard anyway. Not that it makes shopping for him any easier.
So as she slouches through the streets of Kabuki-chou looking for anything that would make a haflway decent gift one day, having successfully avoided the wrath of a cleaning-driven Shinpachi and the whining of a sleep-deprive Gin-chan, she thinks that she has never been so happy to see Zura dodging into an alleyway pursued by Shinsengumi ever in her life.
“Shit,” Hijikata spits as he slides to a stop, kicking up snow around him. His eyes fix on Kagura and he frowns around his cigarette. “Yorozuya brat! Have you seen Katsura?”
She meets eyes with Zura, who’s panting hard, hiding behind a trash can, and nods. “Yup,” she says. Zura closes his eyes and mutters something she can’t hear but suspects is something along the lines of ‘Gintoki needs to stop teaching people to give me away when I’m running from police if he wants to maintain any semblance of a relationship’.
“Where’d he go then, brat?” Okita asks, bending down to stick his nose right up in her face.
She spits at him, and as he very calmly wipes it off his face (Hijikata rolling his eyes impatiently behind him at their squabble), she says, “He might’ve been heading toward the port, but who knows?” She sighs. “If only I could remember…”
Okita is halfway to pulling out his wallet before Hijikata grabs him by the collar and starts to drag him away. “We don’t have time for this,” he grumbles. “Every second wasted here is another second further he gets away.”
Okita rolls his eyes and waves halfheartedly at Kagura. “See you around, yorozuya brat.”
“Hopefully not, asshole!” she shouts back. After he and Hijikata have disappeared around the corner and she’s made certain there are no stragglers hanging around (just like Gin-chan taught her), she skips over to the alley and gives Zura a pat on the head. “You can stop hiding now, yup.”
He opens his eyes. “You have my eternal gratefulness, leader,” he tells her as he stands, brushing the snow from his kimono and his hair. “I will never be fully able to repay you.”
The idea has already sparked in Kagura’s mind, and she’s hardly going to try to put a stop to it now, not when he’s basically offered already. So she reaches out and grabs him by the hand and drags him toward a nearby shop. “I have an idea of how you can start!” she singsongs, and, well, if he looks a little scared, he probably should be.
---
Katsura nods sagely over a bowl of soba as Kagura spills her troubles. “I know well the trouble of shopping for one so frustrating as Gintoki,” he sympathizes. “I will assist you.”
Relief washes over her face. “Zura, you’re the best!” she announces, latching onto his arm and nearly knocking him from his seat.
He clears his throat roughly -- her grip is strong. “It’s not Zura, It’s Katsura,” he reminds her, but he doesn’t expect much. She spends too much time with Gintoki.
They spend the day trailing through the streets of Edo, from one district to another, but Katsura finds that he can offer few suggestions that she hasn’t already thought of. Still, it’s nice to wind her through candy shops and toy stores, to see her face light up with the joy of a child who so infrequently is offered these sights.
The problem, Katsura supposes, is that it’s still hard sometimes. He looks Gintoki in the face and sees the man he is now, but the moment that man turns his back, he feels the echoes of Shiroyasha. There are times he carries the bokutou the way he carried a katana, and he still fights the same. And yet he laughs easier, sleeps easier, breathes easier, and it would be impossible for Katsura not to notice. There are nights, shared over cups of sake or bowls of ramen, when he can see a softened edge to Gintoki’s eyes, his smile, and it eases Katsura’s own mind.
Dragged behind Kagura as she flits through the entrance of another store, he thinks he might understand why.
The sun is beginning to set as she frowns over two nearly identical posters of Otsuu-chan. Katsura has never been much taken with idols -- and he feels like an old man when he thinks it, but he prefers the days when teenage boys were more preoccupied with Naruto or Dragon Quest to this. But maybe his exposure to teenage boys is too limited a sample.
“He’ll like this one,” Kagura decides finally, passing off the reject for Katsura to rewrap and place back in the bin with the others.
“What’s different about them?” he asks, unsure if he wants the answer.
She sighs, world weary. “You’re just like Gin-chan,” she tells him, and stomps off to the register to pay. Katsura’s not sure what that means, but he supposes it’s a jab at their age.
He trails after her once he’s safely stowed the extra, only to find her suddenly frozen in place, eyes wide as she stares at a display. He frowns. “Anime figures?”
“He thinks he’s Kakashi,” she says with a voice like wonder. She leans in, nose nearly pressed to the glass. He doesn’t know how to tell her that Gintoki’s never bothered with figures because the only ones he could ever afford were bootleg and poorly painted. The ones she’s found now are much the same -- unsurprisingly, given that the money she has now is just what she’s managed to save from the little Gintoki has passed onto her.
But there is one, nestled in among the rest -- white hair and a crimson eye, and Katsura sighs. She did send the Shinsengumi the right way, and he does owe her. More than that, he owes Gintoki, and this hardly compares to what he would have to do to make up for it (not that Gintoki will ever admit that there’s a debt that’s not monetary), but it’s worth the effort. He reaches for his wallet and calls to the clerk, resigns himself to the 6000 yen he’ll find some way to make up.
---
Gintoki holds him carefully in his fingers, just in front of his face. He can feel Kagura watching him with an intensity that borders on murderous intent, but he ignores it. Finally, he lowers his hands. “Who’d you rob?”
She pouts. “No one! I worked hard every day to bring home something for my family, yup!”
“More like Katsura-san helped pay,” Shinpachi mutters. Kagura has already forced a Santa hat on him, but he looks content with the Otsuu-chan merchandise she’s showered him with, so he doesn’t put up much of a fight.
“Zura only helped a little!” Kagura protests.
And while that sparks an argument, Gintoki returns to inspecting the figure. It’s real, all right, none of that bootleg shit they sell in the stands of Kabuki-chou’s halfhearted DVD stores. Two years since release, too -- she shouldn’t have been able to find something like this, or pay for it on her own. As far as he’s concerned, he has a right to be suspicious.
He looks back over his shoulder while the kids start throwing ribbons and wrapping paper at each other. “You sure she didn’t steal this?”
The terrorist half-hiding in the corner shrugs. “Who can say? She certainly procured it from somewhere.”
Gintoki snorts. “You’re an awful influence. Whenever you’re done hiding in the corner, you’re free to join the festivities.” Not that the aforementioned festivities amount to much. Kagura woke him at a ridiculous hour, determined to catch Santa, and he had to make a subtle call to Zura to get him to step in and play the role of gift giver in a red suit. And thank god that Kagura is easily distracted and Zura has experience hiding from people who want to kill him, because it’s the only thing that keeps Gintoki from getting his head ripped off by an angry little girl who’s been denied the joys of a winter holiday.
Gintoki doesn’t give a shit about Christmas. He didn’t grow up with it, and then there was no time for it even if he had , and then by the time he finally settled down there was no reason to care. But Kagura cares, and some part of him feels… not warm, but at least a little bit more comfortable, watching her tear into bright red packages that are only ever full of sukonbu and dog food.
And well, if Zura helped out buying the sukonbu and dog food, it’s fine. He helped out buying the tiny Kakashi that Gintoki’s holding in his hands now.
Zura finally moves out of the corner, leans against the couch. Gintoki settles his new prize in his lap (gently, the spiky hair pricks in more painful ways than he would expect), and rests an arm along the back of the couch. Zura’s fingers trail lightly over the back of his hand -- he could tease him for that, but he doesn’t.
Kagura has discovered the joy of wrestling with Sadaharu over his new collar and her new umbrella, just about the only luxuries Gintoki could scrape together. Shinpachi sighs and plugs earphones from his sister into an old, beaten up, hand-me-down mp3 passed on from Tama and hums softly along to one of Otsuu-chan’s heartwrenching (earsplitting) melodies. Zura’s fingers are gentle on his.
On an impulse, Gintoki gets to his feet while the kids are distracted and makes for the kitchen, Zura trailing along behind him. He thinks they have enough supplies to make a batch of cookies that will absolutely be devoured within an hour, but it’ll be worth it if for no other reason than keeping them busy and not destroying the house.
Zura slides in between him and the counter as he’s reaching above the stove to try to find some semblance of a mixing bowl. He drops his arms to Zura’s waist out of habit. “What are you doing?” he deadpans.
“I haven’t given you your gift yet,” Zura says. Gintoki raises an eyebrow.
“D’you think that kinda thing might wait till we don’t have two children in the other room?” he suggests.
Zura makes a face and halfheartedly knees him in the thigh. “You’re disgusting. Jump is tainting your mind.”
“Jump is my only solace in a world that has come to hate shounen protagonists,” Gintoki tells him. “I need something to boost my ego.”
“We’re a gag manga, not a shounen,” Zura points out.
“We have our moments,” Gintoki grumbles. “Go watch Yorozuya yo Eien Nare and try to tell me we’re all about jokes.”
“That movie opens with several minutes of you berating a man with a camera for a head for pirating films,” Zura says, “and then continues on to show you helping him pirate films. Our own film, no less.”
“You don’t actually have a gift for me, do you?” Gintoki cuts in then, suddenly remembering the original thread of their conversation. “You just said that so I would remember you saying it later and assume you gave me something, but you didn’t get me anything at all.”
“I’ve graced you with my presence, have I not?” Zura says, then pauses. “And my presents, I suppose, given how much I’ve assisted in gift giving this year.”
“That joke only works in English, you asshole!” Gintoki grumbles, but he’s given up. “Whatever. I didn’t get you anything, either, so we’re even.”
“We can make up for it some other time,” Zura says, and loops his arms around Gintoki’s waist. It’s comfortable, somehow. Some part of Gintoki wonders when they started having the kind of relationship that required gift giving, and another part worries that means he’ll have to start buying things for birthdays. He’s not looking forward to that. What do you even get a terrorist for their birthday? He can’t exactly wrap up the shogun’s head very pretty.
“There’s a festival in town tonight,” Zura is saying. “We could take Kagura and Shinpachi. The shinsengumi will probably be out, but I doubt they’ll be difficult to avoid if we keep off the main roads.”
“What about Hijikata’s head?” Gintoki wonders.
Zura frowns. “Are you all right?”
“Forget about it,” Gintoki says, shaking his head. Kondou’s too good a guy to let him kill Hijikata anyway. Probably not worth it.
A sigh. “You will always be an incredibly dense enigma, likely not even worth the attempt at penetrating.”
“What’s this about penetration?” Gintoki plays dumb -- maybe if he makes enough annoying jokes about it, Zura will make good on that some other time promise.
Zura groans. “You’re hopeless.”
Gintoki grins, lazy, and tugs Zura a little closer. “I try.”
Zura presses a swift, dry kiss against his mouth. Before Gintoki can protest when he pulls away, he raises a finger to his lips and says, “Let that be a taste of what’s to come if you can convince Shinpachi and Leader to go to the festival without us.”
Gintoki gapes as Zura slips out of his grasp and heads for the living room again. He tries to form some sort of retort, but nothing comes to mind. “Merry Christmas, Gintoki!” Zura calls over his shoulder. And still, nothing comes to mind.