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Chapter Text

If there was a single blessing to be found here, it was that Yamabushi had taken off for the mountains even before the sun had risen, and that Horikawa, who only came back to the Kunihiro room to use the closet, had been in and out shortly after dawn. That left Yamanbagiri free to cocoon himself in all the bedding in the room and hyperventilate, hands firmly pressed over where his ears should have been.

No. He absolutely refused to accept this reality. If he accepted this, he would be lost. He would dissolve into a pile of charcoal and scrap metal if this wasn't a very long, hyper-realistic dream. His brothers could not be allowed to see him in this state. His unit could not be allowed to see him. Not a single sword could see him, and the saniwa absolutely positively beyond a shadow of a doubt could not see his face, and his head, and the alien appendages stuck to the top of his head.

His breathing slowed and he uncurled slightly. He stared at the blanket that had ended up on top of him, a lime green one featuring a pattern of slumber party-themed dinosaurs and flaming pizza meteors bequeathed to him by Atsushi after the tantou’s kiwame journey. He wished, not for the first time, that a flaming pizza meteor would crash through the ceiling and leave a Yamanbagiri Kunihiro-shaped crater in his place. This is all because I'm a copy, he thought to himself with grim certainty.

The alien appendages perked up, swiveling disconcertingly as footfalls sounded, distant at first, then louder, louder, like the entirety of the First Unit was galloping in full mount down the hallway, like they knew. What if they knew? What if the saniwa had decided to use him - disposable, replica, unwanted - in some kind of experiment? And now they were here to drag him out to the courtyard to be put on display like the failed experiment he was. He lay paralyzed, half his instincts screaming at him to run, the other half telling him to remain still and small and hidden, heart thudding in time to the footsteps as they got closer, as they turned the corner, as they reached his door --

--and continued on, moving in the direction of the kitchen. He buried himself in his blanket nest, curling in on himself, uneven nails digging into the side of his head as he gasped for breath.

And then, when the sounds faded and his breathing evened out, he finally let go of his head, wincing as fuzzy fabric brushed against the marks he'd pressed into his skin. He rolled over, shifting a few layers so the dinosaur blanket was back on top and breathed in its warm, fleecy scent. Like a Stegosaurus in footie pajamas, he had no choice but to face the pizza meteor of his doom head on. He couldn't do anything to solve his problem, but maybe, just maybe, he could hide it.

He slowly reached up and felt the alien things that had replaced his perfectly good and wholly unremarkable ears. Very triangular. Much too soft, and covered with an inappropriate amount of hair. Due to his aversion to his own face, there weren't any mirrors in the room, but he could sense that it was the same obnoxious yellow color as the rest of the hair on his head. And they were too sensitive, he thought, wincing as the clock in the room next to his ticked away another minute. He pushed them flat against his head. This created a rumbling echo, like when you sunk in up to your ears in the bath, but at least every other sound wasn't quite so piercing. This was the start of a solution, but it wasn't like he could take more than two steps like that before some nosy sword asked him why he had his hands on his head, and why he didn't have any normal ears.

He unburied himself from the pile of bedding and retrieved his usual cloak. He set the dinosaur blanket over his legs and placed Butter-chan, the smiling plush toast Horikawa had gotten him for New Year's, on his lap for emotional support. Then he began to experiment. The fabric wasn't heavy enough to hold the alien ears down on its own, and he only succeeded in strangling himself when he tried tying it tighter around his neck. He tried his spare cloak next, with similar results. Finally he pulled his emergency cloak, really an old sheet that the day's laundry attendants had given up on after it was blown into the compost heap during a sudden summer squall, out of its secret hiding place in Horikawa's never-used bedding. No sooner had he pulled it tightly over his head than there was a soft ripping sound and one of the ears poked its way through the fabric. He tore it off, buried his face in Butter-chan's fuzzy back, and screamed very softly.

Of course a copy like him would only fail at what he set out to do, he thought glumly. Of course it wouldn't be this easy to hide his shame. He cast around for another idea and fixed upon some of Yamabushi's spare cords, hanging on a hook on the wall. It took some doing, but through trial and error he managed to tie them around his head tightly enough that the things lay mostly flat. With some relief he put his usual cloak on, feeling the top of his head. It was probably the normal shape now, and he couldn't imagine anyone paying enough attention to a replica's head to notice the difference.

Except now that he said that, he absolutely could. Especially since he was on dishwashing duty with Nikkari this afternoon, and ever since Nikkari had come back from his journey, he had apparently gained the ability to see right through people's clothes, as both Kikkou and Sengo had confided in him on separate but equally uncomfortable occasions of shared horse duty. And all that was assuming he even made it to lunchtime without being discovered as the freak of sword nature he was. Since he didn't have a mirror, he had no way of knowing if the ears were really poking out at some weird angle, or if the ears were the least of his worries and his teeth had suddenly turned a shade of fluorescent blue or a tattoo reading "Please pelt me with rotten tomatoes because I'm a sword freak of nature" had suddenly appeared on his forehead.

"I shouldn't have an observable form. Nobody in this world should be able to comprehend my existence," he told Butter-chan, and made Butter-chan nod understandingly. He gave himself a minute to think of every worst case scenario, and then he gave himself another minute of hyperventilation, and then he accepted what he hadn't been willing to accept before. He needed help.

Not help from his brothers. Not help from the saniwa. Not help from chattery swords like Kashuu. Not help from serious swords who would tell the saniwa everything, like Hasebe. Not help from otherwise trustworthy swords with dubious family connections, like Honebami. In short, he could only talk to someone who not only didn't care to gossip, but who actively avoided interacting with others at all costs. And there was only one sword he could think of.

Fortunately, Ookurikara's room was right across from his own, and thanks to his new alien ears, he was confident that no one had gone in or out of that room since five in the morning, when he'd first realized his plight. Also, he was pretty sure Ookurikara thought he owed him some kind of debt for his help with The Chocolate Chip Cookie Incident. If asking to use his mirror for a minute would get Ookurikara to stop skulking around the kitchen whenever he was on duty, glaring at him like he was just daring him to try and call in his favor, so much the better.

He took a deep breath, slid open the door, and knocked on Ookurikara's. "Go away," Ookurikara responded immediately.

"It's me," Yamanbagiri said, looking around nervously even though his monster ears would certainly hear anyone coming long before they got there. "I need to use your mirror. I will leave in three minutes or less."

Ookurikara sighed, a slight raggedness to the sound. "Fine." Yamanbagiri opened the door to discover the unevenness in his breath was because he had caught him in the middle of a workout. He blinked, taking in the sweat glistening on Ookurikara's rippling muscles, and then closed the door behind him. Good for him. A morning workout session sounded much better than the morning panic attack he'd been having. He crossed over to the mirror, feeling rather good about the layer of dust on it. Ookurikara clearly didn't care enough about appearances to bother cleaning it, but he also didn't care enough to tear it off the wall and hurl it into the river the way Yamanbagiri had the day Horikawa had moved out of their room. He wasn't even watching Yamanbagiri as he toweled himself off. Yamanbagiri's entire existence might have been cursed, but at least he still had decent decision making skills, he thought.

Then he looked at his reflection and immediately took it back. This was a horrible mistake. It would have been better to bar all the doors and windows in his room and then fall on his own sword before Yamabushi could force his way in than have to face this thing again. He shuddered violently. He averted his gaze from the face in the mirror and instead focused on the frayed hem of his hood.

He frowned. The head shape looked fine, but there was a hole right at the top of the hood, and part of the red cord was visible. It looked deeply suspicious. He tugged the cloth to the side. Predictably, this didn't help. He tried tugging it the other direction and somehow made it worse. He glowered. He tried bunching up the fabric and tucking it into itself so the hole wouldn't be visible and it undid itself immediately. A wave of panic rose up as he considered that he only had a minute and a half more to fix this, but he reminded himself there was still plenty of time to go back to his room and fall on his sword, and it receded. He tried to shift the cord back a little so that maybe it wouldn't be so visible and succeeded only in loosening it. No, no, no no no. Drawing in a heavy breath, he shifted the cord back to where it had been and tightened it.

Because Yamanbagiri was destined to fail at everything he set out to accomplish and did not deserve happiness, he pulled the cord too tight and it popped off his head entirely. The ears sprang up, pushing his hood back, and he had just a second to confirm that they were, in fact, the same horrible yellow as he'd imagined before he caught sight of Ookurikara behind him.

"What," Ookurikara said.

Blood rushed to his face, heating his cheeks. He yanked the hood back over his head and ran for the door. "I'm sorry, forget about this," he choked out. He promptly tripped over the ab roller on the floor and fell on his face.

"Oi," Ookurikara said.

Yamanbagiri scrambled back to his feet and opened the door, only to be faced with a parade of Sanjous returning from breakfast. He gaped at them. Imanotsurugi started to turn toward him. "Good morn-"

The door slammed shut and Ookurikara's hand fastened around his wrist, pulling him back. "You," he said, looking more upset than he had ever seen him, the expression in his eyes almost desperate. Yamanbagiri looked back at him, panicked, flushed, unable to respond. As if the sound of his own racing heartbeat wasn't enough, the awful ears were even picking up on Ookurikara's as well. The disjointed thudding was like a hammer pounding directly into his skull.

"You're a cat," Ookurikara said, sounding very personally offended. Yamanbagiri seized onto these three words like a life preserver in the tumultuous sea of confusion that was today's mental state. He knew exactly where he stood with this sentence.

"I am not a cat," he said.

Ookurikara slammed his fist into the door, sending his necklace bouncing against his chest. "Then why do you have cat ears."

And now he was drowning again. "I... that's not..." He shrank back against the door, pulling against Ookurikara's grip. "These things aren't-"

Ookurikara dropped his wrist and tore back his hood. "Yes, they are," he said, reaching up to feel the edge of one with surprising gentleness. "You're a cat," he concluded, his eyes narrowing.

Yamanbagiri shuddered, not least of all because the feeling of Ookurikara's leather gloves against the ear drove home the fact that these things really were a part of his body. They shouldn't be. They shouldn't be able to feel anything. They shouldn't be on him. "I am not a cat," he said, brushing his hand off and pulling his hood back up and turning to leave with the intention of retrieving his blade from its stand and hacking them off. Before he could open the door, the sounds of ten Toushirou tantous, unmistakable even without the alien ears' freakish hearing power, came drifting from the hallway. He slammed his head against the door. "I am deeply sorry to concern you with this matter," he said stiffly. "I will leave as soon as possible and ensure that I never force my current unsightly presence on you again."

Ookurikara clicked his tongue at him. "That won't be necessary," he said, and Yamanbagiri had a brief moment of simultaneous fear and hope that Ookurikara was about to draw his sword and perform a ritual execution on him. Instead, he grabbed his wrist again and marched him back to the corner of the room he'd pushed his table into. "Stay," he commanded, pulled on a fresh shirt, and left the room.

Yamanbagiri had absolutely no intention of staying, or of continuing to interact with someone who was convinced he was a cat. However, a continual stream of post-breakfast traffic down the hallway meant that he didn't have an opportunity to make his escape before Ookurikara pushed the door back open with his foot, carefully angling two trays through the door before closing it again. He set the trays down on the table. Yamanbagiri was still lurking by the door, waiting to make his escape and desperately wishing there weren't 70 swords, all of whom felt the need to be immediately outside his room, clogging up the citadel. Ookurikara came back over, pulled him over to the table, and shoved him down on a cushion. He dropped down on the floor beside him and stared at him. "Eat," he said, when Yamanbagiri did nothing besides stare back at him.

Yamanbagiri did nothing of the sort. "Why?" he asked. Ookurikara scowled at him and didn't respond, but his heart rate did speed up a little. "I interrupted your morning. Why would you want me to stay in your room to eat breakfast?"

"I can do whatever I want," Ookurikara said, his face wholly failing to give the impression that he wanted Yamanbagiri on the same planet as him, much less in his room as a breakfast guest.

Yamanbagiri sighed and picked up the chopsticks. He eyed the piece of fish on his rice. "You do understand that I'm not a cat," he said. "Regardless of what alien appendages have attached themselves to my head without my consent."

"Hmph," Ookurikara said. He watched Yamanbagiri take a bite of rice, another of fish, and a sip of miso soup before picking up his own pair of chopsticks and starting in on his rice. They ate, the silence awkward but infinitely preferable to whatever conversation they were going to have after this. Ookurikara finished just before Yamanbagiri did, waited for him to take his last sip of soup, and stacked the dishes up. He picked up the tray and walked over to the door. "Stay," he said again.

"I will not," Yamanbagiri said, and got up.

Ookurikara regarded him for a moment before nodding coolly. "Very cat-like," he said, and left. Yamanbagiri spent the next two minutes psyching himself out trying to figure out what the least cat-like thing he could do in this situation was, and whether he should leave anyway or if that would just encourage Ookurikara to come after him with a tiger toy. He had just made up his mind to leave when Ookurikara came back in, closed the door, and leaned back against it, arms folded. "You stayed," he observed.

"I stayed," he confirmed. "Not because I'm a cat." He sighed and tugged on his hood. "I assume if you want me to stay it's either because you have a solution or because you need something from me. So?"

Ookurikara frowned, his heart rate picking up again. "You can't let anyone else see you."

What Yamanbagiri wanted to say in response was "I shouldn't have let you see me," but he forced himself to stay silent and wait for more. Ookurikara scowled down at the table. "What's your schedule today?"

Yamanbagiri made no attempt to hide his shock. "Why?"

Ookurikara shrugged.

Yamanbagiri tugged on his hood, frustrated and once again adrift in the confusion ocean. Ookurikara did not take interest in the affairs of other swords. Ookurikara had never once asked anyone about their schedule. "You don't have to help me," he tried.

"I never said anything about helping you." He certainly didn't look as if he wanted to help.

One more try. "You know you don't owe me or anything for the thing with the cookies-"

"Obviously." Ookurikara ran a hand through his hair, curling his lip up at a few loose strands that came out and flicking them to the floor in disgust. "Your schedule."

"...Dishwashing duty after lunch."

"With?"

"Nikkari Aoe."

Ookurikara grimaced. "What else?"

"I'm supposed to take the unused horses out to pasture after that. Then-" He felt his throat seize up, but he ground his teeth together and crushed his hands into fists, and thus was able to get out the words "Group C sparring practice" without collapsing into panic.

"That's it?"

It certainly was not it, because he had only just made it up to Group C, which meant everyone else in Group C could and did knock him on his ass constantly during practice. If he skipped a session for anything less than a family emergency or severe injury, he'd immediately be bumped back down to the lowest rank of Group D.

"That's it."

Ookurikara looked even more irritated than usual as he stared into the space over Yamanbagiri's shoulder. He nodded curtly. Then, abruptly, he got very close to Yamanbagiri's face. Yamanbagiri choked out a gasp of surprise and scuttled back as best he could, quickly finding himself pinned between the wall and the advancing Ookurikara. "What are you doing?" he managed, heart racing louder than Ookurikara's.

"What are you doing," Ookurikara countered. Yamanbagiri glared at him, frustrated. He had only gone to Ookurikara because the two of them had, well, if not a friendship, at least a mutual understanding that involved both of them respecting each other's personal space and not talking any more than necessary. Repeating questions back instead of answering them was not efficiency of language. And Ookurikara slamming his hands against the wall to either side of Yamanbagiri's face and leaning in so close he could see his disgusting alien ears reflected in his eyes was not respecting his personal space!

Unfortunately, Yamanbagiri was a failure, incapable even of the minimal amount of human speech required to make his objections known. Fortunately, Ookurikara didn't hold him there much longer, only seven eternities worth of heartbeats, before he clicked his tongue and backed off. He went to the set of drawers across from the mirror and pulled out a purple scarf. He threw it at Yamanbagiri without explanation.

His mind, voice, and ears might be missing in action, but his reflexes were intact. Yamanbagiri caught it, puzzling over its rich color and soft texture for a moment before he caught on. "To hide these things?"

Ookurikara grunted.

Yamanbagiri looked at the fabric a little longer, trying to place the article of clothing in an attempt to delay the inevitable. No idea. Something Shokudaikiri or Taikogane had given him that he didn't like and had never worn, maybe. A suitable gift for a monster-eared copy who ruined every piece of fabric that touched his body. Accepting this explanation, he forced himself to approach the mirror. Fixing his glare firmly on the ears, which were not a part of him and therefore had no right to cause him the same distress as the parts that did belong to him, he wrapped the scarf around his head. Unlike his threadbare cloaks, the scarf was made of a thick material that forced them down. The rumbling, echoing sensation returned, replacing the sound of Ookurikara's heartbeat, which kept inexplicably speeding up in a very distracting way. Much better. One well-placed knot later, Yamanbagiri pulled his hood back over his head, barely looking long enough to make sure there wasn't any purple sticking out before turning away from the mirror. "Thank you," he said.

Ookurikara nodded, and made no move to stop him as he went to leave the room. But as Yamanbagiri's hand closed around the handle, he said "I'll bring you lunch."

Yamanbagiri had never known Ookurikara to say anything like this unprompted. "Leave me alone," perhaps, or "I don't plan on getting friendly with you," or "I fight alone, and I die alone." Usually when he was doing something for someone else he just did it, and never told anyone about it. Taikogane still didn't know who had baked him those cookies. And Ookurikara never sounded uncertain.

He may have been a copy, but he was still Kunihiro's masterpiece. And when he was needed, he would stand strong and do what had to be done. Therefore Yamanbagiri turned around and said "Yes. I would like that," with all the confidence he possessed before opening the door, crossing the hall to his own room, and diving into Butter-chan's welcoming embrace.

-

He spent a solid hour luxuriating in the feeling of being alone and unpersecuted before realizing that the Kunihiro room was only fit for Kunihiros and that drastic measures needed to be taken. Springing to his feet, he attempted to channel his inner Horikawa.

"What is this mess?" he said, attempting to pitch his voice higher. He crossed his arms. "I am quite certain these blankets were in the closet this morning. This one should be thrown out. And when was the last time you washed the one on your head?" He dropped his head into his hands. "This is hopeless." Horikawa would have the entire room clean and sparkling in ten minutes or less, and he would keep nagging the whole time. Yamanbagiri was a slobby, unkempt disaster and a useless copy, so he paced back and forth five times, went to pick up an object only to abandon the attempt six times, gave his Horikawa impression one more shot, and finally ended up back on the floor, trying to figure out how Horikawa folded the blankets so they were flat and didn't take up much space. His ended up lumpy, but they fit in the closet and wouldn't fall out as long as he closed the door quickly enough.

Now that he could see the floor again, he relaxed a little and cleaned up the rest of the clothes on the floor. He cleared two dozen Buddhist sutras and the full ten volume set of Muscles and Mandalas: An Acolyte's Physical Journey to Spiritual Enlightenment off the table and threw a spare cloak over it to hide the indentations from their last arm wrestling tournament. At the last minute, he remembered to change out of his pajamas.

After the last minute, meaning immediately after Ookurikara kicked the door a couple times and said "Open up," Yamanbagiri remembered that the Kunihiro room was not just only fit for Kunihiros but also smelled like Kunihiros. He hastily swiped an incense dish and a fancy candle which was probably supposed to be used for some religious purpose off the dresser and plunked them down in the center of the table. Shaking out the match, he opened the door. "Hey. Sorry about that."

Ookurikara's eyes traveled from the match to the table. "Oh," he said. He carried the two trays over to the table and grabbed a cushion for himself. Yamanbagiri sat across from him.

They ate in silence until Yamanbagiri noticed that Ookurikara's plate had dumplings on it, while his had three slices of fried fish. "Oi," he said. When Ookurikara pretended not to notice the problem, he sighed and tossed a piece of fish onto Ookurikara's tray, stealing a dumpling on the way back. Ookurikara's lips twitched, but if he was annoyed that he had stolen his food or given him food that he had already defiled with his chopsticks or that Yamanbagiri wasn't acting cat-like enough for him, he didn't say anything about it. He didn't say anything even when Yamanbagiri dared to steal another dumpling. It was a pleasant meal, inasmuch as a pre-execution meal could be pleasant.

After picking at his fish bones for some time, Yamanbagiri reached the razor's edge between "as soon as I stop doing this I have to go out in public oh god oh god kill me now" and "if I keep doing this Ookurikara will never be willing to believe that I'm not a cat and after I am killed by the act of doing dishes with Nikkari Aoe he will insist that I be buried in the pet cemetery alongside KabuKabu XXXtreme I through VII." He pushed his tray back and said in the most neutral tone of voice he could muster, "So."

He needn't have bothered. His was just a pale imitation of the superlative neutrality with which Ookurikara responded with a "So" of his own. But this was not exactly a new thing for Yamanbagiri and so he did not dwell on it.

"Dishes," he said.

"Yes," Ookurikara said.

"Did you have a plan for that, or." Hopefully a better plan than Yamanbagiri's current one, which was drowning himself in the sink.

"He washes. I dry. You put away."

All Yamanbagiri could say in the face of such efficiency was "Okay." They sat in silence. Yamanbagiri squeezed his hands so he wouldn't start picking at his fish bones again. "What do we tell him when he asks why you're there?"

"To mind his own business."

"Nikkari Aoe," Yamanbagiri reminded him. He shifted nervously and accidentally kicked Ookurikara's foot. Ookurikara flinched. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Ookurikara muttered. After several seconds of uninterrupted eye contact Yamanbagiri realized this was apparently also the only answer he was getting to his previous concern.

"Fine," he said, even though he couldn't not worry about it. "I'll leave it to you."

"Good. I'll be back." He piled Yamanbagiri's tray, rice and soup bowls, and water cup on top of his own and stood up. "Oh." He reached into his pocket and pulled out Yamabushi's red cord. "You forgot this."

"Oh, sorry," Yamanbagiri said. He reached for the cord, but some trick of physics sent the end of the cord dancing away from him. He frowned and tried again only for the cord to slip out of his fingers a second time. He looked up and caught the hint of a smirk on Ookurikara's lips. "I am not a cat," he said in the most dignified voice he could muster.

"Sure," Ookurikara said. Yamanbagiri folded his arms over his chest. Ookurikara's smirk cracked a fraction wider. He raised an eyebrow in challenge.

Thanks to regular sparring practice, Yamanbagiri had a good idea of his own strength. Making it to C Group was something to be proud of, but Ookurikara was at the top of B Group (along with Kane-san, which was why Yamanbagiri had no choice but to know that). The only chance he had of defeating him was to use the Forbidden Kunihiro Wrestling Techniques, which could never be allowed to leave the Kunihiro room.

Fortunately, they were in the Kunihiro room. Yamanbagiri blew out the candle and watched with grim satisfaction as Ookurikara's smirk was slowly replaced with panic.

When he had Ookurikara on the floor, he slammed his wrists against the ground in a playbook-perfect pin. Instantly Ookurikara went still, but Yamanbagiri wasn't about to fall for that. Making himself as heavy as he could, he leaned his weight forward, not willing to give an inch. He brought his face as close to Ookurikara's as he could without opening himself up to a biting attack. Slowly, enunciating as clearly as he could, he said, "I. Am not. A cat." Ookurikara's eyes closed and this time Yamanbagiri could tell he really had accepted his defeat. He snatched the cord out of his hand and got up to put it away.

Ookurikara took a little too long to get up. Maybe plotting his revenge. Maybe disgusted with the Forbidden Kunihiro Wrestling Techniques, which after all were forbidden for a reason. Maybe angry that this upstart C Group sword had, let's face it, cheated in order to beat him. Maybe so angry that he didn't want to help him anymore.

When Yamanbagiri finally got up the courage to turn around, there was an unreadable expression on his face. In one elegant motion, he got back to his feet and crossed the room in three long steps. He extended his hand. Yamanbagiri flinched, expecting a blow.

"Your ears are coming out." Ookurikara tugged on the scarf wrapped over his head and smoothed out the fabric. He nodded once, then picked up the stacked trays and left the room.

Yamanbagiri slumped to the floor in boneless relief. As he idly returned Volume V: Putting The Abs In Avalokiteśvara to the shelf it had been knocked from in the brief but vicious melee, he silently swore a life debt to Ookurikara. He would start paying it back just as soon as he figured out what kind of cookies he liked.

-

All of it was for nothing. Poring over the floor plans. Debating the best route to the kitchens. Sneaking down the hallway with Ookurikara in tow once the coast was clear. Sensing a disturbance in the Kotetsu room. Shoving the oblivious Ookurikara into the nearest cleaning supply locker mere seconds before Nagasone threw the door open. Holding him there, knowing that anyone who approached the locker would see them, Ookurikara scowling up at him from where he'd pushed him down into the brooms. Listening to Ookurikara's heart pound fast with irritation, audible despite the layers of cloth over Yamanbagiri's alien ears due to sheer proximity, seconds ticking by like agonizing eternities until Urashima loudly said "How about we take the long way to the saniwa's office so that the two of you can argue more along the way," and steered Nagasone and Hachisuka in the opposite direction. (Urashima had absolutely known that they were there, without a doubt. But all good wakizashis had tact in addition to their superlative scouting skills.) Offering Ookurikara a hand up only for his scowl to deepen even as he took it, holding it for several moments too long afterward as he debated inwardly with himself about whether or not to throw Yamanbagiri across the hallway, presumably. All of it wasted effort, because the second they slipped into the room where the dirty dishes were brought to be washed, Nikkari Aoe said "Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in," without even looking up from his sink.

Yamanbagiri froze. Over the blood rushing through his ears and clogging up his brain functions, one single thought made it through. Nikkari Aoe is not a good wakizashi. He tried to stammer out a denial, some kind of excuse, but only garbled sounds made it out of his mouth.

Nikkari turned off the faucet and turned to face them. He raised his one visible eyebrow and smirked. "Cat got your tongue?"

Not a good wakizashi at all. Yamanbagiri turned to Ookurikara in a silent plea for help. Ookurikara nodded to him curtly and took down two of the large aprons hanging on the wall, handing him one. Yamanbagiri nodded back. Of course. The simplest answer was to maintain plausible deniability by saying nothing at all. He should have known. He put the apron on, grateful that the ungainly thing tied in the back so that he didn't have to pull it over his head, which would inevitably end in miserable failure.

"Oh, an extra helper? Excellent. You know what they say, about getting so busy you'd even ask the cat to help... Perhaps it's the other way around today." He chuckled to himself. Yamanbagiri decided it was not at all fair that he was the one cursed to bear alien cat ears when Nikkari was the one who kept smiling all catlike every time he said or did anything. The world's justice, as usual, was reserved for originals.

"Those dishes aren't going to wash themselves," he snapped.

"My my. No need to have kittens about it." Nikkari peeled off one rubber glove and dropped it on the ground, making uncomfortable eye contact with Yamanbagiri the whole time. "It's a good thing you brought a helper. I've been feeling a little water-averse today myself, to say nothing of you."

"It's fine. I'll do it." More like, if he didn't get a physical barrier between him and Nikkari, he was going to end up on the saniwa's list of Naughty Swords Who Stab Their Sword Friends Even Though There Are So Many Evil Skeleton Guys Throughout Time And Space That They Could Stab Instead, at which point he was going to spend the next two weeks washing dishes anyway. And also because even though Nikkari knew, the saniwa didn't yet. And that would change the second they pulled down his hood to administer their trademarked Noogie of Flaming Justice, as they did to all NSWSTSFETTASMESGTTASTTCSI hall-of-shamers. And then he'd really be in trouble.

"Oi," Ookurikara said urgently. Why he said this, Yamanbagiri had no idea. If Nikkari wasn't going to wash the dishes, then he had to wash the dishes. And either way, Ookurikara had to dry the dishes while physically standing between the two of them.

"It's fine," he repeated. "I'll do it."

Ookurikara glared at him. Yamanbagiri glared back. He might be better suited to grime and muck than soapy water, but that didn't mean he never washed his hands. Any rumors to the contrary came from a perfectly reasonable misapprehension on his part when he had first manifested at the citadel, and were certainly nothing compared to what Kogitsunemaru-

Ah.

"Excuse us," he said to Nikkari, and jerked his head to the little alcove that held empty condiment bottles. Ookurikara followed him. "I am not a cat," he mouthed, seizing a glass bottle off the shelf and jabbing it at him for emphasis. Ookurikara's eyes went from Yamanbagiri to the bottle and then back. Just as Nikkari had earlier, he raised one eyebrow.

And he had grabbed the fish-shaped fish sauce bottle, hadn't he. Of course he had. He didn't know why he even bothered. He put the bottle back and stormed out of the alcove and past Nikkari, who was not so subtly trying to eavesdrop. Not bothering with the gloves, he turned the faucets on at full blast, drowning out the sounds of whatever cat idiom Nikkari was about to break out next.

Except. The steam rising up from the sink wasn't thick enough to hide Ookurikara's approach. And his alien ears were sensitive enough that they started picking up fragments of a conversation even over the rush of the water. Trying to block it out didn't help. Maybe Ookurikara had some more unwanted fabric he could wrap around his head once this task was finished. In the last half hour before Nikkari spread the word around and his life came to its inevitable bloody end.

From Ookurikara, he caught: "-can go... got it-" Then a mumble from Nikkari that led to him clicking his tongue at him. "-you really want... while we-"

"Very much," Nikkari said, perfectly audible.

"Whatever you... won't happen. He doesn't-"

At that point Yamanbagiri tossed in a load of spoons with a tremendous crash of metal so that he didn't have to hear what he was saying about him. He scrubbed furiously at a ladle encrusted with yesterday's curry, ignoring the dull bloom of pain when he accidentally scraped a knuckle with the steel pad. Scalded, chapped hands suited him just fine. He scoured the ladle until a burned-on sliver of potato flew off the lip and splashed into the sink. He retrieved it and flicked it into the organic waste catcher, smiling grimly. Nothing beautiful about this work. Nothing beautiful about him.

He turned to set it on the drying counter and squawked to find Nikkari far too close to his face. Nikkari's one green eye stared him down before he smirked and sauntered away. "I see. After Kasen, I thought maybe… Too bad. I'll take you up on that offer of a cat nap, then."

"Don't tell," Ookurikara growled after him.

"Of course, of course. I wouldn't dream of letting this particular cat out of the bag..." Nikkari tossed his apron neatly onto a peg and left. Both of them sighed in relief. Yamanbagiri turned off the faucet and stared down at the swirling mass of brown, soapy water. The perfect mirror of his soul. Ookurikara, who at this moment seemed to possess the twin to Yamanbagiri's soul, went to make sure that Nikkari really had gone.

He almost asked him if he was okay. Stupid thing to ask anyone, especially Ookurikara. He turned back to the sink.

Ookurikara's elbows thumped down on the counter beside him. "That went well," he said, startling a snort of laughter out of him. The hint of a smile tugged ruefully at the corners of Ookurikara's lips. He lifted his face out of his hands and gazed at Yamanbagiri. He had been doing that a lot today. Presumably, because he thought he was a cat, and not because he was bothered by the fact that he was a copy. Still.

Yamanbagiri tugged his cloak down over his eyes. "Quit looking at me and focus on the job."

"When you give me something to do."

Sure enough, the drying rack was empty. He hurriedly turned on the sink and grabbed a fistful of spoons. "That doesn't mean you have to look at me."

"Have to make sure you're working."

That... sounded dangerously close to a joke. He risked a glance over at him through the hole in his cloak. Ookurikara was studying him every bit as intensely as Nikkari had earlier, but it was... different. Still bad though. He dumped his spoons on him and didn't fully relax until he had dried them and left to put them away.

-

"Last one," he announced, passing over the formerly greasy, splatter-ridden pot. He let the water drain and finished his part of the chore by scrubbing down the sink. By the time he was finished with that, Ookurikara was looking at him again. "What."

"You take cleaning dishes very seriously," Ookurikara observed. About 6 more words than he'd expected from him. Maybe the steam rising up from the sink had overheated him? If so, it was his own fault for leaning on the counter to watch every time Yamanbagiri had to scrub at a particularly tough bit of food debris.

To help Ookurikara cool off and snap out of it, he offered the shortest explanation he could. "My brother is a wakizashi." Then, to chase Nikkari's demonic grinning face out of his head, he added, "A good wakizashi."

"Nikkari used to be a tachi. Or ootachi."

"Tachis are different," he said, thinking of Yamabushi. Ookurikara nodded. And then kept looking at him. Yamanbagiri cleared his throat. Perhaps if he attempted to keep the conversation going, it would remind Ookurikara that he hated pointless small talk and he would do something else. Or he would get so much secondhand embarrassment from his flailing attempts at conversation that he would leave entirely. "There was a time when people thought you were a tachi, right?"

"I am me. Nothing else." His tone was clipped, harsh. Normal.

Yamanbagiri nodded in relief. "Yes. Exactly." He took off his apron and put it back, then glanced at the clock. "Next is horses." Luckily he was spared any more sneaking around, hiding in cleaning closets-style idiocy because the kitchen had a back door that led to the fields. Ookurikara followed him out, sitting beside him as they put on outdoor shoes. "Do you like horses?" Yamanbagiri ventured.

"Well enough," he replied. From him, this was praise so high as to be unheard of. Also, fortunate.

"They always try to eat my cloak."

"Then take it off."

"Wh- Not an option."

"Horses don't care if you're a cat."

"I am not a cat."

Still, he had a point. It was one thing for his cloak to be mauled and slobbered over, and another to let horses chew up the scarf he had loaned him. There was a vast divide between "clothes Ookurikara doesn't care about" and "rags fit only to clothe a copy." He glanced at his back - typical of a maybe-tachi's long legs to leave him in the dust where he belonged with those strides. He had spent all that time looking at him today, and he hadn't once had the inane urge to call him "beautiful" or some other such actively insulting thing. Had he commented on his appearance at all, beyond the repeated and probably inevitable feline comparisons?

If he was working in the real stables, he never would have considered it for even an instant. But nobody but the swords assigned to the task of caring for them ever came out to the back stable where the unneeded horses were kept. Yagen and Gotou had asked Yamabushi if the two of them could cover for them while they scoured the woods high and low for KabuKabu XXXtreme VIII, undiscovered heir to the beetle wrestling throne, and in turn Yamabushi had asked if Yamanbagiri could handle the work himself so that he could continue his ascetic training. And Yamanbagiri, ignorant of the fact that on that day he was scheduled to be made a mockery by the universe even more than he usually was, had agreed.

He thought wistfully of Yamabushi. He was probably out there in the woods even now, meditating in a waterfall in his underpants while clenching an improvised rock-and-branch barbell between his teeth. Learning to laugh off the sorrows of the world by strengthening his heart and his gum line.

Yamabushi was always urging him to get stronger, often in a metaphysical way that he shied away from examining too closely. But. Maybe... Yes. This was a chance. A Trial. And Yamabushi was always careful to stress that the world held any number of Trials, and that often it was up to the individual to decide at what time he wanted to face them. Yamanbagiri hadn't gotten a choice in the Trial of Alien Cat Ears Abducting My Real Ears. But he could choose this one. If he was brave enough.

It really wasn't so bad, the way Ookurikara looked at him. Sort of... familiar, maybe, like the way his brothers looked at him. Like he was nothing special at all, just something to look at when there wasn't anything else going on. He thought he could withstand that gaze for another hour or so.

He caught Ookurikara's sleeve just as he started to open the stable door. "Hang on." He looked around suspiciously. Nobody but the two of them around, and the nearest outbuildings were at a good enough distance that he'd have warning if anyone approached. He gave his sleeve a sharp yank. "Hey. You better be ready to take responsibility if this goes horribly wrong."

Ookurikara nodded. Yamanbagiri narrowed his eyes at him before nodding back. He wrestled his cloak over his head, spilling cloth flopping around in every direction as his cloak went one way and Ookurikara's scarf went another and he strangled himself just a little bit accidentally. "Stop," Ookurikara said. He stopped, and Ookurikara pulled the whole mess off in one fell swoop. "Saw a video where a cat got stuck in a t-shirt once," he commented.

Yamanbagiri ignored this, as he ignored the way everything was suddenly a thousand times louder. He scrunched his cloak up into a crumpled ball and found a rock to set on top of it. Ookurikara held out his hand for the scarf and tied it around his waist. "Oh," Yamanbagiri said, recognizing it at last. "It's your waist sash that you wear in battle."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I thought it was something you didn't want. That you were killing two boars with one stone by giving me some random fabric you didn't want."

That got a little huff of amusement. "It's just a scarf. Keep it if you want."

Yamanbagiri informed him that he did not want, thank you.

They went into the stable. After checking to make sure there weren't any immediate problems, they led the horses one by one into the paddock to stretch their legs and let off their energy. The horses Yamanbagiri took all looked a little puzzled that he wasn't wearing their usual favorite snack. One of the brown ones tried to take a bite of his hair instead, so he couldn't really call it a successful experiment. He said as much to Ookurikara, who said he had a chunk of hair that stuck out above all the rest. Which was probably the direct result of being a copy, so he dropped the subject.

Then it was on to the glamorous task of mucking out the stalls. A dirty job that therefore suited him perfectly, but not so much Ookurikara. He offered to do all of it so that he wouldn't have to get dirty, but Ookurikara merely looked contemplative for a moment before saying "Race you" and jogging off to start working on the stall at the end. A long history of brotherly competition spurred Yamanbagiri to hurry into his own stall and start working before he quite knew what he was doing. Once he did, he relaxed into the work. Nothing like manual labor to make your existential issues fade into the background as the more immediate physical complaints elbowed them roughly out of the way.

They worked at about the same rate, and were on either side of the center stall when Ookurikara stuck his head over the door. "Hey."

"What?"

"You said boars?"

"What? Ah." Yamanbagiri nodded to himself. He probably should have guessed that one was a Kunihiro original. (Oh, the irony.) "Actually my brother got three with one stone once."

It must have taken him some time to absorb this. "Which brother?"

He laughed. "Yamabushi. Horikawa got close once, though. We ended up having to track it through the forest for an hour so we could put the poor thing down."

"Hmm." Another pause. "What do you do with the boars?"

"We always keep one to roast. You know the clearing about halfway up the mountain, along the hiking trail? The firepit there is large enough for most boars, and there are always plenty of long sticks to spit them on, left by swords who don't know the right way to prepare firewood. We bring any extras to the kitchen. It depends on the time of year and who's in charge of the menu whether they want to use them or not. If they don't, we take them to the smokehouse and make them into jerky."

Silence.

"Do you... like boar jerky?" he ventured. No response. He began to grow concerned that Ookurikara had strong feelings about boars - he seemed like the kind to think the baby boarlets were cute with their little stripies - and was even now plotting to avenge them, even though they obviously didn't kill any of the babies, nor females until after the breeding season was over and the children were grown enough to be independent. He stuck his head out the door to explain this, only to be faced with Ookurikara heading into the central stall.

"Yes," he said. And then, "I win."

"Cheater."

"Takes one to know one." He started pitching out old hay. Yamanbagiri shook off his feelings and rushed to finish his stall so that he could help.

They worked well together, he realized as they maneuvered around each other in the limited space. They both knew what they were doing. They both paid just enough attention to the other that they didn't get in each other's way or try to do the same task. Ookurikara didn't feel the need to talk about unrelated things, except as part of his twisted ruse. Which was fine, really. He'd still listened to what he had to say. It was... comfortable. In a way that working with others so rarely was.

Maybe it was all one-sided. Probably just the delusions of a jumped-up copy. But he decided it was worth a try to say something anyway. Maybe Ookurikara would understand. Maybe he would even be willing to pair up with him the next time the ever-shifting rules of the Semi-Annual Citadel Cleaning Partner Pentathlon (participation mandatory) required teams to be of the same sword type. Not that he had anything against Kane-san, who after all was basically the fourth Kunihiro sword, but working with him was very much the opposite of everything that he had just thought was so nice about working with Ookurikara. "You know," he started, and then frowned. It had been free entry this spring, which probably meant they were due for a random lottery drawing next. No sense getting ahead of himself.

"What."

"Nothing." Except he had meant to try to compliment him. "It's just, I was thinking. I like..." He trailed off as the alien ears picked up on four new sounds among the clamor of horses grazing and frolicking and insects buzzing and the two of them carting around hay. Two sets of small footsteps, one heavier set, and one... Oh no. One distinctly human.

Letting their tools fall to the ground with a clatter and a crunch of new straw, he grabbed Ookurikara by the wrist and dragged him urgently down the aisle and into the very last stall.

"What-"

"Shh!" He pushed him up against the back wall of the stable, feeling Ookurikara stiffen. He leaned in to whisper an explanation in his ear and he relaxed. "Someone's coming. Four of them. The saniwa, two tantous, a tachi or an uchi."

Ookurikara had his eyes closed. He breathed out a sigh before opening them again. "You're sure." Yamanbagiri nodded. "Right." He pried his hands off his shoulders and moved toward the door.

No! He couldn't leave him like this! Yamanbagiri grabbed for him, trying to pull him back. Ookurikara clearly wasn't expecting this, which meant he pulled too hard and the two of them ended up flying back toward the wall and falling back into a pile of soft straw. Scratch that - Ookurikara fell into a pile of soft straw, and Yamanbagiri fell into a pile of soft Ookurikara. He would have apologized, but the stable door slid open with a crack of wood and they both froze where they were.

With his ears unblocked by fabric, he heard the whole sordid conversation.

"-the black horse? No, one of the greys? My pretty little kitty! A handsome little prince on a snow white steed… An angel sent down from the heavens!" The frivolous word jumbles, the shrill pitch that only Midare or Jiroutachi on a bender could match. That was the saniwa, all right.

"Can I have the black one then?" That... The voice was too boisterous to be Yagen. Aizen.

"Rai," he mouthed to Ookurikara, who blinked in comprehension.

"Hey, anybody here? We're gonna borrow some horses for a bit." When he didn't get a response, Aizen's already loud voice became ear-splitting. "Heeeyy! I said we're borrowing the horses for a photoshoot."

Ookurikara stroked the back of his alien ears to try to calm him down. He wished he wouldn't. Not because it wasn't soothing, but because those horrible things didn't deserve such tenderness and because moving his arm made a faint sound as stalks of straw decompressed.

"Geez, if there's someone there you could at least respond to me," Aizen grumbled. "Is that you, Yamanbagiri? I saw your ratty old sheet out front. We're not gonna make you hold the camera or anything, we've got Kuniyuki for that."

"We will absolutely make you hold the camera," Akashi said mildly. Ookurikara stopped touching his ears and started stroking his back instead. Better, but not great. And very strange.

"Aw, leave them alone. Come on, Kunitoshi, let's get this over with," Hotarumaru said. Three of them went into the inner pasture, but... yes, it was Aizen who stayed behind. He started down the aisle, jumping up to see in when he got to the first stall door. Ookurikara's heart picked up speed, but his hand stayed stroking the same soft, slow rhythm into his back as Aizen slammed stall doors open.

"Hey, this one's only half-done!" Aizen said. He spent some time commenting on the shoddy quality of their work before concluding, "Maybe whoever it is took a break halfway, or had to run to the bathroom or something?" He started to walk away. The two of them started to relax. "Buuuut... it'll just take a second more to check the rest, and it's going to be an hour of Hotaru solo shots anyway before they ever get around to me. Huh, next one's all the way clean. What gives?" He hopped up and down. He advanced to the next stall and slammed it open. "Clean. More and more suspicious."

Ookurikara's heart was beating frantically now. Yamanbagiri wanted to shush him, since tantou ears were probably about as good as alien ears, but he didn't dare make a sound. Besides, he was too busy trying to keep his own heart from giving them away.

SLAM. "Not in this one, down to the last two!"

Yamanbagiri scrunched his eyes shut, so tightly that starbursts went off behind his lids. Ookurikara stroked his back.

SLAM. "Not here either, which means..." Which meant that his life was over, officially. He let his head rest on Ookurikara's chest. He listened to the furious beat of his heart, his own pulsing an angry counterpoint in response. He waited for the moment when the door would slam past them, when Aizen would see them and say-

"Kunitoshi."

"What?"

"That's enough," Akashi said. "Come on."

"But-"

"No buts. You can't compete with Hotaru from in here. Or have you already given up?"

"But I sensed a presence!"

Akashi wandered slowly down the aisle, stopping about halfway down. "Hu-uh. So you want to be the one to interrupt master's special photo hour to tell them that mice have gotten into the stables, again? Which must mean that you want to set out the traps, patch up the walls, check the horses for parasites-"

"No! No, but..."

"And if you find something, you'll never be able to keep your mouth shut, will ya? Nothin' for it, then. I'll have to finish checking for you. And if I find anything, I'm leavin' an anonymous note in Hasebe's mailbox so that I don't have to deal with it. You leave well enough alone and we can all enjoy a nice relaxing weekend where we don't have to dispose of rat corpses, y'hear?"

"Hmm..." Aizen took a few steps toward Akashi, dragging his feet. "You're never gonna find them, though. Even if you do try."

"Oh? After all that, have you really forgotten?"

Aizen snickered. "Yeah, guess you really are the best one for that job today. All right, all right." He took a few more steps... then spun and dashed to the end of the aisle, jumping in front of the door.

"Kunitoshi," Akashi said sharply.

"Huh, I thought for sure... Well, sure, if it's just mice then they're all yours. Enjoy." Aizen walked away, a spring in his step.

When the paddock door slammed shut behind him (and why was it always slamming with him? The Rai room must go through as many doors in a year as the Kobizen room did), Ookurikara's heart returned to its peaceful steady drumbeat. Yamanbagiri finally began to relax.

Which was when Akashi said, in a voice that was just barely a whisper, "Dunno what y'all are doing in there. Don't really care. But you can damn well do it in your own room." Yamanbagiri's breath hitched. "Here's what I'll do. I'll go'n'tidy up in that stall y'all left half-done, and while I'm doing that, y'all GIT. Understand?"

He too slammed the stall door - those poor hinges - and began tossing around tools and generally stomping around. Yamanbagiri winced. He quickly got to his feet and gestured for Ookurikara to do the same. Instead he just glared at him and mouthed "What?" Ah. Well, of course Ookurikara hadn't been cursed with the gift of hypersensitive alien appendages and also he was basically a tachi. So he probably hadn't heard any of what Akashi had said. "Come on," Yamanbagiri mouthed back, and grabbed him by the wrist. He pulled him down the stable aisle, ducking down so they weren't visible from the central stall, and hurried him out of the building. He stopped only to retrieve his cloak from under the rock before dashing for the (comparative) safety of the kitchen building. The dash was somewhat hampered by the fact that Ookurikara was still basically a tachi. Even if he wasn't consciously dragging his feet, Yamanbagiri was very conscious that he was dragging him.

They made it, though, without any outcry or public shaming. As soon as they were within the shadow of the wall Yamanbagiri dropped Ookurikara's hand and pulled his cloak over his head, feeling better if not warmer.

"Hmm," Ookurikara said. So neutral as to be dripping with ridicule and derision. His first reaction was to tug his cloak over his face and turn away. When seconds ticked by alongside Ookurikara's heartbeat, and he neither heaped more judgment upon him nor left him to wallow in his inferiority, he reconsidered. Slowly he turned back. He managed to lift his eyes to see Ookurikara's impassive expression before quickly dropping them back down.

This wouldn't do. Even malformed, he was still Kunihiro's masterpiece. He straightened his back. "I'm sorry. I panicked. I shouldn't have dragged you like that. At the end, Akashi knew we were there, but created a diversion so we could escape without them noticing. I don't think he knew who we were."

Ookurikara folded his arms and regarded him. "Okay," he said eventually.

Yamanbagiri wanted to melt into the soil, but refrained. "Okay," he repeated. If that was all it took, that was all it took. They changed out of their outside shoes and went inside.

The halls were fortunately deserted at this time of day. They made it back to their rooms without encountering anyone - which, Yamanbagiri realized after he'd closed the door behind him, was a very good thing, because his alien ears were currently poking triangles into his hood, announcing to all and sundry that he was a freak. He flopped down on the tatami, exhausted.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. Yamanbagiri listened, and got up when he was confident that he had correctly identified Ookurikara's slow, steady heartbeat.

Ookurikara was holding his bath things. "No," Yamanbagiri said, and closed the door.

"Cat," Ookurikara said.

Yamanbagiri opened the door. "In." Ookurikara came in, and he struggled to find the words to explain that it wasn't that he didn't want to bathe because he was a cat but because he was a copy better suited to dirty work and neglect. To make the point that this was not at all a new aversion of his but in a way that didn't completely disgust Ookurikara with his general filthiness. And also... "Someone will see." Direct. Unemotional. Brooking no argument.

Ookurikara raised an eyebrow.

Brooking one argument. "Maybe on a normal day, no one would be in the baths at this hour. But because it is today, and because I am-" He nearly said "a cat," and scowled down at the ground. "-afflicted. Something will happen. Someone will come in. Just like with the horses." And the baths were all open, with no closets or stalls to hide in. Either he would drown, or he would panic and try to drown Ookurikara by mistake. Neither appealed to him at the moment. "And-And besides. I'll just get sweaty again from sparring."

He considered this. "Okay."

"Okay," he replied, relieved.

"When will you bathe?"

Never, Yamanbagiri didn't say, because despite it all he did value this one single solitary social bond he had managed to form. "In the morning I'll go up to Ascetic Falls," he said. And maybe when he got there, he would stand under the waterfall to clear his heart and mind while also cleaning his loathsome body in the quickest and most efficient possible way, and maybe he wouldn't.

"Hm," Ookurikara said, and turned to go. "Back for dinner." As before, the way he said it was almost a question.

"Ah... You can come back before that. If you want."

He nodded.

Yamanbagiri spent the next hour or so replaying that conversation in his head. Stupid thing to do, inviting him to spend even more time with him than he already had, because why would he possibly want to? If there had been a question in his voice, it was because he wanted to know if Yamanbagiri was really so pathetic that he needed him to bring him all his meals for the day, or if he could finally have a break from him. If he really needed him to hold his hand the whole day because he couldn't do anything on his own. No wonder his heart rate kept speeding up every time he said anything. The stress had to be building up.

Except after an hour Ookurikara knocked again, his heartbeat steady and even. He came in, nodded to him, pulled Muscles and Mandalas Volume I (Vaiśravaṇa, Biceps, and You) off the shelf, sat down in the cozy corner next to Butter-chan, and started reading. At which point he couldn't very well keep rocking back and forth on the floor worrying about whether he hated him. If nothing else, he clearly valued his services as a local librarian. Instead, he got up and got back to the sutra copying Yamabushi had set him to earlier in the week. When his hand started to cramp up, he dared to get his own book out and sit against the same wall.

Ookurikara glanced over. His first instinct was to freeze, of course, but after a second he held up the book so he could see. "I'm on Volume VIII. The Eight-fold Path of Buddhism, the Four-fold Path of the Quadriceps."

He nodded. "It's interesting," he said.

Yamanbagiri nodded back, and they sat reading in silence until the dinner bell chimed, Butter-chan sandwiched between them.

-

"So."

"So."

"We did this earlier," Yamanbagiri pointed out. Ookurikara's lip twitched up in what he was beginning to realize was, for him, a massive smirk. "Sparring. Do you have a plan?"

"I take you to the other room for a private sparring session."

"Oh." Yamanbagiri blinked. "I'm not... very good," he confessed. "The worst in my group."

Ookurikara shrugged. "Good excuse then. But you have potential."

"Oh." His face was hot. "I don't know if the leader will allow it."

"Who is it?"

"Ookanehira."

A second's thought. "If he doesn't, I'll knock him on his ass until he does."

"I look forward to it," he said honestly. Ookurikara smirked at him again.

After clearing their trays, Ookurikara helped tie his scarf around his ears again (which was, honestly, hard to get used to after leaving them out for several hours, not to mention painful. Not that there was anything he could do about it) and they headed to the dojo.

They got several curious looks when they arrived, but they had cut it close enough that nobody had time to say anything before Ookanehira slammed the door shut with a crash and led them in warmup stretches. He kept glancing over at them throughout, but didn't say anything until warmups were done. Then he rose up to his full massive height and proclaimed "Ookurikara!!" at what wasn't even close to the top of his voice.

He nodded back at him.

"You are welcome to join our warmups but I will have to ask you to leave now. This practice room is currently reserved for our group's exclusive use."

He considered this. "No."

Ookanehira's mouth dropped open. Before they were all hit by an ear-blasting wave of noise, Yamanbagiri stepped into the gap. "I asked him to come."

"Perhaps you could explain," said Uguisumaru, the group's unofficial second-in-command. He had taken advantage of the interruption to bring a cup of tea from the other room, which he was drinking in dainty little sips rather than his usual long loud slurps. He probably just wanted more time to drink tea, but Ookanehira listened to him more often than he listened to anyone else, and it was the only possible way he'd listen to what Yamanbagiri had to say. He drew himself up and prepared to speak.

"He's an uchigatana. None of you are uchigatanas. He needs advice from others like him to grow."

Well. That was true enough, and efficiently put. He thought he probably could have communicated that much himself, though. And judging from Ookanehira's face it wasn't an acceptable argument. He didn't especially want to be treated to a lecture on how he was the greatest Japanese sword of all time and if he had been discovered-slash-manifested earlier everyone would have understood this already and therefore no one was on his level and thus he could expect no advice and yet he was doing just fine for himself, you young Azuchi-Momoyama whippersnapper, when I was your age we didn't have dojos or human bodies, we waited in dusty old storehouses for Ikeda Terumasa to rediscover our superlative beauty and we liked it that way! Yamanbagiri had already received this lecture seven times in the month since he had joined Group C sparring. So he spoke up. "And he's stronger than all of you."

That had the desired effect. Ookanehira spluttered and blustered and eventually yelled "Then fight me!!!" at about half his maximum volume. Despite the volume Ookurikara didn't lose the soft smirk that had been on his face since Yamanbagiri had spoken. For his part, Yamanbagiri was just glad that he had crushed down the alien ears. As sensitive as those things were, they would be bleeding by now if they spent any amount of time directly exposed to Ookanehira's voice.

Uguisumaru sidled over, half-full teacup in hand. "Good to see others appreciating the merits of swords whose names start with 'Ook' and end in 'ra,' though I still like mine better than yours." Yamanbagiri had nothing to say to this. Uguisumaru sipped his tea - on second glance, he was almost licking it, weird - and gazed horribly into his face, just as Nikkari had earlier. "No?" he said mildly when Yamanbagiri, naturally, shuddered and turned away. "Too bad. It might have been fun. Do be the referee, won't you?"

He was more than happy to have an excuse to get away from anyone who would spend any amount of time looking at him. He stepped into the center of the room, Ookurikara and Ookanehira took up positions opposite each other, and the rest of the onlooking swords formed a circle around them. "Basic sparring rules, swordplay only," he said. "Begin." He stepped back and enjoyed the show.

Group B sparring practice was held on Tuesday nights, which meant that every Wednesday morning, Horikawa told Yamanbagiri about how Kane-san had fared in the 1v1 matches. He always complained about how it wasn't fair that he couldn't make use of real strategies (read: cheat) and had to fight according to the rules even though everything was fair in love and sword battles. He especially complained about one Group B sword whose swordsmanship was so clean and polished that Kane-san could barely get a point on him half the time. Of course Ookurikara won. The only thing that would cheer Horikawa up from Kane-san's supposedly "unfair" fights against him was recounting just how thoroughly Kane-san had beaten Ookanehira down in the rank-up challenge matches at the end.

Ookanehira took his loss in stride. He bowed curtly and returned to the front of the room. After working his jaw back and forth a few times, he scowled. "You may help him," he said eventually. "But!! At the end of the session we will hold another practice match. The two of you versus myself and Uguisumaru. If Yamanbagiri makes a poor showing, you will not be invited back, and the two of you will clean the floors until they sparkle!"

"Okay," Ookurikara said, and walked off. Yamanbagiri hurried after him.

"Where are you going?!"

"Small practice room."

"You can't just use it!! You need to sign up in advance!"

Ookurikara stopped and sighed, so soft only Yamanbagiri heard. "I did."

"You... did?"

"Yes." This time they made it out the door. Ookurikara shut it behind them just as Ookanehira was starting to complain about being left with uneven numbers.

Yamanbagiri listened idly to Uguisumaru volunteering to sit out after the "long and tiring day" he'd supposedly had as Ookurikara unlocked the door to the small practice room. "When did you have time to reserve it? This morning?"

"A week ago." Apparently he could see the calculus in his brain adding up to conspiracy, because he rolled his eyes. "As I do every week." He gestured for him to enter the room. Yamanbagiri stayed where he was. "Because," Ookurikara said slowly, like he thought he was an idiot, "any sword can reserve a sparring room for two hours each week, and it's three days after my group. Most of Group B takes theirs either today or tomorrow."

"Oh." Maybe he was an idiot. "Isn't it loud, though? With my group right next door?"

"War is loud. Stand in the hallway all night if you like." Ookurikara went to shut the door in his face. Yamanbagiri grabbed it and pushed past him. He ignored the lip-twitching smirk that seemed to grow bigger every time it was directed at him.

It occurred to him, in the seconds he spent picking a wooden practice sword off the wall, that he really ought to be worried about getting his ass kicked in the exhibition match he had coming up in an hour or so. Once he had one that felt good enough in his hand, the highest a wooden sword could aspire to, Ookurikara said "Sword Form 1. Start." And then he didn't have time to worry because he was throwing himself into the movements the same way he'd done a thousand times before.

"Form 2," Ookurikara called the moment after he struck the final rising blow. On the last thrust of Form 2, "Uchigatana Defense 1." As he blocked an invisible blow halfway through the defense form, Ookurikara pushed himself off the wall. "Stop." He froze as he was, assuming he wanted to correct his posture. Instead he flipped his hood off with a dismissive swipe of his hand and reclaimed his scarf. The alien ears sprang up, complaining of their aches and pains. As if they had any right. Yamanbagiri nearly dropped his practice sword in his rush to pull his hood up to crush them down again. He had learned his lesson in the stables. But Ookurikara tapped his knuckles. "Leave it. Your balance is off. Your vestibular sense is already being thrown off by having your ears in the wrong place. Don't make it worse."

"But," he started.

Ookurikara shut his eyes and exhaled. "I am not looking at your face. I am looking at your form. Uchigatana Defense 1, from the top." And when Yamanbagiri restarted the form from the first position, feeling that Ookurikara was making rather a lot of direct eye contact for someone who supposedly wasn't looking at his face, Ookurikara started the matching Uchigatana Attack 1.

He had practiced this way before, of course, on both sides of the equation. Performing this sort of "sword dance" was a prerequisite for graduating Tiny Little Baby Chicky Kindergarten Sword Class and qualifying for the normal sparring groups. But it was different doing it with Ookurikara. It mattered in a way that the exhibition with Shishiou in front of the saniwa and the attendant and a panel of First Unit swords didn't. Shishiou had wanted to tear off the rubber ducky patch that had been sewn onto all his clothes the day he arrived. Ookurikara...

"Arm up. You're anticipating the blow and tensing up. Relax and redirect it instead of trying to stop it."

Ookurikara broke the elegant sequence of the dance to repeat moves until he was satisfied with Yamanbagiri's response. His instructions were short and curt but useful. And when Yamanbagiri corrected his mistake-

"Good. 10 more repetitions and start again."

Good. Again. Good. Good.

Yamanbagiri was no stranger to empty praise and compliments. Misguided attempts at flattery, commentary on how he had been created rather than what he was, all of it. Not this. He wasn't saying it to try to make him feel better, as conversational filler, to rush him on to the next thing because he was tired of watching him fail. He wouldn't say anything he didn't mean. He wouldn't waste his words on something that didn't need to be said. There would be a break in the sustained eye contact, an uncertainty or a falsehood. But the smoldering intensity of his gaze never changed.

Good. Again.

Ookurikara wanted him to be strong.

He didn't know why, but it was true. Every time they restarted the dance, every time he broke from the prescribed pattern to hammer a correction into him, folding his movements into stronger and more graceful lines, every time he stopped and lowered his sword to return to the starting position, he felt the truth of it.

Good. Again.

With every restart, the dance became fuller, richer. The squeaks of their feet on the floor and the thwack-scrape-crack of wooden blades meeting and sliding away and coming together again were harmony and melody, point and counterpoint, all while the soft huffs of Ookurikara's breath and the even rhythm of his heartbeat kept steady time. As the rhythm took root inside him, he started anticipating his mistakes before he made them, began correcting for them. Anything to stay in that whirl of blades and beating hearts. This was what he was made for.

He spun into a defensive block, anticipating the next blow. Which never came. "5 minute break," Ookurikara said, setting his sword down. He wanted to protest, and then his own sword clattered to the ground as he realized that his hands were shaking with the impact of so many consecutive blows. His breathing was too shallow, and when he tried to remember the music of the battle, it was drowned out by the blood pounding through his... through the alien ears.

He gave one of them a sour twist. "I had... almost forgotten... about these things."

Ookurikara passed him a cup from the water cooler in the corner. "You think too much. It's loud."

He huffed, tossed back the water, and collapsed on the floor. He had the vague idea that he hoped it wasn't too loud, then decided he didn't care. "Your fault for listening," he said instead, to an amused little exhale. Ookurikara leaned against the wall beside him.

"Time," he said eventually, pushing himself up. Yamanbagiri allowed himself one long, languid stretch (feeling the most catlike he had all day, despite someone's arguments to the contrary) and retrieved the practice sword. "Start again," he said, and a hot flush of anticipation ran through his veins. Falling into the dance was even easier this time. All he had to do was meet Ookurikara's steady gaze and count his steady heartbeats and move.

The more they moved together, the more he could tell that Ookurikara was deliberately holding himself back, matching his level. Every time it started to rankle at him, the steps would change and the rhythm would pick up and he realized that he was only lowering himself so that he could drag him steadily up. The dance was already so beautiful, so invigorating. What would it be like when he was close enough to him that he could stop holding back? He had to know.

Ookurikara knocked the blade from his hand with a firm sharp strike and called another break. He realized belatedly that they had left Uchigatana Attack/Defense Form 1 long ago. They had been sparring for nearly half an hour. He couldn't help grinning at Ookurikara. It just felt so good.

A strange expression crossed Ookurikara's face. He went over to the water cooler and Yamanbagiri forced his face back into standard neutrality while his back was turned. That was a close one. He didn't think he could bear it if Ookurikara said something like "you're pretty when you smile," which was the reaction he usually got.

Then again he had outright stated that he had no interest in his face earlier.

Then again his smile seemed to have the power to change people's minds about that with alarming rapidity, which was why he never did it.

As a compromise, Yamanbagiri decided to retrieve his abandoned cloak from the corner of the room and bury his face in it. Yes. That seemed like a good compromise.

"Stop that. Drink your water."

Yamanbagiri stopped that and drank his water. This time instead of leaning against the wall, Ookurikara sat down next to him, which was a Bad Sign and normally would have had him burying his face in his cloak again, water or not. Instead of looking at his face he just looked at the wall straight in front of him.

Okay. Then they were doing the sitting in companionable silence thing again. That was good. He was good at that one. Except... "Can we do that again?" he blurted, the words bursting out with the force of one of Ookurikara's lunging thrusts. Ookurikara gave him a sidelong glance and he flushed. "Don't misunderstand," he said quickly. "I know I can do better if you give me a chance. It just feels too good to stop. Not like this."

Ookurikara abruptly dropped his head into his hands. Then, before Yamanbagiri could decide whether or not a wooden practice sword was acceptable for use in ritual disembowelment, he... Ookurikara actually laughed. A short burst of 3 to 4 "ha" sounds in a row. He made every attempt not to stare at him but wasn't entirely successful.

Ookurikara's head thunked back against the wall. "Hey. Show me that thing you did at lunch."

Now he was definitely staring. "What?"

"The thing with the foot and the elbow and-"

"No."

"I taught you. Your turn."

"That is one of the Forbidden Kunihiro Wrestling Techniques."

"And?"

"It cannot be allowed to leave the Kunihiro room."

"We don't have time to go back there before your group leader wants us back. Make an exception."

Surely if there was one sword who deserved it, it was the sword who had been making exceptions for him all day. But… no. There were some lines that simply couldn't be crossed. He told Ookurikara this. Ookurikara considered. "Okay," he said. Yamanbagiri relaxed. "Then I'll figure it out on my own," he continued.

Yamanbagiri unrelaxed. "Wait-" he started to say, but by then he was already flying across the room in a pretty good imitation of the modified judo throw that started the combination he'd taken Ookurikara down with earlier. He tried to escape, but by the time he got to his feet Ookurikara was already bearing down on him. Fortunately he knew how to safely fall to a larger and heavier opponent, and since Yamabushi outperformed Ookurikara in both categories, Yamanbagiri had no trouble using the momentum to roll him all the way over. He prepared to grapple... and then realized he was playing right into his hands. He stopped, offering no resistance when Ookurikara rolled him back and pinned him.

"Coward," Ookurikara said mildly, though his heart was hammering in his chest. His face was rather too close as well.

"The Techniques are Forbidden for a reason."

"That desperate to hold onto your one advantage?"

He recognized this for the weak provocation it was and didn't react. "Your style is clean and beautiful," he continued. "You shouldn't waste your time on dirty brawler's tricks. They don't suit you." That said... If he ever ended up in an all-out fight with Kane-san, who had long since been inducted into the Forbidden Arts and had introduced several new moves of his own into the style, there was at least one dirty brawler's trick that he clearly needed to watch out for. And it wasn't exactly a Kunihiro specialty technique or anything. So.

Ookurikara's face was still far too close. Yamanbagiri lunged upward and bit his nose.

He recoiled. Good. Once bitten, twice shy. "Even when you have the pin and the opponent isn't resisting, don't let your guard down. Your face-" Before he could say was too close, there it was again, back within bite radius and not... slowing... down?

As Ookurikara's lips pressed against his, he stopped feeling anything else - not the hard wood of the sparring room floor, not the weight of his body pinning him down. The only thing his alien ears picked up was the rapid thump-thaTHUMP-thump of Ookurikara's heart.

Which was, of course, why he didn't notice two swords and one human approaching the sparring room until the door opened.

Chapter Text

-

"Stuuuupid sword," the saniwa sang, ruffling his hair with unbearable affection. "Empty-headed uchi. You don't have a brain in your fluffy yellow head."

A short list of things the saniwa had not stopped doing ever since Kasen Kanesada had thrown open the door to the practice room: Grinning at him. Petting his alien ears. Telling him he was an idiot.

"You are the world's most foolish sword. Look at how stupid you are! You are the treasure of my life."

A short list of people he was avoiding making eye contact with: The saniwa. Ookurikara. Kasen, who had a pair of bright purple alien ears that matched his and didn't seem any happier about it than he was. Kotegiri Gou, a fairly new sword who had recently nominated himself to the position of "attendant's attendant" and often followed Kasen around. The various swords passing by the regrettably open door of the saniwa's office for the purpose of whispering and pointing at him. Ookurikara again.

"Sweet stupid Mamba. My beautiful brainless baby. My dearest darling dumbass."

This, he felt, was too much. He had to draw the line. "Don't call me beautiful."

This was not the correct thing to say. The saniwa swooped down on him and tugged on his alien ears. "Idiot! Buffoon! All swords are beautiful! You are no exception, my pretty little kitty cat kitten!" They scrunched his ears down, then rather less gently did the same to his cheeks. "Back to my point. I have to assume that you are not only the most brainless blade ever crafted by human hands but also that what little common sense you possess could not stand up to your desperate desire to make out with your sword boyfriend while cattified. Or, possibly, your sword boyfriend's desperate desire to make out with you while also petting your cute little kitty ears." They nodded to Ookurikara, who had been doing his best lump of raw iron impression since the second he had removed his tongue from Yamanbagiri's mouth, and continued to do so even after the saniwa gave his hair a little tousle. His heartrate didn't so much as speed up in irritation. "And that's fine! Being stupid is not a crime punishable by time government law! I am pleased that the two of you abominably thick swords have found romance, love, and affection in each other even though I certainly did not expect to find you, Yamanbagiri, and you, Ookurikara, using your limited practice time to brush up on your mouth-to-mouth combat!"

"What," said Namazuo Toushirou, who had been walking past the door at that moment. As Yamanbagiri turned in horror, Namazuo's already big eyes grew huge and he spun on his heel to race back in the direction he had come from. Kasen went to the door and shouted after him not to run in the halls. Ookurikara let out a soft, heartfelt sigh.

"No more than you deserve, my lovey-dovey dunce cap!" the saniwa roared, jabbing Ookurikara in the chest. "Because either you were so infatuated with Yanyanbakitty Kunimeow-meow here that you spent all day sneaking around to make out with him in various pantries, stables, and broom closets, or you were deliberately keeping a dangerous and potentially deadly secret from your commander. One of these I can forgive as the folly of love's first flush. The other is very nearly treason!"

"What do you mean dangerous?" Yamanbagiri asked, heart sinking. If he had put this citadel in danger... Were the alien ears being used to listen in on the day-to-day life of the citadel, to prepare for an abduction? An invasion? Were they even now beaming this conversation back to their evil alien mothership?

The saniwa folded their hands together in front of their face and looked pensive. "See, I can tell that some incredibly foolish thought or another is running through your head right now. And that is why I am giving you the benefit of the doubt. Because you are a sword which lacks brains above all things." They rubbed under their eyes. "Can you guess, my Kitten-Cat and my Cat-Kisser, how many swords in my lovely sword-filled household woke up this morning with a pair of cute cat ears on their heads?"

Ookurikara said nothing. Yamanbagiri looked to Kasen, then back to the saniwa. "Two?" he ventured.

The saniwa nodded. "You are wrong entirely. Kote-kitten, your report?"

"Yes!" Kotegiri stepped forward with a clipboard. "Starting from 5:30 this morning with Nikkari Aoe's report, ten different swords across various classifications have reported or have been discovered to be experiencing a phenomenon where one or more of their ears had been transformed into cat ears. We have confirmed the status of 62 of the citadel's 69 swords, but based on the assumed activation condition, Yamanbagiri is currently believed to be the last one."

Nikkari? Ten swords? One or more ears? He didn't know where to begin.

"Lovely. Yes, exactly. My sweet and well-educated Kotten's politic use of the passive present perfect tense, 'have been discovered,' refers primarily to you, as everyone else had the sense to come tell me something was wrong by lunchtime at the latest. I suppose you could say that Aizen 'discovered' the other two Rais, as he was the first of them to report in, but that's more of a technicality, since he has a clear advantage in mobility and Akashi and Hota-potato weren't far behind him."

The Rais?

"On the subject of technicalities," Kotegiri chimed in, "while ten swords were afflicted, the answer to your initial question, Master, was 'eight,' as you asked specifically about swords with a pair of cat ears."

The saniwa beamed at him. "Yes! Yes! We love a sword who pays enough attention to catch these kinds of details! My smart little sprout! My star of stage and screen and science bowl!" They patted Kotegiri on the head. "Now, as for you, my sword school dropout... Eight swords with a pair of cat ears. Nyasen Nyan-esada and Kote-kitten here. Akashi Kuniyuki and Hotarumaru. Hachisuka and Urashima Kotetsu. Uguisumaru, and yourself. Question: What do all these swords have in common?"

His mind went blank. There were uchigatanas, wakizashis, tachis, and an ootachi. They were in a bunch of different sparring groups.

"Something the eight of you share that swords like Aizen Kunitoshi and Nagasone Kotetsu and your sword boyfriend don't share with you..."

Nagasone Kotetsu was a forgery, wasn't he? But while Hachisuka and Yamanbagiri were equally adamant that they were not fakes, that didn't mean Aizen was, and Ookurikara certainly wasn't. Moreover, it seemed unlikely that only 10 of the 69 swords specifically prepared by the time government to combat the evil retrograde army would be genuine, unless... unless they were really-

"Yamanbagiri Kunihiro. Whatever you are thinking I promise it is not that deep. Think your very shallowest thoughts. For that matter pretend for a second that you and Kasen aren't on the list at all, because that may be what's throwing you off. This is something you could notice just by looking any of the swords in question. Look at my beautiful black cat, Kotegiri 'Cutie Kitty' Gou. What do you see?"

Yamanbagiri did not want to look at Kotegiri "Cutie Kitty" Gou, as the first time he had looked at him he had been invited to join his temporary dance unit as the "main visual," which sounded like the worst possible position he could hold in a temporary dance unit even though he wasn't sure what it was. Nevertheless, he looked. "He doesn't have cat ears at all," he said.

"Yes! A fine observation! That is because I have used my great and terrible powers to remove them from every afflicted sword in this house except Kasen, for reasons which I will explain to you later, and you, because you are a stupid sword who did not come to me to have them removed! Thank you for noticing! What else do you see?"

Yamanbagiri concentrated. "Oh... The hair? The little chunk that sticks up at the top? Kasen has one. Apparently I do as well." At least Ookurikara and the horses thought he did.

"Mmmm. That's a good thought. While you certainly put the aho in ahoge, you're not entirely on the wrong track. Last hint. Two swords came to me with only one cat ear. Nikkari Aoe, and Souza Samonji. Something they have that is mismatched… Something that matches on most swords but specifically not these two swords…"

Nikkari Aoe had a disproportionate love for making cat puns, if he had only ever had the one ear and hadn't actually realized that Yamanbagiri had the full pair. That wasn't the answer, but the thought gnawed at him nonetheless. Kotegiri, misinterpreting his frustration, smiled and pointed helpfully to his face. Glasses... No, not glasses. What was behind the glasses.

"Moles."

"Eyes," Ookurikara said, while Kotegiri and the saniwa were busy preventing Kasen from pulling the saniwa's prized Koshien bat out of its shadowbox on the wall in order to beat Yamanbagiri over the head with it. "You all have green eyes."

"Oh." He gave this some thought. "Do I?"

"Yes. Somewhere between green and blue, but the edges lean more to green. Kasen is the opposite."

"Oh." Well, it made sense that Ookurikara knew that, he supposed, considering the heavy eye contact that their sparring session had involved. "Huh."

"Truly you are an amazing sword in many ways," the saniwa said, breathing heavily. They returned to their seat. "Yes, green eyes. One point for you, Cat-Kisser, good work on gazing romantically into your sword boyfriend's eyes for long enough to notice. You know, it was really thanks to Souza that we figured it out. With only Nikki-nyan-nyan, Nyasen, and Cutie Kitty to provide data points, the working hypothesis was that Nikka only had one ear because his legend gave him resistance to youkai influences."

"Youkai?"

"Ah!" the saniwa shouted, slapping their hands against the arms of their chair. "And now we get to the crux of the matter! Why have you got cute charming little kitty cat ears, my beastly boy? Because some horrible little bakeneko stumbled across our little pocket dimension and thought all the raw spiritual energy bouncing around in here would make a tasty little snack. How? By targeting the inhabitants of the dimension with a curse that it could exploit to possess one of them and get in."

Yamanbagiri recoiled in horror and immediately went to rip the things off his head once and for all. In a rare show of solidarity, Ookurikara and Kasen smashed his hands down with simultaneous open-palm strikes.

"The problem with Kunihiros is not that they don't listen but that they assume," the saniwa said, mostly to themself. "New historical event we've been asked to investigate? Yes sir, I'll make sure Kane-san is ready, never mind that the mission details call for wakizashi stealth and subtlety. Bears spotted near the citadel? Yes sir, I'll go up the mountain and have a muscle-based chat with the local wildlife this afternoon, because I'd prefer to hear an excuse to pursue my hobby than a general reminder to the household not to leave unsecured garbage outside. And somehow you are the worst of the three." They sighed. "I appreciate that you are finally realizing the severity of the situation but in this case I am happy to report that you are simply one of the last loose ends I am trying to tie up before sending my report to HQ."

They kneaded their brow with their thumb. "Right. Bakeneko. Once we understood the conditions of the curse, we tracked down the catalyst. I was able to modify the curse to be harmless, you're very welcome, and trace it back to its source. From there my lovely Genji twins were able to kill the thing and burn the remains. After that I could dispel the curse, and after doing that for five swords felt rather justified in taking a lunch break while waiting for some government analysis to come through. Once I determined there was no more danger, I felt all right about taking my time with the last few swords. Kote-kitty should have been the last one, and since I retied the curse to Kasen so that poor old flayed corpse by the barrier could be laid to rest, it should have left him at the same time. But it didn't, which is why I have spent my Friday evening tracking you down, my wretched little sword! I am really quite irritated with you!" They reached out and gave his alien... bakeneko ears a sharp twist, which rather spoiled the effect of Ookurikara and Kasen sparing them the same fate earlier, Yamanbagiri thought with a wince. Then they brought their hands together, clapped them sharply twice, and sent a beam of white light blasting into Yamanbagiri's forehead.

There was a brief floating sensation, as if he were dreaming. He awoke to find himself on the same green couch he'd been sitting on earlier. He reached for his bakeneko ears, found them gone, then reached for his normal ears and found them stinging as if someone had just twisted them hard. So they had been his real ears all along, he thought with a kind of sad resignation. The sounds of Kotegiri putting a cup of water in front of the slumped saniwa were somehow muffled now and... and something was missing. Something important. He twisted around wildly, met Ookurikara's gaze, and realized. "I can't hear your heart anymore," he said, his own voice distant and weak. "I can't hear your heartbeat." Ookurikara frowned and opened his mouth to speak.

"Babies! Baby swords in love! Unbelievable these things!" the saniwa said over him. "Things like this are exactly why I am letting you off easily, because baby swords in love always say the cutest darned things! So precious and lovable even though they haven't a single brain cell to share between them!" The effect of having his usual ears back was that this diatribe registered rather quieter than it would have under normal circumstances. This did not make up for the fact that the steady rhythm that had accompanied him all day had been ripped away from him with the same sudden violence that Horikawa ripped his blankets away from him on laundry day, which, come to think of it, he wasn't wearing his current cloak, it had been left behind in the rush of discovery and he was- he wasn't- he couldn't-

He threw himself on top of Ookurikara, pressing his ear desperately to his chest. There. There it was. Ookurikara's heart did its familiar little jump and race before settling back to its regular steady rhythm. Yamanbagiri shuddered bodily before going limp. Above him, Kasen sighed.

"Baby swords in love," the saniwa said again. "I simply cannot with them." They sighed as well. "Happy for you. Really and truly. Never keep a secret like this from me again. It worked out all right because the stupid cat targeted too many people at once with an extremely visible curse, and the first to report it was one of our foremost experts in supernatural phenomena. If it had just been you, you might have gotten us all killed. I'll figure out a suitable punishment for you once this headache subsides. For now, get out of my sight. You smell like a stable full of sumo wrestling sword pigs. Yamanbagiri, take a bath." This was said in the magical tone of absolute command that a sword could not refuse, no matter how he might struggle. (It was not the first time Yamanbagiri had been given this particular command.)

He crawled out of Ookurikara's lap and marched stiffly to the baths, mechanically performing the necessary ablutions until the magic wore off, at which point he gave up washing his hair and sat on the bath stool in hopelessness and despair.

Kotegiri poked his head into the bathing area. "Yamanbagiri, I left a change of clothes for you in the top left basket in the first row of cubbies. And a token for the vending machine! Please take your time!"

And here he'd been resigned to lurking in the bathroom until lights out and sneaking back through the halls dressed in only a towel, again. A good wakizashi. Not like Nikkari at all. Not least of all because Kotegiri hadn't made even one out-of-pocket cat reference. He'd been so sure that Nikkari had seen right through him, and he hadn't. He'd just been talking about himself the whole time. The saniwa might have had a point about him making assumptions. Yamanbagiri sighed and dunked his head into a bucket of rinse water, getting soap in his eyes.

He went and sat in the bath for a bit, for a change of pace and since the scrubbing was the really horrible part. He might as well enjoy the warm water. His muscles were sorer than usual after all that sparring he had done with Ookuri-

Oh. Oh no.

He attempted to drown himself, failed at this, and flapped around spluttering before retreating to the far edge of the bath where there was a little ledge to sit on. What was he supposed to do about Ookurikara? Leaving aside the misunderstanding that had already swept through the entire citadel if the knowing smirks that he had been treated to on his magic-fueled march to the baths were any indication, he had then proceeded to shove his face into Ookurikara's chest like it was one of his plushies. Like he was some kind of cat. That wasn't something that could be explained away when the initial burst of hilarity died down and people were actually willing to listen. He had done it shamelessly and of his own accord. And worst of all, it had felt good. He had liked leaning into Ookurikara's warm body, inhaling the familiar scent of dried sweat, listening to the steady beat of his heart. He realized morosely that he would do it again in an instant if there were no one else around, and if Ookurikara was like, asleep, or something, so as not to disturb him with the selfish desires of an unworthy replica. He attempted to drown himself again.

The next time he surfaced, he was a little calmer. Facing up against death had a way of focusing up your thoughts. Yes, he had snuggled up with Ookurikara out of nowhere. Yes, there was a part of him that wanted to do it again. And also, he had been cursed by a bakeneko. If a bakeneko's influence could leave Uguisumaru, who regularly drank boiling tea straight from the kettle, with a sensitive cat's tongue hours after the curse had been removed from him, then it could also inexplicably make Yamanbagiri want to lie on Ookurikara's chest. Most of the swords here would have seen Ookurikara resting under the trees at the edge of the fields with multiple tiger cubs stacked on top of him. Many of the newer swords would have seen a full-grown tiger resting under the same trees, though they didn't always realize that there was a sword underneath it. (In the case of Houchou Toushirou, who had seen his legs sticking out from under it, this had briefly launched a tantou brigade into a full-blown murder investigation, until the tiger got up and walked away from all the noise and Ookurikara did the same.) Ookurikara's chest was a popular place for cats to rest, probably because it was warm and firm and they could listen to the soothing rhythm of his heartbeat and forget all of their cat troubles. And Yamanbagiri had been a cat. So no one could really take exception to him doing catlike things.

Except Ookurikara.

But Ookurikara liked cats, obviously. He had been helping him out all day because he was a fundamentally kind soul who couldn't bear to see a cat in need, even though Yamanbagiri had been in denial about being one.

But Yamanbagiri hadn't been a cat when he had thrown himself on top of him and nuzzled into his chest. Or, even if he had been, and possibly still was for some uncertain length of time, the outward signifiers of his transformation had vanished. He had never known Ookurikara to have an interest in random swords touching him, with or without asking first and certainly not in such an intimate way.

He sank down under the water again. Not in a drowning way. Just to think. When he came up, shaking the water out of his face, he had his answer.

"I'm doomed. He hates me now. He'll probably never talk to me again. He'll definitely never spar with me again. I'm a failure of a cat and I've ruined everything once again."

The sound of his voice echoed around the empty baths. Hearing it just confirmed that he was right. He took a deep breath and whisper-yelled a painful lament. (He would have yelled normally but that was a good way to get some nosy sword poking its head into the baths to check if he was trying to drown himself again.) He splashed some water on his face and peeled his hair out of his eyes - his green eyes. Stupid color for eyes. As expected of a replica. Then he said clearly and with as much conviction as he could muster, "But this time I won't run away. I'll face my fate and give him the apology he deserves." Yamabushi was big on stating your intentions loudly for all to hear, which he thought was more kotodama than anything Buddhist, but it did seem to work. Provided your intentions were to become strong enough to laugh off all the misfortunes of the world, or to kill 2 dozen retrograders the next time you got picked by the Osaka Castle roulette, or something else reasonable. Not something impossible like "do your laundry before your brother comes in and forces you to do it without letting you leave even a single comfortably dirty cloak behind." He thought his current intentions were reasonable. Ookurikara would probably at least hear him out, even if he slammed the door in his face afterward. To strengthen his resolve, he repeated, "I will apologize to him," and stood to leave the bath.

"Good luck."

Yamanbagiri slipped and fell face first into the water. He emerged, sopping, to see Oodenta Mitsuyo lurking in the darkest corner of the bath, all but the top half of his face submerged. A rubber ducky floated dourly in front of him. Yamanbagiri immediately submerged himself again as well. He had no desire to let anyone and especially not one of the Five Great Swords see just how far down his blush went when he was embarrassed.

"Thank you," he said eventually. "Were... you here the whole time then?"

"Yeah."

Yamanbagiri closed his eyes and blew solemn bubbles. There was nothing else for it then. As Ichigo Hitofuri had when Yamanbagiri caught him swimming laps in the big bath because he thought he was alone not ten minutes after he had reprimanded Akita and Maeda for doing the same thing, he said, "I'll give you my vending machine token, so please forget you ever saw anything," and walked elegantly away.

Apart from when his foot slid out from under him on the strangely wet tile and he had to windmill to keep his balance. Other than that.

-

Yamanbagiri stood in front of Ookurikara's door, which, like his own, was covered in paper hearts, flowers paper or plastic or real, and hastily scribbled drawings of the two of them holding hands or getting married. He took a deep breath and knocked, dislodging a pink "Date Night" coupon for the steak restaurant in the yorozuya shopping district as he did.

"Go away," Ookurikara said, his voice pitched much sharper than it had been this morning.

Yamanbagiri wavered. He wanted to go away. He wanted to go to his room and throw himself into a mass of blankets and futons and roll around until an impenetrable ball of fabric formed around him. But he had to do this much. For Ookurikara. For himself. For Oodenta Mitsuyo. He bowed forward at a sharp right angle and said "I'm sorry" in the firmest, clearest voice he could muster. He held the pose for five seconds, then straightened up and turned to go.

Which was when Ookurikara caught him by the back of his cloak and hauled him into his room. He tensed instinctively, then slumped. He deserved whatever Ookurikara was going to do to him. He might as well let him do it.

"Hey."

"What."

"What are you sorry about."

"Everything," he said honestly. Ookurikara just scowled at him. Certainly his brothers were both insistent that part of a good apology involved expressing what it was you had done wrong, but Ookurikara had been with him all day and had borne witness to every last one of his crimes and failures, so he didn't really feel he needed to specify. But fine. "For making you an accessory to treason and exposing you to public humiliation and other indignities."

"That's all?"

Which was a tactic that Horikawa had often used to make Yamanbagiri confess to previously undiscovered laundry crimes until he had finally wised up. "If there's something else you think I should be apologizing for, by all means, tell me."

Ookurikara clicked his tongue. His hands slid up his wrists, pinning them against the door. He was standing close enough that if he closed his eyes he could just barely hear the quick angry thud of his heartbeat. He had every right to be angry with him, clearly, but if it wasn't about the treason or the humiliation or the indignities then he was going to need to know the specifics. No assumptions, right? He stood there and let Ookurikara's long fingers press against his pulse point, staring at the floor and listening to his heart rage with every slow blink.

And stood there.

And stood there.

"What," he said eventually. He looked up and was surprised to find that Ookurikara wasn't gazing at him with the soul-rending intensity he had during their practice session but was instead glaring at the door frame over his left shoulder. He wondered if he should also apologize for being a pathetic replica who should have never been allowed to copy his way up to Group C sparring, but reminded himself that he wasn't to assume. Maybe Ookurikara actually wanted him to apologize for being a pathetic replica who should never have been allowed to graduate from Tiny Little Baby Chicky Kindergarten Sword Class at all and who should even now be contained in that soft carpeted room learning the basics of swordplay and eating mushy peas.

"You aren't sorry," Ookurikara gritted out, like he was having slivers from an exploded catapult ball removed one at a time with Yagen's worst pair of tweezers, "because you've changed your mind. Because you don't feel the same."

Despite his tone, he knew it was a question. But it was also completely impenetrable. "Changed my mind about... what exactly. Hiding cursed cat ears? Because-"

"No," Ookurikara said, and as before he pressed his lips to Yamanbagiri's and slipped his tongue between them. Yamanbagiri closed his eyes and felt more than heard the pound of his heartbeat, pressed as it was against his chest. It was different from before. Maybe not in a bad way. It was hard to focus on it to make a decision when he kept moving his tongue around his mouth like that.

Eventually he withdrew, but kept his face close (not too close, good), eyes as intense as they had been in their sparring session earlier. "Well?"

"Is that all?" he asked. "No, I haven't changed my mind. Come on then." Twisting out of Ookurikara's grip, he grabbed his wrist and led him across the hall to the Kunihiro room, kicking sordid piles of hearts and misguided well-wishes aside as he went. "Move the table against the wall," he said, and opened the closet. All the blankets and things he'd shoved in there earlier poured out on top of him, temporarily burying him alive, which got a snort out of Ookurikara. He unearthed himself and scowled. Ookurikara kept looking at him with a soft smile. No mercy, then. He pulled out two of the thick winter futons and arranged them in the center of the room. After some internal debate he reached up and let his cloak fall to the floor. He trusted Ookurikara not to make a big deal about his face. He did not trust him not to take advantage of it in other ways.

"Oh," Ookurikara said softly.

He fought the urge to bury himself back in the blanket pile. "What."

Ookurikara's eyes dropped to the cloak before traveling back up. "You're sure?"

Yamanbagiri told himself not to blush but failed to listen. It was embarrassing that Ookurikara knew just how important this was for him, but at the same time, having someone understand was so rare that he couldn't help but luxuriate in the feeling. "I... I'm sure. I know it's a big step. But it's fine if it's you. Because it's you."

Ookurikara exhaled long and low. Then he pulled off his shirt in one long movement. His necklace bounced once against his chest. "Come here," he said, and Yamanbagiri came to him.

He drew him down gently into the center of the futon, caught one of his wrists and used it to pin him down. Then he just looked at him. Not like he was "captivated by his beauty," or whatever. More like he didn't know where to start. Fair enough. Yamanbagiri slid his trapped wrist down so that he could slip his fingers between Ookurikara's and give him a reassuring squeeze. "Do as you like. I'll follow your lead. Whenever you're ready."

"Yeah." Ookurikara looked a while longer before leaning forward and covering Yamanbagiri's lips and body with his own. Starting with what he knew, he supposed. That was fine. He waited until he got settled, until the rapid beat of his heart slowed just a little. Then since Ookurikara seemed comfortable putting his tongue in Yamanbagiri's mouth, he decided to see what would happen if he put his tongue in Ookurikara's mouth.

The answer was that first his heart jumped a beat and he made a low noise in the back of his throat, and then he squeezed his hand, and then he pushed Yamanbagiri's tongue back. Mouth-to-mouth combat indeed, he thought wryly. Then Ookurikara's free hand slid under his shirt and traced up his side. Well played. Careful to stay still, save for the steady presses of his tongue against Ookurikara's, he brought his other hand up and drew his fingertips down the central line of his back. Ookurikara shivered bodily. Another low noise slipped from between his lips. Interesting. He traced the line back down, fingers just barely ghosting over his skin. Up again, letting his fingertips dip into every ridge of his spine. Ookurikara's heart pounded a frantic warning against his chest. Good to know. He turned his exploration to his broad shoulders, making a mental note to take a good look at them later so he could see how favorably they compared to the illustrations in Volume III: Dharma In The Deltoids. And so he could finally get a good look at the Kurikara dragon's head, which he had harbored a secret desire to see close up ever since one fateful bath day when the command magic had placed him at a bath stool right beside him. He rubbed about where he thought the tattoo started and was treated to a grunt. That called for further investigation later. For now, he pressed his fingers along his side, searching for weakness, and tried not to think too hard about the heat of Ookurikara's chest where it met his bare skin.

He found himself at the waistband of his track pants soon enough, at which point Ookurikara's mouth left his. "Mm... wait." He sat up, shifting his weight on top of his legs. Without him to cover him, Yamanbagiri was exposed. Before he could pull his shirt down, Ookurikara had it over his head and into a pile next to his cloak. Then both his arms were pinned beside his head and Ookurikara's mouth was on his neck. Yamanbagiri was suddenly very aware of his own pulse, its jagged rhythm lifting to match Ookurikara's as his teeth sank in.

"Oh, that's good," he said, just managing not to gasp. The unrelenting pressure of sharp teeth against his lifeblood... Genius. How had no one ever thought of it before?

Ookurikara licked a stripe against the bite mark. "Yeah?" He bit down again, a little higher, a little harder.

"Yeah," he muttered, unable to suppress a shiver. "But - ngh - I don't know how much use I'll be able to make of it. My - ah - brother and Kane-san usually have their necks well-protected."

Ookurikara stopped mid-lick. "...What?"

"Also, you won't get very far if you insist on using your tongue for everything. I'm immune to it, of course, but the others have a pretty high tolerance as well."

Ookurikara let go of his wrists and sat up. "What exactly," he said slowly, "do you think we are doing?"

"Huh? Exploring the Forbidden Kunihiro Techniques now that we're... in the Kunihiro room..." His voice trailed off as something truly horrible happened to Ookurikara's face. It passed, and he motioned for Yamanbagiri to sit up as well. Then, in a Kunihiro-worthy act of desperate mutually assured destruction, he smashed their foreheads together with a vicious headbutt that left them both collapsed on the futons.

The first to rise was Ookurikara, though he was wobbly and had one hand pressed to his head. "Do you normally kiss people as part of these techniques?" he growled.

"...Kiss?" Alarm bells started to ring in his shattered skull.

"Kiss," Ookurikara confirmed.

He raised one shaky hand to his thoroughly moistened lips. "K-kiss?"

"Kiss," he said again, and bared his teeth.

"But," he started, and stopped again. "But you." No, that wasn't it. "But I, I bit you. So then you escalated it by trying to gross me out by licking me, not knowing it wouldn't bother me the way it would other people. And that was when the saniwa walked in, but they misunderstood-"

"The saniwa," Ookurikara snapped, "is an absurd and frivolous tyrant who has been right about too many things today. They didn't misunderstand. You did."

"But." He stared down at the futon. "But if you thought you were kissing me..."

"I did kiss you. I asked you if you felt the same. I kissed you again. You let me. You took me to your room, brought out a futon, and started taking off your clothes. You-" He cut himself off and buried his head in his hands.

After a minute he got up and dropped Yamanbagiri's cloak over him before retreating to the far corner of the room. One distant dark corner of Yamanbagiri's mind appreciated this. All the rest of it was running circles around his head yelling "Oh no!!! Oh no!!! Oh no!!!" at maximum Ookanehira volume.

Belatedly he curled into the too-clean laundry soap scent of his cloak. Not at all soothing. When it came down to it, he'd rather have had Ookurikara's sweaty post-workout t-shirt. Or Ookurikara himself- Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!

Oh no! He uncurled briefly to ask "Would you like to cut off my head?"

"No," Ookurikara said. Not even taking a moment to think it over. Typical. Of course he wouldn't let him take the easy way out. He curled up again.

Oh no. He had... Oh no, but Ookurikara had... Oh no. Oh no.

"Oh no," he said out loud. Ookurikara didn't respond. Yamanbagiri dug his fingers into his hair and pulled hard. This was only minimally effective. "Could you throw that pile of clothing on top of me?" he asked at length. "And Butter-chan?"

"The bread?"

"Yeah."

Ookurikara did as he was asked. Ensconced in a fabric prison of his own choosing, Yamanbagiri put his mouth over the embroidered butter square in the center of Butter-chan and screamed at full volume. Then he rolled around until a sheet and two cardigans were tied hopelessly around him. He lay panting for a while before lifting his head up and slamming it into the tatami floor. With blankets and a futon between him and the floor this wasn't as damaging as it usually would be, but as Ookurikara had also struck a decisive blow earlier he left it at just the one head slam. Once this was taken care of, he sat up, arranging himself in the center of his blanket mountain. Now it was time to get to the bottom of this. "Why did you kiss me?"

Ookurikara had put his shirt on some time during all that. He pulled his necklace out from under it. "Because."

He relaxed a little. "Oh. So it was a Forbidden Technique."

"No." He sighed and tugged his fingers through his hair. "Because I... like you."

This took Yamanbagiri offline for a good minute or so. "Because of... my face?" he tried.

"No."

"Good," he said, although truthfully he wasn't sure it was. At least that would be familiar. But if it wasn't his face at fault, then... "You've made a mistake. There is no possible reason for you to like me."

Ookurikara clicked his tongue loudly.

"I mean it." He pulled a sheet down over his head. "I'm... a mess. I can't do anything right. I panic over things and make them worse. I'm weak, the bottom of my sparring group. I make assumptions and hurt people. I hurt you." His heart throbbed somewhere near the pit of his stomach, cold and sunken and pathetic.

"And?" Ookurikara said.

"And... And I'm an empty-headed uchi with no brains. I didn't even know what color my own eyes were. Looking in the mirror makes me sick. I would never bathe if people didn't make me. I'm always... always like this." He gestured vaguely around him.

Ookurikara raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"Doesn't it bother you?" he burst out, sick to his stomach and wondering why Ookurikara refused to see sense. "That I'm a copy?"

He gave this a moment's consideration. "No."

"Excuse me for a second." He dove under the sheets again to hold a conference with Butter-chan. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH," he explained to Butter-chan, who remained silently supportive. He resurfaced. "Have you considered simply not liking me?" he asked in his most reasonable tone. "It would be a lot easier for you."

"...Yes."

"Oh." So Ookurikara did understand how unreasonable he was being. That was good. That meant there was hope for him after all. Knowing that he would one day come to his senses shouldn't hurt. No need for his insides to twist themselves up into all kinds of complicated knots like the ones his brother liked to make with his cords to demonstrate the complexities of karmic entanglement. Or the ones his other brother liked to make with Kane-san's hair, which as far as he knew weren't a metaphor for anything.

"But. It hasn't worked. And I've come this far." Ookurikara stared at him, brows furrowed, eyes fierce. "What do you care?"

"I... Well, I just... It-"

"Mind your own business. It has nothing to do with you."

Clearly it did, though.

Ookurikara scowled down at the floor. "It doesn't matter if I like you. What matters is if you like me."

"I do," he said immediately. Ookurikara's head jerked up sharply. Looking at the expression on his face was every bit as painful as looking in the mirror. Yamanbagiri grimaced. "I like how easy you are to be with. I like sparring with you. I like you, but… but…"

"Well, then." As Yamanbagiri was trying to figure out how to vocalize but what exactly, Ookurikara shrugged and stood up.

He got two steps toward the door before Yamanbagiri launched himself out of the blanket pile and suplexed him into the ground with a Bushi-Beast Special. "Stop! Let me explain-"

"Say that first next time," Ookurikara said into the floor.

"Oh. But muscles are the universal language." He let go of Ookurikara's legs and backed up. If he backed in front of the door to keep him from trying to escape again, well. That was just taking proper precautions.

"If you want to wrestle, put a shirt on first."

"Oh." The very start of a thought involving people who liked you, kissing, and not wearing a shirt started to circulate before he overheated and had to crouch down on the floor in distress and despair. As before, Ookurikara took pity on him and tossed a shirt and a blanket at him.

After he had recovered enough and was suitably shielded from the judgmental eyes of the world and also could safely wrestle Ookurikara into submission again if it came to that, he stood up and began pacing in agitation. Ookurikara patted the futon next to him. "Sit. I'm not going anywhere." He said this as if it pained him, and probably it did.

Yamanbagiri sat and immediately began tugging at the frayed hem of his blanket, splitting the seam more. He opened his mouth several times only to shut it again. Ookurikara sighed. "One at a time. The order doesn't matter."

"What would people say if they saw us together?" he blurted out.

"The same thing they're saying about us now."

"No, but... That's here. You know how it is here. It'll blow over by next week or whenever something else happens. But you can't... you couldn't just walk into the steak place and hand them a Date Night coupon. Not with me."

"Sure I could."

"No you couldn't."

"They don't care. I've been there with Tsurumaru. Good steak. And dessert. Cheap with the coupon."

"But..." He pulled a new hole in the blanket, frustrated. "But Tsurumaru would look good with you. Not like me. I'm not good enough."

Tch. "I'm the only one who has the right to decide that. Not you. Not some waiter. Next."

He worried at the loose threads. One caught on an uneven fingernail. "You're so stubborn. Why don't you ever listen?"

"Why don't you? Next."

"I'm saying this for your own good, you know? So you don't waste your time. Even if you like me now, you'll change your mind if my original shows up. You'll just have to start over with him."

Ookurikara actually gave this some thought. Typical. He probably hadn't realized that a copy was only there so that it could be banged up and dirtied while the original stayed pristine, that once the two were placed side by side, the difference would be clear as day, that no one would ever choose- "Nah."

Yamanbagiri's finger accidentally poked through the thin fabric again. "What?"

"No. I won't change my mind."

"How can you say that? You don't even know- You haven't even seen him-"

"Exactly."

"Not exactly. I'm telling you, you'll-"

"I'm telling you. It's not about your face. It's not about your provenance. We've lived under the same roof for two and a half years. Do you think that means nothing?"

He hadn't considered this. He had occasionally wished at various low points in his life that he had been the first sword, the attendant, no matter how unsuited for the task he was. Or if he had been among the first uchigatanas manifested, then maybe the saniwa would want to keep him around even after his original arrived, if only for nostalgia. He had manifested too late to be chosen for the First Unit. He had been passed over for battle training time and time again for newer, stronger swords, Ookurikara among them. It wasn't just a matter of feeling unwanted. He was unwanted. Unneeded, at best. "I don't see how it matters."

"It matters to me. That you were here first."

"That's not a good reason."

"Too bad for you. It's good enough for me." He raised a hand, then curled it into a fist and put it back down. "I won't change my mind. I'm stubborn like that."

"He might be more catlike than me," he hedged. "He might look better with cat ears."

For the second time in living memory, Ookurikara laughed. "Hahaha. I don't think so."

"Are you calling me good-looking?" he said suspiciously.

"Yanyanbakitty Kunimeow-meow," Ookurikara said without a trace of self-consciousness. Yamanbagiri pulled his blanket over his head and curled up like a pill bug so he could howl in anguish.

"Don't say things like that," he said when he emerged. Ookurikara failed to look apologetic. "You haven't convinced me of anything, you know."

"Hmph. Enough about other people. What about you?"

"What do you-"

"Don't make excuses. I don't need your pity. If you don't like me, just say so."

Except if he said something like that, he was certain he'd break Ookurikara's heart. "It's not that- I... really admire you. But... The way you... I-I think my like is different from yours. I've never thought about..." His mouth tripped awkwardly over the word kissing. "...in my life."

He made the mistake of looking at Ookurikara, who treated him to one of his little smirks. "Didn't stop you earlier."

The sound Yamanbagiri made could not be expressed in human language ancient or modern. "Don't say that."

Ookurikara delighted in his misery and shame a little longer before speaking again. "I kissed you because I thought you wanted me to. If you don't, I won't."

"But you want to."

"It's not important. Do you want to spar with me again?"

"More than almost anything in the world," Yamanbagiri said honestly. Ookurikara glared very hard at the wall for several seconds, which gave him all kinds of time to think about how he shouldn't have answered so eagerly, how he was pathetic and weak and needed to get so much better before he was worthy of sparring with him, how Ookurikara probably didn't want to spar with him at all and was only asking out of politeness.

"Isn't that enough?" Ookurikara said eventually.

"Is... it?"

"It's enough for me."

"Oh," Yamanbagiri said, deeply relieved. "Then everything's fine." As soon as he said this a dark suspicion crept into his mind. "Unless you're going to say something like... like 'If I beat you in sparring I get to kiss you.'"

Ookurikara gave this some thought. "Not a bad idea," he said, and then to make things worse: "What do you get if you beat me?"

"I won't."

"You have twice today," he pointed out.

"That was... It obviously doesn't count."

"Maybe three times. What do you want?"

Yamanbagiri groaned in frustration. He had thought Ookurikara was a reasonable sword. He should never have gone to him for help. He should have run out first thing to slay that bakeneko without anyone being the wiser. He should have accepted his fate and gone to let the saniwa fuss and squeal over his stupid cat ears. At least the saniwa only ever kissed tantous and/or Hotarumaru, and only on the head. Not like Ookurikara. "Sword kisser," he grumbled.

"Sword."

Nothing he could say to that. He sat there, and Ookurikara sat there, and it wasn't the comfortable silence it had been earlier because there was some big nebulous thing in the air above them. But it wasn't uncomfortable either, for all that he was steadily pulling apart the hem of his blanket and tearing strings off the raw edges.

"If," he said when he had accumulated a small pile of blanket shavings in front of him. "Hypothetically. Because I was a cat earlier. And with the understanding that its evil influence might wear off at any time. If I told you that maybe I wanted to... listen for a while. To your heartbeat. Would you, that is, what would... I just mean..."

"Come here," Ookurikara said. And slowly, hesitantly, Yamanbagiri did. He looked at him. The tiny smile that had been on his lips since he had said everything was fine didn't change. He wondered why Ookurikara liked him. He wondered if it was really okay to like him the way he did. He leaned over and rested his head in the center of his chest.

They stayed like that for a while. Then Ookurikara's heart jumped half a beat and he lifted an arm, settling it on Yamanbagiri's back. This state of affairs persisted for some time until another heartbeat warning came. Ookurikara lay back on the futon and Yamanbagiri fell with him. This was not quite as good because now he was folded in half and Ookurikara's arm was draped weirdly over him instead of sitting snugly around his back. He tried to decide if it would be okay for him to do something about this or if it was bad enough he was trading on Ookurikara's affection for him in order to use him as a home stereo system for guided relaxation and didn't have any right to demand any more from him if he was happy having his shoulder hyperextended like that.

"I'm used to cats," Ookurikara said out of nowhere.

"Yes," Yamanbagiri said back, because everyone knew this but maybe he didn't know everyone knew this and thought this was some great secret he was revealing only to him for the first time ever. Because he liked him.

"And you're a cat."

"I was a cat," he corrected. The familiar sounds of cardiac aggravation echoed in his ears and he quickly course-corrected. "And still experiencing some remaining catlike influence, I mean."

"Cats make themselves comfortable. They don't worry about anyone else's comfort."

"Oh." Yamanbagiri didn't exactly know how to make himself comfortable in a way that involved using Ookurikara as a pillow and letting him put his arm around him - for his heartbeat had slowed way down after that, and certainly he needed to relax and de-stress after the day he'd put him through - but he remembered lying on top of him in the stables, the circumstances of which had been mentally distressing but physically unobjectionable. If he maybe... put his arms here, and sort of crawled on top of him without actually thinking about what it meant to be crawling on top of Ookurikara, a sword who liked him... and he remembered having one leg here, which would put the other one over there... It wasn't quite right, but it would have to do. He wasn't about to make things even worse than they already were by wiggling.

Ookurikara wrapped his arms around him and started stroking his back. "Yes, that's closer to how it should be," Yamanbagiri said, relaxing into his embrace. Oh. No. He unrelaxed. "I didn't mean it... That is, you can do as you like, I just..." He fell silent as Ookurikara continued stroking him. "I'm not very good at being a cat," he concluded at last. "Don't call me that name again."

"You don't have to be a cat."

"But I-"

"I'll still pet you even if you aren't a cat. You can still lie on top of me and listen to my heart."

"But you don't have to. If you don't want to."

"I don't have to, but I will. What does that tell you about what I want?" All the while he kept stroking Yamanbagiri's back. Without pause, without hesitation. His heartbeat was slow and perfectly steady. That was the answer. He couldn't pretend not to understand when it was this clear.

Instead he said "Why didn't Aizen see us? In the stables, at the end, when he jumped to look over the door."

"It's a tall door. He was rushing and didn't get enough height."

"We weren't that well hidden. He would have seen something."

"Only your hair. It's the same color as the straw." At this he moved one hand up to the back of his head and gave it a gentle rub. Yamanbagiri had not liked it when he did this to the bakeneko ears, so he was fully unprepared to like it now.

To cover up the embarrassing sound he had just made, he said "Your hair is the same color as the dirt floor." And then was torn between saying something else to cover that up, and trying for once not to dig himself any deeper into the hole he constantly found himself in.

"Indeed," Ookurikara said. And then didn't say anything else, so in the ensuing heavy silence Yamanbagiri tried to find ways to explain that he was really into dirt, absolutely massive fan of the stuff, without implying that he thought Ookurikara was dirty and also not implying that he wanted him to kiss him because of that. Because you could never tell with a sword kisser. They'd take any excuse to kiss a sword. Maybe. Probably. And he just couldn't see the sense in kissing. He'd thought Ookurikara was a more rational sword than this, but after all he liked him which was probably the most unreasonable thing anyone had ever done in the history of forged steel. So of course he liked kissing too. Unless. Unless mouth-to-mouth combat really was a thing, like it was a metaphor for the real thing, and if he maybe kissed Ookurikara and they pushed their tongues back and forth a little like before it would give him some greater insight into- No. That wasn't, no, it just couldn't... Could it??

"You know I can hear your heart too," Ookurikara said, ruthlessly nonchalant.

"Don't listen. It's... It's bad."

"Why?"

"It just is." He decided to take a line out of Ookurikara's playbook. "Why don't you mind your own business? It's got nothing to do with you."

"Clearly it does, though." He squeezed him gently. "Listen. Like that." He rubbed the back of his head again. "Or that."

Yamanbagiri was starting to think that he would have to kiss him again just so that he couldn't keep saying things like this. Except he was also starting to think that for a sword who had never once in his life thought about kissing before today, he was sure thinking a lot about kissing, and maybe he was going to have to draw some conclusions and take some actions. Later rather than sooner, preferably. He blamed the hypnotic rhythm of Ookurikara's heart. He just couldn't stop listening to it.

(Also, he was vaguely aware that without it, he would probably be having a panic attack about the very concept of kissing rather than resigning himself to the idea of confronting it in the future. Ugh. Argh. Why was he like this.)

"I should never have gone to you this morning," he concluded. "That was the only mistake I made." If this kept up, he was going to get addicted to his heart, which meant that when Ookurikara left him he would be completely hopeless rather than the barely functional front he managed to put up most days.

"Hmm." He stroked his back. "We wouldn't have sparred then."

"That was the only thing that wasn't a mistake."

"You liked it, then."

"Of course I did. It was... It was..." He didn't have the words to describe how it had felt, moving with Ookurikara, always one step behind and striving to catch up, knowing what he wanted was just outside of his reach but that with every block and parry and strike his desperately questing fingertips grew closer... "Very very good," he finished lamely. "I know you don't feel the same, but-"

"Wrong." Ookurikara said this while glaring at him and locking him in a four limb bonecruncher. Yamanbagiri could only curse himself for his negligence in realizing too late what a vulnerable position he had lured him into with the promise of a soothing heartbeat listening session. Well, right now his heart was not at all- "I liked it too. It was... good."

"I think I really like you a lot," Yamanbagiri confessed, the words slipping out of his mouth before he knew they were there. "More... more than I thought I did a few minutes ago. If-if that's okay." He couldn't exactly use his legs when Ookurikara's were already wrapped around his lower torso so he did what he could to crush him back with his arms. It seemed like the thing to do.

"It's got nothing to do with me," Ookurikara said. "But... Good." And squeezed him harder. Yamanbagiri gave up and resigned himself to bursting open like on that one expedition when he had dropped his juice pack and Monoyoshi's horse had stepped on it before he could pick it up. It would serve Ookurikara right if he ended up all Yamanba-gooey because he squeezed him too tight and he exploded. And then he stopped squeezing him and started petting him again and suddenly he wanted to be squeezed again but also wanted him to keep petting him and- Was this a cat thing? Leftover bakeneko energy? Or was it Ookurikara's fault for liking him and being likeable and, and... and whatever kissing had to do with any of it?

"I'm not cut out for this."

"For what."

"Having a corporeal form."

Ookurikara squeezed him again which was nice. "It's been more than 600 years, hasn't it."

"Exactly. And my head is still this loud, and I don't know what to do with myself, and not once in those 600 years have I had the sense to think about kissing so now I have to think about it all at once. It's a disaster. I'm a disaster."

"I don't mind," Ookurikara said, which was about the kindest thing anyone had ever said to him. Yamanbagiri had kind of sort of hoped that he'd take the hint and kiss him, if nothing else so that he'd have a concrete experience to think about rather than vague memories of tongue-battling and the deep consuming shame of being the densest sword in the history of space and infinitely branching timelines. Instead he pulled the blanket over Yamanbagiri's head ("Ah," Yamanbagiri thought, "truly he is a sword of culture, not wanting to spend any more time looking at my face than he has to."), made a funny little growling noise in the back of his throat, and generally sped up his heart rate to an unnecessary tempo. Eventually he uncovered him again but didn't look at him. He was staring at the mess of dirty clothes and blankets that Yamanbagiri had previously cocooned himself in with a similarly dirty expression on his face when he said "Did you really kiss Izuminokami."

Horikawa would be so, so happy, he thought, when he learned that Ookurikara and Kane-san's was a true, two-sided, mutually-requited rivalry. And then he realized what he had said.

"What you have to understand is, it's not... not kissing, it never was, it's just that the first time someone sticks their hand over your mouth to keep you from biting them or saying something that'll embarrass them maybe your first impulse is going to be to lick their hand and of course the first time they'll recoil in disgust and let you go but then as time goes by they'll get used to it and what you have to understand is that it's functionally an act of terrorism because Kunihiros are all cheap dirty fighters and so what you have to understand is that any time my tongue touched Kane-san's skin it wasn't anything like... like what we... what you and I..." He abruptly buried his face in Ookurikara's chest.

"Did you know," Ookurikara said conversationally, "that you blush all the way to your shoulders when you're embarrassed."

"Yes. Don't look."

"I'll do whatever I want."

"But do you want to kiss me though."

"Maybe. You keep bringing it up. Seems like you're the one who wants to kiss me."

"Maybe." The tough facade he tried to put up fell apart almost immediately. "That is... I really don't know if I do or not."

"Then we'll try again," Ookurikara said generously, and took pity on him at last. He kissed the top of his head through the blanket, which made him shiver, then pulled the blanket up and around him so that they were both under it. He had just enough time to be embarrassed about this before Ookurikara kissed his hot cheeks, one after the other, and smiled his quiet smile at him. Ookurikara liked him. He liked him. Had liked him for a long time, maybe. He had tried not liking him but hadn't succeeded even though he was a great sword who could accomplish anything he set his mind to. Which meant that maybe he... liked liking him. That he wanted to like him as much as he wanted to kiss him. Even though there were so many reasons not to.

Ookurikara kissed his lips and his train of thought stuttered to a halt. He did it again, softly, slowly. Without getting any tongues involved in the process which was probably for the best. "Well?" Ookurikara asked, running a hand through Yamanbagiri's hair.

"Oh. I didn't... I was distracted."

"Hm." He stroked his hair again. "Bed time."

"What, but-"

"Bed. Time." Ookurikara started to roll out from under him but stopped when he saw his expression. "It's been a long day. You're fried. I'll kiss you again in the morning. ...If you want."

Yamanbagiri clung to him for a few seconds longer before rolling away all at once and getting lost in a tangle of blankets. That was close. If Ookurikara realized how clingy he was, he wouldn't want to be anywhere near him. He may have spent all this time liking him from afar, but he would learn soon enough that liking him close-up was a lot harder to do. "...Good night."

"Yeah." Ookurikara left and Yamanbagiri resigned himself to a long, sleepless night spent rehashing today's every embarrassing misstep (of which there had been five times more than average, and the average was by no means a small number) and meditating uneasily on what it meant to like and be liked by someone.

Was it really enough to like him the way he did? Was he even allowed to like him? He certainly couldn't be allowed another day like today. Cat curse aside, even Horikawa didn't spend as much time with Kane-san as he had spent with Ookurikara today, and Ookurikara famously hated being around other people. Right. He shouldn't expect to see him again any time soon, then. Maybe... maybe just for a little bit in the morning, because he had said he would kiss him again, and he was a good and noble sword who wouldn't break a promise even if he had made it to a loathsome and churlish copy. So he would see him tomorrow, for as long as it took to get his opinion on kissing, which Yamanbagiri vowed not to drag out. He would pay attention this time so that Ookurikara didn't have to kiss him too much and so that he could hide in his room or in the secret cat nest above the laundry room without having to see Yamanbagiri, a sword who claimed to like him but didn't even know if he wanted to kiss him, for at least a week. Minimum. Maybe by next month he would have recovered enough that they could nod politely to each other in the hallway. And then maybe he could bring up sparring again. Was next year too early?

"You didn't change?"

Yamanbagiri spun. Standing in the doorway was Ookurikara, holding a pillow under his arm and wearing a pair of black pajamas decorated with red and yellow dragons playing with balls and dancing around fireworks. He unthinkingly broke his one rule of interpersonal conversation. "You're adorable."

"Thanks. You too."

And that was why he had that rule. If you commented on someone's appearance, you couldn't be offended when they commented on yours. And they'd had such a good run. Ookurikara hadn't said he was pretty even once all day. He sighed and melted into a heap.

"Change. Brush your teeth. I'm tired."

"Right. Why... why are you here exactly?"

"You were thinking too loud again. I thought... I could help. I'll leave if you don't want me here."

"I want you here very badly," Yamanbagiri said, making an effort to pick himself up. He didn't quite succeed, but at least his flopping arm movements unearthed a pajama shirt that he had only worn three or four times. He threw his jacket and shirt aside and pulled it on. "But I don't want to bother you. I know you don't like spending time with people, and if... Since you've gone to all the trouble of liking me, I don't want to do anything that will change that. Don't push yourself... Please."

Ookurikara had covered his mouth and was staring at the wall. Oh. After a bit more struggle, Yamanbagiri found a cleaner pair of pajamas and changed into them instead. He gathered blankets and a comforter and threw everything else into a heap in the cozy corner. By this time Ookurikara was willing to speak to him again. "It's not that bad. Spending time with you. You're not as annoying as most people."

"Even when I think too loud?"

"Even then."

"Huh." They stared at each other. "Do I have to brush my teeth?" Yamanbagiri said when the eye contact got to be too much.

"Only if you want me to kiss you in the morning."

Yamanbagiri went to brush his teeth.

When he got back, Ookurikara had made up a bed and was standing beside it, rocking back and forth on his toes. "How... do you usually sleep."

"Badly," Yamanbagiri admitted.

"Back, front, or side."

"Whatever I can manage."

Ookurikara stopped rocking and smoothed out a bump in the comforter with his foot. "Do you like... holding something when you sleep."

"Sometimes. Butter-chan, usually."

Ookurikara whipped Butter-chan at his head so fast that while he was fumbling to catch it he nearly missed his next question. "Do you mind... someone holding you while you sleep."

"Wh-... Ah. That would be great actually. If you're offering."

"Oh." Ookurikara glared at his own pillow. Instead of going back to get a better one or fluffing it more the way he wanted, he pulled back the covers and got in bed. "Okay. Lights off."

He flipped the switch and approached the bed. Hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence as he got close enough to hear Ookurikara's heart. It was beating way too fast, but he thought he might be able to do something about that. Setting Butter-chan aside and pulling up the blankets around it, he snuggled into Ookurikara's chest, feeling his heart slow as his arms wrapped around him. "Good night."

"Good night."

"...Do you know when we can spar next?"

"Do you have a practice room reserved?"

"No. ...I never knew you could."

"We'll go to the office and see what's available in the morning."

"Before or after you kiss me?"

The only answer he got was a brief kiss to the top of his head and the slow evening out of Ookurikara's breath. With his heartbeat pulsing steadily in his ear, it didn't take long for him to fall into blessed sleep.

(And in the morning he would be shaken awake by an irate Ookurikara, who didn't mind Yamanbagiri holding him while he slept but had not consented to Yamabushi coming back sometime in the middle of the night and turning him into the filling of a Kunihiro sandwich. But that was a problem for future Yamanbagiri.)