#and then try to do a single person party for sougo when I wake up
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The Weightless Word That Anchors You To His Side [Sougo] [Kamui]
c/w: blood, injury, violence, tons of swearing, slight spoilers for Mitsuba arc
Cross-posted on ao3
Note: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOUGO!! This is my offering to you, mister super sadist. Meanwhile, @goldenlaquer HI uh it's me the anon who asked if I could write the Kamui idea. The Kamui fic is my offering to u, thank u for feeding me so much tasty gintama content. I will not shut up about 'Who Runs The World? Sadists' and 'All The World's A Stage'. I hope this is good enough for u (and if it is can we be friends :"> okay but on a serious note, no pressure!!) Lastly, shoutout to @divinavulpes and @pen-observing for listening to me scream about how much I suffered while writing these and helping me for the Kamui fic <3
Thank u for all the likes and reblogs on my first gintama fic <3
[Sougo]
How fleeting anything beautiful is.
The maple leaves that cling onto their branches as winter starts to exhale its frost into the landscape. They all fall onto the ground at the end of autumn, no matter how much they try. When humans step on them, cracks run across their coloured bodies and are long forgotten.
His sister who was at the peak of health, yet it declined abruptly months after he left for Edo. She’s undergone countless treatments and swallowed thousands of pills. But she still left even before she had a single grey streak in her pale brown hair.
Sougo doesn’t see anything as beautiful anymore. A pair of dirt-tinted glasses he wears to view the world. Everything is shit and ugly, especially you. He makes sure he smears more mud on his dirt-tinted glasses when he looks at you.
You're just supposed to be a housekeeper who happened to take up the job opening at the Shinsengumi for the summer holiday. (Matsudaira finally decided someone needed to clean after a whole army of his men, especially with all the tamakin* lurking around.)
It's all good until Sougo bumps into you with a tray of cold soba. The soba spills all over your apron, bits of the soup staining your shirt.
With a deadpan voice, he comments, “You should keep your eyes on the path in front, mx housekeeper. Now you have to pay for another bowl of soba for me.”
You admit you weren’t paying too much attention to your surroundings and only focusing on cleaning. But the monotone of his voice ticks you off.
Pursing your lips, you attempt to be careful not to let anything too sharp out of your mouth. “I’m so sorry, I was just too focused on trying to make this place clean.”
He doesn’t break eye contact with you for a few seconds and you think he’s already going to send in a request to fire you. Instead, he holds out an open palm. You raise an eyebrow at him and it prompts him to brush his thumb against his fingertips as he mouths “money”. Scoffing under your breath, you shove your hand into your pocket and give him whatever change you have. You don’t check if it’s enough and storm off.
(It wasn't.)
Aside from cleaning, you help some of the men tidy their rooms if they request it. Your job scope does not include any of the men’s rooms because Kondo said that the men should all be responsible for their own spaces. But you don’t mind the extra work since you often finish the required tasks early.
It is all good until Sougo asks you to clean his room with a bunch of insults.
“Are you a pushover? You’re not paid to clean my room but you do it when I ask you anyway?”
You narrow your eyes at him before you turn back to wipe the shelf with a cloth. “I’m trying to be generous to a slob who has a dusty space for a room.”
He clenches his jaw because you’re right with all the layers of dust on the sliding doors and shelves.
“Generosity? Don’t kid with me, I know there won’t be any more of such shit as more time passes. You’ll laze around or leave for home early before you’re dismissed eventually.”
How wrong you prove him to be.
You help him to replace the yellowed and slightly tattered paper over his sliding door. You help Hijikata sweep up the ashes lying around in his room. You stash some different flavoured bread in Yamazaki’s cupboard so he doesn’t have to snack on anpan even on his off days. All with their permission, of course.
When they thank you in their ways, you give Sougo a look that says “how’s that, you sadistic bitch?”
Sougo snickers at you when Hijikata passes you a bowl of ramen with a mountain of mayo as thanks, filled with amusement. You force the whole bowl of ramen down your throat because you’re worried the demon vice-chief of the Shinsengumi was going to punish you for rejecting his gift.
He laughs at your face that’s gradually turning green and pokes at your queasy stomach.
(Not long later, you suppose you get the last laugh. You throw up all over him and you smirk at him while you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, albeit weakly.)
As time passes, the amount of tasks for you reduces and you’re finding it hard not to laze around. Whenever you see Sougo within your view, you wipe over the top of an already clean table a second time. The second time, you do it a little more slowly too.
When you lie in their backyard to admire the azure blue sky, Sougo’s voice bounces around the walls of your mind. Lazing around, are you?
It makes you immediately jump up to find something to do. You spit a 'tch' out of your mouth, frustrated at how you're letting a mere captain influence your actions.
Eventually, you find yourself peeking through the windows of their dojo and watching them train. You pick up a branch and try to imitate whatever you see being taught. Engrossed in your new “skill”, you forget to be on the lookout for the super sadist. The one time you forget to check if you’re within his line of sight, Sougo catches you.
“Slacking off, are you? Or are you practising some ‘special’ sword techniques to swat a fly that intrudes into our compound?”
You drop the branch, fumbling for an excuse.
“I’m already done with my work today. Besides, I could use some self-defence skills with a stick.”
He mocks you, “Please, [name]. What kind of world do you think we live in? Look, your footwork is already all wrong. You can’t just stand with your feet shoulder apart, you need to have your dominant foot forward too.”
The two of you have an impromptu session behind the dojo, him correcting your posture first. You can tell midway he decides to go spartan on you because you think he’s already asked you to swing this stupid branch 50 times. After possibly the 100th time, you start swinging the branch at him.
As he dodges your strikes, he comments, “You’re already as good as me when I was 7.”
“Is that a compliment?”
He just scoffs and tells you to think what you like to think. Right after that, he whacks your side with the wooden sword he pulls from his hip and you tumble to the ground.
(He grins as he watches you clutch your side, face contorted with pain. You swear you will defeat him one day. Perhaps you will since you start showing up to the dojo to train and you’re improving fast.)
Towards the end of summer, you start helping out in the kitchen too. On a particular day, you head out to the market to help the canteen chefs replenish their stocks. Hijikata asks you to help him get a bottle of mayonnaise from the supermarket.
A bunch of ruffians bump into you as you’re carrying bags of food back. You hear the eggs crack in one of the bags that dropped. They stare daggers at you, but you glare back at them. The guy with a red afro, who you suppose is the leader, stomps up to you. His face hovering right in front of yours.
“Hey, apologise.”
“Why? You should apologise.”
He barks out a laugh, “What a feisty kid! You wanna die or something?”
You’re about to open your mouth when a hand grabs the red afro man’s face. Whoever's behind you shoves the man away from you, causing the ruffian to pinch his nose in agony. A monotonous voice replies, “Sorry, this housekeeper is a fucking cockroach, hanging around dirty corners. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put your face so close to them.”
Sougo pulls you backwards, your back colliding with his chest. He raises his unsheathed sword and points the metal tip between the afro man’s eyes. His voice comes out low, a snarl of a vicious dog.
“Leave.”
They turn tail and run. You hop out of his grasp, fanning your burning face.
You mutter thanks as Sougo picks up the bags you’ve dropped. Sougo tilts his body towards you, his free hand cupped around his ear. “What’s that? I couldn’t hear you?”
It’s your turn to scoff and you walk forward without replying to him. On the way back, the back of your hand bumps into his way too many times.
(Sougo doesn’t see non-samurai talk back often. Maybe you’re secretly one.)
With you, Sougo forgets for a while he’s not allowed to see anything as beautiful. That’s his fatal mistake.
He only remembers he shouldn't when he sees your body leaning limply on the wall behind you, head hanging forward. It only slaps him in the face when he sees streaks of red all over your body as if the perpetrator took your body for a canvas and your blood for paint. A sickening halo of crimson starts to pool on the ground beneath you. He notices you holding a metal rod with a splotch of blood on its edge.
Sougo hears swords being unsheathed behind him. He immediately identifies them as remnants of a malicious yakuza that the Shinsengumi attempted to wipe out months ago. They start making threats that Sougo knows are empty. He makes easy work of them, unaware of the beast that his enemies see in his eyes. As he cuts them down, he notices that one of the opponents already has a bleeding wound on his head.
An amused laugh spills out of his lips.
The moment the last opponent falls to their knees, he rushes to your side. Your pulse is weak and your breathing is shallow. His breathing starts becoming erratic. He pulls out his phone. It's out of battery.
He peels off his jacket and drapes it around you. Following that, he lifts you up his back. He ignores the cuts and gashes that cry out with agony when he stands up. He piggy-backs you out of the abandoned warehouse and towards the nearest hospital.
Fuck this shit, he should have made sure his metaphorical shit-filled glasses rested securely on the bridge of his nose. Hell, he should have gotten goggles instead.
Anything mesmerising isn’t for him to keep.
His white shirt feels paper-thin today. He feels the fabric with your blood plaster onto his back.
He curses under his breath, “For fucks sake, [name]. You’re supposed to be a cockroach. If a meteorite didn’t wipe you out, this wouldn’t kill you.”
Sougo thinks he heard a weak hum in your chest.
“Stay with me, idiot. This is an order from the Captain of the 1st Division of the Shinsengumi.”
(You’re not even one of his men.)
Even with your face right beside his ear, he strains to hear your inhales and exhales. It’s hard to hear with his feet that drag themselves across the concrete.
“Is it that hard for you to stay? Did you have a death wish you told no one about?”
Unconsciously, he grits his teeth. Why did his phone have to run out of battery right at this crucial time? He should have charged it this morning. It’s your fault. It’s always because you charge it for him but you weren’t there to charge it this morning.
He feels like he’s clutching his sister’s hand beside her death bed again.
“Stay.”
It comes out like a whimper of an abandoned puppy. He hates how pathetic he sounds, but it doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no one left to listen to him. You’re slowly moving further from his grasp.
“I will.”
Your words almost get carried away by the wind. There’s a sudden push in the muscles of his legs and every part of him goes into overdrive.
He makes it to the hospital in time. You almost don’t make it, but you make it. By your bedside, his hands wish to hold yours. But there’s no urgency, no desperation for him to clutch onto your hand like he’s trying to keep your life in his grasp.
After that, he makes sure he puts on a pair of dirt-smeared glasses.
(Sometimes, when he’s feeling less of a coward, he’ll look at you through the gaps between the smears. Sometimes, he’ll remember you’re a cockroach and that you’ll show up yourself on the surface of his glasses.)
[Kamui]
Ever since you were kids, you have done everything for Kamui. Silently. So when he asked you to join the Harusame with him, you followed him without asking for anything in return.
There were many instances where you regretted joining the Harusame. But you’re thankful that you’re no longer looking out for Kamui alone. Housen mentored Kamui and you’re glad there’s someone much stronger than you he could approach. While you belong to the Yato clan too, you think (and deep down you know) that you’re no longer able to keep up with his strength. You stop sparring with him because a part of you screams that he’s going to toss you out of his squad for potentially losing to him. Due to there being other matters concerning Kamui that you have to attend to, you’re grateful that Abuto is there to clean up Kamui’s mess when you can’t.
You’re aware he has no interest in romance and he’s unlikely to ever look at you the same way you look at him. (And you look at him silently for it.) Even so, you think you can stay with him forever, status quo. It’s not as if you could find guys elsewhere because once you’re in the Harusame, there’s no way out. You can’t imagine being with all the other cluck-faced amantos in the Harusame either.
But it gives you some solace that he cares about you in some way. In the middle of wolfing down his meals, he’d stop abruptly and ask you if you’d like a bit of something he thought tasted good. He’d pull a piece of lint that’s clinging onto your hair. He even once brought back a squashed piece of manju (a poor bystander that suffered collateral damage from one of his fights) when you stayed behind to watch the ship during his visit to Yoshiwara.
He gave you the umbrella you use in fights now. He also gave you your first-ever umbrella.
You still keep it because he gave it to you. You still keep it because it was his first umbrella too. Now, it stands in the corner of your room, beside the much larger one you use now.
“Hey, why are you walking in the rain on your own?”
You sniffle, watching the vermillion-haired boy’s reflection from the puddles beneath you.
“I don’t have one. My parents left me and I have to keep my money for food.”
“Where did your parents go?”
You don’t answer him and you pick up your pace discreetly. He keeps up and continues to pester you, even making an off-handed comment on how rude you were to ignore him.
You keep your eyes fixed on the ground, unsure what the fuck is this kid’s problem. The adults barely even bat an eyelash at you when you needed them and this kid just tries to barge in to find out more about you.
Suddenly, the rain stops. No wait, it didn’t. You still see ripples on the puddles ahead of you and the sound of droplets hitting the ground. You look up to see Kamui stand close next to you, tilting the umbrella to favour your side.
“You can have mine then. But in return, you have to be my friend. Makes up for not answering my questions too.”
When you reach your door, he shoves the umbrella handle into your hand and sprints off into the downpour.
A few days later, he comes back to your place with a slight cough. He comes back again the next day. And the next…
The problem you have is that no one seems to be able to reign in his lust for battle. He doesn’t care for you enough to do that. He probably cares the same way a group member would care about another useful group member in the project.
(He still asks you why you keep that worn umbrella, especially when you’re no longer using it. You don’t tell him it’s the only gift from him that came from him when strength was not all that was in his head. It’s a gift from the Kamui who had space for both you and his ambitions in his heart.)
Abuto says that you’re their best bet in persuading him to learn how to pull the brakes, but you haven’t so far. It makes you want to launch yourself into space and run away from this godforsaken crime syndicate. When he returns to you with blood-soaked sleeves, you don’t know how much longer the dam of your tears will hold. You pray with your entire being, to whoever’s still listening to you, that they're all blood shed by the enemy before he undresses for you to treat him. You pray in silence.
Of course, some of it is blood shed by the enemy. But the bloom of red on one side of his shoulder is a gunshot with a bullet you have to pull out before it closes at godspeed. A crimson river flows down his forearm and you have to stitch his skin up.
Even after umpteen times, you still feel the heat in your cheeks when you examine his toned and refined body. But the cuts and splatters of dirty blood make your worry curl its witch-like fingers around your windpipe, making you forget about how he's shirtless.
Kamui says there’s no real need to patch him up. But even if he’s not hurting, you are. The Yato are meant to fight, but you wish for once, he’d stop throwing himself into battles as if nobody values his life.
You lock up all your lamenting and tuck it in the deepest corner of your mind. It’s not like he’ll value what you say to him. You continue to stick by his side as if there’s super glue between you two.
But even with time, super glue can be worn down. You feel something in your heart snap when he walks into your room with the head of a spear lodged in his back that he couldn’t pull out. That dumb smile still on his face. What the hell are his subordinates doing letting him walk around without removing it?
Ever since you were kids, you did everything for Kamui silently. You give him the last piece of manju you wanted for yourself without protest. You bandage up his cut-littered arms, holding back your tears when you think about the bullies so he wouldn’t hear your sobs. You spar with him after a long day, biting back whimpers when his wooden rod grazes against your skin.
But this time you tell him to fuck off. The smile on his face falls a little. In Kamui’s mind, you never swear. You make it a rule not to look at him until you’re out of his sight.
“You having a bad day?”
You ignore him, grabbing your shawl and draping it over your shoulders. He’s standing in the middle of the door, blocking your way. You shove him off with your shoulder and see him flinch at the corner of your eye. You dig your nails into your palm.
Kamui grabs your wrist with an iron grip.
“Where are you going?”
You try to pry your wrist out, but his grip tightens.
“I’m leaving the Harusame.”
There’s no delay in his question. “Why?”
“I’m done with you.”
Kamui clenches his jaw, trying to keep that grin plastered on his face. He tastes metal on his tongue. Your fingers find their way to your shirt and you crumple a portion in your fists. He chuckles with his mouth closed, the forced laugh thrumming about haphazardly in his chest. Instead of relieving the tension, he feels the echoes of his laugh suffocate him.
“Fight me. If you win, I’ll let you go.”
As you try to take a step forward, he jokes with a feigned spring in his voice, “It’s an order by the way. Can you believe I’m using my authority right now?”
You bite your lip to push down the lump in your throat, but the tears come flowing out anyway. He’s always talking about how your potential is wasted. You’re leaving and this is probably all he’s thinking about. Make full use of [name] before they go.
“Go ahead and kill me then. I’m done. I’m fucking done watching you waste yourself away on the battlefield. I’m done feeling like I’m the one who got stabbed when it’s you.”
You start to choke on your words and sob. In between sobs, you scream, “I’m sick of wondering when you’ll stop showing up to get yourself patched up.”
You heave and exhale, the frustration rendering you unable to form words for a while.
“I joined you because you asked, but you don’t even care about me because you can’t do the basic thing of taking care of yourself.”
(Oh, how he means the world to you, too. But you’re probably just a pawn in his whole scheme of getting strong. Silence still follows you here because you zip your mouth when the thought pops in your mind. Maybe silence is a curse because you wish you dared to say that.)
When you regain your composure, you say, “I’ll get executed by the Harusame for leaving anyway, so you can have the honour of killing me in a spar before they do.”
You think your bones are on the verge of cracking like your heart.
“You’re being fucking unfair, Kamui. Let go. I’ll fight you, that’s what you want, right?”
It’s one of the rare times Kamui stays silent. Should you be grateful you’ve witnessed him shut his mouth before your death or should you desire him to answer you? You throw your fist towards his face. He stops it with his palm, a loud boom reverberating.
“Stay.”
The word drops out of his mouth like a pin falling off a table. You almost miss it with the noise and the whirring of the engine that kept you up for many nights when you first joined. You almost miss it with how raspy his voice is. The word clinks against the ground and its echoes roar over the machinery in your ears. It holds your feet down like a boulder that you can’t kick off or lift. Unconsciously, his grip on your wrist loosens.
The other hand that blocked your fist holds onto your shoulder. His touch is still rough as if it only knows how to make someone keel over, but you can feel him hold his strength back.
You mutter, “How do you expect me to stay in this shithole when you don’t make it any better?”
You hear Kamui inhale as if he’s about to say something, but stops as he chokes on his words. He falls to the ground on his knees. You crouch down to his level and look him in the eye.
Whatever light that was left in his eyes is snuffed out. He’s dropped the pretentious smile he always wears and in its place, a bittersweet curl of his lips.
“You’re the only one left to protect.”
You don’t move for a moment, your mouth slightly parted.
The man in front of you is no longer the bloodthirsty captain of the 7th division. He’s the boy who sat by your side after yet another heavy downpour. The same boy staring into the distance (not even the horizon but instead into another rundown building) with dejected eyes, telling you he wishes he could have protected his sister from the bullies.
You slide your wrist out of his grip and he abruptly looks up, expecting you to walk away from him. Instead, you embrace him in a hug.
You whisper, “Will everything end when you reach the top of the world?”
Kamui’s arms circle your body tentatively. After much hesitation, his palm rests on your back while his arms go lax. He only nods, but it’s timid. You hover your fingers over his wounds on the back, over the wound with the spear.
“And when will that be?”
He doesn’t have an answer for you. He thinks of a couple of answers. When you guys rise to the top of the Harusame? When he defeats that silver-haired samurai down on Earth?
He doesn’t answer you.
Maybe you’re asking too much from him all at once. After all, you’ve never asked anything much from him before.
“Pick your fights, will you? The ones that are just slightly more challenging. This is the last time I’m pulling a spear out of your body.”
#okita sougo x reader#okita sougo imagines#kamui x reader#kamui imagines#okita sougo#kamui#gintama kamui#gintama x reader#gintama imagines#gintama writing#gintama#souglia.s#I cannot believe I wrote 2k for each of them#the word count was so unplanned#going to pass out for 12 hours now#and then try to do a single person party for sougo when I wake up
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