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souglias · 8 months ago

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Remember To Throw Your Expired Milk [GINTOKI]

Just because an era has passed, doesn't mean everything from then is lost.

c/w: self-indulgent, may have some timeline inaccuracies, mentions of the Joui War, mentions of injuries and scars

Gintoki x gn!reader (reader is implied to be smaller than him for a small part)

word count: 4.7k words (I'm sorry guys)

note: This fic serves an outlet for me, so when I mean self-indulgent, I really mean it!! Please let me know if you think I missed any content warnings. Border is a cropped frame from the Gintama The Final movie :)

cross-posted on AO3 (accessible from my profile)!

All likes and reblogs are appreciated!

The morning before you leave for the Joui war is a chilly autumn, with the last leaves barely hanging onto their branches. The four of you were to leave together: You, Gintoki, Takasugi and Katsura.

This particular morning, it is just you and Gintoki in the abandoned house that Takasugi and Katsura also lived in. Both of them have gone out for a bit. You didn’t know for what, but the house feels a little empty without the two.

Gintoki is keenly aware of you standing behind him, your eyes burning holes into his hands that are tightening his headband. He is about to attach his sword but decides to drop his hands to his sides instead, shaking them.

With his back still facing you, he spits, "Go back to Edo tonight. You have no use on the battlefield."

The monotonous banter, usually akin to a relentless fly, stings this time. It takes only a moment for him to realise the possible weight of his words. Tentatively, he looks over his shoulder at you.

Gintoki doesn't know if he is more than a friend to you, but he would carry all your burdens and sorrow if it meant you wouldn’t enter the battlefield with them. If he has to choose his life or yours, he will choose yours. He would do anything if it meant that you would tease him about his natural perm or jab him playfully at his sides again.

So, when he meets your unwavering yet melancholic gaze, he breaks the eye contact that barely lasts. His feet become a little heavier each time he sees you with that face. The more he trudges forward, the more he has to lose.

"I'm not useless. You know I can fight. Didn’t know you had such a shit impression of me."

You can, and you fight well.

“But you don’t need to fight. You should protect your ass when you can and live. You’ve always been a scared kid anyway. Oh, who was the one who used to be intimidated by me?”

You retort back, but there’s no bite in it. “Shut your ass trap. I’m not chickening out now. You sound like the one who’s scared now.”

Gintoki’s heart is trembling. He sees the grim reaper preparing for its shift to make rounds and he does not want to see you among a pile of corpses.

He flicks your forehead, takes your headband anyway and wraps it around your head. You too, carry the same pent-up fury from the Kansei Purge as everyone else. You have your grievances to air in your way too. Hell, if you asked him not to fight, he would have called you an idiot and ignored you.

His arms hover around your head as he ties a knot securely at the back of your head. Your head is almost on his chest, and his mind wanders to how close you are to him.

“It hurts.”

“Ah, sorry.”

His hands move to loosen your headband, but you rest one hand on his forearm to stop him. You stare straight into his chest and your free hand fidgets with the side of your pant leg. Gintoki realises that you are thinking about so much more than the headband.

If he could even be audacious, he thinks he knows what you are thinking of.

He tries to think of something to say. For a split moment, he even considers a hug. Even though it’s not something he has ever been good with. But before he gets to do anything at all, Takasugi creeps up from behind him.

“I can’t believe you guys. Getting all touchy-feely before the fight?”

Gintoki immediately steps back, creating some distance between the two of you. He hurls some insults at Takasugi and the two of them bicker. When Katsura returns, instead of breaking up the fight, he joins in their nonsensical argument that is not even about the two of you anymore.

You take in this scene and etch it in your mind. This is the perfect time to have time halt if it is ever possible.

The four of you set out when it was time. As you attach your sword to your side, Gintoki comes up to you with his faux nonchalance. His eyes wander everywhere for a bit, one of his hands rubs the back of his head and the other seems to be lost on what to do. "You already know this, but do me a favour and buy me some strawberry milk on your next trip to the convenience store again. Keep them in the fridge.”

He pauses as he watches your face shift from confusion to understanding.

“It has to be the Azuri brand one! Don't you dare drink it."

Your hand resting on the handle of your sheathed sword tightens.

“Okay, you better fucking come for it.”

Gintoki catches you with that melancholic smile again. He bumps your arm gently with his fist. Noticing you walk with less of a drag in your feet, he assumes it is good enough.

(You are always so difficult for him.)

Sometime towards the end of the Joui war, when the bodies all start to pile up and the soldiers are all weary, he loses sight of you. His eyes can no longer find the silhouette he has become so familiar with and his ears cannot find the rhythm of your steps that he has memorised by heart. You do not return to base when night falls.

The voices all say you’re dead and gone, but Gintoki tries to protect the flickering flame of hope in his heart as he continues to fight. You promised him a carton- no, cartons of strawberry milk. You are far from stupid to take a promise to the afterlife with you.

But when the Joui war ends, he disappears, just like everyone else. Along with the dying fire in his heart that he wilfully thought he could protect. Hope is a heavy thing to carry after all that has happened.

The Amanto, who had kept you in a dark room for what felt like weeks, releases you into a world you are no longer familiar with. You find out that it’s only been days and that you were originally to be executed the next day.

The sky is cluttered with more spaceships and the sun feels a little more cruel than you knew it to be. You walk with no aim, looking back now and then, thinking that you hear familiar voices. It goes on till the sight of the convenience store you frequented with your friends slowly pulls you back to reality. The weight of your emotions kicks in when you hear the welcome chime of the store. Your wounds start to weep and your muscles burn as you limp towards the refrigerator of cooled drinks.

With a throat full of screams you bite back, you place a few cartons of strawberry milk from the barren refrigerator of the convenience store into your arms. Large ones to keep in the fridge, small ones in the event he wants to bring it out. The counter staff asks you if you are okay while he packs your purchases, but you simply brush him off.

As you drag your unwilling feet into the town that spells a lonely journey into the future, the carton of strawberry milk treads too to its expiration date.

(How naive of you, to think Edo would be the town you could call home with everyone you cared about and the one man you loved.)

You wander within the city after you receive treatment, searching for a sign of anyone you know. Eventually, you traverse out of Edo.

Whenever someone mentions the Four Heavenly Kings, you find your spirit to be lifted, only to be let down without fail. It is a name that strangers use so freely and carelessly. The four you know are now only legends, reduced to mere tales. They are unreachable, even as someone who has grown with them. You start to think maybe they are dead. Maybe you have just been searching for a time that has ceased to exist.

(Besides, you may have escaped death when you were released, but you think a part of you died that day too.)

It’s a long time before you force yourself to get your shit together. When you return to Edo, you see wanted posters of Katsura everywhere, the corners already peeling. One, hangs on by a small strip of tape, at a lamp post outside a humble ramen shop on the outskirts. You get a job at this ramen shop, and you stare at Katsura’s mugshot as you work until the poster gets blown away one day. With your pay, you get by and live in a simple rented apartment nearby.

When you finally bump into Katsura himself, you think you’re seeing the distant light at the end of the winding tunnel. He manages to fill you in on a bit, but takes off soon due to his predicament. The bare, discreet conversation you have with him ends up doing the opposite of what you hoped, whiffing out the little hope you carried instead. Sakamoto is assumed to be in space, which makes you a little relieved knowing he’s living his dream. But, the fact that the whereabouts of Gintoki and Takasugi are still uncertain makes you feel you’re still at square one.

Despite the time that has passed, you still see Gintoki in many things. The Shounen Jump on the shelves. Anyone with their permed hair, even if it’s clearly artificial. And especially those fucking cartons of strawberry milk you keep. They are an anchor to your past and their tarnished, rusted edges dig into your skin. You want to throw them out so bad, but you can never bring yourself to. You stay at square one with these rotting cartons for the passing seasons.

On a chilly winter afternoon with snow that’s taking its time to fall, you find Gintoki when you pass through Kabukicho. Walking past Snack Otose, you catch a glimpse of a head of silver in your peripheral vision.

You don’t recall when this… Yorozuya Gin-Chan came to be above Snack Otose. But you always pass Kabukicho in a hurry. Maybe it has always been there.

An old lady talks to him at his door, blocking him from your view on the ground floor. But you wouldn’t mistake that natural wavy perm of silver, even though all you see are strands peeking out from the sides of the old lady.

When she walks off with a face of frustration, you withdraw into a nearby alley in a flurry. You take in the scene of Gintoki with his exasperated look. He scratches his head a little and sighs, before he goes back inside. You take it as your sign to leave.

(Gintoki sees you. And he isn’t ready to talk to you either. Not with the way your fists clench. He immediately guesses what you’re feeling, if you have not changed immensely into someone different. He shakes away the urge to approach you and convinces himself again that just knowing that you are alive and warm is enough. He is content.)

The snow does not stop even when night falls. When Gintoki returns home, he turns the television on and stretches out with his feet propped up on his work desk. The doorbell rings and he sits up. His heart throbs, in anticipation for a certain someone. He tames it. Expectation is a potential recipe for disappointment.

When he opens the door, he finds you carrying two plastic bags. Your hands are very tightly wrapped around the handles. You refuse to look up at him.

“What? Asshole crawled back up from their grave? Not happy with what you got?”

You enter the house wordlessly and he shuffles out of your path. You drop the bags on the coffee table, causing a loud thud to resound in the room.

“Hey hey, the landlady downstairs is going to complain. She already came up bitching about the rent earlier this afternoon-”

“I owe you something. Did you forget?”

You pull a small carton of strawberry milk out of the bag and set it on the table. It is worn from weather and time. You rip open the top of the carton and the straw gets yanked out of the plastic, soon finding itself in the opening.

Shoving the carton into his chest, you gather the courage to look him in the eye. The carton starts to wrinkle even more from your tightening grip. You hold it tighter, as if it would stop your tears from welling.

He notices the expiry date printed on the carton, which was more than one and a half years ago. His hand wraps around yours and he doesn’t let you slip them out.

“I don’t forget what people owe me that easily. Even if I died, I would demand for the guardians of hell to arrange a delivery to get them from you.”

Your grip loosens a little when you notice the soft, subtle smile on his face. There’s a lump in your throat again and you take a few deep breaths to stop it. The sound of the television fills the silence between the two of you for a bit.

“A little less than a year ago, I crossed paths with Zura. He told me both of you disappeared and didn’t know where you were.”

The next few words almost escape him. It makes you feel small and helpless to say it, even though he was right in front of you. “I thought maybe you died.”

A stray tear streaks down your cheek. He gently pries the milk from your hands and sets it down on the table.

(He thought you died too. Sure, without realising it, he started to carry hope in his heart again. But it felt like the weight of the world sometimes, and he had to carry it by dragging it across the ground. The possibility of you being six feet under rang so loud in his mind.

It only became lighter when he bumped into Katsura for the first time a few days ago. It was when he heard about you from Katsura. Gintoki headed down and watched you work in the ramen shop from the other side of the road. He left without approaching you. He didn’t know what he was going to say to you. Besides, seeing him could reopen old wounds and he didn’t want to do that to you. And just maybe, he was a little bit of a coward when it comes to you.

But he guesses it is all futile. You found him after all.)

With his thumb, he brushes your cheek. You notice scars on his arm that you don’t ever recall him having.

“You worry too much. It takes a lot to kill me.”

“But it hurt, didn’t it?”

It did. Even now, the wounds on his soul throb a little. He thinks he’s underestimated how much he missed you. “They’re just scratches.”

You inch towards him and put your arms around him for a hug. He tenses up at your touch, but he manages to loosen up and pats your back gently until you stop crying.

“Did you cry like that when you found Zura?”

“No.”

A stray smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t waste your tears on Zura.”

“So you’re saying it’s worth it to cry for you?”

Gintoki’s eyes dart off in another direction. “No. Don't cry for me again.”

The way his sentence seemingly hangs thickens the air between the two of you. He scoffs and sits down on the sofa. Refusing to make eye contact with you, he rubs the back of his head and frowns.

He is still the Gintoki you committed to your memory and love. Even as time passes, he still has the same habits. Even though his fashion sense has changed, you still see him adorn the same shades. You can still see the pureness of his soul even with the haze of time. Despite the tears, you find a hearty laugh rising up your throat. So you let it out.

He freezes upon hearing your laugh and realises that he has not heard something so genuine from you for so long, even from before the two of you parted.

As he runs his fingers through his natural perm for the last time and stands up, he suggests, “Let’s go to the supermarket. We should get new cartons.”

You glance at the clock. “Sorry, maybe not today. It takes a while to get to the supermarket and I need to get back to my apartment too. I live on the outskirts.”

“I’ll send you back. I have a scooter now.”

“Wow, I assumed you couldn’t pay rent. Where did you get the money for that? Did you rob a bank? It’s well within the capabilities of the White Yaksha.”

His eyebrow twitches. “Quit yapping and move along. I bargained hard and relentlessly for a lower price.”

As both of you make your way to the scooter, you continue to make more snarky comments about how he got the scooter. When you see the scooter, you decide to make some more comments about the scooter, though you actually think it is a fine thing. He smacks you on the head, eliciting a giggle from you instead of what he thought would be a retort.

“Your home is so damned far away, you know,” Gintoki complains as he turns on the engine.

“You were the one who offered.”

Without much thought, you tease him as you sit behind him, “Then, where should I stay? With you?”

You realise what you’ve asked and you’re about to make a comment to brush it off. But Gintoki plops a helmet on your head before you can do so, and starts the scooter. As he begins to drive off, you place your hands tentatively on his waist. He throws a glance over his shoulder at you. “Hold on tight and don’t let go.”

It doesn’t take long for you to get used to your hand on him and he can feel your tense hands slowly relax. With his eyes on the road in front of him, he’s not 100% sure, but he thinks you’re leaning in a little.

(The scooter doesn’t go as fast as those flashy sports cars the rich use to zoom around town. But you still get to the convenience store a lot quicker than you expected. It’s too fast, you feel like you will never have enough time with him.

Even though he is right in front of you, the lost time makes the vast distance between the two of you so clear. It is one that you cannot cross now with your arms, even if you gathered the courage to wrap them wholly and tightly around him. The thought that he might disappear again will gnaw at you for a while.

That night, he pays for the strawberry milk. The two of you take the last two cartons of the Azuri brand he very much prefers. You take your time to sip on it during the ride, watching his wavy hair let loose in the wind and catch the lights of the slowly dwindling traffic around you.)

Gintoki gives you a face when he looks up from the grocery bag on the coffee table. His eyes fill with incredulity and his lips downturn dramatically. "What is this?"

You put up an air of innocence, teasing in a sing-song voice, "What's what?"

"THIS!"

He pulls out a carton of milk from the grocery bag with two fingers gripping it and waves it around hysterically.

"This is plain milk!"

"You're stating the obvious."

He drops the carton back into the grocery bag and yells out in exasperation, hands grasping at nothing in the air. You stifle a laugh.

"Still gives you the protein that you so absolutely love in your strawberry milk, doesn't it?"

He plops down on the sofa and crosses his arms. Eyebrow twitching, he begins a lecture.

"Listen [name]. Plain milk is not the same as strawberry milk. Strawberry milk is NOT just syrup or sugar getting added into milk."

You nod, pursing your lips so as not to let out a laugh at the bewildering he says and the ones he might say.

His doctor highly recommended that he cut down on sugar. Based on your internet searches, strawberry-flavoured milk has more sugar than plain ones. And because you love your boyfriend so much, you decide to take it into your own hands to buy plain milk which would be much better for his health. Watching him become exasperated over it is just a huge cherry on top.

Sensing that you found his reasoning ridiculous, he whines and throws himself face down onto his sofa. You don’t bother to suppress your laughter when he starts kicking his feet.

Out of nowhere, he jumps off the sofa and slides his wooden sword into his belt. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You offered to buy it because you planned this, right? Because the doctor said I had to reduce my sugar intake.”

How dare you, his beloved, commit such an act of betrayal to him! He adds a little shout in between his rambling. Then, adds, “Sugar is life, [name]! We have to go buy them now!”

He tugs at your arm and you refuse to budge. Initially, you reason that he can’t leave the house because Yorozuya’s opening hours aren’t over yet. As he tugs harder, you start to mock him for having such a sweet tooth, how he’s weak for being unable to go by without strawberry milk and how ungrateful he is for you. He retorts back saying you shouldn’t have backstabbed your boyfriend like that, and there’s nothing sinful with having a sweet tooth. In the end, he lifts you by your waist with his arm and out of the house into the spring evening. Conscious of the looks of onlookers, you smack him on his back harder and harder till he complains about how it hurts and puts you down.

Gintoki continues to lecture you about the strawberry milk as the two of you walk to the convenience store that opened months ago. In the five-minute walk, you let him go on about the difference and hum now and then as an indication that you are listening. At the same time, you imagine the pink cherry blossom buds overhead. You imagine the falling sakura blooms around him. A mental image of the blossoms in his silver hair surfaces.

When he finishes his sentence, you comment, “I think you could be a strawberry parfait too.”

“Huh?”

It’s now your turn to talk in this walk and Gintoki sees the vision you’re having. He’s about to make a dirty joke, but you jab him at his side before he can say it.

When the two of you enter the store, he runs straight to the refrigerator. You trail behind him, already finding his arms full of large and small Maiji milk cartons although it has only been one minute.

It has become normal for Gintoki to take the Maiji brand carton without a second thought. You can no longer find the Azuri brand milk in Edo anymore, and possibly the whole of Japan. It took him a little getting used to and some whining to you, but he has come to enjoy it.

When you watch him try to arrange and squeeze everything into the basket, you think maybe your plan to help him cut down on sugar has backfired. Mans simply trying to stock up at this point. You end up having to do some convincing in that narrow aisle, with some other shoppers, for this manchild to put a few back.

From the refrigerator to the cashier and back to Yorozuya, Gintoki keeps pouting. You poke his cheek with his free hand, but all you get is a “hmph”. He’s not going to give in so easily! It takes so much more than paying for his sweets and saying he looks like a strawberry parfait!!

You think about offering to pay for his parfait, but you tell yourself not to give in to him. You want him to live a long life and die of old age, not go out way before his time in agony because of sugar.

Gintoki plops down at the corner of the sofa when the two of you return to Yorozuya. He starts reading the latest copy of Shounen Jump with one leg crossed on the sofa, sipping loudly on his milk in an attempt to irritate you. You sit on the other corner with your drink and magazine you bought yourself earlier, and you prop your feet on top of his lap. He smacks your feet once, but he lets you be as he always does. On other days, he enjoys doing it to you too.

Every now and then, you look up to see him engrossed in his manga. Sometimes when you blink, you still see images of the past versions of him with Katsura and Takasugi at his side.

You get up and give him a kiss on the cheek, before heading to the stairs outside. He’s a bit caught off guard, but you leave him to process it.

On the street downstairs, a few kids scramble around, presumably to head home. Your mind wanders to the three boys you grew up with. There are still days you think you wake from your nap in the classroom to the three boys duking it out in the dojo. But when your bleary vision in the morning clears and you notice that the ceiling above is different from the one at Shoka Sonjuku, reality settles. It’s just a ruckus made by some kids outside. You stare at the ceiling, remembering that Takasugi is at large with his new comrades. You remember that Zura now has his own faction, which both you and Gintoki reject his relentless invitations to. You remember that Shoyo-sensei is gone.

You hear the sliding door open behind you and Gintoki leans on the part of the ledge beside you.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Gintoki notices you running your finger back and forth on the grooved surface of the ledge. He places a kiss on your temple. A little hesitant at first, but he goes for it. He then shifts behind you slightly, resting his hand on top of yours. With his steady frame behind you, you lean back a little on him.

(Gintoki wonders what Shoyo-sensei would think about the two of you. Hopefully, he approves, even though Shoyo had witnessed him disturbing you in class and outside of it. Hell, Shoyo even thought Gintoki was bullying you at one point and Gintoki had gone to lengths to prove otherwise. He would also argue that he was teasing you to get you to break out of your shell. Though in hindsight, maybe he had been a little mean about a few things.)

The wish to return to the bygone days still squeezes your heart with its agony. The days that Shoka Sonjuku was your home. Its invisible hands still try to grasp at the memories that are becoming ever-distant and drifting away in the stream of time. It is always the worst when you find resemblances that you find hard to ignore.

But everyone has found their place in this new era, including you. The night he dropped you off after reuniting, he asked you’ll come to Yorozuya again. You said you’d try, but no promises because it was far. Though, as you watched his receding figure ride back into the brightly lit town you once detested, you knew you would.

You're glad you did. After all, you found a place with Gintoki. A place, in this still unfamiliar city, that you can finally bring yourself to call home again.

If you've come this far, thank you so much for reading this self-indulgent, monster of a fic <3

#sakata gintoki x reader #gintoki x reader #sakata gintoki #gintoki imagines #gintama imagines #gintama x reader #gintama #souglia.s #my gintoki lovergirl era really hit this hard #this is my saddest era too esp bc of the songs I've been listening to while writing this #now I have other monsters to face aka my final assignments #still can't believe I spit out 4.7k worth of words for this man #I am very downbad for him #when I have the time watch me yap about the themes and shit and stuff I couldn't include

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