Work Text:
It wasn’t an easy task to make Sakata Gintoki seem small.
Sure, he did almost die dozens of times and he had most definitely been depressed before – hell, the moments where things were actually fine were rare to this day. There were days, more days than what he would ever admit, where living felt like the heaviest burden he could carry – and, to an extent, that’s what it was, simple as that. What it had been. Undeniably, he could only carry it all because he had people holding his baggage with him when he needed the most; a silent yet clear agreement he had made with the kind souls around him (a kindness he most times didn’t feel like he deserved at all, but that’s for another time).
Still, no matter what, Sakata Gintoki had always been someone to look up to: not because of his habits – those were, in fact, not to be followed. Ever. – or his moral sense, but because his presence had always been the kind that filled the entire room. Not with brightness, though; something about him was impossible to ignore – something that lied somewhere between heaviness and warmth. His sole existence was heavy, but not heavy enough to drag you down with it. Just enough for other people to recognize it. He wore his burdens on his sleeve, maybe without even noticing it, so that other people could trust him with their own. After all, how else could so many people rely on a weirdo wearing only half of a yukata they’d just met? Sure, plot convenience happens, but if it gets to that point without any kind of explanation, that’s just bad writing.
A certain tax robber once referred to him as someone you would probably hate the second you meet, until suddenly you’d realize whatever he was doing to you, you most probably needed it. Even if his actions felt bitter or annoying. That was just his way of dealing with things; doing whatever he could to be on the sidelines, keeping his distance, trying his hardest to be small: to be nothing but a little push. He had never been a savior of any kind – and he would never be one. Maybe not even a helping hand, since those were too dirty for that. All he wanted was to live, and occasionally, drag someone else to the idea with him, if needed.
When he was, indeed, needed, though, there was no living or dead creature able to make him give up. That was the reason why, no matter how much he’d try to act cold, to shrink, before he’d be seen as anything other than small, it all just made him look even bigger. Like he would never fade away.
That was the kind of person Gintoki was. He was never small. Even when he was a mess, no matter how hurt, be it getting his balls kicked or being pierced through with a sword, and no matter how scared, be it listening to scary ghost stories or seeing a loved one in despair. Even when he tried with all his might to be anything but big.
And even when he was curled up in a ball, covered in a fluffy pink blanket while hugging poor Sadaharu’s white fur (he was definitely lucky the dog was a heavy sleeper). He wasn’t scared at all! In fact, things seemed to be getting calmer, so maybe, just maybe, it was already time for him to get u-
But once more, for the god knows how many times already, the whole living room was brightened up by lightining, which was followed by a very loud thunder and almost made the man’s precious wavy hair straighten. Damn you, Toushi, for suggesting a ‘horror storytelling session’. What the fuck is wrong with the police of Edo anyways!?
He tried to focus on how badly Sadaharu smelled, or how disgusting the rice Kagura dropped two weaks ago looked right beside him on the ground, next to the giant dog. He even thought about how pissed he was at Shinpachi for staying with his sister at a time like this - because yes, even if he was just a 16 year old, he still was the most responsible person inside the house and having him around was comforting – but it all came back to Sougo’s sadistic voice, going on and on about evil spirits who stalked white-haired old men everytime the rain would fall over their heads. As a last resort, he tried to look up to say something to Kagura, who was sitting on the couch tediously flipping through the pages of a shoujo manga, but right at that moment another lightining striked through the place, making him quiver and go back to his initial position, covering his eyes with his strawberry-themed blanket while quietly humming the Doraemon theme song.
And just like that, the rain kept falling, and the sound of the thunder kept creeping inside his ears. It wasn’t exactly nice, but it wasn’t all that bad, either. Not because he had secretly never been scared of it in the first place – nope, he was scared. It was fucking creepy. – but because those were the moments he felt the strongest. Not when he hurt himself to protect the people he loved, or when his sword ceased an enemy. Gintoki felt the strongest during the moments he could curl up and tremble in fear besides people he trusted, because it reminded him what all of was for: so that they could have moments like those. So that, sometimes, he could be small for once. Small enough to hide from the thunder in Sadaharu’s fur. Not that he wasn’t going to make the Shinsegumi pay for scaring him on purpose, though.
It wasn’t an easy task to make Sakata Gintoki seem small. And Kagura never liked shoujo manga.
It wasn’t an easy task to make Kagura seem small.
Sure, she was physically a fourteen year old girl, but no matter how anyone looked at her, she was Kagura. And nothing about Kagura was small: from her mouth to her stomach, from her courage to her kindness. She was never meant to be small – in fact, such thing had even caused some stormy arguments between her and Gintoki, when he deemed Earth itself wasn’t big enough for someone like her. But that didn’t matter anymore because, despite it all, she stayed. He stayed. He stayed.
Still, Kagura hated thunderstorms – or anything rain-related, really. And as heartwarming as she felt about the closure of that incident with Gintoki, it was hard not to feel upset sometimes. That was too close – he was too close to leaving. And she was too close to being left behind. It’s not like she wanted to remember, she simply had no choice; her body had an immediate response to the rain. Which is why she hid herself behind a crappy shoujo manga she had found inside Gin’s closet, trying to stay calm. She only had to wait a bit, so she could feel a little better. She only needed a few minutes to distract herself from the raindrops out the window. If it wasn’t a nightmare, she could handle it by herself. Probably.
Mixed thoughts entangled through her head, while a plain-looking female heroine cried out before her eyes. She wasn’t really paying attention to that silly manga – they were all the same, anyways. But when she turned pages, the phrase ‘Where are you going?’ in a big, full of desperate crying onomatopoeias was hard to ignore, like she did with the rest of the dialogue; being followed by an also plain-looking boy’s back, walking away also didn’t quite help. That’s stupid, she thought. A lightning striked. Her grasp tightened around the paper, just a little. And the next page was almost as white as the next lightning strike, with a very small caption in the middle that read ‘This isn’t good enough for someone like you.’
Finally, Kagura’s attention was fully caught: she eagerly devoured the pages and cries and plain-looking drawings and onomatopoeias, her tiny hands messing up and crumpling the manga as she anxiously flipped them as fast as she could. Everything felt way too familiar – being left behind felt too familiar. It was a feeling she didn’t know how to digest yet, but she had to keep reading no matter what.
Inbetween one or another poorly written argument, the thunderstorm seemed to accompany her journey: getting as messy as the manga’s plain-looking protagonists – and herself – felt at the moment, the raindrops growing more and more intense, the thunder louder each time. At some point, she could barely differentiate her own heartbeat from the thunderstorm, her body working hard to keep up with her chaotic thoughts; ‘Why would he do that?’ ‘That doesn’t make sense. She’s crying too much.’ ‘What an asshole. I hate him, uh-huh.’ ‘Why would he leave?’, that is, until a familiar yawn interrupted her, bringing her back to her senses for a brief moment. She gazed at Sadaharu, who had just adjusted himself and went back to sleep immediately.
Staring at his white fur made the rain feel a little lighter. Her eyes wavered between the manga and their living room: going from a very clean and cute girl’s bedroom, to her messy closet; from various plushies and perfumes to some of her dirty clothes lying on the ground – a fairly common scene inside the Yorozuya, especially when Shinpachi wasn’t around – together with an unfinished sukonbu she thought she lost two days ago, and some grains of rice she dropped probably even longer before. There was a tremendously clear contrast there, of which caused a bittersweet feeling on the Yato; because, even if she would never be able to be as sweet as that damned shoujo protagonist, she too was left behind. So what was the criteria, if not the blood that ran through her veins? At least that she knew for sure it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Not for him. But what else?
Besides not being barely even close to a normal girl, everything inside that apartament screamed ‘You can’t go back now’, because she was everywhere. Kagura’s presence was there, even if it through... unpretty methods. For the first time, she felt like there was no rain that could wipe away her traces from her home. Not again. Not anymore. He couldn’t run away at this point.
Right?
Finally, she looked at Gintoki’s trembling body, laying together with Sadaharu. Kagura was never meant to be small – and even when it wasn’t exactly easy to be tough, it wasn’t like her to hesitate. She knew she wasn’t the only one in the room who wasn’t fond of rainy days. But just as she was about to take a deep breath and get up, his voice echoed – cutting through the thunderstorm like it could destroy it in a single blow (if needed, it really could).
"I thought you hated shoujo manga." was all he said.
With her pride just a little bit hurt for not being fast enough, not being the first one to reach out, she managed to answer a high-pitched "I do." only to continue after some silent seconds, "I thought you were scared of the thunder."
"Hijikata’s gonna have to do way better than that to make me scared." Just as the sentence was finished, another lightning striked. Gintoki wasn’t trembling anymore, as his well known dead-eyes expression was back. He just stared blankly at her. "Are you finished with the crappy manga?" he asked, his voice not particularly soft, nor anything else.
"Yes, uh-huh. I just finished it. It was disgusting. The protagonist is stupid and ugly, uh-huh." She said, picking her nose to show indifference. Gintoki did the same, their movements almost syncronized.
And they fought. Not verbally or physically – they fought for control, silently. Both trying to be the bigger one, waiting for the other to give in and be comforted; but they were both too proud.
After all, it wasn’t an easy task to make Sakata Gintoki nor Kagura seem small.
At some point, the man got up, blanket on his back, and walked calmly towards Kagura, only to wipe his snot on her pink pajamas like it was routine (it was).
The girl was about to punch him in the face like it was routine too (it was), but once again he was quicker – throwing his stupid strawberry blanket on her, and getting inside it himself, sitting on the couch besides her.
Then, like he had a switch turn on again, he abandoned his indifferent demeanor and went back to trembling, even if just slightly.
It wasn’t an easy task to make Sakata Gintoki seem small – and yet, there he was, as small as he could be.
Because no matter how much they fought, trying to prove they were both big, being big was tiring. And with time and patience, they both learned the most precious moments were the ones where they could be small.
Kagura stared at her own hands, and transferred all the loneliness and hate and fear and anger into the the blanket she was gripping tightly.
It wasn’t an easy task to make Kagura seem small – and yet, there she was, as small as she could be.
Because truth be told, at some point she was gonna be forced back into being big, as she had always been – and so would he. They were both so used to being big, it was hard to admit what they needed the most was to be small for each other; but once they did, being small suddenly became the easiest mission they had ever been into.
The thunderstorm didn’t cease anytime soon – their lives weren’t romantic enough for that kind of crap to happen. But this time, the rain didn’t have any blood on Gintoki’s hands to try and (to no avail) wipe, neither did it have any piece of Kagura to take away from her.
As they cuddled, both hiding away from the storm, strawberries and some white fur here and there before their eyes, the rain was just rain. And nothing would change.
The rain was scary. And they were small. And nothing would change.
Nothing would change. Nothing would be wiped away.
When they woke up the next morning, with back pains and stomachs screaming with hunger, a warm tea lied on the desk in front of them.
Gintoki observed as Kagura got up and screamed at Shinpachi, begging for food. Pointing out how she missed his housewife chores being done – how she missed him, actually – and complaining about her guardian’s old man smell and lazyness. Basically the warmest welcome he would receive. Meanwhile, Sadaharu didn’t lose any opportunities, immediately taking a crap on the kitchen floor and making Shinpachi scream in desperation, running as fast as he could to find a newspaper, which he failed at and ended up just grabbing the closest thing he could find, one of Gintoki’s JUMP.
Now he was the one getting up and screaming, trying to save Luffy from the dog’s poop and not to kill a minor in his own house. And the ever so familiar chaos felt just as warm as Sadaharu’s crap.
Nothing changed. And deep down, he was looking forward to the next rainy season – he was looking forward to being small, and to letting Kagura be small, too.
There was a long way still, for him to deem himself deserving of any of that, but he would keep going for them, until, someday maybe, he’d be able to keep going for himself, too.