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Souji, who remembers when Hijikata's hands smelled of nothing but water and blood, is the first to notice.
It must be strange, and almost thrilling, to brush close and catch it: mint and skin. His eyes widen, enough for Hijikata to notice that Souji has noticed, but nothing else is said.
"Is that for me?" Souji asked later, with darkness shrouded all around, the soft blankets of the futon beneath their skin, still half-draped with haphazardly opened kimonos--obis tossed across the floor near a screen with no purpose. And Souji will press his cheek to Hijikata's hand and stare up at him with wicked-dark eyes and ask again, "Is this for me?"
Hijikata's bones are heavy, dense with the smell of newly-laid out futons, thicker for winter, and how Souji smells of the dojo and slightly of sake from dinner. Underneath it all, he smells mint, pressed against Souji's mouth, against pale, soft lips.
He remembers what the men say about Souji, between jokes or drinks or behind Souji's back as he sways--and Souji never walks, just drifts places--into the distance: how their voices lower and their grins grow leering. It's not the lack of women; there are women to be had in Kyoto. It is Souji's grace, and something more--it is in the white kimono and his wide, bright eyes, how he looks younger than he ever was.
But the advances are kept for the most part to various pages of various captains, the younger members of the Shinsengumi, restricted to wondering and little else. Souji knows where he makes his bed, and so does the rest of the Shinsengumi.
It is a slow, slick-tender slide of tongue on skin that drags Hijikata's awareness back to the moment, and when he blinks, the world clears.
Souji is there, right there, no further than the tugging of an arm or the collar of a kimono. With those dark eyes shining with something: fame, admiration, adulation, a combination of dangerous things that should not exist between them anymore, maybe never should have existed at all. But Hijikata remembers being younger than now, the way that Souji swayed into and out of his field of view, and how after Souji had been pinned like a butterfly once, he always fluttered back, the same blinding, tantalizing whirl of awareness that keeps Hijikata slightly off-center, unprepared.
"Hijikata-san," Souji murmurs, and it is with eyes drifting closed and into his the skin of Hijikata's palm, "what are you thinking?"
Hijikata thinks of bitter herbs and the low, familiar grind of stone on stone: of the old mortar and pestle from the shop his uncle owned, and how the neighborhood women would make an effort to visit and catch his eye--it didn't matter that he was fifteen. Hijikata thinks about the books he pours over now, as if trying to relearn things in greater detail, and how nothing new emerges, like the intervening years between then and now have been nothing but repeats of what people knew eras ago. Hijikata thinks about the hours he spends between meetings and training and how his study smells nothing of ink anymore: only bitter herbs--and mint that he sends Tetsunosuke to buy in the morning, at no mind of the extravagant expense.
Suddenly, it is important that this be more real that it feels, and Hijikata slides his other hand behind Souji's neck, cupping the back of his head. The skin there feels warm, fragile, achingly alive. It is with a low growl that he jerks Souji up, hard enough to make the younger man gasp as he crushes their lips together.
It is not a friendly kiss, or a romantic one. Souji has taught him that oftentimes love removes both, and Hijikata tastes desperation as Souji's mouth opens to him, soft and sweet like a deadly flower.
*
Once upon a time, Souji smelled like rainwater and grass, young and sweet inside the way he manages only on the surface now. Hijikata remembers the way that the men drank in the sight of their newest member: nine years old, with the soft-angled face of a pretty girl with the mischief-loving mind of a boy, and wide, almond eyes.
Two months later, Hijikata had Souji removed from general Shinsengumi sleeping quarters.
"You're spoiling the boy," Serizawa said.
And Hijikata, lighting his pipe and closing his shogi doors later that night realized he didn't care whether he was or not. He smoked and fussed with the kimono one of the serving-women had carefully tucked around the boy and watched Souji sleep, body curled up into a tiny ball, pale wrists still bearing dark purple bruises the color of his eyes.
It had been an easy decision then, after seeing the way that two of his men had limped during morning practices, and how Souji looked haunted, shy, red-faced in front of all those leering soldiers, clutching his shinai for dear life.
"Hijikata-san?" Souji had asked, waking the next morning drowsy and sweet with sleep. "Why--?"
He'd released a mouthful of smoke and watched it melt into the sunlight. "Only until we can arrange for separate quarters for you," he'd answered gruffly.
Souji, with an abominable kind of trust, had just smiled hesitantly and curled up to sleep again, sighing into the kimonos that draped him, eyes gray under heavy lids.
That has never changed, the way that Souji crept unwillingly to sleep, body slowly surrendering to exhaustion and eyes settled on Hijikata, as if memorizing him. He'd asked Souji what he was trying to stay awake for, why he always woke so early, only to be told that there was so much to see, so much to learn and remember for later, so much he couldn't bear to miss.
This night is no different, with Souji lingering in the wrinkled futon, rich kimonos in haphazard flashes of color, of dear silks and satins, hand-embroidered with ocean waves and sunrises: things Souji has memorized in his waking hours and dreamt of during night.
But Souji is no pretty-faced boy of fourteen anymore, and this affair should have ended years ago. Hijikata is more than old enough to have taken a wife and had children, and Souji well on his way toward it. Souji will be a good father, kind and patient but firm, a happy marriage for everyone involved, for he will be the same sort of kind and patient with a woman.
He'd broached the subject once. Souji didn't talk to him for a week, but was seen in suspicious proximity with his idiot page's older brother. After six days of sheer stupidity, Hijikata simply dragged Souji out of practice, slammed shut the doors of his room, and made damn certain that no one was entertaining any ideas that such frivolous behavior would be tolerated.
"What will you do when I am gone?" Souji asks. It is a fact, a growing awareness, not something that Souji will lie about, if he's ever lied about anything at all.
Hijikata growls, obstinate and angry, and with seeking hands, crushes Souji's slender body to his own. He feels all their angles and flaws, the scars and sores from too many years living like this.
"The exact same things I do now," Hijikata says, partially out of bitterness, and partially of truth.
Souji sighs into his shoulder and sleeps.
Hijikata stays awake through the night, drifting off as dawn seeps into the room.
It was always Souji, he thinks distantly, that made him change. And with no catalyst, Hijikata will simply remain as he does always. Ever waiting, planning, and arranging. There will be no reason to write bad poetry or smoke and lounge in the afternoon, nor excuses to skip meetings for hasty, giggling kisses in corners, or indulging Souji's sweet tooth with afternoon trips to the market place. There will be no more divergence at all, only straight lines and vertices.
Souji, Hijikata reflects, is one long, soft curve, and this dream they live is just an intersection with a passing ray.
*
In another life, Souji may have been a scholar, a musician, an Onna-gata in some musical troupe, and Hijikata may have always been a pharmacist.
In dreams, Souji wanders into Hijikata's shop seeking something for a cough--and Hijikata hates that, how the specter of it hangs over his head in sleep as well as waking--and Hijikata presses packets of herbs into Souji's white, pale hands, and gives him a sprig of mint. In dreams, he hears water and sees Souji's eyes widening in sweet, childish delight.
In dreams, there is no metal smell of blood or glint of steel.
Hijikata only betrays his principles only in dreams, and that is a trespass he can forgive himself.
*
Souji never sleeps in unless he is feeling particularly ill. It is a dissonance which Hijikata finds completely intolerable, as being awake at dawn is totally counterintuitive. Why choose shivery clothing early in the morning and the shouting of the men when there are better things to be had: sleep, and drowsy caresses.
But Hijikata admits that Souji is beautiful in morning light, and that the gold that streams into the room at the opened shogi suits no one and no moment better than the graceful line of Souji's body, backlit against it.
And then the day wears on with intrigues and dangers, secrets and a slightly-less-incompetent page than before, letters to write in cryptic language, and Souji to entertain when he isn't feeling too poorly.
Sometimes, Hijikata finds Souji in the dojo, running his fingers over the practice shinai that he has not picked up in training for months now. It is surrendering awe that he finds in Souji's eyes, acceptance and awareness of the current state of things, if not contentment.
Hijikata does not ask if he Souji misses it, the glint of his blade, the slide of steel and the aftertaste of blood that it leaves in his mouth--he thinks he might be afraid of the answer that Souji will give him. He knows that whatever Souji says, it will be the product of Hijikata's errors, his mistakes and misgivings, of poorly made first decisions, and stumbling ones thereafter. When it comes to Souji, Hijikata has always been too little too late, and there are indelible marks like those bruises on Souji's wrists so many years ago, burned into Hijikata's memory.
"If you'd never taken me with you," Souji says, with no reason or rhyme that day.
"Yes?" Hijikata asks, waiting for the inevitable, wandering thought. Of the possibilities. Of better results. Of a different world, shaped by Souji's words, unmarred by Hijikata's failure.
Instead Souji smiles and leans against his back, warm and too-slender.
"If you'd never taken me with you," he repeats. "I wouldn't know you."
Hijikata decides this is the most foolish thing that Souji has ever said, and he grunts in response.
So Souji curls around him, peering into his face with large, honest eyes, "Don't you think that'd be too sad, Hijikata-san?" A pause. "If you and I had never known one another?"
And like always, this changes things again, shifts them into an alternate perspective.
This time, Hijikata remains silent, just strokes one hand down the curve of Souji's face.
It's enough to say all the things for which he cannot find words.
"But it's not forever," Souji murmurs.
"No," he agrees.
"You're not sweet at all." Souji stretches his arms, catching them around Hijikata's neck, fingers playing in his hair. "Not sweet at all."
*
But for the moment, Souji is still here, and he reminds Hijikata of this fact with a butterfly kiss, trailing down the line of Hijikata's shoulder.
Hijikata isn't sure where Souji learned all of these things, because this chameleon-like ability to change from a swordsman to a child to a lover was not a skill that Souji found in Hijikata's lessons, that he derived from the Shinsengumi. Perhaps, Hijikata thinks sometimes, pinning Souji like the butterfly that is his mouth, Souji is charmed, touched, blessed with something otherworldly, an ephemeral quality that makes him all the dearer.
Souji reaches one hand to Hijikata's brow, fingers calloused, for all their deceptive paleness.
"Hijikata-san," Souji murmurs, a childish plea, for all its sensuality.
"You don't want me to say it," he murmurs, gruff and torn, hands braced on the futon on either side of Souji's flushed face. There are red and green and gold kimono scattered all around them like drowning fall, melting summer, spring in full blossom: leaves and grass and flowers.
Souji runs thin hands up along Hijikata's back, fingertips digging into his shoulders, thighs insistent and strong on either side of him--and with a clever snap of his thin hips, Souji is making Hijikata gasp, suffering horribly, incapable of breathing, everything amplified.
"Hijikata-san," Souji whispers again, more desperate this time, wild with it. "Please."
It is a question, a request, and Hijikata provides, acquiesces, as he does each time.
It will be worse now, Hijikata knows, biting back a moan and burying his face in Souji's shoulder as he presses them together one last, desperate time, smelling mint and medicine in Souji's long, long hair, the lavender folded into the futon. It will be more terrible, painful in greater degrees, and he will ache, Souji will ache, and neither will want to go. Tomorrow will be a waste, and Souji will sleep in from an illness in his chest, in his heart, and Hijikata will clutch him like a jealous child, and not want to release him.
But Souji wants this, needs it, maybe, and Hijikata says it over again, letting the words spill from him like tears that will never come and he lets his fingertips mark bruises all over Souji, like so long before.
Hijikata thinks that if he tries hard enough, he can carve the words into Souji's skin, and then it will last--long enough.
It is all that he can do; the best he can do.
And in the morning, Souji will be silhouetted against the yellow light again, burned against day until the radiance blurred the lines of his body and he disappeared in the shuttering of an eye, gone like the last vestige of a passing dream.
There will be, burned into Hijikata's fingertips, the memory of this, of them, of each and every possibility, and how they all end.
Souji says, "Hijikata-san," and Hijikata stays stubbornly silent.
"I will wait," Souji adds, barely a whisper. "I'll wait."
And Hijikata sleeps with the weight of two promises, and wakes up to the sound of a bird's wings.