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He repeats the same line to anyone who approaches him. Anyone other than himself, Mitsutada or Tsurumaru, anyway. The more he hears him say it, the more he starts to wonder about it.
“Is it like… a catchphrase or something?” Taikogane Sadamune asks out of the blue, standing in the kitchen on dinner duty, a half peeled potato in hand, that Mitsutada notes has remained just half peeled for the last two minutes. “Kara-chan’s thing.”
“What thing?” Mitsutada asks, continuing to peel potatoes in spite of conversation being made. Instead of joining him in this, Sada waves his potato vaguely in the direction of the kitchen door.
“His thing,” he repeats, clearing up nothing. “You know, the-” and here, he lowers his voice and tries to emulate Ookurikara, “-’I don't intend to get friendly with you’ thing.”
“Ohh, that? I don't think so, although he says it enough that it probably could be.”
“Right?” Sada agrees, the sad, half peeled potato still in hand. “But if it's not that, then I don't get it.”
“Kara-chan has been like that since he joined us,” Mitsutada tells him, setting his umpteenth peeled potato aside to peel yet another while Sada's remains neglected. “He’s stubborn about it.”
Sada isn't particularly satisfied with this answer, much like how Mitsutada isn't satisfied with leaving a potato half peeled. He plucks it out of the others hand, meeting no resistance as Sada’s brow furrows in thought.
“Is it an aesthetic thing? Maybe he's going for the cool, lone wolf image?” he wonders aloud. “He’s not actually unfriendly, and I don't think he's shy.”
He's not so sure on the shy part, but he knows that Ookurikara is definitely not unfriendly. Not actually unfriendly anyway. He might give curt or one word answers, or both, and acts put out, but he still goes along with a lot of their urgings, ideas and antics, and he's even caught an ultra rare hint of a smile on his face before at the height of some of Tsurumaru’s shenanigans.
“I think Kara-chan needs to be more honest,” Mitsutada replies, finally freeing the potato of the last of its skin to join its peeled brethren. “Why don't you ask him?”
He doesn’t, half because he’s pretty sure Ookurikara won’t give him much in the way of an answer and half because just outright asking him seems like it would ruin the fun or mystery of the whole affair. That’s another thing Ookurikara has going for him; the way he doesn’t talk much gives him an air of mystery, too. Sada likes talking to him in spite of this though, even if he does most of the talking.
Really, from the moment they first locked eyes in these forms, there's never been a question in his mind about it. He likes Ookurikara. He likes Micchan and Tsuru too, obviously, but with Ookurikara it's different. He's more interested in him, in more ways than one. It’s not just the air of mystery or the whole lone wolf thing.
He’s learned a lot about him over the few weeks he’s been in the citadel. He’s a hard worker, for starters. He’s cool and capable on the battlefield. He’s good with animals. He can chop onions without crying. He likes rubber ducks in the bath. He's cool, calm and collected, handsome, and yes, he does suit the lone wolf image.
What he’s also noticed and learned is that a lot of other swords in the citadel tend to not know these things about him. Instead, they seem to be buying into him being a lone wolf, unfriendly and even unpleasant. Ookurikara doesn’t seem to care. Sada, however, does. He knows him better, he knows he’s not actually like that, and, he decides on the spot, he won't stand for anyone thinking otherwise, and he's not going to sit around idly and just hope or wait for change.
“Too bad,” he smiles after a minute of silence, with Mitsutada looking over at him questioningly. “Guess I’ll just have to intend to get very friendly with him.”
He does, and he intends to make sure everyone knows Ookurikara’s true colours while he's at it. He'll take his chances whenever opportunity rears its head. Whether it be in the kitchen, in the fields, in the citadel or beyond.
Even if beyond includes on the field of battle.
He likes being on expeditions with Ookurikara. He doesn't talk much when they're on them, not that he talks much outside of them either, but they work well together anyway, wordlessly understanding one another. They take enemies down with style, and he knows Ookurikara looks effortlessly cool while he's at it. Naturally , he aims for the same but that wasn’t the point at hand.
Others aren't so good at working with Ookurikara. His stand-off-ish attitude has fooled the others involved in this expedition at the very least. He can see it in the way they glance at him, how they seem reluctant to engage him in conversation. Also probably because he doesn't reply or uses his catchphrase whenever they do.
It’s a fairly run of the mill expedition. It’s not particularly challenging, but being a newcomer Sada has a lot to prove. He also needs to get used to having and fighting in an actual body of his own, but the important thing is that he needs to prove himself capable, and to do so in style. Unfortunately, fighting is a messy affair and his determination results in casualties. Casualties to fashion, anyway.
“Ugh,” is the best remark he has upon finding one of his sleeves has been torn in the last skirmish. “My outfit. This is totally not cool.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Yagen tells him, from where he’s perched atop Tonbokiri’s shoulder, inspecting some berries or leaves or something on the higher branches of a tree. “They can be repaired when we get back to the citadel. You too.”
Yagen is right, but it’s no consolation while he’s out here and having to wear it. Looking up at Yagen, who has told the rest of them that he’s checking to see if the tree holds a particular kind of leaf, berry or something that could be used for medicinal purposes, Sada wonders if it’s just because he likes to feel tall or be carried. Sada himself suddenly wants to know what the world looks like from Tonbokiri’s height, but that’s also not important right now. The other idea is.
“My outfit has been ruined ,” he complains, loudly. “Kara-chan, carry me.”
Ookurikara, who has been stood apart from the rest of the group from the start of the expedition, looks back at him. Sada holds his gaze for a few seconds before flapping his ruined sleeve at him to prove his statement. It takes a moment for Ookurikara to take the bait and he sees him glance at his arm at last.
“Are you injured?” Ookurikara asks him, rather than sympathising with his outfit plight or agreeing to carry him. Sada looks at the blood staining his sleeve, the red bright and obvious against the white fabric, before looking the rest of himself over. There's a lot of blood. The outfit situation is worse than he thought.
“Kind of,” he realises as Ookurikara starts walking over to him to check out his condition firsthand. “Most of the blood isn't mine, but some of it-”
“Just get on,” Ookurikara tells him, turning his back on him at the last minute and dropping down on one knee, allowing him access to climb onto it. Sada doesn't need telling twice.
He's a lot more considerate than people seem to think he is. He can tell it's surprising to some of the others on the expedition with them. He's also warm and has a strong back, and absolutely no problems carrying him around. Also he has long legs. Sada would try and see if he could carry Ookurikara in return, only being a tantou apparently meant you ended up with a body with shorter legs. His legs were fabulous, but definitely shorter than Ookurikara's.
Ookurikara carries him without complaint with his longer legs, from where he picked him up on the battlefield all the way back to the citadel, and even the repair room. He’s more than a little pleased when he overhears one of the Toushiros, in passing, talking about it later that evening.
The present day is way different to the days where they were simply swords, used by their masters of eld. There are all kinds of customs and traditions that cropped up over the centuries in between these time periods, and more still from places outside of Japan that were celebrated all over the world now. He'd been having to learn about them pretty fast, when it seemed there was another one to address every other week.
As soon as Winter hit, everyone in the citadel that had joined earlier than him had started excitedly talking about one of them in particular, and it wasn’t the imminent new year. Talking about it had turned into starting to bring out decorations for it, and there were a lot of decorations for it. Quickly, everything had turned into lights, glitter and action. The action was mostly trying to put up all the decorations, and there was a lot of glitter, and then a whole lot more glitter when Tsurumaru got involved, and even more still when he'd joined in with him. When everything had descended into fun and chaos, he'd been one of many victims of ‘glitterbombing’’ and he’d decided that he liked this Christmas thing already.
Then he'd been handed a decoration by Monoyoshi, who had been merrily explaining what it was and its significance to him when someone untouched by the glitter carnage entered the room to deposit a box on the floor, someone who would have been more than happy to slip away unnoticed if he could. As it stood, Sada wasn't about to let him.
“Kara-chan!” he calls. “Quick, come here!”
Ookurikara looks over at him to meet his gaze, looks him over, looks at the branch in his hand and then meets his gaze again. His expression is unflinching, but Sada can feel the questions he wants to ask hanging in the air between them. Tragically he doesn't ask them out loud, but he does turn to face him, as though he might be lured over.
“What is it?”
“C’mere and I'll show you!”
Ookurikara hesitates before giving a resigned sigh and walking over to him, stopping to stand in front of him. Sada takes the opportunity to reach the branch up over his head and points to his own lips with a grin.
“If you stand under mistletoe with someone you have to kiss them.”
Ookurikara stares at him. Sada stares back. No kiss comes.
“This is mistletoe, by the way,” Sada tells him, shaking the mistletoe a little over his head by way of explanation, dislodging glitter from his sleeve in the process. Unperturbed even by this shower of sparkle, Ookurikara is unflinching.
He lets the silence hang between them until Ookurikara finally gives in to ask him; “Why?”
“Because Christmas.” Ookurikara doesn't look satisfied with this answer, so he continues; “It’s tradition or something. But those are the rules.”
“I'm not interested in Christmas,” Ookurikara tells him, predictably, and still not leaning down to kiss him. Rude. He's already rolling his eyes as Ookurikara continues with; “I don't want to get involved.”
“Christmas is a time of year, you can't avoid it,” he tells him. “And you’re already involved, you’re bringing in boxes of decorations.”
Ookurikara still isn't looking convinced, but he isn’t arguing this point either. He also isn't moving out from beneath the mistletoe though.
“C’mon , it's all kinda cool and flashy, right?” he tries. “ Just like your favourite person. I'm more stylish, though. Don't tell the tree.”
“Hm.”
“Don't pretend you don't like it.”
“I’m going to go get more boxes,” Ookurikara decides in lieu of admitting to liking it and Sada starts to wonder if Micchan might actually have been right about him needing to be more honest. That, however, wasn't the priority right now.
“Gotta kiss me first.”
“Why?”
“I already told you, those are the rules, so come on, let's do this.”
Ookurikara stares. Sada taps his own lips with a finger for good measure. Still, Ookurikara doesn't bite. Or kiss him. Instead, he turns to leave.
“Oi,” Sada calls. “I just told you-”
“There are still boxes left,” Ookuikara interrupts him, looking back over his shoulder towards him. “I was doing that first.”
Sada stares. Ookurikara stares back. Slowly, Sada’s brow begins to furrow in consideration. It feels like some kind of trick or provocation, but still he asks;
“What, so you’ll only kiss me after the boxes are all down?”
Ookurikara doesn’t answer him. Not in words anyway. But the tense silence and staring that follows in the wake of his question is answer enough for Sada. Slowly, he reaches back to stick the sprig of mistletoe in his ponytail for safe keeping.
“I'm in,” he declares, “Show me the boxes!”
There are so, so many more boxes left than Sada expects there to be. It’s not that he has any trouble hauling them, but bringing out the decoration boxes is a lot less fun than bringing out the decorations themselves. Next year, Sada is determined to drag Ookurikara into decoration duty rather than box duty.
It’s not until he’s already settled down for the night in his futon, the lights out and the silence of sleep sweeping across the citadel, that he remembers something else he was determined that Ookurikara was going to do, this year rather than the next. It’s with the realisation that he sits bolt upright, the sound prompting his roommate to look over to him.
“Sada-chan?” Mitsutada questions. “Is something-”
“I’m going to Kara-chan’s room,” he declares, struggling up and to his feet. “Don’t wait up, Micchan.”
Mitsutada looks perplexed, but he doesn’t rise from where he’s lying, and Sada doesn’t wait long enough to see if he intends to do so. Instead, he rushes next door, not bothering with pleasantries like knocking and instead lets himself into the room immediately.
“Oi,” he starts in lieu of a proper greeting, to the head poking out from a pile of blankets. “ You were supposed to kiss me.”
Ookurikara doesn’t reply. He does, however, roll over to face him. Sada maintains eye contact with him as he steps into the room, sliding the door shut behind him, before raising a finger to point to his own lips.
“K-I-S-S,” he spells out. “Pucker up.”
“You forgot the mistletoe,” Ookurikara points out, correctly. Sada can’t actually remember when it left his hair, or if it had been taken out or had fallen out somewhere along the way. It’s a tragic loss, particularly when Ookurikara is deciding to fixate on this point.
“You didn’t kiss me when I did have it,” he points out. “You owe me a kiss from back then.”
“Is that one of the rules?”
“It is now.”
Ookurikara doesn’t look convinced. Nor does he look like he’s going to get up and make good on his kiss tab. Instead, he rolls back over as though he’s going back to sleep. Sada isn’t willing to just let him do so.
“Oi,” he tries again, crossing the room to drop down next to his futon. “Kara-chan, kiss me.”
“I’m tired,” Ookurikara tells him. “Tomorrow.”
Sada would argue that kissing isn’t exactly like running a marathon, and that he’s already fobbed him off once already but now it’s becoming a challenge. One that he’s going to rise to. Letting this determination set itself in the silence, he eventually clicks his tongue in annoyance before tugging at Ookurikara’s bedding.
“Fine,” he accepts, “Tomorrow, for sure. Move over.”
Ookurikara moves to make room for him without a word, and lets him climb into his futon with him.
“Sada-chan,” Mitsutada addresses him over breakfast. “Did you spend the night in Kara-chan’s room?”
It’s a question that turns a few heads at the table, especially following the story that Ookurikara had given him a piggyback on an expedition days earlier. Unperturbed, Sada gives a nod.
“Mm, yeah,” he confirms. “I did. Sorry I didn’t let you know.”
“No, it’s fine,” Mitsutada insists. “Did he set up a futon for you?”
“Nah I just got into his,” he replies, trying to paste as much jam as physically possible on a slice of toast. “Turns out sharing a futon is actually warmer than adding more and more blankets.”
“Ohh!” Tsurumaru exclaims, drawing attention to himself having just entered the room, questionably carrying a yari that definitely doesn’t belong to him. “Now that’s a surprise!”
“Me getting into his futon or the body warmth?”
“The futon thing,” Tsurumaru clarifies, “Think he’d let one of us try it too?”
Somehow Sada doubts it, mostly because he’d suspect Tsurumaru of being up to something, which to his credit he probably would be. He probably wouldn’t let Mitsutada either and Sada realises he’s glad of it for some reason. Maybe he just doesn’t want to share. Taking a bite out of his toast that is now more of a side dish to his main course of jam, he reflects on the fact it’s Ookurikara himself rather than just his body warmth.
And that reminds him of that promised kiss again. Scarfing down the last of his jam and toast, with only the slightest look of concern from Mitsutada about his sugar intake, he rises to his feet.
“Hey, has anyone seen Kara-chan?”
“He was on kitchen duty this morning,” Mitsutada tells him. “He might still be there.”
“Awesome,” he replies, already rushing out of the room, a man on a mission that calls back; “Thanks Micchan!”
Ookurikara is still in the kitchen. Before Sada can even open his mouth, his target preempts him with a:
“Not right now, I’m washing dishes.”
Okay, it’s a valid reason, Sada thinks. But it’s also yet another delay to the kiss he’s owed, and it’s not the last. He’s willing to wait outside the kitchen for the other to finish up, and the next excuse he gets is that Ookurikara says he needs to get changed, because his shirt got wet while doing the dishes. After that, it’s that he still needs to eat breakfast himself. By the time he finishes eating and then tries to insist he needs to go speak to the saniwa about something first, Sada is convinced he’s just being fobbed off.
“What, do you just not want to kiss me?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ookurikara points out, which is true, but he’s definitely acting like he doesn’t. Sada is also starting to realise that this might bother him too, and that he definitely wants Ookurikara to kiss him. It might not be about the mistletoe anymore.
“Then just kiss me already,” he demands, hands on his hips as he stares the other down. Or up. Uchigatanas definitely got longer legs than tantous did. Ookurikara has nice legs, his brain decides to provide, but that really wasn’t important right now. Ookurikara looks back at him, saying nothing. It’s at this point that Sada looks up a little higher and has an idea.
He wants Ookurikara to kiss him, sure, but it’s more that he wants to kiss him in general. In spite of his best efforts, which mostly involve dangling a stick over his head and nagging, Ookurikara still hasn’t kissed him. Looking at the sprig of mistletoe hung in the doorway over where the other is stood, Sada realises something. That something is that he doesn’t have to wait for what he’s aiming for.
“Oi,” he calls, and Ookurikara turns back to look at him. This time, Sada doesn’t follow up with words. Instead, he grabs the front of Ookurikara’s shirt and pulls him down to his level and within reach. Instead of demanding Ookurikara kiss him, he kisses Ookurikara instead.
He definitely doesn’t taste as sweet as jam, but Sada thinks he might like this better. As he lets Ookurikara’s shirt go, he opens his eyes to find the other-
“Hey,” Sada says, his mouth faster than his brain. “Are you blushing ?”
Ookurikara doesn’t say if he is, but he does straighten himself up abruptly and raises an arm to hide his face behind. Suddenly Sada wonders if he actually is shy after all, at least in one way. A slow smile spreads across his face.
“By the way, you still owe me kisses.”
“You-”
“I kissed you ,” he agrees. “But you still owe me some kisses.”
Ookurikara meets his gaze again, and he holds it with a grin. He expects an excuse, but this one is slightly different to the ones before it.
“Not… here.”
“Got it,” Sada grins at him. “But I’m charging interest by the minute. You better start preparing yourself.”
It is like a catchphrase. Ookurikara acts stand-offish with most people, and insists he doesn’t want to be friends with them. He can even seem convincing until he’s seen with Taikogane Sadamune, who makes sure he’s seen for who he really is.