Work Text:
They’re drinking tea, like adults. Like they’re decent people, normal decent adults with a functional relationship. It’s not even the first time, that’s what irks Gintoki. It’s a regular thing for them, these days. This is something they do.
They’re friends now. Anew. Like old times, or maybe different. But real friends, and not the kind that try to kill each other sometimes. Good friends. Actually it’s kind of strange, and a bit scary, how fast and how close they became when Takasugi came back to life and into Gintoki’s orbit. How easily it came to them. The old banter, the easy complicity, the trust. They just fit. Takasugi comes to see him whenever he is on Earth on one of his business deals that Gintoki wants to know nothing about. The cycle of rebirth didn’t allow for Takasugi to be any less shady than in the past. But for the most part he’s an ally now and welcome in Gintoki’s house; they’re old buddies, they’re increasingly chummy in ways that make Gintoki’s heart sing with joy and his blood boil in frustration.
Because they’re the kind of people who share very grown-up cups of tea, these days. So civil and well-adjusted and… friendly. Don’t get Gintoki wrong. It’s good, it’s very good. Gintoki is… happy? Which is weird. A novel state of things for him. Frustrated, but happy. It’s very good.
But there’s a heat wave in Edo and they should be drinking something cold —at least cold tea— in this weather, not sticking to the ritual, just because the ritual has served them well so far and they are both too chicken to disturb it. In case that ruins the miraculous peace of this their second (third?) attempt at friendship.
He and Takasugi, they are cowards like that. Always have been. They’ll charge against a whole army on their own, outnumbered and already bleeding, they’ll think nothing of missing limbs and fallen comrades, but they won’t dare suggest cold drinks in case hot tea is what is holding their relationship together now. They don’t dare suggest a nudge into a different kind of relationship, either. So they’re stuck in this impasse, stalemate, and Gintoki is happy with that, deliriously happy because Takasugi is alive and in his living room sipping hot tea in scorching weather and frowning like he, too, was wishing they were brave enough to change to beer.
Who knows, maybe they’re being greedy, wishing for a cold bottle of Asahi on a hot summer afternoon. Gintoki feels greedy wishing for something more than Takasugi breathing and breathing in his general direction, and more than his general direction, sitting pretty close together on the couch, actually. It seems petty, that he could get frustrated at such a wonderful status quo.
“What’s that?” Takasugi asks, pointing at a cheap-plastic toolbox by the bottom of the couch. Takasugi has a way of showing his curiosity in a demanding, short tone. He was like that as a kid, Gintoki reflects with annoyance and relief.
“That’s a scam, that’s what it is!” Gintoki snaps, grateful for a distraction, remembering the events of the disaster of a morning he’s had. “I was roped again into working in that damned barbershop because we ran out of rice yesterday and instead of paying my wages he gives me…tools of the trade,” Gintoki air quotes this last part. He knows he’s too old to pull air quotes off, but it’s a new annoying thing he’s getting from Zura because he got it from former-princess Soyo. Zura and Soyo also taught him what a “situationship” was and Gintoki swears he’s in one right now.
“Gintoki. Next time you run out of rice, tell Kagura to text her brother,” Takasugi tells him. “He’s more flush these days than he likes to pretend.”
“That’s not the point of the story!” Gintoki replies, even though he makes a mental note because that’s actually good advice from Takasugi. He can definitely extort some alimony from the Yato pirate with the sister complex. He pulls the tool box on his lap and opens it, showing the baffling contents: it’s mostly useless dreck, a curler, a shaving machine without batteries, zero combs for some reason, but there are three different kinds of scissors Gintoki cannot tell apart and why would you need three. “He said this was worth thousands but I tried to pawn it and no one wanted this trash.”
Takasugi sips his tea thoughtfully, watching Gintoki through half-lidded eyes. It makes Gintoki’s skin itch, Takasugi’s gaze.
“I can’t imagine a worse choice for a hairdresser than you,” he comments. “Maybe the Yato.”
Gintoki huffs —it is true that Kagura gave customers more concussions than haircuts this morning, just from the hair-washing alone, but hey, no need to point that out. He needs to retaliate somehow.
“You could do with a haircut yourself, your hair has gotten all gross.”
This is a bald-faced, absurd, criminal lie. It’s true that Takasugi’s hair looks extremely uncomfortable in this heat, much longer than usual and sticking in odd places from lack of care, and stuck to Takasugi’s sweaty skin. It looks uncomfortable and hot. Not hot as in weather hot, hot as in Gintoki wants to put a lock of that sweat-dampened hair in his mouth and chew on it for hours. Takasugi lets out these little annoyed grunts when hair gets stuck on his brow and he can’t brush it away on the first try and it is the cutest thing ever and Gintoki wants to lick his forehead. Gintoki’s imagination is very much into licking right now, with this heat and Takasugi’s skin all wet and shining like that, like it’s daring him to put his tongue against it. Takasugi’s skin is definitely issuing a written challenge for a brave samurai to pick it up and lick the hell out of Takasugi’s neck.
Look, Gintoki knows he is a sex maniac. He’s a total pervert and he has been obsessed with Takasugi since they both hit puberty, but he also believes in the objective real truth that Takasugi looks objectively really sexy in summer with the hair a mess from sweating and almost down to his shoulders because he’s too busy with his probably-still criminal activities across the galaxy to get some proper grooming.
“Ugh,” Gintoki reaches across the couch and grabs a handful of Takasugi’s hair between his fingers and grimaces. “Yikes.”
Takasugi swats his hand away casually, never missing a beat, as if there was no pause of years of violence and death and tragedy between the troublesome child rivals that they once were and the two proper adults sipping tea in Gintoki’s living room right now.
They slip so easily into their old personas and that means being terrible at boundaries and annoying the shit out of each other and being all touchy at random moments and withdrawing completely the next. Gintoki remembers wiping his snot-covered hand (okay, sometimes grosser things than snot got there) on Takasugi’s cheek just to piss him off one moment and then not talking to him for the rest of the day because they fought over some dumb shit. They were entirely too familiar with each other in the past so now that Takasugi is back in Gintoki’s life they are drifting back into that dynamic and, as if he was still sixteen, Gintoki has gone back to fantasizing about licking Takasugi and he’s gone back to grabbing handfuls of his hair in mock disgust instead.
“Who cuts your hair?” Takasugi asks, trying to change the subject.
Gintoki huffs.
“No one. I do. Except that time Tama tried it and I couldn’t leave the house for three weeks.”
Takasugi flashes one of his mischievous smiles. They make him look more like a brat than a ruthless killer, these days.
“That bad?”
“She purposely mistook Yamapi for— you know what, never you mind, you wouldn’t get it, you don’t have a sense of humour, only evil cackling.”
Gintoki tries to backtrack, a bit embarrassed remembering how he looked when Tama decided to display her sense of humour upon Gintoki’s already wretched hair. It’s particularly embarrassing to remember how awful he looked in front of Takasugi, for very obvious and teenage-girly reasons.
“I’d like to have seen that,” the other man says, as if catching the image of a mortifyingly uncool bowlcut in Gintoki’s horrified stare.
He says it softly, too soft for Takasugi, and it sounds wistful. So much wasted time, Gintoki thinks. Too much. It’s too late to cross that bridge now, he thinks. What can they do about it, now, except drink tea like boring adults and marinate in their own cowardice and dirty fantasies?
Yeah, what can they do.
“Well, I have this stupid barber’s toolbox already, why don’t I cut your hair?” Gintoki suggests. Apparently the combination of a heatwave and Takasugi’s very lickable presence has finished frying his poor brain cells. “You’ll pay, of course. And don’t cheat me, I know the rates.”
Takasugi looks startled (and mildly worried, probably concerned Gintoki has finally lost his marbles), so much so that apparently it doesn’t occur to him to refuse the offer. Gintoki is more strategic in fights than people assume: he sees an enemy offering an opening and goes for it.
“Not here though,” he says, yanking the other by the arm, deciding that silence is acquiesce with his crazy plan. That’s how things would work out between them in the past, too. Gintoki would say something dumb and Takasugi wouldn’t speak against it in time and so the dumb thing came to pass. “Bathroom. I don’t want to be finding your gross hair all over my couch for weeks.”
He’d probably end up eating Takasugi’s pretty loose hair like a psycho, he’s so far gone for the other man.
Takasugi lets himself be yanked by the arm and into Gintoki’s bathroom with only the most performative, weakest of protests. Because —and Gintoki is super good at denial but some things are just too obvious— Takasugi is equally gone for Gintoki, and has been since they were kids. If they hadn’t been such cowards they could have probably been fucking like rabbits the moment they hit their teens. But rivalry complicated stuff, delayed stuff, they were both little shits about it and fourteen-year-old Gintoki figured they had all the time in the world and he could plan how to sweep Takasugi off his tiny feet and he could plan the perfect moment for a perfect confession and a perfect first kiss and they would go from there like he’d learned in all those shojo manga he never admitted to stealing from Zura. That was the idea but. Well. Stuff happened. Gintoki didn’t get over it, but it got more difficult to imagine the perfect scenario to tell your best friend and most recalcitrant rival that even in the middle of a bloody war you can’t stop thinking about fucking him in all the dirty tender ways your imagination can come up with. Gintoki knew it was the same for Takasugi, but they were still cowards, and then Shouyou died and difficult became impossible.
He leaves Takasugi alone in the bathroom for a moment while he retrieves a chair. This is a good plan! And why not? A haircut is a simple, excellent, doable idea. Shinpachi and Kagura are out on a job that’ll take hours, and they’ve taken Sadaharu for bodyguarding purposes. He won’t be disturbed. He’s going about this in such a confident way that it leaves Takasugi (and himself) no room for doubt. Like this was normal. He’s going to cut Takasugi’s hair on a whim. No biggie. Perfectly normal between friends. Just like drinking tea. A fun activity to spend the afternoon.
“I have to wash your hair first, it’s gross.”
It’s the third time he’s called Takasugi’s (definitely not gross! the opposite of gross!) hair disgusting in a few minutes. But he wants an excuse to soap up that stubborn head and maybe drop some shampoo on Takasugi’s eyes because love doesn’t cancel out sadistic tendencies. If anything it makes them much worse.
Gintoki spreads the tools over the sink.
“This was not a joke,” Takasugi comments in a stunned tone, only just realizing, how cute. He puts his hand on his hip for effect, sultry temptress that he is, he has to know what he’s doing, right? Gintoki wants to punch him. Maybe that was their problem all along: it was always easier, more socially acceptable, for Gintoki to punch Takasugi in the face rather than grab his hip hard enough to leave bruises of another kind, for daring to jut out his hipbone in such a sexy way, like he’s doing now.
He is losing his mind, that’s for sure, he’ll need to go to an addicts’ support group at this rate, so he very calmly grabs the biggest scissors with the nicest looking red handles and puts them up to the light, checking their sharpness like he’s a consummate professional.
“I never joke about getting paid for a job!” he counters.
He doesn’t care about getting paid. Who’d care about getting paid when one has the chance to touch Takasugi with the excuse of a haircut? Takasugi could afford to pay him, that’s for sure. But right now, Gintoki would accept used gum as payment. Depending on whose used gum it was he’d probably pay for it himself. Get a hold of yourself, he silently pleads with his Takasugi-addled brain, there’s a limit to debasing himself in his own mind. It’s all the jerk’s fault, anyway, because he had to die and teach Gintoki a lesson about cowardice and timing with that, and now he’s in Gintoki’s life and in his small bathroom, worsening Gintoki’s sex mania by the second. Also: he’s a liar, he would love to debase himself for real, outside his mind and in front of Takasugi, or rather by his feet.
He checks the tools again, one by one, to catch his breath. When he goes for red the scissors once more (it’s sharp enough! you already checked!) Takasugi grabs him by the wrist in a moment. Quick like the killer he is, Gintoki barely saw it coming. It’s a scorching hot grip, apart from the obvious. Takasugi hisses and pulls Gintoki closer to by the tiniest, most microscopic, most wonderful split of an inch.
“Do you think I’m the kind of man to let anyone put a blade to my neck?” he asks. It’s his dangerous voice —the voice that got perfected over years of mayhem and terrorism and being Gintoki’s enemy, rather than his rival. In this context, in the space of this bathroom and the context of being friends again, disgustingly close friends, the danger in that voice makes Gintoki squirm inwardly, press his thighs together reflexively and imagine that tone of voice if Takasugi were to whisper in his ear all the things he wants to— Enough! Gintoki tries to yank his arm back, but Takasugi’s hold admits no resistance.
“They’re hairdressers' scissors,” Gintoki points out, very resolute. “And I’m not anyone.”
That does the trick, on the spot: Takasugi loosens the grip on his wrist very slowly and then his fingers fall across Gintoki’s skin, the touch burning Gintoki’s mind as if it were branding iron.
“No, you’re not,” Takasugi concedes.
A shiver runs down Gintoki’s spine at that change of tone, the other man seemingly accepting that this is their fate now. No going back. Gintoki is about to cut Takasugi’s hair, holy shit. It’s a terrible miscalculation, bad bad idea, but who cares: he’s going to touch Takasugi in a way that it’s at least approximate to how he wants, even if he has to make it all humorous hahaha wouldn’t it be a great practical joke if I cut your hair.
“Stop being a brat and sit down. Though maybe with your height we didn’t even need the chair…”
Takasugi narrows his eyes at him, like he was expecting to see how long Gintoki would go before mocking him for his shortness once more. He obeys and sits down.
Takasugi’s hair is soft.
Okay, Gintoki knew that, of course. That’s what having disgustingly close friends means. The kind of friend you only get not in childhood but in war. So Gintoki knows Takasugi’s hair is soft just like he knows what Zura’s farts sound like or what time of the day (morning) Tatsuma prefers for jerking off. He remembers one time Takasugi was being his usual stubborn shitty self and refusing medical attention because a battle was still going on and Gintoki had to grab him by the hair and drag him to the doctor’s tent. He didn’t even grab that hard (in his fantasies, the ones that he still had in the middle of a goddamned massacre because, as established, Gintoki is a sex maniac, he used to grab Takasugi’s hair much harder and much gentler and for reasons that weren’t so utilitarian), Takasugi just let himself be dragged because he knew Gintoki was right and bleeding to death wouldn’t bring any of their friends back.
It’s a very different animal, what he’s doing now. He runs his hands through Takasugi’s hair and pushes it off his shoulders, gauging just how colossal his mistake in offering a haircut has been. It’s nothing like touching Takasugi for childhood friend reasons, or for comrades in arms reasons. They are more exposed like this, because it’s a completely artificial context. Gintoki made the decision to touch this hair —this stupid beautiful hair!— and now he’s doing it. And they are older now, a lot more resilient but also softer.
And okay, he thought this was going to be funny.
He thought it’d be a joke and that maybe he’d mess with Takasugi’s hair and make him look ridiculous for a week. But of course he can’t. Not now, when he’s actually touching the hair, carding his fingers through the locks reverently —and quietly freaking out at how much softer it is than he remembered. The same hair he’d spent years of his adolescence dreaming of grabbing and pulling, maybe yanking like a brute, dreaming of bunching in his fist as he pressed Takasugi down and fucked him into the floor of their dojo. That sort of teen fantasies. Fantasies where Gintoki did very dirty or very gentle things to that hair, where he kissed it or smeared it with cum and both scenarios seemed equally lovely and loving to him.
He remembered a scene from a lifetime ago, when one of his usual sparring fights had left them unusually mellowed and they sat outside the dojo catching his breath, in a companionable silence for once. Gintoki had lost the fight and found himself not caring much about the defeat, when he looked at Takasugi from the corner of his eyes, the other boy seemingly at peace after the victory. Takasugi looked soft, for a moment, like he was letting the other in on a secret. Gintoki remembers thinking, when that particular lazy setting sun made him act his age for once, his very romance-prone age: ah one day I’ll let Takasugi put his head on my lap and I’ll run my fingers through his hair soothingly and we’ll stay like that forever. That sort of teen fantasy, too.
And now he’s touching it in that delicate way he dreamed of, running his hands through it to measure how much he should cut.
And of course he would never mess it up or give Takasugi a bad haircut. He could never bring himself to. He is so gone for him. Like he always was.
“Weren’t you going to wash my hair?”
Right, he did say that. Takasugi is ever so annoying and ever so helpful.
“I’ll be charging extra for the shampoo,” Gintoki declares, his fingers gently —and so painfully— letting go of dark locks while he grabs the bottle.
Takasugi lets out a startled laugh that it’s actually open and not mean or cynical or dangerous. Open like he used to be. His Takasugi. His friend, Shouyou’s Shinsuke, that adorable ball of pride and stubbornness that just had to waltz into the dojo one day and ruin Gintoki for anyone else. That kid used to laugh like that and Gintoki starts running the water for something to do, instead of collapsing on the floor of his bathroom because fuck, what did Gintoki do today to get Takasugi so relaxed that he’d laugh like that in front of another person? And how can he do it again?
“Of course,” the other man is saying. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
There’s an edge of… something to those words. Gintoki doesn’t want to examine it closely, doesn’t want to fantasize again or see himself in an even more pathetic light. Takasugi can’t be flirting, it’s a trick of the heat.
He doesn’t get shampoo on Takasugi’s eyes, either. Not on purpose, anyway. But he’s not really a real hairdresser, so there are a couple of mishaps at the beginning. His not-customer is patient enough through them, and Gintoki finds himself with all his extremities intact.
It turns out washing the other man’s hair is… kind of nice.
Not that he could ever get used to touching and manipulating Takasugi’s dumb hair but, after a while, after his nerves have been frayed into shreds by the kind of self-restraint he didn’t know he had, Gintoki gets a bit… comfortable. He uses a generous amount of shampoo, trying not to focus too much on the fact that now Takasugi will go about the rest of his day with his hair smelling like Gintoki’s. It’s really hard not to drift off and simply fixate on that fact, though. But there are other distracting elements involved in this bout of insanity that is “Let’s wash Takasugi’s hair hahaha I bet I can pull that off". Gintoki stretches his fingers to reach behind the head, covering every lock in frothy lather. He explores the shape of it, finds the tension in the muscles down the nape. Jokes aside, he knew Takasugi was smaller than him, but he didn’t think that also extended to the size of his skull. He could almost hold the crown of his head in his palm, and that does very bad, very filthy things to Gintoki’s subconscious: now he knows exactly how Takasugi’s head feels under his palm, a detail to lend accuracy to his recurring wanking material featuring the Kiheitai boss on his knees. Who would kill him if he knew about those fantasies, renewed friendship or not. Takasugi is not the kind to get on his knees. But he also doesn’t allow a blade to his neck, right? So maybe…
“That’s not terrible,” Takasugi says, sighing when Gintoki makes a particularly gentle gesture of wiping the excess froth from his forehead.
The man is trying to be encouraging in his own way, Gintoki understands. He makes a show of relaxing under the scalp massage. How disgustingly domestic, Gintoki thinks, delirious with happiness. He imagines this becoming a fixture in their lives. Could he convince Takasugi to have a sexy bath together? Would it be nice to share a jacuzzi? And what favours can Gintoki call in to locate an available jacuzzi asap? The corners of Takasugi’s mouth curve slightly; this time he is not doing it for show, he probably doesn’t know he is doing it at all. Takasugi is really enjoying this crap.
“Okay, let’s rinse,” Gintoki announces, letting go of his grip on Takasugi’s hair, voice too loud and cheerful —covering up for his own scandalously corny reaction upon seeing his friend pleased like a purring cat, just from a little bit of silly hair washing.
He must be punished for that: Gintoki surprises him by turning on the cold water. Takasugi hisses, but otherwise stays put in a display of stoic composure, like he's so cool.
“You’re an idiot,” he says, voice tight, in an obvious effort not to sound too fond of Gintoki.
“Yeah, I know,” Gintoki replies, tone equally saccharine. Then he flicks Takasugi’s ear as painfully as he can manage. Takasugi scrunches up his face at the attack, again trying not to look too chuffed, which he clearly is, even an idiot like Gintoki can tell, because they are doing best-friend things that don’t involve trying to kill each other or sipping dull adult tea together and involve a lot of disregard for personal space and boundaries like when they were fourteen. It’s bliss for both of them.
He gives the other man’s hair another playful yank and then he pushes him back towards the sink so he can rinse him on the sink. Takasugi is surprisingly pliant, which guilt-trips Gintoki into finally adjusting the water temperature for him. Takasugi closes his eyes and from this angle Gintoki can watch those perfect eyelashes flutter as he does. He’s prettier than any girl. Gintoki massages his head a while longer, with patience, pushing the shampoo out of Takasugi’s locks until Gintoki is satisfied that there’s nothing left. For a play haircut he’s being very professional about it. Except for the part where he’s being absolutely unprofessional and deep down this is just an excuse to ogle the other man.
He maneuvers Takasugi into an upright position when he is finished. He likes it a lot. Manhandling Takasugi. He’d like to do that a lot more in the future. Maybe Takasugi can make a regular appointment to cut his hair at Gintoki’s apartment. Escalation from drinking tea, but still not enough. Nothing too dangerous. They’d still be comfortable being cowards, but at least Gintoki would get to touch him gently.
“On to the main show, ladies and gentleman,” he says, mostly to himself.
He grabs the scissors and suddenly feels a little wobbly. There’s a lot of a history here, they are both men of violence first and foremost. Gintoki is now holding a weapon to his friend-come-back-from-the-dead. This is the opposite of the silly joke he thought it would be.
“Are you sure about this?” Takasugi asks. He’s caught Gintoki’s expression and somehow managed to read it to the last letter.
“Are you?” Gintoki retorts.
Pfft, like either of them would ever back down from a challenge in front of the other. Takasugi would sooner get himself stabbed by barber’s scissors than chicken out of a stupid dare. He’s such a moron, all Gintoki wants to do is lean over and kiss his moronic elegant nose.
The start takes a bit of steeling himself for it. For all that Gintoki had done untold amounts of physical damage to Takasugi’s previous body, he takes the responsibility of lifting the scissors up towards his face very seriously. They are so close and suddenly the bathroom feels tiny, oppressive. Gintoki feels stuck to Takasugi even though their bodies are not even touching.
He presses the cold metal of the blade to the spot under Takasugi’s ear, checking it’s safe and his prey won’t startle and run away. They both hold their breaths. Gintoki is aware that the other man is just as affected as he is, suppressing a shudder that threatens to wreck his cool-and-composed façade. Gintoki thinks he might puke from emotion. That would be an incredible ending to the afternoon, vomiting all over Takasugi’s face and hair because Takasugi was crazy enough to let Gintoki put a fucking blade to his skin and Gintoki is so in love it’s not even funny, not even mosaic-censored puke kind of funny.
The first strands of hair fall onto the sink. Fuck. He’s a brave, brave man, he’s a samurai even Zura would be impressed with. He’s really doing this. He moves his gaze back and forth in a little panic, checking that he hasn’t made a comically huge mistake already and left Takasugi with a terrible straight fringe or something. But he hasn’t. It’s fine, he’s just nipped a few hair ends. He still goes slow afterwards, because comedy is a treacherous bitch and can come to bite him in the ass any moment, ruining this—
This what?
Gintoki doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what this is, with his head empty from all the heat and all the Takasugi he’s had to endure this afternoon. He doesn’t have a name for what’s happening. He just knows he likes it. They’re obviously having A Moment. The silence in the bathroom while he works on the other man’s hair. Having Takasugi literally in his hands, trusting Gintoki with something anodyne but also kind of big. It’s easy to trust your comrade to have your back in a battle. Easier than trusting your childhood crush and perhaps-soulmate to touch you intimately in his own apartment. He has to give it to Takasugi, he’s being a good sport. Gintoki holds his friend’s right ear as he trims his bangs, keeping them long because that’s always been a good look on Takasugi. He has small, delicious ears; Gintoki thinks he should get them pierced and wear some metal ring on them, something juvenile and vaguely menacing. That way Takasugi could act coquettish and tuck his hair behind his ear and then there'd be a flash of silver (well, it’d have to be silver, right? especially if Gintoki is the one who’s going to buy the earring for him, oh he so wants to buy Takasugi jewelry) and everybody would know what a bad boy Takasugi was. Bad, bad boy. Bad, bad Gintoki’s mind.
He pauses a moment, stretching the collar of his jacket and flexing inside his too many clothes (who wears leather and a kimono in summer? but he was a bit scared of appearing too casual for his and Takasugi’s tea date) as if that was going to make the room feel less suffocating.
“You’re not being mean and giving me an awful haircut, right?” Takasugi asks, with an undertow of I will murder you slowly if you mess my hair; it’s thrilling enough that Gintoki almost considers doing just that, just to receive Takasugi’s ire and punishment. Takasugi’s punishment sounds good, like a porno he’d like to watch. And there he goes again.
The thing is: yes, Gintoki is a pervert, but let him defend himself for a moment. He knows there’s more to this constantly-thinking-about-Takasugi-and-sex phase than just general perversion. Part of it is the heat, of course. Gintoki gets lazy and sluggish and slobby in summer. It’s the perfect mood for sticky, sweaty, slow fucks, and he loves those, when you’re very aware of your body and the other person’s. But it’s more than a preference, this constant R18 monologue running through his head whenever he’s near Takasugi, or somebody mentions him, or he merely crosses Gintoki’s mind unprompted.
It’s the fact that they are friends again and Takasugi visits often but not often enough. Everything gets sharper because they have a somewhat limited time together. An afternoon of sipping tea or a mild night on the town drinking or eating or talking some cabaret girl’s ear off. It’s not enough, so everything Gintoki feels and thinks regarding Takasugi but can’t say because he’s a coward gets crushed together to fit into those few hours. Like those cars in the scrapyard that end up squished into tiny cubes, and it all ends up a pile of mush in his brain. A pile of horny mush, because the dirty thoughts seem to float to the surface more easily. Perhaps because they are safer than the other thoughts: it’s safer to think I want to see what Takasugi looks like when he’s just come from fucking himself on my fingers than it is to think I want to find a way to make Takasugi stay around forever and never leave me and never die on me ever again. Gintoki is not as dense as he likes to project and he knows how these things work, psychologically. Plus he and Takasugi have always been unbearably intense about each other, and it tends to manifest in the weirdest way. As far as Gintoki is concerned, sexually explicit fantasies are a much better love language than attempted murder, and he already has too many scars with Takasugi’s name on them all over his body. He’ll go for the filthy director’s commentary this time. Much safer too, unless Takasugi discovers exactly what he’s thinking, in which case they’ll be back at the attempted murder phase of their courtship.
He settles into a rhythm, scissors barely making a dent here and there, but allowing him to brush his fingertips against Takasugi’s forehead constantly, smooth skin now that he isn’t frowning for once. Takasugi shivers a little every time he touches him, but never finches. At some point —Gintoki has dropped his thumb across the other man’s cheek— Gintoki is sure he even leans into it, if microscopically. He wants to be careful, and it turns out he is pretty good at it. It has a lulling quality, the motion of holding Takasugi’s hair between two fingers and nipping at the ends with the blade. Despite the delicate task Gintoki finds himself relaxing more than he has in ages. It feels a bit like meditating.
“Do you remember when teacher used to cut all the younger kids’ hair?” Takasugi asks, breaking Gintoki’s nice reverie.
“Yeah,” he mutters. It catches him off guard, hearing Takasugi talk about Shouyou like that, voice still full of longing, but no longer drenched in the old bitterness. It’s strange and makes Gintoki’s chest feel lighter somehow. He cuts a little off of one of Takasugi’s locks and then pauses for a moment, pressing his fingers to the scalp in a circling, almost soothing motion. “Yeah, I remember he was such a sap, he’d let the girls braid his hair afterwards as a reward.”
Takasugi lets out an amused noise, but without moving. It’s just a tiny huff from deep inside his ribcage, but it makes Gintoki want to drop the scissors and grab Takasugi’s chin with all the tenderness the other man deserves and will never ask for, and just kiss him. But he also doesn’t want to disturb this moment of sweet remembrance, because Takasugi has only started talking about the past again recently; he probably needs it, some form of very delayed therapy he and Gintoki and Zura should have gotten ages ago, if only they had been smart enough to stay together and lick their wounds, instead of finding the long, tortuous way back to each other.
“I was jealous of those girls,” Takasugi admits casually. “I also wanted to braid teacher’s hair.”
Gintoki’s caress on the back of Takasugi’s skull grows more insistent for a moment. More comforting. Shouyou would have let him, too. He would have let Takasugi get away with anything the boy wanted, Gintoki always knew. It was a special kind of thing. Gintoki was Shouyou’s family and destiny and kindred spirit, and Zura was the one Shouyou could open the most brilliant corners of his brain to and the only one who could keep up with Shouyou’s wicked sense of humour, but Takasugi… oh, Takasugi had always been Shouyou’s soft spot, he had the man wrapped around his little finger. Shouyou would have spoiled that kid rotten, if only Takasugi had asked for it. But Takasugi never asked to braid his teacher’s hair, even though he wanted to.
“I know,” Gintoki says. It’s a whisper as he starts moving the scissors again. “I know you did.”
He sets a good pace again, and now that he trusts himself a bit more, knowing he won’t ruin his friend’s hair out of incompetence, he risks cutting an inch more this time.
Little by little the picture of a short-haired Takasugi emerges, out of the mess of his summer look. Gintoki narrows his eyes, figuring out how to wrap this up, even though he never wants this afternoon to end, he never wants Takasugi to leave this room. He tries to approximate the length Takasugi was sporting the first time he saw him when he got back to Edo after… well, after being dead. Or the median of hair length Takasugi sports in Gintoki’s fantasies. A composite of the best memories of Takasugi, when he is at his most disarmingly handsome.
“That’s it?” Takasugi eventually asks, when Gintoki hasn’t moved in a while.
“What were you expecting? The spa treatment? Sorry, Master Takasugi, we don’t have the fancy hair lotion you’re used to.”
Takasugi rolls his eyes, a surprisingly benign reaction to his friend being a pest. Maybe he is growing up a bit, and about time too. He straightens in the chair, offering himself up for Gintoki’s assessment. Gintoki stares him down, his thigh almost touching Takasugi’s knee as the man stays seated on the chair, legs spread too far apart not to catch Gintoki’s heated attention for a moment. He looks a bit more like himself. Takasugi’s long, sweaty hair was fucking hot and he wouldn’t mind seeing it again next year, but Takasugi’s usual hair length makes him look more present. It makes Gintoki want to brush his fingers against his cheek again and say “welcome back” to him.
The other man is watching the impromptu-barber’s reaction very closely.
“Does it look acceptable?” he inquires.
Acceptable? Acceptable? Gintoki should get Hairdresser of the Year for what he’s just done, but then again look at the prime material he had to work with! How difficult could it be, making the most annoyingly attractive man Gintoki had ever seen look good? He’d have to do Tama-levels of trolling to mess up that slick, shiny, soft —he didn’t remember it was so soft!— hair.
He buries his fingers into that silkiness once more as if to snatch some details for future memories, back-up for future fantasies, fingertips pretending to be checking something, that it’s the right length just by sheer touch. He really has no excuse to be doing this at this point. Gintoki is mesmerized, just slipping his fingers through slightly-damp locks.
And then —then! — Takasugi has the audacity to moan at his touch. Not a showy moan like the girls and twinks in Gintoki’s favorite porn sites. A little, breathy thing like he can’t stop himself. That’s unfair.
Watching that moan-producing mouth closer, body almost perched over Takasugi, bent to such a picture in front of him, Gintoki tilts his head ever so slightly, but still noticeably. He feels magnetized.
“Were we always this bad?” Takasugi asks.
“What?” Gintoki, in a daze of itching fingers and wasted years, doesn’t process the question.
“Were we always this bad? When we were kids… were we always… like this?”
No. Yes. Gintoki can’t say. In hindsight it’s pretty obvious. Maybe not even in hindsight. Maybe everybody around them noticed and knew they were fools. Maybe their teacher always knew. Zura? No, not Zura, he doesn’t think so. Tatsuma… there’s a chance, in that instinctive brainless way of his. But Shouyou for sure knew, and maybe he protected more than just Takasugi by bringing him back to life.
“Nah. We’ve gotten old and weaker,” Gintoki says.
Takasugi snakes one hand up to grab Gintoki’s wrist. This time it’s not a violent grip, and it’s not to push him away. It’s almost as if he’s making sure Gintoki will keep the hand there, will keep touching his hair.
“That’s not too bad…” Takasugi says, with a soft voice. He sounds so wise when he talks like that, even though Gintoki knows he’s not wise at all. He’s just as dumb as he is. “Getting weaker.”
For Takasugi to say something so out of character…
Gintoki definitely feels weaker, right now. His stance a bit unsteady. His body cannot resist the pull of such gravity —the same gravity that has been tugging at his heart for decades. He lets himself drop because Takasugi is right: it’s not so bad, getting weaker.
He brushes his mouth across Takasugi’s, not even a kiss, just a little taste like a preview of what he’d rather be doing. His body feels flushed all over, taken by sudden shyness. He’s going to kiss Takasugi, he realizes, air leaving his lungs at the idea. Years and years of collecting every embarrassing and lovely fantasy of them locking lips. Years of imprisoning those daydreams in a dark recess of his mind because Gintoki just couldn’t think about it for the longest time; he had to surgically remove all those thoughts and longings just to keep attempting the bare minimum of what people call living on. He did so well for so long, he really kept everything under lock and key. But now it’s all back, the whole collection of it: from when he was a child, the first time he’d thought he’d like to kiss the brat’s blinding smile off his face instead of punching it, right to the moment Takasugi knocked on his door not even two hours ago, with shoulder-length hair and looking delectably kissable in the sweltering Edo heat. That’s a long, thick photo album of kissing fantasies, including awful instances Gintoki never wanted to admit to: fantasies about kissing Takasugi right after Shouyou died, when he knew neither would have gotten any comfort from it, fantasies of Takasugi kissing him hard and cruel right after threatening to kill Gintoki’s friends, fantasies of softly pressing a kiss to Takasugi’s cold blue lips, because crying over his corpse hadn’t done the old Disney movie trick.
And now —holy shit.
He’s going to kiss Takasugi for real in a few moments and he’s freaking out a lot. When was the last time Gintoki kissed someone while sober? And now it’s the middle of the afternoon, everything bathed in sunlight, perfectly delineated and perfectly Not A Fantasy. As sad as it sounds, Gintoki is pretty sure he has never kissed anyone inside this house before.
And yet, the first real kiss is still a light, experimental thing. A peck on the other man’s mouth. Gintoki can see Takasugi stretching to chase it, after Gintoki has pulled away; it makes Gintoki smirk, what a sweet needy bitch. He tilts Takasugi’s head back further and does it again, the same short, close-mouthed slip of contact between them. He’s torturing Takasugi, of course, and himself, but he also fears he might get something very much like an ice cream headache if he attempts to do this too quickly, if he gets in too deep from the get go.
Gintoki can see Takasugi’s nostrils flaring in frustration when he cuts the third almost-kiss short again. He’d even gone to the trouble of closing his eyes when Gintoki dropped his head, the kind of vulnerable gesture Gintoki had imagined was only possible in fantasies, because he couldn’t picture Takasugi actually offering himself up like that to another person. Gintoki had been wrong, this was one fantasy of his that turned out to be accurate. Takasugi would close his eyes if Gintoki kissed him. The idea makes Gintoki’s brain and eyes and skin just melt, it makes him feel feral, wrecked in new, terrible ways. He drops a fourth, mouth-teasing peck, out of masochism rather than sadism this time. This time Takasugi keeps his eyes open, rightfully suspicious of his friend, but then he licks his lips absently while gazing up at Gintoki, like trying to extract Gintoki’s taste from such meager offerings. Gintoki is not sure who’s torturing whom right now.
He puts his knee on the chair, wedging Takasugi’s thighs open with a lewd movement. The other man lets out an exasperated gasp when Gintoki gets a good reaction out of pressing his groin. Gintoki’s eyes go very wide for a moment at the contact, and he pulls back just enough that he can recover a shred of sanity, which would otherwise be lost forever if he dwells too long on the fact of Takasugi’s unmissable arousal. The air inside the bathroom feels sticky all of the sudden, cracked like ice under your feet, and the silence is a liquid only punctured by too-loud breathing. It feels dangerous, to have this knowledge.
“You got hard just from me cutting your hair,” Gintoki says, stating not asking. Hardly believing it. His voice goes low and growly, and he can’t help but tease. “That’s some perverted stuff, Takasugi-kun.”
“What did you expect?” Takasugi asks, answering Gintoki’s jokey taunt in all earnestness. It also sounds a bit mean. Takasugi is always a bit mean and Gintoki loves that. “You run your fingers through my hair.”
He says it like the gravest accusation of the most serious crime.
And of course Gintoki is a hypocrite. Of course Gintoki’s dick is hard, too. Has been, since before they’d even kissed. Because wanting Takasugi is a can of gasoline that never finishes pouring out, and it’s also the trail of fire in its wake that he has not been able to put out since he was fourteen. Because cutting Takasugi’s hair has left him hornier than any actual sex he’d had in the last ten years or so. Isn’t that sad? He’s a hypocrite for trying to tease Takasugi over his erection when all Gintoki wants to do right now is sit on Takasugi’s lap and ride his cock until he gets thighburn.
But admitting that would be pathetic. And him and Takasugi don’t do pathetic. They do prideful and stubborn and they waste years and decades. they destroy lives and property and leave wounds that never finish scarring. So he pulls away some more and holds Takasugi’s jaw between his thumb and index, tilting his head back again.
He leaves his hand there, frozen by wanting to do too many things. Not knowing what he should go for first. Maybe this was also the problem, on top of his lack of courage: he wants so much from Takasugi, he wants such an overwhelming amount of everything that it’s impossible to get started.
Finally Takasugi straight up snarls at him like an animal, murder in his eyes. Gintoki smiles: he knows he’s going to get killed, they’ll find his corpse in this very bathroom, but what can he say, murder is a good look on the asshole.
“Damnit, Gintoki, what are you waiting for now? Do you want me to beg?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s absolutely the wrong thing for Takasugi to say because now Gintoki is fourteen, sixteen, eighteen and wondering how his best friend sounds when he begs Gintoki to fuck him.
His grip on Takasugi’s hair tightens, almost cruelly, arching his body further, exposing Takasugi’s throat in a mock show of dominance. The other man bares his teeth for a moment, looking like he always did on the battlefield before taking down an enemy twice his size. It sends a sharper wave of arousal through Gintoki, the old confusion, unable to untangle the adrenaline of I want to fight this man and the adrenaline of I want this man inside me.
There’s something wrong with the picture.
“Are you the kind of man to beg?” he asks.
Takasugi holds his gaze like Gintoki has just issued a challenge. Everybody knows how Takasugi feels about challenges, especially from Gintoki.
“Not to anyone.”
Gintoki widens his eyes a little in surprise. He loosens his grip until only the tips of fingers hold onto Takasugi’s hair. The battle for dominance is over. He’s lost. Or he’s won. He could never tell, with Takasugi.
“Then let me hear it,” Gintoki tells him. He means to coax Takasugi, but he sounds like the one begging, instead.
Takasugi swallows, preparing himself. Bracing himself. Gintoki is so close, he can hear the movement inside his throat, gaze fixed on his Adam's apple as it slowly bobs. The hollow of Takasugi’s neck glistens with sweat and water from the hair washing. Gintoki finds no reason —not even cowardice— to stop himself from dropping his head and pressing his tongue into the dip of it, lapping at the moisture. Takasugi stays still but gives him a full body shudder. It makes Gintoki want to know how it feels to have him shiver around him, under him, so he closes his teeth over Takasugi’s collarbone and gives it a soft nip. He’d like to mark the other man, paint bites and bruises over that pretty skin, but not now. He’s spent all afternoon stroking Takasugi’s hair and he feels all softened inside. He pulls back to check on Takasugi’s expression. His chest is heaving and his mouth is half-open in surprise. Gintoki’s heart is beating so hard it actually hurts, in a medically-worrisome way.
“Gintoki.”
Oh, so that is how Takasugi sounds when he begs. It’s a little breathless and he sounds dead serious, like he wants Gintoki to know he means it. It’s not playful or flirty and it is a little impatient and curt, very in character, but it is tender. He’s also giving Gintoki bedroom eyes, he’s pretty sure that’s the technical term, and Gintoki’s blood has forgotten it has to pump places other than his groin.
“Fucking hell,” he mutters as he grabs Takasugi’s head and pulls him up from the chair for a proper kiss, crushing their bodies together. Takasugi sighs against it, a deep groan against Gintoki’s open mouth, like begging was worth it. Like he would beg a million times for it. It’s a dizzying thought, but Gintoki doesn’t have the time to get lightheaded from it, because all the contents of his brain have been replaced by Takasugi’s mouth Takasugi’s mouth Takasugi’s mouth oh fucking hell Takasugi’s tongue.
Gintoki doesn't get to ride Takasugi’s dick that afternoon. They kiss like they want to leave bruises for minutes or possibly hours, palms on each other’s hips for mutual anchor. And then Takasugi wraps his hand around both their cocks and jerks them off with surprisingly long fingers while Gintoki presses him against the bathroom sink, hard enough that his back will probably hurt tomorrow. Takasugi drops his head and spits over the heads of their cocks for extra slickness and it’s the most ridiculously sexy thing Gintoki has ever seen, not even his raunchy imagination could have predicted that. They come embarrassingly quick, like horny teenagers, like the horny teenagers they once were and were too chicken or too dysfunctional to go after what they wanted. It’s like they owed their past selves quick, pathetic mutual handjobs.
There’s that word again. Pathetic. Gintoki never wanted to appear pathetic in front of Takasugi but maybe it’s not so bad. It’s like getting old and weaker. It can be a good thing.
After they come down, Takasugi turns and looks at himself in the mirror, hooking one finger around the lock over his left ear, studying his reflection to figure out if he approves. He looks as lovely as ever, but Gintoki wonders if Takasugi even knows it, if he realizes how heartbreakingly handsome he is, the extent of it. In a post-orgasm daze Gintoki fantasizes about telling him, about fucking Takasugi face down on his futon while he waxes poetic about his beauty, mouth pressed into his nape the whole time. It’s alarming, though a bit reassuring, that finally having sex with Takasugi has done nothing but compound the problem of Gintoki’s perviness, and in fact he imagines he is going to be even more unbearable with his one-track mind from now on. He tucks his soft dick back into his pants and catches Takasugi watching him, an expression so openly famished it makes Gintoki feel a bit better because he’ll never be alone on the sex maniac boat, it seems. Takasugi might be a bit more elegant about it (read: repressed, and Gintoki can’t wait to tear that layer of coolness apart with his nails), but he has it equally bad. He’d love to hear Takasugi’s director’s commentary of the afternoon. Gintoki bets it must have been even filthier than his own.
He collects himself —a little. He’s not sure how to proceed, how to get more of what has just happened, but without necessarily limiting themselves to sloppy summer hook-ups inside a bathroom. There’s an odd freedom now: for the first time in his life “there’ll be time” is a real plan for the rest of the day, and not an excuse for being a coward. His own reflection in the mirror looks a bit too smug, red skin around his lips from making out too enthusiastically. His mouth tastes vaguely of that crap Takasugi still smokes from time to time, but it’s not entirely unwelcome. That surprises Gintoki. Because, honestly, he’s never understood how some people have a smoking kink; only real hotties like Tsukuyo or Takasugi can pull it off.
There are strands of hair left on the sink from the haircut and Gintoki wants to put them in his mouth and cry, but instead he licks the exposed skin on Takasugi’s neck because now he can. Takasugi trembles and then chuckles.
“Come on, I think I owe you a drink for the haircut.”
Gintoki clicks his tongue. He’s not getting scammed twice on the same day.
“I told you, I’m only working for hard cash.”
Takasugi hums again, pensive.
“Would you work for sex?” he suggests. Suggestively. It’s bad, it’s very bad. It’s cringe (Zura and Soyo taught him that one, too). Gintoki is kind of embarrassed for the man.
He looks at Takasugi up and down, a slow shameless leer from leg to head. He looks so good like that, bantering and being insufferable and with the right Takasugi-like length of hair. He looks like his best friend. Gintoki tuts.
“Is this your way of flirting? It’s terrible.”
“I believe it was an offer.”
“You think your tight ass is worth an hour of my labour? In your dreams,” Gintoki huffs, and what a bold lie, for Gintoki would absolutely buy sex from Takasugi if only he could afford it, conventional morality and Edo bylaws be damned. Lucky for him Takasugi is not only in love with him but also super horny for Gintoki, so he’s pretty certain he could get everything he wants for free.
Or maybe it wasn’t free.
Maybe a haircut is a fair price. A haircut and a couple of lifetimes.
Takasugi is touching his chest, and in his lovey-dovey daze it takes Gintoki entirely too long to realize he’s wiping his cum-covered fingers on Gintoki’s kimono. He leans over, his crisp short hair tickling Gintoki’s jaw as he brings his mouth against the shell of his ear.
“Didn’t I say that I’d make it worth your while?” he whispers.
He brings his mouth against Gintoki’s only to pull away at the barest hint of contact, giving Gintoki his just medicine. He’s so petty, he can’t forget about getting payback even under these extraordinary and very romantic circumstances. Gintoki whines and reaches over, trying to land a kiss on that now-elusive mouth, whines Takasugi-kun! all high-pitched and putting on a show but also meaning it. Takasugi untangles himself from their proximity before their lips touch and cackles his way out of the bathroom. The other man follows him like a drooling dog in heat. He follows Takasugi out of his house and down the stairs and into a night of drinking and who knows what else; he follows Takasugi into the rest of the day and a future of everything else. An overwhelming amount of everything.
Gintoki doesn’t even care that Shinpachi and Kagura will come back to an empty house with incriminating evidence in the bathroom and half-drunk cold tea left on the living room table and dark hair everywhere. Shinpachi will be unbearably smug and mushy about it, after the obligatory round of disgusted grimaces, and Kagura won’t let him talk to her in at least two days, and Gintoki will deserve that, too. He’s gross, he is not going to argue that point.
He decides he is going to pursue a career in hairdressing.