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“You didn’t have to follow me here, Yasu.”
Okita has said this to Yasusada nearly every day since they’ve settled into Mitsu’s guesthouse together. He must mean that Yasusada’s service to the Shinsengumi never should have encompassed assisting Okita during his last days. Except his eyes are so pale and so piercing that it wouldn’t be surprising if he knows Yasusada’s deeper sin, here; this pilgrimage through time that is anathema to his cause.
Yasusada weighs his next words carefully. Okita has little patience for scripted demurrals, and Yasusada can’t get away with a polite little ‘I would follow Okita-kun into death’ even though that’s actually true. And Okita is keenly waiting on an answer. The threat of that lingering in the air despite the placidly domestic sight of him helping slice up some vegetables for dinner. He had gotten that notion into his head today and couldn’t be dissuaded. There’s nothing incongruous about it. Members of the Shinsengumi would take on as many chores as needed.
“I didn’t need to follow you,” Yasusada says, his knife sliding through a green onion, “but I did, anyway.”
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, actually. This is his response to Okita almost every time and it works well enough. It’s as true as the answer Okita won’t accept.
Okita snorts but doesn’t counter that. Yasusada watches him out of the corner of his eye as Okita’s face’s slowly takes on a gray-ish tinge and his movements slow down. Almost as if to compensate, Yasusada’s chopping speeds up and up. He drowns out his distress by trying to wonder if these simple tools might someday gain souls. It’s something he often jokes about with Kiyomitsu when they have kitchen duty, and Kiyomitsu will tell him to shut up and focus because they need to get this done fast. He hates it when his cuticles smell like onions, and he’s convinced himself that he can avoid that fate by speeding through that task.
These particular kitchen knives are certainly sharp enough to function as a weapon. Okita proves this by staggering a bit, his knife embedding itself in the base of Yasusada’s thumb. At first Yasusada sees the way his skin splits like a torn seam, then the blood welling to the surface. There’s no time for pain, though, because he has to catch Okita in his arms.
It’s not a full-on faint, at least. Okita curls around Yasusada and breathes harshly into Yasusada’s neck. He doesn’t cough, but blood drips down onto the floor anyway from Yasusada’s wound. He rubs Okita’s back with his clean hand and wonders - as if from a distance - if it’s possible to be this happy and sad all at once.
He keeps his hand pressed to his thigh so he doesn’t get blood everywhere when he helps Okita back into bed.
“I should help you dress that.” Okita’s voice is thin and reedy, but he still watches closely as Yasusada wraps a bandage around his wound.
“Hm, I’m not falling for that trick. You’ve already used dinner preparations as an excuse to attack me once today.”
It’s more than a little brazen, but it makes Okita laugh in a sleepy way. And so, everything feels right with the world. Yasusada even closes his eyes and tries to will time to slow down. He doesn’t want to travel forward or back or sideways. He certainly doesn’t want to change it. (His current job has made that mark on his soul, at least.)
No, he just wants this and this and this , forever. The amusement, the agony, the strange comfort in hopelessness. It’s so much more honest than almost anything else.
*
But time is the least generous force of all. The day moves forward, and he brings dinner to Okita. He sends a note to Mitsu’s house to let her know how the day proceeded. Then he goes to clean his sword self.
Not the version he carries with him into battle. His original self. His best self. He does what he can for the blade, knowing all the while that no mortal forces can prevent it from drinking in the atmosphere of this dwelling. This sword will soak up loss like desert sands will soak up a heavy rain. And just like rain on a barren landscape, nothing will grow from this, either. It's simply a fact that exists.
Although…
‘Sand comes from boulders.’
‘Okay?’ If Kiyomitsu didn’t actually care he wouldn’t respond.
‘Yeah. Waves slamming against rocks over and over for a lot longer than we’ve ever existed. I read about it in a book today.’
‘We haven’t existed for very long. We’re both young swords.’
Yasusada had ignored that the way he ignored anything that placed him in a collective with all these swords (Shinsengumi swords not included.)
‘Sometimes it’s made of shells too.’
‘Ugh. Come here.’
‘Why?’
Yasusada had scooted over to Kiyomitsu anyway and ended up submitting to some nail polish. For a few hours he’d sported an intricate shell pattern on each of his fingernails, until the inevitable wear and tear started to erode them. When Kiyomitsu had complained, Yasusada explained that he was making sand himself.
He’s looked all over for Kiyomitsu’s sword form. Yasusada had arrived in this time period a week or two before Ikedaya. Sometimes the events of the past feel like dominoes toppling along the floor. The announcement of the raid, the clashing of swords, the puncturing of flesh. Okita staggering into a faint, the tip of his blade so slightly off.
It hadn’t been tuberculosis that night. Most likely it had been anemia exacerbated by one too many knocks to the head.
“You didn’t have to follow me here, Yasu.”
The first time Okita had said that, it had been when he was well enough again to go to a temple. Yasusada hadn’t known why Okita prayed so fervently that day, but hours before he’d confessed with reddened eyes that there wouldn’t be any way to continue to use his uchigatana.
After that afternoon, Kiyomitsu was simply gone and Okita could not be prevailed upon to say where he’d put his sword. Kiyomitsu’s absence had reminded Yasusada of the time he’d torn off a few fingernails during a particularly wretched battle. He’d had worse wounds over the years, but something about their loss had left him far more vulnerable and sore than he could have ever imagined.
He always hopes Okita had sent Kiyomitsu to Mitsu, but Yasusada has seen no evidence of that so far.
Yasusada ends up contemplating this once more, with his sword self resting on his thighs. This isn’t the first time he’s wanted to go home. Ever since that day, he’s been battling a persuasive desire to see Kiyomitsu again. It’s always there thudding away at the base of his heart. Not just Kiyomitsu's sword form - although that would be nice - but also his human form. It would be nice to hold him close, remember that he’s real, remember that Kiyomitsu has a future beyond his lack of utility in this particular moment in time.
The longing is so strong, in fact, that he actually misses Okita emerging from the shadows. He’s not surprised, exactly. Nothing about Okita surprises him. If anything, he’s surprised that something can wipe Okita from his mind like so much dust.
“You always look a bit inhuman by lamplight,” Okita says.
“You look like you should still be in bed.” Yasusada sheathes the sword, carefully setting it to the side. He thinks about standing as well, but something in Okita’s manner forbids it.
“Hold out your hand. No, not that, one. The other.”
The injured hand, then. Yasusada does so with some trepidation. Okita uses a surprising amount of strength to pull the bandage off. It’s crusted with blood, but the wound beneath is already knitting itself back together. It’s a pink line, with pale yellow and purple bruises around it.
“I cut you close to the bone.”
Yasusada keeps his features very calm, even when his face feels like ice. “You were in the middle of a fainting spell. The cut wasn’t as bad as your memory.”
“Yes, it was. I did that deliberately.”
Pride and amusement in the midst of consternation. This was an interrogation.
“You didn’t actually faint at all, did you?”
“Correct.” Okita pats Yasusada’s cheek, but that doesn’t mean things are safe.
“So, you pester me to let you help make dinner, nearly chop off my thumb, make me bleed all over the vegetables, and then go take a nap. Eventful day for you.”
Okita holds Yasusada’s hand with both of his. It almost feels like he’s massaging Yasusada, but he’s probably checking to see if Yasusada’s bones have the same composition as a human’s. Finding that they do, his brows wrinkle in disbelief.
“Whatever you are, you’re important. And yet you’re here.” He doesn’t sound remotely happy about this.
“I didn’t need to follow you, but I did, anyway.” It sounds different every time he says it. Like how the chorus of a song can sound different with slight alterations to the instrumental. Tonight, it's nearly defiant.
And Okita has always accepted it. But now his hands are around Yasusada’s neck, squeezing a bit, and Yasusada’s heart pounds with fear at the idea he might die at Okita’s hand. If so, Okita might expire early from all the exertion, the same way he died trying to kill a cat. It would only be a difference of a few weeks, but cataclysmic change can ripple from slight alterations.
But then he lets Yasusada go, and Yasusada crouches over a bit, breathing heavily like he’s just raced across the city.
“So you can feel pain, and fear of death.”
“Not mine,” Yasusada wheezes. “Not my death.”
The next time Okita touches him, it’s a comforting pat on the shoulder. Yasusada finds himself on his knees, his arms wrapped around Okita’s waist, his face buried somewhere in Okita’s torso. His jagged bones stick out, and it’s not exactly a comfortable experience. Yasusada doesn’t care.
“I’m not a threat,” he says, his words muffled by Okita’s yukata. ‘Or a bad omen’ he wants to add, but that’s not true, is it? He’s here because this is the end. A hard and fast rule, like the surety of pain in seppuku or the inevitably of death at a beheading.
“I’m not going to ask any more questions,” Okita says, after a while. “I’ve asked people so many questions that maybe a little mystery is a good thing.”
Wrapped up in each other like this, it’s easy to tell when Okita’s outburst of strength gives way to fatigue once more. He returns Okita to his room, and helps undress him because it’s so warm out and even indoors at night the air seems to shimmer with heat and humidity. Blankets will be a good enough cover.
“I dropped a plate on your thigh a few days ago for the same purposes,” Okita says after rolling onto his side, “but then could never come up with a good excuse to have you undress.”
“You could just ask.”
“You’ve always been so bold. Well? You’ve offered. Let me see.”
Yasusda shakes which makes him wonder if the room actually isn’t warm enough, after all. When he’s naked, he closes his eyes and waits for Okita to reach out and rest his hand on Yasuada’s blemish-free leg.
“What would be bold would be saying you could put some more bruises on me.”
Okita snorts. “I’m not the captain you want for that. Even when lungs worked I didn’t go for ravishing people.”
Yasusada nods. “I know.”
He bends down and places a closed-mouth kiss on Okita’s lips. He can feel Okita start to protest until he stops. Maybe he’s remembering that Yasusada is impervious to so many things. He can catch colds, but so far, no sword warrior has caught anything worse than a nasty flu.
They don’t do anything else for the rest of the night. Or, rather, most people would consider that kiss the furthest they ever went. Yasusada is inclined to disagree. Somehow it feels like much more of a transgression to caress Okita’s skin and to have that action returned in kind. They’re wound around each other in misery, yes, but they’re certainly not alone . You could feel very alone during sex. Yasusada has tried to use it, before, to drown out memories of the past. It's never worked. This, though, might be settling something within him the way his wound itches from its continued healing.
“You have to leave soon.” Yasusada can recognize how Okita sounds just before falling into sleep. It’s not the death knell. Not yet.
“I do,” he agrees. And for a few seconds he can picture Kiyomitsu so vividly. “But I’m here for now, anyway.”