A peculiar situation
When Sanosuke finds himself staring at Saitou, he cannot help but figure out something’s horribly wrong…
It was peculiar.
It took him a moment to fully realize what he was doing and what was going on. After eating a meal of overcooked fish and dried rice made by Kaoru herself (and receiving a couple of pounds on the head for commenting on that fact), the Kamiya dojo was suddenly graced by the unwanted Hajime Saitou who had stopped by for an unexpected visit. Of course a visit from the policeman was not something that was strange, for he did come from time to time to talk to Kenshin about something that the government needed his help for.
That wasn’t the part of the situation that Sanosuke found as peculiar. The tall and lanky boy found that what he was doing was completely and utterly odd - he was discovering the fact that he was looking at Saitou. Possibly even staring at him.
It was very peculiar, Sanosuke couldn’t help but think, as he sat there, chewing on a piece of bone that was left from the previous meal and wondering why on earth would he do such a thing. Sanosuke had some usual behavior patterns for when he met with people he didn’t like. He would either a) not choose to pay any heed to them because they were strictly not worth any of his time or b) he would taunt or infuriate them in some manner to show them that they weren’t wanted.
At this moment, he did something else.
He just… stared.
And he hadn’t the faintest clue why.
Saitou craned his head at the lounging boy of skin and bones clad in white except for the kanji in the back of his shirt that read ‘bad’. He was seated casually at the step of the dojo, with his arms resting in back of his head as he leaned against a post holding up the dojo roof and his legs stretched out lazily. Saitou took deep puff out of his cigarette before snaring out, “What is it, Rooster Head?”
Sanosuke squinted at him and snapped back at him, “Shut up you badass cop, like I want to hear you bark.”
But even with this said and done, Sanosuke continued to stare at him in contemplation.
It was peculiar.
Saitou grated his teeth.
“Stop it you rooster head,” Saitou said, glaring at him in disgust. “Do you really want me to kill you?” Saitou dropped his cigarette then, letting it fall to the floor as he stepped on it with his foot.
But before Sanosuke could respond to Saitou’s threat, Kenshin, though small and petite, stood between the two like a tall brick wall and intervened in their conversation. Of course it also helped that he held a large bucket of water in his arms. “Now you two stop it. Saitou? I see you have come here to speak to me?”
Saitou let out another glare before he turned away from Sanosuke, and commenced to tell Kenshin about something or another. Sanosuke didn’t bother to crane his ear and listen to the conversation. Instead, Sanosuke couldn’t help but find himself continuing to stare.
*
Sanosuke rolled the dice idly, as his friends rowdily laughed and whooped at comments that he wasn’t paying attention too. He was already too busy thinking about what had happened a couple of days ago. It was perplexing.
Sanosuke dropped the dice and let it roll.
He lost again.
“There’s something wrong,” his friend said to him, as Sanosuke watched as the money was taken from his pile to another pile belong to someone else. Sanosuke raised his eyebrow to inquire. “I mean, you’re losing at gambling but you’re not even making a big fuss about it.”
“Yeah, I noticed that too. It’s funnier to win his money when it looks like he thinks he has a chance to win it back.” His friend said, as he stared at his now larger pile filled with what appeared to be most of Sanosuke’s money. Sanosuke smacked his other friend in the back of the head. “Funny my ass. I’m just thinking.”
“Thinking? About what?”
Sanosuke was silent for a moment.
His friends looked at him with speculating looks.
“That’s exactly what I want to know,” he said.
*
Sanosuke stared up at the ceiling as he tried to sleep in his six mat apartment-room. And as he stared, he contemplated the way the policeman looked, with his dark brooding eyes, his stern expression, and his husky voice. The scent of cigarettes from a near by neighbor only push him more and more into this web of thoughts.
Sanosuke didn’t know why he was thinking so much of him, the hated policeman that almost killed him that day so long ago. The wound from Saitou’s piercing sword was on him, leaving a ragged mark of his existence meeting his own.
It was a long mark, one that would ache when the weather got too cold, get uncomfortable when it got to hot, and was a nuisance whenever he looked at it. He didn’t want to acknowledge Saitou’s existence, but this scar on his chest screamed otherwise.
“Stupid policeman,” Sanosuke muttered, as he placed his hand to where his scar was, slowly tracing the silky skin and the ridged feeling of the wound with his fingertips. “Always a murderous bastard.”
And, as he continued to contemplate the disappearance of Saitou, Sanosuke couldn’t help but recall when he almost believed that was true. After the battle with Shishiro, in the crumbling alcove, where they all were ragged and spent of all their energy.
Saitou refused to follow them. In the scenery of a crumbling building, Saitou refused his coaxing and instead decided that he should take his own path. Even if it meant dancing at the coast of death.
Sanosuke had never felt so miserable at the moment when Saitou refused to follow, choosing a path that Sanosuke believed would lead to Saitou’s death. His death, his nonexistence, these were things that Sanosuke didn’t want, contrary to his previous thoughts. He couldn’t explain why, only that Sanosuke wanted Saitou alive, kicking, threatening, and speaking crude nonsense to him. He preferred having a Saitou to loath him, to hate him, to always beat the crap out of him than to have Saitou disappear in general.
And, as Sanosuke lay down, staring up at his ceiling, he wanted to know what in the world was his mind getting to.
It never responded.
*
There was one thing that Sanosuke was able to pick up about his blubbering thoughts from the beginning of the week until now, a few days after the ending of that week, would be the awesome fact that he was slowly, but surely, growing insane. Of course this fact was the most logical explanation that Sanosuke could come up with. Then again, it was the only explanation that Sanosuke could figure out also.
Insanity, Sanosuke mused, it was a much more trickier and stranger feeling than he had ever experienced. It was insanity that pushed him to gaze at Saitou unexpectedly, and also why Sanosuke was stuck with thoughts that always cycled around Saitou for these past few days.
Yup, good old insanity, it always answered everything, he couldn’t help but conclude as he sat at the step of Kamiya dojo, listening to the faint arguments between Jou-chan and the brat, and wondering if anyone else had noticed his insanity too.
Somebody had taken notice. That somebody was the red haired sword master with his crossed scar on his cheek and a piece of clothing in his hand as he attempted to hang them up on the clothes line, the wind blowing soft and hard currents from time to time. “Sano,” Kenshin said to him, “You have been acting fairly strange these past few days. Is there anything the matter with you?”
“Ehhh?” A new voice intervened, walking from the dojo entrance, her fox ears picking up Kenshin’s early remark, her pale face looking at him with a mixture of amusement, worry, and curiosity. “What is this? Sanosuke isn’t being the loud overbearing fool that he is?”
“Shuddap,” Sanosuke said, glaring at the dark haired fox beauty that held a cunning expression on her face.
She snickered, “Awww… did I hurt the poor imbecile’s feelings?”
“Damn witch, like hell can you hurt my feelings.” He said, glaring. “I just got lots on my mind.”
“First time I ever you say something along those lines!” Megumi started up, as she sat next to him, staring at his eyes in an eerie manner. She also began to look at him, examining parts of his body, her eyes in a calculating scan. It took him awhile to realize that Megumi was attempting to check and see if there wasn’t anything wrong about him—
“Stop, you fox.” He said gruffly. “I just think that…”
He stopped then.
Dare he go on about his insanity?
He shifted uncomfortably.
“You think that…?” Megumi asked, staring at him. He looked at her and then noticed that Kenshin had stopped his hanging to find out what was going on. Even Jou-chan and Yahiko stopped arguing awhile ago and was now staring at him, in curiosity and worry.
Sanosuke groaned, “Ahou, it’s just strange. Shut up about it, I don’t want to explain it to you devil woman.”
“Try telling us about it,” Kaoru told him, her eyes in a worry haze. He cringed. He really didn’t want them to worry about him. “Dunno, I just think… you know, lately there’s this person that I started to think about a whole lot. But I hate the living guts out of them, but they’re the only freaking thing I think about. Dunno why either. I’ve finally lost it huh?”
Kaoru beamed at him.
Kenshin raised his eyebrow.
Megumi giggled.
Yahiko didn’t know what was going on.
Kaoru was the one that responded to him now, “If you mean lost it as in your mind, no, you still have that. But you did lose something-“
“What did I lose?” He was looking quite confused yet enjoying the fact that he wasn’t feebleminded and going slightly off his rocker. In all actuality, everything seemed to finally be put in the right place. That was, of course, until he heard Kaoru finish off her analyzing of what was wrong with him.
“Your heart. Sano, you’re in love.”
Upon hearing that, Sanosuke couldn’t help but wish he was insane.
*
It took Sanosuke awhile before he was able to escape the grasp of curious women who had poked and prodded at him, requesting immediate responses to sate their curious nature about whom this person that Sanosuke had fallen in love could possibly be. Of course the only person that the two could have attempted to conclude with would be the lovely waitress who he liked to leave a tab with at the Akebeko. Of course if the person he did like was Tai, things would have been a whole lot easier. But it wasn’t. Instead, he clamped his mouth shut not wanting to reveal anything because firstly, the person wasn’t a lady, and secondly, it was Saitou… out of all people that existed upon this earth…!
After a long moment of silence (him being silent of course, the other two just continuing to blabber on), Sano then popped up from his seat, flung out some remarks on how incredibly nosy women are, and proceeded to stroll away as Kaoru scolded him, telling him not to come back anytime soon for food because he was such an ungrateful chump.
‘Who needs your food,’ Sanosuke thought darkly, as he walked along the street, feeling depressed. ‘It’s awful anyways.’ But comments about Kaoru’s cooking didn’t push him away from his self-pity for himself as the image of Saitou popped into his mind.
He hung his head low.
Out of all the people in the world he had to fall in love with, he fell in love the most demented man that’s out there. He was an absolute sicko. And still, knowing that fact, Sanosuke could feel his hands grow clammy at the thought of that deranged police man.
“Wish it was my damn sanity lost instead” Sanosuke mumbled in a lamenting tone. “Although, I probably already lost that seeing how no person in their right mind could fall for that darange cop. I’m just a fucking puddle of lost sanity.”
He then kicked a rock with his foot, watching it roll along the path.
He watched as the rock stopped when it hit another pair of black shoes. He looked up, from the shoes, to those ugly looking pants, that annoying police shirt, and that hideously gloomy face.
Speak of the devil.
“What’s with you, Rooster Head.” Saitou said, as Sanosuke glared at him, the reason for all his disgust and hatred, the reason for his loss of sanity and contemplation. Saitou was the bane of his being – yet still, he couldn’t help but find his eyes unable to look away from the policeman sporting a snicker on his mouth.
Sanosuke suddenly felt the urge to smack him. Which he did, watching in amusement as his fist met with Saitou’s face in a matter of seconds. Although that amusement dropped when Saitou’s fist met with his fist in response. The two ended up brawling with one another in the street, fist meeting body parts, feet sloppily smacking places here and there and a club hitting the side of his face…
Sanosuke thought it was unbelievably unfair for Saitou to use a club. He told Saitou that too. “Unfair? Bastard, you’re the one that attacked me first.”
“That’s because you piss me off,” Sanosuke muttered, ducking the swing of the club but forgetting to block the uppercut of Saitou’s right hand. He stumbled forward then, clutching his stomach in agony.
“You fucking policeman,” he said, wheezing for breath, “You fight dirty.”
“I never said I fight fair,” Saitou concluded, smacking Sanosuke on the head again, but not hard as to physically cripple him or give him brain damage, but more as a ‘what the hell are you doing?’ type of frustrated smack that people give other people over the head.
“As much as I like to kill you, what the hell are you doing messing with me?” Saitou questioned, glaring down at the wheezing boy who took another deep breath of air while attempting to stabilize himself. “It’s been awhile since you pissed me off like this. Is there a reason why or is it because you’re just that fucking intolerable?”
“Wish it was cause I’m just that fucking intolerable,” Sanosuke replied, feeling that the urge to pound Saitou to a pulp die away, being replaced by the urge to rant loudly. “But, no, it’s all your fault you bastard, for being so annoying and stupidly frustrating. If you weren’t so in my face, if you didn’t act the way you did, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
Saitou, of course, could not make much sense of Sanosuke’s blubbering. “You’re an idiot.”
“Damn straight I am,” Sanosuke said loudly. With that, he looked straight at Saitou’s face once again, at the red cheek he had from the initial swig in the face that Sanosuke gave him. He was quite proud at the fact that he was able to mess up the cop even a slight bit. But, while looking at the damage he had given Saitou, he then couldn’t help but noticed how damn lovely the evil guy’s lips were. They were quite… inviting.
“A damn fucking idiot I am. Especially since I want to do this.” With that, Sanosuke grabbed Saitou’s shirt, pulled him towards him and then let his lips meet the older man’s lips in a full-blown passionate kiss that surprised Saitou to the very core of him. After a moment of sweetness in this surprise kiss, Sanosuke then pushed the man away from him. “Now that I got that out of my system…”
Sanosuke then punched the still shocked Saitou square on the jaw before departing.
Saitou held onto his jaw in surprise as he watched the tall lanky boy walk away.
It was a very peculiar situation indeed.