Chapter Text
Ogata doesn’t report this development to Tsurumi.
At first, it’s a vindictive decision, a private jab at authority that satisfies an itch buried deep inside him. It isn’t as if he’s some dog, he tells himself, despite the stiff jut of his uniform collar around his neck. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone, even if he’s thrown his lot in with Tsurumi at the moment.
The second time he sends an invitation to Yuusaku, he jerks Yuusaku off behind the officers’ stables and lets Yuusaku fumble at him until he follows suit. Yuusaku’s cap is knocked off in the process, and Ogata takes pleasure in planting a dusty footprint on top of it.
The third time they meet, he has the sinking feeling that this is becoming a habit. It’s only when Yuusaku’s panting into the side of his neck and grinding Ogata flat against the wall of the laundry room that he realizes that he can’t remember the last time he smoked. Instead, all he tastes is the last thing Yuusaku ate, or a hint of iron from when their kisses grow an edge.
It tastes far better than tobacco, but he has no doubt that it’s not any better for his health.
He foolishly thought that once would be the end of it. A guilty fumble in some hidden corner that would become a festering, shadowy memory. He supposes, though, that perhaps Yuusaku’s immunity to shame means that they simply must repeat the experience as often as possible.
They begin meeting when they can in snatches of time between shifts, or on weekends when the other officers are off in town. Ogata sets the time and place, and Yuusaku shows up on the dot, his cap tugged low and his cheeks flushed. He wonders when he will know when Yuusaku has abandoned his morals. Somehow, when he’s limp with pleasure and panting against Ogata’s neck, he seems purer than ever.
Yuusaku invites Ogata to his quarters once. It’s a departure from the norm, and Ogata’s curiosity eventually wins out over his apathy. He expects something sinister, like tea or childhood anecdotes or shogi. Instead he finds Yuusaku waiting in his shirtsleeves with a washtub full of steaming water.
“What’s this?”
“I...I thought it would be nice.” Yuusaku ducks his head sheepishly. “I could wash your back for you.” His voice takes on a hopeful lift, his hands clasping in front of him.
Ogata looks at him, incredulous. “We have a bathhouse, sir.”
“Well, I mean…” Yuusaku’s face starts going pink. “I wouldn’t want...I wouldn’t want others to see us.”
Ah, Ogata thinks. So that’s how it is. He begins lowering himself to his knees, working his mouth open and shut a few times to stretch his jaw. “You didn’t need the excuse,” he says, relieved that it’s nothing out of the ordinary, after all. “Come on, then.”
“Brother, that’s not-” Yuusaku’s cheeks flush red so quickly that Ogata’s amazed he’s still standing. “No. I mean, not that I don’t- not that...I just- that’s not what I meant by it.”
Ogata blinks once, slowly, then nods in comprehension. “I didn’t bring anything for my ass,” he says. “But I’ll give it a go.”
“Ahh!” Yuusaku covers his face with his hands.
In the end, Yuusaku demonstrates a strength of willpower unlike any that he’s shown before and herds Ogata into the tub. The water is hot and soothing, scented with something he can’t place. He finds himself relaxing, which is terrible. Yuusaku’s hands, however, are even worse.
They move gently over his shoulders, careful and chaste, barely dipping beneath the line of the water. Ogata almost wishes they would choke him instead. It’d give him something else to think about, at least, beside the slow drag of wet fabric over his back, or the sound of Yuusaku’s quiet breathing behind him.
He holds himself rigidly without entirely realizing it, looking down at where his bare knees protrude from the water. He isn’t in the habit of taking his time to soak in the bathhouse. It’s usually a noisy, crowded affair, filled with swinging dicks and pale skinny legs, and the water never stays clear or hot for long enough to make it worthwhile.
He must look ridiculous now, crammed in a tub he barely fits in like an overgrown child. Ogata hasn’t been washed by someone like this since he was small enough to take baths with his mother. It’s a horrifying, sobering thought, followed by an equally horrifying, sobering realization that it feels the same as he remembers.
He only notices Yuusaku has stopped touching him when he realizes his back has gone cold, the damp skin prickling where it’s been scrubbed clean.
“I’m sorry,” Yuusaku says, his voice diminished. “This must be uncomfortable for you, after all.”
Ogata turns his head, just enough to see him from the corner of his eye. Yuusaku’s gaze is downcast, his fingers curled around the side of the tub. The audacity, Ogata thinks, of backing out when he’s dragged Ogata along with him this far.
“I’m not clean yet,” he says. He reaches back for Yuusaku’s hands and brings them over his shoulders to rest on the top of his pectorals. Yuusaku’s chest jostles the tub as he’s pulled forward, his breath cold on the back of Ogata’s wet neck.
“Brother,” Yuusaku begins uncertainly. His hands are stiff, his fingers canting upwards as if to avoid making contact, and Ogata tightens his grip to keep him in place.
“Keep going,” he says. He leans back and wills himself to relax, one muscle at a time. It’s not unlike the way he spends hours perched in some sniper’s roost on a clifftop, erasing his existence inch by inch until not even his breath remains.
Yuusaku’s movements are hesitant at first, as if he’s waiting for a reprimand. When Ogata doesn’t do anything of the sort, he gives Ogata’s chest a healthy squeeze and makes embarrassing noises against the back of Ogata’s head. He fondles Ogata long enough that Ogata wonders if he needs to give another, perhaps less gentle reminder that he’s not a woman, and no amount of wishful groping will change it.
Then Yuusaku’s hands dip beneath the water, and Ogata becomes reluctantly aware of the course they’re taking, of the building enthusiasm in the way Yuusaku spreads his fingers along the curve of his ribs. Yuusaku’s shirt sleeves are getting wet now where they’re rolled neatly around his elbows, his face a lingering shadow in Ogata’s peripheral.
When Yuusaku finally touches his cock, Ogata is almost surprised to find himself hard. It could just be muscle memory, his body tuned to receive Yuusaku’s clumsy touches and his graceless, earnest affections. He sighs and leans back against Yuusaku’s shoulder, because Yuusaku is always better at this when he’s confident. He touches his mouth to the growing dampness at the side of Yuusaku’s jaw, leaving it there until it becomes just the suggestion of a kiss, and sure enough, Yuusaku’s grip tightens until Ogata’s knees bang against the sides of the tub.
“Yuusaku-dono,” he murmurs. This close, Yuusaku’s face is just a blur, the darkness of his eyes cast low on the motions of his own hand. “If you keep that up, I’ll get dirty again.”
Yuusaku makes a small, complicated noise in his throat at that. “Then I’ll just clean you again,” he says valiantly. Ogata has to hand it to him; he’s committed to the effort. He supposes it’s meant to be flattering, that Yuusaku would have a tub dragged all the way to his room just to get his dick wet. Another kinder, more pleasant man might have appreciated the gesture for what it is. Ogata is not that kind of man.
The water doesn’t do much in the way of providing any sort of slickness, and the clinging weight of it slows Yuusaku’s momentum until what little skill he’s managed to pick up is rendered nearly useless. Still, Ogata comes obligingly, the discomfort a close enough thing to pleasure that it tips him over the edge. He can almost pretend the rawness of it is intentional, that Yuusaku meant to leave him sweating through the wetness already on his skin. He exhales as it happens, nearly loud enough to be a groan, and lifts his hips into Yuusaku’s palm to chase the last of the wave. It’s like struggling to reach the last drop of beer at the bottom of a bottle, like straining his eyes to see a bird on the horizon.
He leaves Yuusaku’s quarters feeling both well-fucked and immensely unsatisfied, smelling like he rolled his way through a brothel and landed ass first in a flower shop. In the end, Yuusaku didn’t even let Ogata suck him off, persevering even when Ogata left wet handprints on the bulge between his legs and told him he could stop holding back. Instead, he insisted on toweling Ogata dry, on rubbing his arms and legs down and lifting his feet one by one to wipe beneath his soles. To his credit, he only blushed when Ogata leaned a hand on his shoulder and made an offhand comment about liking the look of him on his knees.
Whatever the hell Yuusaku got out of all that, Ogata thinks, must be more perverted than anything Ogata can bring to mind.
***
“Hya-ku-no-suke.” Usami straddles the foot of his cot without asking, grinning so widely that his moles nearly disappear in the creases of his cheeks. “You’ve been busy.”
Ogata doesn’t look up from his textbook. It’s a creased, second hand copy of a Russian primer, with slips of paper that Tsurumi added in to mark the sections he wants Ogata to pay particular attention to. He recognizes Tsukishima’s fastidious handwriting in the margins, and he wonders if one day, Tsurumi will have some other dead-eyed private reading his own notes on these same pages.
“I’m busy right now,” he says pointedly, stretching his legs out as far as he can.
Usami ignores him, thrusting his way obscenely up the cot until he can lean into Ogata’s field of vision. He sniffs loudly, his head weaving like a hunting hound, and looks at Ogata with his left eye, then his right. “I can smell it,” he says. “You’ve been up to something.”
Ogata pauses and thinks for a moment. “You can’t smell anything.”
“Aha!” Usami jabs a finger at him, triumphant. “So you admit it, there’s something!”
“I didn’t admit anything.” Ogata snaps his textbook shut, irritated, and feels a flash of vindication when Usami has to jerk his head out of the way. “What do you want?”
Usami gives him a dirty look, swiping at his nose as he sits back. “Just looking out for you,” he says, sickly sweet. “You look almost healthy recently. It’s disgusting.”
“I do not,” Ogata says automatically.
“Sorry, it’s true. Very sad.” Usami pulls a tragic face and swings his legs off the cot. Ogata watches him leave, a little uneasy. He didn’t realize that there’s anything different about him, and it bothers him to have someone know something about himself that he isn’t aware of. Of course, it could always just be Usami fucking with him, but there’s always a grain of truth in all of Usami’s fuckery.
He opens his textbook again, but finds it impossible to focus on the lines of print. He must be coming down with something, he decides. It’s almost certainly Yuusaku’s fault, making him sit in the bath so long like that. It’s possible that this was his plan all along, to render Ogata sick and incapacitated so that he can’t escape Yuusaku’s bedside manner.
“Stop thinking so hard, it makes you uglier,” Usami calls from across the room, and Ogata is inclined to agree.
***
The following week, Yuusaku invites Ogata out for dinner and, despite knowing better, Ogata accepts. He spends the day wondering if Yuusaku will blush and flutter his way through his meal, probably at some izakaya where he’ll avoid the beer and sake, but insist that Ogata orders whatever he likes. It’ll be a good excuse, he imagines, to guide Ogata to an inn on their way home. Yuusaku would like the idea of fucking on a bed, he thinks. It’s the sort of softness that suits him.
That night, he finds himself squashed between the square frames of Kikuta and Tamai, and realizes far too late that this is just another one of Yuusaku’s terrible little attempts at- at something Ogata is certain borders on the diabolical. He suffers this realization in dismay, and then he suffers a few rounds of drinks and heavy claps on his shoulders as the nabe in the middle of the table bubbles away. He gets through the bulk of the conversation by seeing how long he can switch his full cup for Tamai’s empty ones without being noticed and is on the third rotation when he sees Yuusaku watching him from the other side of the table.
Yuusaku gives him a look, a commiserating lift of his shoulders and mouth, his own cup full of barley tea and sitting neatly between his palms. Ogata has no idea what to make of it. He changes his mind about the third cup, pulls it back towards himself instead, and drinks it down in a series of determined gulps.
Things are a little easier to deal with, after that.
It’s the sort of restaurant where the tables are packed too closely, and the patrons packed even closer. The smell of too many boiling pots of food mingles and churns in the air, until it’s difficult to pick out one aroma from another. A soup, Ogata thinks hazily. They’re all just soup. All of this, the nabe, the people, the whole damn world.
The nabe is too heavy for his liking, the meat too oily and gamey and the broth oversalted. He remembers a far different nabe, with rich broth and delicate flakes of white meat, the smell of the sea drifting in from the open kitchen window and clinging to the upswept curve of his mother’s hair.
He’s not in a particularly good mood by the time they leave the restaurant. He lingers in the background while Yuusaku makes obligatory small talk with the others, hands deep in his pockets and his stomach roiling unpleasantly.
“Think we’ll stick around, get a few more drinks,” Kikuta says, half supporting half of Tamai’s weight with a careless ease. “You alright there, Ogata?” He peers around Yuusaku, professional in his polite friendliness. Ogata cuts his eyes away and pretends to be fascinated by the lanterns hanging over the restaurant door.
“I’ll see him back, Kikuta-san,” Yuusaku says. He’s the apex predator of friendliness, Ogata thinks. Kikuta doesn’t stand a chance. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”
It’s late enough in the night that the streets are mostly empty. Ogata recognizes a few of the same uniforms on the stragglers they pass, though he doesn’t bother looking too closely at their faces. Yuusaku trails along behind him, in his favorite spot by Ogata’s elbow. Ogata wonders if Yuusaku intentionally seeks out his blind spot when he does this, or if it’s just part of his natural talents in being unsettling.
“We should do this again,” Yuusaku says cheerfully. “That was fun, don’t you think?”
Ogata grunts. His neck prickles with the discomfort of having Yuusaku just beyond his peripheral vision, and he slows his pace so that they can walk side by side. Yuusaku looks immensely touched by this, which Ogata does his best to ignore.
“Well, sir?” he asks. “What now?”
Yuusaku’s expression shifts towards puzzlement. “Hm? I thought we’d head back, get a good night’s sleep.”
Ogata tries and fails to detect any hint of innuendo. “Is that all?”
Yuusaku seems at a loss. “Did you...did you have something else in mind, brother? You looked tired during dinner, I thought you might need the rest.”
Ogata sighs through his nose, long and drawn out, and casts a look around the streets. He spots the mouth of an alley, suitably shadowed where the lantern lights don’t quite reach, and makes a beeline for it. The night may be salvageable after all, even if he has to take matters into his own hands.
Yuusaku follows him blindly, hovering over his shoulder like a bad dream, “Are you feeling ill?” he asks. “I can fetch some water if you’d like-”
Ogata turns around abruptly, the two of them toe to toe in the cramped space. “I’m not ill,” he says. The alleyway is almost too narrow to be called that, little more than an unpaved gap between two buildings that can barely fit the width of their shoulders. Yuusaku is a dark silhouette, the brim of his cap glinting in what little light there is from the lanterns behind him.
“It’s a nice night, isn’t it?” Ogata edges closer, his fingers seeking the hem of Yuusaku’s coat. He hears Yuusaku’s breathing hitch in surprise, his hands coming up to cup Ogata’s elbows. “We could try something new, if you’d like.”
“But we’re...we’re outside,” Yuusaku says dumbly. He starts to look over his shoulder, and Ogata tugs at the front of his uniform to regain his attention.
“No one’s looking,” Ogata says. He turns until his back meets the wall, pulling Yuusaku with him. “You don’t want to?”
Yuusaku hesitates, but his hands are still on Ogata’s arms, his thumbs rubbing against Ogata’s biceps in a way that makes Ogata think he isn’t completely aware of it. “What did you want to try?” he finally asks.
Ogata reaches up and takes Yuusaku’s hand off his arm, bringing it down to rest on his hip instead. “Something even you could do with a woman,” he says. He’s heard that young masters are fond of sumata, for its convenience in keeping their mistresses from getting pregnant. If only their father had favored it, as well.
It doesn’t take much to get Yuusaku hard, even less now that Ogata’s had practice at it. The buttons of Yuusaku’s coat dig against the inside of Ogata’s wrist as he works a hand inside Yuusaku’s open trousers, pulling Yuusaku’s dick out from his fundoshi. He’s starting to feel like a brothel girl, jerking some officer off in a dark alley that stinks of beer and tobacco. Broken glass crunches beneath Yuusaku’s boot as he wedges a foot between Ogata’s, humping up into his palm with a nervous energy. It seems like the atmosphere is filthy enough for even Yuusaku to feel it, and Ogata suddenly feels like a genius.
He pulls at the buttons of his own trousers, shoving them down his thighs, then turns to face the wall. Part of him is relieved that he doesn’t have to look Yuusaku in the face- the rest of him stiffens at showing his back so readily. He braces his arm against the wall and leans his forehead against it, staring down at the dark outlines of his boots.
“Are you cold, brother?” Yuusaku’s hands slide along his bare hips with a boldness that Ogata blames on the darkness. “You’ve got goosebumps.”
“Yeah,” Ogata lies.
“I’m sorry.” Yuusaku doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Ogata finds himself almost proud.
He licks a wet stripe across his palm, then reaches back and gives Yuusaku’s cock an awkward pump before guiding it to the back of his thighs. “Here, sir,” he says. “In between, like that.”
Yuusaku’s hands flex nervously on his waist as he shuffles close. “Like, like this- oh.”
Ogata tightens his legs and feels Yuusaku grow even harder. When Yuusaku’s hips jerk forward, he can feel Yuusaku’s cock behind his balls, rubbing at him through the fabric of his fundoshi. This might have been a mistake, he suddenly thinks. Yuusaku fits unsettlingly well against him like this, his chest pressed against Ogata’s back and their hips slotted together in something far too similar to an embrace between lovers. His chest twists oddly at the realization, and he shifts his weight, trying to put some space between them.
It backfires tremendously- Yuusaku moans when Ogata rocks back against him, his fingers digging into Ogata’s hips. His next blind thrust flattens Ogata against the wall, hard enough that Ogata has to stifle a grunt. It’s less of a fuck now than a slow, agonizing grind, what Ogata initially anticipated to be a hot and dirty rut now becoming softer and horrifically intimate.
It isn’t long before Yuusaku’s breath takes on a desperate pitch, until Ogata begins to wonder if they’re standing far away enough from the street, or if this is about to become a two-fold nightmare. Yuusaku’s hand jerks down to grab at his thigh, tugging at the twist of Ogata’s fundoshi on their way down. The fabric shifts and loosens, and Ogata gives a start at the feeling of Yuusaku’s cock sliding flush against the crease of his thigh. Everything is abruptly too hot, too close. He’s upsettingly hard, his dick bumping against the wall with every jolt.
“Brother,” Yuusaku pants, his voice cracking. His breath gusts out across the back of Ogata’s neck, and suddenly Ogata feels the sharp pressure of Yuusaku’s teeth, catching at the soft flesh over the top of Ogata’s spine.
He makes a startled noise, despite himself, and Yuusaku’s mouth instantly grows slack against him. The bite isn’t deep enough to break the skin, but Ogata can still feel the stinging ghost of it, just high enough that it can’t be hidden by his collar.
“I’m sorry,” Yuusaku gasps. “I’m sorry, brother, I just couldn’t-” Ogata clenches his legs tighter in vindication and feels a jab of satisfaction when Yuusaku chokes and falls silent.
“Go on,” Ogata tells him, “or we’ll be here all night.” It’s more of a bluff than anything else- he’s been teetering on the edge since the moment Yuusaku bit him. He tightens his legs again, rocking back awkwardly, and reaches down to palm himself. He can feel how wet he is, the head of his cock hot and sensitive where it’s chafed against the inside of his fundoshi. He gives himself a cursory stroke, twitching when Yuusaku fucks slowly back into him, then stretches downward past the swollen weight of his balls. He just manages to brush against Yuusaku’s dick before he withdraws, leaving behind a slick smear between Ogata’s fingertips.
“Brother, wait-” Yuusaku grabs at him, his voice most definitely too loud now, before he comes right there between Ogata’s thighs. It’s as filthy and sloppy as Ogata expected, dripping down into the bunched folds of his trousers. Yuusaku trembles against him, overwhelmed, clutching at the front of Ogata’s coat so tightly he knows he’ll have to iron it out in the morning.
Distantly, Ogata hears the murmur of voices and laughter, no doubt any drunken group of privates on their way back to base. He tenses, willing them to pass without incident. The voices grow louder, joining together in the clashing chorus of a drinking song, and Yuusaku chooses that moment to grope at Ogata’s cock.
Ogata grabs at his wrist warningly, but Yuusaku persists, crowding Ogata even closer against the wall. “Yuusaku-dono,” he begins, his breath caught in his throat. He wonders if Yuusaku even hears the approaching voices, the footsteps that are now barely audible beneath the rushing of his pulse.
“Brother,” Yuusaku mumbles, nosing against the side of Ogata’s face. He’s a sprawling dead weight against Ogata’s back, fumbling and tugging at Ogata’s cock with an absolute lack of finesse.
It shouldn’t do it for him at all, which makes it all the more confounding when Ogata shudders and spills over Yuusaku’s fingers. He shoves his hand over his mouth, as if he can force his groan right back down his throat. He no longer cares if they’re seen, if those privates march right down the alley. They’ll get a fucking show, is what they’ll get, and then they’ll get a bullet each.
In the end, nobody comes down the alley.
Ogata shrugs his way out from beneath Yuusaku before his knees can give out, his shirt sticking to his back with sweat, and uses the wreckage of his fundoshi to mop himself clean. He stuffs it in his pocket afterwards, his dick feeling far too exposed in his trousers when he pulls them back up. He can’t quite bring himself to look at Yuusaku, and for once, it’s not because of his damned saintliness.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says. His voice is gravelly, the words not quite managing to pass for sincere. Something tells him that Yuusaku doesn’t mind.
***
It’s an unseasonably warm day, the sun beating down on the trampled mud around the base and filling the breezeless air with a thick, humid haze. Ogata tucks himself into the sliver of space beneath the lean-to and pretends to be doing his part in overseeing the new recruits’ basic training.
Kikuta’s got it well in hand, anyway. He has a natural authority with the younger ones, especially- the ones with a light in their eyes who still think they’re here for some greater cause. He’s got them running laps around the base now, pounding footprints deep into the dirt before the sun can bake it dry.
Ogata tugs at the collar of his uniform, wishing it isn’t so stifling, and waits for the lunch hour to mark the end of his shift.
“It’s nice that you two get along,” Kikuta tells him, apropos of nothing.
Ogata stares at him blankly. Kikuta’s not the worst of his superiors, but he has a habit of saying things that Ogata finds completely bizarre. It’s one of the few sentiments he shares with Usami. “Guy’s kind of out there, you know,” Usami told him once, with the air of confiding something incredibly scandalous. “Told me I didn’t have to stand guard every time First Lieutenant Tsurumi went to the bathhouse. Told me I shouldn’t look through the window, either! Can you believe that? What a headcase.”
“With who?” Ogata finally asks, when Kikuta only looks at him expectantly.
“Your brother,” Kikuta says, as if it’s obvious. “You two seem close.”
“Mm.” Usami was right, Ogata thinks. He is a headcase.
Unfortunately, this isn’t enough of a deterrent for Kikuta. He goes on in the wistful manner of someone who’s begun having a conversation for the sake of himself, and Ogata wonders if he’s allowed to leave. “It’s nice to see, you know. I wish I’d spent more time with my brother before all this.”
“....Right,” Ogata says.
As uncomfortable as the interaction was, he doesn’t think much of it until Tsukishima catches him in the hallway that afternoon, a stack of mail under his arm.
“Here,” Tsukishima says, thrusting a third of the pile towards him. “Take this.”
“I don’t think so,” Ogata says, thrusting them right back. Not a soul in the world is left who would be writing him letters.
“They’re not for you .” Tsukishima pushes the envelopes harder into his chest. “Give those to Second Lieutenant Hanazawa. You’re seeing him later anyway, aren’t you?” He strides off before Ogata can deny it, leaving him standing stupidly in the hallway with Yuusaku’s mail in his hands.
He thinks about the last time he saw Yuusaku- easy, just the night before for dinner in the mess hall. The time before that is another shadowy memory in Yuusaku’s room, the curtains drawn tight and Yuusaku’s dick in his throat. He supposes they had lunch together before that too, sitting shoulder to shoulder at the officers’ table, but surely anyone can see that they aren’t close. It isn’t as if they spend that much time together, only...only…
They think we’re brothers, he realizes. That much feels obvious- he knows that they are, and yet he doesn’t. It’s one thing to be brothers by blood, it’s another to say the words and mean them. No, it’s worse than that- they think we’re friends.
“Ehh, Youhei, do you think he’s asleep?”
“He can’t be, Kouhei. Maybe he’s dead.”
“No, no, I’m sure he’s breathing-”
Ogata blinks, the pale, pointy ovals of the Nikaidous’ faces swimming into focus. They lean away from him in sync, identically appalled.
“You’re right, he was breathing.”
“Message from the Second Lieutenant, sir.” Nikaidou- the older one, Ogata thinks- holds out a folded note. “Didn’t peek, we promise,” he says, in a way that suggests the opposite.
The note politely requests Ogata’s presence at the officer quarters in an hour. Ogata decides that the sooner he gets this over with, the better. He’s had enough unsettling encounters for the day to try for a third.
He knocks at Yuusaku’s door only once before entering. Yuusaku’s reading at his writing desk, his chair tilted back on its back legs. He gives a guilty start when he hears the door, dropping the chair back quickly, before he looks up and sees Ogata. The guilt is swept away instantly, replaced by a smile that splits his face. He waves Ogata over and Ogata goes. He wonders if worms ever realize that they’re on a hook, or if they only realize it when they’re swallowed whole.
“You’re early, brother,” Yuusaku says happily. “Were you looking forward to it?”
Ogata doesn’t grace that with an answer. He takes the bundle of envelopes from his belt pouch instead and sets them on the desk. “Your mail, sir,” he says, unnecessarily.
“Oh! These must be from Father.” Yuusaku sifts through the first few envelopes. “I wrote to him about you, you know.”
“Ah,” says Ogata. “You shouldn’t have.”
Yuusaku is resplendent in his obliviousness. “Of course I did! You’ve been so kind, after all-” Ogata blinks rapidly at this, “Really, brother, you’re far too humble. You’re part of the family.”
“You’re a very imaginative man, Yuusaku-dono.”
Yuusaku grabs for his hands, his eyes wide and sincere. “I‘ve been thinking,” he begins.
“Wouldn’t you rather do something else?” Ogata edges a hopeful step towards the bed, but Yuusaku holds him fast.
“You should come live with us, after the war,” Yuusaku announces. He sounds like it’ll solve every last problem in the world, like he’s scaled some philosophical peak after months of ascension. “It’ll please Father.”
It is such a ridiculous notion that Ogata nearly refuses to even entertain it. In the end, though, he’s as prone to entertaining the absurd as anyone else. “I’m absolutely sure that it won’t,” he says dryly. “You think too well of other people, Yuusaku-dono.”
Yuusaku laughs. “What a thing to say!” He grins at Ogata goodnaturedly. “I think well of you, too, brother.”
Exactly. Ogata wishes that he doesn’t. He wishes Yuusaku would pity him or scorn him, that Yuusaku would show a single mean bone in his body. Kindness is useless in a war, and even more useless in a man meant to be used. He looks down at their hands, at the way Yuusaku holds him unflinchingly. He can’t remember the last time his hands were held like this, not even when he was a child. Even then, it seemed there was some sort of expectation he couldn’t fulfill, some lingering space he was always too close to see the shape of.
It’s very nearly a pleasant feeling.
Ogata pulls his hands back and clears his throat. “Let’s play shogi,” he says. He would prefer anything over continuing this conversation, and he’s lost the mood for fucking after Yuusaku’s insane proposal.
He’s already discovered that Yuusaku is terrible at shogi. He hoards and guards his pieces with the sort of care that a general can’t afford, but Ogata supposes that’s why he will never be one. That isn’t to say that he himself is any better- he supposes that’s why he will never be a general, either. In the end, perhaps they have more in common than he realized. He suddenly recalls Tsurumi’s words, at the beginning of it all.
Their father wouldn’t be proud of the two of them at all.
“You’re smiling,” Yuusaku says, delighted. “Something funny?” He’s already set up the board, his chair pulled around the side of the desk so they can sit across from each other.
Ogata raises a hand to his face, and he doesn’t lower it until he feels the shape of his mouth return to normal. “Not at all,” he says. “Shall we play?”