GINTAMA and all characters/ideas/concepts/places therein are not mine, although the writing certainly is.



Title: Dysfunction is a function.
Characters/Pairing(s): Kondo, Hijikata, Okita
Rating: G
Summary: He's a thinking man, after all.
Notes: The title is taken from the 31_days theme for July 6, 2007.



Dysfunction is a function.


Admittedly, there are times when he sees Hijikata up late with paperwork and an ashtray choked with cigarette butts or Okita out in the thunder and rain carving up people until their bodies until he can’t even lift up his arms right, and Kondo kind of really wants to slow down. Maybe he’ll say hey, it’s good that you’re working hard but I need you alive or maybe he’ll say you don’t need to do this alone. Maybe he won’t even say anything and all and he’ll just knock them upside head, drag them off by the collar and then knock their heads together. That used to work when they were younger, and since it seems as though the two of them haven’t really changed at all, it’s entirely possible that it’ll still work just as well now that they’re all Responsible Adults.

That is, of course, what Kondo likes to tell himself. In fact, he knows that they HAVE changed – he knows only too well, because he can see it in the way the two of them are hardly ever in the same room anymore, if they can help it. He feels it in the slight shift of Okita’s voice whenever Hijikata is brought up in the conversation, in how Hijikata doesn’t ever mention Okita if he can help it. Then there’s that old practice they used to have, when they’d sit around together to watch the sunset and the fireflies come out. They never do that anymore. They’re never really together unless they’re eating with everyone, or out on call. And even then, they stand around like they’re not old friends, not soldiers who fought the good fight together. They stand around like there are walls between them, and no amount of fighting/shouting/kicking/screaming is going to bring them down.

The only thing that brings them together is protecting their commander, preserving him exactly the way they’ve always seen him, through thick and thin, hell and high water.

So Kondo plays the idiot card and tries to live with it instead.