Odd Jobs Crack

A Gintama thingy

By

EvilFuzzy9

"...and so I have no idea what to do," Shinpachi finished, sighing miserably. He stirred his chopsticks idly in the ramen bowl, causing the lingering broth to swirl like a miniature whirlpool.

Next to Shinpachi sat his childhood friend, Takaya Hachibei – or Takachin, as most people had come to know him. The younger man (younger now, that is, after Shinpachi's time skip) looked up into his buddy's eyes. He was frowning solemnly, arms crossed, his own bowl empty of all but the smallest dregs.

The two of them were at a ramen stand roughly equidistant from their respective homes, talking out their troubles over bowls of pulled noodles.

"Seriously?" Takachin said after a moment of silence. "Man, Shin-chan. That's pretty heavy. You and Kagura-chan... who'da thunk it?"

Shinpachi nodded slowly, nervously pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"It's hard to believe everything that's happened these past couple of days," said the newly bishounen (newly, that is, from Takaya's perspective) four-eyes. "But at the same time, it also seems... almost natural, I guess."

He blushed faintly, fiddling a little anxiously with his chopsticks.

"It's not like I never thought she was pretty, you know," he said, and the young man sounded almost wistful as he spoke. "Because she is. And, I mean, she's been pretty for as long as I've known her, even back when we first met..."

His blush deepened. He went quiet.

Takaya nodded slowly, and he hummed.

"I never really noticed, myself," the bucktoothed teen admitted. "But then, for as long as I've known her, I've just thought of her as that kid Shin-chan hangs out with. I suppose she IS cute, though, at least in a foreign kinda way."

"Yeah..." Shinpachi said slowly. "I'll admit that, when I first met her, I was actually a little... hrm, well... I might have, you know—" He gestured vaguely. "—had a little bit of a crush on her, those first couple of days. I had never seen anyone like her."

He paused for a moment, appearing deep in thought. An hoary old patron of the ramen stand paid his bill and left in the time it took for one of the two, Shinpachi and Takaya, to speak again.

"Seriously?" said Takaya, quirking an eyebrow at his friend. He was only mildly perturbed, by now, that the other teen was, in biological development if not necessarily life experience, now two years his senior. "That's news to me."

Shinpachi shrugged weakly, and he nervously brushed a stray bang away from his face.

"Well, it didn't last long," he explained. "Or at least I don't think it did. But once I got to know her, I really started to look past her, well, looks. I saw Kagura-chan for who she really was as a person, and not just for her pretty face."

He hummed quietly, then shook his head.

"Of course, I didn't like what I saw. It really disillusioned me, I think. She was so... vulgar, so rude and stubborn and spiteful. At some point, I stopped thinking of her as a girl. She was a brat, a hellion and a troublemaker. Nothing at all like what I'd always thought a girl should be."

"Not that different from your sister, then," said Takaya wryly.

Shinpachi did not take offense to this. Takachin was one of the few people he could stand to hear making jibes about his sister, largely because he knew that his friend only did so out of affection. Takaya Hachibei owed a lot to Otae, for all the times she had rescued him and Shin-chan from bullies back in temple school, and he respected her nearly as much as he respected Shinpachi.

"I guess," Shinpachi said, smiling just a little. "But a lot has happened since then, and I've really gotten to know her, I think. Kagura-chan... is a good person, at heart. She's actually very kind and gentle, in her own messed up way."

"Kagura? Gentle?" said Takaya, staring at Shinpachi as if the samurai-son had spontaneously sprouted a second head. "Are you sure you've really recovered from that concussion, Shin-chan?"

Shinpachi laughed.

"I'm fine, Takachin," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "I know she might not show it to a lot of people, but..."

He thought of the vermillion haired chit in that nurse outfit, sitting herself on his bed and gently spooning egg-over-rice into his mouth. He smiled, and his cheeks grew warm at the memory.

"...she really does have a sweet side to her."

Takaya hummed thoughtfully, looking sidelong at his friend.

"Huh. You really do have a thing for her," he said after a long moment of studying Shinpachi's expression.

The young squire's face blossomed into a rainbow of scarlet hues. He fidgeted awkwardly in his seat, staring down into the dregs of his ramen.

"It seems so complicated," Shinpachi sighed. "What happened last night... I know I should regret it, and I do. But only kind of." He paused, struggling to find the right words. "It's like, I know that what has happened can't be forgotten or undone. Once that line has been crossed there is no going back. And in that sense, I do regret it."

Takaya frowned.

"In that sense?" he parroted quizzically.

Shinpachi gestured vaguely. "You know," he said. "In the sense... the sense that we can never just go back to the way we were. You know? Me and Kagura. Up to this point, even with everything that had happened, we were still firmly just friends. And that was fine, that was a safe place. I was happy with just being her friend.

"I mean, I knew I liked her. I think at least some part of me has had an inkling of that for a long time. She was pretty—she is pretty—and she was always fun to hang around with, if not always safe. I was glad to be her friend. Me, her, and Gin-san. We were a team. Odd Jobs Gin-chan. But now... I don't know if we can be that anymore."

Takaya hummed thoughtfully.

"So it's like in an office drama, then?" he said slowly. "After doing something like that with your coworker, you have no idea if you can go back to working with her as though nothing ever happened?"

Shinpachi gave Takaya an odd look. The blond shrugged.

"My mom watches a lot of that kinda thing," he explained vaguely.

Shinpachi nodded in understanding.

"Right," he said slowly. "Basically. I can't just act like it never happened. That would be like an insult, you know? It was... it was my first time," he admitted only a little reluctantly, "and probably hers too. We can't pretend it never happened."

"The two of you are too close for it be just casual, right?" guessed Takaya.

Shinpachi scoffed.

"I don't believe in that kind of thing being done casually," he muttered lowly.

Takaya laughed, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Yeah, you are pretty old fashioned about that kind of thing. You and your sister both." He smiled, and placed a reassuring hand on Shinpachi's shoulder. "But I guess that's what I like about you guys, isn't it?"

Shinpachi gave his friend a weary smile.

"You think so?" he said. "Because a part of me does regret it... a part of me WANTS to just forget this ever happened, pretend that things are the same as they've ever been. But that doesn't sit right with me. I..." He grimaced faintly. "I know what I should do. But I'm not really sure if it's what Kagura would want me to..."

Takaya perked up at this.

"Eh? What are you saying, Shin-chan?" he said shrewdly. "You aren't really thinking about..."

The young man blushed, and his hand went to a pocket.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "I... almost feel relieved when I think about it. I've never been popular with girls, or very confident in my charm. If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I don't have much going for me that others don't have in greater quantity. I don't really have anything to set me apart from others."

"That's not true, Shin-chan," Takaya said. "You've got your glasses!"

It was mostly a joke, and Shinpachi did laugh at it.

"I suppose I do, don't I?" Shinpachi said wryly, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. "I've got my glasses, and the Tsu Terakado Imperial Guard. But if Kagura's willing, I think I'll soon have something else."

"Oh?" said Takaya. "And what would that be?"

Shinpachi smiled softly. "A girlfriend."

A beat.

Takachin cocked his head to one side.

"Eh?" he said. "I thought you had no idea what to do."

Shinpachi averted his gaze sheepishly.

"Well..." he said slowly, "...in a way, I don't."

"Ah." Takaya understood immediately. "You don't know how to bring it up."

"I can barely even talk to her, honestly," Shinpachi confessed. "Ten years without aging, or changing in any drastic way. It's really hard to break out of a rut that deep. I still have no idea how to talk to women."

Takaya frowned.

"...so you came to me?" he said, a little incredulously. "You DO know that the main reason I uphold that 'no idol but Otsu-chan' thing so firmly is because I'm no better with dames than you are, right? It's easy to be chaste when you were never popular with girls to begin with."

"I know," Shinpachi said sheepishly. "But you're the only person I could really talk to about it... Aneue doesn't recognize me, and even if she did you know what her advice would be."

Takaya grimaced.

"Would she really push her own brother into a shotgun wedding, though?" he wondered.

"Do you even need to ask?" Shinpachi said. "She's a hundred times more old fashioned than I am."

"...Right. Of course she would," Takaya sighed. "Well, this is a helluva pickle, Shin-chan. I can try and help, but I don't know any more about this sorta stuff than you do. Don't you know anyone else who could help?"

"Most of the people I know are either insane," said Shinpachi bluntly, "or part of the Tsu Terakado Imperial Guard."

"Ah," Takaya winced. "I see your point. I wouldn't ask any of them for help, either."

"Exactly," Shinpachi sighed. He tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling of the ramen stand. "That's why you're the only one who can help me, Takachin."

A beat.

"...You got any ideas, Shin-chan?" Takaya asked.

Shinpachi grimaced.

"Not at all," he answered. "You?"

Takaya sweatdropped, the expression on his face answer enough for Shinpachi

"...this is gonna take a while."

A/N: Soooo, almost two months since the last chapter. I'd say sorry for that, but there's actually at least partly (or so I think!) a good reason for it. My first try at this chapter, I had wanted to make it about Shinpachi's Shinsengumi entrance exam, and I've had parts of that written up for most of that time.

But they were just snippets, snapshots of bits I wanted to do, with nothing really tying them together. And more importantly than that, I just couldn't think of a way to properly start such a chapter.

Only after a month-and-a-half long bit of writer's block did I finally get the inspiration. I was having trouble starting that chapter I wanted to do, I think partly because it felt like such a huge leap from the chapter before it. And after skimming briefly over the last published chapter of this fic, I realized what I probably should have realized over a month earlier:

I have Kagura talking about what happened, but nothing from Shinpachi's perspective. They TALK about him, and why he might be finding this all awkward, but he is completely absent...

And then I realized, that this fic is about the relationship. Well, that and the humor. But I think the reason I got stuck for as long as I was, was because I was trying to force the plot ahead, focusing too much on the side-thingy of Shinpachi joining the Shinsengumi.

So finally, I decided to sit down and write a new chapter, entirely from scratch. And, admittedly, it is not as funny or as wacky as most of the others, but I think it feels much more natural. At the very least, it was much easier for me to write.

Once again, I find that I am much better suited to a more air-or-water bending style of writing: if you're stuck while trying to do it one way, just take a step back and approach from a different angle.

(This chap quite isn't as outright humorous or Gintama-esque as I might prefer, but neither Shinpachi or Takaya are particularly wacky characters when it doesn't involve Otsu-chan... and it does serve it's purpose rather well, I think.)

Chapter added: 6-21-14

TTFN and R&R!

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