Chapter Text
The clink of porcelain echoed too loudly in the silence of the Yorozuya.
Tae set the tea cup on the floor with practiced gentleness, the kind that came from managing rowdy drunks and surviving the chaos of the Shinpachi-Gintoki-Kagura trifecta. But now, none of them were shouting. Kagura had been dragged off by Otose with the threat of liver soup, Shinpachi was doing dojo repairs, and Gintoki…
Gintoki was sweating through a thin yukata, curled on his side under a heap of mismatched blankets.
“You still look like crap,” Tae muttered, crouching beside him with arms crossed.
“That’s rude,” Gintoki croaked. “I look like elegant crap. Graceful, tragic crap. The kind that wins sympathy.”
“The kind that makes people wonder if you’re rotting inside,” she retorted. “How long’s it been since you ate?”
He cracked one bloodshot eye open. “Define eating. Does licking the sugar off a dango skewer count?”
She gave him a look that could curdle milk.
“I’ll eat, I’ll eat,” he mumbled, eyes sliding shut again. “Soon as I can move without my spleen protesting. Might throw it back up but hey, at least I tried.”
She studied him in silence.
Something was… off.
The wounds from the Benizakura fight were healing slower than usual, but not alarmingly so. His fever had dipped yesterday. And yet…
“Hey, Gin,” Tae said slowly. “You smell different.” It was something she’d picked up on when she was first healing him from his first fight with Okada.
His eyes popped open. Sharp. Wary. “I bathed. Don’t get used to it.”
“No.” She frowned. “It’s not the sweat or the ointment. It’s… sweeter. Even worse than the usual strawberries.”
Gintoki froze. His fingers curled tighter in the blanket.
Tae’s gaze narrowed. Alpha senses were sharper than most—especially hers. And now that she was focused, the scent layering beneath the usual bandage and blood was undeniable.
Gintoki hadn’t had a heat in two months. Not since that heat.
The one he didn’t talk about.
The one that ended with Hijikata Toshirou claiming him after they were somehow forced into heat and rut inside a sauna they were trapped in. Causing just a quiet shift in how the two interacted: fewer insults, more staring. Less posturing, more tension so thick it buzzed in the air like a live wire.
He’d been wearing Hijikata’s scent ever since.
And now…
“Gin.” Tae’s voice dropped. “When was your last heat?”
Gintoki swallowed. “Couple months ago.”
“You went through it?”
He didn’t answer.
Her heart thumped once, hard. “Did you use protection?”
A beat. Then:
“Couldn’t,” he whispered. “Wasn’t thinking straight. Neither was he. We didn’t know what triggered it.”
Back to the sauna. He’d never admitted it outright, but he’d lost his virginity there. Tae had suspected something’d happened when Hijikata started showing up near the Yorozuya a bit more often with barely concealed bruises on his neck and Gintoki stopped chasing every alpha in Kabukicho with feigned apathy.
“Have you checked yourself?”
“Was gonna. Been too busy. Kinda got distracted with… life. I haven’t thought about it, really.”
Tae stood up so fast the tea cup rattled.
She left to go out, not before threatening to kill him if he dared to move, returning 20 minutes later with a small bag containing a kit—a discreet one, made for omegas who couldn’t risk clinics or judgment.
Gintoki eyed it like it might bite him. “I don’t think it’s that… it was my first time.” he said as his delusions persisted.
“It’s not always like that,” she said, tossing it in his lap. “you’re already showing most signs.”
He didn’t argue. The constant nausea, tiredness, and weight gain he’d experienced for a few weeks had left a lot of room for interpretation.
Fifteen minutes later, he came out of the bathroom, pale and shaking.
Tae didn’t need to ask.
She caught the way he held the test with both hands, as if afraid it might vanish.
“…Positive?”
He nodded slowly. Then, as if the weight of it hit all at once, he sat down hard beside her.
A long silence.
Finally, he rasped, “I didn’t think… I mean, Hijikata and I—we weren’t…”
“You are now,” she said gently. “Whether it was planned or not, his scent is laced so deep in your skin it practically glows.”
He looked down at his hands, at the test, at the future trembling in his palms.
There was nothing else for him to do as he felt tears streaming down his face.