Gintoki's Birthdays

Hey!

First of all, I'm a non-native English speaker, so there might be some mistakes!

It's just something short for my man's birthday! Happy Birthday to one of the best characters ever! ♥

Enjoy!

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Gintoki had not chosen his name. It was normal, after all, kids usually didn't choose their name.

Gintoki didn't choose his birth date either, it was normal, kids usually didn't choose their birth date. Well, what was different with Gintoki was that someone had actually chosen his birth date. Someone had dutifully selected the 10th of October and decided that it suited Gintoki, and would become the most important day of his life. Well, Gintoki didn't really see it as such, the most important date of his life, that is, but still.

Because of this, Gintoki made an effort to always celebrate his birthday. It was not just a way to honour Shouyou and the fact that the man had gone to the extent of giving him the right to have a special day because Gintoki didn't have one before meeting him. No, it was also a way to celebrate the fact that, after all these years, he was still alive. Still standing, and making the most (or the least, it depended on the point of view) of this life he'd been gifted.

Every time October got closer and his birthday approached, Gintoki was filled with a sense of melancholy. Knowing that, this year again, he would not be able to celebrate his birthday with his sensei.

Yet, the closer the 10th got, the more this feeling faded. Because it wouldn't do, to spend this day mulling, regretting past mistakes and things that, in another world, could have been.

In the first few days of his life with Shouyou, Gintoki spent his birthdays with only Sensei. The older man gave him trinkets he'd found on the road during their walks, and fed him with significantly nicer food than usual. Gintoki never failed to fall asleep with a smile on his face these days.

It was rougher during his soldier years. He had been alone a few times, eating stolen chocolates in the mud, far away from his comrades in the camp. But he also spent some birthdays alongside Zura, Takasugi and Sakamoto. They would play card games and Gintoki would win suspiciously more than in the usual times. It was not to his displeasure.

The birthdays at the end of the war were the toughest, though. He was alone for the most part, and the thoughts of Shouyou were only gruesome, haunting. Still, he always tried to eat something nicer, to steal something from a big shop, or to bribe a prison guard to bring him something sweet.

Gintoki would have liked to say that he didn't have any sort of preferred birthday, but it would have been lying. Not that he wasn't comfortable with doing so, the perm-head having mastered the art of lying. No, simply, his birthday would always be associated with Shouyou, and a birthday without him would always be a heartache for Gintoki during the first light of the day.

But Gintoki had gotten used to it, the heartache lasting only the time needed for Gintoki to adjust his eyes to the light of the room, and already the pain would be relegated to the back of his mind, dull, so dull compared to the other feelings.

So each new birthday was his favourite now, the new one always outperforming the last one. Just like today, for instance.

Tables had been arranged in a U-shape at Tae's club, Gintoki sitting in a big padded chair, at the head. This way, it was easy to talk to anyone in the room without having to move, though you'd have to share the conversation with everyone else around. Hijikata was on his left, while Kagura was on his right.