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"OCEANOGRAPHER'S CHOICE"
my first attempt at a "songfic", focused on my golden kamuy character se kilduff and ogata hyakunosuke, and using the song "oceanographer's choice" by the mountain goats. i truthfully do not know how songfics are supposed to be structured, so i kind of just winged it.***WARNING FOR: BRIEF DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE***
"Well, guy in a skeleton costume / Comes up to the guy in the Superman suit"
He's back standing in the middle of an ever familiar, ravaged and snowy battlefield. And, of course, she's there, too-- Se. He takes the barest of moments to look down, his gaze immediately meeting with a generous flecking of crimson: the specks of blood growing more spread as they fan out from behind him. He isn't going to turn around to find their source because he already knows what-- who-- awaits him, and he doesn't want to see. Moving just like last time, his one hand darts out to grab the woman's shoulder, the opposite quickly lifting to dig the muzzle of his rifle against the incurve of her back.
"Runs through him with a broadsword!!"
There's a loud cracking of a cartridge exploding forth from the barrel and a nauseating thud following when it instantly plunges into its target... and then Ogata is suddenly awake.
"I flip the television off / Bring all the bright lights up / Turn the radio up loud"
Sitting up slowly, he doesn't give his eyes a blink or a flutter to attempt to clear their bleariness. He feels their dry sting, but he can't bring himself to care. Se's the first thing he notices: peacefully curled up near a dying fire, sleeping completely unaware of the betrayal he had played out against her in his sleep. His stare traces the mess of curls atop her head, seemingly able to outline every lick of persimmon hair like the back of his hand in under a second. But then it's two seconds. Three. Four, and he finally forces his attention away, trying to instead put it on the obnoxiously slumbering form of Shiraishi at his right.
"I don't know why I'm so persuaded / That if I think things through / Long enough and hard enough / I'll somehow get to you"
But then it's only another few seconds before Ogata's eyes train right back on Se. It's no longer seconds as he drinks her in; it is many, many minutes. As he sits there, stuck to the spot with his arms hugging his knees, he imagines crawling over to hold her. Buried in the chest, a sensation he's tried and failed to keep far removed from himself abruptly blooms-- disgust. He was thinking of cradling the woman he had just dreamt of killing. He wasn't solely irked by the nerve of it, he was also infuriated that it bothered him in the first place. 'Why should I care? Why do I care?'.
"But then you came in / And we locked eyes / You kicked the ashtray over as we came toward each other"
He keeps fixated onto the nurse as she rests and, inexplicably, his mind shifts from reluctant self-loathing to something even more confusing. Nostalgia. That time in the cave with her, their earlier days. No... right now, Ogata's specifically thinking about that night in the cave and the day which led up to it. Because he had done something he still doesn't fully comprehend, and exactly what he just briefly yearned for: he had held her.
A pair of boots crunch loudly through fresh snow as two bodies race through a forest clearing. Ogata is in the lead, but then he suddenly isn't anymore: Se launching past him with the birdsong-y sounds of joyed laughter in her wake. He freezes, but then it's only a moment later that he makes a mad dash after her, his mouth tugging up into a smirk that looks too much like a genuine smile.
"Stubbed my cigarette out against the west wall / Quickly lit another"
A couple of minutes later, and it all comes crashing down-- literally. The toe of his shoe catches on a concealed tree root and he promptly barrels into her, sending the two tumbling in a flurry of limbs, gear, and powdery snow. They finally come to a stop with Se pancaked beneath him. He's off of her in a heartbeat: an unexpected bolt of electricity firing through him and causing his body to recoil from hers, as if she was lit aflame. She whips her head at him and-- upon seeing the woman's wide-eyed, flushed face-- the tingling of his flesh turns searing. There's a short yet tense silence before Se culls it, and he clenches his teeth together at her voice's subtle wobbliness. "...You can take the lead, actually."
"Look at that / Would you look at that / We're throwing off sparks"
It's hours following this that the pair hunkers down inside a cave for the night. After scarfing down a cold and bland bag of rations, he watches Se wordlessly cozy up near a wall and lazily throw her dark cloak over her head. She wastes no time, it seems, in falling asleep right there. All he does at first is observe her, his eyes following the slight rise and fall of her side as she breathes. Overcome with an intense, unexplainable desire to get closer, the sniper pulls himself across the stone floor whilst trying to convince himself he's simply bored and wants something to study. But as he sidles up to her flank, that theory is smashed to pieces: the shrapnel of an epiphany lodging unabashedly into his soul. Her gentle breathing, her face barely peeking out from under the cloak-- her beautiful goddamn face. He was attached.
"What will I do when I don't have you / To hold onto in the dark?"
His arm drapes over her without another thought. In fact, he's trying not to think about anything at all. The sniper shuffles nearer until they're practically spooning: his other arm snaking towards Se's head to bend around it as he grows more comfortable. His chin drops onto the crook between her shoulder and her neck, and he drinks in the honeyed scent, eyelids dragging closed. One hand palms her stomach rather tenderly, and its fingers begin to twitch ever so slightly, betraying him.
Lost in the fog of memories, Ogata doesn't realize it's happening when his body carefully scoots over to where Se's is laid, immediately reaching over to loosely wind a soft lock of her hair around a finger. He can't help but admire with half a mind how the orange strands coil perfectly about his digit, like the two things were meant to entwine. It's almost a more natural sight than his finger snugly hooked against a trigger. Almost.
"Yes, everybody's going to need a witness / Everybody's going to need a little backup in case the scene gets nasty"
Ogata is laid neatly on a patient bed, the blankets pulled off to the side. His head is killing him, but it's the least of his worries right now. He's staring dully up at the Russian doctor leaned over him, who's re-dressing the newly emptied socket of his face with clean cotton padding and wrappings. For a brief moment, he imagines Se in the man's place, but then swiftly shoves the notion away. He won't make what he's planning to do unnecessarily harder for himself. His remaining eye drifts to the hands of his current caretaker, where silver scissors are clutched between his thumb and index finger as he uses it to snip the gauze.
"You throw the attic window open / And I throw myself all around you / And night comes to Tallahassee"
But his thoughts helplessly return to his only long-standing ally, and he grows frustratingly aimless inside them as his gaze hardens: staring down his own reflection glinting off of the tool. He knew he couldn't get to Se in any sort of functional, timely fashion-- he has no clue where she is. He assumes her lack of presence is due to the others keeping her separated from him for good measure, despite the fact the poor woman had no preconception of what would end up happening on that icy strait. If he had any inkling as to her location, he would plan around that, get them both out of here. But he didn't. And so, to him, it left few options.
"I don't know why it's gotten harder / To keep myself away"
Ogata watches in slow motion as the doctor pulls away to turn to his assistant, his one hand curling into a tight fist atop the sheets. It's obvious to him what comes next.
"Thought I'd finally beat the feeling back / It all came back today"
...But that doesn't make him any more ready.
"And then we fell down / And we locked arms / We knocked the dresser over as we rolled across the floor"
After leaving Koito incapacitated and hurriedly gathering some supplies, Ogata slips from the window of the house to make his way towards where a few horses were tied. He rips one's bridle free, sharply tugging to usher it forwards before hurling himself upon the animal. Startled by its rough appropriation, the horse propels the both of them forwards with a small cry. He shoots past the other buildings and into plain view, his cloak billowing wildly around him while black, crinkled pieces of hair whip erratically against his bandaged forehead.
"I don't mean it when I tell you / That I don't love you anymore"
He's quickly welcomed with a faint, incensed shout from Sugimoto in the distance behind him. A bullet whizzes through the air, but he's utterly unfazed by what he assumes is the other man's futile attempt at stopping him. Because Se is also there, and he knows: past the raw, uncomfortable pain eating at half his face, all he can feel are her eyes on his back. He imagines the pretty blue things brimmed full of tears. But he won't turn around. He won't because he can't. 'Coward.', a voice hisses.
"Look at that / Would you look at that / The way the ceiling starts to swerve"
He tries to divert his focus onto the thundering sound of horse hooves below him, on the biting cold of the wind, the discomfort he feels atop the steed's bare seat. But only one thing hammers against the inside of his skull while he escapes, driving a rusty nail deep into the cracks of a brain he thought he had steeled for this inevitability:
"What will I do when I don't have you? When I finally get what I deserve."