Is it casual now? - Chapter 2 - deltamel - 鬼滅の刃 (2024)

Chapter Text

It’s safe to say that in the few weeks since you and Tanjiro undertook the honour of christening Rengoku’s onsen—you’ve struggled to have a single thought that doesn’t revolve around the hashira in some way, shape, or form.

You feel unravelled. Like you have spent years tangled up into a messy semblance of normality and suppressed feelings, before Tanjiro grasped the end of your string and tugged in one fell swoop. You’re beginning to wonder if you’re still coming undone with every step he takes—the string of your sanity in his hands and steadily unwinding further from you—because you wake up consistently, day after day, feeling worse than you did before.

Although perhaps worse isn’t the right word—horny might be more appropriate. So incredibly horny.

You keep expecting to rise with the sun having found the moon has washed your fantasies—now reality—away, but without fail you wake daily to burning in your core and his warm body tantalisingly close to yours. It is a specific torture you haven’t encountered before, making it that much more arduous to wrangle.

For years your yearning has been frankly emotional; driven by the kindness he relentlessly bestows upon you and the familiarity with which he does so. It is sappy, to be completely honest. You wanted his gentle hands and quiet, reassuring words to be uttered to you with a renewed motivation—one that speaks of romance and love.

But that night tilted your world on its axis—seeing him coming apart under your touch—and now you’re skewed, attempting to make sense of this new perspective. Because now—god. Now, you want to ruin him. You want him to disintegrate under your fingers so that you can meld the ashes into a cruel semblance of who he was before.

And it scares you.

The pivotal moment between your hesitating body on the threshold as you watched him touch himself beneath the water and your own bare body joining his is a blur. The catalyst of which is still unclear to you—unclear enough that you think it may have just been Tanjiro himself. That there was no spark lighting the fire except him and you were simply bone-dry tinder, far from immune.

You might even argue you were possessed—your body and mouth moved by a force infinitely higher than yourself as you guided him to the brink and back. And when the control had been relinquished back to you after, it felt wrong in your hands. Cold. You weren’t sure how to piece yourself back together and act like you had never broken. Because it is undeniable; Tanjiro had broken you, wholly and thoroughly—ruinous for any other partner again. So it’s a damn good job that you don’t want any other partner.

You want Tanjiro.

You wanted the soft and now you want the filthy too. It’s overwhelming when you think about it too much. Just how much of Tanjiro you desire—how much you love. How he meets needs you didn’t even know you had and how he sees you like no one else has before. Consequentially, you make an active effort not to think about it.

You let yourself be guided by your whims when you have the bravery—casual touches that promise a dangerous undercurrent he could let drag him under if he wanted to. But he never lets himself be swept below. He simply accepts the hand on his nape and the finger swiping through the damp hairline there after a fight—accepts the thigh pressed against his under the table in a hole-in-the-wall, family-run Shokudo. He welcomes them all as he did before that night you shared, with a gentleness that betrays him and a small smile reserved only for you.

You don’t know how to read it. He said you were fine but god if you don’t want some physical confirmation. A return of the familial touches you can’t help but give him, a compulsion you couldn’t beat into submission if you had millennia to try.

Despite this, things have still been good between you. Your conversations are normal. Your missions are normal. Your nights, unfortunately, are normal. But fuck, if normal isn’t the furthest thing from what you desire right now. Instead, you’re hungry, tastebuds unsatisfied with everything less than the hashira begging and writhing at your touch; than his pleasure on a tight lease that wraps around your hand and lances into the skin there.

The only inkling you’ve had that he even remembers that night is when you offer out gentle praise—an approval or admiration for his performance, for a hand he reached out to a down-trodden Genya or an errand he needn’t have run for an elderly woman in a town you passed through. His steps always stutter, if he’s walking, and his hands always clench, if he’s stood still. The energy of the praise slips over him and for just a moment again he’s yours. You watch him murmur an acknowledgement, sometimes a gratitude, and refuses to meet your eyes as he forces the blood in his cheeks back down into his heart.

And perhaps it may be sad to admit but it’s kept you going; tiding you over on your long, frustrated days that start from the moment you wake up and don’t even give you a reprieve when you sleep. You like to tuck those interactions behind your ribcage so they can rest against your lungs—and you breathe them like you do oxygen. Perpetually.

So when your crows send you and Tanjiro on a mission independent from your usual gaggle of a crew, you’re hopeful. A tender ambition rises in your chest at the prospect of finally getting some time alone with him. But days of travel eventually come to pass and no more has Tanjiro made any indication he remembers that night you shared, than have you even found, let alone defeated the demon you are looking for.

Next time.

His blissed-out words bounce around the bars of your skull like a locust trapped in a net. The incessancy is both grating and anticipatory, you can’t decide—your own capriciousness is as vast as the ocean. As unpredictable as it, too.

His promise suspends you above the chasm that is Tanjiro not wanting you back. And when you cant your body over the edge of the precarious roped bridge you stand on, just to tease at the idea when next time reads as never, those words are the guardrail that prevents you from toppling over. The depths are so deep and so black that it’s a real fear you would fall forever. That your body wouldn’t hit any ground and you would be bound to your fate, trapped in an endless yearning—doomed because you won’t leave his side.

Not when he screams his rejection from the rooftops of the Yoshiwara district for every courtesan to hear, nor when he disguises tender words like the slaughterman’s hand on a lamb’s neck. And perhaps that makes you masochistic but debating it would be in vain. If the bridge snaps beneath you, there is only one option.

You will fall.

It takes almost two weeks for you to find the demon; a lower moon hell-bent on butchering every young woman in an awful trail of towns that you’re forced to pass through, reaping what discourse the demon had sown in the form of fearful, uncooperative townspeople. You try not to be frustrated. Each town has lost countless women—friends, family, lovers. But when each location proves no more fruitful than the last you begin getting antsy.

The steadily fraying thread of your patience has nearly snapped before you catch wind of the demon’s tail in your ninth town.

“Fucking finally,” you say to yourself, not bothering to spare another glance at the head of a villager that’s cautiously poking out from their barely-cracked door.

You mull over what information he reluctantly parted with—that a handful of women over the past week have failed to return from their foraging trips in the woodlands that flank this town and the search parties sent out for them at first light couldn’t find a trace they’d even been there. It’s the first solid lead you’ve had thus far, and your steps are determined as you set off in the direction of the intimidating forest rising above the houses.

Behind you, Tanjiro quietly thanks the man before he follows and his long strides catch up to yours with an ease that only serves to make you more pissed off. You had hoped to have even a few breaths alone to desist your temper, but you’re a team—and right now, you’re in the thick of the mission.

“You need to work on your bedside manner.” He states, voice unimpressed as he fingers the sword strapped to his side, readjusting it for the nth time since you arrived in this town.

Indignation bubbles up at his admonishment and you scoff, “excuse me for not being a saint after the treatment we’ve had!” You shoot a sharp glance at him. “You’d think they’d be grateful for some assistance, really. It doesn’t exactly look like they’d be dealing with this demon themselves anytime soon.”

Your words are harsh, and you spit them out onto the ground before treading over them with your heavy footfalls for good measure—patience entirely worn thin from the painful reconnaissance and the taut string of desire weaved through your every blood vessel.

Tanjiro lets out a quick, disapproving sound in the back of his throat and glares at you. You ignore it, pointedly fixing your eyes on the trees ahead of you.

“Maybe not, but you have to remember they’re not us.”

That stops your barrage of ugly thoughts at the crest—and while your steps continue you glance at Tanjiro from the corner of your eye, an unwelcome guilt rising to meet you. The wave of anger and frustration you’d been riding ebbs back to reveal the cracked shell underneath—a shell that sometimes feels like it’s only held together by the pressure of the wave and the water rising over it. That you are only held together by the water in your lungs choking the words you want to say. The words you should say.

He’s right—of course, he’s right. None of these villagers are trained demon slayers—only scared, wounded people with lost townspeople and a fear of demons so deep it must be difficult to discern good faith from death. An open palm from a knife in the spine.

“Fuck.” You mutter under your breath, wincing.

Tanjiro is so good—good to the very core of his being. Good in a language the masses will never dream of learning, and the scholars can only hope to decode centuries from now. And it’s one more heavy weight on the fragile rope bridge underneath your feet. You can feel it sway underneath you and you grip that guard rail and it digs into your fingers. Next time.

And like an idiot—you nod, agreeing and wishing you could cut your skin open down to the bone and pull out the stem cells burrowed deep in your marrow; what you’re positive is the only thing good about you.

“That they’re not.”

The hand not on your katana tightens into a fist at your side and the fast pace you’ve set has slices of hair whipping from your braid and into your face.

Tanjiro lets the poor jest settle uncomfortably between you and it’s like he knows you just need some space to work through the mess of your own thoughts because you do. And before long you’re trying again, aiming for the plaintive tone you’d intended initially. “I’m grateful we’re trained.” Tanjiro studies the side of your face and his stare is a physical pain on your raw skin. “That we’ll never have to worry about how to protect who we love.”

He hums and the sound drifts past you—you inhale it gratefully, tasting the absolution that coats your throat.

“Me too,” Tanjiro says, and his eyes have moved from your face to study the tree line that looms beyond you like an infantry encased in the rapidly dropping night. “I can still remember the fear.”

Whatever he’s picturing right now is unknown to you, locked deep in the recesses of his mind, but you feel like you can see it as it’s painted across his face. Uncaring, violent streaks that mar his expression with terror—you can see the blood.

He doesn’t elaborate further yet you’re there with him—a blur of sounds, shapes, and smells swirling around you that are indiscernible but you feel him. The fear is so potent it doesn’t matter what is causing it, just that it is. Then, he speaks again, letting the tension dissolve between you.

“I wouldn’t wish that lack of control on anyone.”

The finality in his tone snaps you back from his memories like rubber returning to a crude imitation of its original shape. You don’t feel quite the same person you did a moment ago and you’re struck once again with how much Tanjiro hides—how much horror and suffering lay under his feet and you marvel at how it doesn’t trip him up with every step he takes.

It’s easy to forget how strong he is. And not just in the physical sense of the word, but a mental strength; a fortitude so secure he still functions higher than most, allowing in connection—friendship and love he knows he deserves because he does. There is no recluse or isolation in the face of what he’s experienced. Only an open warmth and equally open arms like his days are numbered and the fear isn’t worth the loss.

He lets it in because he deserves it and god you don’t. You don’t deserve it at all, yet you want it. Irrevocably and unbidden of all that you are and all that you will ever be. Undeserving to the point of that ugly insecurity rearing its head—speaking how did he ever want me in the first place?

And you have to fight the impulse then to close the gap between you both and embrace him until no part of you isn’t touching a part of him. Because, unlike Tanjiro, you are weak. Weak and scared and unsure you’ll ever amount to everything he needs—everything he deserves.

Instead, you settle for a nod and a gentle brush of the back of your hand on his where it still rests on his katana. “I understand.”

The low, crimson sun is blood that spills over the side of his face when he tilts it to catch your eye, a smile curling the corner of his lips. He looks every bit like a deity—an awful, benevolent god hell-bent on breaking you down to the fibre of your being until all that worships him is your dried blood in the ground and the bones you leave behind.

But maybe that isn’t so bad. Tanjiro’s eyes are on yours, after all.

A distant thunk brings you back to your mission—an animal, or a door slamming shut in the village in preparation for the pregnant night. Before the tree trunks that shoot into the sky and their wall of shadows snake up your bodies as you cross the threshold of where you’re praying the demon is hiding.

The fine hair on your nape stands up at the sudden temperature drop and you can feel all the wildlife holding their breath, the forest so abnormally devoid of chattering—even the wind seems unable to reach the tangle of branches you’re picking through. It’s enough to raise your hackles, your body on high alert at the suspicious silence.

When you kick something that clashes against a tree stump with a sound so out-of-place in this limbo you’ve found yourself in, you quickly look down to see a silver hairpin; a gentle pink flower dangling from one end that is flecked with red.

And fuck, if that isn’t a bad omen.

“Tanji!” You say, as loud as you dare to and nod your head down to the hairpin when he glances at you.

“Shit,” he breathes.

You can only echo his sentiments as you pick up the hairpin and tuck it into your pocket. “Yeah. Shit.”

Perhaps the woman is still alive, you reason. It’s only been a day, and you know from experience that too many demons take pleasure in playing with their food. This demon seems to have it’s own type—the young women from each town. Is it so far a stretch that the demon may relish the chase like it relishes the feast?

It’s wishful thinking, definitely, but this demon in particular has your palisades raising from the dirt; your spears aimed at it’s face before you gave the order. Because, fuck.

You’re a young woman.

A hashira, to be certain, but just knowing there’s a demon out there that considers you and some of your fellow hashira turned closest friends, the prime cut of the day, is enough to make you feel unhinged.

This demon was going to die—by your sword and your hand. You’d chained yourself to that end from the very first town when you learned who the demon was targeting.

“Come on,” Tanjiro’s low voice breaks through your rumination and you find that the weight of the hairpin in your pocket is searing, like it may burn a hole right through your leg and settle itself into your bone. “The sun’s gone down now. It’ll be hunting soon.”

The reminder that the hairpin is from, at the earliest, last night’s hunt has your stomach churning—writhing like it’s trying to break out and exit through your throat. You swallow it back down.

“Lead the way.”

You follow Tanjiro’s careful, near-silent footfalls as he uses his sense of smell to work through the dense woodland, following what you’re sure are scent trails you wouldn’t notice if they were right under your nose. You attempt to keep track of your path, but the forest is so thick it blocks out all light. And without the moon for your guide, very quickly you find yourself lost in a maze of trees where each looks like the last until you’re borderline convinced you’ve passed the same tree four times already.

“Getting anything?” You ask, eyes fixed on the back of Tanjiro’s head.

Something,” he broaches, voice thick with confusion and the tone immediately raises your anxiety. “It’s like it’s moving though, taunting us and leading us in circles.”

Bastard.

“Fuck,” you spit, “I knew it.”

And then a second later your joints are locking up at the realisation the demon is playing with you both. Your hand flies to your katana and you unsheathe it with a sound that rings painfully in the quiet forest. Your eyes dart around you.

You turn in a slow circle, but in every direction you only see more of those dense trees that seem to stretch endlessly upwards until you lose sight of the trunks in the tangle of darkness above your head. Quick to discard that tactic, you put your back to Tanjiro’s and throw your voice out into the cool night air.

“How about you come out and play?” You croon, letting the condescension drip from your tone. You’re going out on a limb, but if the demon is leading you both around like dogs on a lead then surely it’s close. “Surely you’ve been wanting a real fight? None of those women will challenge you like I will.”

And you know your words hit the bullseye when you hear a rustle ahead of you—and a quick gleam of saffron eyes that watch you, and now finally you see it too.

The taunt lies thick in your mouth, disrespectful but true at its core. You want to crush this demon beneath your feet until it’s begging. Until it repents with it’s final breath for what it’s done to women who barely touched their life. Barely got to experience it. All you have to do is lure it out.

Like he could sense it, Tanjiro slowly turns to look where your eyes are fixed unwaveringly on.

“I’d be so perfect for you.” You goad, and the words flow out smooth as honey—sweet with vengeance and thick with disgust. “Why don’t you come and find out?”

Tanjiro sucks in a breath beside you and no sooner than he opens his mouth to protest, does the demon comes careening through the forest, propelling itself forward with each thick trunk of a tree like it can’t hold back a moment longer. It has a feral grin spreading across your face and you brace your body.

“Give it to me, fucker.” You shout, waving your sword through the air like a cruel rendition of a siege flag as it gets closer.

You can see a blur of dark hair flapping behind the demon like a flag itself, a daring emblem of death and torture. It’s a woman, you realise with a start. And when her golden eyes are close enough to pierce your own, you parry the swipe she sends at you with knife-like claws.

Each breath you inhale rattles in your lungs and your wide eyes are fixed on her—on the tattered dress clutching her pale figure and the deep red nails that you’re sure are painted with dried blood. Every inch of her screams destruction and desire, a horrible twist of mankind’s most debased facets and god, you’re furious. A wholehearted rage lodged in your chest and your world narrows down to those bright, clever eyes, with everything else fading into the background, even Tanjiro.

The demon’s anchor of focus is heavy on your back and you can’t look away. You breathe and swing your sword with a ferocity that promises only death, not breaking nor stopping as she counters every move you throw at her.

She looses a blood-curdling scream when you manage to catch her with your sword, slicing off a thick and heavy arm that thumps onto the ground soundlessly as the blood pounds in your ear. The noise is more animal than human and when she opens your mouth you can see a bloodied stump where her tongue should be. And fuck, like an idiot you stumble. Something like a wretched flash of sorrow sizzling along your spine because you know it’s an injury from her human life. And that’s all it takes for the demon to lunge at you, sensing the opening.

Like a divine intervention, Tanjiro leaps in front of you and slices his sword through the air in a blur that has the demon scrambling back again, screaming in displeasure at the loss of her prey as her arm regenerates in the blink of an eye.

The demon’s eyes, branded with the lower moon symbol, don’t leave yours even as she fights off Tanjiro and you feel sick—disgusted on such a base level. You veer forward to swing your sword with Tanjiro’s, carving the air left after every one of Tanjiro’s moves until the demon can do nothing but defend—forced to creep backwards as she knocks off each of your swords again and again and again.

A traitorous thought that you’ve got her cornered sounds in your mind, and like a jinx itself, do you suddenly catch a flash of colour in your peripheral vision. You turn your head and your breath leaves you like a popped balloon.

What the fuck.

Tucked in between trees like a cornered animal is Tanjiro himself—slumped over on his knees in a pool of crimson blood, with dead eyes that won’t leave yours. They stare through you like he’s been watching you from the first step you took in this godforsaken forest.

Your head struggles to discern between the Tanjiro you can hear carrying on the fight next to you and the lifeless body kneeling off into the distance.

An illusion.

But that realisation doesn’t stop the pure wave of horror that crashes over you, tugging your helpless body beneath its strong arm and you want to thrash. To scream or kick and punch but all you can do is stand, eyes locked onto Tanjiro’s pale, dead ones.

The mirage before you is such a real possibility with your job that being faced with an image of what could be his fate, a death at the hand of a demon, has such acute anguish clutching at your chest—clawing at the skin and sinking itself behind your ribcage to crush your heart. You can’t breathe. Fuck, you can’t breathe.

You can physically feel the air stuck beneath the grasp of your panic and for the second time, you stumble.

You can feel the air waver next to you—feel it being sucked out of the space like a void as the demon lunges for your prone form and you can’t move. Can’t do anything but stare despondently at what Tanjiro could become. At a fate you might not be able to stop. Another life’s memory to be honoured and the hairpin in your pocket burns—you have failed.

And you’re unravelling at the seams, falling apart like a house of cards and tumbling down, down just waiting for the impact. For the sweet crack of your head as you hit the ground.

But it doesn’t come—instead, you’re yanked backwards, a punishing grip on the back of your jacket sending you flying from the demon’s path as one of her claws barely catches you. Slicing a horrible slit across the chest of your uniform. You can feel the sting of it, and the warmth of the blood that rises quickly to escape your skin.

You inhale a rattling breath.

The pain wakes you—pulling you above the surface of the crashing wave around you. You can feel your heart beating underneath the slash.

And like the sun breaking over the dark horizon, your forgotten anger swells again to collide with the sorrow that has taken hold of you; in an explosion that sends you swords-blazing towards the demon who has lowered its guard as she heaves over the blood you’ve spilt, entranced by the rivulets you can feel dripping down your chest.

You can feel the presence of the illusion behind you—it’s horror permeates the air you breathe, but the demon controls your attention and you can’t afford to look away as you spin, your sword whistling through the air before sinking into the flesh of the demon’s pale neck.

She yells. In anguish and offence—like she believed you were caught in her snare. Her cry is distorted, voices overlapping in a horrible symphony of tortured souls. And you know at once why you hear the voices. How they seem to call to you for freedom, how they call to you in pain.

She gurgles on the blood pooling in her throat and you push, willing every ounce of your strength into the blade until it’s honed into death itself—unforgiving and merciful at once.

The wails expand, throbbing in the air around the demon and you can feel the despair pouring off the demon in waves. The fear of each woman fallen victim released into the night air with only you and Tanjiro as witness. You let them fall over you—let each different voice slam into you until you’re battered and bloody and bruised.

“I hear you.” You speak—to the demon, to the voices. To the lives of the women floating up until they’re lost in the forest and all you can hear is the warbled scream of the demon alone as your blade sinks incrementally deeper with every grain of time slipping through the hourglass. You repeat it, watching those glowing amber eyes as they begin to drown in fear. “I hear you.”

And with a controlled breath, you slide your katana through the final strings of the demon’s head, severing the connection.

The head doesn’t move for a split second, and then it’s tumbling towards the sodden ground soundlessly and disintegrating away into nothing. You only allow yourself to look away from her eyes when the last embers of it’s life, as human and demon both, are drifting away on a breeze that, like it’s finally been freed from the demon’s grasp, now flows freely through the forest.

All the adrenaline leaves you at once and you sink to your knees where the demon’s head had been.

Fuck.

The memory of Tanjiro’s lifeless body wells up and you force your head to move to look at Tanjiro—to scan his uninjured form and to watch his heaving breaths move his chest. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do you—you’re not sure what words would be right. You worry that if you speak now, everything you’ve hidden for years will baulk like a towering oak—toppled by a man and his axe that is fuelled by a desire for his own destruction.

Tanjiro is staring at you with wide, distressed eyes that rake down your trembling body but he’s okay. He’s fine. And the relief hits you harder than any physical blow dealt to you by the demon. You slump over, hands coming to dig into the dirt beneath you to ground yourself.

Fear locks you up and god, you don’t want to look but you have to know. You have to see that the illusion is gone and it takes all of your willpower to throw a surreptitious glance to where the illusion was knelt, in all it’s terrible glory, and the space is blessedly blank. The trees caging in nothing—caging in the air and the wind. You shudder, and a sob of gratitude is wracking through your body before you can help it—before you can think to cut it off at its ankles.

You don’t have the presence of mind to feel embarrassed, encompassed by a religious-like reverence that in this moment, the illusion isn’t true.

The wind curling through the forest brushes past you, reaching it’s fingers to the bare skin of your wound and you breathe it in. You let it touch you in place of Tanjiro, still frozen beside you as you weep.

Your gratitude gives birth to determination, and you find yourself vowing in your delirium that as long as you are alive you won’t let the illusion come to pass. You will do everything in your power to stop it—you will fight off the Shinigami that has Tanjiro’s name tattooed in blood with your bare hands.

You vow it.

Between your gasping, wet breaths and the sobs tearing from your throat, you vow it like you will control death itself. And you know you will, if it means Tanjiro will live.

Rope wraps around your shoulders, around your body, tightly, and you struggle in your daze before feeling the heat of the rope—the warmth seeping into your skin and you relax into the hold. Tanjiro.

And that starts the sobs anew—he is holding you—and you lean your weight into Tanjiro’s arms like he could absorb you into his skin. Like he could hold the strength of two hashira and become immortal with it. You wish that could be true, god, do you wish.

Gentle, soothing sounds pass through your ears but you’re too out of it to make them out, only recognising the low tone of Tanjiro and the vibration of his mouth against the side of your head. Minutes blur together and the only defining notice you have of the time passed is the gradual slowing of the sobs that wrack your body; you listen to them dwindle down as if they’re not even your own until you’re just slumped into Tanjiro’s chest with only dirt stained nails and shuddering breaths.

“I’ve got you, you’re okay.”

You lift your head up when you can finally make out his words, eyes blearily finding Tanjiro’s and you must look a mess. Bloody and bruised, eyes rimmed a dangerous red. But he only looks at you like you’re something hallowed. Something gentle to hold.

And he doesn’t ask. Doesn’t poke or prod or try to wheedle out of you what you saw—what your own brain tortured you with. Only does he cup your face between his strong hands and tilt you forward until your forehead is resting on his and you’re breathing in his air. Breathing in the very proof that he’s alive.

“I’m here.”

Together, sore and grieving you stumble back out of the forest and into the night—the moon high and bright in her sky, shining onto you like a beacon at sea guiding you to shore.

You feel markedly better now that you’re under the open sky. As though you’re shedding the last of that film of terror that had smothered you, and the breath you inhale is new and free. In control again. Tanjiro glances at you at the sound, eyes studying your face. You don’t bristle in the way you usually do—you can’t find it in yourself to.

“Let’s find somewhere to sleep. We can inform the town in the morning.” He says, and you nod wordlessly, following him as he carves a path into the town and along a low-lit street.

Tanjiro’s hand is a comfort at the base of your spine so tender you sink into the touch as he leads the way, and you finger the hairpin in your pocket absently. The woman is dead.

Tanjiro could smell no trace of her, and when you collected up the shattered pieces of yourself from that forest floor to sweep the area, it was clean. A blood-dyed slate wiped of any trace. Knowing the demon is gone is a relief, but one that scarcely smothers the guilt.

If you had arrived just a day earlier.

Regardless, try as you have throughout your life, you’ve never learnt how to lift those grains of time back to the beginning. Never had the honour to watch them fall anew, eroding a new ending as they go.

If only.

Soon, a friendly-looking ryokan, surprisingly well-lit for such a small town—decorated with a myriad of glowing lanterns, meets you both and you step into it.

A chipped wooden dining table that appears to be functioning as a front desk stands in the centre of the room. And a man, clearly half-asleep already, is hunched over it with his chin propped up on a fist as he stares unseeingly past you.

Tanjiro clears his throat, his face grimacing awkwardly as the man startles to bolt upright and immediately stutter over a needless apology.

“Could we please get a room for the night?” Tanjiro murmurs, shaking his head in a gentle dismissal of the man’s fervent stammering.

The owner looks at you hovering behind Tanjiro apprehensively, plainly taking in your tattered uniform and the bloody gash it displays. You clutch the torn fabric between a fist self-consciously, doing your best to give him a shaky smile in what you want to be reassuring; but the way the man frowns even further, looking back at Tanjiro with a renewed distrusts says you needn’t have bothered

Your head is still fogged with the adrenaline-crash and you tune out the careful and pointed conversation between them knowing Tanjiro will deal with it.

A hesitant response spoken by the man has Tanjiro’s muscles tightening in unease before he looses a breath and moves to drop some coins onto the counter—the last you have left, and another problem for you to deal with tomorrow—before putting a guiding hand on your back to draw you further into the building without another word to the man. He doesn’t rush, but his steps are just this side of too fast that tell you enough about how he wants to get out of sight before the owner changes his mind.

You obey his touch, letting him steer you up some stairs and down an unremarkable corridor until he’s pushing open a door that creaks uncomfortably on its hinges and walking into the room.

You push the heavy door closed behind you and lean against it, letting it take your tired weight. Tanjiro stands in the middle of the room, gaze locked onto what, you can’t see, but the strength written into him commands your whole attention regardless, sucking you in like a void. The wind and forest are no barrier between you now, and the room seems to shrink around you—pushing you closer to him even though you know you haven’t moved from your post.

The silence drips down the walls and puddles at your feet and maybe you should feel uncomfortable but you don’t. Despite being trapped in a strange limbo that has you studying the tangled curls on the back of his head like you may be able to read the answer to Tanjiro there.

You relax the fist gripping your uniform and let it drop, the ripped fabric gaping unseemly to expose the gash on your shoulder that runs across your chest and right down to your waist. And despite everything that occurred tonight, you still have the presence of mind to think, fuck, this is the only uniform you brought with you.

“You scared me,” Tanjiro speaks quietly to the room in front of him.

You pause.

You ache to touch him but he can’t even bear to face you when he admits it and he stands like Orpheus—headstrong and out of place in the cosy room—as though he knows he will turn around just to lose you.

“I’m right here.” You soothe, releasing your katana from your side and propping it up by the door. The guilt of your stumble is all-consuming. You can only imagine the fear that would overtake you if Tanjiro had frozen the way you had. If he hadn’t moved as the demon leapt for him. If he had let it happen. And when he doesn’t acknowledge you, you extend a metaphorical hand. “I’m so sorry, Tanji.”

He should push—he should demand to know why and how a trained hashira could freeze mid-battle. How could you allow such a pitfall to betray you? But he doesn’t.

Tanjiro only looks at you over his shoulder, eyes tracking your sorrowful face before dipping down to your torn uniform and the blood crusting the wound underneath. He locks his jaw like he’s coming to a decision you aren’t privy to and turns to cross the space between you. Two large strides and suddenly his hand is hovering over your chest, fingering the ripped fabric. The back of his knuckles are cool against your burning skin.

You suck in a breath at the sensation, any ache along your wound swimming to the recesses of your mind as all your focus tunnels into the touch of his hand on your bare skin.

“I know.” He utters—a balm of absolution on the contrition that mars your mind.

And you couldn’t be torn away from his steady gaze if the room imploded with you at the centre. If the explosion ripped the skin from your bones and fragmented it into millions of inconsequential pieces doomed to scatter like dust in the wind. You’d only end up seeing him from infinite new angles.

His eyes may as well be fused to yours, in a sin so cardinal even the Gods daren’t disturb it. And you know then and there that you’ll be sentenced to this cosmic yearning for the rest of your life. Shackled to his bright, hopeful eyes until your final breath when the iron you can feel around your wrists, around your ankles, is the only indication that he ever looked at you. That he saw you.

It is electric, shooting up your spine and excavating the want you’d tried so hard to suppress these past weeks. You startle, and you can’t help but push your chest forward to feel more of his skin against yours—vision black and white, Tanjiro an alarming swipe of colour that hurts. It hurts.

In the flesh he stands before you, touching you and looking into you, yet he could not be further away. There is little more than a slim slice of air that separates you—something far heavier than you can hold, something far more charged you’re capable of bearing and you watch it crackle, dancing between you with an urgency that you’re sure only you feel.

You open your mouth to say anything but the words coil in your throat and you can’t. Nothing you can say right now will encapsulate the sheer vastness of what you feel for Tanjiro. The good and the bad. He won’t ever know because you won’t be able to put it into words before you die, you’re not sure it’s possible.

And so you break, and you touch. You lift a hand and place it on his cheek—pushing it against him like the words may bleed from your heart through his skin, osmosis of clandestine, divine emotions too large for you to reduce to noise.

He knows. He must do. Because though his eyes still watch you, they shine. New and wide and you can feel the breath leave you in one punishing punch. All the fear and grief evaporating from you. And you feel like you’ve finally gained your mind back as you stand in this quiet room across from Tanjiro—with his touch and his eyes on you like a weight keeping you together. With your touch and your eyes on him an injustice you will finally exonerate.

God, you feel whole again. After so many weeks.

And like a sinner—like a damned saint—he slips down to his knees before you, ever so slowly until he’s sat on his heels and looking up at you like you’ll grant him the mercy of oblivion. Of a life where he doesn’t carry the weight of you and you don’t carry the weight of him.

But if one such existence is real, you pray it doesn’t come anywhere near you. That it will never touch you. Because the weight of Tanjiro is painful, and so, so heavy but you’re sure you’d float away if it disappeared. High into the sky until you were a speck indistinguishable from any of the stars.

And so you only stare down your nose at him, your hand still meshed against his cheek and shake your head. No. You would say if you could find your voice. I don’t want that.

Moisture gathers at the corner of his eyes and you swipe at it with your finger. Don’t cry.

His eyes, so full of life and colour push the last, final image of Tanjiro’s lifeless, crumpled body, away from you. You breathe a sigh of relief.

He cants forward, resting his forehead against the apex of your thigh and presses a low sound from the back of his throat there. His hands are fists on his own legs, knuckles still bloody and white under the pressure, grounding him where he sits.

“Oh, Tanjiro.” You speak, voice choked and so fond.

He is beautiful. Knelt before you like a sunset—like a stretching ocean and a painting of colours across it that you can’t look away from. A masterpiece. The first stroke and the last—everything in between. The canvas and the frame and the view.

And you—daring to look, forced to protect, and caught in the tide of duty and desire that feels like it will rip you apart cell from cell.

You know you don’t deserve it, god, you’ve grappled with that fact for months. For years. Long before the two of you ever laid together. Yet with Tanjiro on his knees in front of you, looking at you like you’re everything he never believed he could have, you find yourself buckling. You find yourself trusting him inherently—trusting that if he can want you, you are allowed to want him.

Like maybe, just maybe, your longing to be his, and for him to be yours, won’t be the coup de grâce that breaks your heart.

“Please,” Tanjiro murmurs against you, tilting his head up to catch your eyes. “Please.”

Through the fog clouding your mind, you can’t work out what he’s asking and your pulse flutters in panic. You immediately want to soothe, to reassure and you can’t figure out what he’s after, fuck, what does he want?

But his face only presses back against your thigh before his forehead is moving to rest on the mound of your cunt and oh.

Oh god.

You are weak.

Weak, weak, weak. And the notion does nothing to abate the fire burning through your veins—with a ferocity that makes you think you’ll have nothing left to offer him soon. You will be nothing but blood and ash.

So you move, desperate.

“Yes.” You breathe, “Yes. Anything.”

He can take anything he wants—you are Tanjiro’s. His to command and his to obey. All you want is this and in return, he can have whatever he can get his hands on—whatever he can pull out from your tangled mess of humanity that has been crudely crammed into your person.

And sweet Tanjiro whimpers beneath you. A sound of pure relief, like an addict knowing he’s been granted his fix, the next high he’s been chasing. And you shake under his head, so overwhelmed with want and desire and stupidly, ever so stupidly, love.

A force that you don’t want to speak for fear that it will be your final words, sealing your tomb and engraving your headstone. So you tuck it with trembling hands into Tanjiro’s hair and against his scalp hoping that he will know. Like he seems to know everything you don’t say; reading it in between your deflection and your apologies.

His hands move like he’s under a spell, slow and syrupy, brushing up your thighs and over your stomach, rough fingers smoothing around your waist. And while his touch ignites goosebumps in its wake, you shiver when you realise he’s being mindful, carefully stroking over only your uninjured skin.

A questioning tug on your waistband has you nodding your head, and Tanjiro gently pulls your trousers down, lifting each ankle to help you step out of the fabric in a gesture so saccharine you can’t fight the laugh that bubbles out of you.

He glances up at you at the sound and smiles at you. Small and unarmed—all defences crumbling before your eyes and you let yours follow his lead. You smile back.

Sitting back on his heels again, he drags his hands up your shins, along the delicate, sensitive skin on the back of your knees and up your thighs. Grazing over the skin fluid like water until they’re resting at the top of your thighs, thumbing at the crease like you have all the time in the world. And maybe you do—time seems to be warping around you, hazy and imprecise as it winds the threads of fate and ties the knot, sealing you in this moment with no idea when you will be allowed to leave.

Your breath stutters and you brush your hand through his hair to the back of his head, tugging him minutely closer in a silent plea. He complies. His breath ghosts the thin cotton of your underwear, warm and promising and your torment lasts the briefest of moments before he’s connecting his lips to the peak of you, suckling at your clit in a dull shock that has your hips jerking against the door in surprise.

Tanjiro groans against your core, nosing at your clit as he tries to lick through the fabric, pressing his tongue into you as much as can with the barrier in the way. You can’t think to stop him and tug your underwear off, not when the muted sparks of pleasure are dancing in your vision.

“Oh god,” you breathe, unbidden as you screw your eyes shut at the sensation. It’s not enough—too slow and too gentle to get you off but just the simple fact that Tanjiro is on his knees before you, too desperate to even pull off your underwear has you panting like you’ve run up a mountain in training.

Tanjiro’s hands are tight on your hips, strong fingers digging into your soft flesh and he guides you into his mouth when you flinch away.

You let him mould you how he pleases, and when the low wave you’re riding edges into frustration you thread a hand into his hair and tug him back none too gently. He keens, heaving in a breath as you force him back and there’s a vivid flush mapped across his face. Unwilling to keep him away long, you make quick work of your underwear, pushing them down your hips and kicking them carelessly to the side. It only takes another breath for Tanjiro to surge forward again, ignoring your grasp in his hair to connect his mouth to your cunt.

You gasp, your mouth falling open and that familiar head of scarlet hair nestled between your legs is a brand. A quickly forming addiction that you can’t believe you didn’t indulge last time. Because god, it’s so good. He’s so good.

Tanjiro’s tongue laves your cunt, saliva mingling with the arousal you can feel steadily dripping out of you and he laps it up like an animal. Eating you out with all the desperation of a lion converging on its meal, and none of the grace. But you can’t find it in yourself to care or even to tease when the pleasure is frisking along you and turning your mind into nothing more than fuck and Tanjiro and feels good, with the absence of a barrier between you.

He tilts down to thrust his tongue into you and you moan then, pushing your shoulders back against the door to lift your hips, giving him more room to work his tongue in and out of you. The feeling isn’t as full as you crave but it’s still amazing. Warm and rapid, his nose bumping your clit with every movement and fuck, you can’t breathe this time but for an entirely new reason; Tanjiro, quick as the devil at your feet, and eating you like he can’t get enough of the taste.

You push your other hand into his hair now, gripping onto him like a lifeline as he drowns you—his tongue relentlessly moving, listening to your increasingly desperate noises and repeating the motions that have you keening on him. Until you’re a jumbled mess of slurred noises that might be pleas or might be the hashira’s name, you’re not sure.

You throw a leg over his shoulder in desperation, whimpering at the new angle. There’s a clatter as your katana collides with the floor but you don’t care—can’t care right now. You extract a hand from his hair to slap back onto the door behind you for purchase, the wood rough under your fingers and you savour the spark of dull pain dancing with the pleasure blooming in you.

Tanjiro’s hands start moving from your hips a second later like he’s only just remembered how to move them and begin to brush over every bit of skin he can touch. Swipes of pleasure over your stomach, your waist, the backs of your thighs.

And you love it, god, you really do but you’re only so strong with Tanjiro at your feet and it’s for that reason you crack the reverence fallen over you both.

“I didn’t say you could touch.”

His hands snap back from you like he’s been burnt, and his head jerks away a moment later. Your hips jump at the sudden absence of his mouth on you and you frown, choking back an unhappy noise threatening to make itself known.

“I didn’t tell you to stop, either.”

Your low, slightly strained words spill down to him and he cautiously tips forward to nose at your cunt again like he’s testing the boundaries. You hum in approval and he licks a long, hot stripe up your core before suckling at your clit. Your legs tremble where they fight to keep you upright.

Letting the pleasure build, you watch the strain in his eyes; the tight coil of his muscles as he tries not to touch, as he fights against every base urge driving his movements like a wicked puppet master. And maybe you’re wicked too because you can’t get enough. The power of his obedience is a drug where you’re as much an addict as he is. “Hands behind your back.”

He whimpers against you, and the shivering breath he exhales tickles you. You groan. When he doesn’t do as you say the hand in his hair tightens, pulling harshly on the strands as you shove him further into your cunt. It doesn’t take any words or more than the simple action of forcing him closer to your core to have his hands hurrying to grasp each other in a pitiful squeeze at the base of his spine.

You speak, beyond pleased. “Mm, so good for me.”

He relaxes under your grip, like the praise soothed his spike of anxiety and carefully you brush your fingers over his hair, dragging your knuckles down and behind his ear, petting him. He moans against you, and his eyes flick up to yours.

He kisses your core and the gentle action has you gasping, the adoration sinking into you until you feel weightless. Until all you can feel is where Tanjiro’s mouth meets your pussy—the sparks as he sucks on your clit and the sharp shocks of pleasure when he presses his tongue into you. The warmth gathers, rising like a formidable, unstoppable wave and you are helpless to it.

Tanjiro’s eyes slide closed and he starts licking at you with a renewed vigour like he knows, pouring every inch of his focus and attention into drinking your juices like a starving man—his pace punishing and fuck, you deserve it. The softness you always doubt, you second-guess, but the violence—the unforgiving pressure he’s applying—that. That you know you deserve.

And you accept it, letting him take you apart piece by piece; letting him disassemble you and study the shards of your soul spread over the slats of the floor to decide which one he likes best. Which one he wants. He can have them all for all you care, so long as he doesn’t take his mouth from you. So long as he doesn’t stop moving his tongue in that way that has your vision blurring, and a flurry of desperate gasps and moans flying from your lips.

You haven’t looked away, not since you entered the room and not since he sunk to his knees before you. But the pleasure crescendos, sharp and sweet and it’s too much. You close your eyes against it, head tipping back to thunk against the forgotten door behind you. It’s like the last dregs of your worship were drawn out from where his mouth laps at your wetness, and you’re finished. So devoid of everything—fear and apprehension and self-doubt—and all that has survived, burning through your veins like a forest fire, is the want, distilled into pure sin that captains each breath you take.

And when the current hits, sweeping you beneath it, you see white. Your mouth opens on a wordless, soundless gasp that tangles behind your teeth and you practically spasm against Tanjiro’s mouth. He doesn’t stop. Unrelenting as the sensation edges into too much, only kissing you through it until you’re jerking against him in oversensitivity, fighting to escape.

He kisses at your core a final time before pulling away. You gulp down a few desperate, heaving breaths and finally look down only to feel your core clench at the sight and the heat rises like it had never left. He groans, like he’s physically pained to stop and it punches a breath out of you.

Tanjiro’s looking up at you like he never even tried to rip his eyes away and the lower half of his face is covered in you. A clear sheen coating his mouth and chin, but he wears it proudly, a small smile curving the corner of his mouth and fuck, he looks smug. And so pleased. Proud of the tremble lining your legs and proud of the boneless way you sag against the door.

Compelled to, almost against your will, you drag your free hand up to place a finger under his chin and tilt his head further back, lifting your leg off his shoulder to place it shakily back on solid ground. You take a few fingers and smear your juices across his cheek, marvelling at the glaze covering his eyes. You feel insane—it’s the only way to describe how your heart hammers like a war drum in your chest, calling for battle and violence and blood when all that is before you is Tanjiro; sex and pleasure and obedience.

His hands are still tangled behind his back, holding on with a force that looks painful, all white knuckles and crescent-shaped cuts. And god, does that do something to you. Physical proof of how hard he had to restrain himself from touching you. How desperate he is—just like you are.

“Oh, sweetheart.” You breathe, still coming down from your orgasm. “Thank you. You were so perfect, baby.”

A whimper rings in the air and it takes you a moment to realise it sounded from Tanjiro, so high and strung out that you didn’t even recognise it. It has your head swimming and you feel the noise hitting you like a proverbial bottle being smashed over your head, the glass slicing your self-control in two.

The seconds drag on, and while Tanjiro sits pretty and still and content to stay at your feet while he waits for you, you can feel the veil of power, of dominion, settling over you; and where before you felt the act beginning and the curtains lifting—now, there are no roles. Only the bare cores of each of you—the cruxes on which the night will pivot—slowly fusing like the collapse of a dying star under its own gravity.

You tug at the collar of his uniform, demanding and pleading all at once, urging him to stand. He rises with great effort, legs weak after kneeling for so long and you don’t give him a moment to recover before you crash your lips into his like it’s the only way you can express your gratitude. Like your words betray you and your mouth, the last defence, has finally fallen.

And the collision—the implosion as your stars connect—is everything. Everything you have been wanting for weeks since that first night. A culmination of all the tension and longing that has simmered under your feet like hot coals. And it burns, fuck does it burn, but it’s too good to stop. All that heat finally has a release and you press it into Tanjiro’s lips like he may feel a fraction of how you burn for him. How you hurt for him.

He stumbles against you and instead of letting yourself be pushed back against the door, you veer forward, slowly walking him over to the lone bed in the centre of the room. The one you’ve only just spotted without the haze of your pleasure.

You can’t figure out if Tanjiro paid for this room specifically, or if it was the only one left but it doesn’t matter. Not when his shins bump the raised futon and you’re shoving him onto it. Especially not when he bounces at the impact, fumbling to brace himself on his forearms and his tangled hair falls back from his face, baring his forehead to you. And it shouldn’t have that much of an effect on you but fuck seeing the sweat beading at his temples and the pink painted on his face is enough to make you want to eat him.

“Baby,” he ventures, tone pleading and oh. That’s new. Your toes curl on the planked floor and an honest to god shiver runs from the base of your feet all the way to your hairline, goosebumps spreading across your skin. As though seeing your reaction he sounds more confident when he continues, wide eyes looking up at you standing above him. “Baby, please touch me.”

You smile at that—you didn’t have to drag it out of him this time, nor invade his head like a traitorous spy to extract what you wanted to hear. And you have to say it feels so much sweeter. A willing victory handed straight into your open palms.

You lean over him, pressing a knee into the mattress between his thighs before bracketing your hands on either side of his head. “Touch you where, sweetheart?”

His face screws up beneath you and he stutters, dropping back onto the futon so that he can grab your shoulders and slide up to cup your face like he can’t decide whether he wants to keep you watching him or turn you away completely. “I— please.

You hum questioningly.

Tanjiro groans beneath you, shifting on the futon and when you chance a look down he’s completely hard under his hakama. You inhale sharply at the sight—at how his dick strains against the muddied fabric of his uniform and when you look back up, he’s watching you, his face bright red and looking even more embarrassed as the seconds tick by.

“All this just from eating me out, hm, Tanj?” And he positively keens under you, hands flexing on your face. The fog over his eyes as they repeatedly dip down to watch your lips move has your cunt throbbing, the all too familiar desperation to grind him down to nothing but a sobbing mess under you rises its fearsome head. You watch him with sharp eyes. “And I haven’t even touched you yet.”

He makes a noise of complaint then, mouth opening as though he wants to voice it only to snap it closed again a moment later.

You lower your head to catch his lips in a kiss—slow and unhurried as you map his mouth like you’ll need it to navigate home after this is all over. Like he’s a lighthouse you’d follow to the ends of the Earth. He gasps into your mouth and you swallow the sound greedily, nipping at his lip until he outright moans.

Tanjiro’s big hands slide to the back of your head, coming to tangle in the tied hair of your braid unsuccessfully and your breath hitches at the sharp pull of hair under his fingers. And when an image materialises in your mind, so filthy you groan into the man below you, you don’t let yourself hesitate.

“Hands up,” you say into his mouth, one of your palms moving to guide his hands away from your face. Thank god the hashira training is rigorous enough that holding yourself above Tanjiro on one arm is no trouble. “Above your head.”

Tanjiro pauses, eyes visibly uncertain and you kiss him harder, gently coaxing both of his hands off you until they’re resting high above his head and crossed at the wrists where you hold them. You press his hands into the mattress firmly, just once, but the message is clear. Don’t move. And then you lean back to sit on your haunches, eyes dragging down the stretch of his long body and fuck, he’s incredible. Spread out for you like a sacrifice, willing and so, so obedient.

He struggles underneath you gently, like the embarrassment of this position is so acute and physical that he can’t help but fidget to release some of the energy. You watch, content to let him twitch in humiliation as you drink in the taut lines of his muscle even under his shirt. And that has you moving all at once, hands yanking the bottom of his haori out of his trousers and tugging it up to pool at his collarbones like you only just remembered that he’s wearing way too many clothes for your satisfaction.

Like this, his entire chest is exposed and you run your hands up his abdomen, dragging your nails along the skin to leave quiet pink marks that will no doubt fade in minutes. A startled moan rips out from his mouth and his back bows, chest thrusting forward to meet your touch.

“You’re so good.” You say, voice a low murmur and you splay your fingers over his pecs, thumbing the skin there, brushing over a nipple and watching as his breath stutters. “So good to me.”

Voice as reverent as the exploration of your hands and you dip down to mouth at his neck, or what you can reach above the bunched shirt. He doesn’t move his hands from where you’d pressed them down into the futon and again you’re struck with such an intense pride that he obeys your every whim it nearly bowls you over, and you’re grateful to have your face tucked into his neck to hide your hungry expression. Your murmur into his skin.

“Everything I could ever want.”

Tanjiro whines, strangled and reedy, like it tripped over itself in its haste to be heard and you hear it, how could you not? You absorb the sound into you like you could carry it with you forever, hiding it in the cage of your heart. A reminder that he’s alive—alive and writhing beneath you—perfect and so utterly reassuring even as it blazes a fierce path across your skin.

You separate your lips from his neck just long enough to pull his haori over his head and throw it somewhere to the side before reconnecting, nipping at the smooth skin. He tilts his head back with a low moan, releasing heavy breaths into the air above him.

A beat passes, just enough to think an idea over before you decide fuck it and begin undoing his belt, pulling it out from the loops of his hakama. He startles underneath you, body visibly jolting like he thinks he knows what you’re offering and you fight a grin.

Purposely avoiding brushing him in any way, you slide the belt out and shuffle your way up his body until you’re sat on his chest—wet cunt swiping a hot trail of arousal along his abdomen. He inhales sharply, eyes darting between your pussy and your face like he can’t decide which to land on before he launches into a spiral of pleas, the concept of you pawing at his cock long-forgotten. “Oh fuck, please can I— please let me—” And his head tilts forward as much as it can from where his hands are still suspended above him like he means to consume you.

But you cut off his begging with a practised ease—a shake of your head and a brush of your fingers over his lips—and continued what you were saying. The praises you want to lay thick on his skin until it smothers any negative thought living in him. “The perfect friend.”

Your hands creep from his shoulders along his arms with the belt in tow, delicately dancing up his triceps and then his forearms until they rest around his hands. You glance down at him when you speak again. “A perfect lover.”

His gaze flares wide, caught on yours.

And with a sure grip on the belt, you slide it under his crossed wrists, wrapping it around before tying it tight and locking his wrists together. He inhales sharply and screws his eyes shut, fighting a wave of heat you can practically see wash over him. He bites his lip and moans like it does anything to muffle the sound.

“Strong.” You say, watching his face closely for any signs of alarm or fear but there are none. He seems to embrace the constraint—and when his eyes blink open to look at you they’re blurry, his whole demeanour out of it, like the brief moment with his eyes closed had left him stranded. And you can feel the urge to protect—to please—burning up to engulf you.

You slowly shuffle back down his body, beginning your descent by kissing along his collarbone, mapping a path of sharp nips and laved tongues, of small sucked bruises or the skim of teeth over his skin before you speak.

“Kind.”

Tanjiro whimpers beneath you, hips jumping up under you but you don’t lose focus, speaking against his abdomen as you bite at the muscle there.

“Pretty.”

A sound like a wounded animal escapes his parted lips at your praise then—low and whined and pretty. God, he’s so, so pretty. And you want to hear it again, you’re desperate to as you double down against his soft skin. “Fuck, sweetheart— you’re so pretty. Gorgeous spread out like this for me.”

And he doesn’t disappoint, reacting to your words like they’re branding him—like the heat weaved through your tone will mar his skin forever. It utterly humbles you that such a beautiful, helpless sound could ever be heard by your ears. That it could ever be drawn out into the world by you. But how can you focus on your inadequacy when you have Tanjiro spread out under you like this—when you can feel the hard length of his cock bumping your chin as your tongue licks above the waistband of his hakama.

“Ah— oh, baby, please— just, I want— please—”

He’s so desperate—babbling under you like a fool but you are enamoured; you haven’t even touched him yet and he’s unravelling under your teasing. You finger his waistband, feeling the fabric thoughtfully before you peel it off. Little by little revealing tanned skin as you pull his trousers down his hips in no rush, watching with rapt attention as his aching cock springs free and bounces against his clenched stomach, marking it with sticky arousal.

You ease the trousers off his legs and let them pool on the floor around his ankles uncaringly for a moment before you sink to your knees and tug them off fully, ushering his legs apart so you can kneel between them.

Feeling much like a woman possessed, you don’t fight the fond urge to tip forward and kiss the bend of his knee softly. Pressing your lips to his feverish skin with a gentleness that belies your hunger. You smooth your hands up his thighs until they rest at his pelvis, thumbing against the skin at the base of his dick and watching as his hips buck up into your touch.

“Fuck—” He drags out above you, and you can practically feel how the air buzzes in anticipation around him. It only takes a few long moments before his mouth drops open, primed to plea again and that’s when you move to kiss at the tip of his cock, tongue darting out to taste the arousal at his head.

It’s heady and weirdly sweet, and you almost don’t hear Tanjiro’s broken noise, too wrapped up in the new toy in front of you as you lick a hot swipe down the length of him. You laugh against his dick, the sound smothered and warm on him and he only whines in response—you can feel the fight he’s putting up to not buck up into you, to let you go at your own pace and you smile. You run your hands over his thighs, soothing the tense muscles underneath your fingers as you swirl your tongue over the head of his cock. He whimpers, straining under your touch.

The level of trust he’s placing in your waiting hands has your head spinning, and you wish you could say the power wasn’t rushing straight through you but it is. The usually impenetrable hashira has let his defences crumble under your touch and is allowing you to walk right past the guards.

It makes you feel like you’re on top of the fucking world—like you’re impenetrable—like no man nor demon could come close to touching you where you’re floating right now. High above any of the doubt and anxiety that has plagued you for weeks. Leagues above next time meaning never.

You let the elated energy of that thought sink your mouth down his cock, slowly taking as much of him as you can until your nose is brushing his curled hair and he’s groaning like a man dying above you.

“Oh god.” Tanjiro breathes, an out-of-body, slurred quality to his voice that has goosebumps spreading across your skin.

You start up a slow pace. Teasingly bobbing your head, and swirling your tongue around him when you lift your head to breathe. You give him just enough that he can’t complain you’re not touching him, but you know it’s not enough to get him off. His increasingly desperate noises make it sound like he also knows what you’re doing but knows he is in no position to stop you.

And he doesn’t try to—letting you lead him in circles as you drag your tongue into his slit and bring a hand up to gently stroke the base of his cock. He lets you drag him this way and that, like he doesn’t even care that you have no destination in mind. That you just want to savour the journey.

Perspiration beads across his skin at the pressure of keeping still but even your lovely Tanjiro isn’t perfect. There’s a pitiful stream of garbled, borderline panicked sounds pouring from his mouth—spilling over his lips and onto the sweat-covered futon beneath him. When you glance up at him you can only see the taut, long line of his neck where his head is thrown back in distress, and the armsthat are still straining above him.

And maybe it’s cruel—after all, only minutes earlier he’d had you boneless against the door and experiencing an orgasm that had you floating above the room thanks to his quick mouth. But he doesn’t seem to be complaining, and you sure as hell aren’t.

You dip your head too suddenly—you take him into your mouth too quickly—and without warning he’s thrusting once, the motion aborted and stopped as soon as he realised what he had done but you still gag, jerking back to splutter.

“Fuck— I’m so— ah, I’m so sorry. Oh god.”

You take a grounding breath, trying to reel in the rush of adrenaline that just sparked through you and bend your head down to kiss his pelvis, nipping at the skin there when you can’t quite help yourself.

“Sorry, sorry— baby oh, I’m sorry.”

His voice is nothing short of contrite, honeyed and sweet in a way so superfluous you would think he’s joking at first if not for the slur of his words.

Humming, your hands smooth up to rest around his waist and squeeze in what you hope is a reassuring way as you listen to his alarmed, apologetic rambling. He speaks like he’s haunted by a fear that you might stop—that he’s ruined it for himself and you can’t help but smile.

There’s nothing he could do to ruin this. Nothing he could do to stagger or slow the train that was already flying along the tracks. There’s too much momentum, too much longing. And you wouldn’t want the breaks to work even if they could.

You don’t know how he doesn’t see it.

How he doesn’t see he has you completely wrapped around his finger—that he could ask for anything right now, in that enthralling, pleading tone of his and you would grant it like a god bestowing a wish upon their most devoted worshipper.

You don’t know how he could be scared that you’d stop because you don’t think you’re able to. A fire burns under your skin, through your veins, and the extinguisher is Tanjiro. Without him you’ll burn up, disintegrating into a fine dust that will blow away with his next breathy moan until he’s left alone, hard and weeping. You can’t stop. It’s a compulsion. Coercion of the highest order, persuaded by a wicked creature who is none the wiser to his wiles. To how he has ensnared you so thoroughly that you’d rather wither away than leave him at this moment.

And so you touch him like you’re trying to convey it—like you’re trying to keep him underneath you as you press your fingers into his skin so hard the pigment disappears underneath the pressure. You scratch your nails up his abdomen and over the hard muscle he’s built up just to listen to how you know he’ll whine in response—and whine he does. He keens as though it’s been punched out of him, like you’d given him no choice between your kisses and your teasing pricks of pain.

“Ah— oh my god—”

And when your hands reach his pecs, built from training but surprisingly soft beneath your fingers you can feel more than hear the rumbling moan that slips out of you as you fondle him—scratching over his nipples and lathing your tongue over his hipbone like you’re drugged. As though you’re not even conscious of the actions you’re doing and can only make enough sense of your desire to understand you need to touch and taste and that you will burn up if you don’t.

“Fuck baby, you’re doing so good. So pretty all for me.”

You press the words into his skin and suddenly you remember what you were doing a moment ago. Raising your head again to kiss at the head of his dick and slide your pursed lips down the side, doing no more than barely tasting the length of him.

Tanjiro whimpers—he sounds exhausted, like he’s not sure how much longer he can keep up with your teasing and you hum. His hips thrust up again, and when you don’t choke he repeats the motion—the reins of his self-control having finally, finally slipped through his fingers. He pumps his hips, stilted and messy and you just wrap your lips around the side of his dick, letting your tongue lave over the moving length of him in a crude rendition of what he wants.

And he accepts it—he doesn’t try to take anything more even though he knows this won’t be enough to get him off, and he keeps desperately humping up under your wet touch, gasping and panting all the while and still his hands are suspended above him on the bed.

He’s so well-behaved.

And even that thought has your cunt clenching down on nothing, a sick wave of heat washing over you and you fight to breathe against him as the desire weighs you down.

His thighs start to shake and you drag your hands back down to over his hips and press, forcing him to still just to listen to how he almost sobs. A broken noise reverberates in the small room and his chest heaves.

“Oh fuck— please,” he begs, like you knew he would. It’s what you were on your knees just to hear. And you drink in the sound as though it will sustain you—as though you won’t have to eat for weeks because you feel so entirely full with Tanjiro whining underneath you. His words trip and stumble over each other. “Please, baby— please, please. Need— ah— need you.”

His hips still make an effort to jump underneath your hold, but you’re strong too and it’s not an issue to hold him down where you want him when he’s so out of it.

“What do you want baby?” You croon, and you can visibly see the way your low voice washes over him. His head tilts back even further against the futon and he whimpers, hips tensing underneath you as he works over the words in his delirium.

Any lingering apprehension from the past few weeks is gone, burnt away from the moment you entered this room because you don’t have to coax the words out of him. Instantly his head is snapping up, his abdomen tensing to hold himself still as he meets your gaze, his own eyes fogged over as Tanjiro mumbles and sets you alight. “Wanna be inside you.”

It feels like every drop of composure leaves you so quickly you might pass out. “Fuck… okay,” you start stupidly before doubling down, nodding. “Yes, inside.”

He sits up suddenly, tied wrists dropping into his lap before tipping forward unsteadily to loom over you. You brace a hand on his shoulder to balance him. Perhaps you should scold him for moving without permission, but you can hardly find it in yourself to remember why you’d even want to when he dips his head down to capture your lips in a kiss that feels like a thank you.

And you so instead you let him kiss you, allowing your mind to catch up and it only takes a few beats of your racing heart for you to feel back in control again. You slowly stand in an effort to not break this kiss and press into him. You’re welcome.

Reluctant to, but knowing what you’re setting in motion will be so much better, you break apart and crawl onto the bed you’ve ignored up until this point, moving to lie back on the pillows at the head and you glance expectantly towards Tanjiro when you’re situated. He moves as though to crawl towards you automatically but then he jerks back, uncharacteristically shy as he looks down at his bound hands in confusion.

“I— uh—” he swallows nervously. “Can you…?” Tanjiro trails off and lifts his wrists in a helpless, imploring gesture that has you squirming on the soft futon.

You narrow your eyes into something sharp, letting the indifference roll off you in waves that hit Tanjiro like an insult. You shake your head. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again, unable to decide how to proceed. Letting him work through it, you don’t allow your eyes to leave him as you tug your ruined shirt over your head and let it drop to the floor beside the bed.

Tanjiro makes a strangled noise as he watches the reveal of smooth skin, hands clenching into fists in his lap and you can see him subtly testing the belt’s give, his tendons jumping as he pushes against the leather like he just needs to get his hands on you. You hum disapprovingly. “I didn’t say to take it off now, did I baby?”

He inhales—once and sharply enough that you figure he needed the jumpstart of your cruel voice to stop his fidgeting. You speak again, “Come here, sweetheart.”

He waits for a breath as though he thinks you may reveal you’re joking, but when the firm, hungry look smeared on your face doesn’t shift he scrambles towards you on his knees. With an undercurrent of impatience written across his fluid, albeit shaky movements, he comes to a stop between the legs you slowly parted for him and he kneels.

His eyes don’t dare leave yours and you can see the turmoil in him as he tries to work out how to fuck you like he wants to with the restraints. But this is how you want it—and you apparently need to remind him. You shuffle down on the bed slightly and pull on his tied wrists, tugging until momentum sends him tumbling forward and his fists land on the soft futon above your head.

“There you go,” you encourage, smoothing your hands up his forearms. And like he finally understands what you want—like he is pleased he can finally provide it—the confused furrow between his eyebrows smooths out and he lowers himself so he’s resting on his forearms, braced on either side of your head and hovering over you. His bind means your face is more level with his throat but you’re not exactly unimpressed with that little fact as you lift your head to nip at the smooth column of his throat.

Maybe you’ve been too lenient with him up to this point—lulling him into a false sense of security. But you revel in it when you pull the rug out from under him.

“Put it in.” You say, biting at his chin once before you drop your head back to meet his wide eyes, pupils blown and a flush steadily creeping along his cheeks as he glances down at you, realising his predicament.

Baby—” he stutters, hanging his head slightly as he meets your eyes reproachfully. “I— I can’t.”

And you pout, looking put out as you watch him struggle over you, tentatively thrusting his hips forward only for his dick to jab forward into your clit and slide over the mount of your cunt uselessly. You hiss at the sensation.

“Oh baby,” you whine, pitching your voice higher than your usual low temptations and sounding every bit like Tanjiro does beneath you in a mocking performance. “I need it. Can’t you give it to me?”

The plea collapses around him like an avalanche, and he screws up his eyes to whimper against the humiliation. It doesn’t matter that the words are so out of character for you it’s almost laughable, but only that they seem to hit Tanjiro like a sledgehammer, shattering the layer of ice and plunging into his want without restraint.

You don’t think this could ever get old—the sight of Tanjiro bright red and flushed is one that will never tire nor fade in the sun. It’s a sight you’ll dedicate yourself to protect for as long as you can, one that you’ll guard with your life.

You don’t know what he’s thinking right now but you can hazard a guess from his trembling form above you like it’s only your deceivingly kind touch smoothing over his jaw holding him together. He’s playing right into your hands and he doesn’t even care—can’t think beyond your cunt, drenched and waiting for him, and his bound hands and useless disposition. At you ready under him and how he can’t do anything about it until you want him to. That he is entirely at your mercy.

And your mercy is a cruel thing—clouding your head like a storm.

So you lift a hand to stroke at his cock where it bobs pitifully on your stomach, abandoned and useless.

“Shit— please, baby, please.”

You hum again, pressing the sound into his neck behind your closed lips and feeling the vibrations travel through him. He’s warm and heavy in your palm, and you tease a thumb over his head, collecting the arousal that’s dripping from him before letting your head drop back against the mattress.

Slowly, you raise your thumb and seal your lips around it, licking over the trace of him where he can’t see. He whines.

“You can’t do it yourself?” You ask, eyes tracking every twitch that dances across his face.

He groans into the air above you, looking so thoroughly humiliated you know you should have some pity but fuck, you just can’t. He looks perfect. So utterly perfect for you, pliable to your every whim and revelling in your control as he can finally let go.

You can tell he’s fighting himself—to admit he can’t put his dick in you himself and finally get to fuck you, or maintain his fraying mirage of dignity and be left high and dry.

It’s a simple choice, really.

No,” he admits, defeated and whiny. “No I can’t, please can you—” And he doesn’t seem to be able to bring himself to finish his sentence and falls back on what he knows works on you. What he knows you like from him. “Please baby, please, please, please.”

And like how the sun unfailingly breaks the horizon each day, you give in to his begging, weak as you are despite your power.

“Okay, baby,” you murmur soothingly, “I’ll help you, huh, sweetheart? That’s what you want right? I’ll take care of you.”

The breath in Tanjiro’s chest stutters over you and you can hear him trying to grapple it back under control as a whine builds in the back of his throat and is cut off at its neck by his teeth. His forehead drops to meet the futon above you, and his mouth parts to pant into the hair on the crown of your head. You drag your hands teasingly down the side of his body, making a slow journey down to where he wants you as you process his reaction. There’s something heavier in the air around you now—charged and crackling as he heaves in breaths above you while you creep along his skin.

You’ve always known that Tanjiro carries too much—that he shoulders the weight of what it means to be a hashira, the responsibility to protect everyone, always, with little regard for himself. But it’s now, with his trembling body caging you against the futon that you finally comprehend the scope of his burden.

To Tanjiro, the mantle of a hashira is air, something that keeps him alive—giving him purpose and meaning and hope over all else—but also something that he knows if he stops, he will die. His role of protection is as much a necessity to him as the oxygen in his veins.

And that’s all it takes for you to shift gears, knowing he needs you to hold his weight; to let his mind float somewhere high above his body without the tether of his duty. You’d take his weight forever if you could, but you know he would refuse. So instead you settle, kissing his chest gently and offering him a reprieve from the weight—just for tonight.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing, hm? I’ll look after you.” You try, desperate to elicit the same response. To have him know he’s safe now. That he can let go. “I’ll make you feel so good, sweetheart.”

And like an arrow lodging itself deep into the bullseye, your words hit their mark, transforming Tanjiro into something soft and quiet over you. You can practically feel the difference buzzing through the air and it’s intoxicating, wrapped around every inhale and poisoning your lungs.

You look up at him in wonder as he presses himself against you like he can’t bear to have any part of him not touching you. Mindlessly, you raise one of your hands to stroke through his hair, coaxing his head back up where you can see it. He seems reluctant to lift his head from where he’s tucked it, warm and safe in your neck, but you gently ease him up until you can see his face and fuck… did you do that?

Tanjiro is floating—there’s no better way to describe it—he looks like he’s drifting in between faint thoughts, bound only to the present by your touch. A wind of contentment filling his sails and shifting your anchor.

And with how he melted at your reassurance—near boneless as you forced any control out of his hands and into yours—you suspect this is the first time he’s consciously experienced the weight he carries every day. And in its absence he’s free—his only responsibiis lity to trust you.

And that seems to be a too easy task to accomplish. Because he’s gone—taken in the wind and you marvel at the gentle expression smothering his face. How his eyes track yours slow and sluggishly. But somehow seeing the trust and actually knowing it’s because of you—letting it sink into your skin like a balm—are two different things. And when you realise the extent to which he’s trusting you, god, you feel boundless.

You tilt your head back as far as you can, leveraging your hand in his hair in order to pull him down to meet your lips—your other hand guiding his cock towards your centre. As the head of his dick breaches you, a distant hum of pleasure drifts from his mouth into yours as he uses his new hold to slip further inside you. You raise your hands to cup his face and smooth your fingers over his cheeks.

Once his hips are flush with yours, and your cunt is tight around him like a sheath—he rocks experimentally, eyes flashing from behind the fog at your gentle groan. Tanjiro thrusts into you, starting a languid pace, unhurried in the way that only he could be right now. In a way you don’t feel at all, still burning up from the inside. It’s like his previous desperation to be inside you has curled into the air and dissipated, and what replaces it now is a desire to stay inside of you as long as you’ll let him.

And god do you want to give him everything right now. You’re sure you’d let him rut into you all night if that’s what he wanted. But you’re in charge of thinking for the both of you right now, and you can’t help but be selfish. The urge to claim is boiling under your skin, molten like lava and you wouldn’t be surprised if it erupted while you’re both connected.

His paced thrusts are *incredible—*you can feel him drag against your walls in a way that makes your head spin. But you don’t think it’s enough to tip Tanjiro over the edge and that confuses you. It’s like he took note of your teasing pace earlier, of your mouth on him, and figured that’s what you wanted. That he perhaps isn’t allowed to move any faster until you give him the word to. You wrap your legs around his hips, forcing him impossibly deeper and you bite your lip at the thought.

He’s suspended above you floating like a kite in the wind, but you can see the strain in this position. The trembles that wrack along his arms. However, he’s a demon slayer first and foremost—trained for such endurance and so he doesn’t falter under the strenuosity.

“You’re so good for me,” you whisper into his neck, and your back arches off the bed when his hips jerk in response, hitting a spot so deep inside you that you swear the breath is knocked out of your lungs. “All I could ever want, sweetheart.”

He moans into the crown of your head.

You can feel the air around you both swelling like a hot air balloon, hot and weightless—like at any moment, the next inhale you take could be the one that lifts you off the ground. You’re sure you’d be left to view something unspeakable, something beautiful—watching the gentle roll of Tanjiro’s hips, the muscles working diligently in his back to maintain the pace. And maybe you wouldn’t even want to come down—content to forever hover above your entwined bodies and be caught in their loving current like a leaf blowing across a continent.

Tanjiro’s pants lowly over you and the whines that scrape across the back of his throat have an ardent and frenzied need to satisfy rising up in your chest. It pushes aside your heart, and your lungs, until all you can focus on is the apparition urging you to please and to keep safe.

You let it take you over—you let it stroke easing hands across Tanjiro’s sweaty skin, murmur sweet reassurances into his ears, and pull him closer as your ankles cross behind him. And there’s something incredible about it. It’s like you’ve been steadily climbing an endless staircase since you last laid together, and finally, finally, you can see the open door at the top.

And you run, incensed by the sight of gentle grasses and pale flowers and Tanjiro’s humming moans singing from beyond the threshold.

Your thighs burn, and your nails dig into the skin of Tanjiro’s back. And you can’t see the marks from beneath him but you know they’re there—even just that has you moaning, tipping your head back wildly as you fight through the daze, and you hum in pleasure when Tanjiro, like he just knows, dips his head down to catch your lips.

And it is no kiss at all. A sharing of air, maybe, and an exchange of increasingly ungovernable noises that mesh so perfectly between you that it sets your heart hammering in your chest. Beating a fierce rhythm that seems to only spur the feeling on. And when Tanjiro gasps anew, hips slamming into you with timed thrusts that have your vision swimming and your body sliding up the futon, do you fight to get your vocal cords under control. Utterly desperate to send him over the edge.

“Come for me,” you speak, the command tangling in a moan.

And Tanjiro bows his back, bound hands coming frantically to touch the crown of your head like he needs to touch all of you. Before he’s thrusting into you once, twice, and coming with a keen that splinters at its seams. Spilling out everything you want from him until you’re covered in it—covered in him. And the warmth filling you up is even better, you feel so right. Like this couldn’t be any better and you couldn’t even begin to dream of what would match the cloud you’re currently lying on.

Some part of you wants to cry, nerves split in a raw, open wound—but you don’t. You simply hold him close to you, and let Tanjiro’s hips twitch into yours in little aborted motions as he rides out his orgasm. Anchoring him to you as he floats among the waves, letting their undulation slowly calm him.

And when you sense his breathing evening out, you break his peace.

“Baby,” you say, quietly. “What about me?”

He starts against you, blearily raising his head and when he meets your eyes the air is forced from your lungs like he’s just wrapped his hand around the body of it and yanked. He’s a fucking wreck. Face covered in splotches of a crimson flush; eyes that are so far out of it you feel like you’ve just put him under a spell. Like you just forced him beneath the waves instead of letting him drift on top of them.

Tanjiro’s eyebrows furrow, and he looks so worried you can’t help but lean up to press a kiss to his lips. “I— I can keep going.” He mutters, low and his expression is besotted—so entirely desperate to prove he can please you that you can only nod your head, humming your ascent.

And so he starts moving his hips again—gently at first, before he’s rocking into you determinedly—ignoring his slowly softening dick and the downright pained whines that he’s keeping locked up behind his teeth. You’re not even sure the sensation of him fucking into you registers over your focus. Watching as his face winces and his breathing topples into something shaken and uneven as he pushes himself past the pained pleasure of overstimulation to bring you to orgasm.

Yet still, it doesn’t break the blanket that has settled over him. His noises are slurred and his movements sedated as he follows your order—letting you think for him like it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

Slowly but surely, the sparks dancing in your core collide with each other, lighting up your insides and pushing you towards that delicious edge you’re after—just as Tanjiro’s pace begins to falter. When every thrust becomes a fight against himself that he’s slowly losing. Until the only movement he’s doing is with his hips flush to yours, swaying into you minutely while a litany of tense whimpers drip from his lips.

He is so deep inside you from this position, brushing on that spongey spot that has your breath coming in harsh pants but you can see the disappointment written across his features and you tighten your legs around him until he stops.

You feign a sigh, arms coming up to wrap around his shoulders and his mouth is immediately moving, leaping into a stumbled dance of desperation.

“I’m so sorry baby,” he whines, eyes screwed up shut and looking every bit like he wants to sink into the futon beneath you both never to be seen again. “I can still— just gimme a minute.”

Without letting yourself overthink it, and knowing that the part of you hell-bent on satisfying Tanjiro is content, you use the way you’re latched onto his body to roll you both over. Leveraging the momentum until you’re sat on him and his bound wrists are caught behind your neck, forcing your torso to bend forward.

He whimpers beneath you as his back hits the bed, before breathing a sigh of relief now that his arms are free from the exertion. You shush him gently, lifting his hands up and over your head to drop onto his chest in front of you. His hair is spread out beneath him in a cruel crimson halo that is practically singing for you to sink your hands into it but you resist.

You shift up onto your knees, slowly easing his cock from inside you and you watch as his eyes fly to your wet, swollen cunt, dripping with evidence of him and it’s like he’s frozen. But his mouth catches up quicker than his mind does, and as though he’s finally realised a different way to finish you exists he gasps.

“Oh fuck—” He breathes, the words coasting on a strained, still dizzy exhale. “Please, baby— let me taste you.”

Hook, line, and sinker.

And you can already feel your thighs trembling in anticipation but when have you ever given him what he wants without a tease?

“I don’t know, Tanji…” You lie. You’ve never been so certain in your life. “Are you sure you can please me?”

Your hands drift along your bare thighs and up to the folds of your pussy, framing it in a phantom touch. He swallows, head lifting off the bed in a futile attempt to get you closer to his mouth. “Yes,” he breathes, “yes.”

And he doesn’t plead again but instead lets the promise linger between you, tantalising and poisonous—with its bright colours of warning that look awfully grey to you.

And so you crawl forward on your knees until you’re hovering over his face and he’s studying the seam of you glistening for him like it’ll answer every question he’s ever had. Like he could find the answers to the universe in the alluring warmth of your cunt.

Before you can say anything else, his bound hands come up to rest on the small of your back—awkwardly coaxing you down to his waiting mouth with a surprisingly forceful determination that catches you off guard. Your pussy collides with his chin and he’s immediately rectifying the mistake, shifting you up and licking into you with all the fervour of a man who’s dying. He eats you like the filthy mixture of your arousal and his dripping from your cunt will cure him—his tongue fucking into you with an intensity that has your hand grappling uselessly on the wall in front of you.

Oh,” you breathe, though it tapers off into an insulting whine that you can’t even bring yourself to regulate as you veer dangerously fast towards the precipice.

Your thighs burn as you try and keep still but his hands push against you as though encouraging you to rock into his mouth. And you’re weak. So you do. Tanjiro’s nose catches on your clit with every thrust and his tongue laves your folds in sloppy strokes that have you throwing your head back.

The hand that isn’t scraping across the wall flies down to grapple in Tanjiro’s hair, tugging on the strands with a force you should control because you know it is bound to hurt in your desperation. But he only whimpers beneath you, the vibration of the noise rippling across your cunt and he lifts his head off the futon to force his tongue into you like he can push the noise into you.

You try for a sweetheart or a so good but they all falter midway through and you can only fight your moans as his hands push at the base of your back, forcing you closer, closer, closer to his mouth until you’re not even sure he can breathe. Until you’re not even sure he wants to.

And that thought, the realisation, spreads over you like wildfire—consuming and electric and out of fucking control. You don’t think anything will douse it, not even the force of your orgasm as it slams into you. So utterly breathtaking that it’s all you can do to cry out and rock into his mouth, clit catching on his nose, on his cupid’s bow, and he doesn’t stop.

He mouths at you, and his feverish hands are insistent as they stroke over the base of your spine. But your mind is elsewhere, drifting through the planes of pleasure like a cow grazing a meadow. The sunshine is warm on your back.

And then the tongue still laving over your core is too much—too soon, and you jerk back against the hands pressing you closer to his face and whine. Tanjiro tips his head back at the noise, kissing gently at your cunt like he can’t bare to leave it before he drops his head back against the futon and gives you a chance to breathe.

You drop your hand from the wall, and cradle his face—the hand that was tangled in his head smoothing forward to meet it until you’re holding his face gently between your palms like something fragile.

The whole bottom half of his face is smothered in your arousal and his and it glitters in the low lamplight of the room—your eyes are glued to it, stuck to his flushed face and his foggy eyes as they slowly track your own. He doesn’t say anything—there’s no need to—and you don’t feel the need to break the quiet either. You wipe off what you can of the arousal with your hand, before smearing it mindlessly on your thigh to clean him as best you can.

You swing a leg off him to sit on the futon next to him. Like this, when you’re not touching him nor on top of him, he looks wrecked. Splayed out on the bed, sweaty and flushed—with your arousal glistening in patches that you missed on his face and his wrists still bound, resting on his stomach.

Wishing you could keep him like this, but knowing you can’t, you soak up the image. Burning it onto a sheet of memory that you fold and tuck safely behind your ribcage, protecting your heart. Your deft fingers make quick work of the belt and you let it drop off the futon with a metallic clink as it hits the floor. Before Tanjiro can move to stretch his wrists you’re doing it for him, careful fingers massaging the pink chafed skin underneath.

He’s quiet as he watches you, still floating wherever he is and you don’t mind it. Enjoying his eyes on you as you ease the tension in his palms, along each finger, around both wrists. And his pulse thrums, calm as the receding tide, under your touch and the reminder that he’s alive under you has never felt so fortunate. Tanjiro’s life is quite literally bared to you, tattooed under his wrists but if possible, he relaxes even further at your touch as you drain all the tension from where he was bound.

Your head spins with the implications. And you feel, god… exhausted. To say the least. The comedown from such an intense experience with Tanjiro—such an emotion-defying night, the post-fight adrenaline, the connection you’ve shared—hell, the intimacy. You’ve never felt closer to Tanjiro, as physical as it is emotional, and it’s like you never realised you weren’t whole until this happened between you. Like you can finally feel the last piece of your puzzle clicking into place with such a surety that you can’t fathom how you’ve lived a whole life in its absence. How you’ve lived weeks with just a lingering taste of it in your mouth.

As you glance down at Tanjiro’s content expression, you expect the self-doubt to well up, as formidable as the setting sun, but you only feel good. Sated and warm and, it takes you a few minutes to come to terms with it, but also loved. Appreciated. Seen. By Tanjiro no less. So there is nothing that could stop you, really, from the way you bank down—too quick and too eager for his sleepy state—to push your lips against his.

To kiss him like you’re saying I know now. I know how you feel—I feel too. I feel it all, for you.

And he knows, he always does. He kisses back—all gentle lips and teasing tongue to assure you. To say yes, I do. How could I not?

Your hands are still wrapped around his wrists, and you break apart to dip your head down and kiss along the red band encircling them. An apology and a gratitude you don’t think you have the strength to speak out loud right now. You are so utterly sapped of energy that it’s all you can do to gently kiss his palms, the tips of his fingers, before easing yourself down to lay next to him. To tuck your head under his chin and wrap yourself around him like a limpet on a rock—holding on for dear life, or face being washed out to the ocean. But that vast ocean that seemed so impenetrable even only hours ago doesn’t now appear so intimidating. And you think that maybe, with Tanjiro at your side, you could face it.

He’s still silent but he brings his arms up now to hold you, palms soothing up your back a few times before coming to rest at either side of your waist, only his thumbs moving like that’s all he has the energy left to do. And he hums, low and pleased, and that’s enough for you.

You think you might drift in and out of a light sleep—because the time passes weirdly. A syrupy slowness that feels like it has stretched for an accumulative 30 seconds but when you blink your eyes open at Tanjiro’s rumbling voice under your cheek the windows show the first fingers of sunlight creeping along the walls of the wood-panelled room you’re in. Hours must have passed.

“Hm?” You only managed a tired, questioning hum in hopes that he’ll repeat himself. And he does.

“’m glad you’re okay,” he speaks, an admission that has your face nuzzling further into his neck, seeking his warmth and his safety as you mumble a response—your heart a raw, aching wound in your chest. The newness of this still feels strange. Still slightly fragile but you can’t help how your chest swells at the vibration of his voice under you.

“Me too.”

The room you’re in feels like a sanctuary—a temporary bubble where time doesn’t matter, where your careers don’t cause fear, where the warm morning sun is not a relief but just normal. Expected. And you relax, body boneless against Tanjiro where you’ve migrated to being practically on top of him as you both slept.

He shifts slightly under you, and before you can process the arms that are wrapped around you, you are gently eased up and off him so that you lay by his side. He rolls over to face you, hands still bridging the gap between you and stroking absentmindedly over your skin as he studies your face.

Tanjiro’s gaze feels penetrating—all-seeing in the way it usually is but for once, you don’t feel the need to hide what you feel from it. To smother any affection you have towards him until it’s indiscernible to an outsider. Instead, you let it play across your face—allowing him to see what you normally fight to hide. His own eyes soften as they watch you and fuck, if that doesn’t hit you right in the chest. The gentle openness he regards you with strikes you through the heart like an arrow finding its home.

Unbidden, his eyes drift down your bare form, taking in the collection of injuries you’re covered in. Old and new; stories of fights written across your skin and a map of your life in between your scars.

“You cut,” he murmurs, eyes caught on the gash across your chest. Your cut. You’d honestly forgotten about it the moment you stepped into this room, your entire being taken over by Tanjiro—his mouth, his hands. “We need to clean it.”

You open your mouth to brush him off. It’s long—stretching from one shoulder to your waist—but it’s not deep, and has already begun to scab over whilst you’d been asleep. Sure, it stings. But years as a hashira have long since devolved your pain tolerance into something much more manageable. Insouciant.

You shift under his gaze, and you can feel the tug of barely healed skin but truly, you’d be an abysmal demon slayer if an injury of this degree bothered you. But at the determined look in his eyes, as he takes in the dirt-covered slash, you hesitate.

He pushes his advantage. “Let me.”

No, you want to say. It’s okay. I’m fine. But you betray yourself—your heart steering the ship. “Okay.”

He nods and pushes himself up to sit, the muscles in his arms rolling as he does so. You can’t tear your eyes away. With a surprising grace for someone who you’re sure must feel as similarly drained as you, he crosses the room to collect a rag from the precarious pile by a pale of water left out for guests.

No doubt it will be stone cold by now, but he doesn’t flinch as he submerges a rag into the water and wrings it out. He cups a hand underneath to catch any stray drips and walks back over, kneeling at your side. You’re still laid out uselessly on the bed, and you roll onto your back to allow easier access to your wound.

The first brush of an honestly, too-rough, too-cold rag has you sucking in a breath through your teeth but you don’t make a sound after that, focusing instead on the concentration lining Tanjiro’s face as he carefully cleans the dirt from your cut. Swiping in gentle motions that send bites of pain fissioning across your chest, and your nipples pebble from the cold but you let him work.

When his face begins to smooth out, lost to the repetitive, soothing nature of his actions, you wonder if this is more for him than it is for your benefit.

Let me, he said.

You ponder it as he folds over the rag, ensuring only clean fabric is brushing your wound.

Let me do this for you, maybe.

And you reach a hand up to hold his forearm, a thumb brushing over his skin and you smile when he catches your eye inquisitively.

Let me stay next to you, perhaps.

He dips his head down to kiss you, chaste and unhurried, and you raise your chin to meet him.

Or, let me thank you.

And maybe you should be the one saying thank you, but you feel so utterly loved. Safe in the towering shadow of Tanjiro kneeling over you, cared for with his hands on you, that you only deepen the kiss.

His hand clutching the rag is resting, cold against your sternum but you don’t feel it as he tilts his head, licking into your mouth like it’s the first time all over again. Like every time he kisses you he’s learning something new—learning a new reaction he can draw from you.

But he pulls back, breaking apart with a string of spit between you. “I have a cream in my bag for your cut.”

You pout at his interruption but he only raises an eyebrow, not seeming like he’s going to shift in his conviction and so you nod. Letting him fetch the cream and smooth it over your wound with his delicate touch. You hiss at the sensation but he doesn’t relent, rubbing it in, and one of his hands comes to rest on the top of your thigh in consolation. And like a warm tide washing over you, the thumb brushing along your inner thigh has you hissing for a different reason as he finishes nursing your cut.

Feeling the blood rushing to your cheeks, and knowing you won’t be able to hide it from Tanjiro—not anymore—you raise your hips slightly, pushing your thigh further into his touch. He pauses and leans over to put the pot of cream on the wooden floor by the futon, digging his thumb in harder and listening to the hitch in your breath.

“You want more?” He questions, voice light and teasing as he brushes his fingers over the inside of your thigh.

“Yes,” you breathe. How could you not want more? You want everything Tanjiro will give you, and then some. “I want you.”

He chuckles, sounding completely smitten and the warmth in your heart, in your core, blossoms like a flower’s first meeting with the sun. When his fingers slide into you, still cool from the damp rag, and when he has you trembling and coming apart under his touch, he bites at your lip. Lingering a hair’s breadth above your open mouth he whispers.

“You have me,” he closes the distance to kiss you. “For all time.”

You think of the hairpin in your abandoned trouser pocket. Of the pink flower—the splatter of red. And you’re so grateful. Because for now, in this moment, you have for all time. And you will cross the ends of the Earth to keep it that way.

So your hands rise to cradle his face, to hold his life in your hands.

“For all time,” you promise.

Is it casual now? - Chapter 2 - deltamel - 鬼滅の刃 (2024)
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