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ms0milk · 6 months ago

Text

by any other name

sanemi x reincarnated!oc

Sanemi doesn't have the strength to lock himself away from this new Flower Hashira and even finds himself fighting to stay near her. Will he be strong enough to stay so close when her secret is revealed? cw heavily suggestive MDNI, marking, humping, grinding, breast-play, mentions of bodily fluids, ever so slightly submissive nems, 3.5k

thank you for your patience @sanemisbitch you were such a trooper waiting for this @ficsforgaza piece to be published and I'm so grateful! thank you for this request and thank you too for trusting me with your lovely oc Leo. What a total joy to work with :) you have her character so well flushed out, i do hope you enjoy.

Sanemi paces patina into the hardwood floors of the butterfly mansion. It was a mission gone wrong– gone exactly how they always go. Friends cut down, in the hospital, buried shallow somewhere. Even in her own house, Kocho doesn’t bother visiting the sickbay when the Flower Hashira’s under care. She never got over the promotion. When the girl's sunflax hair shone beside Ubuyashiki, when flower floated off his tongue, Kocho, Shinobu, tore up grass in her prostration.

Sanemi’s holdups aren’t so sensitive. When Aoi pops her choppy bangs out of the room he kicks the door in on her.

“Hey!” She bites and swings it shut again. Aoi’s not sensitive either. She might fight a war for Leo. She might fight the Hashira that dares to disturb her friend, but in the bed at the corner of the room, Leo swells at the sight of Sanemi. Her left arm is bandaged and three stitches march in a row out of her hairline, and other than a few punctures nothing remains of the bloody mask she wore when kakushi carried her here.

She smiles big, “Baum,” and reaches out both hands to hold him.

“Baum my ass!” Sanemi swats her fingers down like a naughty child and reels back up again for a good lecture. She thought she’d found it. An in to Muzan’s life, one of the houses he uses for cover, maybe the one with his laboratory– and whether or not she was right stopped being important the second the quiet farmhouse exploded in clouds and gas and needles of poison. Some kind of pined-demon, horrible like a hedgehog, took out most of her team in the dark. Seven crows were sent for reinforcements and five were found dead on the trail after Sanemi was dispatched to cover a kakushi retreat. She’d been carried past him limp and bloody on the back of a soldier. “What were you thinking!”

“thinking that I’m happy to see you.”

“Bullshit,” Sanemi hisses. He raises his finger, “You were selfish.”

“Not true.”

“You were–”

“Baum,” Leo tilts her spot-bandaged head. Her round cheeks catch sunlight like apples. “I was just Hashira. I think like Hashira, you would have done the same and now I get to see you and tell you all about it.”

“It was dusk.”

“It was a Hinoe raid. It’s the best the corps had and before I mourn them I’d like to hold my friend.”

She is so much like her. So much it’s terrifying and suddenly Sanemi wishes he were in Shinobu’s office warming a dish of sake and ignoring bloody flowers.

“Watch your mouth Shinazugawa.”

“Aoi, can I speak to the grump alone please?” Sanemi continues to ignore Aoi’s hatred but he notes when the door clicks closed behind her so he can flop down in a chair. “Baumkuchen,” Leo coos again, “are you okay?”

“Fucking furious.”

She sinks slightly into the pillow propping her up and shifts her carefree smile into something slightly sterner. “I’m sorry,” comes out clearly, “did you have friends in the Hinoe team? I lead them to their death.” Her gentle fingers pinch each other where she tucks them in her lap. The threads of her blanket pucker.

What’s he gonna do with her? How could a general apologize for her soldiers before apologizing for herself? “Not the problem,” he says. The corps dies, that’s what it’s for. Hashira die, that’s the job description, that’s his destiny, it’s your future, that’s the problem.

“Doesn’t help, I’m sure.”

“Nothing helps,” he sighs.

“I’m glad it was you.” Sanemi turns his head towards her and the window that frames her bed like a wince. “I’m happy you’re here, I’m glad the crow found you.”

“I was nearby,” his heart aches, “you got lucky.”

In the interim still Leo slips her hand into his and he doesn’t, he never, pulls away. She calls him Baum again, Baumkuchen, her favorite dessert and asks him about his injuries which were mostly self-inflicted. Asks after his crow, damage to his sword, if he’s eaten. She smiles the same, she pouts the same, she smells the same– lilies of the valley– why does he torture himself like this? Why hasn’t he locked himself away from her?

Leo tucks a sheaf of blonde behind her ear while clucking about whatever kindnesses the butterfly staff have shown her this morning. He shouldn’t even be here, he doesn’t need to be. She reaches forward with her soft pink hand and he flinches, “Baum?” but he’s been staring too long to pretend not to care. “Can you,” she falters at his surprise and points to the table between them, just out of her bandaged reach, “my hairclip?”

That rotten thing. Sanemi kicks himself. The pink paper butterfly she showed up with after final selection two years ago. Good luck charm. She couldn’t have known what it meant or who she was trying to replace. “We match!” she’d exclaimed, more at Shinobu than in conversation with her after that first Hashira meeting. But the insect pillar’s mean-nothing smile had curdled just slightly and Leo withered. Everyone did, even Tengen slipped quietly from the manor.

Sanemi presses the delicate wings into Leo’s hand and watches the eerie movements of a ghost as she perches the insect between her lips. Four fingers drawing the wisps away from her face and everything– every breath, every movement just like– “Sanemi.” She must be finished. He lifts his head and considers simply leaving the room when he realizes how she is watching. Leo and her horrible clip paint a pretty silhouette in sunlight. She nestles her hands in the place her blanket dips between her thighs and always she has that miserable, wonderful smile holding up the corners of her lips.

So many times, so many conversations and missions, all lined with her silent pleading. She is always on the precipice of saying something, and that is uniquely her own.

“Why do you always look away?” She concedes– obviously not what she wanted to ask– before he realizes he’s not only staring but also leaning ever so slightly closer to her sick bed. Sanemi stands up to leave.

“Baum.”

“Rest up, pincushion.”

“Sanemi.”

He waves her words away without turning from the door like trying to clear a horrible smell.

“The Hinoe, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t care,” he tries to yawn or embody any iteration of unbother and pulls the door open to free himself. Maybe Aoi will be waiting outside, maybe his crow has come to announce another mission. Kanroji is certainly already on the road here to preen over her friend and if he leaves now he could easily avoid her, but Leo’s sickbed betrays her movement behind him and before he can turn to scold her for rising, she’s already started to speak.

“Hirotaka,” she grunts with the exertion of swinging her legs over the lip of the mattress, “Yorochi.”

The recital was startling enough for Sanemi without her hauling out of bed and breaking her neck. Tens, hundreds of tiny pinprick scabs freckle the clear milk of her skin as she faces him down with all the gentle strength of the woman who came before her. “Alright,” he submits, turning back to face her, to shoo her down.

“Fusaharu,” she continues with her blanket pulled aside. There were only three Hinoe swordsmen on the mission but names continue to pour off Leo’s tongue, “Naohiro, Iori, Hikoto.” All her sweet demeanor hardens. There was once a Hashira who remembered every name of every soldier that ever fell. “Yoshishige.” As Leo continues, the blood falls from Sanemi’s face. Something stirs. His eyes go wide. “Kumeno.”

The doorknob snaps off in his hand and the pillar is suddenly across the room, against her, up in the face of the person pretending to be her. “How do you know that name?” He demands. He bunches the front of Leo’s robes in a fist and she is serene. It’s the first name of the friend who died instead of him four years ago against that Lower-Rank One. “You can’t know that name,” he growls. He clenches his fist tighter at her chest.

“I know them all,” she murmurs. She is close enough to smell and it comes back to him in waves. Plum, Peony, Hanaguromo, the forms of her Flower Breath overwhelm him when she speaks so close, pulled so close by him. Leo cups his fist with her two hands, “How could you say you don’t care?”

He’s not truly listening because something has finally started to churn behind his eyes like the sea, something his mother used to say. Good boys leave with the Buddha. Good boys are reborn as princes and kings, so work hard in this life. Sanemi shakes his arm and her with it but he is alight with something other than anger and shudders more than he means to.

Leo pauses, sweetness returning, “Bau–?”

“Kanae?” His voice cracks.

It’s impossible. He knows it’s not real and that he’s just set his reputation of sanity up in flames but all the gods on their thrones can’t be allowed to torture him with impunity. He’ll question them, he’ll pull them off their lotuses. Immediately, Leo’s eyes shine with tears.

He shakes his head, she cups it. He should be angry for this dirty trick and he should throw a punch. His fingers tremble where they land on her round cheeks. “Kanae?” He tries again even weaker this time. Leo nods wildly and the tears are racing off of her lashes and over his thumbs. “It’s not funny,” he barely manages. There is a lump and he can’t keep it from fighting its way up his throat.

“I wouldn’t,” she breathes before he loses all control of himself and leans down to kiss her.

He thought this might be what heaven looked like on the day he finally lost a fight. He imagined his siblings gathered under a tree as he crept up behind them on some obnoxiously nice summer’s day. He always imagined Kanae with them. She would be reading in a pretty purple yukata like Aoi had always described and she’d see him before any of his family did. He’d cry, she’d smile, his brother would notice the lull in her reading and turn around to ruin the surprise. Paradise was big enough. His friends, his family, the love of his life, he’d never have to raise a sword again.

Leo’s lips against his, he’s always imagined this. The florals of Kanae’s hair, he’s kept the taste of it safe for long in his memory he worried it might slip out and so he pulls away. When Sanemi takes a step back he falls to the floor. “Nem!” Leo winces and follows him right down. She tucks off of her bed and slumps on the ground in front of where he landed with his hands splay bracing behind him.

“Why– didn’t you say anything?”

“I couldn’t,” she attempts to explain and her butterfly clip comes loose in that sunsilk hair. Leo’s left arm bandages are tight enough but if she keeps making that ridiculous expression her stitches are going to pop, “I still can’t it’s– a curse! I wanted to tell you Sanemi, I gave up telling–”

“It’s not real.” There are tears in Sanemi’s eyes now too. It can’t be. His lips still taste like lilies and Leo’s concern floods her big bug eyes just like Kanae’s once did. What would Kocho think? He pushes himself to a proper sit. “Who are you?”

“Leo,” she whispers as his tears start to fall. She crawls slightly forward on her knees, still lacking strength from last night’s poison. She is taller than Kanae was and just as kind. She’s just as stern and deceptive in her gentleness and Sanemi misses her, so, so much. “You know me,” Leo says as she reaches for him. He doesn’t stop her. She takes up his hand and lifts it to her chest on her knees above him. She presses it deep against her heart. “Please know me.”

He does. He shouldn’t.

Sanemi lets her hold his hand in the swell of her breast and doesn’t flinch when she rests her other palm against his wet cheek. He caught a branch to the face last night and a little girl named Sumi insisted he crouch down so she could bandage it this morning. Leo thumbs the dot of cloth as his tears soak through the fabric. She kisses him.

It can be true for however long it takes Sanemi to finally hold the world in his arms. Leo fingers twitter through his sleepless hair and drag against his scalp. He can hardly stay upright, can hardly do anything but let her lips pull him closer. On the floor, his hands fall from her chest and fumble up her thighs from where she hovers above him. How long has she wanted this? Sanemi’s breath catches when Leo slips her tongue across his teeth and places a hand on his chest. His heartbeat is a window to his soul and it tries as hard as it can now on the floor of a hospital room, to rip itself from its chest and settle between Leo’s fingers. She sings to it. She pulls away.

“Baum?” He hardly hears her and chases the space between their lips, “Sanemi,” she tries again. His eyes are heavy in the sunlight that frames her. His hold on her thighs becomes hungry.

“Again,” he murmurs to the beat of the pulse on his lips.

“Sanemi.” The voice of his second love drips through his ears and she lowers her face back to his so that he might breathe her in again.

“Please.”

“Shinazugawa Sanemi.”

When she kisses him this time she does not cry. Leo’s butterfly is long discarded and on the floor beside her bed, her white robe pools at her knees. She braces herself against Sanemi’s chest, in his hair and across his shoulders on her knees in the dust and wood. Her tongue leads his into a game of devour and suddenly her hips have slotted quietly against his as she straddles his lap. Suddenly a kiss is not enough. How long has he wanted her? Gentle general.

Leo’s lips trail farther, deeper into the nooks and notches of Sanemi’s jaw and he has to hold her to keep from falling back. His fingertips trace an uncertain line up her spine. Hers cradle his face and match pulse with the heartbeat in his ribcage. Leo’s tongue is hot on clammy parts of him and draws a sharp breath when Sanemi bucks into her at a soft angle. He growls just slightly in embarrassment.

How? He wants to ask, all this time, “How–”

“Don’t.” Leo whispers, “I can’t. Know me, understand by holding me.” And whether or not it’s true there’s nothing he wants to do more. She is new, she is not Kanae, she is not the woman Sanemi loved, but she is loved by him. How many people exist inside of her? Her. Who was…who were they before Kanae slipped inside? What makes up this person he loves so?

Leo begins to lose control of that perfect temper and her breath comes more harshly than a Hashira’s should. Sanemi’s thighs vibrate with the weight of her, lighter than air and warmer than anything he could have ever imagined. They find a rhythm and once knees dig into waists and hips warm hips neither of them remember how to properly fill their lungs. Her kisses and nips lose focus. She shudders and Sanemi’s head falls back on his shoulders, attached only by her grasping hands. Leo clutches the open fabric of his uniform as she grinds, deeper, slower than Sanemi’s own growing heat can manage. The bulge of hakama catches the soft crease of her thighs– the tease of something warmer. He can’t force control back into his muscles. Sanemi crosses his arms around her waist and pulls Leo into his lap as he rolls against her.

Hot, desperate, the off kilter beat of her heart and all those small sounds she tries to keep quiet might as well send Sanemi straight to his grave. The smell of her will drown him, thick and sweet. When Leo finds purchase again in his hair he can only groan. He’s never— he doesn’t– Sanemi braces her hips with one hand and pulls her where it feels good, pushes, pulls, like a plea.

She clutches his other hand with her own trembling fingers and tucks it between the break of her robes. Sweat beads at her sternum. His eyes have gone wide and all the Wind Hashira can do is stare between Leo’s chest and the flex of her jaw as she opens and closes it in an attempt to stay quiet, eyes shut in concentration.

He clutches the breast Leo has led him to without stopping that guiding hand at the meat of her ass. Every brush of damp over his lap kicks his heart through his throat and he’s tracing the shape of her nipple before she can shut her mouth to keep her voice down.

“B-Baum–” she bites her lip and dips forward to kiss him again instead of finishing. Two hands on her ass, two hands cupping his face, if they keep grinding against one another he’ll– “Nem.”

“Le–” he attempts and succumbs to her kiss again. It’s wilder than before. Her hips have picked up rhythm and her tongue no longer asks before entering. She’ll swallow him. He’ll let her. It would be so easy– to just let his hands dig deeper. To slip under the folds of her robes and sink inside– lower her onto his–

“No!” Someone shrills behind them and Sanemi’s head jerks backwards, suddenly free of her lips, onto the floor with a start. Much to the Hashira’s rapidly approaching horror, Kanroji Mitsuri is standing in the doorway with a sizable chunk of the door frame broken off in her fist. Above him, Leo’s lips are drawn tight and she’s redder than a sunset. Her lips and jaw still glisten with saliva.

Mitsuri seems to have embarrassed herself even more with her outburst and looks rapidly between their lewd pile on the floor and the empty hallway. She squeaks with indecision and then storms inside. “Sanemi!” She huffs while pulling a stunned Leo from his grip and tossing her onto the bed, “Naughty! Not the time for love!” But mortification has frozen him to the floor. “This is a hospital.”

It’s all he can do to blink. Leo’s lilies ghost his swollen lips and her warmth still draws the sweat from his palms, which he keeps beside his head in shock or surrender until something ridiculous thaws the ice. Leo’s voice like wisteria echoes through the room in hiccups and laughter. Mitsuri’s as pink as her hair and everyone turns to stare but Leo laughs harder. There are tears in her eyes.

“Sanemi,” she gasps, “Up up, Baum!” and she clutches Mitsuri’s sleeve to keep her from moving. Sanemi’s on his feet at a dizzying speed and Leo speaks again from her golden and bandaged throne. He can only back away. “I will have you, Sanemi! Any way you’ll take me.” Her eyes shine like a great hungry garden, they hold back tears like a storm, “Don’t go where I can’t find you.”

As he scrambles from the room Mitsuri’s legs give out. The Love Hashira hits the mattress and he doesn’t catch a word that follows because Sanemi is diving headlong down the staircase– flying– in search of a hiding place. He hurdles Aoi and ignores the sound of his name, ignores the taste of her, down the entry hall, off the porch, and barefoot into Kocho’s garden. He kicks up her pristine sands and pebbles crunch where they should not and Sanemi crumbles in the first pool of shade.

He collapses under a maple tree. He bows over his knees and drops his head in its dirt. How? How a thousand things. Why? Why a handful fewer. Sanemi’s heart won’t survive this, worse than training, worse than death, what is this feeling? His fingers long to hold something over which he has no control. Foxglove trembles in a sunny breeze beside his head and then it whistles right through his ears, carrying scent of the flower with it.

Four years ago Kanae found him beside this exact bush trying his best to meditate in a limp wind. He’d seen her before, tall and docile. She had defended Ubuyashiki against his wrath at his first Hashira meeting and in his first Hashira hospital visit, she’d tucked a flower behind his grumpy ear.

“Why are you hiding?” Her voice was petal. “Would you like to be alone?” Sunshine, new moss. “Would you like to come with me?”

Sanemi smiles against the walkway stones and lets new tears fall. She knows exactly where he is. Leo will find him again.

#love the concept of reincarnated loves!#thx so much for the requst!#kny #sanemi x oc #had to use floral metaphors instead of ocean ones for the first time in forever #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #sanemi shinazugawa #as always any excuse to write mitsuri is a good one

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