#the iron hashira

[iron-embers]

“To embody the principles of iron, you must understand the capacity of resilience and adversity. Iron is full of impurities that weaken it, but through forging it becomes steel, and from that a sharp sword that must be wielded with humility. Never strike from emotion, it is through a calm mind that your strikes never falter. Like Iron, you can withstand attacks aimed to break you and counter those that wish harm, but that is only one side to the strength of iron. What makes iron so versatile is the ability to change. Become malleable while also tempering your understanding and acceptance of change.”

@bloodhuntermoon urged me to do a banner like piece, and after two months it is finally finished! Can’t take full credit, without their help I would not have been able to finish it as quick as I did! Big shoutout to @bloodhuntermoon for pushing me past my comfort zone and for helping to create a cool banner like piece for Isane! The quotes above are the principles Isane has formed throughout her years, unwavering when it comes to her principles, but flexible with her ever changing understanding of the world and those around her. Hope ya like and stay tuned!

Art and Isane are mine

Do not repost

[themadwomanherself]

Sengoku Era Hashira

Finally got them renamed and their looks down.

I just want to make a disclosure that this my own spin on the Sengoku Hashira. I'm not trying to fit them into canon, I just want to do something fun and interesting with them for my stories.

So with that, let's get started!

I'll be sharing their names, the images I am using as references for them, and some facts. Headcanons in the case for the Tsugikuni Twins.

Eventually, I'll make a dedicated post about them in full, but I might as well share this teaser.

Yoriichi Tsugikuni: The Sun Pillar

Creator of Sun Breathing and Progenitor of all breathing styles

Left home shortly after he turned eight, a week or two after revealing his innate talent

Is not the best at speaking, given his limited use as a child, which has impacted his speaking ability into adulthood

As such, he often slurs his words together or poorly pronounces them, and takes pauses to minimize stuttering and mistakes

Views his brother as the distant, lonely, untouchable moon; a guiding, loving light of his childhood

Michikatsu Tsugikuni: The Moon Pillar

Created the means to learn Total Concentration Breathing Constant

Misremembers his childhood due to trauma and, later, as a means to cope with his decision in becoming a demon

Has a few mental illnesses due to abuse from his father and his time as a Samurai

Blamed for Yoriichi leaving the Tsugikuni estate and was often compared to Yoriichi

Is insanely talented and gifted in combat and strategy, but he is unable to see this

Kaenjuro Rengoku: The Flame Pillar

Took inspiration from the fan name given to him, while also liking the idea that Senjuro is named after him

First Flame Pillar and the one who found and helped Yoriichi after Uta's death

A very calm, kind, gentle, and caring person; I liken him being very similar to Senjuro but with more confidence and being less rattled/nervous

Gets along with everyone given his warm personality and wise older brother vibes

Komajiro Aogu: The Stone Pillar

Originally from a high ranking Samurai family, he abandoned his family name and status and became a monk

Was the one who made the Stone Estate

Tsuguyasu Sekainagi: The Water Pillar

A quiet, calm, mellow noble person

Came from a small, but wealthy coastal samurai and shinobi family

Is an ancestor of Tengen

Has four wives

Is distantly related to Yoriichi and Michikatsu through his and their maternal line and share the same eye shape

Horuku Takuraimu: The Rumble Pillar

Born with what many considered exotic features; lapis lazuli eyes, curly blonde hair

Considered a jolly and friendly person, who is also a flirt, suggestive, and a bit of a hedonist

Though his friendly personality often feels fake

Comes from an extremely poor peasant family who used his looks to make money

Sōsuke Noaku: The Wind Pillar

An insightful, carefree, and kind person, who can read people like a book

Can also be overwhelming; I can't explain it easily, but take Kyojuro and Tengen mixed with some bits of Sanemi and you should get his vibes

Originally a peasant boy whose village was burned and ransacked by Samurai of a distant warlord, he was taken and sold as a slave

Often tries to help those with a lot of mental stress and burdens

Ended up close to Michikatsu due to this

He proudly bears the scars he gained during his time as a slave

Kasumi Amano: The Mist Pillar

Had a long career list before becoming a Demon Slayer

Village was burned by Samurai during one of the many wars of the Sengoku era

Trained to use a variety of weapons, she became a ronin who took up jobs on both land and sea

A very tall woman

People often get whiplash at how starkly her personality can change when she's in and out of combat

Her breathing style was referred to as Mist breathing, not originally due to it mimicking the obscurity of mist, but due to how it creates mist of blood

Ajisai Hanae: The Flower Pillar

Ancestor of Mitsuri

Was born with natural sakura pink hair and considered blessed because of this, which is the origins of her name

Was an orphan taken in by a shrine, which was later attacked by Samurai and bandits

Ends up picking up the sword to defend her shrine and later joined the local Samurai forces

Later trained in medicine and healing, creating the Butterfly Mansion and planting the cherry blossom tree in its garden

She has the same body composition as Mitsuri, but due to the food scarcity of the Sengoku era, she lacked the means to utilize her unique muscle constitution to its fullest

[peachdues]

COMPASS

bad boy!Sanemi • gang AU • NSFW

A/N: Peach?? Not having any self control when it comes to writing a fic?? It’s more likely than you think.

This was supposed to be a bad boy!Sanemi takes your virginity drabble that spiraled into a meta-analysis of Sanemi’s self hatred that then blew up into a fic with plot. All of those elements are still present but surprise!! Enjoy 24k words of my brain rot.

Inspired by @homo-homini-lupus-est-1701 ‘s wonderful meta analysis of Sanemi’s self hatred and his scars.

CW: 24k • explicit sexual content • MDNI • gang-related violence • mentions of blood and broken bones • mentions of murder/death • loss of virginity • creampie • vaginal fingering • some angst

I have plenty more of this AU written, so if y’all want more, just let me know 🫡

MASTERLIST HERE

There are three rules to surviving life in the Corps.

The first is simple: once you’re in, you’re in.

Never outwardly confirm or deny rumors; let others talk, but don’t even think about opening your fucking mouth about the things you see or the whispers you hear.

And don’t be stupid enough to think you can cling onto any vestiges of your old life. There’s no splicing your life within the Corps with the one you’d had before. No separation. You’ve whored yourself to their cause, and for better or worse, you’re there until either someone important says otherwise or you end up in a morgue.

This is especially true for someone like Sanemi, so hopelessly entrenched within the organization that he’d allowed himself to be branded at the age of seventeen upon his ascension from rank-and-file street member to full-blown Hashira — the elite of the Corps, just short of the higher-ups who ran it.

The hot sear of iron between his shoulder blades had hurt like hell, but it was a welcome pain. A reminder that he’d not only outlived his father, but had actually made an impact, enough to be noticed and entrusted with more strenuous duties.

Each Hashira is assigned to a particular field. Uzui, silver haired, boisterous and extravagant, deals in bodies — mostly women, but men too, and he runs all of the strip clubs and escort services west of center city. Kocho, a child prodigy in chemistry, leads an intricate narcotics network.

And then there’s Sanemi: the debt collector.

Largely monetary debts — collecting on behalf of loan sharks, gambling debts, or that which is owed to his fellow Hashira, when their customers forget that there are no friends in business.

But the brand seared into his flesh has nothing to do with money — it is a reminder that above all, he is to ensure debts of another kind are paid.

Life debts.

In the three years since his initiation, Sanemi has only had to carry out this oath twice. Both had been scum, responsible for the deaths of innocents.

Their executions had been quick and without fuss — or much mess. A quick trip to an overpass abridging the Wisteria River. A march to the barrier in the dead of night, when no other cars were out and about to see or hear pleading sobs and bargains for their pathetic lives. A bullet to the head would quiet them, and Sanemi would let the rapids below take care of the clean up for him. Job done.

But even though the spray of their brains hadn’t touched him, their blood still stains Sanemi’s hands.

He will never be able to wash them clean.

But this is the life he chose, so Sanemi will endure the consequences — for the sake of his brother, the only living person on earth he gives a damn about. For whom he’ll do anything — be anyone — if it means Genya does not have to pick up a gun and sell himself to the very gang that owns his elder brother.

The second rule is simpler: no patterns. Patterns signal comfort and comfort may as well be a target on your back, begging for someone to come and take their shot (or several).

And finally, the third and arguably the most important rule, is don’t get attached. Keep your circle small so there’s less collateral to be used against you — against the organization that owns you.

This rule applies to both Corps members and civilians alike.

For the longest time, Sanemi Shinazugawa found Rule Three to be the easiest one to follow. He has his brother and no one else. His parents are dead; he has no friends beyond those in the Corps with him, and he knows better than to get overly invested in any of them. His inner circle is as tight as it can get.

But then he’d chosen your bookstore to hide in and that’s when everything falls apart.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” Sanemi mutters, anxious eyes tracking the large hand on his watch as it ticks the seconds by.

They were late.

The job was simple, and well within Sanemi’s capabilities. Maeda, a local dealer in stolen goods, had run up a sizeable bill at one of Uzui’s joints that he’d yet to pay. And while the slippery lech was quick to come sniffing whenever news spread that Iguro, a fellow Hashira, had managed to hijack a semi-truck full of luxury items, he was surprisingly difficult to connect with when it came time for him to pay for company he couldn’t get elsewhere.

He glanced down at his bruised, swollen knuckles and smirked. Sanemi couldn’t say he loved that his worth was measured in the number of bones he could break, or the amount of teeth he could punch out, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t relish the chance to smash the pervert’s face in whenever the opportunity arose. Nor could he deny the rush of satisfaction he’d felt when he’d thrown open the steel door of the Maeda’s small office, crowbar in hand, and watched the snot-nosed pervert piss himself, stumbling over his words as he’d begged for mercy Sanemi hadn’t been hired to give.

The stupid, greasy fuck.

By the time he’d finished, Maeda had been little more than a quivering, helpless lump curled in on himself on the sticky, slate floor. His office had been left in shambles, drawers yanked out and emptied, only to be thrown aside (or cracked over the vermin’s back as he sobbed). But he’d had found the money, right down to the last dollar, just as he knew he would.

And that’s how Sanemi finds himself standing in the alley tucked behind Maeda’s small warehouse, Uzui’s payment split into two rolls that he’d shoved down into boots. All that was left was for the two junior Corps members he’d brought along for watch to bring the car around, and then they’d return to the abandoned factory that served as their headquarters.

Normally, this would have been a solo job, and Sanemi would already be on his bike, speeding off to safety. But he’d received an order to take along two, new Hinoe so they could get experience with higher level jobs.

Conveniently, his instructions had omitted the part the fact that the two lugs were utterly useless, bumbling idiots, contrary to what their recent promotions otherwise suggested.

Because neither of the two juniors are anywhere to be found. Nor is there any sound signaling that his getaway ride is approaching.

Sharp, lavender eyes scan the alley before him, but to his dismay, it remains empty — disquietingly so.

Leave it to a couple of rookies to set his teeth on edge.

Sanemi’s eyes drop down to follow the large hand of his watch as yet another minute ticks by. It’s been six minutes and their window had only allowed for four.

He knows how to be patient when the circumstances call for it, but now is not one of those times.

One minute, he decides, shifting his weight between his feet. They get one more fucking minute and then he splits —

A sudden screech of tires at the opposite end of the alley makes his stomach flip. Sanemi looks up just in time to see his escape car grind to a sharp halt, its rear jolting up as the driver slams on the brakes.

The passenger door flings open, and one of the Hinoe stumbles out, his feet barely connecting with the pavement before the car guns away, the side door flapping open.

The familiar howl of police sirens accompanied by distant shouts is enough for Sanemi to know this simple little debt collection has now gone tits-up.

“Pigs!” The Hinoe who stumbled out of the getaway car calls to him. “Pigs!”

“Shit,” Sanemi growls. No doubt Maeda’s bruised ego sold them out. He should’ve taken the time to smash the asshole’s phone.

He’ll be dealt with later — and with relish. But right now, Sanemi needs to get the fuck away.

Part of following Rule Three means not worrying about your fellow comrades when the cops come. None of them are stupid enough to actually risk talking to law enforcement about the Corps’ operations, but the fewer of them who get caught, the better.

So Sanemi takes off, adrenaline pumping fast and jot in his veins as he hears the swine behind him split off. He can’t be sure, but he can make out two, maybe three pairs of footsteps trailing behind him.

He scowls; shaking one cop is a breeze; having to shake off three is a bitch.

He hurtles over a pile of wooden crates and shoves a stack of delivery pallets over behind him as he runs, darting down random alleys and side streets that he knows will eventually lead him to a safe house.

The backstreet he shoots down is a fork, but only the path straight through will lead him to a rust yard of abandoned warehouses and shipping containers that Sanemi knows like the back of his hand. He could lose them there, could vanish between freights and wait the bastards out, and once clear, he could slip back into the district marking the outer territory of the Silo and get back home.

Iron pumps hotly in his veins. Almost there, almost there —

A car skids to a stop at the end of the middle ting of the alley, police lights flashing and alarms blaring.

No good.

“Fuck.” It isn’t the end of the world, but the blocking of the alley meant he had to reevaluate his escape. While he’s familiar with the path now obstructed by the police cruiser ahead, he hadn’t the chance to fully scope out his only other two options — the side streets to the left and right.

Without much thought, Sanemi darts sharply left and prays to whatever deity is listening that he hasn’t fully fucked himself.

Only one shop remains open; a tiny hole in the wall, tucked in between two old apartment buildings at the end of the street — one that borders the city’s western wing.

It’ll have to do, he decides, especially as the police sirens grow louder with each passing second.

He explodes through the front door, wide eyed and panting. Vaguely, it registers to him that this is a bookshop — a thankfully empty, cluttered bookshop.

But his abrupt arrival does reveal that the shop is not totally empty. There is one other — the store’s lone employee, who startles out of her seat behind the clerk’s counter, nearly knocking over a small cup of coffee.

He regards her for a moment, and she him, with matching expressions of wariness and shock at the presence of the other.

Behind him, the police sirens grow louder; more urgent.

It’s now or never. And, because he’s desperate enough to try, he risks a move he knows better than to take.

“You got someplace I can hide?”

——-

You blink, stunned as you stare at the frantic, pleading man anxiously looking between you and the door behind him.

His name registers dimly in the back of your mind. Here. In your store. And, evidently, on the run, if the distant echoes of police sirens growing steadily closer to your store is any indication.

Sanemi Shinazugawa.

You know him; you’d known him most of your life, even if you’d never spoken to him. You’d gone to the same school in your youth — all thirteen years of it, in fact. He’d been an abrasive loudmouth in the hallways, but a quiet, even polite boy in the classroom.

You know he’s from the Silo — a worn down, derelict part of the City that housed only the poorest residents. A cruel nickname meant to mock the poverty of its population.

But the Silo was also well known for being the epicenter of operations for the notorious group known only as the Corps.

It was the Corps who owned a majority of the City, its reach extending from the Silo, through the West and East wings, and all the way into Midtown. And, as was the case with most leeches, the Corps relied on the most desperate and hungry to carry out its biddings, offering some level of protection and security for the poor souls who needed it most.

Hence, its presence in the Silo.

So you hadn’t been surprised when you’d heard Sanemi had joined the Corps. Most kids from the Silo did; what had surprised you were the rumors that he became a high-rank member by the ripe age of seventeen, before he’d even graduated high school.

You shudder to think what he had to have done — what he’d become — in order to achieve such status and notoriety.

If he’d been anyone else, you wouldn’t have helped; you would’ve screamed, alerted the police to his presence, maybe even outed him as a suspected Hashira.

But you owed him.

Years ago, before either you or your siblings could drive, you all relied on the city bus to get to and from school.

But one afternoon, when you’d had to stay late for a club meeting, your little sister accidentally got on the wrong bus. Rather than being dropped safe and sound a block away from home, she’d ended up in a bad part of town that just so happened to have been the stomping grounds of the scowling delinquent now shoved under your cabinet, contorted between boxes of blank receipt rolls and stacks of returns.

Had anyone else found your sister, there would be no telling what would have happened to her. The Silo was not a place known to be kind to lost little girls.

But it was Sanemi who discovered her, sniffling and red-faced at the dilapidated bus stop. And though he’d been nothing more than a scrawny ten year old, he’d put your sister on his back and carried her not just the six miles back to safe part of town, but the additional two that led right to the front doorstep of your parents’ home.

You’d watched him curiously from the stairs as your parents profusely thanked your sister’s white-haired savior. They’d offered Sanemi dinner, or at least some sort of reward for his efforts, but he’d only waved them off, briskly telling them it was “no big deal.” As though carrying a six-year-old nearly eight miles was par for the course, as far as he was concerned.

His eyes had flitted over to you once during the exchange, briefly lingering before he turned and left, a single hand held up in casual farewell.

You’d been ten at the time. And now, here you are, twenty years old, running a shabby bookstore, and the opportunity to pay him back has finally arrived. The chance to show your gratitude for sparing your sister of a fate he himself, had not been able to escape.

Quickly, you motion him to you and without explanation, you cram him under the clerk’s counter, holding the cabinet door shut with your knee just as the police burst through the store entrance.

There are three of them, and they do not bother announcing themselves to you. Instead, they begin to prowl through your aisles, flashlights out and guns drawn while they comb the quiet corners of the store, searching for signs of anything that did not belong; anything misplaced.

A bead of sweat slides down the back of your neck, but you keep your face and your stance casual. Below the counter you cross your fingers, hoping and praying that the criminal stuffed inside your cabinet isn’t stupid enough to try and shift.

One officer rounds back into the main part of the store and locks in on you, stiff and anxious behind the counter.“You haven’t seen anything suspicious?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what you mean.”

The cop grimaces. “You haven’t seen anyone who looks out of place? Maybe seems like they’re running?”

You feign an easy, sweet smile, even as the leg holding the cabinet door shut begins to tremble. “I’m afraid you’re my first customer of the day, sir.”

The officer grumbles under his breath something along the lines of not your customer, but he questions you no further. He only waves to his comrades and the three of them shuffle out through the door, one muttering into the walkie strapped to his shoulder.

Several moments pass, tense and thick. The silence is broken only by the sound of your heart hammering against your sternum. You remain still, fingers curled tight against the counter’s edge listening for any sound signaling the cops have returned, that their stiff departure had been a ruse to lull you into a false sense of security, as they waited for you to reveal your deception.

But all remains quiet. And you cannot stomach the silence any longer.

“They’re gone,” you mutter, finally moving aside to let the cabinet door below you swing open.

There’s a faint thumping and a few, muffled curses as the scar-speckled fugitive unfolds himself and spills free from the under-cabinet.

In a way, Sanemi still resembles the boy of your memories. His eyes and hair have always been distinctive: a shocking contrast of violet framed by thick, dark lashes that do not match the mop of silvery-white atop his head. But it’s the faint scowl he wears as he stands, the tinge of annoyance that tugs at the corners of his mouth, that scrunches his pale eyebrows, that feels familiar.

That expression, a portrait of vague irritation with the world around him, was one you came to know well — at least, at a distance. One that remained constant even as you grew; his default.

However, it is still not nearly as memorable as the shy embarrassment that had turned his cheeks slightly pink, had made him cast his eyes down as your parents showered him with gratitude.

But that earnest bashfulness is nowhere to be found now.

He wears a patterned, short-sleeved button down. Though rumpled and a tad dirty, you suspect the top three buttons were left open intentionally, rather than being the product of whatever scuffle he’d found himself in before he decided to make it your problem.

You try not to linger on the very obvious hint of the well-defined muscles revealed by his open collar. Nor do you let yourself consider the bulging mass of his biceps as he runs a hand through his cornsilk hair.

He has scars he’d not had in your youth — jagged, silvery lines that cut halfway across his cheek and forehead. Yet their presence does not dull his good looks.

A scrawny ten year old no longer; Sanemi Shinazugawa is now tall and roguishly handsome. But his infuriating good looks aside, your debt to him has been repaid; now, he needs to get the fuck away.

“Can’t thank ya enough,” he shoots you a devilish smile as he straightens his shirt. “You really saved my ass —“

“Get out of my store.” You order, your voice hard. “Take your trouble somewhere else and leave me out of it.”

Sanemi’s eyes narrow at your use of the word trouble, but he says nothing. Instead, he only rounds the counter with a loping, infuriating swagger, his hands shoved in his pockets.

“As you wish, Princess,” and you bristle at the sarcasm dropping from the word. He pauses to scan the shelf marked New Releases. “Just need somethin’ for the road.”

He snags a small novel — a fantasy story, judging by the cover - and he tucks it under his arm.

“Later,” he calls, waving a lazy hand over his shoulder.

You stare after him, slack-jawed and incensed. “You have to pay for —“

But the door bangs shut behind him, and Sanemi Shinazugawa disappears into the night.

—-

By the time Sanemi returns to his shabby apartment, it is well after midnight. He’d met up with Uzui and forked over Maeda’s payment. Though, the Corp’s head pimp hadn’t been particularly pleased that his money rolls had been shoved deep down in his boots, his nose wrinkling as Sanemi dropped the crumpled, slightly damp wads of cash into his waiting, magenta-nailed hands.

As it turned out, Maeda hadn’t sold them out. Rather, one of the Hinoe had stupidly gotten into a scuffle with some brash, young teenager and in his anger, pulled his gun on the kid.

Right in front of two, marked cop cars.

One of the idiots had been caught and cuffed, and was now spending his evening locked in the damp, cold jailhouse pending bond. The other — the driver — had managed to escape, though he’d been carted off to Iguro for punishment.

There’s a reason he prefers working alone, he thinks bitterly as he kicks his boots off. He fucking loathes incompetence.

He pulls his gun free from its place in his waistband and sets it gently atop his ratty kitchen table. Sanemi then trudges over to his futon, collapsing heavily on it with a groan. A shit day, he decides, pulling the stack of cash he’d received as his cut for the job free from his pocket, thumbing through it. A shit day with shit juniors.

He shifts against a lump that sits under his ass. Frowning, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the book he’d swiped from your store and turns it over in his hands. Surprisingly, it has managed to remain in pristine condition despite its rather unceremonious storage in his pocket.

Your face flashes in his mind, but before he can fully appreciate it, your words echo in his ears.

Take your trouble somewhere else.

Sanemi scowls, tossing the book onto his coffee table, annoyed. The implication underlying your use of trouble and the venom with which you’d spoken it is a thorn in his side he cannot ignore.

You know what — who — he is. In Sanemi’s world, that’s a liability.

Though, in fairness, he can’t really be surprised that you do. Gossip is a free commodity in this town, and it’s a coveted one. It wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that you’d overheard one of the rumors about him and his ties to the Corps.

What concerns him is he doesn’t know what your connection is, if any, to his world. Maybe you’re really just a girl in a bookshop who paid back a decade-old favor.

Or maybe you’ve got an in with them.

The Corps isn’t the only gang operating within the city; there is another, crueler and far more violent that had arisen west of the Silo.

The Kizuki.

In the last six months, the Kizuki have managed to overtake the Western Wing, nearly expanding their reach into center city.

Their takeover had been swift; practically achieved overnight, following the systematic execution of every known Corps members in the area. And their violence hadn’t been limited to active members; the Kizuki had brutally maimed and murdered anyone tangentially connected to those Corps members.

Neither women nor their children were spared. And now, it seemed the Kizuki had set their sights on the Silo.

There are whispers that they’ve expanded into their operations into the neighborhood adjacent to the one in which the bookstore sits. That alone is enough to make Sanemi suspicious — perhaps you’re in league with them, and you’ll hand him over the moment it’s most convenient for you to do so.

Admittedly, that theory seems doubtful. You’re a bookseller. Not the kind of girl he knows is prone to becoming involved with the seedy underground world of organized crime. And your apparent disdain for him and his trouble only supports that theory.

But that’s an assumption, and in his line of work, assumptions are precarious; risky. Too much so for comfort.

Either way, he doesn’t know, and that uncertainty is a breeding ground for the parasite that is doubt. Toxic enough that were it to take root in his brain, his judgment could be compromised, leading him to mistakes he can’t afford to make.

Sanemi doesn’t tolerate blind spots. He will keep you on his radar until he determines the threat you pose and once he knows its severity, he’ll decide how to proceed.

He eyes the book he’d swiped from your store. He likes reading, though he hasn’t had much time for it lately (or, ever). But, if he’s going to hang around you while trying to identify the threat you pose, he might as well have a strategy for getting you to talk.

Sighing, he grabs the novel from his table and thumbs to the first page as he pads into his kitchen, in search of something to quell the grumble in his stomach.

—

His inquiries into you and your life reveal shockingly little.

You work at a bookstore. Your parents sold off your childhood home and retired to some beach down south. Your siblings are spread out across other cities and don’t visit home often, if ever.

Only you remain, abandoned by your family to fend for yourself in a crumbling city with only a shabby bookshop that sits on the furthest end of an otherwise safe street to keep you busy.

Truthfully, the bookstore probably is more interesting than you, at least on paper. But it’s that dirge of information that piques his interest; makes him look at you more as a mystery worth unraveling.

Besides, the smart thing for him would be to keep a tab on you until he can confirm you are in fact, as boring as you appear.

Or so he tells himself.

The image of a ten-year-old you peering at him from your parents’ stairwell flashes through his mind once more.

He’d felt your gaze burning a hole into his head, and shyly, he’d looked back at you, only to find himself unable to look away. Only your mother’s prodding about him joining your family for dinner had broken your temporary enchantment over him.

The memory of how you’d looked at him — a mixture of curiosity and awe highlighted by a faint blush in your cheeks when he’d met your stare head on — remained fixed in his brain for years after.

And though the two of you never spoke, you always smiled at him whenever you locked eyes in the school hallway or cafeteria. A real, genuine smile.

He wonders if he ever smiled back and finds himself irritated that he can’t remember if he had. He should’ve; especially now when it seems as though he’s unlikely to ever see that gentle, radiant smile again.

Sanemi’s phone pings and all thoughts of you come to a screeching halt. The message that flashes on his screen — instructions, only by way of an address and an amount — chase away the images of you and your sweet smile, like a hand scattering smoke.

With a sigh, Sanemi dials the number for two, lower-ranked Corps members to serve as scouts. With watch secured, he shoves his phone into his pocket and runs a tired hand over his face.

He wonders what will kill him first — whether it will be a bullet or whether it will be because there’s nothing left of him to whore out on the Corp’s behalf.

Ultimately, he knows it doesn’t really matter. He won’t die as himself; as Sanemi, the boy from the Silo who wants a life that’s anything but this. He’ll die only as Shinazugawa the Hashira. He’ll die under the mask he’s forced to wear so often, he wonders if it hasn’t yet bonded with his skin.

But as long as he remains in one piece, he must continue on as a puppet in this this tedious show. So, Sanemi grabs his gun from where he’d placed it on atop the cheap plastic of his kitchen table and he tucks it into his waistband.

And by the time his apartment door slams shut behind him, Sanemi has slipped the mask down over his face, and he is Shinazugawa once more.

—

Two weeks pass before he ends up back in front of your bookstore.

Sanemi doesn’t really remember how he got here. He awoke well before sunrise to his phone chiming with orders that he go collect on a sizeable gambling debt owed by one of Iguro’s regulars, an owner of some pawn shop.

The sun was already high overhead when he finally left the pawn shop, knuckles bruised and arm aching. He’d kicked his bike into gear in a familiar daze, one that always slipped over him after he completed a job. A kind of numb quiet that settled into his bones, a dull static in his brain that did not fade until the tremor in his hands subsided.

That paralysis needs to be broken. Contrary to popular belief, desensitization was not an ideal state of being for someone like him. It made him apathetic and careless to the world around him, and that was little better than painting a giant target on his back, begging his enemies to come and do their worst.

So, when the numbness still lingered by the time his bike roars past a rusted water tower that marks the outer limit of the Silo, Sanemi knows of only one cure. His go-to.

His bike is still hot by the time he lifts his phone to his ear, just outside his shithole of an apartment.

He doesn’t know her by name — only by description, as told by the series of emojis that accompany her number on his phone. But it’s surprisingly easy to charm her, though perhaps that’s because she’s looking for an escape just as much as he is.

Less than ten minutes later, the girl pulls up beside him in the parking lot.

Her hands are already roaming down his chest and playing with the buckle on his belt as Sanemi unlocks his door and pushes her inside.

At some point between the front door and his bedroom, the girl has stripped herself of her outer clothing, leaving her only in her undergarments as she tugs Sanemi down by his neck and into her kiss. She’s licking and nipping at his lips in a way he’s not sure he likes, but he allows it because his cock is painfully hard and throbbing where it strains against his pants.

And, after all, he’s the one desperate for relief.

“I’ve only got ten minutes,” she warns, kicking off her underwear as she falls back onto his bed. Sanemi only smirks as he slides his hand down the length of her leg, gripping her by the ankle and flipping her to her stomach.

He shifts away long enough to quickly wiggle free of his pants. He grabs a condom from his nightstand and rips the foil with his teeth. Fingers toying with the girl’s clit as she moans into his mattress, Sanemi rolls the latex down his cock. Protection secured, he reaches for her again, yanking her by her hips until her backside is flush against him. One hand pushes down between her shoulder blades while the other snakes up her neck, and Sanemi nudges the tip of his cock up against her entrance.

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” he winds the long tresses of her hair around his fist and gives her a sharp tug. “We’ll be done in five.”

—-

Even an hour after he tossed the girl her clothing and not so casually suggested she leave his apartment, Sanemi still feels restless.

He cannot shake the images of the afternoon from his mind, and so, Sanemi resorts to walking.

He does so without thought as to destination or the rapidly setting sun. Sanemi only focuses on the activity itself. One foot in front of the other; pace even and quick, each step accompanied by a flash of that day’s sins.

The crash of a garage door as it slammed back against the wall. Wide eyes that quickly filled with panic at the sight of him and the flash of metal tucked against his hip.

Step.

A plea; a desperate promise to pay, one that he’d heard a thousand times from a thousand different mouths. None of them ever seemed to understand their word wasn’t worth shit when they’d already defaulted on their obligations. Yet still, they begged.

Step.

The breaking of teeth beneath his fists.

Step.

The crush of bone under the iron pipe he’d found discarded on the garage floor. The agonized futility of trying to scoot back and away from him, despite a shattered leg.

Green; the color of the money he’d found stashed in a duffel, the debtor’s desperate attempt to hoard the wealth owed to the Corps.

Step. Step. Step. All the way down the street leading until he finds himself on a distantly familiar stretch of pavement that ends at the bookstore’s front steps.

For a moment, he lingers outside the shop, hesitant. He should turn around; there is no reason for him to be here. His investigation into you is not a priority by any means, especially where whatever poking he has done has revealed so little.

The book he lifted from the New Releases shelf is tucked carefully in his jacket pocket. He doesn’t know why he’s carried it around with him, all this time. Sanemi finished the novel the very night you’d helped hide him from the cops.

He should leave; but then his feet carry him up the walk leading to the store, and he’s pushing the door open.

His arrival is punctuated by a cheerful ring of the old bell nailed above the door. At first, the store appears deserted; but then you pop up from under the counter, surprise coloring your features.

That surprise melts quickly into cold disdain that makes something in his chest flutter as he strolls toward you. With every step, that numb haze of his disperses and instead, Sanemi feels himself returning to normal the closer he brings himself to you.

“This isn’t a library,” you chide when he plops his borrowed novel back down on your counter. “You have to pay for the books here.”

It’s incredible how easily he is able to slip back into the skin of the suave, smug playboy, and your adorable glare only makes him smirk. “I brought it back, didn’t I? Look — didn’t even crack the spine.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you reply coolly, snatching the book up and tossing it on a small cart marked Restock. “That loss came out of my paycheck — which is scant enough.”

That piques his attention. “Didn’t you say this was your store?”

His question makes you turn pink, and you’re quick to put your back to him, pretending to shuffle through new releases waiting to be shelved. “I work here,” you mutter quietly, but when you turn back around, you stick your chin out, defiant. “But I am the only employee, so it is my store, in a sense. The owner doesn’t ever come by.”

You wrinkle your nose. “So yes, lost profits affect me, and me alone, you thief.”

Sanemi cocks his head, his eyes running over you in consideration.

You’re beautiful; he’s always found you cute, even as a kid, but the transition between your teen years and adulthood have been kind. Even if you’re glaring at him like you would a crushed bug stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

But your words strike a chord in him. His job is to collect money from those greedy lowlifes who waste it; who use money to carry out their bad deeds, who use it to fuck over others.

He doesn’t take it from those who need it; from those who are barely scraping. by. Sanemi knows the agony of having to choose between keeping the lights on or feeding a hungry stomach far, far too well.

“Fine, here,” he tosses a random novel on your counter and a crumpled twenty dollar note. You ring him up, eyes flicking up to glare at him every so often as you count out his change.

He only continues to watch you, the heat of his stare ignites an itch under your skin that makes you squirm.

Your restlessness boils over. “What?”

“Nothin,” he shrugs. “Just think it’s interesting that you of all people are still lingering in this shit hole.”

Your head snaps up, your task of totaling out his change forgotten. “I live here, idiot.”

He snorts. “Didn’t you want outta here? Do somethin’ different?” He leans forward, elbows propped on your counter as he rests his chin on his fist.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” He’s dancing dangerously close to a sore spot of yours — that you are alone in your hometown, working at a failing bookshop, with no one and nothing to justify your stagnancy.

“This can’t be your dream life.”

You don’t have to answer; you know that. But his line of questioning is puzzling. Because, no matter how casual he manages to keep his tone, his nonchalance is betrayed by his eyes, sharp and inquisitive.

Like he’s waiting to dissect whatever answer you give him.

Sanemi continues. “It’s strange for people not to want for more — to not dream about somethin’ different.”

“And who are you to say I don’t?” You bristle, slamming your cash drawer shut with more force than necessary. “I have a dream of my own. Just because it’s not one you would pick for yourself doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

He blinks, taken aback. “Woah, woah, I never meant any offense.” He pushes back from the counter. “My bad.”

His response feels genuine but your ego is already bruised. Stiffly, you finish counting out his change and drop it into his waiting palm.

You slide his book across the counter. “Have the day you deserve.”

His surprise morphs into amusement at your iciness. So haughty, he winks. “You too, Princess.”

You turn aside in clear dismissal. He makes a show of taking out his wallet and stuffing his change inside, but your pointed ignorance of him means you don’t see him toss another note on the counter.

He’s already halfway out the door when you call after him, urgent. “Sir, you dropped your —“

“Nah, I didn’t,” he raises his hand in farewell as the bookstore door bangs shut behind him, leaving you to stare open-mouthed after him.

Clutched tightly in your hand is his crisp, one hundred dollar note.

—

His next visit is unplanned, but not in the way that Sanemi avoids routine. It’s unplanned in that he’s annoyed and it’s partially your fault, so that means the onus is on you to fix it.

You’re in the process of double checking delivery logs to ensure all your new inventory has arrived when a large thud against the clerk’s counter startles you.

You frown. It’s him again — all ivory hair and silvery facial scars that somehow are less imposing than the irritated scowl he wears.

“This book was shit,” he scoots the novel across the counter to you with distaste. “I want a refund.”

You level his pout with a frosty glare of your own. Wordlessly, you lean over the counter and tap a single finger against a laminated sign duck-taped to its edge.

Return-exchange only. No refunds.

“But it was shit,” he repeats, as though that will somehow spur you to change a policy you didn’t create. “You let me waste twenty bucks.”

“I did nothing,” you rustle the pages of your delivery log in pointed dismissal. “You’re the one who decided to buy a book before checking it out.”

You glance down at the discarded novel. “Figures,” you scoff. “He’s not even an author. He uses ghost writers and takes all the credit.”

“Woulda been nice if you’d told me that before you let me give him my money.”

You hum idly as you cross off the log’s boxes for new releases. “I suppose I was too stunned that you even knew how to read. Guess I wasn’t really paying attention to your shit choices.”

“Oh?” And you glance up to see Sanemi smirking at you. “The Princess has claws, does she?” He leans against the counter, propping his cheek under a loose fist. “So, what are your recommendations, gorgeous?”

“I’m not your Princess,” you snap imbuing the nickname with as much venom as you can muster. “Call me by my name or call me nothing at all.”

His eyes drop to your name-tag, pinned neatly on the front of your sweater. That insufferable smirk of his only widens. “Alright, alright. What are your recommendations, Y/N?”

The syllables sound rich and honeyed and suddenly, you wish you’d let him stick with Princess, as grating as it was.

Because your name should not sound so sweet, should not roll off his tongue so seamlessly, as it just did.

You’ve never been one to indulge in rumors. But in this city, as economically fractured as it is, gossip is a currency everyone keeps in their back pocket. And though you keep your head down and mind your own business, even you have heard the rumors swirling around town about the eldest Shinazugawa child.

Rumors that he has ascended the ranks of the same Mob that claimed the life of his deadbeat father long before the bastard was shived in the back for a debt he’d owed (their words, never yours).

Rumors that he holds a unique position within the gang, known clandestinely only as the Corps, and that position requires him to do things most won’t speak about.

But the rumor that screeches to the forefront of your mind has nothing to do with his alleged status with the Corps. It’s his reputation as a flirt; a rumored womanizer, through and through, that is a splinter under your skin.

Determined to pick him out, a wicked idea blossoms. “Fine, here.” You stalk purposefully to the section marked Literature. Your finger drags down a line of titles before finally settling on one. You pull it free with a soft grunt, the book sitting thick and heavy in your hand as you dump it into Sanemi’s.

“Read that.”

His eyes flick between its cover and you, incredulous. “This ain’t a book; it’s a brick.”

“It’s a classic,” you counter. “One that examines age-old question of destiny versus free will, generational curses.” Your head cocks to the side, a challenging smirk tugging at the corner of your mouth. “Love and lust.”

His eyebrow raises and you cross your fingers. If he falls for it and ultimately ends up hating the book, then perhaps he’ll decide your taste in reading material is indeed shit, and maybe then he’ll leave you alone.

Sanemi considers you for a moment but then he takes the bait. “If you say so,” he sighs. “But if it’s shit, I’m taking my refund.” And then he leans in close, so close that you can feel the warmth radiating off his body.

His breath is hot against your ear. “Regardless of your shitty little policy.”

You refuse to let him see how much he’s knocked you off-kilter. “So I can expect to be robbed? Will it be at gun or knifepoint? Just so I’m prepared.”

His chuckle, low and dark sends goosebumps skittering down your arms. “Worse,” he promises before he draws back. His grin is wolfish, all teeth and feral hunger. “You’ll owe me a date.”

He looses a low, appreciate whistle as he steps back and takes his eyes over your rigid form. “Though, I might just take you out anyway.”

“You assume I’ll say yes — or are you planning on kidnapping me? I’m sure you’re rather proficient at it, given your occupation.”

Something dark flashes across his face, and it’s enough to make you step back, a sudden fear creeping up the back of your spine.

Stupid, you chastise yourself. You never know when to keep your mouth shut.

But the shadows in his features recede as quickly as they appeared, and Sanemi’s mouth eases back into that same, cocky smile.

“You’ll say yes, Princess. You won’t be able to resist the temptation.”

“Temptation?” You force out a laugh. “And what makes you think I can’t?”

Sanemi’s eyes find your current read, open flipped over on the counter, marking your current page.

It’s a mystery novel. Your third of the month, born of a new hyperfixation on the genre.

You want nothing more than to wipe that smug grin of his clean from his face. He gives an affectionate snake of his head as he turns and makes his way toward the door. “Habits, Y/N. It all comes down to habits.”

You should throw it at his head, but Sanemi exits the store before your hand can find its spine.

——-

Over two weeks pass without so much as a whisper from the enigma that is Sanemi Shinazugawa.

Loath though you are to give him that sort of credit, you cannot deny that he utterly confounds you. He is everything you expected while simultaneously nothing at all what you’d imagined. He is brash and cocky, and he struts around with an insufferable self-importance that can only come from years of being at the top of his game (no matter how he got there).

Yet, he also reads. Enough to have opinions, even decent ones, about certain authors, and he’s open minded enough to accept your recommendation even if it feels as though he has an ulterior motive for doing so.

And, he’d been bothered by the dock in your pay as a result of his mischief; so much so, that he’d slipped you more than enough to make up the loss. That is the action that puzzles you the most, even weeks later. You’d assumed that someone like him, so used to ensnaring people into various schemes, wouldn’t have given two shits if he’d stolen money from some broke girl at a bookstore. After all, his business was all about money — and the lengths some would go to keep it.

Yet he’d paid you back — paid you more than you needed, if you were honest.

Since that day, you’ve had your ears tuned to any mention of his name, any whispers of the mysterious, scarred gang-member who has occupied nearly all the open space in your head. You’ve managed to glean small things here and there. That he’s a Hashira, and Hashira means he’s only one step below what is known ominously as the Master Family — the heads of the entire organization.

That he’s rather feared, even among seasoned Corps members; that he’s known for his swift brutality.

That he’s more than just a flirt; he’s a virile lover. Not picky in the slightest about who warms his bed, though no one has ever been able to pin him down longer than a handful of one-night stands.

You stop poking around after that particular revelation, embarrassed that you now know exactly what makes him so popular.

Apparently, his flexibility pairs well with his near inhuman stamina. And he’s said to be very well-endowed.

It’s more information than you care to know, but you can’t deny that your curiosity lingers.

You brush aside your inquisitiveness as nothing more than a natural side effect of your own inexperience. And you’ll be damned before admitting that your interest in Sanemi Shinazugawa isn’t limited to rumors of how good he is in bed. That, perhaps your curiosity stems from something deeper, from a desire to know if that bad boy persona is authentic or a mere facade, and boy on the stoop still lurks somewhere beneath his mask.

—

“You look like shit.”

You startle up from where you’d been resting your head on your arm, wavering between consciousness and sleep.

You know that gravelly voice before you lay your eyes on him, and your irritation is quick to flicker to life.

Nearly a month has passed since your last encounter, and for a moment, you’d thought you’d been freed from his nuisance. But now, Sanemi stands in your store, wearing a half-amused expression on his stupidly handsome face.

“Is that the only descriptor you know?” You ask miserably, hands working quickly to smooth down your mused hair. “Is everything either shit or not-shit to you?”

Sanemi shrugs. “Pretty much,” and he holds something out to you, waiting. “Here.”

It’s a to-go bag from a cafe two blocks away. One known for their almond croissants, for which you have a particular penchant.

Your stomach grumbles fiercely. You’d foregone eating breakfast when you realized you’d overslept your alarm, and had to rush out of your apartment to ensure you’d be here in time for the weekly delivery truck.

The sweet scent of butter and sugar wafting from the bag makes your mouth water.

But this is Sanemi Shinazugawa, and you should think to know better. “Is it poisoned?”

He rolls his eyes. “If I wanted to drug you, sweetheart, I’d pick a far more convenient way to do it — and one that didn’t involve me getting up at the ass crack of dawn for some overpriced pastries.”

Warily, you accept the paper bag, and Sanemi surprises you again by handing you a to-go cup of coffee. He watches as you, ever the dramatic, sniff tentatively at the lid and frown, apparently dissatisfied that you can discern nothing but the rich, aromatic scent of espresso.

Sanemi takes a deep drink from his own cup. “It’s a thank you. For that book you recommended,” He smirks. “It wasn’t shit. It was good.”

You fish a pastry out of the bag, and nearly drool as you behold its buttery, flaky goodness. “You sound surprised.”

“Maybe I was. Your success rate was only fifty-fifty. I had every right to be skeptical.”

“You’re the one who grabbed that last book,” you take a large bite out of your croissant and you fight to keep yourself from moaning. “That had nothing to do with me.” You swallow thickly before taking a large sip of coffee to wash down the pastry. “So, no date, then?”

The smile he gives you is almost apologetic. “Sorry, beautiful. I don’t actually date.” And you nearly double over at the bewildering taste of disappointment creeping sourly up the back of your throat. “Gotta keep things casual in my world.”

The once-over he gives you is razor-sharp. “And you don’t look like a casual girl.”

You resist the urge to cross your arms. “You seem awfully certain, Shinazugawa.”

“Experience,” he offers easily. “I know casual women.” He turns his head away before quietly adding, “And you ain’t one of ‘em.”

It’s odd; you know of his rather wild reputation among women, and yet he seems almost embarrassed by its acknowledgment. But as you’re slowly learning, Sanemi Shinazugawa is a conundrum you haven’t yet been able to pick apart.

You could throw it in his face; you could spew some barb about his experience, rub your salt right into his obvious wound. You have no reason to spare his feelings, not when he’s been such a consistent pain in your ass.

Your eyes drift to the empty pastry bag and coffee cup before they find him again, and suddenly, you don’t see the swaggering, cocky Corps member with a reputation for being just as dangerous and violent as he is flirtatious.

You see only the boy on your stoop; the one who’d gently removed your sister from her place on his back and handed her back to your tearful, relieved parents.

And it’s because you cannot stop seeing that boy, that you offer before you lose the courage to ask, “So, friends, then?”

Sanemi whips back to you, surprise coloring his features that quickly melts into a smile — a real, genuine smile.

And thus, Sanemi Shinazugawa, ruthless member of the Corps and a ranked Hashira, befriends a girl who runs a bookshop.

—-

In retrospect, Sanemi knows he’s probably fucked himself.

His only intention in visiting your shop after that first day had been to discern what level of threat you posed to him, if any, and to address it accordingly. Befriending you was never his goal. After all, he prided himself on his staunch ability in following the unspoken Rules of the Corps — number Three, in particular.

But he has always interpreted Three has a warning against forming bonds within the Corps. And though he knows it’s good practice to keep his circle outside its operations small as well, he rations he’s entitled to indulge his curiosity in you. He doesn’t have friends, not really. Just Genya, and his little brother lives well over an hour away, enrolled in a school in a far better — far safer — city.

It would be nice to have someone a little closer to home that he could relax around.

Yet, he can’t recall whether Rule Three would bar him from associating you outside work hours. Caution would dictate he shouldn’t, but Sanemi never claimed to be a careful man.

He never visits the same day or at the same time. Rule Two says no patterns, and though he’s steadily blurring the lines of Rule Three with each passing day, he convinces himself that as long as he abides by the first two, he won’t be in as deep shit as he, in theory, could be.

It starts out slow; tentative. Despite what he’d thought otherwise, you’re not nearly as prim and haughty as you’d tried to make him believe.

You’re sweet. Genuine, in a way that’s rare for him to encounter in his world.

Gradually, he begins spending more time with you. At first, your relationship is confined strictly to discussions of books. You swap favorites, debate which author is at the top of their genre, and you occasionally needle each other over your respective guilty pleasure: yours, bodice rippers. His, fairytales.

He spends a great deal of his free time at the bookstore, though he’s never consistent with his visits. You never ask him about it, and for that, he’s grateful. But eventually, your conversation turns to other interests — movies, shows, music — and each new mutual interest only further enamors him with you.

And when you invite him over one day after you close the shop to watch an old movie you’d swiped from the store’s limited collection, he can’t find it in him to tell you no.

The first time he visits your apartment, he is appalled.

For starters, the neighborhood you live in isn’t the safest. It’s not the Silo, by any means, but it’s an area he frequents as part of his job and that fact alone sets him on edge. He knows what kind of people linger here; knows that they tend to borrow cash that ends up in Uzui’s business — another Hashira.

And when he sees the shoebox you live in (a studio, you’d proudly boasted, as though the distraction of exposed brick and industrial piping made up for its shit location and shit security), Sanemi finds himself clutching his proverbial pearls.

He supposes he can see its appeal — you’ve certainly turned it into a home.

You’ve made a small living room out of a single couch, thrifted coffee table, and a faintly stained rug. Your TV is laughably small, but he supposes it gets the job done.

A small kitchen stands to the right of the entryway, and there is a bathroom to the left. You have a wall of closets with folding doors, and the wall directly opposite of him boasts three large, arched windows. Sanemi supposes during the day, they provide enough natural sunlight to negate any need for any overhead lighting, of which you have none. But he can’t tell if they open from the outside, so he resolves to furtively check once you’re distracted.

Your bed stands on the furthest wall, tucked into a corner and laden heavy with colorful pillows and plush throws. Books are stacked everywhere — in shelves, in corners, by plants and furniture. All well-worn and loved, their spines cracked and covers stained.

It’s lively; warm. And it has you written all over it. That alone is enough to slightly endear the place to him.

But it’s still a shit apartment in a shit neighborhood.

Worse, your door is little more than a flimsy piece of wood that latches with a single turn lock — the easiest to break, if someone was determined enough to try. He tells you as much and you roll your eyes, brushing aside his concerns as though he’s not precisely aware of what kind of filth might linger around the corner.

The next day, he brings over a deadbolt, a chain, and a drill. He bats off your indignant protests as he installs it on your door. And, because he’s petty, he forces you to sit through a painfully detailed demonstration of how to properly latch and unlatch the chain once he’s finished.

The weeks blend seamlessly into months, and Sanemi finds himself spending more and more of his free time with you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working at the bookstore or enjoying a night of brain-rotting entertainment on your shitty little television. He just wants to be near you, and he finds himself unable to stay away.

Four months into your friendship, you start a weekly movie night, though the date is always subject to change. Still, Sanemi finds himself craving more of that precious time with you. The hours spent in your store or at your apartment fill a void in his chest he hadn’t realized he’d been harboring, and it’s a fullness he quickly becomes addicted to.

It is an odd thing, this new ritual (never routine) of his. The alternation between visiting the scum indebted to the Corps, to feel bones crush and snap beneath his hands or the iron of a spare crowbar, or blood griming to his knuckles, only to return to your bookshop or apartment, cheap beer and greasy takeout in hand, isn’t the kind of switch he imagined he’d ever make. But you make taking off his Hashira mask so damn easy, and every time he leaves he finds it more difficult to slip back on.

With each passing day, he learns you more and more. He gathers information like a dragon hoards its jewels, each new tidbit a precious gem that he tucks safely away in a mental box labeled with your name.

He learns that, while he prefers tea, you prefer coffee, but you’re picky about your order. If it’s hot, you want it black or with only the faintest splash of cream. If it’s cold, however, you want every sweet syrup and topping known to man, even though it only makes you crash like a freight train once the sugar high wears off.

He learns you think cooking means pouring yourself a bowl of cereal and calling it a day, and it’s a revelation that makes him have to walk away and collect himself, lest he start lecturing you on the importance of proper nutrition, just as he does with his brother.

In exchange, he opens up about the more sacred aspects of his life — namely, Genya. He confides in you the great pride and adoration he has for his little brother, and admits his deep-seated fear that Genya will somehow be pulled into his violent, hostile world of his. And each time Sanemi begins to feel that anxiety rear its ugly head, threaten to settle into the marrow of his bones and send him into a spiral, you’re always there to pull him back.

Sometimes you ask questions, and Sanemi tries to answer them as best he can. But there are some subjects he can never touch. Never wants to.

He can’t tell you whose blood stains his knuckles or is splattered across his shoes. He can’t tell you where he goes when his phone vibrates late at night or at random during the day. He can’t tell you what his fellow Hashira do; the specialties they oversee.

Sanemi does make a point to assure you there is one sacred creed by which they all abide: no kids. This seems to put you at ease, as though this tepid moral line somehow absolves him of the other shit he’s guilty for.

It’s selfish, this thing he has created with you. He knows that. And his blossoming friendship with you likely breaks more than one of the sacred precepts of the Corps. But you’re the first person he’s met since his initiation who knows what he is and doesn’t cower in fear, and that makes him desperate to cling onto you. You know what an ugly, beastly creature he is, and yet you do not run away from him. Even when you probably should.

So, he makes a promise. He won’t show you the Shinazugawa who belongs to the Corps; a formidable member of the Hashira, known because of the things he can do to others to make sure they pay their debts. What he does to them when they don’t.

With you, he wants to be Sanemi; only Sanemi.

And so it goes, for the better part of a year, the two of you learning one another, pretending the ease you feel in the company of the other is merely the product of two people relieved to find a friend in a city that cautions against such ties, and not something in danger of becoming more.

As though the metamorphosis hasn’t already set in.

—

“You never told me what your dream was, y’know.” Sanemi says one night while you finish up inventory at the store.

“What dream?” You hum as you scan the shelves reserved for non-fiction releases, your lips pressed into a firm line as you run your pen down the entries of your log.

He leans against the bookshelf, arms folded across the considerable mass of his chest. “Your big dream — the one you bit my head off for insulting that one time.”

You look up long enough to roll your eyes at him. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Dunno. Curious.”

“Thought you’re not supposed to ask questions in your line of work.” And you shoot him a sly grin. “You ought to be careful.”

Sanemi snorts but he nudges your foot with his. “I’m serious.”

Your eyes dance back and forth between him and the log before you. There’s no real harm in it, you decide. After all, he’s the only friend you have. “I want my own bookstore.”

“Yeah?” He raises a pale brow and waves his hand vaguely around behind him. “Aren’t you practically running this one? That ain’t enough?”

“I don’t own it, though.” You frown, setting your clipboard down. “I just work here. You’ve seen my paycheck.”

And he had, having found a paystub when he’d gone snooping under your counter. You would’ve been furious at his invasion of your privacy had you not been so mortified at the way he’d stared in horror at the pitiful figure reflecting your earnings after two, grueling weeks of work.

His insistence on bringing you meals at any and every opportunity afterward only compounded your embarrassment.

“I want something that’s mine — that I own.” You continue. “I’ve begged the owner to let me organize author meet-and-greets as a way to promote the store for months, and he always says no. If I owned my own store, I wouldn’t need anyone’s permission.”

You pull your bottom lip between your teeth. “I wouldn’t have to live under anyone’s thumb.”

Something shifts in the way Sanemi watches you, a certain profundity creeping into his eyes.

Your cheeks heat. “I know it sounds stupid —“

“It doesn’t,” Sanemi says earnestly. “Wanting your freedom can never be stupid.”

You soften then, as understanding passes between you. Of course he would know all about that — arguably better than anyone you know.

Sanemi clears his throat. “So, a bookstore?” And he gives you a broad smile as he pulls out his wallet and tosses you a twenty dollar note. “Consider me your first investor.”

—

Sanemi spends the rest of the evening watching you work, fascinated by the way you meticulously organize your store shelves, and count the cash in your register. When it comes time for you to heave boxes of excess inventory to the back storeroom so they can be shipped back to their distributors, Sanemi plucks them from your hands, batting off your protests as he carries them for you.

By the time closing arrives, every new shipment has been unpacked and its contents have been shelved.

You flick off the overhead lights in the main store, relying on the backlight of the exit door to light your way out. You tug on your coat and find him watching you, expectantly. “Are you walking me home?”

“Tch. Don’t I always, when I can?”

You grin and it’s enough to chase away some of the sourness twisting in his gut. He shouldn’t do it, as often as he does. He’s risking enough as it is by constantly redrawing the lines around Rule Three to justify the way he’s beginning to bend the parameters around the rule against patterns. But it’s dark and late, and you don’t have a car, and he’ll be damned if he lets you brave the walk home alone.

Better he’s there to protect you from the dangers he can anticipate and see than to stick to his code and risk your harm from those he cannot.

Thankfully, the journey back to your apartment takes no more than fifteen minutes, even when he stops to thumb free a cigarette from the spare carton he keeps tucked in his jacket. You wrinkle your nose at him in mock-disgust as he lights it, the smoke curling out of his mouth reminiscent of a fire-breathing dragon.

He wouldn’t do it if he knew it truly bothered you. But you’d once shyly confessed you liked the faint smell of tobacco that clung to his jacket, especially in cold air like this. So he only shoots you a wink as he brings it to his lips and takes a long drag.

Besides, he thinks as he looses a slow exhale. He needs something to help him take the edge off; to guide him in making that transition between Hashira and Sanemi.

He escorts you all the way to your front door, the two of you trading quips and jokes. And Sanemi savors how utterly extraordinary something as ordinary as walking you to your door feels. Almost as if he’s ordinary, the way he so desperately wishes he could be.

You fidget with your keys, sliding them into your lock. “Did you finish that series I recommended?”

Sanemi grins. “Last night. I think it was your best suggestion yet.”

You duck your head, a bashful smile spreading across your pretty lips and its sight fills him with a golden warmth.

Your door gives way and you turn back to him. “‘Til next time?”

It was what you always said; you never asked him when you could expect to see him again, and he appreciated it. Appreciated not having to explain himself, when most outside his world would likely demand he try.

“‘Til next time,” he confirms, returning your smile with one of his own.

You hover in your doorway, fingers drumming on the frame, eyes roaming his.

“You never told me yours — what your dream is.”

He should leave. You’re treading in murky waters, ones made dangerous because he almost wants to tell you — tell you the truth, at that.

That he dreams of more. More life. More stability. More everything. He’d settle for anything, really; anything at all.

As long as it was more than this.

But Sanemi only responds with a wry grin. “To wake up in the morning, Princess. That’s all I can ask for.”

———

Sanemi’s answer lingers with you long after you emerge from your shower, warm and toweling your damp hair.

To wake up in the morning, Princess.

He’s full of shit and you know it.

Over the course of the last year, you’ve learned a handful of crucial details that make up Sanemi Shinazugawa.

You’ve learned he loves matcha, but he really loves the expensive kind. While you can’t afford to buy the high quality powder, you make do with what you can afford at the grocery, and you make it for him as often as you can.

He drinks it every time, bitter dregs and all.

More importantly, you’ve learned what it means to have a friend involved in the Corps. Not that he’s merely involved with the notorious gang — at least, not any more than the two of you are just “friends.”

Town gossip aside, Sanemi’s affiliation with the Corps is made obvious by his own actions. Like the way the two of you only ever hang out at the bookstore or your apartment; how he never invites you to visit his place, over in the Silo.

Or how he insists on scoping out your apartment every time he comes over, his eyes alert and sharp as his hand lingers at his hip, ready to pull out the gun you know he keeps tucked into his waistband at all times.

It’s evident in the way Sanemi never sticks to a consistent schedule. He varies the days and times of his visits at random, never allowing himself to settle into a routine, even if that means going an entire week or longer without seeing you.

But perhaps the most significant detail you’ve learned about Sanemi over the year of your friendship is this:

He wants out. Dreams of it, even.

This revelation does not come from the scarred Hashira himself. It is the product of months of observation, of studying how his face darkens when his phone pings! while you’re watching some sitcom on television, or when he sees a familiar face pass by your shop window, and suddenly he has to leave because he must be Shinazugawa again, and you won’t see him for the rest of the day.

It is evident in the way he talks of his younger brother, who, by all accounts is a star student and athlete, with a promising future in collegiate archery.

Sanemi is saving every penny he can to send his brother — Genya — to school, far, far away from the Silo. The conviction with which he speaks of Genya’s future, full of college and internships and promise, breaks your heart, because you know Sanemi hadn’t anyone to want those things for him.

Sanemi does not speak of any future of his. You suspect it’s because he doesn’t believe he will have one.

That has to be why he answered your question with his vague desire to wake up every morning. It was an easy answer. One that relied on you making certain connections between his life and his words and deduce that he truly had nothing more to live for other than life itself.

A cop-out, is what it is.

But his reading habits betray his darkest secret — betray the truth — and that’s exactly how you know his flippant answer is utter bullshit.

The book Sanemi carries around the most is a series of classic fairy tales, bought off your sale table a few months back. He’s read the whole thing cover to cover, but he keeps a bookmark on one specific page, and periodically, you catch him flipping back to it.

He made the mistake of leaving the book on your coffee table one night when he excused himself to use your bathroom. Realistically, you knew it was no big deal to flip through it, but somehow, the thought still felt like an invasion of his privacy.

But your curiosity got the better of you so you snatched it up, and thumb quickly to the bookmarked page, desperate to know which story has so captivated him.

You opened to the first page of of a tale — an old French story, about the daughter of a merchant who is sent to life with a beast in a distant castle, as penance for his theft of the beast’s rose.

You smiled to yourself; you were familiar with the story. You know how it goes — the beast everyone believes to be the villain is saved by the woman, and revealed to be a handsome prince. And the two live happily ever after.

Your smile faded as you recalled how the woman saved her Beast. True love’s kiss, or something along those lines.

True love.

And as Sanemi returned from the bathroom and plopped down next to you on your couch to watch a rerun of some old sitcom before he has to leave for the night, you mulled over Sanemi’s apparent fascination with the tale of the beast and the beauty.

And that’s how you drew the series of conclusions which enabled you to see right through his thin facade.

He wants out.

He wants a happily ever after. He doesn’t think he’ll get it.

And, above all, he dreams of love.

—

If any doubt lingered as to the magnitude of his ties to the Corps, it disintegrates one night, about eight months after he’d first burst into your bookstore.

It is well after midnight, but you are still awake, too engrossed in a new fantasy novel to pay particular attention to the lateness of the hour when your phone buzzes on your bedside table.

Sanemi’s name lingers above the notification, which reads simply, Outside.

You untangle yourself from your blankets and pad over to your front door, hastily tugging on a pair of sleep boxers over your underwear.

You open the door and the flutter of excitement you’d felt upon seeing his text is chased away by shock at the sight before you.

There is a bruise forming along Sanemi’s cheek that you almost would have mistaken for dirt if not for the swelling. His hair is rumpled, his clothes in disarray. Though it winks away the second he sets his gaze on you, you swear you were able a cold fury in his eyes; foreign, and violent.

The fury that belongs to a Hashira, not to the friend you know.

Wordlessly, you step back and allow him to limp past you.

“You got liniment?” He rasps, plopping heavily down in your kitchen chair. “And water?”

“You mean icy-hot?” You’re already filling a glass from the tap that you set on the table next to him before you retreat to your bathroom to rummage the cabinets.

You return a few moments later, tub of minty topical gel clutched in hand. You nearly drop it when you realize that Sanemi has stripped himself of his shirt already and is now bare from the waist-up, his forehead resting against his arms where they’re propped up on the back of your chair.

You’ve known for a long while that Sanemi is well-built (obscenely so).

Once, in the early days of your friendship, you’d snapped at him to button his shirt properly if he insisted on hanging around your store, dramatizing over how obscene it was for him to prance around with his chest half-exposed.

Sanemi had only grinned at you before he unbuttoned two more, revealing a generous glimpse of infuriatingly toned abs. Your open-mouthed, scandalized stare was met only with a wink.

He kept his shirt like that for the remainder of the day. You’d hardly been able to look at him without flushing a deep scarlet that only seemed to inflate his already generous ego even further.

But, you’re only human. And as the months passed by, and your friendship with the scarred mobster grew, you found yourself sneaking the odd peek every now and then. A glimpse of pectoral here; a hint of his rigid v-line when he stretched his arms over his head there.

And now, here he is, sitting in your small kitchen area awaiting the relief of the icy hot clutched in the tub that grew more slippery between your rapidly sweaty palms, every mouth watering inch of his upper body on display.

Beautiful. Your mouth goes dry at the sight of him. Sanemi is unbelievably beautiful.

“Need ya to rub it into my shoulder, if you don’t mind,” his voice is muffled against his arm. “I hate asking, but I dislocated the damn thing and had to reset it — fuckin’ hurts, now.”

You know better than to suggest he go get an x-ray. No hospitals, he’d once explained. Not unless you’re bleeding out.

You also know better than to ask how he dislocated it, and so you only pad silently over to him, grateful he’s turned away from you so he cannot see the tremble in your hands or the blush creeping across your cheeks.

Eager to give yourself something to do besides ogling, you focus on unscrewing the lid on the jar of liniment, your nose wrinkling under the burn of its stringent odor. You scoop a generous amount of the salve into your palms and warm it between your hands.

“Motherfucker,” Sanemi hisses as your hands spread gently across his shoulder, your fingers gingerly massaging the topical into his swollen joint. “Shit stings.”

“You’re lucky it’s not broken,” you chide, carefully prodding along the joint in search of anything that may be amiss — an odd lump or gap, signaling something hasn’t been reset properly. “At least, I don’t think it is.”

“Your medical expertise is astounding,” Sanemi drolls, but he winces again as your fingers press against a particularly tender spot. You step away from him with a huff and fish your phone out of your pocket, hands still slathered with ointment.

“I’m not a doctor,” you shoot back. “And since you refuse to go see one, the best I can do it give you the advice of the internet.”

You ignore his grumblings as you search for treatments for dislocated joints. You tap on the first link that appears and scroll, eyes narrowed as you read.

“You’re in luck. It seems like you won’t die,” you say dryly. “But you’re going to have a nasty bruise.” You purse your lips, eyes scanning the article on your phone. “And this says you’re supposed to rest — not overexert the joint.” You reach to tug playfully on a lock of his hair. “I don’t suppose you’re actually going to do that, though.”

He twists and flashes you a mischievous smirk over his shoulder. “You know me too well, Princess.”

You roll your eyes and snort, tossing your phone onto your table in favor of reaching for a discarded kitchen towel to wipe off the excess icy hot from your hands.

You’re about to tell him to put his shirt back on and stop flaunting the muscles he just can’t seem to help but show everyone he has when your eyes snag on a mark that rests squarely between his shoulder blades.

You wouldn’t have noticed it but for the shiny redness surrounding it, a clear contrast to the rest of his skin. But the longer your stare at it, the more clear its abnormality. The mark is puffy and raised, but there’s a distinct pattern to it that makes the hair on the back of your neck curl.

A brand, you realize with horror. Someone has branded him like cattle.

Your finger reaches to trace over the ridges seared into his skin before you can think the better of it. Sanemi twitches under your touch, a small shudder skirting down his spine as he tilts his head back toward you.

“Ugly, ain’t it?” His tone is unreadable. “Like a collar, ‘cept it’s permanent.”

Though he tends to err on the side of caution when it comes to discussing the Corps, you at least know what is role is within it. He told you: debt collector. Mostly monetary debts.

But the brand has nothing to do with money. No, the symbol burned into his skin — the one that stands for Kill — is a neon sign of a reminder that Sanemi’s duties can and do entail another kind of collection.

A chill snakes down your spine. You’d had your suspicions, of course, you’re not stupid. But seeing it confirmed by a brand of all things is a lightning rod through your chest.

Sanemi must sense your stare against his back, and you hear his rueful smile though you can’t see his face. “Guess it’s fitting, since I’m their dog.”

There it is; confirmation of what he is, as though it were possible to forget. You don’t know why you’d held out in letting its weight settle over you. Nor do you know why your brain had refused, for a moment, to reconcile the Sanemi who brought cheap beer and greasy fast food to your apartment for a night of trash television and book reviews with the one before you now, branded with inexorable reminder of what his duties are when he steps outside and debts go unpaid; when scores go uneven.

Your eyes slide to his gun, resting atop your table. It may has well have been smoking.

“It’s barbaric,” you murmur. You never offer much of an opinion on the tidbits of information about his life he shares with you, unwilling to make him feel as though you aren’t someone he can confide in.

But the sight of the brand scorched between his shoulder blades stokes something ugly and angry within you. You’re grateful his back is to you so you can furtively rub your hand over your prickling eyes before he can see you do something stupid, like cry.

He tilts his head back until it rests against your abdomen. “Thank you,” he murmurs, his eyes drifting shut.

You freeze for a moment, your anger temporarily suspended against your uncertainty of whether you should step back or remain. You’ve touched Sanemi a thousand different ways — you’ve grabbed his arm, smacked him upside his thick head, and elbowed him more times than you can count.

But this; this is something far different from your teasing nudges of the past. This small gesture feels infinitely more tender. Gentle.

Intimate.

Sanemi has never not been the picture of cocky brashness, especially around you. His priggish smirk was a constant, only ever dampened by the occasional alert on his phone — the one that meant he had to stop being yours for the night, and go be theirs.

But this Sanemi? This peaceful, eased, vulnerable version of your best friend is wholly uncharted territory. And perhaps it’s because he looks so unguarded this way, his face relaxed and his eyes closed, that you feel so flustered.

You brush his hair away from his forehead. At the first graze of your fingers along his scalp, Sanemi leans further into you with something akin to a moan.

Hot; everything feels so damn hot, the air in your apartment suddenly too thick. Too oppressive.

Yet, you don’t stop; your fingers keep raking through his hair, surprisingly silky.

You think he may have fallen asleep in your chair, but after another moment of your hands carding through his hair, Sanemi stands. You step away instantly, and you avert your eyes while he pulls his shirt back over his head, cursing softly as he works it over his injured shoulder.

Sanemi turns to you and clears his throat roughly. “Thanks again. Don’t know what I would’ve done without ya.”

You wave him off with an exaggerated eye roll, eager to conceal the redness in your cheeks. “Oh please, I’m just your neighborhood book supplier and occasional first aid nurse.”

A sudden sobriety passes over his features, clouding over that all too familiar smirk with something heavier.

“No,” he murmurs and his hand absently lifts to tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear. “No, you’re more than that.” His palm lingers against your cheek and his voice quiets to a hoarse whisper. “Much more.”

For a moment, you wonder if he’ll lean in; if he’ll show you whether his lips are as warm as his touch.

His eyes drop briefly to your mouth and your stomach somersaults at the thought he might be considering it, too. But the clouds part and Sanemi withdraws from you with an affection flick against the tip of your nose.

And then he turns and leaves.

You sink back against your door after you close it behind him and slide to your floor. You remain there for a long while after, your mind little more than a gnarled tangle of brambles you can’t begin to pick through. But even despite the complicated mess of thoughts and emotions knotted together in your head, one thing stands clear: you’d wanted to kiss him.

And for a moment, you swear he’d wanted to, as well.

An old rumor, one you hadn’t considered since your very first interaction with him, resurfaces in your mind. The one that had less to do with him in the Corps, and more so involved his activities outside of it.

The rumor that he cycles through the bodies he uses to warm his bed more frequently than you change the sheets on yours.

Your cheeks heat, and you shake your head to clear away the sudden, intrusive images of Sanemi tangled in the throes of passion with some faceless stranger that fill your imagination. You don’t care what those blasted rumors claim; you know him. And what’s more, you know that what you feel for him is stronger than anything you’ve ever felt toward anyone.

You’re in love with Sanemi.

It is his face you see at night before you fall asleep; it’s his touch you imagine in those secret moments in your bed or in the shower, when you’re desperate and aching.

It’s he who makes you feel most at ease; the one person you feel truly sees you, thinks you’re actually worth something.

You’ve never really known love before. But it’s because you’re such a novice that you know your feelings are true; powerful. You know what he is — what he thinks he is. And you know that you will never want anyone else; you can’t.

You won’t.

—

Three rules. That’s all he had to do, was follow three simple fucking rules.

Don’t speak. No patterns. And don’t get overly attached.

It had been easy, so easy, to follow them. If there was one thing Sanemi believed he could pride himself on, it had been his steadfast adherence to the Corps’ rules. Number three, in particular.

Until you. Until the day he’d chosen your bookstore to hide in.

Because that was when Sanemi decided that those rules were really more like guidelines; malleable. He’d let himself cast them aside out of a desperation for human connection. And he’d justified his carelessness by convincing himself that as long as he maintained some semblance compliance with the unspoken code of the Corps.

Sanemi had built his own set of rules around the foundation of his friendship with you, a wall of stone around the glass castle meant to ensure you would not be cut by its shards should it ever shatter.

He would not be your liability, nor would you be his.

But now, he’s too deep; Sanemi knows he’s gotten in way too fucking deep with you.

Until this moment, he imagined he’d managed to toe the line of this internal code that applied only to his relationship with you, save a handful of instances when he’d let himself blur it.

As it turns out, he’d been dead fucking wrong. Because he’s pretty sure you just asked him to cross the last major boundary he’d set for himself when it came to you.

So, Sanemi only gapes at you. “What?”

You huff, impatient. “I want you to fuck me.”

You say it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world — as though you haven’t just ripped the floor out from beneath him and sent him falling directly on his ass.

If he didn’t know you were dead serious, he would’ve laughed in your face. And that’s how he knows he’s fucked.

You’re a virgin; he knows that, because you’d drunkenly confessed it to him two weeks prior, tipsy on the cheap beer he’d brought over for your weekly movie night together.

Admittedly, he’d been surprised. You were beautiful — not that beauty was a requirement for a good fuck, but you didn’t seem the type to go for random hookups, unlike him. Still, he would’ve thought you’d had some prior relationship where the opportunity would have arisen.

As it turned out, you’d never been in a relationship, either.

Between long gulps of your drink, you’d asked him to fix it and he’d turned you down — his tolerance for watery beer far surpassed your own, and Sanemi Shinazugawa wasn’t the type to sleep with someone who couldn’t fully consent.

So he’d let you down — but not before he kissed you. It was only once; soft, the way you deserved to be kissed. His lips met yours and suddenly, the gaping hole in his chest felt smaller; fuller. Kissing you felt like coming home, even though Sanemi was sure he’d never fully known what home truly felt like.

And then he parted from you with an affectionate flick on your nose to cover the way his heart clenched at the visible disappointment in your eyes.

He’d boldly kissed you twice more after that night — one a quick, cheeky peck when you went in to hug him, an act done more to fluster you than to sate any desire of his, no matter how he craved more of you.

The other happened only three nights prior, and it was anything but soft and sweet.

One of Sanemi’s fellow Hashira, Kanae, hadn’t been seen in several days, and no one had been able to get in touch with her. When she’d missed a scheduled patrol of one of the neighborhoods in the Silo, he and another member, Iguro, had been sent to check on her.

They’d found her in the kitchen of the small home she’d shared with her two sisters with a hole in her head and her brains splattered across the floor.

Curled under the protective stretch of her limp arms, had been her two sisters, both bearing matching bullet wounds to their skulls.

Kizuki, most likely. They were the only ones brave enough to target someone as high ranked as Kanae.

Their blood had still been fresh, and the stench of decay and rot hadn’t yet set in, which only told them that the girls had been held for several days, forced to endure unknown horrors at the hands of their murderers.

He hadn’t been particularly close with the woman, but as his rank equal, she’d had his respect. But now she and her adolescent sisters were nothing more than smears of brain matter and skull fragments to be scraped off the linoleum of their kitchen floor and quietly buried. Forgotten.

The hours passed by in a blur once Kocho’s death was called into the higher-ups, and Sanemi didn’t remember cleaning up the scene anymore than he remembered the solitary trek back. His mind and his body disconnected, and he only snapped back to reality when he realized he was standing in front of your apartment, unsure of how or when he’d begun walking in its direction.

He knew he should turn around and go home; there was nothing you could do for him right then, he shouldn’t bother you —

His fist was pounding on your door before he could think better of it.

Despite the late hour, you’d greeted him with a broad smile and a shy hi. Your hair had been damp, and he could smell the floral sweetness of your shampoo still mixed with the steam from your shower as it spilled into the hall.

Safe; you were safe.

Your door had still been hanging wide open as Sanemi surged forward, trapping your face in his hands to crash his lips down against yours, his kiss heavy and hot.

You’d broken away long enough to ask, “S-Sanemi — what —?”

“Shut up,” he’d snarled, slanting his mouth back over yours, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip. He’d half expected you to shove him away, perhaps to even aim a knee right at his crotch, yet you’d only buried your fingers in his hair and tugged him closer.

He backed you up against the wall opposite of your entryway, though he’d moved his hand to cup the back of your head to keep it from banging against the exposed brick.

You moaned into the kiss and Sanemi lost whatever shred of sense he’d managed to cling onto. His tongue swept along your bottom lip, and the hand cupping the back of your head loosely pulled at your hair, tugging your head to the side and signaling you to open up — to let him in.

And you did. And the first brush of his tongue against yours as he licked into your mouth ignited an inferno within him that he did not know how to tame.

His hands pushed under your sweatshirt, seeking out the comforting warmth of your skin. Higher and higher they rose, until they came to rest against your ribs, and Sanemi realized you were bare — completely bare — beneath your hoodie.

That you’d allowed him to toe so dangerously close to a line neither of you could cross had clouded every bit of his judgment. The thought that he’d only have to move his hands mere centimeters to touch you in a way no other had before had sent him reeling, and his hips were beyond his control when they pinned yours against the wall and ground into you.

But your single gasp into his mouth broke the spell, and with more regret than Sanemi knew he should feel, he broke away, leaving you both breathless and panting.

Without a word, he’d turned around and stalked right back out of your apartment, closing your door firmly behind him.

He’d sent a text only a few minutes later — a single, ominous reminder to you to lock your door, deadbolt and all.

He hadn’t the stomach to explain his cryptic warning; not as the sight of Kocho remained burned into his retinas.

So, yes, he’s blurred a few lines when it comes to you. But those had only been kisses; heavy touching aside, he’d never allowed himself to go further than that.

No matter how much he wanted to.

And it’s because he knows he can’t cross this last line — can’t open you up to risk more than he already has, that he meets your expectant stare with a rueful smile.

“You’re better off asking someone else, Princess. You don’t want to get tangled up with someone like me.”

Never mind that you’re already tangled up with him — but he’s managed to uphold this last boundary, and Sanemi has convinced himself that as long as it remains in place, he can’t ruin you the way Kocho and her young sisters were ruined.

“I don’t want to ask someone else,” you fold your arms across your chest and cock your hip out, defiant. Normally, Sanemi finds your stubbornness endearing, if not adorable, but not now; not when you should know better.

A low growl of your name is his warning. “You don’t know what you’re asking —“

“It’s you I want. I don’t care what the rumors say, I don’t care what anyone thinks — including you.”

The sincerity in your eyes nearly scalds him. “And I am not asking as a friend. You and I both know this is more than that.”

He wants to throttle you. Not literally of course, he could never — but he wants to shake the sense you’re so clearly lacking back into you until you see; until you understand.

Of course he wants you. He has wanted you for months — so much so, he hardly can focus on anything else. And he’s pent up. He hasn’t had the stomach to fuck anyone else. Not since he began falling asleep and waking up to thoughts of you and your touch, of how you might look under or above him, wanton and desperate. Or how you might feel in his arms; on his tongue.

Really, it’s been quite a blow to his rather wild reputation throughout the Silo. But God knows he has tried to fill the you-shaped void in his heart, but nothing — no one — has come close.

More than anything, he wants you to be his, and for him to be yours. He longs to be the Sanemi who takes you out on dates, who kisses you freely without the compulsive need to check over his shoulder, to make sure there aren’t any enemies watching and plotting to strike him right where he’s weak. He wants to be the Sanemi you come home to after a long day at the bookstore. The one with whom you plan a future, utterly and completely yours.

But he can never be just Sanemi. He is nothing more than the property of the very organization he’s sworn allegiance to; the group whose brand he bears on his skin.

He is not good. He is a curse that will infect you, a poison to your life.

He will rot you from the inside, out.

His friendship with you is selfish. He knows that — he’s always known that, and yet he did not stop. It is selfish because he deluded himself into believing he could actually be someone else when he was with you. Someone worth befriending; perhaps someone worth a little more.

You were right to call him a thief, that day. All he does is take your time and affection when he knows damn well he won’t give you anything in return, no matter how he wishes he could.

Sanemi won’t label that thing he holds deep inside his heart which is formed in the shape of your name; not when it could so easily doom you both. But he knows his feelings for you are dangerous, and he cannot allow you to sniff them out.

Because if he does, then this only ends one or two ways: either he lets you in only for you to abandon him once you realize the truth of what he is, or you’re used as a weapon against him.

In either event, he loses you. So it is better to cut this off now, to force you away before either of you become more invested than you already are.

He will not hurt you, but neither will he allow himself to be hurt by you.

You take a step toward him, and the soft whisper of his name sounds like a holy prayer on your lips and that’s how he knows this is wrong.

Your obstinate refusal to recognize him for what he is is a needle digging into his skin, one that whittles away at every wall he has managed to build around his heart, that damnable, soft, dangerous thing that he will not allow you to find; he cannot.

You’re confusing your roles. He is the vulture and you are his prey, not the other way around. he is not here to give. He is here only to take, and you will let him and then he will leave.

And he will not be the carcass you pick clean only to discard once you’ve had your fill.

(A lie, but it’s one Sanemi almost believes. Almost.)

But Sanemi knows you; he knows you better than he knows anything else. You are a constant he has become far too dependent upon, and you are precious — far too precious to him to continue to indulging.

He knows you are too good, too loyal in your feelings to forget about him, even if he disappeared from your life entirely.

A clean break. it is the only thing that will force you to forget him and move on, find another, someone good and whole and not a broken, misshapen thing like him.

He will show you who he really is. He will show you that he could never be just Sanemi, and he sure as hell can’t ever be yours.

Better; you deserve better, so he will become worse.

He advances on you, his step heavy and imposing, and you have enough sense to scurry back from him. But he is too quick and soon he has you caged against the wall of your studio, literally backed into a corner.

“You want me?” He is scathing and he loathes himself for it, but he can’t stop. Not when he’s desperate to save you from the blight of himself.

You shouldn’t; you can’t.

But you nod, damn you. Wide-eyed, you nod and he resents the certainty reflected in your gaze.

His mouth twists into a cruel sneer. “You want to say you’ve had a taste of the lowlife, huh?“

Your eyebrows knit together. “Sanemi, that’s not —“

But he can’t stop his venom. “Bragging rights, that’s all you’re after, right? You want to be like one of the characters in your stories — the good girl who makes an honest man outta the good-for-nothing villain.”

“Stop it,” you bite, and your eyes harden. “You’re acting like an asshole.”

You’re angry. Good. Sanemi knows how to deal in anger.

“Hate to break it to ya, sweetheart, but I’m not acting like an asshole. I am one.”

Your hackles raise, and you step away from the wall and toward him, bold in your fury. “I know you want to believe you are, but you’re not —“

Sanemi’s hand shoots out to grab a fistful of your hair. “Is that so?” You yelp as he wrenches your head back, your neck straining. “Then maybe I oughta bend you over and fuck you like I would any other cheap whore. Then you can tell me what you think I am.”

Your eyes water as the grip in your hair tightens.

Good, he thinks savagely. Let you see the monster he truly was, let you know he was his bastard father’s son, and that he’d be no different, no different at all. He’s a brute, and you don’t want that, you don’t want him —

“You can do whatever it is you want,” you manage, you throat tight. And Sanemi’s eyes blow wide at the soft, watery smile that forms on your lips despite the tears that escape the corners of your eyes. “Do to me what you like; I don’t mind, as long as it’s you.”

All at once, his ire with you and your bewildering devotion to him melts away, leaving nothing behind but a deep well of guilt, bitter and acerbic.

It isn’t that you think he might take you forcefully and harshly; after all, he’s only shown you he’s entirely capable of doing so.

It’s that you would let him. Without a shred of doubt, he knows you would offer yourself to him to use however he wants, and that you’d do it with a smile not unlike the one you’re wearing right now, soft and earnest.

Fuck, you just did.

And it’s that realization that has Sanemi’s hand loosening from your hair, his eyes softening. An errant tear escapes down your cheek and he moves to brush it away, but you close your eyes the moment you spy his knuckle nearing your face.

You do not flinch, but you are steeling yourself in anticipation of expected cruelty, and the front he’s put forth crumbles to dust.

He is a monster, but not for the reasons he’s used to justify this ugly display of his. He’s a monster because he has made you believe that this treatment is acceptable — an unavoidable cost of intimacy, no matter how fleeting.

Worse, he’s done the one thing he’d sworn never to do to any woman, let alone someone as good and as dear as you.

He’d only wanted to disgust you; enrage you, so that you would kick him out of both your apartment and your life, right out on his sorry ass like he deserved.

But this is worse. He has frightened you.

He recoils from you like a kicked dog. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He stands awkwardly as you stare at him, wide-eyed and uncertain, and each second that ticks silently by only amplifies the oily well of guilt in his stomach.

He clears his throat. “I’ll go,” he says roughly, too ashamed to meet your eyes. “‘M sorry, I didn’t —“

Your hand grabs his bicep, anchoring him in place. “I want you to stay.”

“You don’t owe me anything —“

“It’s not about owing you,” you interject, lifting your hands to take his face between your palms. “I want you. I want this.”

You prove your point by taking his hand and guiding it to your waist. You hold it there, mouth set in a determined line as you inch closer to him.

“You deserve someone else,” Sanemi can’t stop the admission from rolling off his tongue. “Better.”

But you’re already shaking your head, as though you somehow know different. “There is no one better; I only want you.”

Idiot, he thinks as you rise up on your tiptoes, your arms winding around his shoulders as the distance between your bodies grows narrower. You’re an idiot.

You can’t possibly believe he’s as good as it gets. He’s used you as a distraction this whole time, a chance to forget the things he’s done and what he’ll be required to do in the future. Surely, you must know that.

He will hurt you; it’s in his nature. It’s unavoidable. He can’t be what you deserve.

But then your lips brush gently against his and the last of his resolve crumbles.

Sanemi melts into your kiss. He brings one hand to cradle the side of your face as the one braced against your waist shorts, until he wraps his arms around you and tugs you closer to him.

This kiss is gentle in every way the last was not. Sanemi’s lips are soft moving against yours, his hands almost hesitant in how they hold you. For a moment, he imagines himself not as the selfish, hard brute he knows he is, but instead as the gentle, giving lover he wants so desperately to be. One who is worthy of someone as kind and vibrant as you, and not the trash you’d be better off leaving out on the street.

The tentativeness with which he kisses you tempers some as his tongue flicks out against your bottom lip. You answer his silent request with enthusiasm, your fingers burying themselves in his hair as you haul yourself closer. The moment Sanemi’s tongue sweeps into your waiting mouth, you buckle against him with the sweetest sigh he’s ever heard. One of pure relief, as though you’d been burning and he was your balm.

Ironic, considering he’s only adding gasoline to this fire between you.

But there’s nothing he can do now except allow the flames to consume you both.

Soon, the shy curiosity with which he explores your mouth gives way to a mutual hunger, evident by how he feels as though he’s boiling alive while you gasp and sigh into him, your fingers tugging pleadingly at his hair.

You want more, and he needs you, too.

His nose nuzzles against yours as he bends down, his hands running along the bare expanse of your legs. The ground beneath your feet disappears as Sanemi gathers you up easily into his arms.

One of your arms is looped around his neck while your other hand cups his face, turning it toward yours as he carries you to your bed. Your thumb smooths absently over the scar that cuts across his cheek and then your lips seek out his once more. His kiss is as gentle as the hand squeezing your waist, his fingers slotting into the gap between your sweatshirt and the top of your sleep shorts, stroking your skin.

He lays you out upon your mattress, grateful you’d at least purchased a full bed rather than some shitty twin. Your hands untangle themselves from his hair and instead seek out the waistband of your sleep shorts, but Sanemi covers them with his, halting you.

“Don’t,” he murmurs between quick, messy kisses. “Let me — please.”

Before you can respond, Sanemi sits back and grabs a fistful of his own shirt, yanking it over his head.

Your pupils blow wide at the sight of him and he feels himself hesitate. Sanemi has always felt an easy self confidence when it came to stripping in front of his partners for the night. He’d always been quite proud of his physique, relying on his considerable muscles to mask his deep loathing of his scars.

But in front of you, all sense of self-assuredness goes flying out the window, and suddenly he feels too exposed. His eyes drop to scour the planes of his chest — have his scars always been this prominent? This thick?

“Holy shit,” your soft sigh snaps his attention away from the howling inside his head. For one, petrifying moment, he thinks that you are as disgusted with his body as he is, but then he sees the pink flush staining your cheeks.

Your eyes roam hungrily over him and your tongue darts out to wet your lips. You meet his gaze and your pupils are blown wide with desire — rich, hot need for him.

Your voice is little more than a sultry whisper. “Come here.”

He moves eagerly to cover your body with his, his hair rumpled and his eyes bright as his lips press hurriedly against yours. Your hands smooth over his pectorals and tease down his abdomen until he’s panting, but the moment your nails rake along the skin on either side of his navel, Sanemi moans.

More. He needs more.

He hauls you up from the bed, straddling you across his lap, his hands notched behind your knees as they press into the mattress. You reconnect your lips in a heated kiss, one hand playing with the ends of his snowy hair, the other dropping down his back, settling over the brand seared between his shoulder blades. Covering it.

Yes, he thinks as he nips your bottom lip, urging your mouth to open so he can slide his tongue in to dance with yours. Yes, this is fitting. Because in his ideal world, his life with you would come before any other — including his with the Corps.

Sanemi’s lips begin trailing hotly down your jaw, pausing when he reaches your neck. He finds a particularly sensitive spot with a nip of his teeth that he soothes with his tongue, and he hums in approval at the faint, breathy whimpers that squeak past your lips as you tilt your head, offering more of yourself to him.

The ache burgeoning in his groin in response to your display is enough to drive him insane; he has never wanted anything in his life as badly as he wants this — you.

As his mouth continues its heated path, his hands find the hem of your hoodie. With a gentleness that surprises even him, Sanemi begins charting your skin with his fingers. With every new plane of your body he explores, he pushes your sweatshirt up, up, up, until he guides it over your head.

He tosses it to the side, not caring for where it lands. His attention is focused solely on you as you fall back against your bed, now bare from the waist up.

“Beautiful,” he marvels, eyes running over the slope of your shoulder and tracing the curve of your breasts. “So fuckin’ beautiful.”

He savors every hitched breath, every chill that ripples over your skin as he explores your body with his mouth and hands. Over the years, Sanemi has become well acquainted with the magic of the female body. He’s always liked how soft women were compared to him. He isn’t a picky man; he’ll celebrate them all, regardless of their shape or size.

But you? Celebration isn’t enough; you deserve nothing less than outright worship.

“You feel so damn good,” he mutters against your breast before closing his lips over your nipple and sucking hard. You bow off the bed with a keening moan that gutters out into something more ragged as his hand covers the other, pinching and rolling your stiffened bud between his fingers.

He could spend all night like this, lavishing your soft mounds with his mouth. But Sanemi knows that won’t be enough to satisfy the hunger gnawing at both of you, so with a tinge of regret, he forces himself to move on, descending your body in alternating kisses and nips.

He reaches the waistband of your shorts and his eyes flash to yours as he tugs on it with his teeth. The hot exhale of his breath below your navel sends goosebumps across your skin. Sanemi’s fingers inch below the hem of your shorts until he loops his hands around the waistband, and he yanks them down your legs in a single, fluid motion.

His eyes rake down your body, taking in every beautiful inch. A blush forms on his cheeks as he realizes all that separates you from him is your simple pair of black underwear.

He sits back, eager to join your near-nudity. His hands are quick, if not a little clumsy, as he finds his belt buckle. The instant the metal clicks and the leather around his hips loosens, Sanemi shoves off his pants, eagerly kicking them off your bed until he is left in nothing but his briefs.

Your eyes fall to where the evidence of his desire protrudes stiffly from between his legs. Sanemi watches your throat pulse as you try to stifle your small gulp, your thighs tensing beneath him in an effort to press together.

He can sense your nerves; can see by the way your eyes dart anxiously between his and the rigid tent in his briefs.

With a gentle smile, Sanemi leans in and soothes your unease with his lips. “We’ll take it as slow as you want. I’m not in any rush.”

“N-now?” You murmur between kisses, and he nearly seizes at the hesitant, questioning brush of your fingers against the underside of his shaft.

“Not yet,” he groans against your mouth. “I gotta make sure you’re ready first.”

“I am ready -“

“Not like that,” he cuts off your protest by ghosting his fingers up the covered seam of you. Sanemi circles his finger around where he thinks your clit is, and he smirks when your head tips back against your pillow, your mouth widening in a silent o.

“Found you,” he croons, repeating the movement again until your legs begin to twitch beneath him.

He makes quick work of your underwear, tossing them over the side of your bed without much thought. The sight of you bare beneath him nearly stops his heart dead in his chest. His eyes drop to the neat thatch of curls resting at the apex of your thighs, and his mouth waters.

You blush under the intensity of his appreciative stare, and your legs twitch, as though you mean to close them.

A hand sliding between your thighs restrains you from doing so. “Uh-uh,” he tuts. “Can’t hide from me now, sweetheart’.”

He smooths his hand down the length of your leg until it hovers just outside where he’s most eager to explore. The heat radiating from sends his pulse skyrocketing.

One, tentative finger circles your entrance, testing. Sanemi leans in to capture your lips with his as he pushes in, swallowing your soft gasp with his tongue that he slides into your parted mouth.

A moan vibrates in his chest in time with a faint whimper that sounds in the back of your throat as Sanemi begins exploring you. You’re tight; almost impossibly so, clenching and pulsing around the single finger he gradually sinks inside you, pushing deeper with every gentle pump of his hand.

The thought of your tight, wet heat constricting around the aching length of him just as you were around his finger makes him dizzy with want.

He won’t go down on you, he decides. Not tonight. Not when he’s throbbing this badly after just a couple of fingers; not when your breasts are so plush and soft pressed against his chest where you’re already arcing up into him, sending his mind wild with thoughts of how you’ll move under him; how you’ll moan.

His lips are hot against your neck, trailing down past your collarbone. Left behind are a series of purplish-maroon whorls blooming beneath his mouth, your skin quickly becoming a tapestry for him to display how badly he wants this. You.

You cling to him, one hand buried in his hair, pulling and tugging at him as the other clutches wildly at his shoulder, your fingers digging hard into his muscles. Your teeth are buried into your bottom lip in an effort to stifle your whimpers, but a needy whine slips out as Sanemi sucks one, soft breast into his mouth, his tongue flicking out across your pert nipple.

Another finger slides into your entrance as his thumb works your clit, and before long, you’re vibrating beneath him, unrestrained in how you moan and cry out for him so beautifully.

“Sanemi! I think — oh, I think I’m -“ but then he crooks his fingers, brushing against a rough spot deep within you that makes you writhe. You thrash back hard against the bed, your hips grinding against his hand with abandon.

He smothers a curse into your skin. You’re close and he knows it; can feel it in the way your walls flutter and pulse around him. And as desperate as he is to study how you fall apart, it’s too soon.

“Not yet,” he pants against your breast, circling your nipple with his tongue before imparting a final nip at the soft flesh and drawing back.

Remorseful, he pulls his fingers away from you, leaving you panting and flushed under him. But the hot, searing flames of desire burning beneath his skin intensify still, as he takes your hand and guides it between your legs.

“There. Feel how wet you are?” His voice is husky with want. You peer up at him through heavily lidded eyes as you nod, a whimper vibrating in your throat as Sanemi grinds your hand against your sensitive flesh.

“For you,” your voice is syrupy and warm, and damn if Sanemi doesn’t feel like he could get drunk on it. “It’s all for you.”

His tone sharpens into something possessive; hungry. “That’s right,” and he pushes your hand firmly against your clit and rotates it, eliciting a deep moan from you. “Because you’re mine.“

It’s not fair. But he wants to pretend like it’s true, if only for a while.

Once your fingers are sufficiently shiny with your own wetness, he brings your hand to his mouth, his tongue peeking out from between his lips. Slowly and languidly, he drags it up the side of your digits, and his eyes burn into yours as he slides your fingers into his mouth and sucks them clean.

It takes everything in him not to moan at the sweet taste of you that floods his tongue.

He’d made the right decision in not going down on you. If he had, he’d never be able to pull away; not until his face had become so adorned with your essence that he could not comprehend anything that wasn’t you. Not until you were trembling under him and begging for a break.

The first time you cum will be on him; with him. So as much as it pains him, he resists your temptation.

But not before you know; not before you understand exactly how wild you drive him. How much you threaten his sanity.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasps as he pulls your hand away from his mouth. “Here.”

His hand his gentle but firm as he grips your chin, squeezing your jaw until your mouth parts. The question in your gaze dissolves, your eyes instead rolling back into your head, as Sanemi slides the two fingers he’d just had between your thighs, still covered in your wetness, past your lips.

“Go on,” he orders, his other hand brushing your hair from your face. “Taste how fuckin’ perfect you are.”

The moan that slips free from your lips is one he wishes he could bottle up as your tongue caresses his fingers, your cheeks hollowing so fucking perfectly around him as you dutifully clean yourself from him.

Fuck, you’re trying to kill him.

But some of the burning he feels ebbs as the sobering weight of what’s to come settles over him; the magnitude of what he is about to do. Because no matter what happens after, nothing between you will be the same. Whatever else you are after tonight — whether that’s something or nothing — you will never be just friends again.

Sanemi supposes the punishment fits his crime; this is what he gets for getting in too deep with you, even if it means losing you entirely.

He chases away those thoughts by running his hands down your sides before he pulls back, leaving you in favor of shucking his briefs down his thighs.

Finally bare, he’s quick to drape his body over yours once more, his hands smoothing up and down your sides, unable to quench his need to feel your skin against his. But a foreign uncertainty stills him, and his eyes flash to yours, hesitant.

“Are you sure?”

You answer only by reaching to grip the back of his neck, tugging him down to meet your lips, your kiss feverish and urgent.

He doesn’t have a condom but he’s in too deep now to stop. In a way, what is about to happen is new to him as well. He’s never fucked anyone raw before. No matter who he’d had in his bed, no matter how much they begged him or assured him they were on birth control, he’d always been sure to have protection on hand.

Children are a gift, but he’d be damned if anyone tried to come after him and demand he raise one in his fucked up world. Either Sanemi got out or he never became a parent; there was no middle ground.

But once again, he is blurring boundaries where you were concerned, and Sanemi doesn’t think he knows how to stop himself from having the full taste in the indulgence that was you.

“It might hurt a moment,” he admits against your mouth, his voice raspy. “But I promise I’ll be gentle — as gentle as I can.”

You stretch to kiss him again, your lips soft and warm and everything he loves. “I trust you.”

You shouldn’t, he wants to say. You shouldn’t, and you should run far away from this — from me.

But Sanemi knows you won’t just as much as he knows he doesn’t have it in him to try and chase you away, and so he only kisses you back, slow and indulgent.

He breaks away from you with a soft groan and sits up on his knees. His back straight, Sanemi’s hands curl around your hips and he tugs you forward until your backside is flush against his thighs.

The heat radiating from you pulls him in like a magnet as he lines the tip of his cock up with your entrance. A vein above his brow ticks, the only outward sign of the battle raging within him as his self restraint wars with his tantalizing urge to impale you on the thick, throbbing length of him, desperate for the sweet relief only your body can give.

Every inch of him trembles as Sanemi presses his hips forward. “Fuck,” he exhales shakily, pushing his tip past your entrance. “Fuck.”

His head falls back and the muscles in his throat strain. Some small, needy sound leaves him and the fingers on your hip tighten nearly to the point of pain.

The noise registers in the back of your mind, and vaguely, you recognize it as a whimper. You wonder whether he makes that sound for the others; somehow you doubt it, given that he does it again, only now in the shape of your name.

The rumors always said he never asked for names; he was a one-and-done kind of man. A great fuck, but not someone to go to if you were looking for comfort; softness.

Once again, Sanemi is nothing but a collection of contradictions, especially where you’re concerned.

Sanemi hisses as he slowly eases into you. Despite your wetness, you’re impossibly tight, and your body is a live wire hell bent on pushing out his intrusion.

With a deep groan, he falls forward, one arm shooting out to land near your head to catch himself before he can crash into you. His weight carefully braced above you, Sanemi shifts, widening the stance of his knees. Your legs slide up his waist, locking at your ankles at the base of his spine.

His cock is barely a quarter of the way inside your heat when he pulls out. A whine of protest mounts in your throat, but it quickly flickers out when he presses his leaking tip to your clit and grinds. A soft moan slips out of you when he repeats the movement again, and your thighs widen, your hips tilting up to allow him easier access.

Sanemi circles the head of his cock once more against your sensitive nub, coating himself in more of your sticky wetness, before he slides back into your entrance. This time, your body parts more easily around him, sucking him in rather than trying to squeeze him out.

“There you go, that’s it,” his breath is hot against your ear, his lips trailing silkily across your jaw. “That’s my girl.”

Halfway in, Sanemi brushes against that thin barrier that separates him from the rest of you, and he stills.

He pulls his head back from your neck, and moves his hand out from between your legs to cup your cheek.

“Ready?” His thumb strokes over your cheekbone, tender and soft.

There is a tightness building in your abdomen, a foreign pressure that isn’t entirely unwelcome, but neither is it wholly comfortable. You brace a hand at your side, balling your sheets into your fist as you steady yourself, flushed and panting beneath the scar speckled man holding rigidly still above you.

Your eyes flick up once, and you see the tightness in his jaw; the tremble in his limbs as he fights against the urge to relief the friction mounting where you are joined.

You swallow around the lump of anticipation lodged in your throat. Your breath is shaky, but at last, you manage a single “Please.”

With a groan, he grips himself around his base and slowly, he presses forward. There is a sharp prick that shoots deep in your lower abdomen as Sanemi surges past that thin inner wall.

You cannot stop your cry of discomfort from ringing out anymore than you can stop the surprised tears which escape the corners of your eyes as the sharp pain between your legs intensifies.

But then Sanemi’s lips are there, kissing away your tears, and the hand he’d used to guide himself into your body skims along the outside of your thigh, hiking your leg higher up his waist before it drops to rub gentle circles into your hip.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs between soothing caresses of his lips against your cheeks and across your eyelids. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He coos his string of apologies as his cock continues to push into you. On and on he sinks, his length endless, and you begin to think your body will split in two before you find the end of his.

Just before you reach your limit, Sanemi stills, fully embedded in your heat. He pants through gritted teeth, his jaw locked against the way you’re constricting around him so tightly it’s nearly painful.

It’s unreal; not only does Sanemi realize how much fucking better sex feels without the restriction of a condom, but he’s also bashed over the head with the realization that you were made for him. For nothing, no one has ever felt as incredible as you.

Nothing in his life has ever felt so right.

Sanemi has always been someone who fucks fast and hard. He’d had no objective other than to escape for a few, blissful moments in the body of another as he pretended not to feel the hollowness in his chest, or the throb of his own self-loathing.

With you, however, he wants nothing more than to relish every movement of your body against his, to savor your every gasp and sigh; to learn what makes you lose control.

You are no temporary distraction; he wants to know you.

He drops his forehead against yours and waits, allowing you to adjust to the intrusion of him.

He trails his lips across your collar bone and down to the twin swells of your breasts, sucking softly at your plush skin as you fidget and squirm beneath him. One broad hand skirts down the outside of your thigh until he finds your knee, and gently he guides your leg around his hips. The other he leaves relaxed against the bed, your foot resting somewhere against his calf.

When your eyes flutter open and find his, he knows you’re ready. So he moves his arm out from between your bodies and winds it instead around your waist, deepening the arch in your back until his chest is flush with yours.

His lips press to your forehead, a silent warning that he is about to move.

And then Sanemi begins molding your body to the shape of his.

He starts slow. He doesn’t withdraw far from you, instead focusing on rolling his hips against yours. Each churn of his groin pushes his cock deeper into your warmth, and soon, your timid whimpers melt into soft moans as your initial discomfort gives way to pleasure.

Encouraged by the way your body starts to relax in his embrace, Sanemi tests drawing his cock out a few inches before plunging back into you.

Before long, the room fills with the lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin, and Sanemi’s moans join yours as he rapidly becomes lost in the euphoria of your wet, tight heat.

One of your arms jumps to lock around his ribs, your nails sinking into his skin as you anchor yourself to him.

His hand snakes across the sheets in search of yours. When he finds it, fisted against your sheets, he pries your fingers loose, winding them with his and he wraps your arm around his shoulders.

“Tighter,” he gasps. “Hold me tighter. Please.”

Your fingers dig into the muscles of his back and Sanemi groans his approval.

And then he’s rolling to his side, pulling you along with him until you’re stretched out across the length of your mattress, chest to chest.

His hand grips under your thigh, tugging it over his hip as he rocks harder into you. “Talk to me, angel,” the hand under your thigh moves to splay across your rear, pushing and pulling your hips in time with his as he grinds. “Tell me how you feel — tell me what you want.”

You cry out, mournful, as Sanemi draws out his cock nearly to its tip before he plunges back into you.

The fullness you feel is overwhelming. You can’t stand that empty feeling, even for a moment. So you hitch your leg higher around his hip, and dig the heel of your foot into the firmness of his ass, limiting his movements.

“Closer!” You gasp. “I — I need you closer.”

He needs that too, he decides; craves it. He doesn’t want to feel any space between your bodies. He wants — he needs — to be so enraptured with you that there is no point in trying to separate. That way, he might get to keep you for just a little longer.

Sanemi’s hand massages your backside, his cock throbbing with every push into you. “Deeper,” he confirms between throaty groans. “You want me deeper?”

You bury your face into his shoulder. Your teeth sink into his skin and with a moan, you nod.

He can do that; is more than happy to, as a matter of fact.

So, with a faint snarl, Sanemi grips the fat of your ass and spreads you wide, and he begins thrusting, hard.

The new angle allows the tip of his cock to bump up against a sweet spot deep inside you. Sanemi’s eyes narrow at the way your head drops back, a loud cry tearing from your throat.

Determined to hit that point within you again and again, he shifts his hips under you while hiking your leg higher up his hip, his fingers digging into the curve of your ass.

It’s a success; soon, your wails echo throughout your studio, punctuated by every punishing slap of his skin against yours.

Really, he can’t give less of a damn at how thin your apartment walls are. The sounds pouring from your mouth are the prettiest fucking thing he’s ever heard.

Something hot and electric mounts quickly in your stomach with each of his frenetic movements. You’ve come before with your own hand, but this — this is something different. Something far more intense, something that threatens to rip you apart from your very sanity until you know nothing but him.

You try and tell him you’re losing control but all that comes out is a pitiful whimper.

But he knows; he knows exactly what you need.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here. I’ve got you.” And with that, Sanemi rolls you back underneath him, settling into the cradle of your thighs and pushing his cock faster and deeper into you. His arms gently unwind yours from his shoulders, and he brings them up over your head, one large hand pinning them down.

“I’ll take care of you, sweet girl,” he promises, and he weaves the fingers of the hand keeping you pressed against the mattress with your own. “Just keep your legs around me.”

Your thighs squeeze his waist in silent answer, your mind far too suspended in the throes of your pleasure to do anything else.

With his lips trailing along your neck leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses in its wake, his free hand slides between your sweat-slicked bodies. He wedges it between where his groin is pressed to yours, and he searches along your sensitive, swollen folds, seeking the spot between your thighs that made you tremble and whine for him earlier.

You jolt under him as his fingers find you again, that foreign, electric sensation sparking deep in your abdomen. “Sanemi —“

“It’s okay,” he murmurs sweetly, pressing down on your clit until you arch further into him with a gasp. “It’s gonna feel so good, baby, I promise. Just focus on me.”

Each rotation of his hand against your sensitive bead matched the deep, pointed roll of his groin, with Sanemi capping the end of every powerful thrust with alternating pulses of his thumb. The pressure he uses mounts with every churn of his hips, and the moan vibrating in your chest as another surge of sticky wetness gushes from your thighs is the sweetest sound he thinks he’s ever heard.

A broken chant of please please please stutters its way out of you, spurning him to go faster; hit deeper.

And Sanemi only knows how to oblige you.

“You’re doing so fucking good, sweetheart. Just keep letting me take care of you —- that’s it.” He curses as you clench down around him, crying out in approval at his praise. “Yeah, yeah. You’re my fuckin’ girl, aren’t you?”

A single wail of his name is your only response, but it’s enough of a confirmation to damn you both.

“You are,” he affirms, his voice taking on the timber of a growl. “Mine. You’re fuckin’ mine.”

His thrusts grow sloppier with every second, though each is punctuated by a silent, recurring chant of mine, mine, mine. Though your eyes are closed, Sanemi can spy a faint sliver of white peeking out from between your eyelids.

You’re close; he can feel it. And he knows, as the walls of your cunt flutter and tighten around him, that your climax will be his undoing.

The hands he has pinned against the mattress over your head flex as you twist and writhe beneath him. your head tosses from from side to side, and the vibrato of your cries rises octave by octave. Every muscle in your body is tense; you are a live wire thrumming with a need to come apart that he knows you do not fully understand.

Sanemi grunts as he fucks you harder into your bed, no longer concerned with keeping his weight off you. He will show you; he will show you how to shatter, and then he too, will break.

But he needs to see you, first.

“Look at me,” his voice beckons you back from the precipice of ruin. “Look at me, Y/N.”

Your eyes open to meet his and suddenly you’re right back at that edge, only this time, you’re falling freely over it, plummeting down a drop that has no end.

“S-Sanemi —!” It’s all you can manage before the knot steadily building in your stomach unravels. Your back arcs sharply away from your bed, and Sanemi ducks his head to smother his own cry against your breast as he takes its tip into his hot mouth.

Your hips jerk and twitch against his, your cunt seizing around him with force that threatens to squeeze the life out of him. Above you, your arms strain and pull against his grip as you writhe and sing for him.

“That’s it baby, that’s it,” Sanemi’s praise is muffled against your sternum, though it is strangled as he nears his own end. “Fuck!“

He’ll have to buy you the morning-after pill tomorrow, he realizes as you continue to come apart so beautifully on his cock, a soft chant of his name the only thing on your lips. He will not force you to bear the consequences of his own selfishness; he will not saddle you with his burden.

But he’s also not strong enough to pull out; not when your body feels like it was made for him, not when your sweet cunt is gripping him this hard, is this wet — all because of him.

He is selfish and he is weak; it’s a toxic combination, and yet he knows cannot stop.

Sanemi’s hips snap a final time against yours, pushing them up and away from the mattress, pressing deeper than he thought possible. His eyes roll back as his own orgasm rocks through him, powerful and blinding, and the growl that built in his throat melts into a strained groan.

He holds you in place, his cock pulsing in time with your cunt while the two of you ride out the waves of your climax together, his cum steadily filling you with his warmth. Your hands skirt down the length of his arms, blindly searching for his hips. When you find him, you pull and tug, a faint whine sounding from the back of your throat. Sanemi answers your plea with a broken moan of his own and he rocks against you, your hips circling with his until he finally lets you collapse against your mattress, limp-limbed and exhausted.

He follows you down, smothering you with his weight as he clings to you like a lifeline, his face buried in the crook of your neck.

“Fuck, you did so good, sweetheart. So fuckin’ good.” He moans into your ear before he pulls back, his eyes searching your face as he pants.

One hand cradles your jaw and his thumb strokes repeatedly over the flushed curve of your cheek. “You okay?”

You don’t answer right away, your eyes shut tight, and Sanemi feels panic bubble hot in his stomach. The hand cupping your face tightens with his worried call of your name, his fear rearing its ugly head, ready to rip him apart, to turn him into the horrid monster he’s always known he was —

“I love you,” and then you’re peering up at him, eyes round and shining with emotion he does not deserve to feel. “I love you, Sanemi.”

It would’ve hurt less if you’d shot him.

Whatever wall remained around his heart cracks and crumbles under the weight of your confession. Sanemi does not answer, cannot find the words to adequately capture the depth of his feelings.

Instead, he snatches you up into his arms, crushing your body against his.

He kisses your lips and then your cheek. One hand cups the back of your head, his fingers burying into your hair as he presses your face into his chest. His arms tremble as he holds you close, every hard ridge of him cradled against your soft curves. He feels your smile against his collarbone, and the way your fingers dance up and down his spine that makes him melt.

It hits him, then. You aren’t waiting for an answer — you said it only so he would know, and you’d not expected anything in return.

All you’d done was give while he took and took. Your body. Your love.

He doesn’t deserve any of it.

Whatever or whomever came after this would never compare to you. Truthfully, Sanemi doesn’t think it would be worth trying anything different. Everything now began and ended with you — including him.

He twists his head to kiss you again and again, your lips meeting his with a sleepy enthusiasm.

He pants as he breaks away. “‘M gonna pull out — might be uncomfortable for a second.”

You wince at the sudden stab of cold left behind by Sanemi’s retreating warmth. He shifts back onto his knees and slides his hands down your thighs, parting them.

A low whistle blows past his lips. “Damn, I made a mess outta you.”

For a moment, Sanemi can’t tear his eyes away from the sight between your legs; the sight of him trickling out you, staining the sheets below. But some of that hot, possessive pride that wells in his chest tempers at the small smear of blood staining your inner thigh.

His fingers massage your legs in silent apology. “Let me clean you up.”

Your hands shoot to grasp at his shoulders, a pleading whimper on your lips. “Don’t leave — not yet.” You bite your lip, your eyes wide and anxious. “Please, can you just hold me for a bit?”

Sanemi’s eyes soften and his heart throbs painfully in his chest. He can’t imagine leaving you; not now, not ever. No matter how stupid and selfish that makes him.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t know the source of your anxiety — or that you didn’t have reason for it. Sanemi isn’t known for lingering.

But this is different — you’re different. You’re not some temporary distraction. You’re everything. His everything.

“Shhh,” he maneuvers you easily atop him, settling you in against the length of his torso, his hands smoothing up and down the column of your spine. “I’m staying right here, sweet girl. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

He seals his promise with a gentle kiss against your forehead before laying his cheek against your temple, cradling you to his chest.

Finally, you relax against him, convinced. He lays with you for a long time after, one hand on the back of your head, his fingers rubbing against your scalp until you fall asleep on against him, safe and sound and warm.

Minutes pass, or maybe hours. But Sanemi’s head does not quiet, not even under the soothing sounds of your deep, slow breaths as you dream.

He must have lost his mind. There is no other explanation for the way he’s disregarded every rule, every boundary he’s ever made sense of, all in the name of you. In a single evening, you managed to obliterate every last defense, every barricade he’d safely cowered behind, and now that the castle has fallen, he isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to do with the rubble.

What he does know is that there’s no putting things back to how they were.

His eyes search your sleeping face because if you were able to make him question nearly everything that made sense in his life, then surely you must also have the answers he needs to re-strike balance in his tilted world. Maybe they lie among the lashes that tickle your cheek, or in the occasional twitch of your mouth between your deep inhales.

But Sanemi is only left feeling more confused the longer he watches you. Because, despite the way he feels vulnerable and exposed at how easily he has been stripped of his guard, he can’t quite bring himself to believe it was entirely your doing.

His eyes widen. There’s his answer.

Perhaps you are not trying to sink your nails into his flesh to peel it back, to demand he be stripped to the bone for you to inspect, to scrutinize and use as you please.

Perhaps that is what you’ve done to yourself, and you’re waiting to see if you will join you; to know if he can volunteer his vulnerability, rather than wait for someone to come and force it from him.

He cannot make any promises. He has spent so much of his life cowering behind the armor he crafted out of his scars and his sneers and barks that were always more ferocious than his bite, that he does not know how to take it off. He does not know how to navigate the world without its weight, both his safety net and his chain. And there is an understanding in your eyes that signals you know that, too.

But he can try.

He mouths I love you against your hairline — he does not voice it, not yet, though it’s what he feels. But your love is a compass that just might point him down the road the leads to a life he so desperately wants; to you.

And he’ll get there, maybe.

In time.

LIKES, REBLOGS, COMMENTS APPRECIATED!

[eskumii]

Can you pls do platonic yandere sanemi x demon child reader (that is also tanjiros and nezukos younger sibling to)

soft yandere!older brother figure!shinazugawa sanemi x child!demon!reader hcs [platonic]

TITLE: " TURBULENCE " — navi.

A/N: this contains huge manga spoilers in regards to sanemi's past/relationships!! also ,, ty for being patient annonie, if ur still there :') also i accidentally posted this b4 i finished it, so sorry if anyone saw that...

PAIRING: soft yandere!older brother figure!shinazugawa sanemi x child!demon!kamado!reader (platonic)

CHARACTERS: shinazugawa sanemi (21), reader (12), nezuko (14), tanjiro (16)

☆ sanemi hates demons.

☆ that much is clear from the spectacle he made of your older sister, nezuko, at the hashira's headquarters with that horrrible temper of his. needless to say, you don't like him at all and he clearly doesn't like you or your sister, either. it certainly doesn't help that master kagaya seems to have a sour sense of humor as you're now stuck with him as your babysitter.

☆ both tanjiro and nezuko vehemently object to master kagaya's orders. the servants of the residence had to literally rip you from the ironed grips of your older siblings, who were screaming bloody murder as if you'd be separated for the rest of eternity. they were certainly being a tad bit dramatic, but you'd be lying if you said you weren't just as upset.

☆ with the deal set in stone, however, sanemi drags you to his home as begrudgingly as humanly possible and condemns you to one of his spare bedrooms. apparently he lived alone (expected tbh) in a traditional style home, complete with the koi ponds and bamboo deer scares. it's nice, you'll give him that, but his nasty attitude doesn't seem to match the beauty of his residence.

☆ although your living conditions are less than ideal, you're old enough to know that staying under someone else's roof is almost never free. you try (keyword: try) to do what you can to help around the house but sanemi is constantly hollering at you to leave him alone or to not mess with his stuff.

☆ he insists you stay in your room and out of his way, but you still tail behind him from afar out of your debilitating boredom. if he notices, he says nothing, and simply ignores you as if you're not even there. at least when you were with tanjiro and nezuko there was always something to do—sanemi is so boring.

☆ sometimes sanemi gets really angry for seemingly no reason and at any given time. he'll storm outside and take it out on the poor practice dummies that litter his backyard, grunting in oblivious rage when he accidentally kicks one of their heads off. you're not sure what it is about you that makes him so angry; you've kind of already ruled it out as his perpetual state of being.

☆ and, well, sanemi doesn't... hate you. you remind him so much of his younger brother, genya, and most of his anger is only borne out of pain. as the eldest of the family he once knew, it's not like the instincts he acquired to take care of his siblings just went away. you simply remind him of who he used to be and the weaknesses that tore his family apart make him inexplicably angry.

☆ considering your resemblance to his late younger siblings (and genya), sanemi does get protective over you in his own ways. sometimes you meddle too close to the windows during the day, so he'll yell at you to move. or sometimes when you're scarfing down the raw meat he gives you, he yells at you to slow down lest you choke.

☆ it may seem like he's not paying attention to you at all, but he's always peeking at you with watchful eyes. he's notices that you like to watch him train but can't be out in the sun, so he hung up a blanket in the branches of a nearby tree without saying a word to you. you smile knowing that you're growing on him.

☆ during the evening, sanemi often catches you out in the garden picking flowers. usually he'd shrug his shoulders and turn his nose up, but he felt compelled to see what you were doing out there all the time. plus, he couldn't have you wandering out beyond the walls.

☆ "what're you doin', kid?" sanemi's booming voice scares you and you drop your basket of colorful flowers on the ground with a squeak. you scramble to gather them again and you're surprised to see a pair of scarred hands helping out, too.

☆ "i'm gonna make flower crowns for when tanjiro and nezuko get back." you answer once all the flowers are back in the basket. sanemi snorts. "flower crowns?"

☆ you nod. "yup! here, i'll show you how to make one." sanemi has zero time to refuse as you grab his hand and pull him down onto the grass with you. you take a length of string that you had stolen from one of his many rooms of junk and began to attach the flowers to it with a clever weaving pattern.

☆ sanemi is fuming in embarrassment as you eagerly teach him how to make a stupid flower crown. this is ridiculous. but why can't he just get up and leave? when you hand him the string of flowers to try it out for himself, your childish giggling is contagious as he fumbles clumsily and accidentally crushes the delicate stem in his callous grip.

☆ in the end, sanemi finds himself enjoying making flower crowns with you, but he threatens you violently with a ruffle of your hair should you tell anyone about it. he would never admit it but as he looks at the crudely made flower crown that you helped him with, he feels a distantly familiar feeling of warmth igniting in his heart again.

☆ the rest of the days you spend with sanemi begin to feel more pleasant than it did initially. sanemi no longer leaves you to your own devices, but instead tries to find things for you to do during the day when you can't go outside. he'll bring you puzzles and teach you how to read with children's folktales written on tarnished scrolls that he said he kept from his old family home.

☆ you're not sure what happened, but sanemi dotes on you now. once you had tripped and split your finger open, and sanemi rushed to your side like it had been your head. it healed within a few seconds, but sanemi still scolded you for walking around unsupervised.

☆ and when you get feverish due to your refusal of eating human flesh, which is often, sanemi tarries by your side day and night in order to make sure you're as comfortable as can be. cold, damp towels on your forehead, fresh raw meat at your bedside, and anything else you want, he gets for you. the worry etched into the lines of his forehead shows how much he cares about you.

☆ by the time tanjiro and nezuko return from their mission to collect you, sanemi doesn't even want to let you go. in fact, you've both grown attached to each other and while you're overjoyed to see your siblings again, sanemi has also become something like an older brother to you. you've grown to love the big residence and his presence.

☆ you're in tears as sanemi pats your head and smiles crookedly at you for what feels like the last time. you beg tanjiro to let you stay longer but he firmly tells you no. sanemi makes tanjiro promise that he'll take you to visit him or else he'll kill him (he's serious).

☆ when you inevitably depart from sanemi (tanjiro has to pry you away from him), he feels about as lonely as the day is long. the residence feels too big without you following behind him like his own shadow, and every time he turns a corner he half-expects to find you doing something to cause trouble.

☆ sanemi takes the flower crown you both made and seals it in a glass jar. he hopes that you'll visit again before it withers, or else he might just go out and find you himself.

[iron-embers]

After a month of chipping away at this, it was high time I did some sick rendering for the Demon slayer OCs instead of flats. Here we have the Dynamic Duo, Saigo Masashi the Fang Hashira, and Isane Kuratetsu the Iron Hashira! Both with their vastly different breathing forms, both self developed and formidable in their own way! If their Silver eyes look similar, that was on purpose as they are actually second cousins, both inheriting the Igarashi line of Silver eyes. Had so much fun doing this piece, and if you guys have any questions about Isane feel free to ask! If about Saigo, go and ask @taintedbloodlinesburden about him! Love these two to bits, and stay tuned for more!

Isane Kuratetsu belongs to me

Saigo Masashi belongs to @taintedbloodlinesburden

[beddybites]

Ok but Babybu trying to cuddle with Gyomei only to throw a fit because he didn’t shave and his stubble keeps scratching her face ;-;

anon dont do this to me im going to start crying hysterically

i wanted to draw this but my wrist is killing me D: i will bookmark it for later. i am going to cry. ironically i was just talking about gyomei stubble. actually

ranking baby hashira on how likely they are to respond to the stubble

muichiro

does not care at all

he just wants to snuggle w his dad

if his stubble pokes at him he just adjusts his head accordingly and finds a new spot

hes like a kitten

2. mitsuri

i genuinely doubt she would really care

if anything she would play with it and paw at his stubble and say its like petting a kitty cat

which in turn would make gyomei cry. Kitty cats

3. giyuu

people will probably argue with me over this but i dont think he really cares that much about stubble

urokodaki had some stubble so i imagine if anything its comforting

4. kyojuro

i imagine shinjuro had a stubble so similar to mitsuri he doesnt mind it and likes to pet at it

he wonders if he too can grow facial hair some day

5. tengen

it bothers him a little bit

he would just babble some gibberish about giving gyomei a make over

do not let a baby shave a blind man

6. sanemi

he would just pull at the facial hair and laugh like a maniac

insert that one stitch clip of him laughing maniacally

7. obanai

it does bother him just because he has no idea what the hell that is

he doesnt like the feeling of being poked at and i imagine his skin is rlly sensitive so the stubble makes him a little fussy

but he does adjust eventually, mostly because of sheer determination for papa gyomei cuddles

8. shinobu

throws a fit

she HATES the facial hair

starts off frustrated but eventually gets rlly worked up and distraught and starts crying and crying ): she just wants hugs from her dad

gyomei immediately asks amane if she can help him shave

he does not want his baby daughter to cry because of him

they cuddle all night after that

[ponderingmoonlight]

Meeting Sabito again after you thought he died

Pairing: Sabito x fem!reader

Word Count: 4k

Synopsis: You were meant for each other, the most promising upbringings of the demon slayer corps. Everyone knew it, no one ever doubted you'd make it back from the final selection. But when Sabito lost his life during this cursed night, you left without ever returning. Little do you know that you are still meant for each other, that you will find your way back together...

Warnings: This is huge hurt to comfort y'all, I just had to write for him because LOOK AT HIM, this is loooong so get seated

You cry out in sheer frustration, face covered in mud like an accessory by this point.

It’s like a game to him. Over and over, he hits you with his bare hands, sweeps you off your feet, forces your frame to the ground.

“You’re still not strong enough, (y/n).”

And even though you want to hate that skilled boy, you can’t help but get lost in his lavender eyes all over again. 

“Someday I will”, you press out, your lungs still refusing their service while you struggle to breathe.

“Don’t be so hard on her”, Giyu comments from behind, his eyes filled with pity.

“No”, you blurt out, your body finding its way back on your feet on its own.

“Hit me again. Let me try again.”

“I will try until I’m better than you, Sabito.”

And oh you tried.

And tried.

And tried.

But in the end, it was still him who had to save you.

You find yourself right in that cursed forest. The night air was sharp, thick with the scent of damp earth and iron. Your limbs ached, screaming with exhaustion, yet you forced yourself to move. The final selection had become a nightmare, one you weren’t sure you’d wake from. No amount of hard training could’ve prepared you for this. Not even Sabito’s relentless training.

And then, it happened.

You had barely turned when the massive hand of a demon swung toward you, claws glinting under the moonlight. Time slowed, your breath caught in your throat, and fear wrapped around your body like chains.

But you never felt the impact. You never felt death crawling up your spine.

Instead, a blur of orange and white struck with furious speed, knocking you out of harm’s way.

“Sabito-!” you gasped, the world spinning as your back hit the ground.

He stood before you, blade already stained crimson, eyes burning with something beyond fury - something like desperation. The demon roared, lunging again, but Sabito was faster. His sword carved through flesh, a deadly dance of skill and strength. For a moment, you thought he would win.

Then, a second demon emerged from the shadows.

You saw it too late.

“Sabito, behind you-!”

His eyes widened, his body twisted. But he wasn’t fast enough. The demon’s claws sank deep into his side, ripping through fabric and flesh. Blood splattered the ground. Your breath hitched.

“No—no, no, no—!”

Sabito gritted his teeth, pushing himself forward despite the wound, despite the odds. With one final, desperate strike, he beheaded the demon before collapsing to his knees.

Your body moved before you could think. You crawled to his side, hands pressing against the wound, trembling.

“Stay awake. Please, you have to stay awake-”

He smiled, just barely.

“Told you… you weren’t strong enough yet.”

“Shut up,” you choked, vision blurred by tears.

“You can’t…you can’t leave me, Sabito.”

His fingers brushed against yours, weak but warm.

“You’ll be fine… You’ll be strong, (y/n). Stronger than me. Promise me you’ll become a demon slayer, maybe even a hashira. Promise me to look after the others. Promise that you…that you won’t forget me. I…you…you were always…”

“Sabito-”

His eyelids fluttered. His breathing slowed. And then-

Darkness. The numb feeling of brisk grabbed onto your body, dragged you with it.

When you woke up, you were in the care of the Ubuyashiki estate. The pain in your body was nothing compared to the ache in your chest. The final selection, that fight…Sabito.

Sabito. He died right in front of your eyes. Was this just a dream? Nothing but a nightmare? No, it can’t be. You know the sight of empty eyes all too well to mistake it. He died. Sabito died in order to save you.

You barely registered the gentle voices around you until Giyu stepped forward, his expression unreadable.

“Sabito…?”

Your voice was hoarse, fragile.

The silence was unbearable.

Then, Giyu shook his head.

No.

Your heart shattered.

A choked sob tore from your throat. You gripped the fabric of your uniform, gasping for breath, drowning in the weight of his absence. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to scold you for being reckless. He was supposed to live.

But he was gone.

You pressed a hand against your mouth, the realization crashing over you in waves.

You loved him.

You loved him, and you never got to tell him.

And now, you never would.

Tears streamed down your face as your body trembled, the grief consuming you whole.

But even through the heartbreak, you heard his voice echo in your mind:

“You’ll be strong, (y/n). Stronger than me.”

Your lungs desperately aching for air forces your eyes open, your upper body out of your futon. Your shaky hands grab your hair, eyes scanning around the simple room.

Was it…?

“Just a dream”, you mumble to yourself.

It was just a dream. Like the countless times before, like almost every night.

You get on your wobbly feet, gazing at yourself in the mirror. Even 5 years later, his lavender eyes haunt you each and every night. That look on his face before you passed out, how he saved you from certain death so that you could live.

You never deserved this second chance, never wanted to take his life for your own. Did he regret saving you back then? Wouldn’t it be better if you died instead of him? Sabito was expected to be the following water hashira, a well-praised candidate for the highest-ranked demon slayer.

But he saved you. You, nothing but an average slayer. You, the coward who ran away from her old life in order to forget. You, who now lived in this remote area on her own. Far away from the pillars, far away from the life you used to know. All alone, with the mission to save as many lives as possible on your own.

No one will die again while trying to save you.

Rough knocking on your front door rips you out of your dreams immediately. Usually, your days are quite peaceful with people calling for your help during the night. It’s not a secret that you are a demon slayer, even though this technically isn’t a real job accepted by the country. But here in a remote village? Every single soul knows about the dangers that lie in the shelter of the night.

Your feet carry you to the front door on their own.

“(Y/N)-SAMA!”

“Please call me by my name. I’m (y/n), there is no need for that title my love”, you reply gently.

But something isn’t right. The girl with the usual so bright smile and eyes full of love now looks up at you with dread filling her orbs, her shaky hands holding onto your kimono for what feels like dear life.

Your heart drops to the floor. This is everything but a good sign.

“Tell me how I can help.”

Multiple attacks on mine workers in a forest one day march away from their village. A lot of the men work there, including her father. All of them went missing, some of their body parts were found during a search. There are no wild animals around in this area, no bears that would do something like this.

“A demon”, you mutter to yourself.

Another demon who kills innocent citizens. Other lives, forever vanished into thin air. Just like his.

“I will leave immediately.”

“Alone? But what if you get killed? What if I’ll lose you as well?”

Her little hands claw into your kimono, unwilling to let you go.

“It’s an honour to risk my life in order to safe yours. I promise I’ll do everything I can to save everyone, including myself. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

Oh, what a great liar you are. Truth is, you never know if the next mission will be your last. After all, you left training when you were 13 with your hands shaking every time you lifted your katana. You aren’t skilled at all compared to the great hashira.

And yet, it’s your destiny to carry on his will, to fight until the day you die.

Your feet move on their own. Through the lonely village, far away from the place you called home for over 5 years by now. You never moved away further than a few hours, always close in order to protect them at all costs. Those people who welcomed you in their middle when you had nowhere else to go, those people who greeted you with a gentle smile and healed your heart bit by bit. You won’t let them down, won’t let this uneasy feeling settled in your bones overtake you. After all, this is the only thing that keeps you from drowning in his loss. After all, this is what keeps you going.

You feel their presence before you’re even able to see them. That unsettling, gut-wrenching presence. There’s not only one of them. No, their foul smell follows you like the plague, seems to devour you whole.

“HELP!”

Yet, you follow the desperate cry from nearby without thinking twice. Just in time, your blade cuts through the thick neck of the demon who was about to kill the man in front of you.

You let out the breath you didn’t know you were holing, your already aching muscles begging for a break.

“Are you alright?”, you breathe out.

But before the man is even able to respond, you’re covered in blood.

His head is gone.

Your eyes widen in sheer horror, mind going blank for a moment. What was that?

“Another little slayer to kill, what a night, what a fun!”

You’re about to lose it when that creature steps out into the moonlight, its appearance so great that you feel crushed by a single gaze. That thing is stronger than anything you ever expected. Faster. More brutal. Every strike you land barely scratches its skin. And your blade, dulled by years of use, can’t keep up either. Your breath comes sharp and uneven, shaky fingers almost unable to hold onto your sword any longer.

But you promised.

You promised to fight until the end. You promised to save the father of the little girl. You can’t let Sabito’s death be useless by dying like a coward. No, you will fight until you can’t anymore, will give your best and even more.

You straighten your shoulders, put all your strength in your legs, stomach and arms. Your eyes dart towards your target. He might be fast, but he’s still rather tall and stiff. If you focus on nothing but him, you will land a hit in his calf and behead him afterwards.

This is it. The moment to prove yourself. There’s not a single doubt in your mind that you can beat that thing, that you’ll make it out alive. One hit, then another.

The sound of slicing flesh cuts through the air.

And before you can react any further, you feel it.

Claws that dig deeply straight through your stomach. Warm blood that starts pooling beneath your feet. A scorching pain, the inability to move.

Your eyes start to water, vision getting blurry.

He hit you. No, it wasn’t him.

Out of the shadows, you see them lurking. One by one, demon after demon.

It wasn’t only him. You failed to realize that it wasn’t just this one powerful demon, but whole bunch of them.

You cough up blood, the taste coating your tongue as if you licked on iron.

Is this…the end?

“Foolish little girl, did you really think someone like you is able to beat me? You, with that run-down blade? Pah, that I don’t laugh! Looks like not even the demon slayers care about your puny self.”

You are far too tired to get hurt by his rough words.

No, all you’re able to think about is him.

Is this how Sabito felt when he died? Empty, drained out, devastated? As if his whole life had no meaning? As if he missed out? Did he think about the missed opportunity to tell you about his feeling, maybe that he loved you? Did he actually like you back?

Oh, you definitely loved him. And after all those years, you still do. Maybe it is true what people say about first love, maybe you were destined to love him until the day you die.

The ringing in your ear grows louder and louder, your vision nothing but blank by now while your body collapses onto the floor. What a privilege it is, dying with nothing but him on your mind.

“(y/n), is that you? (Y/N)!”

That voice…You must be hallucinating, your brain tricking you into thinking that he’s there to meet you. If you could just open your eyes, locate where it comes from. Are you already…dead?

“Don’t give up on me, (y/n). Do you hear me? Not now. Now when I finally found you.”

Your heartbeat starts picking up, tired mind going crazy. This can’t be him. You saw the way Giyu looked at you back then, knew what he was trying to say the second he entered the room. There’s no way…

Your eyes dart open. Only a brief second before your body fails you, just a moment before everything goes dark.

But what you see is lavender.

“Am I…dead?”

A dull ache pulls you from the depths of unconsciousness. Your body feels impossibly heavy, weighed down by exhaustion and the lingering haze of pain. The scent of wisteria fills your senses, soft and familiar, a stark contrast to the metallic taste of blood that last coated your lips.

Your eyelashes flutter, the blinding light forcing you to squeeze your eyes shut again before slowly adjusting to the world around you. You’re lying on a futon, the gentle rustling of fabric catching your ear as someone shifts beside you.

Then-

“(y/n).”

Your breath catches. That voice. Steady, low, but undeniably concerned.

Giyu.

Your head turns slightly, the effort far more exhausting than it should be, but it’s worth it when you see him sitting beside you. His blue eyes are darker than usual, clouded with something between worry and relief. He looks like a different person with his stern look and sharp facial features. The tension in his posture fades just a fraction when you finally meet his gaze.

“You’re awake.”

A breathy laugh escapes you, though it’s weak. Is this real or are you dreaming?

“I think so.”

His expression remains unreadable, but there’s something in the way his shoulders drop, in the way his fingers twitch slightly as if resisting the urge to reach for you.

“You almost died,” he comments bluntly, but there’s a crack in his usual monotone.

You hear it. The way his voice wavers just the slightest bit.

“Yeah… I noticed.”

His brows furrow slightly at your attempt at humor, and it’s almost endearing. A silence settles between you both before he lets out the smallest sigh.

“You were reckless. Not to mention that you vanished for more than five years without a trace, without telling anyone where you are.”

Your lips part to retort, but before you can, his hand - warm, solid, real - settles over yours. Your heart skips.

“But… you’re alive.”

A soft warmth spreads through your chest, different from the scorching pain you felt before. Your fingers twitch beneath his, and after a moment, he gives your hand a gentle squeeze.

For a while, there are no words. Just the quiet hum of the wind outside, the gentle rustling of the wisteria blossoms swaying beyond the open shoji doors. The silence is comforting, not heavy like grief, but something else. Something lighter. It makes you realize just how much you missed him. That quiet child that always hid well behind Sabito’s shoulder. The boy who never realized his full potential, who always felt like nothing. That child is now a man. And given his sight, he’s still a demon slayer, maybe even a hashira?

Then, Giyu speaks again.

“I need to tell Sabito about this.”

Your breath stills.

A bitter pang grips your heart before you can stop it, a dull ache that never truly faded even after all these years. The memories flood back: his voice, his lavender eyes, the warmth of his hand brushing against yours as life slipped from his grasp. Even after all those years, hearing his name coming out of Giyu’s mouth makes you feel like dying all over again.

Your lips tremble.

“Giyu, don’t-”

But he’s looking at you, truly looking at you. And for the first time in years, there’s something in his expression that shakes you to your core.

Because he isn’t mourning.

His eyes aren’t filled with the quiet grief that usually lingers when someone meaningful died. There’s no sadness, no finality. Instead, there’s something else. Something fragile. Something hopeful.

Your heart hammers.

Giyu’s next words shatter the world you’ve known for the past five years.

“Sabito is alive.”

The room tilts. Your breath catches, and for a moment, all you can hear is the wild pounding of your heartbeat in your ears.

“No.”

You shake your head, trying to process it, trying to make sense of what you just heard.

“That’s…That’s not possible, Giyu. I saw… He…You…”

But he’s still holding your hand. And his grip is steady, grounding. Real.

“He survived, (y/n). You never allowed me to finish my sentence back then before you ran away.”

Something inside you snaps.

Despite the pain, despite your body’s protests, you throw the blankets off and swing your legs over the futon. Giyu barely has time to react before you push yourself up - too fast, too desperate, ignoring the sharp flare of agony that nearly sends you crumbling to the ground.

“(y/n), wait—!”

But you don’t.

You simply can’t.

Your feet are already moving before logic can catch up, before you can think about the wounds, the weakness, the time you’ve lost. You stumble through the open doors, through the gardens, past the rows of blooming wisteria that blur into nothing but streaks of color in your vision.

You don’t know where you’re going.

But your heart does.

And then-

You see him.

Beneath the cascading wisteria, bathed in violet light, stands the boy who never left your dreams.

Lavender eyes meet yours.

Your breath leaves you in a shattered whisper.

“Sabito.”

His name tastes like both heartbreak and salvation on your lips.

And when he takes a step toward you, when his expression softens into something unreadable, something overwhelming, you don’t hesitate.

You run.

Your heart is screaming, pounding so hard in your chest that you think it might burst.

And then, after five long, agonizing years, after endless nights of dreams and regrets, your fingers finally brush against him.

Sabito is real. Warm. Alive.

He catches you with ease, as if he was always meant to. His arms wrap around you, steady and strong, holding you as if he’s afraid you might disappear again. Your knees buckle, but he’s already there, supporting your weight effortlessly, grounding you in a reality too surreal to be true.

"You're real," you whisper, voice trembling, hands clinging onto the fabric of his haori.

"This isn't a dream…?"

His breath hitches, and when you finally gather the courage to lift your head, you meet those familiar lavender eyes filled with something raw, something vulnerable, something that makes your chest tighten until you can hardly breathe.

"It’s me," Sabito murmurs, his voice softer than you’ve ever heard it.

"I’m here, (y/n). I’ve always been."

A sob tears from your throat. The floodgates burst, and before you can stop yourself, you bury your face against his chest, gripping onto him as if letting go would mean losing him all over again while a violent scream escapes your lips.

He doesn’t let go either. If anything, his hold tightens, as if he’s trying to make up for every second you spent apart. His fingers tangle into your hair, his other arm securing you to him like a promise.

“I thought you-”

Your voice breaks.

“I thought you died, Sabito. I thought I lost you.”

“I know.”

His breath is warm against your temple, his voice strained as if he’s barely holding himself together.

“I thought I lost you too.”

You pull back slightly, just enough to look at him properly. Your hands reach up before you can stop them, trembling fingers tracing over the curve of his jaw, the faint scar along his cheek. He leans into your touch, his eyes never leaving yours. God, he looks so handsome. Still like the boy you knew, but he definitely outgrew you.

“How…?”

Your voice is barely above a whisper.

“How are you here?”

Sabito lets out a slow, unsteady breath.

“It was close. I should have died that night. But I didn’t. Our master saved me at the last second, I barely made it into the wisteria forest.”

He shakes his head.

“By the time I woke up, you were gone. Giyu told me you disappeared. I tried to find you, but you… you just vanished. I searched everywhere for you, (y/n).”

Your heart clenches. Guilt, relief, overwhelming love, all of it crashes over you in waves, nearly knocking you off your feet again.

“I was running away,” you admit, voice small.

“I was scared. I thought I wasn’t strong enough. I thought… I thought I didn’t deserve to live when you…”

You swallow hard, forcing down another sob.

“I should have been the one to die that night.”

Sabito stiffens.

And then, before you can react, his hands are cupping your face, tilting your head up so you have no choice but to look at him. His eyes burn with something fierce, something that sends a shiver down your spine.

“Don’t you ever say that again,” he breathes, his thumbs brushing away the tears that won’t stop falling.

“You deserved to live just as much as I did. Maybe even more.”

You shake your head, lips quivering.

 “But-”

“No.”

His voice is firm, but there’s a gentleness in it too, a tenderness that makes your heart ache.

“I would have saved you a thousand times over, (y/n). I don’t regret it. I never have.”

His forehead presses against yours, his breath mingling with yours in the cool night air.

“And I would do it again,” he murmurs, closing his eyes.

“Every single time. Again and again. You’re the reason I became a hashira, the reason I still keep going. I never gave up the hope to hold you like this someday.”

Your own eyes flutter shut, a fresh wave of tears spilling over. The warmth of him, the steady rhythm of his heart against yours - it’s all too much, yet somehow not enough.

You don’t know who moves first.

But suddenly, his lips are on yours.

It’s not rushed, not desperate.

But it’s everything.

It’s years of unspoken words, of longing, of quiet grief and unwavering love. It’s the feeling of home, of finally, finally being whole again.

His hands tangle in your hair, pulling you closer, deepening the kiss as if trying to make up for lost time. Your fingers grip onto his haori, afraid that if you let go, he might disappear again.

But he won’t.

He’s here.

When you finally part, your forehead rests against his, both of you breathless, eyes half-lidded with emotions too big to put into words.

“I love you,” he confesses, voice barely above a whisper. “

I have for so long, (y/n). Even when I thought I’d never get to tell you.”

A watery laugh escapes you, your fingers tracing along the fabric of his sleeve, holding onto him like a lifeline.

“I love you too. I always have.”

Sabito exhales a shaky breath, a small, relieved smile tugging at his lips.

And in that moment, under the wisteria, bathed in soft violet light, you know.

This is where you were always meant to be.

Tags: @chilichopsticks @hellkaiserinphoenix  @ynackerman9499 @keepghostly @beatrexworld

@froufrousnowman @hidazinie @tomiokathedepresso  @poketrainer2270 @chaoticwinnercupcake

@lees-chaotic-brain @wordskeeper @polarbvnny @sugu-love @ryva @baku2345

@komelrebi-san @kentocalls @barbuse @sunshine7queen @lavenderdrxp

@yaninnaacu @hopefulbelievertimemachine @vrystalius @sanemifucker @blunderland

[bones4thecats]

Could I request Tengen and Rengoku with an s/o who's a descendant of a famous swordsman?

S/O's A Descendant of a Swordsman

Characters: Tengen Uzui and Kyojuro Rengoku (separate) Requester: ⚔Anon A/N: I now dub thee ⚔Anon because of the two characters and the swordsman prompt. Idk it was the first thing that came to mind. Anyways, this is mainly themed around them finding out their spouse is the descendant of a demon slayer. Just noting!

••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●•

»»——————————��-　Tengen Uzui　———————————-««

🔊 During his time at the Demon Slayer Corps, Tengen has heard about many slayers. But there was always one that stayed in his mind and never seemed to go away: Kenji Sureiyaa. Who was the Thunder Hashira all the way back in the Sengoku Era

🔊 Tengen loved to read all kinds of stuff on the way he produced the style with his four spouses. He would literally just lay a book on a slightly higher-up pedestal next to your large futon bed that you all shared and whenever he couldn't sleep, he'd grab it and read it till god knows what hour

🔊 One morning, you found him sitting in front of the small training area you had installed in the backyard for your wives and husband. And normally whenever he was outside, he'd be using it. Not now evidently

" What are you reading, love? " You asked.

🔊 Tengen looked back at you and smiled before standing up and closing the book, but not before marking his page. He was almost finished, it seemed.

" Just this book on the first ever Thunder Hashira, Kenji Sureiyaa. "

" Kenji Sureiyaa? That sounds familiar. " This caused your husband to snap his head to look at you. His eyebrows cocked in confusion.

🔊 You laid the laundry basket down and began to hang it all up to dry while Tengen just stared at you in curiosity. Silently pondering on how you have heard this man's name before. He knew you were friends with other slayers such as Mitsuri, but not even she knew of the guy

" Oh! Now I remember. My grandfather's grandfather was named that. How ironic, right? "

🔊 Okay... WHAT?!

🔊 Tengen practically dropped his book on the wooden flooring before he spun you around and asked how old you were, causing you to chuckle before patting his arms as he stared into your eyes. Damn, is this what demon's saw when fighting against the ex-shinobi?

" I'm 20, Tengen. Come on, you have to remember this. Did some demon hit you with some weird kind of memory-blood demon art or something? "

" So you're the... HOLY SHIT! You're the descendant of Kenji Sureiyaa! This is so cool! I married one of the first Hashira's grand-kid's grand-kid's kid! "

🔊 Huh?

🔊 As Tengen rambled, you picked up the book to take a glimpse at the detailed drawing of the man. He did look an awful lot like you great-great-grandfather's drawing you had in your room...

••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●••●•

»»——————————-　Kyojuro Rengoku　——————————-««

❤️‍🔥 Rengoku was far from a silent man when he was off of his missions. And right now this was being proved to be true just as much as your honeymoon

❤️‍🔥 Your husband had heard about a book of old slayers from times long past the current one. And he had gotten quite interested into one that was supposedly the tsuguko of the first Stone Hashira: Kei Ishi

❤️‍🔥 Much like with Tengen, Rengoku would ramble about the long-deceased woman as if she was the second most important thing in the world, behind his oh-so-dear spouse, of course!

❤️‍🔥 Today just so happened to be quite the odd one, though.

❤️‍🔥 You had spent most of the day helping Aoi, your dear friend Shinobu's assistant at her mansion, out with healing hurt slayers while your husband was set to return from a nearly three-month long mission up in the northern-area of Japan

❤️‍🔥 Due to this, you were tired and needed a good, long nap. So, you grabbed one of the nearest books and began to read. And as you read, you passed almost four slayers before catching a familiar name written in ink. Kei Ishi?

" Why do they sound so familiar... " you wondered.

" Hello there, my blaze! "

❤️‍🔥 Practically throwing the book at the suspected startler, you noticed that it was knocked into the air before falling right onto the palm of the flame-haired male that you got to call your's

❤️‍🔥 Rengoku laughed as your cheeks flushed and you hid your face behind one of his haori's, which you loved to cuddle with whenever he was absent for whatever reason. And as you began to cool yourself down from the initial scare, Rengoku looked at the page you were reading

" Ah, Kei Ishi! Her story is quite interesting, is it not? "

❤️‍🔥 You just smiled and agreed as he laid the book down on a small bookshelf before adjusting the nemaki he wore to be lighter around his neck, making it appear like a yukata

❤️‍🔥 As he laid down, he noticed that you were looking at another book which was situated just underneath his. It seemed to be the book full of drawings of your ancestors, like your grandparents and aunts, uncles, cousins alike

" Why are you looking at the book of your ancestors, my love? "

" Oh it's nothing, Kyojuro. It's just- the name of Kei Ishi's, it just sounds familiar is all. "

" Do you wonder if she is perhaps an ancestor of yours as well? "

" I suppose so. "

" Then we shall check to make yourself sure! "

❤️‍🔥 Rengoku quickly nabbed the book and set it down on your lap before sitting back down with his outside, seemingly turning to a specific page while you looked for your family tree's page. A tradition for many years was to add on with each generation that held the book in their custody, and maybe you and Rengoku's child will do the same one day

" The final instance of a descendant of Ishi's is with her great-grandson named Takeshi Inoue. "

" Mine starts with Takeshi Inoue... "

" Oh my Gods! Y/N, you're the current descendant of Kei Ishi's! This is beyond unexpected! "

❤️‍🔥 Yeah, it was definitely unexpected alright

[vrystalius]

Trick or treat..?

I suppose it’s too late for that huhu😭 but may I please have your take on Sanemi taking care of a drunk s/o after a (halloween?) party?

Sanemi taking care of his drunk partner

He knew attending Tengen’s birthday part was a mistake. Sanemi never wanted to come in the first place!

Pairing: Sanemi x gn!reader

Again, this absolutely beautiful banner was made by @erexart !! Please, please go check her out! She makes fanarts (remember boxer Sanemi?) and art including her ocs and characters like Kyojuro and Sanemi— I love her comics so much, they are so so cute and I love imagining my own oc in her place XD Anyways, thank you so much for requesting and making this beautiful banner for this fic!

“Sanemiiii, you’re soo serious… lighten uppp, this a party, yeah?”

“Party’s over.”

Sanemi was steadily helping you to lean against his shoulder while his arms were wrapped beneath yours, trying to drag you down the streets, back to your home. He doesn’t step into the role of a caretaker often, but after watching you down drinks after drinks alongside the birthday-boy Uzui, he was already mentally preparing himself to finally pay you back for all the times you took care of him, physically and mentally. It’s the least he could do for you in his eyes, taking care of you while you are drunk. He had already stayed near you all evening, making sure that you don’t seriously overdo it and end up with alcohol poisoning, silently glaring at Tengen for again pouring you another drink. Sanemi was never fond of alcohol drinks and decided to stick to his green tea. Someone has to stay sober and make sure everyone is being responsible, right?

By the time you were stumbling away from the former sound hashira’s mansion, your husband steadied you carefully while you kept trying to wiggle out of his grasp, assuring him that you can totally walk on your own. Dragging you home and making sure that you don’t trip or decide that running off is a suitable option for you as well. You didn’t notice how Sanemi’s grip tightened on you as you complained about going home so soon, wanting to stay a little longer at the birthday party to celebrate more. By the time you two arrived back home, it was way past midnight. Your husband guided you to sit down while he prepared a small meal for you, scolding you to drink the glass of water he handed you slowly but surely, threatingly pointing his wooden spoon at you while standing by the stove.

“You’re so mean to meee! You’re lucky I like your pretty face.”

“Mhm, just drink your damn water.”

It’s a little ironic to him how Sanemi usually is spending his nights beating the shit out of demons, dragging himself home and almost falling asleep in the shower while you scrub his bloody back. Sometimes, despite how exhausted and how much you want to sleep right now, you still drag yourself to the kitchen and prepare a small meal for him so that he doesn’t have to go to bed hungry. You know that your husband would be too exhausted to make something himself, preferring to sleep. Despite how annoyed and pissed he seems with you right now because of how drunk you are, Sanemi still gladly takes care of you.

He always felt like he was taking more than he was giving in your relationship, taking your affections for granted, barely having any time for you due to his hashira duties and never really acknowledging how much you are doing for him. While holding the glass of water to your lips you still haven’t finished, his fingers carefully brushing over your rosy cheeks as a way to gently coax you into finally drinking at least a little bit of water. The quick meal he whipped up wasn’t anything too fancy, Sanemi feeding you with chopsticks while you lazy lean back against the chair, ready to crash into bed and hibernate until the late afternoon. Now you’re thankful for Sanemi dragging you home so early.

A shower he was planning on forcing you to take has to wait until later, you’re basically half asleep in your chair by the time he finished feeding you. Carrying you to bed was much easier than dragging you away from Tengen’s estate, your body basically limp in his arms while he carried you to bed. Your arms were lazily wrapped around his neck, playing a little with the hair on the back of his head while dreamily staring at your husband’s handsome face. My, was he always this hot? Or is the way Sanemi is removing your sweaty clothes just really turning you on? Before you could even open your mouth, your husband carefully helped you lay down properly onto your mattress, tucking you in with the cosiest sheets he could find. You grinned at him.

“What’re ya staring at?”

“The hottest man in the whole world.”

You relaxed under his touch as he ran his thick fingers through your hairstrands, detangling your hair a little while his eyes glossed over your features. Sanemi gave you a small hum of acknowledgement before leaning down to you, placing a soft kiss on your forehead. A small giggle escaped your lips as you weakly tried pulling the warm body of your husband closer for a cuddle. He didn’t even try to protest despite him still being dressed in his street clothes.

“I gotta change, bug.”

“Mh, no. Dooooon’t caaaree.”

Sanemi groaned in annoyance but never made an attempt to move away or escape your grasp. The tension in his body slowly began to disappear the longer your body pressed against his. He lazily kicked his shoes off and slipped beneath the sheets, giving up on fighting against your drunk stubbornness.

“Just sleep, will ya?”

“As long as you stay here.”

A soft sigh escaped his lips as he began to smile slightly. He moved closer to you, burying his face into your warm neck, closing his eyes in exhaustion.

“I ain’t going nowhere, promise.”

💠

I always feel so incredibly honoured when I receive art for my fics— when I first started posting on tumblr, I set some small goals for me to archive while being active on here: get over 100 followers, get a post to 1.000 interactions, get requests and get my favourite authors to like my works— one of those goals was to receive fanart or art for my works, and the first time erexart offered to make a banner for one of my posts, I can’t describe how happy I felt XD Once I gathered enough (like a goblin), I’ll make a small post collecting every piece of media I received from others— may it be art from you guys or own little fan-works or whatever, I always feel incredibly honoured to receive anything.

I apologise if this may sound desperate or demanding, I just feel like I don’t express my appreciation for you guys enough XD

Anyways, make sure to EAT, SLEEP and DRINK enough!!

Take care of yourselves <3

[person25]

ironic how the two most suicidal hashiras are the ones to live😭

[tbaluver]

What Video Game/ Genre The Hashira's Play- Demon Slayer

a/n: just a silly idea bc my head is filled with gaming brainrot esp dress to impress

any likes and reblogs are always appreciated! enjoy! <3

genre: silly

⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆

Giyu:

He's honestly a chill gamer and mostly just there to have fun and make friends. But never really chats with anybody unless someone talks to him first.

He duo's with Sabito a lot on games. Whatever games Sabito recommends to play, he'll play it. Sabito mostly carries him in FPS ( first person shooter ) games.

One time Sanemi and Obanai were on the enemy team and they won. He would be confused on why they would curse him out every time in the chat saying he was to 'easy' or that he sucks.

Sanemi:

Plays a lot of video games especially during his childhood. He would share his DS or Gameboy with Genya a lot during their childhood.

Mainly plays FPS games or any combat games. Literally anything competitive.

Mostly duo with Obanai in FPS games. He would curse Giyu out with Obanai anytime they would be on the opposing team.

Tries to play with Genya and he tries his best to not rage but eventually he does either at the game or at Genya. Ironically tells Genya not to play games like that anymore because people in the lobby can be toxic.

Would get in trouble a lot from yelling so much at the game at night.

Obanai:

Has played Overcooked with Mitsuri many times. He does not yell at her at all and is super patient when they do not get any stars on the hard levels. They would plan strategies together on how to defeat a level.

Sometimes plays FPS games but only when Sanemi asks him to get on. Will type mean things in chat with Sanemi whenever he sees Giyu on the opposite team.

Misturi:

Has so much fun playing overcooked with Obanai and they are so close to finishing the game. Would make comments about how if she were to drop food in her restaurant she would not serve it to her customers or how she would love to make a recipe like that in real life.

She would play cooking games like Cooking Mama or Good Pizza, Great Pizza. Would literally give a generous amount of toppings on Good Pizza, Great Pizza and would already have 5 stars in her restaurant.

Plays other games like Episode or The Sims or Just Dance. Would have the cutest family in the coziest home that she made on The Sims. She would also be really good on Just Dance.

She would also play Otome games because men irl suck and Obanai won't confess to her yet.

Tengen:

He would be really good in Osu! or any rhythm game. Has also played Fortnite Festival and has the top score in all his friends lists.

Duo with Rengoku often in FPS games. He would also have a big ego when playing any competitive match. "I'm a god in this game"

Rengoku:

Plays a couple FPS games and duos with Tengen.

Plays with his little brother and helps carry him in any game he needs. Usually just loves to spend time with his little brother and plays whatever game he wants.

Played with Sanemi and Obanai a couple times. Sanemi would yell in the mic and have his ears ringing so Rengoku wouldn't notice how loud he actually talks on the mic until Sanemi yells at him.

Shinobu:

Not the biggest fan of playing video games on her free time.

I don't know why but I think she could have fun playing horror games or likes playing chill games like Stardew Valley.

She tried to play an FPS game and played the role as a healer and never picked up the game ever again.

Muichiro:

Would have a hand me down of a DS or gameboy and have loved video games every since.

Have played a lot of video games and plays a lot of games that are trending.

Right now he plays a lot of Minecraft and Roblox.

Teaches the Kamaboko Squad on how to play. They would have a realm and try to beat the enderdragon together.

Gyomei:

He's blind but I feel like the kids would include him in an game they play. I feel like he would like playing story games where choices matter. He would carefully pick the choices and actions so he can save all the characters.

[jazzthatonewriterchick]

Hot As A Summer’s Eve (Rengoku x Black!F! Reader 18+ One Shot) [COMMISSION FILL]

Pairing: Rengoku Kyojuro x Black!Fem!Plus-Sized!Reader

Synopsis: In which our favorite sexy, fire-haired himbo Rengoku decides to confess his feelings to you, his favorite Demon Slayer Corp, and show you that he adores your body just for how it was made: by fucking you stupid in the woods at a summer festival.

Warnings: Smutty Smut, 18+ (MINORS DNI), Older!Rengoku x Younger!Reader; Public Sex, Forest Sex, Crush Confession, Foreplay, Breeding Kink, Cumpie, Oral, Masturbation, Breast Worship, Oral (Giving & Receiving), Facefuck, Multiple Positions, Sex Against a Tree, Doggystyle, Almost Caught, Spanking, Mild Choking, MDom!Rengoku, fsub!Reader, Aftercare

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned in this fic. However, as this is my writing, I do not give permission for my work to be reposted on any other sites that are not from my own accounts. Thank you!

Writer’s Note: A thank you to @eevees-hobbies for trusting me to write this commission & post it publicly! I’m gonna start writing more Demon Slayer shit after this lol. I hope y’all enjoy! ❤️ -Jazz

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“Rengoku, I…I didn’t know you felt this way about me.”

You say this while standing in the cool, lush forest yards away from the glowing lights, cheery live music, and chatter of visitors coming from the summer festival that you’ve been looking forward to all week.

The highly-anticipated festival is thrown every year to celebrate the summer’s solstice where businesses set up vendors to make a profit, shaved ice and free sake shots are aplenty, and people wear kimonos and adobes to celebrate in full. Rengoku has been looking forward to it too.

But not for the flavored shaved ice, free sake, games to win goldish, live performances, or fireworks that are done at the end of the festival. He was only looking forward to it for a chance to spend time with you.

You, the beautiful and magnetic demon slayer that has been learning and training with him, the eight other Hashira members, and the other new members of the Demon Slayer Corps. You with your soft, curly black hair, smooth skin that he wishes to touch, bright smile, and luscious, beautiful body.

Truth be told, Rengoku doesn’t give a fuck about the festival. He wasn’t even going to go even though the rest of his group and the newest Demon Slayer Corps members were going. But when he found out you’d be in attendance, he rushed to iron his kimono for the occasion. The moment he saw you in your red kimono with its pink flowers, he knew he had to tell you how he felt finally.

And when he saw you laughing at something Tengen said, the flirty, cocky motherfucker, he definitely knew he had to act fast. He felt bad for having such negative thoughts about his fellow slayer. Tengen was always a great guy and an even greater guy! But there was something about seeing him flash his white smile and flirty eyes at pretty, plump little you while you slurped on your strawberry water ice.

Embarrassingly, Rengoku felt his cock stir beneath his kimono as he watched your lips and tongue stained red. He must’ve looked insane because Tanjiro asked if anything was wrong.

He can’t understand why he feels so deeply for you. He���s never felt this way about any woman, let alone a Demon Slayer Corp! Sure, he’s found women attractive, but the feelings you invoke in him are primal. Sexual. Personal. He finds himself going mad seeing you around other men or when you flash one of those pretty smiles his way.

He can’t quite put his finger on why you affect him the way you do. Maybe it’s the way your hair bounces when you walk or how it smells faintly of mangos whenever you’re near him. Maybe it’s how kind and sweet you are to everyone. Maybe it’s the way you always give your all when it comes to training and you don’t let your size stop you from doing what you want.

True, you are a bigger girl. “Chubby”, he’s heard you call yourself before. You need to wear a larger size for the Corp uniform, and your arms have an adorable jiggle to them, as do your thighs, and you have these chunky legs that he wants to see wrapped around his waist, and you’re just so perfect and soft and small to him.

Though you’d probably disagree with the small part, Rengoku doesn’t care. You’d be small to him no matter what size you are being that he is much bigger than you.

He is crazy over you! During the day, he watches you stretch during training sessions, your athletic sets tight on your plump body, or do your warm-ups, your voluptuous breasts jiggling enticingly in your sports bra. Even when you serve him his meals at supper with a bright smile or give him a “Good morning, Rengoku”, he is ready to jump you.

During the night, he is just as unhinged. He tosses, turns, and sweats in his sheets imagining you in them with him. His big hand fists his hard cock, pumping it vigorously at the salacious images of your thick thighs pinned under his hands as he bounces you up and down on his cock, groping your tits, stomach, and ass. You’d be so small underneath him, his big body taking over as he ruts into you and hopefully breeds you, taking you as his own.

He towers over you now, staring down into those big, brown, doe-like eyes of yours that twinkle like the stars above. Realizing he’s been staring at you without answering, Rengoku blushes and quickly tries to recover. “Uh…y-yes,” he replies, clearing his throat. “I felt that tonight was the night I should tell you: I…like you.”

He had told you this minutes before when he randomly asked you to go for a walk with him on the walking trails in the forest. You had agreed much to his shock and relief. You had placed a hand on his bicep, hard and big from years of training, as you walked through the forest darkened by night.

When you came to a clearing of pink flowers that matched the ones on your kimono, Rengoku finally confessed his year-long feelings to you, albeit sweating profusely and stammering. At first, when he confessed, you smiled your beautiful, blinding smile and said, “Oh, Ren, I like you too!” You placed a hand on his arm, making him shiver. “You’re a great fighter and an even greater friend.”

Rengoku can’t lie: he died inside hearing that. But he wasn’t the type to back down. You needed to know how he truly felt. So he elaborated: “No, no…I mean…in a romantic sense. I like you.”

Your smile had faded, replaced with an expression of confusion and surprise. You stand before him now, still looking confused and a little tense. “I-I’m sorry,” he says, feeling guilty and ashamed for making you feel some type of way. “Is this making you uncomfortable? I can sense the tension in your body. Please tell me I’m being too overbearing or if you don’t feel the same way!”

You stare down at your flip-flops sinking into the pink flowers before. “I didn’t say that,” you softly say. “I’m just…surprised is all. You’ve never really made it clear how you feel about me before. You never gave me signals or anything.” Rengoku cocks his head to the side like a lost puppy. “Signals?” he asks. “I’m not sure I follow.”

You look up at him standing a good head taller than you. “Y’know, like your hand lingering on my waist during training more than it should. Flirting. Compliments. Maybe asking me on a date.”

Rengoku blinks and his face flames up in embarrassment. You’re right! How could he tell you this now when he’s never made it known that he feels such a way about you? Tengen has no problem with it. Even Obanai, as shy and as reserved as he is, showed Mitsuri how he felt before they started officially dating.

Rengoku awkwardly rubs the back of his thick neck, right under his curtain of fiery orange and red hair like a lion’s mane. “Oh,” he chuckles bashfully. “I understand. Well, I didn’t want to come off as inappropriate or make you feel fearful of me. After all, I am your superior.”

You shrug to yourself, gnawing on your lush bottom lip. He stares at it a little too intently. “I guess so,” you say. “But that’s not stopping you from telling me how you feel now.” You give a little awkward, soft giggle that eases the tension somewhat.

Silence descends upon you for a few seconds, only filled by the distant sounds of the festival, a lone hooting owl, and crickets chirping in the night. He watches your face, noticing your frown and apprehensive eyes. “So…how do you feel about that?” he softly asks. “You don’t seem happy. Are you with one of the others? Maybe Tengen?”

You blink up at him, shocked. “Huh?!” you gasp, looking horrified at the idea. “No, no, the man already has three doting wives! I don’t wanna be one of them!” Rengoku breathes a sigh of relief. He would’ve probably killed himself if that were to happen.

“I’m just wondering if this is really real,” you admit. “Like maybe I’m dreaming or this is just a prank the others put you up to.” You look like you’re battling with yourself to admit this, still staring at the flowers.

Rengoku is confused by your confession. “What?” he asks, perplexed by such a statement. “Why would you think that?” You flush, playing with the tie to your kimono. “Well, b-because…” You pause, nibbling on that damn plump bottom lip again. He is quiet, patiently waiting for you to finish. When you look back up at him, you look so sad and broken that he wants to scoop you up and hold you.

“Because of my size,” you softly say. “My body. A man as handsome as you could get someone much smaller than me.” Rengoku takes a moment to process this, wondering what your size has to do with anything. “But you are small,” he laughs. “You’d be small to me at any size, Y/N. And beautiful at that.”

You look stunned by his compliment, but more than anything, you don’t look like you quite believe him. That’s when Rengoku realizes it: “Do you not like how you look?” He asks, wounded. How could you not see yourself as beautiful and as sexy as he does?

“No,” you sigh. “It’s not that. It’s just…well, men don’t exactly go for girls like me unless they just want me sexually. I’m not ever pursued romantically a-and…” You trail off, withering like a flower before him.

Rengoku is enraged. He wishes now he would’ve expressed to you how attractive he found you. He wants so desperately to tell you how he would stare at you while you trained or stretched, loving how tight your spandex shorts were on you. He may even tell you how he’d stroke himself at the thought of him taking down those shorts and fucking you, but not right now.

But right now, you do need reassurance. So he bends down and plucks one of the pink flowers before holding it between you. “You deserve to be pursued romantically every day,” he says. “You deserve to be courted not for selfish gain. You deserve to be cared for and taken care of for the beautiful, intelligent, sweet person that you are.”

He pauses, putting the flower behind your ear. He bites back a gasp at the softness of your hair as his fingers graze your curls. “And I’d like to be the man to do it,” he confesses. “I’m sorry it took me this long to say anything to you, but…I’d like to show you how I feel and have been feeling about you. If you’re okay with that.”

He stares down at you carefully, trying to see any kind of sign of a no in your pretty, round face. But when you look up at him with a shy smile and take one of his huge hands in your smaller ones, he knows that you feel the same as he does. “I’d like that, Rengoku,” you say barely above a whisper.

Rengoku cannot stop the smile that stretches across his face. Because you’re so short, he has to bend down to kiss you, but does it slowly, giving you time to change your mind and say no. But you don’t. In fact, you lean in too, moving up slightly on your tip toes to reach him. Then your eyes are closing, your mouth is parting, and your lips are on his.

You feel and taste better than he ever could’ve imagined. Your lips are pillowy soft, supple, and taste slightly of shaved strawberry-flavored ice. He knows you can taste the sake on his, but luckily not the bowls of miso ramen and other treats he consumed thanks to the mint leaves he chewed on earlier before he spirited you away.

A soft moan leaves your lips as your hands move to his chest, pressing against his hard pectorals. He feels his cock surge at the small sound and moves his hand to grab your waist. He doesn’t go any lower than that. Though you are driving him insane, he wants to be respectful of your body.

When you finally pull away, he is left in a daze and hard as a rock. That was so dreamy. Romantic even given the privacy and stars above. It’s the best kiss he’s ever had. “I’ve wanted that for so long,” he sighs. “Was it okay for you?” His hands move up to caress your back, making you shiver in delight.

“Yes,” you whisper and you lean up to kiss him again.

This one is more passionate and eager, yet still sweet, and knocks Rengoku off his feet. He can’t help but moan with you as you wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him closer. He wraps his arms tight around your waist, nearly picking you up off of the ground. Your bodies press flush together in the summer’s night, the only thing separating you being your clothes.

If the clothes were off, Rengoku doesn’t want to think about what would happen. And because he’s about a millisecond away from ripping off your kimono, he gently pulls himself away from you, both of you panting heavily. “We should probably head back now,” he shakily suggests. “The gang may be wondering where we—“

“No,” you protest. “Stay with me a little longer.” Though your eyes are shy, your hands grasp his biceps, keeping him grounded there. “I’ve wanted this too,” you confess, making Rengoku’s heart flutter. “I feel the same, Rengoku. I just didn’t want to tell you because—“

You don’t get a chance to finish because Rengoku’s big hands are grasping your cheeks and his lips are capturing yours in a mind-blowing, toe-curling kiss. You both feel fireworks explode in your head every time you touch. He pulls away and begins peppering your neck in kisses, slowly and sweetly. “I understand,” he breathlessly murmurs. “But it doesn’t matter now. Just show me how you feel now, Y/N.”

You softly moan, leaning your head back to expose your neck, allowing him to kiss every part of your skin. He goes lower, tracing his lips down to your chest and collarbones, right between that little sliver of your open kimono where he can see your cleavage. “Does that feel good?” He whispers. You nod, staring up at him in a daze.

He wants to make you feel even better. His body is hot and tingly for you, needing more of you. He swallows, struggling to form a coherent sentence due to his horny thoughts. “I want to show you more of how I feel. I…I want to…to—“

“Make love to me?” You finish, your smile bemused and seductive. “I want that too, Ren. I want out here, now, with you.” You run a hand up his chest, your fingers pressing against his skin.

“Out here?” He parrots, shocked. “But anyone could see us! We could be caught by one of the Corps or—“

“I don’t care,” you breathlessly protest. “I’ll be embarrassed about it later, but right now, I can’t wait. I’ve wanted you for so, so long!” You push yourself against him, giving him a feel of your hard nipples underneath your kimono. Your body wants him. You want him.

Rengoku cannot deny you even if he tried. “Lay down with me,” he whispers in his deep, velvety voice. You eagerly do so, lay down on your back in the pink flowers before. He lays beside you and begins kissing up your neck, his hands roaming over your body. “You’re perfect,” he sighs. “I’ve wanted you for so, so long. You have no idea.”

He looks at your face, his cock hardening at your eyes closed and your lush lips parted. “Yes,” you moan. “That feels so good, Rengoku.” With a pleasurable shiver, he toys with the tie holding your kimono together and pauses, looking at you. “May I?” You nod, helping him untie your kimono.

When the flaps finally fall open, his eyes widen at the heavenly sight in front of him: rolls, soft flesh, a jiggly tummy, thighs, and breasts. He practically moans at the sight of you. “Look at you, baby,” he coos. “You’re absolutely stunning.” He leans in and presses a kiss to your lips.

“Breathtaking.” His lips trail down to your neck to kiss your throat. “Sexy.” His tongue jets out to lick down to your breasts, much to your enjoyment. He takes one into his mouth and sucks on your hardened, brown nipple, rolling the little pebble around his tongue before popping it out of his mouth.

“Tasty,” he whispers. He smiles at your fit of giggles, your body jiggling under his hands. “You were fixin’ to say that,” you chuckle. “But so are you.” You lean in and give a salacious lick down his chest, coaxing him to take his kimono off from the waist up.

He moans at your hands and lips on him, touching, kissing, and licking up his muscles. While you do, he plays with your sweet, juicy tits, molding the pretty, heavy things in his hands and sucking on your nipples. When he lightly nibbles on one of them, you moan into the night, tilting your head back. “Right there,” you sigh.

“Where?” he teasingly asks. “Here?” He does it again but massages one of your tits as he does, stimulating you even further. At some point, you slide into his lap, causing you to straddle him and your panties to glide against his thigh. “Fuck, Ren!” you moan. Realizing how loud you are, you bite your lip. “Sorry. That just felt so good.”

Rengoku’s eyes flash with an inner fire only you can see at the sound of your sweet, delicious moans. “Don’t be sorry. It’s just us here, baby. You can be as loud as you want.” As he continues to coat your nipples in his spit and bites, you take his hands and put them on your ass as you grind into him shamelessly.

Rengoku can’t get enough of how free and liberated you are tonight. And just for him. He especially loves how soft your tits are and the heat he can feel pooling from between your legs. He stares up into your twinkling, brown eyes. “I want to taste more of you,” he pants. “May I do that?” Wordlessly, you nod, biting your lip and making him harder. “Stand up and lean against the tree. I’ll take it all from there.”

You do as he says and lean against a nearby tree, your body glistening in the silver moonlight. You look so ethereal and gorgeous that Rengoku nearly pulls his cock out and fucks you right against the tree! But not yet. Not until he pleases you first.

Minutes later, he does just that and has you pinned against the tree while he kneels in front of you, his tongue slurping at your cunt with one of your legs hooked over his shoulder. You pant and moan above him, your hands running through his long, fiery, spiked hair, pulling at strands when he gently sucks on your clit or swirls his tongue around your pussy.

You’re so vocal, unable to keep your voice down. “Oh, my God,” you moan. “Fuck, Rengoku, yes! Y-You’re so…oh…good!”

You whimper, squeezing your eyes tight due to the sheer pleasure he’s giving you. He can tell you love it from the way your pretty pussy is gushing into his mouth, giving him more and more of your honey.

He pulls away slightly to look up at you, his lips glistening with your juices. “It’s okay, baby,” he coos into your pussy. “Just let go. I’ve got you.” He dives back in, slurping and eating you as if it’s his last meal. You taste, smell, sound, and feel so damn good! How he’s wanted to do this for you for so long!

“Fuck, you taste so good,” he whimpers. “You’re so tasty here.” You’re the tastiest thing he’s ever consumed. He can feel his cock painfully aching underneath his kimono, leading him to slowly stroke himself as he eats you out. “Fuck!” You sob. “Please, R-Rengoku, don’t tease me!”

He can’t help it. He just loves how loud and slutty you sound whenever he slowly strokes up your slit to your rosebud. You sound so cute. So needy. He’s feeling needy too. That primal instinct to have you returns, overtaking him. “Need more,” he growls. “I need more of you, baby.”

Thinking with his dick instead of his brain, he takes your other leg and hooks it over his shoulder. Suddenly, your feet are dangling over his broad shoulders as he stands up, his hands securely under your ass and keeping you leaned against the tree. “Wait, wait!” you gasp, gripping his hair, your body tense with fear. “What are you—“

“Relax,” he chuckles. “I’ve got you. Just relax for me and don’t squirm too much.” He gives you a wink before diving into your pussy again, drinking your honey straight from the source.

All protests and fears are stolen away as you feel his tongue slide between your lips and inside you, your clit bumping against his nose. Your eyes roll back at the pleasure, the sight absolutely porn-worthy to Rengoku. “Oh, my God, yes,” you whine. “O-Oh, fuck, Ren, yes!”

Even as his neck starts to ache and his jaw tires, he doesn’t stop. He needs you to cum. He needs to make you feel good. When you begin to get louder and your pussy quivers, he can tell that you’re close and moves his jaw faster. “O-Oh, my God!” you sob. “Rengoku, I’m gonna cum! Oh, fuck yes, make me cum!”

His own need makes him insane, causing him to whimper into your pussy and say things he never would say. “Cum,” he begs. “I fucking need it. Give it to me, please.”

Hearing him beg so prettily makes you finally combust. “Oh, fuck!” you loudly sob as you cum around his tongue, that dam inside of you bursting open. Rengoku moans as you flood his mouth and taste buds with your cream, becoming drunk on your cum.

As you moan and babble above him, fisting his hair, he cleans you up, licking your thighs and pussy lips of all of your mess until you’re coated in just his spit.

When you finally come down from your high, you look down at him, grateful and adoringly so. “That was amazing,” you sigh, filling him with pride. “Now it’s your turn.”

He helps you down and switches places with you, so now he’s pinned against the wall, completely at your mercy. Minutes later, you find out just how delicious he is too when you’ve got his cock down your throat. And he finds out just how amazing your mouth is.

Your soft lips cushion around his shaft as you bop up and down on his cock, thick, girthy, and shaded tan. He blushed as you stared at it once he got his clothes off, standing naked before you like a living, breathing Adonis statue. “Your cock is so pretty, Rengoku,” you whispered, wrapping a hand around him.

You stared at your hand wrapped around his cock, your fingers only stretching around some of the base. You weren’t shocked that your big man also had a big cock. Rengoku, however, was a straight-up mess. He has faced the worst of demons in his lifetime yet he could hardly handle seeing such a pretty, plump thing on her knees with her pretty nails and skin contrasting against his pale complexion.

He can hardly handle you now, seeing his cock disappear down your throat, your cheeks hollow and your brown eyes staring up into his. Your wet tongue and soft lips feel like heaven, the closest he feels he’ll ever be to it, and he intends to enjoy it.

“That’s so nice,” he sighs. “You’re doing so well, baby.”

You pull off of him with a wet pop, letting his hard cock fall out of your mouth and slap against his lower stomach. “I hope so,” you giggle. “You’re so quiet.” He bites his lip, bashful. He was keeping it down in fear of others hearing him, but your mouth is so fucking good that he wants to growl, grunt, and scream about his pleasure to the listening skies.

Your hands sneak up his clenched abs and trembling body, caressing his stomach. “It’s okay,” you purr. “You can be loud too. Lemme hear you.” Then, with no hands, you wrap your lips around him again and deepthroat his cock, easing your throat back and forth.

Rengoku can hardly believe his eyes. How is such a beautiful creature such as yourself on his knees for him, throating his dick like this? A whimper leaves him and he begins to crumble, unable to hold himself back anymore. He wraps a hand in your hair, caressing your scalp as you bop your head. “Oh, fuck,” he groans. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Keep lookin’ up at me, gorgeous, please.”

You do so, giving him a look at the spit dripping from your lips and chin. It’s such a slutty, lewd look that has him throbbing and his balls clenching at the sight. You once again pop off of his cock and begin licking him up and down, even caressing his balls with your tongue.

“Is my mouth good, baby?” you teasingly ask. “Am I makin’ you feel good?”

Whimpers and groans leave Rengoku’s mouth as if a bottle has been opened and can’t be closed unless he cums. “Y-Yes!” he gasps. “So, so good!” Feeling your hot, wet tongue on his balls, filled up with cum for you, makes him want to bust all over your pretty face and body.

You pop his balls out of your mouth and lick up the underside of his dick. “You sound much better than my dreams,” you moan, taking a lick of his cock. You pause, quickly pumping his cock with your hand as you stare into his eyes. “Fuck my face, Ren. I want you to.”

You press a kiss to his head, making him flinch. “Please,” you whimper, batting those pretty lashes up at him. How can he possibly deny you?

Losing all control and restraint, Rengoku pushes you back down onto his cock and proceeds to fuck your face, thrusting his hips into your soft, wet hole. You gag and gargle around his dick, breathing through your nostrils in time with his thrusts. He can feel his mind going blank and his entire body clenching as his balls tighten, ready to empty themselves out of his cock and down your pretty, sloppy throat.

You help him, holding his hips and pushing yourself deeper so his cock hits the back of your throat. He loudly moans at the contact, not even caring if anyone from the festival hears. He can feel his end nearing. “Hah, hah, fuck, gorgeous!” he pants. “I-I think I’m gonna…you need to stop or I’ll…oh, fuck!”

He has no chance to fight it. With a loud, low groan of your name, he spills his seed into your mouth and down your throat. You moan eagerly as he fills your tastebuds with his warm, salty cum, flooding your tongue with the taste of him. You don’t move, instead licking up the rest of him and swallowing his nut. The sight of you taking him so well makes the orgasm last longer and he nearly passes out from the blissful feeling.

When he finally finishes, you pull off of him and lick your lips of his nut and your spit. “I’m sorry,” he sheepishly apologizes. “I couldn’t stop it.” You giggle cutely at him despite having done what you just did. “Don’t be sorry. I enjoyed it.” And he loves that you enjoyed it.

He holds a hand out to help you off of your knees. As you stand before him and wrap your arms around him, only one thing stops you from being flush against each other: his cock which has begun to grow hard again, standing at attention. You look down at the growing appendage and your eyes grow wide at the sight. “Oh!” you gasp. “Y-You’re still–”

“Yeah,” he sighs, subconsciously criticizing his dick. “I just can’t believe I really have you like this and I guess I’m just excited.”

Feeling your soft, plump body against him is more than he can take! He needs to see you underneath him, taking his cock, or bent over, your ass presented to him to spank and massage until he empties himself inside of you again.

But he wants you to want that too, so he presses a hand to your cheek to keep your eyes fixated on his. “If you don’t want to go any further, we don’t have to. It’s all up to you, sweetie.”

You press your cheek farther into his touch and then stand on your tiptoes to kiss him. Your soft lips make him grow harder. “I want to,” you murmur softly against his mouth. “We may have to keep quiet though.” He nods in understanding.

That doesn’t last for long though. Actually, that “quiet” shit goes straight out the window the minute Rengoku gets inside of you and has you pinned up against the tree while you sink down onto his cock. You are both unable to keep your voices down as your sobbing wet, tight pussy slides down on Rengoku’s thick, hard cock over and over again, somehow becoming more intense with each passing second.

“Fuck, Ren!” You moan into his ear. “You’re so…so…oh, fuck!” You wrap your arms and legs tight around him while he bounces you up and down on top of him, filling you up with dick again and again.

Rengoku can barely handle the feeling of your soft, curvy body against him, his big hands gripping your ass as he thrusts up into you. “I know,” he groans. “You feel so fuckin’ good, gorgeous. Fuck, I’m so sorry it took me so long to do this.”

But feeling your bodies, damp and sticky from the summer’s night, against each other and your cunt squeezing around him make it all worth it. “M-Me too!” You whimper sweetly to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how I felt before.” You bury your face in his hair as you moan and whine, trying to keep your voice down as much as you can.

Rengoku laughs lightly as he fucks you against the tree, gripping you to him. “You sound so cute, baby,” he pants. “You love gettin’ fucked out in public like this, don’t you? Who would’ve thought such a great trainer would be such a little slut.”

Your pussy tightens at the vulgar word, leading him to fuck you slower, teasing you. His strokes are still deep and draw sobs and whines out of you that make him want to bust the fattest nut inside of you. To anyone who walked by, they’d see him—a big, tall man—fucking you—a beautiful, curvy woman with the heels of her feet in her man’s firm ass and her nails sinking into his shoulders.

After a few more strokes, Rengoku gently lowers you onto your feet. You look up at him, dazed and cock drunk. In his crimson eyes rimmed with gold, you see passion and lust flared within them. “Turn around,” he demands. “I need to see this gorgeous ass bounce when I cum again.”

He leans down to give you an open-mouthed kiss, swirling his tongue erotically with yours. When he pulls away, he presses a kiss to your earlobe. “And I want us to cum together,” he murmurs into your ear. “Can we do that, baby?” He takes a nibble of your earlobe, emitting a soft moan from you.

You grip his arms and sink your pretty, pink nails into them. “Please,” you whimper. He pulls away and bends his knees so he’s at eye level with you. “Please what, darling?” One of his big hands grips your chin, forcing you to keep looking at him.

You pull your lush bottom lip between your teeth and utter two little words that feel like a loaded gun to him: “Fuck me.”

It’s like Rengoku becomes a whole other person. Gone is the gold retriever, sunshiney man to see on a regular basis. The man in his place is lustful and demanding. And you love every minute of it, especially when he turns you around and bends you over, even gives your ass a smack. At the sound of your pleased moan, he does it again, the sharp sound of his hand connecting with your jiggling asscheek a symphony.

“Ready for me?” He softly asks, sliding his cock against your slit. You whimperingly beg him to just take you, your knees bent and hands braced against the tree. As soon as he slides back inside you, he can’t stop the moan that escapes him: “Fuuuuck.”

You let out a moan as well, feeling your pussy stretch around his thick cock as he slides in, his pelvis flush against your asscheeks. His strokes start off slow and deep, his hands gripping your juicy hips, his face buried in your hair as he whispers sweet, dirty nothings to you, like “You’re such a good girl” and “You look so perfect with my cock in you, darling”.

At the sound of your voice rising above the trees, he goes harder and faster, his big hands gripping your tits. Wet plap-plap sounds fill the air, mingling with your mindless babbling as Rengoku wears your pussy out: “Shit, Rengoku, yes, fuck me! Fuck me just like that, oh, oh!”

You begin to grind back into him, meeting his thrusts and causing him to sink even deeper inside of you. “Yes, gorgeous,” he praises you, laying a spank on your ass. “Fuck me back. Take me like you own me.”

You fuck each other, giving all the energy that you have in bringing each other pleasure. Rengoku can feel his balls tightening at the sight of your soft, round ass bouncing against him while you moan and whine. He’s so close! You are too and you make that known to him. “Oh, f-fuck, R-Ren,” you whimper. “I’m so close! Please don’t stop! Don’t—“

“Did you hear that?” A distant voice asks. “I think I heard it back there.” Tanjiro.

You and Rengoku share a look like you just heard a murder. He sounds like he’s at least five feet away from you.

“No, no, wait!” Zenistsu cries. “It could be a trap! You know the legends about spirits waking up during festival season!” He gasps. “Or what if it’s a demon?”

“If it is, we’ll kill it!” Inosuke bellows. “What’s the big deal, you big baby? We’ve fought off demons before!”

“Rengoku came out here, so he can’t be far,” Tanjiro says. There is the sound of footsteps and a twig snapping. “Uh, Rengoku-sama?” The young man calls. “Is that you?”

You look over your shoulder at Rengoku, terrified. “Don’t move,” he whispers. He clears his throat though still deep inside of you. “Uh, yes, Tanjiro!” He calls, keeping his voice steady and level. “It’s me! Why are you guys out here? Enjoy the festival!”

“Well, we were just wondering where you went,” Tanjiro explains. “It had been a while since you went on that walk with Y/N. We thought you guys got spirited away or were in trouble.”

“No, not we,” Insokue says with a scoff. “You two babies thought they were in trouble! I only came because Zenitsu was too much of a scaredy cat to go with you!”

Zenistu makes a noise between a whine and a scoff, offended. “That’s not true!” He protests. ”Why do you gotta always poke fun at me? It’s a forest! Anything bad can happen!”

The two begin to argue while Tanjiro desperately tries to stop them. “Guys, guys,” Rengoku firmly says, silencing them. “I’m fine! I just followed Y/N out to take her to gather some flowers. We’ll be back soon, so just head back to the festival.”

Your pussy clenches around him as his hand sneaks down to rub your clit, making him bite back a moan. “Are you sure?” Tanjiro asks.

“Absolutely!” he calls, his heart hammering against his chest. “Go and enjoy the festivities! We’ll be back before the fireworks!” He hears the three whisper amongst each other before finally, Tanjiro announces that they are heading back. ”We’ll save you a seat,” he says before his and the others’ footsteps descend.

Once their footsteps fade, Rengoku’s body relaxes. “They’re gone,” he announces and sighs in relief. “Thank goodness. I’m sorry about that.” He gently strokes your back, hoping to ease your body out of its fight-or-flight state.

Shockingly, you are still wet and still horny, looking back at him with the sexiest eyes he’s ever seen. “Don’t be sorry, baby,” you purr. “It wasn’t your fault. Just cum with me.”

You begin to toss your ass back into him, your pussy swallowing him up. “Please fill me up,” you beg. “I need it so badly.”

Rengoku, helpless to deny you and needing release, wraps a hand around your neck and gently squeezes. The way your lips form an O is an erotic sight, indeed. “You’re such a little slut, you know that?” He growls. “Such a good little girl for me.”

With his other hand, he grabs your hip and pistons himself into you again and again, plunging his cock into the wet depths of your soft pussy and flicking your needy clit at the same time.

It doesn’t take long for that button inside of you to flicker on and Rengoku feels your pussy tighten around him, squeezing him tighter than a vice.

“I’m cumming!” You sob. “Ren, I’m cumming! I’m…I’m…”

You don’t get a chance to finish because your pussy is spasming around his cock and cumming on it, dripping cream down to his balls. Your little body spasming in his hands and your loud moans cause him to cum too, triggered by all of you.

A low yet loud groan leaves Rengoku’s mouth as he empties his balls inside of, rope after rope of cum escaping his cock and into your womb. He grips you to him, afraid that you’ll vanish and he’ll never be able to get this moment again.

“Shit!” He hisses, pressing his face into your soft, sweet-smelling hair as he goes through the motions of his orgasm. ”Take it,” he growls. “Take it all. It’s fucking yours.” You gasp at the onslaught of warmth and wetness, feeling overloaded with cum.

You are absolutely full of him.

After a few more shallow thrusts and a feeble grab of your breast, Rengoku presses a kiss to your forehead and gently pulls out of you. The sight of his nut dripping down your pussy and thighs is damn near too much.

Together, you both lie down in the flowers side by side, Rengoku’s big, muscular body curled into yours. Legs tangled, fingers stroking, and lips touching each others’. You lay in the sweet afterglow, only the stars witness to what just transpired.

For a while, you lie in comfortable silence. And then you speak. “That was amazing,” you sigh. “You were so good.” You press your hand and cheek to his chest, feeling and listening to his thumbing heart.

Rengoku feels pride and joy swell within him. “So were you.” He takes your hand and presses several kisses to them. Once again, he holds you close, not wanting to lose this peaceful moment. But alas, everything good must come to an end.

The only thing that makes him happy is that you will get many more moments like this now that he knows how you feel.

He sighs, lamenting. “I don’t want to leave, but we should probably head back.” You nod in agreement, sharing one last kiss before you separate and rise to your feet.

You get dressed and fix your hair to make sure neither of you look like you just fucked in the woods. Rengoku watches you wobble slightly. “Can you walk?” he asks, concerned. You nod though you keep leaning against one of the trees.

He tuts, stalking over to you. “That won’t do.”

In one swift motion, he scoops you up and carries you bridal style away from the clearing. “Rengoku, no!” you squeal in protest. “I’m fine! I-I can walk! Put me down!”

But he doesn’t listen, gripping you tighter. ”Just enjoy the ride, honey,” he chuckles. “We’ll be back in no time to see the fireworks.” He gives you a wink and his laugh echoes among the trees as you flush embarrassingly, wrapping your arms around his neck.

When you and Rengoku make it back to the festival, the fireworks have already begun. He puts you down and you find the gang among the crowd. Mitsuri greets you first, yelling among the boom of the fireworks. “There you two are!” she shouts. “We thought you got lost! C’mon, the fireworks started and I’ve got the best seats.”

She grabs your hand and drags you over to her seat on the grass with Tengen’s wives. Speaking of Tengen, he comes up to Rengoku’s side with some shaved blue moon ice, a smirk playing on his lips.

“That was some walk,” he comments. “Guess you got her before I could, huh?” He raises an eyebrow at his fellow slayer and friend.

“That’s right,” Rengoku confidently says, raising his chin and smiling. “I’m sorry to break it to you like this, Tengen.”

Tengen just keeps smirking, ever so cocky. “How flashy of you,” he chuckles. “I guess my plans for a fourth wife have been ruined.”

Rengoku must look horrified and absolutely murderous because Tengen nearly doubles over cracking up. “I’m kidding!” he laughs. “I just wanted to see your face!”

He pats Rengoku on the back and leans in. “But you may wanna break this lightly to my girls,” he whispers. “They were looking forward to a fifth in our little family.”

Sure enough, the sister wives are doting over you, talking about how pretty you look in your kimono. Tengen gives Rengoku a wink before walking over to join his wives on the grass.

Shaking off his words, Rengoku joins you on the grass shortly after and watches the colorful beams explode in the night sky. “Isn’t it so pretty?” you dreamily sigh.

He turns to you, watching red, green, and pink illuminate your face. He slides his hand over to yours and interlaces your fingers. “Yes,” he agrees. “It is.”

THE END.

[zafill]

Can I ask for a kyojuro x a girl who happens to look exactly like his mother ruka?

(this is my time requesting so I'm really nervous)

A Flicker of Flame

HII UR MY FIRST REQUEST SO IM SO EXCITED!!!

warnings: none

note: Its a bit short, if you want a pt.2 just ask :3

----------------------------------

The streets of the red light district were alive with the hum of night time activity. Lanterns hung from the eaves of the shops, casting soft red glows on the faces of passing strangers. The scent of sake and sweet perfumes lingered in the air, blending with the whispers of conversations. Y/n walked quietly through the crowd, her sharp eyes scanning every corner of the bustling marketplace.

She had her reasons for being here. Her life in the village hadn't been kind, and the things she did to survive were things she would never admit aloud. Tonight, though, her eyes were set on one particular target—a man known for his flaming red hair, his powerful presence, and his unwavering sense of honor.

Kyojuro Rengoku.

She had heard of him, of course. The Flame Hashira had been in the area before, fighting demons to protect the city. The people praised him for his strength, his commitment, and his fiery spirit. They spoke of his kindness, his bravery, and how he had saved the city on multiple occasions. It seemed like everyone was enamored with him. Except Y/n.

She couldn't bring herself to like him, despite everything he had done. The truth was, she found it hard to trust people who tried too hard to be "good."

Y/n moved through the throngs of people with practiced ease, her gaze always shifting from face to face, from shadow to shadow. She was a master of her craft, slipping unnoticed through crowded streets, her hands light as air as they lifted coin purses from unsuspecting victims. The bustling red-light district was perfect for someone like her—chaotic, filled with distractions, and yet, she always kept her focus sharp.

She had heard Rengoku was nearby, having been seen leaving a tavern a short while ago. Her target was a man who stood out, even in a crowd. His towering figure and bright, fiery hair could make him a beacon in the dark, and that was exactly what she needed. It was always easier to pick the pockets of those who were too focused on their own sense of justice to pay attention to the world around them.

The night air was thick with the smell of incense and the faintest hint of smoke. Y/n knew this place all too well—she had slipped through these streets countless times, taking what she could, never looking back. She was always quick, always calculating. But tonight, something felt different. Tonight, she wasn’t just any pickpocket. She had her sights set on something bigger.

Kyojuro Rengoku was tall, his posture rigid, as though he was made of iron and fire. His crimson hair, glowing faintly under the lantern lights, reminded Y/n of a blaze, fierce and untamable. She watched him from a distance as he spoke with the street vendors, exchanging pleasantries and leaving generous tips. The people adored him, surrounding him with smiles and admiration. He was their hero, the man who protected them from demons and dangers alike.

Y/n's lips curled into a bitter smile as she adjusted her cloak, allowing it to fall loosely around her form. She moved closer, blending into the crowd, eyes fixed on the pouch hanging from Rengoku's waist. It was tucked away in a way that screamed "easy pick," but it was guarded by his sheer presence—the kind of presence that made everyone part ways without even realizing it.

Taking a deep breath, Y/n reached for the knife tucked beneath her sleeve. She wasn’t planning to use it, not tonight. But a sharp edge was always a good reminder of what she was capable of. She wasn’t afraid of a fight. Not anymore.

Her pace quickened, and in the span of a few moments, she was close enough to make her move. As she brushed past him, her fingers brushed the pouch gently, carefully, her movements like water, silent and swift. She felt the familiar weight shift in her hand, her fingers deftly unlatching the string that held it closed. The pouch slipped free, light as a feather.

But then—

Rengoku’s voice rang out, low and calm, yet full of an undeniable power. "I believe you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you."

Y/n froze, her heart skipping a beat. She hadn’t expected him to notice, to catch her so easily. She’d been so sure of herself, so confident that this would be like any other job.

Y/n’s breath hitched, but she quickly masked it with a practiced air of innocence. She straightened, feigning surprise, her eyes wide as she turned to face him.

“Excuse me?” she asked, her voice soft, as if she had no idea what he was talking about. Her hand stayed steady, the pouch still clutched in her fingers, hidden behind the folds of her cloak.

Rengoku's amber gaze never wavered from her. His eyes were unwavering, like flames that burned with sincerity and unshakable certainty. He didn’t flinch at her act; he simply stepped closer, his presence like the heat of a fire, undeniable and relentless.

"You're quite skilled," he said, his voice calm, though there was a quiet intensity beneath the words. "But I can see the pouch you’ve taken. I don’t think you need to deny it."

Y/n’s mind raced. She knew she could make a run for it—escape into the darkened alleyways and lose herself in the maze of the district. She’d done it countless times before. But something about Rengoku’s gaze made her hesitate. The usual fear she felt when caught had vanished, replaced by a strange curiosity. Why wasn’t he angry? Why was he so sure of himself?

She took a breath, letting her mask slip just slightly. “I don’t know what you're talking about,” she said again, but this time, the edge of her voice wasn’t as sharp. Her words didn’t carry the usual bite; they felt empty.

Rengoku gave a soft sigh, not out of frustration, but as if he had expected this response. His eyes softened, and for the briefest moment, Y/n could almost see past the warrior and into the man beneath. The one who had seen countless battles, fought for people who might never know his name, and stood unwavering even when the world around him crumbled.

“You don’t have to keep pretending," he said gently, his voice surprisingly tender. "I understand why you do it, the way you live. But stealing from others won’t fill the emptiness inside. You don’t have to carry that weight alone."

Y/n’s breath caught in her throat. His words weren’t angry or accusatory—they were understanding. Almost like he knew. Like he saw through all the walls she had so carefully built around herself.

Y/n’s heart pounded in her chest, and before she could stop herself, her legs were already moving, carrying her away from Rengoku’s steady gaze. His words reverberated in her mind, but she couldn’t let them settle. Not yet. Not when she still had so much to run from.

She darted down a narrow alleyway, weaving between shadowed doorways and discarded crates. The sounds of the bustling red-light district faded, replaced by the echo of her hurried footsteps and the sharp breaths she took as she pressed herself against the cool stone wall.

Her pulse was racing, her mind a whirlwind of thoughts. Why did he have to say that? She didn’t want anyone to understand her. She didn’t want to be seen, not like that. She needed to forget about Rengoku and his damned kindness. People like him never understood. They always thought they could save someone like her, but they never could. Not really.

Y/n squeezed her eyes shut, pushing the thoughts away as she crouched behind a stack of crates, hoping the shadows would conceal her. She stayed perfectly still, listening for any sign that Rengoku had followed her.

But no matter how hard she tried to keep her breath steady, it came in sharp, uneven gasps. Her hands clenched at her sides, the pouch now sitting heavy in her palm, the weight of it a constant reminder of what she had almost done.

Her eyes flicked toward the alley’s mouth, waiting for the familiar sounds of footsteps to fade.

Seconds passed. Then minutes.

But they didn’t fade. Instead, she heard a voice—a calm, unhurried voice—cut through the stillness of the alley.

“I know you’re here.”

Y/n’s breath caught in her throat. How?

Her eyes widened, and she turned her head just enough to see the silhouette of Rengoku standing at the far end of the alley. He hadn’t even run after her, hadn’t rushed to catch up. No, he had been patient, waiting for her to come to terms with whatever it was she was running from.

His amber eyes gleamed in the low light, calm and unwavering, as if he had always known she would end up here.

“There's no reason to run,” he said gently, his voice like a warm flame in the cold night air. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Y/n’s instincts screamed at her to move, to escape before he could catch her again, but something in the way he spoke—something in the way he wasn’t threatening or angry—stilled her.

He stepped closer, his posture relaxed yet firm, like a man who had faced countless trials and was ready for whatever came next, but with no desire to force her hand.

Y/n’s chest tightened, her mind a swirl of conflicting thoughts. She felt trapped, cornered by his calm presence, unable to run or hide. The weight of the pouch in her hand felt unbearable now, its coins clinking in the silence between them.

With a sharp exhale, Y/n tossed the pouch back toward him, letting it fall to the ground with a dull thud. She pulled her hood back with a swift motion, the dark fabric falling away from her face, revealing the features she had kept hidden for so long.

Rengoku froze.

For a long moment, there was no sound, no movement except the quiet rustle of her cloak in the night air. Y/n tilted her head slightly, narrowing her eyes at him, as though daring him to say something. Anything.

But when his amber eyes locked onto her, his mouth parted in disbelief, and his voice trembled with something she couldn’t quite place.

"Mom...?"

Y/n blinked, her mind struggling to catch up. Her breath caught in her throat, a confused laugh escaping her before she could stop it. "What?!" she snapped, her hands flying up as if to shield herself from whatever madness was unfolding before her. "What do you mean, 'Mom'? Are you out of your mind or something?"

Rengoku took a step forward, his face etched with shock, his eyes wide with recognition. "I... it can’t be. But your eyes—"

Y/n’s eyes narrowed, her pulse racing in confusion and frustration. She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated, and took a sharp step back, her posture defensive.

“Do I look old enough to be your mother?!?!" she snapped, her voice rising with disbelief. “I mean, seriously, what is this? Some kind of sick joke? Do I look like I’m in my thirties or something?! I’m not your mom!”

Her words cut through the air, filled with a mixture of anger and pure confusion. She had no idea what was going on or why this stranger—this man she had just met, someone who’d seemed so calm and collected, was now looking at her with that wide-eyed recognition.

Rengoku seemed to recoil, his hands slightly raised in a gesture of apology, but he didn’t back away. His expression was a mix of concern and bewilderment, the shock of the moment still written clearly across his face.

“I—I’m sorry. It’s just… your eyes. They’re so familiar,” he stammered, though his voice remained steady. "I... I didn’t mean to—"

Y/n cut him off, shaking her head in disbelief. “No, no. No. I’m not your long-lost mother, and if you think I am, you’ve got some serious issues you need to sort out. My life’s hard enough without you adding some random, weird connection I didn’t ask for.”

Y/n’s breath hitched in frustration, her hands still clenched tightly by her sides as she glared at him, daring him to say anything more. She wasn’t sure what game he was playing, but she wasn’t about to entertain it any longer.

Rengoku, still standing there with that mixture of shock and regret in his eyes, seemed to deflate slightly under her sharp words. His face reddened, and he shifted uncomfortably, clearly caught off guard by her anger and the situation at hand.

“I... I’m really sorry,” he muttered, his voice lower now, laced with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. It’s just...”

He trailed off, the words caught in his throat as he glanced at the pouch of money still resting on the ground between them, the coins catching the faint glow of the lanterns above.

“Keep the money...” he mumbled, his voice almost inaudible now. His cheeks were flushed, a stark contrast to his usual fiery demeanor, and his eyes darted anywhere but at her.

With that, he gave a small bow of his head, and without another word, he turned on his heel and began to walk away, his broad shoulders slightly hunched, his back turned in silent retreat.

Y/n watched him go, her mind swirling with a mixture of confusion, frustration, and something else she couldn’t quite place. She hadn’t expected him to just... give up like that.

As he disappeared into the distance, she couldn’t help but mutter under her breath, “What a weird guy.”

And with that, she was left alone in the quiet alley, the pouch still lying untouched at her feet, the night air thick with the weight of everything unsaid.

[iron-embers]

Isane and Saigo…..it has been too long! Love drawing this dynamic duo and can’t wait to finish it!

(Low key…..doesn’t Isane and Saigo sound like insane and psycho?!🤣😂)

Isane and art are mine

Saigo belongs to @bloodbladesanddemons

[neiptune]

One serving of christmas pudding please🤍

Kyoiuro Rengoku + Hashira!wife + "stop trying to get me under the mistletoe!"

Thinking of him finally getting back up and cheerful after all the things he endured after Mugen train and what better way than to mess with the little wifey🤭

kyojuro rengoku x stop trying to get me under the mistletoe!

“Kyo, let me do that”, you promptly take the tinsel from his hands and toss him a smile before heading toward the fireplace. He frowns.

“But I want to help”.

“You can help by resting”, the playful quip makes him pout slightly.

He knows you’re trying to take care of him, have been doing so ever since he miraculously made it back from his last mission. Shinobu didn’t have to tell him about all the sleepless nights you spent by his side while he was knocked out for almost a month, barely strong enough to open his eyes again.

Sure enough, you were there, so tired and the most scared he’s ever seen you. Despite your sweet face being the last thing he evoked in his mind right before blacking out, seeing it again filled his lungs with relief and eyes with scorching tears.

Kyojuro is aware he brought back a different version of himself, much more vulnerable, prone to nightmares and quiet moments where his mind wanders off to places not even you can reach. But he is better now: with your help and the kindness of his friends, his family, he is better. Whatever will ever take to convince you of that, still tiptoeing around him as if he’s glass that will shatter with a gust of wind.

You’re scared, there’s a paralyzing terror clutching your limbs in an iron grip not even all your years spent as a hashira can help you escape. It’s the closest you’ve ever been to life without him. You can’t forget how it felt, all his years as the flame pillar shrinking in the presence of your terror. Of your resolve. You can’t risk that again. And if it means looking after him forever, putting the love of your life before your job, demons be damned, by gods you will do it. It’s the one thing you’ll allow yourself to be selfish with.

“You know. You still haven’t told me what my gift is”, Kyojuro carefully wraps his arms around you and gently pulls you into his chest, warm and solid against your back. You melt into him, close your eyes to enjoy the domesticity that the quiet moment holds before one of his gifts, Shinjuru and Senjuro coming to stay over for the holidays as a surprise, walks through the door.

“It’s… one serving of miso soup and sweet potatoes”. He hums, lips grazing your ear as he starts swaying gently.

“That’s not true. Don’t lie to your husband”.

“Accusing your wife of such shameful offence”, you grin, “how outrageous!”.

Kyojuro smiles too as he kisses a spot under your jaw, teeth later grazing the tender skin.

“I’ll tell you what’s outrageous”, with a swift movement and a yelp on your side, he suddenly turns you into his embrace, eyes glinting with mischief, “you haven’t kissed me yet”. He picks you up with ease and you cling to him like a koala bear as Kyojuro starts walking backwards, toward a foreign destination. When you catch a glimpse of the sprig of mistletoe, you push back against his chest.

“Kyojuro, no!”.

“No?”, he tilts his head, feigning indignation, “I thought you loved me”.

“I do!”.

“I thought you were the proudest wife… married to such a handsome exponent of the Rengoku family…”.

“I am!”, you cry out, “you are! Just-”

Kyojuro balances you against his chest with a small hop and a telltale grin.

“I thought you’d be happy to prove all the aforementioned affection…”.

“Rengoku Kyojuro”, you arch your back in another attempt at breaking free of his embrace, “stop trying to get me under the mistletoe!”

“I’m afraid I can’t. It’s my favorite tradition”.

“Put me down, you’re still recovering! Besides, you have to wait until christm-”

“No can do”, he brings one of his hands to rest on your back and pulls you in once more, “and I’m fine. I feel good. I just want my wife to kiss me”.

With a sigh, you deflate against him and finally wrap your arms around his neck. You sense a real effort on his side, underneath all the warm playfulness: Kyojuro is really trying to reassure you, a silent plea to let him be himself again. He’s not made of glass.

He sees it in your eyes right away, the comprehension slowly making its way within them.

“I’m fine”, he repeats it softly. You exhale a shaky breath, fingers gently tangling in his hair. He looks especially good like this, in a simple beige sweater and brown cardigan, when he gets to be your husband and nothing else. Sometimes you wish he was a civilian, someone you could protect.

“I know”, you whisper back and lean forward to press a light kiss to his hooded eye. You still remember his relief upon realizing he could still see, happy because he wouldn’t have to halve the sight of you.

“So”, Kyojuro’s gaze never leaves yours as he reaches up to take the green sprig between his fingers and hold it above your heads, “will my wife kiss me?”.

Your exasperation is coated in tenderness.

“She will”.

thank you for trusting my writing and for drawing this BEAUTIFUL perfect header, hope you enjoy! happy holidays mwah

[six-eyed-samurai]

SUMMARY: Romeo and Juliet but shark merman!Genya x mermaid!Reader. A/N: I too have no idea how it spiraled into angst but it is what it is so enjoy! I realized it was gonna get too long so expect Part II soon (I swear it'll get better). WARNINGS: none

“Where the bloody hell are you off to at this time of the bleeping night?”

Ironic, Genya thought wryly, that sailors on the seas were Sanemi’s sworn enemies but his language was just as filthy as theirs, albeit he was sober (mostly, at any rate; when Obanai came around it was another story). He exhaled sharply, before plastering an innocent expression that failed terribly when he caught the suspicious look on his elder brother’s face as he turned around.

Sanemi glared at him from the entrance of their family home, evidently having woken up when Genya sneaked out. Violet eyes crankily clouded by sleep and his white hair even wilder than usual, Sanemi looked as forgiving as the fishermen that would catch them in their nets and sell them off for their fins. He prayed his brother hadn’t alerted their mother of his night time wanderings and that Sanemi would think this was the first time he was doing this.

“For a swim, I can’t sleep.” Genya’s eye twitched but he blinked to disguise it. He hated lying to his older brother, hell, anyone really, but he had no choice.

He didn’t mind if Sanemi was going to drag him back in screaming bloody murder by his ear fins and threaten to add a few more scars to the ones already criss-crossing both their bodies and chop off his fins to make soup with for disobeying their mother’s curfew rule, although now that he thought about it…it was a little scary.

But it was fine!

As long as she was safe from the numerous wraths that would be incurred if anyone found out what Genya really had been doing at night, he’d have his long, dark purple tail chopped off for all he cared.

Seconds ticked by. If Genya were human sweat would be rolling off him in buckets. He tugged at his piranha-tooth necklace instead. Sanemi continued to glower menacingly.

Then his brother rolled his eyes before drifting back in. “Work on your lying skills if you’re going to go see your little princess.”

Woah, he wasn’t expecting that. Since when was Sanemi so forgiving? He brightened in relief, not realizing how panicked he had been to have Sanemi catch him in such an incriminating move - wait a minute -

“SHE’S NOT MY PRINCESS!”

Presumably his brother had returned to the pod, but he heard a grunt as he hovered around the entrance, face as red as coral and throat struggling to both shout at Sanemi and not wake his siblings. “Whatever you say.”

“We’re just - we’re -” Then another thought struck him. “HOLD UP - HOW LONG - HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

This time Sanemi really poked his head back in with a gritted jaw and twitching eye. “Go find your bleeping precious pearl and LET ME SLEEP ALREADY!”

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so Genya took the opportunity to flee, flushed and flustered at however in the world had Sanemi discovered his nickname for her?

***

“Ara ara, what do we have here, a little princess running away?”

“Eh, no, no, Kocho-san!” She frantically turned around, eyes widened to the size of the largest, prettiest pearls Genya always liked to compare her to.

The Hashira’s resident healer leaned closer with her customary smile that never wavered, unlike her midnight blue and dark purple tendrils in the still waters. “Really now? Whatever are you doing then? Himejima would be very worried if I were to tell him you were sneaking out at night - not very sneakily, actually, seeing as I’ve seen you do this three times already, little princess.”

She glanced away but the pink blush was still painted on her face for all the ocean to see. Kocho had known all this time? That was very, very bad news…but if she hadn’t confronted her until now it much mean something, right?

Besides, Kocho didn’t sound like the other snitches of other mermaids who’d gotten her into trouble too many times to count by reporting her to her strict father in order to get into his good books: sly, accusing and reprimanding. No, she only sounded as if she were to know why she’d leave it at that. Mere curiosity.

Mere curiosity, she lied to herself reassuringly.

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she said aloud. “I wanted to go out and work off the restlessness.”

“Why haven’t you come to me or Kanae then, dear?” Shinobu hummed, then inclined her head to the rows of undersea herbs and concoctions the two sister healers spent their days mixing up for the kingdom’s army. She crossed her arms. “Or is there something else…?”

Jellyfish were hypnotizing to look at; Kocho was hypnotizing to listen to and the truth burst out before she could stop herself.

“I’m - I’m just going to see someone. Please don’t tell Gyomei-san!” She begged, not liking the idea of the giant stone crab-hybrid getting into trouble on her account. Trusted family friend or not her father would definitely have words with her caretaker for letting her run off, especially if he found out that today Gyomei had to leave her with the Kocho sisters to deal with some more troublesome members of the Corps.

“Who is this someone?” Kocho’s smile widened but turned a little more real, more genuine. “Don’t worry, I have no plans to rat you out.”

She cast her eyes down and mumbled a name Shinobu didn’t exactly remember (oddly familiar though, hmmm….), but there was only one reason she would be running off to see someone at this time of the night…her father, the Undersea King Ubuyashiki’s loyal, old-fashioned second in command must not have approved of…

“It's a boy?” Shinobu prodded, not unkindly. “I'd have thought your father would be happy you found a suitor.”

“You know - you know how he is!” She hid her face. Certainly a boy then, but…

Her father was infamous for his beliefs that different species of mercreatures - dolphin with dolphin, fish with fish, octopi with octopi - shouldn't be mixing…one particular species in particular.

Well there was only one shark mercreature that Shinobu was well acquainted with, and if her memory served her right Shinazugawa had a younger brother.

“I would've thought you'd have gone for someone of a more calmer nature.” Shinobu turned away to hide the genuine smirk on her face, her indigo tentacles propelling her back inside. “Don't take too long and tell Genya-kun I said he better not break your heart.”

She knew an olive branch when she saw one, and so blushing furiously she quickly swam away with half formed, stammering questions and protests.

***

“H - hey -oof!”

Genya swore she was more beautiful with every time he saw her, smooth hair drifting in a silky cloud behind her, stars stolen from the above and taken to their new home in her eyes, moonlight highlighting that perfect skin and scales, but she never did believe him (would he? Not when he stuttered and struggled to convey his worship of her eloquently anyway) so he tried to show it in ways she couldn’t deny.

Not to say he didn’t love it when she showered him with affection that nearly gave him a premature death by cardiac arrest either.

Like right now. He prayed to all the Undersea Gods they could stay like this forever, him awkward as ever wrapping his scarred arms around her frail little body, her head tucked into his neck and his buried into her hair, tails intertwined.

Just them. No one else. No one judging them just because he was some shark delinquent boy and she was the closest thing to a princess. Not a thing in the world to rip them apart.

He'd tell her about his training, internally wondering what good karma had he done to earn someone as patient as her sitting through his terrible spluttering and have her tell him it was cute instead. She’d tell him about whatever it was someone as upper class her did on a daily basis, royal gossip and the doings of the Hashira, the Corps’ strongest mercreature soldiers. He laughed, she teased, he blushed, she shyly pecked his cheek; but mostly they just held each other, savor the feeling of fragile content.

Today was a little special - Genya had been planning to gift her something for a while. Himejima-san had no idea, obviously, of who he was seeing (some things were easier to keep from a blind man than others, Genya guiltily thought) but knew enough to know the girl, whoever she was, must be very special to have his apprentice shout and bluster like crazy when he asked. With a quirked smile he had quietly handed Genya a string of pearls the other day and when the oblivious, confused Shinazugawa had asked what for:

“I’m sure your little pearl will enjoy it.”

(The stone crab mercreature had quite the laugh to himself that day watching Genya poorly justify and defend himself. Let’s be honest, everyone knew Genya was chasing after someone.)

He prayed she’d like it. In retrospect it was such a stupid idea. She was nearest thing to Undersea royalty, she could have any jewel the seat offered if she so much as implied it. Such a stupid idea he nearly backed out of it, but the sneaky mermaid had distracted him so well with those glassy eyes and pouting lips that Genya didn’t even realize when she took them out of his grasp.

“Genya-kun, this is so pretty!”

“Har? No, it’s nothing really - just some seed pearls - besides I know you have better ones -”

“But they’re not from you! Help me put it on?”

“…fine, but only because you said so,” he muttered, embarrassed that she could have him wrapped around her finger so well.

“See, I’m matching with you now!” She tapped the driftwood-carved bracelets on his own arms with a bright giggle.

Perfect. Her, everything. Just perfect.

It was for but a moment anyway; something or somebody would always come along to remind them of the invisible glass wall that separated them forever like the poor captured mercreatures stuck in aquariums.

“Right this way, sir…”

“Shit.” Genya muttered some more obscenities and hurriedly untangled himself from her, grabbing her hand with the panicked intention of hopefully swimming off fast enough to - no idea, but anywhere before they were caught.

“Genya - stop - they’re coming this way -” Her warning, worried whisper came far too late.

There really was nothing more awkward than running right into the very person they were trying to run away from, and judging by Tomioka Giyuu’s slack jawed, wide eyed expression he had not been expecting this at all.

“Tomioka?”

Undersea Gods damn this day, why did it have to be HIS voice approaching?

A very awkward pause ensued; the calm before the storm.

“What are you doing with my daughter? This is the fifth time already.”

“Father -”

“Come over here.”

She squeezed his hand weakly before swimming over to her father’s side. Genya lowered his head in fearful respect under her father’s commanding gaze and cold venom in his tone. Tomioka looked on almost apologetically from the side.

“When you prove you’re no less violent and lowly as the two legs above only then are you worthy of even being in her company, shark.”

You’re not good enough for her, he meant.

You’ll never be good enough.

You’re no good.

“Wait!” Her outstretched hand was blocked by her father’s.

Genya swam away as fast as he could, ears burning not from flustered adoration but shame. Predators like him weren’t supposed to be part of her paradise.

Something about being told that constantly was really starting to chip away at him.

***

“Shinazugawa-san gave Tomioka quite the scolding today.” Muichiro peeled himself away from the rock he had been sitting on to chase after Genya, who was listlessly drifting off, turquoise tentacles the same color as the ends of his long hair wavering in the water. His blue eyes were alight with mischief. “I suspect if Oyakata-sama had not been there he would’ve beaten up Tomioka for accidentally leading her father to you both. Tomioka was already lucky to be able to avoid him for three days; but of course the meeting was impossible to miss.”

“Aniki wouldn’t actually do that,” Genya replied distractedly. Lies, Sanemi absolutely would, what with his intense hatred for the poor merman, but right now Genya had a lot more to think about than to ponder on what havoc Sanemi was capable of wrecking.

“What happened after that though?” Muichiro was the only one Genya had explicitly told about his not so secret infatuation with her, being his close friend - and also because the sly octopus and his twin had stalked him one day. “Are you still meeting up with her?”

Genya scowled at the ground. “No, Himejima-san has been told to not let her out of his sight now. Haven’t seen her since then.”

Are you okay? Genya silently asked. Did you get punished? Are you still sure you want me even with all this we have to avoid?

“Come on, surely there’s a way for you to, you know, court her without having her prick of a dad interfering. So what if you’re a shark? You’re not that scary.”

“I’ll show you scary when I pull off all your tentacles,” Genya growled half-heartedly.

“Shiver me timbers. Is there really nothing you can do to get his approval?”

“…maybe it’s for the best he did it.”

Maybe we’re not meant for each other, he realized.

Put aside their difference in status and species, shark mercreatures were known for their aggressiveness and hot tempers - no wonder her father didn’t trust him around someone as delicate and precious as her. Sometimes Genya himself was afraid of what he could accidentally do to you. Not only that, but as much as Genya hated to admit it, he was afraid he’d turn out like Kyogo - everyone knew about the Shinazugawa’s abusive patriarch. Maybe her father wasn’t afraid of him, but what he could do or become.

She was a blooming flower.

He was the hand that was going to snap her stem and break her apart.

He finally understood now.

“Hey, hey, why are you saying that? Both of you are so in love it actually made me want to throw up, you can’t give up just because some old racist bigot - Genya-kun! Where are you going? Are you even listening? Don’t give up on her, that’s just stupid.”

Genya turned away, blinking away whatever was in his eyes. Definitely not tears. “It’s for the best.”

***

“Hey! There you are!”

She looked up from the seaweed she was absently pulling out. “Oh, hi, Mitsuri-chan.”

The pink and green haired mermaid swam closer, looking as bubbly as ever. Even though she was a Hashira, it was still amazing how there wasn’t a visible sign of injury save for her bandaged head after her recent clash with a group humans some time ago.

“What are you doing in the Stone Estate?” She asked. Himejima-san had gone out for a while, so if Mitsuri was here to see him she was a little too late. “Oh, you can sit down.”

“Thank you! To answer your question I think I left something of mine here when I last visited. Iguro-san said he could get me a new one, but I’m really upset I lost it. Have you seen an emerald bracelet?”

She shook her head. “I’ll look for it, but I don’t think it’s here. I would’ve seen it.”

“Oh well, maybe it’s at Kocho’s,” Mitsuri hums. “I heard what happened the other day.”

There wasn’t really an use in pretending not to know what she was talking about. Pretty much all the Hashira did after the one-sided screaming match between Shinazugawa and Tomioka. She’s managed to hide away successfully from interacting with any of them other than Himejima-san so far though.

“Mmm.”

“Have you spoken to him since?”

She didn’t mind telling Mitsuri, at least not much. The Love Pillar was almost like an older sister to her. “No. My father won’t let me out of sight and if we don’t really purposely go find each other it’s really hard to run into one another.”

“He hasn’t bothered to find you?” Mitsuri frowned. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

“Maybe he’s busy,” she replied unconvincingly, but Mitsuri figured it out quickly.

“He’s avoiding you?”

She didn’t mean to burst into tears, but she did anyway, sobbing her broken heart out onto a comforting Mitsuri’s shoulder. So what if they came from different worlds? It shouldn’t matter. Right? Hadn’t he told her that all this time? Then why did he seem to care about that now?

“I’m sure he doesn’t mean to! I think he’s just scared of your father - I know I am!” Mitsuri’s joke was enough to get a hiccupping laugh from her. “Why don’t you go find him tonight? He can’t avoid you forever. It’s all silly reasons to keep you apart! You both just have to work it through together! Lots of people support you - not just me and you remember that, alright? I’ll make Shinazugawa drag Genya there himself if I have to.”

Mitsuri’s pep talk caused her to brighten almost immediately. “You really think so?”

“I’d be such an idiot if I didn’t! Now, you better go find him by today!”

Her face cracked into a shy, elated smile for the first time in a while as she tackled the older mermaid in a fierce hug. “Thank you so much, Mitsuri-chan! I hope you and Iguro-san get together soon!”

“Eh? No, no, he doesn’t like me that way!!!”

***

“Genya! Don’t ignore me, I know you know I’m here.”

She swam closer to the Shinazugawa home impatiently, rapidly getting fed up with the way Genya kept turning away with a red face. Exasperated she grabbed his shoulders to turn him around and face her, using one hand to force his head to face her.

“Stop ignoring me already! I just want to talk,” she huffed.

“You really shouldn’t be here.”

“Since when have you ever said something like that?” The space between her brow creased. “Genya, what’s wrong? You don’t have to be bothered about what my father says. I really don’t care and neither should you!”

“…it’s better if we did.”

He said it aloud to tell her, but more than half of him still hopelessly prayed she wouldn’t catch his whisper. The hurt and shattered look on her face proved otherwise and another part of his heart died a little more.

“Why? After everything? Did I do something wrong?” He promised to never make her cry, didn’t he? He said he’d catch all her tears, didn’t he? Why was he making her cry right now?

Liar.

“You deserve someone so much better than me, alright? Someone your equal. Someone who won’t fxxking be a danger to you. I should’ve listened to your father. I told you I’d give you the best things in the world - if that’s not me so be it. I’m not supposed to be part of it.”

“What’s the point of the world if you’re not in it? You don’t have the right to decide what I deserve or not!”

“We’re over.”

She swam away too quickly, too caught up in her misery and grief, to see the tears as glossy as the pearls she had dumped into his hand forming in his eyes, but not quick enough for him to not see the half-formed words on her lips: I don’t care, I still love you, I need you.

He brushed his fingers over the bracelet. For the best. If she hated him but could move on, he’d done his job. Sharks were predators - she’d be prey if he hadn’t done this.

I’m not supposed to be part of your world, he repeated.