Chapter Text
december.
Tanjirou doesn’t quite know what to make of Tomioka.
He is their savior, but he is also their guardian, but he is also a friend. Or, at least, Tanjirou hopes that he is their friend. He’d like to think that the man, as few-worded as he is, is one.
“Look at the wisteria, Nezuko,” He smiles, watching the slow drawl of his sister’s tired eyes as it reaches the trees in front of Tomioka’s estate. The place is really big—probably one thousand times bigger than their little house on the mountains. (There’s still blood in the floors. It will never be clean again.) “I didn’t think they grew in winter!”
Tomioka, from just behind them, ushers them inside of the fenced-off gardens. There’s a lot of beds of dirt that are covered with snow. Tanjirou can see the edge of a black tarp underneath it, and wonders distantly if there’s vegetables underneath it. It would be cool if Tomioka knew how to garden. Speaking of the man, he speaks in reply to him; “They don’t.”
Tanjirou blinks, tilts his head, waits for more. Tomioka blinks back, gaze ajar in the way Tanjirou knows is to look at a different part of the face. Eye contact is weird, so it’s okay. He does it too. “The Demon Slayer Corps has a specific growing pattern that mutated the plant to become strong enough to withstand the harsh season.” the man finally elaborates, expression a never-ending calm. It looks like the smooth surface of water, which is probably a really really good comparison, because Tomioka breathes kind of weird and he could’ve sworn when he killed that demon in the town they got Nezuko’s new outfit that he’d said something like “water slash”.
Or, like, something similar to that. Was it actually water slash, or was there another word? One less word? Tanjirou can’t remember, but it’s probably not that important.
When they step onto the engawa, and then the entry room, there’s two sets of house slippers just big enough for his and Nezuko’s feet next to a much larger pair. Tanjirou toes off his boots and walks Nezuko through doing the same to her zori. “No, you can’t just walk barefoot, Nezuko,” he tells her, patient. They’ve had this conversation before, when they were much younger and manners hadn’t fully gotten through her head. It’s probably really fair, though, because Tanjirou doesn’t much like shoes either. “We’re guests. We need to be respectful to Tomioka-san.”
Tomioka blinks down at them. He looks really confused and lost a lot of times, even smells like it, too. It’s a little funny. His face makes him look like he’s constipated. “You can walk barefoot in the estate,” Tomioka tells them. “I don’t mind.” His scent is neutral, if a bit confused, which tells Tanjirou he’s being completely honest.
However, he replies with; “If Nezuko unlearns her manners I’m going to bite you.”
Tomioka blinks. Again. He’s really good at doing that. Tanjirou’s only half serious about it, because he’s pretty sure Tomioka could probably get away from him really easily, but he can try really hard. “...Okay.” The man says, sounding completely out of his depth.
Tanjirou nods, satisfied, as his sister makes a groaning noise from behind her muzzle. She puts on the slippers, and Tanjirou smiles at her—only a little smug. She takes the chance to pinch his cheek, like the jerk she is, and he responds to it by snapping his teeth at her hand. Nezuko quickly retracts it, smacking him in the shoulder, and his smile this time is completely smug. He’s particularly unashamed of it, too.
Footsteps round the corner into the large entrance of Tomioka’s estate, and a young woman dressed in a dark gakuran modified like his appears. “Tomioka-sama,” she greets with a bow. She’s got a more modern dress thrown over the gakuran, a strange contradiction that only serves to make her look interesting with its minimal fish pattern along the bottom of it. Her hair is black and pin-straight, tied in a high ponytail.. “I assume Oyakata-sama knows of the demon girl?”
Tomioka hums. “Yes,” he responds. “I have informed him of their… unique situation,” The man tilts his head at him, and Tanjirou perks up, because usually when Tomioka’s head tilts he’s about to tell him stuff. “This is Ichikawa Fumiko. The Water Estate’s assistant. She will care for you when I am on missions or am unable to do so myself.”
Tanjirou grins. “It’s nice to meet you, Ichikawa-sama! Please take good care of us!” Nezuko nods beside him, chewing on her bamboo muzzle, huffing happily.
Ichikawa smiles. “Call me Fumiko, Kamado-kun. We’ll be spending a lot of time together.”
“Ichikawa-san.” Tanjirou says, stubborn.
She lifts a brow. “Ichikawa- chan .”
Tanjirou screws up his face. “...Fumiko-sama.” He settles on.
Fumiko snorts, nodding in satisfaction, and Tanjirou’s face burns with embarrassment. Tomioka sighs, scent something vaguely fond but distantly exhausted. “Ichikawa,” he begins. “Can you set up a room for the two of them? I… am tired. Nezuko-kun’s yukata needs washing, too.”
“As you wish,” Fumiko obliges, bowing again, before sending a smile their way. Tomioka doesn’t wait any particular amount of time before handing the leather bag with Nezuko’s bloodstained yukata in it over to the woman, before turning down a hallway with a short nod to them both. “Come now, you two. Let’s get you settled.”
Tanjirou, hand in his sister’s, follows Tomioka’s assistant through barely lived-in walls.
—
Nezuko falls asleep on a cloudy day where the sun can’t even begin to reach the earth below.
She doesn’t wake up. Before, during their travels, Tanjirou could simply nudge her into awareness. Now, since the night before, she’s buried deep into her kakebuton, unflinching and unawaking. He sits beside her futon and waits, watching. Her scent doesn’t change beyond quiet calm, muted and serene and completely unaware.
Snow covers the ground outside in thick sheets, unwavering, and he feels at her wrist for some kind of pulse. Of course she’s alive, he can tell that just by how she smells, but her pulse beats below his thumb and something about it is soothing. Maybe it’s a coma? Tanjirou thinks, lips thinning. But what would cause her one? Is it because she lost her leg when fighting that temari demon? But she was okay afterward…
His fingers dig into the seam of his haori’s sleeve. (She can’t be dead. Not her. Not the only thing he has left.) Fumiko. He could get her. But she doesn’t seem to know demons like Tomioka does, so he should probably get him, too, but what if Tomioka is doing something important? What if he’s on a mission?
Tanjirou sits in the room they’ve been provided in paralyzed fear, unsure where to go from here. Time ticks on like the march of a millipede, gentle and rough all the same. He doesn’t really feel it. Yesterday, they’d entered the estate, and Nezuko had been fine. She’d been content, even. She’d let Fumiko braid her hair so that it kept un-matted in her sleep, and shrunken herself down to a toddler. She likes being a toddler. His imōto has always loved being taken care of.
The thought is unbidden, unliked. His sister has always loved being cared for. Is she asleep because she knows she is cared for? It’s both nice and not. Tanjirou doesn’t want the thought, and he doesn’t like it. The smell of something cooking sinks its way into the wooden floors, wafting from whatever room holds the kitchen, and Tanjirou cannot move.
He sits beside his sister, knees on the floor, hands clasped around one of hers. Oh, Amaterasu-sama, he thinks, a prayer. Hi No Kami-sama. Please spare my sister. I promise she is still a child of the sun, of fire. She deserves to live, too.
This is how Tomioka finds him, muttering the same prayer over and over again with his sister’s hand between his. “Kamado-kun,” the man murmurs, stepping closer, scent uncertain like a confused little dog. “Breakfast is almost ready. Is your sister alright?”
Tanjirou swallows, eyes burning. “Tomioka-san,” he croaks, voice thick. The man’s scent turns into something full of concern, worry tinged with the slight feeling of discomfort. “Nezuko won’t wake up.”
Tomioka inhales, sharp, a disruption in his usually methodical breathing. He comes to kneel beside him, gently easing Tanjirou’s hands out of his sister’s. With a frown and a sniff, doing his best not to cry, Tanjirou lets him. The man checks for a pulse like he had earlier, first at the wrist and then at the neck, practically drowning in his own worry despite the placid expression he wears. After a moment, his palm presses to Nezuko’s forehead, like he’s checking for a fever.
Tomioka sighs. “I’ll… have to send a letter to Tamayo-sama,” he decides. “If she is unreachable, or is unable to find a solution, I may have to consult… Kochou,” The man shakes his head, uncertainty mixing with the worry. “That would be… a last ditch effort. Kochou does not particularly like demons.”
Tanjirou, for all he doesn’t know about demon slayers, is pretty sure that’s a euphemism for absolutely despising them. Demon slayers probably only become demon slayers because they’re like him , homes full of blood and gore and guts, their families nothing but contorted corpses—and so he cannot blame her. “What if she doesn’t wake up?” He asks, even though Tomioka won’t have an answer.
He’s got an air of awkward uncertainty to him, now, looking over at Tanjirou. “...Then we try our best to wake her anyway,” the man tells him. Our , he said. Try our best. Tanjirou sniffs, rubbing at his eyes. “Your sister is strong. The way she fought that temari demon proved it. She will make it through this, as will you.”
“Okay,” he mutters, through gentle tears. He wipes them away with the back of his wrist. “Okay. I’m hungry, Tomioka-san.”
Tomioka nods. “Breakfast should be ready by now. First, you eat, and then I will page Tamayo-sama about this situation,” The man’s head finds its way to Tanjirou’s head, carefully ruffling the hair with distinct fondness.
And with that, Tomioka leaves the room.
Oh, Amaterasu-sama. Oh, Hi No Kami-sama. Please let my sister wake up again.
—
“Kamado-kun,” Fumiko sings. “What’s your favorite sea creature?”
Tanjirou blinks, looking up from his journal. There’s already two in total, filled to the brim with days that drag lethargically through the winter. He makes them special for Nezuko, because she’ll want to know what was happening while she was asleep. Because she’ll wake up. She will . Tomioka said that she most likely would.
“Um,” he starts, mind blank. “I haven’t really thought about it. Why are you asking, Fumiko-san?” The young woman sits beside him, fingers gently running through his hair. It’s a distinct reminder of Kaa-san, the touch, and though guilt sinks his heart to his feet, he indulges in the affection.
“Everyone a part of Water Breathing’s heritage has some kind of representative sea creature. This includes attendants like me. I suppose it includes you and your sister now, too,” Tanjirou tilts his head at her, and she giggles. (It includes him and Nezuko. There is something where there is nothing.) “Even Tomioka-sama has one. Do you want to know what it is?”
Tanjirou’s eyes brighten, intrigued. “What? What is it?”
Fumiko’s grin gets a little smug. “It’s a cone snail .”
“Cone snail?” Tanjirou asks. The name doesn’t quite ring a bell, but snail and Tomioka feels both too cutesy but also just right. “Why?” Fumiko gestures silently for a piece of paper, which Tanjirou dutifully obliges, providing her his pen, too. With a deft, practiced hand, she slowly etches out a pretty-looking shell. It’s that cone shape that the name suggests, big on one side and narrow on the other. On the narrow side, a little appendage sticks out—the head, maybe. Underneath the shell is a weird sort of membrane.
“You’ll have to ask his master about what it means,” she tells him, handing him the paper. “I don’t quite know myself.” It’s a lie that Tanjirou isn’t inclined to call her out for. He takes the sketch and rummages through the drawer of the writing table to find an old pair of scissors, before cutting down the paper.
“There’s glue in there, too,” Fumiko says. “If you want to stick it in your journal for Nezuko-kun.” Tanjirou shoots her a smile, a little in awe. There’s glue . That stuff’s expensive—his family could never afford things like that. He supposes saving humanity in silence would probably warrant a hefty salary, though.
“Fumiko-san,” Tanjirou begins, slowly pressing the sketch into a fresh page of the journal. “What sea creature do you think I am?”
The woman blinks, clearly surprised by the question. She pauses, hums, begins to think. She looks a little like Kaa-san, when she does that. Not that Fumiko is like Kaa-san, heavens no. She’s beginning to feel more big-sister-y. “Well,” Fumiko murmurs. “You remind me of a nautilus.”
Dutifully, Tanjirou rips out a different page of the journal, handing it to her to sketch again. “What does it mean? Do you know?” She hums again, carefully drawing the creature into the page. It’s another shell-based creature, this time more of a long-winded spiral and circle. Through the opening lies the little face of a creature, stout tentacles floating about.
“The nautilus means growth,” Fumiko tells him. “Expansion and renewal, too. The shell symbolizes order in the midst of chaos,” she gives him a wry amused look. “Tomioka-sama told me the basis of your… encounters.”
Tanjirou can’t help but blush, rightfully embarrassed as he takes the picture from Fumiko and sticks it inside of the journal, a tad sloppier than the cone snail’s. “Well, okay,” He mutters. “I guess I’m a nautilus, then.”
Fumiko laughs, bright and fond, fingers running through her hair.
“I guess so.”
—
A week before the new year, Tanjirou finds himself sitting on the engawa.
The snow is still pretty. He can’t decide if he hates it or not, because all he can see is it red with his family’s blood. The new year is approaching, and everything is wrong .
Nezuko is asleep. The rest of his family is dead. He’s far away from his little house on the mountain. He left his family’s ceremonial Kagura robes at home, so now he can’t even perform the dance. (It’s so, so wrong. Disgustingly so. Tanjirou feels an innate sickness well up in his gut, and chokes down the bile it brings.)
“Kamado-kun,” Tomioka-san says, just loud enough to count as him calling for him. Tanjirou looks up and over at the man, the shoji door half-ajar. “What are you doing out here? You’ll catch a cold.”
Tanjirou frowns, and wrinkles his nose and Tomioka’s scent immediately sours with worry. That seems to be all he’s good at doing to him, now that they aren’t traveling anymore. Worrying him. He looks really tired, too. Tanjirou doesn’t think he noticed how tired the man looked when they were moving. When they met. He should really sleep some more. (Nevermind the fact that Tomioka-san sleeps a lot . Sometimes Tanjirou will find that he’s fallen asleep beside Nezuko. At the very least, it soothes that something wrong.)
Tomioka comes to sit on his knees beside him, hesitating slightly. The man gives up his haori for him, the umpteenth time he’s done so. It’s probably fair, all things considered. Tanjirou didn’t exactly but his own haori or his scarf on before coming out here. “What’s wrong?” Tomioka asks him.
His voice is really even and bland, but it’s okay. Tomioka really is a nice person. “I…” Tanjirou tries, mouth dry. Everything , he thinks. Even you. It should be Kaa-san at Nezuko’s side. Not you. Those thoughts make him seem ungrateful. He’s thankful for Tomioka-san and Fumiko-san, he really is, but they are ever-present reminders that everything is wrong . “I just realized that I left my family’s sacred Kagura robes at home.”
It’s not a full lie, but it still grates in his throat. Wrong, wrong, wrong. “I see.” Tomioka murmurs. There is a week before the new year, and everything in Tanjirou’s life is completely and utterly wrong.
After a moment, Tomioka speaks again. “Let’s go inside. I have a mission to get to.”
Tanjirou obliges.
(Three days later, his family’s Kagura robes and materials have been gently set beside Nezuko’s futon, just in time for him to wake up.)
—
Tanjirou feels the wood under his fingers.
“I’m not very good at the dance,” he admits to Tomioka and Fumiko both, playing with the paper mask shifted ajar his face. “I can only go until midnight usually. Not until sun-up, like I’m supposed to.”
Fumiko smiles, kind and too much like Kaa-san. Tanjirou looks away. “We don’t mind, Kamado-kun. We’re here so you don’t get hurt.” She elbows Tomioka in the side, and the man jolts, properly startled. Tanjirou almost laughs.
“...Yes.” Tomioka says, voice blank. His scent doesn’t really change much from that ever-present tired, but the investment and intrigue is there. Tomioka-san really is a kind person, despite how cold his expression makes him look.
Tanjirou smiles at him. “And then you can go to that party your friends were talking about!” He decides immediately, because Tomioka really isn’t subtle. (Admittedly, he had eavesdropped on the conversation that he’d had with that butterfly lady. Kochou, he’s pretty sure. She might hate demons, but she really is nice, even if her teasing sounds really mean. Tomioka-san has a good friend.)
Tomioka grimaces. “I’d rather not.”
Blinking, Tanjirou tilts his head. “Why not?” he asks. “They’re your friends, right? And it’s a new years party, so they’ll probably be there after midnight.”
“I—” Tomioka begins, before Fumiko unceremoniously cuts him off with another elbow in the ribs. She shoots him a look. “...Okay.” the man relents with a resigned sigh. Tanjirou grins, and lights the torches around the garden.
(His dance is familiar, something normal in the midst of everything wrong.)
(Fire and brimstone, charcoal smoke and something like home. Something of home. Something he still has. He dances through the night, just past the new year, before Tomioka has caught him in his stumble and urges him to rest.)
(Tomioka is the one to carry him back to his room, peel the robes off him and re-dress him in his jinbe, and tuck him in beside his sister.)
(It burns with the familiarity of home.)
Hi No Kami-sama, he prays, eyes fluttering closed. Please allow my sister to wake again.
january.
“Tanjirou,” Giyuu begins, near the beginning of the month. His given name feels warm and fond in the man’s mouth, and Tanjirou smiles. “Come here.”
“What is it?” he asks him, peering out of the shoji doors. Most of the snow has cleared up by now, the weather pinballing between the beginnings of warmth and the still-present chill of winter. It’s not that unusual for this time of the year, really.
“Your family’s Kagura dance,” Giyuu says. “It was a Breathing technique.”
Not really getting it, because Giyuu is nothing if not really weird and vague about things, Tanjirou tilts his head. “Well, yes,” he replies. “Tou-san said you had to breathe a certain way to do it all night. It hurts my lungs a lot, though.”
“No,” Giyuu mutters, shaking his head. “A Breathing technique. Demon slayers utilize them to… slay demons. It expands lung capacity and allows you to push your body to the limit. I’m not sure which one it is, though. It looks like a mixture of them all.”
Tanjirou hums. “A mixture?” he asks, and then immediately afterward, continues with a; “Wait, is this what that water-slash-thing was?”
The man makes a really weird deadpan expression that makes him look a little constipated. “...Water surface slash, Tanjirou. The first of the Water Breathing forms,” Using it as a segue, apparently, Giyuu bends to the ground, picking up what Tanjirou is, like, half sure is a wooden sword. A bokken, he thinks? “Which you should at least attempt to learn, if not turn your family’s kagura dance into a full Breathing Style of its own.”
Tanjirou screws up his face. “I’m not going to kill demons, Giyuu-san.”
“Yes,” Giyuu nods. “But considering the demon king himself has it out for your head, I would prefer if you knew how to at least somewhat defend yourself. Call it peace of mind for the shenanigans you appear to find your way into.”
Sheepish, Tanjirou relents, and takes the bokken from Giyuu.
He enters the estatelater with significantly more bruises than he started with—that is, to say, a large amount compared to the nothing of before.
It’s rewarding, somehow.
—
One of Giyuu’s friends stops by for lunch.
Rengoku, his name is. Tanjirou intentionally steers clear and lets the adults do their adult things, because as nice as Rengoku-san appears to be, he’s pretty sure that the man is one of those Hashira guys—gold buttons and all. Him being under the same roof as Nezuko is nerve racking, and admittedly, he picks her up and moves her to a nook of a bookshelf and dust-filled room on the second floor of the estate.
Not that anyone ever goes up here. Which is good, because then Rengoku-san won’t find his demon sister, and probably kill her. It’s a very good thing. Tanjirou has no reason to go up here, and Nezuko is asleep, and Giyuu is always too tired to walk up stairs unless he absolutely has to. It’s probably why all the essential rooms are kept on the first floor. Who even knows at this point, though, because Giyuu is really weird even if he’s really nice.
Tanjirou can hear the echo of Rengoku-san’s voice all the way from here, reverberating through the house like the heat from a furnace. He can’t quite tell what’s being said, of course, he doesn’t have super hearing. It would be really cool if he did, though, but he’s got super smell, so that’s enough. For the most part.
Maybe an hour later, as he’s getting tired, Fumiko finds them underneath the desk in the corner. “Hiding away, Tanjirou-kun?” she sings, light and airy and teasing. Tanjirou, mind bleary, sticks his tongue out at her. “They’re in here, Tomioka-sama!” Fumiko calls.
Tanjirou, for all he is thirteen and big enough to look after himself, doesn’t quite mind that Giyuu carries them back to their room, tucking them into the kakebuton.
It’s a piece of home.
—
Nezuko’s new kimono is pink by the end of the month
Giyuu brings in a zuanka to dye it with the offering of a generous salary for all of the trouble. Tanjirou makes slightly burned rice crackers to give to her and leaves her alone while she works. He never learns her name, but she is kind and sweet and quiet—a younger woman doing side work as her belly rounds with pregnancy, so that she can keep food on the table. A very noble thing, he thinks.
“It’s for when she wakes up,” Giyuu explains, when asked. Not if— when , and, really, Giyuu is a very deeply kind person. “You said she preferred pink. I forgot to look for her original kimono when I went to bring your family’s Kagura materials here.”
Tanjirou hasn’t forgotten that he’d done that, but he did sort of maybe also forget that they’d left Nezuko’s favorite kimono at home. “It’s okay,” he tells Giyuu, because it really is. A little bit, at least. “She has this one, now, and she needed a new kimono anyways. We didn’t have the money to replace it.”
Giyuu’s lips thin into a line. Tanjirou isn’t really all that good at telling what his expressions mean, but the man’s scent has a small, distant note of guilt. Over what, Tanjirou isn’t sure, but it’s gone before he can ask about it. “She’ll have more than enough to pick from.”
Tanjirou pauses, blinks. That’s really really cryptic and vague and also a little weird, but Giyuu tends to be all of those things. So, instead of commenting on it, he instead says; “If you spend all your money on Nezuko or me I’ll bite you.”
Giyuu hums in reply, and he has a distinct feeling that his threat will become a promise.
february.
February begins with him beside a little stream deep into the woods.
Tanjirou is maybe kind of sort of lost. Really lost, actually, because he can’t smell Giyuu’s estate anymore. Which is probably really bad. Like, really really bad, and that’s two reallys. It’s okay, though, because there’s a cute white snake wrapped around his arm and keeping him company as he walks through the woods and gets himself even more lost.
“Giyuu-san makes really good salmon-filled onigiri,” he tells his new snake friend. “He’s really bad at, like, everything else, though. I took some from the last batch he made as a snack while I cam out here, but I ate it already, so I can’t give some to you.” The snake, smarter than it looks, seems to appear dejected.
Tanjirou feels just a bit guilty. “If I ever see you again, I’ll make sure to give some to you!” he promises. “I wish I could take you to Giyuu-san’s estate, but Nezuko doesn’t like snakes very much. She hit one on the head with her vegetable basket once, and it’d probably be really bad for you to meet the same fate.”
The snake shivers. Tanjirou didn’t even know they could do that, but according to Fumiko, they’re cold-blooded creatures. “Are you cold? You just shivered,” he asks it. It flicks its tongue out, and, taking that as a yes, Tanjirou tucks it into his scarf. “You’re really nice for a snake. I wonder if you’re domesticated? But you’re out here all on your own.”
The snake wiggles, slithering out from under his scarf and winding down his leg until it's on the forest floor. “Oh, okay,” he says, maybe just a little bit disappointed as it wiggles off to wherever it came from, dipping through the underbrush far past where he can see. “Well, I’ll make sure to keep some onigiri on me next time I come out here!”
He’s still lost, though.
…Giyuu is totally going to figure out how to ground him for this.
—
Mitsuri-san is really, really nice.
He meets her and Kochou-san and Rengoku-san (again, for that last one) while they’re out on a shopping trip. He’s technically out on a shopping trip, too, but he has to be really sneaky about it.
Why?
It’s Giyuu’s birthday soon, and Tanjirou may have gone out by himself and made charcoal to sell so that he’d be paying for the man’s gift with money that didn’t literally belong to him, despite Giyuu’s insistence. It’s not like he’ll get in trouble for it—as long as Giyuu doesn’t find out he snuck out in the middle of the night to chop wood and then that he hid the charcoal under the engawa and took a basket from Fumiko’s shed and also ran down the hill to the nearby village to sell it.
It’s a little harder to sell it when spring is about to be around the corner, but everyone in this village has a lot more money that his home village ever did. It’s a bittersweet reminder of it, of course. (If Kibutsuji had just left them alone, he’d be selling charcoal there to get his siblings treats.)
(If Kibutsujji had left them alone, Nezuko would be awake and human and underneath the sun and the big blue sky.)
Rengoku-san knows all of the great food places. Kochou-san helps him find a merchant that will make a hair clip in the design of a cone snail, to match Nezuko’s octopus. Mitsuri-san plans gifts and a little celebration that Kochou-san help tone down, specifically so that they don’t scare Giyuu off, because he’s just a little bit anti-social. Just a little bit.
It’s all really, really nice. Tanjirou is glad that Giyuu has really nice friends, even though the man insisted they were just coworkers. Really, he should get better at admitting when he’s friends with someone.
It’d be a lot better if he could get rid of this cough.
—
Giyuu presses a palm against his forehead.
“I’m calling Kochou,” the man says, leaving zero room for disagreement. Despite that, Tanjirou groans dramatically. “You’re sick, Tanjirou. I’d rather the literal doctor take care of you.”
“But your party, Giyuu- saaan!” Tanjirou whines. “We were ‘onna throw you a partyyy . Me n’ R’ngoku-san n’ ‘Suri-san n’ K’chou-san.”
Giyuu gives him a flat look. “I would also rather you be taken care of than have a party. How did you even get sick, anyways?”
Tanjirou, perhaps very simply, looks at the floor with poorly disguised guilt.
march.
In March, Giyuu presses a tanto into his hand.
The blade quickly bleeds dark colors, the steel turning blacker than the night sky, spilling over the gray like ink on paper. Tanjirou gapes at it. “It changed color!” he says, the obvious.
Giyuu blinks. “This is a nichirin tanto,” he tells him. “Normally, only demon slayers are allowed nichirin weapons, but Oyakata-sama allowed an exception given your… circumstances .”
“You mean that mister demon-baby wants me to die, because he’s a baby?” Tanjirou asks.
Giyuu gives him a flat look. “I mean that Kibutsuji apparently wants your head intact , yes.”
Tanjirou sticks his tongue out. “If he tries, I’ll bite him. And then I’ll stab him with this. You really shouldn’t give knives to children, Giyuu-san.”
Giyuu, for all it’s worth, just sighs wearily in return.
april.
“Giyuu-san,” Tanjirou says. “Wake up.”
The man in question lies in his futon, staring blankly up at the ceiling. “I am awake, Tanjirou.” Giyuu tells him, the exhaustion in his scent bleeding through to his voice. He’s tired, that much is obvious. Giyuu always smells tired, of course, and always goes to bed way too early and whatnot, but he’s always attributed it to his job.
Demon slayer work really odd hours, right? I mean, duh, because demons only go out at night. Still, though, Giyuu is probably way too tired for it. “Do I need to send Kanzaburo to notify Kochou-san?” he asks.
Giyuu hums. “...no,” he murmurs, voice light. “This… happens sometimes. Where the fatigue gets worse. Let… let Oyakata-sama know, but this is normal. It’ll pass.”
Tanjirou’s face scrunches up. “It’s not normal for you to be this tired, Giyuu-san.”
The man blinks up at the ceiling, slow. All of his movements and speech and everything are slow. “It is for me,” he says. “Let me sleep, Tanjirou. It’ll pass.”
(That’s something Tou-san said, just a few days before he succumbed to his illness.)
Tanjrou sniffs, swipes at his eyes, and asks Fumiko to do it instead. When she leaves to do just that, he turns tail to the room that’s been all but claimed as his and Nezuko’s, gathering his sister into his arms. He drags her kakebuton behind him for extra measure, before slinking down the hall and pushing Giyuu’s door open again.
Giyuu doesn’t have time for his slower mouth to open and talk again, because Tanjirou deposits Nezuko at his side, throwing her kakebuton over her. His sister quickly nestles into the man’s side, sticking to him like a stubborn barnacle and totally just using him for his warmth.
Which Tanjirou is also about to do, wiggling his way under Giyuu’s arm on his other side, and curling up against him.
Neither of them say anything, but gratitude joins the perpetual smell of his tired.
—
Giyuu begins to pull weeds out of the estate’s gardens around the middle of the month.
It’s slow, meticulous. Whenever he isn’t doing patrols or missions, or checking on him and Nezuko, or teaching him how to use his tanto, he’s planting seeds and tilling dirt. Tanjirou joins him a few times, hands stained with soil and a grin on his face.
“What do you usually grow?” He’d asked one day, as Giyuu had pulled a few seed packets out.
“A little bit of everything.” The man had replied.
A little bit of everything feels just a bit like home.
may.
May feels rainy, and perhaps a little bit sad.
Giyuu lingers at a shelf with a portrait of a younger him and a peach-haired boy. Tanjirou has seen the altar plenty of times, both lit and not, because Giyuu keeps it inside of a room perfect for hiding whenever Rengoku-san comes over for lunch. The boy is dead. Tanjirou can tell just by the grief and guilt that linger in Giyuu’s scent every time he murmurs at the head of it, hands clasped in prayer and eyes squeezed shut.
Tanjirou joins him on a day that it’s too rainy to even sit on the engawa.
“Who was he?” he asks the man, startling him from his distant expression. Giyuu blinks, eyes shifting over to look at Tanjirou for a moment. The man’s lips press together, considering, before he turns back to the altar.
“Sabito,” Giyuu finally says. “...I suppose you could call him my brother.”
And ache nestles into his ribs, a reminder of contorted bodies, and Tanjirou knows . (There is a matching one in Giyuu, after all.)
“Tell me about him,” Tanjirou all bit demands, eyeing the part of Sabito’s clothing that looks exactly like the patterned half of Giyuu’s haori. “You trained together, right?”
Giyuu sighs, but it’s fond, and the grief that plagues his scent lessens as he talks about the brother he once had.
It’s enough.
It feels like home.