secretly judging you

I’m no saint. Just a sinner with wants.

Tanjirou wasn’t used to seeing you weak.

His senior whose shoulders always seemed sturdy and untouchable now stood before him with legs barely holding your battered body up and hands unable to hold a sword properly. A quiescent smile often etched in your pretty face is now ripped away and replaced by bandages and claw marks and the effervescent ichor in your eyes is drained away to replace the blood dripping from your gory bandages.

The instability of the teapot under your bandaged fingers mirror the tremors within your fortitude. Though you’ve only woken up from a restless nap being operated on under white lights and the doctors’ watchful eyes, your instincts insist on being a better host and pouring him a glass of water. He wants to push you back to your bed but you look so fragile, as if the calluses in his palms could rip your stitched wounds open and he’s afraid he’ll break you even more.

And if there’s another thing that hasn’t changed—

“I told you, I can do it myself.”

—Is that you’re stubborn as the solitary soldier you’ve always been.

He frowns and his hands fly up to stop your numbed fingers from pouring more on the cup lest the water overflows and makes more mess in the room, along with the pillows scattered about and the curtains hanging unevenly across the windows. He noticed your little flinch from his touch and the shifts in your expression no matter their minuscule mannerisms because the world will sooner end than he could miss a detail on your beautiful composition.

You apologize on reflex – it grinds his gears. Here you are, barely alive from that dance with death and your only concern is making sure he gets comfortable in your hospital bed.

You’re so… so…

“Hey. Smile for me.”

Perhaps he could no longer hold every little thing that built up his frustrations the young Kamado’s expression morphs into something he could feel shaping his facial muscles. And that’s what makes your visage soften even more. A humorless, whispering laugh bubbles in your scratchy throat (he swears you need that water more than he does) and you only grin in his direction.

“I’d heal faster if you do.”

He was this close to losing you.

The world changes in trajectory—in color, temperature, and haptic senses. His fingers felt the soft, dangerously malleable wrist on one hand while the other grappled the side of your head, weaved and locked between the strands of your hair with promise. Tanjirou couldn’t tell if he did such without warnings or if he gave you ample time to react because all he could see was the wide register across your face. He doubts it matters. Either way, he may have come too forward. He doesn’t think he’s even in the right headspace to act this way. But he’s out of rays of sunshine to spare.

A bandage over your forehead. Deep eye bags matching the lost depth within your eyes. Numerous cuts littering all over your sickly face. His thumb rubs over your skin as if you were fragile like any glass, but you’ve shattered and he’s careful not to hurt himself.

He takes advantage of your parted lips, prying you open until closing your mouth seems impossible. You’re so soft and warm and he wants to drown in your scent until his lungs can only breathe for you. Until all he knows is you – the same way all you’ll ever know is him. The feathery sensation stings his lips and he welcomes the burn with open arms, even more so your verbally muffled response.

At this point, stopping would be detrimental to his mental stability; dancing with your soft, stiff lips—nibbling, and biting his way into your fiber until all parts of you are swollen red. Your struggle is instinctive under his vice grip, nonetheless futile when he wouldn’t budge. The way you squirm under him feels electrifying. A soothing reminder that you’re alive. Though he disconnects, respite is momentary when he comes back once more, this time his force much greater until you suffocate. Every body part of yours seemed to have a mind (or lack thereof) of its own and callously grappled his body – whether to push him away or keep him closer, he’s unsure. Not that he was in the right state of mind to debate on it. Not that it mattered.

What mattered was that here you are, in his arms.

He doesn’t notice when you drop the kettle and doesn’t care about the horrid sound of metal colliding with the floorboards. Not even the watery mess of the table that extended to your bed. None of you did. Pressing all of his against you, your vibrations a soothing stream to his burning embers, he couldn’t help but want to swallow more of your mindless moans and behold the ephemeral droplets gathering in the corner of your eyes. And so he does—promptly pressing his thigh against the sensitivity between your legs, it all but forces a brusque groan out of you, one that served as his ticket to deepen the kiss. Your lazy hands are all over his body and you’re barely fighting against his tongue. Whether its because you have no strength to spare or if you’re just as desperate, it doesn’t stop him.

Do you even process his fingers climbing up to your scalp? Or is the feeling of this wet muscle pushing your own down too much not to notice? As it scours through all the crooks and crannies, your sound grows worse and your movements weaker yet desperate. Your eyes are a blur but you’re not pushing him away. Do you want him the same way he does? He wants to hear more from you so his fingers pull on your hair and you mewl louder into his mouth. The world is spinning in warm colors, your debilitated body is being pushed against the edge of the table, and one of your hands, gripping for stability, knocks the cup you filled for him away but you’re more focused on his warmth especially when you have a better, wet mess on your person.

You barely registered an arm firmly hooking around your waist, or your hands flat against the splash of puddle, especially with the instinctive search for stability. Then again, the closing proximity yields too much heat to ignore and he’s sensitive to the contours and the curves of your figure.

Through half-lidded optics, he watched the way your face morphed under his care – from the crimson decking your visage, to the eyebrows furrowed just as hard as the creases of your glossy eyes, and up to a dribble of saliva forming in the corner of your mouth. Residue tears fall and your fluster darkens and he wants nothing more but to consume you.

Pretty. So pretty. He can’t get enough of you.

He almost couldn’t get enough of you.

It was before you’re pushed down to soft mattresses that rival his lips – gentle, warm, cosseting. Yet, his impatience seeps through. The new position makes the world spin in a different direction and you swear you could hear your freshly stitched wounds rip, but his warm invasion keeps you grounded and focused on him.

Small glisters of tears gather in the corner of your eyes, half of your moans from the sensation of his knee rubbing against your clothed cunt, the other from his arm pressing onto the fractured ulna of your forearm. It momentarily pulled him out of his headspace when he could sense the blooming pain all over your body—blood dripping out of your squeezed wounds while your eyes barely could focus on anything.

It’s… something he shouldn’t lean close for. But he does; pressing his nose against the crook of your neck, breathing in that metallic scent, your ichor pumping in and out of your heart, your heart that he cradles underneath his fingertips. It’s beating—it’s alive.

He kissed the space under your ear, pecking you all over. And with your whines becoming sweeter and your grasp burning tighter against him, he could tell it was providing ample distraction. It wasn’t until a whimper that sounded like please vibrating under his touch did he pull back, not so much as to disconnect—essentially sharing the same breath as he pries your mouth open with his parted ones. His palms found a home grasping your side profile while pushing himself even closer to you, thumb against your bottom lip and forcing you apart. 

“I– I’m so,” And he stills for a moment. His eyes look down at you, watching as you desperately pull him closer to your gaping lips before you feel his fingers wipe your tears away, and soon his eyes are filled with pure adoration.

“Glad. You’re still with me.”

Remedy to my golden cracks.

“Is this okay?”

All you receive is a hum, dull in pain and fatigue, but the warm palm that immediately takes home atop your hand is enough to indicate his appreciation. You can perfectly imagine the gentle smile shaping his relaxed facial muscles, even if you face his bare back. This was your cue to cut the bandage and wrap up treating his torso. 

(He would have first taken the trek to the Butterfly Estate for the significant injuries ebbing his shoulders, if only so you wouldn't get the chance to fret over what should have been a normal occurrence to him. But he could not spend another second away from his heart that awaits his return. It was the only uninjured organ he had left.

So here he was, sitting under your care, baring all of him to your figure that stood behind.)

As your eyes lay upon the intricacies of his wounded body, you can’t help tracing the scars etched on his golden skin. Barely covered by the newly applied dressing, yet they vie for the attention of those who seek. The largest scar stretches from his shoulder blades to his front. Another was on the lower right of four claw marks twice the size of your hand, dented and carved because it was the best the human body could restore. The rest are smaller, like stars forming linear constellations, the closest thing you could to touch the night sky.

No matter their size, or their depth, you will forever appreciate each and every part of him.

The mere sight of them gives you a sense of a bottomless pit in your heart, an ache you could not heal because there is no cure for his pain. You want nothing more than to coddle him away from all the fears immortalized under his toughened skin, nourish his scars – all visibly and not – until his nightmares would no longer follow him to his sleep.

But… as your fingers ghost over his back, the tingles under your touch as you felt the textured skin—proofs of his survival, all the dangerous things that tried to kill him and failed. All his unsung epics carved onto his body, molding him the man he is today.

“… Darling?” Tanjirou derails your train of thought – possibly sensing your sudden change of mood – and slightly cranes his neck to face you. Of course. Have you not gotten used to his utmost attentiveness and his peculiar sense of smell? A small laugh bubbles in the edge of your throat as you wrap your arms around his waist, digging your face against his uninjured shoulder.

“Sorry. You just look so pretty, it genuinely upsets me.”

“What?” He chuckles while shaking his head, overgrown tufts of his hair cascading down and licking your face. Nowadays, he’s been keeping it in a low ponytail.  “That doesn’t even make any sense.” Though, his fingers immediately wrapped around your forearms and leaned in your embrace, enjoying the trails of ghost kisses you leave on his scar’s wake. Up to his shoulders, trailing upon his spine, down to his waist.

He feels you grumble against his skin before hearing your retort. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

This earns you a shrug, half-heartedly, because he always seems to agree with whatever you say. Even if he knows you omit particular syllables. “I guess so.”

The silence was comforting. And with his satisfied hum, you could tell he felt it too. You knew he used to dislike it—if his overcompensating nature over filling empty spaces with conversations wasn’t enough evidence. And you understood better that even after all these years, he could never get used to silence when he grew up in a house full of children’s laughter.

And like how he left his family, he was left alone too. With his thoughts.

As open as a book he may seem, at times like this, when he’s suddenly taciturn, it worries you a bit. All this time, even if he has bared his soul to you, letting you pry into his heart until you’ve known all his painful memories and distant dreams, he’s still afraid of becoming the anchor that weighed you down to the bottomless pit of all his fears reimagined. Even if he’s let you pick up his broken shards, piece-by-piece, the only one with scars bleeding tears is him.

You’ll never condemn him for it. But its a lie to say it doesn’t hurt.

You covet for his scars. To touch him until all the tension underneath his muscles loosen, where he could let go of the weight of every promise he’s never fulfilled—of every burden he’s shouldered.

You kiss the scar atop his shoulders, your whispers carried along your breath.

The Kamado makes that sound whenever he’s pulled out of his headspace. A soft hum, a bit mindless, as if returning to the physical world, and readjusting to where he left off. He looks over his shoulder, enough to catch your lips linger upon his golden skin.

“Oh. What are you doing?”

Though you pull away to answer, it seems he wasn’t a fan of the lack of heat on his back as he grabbed both your hands and pressed them against his chest, keeping you under his touch. This makes you raise an eyebrow. There are thumbs circling on your skin, bringing it closer to his heart. His beating heart, often thunderous as it’s what’s demanded out of his breath style, now languid. You revel in his presence—not the Hashira. The man who caught your heart.

You lower your voice as if you’re exchanging vows even the half-moon should not witness. 

“I want to touch you.”

There’s a hitch riding in his throat. You could feel him getting already warmer than what’s humanly possible. Tanjirou pulls his head back until your gaze finally falls on him, cheeks burning yet expression pushing through. “That’s a dangerous game you’re playing.”

A smile shapes your response. “More dangerous than demons?”

He hums. Neither arrogance nor embellishment. Just the truth his sword speaks. “I’m more dangerous.”

You roll your eyes. You don’t care about the title or his prowess – right now, he’s merely the man you’re betrothed to. And right now, you care more to press your lips against the mark on his forehead. His first scar, now covered by the mark he has been maintaining ever since. The texture in it is just like any other part of his skin, as if fooling you to think there’s nothing atop. As if the mark has always been part of him.

He dons a few more. Spread across his chest, down to his right arm. Your hand finds home on it, grappling against his bicep, enjoying the contours of his muscles unflexed. There’s charm in his sculpted figure, in the way he dances like a spirit and fight tooth-andnail as a thick-skinned soldier, sure, but you adore how you could revert the strongest slayer into a pile of mush against your fingertips. The solace you bring, quelling all tempests within his chest.

(“But should it not fester and fuel my desire to eradicate all evil?” Blood seeps through the cracks of his scars. “Forgetting all the carnage I carelessly leave on my trail, why must I accept comfort when the last memories of my late family were ruin and blood?”)

“Are you Tanjirou Kamado, the Sun Hashira, right now?”

He blinks awake, as if pulled away yet again. His loosened hold has granted you ample room to instead cradle his face, your other lingering on his mark across his neck.

“Or Tanjirou Kamado, as… the man who stole my heart?”

His eyes glister with familiarity. His hand wraps around yours caressing his neck before turning over to have you facing all of him. His other grabs your waist, pulling you close enough to be in between his spread legs. The warmth of his lips on your skin beget prickles all over, and his unyielding gaze over yours wasn’t helping it. “I am both. Aren’t I?”

With your free hand, it lands on the biggest scar etched across his chest. “You are. It’s why it feels like…” Tracing over his skin, your tempo as slow as your words. “Like you’re not mine. Alone.”

Oh.

There you are. Being childish. A laugh vibrates in your throat, if only to lighten the atmosphere you brought down with your gloom. “I mean, what, are you also married to your job? I know I came second, but, you know? Hah…”

You really tend to not like that softened expression he bears; just a few words and he already has a novel of your person. Unlike you, when you have to knock on his heart’s doorstep and wait for him to welcome you. Unlike you, where you can’t even read him even if it’s your job to know all his caricature until all his achievements and flaws become details.

“I’ve been gone for a lot, haven’t I?” His simper kisses sweet promises against your knuckles. “I must have made you lonely.”

A scoff accompanies your words. “What am I, a child? Begging for their mother?”

“Not the first time you’ve begged.”

Now, you can’t stop the glare against his grin. If only to hide your burning cheeks at the abrupt reminder of… such intimate details, you turn away with the intent of letting him go. Of course, your steaming ears are interrupted by his laugh as he pulls you back, this time wrapping his arms around your waist before digging his face onto you.

Though it soon dies down, forever owning to his mistakes (even those he doesn’t own). “I’m sorry. I never wanted you to feel neglected. But I couldn’t ignore my duties, either.”

“I know.” You’re glad he can’t see your pout, but something tells you he could smell it from a mile away. “Line between duty and me.”

“You are my duty.”

All you give is a hum. Whether you believe that or otherwise… you’re unsure. Your fingers could only card through his hair. Under your touch, you feel it’s texture; a bit singed over the ends, lightening until brown curls. It truly is like you’re holding the sun on your palms. As your hand descends to his neck, where the mark reminds you of his borrowed time, you feel your stomach churning again.

He pulls away, this time taking the same hand across his mark to instead lay it on his chest. On his scar, where you first kissed. 

“Touch me.”

You ghost over his skin. “A dangerous game, indeed.”

“So long as it’s you.” He tilts his head. “I’ll run into danger.”

His words stung, like an arrow straight to your heart. It bleeds and your ichor is the color of the love you can’t contain inside you. The same way you can feel your eyes burning at newfound blurs. You press your palm flat against his pectoral, thumb rubbing over the discolored skin. This was… during the red light district incident. The oh, so, celebrated victory of finally defeating an Upper Moon after centuries of a stagnant war. A smile blooms after.

“I like it when you smile like that.”

Your gaze darts to him, but only a fraction of a second, just so you could return to looking over where your fingers end up. “I like the story behind it.” You trace over where it stretches, down to his midsection, where the contours of his abdominal muscles are chiseled. With even more rubescence on his cheeks, he’s quietly watching the glisten in your softening eyes and listening within the melody wrapped in your quiet voice, “ Whatever tried to kill you, failed.”

(That sense of pride you emanate tingles across his spine, up his already clouded mind inflating his ego, and down where he could feel it rising.)

Ghosting over his skin lower, touching all the littered scars. Along his lower abdomen, where his stomach lies. These ones, he got it from the mt. Natagumo mission. And plenty others. Nowadays, he hasn’t gotten any new scars. It’d be difficult when he’s untouchable. Even his shoulder injury wasn’t from a demon—it was from his careless footsteps. You pressed your fingers a bit more, your simper widening a bit when you feel him flinch under your touch.

(This is… really dangerous for him.)

You don’t register movement until a hand latches onto your neck and pulls you closer to his face, until your lips are soft against his. Until he’s moving against you; sweet and warm, soft yet sturdy, you can’t help but fall into his rhythm because this tango isn’t unfamiliar and you love his taste. The way your hands trailed over his arms before tightening your hold, easing your muscles into him, reminds him of your unadulterated devotion – of the undivided trust you gave him, whether prepared or otherwise.

(Reminiscent of the family he has been deprived of after all these years, of the future he yearns, yet he relishes in your unique flavor that makes him fall deeper into the trance you’ve long enraptured him with.)

As you feel him break away, he keeps you close, letting you keep his broken heart from falling apart all over again. All his broken glasses, keeping them together, never hurting yourself. 

(The only person he’d let his heart be touched.)

“Sorry, I… got envious.”

And Tanjirou can only think,

There’s no one for me, but you.

Within the next second, however, your world was suddenly flipped; everything happened so fast that all you knew was now you lay against the mattresses, wrists abound beside your head by strong hands, defined by veins and muscles. With your remaining limbs just as encased, you’ve no option but to stare at his gaze looking down at you, now shining with a different shade prior. Accepting, yes, but something else ran deeper.

Of love, adoration, and desires.

You blink. “Huh? Envious? What??”

“Being touched.” He laughs, soft like a maiden giggling over her lover, but his actions imply otherwise when he brings his lips closer to you, only to plant a peck on your nose, before descending lower and deeper to the crevice of your neck. Inhaling your scent at the same time he starts planting kisses on your skin, you could just feel the smile on his lips. “Hey, we haven’t done this in a while.”

You’re right; his title be damned—he’s your husband(-to-be) and its his job to satisfy you in all ways.

“W– wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait–!” You erupted in red while you tried to struggle against his grip (to no avail), a nervous laugh slipping out of your lips, overheating from his shared body warmth pressed against you. But, you can’t really be blamed—especially when you could feel something hard pressed against the space between your legs. You almost couldn’t breathe. “Now? But– but you’re injured,”

“It’s alright, really. I’ve gone through worst–”

“Wh– No?? Take better care of yourself, you–!”

You feel him lift himself to properly face you, only to be graced with this gentle smile that never fails to cradle your heart and bring it to cloud nine. One full of honest affection, brimming and overflowing, and of pure love. At the way he looks at you because you’re the only one for him.

“I want to touch you.”

And that made you bite your tongue and eat all of your words.

Time could never heal a weary heart.

The boulder was never part of the plan.

It was never part of his students’ training regime. It just… didn’t cross his mind, knowing that a read of their prowess was enough for Sakonji to send them off to their possible—actual—deaths and now that only one of his student remains alive, he wondered if he truly had the right to be called a master swordsman.

Said remaining student, now his pride as he donned the title of Hashira, sent him another student his way. A boy who could not challenge the fate of his sister being turned into a demon. Or so he thinks. Not because he was clumsy. Not because he couldn’t hold a sword properly.

But because he wore his heart on his sleeve.

He had the same shine in Giyuu’s eyes, that hopeful shade that screamed determination, so long as he had family by his side. He also used to be flimsy with his stances—Sakonji was quite worried to be sending him to the selection. And while now, he had become the master of his field, even surpassing his peak back when he bore the title of the Hashira, there was no longer that child who had stars for eyes. All that remained was a bottomless ocean across them.

The death of Sabito broke him.

Sakonji can’t handle bearing that blame anymore. As miraculous as it is for the demon to deny her endless hunger, he fears such determination won’t be enough. Both for the sister (if she succumbs to her true nature) and her brother (if he dies fighting for it). He has housed so many children with such vigor in their bearings, only for the only thing to return from their death sentence was the sword they honed and the pieces of the fox masks he gifted to them. 

Day and night, that child spends all his waking moments into etching all his teachings under his skin. He could feel the enthusiasm. The covet to hold the sword. The need to mold his hands around the handle. But the more the days pass by, the less the idea becomes appetizing. The more the kid ends up bruised, the less he pretends as master (and let his body heal on his own) and the more he plays as caretaker (making ointments to help his injuries). The more the kid memorizes (rather than learns), the less he corrects it.

He’s acknowledged that he’s an old man, worn down by time and guilt. The man isn’t a devout by any means, but when he came across that very boulder among his mindless strolls, where he search for answers he didn’t even know what he questions, he took it as a sign.

The boulder was never part of the plan.

The cold solstice begets a dying hearth.

It’s not that he dislikes winter.

In fact, it was Tanjirou’s first memory. The rush of cold breeze, the warmth of his mother beside him, and the torches he feels alongside, its a sensation so prepotent, so memorable, he could almost taste the cold on his tongue. But the center stage of his reminisce is the man dancing on ice, surrounded by the ring of torches. His father, an embodiment of grace and strength, dancing as if his bones weren’t stuttering from the cold or bare feet aching from the time that clawed at him to wilt since he was brought into the world. 

A beautiful tradition; he cares more about how his father manages to dance all night long rather than why dancing at all.

His father told him that anything can be done without tiring yourself out. You have to know your body. What should be done and what shouldn’t. The dance is framed in a way of efficient movement, passed across generations after generations while ensuring no changes, additions or eliminations. The strictness wasn’t for decor—It’s by necessity, he was told. Struggling is part of the process, his father said after being told that he’ll soon inherit the responsibility.

Succeeding, is, too.

Winter was also the dusk when he died.

(Winter was also the dusk when everyone died.)

It became a reminder of his emergence as the new head of the family, tasked to shoulder the burden of setting the fire to the hearth. His father said that once the eldest began the tradition, that was their sign of stepping into adulthood. And he was more than ready to shoulder the fire he was left with.

Blood on the snow has often bothered him. When his father took the life of a bear threatening his family’s safety, the carcass falls heavy against the soft ground. Almost immediately, the alighting snow was ready to cover it all, blood and body. He almost couldn’t send it off with a proper prayer with how all his younger mind could think of was how easy the snow buried the blood, as if erasing all notion that death ever happened. The cold challenged his sense of smell too—blanketing his nose, masking the scent of death.

He immortalized that certain scent. The blood on snow. It eased him to know than otherwise.

(And it, too, was his omen to leaving his life behind.)

The sprouts of Taranome signified the start of Spring. It signified that snow no longer covered the ground and the breath of death melts into water that could bring life and nourish all of the living. He welcomes the bitter taste, one he could not appreciate when the winter numbed his tongue, and the company that it brings along—the warmth of the season, the chirp of birds, the start of a new beginning. He preferred spring than winter. Not truly a dislike of winter.

You held me in your arms, and no longer was I cold.

Tanjirou is beautiful against the snow.

His color clashes against it, both the flakes alighting from the sky and the path his bare feet treads upon. Though it drapes every surface it can touch – trees, ground, sky – into a beautiful winter wonderland, he’s forever the beauty you gravitate to. His red and the winter’s white—such a fitting color palette. You could endure the harsh cold all night, so long as he lets you watch him dance alongside.

The sky has dusked and the stars littered the heavens. But the sun you’re more interested in was surrounded by torches, all dancing alongside him, with the beat of the gelid breeze sliding right between the trunks and the thickets. It kisses your skin flushed but the fire nearby overpowers it until its reminiscent of his lips upon your skin, the taste of affection immortalized underneath your fiber.

“Join me.”

His eyes scintillate against the fire, the color of passion and carnage welcoming you into his den. Embers clash with snowflakes and the man before you stood among the bare and the dead with his incandescence, highlighting his overgrown tufts that framed his face covered by the headpiece until they fell on his shoulders. Nowadays, he's been keeping it in a low ponytail because that's how far you could reach in full height; after all, everyday chores are difficult with only one hand working, and you’re more than happy to tend to his service.

One you're not sure how he manages when he dances so gracefully, fooling you to think he has control of every limb, mesmerizing you as every loose clothing follows every movement. Every step he takes copies the heartbeat ringing in your ears and it lulls you into serenity.

And that expression. Years have molded his visage into maturity and even if his headpiece hides much of it, you will never be rid of that smile, so fond yet so loose, the sunshine in his gaze forever yours to bathe upon. The hand scarred from all his unwritten epics only yours to take.

A picturesque fire against snowfall that he belongs from, a beautiful painting deserved to be framed.

“I’ll pass. I don’t dance.”

You, however, don’t.

There's a certain tone across his sunkissed expression, that which the fire only further highlights; familiar yet searing, when he dims his light in your darkest throes because you're vulnerable from the preying light. And it's certainly hinged upon your lack of hesitance. However stubborn you are, the low rumble of his chest (that you so badly want to feel under your fingers) tells a story otherwise. 

And just like those nights, you want him.

“You don’t have to be good at dancing.” His hand tempts you once more, coaxing you into the middle patch lacking snow, as if his word is the truth and it fools even you to believe you truly belonged there. With him. “Here, I’ll guide you.”

And he wants you too.

Which is why you look away, blowing raspberries the same manner you waved his words off. “I am–” With the same hands raised, you took a step farther back, stomach and nerves feeling the jitters always present alongside him, and now you’re certain it was not from the gelid season. ”–Not ruining any traditional, sacred dance your family has.”

This earns you a low hum from the Kamado, muttering, “You’re not ruining anything.” The humble smile returns to grace his lips, one you gravitate to within the tendrils of darkness because he’s proven himself the light your dying world needed.

“I’d like it better if you’re in my arms.”

Red and even more heat consumes your cheeks while your shoulder stiffened, flustered at his unexpected flirt. “D– don’t use your charms against me, Tanjirou Kamado.” Though your threat comes with sternness, embarrassment is another flavor mixed in it, and the way his eyes trailed over your eyes (and the unsubtle way they lingered on your lips) tells you he enjoys it.

“Well, I'd be remiss–” He starts with a shrug, a playful timbre seeping through his clemency, “–Not to use your weakness.”

Really. Your narrowed eyes are accompanied by your crossed arms. Enjoying himself a little too much. “Oh, you're so lucky you're cute, you son of a–”

“No one is watching.” Tanjirou laughed and stepped outside of the circle just to be closer to you. You're not sure where your flinch is derived from; if it's him suddenly stepping away in the middle of the dance that makes it sacrilegious or it's his characteristic warmth that immediately embraces you despite the distance. However hesitant you are, he makes up for it with conviction as he takes advantage of your loosened self-hug (that you didn’t even realized) to disentangle your hand into his, embracing them with his own, instead protecting you from the cold as if his warm hands were born for it. 

You want to reel at his touch for the sake of your palpitating heart but you know better that he wants you, so you let him pull your body towards him. No matter how gentle his textured ministration is, the tingle within them remains as unhealthy as they did the first time you met, when he had a sword in hand and a hero’s resolve in the other. His touch guides your hand to his barely visible lips, chapped and cold that merely grinned wider when your fingers almost never wanted to leave him, before lowering to the space above his heart and it ignites your skin like no fire could.

“It’ll just be between the two of us.” His husks affords a deeper baritone when he leans towards you, the rumbles of his chest under your fingers the conductor to your racing heart. No matter the barrier that is the headpiece, the smile underneath is a novel you'll never tire of reading and it promises temptations begetting both sinful and sacred.

“Trust me?”

But the heart underneath you beats just as rapid as yours, the heartbeat you’ve dreaded that would stop once upon a time after dancing with death. Such nightmare now seems so out of reach when his heart sings only for you.

A low grumble escaped your tight lips as you felt your stomach do somersaults and your heart ran another marathon, unable to get used to this intimacy with him. But you knew that seconds before you is inevitable because you can’t just seem to refuse him and his unfairly convincing invitation, and all you could do was look away with a rubescent complexion.

And he knows your trust in him is as boundless as the sun’s reign among the sky.

Tanjirou brightens up the dusk (you don't know how he manages to convey it when his expression is still covered) and eagerly, yet so gently, pulls you into the ring of fire.

Perhaps you're too ensorcelled with him that you tripped on your second step forward – you don't even know what you tripped on – alongside the undignified screech you let out, one he merely brushes off as the man and his protective grip pulled you back up with a beat reminiscent to his dance. His dulcet reaction only incites even more crimson out of your cheeks but you don't get to do anything else when he starts swaying you in a rhythm, pulling you alongside until you finally reach the center.

“I told you.” You kick his ankle with a frown in between the beats. “I’m going to mess this up.”

“And I'll tell you,” Comes his soft but solid affirmation before slipping his fingers in between your left ones and guiding your right hand to his shoulder. He leans closer to you, enough that you notice his lips are in the perfect angle above yours, making your digits curl on his clothing and turn your head away. Regardless, he pushes himself closer until you feel his nose on the side of your neck even with the fabric. 

“I’ll make sure you won’t.” 

Whether he knows his effect on you or not, he lets go of his hold to plant his palm on your waist with a tune on his tongue. He must be sensing your scent tainted by severe fluster, even more so at the proximity, and you think the sound of his mirth hinges upon that. And as angelic as it sounds, you really want to kick his foot harder.

“Just focus on me… won’t you?”

His noises urge you to look up, to return his stare that studied your face with adoration and modest gaiety. You realized he had lifted the paper off his face to grace you with what you've been trying to look at since he began dancing.

His tanned cheeks were also reddening, some stray locks escaping from his tied hair and flying with the wind, and his respiration materializing into visible puffs of air. 

He, who holds you like no other, is a man retaining the purity and glee from his youth, yet he is also a man matured and scarred by all that he went through. Gentle like a mother’s loving embrace and protective like a father’s fortitude. Soothing and cooling to the senses like a pacific stream and fiery and warm like the rays of the scorching sun. He comprises all the beauty that can’t be described. And you were certain that even a mix of all the most beautiful and deeply compelling words cannot ever tantamount, but–

“Pretty.” You mutter, not even noticing your hand on his shoulder until it’s already lifting his mask in his steed.

Or at the way his eyes widened. At the lively scarlet worsening in his end. As much as bashful his smile is shaped, he keeps the eye contact and you revel the shine in their eyes and how your reflection in them is something you’d never thought you’d enjoy. Maybe it didn’t matter if you saw yourself in him—you just wanted to imprint the imagery behind your eyelids, just so it could be the only thing you’ll see in your dreams. You want to experience all of him, even if he’s already given himself so much of you with how much your heart contains him.

Though, you had yet to give a grin of victory for finally placing him at the end of the fluster when you feel a palm on your back that pulled you closer to his chest. A peep of surprise escapes from you as you instinctively let go of him to plant both palms against him. And you had to bite your tongue to refrain any more sounds out when he lowly breathes to you, 

“Sweetheart… my heart can only take so much.”

As soon as your gaze fly upward, you only realized just how awfully close he truly was, enough that he could rest the mask over your crown to keep the contact across your noses. Until your lips share the same air, and the words unspoken alongside, and you felt like the winter froze your bones despite the warmth he radiated.

“You’re too perfect for me.”