melding with mist

❝ what's your favorite color and why? ❞

❝ can i come with you? ❞

❝ you have a nice smile, has anyone ever told you that before? ❞

❝ how do you take your coffee? ❞

❝ sorry, what was your name again? ❞

❝ it just occurred to me i never asked you what your last name is. ❞

❝ actually we've met before. ❞

❝ i've heard a few things about you. ❞

❝ care to join me? ❞

❝ i'm not really sure why i trust you. ❞

❝ i don't usually talk this much, it just feels easy to say stuff when you're listening. ❞

❝ i know we don't know each other that well but if you wanna talk about it... ❞

❝ could you help me with something? ❞

❝ do you like it here? ❞

❝ are you new around here? ❞

❝ you can ask me anything you want. i promise i'll answer truthfully except the things i feel like lying about. ❞

❝ i don't mean to be too forward, you just seem like you could use a friend right now. ❞

❝ you can come with me. i mean if you don't have anyone waiting for you. ❞

❝ we're friends now. you can ask me for help. ❞

❝ do you like this music? i can change it. ❞

❝ what are your favorite snacks? ❞

❝ really? i wouldn't have guessed that about you. ❞

❝ do you mind if i ask about it? ❞

ACTIONS:

VISIT: for sender to go to receiver's home for the first time

VISITED: for receiver to go to sender's home for the first time

CRYING: for sender to see receiver cry for the first time

CRIED: for receiver to see sender cry for the first time

BEGIN: sender and receiver are on their first date together

TRIP: our muses go on a group trip but end up stuck together, away from the rest of their friends.

SITUATION: our muses are acquainted because one of them is their friend's roommate. muse a shows up when their friend isn't there and ends up hanging out with muse b one on one.

GO: our muses go to a zoo or theme park together and get lost.

INVITE: sender cooks for receiver for the first time

INVITED: receiver cooks for sender for the first time

TOGETHER: our muses spend the night for the first time

TRY: our muses hooked up and are hanging out the next day

COMFORT: sender is going through a break up and receiver offers to cheer them up

COMFORTED: receiver is going through a break up and sender offers to cheer them up

OFFER: sender gives receiver a ride to the airport/picks them up

OFERED: receiver gives sender a ride to the airport/picks them up

AID: sender helps receiver redecorate

Teetering between the warm embrace of humanity, or drowning within the cells of the demon lords kin. Deep resonate voice not of his own will still clawed at the base of his skull. Million sets of eyes peel from beneath his skin though not currently precent; he could feel their everlasting gaze peer not just on him but through his very core.

Despite this. His jaws snapped not with a fatal intent, but as a reaction of a wild animal. But for those with Muzans cells roiling through his veins, it is not intent that mattered. He was of demon kin, one who now had a taste of human flesh. By that merit, it meant that Muichiro Tokito was now duty bound to take the smaller head. Did it not?

Yet it is Muichiros blood that brought something to the surface. Moments. Flashes of a life held just below the surface of Muzan’s infection that held the youngling now.

Perhaps if their parents had never died, had Amane never encroached on their lives, had they remain ignorant of the reality of demons, their bond would be closer. They never would have become estranged.

All of this would be nothing but a nightmare.

But the world was just not kind.

The world was cruel.

And what remains of Yuichiro Tokito had aimed the cruelty of his nature upon himself instead of Muichiro.

Claws which seek to bury into flesh buried themselves deeper within his own flesh rather than inflict that harm onto their natural prey, the human before him. Until his small wrist caught in Muichiro’s hold, causing an audible whimper to leave him.

“N…punish..n-no…”

But he was the bad twin! Was that not apparent by that fact that he was a demon? His whole body trembling, strain against Muichiro’s grip. Shaken by the demon slayer, his eyes finally rose to meet Muichiro’s own as he spoke about the meaning of their name.

Nothingness.

Infinity.

Existence.

That… that’s right. He… he ran. He ran. And he was looking for..

“M….mui…”

It all paled to the loyalty Muichiro had always had to his brother - no matter what came between them, be it silence or demon blood.

"Stop it!" Muichiro tugged harder at Yuichiro's wrists, trying to stop him from hurting himself further. "You don't deserve to be punished, for anything!"

He met his brother's gaze, a determined look in his eyes - he was not going to let go of his brother, for anything. They'd been apart for too long, even before Muichiro had thought his twin had died. The wedge between then that had grown after the last fight had nearly broken him, the aftermath of the demon's attack those years ago truly finishing the job, to the point Muichiro had lost himself.

He'd only just regained his memories, found his brother, and he was not going to lose Yuichiro again.

Send [LIPS] for your muse to be caught staring at my muse's lips

Send [KISS] for your muse to suddenly kiss mine

Send [TRACE] for your muse to slowly trace a finger down my muse’s jawline

Send [STRADDLE] for your muse to climb into my muse's lap

Send [PIN] for your muse to trap mine against a wall.

Send [COLLAR] for your muse to grab mine by the collar

Muichiro was a Hashira.

He knew that demons were creatures born of painful tragedies. Their forms were flooded with Muzans cells and replaced. Their humanity struck down with nothing but a blood thirsty demon in its place. And yet.

And yet the little demon before him could not stand the taste of human flesh. When he tried, when he tried to satisfy his ancestor, upper moon one, by feasting on human flesh, he recoiled in disgust. Gagging and dry heaving on nothing but the lingering scent of decay regardless of the saccharine sweet weight on his tongue. When in the depths of starvation, it was not human flesh he hunted but that of raw animals. When he was not laid out across wooden floorboards, scarred by buried painful memories.

But it was this boys blood.

Screams of anguish of two familiar figures, the cries of another form properly mirrored to his own.

Broken pleas for him to stop fell on deaf ears.

The broken face of heartache burrowed deep within the demons dead eyes. But it was as his teeth sank into supple flesh, as his smaller frame gets shoved. Crimson sweetness explode across his tastebuds, and the demons whole frame filled with the shock of shame? Despair?

Icy touches clutch his being, the images of that boy. Sky blue yukata with cyan mist print, a smile of brilliant sunshine, sickening stifle of silence. Dulled, hollow eyes widen in disgust and horror as those cries struck him. His frame came crashing against the ground, breaking through the blanket of mist coiling from the small boy.

‘Stop! Yuichiro! Please-!’

Who….? He knew that voice.

But why did he know that voice.

Why?

H-how…

Another scream. Born from memories he knew not where they came from. Stifling silence. Warmth sapped from his cooling corpse, a screaming berating, and disgusting silence.

Broken silence.

Sheen of new tears coat over his eyes, terror and guilt filled gaze lock onto the slayer as his form shook like a leaf. Clawed fingertips shot to his own arms, racking down into pale demonic flesh hard enough to break the skin. Pushing deeper, deeper, until his fingertips touched ghostly ivory.

“No-….”

“N-no…nononononononono—- bad…bad…t-twin…ch….”

Tears still flooded his sight and ran down hia face, but he found his footing, taking a deep breath to ground himself. It hurt - not just his throat, but his heart and, it seemed, his very soul; he longed for a time long past, when he'd lived unaware of demons, when his parents were still alive, and his brother was still happy. Why couldn't they have just had a normal life? If their parents hadn't died... if Lady Amane had never come... if that demon had never stumbled across their home...

Maybe he and Yuichiro would have been closer and the pain they both clearly felt would be nothing but a nightmare.

Muichiro heard his brother's voice, repeating that no, over and over, and he looked up to see claws digging into flesh. His own wound forgotten, Muichiro moved towards the smaller boy again, this time reaching to circle around thin wrists. "Yui - !"

Bad twin... infinity...

Yuichiro Tokito bled out on this very spot. And yet.

And yet.

Dead, long grown to resemble that of a fish, now alight with life, cat like slits lit his gaze. Though dulled by his demonic nature. Just like that demon girl Muichiro had come to befriend through Tanjiro. He should be dead.

He died three years ago and yet, though changed, it was Yuichiro who stood over Muichiro. Brandishing a blade he’d honed his skill much like the Hashira had done. Lady Amane had done a proper burial for Yuichiro, of course she had. But there was one mistake. One gaping hole in her rights, a small unimportant detail she buried with the boy she failed to save.

His casket was buried empty.

She never recovered a body.

Pain clenched Muichiros heart, while despair threatened to swallow the demon whole.

Struck him dumb, unable to continue to attack, unable to touch the slayer before him. While somewhere deep in the base of his skull screamed at him to strike. To tear. To slash the flesh from the body of the one who dare to intrude on his piece of heaven.

His safe haven.

His…

“GO!!”

It’s screamed, whites of his fangs glint in the moonlight’s embrace.

Yet the boy moved so quick.

In one second sat before him, the next towering above. A blur of motion, while his instinct reeled, one heel slid backward as Muichiros arms caught him in an embrace. And he screamed, he screamed and thrashed, but the blade fell from his grasp. Claws burying themselves in flesh, but though he struggled, he could feel a deep spring of warmth welling from deep within his chest.

Flooding the void that had been resting at the core of his being.

"Please, onii-san! I didn't mean to forget!" Muichiro's words are punctuated with sobs. Gone was the blank, cold face of the boy hashira, twisted now with pain and heartache. "I'm sorry, I - "

His brother's teeth pierced at his throat and Muichiro screamed, voice echoing in the abandoned hut, much like the last scream it had housed three years ago, when Yuichiro had lost his arm. Muichiro's hands came to his brother's smaller shoulders and shoved to get him away.

"Stop! Yuichiro, please!"

The bite wasn't enough to kill him, but he could feel the warmth of his own blood running down his neck and into the shirt he wore. He cried, broken and devastated cries, as he tried to get away.

This mirrored image was far too old. His features, though soft compared to the usual peers, were too sharp. Too angular for the younglings mind to connect to his own. But the gaze. Widen in terror, wreaking his little heart in a bone shattering guilt. His anger drowned out by that soul wrenching despair from a time he could not remember. His chest heaves with every breath he took.

Demonic eyes met Muichiro’s own as the smaller stood over the seated human. All that fury suddenly far too heavy left the ghost paralyzed in his place.

This human. His voice. It made his limbs heavy, and flashes of images that he just could not hold onto long enough for him to understand what they were. However, slowly, ever so slowly, his blade lowers to the ground.

Yet remains in his grasp. His only physical thread to reality.

The boy's eyes, identical to his own with the exception of the slit pupils, staring at him. He remembers the glares from the months between their last fight and the demon's attack, but never those pupils. Pain clenches at Muichiro's heart as he put the pieces together at last, seeing past his shock for the first time and realizing the truth.

His brother had become a demon.

Instinct as a demon slayer and hashira told him to do his duty and strike the demon down, but heart and broken soul begged him to stay his hand. This was his brother, his twin, his lost other half. He couldn't hurt him.

Muichiro ignored the command to leave, instead moving so quickly from where he'd been frozen to stand, moving forward, and without warning. His arms wrapped around Yuichiro and pulled him close into a tight hug as he sobbed.

His body and blade flows through the forms with every breath the demon did not need to take.

Three sets of eyes perceptive in their perfection, wove the motions into his body’s memory. Even if the demonkin had escaped that hell? Where were he to go? An orphan, with no home to go to, no one to run to. Once the demon had slipped away, he was so focused on the present. On the impossible of escape, where he would go never came to his mind. So. He went to the only place the blank void of his mind knew peace.

Home.

Where he slept, curled in dusty futons, slept on dark stained floorboards soaked in the iron rot he hated so.

For months he’d slept, for other long nights the child would go out to chop wood. Or gather herbs or mushrooms, only to place them in messy piles out by the back door. In what could only be called laughable piles, left to rot away in disuse. And yet the demon still worked his chores, ones he had done during his time as a human. But now, under the brilliant moon light, he continued to mold himself the way the only significant being left in existence taught him.

Moon breathing.

Locks flow as rivers around the boys body, pooling at his feet as his form moved flawlessly from each stance. It is not until the creaking of wood reached his pointed ear that he froze. Mist gaze snapping to the small abandoned hovel that he’d come to call his home. Panic pinging in his chest, his training forgotten, the demon ran to his home. Ready to protect his sanctuary.

In his rush, he did not notice the demon slayers face before aiming his blade to bury itself in his belly. Scent of iron hitting his nose snapped him from his frenzy. One step back, a face too familiar, too round, too soft, yet unmistakably Yuichiro’s rose into view. Demonic silt pupils, an arm made of tainted ink present on his right side to replace the one he had lost that night.

His body is conflicted. The strangers face made his heart ache and twist in a sickening pit of confusion as the child screams his demand.

Which made the arrival of a ghost brandishing a blade all the most shocking when Muichiro turned to face the sound of running footsteps.

Eyes wide, he could barely believe what he saw. Still seated on the floor, Muichiro stared, taking in the sight of a very familiar face, almost unchanged from his last memory of his dying brother.

The yelled demand startled him, making him jump in a way he hadn't done so in years. He felt himself back on the day he and Yuichiro had stopped talking to each other, when his brother had yelled at him one last time. Despite time and change, amnesia and recovery, Muichiro felt so small as stared up at that ghost, unable to bring himself to move.