Chapter Text
All throughout class on Wednesday—the day after she and her brother had skipped school, which was the day after they first made love—the inside of Nezuko’s chest burned with molten gold, warming and blooming and reforming into different shapes. The thick coagulation of emotional heat suffocated and consumed her, and all she could focus on was the feeling. The sensation was healing, like the benign lava massaged and kindled her heart and all the arteries and veins around it. But it was missing something. All the overwhelming fire needed to breathe, and the oxygen was Tanjirou. As she sat in her standard classroom chair, trying to pay attention to the history lesson, every nerve ending in her body tingled; every hair on her arms stood up; every neuron in her brain focused on one sole desire.
She needed to be in her big brother’s arms, so badly that she felt as though she was dying. No matter how the lingering amorous pleasure in her chest fluidly sent phantom memories of ecstasy throughout her veins, it was still impossible to breathe. It was a complete reality to her that she might faint right there in front of all of Taro Class, and need to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
There was that, too, creeping in more in flashing images than real thoughts or words. The ambulances. The brief screams of her family before they couldn’t scream anymore. Blankness as she wondered if she screamed herself. Fire. Fire, but not like the one in her chest now that warmed like balm on sore muscles—fire like scorching blades that cut through skin and metal and bone and her memory. Pain in her head. Pain—
She needed Tanjirou.
Late that afternoon, when Nezuko returned home from her art club, Tanjirou pulled her into a warm hug. She laid her cheek on his chest as she embraced him in return, closing her eyes and smelling the soap on his skin, letting his natural body heat envelop her like it did when they were in bed and he filled her, making them into one whole, complete entity.
Safety.
The moments passed in long, gentle waves, until he gently cupped her cheek to tilt her up for a kiss. She met his lips as the place that she belonged. His lips were slightly chapped—she did make sure he carried chapstick for all the days spent outside playing soccer in the cold—but the interspersed roughness on the skin meant nothing to their heavenly touch. She didn’t have to let him open her mouth, which he was eager to do—she opened it for him, craving a deeper kiss, yearning for his tongue inside, touching all her soft walls.
The proud contentment that had settled into Tanjirou’s chest since he had made love to Nezuko for the first time two nights ago met all the archetypes of a lion, the king of his pride. His possessiveness of his little sister finally had a place to settle—she was his sister, his lover, his Nezuko, whatever that meant—just his, fully and indisputably. His overall mood could only be described as fulfillment. She was all he needed. If life were a game, he had won. So he held her—tenderly, but with some grit—when she got home, and kissed her the same way.
“How was your day, Nezuko?” he asked her.
Nezuko was too drunk on kissing to think. That lava in her chest had warmed and swelled against his body when they were pressed against each other, and seemed to now be in her throat. She looked at his face—handsome, so familiar she could draw him without looking—and the molten gold was in her head between her ears.
“Good, nii-chan,” she said. The screech of metal on concrete. “But I missed you.”
He laughed and placed a kiss on her forehead, the spot tingling where his perfect rough lips met her skin.
“I missed you too,” he said, and the next words out of his mouth were that he had started dinner, the declaration coming out straight as he turned away, but Nezuko clutched him like a child and wouldn’t let him go.
He regarded her quizzically, but laughed.
“What is it, Nezuko?” he asked, trapped in her arms.
She pouted. She didn’t understand why she held on to him, as she had nothing left to say, and in all sensibility was perfectly ready to head into the kitchen with him anyway. But she couldn’t let him go.
“I missed you,” she found herself repeating.
A lump settled in her throat.
Ever in good spirits, especially now that he had overcome so many demons, Tanjirou gave her a quick peck on the lips that she clung to with the ridges of her teeth.
“I missed you too,” he said. Gently, he pried her arms from his middle and took her hand. “Come on, let’s make something to eat.”
She followed him like she did to the playground when she was eight years old, her respected and adored older brother watching over her to protect her from scrapes on her knee and big older bullies. She went to cook with him as a young woman, living domestically alone with him, warm between her legs as her fingers were interlaced with her lover’s. None of it was uncomfortable, but it was overwhelming—her love for him a powerful force that had her caught in a spell; one very tricky, because the feelings it stirred were not ones she had never had when not enchanted, but the charm altering her emotions to such a degree it was almost distressing.
She needed Tanjirou.
It was a happy thing that he had no reservations in holding back affection, as she craved constant pets and kisses, which she got on the couch that evening after eating and cleaning and homework was done (mostly). This had become the rhythm of things in the time since their confessions had been made. The experience of coming together romantically was still so filled with wonder that conversations about how it had happened and what it meant were still not infrequent. Their situation was, after all, still a taboo. That fact made the romance all the more unreal that it was real, while it was the most natural and sacred thing to them.
“I’m so relieved that we shared our feelings, nii-chan,” said Nezuko, her face inches from his after they broke a mind-numbing kiss.
“Me too,” said Tanjirou, adjusting their positions on the couch so he could cradle her comfortably. “I’d still be going crazy if I couldn’t kiss you like this.”
Nezuko smiled and let out a little chuckle.
“You probably would’ve been expelled by this point,” she teased.
Tanjirou laughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Or in jail with Shabana.”
“Me too,” said Nezuko. “With the way Ume-san steals when we go shopping.”
“She’s still doing that?” asked Tanjirou.
“She says only a little,” said Nezuko with a sigh. “But I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s not like Shabana is a different person, either. But that’s just who they are, and they’re our friends.”
Nezuko agreed as Tanjirou stroked her forehead to get her hair out of her eyes, and ran his fingers down her cheek. He gazed into her eyes like a man pledging fealty to a queen that he dedicated his life to serving, and she returned the look with honor, her eyes a darker, more intense shade of pink that looked almost like his crimson ones, with desperation to forever be his.
“I like when you do that,” she whispered, her voice also taking on a different tone. One not darker, but deeper. One that was increasingly passionate, and craved him.
“When I do what?”
“When you stroke my face like that, and play with my hair. When you show me how much you care about me.”
Tanjirou smiled. He had a pure, nearly peaceful carefree smile that genuinely came from his heart. It was one of the things that made Nezuko fall in love with him—how easily and deeply he communicated love.
“Of course I care about you, Nezuko. There’s nothing I care about more. I’ve told you many times now—you’re everything to me.”
“I know,” she said. “But in little ways like that, you show it.”
Their bond had blossomed into something more not only amorous but profoundly wrapped in transcendent love than it had been before, now that they could express it in more ways—primarily physically.
Tanjirou kissed her, wet tongue tracing the curves of her own, their mouths fully molded together in an almost calculated precision of line. They tilted their heads and pulled at each other’s lips, never not giving everything to one another.
“I love you,” said Tanjirou.
“I love you too,” Nezuko replied, and it was only natural that they once again became entangled in bed that night.
The first time had not been awkward, and not even dulled by inexperience, but had been hesitant—mainly for Nezuko, who doubted allowing herself to give full consent to what she worried was lewd and damning, and only for Tanjirou because of her perceived resistance. But now it was immediately passionate and fluid. Clothes came off without a second thought—almost with a carelessness that the articles never again exist. Naked bodies came together and kisses deprived their ecstatic brains of oxygen. Limbs encircled and locked in ways that looked uncomfortable but were necessary to fuse them together.
Nezuko discovered that she needed this. No matter how much thoughts of being with him were repeated and repeated, jammed viscerally into her being, she couldn't find a term except for need. How she had at first not truly seen it and then denied herself it, she didn’t know. Tanjirou said she was everything to him, but Nezuko felt she wasn’t anything without him. Without him, she would be so scared she couldn’t breathe or move. Without him, the world would be a grey blur. Without him, there would be fire. Scorching fire like blades. And even if he wasn’t the one to pull her from the smoke—even if it was only his heartfelt caring after—without him she wouldn’t have made it. She loved him so much, the sense of it was all-consuming, and now she needed him in romantic physicality.
Her big brother, inside her, on top of her, his weight pressing her into the bed. Safety.
My perfect nii-chan… who always protects me… This is how we’re supposed to be…
Safety.
In the morning, she locked herself around him—after having slept naked with him again, relinquishing any resistance to all barriers between them.
“Let’s stay home again today, nii-chan,” said Nezuko, pressing her face into his chest.
Tanjirou whined her name with a laugh, not taking her seriously. Of course they couldn’t skip class two days in the same week—nearly two in a row. It was unthinkable that she would even want to; he had been surprised when she had first even suggested the day they took before last.
“What?” she pouted in response to him. “Why, nii-chan? Why not? Please?”
“Nezuko,” Tanjirou said her name again as he petted her head. A weird tingle ran down his spine; she seemed oddly serious, but he couldn’t fathom why she would be. “You don’t really want that. You already broke your attendance record, and you take pride in your grades. I’m so proud of you too. Plus you’ll be missing your art club.”
These were facts—even his point that she didn’t truly want to abandon everything she loved about school—but Nezuko’s chest constricted in fear. She squeezed her eyes shut like she could make it all disappear.
“No,” she said, clinging to Tanjirou tighter. She couldn’t escape it—the woman and the little girl. “I don’t want to leave you, nii-chan.”
I might die. Did everyone die? Where am I?
“Nezuko.”
The realization of what was happening—at least some sense of it—washed over him, and he kissed her forehead and began gently stroking her back.
“It’s okay, Nezuko,” he said quietly, whispering to her as though she were a baby. “It’s just for a handful of hours, really. And we can’t actually physically always be together.”
He had a vision of them in his head as children, in summer clothes. He wore frayed denim overalls; Nezuko wore a white sundress. She held a daisy in her free hand. Their family was only yards away, relaxing at a picnic—checkered blanket and everything. Their father was there, alive and breathing.
I can’t always hold your hand.
“Why?” she whined, one of her hands clutching him so tightly that her fingernails dug into his bare back. She was too caught up in her emotions and racing thoughts to notice her breathing had grown shallow, and her heart beat fast. She didn't want their naked bodies to come away from each other.
“Hey, hey, Nezuko,” said Tanjirou, continuing to soothe her with his caresses and adding a kiss on her cheek. “Look at me,” he said.
She tilted her head, rose eyes glassy, though she wasn’t crying, to stare at Tanjirou’s face—his strong nose and kind eyes. She could draw it with her eyes closed. He stared back at her, into her soul, with that kindness and caring—but also with the special love and protectiveness that was only for her. She swallowed thickly, keeping her eyes on him.
“Everything is okay,” he said carefully. “You don’t have to be afraid. You’re safe—I’m safe too.”
“I don’t always feel safe,” Nezuko whispered, as though it were a dark secret, and one he didn’t know. But he did know it. He had known it since the hospital, directly after the tragedy. “I only feel safe with you.”
Tanjirou’s lips fell into a frown, his heart hurting for her.
“You’ve been through so much,” he decided to say, after mentally searching through all kinds of reassurances and comfort, trying to discern the perfect words for her. He wasn’t sure he had found them, but what he chose seemed to him the best things he thought she should hear. “It makes sense that you still get scared sometimes. But you’re strong, and you’re building a great life at school—even after everything that’s happened to us. And the high school is right next to your junior high—I’ll wait for your club to finish and walk home with you.”
“Nii-chan,” Nezuko whimpered, a single silent tear running down her cheek. Her symptoms had calmed as he had held her and stroked her, and she accepted the gravity of what he said. She didn’t fully believe it—that she was strong, or that they really were safe, but it was good enough for the moment. “You’ll walk me home?” she asked.
It wasn’t like it was something he never did, or that their neighborhood was dangerous—not like Gyutaro and Ume’s. It was just that her heart filled with the romance of the trope of walking home together as a prominent scene of young love, both enticing and comforting.
“Yes,” said Tanjirou. “I promise.”
She smiled; they kissed.
“Thank you.”
It was still spoken as a plea.
“Of course,” said Tanjirou, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
They did get up, minding the clock to keep time to get to school—it was interesting now, the second night of getting out of bed naked with each other. Nezuko put her pajamas back on to walk across the hall to her bedroom, even though no one else was home and she was about to take them right off and get changed into her uniform. She took heavy breaths as she pulled on her skirt and panties and socks, thinking maybe she should start taking showers in the morning if she and Tanjirou were going to be having sex most nights. None of it was wrong, but everything about it was curious.
Once dressed and freshened up, she headed downstairs to dutifully make breakfast, remembering herself and how she always took care of things: managed the house, her grades, her hobbies, her friendships, her brother—even before the changes in their relationship—and kept herself together, with ease and maturity. She always minded everything she had learned from her mother. Kamado Kie had been a good mother, and a good wife. Nezuko had always copied her—an essential adaptation for often being left alone to care for her younger siblings—and she knew how a good woman was supposed to behave. She had already been mirroring and internalizing those observations and lessons, even at a young age. Tanjirou was right that she was strong. But, sometimes, she wished she didn’t have to be.
She was grateful, and everything was beautiful now that she and Tanjirou were a couple, for lack of a better word to describe their relationship.
She wouldn’t let herself crack like windshield glass.