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“Rest!” The crow screams. “Rest!”
“Huh? Really? We’re not injured, you know--”
“Rest!” It screams again. “Rest!”
The air everywhere is calmer in the wake of Muzan’s defeat. As if everywhere, even the places where it wasn’t known, had itched beneath the skin, knowing something was wrong, somewhere monsters were real, somewhere, there was the smell of blood. Or maybe it’s just Tanjirou’s imagination.
“Must really be th-thinning them out,” Nezuko says, from the balcony door. Her scent is calm and sweet, with the hint of childlike excitement still leftover beneath, as it always should be. “Th-the rest must be hiding. Maybe th-thinking.”
Her tongue still trips over words, fumbles around and over her forever-sharp teeth. It’s less ‘hunting,’ now, and more ‘forcefully injecting with a cure,’ so her hands still manage to keep the soft callouses of sewing, and nothing else.
“Is it really alright?” Tanjirou looks out below the balcony of the inn. Beneath the humid evening air, there’s the scent of anticipation, of excitement, of wood and paper and preparation. “If that’s true, I’ll take you out to the festival tomorrow. You haven’t had candied apples since we were kids, right, Nezuko? I’ll bring a lot of money, so we can eat as much as you’d like, okay?”
“Mmm, mmm,” Nezuko nods, and for just one moment, he catches a brief smell of mischief. “But how about you go ww-with s-someone else? You should s-stop thinking so much about me.”
Tanjirou flinches. “Huh? Nezuko…”
“Mm?”
“Do you not want to be seen with me anymore? Are you going through your rebellious phase?”
Nezuko laughs, and she looks so much like their mother it’s almost blinding. “Nn-no! I mean…” Nezuko stops for a minute, tapping her finger against her lip like she's thinking about how to word something. “Inosuke als-also...right? He’s never bb-been to one, right?”
“Oh! You’re right!” Tanjirou reaches out and pets her head, like she’s still two feet tall. “You’re kind as always, Nezuko. Are you going to take him?”
With her smile still blinding, Nezuko says: “No, you!” so confidently it almost masks how hard she’s trying not to laugh.
---
Tanjirou is not good at staying put and relaxing, and never has been. After a long morning of trying to help out literally everyone setting up the festival, he’s left sitting in one of the inn beds, fiddling with his hands.
“Check!” Inosuke yells from the other.
Nezuko leans over and studies the shogi board carefully. “Nn-no, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is!” He yells. “This piece is the strongest one, so it can move faster!”
“Shut up.” Zenitsu chimes in from the corner, helpfully.
“No, th-they move the same.” Nezuko taps the piece with her finger. Her voice is muffled by the borrowed boar mask. “He’s not ff-feeling well, so he mm-moves the same.”
Tanjirou stifles his laugh when Inosuke’s face contorts with disgust. “That doesn’t matter! He musters up the strength anyway! I win, Mizuko!”
Although his arms and legs itch to do something useful, Tanjirou can be content watching them. He always is. And if he catches himself in the middle of it, and realizes the one he’s been watching, full of warm and cute thoughts, isn’t his sister, he’ll bury that down somewhere. Somewhere where it can be useful, because love is never wrong, but somewhere it can stay quiet and unobtrusive.
Should Inosuke holler and shout over their games, and should Tanjirou think, despite himself, ‘I’d really love to kiss you,’ then that’s just Tanjirou’s problem.
(“Stop looking at me like that!” Inosuke said to him once. He was giving off a strange smell, excited, fluffy, like the smell of a happy dog. “You should like me that much! I’m the boss! But you’re getting me too fired up! Okay, Monjirou?!”)
If the day everything is okay again is soon--maybe it’s alright. Maybe it would be alright, to think about other things then. He could’ve thought about other things this whole time, in theory, but Tanjirou has never even had a dream where he thought about himself. That’s the root of the problem.
“Our assignment is to rest,” Zenitsu whines after another yell, “I’m not resting! And bothering Nezuko is a crime, alright, so stop it!”
“I’m not bothered.” Nezuko says, looking completely cheerful.
“Ah, Nezuko, you’re so kind~! You’ll even play with a stupid boar! Nezukooooo~!”
“HEY!”
Tanjirou sits and thinks, while they chase each other around the room. Their sounds and smells are so familiar by now, their patterns, their habits, their reactions--his mind and his body has become accustomed to the groove of a new family. Life has to go on. It has to, doesn’t it?
(“Oh, Tanjirou,” his mother once said, running her fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. We’ve taken being a child away from you, haven’t we?”)
Maybe it’s alright, then. It should be. It is. Just one date--well, that’s fine, isn’t it? Just one! And it’s not like he’s being Zenitsu about it! He’s going to ask very politely! And if Inosuke says yes...um, he’ll figure that out once he gets there.
“Inosuke,” He pipes up, suddenly and a little too loudly. Inosuke looks up from his twisting of Zenitsu’s arm.
“I wasn’t actually going to break it!” He screams, eyes wide.
“Inosuke,” Tanjirou repeats, his face flushed. “Do you want to go to the town festival with me tonight? There’ll be lots of food, and, um…well, I’d really like to go with you! Do you want to?”
“Oh my god.” Zenitsu groans. Inosuke drops his arm and shoves him, without much thought.
Inosuke smiles his big, toothy smile. “Of course! If my underling asks me to protect him, I always will, okay?! Because I’m the leader!”
“No, um, it’s not that…it’s for fun! It’s, um,” Tanjirou waves his hands back and forth, red all the way to his ears. “I’m asking you to come with me for a date!”
Inosuke just looks at him, face just the slightest bit pink. Zenitsu stays face down on the floor, looking very much like he wants to die.
“A date!” Inosuke shouts, face getting redder by the second. He has that excited puppy smell again. “Of course you want to! Because it’s for the person you like best, right? For the person you think is most amazing, right? I’ll do it, cause you asked me to! Because I’m the greatest boss!”
---
“Good ll-uck.” Nezuko says, smiling. “Make sh-sure you keep your yukata on, okay?”
“Dumbass!” Inosuke screams. “‘Course I will! I can wear a yukata, no problem!”
Nezuko ties it a little tighter, just in case. She pats the top of his head. “If you’re gg-going to be my b-brother-in-law, you’ll have to be p-p-polite sometimes.”
“I’m polite!” Inosuke yells, at the same time Tanjirou chokes out “N-Nezuko!”
The smell of giddiness coming off of him when they leave is making his heart pound. Tanjirou looks away. Or should he look? Or, wait, Inosuke can tell how someone’s looking at him, so that would be too embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Then again, it’s not like it’s ever stopped him before. It’s just that--well, frankly, every act of liking him seems much more real right about now, and the fact he’s asked someone on a date is sinking in--and, certainly, the pounding of his heart and the blood rushing in his ears is making it hard to think.
It’s very easy to forget that even though he’s nearly died about three hundred times, he’s still sixteen years old, and has never considered dating someone in his life. It’s also very possible he’s overthinking it.
“Slow,” Inosuke grumbles, jittering with impatience. “You’re way, way too slow! Come on!”
Inosuke grabs his hand, roughly, and pulls him along.
As promised, Tanjirou takes him through every food stall possible. They definitely alarm several innocent stall workers, and Tanjirou definitely has to apologize several times, but it’s worth it. Seeing his eyes sparkle each and every time a new monstrous fried concoction is in front of him is just too good. It’s way too good.
Inosuke wriggles and makes sour faces while Tanjirou wipes off his face with a handkerchief. “Stupid,” He hisses, with that giddy smell coming off of him even stronger. “Stupid. What’s the point of that? Get away from me.”
“You have to keep clean. Just hold still!” Tanjirou says, thoroughly resisting the prime excuse he has to trace the line of Inosuke’s lips.
Inosuke is the one who reaches back for his hand after he’s done; as if it’s a complete given they should still be holding hands. Tanjirou thinks that maybe, after all this time, he’s finally going to die for real.
After a brief quest of Inosuke’s to win Absolutely Every Game (he breaks several of them, but still walks away satisfied), and an absolute disaster in which he fishes for goldfish with his hands then thinks the goldfish you catch are for eating (he only ate three), they’re left standing at the edge of the festival grounds.
They both stare up into the clear sky, with an uncharacteristic silence. Unfortunately (fortunately?) Inosuke is allergic.
“Was that the date?!” He shouts, grinning. “That was easy! Way too easy! You underestimate me, Kentarou!”
Tanjirou laughs, softly, and is choked by how the fluffy smell from Inosuke immediately explodes. “I-it’s not supposed to be hard. It’s just about spending time having fun with someone you like.”
“Then what were you all scared for?”
Inosuke is staring at him intently, eyes half-squinted. It’d be sort of funny-looking, if it didn’t render Tanjirou absolutely speechless for some reason.
“Um,” Tanjirou says, softly. “I guess it’s because I’ve never liked someone so much.”
Inosuke’s face flushes dark red. After a minute of just looking at him, he explodes into a huge smile, but notably closes his eyes and looks away. Tanjirou half-expects to see a wagging tail. “Of course! Of course you do! I’m great!”
“Yeah.” Tanjirou responds, before his brain can even catch up. Inosuke starts shifting from foot to foot, bursting with even more energy.
“You’re my very best minion, of course! Don’t you forget it!” Inosuke looks him straight in the eyes again, smiling with just a flash of teeth, hair ruffled by activity; beet red, bursting with the kind of innocent happiness only Inosuke can have, the kind that makes him jealous.
Tanjirou smiles too, because his smile is too contagious. “Inosuke,” he says, softly. “I don’t think I’d mind being like this forever.”
That’s true. He wouldn’t. And that’s fine, maybe. Maybe having a dream like that is fine. Maybe it’s not a dream. Dreams become realities if you work hard enough, and maybe the day will come where he’s worked hard enough.
There’s a smell of gunpowder, and a boom!
Tanjirou jumps, but several more fireworks follow, exploding and coloring the sky all sorts of different colors. It’s only when he himself calms down that he realizes Inosuke is clutching onto his side.
“The hell is that?” Inosuke hisses, voice low. He doesn’t seem to realize that he’s holding on to Tanjirou, or else he’d probably be more focused on trying to make a cool excuse for that. “The hell kind of demon is that?”
More fireworks go off. Inosuke bares his teeth and bristles, like a threatened animal. Tanjirou feels a little bad for thinking it’s cute.
“It’s not a demon,” he explains. “It’s fireworks. They’re just for fun.”
Inosuke watches the fireworks himself, but still tenses at the loud noise. “What the hell?”
“If you’re scared, let’s go back to the inn.”
That was the wrong way to put it, because Inosuke whirls around, grabs another part higher up on Tanjirou’s yukata, and pulls him to get in his face. “Haaah?! I’m not scared, god damn it!”
Inosuke freezes, and the angry look on his face falters. It looks like they’ve realized the issue of distance at about the same time, although Tanjirou is sweating much harder.
“I-Inosuke!” Tanjirou starts. “Y-you know, if you want to kiss, that’s okay!”
Inosuke tries to pull away, but ends up right back when another firework explodes. “That’s not what I--that’s not it!” He screams over the fireworks. “I’m not scared! And that’s not it, either, dumbass!”
“I-I don’t mind! Um, may I?”
“May you WHAT?” The fireworks are way too loud.
“Kiss you, Inosuke!”
Inosuke blinks. Then shouts “Sure!” in the exact same tone he shouts everything else.
Tanjirou’s breath hitches, and before he can think too hard about it or possibly die, he leans forward and kisses him.
When you’ve thought about doing something a thousand times, it’s hard not to compare reality to your imagination. Tanjirou has never kissed before, and Inosuke probably doesn’t know he even needs to do anything, so it’s clumsy--but he lingers, making sure he remembers. Making sure he remembers the smell of gunpowder, and tempura, the ever-present smell of dirt and forest on Inosuke’s skin, the unbearably strong smell of fluff.
He pulls away, and sighs. “Was that okay?”
Inosuke just stares at him, eyes wide, lips parted. His face is flushed totally red again. The smell of fluff just gets stronger every second. “Idiot! Stupid! Dumbass!” Inosuke screeches, finally. “Do it again!”
Tanjirou decides: this is fine. And he decides: maybe it’s not betraying anyone at all to think about his own feelings occasionally, and maybe if he wants to kiss a pretty boy that was raised by boars, he can do it. Maybe Nezuko is okay without him always looking at her--maybe there are more and more demon hunters and less and less demons. Maybe there’s a charcoal business with his name on it. Maybe he can build a little house in the forest, and maybe Inosuke will be there, too.
That’s probably fine. Those types of dreams--they’re definitely fine. He remembers his little siblings’ smiles, and thinks: there isn’t a monster under the bed anymore. So--it's okay.