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Chapter Text

Sanemi Shinazugawa’s life up until the age of twelve had been simple, though not easy. He learned to read the air of his home like one might read the weather. The heavy steps of his father on the floor meant he had to grab his siblings and disappear quickly, slipping into a corner where the anger couldn’t find them. When the shouting started, Sanemi drowned it out by helping his mother with chores or tending to the younger children, who clung to him as if he were a shield.

But once the work was done, his heart always pointed him in the same direction: the Tomioka household. That was where Giyuu was. 

He had met him years earlier on a day that started like any other. Sanemi remembered rounding the corner and spotting a boy sitting outside his house. He had dark, unruly hair and eyes so blue they looked like they belonged to the sky instead of a person. His small hands were busy arranging sticks. 

“What are you doing?” Sanemi had asked, blunt but curious. 

The boy looked up, startled at first but then softened into a small and easygoing smile. 

“I’m playing a game my sister taught me,” he explained. “But no one else wanted to play with me.”

Sanemi hesitated. Other kids never asked him to join in, most of their parents warned them to stay away from the Shinazugawa boy, whispering about his father’s temper and about trouble running in the family. He expected this boy to wrinkle his nose and dismiss him too. 

But when Sanemi sat down in the dirt beside him, Giyuu simply handed him a stick and kept smiling.

That’s all it took.

From that day on, they were inseparable. Sanemi would find himself at the Tomioka home so often that Tsutako would simply wave him inside without asking who he was looking for. And in turn, Giyuu began to spend afternoons at Sanemi’s house once his dad went out, undeterred by the cramped rooms and his noisy siblings. After Sanemi’s dad died, Giyuu pitched in where he could. Helping Genya with hauling water buckets, helping Koto when he toddled towards danger or simply keeping Sanemi company in the quiet hours after chores. He became a part of their family so much Shizu called him her honorary son. 

His life was still heavy and full of responsibility but with Giyuu beside him, it felt easier. Lighter, even. 

Sanemi tried not to think about why his chest always thumped a little harder whenever he caught sight of his best friend running towards him, hair and sleeves bouncing with each step. He told himself it was just the excitement of seeing someone who mattered. 

One afternoon, not long after Tsutako’s engagement was announced, the familiar sound of Giyuu’s knock rattled the doorframe of the Shinazugawa home.

“Good afternoon,” Giyuu greeted Shizu, bowing politely before slipping off his sandals. His voice carried clearly through the house and by the time he reached the living room, Sanemi was already waiting, arms crossed but smiling despite himself. 

They made their way into the garden, where the summer air buzzed with cicadas. The grass was warm beneath their knees and old trees cast a shadow on their shoulders. While Sanemi poked through the underbush for beetles, Giyuu crouched nearby. 

“I asked Tsutako why she’s marrying Haru,” Giyuu blurted after a long silence. 

Sanemi glanced over, curious and with a smear of dirt streaked across his cheek. 

“She told me it’s because he’s her best friend,” Giyuu continued, his brows furrowed as if he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.

Sanemi froze, the beetle in his lap forgotten about. The thought struck him suddenly, bold and reckless. “We’re best friends!” He declared, louder than he intended. His cheeks burned, but he didn’t stop. “We should get married too, once we’re Tsutako’s age!”

The words hung between them, making his pulse race. He half-expected Giyuu to frown, tilt his head in confusion or ask why Sanemi had said something so stupid. 

Instead, Giyuu’s face lit up with a grin that was brighter than the afternoon sun.

“Yeah!” he said, nodding eagerly. “We’d be the best married couple in this whole village!”

Sanemi let out a breathless laugh, his embarrassment dissolving under the warmth of Giyuu’s certainty. His heart still hammered in his chest, but for the first time he didn’t try to shove it down. For a moment, sitting in the light of the garden with Giyuu beside him, the future seemed as simple and unshakeable as that promise. 

But of course, things were never that easy. Because a few nights later, everything crumbled.

He didn’t know demons existed, but once he saw the monster that his mom turned into, he couldn’t deny their existence. 

He didn’t understand it at first. His mom was normal when she left this morning, so when he looked at her while she turned into ash on the streets, why was she like this now? Genya understood enough to scream and to accuse him of murder. Something in his little brother’s eyes had changed; instead of love and admiration there was now only horror and disgust. 

The image of his siblings, dead on their bedroom floor, burned itself into Sanemi’s skull. 

He ran without thinking. Running felt like the only thing he could do that wasn’t collapsing under the weight of what he’d seen. He fled towards the place that had always felt safe, the only place where Giyuu’s steadiness might make the world make sense again. 

When Sanemi skidded into the street, he found not comfort but an unravelled child. Giyuu stood beneath the eaves, his shoulders shaking and his voice cracking with each syllable as he frantically tried to explain.

“It…” Giyuu’s hands clutched at the air as if he could grab the words and hold them in. “It came into the house. Tsutako… she… I saw its eyes and then she pushed me into the room. It wasn’t a person.” He inhaled raggedly, then spat the words faster. “I swear, it’s a demon. It attacked…” His voice broke so hard he made a sound like a sob and a shout at once. 

Around them, neighbours circled in that slow, delicate way people do when they want to feel involved. Their faces were soft with pity for Giyuu, their eyes sharpened as soon as they spotted Sanemi. 

“It was a demon, I swear!” Giyuu repeated, louder. Tears tracked clean lines down his cheeks. His lips trembled. “I… Tsutako… She’s gone.” He let the last word hang as if coming to terms with it. 

Sanemi watched him. Every ragged, earnest word Giyuu forced out cracked something open in his chest. Giyuu’s voice, usually so steady, had splintered into a raw and childish panic. The sight of him, his best friend trying to hold his composure as his world dissolved, made Sanemi’s stomach drop into a cold pit. 

A woman near Giyuu reached out and touched his shoulder in a practised comfort that looked more like containment than solace. “Poor thing,” she murmured loud enough for everyone to hear. “He’s so traumatised. Didn’t Tsutako say the other day they have an uncle somewhere?”

Another neighbour’s whisper slid through the crowd like smoke. “He’s always running around with that Shinazugawa boy,” she said so softly the words almost felt like a caress. “Who knows what sort of talk they get up to? The boy needs a doctor.” Her smile was small and judgement was folded neatly inside. 

Giyuu flinched at the insinuation as if the words were blows to his face. He looked over his shoulder, searched for someone to disagree. For someone to say it wasn’t because of Sanemi. Instead, all he saw was the villager’s polite but distancing pity. It was easier for them to call the boys hysteria than to face the possibility that demons existed. 

“No! I’m not crazy!” Giyuu’s voice cracked into a higher register. Tears fell faster now and his breath was a staccato of sobs. “I saw it! It had a mouth like… like…” he groped for a comparison but found none. Only the raw memory of something wrong remained. “I saw it. Please, believe me!”

Sanemi felt something in his chest go ice-cold. He wanted to grab Giyuu, to press his own grief into the other boy’s hands and make the world stop moving for a moment so they could both breathe. He wanted to tell Giyuu that he had seen it too, he saw the monster that took control of his mother and watched her change into something she never had been. 

But then his mouth closed on a different language: shame. How do you explain that the demon that destroyed Tsutako’s future was his own mother? How do you say “my mother turned into one of those things,” without every face in the crowd recoiling and even worse, see the disgust in Giyuu’s eyes?

Sanemi felt fury, bright and hot, climb up his throat and settle into his teeth. Not the quiet, grieving kind. This was something harder. Demons. Their name tasted obscene and right at once. He remembered the way his mother’s laugh had sounded before, the small kindnesses she’d done by way of folding clothes or tending scraped knees. And he remembered the animalistic hunger that had laced her movements at the end. 

His fury stripped him of nuance. It honed his thoughts to a single point: demons had taken everything that had meaning for him. They were not the silly images he saw on paper sometimes, they were the things that had eaten his home, the things that had chewed up futures and spat them out. 

A cold but uncomplicated certainty settled in him. Demons deserved only one fate. Death. 

He turned his back on the murmuring faces, on a sobbing Giyuu. He wanted the one response his chest now demanded: action. He wanted to learn how to make those things die. 

As he ran away from the Tomioka home, the oath uncoiled inside him like a blade being drawn. He would hunt them down. He would make them pay. He would not be small in the face of what took his mom, his siblings and Giyuu’s sister. If the village would not stand with him, and turn Giyuu into an object of suspicion too, then Sanemi would stand alone, fueled by his sharp white-hot hatred that had replaced something gentle in his heart. 

Behind him, Giyuu’s sobs broke the silence, ragged and helpless. Sanemi didn’t look back. He let the sound etch itself into him. It was a promise, a wound and a compass all at once. But in the quiet between his heartbeat and his vow, grief pressed in. The knowledge that Giyuu, his best friend, was lost to him too was unbearable if he thought about it too much.

Chapter Text

Years passed, and Sanemi learned the cost of friendship.

He had buried so many people that their faces blurred together, but Masachika was different. He had been like a brother, someone who understood his reckless pace and matched it stride for stride, he was someone who made the battlefield feel less lonely. And now he was gone, another life snuffed out in exchange for Sanemi’s survival. 

The crow had called him the Wind Hashira after that, the  title falling heavy in the air like it meant triumph. It tasted like ash in his mouth. A Hashira? No, he was cursed. Everyone he had drawn close to had been dragged in the grave. His mother, his siblings and now, Masachika. And long before that, although he was alive back then, there had been the boy with the bright blue eyes who promised him forever.

Sanemi rarely lets himself think of Giyuu anymore. But the scar was still there, buried deep in his chest, aching whenever he thought too much of the past.

So when he walked into the Ubuyashiki Estate for the first time as a Hashira, the last thing he expected was to see him. 

The Water Pillar.

Giyuu Tomioka. 

The sight knocked the air out of him. The last time he saw Giyuu he was a sobbing mess, trying to convince the villagers of something they didn’t wanted to realise. But now he was standing just a few feet away. Older, leaner and his expression carved into something blank and unyielding. He wore a ridiculous haori, half patterned and half plain, as if he couldn’t make up who he wanted to be. His posture was rigid, his eyes sharp but lifeless as if he was river frozen under ice. 

Sanemi’s breath caught. For one absurd moment, he wondered if Giyuu had been possessed too, like his mother had been. Because the boy he remembered, who used to grin wide enough to make his eyes wrinkle and who laughed so hard he doubled over in the grass, was gone. In his place was this hollow-eyed stranger.

The other Hashira welcomed Sanemi noisily, their voices loud and warm, testing the edges of the newcomer as they always did. But Giyuu stood apart. When their gazes met across the courtyard, all he gave was the smallest of nods. Nothing more. 

Sanemi’s jaw tightened. 

Anger had been his companion for years, the only fire that had kept him upright. But the blankness in Giyuu’s eyes, that cold distance… That lit a new flame in his chest.

So, that’s it he thought bitterly. He does hate me. He blames me for Tsutako. He blames me for everything. 

The meeting blurred in a haze. His mind was a storm, his grief for Masachika colliding with  the old wound Giyuu had ripped open by just standing there like a ghost. By the time the proceedings ended, Sanemi was raw, strung so tight he could barely stand the sounding of his pounding heart.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Giyuu starting to walk into his direction. 

And he snapped. 

“Stay the fuck away from me!” he bellowed across the courtyard, his voice harsh and ragged.

The words sliced through the air like a blade. The other Hashira stilled, eyes darting between them. 

Giyuu shifted faintly, as though he was struck by the words but he didn’t lash back. Didn’t even defend himself, like he used to do back in the day when Sanemi was too angry at the world. He only dipped his chin once, the barest acknowledgement, and turned his gaze away as if Sanemi wasn’t worth the effort.

That quiet dismissal enraged him more than any insult could have. 

“Don’t mind him, Shinazugawa,” Iguro muttered from behind his mask, voice thick with disdain. “He thinks he’s above us.”

Sanemi’s teeth ground together. He wanted to tell the man that Giyuu would never think that, that this was the same person that saw his rundown house and cramped rooms and happily took place into his family. He wanted to tell him he didn’t saw arrogance in the man, only emptiness. And somehow that was worse.

Because no matter how vicious his words, no matter how much poison he spat, it didn’t erase the truth.

He wanted Giyuu back. Wanted his best friend to talk to him again as if everything will be okay.

But the boy who once held out a stick to say play with me was gone. The boy who promised him to marry him once they were old enough, had vanished. In his place stood a stranger in a half-and-half haori, untouchable, unreadable, intolerable. 

Sanemi hated him for it.

So he built walls for hostility. He spat venom when their paths crossed, barked insults when Giyuu lingered too close. He made his disdain loud enough for the world to hear. He convinced himself it was because Giyuu deserved it. For looking at him with that blank, lifeless stare. 

But the truth betrayed him every time. Because whenever Sanemi’s eyes found him in battle, or across the meetings, his chest ached the same way it had when they were boys. His heart pounded hard and unrelenting, as if trying to free itself from his ribs, reminding him of what he had lost. 

He hated demons for taking his family. He hated himself for surviving Masachika. But most of all, he hated that every beat of his heart still belonged to the boy who promised him forever, and now looked at him like he was a stranger.

The final battle changed everything.

Sanemi had thought himself prepared for war, prepared for loss and for rage. He thought he was prepared for the endless grind of slaughter. But standing in Muzan’s fortress, every nerve in his body thrumming with Wind Breathing, he realized how wrong he was. The air was thick with blood and death. And even though anger and desperation burned through him, another emotion cut deeper: fear. 

When the floor crumbled and they were dragged into the shifting castle, Sanemi whipped his head around. Pillars fell like stones into the abyss. His heart plummeted when a flash of a half-and-half haori flickered past his vision. He’d recognize that pattern everywhere.

Giyuu.

He had prayed, foolishly, that by some miracle Giyuu would be spared, kept far from this hell. That the boy that gave him rhino beetles once he found them, wouldn’t be dragged into this hell. But life had been cruel, and the universe had never shown Sanemi mercy.

Hours later, when a crow screeched through the smoky atmosphere ‘Tomioka and Kamado have defeated Upper Moon Three’ Sanemi’s knees almost gave out. Relief and pride flooded him so hard it made him dizzy. Giyuu was alive. He defeated an Upper Moon. 

But even that night had its price. 

Sanemi had lost his little brother in the fight with Upper Moon One. Genya’s last words had been dissolved into ash before Sanemi could hold them. And though he survived, he felt no triumph. Death, he thought bitterly, would have been too easy.

Three months later, he woke up to the sterile scent of the Butterfly Mansion. His body felt heavy and weak, his skin burning under the bandages. And when he turned his head, he saw Giyuu laying in the bed next to him. His chest was rising and falling, his face pale but he was alive.

For a moment, Sanemi wasn’t in the present. He was back in a sunlit garden, beetles crawling on his fingers and a boy laughing beside him. “We’d be the best married couple in this whole village!” Giyuu’s boyish voice echoed through his skull like a bell.

If only their lives had been that simple. If only Muzan had never touched his mother. If only Tsutako were alive. Maybe then Giyuu wouldn’t be the hollow-eyed and cold person he forced himself to be. Maybe then Sanemi could have convinced him that being close with a Shinazugawa didn’t always mean pain. 

Instead, here they were.The last two active Hashira of the Corps. The demons were gone. Sanemi’s lifelong goal was fullfilled. Yet the victory felt like ashes in his mouth.

A few days later, Giyuu stirred and woke up. Relief poured through Sanemi’s body like sunlight breaking through a storm. But it was bittersweet. Giyuu had lost an arm. He lived, but only for a few more years.The curse of the Demon Slayer Mark hung over them both like a guillotine. Neither would live past 25. 

Giyuu deserved more than four short years. And the thought made Sanemi realise something else: if they were running out of time, then maybe, just maybe, he should stop wasting it. 

Days passed in silence while Sanemi thought about how to talk to Giyuu again as the friend he once was to him. The weight of unsaid words pressed down on him until he could hardly breathe. One morning, after a particular long walk in the garden to muster the courage, he decided. He would talk to him. Maybe Giyuu would think he was insane. Maybe not. But what else did Sanemi have to lose?

When he came back inside, he found Giyuu sitting cross-legged on his bed, a pair of scissors in his remaining hand. His face was expressionless, but his movements were clumsy and awkward as his hair was spilling like ink over his shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sanemi barked, harsher than he meant.

Giyuu looked up, his eyes flickering with something unreadable. He hesitated, as if weighing whether to answer at all. Finally, he said quietly, “it’s time I cut my hair.”

Sanemi exhaled hard through his nose. He walked behind him and plucked the scissors from Giyuu’s hand. “You’ll cut your damn ear off like that,” he muttered. “I’ll do it.”

The air between them was tight, but the simple act of touching Giyuu’s hair made Sanemi’s throat ache. Maybe if he kept his hands moving, the words wouldn’t choke him.

“I know… I know i can’t ask this of you,” he began, his voice low and unsteady. “But… please forgive me, Tomioka. Forgive my mother, forgive my family. She didn’t know what she was doing. By the time she… she reached your house, she was already dead and I…,” he rambled, words coming fast out of his mouth before he could think twice. 

Giyuu tilted his head, but Sanemu hand shot out to still him. He couldn’t dare to look in his eyes. “Don’t move.”

“Forgive you… for what?” Giyuu asked after a long pause, his tone soft. 

Sanemi’s  hand trembled around the scissors. “Because my mom… she… well she killed Tsutako…” His voice cracked and he shut his mouth.

He focussed on the snipping and the rhythm of the blades to steady his shaking. 

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Giyuu said simply. “The only man I blame is dead.”

Sanemi froze mid-cut. 

It can’t be that easy.

“But she…”

“No,” Giyuu interrupted, his voice firmer this time as if he needed Sanemi to understand the words he was saying. “I never blamed you, or your mother. What happened to your family was tragic and i never stopped grieving them as I did for Tsutako. I never blamed you, Sanemi.”

Sanemi stepped back, scissors limp in his hand and walked around to look at Giyuu’s face. It wasn’t cold or blank. It was sincere. Gentle, even. Like the boy he used to know. 

“But you… at our first meeting…” he started, not even knowing where to end that sentence.

“I don’t want to live the rest of my life with regrets,” Giyuu said quietly. “So I’d like to be your friend again, if you’ll let me. I know I’m standoffish, and you think I’m-” 

“I’d love to be friends again!” Sanemi interrupted before he could stop himself. Then, softer, he added, “just… friends with me never ends well.”

Giyuu smiled, small but genuine. Almost like the smile he used to wear in that garden all those years ago. “Well, I’m gonna die in a few years anyway,” he said lightly.

Sanemi chuckled. “Yeah. Me too.”

The scissors hung between them like a truce. For the first time in years, he felt something shift in his chest, a fragile and tentative hope. Maybe, in the time they had left, they could build something out of the wreckage.

Their rekindled friendship lasted only a few weeks before Sanemi started to feel restless. 

It had been easy at first, to slip into comfort of old habits. They shared meals, and went on quiet walks after. They had small, halting conversations that circled around everything but the years of silence between them. But the longer they spent together, the more Sanemi noticed the things he could ignore when he was kid. 

The way his heart jumped when Giyuu smiled a secret smile just for him. The warmth that crept under his skin whenever their hands brushed, purely by accident. The thoughts that filled his head at night when he was supposed to be resting. 

He thought about every time he heard the familiar knock, his heart threatened to beat out of his chest.

How every time Giyuu smiled sheepishly and gave him an odd-shaped ohagi with red bean paste still streaked on his face, heat crawled up to his neck. 

He was old enough now to recognise what those feelings meant.

And then there was the way Giyuu stared at him sometimes, just for a second too long with a softness that Sanemi never wanted to fade again. It was enough to make him wonder if maybe, just maybe, his feelings were mutual. 

The wondering turned into an ache he couldn’t ignore. 

One evening, when the sky was colored purple and gold, Sanemi found himself walking to Water Estate. He didn’t have a speech prepared. He tried all day, but the feelings he had for Giyuu couldn’t be put into words. Doubts swirled in his chest like a storm, maybe he had misread anything and just saw what he wanted to see. Maybe Giyuu would pull away and he’d ruin the only piece of peace he had left.

But he still made the walk to him. 

His plan was to knock on the door and talk to Giyuu but then he saw Giyuu kneeled on dirt. He ran towards him without hesitation. 

“Giyuu! Are you okay?!” he shouted and landed on the floor unceremoniously. 

Giyuu looked startled, and then smiled. “Yes. I saw a beetle the other day, and today it was still there. I thought that maybe… you’d still like to keep them? I know we’re no longer children but… I guess it’s just something I wanted to do for you.” He held out the jar in his hand with the beetle inside. 

It was such a small gesture, but to Sanemi it was everything. 

“How long have you been here doing that?” His voice cracked at the end as he held the jar in his hand as if it was sacred.

“Ah… It’s not so easy with one arm…” Giyuu admittedly shyly. 

If Sanemi hadn’t already decided on declaring his love, he might’ve kissed Giyuu right there and then. 

They were silent for a beat as both men kept kneeling on the dirty, muddy patch in front of Giyuu’s house. 

Before he lost his courage, Sanemi spoke. 

“Do you remember when you told me why Tsutako wanted to marry her fiancé?"

Giyuu froze. After a heartbeat, he nodded slowly. “Yes. She said he was her best friend. She said there’s no one better to spend your life with than with someone you trust completely.” His voice was careful, tentative. As if he had no idea where this conversation was going and didn’t want to expose too much. 

“Do you remember what I told you in response?”

Giyuu met his eyes now, as his softened. “Of course,” he admitted quietly. Then he hesitantly added, “I’ve never forgotten that.”

Sanemi’s heart pounded. He drew a breath, steadying himself. “Being friends with you again has been… nothing short of amazing. But I want more. I want to be married to you. I want to spend the rest of my years with you, Giyuu. I think… I’ve loved you since you put that stick in my hand and asked me to play with you.”

He huffed out a nervous laugh. “I know we can’t legally. Hell, we worked for an illegal corps anyway, so who cares what everyone thinks. But if you still want…”

He didn’t finish. 

Giyuu closed the space between him and put his hand over Sanemi’s, firm and warm. 

“We’d be the best married couple in that whole village,” he said softly. “Yes, Sanemi. I’d love to be your husband.”

For a heartbeat, everything was still. 

Then Sanemi leaned forward and kissed him.

It was hesitant, clumsy and messy. It was the kind of kiss between two men who’d spent their lives fighting and never had time for romance. But it was real. Giyuu’s lips were warm against his and Sanemi felt like he could breathe again for the first time since his friendship with Giyuu was destroyed by demons. 

They’ve decided on something small. Just an exchange of vows with Tengen with his wives and the Kamado family. 

But Tengen insisted on a ceremony. 

“You can’t just do it in silence!” he thundered, throwing his hands in the air as if the very thought offended him. As if getting married in silence was an insult to Kagaya Ubuyashiki himself. “No! Absolutely not! I will not have it! You can do it at my mansion for that matter. Yes! My mansion! With a feast, and music! With fireworks if I have anything to say about it!”

“We don’t need fireworks! Our lives are short as it is…” Sanemi shouted, to which Tengen nodded heavily. 

“Exactly! So your love needs to be celebrated!” He said before he rattled some orders to his wives. Hinatsuru nodded enthusiastically as Suma was already thinking out loud what to cook while Makio countered with other meals. 

Sanemi grumbled and looked at Giyuu. They had both imagined something private. 

But Tengen Uzui was not a man to be argued with. 

Word among the former Corps members spread faster than wildfire. Murata heard from Zenitsu and insisted on coming. “You can’t expect me to miss this!” he’d said, eyes wide and shining. “Everyone needs to know!” He carried the news to every surviving slayer he could find. Soon, even Kiriya had sent a letter to Tengen. 

“The last Wind and Water pillars together. My sisters and I will attend with our blessing. This union deserves to be witnessed.”

And so, what was meant to be a quiet vow between two men who had lived through too much became a full celebration.

On the day of the ceremony, Tengen’s mansion transformed overnight into something out of a festival dream. Rows of lanterns lined the paths. Fresh flowers were arranged in great vases, their perfume reaching everywhere in the garden and the house. 

“It’s too much,” Sanemi muttered as they stepped into the courtyard, his shoulders stiff under the traditional clothes he was wearing. He tugged the collar uncomfortably.

Giyuu, walking just beside him, said nothing. Just slid his hand into Sanemi’s and smiled at him. 

The crowd was larger than either of them expected. What they had imagined as a private affair had become a gathering of nearly every surviving slayer. Murata waved enthusiastically from the back as he was already holding a cup of sake while Tanjiro, Zenitsu, Nezuko and Inosuke practically vibrated with excitement. Kiriya stood with his sisters, as their presence carried the weight of their family’s blessing. Even Urokodaki had made the journey. 

The ceremony itself was simple but beautiful. They stood side by side beneath a string of paper lanterns. For a moment, Sanemi feared his knees might buckle. But when he turned his head, Giyuu was there. His calm and steady presence rooted him in place.

Then, afterwards, it was time for speeches. 

Tengen naturally spoke first. 

“Tonight,” he declared, gesturing grandly with both arms, “we celebrate not only the union of two men. We celebrate the survival of love itself! After years of war and death, after their unthinkable sacrifice, we finally see something beautiful bloom from the ashes. So everyone, cheers to the Wind and Water. Together at last!” 

Cheers erupted, sake cups lifted high. Sanemi rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath but unwilling to let go of Giyuu’s sleeve. 

Tanjiro spoke next, followed by Kiriya with his blessing. Eventually a lot of lower rank slayers followed with stories about missions with both pillars. It received chuckles, eventually even from Sanemi and Giyuu. 

Finally, Urokodaki spoke. “I have watched Giyuu grow. I watched him struggle, I watched him become a Pillar. You were as good as my son before, and now I can add Sanemi to my family. Now I see that even after the world took everything from you, you still chose each other. That is a love stronger than any breathing style. My best wishes to the happy couple.”

The courtyard fell quiet for a beat. Sanemi’s throat felt tight. Giyuu’s eyes glistened in the lantern light, though he blinked quickly to hide it. 

Afterwards, the food and drinks flowed freely as laughter echoed off the walls. Musicians played the shamisen and drums as their lively and bright notes filled the garden. At one point Tengen’s wives pulled Giyuu in a dance. He looked utterly lost while Sanemi nearly doubled over laughing.  

Later, Inosuke challenged Sanemi to an arm wrestling match on one of the tables while Zenitsu screamed at him not to embarrass the groom. 

It was chaotic. Loud. Nothing like they planned. 

And yet, as the night wore on, Sanemi realised he didn’t mind. Not when he caught Giyuu’s smile again and again. Not when Tanjiro dragged them both in a toast and the courtyard erupted in cheers. 

Once the lanterns dimmed, and most people made their way to the guest rooms, Giyuu and Sanemi reached their room Tengen had set aside for them. The futons had already been laid out, two side by side. 

For a moment, Sanemi just stood there, his hands shoved in his sleeves. His heart felt full as he thought about the day. 

Giyuu knelt first, his fingers brushing the edge of the futon as if grounding himself in the simple task of getting into bed. His movements were quiet and unhurried as Sanemi watched him in the lamplight.  He thought, and not for the first time, that the calm in Giyuu’s hands was something he wanted to keep for the rest of his life. 

Giyuu looked up. “You should rest. You’ve been tense all day.”

Sanemi snorted, tugging off his clothes. “Says you. You’ve barely sat down since this morning.” He stretched out a kink in his shoulder. “Guess we’re both terrible at taking it easy.”

Giyuu gave a small huff of amusement. Then, without a word, he reached for Sanemi’s wrist and tugged him down onto the futon. 

Once Sanemi was laying down, he turned to face Giyuu. His hand caressed his cheek. “Besides,” he started. “How can I rest when my husband looks so handsome?” 

Giyuu’s ears reddened as he laughed shyly. “Is that so? Maybe you should show him how much you love him? Since it’s your wedding day.” 

The boldness startled Sanemi, but he quickly hid it with a lopsided small as he hovered above Giyuu. “I plan to. Every damn day of my life.” He lowered himself to kiss him deeply as Giyuu’s hand was placed on Sanemi’s cheek. 

As their quiet moans and rhythms filled the room, Sanemi knew that although his life might have been cut short by the Mark, it was worth it. It was worth the poison, which he requested from Aoi, in a closet when in a few years their condition will worsen. Giyuu and he both decided from the start of their relationship, they didn’t want to be without each other for even a day longer. 

It was worth the scrutiny of the people who stared at him and Giyuu once they were a little too affectionate in public. 

It was worth the trip they would make in the morning to their old village to pay their respects to their fallen family members. 

And in their makeshift newlyweds room, as they both came to a release and leaned into each other, foreheads touching and their breaths mingling, Sanemi knew in that breathless moment that their childhood vow had bloomed at last. And like wind and water, it would flow on in their next life.