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Giyu is nineteen years old when a social worker knocks on his door, looking lost and a little irritated.
“I’m sorry to bother you…” she trails off, clearly expecting him to tell her his name, and he has to clear his throat before speaking. He’s never been good with strangers, they make him nervous. Acquaintances also make him nervous. Everyone makes him nervous.
“Tomioka,” he says. “Giyu Tomioka.”
The woman smiles. “I’m sorry to bother you, Tomioka-san. I was wondering if you were familiar with your neighbors from across the hall.”
Giyu frowns but nods anyway.
Everyone knows the Kamados, even a pariah such as himself. They’re a slightly too big family living in a slightly too small apartment, but they’re some of the kindest people Giyu has ever met.
Tanjuro, the dad, passed away less than a year ago, and Kie was been left alone to look after her litter of children all by herself.
Giyu does his best to check on them every week or so, and by checking on them he means buying a whole lot of takeout and leaving it outside of their door. Kie has told him there’s no need for him to bother with it, she can manage, she’s gotten the hang of rationing their groceries by this point, but Giyu never listens to her.
He’s been rather depressed these past few days and hasn’t stepped outside of his apartment since Monday, but today he woke up with the resolution to walk down the street and get some food for himself and the Kamados. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll be brave enough to stay and eat with them, although the prospect of following through with his plan seems unlikely.
When the social worker realizes he’s not going to speak again unless she tells him what she wants from him, she sighs.
“My name is Misaki Ito, I’m here because I need to take Tanjiro and Nezuko Kamado with me for processing, and they’re not opening the door. I know they’re inside, I can hear them, but I don’t want to get the police involved and make this harder for them than it already is,” she explains.
Giyu frowns. “Processing?” he asks. “What do you mean processing? And why would you need to get the police involved? Did they get in trouble?” He normally doesn’t say that many words at once, but he’s too shocked to measure the flux of his speech the way he usually does. It’s unfathomable to him, the thought of Tanjiro or Nezuko getting in trouble.
They’re good kids, they really are. They’re the best kids Giyu has ever met, trust him, he gives remote English classes, he knows his fair share of good and bad kids, and these ones are every teacher’s dream. All the Kamados are, but Tanjiro and Nezuko are the ones he sees the most, always helping everyone with their groceries, making small talk with their elderly neighbors, carrying their younger siblings around like it doesn’t bother them in the slightest.
The social worker whose name Giyu already forgot smiles at him, one of those fake customer service smiles everyone feels naturally repelled by.
“Their mom and their three youngest siblings got hit by a drunk driver on their way home two days ago, Tomioka-san,” she says. “Unfortunately, they didn’t make it. And because they don’t have any living relatives, I need to take them with me and assign them to a foster home as soon as possible.”
The walls seem to cave in around Giyu, and he’s not sure he’s getting enough air in his lungs anymore.
No.
No, it’s impossible.
She must be mistaken, they can’t— Kie can’t— and the children—
He almost laughs, not because it’s funny but because he lost his last foster family the exact same way a couple of years ago. It wasn’t a drunk driver that hit them, though, just a regular bad driver losing control on an icy road.
“Two days ago?” Giyu hears himself asking. “That can’t be, I didn’t— no one told me anything.”
But who was going to tell him? Tanjiro? Nezuko? Their fucking landlord?
Giyu has made it a point to alienate himself from everyone around them since the moment he moved into this building, he’s not even in the communal group chat and never attends the meetings, so it’s no wonder no one has thought of knocking on his door and delivering the news to him.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” the social worker goes on, though he can tell she couldn’t care any less. “Are you close with the family? Would you say the children trust you?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe.”
She nods and sighs again. “I wouldn’t ask this if I wasn’t so desperate for help, but I truly don’t know how to make Tanjiro and Nezuko come out, much less how to make them come with me out of their own free will. Could you—”
Giyu is closing the door behind him and rushing across the hall before she’s had a chance to finish speaking, and his fingers feel numb when he knocks on the door.
A deep silence greets him, extending before him for what feels like hours but can’t be longer than a handful of seconds.
He knocks again, harder this time.
“Tanjiro?” he asks. “It’s— it’s me, Giyu, your neighbor from across the hall.”
Silence, silence, silence, a dull step, then another.
Tanjiro is the one who opens the door, staring at him through the gap.
“Tomioka-san?” he asks in a weak voice.
Giyu tries to smile at him, but he hasn’t smiled in so long, he decides to just give up before he can pull a grimace that can scare the young boy even more.
“Can I come in?” he wonders.
Tanjiro looks at the social worker with apprehension for a moment before he says, “Only you.”
Giyu nods once, and turns to her with a blank expression.
“There’s a sitting area in the lobby,” he says curtly before walking into the apartment and shutting the door.
The living room is dark, the curtains are all closed and there are a couple of plates with rice and what looks like pork on the table, but what stands out the most to him is the small pile of money in the center. It can’t be more than five thousand yen, all in small bills and coins.
On his side, Tanjiro drags in a deep breath.
“I’m sorry for the mess,” he says. “We haven’t got a chance to clean up.”
Giyu’s heart twists painfully at the sound of those words.
“Don’t worry about it,” he tells the boy, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Tanjiro gives him a shaky smile. “What did the social worker say to you?”
“That she needed to place you in a foster home,” Giyu replies, and when Tanjiro’s face twitches, he adds, “I grew up in one, you know,” as if it was of any consolation.
“Was it bad?” Tanjiro wonders.
Giyu shakes his head. “No. Not at all.”
“We’re not going into a foster home,” he blurts out. “We’re not— I can take care of Nezuko. I’m her older brother, I’m all she— I’m all she has left. I can take care of her.”
“Is that what you’re planning to do with that money?” Giyu wonders, pointing at the table with a quick tilt of the head. “Run away?”
Tanjiro nods, sniffling a little. “I know it’s not much, but I can buy us some train tickets.”
“And do what, exactly?” he asks. “You can’t finish your education like that— hell, you can’t even get a job, you’re only fourteen.”
“Thirteen,” Tanjiro corrects him. “I’m thirteen. Nezuko is twelve.”
Giyu grabs him by the shoulders and crouches down to look him in the eye, trying his best not to upset the boy.
“Tanjiro,” he whispers. “You need to go with the social worker. She’ll find you a good home, she—”
“But this is our home,” Tanjiro cuts him off, his eyes going glassy. “This is our home,” he desperately repeats. “I can’t just— we can’t just leave. We don’t want another home, we don’t want to live with strangers. We have a family already, we have a mom and three siblings, and we can’t leave, we can’t—” A sob overtakes his words and he closes his eyes very tightly, but he can’t stop the tears from rolling down his cheeks, and Giyu can’t stop his arms from wrapping around the boy’s small frame and pulling him into a clumsy hug.
Tanjiro doesn’t seem to care about how clumsy Giyu’s movements are because he melts right into his arms and sobs. And Giyu lets him, hoping his awkward embrace can at least stop Tanjiro from coming apart at the seams.
They stay there until the bright sunlight peeking through the gap between the curtains and the window becomes orange, two orphans holding each other, a small apartment full of memories, a pile of coins on the dining table, a freshly broken heart and one whose torn edges still bleed from time to time.
Giyu has never considered himself to be particularly brave or determined. He stays out of trouble, repays kindness with kindness and does well by everyone as best as he can. That’s what his sister taught him, after all. It made him into a nice boy that all teachers loved, even if his shy personality and introverted nature drove almost all his peers away.
His foster dad, though, taught him what it meant to be a man, and that came with a whole lot of responsibility added to what he already knew.
Giyu finds the social worker sitting in the lobby, and the words fall from his mouth before she’s had a chance to say anything at all.
“I want to foster the kids.”
Giyu is twenty years old the first time Tanjiro and Nezuko get sick under his care.
He’s just walking to the kitchen to get some water in the middle of the night when he hears fussing coming from the siblings’ bedroom, which he wouldn’t usually pay any mind to, but then he hears it. A sniffle, followed by a cough, followed by an even harsher sniffle and another cough.
Oh, no.
The door is slightly ajar, it always is, but Giyu still pushes it slowly, giving them time to stop him if they don’t want him to come in, but they don’t. He finds Nezuko sitting up in her bed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, and Tanjiro rummaging through his bag with quick fingers.
“Are you two alright?” he asks.
“Yes!” Tanjiro is quick to exclaim, but his words sound muffled. “Sorry we woke you up, Tomioka-san! Nezuko has a bit of a sniffle, that’s all. I’m trying to find some aspirin.”
Giyu frowns, stepping into the room, and goes to touch Nezuko’s forehead. She’s still half asleep, and groans when Giyu’s cold hand comes in contact with her warm skin.
“You’re burning up,” he mutters. “How are you feeling?”
“My throat hurts,” she mumbles.
“Okay, hold on,” Giyu says, moving quickly to check Tanjiro’s temperature. Lo and behold, he’s also burning up, and his teeth are clattering. “Tanjiro, go back to bed, I’ll call the doctor.”
Tanjiro’s eyes go wide open. “The doctor?” he asks. “No, no, Tomioka-san, we don’t mean to be a bother! I’ll just find some aspirin and take Nezuko to the doctor myself in the morning! I have some money saved up, I can buy the medicine myself!”
What is it about these two kids that makes Giyu’s heart threaten to crumble every other day?
It’s been a year since they’ve been living in Giyu’s apartment, and they always act like they have to earn their place there, cleaning and cooking and trying their hardest not to bother him.
For someone who makes a living out of teaching children a different language, Giyu sure is bad with words, but if he knew how to express himself any better, he would sit Tanjiro and Nezuko down and tell them they’re not a burden, they never have been and never will be. If anything, they’ve made Giyu’s life a lot less bleak, they’ve given him the motivation to drag himself out of bed in the mornings to make them breakfast and take them to school. They couldn’t burden him in the slightest if they tried with all their might.
“You’re sick too,” he tells Tanjiro. “Just get back in bed, I’ll bring you some water and something for the fever, but I need to call someone first.”
“But—”
“Back in bed. Now.”
Tanjiro sighs, standing up on shaky legs, but does as he’s told without a word of complaint.
Giyu walks back into the hallway as calmly as he possibly can, and then runs all the way to his bedroom, scrambling around to find his phone. There’s just one person he can think of calling right now, one of the only friends he has in the whole wide world, and it just so happens that she’s a med student.
The line rings two, three, four times before she picks up, and her usually soft voice is eclipsed by the rumble of sleep when she answers.
“Tomioka?” Kocho asks. “Is everything alright? It’s two in the morning.”
“I’m sorry, I have a bit of an emergency and I didn’t know who else to call,” he says.
They haven’t seen each other since before Tanjiro and Nezuko moved in because Kocho took an exchange program in America. She came back only two weeks ago, and has been swarmed with coursework ever since, so they haven’t found a chance to get a coffee and catch up.
Only two of his other friends know about Tanjiro and Nezuko, Rengoku and Sanemi. Giyu fully intended on telling Kocho as well, but everything has been so hectic…
“What kind of an emergency?” She sounds more alert now, and Giyu almost feels bad for worrying her.
“I’m… uh, I’m fostering two children, I can explain more some other time, but they both have a fever and a cough I don’t know what to do,” he tells her. “I don’t even think I have aspirin in my apartment, or ibuprofen, or anything else.”
Kocho stays silent for a moment, but then she giggles.
“Ah, Tomioka-san, you’re always full of surprises,” she says fondly. “Do you have pen and paper on hand? I’ll tell you what to buy.”
Giyu has a whiteboard in his room, so he takes note of everything Kocho tells him and thanks her profusely for her help.
“Don’t thank me, that’s what friends are for,” Kocho tells him. “I’ll swing by tomorrow to check on them.”
“There’s no need, Kocho—”
“I insist,” she interjects. “Are you still living in the same apartment?”
Giyu nods even though she can’t see him. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow after my last lecture,” she says. “Sleep well, Tomioka-san.”
Aside from her unwavering kindness and sense of duty Giyu has always secretly admired, she’s also incredibly nosy, so he knows she’s going to interrogate him to hell and back as soon as she’s made sure the kids are alright, but he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.
For now, he needs to run to the 24/7 drugstore and get everything he needs to care for two sick children.
He makes a run to and from the drugstore, and he’s frozen to the bone by the time he comes back, shivering and panting for air with two bags full of everything Kocho told him to buy hanging from the crook of his elbow, along with a bunch of snacks he thought they’d enjoy.
Nezuko is sound asleep when he steps into the room, but Tanjiro isn’t. He’s sitting on the edge of her bed, pressing a cold compress against her forehead.
“You should be resting right now,” Giyu tells him, not unkindly.
Tanjiro shrugs.
“I don’t like it when she’s sick.”
“I know.” Giyu sits next to them and pours some cough syrup into a spoon, offering it to Tanjiro. “Drink all of it, and don’t you dare spit it out.”
Tanjiro grimaces at the spoon. “You’re only saying that because you know it tastes bad, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. It says it’s grape flavored, but it does smell a bit rank.”
“You’re supposed to say it doesn’t taste that bad,” Tanjiro whines. Any other time, he’d probably drink the whole thing up without thinking about it twice, but the fever seems to be affecting the filter between his brain and his mouth. “Now I know what I’m in for.”
Giyu tilts his head to the side. “Isn’t it better to know what you’re in for from the very beginning so that it doesn’t come as a surprise when it hits you?” he wonders. “At least now you know what to expect and you won’t spit it all over my face. I even brought you some orange juice to drink right after.” He raises the juice box with his free hand, and Tanjiro’s eyes widen.
“Okay.” Tanjiro closes his eyes very tightly when Giyu mercilessly shoves the spoon in his mouth and forces him to lick it clean before replacing it with the straw from the juice box. “Ew…”
“I know, but it’ll make you feel better, I promise,” Giyu says. “Before you finish drinking that, take this pill. It’s for the fever.” The pill goes down without a fight, thankfully, and now it’s Nezuko’s turn.
Still sipping on his orange juice, Tanjiro removes the compress from Nezuko’s forehead and wipes her cheeks with it.
“Nezuko,” he whispers, gently shaking her by the shoulder. “Nezuko, wake up, you need to take your medicine.”
Nezuko shakes her head. “I don’t wanna,” she muses.
“C’mon, Tomioka-san already went through all this trouble, you have to take it,” Tanjiro tells her.
“I brought you apple juice to wash it down,” Giyu adds.
Grumpily, Nezuko sits upright, but her eyes remain closed. Tanjiro holds her in place while Giyu gives her the cough syrup and then the pill, but she barely makes it through a couple sips of juice before she starts dozing off again.
She falls asleep against Giyu’s arm, her steady heartbeat pulsing against his bicep.
“Go back to sleep,” Giyu tells Tanjiro. “The cough syrup is going to knock you out sooner rather than later, anyway.”
Tanjiro hesitates for a moment, but then he nods. “Okay,” he says, and it may be the fever that’s knocking down his walls, but he cuddles up against Giyu’s other side and falls asleep not long after.
Giyu spends the entire night checking their temperatures with the thermometer he bought, changing their cold compresses and only waking them up to bring them breakfast to bed. Kocho said it was important for them to sleep off the fever, and Giyu would never dream of questioning her medical knowledge. She was always the smartest one in their friend group, after all.
“You really became a foster parent at nineteen,” Kocho comments the next day, a cup of tea between her small hands and one of her usual smiles etched on her lips. “One could say you’re a teen dad now.”
“That’s one way to put it,” he muses.
“I admire your kindness, Tomioka-san,” Kocho tells him.
“Don’t,” Giyu breathes out. “There’s nothing admirable about me.”
“There are plenty of admirable things about you, but if I start listing them off, they’ll go straight to your head, so I won’t,” she jokes, or at least he thinks she’s joking. It’s virtually impossible to tell with her, but he thinks he’s gotten the hang of it over the course of the years. “You’re a good man, though, even if you make me question if you actually exist or if you’re just a figment of my imagination with how often you disappear.”
Giyu wants to laugh, but he thinks his voice box doesn’t know how to produce an appropriate laughing sound anymore, so he doesn’t even try.
The last time he laughed was when Tanjiro killed a mosquito by slamming his forehead against the kitchen counter, and that wasn’t even a laugh. It was an amused exhale, or something equally as horrifying. It did make Tanjiro and Nezuko giggle timidly, so the brief embarrassment was worth it.
“I’m sorry,” he tells Kocho. “I’m not good at making friends, or at keeping them.”
“You’re the worst at it, that’s true,” she says. “But you can make up for it by inviting me for coffee every once in a while.”
Giyu finds himself gaping his mouth at her like a fish out of the water, which in turn makes her laugh, her violet eyes glimmering like gems under the kitchen lights.
Giyu is twenty-one years old when he decides it’s time to move somewhere a little bigger.
Tanjiro just turned fifteen and Nezuko is fourteen now, it’s only fair that they get their own bedrooms, their own spaces they can decorate however they like, which was a battle all on its own, by the way.
They both insisted they didn’t need any of it, they were fine, really, but Kocho —who swiftly made herself a part of their mismatched family before Giyu could even consider doing something to stop her— convinced them to take what Giyu wanted to give them and make the most of it. He was a good man, and he hadn’t become their foster parent to offer them the bare minimum, after all.
So that’s what they’re doing today, turning this place into their new home.
It’s only slightly bigger than the last one, but it’s closer to the high school Tanjiro will be attending to next year, and it has three bedrooms instead of just two. The kitchen has enough room for a table and a double-door fridge they still need to buy, along with a new sofa and a larger TV.
The new apartment also has a small balcony. The view isn’t anything extraordinary, there’s nothing exciting about the street vendors and the people jogging idly in the park across the street, but when they were apartment hunting with Kocho, she leaned against the railing and mentioned off-handedly that she thought that spot was perfect for stargazing.
Giyu signed the lease two days later, and no, it wasn’t because of the brief mental image he got of himself with an arm draped around Kocho’s shoulders, staring into the night sky, it was just because— well, because— the price was very reasonable, alright? More than reasonable even. An absolute steal. It would’ve been plain stupid to pass on that opportunity.
“Do you like it?” Giyu asks Nezuko, a hand on her shoulder as she stands in the doorway of her new room.
Nezuko nods, her lower lip trapped between her teeth. “I’ve never had a bedroom for myself before,” she whispers. “I wish mom was here to see it.”
Giyu holds her a little closer, breathing in deeply.
He doesn’t know what to tell her, he’s still a wreck when it comes to voicing his feelings, both Nezuko and Tanjiro know this, but it seems like they also know how to pick up the unspoken words from his actions alone.
Still, it takes him by surprise when Nezuko gets on the tips of her toes and wraps her arms around his neck. She’s stronger than Giyu thought her to be, and she doesn’t hesitate before saying, “Thank you, aniki. Thank you for taking care of us. I don’t know where we’d be without you.”
“You don’t ever have to thank me for anything,” Giyu tells her. He tightens his embrace to try and show her how much she means to him, how much they both mean to him, and he hopes she understands. He really, really does.
Living with them has taught him many things, but perhaps the most valuable of the bunch is that family is what we make of it, and that loneliness is an illness that festers and festers until it starts killing one’s soul. When Giyu took the siblings in, he promptly realized his own loneliness could become contagious if left untreated, so he took it upon himself to find a cure.
The cure, of course, came in the form of early breakfasts and children passed out in front of the TV, empty juice boxes and a drawer in the fridge stocked with string cheese, Studio Ghibli movies and weekly meetings with teachers who doubted his caretaker abilities. One shared bowl of popcorn at a time, the open wound that was Giyu’s loneliness began closing and healing.
Admittedly, Kocho has been a good companion this past year. She has a younger sister, Kanao, who’s only a year older than Tanjiro. She’s very quiet, but she seems to enjoy Tanjiro and Nezuko’s company. Kocho says she doesn’t usually enjoy other people’s company, so her coming over is beneficial for everyone, even for Giyu, because it means he gets to sit down and talk with Kocho for a couple of hours until Kanao reminds her she needs to wake up early for her morning lectures.
Tanjiro always gives him a strange look when she’s gone, something teasing but still respectful, and Giyu is a bit scared to ask him what it means.
“Is she coming over tonight?” Tanjiro offhandedly wonders as Giyu helps him put together a desk for the computer Tanjiro doesn’t know he’s going to be given in a few more days.
“Who is?”
“Shinobu-san,” he says lightly, but there’s a tiny smirk pulling at the corner of his lip.
Giyu sighs.
“Whatever it is you’re thinking, stop thinking it,” he muses. “It’s not like that.”
Tanjiro smiles. “It’s not like what?”
“Like that.”
“I think she likes you.”
“Of course she likes me, we’ve been friends since high school.”
Tanjiro’s smile widens. “Not like that.”
“You can be such a little shit sometimes,” Giyu huffs. “She’s always been like this, it’s nothing new.”
“So she’s liked you since high school and you haven’t made a move yet?” Tanjiro raises his eyebrows. “She must really, really, really like you then.”
“Tanjiro,” he says through gritted teeth, but he can tell his cheeks are getting warm.
“You like her too, don’t you?” the boy wonders, not looking up from the manual he’s trying to make sense of.
Giyu takes in a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter if I do.”
“Why not?”
“It just doesn’t.”
Because I’m me and she’s her and someone like her would never look at someone like me twice, he wants to say, but doesn’t, because those are dangerous words to be spoken aloud.
It’s not like he’s never dated someone before, he knows he’s not entirely unlovable. He dated Sanemi for a few months the summer after they graduated high school, but it didn’t work out, and that’s about all the dating experience he has.
Still, the sole thought of holding Kocho’s hand or kissing her— oh, here comes the blushing. Ugh, how fucking embarrassing, he hates it.
“Kanao says she talks about you a lot,” Tanjiro goes on, handing Giyu the manual as a silent way of saying he doesn’t understand shit of what he’s reading. “And that she never talks about anyone else, just you. Do with that information what you will.”
This time, Giyu allows himself to lower his gaze and close his eyes for a moment before focusing on the manual.
Kocho does swing by later that day with Kanao trailing behind her and a box of mochi between her hands, but Giyu is too distracted by Kocho’s hair to hear a word they say.
He hasn’t seen her wearing her hair down in at least four years, and the sight of it is as beautiful as Giyu remembers it being. He wonders, for a shameful fraction of a second, if it’s as soft to the touch as it appears to be, or what it would look like sprawled over his pillow come morning—
“We wanted to bring you a housewarming gift,” she tells him, placing a hand on his bicep, “but it was already getting late and we didn’t want to waste too much time at the mall. I’m sorry, Tomioka-san. I promise I’ll bring you a nice houseplant the next time I come by.”
“It’s alright, don’t worry about it, I love mochi,” he says, only a bit startled by the sound of her voice echoing in his ears. “You can drop the san, you know? You can even call me by my name if you want.”
Kocho gives him a teasing smile. “Is that right, Tomioka-san?” she asks. “Hmm, I don’t know if we’ve gotten to that point yet.”
“We’ve known each other since we were sixteen, I think it’s safe to say we’re way past that point.”
“You keep count?” she chuckles, sitting at the kitchen table. “That’s sweet.”
There he goes again, blushing like a teenager.
Giyu sits across from her, and if it takes him a second longer than usual to catch his breath, she doesn’t notice, or at least she pretends like she doesn’t.
“What would it take for you to call me by my name?” he asks.
Kocho shrugs, and Giyu could swear her cheeks are getting pinker and pinker by the second.
“A date, maybe,” she replies. “I guess you have to ask me out to find out.”
Giyu is twenty-two years old when Tanjiro finally brings two friends home, after Giyu assured him over and over again that it was more than alright if he wanted to watch a few movies with them, maybe order some pizza from that place he really likes.
The boys are exactly like Giyu imagined them to be, but they’re also entirely different.
Zenitsu is short and jumpy, seemingly scared of his very own shadow. He knocked a plant over when he walked through the door and had a meltdown and a half over it, but Tanjiro handled it with ever-lasting fondness and patience.
He has bright blond hair and a cute little smile, and Giyu would be lying if he said he didn’t notice Tanjiro’s gaze lingering on him a bit longer than necessary while they ordered the pizza, or how Zenitsu went bright red when Tanjiro offered him a jacket after he said he was cold. Ah, Giyu is going to have the time of his life teasing the shit out of Tanjiro once they’re gone.
Inosuke, who is a bit of a local celebrity because he was quite literally raised by boars, is tall, broad and loud as fuck. Tanjiro warned Giyu about his manners, or lack thereof, from the very beginning, but Giyu thought he was exaggerating. As it turns out, Tanjiro wasn’t exaggerating one bit; Inosuke really has no manners, but Giyu can see he’s trying his best, and aren’t they all?
He seems uninterested in both Zenitsu and Tanjiro the way Zenitsu and Tanjiro are interested in each other, but he’s also not entirely oblivious to it, that much is evident by the way he locks eyes with Nezuko and rolls his eyes at the unsuspecting lovebirds more than once.
“We have a betting pool going on,” Nezuko informs Giyu as they watch Spirited Away in his bedroom for the thousandth time. “I think they’re going to get together before the school year ends, Kanao gave them only two months, Aoi said six, but Inosuke says they’re too stupid and that it’ll take them at least one more year to even realize they like each other. Genya told us it was disrespectful to bet on their love lives, so we kicked him out of the group chat.”
“It is pretty disrespectful to bet on their love lives, I agree,” Giyu says. “But I’m with Inosuke, they’re way too dumb. How much money are we betting, by the way?”
Nezuko giggles, grabbing a fistful of popcorn and shoving it in her mouth before pulling out her phone to show Giyu the spreadsheet Kanao made.
“I can’t believe you’re in that group chat,” Giyu tells Kocho the next time he sees her. They’re sitting on the balcony, wrapped in each other’s arms, but they’re not stargazing. They can’t stargaze if they’re busy staring at each other instead.
Kocho laughs, covering her mouth with her hand, and Giyu can’t help but laugh with her. It’s a rusty sound, his laughter, and the muscles around his mouth feel awkward when he tugs on them, but Kocho says she likes it, and if Kocho likes it then Giyu has no business hating it, hating himself.
“I can’t believe the stoic Tomioka-san is also in that group chat,” she says. “I thought I was dreaming when I saw your name pop up.”
Giyu buries his nose in her hair, smiling despite himself.
Kocho turns around to look at him, her eyes full of the stars hanging above their heads, and leans in to steal a kiss. Call him an opportunist, but he cradles her cheek to keep her there for a moment longer, just enough for him to savor the chocolate on her lips from the Kit-Kat they just shared.
He still has trouble wrapping his head around the concept of them, and he doesn’t think he’ll make sense of it anytime soon.
Kocho is his now, and he’s Kocho’s, and loneliness has never felt so abstract, so foreign. What even is loneliness when his bed is so warm and her cheeky laughter follows him around even after she’s gone?
“You think so loudly sometimes,” Kocho whispers against his lips. “I swear one day I’ll be able to hear your thoughts if I stay quiet for long enough.”
Giyu loops an arm around her waist and brings her to sit on his lap in one swift movement, making her chuckle in delight.
“You don’t need to hear my thoughts to know what I’m thinking of,” he tells her. “I’m almost always thinking about you.”
Kocho places a hand on the back of his neck, gently grazing his nose with hers.
“What a coincidence,” she says, the words sweet and fluttery on her tongue. “I’m almost always thinking about you too.”
Giyu is twenty-three years old when he snaps a picture of Tanjiro and Zenitsu walking through the door with their hands clasped together after coming back from the movies and sends it to the group chat Genya still doesn’t approve of.
He hears Nezuko’s scream of defeat all the way from her bedroom, and Kocho glares at him, her smile having turned upside-down the moment she realized she’d lost the bet.
In his opinion, Kocho looks adorable when she gets angry like this, especially when she’s wearing one of his hoodies and a pair of sweatpants with little Charmanders all over them.
“You rigged it,” she accuses him. “You fucking rigged it.”
“How could I have possibly rigged it?” Giyu asks, offended. “I don’t control Tanjiro’s dating life!”
Tanjiro stops dead in his tracks when he hears that, frowning in confusion.
“Huh?”
“The bet,” Zenitsu clarifies, entirely unbothered. “He won the bet.”
“What bet?”
Zenitsu raises his eyebrows. “You don’t know about the bet?”
“Of course he knows about the bet,” Kocho says. “Everyone knows about the bet.”
“I don’t think I know about the bet,” Tanjiro mumbles.
Giyu raises both eyebrows. “Well, this is awkward.”
“Can someone explain to me what this bet is about?”
Zenitsu breathes out fondly and kisses Tanjiro’s cheek.
“Let’s go to your room, I’ll explain there.”
“Keep that door open,” Giyu warns them, tossing his phone to the side.
Tanjiro pouts and frowns and Giyu could swear he’s a second away from stomping a foot against the ground.
“But, aniki—”
“You can’t ‘aniki’ your way out of this one,” he says. “Keep that door open.”
Kocho rolls her eyes. “It’s not like they can multiply, can they?”
Zenitsu hides his face behind his hands, but he can’t hide the deep blush covering his features, and neither can Tanjiro.
“No, but they’re surely going to try if I don’t keep an eye on them,” Giyu only half-jokes.
“Aniki!” Tanjiro cries out, each syllable more haunted than the last.
“I’m gonna kill myself in front of you to alter the trajectory of your life forever,” Zenitsu dramatically informs Giyu, already making a beeline for Tanjiro’s bedroom. “You don’t think I have it in me, but I do! I swear I do!”
Tanjiro rushes after him, proclaiming something cheesy that Giyu chooses not to pay attention to.
“Don’t be too harsh on them,” Kocho tells him, snuggling against his side. “They’re good boys.”
“Yeah, I know they are,” Giyu says. “At least Tanjiro is. He was raised well.”
“By you or by his mom?”
Giyu throws an arm around her shoulders. “By his mom,” he replies. “I didn’t raise him, not really. I just helped a little, but all the hard work was already done when I came around.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kocho asks. “Because I see a lot of you in them.”
“You’re seeing what you want to see.”
Kocho shakes her head, a hand on his chest and a quizzical tint to her smirk.
“It’s endearing, how oblivious you are,” she says. “They love you a lot, you know? They work very hard to make you proud.”
Giyu smiles out of the corner of his mouth.
“You can’t imagine how insanely proud I am of them, of the people they’re becoming,” he whispers. “I can only hope their parents are too, wherever they may be.”
“I’m sure they are, dear,” Kocho says softly. “And I’m sure yours are even prouder, knowing you became such an honorable, kind, loving man.”
Giyu tilts his head to the side. “I thought you weren’t going to list off all my good qualities because they were going to go straight to my head.”
Kocho laughs. “You’re right, I’m sorry, I take it all back.”
Giyu laughs alongside her, as if her laughter was a song and he was just humming along to the tune he knows by heart. The sound isn’t all that rusty anymore, his cheeks don’t fight the smile as much as they used to, but his heart still threatens to leap out of his chest whenever she gives him one of those lovestruck looks he’s probably not worthy of but that she reserves for him and him only either way.
“I love you, Shinobu,” he whispers. “I really fucking love you.”
“And I really fucking love you, Giyu.”