Work Text:
The world is a difference place, in the dark.
Giyuu has never found comfort in it. The darkness of night leeches the warmth of the day away, turns familiar sights into strange and twisted shapes, and when Giyuu was younger, he had been wary of that shadowy world beyond the flickering candlelight of the little lamp his sister left by his bedside, his mind conjuring visions of all the possible creatures that lurk in the dark.
Now, Giyuu knows better. He knows very well what dangers stalk the night; night time is when demons stir to life, and when demon slayers go out to hunt.
But demon slayers are still human, and even with breath techniques, their bodies still constantly seek to return to equilibrium. Daytime is for work and living, the night for sleeping, and so demon slayers take their downtime seriously, letting their guards down and allowing their bodies to return to its natural rhythm. It is a privilege to be able to sleep when the sun sets; Giyuu should take advantage of it.
But he doesn’t.
He had only gone to bed at Tanjirou’s insistence. They are sharing rooms once again, their futons tucked side by side, and Giyuu doesn’t protest even though he normally enjoys his privacy and his solitude. Of late, he finds himself distracted when Tanjirou should be at his side but isn’t , and it seems easier, somehow, to just keep the younger man in sight, in Giyuu's vicinity, if only to calm that strange agitation under his skin.
Of course, staying in Tanjirou’s presence comes with its own set of complications.
Tanjirou is asleep with the ease of someone who knows that sleep is a premium and that he must take advantage of every moment of it, although he’d stayed up and stared stubbornly at Giyuu until Giyuu had extinguished the room light and folded himself in his futon. Giyuu doesn’t begrudge Tanjirou his simple pleasures, because goodness knows those are rare enough in their line of work; he can just as easily stay awake and meditate lying down as he can sitting up, and so he indulges Tanjirou—
(“How endearing,” Kochou has commented the few times Giyuu has dropped by the Butterfly Mansion when Tanjirou is there, a complicated fold of a smile on her face).
—but this time, Giyuu can’t seem to settle his restless heart.
Giyuu doesn’t sigh or fidget. His breathing stays steady as he pushes the sheets away and sits up; his nichirin blade is lying ever ready beside his bed, because a demon slayer without a blade is soon a dead slayer, and he turns to reach for it—
—but something catches on Giyuu’s yukata, pulling, and Giyuu glances over his shoulder, startled.
The first thing Giyuu notes is that Tanjirou’s eyes are still closed. The second thing he notes is that his yukata sleeve is not snagged in the sheets or against the tatami floor but caught quite firmly by Tanjirou’s hand. The third is not an observation but an interpretation: it seems Tanjirou’s instinct is to keep Giyuu close, something that stays true even when he is unconscious.
It’s a thought that reverberates through the confines of Giyuu’s mind; it is not something he wants to consider right now, and he reaches out to untangle Tanjirou’s hand from his yukata.
The dark works against him. Without the clarity of sight, all of Giyuu’s other senses are heightened and he can feel the rough calluses on Tanjirou’s palms, hear the way Tanjirou grumbles at him. Giyuu ignores all of it and works at prying Tanjirou’s fingers loose, but Tanjirou is tenacious and the next thing Giyuu knows, he has both hands in Giyuu’s yukata.
Amazingly, he is also still asleep.
This time, Giyuu does sigh, because honestly, what kind of demon slayer stays asleep through someone semi-manhandling them? Tanjirou has told him before that it’s because he trusts Giyuu, so Giyuu’s scent and his presence doesn’t register as a threat. As a demon slayer, Tanjirou has trained himself to wake at a moment’s notice to danger, but as an elder brother, he has long learned to sleep right through the kicks his younger siblings dealt out in their sleep; the elder Kamado siblings always shared beds with the younger children, to keep them safe and warm through long winter nights.
Giyuu stares down at Tanjirou’s fingers buried in the fabric of his yukata for a long, indefinite period.
Here is a truth buried in the shadows of the room, only admitted where no one else can witness it: Giyuu thinks he knows how those younger children felt, and part of the reason why he is so reluctant to sleep now is because he sleeps too well with Tanjirou at his side.
More than once Giyuu has woken up to find the sun high in the sky, far past daybreak, when normally he doesn’t sleep deeply unless he is in the heart of his own territory, in his own housing. Sometimes Tanjirou is sitting close by, writing letters or sorting through their supplies; other times, very rarely, he is lying on the edge of Giyuu’s futon, arms holding Giyuu close and his body curled around Giyuu like he’s dragged Giyuu into his embrace in the middle of the night.
What kind of Pillar stays asleep through someone semi-manhandling them, Giyuu thinks bitterly, and pulls his sleeve right out of Tanjirou’s grasp, a sharp tug that doesn’t allow those questing fingers a chance to hold on.
He grabs his blade and is across the room in an instant, quietly sliding aside the panels that lead out to the veranda and the gardens. He pauses to retie his obi firmly around his yukata, to pull his hair back into its habitual tail, and then he makes the fatal mistake of looking back into the room.
Moonlight spills across the floor, playing in Tanjirou’s auburn hair and setting his skin nearly aglow. Against the dark sheets, the lighter hue of Tanjirou’s yukata and his hand is only too obvious; his arm is stretched out, fingers curled, as if Tanjirou is still reaching for Giyuu, and there is a slight frown marring his normally sunny face.
Giyuu hovers there for a long moment, and then he relents.
Like his blade, Giyuu keeps his uniform folded neatly beside his bed; now, he takes his haori and kneels beside Tanjirou, draping it carefully over him like a second blanket. He watches as Tanjirou automatically snags onto the haori, and is reminded of that time while training with Shinazugawa, when Giyuu had stood over Tanjirou’s unconscious body and wondered what to do. In the end, he’d folded his haori and tucked it under Tanjirou’s head as a pillow against the hard ground, and it’d seemed to comfort the younger demon slayer.
Giyuu hadn’t been able to leave Tanjirou’s side that time either.
But this is not the time for weakness. Giyuu can sense it, all the Pillars can, that singing tension in that air that is the final calm before the storm. It is only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose; as a Pillar, Giyuu knows he will be fighting many battles, against high-level demons if not the Upper Moons themselves.
He also knows that a great number of human lives will be lost in this all-out war. And in his heart, Giyuu has already decided he will fight to his last breath to prevent that.
Giyuu doesn’t normally take up such a stance of aggression and alertness and initiative. He was a sheltered younger brother before his eyes had been opened to the existence of demons, and even as an apprentice under Urokodaki he had been kind and soft and weak. Given a choice, Giyuu would always prefer to take the path of least resistance.
The strict rationality and stoic aloofness that keeps Giyuu awake and away instead of peacefully slumbering at Tanjirou’s side is not Giyuu’s nature. But time and painful experience has forged him into a different vessel, and Giyuu accepts it as his lot. He will stay alert, he will fight and he will protect, as he was once protected before.
This is not his nature, but it is his resolve.
And no matter how much Tanjirou clings and coaxes with his warm hands and kind eyes, Giyuu will not waver in this.
Giyuu runs his hand lightly across the back of his haori, from the maroon side – Tsutako-nee-san – to the patterned half – Sabito. He allows his fingers to curl very, very briefly in Tanjirou’s hair, and then, carrying the reminders of the important people in his life, past and present, he forces himself to his feet, and goes.
*
Giyuu returns to the room an hour later.
He’d walked the entire perimeter of the wisteria house, checking for possible weak points, and then prowled the building’s interiors, checking in on its residences and refilling the little pot burners with more wisteria incense when he found any running low. He was tempted to go out and patrol the village as well, but it would be madness to do that without his uniform, and in the end, Giyuu called down his and Tanjirou’s kasugaigarasu and tasked them with the watch in his stead, each crow taking one half of the village.
Tanjirou’s kasugaigarasu is normally quite the mouthy creature, but other than a quiet grumble about lost sleep, it had flown into the wisteria house to look in on Tanjirou and then flapped off on its task. Giyuu’s own kasugaigarasu, as quiet as its master, had merely alighted on Giyuu’s shoulder to run its beak and head lightly against Giyuu’s cheek, and then took off in the opposite direction.
Giyuu stared after them – it was impossible to see their flight path, dark feathers against the dark sky, the stars burned away and only the singular moon in the sky – before finally turning back. The agitation under his skin hadn’t quite died away, but he hoped that he was finally calm enough for meditation to actually work this time.
Of course, all of that goes right out the window when Giyuu steps into their shared room.
Tanjirou is fully curled up in Giyuu's haori now, his arms threaded through the sleeves, but apparently it isn’t enough to fool him. The moonlight tempers the deep ruby of Tanjirou’s irises into a far muted rose, but although Tanjirou appears sleep-soft and mellow at the edges, there’s something watchful and alert in the depths of his eyes, the way his gaze is fixed unwaveringly upon Giyuu.
Giyuu slides the panels closed behind him, plunging the room into shadow. He can feel Tanjirou’s eyes following his progress as Giyuu crosses the room, as he kneels and sets his blade back into place beside his futon.
“You should be sleeping,” Giyuu murmurs.
“So should you,” Tanjirou whispers back, his voice just as soft, as if the quiet around them is a secret that he is afraid of shattering.
“‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’” Giyuu quips. It’s not his own sentiment, but the saying had stuck with him. Shinazugawa was the first to proclaim it, half-sarcastic, his eyes glittering with angry stubbornness. Uzui laughed in response, noting that shinobi already did that long before demon slayers came along, while Kochou had merely shaken her head, murmuring something about gallows humour. It’d been Rengoku who had cheerfully adopted the phrase, and from then on it became a Pillar catchphrase of sorts, an ironic play on the sheer amount of responsibility they each carried and a Pillar’s longevity compared to the other demon slayer ranks.
They’d all die one day. But in the meantime, they had work to do.
But it seems Tanjirou is less than amused by it.
“Giyuu-san,” Tanjirou says, and his voice comes out flat, a note of rebuke still filtering through no matter how much he tries to suppress it.
Giyuu is not at all surprised when he feels Tanjirou’s hand snag in his yukata sleeve once more, pulling the fabric tight with a silent sort of desperation.
He blows out a quiet breath, and then moves to lie down on his futon, careful not to dislodge Tanjirou’s hold. He turns on his side so he can look at Tanjirou and hears Tanjirou do the same; the dark smudges the details of Tanjirou’s features, but Giyuu can make out the shape of his face, the dips and curves of his body.
They breathe together for a while. Tanjirou's eyes are huge in the dark; Giyuu isn’t sure what Tanjirou wants from him, so he just stares back.
“I can smell the wisteria incense,” Tanjirou finally says, his voice still soft. “The house, our surroundings – it smells safe. I don’t sense any danger.”
Giyuu knows just how acute Tanjirou’s sense of smell is, but he shakes his head, his hair rasping against his pillow. “I doubt the incense would deter an Upper Moon. The trees themselves when in bloom, perhaps. But not incense derived from the flowers, their essence distilled through the air.”
Silence settles between them once more, but this time it is rife with tension. Tanjirou is thinking, putting all the facts together and coming to a conclusion; when he says Giyuu’s name once more, it comes out plaintive.
Giyuu doesn’t really know how to reassure him. Kochou has told him several times before that he is terrible at it because he’s too blunt. All Giyuu can think about right now is how although he and Tanjirou are much, much safer traveling together than apart, they also present a tempting target twice over – Tanjirou, because of the demons’ hunt for Nezuko and because Kibutsuji specifically wants his head, and Giyuu because he is a Pillar and a threat.
It’s probably too blunt to say all of that out loud, however. Giyuu can practically hear Kochou chiding him, You need to learn to read the atmosphere, Tomioka-san, so in the end, he merely says, “Go back to sleep, Tanjirou.”
“I can stay up with you.”
“That would defeat the point. At least one of us should get some rest.”
“Then we can take turns,” Tanjirou insists, and ah, there’s the infamous Kamado stubbornness. “You need sleep too.”
“I can’t,” Giyuu simply says.
If Tanjirou stays up, Giyuu doubts his own sense of duty would allow him to properly rest; they can’t both sleep because when Giyuu is with Tanjirou he feels secure and drowses too deeply, and although between Giyuu’s own reflexes and Tanjirou’s nose they’d likely be able to respond to any attack well enough, Giyuu will never forgive himself if that precious second it takes for him to drag himself from deep sleep ends up costing someone their life.
“Tanjirou,” he says a moment later. The silence feels too full, too loud, and Giyuu has no idea what else to say.
Perhaps Tanjirou feels the same, because instead of responding out loud, he pulls sharply on Giyuu’s sleeve, and then he lets go.
It startles Giyuu so much that he doesn’t realize Tanjirou has caught his hand until their fingers are already laced together, Tanjirou clinging on so tightly that Giyuu’s bones ache.
Instead of shaking Tanjirou’s grip loose, Giyuu squeezes Tanjirou’s fingers back, although he is careful not to hurt.
Time passes. It feels almost inconsequential here in the dark, with no frames of references; just the two of them lying there, Tanjirou’s breathing telling Giyuu that he’s still very much awake.
Finally, Tanjirou’s grip loosens, and he relaxes enough to sweep his thumb slowly over Giyuu’s wrist, against his pulse point.
“If I go to sleep now,” Tanjirou whispers, “Will you promise me that you’ll sleep for a while when the sun rises? That you’ll let me watch over you like you’re doing for me now?”
Giyuu’s breath catches.
Tanjirou may have asked Giyuu for a promise, but Tanjirou’s words hold a promise of their own. And the way Tanjirou waits, the way Tanjirou’s fingers brush a light caress against Giyuu’s skin, undemanding, tells Giyuu just why he would make such a vow.
It has been a very long time since Giyuu has trusted in another person’s strength enough to lean on them.
But Giyuu does trust Tanjirou.
“All right,” he says, and this time, it’s Tanjirou’s breath that catches.
“Really?” Tanjirou asks. Giyuu doesn’t bother answering because Tanjirou is used to Giyuu’s silences and so most of his questioning remarks are rhetorical, and sure enough, Tanjirou continues, “Thank you, Giyuu-san!”
“You don’t need to thank me,” Giyuu replies. “Go to sleep, Tanjirou.”
“Okay!” The delight is only too obvious in Tanjirou’s voice; if Giyuu reached out to touch Tanjirou’s face, he is sure he would find a wide smile there. Fortunately, Tanjirou is still holding onto Giyuu’s hand, and he doesn’t seem like he will be letting go any time soon.
That’s fine; Giyuu doesn’t plan on letting go either.
It takes a little while for Tanjirou to settle back down. Giyuu can tell when Tanjirou shuts his eyes – the weight of his gaze disappears – but his pulse under Giyuu’s fingers remains heightened for a while longer. The night is quiet, so Giyuu patiently listens for the pacing of Tanjirou’s breath to slow, to deepen in true sleep.
Tenacious as always though, Tanjirou’s grip on Giyuu’s hand doesn’t slacken one bit.
Giyuu waits a few beats longer, and then he finally gives in to the impulse. Carefully, he reaches out with his free hand and gathers Tanjirou close, pulling him into the careful shelter of Giyuu’s arm. He already knows that Tanjirou won’t wake at a little bit of manhandling; sure enough, Tanjirou doesn’t stir, but he does curl instinctively into Giyuu, shifting until his head is fitted neatly under Giyuu’s chin, their clasped hands tucked between them.
Tanjirou is still wearing Giyuu’s haori, the silk lining familiar against Giyuu’s fingertips.
Giyuu presses his cheek against Tanjirou’s hair. Like this, with Tanjirou’s breath feathering across Giyuu’s chest and Tanjirou’s body a long line of warmth against his, Giyuu is absolutely assured of Tanjirou’s wellbeing, even as he trains his other senses outwards, ever on alert for danger.
The restless unease under Giyuu’s skin is finally tranquil.