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Tanjirou is the boy with sun kissed skin and strong boy-warrior hands.
One day Zenitsu starts to wonder how it would feel to take his hands in his.
It would be nothing like holding a girl’s hand, he thinks almost right away. After all, Tanjirou’s hands are bigger and rougher than any average girl’s would be. His palms are covered with small cuts and calluses from holding his sword a little too tight, and his fingers are neither thin nor delicate. And it’s not like Zenitsu’s hands are in a better condition either.
So it's very unlikely that the sensation of holding Tanjirou’s hands could ever be similar to the feeling of having the soft hands of a pretty girl against his.
After all, Tanjirou’s hands aren’t soft at all.
But then— Zenitsu can’t help thinking there is something quite beautiful in the way his hands, despite being rough, can be so gentle at the same time. Just like the sound of his soul, so ridiculously kind. There is something quite beautiful in how his rough skin serves as a testimony of his hard working spirit, of his strong, unbreakable will, of the courage he could easily envy if he didn’t know him as he does.
Tanjirou’s hands aren’t soft at all, but they carry such an honest love in his open palms. Even in the middle of the battlefield their lives have become.
One day Zenitsu commits one of the bravest actions in his entire life as he searches for one of Tanjirou’s hands and takes it in his own while they walk together to a new mission. He can already feel his cheeks start to burn and his heart beat fast against his chest with no mercy. But he does not let go of his hand, he refuses to do so. Tanjirou lays his eyes on him and his intertwined hands, visibly surprised, and Zenitsu is ready to excuse himself with the first thing that pops in his mind; that Tanjirou is supposed to protect him from the demon they have to fight and that in this way it would be easier for him to stay safe by his side— or something like that, anything that would keep Tanjirou from staring at him like that.
But he can’t even say a word when the only thing Tanjirou does is smile at him without saying anything. He doesn’t try to free his hand from Zenitsu’s weak grip, instead he locks his fingers with his, as they follow their way to the village they have to help and Zenitsu tries to keep his attention in anywhere else that isn’t their hands grasped at each other’s or Tanjirou’s blinding smile. He feels that at this rate, if he were to look at Tanjirou's face, he would end up dying of a heart attack.
He finds himself smiling despite that, infected by the warmness of Tanjirou’s skin against his.
It turns out that holding Tanjirou’s hand feels like caressing the sun with his fingertips.