Chapter Text
it didn’t come as a shock to anyone when you and inosuke started dating. everything had always come naturally between the two of you, it was a perfect fit. some people even went as far to say that the two of you were soulmates. in battle, the two of you worked gracefully together, you seemed to always know what the other was going to do next and planned around that. never once had anyone seen the two of you fight, other than trying to stop inosuke from slamming his head into things of course.
you both had respect for one another. you knew your job as a demon slayer was dangerous as well as he knew. you never tried to stop one another from going on missions because you both knew it had to be done no matter how dangerous. also neither of you cared much about your significant other talking to others. there was trust in your relationship and that’s how things always had been between the two of you.
communication was also a key in your relationship. inosuke wasn’t always the best at coming to terms with himself or things around him, so both of you always took time out of your days if you could to just sit and talk. it had become a routine that others tried to not interrupt unless they really needed to. inosuke felt safe in your arms much like you did in his arms. your words being as much as a comfort to him as your presence and your touch.
and man, he was head over heels for you. you could see it in the way he looked at you. his pretty eyes always seemed to soften when he looked at you, and that surely wasn’t at all different on this night. things were pretty calm at the moment and neither of you had missions you needed to attend to, so you decided to have a small date night. you had gotten a little dressed up for him, but even just seeing you was enough to take his breath away. it seemed as if butterflies filled his stomach much like when you had first asked him out. it almost seemed as if his breath was caught in his throat at first sight of you on this night, but his breathing quickly went back to normal. he could only guess it was because he was constantly falling for you more and more.
a few days later, inosuke was on a mission without you. he had slipped up a little bit during the fight, causing him to eat shit for a second before getting back up. after that, the battle was quickly over. yet he couldn’t seem to catch his breath as quick as normal. he figured he should talk to shinobu and see if she could tell if anything was wrong. she said it was probably due to what happened in his fight, so he brushed it off and didn’t think to tell you.
a few more dates happened, each taking his breath away more and more, but nothing that wouldn’t go back to what seemed normal. he was fine, right? shinobu hadn’t seen anything wrong with him, so he figured it was still his love for you taking away his breath.
over the next few weeks it had been becoming worse and worse though, yet he didn’t want to go back and bother shinobu if it wasn’t anything to worry about. so he left it. he really hadn’t thought much about it until he coughed up a petal. that was a shock to him. he didn’t remember eating any flowers? or accidentally falling into some and finding a way to inhaling one. yet, he wasn’t raise with people for the most part, so he didn’t think much of it.
it wasn’t until tanjiro had seen him cough up more petals and comment on it that he started to worry. at this point he had realized it wasn’t normal, but he also didn’t want you to worry. you already had so much to worry about, he didn’t need to add more to the mix, so he went to shinobu. she checked him out again and noticed how flowers had started to fill his lungs.
she asked him if he truly loved anyone. he said yes, he loved you. shinobu sat in silence for a minute before explaining to him what was happening. he had hanahaki disease, yet he only truly loved one person, you. you had loved him, didn’t you? you told him yourself that you did. why did he have this strange disease? what was going on? yet he still didn’t want to tell you about it. he was too scared to hear that you were falling out of love with him.
he let it be until he was on a mission with tanjiro, zenitsu, and nezuko when he collapsed into a fit of coughing. he couldn’t stop. he was coughing up full flowers at this point and couldn’t seem to breathe any air in. the three quickly defeated the demon before rushing over to try and help him. all they could do was get the coughing to stop for the time being to try and get him back to the butterfly estate. by the time they arrived, inosuke was still wheezing and could barely hold himself together.
if the disease had made it this far, that meant you no longer loved him. what was the point if you no longer loved him? where had he gone wrong? what had he done wrong? was it his fault? was he not good enough? all of these thoughts and more plagued his mind, hurting more than breathing itself.
shinobu told him that the only way that she could save him was to operate on him and remove all of the petals, which would then remove the love for the person causing this. at first he didn’t want to go through with it, but realized then he’d never be able to see you again. so he went through with it.
he no longer loved you, yet somehow that caused pain in your chest. as he was sleeping to recover from the operation, you sat by his side constantly, thinking about everything the two of you had done together. you didn’t know what the operation was on, you thought it was due to an injury he had obtained on a mission, but obviously that wasn’t the case.
thinking about everything the two of you had done together made you feel warm. you felt loved. tears slipped your eyes as you wondered how you could ever fall out of love with this man, your love slowly returning, but it was too late. the damage had been done, and now you’d have to go through the same pain that he once went through.