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“I swear to whatever fuckin’ god is listening, I’m gonna beat the shit out of him,” Sanemi growls as soon as Giyuu is out of earshot.
Tengen shakes his head and laughs, beckoning him over to the table where he and Kyojuro are drinking. “Alright, alright, come here and grab a glass before you get lost in your head thinking about how pretty Giyuu is.”
Sanemi trudges over to the table, ears and tail raised in half-hearted aggression. “I’m not thinking about that, asshole.” He pours himself a drink and starts to down it.
“So you admit he’s pretty, then?” Kyojuro remarks, the hints of a smirk on his face. The wind pillar feels a vein pop and has to fight the urge to swing his fist.
“No,” Sanemi nearly growls. “You’re fuckin’ lucky the both of you are missing limbs, or I’d beat both of you, too.”
“Yeah, yeah, but why’re you so pissed at Giyuu, anyway?” Tengen asks before sipping his drink.
“He always leaves the room whenever I walk in,” Sanemi explains. “Grabs his tail and books it like he can’t even stand to look at me. Pisses me off.”
“That can't be the case,” Kyojuro comments, albeit a little too loudly. “Giyuu isn’t the type to hate anyone for no reason.”
Sanemi grumbles to himself, struggling to ignore how both of them are apparently on a first-name-basis with Giyuu.
Tengen hums, tail swishing behind him thoughtfully. “Look. The girls and I are finally permanently moving into my estate, and we need help moving stuff. We can use that as an excuse to get you two in the same place. Then we can figure out once and for all if Giyuu really hates you, or if you’re just freaking out over nothing.”
“I’m not—whatever. Fine. When?”
Tengen and Kyojuro smile.
As expected, Giyuu easily agrees to help them move. They’d become pretty good friends since Tanjiro got Giyuu to join pillar training, and Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma were more than happy to get to know him as well. Plus, with Tengen now missing half of his left arm and usage of an eye, he doesn’t mind lending a hand.
“Giyuu’s here~!” Suma cheers as soon as she spots him walking up the path to the estate.
“Oh, good! Giyuu, Makio’s making mochi right now, we can all have some once we move everything in,” Hinatsuru greets, picking up a pair of large baskets and starting to head into the house. “Tengen and Kyojuro are inside, too. They're fixing a shoji screen that Suma tore when she saw a spider earlier,” she giggles softly.
“Hina,” Suma pouts dramatically and lightly pushes her, “Don’t embarrass me in front of Giyuu,” she says, drawing out the last vowel.
“It’s okay, he already knows how embarrassing you are.”
Suma whines, and Giyuu can’t help but laugh, smiling widely as he picks up a crate and follows them. They drop the boxes off in the living room, and Giyuu goes to greet Tengen and Kyojuro. Kyojuro is holding the pieces of the screen flush while Tengen meticulously sews the cloth together, hand as precise as ever.
“Hello, Giyuu!” Kyojuro welcomes, and Giyuu can tell he’s trying his best not to move. It makes him smile.
“Hey, Giyuu,” Tengen says, eyes stuck firmly on the screen. Giyuu greets them in return and kneels down at their side.
“Anything I can do?” He asks.
“I think we’re good here. Just help the girls move everything inside.”
“Sounds good,” Giyuu says, and pats both of them on their shoulders before following Hinatsuru out again.
“You can come out, now, loverboy,” Tengen teases, and Sanemi drags himself out of an adjacent room.
“I still think this is stupid,” Sanemi grumbles. He looks down the hallway, where evidence of a family freshly moving in is clearly visible. With his little crush on Giyuu, it’s easy to imagine that they’re the ones moving in together. But he’ll never admit the way his heart beats a little faster at the thought.
“A hundred yen says he’s thinking about him and Giyuu moving in together,” Kyojuro says to Tengen. Sanemi hates how easily they can read him.
“Shut up,” Sanemi groans, shaking his head.
Tengen laughs. “Ah, picture it, Sanemi, there’s nothing wrong with it. Coming home to someone is honestly really nice.”
“I agree!” Kyojuro yells. “My brother and I have been spending much more quality time together now that I’m retired!”
Sanemi sighs and gives in.
He imagines himself coming home after a long mission, bandages wrapped around one shoulder where a demon had managed to nick him. He slides open the front door and the nostalgic, sweet scent of ohagi gradually reaches his senses. He sighs happily, making his way to the kitchen of his estate, finding a certain blue-eyed pillar at one of the counters, whose fingers are covered in red bean paste. Giyuu notices him and smiles, and suddenly Sanemi understands what people mean when they say they feel butterflies in their stomach. He opens his mouth to speak, and—
“He’s got it bad, doesn’t he?” Tengen whispers, loud enough to be at a regular talking level. Sanemi glares at them, feeling like he’s seeing double with the way Tengen and Kyojuro both have patches over the same eye, tails moving identically behind them.
“Fuck off,” Sanemi bites, hoping they’ll interpret the red in his face as anger and not blush. “God, you two are the worst.”
-
“Okay, these should be the last two boxes, then Tengen, the girls, and I just have to unpack them all!” Hinatsuru smiles widely at him. “We haven’t been letting Tengen move these two since they have all our china, so thank you for all your help, Giyuu, it really—”
“Hinatsuru!” Makio yells from the doorway of the home. She looks scared out of her mind, ears tucked back and tail close to her body. “I—Suma was helping me pound the mochi, but she didn’t move her hand away fast enough, and I couldn’t—help!!”
Hinatsuru gasps, places her own crate on top of Giyuu’s while he’s holding it, and throws an apology over her shoulder as she races into the house.
“Ah—” Giyuu stumbles slightly, doing his best to ensure that the top crate doesn’t fall. He makes his way back into the house, feeling his hands grow slippery with the pressure of not dropping and cracking the Uzui family’s entire porcelain collection. Each step is a risk, and he can’t try to put the crates down and readjust his hold because he runs the even bigger risk of having the top crate slide off before that happens.
At last, he enters the estate once more. The entryway is more crowded than he remembers, with more boxes stacked just high enough that he can’t comfortably put down the two he’s holding. “Tengen?” He calls.
“Yeah, over here, Giyuu!” Tengen responds from the same room as the torn shoji screen. Giyuu follows his voice, and the first person he sees when he turns the corner is Sanemi. He stifles a gasp, shoving his back against the nearest wall. The top crate wobbles precariously, but Sanemi pushes it back to a safe position and stares at Giyuu, brows slightly furrowed.
“Something wrong?” Sanemi barks. “Is there a reason why you can’t fuckin’ stand to look at me, Tomioka?”
“No,” Giyuu tries, but he’s avoiding eye contact, “No, I’m not—”
He’s interrupted by the sound of repeated thumping against the same wall his back is pressed to. Sanemi peers around Giyuu, only to find that the source of the thumping is none other than Giyuu’s tail.
It’s wagging.
The thumping is from it hitting the wall over and over. When he looks up, Giyuu’s face is painted in a fierce red, and he’s practically hiding behind the crates, begging the earth to swallow him whole.
“Oh.” Sanemi realizes. Giyuu never hated him, he—
Sanemi takes one of the crates, setting it to the side. He takes the other from Giyuu and places it on top.
“U-Um,” Giyuu clutches his tail, but Sanemi grasps his wrists and pins them to the wall.
“Don’t.” He says.
“Don’t?” Giyuu parrots.
“Don’t hide it.” Sanemi finishes, and kisses him.
Call him biased, but Giyuu tastes sweeter than Makio’s mochi.