Work Text:
“It is called the Tarantella,” Princess Kanae explained, her voice like raindrops on mushroom caps to Tanjiro’s ears. He couldn’t help but lean into her space as she spoke—tilting unconsciously into the rhythm of her speech, entranced by the sound of her. She didn’t mind anyway. She giggled louder the closer he got, and smiled wider as he asked more questions: this one being about the dance she’d promised would soon begin, a ritual of sorts she had said. “It has many variations and iterations, but this one is ours. Have you ever heard of a May Pole dance? Do you know how they work?”
Tanjiro nodded silently and glanced to the gathered group of already dancing faeries. It almost was like watching a dance back in his court, but…messier somehow. The fae didn’t have as strictly organized celebration as his human kingdom did. They did not keep to specific steps, seemingly only moving in whichever way they so desired, almost as if the music itself was pulling and guiding them to and fro.
“It is similar to that, in a way!” Kanae cheered at Tanjiro’s agreement. “We all dance, and the drums choose who most deserves to win! We move with the music, like a competition. The one who best understands their beat is the one to be crowned.”
“Crowned?” Tanjiro echoed.
Kanae giggled. “An additional tradition of ours! It is an homage to the one who first danced the dance—Her Majesty!”
Tanjiro glanced behind them, to where the queen sat. She looked just as ethereal as she had during the conclave, her pale purple eyes regarding her subjects steadily and her small red mouth pulled into the daintiest of smiles. The second princess, Her Royal Highness Shinobu, sat at her side, equally as calm and composed as the queen, though her eyes were on Tanjiro and her sister, watching them both with a soft curiosity. It was a better look than she’d given him when first stumbling upon him and Genya, though it still tickled his skin, so he looked forward again and took a sip of his wine.
“Consider joining, I am sure you would dance well,” Princess Kanae said when he shifted. She was on her feet, preparing to join the festivities herself, and her smile seemed somehow even more dazzling than it’d been before. Tanjiro blinked, suddenly dizzy. “Maybe your companion would like to see you in a crown.” Then she was gone, and Tanjiro was turning again—the opposite way this time, towards where Genya still sat.
Tanjiro wasn’t certain he’d ever seen his friend smile as much as he had that night. He was usually so solemn and serious, occasionally softening for a sweet assurance or the like, but never just…grinning. Tanjiro was already infatuated with him, but now he became obsessed, greedy for the way he laughed and smiled, admiring the twinkling lights and dancing faeries.
Especially in contrast to his mood when they first arrived—unwaveringly intense, as stoic as an ambassador must be—it was a delight to see. He just seemed so relaxed now, lounging in his seat and casually sipping on the wine provided to them—the human safe wine, the queen had vehemently assured with that mellifluous voice of hers. Tanjiro’s own cupful had a small dash of faerie wine thrown in—a maybe dangerous experiment on his own part, but Princess Kanae had provided it readily enough. Maybe that was why he felt his head turn all light and airy, his body stuffing full of cotton and his heart thrumming along in tandem with the drums.
When did those start to play? Tanjiro couldn’t remember. He’d been so busy with Kanae and the previous dance and Genya’s image after that, but surely it was not the next dance already—was it? The tarantella. The fae were gathering regardless if he believed it or not, the fluttering of their bright clothes almost as captivating as Genya’s eyes reflecting them. They were aware of what was to come, even if Tanjiro had nearly forgotten: too lost in the lilting strings and prancing feet, too entranced with a beautiful knight’s image, not noticing the switch in stringed chords to heady, eager drums.
But he did notice then, as their booming pulse joined alongside his own. More fae joined in on the dance—Princess Kanae spotted among them—forming circles around the performers and each other and starting to move: quicker, sharper than before, loud cries of ecstasy echoing with the music, bodies spinning around the ring of drums like a hurricane. Tanjiro found himself standing from his seat before he could really decide he would join, drifting towards the swaths of dancers with his head swaying to the beat. He only stopped when a hand wrapped around his wrist.
“Where are you going?” Genya asked him, eyes soft and searching when Tanjiro turned to see them. His skin burned hot like a bonfire and a smile pulled at his mouth, lazy with the wine stained around it. Stunning.
“I want to dance,” he told his friend, then twisted his arm in his grasp, delicately tying his own fingers around Genya’s wrist. He watched as the apple in Genya’s throat bobbed, gaze falling to rake down Tanjiro’s body in time before finding his face again. Maybe your companion would like to see you in a crown. Tanjiro’s smile stretched even further, his heart beating even quicker, the drums playing even faster. “Will you join me?”
Genya wasn’t one for court dances. He’d made that known several times before. He didn’t like the stiff steps and pompous crowds. But this was not a choreographed court dance. This was not a quiet harmony in a bright ballroom stuffed full of lords and ladies and too much mead; this was a loud and messy amalgamation of faeries and wine and laughter, and Genya smiled again, placing his cup aside to stand.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he warned Tanjiro.
Tanjiro giggled and squeezed his wrist, all too aware of how heavily Genya’s pulse beat against his fingertips. “Neither do I,” he promised with another squeeze, then leaned forward into Genya’s space to inhale his scent: oak and cow leather and mulled wine. “Shall we figure it out together?”
Genya didn’t need to answer him. He nodded, and so they stepped forwards.
“Careful now!” A voice called behind them. Tanjiro glanced to see Princess Shinobu, studying them with a slight smirk now, her curiosity replaced with apparent amusement. “Mortals have died from less than a faerie’s dance.”
“Worry not!” Tanjiro hollered back, already on the outskirts of the commotion. “It is as Her Majesty said—I am faer enough!”
“Pull your companion if his feet start to bleed!” Shinobu warned, though she turned from them all the same to speak with the queen, and soon after, Genya and Tanjiro were inside the horde of dancing fae.
At first, he barely noticed their joining along. He felt his body move, saw the colors of the world shift and spin around him, but none of it was in stone. It was light in the air, soil on the earth, breath in his lungs, and fire of his soul. Thin-fingered hands brushed over his shoulders as he moved. Some coiled through his hair and tugged on its restraint. One finger must have snapped it off, for at one point his braid came undone, maroon hair spilling over his shoulders and joining the hazy designs of the space around him. It was when he noticed this that he found Genya within the mess, all the haze of his vision refocusing with the desire for his friend to see him, to see his loose hair and grow all red about it like he usually did.
And so, there he was: hands entwining with Tanjiro’s, feet stomping into the ground with the same ferocity as him, matching his pace and joining in with the laughter he felt boiling from his own chest. His scent swirled and mingled with the many others, yet it still seemed to be the only one Tanjiro could truly smell—singular and distinct from everything else, too intoxicating to truly get lost in the mess of commotion. And Genya—oh, Genya…
He had always cut such an impressive figure, ever since the day he’d first been begrudgingly assigned to Tanjiro’s side. He stood so tall, so long, so large and imposing in a way that was completely antithetical to his true personality, the one he kept so stubbornly hidden yet the same one Tanjiro had long since treasured. His features refused to allow him the grace of blending in, instead throwing him in stark relief against everyone else with his unconventionally cut jet black hair and his small, amethyst eyes. That jagged scar across his face frightened people almost more than his massive stature and glaring expressions, but Tanjiro had never been one to fall for so easy of a trick. He was not the harshness everyone expected of him: he was the softness of moss, the kindness of dawn, the satiating comfort of a lit fireplace and warm meal. He was beautiful and handsome and ethereal and carnal, and Tanjiro loved every inch of him as much as Genya hated it.
He loved the raw passion in his eyes as he matched Tanjiro’s steps. He loved the crack in his voice as he raised it to join alongside the exuberant faeries. He loved the roughness of his weary palms. He loved the sharpness of his manic grin. He loved his captivating scent, his rapturous gaze, his joy and his confusion and his everything that ever was.
He loved every part of Genya Shinazugawa.
But the nimble hands of spinning fae and cloying sound of sentient drums took him away from Tanjiro as the music swelled to its first peak—then abruptly mellowed out. They thrummed quietly through the hush of the crowd, vibrating inside of Tanjiro’s bones and stealing his breath like a whipping breeze. He couldn’t help but stand just as still as the bodies around him, glancing momentarily over each of their faces: some shorter than him, some taller than Genya, but all frozen in masks of giddy anticipation. Lips folded between teeth and long fingers twitched tenuously in the air, and there—watching the taps of fingernails on nothing in particular—Tanjiro saw it too.
Maybe saw wasn’t the right word. He became aware of it, that string that the titillating drums threaded through the crowd. It spun and wove steadily around each person, curious and curling, beginning to grow taut as they picked up in volume once again. The noise rose at a steady crescendo and that string urged everyone closer and a mutual cry swelled in the throats of everyone gathering. Tanjiro felt it bubble in his throat as well, felt the rise of prickling heat in his skin, smelled the boiling vigor among the fae—caught a whiff of Genya’s delightful scent, ripe and so delicious on his tongue—and then eruption! The music began in truth again, impossibly louder, impossibly faster, impossibly thicker, and all the fae restarted the dance.
The frenzy multiplied this time, and within moments Tanjiro was lost again to the crowd, spinning and screaming and grinning and inhaling sharply for every breath in a chance of catching that familiar smell he so loved. He could not see him, though; he could not find where he had been whisked away to, and that in itself sparked a new emotion inside Tanjiro’s excited chest: agita.
He could not dwell on it long, however. A pair of hands latched around his wrists as if knowing he needed steadying and started to twirl him alongside them. Tanjiro stumbled only momentarily before finding the rhythm and falling in step, at which point he raised his eyes to see who had stolen him away.
It was the eldest princess again, he learned: Her Royal Highness, Kanae Kocho, and she was grinning from one long ear to another. Her scent was as sweet and sure as it had been during their earlier conversation, but a new sugar-rich twang laid beneath the flowery notes: something young and teasing, something that got Tanjiro’s heart racing even faster than it’d gone before, something that made his palms sweat and mouth grin and eyes burn with how they widened to take in the sight of everything.
“Beautiful, is it not?!” Hollered Kanae over the joyous screams of her people and the deafening drums of the music. “To see as a faerie does—you will learn the trick to it soon enough, I predict!”
“Will you help me until I do?” Tanjiro asked her in return. “I have lost my friend; can you see him?”
Kanae winked one of her pretty, pink eyes. “I can!” She assured, then bent as they spun, yanking Tanjiro closer to her and grinning to show off her many white teeth. “I can help you earn him too!”
Tanjiro blinked. The twinkling lights all suddenly seemed too bright from the way she held him, the colors of the faeries’ clothing too saturated for him to understand—but the ache of his sight did little to quell how enthralling it all was, and how much he desired to understand her premonition.
“You wish to win him?” She asked him. Tanjiro nodded, his rabid heart thick in his throat and the searing heat of desire and dance branding his sweating skin red. Kanae giggled at his agreement, like the sound of a thousand tinkling bells, then twirled him beneath her arms. “Then you have to woo him!” She shouted, before turning him abruptly around and shoving him forwards.
He stumbled, footing lost, only to be swept up with the crowd again—deeper and deeper into the horde, swarmed by the cloying bodies, brushed by sharp fingers and adorned with soft kisses as they pushed and pulled him; in he went, like down a rabbit hole, until he tumbled into the eye of the storm, the middle of the dance, within the circle of drummers; and there he saw across the way his friend, equally as dazed as Tanjiro felt yet still grinning that charming grin. His scent was stronger than ever, at the forefront of Tanjiro’s senses despite how heady the perfume of plants and bodies and wine around them remained, and he looked strangely dashing with the line of sweat painted across his brow. His shirt sleeves were pushed above his elbows and the collar left indecently open, showing off the tantalizing lines of his throat and collarbone. Tanjiro could do naught but trace them with his stinging eyes, wishing he could peer through the fabric and see the further planes of his body, surely just as coated in perspiration and the bright flush of activity. Painfully handsome he was. Tanjiro could barely catch his breath.
Genya noticed Tanjiro as the drums lulled again, dipping once more into that anticipating hum. Again, that line in the air grew lax, weaving and threading between every body squashed together. It twisted several times around Tanjiro and Genya alike he saw, tying them together within this circle of drums. The apex of the dance. The choice of the music.
Woo him.
“Tanjiro,” Genya breathed across the small space, rumbling voice perfectly in pitch with the drums. It rolled to Tanjiro and spurred into his veins and pulled him closer, twitching that string and urging a few steps from his feet. Genya mimicked. “I feel incredible,” he said, and Tanjiro could not tell if the awe in his voice was from the intoxicating dance or the sight of Tanjiro before him.
“As do I,” Tanjiro agreed with him, knowing exactly where his amazement stemmed from.
Genya nodded reverently. “You look amazing.”
Tanjiro smiled. The warm air pulling into his lungs spiked in heat and seared into his heart and he stepped closer still. The drums' low thrumming grew more fervent. The faeries around them moved inwards. Their eyes—beady and bright and many colored—flashed like glass and gold in the corners of Tanjiro’s vision, invested with the scene before them, scrutinizing with eager interest, but they did not trouble Tanjiro. Nothing could trouble him with Genya standing there, glorious and regal and the most fantastic thing Tanjiro had ever seen.
“Do you remember that dance you hate?” Tanjiro asked his beloved companion.
Genya laughed loudly, warm and high spirited. The noise echoed amongst the crowd. “I cannot believe I have ever hated anything at this moment,” he said, “least of all what pertains to you.”
Tanjiro’s heart skipped with a heavy beat of the drum—a promise, a threat, a push to step closer, to reach his hand out as his sister did: palm down, fingers beckoning to be asked instead of demanding themselves.
And Genya obeyed the beck, his own long fingers coiling around Tanjiro’s and lifting them to his mouth. He brushed a kiss lighter than air over his knuckles. His sharp eyes never wavered from Tanjiro’s.
“Would you like to make it more exciting?” Tanjiro asked.
Genya’s grin flashed wider. The crowd erupted with a frenzied scream. The drums hammered, then that string snapped taut, and the entire world was spinning again.
Their hands remained entwined, their feet mirrored in a practiced position, same as they had those some weeks ago, but faster this time—hotter and heavier and more wanton than Tanjiro had ever danced before. He could not look away from Genya’s face, suddenly so sharp and narrow with a lethal focus. He could not breathe under those eyes, nor did he want to. He wanted naught but this: this stare, this connection, this exchange of steps.
It was a bastardization of a proper dance, an affront to all things Tanjiro had been taught to worship and revere, but he loved it. It was headier than the wine he’d drunk and warmer than the meat he’d eaten. It was a mess, an insult, a crazed and maddened ritual of sins and spells and it was perfect. It was everything he was not meant to be and everything his companion once said he should be. But Genya didn’t seem interested in should be and past conversations; all he seemed interested in was Tanjiro, and this debased dance they now shared.
He began to succumb to the crowd’s ecstasy then. They both did. Genya’s grip grew suddenly tight—or was it Tanjiro’s?—seizing like the thread of the music and yanking each of them into the other’s space. The dance was not meant to be done this way, they both knew it, but that was what made it right, wasn’t it? Woo him, the princess had said. Get close to him, Tanjiro thought, as Genya obviously did too. Touch him. See every part of him in every way others cannot. If done the way it was designed, Tanjiro would not be able to hear the gasping pants Genya called breath, he would not be able to feel the heat emanating from him, not feel the unprepared kick of his boot as they grew unnecessarily closer, dangerously closer, and that was exactly why it would not be danced how it was designed, not now. That was their unspoken agreement: damn the rules.
Genya wanted him too, didn’t he?
“Hold me,” Tanjiro ordered, voice as hot as fire.
“It is improper,” Genya argued, though they’d long since passed the threshold of proper, though his eyes flashed like sparks and his scent coiled sweetly—cloying with the thick smell of overripe fruit. Interest. Intrigue. Enthrallment. Delicious.
“Yes,” Tanjiro whispered. He caught Genya’s second hand in his own to take the next step, one that would throw any good Prince entirely off balance. Too close, too wrong—but Tanjiro stayed standing, as did Genya, because it was just right for them. “I want your impropriety,” he said. “Hold me.”
Genya obeyed the repeated command without further prompt. The arm Tanjiro had grabbed twisted from his grasp to latch around his ribcage instead. Muscles flexed beneath his shoulder blades and Tanjiro gasped, slotting himself against Genya as the dance went on, haphazard and incorrect yet stable still. The fae continued to cheer and screech and sing, the drums’ tempo swelled and surged, the air around them thickened with overwhelming ardor, and Tanjiro grabbed his companion’s nape: fingers fisting around a handful of hair and skin and yanking him downwards, against and into him. Their skulls collided with a jolt and they each caught a breath that failed to help at all. Tanjiro found Genya’s gaze—darker than ever before—and held it.
He did not say anything. There was nothing to be said. Nothing could articulate the knowledge Tanjiro knew they shared, that this was all either of them wanted: this closeness, the freedom of the music, the honesty of the wine, the prophecy of Genya’s touch upon Tanjiro’s skin and his own hands in mimicry. He could see that thin thread of music and magic woven around Genya like a royal cloak—chosen, her royal highness had said. Not luck; chosen.
Chosen then. Tanjiro knew the fact as truth even before the wailing drums reached their peak. He knew it before the remaining circle of bodies tumbled down and around, echoing endlessly with hysterical joy and exuberance. He knew it best, however, when his own feet came to an unsteady halt, pinned within Genya’s as his body did the same; their arms wrapped around one another and what little air they dared to call breath only stolen from the same pocket of sky. Everything smelled of Genya, everything felt of him too. Everything was him, and he was everything. Tanjiro could not find it within himself to look away from his amethyst and onyx eyes, still so studiously locked with his. Not even as the crowds returned, as they piled crowns of flowers and capes of leaves upon each of them, Tanjiro could not look away. All he could do was stare and imagine: envision Genya standing upon the dais of a throne, a circlet of gold over his raven hair and a cloak of velvet atop his wide shoulders, smiling at Tanjiro and accepting his hand and staying beside him. Crowned.
A king.
“Tanjiro,” Genya said, and again, Tanjiro could not tell if it was the exhaustive dance that had stolen his breath or the possibility that he shared the same dream as him. “I feel incredible.”
Tanjiro smiled. His cheeks ached as his feet began to do, overworn and overworked, but he smiled.
“As do I.”
~
Night had properly fallen by the time the last bits of drunkenness faded from Tanjiro’s blood.
He groaned lowly to himself and pressed his face into the soft grass, wishing it would do more to stave away his regret of the alcohol. His skull throbbed something terrible, as did the rest of his body. What was it Princess Shinobu had said? Mortals have died of less than a faerie’s dance.
Tanjiro could understand how.
He couldn’t recall how much time had passed since the dance had ended. The crowns bestowed upon him scattered like a halo around his fallen head, disturbed from his hair the moment he collapsed on the soil, but the leafy capes still remained, draped over him like a blanket. He considered falling asleep beneath them, though he had yet to do so. Genya had disappeared some while ago, wandering off while Tanjiro still battled with the waning wine in his stomach, and he refused to drift into unconsciousness until his absence had been rectified. At first, that had simply meant holding out while the alcohol worked its way through him; now, he supposed that meant lying in uncomfortable wait. Just as well, he supposed. Perhaps it was a much needed lesson: never drink that much wine again.
It could have been seconds later or hours. Tanjiro was not sure. Eventually, either way, fabric and flowers rustled into place beside Tanjiro, accompanied by that familiar, alluring scent, and he picked up his head, grinning through its pulsing ache to smile at Genya. Genya returned the look wearily, then collapsed backwards onto the grass, exhaling slowly and closing his eyes to the starry sky.
“I used to climb trees and mountains all the time as a child,” he said—voice quiet and scratching and slow, clearly exhausted. “Now, as a knight, I am on my feet all of the time, walking and fighting and often simply standing there. And yet, never before in my entire life have I been this sore.”
“I apologize,” Tanjiro said, though he could not keep himself from laughing to himself. Genya still grinned anyway, so he supposed the amusement was mutual.
“Do not be,” Genya promised, sure enough. “I had a delightful time.” His head shifted on the soil, turning towards Tanjiro, then his eyes reopened. They weren’t as dark as they had been during the dance, but they were just as beautiful, and Tanjiro’s breath caught in his throat. “You look rather pretty with a crown.”
“As do you,” Tanjiro whispered, and looked to Genya’s own now-fallen ring of crowns. His flowers were darker than Tanjiro’s, rich purples and deep reds. They suited him beautifully. Amethyst and rubies. Tanjiro ought to have a crown commissioned with those gemstones within. Gift it to Genya one day. Ask a question, the one that made his heart leap into his throat.
“We’ve a long journey back,” Genya said, though he looked as though he wished to talk of anything else. Too dutiful, Tanjiro figured. Too practical. Too committed to delivering on his word, to making a success of this mission.
Did he really not understand how much he’d already done?
“Let us not talk of it for now,” Tanjiro told him, deciding to indulge that desire in Genya’s eyes. Sure enough, at the suggestion, his expression softened and he sighed, easing into the grass and twitching his hand towards Tanjiro’s. Tanjiro reciprocated the action and wove his fingers through Genya’s, clutching them in his palm and smiling. “Let us sleep, yes? I do not know about you, but I am utterly exhausted.”
Genya laughed—a hearty tone, but one that tapered off quickly, hindered by the exhaustion he nodded to agree with. “I desperately wish I was in my bed right now,” he admitted, already twisting to settle in place, searching for the best position to rest in.
Tanjiro snorted at the sentiment, but he couldn’t find the strength to continue the conversation. Genya obviously didn’t mind. His eyes fluttered closed within seconds and his breaths mellowed out, stretching and softening as he—really rather quickly—fell asleep.
Tanjiro was not swift to follow. He studied Genya’s face for as long as his vision would allow him to, tracing every line of his features and committing him to memory. He squeezed his hand and tried to remember how it’d felt to dance that frantic dance with him. So different from the previous dances they’d shared, all of which had been stuffed in the castle’s marble ballroom, too bright and too full. Too on display, too obvious for his shy friend. How he wished to do it again, to do this again, no matter how terribly he hurt for it now. He’d ache a thousand times over if it meant Genya would hold him like that once more, if it meant he could breathe the same air as him and give in to the carnal desire he felt clutched around his heart. Woo him, Princess Kanae had told him, even though he wasn’t certain he understood what she meant originally. Maybe his drunken self believed he did, but looking back, Tanjiro was not so sure. It was excited and licentious and more wanton than he’d had ever allowed himself to be before, but it wasn’t enough. It lacked that final puzzle piece, that last push into click. It needed honesty. He needed to ask that question.
He needed to put Genya in a crown.