Work Text:
The world outside of Obanai’s bedroom window was a study in monochrome. The soft, persistent snow fell, blanketing the Corps headquarters in a deep,muffling silence. Inside his estate though, was a pocket of warmth that was so profound it felt like a whole other reality, away from the pain and suffering of the cruel world. The air inside was thick with the incense of cinnamon, and clove. Along with the smell of freshly baked goods from the servants of the Serpent Hashira’s estate. Though the smell Obanai loved the most right now was the clean smell of snow that was still stuck to his lover Giyuu, and to his haori that was draped over a chair that was in his room.
They were a tangle of limbs, comfort and pure bliss on the futon, a nest of blankets and pillows built to withstand the winter's cruel chill.Obanai was used to being so rigid and coiled with tension so seeing him so pliant and soft in Giyuu’s arms was a sweet sight to see, even sweeter that he got to relax for once. His head was resting on Giyuu’s chest, his ear pressed against where his heart would be. It had become a routine to do this so Obanai could know he was safe and sound, since he had lost one too many people in his life. He was not about to let Giyuu become another one of those people. The steady, rhythmic, lub-dub. His lub-dub was the most beautiful music Obanai had ever known. It was a metronome of peace, a sound that grounded him in a way noting else could.
Giyuu’s fingers, calloused and strong from a lifetime of gripping a sword, were currently engaged in a far gentler task. They were carding slowly, meticulously, through Obanai’s hair, occasionally tracing the shell of his ear, skimming down the line of his jaw where the bandages usually were. Tonight, the bandages were gone, set carefully aside. In this sacred space, Obanai could be bare. Giyuu always seemed so entranced by Obanai’s scars despite them being his biggest insecurity and the reason for his trauma. He always kissed Obanai’s scars and told him how beautiful he was, the prettiest man that he had ever met in his whole life. Between them there was no shame, no secrets, and no judgement. They understood that the things they had done in life were in order to survive not because they enjoyed committing horrific acts or not being able to save someone, worst of all having to choose not to save someone. These things haunted them both but when they were together those things always seemed to melt away and they were simply just two young adults who had grown up in a world of pain and suffering to grow up to fight the pain and suffering.
“Your hair is getting long,” Giyuu murmured, speaking up, his voice a low, soothing rumble that vibrated through his chest and into Obanai’s very bones. Obanai nuzzled closer, inhaling the familiar, aquatic scent that was uniquely Giyuu. “Hmm. Should I cut it?” “No.” Giyuu’s answer was immediate, his fingers tightening just slightly in the dark strands. “I like it. It’s soft.” He hummed as Giyuu continued playing with his hair. He hadn't had his hair this long since he was a small kid, before he began training with the Rengoku family to become a demon slayer. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had my hair this long, I wonder what the others think.” He mused as he nestled closer to his lover.
A contented sigh escaped Obanai’s lips. He closed his eyes, focusing on the sensations: the solid warmth of Giyuu beneath him, the heavy weight of the blankets, the gentle scratch of Giyuu’s work-roughened fingertips against his scalp. It was perfect. This was the peace they fought for, bled for, killed for. This right here. This is what life would be like everyday after Muzan was dead, not just every once in a blue moon.
“The snow is piling up,” Obanai said, his voice muffled against Giyuu’s yukata. “It will be a nightmare to train tomorrow.” “Then we won’t train,” Giyuu replied, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “We’ll stay here. Shinazugawa can yell all he wants.” Obanai huffed a quiet laugh, the image of an apoplectic Sanemi so vivid it was amusing. “He’d break the door down.” “Let him try.” Giyuu’s arm around Obanai’s shoulders tightened possessively. “I’m not moving.” Obanai let out a huff of amusement since he knew that Giyuu was used to Sanemi’s yelling and insults since he had also once been like that towards Giyuu, though not anymore.
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, broken only by the crackle of the charcoal in the brazier and the whisper of snow against the shoji paper door. Obanai felt the sharp edges of his own soul, the constant, simmering anger and bitterness, being sanded down by the sheer, unwavering calm that Giyuu exuded. With Giyuu, he didn’t have to be the stern, unforgiving Snake Hashira. He could just be Obanai. He could be weak. He could be needy. He could be loved. He could crave things he never thought were possible, and he could be childish to make up for the years of suffering as a child. He didn’t have to keep his facade, he could be a normal person who just loved spending time with his lover.
“Do you remember,” Obanai began, his voice barely a whisper, “that mission in the north? With the demon in the ice caves?” Giyuu hummed in acknowledgment. “You were furious. You said the cold was making Kaburamaru sluggish.” “He was. He kept trying to coil up inside my clothes.” Obanai smiled at the memory. “You gave me your haori to wrap him in. You nearly got frostbite on your own arms because of it.” “It was just a haori,” Giyuu said, as if it were nothing. As if the iconic, two-patterned garment wasn’t a piece of his very identity. “And Kaburamaru is important.”
Tears, hot and sudden, pricked at the corners of Obanai’s eyes. He blinked them away rapidly, burying his face deeper into Giyuu’s chest. The heart beat on, a steady, reassuring drum. “You’re too good,” Obanai whispered, the words torn from a place of deep, vulnerable awe. “I don’t deserve you.” Giyuu’s hand stilled in his hair. He shifted, just enough to tilt Obanai’s face up to his. His blue eyes, so often described as empty or dead, were in that moment as deep and warm as a summer ocean. They held a universe of feeling, a depth of love that was reserved only for Obanai. “Don’t say that,” Giyuu said, his voice firm, leaving no room for argument. “You deserve every good thing, Obanai. You deserve all the peace in the world.” Obanai nearly choked on a sob as he listened to Giyuu, the warmth in the man’s eyes nearly made Obanai melt all together. How could anyone get any better than this man? They were all missing out, that was for sure. Obanai didn’t understand how anyone could hate this kind gentle man, he had a pure soul and Obanai could say for certain he was sweeter and kinder than the Kamado kid, and everyone adored that kid. Sanemi and Shinobou were missing out on someone so good and precious just because they believed he thought he was better than the others. How could he have ever thought that? How idiotic he had been back then, a fool.
Giyuu leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to Obanai’s forehead. It was a chaste, tender gesture that sent a wave of pure, unadulterated warmth flooding through Obanai’s entire body. It felt like a blessing. It felt like a promise. “I love you,” Giyuu whispered against his skin, the words a sacred vow in the quiet room. Obanai’s breath hitched. “I love you more.” A small, almost imperceptible smile touched Giyuu’s lips—a rare and precious sight. “Impossible.” Giyuu nuzzled closer to him as if trying to prove he loved Obanai more like a little puppy showing its owner that they loved him. He couldn’t help but melt at his lovers words. He didn’t think that Giyuu could understand just how much Obanai loved him and perhaps Giyuu thought the same thing about Obanai. Though Obanai knew one thing for certain, it was that he was willing to die again and again to keep Giyuu happy and safe, he was willing to leave Giyuu’s life if he ever were to decide he didn’t want Obanai any more and wanted someone else. Obanai would do anything for Giyuu, even if it meant selling his soul to the devil, or becoming a demon.
He settled back against the pillows, pulling Obanai with him, rearranging the blankets until they were a perfect cocoon of warmth once more. Obanai let himself melt into the embrace, every muscle relaxing, every worry dissolving. The sound of the heartbeat filled his senses, a lullaby he knew by heart. He felt sleep pulling at him, a warm, heavy blanket of its own. “Stay,” he mumbled, already half-asleep. “Don’t go.” “I’m not going anywhere,” Giyuu’s voice was a soft echo, a whisper from a dream. “I’ll always be here.” Obanai believed him. He drifted off to the feeling of fingers in his hair and the sound of a heartbeat beneath his ear, convinced that this, at last, was his forever. He felt the warmth disappear as everything went dark, lulling him into a dreamless sleep.
The first thing he registered was the cold. A deep, penetrating cold that seeped up from the floorboards and bit into his bones. The second was the silence. It wasn't the soft, snow-muffled silence from before. It was an empty, hollow silence, broken only by the frantic, panicked skittering of scales against wood. Obanai’s eyes flew open.
He was alone.
The warmth was gone. The weight on his chest was gone. The scent of wisteria and snow had been replaced by the stale, dusty air of an unused room. He was lying on the bare, cold tatami mats of his own bedroom. There were no blankets. No pillows. No nest of comfort. He was still in his full Hashira uniform, his sword lying beside him. Kaburamaru was coiled tightly around his neck, hissing softly, nudging his cheek with an urgent, worried head.
And the heartbeat… the heartbeat was gone.
A sharp, fractured sound escaped Obanai’s throat. He scrambled upright, his head whipping around, his single visible eye wide with dawning, gut-wrenching horror.
“Giyuu?”
The name was a ragged plea in the dead air. There was no answer. He looked at the chair where the haori had been. It was empty. The room was empty. It had always been empty. The memory of the warmth, the touch, the love crashed against the stark, cold reality of the present and shattered into a million pieces. It had been a phantom sensation. A cruel, beautiful illusion woven by a mind too broken to accept the truth.
The truth that had been staring him in the face all along.
The mission in the north. The ice caves. It hadn’t ended with a shared haori and a warm memory. It had ended with a spray of crimson blood on pristine white snow, staining it a violent, ugly red. It had ended with a blade shattering. It had ended with blue eyes, once so warm for him, going blank and staring at a sky they could no longer see.
Giyuu Tomioka had not come back from that mission.
The cuddling, the whispered words, the feeling of being cherished and safe… it was a dream. A desperate, waking dream he replayed every night, trying to stitch the fragments of his sanity back together with the ghost of a love that was six months in the grave. No it couldn’t, but it did.
A raw, agonized scream tore from Obanai’s lungs, a sound of such profound loss that it seemed to shake the very foundations of the silent room. He clawed at his own chest, where the echo of a heartbeat that wasn’t there still taunted him. He curled in on himself, his body wracked with sobs that offered no relief, no release, only a deeper, more infinite pain. Sobs broke through his lips, escaping into the cold empty room. Nothing, he was alone and his lover was gone.
Kaburamaru tightened his coil, a silent, helpless comfort.
But there was no comfort to be had. There was only the cold, the silence, and the crushing, unbearable weight of a blanket that had never been there, and arms that would never hold him again. The man that wished for the spring to come faster for their first picnic wouldn’t get that date, he wouldn’t get to tease Obanai for freaking out when he thought Kaburamaru was missing, when in reality he was just coiled in the picnic basket. The man that had been the peace for the children in the Corps would never again whisper to them reassurances or lullabies when they had a traumatic day. The man he wanted to marry would never return or live to see a world without demons. All because of a demon.
The scream dissolved into a choked, guttural sound, a wounded animal trapped in the cage of its own grief. The silence that rushed back in was worse than before. It was a physical presence, thick and suffocating, pressing down on him until he felt his ribs might splinter. He gasped, drawing in ragged breaths that did nothing to fill the hollow, screaming void in his chest. He was paralyzed in grief, nowhere to go and nowhere to run because every corner and stone held a memory of his beloved.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
The memory of the sound was a phantom limb, an agony of sensation where there was nothing. He pressed his ear back against the cold, unforgiving tatami, as if he could somehow summon it back through sheer force of will. But there was only the frantic, terrified thumping of his own heart, a pathetic, panicked counter-rhythm to the steady, imagined one. He could bring it back, this wasn’t real, Giyuu would…he wouldn’t, he wasn’t coming back.
Kaburamaru slithered down from his neck, his smooth scales cool against Obanai’s feverish skin. The snake nudged his clenched fist, then his tear-streaked cheek, his tiny black eyes filled with a primal understanding of his master’s suffering. He was the only real thing in this room of ghosts. Obanai continued sobbing and frantically clawing at the fabric as if he was trying to dig through the cloth to Giyuu who’d be waiting on the other side. Not even his snake could help him right now, only Giyuu, only Giyuu could refill this gaping hole in his heart that he had taken with him when he died.
“He was here,” Obanai whispered, the words scraping his throat raw. “He was right here.” He could still feel the imprint of Giyuu’s body against his own, the solid weight of his arm, the texture of his yukata under his fingertips. The sensation was so vivid, so real, that his mind rebelled against the emptiness. It had to be real. It had to be. The alternative was a madness he couldn't survive. He so desperately needed for it to be fake, for Giyuu to just be out on a mission and not truly gone, that he’d walk into the room and ensure that he had in fact fallen asleep on his chest, that it was a sick nightmare.
He squeezed his eye shut, trying to force himself back into the dream. He focused on the feeling of Giyuu’s fingers in his hair, the low rumble of his voice. “I’m not going anywhere.” What a lie. He lied and now Obanai was alone.
A fresh wave of sobs wracked his frame. He was going nowhere. He was trapped here, in this cold, sterile room, in this unbearable present, while Giyuu was forever in a past he could never reach. He pushed himself up, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He stumbled to the corner of the room where a small, plain wooden chest was kept. His hands trembled so violently he could barely work the latch. When it finally sprang open, the scent that wafted out was faint, almost gone, but unmistakable. It was the ghost of water and clean air, the last vestiges of him. Inside, folded with a heartbreaking precision, was the two-patterned haori. The one Giyuu had supposedly given him for Kaburamaru in his dream-memory. The one that had been returned to him, torn and bloodstained, by a stone-faced Shinazugawa after the mission. Obanai had washed it, mended the worst of the tears with clumsy, shaking hands, but the faint, rusty-brown shadow of the blood remained, a permanent stain on the fabric and on his soul. He remembered sleeping in the haori for the first two months and sleeping with it tucked into his chest for another month after that.
He buried his face in the cloth, inhaling deeply, desperately. The scent was so faint it was more memory than smell. But it was all he had. It was a relic. A tomb.
He clutched it to his chest, rocking back and forth on his heels. The cold of the floor seeped through his hakama, a stark contrast to the warmth of the futon in his hallucination. That warmth had felt so real. How could his mind conjure something so perfect, so detailed, only to snatch it away? It was a torture more refined than any demon could ever devise. He remembered the kiss on his forehead. The feeling of Giyuu’s lips, so soft and certain. A fresh tear traced a hot path down his cheek, dripping onto the haori. That kiss had felt like a seal, a promise of a future. But it was a promise spoken by a ghost. A lie his own broken psyche had told him to keep him from shattering completely. He wasn't sure how long he sat there, curled around the folded fabric, the world reduced to the four walls of his grief. The gray light of dawn began to filter through the window, painting the room in shades of ash and despair. The snow had stopped, leaving a world that looked clean and new, a cruel mockery of the devastation within.
He’d stay here and keep hallucinating Giyuu if that meant he got to continue hearing his voice and talking to him even if it was extremely unhealthy and if it killed him cause at least he’d be able to live with some sort of Giyuu with him. He wouldn’t leave Giyuu and he sure as hell wouldn’t move on. Giyuu had been his first and he’d be his last. There would be no other, his heart belonged to the dead man he loved so dearly.
A soft knock came at the door.
Obanai froze, his entire body going rigid. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. To speak would be to acknowledge this reality, to let the last traces of the dream finally dissipate. The door slid open a crack. Sanemi stood there, his sharp features etched with an uncharacteristic hesitation. His white hair was messy, and there were dark circles under his violet eyes. He took in the scene: Obanai on the floor, clutching the haori, his face a wreck of tears, the room barren and cold.
Sanemi’s jaw tightened. He’d seen this before. Too many times. “Iguro,” he said, his voice gruff but lacking its usual bite. “The meeting. It’s starting.” Obanai didn’t look up, he wouldn’t go if Giyuu wasn’t there. “Go away.” Sanemi didn’t move. He stood there, a silent, uncomfortable sentinel. “You can’t stay here forever.” “Why not?” Obanai’s voice was hollow. “What’s out there for me?” Obanai knew he was being unfair to Sanemi who had been the one to witness Giyuu’s brutal fate and still got to his feet while he stayed here like a pathetic child, not wanting to give up their favorite stuffed animal.
Sanemi had no answer for that. He knew better than anyone what was and who was not out there. He looked at the haori in Obanai’s arms, and a flicker of shared pain crossed his face. He had his own ghosts. And many of his own regrets.
“Tomioka wouldn’t—” Sanemi began, then cut himself off, shaking his head. It was the wrong thing to say. They both knew it. The use of Giyuu’s name was like a physical blow. Obanai flinched, his arms tightening around the haori. Tomioka wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t want this? How could anyone possibly know what Giyuu would want? He was gone. His wants, his thoughts, his quiet smiles—they were all just dust. “Get out,” Obanai whispered, the words laced with a venom born of pure agony. How dare Sanemi try to use his beloved against him? How dare he try to speak on his behalf? He had acted like he hated Giyuu up until his death.
Sanemi sighed, a heavy, weary sound. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but instead, he just nodded once and slid the door shut, leaving Obanai alone once more. The brief interruption had shattered the last fragile remnants of the dream. The warmth was truly gone now, replaced by a cold that felt permanent. The echo of the heartbeat had faded, leaving only the deafening silence of loss. Kaburamaru returned, slithering up his arm and coiling around his wrist, a small, living anchor. Obanai looked down at the haori, at the permanent stain of blood that his mind had so conveniently erased in his fantasy. This was the truth. The blood. The cold. The silence. There was no more Giyuu, no more Water Hashira, no more love or laughter, and it was time that Obanai accepted that he had to get to his feet just like everyone else.
He would get up. He would go to the meeting. He would put on his bandages and his uniform and become the Snake Hashira again. He would breathe and move and speak, a perfect, hollow imitation of a living man. But he knew, with a certainty that settled deep into his marrow, that he would be back here tonight. And the next night. And the night after that. He would lie down on the cold tatami, close his eyes, and dream of coming again. He would trade a thousand cold, real dawns for one more minute of that phantom warmth, for the sound of a heartbeat that didn't exist, for the feel of arms that were only a trick of the light and a memory. It was madness, yes. But it was the only madness that kept him alive. And so, clutching the ghost of his love to his chest, Obanai Iguro began the long, slow process of waiting for night to fall.