Chapter Text
“Like hell I am.”
He stares at Shinobu, stares harder this time. He waits for her to laugh. He dares her to laugh and let up with the joke, but the younger Kocho never does. Instead, she reads her own writing again, narrows her eyes at the scrawl.
“I’m positive,” she says slowly, as though he is stupid. “The tests… the tests do not lie.”
“Then run them again,” he growls back, sitting up. “You know they can’t fucking be true.”
With a flourish she flutters back into her study, and the room falls quiet. Too quiet. He grips at the sheets, his face growing hot. It’s almost too much to deal with. He wants to get up, pace the place for a bit, but his legs - fucking useless - they’re stiff. Locked in the bed he digs into his skin, picks at the scabs that are forming.
She’s fucking with him, he’s certain of it. He knows he hasn’t been pupped. He cannot be pupped because marechis are sterile. Have been since Muzan cursed them all.
A small squeak sounds from the back of the room, and Shinobu comes back with a hare. The dark thing is dead, dangles limp by its ears. It drips blood on the wood-panelled floor. Some spills on her clothes and Sanemi’s spit dries because shit, he knows what this is. It’s what his mother used to test for pregnancy.
“I injected the specimen with your urine sample,” she shrugs. “Both ovaries burst in ten minutes. I don’t have more rabbits, so unless you want me to cut you up too… I have nothing else left to show you.”
God, her hands. He looks at her hands. Her fingers are covered in blood. They’re black and he’s seen that foul black all his life but he pukes, he pukes anyway. As Kocho steps forward she takes off her gloves and throws the beast into the trash, shifts the bin out of sight with a flick of her foot. “Cheer up,” she consoles, but the grin is half-hearted. “This is a medical miracle.”
Miracle? Ha! More like God’s shitty will. He’s going to fucking lose it. “Shut up!” he yells, fist against the white mattress. “Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!”
It’s luck. Bad luck. Just bad fucking luck. He’s just too fucking unlucky. The one time he’s soft and fate screws him for it, makes him pay with the rest of his body. Shinobu watches him pound the bed frame, her mouth pressed in a thin line.
“Are you done,” she says flatly, as if to a child. Without any anger or excitement.
No, he’s not done. He’s anything but done. Done for, sure, but not done. He feels sick and cold, but it’s not from the rabbit. It’s not even from the damn bond.
His hand crawls up to the mark on his neck. Tomioka. Tomioka’s thing is inside him. Somewhere, somehow, in the lines of his scars, the bastard’s seed has grown roots. It grows and will grow and will keep fucking growing, and someday it will grow into a child. He can’t do it. He can’t raise a kid. He knows jack shit about kids. He’s too fucking cursed to conceive a damn kid, let alone carry it to term.
“Shinazugawa-san? Shinazugawa-san!” Kocho cries, her voice laced with ice. “If you hate it so much, I can just cut it out - ”
“Not now, woman!” he groans.
It’s too much. He can’t deal with this now. He presses his hands to his ears. He needs space to think, to actually think. “Fuck, I just need more - ”
Crash.
The shoji door falls, screaming towards the floor. The room bursts open.
“Kocho!”
At the world’s worst possible moment, a man with black hair crashes in. He’s covered in sweat and there’s dirt on his chin, his nose a brown crust of snubbed mud. Slung on his back, wrapped up in wet sheets, a boy is slumped over, half-conscious. He whimpers and shakes when he’s jostled too hard, and every so often he moans.
Oh, hell no. Not now. Not here. He backs up, slams into the pillow. The boy, he realises, is Kamado Tanjiro. The shitface who fractured his skull. The brat slips out, spills onto the hard ground, and blankets unfurl with a splat. He shivers and mumbles at nothing at all. Cries for no one in particular.
It would have been sad, if not for the smell. Oh, fuck - God, the smell.
Shinobu hums, tilts her head to the side, but even she has clocked it too. The scent of omega in heat, omega gone wrong. It fumes from the swell in Kamado’s limp neck, steams like a punch to the teeth. Sticky. Star candy. It clings to the walls.
“Oh my, what a difficult situation.”
Damn right. Kamado is an omega, and from the stench, newly presented. The stain on his groin slowly seeps through his pants, spreads to his thighs by the second. As slick drips down, Sanemi dry-heaves. Scrapes his palms over his eyes. Considers gouging them out from their sockets, wringing them out through their veins.
Great. What perfect timing, too. Kamado is halfway to hell. The first heat is always the strongest, the most potent. Without medication, he’ll die.
The little shit shrieks - a raw, high sound - and the rest passes by in a blur. Shinobu coos, her soft words meant to soothe, but he cannot tell what she is saying. The room chokes up with the stink of the child, and Sanemi feels like he is floating. His hands, his legs. Everything feels wrong. It’s like he forgot how to breathe.
“Tomioka-san!” Kocho yells through the haze. “Are you listening, Tomioka-san?”
Just a few feet away, a figure staggers upright. He leans on the doorframe, arms heavy. His ponytail falls in a curtain of waves, and Sanemi’s vision goes grey.
No, he thinks, nails scratching the bed. Oh, no, no, no, no. Of all the Hashira, he had to be here. He just fucking had to be here. Sanemi’s mind splits, screeches to a dead stop, sputters and starts like a fool. Splutters some words where a sentence should be. A prayer where fury should be.
Don’t turn around. Don’t you dare turn around. Don’t you dare turn around, goddamnit. Just get up and leave, like you always do. Don’t turn around and see -
“Shinazugawa?”
The man turns his head, brushing hair from his face, and Sanemi’s heart dies in his throat.
He won’t look at him, not when he is like this. Not when he reeks of omega. Not when he’s patting himself on the back, not knowing what he has done. Tomioka Giyuu. The bastard is here. He acts as if nothing has happened. His haori is drenched in Kamado’s sweet stink, but his eyes - his eyes haven’t changed.
Blank. Calm. Two deep empty pools. As if none of this was his fault. Alpha. Sanemi’s pulse trips and jolts. Alpha. Mate.
Pup.
His thoughts crash in, churn out one final truth. Tomioka left something inside him. This is the prick who fucked over his life, and he’s gone off to play fucking hero. If Sanemi could move, Tomioka would be dead. He’d leave the damn place on his knees. He’d leave with the knowledge that Sanemi screams. You left something inside me.
But he cannot move. For once, he can’t move. No wind blows through him now. “Shinazu-” Tomioka swallows, voice hoarse. “Shinazugawa, you smell like me.”
Sanemi stares.
He stares at the man, waits for him to say something. Anything other than this. Anything else, besides what he just said.
Shinazugawa, you smell like me.
It’s stupid, so stupid, those five fucking words, that everything crumbles around him. Everything good about him dies inside, curdles into a hard lump. And with that, everything comes to a stop. Time itself grinds to a halt. The world cracks, collapses in on itself. Caves to that horrible line.
“Get out.”
Slow, like a fish, Tomioka starts to blink.
“Wait, what -”
“GET OUT,” he snarls.
He’s had it. He wants Tomioka out. His voice is brittle. Too brittle. “GET OUT,” he snaps, breaking into a roar. “GET - THE FUCK - OUT - LEAVE -”
His brain spins, churning too fast in his head. He doubles over, chest heaving. Spit rains down in wet, degrading streaks, and Tomioka’s face goes white. Too bad, Sanemi thinks, curling forwards. Too bad he has to see this. Too fucking bad he must see what he did, stoop down to Sanemi’s level.
His gut twists, and he retches again. The sound of it rings in the air. From the back of the ward, he sees Tomioka move. On instinct, he throws his hand up.
“FUCK OFF!”
And Tomioka stops. He freezes, one foot caught in front of the other, lips parted in cold surprise. No, not surprise - fucking incomprehension, like he’s never been ill before. Fuck him, Sanemi seethes, standing up. He doesn’t have time for this shit. If the bastard refuses to go, then he will. He’ll deal with this all by himself.
“Where are you going?” Shinobu protests, as he pushes himself off the bed. “You can’t leave yet, Shinazugawa-san! You’re-”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP, KOCHO!”
He doesn’t care. He wants out. He’ll get out. He presses an arm to his belly. He yells at Kocho, for her news wrecked his life. He yells at fucking Kamado. Above all, he yells at Tomioka Giyuu, who still has not left his damn spot. The room spins, blood rushing into his ears, old nausea meeting new fury.
He wants to lash out, but doesn’t know who to punch - Tomioka, the kid or himself. Instead, he storms out like a right fucking coward, knocking past Tomioka’s shoulder. He runs, but he doesn’t know where he is running. He might just be running on air.
And if Tomioka speaks, says anything different, Sanemi will never know.
At home, he slams a fist into the wall. Red wells up in his knuckles. He unfolds the futon and falls into it, even though it is only midday. His teeth chatter, but he doesn’t fucking know why. He shakes, but he doesn’t know why. He claws at his torso, feels sharp bone and sinew, the scars littered across his chest.
He’s not going through it. He’s cutting it out. He’s cutting it out by next morning. Tomorrow he’ll go back to Kocho’s estate. He’ll carve it out with his bare hands. He’s not sitting by like a pig set to die while Tomioka Giyuu fucks his life. Tomorrow he’ll go back to Kocho’s estate, and all of this will be forgotten.