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ibbybelle · 3 days ago

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Not With the Door Open

Butterfly Estate evenings always smelled like antiseptic and wisteria.

You were used to both—the sting of the first, the sweetness of the second—used to binding ribs and re-lacing stitches, used to Hashira who acted like pain was a suggestion and rules were rumors. You were used to Sanemi Shinazugawa most of all: the way he arrived already half-glowering, half-bleeding, and wholly insufferable about needing help.

“Sit,” you said, pointing at the futon.

“I am sitting,” he growled, which was technically true if one considered leaning sideways on an elbow, scowling at the floor, and refusing to take off his ruined uniform top “sitting.”

You waited.

He waited.

The silence stretched taut between you, humming with wind and stubbornness. Finally, with a put-upon sigh that suggested you were the greatest trial he had ever suffered—including demons—Sanemi peeled off what was left of his shirt.

Bandage-white scars crossed a map of older scars. Fresh gashes red-lined his side like claw marks. You swallowed down the instinctive worry and reached for the basin.

“I told you to watch your flank,” you murmured, wringing out a cloth. “That demon went low.”

“It went dead,” he said, and you could hear the smile he didn’t have the energy to wear.

“After it opened you up.”

“Just a scratch.”

“Three scratches,” you corrected, dabbing gently around the deepest one. He flinched a fraction and then pretended not to. “Hold still. This is going to sting.”

“If you say that, it’s gonna—” He hissed when the antiseptic kissed raw skin. “—sting.”

“Medical prophecy,” you said lightly, hiding your own wince. The cut was clean but deep, muscles angry and heat pulsing under the surface. He’d need tight stitches and a miracle to keep from popping them the second he stood up.

“Shoulda sent me to someone else,” he muttered. “One of the brats.”

“You don’t let the ‘brats’ within ten feet of you with a needle,” you said, reaching for gauze. “Lucky for you, I’m the one who pulls yours out when you inevitably tear them.”

“Tch.” He tipped his head, watching you through white lashes. “Lucky.”

You kept your eyes on your work, because looking up at him while he was shirtless and grumpy and alive had been your undoing before. A different night. A different injury. The same room, the same breath between you. A kiss that had happened like a dropped blade—shock first, danger second—and then you’d had the sense to pull away. Barely.

He’d ignored it the way he ignored cautions: by clenching his jaw and pretending it didn’t exist.

Until now.

“About—” he started, and you could hear him stalking the word like prey, “—whatever that was last night.”

You pinched gauze into place. “Mm?”

“Never again,” he said flatly. “You hear me? You were hopped up on adrenaline and I was concussed. It was—” his mouth twisted around a word he hated— “—a mistake.”

You made a thoughtful noise, which was safer than the laughter bubbling up in your chest. “A mistake.”

“Yeah.” He set his jaw. “It’s not happenin’ again.”

“Strictly medical,” you agreed blandly. “Professional.”

“Exactly.” He gestured with his chin at your hands where they were smoothing gauze. “You patch me up, I leave, end of it.”

“Of course.” You reached for the needle. “Hold still.”

You would have honored the line he was drawing. You would have. You should have. You were a medic and he was your most difficult patient and there were doors and rules and Shinobu.

But then he kept talking.

“Just so we’re clear,” he added, not holding still, the edge in his voice sharp enough to cut thread, “—whatever you think happened, it didn’t. Won’t. I just want you to know—”

You leaned in and kissed him.

It was the only way to shut him up that wasn’t a tranquilizer.

His words died against your mouth, muffled into the warm, surprised sound he made—a rough inhale that tasted like green tea and stubbornness. You meant it quick. Gentle. A reminder and a dare, just the press of lips while your hand flattened against the uninjured side of his ribs to steady you both.

Sanemi went still. Entirely, gloriously still. For half a heartbeat you felt his entire body decide whether to push you away or pull you closer.

He chose closer.

He kissed you back like the floor tilted him into you. Not cautious—Sanemi didn’t know cautious—but careful, a fierce steadiness that surprised you more than the heat. His mouth moved against yours with all that bottled-up fight turned toward something that wasn’t war. Your breath caught; the needle in your hand trembled; the world narrowed to the rough rasp of him, the warmth, the way he made a noise in his throat somewhere between a growl and a sigh—

Then his brain caught up.

He broke away an inch, eyes blown wide, voice low and horrified in equal measure. “Oi—”

“Mm?” you breathed, dazed.

“Not with the damn door open.”

You blinked. Tilted your head. Looked past his shoulder.

The shoji was, in fact, cracked open two fingers. The corridor beyond was quiet now but never stayed that way for long. A Kakushi could drift past at any second. So could Kiyo. So could—oh gods—Shinobu.

Sanemi moved like a hunter startled into flight. He was on his feet before you could breathe the word wait, grabbing the edge of the door and slamming it shut hard enough to make the paper rattle. He stood there a second, bare back heaving, hands braced against the frame like he was holding it up with his spine, then rounded back on you with ears already going pink.

“What part of ‘never again’ did you not—” He stopped, because you were smiling at him, which only made his ears redder. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what,” you said, innocent.

“Like you just won.”

“I did,” you said, still breathless. “You caved in under four seconds.”

“Three,” he said automatically, then cursed under his breath when he realized he’d admitted it. “Shut up. You can’t just— you can’t kiss me while the door’s open and expect me to—” He gestured at the air, furious at an invisible audience. “—to make an exhibition outta us.”

“Exhibition.” You bit down on a laugh. “So it is okay if the door’s closed.”

His mouth opened. Closed. A muscle jumped in his cheek. “That’s not what I—”

“It is,” you said, light as a match. “Not with the door open.”

He stepped forward like you’d tugged a string. Another step. The needle lay forgotten between your fingers as he stopped in front of you, looking down with a scowl that had lost its teeth.

“You started something,” he said, voice lower. “Finish it.”

“Medical,” you whispered. “Professional.”

“Shut up,” he said, and kissed you like he meant it.

There was nothing quick about this one. Nothing gentle about the way his hand found your jaw and held you there like he was learning the shape of a miracle and didn’t trust it to stay. He angled your face and heat spilled through you like sunlight through a shoji screen; your free hand clutched his shoulder to feel the muscles flex under your palm. He tasted like mint from the rinse Aoi insisted on after stitches and the metallic breath of the training yard and something salt-warm that was just him.

“Never again lasted less time than a mosquito,” you murmured when you came up for air, your forehead resting on his.

“Mosquitoes live a week,” he said, wrecked and offended.

“The point remains.”

“You are the point,” he muttered, and caught your mouth again like he couldn’t help himself.

This time when you swayed, he followed, one palm sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, the other curving around your waist with a care that belied the size of his hand. He didn’t press; he was all restraint and urgency, all want wrapped in held breath. You rose on your knees to meet him, the futon edge biting your shins, the kiss losing its edges as heat softened every hard line in the room.

“Sanemi,” you said into the seam of his mouth, because you needed him to hear it.

He made a noise you’d never heard on him—half warning, half plea—and stilled enough to look at you properly. Moonlight from the papered window braided pale over his shoulders; his lashes threw thin crescents. There was a cut on his cheekbone you hadn’t cleaned yet. There was a bloom of pink where your thumb had pressed.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, and it was almost funny because he was the one whose hand shook.

“Do you want me to?” you asked, honest.

He swallowed. “No.”

“Then don’t,” you said, and brought him back in by the edge of his haori.

The kiss deepened with a slow, startled certainty. You tasted the salt at the corner of his mouth. His thumb stroked once behind your ear, the gentlest pass of callus, and something in your chest unclenched like a knot admitting it had been a knot all along.

He broke away just enough to mutter, “You’re trouble.”

“You like trouble,” you said, using the hand at his shoulder to tug until he huffed and went where you put him.

“Not when it’s you.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, and kissed you like you were the only thing in a room full of reasons to leave.

The rest of the world returned in pieces. First the ache in his side when the stitch line tugged and he grunted but didn’t flinch away. Then the needle you still held, poised like a ridiculous flag of responsibility.

“Wait,” you gasped, half laughing against him. “I’m literally mid-stitches.”

He blinked, like the word stitches translated slowly. “I’ll live.”

“I need you to live well. Turn. Lay down. Let me finish and then you can—”

“Then I can what,” he said, entirely too smug, entire mouth saying please say ‘kiss me again’ so I don’t have to ask.

“Then you can not bleed on my futon,” you said primly.

“You’re killin’ me,” he muttered, but the corner of his mouth hooked up and he did as told, easing back to lie on his side, one forearm tucked under his head. It was a posture that should have been vulnerable. On him, it looked like coiled wind.

You cleaned your needle hand and bent back to work. He watched you with a focus that would have been unnerving on anyone else. It was the kind he used in battle: absolute attention, ruthless patience. You glanced up once, just to make sure he was breathing normally.

Bad idea. His attention knocked the breath out of you more surely than any demon had.

“What,” you said, because your mouth thought it could handle a question.

“You look,” he said, and then failed entirely to produce words for a moment. “—good. Like that.”

“Like what.”

“Focused.” He glanced at your hands. “Careful. Bossy.”

“I am bossy.”

“I can tell.”

You hid a smile in the next stitch. “Hold still.”

“Can I talk?”

“You will talk either way,” you said, “so make it useful.”

“Useful,” he repeated, as if the concept offended him. “Fine. Useful: door’s shut.”

“It is.”

“Stay close to me when I’m out,” he said, as if this were a thing you didn’t already do. “Some of the lower moons have gotten cute.”

“Threats noted,” you said dryly.

“And tell Aoi I’m not drinkin’ that brown sludge again. Tastes like dirt had a baby with suffering.”

“Aoi’s tea keeps you from getting infections.”

“So does not gettin’ cut.”

“Fascinating technique,” you murmured, tying off a knot. “You should teach a seminar.”

He snorted. Then, quieter, so you almost missed it: “Don’t let Shinobu send you out alone.”

You glanced up. “She doesn’t.”

“She would if she thought she could get away with it.”

You cut the thread. “You’re worried about me.”

“Shut up,” he said instantly, and you could hear the yes like a pulse under the word.

You finished the last stitch and set the needle aside, suddenly very aware that you had promised him kisses in a way your professional brain should probably be ashamed of. You reached for fresh gauze, and as you leaned, his hand lifted—hesitant—and caught lightly at your wrist.

He didn’t pull. He just felt the pulse there, let his fingers close around the beat once. Then he let go like he was afraid of breaking it.

“You done?” he asked, voice a shade rougher.

“Mm.” Your throat bobbed. “Bandage, then yes.”

You wrapped it neat. Your hands didn’t shake. Your chest did.

When you were finished, you smoothed the tail under and tapped the edge with two fingers. “Perfect. Don’t move.”

He moved.

He sat up, slow and careful, testing the line you’d sewn, and then was in your space again before you could decide whether to stand or breathe. His hand found the back of your neck like it belonged there; yours found his shoulder as if it always had.

“Sanemi—”

He kissed you, smiling against your mouth like he’d heard something you hadn’t realized you said. Heat coiled low. You braced a knee on the futon for leverage; he made a small approving sound and used the other hand—big, warm—to anchor at your waist like the world might try to yank you away.

There was a knock.

You both froze. The knock wasn’t a knock so much as a warning—two gentle taps and then, without waiting, the soft scrape of a door being slid back in its track.

The closed door.

Sanemi tore away from you and turned with a snarl. “We’re busy.”

Shinobu Kocho leaned into the room like she’d been invited. “Ah,” she said, as if she had discovered a rare butterfly mid-emergence and didn’t want to frighten it, “my mistake. I thought this room was unoccupied.” Her gaze took in the state of things—the bandages, your flushed face, Sanemi’s lack of shirt, your very professional closeness—with a delicacy that somehow made it worse. “Oh, good. You closed it. I usually have to remind you about that.”

Sanemi turned a shade of red you’d only ever seen on maple leaves. “Get. Out.”

Shinobu’s smile curled. “I simply came to drop these off.” She lifted a small tray you hadn’t noticed—salves, a tiny jar of willow bark, a roll of additional gauze. “But it seems my patient’s pain is being well managed.”

“Out,” he repeated, voice flattening into a growl.

She turned her smile on you. It softened by a measurable degree. “He’ll insist he’s fine in an hour and try to leave. Please make sure he doesn’t undo your excellent work.”

“I will,” you said, trying not to die. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Her eyes returned to Sanemi with the kind of delight one normally reserved for fireworks. “Do lock it next time. I’d hate for Kiyo to get an education.”

“I’m going to throw you out the window,” Sanemi said, enunciating each word like a blessing.

“Windows don’t open that way,” Shinobu said, and slid the door shut again before he could find out.

Silence.

It lasted exactly as long as it took you to start laughing.

It came out helpless and mortified and bright, your hand over your mouth because you weren’t sure you could stop once you started. Sanemi glared with what might have once been dignity.

“This isn’t funny,” he said, which only made you wheeze harder.

“She said ‘lock it next time,’” you managed.

“Shut up.”

“You could have locked it.”

“I was busy.”

“Doing what?” you said, all innocence.

He moved so fast you didn’t see the decision—just the heat of him, the hand at your waist, the half-snarl that was actually a smile. “Say one more word.”

“Lock,” you said, dizzy with joy.

He kissed you into silence.

It was less careful now and still careful enough. He swallowed your laugh, turned it to heat, let it spill back into him as sound. You curled your fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and felt the groan there before you heard it. He was a study in contradictions: the crush of his mouth, the restraint in his hands, the way he didn’t push and you needed him to, the way he could probably lift you with one arm and didn’t try.

You broke first, greedy for air and the look on his face. He didn’t back away far. His forehead fell against yours; your breaths braided. You could see every fleck in his eyes this close, storm-grey ringed in something warmer.

“Never again,” you whispered, just to be cruel.

He laughed, breathless. It sounded like a man giving up a fight he’d been proud of losing. “Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Oh, I will,” he promised, and would have, except—

“Not with the door open,” you added, and he made the exact noise a person makes when they are both furious and in love.

He nudged your nose with his. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

“You’re a Hashira,” you said. “Act like it.”

He kissed the corner of your mouth, the softest brush, and let the heat simmer into something quieter. “I am.”

You sat there together in the awake hush—wisteria and antiseptic and the wet ink of night fading at the edges. His thumb drew a thoughtless line along your jaw. On the floor beside you, Shinobu’s tray waited, smug.

“Sanemi,” you said finally, because your chest felt too full for your ribs and someone had to say something responsible.

“What,” he said, already suspicious of responsibility.

“You have to sleep.”

He grimaced. “Pass.”

“You have to not tear the stitches I just put in you.”

He tipped his head back, stared at the ceiling like it could save him from tenderness. “I’ll try.”

“You will,” you corrected.

“Bossy.”

“Professional.”

“Fine.” He blew out a breath, then looked back at you, softer than the word deserved. “Stay?”

You would have. You would have even if he hadn’t asked. “I have rounds.”

He scowled. “I’m round.”

“Not what that means.”

“Stay,” he repeated, and there was no order in it at all. Only hope. Only you.

You gave him a look. “If I get scolded by Aoi, I’m blaming you.”

“I’ll fight her.”

“You’ll lose.”

He considered this. “I’ll die pretty.”

“You’ll die loudly,” you said, laughing again as you nudged him back onto the futon with a palm to his shoulder. He went, pliant in a way only you ever saw, and you tugged his haori from the chair to drape over him. He made a face at being tucked in and then secretly edged under it like a cat finding sun.

You settled at his side, not quite lying, not quite sitting, your hip against the futon, your head where his shoulder made a warm ledge. He rolled just enough to make room. Your fingers found his; he laced them like it cost him nothing and everything.

“Next time,” you murmured, the words drifting with your breath, “we lock it.”

He went pink to the tips of his ears. “Don’t say ‘next time.’”

“There will be a next time,” you said, sweet as poison.

“Shut up,” he said again, but the smile dragged at his mouth no matter how he fought it. He closed his eyes. His shoulders unwound one careful inch at a time. Your own lungs followed suit.

You dozed like that, the pond murmuring, the hall beyond occasionally humming to life then back down. Somewhere, Shinobu’s laugh chimed and slid away. Somewhere else, Aoi scolded a Kakushi for running inside. Here, there was only the feeling of a man built of storms learning how to be quiet.

You woke to find him watching you.

“What,” you mumbled, voice rough with sleep.

He didn’t look away. His thumb was drawing circles over your knuckles like he wasn’t aware of it. “Nothin’.”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m allowed,” he said, and it was so unexpectedly sweet it put a lump in your throat.

“You are,” you said back, equally soft.

He cleared his throat, looked wild for a second like he’d said too much, then found the shoreline of grump he knew how to walk. “If Shinobu walks in here again, I’m movin’ out.”

“She does live here,” you reminded him.

“Not in this room,” he said firmly.

You lifted his hand to your mouth and pressed a kiss to the roughest scar across his knuckles. He held still like you’d pressed a blade to his pulse and he trusted you not to cut.

“Sanemi?”

“Mm.”

“You can say ‘again.’”

He scowled automatically. “About what.”

“About kissing me,” you said, which was frankly reckless of you but you were very tired and very happy and very in love with a man who responded to care like it was being stabbed, which meant you had to say the thing he couldn’t.

He stared at you, eyes flat and bright as flint, and then the scowl went somewhere you couldn’t follow. His mouth did that helpless hook again.

“Yeah,” he said. “Again.”

“Lock the door,” you whispered.

He laughed—really laughed this time, the sound old and boyish and new all at once—and tugged the blanket higher with all the tenderness in the world and none of the grace.

“Bossy,” he said, which meant mine.

“Professional,” you said, which meant yours.

He kissed you once more—quick and clean, a goodnight and a promise—and then actually closed his eyes.

Outside, the estate breathed. Inside, your room did, too.

And if, later, a neat note appeared on your supply cabinet in Shinobu’s graceful hand—“Please remember: doors are for closing. (P.S. I am delighted you finally closed yours.)”—well. Sanemi made very sure the door was locked before he complained about it at length.

He was loud.

You shut him up. Again. Not with the door open.

#ibby’s library #this is so cute #i love scenes like this #and the BANTER UGHHH YES

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