#fits serpent tsuguko ayame au

[minteayoongimakesmewoozi]

this has been stuck in my head for a while now, so i present...

serpent tsuguko!ayame

- yeah, so iguro obanai and higuchi ayame as a hashira-tsuguko duo

- not off the bat though, cos obanai doesn't become hashira until a year after ayame starts training

- it's probably a ploy by oyakata-sama to get obanai to warm up to the other underlings. and also a way to get this tiny lil civilian girl to stop kicking his demon slayers into submission (giyuu refuses to take in the child and he's kind of at his wit's end)

- so yeah, obanai and ayame end up shoved together. or more like ayame is unceremoniously pulled up by her scruff and thrown at obanai

- as u can imagine, it doesn't go well the first few months. obanai is still Very Traumatised and ayame is a lil anger ball. he refuses to look at her, let alone teach her anything, so she spends a lot of time alone and in the forest. she does her best to refine the tracking skills she learned from her otouchan, but she also snatches a bokken and whacks it about sometimes

- it's about three months into their... arrangement that obanai finds ayame sitting on the engawa. it's the first time he sees her out and about in the daylight, but it's because of there's a black juvenile snake curled up next to her

obanai rushes forward, snatching her away from the snake. kaburamaru is mostly docile (with him), but thay isn't the case for most snakes.

"stupid girl," he hisses. "what are you doing?"

ayame keeps her eyes on the snake. "he was all alone."

most people are scared of snakes. women especially. but this is a girl, and she saw a juvenile snake all alone and brought it back with her.

he warms up to her. just a little bit.

enough to teach her his breathing style. she already has the serpent to match.

- ayame under obanai's tutelage is quieter, but with a tongue as sharp as any snake's fangs when she chooses to speak. it takes some time for the snake - she names him kuromaru - to warm up to her, so she's littered with bite marks. by the time she leaves for okutama after the first year of her apprenticeship has started, kuromaru has mostly stopped biting her.

- ayame calls obanai shihan! since he's the creator and only master of breath of serpent.

- when she leaves for final selection, obanai gifts her a blue and white striped scarf to match her haori. she offers him the faintest of smiles and a polite bow, and leaves with kuromaru curled in her yukata sleeve and the scarf firmly tied around her neck.

- obanai bought her a pair of socks like he did for mitsuri, but when ayame emerged in the standard uniform instead of one like mitsuri's, he heaves a silent sigh of relief and tosses the socks away.

- her nichirin sword is the same as obanai's! although the tsuba is a simpler version of his, with only one snake encircling the entire thing, the colour of her wavy edge is blue on one side and lavender on the other. she's only the second breath of serpent user, so they just shrug it off as a strange effect of being a breath of serpent user. it could be because she isn't bonded with kuromaru the same way obanai is bonded with kaburamaru.

(he's a little annoyed at the blue, bc it almost looks like tomioka and he knows the girl admires that stupid water hashira.)

- obanai and ayame aren't a very affectionate pair. he isn't as harsh with his words with her, that's true, but the most touch-based affection they've shared is when he pats her on the shoulder for a good job.

- ayame ends up both touch-starved and touch-averse as a consequence. u can imagine how well the first meeting with zenitsu went. (yeah, kuromaru bit zenitsu. he was sobbing about poison for a moment before ayame had to explain that firstly, snakes are venomous, and kuromaru isn't venomous. she still ends up nursing his wound and he asks her to marry him. he gets punched in the face for that. she panicked okay!)

- she doesn't know the full story of obanai's past. he tells her bits here and there, so she knows that onis did something terrible to him, and that his mostly-female family had treated him very unkindly. she leaves it at that; she doesn't have to know everything.

- u can imagine how pissed obanai was during the hashira trial though. he knows his tsuguko is loyal, and she's too kind

- they end up in a big argument while she's in rehabilitation. they don't shout, but kuromaru and kaburamaru were hissing at each other mutinously, and they never do that. ayame doesn't talk for days after that. she just pulls up her scarf to cover her mouth and fumes silently until the rest of the idiots squad eventually pulls her out of her funk

- fracture arc goes differently after mugen train. when tanjirou and ayame return from the rengoku estate, obanai pulls ayame away from tanjirou and orders her to stay away from all of them. he's going to focus on her training as a tsuguko, so she won't have time to fumble around missions with those lesser slayers. the logic is sound, but it also isn't made in a logical manner; she knows he's being driven by emotion.

but she can't ignore a direct order from her shihan, the same way she couldn't ignore a hashira's order when rengoku-san told her to stay back.

- (obanai heard that his fool of a tsuguko had somehow ended up on that mission. he rushes to the site of the crash - of rengoku's death - and pulls her into a hug for the first time. both ayame and kuromaru are so flabbergasted that they can't move.)

- ayame goes on missions with obanai. she's not quite happy, but she can't argue that all the extra training he's beating pushing onto her helps. she writes letters to tanjirou, zenitsu and inosuke and tells her shihan that it's from aoi and kanao. shirogane is the only crow that enters and leaves, so he doesn't know otherwise. kaburamaru knows, but he turns a blind eye to it. that's his only rebellion against his companion.

- rld starts something like this:

"you sure iguro will be okay with this?" uzui-sama asks doubtfully.

ayame blinks at him, scratching her snake on the head. she shrugs. "what shihan doesn't know won't hurt you."

"don't you mean won't hurt you?"

she smiles. "no."

- u can imagine how furious he was when he found out ayame went to yoshiwara with tengen and the rest of those bumbling fools she calls her friends. he reads tengen the riot act when he arrives in yoshiwara and carries ayame to the butterfly estate himself.

- he spends a month sitting by her bedside. in the dead of night, he'll pull out a book and read it to her until his voice goes hoarse. he even ignores zenitsu when he visits. (it burns him that he was too late, and that he had to rely on the kisatsutai's most idiotic band of slayers to save her.)

- ayame and mitsuri are really close! mitsuri is found in obanai's company, and so is ayame. they have a closer relationship in this au than in fits, because she doesn't feel like mitsuri's regard is unfounded.

- yeah so they have a lot of fun in swordsmith village. even during the battle, ayame has seen mitsuri spar a lot, so she can weave her attacks between them effortlessly. she's a breath of serpent user after all.

- ayame still learns breath of water, but it's a lot rougher than it fits. she mainly learned from watching tanjirou, not from formal teaching. it's similar enough to breath of serpent - it's a derivative of breath of water after all - so she gains a better mastery of her second breathing style.

- yes, it pisses obanai off, but it means his tsuguko doesn't die, so he'll allow it

- (damn you, tomioka)

- he also berates her for her poor choice in choosing tomioka as a crush. tomioka! of all people!

- speaking of the other hashiras, sanemi doesn't approve of ayame bc of akihiko, but obanai is less prickly after taking her in, so they're... cordial. barely. they glare at each other a lot behind obanai's back tho and kuromaru has "accidentally" bitten sanemi a few... dozen times.

- when ayame performs breath of serpent, what she conjures up is a black serpent instead of white. they both assume it's because kuromaru is, well, black, and it's reliant on the snake the user is bonded to

- all just speculation. they're still the only two breath of serpent users in existence.

yeah so that's all i can think of so far. i need to go sketch some ayame and kuromaru now cos they are SO CUTE.

[minteayoongimakesmewoozi]

thinking about serpent tsuguko!ayame and how incredibly touch-starved she is, but also touch-avoidant

zenitsu is constantly throwing himself at her and she can't help but freeze and shudder, pulling away even as he pulls her closer. he eventually learns to stop the instinctive flinch to tug at her haori and cower behind her, although he still tends to use her as a human shield where possible. he just makes sure they don't touch, which means she makes both a relieved and a disappointed sound and he's pulling at his hair trying to fix it

inosuke notices the way she flinches out of the way when he goes in for a headbutt. at first, he thought it was just a show of strength! he's stronger than her after all! then he sees her in action in mount natagumo and realises that she isn't weak at all; she just doesn't like being touched. he knows what that's like, so he's always protectively hovering right outside her personal bubble, wary of anyone who tries to touch her without permission. (he hates the crawly feeling of panic that he can feel from her.)

tanjirou is the only person who can touch her without receiving a hiss or a flinch in response. he's familiar in a way that other people aren't. he knew her before everything, his touch warm and comforting. he can grab her hand without her slapping him away, and kuromaru doesn't even hiss when they bump against each other. this does mean he's twice as protective when they're in a crowd, always lingering close enough to headbutt or throw someone that gets close to her. on occasion, she might even seek out his touch - the deliberate brush of her knuckles against his, maybe her fingers curling into his haori sleeve for a half second before she's walking away, the most hesitant brush of her shoulder against his. the first time she takes his hand and the scent of happiness and suzuran fills the air and overpowers the cloying scent of fear, his heart stutters and soars in his chest

[minteayoongimakesmewoozi]

i still have serpent tsuguko!ayame thoughts whirling around in my brain........ 😔