Demon Slayer Oneshots

☁️Zenitsu/Reader: Static Part 1/2

I have bestowed the honor of the first oneshot on my little moe Dorito prince, for whom I have a mighty love.

Request for imanagentofchaos, local_bedsheet_ghost, Wolfygirllove, and... ME! Cuz author-chan always gets the first request! Mwahaha! Tis the rules.

Description: Zenitsu keeps shocking you by accident when he gets flustered. It's starting to get out of hand.

"F/N-chaaan!~" A familiar timbre called- or more like sang- your name. You heard light footsteps pattering around the courtyard and knew your quiet solitude was not long for this world. You let out a tiny sigh of acceptance and then realized your instant mistake. Considering how adept that boy's hearing was you might as well have screamed out your position. "F/N-chan?" It was mere seconds before his blond mop of hair popped out from around the corner. "There you are!" His face lit up with a blithe smile and you politely returned it.

"Hi, Zenitsu. Lovely day, isn't it?"

"Mhm." He approached with a bounce in his step and knelt by your side at the edge of the washbasin. "But not nearly as lovely as the flower in this garden." You eyed your surroundings for a moment in confusion. This side of the Wisteria estate surely housed too much shade to allow for natural growth. You were quite literally kneeling on a mix of patchy grass and dirt. It was then you caught him grinning directly at you and you couldn't help but chuckle; not at the cleverness of his flirting, but at just how proud he looked for coming up with that line. He seemed encouraged by your reaction and found the nerve to speak again. "So what are you doing hiding all the way over here?"

"Oh, I'm not hiding. Just doing laundry." His lips curled into a tiny pout.

"It's not fitting for a lady to exert herself." He scuttled forward until he was almost shoulder-to-shoulder with you and rolled up his sleeves. "May I?"

"Erm, well-"

"I insist."

"Suuuure..." You chewed your bottom lip as he grabbed a washboard and dunked his arms into the soapy water. Now you immediately regretted throwing your delicates in amongst the kimonos with reckless abandon this morning.

"I think a good husband would never let his wife do all the chores by herself." He said it in a chipper sort of way, almost as if he found these mundane activities pleasant, therapeutic. You cast him a sidelong glance. There it was again. Zenitsu easily talked about marriage ten times as frequently as any teen his age you'd ever met. If there were a record he'd have definitely beaten it by now. It was curious to say the least, and you'd wager commitment was the only thing this boy wasn't afraid of.

However, you'd caught on to a nuance in his tone as of late. These situations no longer felt forward to you anymore, and you found yourself minding them less and less as time passed. Something about his demeanor didn't make you feel stifled as it had at first. There was nothing predatory about these conversations, no suggestive eyebrow jerk, no elbow nudge and a wink. Zenitsu wasn't trying to box you in, trap you in an eternal game of cat and mouse; he was just a boy sharing his dreams with you.

All he wanted was a simple life, to feel loved by someone, and in return he vowed to dote on that someone like crazy. Zenitsu had always been very open about that dream, and it was easy to see why now, why he behaved the way he did. He craved little moments like these, ones that paralleled his fantasy, where he could imagine settling down and starting the family he never had. It was the missing piece of him, the void he longed to fill, and the exact reason he got into the bad habit of violently shoving people into it, anyone he thought might fit.

You had felt a hard pang of guilt the day this epiphany came to you, and as retribution started treating him with the kindness he deserved in the first place. Besides, what harm could it do to play house with him sometimes? It's not as if his presence was any kind of great burden to you. To the contrary, if you were being brutally honest with yourself, you had to admit you'd grown to like the attention. The companionship and routine of it all seemed to calm him, even bring a golden twinkle back to his recurrently tearful eyes. You found yourself coaxing it nowadays, that little twinkle, even expending effort to bring it to the surface. You didn't know why. You just... liked seeing it?