Chapter Text
There's a demon in my room.
A phrase that, quite frankly sounds as if it should come from a five-year-old, clutching a fluffy teddy bear to her chest as she tugs at her papa's sleeve in the middle of the night, shifting from foot to foot, to ask him to chase away the monsters under her bed.
That wasn't the kind of demon who'd appeared in Tanpopo's room when she was a kid, and it took far more than a dutiful papa with a nightlight and mug of warm cinnamon and nutmeg spiced milk to chase away the monsters.
Or clean up the mess that had been left behind, a gelatinous crimson pool of blood that frothed and rolled out, soaking into the cracks in the floorboard as Shade perched, avian-like, above her bed, gore-endowed claws glistening in moonlight just like his manic grin.
There's a demon in my room.
When not the product of childhood fantasies and nighttime shadows, that would generally require military intervention by a contingent of Magical Heroines.
Now, roughly ten years later, it's not even cause for a temporary evacuation of the premises.
Only because she alone can see him.
Shade is typically all smooth self-confidence and sinewy, serpentine (“villainous”) charisma, unless he's terribly grumpy or in one of his snarky, teasing moods. Even now, when it's become normal, there's a bashfulness to him when he's not sure she's watching, attention drifting away from algebra homework without him noticing. Mathematics, the abstruse Kabbalistic magic of formulae and figures, is infinitely more demonic than him, despite the mouthful of daggers – no grinders; all fangs – and the way that the shadows cast by her desk lamp seem to curl towards him as if they're trying to swaddle him up, or beg for head-pats and attention.
When the headache comes, not that math homework isn't already one, she sneaks another glance at him through the gaps between her fingers while trying to crush the throbbing pain out of her eyes and, possibly, shatter the bridge of her nose.
Not an uncommon desire, to have a headache so intense you just wanted to crack open your own skull to release the pressure.
At least since Shade slunk into her life.
It's rare to catch a glimpse of him even on the days when he's lazing around just because he's bored; she can't be too blatant about it, although she couldn't be more obvious than he is while sitting in the middle of her blandly cheery bedroom, juxtaposed against stuffed animals and pastel and preppy painted walls. A little lump of coal just resting there, legs splayed, posture relaxed and bonelessly contorted because the gangly limbs are all unnatural, his proportions like that of a marionette. Emaciated twigs for arms and legs, angular features like they've been carved out of pale wood. Planes and edges rather than curves; a pallid, completely hairless jawline that's quite literally that – a line rather than a soft arch.
Maybe she's been staring too long.
It should have been obvious from the way tension bled from his shoulders, that air of boneless relaxation, unperturbed, provoking a slouch.
"See something that you like?" His smirk is like the one that appears when he's just eviscerated another shadow, but warped as if in a funhouse mirror. A dozen times, he's plucked her out of harm's way, let her see the authentic version that borders on mania. That's how she knows.
"I'm just zoning out," she retorts in an airy schoolgirl tone, treacly. "Staring into empty space."
There's a mirthful creasing around his eyes because he's getting revved up. "Meaning my head," he observes in mock offence and challenge. Like he wants her to affirm it.
"You said it," she demures so well, turning back to the spread of scrap paper, mathematics notes, and the worksheet that's marred with graphite smudges and flecks of eraser because that'll get under his skin worse than any insult ever could. "Not me."
His tongue clucks against the roof of his mouth. From her new angle, she can't see his expression. It's probably petulant, the big baby.
"Like you'd have the guts," he huffs to the crinkling of fabric, probably as he folds his arms. What are demon clothes made out of, anyway? How do shadows crinkle? "Don't expect me to catch you the next time you trip down a flight of stairs if this is the treatment I get."
"Ha! Not going to happen." She's turning over a new, independent and self-assured leaf. No more real life prat falls. "Tomorrow, I'll take every flight of stairs I see two at a time, and I won't even stumble once!"
She's right.
Got through a whole day sans a single stairway stumble.
That warped divot in an aging, cracked sidewalk, weeds poking through the fissures, did conspire to trip her, though.
Perhaps the extra ten minutes in bed and the frantic scramble to school hadn't been wise but Shade kept her up late because he wanted to watch some weird, seemingly incoherent game show that only aired at ten because it wasn't fit for consumption by anyone, least of all kids.
Her tumbling towards a flight of stairs, which seemed to have it out for her on principle, didn't have any bearing on the boast and resolution to turn the page on her teenage clumsiness whatsoever. She wasn't actually on the stairs when the inciting incident, which would have probably ended with her losing a few teeth as she pitched forward towards the abyss, occurred.
Begrudgingly, she had to admit that it was for the best that Shade was there to catch her, just on the edge.
As he floated down the stairs next to her, he shook his head incredulously, as if awed.
"Idiot," came his sighed chastisement . "How are you even still alive?"
The flush of embarrassment and frustration was better than a broken nose and gap-toothed smile.
Shade's never had trifle.
This is something, after ten years of their affiliation, to be rectified.
Post haste!
Even if she doesn't really think that he needs to eat, which makes some degree of sense since he can hardly even interact with her at most times, at least physically. Not that she has much experience, or studied the particulars of phantoms and their exotic morphologies and, for lack of a better term, biological limitations, but she's tried to hug him on more than one occasion. From kissing the wall, staggering into a lamp-post, or tripping over empty air - a few more times than she'd care to admit because, in her excitement, she forgets herself sometimes - rather than clutching at her best friend and guardian's chest, she figures that he controls his corporialty. Normal Phantoms are dangerous, after all.
They took her parents.
Didn't find it hard to touch them.
But the minutiae of life, including the vitally important trifle, which sounds like an oxymoron, is what matters.
Which is when she realizes it.
Shade eats kind of like a puppy.
Well, not really, because a puppy would probably faceplant in his bowl and inhale his kibble.
But it's kind of cute like a puppy because there's an initial hesitation and then, as if in a stuttered self-correction, clumsiness as he dunks the bowl of his spoon into the soft, smooth whipped cream layer of her trifle in a stab. Piercing sponge and custard, it sinks down to the bottom and clinks against the glass, and in response, almost as if he had expected the desert to fight him back, Shade starts almost imperceptibly, shoulders flinching and already bulbous, if angular, eyes widening.
“You've got to get a little bit of everything so that you can have the perfect bite,” she chirps after a heartbeat of silence, miming a scooping motion with her hand. Clutched between the queerly-proportioned talons of his thumb and forefinger in a fashion that's somehow ... dainty, the spoon just sitting there, sticking out of the now mangled swirl of whipped cream atop their miniature trifle.
“Right.” He hauls out a messy glob of sponge, cream, and custard. Messing up a trifle is, really, half the fun of eating it, no matter how pretty it looks when it's first set down in front of you.
“I know that.” Despite his assurance, a dismissive huff with lips peeling back from his fangs, he brings the spoon to his mouth in an almost tentative way, like the whipped cream might be carefully-concealed nitroglycerine or the custard made with holy water. With that tentative motion, the edge of some frothy cream brushes by his lip, just letting him get the faintest taste. His eyes widen again.
Tanpopo has learnt to enjoy messy thing; to survive with the sheer number of ... incidents that are completely unintentional, and thus not her fault, she's had to become inured against them, at least.
Another second of hesitation passes while she stifles a snort at the shifting expression, the toothy, perpetually manic grin melting and oozing and flickering on his face like a computer's processing lights cycling. Oily shadows undulate along his brown, creeping forward and then receding.
And then, ravenous, Shade feasts.
He chews, fangs gnashing soft, soaked pastry, like a carnivorous animal savaging a raw steak.
At every step, he eats like he's a puppy that hasn't actually learnt how yet.
Watching it is kind of enthralling, a car-crash, bloody and without any survivors, only splatters. Unfolding just as quickly while he scarfs down the whole thing. She actually forgets that they were supposed to share.
All that's left is an empty cup.
Shade pats his still-emaciated belly and burps without excusing himself, and all Tanpopo can do is stare mournfully at the flecks and scraps of fruit, cream, and custard while disposing of the dish and muttering under her breath.
The jerk.
Demon indeed.