title: ageless

genre: romance / hurt / comfort / horror

pairings: shiemi/amaimon, rin/bon

warnings: conversations about cancer, vague allusions to abusive relationships, and my many grammatical errors

"This is a story about the
monsters and the lovers,

This is a story about how
they became the same thing."

—Emily Palermo, Love in the Time of Monsters

chapter four: in which the door rattles twice

Shiemi manages to convince Izumo to go to lunch with her. It is no great feat as Izumo seems adamant not to let her out of her sight, but Shiemi feels cheered all the same. They wind up at one of the campus cafés that is reserved for professors—and professor incomes—exclusively.

It is a lively little place, meant to descend from the streets of Paris. Even the menu was dual lingual.

It would have been the perfect place for old friends to catch up, but Izumo has not taken her eyes off of her since they left the classroom. From the walk over to the moment they were seated at little iron-wrought chairs, Izumo has been studying her like a Tamer does a particularly rare demon.

Her gaze shifts from the length of her hair, to the curve of her cheek, the skin of her neck, and so on.

And now, facing each other, without the pretense of walking side-by-side, Shiemi is privy to the full intensity of that stare.

It makes her uncomfortable.

"So um, how have you been, Izumo-chan?"

Izumo blinks at her. "How have I been." She repeats this, almost to herself, slowly. "You want to know how I've been?"

"Yes," Shiemi struggles a moment. "How have things been?"

There is an awkward silence then, quickly filled by an astute waiter that comes to take their orders and leaves them feeling vaguely insulted when Izumo pronounces et aux noix with every letter.

"I would Yelp review this place," Izumo grumbles under her breath, "but I'm pretty sure I would wake up with Mephisto at the foot of my bed waiting to force-feed me that salad."

It makes Shiemi laugh and, for a moment, her heart is full. She has not seen Izumo in ages! Even in the multitude of letters, texts, and phone calls, nothing can truly replace the simple pleasure of sharing one's company.

"I missed this," she says aloud and Izumo stops looking over her shoulder, glaring at the waiter. Her brow raises in question. Shiemi smiles. "I've missed this. I miss seeing you, having lunch, being here," She breaks off with a smile. "I think all I really need now is Yuki-chan telling me to believe in myself more and Rin-chan swinging through with his demon friends and I'll be in high school again."

Izumo huffs like she's annoyed. "That's silly. No one wants to be stuck in one place forever."

"I know," Shiemi admonishes, blithely. "It's just the feelings I've missed."

"Me too," Izumo relents after a beat. "This past week has been . . . hectic. I'm glad I was able to run into you while I'm in the city."

"Oh, are you not staying long?"

"I can't. The Knights asked me to come check on something for them and one of them mentioned that you were in the area. I couldn't pass up the chance to see you."

Even though it feels like a compliment, something that should fill her with warmth, she feels utterly cold.

It may be the way that Izumo is looking at her now.

"How's the Husband?" Izumo asks.

It amuses Shiemi to no end that, of all her cram school classmates, that Izumo had been the one most unbothered by their relationship. In a domain in which everyone had an opinion, it had been refreshing. Shiemi could not thank Izumo enough for giving her support where she needed it and objective advice when she wanted it.

Still, Izumo is Izumo and upon meeting Amaimon and hearing him refer to her as his bride; Izumo had dubbed him the Husband. Much to his amusement.

"He's been good." She ventures, wondering how much to add. "He was gone when I left for work this morning. I think he's been anxious that I've been returning to the workforce—or, well, teaching. In person again."

Izumo shifts in her seat, fingers bracketing her water glass. "So, have you and the husband been," Izumo trails off, making a gesture that Shiemi cannot quite decipher. Izumo's gaze flickers to hers, almost insistent. "I mean, have you?"

"Well, what do you mean?" Shiemi prompts, confused.

As soon as its out of her mouth, it clicks. Oh, oh, well that's forward. Shiemi can feel her face growing redder than a pepper. She is about to correct Izumo—or confirm for Izumo—but her friend continues in the same, stilted speech.

"Like, have you two," she trails off, continuing to make gestures and then, red faced herself, leans forward and whispered. "Been doing blood rituals or something?"

Shiemi stares at her.

And stares.

After a moment, her flush of embarrassment turns to laughter. Wild peels of laughter. "Oh, oh my," Shiemi leans back in her chair, guileless of the waiter's return with their orders. He pauses a moment, taking in the scene, their flushed faces and bows out as quickly as he appeared.

Izumo's face is redder than a tomato now. "What? Why are you laughing? I'm being serious!" She hisses, pointing her fork at her playfully.

Shiemi wipes a tear from the corner of her eye, minding her makeup. "Oh, oh, I thought you were talking about sex."

"Huh? Oh. Oh! Ohmigod," Izumo drops her fork and hides her face behind her hands. Shiemi giggles, helplessly. Izumo stays behind her hands a moment, muttering to herself what sounds like a prayer for strength and patience. When she looks up, her expression is decidedly somber. "That's not what I meant."

Izumo's cheeks are still pink, as if sunburnt, it makes Shiemi smile. "That's a relief."

"And when did you get so casual about sex?" Izumo continues in a furious whisper, taking up her fork again. "I remember the days when you didn't even know what a crush was."

Shiemi raises her brows, reaching for the pepper across the table. "Well, when you're married to someone like Amaimon, you learn not to be so conservative about those kinds of things." She smiles absently, thinking of her husband's blunt manner. "He's very . . . open."

"It's a demon thing."

"It's an age thing."

Izumo grumbles to herself, the color in her cheeks cooled to a rosy kiss. "Whatever," Izumo finally stays, stabbing at her garden salad. She finally sets her silverware aside. "What I'm asking, really asking, is," Izumo takes a breath, "have you two been exchanging blood or anything like that?"

Shiemi has dealt with many things in her career as a Tamer. Since she entered into this world of demons, gods, and monsters; she has put her literal blood, sweat, and tears into her work. She has made blood pacts with demons. She has bitten her own thumb enough times to worry a scar.

She has fed her own blood into her garden to make it grow. She has exchanged locks of hair for information and endured charms and consequences.

She has even had her insides liquidated by chemo and came out alive, healthy even, with a heart that beats and lungs that breathe. White blood cells that don't multiply and attack.

Even then, the thought of exchanging blood with her husband has never crossed her mind. She is not even sure of the implications of such a thing.

She thinks of those big, dark jars of blood she feeds to her chuchi—and imagines drinking that down—and feels sick.

Her nose scrunches in disgust. "No, never."

Izumo snorts, indignant. "You could have fooled me. I haven't seen you since the Husband spirited you away to a house in the middle of nowhere." Izumo says evenly, but Shiemi can hear the tension in her voice return with fervor, taut as a bowstring. "So, either you've found the fountain of youth or you have exceptionally good genes because I'm sure feeling pretty crazy right now."

Everything about Izumo seems to be winding tighter and tighter. Her jaw, her fists, her mouth.

It's a pained expression, she realizes. Izumo is worried about her and she is sitting here, letting her stew in that worry needlessly.

She summons a smile. "Well, you know how I like to stay healthy—especially after I got sick—I've completely cut out sugars and most fats! I work out. Oh, and my skincare routine has been quite—"

"That's not it." Izumo shakes her head, eyes closing. "That's not. You look the same."

Her smile strains. "Well, thank you, Izumo, but—"

"No, Shiemi," Izumo leans into the table, eyes boring into hers once more. "You look exactly the same. It's like looking at a picture of you when you were twenty-two. It's—it's—before Osaka. It's before you left. You look like you did before."

Though Izumo doesn't mean it, it comes out like a swear. That before. That implication.

It hits Shiemi right in the throat and lodges there like tears.

Izumo falls silent. "Oh, Shiemi, I didn't mean—" But, she cannot think of anything to say, try as she might. She did mean it, then. In some small way.

Shiemi tightens her fingers into fists on her lap, tamping down that feeling. Whatever its name was. Her smile feels tight and unnatural now. Twitching on her cheek. "I wasn't exactly in the best shape when I left Osaka." Shiemi murmurs and watches the words wrap around Izumo's throat. "When the doctor ordered me to leave the city, I didn't really have a choice if I wanted to . . . get better."

She wants to say if I wanted to live because it's true.

Regardless, Izumo flinches as if struck.

And Shiemi feels guilty about it, her stomach clenches uncomfortably and she hates it. Hates that the first time she's seen Izumo in years has to be this way.

She hates more that she thinks about that time when she left her life, and career, in Osaka. The remission, the outbreak of demonic attacks, the orders to move to the countryside, somewhere peaceful and with clean air. It had been sudden, she knew that.

She knew her mother and friends and coworkers worried, but she had been sick so long, been sick and tired, and the world was always too loud, too bright, too full.

It had been a relief to leave it all behind and let someone else make the decisions.

"You look good," Izumo ventures, slowly as if she were afraid to speak. "You look healthier. It makes me happy."

It softens her, the look in Izumo's eye. It was never a measuring of grief, but her mother and Amaimon aside, Shiemi had always felt worse about telling Izumo when she had gotten sick. It had been so soon after Izumo found out she was pregnant. Shiemi had not wanted to put any added stress on her, especially after everything that happened.

Still, Izumo had been at her bedside, belly growing and temper flaring. She had knitted her socks and helped her cut her hair. Then she had knitted her hats.

Shiemi had been the one going through it, but Izumo had been hurt by it.

"Thank you," she whispers and it feels like a relief. One that she cannot quite touch, not yet.

Izumo looks like she wants to say more, but in that moment, her phone goes off. It's a loud alarm, an air horn of a thing, that disturbs several patrons—her coworkers—and leaves Izumo startled. She snatches it from her purse, glances at it, then wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. "Sorry, just a minute."

She rises from her seat, graceful and lovely as always, her long dark hair trailing after her like a curtain.

Shiemi catches the tail end of her sentence. "—sweetie? Ooh, fighting with Mike again?" Izumo's voice is tender and soft, the softest she has ever heard from her. She steps out of the café with a chorus of tiny bells.

She is not gone long, but when she returns Izumo is physically more relaxed, even if her eyebrow keeps ticking. "And that is why I never leave foxes to watch my kid. It's so annoying. My familiars think she looks just like my mom, so I never hear the end of it."

And like that, the conversation shifts.

And she jumps for it.

Shiemi cannot help but smile. "How is Tsuki? I haven't seen her in ages."

Izumo hums a little to herself, crossing her legs at the knee. "She's great. She' s been going to school and taking lessons from the Inari temple gods. She is heir to the name and all the rest, so everyone expects great things." Her voice always gentles when she talks of Tsuki, her little moon, her baby and then she pauses, a little wistful, and says, "I think she takes after her father more."

That draws a bought of silence from the both of them.

The waiter comes to collect their plates. He leaves a joint check.

Shiemi feels strangely guilty when she gets home later.

Amaimon is still gone, but then she is not quite sure when she should be expecting him back.

The thought strikes her as she stands on the threshold of the portal, looking back into her empty house and her empty house looking back at her. She locks the portal and puts her keys on the hook, takes off her shoes and drops her bag onto the side table.

She knows she should check on her hobgoblins. She should check the garden, the houseplants, her greenhouse plants, start dinner, call her mother—

But, instead, full of that ugly feeling that had been festering since lunch, she drifts through her own house like a ghost. She haunts the halls and pokes her head into empty rooms, looking for people that aren't there. No husband lounging on the couch. No children running the halls.

The whirl of the heater echoes her steps. The hobgoblins sleep in a pile in the kitchen.

She stands for a moment in the dark, thinking.

Her home feels tainted after her conversation with Izumo.

"Spirited away to the middle of nowhere," she murmurs to herself and drifts through the house. The waxy leaves of plants twist down to greet her as she passes one hall and then the subtle scent of flora as she passes into another. Everywhere, all around her are plants, framed photographs, hand-woven blankets, and books.

Her home is a cozy one. One she nested in after she left Osaka for the country.

Mephisto had helped Amaimon arrange it. A new doctor, a new place, a new treatment.

She hung for a moment on the door to her greenhouse, the trapped heat clinging to the glass windows, a hazy blend of green beyond it.

She loved the house the instant they stepped into it. She slept for hours that summer in the garden, soaking up the rays of fresh sunshine, Amaimon curled beside her in a worried, protective slump.

He had never been the overly affectionate type, though he showed it when he could. However, something in that summer made him cling to her. He would put her to bed at night, rubbing her nape where her hair had begun to bristle and kiss along the knobs of her spine where she began to fill out. Nothing sexual. Just warmth. Real warmth soaking back into her with the sun's rays.

She had been so overwhelmed, with the hospital, with her friends, with dying that—

—it had been a relief to get away from it all. Away from the big exciting city, away from her well-meaning and teary friends, away from chemicals and hospitals. She needed a break from the trauma of it all. She needed—in those days—space.

Shiemi got the strange, uncomfortable feeling that her blissful space was over and the thought made her cry.

The house is far too quiet in the days to come. There is no waking to loud music blaring from the old radio in the kitchen. No brigade of hobgoblins trampling the floor after bootheels. There are no forehead kisses, no nest of blankets and limbs, nor the fresh smell of lilac and on her pillow.

She still wakes every morning, makes breakfast, goes to work, checks her messages, comes home, tends to the garden, makes dinner and goes to bed.

Nothing wilts. Nothing wavers.

But, Amaimon's disappearance is intimately felt in every aspect of her day-to-day.

She pulls up a list of forests on her laptop and searches for nature preserves under attack, and deforestation plans, and wildfires. She comes up with many results. Too many.

Then she feels stupid for it having occurred to her that Amaimon never told her exactly where it is that he is disappearing to. Japan? China? America? South America? It is something oddly reminiscent of their early years, as friends, not dating. The secrets. The lapse in conversation.

She sits in their kitchen, with a mug, pouring over her lesson plan for the coming day, when she realizes that she has read the same line over twice now. Resigned, she rises from her chair and drifts over to her school bag that she left on the hall table. She left her phone in there, as per usual.

She finds two missed calls from Izumo and some texts. A couple texts from Rin. An article link from Miwa.

Nothing from Amaimon.

She shoots off a quick message to him, but when she checks it later, after class, she finds that her own text still hasn't gone through. A simple I love you sat with an exclamation point, unsent and, therefore, unread.

She tries to send it again, and again, and again.

Of her cram school student, none seem to show any promise as a Tamer. It has become a source of her frustrations, or one of them at least, and Mephisto's annoyance.

"Really? Not one of them? Not even the Shima?" Mephisto looks aghast, his delicate tea cup poised over its matching saucer. He had asked her high tea more often than once and even though his style is vaguely European, he still insists on a Japanese tea ceremony.

"I'm afraid not." She says, resigned. "I'm going to try another approach, more relaxers and demon blood. Maybe even some summoning games? I think those might help."

Mephisto waves his hands dismissively and sets his tea cup aside. He looks suddenly too resigned to speak as he falls deep in thought. Shiemi does her best not to shift or sip too loudly. She has always felt vaguely uncomfortable alone in Mephisto's presence, but that had never been often. Never been much of a problem.

But, now Mephisto almost always insists that they get lunch together. In-laws and all.

And Shiemi is less and less likely to refuse.

Mephisto sighs, fingers drumming against the arm of his chair. "Well, that must be hard on you, being such an exceptional Tamer and all."

Shiemi sets her tea cup down on the table between them. The sugary rind of the glass suddenly too sweet. She bites her lips together.

Amaimon often told her that Mephisto did not approve of their union, however contrary to his actions. Mephisto did not like the words that followed them. Did not like the taunts of a demon king marrying a demon tamer. He said it made for bad publicity.

Until one day, Amaimon announced that his brother was over it.

"It is frustrating," she relents, slowly, carefully as she might pot a sapling. "I have carried them through the steps, but they simply don't have the strength or the talent yet." Mephisto's frown returns briefly. Like a flash. It renews her vigor. "But—but I am going to be trying some other methods soon, like—"

"I think," Mephisto says smoothly, it almost sounds innocent, unanimous. "That this is an opportune time to apply some pressure onto our dear students. Sometimes true gifts, like my little brother's, are only ever fully realized when put under pressure."

She remembers the story of Rin's awaken and shivers.

"What are you suggesting?"

Mephisto leans back in his over-stuffed chair. "I was thinking, perhaps, your hobgoblins may be sufficient. They can act as motives for the children to summon something to protect them."

It takes her a moment of mumbling over the words before the meaning sinks in and, when it does, Shiemi feels the sick, uneasy feeling of being alone with someone very dangerous.

"I don't think," she begins, but then Mephisto tilts his head, his teeth peaking beneath his lips and she falls silent. He is not saying anything, but the intention of his actions are clear. Amaimon must have been lying when he said he was over it. She can feel a cool chill sweep over her. "Give me a couple more days with them. I'll see what I can do."

"I would rather be do this sooner." He says gently, but his tone suggests no room for argument. "I would prefer that they gain these insights sooner rather than later."

"I think I can get more out of them if I'm given more time."

It's abrupt. Rude, even.

Shiemi stares him down.

Mephisto stares back. Unamused.

"Please."

A slow smile tugs at his mouth, more fang than before, but he tames his curling lips into a mask. "Whatever you say, Schwägerin. I will give you three days to get some results from our little cram school students, but after that I will be stepping in."

He says nothing more, but the threat is still there. She can taste it like the sugar in her mouth.

Shiemi nods, even though she is shaking on the inside, even though her fists are clenched with terror, she smiles. "Of course, thank you."

"Great! Now, we shall have cake." He produces a square blond cake from seemingly nowhere and plates it even more quickly. The cake is spongy, almost airy, with little wheels of pineapple decorating the top under a dusting of powdered sugar.

Shiemi takes a bite if only to satisfy Mephisto. Her stomach is upset.

"I had Amaimon pick this up for me the other day," Mephisto continues, conversationally. "I may have given my whole heart to the land of the rising sun, but my stomach still loves the culinary arts of Germany. This was my favorite coffeecake to take with the—are you alright?"

Shiemi realizes that she had frozen at the mention of her husband's name and puts her fork down.

"'The other day?'" She repeats, like the times when she had to question the foreign exorcists in Osaka on their Japanese. Mephisto nods, politely. "You saw him the other day?"

"Yes," Mephisto takes a bite of his cake and smiles. He continues eating until he is plating himself another slice. "Trouble in paradise?"

"No, no. We just—he has been helping a friend of his. Her forest was overrun?" It comes out like a question. Mephisto's flat expression gives her nothing, but he cants his head to her words. "I've just missed him these past couple of days." A week, she realizes belatedly. He's been gone a week. "I just worry."

"I wouldn't," Mephisto says, nose scrunching. "My little brother is always finding a way to make it through. Even when he shouldn't."

i hate to end on a cliff-hanger/shocking note, but honestly i'm doing whatever i want. into the hellfire!

i've had to physically restrain myself from posting this too early because i wanted to read more of the manga, but sadly my library only has up to 20, so i will have to buy the rest of them (or find them online, camp at a store, i've got bills kids).

i really want to tell a grander story here, something that is constantly unfolding and i think izumo is a big part of that. shiemi and amaimon lived in their own world for a yet unnamed number of years (guess in the comments) and she has a kid, not a baby, a kid! so, we're getting an idea of the passage of time. little context clues. also, who is izumo's baby-daddy?

when will rin appear? where is everyone else? why have i been binge eating? all this and more on the next episode of Ageless.

have a good night!

- cafeanna