waking up the devil | oikawa tooru

ii. ad meliora.

FOUR YEARS HAD GONE by since you had vanished. To Oikawa Tooru, that had been a lifetime; he had gone through a lifetime's worth of misery, at the very least, in those handful of years that you were probably off with an adoptive family.

He had tried to find you, of course. But once his true devil powers had embedded themselves into his body, unrestrained from the age caveat that God had set upon him, he had become a monster in more ways than one. And that wasn't something he wanted to subject you to.

His human form was nice, of course, he'd give it that. It was almost worth the trouble of dealing with mortal girls; after all, his needs weren't exactly being fulfilled when he was wandering the human world. It didn't stop him from destroying the girls he was with, however—they refused second rounds and were downright terrified to sleep with him once they'd had a taste of him.

Oikawa Tooru didn't do gentle.

"Another one running for the hills?" Iwaizumi Hajime watched as his latest fling slowly picked up her cheap lingerie from the floor, the scraps torn and ripped at the seams. Her flesh was littered with bruises and scrapes and bites, the imprint of Oikawa's fingers upon her throat livid and purple and painful. "You can't just do that to every girl you come across that doesn't know who you are."

Oikawa shrugged loosely from his place at the foot of his bed. He'd tossed on a pair of sweats when he'd finished with the girl, Maya or something, and healed her just enough to send her walking out the door. Iwaizumi was lucky he'd even decided to put pants on at all.

"They haven't stopped coming yet." He smiled wickedly and reached for his vape on the nightstand. Oddly enough he couldn't stand straight nicotine. "They'll just keep getting worse."

Iwaizumi grunted and took a seat on his couch. He was aware of Oikawa's issue with his temperamental devil side, had known about it since they were children. It had been almost like a switch had been flipped one day, out of the blue. He'd never spoken about what exactly had happened, but he seemed to mull over it often when he thought no one was looking or between rounds of beating his opponents into the ground.

Looking more closely as his friend blew smoke out through his nostrils, a combination of diluted nicotine and the unholy brimstone in his lungs, he could see dark rings underneath his eyes.

"Have you been sleeping?"

"Mm?" Oikawa raised his eyebrows and reached up to ruffle his disheveled hair. "Not lately. The bad guy's acting up again."

The 'bad guy' was, in a sense, Oikawa's true form. Or, at least, the truest version he could be refined down to. The only time Iwaizumi had been privy to seeing it was during a particularly bad time in Oikawa's life, over two years after the incident that turned him into the beast he was now. He would never forget the terrible monstrosity his friend had become.

And it was only getting worse. Iwaizumi watched as his friend got up and fumbled for his seal kit, haphazardly putting together the rune brush and witch blade. After his first outburst, he'd taken to sealing his devil down as far as he could get it without forsaking it completely. So far the seals had held and kept him docile, if not slightly high at all times, but lately he'd noticed Oikawa seemed more alert and fine tuned to everyone around him.

"Here." Oikawa handed him the blade and motioned to the only unmarked section of his body: his left pectoral. He had drowned the rest in intricate scrolling linework dotted with the occasional decorative snake and panther, scarred to be permanent and inked over to hold the seal. "Do it."

It was the first time he'd ever asked him to do it before.

Iwaizumi accepted the blade with a narrowed gaze. "Why do you want me to do it? Don't you usually do it?"

"Yes. And I would have." Oikawa's eyes were unusually bright in the darkness as he regarded his friend. "But lately they've become immune to my magic, so I figured you would be a good buffer to set me right for a bit."

Iwaizumi could see the devil lurking in his aura. With a sigh, he got up and waved Oikawa to lay down on the couch. "You know, Shittykawa, we've been friends forever and I still don't know why you're like this."

"And if I have my way, you never will," he replied with a hard edge to his voice. "Get to carving."

He sighed and lifted the blade to his skin. Oikawa seemed oblivious to the pain he should be in from his heavy hand. He stared at the ceiling and drummed his fingers to a beat only he could hear, oddly mimicking the pattern of a heart, and vanished into a world of his own creation. Iwaizumi could see him zone out and relax. Whatever he was imagining it had also calmed the devil down to the point he had a hard time sensing it.

Interesting.

When he was finished and had followed the pattern with an ink seal, Oikawa snapped out of it and his devil was present again like a third entity in the room.

"Thanks, Iwa." He rolled his shoulder and got up off the couch. Blood ran down his chest and he didn't seem to care, just swiped at it with a stray shirt and tossed it into a laundry basket. He then reached for a bottle of whiskey he had on his desk, uncorking it and taking a deep swig. "So what were you here for? Other than to make remarks about my sexual proclivities of course."

"Right." Iwaizumi had almost forgotten. He pulled out his phone and unlocked it, scrolling to a text message and tossing it to Oikawa. He caught it effortlessly, the devil's reflexes more accurate than usual. "There's a match tomorrow night, midnight. The betting pool is pretty high. I figured you would be interested."

"You'd be right." They both listened to his hookup slam the door down in the stairwell; Iwaizumi with a grimace and Oikawa with a dark smirk. "She didn't do the job so a fight would do me some good."

Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Sex didn't do anything for your temper? That's new."

"Yeah." His brows furrowed in thought and suddenly he was far away again, somewhere Iwa couldn't reach him. "A lot of things are new lately."

"Tooru, what's really got you wound up like this?"

Oikawa blinked at the sound of his first name. He almost seemed offended but thought better of the first thing he wanted to say and regarded Iwaizumi with a long stare.

He almost thought he would give in and tell him.

And then the devil made him close up, his eyes hardening like chips of ice. He took another swig of his whiskey.

Iwa: 0. Devil: 1.

"Guess not." He patted his thighs and Oikawa tossed him his phone back. "Well, I'm gone. Let me know if you need anything."

Again, he seemed on the verge of asking; but every time the devil stopped him.

"I will," Oikawa said, instead, a fake smile erupting across his face. Iwaizumi hated it. "Have a good night, Iwa."

He gave him a two fingered salute and headed for the door, locking it behind him.

Oikawa tapped his fingers against the glass bottle and drained the rest of it in one go, slamming it down on the desk with a frustrated sigh.

The devil didn't want just any random girl.

It wanted [Name].

He had tried to put her out of his head and had succeeded for the most part. He didn't deserve her, even if she had left like he didn't matter. He would drown his sorrows in whiskey or the most potent vodka he could find. And if that didn't work, he went to taking his frustrations out on the women he took to bed. But not even that was riding over the devil now.

The devil plagued him with dreams of [Name] in that field as if it had just been hours ago and not five years. It was just as obsessive over her as he was and time had not changed that. It just made it worse.

Oikawa almost pitied himself. He was pining over a girl he wasn't even sure wanted anything to do with him anymore.

With a hard rub of his eyes, he headed to the bathroom to clean up his seal and, hopefully, manage to deal with the devil for another day.

But things, unfortunately, were never always that simple.