unwanted demons | iwaoi

Chapter 17

If stress is coffee in a cup, and if the cup spills you are overwhelmed and sick, then it makes sense to put a lid on that cup. This is managing your life, choosing wisely what you can and can't cope with. This way we keep an open heart and see that we are doing the most we can do whilst remaining in good health.

One way Oikawa put a lid on his cup is not to watch the news, to not talk with those who bring a sense of love into his life. We can make choices to care for the self and still be kind. You can care better for others from strength than weakness and you can always keep your sense of duty to others as your moral compass, as the reason you come back to help even at the expense of your own comfort. It's a prudence with integrity that awaits the right moment to be brave. Tooru wasn't brave.

His nerves were frayed to the quick. In his building anxiety he constructed elaborate rationalizations for why everything would turn out alright, but still the nagging voice in the back of his mind spoke of nothing but doom ahead. There was a tenseness to his muscles that makes him more like a mannequin on this soft mattress than a man of flesh and bone. He wanted so much to melt onto the soft foam, wrapped in it, and drift into the world of dreams.

Yet his brain is a violent whirl of stupidity, trying to organize the chaos in his life. It seeks to discover a way to control the capriciousness of people, to acquiesce and please them so that the encounters are softer, less draining. Of course the task is pointless, life is far too random for a human brain to take the billions of factors that come together to form just one day for one person.

Though Tooru's conscious brain knows all this by subconscious it remains stubborn in its attempts to protect him. To ensure his survival. Ironic really, what he really need to survive tomorrow is sleep, at lease six hours would be nice. Maybe a hug to.

In the inkiness of Oikawa's mind supplies demons real and fictitious. It reminds him of deadlines both near and distant, demanding that he slice the time between now and then ever thinner to apportion hours and minutes to each mind-numbing task.

He didn't want to go over this all again. It was out of order, this wasn't meant to happen today. In fact it was never meant to happen.
He had wrote a list in his planner, He has alerts from his phone, yet somehow all that isn't enough. Today didn't follow his plan, he wasn't meant to see him.
Wasn't meant to see him for a long time.
Tooru didn't like it when things did it go to plan.

Oikawa felt the panic begin like a cluster of spark plugs in his abdomen. Tension grew in his face and limbs, his mind replaying the last attack. A month before. His breathing became more rapid, more shallow. In these moments before his personal hurricane, he understood the drug addict, the alcoholic... anything to stop the primal surge to flee. He hit the speed-dial and ran into the back room to escape his gaze.

The thoughts were accelerating inside his head. He wanted them to slow down so he could breathe but they won't. His breaths come in gasps and he feels like he would black out. His heart hammering inside his chest like it belongs to a rabbit running for its skin. The room spins and Tooru squatted on the floor, trying to make everything slow to something his brain and body can cope with. He felt so sick. His wings appeared behind him and his tail uncoiled from his torso.

I let my emotions get the best of me

After all these years he still pulled his phone out in a shaky and sharp movement and went to Iwaizumi's contact. This happens every time he panicked. Ever since the beginning of his 3rd year in high school he would call Iwaizumi, get him to come over and cuddle with him, help him wish he pain and anxiety away. He would let him trail gentle kisses down his neck that would calm his nerves completely and make him feel home in a place he would of never uttered such a word. 'Home'

Of course when they graduated he could no longer do this once they drifted. But every time he still went to Iwaizumi's contact and hovered his thumb over the call button before throwing his phone away from him.

When stressed and afraid, the human brain is only made better at learning and remembering things we fear - it locks us in with our demons and gives them longer claws. It makes us want to hide in the dark and make no sound, ready to fight if we need to. In this state we invent new monsters, we look for more, desperate to survive...

Though in truth all they need is a little light to show that the "monsters" are only clothes in the closet, that perhaps a fancy dress costume made an interesting shadow, but everything is okay. Tooru was okay. He had to be, he didn't have the option not to be and he never had done. "Take deep breaths Tooru..." he muttered to himself shakily and pulled his knees to his chest- with every breath he released another worry or anxiety. Oikawa couldn't let anything else fall out of order, not go to plan or he truly would loose it.

Iwaizumi's words rocked his mind, leaving it moving in foreign ways, ways he had become unaccustomed to over these many lonely years. Iwaizumi was an echo, but one with the power to tear down walls that Tooru had built high and deep. So though he needed Hajime, wanted him, loved him...he wanted to walk away.

Coming to Iwaizumi, to be healed by him, will break him and he knows it.
For to come to him is forbidden, yet to stay away is pain.
More deep breaths.
Oikawa repeated this for awhile until his heartbeat slowed to its normal pace and the panic settled to low whispers in his ears. Well, he was still panicking as he didn't know what to do. He thought on this for what must've been an hour when he heard suga knocking on the door.

"You okay in there Tooru? "
He heard and immediately got to his feet. He couldn't be seen like this, couldn't be see as weak or vulnerable. Oikawa looked to the back door and frantically pulled open the lever, forcing his wings to disappear before running out the door, a mere few seconds before Suga came in. "What the?..."

His feet pounded the tarmac with all the grace of a sack of wet concrete, the springing graceful steps of twenty feet earlier had long since disappeared. His rasping throat was as parched as a dead lizard in the desert sun. His head bobbed loosely from side to side and his eyes felt heavy in their sockets. He ran and ran until he couldn't no more, collapsing onto a park bench. Oikawa was glad he hid his wings and tail as there must've been at least 100 people in the park. The funny thing was that he was too drunk on his own thoughts to notice all the onlookers, all the adults, parents and children running around the park in a carefree manor.

The brunette gulped and looked up at the clean blue sky, merely one cloud could be seen.
But the he heard the voice of a man that made him shiver. The voice of a man that he had been running from for so long that it had now caught up to him.

"This isn't how I planned my afternoon"

A/n
Votes and comments are appreciated!