#devilman imagine

Nighttime drives are your favorite.

There are hardly any other cars on the roads, and your eyes are spared the ugly glare of headlights flashing in your mirrors or from cars in the opposite lanes, headed the opposite direction. Lamp posts leave spots of light to illuminate the asphalt roads in addition to your own car lights, and you’re driving into the blackness, the glittering city skyscrapers getting farther and farther away.

You bask in the silence afforded by moments like these, the radio having been switched off as soon as you got in. In the daytime, you typically have it on to mask the sound of passing cars, the whoosh which begins as a low thrum during the approach, then a quick burst of noise as they drive by, before the sound fades again. You’ve been hunched over your work all day, so to be here now, mindlessly zooming down the street, is welcome stress relief.

Your stomach growls and you wince slightly. It’s the first noise to permeate the cabin besides your occasional deep breaths, steady inhales and exhales to relax after a long day. You hadn’t bothered to eat prior to hopping in the car. The thought of food had slipped from your mind since you hadn’t been hungry, and you were too eager for quiet time to yourself to have a snack. You’ll have to grab something to eat on your way back.

Eventually the smooth asphalt roads are traded for bumpy, uneven terrain, and while this is considerably less relaxing, you’re not bothered because it means you’ll soon arrive at your destination. Instead of lamp posts to light the way, you rely solely on your car headlights and the moon above. The latter isn’t helping much at all, unable to touch the ground and only strong enough to shine on the leaves of the trees to your left and right. For any other person, coming through here might prove to be difficult at this time of night, but you have no such problems. You’ve memorized the route.

Once the car is parked and the headlights switched off, you exit and push the door shut behind you. The chirps of crickets echo in every direction. They sound nearby, the volume growing still as you pop open the trunk, as if they have come to see what you are up to. No one comes out here, much less past midnight. It wouldn’t be safe, considering the animals who might roam in the tall grass and behind thick tree trunks. But even as the chirps and the hoots of owls and the scurrying of small creatures in the bushes grow louder, like they are closing in, you’re not afraid. Would you come as often as you do if you were?

There’s only one bag in the trunk tonight. Sometimes you have as many as five. One is a nice break for your back, and it only takes a single trip to carry it out to the middle of the small clearing. It lands with a heavy thud and kicks up a small cloud of dust. The movement has disturbed the contents inside, and you recoil in disgust as the smell reaches your nose. You nudge at the garbage bag with the toe of your boot, like you’re expecting it to twitch, and with a shudder and shake of your head, you take a few steps back and reach into your jacket pocket.

The matchbox is feeling light. Okay, add that to the checklist. Buy food and a new box of matches. You strike a fresh match and briefly revel in the quiet hiss of the fire which bursts forth, eating away at the head and down the wood. Before it reaches your fingers, you toss the match onto the garbage bag and watch as it burns, tendrils of smoke trailing higher and dissipating to nothing. The stench worsens as the bag is engulfed in flames and your repulsion increases. You have to cover your nose with your hand and this might seem like good reason to leave, but you need to stay to make sure the fire is strong enough that it doesn’t accidentally go out due to any gusts of wind.

Come on, you berate yourself. You’ve done this before. Seconds of waiting are like hours and it’s ironic, you can’t help but think as you stand there, willing yourself not to be sick. You have seen and smelled and felt much worse.

When the fire is sufficiently strong enough that you’re confident it won’t go out before its job is done, you turn away and speed walk back to the car, yearning for fresh air. You slam the trunk closed. Coming out here was fun and all, but you’re now ready to leave. As if on cue, your phone dings with a text message. After sliding into the driver’s seat and getting situated, you open it to find two street names. They’re familiar to you. You’ve driven past this intersection in the past, though that had been in the day. You continue to stare down at the succinct message while mentally mapping your way there from here, and blink curiously at the three dots at the bottom of the conversation.

A new chat bubble pops up: Don’t be late.

You roll your eyes and toss your phone onto the passenger seat, not bothering to reply. Since when are you ever late? The engine roars to life and you leave the nocturnal animals to their own devices, until next time, whenever that should be. Perhaps soon. The spot of orange flames in your rearview mirror shrinks the farther you drive and there comes a point where you aren’t sure if you have driven far enough for it to be too small to see any longer, or if it has finally fizzled out.

Though you’re back in the city, you’re back in a part of it that lacks functioning lamp posts. It’s pitch black in the alleyway, and if not for your night vision, you’d be left clawing at the walls to guide yourself along. Walking with a sense of ease that doesn’t entirely fit the context, given the time and the nonexistent lighting and your generally unassuming and nonthreatening figure, you traipse down the long path between the two buildings. You hear the scuffle before you see it.

Heavy fists swinging through the air; loud roars; claws sinking into flesh with a squelch; spurts of blood. It sounds ugly. You peek around the corner. The monsters fighting have no trouble sensing each other in the darkness, yellow liquid painting the ground and walls. If you didn’t know any better, and if you didn’t pick up on the scent, it might look like paint. You appear to have arrived in the middle of the fight, but it’s soon over, and the only demon left is heaving with labored breaths, long wings outstretched and his back to you. He straightens to his full height, having been bent into a fighting stance previously, and twists around.

Glowing white eyes find you effortlessly, and a sinister smile curls at his mouth, sharp teeth menacing. You’re not frightened by the predatory leer as you reveal yourself fully from behind your hiding spot. He watches you walk closer, but your gaze isn’t on him—rather, it’s on the corpses littering the ground.

You hum in thought as you survey the scene, stepping over limbs and guts, the only bits of demon gore you can avoid because the blood is everywhere, and it covers the soles of your boots. “Well, you didn’t tear all of them to shreds at least.”

“It’s easy to get carried away.” The devilman’s voice is deep, and there’s a flanging to it, as though he’s speaking with two voices instead of just one. You shrug as though to say I guess and you’re not looking but can tell he’s shifting back, tendrils of black smoke shrouding the beast. It fades gradually and Akira now stands before you, back in human form and flanging distinctly absent from his voice.

“Do you have enough?” he asks.

You flip over a demon that looks to be in reasonable shape onto its back, and you’re satisfied to see its stomach hasn’t been cut open. One of the legs is missing and the arms are bent at strange angles, but you’ll make do. This is better than nothing.

“I do,” you confirm.

With hands tucked into your pockets, you turn to look at Akira. Blood stains his clothes and his hair and he tries to wipe off what sticks to his skin, but he isn’t entirely successful as some of it has dried.

“Hey, uh, I parked my motorcycle farther down the block,” he begins. “I don’t suppose you could give me a lift there?”

You did park closer than that, having left your car at the end of the alleyway for a short and easy walk. But you shake your head, brow raised as you motion to his bloodied form. “With you like that? You’ll stain the leather.”

Akira isn’t bothered by your refusal and merely chuckles, nodding his acquiescence. “Yeah… I figured.” He sighs heavily, the fatigue of the fight seeming to finally catch up to him. “I’ll see  you later then.”

After he has made his leave, you stay to pack up the most intact demon body you had found. It really is simple for Akira to get carried away. You’re lucky there’s even one body to take back with you, for there have been times in the past he has torn them all limb from limb, ripped apart their torsos until entrails splattered on the ground, the squelch as he trampled them underfoot music to his ears. This sense of euphoria from slaying demons he had detailed to you a while ago, and though you understood the blood thirst and the satisfaction to sate it even slightly, you did have to keep reminding him to try leaving some in suitable condition.

I don’t get it, he’d said once before. If you want them in one piece, why don’t you do it?

The answer had been a simple one to you. The fighting’s dirty. I don’t like to be a bloody mess at the end of it. If that meant you had to wait until Akira left decently unmarked corpses, you would deal with it. Though to his credit, he’d been better about it lately. There’s at least one viable body each time he goes out on the hunt for bands of demons, and once there had even been three.

This demon is much heavier than the last. Granted, you don’t have any trouble pulling this one along in a bag and tossing it into the car, but you can still detect the vast differences in weight. The car sinks slightly under the added burden, and the trunk nearly doesn’t close due to the protrusions on this particular demon, with its large curled horns and spiked scales down the length of its back. Luckily you’re able to force it closed. You didn’t want to spend extra time tying a rope around the trunk to keep it shut. You’re tired, it’s been a long night, and you’d like to go home now.

———

Akira’s always been bad about keeping quiet.

He lets himself into your house with the spare key beneath the rug, and he closes the front door a little harder than necessary with the strength he sometimes forgets stays with him in human form. You hear it slam even from downstairs and flinch at the sudden interruption, but luckily you aren’t occupied with anything that requires a steady hand. He calls out your name but you don’t reply. He already knows where you are.

His footsteps coming down the staircase are loud, and you sigh. How he can get the drop on the demons he hunts is beyond you, when he makes so much noise as it is. Once he reaches the bottom and spots you, he flashes you a boyish grin.

“That the body from last night?”

You nod, your gaze dropping back down to the table where you set the demon corpse. You’ve cut open the torso, a neat slice across the chest and down the sternum. The thick, rough skin is pinned down with needles, several more than what a human cadaver would require. A bowl of viscous membrane you have peeled away to reveal the organs sits in a silver bowl, but that’s the most you have done so far. You stopped to wash your hands and take notes.

Akira stands on the other side of the table and glances down into the depths of the demon he killed. He likes to watch you work. At first, you’d asked him to stop, becoming unnerved to be scrutinized so closely. But he didn’t really listen. He’d leave for five minutes to scavenge your kitchen for food, and then he’d be back. You have since given up telling him to entertain himself elsewhere.

Eventually he goes from standing by the table to sitting in one of the sofa chairs you have placed down here. He lounges on it sideways, back against one arm and legs bent over the other. You’re completely absorbed in your task, sawing at bones to open up room to reach in. Blood covers your hands and the sleeves of the lab coat you wear. He doesn’t know exactly what part you’re searching for, but it apparently takes some time, as you make little cuts here and incisions there. You dip your hand in, and the torso is so large almost your entire forearm disappears as you lower it.

Aha! you exclaim quietly in victory. Akira’s brows furrow as you pull out… whatever organ that is. He’s not sure. But whatever it is, you’re happy to have found it, and you set it on a silver tray for further study with some of the finer tools.

“Why are you so interested in dissecting demons?” It’s a question he has had for a while, and he had never bothered to ask it until now. Perhaps it was the fascination inherent on your face as you scanned over your tools for the appropriate one, the excitement to dive further into the innards of the demon laying across the cold table, which pushed him to speak.

You don’t respond right away, picking up a scalpel and evaluating it before you seem to decide it’s a good choice. Nosce te ipsum, you then recite.

Akira tilts his head. He’s uncertain if that was a reply to his inquiry or if you’re just muttering to yourself. “Huh?”

“Know thyself,” you explain. “In Europe in the sixteenth century, the phrase was used to defend the necessity of human dissection, which was illegal at the time. It’s important to learn the mechanisms of one’s own body, and that’s best done by delving into a body like your own.” You punctuate your anecdote with a careful slice of the organ on the tray, and a thick black liquid oozes from the cut. Your eyes brighten in delight.

Akira nods slowly, putting together the pieces. “So you dissect demons to learn more about your demon side.”

You hum in affirmation. “Correct. I’ve long wondered what arrangement of organs lies beneath the surface when I take on that form.”

The way you handle each body part as you work is elegant. You separate each one slowly, making sure you don’t accidentally rupture or put undue pressure on other organs you have yet to take out. It’s a stark contrast to the brutal ravaging Akira gives the demons he kills. He can’t help it. He lives for the blood on his claws and the rip and tear of flesh. It makes perfect sense why you’re opposed to the idea of getting your hands dirty. It’s not in your nature to be messy—it hadn’t been before you merged with a demon, and it still remains as such. If there were cleaner methods to exterminating demons, you might be more open to the idea of killing them yourself. But who knows, maybe you’re already working on that as a small side project.

Some time passes. Akira doesn’t keep track, but he does fall asleep briefly at one point. He wakes back up and his stomach growls, but you’re not paying attention. A glance at the clock tells him it’s early evening, so he suggests the two of you get food.

You don’t always accept, wanting instead to remain in your lab, poring over demon guts. On those days, you settle for eating whenever you decide to call it quits, or you might not even eat at all. Every time he asks if you’d like to tag along, he hopes you’ll say okay. He likes your company.

It may be reasonable to assume that as of the current moment, you have no appetite. You’ve been working with a corpse for the last couple of hours, and the smell isn’t pleasant. But the assumption is wrong, for the thought of getting some food in your stomach sounds like a wonderful idea.

“What’d you have in mind?”

Akira smiles widely. “How about ramen?”

———

You return home alone. Akira had left after dinner, intent to hunt for the remainder of the evening. Once you arrive and set your keys in the bowl by the door, you contemplate returning to your work, but you don’t think you’ll be able to concentrate. The warm food made you sleepy, and you’ve been running low all day after the late night you had.

Instead, you settle for changing into comfortable clothes and relaxing. Your phone is left face-down on the coffee table as you walk into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. You're not expecting any calls or messages. At this time of night, it would usually only be cross streets from Akira, to let you know where you could find more demons to take back to the lab. But you had already told him before you parted earlier that he didn’t need to do that tonight. You’re still working away at the most recent corpse.

Since your mind still drifts to thoughts of said body downstairs, you decide to at least review the notes you’ve taken today. You sit on the couch, mug in one hand and notebook in the other. The pages are incredibly immaculate despite its proximity to all the demon offal, but you do consider yourself quite the neat freak. You wouldn’t stand for a drop of blood anywhere on your journal. Besides, you sometimes bring this with you when you go out, in case you should have any new thoughts on what you have researched, and dark red splotches would seem suspicious.

Once you catch up on everything you’ve written, you glance at the clock. It’s sufficiently late enough that you can shower and head to bed and it wouldn’t be too early. But it’s still earlier than usual, and you welcome the idea of a full night’s rest. You’ll resume your work first thing in the morning.

You always clean your hands thoroughly in the lab, but you never feel as though you have truly washed away the blood and sinew until you step into the shower, the hot water, entirely too hot for most but the perfect temperature for you, stinging your skin and turning it pink. Steam rises and fogs up the mirror and the bathroom smells like peaches. With the weather steadily growing colder, hot showers are all the more a comfort.

The towel you wrap around yourself is white and fluffy. Your wet hair clings to bare skin, tendrils gently curling as they stick to your shoulders and collarbones. You’re rifling through the closet for pajamas when the door opens and closes loudly.

Your brows furrow and you look towards your open bedroom door. You know who’s here, but unless he’d texted you while you were in the shower, you weren’t expecting to see him for the rest of the night. Unless…

Once more the heavy thud of his shoes pounding on the stairs echo throughout the house, and as he stomps down the hallway. He comes to a stop in the middle of the doorframe, and you see Akira standing before you, but you know it isn’t him entirely. The demon side of him is peeking through despite his human form, too strong and too desperate for indulgence to be contained. He’s snarling, eyes wild, fists clenched tightly and heaving hard as if he’s attempting to hold back. His gaze is predatory as he stares at you, the prey in his sights. But you are not at all helpless, you both understand that.  

However, you also understand what it is Akira needs, why he’s here, and so you play your part, waiting there for him to sink his teeth in. You hear him inhale deeply, taking in your smell, not only the smell of your peach shampoo but the smell of you, the nuances of the scent which unmistakably make up who you are. And though you find yourselves cut from the same cloth, find yourselves to be kindred beasts of hell, even he moves too fast for you to track.

He doesn’t give you room to breath. His lips are on yours and his tongue shoves its way into your mouth and his hands are everywhere. Your muffled whimpers and weak squeezes at his biceps to slow down are only half an act. He doesn’t listen, and maybe it’s the lack of oxygen to your head or the fact you get it, you get what it feels like to lose control, that doesn’t leave you genuinely angered that he fails to let up.

You pant loudly when he finally gives your mouth a break, now focusing on the tender skin of your neck. He bites down, sharp teeth sinking in, and you scream because fuck, it genuinely hurts. His chuckle is dark as his hand trails up to untuck the towel around your body.

Come on, you can take it… he murmurs, licking up the blood pooling from the wounds.

And it’s true, you can take it. That was the whole point, how any of this began in the first place. It had been merely transactional, the relationship you had. Akira would provide demon corpses for you to study, and you’d provide him the space to release his baser urges when they became too much to ignore or handle himself. You were spared the trouble of messy fights, and he the possibility of harming a human. There was no worry about harming you. You’re half human but also half demon, and like him, you have far greater strength than your fully human counterparts.

Akira tosses you onto the bed and you bounce slightly on the mattress. He crawls over you and toys with your breasts, squeezing and pinching and nipping. Your fingers curl in his mane of black hair, relaxed for the most part but occasionally digging in if he bites too hard. Through hazy vision you notice he’s still fully clothed, and you tug weakly at the collar of his shirt.

“You’re overdressed,” you force out hoarsely. Sometimes you’re uncertain if Akira can even hear you in his lust-fueled hazes.

But it seems, at least tonight, he can, as he momentarily sits up to pull off his shirt. He takes the opportunity to also rid himself of his pants. Then he returns his attention to you, and the spot between your legs. His fingers firmly slide along the length of your slit and apply pressure on your swollen clit and you squeal, attempting in vain to close your legs to get away from the pleasure which is quickly sliding from just right to too much.

Akira laughs and pulls his hand away, holding it up so you can see how it glistens in the soft light of your bedroom. “Such a good girl, getting so wet for me…”

Without warning, he flips you onto your stomach and gropes harshly at your hips to position you the way he wants. You feel the head of his cock nudging at your folds and you bite your lip, but even for the anticipation as you rest your cheek on the blankets, staring at the far wall, you aren’t prepared when he pushes all the way in, giving you no time to adjust. Your teeth sink deeper and you taste blood on your tongue and you can’t keep the noise down, you never can (not that Akira would let you), and you scream at the deep intrusion. Akira is big, and though you have taken him before, you don’t think you’ll ever adjust completely.

His fingers dig into the supple flesh of your ass so tightly that his nails leave crescent moon marks, and he watches, enraptured, at the spot where you’re joined, watches as his cock slides in and out, smoothly, easily, due to your arousal. The squelch as he pushes in and the slap of skin against skin is vulgar and filthy and he thinks he could eat you whole. Would you let him, he wonders?

A particularly hard thrust prompts you to let out a shocked yelp, and your hips lower, like you’re trying to get away, in search of a reprieve from the overstimulation. He doesn’t let you (Where do you think you’re going?), one arm wrapping around your torso to pull you up against his chest. His free hand he trails up your stomach, past your breasts (your breath hitches as he passes over a nipple, sensitive and swollen) and he slides his fingers into your mouth.

You’re tired from being fucked so hard and you think you might pass out and you nearly gag when he presses down on your tongue. Akira! you mumble around his fingers. Drool dribbles out of the corner of your mouth and you wrap your hands around each of his wrists as a way to ground yourself since at this angle, you can’t reach the blankets. His grunts are loud and low in your ear as his thrusts grow sloppier.

You mewl and call his name again, goading him closer and closer to the edge. You’re almost there too, and evidently he can tell, as the arm around your waist moves down and his hand finds your clit. He rubs at it quickly and you snap, screaming as you cum. With your mouth open, he retracts his fingers and crosses that arm over your chest to keep you against him, for your body is trying to curl in on itself from the force of your orgasm.

“Fuck.”

The feeling of you squeezing around his cock nearly makes him cum, but this angle isn’t quite good enough, not deep enough. He pushes you forward and you fall limply on the bed, and he bends over you, chest pressed to your back and arms on either side of your head. You only have labored pants to give in response to the last few hard thrusts, exhausted as you are, and he orgasms with a growl.

You moan lowly at the feel of hot cum gushing deep into your belly. As a devilman, the amount Akira releases is a lot more than usual, and you never have room for it all. This is proven by the white liquid seeping out around his cock, and he smirks when he notices it. My cum too much for you, baby? he teases.

But you don’t have the energy to talk, and it seems he doesn’t mind your lack of an answer. He pulls out and you wince, oversensitive and sleepy. So sleepy…

So much for that shower.

———

You sigh deeply.

Dark purple splotches litter your body, in places that would be hidden from view when you wear clothes but also in places where they would be fully on display. You press a finger gingerly into one by your collarbone, and it throbs slightly in response to the added pressure. Man… And just when the last set of bites marks Akira had given you had faded.

You hear the rustle of bedsheets and step away from the bathroom mirror to peek your head out. Akira’s brows are furrowed and he turns away from the sunlight pouring in from the window. His breathing isn’t as deep so you know he’s at least slightly awake, but his eyes remain closed like he’s trying to fall asleep again, not quite ready to face the day.

The blankets are a mess and you’ll have to wash them today, but that can wait until after Akira wakes up. However, you don’t end up waiting as long as you think you’ll have to, for he’s given up his efforts to fall back to sleep, and his eyes slide open while you’re bent over to dig out panties from the bottom drawer.

“Not a bad sight to wake up to.”

With a roll of your eyes he can’t see, you stand back up straight and look at him over you shoulder. “Good morning to you too.”

Akira smiles, but it fades as his attention trails lower once you turn around. He doesn’t ask if he really did all that. He’d had full consciousness, full control, last night, and he was aware of every mark he left. To voice the question would be a waste of breath, so he skips over it. “Sorry. I hope it didn’t hurt too much.”

The boy in your bed is drastically different from the one who’d been there last night. His gaze is apologetic even for his lighthearted teasing and it makes you smile softly.

“It did a little bit,” you state truthfully as you drop an oversized shirt over your head. “But it’s okay. I can take it after all.”

Akira chuckles to hear his words repeated from the night before. He throws back the blankets, standing up and finding his own clothes. “Well let me buy you breakfast. To treat you for taking it so well.”

Breakfast does sound nice, and you’re not about to argue over who pays, not if Akira’s offering. Still, you can’t help playing around, as you hum in mock thought. “Hm… I guess, if you insist.”

It’s Akira’s turn to roll his eyes and you laugh. “Hey, don’t push it.” But he’s just playing around too, judging by his grin.

The relationship you share had at the beginning been transactional, nothing more than business, but it can’t be confidently said whether either of you was sure it would remain that way. Spend enough time in each other’s presence and you were bound to grow closer. Neither of you had shied away from this development. In fact, both of you like it this way better. Maybe you’re made for each other. Maybe the devils inside you are.