Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.”

— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese.

Shizuo’s been running every day of his life, but tonight he wanted to feel. Wanted to take ten fingers around something and claim it, or maybe earn it. So he ran, and he ran, and he didn’t stop. And the bastard in front of him didn’t stop either. 

At night, a chill settled over Ikebukuro’s bird-boned skeleton. Shizuo could feel it in the shadows of the underpass, could see it in the way the homeless and scattered youth ironed the walls. He could smell it in the air as he ran through the streets, his soles twisting loose against the sleet.

To his front, Izaya’s open jacket whipped against his sides, leather cracked but well-maintained. He had had it since high school. Even back then, Shizuo had wondered how the fabric hadn’t yet corroded, bubbling away from the cyanide under Izaya’s fingernails.

Name one thing better for having known you. I dare you.

They’ve been at this since sunset. Shizuo hadn’t been able to appreciate the colours for long. He started sprinting when blue had bled into something softer, ripe peach pinks and tangerine oranges. 

No, he wasn’t allowed to engage in simple pleasures. He’s never known a life of beauty.

October made him wheeze. The air was dry and coarse, and Izaya’s steps didn’t falter for even a second. Running might be a second nature. Chasing Izaya was, anyway. He’s been following the rat’s coattails since high school, since before lollipops were traded for cigarettes, and when there had been even a sliver of a chance that he would turn out to be normal. 

No, Izaya took care of that.

Turning into an underpass, the darkness swallowed them whole. Shizuo stopped sprinting, his adrenaline surge giving way to a tepid sort of realization; if he kept this up he’d be running straight into a knife. 

“Bastard,” he coughed, barely containing the urge to shatter his knuckles against the cement wall. His fists curled around nothing, head whipping despite the way he knew Izaya was already gone. He would only be found if he wanted to be found. 

That was the fun part. 

Yeah, right. 

☨

When he wasn’t running he was crouching, or stalking, or bludgeoning the stomach of a man with the heel of his boot. It wasn’t a life he would have chosen for himself. 

“We’ve been through this before,” Shizuo’s voice was more bark than human speech. “I want my money.”

The man couldn’t even respond. All of his attempts at placation fell victim to the edge of Shizuo’s shoe. He choked on them; words pushed back into the cave of his throat. Spittle red with blood pooled in the cracks of the pavement, mixing with old rainwater into nothing at all. 

“Please,” was his wheezed cry, spoken into the soot. “I don’t have anything.”

It could’ve been true. Anything any of these guys said could have been the truth. But truth didn’t matter on his side of the city.

“You don’t have anything?” Shizuo fingered the man’s collar and hauled him to his feet, and he wound his fist back, elbow grazing the cleft of his ear. “Are you fucking with me?”

“No, of course I’m not!” he said, pleading. Tears caught on his outermost lashes, bulbous; mirroring Shizuo’s skewered reflection right back to him. “I can get it, though! Soon I—I can get you your money. I promise!”

Shizuo collected spit behind his teeth, hacking against the ground. Tom wouldn’t like this. He wouldn’t like how he was losing his cool. The brutality of it all.

It’s just money, Shizuo. No use getting too worked up.

Tom was good at that. Had been good since high school. He let things roll off his shoulders; he didn’t give them the chance to get under his skin. 

Shizuo’s hand tightened impossibly, cutting the guy’s collar into his jugular, before he let go completely. “Ain’t got the time,” he said to himself. “You get that money by Friday, else I won’t be so nice.”

The guy crawled out of the underpass, pushing to his knees in a stumble before he could run away. 

Into the light. 

Shizuo stood in the shadows alone, fists empty.

☨

The shop looked different at night. Full of stuff and empty of people, the way junkyards proved apt for mice and stray dogs. Shizuo could see himself that way if he cared to, as a stray dog. He often followed the yellow lines painted on the roads but none of them felt like they led anywhere meant for him.

Pushing the door open, a wind chime played. It reminded him of high school, breaking onto the roof to sleep during first period. Birds would land on the top of the chain link fence, singing him to a lull, dreamless sleep. 

Things were simpler then, during the narrow period of time before Izaya Orihara had transferred into his year one class. The best word he could conjure to explain that middle school summer between class four and class one was: peace. 

And, now; War , children.

Inside the shop, racks upon racks of shit threatened to overload his senses with colour. It would’ve been incorrect to compare his life to a greyscale because Ikebukuro was all fluorescent light. Neon signs and love hotels and his name on Izaya’s tongue.

Shizuo bought cigarettes, a matchbook, and a magazine with a chick on the front. Nevermind that she was in a bikini—she was taken, anyhow. Kasuka’s calls were few and far between but never were they about some supposed famous girlfriend. Shizuo didn’t want to overstep so he hadn’t mentioned it.

“That shit melts your brain, Shizu-chan,” Izaya’s lilt came from above, suspending himself from the fire escape like an aerobic attention whore. His jacket was wide open, and the chill of early fall billowed his shirt against his chest. His ribs jutted, gaunt, against his skin.

Shizuo’s mouth set low. “Get down from there,” he reached to grab but Izaya just deflected, dipping back as if reading the lines of his body; knowing Shizuo’s moves before his own limbs could comply.

“Or what?”

Or I’ll kill you, came to mind but there was a sort of serenity tonight that not even Shizuo wished to break. Sometimes exhaustion replaced anger. That part got deeper than the veins, right to the bones. “Fine. Paralyze yourself. See if I care.”

Izaya had about three expressions on rotation when it came to Shizuo. He had a new face on, now. The thin lines of his eyebrows peaked in the center, a curious part to his lips. “Don’t tell me Shizu-chan cares about me,” the words disgusting on his tongue, spat out one by one. 

Shizuo fished a cigarette from the plastic bag and lit up. They didn’t have his usual so he was stuck smoking some no-name without menthol. His breath was of bitter tobacco when he bit, “I don’t care about anyone.”

“You have most people fooled,” Izaya said, doing one of his flips and landing soundlessly before him. “but you don’t fool me.”

Shizuo’s lip hitched upward, stayed there. “Haah?”

“You do care,” he sang, motioning up to the blanket sky. It was a starless night, a dark one. “That’s the problem. You’ve been running from it since I’ve known you.”

Shizuo squared his shoulders, bringing loose fists to his jaw. “I don’t run,” he spat, cigarette forgotten on the damp concrete. I chase. 

Izaya surrendered, opaque palms bracketing his ears. “Just an observation.”

He’s been poking rat-shaped holes through Shizuo’s armour since high school. Every quip, every thought out line a piece of himself that he’d either never acknowledged or had overthought so much that he’d had to push it down, down; further down than anything else—just to get rid of it. 

Shizuo dropped his arms, tonguing the gap in his molars where some lackey had knocked them out. “Screw off.”

He had no time for this. There was work and then there was sleep, and in between there was only a marginal amount of time to fuck around before one started to impact the other. Izaya, of course, was used to the nighttime. Vampires didn’t need sleep. Shizuo didn’t think he’d ever seen Izaya’s eyes close for more than a second at a time. 

“And miss out on talking to you?” Izaya’s lashes fluttered, stop-motion slow. “When you aren’t trying to kill me you can be good company.”

Izaya’s compliments were scarce, few and far between, as Shizuo liked compliments to be. He didn’t take well to kindness. “It’s late. Go find someone else to bother.”

“I’d rather bother you,”

“I don’t care, ” Shizuo knocked Izaya back with his forearm, straightening until he could tower over him at his full height. The one thing he’s always had over the bastard, a few goddamn inches. “about what you want. I don’t give a fuck about you .”

Izaya studied his eyes; left, right, left, right. If he was offended it didn’t show on his face. “Always a way with words, Shizu-chan,” he backed away, but he took his little dagger out of his pocket and held it between them. “Humour me. If you win, I’ll leave you alone.”

Shizuo sidestepped, making himself bigger. He didn’t need much to be bigger than him, but some strange inadequacy inside always seemed to make that detail irrelevant. Izaya’s tongue was enough; his hands.

“That bored, huh?” 

There was no audience out here other than the tired teenager sitting behind the shop’s counter. Not Izaya’s usual style. 

“Too many dogs on leashes,” Izaya said, shrug languid, his fork-tongue peeking between the cracks of his teeth.

“Maybe I’ve had a change of heart,” 

Shizuo had been on a zen streak, so to speak. No public displays, no walking circuses—his work had been stuck to the confines of alleys and basements. 

He decided to entertain the freak, lips twitching into something that could be considered a smile, had the context been different. Had they been different men. “Turned to religion and all of that.”

Izaya looked up to the sky as if he suspected God would be watching them, laughing alongside him. “Now that’s something I don’t believe.”

☨

“I wasn’t going to do this,” Tom was saying, thumb jammed beneath the thick strap of his messenger bag. He was one pace ahead so Shizuo could make sure he was safe from all directions. “but it’s high-profile. Yakuza stuff. And we’ve been behind on monthly’s…”

Shizuo followed his pattern: three, six, then nine o’clock. Old couples and children in strollers. Safe. The alleys were dark and near impossible to see through behind the glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose, but he wasn’t concerned about the street this time. He was more worried about their final destination.

“Gettin’ caught up in this shit will bite you,” Shizuo grunted. Nothing good ever came from messing with gangs. Whether it came from the old colours, the yakuza, or the Dollars. His fists had always been weapon enough, but being faced with half a dozen guns would demobilize anybody. “The money ain’t worth it.”

“Appearances,” Tom said, as if that made any sense.

“No use if you’re dead,” Shizuo pointed out. 

Tom turned his neck, cheek crooked in a lazy smile. “That’s why I’ve got you.”

Shizuo turned his eyes away. The sun above was sweltering for October, a sudden tropical surge that would melt the sleet away by the afternoon. But it wasn’t the weather that kept his cheeks hot.

That was two compliments in two days. Two more than he was used to.

“Yeah, whatever,” he muttered, lighting a smoke to have something to do with his hands. 

The location couldn’t have been much further. Ikebukuro took on a red tinge, buildings going raggedy; streets clumping with garbage instead of hedges. 

Shizuo had grown up on these streets. Born not out of necessity but some seedling of a need for a life he wasn’t awarded. One that fit the disparity coursing through the very essence of his being. He wasn’t made for picket fences and naps on school rooftops. He was made for abandoned warehouses and 24-hour kobini’s. 

He was made, apparently, for a two-on-four yakuza showdown.

Shizuo didn’t know how he was able to rip the counter off the cupboard but he knew he fucked up by the time the first guy fell.

“You want what this guy got?” The adrenaline got to his head, putting words in his mouth. He turned into a real asshole these kinda days. The words weren’t his own—not really. “I can deliver, but you ain’t gonna like it.”

The yakuza was young. Bare-skinned, inexperienced; a lackey. He’d mixed with the wrong people. Shizuo figured he owed a lot of money to a lot of people; people much more important than Tom and he were. 

“No!” the kid yelled, patting down all of his pockets for loose change. “I don’t have anything with me.”

“Not good enough,” Shizuo growled, dropping the laminate with a thud. His gaze flickered over to Tom for a signal. His dreads waved with his minute nod, the only O.K Shizuo was gonna get. “The baggie. Loan it to me.”

The yakuza’s frightened gaze moved over to the drugs on the side table, the stuff his whole trade was about. He’d be in even deeper shit if he lost his product, yakuza money, but that was what business was like. “Please. I’ll—I’ll get killed for this.”

Shizuo grabbed the bag and tried not to feel like it was the kid’s throat he was squeezing the life out of. It was all the same, today. “Please don’t,” he threw the bag to Tom. “I can't possibly move this much on my own.”

The yakuza looked around to his friends like they’d rise out of unconscious sleep to help him out. Unfortunately for him, he was in this one alone. “I’ll get you your money,” he said resolutely, trying to cover the waiver in his voice. “Just give me one more day.”

☨

Izaya looked like his lid was about to blow. 

Shizuo had noticed he wasn’t limited to his few facial expressions from high school. Disgust, loathing, contempt. This one—this one was new.

“You must have really lost it now, Shizu-chan,” he motioned toward the table, the swollen baggie, innocent as snow. 

But it wasn’t innocent. The kid was dead, of course, and someone needed their money. Tom needed an extra zero to pretty the papers and Shizuo did what he could to keep a job. “Can you move it or not?”

Izaya looked apprehensive. He hesitated for a moment as if debating the risks of leaving fingerprints on the package. Then he remembered what was inside. “I know people who know people, sure,” he said, turning it over between his lithe fingers. He weighed it in his palm like he couldn’t believe it was real. “But I’m not a miracle worker. Best I can do is cut and run—expand it over the month.”

Shizuo grimaced. “Can’t wait a month.”

“Shizu-chan. This is a kilogram of cocaine. Not even an addict can run through that in a week.”

Shizuo wondered how he went from mixing Jager Bombs to slinging blow. It wasn’t a glamorous slide down. “Two weeks.”

Izaya’s eyes rolled beneath the slit of his eyelids. “Let’s talk compensation, beast. Perhaps if that’s what you’d led with, I wouldn’t be so unwilling.”

Shizuo felt his eye twitch before he saw Izaya’s smarmy grin wink out of view. “If you keep your damn mouth shut; seven percent.”

“Bullshit. Twenty.”

Shizuo grit his teeth. “I don’t have twenty to give you.”

Izaya rounded the table. He stood so much shorter than Shizuo was, nearly a head lower; brown eyes glowering. His nails crept beneath Shizuo’s shirt sleeve, ghosting through his arm hair, and when he spoke again it was under his breath, “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

For a moment, Shizuo could imagine they’d done this before. Could imagine pinning Izaya’s wrist in place and feeling his bones creak. 

Shizuo’s lips parted, intending to tell him off. Maybe a, I’ll fuckin’ kill you, rat. But nothing came out. 

Izaya went on. “Tanaka won’t mind. He’s already wrapped around your little finger,” his cold fingertips bridged Shizuo’s forearm, nails clipping the skin. “Or is it the other way around?”

Shizuo grabbed his wrist and caught his eyes head-on. “He’s my boss,” Shizuo growled. “It’s his money.”

Izaya shook out of his grip, finally moving his heady stare elsewhere. “Then get your boy to move it.”

Shizuo didn’t plead. He didn’t. But— “Please .”

Izaya’s eyes widened a fraction, despite himself. It seemed that new expressions were a common occurrence now. 

He hummed, gaze returning with newfound fervour. “I like it when you beg, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo backed Izaya into the kitchen counter. “Make you feel powerful?”

Izaya skirted his hands around Shizuo’s nape, implying at something violent. He didn’t answer the question, just stuck his tongue between Shizuo’s teeth. Eyes open in slits, staring him down as if to dare him to do something. 

Shizuo caught him by the chin, slamming his head back into the cabinets. Glasses chinked against one another before falling silent. “Don’t play fucking games with me.”

“No games,” Izaya was speaking in a stage-whisper, like he’d ever tried for humility before. His chest rose and fell as if he was out of breath, cheeks a careful pink. “Just misread this.”

“You’re an asshole,” Shizuo said, pulling Izaya by the jaw until he could bite into his mouth. The taste on his tongue was electric, spark and fuse—the ashen residue behind his own teeth catching light, exploding under his tongue.

Shizuo withdrew, staring him in the eyes. “Stupid fuckin’ asshole.”

Izaya breathed hard against his lips. “You’ve grown balls.”

“Can’t say the same for you.” Shizuo snarled, lip curling like a dog.

“Fifteen percent, take it or leave it,” Izaya’s smirk was telltale. He was winning, flaunting it.

Shizuo sucked Izaya’s bottom lip into his mouth. “Ten.”

Izaya’s eyes fluttered behind his dark lashes. “Twelve percent and we go finish this somewhere better.”

☨

There weren’t many times Shizuo was overpowered in a fight. There was Shishizaki, back in middle school, and Simon at Russia Sushi—and Izaya, in that mental game of his. But no one else should’ve been able to catch his fists in their hands and press his face into the pavement.

An ox of a man was fuming, inhuman. He’d lifted Shizuo over his shoulders and with his exemplary body weight, he’d propelled them both onto the concrete below. As of now, one trunk-sized thigh held his nape down, forcing his teeth against the concrete. 

“You bastard ,” he was yelling, spit flying everywhere. He had on army boots, thick and dark green, choking Shizuo’s grunts back into his throat. “I know you killed my brother. Fess up, Heiwajima!”

A posse was filling the Ikebukuro intersection. Eyes wide open, the circumference of their mouths large and aghast. 

“Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he snarled, hands coming up to grip onto the guy’s massive sole. 

“Yuu. Remember him? His asset? ” The guy kicked his chest and sent him flying towards the curb. “He was eighteen you fuckin’ jackhole!”

From Shizuo’s assessment, the guy didn’t have any weapons on him. Not that he needed any. But Shizuo was boxing about three weight classes above his own and he needed anything to even out the playing field. 

“That wasn’t my fault,” he spat into the ground. “The asset was a placeholder. Go fork up the yakuza !”

The guy stepped off, grabbing Shizuo by the lapels so he could aim spittle straight in his face instead. “It is your fault that he’s dead,” he said, tone low and—broken. 

His brother was dead and he was broken. He was avenging. 

Who would do that for Shizuo? Who would want to?

The man’s pupils were small, dark. “You have to pay.”

Shizuo supposed it was true. It was so true, yes, that he allowed himself to be held there, jacket fisted so tight his feet were light on the pavement. He eyed the vein protruding grotesquely from the man’s forehead, the tears in his eyes, reflecting the muddled sun. His pain sat there, on display. 

Someone had told him once that the eyes were windows into the soul. That the eyes don’t lie. 

The man was threatening his life with the power of his soul, sitting there, in a brown so afflicted it was almost black.

Someone has to pay, yes, now, and in this way.

But not Shizuo. 

The man wound his arm back. “You have to pay.”

Yes.

Someone has to. 

☨

Hospitals were uncharted territory. He’d frequented Shinra’s, but even that seemed unbearable. So—

“I’ve never seen you like this before,” Izaya’s voice was cool. Unsure. His thin fingers worked at cleaning up the gashes on his face: a cut below the brow bone, a crooked, gushing nose—among others. “What the hell happened, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo winced at the minute sting, alcohol burning his nose and eyes. “You should see the other guy.”

Izaya did not laugh. “The morgue?”

He flickered his gaze up to Izaya’s, looking for judgement. He didn’t find any. “Probably just his couch, rat. Ain’t a killer.”

Izaya hooked a butterfly bandage against the crook of his nose. His penthouse apartment was large and hollow around them, and a silent debatable echoed loud. “Never said you were.”

You don’t have to say it. 

Nobody does. People in this city, they take one look at his face and they remember the headlines. Shizuo had been chasing Izaya since high school, and running from the cameras—the eyes and the windows and the souls—for much, much longer. 

Obviously, they’d assume he was a killer. Shizuo walked around with guns for hands. He shook pockets and earned his keep with his brass knuckles even when Tom told him talking it out would work just fine. 

Talking didn’t come so easy. Words didn’t craft themselves in his mouth the way they do Izaya’s, or Tom’s, or Kadota’s. So why not settle for something simpler? 

“I don’t like it,” Shizuo said suddenly.

Izaya’s hand hesitated. “Like what?”

“The fighting. The death,” Shizuo’s teeth creaked under the force of his jaw. Biting it back, swallowing it down. “I’ve never liked it.”

“Leashed dogs,” Izaya said, palm hugging the slight of his cheek. “only do as they are told.”

Shizuo bit back the remark about being called a dog. He supposed it could be true. A stray.

Then what does that make you, huh?  

“Wouldn’t have minded just being a bartender,”

Izaya’s smile was small, not performative like all the others. It could have been real if he was capable of genuine emotion, real sympathy, real regret. “There’s still time. You aren’t that old.”

“I don’t feel twenty-four,” Shizuo confessed, looking down to his body. He hadn’t changed before coming to Izaya’s place: suit all scuffed, knees split; knuckles bruised. He felt like he’d aged a hundred years.

Izaya would know something about that. Being yakuza, always looking over your shoulder. The schemes, the violence; the clusterfuck that was their lives. That shit would age you. 

And yet, Izaya was as smooth-faced as he was back in high school. He had no lines to betray the stress, nor of the life he’d chosen for himself. The life he’d fallen into. 

“You speak for all of us,” Izaya said. 

Shizuo scoffed. “Yeah right.”

“Calling me pretty, Shizu-chan?”

“Callin’ you fucking stupid.”

Izaya’s smile curled. Same thing. 

☨

Maybe in another life, sentiment would come easier. Sometimes he was tempted to do the right thing. The good thing. Let them off with a warning, pay out of pocket if he could afford to. Save someone’s dignity, someone’s life . 

But you can’t afford sentiment on this kind of salary. And money was owed. The kid was dead now, but Tom was paid, so at the end of the day, things were as they should be. 

Izaya had wormed his way into seventeen percent. Shizuo didn’t know how that happened. 

He told Tom he needed some extra cash after trashing his car. Tom knew he didn’t have a car, but he didn’t ask any questions.

Things were as they should be. 

Things were as they should be, but maybe they’re not, because he itched for something he’d never itched for before. And if you asked him about it, he probably wouldn’t answer truthfully. Trying Izaya’s apartment. Not getting past the gate. Shizuo knew he had places scattered all over Tokyo: Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shibuya. Who knew where he’d be on any given day. 

Shizuo stopped at the first restaurant that had 24-hour in the sign. It was some Chinese joint so dark the low-light lanterns painted the whole place red. Fitting.

The cuts on his face were beginning to stitch up and his bruises were less tender, yellowing like pus. The boy behind the counter stared at him slack-jawed. He couldn’t have been older than twelve. 

“You guys got anything under a thousand yen?” Shizuo was too tired for this. Too tired for most shit, really. He procured a couple bills from his vest pocket and leaned on his elbows.

Without moving his eyes or his stupid, dumbfounded expression, the kid pointed to the twelve-and-under menu. 

Shizuo motioned toward number two. The kid turned his head, yelling something in Mandarin, and an old woman poked her head out of the kitchen. Her overgrown eyebrow pushed up her forehead. 

“A bit late for Chinese,” she remarked, in heavily butchered Japanese.

He wished she would just take his money and microwave him some goddamn dumplings. 

Shrugging, “They’re your hours.”

She muttered to herself, wobbling right-left back into the kitchen. 

Shizuo tipped because she seemed like a nice lady. And she seemed almost as tired as he was. The kid slipped it beneath the counter, into his pocket. 

Pushing into a booth, Shizuo eyed the child-sized portions next to his bottle of sake and wondered if there was anything he could do to change this life he was living. Moving from one commission to the next. The stalking, the sneaking; the blood and daggers and puke and shit. 

He couldn’t put professional ass-kicker on his resume, so he was shit outta luck in that department. Or maybe that is just what he told himself to keep from even trying. 

Easier that way. 

If and not when. 

If he left, Tom might get in trouble he couldn’t get himself out of. If he left, he’d only be leading vultures to any person or corporation who managed to trust him. 

If he left this, or if he left that. 

The chopsticks were wooden, breaking out into little strings when he pulled them apart. A tight little ribbon on an already perfect day. 

He needed to let off steam, but that was Izaya’s job. And he didn’t know where Izaya was. It scared him a little; he hadn’t realized this relationship had gotten so codependent. 

Maybe he needed Izaya in the way the repressed needed a good fuck. Maybe there was something biblical about it. Something pathetic. 

But he didn’t want to think about it.

☨

Izaya had gotten himself into trouble. 

That’s the only conclusion that made any sense. Two weeks went by since he nursed Shizuo’s wounds in his Ikebukuro penthouse. Two weeks, three days since the shop, and four days before that since he led him into the derelict underpass. 

He had been AWOL for three weeks straight before he cornered Shizuo in an underground train station. Here, people were too busy to stop and stare. Boots clipped into his shins and he’d been shouldered too many times to count, but the only thing he could focus on was the scared-shitless expression on Izaya’s face. 

He didn’t even get angry at being forced against the supporting beam. He let himself be held there, lips parted. 

Izaya stared at him, fear turning to anger. He wound his hand back and smacked Shizuo across the face. 

“You had me move yakuza drugs?” he pulled Shizuo’s jacket, slamming him back against the column again. “Not just yakuza product, but you screwed over the Yellow Scarves. What were you thinking?”

Shizuo was still working through the shock of the blow. Not that it hurt—just unexpected. “It was supposed to be a placeholder,” he said under his breath, knowing how public they were airing his laundry. “But the kid—”

Izaya kept him there, forearm to chest. “I know. You know how I know? I work for the fucking yakuza!”

Oh, Shizuo knew. Information broker was just some flowery title when all his clients were gangsters. “Lower your voice,” he hissed. “Tom needed the money. He didn’t pay.”

Izaya’s laugh was scornful. “Do you know how much shit we are in right now? Any idea at all?”

“I can deal with thugs,” Shizuo ground out, patience wearing threadbare. “You don’t think that by now I’ve had my fair share of fucked up?”

Izaya let him go. He took a step back and ran his hands through his hair, oily and disheveled. Only now did Shizuo come to take in his appearance. Purplish bruises sunk his eyes, worried lines writing themselves under his cheekbones. His lips were red and scabbed with blood as if he’d sunk his teeth into them over and over. 

“This isn’t just about you,” he spat back, looking at the ground. Waves of people passed them, but no one dared to get close enough to touch. “I talked them down from premeditated murder, but they want a thumb.”

Shizuo felt the rage mount to an apex. “No one is getting my thumb,” he growled, sneering. “I’ll get through them all before that happens.”

Izaya pressed his lips together. “What, you’re gonna kill them all?”

Shizuo took a step, the crowd be damned. “Only the ones who get in my way.”

Izaya surveyed him, searching his eyes for something. He wouldn’t find anything. Shizuo was sick and fucking tired of losing. 

Izaya did not smile, but his lips did something in admittance. A faint twitch, but it was enough, because everything was up in the eyes. “You really are a bad man.”

Shizuo wore the words like a crown. “The worst .”

☨

His apartment door was shot down at 3:21. By 3:30, mountains of men in black tac gear cluttered his bedroom, foyer, and kitchen. They couldn’t really fight, had no distinguishable features; a bunch of minutemen. A group of low-level thugs. A warning . 

At 3:33, the cops came by. By the cops, he meant the cop: a middle-aged officer who’s partner had died the year before. They didn’t talk much, but from what Shizuo had gathered he’d never gotten a new partner. And if he had, they didn’t last long. 

It had worked out well for one of them, anyway.

The knock came on the wall of the foyer, given that the door was reduced to a few planks of wood. “Evening, Heiwajima,” he said, peering around him to see the bodies. “Full house tonight?”

Shizuo shrugged a shoulder. He handed over a rolled mass of bills—a few thousand yen. Money was better at keeping a mouth shut than duct tape was. “Dunno when I got so popular.”

The cop pocketed the bills, nodding his head. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

Shizuo watched him leave. He backed into the wall, slid down to his ass, and held his head in his hands. It had been frightening, sure, but mostly it was a goddamn nuisance . He couldn’t go to Tom about this—not yet, anyway. And Izaya was already upset as it was.

The adrenaline faded too fast. Reality was seeping in, the pain. He had a few hours before the sun rose and these guys needed out of the house. No doubt, Izaya would know a mover. Usually Shizuo’d do it himself but there were way too many and they were all yakuza, besides. More the rat’s territory.

Fuck.

This was getting unbearable. 

“Funny that we keep meeting like this,” Izaya said once he was over and taking count of the bodies. “In the middle of the night, you bleeding. Someone’s going to think I’m beating you.”

Shizuo grit his teeth. Some felt looser than they’d been before. “Can you move them or not?”

“Deja vu,” Izaya hummed, flipping open his phone. He said some random words—something about a pizza with thirty-something toppings, and hung up without much further instruction. “Let’s clean you up.”

He sat Shizuo down against the sink, holding his shoulder as he worked at the blood drying around his mouth. 

“Is this really how you want to live?” Izaya’s voice came out slow and quiet. He didn’t meet Shizuo’s eyes. “Almost dying every day?”

Shizuo winced at the sting of alcohol—and the question. “Of course not.”

“Then why— ”

“And why are you yakuza?”

Izaya rolled his lips, falling quiet.

Shizuo looked away. “That’s why.”

They fell back into their usual, charged silence; Izaya worked away while Shizuo tried not to squirm. There wasn’t long before the sun would be up, before none of this would be okay. Not that it was now. But in the dark he could hide it better, this grotesque air that follows behind him; with the sun, serenity breaks right in half. 

“I didn’t mean to ruin your life,” Izaya told him, fingers stopping somewhere near his ear. His knuckles brushed through the hair there. “If I knew this would’ve happened, I wouldn’t have done it. Swear—I wouldn’t have.”

Shizuo scoffed. “You really think I believe that?”

“Believe whatever you want to believe,” he said, shoulder shrugging. “But it’s the truth.”

Shizuo’s fists shook at his sides. His nails pressed crescent moons into the calloused skin of his palms. “So why ?”

“I wanted to,” Izaya told him, one corner of his mouth flipping up into a smile. “I liked you too much to let you go.”

“You got me fired because you liked me?”

Izaya smoothed his palms over the slopes of Shizuo’s shoulders, eyes slow to rise. “Had to be original.”

Shizuo trembled. God, he did. A stream of anger replaced the blood in his veins, replaced the oxygen in his lungs. He jumped from his seated position, had two hands around the rat’s throat, and he squeezed. 

“You fucker !” Shizuo had him against the plastic shower wall. Izaya hadn’t had time to deflect the attack. “You leech. You ruined my fucking life!”

The chords in Izaya’s throat worked against Shizuo’s fingers. He grasped his wrists, not fighting back. Just holding, watching.

Shizuo had never been so close. He just had to grip a little harder, a little longer, and Izaya would be out of his life forever. Dead , and by his own hands.

“The only one who ruined your life,” Izaya choked, words coming out forced, “was you.”

Shizuo seethed. He wanted Izaya to—to pay. To feel bad about the years of torment, for this sorry life he’d imprisoned them to. 

But he was right. Shizuo’d been at this long before he’d ever gotten that job. It was one of Kasuka’s many attempts at pushing him on a path worth pursuing. Who knew how long it would have stuck. 

Shizuo dropped him to his feet. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

Izaya didn’t even take the time to straighten his jacket. “Okay,” he said, and he left the way he’d come. 

The movers arrived shortly thereafter, rolling the men into plastic from their necks to their ankles. They weren’t dead, but they’d wake soon enough, and it would be far, far from here. 

They didn’t do anything about the blood.

Shizuo was too wired for sleep. He needed something strong in place of painkillers and he needed to soak the blood from the carpet. Half a cardboard box was enough of a door for at least the illusion of privacy, and on his hands and knees he pressed what he could out of the ratty old flooring with the tank off his back. 

It would have to be pulled out. 

He used stain remover and bleach. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and the blood it just. It just spread. It crept up his fingertips and stained the tank red; red as flame, red as hellfire; red as everything evil and bad with the world. 

It would have to be pulled out. Pulled out like loose teeth, like rotten teeth; like the tar stuck beneath his gums. Shizuo scrubbed, and his eyes stung, but on his knees he kept scrubbing. Red everywhere. Fuck. Why?

It would have to be pulled out and why? Why was there so much blood?

He didn’t know how long he’d been at it before he was pulled off the floor. Izaya pressed his body close, closer than they’d ever been before. He held Shizuo’s hands to stop them from shaking.

Shizuo stared at the red of his lips, the brown of his eyes. “The carpet,” he said, like the louse he was. And then they were kissing. There had to be some fucked up symbolism about this, but his lizard brain couldn’t procure anything good enough to be rearranged into real human words. About this way; his hands finding their way to Izaya’s cheeks, fingertips tracking blood past his ears and into his hair.

About the way Izaya kissed Shizuo like he was trying to save him from himself.
And he was a welcomed distraction, a constant pressure; a leech on his back that he couldn’t get rid of. Poetry in motion; he was everything all at once. 

They crashed into the wall, tongue and teeth and red hands everywhere. Shizuo was shirtless and Izaya liked it. His thumbs traced his skin: the curve of his pectorals, down the lines of his abdomen; over the litany of scars covering what he could reach. All the way up to his collarbone, the mouth of his dagger. Ribbed and pink and all Izaya’s. 

“You kept it,” Izaya said, fingering the scar. His blade had sat there, once, at the hilt; had made a home in his flesh. Sometimes he could still feel it lodged in there, all the way past the bones, and right into the heart.

“Not much of a choice,” Shizuo knocked his head back against the wall. Plaster rained down, coating the outer layer of his hair. Painted them white like snowflakes. 

“Does it hurt?”

Shizuo didn’t look down. “Sometimes.” 

Faint, like ghosts.

“I can’t always deal. This—this pain. I need to share it with someone. You know how that feels. Tell me you do.” Izaya looked wild like this, bloodstained handprints painting blush high on his cheekbones; lips red and kiss-swollen.

Shizuo did. Oh, he did. 

He kissed the veins goring Izaya’s wrist. “I can be that for you,” he said, not exactly knowing what that was. “Let me.”

“Don’t leave me again,” Izaya warned; he was giving in. “Don’t you dare.”

Shizuo nodded.

“I need to hear you promise,” Izaya said, taking his hands. The grip was strong despite the blood. “You go too deep in that head of yours, you get lost.”

Shizuo could say the same for him. “I know. I promise.”

☨

Pulling the carpet was an at-home job. Tom helped on his day off. 

“Shit, Shizuo,” Tom said, messenger bag dropping to the half-turnt floor. “Shit.” he repeated.

“I know,” Shizuo resisted looking down at the mess. “’S not as bad as it looks.”

Tom’s entire face was a grimace. “It’s exactly as bad as it looks.”

“They aren’t dead,” he said quietly. 

Tom nodded. “Did you see Shinra?”

“Orihara—actually.”

Tom finally met his eyes, bewildered. “This is a thing, then?” he looked embarrassed for a second before schooling his expression somewhat. “You and Izaya.”

“I guess,” he muttered, kneeling to finish the job. “I don’t know. He was safer.”

“Since when was Izaya Orihara safe?”

Shizuo’s fist closed around a strip of carpet. “Since we got implicated in the fucking yakuza . Let’s not forget where the bastard spends his free time.”

Tom didn’t say anything. He knelt to begin rolling more of the loose carpet. “I’m sorry they came to your house,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”.

“How?”

Tom sent him a reassuring smile, soiled hands working a big bag. “Comes with the business.”

They made quick enough work of the floor. Shizuo’s building wasn’t big by any definition of the word, so all the carpet fit in four industrial-sized garbage bags. 

The whole time they worked he wondered about what Tom meant by the business. He’d never been that secretive before. His business was Shizuo’s business—else he wouldn’t be a very good bodyguard. There was no way to word it that wouldn’t be prying, overstepping his bounds. He was a lackey—not some mastermind. So he left it alone.

“Thanks, man,” Shizuo said when they were round back and slugging bags over their shoulders. “I mean it.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tom threw the bag into the dumpster like it weighed nothing. “You gonna call up Kadota?”

Shizuo shrugged. “Figure he’d know someone.”

“Friend discount,” Tom joked, smile edging up one side of his face. “We have to get the old group back together.”

He said it every time someone from middle school was mentioned or seen passing on a street corner. Shizuo hummed neither in disagreement nor in the affirmative, like always , and threw the last of the garbage bags into the dump. “Maybe.”

Tom poised himself against the building wall. A pipe dripped browning water near his swinging dreadlocks, but he didn’t seem to mind. Did anything ever bother him? Anything at all?

“They’d want to see you, Shizuo,”

“I don’t know about that,”

He bridged his nose with his thumb and pointer finger, exhaling long. “They stopped hearing about you in the paper. Thought you’d died—you don’t pick up your phone.”

Shizuo didn’t want to talk about this. “It’s for emergencies,” he felt up his back pocket, just making sure it was there. “You know that.”

Tom exhaled again. “That isn’t the point.”

“And what is your point?”

Tom held his shoulder and Shizuo felt every single finger. “My point is that people care about you. I care. Kadota cares. Shinra, Vorona, they care. In his fucked up way—even Orihara cares.”

That stopped him short. “You think Izaya cares?”

Tom shrugged. “Hasn’t killed you yet.”

Like I’d ever let that happen.  

He continued, “and aren’t you guys in some sort of truce?”

Shizuo hadn’t bothered to put a name on it. It wasn’t like they were in a relationship—they just clashed. Clashed in a way they hadn’t before. Izaya had pulled him off the edge instead of pushing him off of it. 

“I guess so,” he said, for lack of a better name.

They made their way back to his room, ducking under the false cardboard door. Shizuo served up two vodka-crans for the trouble.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad,” Tom was telling him, drinking the last of his cup and strapping his bag over his chest. “about you and Izaya. Every time I see a paper without your names in it I manage to have a good day.”

Shizuo’s chuckle was lighthearted. “You and me both, brother.”

Tom nodded, bracing his fist for a bump. “And I’ll deal with this. As your boss and as your friend, I’ll deal with this.”

Shizuo didn’t see how he could. “Alright.”

“I mean it,”

Shizuo could tell that he did. “Lots of people mean lots of things. Ain’t mean it’s possible.”

They’d dealt with yakuza before. In their line of work, it was only a matter of time before you’d run into one. But thirty men? 

Tom flashed him a small smile. “Have a little faith.”

But faith was a hard thing to come by.

☨

He needed a place to stay while they were replacing the floor—with wood, this time. Izaya was just convenient. 

“You caught me on my day off, Shizu-chan. Lucky you,” Izaya opened the door wider to let him past. 

His Ikebukuro penthouse was massive. When Shizuo had been here the first time, late at night and lethargic from the pain, he’d claimed it had no personality. But in the daytime Izaya’s choices of decor seemed a little more thought out, a little more purposeful. 

Shizuo couldn’t help the curious finger trailing the paint. “Stay here often?”

Izaya’s smile was knowing. Or perhaps reminiscent. “Not as much as I’d like to.”

His smile was something he had to physically suppress. That was new. “Should I take the couch?”

Izaya gave him this look. His brows set low over his eyes, lips crooked. It looked odd on him, as if anything could look bad on a face like Izaya’s. “That’s where the dogs sleep.”

Shizuo’s silence urged him to go on. Daring him, even. Say what you wanna say , it’s saying, I’m just your dog, ain’t I? 

Izaya just opened the door to his bedroom; wordlessly falling into the space, dipping out of sight. 

Shizuo dropped his duffle by the door. Izaya’s room was much like the man himself: empty inside, hollow—maybe too fit for its purpose. The bed was the largest thing inside, with a sturdy wooden frame and a mattress about twenty inches thick. No pillows. 

“Wasn’t expecting company,” Izaya said, when he noticed him looking. He sounded sheepish, or maybe embarrassed. 

Shizuo’s eyes took to the ceiling-length windows, noticing how each person was a mere speck of dirt on the street below. They were, seemingly, at cloud level. Shizuo thought this may be the closest to the sky he’d ever be allowed in this lifetime. 

“Should’ve seen my place. They blew the fucking door down,”

“They ruined my hard work, too,” Izaya murmured low, moving close enough to finger the tender skin of his facial wounds. Wound was pushing it: really, he had a few little cuts that had yet to close up. And his ego was a little bruised—among other things. 

Shizuo’s tongue dried up in his mouth at the proximity. Izaya was watching, ghosting along the perimeter of his face; taking in each feature as it came. Damaged package and all. Then,

“How do you do it?”

Shizuo cocked a brow. “Do what?”

“Pretend,” Izaya’s hand slid down the slope of his throat, to the curve of his shoulder. Each finger held him, all the way to his back. “Tell me how you do it so well.”

Shizuo touched his elbow, light as he could manage it; skirting fingers that went all the way around. He’d never been taught to hold with this much care, hadn’t had much practice with the skill, but today it all seemed to come so natural. “The same way you do.”

“And how is that?”

Shizuo took him then, gently. Inhaling the words right off his breath, from Izaya’s rib cage into his own; making a home for him there. Wedged right between his bones. He moved far enough to see the details of Izaya’s face, pressing two fingers to his lips like he was asking him to keep a secret. “Like that.”

The emotion that overtook Izaya’s face caught Shizuo’s heart mid-movement. Rendered him dead on his feet.

“Curse you,” Izaya released, his loose fist pounding against Shizuo’s chest. “ Curse you.”

“I know,” he stared at Izaya’s hair, his bowed head; the vulnerability of his sloped shoulders; the desperation of his fists. Holding onto Izaya was like holding onto a shaded mirror of himself. 

Maybe that was why he was always running away. 

Izaya’s shoulders shook when he exhaled sharply, “Why must you do this to me?”

Shizuo lifted his head, staring out the window at the world below. Izaya slept so far away from everyone else. “I’m not as strong as you think I am.”

“If the strongest man isn’t strong,” Izaya said under his breath, trembling, “then what does that make the rest of us?”

☨

Smoking with Kadota wasn’t something he did often. But it came easier than the talking. Shizuo squeezed the pack of nondescripts, pinching one between his lips. It was too windy to light up, so he stared at the sky to avoid having to look him in the eyes.

“Good to see you, man,” Kadota said, back pressed against the grocery store wall. They just happened to run into one another out here, two out of the million people shopping off a crowded Ikebukuro street. “Long time no see.”

Shizuo was thinking of an out. What was more believable: having left the fridge open or the stove on? “Oh, yeah, sure,” Shizuo grunted, fumbling with the lighter. The flame wouldn’t stick. 

Kadota chuckled at him or maybe at nothing, just to laugh. “Out of juice?”

“Goddamn wind,” Shizuo muttered.

Kadota had his tool kit strapped over his breast, whatever instruments he kept in there pushing phallically against the fabric. He pulled something plastic from out of the side compartment, lighting his own cigarette, and inclining his head forward.

Shizuo swallowed. Their cigarettes touched, hissing; the thin paper blackening and peeling backwards. He held the smoke in his lungs and shut his eyes, exhaling long and slow. “Thanks.”

Kadota shrugged and his smile looked easy, genuine. “No problem, man. So what’s up?”

Shizuo struggled to find his words. Oh you know, regular shit. Gang shit. Drug shit. Shit I can’t talk about. 

“Same old,” he said, supposing it wasn’t too far from the truth. “How’s the business?”

Kadota smiled with his eyes this time. “Same old. But you didn’t need to pay me. I was glad to do it.”

“Course I did,” he dismissed quickly. He didn’t want charity. Didn’t need it. 

Shizuo ashed the cigarette, watching it flake like snow toward the sidewalk. He tried to take his mind off the blood, the garbage bags; tried not to wonder if Kadota would take it back, had he known why the floor needed to be fixed in the first place. 

He shook his head, tendrils of smoke floating side to side. “Friends, right?”

Shizuo shrugged, impassive. “Friends.”

“Friends do favours for one another,” Kadota told him, urging him with a tilt of his head; words muddled slightly around the cigarette. “They talk to one another.”

Shizuo felt it, then. The anger starting, slow, like a disease. There was nothing that could be done to stop it now.

“This what you wanted to talk about, then? The meaning of friendship?”

Kadota eyed him beneath the line of his lashes, and it didn’t look right on a face like his. Silent interpretation. He wasn’t supposed to try and see Shizuo this clearly, beyond surface-level; read between the lines of him and understand just what was really there. 

“No,” he said simply, tone devoid of malice or irritation or the strange cocktail of the two Shizuo had grown accustomed to. “Just needed some cigarettes.”

Just needed some cigarettes.

Shizuo laughed humourlessly at the cloudy sky. 

☨

By the time his apartment was ready to be lived in again the leaves had all browned and fallen off the trees. The last of the warm weather passed through Ikebukuro’s streets in pursuit of somewhere nicer, somewhere greener. 

Izaya’s bathroom had two toothbrushes. Four pillows sat on the bed, cased and fluffed. He even kept menthols on the table out on the balcony. It felt like a new life.

No yakuza had visited him. Not the ones in tac gear. The men who visited Izaya had sunglasses over their scars and pressed black suits. Some had tattoos that wrapped all the way around their knuckles and had one or both of their thumbs missing. During those days he’d shut the door to his office and he wouldn’t leave for a few hours, but their voices would carry through the frosted windows. 

Shizuo was reminded that his actions had caused someone to die through the inflection of Izaya’s pitched soprano. He sat on Izaya’s couch, worrying his nails between the gaps of his knuckles, and replaying the scene of it in his mind. A trade, a battle of wits. The kid shivered behind the shadow of the counter, inhuman; pinched between Shizuo’s fingers. 

He said he'd die for it. 

Shizuo had joked about it. 

The monster threatened to climb out. It already had. 

Shizuo deserved what was coming. He deserved the boot, the knife; the word of execution. He welcomed it. 

The men left and Izaya entered the living room. By then, the sun was invisible beneath the cityscape. Darkness caught the bridge of his nose, sunk his eyes. Shizuo had said Izaya was smooth-skinned, but today he looked aged. 

Why must he still be so beautiful?

“That was an old friend,” Izaya said, tone flat; betraying the truth. “You’ve caused a rift between groups. Those drugs were a peacemaking offer, and now a young recruit is dead.”

Shizuo felt the comfort of anger settling beneath his bones. He couldn’t train it anywhere—this inward hatred. “I know,” he hissed.

Izaya laughed up at the ceiling. Laughing at him or God or both. “Do you know? Really know? Not everything can be settled with your fists.”

“No,” Shizuo agreed, lightly. But most things can.

Izaya shook his head and his hair fell over his eyes. “I think you should go home.”

Shizuo stared up, up; up at Izaya for the first time maybe ever. “Is this over?” He tried to interpret any hidden meaning behind the browns of his eyes, any signs in the clutch of his fingers. All the non-verbal cues they seem to default to with the heaviness of what their words imply. “Are we—” and he left it there, without anything else to say. It wouldn’t be true with no ending.

Izaya raised his chin, defiant. “What is this ? We ?”

A distraction, yes. A mercy, maybe. A— “A mistake,” Shizuo said. “Loving me is a mistake.”

Izaya didn’t say anything for a long, long while. “And who said I loved you?” A singular, movie tear tracked down his cheek. His weakness, tasting of salt.

Shizuo’s fists shook with the force of his restraint. He wanted— needed —to crush something. Take it in between his fingers and squeeze until there was nothing left but dust. 

Izaya didn’t look scared. Never that. Only tired. His eyes were slow to fall at Shizuo’s waist, where his gun-hands rested against his flesh holsters, little earthquakes wracking up the length of his forearms. “My mistake,” he said, words as sharp as bayonets.

Izaya shut his eyes.

☨

Tom had his glasses broken in two. Glass shattered, plastic splintered; his nose was still stained with purplish bruises where a fist had been smothered into his skin. Shizuo wasn’t there to protect him. He failed.

Tom in a hospital bed, head wrapped in white bandage. Because of him.

Shizuo smashed through the side window. Just took his fingers into a fist and redirected his hatred somewhere easier, somewhere outside of himself; to the world around him. 

In the back of his mind, he revelled at the fact that this glass was supposed to be unbreakable. 

Tom was wheeled away and Shizuo was kicked out of the hospital room, but not before Tom could tell him something, weakly.

“Shizuo,” he said, dark eyes cracked open; purple and heavy. “Not your fault.”

And the door was shut. 

Outside, in the lobby, a security guard stood by the wall making sure he wouldn’t get up to trouble. In the corner, a boxed television droned on low volume: the afternoon news. Breaking news, it wrote, camera panning wide to show a street. A building had exploded. Gunfire poured from the sharded windows, along with the glass and debris. A fucking bomb. Hand-grenade, they were calling it, but shit like that shouldn’t happen here. Not in his city, his country. Not with me in it.

A bloody tryst between rival gangs, colour and colourless. Tom was just the poor bastard who got caught in the middle. 

Shizuo was just the fucking catalyst. 

Then his phone rang. No caller ID, just a rat emoticon. 

“ Get down here now, ” Izaya ordered by way of greeting, sending the location with a ping. “ You’ll know where to go. ” And he hung up the phone.

Shizuo stared at the screen, tunneling in on the street name. Izaya didn’t leave much room for argument.

He took the train. He could feel the way they watched him: behind the curled edges of magazines, between the gaps of swinging keychains. 

The look Izaya was giving him was worse, though. 

Much worse.

They stood on opposite sides of a bunker, across thick cement walls that wouldn’t let anyone in. Or out.

Izaya had blood on his hands. Blood on his dagger, dripping, like fresh paint down his wrist. It tapped-tapped to the floor, pooling there at his feet. 

“What did you do?” Shizuo broke the shield of silence, eyes trained on the blood. “Izaya .”

Izaya looked up from his hands, eyes slow to set on Shizuo’s. “Stuck with me now, Shizu-chan,” he said, but his voice sounded foreign, like it wasn’t his own. “Now that I’ve killed for you.”

Shizuo’s lips parted. “Who—”

“Does it matter?”

He took a step forward. “Of course it does.”

Izaya dropped the knife, or maybe it slipped; clattering to the floor. “All of this is your fault.”

Shizuo stopped moving forward, Izaya’s words keeping him rooted in place. “I didn’t ask you to kill someone, Izaya.”

“No,” Izaya said, closing the gap. He held Shizuo’s chin in his hand, red fingers etching across his throat. A parallel of their time before, sealed in blood. “because you’re a coward.”

Shizuo swallowed. “Is it over?”

“The world doesn’t end when one man falls, Shizu-chan,” Izaya’s eyes rolled to the side, slow. The low light brought out something brutal in him, shadowing his eyes until they looked black as sin, slicing his jaw sharp. “But I have some good friends. Powerful friends. Something has to give right? Someone always has to die.”

Shizuo raised a hand, removed Izaya’s grip from his face. He threaded their fingers together, Izaya’s rings pressing cold against his skin. “It shouldn’t have been you. I should’ve done it.”

“I’m already rotten enough, no?”

Rotten all the fucking way down. But—

“You don’t have to be.”

“Of course we do!” Izaya was desperate, shoving every word into his chest; hands flying. “We are the monsters mothers warn their children of. We are the cautionary tales. That is all we will ever be.”

Shizuo exhaled, separating their hands. He took his arms, heavy, circling them around Izaya’s torso. And he held. He felt big today, wrapping himself around Izaya. Holding him. It was awkward at first, new; the first embrace he’d given or gotten since he was a child. 

Izaya’s shoulders shook, but he did not cry. He held himself up to high standards of being. Monsters did not allow themselves to cry. To be loved. They do not know how. He stood, trembling the way gods do, under the burden of insurmountable power. It was the shake of restraint, of violence unbidden. Or of surrender.

They didn’t exchange words for what felt like a million years. “Izaya,” he said, as soft as he could manage it. “Let’s go home.”

☨

There were no policemen at the door tonight. For all intents and purposes, they were on the force’s side; threading out the gangsters and the reverting ex-cons so they didn’t have to. 

Shizuo waited on his bed while Izaya took the shower, steam bleeding under the door like poisonous gas. 

When he was finished, fluffy towel wrapped around his waist, Izaya’s hair fell, wet, in his eyes. 

“You stayed,” his voice was guttural, and rough, and his eyes were red. 

“You invited me in,” Shizuo reached out, held a fabric-clad hip; inclined his body toward the heat of another. For a second time, he looked up at Izaya instead of down upon him. “Your mother didn’t warn you about guys like me?”

Izaya knocked his shoulder with a light fist, lips loose in a smile. “Shut up, beast,” and he settled across Shizuo’s thighs, draping his thin arms over his shoulders. “How is this?”

Shizuo looked up, seeing throat and jaw. “Weird,” he muttered, low. “but not bad.”

“How is weird not bad?”

Shizuo hushed him, massaging circles into the skin just above the towel. “Weird like new. Confusing.”

“I want you,” Izaya proclaimed, playing with his hair. “What’s confusing about that?”

“That you haven’t told me this until now,”

Izaya looked down the slope of his nose, shifting his weight. “Didn’t know how you’d take it. Loose-canon, and all. Would you have killed me for it?”

Shizuo mapped out the texture of his skin now that he was close enough to see: light brown freckles, scattered like stardust across his cheeks. Short hairs above his lip. The shadows painted down the sharp lines of his face. 

Beauty, found everywhere. 

“Wouldn’t have believed you.”

“I’m capable of love, Shizu-chan.”

“And I’m capable of being loved?”

Izaya held his gaze, careful smile gone. “Yes,” he urged, serious. “That is one of the better parts of the human condition.”

Shizuo hummed into his throat. “And if I’m not human?”

“We’re all human,” Izaya said, hand tightening. “That’s the problem.”

And maybe they were human, in all the worst ways to be one. Maybe they’ve spent half or all their lives pretending not to be. 

There’s a vampire parading these streets, and the worst sin he’s committed was pretending to be a monster.

Shizuo tracked his open mouth against Izaya’s pulse, exhaling long. “How is this?” he asked, a mirror. He wasn’t familiar with softness so he bypassed the lips, went straight for the teeth.

Izaya went rigid in his hold. Tight fingers, gripping tendrils of his hair, hip bones angling into Shizuo’s thighs. “Green light, beast,” he said, but the quiver in his voice betrayed the confidence he tried to play. 

Shizuo let his head be guided, his teeth following the column of Izaya’s throat and up to his earlobe, taking it between his canines and rolling it there. Shizuo’s imagined himself this close many times before this, but it had never been for this purpose. 

He was chasing Izaya in a completely new way. 

I’d follow you to the end of the world and then some, rat.

Izaya’s hands tightened behind his head, breath warm where it fanned against his neck. “I heard that,” he whispered; a confession. 

Shizuo pressed his smile into Izaya’s skin. He couldn’t suppress them anymore; the curling of his lips, entirely against his will. He couldn’t call them by another name: not a snarl, nor a sneer, nor a frown. An honest to God smile. When did that happen?

“What are you going to do about it?” Shizuo asked, craning his neck back, taking in Izaya’s features again. 

Izaya held him beneath the ears, thumbs propping his jaw up on stilts. Shizuo thought it took them far too long to get here. 

With a tilt to Izaya’s smile he leaned forward, speaking the words against Shizuo’s lips, “ I’ll let you. ”