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This Way Up (Breakable)
digging up your arteries
to find proof of something more
i want to see blood or bones or nerves
or anything at all
there has to be something
— c.k. —
Heiwajima Shizuo hates violence. He hates the slow-boil that simmers deep inside his body, threatening to spill over. He hates the aggressive nature it nourishes: the constant, unyielding pressure to unleash his fists onto something inferior to his strength. He hates the destruction left in his wake, such as the lampposts bent at odd angles, the windows shattered into thousands of shards, and the buildings pummeled into rubble and debris. He hates how fragile the world and its inhabitants are. How breakable bones can be.
But as a child, he'd been granted steel for limbs, a bulletproof skull, and armor for his heart. At first glance, people gawk in awe at his marvelous, unparalleled strength that remains shrouded in mystery. They wonder, ponder, and simply envy the blonde—they wish to be invincible too. Upon further inspection, however, the metal castings protecting his body also act as a wall, a barrier, for Shizuo cannot be gentle. He is incapable of overcoming his own defenses, unable to caress a woman's face without hurting her, lost for words when it comes to comforting an abandoned child in an alley, and, worst of all, conflicted over what it means to love someone, for nobody can bear to get close to him and the dangerous silhouette he poses.
Shizuo hates violence but, every night before he falls asleep, he stares at the ceiling, closes his eyes and whispers I hate myself.
—
After writing his name in the top right-hand corner, Shizuo cannot help but crinkle the paper in his hands. He tries again, his mechanical pencil scratching against the thin paper; Shizuo crumbles the notebook sheet into a ball. Alas, a third attempt is made. He takes his time, slowly scribbling the characters 平和島静雄 across the dotted line. His eyes fixate on those five characters, wondering how a few simple strokes can mean something.
His surname, 平和島, means peaceful island. The sixteen-year-old clasps his hands behind his head and leans back, the chair legs lifting off the floor. Within the confines of his bedroom, the blonde relinquishes a half-hearted laugh. While abnormally strong, he admits to being an introvert—a defense mechanism of some sort in order to protect himself and the people around him. Peaceful island, at least using Shizuo's logic, sounds distant, or better yet, isolated—he decides that it suits him.
The light chuckle subsides, however, as he focuses on his given name. 静雄. Quiet hero.
Shizuo's eyebrows wrinkle, his face contorting in disgust.
He isn't, and never will be, a hero.
—
From the moment Shizuo sees him, he dislikes him.
With unkempt black hair, a merciless, mischievous grin, and the obnoxious, insidious echo of his clapping hands, Shizuo knows that whatever sits before him is the very definition of chaos. What's worse, is the overwhelming stench that leeches off this person, driving Shizuo nigh insane.
"You piss me off."
A pair of umber, brown eyes meets his.
"Oh, yeah?"
Shizuo glares at him. Merely shrugging, a smirk crosses the raven's face.
"Too bad. I thought you and I could have some fun."
Fun? Shizuo wants to laugh. No, better yet, he wants to absolutely maul the kid, wants to sock him in the jaw and see if the flea can still crack a smile. The blonde refrains, however, because Orihara Izaya is breakable, or at least, he looks breakable, just like everybody else in this world. The second Shizuo had first laid eyes on the raven's lithe, frail body, he'd imagined a tree in the howling wind, its branches snapping off, the trunk splintering, and the narrow roots deracinating through the mud. And in this case scenario, as always, Shizuo is the fucking wind.
"Shut up," the blonde growls.
But no, apparently Izaya has a knack for opening his mouth at the most inconvenient moments.
"Don't be like that, Shizu-chan."
Shizu-chan? Who the hell does he think he is?
And just like that, Shizuo unfurls his fists, grunts, and throws his weight behind a deafening punch. Surely, it's lights out for the deceitful raven. Only, as his blow comes down, Shizuo gasps and watches his hand collide with wood, a sickening thud ringing in his ears. Izaya is nowhere to be seen.
Where the fu—
Then, out of the blue, Shizuo sees him, or rather, a flash of black and a glint of metal. Before he can send another punch, pain ripples from his chest. Glancing down, the blonde finds a deep slash across his breastbone, blood oozing and dripping onto the pavement. It stings and hurts like hell, but all Shizuo can manage is a surprised expression, gaping at the switchblade twirling in Izaya's slender fingers.
"See? It's fun, isn't it?"
He hurt me. How?
It takes only a single wound for Shizuo to hate Izaya. Not because he had hurt Shizuo. Not because he tried to kill him. But because within that second, Shizuo found himself staring at a threat, at someone capable of surviving his violent rampages, at a flea who doesn't play by the rules. He finds himself standing five feet away from someone with the capacity to trick, to injure, to kill—he is a monster. A monster that Shizuo wants dead. Yet, as he gazes long and hard into those brown, calculating eyes, he knows it will be a feat damn near impossible, for Izaya, in one word, is unbreakable.
—
Shizuo is certain about one notion in life: he hates Orihara Izaya more than he hates violence.
The blonde hates that the raven-haired man treats life as if it's a game, considering Ikebukuro to be his board and people to be his pawns. He hates that within Izaya's sick and twisted mind, people are his prey and that, like a cat, he can hunt, taunt, and devour them. And most of all, he hates the revolting smell that is Izaya, and how it has only become more grotesque, more wretched in the past few years since graduating secondary school.
If there is anything Shizuo hates more, it's the dire fact that Izaya can be so blunt, so unequivocally clever with his words, making a mess of Shizuo's streets, burying victims rather than saving them, and causing chaos this way and that.
Yes, Shizuo is the epitome of violence—bred to destroy, impossible to break—but he distances himself from the people around him, knowing what his superior strength can do if things get out of hand. So when Izaya—a weaker man—has the audacity to conjure up the stuff of nightmares, sprinting through the streets with a knife, ensuing injury and crime and problems just for the hell of it, Shizuo knows that at some point, Izaya will have to die, probably under the weight of the blonde's powerful hands if he can help it.
They're polar opposites, Orihara Izaya and Heiwajima Shizuo: one protects with his strength, the other exploits.
Hence why, when Shizuo finds Izaya sitting with his legs dangling over the railing of a fire escape, he doesn't hesitate to sucker punch the daylights out of him. Catching himself on a pole within reach, Izaya keeps himself from falling over fifty feet, sneering at Shizuo as if to ask is that all you've got?
Shizuo answers to Izaya's challenge with a backhand swing, followed by a roundhouse kick. The information broker collapses flat on his face against the cold, grate floor beneath him. Struggling, he eventually gets to his feet and huffs, revealing his signature switchblade.
"That isn't fair, Shizu-chan. You didn't even give me a warning."
Shizuo growls and steps forward, his hand automatically slipping around Izaya's neck. Muscle memory; they've been in this position before. His hands know exactly where to go and his fingers remember the pressure points between Izaya's throbbing veins. The bodyguard watches in fascination as the information broker chokes, his face slowly turning an ugly shade of purple—it's thrilling and has Shizuo on his toes.
How he's waited for this moment. How he's waited to strangle Izaya with his own bare hands, using brute strength, without holding back. How he's waited for Izaya to die, to go limp, to go quiet, to go ghastly white, to have a taste of his own medicine, to—
—to not even put up a fight?
As Shizuo looks up at Izaya, hoping to watch the light dim in his eyes, he instead finds the raven smirking.
The nerve of this guy. Smirking!
He tightens his grasp around Izaya's skin.
Take it and fight it. I want to see you struggle. I want to watch you writhe.
Izaya, much to Shizuo's shock, doesn't do any of these things. With his hands hanging at his sides, his body motionless save for the few shallow breaths passing between his gritting teeth, it is safe to say that Izaya has given up. He doesn't fight his way out of his chokehold. He doesn't swipe his switchblade at his attacker. He doesn't scream. He doesn't kick. He doesn't bite. He doesn't beg. He doesn't struggle. He just… stops moving and accepts his fate.
Alarmed, Shizuo releases Izaya, the thin man tumbling to the ground in a heap. He coughs once or twice, rubs his swollen neck, and frowns. Much to Shizuo's own chagrin, the blonde takes a step back—something he has never done because, in all honesty, it looks like he's running from a fight. But fuck it all, because before him lies a defeated Izaya. It's surreal. It's a hallucination. It's impossible. Izaya doesn't give up even when he doesn't stand a chance; Shizuo is livid.
"I'm disappointed in you, Shizu-chan. You finally had the chance to kill me, so why didn't you?"
Shizuo searches desperately for an explanation but finds none. Izaya hadn't tried to stop him, not even once. Suddenly, the world is spinning. Nothing makes sense. Nothing about this entire situation is normal and Shizuo, for the first time ever, feels an ounce of concern for the flea.
What's going through your mind right now, Izaya?
"If you aren't going to kill me tonight, I'm leaving. Some hero you are."
Izaya brings himself to his feet and clambers down the stairs, leaving a mortified Shizuo standing in stupefaction.
Anyone else there would have probably run after Izaya, demanding a fucking explanation. But not Shizuo. Because in all their years spent fighting, Shizuo mutters what the fuck aloud and leans against the wall, trying to comprehend what just happened between cigarette drags. Because Izaya, unlike every other previous encounter, hadn't read Shizuo's mind.
—
A couple of years ago, Shizuo had been asked what is life? and why do people live? Someone asked him that and long story short, the blonde beat them within an inch of their life.
While not outrageously (if at all) careful with the delicacy of mortality, as Shizuo constantly beats the living crap out of anyone who pisses him off, he does value life. In some way, shape, or form, life is everything violence is not. It grants growth, whereas violence destroys. It promotes happiness, whereas violence ails misery. It offers love with an open hand, whereas violence condones hatred.
Thus, for someone to oppose life, to wish for the end, to willingly throw away something so hallmark to beauty, Shizuo feels the urge to knock some sense into them. And in most of these situations, he does, usually by throwing them against a dumpster, tossing them into an alley, or hanging them over a bridge. He gives them a reason to fear death and always summons the will to whisper if you ever find yourself hanging on by a thread again, remember this and proceeds to punch them until they beg for mercy and find the will to live another day.
So when Shizuo's phone vibrates at two in the morning, the blonde reading an urgent message from Shinra, he scowls in disbelief and hurries to the doctor's apartment along the outskirts of Ikebukuro. The entire drive, he finds himself slamming on the brakes too hard whilst emitting a string of curses, unable to control his apparent rage. Eventually, he pulls up to the defaced building and sprints up the stairs, occasionally punching a wall or screaming Izaya's name.
After a gnarly confrontation with Celty, the Dullahan doing her best to calm a raging Shizuo, Shinra worriedly ushers him into the bedroom and carefully closes the door behind them. It is then, thankfully, that Shinra explains the situation. Only, he doesn't have to. Shizuo has seen the aftermath with his own eyes; it's obvious what happened.
Lying on the mattress, far too still, is a comatose Izaya. He doesn't move a muscle. Not a single tremor running through his body. Not a single flutter of the eyes. Not a single damn movement that calms Shizuo's flaring temper and spiking worry. The only thing indicating a slow pulse is a monitor that remains hooked up to a sickly, white arm that beeps every few seconds. Aside from that, however, Izaya looks dead. Looks gone. A corpse—that is all that appears to remain of the man Shizuo has come to hate, to despise. And in this moment alone, Shizuo finds something he hates more than violence, more than the fucking flea: Izaya lying still, looking dead, nearly gone.
Shinra quietly leaves the room, apparently trusting Shizuo to refrain from harming Izaya (as if he can do more damage), and whispers I'm sorry behind the shut door. Once the blonde believes that he and Izaya are truly alone, he dares himself to look again at the sleeping man, his eyes fractionally widening as he comes across Izaya's bandaged wrists.
He'd done it with a knife. Shizuo can only think of one blade that Izaya would rely on for something this horrific, this desperate. It's not here. Probably back at the gruesome scene.
Shizuo shudders at the thought, reminded that Izaya had tried to take his own life. Reminded that he'd been alone at the hour, possibly, if not certainly, crying because it had come to this. Izaya had come to this.
Shizuo growls and slams his fist into a wall. The blonde wants to punch him senseless, wants Izaya to wake up so he can kill the man himself. He wants to force the flea to look at him. He wants to stare into those brown eyes one more time and yell how dare you do this whilst cracking his skull against the ground, feeling the absolute satisfaction of Izaya's dead body in his hands. As the thought crosses his mind, a tortured scream escapes Shizuo's mouth. He screams and screams and screams Izaya's name until his voice is gone and even then, keeps yelling. Nobody interrupts him and all the while, he wishes that Izaya will leap at him, shove his blade against Shizuo's tongue, and reprimand him for raising his voice. But he doesn't. Izaya still doesn't move and for some reason, it kills Shizuo.
Furious at him, Shizuo wreaks havoc around the room: overturning tables, picture frames breaking into two, vases filled to the brim with flowers shattering and leaving behind a mess Shizuo doesn't bother to clean up. He can't. He can't do anything but pound into the wall with reckless abandon. At some point, however, he lands a punch that splits his knuckles, blood filling his palm. He briefly wonders if this is how Izaya felt just hours ago. He wonders if this is what Izaya felt like when he nearly bled to death.
Shizuo has broken nearly everything in the room. He's running out of collateral damage. The only thing left is Izaya lying defenseless in bed. Oh, how Shizuo wants to punch him, how he wants to kill him.
But he can't.
Not anymore.
Even when Izaya wakes up, he won't be able to. He'll ogle the man and wonder if he's hitting him too hard, giving blows that will leave bruises, leaving scars on Izaya's heart that will never mend. He'll only remember this night and how Izaya had hurt himself. Shizuo hates violence, and for Izaya to do this, to commit violence upon himself, Shizuo knows that he should hate the flea even more. But he just can't. Shizuo knows that nothing will ever be the same.
And as he looks at Izaya, he finds a tear threatening to fall and whispers you were the one thing in this damn world that wasn't meant to break.