Every action has a consequence. It just happens that either karma can't do its job properly or Izaya Orihara's consequence is very much delayed, slowly snowballing into one terrible, terrible, catastrophe waiting to happen.
The informant is stopped to the side of the streets of Ikebukuro—the black jacket he always wears is draped around his shoulders, but it isn't enough to protect him from the freezing temperatures of winter. He can feel the goosebumps on his skin, but he ignores it, too used to the cold to care. At this hour, most stores are closed and the only illumination is street lights and the bright lights of love hotels, but he doesn't need a source of light to guide him; he knows this city like the back of his hand. When a monster like Shizuo chases you around enough, you really get to know everything—from the twists and turns of the streets to the back alleys that are dim enough that you can go unnoticed to the best hiding places for ambush—none of it goes unnoticed. Not by Izaya, anyway. Ikebukuro is his playground.
His movements are fluid, smooth as though well rehearsed. The meeting place he and his client designated over the phone is a place he's familiar with. His steps have a certain hop to them, graceful and agile. Concealed in his jacket close to his body is a manila envelope containing vital information. It's a careless method of transferring information, but Izaya Orihara wouldn't have it any other way.
Footsteps resound in his wake, interrupting his pace as he notices that they are not timed with his movements and therefore belong to another. He is unfazed, used to people approaching him while he's on the job. Izaya whirls around, a knowing smirk on his face. "Gentlemen, isn't it a little too cliched for you to attack me from behind?"
No response.
There are two people in front of him and both of them have yellow cloth tied around the lower halves of their faces. Izaya would assume that they are Yellow Scarves, but their faces show more years than even the oldest of the color gang would have. Someone he left behind on bad terms, perhaps? Unlikely. His hand casually places itself at his pocket where he keeps his trusty switchblade and he flicks it out, only revealing a brief flash of silver but doing little else to show it. A threatening look crosses his assailant's faces and he, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He steps back and glides to the side to narrowly evade a swing that would've, without a doubt, would've knocked him out if he hadn't dodged it. He isn't too caught off guard; Shizuo is worse.
What Izaya isn't expecting is a hand coming out of the sewers and catching him by his ankles, tripping him as he moves. A good amount of color drains from his face when he tries to regain his footing, but it's difficult to do so when he's being crowded by many larger than him. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be much of a problem given his agility, but his mobility is restricted. Clicking his tongue, the raven-haired male snaps out his switchblade and slices the chest of one of his aggressors successfully, gritting his teeth as he rips the serrated edge out of flesh. He doesn't care for the blood staining his wonderful jacket; his priorities lie in fleeing—and his attempts at doing so don't seem like they're working all too well. Fighting back only serves to anger his scarved assailants further. He rips his ankle out of the hand's grip and stomps on it, leaping backwards.
Izaya quickly realizes that he didn't account for the possibility of something behind him when his back hits a wall—more specifically, a barrier of warm muscle. His mouth is suddenly muffled by a white cloth and his wrists pushed behind his back, forced to the ground. From the way his consciousness is beginning to waver, he can assume that the cloth has been doused with chloroform—how cliched. Izaya squirms uselessly in the hold his foes have on him. His vision is already blurring when he falls limp, his weapon seized before he is hauled into the trunk of a white van parked into an alley.
He wakes up with his wrists and ankles bound together, his clothes torn off and replaced with rags. The floor is smooth but solid and his temples ache slightly. There's a blindfold tied onto him, making it difficult to discern any details about the room. It feels like rot, mildew, and he has to breathe in stale air.
"Izaya Orihara." The words command authority that whoever they came from doesn't have. No matter how intimidating the voice is, he refuses to flinch in the slightest. Whatever dignity he has left will not allow him to do so.
A playful but forced smile makes it way onto his face, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his pale face. "That's my name, don't wear it out."
There is a pause before the same voice replies. "Playing it cool? You won't be for long."
His captor's words make the hairs on the back of Izaya's neck stand straight up and he furrows his eyebrows. The familiar cold of metal presses against the side of his head, but there's something specific about the blade (the way that its edge is shaped, the feel of the handle) that is too familiar.
They're using his own fucking knife to do all this.
Rip .
The cut up blindfold falls into the informant's lap and his eyes squint at the sudden influx of light, his wrists beginning to ache from the rope. Whoever did it clearly isn't an expert at it. Even though there were about five people attacking him, there is only three in the room with him. From the way one is positioned directly in front of him with the two others on standby farther away, Izaya presumes that the one speaking to him is the ringleader of all of this. The man, who he's decided to call "Specs" from the pair of sunglasses resting on the bridge of his nose, towers over him as though trying to exert some form of power that clearly isn't working. His build is broad and Izaya immediately recognizes him as the man who he bumped into.
"I wouldn't exactly call it playing cool, but whatever floats your boat."
Izaya leans back in his chair to survey the room and the moment his eyes leave Specs, he is kicked in the gut, pain blossoming in his stomach. He grimaces and curls inwards slightly, his cry of pain getting caught in his throat. He keeps his forced smirk.
"Shut up, Orihara." The heel of Specs' boot crashes down on the ground behind him and moves, rolling Izaya to his stomach and then pushing his face into the floor. The thin man chokes out a groan in pain as his cheek is gnashed into dirty cold stone, waiting for an opening. "Hey, got the brand?" He hears a low hiss behind him, undoubtedly the sound of metal being heated up.
This is how the filthiest of humans behave , he realizes, though it's nothing like what Shizu-chan does. "So what are you doing this for?"
"You don't remember, huh?" Another bruising kick. "Figured you wouldn't. You don't need to know what you fucking did."
Izaya fakes a grunt—lure Specs into a false sense of security and when it's time, destroy it. He doesn't say anything, conceiving of plans that won't work. It's difficult to do much when the side of your face is being grinding into stone and at this point, Izaya can taste iron on his tongue.
"Man, you gotta be more discreet than that." Specs says from above him. Someone is lifting the hem of Izaya's shirt up, cold air brushing against his skin promptly replaced with heat that gets warmer and warmer and doesn't stop until it's searing pain. Izaya cries out at the pain when the brand presses against his skin and it's held there for a good few seconds before gliding over his sweltering skin slightly and then coming off. Explosions of color dance across his vision, fading in and out and melding together to form hues he's never seen before and that's all he can see as his body shakes uncontrollably and his skin burns .
"Poor Orihara." Specs pouts from above him mockingly. Izaya stifles a sarcastic chuckle, imagining every little way he can kill Specs and his henchmen had his hands and feet not been bound.
That night, Izaya learns how to just lay there and take a beating, learns how to zone out even through intense pain to save energy for the next day until he finally loses consciousness.
He's uncertain when he wakes up again, but he wakes up without pain, thoughts murky and groggier than usual. After a few moments of trying to collect himself, Izaya decides that they've likely drugged him. How fucking typical. Izaya's wrists are tied to the bedpost and he knows too damn well what's happening next - he's had this done to enough people to know and he's seen enough information files to know. What a great chance to test his own humanity.
Izaya tries to get as much sleep as possible but he's restless, the uneasiness quickly dissolving into anxiety that eventually boils into determination out of his own shitty pride and delusions that he's somehow higher than the lovely humans that forced him into captivity. Specs enters the room.
"Boy, are you composed."
A smirk. "Yep."
Specs' expression turns into a frown as he approaches the bed. The mattress creaks under his weight. "With that pretty face, you must've had a cock in your mouth at one point, huh?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Izaya hasn't.
"Sure I would." He can see Specs slip a Glock out of a holster at his waist. "Ever done it with a pistol pressed to your forehead?"
Specs has the head of his dick pressed against Izaya's lips within record time and it's only the cold feeling of a metal barrel pressing against his forehead that makes Izaya oblige and part his lips. He gags halfway down and the gun presses harder onto his face. Tears prick at the corner of his eyes.
Izaya's throat feels raw when they're done and his eyes are swollen with tears. He can't even groan by the end of it and he'd probably be in pain if it weren't for his good ol' pal, drugs. His skin is sticky with cum and his legs are unbelievably bruised, ass aching. His chest heaves with labored breaths. As he tries to lull himself back to sleep, he can't help but wonder what Mairu and Kururi are doing. How are the Yellow Scarves? The Dollars? He struggles to think of any other color gangs beyond the Dollars - his life in Ikebukuro seems like nothing but a distant memory, but when he thinks of names, one sticks out.
Shizu-chan.
Shizuo Heiwajima.
Monster.
Would this have been better if Shizuo were here instead? Izaya would be a senseless pile of gore by now if Shizu-chan had his hands on him. He doesn't know how this is comforting, but it is.
Before Izaya loses his mind, he loses his gag reflex. Getting your face fucked many times a day does that and you stop caring when you're pumped full of drugs almost an equal amount of times a day. It doesn't take long before he just learns to space out, learns to stop wasting effort in trying to keep his cries of pain contained.
Izaya doesn't know how long it's been, but one of those days he remembers.
He is Izaya, the informant - not Izaya, the local cock warmer. He manipulated people and not the other way around and what else did he enjoy? Messing with monsters like Shizuo. He remembers the day Specs gives him his real name just so that he has something to scream every night but for him, Specs is Specs. Izaya doesn't need a name and he's so zoned out all the time that the name escapes him within the next hour. There is a single night where Specs has Izaya tied at his wrists and blindfolded, a knife digging into the man's shoulder blade as his cock is buried into the informant, shirt sticking to his skin from sweat and their groans filling the silence present within the room. He rolls his hips just the right way - the angle that has Izaya screaming and snapping out of his trance.
"Shizu-" Izaya writhes around under the other's weight, stifling heavy pants into his forearms, "Ah - Shizu-chan…"
His blood runs cold when he processes the words he blurted out, but before he can do anything, the knife at his shoulder is already pushing itself in and he screams louder, feeling crimson run down his arm.
"Screaming the names of other people while I'm fucking you?" Specs grabs a fistful of his hair and forces his head down, which would hurt considerably if they weren't on a mattress. Instead, Izaya is heaving lacking breaths as he's suffocated by the mattress. "You got guts, Orihara."
Warm metal slick with blood traces the base of Izaya's cock and his muffled screams fall on deaf ears, nails carving crescent moons into his skin and raking along the fragile, paper white of his torso. Izaya doesn't apologize, squeezes tears out of his shut eyes as he is beaten mercilessly.
The next day, Izaya is in an unbearable amount of pain as the painkillers slowly wear off and every little shift of his muscles brings a searing sensation. Despite the pain, he can think more clearly than he did before. His wrists aren't bound anymore and in place of the rope is hot pink markings. Screw this shitty bondage S&M scenario he got himself in, he needs freedom - well, the bruises and cuts along his skin dictates that he needs not liberty but medical attention. If he keeps living like this, he'll die. Not that he's ever really valued his life, but watching over humans seems pretty interesting right about now.
When Izaya isn't being fed stale bread and water ( like a dirty peasant , Specs' henchmen remark), he's sleeping through his pain. When he isn't unconscious, he's being screwed, tortured, or both. He finds his escape through dreams.
In Izaya's dreams, his body is unscarred and his hair is clean, beautiful. He is enjoying the wondrous sensation of fresh air, warm clothing against his skin, and blue skies with a boisterous crowd. In his fantasies, he resides in a concrete jungle called Ikebukuro - a land that is only a distant memory that he can barely picture. He hardly remembers the streets he used to navigate like a professional, the sidewalks that he pronounced himself as king of, and the people that used to dance around in the palm of his hand beautifully . He loved humans.
In his nightmares, he sees Shizuo. Only Shizuo.
Shizuo, a metal grip around Izaya's throat and the life slowly being squeezed from him as he hangs senselessly from the monster's grasp like a ragdoll.
Shizuo, bringing the tip of a metal pole crashing down on the side of Izaya's head and splattering his brains across the floor while the informant is trying to weasel his way out of it without begging for mercy.
Shizuo, fucking Izaya's eyes out while he is slowly dying from physical trauma.
Shizuo, laughing as a torch is tossed on Izaya's skin, searing his flesh black as he burns.
Shizuo.
Every time he resurfaces into reality, Izaya pretends to be asleep for awhile until the torture starts again and one of the days he's in captivity, he can hardly eavesdrop on a conversation between Specs and the one who branded him on his first day.
"You aren't binding him?"
"He's breaking anyway. Kinda pointless now."
The rest of the conversation flows in a language that Izaya, surprisingly enough, does not understand. Is it German?
The day after (he thinks a day has passed - he counts every time he wakes up as a day because other than his sleeping schedule, he has no idea how to keep time), Izaya finally remembers.
Specs.
Takuya Kishihara - that's Specs' name. He remembers in the middle of beating when Specs quips, "I ought to sell your body parts to pay off the shitty debt you caused."
Izaya has caused plenty of people to go into debt, but it's the way that Takuya's face twists into a cruel smirk that causes him to remember the name - he remembers the way that the man ran away screaming threats when he confronted the informant about the misleading information he was given. None of the information was wrong, the guy was just stupid.
Stupidity is man's downfall, but it happened to not be Specs' but rather Izaya's. How terrible.
"Guess you weren't kidding about the threats." Izaya greets coarsely when Specs comes in one day - probably a weekend because Izaya can hear birds chirping outside of the window. Specs is usually gone in the morning.
The other man tilts his head. "You thought I was?"
Izaya is quiet.
"So, now you know what you did."
Stone motherfucking silence.
"Does it all make sense now?"
Izaya scoffs and tilts his head. "Isn't all this?" He musters the strength to wave his arm, showing his scarred, bruised body. "Enough?"
"Isn't years of debt quite…" Specs whips out a knife and Izaya has a hard time containing his fear. "Awful?"
By the end of it all, Izaya has not only cuts and bruises but also burns. He finds that his left side hurts the least and rolling onto his back to sleep brings agony that makes his vision go white. Shizuo eats him alive in his sleep and not in the good way. In the middle of the night he wakes up in pain and to the sound of loud, brash knocking. He crawls to the window and looks out of it and a pair of men are at the door. He can't see much other than one dyed head of hair and all he can think is Shizuo , Shizuo , Shizuo . They leave with a suitcase of money.
Izaya collapses onto the floor, weak from malnutrition and blacks out as his head hits the carpet.
His dreams aren't exactly pleasant, but he's definitely had worse, and he doesn't die this time. Dying would be a blessing. This time he's being chased across the streets by a blond bartender ripping street signs out of the ground and throwing vending machines. Izaya is not intimidated by this. His body feels lighter than it ever has and he dodges the vending machines easily, laughs freely as Shizuo screams out, enunciating every syllable as though it were the monster's last. " I-ZA-YA ."
When people poke their heads out of buildings to investigate and passersby begin fleeing so they don't get caught in the skirmish, Izaya just laughs even harder. They're scared of the monster chasing him, but he isn't. He remembers - he loves humans, no matter what filthy thing they might do. Shizuo does not count. Shizuo is a manbeast. Humans are beautiful and lovely. His captors are still human. He darts into an alley and Shizuo does not follow. Buildings around him begin to collapse in a flood of crumbling slate grey and he falls onto the ground.
When Izaya comes to, he is hanging from the ceiling in rope like a disco ball and there's a tub of water ( might be piss or something else disgusting , he reminds himself). His groans are muffled by a rag tied around the lower half of his face. More waterboarding? He's had enough of that, really. Maybe they'll finally drown him to death.
But no, he stays hanging there for what feels like hours. The minutes tick by, and his sense of time is probably too distorted for him to accurately tell how long it's been. He just knows that it's been long enough that he got bored and began looking at the knots. He's been around for so long and Specs still can't tie knots for shit. He finds a stray piece of rope in the knot that, when he pulls it, released the rope on his wrists. Fucking score. With his wrists free, Izaya untied the rest of himself, twisting his body upright as he freed his torso from the burn-inducing rope. He landed into the tub of water, but not enough to generate too big of a splash, and wiped his feet on the carpet before leaving the room he'd been imprisoned in for weeks on end. His legs stumbled and trembled as he moved, walking now being a very unfamiliar act for him. The man was more used to spreading his legs than actually using them at this point. But that aside, he is finally free.
He has no fear.
Izaya sees one of Specs' friends down the hall and freezes, crimson gaze set upon the revolver in the man's pocket.
He has one fear.
The guy turns around and pulls out his gun, keeping it low and pointed towards the ground. He clearly does not see Izaya as much of a threat, which is really a shame, because Izaya still has some muscle memory of what he learned on the streets.
"Aren't you supposed to be in…" He gives the door Izaya came out of a sidelong glance. "That room?"
"What room?" Izaya smiles.
The man looks at the door again and Izaya takes the opportunity to burst forwards and sweep him off his feet, pushing him forwards and knocking the gun out of his hands. "Not today, my dear human." He forces a smile onto his face even there's hardly anything to smile about - other than the fact that he's escaping. He doesn't care too much, though, but it'd be nice if he did. Izaya then reaches for the gun and blows Specs' friend's face off, whistling as he slips the weapon into the rags he's dressed in. When he reaches the front entrance of the flat, he feels a swift breeze blow by before losing consciousness, a hollow thud in his head. Izaya almost loses an eye that night - there is a fresh, gaping wound by his temple and large knife wounds gouged in both feet, now bandaged. While Izaya would like to say that he's not discouraged in the slightest, he is. He longs to embrace the cool night air instead of a shitty springy mattress, face shoved into the bed in disgusting submission.
The amount of time he's been there sufficed for figuring out Specs' mindset, and he no longer has any interest in him, or so Izaya likes to say. Izaya likes to think that he's still in control over the situation. He likes to think that he could get out whenever he wants to, though the injuries on his feet say otherwise. He's long since gotten sick of the endless violating and pain, long since tired of being called a slut and other obscenities, long since started feeling a dull ache in his chest every time he thought of Ikebukuro, and worst of all - long since started yearning for the thrill he felt as Shizuo gave chase almost everyday, yearning for the way he felt so vigorous and full of life with every shout of his name and with every time he was an inch away from getting killed by an incoming vending machine - the way it felt as though he cheated death. Now, though, he is cheating death in the way that he's been hanging one inch away from it constantly, an unpleasant and relentless sensation that hurts .
For the first time since his capture, Izaya starts crying. Sure, a few tears have slipped down his face, but before, it was reflex and just out of pain. This time, Izaya is not being beaten. He is not being raped. It is pure frustration and distress, a time bomb that had been ticking for an eternity finally going off - a dam that'd been slowly crumbling breaking and with the splintered wood, a flood of tears that will not cease. The sheets are bed with tears when Izaya finally stops, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably and his face flushed. His eyes hurt much like everything else. Right after that happens to be the first time he hates himself. He loathes himself for breaking so easily, for doing the exact same things he has mocked other humans for doing. He screams at himself, tells himself that he's weak for cracking under such weak physical torture. He tries to stop caring. He doesn't need to react like this, doesn't need to sit there and wallow in self-pity like others would, and he tells himself that he is stronger than that - Izaya Orihara is not weak. Izaya Orihara is human, but not a broken sex toy.
He doesn't know when, but one of the following days, there is a knock at the door. He's outside of the room that day, bound at the wrists and broken in the feet on the couch by the entrance of the flat. The knock on the door is loud, commanding, and Izaya flinches at the sound.
"Debt." A voice yells from the other side of the door. "Don't pretend you aren't here, either. I saw you come in a little bit ago."
Izaya's screams are muffled by the gag crammed into his mouth, and he just tries and tries until his throat goes hoarse, but by then, Specs has already rammed his fist into Izaya's face and told him to shut the fuck up. He only stops when a gun is pointed at his head but if it weren't for the prospect of escape, he would have kept screaming in hopes that he would die. He is left on the couch instead. When Specs is leaving the room, he looks in Izaya's direction. "If you make a sound, I'm sawing off your limbs."
He isn't kidding - Izaya can tell from his grim demeanor, but when has that ever stopped Izaya? The ex-informant can hear Specs open the door and greet the debt collectors. The walls are thin, or the ones within the house are. Izaya rolls onto the floor, staining the carpet with blood, gets on his knees and crawls as fast as he can. He ignores the sound of blood thrumming in his eardrums, fights against the instincts planted in him that yell at him to turn back and keep himself safe, tells himself that he won't make it out without risks. Izaya finally makes it to the hallway, his eyes widening at his crimson gaze settles onto the open door as though it is a gate to heaven, because it is. The property is in the quiet side of Ikebukuro, a broken down neighborhood that no one touches because of the crime activity.
His eyes widen, not at the open door, but at what is beyond it. Standing in the doorway is the two people he saw from what feels like a lifetime ago, a distant image that slipped away from his head just like every other memory from his life as an informant. His heart pounds, his hands slick with sweat and his skin reeking with the stench of sex, everything is bruised and ugly except for his face, but that's a little messed up too. Specs tries to be careful with it because that's supposedly Izaya's only redeeming quality.
But that's not true. Not with the way that the visitors look at him. They notice him a few minutes after he sees them.
One of them is Shizuo.
Izaya looks at the black and white-clad man as though he's a mythical creature of some sorts - a legend. As though he's only ever dreamed of Shizuo because from what he remembers, he only knows Shizuo. He remembers everything with the man in it, and it doesn't take much to recognize the bleached locks of hair, the blue-tinted sunglasses, everything down to the not-so-subtle smell of cigarettes that he carries around. His broad shoulders, the bartender outfit. There is no way in hell that Izaya would not recognize him, and he knows that Shizuo recognizes him.
"Izaya?" The sound is foreign, softer than anything Izaya has ever heard Shizuo say. It's hushed, quiet, but not kind. More surprised than anything. "What…"
Tom squints. "That's Izaya? Sure doesn't look like it."
"Sure doesn't." Shizuo says. His eyes are wide and Izaya doesn't know if he's just caught off guard or pissed. He wants to say something but the gag forbids it.
Specs whirls around, barks a laugh as he hoists Izaya up by the arms, holds him close by the waist. A silver barrel presses itself into the man's temple, cold like the winter night Izaya saw the night he was kidnapped. "You know him?"
Izaya's eyes widen in a plead for help.
"Yeah." Shizuo is no longer confounded, only angry. "Why the fuck is he here?"
"Shizuo." The man beside him, a dark-skinned man with hair styled into dreadlocks, said. "Stop. We're not here for this, we're here for the debt."
Specs' hand began shaking, the gun at Izaya's head trembling and pushing into his skin. "If you don't leave, I'll shoot."
Shizuo remains silent as the one who Izaya assumed to be his coworker speaks, calm and composed. "We have no connections to him. Your threats are empty."
"The look blondie has on his face says otherwise." A click as the weapon is cocked. "I-i'll… I'll really do it! Don't you care for his safety at all?"
"As a matter of fact." Shizuo starts. His teeth grind against the white of his cigarette slowly. "I don't care."
Izaya's eyes widen in surprise but then shrink back to their usual size. He wonders if Shizuo is lying, but what does he expect? It's Shizu-chan after all, and Shizu-chan is a monster. Everyone knows that. He laughs into the cloth stuffed into his mouth, tilting his head as he gazes up at Shizuo as menacingly as he can with his bloodied and broken visage.
"Is that so?" Specs barks laughter, lowers his head to whisper into Izaya's ear. "Even to the very end, you're garbage."
Izaya is stone-faced throughout it all, an empty bang ringing into his head as the trigger is pulled. He sees Shizuo's face contort into surprise and worse of all, pity and sympathy. Almost as though apologizing.