Shizuo doesn't notice the television in the corner of the room.
He doesn't usually pay much attention to the furnishings in the homes he sees at work. He and Tom are only ever in rooms for a handful of minutes at most, and by the time it's Shizuo's turn to step forward they only have a few seconds of time left before they and the individual they have come to speak to will be leaving, the latter more precipitously than walking would allow. When Shizuo steps through this doorway he notices the dark of the room, the widening of the stranger's eyes, the faint glow of light from around half-drawn blinds; he doesn't notice the low murmur of sound from the television any more than he notices the dim illumination of the screen in the corner of the room, an unnecessary distraction for his current thoughts.
"You don't understand!" the other man whimpers, retreating back across the floor until his shoulders press against the wall and holding his hands up as if to offer support for the defense his words offer. "I have my reasons!"
"Yeah?" Shizuo growls at him, the word purring in the back of his throat and over his tongue on some impulse not his own, riding the same wave of anticipatory heat that's stretching out along his spine and unfurling into his veins like the dawn breaking over the bright glass and metal of his city. "Don't you think your reasons are your responsibility too?"
"It's not my fault!" the man protests. "I had to, I had no choice!"
"You had a choice," Shizuo says, curling his fingers in against his palm. "If you say you don't then you must not think very much of the freedom you already have, is that it?"
"Orihara Izaya."
Shizuo can feel the name like an electric shock down his spine, like a force to flex every muscle in his body rigid with violence all at once. His hand moves on its own, his fingers seizing around the stranger's shirt to lift him off his feet, and "What?" his voice is demanding for him, dropping into the shadowed-over range it always hits when his body is trembling with as much adrenaline as is suddenly hitting him, when his heart is racing in immediate expectation of the violence that always lingers on his mental horizon. "What does he have to do with this?"
"What?" the man gasps. His hands are still up, his eyes still wide; his mouth is open but the voice is wrong, it doesn't match the one just speaking. "What are you talking about?"
"You just-" Shizuo starts, and then he realizes Tom's calling his name, "Shizuo!" in the clear tone he always uses to get the other's attention. Shizuo blinks, the haze of red flickering away from his vision for a moment, and when he looks back Tom is pointing to the corner of the room. Shizuo follows the line of Tom's hand to the darkened corner, to the pale white glow of electronics, and it's only then that he sees the television, only then that he makes sense of the low background hum of static as sound, as the spoken words of the announcer for a news program. It's meaningless, Shizuo wants to say, he never watches the news himself and doesn't care about whatever politics are being reported; but then an image flashes into the corner of the screen, a years-old photograph of a face too familiar for Shizuo to dismiss, and his attention snaps to the screen entirely, his focus bringing the sound of the announcer's voice into coherency as he stares confusion at the report.
"...brought in to the hospital late last night after collapsing in a downtown street." She sounds calm, her words clear as she reads them off a script; Shizuo barely spares the bland calm of her expression a glance before he focuses on the displayed photograph, on the familiar bright of a lopsided smile and the suggestion of red behind dark eyes made strange and distant by the distortion of electronics. "He was identified from personal effects he had on him at the time he was brought in and is currently reported as in stable condition and receiving treatment for his injuries. If you have any additional information, the police ask that you inform them immediately, as the investigation into the perpetrator is still ongoing." The announcer ducks her head, the screen flickers, and Izaya's photograph is gone, dropped as easily as the thread of the story is.
Shizuo's fingers loosen from their grip. The man he's holding up squeaks something short and panicked as he slides free and stumbles backwards against the wall again, but Shizuo doesn't turn to look at him; he's entirely forgotten about the third occupant in the room, has forgotten even about Tom. The whole of his surroundings has gone hazy with unimportance as his mind reels wildly over the sudden instability of what he's just heard, of the implications of the announcement itself: Izaya collapsing on the street, Izaya in the hospital, Izaya being treated for injuries Shizuo wasn't responsible for and didn't even know about.
"I have to go," Shizuo says, and he's leaving without waiting for confirmation from Tom, without looking back to the breathless relief of the man he's left sagging against the wall of his darkened apartment. He leaves the room, leaves the complex, leaves the block, his feet carrying him forward without any conscious thought in his mind but that grainy image of Izaya's smile locked to some past point in time, the expression displayed like it was nothing on a news station reporting the fact of his hospitalization like it was trivial, like it hardly mattered at all.
Shizuo didn't expect that to feel so wrong.
The hospital staff are not as helpful as Shizuo could hope.
"Ah, you've come to visit Orihara-san," the young man at the front desk says with a smile as cool and sterile as the space around them. "He'll be glad to see a friend."
Shizuo frowns. "We're not friends."
The smile flickers for a moment of confusion. "Ah." The young man's gaze skips down over Shizuo's usual bartender uniform, his forehead creasing. "Are you...with the police, then?"
"No." Shizuo fixes the other with the full force of his attention, feels his shoulders starting to hunch into irritation. "What's his room number?"
The other blinks. His smile is entirely gone, now. "I can't let you in without a guest pass."
Shizuo's jaw sets. "So give me a guest pass."
"But why are you…" The young man trails himself to silence as Shizuo's teeth clench against each other. His gaze drops to the other's hand, to the curl of fingers tight on a fist at Shizuo's side, and when he swallows it's hard enough to be audible and followed immediately by him ducking his head over the sheets of paper on his desk. "One moment please."
"Okay." Shizuo watches the young man type into the keypad of a label maker to print off some kind of a barcode; he tears it off as soon as it's done and reaches for a pen to write something Shizuo doesn't bother reading before he accepts the tag and peels off the backing to stick it to his vest.
"Please keep that on while you're visiting," the young man says, still looking a bit shaken and not quite meeting Shizuo's gaze. "Orihara-san is in room 1138."
"Thanks," Shizuo says, and turns to head for the rows of elevators at the back of the room.
"He just got out of surgery," the young man calls after him, sounding desperate. "He may not be awake when you arrive." Shizuo waves a hand to push aside this concern as he presses the button for the elevator, and the other subsides to silence that lingers until the doors have shut behind Shizuo and the elevator is purring itself into movement under his feet. Shizuo leans back against the wall and stares at his reflection distorted in the polished metal of the doors in front of him; it makes him think of that photograph on the news program, outdated and out-of-focus but clear enough to recognize, clear enough to carry all the pieces of Izaya as surely as his own blurry reflection is clearly Shizuo.
He doesn't think about the question the young man at the front desk left unfinished. There's only one reason he has ever wanted to see Orihara Izaya.
Izaya looks different in his hospital bed.
Shizuo knew he was hurt. He was half-expecting the white of bandages across pale skin, maybe the slow drip of an IV running down to the inside of a skinny arm; he's spent more than enough time of his own in hospitals, he's all too familiar with the trappings of comfort and the immediacy of pain that come with them. But he can't see the bandages hidden under Izaya's hospital gown and the thin layer of the blanket pulled over him, and while the IV is there it's half-hidden behind a curtain, easy to overlook if Shizuo turns away from it. Really Izaya could be sleeping at home, except for his surroundings, and even then Shizuo doesn't have anything to compare it to, doesn't know how far off this situation is from whatever Izaya constructs for himself by way of a residence. There's almost nothing to prove the other is hurt, barely any sign that he's recovering from a serious injury; if Shizuo ignores the rest of the room he can almost believe Izaya has just fallen asleep in front of him, can almost convince himself this is an opportunity for the revenge he has always craved provided by unheard-of carelessness in the other. In a way it is; Shizuo has no doubt Izaya deserved whatever injury he received, and it seems like justice, somehow, to have him left vulnerable by his own machinations for the blows Shizuo has never managed to land against his body. It would be easy to crush a fist against his face, easy to let the adrenaline of aggression run free of Shizuo's veins and into unresisted violence; it's what Shizuo half-intended on his walk over here, what he expected during the elevator ride up to the floor.
He can't explain why he doesn't act. It's not a matter of holding himself back; there's just nothing in him at all, none of the seething fury that he has become so accustomed to feeling at the sound of Izaya's name or the thought of the other's face. Izaya is lying in front of him still and totally unconscious of the danger Shizuo could present to him; and Shizuo can muster no strength for combat at all, can find nothing inside the space of his thoughts but a low hum of shock and an ache against the inside of his chest like he can't quite breathe. He stands at the foot of Izaya's bed, his hands slack at his sides and his gaze fixed at the part of Izaya's lips on the rhythm of his breathing, and he thinks about Izaya falling to the street, thinks about Izaya's blood spilling across the pavement, thinks about Izaya lying unconscious for some unmeasured span of time before someone cared enough to call for aid. Shizuo's not sure, now, that he's ever even seen Izaya bleed before; it seems an impossible oversight, given the years of their shared violence, but all his memories offer Izaya sidestepping blows, laughing and dodging and taunting without ever taking any damage himself. It seems wrong that someone other than Shizuo could cause harm to him, seems like an impossibility that someone else's hand could break past the laughing amusement that is all Shizuo has ever seen from Izaya when they fight. The idea constricts around his chest and shivers cold along his spine; Shizuo doesn't realize he's frowning at Izaya on the bed in front of him, doesn't realize his shoulders are tensing with something other than anger as he considers the idea.
It's strange to realize how defensive the thought makes him feel.
Shizuo doesn't fall asleep. There's a couch in the corner, the width of it too short to accommodate his legs and the promise of a fold-out cot not tempting enough to make it worth the effort to open it; and besides he's not tired, doesn't think he could fall asleep even if it were late in the day instead of the middle of the afternoon. A nurse comes by to check Izaya's blood pressure and heartrate, eying Shizuo sideways where he's settled himself into the chair alongside the bed, but Shizuo doesn't spare her more than a glance and her curiosity or concern apparently doesn't extend to the distraction of speech. She leaves after five minutes, and Shizuo continues to wait without further interruption, letting the minutes slide past and collect into the outline of hours while his thoughts hum over incomprehensible tension like he's waiting for some rising storm to break in the silence of the hospital room. Izaya is still, the sound of his breathing too soft to be heard over the steady beep of the monitors he's hooked up to; and then he takes an inhale harder than what came before, the action catching loud on the beginnings of awareness, and he opens his eyes before Shizuo has a chance to even grasp at coherency. Izaya blinks once, his vision clearing into focus on the ceiling, and then he turns his head to see Shizuo sitting alongside his bed.
He doesn't even look surprised. "Shizu-chan," he says, his voice a little softer than it usually is, a little rougher in the back of his throat. His mouth catches at one side and tugs up into the very beginning of a smile. "I thought you might be waiting for me." He blinks, carefully, like the action takes some thought. His eyes look brighter in the overhead illumination than Shizuo remembers. "Are you here to kill me?"
Shizuo doesn't answer. Shizuo doesn't know the answer. "What happened to you?" he says instead, cutting past the reasons he doesn't know and the pressure on his chest he can't make sense of to what he can, to the question that has a far simpler answer than any of the others.
"I got stabbed." Izaya shifts his hand against the sheets, his fingers pressing in against his side in a motion Shizuo is sure is as involuntary as the tension against his mouth at the movement.
Shizuo frowns. "Who did it?"
"I don't know." It's probably a lie, but Shizuo can't make any sense out of the soft calm of Izaya's expression. "Why, would you like to send them a thank-you?"
"I'll punch them," Shizuo says, hearing the words clear with sincerity he only parses after he says them.
Izaya's eyebrows raise, just barely, just enough to flicker surprise across his expression. "Are you that jealous of your claim to my life, Shizu-chan?"
Shizuo doesn't have an answer to that either. He just stares at Izaya, waiting for the rush of adrenaline that doesn't come, breathing in that whisper of strangeness in the air that murmurs Izaya while his heart continues to measure out steady seconds by its rhythm in his chest. Izaya's raised eyebrows ease, the tension at the corner of his mouth fades away, and then they're just left gazing at each other in silence that feels oddly still with the absence of threat that usually forms itself between them.
Izaya takes a breath, deep and bracing enough that Shizuo can see it shift in his shoulders. "I didn't actually think you'd be here," he says, slow, like he's thinking over the words. His lashes dip heavy over his eyes as he blinks. "I hoped you would. But I didn't think you'd come."
"I heard about it while I was at work," Shizuo tells him without looking away. "They didn't say on the news how serious it was, I thought you-"
Might be dying, he thinks but doesn't say. You could have died on the street in front of dozens of strangers and I wouldn't have been there, I wouldn't have known, someone else could have killed you and I -
"Oh my god," Izaya says, very faintly. "You're actually here, aren't you."
Shizuo blinks, caught off-guard by the absurdity of this question. "What? Yes I'm here, what-"
"Sorry," Izaya says, so quickly Shizuo doesn't realize, right away, that he's never heard that word from Izaya's lips before. "They've got me on some kind of painkillers and I came to and you were here and I thought-" He closes his mouth hard, pressing his lips tight against each other as if to hold back the words he's already said, but there's enough already, the implication underneath his speech is as clear as if he had finished his sentence.
"I'm here," Shizuo tells him, frowning with the first beginnings of the frustration that has been so oddly absent from this conversation so far. "You're not imagining me or anything."
"Yeah," Izaya says, his mouth twitching on the edge of a smile. "I see that." He stares at Shizuo for another long moment, his mouth easing from its smile and into flatline uncertainty again; then he turns his head away to gaze up at the ceiling, his throat working away tension from his voice before he speaks. "I didn't think you'd come."
He's repeating himself. There's no new meaning under the words, nothing new to be gained from the context of the conversation; there's just Izaya staring at the ceiling, his expression strangely soft without the tension of anticipation Shizuo usually sees settled into the lines of his face, and Shizuo watching him, his heart measuring out a rhythm steadier than the slow beep of Izaya's monitors. Shizuo doesn't answer out loud, and Izaya doesn't look at him again, and in the span of the peace between them the words of course I care don't need to be said aloud.