"You know, Izaya-kun, this is the third course of antibiotics you've had in five weeks...it's as if one wound clears, and another gets infected. Have you not been cleaning them properly?"
"Of course I have. I'm not stupid, Shinra."
Shinra smiled lightly. "Sometimes I think you are. When are you going to stop getting yourself into trouble?"
"Not any time soon." Izaya smirked and waved his hand in a lazy circle, silver rings glinting in the light. "Trouble makes the world go round! There would be no interesting reactions without the occasional calamity."
"Hmm, that's debatable." Shinra finished cleaning and bandaging the large, suppurating gash on Izaya's left forearm, and wheeled his desk chair closer to the opposite side, taking Izaya's right hand in his own to examine the grazed knuckles. "These are badly bruised - did you punch Shizuo-kun in the chest? Ahh, but then I suppose you'd have a broken wrist too…" He carefully probed the bruised flesh surrounding the ulna, causing Izaya to flinch.
"Is this really necessary?"
Shinra ignored him and turned Izaya's wrist over, prodding the inner side with his fingertips. "Badly bruised," he mumbled to himself "but not fractured, so it can't have been Shizuo-kun…"
"Shinra." Izaya repeated, more firmly this time.
"Okay, okay, done! I'll get those antibiotics for you...and I think that it'd be a good idea to run a blood test as a precaution. It's unusual for you to be getting so many infections if you've cleaned your wounds as you say." Shinra turned his back to Izaya, rooting through cupboards for the required medication.
"Haha, are you sure the blood you want to take isn't for one of your experiments? For all I know, you're developing a way of turning people into cats, or of making them fall in love at first sight!" Izaya laughed and stood up from the designated inspection chair, waiting expectantly for Shinra to hand him the bottle of pills.
"Ahh, thanks for the ideas! No need to worry though, I can assure you that your blood is of little interest to me when I have acquaintances like Shizuo-kun. Just think, somebody who can lift vending machines and carsmusthave a special quality to their blood - perhaps Shizuo-kun's body manufactures an extra protein that normal human beings don't have, leading to the increased strength and flexibility of his muscles? Even bodybuilders and weightlifters can't lift the same amount as him without suffering damage; the muscle tissues scars, and the resulting scar tissue is weaker and less elastic. Regardless of Shizuo-kun's lack of a natural limiter, his abilities are-"
"I thought we'd established long ago that Shizu-chan is a monster, Shinra. I have other things to do today, and none of those include listening to your analysis of his beast-like 'abilities', so I'd appreciate it if you just gave me the antibiotics so that I can leave." Izaya held out his hand calmly, his signature smirk betraying his conviction that Shinra would do as requested, but Shinra only slipped the bottle into his lab coat pocket, a smirk to challenge Izaya's (albeit more mocking) spreading across his face.
"Hmm, you seem awfully desperate to get out of this blood test, Izaya-kun. Now that I think about it, I only recall giving you one once. Don't tell me that you're afraid of needles?"
"Considering the fact that I've had knife and bullet wounds before, a needle hardly fazes me." Izaya responded flatly, his smile dropping.
"I need to ask you a few questions before you leave, so you may as well take a seat, Izaya-kun."
Izaya let his arm fall to his side and slumped back down onto the chair irritably, an eyebrow raised suspiciously.
"How is your health in general?"
"Same as ever. What is this, an interrogation?"
Shinra regarded Izaya's slight form with pursed lips before resuming his position in the desk chair opposite.
"You know, Izaya-kun, if you aren't honest about your health and ignore symptoms so persistently, it'll catch up on you one day. It isn't a sign of weakness to be ill every now and again. I can tell you've left some of these injuries infected for a few days before coming to see me. You need to start taking responsibility for your health, before you end up with septicemia."
Izaya, who had been paying more attention to what was going on outside through the window than to what Shinra had been saying, snapped his head back in surprise. It wasn't often that Shinra spoke to him in such a firm tone.
Shinra sighed exasperatedly. "And you've clearly lost weight. Have you not been eating properly?"
"I've been busy with work, there's not always time to stop and cook when I've got meetings to attend and humans to see."
Shinra wanted to believe him, knowing of Izaya's fixational attitude towards his work, but something about the way in which Izaya averted his eyes left him feeling uneasy.
"That's a poor excuse Izaya-kun, and you know it. You've not let that stop you from eating out before, and doesn't Yagiri-san cook for you if you're too busy to do it yourself? You wouldn't have lost this much weight if you were eating properly."
Izaya looked back at Shinra, the daggers that he was glaring only serving to prove how much he hated Shinra seeing straight through him. Most people who knew or had heard of the Informant's formidable reputation would feel incredibly uncomfortable under the heat of his piercing gaze, but Shinra was different. He knew Izaya well enough to know that his true emotions only ever leaked through when he was afraid.
Taking a deep, calming breath, he couldn't help but adopt a softer tone, one that he knew would do little to achieve its goal of coaxing Izaya to divulge information about himself that wasn't predominated by his supposed 'love' of humans.
All in all, a small part of Shinra pitied Izaya. It pitied his inability to open up to anybody, even if doing so was something that Izaya claimed he didn't want or need. He pitied Izaya's perspective that it was something that he didn't need in the first place: that he saw having somebody to confide in as a weakness. It wasn't necessarily because Izaya believed himself to be above people. It was more along the lines of him believing that he was strong enough not to fall folly to burdensome emotions that necessitated discussion. Doing so would, after all, divert his attention from observing the reactions of other people, and being too invested in his own reactions to situations would destroy his stance as an observer. It was this that Shinra pitied most of all, because at times like this, it caused Izaya to run away. And Shinra knew that attempting to escape from yourself by running from others was ineffective.
Finally, Izaya broke eye contact, though the harsh glint remained even as he traced the swirling green pattern in the rug.
"What's it to you?"
"I'm your doctor, that's what. It's my job to notice changes in your health."
An uncomfortable shuffle. A silent admittance.
"I'm fine. I just haven't been as hungry as usual."
"Do you think that there's a particular reason for this?"
"I don't know. All I know is that I haven't been, and clearly, eating without an appetite isn't a particularly favourable course of action."
"Have there been any other symptoms?"
"No."
"Okay. Let's get this blood test done. It'll only take a minute."
Izaya rolled up his sleeve reluctantly. He was drained, and didn't have the energy to keep arguing with Shinra. The further his sleeve came up, the more bruises were revealed. Violet, plum, grey mottled with acidic yellow...an artist's imprint of tiny galaxies. Shinra could count eight up to Izaya's mid bicep, where a particularly large bruise engulfed the entire crook of his elbow. Izaya's eyes flittered to Shinra's, observing his reaction.
"Ecchymoses." Shinra muttered.
"What?"
"Signs of bleeding under the skin. Is your skin like this anywhere else?"
Izaya paused, recalling when he had first seen them in his mirror two weeks ago. Like he'd been shot continuously with a paintball gun. He'd brushed it off, as he usually did with injuries that he didn't deem life threatening. They were just bruises. They'd go away on their own. (But they didn't hurt, and aside from one or two, the others had appeared as uninvited guests, seemingly manifesting without a tangible cause.)
"There's some on my legs too." He confessed finally. "Shizu-chan really is a-"
"Izaya-kun. I know that Shizuo-kun didn't cause these."
The tension in this room is accelerating at a speed of approximately 80mph. At this velocity, the destination will soon be reached, and the whole universe will change.
"I'm going to have to take the blood from the dorsal venous arch in your hand, the bleeding is too severe to take it from the median cubital vein."
Shinra retrieved the necessary equipment from a medical cupboard while Izaya looked on.
Detach. Then it won't hurt.
He knew. He knew what it might be.
Shinra returned and swabbed the vein before tapping it a few times.
"Sharp scratch."
"Did you really need to tell me that?"
It was difficult to regain his usual composure when he was panicking so much inside. The bruises, the infections, the inexplicable heavy sweating, energy loss,the nosebleeds...
"Izaya-kun?" Shinra looked at him curiously. "I've finished now. You've gone very pale - do you need to lie down?"
"I'm fine."
"I'll get you a glass of juice."
Izaya felt a cold glass being pressed into his palm. It couldn't be…
He was zoning out again.
"I've got you some biscuits too. Your blood sugar is probably a little on the low side if you haven't been eating adequately, or at all. You should try and have them." Shinra touched Izaya's shoulder, who tried to ignore the spiralling feeling of dizziness as he raised his head.
"It makes me feel nauseous."
He had intended to sound apathetic, but instead his voice came out on the verge of cracking. A crumpled paper message floating on water, in danger of sinking at any moment.
'I know I'm not well.'
"Try to have some of the juice then, hmm?"
Raising the glass steadily, steadily, he drank a few sips before setting it at the foot of the chair.
"I'm going to get Celty to take these to the hospital for analysis. I've marked them as urgent, which should reduce the waiting time to about an hour or two. Somebody in the hospital owes me a favour, so he'll make sure that they're dealt with promptly. I think that it'd be best if you stayed here until then. It's better safe than sorry, hey?"
"Is it that serious?"
Shinra paused, wondering how to tell Izaya that yes, he did think it was serious. "Well, if it's a platelet disorder there's an increased risk of internal bleeding, so it'd be important to get you seen to straight away."
"Could it be…"
The strain was evident. Shinra's face was taut with worry, Izaya's sickly and drawn.
"You look tired. Why don't you rest for a bit until we get the results?"
He wanted to deny the fact that he desperately needed rest, but denying it meant sitting in the same room as Shinra, and he didn't think he could bear it anymore. So instead, he nodded mutely and followed Shinra into the guestroom. He waited until Shinra had left the room to move soundlessly into the bathroom. He didn't look at himself in the mirror until he saw a drop of blood fall onto the white tiled floor. His sixth nosebleed in three weeks, and it wasn't even because he had seen somebody attractive. Prior to this, he'd only ever had a nosebleed if somebody had punched him in the face, which (as you can imagine for a Parkour expert) didn't happen very often.
What had he done wrong?
He could think of lots of things that he had done wrong - a wealth of things, but who was to say what is truly right and wrong when the sliding scales of morality are a social construct?
Did being what his fellow humans considered to be a 'bad' person mean that he deserved to suffer?
Some would say that it was his body's way of punishing him for using the form that God had created to stir chaos in the world, but Izaya couldn't help but think back to the people on the suicide forum. Bored, unhappy, delusional people, a smattering of terminally ill people…
Largely good people.
Was it wrong to want to escape your lot?
Shinra handed the container carrying the blood samples to Celty gravely.
"I need you to take these to the hospital for me. Please direct them to Saito Shunsuke on the Medical Assessment Unit - he's already expecting you. I'm sorry to spring this on you, my darling, but it's important that it's done now."
At the age of 25, Shinra didn't have the slightest hint of a crease on his forehead. Really, Celty found the miracles of human aging quite fascinating. People just a few years older than Shinra and bordering thirty could have grey hairs and the preliminary signs of aging: the subtle beginnings of crow's feet, or lines on the forehead when it isn't tensed. These were not as common in Japan as in some other countries at what Celty considered to be such an early age, but she still found it intriguing. Why did these signs come about when people could live three times the length of thirty years, or even more? Celty believed that there was most likely a correlation between people who experienced high levels of stress and anxiety in their teenage years and twenties and those who developed these signs sooner. It would, after all, make sense that people who frowned a lot and furrowed their brows would be more susceptible to aging faster. In Shinra's case, his habit of being somewhat overbearing was counteracted by his good nature and adaptability. Celty would never consider Shinra to be an intense or stressed person, despite knowing that Shinra could rival Izaya's intense, calculating manipulation. Yet now, she could sense an aura of change, and the current expression on Shinra's face, an image of agitated grief consolidated by turbulent grey eyes, inspired an unsettling feeling of change. Celty had a feeling that this expression was here to stay.
[Shinra, what's going on?]
"Orihara-kun is sick."
His voice was blank, as though all of the emotion had been stripped from it. It was in such stark contrast to his face, that Celty found the scene to be overwhelmingly discordant. Here they were, standing in the doorway to their home on a bright sunny day, and there she was carrying a container holding what she now knew could only contain bad news.
[What's wrong with him?]
"I'm not sure yet, but I think it's..." Shinra raised his eyes so that they were level with where Celty's would be. She could tell that it was choking him. Shinra, the overly emotional fool that he was when it came to her, but rarely to another, had tears in his eyes for none other than Orihara Izaya.
"I think it's-"