A/N: An old fic from the DRRR Kink Meme.
It was the middle of the night. The view of Shinjuku outside the panoramic window in Izaya's office was as breathtaking as ever, the lights of the city down below the only illumination in the room.
The computers were off for once, all of them, including the servers in the rack cabinet up on the mezzanine floor. The only sounds left in the office after their constant hum was gone were Izaya's breathing and the crack of his sanity snapping like a crushed twig.
He smiled, admiring the new order forming in his mind.
Five weeks later he was getting ready for Namie's return.
He had submerged the Dullahan's head in hydrochloric acid in the evening. It had been steadily dissolving, its pretty features disfiguring into an ugly shapeless goo with the whiteness of bones showing through and as steadily growing back in an endlessly persistent way. It was quite a sight.
He spent the night looking at it.
"Where has my acid gone?" He asked the head in the morning, removing it from the container that was remarkably dried down. "Have you consumed it? Were you hungry? Maybe I should have fed you all along."
He wrapped the head in bandages to cover up its monstrous injuries it hadn't regenerated from fully yet and threw it into a plastic bag before heading towards the door.
The cage was there when he opened it.
So it was actually true one could order a dog on the Internet and have it delivered by mail the following day, all thirsty and pitiful and thankfully alive. He knelt down to let it out of the cage.
It was a basset hound, too long ears sweeping the floor and a cool nose forcing its way into his hands. Then it proceeded to sniff the head in the plastic bag.
Izaya wondered briefly what would have happened if the dog ate it. It would have probably gotten stuck inside it, its gastric acid battling with the Dullahan's supernatural perseverance forever. Chopped up into pieces, it tended to regain its original form after a while so it would have probably made the poor dog explode eventually, too. An angel of death indeed.
And a fitting punishment for Namie. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And a human being ripped to shreds for a human being ripped to shreds.
"We'll go for a walk." Izaya informed the dog before taking a hold of its leash and dragging it to the elevator.
It was an office building. With lower floors occupied by respectable enterprises and filled with salarymen from 9 to 5. The woman in an impeccable suit Izaya encountered in the elevator distanced herself from him and his dog and his plastic bag that was dripping some dark red liquid onto the floor as much as she physically could before escaping three floors too early.
Right after she got off Izaya's newly acquired dog decided to pee in the corner of the elevator thus marking it as his. Such possessiveness. It reminded Izaya of Shizu-chan, for some reason.
He pulled on the leash forcefully to remove the dog from the elevator when they reached the ground floor.
"I believe no animals are..." A woman stood up from behind the counter in the hall and started walking towards him. "Oh, it's you, Orihara-san."
He smiled at her before leaving the building, the basset hound barely keeping up on its short legs.
"Say, dog, do you have a name? Do you want to have a name? Are you okay with Old Church Slavonic?"
The dog didn't seem to have an opinion.
"Venceslav." Izaya announced happily. "You write it…" He produced a piece of paper and a pen." ...Вѧщєславъ. Like that. Though I guess you don't care." He sighed. "We're going to Ikebukuro. There is a certain sushi shop there that will gladly accept both you and this head. And maybe even myself. Russians can make alcohol from anything. And then they come to Japan and bring this attitude with them only to exercise it on sushi. Fusion cuisine all the way."