Shinra's waiting when Celty gets home.
"Is that the love of my life?" he calls from the living room, leaning over the back of the couch to peer down the hallway almost before she has the door open. By the time Celty has stepped through the doorway and turned the lock behind her, Shinra has turned entirely around to kneel on the couch cushions and lean far out over the back of the furniture. His smile is as radiantly bright as if Celty has been gone for a week instead of the barely-an-hour it has been; it makes Celty go so warm she's sure she would be blushing, if she had a face to show the color.
I'm back, she types needlessly, offering the phone in Shinra's general direction before tugging her motorcycle helmet free and reforming her jacket into something a little looser and more comfortably casual. It's too much of a distance for Shinra to read, she's sure, but he responds the way he usually does, as fluently as if she were speaking her half of the conversation instead of typing it. "How was the delivery?"
Celty hesitates for a moment, standing in the shadows of the hallway while her fingers hover over the phone keyboard. Fine, she says, finally, but Shinra barely glances at the screen before he's looking back up at her, squinting as if to read an expression off the face she doesn't have.
"You don't look like it was fine," he tells her. "What happened? You didn't get pulled over again, did you?"
Celty shudders at the reminder. No, she types. Thank goodness. She comes around the edge of the couch to sit down next to Shinra; Shinra turns as she approaches, pivoting to track her so by the time she's on the couch he's turned sideways across the cushions and has an arm stretched out across the back, along the line of her shoulders. Celty lets the weight of his touch land over her shirt, leans back into it with a mental sigh of relief, and feels some of the stress along her spine ease.
"You're really tense," Shinra observes, working his fingers into an impromptu massage against her shoulder. "Was it that terrible?"
No, Celty types. Just. She pauses, tries to frame words to the uncomfortable memory. Weird.
"You deal with weird things all the time," Shinra points out. "Don't you and Shizuo usually get along?"
Of course. Celty isn't sure how to explain the oddity of the interaction, doesn't know what approach to take. I gave him the package, just like usual. But when he opened it he…
Shinra waits for her, gives her several seconds to finish her thought. It's not until Celty's fingers have been still on her phone for almost a minute that he stirs and prompts, "Was he angry?"
No, Celty answers, but that doesn't help narrow down her description. She can recall the expression on Shizuo's face as he pushed back the lid of the box she offered to him: confusion easy to see, at first, before his eyes went wide in recognition, all the blood draining from his face to leave him white with horror before rushing back into a blush darker than anything Celty's ever seen on his face. He seemed...embarrassed? It's the closest she can manage to encompass the glow of color that suffused Shizuo's entire face as he slammed the lid shut, the tremor in his voice when he had all but whispered, "Did you see?" as if the contents of the package collapsing under his too-tight hold were some horrifying personal secret. Even Celty's immediate headshake and uplifted hands weren't enough to ease the strain in Shizuo's shoulders; he had barely glanced at her before crushing the box to his chest one-handed and adjusting his sunglasses.
"Good," he had said, still in that low, shaking voice. "I have to go kill a man, now. I'll see you around." And he was gone, too fast for Celty to even offer him the birthday wishes she had intended to give.
Definitely embarrassed, Celty decides. But I don't know why.
Shinra's laugh is so bright it makes Celty jump. "Ah, good!" he declares. "I told Izaya that was the right present to go with after all."
What?! Celty taps out. That was from Izaya?
"Oh yeah," Shinra says. "Didn't you know? I helped him pick it out last week."
I did not know! No wonder Shizuo had been so strange.
"He said he wanted the perfect birthday present," Shinra continues. "If Shizuo's on his way to Shinjuku, then it all worked out just like I said it would. I told Izaya it was the right idea to go with the-"
Celty barely gets her shadows wound around Shinra's mouth in time. There had been the beginning of a syllable, more information than she wanted threatening her memory, but she pushes it aside by focusing on the mumble of Shinra attempting to protest past the shadows while she types furiously into her phone.
Don't tell me! Don't tell me, I don't want to know, I don't want to know anything about it!
Shinra gives her a thumbs-up of surrender; after a moment Celty relaxes enough to unwind the shadows from around his mouth.
"I won't tell you if you don't want," he soothes as soon as she's released him. "You're sure you'd rather not know?"
Celty considers, briefly, the color staining Shizuo's cheeks, the odd tone in his voice that might have been just self-consciousness and might have been the held-back heat of-
Yes, she types, as fast and decisively as she can. I don't want to know anything about it.
"Okay," Shinra says, and pulls at her shoulder to tug her in against his chest. Celty's still tense with panic, still resistant to the risk of more information than she wants, but she tips in anyway. She can feel the rhythm of Shinra's breathing, can just make out the steady thud of his heartbeat; it's soothing in spite of the adrenaline running through her, enough to start to ease the discomfort of the remembered experience from her shoulders.
"Too bad," Shinra says over her. "It was a great present."
Not a word, Celty types, holding her phone up without looking to see if Shinra's watching the screen. I'm much, much happier not knowing. Shinra laughs, and pulls her closer, and after a few minutes Celty is able to push aside the suspicion that something other than fighting is taking place in Shinjuku.
She'd prefer to sustain the bliss of ignorance as long as she can.