The New Year finds him in his couch, watching the fireworks in the TV, a cigarette between his lips, filling his lungs with bitter smoke. It's not how most people celebrate the coming of a new year, he knows, and yet the information is nothing more than that; a vague notion in the back of his mind which never fully forms into a complaint, or a regret or – even worse – a sort of grief. He is fine with the way his life has unfolded, the way it unfolds still, unaltered, unchanged by the coming of yet another year – his mind says so, his smoke-filled lungs say so, the empty feeling that sometimes settles in his stomach begs to differ but he silences it with a nice piece of chocolate cake with vanilla icing on the last afternoon of the year with his kohai, who has as much of a sweet tooth as he does, and his senpai who is kind enough to take the both of them out for a little New Year's Eve celebration. After meeting his little brother that very same morning for a coffee (hot chocolate for him, coffee is too damned bitter, even loaded with sugar and turned white with milk, and besides it reminds him of the four-eyed doctor and his annoyingly to-the-point observation of how Shizuo hates everything bitter and yet can't go a minute without a cigarette in his mouth, which is just as bitter as it gets really, while Izaya loves everything bitter but can't stand the smell of cigarettes, which, going by his tastes, should be his favorite aroma), he can't ask for more even if he's spending the actual New Year's Eve on his own. He wouldn't know what to ask for, anyway. Celty and Shinra have invited him over for dinner on the first day of the New Year – Celty is cooking, which makes the invitation more of a threat than anything, but it's still heartwarming that they wish to spend the first evening of the year with him. Shinra annoys him - he even had the nerve to suggest that they invite the shitty flea as well and it was just as well that the damned doctor made the suggestion over the phone for he'd hate to start the new year by murdering his best friend's boyfriend – but Celty will be there and she is his best friend after all. No, all in all he'd call this a nice holiday. A nice celebration of the New Year. Maybe even a good day, had it not been for that unbearable stench suffocating him all day, his irritation culminating in a glimpse of white fur and the grating ring of a too familiar "Shizu-chan" earlier that evening. He should have expected it, the adrenaline running through his veins and the sick feeling which made his skin crawl ever since he left his apartment that morning should have been warning enough, and yet he had dared hope that he would be allowed to bid the year farewell without having to face that bloody parasite. How foolish of him. In a city which would be glad to go to sleep one evening and wake up having forgotten all about him, having forgotten of ever living in the fear of a monster roaming the streets, there is one man who would lift every rock and shed light to every dark corner in order to drag him out screaming and kicking like the beast he is. Peace was never an option – not since Orihara Izaya stepped into his life.
He shakes his head and stubs his cigarette out only to light a new one straight away. He does not wish to think about the flea, not as the countdown begins. They say that what you do on New Year's Eve, you will do all year, and he has no intention of thinking of that shitty two-faced – no, scratch that, a dozen-faced – abomination of nature all year. Izaya Orihara is scum. He stresses the word in his mind - scum – and rolls it over and over until the sound of it echoing in his head makes him smirk to no one in particular. The image of too familiar features caught in the light of fireworks threatens to resurface, but he pushes it back with little care. He knows the flea. The insect isn't going to change now, no matter what he saw – what he thinks he saw – a few hours earlier.
…eight, seven, six…
He feels no grief watching the countdown on TV; it's been a lonely year, just like any other, and it leaves him as lonely as it found him. There's nothing wrong with that. People make their choices and sometimes life makes the choices for them. Either way, he is who he is and that is not likely to change, no matter how many lonely New Year's Eves go by. What's the point in getting depressed about something he has no power over? He stretches his left arm over the back of the couch, letting it rest on the faded cloth, and the sensation under his fingers sends the signals like electricity burning him all the way from his fingertips to his mouth where the bitter taste of smoke suddenly turns into thick blood, the coppery taste that for unknown reasons has been so tightly associated to blood-red irises piercing him with smug defiance. He has touched the cloth of that ugly parka a few times in the past – not touched really, but more like grabbed, pulled, snatched, seized, whipped, fisted…he can't come up with the right word to express the abhorrence that sensation at his fingertips causes him every time and the way the feeling is expressed in the violence of his grip, not when his mind is seized by the memory of an expression so unguarded it knocks the air out of his lungs with its simple honesty, even hours after he witnessed it. He knows where this thought leads and he huffs, annoyed at himself, chews on his cigarette butt and takes a long drag of smoke, hoping to choke the image forming in his mind. The flea is not human. The flea is not normal. The flea is not someone he should consider as another human being, someone he can actually understand. The flea is an insect. End of story. And yet as the first fireworks turn the Tokyo sky colorful in his TV screen, all he sees is blood-red eyes wide with momentary terror and surprise and something else that Shizuo forbids himself to interpret as gratitude, but whatever it is, it's there, it's real, as real as the momentary slip of the insect's nonchalant mask of superiority, and in that instant of unguarded emotion, whatever the emotion might be, Shizuo sees a common human, as loud and clear as the music and New Year's wishes coming from the TV. It's not like a single moment can change everything he knows – or thinks he knows, he is decent enough to admit that he doesn't truly know anything about the man – and feels about his archenemy, but it is enough for him to question his conviction that he can and wants to kill the information broker, to rid the city of his presence, to clean the filth of his existence from this world.
That's as far as that thought goes, though, for his cellphone rings and he runs a hand between the cushions cursing under his breath at the fact that the damned thing always seems to slip in the creases or disappear down cracks and corners and it only irritates him further when it offers nothing but an unknown number on its tiny screen. Someone is calling to wish him a happy new year, but as happy as it seemed a few minutes ago, right now all he sees is red and Izaya's eyes flashing in the back of his mind don't help much. Whoever it is, they should know better than to call a monster to exchange common courtesies, so Shizuo feels no remorse for barking a 'hello' that would have any sane person hanging up without a word. Surprisingly, the line doesn't go dead. He can hear a lot of background noise; music and a lot of commotion and perhaps the loud crack of fireworks – or is that from the TV? – but the caller remains silent long enough for Shizuo to wonder if perhaps someone's phone dialed his number by mistake, squeezed in a pocket and unthinkingly left unlocked. But then there's the soft sound of someone drawing a breath and for some reason it sends Shizuo's heart thrumming. He knows who it is before he hears that voice, he knows by the coppery taste in his mouth and the tension building up in his spine, he knows by the way his cigarette ends up snapped in two in his hand and he can't even say how it happened. But the rage drowns in that bottomless pit in his stomach that sometimes makes him feel cold and small and pitiful, that hole that occasionally reminds him of what grief feels like, and he catches himself wondering whether the flea possesses such a pit himself, a black hole that devours everything and spits out bile and anger – anger that translates into something other than rage and broken bones in his case, perhaps smugness, or hatred, or bitterness, who knows. Not him, for sure. Maybe he's wrong, maybe they have nothing in common the two of them, after all if someone had suggested that they did a few hours ago Shizuo would have punched the thought out of them without hesitation. But there's that look of sincere whatever-it-was stuck in his mind and he can't help but wonder whether Izaya has no one to wish a Happy New Year to, just like Shizuo doesn't, and the thought is enough to make him wonder whether it would be that bad to make truce for an evening, to act civil. He leans forward to drop his ruined cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table in front of him and exhales loudly, breathing the air out like it's a sum of all the venom that has stocked up in his lungs during this last year thanks to and for the shitty flea. Tomorrow is another day, another year; surely the louse will provide him enough of it to build a new stock, day by day.
He brings a hand up and rubs his forehead absentmindedly, like this takes a lot more effort than it should, but the noise at the other end of the call goes on despite his stalling and he knows for certain that Izaya is as alone as he is, that Shizuo is the first person to breathe these words to him, and, enemies or not – even though there is no 'or not' here, they are enemies, and come morning they will be back at each other's throat again – he kind of means them as he speaks them:
"Happy New Year, flea".
