'i'm so tired of the AU where your soulmate's name is on your wrist. i want my enemy's name on my wrist. i wanna know who i'm going to have to physically fight eventually. turn on your fucking location'
'your enemy's name on one wrist and your soulmate the another. no clue which is which. hope it's not the same name on both wrists.'
By the time he's in middle school, Izaya has learned to cover his arms.
It's not that unusual. Most kids adopt some kind of affection to keep their skin covered as they come out of elementary school, when the names written indelibly across the tracery of veins in their wrists gain more immediate interest than just the vague curiosity of children too young to care about either sworn enemies or lifelong soulmates. It's not until the end of elementary school that the characters embedded under the skin became of real interest, among the girls first and then spreading to the boys with the odd fever-bright intensity that taught Izaya to turn his wrists down, to press the patterns over his pulse points against the dark of his school uniform instead of leaving them clear for view. He kept his jacket on after that, watched as the girls started wearing bracelets and some of the boys began to wrap their wrists with bandages, and learned to keep his cuffs half-over his hands to hide the dark lines under his skin.
It's a point of interest for some people, a sign of intimacy among friends to share the text on your wrists. Luckily Izaya doesn't have many to count as friends who would ask, and even when Shinra eventually does Izaya is willing enough to show him in exchange for seeing the curiosity of the English text printed in a neat line along Shinra's left arm. Shinra makes no attempt to hide it, in class or otherwise, but it's still satisfying to see it laid clear for Izaya's consideration, the information offered freely instead of won by theft or lies.
"I already know her," Shinra volunteers while Izaya is tracing over the lines, sounding out the unfamiliar letters that fit together to Celty Sturluson under Shinra's skin. "Pretty lucky to know which one's my soulmate, huh?"
"How can you be sure?" Izaya asks without looking up, just to argue the point, because there's a warm dip to Shinra's voice that twists something into an ache against the inside of his chest. "Maybe you just think she's your soulmate and really you're doomed to fight each other in the future."
"No, no," Shinra insists, waving his other hand through the air with so much gratuitous excitement that Izaya has to lean back to keep from getting hit. "I could never fight Celty, even if she wanted to kill me!"
"Very lucky, then," Izaya says, and lets his hold on Shinra's arm go to close his fingers against his cuffs and tug them down in the involuntary habit he developed years ago. "You have your whole life sorted out already, sounds very simple and straightforward and boring."
Shinra's laugh is high, breathless and so loud it teeters on the edge of mania before he can catch it back. "There's nothing boring about love," he says, smiling all over his face with that same glowing happiness that sticks against the gaps in Izaya's ribs deeper than a knife would go. "What about you, do you know which is which yet?"
Izaya takes a breath. His shoulders want to hunch, his fingers want to tighten on the cuffs of his sleeves; but this is friendship, and he knows how this works, and even if Shinra would let him get away with keeping the secret to himself there's a need laid in along Izaya's spine, a desire to share the weight of his secret with someone other than the echoing space of his own head. So he uncurls his fingers, and musters a smile, and says "Sure do" as he offers his matched wrists to Shinra for inspection.
Shinra hisses an inhale, his eyes going wide on shock as he leans in; it takes an effort of will for Izaya to not flinch away at the press of fingers to his skin as Shinra grips his arm to peer at the characters on first his left and then his right wrist. Izaya knows what he'll see, doesn't need to look down to confirm; the single name hasn't changed all his life, he doesn't imagine it'll do him the favor of shifting now just because someone else is looking at it.
"That's crazy," Shinra finally tells him, his whole face glowing with interest. "I've never heard of someone with the same name on both wrists. Do you think one of them could be wrong?"
"I doubt it," Izaya says, letting his sleeves fall back over his hands. "I've never heard of the names making a mistake before."
Shinra's forehead creases. "But that would mean-"
Izaya bares all his teeth in a smile. "At least I'll know when I meet them, right?"
It is a comfort, of sorts. Most people Izaya sees carry the weight of their names creased into their foreheads, those who aren't as lucky as Shinra or as Izaya's twin sisters, who as likely to hold hands with the arms with the matching enemy name as the ones with each other's laid into their child-skinny wrists. It's amusing to watch, Izaya finds, to see people pouring over the shape of the characters and the fortune-telling attempts to determine which wrist is which - love or hate, enemy or soulmate - as if there's any logic to the imprint at all. Izaya is left to watch from the corner of the classroom, or a chair in the back of a coffeeshop, or looking down from the edge of the school roof, left to watch the stress of not-knowing crease teenagers' faces before their time and settle heavy on the shoulders of adults who don't yet see the trajectory of their life laid before them.
By the time he starts high school he's glad for his own odd wrists; better to know, he thinks, better to spend his life calmly waiting for destiny to fall into his lap than to be questioning every interaction he has with every stranger he meets. The first day of class is amusing even before the teacher arrives, entertaining just for the range of reactions Izaya sees, for the half-controlled panic of meeting dozens of new people with new names written clear on every face as he finds his way across the classroom to a seat in the very back row of the middle aisle. It's where he's sitting when the teacher comes in, where he's watching as the roll call starts, observing the shivers of excitement that roll through the crowd with each new name. Izaya's grinning after the first minute, barely restraining laughter in the back of his throat, and then: "Heiwajima Shizuo" from the teacher's mouth, an echo from Izaya's memories so eerie it takes him a moment to be sure he's heard it.
"Here," growls a voice from the front of the room, and Izaya's attention snaps to blond hair, to a blue jacket, to shoulders hunched forward over a desk like the owner can't find the energy to sit more upright. Izaya's entire body goes hot, awareness prickling through his veins like electricity running down a wire to charge him hot and shaky; his wrists are burning, the characters under his skin are itching like they're the tattoos they appear to be in truth, until it takes all he has to keep his hands flat on his desk and not close his fingers around the angle of his wrists. His heart is pounding, his breathing catching, and then there's the sound of his name, "Orihara Izaya" read aloud in the teacher's calm voice, and Shizuo jerks upright in his chair like he's been electrocuted.
"Present," Izaya says without looking away. Shizuo's head whips around, his attention skimming over the class, and then he sees Izaya staring at him, sees the smile Izaya is giving him from the back of the classroom.
Izaya doesn't know what he expected. A scowl, maybe, maybe a shout or a curse or something similar. What he was not expecting is what happens, which is Shizuo shoving to his feet and lunging towards him without any hesitation or concern for the desks or students in his way. The first is just kicked aside, the second manages to throw himself backwards and out of the line of motion, but Shizuo doesn't even glance at them; he's just coming forward, moving so fast and with so little hesitation that Izaya doesn't have time to even get to his feet before Shizuo's hands are closing on his uniform jacket and hauling him up off his feet to shove him back against the wall.
"You," Shizuo hisses into his face. His eyes are dark, Izaya can see from under the tangle of his bleached-blond hair; his mouth is dragging on a scowl, his teeth bared in fury, but his hands against Izaya's jacket are warm, so hot that Izaya can feel the radiance of the other's body right through the fabric. "What the fuck are you doing in my class?"
Izaya can feel adrenaline on his tongue, can feel the tension in his throat that presages the heat of tears in his eyes; but when he opens his mouth it's laughter that spills free instead, a breathless wave of sound that hums in his throat with unstoppable force. There's shouting behind the width of Shizuo's shoulders, the teacher finding voice for protest while the students knocked aside add their complaints to the sound, but Izaya's not listening any more than Shizuo is; all he can hear is the sound of Shizuo's breathing hissing past the grit of his teeth.
"Hey," Izaya says, and lets his hold on his sleeves go to reaches for Shizuo's wrists, to press his fingers into the characters of his name on either side like he can read them through his fingertips. "Nice to finally meet you, Shizu-chan."