Another soldier, says he's not afraid to die
Well, I am scared… I'm so scared
In slow motion the blast is beautiful
He's defensive for once, body leaning forward, one hand up in front with his own knife and one hand in back. He's doing what people normally do when they see him. It's definitely a strange feeling, kind of like what he's heard described as an out-of-body experience.
"I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed," Kikou half-sings, like a canary stuck in the dark mine of the bar, the smoke trailing from her lips a damaged lace scarf hanging from barbed wire. Izaya has to admire her consistency. Even now, she smokes.
From across overturned tables and abandoned bottles and hurried footsteps scattered like ash, they regard each other with steel eyes.
"That's a song."
"Aren't you clever."
He leans in a little, and the smell punches him in the nose.
"You're very drunk, you know that?"
He says it flatly. Truth is flat, like soda left out.
"Mmmm. You're pretty but not so smart," Kikou slurs. The knife edges forwards a little.
Izaya wants to laugh. This. Is really. Pathetic. The smell of danger chokes the room. He does not cough. He inhales it. She was always so in control, but he could smell it slipping, and here they are. The interesting part is, as always, the why.
"Come on. It's only four, you know."
"It is?" She shades her face with her hands, peers to the left.
Izaya's eyebrow raises. "There's no window there."
There's no sun either.
"Oh." She sounds disappointed.
"It's too early. To get this drunk." Even for you, he adds silently.
"But you"—Kikou lunges forward with the knife, he parries, they stare into each other's eyes for a second before he brings it up and slides it past hers in a ring of metal, slices down hard while she stumbles forward past him because of her own momentum and opens up her arm from wrist to elbow in one beautiful stroke.
She wobbles and turns back around, bleeding like a maniac. She doesn't touch her arm, doesn't acknowledge the wound like a mouth on her skin.
— "Now, you, you don't really give a fuck, do you?"
"Maybe I do."
He's not talking about concern here. He's talking amusement. Getting drunk at four, scaring the barkeep out with her cussing, slurring and stumbling all over the place—this girl is a wreck. One human. Just add water. All he has to do is sit back and enjoy. Or stand. With a knife, as the situation seems to dictate.
"No, you don't."
"I'm here."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you're not real."
Izaya doesn't respond to this, just lets her words unravel around her.
"But me. I know I'm real. And if you're real, then you're Izaya, which means you don't give a fuck."
He laughs a hard laugh, feeling impatient now, because this is getting a little boring. "Are you angry at me or something?"
"Nooo. I'm just saying, is all."
Abruptly, she sits down on one of the bar stools, swiveling around in it in numbing sketches of circles. Izaya is vaguely reminded of himself.
"Have some cake."
She gestures at the enormous heaps of bags next to her, and Izaya can see cake inside all of them, of all types, all sizes, all flavors.
"Oh, cake. How nice of you"—
"Have some," she says, low.
And she is shaking, her hands trembling like an addict's after a hit, and never has he seen her eyes so dry—like a stone that's been in the desert for half a million years.
There is a deeper problem here, isn't it? It's not an elephant in the room. It's a fucking mammoth. It is the room, the smell and the drunkenness and the vomit and all of that.
Izaya leans over, extracts a piece delicately, and takes a bite. He even makes it look as if it was a good idea. The sweetness melts down his throat. The name-calling doesn't particularly matter to him, though if she keeps going this way he's going to knock her out, strip her naked, drag her to a church spire, and hang her from the bell tower upside down from her ankles before stealing her credit card and spending it all on cake.
But we haven't quite reached critical mass yet.
Good for her.
There is awkward silence. She stares into the distance, fiddling with her knife as her arm bleeds in to the table. The attitude is already gone. She looks almost uncomfortable.
"It's pretty good." He manages to make it sound cheery.
"Mhm."
"So what's the occasion?"
She laughs and it is so bitter that Izaya thinks the air gets darker, like someone spilled medicine on it.
"Occasion? Who needs a fucking occasion for cake?"
She grabs a bottle from the table.
"Drink with me."
"No, thanks."
"Drink"—
"I'd rather n"—
"With me. You should. So we can celebrate."
What happened to no occasion? "Celebrate what?"
"A funeral."
He laughs again. "I think you're a little mixed up, there. Wasn't a funeral something to be sad at?"
When she stares into his eyes and says, "Not this one," he knows she's talking about herself.
After she passes out, he opens her wallet to pay the bartender. He gets sidetracked by the I.D.s. There are so many. They spill like candy through his fingers. A little number waves at him, catching his eye. He stops flipping. This one says she's eighteen today. How weird. He takes a second look.
A little obvious-and-revelation alloy hits him in the head. He distracts himself from the sweet, sweet fact by taking a moment to chastise himself for missing something so obvious. Come on, Izaya, he thinks. You researched this girl when she first started stealing your business. You knew her basic information. How could you have let this date slip past you? This date—this date—this—this—
-And he can't stop himself any longer, it's coming—
The maniacal laughter starts. It bubbles from deep, deep inside his chest before forcing its way up his throat and crawling out of his mouth like a worm wriggling from a bird's stomach. His smile reaches around and shakes hands with itself across his head. Outside, innocents hear his laughter and shrink away, like they do before their Gods. There is something about this man's laughter. It's not just the insanity in it, it's the utter blackness of it, so devoid of light that it hurts your ears to hear. Children might be able to understand it, but adults… adults cry when they hear Izaya's joy. The bartender takes one looks inside and bails when he hears Izaya shouting, "I LOVE HUMANS!" at the top of his lungs. The girl's head is limp on the bar.
Oh, he thought it was bad before—but this is just great.
When Izaya finally catches his breath, he wheezes at the drunken girl, "Why didn't. Why—didn't you tell me—tell me it was your birthday?"
This is excellence.
Author's Note: All song lyrics (first line, title of chapter, first line OC says) are all from Snow Patrol's Somewhere a Clock is Ticking.
