(A/N) whoop whoop a doop! There's porn in this chapter whoops
Blackfallstar9: im ded. I literally live for your reviews so please don't feel bad omg. Also sofar, there's like five bad endings and a neutral, good, and true, so I hope you enjoy reading all of that! Can't wait to hear from you again. d(3)b
Guest: Ahhh thanks. I'm sorry that you had to wait this long, but I was having a hard time figuring out how to get the plot here. Thank you so much, and I dearly hope that you're still with us.
Once again, there's dingles in the chapter whoops
It was starting to give him a headache. Shinra kept acting with this aloof aura about him, like he knew something that Shizuo didn't, and yeah, he did, but Shizuo can't help the gnawing in the back of his mind that there's way more to this than he thinks there is. Regardless, there's just something about the way Shinra presented the information he had- he seemed like a teacher trying to lead Shizuo to this great revelation that he just hasn't had yet.
Shizuo goes over the facts in his head. For starters, both Itzal and Izaya have been missing for two months. Shinra knows where Izaya is, but he's not talking to him or even Celty. Shinra seems to think that he can find out where Izaya is on his own just by sniffing around his apartment. The problem is, he's tried that already. About a week into Itzal's disappearance, he went to Izaya's to ask him for help. He's the best informant, probably in the entire Eastern hemisphere, and everyone knows it. If anyone knew where Itzal was, it was bound to be him. He knew everything about everyone, didn't he? Well, except Shizuo. He only knew that Shizuo was some dumb monster. He didn't know about Ursus, or Helectric, or how much it hurt to deal with the absence of both him and Itzal, especially at the same time. He never took the time to learn anymore than he thought he knew about Shizuo, but he was always like that. Despite that massive brain of his, Izaya was a creature of habit, much like Shizuo. He would come to his conclusion and stick with it before looking for anything that could possibly prove him wrong. Both of them were adverse to change, even if it was for the better.
Shizuo thought that he didn't like change because he was happy where he was, and change normally lead to something bad. Except when it didn't. There were moments of clarity in his haze of pessimism. He was so cold towards Itzal because he looked like bad news, and his black suit and piercing red eyes reminded him of Izaya. He fell in love with Itzal.
And now that he's entertaining the thought, if Shizuo had a little more control– if Izaya was a little bit less of an asshole– he thinks he wouldn't be as guilt ridden as he is now. All of his conversations with Shinra have opened up an entirely new perspective on Izaya as a person rather than the enigma or idea that he represented before. He wasn't the god he tried so hard to become. He was a person who had been abandoned by everyone in his life. Anyone that got close to him hurt him, whether intentional or not, so he stopped letting people in. His parents, despite how they tried, weren't there. Shinra had told him that something happened with Izaya when he was little, and then they relatively vanished from his life, but Shizuo gets an inkling that that was entirely intentional on their part. He wouldn't specify what happened when Izaya was young, but he didn't need too. Shizuo was content with the knowledge he was given. If Shizuo's parents didn't give up on him when he literally picked up a fridge, then there was no justification for intentionally leaving your son to the care of nannies that probably didn't show him any of the love he deserved.
Shinra had cleared the air on the violent stabbing that Shizuo had thought had been done by Izaya. Shinra wasn't aware of the gritty details of what happened to Nakura after that, but he did know that it left Nakura's mind in shambles. He was a completely different person than the one that had attempted to murder Izaya in middle school– a mere shell of the man that he had the potential to be. And maybe it was for the best. From all the stories he had heard from Shinra and the general cacophony of middle school rumors lost in translation, Nakura was a bad guy. He wasn't one of those guys like Shizuo, who was bad by default, he was someone like Izaya, who was evil with intent.
No, that isn't right either. Izaya doesn't normally have direct intent to wreak havoc. He sets up these strategic, well-orchestrated scenarios to test the limitations of humanity. Whether the pieces fall in a good or bad way is never Izaya's direct involvement; it's simply the cards of fate falling into place however they may land in whatever dance they settle in. Izaya never intentionally sets someone up for failure or success. He provides options which, in its own right, is still meddling and still ends up with a lot of people hurt, but that is never his intention. He allows people to fail while watching with every option stacked in his favor to assist, but he never acts on it. Izaya puts people's fates into his own hands and watches them trickle through his fingers like sand, and that's all they are to him. He had once said to Mikado, "If you truly want to continue escaping from everyday life, you've no other choice but to keep evolving. No matter whether you're aiming higher or lower." That's all he does. He forces people to evolve, even when their contented in their life style– especially so for those that aren't. And most times, it's for the worse, such as it was for Mikado, but occasionally it's for the better. There are times when his intervention saves lives. Shizuo's seen it in the harem Izaya was decorated in back in high school, and his current cyber following he had heard about from Shinra. He's taken passing glances at open emails and message boards before his anger overwhelms him into combat. He's seen "thank you"s and "you saved me"s littered in the black text glowing against the red in Izaya's eyes, even if only for a second.
It has always forced Shizuo to pause, huff, or flinch. The messages serve as a momentary reminder, a moment of clarity in the haze of adrenaline and the heat of a temper too short for anyone's good. Unfortunately, it was all that was needed to alert the ever vigilant Izaya of Shizuo's presence and proximity before he pounced into action.
Shizuo never understood it. He never understood why people would say something like that, to Izaya nonetheless. He wasn't a good guy. He was the bad guy. Bad guys don't get "thank you"s. Bad guys get thrown in jail or beaten up by the good guy. Shizuo halts himself. By following that logic, that would make Shizuo the good guy. After all, he's the one that is always trying to hit Izaya. But if Izaya is saving lives from behind his computer screen, and Shizuo is always hitting him, does that make Shizuo the bad guy?
When he shared this question with Celty, she told him that no, he wasn't the bad guy, and recently, she had begun to insist that Izaya wasn't either.
"The world wasn't as black and white, as you see it. No one is either entirely good, or entirely bad. Sometimes good people do bad things, but they're still good people."
She pulls her phone back into her chest and continues to type before showing the screen back to Shizuo.
"Somethings are gray, and are meant to be in the gray."
"I hope he's okay."
She's talking about Izaya. He knows, and she knows, and both of them know that it's a sore subject for Shizuo.
"Me too," he adds sincerely. "I just wish I knew where he was."
This conversation was old and practically a mantra with how many times Shizuo had gone over it in his head. It sounded like something Izaya would say. It sounded like the same metaphor that would fall from a crooked smile to the concrete like spilled blood. Izaya would laugh then. It would be bright and maniacal and make Shizuo's chest flutter with some unnamed feeling strong enough to overtake the immediate rush of anger. Then he would say something about having to dumb it down for Shizuo and his "protozoan brain." And then he would step in close and talk animatedly with his hands and explain something that went way over Shizuo's head. And how could it not? Izaya would have an honest light in his eyes, like a child talking to their good friend, and a smile would purr across his face for a candle flicker of a second. It would be one of his genuine smiles that made Shizuo faulter in his judgement before those eyes shrunk to slits and his mouth curved into that same serial killer-esque grin that showed his teeth as straight and white as grave stones in a military memorial.
Shizuo cringed to himself. Sometimes Izaya was the most beautiful person he had ever seen, but at others, he looked like the monster hiding in the back of your closet as a little kid. His expressions were so large and loud, such as everything else he ever did– be it the way he walked, talked, or acted. He made his presence known if he wanted it to be, but if he didn't, he could slip by without anyone knowing. Unless, of course, that person was Shizuo. Izaya's scent would crawl its way into his nose until Shizuo's brain was entirely clouded with thoughts of red eyes and a dangerously deceitful smile.
Shizuo kicked weakly at a rock on the sidewalk. It'd been so long that Izaya's scent had bled more and more out of the concrete in the city with each passing rain. Right now, even as the rain fell in sheets of ice around the edge of his umbrella like a barrier, Shizuo could barely track the recent pathways Izaya had once taken.
Winter was the worst for Shizuo. He enjoyed the holiday atmosphere that came with Christmas, and the attempts that people made at being better in light of resolutions. He liked the way everyone seemed happier and it also gave him an open excuse to bat away loneliness with his friends and family. But he hated the cold, and more than that, the sting of the wind reminded him too much of the one person he wanted to see the most.
He folds his umbrella into his hip as he steps through the threshold of Izaya's apartment building and heads to the elevator. This isn't the first time that he's made this trek. He frequented Izaya's apartment about a week and a half after Itzal's disappearance, prying at Namie until she threatened him with either physical violence or police intervention. Shizuo doesn't think that she would actually get the cops involved, especially given Izaya's line of work and her affiliation with that. She also smells like embalming fluid and that serves to raise a few heads given her family's background as a pharmaceutical company.
If she's here, then she can just sit tight and leave him to rummage through Izaya's things. It's not like she could actually do anything to stop Shizuo if she really wanted to (which she does), but he would very much prefer to avoid an altercation with Namie if possible. He can't exactly make an enemy of the person that continuously drops little hints of Izaya's whereabouts. And she does do that. She's the one that originally told him that he had left, and wouldn't be back, and she did say that they had stayed in contact, and she was still doing stuff for him here in Japan, so that means that he wants to maintain ties to home. That's what Shizuo took from it.
He arrives at Izaya's door, and feels a purr of familiarity. Izaya smells so good. Shizuo had always thought that he stunk and had blamed him for the way that he reeked, which technically was his fault. He didn't have to have the job he did. Regardless, behind all of that was the smell of a warm-baked berry cobbler. He smelt like blueberries and raspberries, boiled in sugar and their own juices. Shizuo would be unstoppable if he had a candle that smelled like the inside of Izaya's neck. At least, that's what Shizuo thinks it would smell like. It's what his house smells like.
The heavy contrast in Izaya's apartment always seem to throw Shizuo off. Everything was either dark or light (normally dark) and Namie always kept the wall length windows closed. It was dark as always when Shizuo finally pushed forward the door. Namie "accidentally" told him where the spare key was, probably knowing that he would be frequenting Izaya's house.
It was time to play detective. Namie wasn't there, surprisingly. Her usual spot on the couch was void of any presence or life, and seemingly had been for a few days. Izaya's apartment was normally squeaky clean without a speck of dust on any glace surface or ingrained in any dark wood. At the moment, Shizuo could see the fine settling of grey that dinged the white counters and furniture. No one had been here in a few days, and now that he thought about it, why would she come? Izaya wasn't here. Izaya hadn't been here in quite a while, and if she was still doing work for him, than she could probably perform it at her own home.
He's already rifled through Izaya's desk. Every drawer and cabinet that wasn't locked had been haphazardly torn open and sniffed around when Shizuo was first looking through everything. His book shelf contained nothing of interest either– just books on human psychology and celtic folk lore. There are a few filing cabinets, all of them labeled with three characters to another three characters to mark the last names of the files within them.
He's curious about Izaya's desk though. As weird as the Z-shape is, there's only one drawer in the whole desk that has a legitimate lock, and even then, it looks like it was as a separate install rather than an actual part of the desk. Shizuo was looking for a key then, and Namie said it was upstairs but then wouldn't let Shizuo go upstairs.
She wasn't here now, though.
And with that in mind, Shizuo took the stairs two at a time. There's a hallway with two doors on the left, double doors on the right, and one at the end of the hall. There's a washer and dryer behind the double doors, and Shizuo can't help but think about how nice it would be to, not only have a washer and dryer in the house, but also to have it upstairs, where laundry was. He closes them and checks the first door on the left. Immediately, he takes a deep inhale of the air that floods out of the room.
It smells so heavily of Izaya that it's like he's there right now. Shizuo can't help himself. He wanders toward the bed and picks up the pillow dead center in the middle of the bed and brings it into his face. Given any other circumstance, Shizuo would feel creepy standing in the middle of his ex-enemy's– now newfound friend's– bedroom sniffing his pillows. But the heat that filled him as much as Izaya's scent did caused his knees to buckle.
Shizuo collapses onto Izaya's bed with a weak huff as he becomes completely encompassed in the smell of Izaya's skin that bled into that mattress and those blankets. They were soft to the touch, much softer than the fur of Izaya's jacket as it tickles his neck. And then Izaya is there– at least in Shizuo's mind. He pulls back and slides his jacket off his shoulders and onto the floor. Shizuo sits up then and reaches his hands to tug at the hem of his mind's Izaya's shirt. He pulls it up and off, and Izaya drops to his knees between Shizuo's parted legs.
Shizuo drags his hand from his knee to the clasp of his belt, but it doesn't look like his hand. It's pale and delicate like a spider's and Izaya's red eyes are staring into his from his place on the floor. Izaya looks absolutely ravishing. His pupils are so large that the black almost entirely encompasses the glowing crimson. His lips are parted, the pink of his tongue swiping across his lips before a cheshire grin purrs onto his face. Izaya's teeth are a little pointed as he smiles, but Shizuo can't dwell on that. Shizuo's mental representation of Izaya flutters his impossibly thick lashes shut before that mouth breathes heat onto his cock through the fabric. Izaya purrs and nuzzles against it again before Shizuo's hands, that look shockingly like Izaya's, open his pants and pull down his boxers just enough to let his cock spring from its confines.
The tip is flushed dark red against the tan of his skin. It throbs lightly in time with his heartbeat. He thumbs the tip of it at the same time that Izaya's tongue does. Izaya offers it a tantalizing lick and brings on of his hands to grip the base and hold it steady before bringing the tip into his mouth. Shizuo lets off some strangled breath and Izaya maintains eyes contact as he pulls more and more of it into the heat of his mouth. His tongue grinds against the bottom as Shizuo's cock gets closer and closer to the back of his throat.
Shizuo can't breathe. He's absolutely smothered from the minimal point of contact between him and an Izaya that isn't even there, but he feels like he is. He feels the hand Izaya has on his upper thigh, and he feels Izaya's mouth and tongue and throat instead of his hand. And he feels his hand slide into Izaya's hair. He can hear Izaya slurp and swallow at Shizuo like he's candy, and he can smell Izaya all around him like he's really there– like he's here right now, sucking Shizuo off with a beautiful grace that Shizuo can't even begin to describe. But then he isn't.
Izaya is pulling back and away from Shizuo's dick. He's standing, and losing his pants, and pushing Shizuo down to lay flat on the mattress horizontally. And then Izaya is climbing into Shizuo's lap, and shifting his pants further down his hips before he grabs the base of Shizuo's cock and positions it against a heat eons away from the weight of his tongue. And just like that, Izaya's sitting. His body is giving way to the intrusion of Shizuo pushing inside of him, and he's so tight, and so hot. And Izaya throws his head back and lets out a strangled moan that sounds suspiciously like "Shizu-chan" as it falls from Izaya's mouth.
Shizuo brings his hand to Izaya's face and just holds him wihile Izaya lifts his hips up and drops them again. He sets up a steady rhythm right out the bat as panting and moaning fills Shizuo's ears. He can't hear anything aside from his name tumbling out of Izaya's throat with each second that their hips meet. It's burning in the space where Shizuo's hand curls into his fever dream of Izaya's walls clamping down on his cock. The warmth from him is spreading into every fiber of his being from the core that Izaya's rocking against to the tips of his fingers. Izaya's hands move from the sides of the mattress pressed beneath Shizuo to his shoulders. He takes Shizuo's hand, the one against his face and holds it there as he rides Shizuo.
And in that instant, Shizuo believes that Izaya is the single most beautiful thing he's ever seen. And even right now, when rationally he knows that he's alone in Izaya's bed, and that Izaya isn't really here, fucking him like he cares about Shizuo's pleasure as much as his own, and that it's just Shizuo and his hand in an impossibly vivid imagination, he knows that he could never truly remember how gorgeous Izaya really is. This mental version of the one man he loves is a pale comparison to how breathtaking Izaya really is.
Shizuo snaps his hand down again. Even though he's aware of how weird this is, he isn't going to deny this picturesque scene of Izaya riding him that his mind has presented him. He never knew his imagination could be so vivid.
Everything is hot– hot and heavy and there's a pressure building in his abdomen while Izaya fucks himself harder on Shizuo's cock. His fist squeezes tighter, and so does Izaya, and he throws his head back and out of Shizuo's line of sight as he comes. And Shizuo tumbles into his release after him. It's blinding and heavy and all encompassing even as the imaginary weight of Izaya's hips fades from his sensation. He wishes that he could see Izaya, but his brain can't begin to come up with an imaginary representation without knowing that it would be a disappointing fraction of what he would really look like. And he's okay with that, he guesses. If Shizuo would find a way to see what Izaya really looked like when he came, hard and full, especially over Shizuo's dick, than every other person would pale in comparison.
It's cold now. His hand is sticky and covered in come as it comes off of his dick to zip himself back up. His sweat has cooled into a film on his skin. He feels dirty and gross, and the scent in the room and of Izaya's bed is exacerbating it to say the least. It smells like Izaya, and sex, and Shizuo's own sweat, and he silently hopes that another mental image of Izaya will appear (if not the real one). But nothing comes, so Shizuo stands on shaky legs and wanders into the master bath. It's all black and white, like everything else in this damn house, and Shizuo goes to wash his hands off and rinse down the drain the shame of the fact that he just technically broke into Izaya's house and masturbated in his bed. Behind him, there's a shower, and Shizuo gets a crazy idea to steal Izaya's soap.
If the fading smell from his bed drove Shizuo this insane, then the actual direct smell of whatever soap he uses would be urethral. Unfortunately, Izaya has a variety of weird fucking smells in his bathroom. There's one that smells like the same expensive cologne he's sure Izaya wears. There's one that smells like a forest, one that smells like old worn leather and fine scotch, and then there's one that smells like...
Rain water.
Shizuo feels it like a physical blow. He is in love with Itzal, not Izaya. Right?
He takes it, but the nagging voice in his head is telling him to keep looking for the scent of warm frosted berries. Eventually he finds it, but that doesn't stop how awful he feels. He feels like he's cheated on someone dear to him, even though he knows that's completely irrational. If screaming into the night and disappearing into the void for over a month wasn't a break-up, he didn't know what was.
Shizuo takes one last glance at Izaya's room. Miraculously, there aren't any stains on Izaya's blanket or his pants for that matter. The only evidence that Shizuo was there at all is the imprint on the comforter, and that's fine, he assumes. He leaves, with one final inhale of Izaya's fleeting scent, mainly covered by the smell of Shizuo's sin on his bed.
He trudges back downstairs. He hasn't entirely come down from his high, and the way his legs twitch and buckle as they switch the support of his weight is clearly evident of that. He stops by the small end table near the front door, and that's when he sees it.
It's a letter.
One addressed from Namie, at this current address, to Izaya.
Specifically, it's inscribed to Izaya with a Romanian address.