Pulling Strings

"Kida-kuuuuuunnnn!"

"Die."

"Aww! Don't be like that! I may have to dock your pay."

"I don't work for you anymore."

"Tsk, tsk, let's not play any games right now! I need a desktop that needs fixing, and poor old me can't move around to get it!"

"Why don't you call Heiwajima-san?"

"Why call him when I can get one of my sla-employees to help me instead?"

"You intentionally stuttered, didn't you?"

"What can I say? I'm a troll, through and through!"

"..."

"We'll start off with 20,000 yen*-"

"I'll be there in a heartbeat Taichou!*"

Izaya walks the wheelchair to the door, sits in it, and pretends to seem like he has trouble opening the door. It works, because the blond is trying to hide his irritated expression. "Took you long enough!"

He laughs with just the right amount of half-hardheartedness that only a veteran war amps can pull off. "My bad, slave!"

Kida frowns but goes right to business, staring at the knocked over computer.

"How the hell did you manage this?"

"Trying to grasp the art of multitasking. As you can see, it was a failure."

The blond rolled his eyes and plopped down to the floor.

"I don't know how to fix this, walk me through it?" The blond seems to realize his slip of tongue too late and visibly freezes. For a youth of many words, the boy looked generally speechless.

No matter how much he does to Kida, he knows deep down that Kida Masaomi is just another human. He will go through life under the impression that he hates the informant in the black fur coat, but he'll come to his aid, even when he is in a wheelchair. It's not just pity, because if he wasn't posing as a paraplegic, the boy would have come anyways.

But for now, he enjoys the blond's change of attitude.

His face is already blank, and he keeps his voice level. "Masaomi."

"Don't call me that, old man." The blond croaks, voice thick and quiet.

He allows himself to chuckle a little. "How am I old? I'm only 26!"

Kida's back is turned, but he's started to hunch into himself. He outwardly sighs, genuinely wondering the strangeness of humans. He would have expected this kind of reaction from Mikado rather than Masaomi. It's refreshing to see a different side of the teen, but if he doesn't resolve this situation sooner, his constructed reality he worked so hard to build would be shattered.

"Masaomi, it's OK."

He hears loud sniffing and massages his temple.

"Come on, I'm paying you by the hour. Get to work!" His playful tenor is back and it seems to work because he receives a vigorous nod.

He wheels himself as close as possible as he can without getting elbowed in the knee as the teen pushes and pulls on thick cables coming from the motherboard. It's a problem he could have fixed himself, but it would seem irregular if he didn't appear to have any problems at all. He had already done it several times to Shizuo. The first and only time he tried to deceive Namie had resulted in her knowing of the truth, kept under lock and key.

When the teen had come to the apartment, the big south facing windows showed clear blue skies. But as the afternoon dragged on, clouds gathered and a light drizzle had started. Maybe he should have taken it as an omen.

The added stress of not leaving the chair all day was getting to him, Kida not understanding the simple 'It goes here' was frustrating him, and he really, really, needed to pee.

In hindsight, he should have waited.

"What is wrong with you!" He pushed the wheelchair back with such force that it wheeled back into the leather couch and flipped over the arm rest.

He dropped to his knees in front of the blond and had rewired the mainframe in mere minutes. He turned back around, glare directed towards the teen. "See? The ports are even labeled!"

The impulse of leaving the chair hadn't occurred to him when he did it, but the blond's speechless expression quickly made him realize that he did.

"You...You.."

All the revulsion and disgust that a single person could muster was on the blond's face. His face flushed red and he started to breath hard, fists shaking with barely suppressed rage.

Abruptly, he jumped to his feet, jabbing his fingers as if they were knives to his chest.

"I thought you changed! I felt sorry for you! You have reached a whole new level of sick!"

He retracted his fingers and stepped back, eyes widened as he fixed his eyes to some point above his head, the brown orbs harboring disbelief. "I can't believe I bought into all this. I can't believe I wasn't smarter."

He seemed to notice his boss again because the glare was back in full force.

"I thought you were different."

Somewhere in his chest, he felt a pang on his chest. His breathing started to labor quietly, rising in volume as the blond started to list his disgust with the fraud.

"...I thought Shizuo-san made you a better person."

The blond's eyes flashed. "I'm telling Shizuo."

Before the blond had even left the apartment, his head had hit the floor.

He clawed at the hardwood, gasping for breath.

"Nonononononononononononono."

His lungs burned for air, black spots started to eat away at his vision, the floor disappeared beneath him, the sensation feeling like a thousand rats were running rampant, carrying him deeper into the ground.

It felt like dying.

And those rats started to get colder, vertigo settling in. His body felt sizes too small, too tight. His heart thundered like a jackhammer against his ribcage.

He fought his tunnel vision towards the open door, reaching out in a last ditch attempt to fight the rats.

They won.

*Taichou: Captain

*20,000 yen: 200 dollars or more approximately