Sorry again that Shizuo only has the spotlight for a little while at the end. He will definitely have more time to shine next time!
Enjoy!

Izaya

"—zaya...Izaya...No!...Izaya!..."

My eyes flew open when I heard my name.

Timidly, I rolled over to the direction from which the calling had come, my eyes adjusting to the lack of light as I made out Shizuo's figure. His head was shaking back and forth, his brows tightly knit in what looked like a form of mental anguish. Beads of sweat were rolling down his forehead, and before I had a chance to register the situation before me, I hurriedly jumped up, my heart racing as I grabbed both his wrists to stop the tremors.

"Shizuo! What's wrong?!" I called to him in panic.

"Izaya! No!" To no avail, he was still shaking violently and I was worried he would end up hurting himself, or more likely me, if he didn't wake immediately.

"Wake up! Come on," I shook him a little. "Wake up!"

His eyes sprang open as he flung forward panting, hitting his head against mine, in turn making me fall back on to the bed. I surged a hand to the newly forming nodule or my forehead, rubbing it thoroughly to ease the rapidly intensifying pain. He looked around the room, panting in a worry, registering that he was no longer in the limbo of his nightmare. He turned to me, tightly grabbing hold of my shoulders, pulling me forward.

"Are you okay?!" he sounded even more apprehensive and out of breath.

"Well, aside from the growing protrusion on my forehead, I'm fine," I said, cupping the spot my head. "What about you?" I said it flatly enough to hide the concern that I denied had formed the minute he screamed my name. I told myself it was more out of curiosity than anything.

His expression softened a bit and he loosened his grip on me before they slacked back to his sides.

"I'll go get some ice," he said, which was the least expected answer I could have received. He hurried out of bed, turning the corner to leave the room at least remembering to grab a key.

"What?" I was entirely stunned of the events going on before me.

Was he still in some sort of trance? I mean I assumed he had sleeping issues, but this was definitely new...

He came back into view for a second looking at me, dead serious, "And DON'T fall asleep," he warned then left out the door in his pajamas.

I leaned up against the headboard obediently, my fingertips massaging my temples as my headache increased. The pain was too real to believe that I was the one dreaming, and ruled out that possibility first.

"What the actual hell is going on?" I cursed, my voice and hands shaking.

When he returned a few minutes later, he was holding a plastic cup and took a seat down on the bed next to me. I saw it was full of little ice cubes and offered it to me as makeshift ice pack.

"Where did you get this?" I asked, but was not reluctant to accept it, wincing as I placed it in contact with my skin.

"There's an ice machine on this floor."

"Ah..." was all I could say in response as the throbbing started to slowly subside.

"Should I take you to the doctor? I'm sure they have one here..." he said reaching to look in the drawer of the night table for an information packet.

"No, it's fine, I don't have a concussion. You've hit me harder than this before..." I assured him with a deep sigh. He didn't know that I was still trying to stop the feeling of my head spinning, and the last thing I wanted was to get other people involved.

He turned on one of the lights, not thinking twice about how the bright fluorescence would burn my retinas.

Taking my face in both hands, he pulled me forward until our faces were only a few centimeters apart. My breath hitched as I stared into caramel eyes that darked from the seriousness of his expression. He concentrated on one of my eyes, then the other.

I felt my cheeks grow hotter than necessary under his palms as I looked back, not backing down to break his gaze. However the closeness of our faces sat to be a little too intimate for me, and I had to look away.

"Really, I'm fine." I could only hope that he wasn't feeling how my heart stammered under his hold.

"...Okay," he said, hesitantly releasing my face.

I thought of anything that could possibly make the situation less awkward and sarcastically asked, "so what made you care this time? You've never had a problem injuring me before," I prompted.

He paused for a moment, not having thought that far ahead. His brows narrowed in response of the accusation, but decided to challenge me. "What made you sleep in my bed?"

Now that I hadn't had a proper response with either, and settled on simply saying, "touché..."

We were silent for a few minutes, which was fine with me. The less I had to talk the better, as I sat with my head down, the cup still glued to my fresh bump. He rose to his feet and I watched him enter the bathroom. I heard rummaging coming from within, and he shortly returned with an over-the-counter pill bottle and cup of water.

"Here, at least take an anti-inflammatory."

I looked up at him for a moment, but used my better judgement than to be stubborn and refuse. "Very well, then."

The blonde and I exchanged the cup of ice for the cup of water and I downed two of the gel capsules and the rest of the water. He looked satisfied enough, and took the empty cup and pill bottle and set them gently on the nightstand.

"You can stay," he said finally.

I looked up at him sideways under my bangs. "What?"

"Here. You can stay here."

And I realized what he was referring to. "Oh...thanks."

He handed me cup of ice again and there was another long silence.

"Are you sure you're—"

"Yes, Shizuo, I'm fine." I let out another agitated sigh. The last thing I needed tonight was the thought of the blonde nursing me back to health any further.

"No, you're not. You just called me by my name, so you're not fine."

I sat in thought for a second, not sure what to say, trying to remember the last time I had dropped the pet name when I was addressing him.

"Look, I'm tired okay, just let me go to sleep already." I shoved the cup of half-melted ice in his hand and rolled over on my side to face away from him.

He grumbled something to himself as he turned out the light so we could both sleep. Not for long though, he woke me up every other hour to make sure I hadn't lost consciousness or something. Just because he was used to being sleep deprived didn't give him the right to drag me down with him. Needless to say I was not very happy when I was half awake as the sun was rising.

I was finally able to fall back to sleep for a few hours. Maybe the brute had finally got it through his thick skull that I wasn't in need of his doctoring or any other kind of serious medical attention. When I woke up again, for like the fourth time that night, the sun was shining brightly through the open drapes of the window. I sat there staring up at the ceiling, feeling how the bags had formed under my eyes, cursing the man who was sleeping next to me. However, when I looked over my shoulder, there was no one else sharing the bed. I sat up a little too quickly, and held my head to stop it from spinning, groaning at the whiplash of pain.

"Glad you're up," a voice that didn't sound at all enthusiastic with the fact, appeared from around the corner of the room, holding a tray of food in his hands.

"What's this?" I asked, mimicking the same bored tone he had used.

He set the tray down on the bedside table. "It's your breakfast," he responded as if it should have been obvious..

I looked up at him. His facial expression remained normal. Well, still scowling, but what else was new.

"...Why?"

"What do you mean 'why'? Why what?"

"Everything. Why everything. What's going on?" I finally cracked the pent up frustration I had been holding in all night. There was a price to pay for not letting me have a healthy sleep cycle.

"It's just breakfast?" he gave me a look as if he were utterly offended.

My stomach growling broke the silence, choosing the absolute worse time to betray me.

"Ugh, nevermind," I gave up trying to communicate with him because I knew it would get me nowhere.

"Good, now eat," he said leaving me with the tray. He rounded the corner again and I heard the bathroom door shut and the shower turn on.

I looked at the food and it looked back at me. My stomach growled again in protest and I eventually gave up and set the tray on my lap. He had gotten me two fried eggs, some bacon, some of those little cooked potatoes, and a cup of black coffee.

Good, nothing sweet, was the only thing I was grateful for.

I ate everything in a matter of minutes, and by that time, the shower had stopped. I went to set the tray back on the table and saw the plastic cup half full of water next to the lamp, along with a pill bottle. It was an unwanted reminder of what had happened several hours ago. It all flashed through my mind again, starting with the echo of the panic lacing his voice as he thrashed restlessly in his sleep, ending with those dark, auric eyes staring too closely back at me. My body tensed at the sheer thought of it.

What goes on in that head of yours...

Suddenly there were fingers snapping in front of my face. I blinked and looked at the person who the hand belonged to.

"Oi. Izaya? What the fuck?"

"I was thinking, why did you interrupt me?" I asked irritatedly.

"You've been sitting like that for five minutes. You didn't even notice when I sat down.

Oh.

"You're not going anywhere today. You're staying in bed," he instructed me.

"You're not the boss of me, Shizu-chan," I instantly argued with my eyes narrowing. "And no, I'm not going to just sit here all day."

"Yes, you are. I'm forcing you," he commanded.

"What? And I suppose you're going to sit here and babysit me?" I scoffed in disbelief.

"If that's what it takes."

"You're doing nothing of the sort." Irritably I pulled the comforter off, not caring whether or not it hit him in the face. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get ready to enjoy spending the day outside.

"Fine...but if I see you starting to drag behind, I'm marching you right back up here," he said angrily.

Was this really the right dimension I had woke up in? Since when was Shizuo ever like this?

"Oh, Shizu-chan, how motherly of you," I rolled my eyes and gave him a disgusted look.

Eventually when we made it outside, it was bright and sunny, and I was almost regretting my decision. Almost.

There was energy radiating from the busy mountainsides, as people enjoyed the nice weather. My usual triplet and I marched our way to the ski shop, gathering the things we needed for the day.

"It's crowded today, I hope the line to the ski lift isn't busy," Shinra noted with a smile, looking into the distance.

"If I had gotten more sleep I probably wouldn't have kept you all waiting," I said between clenched teeth, despite my fake smile, eyeing the blonde.

"Are you not sleeping well either, Izaya?" Shinra was walking next to me as he asked. Then he turned to me with the smug expression I hated seeing him wear. "Or does it go deeper than just that?"

Really, how dare he.

"Oh, you don't even know the half of it..." I mumbled to myself.

Shizuo, on Shinra's other side glared at me, his signature grimace on his face. My eyes narrowed more, not letting my gaze back down.

"I uh, see there's a lot of tension here," the doctor in training said, raising up his hands as he fell behind a little, smiling all the while, completely aware that something was up.

"Oh, there's no tension, Shinra, things are just fine. Today is just like any other normal day. I'm just waiting for Shizu-chan to take a little trip down the mountain without his skis. Maybe he'll even split his head open on a tree on the way down." I sneered in the direction of the man himself.

"Tch, shut up flea," he finally broke the gaze and looked straight ahead. I could see under his gloves that his fists were balled tightly, shaking even, as he was restraining from punching me. I almost went on to reply with another sarcastic remark, when suddenly something changed about his expression.

His movements were too quick for me to substantiate what was happening. In a flash he projected himself before me. My eyes, by nature, protectively shut, and the puffy coat he was wearing softened the landing between my face and his chest. His arms wrapped securely around me, and my heart had skipped a beat.

Pafft.

After about 10 long seconds of this, I opened one eye expecting the world around me to have changed during some catastrophic event. Shizuo's arms were still holding me to his chest, and I hadn't felt the ground shake or anything else exciting. I lifted my head slowly, cautiously. The bright light of the sun was still shining down on the glistening snow, which men, women and children were still enjoying themselves on. I pushed away from the blonde, and began looking around for something abnormal, but there was nothing. Everything looked the same as it did a minute ago, except for a completely shocked, mouth-gaping-open Shinra, and an equally dumbfounded Kadota.

I looked up at Shizuo again, searching for some sort of answer to the hundreds of questions running through my mind. To my not-so-surprise, he was looking just about as confused as the other two idiots. Finally my body was out of it's shocked state, and I shrugged completely away from the hold.

"What the hell was that?!" I demanded horrifically embarrassed.

Shizuo was still standing there, mouth parting as he was looking for the answer himself.

"I demand an answer, Shizu-chan! What the hell?" My patience was growing thin and the tips of my ears burned red.

"I...there was..." he said in an almost inaudible, soft voice, as though he were also questioning what the three of us were wondering.

"Spit it out, you protozoan!" I snapped out of sheer humiliation.

"There was...a snowball...it was going to hit you..." he said quietly, barely mouthing the words.

"A what?" I tried grasping what the blonde had just said.

"Sorry, big brother!" A young voice sounded behind us.

The four of us turned around to see three young kids playing in the snow, each of them with small, compacted balls of snow in their hands. They too, looked stunned, having watched the scene unfold before them.

What the fuck just happened?

"That was...really weird," I heard Shinra's state dumbly behind me.

"Uh, yeah, not gonna lie, that made me feel really uncomfortable too," Kadota agreed.

I felt my entire body grow hot with both anger and embarrassment.

I didn't know which of the two emotions to deal with at the moment, my eyes looking around in panic. All sets of eyes were on me.

Say something you idiot! I didn't know who my conscious was talking to.

"Well, uh...I-I would have to agree. I am feeling really violated right now," I mustered in my best casual voice for the moment.

Now all eyes were on Shizuo. He didn't do too well under pressure, so this was a good opportunity for me to totally collapse any self-esteem he might have had before.

"Well, Shizu-chan?" I said as if I really did expect him to say something.

Again, as I presumed, he said nothing and just had one of his many idiotic looks on his face.

Keep rolling with it, Izaya, use it to your advantage!

I began to feel my insides sort of twitch. My stomach kept quivering, and my chest quickly followed. Exhaling short burst of breath through my nose, I felt myself smile and hum in kind of a choking way. But I wasn't in pain. No...I was in pure jubilation.

So I let myself go.

I let my hysterical fits escape, wide-mouthed and head back. I began to feel my sides strain themselves from all the laughter. I wrapped my arms around my stomach to make it stop, but they didn't. The pain only made it worse, not that I even cared.

I opened a teary eye, only to see more people staring at me in horror. Yes, now I was once again, the center of attention. This made me laugh harder, if at all possible. I fell onto my rear and continued to make a scene. When I thought I had myself under control, I looked over at Shizuo. He looked like more than an idiot that I did, in my opinion, so the fits started again. So much that I started coughing between my hysterics.

Then suddenly, I stopped. All was quiet again. The only sound to be heard was the micro-hertz of the snow falling from above. My usual smirk smeared across my lips once again.

"Well, well, well, Shizu-chan. This was all a plan for you to play the hero, ne? You set this all up to save your, 'damsel in distress'~." I dramatically threw a hand over my forehead, just to add to the silliness of the chain of events.

My smirk then drew into a serious frown as I lifted my arm away from my face, settling it back down to the ground to brace myself as I rose to my feet. "Well of course you didn't. That would be idiotic of anyone to believe." I got up brushing the snow off me. "No barbarian like you could ever act so humanely, after all," I scoffed in pure detestation.

I began walking in the direction of which we were originally heading. I turned around to stride backwards to see if the others were following their great leader — as I liked to view myself. They eventually submitted, the blonde last in line.

"Oh, and Shizu-chan," I called with my hands around my mouth. "The next time you want a hug, don't even bother. Losing brain cells from physical contact might be contagious, you know~." I smiled gleefully back towards him, but for some reason my heart ached.

Shizuo

Confused. Humiliated. Furious. I didn't know which emotion to deal with first.

I walked, head down, trying to recall what had provoked me in the first place to do something so...irrational, as the flea would probably call it and taunt me about it further. I always acted impulsively, as much as I hated admitting it, I couldn't deny the fact. It must have just been a natural reflex. But for him? Really? Why did it have to be him?!

Perhaps it was the dream, I thought. Seeing him like that; the real Izaya. Because of that damn dream it left me feeling more...protective? It felt so wrong, impossible even, but it was a feeling I couldn't ignore. Yes, for some crazy fucking reason, I wanted that flea bastard to be safe. To my dismay I had grown some sort of sick attachment to him.

My cheeks were still burning by the time we caught up with the little insect and arrived at the lift. Surprisingly the line was shorter than expected.

"Shinra, sit with me. I want to have an intelligent conversation with someone," he said, standing with a hand on his hip as he flipped his dark bangs with specks of white out of his eyes.

"Uhh..." was all Shinra could say, sending Kadota and me an awkward, sideways glance.

My hands balled into fists, as I couldn't bare to see Izaya act like such a brat, well, more than usual.

He was walking over to the lift, obviously not hearing the brunette walking behind him and turned around to speak once again.

"Come on, Shinra, use those legs of yo — Hey!"

I grabbed him by the hood of his jacket and started walking to the seat of the lift, my grip on his coat shaking all the while. Was I really about to do this? I supposed it was too late to turn back now.

"Shizu-chan, what the—?!" he protested, reaching behind him as if to try to pry my hand away from the grasp, as I literally dragged him to the chair.

I didn't say anything as I threw him in the seat, pushing him to the opposite corner as I slid in and lowered the safety bar into a locking position. No turning back now.

"What's this about?! I demand an answer!" he exclaimed, more flustered than actually appalled by my actions.

I didn't say anything while we ascended; counting down in my head and observing the passing scenery were my best attempts at calming the trembling that ran down my spine like a live wire.

"You can be a real brute sometimes, you know," he pouted, crossing his arms to look away from me, out towards the open peaks of the mountains. "Why are you acting like more of an idiot than usual?"

I didn't look at him when I finally gave in for a response. "Just shut up, already," I said in a relatively calm voice, but there was still a bite to my tone.

"When you hit my head did you somehow knock me into a different dimension as well?" he sneered. "Seeing as how the Shizu-chan I know would have been more than ecstatic to watch me endure getting shot, face-first, by a mere ball of snow…" There was a pause, and I could tell he was waiting to get a reaction out of me. "Really, are you mentally deficient? To do something so incredulous as to block the path of a snowball thrown by a child?" he scoffed. "Seriously, your kind of protozoan should have it's own separate page in the dictionary; a nice blank page, easy enough for your monocellular brain to comprehend.

He really didn't know when to keep that damn mouth of his shut. This was probably the farthest I've gone without snapping, but I was on my final nerve.

"Why, Shizu-chan. Why did you—"

"I DON'T KNOW, OKAY?!" I turned and shouted so loudly in his face, the people in front of us, 20 meters ahead, turned around to stare.

Still pouting, he backed off for a few minutes to think...I hated when he thought.

"I'm just...surprised," he offered in a 180 tone, softer and gentle this time. His new tactic of approach made me relax only a little. "I don't know why you've been so...grossly concerned about me lately." It was more of a half-hearted insult now, the venom of his tone had finally eased away.

I sighed and tilted my head back against the chair behind me. "Look, it's not that I want to," I was trying to chooses my words carefully, "I'm just—"

Suddenly we jarred forward as the ski lift stopped about a quarter away from the end.

"Shit."

"Oh, well this is just perfect," the man next to me huffed sarcastically.

"Fuck. How long will we be up here?"

"My sources tell me all day, sadly." He gave me a look that clearly said 'do you really think I know the answer to that, dumb Shizu-chan'. Alas he sighed, "but that's besides the point," he changed his expression. "Why the sudden act of random kindness? It's disturbing the hell out of me."

Even I could tell he was trying to cover up some mysterious, underlying thoughts he didn't feel quite comfortable with addressing. It was easier for him to be rude when he was obviously uncomfortable, but for different reasons than he led on.

I sighed again for the umpteinth time that day. "I'm just paranoid, I guess," I said honestly, to my dismay.

"And why on earth is that?"

I didn't really want to tell him about the dream I had, but at this point, I was sure it would be the only way to shut him up.

"I had this dream...last night..." I hesitated.

"Ooh~, is Shizu-chan finally going to tell me about his long awaited wet dreams?" he taunted on a lighter note than before.

"They're not those kinds of dreams!" I growled in defense, but his smirk only widened as an eyebrow shot up in disbelief. "Something happened to you. Something bad."

"Such as?"

"...you..."

"I...?"

"You were..."

"Yes? I was what?"

"You were hit by a car." I said without hesitation.

An unreadable expression showed on his face for a moment before it quickly softened as he gave me a more thoughtful look. "Well you don't have to worry about that up here, Shizu-chan, there are no cars."

"I know, but still. It really gave me a bad feeling for some reason and I can't get my mind off it. You were so scared..."

"Scared of what?"

I gave in and explained the dream to him in full detail; the city, the storm, how he cried out for me, everything. He listened carefully the whole time, and at the end of my story, we sat unspeaking for a while.

"Well..." he began, but for the first time he didn't know what to say.

"I know it's really, really weird, for both of us, but something just came over me." I said guiltily, feeling my face warm at the topic.

"I see..." he thought some more. "I guess I should thank you then?"

This took me by surprise. "What?! N-No, that's even weirder."

"I'm aware, but I feel as though I should, as much as it hurts my ego. For what you did the other night during the storm, and what you did for me last night and today...Thanks," he said quietly.

"You're welcome, I guess..."

It was odd to have a sense of closure with him, but I was a little relieved we were able to find a mutual ground. We hadn't realized the lift had begun moving again until we were at the end.