Of all the mandatory Shibusen classes, Izaya thinks he dislikes Kujiragi's the most.
It's not that they're any harder, exactly. Simon's lectures are always a challenge to follow just from his style of presentation and speech, and there's always the possibility of being called up with no warning to demonstrate something in front of the class as a whole. The more talkative one is the more likely this is to happen, Izaya has rapidly learned; by now he keeps his mouth shut, and his attention on the notes in front of him, and he's managed to dodge getting called up any more than twice in the last three months. Shizuo is not so lucky; he gets pulled up almost once a week to be a stand-in for some demonstration or another. Izaya doesn't know if it's the fact that Shizuo's distraction is too obvious to hide, or if it's just that his unusual grasp of Soul Force makes him the only available option for many demonstrations, but whatever the cause it's more than enough amusement to pull a grin onto Izaya's mouth even over the distance of the classroom. There's some risk there too - if he looks too obviously amused he's as likely to get brought up on some constructed pretext as Shizuo - but Izaya's gotten good at restraining that too, until Simon's classes are nearly entertaining enough to make them worth looking forward to. The weapon-only classes aren't so bad either; at least Izaya doesn't have to deal with the distraction of Shizuo in those, and while he may not be overly fond of sitting in a room with Shinra's partner and the unwilling mascot of the entire school, Celty never does anything to affect him directly, and in the end Izaya can't find it in him to hold her partner's callousness against her personally. It's not as if she's the one who made Shinra into the person he is, after all; and besides, Izaya stopping thinking of Shinra as even his ex-meister a bare handful of weeks after the other moved out. It's hard enough to deal with the meister he has now; he has no time to spare for sulking about the past, and less inclination to do so. So he pays attention in his weapon classes, takes notes in lecture and works through the homework and hands-on assignments in the peace of his bedroom, and if he doesn't care much about days when he attends those sessions he finds he doesn't hate them either.
The dread he saves entirely for the practical coursework.
It starts as soon as they come through the door. The alignment of the walls, the layout of the furniture, even the high arch of the ceiling: it's all too familiar, it carries the pressed-in memories of too many weeks spent here waiting for a meister that never came, until even with Shizuo at his side Izaya can hardly find the air to take a deep breath. And then there's the coursework itself: the hands-on practice they're meant to do necessarily requires Izaya to transform, requires him to let Shizuo wield him in the same shadows he hid himself within on the meister's first appearance, demands that he let the force of Shizuo's mental presence overwhelm him into submission that always turns all his blood to steam in his veins. It's hard enough to bear in the field, when there's the immediate distraction of violence and the grounding effect of danger to lock them both into a shared outward focus; with nothing but the patter of footsteps and the soft hush of voices around them in the classroom, there's nothing to keep Shizuo's attention on anything other than Izaya in his head. There are no shadows for Izaya to hide in, nothing he can throw in front of himself to protect the murmur of his thoughts from Shizuo's insight, and there are things in his head he doesn't want Shizuo to know, things he can hardly stand to acknowledge in himself. Every class is an extended struggle between trying to keep his thoughts on lockdown and fighting back the undercurrent of Shizuo's wavelength purring through all Izaya's veins like it's urging him to relax, to cede control, to hand over power to the meister gripping the handle of his weapon form in steady fingers. He would be better at this than you, Izaya's mind murmurs, he could take care of you, he could help you, just relax, just stop fighting. And Izaya keeps fighting, because it's all he knows how to do, it's all he can do, and it's the only way he can fight Shizuo back from seeing too far into the shadows of the psyche he's sworn he'll never leave open to anyone.
It's in the midst of this silent, unseen war in the shared space of he and Shizuo's consciousnesses that Kujiragi comes over to check on them.
"How are things going?" she asks, her voice faint and echoey in the way that sounds always seem when Izaya's in weapon form. "You're coming close to your hundred souls, aren't you?"
"Ah," Shizuo says, and drops back onto his heels and out of the combat-ready stance he had been in. "Yeah, we are." Izaya thinks about transforming back for the span of this conversation, thinks about buying himself a few minutes of time in his human form just for the chance to catch his breath and exist in the echoing silence of his own head for a moment; but he doesn't want to talk to Kujiragi, and she'll undoubtedly want him to transform back for some exercise or another, and he doesn't want to go through the first few seconds of his involuntary attempts at Soul Possession and Shizuo's inevitable control over him with an audience beyond the meister himself. So he stays in his weapon form instead, and lets the sound of Kujiragi's voice come to him in offset stereo from the minimal perception of his weapon form and the slightly delayed awareness of her voice inside the realm of Shizuo's thoughts.
"I'm surprised you two worked out so well together," Kujiragi tells them, her voice betraying nothing like this supposed surprise. "I wasn't sure you would find yourselves compatible."
Bullshit, Izaya hisses to the audience of one he currently has. As if she didn't know exactly what she was doing when she told you to partner with me.
Shut up, Shizuo growls back, offering efficient cessation to the conversation, and aloud, while Izaya is still scowling with irritation that goes unnoticed: "Well, we made it work somehow."
"You did." Kujiragi lifts a hand to slide her glasses slightly higher up the bridge of her nose as she looks down at Izaya's weapon form in Shizuo's grip. Izaya can feel his shoulders stiffen just at the suggestion of that gaze, at the considering weighing behind Kujiragi's eyes on him. "Have you managed to achieve Soul Resonance as yet?"
Izaya recoils. There's nowhere for him to go, no space for him to stage a retreat inside the space of Shizuo's head; but he shoves himself back as far away from the other's consciousness as he can get, hunching the mental idea of shoulders in over himself to make a wall between himself and Shizuo's soul wavelength.
"No," Shizuo says, sounding like he's barely paying attention to what Kujiragi is saying. Izaya? "Soul Resonance?" What's wrong?
No, Izaya thinks, forcing the word to diamond-edged clarity over the gap between his awareness and Shizuo's, over the difference between them that usually feels so dangerously narrow and now feels like all the security of a locked door compared to what Kujiragi is suggesting. I'm not doing it.
"Yes." Kujiragi sounds calm, her voice still as absolutely level as it ever is; Izaya wonders if she has the least idea how viciously defensive her words have made him. He wonders if she would care even if she did. "It's a matter of bringing your wavelengths into alignment and harmonizing with each other as weapon and meister." She considers Izaya again, pursing her lips into thoughtful consideration. "The end result often carries a significant increase in combat ability. Given the untapped potential of your weapon partner, I imagine achieving Soul Resonance would allow you both to skip several ranks in relative power."
"Really?" Shizuo says aloud, and in his head: Seriously, what's wrong with you? You're acting like she's about to stab you.
"Really." Kujiragi blinks, her eyes cataloguing every feature of the both of them, from Shizuo's stance to the fit of his fingers against Izaya's weapon form to the shine of the light off the open blade. When she looks up to meet Shizuo's gaze Izaya has the uncanny feeling she's looking through the meister and at him instead, as if it's his attention behind Shizuo's eyes that she's interested in holding. "You're taking two-star assignments right now, isn't that right? You could tackle a three-star easily if you were able to drop into Soul Resonance at will."
No, Izaya says again, but Kujiragi can't hear him and Shizuo isn't answering, as if he's somehow not hearing the shrill skid of the other's voice inside his head. No, I won't do it.
"Is there a trick to it?" Shizuo asks, and that's the wrong question, that's too close to interest for Izaya to bear. He hisses, a raw sound of unfettered fury against the back of Shizuo's mind, and Shizuo frowns, and shakes his head as if to clear it, and goes on speaking. "Something special we have to do, or…?"
Kujiragi tips her head and lifts one shoulder in an easy shrug. "It's more a state of mind than a physical action. You're fitting your soul wavelengths together; both you and your weapon have to be making a conscious choice to align with each other. Once you're both reaching out, you'll be able to feel the connection forming and adjust accordingly."
"Sounds easy." What is wrong with you? It doesn't sound that hard.
It's not about it being hard, Izaya snaps, because it doesn't sound hard; it sounds easy, terrifyingly easy, something he could slip into without even intending if he's not careful. I just don't want to.
Why not? Shizuo presses. I think we could do it. It would be a lot faster to find assignments in the higher ranks. We could probably get you the rest of the Kishin souls you need before the beginning of summer.
Izaya can feel ice settle into the illusion of his veins, can feel his whole body tense against the implication under Shizuo's words, as if there's the sudden pressure of a countdown following along with every beat of his heart. This is fine, he says, hissing the words to a vicious edge even in the mental space they are sharing and hoping it will be enough to cover up the hurt in his chest, enough to disguise the surge of flinching unhappiness that spills from the barriers of his own mind and into the shared space between them. We'll get them eventually. Am I really that horrible to put up with that you want to try something that probably won't even work just to be done a few weeks sooner?
Izaya can feel the way Shizuo recoils mentally as much as physically; he actually takes a half-step back from Kujiragi, his body acting out the focus in his head in that way it so often does, with him. Why are you so upset?
I'm not upset, Izaya snaps, feeling insincerity freeze the words to chill ice on his tongue. I just don't want to do this.
"Heiwajima-kun?" Kujiragi says. She's still watching them, her expression still devoid of any but the most casual interest. For a moment Izaya loathes every part of that calm composure. "You should really try it at least once, and you should be compatible enough to manage it with how many souls you've already collected. I can walk you through the process."
Shizuo frowns; Izaya can feel the hiss of frustration against the inside of his head, can feel the edges of irritation curling into the start of the electric Soul Force that sparks down his blade and so threatens to sweep him away into part of something larger than himself, something unbearably more than the confined space he's created for his own existence. "Izaya doesn't want to."
"Orihara-kun didn't care to partner with you originally either, and yet now he's barely a dozen souls away from becoming a Death Weapon," Kujiragi informs them with that same emotionless calm. "This is your assignment for today's class. Please attempt Soul Resonance with your partner."
The polite phrasing is a lie in itself; there's no space in the set of Kujiragi's shoulders for refusal in this. Shizuo's frown twists, his fingers tighten hard against the handle of Izaya's weapon form; and then he takes a breath, and thinks Let's just try, and Izaya has had enough.
"No!" he says, and the one word takes shape in the air around them instead of just inside Shizuo's head, the negation snapping loud enough to echo in the classroom as Izaya shoves himself away from weapon form, out of Shizuo's head, back from the impulse to agree that he knows will sweep him away with it if he lingers too long with Shizuo's soul wavelength calling out to his. There are promises of closeness there, of acceptance, of belonging in a way Izaya has never belonged to anyone anywhere, and he's not stupid enough to let himself believe that siren song when he's old enough to know those promises for the lies they are. Shizuo will leave, Izaya knows it, he can count the days to abandonment with every soul he swallows down, and Izaya can't let the meister take a part of his own soul with him when he does. His feet hit the floor, his knees quiver and try to buckle, but his hands are closed into fists, and what his balance can't manage his willpower makes up for to force his footing to stability under him as he lifts his head to glare incandescent fury at Kujiragi.
"No," he repeats again, a little softer now even though it doesn't make a difference, even though the whole of the classroom has stopped its movement for the disparate meisters and weapons to turn and blink shock at him. Shizuo's watching him too, Izaya can feel the meister's stare as hot as flame against his skin, but he doesn't turn to meet the other's gaze, he ignores Shizuo as much as he ignores everyone else. "I'm not going to Resonate with him. I'm not going to Resonate with anyone. I'm going to collect my hundred souls and I'm going to leave."
Kujiragi blinks at him with infuriating calm. "As the instructor of your class-"
"You can go to hell," Izaya snaps at her. "I don't give a damn about your requirements or your class." And he's turning on his heel, fast, before Kujiragi has a chance to keep talking, striding away towards the door without consideration for the shocked stares that follow him from the other students in the class. There's one shout: "Izaya!" from a voice impossible for Izaya to entirely ignore; but he hunches his shoulders, and speeds his steps, and shoves the door open to escape into the hallway without admitting he heard his name at all.
If he doesn't turn, Shizuo will never find out how much he wanted to answer that call.