In the hopeless desolation of the impersonally clean room, Izaya was sweating out his fever, knowing full well, that the shadows he saw squirming in the corners of the room, weren't really there at all.
Still, he couldn't push away the paranoid fear that the ceiling was coming closer inch by inch, baring its fangs at him and waiting for its opportunity to laugh at him, while smashing his face in.
"Since when have you been afraid of the dark?" A taunting voice whispered somewhere close to his ear.
"Are you finally admitting defeat, Izaya." His name was spoken in a mockingly affectionate way, and the breath was knocked out of him, when he realized that it was Shiki's voice that was deriding him.
The painfully familiar scent of tobacco and cologne seemed to hang in the air thickly, filling his lungs like poisonous smoke.
He knew, that he was simply imagining Shiki's presence, because the Awakusu-kai executive had never, ever called him by his first name so casually. Most likely only to prove, how good he was at pretending to be detached from the informant.
What really caught him off guard though, was that he was pertified with fear by the mere thought of being so close to Shiki. So much, so that his heart beat faster and faster, feeling as though it was about to explode, while breathing seemed almost impossible, as he took in unsteady gulps of air through his mouth.
When had he started to be this scared of Shiki? When had the older man managed to get to him like this?
Somewhere along the way, every positive aspect about his relationship with Shiki had been lost, bit by bit, until there was nothing left but competitiveness, possessiveness and violence.
Ironically, their already rather unusual relationship had completely deteriorated the very day Shiki had admitted defeat and confessed that what he felt for Izaya was something more serious than physical attraction or superficial desire.
That very day, Shiki had declared himself the loser of the game Izaya had started with all of his teasing and flirting, only to begin a completely different game, one that Izaya had no chance of winning.
Because Shiki had not only lost the game that day, he had lost his heart to Izaya.
A 35 year old, married man falling for the advances of a 23 year old man, who was still nothing more than a child, cheeky and audacious enough to play adult games.
That was the ultimate humiliation, and it awoke a deep, uncontrollable fury within the usually stoic, calm man, a side no one had ever seen of him before. A side even Shiki himself had most likely not been aware of existing within him.
In the end, selfishly taking a man's heart, only to toy with it, had become his undoing, because now his life was being made miserable by the very monster he himself had created.
"...fuck." Izaya gasped out breathlessly, his chest clenching painfully. And of course, it was only now that he noticed, that maybe he wasn't as indifferent towards Shiki as he had originally thought. And it took all the abuse and mistreatment for him to realize this.
Izaya's sight blurred uncontrollably, the barely lit room vanishing behind an almost transparent veil.
And then a tear made its way down the side of his face slowly.
