Author's Note: I'm looking for a new job. But now I have to go get ready for work. It suuuuucks.

Please enjoy this next chapter. :D

Or not.

It's really up to you.

The morning sun is bright; hardly a cloud in view.

Shizuo stands before me, head hung; a mop of messy blond hair shielding his solemn eyes. "I can't take it anymore. I quit."

"I'm sorry..." I don't fully understand - that, or I'm trying to avoid believing what he's suggesting. "What...?"

"I can't do it."

His deep sigh is approaching mournful. Nervousness bubbles in my stomach.

Is he ashamed? Should I have seen this coming? Did we go a too far?

Yes.

We crossed the line long ago. Now, it's too late for us to go back. Things will never be the same. We don't want them to be. We can't feel the way we once did. The world is a different place; this is not a dream after all. He is more fragile than I thought.

Do I blame him?

No.

Who wouldn't fall apart? I'm surprised he lasted this long, as I would have thrown in the towel weeks ago.

"Shizuo-"

"No! Listen to me for a minute, okay!"

Silently, I nod, willing to give him the time he needs to work with words I surely would have spat ten times over by now. It's a good thing he isn't me.

Ever hear of the term, "Too smart for your own good?"

"I-it's killing me, Izaya," we are off to a rough start as he fumbles his words, struggling to put me down gently. I understand that there's no easier way. "Not in the same way that it's killing you, but... it's killing me. I can't stand it anymore… to see you constantly suffering. Suffering because of me! Because of something I did."

"I don't care who did it…" I whisper, realizing I'm to blame for provoking him in the first place, accepting responsibility in my own mind, even if I will not utter the words aloud. "I just want it fixed…"

"Well I do!" he protests, "I care! The past few days have been nothing but proof."

"Of what?"

"Everything! That I hurt you. That you're sick. That I can't do anything to fix you no matter how hard I try… What kinda man am I supposed to be if I can't make up for all of this? So I quit."

Leaning back in my office chair, I give him a skeptical look, wondering where his logic is derived from. "And how does giving up solve anything?"

Shizuo snaps his molten eyes back up to mine, meeting them with an almost vicious intensity. "I'm not giving up," he says, taken aback by my evidently misplaced accusation. "Just quitting."

"Shizuo," I continue to call him by name as an indication that I am not messing around. "You're going to have to elaborate if you want me to understand your sense of logic."

Heaving another sigh, Shizuo leans against the edge of my desk, nervously gripping the edges with strong hands. I wish this could be easier on us both, but it feels as if the oxygen has been sucked out of the room through a vacuum. Breathing is arduous as this point.

"I quit…" he repeats for the umpteenth time.

He's beginning to frustrate me. "So you've said."

"But… I dunno… I'm not - if it's okay with you - I'm not leaving you."

Well, if I was not breathless already…

Choking back fear, I continue to listen intently, processing every word if only to over analyze it. Someday, this style of thinking is going to ruin me - that is to say if it isn't at this very moment.

"I don't wanna get paid to do this anymore, Izaya," he says, making it clear that his courage is really hanging by a thread here. "I wanna do it 'cause I care about you… and I don't deserve to be here. I don't deserve to spend my time with someone like you."

I want to take this comment as an insult rather than a compliment. I want to be angry with him for it, rather than feeling my chest tingle with that familiar burn. That nameless sensation that fills me with resentment for being unable to banish or hate the way it makes me feel.

Left speechless, I can only wait for the blond to keep speaking.

"I know it's wrong to feel this way about you… except I can't make myself regret it either."

My stomach twists into a multitude of tight knots. Clenching my fists, I hide the shaking in my hands, feeling the dull throb of a migraine slowly sneaking up on me. As my heart painfully slams into my ribs, I could swear they're cracking with each oversized beat.

This is not what should be happening.

"I've been thinking about it nonstop," he continues, "And I realized that this whole time, it's been there. This whole time, I've wanted to tell you… It's the last part of step three. It's the fear you told me to face."

I can't. I'm the one who can't take it anymore.

"Shizuo… whatever it is you're trying to say… Don't."

Shinra was right.

What good am I if all I could ever do is cause him pain?

Break his heart. Break his spirits. Leave an everlasting scar on something to be nurtured and properly cared for. I'm no good. No better. No different. I am the same as always, running away from everything an ordinary human being could want, only to see that in my fight to be something more - something special - I'm giving up so much more than I've bargained for. Much more than I can afford to lose…

I'm taking away from others; never stopping to acknowledge their needs; mercilessly taking them down. Destroying them.

Shizuo isn't the undeserving one. It's me.

I throw away what any sane man would take without hesitation. And for what? Self-defense? For the protection of some scared little boy trapped in the past with the weak excuse that it was never his fault? He did not ask to be alone. Nobody gave him a choice.

Still… that hardly makes it right. Scared still as he may be, it should not be up to him whether or not the people surrounding him are allowed to find the love they long for.

Shinra is right. And I'm more of a monster than Hades' kraken rising from the sea to destroy Argos… or however the story goes.

Shizuo stares at me with wide yes, mouth shut.

"I don't want to hurt you," I tell him, feeling a pang like the slice of a blade, cut through my chest. "But that's all that I could ever do."

He shakes his head. "I don't believe that."

"And you're an amazing person to think so," I smile half-heartedly. "I just can't let you be in the same position that so many others have been… I can't let you be a repeat."

It's a sick comment to make after sleeping with him when I should have said no. Stealing his heart and his virginity? This is deserving of a fate worse than Hell.

I deserve to be tied to Celty's motorcycle and dragged through the busy streets of Ikebukuro until I die a violent, bloody death. I deserve to be wiped out like a deadly disease before it claims the lives of its victims. Because that is exactly what I am. A disease. Bacteria. Poison. A virus.

"If there is anyone in this world who is unworthy of what you have to offer, it's me, Shizuo."

"I just can't believe that," he argues. "And even if I could, we've been through too much. There is nobody else."

"You're mistaken."

"I'm not." The tension is ready to break us with these words… And then he says the unfathomable. "I dunno what you're so afraid of, Izaya. I just know that I am in love with you."