Shizuo Heiwajima didn't really hate Izaya Orihara, the person. She irritated the ever-living shit out of him, and he'd love to beat her to a pulp, but aside from her persistence to set her apart, that really wasn't that special compared to anyone else who pissed him off. No, what he hated was, he would have to say, her presence. If she'd just leave him and his friends alone, he really didn't care if she slipped off somewhere else to live whatever the Izaya equivalent of a happy life was. As long as he didn't have to see her.

He remembered the first time he'd laid eyes on her, back in high school, and he was objectively aware that she was beautiful. If he had been calm, he might have even found her beautiful himself. Unfortunately for her, he was pissed, and she had a smug look on her face, so he just had the urge to punch her through a wall instead.

"You. You're pissing me off."

"Aaw, really?" She pouted, sauntering over to him. It was an expression that probably would have had most guys groveling at her feet, but Shizuo knew rage more than any other human emotion, lust included. She was a short woman and he was a tall man, but with a bit of a reach, she grabbed his tie, and pulled him towards her playfully, seductively. "Cuz I thought you were pretty cute, big boy."

Now, Shizuo normally had a pretty strong personal moral about not hitting girls, but in the ten seconds he'd known her, something in him had decided. This creature in front of him, it wasn't a woman, for all her dolled up beauty. No. She was... a flea.

Growling, he yanked her wrist away from him, expecting outrage, maybe a slap to the face, only to find the girl, no, the flea, hadn't missed a beat in flipping out a switchblade and ramming it into his chest. For a second, still holding her wrist in the air, he paused. He could honestly say he had never been stunned like this in his entire life. She had stabbed him. This flea, so small she barely reached his chest in height, had stabbed him.

"See?" She said, grinning, brimming with arrogance. "I'm plenty of fun!"

Slowly he released her wrist to pluck the blade from his chest, the wound gushing a waterfall of blood with its absence, and snapped it between his fingers, before crushing it beneath his heel.

"Iz. A. YAAAA!" He bellowed, charging at her for the first, but certainly not the last time. She had escaped that day, and nearly every day since, seeding between them one of the greatest rivalries the world, or at least Ikebukuro had ever seen. What he didn't know, or at least failed to consider at the time, was the old adage about love and hate. Because as they say-the line between love and hate, is often all too thin.

Izaya Orihara hated Shizuo Heiwajima, and the list of reasons why was long. She wouldn't deny that her body, the traitorous bitch, found him attractive, but she couldn't very well help that the beast had taken an appealing human form. Still, she could never love him, because, at the end of the day, it all boiled down to one key principle. Shizuo just didn't fall within society's carefully placed laws, for all that he was supposedly human. And it's not the literal law she was talking about here, but the basic, fundamental ways humans are supposed to interact with each other, the kinds of things that are ingrained in most people without really knowing why. He functioned entirely on his own rules and principles. For a woman who controlled people entirely through such expectations, this made him... unpredictable, to say the least. She hated it.

His monstrous strength, of course, was yet another contributing factor, in the list of many reasons that she refused to accept him as human. He just couldn't be. And if he wasn't human, then, she didn't have to love him. That was the way she wanted it. To keep Shizuo as far from the category of human, and as such, far from the category of love as humanely possible. So she would hate him instead, she decided, and she would make the rest of the world hate him too if she could. They would see what a monster he was, and all would be as it should be.

She looked over Ikebukuro from her large flat window in Shinjuku, and she imagined it burning.

AN: Shizaya is a couple I've always wanted to explore more. While I'm just generally a sucker for rivals turned lovers, this pair, in particular, are such interesting characters in their own right, much less when you put them together. Izaya's desperation for Shizuo not to be human, in particular, is very interesting to me. Normally Izaya's such a clever guy, who likes to have all his information straight so that he's prepared for everything. Yet when it comes to Shizuo, he willfully turns a blind eye to anything remotely humanizing about him, until the very end when he's forced to confront it head-on, when Shizuo spares his life in their final showdown. What is it that makes him so recklessly determined for Shizuo to be a monster, in a way that's almost uncharacteristic for him?

I think Shinra's words from the light novels come into play here, where he says Izaya had chosen to be detached because, at the end of the day, he's fragile. He has a brittle and delicate heart that would be easy to break, so he chooses to love everyone instead of anyone in particular because everyone as a unit can't hurt him. So, one reason Izaya could be so adamant on keeping Shizuo away from his category of things he "loves" is that he recognizes somewhere deep down that he has affection or admiration for him. In the context of the canonical series, this doesn't have to be romantic, it could be a platonic love, as I'm sure Izaya would still be horrified by that, but in the context of this story let's say it was romantic.

Basically, I want to dig around in Izaya's head, and involving Shizuo is just about the best way to do that. Plus, I think they'd make a very cute couple once she accepted his humanity, and I'm a sappy bitch.

Hope y'all are all staying healthy and safe out there