The Wi-Fi signal sucked but Izaya remained. In front of the bookshelf now was a sleek corner desk with a PC, a laptop and a handful of smartphones on top. There was a flea behind it, either typing like a machine gun or spinning on a swivel chair while laughing hysterically, somewhere on the spectrum between a child and a psycho killer.

On a summer afternoon two years after Izaya came home, Shizuo plodded in the living room trying to not spill black coffee from the HELLO GORGEOUS! mug and sugary milk from the one with cats, just to find the flea in a working spree. Izaya clicked while looking at the PC screen, nodded, turned to type something on the laptop and then nodded again, smiling wickedly.

In the years they had been living together, Shizuo had learned that Izaya was a workaholic. If it wasn't for their cats taking naps on his keyboards, he would go on non-stop for hours while drinking his weight in coffee. Shizuo didn't know who he was working with today, though from Izaya's enthusiasm it was a consultation about mythological beings for Kishitani Shingen, who had reappeared abroad as the head of a company called Nebula and had sold them the house, or war matters for his father and Shiki.

The beverages sloshed into the mugs when Izaya threw his hands in the air, then spun his chair and propelled himself to his feet, violently enough that he almost bumped into the other man.

Shizuo gave him a narrow-eyed look while he asked, "What dirty trick did you pull off to be in such a great mood?"

Izaya giggled, shaking his head. "The day will come when you'll regret being so distrustful. I'm not always up to mischief, you know."

Unconvinced, Shizuo hummed flatly. As he handed him the coffee, the silver ring Izaya wore on his index finger clicked against the porcelain mug. It matched the one Shizuo wore on his ring finger, which was where Izaya was supposed to wear his own if only Shizuo hadn't bought the wrong size. "It suits me better this way, doesn't it?" Izaya had said, stretching his arm out to have a better look at his open hand. Shizuo didn't have an opinion about that, though he liked to feel the fresh touch from the ring when Izaya passed his hands on his bare skin; it made him feel like there were fireworks low in his body.

Izaya took a sip of coffee and leaned his other hand on Shizuo's shoulder. "An astounding afternoon awaits us, Shizu-chan. Full of surprises. Do you know what we are going to do?"

The corners of Shizuo's mouth stretched in a grin, and his voice was a deep groan when he said, "Surprise me."

Izaya smiled back at him and then his lips were soft on Shizuo's, gently stroking his mouth and parting his lips for a slow sweep of tongue that tasted like coffee and flea. Shizuo's knees almost gave out. Izaya smirked, then broke the kiss to drain his black coffee in one pull. He smacked his lips and said, matter-of-factly, "We're going to watch a movie."

Shizuo lifted an eyebrow. He enjoyed the idea, but that was no surprise. They often watched movies, and Izaya had the unpleasant habit of providing a running commentary. "This is predictable", or "That idiot is going to die!" or "The culprit is that guy" were just a few of Izaya's typical groaned every time he heard Izaya's voice, louder than the movie. It distracted him and pissed him off. It didn't annoy him when Izaya got bored with the movie and began kissing him, though. There were a lot of movies that Shizuo didn't know how they ended, but it was fine. By the end credits, Izaya was a writhing mess on the sofa, or on the floor, or against the bookshelf, or on his desk, or on the kitchen table. There was one memorable time in which Izaya had straddled him on the swivel chair and had spun it so fast that they fell on the floor and had resumed what they were doing while the world spiraled around them and Al Pacino fired his M16 machine gun on a pack of rival gangsters.

There was a faint smile on Shizuo's face as the microwave popcorn burst like hundreds of fireworks going off, and the aromatic scent of melted butter wafted in the house, making Izaya hum in appreciation from the living room.

Shizuo found him crouched on the floor as he struggled to insert a thumb drive into the TV. A flash of pain shot through his features as he stood up and sat on the sofa close to Alfred, who was sleeping curled in a tight ball. For a moment Shizuo stood there, holding his mug of milk in one hand and a bowlful of popcorn in the other, because living with a flea and a family of cats was so terribly comfortable and familiar it still shook him to the bone when he least expected it.

Izaya patted the place by his side and said, "I know you like the classics, though I bet this foreign, new movie is going to become your all-time favorite."

"Impossible," Shizuo said as he slumped on the sofa. "Come on, let's rewatch Rear Window instead,"

Izaya's eyes met his in a sly side-eye as he pressed on the play button. "Just give it a chance. It's an urban fantasy featuring vampires, isn't it exciting?"

Shizuo stared into the mug's depleted depths, checking for a last drop of milk before leaning it on the coffee table. "I'm not watching this, Izaya."

"You are, Shizu-chan."

He snapped, "Is this a fucking prank?"

Izaya shook his head and stared at the movie with an enigmatic smile on his face. "Trust me," he said.

Pouting, Shizuo shifted his gaze from the flea to the TV screen. The movie had started in a city alley by night. In the distance, across the broken blacktop, dismembered skyscrapers pierced through piles of debris like a jagged hill ridge before the opening credits appeared. Shizuo rolled his eyes. He couldn't understand why the flea was forcing him to watch an urban fantasy movie if he wasn't jerking him around. Or, at least, he couldn't understand it yet.

Two minutes from now, Shizuo would grab Izaya as tightly, as though he needed to feel every ounce of his former enemy's body embossed into his own, both their shirts streaked with his tears and popcorn crumble.

In one minute, Shizuo would throw himself from the sofa to the TV screen, stumbling on the coffee table, scattering popcorn everywhere. At his back, Izaya wouldn't complain, as though he was too busy observing the dense fog of Shizuo's nightmares evaporating like steam in the air to speak. Ahead, the sight was unclouded, and a new universe of dots to connect shone like constellations on the backdrop of the night.

Shizuo didn't know all of this, not until a last handful of seconds had passed by, not until the opening credits faded away and showed the main actor standing on the rooftop of a run-down building, the moon at his back red like Izaya's eyes.

Featuring Hanejima Yuuhei

"VAMPIRE NINJA CARMILLA SAIZOU"

Acknowledgments

Thanks so much to my beta Kay for taking the time to fix my English and send detailed notes and feedback and also for helping me grow as a writer. This story is far better thanks to your help.

Thanks to Su, my fellow snail. I'm so glad I wrote this fic because I got to know you, dear. I love you so much.

Thanks to you, my wonderful reader, for sticking with me until the very end. I hope to meet you in my next Shizaya fic, which I'm writing at the moment. You know me, I'm slow as fuck, but I'll get there… eventually.

This story is dedicated to the one who followed it from the very start: my best friend, my love, my everything.