Shizuo knocked on the fancy door twice.
The colorful glass pieces adorning the oak wood mirrored a distorted image of his own face. He tried to smooth, with little success, the unruly hair at the side of his head and then put his hands back in the pockets of his new black trousers, elegant pants with the sharp crease in the middle of each leg and the thin leather belt at the waist. Tom had given them to him along with shoes, a white shirt that felt a bit tight at the shoulders and a black tie that he still had no idea how to knot.
Izaya, watching him get ready, had giggled, loud enough for Shizuo to hear him from his place in front of the wardrobe mirror, his chin tilted up in a theatrical gesture of superiority. "I can't believe you don't know how to wear a tie," the flea had chirped after he had fully enjoyed the birth of the umpteenth failed knot.
When Shizuo knocked at the pub's door it was few minutes past seven. Tom appeared on the threshold with a brass saxophone hanging from his neck. He smiled.
"Come in," said Tom.
Inside the empty pub, both floor and walls were covered in glossy wooden panels. The place was full of tables, except for the bar area and a corner where there was a small, slightly raised stage with a piano and drums. The light above the tables came out dimmed by dark red silken lampshades, projecting a warm glow on the glass frames shielding monochromatic photos of jazz players Shizuo had never seen before. Tom's pub reminded Shizuo a bit of a den, dark but relaxing. Shizuo hadn't been in many bars in his life, but the ones he remembered were dingy, with counters and carpets stinking of the same sour spilled beer that left his fingers sticky. He flinched at the memory. Tom's pub, on the other hand, was an elegant and clean place, smelling of beeswax from the furniture polish, small in size with great attention put in choosing each detail, from the paneled ceiling to the marble surface of the counter. He liked it.
"This evening I play music with some friends of mine. Do you like jazz, Shizuo-kun?"
"It's fine."
"Good! Ah, you won't be alone, Erika will help you keep up with the orders." Tom checked the golden watch at his wrist. "She'll be here in minutes."
After Shizuo had passed a couple of hours with Karisawa Erika, and observed her interacting with clients, he came to the conclusion she was outgoing and straightforward - qualities he appreciated. She had also been so kind as to help him with some troublesome situations he didn't know how to deal with, what with his lack of experience. Erika was a good bartender, and a patient upperclassman but, every now and then, she got very excited. She giggled, jumped and clapped her hands above her head because, from what Shizuo had heard above the loud music, the three men playing jazz with Tom were friends of her. Anyway, the first time she squealed caught him so much by surprise he broke a beer mug.
Erika was only quiet when she helped him picking up the glass pieces. Used to rigid military habits since he was a boy, Shizuo expected to be scolded. She just asked him if he was fine.
"Ne, ne, aren't they gooood?" Erika shouted above the round of applauses when the concert ended, elbowing him in the ribs hard enough to knock breath out of his lungs. He broke a carafe.
Once the counter had been cleaned from the broken glasses, Erika introduced him to her friends. Luckily for Shizuo (and Tom's glasses), they looked more collected than her, especially the double bass player, Togusa Saburo, and the drummer, a tall man in his mid-twenties called Kadota Kyohei.
"Hope you enjoyed the concert," he said as he took off the black beanie he was wearing; Shizuo guessed it was so that he wouldn't have hair on his face while he played.
The last person composing the quartet was a pianist named Yumasaki Walker. He was a short boy with sand blond hair and a gaze which reminded Shizuo of a fox. Erika affectionately called him Yumacchi and, now that Shizuo thought about it, that was another thing he didn't like about her - her irrepressible need to assign a nickname to everyone she was close with, Shizuo - or, better, Shizu-Shizu – now included; only Tom was spared since he was her boss. It was annoying because it immediately reminded him of a certain flea Shizuo didn't want to think about, especially because it undermined his pride a bit admitting he was grateful to him. Indeed, Izaya had saved him from the embarrassing situation of attending his first day of work with a ridiculously knotted tie.
The sensation of Izaya's elegant fingers still lingered on his neck like a phantom.
"So she bandaged it for you," Izaya had said before Shizuo went to work, fingertips brushing the gauze covering the wound on Shizuo's neck.
Shizuo, against his will, reacted.
He took a shuddering breath when Izaya touched him, the pads of his fingers a barely perceptible pressure across his neck, shifting to make the tie slid down from the shirt collar.
"Lower yourself a bit more."
Shizuo obeyed. Not bothering to answer him back, he had lowered his upper body so Izaya could access at his shirt collar with ease. The bandages covering Izaya's sprained wrists as support weren't enough to keep his brows from knitting in pain slightly. Shizuo mirrored the flinch when Izaya buttoned his shirt to the topmost button - it constricted his neck too much and the flea must have known it based on the way he smirked.
After the tie had encircled his neck, Shizuo caught the instant when scarlet eyes sharpened in concentration. From such proximity, Shizuo felt the damp hotness of breath on his own neck, slow but constant, and the scent of the lavender flavored shampoo they shared lingering on raven-black strands, along with the flea smell he could recognize between thousands - Izaya's scent.
As soon as hands began twisting with self-confident movements, Shizuo saw Izaya's lips parting. The tip of his tongue moistened them, leaving them glistening. Then, he started on chewing his lower lip, absentmindedly, until fingers left the tie.
"Done."
His heartbeat caught in his chest when scarlet eyes darted up. Shizuo's gaze shifted but it took him a moment to collect himself, so he didn't react immediately when Izaya chirped: "Just out of curiosity, what did you wear during dates, Shizu-chan?"
Shizuo's mouth clenched the cigarette he held between his lips as Izaya's words from hours before resurfaced in his mind. The night had passed quickly; it was around two in the morning, now, and Tom had rounded up and ejected the few remaining patrons, closed and locked the pub door, and offered Shizuo a smoke. He didn't refuse it, so they sat on a bench facing the sea.
"How was your first day?" asked Tom.
Shizuo took a deep drag. He enjoyed the bitter taste of tobacco deep in his throat, nicotine calming his blood from images of crimson eyes. He exhaled, looking at the trail of smoke dissolving in the air.
"Thank you."
Tom chuckled. "You're welcome."
Around them the village was asleep; the only sounds in the air were the ripples of tiny waves lapping against hulls and their exhalations of clouds of smoke.
"May I ask you a personal question, Shizuo-kun?" Tom asked after a pause, breaking the silence.
"Of course."
"Have you been here long? I've never seen you before yesterday evening."
"No, I only arrived a few days ago."
"As I imagined," Tom said, his voice lacking the usual lightheartedness Shizuo was starting to get accustomed to. "I don't want to scare you but since you said you just arrived, there's something I must warn you about."
Out of the corner of his eye, Shizuo saw Tom's right hand clenching in a fist in his trouser pocket.
"Don't worry, this is a peaceful village, the wars between city-states hopefully won't reach us anytime soon, but we live close to dangerous places. Please, please Shizuo-kun, never venture in the wild lands."
Why? Shizuo craved to ask, since he saw no physical harm in an infinite succession of wooded hills. He to tell Tom that there was no need to be scared; he had already been there and he came out unscathed. However, he didn't want to come off as rude to his boss, either, so he kept his mouth shut.
"Here, take mine."
Shizuo went wide-eyed when Tom offered him a lucky charm, red with white flowers, identical to the one Kasuka had given him days before.
"Hold it with you and never cross the rope hung with talismans. It's right on the hill at our backs, when houses end and forest starts."
Tom's voice came out broken when he added: "Usually I'm not eager to talk about those places, but I owe you my life, Shizuo-kun. I must tell you what you will find if you decide to cross the rope. You know, ages ago, my friends and I dared to go in the depth of the wild lands, looking for adventure, and for answers."
His gaze slid from his cigarette to Shizuo.
"We've seen it-"
Far away, an owl hooted, shattering the night with its ominous call. It was the only sound in the air aside from the waves. Their exhalations were nowhere to be found, ashes accumulating on their cigarettes tips until they fell on shoes and cobblestones, silently.
"We've seen the monster who kills humans."
In the dark and silence of the early morning, Shizuo trotted along the uphill path that lead to his new dwelling. In the distance, he could see that the lights in their house were off. It didn't surprised him; surely Izaya was already asleep.
The flea must have been tired, since they ended up playing chess for hours this afternoon. Izaya was an expert chess player, so the matches hadn't been relaxing or easy – nor, satisfactory, either. With a smile stretching his lips, Izaya had dismantled every smart move Shizuo could think with the inevitability of high tide against poorly made sand castles. Izaya had been ruthless despite Shizuo being a newbie. Needless to say, there were cracks in the white chess pieces now.
When they decided to stop playing for the sake of Shinra's chess set, Shizuo had cleaned the house and prepared dinner. Izaya had, as expected, complained about his choice of food just like the lousy flea he was.
"I really despise processed foods. They're not healthy and handmade meals can tell me the personality of the human who cooked them," Izaya had muttered, wrinkling his nose when he tasted the instant noodles. "I don't know how it works with Shizu-chan, though," he added absent-mindedly, his attention already shifted to his beloved humans beyond the window glass.
Shizuo wondered why Izaya kept watching the humans outside the window. Even this morning, when Shizuo came back home after he met Kyouko and Tom, Izaya was sitting by the window examining what happened in the village lanes.
Shizuo stopped walking and looked at his right.
In this village, he couldn't see anything beside closed windows and lampposts enlightening trails of roads and alleys, suggesting the ways to walk to reach home despite the dark. Halos in the backdrop of night reminded him dots on a white sheet - Connect the dots was the puzzle game he loved to solve when he was a child.
Connecting the dots with pencil lines, from one to sixty, he would surely get an image from the apparent chaos, a bigger picture he couldn't figure out before - a target he believed unreachable. Following the light spots from the lampposts, he would reach a destination.
Keep walking, keep tracing lines.
Keep going on.
He had always believed every time a bone broke, a muscle sprained, a blood drop slid down his skin, he would be closer to his destination - he would become stronger, until he would be strong enough to master his rage, strong enough to bury the monster inside of him deep enough it wouldn't resurface anymore.
Strong enough to prove to other people he was human.
Strong enough to consider himself human.
Heiwajima Shizuo believed in continuing to struggle, continuing doing his best, continuing going on.
Just follow the lampposts' lights, just connect the dots.
...Wait.
What if I won't reach my ending? What if, despite connecting the dots, there won't be a final picture but just a mess of sloppy lines?
What if, in an indefinite moment after my childhood ended, I lost the ability to connect the dots?
A part of him replied he was already trapped in a maze of useless lines and fights and struggles that hadn't brought him closer to destination but kept him in a limbo of deceptive halos and mirages.
And yet, another stupid, irrational, delusional part of him kept his feet in motion when he had walked for miles in the wild lands so he wouldn't stop and seek comfort in death-
- But isn't clear enough it brought you nowhere?
His head lowered to the ground at the bitter truth. The diffuse light of a lamppost tinted the dark asphalt under his feet warm yellow, and it was just now Shizuo realized he wasn't alone.
Near him there was a black cat, scrawny for the hot weather, his ears too big, tail too long and slender to make him look like the kittens on cat food commercial posters. He tottered near Shizuo's calf and arched his back to rub across his new trousers, his fur warm.
Shizuo stared at him, not lifting a finger, just waiting for the cat to stop whatever he was doing and go away.
"I don't like cats."
Blunt yes, but it was the truth. Shizuo had always considered himself more a dog person. Not that he ever had a pet in his life; it was a certainty based on a gut feeling. In response, the black cat arched his back even more and began to purr.
"Go away."
Nothing. Shizuo didn't like cats but he couldn't deny that this one seemed to like him a lot, and now he didn't know what to do to make him leave. Shizuo began ruffling the hair at the back of his head.
Should he simply walk away? And what if the furry little thing didn't go away and one tiny pawn ended under one of his soles? Should he move the cat by force and then walk away? Snorting, he decided the latter was for the best; he couldn't risk stepping on something so frail as a kitten's paw. He leaned over, his hands wide open to grab the cat from his belly.
As soon as fingertips brushed the soft fur, he froze.
He couldn't do it, not with the hands of his, because they could handle the touch of metal pipes, tree barks and broken limbs, but the strength required to hold a kitten must be completely different. Looking at his palms and fingers, he remembered the sensation of glass shattering on his skin.
What if I...?
His hands twitched, heartbeat increased when soft fur rubbed across his fingers. Pressed against his palm, there were a tiny head and soft ears. The scrawny cat kept searching for his touch with weak bumps, nuzzling against his palm, asking Shizuo to pet him. Shizuo witnessed with horror at how his fingers began to tremble with panic, cold sweat dampening the white shirt collar. His teeth clenched and eyes fell shut in the concentration of keeping every single muscle, every single bone, every single cell in his hand, perfectly still, until he couldn't feel the softness of fur against his skin anymore.
"Get lost," he managed to growl under his breath.
It surprised him when the cat stopped his ministrations to look at him, placid and fearless. Shizuo, indeed, was way more scared than the black cat.
"I said get lost! Go away! Understand? Damn..."
Desperate and terrified, Shizuo decided to take advantage of the cat's stillness to walk away. He stood slowly and stepped forward as careful as he could, just in case the cat decided to run around his shoes again, and left him behind. After few steps, Shizuo turned. His eyebrows knitted because the kitten followed him toddling, his thin tail lifted.
"Oi, you! Stay there!"
He waved his hand and sped up the pace, beginning to run when he understood there was no other way to leave behind the furry little bother. He was glad Izaya was already in bed and wasn't looking outside the window, otherwise he would have surely split his sides laughing at his nemesis escaping from a kitten.
When he arrived in front of their house, the cat was nowhere in sight.
In the bedroom, the bed was empty.
Shizuo found Izaya still sitting on the chair near the window, sound asleep, with his chin tipped onto his chest. On the table where they ate lunch and dinner sat Shinra's chessboard, the glass pieces gleaming in a sinister way in the moonlight.
Izaya woke up as soon as Shizuo entered the room. He composed himself quickly, pretending he wasn't asleep at all, but his voice was hoarse and his eyes sleepy when he muttered: "Oh, Shizu-chan."
"What the hell are you doing, flea? Why are you sleeping there, are you stupid?"
Of course he wasn't. Izaya had a lot of flaws, but he was far from being stupid. Shizuo just couldn't understand what there was in his brain at all. Why is he still there? Had he passed all the evening watching people?
Izaya answered him with a bitter laugh and tried to stand up. Drowsiness made him unmindful of his injured knee, or he just took for granted that he could do a simple action as such as standing on his feet. He stumbled instead, breathing heavily through his nose, trying to muffle a whimper of pain.
Shizuo reached out, watching for any sign of hesitation in Izaya's features. He expected Izaya would flash one of his knives, slashing his chest or his neck. Instead, the touch he offered was accepted, his arm passing over Izaya's back, fingers sliding on the flea's side, gentle.
Shizuo closed the distance, mere inches, that separate them and pressed Izaya's body against his own. Izaya was warm with sleep and hard with tension. A pale hand caught on his hair as Shizuo looped Izaya's arm over his own shoulder so Izaya could lean on him. Shizuo's palm slid over Izaya's waist, slowly, very slowly but holding him tight. He lowered himself to make the height difference less considerable and prevent Izaya from dangling off of him. Izaya's fingers curled around his shoulder, his hipbone hard where it pressed into Shizuo's side. A pulse beat across Shizuo's neck.
"You smoked," Izaya said.
"Yeah," Shizuo replied, his voice soft.
Izaya tilted his head toward him.
"It stinks."
"You stink more."
Once he had helped Izaya to bed, he took off his own clothes. When he folded the trousers, the lucky charm Tom gave him slipped out of the pocket, falling on the floor. He picked it up and put it on his bedside table, only to realize he had just crossed in front of Izaya's line of vision.
Was he looking outside - again?!
Shizuo lay down on his back, staring absentmindedly at the wooden fan above his head. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Izaya was looking at ceiling, his face wiped clean of every expression.
"Oi, flea."
"Hmm?"
"Um... Tomorrow, do you want to go somewhere?"
Izaya rolled on his side to face Shizuo, his eyes electric.
"Eeeeh, Shizu-chan wants to go on a date with me?"
Shizuo snapped, turning so he was face to face with his nemesis.
"Who would ever want to go on a date with a fucking louse like you?!" He inhaled deeply, craving for a breath of nicotine-filled air to soothe his nerves. "Don't piss me off, Izaya! Do you want to sit there watching people's lives 'till you're healed? Do you know what it seems like? God, it's like that movie - Rear Window!"
Izaya laughed. The sound wasn't the usual mechanic snicker that ignited Shizuo's blood with desire to squash the flea under his fists. It left him shocked.
"And you would be Grace Kelly, I suppose!"
"Hah?! What did you say?"
"You two are quite alike you know - two blond socialites always ready to exhibit a new dress!"
"Wanna die that badly, flea?"
Izaya's mouth crooked up at the corners.
"It's one of the things - many things - I've never understood about you, Shizu-chan. Back in the army, you actually spent the few evenings we had to enjoy ourselves going into old-fashioned cinemas to watch some old movie. Ah, I almost forgot - eating caramel popcorn."
"Why not?" Shizuo murmured, only to add on, snarling: "Wait - did you actually spy on me? I knew something stunk, it was you-"
Scarlet eyes flashed.
"Watching movies might be your hobby, but mine is observing humans," Izaya paused for emphasis "and Shizu-chan."
Izaya's smile was razor-sharp, dangerous, the eye not hidden in the pillow closed to a slit.
"Izaya..."
"Sometimes I make interesting discoveries. For example, I would have never guessed Shizu-chan was superstitious."
"I'm not," Shizuo replied.
"But you had a lucky charm in your pocket. What do you think a talisman would protect you from?"
"My boss gave that to me."
"Hmm, I see. People surely can be really irrational if they give so much credit to old legends-"
"Don't talk shit about him, Izaya," Shizuo growled.
"So you do trust him?"
In response to Shizuo's silence, Izaya drew nearer. Now both his eyes were back on Shizuo, serious, the mocking smirk vanished from his face.
"Well, "Shizuo muttered, his brows knitting at such awkward display of interest."Tom-san said he had seen a monster in the wild lands. He looked truly scared when he told me. I trust him, even if-"
"Even if?"
"Back then, when I crossed the wild lands with you, I didn't see anything."
"Anything at all?"
Shizuo shook his head.
"At all. Far as I saw, there's nothing there. Just wooded hills, a lot of 'em. So many wooded hills and fields that I felt-"
Izaya stared at him, waiting for him to continue speaking. But was he supposed to say? I felt - lonely? Thankful to have you with me? It unsettled him even thinking about how he had kept Izaya close during their escape, how he had embraced him with his last drop of energy before waiting for death, so he just muttered: "Nothing."
When Izaya nodded and closed his eyes, breath slowing down as sleep overcame him, Shizuo couldn't stop himself from questioning how Izaya was handling what happened to both of them - the fire, Shizuo being so weak as to not being able to kill him, and then holding him in his arms during their escape.
Shizuo could sense that there was something different in the flea's behavior, leading him to assume that Izaya, too, was struggling against the reality of facts. Even if he tried with all his efforts to act like an asshole, his trademark provocations had lost a bit of their bite, despite being annoying-
Izaya asked me to kill him.
After that strange request and some time to reflect, Shizuo couldn't doubt it anymore - the consequences of what happened in that hell of a night affected them both. The irony of fate was that even if they shared the tragedy, they couldn't sustain each other. Mutual support was a natural thing for people who share the same traumatic experience, right? Wrong, at least here. It didn't apply to them at all. The hatred was just too deeply rooted, the pride too strong to allow them to break down and let tears flow freely in each other's arms – the thought was laughable.
Shizuo looked at the ruby eyes, now closed, hidden under raven-black bangs that smelled of lavender and flea. Izaya was graceful, sleeping curled up as though he was a lonely cat - just like the one who had followed Shizuo tonight.
No. Izaya was strong, indestructible like a cockroach and impossible to catch - both his back and thoughts were always too far from Shizuo's grasp.
I don't know what there's in his head.
I don't know how he's handling what happened to us.
No...
Izaya asked me to kill him, he repeated to himself for the umpteenth time today.
He wants to die, like I do.
Shizuo didn't understand him and probably never wouldbut, until Izaya asked him to fulfill their pact,they would share a safe place to live, along with loneliness and the desire to now, they shared the road to reach their destinations, their targets. At the end of their lives, when this giant game of connect-the-dots ended, they would find images, or maybe just tangles, Izaya's surely different from Shizuo's, but for the last dots, their lines would run close to each other.
There were only few lampposts left before the end, and it was too dark for Shizuo to see Izaya's face - and thoughts - clearly enough to not perceive him like one of the threats scattered across the road.
He didn't trust him. Izaya was too strong, too dangerous, too cryptic. And yet, as he looked at him one last time before falling asleep, Shizuo felt reassured.
Follow the lampposts' lights, connect the dots - he's beside you.
He's here.
A/N: Thanks to my beta, Aira Kay!
