Thanks for reading thus far *sends you hugs and hearts!* Everyone who sent me reviews, thank you so much. They made me so happy, I really appreciate all of them.
Shizuo really liked his new job as bartender. Even if Tom's pub was sometimes so noisy he couldn't understand orders without getting his head closer and asking the clients to repeat themselves, the music was so good that he found himself tapping his fingers to the beat. Shizuo didn't know the exact reason why he felt at ease bartending. Perhaps it was the sound of ice in the shaker, or the amber color of beer, or the clink of glasses against the marble counter; whatever it was, it let him shut his mind and enjoy people's laughs smiling in return.
In more than one month working in Tom's pub, Shizuo had managed to reduce the number of glasses broken in each shift to zero. He had learned that the clients were all more or less the same, and they all knew each other. Day by day, he began remembering their faces (for their names, he still needed a little more of time) and linking them to their voices and tastes. They even started to greet him with a smile, asking how he was doing when Shizuo handed them a beer mug. To cap it all off, he learned that some shifts made him come back home so tired he had barely the strength to fold his bartender outfit before dashing in bed, the soles of his feet sore, his ears ringing. Other nights were more relaxing, the pub almost empty, and he was left with the energy to take a smoke and scold Izaya for falling asleep while sitting near the window.
Tonight was one of those evenings.
"Shizuo-kun, it's enough for tonight. Go home and rest!" Tom said since, along with them, there was only Kadota.
When Kadota didn't play drums, he was sat on the same stool at the counter and, with arms crossed on the marble surface, he ordered his favorite double malt beer. He and Shizuo always greeted each other and exchanged the usual courtesy words, and every now and then they even indulged in longer conversations. Otherwise, they just stood one in front of the other, sometimes for whole shifts, Kadota with his head propped against his hand, listening to the chatter absentmindedly, Shizuo waiting for orders against the shelves, lost in thoughts.
Before Tom dismissed him, Shizuo had been thinking of the flea.
In the past weeks, Izaya got better: his wrists healed and he discarded the wheelchair, shifting to crutches. Shinra said Izaya was healing very fast and soon he would be able to walk on his own, even if it would take time and patience.
Right now, under Izaya's black trousers, there wasn't white gauze anymore.
Shizuo remembered Izaya's face when Shinra removed the bandages on his legs for good. It was the first time Shizuo saw Izaya with his gaze blank, brows knitted in an almost imperceptible way, and when his pale fingers twitched to close in loose fists, Shizuo found himself holding his breath. Shizuo had known Izaya was a narcissist since the first time he saw him - Izaya oozed arrogance and conceit from every word, every gaze, every gesture. More than scarring his skin, the burns and the bullet mark damaged his ego, his pride.
Izaya flinched, even so slightly, every time Shizuo undressed him and washed his legs. Shizuo wondered if he should tell Izaya his skin wasn't less beautiful just because of some scars.
Before the bandages on Izaya's wrists were removed, Shizuo was used to washing him every morning. Luckily, they soon understood how to avoid the embarrassing situation of the first time Shizuo had washed him. Shizuo had learned he shouldn't touch him, not so gently, not with his bare hands, not when he wasn't aware of his own actions anymore.
Every now and then, when Shizuo shut his mind while he walked or bartended, the Izaya of that day came to his mind. More than his bare body and his fully hard cock, of a darker pink than his pale skin and perfectly proportioned with Izaya's body, Shizuo remembered the changes of expression on Izaya's face. When Shizuo closed his eyes, he recollected how it happened - Izaya's lips parting, the flutter of starry eyelashes as Shizuo touched him, Izaya's pulse growing faster. And then, before Shizuo could realize it, the moment was transforming: he wasn't washing him anymore. He was admiring Izaya reacting to him. Laying there with his eyes closed and wet, naked body, Izaya had been stripped to his most earnest reactions, and Shizuo felt as though he had caught a glimpse of how Izaya looked like under his thick, mocking masks. Despite being something Shizuo knew he shouldn't redo - hell, no! - seeing Izaya's human and instinctive side was mesmerizing and strangely addictive.
In the last month, after Shizuo had washed him, he prepared breakfast and carried Izaya to the seaside, or they played chess. At times, he sat beside Izaya and they worked on crosswords together, their shoulders brushing. Unexpectedly, Izaya didn't complain if Shizuo pointed out-loud the words he knew. Every now and then, Shizuo found some words related to the old movies he loved to watch during the free evenings back when he was in the Military Academy.
"Ah! I know this one. The director of Rear Window: Alfred Hitchcock, of course! You know, that movie reminds me of you - you're always near the window watching people outside... Isn't it, flea-kuuuun? C'mon, write it down already! Here, here!"
"You've already said that a looooot of times, Shizu-chan. A joke isn't funny anymore if you keep repeating it, you know?" Izaya had said while patting with the tip of the pencil on Shizuo's index finger, jabbed at the first square of the 32 Horizontal.
Izaya had started writing the name down in the grid with his neat calligraphy, but stopped halfway. Shizuo had leant his head on his arms, crossed on the round table in their bedroom, and was looking up at him. Shizuo observed Izaya long enough to elicit a confused frown from the other man, then he had said:
"Oi, 'zaya. Do you think Alfred is a good name for a cat?"
As it was right now, Shizuo was aware his relationship with Izaya couldn't be categorized into watertight compartments anymore - sometimes they act like enemies and, sometimes, while Shizuo observed Izaya quietly doing crosswords or planning the next move to thrash him while they played chess, he wondered if he could ever be something close to a friend to him. Fuck, no! came the thought immediately after. There was nothing similar to friendship between them. He and Izaya just spent the days together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes merely trying to not kill each other while they bickered.
More than once Shizuo had repeated to himself that buying a children's knife instead of a switchblade had been the right choice. Not only because he didn't want to deal with something bothersome like a bleeding wound, but also because Izaya's frustrated face was like ambrosia for his eyes.
"Damn, this knife is rubbish... I hate you, I loathe you so much," Izaya was prone to hissing after he had uselessly tried to stab him. Shizuo replied by splitting his sides laughing at the flea's reddened face, and Izaya only got more and more annoyed. However, despite his words, Izaya didn't throw the knife away.
Sometimes, Izaya provoked him beyond what he could stand and he stomped away, slamming the door at his back in order to not punch him in the face.
Other times, at night, Izaya held his hand until Shizuo feel asleep.
At first it was just fingertips brushing, silky skin lingering on the back of Shizuo's hand before flowing down like water and filling the spaces between his fingers. Then, it became palms being pressed together and intertwined fingers. As days passed by, the initial shock gave way to a placid sense of reassurance. Shizuo wondered if it made Izaya feel better too.
Even if Izaya's fingers shivered slightly, when Shizuo turned to look at him, the moonlight seeping through the window left open showed him an unperturbed face and open red eyes - always dry. Izaya hadn't cried, not once. Izaya never woke suddenly from the same nightmares which haunted Shizuo's sleep. Indeed, the first days after Shinra found them, Shizuo couldn't remember anything but void from his dreams, but, as time passed, from the darkness emerged disjointed images of fire and utter terror.
Kasuka waited for him every night, just to look at his older brother one last time, his expression blank, before flames swallowed his frame. Kasuka never replied to Shizuo's desperate scream to run away. Even when fire began eating his pale skin, even when Shizuo screamed at his brother to forgive him, Kasuka's black eyes were still the same - expressionless, lacking light like the sea at night when Shizuo came back from work. Then, Shizuo felt the fire devouring him too, and he woke up with a jerk, without air in his lungs.
What he wanted to do in those moments was run, run like hell back where the ashes of their military camp rested and search for something, anything, to soothe his need to know where his little brother rested. And then, he would run to the enemy city to kill as many enemy soldiers as he could. He needed to do it with his bare hands, to hear the crack of bones breaking under his knuckles, hot blood and tears, his or theirs, it didn't matter. Nothing would matter anymore, and before they would shoot him in the head, he must cry out those words hurting his throat for release:
Why him?
When Shizuo sat in bed, his tears had already reached his mouth. The taste was too bitter; it made him feel nauseous. He decided to leave.
He would have disappeared in the dead of night, entering the wild lands to walk through the same path he had made with Izaya in his arms. He would have welcomed death, if cold fingertips hadn't brushed his own, reminding him he couldn't die yet.
Once the daylight came, Shizuo understood that Izaya's touch was meant to remember him to keep their promise. That was a gesture no different at all from their first and only handshake.
In the dead of night, however, the touch didn't remind Shizuo of his duty to kill Izaya. It was just consoling. The faint light of moon and lampposts wasn't enough to unveil the meaning behind actions - in the darkness of their bedroom, Izaya was just asking him to stay. Shizuo found himself intertwining his fingers with Izaya's, feeling their hands becoming warmer, their breaths synchronizing.
There were still salty drops in Shizuo's mouth. He still needed to leave, he still wanted to know where Kasuka rested, he still must atone.
He decided to stay.
Unable to release sorrow through actions, questions flowed out of him, like tears: "Do you think he suffered? Do you think he wondered where I was when he started to feel his skin burning? They say that's the most painful death... Izaya, do you think he cursed me while he exhaled his last breath?"
Izaya never answered, he only tightened the hold until Shizuo lay down again on the mattress and fell asleep. In the morning, Shizuo always woke to Izaya curled up in one corner of the bed, thin back facing him, as though the touch of his hand was limited to the dead of night. Since the day when their hands brushed as Izaya taught him how to pet cats, they had never shared such a gesture in the daylight.
Shizuo wondered if there was something he could do to be as helpful as Izaya's hand after he had a nightmare, as Izaya teaching him to play chess to not make him think about Kasuka, as Izaya saying he was doing fine while petting a scrawny cat. Because, despite Izaya was strong and indestructible as a cockroach, Shizuo had sensed something had changed in him after they arrived in this village.
Izaya wants to die.
Shizuo still remembered what happened to Izaya the first time they walked through the asphalt road connecting the village with the outside world. It was carved in his memory how scared Izaya was, unable to breathe, trembling in his arms, eyes shut across Shizuo's neck. Izaya said it was due to an excess of sun, but Shizuo knew it was for the shadows of the night of the attack still haunting him instead. Basing his diagnosis on the description Shizuo gave him, Shinra said Izaya had a panic attack.
It didn't happen a second time, even if Shizuo couldn't stop envisioning him alone, unable to remember how to breathe and shivering when Shizuo was at work or asleep.
Shizuo wished he was good with words so he could convince him that until the day they would leave this village and he would kill him, Izaya could lean on him as Shizuo leaned on Izaya. It would be give and take, mutual support that didn't erase their passionate hatred and incompatibility. He would like to find a good way to say to him "let me help you as you're helping me," but he had never been a smooth talker.
When he lay in bed every night, Shizuo hoped for a light, dreamless sleep, to perceive the changes in Izaya's breath, to feel him curling up and dealing alone with his nightmares. But he was too tangled in his own dreams of death and fire to wake if Izaya's breath suddenly quickened.
"Oi louse... If you - if you still feel like that time, y'know, I won't kick your ass if you wake me," he had said, mustering up all the courage he had and trying to sound casual.
Izaya replied chuckling and, from the flash in his red eyes, Shizuo understood his words had just clashed against another impenetrable mask Izaya had crafted down to fine art.
In the past month, Izaya's wounds got better, wrists healed, burns became scars, and soon he would be able to walk again, but the psychological wounds seemed only to become gangrenous. When Shizuo came back from work at half past two, he always found Izaya still staring at the empty lanes of a sleeping village outside the window, his gaze void from every emotion. Izaya didn't cry, Izaya didn't let Shizuo help him if he had nightmares, Izaya didn't keep him awake asking him questions Shizuo couldn't answer.
Izaya was a long-winded person but, in the end, he didn't communicate at all.
This evening, when Shizuo walked into their room, Izaya was looking outside the window, lost in thoughts.
"You're early," Izaya said as he petted absentmindedly Alfred, asleep in his lap.
"Tom-san let me go."
Izaya replied humming. He didn't stop looking outside the window when Shizuo began undressing to wear more comfortable clothes.
Shizuo loosened his necktie and his gaze softened when he saw how peaceful the black kitten looked under Izaya's ministrations. Alfred was used to jumping on Shizuo's lap and, here, he began kneading the man's thighs and purring and searching for cuddles. Shizuo petted him, trying to imitate Izaya, but his caresses were way shyer and clumsier. Luckily, Alfred appreciated them in the same way he loved Izaya's and Shizuo felt a bit proud of himself. However, the fear of hurting something so small and frail still blocked Shizuo from taking the cat in his arms like Izaya did.
"What did Shinra tell you today?" Shizuo asked.
"He said I'm ready to try walking by myself, without doing too much, of course," Izaya replied.
"Ah, that's good."
Izaya hinted a nod.
"Let's go," Shizuo said.
Suddenly, Izaya stopped petting their cat. "Where?"
"I need another smoke and you have to try walking. Let's go there."
Izaya exhaled and lifted the black cat by his belly. Alfred mewled and tottered toward Shizuo to greet him with a brush of his back against the man's calf. Shizuo patted his small head clumsily as he waited for Izaya to take his crutches. Then, they headed out of the room. Once they exited the main door, Alfred went away on his own like he was used to do. They both agreed the cat could come and go whenever he liked. They didn't want to force him inside the house, so Alfred usually spent the night outside, but every morning he waited for food outside the main door, so they let him come in.
They walked through the road in the opposite direction they usually took to reach the village centre, uphill, until the street ended. The place they reached was a small park at the limit of the vast forest covering the remaining part of the hill where the village was situated. It was a location they discovered just few days before, when they wondered where the road would lead them if they walked past their house.
Partially hidden by beech trees, there was an old, wooden gazebo with a picnic table and a fence delimiting the cliff's edge. Over the fence, the panorama was breathtaking. From there, they overlooked the sea, the entire village and even a portion of the road beside the seaside. Shizuo liked spending lazy afternoons in the shade of the gazebo, taking a nap on one bench while Izaya did crosswords on the other.
It left him shocked that, once the sun was set, the place looked completely different.
About ten feet beyond the gazebo, the moonlight that streamed through the leaves came to a sudden stop. It was as though the forest inhaled every trace of light to exhale a breeze drenched with the rich smell of sap and damp earth, so cold it enveloped his bare arms in sleeves of ice. As he walked toward the wooden table, the grass cushioned his soles, devouring the sounds produced by his footsteps and Izaya's crutches. Only darkness was left, only silence. Creepy, he thought.
Shizuo didn't like this place at night. He could sense the presence of the rope with the talismans hidden in the darkness between the trees - the boundary between the village and the wild lands. The thought didn't bother Shizuo during the day. Now it did, as though the distinction between the human world and that infinite expanse of nothingness became sharper at night. Even if Shizuo had already crossed the uninhabited lands and found nothing supernatural in them, he still remembered Tom's words from more than one month ago:
"We've seen it - we've seen the monster who kills humans."
Shizuo found himself tilting his chin up and sniffing, trying to catch the smell of something different than trees, saltiness in the air and the flea. Despite the fact that his senses found nothing, he still felt the hair at the back of his head standing up. It hadn't been a good idea, coming in this place at night.
Better make it fast and go home, he thought.
He casted a sidelong glance at Izaya, as if to check if the other man had sensed something strange too, and his eyes met Izaya's ones. Izaya was staring at him with a brow raised. The flea looked amused.
"Do you fear woods at night, Shizu-chan?" Izaya teased.
"No."
"Liar. You look pale as though you've seen a ghost. But it's fine if you don't want to admit it. I guess it's because you have your pride, after all."
Fuck you, Izaya, would be his usual reply. He hummed absentmindedly instead, still too intent in trying to understand why he felt so exposed. He couldn't find a rational explanation, he just smelled danger and, for once, it wasn't due to a certain flea smell.
Shizuo sat on one bench, shifting uncomfortably. After he had forced himself to stop trying to identify something in the darkness between the trees, Shizuo watched Izaya rest the crutches against the wooden fence. Then, still holding the wood as support, Izaya turned, his body facing Shizuo despite his scarlet eyes being somewhere else. Beyond Izaya, the night had rolled in over the village, releasing it from the mugginess of another summer's day. Lampposts' lights smudged the walls otherwise charcoal black, their warm halos enlightening Izaya's dark clothes and his face and hands, showing the slight but perpetual tension in them that not even the night could unwind.
Shizuo observed Izaya in silence, the sensation of impending danger for a moment forgotten.
When a blast of wind ruffled black hair, making Izaya hiss, the spell broke. Shizuo looked away, right hand jerking in his pockets to grab a half-smoked pack of American Spirit.
"Try coming here," he drawled as he lit the cigarette he held between his lips, covering the lighter with his hand to protect the newborn flame from the breeze. Closing his eyes, he inhaled tobacco deep in his throat.
Shizuo looked again at the ink black trees engulfing them in an atmosphere so spooky he regretted to have left the red lucky charm in his bedside table. Then, Shizuo snorted, and it was supposed to be more for himself when he said out loud:
"You have nothing to fear."
Orihara Izaya hated Heiwajima Shizuo from the bottom of his heart.
Now, more than ever.
Irritation laced Izaya's chest when Shizuo's words made him realized he was, indeed, scared. No, he was terrified. What if he had still a long way to go before walking, or running? What if he would never manage to be as fast as he had always been? What if he wouldn't be able to walk without limping? What if-
Wide-eyed in the semi-darkness surrounding them, Izaya observed Shizuo rising from the bench and stepping toward him. Shizuo put out the cigarette he had just lit and opened his arms.
"I'll take you," he said, nonchalant, his voice a deep purr.
Izaya's eyes narrowed over a hard, cold gaze.
"Good God, Shizu-chan is so stupid he thinks I am a child," he said, and his mouth crooked up in a smirk.
Izaya hoped for a violent reaction, or even for a hint of anger on Shizuo's features - his fingers seizing another cancer stick to calm himself would be fine too. Anything but this, Izaya thought. Anything but this calm, almost worried expression. It doesn't suit a monster like him at all.
Luckily, Shizuo reacted, and Izaya found himself tilting his chin up, grinning at the quiver of Shizuo's brow. However, since Izaya's whole body burned with repressed anger, Shizuo's gesture felt more like a delicate puff of wind on white-hot pain - so unsatisfying. To add insult to injury, Shizuo outstretched his hands toward Izaya, as an invitation to reach him.
"Fuck, I said I'll take you! Come on, Izaya! Or you wanna stay here forever, hah?" he blurted out. Then, his hazel widened and his voice lowered into a whisper as he added, much softer: "Come on. Try walking, even if just for few steps, and then we'll go home."
This was hell, Izaya thought.
Heaven was still so far, barely a mirage flickering on the horizon. There was so much desert to walk through, much more pain and anger to endure, much more information to discover before he could cross the rope hung with talismans and become an immortal being. The next obstacle was the inability to walk, being bound to the wheelchair before and crutches now. Izaya wanted to be fast as he had always been, a shadow hiding in the village's lanes to hear, observe, learn people's secrets. Instead, he moved slowly, lacking his usual grace and becoming worn out before he could discover anything interesting. It was as though he was trapped in a circle of hell, and he wouldn't be able to escape from it if he didn't decide to endure once again and walk toward the man he hated the most.
To convince himself to finally put a step forward, Izaya reminded himself that if he wasn't able to move on his own, this torment will never end - this kind of relationship with Shizuo would drive him to madness. Holding Shizuo's hand almost every night had been the worst part. His fingers still twitched at the memory of Shizuo's fingers intertwined with his own. Shizuo's hold was always solid, it hurt just a bit, his warmth rushing through Izaya's body and leaving him helpless.
Izaya forced himself to bear it. Because he couldn't let Shizuo go and die - no, not yet. He needed him, and until he was positive Shizuo wasn't useful anymore, he would let the monster be close to him.
Izaya gritted his teeth as his hands released the fence.
He walked slowly, clenching his eyes every time he put the weight on the injured leg. It was worse than he expected, and he fought to stay on his feet and to not being overwhelmed by discouragement. When the pain escalated, taking the form of needles piercing his flesh and making him exhale in a soft groan, as he feared, Shizuo took him.
Before he fell on the ground, Shizuo encircled Izaya's waist with his arms and held him on his feet. Izaya hissed against the crook of Shizuo's neck. He didn't want this. His pride had been shattered enough.
Shizuo leaned closer to murmur in Izaya's ear words of reassurance, while his fingers drew soothing circles on his back. Red eyes darted open. Let me go, Izaya uttered icily in his head. But, somehow, words couldn't reach his lips without being melted. It was like sun on snow, and one month was enough to become addicted to the pain of being unable to push Shizuo away.
Shizuo squeezed his frame, gently, and Izaya's thoughts began to run:
It's so evident he doesn't hate you anymore.
You must be so pitiful for him.
He's so nice because you can't walk on your own. He holds your hand in return because of your scarred legs!
How does it feel to have the man you loathe the most nursing you back to health?
Pale hands clenched Shizuo's shirt when a deep, rich voice murmured its spell:
"Does it hurt so much?"
Monster, if you only knew...
The ache from his knee was nothing compared to the torment of being ripped in half by Shizuo's innocent, almost affectionate gestures. Because, though Shizuo was warm, his intentions were as crystalline as ice. This embrace, making Izaya's self-control faltering and his body yearning, for Shizuo it lacked malice; it was like a child's hug.
If he would ever find a Dullahan, and if they ferried the bravest warriors to Valhalla for real, Izaya swore he would surely manage to pass through the narrow gate of heaven. He had been in war almost his whole life, after all. And now, beyond strategic plans, beyond watching humans reacting to the situations he pushed them through, this was his battle. Right now, he was on the battlefield, in a harsh fight against himself, against the human side of him. How could he not deserve heaven when he fought, day after day, against the instinctive part of him craving for Shizuo's touch, Shizuo's eyes on his naked body while he washed him, the rhythm of Shizuo's breath in the darkness of their bedroom?
It would have been so much easier if Shizuo hadn't stop hating him, had kept from him every sign of empathy. Shizuo should just let him dealing with his injuries alone.
Just act like a monster, Shizu-chan.
On the crook of his neck, Shizuo smelled of the day they spent together. The morning shower lingered on blond hair in a hint of lavender from the shampoo they shared. On Shizuo's skin, there was still a trace of sunrays, of the saltiness in the breeze on the seaside. Izaya sensed tobacco too, and the smell of beer from the pub. Izaya inhaled deeply to catch the sweet scent of Shizuo's skin. It made him feel too dizzy, it was unsettling. It was intoxicating.
Izaya knew he should push him away now. He couldn't. He wanted to slide his lips from Shizuo's collarbone up to his earlobe, thread his fingers in the bleached hair on the nape of his neck, twirl strands across his own fingers and leave no room between their bodies.
Izaya wanted to kill him.
Izaya wanted to trace Shizuo's neck with his tongue.
Izaya nuzzled his neck and Shizuo froze in the embrace, muscles tensing, hands paralyzed across Izaya's back.
Izaya's lips lingered right above Shizuo's collarbone. Izaya knew he shouldn't open them more than this, he shouldn't let his tongue lick him. He shouldn't leave marks either, otherwise he would hate himself every time he saw them above the hem of Shizuo's shirt. Aware of the boundaries he must not cross, Izaya traced the tendons of Shizuo's neck with his lips only, smiling languidly across the tanned skin as he sensed Shizuo's pulse speeding up, becoming frantic under his lips.
Electricity spread through him, and when he felt the taste of Shizuo's skin on the tip of his tongue, he realized how powerless he was, his self-control already shattering.
His mind was screeching at him to stop when his mouth closed on a spot on Shizuo's neck. He sucked.
"Izaya..."
Shizuo's voice rolled out hoarse and ragged of his tongue. Izaya's breath caught dangerously in his throat as he waited for a question that, luckily, never came.
Shizuo was frozen in place as Izaya's mouth explored the unexpected tenderness of the monster's armor, the skin shielding the pulsing life of the carotid. A grin tensed Izaya's mouth in a sharp bow. Despite being a monster, Izaya knew Shizuo could bleed. He had made him bleed plenty of times and, now, Izaya would love to see his own desperation mirrored in Shizuo's hazel eyes, if he were to bite him harsh enough to pierce his neck.
Darkness surrounded them and blinded Izaya's mind. He kissed Shizuo's neck and Shizuo was still immobile, his pulse frantic, large hands twitching slightly when Izaya indulged himself in longer kisses, leaving behind wet trails and blooming red marks. Through his lashes, Izaya looked up at Shizuo's lips, parted in a soundless question, at his flushed cheeks, at his dark eyes. From Shizuo's chest, Izaya drew up his hand to brush Shizuo's jaw with his fingers. Shizuo jolted, tilting his chin up enough to leave room for a trail of open-mouthed kisses, from collarbone to the skin under his earlobe.
In the meanwhile, the same tall trees that shielded the rope with talismans blotted the silver light of the moon. It was as though a spirit from the wild lands awoke at night and skimmed the human world with rustling arm-like branches of dark leaves, devouring the lights coming from the village at Izaya's back. Two opposite worlds clashed inside Izaya and outside him - rationality and instinct, order and chaos, light from the village and darkness from the wild lands. He was in between, gasping for sanity.
While Shizuo smelled, tasted of the day they had passed together, the forest in front of Izaya's eyes stunk of centuries, amassed like piles of leaves on the ground, smelling of the untouched life hidden there since the dawn of time, untouchable until the end of the world. Lampposts' lights tinted Shizuo's skin and hair tips, a luminous galaxy mirroring the stars above and moving with the rhythm of Shizuo's shallow breath. Between the trees and on the ground in front of Izaya, instead, there was only motionless obscurity.
Suddenly, Izaya stopped kissing Shizuo's neck.
The darkness.
The darkness wasn't motionless.
The darkness was alive.
This is my mind, he thought. Just another nightmare. Trees can't move.
The leaves on the ground rustled. His heartbeat sped up, until he felt as though there were hammers pounding inside his ribcage.
There was someone hidden in the forest-
Soldiers!
Shizu-chan, oh god, they found us!
The air surrounding him freeze his thoughts, his muscles, his bones, until he was only aware of his blood, racing a continuous course through his body.
Leaves rustled, the obscurity pulsed, expelling a branch of darkness that now started meandering on the ground. It was similar to a shadow.
The shadow extended, devouring leaves and grass. Izaya knew it meant its owner was coming out from behind the trees. It was close. Too close.
Izaya's mouth opened.
The shadow kept growing. Who can be so tall to have such a shadow?! Izaya wondered. And yet, it stretched again, as though it had been an enormous snake made of absence of light, its skin even darker than the trees' shade.
"Flea?"
Shizuo couldn't hear him - Izaya's scream was stuck, frozen in his throat. He hugged Shizuo tighter, holding on, his fingers clenching Shizuo's shirt.
"Izaya! What the hell is happening- Izaya! Talk to me!"
Izaya's breath withered in his throat.
His body began to shiver, as though it had been stricken by a high voltage electric discharge. He clenched his fists, nails digging into Shizuo's back.
"W-what the fuck! Izaya!"
Shizuo's voice was far away from him now. Izaya could barely feel the gentle hand threading in his hair anymore, clumsy in the way only Shizuo's fingers were. For once, the touch didn't shatter his heart, as his muscles contracted as he struggled to breathe and scream and move.
"IZAYA!"
Shizuo grabbed Izaya's shoulders and looked at him through worried hazel eyes.
Lights from the human world flickered in Shizuo's eyes.
Izaya smiled at the monsterat Shizuo's back.
The last sound Izaya heard was the one of his own scream, finally released from his throat, blending into a laughter. It came to him as thought it didn't belong to his body anymore - a high-pitched, blood-freezing sound of nails on blackboard.
Then, his mind fell into darkness.
A/N: Thanks to my beta, Aira Kay!
