To the outside world, this day in Ikebukuro started out much like any other. But to Izaya Orihara and Shizuo Heiwajima, it was nothing even close. It wasn't even close because today, Shizuo had a great task before him. Today, he was going to meet Izaya Orihara's parents.
"Don't you own any other outfits, Shizu-chan?" Izaya barked from the kitchen, rummaging desperately through the cabinets in search of something, anything that wasn't instant.
"Not really!" He called back, attempting with equal fervor to get their daughter to hold still long enough for a diaper change. She stared up at him with the bored, red-brown eyes she had inherited from her mother, thoroughly unimpressed by his efforts.
They were at Izaya's mediocre-est apartment, because Izaya didn't want to raise any suspicions with her father about his eldest daughter who he believed to be a financial advisor, and they had spent most of the day attempting to make it look at least a little lived in. Beating up pillows, throwing a book open on a table or two, anything they could think of.
The Oriharas had been out of the country the entirety of Izaya's pregnancy, and the one time they got in contact with her over the phone, they thought she was lying. So, when they came back from overseas to find that their eldest daughter had given birth over a month ago, they were more than a little embarrassed, and swore they would come over to meet the baby and her boyfriend that very day.
"Can't you just tell them I'm at work?" Shizuo had complained when she first told him.
"Ha! They'd wait all night for you to come back, there's absolutely no way they go without meeting you first." She'd stopped spinning her chair, shooting him a cunning grin. "Why? Afraid my daddy's gonna try and kill you for impregnating his little girl out of wedlock?"
"Pretty much."
"Pft. Believe me, my father may be more "normal" than I am, but he's still a detached bastard. You have to be to start leaving your kids alone for months or years at a time the second the eldest one's old enough to watch the youngest." She had risen then, going to stare down at her daughter, sleeping peacefully in the downstairs crib, which yes, she had one almost every room in the house, and no, she didn't think it was overboard. She cooed down in a baby voice. "That'll never happen to you though, Ayako! Mommy will never be having another baby ever because you weighed ten pounds at birth and your pregnancy was hell! Yes it was! Yes it was!"
"Still, I'm sure it's not exactly the future they had in mind for you."
"Hm, that's true. If only he knew what I actually did for a living, you'd sound fantastic by comparison," she'd announced cheerfully.
"By comparison," Shizuo muttered, shaking free of the unwelcome memory as he finally succeeded in getting a fresh diaper onto his daughter. "Your mom's shit at reassurances, Ayako."
"No swearing in front of the baby!" Izaya called from the kitchen. Damn her seemingly super-human hearing.
"Yeah yeah," he conceded, pinching the bridge of his nose and struggling to mentally prepare for his next task of dressing Ayako, like diapers weren't hard enough. Scooping his daughter into his arms, he reflected briefly on the fact that she weighed absolutely nothing, and how much this horrified him. If she was anything like her mother, she was going to grow up to be a tiny, clever thing who liked to pick on people way bigger than her, both literally and figuratively. Which was an awful combination. He had no idea how he was going to handle two of them.
He'd tried to express these concerns to Izaya a time or two, but she'd always shot him down. Apparently his daughter was huge for a baby, as Izaya loved to bitch about any chance she got, but Shizuo wasn't convinced. From where he was concerned, she was absolutely tiny.
Though, he had to admit, even as an outside observer, Izaya's pregnancy did certainly seem like hell. She had always been unstable in reality, but her cheerful facade was usually well enough in control to fool most people. After about 3 months of pregnancy though, everything had changed. Izaya would cry to him, she'd cry to Shinra, she'd cry to some random schmuck on the street who tried to mug her, she was out of control.
She'd finally had to accept closing her business for the remainder of her pregnancy when, at a routine meeting with Shiki, he'd commented that it was going to be rough having a baby with jobs like her and Shizuo's, and she broke down sobbing on the couch. Shizuo had come in from work, only to see his girlfriend bawling on the couch, wailing incomprehensibly about what an awful person she was, with Shiki awkwardly rubbing her back and looking for all the world like he wanted nothing more than to run away or maybe just cease to exist entirely. He'd hastily opened his mouth to explain, clearly concerned that Shizuo would get the wrong idea and think he'd upset her somehow intentionally, but the blond had only held up his hand in a "stop" motion and sighed.
"I know, it's not your fault. This is just how she is now," he'd admitted, presence still totally unrecognized by his lover through all her hysterics.
"She really can't work like that," Shiki advised, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head. "If I'd been anyone else-"
'I know, I know," Shizuo had bemoaned, lighting a cigarette with a little more desperation than he used to. "It'll make her cry all over again, but I'll have a talk with her tonight. I'll restrain her until she gives birth myself if I have to."
"That's..." Shiki had hesitated, his instinct being to protest. He shot the sobbing brunette one more look, and then sighed instead. "Probably for the best, actually."
He shuddered at the memory of her emotional outbursts. And then there was the actual birth itself, but he didn't even wanna think about that right now. The fact that things could stretch like that- he suppressed a shudder. Not the time.
With his free hand, he pulled out the top drawer of the small dresser in the room of this apartment that now functioned as Ayako's nursery. Inside, everything was neatly color-coated with a precision that only Izaya could have the patience for. Not really trusting himself to put together a reasonable outfit without his girlfriend's guidance, he turned to the dresses section and grabbed a small overall dress with a built-in shirt and decided to call that acceptable. Thankfully by this point, Ayako seemed to have decided to take mercy on her struggling father, if just for the moment, and the dress went on with relative ease.
"I'm not even going to try doing anything with your hair." He announced to her, as though she would be disappointed. He'd never understood why people bothered spending so much time trying to cutesy up babies when the babies themselves clearly didn't give a shit. It wasn't until Ayako was born that he realized that in reality, it had nothing to do with baby themselves, but with the fact that they were, like, an interactive dress-up doll. Or at least that was how he was pretty sure Izaya looked at her most of the time.
"Okay," Izaya announced with authority, dashing into the room just before he could leave to come find her. "There is no food in this apartment that my mother would ever approve of, so we need to go to the grocery store, and probably a department store too, because frankly, Shizu-chan, I refuse to introduce my father to my baby daddy, who is a notoriously violent debt collector, whilst he is dressed as a bartender even within the walls of my own home."
"For fuck's sake, flea, stop calling me your fucking 'baby daddy'."
"Hmm," she placed a finger to her lips and tilted her head in mock thought. It was the type of attitude that 5 years ago would've just pissed him off, but now instead he found himself staring at the fullness of her lips, noticing the way she cocked her hip to the side and the way her long hair swayed with the movement. Shit, he thought sometimes, he had it bad. Removing her finger she turned back to him with her signature Cheshire grin, and rebutted him cheerfully. "Nope!"
"Of course." He rolled his eyes. "Ayako going with?"
"Not like that she isn't!" Izaya cried in mock outrage, bringing her fingertips to her chest in horror, as though clutching a nonexistant necklace of pearls. "Look at her hair!"
"I knew it," he muttered under his breath to his daughter, but Izaya didn't pay him any mind, instead flipping open the small jewelry box that sat on the dresser and pulling out a small, white, elastic headband with a flower attached to the side. With great ceremony, as though crowning a new king, she got her toes to place the decoration upon their daughter from her place in his arms. After just enough seconds of fidgeting to start irritating him, she gave a regal nod of approval, and returned to the balls of her feet.
"There, perfect. So adorable~!"
"Glad you approve," he deadpanned, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. She really was no better than Erika dressing up that Anri girl.
"Now now, no need to sass me Shizu-chan, we have a long day ahead of us!" His girlfriend admonished, turning heel and marching out the door with an air of leadership that suggested he follow if he knows what's good for him. He sighed. It was probably true.
By the time they got back from the impromptu day of shopping, Shizuo was not in a good mood. First, they missed the first train that would take them anywhere near a grocery store, which meant that they had had to wait 20 minutes for the next one with an increasingly displeased baby. Then, Izaya decided to spend about triple thier usual food budget, which yes, he understood that she had more than enough money to but it was about the principle of the thing, dammit- anyways. And then he got shot.
He was more pissed, frankly, than anything.
After the whole train debacle from earlier, they had decided to walk home. This meant that for the first time that day Ayako had been shifted into the arms of her mother, since Izaya wouldn't have been able to carry the amount of groceries they had for 2 feet, much 2 miles. Ayako was not at all pleased with this new arrangement, as Izaya liked to lament that she was already a daddy's girl. This was, she loved to complain, incredibly unfair given the discrepancy in effort between them in the job of bringing her into this world, and from what he'd seen, Shizuo tended to agree. Not that he would ever tell her so.
Since god hated him, it was, at that point, that the sky decided to open up a torrential downpour.
Izaya had huffed with no small amount of outrage at the powers that be for this affront to her person, for once utilizing her lightning-fast reflexes for the power of good, whipping out a portable umbrella from one of the many recesses of her beloved coat. While this left her and Ayako on the lighter side of damp, poor Shizuo was left to fend for himself, and still had to carry groceries.
They were very nearly home, which would have normally offered him some kind of relief, but no. Only more horrors lay ahead of him. Was this the price he paid for not sharing in the hell that Izaya claimed her pregnancy to be? Was this god punishing him for the years of violence he had committed against half of Ikebukuro? For pretending he didn't know why the carpet caught on fire last week when he didn't properly snuff out his cigarette? For stealing Izaya's last piece of otoro at Russia sushi yesterday? Whatever. Fuck god, he decided.
So god shot him.
Or, it seemed like god shot him. It was all a blur really. But timed with the thunder and lightening like it was, Shizuo really couldn't help but feel like he had just been personally struck down by the heavens. He hoped Izaya wouldn't let Shinra dissect his body when he was gone.
"Shizuo!"
He could distantly hear a voice that sounded like his girlfriend calling his name, but the voice actually said his proper name so it must have been something else. Ayako was crying. God, she'd take hours to settle down now. What if she was still upset when Izaya's parents got there? What kind of impression would that make?
He lay there on the sidewalk, in a puddle of rain damn near deep enough to drown him to death if god didn't get him first, and vaguely thought someone was beating on his chest. Groaning, he opened his eyes to the concerned face of his girlfriend kneeling over him. He blinked. Was she crying, or was that the rain? He blinked again. Hm. Definitely crying.
Deciding that he was at the very least not going to die, he sat up and began collecting his spilled groceries. He guessed he probably wasn't totally coherent, and he couldn't really hear anything, but he mostly felt fine. It wasn't until Izaya slapped him hard across the face that all of his senses came rushing back to him, and he looked at the blood dripping out of his chest and onto the can of soup that he was holding. Oh. He looked at Izaya, who was definitely still crying.
"Izaya." He stated simply. "I've been shot."
"Yes I saw, you, you, imbecilic protozoan! You single-celled barbarian!" She screamed through the rain, holding Ayako with a firmness that couldn't have possibly been comfortable for the baby. "Put down the damn soup and cover the gaping bullet wound in your chest! For the love of god, why can't you be sensible for once in your mindless existence!?"
He growled. "Hey, I just got fucking shot, Izaya, the least you could do-"
"Shut up!" She commanded pulling him into a hug with her free harm. He realized, upon contact, that she was trembling. Ah. "Just shut up. Stupid."
He wasn't really sure if the last part was directed at him, herself, the situation, or all of the above, but he felt his anger- at her, anyways- melt away. Poor at expressing herself as always.
"So... I guess we're taking a cab to Shinra's?"
She scoffed into his hair. "Yes, of course we're taking a god damn cab to Shinra's."
After taking the god damn cab to Shinra's, tipping double to make sure the driver didn't ask any questions, and dealing with a very excited Shinra for about 20 minutes while Shizuo had the various bullets extracted from his body, it really occurred to Shizuo that this just might be the worst day of his life. He'd thought things like that before, he wasn't exactly the most positive man on the face of the planet, but he thought this time he really meant it. It was a through and through, terrible, awful, 100% bad day.
On the chair next to Shinra's couch, Izaya sniffled, still trying to pretend she totally hadn't had a sobbing fit over him in the street less than an hour ago. Shizuo held in a growl. He would've been pissed enough if he had been shot by himself, but some bastard had the audacity to try and assassinate him while his girlfriend and baby were present? That was a new low of scum, and he was gonna rip their heads off.
"Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill," he chanted under his breath. No need for Ayako to witness any more violence today, even if she didn't understand it. He hated violence. "Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill."
Izaya reached out and laid a hand gingerly on his arm. His mouth snapped shut. It was a subtle communication, but one even he understood.
"Sooooo," she drawled, checking a watch she didn't have for emphasis, "It's getting pretty late. Should I just tell my parents another day, or...?"
He barked out a bitter laugh. "Are you gonna tell them I got shot?"
She shrugged. "You're the one who was worried about your image. I'll facetime them, tears in my eyes, and sing of your heroic virtues. 'Oto-san, I was so scared!', I'll say. 'This thug pulled a gun on me, but my big strong man took the bullet to protect me! What a fantastic baby daddy he is!'. Like that. You'll look great."
Shinra chuckled. "Sometimes with your flair for theatrics I really do feel like you've missed out on your true calling as a spin doctor or a reality tv presenter or something, Izaya."
She sighed, waving him off. "As much as I would love the power of celebrity, it's simply not my style. Besides, can you imagine Shizu-chan if I were being harassed by paparazzi? It could never work."
"You've got a point there," Shinra agreed, tying off the last bandage for his friend/regular patient. Shizuo could barely handle one reporter asking about his brother, much less if a dozen of them interrupted one of his dates with Izaya. He shuddered at the image of the carnage that would surely result from such an action.
"If you really think it'd help..." Shizuo trailed off, reluctant not for any doubt of his girlfriend's skills at manipulation, but for doubt that they would be used for the power of good. It was one of the many regular hazards he had come to accept as a part of dating the information broker, and while he trusted she would never cause harm to him or anyone he cared about intentionally, he sometimes wondered that their definitions of "harm" may be wildly different.
"Our course it will!" She exclaimed sunnily, almost too cheerful at the prospect of not seeing her parents after 2 years. "Just keep your fingers crossed that they don't want to come over and personally thank you for saving the life of their daughter or some sentimental nonsense like that."
"Heiwajima-san, we would like to thank you personally for saving the life of our daughter," Shirou Orihara announced with a deep, traditional bow.
He looked, Shizuo thought, not much like Izaya at all. He had always known that Izaya was technically mixed, being a quarter Russian on her mother's side, but while, sure, she tended towards the pale side, and her eye-color was a little unique, nothing about her screamed 'not totally Japanese' until he really looked at her next to someone like Shirou. Her sisters, he thought absently, took much more from his side of the family than Izaya had, now that he thought about it.
Her mother, on the other hand, damn near could have been her twin, despite surely pushing 45 by now, at least. Maybe a couple of soft wrinkles traced underneath her eyes, but if she had said she was 30, Shizuo would have believed it. The only difference was her eyes, which were much softer, doey-er, than his girlfriend's. He wondered if that was a matter of genetics he didn't understand, or just a difference in their natures.
"You don't have to thank me, sir," he assured honestly. "I only did what any man should do."
"Yes daddy isn't he darling," Izaya swooned, playing the role of an over-infatuated young girl with a little too much enthusiasm. "My Shizu-chan would rather take a hundred bullets himself than see me take one, isn't that right Shizu-chan?"
"I guess," he answered, not really sure what she wanted from him at this point. She clung to his bicep with the dedication of drunk girl at the club after 10 shots, occasionally batting her eyelashes at him prettily with her very best 'adorable and innocent and definitely not working for the mob' expression. He was beginning to suspect she had decided to channel Mika Harima for the evening, and the thought made him shudder.
They had scarcely made it back to the apartment 10 minutes before the Oriharas had arrived, meaning Izaya had been forced to settle on removing his bow-tie and vest as good enough for pretending her boyfriend didn't wander around dressed as a bartender at all times. He had already changed into one of the spare shirts he kept at Shinra's, which probably said something about his lifestyle that he didn't care to observe right now, so for all outside appearances, it would be hard to tell that he had been shot at all.
"Ooooh," her mother practically squealed from her seat, clutching Ayako to her chest even tighter, "Aren't they adorable, dear?"
"Yes," her father agreed, taking a long drag of his expensive cigar, "It would seem she has fallen in love with a fine human after all."
Taking a bite of the Russia Sushi they had ordered last minute in lieu of their ruined groceries, Shizuo barely restrained the urge to roll his eyes. So this was where Izaya had gotten her weird... human-complex.
"You will still be keeping an eye on Mairu and Kururi, won't you, Izaya? I know you must be bust with little Ayako here and all but you know how work gets for your father and I..."
"Of course, mom!" Izaya chirped with what Shizuo recognized as her political smile. Interesting.
"I really can't express what a relief it is to see you so capable now of loving humans, you know," her father expressed airily, "You know I always did worry about that, especially after you stabbed that Kishitani boy in middle school..."
"You stabbed Shinra?" He exclaimed. Sure she had stabbed him at least once a month, but he'd thought that was just him! She said she only stabbed him!
"Oh dAd," she whined, not acknowledging her boyfriend's question at all, "You can't just go bringing up the time I stabbed a boy in front of my boyfriend!"
"Well it really was rather startling, dear," he mother scolded, "I even had to come back to Japan and deal with the school because of it, you're very lucky he decided not to press charges and I made it back to Russia in time for the board meeting."
"Yes, god forbid you miss out on something so important because of a little stabbing," she drawled with a false sweetness that, if directed at him, usually meant he should be bracing himself for revenge, but her mother seemed not to even notice.
"And you always came home with all those bruises, it was remarkable the number of fights you managed to get into as a young lady."
Shizuo gulped, ignoring the twinge of guilt in his gut at knowing he was likely the one to cause said bruises. He reminded himself that she had stabbed him, several times, for half a decade. He still didn't feel great about it.
"Frankly, when you said your boyfriend had been shot we worried for a second that the perpetrator may have been you." Her father said with mild accusation in his tone, tapping out his cigar into one of the many ashtrays she had bought for Shizuo. Shizuo... well, Shizuo didn't like too many people to begin with, but he was starting to think his girlfriend's father was no exception, and he didn't appreciate him leveling accusations with her. Even if they were justified. "But-" his face flipped easily into the same 'fuck you' politician's smile that Izaya had worn just moments earlier. "It seems my concerns were unfounded. I'm glad you are living a peaceful life as I wished for you."
"Of course, father, I would hate to disappoint," she grinned back neutrally.
"Hm. Well, in any case we best be going. We both do have a flight to catch in the morning, don't we, dear?"
"Oh yes, and we should probably say hello to the girls before we leave, too," her mother said like it was an afterthought. She turned to Izaya, and fluidly returned their daughter with infinite grace but no sense of love or loss. "We'll see ourselves out. I hope you recover quickly, Shizuo!"
"Thank you, ma'am."
"Yes I'll be sure to take the bestest care of him, don't you worry!" Izaya assured, visibly pepped up by her parents leaving. "Goodbye now! Say hello to the twins for me! Ta-ta!"
She continued spouting off pleasantries until the door was allowed to close with a soft click, and her face fell into a deep frown.
"I can't believe that bastard mentioned the Shinra incident."
"Isn't your dad a little..." he struggled to find a politically correct way to phrase his question.
"Deplorable? Judgemental? Arrogant? Possessing an ego the size of Japan?" Izaya filled in for him good-naturedly.
"All of the above."
"Indeed." She shifted Ayako around in her arms, the baby's eyes drooping promisingly. Maybe all the commotion of the day had finally gotten to her. "They're not bad people, not really. They just never were particularly attached to their children beyond their basic parental responsibilities. It suited me just fine."
Shizuo scoffed. "Maybe if your parents actually paid attention to you you wouldn't have had so much free time to mercilessly torment me all through high school."
"Torment?" She gasped, a smirk twinging at the corners of her mouth. "You wound me, Shizu-chan! It's not my fault I fell for a barbarian with no regard for subtleties of my love language."
"Stabbings?"
"Yes, stabbings, an intensity reserved only for the deserving!"
"Lucky me," he agreed dryly. Still, she was right. After years of watching her operate, he had observed that Izaya had a very clear preference hierachy of how to deal with conflict, at which running was the top, followed closely by tricking someone else into defending her, then slashing, but he had never seen her stab anyone else. Some part of him sometimes wondered if she wasn't entirely kidding about it being in her own, sick, twisted, Izaya way something that she considered to be a special form of violence just for her and Shizuo. "So... did you stab Shinra?"
She laughed, and for the first time since her parents had arrived, she graced him with one of the real, genuinely amused smirks that he had come to love. "Jealous, Shizu-chan~?" She sing-songed, but it was lacking in her usual energy. She sighed, allowing herself to relax into the side of his chest that didn't have a bullet hole in it. "I didn't, by the way. And I ruined the life of the bastard who did."
"Oh." How very... well, Izaya of her.
She chuckled, cupping his cheek with her free hand and peering up into his eyes through her long lashes, still half drenched in runny mascara from the combination of rain and violent sobbing. "You're still the only man I've ever stabbed, you twisted monstrosity."
He smiled back. In Izaya speak, it was as good as any 'I love you'. "Good."
At his brief answer she spiraled out into a fit of laughter, the kind only he seemed to cause, and he rethought his previous ruling on today. It was still, easily, the worst day of his life, but if it could end like this... well. He guessed it wasn't all bad after all.
AN: Written upon reading the Shirou Orihara journal entries Narita wrote for one of the magazines. You don't exactly get a great grasp of the character from them, but you do get a small insight into his relationship with his children who he seems to... kind of care about? In a weird, detached way. He's definitely portrayed as a bit of a weird guy himself, has Izaya's same weird way of talking about humans, gave Izaya the name Izaya which is a really weird name in the first place, definitely not a completely normal father, even if he is more normal than his children. You don't really learn anything about his mom besides that her name is Kyoko.