"What if I had been a man?"

"Huh?" Shizuo looked up from his phone where he had been texting Celty to take a good look at his girlfriend of a little over a year now. She was sprawled vertically across the couch, with her legs draped over the back and her head hanging upside down, long hair cascading from her scalp and piling on the floor in what was sure to become a giant knot the more she fidgeted.

Sometimes, Shizuo got the feeling she still hadn't fully comprehended the fact that they were in a relationship. Like he would ask her on a sushi date or if she wanted him to pick up groceries on the way home from work and she would hesitate for a second with a wide-eyed expression before she collected her thoughts enough to give an answer. Like she was surprised at every other reminder that they were actually together.

"What if I had been born a man," she elaborated, swinging her feet which hung loosely over the back of the couch. He had always known she was quick and nimble, but he hadn't realized until they were together just how truly hyper-active she was. He thought it was probably her body's way of dealing with her intelligence since her mind was always going a million miles a minute. "Do you think we'd still hate each other?"

That was... a surprisingly good question. To be honest, he was pretty sure they would, but he wasn't gonna say that while the motives for her asking were still unknown. Izaya loved to lay verbal traps and then complain for days when he fell into them. She wasn't actually upset, she just didn't know how to function in life without something to bitch and tease him about. But that didn't mean he had to make it easy for her. "I don't know if I would really say I ever hated you," he said instead.

Izaya only rolled her eyes. Bored with her current position, she gracelessly flopped the lower half of her body down to join her on the seat portion of the couch and rolled onto her stomach, peering out at him over the arm of the couch in a way that reminded him of a cat in a box. "Unless I was a man and we were also gay, of course," she elaborated, voiced now muffled by the fabric of the couch that she was pressed into.

"Where the hell is this coming from anyways?" With Izaya there was always a second meaning, and the rewards for finding it were often plentiful. The look of pride on the rare occasion that he successfully caught onto her always made his heart beat a little faster, even if she tried to hide it.

"Listen, Shizu-chan," she explained with great arrogance. She had finally grown bored with the couch entirely, and rose to stalk over to her beloved desk chair instead. He wondered if there was really that much people watching to be had from an apartment this high up, or if it just fed the god-complex she claimed she didn't have to look down on "her humans" from the heights. "I'm clearly a very attractive young woman, as you yourself would agree, correct?"

He raised a brow from his chair. That one was easy... too easy. He sighed. "You know I think you're beautiful, Izaya."

"Oh stop it you," she squee-ed, waving him off like he was just too much. He rolled his eyes at the theatrics. "You're making me blush!"

It was his turn to smirk now. "We both know you're not really that hard to make blush, Izaya."

On cue, her face lit up a light scarlet and she coughed once, like she was choking on the ashes of her own snuffed out dramatics. "Anyhow, Shizu-chan," she redirected with a little too much eagerness on her part, "The point is, if I hadn't been such a very enticing young lady, who couldn't help being attracted to such a very handsome monster I was cursed with the misfortune of crossing paths with, would we have ever changed? As it is, it took a car accident and my presumed nearness to death for you to spend more than 5 minutes in a room with me, or for me to have enough data to deduce that you may indeed be human-like enough to justify a relationship after all. What if the life we live now is some grand, cosmic mistake?"

She delivered her little speech cheerfully enough, but something about it had Shizuo raising and eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure you've admitted more than once that you've been trying to seduce me for years, so I'm not sure how much you expect me to believe that you weren't interested until you got hit by a car."

"Well, of course, I wanted to fuck you for years, but it wasn't until then I decided I may as well keep you around for the company as well," she dismissed with a teasing coolness. She pouted. "But Shizu-chan never wanted to fuck me or talk to me. How sad."

"Izaya..." he began hesitantly, "Are you... are you worried I'm only with you for sex?"

She parted her lips with the tiniest intake of air, so small he wasn't sure it could really be called a gasp, then closed them again and settled on a smirk. "Now what gave Shizu-chan such a ridiculous idea like that?" She deflected.

"You are!" He accused, not sure whether he was more amused or concerned at this point, "You really think I would be dating you for a year after all the fights we've had just because of your pretty face?"

"It's a very pretty face, Shizu-chan," she muttered despondently, which for Izaya was all but an admission that he was correct.

He brushed his hand through his hair with another sigh. "Izaya."

"Yes."

"I'm gonna give you some true or false statements here, got it? Just true or false, I'm not looking for a whole commentary track here." He got to his feet, and lazily, hands in his pockets, he started to approach her.

"...Alright."

"You wake up at 5 in the morning, which means I wake up at 5 every morning, to your scrawny elbows jamming into my side because you insist on sleeping next to the window, which means you have to crawl over me. Every. Morning."

"...True."

"And the only reason you're so scrawny in the first place is because you don't eat half the time, which means that if I want you not to keel over from starvation one day, I have to cook, since you're somehow also too health-conscious to eat fast food every day. But you're a picky eater, so half the time you won't eat what I make anyways."

"I have to watch my figure, Shizu-chan, no one wants to talk to an ugly informant." She pouted at the glare he shot her for breaking the commentary rule. "But true."

"You still occasionally stab me when you wander into Ikebukuro, which you still do, even though I have asked you a million times not to."

"True."

"And you pester me day in and day out with endless monologues on things and people I don't care about and questions with 10 different meanings I'm not allowed to know about."

"...True. From a certain perspective."

"Izaya," he placed his hands on her desk, leaning down now so that they were at eye-level. "No one is that pretty."

Slowly, he watched her apprehension fade away, and her lips quirked up at the corners in a small smile he was almost tempted to call sweet. "Oh. Well, that's good to know." She was now grinning from ear to ear, and Shizuo felt his entire body warm with affection that was starting to think really was love.

"Tch. For someone so smart, you can be pretty dumb sometimes."

"Ah, Shizu-chan, I can always count on you to ruin sweet moments," she complained, but her eyes were still bright. "But the sex is still good too, eh?"

He laughed. "Very."

She leaned forward now, close enough for her breath to rustle the hair by his ear. "Maybe you should remind me?"

He chuckled. "Now that's a question I can answer."

AN: I'm in such a Shizaya phase right now, I'm getting to that part where I'm running out of interesting things to read, if anyone has a story they recommend in particular I'd love to check it out. Personanlly my absolute favorite Shizaya is still "A Cheap Imitation", over on AO3, that fucker should be a published goddamn novel as far as I'm concerned