"What happens now?"

Shinra's words barely came out intelligible, the cause being the pudding spoon in his mouth, which, Izaya wasn't sure why, but his gaze had been fixated on it. He shifted his attention elsewhere after catching himself staring.

It won't be long until recess came to an end.

"What?" Izaya allowed his head to loll backwards, exhaling a sigh.

"You and Shizuo."

"What about us?"

"I'd never seen you two so close until that day. It was amazing, I must say –" Shinra pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a habit he had whenever he found something fascinating, "–that I almost don't feel sorry for what happened."

Izaya scoffed.

He wasn't going to give Shinra the satisfaction of knowing this, but he didn't regret the events that had unfolded. In fact, if he'd learn it all beforehand, he'd make the decision to go through it again, no alterations. See, there was such thing as 'the butterfly effect'. Had all the things, as awful as they were, not happen, he wouldn't get to see that tender side of Shizuo, a side that he couldn't say he disliked.

They'd settled on it being a temporary truce however, so that tender Shizuo was no longer, or as far as he knew, at least. Nothing had happened thus far.

"I don't know." Izaya decided to say the truth.

"Do you want to be friends with him?"

That was something he'd never even come close to considering. Izaya gave Shinra an incredulous look, to which Shinra responded with a small chuckle.

"It's not that farfetched!" Shinra raised a hand to wave at Shizuo. The blonde had been leaning against the rooftop railing and away from them, after receiving many complaints, courtesy of Izaya, regarding the second-hand smoke they were inhaling. "Shizuo!"

Shizuo put out the cigarette with the sole of his shoe before he sauntered over to them.

"Do you want to be friends with Orihara-kun?" Shinra asked immediately.

It caught Shizuo off guard, for sure. He was about to take a seat on the ground along with them, but now he was no longer certain with that idea.

"Uh."

This was pure embarrassing. It felt as though Izaya was back in kindergarten and his parents were attempting to introduce him to a classmate. He noticed Shizuo's brief glance at him out of the corner of his eye, wanting to understand more of the context of this situation.

"If he stops being a flea…?" Shizuo continued, but his tone wasn't anywhere close to being sincere.

"I've been human since birth, Shizu-chan."

"You know what I mean."

"Why don't you tell me?"

Izaya's rather sarcastic tone seemed to aggravate Shizuo. He could see the telltale signs of anger rising in those amber hued eyes, accompanied by the way Shizuo's face was much closer to his now. He could practically feel Shizuo's breath on his skin.

"You, Orihara Izaya has always been a pe—"

Shinra squeezed himself in between to put a halt in their argument before it escalated even further, "Haha! Okay, that's enough. Let's just go to that new ice cream store later! What flavor would you guys want? Black sesame, Orihara-kun?"

"No." Izaya and Shizuo said in unison.

"Eh?"

"We already made plans to go after school. He owes me one after dropping the one I bought him," Shizuo explained, pointing over at Izaya, whose lips were jutting out in a pout.

"I told you, it was the thug who did it! To add to that, if your micro brain can even remember the details, Shizu-chan, you ate my ice cream."

"Which I bought!"

Shinra merely watched as the two so-called nemesis began to fall into another argument, one that was a little more harmless than the previous, but more than that, he was still reeling from the fact that they'd agreed to go together. And without him even, which if you think about it, wouldn't that mean it was a date?

"Didn't they say they weren't friends…?"