dfjisdfjghdf

Disclaimer: I do not own Durarara! and this original storyline is not my idea. It is based on fan-made comic strips by Akio from Pixiv. Please view her/his comics first. ^_^ His/Her art is awesome, by the way.

Part 1: zerochan(dot)net/709697

Part 2: zerochan(dot)net/733582

Part 3: zerochan(dot)net/764403

Part 4: zerochan(dot)net/821130 [FINAL]

Akio's other works (that are from zerochan) : zerochan(dot)net/Akio

My other translations: zerochan(dot)net/user/Xxmilky-candy1996xX

Full summary: Other than strength, it seemed that Shizuo had developed another ability—one that enables him to see Izaya's future deaths. Thinking that the only one allowed to kill the flea was him, Shizuo stopped those deaths. What he refuses to admit, however, was how stopping them—and those to come—would take a toll on his feelings and mind. Warning: numerous character deaths, dark Shizuo.

Reaching For That Hand

Chapter 3

~ Shizuo's PoV ~

Izaya will be up on the roof of a fifteen-story building, playing that sick twisted balancing game of his. Then a strong wind will blow. Then he will become unfocused, because he was thinking of other stuff at the time. Then he falls onto the asphalt meters below.

And he will be dead.

Several days later, Izaya will go on a meeting with the yakuza he usually handles with. For some reason, both ends don't meet and they don't reach a compromise. A fight happens. As usual Izaya finds his way out of the situation and runs away, but some of them follow him.

And they will shoot him, in the dark alleys. His body will stay there until somebody notices and calls the police.

Not two weeks later, Izaya will make a new enemy. That enemy will bury his feelings of revenge deep within him, until he can't take it when Izaya pulls his strings a little too hard. He will keep that expensive knife he'd originally bought for collection purposes in his coat pocket one night when he goes out drinking. Somehow he manages to cross paths with Izaya. He asks Izaya to follow him because there was some interesting information he would give for free. Izaya follows him into the backstreets, where he lowers his guard because the latter is drunk.

He gets stabbed, and collapses.

Izaya will die of blood loss because nobody heard or saw what happened.

In all of these deaths, the possibility of them happening is a hundred percent.

And in all of these deaths, Orihara Izaya will die pathetically alone, with no one to help him. Even if they could, they wouldn't be able to.

In the first death, Izaya falls because of his own mistake. Because of his own carelessness.

In the second death, it's his own fault for getting involved in all the dangerous work he does. And it's his own fault for not managing to explain matters better for both parties, and it's his own fault for not being able to run away fast enough.

In the third death, it's his own fault for making a new enemy and continuously persecutes him until he gets killed. Plus, he was foolish enough to let his guard down just because the killer was drunk.

But there is someone there to help him, and that man is somebody who has a brain the size of a pea.

Orihara Izaya is stupid, yes, but Heiwajima Shizuo is just as stupid. Maybe even more so.

To help an enemy, just because his selfish pride doesn't allow anything else to take his life other than him. Just because he wanted to emerge as the proud champion. Valiant. Victorious.

And because of those selfish feelings, I will fall. I will fall into nothingness, be swallowed by doubt, all those dark energy clumping together to clot whatever's left of my humanity.

I'm almost at my limit now.

~ Izaya's PoV ~

"Ughh…" Izaya groaned as he leaned his head back against his swivel chair after logging out of the chat rooms. Rumors are going around. Rumors about him and Shizuo. How recently, they were being seen together more often.

Yeah, well, Shizuo was the one who came looking for him in the first place, so it was all his fault for the rising tension recently. Surprise didn't manage to keep itself hidden under his sniggering mask each time Shizuo showed up during 'certain' times. Somehow he'd felt that if he didn't come during those times, he won't be sitting around so leisurely while curling his toes.

He brought his wrist to his face, inspecting it. A little more than two weeks had passed since their little encounter with the gigantic truck, and the place where Shizuo had grabbed him and pulled him out of certain death unexpectedly became a bruise. (A/N: Izaya had already escaped his deaths as written above, in Shizuo's PoV)

And it didn't show any sign of disappearing.

But at least the pain had gone away, more or less.

His secretary Namie had asked about it, but dropped the matter almost instantly when he started to explain. She even told him to reap what he'd sowed! From that day forth Izaya was determined to find any other flaw that would encourage him to lower her pay. Or to forget about her paycheck altogether.

Izaya wondered about all the recent events that involved him and the monster he so deeply loathed.

There was one day when he was feeling a little bored and went up to the roof of a building where he could get the night's fresh air, and where he could look all around him and see the city's twinkling lights. He had climbed over the protective barrier between life and death stories below, stepped onto the thin stretch of cement and walked around, balancing himself, while enjoying the adrenaline rush every time the wind blew in his own sadomasochistic way.

But then the door was suddenly flung open—and thrown off its hinges—and there was Shizuo, huffing, obvious that he'd ran a long way and climbed up the stairs all the way to the rooftop.

Izaya saw and got pissed all over again, starting to derive a series of mocking retorts, when the big brute started to march straight at him, tearing the wire fence apart and pulling him out and back into safety. He was just about to fetch his switchblade when Shizuo just stood there, not letting go of his waist. Izaya ignored the fact that Shizuo's hand was big and it seemed to comfortably set itself on his waist, though the touch felt mundanely settling but it also seemed hesitant, and if he'd felt it right it almost felt as if his fingers were trembling very slightly. He'd decided to drop the matter and deemed that his fur jacket was thick and he didn't notice.

He stared at the hand with scorn, annoyed once again that he'd touched him, and expected for Shizuo to do or say something, which, of course, he didn't. They just stayed like that for a few minutes, the wind whipping through their hair, Izaya getting uncomfortable and staring down at the ground with rising unease.

He didn't know what Shizuo's expression looked like. He considered throwing him off, pissing him off and run away with him chasing, but for some reason decided not to as Shizuo seemed to be vague and disconnected.

Suddenly, he did the unthinkable—he actually lowered his head and rested it on Izaya's shoulder, silent. Izaya dared to swear that his heart was going to burst at that time, his eyes widening as a shade of red dusted his features.

"Sh-Shizu-chan…?"

Then he'd pushed him away like he was some contagious disease, and after a moment of glaring turned around and went away, leaving Izaya feeling horribly confused.

For some reason, he felt as if he was a used product that somebody just threw away after they'd had their fun. But at least they didn't go very far so he didn't have to worry much.

Izaya bent over and smothered his face, trying to forget what happened, especially the part where he'd… wanted to…actually…touch him back.

"What are you doing, bent over like that," said a voice Izaya didn't exactly want to hear at the moment—the ice queen's. "Just finish off your work already and stop slacking."

He immediately straightened back up, a smile plastered on his face. "Oh, I thought you didn't want to have anything to do with me other than what's necessary? So I personally think that you should just fuck off. What have you got?"

Namie narrowed her eyes as she glared icily at him, before literally throwing the files she'd been holding down on Izaya's desk with a 'clunk'. "Here, today's paperwork. I'm done for today so I'm going back now, like you ordered me to." She turned around and grabbed her coat and stuff.

"Huh, 'thanks'," he replied back sarcastically.

She shook her head and stomped away, heels clicking on the floor and slamming the front door behind her. Izaya could've sworn that she rolled her eyes too. Like a bitch.

"I'll have you know that if that door begins to emit weird creaking sounds I'll use your pay to order a brand-new one!" he called out loudly, not sure if she'd lingered around long enough to hear but did so just the same.

~ Shizuo's PoV ~

Shizuo sat on his couch, head leaning back against the headrest while he stared up at the ceiling dully, going through one of his 'visions' again. The glass of ice-cold milk he'd set on the coffee table had long since begun to 'sweat', the water droplets collecting on the surface of the glass and slowly flowing downwards, creating a thin ring of water around the base of it that he'd have to wipe away later.

His 'vision' ended and his eyes very slowly came back into focus. The first thing he did was close them—the fluorescent white light was blinding his eyes—and sigh as it all came back to his mind.

The next time… At another construction site… Like the first time this all happened…

Damn.

In that vision it was daylight, he was chasing after him again, and he'd actually revealed all of his inner turmoil, all of those feelings that'd been buried within him, just waiting to burst and overflow, like a pipe. He lashed out at him, purposely ignoring the slightly hurt and confused look on the flea's face. He said it was all his fault for making him go through all this, for making his life suffer all the more. He demanded—when exactly will it all end? When exactly will he, for once, just stop and leave him alone to nurse himself back to shape.

When will he really die so he would leave him in peace, once and for all.

After that he began to move back a few steps, hurt evident across his features by then.

And the supposedly-durable wire—metal string, whatever it is—starts to unravel, and the metal beam it'd been suspending falls straight onto him.

Dead, once again.

Leaving Shizuo in more hurt than anything he could handle anymore.

He bent over, not caring if it just made him look like somebody trying to hug himself to get rid of the pain, and stared gloomily at the carpet below. His breath hitched as he felt that feeling again—the overwhelming feeling of something attempting to crush his heart, flatten it; it hurt, but he couldn't do anything to stop it, so he was forced to face it head-on. It felt like a really bad cramp, one that constricts your heart, never letting go, not letting it pump the blood necessarily needed by the human body, and not letting oxygen get through to the brain either.

He gritted his teeth as he rubbed his hand over his chest, trying to ease it. Eventually the feeling did ebb away, but that throb lingered.

"Damn it," he whispered brokenly. "Damn it Izaya, I hate you."

He looked at his most favorite drink that is not only nutritious, but tasty as well, without that surging appetite that is usually felt by any other kid when looking at candy.

"I hate you so much."

~ Izaya's PoV ~

Work required him to venture into Ikebukuro once again, plus, he needed to make a stop at Shinra's, just when he didn't really feel the desire to. But he dressed up anyways, putting on his fur coat like always, ignoring the little mark visible at the edges of a fur sleeve. At least what showed through was miniscule and didn't attract too much attention for anybody. Not even Shizu-chan noticed it these past two weeks.

Well, he never did anyway, if all he did was look around for something heavy to chuck at him with.

He was loitering in the streets of a section of Ikebukuro with not so many people around he hoped Shizuo wouldn't cross during his work time—after all, he and Tanaka Tom were hot on a debtor's heels at some other part—when he saw that dreaded bleached blond hair. And he wasn't with somebody who had brown dreadlocks.

But something seemed to be terribly wrong with the blond-haired monster.

He was leaning against the display window of a gift shop, yeah, but a guy like him surely wouldn't peek inside a gift shop just for fun, much less try to look for something for someone. Sure, he had the looks but he didn't have the connections. And it was something Izaya made sure to keep track of.

The young informant started to fidget impatiently as he waited for the traffic light to turn green for him to cross the road, where he could see him properly.

Suddenly he turned around, at least enough for Izaya to see part of his front torso, but his face looked flushed and he seemed to breathe heavily.

It almost looked like he was—

Like he was having a really bad fever or whatever sickness he's having and was forcing himself to go outside.

At last the beeping sound signaling for people to cross the road was heard and Izaya hurried along, curiosity sparking his interest more than anything. And the need to look at Shizu-chan's weakness, to be able to sneer at him about something as trivial as a headache, or something.

"Ehee~ Shizu-chan~ What are you doing all the way out here? Here I was taking the trouble trying to avoid you when you're the one who happened to be everywhere I go. And what is going on with you? You look… sick. Hahahaha! Get away from me; I don't wanna catch whatever germs that are powerful enough to invade your inhuman body!"

The debt collector didn't respond immediately; instead he raised his gaze to his eyes with effort.

"Iza—"

His eyes slipped closed as he slumped forward, collapsing in a dead faint right smack in the middle of the city.

Wow… This chapter was pretty long… And pretty packed with Shizuo angst, sorry about that… Plus, I made him faint too. O.o As you can see—for those who've read the comics—we have now reached part three, it will end at part four but I'm continuing off around the end with my own plot and with my own ideas. I still don't know whether this story will be a long one or not.

And thanks a lot to those who've reviewed/favorited/put the story on alert, I love you guys shoo much… ^_^

A~nyways, a little heads-up on the next chapter, if everything goes to plan there will be tears. So brace yourselves. D: