Originally posted at the Drrr Kinkmeme on Livejournal.
The following story contains M/M - please don't read if that's not your thing. If it is, enjoy! ;)
Wherever You Will Go
Chapter Nine
Ikebukuro. Day. Only it's not the same and he can't figure out why everything's changed.
All the grey people have gone. He's alone on silent, grey streets that are still streaked with red. Even the wind has died down, gone away. And the familiar has never seemed so wrong.
He starts running. He doesn't know where he's going, just that he can't stay here. Can't tolerate this vacant grey maw of a street, ready to swallow him whole.
Starts running. Keeps running. But he isn't going anywhere. Like the road's the only thing that's moving under his feet, his surroundings don't change, and the faster he runs, the harder he tries, the more the stillness just closes in around him.
Until something makes him stop. Turn around.
The silent, grey wreckage of the accident is in front of him. Twisted metal, broken glass. Abandoned and ghostly like a shipwreck. Like something the rest of the world's forgotten just because they can't see it anymore.
He can't forget, because he sees it every time he closes his eyes.
As he takes slow steps towards it, he realizes he can move now, that the world does change, but only in this direction.
And on the other side, an invincible demon with defiant, fearless red eyes.
Eyes that remind him it's always been him who's most afraid.
The demon reaches out a hand, pale and smooth as bleached bone, something bright around a thin wrist catching on a light he can't see.
He can't reach. He can't find a way around the mess ahead of him. And deep inside something's burning with the need to, because nothing can understand a monster like another monster. All those grey people, all those ordinary lives, he can't expect them to know how it feels.
Compared to that, the feeling he has of willingly handing his soul over to the devil doesn't feel so bad.
Please. I can't do this by myself anymore.
But he can't reach. The wreckage isn't even on fire, but it looks as though there's smoke coiling up, blocking his view. He can't see where that hand is anymore.
No. You can't just offer something like that and then leave me here alone.
"Oh?" It's perfectly pin-drop quiet, but he can still barely hear the demon's voice. It feels much further than a few feet away. "But you're the one who sent me away, Shizu-chan. You're the one who chose this instead."
This?
"Look around you. It doesn't matter where you go, this is where you'll always be."
But you can't take it away, you can't make it so that it never happened.
"No, I can't do any of that. But it'd be better than being here all alone, ne?"
The voice is fading with every word, and as much as he wants to cling onto it there's nothing let to cling to. He fights through the grey smoke, reaching, but there's nothing there.
Just him, and this wreckage, and grey empty streets, and the roar of the demon's name on his lips—
"—Izaya…!"
He jerked awake, breathing hard, staring at the hand he was reaching out uselessly towards the blindingly bright whitewashed wall.
Shit.
Closing his eyes, he rolled onto his back, hands tunnelling through his hair. His heart still pounded in his ears, and the fresh memory of the dream tasted bitter on his tongue.
He tried to imagine Izaya's reaction to that. The damn louse would be unbearable, all smug smiles and "Ah, Shizu-chan wants me after all!"
Just as well he was gone, then.
Gone. The day ahead was entirely his. There'd be no need to watch the flea for any signs of Machiavellian plotting. No need to keep himself in check in the face of that relentless flirting. No, now he only had to worry about the things the flea would get up to once he got home. Maybe he should find some way of warning his friends, even though they wouldn't know why Izaya had been blessedly missing in the first place. Unless Izaya decided to tell them. Oh, fuck, he wouldn't tell them about this, would he? About the things he'd done, about the—
He felt the echoes of Izaya's lips, his tongue, his hands, his body.
Fuck. If the flea goes blabbing about that, I'll find a way to get back to Ikebukuro and kick the shit out of him. Hell, Celty managed to get to Japan and she didn't even have a head, how hard can it be…?
He pressed his hands hard against his eyes, hard enough to see specks of colour against swirls of grey.
Grey streets.
Would he really chase Izaya back to Ikebukuro? Could he face the site of his biggest failure just to track down his biggest mistake?
No. Besides, Izaya had the pendant now, there was no way back. He needed to focus on the important things, like how the hell he was going to pay for the next round of groceries. Someone in the village probably needed help with… heavy lifting or something, right? There didn't seem to be much call for debt collection, and he didn't have a great track record with anything else. Izaya would have been able to talk someone into giving them a job, assuming he wouldn't have found a less honourable way of making money in the meantime.
But Izaya was gone, and Shizuo had everything he'd ever wanted. Peace. Solitude. The flea out of his life for good.
Even if the flea he'd known over the past few days wasn't quite the flea he remembered. While he'd told Izaya that he was just him, regardless of who was looking, someone like Izaya surely had a different face, a different facet of himself at the ready depending on who he was trying to troll. He could probably be whatever his latest victim wanted.
"I'll be anything you want. Do anything you want."
…yeah, Izaya was nothing if not convincing. More fool him.
But it didn't matter. Izaya was gone, and Shizuo had everything he'd ever wanted. Everything he deserved.
He rubbed his eyes again. Damn, that too-bright sunshine hurt…
Stretching, he turned towards the empty side of the bed, and decided Izaya really must have done one hell of a number on him, because now he was imagining that dark, knowing gaze smiling sleepily back at him.
"Good morning, Shizu-chan."
Shizuo closed his eyes again. Took a breath. Opened them.
"I'd ask whether you missed me, but…" Izaya shrugged one shoulder. He was still wearing Shizuo's shirt.
He was still there.
The words just wouldn't come. His mouth refused to cooperate, and after the third attempt, Shizuo gave up.
Why?
"But even you want to know 'why', don't you?"
He reached out, hesitant as though he was about to shatter a mirage, and brushed trembling fingers against Izaya's cheek. Izaya closed his eyes, a hand overlapping Shizuo's and turning tentative into touching, the disk tied around his wrist glinting as he interlaced their fingers.
A flash of that new, unsettling dream sank cold claws into the back of his mind.
That sense of reaching out for nothing.
Izaya made a soft sound of surprise as Shizuo pulled him close, arms wrapped tight around him, face buried in the crook of his neck. Real. Not his imagination. Real, and here, and oh, fuck, his, somehow, because the only way Izaya could still be here was that the pendant wouldn't take him anywhere else.
Just let it be real. Fuck the rest, just let this be real.
Working one arm free from its place trapped between their chests, Izaya's hand snaked into his hair, half stroking, half just holding on.
"I'm sorry," the words were muffled against the pounding of Shizuo's heart. "I'm sorry. I know it's my fault, but I never meant for it to be like this, so don't, Shizu-chan, please don't…"
At first, he thought Izaya meant that he shouldn't cling so tight – shouldn't hurt - but the hand in his hair kept him close, and Izaya kept pressing against his chest as though he wanted to melt into him. The words only made sense when he drew back slightly, immediately embarrassed by the damp smudges on the shoulder of Izaya's borrowed shirt.
"Sorry."
He let go, pulled back, rubbed a hand across his face as he looked away. He was such a fucking idiot.
He thought he heard Izaya sigh, but for once the flea allowed him his space.
"That's why I didn't try to change your mind," Izaya said after a moment. Shifting the lean on one elbow, he looked down at Shizuo and held out his wrist. "I know you never believed me, and I didn't know any other way that would make you see I wasn't lying."
The cord was untouched. The only way Izaya could have taken it off would be to take his flick blade to it, and then there'd be no way to tie it back. Still, Shizuo ran his fingers against the knot he'd tied, as though it had somehow unravelled and rewound just to spite him.
"You didn't take it off," he said, needing to hear his own voice confirming it.
Izaya shook his head. "No. I admit I was a little nervous, I mean… you're the one who explained - in a very half-assed way, honestly - how it worked. I don't think you even know how to work a cell phone. For all I knew it'd send me to a parallel universe."
Shizuo thought maybe it had.
"So you'll believe some little trinket," Izaya held his hand up, letting the pendant jangle on its cord, "but not me. I'm wounded, Shizu-chan, wounded."
"Where…" he swallowed past the dryness in his mouth, forcing the words out. Whatever the answer, he told himself he could deal with it. That he'd have to deal with it, because he was running a little low on options that involved either of them running. "Where did you want to go?"
Izaya watched him, eyes calm and serious. If he was lying now, he was better at it than Shizuo had ever believed.
"Home."
And he was aware it was a petty, stupid thing to say but he had to know— "This isn't your home."
"No, but you are." Izaya smiled a little, as though he was wary of the reception his words would get. "You can tell me to go anywhere in the world, the only place that interests me now is where you are."
"But that's…" He shook his head, hoping that maybe, somehow, if he wasn't quite listening then Izaya's words wouldn't curl up against that yearning, terrified part of his soul and murmur sweet, gentle lies. "That's stupid, I'm not—"
"Enough." He found himself staring up at intense eyes, Izaya's hands braced on the pillows either side of his head. "I'll do anything for you. Anything. I'll give you everything I own. You already know you can do whatever you like with my body. But I will not listen to more of this. Do you think I'd want a worthless man?"
But you do. If you're still telling me you give a shit, then that's exactly what you're doing.
"If you stay, I'll hurt you," and he willed Izaya to understand that he didn't just mean the sort of hurt that came from flying vending machines. There were far more insidious, cowardly ways to hurt than that.
"You can't hurt me because you wouldn't. I love everything you do to me—" Shizuo looked away. Izaya turned his face back towards his. "No, you're going to listen to me. I love everything you do to me. Everything. I love wearing the bruises that mark me as yours. I love watching you lose control, and knowing I'm the reason for it. I love knowing that even when you do lose control, there's nowhere I'm safer than by your side. I love you, you protozoan idiot."
The room had always been cramped, but it had never felt quite so claustrophobic. Everything felt too close: the walls; Izaya's lips; that unapologetic look in his eyes.
I love you.
But that was… how the hell could Izaya love him? The things they'd done to each other spoke of a thousand things, but love wasn't one of them. Love didn't make you angry, didn't make you mean. It didn't make you chase someone with the single minded determination to be the most important, most all-consuming thing in their lives, the one thing they could never forget, never escape-
Oh, fuck…
"I know I promised I'd never say it again, but I swore to myself if I woke up still here with you I'd try to make you understand."
The first time Izaya said it, he'd taken it as another colossal joke – and he still couldn't say it wasn't, only now he suspected if there was one, it was on both of them. He hadn't wanted to hear it, hadn't wanted to believe it was anything more than a game.
I love you.
When Shizuo said nothing, Izaya sat up, arms anchoring his knees to his chest, posture more self-protective than he'd ever been in the face of anything Shizuo could physically throw at him.
"Do you think I don't know I've done this wrong from the start?" The laugh was soft, sad. "I think I truly started believing we wereinvincible. I never thought there could be something that would hurt you this much, something I couldn't control. You know, there's not a lot I can't do, one way or another, but this… I can't take it back. I can't fix it. I don't know how to make it better. I've never wanted to make it better before…"
"I'm sorry for being such an inconvenience."
"Don't be an asshole, Shizu-chan, it doesn't suit you." Izaya rested his chin on his knee, sent him a sideways look. "Besides, that's my thing. I think this is around the time you should be throwing things at me, yelling 'Kill! Kill! Kill!'. Ah…" The flea laughed a little, a goddamn blush creeping across his cheeks, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. "And I suppose you could still throw me out in the old fashioned way, I didn't really think about that."
Yeah. There really had to be a limit on the mistakes one man could make in a lifetime.
"I won't."
"Hmm?" Izaya lifted his head at Shizuo's mumble.
"I won't. Throw you out, I mean."
He probably should have. He'd pay for this, somewhere down the line. Nothing good could come of it.
But fuck if he could turn it away twice. Even the strongest man had to be weak against something, right?
Izaya started to say something, but Shizuo had heard about as much as his composure could stand. He silenced the words with his lips, opening Izaya's mouth for better things than conversation. He'd expected compliance – it was a frightening, heady thought, that he could do anything he wanted and Izaya wouldn't refuse him – but he hadn't expected the quiet sense of acceptance in the kiss.
Like there was nowhere else either of them were meant to be.
And it felt as though something just broke. As strong as he was, as hard as he tried, he couldn't hold all those shattering pieces together anymore. There were too many of them, too small and painful to grab onto. A million tiny barbed losses and hurts, far too much for his tenuous defences to deal with.
Izaya just held on, held tight, and whispered extravagant promises no one could keep until the shudders subsided and Shizuo figured there was no damn way on earth he could embarrass himself any more than he already had.
After a while, the way Izaya stroked his hair changed. The cool fingers were searching, instead of soothing, tracing circles at the nape of his neck, dragging along his jaw, tickling against his lips.
Wanting something.
He drew back, breathing hard, both hands cradling Izaya's face.
"If you're still playing me, I swear…"
Arching under him, Izaya nodded, pupils wide and dark, the red of his eyes just thin bright halos, and went along with the empty threat. "If I hurt you again, I wouldn't expect anything less."
Izaya reached for him again, but Shizuo caught his wrists, pinning them above his head. He felt the cool metal of the pendant against his palm as Izaya struggled a little, testing his hold. Nudging Izaya's legs apart, he knelt between them, pressing closer until Izaya's ass was pressed snugly against his groin. Even the layers of cloth between them didn't do much to mask the heat as he rotated his hips, grinding his own erection under Izaya's. But when he slid a hand between their bodies, palm rubbing hard, Izaya shook his head.
"Wait, Shizu-chan, you don't have to—"
He nipped sharply at Izaya's lower lip to silence him, soothing the bite with a slow sweep of his tongue, fingers tracing the shape of Izaya's cock through tight pants. He felt Izaya's hips jerk, slender thighs tightening around his.
"What, you think I can't get you off like this?"
"You never wanted to before."
A nip to Izaya's earlobe this time, hard enough to make the other man hiss. "Yeah, well…" His lips worked their way down the side of Izaya's neck, while his free hand worked at undoing first Izaya's pants, then his own. "There were a lot of things I didn't want before."
There were things he hadn't thought about before. Like how it'd feel to have Izaya's cock sliding against his own, hot and wet in the tight circle of Shizuo's fingers. Every shift of his hips set off sparks behind his eyes, chased shivers down his spine.
"Shizu-chan…" Izaya breathed his name, thrusting up against his hand. "Shizu-chan…"
He leaned down, biting at Izaya's collar bone through the rumpled fabric of his borrowed shirt. Izaya's back arched off the bed, head falling back with a cry, wrists straining against the hand that held him pinned. Shizuo just held tighter, feeling his grin turn feral against Izaya's bared throat when the other man hardened further.
"You're fucking shameless, flea."
"Ah…!" Izaya laughed, a low, breathy sound that vibrated against Shizuo's lips. "Only for you, Shizu-chan."
"Only for me?" Dragging the tip of his tongue from the hollow of Izaya's throat all the way to his chin, he looked down at red eyes gone hazy with pleasure. "You want to be mine that badly, flea?"
"Don't want to," Izaya shook his head. "I am. Always have been."
Speeding up his strokes, he sought out Izaya's mouth again, breathing in the moans as the other man moved restlessly under him. Izaya's heels dug into the back of his knees, trying to press their bodies even closer. Like he couldn't ever get close enough.
He broke the kiss long enough to latch onto Izaya's shoulder again. Izaya bucked against him at the first hint of teeth, cried out his name as his body tensed, coming against Shizuo's fingers. Hand tightening around them in one last, ruthless stroke, Shizuo let the slick wet heat of Izaya's release trigger his own.
And the lights going off behind his eyes were brighter than sunshine, scattering any lingering shadows of grey or red.
He released Izaya's wrists, but before he could move back, Izaya reached for his hand, drawing it to his mouth, and—
"Fuck…" Shizuo cursed under his breath, eyes fluttering shut at the warm, firm lap of Izaya's tongue around his fingers, between them, sucking and licking him clean, watching him with dark, satisfied eyes.
It already felt worryingly natural to lean down, kissing Izaya again, tasting them both on his lips. It already felt too much like all this belonged to him.
Arms winding around Izaya, face pressed against his chest, he drew the smaller man into a more comfortable position. While he listened to the thud of Izaya's heartbeat returning to normal, those ridiculously gentle fingers were back in his hair. With the desperation of wanting ebbing away to something that just simmered, gave him a moment to think, everything they'd done still hung between them, like-
Like grey smoke, thick and cloying and keeping him from the one thing that stood the first chance at saving him.
"The stuff you said…" he managed eventually. "I don't know what to do with this, I…"
The hands in his hair stilled, and Shizuo had the distinct impression he'd said the wrong thing, though hell if he knew why. "Didn't I tell you? You don't have to do anything, Shizu-chan. If you really feel the need to do something, then… just give me a chance."
A few days ago, that would have been impossible. He wouldn't have given Izaya the benefit of the doubt if he claimed the sky was blue. But he wasn't dealing with that Izaya anymore. This one made strangers smile, and rambled about flowers. This one was open, unguarded, handed Shizuo enough ammunition to hold against him for decades. This one commandeered his dreams, and held him while he fell apart.
It was too elaborate an act, even for the flea. And if it wasn't well… he contented himself with the knowledge that anyone would fall for it.
"Yeah," he said, closing his eyes. "Okay."