Saturday 8th February
12:34
"There, your stupid food is ready." Namie shouts from the kitchen. "Lucky I forgot to bring any poison today." She adds under her breath as she stirs the pot of soup one last time and replaces the lid. She pads around the kitchen, doing whatever it is she feels the need to be doing as she waits for her boss to speak up.
Izaya just lets out a quiet huff from where he was sat at his desk, ignoring her in favour of idly browsing through the Dollars homepage in search of anything to quench his curiosity and boredom. He was currently half-way through a big job one of his client's had requested, though at the moment he could do nothing but wait for his trusted acquaintance who goes by the name 'Virus' to hack into the suspects email and send him what he finds. It seemed to be taking longer than he'd anticipated, and yet he couldn't take up any other offers as he progressed with this job since it would be largely time-consuming once they were back on track.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair before turning to stare out of his window. A lazy smile spread across his lips as he watched Shinjuku's skyline and the people who commuted below it, imagining himself outrunning Shizuo on one of infamous chases through Tokyo. It got him to start thinking about the beast and the fun he'd soon have provoking him.
Why wait? He thinks to himself, getting up and creeping up the stairs. He hadn't heard from Shizuo since he'd went to his new bedroom two hours ago and he entertained the idea that he'd somehow escaped by scaling the side of the building and had already begun rampaging through the streets. What a wonderful idea it was, thinking that Shizuo would go through the trouble of using that monstrous strength to scale a wall instead of just marching down the stairs and out of the door in the hopes of avoiding confrontation.
Izaya only then remembers that Shizuo can't actually use his strength unless he's told to by somebody of power, like Tom as that's his boss. Maybe even me, since he's living in my house under my rules.
It makes a smirk twist his lips and a muted chuckle spill past that only increases when he opens the door to see a sleeping body spread across the double bed.
He slips into the room leaving the door wide open as he skulks up towards the bed, pausing to look down at the unconscious blonde. His hair is fanned out across the pillow and ono his face, his lips parted slightly to release light exhales of breath. The lack of a frown or glare makes him look younger, more at peace with the world and his surroundings and Izaya doesn't appreciate it. He's a beast so he's supposed to look like one, whether he's asleep or wide awake.
He thinks of all the ways he could possibly wake Shizuo: a bucket of water, screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking him out of the bed, the possibilities are endless. But he suddenly has the sadistic urge to make Shizuo feel helpless and at his mercy.
He also wants to have fun and enjoy watching his reactions, which is why he chooses to pick up a pillow that has been discarded on the floor and quietly straddle him. He then firmly places the pillow onto Shizuo's face and start to shake it and the bed as he moves around.
Shizuo quickly jerks awake to the feeling of being smothered, quickly realising it as reality. His hands instinctively reach up to grab the pillow and try to pull it away, a muffled cry making it's way past his lips. When he realises the person hasn't so much as budged, he tries to thrash his own body in an attempt dislodge the one above, only to feel the legs straddling him and trapping him in place.
His eyes are watering from panic and his throat constricting. In the little space he has to breathe, breaths spills from him in rushed, punctuated gasps. He moves his hands to the person's wrist, pulling at them in vain. His heart is beating faster and faster and faster in his chest, painfully pounding against his ribs as if it were about to rip itself from his body at any moment in its haste to get oxygen.
Oxygen, something he isn't getting enough of, his lungs are screaming and begging and pleading and it's feeling like one of those panic attacks he swore he wouldn't have.
It's as he's about to start screaming does the grip loosen and the legs move until the pillow's on the floor and so is his attacker, laughing manically as Shizuo sits up and grips his hair.
His eyes are closed and there are tears spilling past, his breaths coming out rushed and panicked. His limbs feel heavy with the sensation of pins and needles and as he pulls at his blonde strands, longing for the light-headed feeling that makes him dizzy to dissipate. He thinks he hears someone call "Come down when you're ready to eat." and light footsteps, but there's blood rushing to his head and his ears are pounding so he can't be sure.
He opens his eyes to look around, calm himself down, ground himself, assure himself. He looks up just in time to see Izaya's back retreating from the doorframe and thinks It's okay, it was just the flea messing with you. The grip on his hair is tightening, his legs curling up so that his knees are level with his chest as he forces himself to breathe, because it was only a stupid joke.
He stays like this for what could easily have been 20 minutes before he can find the strength to stand up, and even then his limbs feel unnaturally light and buzz with the after-feeling of pins and needles. He walks from the room slowly, his legs shaking with the effort of keeping him balanced and even then, he's clutching the walls for support. He walks down the stairs and stops, searching for Izaya before moving towards the kitchen table and sitting opposite him in front of a steaming bowl of soup.
"Make it yourself next time!" He hears a woman shout punctuated by the slam of a door. He whirls around to stare at the offending door before turning back to Izaya in confusion.
"My secretary." He offers, eyebrows raised and a smirk adorning his face.
But Shizuo doesn't even blink at that, just turns to his food and starts to eat. It's warm and soothing and so he tries to block out the unwanted presence before him and his restless heart and focus on enjoying the food. There's nothing special about it, but it's enough for him to savour and probably better than what he thinks he'd be able to do.
Izaya frowns at that. He can see that the blonde is paler than he was earlier, and his hands are trembling as he starts to eat. There's a small feeling gnawing away at the back of his mind, something he can't quite put his finger on. It's mostly likely guilt, but in his mind he has nothing to feel guilty for, he only waked and fed the beast. And yes, maybe almost suffocating him wasn't the best way to go about it but at least he's awake and eating.
"Beasts like you don't even deserve to eat, you should be crying out with how grateful you are." Izaya mutters, looking up to challenge Shizuo's own glare.
"Maybe if you weren't such a disgusting piece of shit I would say 'thanks'." Shizuo growls back, his grip on his chopsticks strengthening. He's still having to make an effort to breathe steadily, still shaken from almost suffocating. He's not sure why Izaya would go that far to distress him, especially when he hadn't so much as swore at him since he'd arrived but the thoughts are quickly pushed away. He lets out an irritated huff and turns back to his food, deciding to ignore the flea and the way he's started to laugh at him.
When he's finished laughing at the brute, he just smirks and starts to eat his own food. When he's done, he leans back and stretches and stand and walks into the kitchen. Shizuo can hear the clatter of the bowl landing on the counter and decides to wait until the pest has left the kitchen before following to put away his own dishes. He watches as Izaya walks over to his desk and begins typing before he stands and makes his way to the sink.
"Wash up the dishes, Shizu-chan!" Izaya shouts to the blonde, smirking as he turns to looks at him with a frown.
"It's not my house." He says in growing frustration. "So why don't you stop ruining people's lives for a couple of minutes and do it yourself." He turns away and makes back towards the stairs to hideout in his room but stop when he hears Izaya shout back in reply.
"Yeah, it is my house, isn't it? It's my house so you live under my rules, and if you think you'll get away without doing some housework, you're sorely mistaken." Izaya isn't smirking anymore, it's twisted into an unapprovingly frown. "So go and make your worthless self helpful and wash the damn dishes."
Nobody speaks for a while after that, but Shizuo can feel a familiar sting in his eyes and his throat constricting from the heavy silence after confrontation. Izaya is back to typing and he walks towards the kitchen with his head lowered, his heavy footsteps a symphony with the click-click-click from Izaya's computer and the sporadic, muted buzz of traffic from outside. The sounds are amplified in his mind and something he uses as a distraction as he washes the bowls and cups in warm soapy water.
Izaya only scowls as he watches the blonde sulk, think with a heavy feeling of exasperation, of how the next few weeks would drag on and on. Contrary to what most may think, Izaya truly did hate Shizuo; much more than Shizuo would ever find in himself to hate Izaya. The reason being, Izaya hated Shizuo like a God would hate a Devil, whereas Shizuo hated Izaya like someone would hate an annoying co-worker.
Shizuo walks past Izaya and to the living room, sitting on the biggest sofa and leaning his head back. He's bored and has nothing to do. If he were at home, he's maybe go for a cigarette but he's all out and doubts he's be allowed to go to the shops to buys some without a lot of unnecessary hassle, so he reaches for where the remote is laying on a pillow and begins to idly flick through the channels in the hopes of finding something interesting.
Unlike the few channels he has on his TV at home, Izaya has more than Shizuo ever thought you could have and actually finds something that catches his eyes, 'Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizou', the first movie his brother was in. His lips flicker upwards into a small smile as he sees Kasuka appear on screen, wielding some heavy looking sword and adorned in fake cuts and bruises, though his happiness is short-lived as Izaya decides to pad over and sit on the sofa next to the one he's in.
He'd been watching as Shizuo had started watching the movie and smiling and had not liked it one bit. A dreadfully unsatisfying feeling had started to pulse through his veins and he'd wanted nothing more to wipe he smile off of the stupid brute's face, which is why he's now sitting at one of the chairs surrounding the coffee table with the remote he'd snatched from Shizuo in one hand and his laptop in another. He matches Shizuo's glare with one of his smirks and pressed the red button on the remote, quickly switching the TV and Shizuo's only distraction off.
"What the fuck is your problem?" Shizuo yells at the brunette, his hands curled into fist.
"It's my TV, I can do whatever the hell I want." Izaya offers back, suddenly indifferent eyes looking down at his laptop screen as he resumes typing. "And it's not your place to question what I do, this is-"
"Your home! I get it! I remembered, it's not like I can forget!" Because Izaya's all-too-kindly reminded him of that little fact since he first stepped foot into the apartment. "But you don't have to such a fucking shit about everything." He adds, snarling as he looks down at the frowning informant. "But what did I expect?" He mutters, causing Izaya to look up.
"What did I expect from someone like you? You're nothing but an immature, frustrating little brat!" He's hysterical as he shouts, pure rage and frustration pouring out into his words that ring in the short-lived normalcy. "You don't deserve even half of the things that you have."
"And you deserve everything you get." Izaya says, his eyes narrowed and spiteful that contradict the light and amused tone he speaks with. "You deserve the anxiety and attacks and everything bad that has and will happen to you."
"You deserve everything bad, because you're a monster, Shizu-chan."
"You're a monster." He repeats, and then he starts to laugh at the way Shizuo's furious expression drops.
He can't really reply to that. He know he's a monster and he knows he deserves this and so he can't reply. Just feels that all-too-familiar sting behind his eyes and the tears that are now welling. It's pathetic, he thinks, the way he has so many tears that are just waiting to be spilt, like he was a glass filled with water that sloshed around whenever he moved or spoke, inevitable droplets spilling out each time. But he doesn't let Izaya see that bit, he marches up the stairs and into his room with the slam of a door and sits on the edge of his bed and just allows the tears roll down his face and drip from his chin.
He's not crying, he thinks. He's just letting water drain from his eyes. He's not crying because he's making no noise, he thinks. Just sitting in the near-silence of sadness and traffic.
His hands are trembling but that's just because he's cold, he thinks. That must explain why his whole body is also shaking, that's the only reason he can think of.
His throat is hurting and stinging from the lump that he feels is growing there and thinks he must be getting a sore throat or something.
Regardless of what he thinks, he gasps out loud, and then there's a strangled groan that escapes too. He just interlocks his fingers and rests them on his lap and close his eyes and breathes.
In and out and in an out until he feels that the tears tracking down his face have dried and his shaking is down to a minimum. After that, he just opens those dull, honey eyes and stares ahead at the plain white door.
He wishes it would open, wishes someone -maybe Kasuka or Celty- would walk through and hold him and tell him it was okay and that he was just being silly and why don't we go and get some Russian Sushi?
He wishes with all he has because there's nothing he can think of wanting more than that. But the door remains closed and the room remains silent and he feels as if he was in an unholy purgatory, with no hope of release without breaking through his sudden confines of numbness that smother him.