"It's his life. Can't do anything about it."
"Don't you love him? I have no idea why but I know you do."
"Not that Izaya gives a shit one way or another."
Some bitterness crept into Shizuo's voice. He kept seeing the multicolor lights sparkling off silver rings.
"Why don't you talk about it? It might help."
Shizuo had no intention of doing so but suddenly he could not do otherwise. The bottled feeling of mortification would find its vent one or another. Shinra listened with growing dismay.
"Marriage? Putting marriage and Izaya in the same sentence is insanity unless there's a big 'NOT' in there somewhere."
"He didn't take it seriously either."
"So you broke up with him."
"There was nothing else I could do."
Shinra adjusted his glasses and sighed.
"Just so you know, this is all Izaya's little revenge."
"Has he told you that?"
"As if. But it's obvious. No matter how you look at it this kind of behavior isn't normal."
"He's got a strong sex drive-"
"Not something I want to know. To be fair, you're probably better off without Izaya. I mean, he's selfish, flippant, conceived, arrogant, snickering, mean-"
"You don't get to say all that about Izaya when I'm around."
Shizuo did not raise his voice but Shinra read the undertow of threat very clearly.
"See? You love him. You have got to love him to care about things like that."
"It doesn't matter what I feel for him. If he doesn't care about me."
"Did you really think he'd marry you?"
Shizuo nodded, not in agreement but accepting in implicit negative outcome.
"I thought he wouldn't but I had to try."
"Maybe you did want to break up with him in a way."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you know he'd turn it down and it would lead to a break up and you still went ahead with it…"
Shizuo was silent for a while.
"What's wrong with wanting to spend the rest of my life with the person I love?"
"Nothing. But this is Izaya we're talking about. It's not like he's into that kind of thing. In some ways he never grew up."
"It doesn't feel right to be talking about this with you. It's between me and Izaya."
And all the random girls Izaya picked, Shinra thought.
Shizuo was not at all calm about it regardless of appearances. He understood full well that Izaya was on a revenge trip precisely because he was hurt but Shizuo could not precisely tell if presently Izaya was happy. Had he been able to spy on Izaya, he could have a clear answer to his doubts.

Izaya woke up to a feeling of fuzziness. It was uncommon for him to work until exhaustion but it was nothing some sleep did not cure and even if he burnt the night away gathering information he would always be full of lucid energy shortly after. But this was different. He felt sluggish, sticky and vaguely oppressed. It took him a while to piece back the events of a rather crazy night and to realize that he was surrounded by several girls in various states of nakedness. He was not one to actually sleep with these impromptu partners so he must have overdone it. Izaya needed to count heads to have a clear idea of how many people exactly where in the same bed with him. Which was never a good sign. He also could not name a single one of them which was probably worse.
Izaya tiptoed away and left the scene. It was only outside that he remembered that he was in some hotel. As he ruminated on his way back to his apartment (and he was in need of a long bath even if his recent experiences was less than pleasant) he reached a counterintuitive reasoning. Shizuo did not want to quarter Izaya's freedom out of any attachment to him, his entire point was to insult him with a marriage proposal to dump him in return. It aligned perfectly in Izaya's mind. Because the only true satisfaction he derived was the bittersweet knowledge that he could hurt Shizuo, Izaya was eager to paint Shizuo in the worst scenario possible.
Free to think about this at length without being checked by any contradictory evidence Izaya was fairly certain that he was right when he reached his apartment. Which left him in something of a predicament. If he was correct then he could not affect Shizuo all that much. Which meant he had been wasting time as well as money. Izaya considered this. It made sense.