Author Note: This was meant to be just a filler while I tweak the next chapter, but I actually really like the way it came out. I'm going to respond to reviews from here on out via PM, I like talking to you all and seeing what you think of it or think will happen next. So let's be fabulous friends~
This is dedicated ryodai89 and kitespirit, in the hope they continue to leave long, long reviews to make me smile.
It wasn't like him. Shizuo wanted to laugh. It really wasn't like him at all.
Shizuo Heiwajima was a guy who got into fights, he was a guy that had scumbags throw themselves at him in the name of looking tough. Shizuo Heiwajima was a guy who went to bed early after a glass of milk and a couple of cigarettes. Shizuo Heiwajima was a guy with a nature as pure as his name, yet was never given a chance to prove that everyone. Shizuo Heiwajima was just a guy who loved a brother he didn't see much. Shizuo Heiwajima was a guy with a steady job and a short temper. He was just a normal guy, no matter what people thought.
It wasn't like him to act the way he acted.
Because Shizuo Heiwajima wasn't the type of guy to go out late at night because of the teasing words in an email from a man he had never met. Shizuo Heiwajima wasn't the type of man to go to a bar in Shinjuku – especially knowing that was where the damn flea lived – in the hopes of these tips from a man he didn't know actually working. Shizuo Heiwajima wasn't the type of man to order a drink and fight back a blush and try to pick up a 'date' for the night. He just wasn't, because normal guys didn't do that, and he was just a normal guy.
And yet-
Nakura's words had stung him in some way. There had been some challenge to his words that Shizuo couldn't turn down, or no- no, that wasn't it, he hadn't ever been the competitive type really. There was something else, something underlying in the other man's email that had prompted Shizuo to act so completely out of character for him. There had been a burst of confidence hidden amongst the man's teasing words, a sprinkling of belief that had Shizuo realising that even he could do things that he had never thought he could do.
It wasn't like him at all.
And yet-
And yet he had still pushed himself away from the computer, turning it off for the night without replying to Nakura. He had still gone to the bedroom and changed out of the uniform, one of the many that Kasuka had given him. He had still slid into some jeans that looked a little battered and were wearing out at the knees and an old button up shirt in a colour that matched his eyes. He had supposed that was okay, he had never dressed to impress before, there had never been a need to. Who did he have to impress anyway? It was what was inside that counted. Perhaps that was why he found it so easy to talk to Nakura, the whole anonymity of it. He didn't know who Nakura was, he didn't know what he looked like or sounded like or what his home looked like, and yet- and yet he felt that he knew the man, under the skin, behind whatever face he might have. And that was important wasn't it? Looks were distracting. They always made a mess of things. It was the beautiful people that made it in the world. A harsh fact, but the truth, one that Shizuo had long since accepted – after all, wasn't his brother beautiful? Wasn't that why Kasuka was the star of so many films and teenage girls' dizziest dreams?
It wasn't like him at all. Shizuo Heiwajima was a monster, and monsters weren't supposed to socialise with normal people were they? He didn't even know anymore. Nakura didn't seem to think he was a monster, but Nakura didn't know who he really was did he.
It wasn't like him to act that way, and yet-
And yet-
Shizuo had still gone to that bar, fighting back the red pinching at his cheeks. He'd chosen Shinjuku over Ikebukuro; only a handful of people knew who he was in this part of the city, and they only knew him because of the uniform he normally wore. Tonight he could blend in, fit with the crowd, and be normal and not extraordinary. It was a notion that had his heart pounding.
It had been smoky, and dark, and there was a music box beating in the corner so loudly that when he stepped in he could feel the bass rocking through his bones, into his soul. The smoke he could deal with. There had been chatter in the air, and no one seemed to care when he walked in, and he could just ease himself into the place like he was meant to be here. It was easy, it was- if Nakura seemed to think it was so easy, and then Shizuo would prove it was. If he could do it, then so could Shizuo. The blonde couldn't help but choke back a dark laugh. He was doing all of this, stepping outside of his comfort zone because of a tone that he might have noticed in an email from someone he'd never met. It was ridiculous, it was stupid, it was so completely unlike him that it was laughable.
And yet-
He had still made his way to the bar, still ordered a drink. Shot of whiskey mixed with a glass of coke. He'd still kicked it back, felt the burn on his tongue. This was what men did right? This was what he was missing out on? Heh. Liquid confidence. He could feel it burning through him, making him faint and dizzy with the notion of what he was doing. Calm, calm, he needed to calm down. It was just a bar, just a bar where no one knew his name. If nothing happened, then what? He'd just go home and that would be that. He'd email Nakura, act like nothing happened, and life would carry on just as it had been. He could talk to this man online, go to work, beat the hell out of that damn louse every now and then and that would be great.
And yet-
Yet-
His heart had still pounded when some man had slid into the seat next to him. Shizuo had noticed his looks right away, had realised that the man was handsome, he was hot, he was- what the hell was he thinking? Shizuo Heiwajima didn't think like this, he didn't. It didn't matter that the man had the softest looking chocolate hair Shizuo had seen, it didn't matter that his eyes seemed to flash the colour of the sea on a stormy day, it didn't matter that his smile was dazzling, it didn't matter that those jeans hugged his legs or that shirt or that look in his- Shizuo Heiwajima didn't think like that. He wasn't a pervert, his brain wasn't wired that way.
And yet Shizuo wasn't normally the type of man to wind up in a little bar in Shinjuku looking for sex. Well, well- he was already acting so unlike himself, already three sheets to the wind, why not go the full way, the whole way, why not, why- Nakura wanted this, didn't he? He wanted Shizuo to experience this, the pounding of his heart, the sweating of his skin, the way that man's smile looked- god, he was bad at this.
And yet-
When the man smiled at him, asked him if he could get Shizuo another drink, the blonde had had no trouble in saying yes. He'd had no trouble remembering what Nakura had told him, in going with the flow, forgetting who he was. Did the other man on the email not feel jealous, essentially giving Shizuo the tools to find another man? Was the whole point of that site not to find love, and yet here he was handing Shizuo away for a night or whatever?
And yet-
Shizuo didn't think once of Nakura when he followed the man home, knowing full well what waited for him when they got there.
It wasn't like him. It wasn't like him at all.
And yet-
And yet…