Author's Note: Sorry for the lack of an update last night! I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie that came out yesterday with a friend, so I didn't get a chance to update~. So I found a few people fangirling over this story on Tumblr the other day. Oh my gosh, you guys are adorable. (● ∀ )

'This isn't working.
Don't email me again.'

No. No. No.

Shinozuka wasn't getting out of this that easily. This was Izaya's game, not his. This was Izaya's fucking game, and Shinozuka wasn't leaving until Izaya said he could, this game wasn't ending until Izaya said it was over. Shinozuka had no right to call the shots like that. Izaya could do as he damn well pleased. No. No. No. Shinozuka couldn't just come in and screw things up like he had, he couldn't just come in and make such delightful moves in this game and then leave. It didn't work like that, it broke the rules, and if there was one thing that Izaya hated more, it was when people broke his rules.

No. No. No.

That wasn't it at all though, really, was it? The reason that Izaya was so worked up, the reason that— it wasn't because of the game anymore, was it? Somewhere along the lines he had gotten tangled up in his role and it had taken him crashing down with him, as if it was a shoelace knotted together that he had tripped over. Tripped, fallen, and crashed down like an idiot to smack his face on the pavement of love. That was the real reason, wasn't it? Or so the nagging voice at the back of his head kept saying, over and over and over. Izaya wanted to slit the damn thing's neck. He wasn't beating himself up and spiralling out of his own control because his game was being broken, it was because somewhere along the lines this game had turned from that into something much more serious. It had shifted, distorted like some kind of hideous monster into something that Izaya didn't recognise nor particularly like. Somewhere along the line he had slipped, turned just as badly as one of his dear, devoted humans and lost the heart he wasn't supposed to have to someone without a face, to a man he'd never met, to his own fucking plaything at that. Shinozuka was the answer to it all; Shinozuka was the question to everything. That was why Izaya was so upset, so utterly pissed at the man.

Emotions and feelings, who really needed them? Izaya had dealt without them for years now, ever since the death of his childhood, ever since Shiki. He had gotten on with his life with only gleeful feelings and the love of his humans. That was all that had mattered, and then he had started up this new game. An idiotic notion he realised now, considering the turn that this twisted game had taken. Then Shinozuka had come along, and then— and then—

Izaya had been with a person once who he had given everything to. He was always put first and Izaya was always put last. He had owned Izaya's whole heart while Izaya had only owned half of his. Shinozuka had come along with his stupid fucking innocence and his naïve, hopeless notion of love and somehow that had done something to Izaya, something that he both craved and hated at the same time. It had started with Izaya trying to change him, to influence that sickly sweet human being, and yet in actuality, wasn't it Izaya who had been morphed and shifted and bent out of shape? Someone had come along again who had put him up at the top of their list, who had started to feel something for him, and Izaya had learnt how to feel all over again. Izaya was used to denying things. If he told himself something enough, then eventually he would start to believe it. He had tried to do that when he had felt himself tumbling off of the edge, when he had fell stirrings of emotion for the other man, but it had been fruitless, hadn't it? Izaya had started to crumble. He had allowed some kind of attraction to spring up between him and Shinozuka, despite never having met. He had tried to deny that too, and that had been just as successful as the last attempt. And now—

Did Shinozuka not realise what it was like to feel this way? So conflicted and so torn between yourself. It was as if Izaya was fighting three faces, three identities that he just couldn't escape. One was the face that he presented to everyone, his public face, the mask that he wore; that cheery and unaffected asshole persona that everyone in Ikebukuro knew him to be. The second was Nakura, the character that he had created and used so many times in the past; this was a gentler man, one that was so wholly different from his public face that it was crazy, this was a man who had fallen one and truly for Shinozuka Heikichi. The third was the old him, the real Izaya, fighting tooth and nail to get back out in the open. Izaya had shoved him back into the depths of his mind when he had left Shiki's all those years ago. The real him was needy, and the real him hadn't had the chance to grow up properly. It craved freedom, and yet it needed to have someone there to help it along the way.

Izaya couldn't just let Shinozuka stir up these feelings in him and then walk away as if nothing had happened. There had been something there, hadn't there? There had been some kind of feeling that the other man had felt, and he wasn't going to let Shinozuka leave without finding that out. People always think that the most painful thing is losing the one you love in your life. The truth is, the most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much.

It was ridiculous, so fucking ridiculous. Who would have ever thought that someone could reduce the great Izaya Orihara to a primal creature of need and desperation and raw emotion? Who would have ever thought he had it in himself to love? Izaya hadn't even realised it was possible for him. Not anymore. He didn't know whether to laugh and mock himself or to be glad that there was someone out there again, someone other than Shiki. He decided that a mixture of both would be the best option, but couldn't really summon up the enthusiasm for either. He was weak, he was some pathetic jerk now that someone really needed to exploit but that no one ever would. No one except him would see this weak state. In fact maybe even he wouldn't. It was stupid, stupid, he was stupid, stupid, stupidly in lo—

"Look, I don't care how late it is," Izaya snapped down the phone. He had settled himself in his office chair, curling up into it like a cat or a small child looking for some kind of comfort. The day was nearly over, and he had lost count of how long had passed since Shinozuka's email had arrived in his inbox. He hadn't gotten dressed all day, lounging around in his sleepwear. What was the point? His humans were boring, boring— no, no, he didn't deserve to be around them now when he was so weak and hopeless and disgustingly emotional. The voice on the other end of the phone quickly shut up when the caught the tone of Izaya's words, and the information broker couldn't help but smirk as he noted that he hadn't lost his touch in dealing with idiots like this.

"But if you want to get your payment next week, you'll dig up as much information as you can on Shinozuka Heikichi," He continued, and without waiting for a reply, promptly hung up the phone. There was no point in wasting niceties on people like him, he wasn't even a pawn on Izaya's board, he wasn't a player in the grand scheme of things, and he was just once of Izaya's contacts, just some bum that Izaya knew could dig up some information for a measly few coins to feed his family for the week. Pathetic, really, it was almost laughable. Ha. Ha. With that done, he tossed the mobile phone to his desk, not caring when it landed with a loud clatter against the glass surface. It was a long shot that anything would come up, he had guessed straight away that Shinozuka Heikichi was just a screen name, but how stupid would he have to be to not at least try to check him out? Maybe he was wrong, maybe it was his name and Izaya's guess had just been off. No biggie, it was easier for him in the long run, it was. It would mean that he could track the man down faster, could someone bring him back into the game or back into his—

Izaya got a call less than an hour later, to find that his contact had turned up nothing. It didn't surprise him, but the news pissed him off nonetheless. This isn't working. Don't email me again. This isn't working. Don't email me again. This isn't working. Don't email me again. The words rang in his head over and over as he sat, curling in the arms of his chair, louder and louder. It shouldn't bother him so much, it shouldn't, but all of these conflicting emotions and feelings made it hard for Izaya to understand what he felt and what he didn't. He loved Shinozuka, didn't he? Maybe, maybe not, maybe he was just curious after all. You can't heal without answers, Izaya had heard that before, and he needed them now more than ever. A few moments was all it took for him to decide that he would have to take a much more active – and illegal – part in his search for information around this man.

His computer booted up easily enough, and the internet connected just as quickly. Izaya loaded up the dating website, and set about scrolling through whatever he could that would give any information about the man who had enchanted him so. There was nothing that he could find on the surface, annoyingly, so Izaya had to pull deeper, digging under that surface to pluck at the underbelly and see what lay underneath. He knew that if he could find the IP address of Shinozuka, then he could find his address too, it was just getting around all of those nitty gritty little problems. It was only the law enforcement that was supposed to be able to do what Izaya wanted to do, and normally even they needed some sort of warrant to track people's addresses through their IP. But hey, hey, Izaya had always been above the law, always had and always would be. It didn't take long, really, it didn't. Izaya was good at what he did. He was the best, he was, the best in all of Ikebukuro, in all of Shinjuku, in the entire city. It didn't take long for Izaya to track down the apartment number that Shinozuka Heikichi lived in, and devise his next plan.

Who needed a court order when you were the great Izaya Orihara?

The address had rung a bell for Izaya, as if he had heard it somewhere before, though he had no idea where that might have been. If he hadn't been so desperate to just make some sort of contact with Shinozuka and end this conflict within himself then maybe, just maybe he would have taken the time to check why the place sounded so familiar. But he didn't have time for that, because every second that he spent was another second that Shinozuka was moving away from him, another second further away from his wonderful game and from Nakura and Izaya and—

The box of ootoro had been ordered specially for Shinozuka, and Izaya had packaged it carefully, had written a little note to the man to apologise, again. He didn't understand what the hell had caused this complete turn from Shinozuka, all he knew was that he didn't want it, and that he wanted things to go back to how they were. He wanted to go back to playing that game, he wanted to go back and lose himself in Nakura all over again and pretend none of this hurt and whatever the fuck else had come to light. He didn't like it. He knew that he felt something for Shinozuka, but he wasn't going to admit it, not yet. If he admitted it, then that was game over, it was the end, and he would come crashing down once and for all to the same level as his humans and he couldn't have that now could he?

One of his contacts had been sent to drop it off, because gods forbid he should go himself. What if Shinozuka was there? That wasn't something that he was ready to deal with, not after what had happened. He had been all for meeting before that was true, but that had been when he had just been curious, when he hadn't been falling in—

The ping of an email at his computer came late in the night; hours after when Izaya knew Shinozuka would be home from work and would have received the little parcel he sent to his door. He clicked on the inbox straight away, but couldn't help but hesitate when Shinozuka's name showed up in the inbox, right at the top of the pile, where he ought to be. His hand moved the little pointing arrow of the mouse to hover over the email, but it was several minutes later that he clicked it. Silly, stupid, idiotic Orihara, what the hell had gotten over him? It was an email, just a silly, stupid email from Shinozuka, probably just to say that he was—

'I don't know how the hell you got my address,
but don't you fucking dare do something like that again.
Who the hell do you think you are? Who does that?
I don't feel the same way I felt about you, so get lost.
Maybe it's because you're not even the same person anymore.
Why did I ever think you were for real?
Stay the hell out of my life, Nak.'

—sorry. No. No. No.

It hurt to breathe and to think and to just exist. Izaya didn't quite know what to make of that, of all the replies he had been expecting, that had not been it. There was a moment of impulse, a moment of rash raw emotion that caused him to hit the reply button while he remembered how to breathe and how to see and feel and live. What was going on, what was, what was, what was—?

'What if I were to tell you that I loved you?
Would that change nothing, Heikichi?
x.'

Izaya watched the message send, celebrating the high. Fuck Shinozuka, yeah, yeah, who the hell did Shino-chan think he was? Accusing his feelings and him of changing, of not being real, fuck it had started to acknowledge his feelings, he had, and he was getting there slowly, one step at a time. It hadn't been easy, and then this had happened. Fuck. Fuck. This was why he had built those walls, because love was a fucking monster, and this was just the proof. This was proof that Izaya had been right all along.

The anger flared in him then. He swore, and he cursed and he shut down the computer with a kick to the tower. Fuck it all. He didn't need this. He was better than this. He wasn't in love, no, no, he wasn't. Who could love an asshole like Shinozuka? No. No. He needed to go out, to that club, to get drunk and get fucked. That would solve it all. He had tried to chase this man, had tried to move on, to take a step into something better than a fucked up game, and this had happened. Fuck love. It was a monster. Fuck Shinozuka. He was a monster too.

Just for this one night Izaya would not think about him. He would have fun, and laugh again. And enjoy every minute. He would let some guy fuck him senseless, because who needed to wait around for some man he'd never met? He would drink and dance and everything else. Tomorrow he would deal with the hangover, and go and confront that fucking Shinozuka Heikichi, face to face.

Forcing a smirk that he didn't feel, Izaya grabbed his jacket, and headed for the door.