Author's Note: I know I promised/hinted at some proper smut in this chapter, but I had to visit relatives and didn't get home until later than expected, so I didn't have time to go into so much detail with this chapter. But hey, we still have Shizuo's POV to come (lol) So I promise the next chapter will be more... lemony fresh.

DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO SPEND TOO LONG PROOFING. PLEASE FORGIVE TYPOS. ;_;

Next chapter will be up on Boxing Day – spending time with family etc tomorrow so I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas day too! The little Christmas one-shot I promised you is also now posted on my profile, so I hope you enjoy that one too. /Kiwi Out/

"Ah, Shinozuka-chaaan~" Izaya piped up, lips quirking into a smirk that he knew sent Shizuo's temper spiralling skyward. Why was he here, why, why, why? What had prompted him to do this? What, why, what was— "Just who I was hoping to find, can Nakura-chan come in to play?"

The first mistake that Shizuo Heiwajima made was not to slam the door in the damn flea's face there and then. It would have stopped the whole thing in its tracks, would have stopped him letting that louse pull him into his twisted, fucking mind-game again. That was his first mistake, but it wasn't his last.

Izaya stood leant on the doorframe, lips quirked up into that smirk, that cocky, self-confident smirk that Shizuo fucking hated. He didn't say anything else after that, but his eyes hadn't left Shizuo's face. He could feel the irritation bubbling under his skin, just like it always did when he saw the flea in front of him, down the street, halfway across the city. It was different from normal though, it was like a slow burning flame, heating up in all the wrong ways, in ways that Shizuo wasn't used to. He was used to his rage peaking in all of two seconds, not this, this gradual rising scale of irritation. It felt odd, it didn't feel right, though he could only guess that had something to do with this fucked up situation and all this conflict within himself. It was all the flea's fault, all of his—

The second mistake that Shizuo Heiwajima made was not to say no when Izaya Orihara had asked to come in, and that was soon followed by his third mistake of the evening, which was to remain mute on the matter, and just stand in the doorway, half dressed and slowly working up the anger to kill the bastard on his doorstep. Nakura. Izaya. They were one and the same. Shizuo wasn't sure how a sane person was meant to react in that situation, and he got the feeling that thought was just what Izaya had wanted to create in him. He cared for Nakura, wouldn't want anything to come to harm him, and yet Izaya Orihara could end up dead in some back alley for all he cared. Was it possible to feel like this? Shizuo was pretty damn sure it sounded wrong.

"Do you have a death wish?" He bit out, too late, the words sounding robotic, forced. Izaya laughed, but that laugh sounded as fake as his words.

They were both different, they were. But with a situation like this looming over their heads, Shizuo guessed that made sense. It did, really. Unless Izaya hadn't fallen for his online self, unless this was all a game, in which case it was just Shizuo who had been twisted and turned and moulded by the man in front of him. Fuck this, fuck everything.

The fourth mistake that Shizuo Heiwajima made was letting Izaya Orihara into his apartment, and allowing the door to shut behind them. Fuck it, fuck it all, fuck this game and fuck the flea and—

"No, I've no real desire to die just yet, Shizu-chan," Izaya responded, matter-of-factly, pushing himself away from the doorframe where he had been leaning. "But if that is meant to scare me, you really need to work on your poker face. If you intended to kill me I would half-way down the stairs by now, wouldn't I?"

Shizuo laughed, low and bitter at that. The flea had a point, had called his bluff. Fuck, what the hell was wrong with him? When had his feelings for Nakura reached such a point that Shizuo didn't want to hurt his creator, the real him? Things were different, they were, and he couldn't deny that when the evidence was staring him straight in the face. Back in the old days, if Izaya had turned up on his doorstep, Shizuo would have sent him flying back down the stairs with a broken face. And now— what of now? Now Shizuo was allowing him to stand there, casually conversing with him simply because he had fallen in love with the man Izaya had played? The fourth mistake that Shizuo Heiwajima made was to let the flea enter his apartment, and to shut the door behind him.

He should have tossed the flea across the room, sent him flying out the window or just thrown the coffee table at his fat head while he had the chance, but he didn't, he didn't do anything. Because there was still that fire, under his skin, in the pit of his stomach, telling him that something big was spiralling towards him, towards them, but that he shouldn't stop it. It was ridiculous, it was, but nobody said love was reasonable, and love, heh, love always made people do stupid things.

Infatuation, that's all this was. Infatuation, some patter of the heart which weakens the brain, causes blood pressure to rise, lips to pucker and jeans to tighten. That was all this was, all of these feelings for Shinozuka, for Shizuo or whatever, it was just infatuation, it had to be. Because there was no way that Izaya could love Shizuo, the monster, the beast, there was just no—

He was angry, he was irritated with this whole situation, and he sensed that Shizuo was too. That tension, somewhere just now it had snapped. Izaya wasn't sure when, in both him and in the half-dressed monster he was with. He wasn't sure what had caused something in him to snap, and he wasn't entirely sure why Shizuo hadn't snapped his neck for it already, why the man was—

He had just stopped thinking, because that was the way to do it, because it stopped all those nasty, niggling feelings and thoughts in his head. To stop thinking was glorious, just like the drink from the night before, it solved everything. Things became simpler. Izaya loved Shinozuka, but no, no, he didn't, did he? It was just an infatuation; he just wanted to get into the man's pants. That was all. The only way to give in to a temptation, an infatuation, was to yield to it, to just give in. Izaya was good at doing just that, he was good at acting on instinct. He had spent years of his life doing just that, giving in to pleasure, to his lust, just going to a club and letting some stranger take him in their bed just because he wanted it. It was nothing new, no, no, so what if he had now decided the next man he chose was Shizuo Heiwajima, the monster, the oaf, and the man he was supposed to hate? So what, so what?

Izaya couldn't begin to tell where he ended and where Shizuo began. Their mouths had locked, though who had started the kiss he didn't know, didn't care. The familiar tightening of his trousers was enough to send reason flying out of the window. There were hands, everywhere, his, Shizuo's, again, he didn't know, didn't care, just wanted this fire in the pit of his stomach quenched, wanted this need to be gone, dealt with, ended. This was just infatuation, just lust, and the sooner it was dealt with the sooner Izaya could end this game, the way it was meant to, the way he had intended. To even consider that he could fall in love with this beast, this monster, what kind of fool could ever love a man like him?

Things were blurring again, Izaya couldn't tell what they were doing or where they were going, only that they were moving through the brute's apartment. It was like being drunk again, like having that delightful buzz coursing through his veins. Faintly he could register things being knocked off of the coffee table as they passed, the door to another room banging against the wall as it was kicked open. This was madness, it was, fucking blissful madness that he had allowed himself to fall into. But it didn't matter, not now, what mattered was dousing the fire, what mattered was letting that brute fuck him any which way he wanted. Izaya didn't care right now, Izaya was barely at home in his mind, just some primal creature of lust and passion and god- for a novice, Shizuo certainly knew how to push his buttons.

The bed came soon after that banging door had reached his ears, and the two tumbling, falling together to land on the mattress. The springs were hard, squeaking as they landed, and Izaya could feel them digging into his back. Shizuo's weight was on top of him, a delightful reminder of the muscle and that power rippling under the skin. He could feel Shizuo's hips against his, and ha, ha, the monster was just as turned on by this as he was, just as aroused by this fucking wrong situation. Neither of them were thinking, neither of them could really love the other, this was just lust, just tension, just some fucked up version of love or hate or something.

"For an amateur, Shinozuka-chan is good," Izaya smirked out when their mouths broke apart. His chest was rising, falling, in rapid motions as he puffed in gulps of air. Shizuo didn't return the look, his face was hard, it was smooth, and tinged the most delightful red. If anything, he seemed angry, like this was proving some point to Izaya that he was supposed to learn from. Idiot. That was the only pause that came in their night, because then Izaya stepped across the line, returned his mouth to Shizuo's hot and hard and merging in all the right places. Ha. Ha. This was so fucking wrong that he couldn't even find the words to describe it, but he wasn't going to stop, he wasn't. Madness, insanity, some mix of the two, ha, ha, fucking hilarious.

Izaya slid a leg around Shizuo's hips, and then the other, and then turned them over, flipped things, back to the way they should be, with him in control, him in charge. He let his hands have free reign to do as they pleased, popping open the buttons of Shizuo's shirt to roam up and down and over that chest, dotted with a scar here and there that he knew had been due to his knife, his arrogance, and their fights and chases in the city streets. Shizuo was warm, so warm, a delightful contrast to the cool touch that Izaya provided. They were a contradiction, always were, always would be, hot and cold, good and evil.

When they broke the kiss again, Izaya turned his attention to Shizuo's neck, nibbling and biting and licking at the skin there. This was Izaya's comfort zone. He had fucked and been fucked enough to know what to do to get his lover moaning, to get them arching up into him. He wasn't like Shizuo, who had done this only once before, he knew what to do, what had to be done and what he sure as hell wanted to do. It didn't matter anymore who this was, Izaya was too far gone to care, to even notice, and by the way Shizuo mewled out a little moan when Izaya lowered a hand to his crotch, so was he.

Things were blurring, and time seemed to have crashed together, collided, endless in this moment, and hurling itself along at a pace that sent Izaya's head spinning. He was impatient now, he didn't have time for foreplay or romantic cuddles and kisses, he wanted Shizuo, hot and hard and pounding away until they were both sated, until this infatuation, ridiculous, mad, could be brought to an end.

He sat up, shimming down the body of the brute, that monster, the man he was supposed to hate. Ha. Ha. His hips straddled Shizuo's, and when he took a moment to examine the state of the man below him, he couldn't help but let out a delightful cry of amusement at his ruffled, flushed state. His hair had spread, sticking up in tufts of gold, though Izaya could only barely remember running his hands through it. His lips were red, pink from where he had nibbled at Shizuo's lip, and he could already see the little dark shadow of his mark on the Shizuo's neck forming. Ha. Ha. Let the brute have fun trying to explain where that had come from the next day. It would serve him right for stirring these things in Izaya, and it would give him endless amusement to think about what he would tell Tom.

Izaya didn't waste too much time looking though. He cared little for the man under him; all he wanted was the hard object waiting for him, straddled under his hips. That was all, just sex, all it was, angry, hot, meaningless sex. Right? Right. Infatuation, that's all. Because Shizuo and Izaya couldn't love, they were born to hate. No. No. Izaya didn't care, and with that thought in mind, he unzipped the top of Shizuo's trousers, lowering them down and down his legs along with the underwear that he had been wearing. Izaya smirked as Shizuo's breath hitched in his throat, and without another thought, lowered his head and claimed his prize.