Author's Note: The next chapter will include sex. Just to give you a heads up if that's not your cup of tea. This was meant to be a short and sweet kind of chapter, but before I knew it, I'd written over 2000 words. Oops. I hope you enjoy regardless, it's been a long time coming, right?
Please forgive any typos! I spent longer on this chapter than I planned, and it's pretty late in the UK right now so I only had time to give it a quick proof before I go to bed. I normally spend longer proofing, but I have college tomorrow and I am dead on my feet but wanted to get this up today so. /keels over/ Forgive me~~~~
Nothing stays the same. Shizuo knew that. He knew that life had an uncanny way of tossing and turning, like a storm, like a hurricane, intent on unsettling a struggling ship trying to make it home. That's just the way of things. Nothing ever stays the same.
He had never thought there would be a day when he would be able to stay so close to the louse and not end up with his temper flaring. It had been a ridiculous notion before. To think that it was even possible would mean that Shizuo had started to descend into madness, that he had finally let his brain give in and spoil. And yet here he was, not only within sight of the louse, the flea, that enticing bastard, but sat in his home, the loft, somewhere in the upper side of Shinjuku. Just sat, quiet and calm and smoking, as if he had never left his own home, as if this wasn't the place that it really was. Nothing stays the same, and this was proof enough of that.
Shizuo still wasn't sure why he was here. He hadn't been sure when he had knocked on the door and the initial daze had worn off. He hadn't been sure when the door had opened and that woman he knew worked for the louse opened the door. He certainly hadn't been sure when he had stepped in and taken a quick look around. Things had changed, but he was still unsure of how or what the hell that even meant. He was struggling, he was, and he knew that. He knew that he was stubborn and he knew that he was not nearly as intelligent as the smug bastard sat behind the desk over there, but he knew that his choice to come here meant something. He just still didn't know what.
No. No. That was a lie, wasn't it?
He knew why he had come here. He knew that he had changed, that he had started to look past whatever hate or whatever he had felt for the flea. That was why he had come. Because he had to know, he had to confront this, these feelings, the man over there, he just had to, couldn't not. He was still being stubborn, still there was a part of him denying these feelings, this, everything, everything and anything that he could.
There was that part of him that was screaming, telling him to just run, to get out and break whatever of the flea's property he could on the way out. That was what he would have done before, with a cry of the louse's name, running, running, running like normal. That would have been the natural order of things, back then. And yet now he was sat there, on the sofa, with Izaya just across the room with those glasses on his nose and that little crinkle of concentration on his face. He was sat there, not running, just smoking and breathing and surviving. When he had first signed up to that site and met Nakura, heh, he had been scared; he had, really, scared that Nakura would take one look at the real him and run and then he would be all alone, forever, ever, ever. But Izaya had seen him, all of him, and he wasn't running. No. He was chasing Shizuo, and with the smoke of his cigarette curling around him, the monster was at last— heh, content.
Izaya wasn't sure how long passed before he set the little pen down onto the desk. He wasn't sure. It could have been an hour; it could have been more or less than that. Considering Shizuo was still smoking, Izaya guessed it hadn't been long. It didn't matter, it really didn't. There was no rush anymore, because Shizuo was here now and that was just— no, no, maybe that was just the final excuse of a coward, not wanting to really follow through with these feelings he had accepted. He'd always thought that he would never be able to love someone back again, for so many reasons, that new persona, Shiki and yet-
"So Shizu-chan," the information broker began, in the same slightly teasing lilt that he normally took on, with clients, with his humans. "What can I do for you today?"
Silence seemed to follow his question, though it wasn't awkward, it was just more of that same silence they'd been sat in for so long, calm and quiet and— Izaya looked up, his glasses still resting quietly on the bridge of his nose, throwing Shizuo's sharp features into focus. The blonde had turned to look at Izaya, though at what point he didn't know. As soon as he met Shizuo's eyes, the blonde turned, quickly shifting his attention elsewhere as though he had been caught thinking, red-handed. The cigarette quickly raised to his mouth again, allowing the blonde to draw in the intoxicating scent. Izaya let the corners of his mouth tweak up into a little smirk, his fingers closing around the little arms of his glasses to remove them and rest them on the surface of the desk instead.
"Why— What—?" the blonde started, but clearly whatever it was he wanted to say quickly broke off in his mouth, replaced with a rough 'tch' and the crossing of his arms over his chest. Izaya could read the tightness in that pose, could read the anxiety, he could read that, and yet he had no idea what that meant, no idea what Shizuo was really thinking. This was so out of the norm that they had fallen into, so different from their supposed natural order of things. This was the real him and the real Shizuo, finally giving each other a chance to— to what? Where did this go now? Shizuo was here, and Izaya was here, but now— now what happened? Izaya hadn't planned much further than this. He should have kicked himself for that. Izaya always planned, and yet—
"I don't know," Izaya admitted with a dry chuckle, pushing his chair away from the desk and allowing him to stand up. He didn't know, and Izaya rarely lied, no matter how much people seemed to think that he did. "You know, things happen to you, and sometimes you don't realize why it happened until much later,"
Shizuo scoffed at that, and Izaya relished the low laugh that fell huskily from the blonde's parted lips. By now, the raven had made his way from behind his desk and had started towards the area in which Shizuo still sat with slow, languid steps. The blonde was still sat on the sofa, one leg drawn up so that his foot rested on the edge of the cushions and his hand rested on his knee, now level with his chin. The cigarette rested in between two lithe fingers, but no, no, not that Izaya was looking.
"Things happen to me?" Shizuo spoke, and Izaya drew to a stop a few paces away, his own arms crossed across his chest. "Do all of your games count in that?"
"I suppose so," Izaya agreed with a laugh, amused. His face was blank, some old habit he had picked up, that habit of keeping his emotions guarded in situations that made him uncomfortable. "But this isn't one of them, not now anyway,"
"Now?" came the low reply, another scoff.
"What do you expect? I need my little games to keep me entertained," Izaya chuckled again at Shizuo's question, shrugging lazily with one shoulder. "You were a mistake that wasn't meant to happen in that game, Shizu-chan. I wasn't intending it to be you,"
Izaya's father had once told him that you are simply born and you die and in between you make a lot of mistakes. Izaya wondered if there was such a thing as having a favourite mistake. Ha. Ha.
He'd had given up trying to read Shizuo's thoughts in his eyes. The monster had always been unpredictable, had never acted or seemed to be what Izaya had thought he would do or be. Why should now be any different? Shizuo had changed, he had changed, but in their cores, inside, they were still the same, cat and mouse, hot and cold, flea and monster. Izaya didn't want that to be any different, even if their feelings were, even if their entire world had changed, he wanted them to be the same inside, just—
Shizuo didn't reply. He seemed to have fallen silent, seemed to have even forgotten about the cigarette curling and licking smoke up delicately towards the situation. Izaya was moving again, his steps light, feathery, almost like he wasn't really aware he was taking them. This situation was changing, rapidly, quickly, too fast and too slow for him to keep up. He was melting away, the old him shining out once again, that teenage boy who had run away from home, who Shiki had found wet and cold on the streets; it was like he was back, in charge for once, taking control of a situation that the new Izaya didn't know how to deal with.
What was this feeling? Nerves? No, no, that was mad. It was mad. This whole fucking thing was mad. Izaya was stepping closer, closer, closer until he had brought himself in front of the blonde, the monster, the oaf. Izaya was stepping closer, closer, closer until he had lowered himself to sit, half kneeling on the edge of the sofa over one of Shizuo's legs, the one that wasn't raised. The blonde's face was blank, blanker than his own, but there was something swirling in that liquid gold that was just— what was this feeling? What was it? What was— Izaya didn't move, for his sake and for Shizuo's. This was uncharted territory, new ground, unfamiliar to them both. This move of his, so bold and—
There was silence again. Neither of them seemed to really know what was happening, both of them take a breath before the inevitable plunge into darkness, into that abyss that had no end in sight. Neither of them seemed to really know what this was still or where they would end up, just that they were both here, both able to sit here, quiet and calm, struggling on, just surviving, together.
One of the information broker's hands reached across after the pause, his fingers, slim, pale, curling around one of Shizuo's wrists; raising his hand up so that he could then rest his other hand flat against the monster's smooth palm. Izaya almost laughed at the difference. Shizuo's hands were bigger, they were long fingered and as warm as the rest of him, like sunlight, like— Izaya's were slim, but they were small, cool and pale like the moon. Shizuo and Izaya had always been contradictions, right from the very first moment they'd met, but maybe that was a good thing, weren't opposites meant to attract? Ha. Ha.
"Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding with our mind exactly what we want our heart to feel, sometimes we just have to go with the flow," Izaya purred, his voice quiet, whispering, as if the moment, this calm connection would be broken if he spoke normally. His face was blank too, quiet, waiting, waiting, waiting and his other hand dropped, allowing Shizuo's hand to remain pressed against his, the warmth of that skin, liquid gold. "We're both monsters, and who can love a monster but one of its own kind?"
"What are we doing?" Shizuo half mumbled out, and Izaya wondered if he was just asking himself that or if the blonde wanted him to reply. He didn't move his hand from Izaya's, and so the two just remained there; Izaya half on his lap, half off the sofa, their hands palm to palm in the air.
"I don't know," Izaya replied, "I don't know,"
Another pause, another, another, another. It wasn't uncomfortable, just silent, quiet, seeming to stretch on and on. Shizuo seemed to have taken to staring again, his brow crinkled in what was no doubt some heavy thought on the matter. Izaya didn't blame him, this, whatever it was, wasn't going to be easy to deal with, to sort through, to understand.
He didn't know what they were doing, but when his head lowered and Shizuo's tilted up and their lips met in such a warm connection, how could he be anything more than completely content?