Chapter Text
I
Shizuo climbed off of him, his hands jerking towards the pack of cigarettes resting on the nightstand. On average, it took him from four to five minutes to finish one cigarette. Sometimes when he was less riled up, he could smoke one for around seven minutes. Never longer than eight, though.
Izaya knew this because he had watched the same thing happen for six months now.
He stretched in his bed, heavy-lidded gaze falling on the clock. 3:01 AM. Shizuo had come over a little less than an hour ago, waking him up. They didn’t talk much after they had sex, Shizuo hardly looked at him. On the opposite, all Izaya could look at was the edge of Shizuo’s cheekbones and the sharp lines of his jaw. Shizuo had a beautiful profile.
“You know you’ll never pay off your debt.”
Shizuo slowly pulled his shirt on and buckled his pants. “What do you mean?”
“It’s mathematically impossible,” Izaya said, mentally skimming through the computations even if he knew it for a fact. “Assume you will never damage the city ever again, which isn’t true, but for the sake of keeping it simple, let’s assume that. Take the amount you owe them at the moment, add interest and inflation. Then take your lack of experience in any particular field, the lack of a higher degree education or other credentials. You’ll never earn enough money to pay off your debt.”
“You talk too much,” Shizuo said, but his tone never carried much anger after sex. He was alike an exhausted lion who gave it all, the lax movements of his body almost vulnerable. “I don’t care that I can’t pay it all. I deserve to give them all of my money anyway.”
Izaya wondered if he should tell him the truth. He was the one to tip off the city government on Shizuo’s continuous rampages around the town, diligently faxing them the necessary photographs and backed-up evidence. They had to finally admit it to themselves that Heiwajima Shizuo was a real force that could bend railings, tear vending machines off the ground and even destroy buildings. He wasn’t just a myth of Ikebukuro that people loved to gossip about. It probably didn’t matter that Izaya was the one to have them go after him, because Shizuo was repentant and determined to work hard to pay it off. He had found a second job, was now looking for a third. That was why he visited Izaya so late at night, his hands blackened with dirt and Izaya always made him take a shower first.
That strange sense of responsibility was foreign to Izaya. He rolled over to his side and used the ruins of his t-shirt to wipe the cum off his cock and stomach, the sticky substance a faint reminder that the sex did happen. Shizuo was so emotionless in the moments after, sometimes it was hard to believe that just minutes ago he used those strong hands to bring Izaya over the edge as he was coming himself.
Izaya’s cock twitched a little at the memories, but he came so hard just minutes ago, the promise of arousal was a little painful.
3:04 AM. The cigarette was half-done. Shizuo was fully dressed now, reaching for his boots.
“You know—”
“Keep the talking to a minimum.”
“Why?”
Shizuo muttered through his cigarette. “We do this for the sex. It’s to blow off steam. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
“Do you pretend I’m someone else?” Izaya asked with a wide smile.
“No,” Shizuo spat the truth like he was disgusted with it. “Do you?”
No, Izaya thought, but said nothing. He almost expected Shizuo to say yes, but then the monster’s imagination was probably quite poor.
Shizuo could have left immediately after, but he didn’t. He always stayed for the duration of that one cigarette, and even in that irritated moment of hearing Izaya talk, he didn’t hurry to finish it quicker or to throw it away half-done. He kept on smoking, as if he had to finish it with whatever pace was set from the beginning.
3:05 AM. Izaya knew there were only a few moments left. He partially hid underneath the blanket, feeling an itch crawl over his skin, settling somewhere underneath, on a deeper layer below the surface. Unreachable. He would never get to scratch it, because he would never search for it. He was a little scared of what he would find.
3:06 AM. Shizuo turned his head slightly to look behind himself. The dim light shed a glow of orange gold over his blond locks. His eyes widened a little at the view that was available from the windows of Izaya’s bedroom. That look of awe was the only emotion Shizuo let slip through his fingers during this cigarette break. Other than the familiar colors of anger and disgust, of course.
“You like the view.”
Shizuo hummed in response, shoving his bow-tie into the pocket. His eyes trailed over Izaya’s naked form, a slight twitch at the corners as if he was disgusted by what he saw, and Izaya felt like shoving a knife into Shizuo’s side. He knew he was wanted. Shizuo wouldn’t come to fuck him almost every night if that wasn’t the case.
3:07 AM. Shizuo got up and left, the burning end of the cigarette touching the filter. Izaya wondered if Shizuo realized how impeccable his timing was.
When he heard the distant slam of the front door downstairs, he turned off the lights and stared at the ceiling. There was a large crack twisting through the white of it, like a rogue vein in an otherwise smooth skin. He could have it fixed, but cracks were interesting. They gave him something to stare at.
!
Izaya loved running. He ran fast and light, rooftops blinking underneath his feet. His expensive shoes were finally put to good use again — he had stopped coming to Ikebukuro as often recently, his desire to see Shizuo sated almost on the nightly. But recently there was that itch that he couldn’t scratch, so he felt restless that day. He came out to play, and Shizuo kindly agreed to do their usual dance of the cat and mouse chasing.
Shizuo hated running. His face burned red with anger, breathing irregular, and he was god awful at parkour. He never did quite get the hang of it. Izaya’s body almost shuddered when he watched Shizuo take a roll because what he lacked in technique was made up for by the strong padding of muscle that coated his entire body. Shizuo never had to learn the proper moves of parkour.
He leaped on top of a building, sending back a condescending look. “You know your front-rolls are terrible? If you were human, your spine would long have suffered irreversible damage.”
“Shut up! Get your ass out of Ikebukuro!” Shizuo bellowed as he grabbed onto the edge of the rooftop to pull himself up.
“Ikebukuro this, Ikebukuro that…” Izaya sighed as he ran forward.
He was bored. Bored with their fights because Shizuo never really caught him unless Izaya wanted him to. Sometimes they had sex on some abandoned rooftop where Izaya was sure no eyes could see them. That was fun, but it was messy and he preferred the comfort of his bedroom. Sex with Shizuo was never boring, so it didn’t need the spice-up of being outside or anywhere else.
At the corner, he turned abruptly and leaned his back against the wall, a mischievous smile on his lips. Shizuo could never turn as fast as he did, being heavier and not as agile. The laws of physics were quite handy sometimes. He watched Shizuo’s heel dig into the concrete in a desperate attempt to halt his movement, but the turn was far too abrupt and he was sent over the edge into the flowing river below them.
The splash of water reached so high, it hit Izaya’s cheeks and a drop even touched his eyelashes. He blinked it off.
“Good idea, Shizu-chan,” he sang as he sat leisurely on the rails, squinting a little. The sunlight shimmered in the waves and flared off Shizuo’s sunglasses. “Going for a swim on a hot day like this. How’s the water? Should I join you?”
Shizuo growled something in response, but his mouth was still submerged underwater, and bubbles surrounded his incandescent face. What was prettier — the look of anger or the look of lust? Izaya weighed both, but couldn’t decide on either. When Shizuo climbed back up, his rage had mostly dissipated and he stared at the tragedy of his ruined cigarette pack. He stared at it for so long, Izaya felt a little scared if something didn’t break within the man. Like when a program was supposed to execute but the required files were missing.
A man passed by, and Izaya danced around him, bumming a cigarette. “Here,” he handed it to Shizuo, and Shizuo snatched it out of his fingers without a word of gratitude. Of course, he blamed Izaya for his own destroyed pack.
Shizuo finished smoking and turned to leave, shivering a little from the cold breeze that assaulted his drenched state. It was then that Izaya finally located the itch that had been nagging at him for days, maybe weeks or even months.
One cigarette’s lifetime was too short.
He wasn’t looking to identify it because he was scared to come to terms with it, but the change of scenery and a different scenario made it all too clear for him. His sharp mind was too agile to ignore it from then on.
!
“Shizu-chan is human.”
The old lady that lived in one of the buildings on the border between Ikebukuro and Shinjuku wobbled her frail head, listening to him. She was tiny, and Izaya still hadn’t asked her name. She told him she was going to kill herself soon. Izaya hadn’t asked why, because he had no interest in old people.
“What'd you think he was before?”
“Something not human,” Izaya waved his hand, knowing that he made little sense to someone outside of his head. That wasn’t the point. “I was in denial. So many things pointed to him being human, yet I conveniently tunnel visioned on his body that’s borderline supernatural.”
“Does it change anything? Him being a human or not?”
“Of course, it does,” Izaya said. “It changes too much.”
The old lady looked at him skeptically. “I thought this was about the cigarettes.” She was smoking one, too, and the mere sight of a burning end irritated him. Soon it would devour the white stick, reach the orange of the filter, and poof! Shizuo would be gone. Except there was no Shizuo in the picture right there and then, and Izaya blinked, gripping onto the ropes of the swings he was sitting on. He was spacing out harder than usual.
“It’s not about the cigarettes,” he smiled with reproach, turning to scan her withering frame again. “Come on, be a little more useful.”
“Of course, it’s not about the cigarettes,” she said with a scoff, not in the least bit offended by Izaya’s claim of her being useless as a dialogue partner. “I just didn’t know if you'd realized that yet. The first time you mentioned them was a few weeks ago. You were going on and on about it like a broken record. Cigarettes don’t last long enough! I’m gonna invest in a company that makes longer cigarette sticks!”
“Please stop,” he laughed. “Your rendition of my voice is embarrassing for you.”
“Then you shifted gears, started saying things like, I could make him quit! I totally could, but a week later you came back saying it was impossible to make him quit.”
Izaya shook his head. Old people loved making fun of you. Come to think of it, he did consider making Shizuo quit. His subconscious latched onto the issue of the cigarettes a long while ago, but there was a deeper meaning there somewhere. The cigarettes were a symptom, not the cause of the problem.
“You should have told me,” he said automatically. “Would have saved me time.”
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Very true,” he agreed. “When are you leaving?”
“August 27th.”
About two weeks from now, he realized. He looked around the playground, wondering if he would ever set foot here again after she passed away.
“Still not going to even try to talk me out of it?” she asked, using a wooden stick to draw figures in the sand underneath her feet. She was sitting on a bench to the right of the swings. The bulging veins trailing down her pale wrinkled legs were so disgustingly blue, Izaya made sure not to look at them again by accident.
Old people were boring. Their opinions had long formed and hardened, and there was little room to wiggle new ideas in. Originally, he lingered by her bench because he was disgusted by the old appearance and simultaneously thrilled by the chilling fear that filled him when he imagined himself growing that old. His mind was already falling prey to the spell of aging. He had been studying Hebrew these days, and his twenty-six year old mind didn’t absorb concepts as easily as when he was fourteen and breezing through five books on Russian grammar, all at the same time. The creeping sense of aging irritated him to no end. He wanted to hide it, pack it away and send it off to another country, but certain parts of his personality would never change. He would always be acutely aware of it.
“I wouldn’t talk anyone out of it,” Izaya answered truthfully. “Especially not someone as old as you. Your potential is exhausted by now.”
Cold words uttered in the most polite form of Japanese, but he believed in them. He had told her quite a few hard truths by now, but she was never really affected by it.
“I agree,” she said amiably. “I had a good life.”
Her children never called her, her husband left her for a younger woman some twenty years ago. Self-delusion was a powerful thing, but Izaya didn’t care about her enough to want to rub it in her face.
“You and I must have a different definition of good,” was all he said as he brushed his thumb over the shiny screen of his phone. The sun was setting, and Shizuo usually dropped a message before he made the trip to Shinjuku.
“We most certainly do, young man. You don’t have a definition of good in the first place.”
An astute observation from someone as old as her. Perhaps experience and the weight of accumulated intelligence could make up for the lack of agility in an older mind. Izaya could only hope. He would never be brave enough to kill himself. Or would he? What was stronger, his fear of aging or his fear of death?
He looked down at his hands, the sight of his smooth skin reassuring him.
“Say,” he turned to her before he jumped off the swings. “Could I use your death for something?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll be a little too dead to care about what happens after I die.”
“With your blessing then,” he bowed playfully and turned to leave. “I’ll visit again before the 27th, you know.”
“You’re running away from something,” she yelled into his back, the volume of her voice setting off a flock of doves that were murmuring around her feet. They fluttered their wings and rose into the orange sky.
“I’m not running away,” Izaya smiled into the sunset, raising his hand in farewell. “I’m advancing in a different direction.”
!
On the day she died, Izaya dragged Shizuo all the way out to the border of Shinjuku.
Normally, Shizuo gave up on chasing him the moment Izaya was gone from the major areas of Ikebukuro, but on that day Izaya taunted him to the best of his ability. He mocked his intelligence, stamina and the lack of finesse in everything the monster did in life. When Shizuo still wanted to let go and go do his own things, Izaya had to resort to lying when he insulted the monster, saying that out of all of his current partners Shizuo was the worst at sex. Izaya never had anyone else, but for some reason Shizuo was especially resistant to being sufficiently riled up on that day.
That seemed to do it. It had been a long time since Izaya had seen Shizuo so blown away by his anger. He stopped being coherent in his pathetic attempts of verbal comeback, only growling and roaring at this point.
The building where the old woman lived was easy to destroy. He still calculated the most optimal way to make it fall apart because he liked things to be efficient. It was one of the older buildings in the area, and the city planned to bulldoze it to the ground in the next month. That was the reason why everyone but the old woman had moved out, leaving it empty on the day she died.
He slipped in through one of the broken windows, and a large metal pipe came flying after him. Patient, he waited by the next door, waiting for Shizuo to make his way over. A vending machine followed. Izaya scanned the broken metal and glass, satisfied. A little piece broke off of it when it crashed into the room, lodging itself in his arm, but it wasn’t anything too bad.
“IZAYA!”
“I can’t hear you from here, Shizu-chan!” Izaya sang back playfully. “You still haven’t answered my question though — how does it feel to be the worst at everything you do?”
Shizuo finally stormed in, completely destroying what was left of the window, and Izaya started running again.
Room after room, Shizuo followed after him like a disruptive tornado, a terrifying force of nature, and the levels of his rage began to be worrying. Izaya wasn’t really sure if Shizuo was going to let him go this time around. Would he chase him indefinitely? For now it was working out splendidly, and eventually, the building skewed a little threateningly, ceilings shifted and walls cracked. Izaya slipped out, deeming the job well done. He had gone through each room but the old woman’s, compromising the supports and making sure there was no homeless people holing up in some corner.
He analyzed his work from the rooftop of a neighboring building and estimated it would take another ten minutes for the building to begin crumbling down.
Shizuo ran out and beelined towards him again. Why so angry, Izaya lazily thought as he smiled in the face of Shizuo’s fire. They were out of Ikebukuro by now, so it was probably the comment about sex.
“Relax, Shizu-chan,” Izaya drawled, figuring he needed to defuse the bomb before it exploded. “I don’t sleep with anyone but you.”
Shizuo staggered, came to a stop. He had almost climbed up to the rooftop by then. Izaya was only a level above, looking down on him with a satisfied grin.
“Which one is a lie?” Shizuo growled.
“That first thing,” Izaya rolled his eyes. “You really think I would have time for multiple partners? You’ve already compromised my sleep showing up so late every day.”
“If I find out that you—”
“Then what, Shizu-chan? Would you like to go to the city hall and file for your ownership of me?”
Shizuo’s face contorted at the question. “No! I just won’t do it with you anymore,” he said, shaking hands searching his pockets. Adrenaline still seemed to dominate his bloodstream. He lit a cigarette, though it took him a few tries to get the trembling flame going. “We don’t always use a condom, you fuck.”
“Let’s go make use of all that steam,” Izaya sighed, throwing one last look at the building that would fall any moment now. He needed to get Shizuo out of the area before he witnessed it.
Shizuo followed after him, silently fuming.
!
He loved it when Shizuo was angry during sex. It never crossed the line to become actually hurtful or health threatening, but passion burned in Shizuo’s every move.
The moment Izaya stepped foot into his apartment, he was shoved to the wall, hard surface hitting the back of his head. “Ow,” he whimpered as Shizuo pressed himself against him. “Are you going to fuck me or are you going to kill me?”
He loved it when Shizuo said it out loud. His growl was a menacing promise. “I’ll fuck the shit out of you.”
They had done a lot of things by now, but kissing was one of the few things they had never even attempted. Shizuo pinned him into the mattress, his weight shoving Izaya’s legs up against his chest. His shoulders embedded themselves into the back of Izaya’s knees. The rhythm was good, fulfilling. The thickness of the cock inside stretched him out, the heat from the friction burning the walls of his entrance in an overwhelming way. In those moments Izaya couldn’t really think of anything, the blinding waves of pleasure snapping all threads of rational thought.
His fingers always curled through Shizuo’s hair because during sex was the only time he got to play with those stupid blond locks. Shizuo’s face was buried in the mattress past Izaya’s head, and though their cheeks almost touched, kissing didn’t seem to even cross Shizuo’s mind.
One final violent thrust, and Izaya felt Shizuo's cock twitch and contract inside of him, the sound of Shizuo's muffled groan by his ear. Something hot spurted within him and he knew he was filling up with Shizuo’s sperm. The thought and the sensation aroused him to almost painful levels, his own cock having received almost no stimulation during that fuck, aside from rubbing against Shizuo’s hard body. In his anger, Shizuo always forgot or didn’t want to help him get off.
With a groan, Shizuo climbed off of him to sit on the edge of the bed, numb fingers reaching for the cigarettes.
I fucking hate those cigarettes, Izaya thought angrily as he grabbed his own cock and worked on finishing himself off. Shizuo stared at him with an intense frown, but within seconds his features smoothed. He threw aside the pack and leaned forward to shove Izaya’s hands away.
“Hey—” Izaya protested, lifting himself off the mattress by the elbows. He stopped his protest short when Shizuo grabbed his hips to slide him closer to himself and lowered his head to bring his lips around Izaya’s cock. It felt so good, Izaya immediately let a moan slip through when he always tried his best to keep as quiet as possible. It only took five embarrassing seconds of his first blow-job for him to come, and he shot his load inside Shizuo’s mouth, shuddering and desperately wishing against being so aroused. He wanted it to last a little longer.
Shizuo probably didn’t know that he didn’t have to swallow. But since Izaya always did it for him, he didn’t even blink when his mouth began to fill with the stream. He scrupulously gulped it down and licked his lips, eyes only slightly widened, probably judging the taste. Izaya collapsed against the mattress, too exhausted to move.
By habit, his eyes shot to the clock. 8:05 PM. And by habit, Shizuo hurried back to his cigarette pack, lips still glistening with moisture.
“What’s gotten over you?” Izaya asked, voice a little weak.
“Dunno,” Shizuo huffed. “You’ve done it for me a lot, I guess. You came fast,” he noted as he took a drag off the cigarette.
Izaya’s face flushed. He sat up, feeling a stream ooze out of him to soak the sheets. This feeling is too good, he thought tiredly. He wanted it to never end. It was dangerous to dwell on those thoughts, so he focused on the clock instead.
8:07 PM. The invisible wall between the two of them was erected the moment both of them finished. Izaya looked up at the crack in the ceiling, listening to the soft puffs of Shizuo’s smoking.
At 8:09 PM Shizuo got up and left, the residual anger from their earlier chase subconsciously making him finish his smoke faster. Only four minutes this time. Izaya waited for the sound of the door slamming before he reached for the phone and sent an anonymous tip to the police.