Touch and Go

The Seventh Visit

I didn't beta read.

Shizuo wheels Izaya back into the care home, back to his room that looks somehow more boring now that it did before. And it was never exciting before. He can feel the tension of Shizuo's hands on the back of the chair and dreads them moment they let go. Dreads the moment Shizuo leaves, and leaves forever. Dreads losing the feeling intimate emotional touch, not even physical but someone who understands him on such a deep level. Even Shinra can't get on his level but somehow this dumb oaf can. What a mystery.

That bed with the paper thin sheets and the draughty rattling of the underpriced window are things that bother him after spending  night in peace without. How did he cope with these things before Shizuo? "Well this is my stop. Thank you for a good night," His eyes narrow, his smile cruel. Cruelty directed to himself. Refusing to show his vulnerabilities with Shizuo to punish himself torturously for an imperceptible trespass.

"Wait?" Shizuo hesitantly lets go. "That's it?"

"Yep, that's it," Izaya sighs. "Was there anything else?"

"I..." Wrong! I was wrong! So Izaya doesn't want him, is casually discarding him at the first opportunity. Of course he is, it's all Shizuo is worth. Nothing. "No. That's all,"

Shizuo speed walks to the bathroom, entering a stall and banging the door closed. He lights up a smoke sitting on the toilet seat, the first drag ending in a deep exhale. His leg bounces with anxiety, then everything tremors. The cigarette isn't helping, the only thing that helps is crushing it underfoot. Stabbing into it with his toe and scraping it against the tiled floor until the cigarette is left a mangled mess of loose tobacco and torn paper.

"Dammit," Shizuo hates littering. The manifestation of violence stares at himself in the mirror, seeing the beast he can escape from. Unworthy of love from anyone, especially someone like Izaya. In the mirror his image is warped, disrobed by the portal of angled glass and forced 0ercetipj, His dysmorphia a monster with its hand around his throat that controls his eyes very move. Every small afterthought that relates to Izaya. Unworthy. Fat

The mirror shatters into a million tiny knives when his hand collides, slashed by the sharp blades kept in Izaya's pocket. They embed in his arm and blood flows freely from open-mouthed sores like the transition from river to waterfalls. It drips onto the floor. Diluting on the damp tiles. The floor absorbs nothing, acts simply as a bowl to transport his blood into different tiny tunnel to a labyrinth of scarlet tracks. Like a railway map in the earth it carves its way into the surface.

"What the Hell?!" the manager demands of him, having heard the shatter and come to investigate. "I'm phoning your supervisor!"

Shizaya accepts the fate dealt to him. Kicked off the community service crew for smoking in the care home - and whatever else he confesses to when they interrogate him, things he probably didn't do. Gathering his stuff, he refuses to walk down the corridor past Izaya's room, for the man to judge him even harsher than himself. The second he walks out the door he lights a cigarette, absorbing in the hypotheticals of his fate His new hearing rapidly approaching, a jail sentence is imminent.

*

Izaya watches him Shizuo leave from his bedroom window. Of course he's leaving, why would he stay? For someone incapable of accepting him into their life, or accepting he wants them in his life. With a bitter smile he stares outside long after Shizuo's out of sight. Staring at the stagnant impression of this street that may well be a frozen still image than a live feed. Another reason he doesn't belong here: it lacks the spark of city life he bases his entire identity on.

With the loss of Shizuo, he loses that part of himself.

"I suppose I could never turn around his hate... humans are too predictable for that," he sighs in disappointment, though with an almost expected defeat of accepting the null hypothesis. He couldn't overturn someone's emotions like that. Human emotions are too inhibited and predictable to be overcome with coercion. Even if that coercion is to the truth. That Izaya loves Shizuo and is worth loving.

But he can't be so crestfallen by a verdict he expected. His own understanding of love couldn't shift to hate. He is unable to feel anything but love for the fake blonde. "I hate being wrong..." He always does. But this time it feels a lot worse.

"Huh? Did you say something?"

Izaya cranes his neck over his shoulder with difficulty. Shinra smiles a sweet smile and closes the door behind him.

"Oh, nothing that needs to be brought up again," he wheels to the bed, pulling up his armrest. With his long arms he scoots across to the bed. "So What brings you here?"

"Would you like to come to Russia sushi with Celty and I tomorrow night?" That smile again, squeezing his eyes closed. The man is so kind for who he is. What he does. An oxymoron so amusing to Izaya, one of the few humans he finds interesting enough to surround himself with.

"Why exactly?" He rests his elbow on his pillow and props his head up.

"Well because Celty and I are celebrating! It's our one year anniversary?"

"Why not just invite us back to your house, like you usually do?" Izaya wonders.

"Oh - That," Shinra frowns. He fluctuates on the gradient between sad and worried. "She's been really self conscious about her cooking recently. I try to tell her she's really talented but..."

"Don't worry I understand," Shizuo has the same problem. Unable to accept compliments or even objective assessments. Neutral ones! Anything other than degradation frightens him. "Alright, I'll be there. What time?"

"Do you not need help to come?" Shinra asks oddly.

"I'll figure it out,"

And so he does and that Saturday night the small nurse signs a day pass for release (on the basis of Izaya's lie that Shizuo is picking him up just around the corner) and heads into the night, into Ikebukoro.

It doesn't take long for his arms to get tired, them to ache. "Dammit!" But he pushes on, forcing himself to go just a few more feet. He hisses once his elbow locks. Cramp forcing tension. And eventually his tendons rip. Painful enough to scream. But he never screams. Simply smirks even in his panic. He looks around, eyes setting upon the tower clock. Already 10 minutes late and he's all the way across the park on the West side of the city. He smirks even as tears of agony roll down his face.