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“Ah,” Izaya said walking past the bathroom to Shizuo who was brushing his teeth at the time, “I forgot to tell you, I’m going away for a few days.”
Shizuo spit and straightened his back. He gauged Izaya’s body language and tried to play off his immediate reaction. “Yeah?” he said, mouth still full of foam. “Where the hell could you be going?”
“To visit my relatives.”
“Since when?”
“Since earlier this week. My grandparents are celebrating sixty years of marriage.”
Forgot to my ass, Shizuo thought.
“Good for them. But, why are you even going?”
Izaya smirked at him through the mirror. “What, are you getting overprotective?”
“I’m asking a simple question,” Shizuo said with a glare in Izaya’s direction. He returned his attention to the mirror. “Are your sisters going?”
“How should I know?” Izaya scoffed. “We’re not like you and Kasuka-san, always doing things together.”
“Izaya.” Shizuo said warningly.
“What’s with the testy atmosphere?” Izaya said with a smirk. “Are you mad that I’m leaving you?”
“Wha-? N-No!” Shizuo spluttered, suddenly on the defensive. “It’s just… a little suspicious of you to suddenly have something familial related come up. And what, you don’t want me to meet your grandparents?”
“It’s not that,” Izaya said, meeting Shizuo’s eye over his shoulder through the mirror. “I just don’t think you’d enjoy it. They’re just going to take a bunch of pictures.”
“What, the whole time?”
“They’re old Shizu-chan. What do you expect them to do?”
Shizuo was dead silent for a minute and Izaya continued to study him through the mirror.
“They don’t know who I am, do they?” Shizuo asked. Izaya’s eyes were unreadable.
“They don’t know who, my lover? No, I imagine not. I don’t really talk to them often. But that’s not why I’m not inviting you.”
“So you’re just outright saying that I can’t come? Now I’m even more suspicious.”
“Why Shizu-chan, you should be a bit more trusting than that.” Izaya sighed, and he leaned his chin on Shizuo shoulder and wrapped his arms around the other’s waist as he brought something up on his phone. He showed his call history. “Look, see there? That’s a call from my mother.” And to show it even further he brought up his texting history as well.
“It’s not that I don’t believe that it’s a family thing.” Shizuo grumbled, which was only partially true. “But why does it feel like you’re trying to keep me a secret? We live together!”
“I’m not!” Izaya chided, and this time he really did look annoyed. “If you really want to come so badly you can come, but you’ll have to take off work and you really won’t enjoy it.”
“Whatever! You don’t want me to come so I won’t, I’ll just drop it.”
“Shizuo…”
“I said I’d drop it!” Shizuo snapped. “So you’ll be gone for a few days, so what? You bastard, maybe I’ll finally get some shit done around here.”
“Oh is that right?” Izaya teased halfheartedly. “I bet you’ll do nothing but watch TV and eat cereal for dinner.”
“Shut up, I might go to a movie and eat dinner with Tom, and chat with Celty for hours and hours, and forget the day that you crawled your way back into my life.” Shizuo stated, getting progressively more aggressive as he spoke, leaving Izaya in the bathroom to contemplate how indifferent Shizuo was being to him leaving.
“Aww, well don’t get used to it.” Izaya said breezily, following him without a care in the world. “I’ll only be gone for a few days.”
“A few days he says,” Shizuo gritted his teeth as he poured his milk. He started to get out a bagel to put in the toaster for Izaya but he second guessed himself. “Definitely sounds like a yakuza meet up.”
“Ah-huh…” Izaya quirked a smile at him as he poured himself a cup of tea and fixed his own bagel. “I thought you weren’t suspicious?”
“I’m not.”
They exchanged mutual glares, Izaya with a smile, as they sipped their respective drinks. A brief interim passed between them and Shizuo placed down his cup with a bit more force then intended, which rattled the table of course. Izaya didn’t comment.
“Will you miss me terribly while I’m away?” Izaya teased. Shizuo glared openly at him.
“No chance in hell.”
Shizuo tried his best to act normal in the days leading up to Izaya’s departure. He couldn’t deny he had been a little bit bratty when Izaya had initially announced it to him and Izaya had been nothing but good to him ever since.
Almost too good. Shizuo was suspicious.
“I checked with Mairu and Kururi,” Izaya told him the morning before Izaya was set to leave. “They’re going. We’re going to take a rental car there together.”
Shizuo’s moral superiority instantly deflated. If Mairu and Kururi were going, there was no way it was shady business, right? Izaya was smiling into his eyes as if he knew exactly what he was thinking. Shizuo glared and scoffed.
“Well try not to mentally scar them anymore, won’t ya? They’re hard enough to deal with as it is.”
Izaya quirked a smile, moving to sit next to Shizuo on the couch.
“What can I do to prove to you that this is a family thing?” he asked.
Shizuo balked at Izaya’s offer. He honestly hadn’t been expecting that. Izaya wanting to prove something to him? As if it were something Izaya was honestly concerned about?
“You don’t have to,” Shizuo said as Izaya pressed their shoulders together. “I would like to know why you’re keeping me a secret from your grandparents?”
“I’m not!” Izaya laughed, a smile blooming across his face but Shizuo could read the signs. Izaya was incredibly nervous right now. “Honestly I just… I don’t talk to them much, like my parents, and I just don’t share things with everyone I know. What about you? Do your grandparents know you’re shacking up with another man, much less a former enemy?”
Izaya was getting a squeaky tone to his voice that he usually got when he talked about himself, most specifically, things he didn’t like to talk about, which made him nervous. When Izaya couldn’t direct the subject towards another person, he was in trouble.
“Neither of my grandparents on both my parents’ sides are living,” Shizuo told him. “So no.”
“Ah.” Izaya said, in that matter-of-fact tone of his that he made when he didn’t know what else to say. Shizuo heaved a sigh. Izaya was always weird about his family, so this wasn’t a completely unexpected event. Shizuo could sense the tension in the other’s shoulders and hear the anxiety pouring out of the other’s docile tone of voice. Still though, Shizuo thought turning away from him with a frown. Was Shizuo really so bewildering a person for Izaya to feel better not having him there?
It was time for Izaya to leave later that night and though Shizuo offered to go with them to the car rental place, Izaya insisted on saying goodbye at the door.
“You won’t miss me even a little?” Izaya teased, that same tension rising tightly in his shoulders. Shizuo studied him with a solemn expression.
“I’ll let you know once you get there.”
“Haha! You’re so unnecessarily withholding sometimes.” Izaya said, batting his eyelashes. His fake smile was pinned in place.
Shizuo glared at him, standing there in the doorway, clearly hiding something, and likely feeling guilty about it, but would never fess up.
“I bet you’ll miss me.” Shizuo told him dryly.
“Oh undoubtedly. Who even am I without my better half around?” Izaya said, leaning into his space for a quick kiss. Shizuo begrudgingly complied, but it was very short, and he could tell Izaya sensed his reluctance. “I’ll see you in a few days!”
Shizuo watched his retreating form as he got into the elevator and disappeared into the night. He continued to glare into the dimly lit space of the hallway for a long time before stomping back into their apartment door.
“If you don’t like your family you can just say so you know. Dumbass.” Shizuo muttered under his breath before sitting down on the couch to watch TV for the remainder of the evening.
Shizuo pondered over the next few days, just what it was about Izaya’s family that Izaya wanted to hide. When Shizuo had first met Izaya’s parents they seemed perfectly normal enough, at least at first. His dad was, in a very subtle way, an eccentric man of sorts, always talking about Japanese virtues and philosophies. He could prattle on and on about something Shizuo would only halfway understand but he was so earnest and cheerful and sincere about it that he couldn’t really get annoyed. His mother, on the other hand, was a bit on the quiet side, not speaking much unless spoken to, perhaps sometimes a bit stern. There weren’t many people out there that could properly scold Izaya Orihara, and Kyouko Orihara was one of them.
What Shizuo found the most interest, perhaps, about Izaya’s parents were how different Izaya acted when they were around. He was all smiles and laughing over nothing and very accommodating to everyone as much as he could. It was perhaps the most peculiar side of Izaya that Shizuo had ever encountered.
That’s how Shizuo had figured out Izaya wasn’t lying about where he was going. Still though, were Izaya’s grandparents really all that different from his parents? And why did Izaya act that way in the first place?
“How is your family?” Shizuo asked gruffly over the phone the second night Izaya was gone and Izaya had finally called him for the first time. “Since there’s so many of you do you like, start a huge fire to commemorate the occasion?”
“My Shizu-chan, you’re so creative!” Izaya’s voice was verbose and overexaggerated. “Perhaps we should put you in charge of your family outings in the future!”
“We’d all just end up staying home watching sports. Answer my question, you lout.”
“Oh about my family? They’re all doing as well as ever! Mairu and Kururi have not stopped gushing about all the damn trees everywhere. As if they’ve never seen a tree before.”
“Well they’re mostly just in the parks in Tokyo so I get how they feel,” Shizuo agreed. “Where’d you go to take pictures?”
“We haven’t taken any yet. We visited an old temple and prayed for their continued good health and took a long walk. I’m very tired.”
“I see.” Shizuo stiffened.
“Do you miss me?” Izaya’s voice cooed into his ear. “Is this time apart teaching you the beauty of my presence in your life?”
“As if,” Shizuo said, “Take as many damn tours as you want.”
“Haha! Aw Shizu-chan, we can come back here together on our own sometime. I’m sure you’ll be able to become one with your inner beast out here with all these trees and wild birds.”
There was a pause as Shizuo didn’t fall for such obvious bait.
“It’ll probably be a day or two more than I initially said…” Izaya admitted. “So you’ll have to go on without me a bit longer.”
Shizuo tensed, gripping hard on the phone. Suddenly the last two days flooded back to him and Shizuo realized just how little he’d been doing compared to what he had proclaimed. None of it really appealed to him, and he missed cuddling up with Izaya on the couch while Izaya bitched about whatever Shizuo was watching on television.
“Yeah I figured after you said the pictures didn’t happen. Didn’t realize your grandparents liked to do so much as a family. It’s nice.”
“Well they don’t really, all that much!” Izaya admitted, the grandiose pitch returning to his voice. “I guess such a long-lasting marriage inspired them a bit.”
“I see. Well, maybe I can meet them sometime.” Shizuo didn’t hide the resentment in his voice.
“Oh come on Shizu-chan, are you still on about that? Listen, I…”
In the background he could hear a higher pitched voice calling Izaya. Mairu perhaps? Shizuo can’t distinguish it all that well from far away.
“Ah, Shizu-chan I’m afraid I have to go now. I’ll text you before bed, so don’t stay up too late alright?”
Shizuo’s scowl deepened. “Whatever. I’ll see you in two more days I guess.”
“Okay then. Talk to you tomorrow!”
“Yeah.” Shizuo said, before throwing the phone against the couch, which luckily even for him, didn’t do much more than make a really weird sound upon impact.
Why didn’t he just invite Shizuo too?
Four days was too long, Shizuo decided. He should’ve put his foot down. Four days. Four whole days? Shizuo couldn’t remember the last time they’d spent that long apart. It was entirely too long, and Shizuo was going to be livid if Izaya told him he’d be away for longer than that. Did the flea even have enough clothes for four days? He likely wouldn’t have a problem buying new clothes for it, but didn’t his grandparents realize how inconvenient that would be for him? Unless Izaya just didn’t say anything about needing more clothes.
It’s not like it didn’t sound like something Izaya would do, when he was around his family. Shizuo huffed a long sigh and went outside to smoke a cigarette.
“You’ve been irritable since Izaya left, man,” Tom noted as they clocked out for the night. “Is he really that great?”
“Huh?” Shizuo gaped, stopping in his tracks. He felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “Not exactly.”
“Well when he gets back, and you cheer up make sure to give him a big kiss or hug or whatever it is you two do,” Tom’s face contorted uncomfortably in thought, “On my behalf, alright?”
“What? Gross. Shut up.”
“I’m just playing around man. When’s he coming back anyway?”
“Hopefully tonight.”
“Uh-huh. Hopefully?”
Shizuo avoided making eye contact with him. “Oh shut up.”
Shizuo stomped around the apartment in a huff for the fifteenth time that night as he waited for the inevitable text from Izaya that said he would be late. When he first received it he thought Izaya was gonna say he would be gone for another two days, and was ready to throw Izaya’s desk out the window. He was relieved it was just an ‘I’ll be late’ text, since he was used to those, but he was still increasingly irritable. It soon became clear that by late Izaya meant really late. Did his family really keep him out for that long? Shizuo didn’t think they were all that close.
Well whatever. Izaya could keep all the secrets he liked. Shizuo would simply refuse to admit that he missed him.
He did though.
He was nearly asleep, but the glare of the bathroom light and the roar of the shower stirred him enough to crack an eye open. He was still mad enough to think about going back to sleep, but he sat up instead and got to his feet. Izaya wasn’t looking as he stepped out of the shower and onto the scale to weigh himself, as per usual. He stared down intently with such a solemn expression Shizuo might have thought he’d gained a pound or something, if the flea weren’t so obviously too skinny. When he turned to check himself out in the mirror, he caught a glance of Shizuo’s figure and looked back.
“Oh hello there.”
“Welcome home.” Shizuo said. Now that he was staring at Izaya’s figure again, he felt significantly more relaxed.
Izaya nodded. “Sorry if I woke you. I’m afraid Tokichi and Natsu kept us out quite late this afternoon, so we left later than we meant to.”
“Those are your grandparents names? You shouldn’t call them that so casually.” Shizuo said, not remarking on what Izaya said at all.
Izaya gave him a small smile. “They send their regards. And they hope to meet you in the future, should we stay together.”
Suddenly Shizuo’s shoulders slackened. “You told them who I am?” he said, a bit taken aback.
“Well, it seemed to be causing you so much distress.” Izaya said, as he applied moisturizer to his face, completely distracting himself from looking directly at Shizuo. “So yes, I did.”
“A-And? What did they say?”
“Just what I told you. That they’d like to meet you sometime.”
“…I see.” Shizuo felt a little satisfied by that. He looked down at the floor, feeling the rush of emotion that Izaya was not embarrassed of him to show him to his family.
When Izaya turned around to look at him now, he was beaming dangerously at him, in that off-putting way Izaya would do when something was bothering him.
“So will you stop giving me the cold shoulder now?” Izaya said too cheerfully.
“Ah.” Shizuo was like a deer in the headlights, “I… I wasn’t…”
“That wasn’t all that they said of course,” Izaya continued, with a flourish of his hands, and Shizuo did his best not to stare at the short towel around Izaya’s waist. “They’re a bit old fashioned you see, so of course when I told them you were a man they wanted to know all about it. They lectured me for four days straight about how inappropriate it is for a man to lie with another man, that Japanese population is on the decline anyway, yadda yadda yadda. You know I don’t think I’ve ever heard my grandfather speak so much in my entire life! But, of course by the end of it I all they really wanted to know was what you could really be like and wanted to meet you. Mairu and Kururi showed them pictures of you and all they could talk about was how handsome you are. Typical sweet shining Shizu-chan, making fans wherever you go.”
Shizuo stared at him in awe as Izaya slowly devolved into a bout of emotion he was familiar with.
“That’s why you didn’t want me to come?” Shizuo demanded, “You thought your grandparents would like me more than they like you?”
“Excuse me? I told them about you didn’t I?” Izaya demanded, scowling. “You know, what’s so wrong with wanting to keep parts of life secret from my family? It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Then why?” Shizuo said, “Why did you say I couldn’t come?”
“Because I just didn’t! What do you care? You wouldn’t have had a good time.”
“Because then we would’ve been together! And whatever weird insecurities you have about your family you can always share with me, you know that!”
Izaya grimaced and looked down at the floor. He reached onto the back of the bathroom door and pulled on his bathrobe. He walked past Shizuo without saying anything, heaving a big sigh.
“So then does this mean you did miss me?” he asked.
“Oh shut up,” Shizuo snapped. “Of course I did.”
Izaya turned to face him, smiling jovially. “Aww Shizu-chan! I missed you too.”
“Izaya!” Shizuo snapped, but before he had the chance to get mad Izaya had crossed the thresholds between them and threw his arms around Shizuo, burying his head in the other’s chest.
“I really did…” Izaya murmured. “Miss you.”
Shizuo stiffened and then scoffed. “Moron. You didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
“Then why…?”
“I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“W-What?”
“That me. The fake me,” Izaya said softly, “I didn’t want you to see that fake person I pretend to be around my parents and grandparents. I… I think you’d hate me for it.”
Shizuo was thoughtful.
“Nah. I already hate you, so it doesn’t matter.”
Izaya snorted.
Shizuo pulled away from Izaya’s hug enough that he could pull Izaya into a proper kiss. Izaya hummed fervently against his mouth, and Shizuo slipped his hand inside Izaya’s bathrobe enough to press his hand against his still damp chest. When they broke free Shizuo rested his head on Izaya’s shoulder.
“For the record I already know how fake you are around your parents.”
Izaya made a sound of amusement.
“Of course I missed you. I was so pissed at you. Are you kidding?”
“Ha. Yeah, I know.” Izaya squeezed him. “I probably missed you more if it’s any consolation.”
Jeez, was Izaya really admitting that? It must have been bad.
“Welcome home,” Shizuo told him gently. Izaya’s shoulders relaxed.
“Ah Shizu-chan,” Izaya said breezily, “That’s all I wanted to hear from you.”