Chapter Text
It hits him one night when they had been bickering or bitching about something, and Izaya had taken his hand out of the blue: warmth had surged through him so suddenly it was almost unpleasant. Izaya had gone to sleep holding his hand as casually as anything, while Shizuo had lay there with his heart in his mouth, vaguely terrified that something so simple could make him feel so much, the implications of it.
The way this feels, I could fall for him, I could love him.
Which is a shame as, the next day, Izaya finally insists on leaving.
“I knew it,” Shinra says triumphantly, when Shizuo finally caves and tells them. “It was that night you stayed over, right? I knew it would happen sooner or lately. He’s liked you since school.”
“I don't know," Shizuo says. "Sometimes I catch him looking at me like he hates me.”
-It's because it's too soon, Celty types quickly, and Shizuo can't help wondering if she's right.
Even Shinra tells him not to get attached, not yet.
“I thought you guys were just fooling around," he says, with his usual tact. "Give it a little longer before, you know, anything else."
As if he had any control over his own stupidity.
"Come and see me, Shizu-chan," Izaya says when he leaves, and even though he says it like he means it, Shizuo doesn't believe him, and it doesn't make him feel any better.
He doesn't get in touch with Izaya, doesn't hear anything about him, but the informant calls himself about a week later, and says irritably, with no preamble,
"Do you want to come over for brownies or not?"
Shizuo never expected to like Shinjuku.
He’d never thought about the place much before other than as Izaya’s territory, but after a few weekends there, after a very tentative routine starts to develop, he finds it growing on him. He likes going to sleep and not waking up to the blare of traffic. He likes how there are more parks, more open spaces, less crowds, shorter lines for coffee. There are no zombies or weird shit, the kids don’t all look like gangs in training. There’s more sun, as the buildings aren't so crowded together, better sunsets. It’s a pleasant change of air. He understands why Izaya left Ikebukuro in the first place all those years ago.
It is like a weekly respite for him. He even smokes less, as Izaya won’t let him smoke in bed and he can’t always be bothered getting up.
He wonders how many people have clicked on. Celty and Shinra wouldn’t gossip, but it’s quite obvious even to those who don't know him well that he’s out of town every weekend.
-We never see you anymore, Celty types, whenever they catch up. –How’s it going?
He dodges the question, vaguely tells her the neighbourhood is more peaceful.
He doesn't tell her that the third time he tried to leave, Izaya had said, "Where are you going?" and pulled him back by the shirt to kiss him. "I told you I'm a mess," he explained, when Shizuo just looked stunned. "If you want to go ahead and risk it anyway, that's your problem."
He doesn't tell her how close he's come to the L word.
He also doesn’t tell her that that, except for that last night at Shizuo's place, even after they'd started having sex, Izaya still hasn't told him a thing. That he will sit there with his eyes narrowed and his hands ice-cold when he's having a bad night, usually with some form of furniture between them, that he'll look at Shizuo blankly like he can't remember why he's here, or sometimes even resentfully, like he regrets ever letting the other man near him. That sometimes he is distant, he will push food at Shizuo absently and not eat any himself, give Shizuo a wide berth, and answer 'yes' or 'fine' to literally anything he says.
That some days he doesn’t even answer the phone, always has some flimsy excuse or lie for it.
Or that he's secretly afraid Izaya will one day decide it’s too much effort and just cut him off, or worse.
He gets a call from Izaya one night, and Shizuo can tell right away that there's something off about his voice.
"Did I wake you up?"
"Mm, s'all right. Are you OK?"
"Mm-hmm. I'm drunk. Hammered, actually."
"OK," he says, waking up a little bit more. "How come? Did you go out?"
Izaya doesn't say anything for a long time.
"I was sad," he says eventually. "Do you want to come over? I want to have sex."
He glances at the clock, even though there's no question of him going.
"I'll come over, but we're not having sex. Not when you're hammered."
"What?" He's so outraged it's almost funny. "What do you mean? We've done it drunk before."
"I know. I don't want it to become a thing."
"You're such a girl," he complains. Then his voice wavers. "I've been sad," he says again. "I miss you."
"You should have said."
"It's not so bad when you're here," he says. "It's when you're not."
"I'm coming now," he says. "Just hang on."
By the time he gets there, of course, Izaya is dead to the world and claims to remember nothing. But he doesn't protest when Shizuo starts coming over more often.
Another few months down the line and Shizuo hasn’t said anything to anyone, least of all to Izaya, but the lease on his apartment is coming up in just over six weeks, and...well. His landlord hasn’t contacted him, assuming he’s staying on, like every year. Another year of the same shit. He's maybe getting ahead of himself, but he can't help it.
No-one in Shinjuku is afraid of him the way they are in Ikebukuro. Although he’d calmed down a lot over the years, his reputation in Ikebukuro would always be stuck. He’s tired of it.
But, he needs to think about this more carefully.
He still works in Ikebukuro. All his friends are there. Shinjuku is still very much Izaya’s territory.
And besides, he couldn’t afford the rent, and he doesn’t know how comfortable he is with someone else paying the lion’s share.
And most importantly, he hasn’t so much as hinted at any of this to Izaya, and Izaya hasn’t brought it up.
Izaya, with an irony that is lost on neither of them, is staying out of Ikebukuro when he can help it. He’s pissed off too many people to ever really save his reputation, and tends to avoid confrontations nowadays.
Izaya may still find a lot of Ikebukuro's bullshit funny, but he doesn’t have to live there. Shizuo does. Sure, Shizuo had developed a kind of masochistic fondness for the place over time, but now he’s just…what? Outgrown it? He has more friends now, and he keeps his temper better, but his life still doesn't feel like it's going forward. He practically lives in Shinjuku already when he’s not working.
But, even at this point, sort of but not quite thinking about moving in, Izaya still hasn’t told him much. He’s as busy as he used to be, his dark humour returns, and he is affectionate in a flippant, almost poker-faced kind of way that’s easy to see through.
He’s still cocky, still antagonistic, but he’ll hit Shizuo with a pillow when he insults him to show he doesn’t mean it, he'll bring Shizuo a glass of milk in bed and massage his shoulders after work. Even when he has bad days, when he gets a spacey and full of silent anger, he’ll still push food at Shizuo that he won't touch himself and still, usually, come to bed.
So, maybe it still isn't quite time.
But, on the other hand, he thinks back to when Izaya could barely even hold his hand, and thinks of how far they've come. He still doesn't know shit about the bastard who hurt him, but he knows he's been dead for over a year and that Izaya's thrown his lighter out.
And, possibly the most important thing at all, Shizuo wants to. He wants to live with his emotionally disturbed ex-rival who'd made his life hell more than anything.
"You're too quiet," Izaya says in his ear one night, straddling him, when he's thinking all this. "What is it?"
"I..."
Shizuo struggles for a moment. Aside from when he's having a bad day, Izaya can generally more or less read his mind, and it's difficult to have to express himself.
"I just get worried sometimes that you might..." he trails off, waiting for Izaya to figure it out, but he just sits back looking puzzled.
"Might what?"
"You know, when you've had a bad day..." he prompts. "Hurt yourself?"
"Oh," he says. He sits back, looking vaguely disturbed at the idea. "Oh, no. I don't think you have to worry about that, not any more."
"No?"
He shakes his head.
"You don't know how it feels to be, you know, normal again. Having sex and enjoying it. It's..." He shakes his head, unable to explain. "It's better than I thought. I'm...feeling better."
"OK," he says, feeling an old, old tension uncurl. "Good."
Izaya is still looking at him.
"What else?"
"I...well, I was thinking of moving," he says vaguely. Izaya's eyes brighten with interest.
"Oh, really? You mean closer to Shinjuku, right? I think that's a great idea. You live much too far away. You don't even like Ikebukuro."
Shizuo lets him chatter on, holding him, as he offers up various districts and weighs up their pros and cons. He doesn't clarify that he meant them moving in together, but he doesn't think it'll be too long before he catches on.