PART 11 OVERFLOW
DURARARA!! KINK MEME PT.11 OVERFLOW
This post is only for new and continuing fics from part 11! Please do not post new requests here.
ATTN all authors moving fics to this part:
Please put the original URL to your request somewhere in the first part of the fic, just so people a) know what it's for and b) to make things easier for russia_sushi-tachi. Thank you ( Read more... )
This post is only for new and continuing fics from part 11! Please do not post new requests here.
ATTN all authors moving fics to this part:
Please put the original URL to your request somewhere in the first part of the fic, just so people a) know what it's for and b) to make things easier for russia_sushi-tachi. Thank you ( Read more... )
I hope that this method of threading new updates works okay. The original request can be found here: http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/6253.html?thread=23934573#t23934573
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Returning from her small handful of odd jobs and errands, Celty would like to be able to say that she’s surprised to find Shizuo waiting with Shinra in their apartment. She’d like to be surprised by his new air of dread-heavy responsibility and something bordering on guilt. By the relative silence in the other room and the obvious exhaustion of forcing help on someone who needs but can’t handle it.
She’d even like to have to wonder what he intends to do from here on, but she knows Heiwajima Shizuo.
“Hey,” he mumbles tiredly, and she nods thoughtfully. Whips out her PDA and then pauses to come up with a decent response - doesn’t want to be transparent, doesn’t want to add to the pressure and certainly doesn’t want to make anything more awkward or infuriating than it already is.
Thanks for coming, she decides, and Shizuo returns her nod without smiling.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Sorry - guess I might be here ‘th you guys for a while…”
She wonders if she should fake surprise. Shinra smiles sympathetically from his quiet place on the couch ( ... )
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Right - he can see it, too, the fine layer of tension tracing every curve of Shizuo’s hunched figure. The look in his eyes - confusion, guilt and the shock of enduring a world too quickly changed. Torn and tearing more with every passing second.
It’s not hard to sympathize, but Shizuo is a special case and their attempts to calm him down may only be weakly effective at best.
“You think it was random,” Shizuo says, gruffly.
We don’t know. He may be able to tell us -
Shizuo speaks again before Celty can show him the message she’s typing - rocks to his feet and takes a slow breath, then - “He needs help, and I - I mean, I might be the only one who…”
Shinra turns away to apologize. “It’s not your fault, Shizuo-kun, so don’t think that you have to -”
-that you have to take it all upon yourself, but beneath that unvoiced apology is the acknowledgment that Shinra’s already let Shizuo do just that. If he has a chance then he has no choice but to try, and as a calming influence he’s already indispensable. Trapped, maybe, a closed ( ... )
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A/N: Hey, so it's really been a while! What else is new?
Izaya has only ever thought of himself.
It’s not that he can’t help it - hell, he could care if he tried, and he does - or did, anyway - but that was the caring of a scientist watching cagefuls of lab rats. It wasn’t sympathy and it definitely wasn’t benevolence. Just the narcissistic self-satisfaction of the man he used to be - right, the one who did everything for his own benefit, who laughed at others’ misfortune and who gladly would have watched a person die so long as they could be deemed somehow worthy of the honor.
He’s always known better than anyone how to manipulate people. That means thinking about others, but it’s an impersonal thing. It means - no, it meant nothing.
He can’t quite reconcile himself to thinking about things in the past tense, but then again he also can’t help it -
- the fact that he’s starting to understand exactly what it means to be ‘empty’ inside.
Today is a good day. He can’t feel the floor beneath his bed vibrating. He doesn’t get the ( ... )
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Sunglasses.
O-oh, it’s…
…it’s him…
Izaya swallows a short whimper and tries not to think too much as he nods stiffly - permission granted, calm just barely returning. He’s not sure how, really, but he trusts Shizuo enough to let him come closer - take the fear away again, erase the shadows with whatever light he might possibly provide - and he does, so the floor and bed vibrate a little and he must be pulling up a chair, moving closer and Izaya can feel his warmth again -
- his hand slowly raised to another’s lips and the soft contours of a greeting.
Better today?
Izaya lets his own lips turn down at the corners. It should be answer enough.
He feels Shizuo smile into his fingers. That’s good news.
That’s - it’s frustrating, honestly, that Shizuo’s just succeeded in completely missing the simple point. He’s the only one in whom Izaya can trust, after all, so maybe if he’d try just a little hard to understand -
Listen, Shizuo mouths, and if Izaya could he might actually laugh at the obvious stupidity of that request. Shizu- ( ... )
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“They’ll need to come off in around two weeks.”
Shizuo glances up at the sound of Shinra’s voice. He’s been slouched way over a steaming cup of coffee - milk with coffee, maybe, but to Shinra it seems that in just a handful of days he’s already started to seek out caffeine in larger doses - for a while now, muttering every now and then about how he has work soon and he wonders if Izaya’s gonna be okay, having his bandages and stuff changed without the blonde around to keep him calm…?
It is almost too good to be true, the effect that Shizuo’s had on Izaya. Shinra’d been hoping for a glimmer of recognition, maybe, and then he’d expected his friend’s strength to come in handier than anything else. Ironically, though, Shizuo hasn’t had to use said strength more than three or four times in plenty more than twice as many days. That certainly beats the doctor’s expectations; the hysteria’s not nearly as consistent anymore.
It’s an improvement that no one could have seen coming.
Shinra’s present comment is a response to another of Shizuo’ ( ... )
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“‘S really ruined - right?” Shizuo interrupts, brow creasing and he starts to worry his lower lip - sharp teeth on chapped skin, repeated, rough motion that finally results in a light tear and swelling dot of blood.
Shinra exhales slowly. “Effectively - yes. It’s almost certainly going to be about as useful as the other…”
The blonde looks away. “What are his options, then?”
“I’d like to recommend a prosthesis,” Shinra explains, “but that would require multiple trips to see a certified specialist -”
“Can’t you do it?” Shizuo wonders, his voice sharp with an unmistakable note of surprise.
Shinra shakes his head. “I don’t have the resources for anything that complex, Shizuo-kun, and a professional will do a better job, anyway.”
“Y’mean… better like more - ah… realistic?”
Shinra tries to hide a shudder by tightening his one-handed grip on his upper arm. The effort’s probably not particularly effective, but Shizuo’s not paying enough attention to catch that brief show of emotion, anyway.
“Yes,” he answers, sounding distant even to ( ... )
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A/N: Thanks to the kind anon who commented on the last chapter! I only just found it when I came to post my update, so I'm sorry for not saying anything earlier!
At what point - when and how and why - does Shizuo start to look forward to moments like that - Izaya relatively calm, broken pieces of him coming together all at once and honest words shared through fingers and lips and quiet caresses, tight embraces?
For Shizuo, it might be because hope has always been a thing that had to be clung to - uselessly, of course, always so far from approachable and self-control never more than a vague almost-goal of sorts. Hope’s always been his passive means of acknowledgment - that he’s not really a good person, doesn’t matter that he wants to be, and also that he might be able to change. Maybe. Somehow - and he doesn’t know, doesn’t have any idea, but it’s nice to think about, anyway. It makes all the bad stuff feel a little better even at the worst of times.
Shizuo can’t help thinking about making it all a little more than that for Izaya ( ... )
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They’ll stare anyway, Shizu-chan. They know me.
He stops for a second, twists his head to one side and all his muscles drawn tight about the pain he’s probably starting to feel again in the absence of the old medication. His breath is coming fast and slow, his mouth open to drag in air and then to throw it all back out again.
The first day of that - the weaker pain relief, not as much and not as powerful - had left him a sobbing, hurting mess, all pleas for them to take it away and Shinra shaking his head, looking sympathetic and apologetic but never budging an inch. Shizuo had wanted to do something - get him off it more gradually, maybe, or let him recover more than this before taking the drugs away - but Shinra had managed to convince him not to interfere.
“This is why we can’t,” he’d murmured. “If we give him any more of the stronger dosage, his body will completely stop manufacturing its own natural painkillers. He could even fall into a medically-induced coma, Shizuo-kun - no, it’s because he’s too dependent on it, which ( ... )
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No one expects you to be perfect.
“It’s not like that,” Shizuo insists quickly, but his hand curls into a fist, anyway, and he might as well be telling her that it is. “I just - know that he needs this. He won’t listen to anyone else, so if I can’t get him to understand, he’ll just… stay like that forever.”
Celty has to resist the urge to type quickly, then, because she wants Shizuo to pay real attention to what she has to say. The point seems simple enough, but that’s probably why Shizuo’s forgotten it in his hurry to fix everything at once.
When she’s finished typing, she passes the little screen to him deliberately and watches shadows spark in his eyes as he gives the screen a quick once-over.
That wouldn’t make it your fault. You’ve done a lot more than we thought you’d be able to manage, and besides - I think anyone in his position would hesitate over something like that. It’s a big step.
Running his palm and fingers through his hair and then on down his face, Shizuo nods. He looks - well, incredibly grim, like he ( ... )
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Celty nods - still wearing her helmet, just-returned from another job and still more accustomed to speaking to Shizuo like this - prompting him to keep going, think it through talk it through figure it out.
“Thinking,” Shizuo repeats, eyes widening as color floods his cheeks, “maybe I was just too shocked to do anything else. I couldn’t sit around doing nothing, even if it was Izaya. So I stayed.
“It hasn’t even been that long,” he sighs. “But it’s still kinda changed some things, I guess.”
It’s alright to care.
Shizuo almost chokes on his words. “I - I know! I was - I mean I do. That’s all I can do, anyway - half the time.” Celty wonders if she should interject, then, but her friend’s not done, anyway - and he smiles melancholically as he adds, “I’d feel like I was taking something from him if I used this just as a way to deal with my own things. I guess… it’d be fine if I could just see him off to a good start.”
If that’s all…
Shizuo blinks, for the first time dropping the deeply agonized look to watch her blankly - ( ... )
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He’s not sure how long he’s been awake - whether he’s even really conscious right now, relatively lucid and not just dreaming in and out again, jerked back into a hot, chest-aching, painful-restless slew of nightmares and too-strong tides of emotion. That’s how it’s been all day - night, morning, evening, he’ll never know - and maybe Izaya shouldn’t even be bothered by the fact that he can’t distinguish between dream and reality anymore.
He can’t help it. Someone’s holding his hand, but he could almost swear that he can hear them whispering - to him, maybe, or to someone he can’t see at all - until he catches a quick flicker, a needle-sharp flash of light, there-and-gone bright. He imagines a face, a smile, sad brown eyes. Something yellow, but there’s no word left in his slow-creeping mind to describe it any better than that.
He imagines a low beeping, too, like a dolphin chattering away - separated by miles and miles and endless gallons of water - and the antiseptic smell, there’s that, too.
He’s not thinking about any of it, of ( ... )
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Izaya shakes his head; he doesn’t know. Maybe he’ll die - or, actually, he’s sure he will, abandoned when they all grow tired of his empty shell and self-pity and panic. It doesn’t matter and he doesn’t care - doesn’t need anywhere to go, doesn’t need anyone.
Death is fine. Shizuo’s the one who doesn’t get that.
You’re - what - and it takes Izaya a moment to register the question mark, the tone he can’t hear, only infer - twenty-five? He doesn’t deny that, doesn’t move, so Shizuo chooses to interpret it as an affirmative and keeps going.
You can’t check out that early, doesn’t matter who you are or how much I hate you.
‘Hate you’ - oh, Izaya knows, but he forgets much of the time these days. He’s probably lost most of his own capacity for that kind of thing, after all, and besides - this Shizu-chan is invisible, calm, non-violent and the only one standing between Izaya and total isolation. He’s lips and hands and awkward and - and he tries, really does. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be here, at Izaya’s side with not so much as a ( ... )
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It’s a funny story, actually. Izaya needs Shizuo, and of course he has for a while - but now that he’s acknowledged it, the fact’s a thousand times worse and a million times more indelible.
Shizuo shakes his head, at first slowly and then gradually faster - violently, desperately - he can’t need me like that, not so badly, he doesn’t mean it, doesn’t know, there’s still hope, a chance - when he gets better -
But the meaning is clear, and he knows it. Izaya’s just responding to what Shizuo’s promised, to his demands and stupid excuses and faulty explanations. For him, getting better means getting better with ‘Shizu-chan.’ It means remaining close to the man who’s filling the cracks with pieces of himself. It means wanting to reach out and take hold of the hand that’s been so forcefully offered to him.
“Sorry, Izaya,” he whispers. The informant’s lips part for a moment, and then he bites them and shakes his head clumsily. “No, it’s - don’t cry, please…”
How long will you wait, Shizu-chan? How long will you - a choking sob - w-wait ( ... )
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Izaya turns away for a moment, then turns back and pushes his free hand through the air until he finds Shizuo’s shoulder and bunches the fabric of his shirt up in his hand. Shizuo’s heart pounds, seeing that - Izaya moving on his own again, kind of getting away from the bed, and calm - so when the informant tries to tug him close, he only hesitates briefly before following the movement, leaning in.
Right. Everything Shizu-chan does is wrong. You can’t fix it, so don’t bother trying.
“What’s that supposed to -?”
Izaya shakes his head, lets go of Shizuo’s shoulder and pulls his other hand free of the blonde’s. Shizuo wonders if the conversation’s supposed to end there - fuck, and he hasn’t convinced the flea of anything, hasn’t accomplished a single damn thing, confusion aside - but Izaya surprises him by reaching up and -
- and cupping his face in his hands, bony and thin and cold and alive fingers.
Shizuo’s mouth falls open, and for a fleeting moment nothing moves. And then Izaya’s hands move a little higher, his fingers ( ... )
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