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... )
Izaya is well aware of the dangers inherent in the job he’s chosen for himself. He’s doing exceedingly well at it despite that - or because of it, maybe, and that’s more often than not what he likes to believe - and his age has earned him the additional title of prodigy in a good number of circles. It was a hindrance at first; as a fifteen-something kid claiming to deal in information known not even to some of the underground’s top brass, he was only rarely given the chance to prove his worth.
Naturally, though, he was quick to force the point. He’s ruined quite a few people in just under two years, so if he’s not fearsome he’s at least one to be approached delicately. Notoriety like that is one of his aims, and handling it with an appropriate degree of caution is an important point of pride.
And that caution doesn’t just mean keeping his drinks out of strangers’ hands, either. It probably should mean avoiding Shizu-chan and his little outbursts, but that’s not fun, and besides - he can handle Heiwajima Shizuo. The guy’s an idiot, but not really out to kill him - regardless of what he himself may say - and that’s why he’s more entertaining than anything else.
Izaya relaxes when he’s out exploring the city, too, but that’s also where the constant need to be wary comes into play. He’s not just watching for Shizuo; the corners of his eyes are perpetually trained on dark patches, shadows. Sharp corners and alleyways. When he twirls on the point of his heel to scan the sweeping panorama of his city, he’s also checking to see that no one’s tailing him.
He’s never allowed anyone to find his house and family. He’d rather not lose either of them to third-rate gangsters or power-thirsty yakuza, after all, and then he needs all of that as a safe base of operations, anyway. Pride and practicality.
There’s this: the defense he’s built, the fact of practicing hard with knives - for throwing, for making delicate, accurate cuts and startling potential attackers into dropped guards - and he’s also fast-getting-faster thanks to his near-daily running away from Shizu-chan. He makes a point of concealing his emotions, even arbitrarily. He’s perfected his poker face, and to say that he ever lets even a hint of weakness show through would be almost laughably inaccurate. Not even Shinra knows exactly what goes on in his mind.
And, for all of that, he’s almost bored to the point of apathy when it all falls through.
He can’t be quite as hyperactive, bouncy, alert when he’s with his more important clients. As a seventeen year old who probably looks more naïve than any of the hundreds of idiot adults out there, he has to be aloof and coolly polite to impress the people that surround him.
If the buttoned-up businessman - a new CEO, awfully young for his position, himself - seeing Izaya now wants to fall just a bit farther behind him than could be called purely conventional, that’s fine. It has to be fine, because to indicate any sort of discomfort would be the same as showing fear. And he’s not afraid, not even uncomfortable.
Annoyed - that’s all.
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He’s leading the way to a meeting place of his own choosing, anyway, so he decides that the man’s simply testing his resolve. It’s dark - very dark, moonless night and few lights or people in this part of the city - so with most of the situation’s control well within his own hands, Izaya’s sure that’s all it is.
Despite the warning signs - despite the achingly uncertain, buried-deep voice of reason.
He’s rarely wrong. The only thing that manages to convince him of his mistake this time is the crack of something hard and sharp against the back of his head - and then, of course, he sees a rush of gray, blurred-out lights and nothing.
The prodigy falls.
~~*~~
The first irritation of waking up is the light that surrounds him. His head is ringing with it, his vision fading in and out as his thoughts struggle to catch up with the sudden juxtaposition of night and sun. His hand is lying limp in front of his face. Everything is skewed wrong, he thinks, and then he recognizes his position as horizontal, the surface upon which he’s lying as a broad swath of newspapers on carpet.
The indignity of that position is the second annoyance, and the predictably familiar voice of his client the third. What really bothers him isn’t even the sound itself, though, but the tone it carries.
“Having a hard time, Orihara-kun?”
Izaya grunts disgustedly in response and works to clear his dry throat for a retort. The most he manages is a short whine; the man laughs amiably at it, at Izaya.
“Seems the drug’s a bit much for a kid as small as you, after all. I’d heard you were a hardy guy, really, but I suppose it is what it is, huh?”
“Suppose… so…” Izaya croaks, finally managing to tie his ragged voice to words. “Too bad.”
“I wouldn’t say that, kid,” the guy laughs. He crosses into Izaya’s field of vision, then, kneels in front of him and sinks his fingers into Izaya’s hair. He uses it to pull him upright; Izaya bites back a pained noise, his teeth tight together and he hopes to hell that nothing winds up getting yanked entirely loose. “This is exactly what I wanted, after all. Didn’t your parents ever warn you to keep your guard up around strangers?”
Izaya laughs in spite of himself. The sound is rough, but it restores a good deal of his courage. “Now, I can’t seem to remember. I’ve done a good job of it until now, haven’t I?”
“Until now,” the man agrees with a sudden smirk. He lets go of Izaya’s hair, at least, and the informant slumps back against the wall; his limbs are about as useful to him as noodles, it seems.
“And? I don’t have much in the way of money, you know. You’d have been better off getting that dirt on your competitors, I’m sure.”
“Oh, of course,” the guy laughs. “I’m not too worried about that, though. After all” - he all but purrs the word as his hands fall to the hem of Izaya’s T-shirt - “money’s not an issue at the moment. I’d much rather have a bit of fun, you know?”
“Fun,” Izaya repeats blandly. He continues to stare up at the man - reluctant to allow himself to be led to that conclusion, refusing to pick up the pieces that would necessarily build comprehension in the place of forced ignorance - and then he smiles. “What could you possibly have in mind?”
Everything is a warning sign. Be quiet, he reads, and fight. Don’t provoke anything worse than the inevitable. But he’s already done that, let himself be captured in the worst way, humiliated by the simple fact of having failed.
Why stop there?
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That’s what skips through his fever-dark mind like so many neon-sign flickers, dying in and out.
He draws a sharp breath as the smooth pads of this stranger’s hands pick their way over the skin of his stomach and chest. They press close and hard and painful to the pink of his nipples, chilling the back of his neck - his hair standing stiffly on end.
“My, my,” he bites, “I never would’ve taken you for a pedophile.”
“So you consider yourself a child, then?” The man seems amused. “And does your body operate in accordance with that, Orihara-kun? Or are you more adult than you’ve yet learned to admit?”
Izaya swallows thickly and refuses to respond. Breathing is suddenly a maddeningly difficult task. His chest is rising and falling irregularly, dry air rasping in his throat as his heart flutters almost painfully under another person’s touch.
This is wrong; he feels it in every fiber of his being, from the flush in his cheeks to the chill of dread pooling in his stomach. He feels no loyalty toward most of the humans he knows, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a betrayal - if of nothing else, then of his love itself. And it’s also an unforgivable trespass. To think that he has the right to touch Izaya, to use his body to pleasure himself - to play with and laugh at him, cut at his heavy-duty pride - this man is funny and misguided and interesting, yes, but he’s also far below Izaya’s love.
“Don’t be getting cocky with me, now,” the man chuckles. His hand pressed to the back of Izaya’s head - fingers tangled up in black - he yanks him so far back that the informant’s neck feels like it’s going to break.
And then he kisses the skin there, first with tongue and then with teeth that scrape and bruise and drag hot blood out onto the smooth white of his throat.
Izaya groans, twitching desperately under his once-client’s ministrations. He can only watch as his shirt is pushed up, his pants down, as this man palms him deliberately through the gray of his boxers and foregoes laughter for satisfied grunts and heavy panting. He sounds like an animal, Izaya decides, and he detests him for it.
Because he’s not a human, or at least he’s not the kind of human that Izaya loves. He’s not a thing to be observed safely from a distance, no, he’s a crushing weight. He’s blinding pain. He’s choking and drowning, muffled cries and bitten-back pleas.
~~*~~
He thinks about Shizu-chan.
He thinks hard about him and his immaturity and how mad it always makes Izaya. He thinks about running fast and leaping and laughing and how he hates the old bruises healing all over his legs. He wonders if he’ll be able to tell, later - which ones are new and which ones are from the fights he starts himself. He wonders if the new ones will somehow manage to overwrite the parts of him that shouldn’t be covered up.
He thinks that maybe, hopefully, he’ll be able to work himself up enough to feel normal. He’ll wash away the mortification with a healthy dose of rage; he’d give almost anything to fly off the handle just like Shizu-chan, just once.
He can’t, though, and - “How’s he do it,” he wonders aloud. His voice sounds tinny to his ears, so he saves himself the trouble and draws his lips into a tight line. His breath wheezes in and out of his nose, oxygen insufficient to keep him from slowly getting lightheaded. He doesn’t care; it’s funny, the apathy. He should care, but he’s too tired to feel it strongly. He hasn’t felt the weight of real depression in a long time.
Being treated and seen as trash - put in that place, himself, he wonders how Shizu-chan can even manage anger most of the time.
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His captor will be back soon enough. Izaya should try to escape - should at least be thinking about it more than he is - but there’s too much pain there for him to deal with. He should stand, but his legs feel too heavy. His arms are too weak to accomplish much of anything; it’s all he can do to drag himself over to the little dish of water that’s been left out for him. It’s intended for dogs, clearly, but his lips and throat hurt so much that he’s willing to make an allowance just this once.
He only gets to wet his tongue, though, before he collapses back, too exhausted to so much as hold himself upright.
~~*~~
“He must be sick,” Shinra comments before the end of their first class. The teacher’d sailed right through the class roster after the bell, barely reacting to Izaya’s failure to respond; he misses even more school than Shizuo does, after all, so it really doesn’t make any damn sense to assume that he’s got something genuinely wrong with him today. “I wonder if it’s because you chased him through the rain before.”
“Tch. Hope it is,” Shizuo mutters into his bare knuckles. He’s sagging lazily onto his arm and desk, tired; he didn’t manage to get much sleep last night, mostly ‘cause of the damn flea and the afterburn of rage without an outlet - Izaya’s fault, of course. It’s his fault most of the time.
“That’s not very nice,” Shinra criticizes with an unconcerned frown. Shizuo just rolls his eyes.
“Izaya’s not around?”
“Ah - Dotachin.”
Kadota sighs and fixes a pointedly deadpan stare on Shinra. “Quit it,” he mutters before turning to Shizuo. “You guys get into another fight or something?”
Shizuo comes close to falling face-first onto his desk. “Why’s everyone think I did something?!”
Kadota chuckles. “Sorry. It was just a guess. Don’t try to tell me it’s not a good one.”
“It’s not,” Shizuo hisses defensively. “He just - ran off, same as always.”
Shinra’s turn to laugh. “The comfortable routine, right?”
“Like hell!”
“I’d hate to have to call that comfortable,” Kadota agrees with a smile that is three-fourths of the way to becoming a smirk. “Unless Shizuo lets him get away, I guess.”
“I don’t,” Shizuo mutters, settling back to cross his arms on his chest and glare at the desk in front of him. “I could care less if he doesn’t show up around here, though.”
~~*~~
Izaya expects the second time to be the same as the first; it’s worse.
His voice cracks after half a sentence, and from there it becomes nearly impossible to stitch it back together again, to stitch it into words and sentences. What he does manage are lung-shattering gasps and broken squeaks, many of them screams caught by the mile-wide lump in his throat.
The thing hanging over him, on the other hand - that half-recognized human form, all charming grins and hot breath - it talks plenty, puts him in his new place with words as much as with actions. He’s to call him his master, think about the position you’re in now and consider not fighting too much - which is ridiculous, anyway, because he’s done a great job of that already.
This time, the man’s hands are cold when he touches Izaya. It’s not that he means to make the informant feel good - that’s just a side effect of the contact he initiates for his own pleasure - but the shock is a rush of blood and the panic a kind of arousal.
“Not so fast, now,” the man coos. “You haven’t got my permission.”
Izaya rocks back when he catches sight of the thing in his master’s hand - and suddenly he’s really just a kid, terrified of the pleasure, more so of the pain, the snap of thin leather closing at the base of his leaking cock.
“Relax,” the man laughs. “It won’t kill you. Wouldn’t want you making a mess of the floor, though, would we?”
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He’ll make a mess of the floor, though. He’ll make a mess of Izaya. And Izaya will lay back with his limbs splayed, limp save for the occasional twisting of his muscles, tensing, shuddering upon every bruising thrust. He’ll whine for release, and when he doesn’t get it he’ll hurt everywhere and bite his lip hard - until it bleeds, stinging, and then he’ll just keep biting.
~~*~~
He wakes up sopping wet in the middle of the third night. He thinks blood, first, and then he thinks cum. Water, maybe, a pointless cruelty exerted by his owner - a joke.
It’s not funny, though - not when he realizes what it really is. His eyes burn, his cheeks, the back of his neck and he can smell it wafting up from his lower body - naked, of course, because not once since the first time has the man holding him here bothered to clothe him in between fucks -
And he can’t move. He should be drugged out of his head, too, but instead it’s just his body that won’t do what he wants it to. His mind is all too clear, too breaking, too broken.
He swallows back bile and wonders how this happened. How he went from top-of-the-world devil-may-care to weak, vulnerable, flinching-at-the-drop-of-a-pin sad. How it wound up hurting this much despite all of his bravado. How he could have been so careful but not careful enough and he knows now that he should have done more thought more cared more because -
- because, after all -
- it’s funny-not-funny, but he’s probably been really weak all along.
His view of his surroundings as he lies there waiting is the same as it’s been for the past seventy-two-and-counting hours: a bare room, three corners plus the one he’s lying in, and walls with nothing hanging on them. One window, big but very high up. A door, always closed. Izaya can never see any light shifting through the fronds of thick carpet at the bottom of it; at best, the room’s just secure. At worst, it’s entirely soundproof. And the latter’d make sense, anyway; this guy’s a CEO, wealthy enough to afford an apartment with expendable Western-style rooms far enough away from other people that he’s unlikely to be discovered.
Izaya figures that anyone half-capable of kidnapping and holding him like this should at least have the presence of mind to prepare for things like that.
He shivers. The place is also freezing, and the urine sticking to his legs and quickly cooling the floor beneath him isn’t helping. He won’t cry, but he wants to. He’s afraid of what’ll be done to him when his master drops by again in the morning.
If Shizu-chan could see, he wonders - would he be laughing now?
~~*~~
“Huh,” the man huffs. “So it was too much for you, is that it?” He looks annoyed, but he’s not shouting yet - not that Izaya expects it, exactly; he has yet to see this man truly angry, and why should he be? He has all the power, all the control. If his game doesn’t go the way he wants it to, all he has to do is change the rules. It’s the way Izaya’s been learning to play for years, so he knows just how simple it actually is.
“Nothing to say for yourself? Were you trying to prove a point to me, kid?”
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The way he stands, staring - and Izaya all curled in on himself, body stiff and cold despite his heart beating wildly in his chest. Izaya completely exposed, seemingly small and soaked in piss and probably looking ready to cry despite whatever faux rage he’s still capable of holding to in his facial expressions. And that man nothing if not impassive, mercilessly matter-of-fact. Commanding.
Izaya shudders heavily, his eyes forced close as a heavy lump of nausea works its way into his throat. He shakes his head silently and hates himself all over again for the irrational cowardice. Whatever happened to fighting? To laughing through the pain? He’s supposed to mock guys like this, pathetic losers with nothing but desperation and overblown egos.
“I wonder,” the man mutters. “Thinking of getting away like that? You thought you’d get a bath, didn’t you?”
As if I’d choose to wet myself for a slim chance like that, he wants to snap - but no, he can’t. He won’t even try, because in a small matter of days he’s started to hate the sound of his own voice. He hates what it gets him, and anyway staying silent requires less effort, makes him less noticeable - safe, in other words.
He’s sure his master understands that to some extent, but that hasn’t kept him from asking more and more questions. Probably because he knows that he won’t receive an answer, any retaliation. Izaya would like to call that cowardly, but the constant stream of inquiry is really more unnerving than anything else.
The man leaves without another word, but the fact that he doesn’t so much as bother closing the door all the way behind him makes it clear that he plans to return right away - and when he does, it’s with a small bucket and fresh bundle of old newspapers.
“This was your bad decision,” he prefaces, “so you’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t soak back up from the carpet underneath.”
Izaya draws a sharp breath when his master comes close enough to finally reveal the sloshing mass of soapy water, the sponge floating on it. When he kneels in front of Izaya with his hand searching his suit’s pocket - when he comes up with the now-familiar leather ring - Izaya’s chest starts to rise and fall fast - hyperventilating, almost, eyes darting all about the empty room the way they do when he gets especially desperate.
He’s shaking his head even before he knows that he is, but the man only laughs and forces his legs open to finger the thing onto his cock. He goes out of his way to touch Izaya all over as he does, and then he’s got the sponge out and it’s dripping hot, thick pools of water onto the informant’s shuddering stomach.
No no no, no - no -
The makeshift bath douses his skin in warmth, tear-tinted humiliation and
fear.
He’s afraid. That’s the conclusion. Panicking. That’s the result, the method. Crying, the delayed reaction, the swallowed-back realizations, shadowed epiphanies of reality, abuse barely endured.
He sinks his teeth into his already-swollen lips and thinks, So this is rape.
~~*~~
That day ends and another one begins - and then it ends and another replaces it and they all just keep creeping past like a wriggling ton of maggots.
His food - obvious leftovers, but he’d hardly touch them if they were dishfuls of ootoro, anyway - is brought to him normally. He’s held upright on a toilet once or twice a day and watched until he finally gives in to the persistent growling in his stomach. He drinks just enough to leave his head light, lips cracked and bleeding - but heart-beating and breathing and therefore fuckable, which is all he really needs to be, after all.
He’s not exactly sure how many days have gone by, exactly, but he can tell by the light filtering in through his single window that it’s early morning when his owner comes back to see him - goes through the routine with which he’s starting to become so familiar, then sets him down newly-sedated on a fresh bed of newspapers, stiff-limbed and whimpering softly.
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“Smile, Orihara-kun. I’m sure you’ll miss me today, too, but I can’t help working on a weekend, after all, there’s a meeting” - an important one, Izaya dully surmises, because his master’s almost manic under the strain of obvious nerves - “but tonight will make the wait well worth it, I promise.”
Izaya doesn’t want it to be worth it, but he twists his lips into a broken smile, anyway, and that seems to placate the man into leaving with no more than a parting stroke.
The cold rush of self-disgust triggered by that alone sees him curling into a loose ball - his strength failing him when he tries to do more - mind fogging over, alone.
Abstractedly, he wonders - about Shinra, his sisters, what they’re doing now, what they’d think if they could only - if maybe - and where, he thinks desperately, where’s Shizu-chan, breaking things? Happy? Mad? I bet he misses me -
But Izaya knows better, after all. He’s gone - so, happy. Shizu-chan must be happy, maybe must be breaking things just a little less than usual. Maybe must be wandering around the city, looking for something else entirely on a peaceful day off.
~~*~~
He chews his lips whenever he thinks about anything that isn’t here. He can tell that it hasn’t been a lot of time, not really - or at least he hopes not, as alone as he feels, as sure as he is that no one’s out looking for him, anyway - but he’s almost accustomed to the routine of it. It’s funny, how he can get used even to this - to numbing fear and hopelessness. How despair can become its own form of contentment.
All it takes is embracing it.
So maybe that’s why burying himself in old memories now feels like the real betrayal; it’s no longer being touched and used and owned by a single man who so consistently behaves in exactly the same way, no, it’s not giving up humanity in exchange for boredom. It’s turning his back on that boredom, his new everyday.
If Shizuo were here and he could, he’d ask Izaya why he doesn’t ever think hard about escaping. Why he doesn’t ever try.
That time a few years ago, the knife entering Shinra’s body and the guilt of it. The one and only time Izaya’s ever taken responsibility for anything, his fault or not. It was sort of satisfying, really. A fun experiment, if nothing else.
He slipped, once. Shizu-chan almost caught him, his fingers brushed past his ankles and a shiver flew up his spine from that single point, but he got away. It was the biggest triumph of the day, but then - it was a boring day.
The texture of ootoro. He pretends that he can still feel it on his tongue, but the illusion doesn’t last long. His whole mouth hurts, stretched wide to accommodate an almost-stranger’s cock, and it’s dry. Bleeding, he bets. That’s nothing like ootoro, so he gives up quickly.
Returns to thinking about nothing, because, after all, that’s a lot simpler.
~~*~~
It rains for days.
It rains for days and days and then he hears a crash and it just keeps raining to drown it out - the sound and the memory, the fact that it should have been a noise like a car accident but wasn’t, no way, more like distant shouting and a limp body colliding heavily with blunt pain. More shouting. Then sirens.
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But it’s raining and he’s tired, so he deludes himself into thinking that it’s someone like Shizu-chan coming to save him - just for a second, of course, and then he lets himself really forget all about it.
Because that’s ridiculous and this is reality and he’s alone, after all.
~~*~~
Really, it’s nothing if not rude.
Here he is waiting patiently, and the bastard doesn’t have the decency to come back with food. He probably expects Izaya to stick around, unfighting, even as his body gradually purges the drug - even as he regains the physical ability to fight his way out - and to be honest it’s probably the accuracy of the assumption that really gets to him.
He won’t fight. He can’t. He’s heavily exhausted and relatively malnourished and hardly as superhuman as the monstrous Shizu-chan. He can’t come back from stuff like this in the blink of an eye, but he can lie still and hope and hate. He can imagine himself channeling his rival’s strength for long enough, just long enough to get out and far away.
The first thing he’d do is pick a fight with that protozoan idiot. He deserves it for clinging so aggressively to every other thought of Izaya’s. For making him regret his generally lax attitude - the cowardice, the fear.
He deserves it even more when the man finally does come back, just under two days later with his left arm in a sling.
He explains that he was attacked by a “little friend” of Izaya’s - “said he didn’t like the way I smelled,” he laughs, “said it was like you” - and Izaya knows what that means but won’t go quite as far as acknowledging it.
Shizu-chan didn’t mean to help, anyway. And Izaya’s had to go without food or water for most of two days; he’s never wanted a drink more than he wants one now. Next to Shizuo himself, it’s almost all he can think about. His stomach is a knife in his gut. His body feels the same way it did with a strong sedative coursing its way through every dwindling ounce of blood. He’s exhausted but can’t relax enough to sleep; when the physical discomfort doesn’t keep him awake, the nightmares do.
“My, what a mess you are,” the man grunts. “Bit too far gone to be of much use tonight.”
“N-ne,” Izaya croaks, surprised at himself and his voice. He can’t remember the last time he spoke anything like real words. “A-at least - water - please.”
He expects it to be fine. If he’s such a mess, his owner should want to clean him up for later use. The tail end of that thought sets his stomach throbbing, cold dread and nausea, but at the very least it’s supposed to mean a moment or two of tiny relief.
What he gets is hardly that kind. The man’s face - the only face Izaya’s seen in at least a week and a half, maybe more if he’d only bothered to count - contorts, becomes outrage, fury, danger - booming and threatening and he flinches back, closes his eyes and pulls himself into a tight ball, face buried in his hands
and blow after blow
and that’s it, that’s all, he’s left alone and it doesn’t matter that he’s smart that he’s hurt that he’s powerful was powerful weak now and desperate clinging to his old ideal self the one that used to laugh the one that used to spin
because the outcome is always the same.
~~*~~
[You look upset.]
Shizuo reads that and then almost keeps walking without sparing Celty another glance. He’s on his way home, after all, and he’s gotta hurry - he’s supposed to help Kasuka with dinner tonight - but the observation gets to him enough that he finally does stop mid-stride to glance back at her and Shinra and that weird bike.
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“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grumbles. He hopes it’s not that either of them has heard about the trouble from a few days ago - that pompous dick who reeked of flea and the same-old, same-old trouble of getting hauled off to a holding cell to spend the night. That stuff’s not usually his fault, but even now he can’t argue that he wasn’t unprovoked this time.
He’d do it again, fucking expensive bail or not.
“Right,” Shinra agrees with a flippant grin. “He’s in a better mood than usual, isn’t he?”
Celty tilts her helmet curiously before somewhat closing the distance between herself and Shizuo.
[It’s that Orihara - right?]
Shizuo frowns. “No,” he denies. He hesitates for a moment, then decides to go with something a bit more honest than that. “But I guess - yeah, sort of.”
“Huh?”
“It’s fine as long as he doesn’t show his face at school, really,” Shizuo says, turning just briefly to face Shinra, “but I get the feeling he’s not gonna leave it like that, after all. Kinda just wish he’d get whatever it is over with so I could beat the living hell out of him and - um, just move on, I guess.”
Shinra chuckles. “That’s really harsh, isn’t it?” He glances at Celty, grins widely at her and then casually adds, “Though, on the other hand, I bet even Izaya-kun might be a bit disappointed by the lack of response around here. There were some girls talking about him earlier today, but aside from that we could easily be just a few of the only ones who’ve really noticed he’s not around.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Shizuo shrugs. “Who wants to remember a bastard like him, anyway?”
~~*~~
He could try a thousand times and never be able to put his finger on what, exactly, changes things.
Maybe it’s the thread of pain emanating from his split lip that draws him close to reality. Maybe it’s the boredom of lying around all day, half-starving and always too weak to drink enough of what’s left out for him. Maybe it’s the way his owner looks at him or the fact that he can’t even look at himself. Maybe it’s because he’s so vain that he can’t help but want to see his own face as it looks now - to reassure himself that he’s not really falling apart outwardly, not all the way.
Maybe it’s the staggering emotional breakdowns - one, two of them, and then they just keep coming. He can’t breathe; his chest hurts, he thinks he’s having a heart attack and his vision tunnels. He can’t see. He can’t think. He can only fear. And lurking behind every tremorous gasp and lurching shudder is another repetition of the premonition that this is how he’ll be stuck forever.
It’s a knowledge ingrained into the very marrow of his bones - as an information broker, as Orihara Izaya - that nothing happens in this world unless you can do whatever it takes to make it happen, that if he lets himself be led through this he’ll die here, in this room with this man and his body as it gradually deteriorates.
He’d never get to lay eyes on the city again.
He flashes back to the door left ajar.
This was your bad decision, he remembers.
Your decision.
Your choice.
A chance.
And, well, maybe it’s the fact that he can’t stop thinking about Shizu-chan - that too.
Whatever the reason, the cause is there and he continues to humiliate himself by cowering, eating little, crying and fisting his hands in crumpled newspaper every time his master bears down on him. He continues to entertain the man’s desires, and most of the time it’s not an act but forced habit.
When it is an act, it’s also like a very small celebration of victory. Feels like the hope alone could break him if it all turned downhill - if the man realized, through the frustration of his own broken limb and the increasingly obvious stressors of his life beyond this room, that he hasn’t yet bothered to sedate Izaya - but with just a bit of pretending, Izaya’s surviving his way. Building his strength while faking a total lack of it, of coordination, thought or consciousness - any combination of the above, really.
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“Really getting to you, is it?” the man chuckles - several days in, Izaya’s stomach just emptied in the crazy-desperate throes of yet another attack - and he doesn’t even bother to clean his toy up, just makes half an attempt to get the mess away from his lower body - so that the play can continue, naturally.
“You’re certainly a lot worse for wear these days, Orihara-kun. I should be terribly insulted that you haven’t yet grown to like me.”
Izaya shudders, swallows back bile, and then tries hard to smile. He’s not sure it works, but the effort’s enough to save him a few bruises, at least.
“Changed a lot, haven’t you?” His master is outright laughing, now - thrusting into him at the same time, hot and wet and sloppily painful. “Used to talk back. Glad to see we’ve put a stop to that, anyhow. Though you could say I - ahh, yeah - mm, probably miss the cheeriness, but the quiet’s more’n worth it.”
Izaya doesn’t respond. He presses his left cheek heavily into the dirty newspaper - to avoid watching it as it happens, his eyes screwed shut as his breath rasps in and out, stinging - and he says absolutely nothing. Thinks absolutely nothing.
And, mercifully, passes clean out to the dull echo of violation.
~~*~~
There is nothing particularly dramatic about what happens later that day - no blaring music, high moments, chases - but to Izaya it’s nothing short of momentous.
He stands.
Sways, falls, and then pulls himself up again. He’s practiced, of course, but only once or twice a day; it’s been so long that even that’s not nearly enough to account for all the time he’s been forced to spend barely moving, the desperate lack of water and nutrients. The physical battery.
He starts with most of his weight balanced against the vertical slope of the wall. And then he walks.
And then he finds the door unlocked, takes a moment to gather his already-flagging strength before pushing through and
out.
There’s an unmade bed in one of the rooms down the hall. Izaya freezes for a moment when he notices the dark space, but that turns out to be unnecessary; his master’s at work, after all, and the apartment is large and echoingly empty. He’s alone and tantalizingly safe.
He totters into the room, sees a dresser with drawers probably stuffed full of clothes - but he can’t stand the thought of wearing anything of that man’s, after all, and anyway he’s openly trembling, terrified out of his mind that he’ll be caught before he can leave properly - so he settles for the sheet off the bed, finds it more or less clean and wraps it tight about himself. At the very least, it smells and looks better than he must.
He runs, then, as fast as he can barely manage. He doesn’t look for a bathroom or food or water. He doesn’t try to find his own clothes, his phone, his wallet - his knives. He can’t imagine fighting his way out, anyway, and there’s no way he’ll talk, not into a machine or to anyone’s face. Not yet.
He runs, maybe just because that’s all he can think to do.
~~*~~
He cries when the smell hits him; burnt-out cigarettes, car exhaust and cold metal. The rocky pavement hurts his bare feet, cuts them, but it has a texture that isn’t carpet or paper or toes curling in hot, dry air, so he likes it. He loves it, he opens his mouth to the air and fears it, too. Fears passing faces, the sweeping space of the city.
He doesn’t remember it being this big, actually - and, actually, he doesn’t remember hating the feeling of curious eyes on him.
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He’d stopped running, but the discomfort quickly turns to distrust turns to fear again - and he runs.
A tall man, middle-aged and graying, tries to help him, but he doesn’t recognize the sound coming from the stranger’s mouth as words. That scares him almost as much as the towering form and what if he knows who I am? so he stumbles past with his sheet clutched gingerly to his chest.
The stranger doesn’t follow him.
He wanders like that for a long time, lost. He should know the ins and outs of Ikebukuro, but now it’s all messed up and he can’t remember how to get home. He has no money for a hotel room or taxi, and he’s honestly terrified of running into anyone who might know him - or anyone who might not, the whole lot of accusatory fingers and raised eyebrows and gaping mouths. The bodies on the sidewalks around him seem too close. They’re waiting for him to fall, must be - must be waiting for him to brush close and then they’ll grab him, so he has to get away now before they take him back -
“Izaya?”
He twists to face behind him, eyes wide wide wide, features wildly contorted to force the only expression he can remember how to make of his own accord - that fake, obvious smile, he’d never do it again if he could still do it normally. He tries to greet this newcomer by name, but his voice only stutters out into a broken whimper. He falls to his knees as a sob lodges itself in his throat, and that’s it.
That’s all he can manage.
“What the hell - are you naked?”
Izaya shakes his head wildly, but he still chooses to draw the sheet tighter about himself. His bruised-up, sticky, disgusting body.
“Hey,” he hears and startles back when he realizes that Shizuo’s kneeling directly in front of him, now. “Fucking say something, or I’ll walk off and leave you here.”
Izaya bites his lower lip hard - he’s almost made a habit of it, now - before taking a deep breath. It comes in shuddery, leaves in the form of another sob. He shakes his head again.
Shizuo sighs almost inaudibly. Izaya can feel the warm air blow past his forehead, and he stiffens resolutely, let the gravel by the side of the road dig into his skin if that’s what it wants to do.
He hardly feels it, anyway.
“You smell awful,” the blonde hisses. Izaya flinches - he’s close, way too close - but by the time he realizes what’s happening, he’s already floating several feet up and in Shizuo’s arms. There’s no effort in it, not for Shizu-chan, and when Izaya finally manages to look he finds the brute’s eyes narrowed disinterestedly at him.
Blaming him, kind of.
Izaya’s breath catches in his throat before it can turn into a scream. Shizu-chan’s not at all like what he’s been daydreaming about for days, he’s not so docile and he’s likely to lose patience any minute now, kill Izaya or hurt him badly - and he’d just gotten away, too, just thought he’d be some kind of okay -
“Hey,” Shizuo grunts. He sounds uncertain. “I’m not gonna… I mean, I won’t hurt you. Quit looking at me like that.”
Like what, Shizu-chan? What’s it matter how I look at a protozoan like you?
Ha - as if he could ever say that now.
Another feeling - something decidedly not the same as fear - makes a painful knot of Izaya’s stomach, then, and he tries so hard to bite back a fresh wave of sobs that it turns into an irregular stream of forceful hiccups. He can feel Shizuo watching him even with his own eyes squeezed shut, but that’s not enough to stem the flow of disgust - at himself, at this situation and at Shizu-chan for the simple act of being here to see it.
Shizuo tries to talk to him a few more times after that, but Izaya doesn’t hear him, doesn’t care. He keeps thinking about that man’s hands on him, that man carrying him, and freedom melts away into a waking nightmare, another anxiety attack and all the terror of remembering.
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~~*~~
The note is hard to read, it’s so messy, and Izaya’s vision keeps blurring in and out so much that it takes him more than a minute to figure out what the thing says.
It you try anything weird, I’ll kill you. Bathroom’s down the hall, so go clean up when you feel like it.
He almost smiles. The last part of it’s kind of nice, actually, especially coming from Shizu-chan. The first is probably the most important, though, because that’s how Shizu-chan’s simple mind works. That’s what he thinks first when he thinks about Izaya; it’s all he can focus on, really, and getting past it must be as hard for that brute as calming down is for the informant.
The open animosity makes it hard, but the almost-smiling-kind-of-nice part helps.
He looks around. He’s still wrapped up tight in his sheet, and there’s a towel flung carelessly over the pillow upon which his head was resting just a second ago. The room’s small but neat, the bed still made with the blankets taut beneath him. The table beside him is empty save for the scribbled-on memo pad and an old alarm clock. The desk on the other side of the room has a lamp, and there are one or two papers peeking out from the drawers beneath that.
Izaya wonders how much use that desk actually gets; it looks pretty worn, but he’s never taken Shizuo for the studious type.
“How long were you gonna gawk for, flea?”
Izaya flinches at the sound of the blonde’s voice, the sudden and commanding appearance of his form in the doorway. He finds himself biting his lip again, hands fisted in the bedcovers at his side; he’s trying not to throw up all over them.
“What?” Shizuo snaps. “If you need to puke -”
Izaya shakes his head and tries again to smile, to show Shizuo that he’s okay, fine, great and perfectly capable of being on his own, after all.
“Knock it off. That’s fuckin’ creepy.”
“Eh?”
“So you can talk,” Shizuo retorts.
Izaya flushes, almost angry now, but he still draws his lips into a tight line and lowers his head to stare wordlessly down at his lap - which isn’t a good decision, either, because that calls up a lot of things at once, leaves him doubled-over and struggling to draw just one breathful of air into his lungs.
This time, Shizuo doesn’t make the mistake of touching Izaya. He comes close, though, and waits awkwardly at his side. Mumbles vague reassurances and probably fidgets a lot to make up for the nervous urge to physically do something.
And Izaya, independent of the boy at his side, comes down slowly. As his mind clears enough that he can finally start to relax his aching muscles, he also manages to take gradually deeper breaths, slow and steady. Safe. He’s safe. He’s never been scared of Shizu-chan, and Shizu-chan hates him but he’s not a bad guy. He won’t do anything right here and now, not as long as Izaya’s this unthreatening.
“What’s with you?” he hisses at last, and Izaya flinches again - finally aware enough to hear it, lightheaded and tear-streaked but conscious. “Did someone” - Shizuo hesitates, fumbles with the hem of his T-shirt - “ah - um, ‘d they hurt you somehow? Or are you sick?”
Izaya stares at the opposite wall and takes another deep breath.
In. Out.
“N-no,” he rasps. Glances back at Shizu-chan, eyebrows drawn up in an unintentional expression of concern, and when nothing happens he takes another deep breath; it hurts his throat. The words sound like a stranger’s - small and afraid, distant. “W-water. Please.”
Shizuo’s frown is back, but he nods, anyway. “There’s milk, too. And some food.”
Izaya closes his eyes. Takes more deep breaths, then manages a smile that’s just a little less forced than all the others.
“Water,” he repeats, “and - food.”
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~~*~~
“What are you gonna do now?”
The question startles Izaya. He sets his spoon and the emptied carton of chocolate pudding - hardly worth wasting on you, Shizuo’d grumbled, but if Izaya didn’t know better he’d almost call the look on the blonde’s face satisfied - down on the bedside table. Crinkles his brow and imagines the reaction he’d get if he went home now. He should probably see a doctor, but what would Shinra’s response be?
He shrugs listlessly.
“Fine,” Shizuo groans. “At least tell me what happened. I can call Shinra if that’s what you need. Dunno if he’d come, but it’s better than sitting around here like this. Doubt you wanna be here, anyway.”
“I might,” Izaya mumbles.
“What?”
“I - I might,” the informant tries again, louder this time. His voice still sounds foreign to him, but it’s better than it was before - not grating, just dry, still hurting.
Shizuo stares. “What - really?” He narrows his eyes at Izaya. “Got any weird reasons for that? You’re not planning something, are you?”
“I’m not,” Izaya defends in a monotone. He can’t quite put emotion into it, after all, and the sound of his voice scares him a little even now. He takes a slow breath, lets it go with a sigh. “Hey - Sh-Shizu-chan.”
“Shizuo,” he corrects blandly.
“Shizuo,” Izaya agrees. “Why do you care?”
Shizuo goes quiet for a moment. He looks like he’s starting to get a feel for the gap between what he’s learned to expect and what Izaya currently has to offer; that it’s such an obvious difference hurts a little.
Then - “I don’t. I wish you’d just get lost, but it wouldn’t be right to force you into anything as long as you’re like that. Even though it’s you,” and the blonde sighs. “You probably got yourself into whatever happened, but you might not’ve deserved it - just maybe,” he qualifies quickly.
“Why not?” Izaya finds himself asking; it’s almost an accident. Even having realized what he’s saying, though, he doesn’t stop forming the words deliberately, letting them drop from his tongue, heavy and sad, “I let it happen.”
~~*~~
He doesn’t spend the night at Shizuo’s. The thought of another twenty-four hour cycle of light and dark under someone else’s roof is almost more than he can handle, after all, and then there’s just no way he could ever explain himself to anyone, Shizu-chan especially. He can’t imagine the words hanging in open air, can’t quite decipher the point at which all those painful scenes and images transition into a complete story.
The beginning, middle, and - ridiculously - even the end all have the same feel to them. The atmosphere of dread and humiliation hasn’t changed once since that first brilliant lungful of crisp city air.
Mairu and Kururi don’t look particularly surprised when they come to the front door to find their lost-and-found older brother waiting for them on the other side. They notice Shizuo far more than they do him, actually; their brother has friends, sure - he insists that he does when they ask, at least - but even he can’t remember the last time he brought one home with him.
Shizuo wasn’t the one who insisted on coming, though; it was Izaya, every step of the way down the small path to the road painful until he turned to find Shizuo watching him anxiously. He’d been stumbling along, barely making it on his feet even after several hours of good rest and sustenance, and Shizuo had probably felt compelled to offer himself up as a sort of bodyguard. No one’ll come near if I’m around, he’d suggested. I’ll - I mean, if you need it, I can even carry you some of the way there.
He doesn’t bother explaining the blonde away as nothing more than an old enemy allowing him some temporary immunity; he’d rather not, not only because he doesn’t want to have to see his sisters not listening or caring - not just because a quiet handful of words still requires a monumental degree of effort on his part - but also because he’s not likely to receive the same careful attention from anyone else from now on.
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This is where he takes it all upon himself, really. Shizuo’s no good as a support system, Izaya knows that. But he’s it now, and to lose it is more than just painful; it feels like falling. The sensation in his stomach is the same - it’s in his throat.
“Thanks,” he croaks. “Bye.”
“You gonna be okay like this?” Shizuo fusses, eyes wide. “Would it be alright if I -”
Izaya shakes his head. Go.
“Iza-nii,” Mairu chimes, “we thought you were dead.” She cranes her neck to scrutinize him with wide and innocent six-turning-seven-year-old eyes - and Izaya can feel something in him start to break again. There’s nothing in her tone that indicates worry - just curiosity, a novelty to be examined and then cast aside at the end of the day.
Kururi mimics her twin sister’s actions, her mouth a near-perfect O, little hands searching for the corner of the enormously baggy T-shirt Izaya’s borrowed from Shizu-chan.
Shizuo smiles uncomfortably at them, then glances back up at Izaya. “Your parents aren’t around?”
Izaya’s stomach constricts; the result is a tight lump in his throat, so all he can do is shake his head with one of his twisted not-smiles awkwardly in place. Mairu sees it and he sees the look on her face - the disgusted one, the one that wants to know what’s wrong with her brother, where he’s gone and who’s come to replace him now.
~~*~~
His parents aren’t unhappy to see him, but the teary hugs and concerned questions barely manage to make a dent in the ache of loneliness. He asks them about the police, blankly suggests that they should call to let them know he’s fine, but their awkward response - exchanging a silent look, lips pursed or pressed into uneasy lines - tells him all he needs to know - that no one bothered to call about him. That they’ve been waiting altogether too patiently here for him to get back - but how can they tell him that now, as half-dead with exhaustion as he probably looks?
“Got it,” he mutters, hands fisting at his sides. “Tired,” and he drags himself back up and into his room. Creaks the door shut, buries his face in a pillow and tries to remind himself that this isn’t any different from what it’s always been; he’s never really had friends, not close ones, and the distance he was always after is exactly what he’s experiencing now.
The only thing wrong about this is that he suddenly feels like he needs someone to be at his side.
He wonders if his phone has any messages on it, but that’s before he remembers where it probably is. And then he has to deal with a splitting headache and the sharp pressure behind his eyes. He has to bury his cries in a pillow that won’t ever get the chance to dry, has to force the fear down until he can breathe normally on his own.
It’s great, hilarious even - that he somehow managed to get himself out of one four-cornered prison of a room just to find himself in another - and this one his own.
~~*~~
“Izaya? There’s a call for you…”
“Can’t,” he croaks, hardly caring that he sounds as messy as he feels. He hasn’t showered once since parting ways with Shizu-chan, and it’s been maybe two or three days already. His face seems to be permanently sticky already. “I - I’m changing my clothes.”
His mother is so quiet for a moment that Izaya wonders if she’s gone already - but then she calls him again, sounding more worried than before. “It’s Kishitani Shinra-kun,” she explains. “He says it’s important.”
Izaya draws a shaky breath before refusing again.
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“Izaya -”
“I can’t,” he repeats.
“Oh - yes, well,” he hears, and it takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that her change in tone isn’t intended for him. “If you’re willing to wait, I suppose that’s fine…”
Izaya doubts it until he manages to detect the faint tap of the phone being set down on the floor in front of his door. He swallows thickly and waits for an explanation.
“It’s still connected, dear,” his mother calls. “I don’t know how long your friend plans on waiting, but you can take your time if you need to.”
He takes a deep breath to steady himself; it doesn’t help the nervous fluttering in his stomach. “Sure.”
The moment his mother’s footsteps disappear down the stairs, he lowers himself to the floor and gradually works his way onto two feet. The door feels incredibly far away, but a few teetering inches in its direction close the distance quickly. He can hardly breathe, and it’s not exertion - not exactly, anyway.
“Hey,” he whispers to the crack between his door and the hallway beyond it. He should feel like an idiot, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least hear something like a response in return.
There’s nothing.
He presses his lips together and slowly, slowly pulls the door open.
Picks up the phone and holds it gingerly to his ear.
“Hey,” he repeats, as breathless as if he’s been out running.
“Izaya-kun.”
He sounds so calm - no, matter-of-fact. Business-like, even.
“Need something?” Izaya all but chokes, voice strangling in his throat as he retreats back into the suffocating safety of his room.
“Shizuo-kun told me what happened,” Shinra sighs. “Do you plan on sulking forever, or should I come over?”
Izaya swallows back a nervous whimper, licks his cracked-and-bleeding lips. “You don’t - you don’t know what happened - right?”
“…Should I?”
“N-no,” Izaya gasps. “It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing. You’ve been gone a lot longer than usual, you know. ”
Izaya laughs, but the sound’s mostly just hysterical. “Someone noticed, then? How reassuring. I’m flattered, even.”
“Izaya-kun,” Shinra hisses back, sounding alarmed. “Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t.”
“You keep saying that -”
“I can’t,” he sighs. “I can’t - just - can’t, Shinra, sorry. It’s - not that easy. And I’m blowing it way out of proportion, anyway,” he tries, shifting tactics to brush it all off and call it done. “It’s not important.”
“Come to school, then.”
Nausea. “I can’t do that.”
“And why not?”
“What do you care?” Izaya spits, confidence - anger - colliding restlessly with hopelessness. “Am I suddenly that interesting to you and Shizu-chan? After enduring that kind of humiliation - what’s so hard to understand - ah.” He realizes it too late.
“Humiliation?”
“No,” Izaya bites. “Never mind.”
“…I might be able to help, you know. Tonight, even.”
There’s that familiar twisting sensation again; it’s like being split clean in two, a child offered a treat and tempted by the urge to reject it because the reward inevitably means compromise. “You have school tomorrow.”
“So do you. And it’s still only six,” Shinra responds coolly.
“I’m not hurt.”
Shinra waits quietly for a moment. Then - “If you need me to run a few blood tests to check for - you know -”
Izaya does know; he squeezes the phone tight in his hand and then throws it with all the force he can muster - not much - at the nearest wall.
~~*~~
He wouldn’t put it past Shinra to come by regardless, though, so he takes the opportunity to shower - with his eyes squeezed shut, fingers grazing bare skin as sparingly as possible. The water doesn’t make him feel any cleaner - he doubts that it will for a long time yet - but his appearance is all that matters for now, anyway.
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His hair’s gotten a bit long, but it’ll have to work for as long as it’ll take him to get over the idea of having it cut. He’s pale enough to look genuinely sick, but that’s probably a good thing - an excuse, like the dark spots under his eyes and the tired fading of the black and bright red of his hair and eyes.
He’s just been sick - that’s all.
He goes to bed late, finds a spare uniform from middle school tucked away in a corner of his room and hangs it up for morning. The sight of the thing sends shivers rolling up and down his spine, but it’s a physical symbol of normalcy to everyone else; he has to wear it.
Maybe but not really because of that, he barely sleeps. He keeps remembering, and remembering means at least one attack of needless anxiety, his heart waling away at the rest of his organs and a quick trip to the bathroom to empty his stomach of the next to nothing he’s been putting into it.
~~*~~
He’s called down to the faculty room by their homeroom teacher even before the start of class.
“We’re concerned about the choices you’re making, Orihara-kun.” Izaya steels himself so that he won’t flinch when he hears that name coming from an adult - the tone, the same old voice all over again - and he manages it, somehow, smirks briefly before turning it into a polite smile and listening patiently. “As things stand now, you should still have enough attendance to move on to your next year, but I certainly hope I don’t need to discourage you from missing any more days.”
“Of course,” he responds. And then he narrows his eyes slightly, lets the smirk slide back into place and adds, “But if you were really concerned, sensei, shouldn’t you have at least reported my absence to my parents?” He’s not always listening when they try to talk to him, but he’s close to certain that they have yet to say anything about school or all the days he’s missing.
The teacher straightens and frowns imperiously at him. “As a matter of fact,” he counters, “the school called your home multiple times. Your parents said they’d see what they could do.” He leans close with that look that now reads - patronizingly - I only want to help you. “You don’t want to disappoint them, do you?”
Izaya feels a little like laughing. This is clumsy of him, really; he doesn’t get chewed out by teachers - because, after all, he’s supposed to be relatively well-liked despite his usual attendance (the lack thereof) and attitude. He’s supposed to be good at avoiding prying eyes. He doesn’t know what it’s like to worry about disappointing others - because what do their feelings really matter, anyway?
His entire body jerks to face the door. He hopes he looks as irritated as he feels. He hopes it’s not obvious that this man frightens him in a way that only relatively young adults can, now - that he reminds him of the man he learned to call master.
“That’s a two-way road, sir.”
~~*~~
Shinra and Shizuo are there and talking when Izaya returns to the classroom. Shinra spots him first and immediately straightens in his seat, eyes wide. Shizuo takes a minute, then turns with a look of unhappy presentiment on his face; his reaction to Izaya’s cheerful wave confirms that he more or less expected to see the informant there.
“Miss me?” Izaya chirps, taking an unoccupied seat near the other two and pulling it just a bit closer.
“Izaya…”
He raises an eyebrow and grins at Shinra. “What? Don’t tell me you’re that happy to see me back. Or have you already started to forget what I look like?”
Shinra’s anxious frown deepens slightly. “Are you sure you’re okay, being here already?” He lowers his voice. “And last night?”
“You told me to come,” Izaya retorts, voice now just a bit flatter that it’d been before.
“That’s true,” Shinra acknowledges, exchanging an uncomfortable look with Shizuo. “But that was before you hung up on me for asking - you know.”
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