My third DR piece, inspired by Simon's fantastic speech (you know the one). Enjoy.

-*-
5.

It happens like this: Izaya laughs crazily. "Go ahead," he shouts with unconstrainable glee, "go ahead! Let's see if I care~?"

And so, a direct consequence of his words – Shizuo dies.

(the world stops)

Izaya keeps laughing.

-*-
1.

There have been many murders, of late. It's rather unsettling – not because Izaya particularly cares about the victims, but because all of them have been recently involved with him. Izaya, of all people, has become a target.

How hysterical! How interesting!

He laughs and deals with shady characters in the alleyways and laughs all the more when they turn up dead the next week. He has developed the touch of death. Everyone he meets with publicly is a target. Namie refuses to spend any time with him outside of his office/apartment. No one else he knows well ever wants to meet him publicly, anyway.

This murderer isn't very smart.

Izaya is already starting to lose interest in the game when Shiki tells him not to bother coming round with more information until he sorts out his own messes. He has already chosen and indirectly executed twelve fools and honestly, this is getting boring. He is not feeling pressured or terrified by this odd tactic his enemy has chosen; without any escalation it lacks originality and style. This murderer needs to be taught a lesson.

Izaya visits Ikebukuro.

Shizuo throws a vending machine at him. This time it contains cigarettes, so Izaya pauses for a moment to empty the broken machine of Shizuo's chosen brand and uses the cigarettes as a trail for the beast to follow while chasing him.

-*-
6.

"Did you think that would impress me?" Izaya's grin is deadly; he leans in close and smiles proudly into the murderer's face. "All you did was exterminate an animal."

(shizuo is not breathing and reality is fraying at the edges)

"Please," Izaya says with a bored chuckle, "tell me you've got more than that."

And then he lashes out with the knife in his hand, slashes straight across the murderer's throat, and blood sprays across his face, in his mouth and in his eyes.

Izaya shakes his head, still grinning, hot blood on his teeth. He looks at the bodies lying at his feet. "Pitiful," he sneers.

Then he falls to his knees, gasps, and vomits on the cold stone floor.

-*-
4.

"I'll kill him," the murderer says, voice as dark as the mask covering his face.

Shizuo is on the floor, wrists and ankles cuffed together. It looks like he's suffering from a severe concussion and probably has also been drugged, but nonetheless he's still well enough to glare daggers vaguely in Izaya's general direction and slur something about, "…knewihwusyou… gonna kill you fuckinflea…"

Izaya bends down and turns Shizuo's head this way and that. The bodyguard's eyes roll, unfocused, but his lips still curl up in a snarl, and Izaya pats him on the cheek before standing up again. "Hush now, Shizu-chan, the adults are talking."

The murderer is silent, desperation leaking through his stoic front, and Izaya sighs. This fool isn't worth his time after all, not when he's such an easy puzzle. Even if he did manage to get Shizuo here, that means nothing in the face of such predictability.

"Do you want me to kill him?" The murderer finally threatens. "I will!"

So Izaya digs his hands into his pockets, balances on the balls of his feet, and screams with laughter. "Go ahead!"

-*-
2.

The next day, there's a letter in his mailbox. It is written on stationary paper out of cutout letters and words from magazines and newspapers. So immature, Izaya has to chuckle.

There's a black-and-white picture enclosed as well. Shizuo leers in profile, angry but unaware of the camera (or the picture would never have had time to develop). The interesting thing is that Shizuo is standing inside of his kitchen, glaring at what appears to be a microwave with a fist-sized hole in it. Someone knows how to stalk.

Izaya tapes the photo to his computer with a laugh, and burns the letter.

If you don't acknowledge me, it said, I'll kill him, too.

And though his reaction to the letter has been amusement by-and-large, Izaya still frowns at the ashes on his table. He'd been hoping for something a little better than just a misguided fan.

-*-
7.

"Shinra," Izaya whispers, fingers bloody and slipping against the phone keys. "Shizuo is dead."

He takes a long moment to stare at the tableau before him; his two victims sprawled lifeless on the ground.

"Please come," Izaya adds quietly, ignoring the confused shouting on the other end of the phone line. "This may be your last chance to get any samples, you know."

(it feels like there should be rain. or shizuo, screaming his name)

The phone clicks closed in his hand. Izaya slips it back into his pocket; then rolls over to lay on his back on the ground, in the blood with the bodies.

He rests his head on Shizuo's chest, right next to the hole, and stares at the drab gray ceiling of the parking garage. After a brief hesitation, he sighs and drops a hand to rest on Shizuo's head, fingers gripping and yanking at his dyed hair.

Izaya closes his eyes.

-*-
3.

Some sort of voice-distortion device is being used, so Izaya can't tell what the murderer's voice actually sounds like. Not that it makes much of a difference, when he's already tracked the call back to the man's cell phone and uncovered his entire personal history, now displayed on the computer in front of him.

"I've got him," the murderer says, "I've got Heiwajima Shizuo."

"Oh? Interesting~" Izaya croons back down the line, hope for the usefulness of this office-worker fool abruptly springing back to life. "Are you going to do it, then, hmm? Bang! Bang! Goodbye, Monster of Ikebukuro!" He laughs at the absurdity, and the murderer catches the mocking in his voice.

"You aren't taking me seriously," he says. Emotions are impossible to tell through the distortion, but his next words reveal how he feels about that clearly enough. "I really can do it! I'll prove it to you!"

He slams down the phone, and Izaya rolls his eyes at Namie. "Why is he so fired up, anyway? –Ooh, is the curry ready?"

But he stays next to his computer while eating, checking the Dollars forum for confirmation – and yes, rumors abound about Heiwajima Shizuo, as always, and the newest thread is regarding his potential kidnapping.

"Nonsense." Shima006 insists. "As if the Fortissimo could ever be victim of a kidnapping."

But Eldritch-sama isn't so sure. "He lives nearby me, and I heard weird noises from his house! And then someone came out with something that looked like a body and stuffed it in the trunk of his car!"

Izaya snickers, then adds his own suggestion: "Maybe Heiwajima was the one doing the kidnapping!"

He sits back after that, watching the chaos unfold and waiting for the email he knows is coming, sent from a disposable account, with a picture and address.

Come here, the murderer tells Izaya, and I'll show you how serious I am.

Izaya forwards the address to Shinra, with a 'just in case I need a doctor, this is where' note, then prints out the picture and tapes it up next to the first. He leaves, whistling.

Shizuo, head bloody and eyes dazed, stares confusedly out at the dark room.

-*-
9.

Izaya flops into his desk chair, then tilts it back, and begins to spin. The breeze feels nice on his skin, despite the blood that's long dried on and beginning to flake.

He begins to chuckle. "Of course," he rasps, "of course I should've expected that from you, Shizu-chan! Obviously, you'd live!"

Izaya lifts a hand, presses his fingers in to the bruises on his neck. His throat is still aching, and touching it now just makes the pain flare up even higher. Still, he grins widely and drops his head back, slipping sideways in the chair as he keeps up the pressure.

"You're such a monster, Shizu-chan," Izaya whispers in a cracking voice, and he feels the first drop of saltwater slip down his forehead into his hair.

"Next time, I'll do a better job," he promises, closing his eyes against the wet and flicking out his blade with the hand not pressing in on each fingerprint bruise. He rolls his thumb down the side of the knife; he needs to clean it, get the blood off before it rusts.

Izaya laughs once more, laughs through the night, and it's like nothing at all has happened, truly it is.

-*-
8.

There's a twitch underneath him. Izaya blinks his eyes open, surprised, just in time to see the arm that descends over him, fingers gripping in to his neck and squeezing.

"Shi-izuo?" Izaya hitches, breath catching on his disbelief and the warm, wet fingers pressing in firmly, definitely alive against his own hammering pulse.

A mumble from beneath him, slurred and incoherent, angry and one hundred percent not dead: "Not gonna…get 'way with this…flea!"

Shizuo grips harder; Izaya can feel blood soaking into his hair from the still-bleeding wound, and thinks -oh, it must've just missed his heart, just barely, and then he can't think much more than that because Shizuo's labored breathing is in his ears, Shizuo's blood is in his hair, Shizuo's fingers are on his neck and he's going to take Izaya down with him, Izaya's trying in vain to push him away –

A black shadow does the job for him, just when Izaya's vision is starting to blur, and Izaya rolls away to hack up air on the concrete floor. Celty's there, pulling up with a supernatural whinny and Shinra saying oh my god and scrambling to Shizuo's side, yanking out bandages and medicines and yelling to call the hospital, and Izaya's on all fours, trying in vain to breathe, gasping, gasping.

(it's not over, it's not over, he's alive)

There's a phone being shoved in his face. Izaya blinks, and sits up to read it. Celty is furious, shaking, her phone reading: What hapepend here?

Izaya opens his mouth to respond, wheezes, and looks around. Shinra is on his knees next to Shizuo administering desperate first aid. Ikebukuro's strongest is still awake, fingers straining around Celty's shadow, muttering, "kill, kill 'im, damn flea, not gonna get away with…" and his eyes actually meet Izaya's, he even tries to sit up and Celty's shadows strain to pin him down.

The puddle of blood underneath Shizuo has spread, mixing with the murderer's. He lies nearby, obviously dead with his throat split in two, gun still in his hand and vomit at his feet. Izaya's knife is there, too, wet and red and forgotten, he'll have to get it back before the police arrive, and Celty shakes her phone in his face, furiously.

Izaya is unsteady still, can't even breathe – but even so, a smile spreads on his face and he starts to laugh.

-*-
10.

There have been numerous visits during Shizuo's two days of sleep – Shinra and Celty and Tom and Kasuka, who just left to go to work – but this is Izaya's first one. Almost as soon as he enters the hospital room, Shizuo's face screws up in an expression of distaste, and he opens his eyes, just like that.

Izaya laughs out loud. "You really do hate me, don't you, Shi-zu-chan~?"

Shizuo growls, trying to sit up, and Izaya plops down in the visitor's chair. "Hey, hey, this is a hospital you know. Do you really want to start throwing things around in here? You could kill someone."

Shizuo stops instantly, taking in the room and gritting his teeth. "Izaya-kun…"

Still chuckling gently, Izaya gets comfortable in his chair, adjusting the scarf around his neck. Underneath it, the bruises are yellow and deep, hurting with every breath, every word. "Your brother came to visit, you know. I passed him in the hall."

The mention of Kasuka, of course, throws Shizuo off-guard, and he gets that earnest, yearning look on his face: "Kasuka? Where…"

"He left," Izaya says with a grin. Then, before Shizuo can get pissed off again, he tosses his question out like it's nothing, a mere whim: "Oi, Shizu-chan, have you ever killed someone?"

(he knows, he knows the answer so why is he asking this)

Shizuo's brows knit, and his face goes serious. It's not so much that he's thinking about his answer, more like he's thinking about the question. He looks at Izaya piercingly, with that unnerving expression like he knows everything, that odd animal cunning he occasionally displays which is so very irritating.

"No," he says, simply.

Izaya laughs. "You sure about that?"

"Yes."

And Izaya laughs some more, says, "Oh, you're no fun."

Shizuo stares at him in silence for several moments longer, then growls, "Shut up, Izaya. Get lost."

But he lays back after that, closes his eyes as if to sleep, and doesn't say a word when Izaya stays. He has probably noticed the bags under Izaya's eyes, has remembered the man who shot him, has intuited Izaya's reason for asking that question, even if he has no idea of the dreams, the blood, that wet snickt sound and Shizuo dead on the ground.

It's more than the bruises choking him; they're just a convenient excuse, and Izaya sinks forward to cross his arms on the bed and pillow his head there, just barely-almost-maybe touching Shizuo's shoulder.

Izaya closes his eyes, following Shizuo's example, and takes shaky breath after breath. He can hear Shizuo's steady breathing, as serene as the man's name as though it was never interrupted, and he can feel the resistance giving way under his blade, and he can't find it in himself to move from this spot.

"Honestly, Shizuo," Izaya snickers, still tasting the blood on his teeth, "you're such a monster."