Hey! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas for who celebrates it. Sorry it took so long to get this last part up and out - to be honest, I just kept forgetting to upload it, and then I got distracted by my holiday piece. But, better late than never, huh? This chapter is probably the whole reason why this story was called "Eating Habits", to be honest. It includes a lot of speculation on the eating habits and stuff for ghouls, seeing as when I was reading Tokyo Ghoul I didn't see too much in depth detail on it. If I got anything wrong, please let me know!

Even though this is the end to Eating Habits, I will probably have a few more to go with the AU - there's definitely one I have in mind that will feature more Tokyo Ghoul characters (specifically Touka and Kaneki). If you guys have any ideas or anything you want to see within the AU, let me know and I'll see how I can make it work! You can either drop it to me as a PM, or hit me up on my tumblr at kixaxstyx.

Now, let's get to the last part of Eating Habits! This is the chapter that the majority of the warnings actually apply to, so just be careful, okay?

Story Warnings: Vomiting, Blood, Gore, Cannibalism

Chapter Warnings: Blood, Gore, Cannibalism

Disclaimer: I do not own Durarara! or Tokyo Ghoul

Eating Habits

Shinra always knew that there was something off about Izaya's eating habits, but he never would have guessed this to be the reason. Tokyo Ghoul AU

Meal 3: "Stranger" Meals

"I'm pretty sure I just got done explaining that I can't eat anything you make me Shinra," Izaya replies dully, though he gets up despite his words. Purely out of curiosity, he tells himself.

"Oh, I never said I was going to make you anything!" Shinra's chipper as he leads the way out of the kitchen and down the hall of the apartment. Izaya is following behind at a safe distance, leaving enough room between them in case he has to make a quick escape. He knows Shinra's predilection for asking Shizuo to dissect him because of his monstrous strength, and Izaya holds no fondness for being the one actually on the table. Which he knows Shinra is fully capable of, and though he will never admit it, Izaya is actually thankful for that ghoul investigator coming to the door.

"I mean, you were so thankless when I made you stuff the first time, there's no way I'm making anything for you ever again, ignoring the fact that you can't eat it anyways!" Shinra pops into one of the rooms, which Izaya recognizes as a bedroom.

"Ah, this is my dad's room," He explains needlessly, as Izaya doesn't care. "Just need something… here it is!" Shinra pulls a key from a box on the dresser, brandishing it excitedly. "Technically, I'm not supposed to know where he hides it, but, well, dad doesn't care anyways." He shrugs before heading back down the hall. Shinra stops at a door at the end of it, slotting the key in the hole, unlocking it and stepping in.

The room is freezing, Izaya notices as they enter. It's also filled with medical equipment, which is unsurprising since Shinra has never been shy at admitting that his family is in the medical profession. What really draws his attention most is the corpse lying on an exam table.

At least, he's fairly certain it's a corpse, seeing as the chest isn't rising, and there's the tell-tale 'y' form of stitches on its chest for someone having undergone an autopsy.

"Yeah," Shinra agrees to a question Izaya never spoke. "My dad does work as an underground doctor. Cool, isn't it?" He approaches the corpse with far less hesitance than Izaya does, as he's still suspecting some sort of catch. "He doesn't normally take care of cases in the apartment, but this guy, well, was sort of a special case. Until he died, of course."

"Oh, and don't worry!" Shinra adds as if he just thought of something, "He just kicked it this afternoon. Someone was supposed to come by earlier to pick the body up to get rid of it, but the lockdown ruined that! Lucky you, huh? He's a lot fresher than the corpse you were trying to snack on earlier!"

"What makes you think I was trying to 'snack on' that corpse earlier?" Izaya asks dryly, staring down at the corpse. It looks like it's in far better shape than the one from the alley. "For all you know, I was just an innocent passerby."

"You? Innocent?" He laughs. "Yeah right! But you're right, when I first saw you, I thought you were just squeamish, and threw up because you saw a dead body."

"Gee, thanks," Izaya pokes the corpse, shooting Shinra uncertain glances as if he's not sure what he's supposed to do.

"You're welcome!" Shinra side-steps the sarcasm as if it was never there. "And I knew you were trying to snack on the corpse because I saw the finger bone in your vomit. It was quite the surprise, to be honest!"

"I wasn't trying to snack on the corpse, by the way," Izaya's still alternating between staring at the corpse and Shinra, like he needs permission to start eating it. Either that or his presence is making it awkward, Shinra doesn't really know. "Well, not really."

"Then what do you call it?" Shinra asks.

"Seeing how fresh the corpse is," Izaya shrugs, "If it was rotted – which it was, as you helpfully pointed out – I wouldn't be able to take it. Which I can't." Even if he had wanted to swing by when he finally left Shinra's and scavenge what he could from it, the corpse would be long gone now – taken away by the CCG.

"So," Izaya changes the subject abruptly, leaning over the corpse. "You're sure it's okay that I eat this guy?"

"Well," Shinra hedges. For all he had been offering this corpse up to Izaya before, now he seems like he's second-guessing his decision. "I'm not sure 'okay' is the right word, and it'll probably be difficult to explain to my dad and the people who come to collect it, but I'm pretty sure you need the corpse more than wherever he's going to wind up being dumped. 'Sides, it's like a win-win situation for everyone – you get to eat, the body gets disposed of, and I'll get praise from Celty for being such a nice friend by helping you out!"

"As mean as I am, I'm not going to get you in trouble on my behalf over something like this," Izaya tells Shinra, scowling. Leave it to Shinra to try and make it seem like he's doing Izaya a favor. "I'll be fine; I'm not that hungry."

"Says the guy who was eating rotten corpse meat earlier," Shinra laughs, though it's not in an unkind manner. "You're such a liar, Izaya. You're drooling right now – I bet you can't wait to sink your teeth into this guy."

"Am not," Izaya retorts defensively, though he swipes a hand by his mouth like there's some sort of evidence he has to hide. He adds darkly under his breath, "And it's more like I can't wait to sink my teeth into you."

"I heard that!" Shinra trills, unfazed. He's fairly certain Izaya won't eat him, regardless of the presence of the corpse in front of them. "So, are you going to eat or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there." He scowls, before holding out a hand. "Can I have a bowl and chopsticks or something?" Shinra stares at Izaya like he suddenly stopped speaking Japanese. "What?"

"Ah, nothing," Shinra answers quickly, "Just, what do you need the bowl and utensils for?"

"I may be a ghoul, but I'm not uncivilized," Izaya's staring at Shinra like he just grew a second head. "What, did you think I was going to stand here and use my hands the whole time? As if."

"Fine, fine," Shinra acquiesces, retreating to the kitchen to grab the requested items. He grabs a clean bowl from the cupboard, and a set of western eating utensils, and then Shinra just pulls the chopsticks Izaya had used earlier that evening from the sink, giving them a quick rinse off. He makes a mental note to isolate all these items later and mark them as Izaya's stuff to use whenever he's over.

As he passes the bathroom, he remembers the mess that had been left in there, but when he pops his head in, the mess has already been cleaned up.

"Oh good, you didn't start eating without me here! Did you clean up the mess in the bathroom?" He hands Izaya the bowl and utensils when he enters the room.

"I said that I would," Izaya shrugs as he sets everything on the small table by the exam table.

"And I said that you didn't have to." Shinra frowns, but Izaya's not looking at him, instead poking the corpse like he's trying to figure out where the best place to start is.

"Do you want to undo the stitches on his chest?" Izaya dismisses the subject, moving his attention up to the head of the corpse.

"Sure," Shinra amenably agrees. "Though, couldn't you just rip them open yourself with your ghoul strength?"

"I'm getting my hands dirty enough as it is, ne?" Izaya messes with the guy's eyelids. "You could stand to help a little too, seeing as you were kind enough to offer this meal to me." Then, with a bored tone, he adds, "I hope you're not squeamish."

And he sticks his fingers into the guy's eye socket, scooping out the right eye with his bare hand. Morbidly, Shinra watches with fascination, not squeamish in the slightest. Izaya pulls the eyeball out with relative ease, only needing to give an extra yank when the optic nerve refuses to dislodge from the occipital lobe. Dropping it in the bowl at his side, Izaya wastes no time in doing the same thing to the left eye.

"Maa, that's truly disgusting," Shinra hums when Izaya's pulled the left eye out, and is licking his gore covered fingers.

"Nobody's making you watch me," He snaps irritably, pausing to glare at him.

"I know, I know!" Shinra says quickly, picking up a pair of medical scissors and snipping through the stitches on the corpse's chest with fast precision, Izaya idly licking his fingers as he waits for Shinra to finish. "What do you want with the guy's eyes, anyways? I thought ghouls only ate human meat."

"I believe I said our diets were 'one-hundred percent human', Shinra," Izaya pulls up the skin covering the chest area. Wrapping a hand around one of the upper ribs, Izaya brings his hand up, taking along not only the rib he had grabbed, but two nearby ribs as well, and the sternum. Blood and gore splatter over the two boys, Shinra recoiling in disgust, and Izaya blinking like it was an unexpected happenstance. "Oops. Ah, oh well." He tosses the ribs back onto the body, and reaches his hand back into the chest cavity, through the opening he made by breaking off the ribs. Grabbing whatever he's looking for, the next thing Izaya pulls out of the corpse's chest is the heart which he drops carelessly into the bowl on top of the eyeballs.

"Anyways," He continues, stripping some of the flesh off of the ribs he had pulled out earlier, dropping that into the bowl as well. Shinra wonders for a moment if he should have grabbed a bigger one, marveling over how much Izaya is putting into the bowl. "We are able to eat every part of the human body, though some of us prefer certain parts over others. Like humans, ne? Some humans won't eat a pig's brain, while others consider it a delicacy – it's the same concept."

"So, what, you eat the heart and eyes because you consider it a delicacy?"

"Nah," Izaya shakes his head, swiping his tongue across the back of his hand, licking up some of the gore. "I was just taught not to be wasteful when you have food put in front of you. For some of us, it's hard to be picky." There's a chair on his side of the exam table, and Izaya drops into it as he cleans his hand. Shinra mimics the action on his side, staring with queer curiosity at Izaya's cat-like cleaning of his hand.

"So," Izaya says brusquely when he's done licking his hand clean, picking up the chopsticks. "Is there anything else you want to know about our eating habits?" He digs them through the bowl, probably searching for one of the eyeballs he buried under the heart and other flesh he put in it. Izaya scowls during his search, and as Shinra wonders why, he pulls the chopsticks out, with a deflated eyeball trapped sadly between them.

"Wow, you're just going to tell me?" Shinra is amazed. "Orihara Izaya offering me information? For free? Wow, it's like I've been transported to a different reality!" Izaya scoffs.

"It's not for free," Izaya throws the eyeball into his mouth, pausing to chew and swallow. "I owe you, for not telling that CCG investigator about me, and for this," He licks his lips and waves at the corpse with his chopsticks before he goes routing through his bowl for the other eyeball. "It's only fair, ne? So, do you have anything you want to know or not? Aha!" Izaya smirks triumphantly, pulling out the other eyeball by its optic nerve, completely intact.

"Um, let's see," Shinra thinks, trying to come up with appropriate questions in order to take full advantage of this opportunity Izaya is giving him. "Why do you eat human food if it makes you sick?"

"We have to blend in with you humans," Izaya answers around the eyeball in his mouth, before shutting his teeth down sharply – and disgustingly – on it. "That includes eating. It'd be strange if humans didn't see us eating their sort of food around them. If we never ate human food, it'd be like sticking a red flag screaming, 'hey, look at me! I'm a ghoul!' We're not technically allowed to interact with humans until we've mastered eating human food without throwing up immediately after."

"Technically?"

"Some still do it," Izaya shrugs, picking at the flesh he stripped from the ribs, taking a bite from it. "Most of the time, ghoul kids are just home schooled. A lot of us never properly integrate into the human world, and just live and interact with the underground."

It's tempting to ask personal questions of Izaya's home life, seeing as it's a perfect segue opportunity and all, but Shinra doesn't want to risk Izaya taking away his information free-for-all that he's given Shinra.

"All right," Shinra nods, watching as Izaya leans up, and separates a rib from the trio he pulled out earlier, sticking in his mouth. He's not sure if this is how the other teen always eats, or if it's supposed to be an intimidation tactic, but if it's the latter, it isn't really working. "Is there human food that ghouls can eat? Or is it all vomit-inducing?"

"Um," Izaya pauses, thinking, before crunching down on the part of the rib that's in his mouth, grabbing the part that's sticking out with the same hand that's holding his chopsticks. He chews and swallows before answering. "Coffee, the stronger the brew, the better we keep it down. Sugar, though that's easier if you mix blood in it… Water, though that's not strictly human… That's about it, I think. It's what I've heard of, and have been able to keep down, at least." He sticks the rib back in his mouth, crunching on it once more. How amazing, to have teeth strong enough to cut through bones like that.

"Does the human meat you consume have to be raw?" Shinra throws out another question. "Or are you able to cook it?"

"Tastes better raw," Izaya shrugs, tossing back the last of the rib. "But, yeah, we can cook it if we want to. Helps sometimes, if you're trying to get a corpse to last a while and you don't want to freeze everything."

"So, what? You turn it into jerky and stuff like that?" Shinra mocks, only half serious when his next question is, "Have any recipes you'd like to share, Orihara-kun?"

"Jerky, sure, or stuff like smoked meat," Izaya glares around the piece of meat he has hanging on his chopsticks, taking time to eat it before continuing. "My sisters and I make jelly occasionally, with the brain and blood, seeing as it's mainly sugar and water. The gelatin mix makes it a bit hard to eat, but if you add more blood than water it's not too disgusting."

"Hmm," Shinra fishes around for another question while Izaya fishes the heart from his bowl. "Does your kakugan always appear when you're eating, or only sometimes?"

"Yeah," Izaya agrees, answer somewhat muffled with how his mouth is around the heart in a similar manner as to how one would eat an apple. He follows through with the bite, continuing when he's done with, "It comes out when we're eating, or excited, or not in control. Or when we're using our kagune."

"Can I see your kagune?" Shinra asks before he can stop himself.

"No," Is Izaya's immediate response, teeth slicing through the aortic valve of the heart.

"Ah, it was worth a shot." But he's not too disappointed, seeing as he expected that sort of answer. "How often do ghouls need to eat?"

"Once a month," Izaya's done with the heart, and instead of pulling more interior organs or flesh out, just drops the last two ribs and sternum that he ripped out earlier into his bowl, flesh and all, blood splashing out the sides. "Though some eat more often than that. It depends on how fresh the meat is, how much the ghoul eats in one sitting, as well as how old the ghoul is. Children and elderly need more meat than young adults and adults, assuming they got the proper amount of meat they needed during their childhood." He crunches through an entire rib and its flesh as he answers, and makes headway on the sternum as well. "We call the ones who eat more often than they need to binge-eaters. Like humans, ne? Bingeing on everything they can get their hands on, but unlike humans, ghouls don't throw it all back up when they're done."

"How much is a proper amount for a ghoul to eat in one sitting?" Izaya snaps up the rest of the sternum before answering.

"Like I said, it depends on the ghoul." He crunches down on the last rib in his bowl. "Most adults could probably eat the entire torso of this guy before being full."

"Why do kids need more than an adult?" Shinra doesn't flinch when Izaya rips out the three top ribs from the side of the guy's chest he's sitting on, though he is mildly annoyed by the blood spatter that's on his glasses now because of it.

"We get RC cells from eating human meat," Izaya seems to have lost a lot of the decorum he's had up until now while eating, barely restraining himself from using his hands completely as he eats. At the present moment, Shinra's pretty sure the only reason Izaya hasn't gone after him yet is because of the corpse that he has free reign on. As it is, Izaya isn't doing very well at not talking with his mouth full. "It's what helps us form our kagunes. Kids need more to help make and stabilize them, and the elderly need more to help keep them from deteriorating in old age."

"Fascinating," Shinra grins, and Izaya stares at him like he just realized something.

"It's creepy, having you sit there staring at me while I eat." He points his chopsticks at Shinra accusingly.

"But Izaya, just think about it!" Shinra gasps in mock hurt from the other side of the table. As Izaya actually looks at him, he can see that Shinra's eyes are shining in excitement, and he regrets not kicking him out while he was eating. Freak. "When will I ever get to observe a ghoul eating again?"

"Never, if you keep that up," Izaya grumbles and pokes his chopsticks at the interior of the bowl. There's nothing really left in it, but as he looks at the mutilated corpse, he suddenly feels self-conscious. He's still sort of hungry, but now that he's conscious of Shinra staring at him eating, he's hesitant to eat more. "Technically, I should have killed you already."

"And aren't I glad you haven't!" Shinra hums, and Izaya huffs. "Thanks to you, I know so much more about the eating habits of ghouls!"

"Besides," Shinra continues as Izaya settles back in his chair, setting the empty bowl on the small table next to him. "Why would you kill me, when I was so nice to feed you?"

"Because you're a walking liability?" Izaya suggests. "You could at any point walk into the CCG and tell them I'm a ghoul, and the next thing I know, I'm dead."

"I would never do that!" Shinra brightly denies. "After all, if I turned you into the CCG, I wouldn't be able to dissect you when they killed you." Of course, everything always leads back to dissection with Shinra.

"You say that now," Izaya mutters crossly, and as he sits there wondering if he should eat a bit more, he decides against it. Though he can probably eat more, sitting down and letting his stomach settle tells him that he ate a little too much a little too fast.

"Can I have one last question?" Shinra asks, staring at Izaya, who is now curled slightly over himself, staring at the corpse like he's fighting to either have one last bite, or keep what he's eaten so far down.

"Can't guarantee I'll answer it," Izaya bites back, and Shinra doesn't mind. He thinks he can probably answer this one without Izaya's help anyways.

"You say ghouls only need to eat once a month, but when was the last time you ate?" Izaya freezes, and he doesn't come up with a lie quick enough, because Shinra says the conclusion he's already come to. "I'm guessing it's been more than a month, judging by how you were just gorging yourself, and barely able to restrain yourself. Not only that, but you're looking pale again, like you might be sick, even though you've only eaten human, which is supposed to be the only thing you're able to eat. That means the reason why you're feeling sick is because you've eaten too much, probably too fast! So, what's it been, a month and a half since you last ate? Two months?"

"Three," Izaya reluctantly admits. "Since I've properly eaten, at least. Every now and then I get quick bites, but nothing substantial."

"Wow!" Shinra is amazed. "I'm surprised you haven't gone mad with starvation yet and tried to eat the kids at school. Why so long?" He doesn't think Izaya will actually deign to answer, so Shinra's amazement extends further when he does.

"I give all the food I find that can be eaten to my sisters," And wow, maybe there is a part of Izaya that is caring, who knew? "They need it more than me."

"I don't know about that," Shinra hums, "You're practically skin and bones! I'd say you definitely need it as much as your sisters do."

"I am not," Izaya denies, but from where Shinra's sitting, he's pretty sure he can see a light flush somewhere on the other's gore-covered cheeks. "I don't need a lecture on my eating habits from you."

"Haha, sure you don't!" Shinra mockingly agrees, standing from his chair, and walks across to root through the cupboards on the other side of the room before producing two decently sized medical bags from one of them. Unzipping them, he upends the contents of both bags into the bottom of the cupboard.

"Here!" He tosses one at Izaya, who catches it with a bewildered look on his face, before striding back over to the corpse.

"What –?" Izaya begins, but Shinra cuts him off.

"I mean, we already started mutilating this corpse, might as well do a bit more!" He drops his bag on his chair, swaps the latex gloves he's been wearing for a new pair, and roots through the drawers for a bone saw. "You get that side, I'll get this one, and we'll see how much we can fit in these bags!"

"And do what with it?" Izaya isn't quite sure what Shinra is aiming for.

"Well, send you home with it, obviously," Shinra says, pausing in his attempt to figure out the best place to start. Will it be easier to go for larger chunks, or smaller? He isn't sure. "The ghoul lockdown will lift at dawn, and we can just take these and drop them off at your house before heading to school – you need to stop there anyways to change. My dad's probably just going to stay at work and not come home anyways, and while it'll be disappointing not to see my darling, she's probably better off not seeing this. As long as we don't act suspiciously, we'll be able to get this corpse – well, a good chunk of it, at least – to your house without anyone the wiser."

"And how are you going to explain a missing corpse to the people who are supposed to pick this thing up?" Izaya's voice is dry, as if he doubts Shinra has thought this entire thing through.

"Well, hopefully, we'll have gone by the time they get here!" He responds optimistically, because he hasn't thought the entire thing through, not completely. "My dad can take care of it – they won't suspect me, not if I put the key back, and they definitely won't suspect you because even though you were here, you're not supposed to know about this anyways! If anything, I can always blame it on the ghoul that caused the lockdown."

"Fine," Izaya agrees to Shinra's plan. "But only because there's no way for them to connect this all to me being a ghoul. That's the only reason I'm agreeing to this dumb idea of yours."

"And because you're getting free food out of it," Shinra adds slyly, and Izaya scoffs as he braces a hand on the forearm of the corpse and rips its hand straight off its body from the wrist. Okay, the smaller the parts, the better. Shinra can do that.

"You'll have to wash your clothes," Izaya informs Shinra as they work on dismantling the corpse. "Having them covered in blood and gore isn't going to being all the convincing when you try to play innocent."

"Yeah, and you'll have to wash your face," Shinra laughs, removing the hand on his side of the body and throwing it in Izaya's bag. "Seeing as it's covered in gore." And he laughs harder when Izaya raises a hand to his face and tries to wipe it off, only succeeding in smearing more gore on and around it.

"Ah, go die," Izaya tells Shinra when he finally gives up and Shinra collapses from laughing so hard.

"Wah, how mean, telling the person feeding you to go die," Shinra manages to respond, when he finally stops laughing.

"If the person feeding me went and died, I would just have more to eat, ne? It's a win-win." Izaya brushes Shinra off.

"You really are horrible, aren't you?" Shinra says, watching Izaya snap the man's arm off at the shoulder.

Izaya gives Shinra a blithe smile in response, a scary expression when combined with his gore covered face and how he's holding half of a man's arm.

"So they tell me."

And that's the end! As always, please read and review~!