Goldilocks by Akuno Hikari

A story that has absolutely nothing to do with its title.

Summary: Featuring Orihara Izaya, a would-be Goldilocks, on a daring quest to discover his sexual orientation. Co-starring Yagiri Namie, Heiwajima Shizuo, and Ryuugamine Mikado as Papa, Mama, and Baby Bears. Respectively. IZMK.

A/N: This isn't the continuation of Octopus Sausage that some people have been requesting, but a stand alone oneshot. Like most of my plotbunnies, this baby's water broke when I was just waking up, and its birth was moments later while I was taking a shower. Vulgar way of describing how I brainstorm aside, this is my thanks to all those reviewed and favorited Octopus Sausage. (But not the ones who put a story alert on it. Silly readers, when a fic's status declares it to be COMPLETE, it probably means that there won't be any more updates.)

I do want to write a sequel for Octopus Sausage though, if not to fill in some plot holes, write "erection" for the second time in a story (and blush like the virgin that I am afterwards), and add some IZMK love to the mostly Shizaya fandom, then to write more about whatever food that I want to eat at the moment.

On another note, is anyone else a part of Colorless? My username there is Epiuno.

Let it be said that Orihara Izaya is an expert information broker. His network encompassed the whole of Ikebukuro like how a vampire would sink its fangs into its helpless victim. This simile, of course, ignored the modern mutilation of a fearsome supernatural being, a vegetarian vampire (who had been seventeen for a while) that sparkled under Hollywood's spotlights and was too pussy to stay in the same room as the victim, let alone bite her. More like a stalker than a victim, that girl always followed him around. And she wanted him to bite her. What a creepy, deranged stalker that unleashed all of her masochistic tendencies on her vampire boyfriend.

(Like the simile above, the previous statement had an exception; this statement ignored the fact that Orihara Izaya was a creepy, deranged stalker that unleashed all of his masochistic tendencies on Heiwajima Shizuo.)

Let it also be said that Orihara Izaya was well versed in collecting the information that made him into an expert information broker. He had various connections over the internet that he had coerced (Blackmailed) into sending him reports on activities on an hourly basis. He had contacts who he had convinced (Bribed) into calling him on one of his cellphones. For information that had to stay absolutely secure, he had people who he had invited (Blackmailed) into becoming pen pals with others who had volunteered (Blackmailed as well. It may have been repetitive, but who could blame him, it was a very effective method. His favorite, next to bodily harm, of course.) to deliver the letters of vital information to yet another associate (Hired, this time, though Izaya had some photographs that the man was sure to be interested in if push comes to shove.) who would deposit the information in the mailbox of Izaya's office.

Despite the fact that he had a well-established network of information at his fingertips, Orihara Izaya also went out and gathered rumors in person. These escapades usually entailed his interviewee running into a dead end and screaming as the information broker approached with an amiable smile on his face, a calm question on his lips, and a deadly knife in his hand. Orihara Izaya was a hands-on sort of person.

But this was only if he was particularly motivated.

Right now, boredom and chronic laziness had found Izaya reduced to a lump on his couch and watching the first thing that came onto the television. (It just so happened that the first thing that came on was a movie about a vampire that wasn't coming onto the girl.)

This was where Yagiri Namie found her boss, sipping at a cup of tea delicately and eyes glued to a chick flick. Gaze not detaching itself from the screen, he said, "Namie-san, good timing! I'm about to run out of tea, can you brew me some more? There some Earl Grey on the counter." She snorted at the ridiculousness of it all. She headed for the kitchen to start the water boiling.

Although she hadn't made any indication that she had left the room, Izaya raised his voice to say something else. "Actually, on second thought, I want Aracha!"

Namie sighed, but complied. She was much too used to her boss's capricious whims. Five minutes later, she emerged from the kitchen with a glazed pot and accompanying cup. She poured the green tea into the cup and set it in front of her boss. Izaya made a delighted sort of noise and immediately set out to take a sip. Burn his tongue, Namie willed the tea. Burn the manipulative bastard's tongue, but the tea apparently didn't know how to read minds, and Izaya drank his tea without incident, still focused on the screen.

When the credits started rolling down the screen, Izaya stood up and stretched. His back cracked as he did so. "Ah~ That was a good movie!" he exclaimed.

"Are you kidding me," Namie stated flatly. "It's a terrible movie."

"I beg to disagree," Izaya countered. "I thought it was an excellent display of humanity's selfishness and fruitless struggle to find their one true love." There was a faraway look in her boss's eyes and the smile on his face was positively giddy. "I liked it."

Namie rolled her eyes. "Only teenaged girls and homosexuals enjoy that trash."

A normal person would have gotten embarrassed by their eccentric tastes or would have retaliated with indignance.

But, Orihara Izaya wasn't a normal person. Hell, Namie sometimes suspected that he wasn't human at all. A simple dissection would be enough to determine his planet of origin, Namie hypothesized, but the side affects of being bisected and having your insides removed and preserved in jars for further investigation more often than not included death. But in the name of science, Namie was willing to take the risk. Orihara Izaya, the not normal person, appeared to be thinking about her statement seriously, and Namie gaped at him, but stopped almost immediately. Of course he would take a casual comment like that and scrutinize it to the extreme. Orihara Izaya didn't just scrutinize it, he took it apart down to atoms and reassembled it haphazardly in his own mind once he thought he was satisfied.

"Well, I'm not a teenage girl, obviously…"

Namie decided to humor him. "So then, you must be a homosexual," she finished for him.

"Hmm…" Izaya folded his arms and forced his lips to form the word. It left a strange taste in his mouth, not an unpleasant one, but an unfamiliar one. He tried whispering, then muttering, then saying it in his head. It was still a foreign concept to him. What if he was? Homosexual, that is. He tried thinking back to past girlfriends and his attraction to them, but then he realized that he never had a girlfriend, or even an attraction to a girl, as far as he could remember.

"I'm not sure if I am," he admitted. And then, he got really interested. If he wasn't interested in women, does that mean that he was gay? Or maybe, as a man destined to stand above humans, he was asexual, and needed no counterpart, female, male, or otherwise. It bothered him not to know, and he really had to know, now that he knew that he didn't know.

He studied Yagiri Namie, giving her the perfunctory sweep a man usually gave a woman. His eyes swept over her face, made a brief pit stop at her breasts, and continued its travels down to other key points of her anatomy. She was attractive, he figured. Long black hair, an attractive face, long legs, and a curvy body. Great girlfriend material, barring the fact that she had some kind of borderline incestuous brother complex. Looking at her didn't give him an urges, so he decided to try a different approach.

He walked over to her from his place by the couch and stopped right in front of his aide. Izaya had a serious look on his face and a hand was rubbing his face to mockingly create an enlightened air. He peered into her face, and Namie took an unconscious step back because of how far he was leaning into her.

And, with an almost casual air, Izaya pinched her ass.

And if that wasn't mortifying enough, she heard him mutter, "Too soft," before he swiftly extracted his hand and vacated the premises. Namie felt a cold fury wash over her, and she barely noticed the front door opening and closing.

Though him being a hands-on sort of person was one of his redeeming qualities as an information broker, this redeeming quality was going to get him killed.

Brutally murdered. Body mutilated. Blood-bathed and missing a few select organs.

And when Izaya got home, Namie swore that she would off him so perfectly that no one would ever think to suspect her, and instead point their fingers at a poor butler who had been in a dining room holding a candlestick at the wrong place and the wrong time.

Women, Izaya decided as he roamed the streets of Ikebukuro, were not to his liking. They were much too soft, which was charming in its own right (It must have been, as most men usually preferred women. But Izaya wasn't most men.) but it wasn't for him.

And then the question that had been plaguing him reared its ugly head. Did that mean that he like men?

Izaya pondered, and thought, and wondered, and came to the conclusion that he honestly didn't know. He probably would have put more thought into coming up with more synonyms to describe how hard he was thinking, if not for a sudden whoosh of air. And, ohholyshit, somebody had just thrown a vending machine at him. The once populated street was suddenly void of all pedestrians.

"I-ZA-YA-KUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN," the blonde man in a bartender uniform stood in front of him like how the Big Bad of a video game loomed in front of the hero (Izaya could just hear an orchestra accompanied by a choir and a rock band in front. It was that daunting). "Didn't I tell you to stay the hell out of Ikebukuro!"

Ooh, goody! A chance to bait his good friend (The italicized word stated previously could also be replaced by a variety of nouns of the colorful sort) Shizu-chan. Maybe if he weren't so damn bored, Izaya would have thought of the repercussions of fighting with the Strongest Man in Ikebukuro (Possible side effects may include, but is not limited to: a broken leg due to a well-thrown mailbox, cleaved in half by a sign from the highway used as a makeshift scythe, and most likely, death) and not let those years of practicing parkour go to waste. But Izaya was bored, and this was sure to get some adrenaline, maybe even some endorphins, flowing.

A wide grin spread across Izaya's face. "But, Shizu-chan~," the brunette made sure to put enough whine into his sing song voice. "Ikebukuro's so exciting, I can't help but come!"

Shizuo's eyebrow twitched. "You've got balls to step foot into Ikebukuro even though you knew I'd be here to beat the ever loving crap out of you!" He took a few steps to the side of the road, and yanked up the metal guard- all twelve feet of it- as easily as if he were dismantling a building block structure. He then turned and began to walk smoothly toward Izaya

Even though he had years to get used to the other's unnatural strength, a little bit of panic would always well up when the man would use that unnatural strength to heft a really, really heavy object that could squash his head like a grape in the sticky fingers of a three year old child, especially if that really, really heavy object that could squash his head like a grape in the sticky fingers of a three year old child was aimed at him. He didn't let his fear show in his outward appearance, but his heart was pounding, and he went with the first retort that came to mind. "Maybe I stepped foot into Ikebukuro because I wanted to see you!" he cooed.

Shizuo had been no less than two feet away from him when Izaya said this, more than close enough for him to reach out and whack Izaya across the face with the metal railing. (Conversely, he had also, in his blind rage, entered Izaya's range.) A horrified look momentarily flashed across his face, and he dropped the piece of metal taller than both of them combined on the ground. It landed with a heavy sort of noise and the asphalt immediately cracked under the sudden pressure.

"What," he growled, "did you just say?"

Izaya smiled the sort of smile that politicians used to placate the masses that he donned to comfort his frightened clients, utilized to get people to trust him, and used to make little children cry. "I said-"

"What," Heiwajima Shizuo continued, his voice rising into a crescendo, without listening to the information broker's response. "Did. You. Just. Say."

Two things occurred to Izaya at the moment.

Firstly, that his lips felt awfully chapped.

And secondly, it amused him to no end that what he said had riled his rival so much, but he really didn't understand why it had put the man into such a tizzy. But, why waste such a wonderfully panned out scenario like this? He decided to capitalize the moment. "I wanted to see you so badly," Izaya licked his lips, they were awfully dry,"Shizu-chan."

The man in the bartender uniform's eyebrow twitched.

"You," Heiwajima Shizuo told him, "are such a goddamn fruit. Also, getthefuckouttaIkebukuro." And he bent down to pick up his weapon.

…Ah, it made sense now. Shizu-chan thought that he was coming on to him, Izaya realized. And now, he thinks I'm gay. And that question reverberated in his head once more, and the memory of his discovery of not liking women flashed in his mind again and again. While Izaya was mulling over his possible career batting for the other team, with almost a lazy look on his face, the blonde began to pull back to swing the metal railing at him. It was strange that he was seriously contemplating his sexual orientation when Shizuo was just about to bust his brains out.

Then, he remembered the kind of person he was.

He sidestepped the swing, and Shizuo swore as the momentum from it pulled him along with it, leaving his body open to any attacks of Izaya's own. Just as Shizuo was about to step back to reposition himself, Izaya retaliated with an assault of his own. To counter a slash of a knife, Shizuo readied his muscles to prepare for a jump back, but then he realized that Izaya didn't in fact have a knife in his hand, but his hand on his ass.

A hand-on sort of person.

Not bad, but… "Too hard," Izaya noted with a murmur, and he drew back his hand. Shizuo blinked and tried to process the fact that his bitter enemy just groped him. Then he took another moment to realize that he, the Strongest Man in Ikebukuro, was just violated, for what may have been the first time in his life. He shook himself out of it to see Izaya already halfway down the street.

"Shit," he cursed, but felt too traumatized about the incident, so he really couldn't bring himself to chase the bastard out of his town. With a practiced movement, he produced a box from his pocket, and lit himself a cigarette. He took a long drag.

Dammit, he felt so used.

Like a condom.

Heiwajima Shizuo swiftly reconsidered his previous decision not to run after the man that violated him.

"I-ZA-YAAA-KUUUUUUN!"

The incident happened one day on the way home from school.

It was around three-forty in the afternoon when Ryuugamine Mikado was walking home from school with his friends. Masaomi sure is energetic he thought, watching his friend somehow simultaneously dance and walk at the same time. They were really a motley group, a loud and vibrant boy, a beautiful girl, and a shy boy. It may have been a spectacle for passersby, but for Mikado, this group was where his happiness lay. A ringtone interrupted his thoughts, and he was surprised to see his previously exuberant best friend sober and answer his phone.

Mikado gave his friend his privacy, and not even a minute later, Masaomi clicked his phone shut forcefully with an almost frustrated look on his face. Mikado was surprised to see that the moment the blonde looked up from the item clenched in his fist, there was that sunny and cheery Kida Masaomi grinning cheekily back at him.

"Ahh~ That was the senpai that I was telling you about, Mikado, the other day." What senpai? Which day? Mikado thought privately, but didn't speak. "Her friends are going on a group date, and they needed an extra guy." He did a theatrical twirl and the smile on his face was so beautiful that it must have been practiced. "Even the older ladies can't keep their hands off of me," he laughed.

Mikado must have had a strange look on his face, because Masaomi wrapped an arm around his shoulders and said, "No need to be jealous, Mikado. You've got Anri by you! And even you can't deny her ero-"

"Masaomi!" Mikado blushed, and glanced at his lone female friend to see her reaction. She didn't look too fazed, as always. Masaomi just laughed off Mikado's indignation and danced away into the distance.

His leave had left his two friends alone for the rest of their journey, and although both members of their party were quiet, Mikado didn't find the silence unpleasant in the least. Sonohara-san was a person of little words, and as a fellow soft-spoken individual, there was a mutual unsaid understanding between the two of them that just being in each other's presence was comfortable.

Smiling softly at the girl as she said goodbye at their usual intersection, Mikado continued the rest of his trek home absorbed in his own thoughts. His mother had recently called him; Mikado could recall the incident quite clearly. His eardrums still felt as if they were bleeding. She had called to see how he was doing, and dissolved quite quickly into tears over her baby leaving the nest so early, and how she was lonely without his presence.

Privately, Mikado had suspected that it was his mother's time of month.

He appreciated the gesture nonetheless. It had made him almost smile, listening to his mother babble, reminding him to eat healthy (You better not be eating ramen all the time! He had laughed awkwardly at that.) and to do his homework early to get enough sleep (You better not be staying up all night long on that computer of yours! Which made Mikado wonder if all mothers were psychics…).

Mikado turned into a street, and smiled in the direction of an elderly woman that waved at him. The modern atmosphere of Ikebukuro gave way to a residential area, houses and apartment complexes took up his line of vision.

He frowned as he recalled the rest of his mother's call.

Just as he had finally begun to be comforted by the sound of his mother's voice for the first time in a while, his smile had fallen off completely and replaced by a puzzled expression when his had mother hung up.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Mikado crossed another street after looking both ways twice. His mother would be proud, and he smiled at the thought.

It was then that he turned the corner, and immediately walked into a solid object. Face hurting, he blushed, thinking to himself embarrassedly that he had just walked into a wall. He removed himself from the offending object, and was surprised to see black and a little bit of fur from the corner of his eye. He blushed again when he realized what he just did.

He hurriedly took a few steps back and blushed. "O-orihara-san…! I'm so sorry for walking into you!"

Orihara Izaya didn't seem fazed in the least that a school boy had just collided with him. "It's all right, Ryuugamine-kun." And his lips stretched into a wide smile.

"I wasn't looking at where I was going. I could have seriously hurt you, Orihara san. It's not all right," Mikado muttered quietly, looking quit guilty about the whole ordeal. His grip on the strap of his shoulder bag tightened, and his gaze was downcast. The boy bit his lip.

"Maa, maa, Ryuugamine-kun, there's no need to panic." The older man made a show of giving himself a pat down to check for any injuries. "See. No harm, no foul."

Mikado frowned and stared at the ground some more, still not placated. If it had been Masaomi that he had run into, Mikado would have blushed and stutter out some apologies just as he had right now, and the blonde would wrap an arm around him and lightheartedly forgive him, then proceed to tell a lewd joke while waggling his eyebrows. But this wasn't the best friend he had since the beginning of time. This was Orihara Izaya. He was dangerous, and Masaomi had told him to avoid him at all costs.

If he wanted to keep his heart beating, he hoped that he didn't cross that man, ever. But he just did. And not just cross, he had walked right into him…!

He had to make it up to him anyway he could, or else he'd dread the consequences that lay in store for him.

He looked into the older man's eyes. "If there's anything I can do to make up for this, please let me know." For the sake of his life, he hoped there was a way to redeem himself. The image of a dark alleyway and a smiling man with a knife flitted through his mind, and he really didn't want to die a virgin...no.

What he meant was, he didn't want to die young. Mikado mentally slapped himself for worrying about his reasons for not wanting to meet an untimely end.

He didn't want to die at all.

Period.

Izaya smiled. The corners of his eyes crinkled pleasantly, his lips were upturned beautifully, and it sent shivers down Mikado's spine. It was a well timed smile that was executed just as Mikado had made his offer, and it almost could have implied that the man had been hoping that the boy would say that.

For some reason, his mother's parting words came to mind.

And do watch out for perverts, dear.

"Actually, Mikado-kun," Mikado felt his hair stand on end as the informant leaned in towards him and addressed him by his given name. "There was a question that I was having figuring out the answer to," the man said, no, purred, as he took a step forward.

And Mikado took a step back, suddenly uneasy.

"What is it, Orihara-san?" The man took another step toward him, and Mikado mirrored him, his feet taking him another step back. "I-I'm not all too good at using my brain, I hope it's something easy enough that even I could help you with."

"Oya, oya, Mikado-kun." Again with putting emphasis on his name! Didn't the older man realize that his skin crawled and his breath hitched every time he said it! "I wouldn't have asked you to help solve my…problem if I hadn't the utmost confidence that you'd be the one that could help me!" And the man took a step, and Mikado another.

Mikado gulped as the man continued to approach, "W-well, I'm happy that you have that much hope in me…"

"Actually, it's quite simple," Orihara Izaya said. He extracted one hand out of the pocket of his coat, and for a moment, Mikado was afraid that the information broker really did decide to kill him. The arm shot out lightening fast, and Mikado didn't have enough time to do anything to defend himself. He clenched his eyes shut.

A moment later, he opened his eyes and looked down, surprised to see that there wasn't a gaping wound in his chest.

He was equally surprised to see the older man's hand caressing his ass.

There was a look of enlightenment on Izaya's face,

Taking a look at the informant's face, then trailing his gaze down his arm, and finally at the hand with the firm grip on his tush, Mikado blinked and tried to put the picture together in a logical manner.

"…Orihara-san, are you groping me?"

"…"

Mikado stared at him.

"…Yes," Izaya admitted finally. There was a strange look on his face which morphed into determination, and in a swift move, he scooped Mikado into an embrace. He dropped his bag because of the sudden movement, and made a move to pick it up, but the arms around him were strong and the hold was warm and smelt softly of laundry detergent. With one hand, the man tucked Mikado's head into the crook of his shoulder. The boy could faintly feel Izaya's breath on his ear and they were so close that Mikado could imagine that he could hear the man's heartbeat.

And he heard Orihara Izaya murmur softly in his ear.

"Just right."

It didn't feel to weird, and the edge that Izaya usually carried in his face was gone in this momentary lapse in his constant vigilance, so Mikado let Izaya just hold him for a while.

That is, until he felt a telltale pressure on his behind.

"…Orihara-san, are you molesting me?"

Mikado felt low vibrations against his chest as the man chuckled. The one arm still wrapped around him gave him a light squeeze, and Izaya murmured in his ear, warm breath tickling the lobe and sending shivers down his spine.

"If I have my way, I'll be doing more than molesting you."

Izaya drew from the embrace, looked at Mikado, and smiled. Mikado was red-faced and short of breath, and he was playing with his fingers distractedly.

It was cute, Izaya thought, and then the smile fell from his face when he realized that he was a pedophile. And gay. A gay pedophile.

But…

Mikado was across from him, blush fading, but a pink dusting still on his cheeks. He toyed with his fingers in a way that Izaya found endearing, and there was a wobbly smile forming on his lips.

"…I wouldn't be adverse to that," the boy admitted finally.

The smile returned to Izaya's face, and he playfully tapped the boy's nose, causing his eyes to widen and the blush to come back with vengeance.

"Then it's a promise!" he chirped.

And Izaya bent down and gently kissed Mikado on the lips.