Pairing: Shizuo/Izaya

Prompt: Shizuo and Izaya in a loony bin and the one lesser disturbed looking out for the other! I'm happy if it's another scenario with them forced to work together (f.e. cellmates in prison), too!

Warnings: mentions of NCS, death of OC

"Prisoner 3456, returning to his cell."
Izaya stood calmly as the loudspeakers announced this. The door of metal bars slid open to let him in and he waved at the already retreating guard.
"Shizu-chan, here. Your favorite brand."
He tossed a pack of cigarettes to a bunk that nearly filled the narrow space allotted to him and to the man lying flat on his back. Shizuo caught it in mid air and sat up.
"How did you get this?"
"You know how things work around here. Currently the rate is at a handjob for an extra bit of a sugar, a blowjob for unsupervised time at the library's computer, as for cigarettes I'll let you figure the exchange rate."
Izaya climbed to his own bunk above Shizuo's. There was a grunt of disgust that fully expressed how he felt about this whole disgusting system of bartering sex for goods. Still, he propped a cigarette and was puffed in silence for a while.
"You didn't have to go that far…"
"It's okay. It's in my interest to keep you happy and vice versa."
Shizuo knew that it was so. Smoke filled the cell with its short lived shifting forms that dissolved into nothingness. Theirs was an unlikely partnership, frayed with suspicion but mutually beneficial in the end. Shizuo needed Izaya's network of contacts to maneuver in this strange microcosm that was the prison and Izaya needed Shizuo's protection to avoid being raped more or less constantly.
"Right."
"Aren't you glad that you're friends with me, Shizu-chan?"
"We're not friends. Just cellmates."
The poetic justice of it all had worn out after the past month. Finally, karma turned on Izaya and landed him in jail where he belonged but Shizuo did not even appreciate this unexpected turn of events. After all he too is locked in this hell hole. Not only is his freedom curtailed as what little of it he does have is now shared by Izaya.
"Ah, but we became cellmates precisely because we're friends. Let's just say that the warden took some convincing and that I can be most eloquent."
Shizuo cannot understand how easily Izaya managed to blend into the vicious crowd but somehow he found ways of playing his little games. Here was humanity at its very worst and Izaya knew just how to twist it to his advantage.
"And today I worked extra hard, even got this back."
The ever so familiar switchblade flitted into Shizuo's field of vision and was gone immediately.
"You're not supposed to keep weapons around."
"Not everyone is strong like you, Shizu-chan. I can do marvels with this beauty but there is not much I can do on my own if they gang up on me."
Izaya's position in the hierarchy of power was kept artificially in this closed environment.
"I just don't want to get in trouble if they do a search and find it."
"They won't. Don't worry."
Shizuo was silent. He finished his cigarette and storing the rest of the pack under his pillow.
"You sure sound chirpy about this."
"As long as they believe I'm your bitch I should be safe enough."
In reality Shizuo did not at all touch him and had violently repelled all advances from Izaya's part. Which posed something of a problem. It had taken a lot to secure this cell that was perfect all around, away from the rest and tucked at a corner so that they had more privacy than any other inmate but Izaya's status needed public confirmation to become secure.
"Izaya, what does this word mean?"
Shizuo climbed into the upper bunk along with a book. In an attempt to keep a low profile and deal with all the loads of free time without going insane Shizuo had taken Izaya's suggestion and taken up reading. So this became part of their routine, Izaya explaining complicated passages or obscure vocabulary. Shizuo was impressed despite himself at just how wide and encompassing Izaya's knowledge was.
"'Inchoate', in this context it means 'formless' but it can also refer to an initial stage that has yet to gain its defining traits."
Shizuo nodded and scribbled it down on a notebook where he kept track of Izaya's bits of wisdom.
"Thanks. It makes sense now."
"Still, Shizu-chan! Mishima! Fancy you reading Mishima, of all things! You're turning into quite the intellectual."