Pairing: Shizuo/Izaya

Prompt: Gang x Izaya AND Shizuo

Warning: NCS, death of OC

Heiwajima Shizuo did not handle words well. Between their forming in his brain and actually being translated into audible sounds there was a certain muddled confusion that left him mumbling to himself like a demented person whenever he wanted to say something important. It always had been that way. And thus his inner dialogue remained thus, consigned to his mind without an escape valve. At times it was aggravating. At times it added to his anger but more than that it was behind much of it. The trench between himself and others grew wider with each word that he fumbled through without speaking.
But somehow it was also business as usual. Part of the usual routine. Incorporated into the routine that made up his life and his person. Shizuo already counted on this handicap and made the best he could out of it. Until a severe disturbance burst apart the fabric of normality. Shizuo thought that there was little he could not handle. He was wrong. The pain was something he was used to but the humiliation had a sting of its own. A lingering one. Through the haze of tears of frustration it was only dimly felt, suffocated under riotous distress but as time went on – as his beaten body cooled and wounds scabbed – the humiliation grew, taking root in his very bones and spreading out with an infectious power.
Ironically, it had been Izaya to take care of him. Small and frail bodied Izaya. Somehow Izaya had gathered himself from the bloody mess he had become and tried to haul Shizuo out of the pit of silence. For Shizuo was deadlocked into wordless misery. Unable to at all speak. His tentative grasp on human communication snapped.
He now sat slumped on a creaky chair in a seedy waiting room. Izaya had dragged him to Shinra's office to run some tests. A few light bulbs were dead so that Shizuo was in dirty semi-shadow. Shinra glanced at him through the shaded glass portion of the door.
"He's just sitting there…"
Izaya smiled weakly.
"Shizu-chan took it rather hard. The results?"
"Negative for STDs but you better come back next month and get tested again. There's an incubation period to these things."
Izaya exhaled slowly. One of his eyes was patched up and he kept his jacket zipped up all the way to his chin. Cigarettes burns littered his skin with ugly marks a bit over his body. He kept them hidden along with the bruises and cuts.
"I've always wondered why in movies rape victims hardly ever bother getting tested. One would think that it would be the obvious move."
"Most aren't thinking straight."
Shinra could not help cast another glance at the huddled shape that was Shizuo. Izaya followed it. As much as he could. It was difficult seeing the world with just one eye. There was a perpetual blind spot and it frightened him. He kept jumping at shadows.
"He's not talking about it. He's not saying a thing, actually. About anything."
"Have you contacted Kasuka?"
"Should I?"
Shinra was silent.
"I'm not sure."
"There you go."
"Is he eating?"
"Barely. I figured that bringing him here would be better than an official hospital."
"You were probably right about that."
"Is Celty around? Maybe she can help. I'm pretty sure that as long as he's with me, he'll be thinking about it."
"She'll be back shortly."
Izaya headed for the exit.
"You're leaving?"
"I want to be alone."
Izaya stepped into the neon drowned night without as much as looking at Shizuo on his way out. He did not want his company. Being around Shizuo was living in the trail of what Izaya termed as 'the incident'. Izaya had thought it through and even written down every single detail of what happened, from the kidnapping, to the drugging, to the torture and rape. He omitted no single fact, not even minor things like the smashed logos in the abandoned garage or the dead scent of gasoline hanging in the stale air. Izaya did not do it to dwell on the subject but to expunge it from his mind as one would do with poison before it could take a hold of the heart.
It had not worked. But the effort attested to his tenacity to survive emotionally.