Author's Note:I haven't decided if this is going to remain as a one-shot or if I want to add more chapters to it yet. I think it's quite nice just keeping it short and sweet, but I know this would be so much fun to write. Welp, writing in first person was a new thing for me too. I've never done that before. Is it okay? ._.

This is based on someone's head-canon that I saw on Tumblr the other day. You know what it's like when you see something you want to write, so I figured the only way to make the plot bunny disappear was to give in and write it. (The prompt is written below ok)

"In my head, Izaya's been in love with Shizuo ever since they first met in high school. But since Shizuo decided that he hated him upon sight, Izaya gave up all hope of ever making Shizuo love him, and instead focused all of his energy on making Shizuo hate him more than anyone else. Because if he couldn't have Shizuo's love, he would have all of his hate instead, and that's why he does the things he does."

The world is full of contradictions, it is, really, all you really need to do is turn around and take a good long look. Good and evil, fire and water, peace and war, the list is endless, timeless, stretching out into eternity and ever present in everything and everyone. Of all of these contradictions, it is love and hate that is truly the worst. Love is so easy to get tangled up in, something that can bring about the ruin of even the most powerful men and women, but love is fickle and love is blind and just as easily can turn to hate. You can end up hating someone who you wish really to love but aren't allowed to do so for whatever stupid reason that might be. Hate is even worse, a stronger emotion to shake and one that never truly goes away. Hate is for life, not just for Christmas, and once you have started to hate, then it becomes impossible to stop. It is easy to hate, you see, and it is difficult to love. This is just how the world works though, full of contradictions, wasn't that what one of those great philosophers had once said?

I was used to being hated. I was hated for being the best at what I did, because there was no question that I was the best information broker in the city. I was hated for the very reputation that I had built in the underbelly of the city, having a friend like Shiki had certainly caused quite a few street thugs to decide they would quite like me dead, thank you very much. I was hated for the gleeful games that I played, all for my own entertainment and curiosity's sake. It was just something that had become such a part of my life that it wasn't worth bothering with anymore, just the way the world worked. That didn't mean I was going to change though, there was no way that I was going to conform to those social norms that would allow me to be loved like the rest of humankind. It was better to be hated for who I was than to be loved for someone I wasn't. I wasn't going to be normal, just because that was what the world told me I should be. Who wanted to be normal when you could be exceptional?

I was hated by many people, but none more so than Heiwajima Shizuo, because if there was a title awarded to the person who despised me the most, he would wear it proudly on his person at all hours of the day if he could. Shizu-chan and I, we were a contradiction, no, no, it was better than that; we were the contradiction, the first and the last and the greatest in the world. They say that opposites are supposed to attract, but Shizu-chan always seemed to want to repel me, so maybe we weren't so different after all. Who knew, who knew, this wasn't some middle school science project. This was life and this was real. He was good and I was evil, he was fire and I was water, he was hate and I was love. Do you remember me talk of it earlier? Love! Ha! Ha! Do you remember how I talked about how easy it was to become tangled up in it, how easy it was to fall? He was a monster and I was something else entirely. A man, a God, who knew, but he and I were not the same, we were so completely different and that was that.

I had fallen, years ago now. I had fallen as only a foolish teenager can fall, hard and quick and ridiculously deep. I fell in love to a point of passion that set about unhinging my soul itself. It was funny that someone like me could feel something like that; it was so funny that I wanted to laugh at myself until my sides hurt, until tears of laughter sprang into my eyes. I had never thought that it were possible for someone like me, but maybe that was because until that day I had never met someone like him.

I can still remember the day; how many years have gone by since then? Many, too many, but I can remember everything about it, and maybe that makes me a spineless, pathetic excuse for something but I frankly don't give a shit about that anymore. I did once, but I have learnt to deal with it now, as all adults must. It was still in school, though I never wore the uniform, never conformed, even then. I remember it so well, so well that I can still feel the dusting of petals in the air and the breeze tugging at my hair, at the loose edges of my clothes. I'd been sat on some wall or some such thing outside of the school grounds, one leg pulled up to lean my chin on. Shinra had arrived then, Kishitani Shinra, probably one of the few people I knew could stomach me even then, despite knowing just what a twisted fuck I was.

And then he had arrived, along with Shinra, a bag tucked over one shoulder that his hand gripped onto as if he thought someone would try and take it from him. How delightfully fascinating he was, even then, before I knew what lay beneath. I almost lost track of Shinra introducing us, and I only just caught his name over my smirk and my staring. That blonde hair, that hard stare my way, the shift of his muscles under the crinkled white school shirt. He was enchanting, and he most definitely had caught my attention in a way that no one else had in quite some time. Heiwajima Shizuo. His name practically rolled off of my tongue. Heiwajima Shizuo. Heiwajima Shizuo. It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted him, in any way I could take him. It didn't take me long to decide that he was mine, and that no one else was getting a piece of him while I was around, still breathing and fighting and kicking up against the current. I'd always been a strong believer that love at first sight was bullshit, and yet here I was, undeniably drawn to this other human like people were to me. Love is shallow and love is blind, but when it strikes, there's no getting away from it.

But love never makes things easy, does it? It never follows a smooth course; it never does, because love is just like me. It likes to play games, it likes to do horrible things just because it can, and it likes to play with people just to see how they'll react. That was the course that my love for Heiwajima Shizuo took, and the course that I am pretty sure it will be set on forever; a downward spiral into hate.

He was interesting for a reason. He had defied the normal too, just like me. He hadn't acted as I expected him to act like any other human that came into contact with me. They all knew what an asshole I could be, but that didn't stop them from flocking to me, because everyone has that attractive to danger, that tug they feel to do something naughty; and well, that something was me. I knew I wasn't unattractive, I knew that I was smart, and I knew that people, girls and boys, were drawn to me when they shouldn't be. Stupid, delicious humans, drawn to me like idiotic moths to a burning hard flame. When I had first laid eyes on Heiwajima Shizuo, my Shizu-chan, Shizzy, Shizu, I had known that he was different. I had known that from the get go, and in actuality that was probably what had drawn him to me quite as strongly as I had been. I didn't like normal. Normal was boring, and I was always looking for new sensations, always acting on whims and seeking things that stayed outside of the conventional box everyone is penned into. Shizu-chan broke that box by hating me.

He made it known that he hated me from the very day that we met. Shinra had barely finished introducing us when he had lunged for me, snarling and tossing his bag to the side like some kind of rabid dog let off of its lead. Shinra had dived out of the way and I had merely laughed and leapt out of the way with a gleeful delight. How fascinating, how utterly monstrous! He was a monster; he was, ruled by his anger and without reason, acting on a primal instinct. He had no reason to hate me, and yet he had just decided that he would, without getting to know what else I could be capable of. Maybe he sensed something in me then, maybe there was a look in my eye that he misread or he didn't like the way that my mouth twisted up into a smirk. Whatever the reason, from day one, Shizu-chan and I had contradicted each other. He hated me, and I loved him.

I'm not sure where exactly I realised that I did. Perhaps it was somewhere between that first day and the end of our school year when he got kicked out for defending himself in a fight that he hadn't started. But I loved him, and I think I was one of the few people that could, if only he would have let me. Because I did try, I didn't play games with him, at least I hadn't at first. People aren't meant to play games with the people they love, are they? I had tried to be nice, I had tried to woo him, to lure him in like a spider and a fly, but it had only seemed to piss him off even further. The idiot took me all the wrong way, decided that my nice gestures and flirty comments tossed his way were made only to irritate him. In the time that we had together, I seemed to attract everyone but him, no matter what I did.

And then I left school, graduated with top grades and a promising future that I already knew I didn't want, and for a year or so I lost track of Heiwajima Shizuo. We ran in different circles. I had my contacts in the underworld, Shiki and his guys, and he had— well he had no one, really, did he? He went from dead-end job to dead-end job while I just kept climbing higher and higher in my world. And when I ran into him again, nothing changed. He was still the same, and I was still the same, and he still decided that he hated me and then—

Everyone has a breaking point. I found mine at the same time that first vending machine had collided with me in the street outside of the bar that he worked at. Maybe it was the concussion that followed, or maybe it was just common sense, but it became apparent then that Heiwajima Shizuo really wasn't anything like the rest of my humans. It became apparent that I wouldn't be able to charm him, that I wouldn't be able to make him love me. So I did something so pathetically human, and I gave up.

It is difficult to love; do you remember I said that before? It's something I've never forgotten. So I gave up trying to make him love me, because Shizu-chan was as stubborn as an ox. A dumb and idiotic and violent ox; that was him all over, proud and stupid. I changed then, into something different and yet into someone that really I'd always been all along. I stopped trying, and I gave into the real me. I brought Shizu-chan into my games, I made him a playing piece on my board, and I endeavoured to make him hate me even more than he did now. Little children are meant to tease the people they like, maybe that was what drove me, or maybe it was just the need to be acknowledged by him, even if it wasn't in the way that I wanted. Because if I couldn't ever have his love, then I would have all of his hate instead, because if his love was reserved for someone else, then I would at least make sure that he didn't hate anyone else more than me. Being his enemy was the closest I was ever going to get to being his lover, because we were a contradiction, polar opposites, we had to be extreme, we had to be one or the other, we could never be just friends. The world just didn't work that way, and it never would work in that way.

So now it's my aim to make him hate me as much as I can, because if the day comes that there is someone he hates more than me, I don't know what I'll do with myself; because in that moment he won't love me, and yet, I won't have all of his hate either, so what would that make me? It's almost scary how easy it is now, how quickly I can ruin his day or his week or his month. I can set him up for things that he hasn't done with the snap of my fingers or I can send his phone number around to creepy old men looking for sex who'll more than happily harass him into the early hours of the morning. I can push all the wrong buttons and get his blood boiling by dancing around him in Ikebukuro or by mentioning that I'm on my way to visit his brother to play. I can get his anger burning and coax an enraged yell of my name from his delicious mouth by just existing, by just being there and in front of him, poking fun at him and flirting and catching at his clothes with the blade of my flick knife. It's so easy to make him hate me, and I know I shouldn't be so proud of the fact that he hates me with every fibre of his soul, but I am. I really am.

Occasionally, when he steps too close to me when we fight, or when his face flushes at something I say, I allow some tiny little string of hope or some misguided love to blossom again. I think things I shouldn't, like what he would look like, propped above me, sweaty and moaning. I hear things I shouldn't, like my name leaving his mouth in an affectionate way, not in the normal yell of rage. I feel things I shouldn't, like the racing of my own heart, like the tightening of my jeans whenever I brush past him in my dodging out of his way. Call me a masochist, I wouldn't care, it's probably the most accurate thing to label me as anyway. I enjoy every second of his attention, even if he hates me, even if it's not love that I know he feels. I enjoy it because at least I have his attention, because I honestly don't know what I would do if I didn't. I need all of his hate, I need him to hate me, as badly as some washed up drug addict might need their next fix. Because he'll never love me, and I need him to feel something strongly for me, even if it's hate, I don't care. But yeah, yeah, I still wonder every now and then what it might be like if it were the opposite, if it were this easy to make him love me, but it's not long before I shove out that ridiculous idea. It will never happen, because Shizu-chan is stubborn, because he breaks the mould, and honestly, I guess I really wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I love him, that's why I noticed him, why he stood out from the others, why he is so much better than humankind, why I wanted him for my own. He's not normal, and neither am I, and strange attracts strange even when opposites are supposedly what attract. He is fire and I am water, he is good and I am not, he is hot and I am cold.

This is the way the world works, it is. This is the way that my world works and the way that his world works. We are the very greatest of contradictions, we have been since we met, and we always will be. We are timeless, we are endless, stretching out into eternity and ever present in each other and everywhere around us.

He hates me, and I love him; but hey, I'll put on a show, I'll play the game, and pretend that I hate him too, for the sake of keeping things running, for the sake of my own sanity. And that's just fine with me. It is. I've learnt to excel on his hate, I've learnt to flourish and grow under it, because I know this is what I'm stuck with whether I like it or not. I'll pretend that I hate him too, because it's the only thing I have left.

Since we've met, this has been the way things have worked. It's what we do best, we hate, my beloved monster and I.