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It is a normal day when Shizuo’s life goes completely wrong. He is at school, on his free period, and he is chasing Izaya. He is always chasing Izaya, and not always in free periods, hurtling round corners and through hallways, barely giving those around them time to duck for safety. Those who are in their path wisely part, and Izaya neatly dodges those who don’t quite make it, while Shizuo just staggers into them, too set on his target to apologise.
Izaya is making for the last hallway now, in the direction of the exit. He nearly always took them outside, where he would go up on a roof or disappear, like a fucking cat or something.
Izaya skids then and puts his hands out. Shizuo's seen what he's seen too late: a 'wet floor' notice. As Shizuo starts to skid, Izaya smacks into the wall and Shizuo crashes into him from behind, doubling the impact. They both crumple into a heap, groaning.
His is crushed into Izaya's back, half on top of him, face in his hair, their limbs tangled. In this still-stunned state, it hits Shizuo that Izaya smells good. His hair, his shampoo, his skin too, something slightly sweet and slightly something else, undetectable at a distance but divine up close. Pressed up against Izaya, Shizuo realises he is getting hard.
Beneath him, Izaya groans and tells him to get off. Shizuo leaps up like he’s been shocked, feeling his face flame. He stumbles away before Izaya can get up, leaving him grumbling on the ground, and bolts.
-
Shizuo terrifies himself sometimes. Unwanted boners were enough of a problem without them being about another guy, let alone fucking Izaya. The idea alone makes him want to die.
He makes it through the rest of his day with grit teeth, keeping his head down and his eyes averted from Izaya whenever they shared a class, and darts out of the gates the moment the final bell releases him.
He begins to calm when he's within sight of his house. It was just one of these things, no big deal. He'd forget about it soon enough, and Izaya was none the wiser.
-
Shizuo's subconscious apparently has other ideas.
He wakes up to a shameful, sticky mess, with no clear memory of what he'd dreamt except that scent and the silky feel of Izaya's hair in his face, a sleek body caught against his own.
Oh, fuck. What is wrong with me.
-
In homeroom that day, Izaya is lounging back in his chair with his feet on a neighbouring seat, reading, while everyone else eats or gossips or throws things or finishes homework. He’s quiet enough to blend in, yet too irresistably good looking and too graceful to not stand out.
Shinra comes in just behind Shizuo, says hello to someone, and Izaya filters his voice out of noise and looks up.
Shizuo ducks his head, suddenly interested in his backpack's contents. He keeps his head down as Shinra glides past and starts chatting to Izaya.
Overalert with paranois, Shizuo gives it a minute or so after they’ve stopped talking before looking up, and Izaya’s head is safely back in his book again.
It’s just Izaya, Shizuo tells himself. Get a grip. So what if he's different from everyone else, like you. So what if he’s good looking. He’s an awful person, he's annoying and he hates you.
Shizuo gets out his books for first period and resolves to indeed get a grip.
-
24 hours later and he's chasing Izaya again.
He had been sitting there, minding his own business, when Izaya, apparently bored, had leaned over and plucked Shizuo's sunglasses off his ears.
"What are you, five? Give those back."
"Come and get them."
Fucking evil sneering little bastard. Part of him cringes inwardly as his legs pump him after Izaya, the adrenalin propelling him towards his target but also reminding him with disturbing clarity of his dream last night, and of its consequences in the morning. But, Shizuo shakes it off. He still hates Izaya, hates him too much to not chase him, and that holds true even if his subconscious had decided to take a vacation to the looney bin. He even hopes this will help make things more normal, this chasing, this violence, the need to literally kill him. His body knows he hates Izaya: it tears after the smaller boy like it wants to tear him apart. Shizuo just needs his brain to catch up.
He’s concentrating so much on the thought of catching Izaya, of throwing his entire being into the chase, that he doesn't realise the problem that has developed until it is too late.
Shizuo stops so suddenly he almost keels over. Far ahead of him, Izaya doesn’t notice and keeps belting into the distance.
Cringing with embarassment and panic, Shizuo bangs into the restroom and locks himself in the nearest stall.
I can’t even chase him any more???
-
When this 'problem' has gone away, Shizuo makes for the library, where Izaya couldn’t and probably, hopefully, wouldn’t want to make trouble. At least he can get his homework done on time here, for once. He has algebra, which is thankfully so complicated that it requires every spec of his attention, leaving no resources for self-loathing or disgust.
He’s so absorbed, in fact, that he doesn’t look up when someone drops into the seat opposite, until a perfect hand waves between his pen and his eyes.
Shizuo inches his head up unwillingly, feeling his cheeks flood. Izaya sits there smirking at him, cheek propped on one hand.
“What happened to you?” he says in a low voice, conscious of the librarian shelving behind them. “You give up too easily.”
“Leave me alone, I’m busy.”
It comes out more rushed than he had intended, but he looks down before he’s finished speaking to indicate just how busy he is. He copies out a question he doesn’t need to copy under Izaya's gaze, because it makes him look like he’s doing something and his brain is too useless to do anything else.
Izaya thankfully doesn't press him. Instead of leaving, however, he sits back and takes out a book of his own.
Shizuo opens his mouth to tell him to go somewhere else, when he notices the rain trickling down the windows, and that every table is packed except his own. Most people tend to give him a wide berth in case they accidentally shake the table or something and incur his wrath. Most people. Who is he kidding? Make that all people. All people except Izaya, who isn't afraid of anything. Some guy had even pulled a spare chair up to an already full table to avoid sitting with him. How humiliating.
Shizuo doesn’t realise he’s sighed out loud until Izaya looks up. He blushes and goes back to work. At least, he tries to. It is still hard to concentrate with the other boy opposite.
Izaya at least doesn’t tease him again, and they spend the rest of the lunch period in an unprovoking silence.
-
He keeps dreaming of Izaya. Sordid dreams with some scenes rehashed from the most cliché of pornos, and some as base as him simply catching Izaya and holding him down, trying to get his clothes off, Izaya laughing at his urgency but not fighting him, struggling enough to tease him but not enough to actually slip away, Izaya's hands in his hair, Izaya’s mouth around his cock - he wants to come in Izaya’s mouth and then again all over his perfect body.
He doesn’t know why his brain is doing this to him.
He even tries to sort of discreetly check out some other good looking guys in his year, thinking this experience would be mildly less traumatic if it involved anyone but Izaya, but none of them were unique enough, strikingly good-looking enough, and they were all scared of him anyway.
-
His fantasies are fuelled when he meets Kadota at the dojo, towards the end of the session, and of course Izaya is there. Shizuo feels himself flush automatically, but thankfully Izaya is too busy sparring to notice him. Izaya is also flushed, lightly sheened in sweat. He shakes his hair from his eyes and tips his head back to finish off a bottle of water, closing his eyes as he lets it in his throat.
"Hey." Kadota appears from nowhere at Shizuo's side. “I was waving you from the other side, didn’t you see me?”
Izaya and his partner are striking each other again now. Izaya goes a bit too hard, making his partner stagger a couple of steps, and stops to apologise, actually looks sincere. His partner laughs it off. He remembers Kadota.
"...what? Oh, yeah. I mean, no, sorry. Hi."
Kadota however is too worn out to think much of it.
"We can go. It's only the advanced class now."
"Oh. How was it?"
Izaya's eyes seem to slide over them both, but Shizuo can't tell if he actually perceives them or if he's too in-the-zone.
Shizuo watches Izaya as Kadota gets his things together, his voice fading into a background murmur. A few of the others are watching too, including their Sensei.
“Not so hard, Izaya,” the teacher calls.
Izaya gives an exaggerated bow in apology, but he looks pleased with himself. The other boy is a lot bigger than him.
Kadota looks up and chuckles.
“He’s showing off because you’re here.”
“He’s always showing off,” Shizuo mutters, but his eyes stay rooted on Izaya even so. The other boy licks his lips as he concentrates. He’s so graceful, so fast, it's like watching a rare breed of animal.
"Come on, Shizuo," Kadota says, tugging him out the door.
-
He dreams of Izaya in the shower. Izaya with hot water running over his chest, Izaya closing his eyes and tipping his head back under the water's flow, opening his mouth and-
No. Nonononononono.
-
“Shizu-chan’s been acting really weird lately.”
Shizuo almost balks mid-step. He’d hung back that morning in the hall as soon as he spotted Izaya and Shinra up ahead, but he's close enough to hear them over the rabble.
“In what way?” says Shinra.
“I don’t know…he’s getting all self-conscious all of a sudden. Maybe he has a crush on someone.”
Shizuo dogs them as they talk, agonising, convinced he'd been sussed and wishing he could throw the nearest fire extinguisher and knock them both out.
“That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed.” Shinra seems to reflect on for a moment. “Y’know, I know I always go on about it, but I wish you and he could get along. I think you’d be really good for each other.”
Shizuo hears Izaya snort.
“You’ll have to tell him to stop the tantrums every time he sees me then, for a start.”
The hall gets more crowded as they near the canteen, and Shizuo doesn’t hear the rest.
-
There is an announcement over lunch that today is the last day to get tickets for the school dance. The term alone normally, makes him wince, but he remembers that he and Izaya were conveniently banned from the school dance, after one chase too many had driven their teacher to lay on the cruellest punishment he could think of. And Shizuo had done his best to look dejected, while being secretly thrilled to get out of it. There's no-one he can think of that he'd like to ask, knowing everyone would be too scared to spend the night dancing with him, let alone kiss him. Getting banned from the dance takes care of this problem beautifully.
Shizuo has no idea what Izaya makes of this punishment. He could take his pick of any of the girls, and probably half the boys, but he never seemed very interested in social occasions, unless pushed by Shinra or someone. He had been completely poker faced, anyway.
Shizuo ducks out of class when the rest of them are putting the finishing touches to the hall decorations. No-one would miss him. He's technically not on free period though, so he has to find somewhere discreet. Not the library. Not the yard. He wanders the halls for a while, trying to look purposeful, until he passes through a corridor of empty classrooms. He could just duck in one for a while. It looked like no-one would be around for some time, and no-one would walk past if he takes the last room of the hallway.
To his dismay, Izaya of all people is reading in the last room. Shizuo already has the door half-open when he realises, and Izaya lifts his head before he can retreat, so he is forced to let himself in.
"I was just..."
Izaya is grinning at him.
"You're hiding too, right?"
"Well, no point in helping with the decorations if I'm not going," he mumbles. He takes a seat on the other side of the room, and tries to find his homework.
"You're welcome," Izaya chirps.
Shizuo frowns and looks up.
"What?"
"I heard you saying to Shinra that you hate these things too," Izaya says, a mischievious smile on his lips. "I needed an excuse to not go, so…”
He gestures from himself to Shizuo with one hand. You're welcome.
“So you were just doing me a big favour,” Shizuo growls sarcastically. He seems unable to communicate with Izaya without aggression, even if he’s not really feeling it. It's probably safer anyway.
-
Shizuo’s birthday is a school day. It nearly always is, he is unlucky like that. He only hopes to have a peaceful day and that it wll go quickly: his parents are taking him and Kasuka to his favourite restaurant after school, and he's going to get two desserts.
On the upside, he has no lessons with Izaya today. He's deliberately late getting to homeroom too, to avoid him completely, and in the hope that the teacher will not make him make up the time after school on his birthday.
So far, it’s not his best birthday. The strain of the past week, of both having his awkward desire and not being able to indulge it, has been getting to him. He hopes turning 16 will mean better self control.
The hall is quiet, everyone being in home room. There's not long left. He'll just dawdle a little longer and then go on to his first lesson. Simple.
Only it's not that simple.
He jumps as the door swings open behind him, and it's only Izaya coming towards him. This is the worst possible luck: Izaya is never late.
The other boy stops and blinks. He looks at Shizuo consideringly for a moment, and Shizuo braces himself for the inevitable insult.
While he's focussed on keeping his features neutral and slightly annoyed, Izaya steps up and and slams him into the lockers, holding him there with his entire body as he kisses him, ending it with the most delicious bite to Shizuo's lower lip.
“...happy birthday, Shizu-chan.”
Shizuo hears his voice but the words have no meaning. His mouth is open, and his brain hasn’t quite caught on to what's happening.
Izaya is still pressed against him, from his toes to his sweet smelling hair, a leg between Shizuo's thighs, his fists in Shizuo’s shirt. He gives the shirt a little squeeze, as if to pull Shizuo in for more, but instead steps back and lets go in one fluid motion, adjusts his bag and leaves Shizuo up against the lockers, legs shaking and gulping for air.
-
And of course he doesn’t see Izaya for the rest of the day. Shizuo looks all over for him in his free period, at lunch, in his breaks, and never sees Izaya.
He missed homeroom completely, having to make a long stop in the bathroom, and fortunately his teacher was nice about it. He’d gone into his first class with what he knows must be a stupid look of content on his face, but he can't help it. He has all this urgent energy he doesn't know what to do with, and it's more of a thrill than an anxiety now it's not just a product of his own dirty thoughts.
As the day goes on, however, he begins to worry. Had it been a joke? A test? He nearly always crossed paths with Izaya at some point, and he hasn’t seen him all day. Why would Izaya avoid him? Did he regret it? How long had he known what Shizuo was thinking? Was he scared Shizuo would be mad?
No, Izaya is fucking fearless. No-one else would have the gall to kiss someone up against the lockers like that, without warnng, yards away from their classmates down the hall. But of course that is Izaya, and he would do whatever he wanted wherever he felt it was convenient.
The end of the day comes, what he'd been praying for that morning, and he is still frustrated.
He hangs back as the others herd out, smiling thanks when a couple shout him a happy birthday. He takes out his phone as soon as it's quiet. He got Izaya’s number from Shinra long ago as a precaution and had never needed to use it.
Izaya answers on the third ring, and Shizuo can tell by the wariness in his voice that he has Shizuo’s number too, that his name has come up on Izaya's screen and not an unknown number.
“Hello?”
Shizuo realises he doesn’t have a clue what to say.
“Um…” His heart starts to hammer, as if he were speaking to a judge about to sentence him.
You have the upper hand here, he tells himself. He’s the one who’s done something embrassing. You were just the recipient.
Well. Maybe he put his arms around Izaya’s waist. Maybe he widened his stance just a little so Izaya could fit more of his leg into the gap. Shizuo had fantasised about the moment so many times, he hardly knows the difference between those and the reality, but Izaya doesn't know this.
All this logic goes out the window anyway when he finds himself blurting,
“I don’t know if that was a joke or if you’re avoiding me or what, but, uh, can we do it again?”
There’s a little silence. Shizuo’s stomach flips as the seconds pass, thinking he’s made a mistake, that it was a joke or a misunderstanding, when someone taps his shoulder. He jumps and snaps around like someone has struck him.
Izaya is there, phone in hand, laughing, not in his usual sneering-villain style but like he’s relieved.
“I was scared you- “
Shizuo crushes him back into the wall, mirroring their actions from earlier, only he’s kissing Izaya back this time, and Izaya’s groaning and clinging to him, hands in his shirt. He doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Izaya keeps his fists in Shizuo's shirt, his arms and elbows wedging a distance between them, even though he kisses back like he’s starving. He gives a little noise of distress when Shizuo finally pushesthem aside, aligning their bodies, and he realises it is because Izaya is hard. He is hard, but for the first time it doesn't matter.
A phone starts ringing. It takes him a moment to realise it is his own. He disentangles himself from Izaya long enough to snatch his phone out of his pocket and stab off the call.
He’s resumed the kiss when it goes again, making him groan with frustration. It is his mother, and Kasuka has messaged him as well, but he doesn’t care. He almost wishes that they weren't going, that it wasn’t his birthday at all.
Izaya laughs at him, slightly out of breath.
“Answer your phone,” he chides. “It’s your birthday, go have fun. I’ll still be here tomorrow.”
He answers the phoneat Izaya's insistence, while the smaller boy slips his arms round his waist and nuzzles his throat, leaning into him like a cat.
“Hi…yeah, sorry, I got held up…yeah, I mean, no, I haven’t, I’m still at school...it’s OK, I can run…oh, could you? Yeah, please pick me up. Thanks. Thanks. OK bye!”
He pushes Izaya round the corner so he can kiss him out of sight of the windows.
“We have to stop,” Shizuo says, when he imagines his parents are probably close. “My mom’s coming.”
“Yeah, I know,” Izaya breathes. He fists Shizuo’s hair and kisses him even harder.
His phone starts ringing again, and he reluctantly breaks away to answer.
"Thanks. I'm coming out now."
He swallows, adjusting his pants and his bag. Izaya smooths down his hair with his fingers, trying to cover some of his flushed face.
Shizuo's family are in the car by the gates, waiting for him. His mother’s face falls when he comes out with Izaya behind him.
“You’ve not been fighting again?”
“No,” they say in unison.
There’s an little silence while Shizuo’s family waits for one of them to explain.
“Well, seeya,” Izaya says. He gives Shizuo's parents a polite little bow and backs off.
“Do you want a ride, Izaya? We’ll be passing your place.”
Izaya hesitates, looking unsure of how to say no without appearing rude.
Seeing no alternative, Shizuo opens the door for him and mumbles something, gesturing for him to get in.
Izaya and Kasuka say hello as Shizuo gets in after him, their thighs squashed together. He has to hold his bag in his lap, and notices Izaya is doing the same.
“So you weren’t in trouble?” Shizuo’s mother persists.
“Nope,” Shizuo says hurriedly.
“They were giving us some more information about the trip next month,” Izaya says, and Shizuo is secretly impressed by how convincing, how quick-thinking he is.
“Oh, really?” His Father says. “It’s about time. You think they’d do that during their time, though. Especially on your birthday.”
“Yeah…” Shizuo says. He can’t think of a thing to say. He can tell his parents know something's up, but have the sense not to say anything in front of Izaya. They probably think they've had another fight. Kasuka keeps shooting him glances past Izaya, which he ignores.
“Good birthday so far?” his mother prompts.
“Oh, yeah, really good. Really, really good.”
His face floods as he realises what he's said, who's next to him.
Izaya ducks his head, politely trying to make himself invisible. He stays pressed against Shizuo's personal space so as not to invade any of Kasuka's.
Fortunately Izaya’s house isn’t far, so the torture ends before Shizuo releases the childlocks.
“Thank you very much,” Izaya says to Shizuo’s parents, sounding as relieved as if they’d driven him across a desert.
“No problem, dear. Tell your folks we said hi.”
His and Izaya's parents had always been annoyingly chummy. They had often sat glaring at each other while their parents chatted about their neighbours and the prime minister and the latest restaurant opening.
Kasuka is on the side closer to the curb, so he steps out to let Izaya pass.
“Have a good birthday,” Izaya says in a rush, and practically jumps out of the car. He nods at Kasuka and disappears into the house.
“That was nice of him,” Shizuo’s mother says. “Are you two getting on now?”
“Sort of. Not really. I don’t know. What time were we meant to be at the restaurant?”
“15 minutes ago. It’s OK, your Father called them. I’m sure they’ll have some ice cream left.”
Shizuo tries to concentrate on the conversation for the rest of the night, the food, his bithday, instead of thinking rather impatiently of Izaya. Why had the other boy left it til today, of all days?
I’ll still be here tomorrow, he had said. He better mean it. This better be the part where Shizuo's life starts getting good.