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He doesn’t speak when he kneels on the asphalt, watching his tea. Whether he heard your thoughts or had any intention to answer, there was no indication.
There is a sound of a clock, somewhere, and your own heart, the hum of air conditioning. It’s dangerously intimate to be a simple meeting, there’s jazz playing behind you and the streetlights are this dim muted color, like candlelight.
Over an hour had past. It’s precariously close to midnight. It’s a lifetime and an instant.
He is smiling. Is that good, or very, very bad?
“Most people,” he says, “don’t understand the significance of something like tea.”
You say nothing.
You both sat in the back of a large, black pickup truck, his back to the driver’s cabin and his feet relaxedly stretched out. Pale fingers held his cup, but the hand quickly withdrew to the silver case on his lap as you inched closer.
“When I see tea, I see history spread about before me like a field of stars and all the galaxies, light that takes a million years to reach the Earth. It’s not necessarily in chronological order, just kind of strewn out casually. Like the parable of any sower, tea begins as a plant. Seeds, planted, cultivated, like any other -”
“Izaya,” you interrupt him, because you know where he is going, “It doesn’t matter. Look at this day and age. All the teabags are hand picked and thouroughly processed because system siphons thought, and every flaw in every tea bag has been eliminated. Cast away by the system. Like you and me.”
He looks up at you, smiling ever so slightly, “That’s your thinking, partially, not mine.”
“Mine? How?”
“You think you’re not thinking, but you are. No one stops thinking until they become an image. I’m not tea, darling, I’m doing the processing.” The soft smile never leaves his face.
It hurts, even though you don’t want it to. “Then I’m a flawed plant that doesn’t give in to the Collective.”
“That’s exactly right my dear, my human.” It really shouldn’t hurt anymore, “You are strange, and I am interested in you and we are laughing on our seculded corner of the System.” His eyes twinkle behind the cup.
“And when I am strained and well put through, you’ll discard me?” Of course he would, right? He thinks he’s above everyone, more deserving of life, and we are all his little failed science experiment.
To this he sighs and lies back down on the back of the truck, “You truly think so little of me, my love,” his voice is in a conversational murmur, “I, too, yearn for something.”
“Then what will we do?”
He doesn’t speak for a moment.
“Have you seen the stars lately?”
You glance at him curiously, then at the sky. A few dozen hang in the air above you, some were planes upon closer inspection. “Pretty, I guess.”
“How does my darling see so little.” he muses. He’s starting at the sky, seemingly enchanted, and falters. The streetlight throws shadows upon his features. “There are so many things we miss as we blindly scramble in our own small lives- you really should look at them more often."
"I suppose. Have you been sleeping enough, my love?”
His wanderlust seems to snap before he says, “Oh, right, you don’t see them as I do.” And to your alarm, he pulls out a shotgun.
Dark and sleek and he flicked a small switch on the side of it. Then, without further explanation he raised weapon and briefly aimed for the nearby streetlamp. A squeeze on the trigger and a silent burst of red light and the bulb exploded, glass snowing in tiny fragments to the asphalt below- as soon as that one blew all the others lighting the car park did the same, tiny synchronised plumes of smoke and glass. Flinching, you’d covered your ears and only cracked an eye open a few seconds later. It was uncomfortably dark for miles around.
“Izaya, what -”
“Look up.” he nods.
Nebulas and blues stretching out for miles. Piercing that fabric was a million delicate pinpricks, some bright and clear enough to form mystical constellations, others so dim they were almost imperceptible, speckling the dark. It was stunning.
“This isn’t what I expected we’d be doing.” You thought aloud, entranced by all the dark and delicate colours overhead.
“Oh?” Something mildly provocative in his voice made you turn to him as he sat there, grinning quite suggestively, “What were you hoping for?”
You shake your head and turn away, face and neck and hands feeling warm, “You’re being a child. Now, what’s the point of meeting at midnight in an empty car park again?” Finally you looked back at him. Cloaked in shadow, he sat there, dragging a foot back towards himself, one leg comfortably arched.
“Ah,” he seems to think, “It just, it seemed like the thing to do.”
“Oh, don’t tell me, the villian aesthetic? God complex? Was it for the stars?”
He laughs, genuinely laughs. It was easy to forget your insecurities when you were joking around. “Perhaps.”
He was weird, acting weird. He was dangerous. This man had given you, who he has known for so long, an address that lead to an empty parking lot.
“You’re being strange,” you muttered, keeping an eye on him, “And it’s just clicked that we’re a long way from any immediate emergency service - and you’ve got a gun."
Izaya frowned mutely. Then, slowly, he retrieved his pistol from his case and tossed it, the thing skidding over the truck bed to bump a halt at your trainers. You glanced back at him.
"Would you shoot me, love?” He leant forward, intrigued, and nodded to the gun, “Go on. You have good reason. I’m dangerous. I tried to kill your friends. I’ve got Yakuza connections. I’m treating you like a science experiment.”
You frown, “No, too much mess and paperwork and I’d be a suspect for even knowing who the mysterious Kanra is.”
He laughs easily again, “How absolutely charming, that you care for me so."
Kicking the pistol back over to him, you smiled sweetly in the quick decision not to let him take this as a foothold, running a hand through the breeze-tousled knots in your hair to easily joke back, "I know, the trust we’ve got here.” You have your hands in the space between you two, “The bond.”
“Quite astounding.” He smirkingly finished for you and you nodded in agreement.
A growing part of you wondered, in the dark and cold, under the stars, why exactly this constant power struggle seemed to be fading. You crawled towards his side of the truck and leaned into his side.
“Answering your earlier question,” he begins, “We’ve done something naughty here, you and I. And for that they’ll be after us.”
“So what do we do?”
“Do you want to live or to die?”
You sigh, “It’s easy to expire, I suppose. If I had it my way I’d be thrown away before I had the chance to begin.”
“I know you want to live.” There is no joking in his tone.
Silence again
“Be sweet, my love, just this once.” Pale fingers wrap around your jaw to look at you. His eyes widen in - is it adoration? “Absolutely stunning.”
You both close your eyes. Your hands are in his hair. When did his jacket unbutton?
When he releases you, finally, he is smiling again. It reaches his eyes.
“If you want to leave, I’d go with you."