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It was ironic that the only thing heavy he felt was a sinking feeling in his gut, telling him that something didn’t feel right, and yet the weight he was meant to feel in his arms, scarred and bloody and grasping the edges of a vending machine as though he was crushing nothing but a soda can, felt almost like nothing at all. Sirens in the background, laughter, explosions, they all seemed to swirl around him as though he was on the edge of a hurricane, and getting swallowed whole into the eye at the centre. He didn’t think the centre would turn out to be this shade of red, though.
Shizuo was used to seeing the colour red: metaphorically, with the way his anger gets the best of him on most days, and literally - the colour of the circle embedded on the national flag, the colour of the phone charm Celty got for him two or three years ago that he never used, and, oddly enough, the colour of eyes, like Saika, or a pair of twins, or…
Maybe hitting Izaya with a literal column of concrete (or was it metal? Remembering things was starting to take a toll on him), was a little too much? It was hard to tell when it came to Izaya, it always has, and more often than not Shizuo would find that his arms would be moving to grab the nearest object, or his legs would have already started running on sight, ready to pounce, to attack. Like a rabid dog, Izaya would say, and Shizuo wasn’t really sure when Izaya had even said that in the first place.
Regardless, here they were. Years of hatred, frustration, pain, all lead up to this final showdown, this final blow where only one of them could end up victorious. “Do it, monster,” Izaya had said, eyes dull as though the red from it had spilled out of his mouth as another breathless laugh left his lips, wet and tainted with the blood Shizuo had managed to knock out of him.
He had no regrets, no qualms about ending it all, and Shizuo briefly wondered why no one was stopping him, not even himself, as the grip on soft metal hardened and he lifted it over his head, ready to put an end to the ten something years of whatever it was that they had.
There was a loud crash and Shizuo’s legs gave out from under him as he watched in utter shock, ears ringing, heart pounding, and the refrigerator that left his hands now smashed to unrecognizability above the kitchen table, and subsequently his seven year old younger brother. He didn’t mean to, he didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to , ran through his head, and he could still see red. It was painted, splattered, across the wooden floorboards of his parents’ old home, and steadily seeping towards him like dread in the back of his mind. It was blurry, the world around him, and it was almost like he could already hear the flatline above his ragged panting.
Shakily, he ran his hands through his hair, not really questioning why the bangs that fell in front of his face were an old shade of brown instead of violent blonde, and all of a sudden he heard clapping.
“You really went and did it now, didn’t you, Shizu-chan ?” he said, the rest of the kitchen fading but leaving behind more of that annoying red, and for some reason Shizuo froze in place
He could still see the refrigerator out of the corner of his eye, the splintered table and the brother he destroyed crushed beneath it, and a vending machine, equally crushed against a lamp post from a time that hasn’t happened yet; and he could see the store and the lady inside it coming from around the counter with a bottle of fresh milk, and he saw his younger self trash the entire store with nothing but a street sign in his loose grip. Now, however, he could see Izaya move his mouth but he couldn’t hear the words. It felt like he was drowning and someone was trying to call out to him, only to push him further down.
“Leave! Me! Alone!” he shouted, at the line of wreckage he left behind, and at Izaya, smirking, unphased.
“Was killing me not enough?” he said, and for some reason he seemed closer than he was a second ago. “You had to kill the poor innocent woman who saw a distressed kid and just wanted to help, too?”
The glint of a knife being drawn matched the evil in his eyes, and suddenly there was a slicing sound as Shizuo’s white button-up got shredded open.
“And what about your brother, hm?” Izaya said, and Shizuo struggled to take in a breath. “He would’ve been an actor if you hadn’t killed him.”
“Shut up!” Shizuo shouted, drawing his fist back and letting it barrel forwards with the spike in his emotions.
It collided, but Shizuo couldn’t feel anything and Izaya was sent flying back towards the bleachers from before. For some reason, he took a step forward to see if Izaya was okay.
He stopped as laughter rang out, like it was coming through a megaphone in some sort of school announcement, and it kept ringing, ringing on like it was trying to ingrain itself into Shizuo’s subconscious with each increasing decibel. The louder it got, the more blurry his vision became, so much so that he opted to squeeze his eyes shut to hopefully mitigate the pain. The ringing continued.
He heard a voice calling out to him, over and over again, buried underneath all that static, and as the light behind his eyelids got brighter and brighter, so did everything else. Through it all, he heard one line above others.
“ Do it, monster. ”
“Shizuo. Shizuo! Wake up, you idiot, you’re starting to freak me out,” and Shizuo opened his eyes to a white ceiling, and Izaya’s face, from above him.
He closed his eyes to try and block out the light that was making his headache worse, and it took a moment to orientate himself again. The back of his neck and clothes were soaked with cold sweat and his breathing was still as ragged as it was in his nightmare, but at least he was sure he wasn’t about to go on a rampage in Izaya’s apartment or anything.
Izaya .
The Izaya he saw right now was different from the one from his nightmares, the one he used to know, and the one he thought he knew. Just like how the Kasuka of this world wasn’t dead, and the lady from the shop had since moved to Kanto with her husband and two kids. This Izaya had a concerned expression on his face, only given away by the gentle frown on his face and the way he struggled to lean out far enough off his wheelchair to examine Shizuo’s face, as if what had been causing the nightmare in the first place would start to show itself.
“S-Sorry,” Shizuo said, shakily, as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, letting himself rest against the back of the sofa. “I’m fine.”
“Obviously not, if you have to convince me of it in the first place,” Izaya huffed, looking slightly calmer now, and attempted to maneuver himself into a seat next to Shizuo. He was getting better at it, Shizuo noted, as he leaned forward to lift Izaya up so that he wouldn’t have to struggle as much.
They sat side by side in silence for a moment before Shizuo spoke up again, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Izaya said, only glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, as though he already knew what it was about. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Shizuo shook his head. Not yet . Sometimes he wished that he never has to ever again.
“Okay,” Izaya sighed, as he leant his head onto Shizuo’s shoulder, somewhat snuggling up to him. “Then we won’t talk about it. Not until you want to.”