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It's been three weeks.
Three weeks since he's been able to sleep; three weeks since he's been able to eat a full meal or felt inclined to leave his apartment or even his bed.
It's been three weeks since Shizuo left him. Left him and didn't come back.
Izaya doesn't want to think about it anymore so he burrows under the blankets of the bed he's been more or less living in.
It doesn't work to distract him though and his thoughts stretch out too far for even him to fully collect them.
They'd been fucking on and off in the seven or so years since highschool, slowly getting closer and closer until all of a sudden they were living together and neither had noticed how it happened. But the thing, the important thing, that they realized at the same time was they weren't lonely anymore. That they felt some strange happy heavy feeling in their chest when the other was around.
Well that last part... maybe that was just Izaya who felt it in the end.
And maybe Shizuo is happier now, without him.
God knows his friend's and family are. And maybe it'll be for the better in the long-run. Maybe that blonde girl is better in the sack than she looks.
But at the thought of Shizuo with someone else sends a wave of nausea through Izaya's stomach, or his mind, he's not entirely sure which but it makes him want to get up either way.
It's been a long time since he's gotten up, maybe a whole day or even two, and his stomach takes this moment as an opportunity to remind him that he's hungry, really hungry, to make him feel like his entire being in going to cave in if he doesn't force something down his throat and soon.
So Izaya complies and it's on his way to the kitchen, that's when he sees it. When his world sort of jumps and shutters and almost collapses on top of him.
It's Shizuo, of course, Shizuo.
With a box in his hands, taking back what's his. All the little bits of life that had wormed their way into Izaya's apartment, his existence, their existence, the whole universe.
Izaya gives the blond man a lookand then attempts to ignore him but Shizuo is apparently too shocked to be able to read into Izaya's actions and he was never much good at it to begin with.
"Uh, I thought you were out so I just..." Shizuo looks guiltily around the room; at the box. And Izaya thinks, Good, he should look guilty, and congratulates himself on having decided to wear pants out of his bedroom today.
His bedroom. It's not their bedroom anymore.
And thinking of this and the mess piling up in there is what causes him to say in as much nonchalance as he can pretend to have, "Whatever, just stay out of the bedroom and leave your key before you go."
Shizuo flushes red, and gives Izaya a sweeping look. Shirtless, messy haired, sleep deprived, wandering out of his bedroom in the middle of the day to pick at some food, and Izaya can watch the realization dawn in the other's mind but does nothing to stop it.
Shizuo grits his teeth and clenches his hand into a fist but doesn't move to punch anything just yet. Izaya can almost hear him counting to ten. He's not looking at the dark-haired man when he says, "Sure, fine, okay, I'll let you get back to your... friend... as soon as possible."
The idea of Shizuo being unhappy or uncomfortable should have made Izaya ecstatic, like it used to, but really it just makes him want to melt into the floorboards and drift away and die somewhere alone and dark. Shizuo is so close and he can't even remember what they were fighting about before all this happened, before he started throwing insults and knives, some of which are still stuck in the wall, before Shizuo punched the table in half and tried to hit Izaya then storming out and not coming back.
They'd had fights, sure, they had fights all the time, they'd thrown things and broken their fair share of everything; they'd even stormed out when things got too bad but they'd always come back. In an hour, two. After they'd cooled down, talked to someone with a better perspective on the whole thing, and the other one would always be there still. And they would fuck on the floor or the couch or the counter or the bathtub and the next day would be easier and the day after that, and the day after that, until things smoothed themselves out.
Izaya had waited for Shizuo to come back, for it to get easier, all night. And the day after that, and the one after that but he never came. Not for three weeks.
It's been five minutes and Izaya is still standing in the kitchen holding an uneaten apple in his hand hard enough to it bruises and make it completely inedible, while he watches from the corner of his eye Shizuo reaching for a little trinket on the top of a book shelf.
It was first thing Shizuo had ever given him, back when they weren't so much together as not together, they had run into each other at a fair and chased around, ended up fucking in a parking lot, and when it was over Shizuo takes this stupid little thing he had won at a shooting gallery and lobs it to him. Says, "I was kind of hoping I'd run into you tonight" and Izaya would have made fun of him for blushing if he wasn't sure he was blushing too.
And watching that ugly little thing get shoved into Shizuo's box; that's when something snaps.
"You can't have that" he states with this sort of dark seriousness he saves for when he's truly angry.
Shizuo looks at him, almost startled to find him still there and Izaya repeats himself, "You can't have that."
Shizuo turns edging on angry, "Why? So you can burn it when I leave? No."
Things are spiraling out of control and Izaya doesn't know where all these words are coming from but they are leaving his mouth just the same, "I'm not going to burn it, you asshole, it's mine, you gave it to me, I can do whatever I want with it, because it's MINE, and it's fucking important to me."
And Izaya is choking up and furious and he just wants Shizuo to leave right now or stay forever or to have this all be one big awful dream. He needs to sit down, lay down, get away and he knows he's acting like a little girl but he will not, will not, will not let Shizuo see him cry, because then he's lost something and he's not even sure what it was to begin with.
But Shizuo seems to catch on and he visibly wavers if only Izaya was looking at him.
And then he is there. In the kitchen, right next to Izaya, looking like he is debating on wether or not to touch the other man who is pointedly ignoring him, busy placing the poor abused apple back in his fruit-bowl.
"I'm sorry..." Shizuo mumbles, and Izaya snorts, but lets him continue, "I'm really... I just... I tried to hit you."
And this is where Izaya looks up, curious, into soft searching brown eyes.
"I tried to hit you, Izaya. I didn't even think about it, it just happened, and what? I could have really hurt you, you could have died, or, or..."
And he's not sure how it happened but their arms are around each other and all over the place at the same time, but they are sinking to the kitchen floor while Shizuo is still talking, "And I know you can dodge it but what if one time you don't? Sometimes I can't control myself and I don't know how to make this okay" and he pauses, like this is hard to say, "just go back to whoever is in your bedroom and forget about this, I mean, fuck, were we ever even really dating?"
Izaya gives up on not crying and big fat stupid tears are coming out of his eyes when he kisses Shizuo on the forehead, "there's nobody in my room, dumbass," he mutters into Shizuo's eyebrow ridge, "and stop thinking I'm so weak, you know, I'm faster than you, and smarter than you, better looking," they're smiling a bit now, despite themselves and the tears, "I have more money, I'm funnier, more fashionable... basically there's no way someone like you can hurt me."
Shizuo is gripping him tightly now.
"So it's okay to trust me, you know. And if you wanted to you could have called me your... boyfriend anytime."
And their foreheads are pressed together when Shizuo says, "you think it's too late to do that?"
But there is no answer because they are too busy kissing.