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Reflecting in the rearview mirror is the soft glow of streetlights, glaring in the corner of Shizuo's eye with each rhythmic tap of his fingers against the steering wheel. They're dimmed in the pale moonlight, and it's almost beautiful, with the stars' white glow becoming clearer the further he drives from Ikebukuro. He isn't used to the stars. They only add to how fucked up tonight feels.
There's a gentle fizz as Izaya pops open an energy drink. It's the third he's had since Shizuo picked him up an hour ago.
Izaya's said before that he doesn't have a taste for sugar. Way back in Raijin, the days where the sunrise felt peaceful and less like a threat. When Shizuo could look Izaya in the eye without white, hot anger scorching through his veins like an open flame. Back then, Izaya said it's disgusting — only empty calories.
Back then, Shizuo only told him to shut up. Only took another sip of vending machine soda, not minding the nip of winter against his skin. He doesn't remember how Izaya responded to that: maybe he'd dug a taunt into Shizuo's skin, and anger flattened Shizuo's lungs as it's done hundreds of times before and tenfold. Maybe he'd swung a punch and missed, blinded by the rioting of blood through his veins.
It's the middle of autumn now, they're nineteen, and Shizuo wonders if they'll ever go back to telling each other to shut up over cans of vending machine soda. Probably not.
"Shizuo," there's a soft crackling on the other side of the phone, and Shizuo almost doesn't recognise the unmistakable lilt of Orihara Izaya's voice.
But still, he hesitates for a moment — for all that Izaya would go out of his way to call Shizuo at one in the morning, if only to revel in the pounding of Shizuo's blood through the unstable connection between their phone lines, and even with the kanji of Izaya's name glowing clearly on his phone screen in the dark bedroom like the moonlight in a back alley, Izaya's voice is quiet.
Too quiet. It's shaky, hesitant.
Orihara Izaya's voice is fluid, deceitful, practised; all that's the antithesis of peace. From the cuts of Izaya's blade and the lies of his cold words, each slash tastes like a poem in Shizuo's mouth. Like a prayer, and like the way Izaya looks at him.
Orihara Izaya's voice isn't like this.
"Who is this?" Shizuo asks, and the question is bitter on his tongue. He knows the answer, and the questions sweltering in his mind taunt him like a missed punch.
"Shizuo," Izaya repeats. His voice sounds dry and heavy. Too similar to Shizuo's, far from Izaya's own, and discomfort sits like a weight in his stomach at the sound of his own name. His actual name — Shizuo. It isn't the nickname that laces Izaya's tongue like a poem, serpentine and practised. It's fragile. "I need help. Fuck, I— I need help. From you, only you. Come alone."
Shizuo looks at Izaya with his elbow resting on the headrest, Shizuo's other hand tense on the steering wheel as the car runs forward on the deserted highway.
The bruising on Izaya's cheek is blooming to a deeper purple with each hour — there are similar ones on his knuckles, softer yellows and greens that look sickly against pale skin. Shizuo considered bringing him to Shinra, if only for a second. But he knows they've both survived much worse, and the semblance of trust brought by their shared secret leaves a selfish warmth in his heart. He wants it to last, and he wants it to stay between them. Only them.
"Who was it?"
Izaya only laughs from low in his throat at Shizuo's question. A breathy sigh leaves his lips, "nobody special."
Shizuo wants to say "alright," to nod his head and focus on the road, but the word feels like a lie in his throat before it can fall from his tongue. He's not a liar. He's not Izaya. But before he can pry, Izaya's eyes bite through him from his gaze in the rearview mirror, and Shizuo stays quiet. His eyes are lid-eyed, framed by dark eyelashes with the cover of moonlight drowning him in an air of mystery that feels like the words of a poem come to life. It's ruined by the dried blood on his cheek, clearly not his own.
"Why did you pick up when I called?" It's Izaya's turn to ask questions.
"Too tired to check who was calling," Shizuo lies.
Humming quietly, Izaya falls back onto the seat. He keeps watching Shizuo from the mirror.
"Aozaki Shu," he says, letting his head roll by the slightest when the car runs over a rock. "The Awakusu doesn't trust me yet, they say I'm too young for their more confidential jobs. Aozaki wanted to hire me outside of the group, said it's for a more personal matter that he doesn't want to involve the Awakusu in."
Shizuo stays silent as Izaya speaks, taking each word in.
"I agreed. Didn't really have any other jobs to focus on, so it's some extra cash. He wanted to meet in an alleyway by some property he owns in Ikebukuro — if all else failed, I thought I could've at least got some info on an Awakusu higher-up. It'd be some pretty valuable info if nothing else," a fractured smile cuts his lips. "Turns out he didn't want to hire me."
His words leave an aftertaste of cyanide on Shizuo's tongue. Izaya turns his head, looking at Shizuo. "It was self-defence."
"Figured." It's all Shizuo can say.
The streetlights' glow reflects by the red of Izaya's irises, and it softens the bite of his eyes to a flush of regret. "And that brings us to where we are now," there's a rhythm in his tone, sing-song and self-pitying. "On a deserted highway at three in the morning, driving a car with a suspended license. Riding next to the one person I swore to kill, a corpse sitting pretty in the backseat. Wrapped in my favourite coat, no less."
Shizuo laughs then, and it feels like it's tearing his throat. "We're dead men fucking walking,"
"At least you're only an accessory to murder," Izaya's smiling too, now. Shizuo doesn't look at it for longer than a moment; he doesn't want to know if it's fake or not. He's seen too much tonight. "I never would've pinned you as a getaway driver. You seem more of a manslaughter type of guy."
"Then why call a manslaughter type of guy instead of a getaway driver?"
"Too many questions," he sighs, tone tired, but continues regardless. "You're all I have now. I don't— I can't have people see me as a monster. I'm not a monster. Fuck, it's ironic, with me getting you falsely arrested for murder and everything, but you're all I have. Anyone else would've turned me in or killed me themselves. I'd be dead by now If I called my first choice," he pauses for a moment, "Shiki was close to Aozaki, surprisingly. If he heard of this, I'd be dead meat before I'd have the chance to beg for mercy. Informants are expendable, executives aren't."
Izaya trails off, and Shizuo doesn't push him.
Sometimes, Shizuo thinks he can smell the body in the backseat rotting — Izaya told him it takes more than a day or two for a corpse to decompose. He can't see the body, but the comfort of Izaya's coat over it is only sterile. Izaya's scent is bitter and metallic this close, and it blocks Shizuo's nose like a blood clot. Shizuo hopes it'll suffocate and scorch his lungs, heart, every aching part of him, before the reality of the situation catches up to him.
But still, it's weak. Four hours ago, he would've craved for a moment away from the overwhelming anger Izaya's scent stirs in him. Now, it's hardly noticeable, and it takes a knife's blade to the seams of Shizuo's sanity. He wishes it were stronger, for it to slash through the seams completely. Stop him from imagining the corpses' festering smell.
Izaya insists they keep the body in the backseat, though. Not to take any risks.
It's fair, really. Shizuo supposes it'd be an inconvenience for a corpse to fall out of the back of his car trunk — maybe they could just drive away, then, pretend that Izaya didn't call him up at one in the morning with a fragility in his voice that brought bile to Shizuo's throat. Pretend that he didn't pick up when he saw Izaya's name on the call screen.
"Turn right and stop," Izaya says as they pass a road sign. He knows this way off by heart, he'd told Shizuo. Neither of them brought a phone. Using their phones for directions is nothing more than open threat. They can't take a gamble with it all, not with the threat of being tracked down. And Shizuo complied, like a loyal dog on his owner's leash. Except not like that at all — Izaya's just as vulnerable as he is, Shizuo reminds himself.
He pulls up his car, busted and running on old fuel, and lets Izaya lead him to a forest between the highway and abandoned train tracks.
They're far from the city, now. Shizuo can't tell how far for certain. They didn't bring a map. And still, Shizuo's grateful for it; he doesn't want to think of the body buried six feet under, somewhere between the overgrown forestry and thin trees, if he were to ever drive by this road again. Ignorance is bliss.
"This road only leads to a village outside of Tokyo. Hardly anyone passes by, especially not at this time of night."
The chill of autumn is only an afterthought as Shizuo lets the car door fall shut behind him, Izaya following suit. Shizuo is still in the clothes he wore to bed, oblivious and peaceful if only exhausted — unaware that he'd wake up two hours later, and be hoisting the body of a man almost two times the size of him out of his car boot. Izaya is wearing Shizuo's bomber jacket, practically flooding him. When Shizuo pulled up to the entrance of an alleyway in the seedy side of town, seeing Izaya stained with another man's drying blood and trembling like he'd been caught in a storm, Shizuo wrapped him in it without second thought.
Maybe it was the shock of everything that made him move so thoughtlessly. He'd never seen a dead body before.
"He's fucking big," Shizuo says, if only for the familiarity of his own voice to bring him back to consciousness. The weight of another man in his arms is unfamiliar — he wonders, only for a second, what it took for Izaya to bring him down. But he doesn't want to know. The dent in his head says enough.
Izaya only hums. "I'll dispose of my own coat myself when we part ways," there's the noise of his trunk opening. Cicadas and the rustling of leaves are the only white noise against the overwhelming silence of his moral compass, and Shizuo doesn't watch as Izaya takes out the only shovel Shizuo thought to bring. It was an afterthought, a decision made if only to distract himself from his trembling hands as he struggled to find his car keys.
He continues, "my fingerprints will be all over it. I doubt I can use any of my connections to dispose of it for me — legally, I'll practically be a dead man after this. Doubt I'll return to Ikebukuro for a while. For the sake of staying low."
Pale moonlight drowns Izaya's frame when he walks through the overgrown shrubbery. There's a smile on his face, a practised cut that doesn't hide his stiff shoulders. Looking at him is like running your tongue over a sore tooth, tempting and still as aching as Shizuo had known it'd be.
"We'll need to get rid of any identifying features on the body. The tattoos will be a giveaway to the whole Awakusu executive deal, but they'll have to stay. Better to play it safe than sorry though, no?" There's a dull weight sitting in Shizuo's stomach at Izaya's voice. His tone is gentle, and his pink lips with the corners curving to a smirk sit prettily against pale skin. It's uncomfortable beyond words, the way Izaya's acting as if nothing's wrong. The way the lies in his tone, and the dread sitting in Izaya's eyes, are barely concealed.
"Fingerprints and dental records are our plagues here. I wouldn't doubt that his records have been wiped from any government files, but the Awakusu have info of their members on hand. Not even I could gain access to any of it," there's a refined elegance to the way he clicks his tongue, but it's all theatrics.
There's a lump in Shizuo's throat when he speaks. "And how are we gonna do that?"
Izaya looks at him. "Care to guess, Shizu-chan?"
The nickname feels like a taunt, but the way he says it is far more human than Shizuo has ever considered Izaya to be. Human in the way he's scared, in shock, and a pathetic liar. "I don't get myself involved in this kind of shit," he wishes that it stayed true, "don't expect anythin' from me. Dissolve it in acid, or something."
"Dissolve the body in hydrochloric acid and dump the contents into seawater to avoid detection," Izaya hums, the tilt to his lips threatening. He looks like a scared animal; panicked, moments away from fight or flight. "Does it look like I have any fucking hydrochloric acid on me, Shizu-chan? Any beaches in sight?"
Shizuo looks at him. "No."
Walking backwards now, Izaya tilts his head to the side with a chuckle falling from his lips. Strands of hair fall over his eyes, but it isn't messy in the boyish way that looks beautiful against Izaya's soft features. He looks dishevelled, lost. "No," he echoes. He looks at the body in Shizuo's arms, covered by Izaya's coat and too big for Shizuo's awkward hold. "Promise me you won't hold this against me."
"I won't," Shizuo says, and he means it.
"Promise me you won't look at me any differently."
"I won't."
Izaya looks at him. Shizuo looks back, returning the gaze in likeness. It feels like an oath, feels like the pinkie promises he'd make as a child; something innocent that sits in his throat like a painkiller swallowed dry. He wonders if the feeling will stick. "Okay," Izaya says. Quietly, "thank you. For this."
He takes a breath, deep and long. It sounds like he's been holding it in. "I'd suggest you start digging. Just— don't look, y'know?"
Even when Shizuo looks away it's like he's still looking. But now, even Izaya's orders can sound like a vow — Shizuo holds it like a religion. When he lets the body fall out of his hands and takes hold of the shovel, the motions of his fingers grasping around it are strangely biblical. See no evil, hear no evil; Shizuo wishes that the gnawing of the shovel digging into dirt were louder.
He's nostalgic for the anger he once had. Now, all he can feel is something worse; calmness, or something alike.
The shovel is stiff in the dirt. "You don't have to do that alone if you're afraid," Shizuo says, his tone tender like a fresh bruise. He doesn't lift his eyes from the pile of dirt by the heel of his shoe, still barely a dent in the ground. Izaya hasn't made a move. "It's probably not much of a comfort, but I'm in the same boat as you are now. I don't know what the fuck our relationship is meant to be now, but— "
"I can handle myself," he cuts in, a tremor in his voice. It's still sharp, a soft laughter underlying his tone. "I'm fine. You're just here because I dragged you into it, don't think that I would've called you if I had any other options."
"Izaya—"
He laughs now, but it's forceful. Shizuo's gaze on the ground is jagged and blunt. There's nothing else he can do but stare at the dirt, pretend he doesn't hear the broken shards digging into Izaya's voice like a mantra. "I can handle myself, Shizuo. Keep digging."
He wonders if Izaya still has his switchblade on him. Wonders if he'd have to get his hands dirty instead, wonders if there's still dry blood under his fingernails. It's fucked up, Shizuo thinks, but the sinking that tears through his stomach like an animal's teeth isn't because of these thoughts. He wishes he was more disgusted than he is.
Maybe he's just fucked up. Probably, if he's so willing to drop it all and help his worst enemy bury the body of one of the most dangerous men in Ikebukuro.
"What're we going to do with all the... shit they could use to identify him? Won't someone recognise him either way if the body's dug up?" Shizuo says, only for the sake of talking. He digs the shovel into the ground, firmer now. "We can't go into the city like this. All bloodied up. It's too crowded at night."
"I don't know, Shizu-chan. He'll decompose eventually. I'll figure the rest out."
There's hesitant shuffling behind him. A gag in Izaya's voice.
"I won't leave you. For what it's worth. You don't have to do this alone," Shizuo's gaze doesn't lift from the ground, though Izaya stops moving behind him. Shizuo makes up for the silence when the scraping of Izaya's boots on dirt goes still, keeps digging and letting words fall from his lips before his mind can catch up to who he's talking to. "I know what it's like. Not to— to do this, 'course. But be an outcast. Isolated."
"Don't run your mouth, Shizu-chan." Izaya's voice doesn't tremble. It's louder, but weaker all the same. "You don't know shit."
A quiet chuckle. Shizuo wishes he could see his own expression. "Can't say I've gouged anyone's teeth out with a switchblade before."
"You know what I meant," Izaya scoffs back. Softly, now.
"Digging a grave is fucking hard," his lip hikes into a scowl. Izaya laughs quietly behind him. "Let's not do this again."
"We'll have to dig another for the rest of him," he says, and there's a gentle smile in his voice. Morbid, but there's a lighthearted sinking in Shizuo's chest that rises in his throat and blossoms throughout his body — maybe he's just tired, maybe he's content with the look in Izaya's eyes; not hostile, not much at all. Just thankful. "After that, there's no promises."
Izaya grunts then, and there's a wet noise that Shizuo doesn't want to picture.
"D'you think it'll connect back to us?" Shizuo says, shovel digging into the dirt and staying there like a knife through a chest as he stands over the makeshift grave. Wildflowers and weeds cover the surrounding forestry, and the sky's starlight deepens until the pit basks under the gentle glow of unnaturally soft moonlight.
It shouldn't be pretty, but Shizuo is used to the city. Nature is always relieving to him.
"I wouldn't bet on it; I've taken on jobs covering up this kind of evidence before, our best hope is to play along with it all. The benefits of working for yakuza, I suppose," his hand slips into Shizuo's, bloodied and trembling. Shizuo didn't hear Izaya come up behind him. "How's this for a first date? Helping the bane of your existence bury a corpse,"
Shizuo's fingers slot between Izaya's, a calloused thumb rubbing against soft skin. He doesn't worry about his strength; he doesn't worry about much tonight. "Can't say I've had worse."
A soft sigh falls from Izaya's lips, resting his forehead on Shizuo's back.
"Always room for it to get worse. Still have to get our hands dirtier," he looks back at the body, and Shizuo doesn't follow his gaze. "Haven't even buried it yet."
As it turns out, digging a grave — with a shovel that'd probably been leftover from whoever lived in his apartment before him — is hard. Filling it in hardly makes him break a sweat. Though, maybe it's that the cold sweat he'd broken into earlier, at the sound of Izaya's weak voice on the other side of the phone, had worn him out.
He can't keep his eyes closed when he throws the body in. Izaya offers to do the job for him, at first, but it's an empty suggestion. The body's too heavy. With breath held tight in his throat, Shizuo does it.
Izaya is precise and practised in the way they fill in the grave. Keep it even with the rest of the ground, kick some plucked weeds and dead leaves over what's left of uneven dirt.
They don't say much after that.
Izaya's fingers are intertwined between his, but Shizuo barely notices the feeling of it — he only knows that it's natural, even if Shizuo had only ever felt his fingers before with Izaya's knuckles digging into his cheek and a deep bruise flowering on his skin with it. Shizuo doesn't mind it, though, and the motions of his thumb running over the back of Izaya's hand is intimate.
"I'm surprised you picked up the phone."
"Yeah," he puts his other hand in his pocket, looking back at the car. "Me too, honestly."
He doesn't know where they drive to, after that. He turns the radio low when Izaya's eyes fall shut, his eyelashes brushing against his cheeks in a way that's almost pretty despite the bruising under his eye, and his head rests against the car window in sleep. Shizuo only follows the road, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the song's beat.