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hhe encourages namie to call him seiji's name when th

[undeific]

          “Wow. This is really embarrassing for you.”          His eyes glitter with mean-spirited glee.          “I think I’m going to keep doing what I want, actually. If you can’t even land a punch, it really doesn’t make a difference, does it? Anyway, you should calm down. You’re the one who started being mean out of nowhere. Don’t dish out what you can’t take. Guess all your cool guy posturing is worthless, too.”

Yoshiki swings without thinking, blinded by a rage he hasn’t felt this strong in many, many years. But Izaya steps aside easily, so all Yoshiki’s momentum pulls him stumbling forward until he catches himself on a nearby lamp post. 

God, he wishes he could just rip this out of the ground and smack him with it. 

Humiliation makes his face turn even more red,     “ You just stay the fuck away from me, understand? ”

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          “I thought you might say that!”          Izaya smiles.          “That’s one good guess so far. Come on, then. I know a place.”

He always knows a place. Brusque and buoyant, he begins to walk. He doesn’t look behind him; he trusts he’s being followed. If Seth really is worth his time, he won’t lose him in the crowd.

It isn’t a long walk. The cafe is modern, sleek, with stark black surfaces and sharp angles. He fits right in. Walking right up to the counter, he takes a brief glance at the menu before locking eyes with the teenage girl at the register. 

          “One of everything, please.”

' Insidious ', huh -- the atmosphere around this guy swerves with every syllable! These things that stack up are warning signs, aren't they? Red flags, police tape -- In the back of his head, he can already hear the scolding for pressing forward with this one. But it can't be helped! It's all too enticing.

-- you're only human, after all. The best dangers in the world always start with a 「 human. 」

"No way! That's waaaay too personal! The best course is for Izaya-san to buy me a treat then study my reaction, right?? - He'll have to deduce whether I'm lying with my face, too~! "

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          “Be yourself. I promised to bring you specifically.”          His smile is very disconcerting. 

A defeated sigh. She should have known. Of course he would use her name.    “ … Fine. Whatever. My normal clothes? Something else? Is there a role I have to play? ”

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It never took much to make her cry. Izaya smiles, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand.

          “Then don’t be.”

He laughs again and quickly pulls away, always eager to undercut her sincerity. But there’s an undeniable fullness in his chest. He is like a reassured child, sunny and smiling. 

Traffic lengthens the drive. By the time they reach their destination, Izaya has elected to unbuckle his seatbelt and drape all across the backseat, his head in her lap, playing idly with a pocket knife. He’s been chattering at her about the contrast between their memories, the sacred symmetry of experiencing both at once. Show me this one through your eyes. Now this one. I don’t remember that way. Now I do. I’m right and I’m wrong, which one is which?  Tangents upon tangents, making little sense.

Anatoly is very gracious in opening their doors for them. The promise of freedom makes him friendly.

The mansion is as gorgeous as it is huge, a display of wealth only the most insidious can afford. Well-dressed men with guns greet them at the door. Izaya helps her inside, very boldly demanding in that she is provided the finest, most comfortable chair in the home. Она страдает. Это причиняет ей боль. Неизвестное зло постигнет нас всех, если мы не позаботимся о ее комфорте. Она не может контролировать свое колдовство!

In the massive living room, where everyone is waiting, it is provided.

the sunglasses are tossed to the side. (sorry, anatoly.) with fingers knotted furiously in his hair, delilah rests her forehead against his. without speaking, she mouths her next words so that they might pass as a breath between them.

i'm bound to you.

they're vows, of a sort. he had once coaxed them out with a knife to her throat. she was afraid in that moment, not of death, but that he would look away from her. naively she imagined those to be one and the same. how very little she had known of death.

but she knows it now. and thrash as she might against the destruction and loneliness he invites; she will choose it, again and again. she would have nothing of her current life without it. sure, the paths she might've chosen alone would've had their own merits. certainly, she would have been happier. but judah never wanted happiness. at least, not just happiness. she wanted to exist, perpetually, unabashedly, in the world that she so loved, even as it seemed refuse her at every turn. she wanted to wring life itself dry in defiance of all that had already been denied to her at only four years old.

i don't want to be anyone else.

she doesn't realize the tears are flowing until she tastes them.

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Her tears take him by surprise. Izaya’s laughter stops mid-giggle, plunging the two of them into a jarring moment of silence. His smile warps a bit, strange, unreadable. 

This is the moment where it becomes clear—or it should, anyway—that his little hypothesis is incorrect. There are no tricks at play here, no manipulation. Her tears are authentic; she cries with the same raw confusion he’s seen in a thousand other girls. He’s disoriented her, and she’s done nothing to him, nothing at all.

But she knows, on some level, what all of this is about. She mentions that night. He gets stuck for a moment on I didn’t want you to die, but the peculiar feeling it stirs in his chest is quickly stamped out by what she says next, which is so sweet, so sickeningly, pitifully earnest that he almost starts laughing again. 

He thinks of another night, when he came to her apartment. Come here, he’d said, with the most gentle voice he could muster, and she refused. When she stormed out, did she cry then, too? 

This time she doesn’t get to walk away. He invades her space, taking her face into his hands. Her cheeks are hot and wet; she looks miserable, vulnerable. Small. Young.

          “...You’re cute when you cry.”

For a moment, just a moment, in the split-second between his voice catching up with his open mouth, he almost said something different. 

　　HOW HAD THIS TURNED SO TERRIBLE? Why is she so upset? She had felt so close to him a few minutes ago, indulging in her bad habit, sharing in a moment with her. It had been something out of a dream. A stupid fantasy, poison to highlight their bizarre, twisted relationship. And now it feels as if he's peering at her through glass, trying to read some informational card about the strange creature inside.

　　It's a feeling she's never had before. When did he start looking at her like a specimen, and not a person? And he is, of course, the only person on earth who she could ever give a fuck about feeling that way.

　　His laughter startles her. His strange outbursts often bring her back down to earth, but not this time. It feels like it's pulling him further away, and for some reason, when he stomps the cigarette out, it feels like a personal offense.

　　Quietly, Tem Green bursts into tears.

　　She stares at the ground for a moment, but when willpower alone fails to stop them, she raises her hands and begins wiping them away.

　　“Youーy-you're the one looking at me weird,” She tries to explain, sniffling as she fails to keep herself steady. “I don'tーI don't know what I did.” Talking is only making the crying worse, but she keeps going, the words bubbling out in between sniffling.

　　“I s-stabbed you b-because you said you'd like it,” She sobs. “I called Shinra because IーI didn't want you to die.” You're the one who stopped talking to me after that. She won't apologize for any silence in between, at least. That was all his doing. He's at fault for that.

　　“Y-you didn't have to smoke the cigarette if you didn't w-want to.”

　　She rubs harder at her eyes, the cuffs of her jacket sleeves already soaked as the skin of her face turns red and raw.

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It all happens too fast for Izaya to interject. He’s left listening to dead air, meditating on what he’s just heard. 

It sounded like something out of a horror movie. There’s a twist of anxious excitement in his gut as he hangs up the phone, weighing his options. It isn’t a question of whether or not he’s going to accept Alice’s invitation—he most certainly is—but a question of how to prepare, how to keep himself protected. She wasn’t subtle about her ill intent. 

Ultimately, he elects to go with the flow and see where it takes him. He has his knives on him. That’s all he really needs. She is confined to Salem’s body, limited by his limitations, and he can handle Salem just fine. Besides, if her host is actively fighting against her influence, she’ll be all the more weak.

He’s there within the hour, all thoughts of Scientology abandoned.

          “Alice? Lemmy? Alice in Lemmyland—?”          he sing-songs, letting himself into the apartment. 

A   gasp   gets   caught   in   Salem’s   throat.          That’s not the voice he expected to hear — it’s not the gruff baritone or sultry British accent he was preparing to hear. Izaya’s voice sets off a reaction within him; his heart flutters, his cheeks burn, his stomach drops — and Alice screams. Her nails dig into the inside of his throat like she’s trying to claw her way up and out of his mouth.

It must be an awful auditory experience, hearing Salem choking Alice back on the other side of the phone. He really whimpers now, struggling to keep his mind his and his alone — but a knife is sounding pretty good right about now, or the shards of a broken mirror.

“ — Why don’t you come on by? ”     Salem's voice doesn’t quite sound like his anymore. Smooth, concise, and clear.     “ We can work out what you can do for me when you get here. ”

Another choke, and this time, when Salem speaks, the faltering pathetic voice is back. He whimpers,     “ N-no. It’s… wrong number… ”

And then the line goes dead.

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His mind belongs to him again—or at least it seems like it—but he can’t shake the feeling of violation. It was her, he knows it. The innocent act all but confirms it, the smile. She isn’t much of a smiler.

          “You were.”          He smiles back at her, utter contempt in his eyes.          “I know the way my brain works. I know it very well, and that wasn’t me. Is that your thing, then? Hawk rots, Z seizes the body, you rape the mind?”

As a gesture of good will, he’ll comply with her request, putting the knife back in his pocket—but he’s very conscious of its weight there. It will come back out in an instant if she tries anything. 

         “I thought you wanted to be friends!” 

Willow takes a little offence to him referring to her as repulsive. Hell might have toughened her up, but she still knows an insult when she hears it. She glances at the knife in his hand, a ghost of a frown on her features as she imagines him surging toward her with it.

She would have to kill him. Which is, in fact, probably fine -- But maybe she should go a little easy on him. After all, she is at least enjoying him for the study he is. The blank stare buffers as she selects the best place to move from here.

Willow decides to test how he would respond to his own medicine. She breaks into a smile. All tension gone, all squirming little maggots of paranoia in his brain go still. At least the ones she put there.

"Don't be silly, Izaya. Put the knife away. I'm not doing anything."

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This is too easy. She’s already so taken with him!

But that’s to be expected. Ayumi is in many ways Yoshiki’s opposite. He’s the suspicious one, the standoffish one, the angry one—a perfect contrast to her sincere, sunny cheer. They complement each other, provide balance. It’s quite sweet, really. 

Without him here, though, she has no one to put a hand on her shoulder and steer her away from trouble. Izaya’s smile widens. 

          “Orihara Izaya.”          His hand flutters to his chest in an introductory gesture.          “Thank you so much! I’m really so excited to meet you. It means a lot to me, it really does.” 

Ayumi   watches   in   awe   at   the   flourish   and   sleight-of-hand   showmanship.          If he is doing it on purpose to impress her, color her impressed — but it looks so casual and so nonchalant that she can't help but to wonder if that’s just how he moves. It’s almost enchanting, watching the way his eyes move from book to book, the way he hovers over every book with the tips of his fingers. She’s read that’s how mystics and witches search out energy — they feel for a push or pull in something energy… is that what he’s doing?

She realizes with horror that she had been staring when his eyes come back up to meet hers. The money put in her hands is quickly put away with the rest of her earnings for the day — anything to avoid eye contact for even just a moment as she regains her composure.

But she does turn back, polite as ever but a little more watchful this time – watching his hands or the way his lips quirk into a smile, like he is a puzzle to figure out. And a beautiful one at that.     “ Oh, of course I can! Who should I make it out to? ”

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A ringed hand clutches the leg draped over his shoulder; the other digs its digits into her hip. The skin of her thigh, soft and thin and pure, will be littered with bruises by the end of this.

Does she feel it too, that pounding, that thrumming? Is her heart in her throat? Is her skull cracking open, spilling out in Technicolor? The world is an open wound bleeding love. Does she know? She must know, she must know. If she doesn’t already, he’ll show her. 

Her hand in his hair is like being blessed. Anointed. It’s a balm for the noise in his head, even as it makes it worse. His scalp tingles—faint, shuddery delight that seeps down past his skin into his brain, causing a spark in the already-overridden electrical wiring. There’s a primal twist in his lower abdomen.

A lingering open-mouthed kiss between her legs, a prying tongue. The familiar taste of salt-musk pleasure. He nuzzles in, deepens the one-sided kiss, desperate to draw out her desire. His lips move as if murmuring something against her, but the only sound that comes is his hitching breath, a delicate, craving sound somewhere in the back of his throat. 

　　HE PULLS HER ALONG IN A WHIRLWIND. She’d expected him to drag her to a hotel and embarrass her in the check-in process, but he’s in some higher frenzy, bursting through the crowd as if being chased, and utterly elated by it.

　　Still in a daze, the explosion of energy only keeps her mind hazy. She’s not sure she could even call what he’s experiencing ‘emotions,’ but they saturate the space around them nonetheless, keeping her attached to him in this bizarre way he manages without even trying. Is this how everyone feels with him, or is it worse because of her stupid shitty extra senses? What she does know, at least, is that it is overwhelmingly positive.

　　When he suddenly veers them into an alleyway, Tem stumbles further back amidst his attack on her, trying to get as far from anyone else as possible. The kiss is far too short, but there’s no time to chase it; when his mouth lands at her throat, visions of him tearing it out flash through her mind. This is the most animalistic she’s ever seen him, and there’s an irony in seeing him as a beast.

　　“Oh,” Tem breathes, startled by his descent, and by what he says. Is he making fun of her? She supposes it doesn’t even matter. That’s very him.

　　When her shorts come down, she already feels restricted. After a brief moment at the exposure hitting her when the rest follows, she inches them down around her boots until she can free one of her legs to rest over Izaya’s shoulder, a hand already in his hair to steady herself. The other falls back against the wall, fingertips digging into the concrete as his frenzy continues, but it’s not long before it comes up to clamp over her mouth instead.

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Unexpected! 

Shock bleeds into laughter. He peers into her unsettlingly blank eyes, fascinated by this sudden change, before pulling away and righting himself, adjusting his hood, smoothing out his coat. 

It’s a good threat. He doesn’t know how meaningful it really is, but the attempt is respectable—enough for him to consider entertaining the request. 

          “Ohhh, so scary!”          he giggles.          “I guess we’ll see what happens in five days!”

“ Hmm! What a bully! Alright then! ”

Her small, delicate hand reaches for the collar of Izaya’s jacket, almost like she intends to pet the fur — until she doesn’t. Until she grabs hold of the hood and uses it to pull him down closer to her level, which is quite a bit lower than him. Her face is dark, her smile gone and replaced with… nothing. Expression unreadable. 

“ Since you took your payment, I’ll give you five days to get me the video! And I know what you’re probably thinking — what if I don’t! Well, I will be taking it back, with interest. ‘Kay? ”

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          “You promise! Really? Cross your heart and hope to die?”          His friendly grin takes on a new edge; there’s something vaguely insidious about it, like he’s in on something that Seth isn’t.          “Be careful what you go looking for. You never know what you might find.”

He’s game, though. Of course he’s game. That feeling of promise surges once again. This could be fun, he thinks. Something new to entertain. Seth’s peculiarity is familiar, almost kindred—and that excites him. 

          “But sure! I promise too,”          he chirps, smile morphing once again into something else: sweet, chipper, polite. He holds out his pinky finger to seal the contract.          “Let me treat you to a cup of coffee. Unless you prefer tea? Or is even telling me that too much?”

Oh, man -- Isn't that the most natural thing in the world ? For a certifiably weird character to have a certifiably weird name. He kind of wants to press on it; where does a name like ' izaya ' come from? It sounds familiar, in some distant way -- But continuing before he can, really as if nothing at all happened a second ago, Stranger-san Izaya-san has decided to ask him something like that!

" Eh? Eh? Let me get this straight--It's my job to figure out what kind of person you are, and tell you about the person I am!? That doesn't seem fair !"

He ventures something a little daring, by stepping closer and pressing a finger into the other's shoulder.

"Nah, let's try being nice to each other~ I promise to put a ton of effort into figuring you out, if you promise to do the same for me. Got it~?"

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nah just cuddling ain't enough, I want to merge my soul with hers

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          “There’s nothing stopping you from saying no! But there’s also nothing stopping me from saying, ‘Kahrah, do what I say.’”

Oh. He didn't miss her at all? It’s really pathetic how much that hurts. She blinks back the tears.     “ You’re not going to let me say ‘no’, are you? ”

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it actually completely unironically pisses me off that there was times when i wasn't alive and there will be times when i'm not alive. i should have been there for everything

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          “Aren’t you a little old to believe in those stories?”          Izaya laughs.

He takes her money, though—or more like snatches it, using deft sleight-of-hand to slip the cash up his sleeve. She shouldn’t wave it around like that.

Idly, he wonders if his sisters put her up to this. He wouldn’t put it past them. They’re always trying to stick their nose in his business, involve themselves where they aren’t welcome. Brats.

“ So I heard something really cool about the Headless Rider — ”     Naoki practically skips along side him, unphased entirely by the looks cast their way,     “ — That he can summon a spiritual weapon! People say it looks like shadows or spider webs or something — how cool is that! It’s like something straight out of an anime! ”

She bounces in front of him and stops, pulling out and holding in front of her a 10,000 yen note. With a twist of her fingers, four more appear behind it — 50,000 yen in total.      “ Get me a video of it? ”

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