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demytasse · 5 years

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[Shizaya] Of Pleas and Boredom - Ch 1

Summary: Two sides of the same tragedy; what boredom and the fear of being left behind can do to a relationship that was built from thrills and high tension. A bittersweet, established relationship fic to which Izaya and Shizuo actively fuck things up out of desperation. (Previous Chapters)

You drive me... a faulty wheel to which you forfeit; tread me a weary path that you love to fumble.

...make me... a cardinal sin to which you frequent; claim me a novel bore that you hate to fixate.

...wear me... a moral crime of that you fashion; accuse me a guilty deed that you write as fiction. But — Don’t create me... a pity loss to which you fancy; dub me a boring muse you force to forget. Please — Don’t tire of me... a healthy flame to which you see feeble; view us a heat-less fire you fear to foster.

"...and Shizu-chan, you wouldn’t believe the grand finale! And here I thought it was a lost cause!”

A solo conversation for two ran in fast forward. It was an afternoon of hyperbolic proportion, one that starred the master of monologue — a dancer who jumped tangents just as quick as he landed, to whom barely left pause for dramatic effect let alone a breath to regain his strength, his gusto provided by the thrill of the moment.

Once desperate to keep pace with Izaya, Shizuo relinquished his attention in attempt to make sense of multiple stories that criss-crossed paths. He cleared his eyes of glaze and attempted to do the same of his comprehension.

Shizuo stammered his response, “which forum was this?"

The way his mind referenced notes in a scurry transformed him into a student caught off guard — Izaya, the mad professor dissolved his excitement mid-lecture. His animated gestures fell in a way that told of his unconscious prediction coming to fruition. It was a sight Shizuo hated to see let alone count the rise in frequency; just as well as he despised to be the cause of it.

"Ah, it’s okay. I didn't expect you to keep up."

Flashed fever clammed his skin — a drop of sweat rolled down his spine, "I can keep up just fine, flea!”

With immediacy, the pest took up a feigned task, his eyes flit over lines of text as fingertips skated the phone screen. It was his brutal way of showing disgust; replacement of one disconnect with another, tit-for-tat for those unable to share his exercise of intelligence.

Shizuo grumbled; he knew of that audacious play quite well, to which Izaya brandished his petulance like a child just to swing it haphazardly.

“Seems like a different one than yesterday, is all."

"Oh, that's because it is.”

“Hu?”

“Honestly, I was only there for Momo-chan."

"She's…” he paused to grab the right wording, “not there anymore?"

"Well it’d certainly be troublesome for her not to be,” Izaya chuckled emptily. “She is the admin, right?”

Shizuo nodded though couldn’t tell if he actually recalled it or if he never knew the detail in the first place.

He followed the arc of Izaya’s tossed phone, perceptively read the other’s tired disappointment over something specific. That’s what he’d found of that particular sigh and that sigh was something of a forecast. Izaya wasn't the only one keen of the other's idiosyncrasies, though Shizuo wasn't a braggart.

“She was dragging on my every nerve. Constantly asking for more advice, more tips, more this, more that... The forum’s popularity boomed just like she wanted,” he mocked an explosion with flayed fingers. “Just as she begged me to help her achieve. Though was she prepared to handle the duties of being an admin?” He answered his rhetorical question with a huff.

Even though Izaya tiptoed the edge of vehemence, he paid the memory disinterest. Normally he quaffed let-downs like a drug and this time was no different. He reaped whatever benefit he could: appreciated a rise of any kind. It was cheap ecstasy.

Shizuo frowned upon Izaya for his committed sin.

“I was running her forum while she floundered. So I told her it was a sign she wasn’t cut out for it.” His tone grew chill, ”the truth shouldn't warrant her calling me a bastard, but as a favour I let her scream to her heart's content in PM before I dropped the account.”

"You lost interest in her that quickly?”

“I suppose.”

“You’re okay with cutting someone out after chatting with them for months?" Shizuo’s nerves ran frantic with a chip in his voice.

It was that ever-lurking boredom that clung to Izaya that reared its fearsome head — yet again, Shizuo lamented.

"I wouldn’t consider six weeks months. What illogical mathematics do monsters practice?”

No sooner he insulted, Izaya squashed what inspired Shizuo’s twitch of anger that rose beyond his instinct. “But to continue that thought, yes, I would.”

“Why?”

The air struggled to support the hefty stall. Izaya appeared to suss if it was a serious question, though Shizuo meant it a plea for the selfishly cut tie to be reconsidered; to believe he himself wouldn't meet a similar fate.

“I was being saddled with a project I couldn't afford. People are supposed to grow once I assist them, Shizu-chan. At the very least they should have interest in themselves."

Izaya idly snipped his fingers in the air like scissors, his eyes focused on a thought already distant. As the exhaustion set in, he slowed his pantomime. Weariness draped his eyes.

Shizuo witnessed that exhaustion sans empathy.

"How often do you do that?"

"As often as needed." Izaya’s absent mind responded too quickly.

"Izaya..."

"I’m not dodging the question, Shizuo. I just can't give you a solid answer. I love and appreciate people, but...”

Their eyes met at middle ground and Shizuo immediately ached with the pain of Izaya’s constitution that begged for him to reciprocate.

“Have you ever felt yourself gradually lose reasons to talk to someone? The topics you can share quickly diminish?"

"Not really.”

The admittance was a crime and Izaya’s chuckle incarcerated him — exposed without a defense against the accusation Shizuo swallowed nervously.

“Consider yourself lucky, then. The countless times I’ve watched people fail to uphold their potential is nothing short of… Well, it’s tiring. The injustice individuals pay to the human race is abysmal.”

His charming smile traveled upward, yet his vigor neglected to perform its passionate abandon. Shizuo treasured that of Izaya, that rare joy that would drown anyone within short distance. At no fault of his own he watched a travesty of that raw beauty; though he was stabbed with blame that twisted with guilt, just before it was yanked out to create him a casualty.

Shizuo sickened as his own silence grew deeper while Izaya filled the void with his muse.

“Relationships are two way streets, and really — truthfully — it's tragic how difficult it is to find those who’ll comply.”

Izaya’s age caught up to him at once. “I don't enjoy cutting ties with people, Shizu-chan, but it happens. Oh well.”

His youthful air and wise maturity were purposely built strong, yet they were functions of a glass canon. It was rare that anything would get passed his own valued fortitude that he too desperately clung to. Though Izaya stacked the odds in his favour, occasionally something chipped his kayfabe, dramatically destroyed his character that appeared a child, while his years barely counted higher than a teen.

But now he was revealed too old and Shizuo had no means to fathom the leagues that Izaya’s weariness dove.

“Sorry…”

It soured the sympathy he’d given Izaya, like he offered empty condolences to an immortal whose wonder had disappeared long ago, alongside the people he’d watched leave — one at a time, crushingly the same, indefinitely. Yet that man wielded hope like a rusty weapon to attack his forever depression.

It was a hard belief that they were two beings of separate race — a bumbling human ruled by primal law and a god among no peers burdened by a lack of finality.

And what deity Izaya was went unnoticed by the man himself, though not by the man to whom he fancied at that moment.

Shizuo worried that he was merely a footnote.

Maybe all he was to Izaya was a temporary partner to entertain him before he moved on down his farcical timeline of his deathless life. Maybe he was an interest whose clock was about to tick its last tock and reset once more as a new bore.

Perhaps…

A novel chirp interrupted their simultaneous, yet separate thoughts.

Shizuo observed the perk in Izaya's aura like he regained his childhood. A new toy he approached with re-awoken wonder as a text message lit his waxen features. The delighted beam snipped attention that was strung to Shizuo; their conversation hung dead.

“Well that’s certainly a surprise…” a skip to his step, Izaya left the room to pretend himself an informant during a round of make-believe at recess.

He smiled with glee no longer a treat for Shizuo to indulge.

Perhaps, he’d already crossed the threshold of Izaya's boredom. That insecurity had already began to fester, but now it burrowed, rather drilled furiously deeper to take foundation in the gut of his anxiety — Shizuo’s fear attempted to replace his faith that he’d stay connected to Izaya.

Snip!

He recalled the image of Izaya cutting the tie of that once budding relationship.

Snip-snip!

The threads began to cut away from their seam. Though sewn tight, Shizuo had so little thread to rely on.

#shizaya #shizuo x izaya #heiwajima shizuo #orihara izaya #izaya orihara #shizuo heiwajima #durarara #durarara!!#drrr #drrr!!#durarara fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #shizaya fanfic #izuo #izaya x shizuo #of pleas and boredom #demytasse fanfics

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valflame · 6 years

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hi it’s 7:30 am as of the time I’m beginning this post and I still can’t hecking sleep so have some family hcs while I play botw and also give my cat the love and affection he so clearly demands from me

LOPTYR ( MATERNAL ANCESTOR ?? ): An Earth Dragon hailing from the continent of Archanea. Naga, sovereign of the Divine Dragons, had when faced with their species’ imminent extinction in the face of widespread degeneration and loss of sanity due to an ill-classified disease of the blood proposed that they shed their bodies in favour of more human-like ones, that they store their powers in dragonstones to carry on their weaker forms and that they secede the earth to humanity while they quietly allowed themselves to die out with dignity. While most dragons agreed and became Manaketes the Earth Dragons refused, and a terrible war waged on between those who had allowed themselves to become Manaketes and those too prideful and in denial to refuse to fight back against the demise of their race. In the midst of this war Loptyr came across a certain human being in a chance encounter who had travelled from a continent far, far away...

GALLE I ( MATERNAL ANCESTOR ): A priest of one of the old pagan religions of Jugdral in the Grann Republic, a scholar, a world-traveller and, eventually, the first vessel to the Earth Dragon Loptyr. He travelled far and wide across the earth in the pursuit of knowledge, at first to study medicine and pharmaceuticals in order to better the rudimentary study of healing in his home continent but later in search of a ‘philosopher’s stone’ of sorts. Absurdly educated for his time and place, Galle had learnt of dragons in a continent far out across the sea whose flesh and blood would grant immense power and eternal life to those who consumed it. In his growing pride and greed he set out in search of the treasure he sought, and he found it in Loptyr on the continent of Archanea. Loptyr tricked him; he allowed the human to drink his blood, and in it Galle was indeed blessed with magic ( a first among humanity ) and unparalleled strength among his fellow mankind thanks to his newly granted draconic bloodline and the dragonstone-forged tome gifted alongside it, but at a terrible cost. He had found the immortality that he’d set out to find, but it wasn’t for him to enjoy --- as soon as he accepted the Book of Loptyr the dragon of the same name possessed his body and would continue to live on within his skin and the skins of his first born, and their first born, and theirs, so on and so forth for as long as they reaped the benefits of his blood. All those who bore Loptyr’s major blood would also subsequently be named ‘Galle’.

MAERA ( MATERNAL ANCESTOR ): The second son of one of the Emperor Galles following Galle I’s establishment of the Loptyrian Empire atop the ruins of the overthrown Grann Republic. Largely an oppressive and totalitarian regime backing itself through brutality and a viciously strict caste system that left most of its own citizens as slave-serfs to the royal family and the innermost religious circle of the theocracy, it was not until Maera, prince of the empire and younger brother to one of the seventeen Emperor Galles that had descended from Loptyr and the original Galle, stood for the people and called out his own family’s brutality that the winds of change began stirring. Maera, in his devotion to Loptyr and to his family as a priest of the Loptyrian Church, urged his elder brother — then possessed by Loptyr — to diffuse the situation by treating the public gently and with kindness and to permit them the worship of their old pagan gods, with Loptyr situated among the higher rungs of their pantheon as the being who first gifted humanity magic as a deity of knowledge. Enraged by his younger brother’s words, Galle lashed out physically against him. Maera acted back and spurred a revolution, educating people on his religious beliefs and subsequently sparking a schism in the Church of Loptyr between the Orthodox Loptyrians, following the reign of the Galles, and Maerist Loptyrism, a gentler sect following Maera’s teachings. He and his priestly followers set themselves to work educating the public and fighting for their rights, rescuing those meant to be executed in Loptyr’s name and generally fighting against tyranny whenever they could until Galle caught up with them. Maera was physically decimated by his elder brother, beaten within an inch of his life and banished to the Spirit Forest to die quietly, though he did manage to have children before finally passing away. His children, and their children, and their children, so on and so forth, would serve out their forefathers’ sentence and never be permitted to leave the Spirit Forest, lest a disaster befall the world owing to their cursed blood.

SALAMANDER ( PATERNAL ANCESTOR ?? ): A Fire Dragon that descended during the Miracle of Darna in the year Grann 632 alongside Naga, Forseti and the other dragons to aid the rebel army against the forces of the Loptyrian Empire. Appearing as an elderly man as a Manakete, he approached and blood-bonded with Fjalar, the Mage Fighter, granting her his blood, Valflame, and inherit mastery over fire magic.

FJALAR ( PATERNAL ANCESTOR ): The famed crusader that had fought against and aided in originally slaying Loptyr’s seventeenth vessel. Fjalar founded both House Velthomer and the duchy of the same name, and aided in the foundation of the Kingdom of Grannvale. She had served as a tactician to Saint Heim during the Holy War. Prior to the great war she had been born into a noble house in the Loptyrian Empire.

CIGYUN ( MOTHER ): The original Maiden of the Spirit Forest. Forbidden from ever leaving the Spirit Forest due to the Maeratic Decree and her curse as a carrier of Loptyr holy blood, things would probably have been fine had it not been for harsher treatment of blooded Loptyrians even among the residents of the woods. The Maeratic Decree set forth certain laws, both in order to protect its own people and to protect all of Jugdral’s residents: that Loptyr-blooded people may never leave the sanctity of the forest and that they may never bear more than one child were the two most important ones, but elsewhere the very act of living with Loptyrian heritage at all was cause for violent execution by fire, and the sentiments were beginning to permeate the forest despite its isolation and despite the enchantments set in place preventing any outsiders from entering. While never harming her outright, the common people within the forest treated her coldly; they knew what she was and saw her as something to be avoided at all costs. Lonely and tired of being neglected, Cigyun fled the Spirit Forest and married Victor, Duke of Velthomer, charmed by his charisma and his apparent infatuation with her... And almost immediately regretted it. After bearing Victor a son in Arvis and after a cataclysmic series of events triggered by having an extramarital affair with prince Kurth of Belhalla’s royal family, she fled back to the Spirit Forest just in time to give birth to her second child --- a daughter, Deirdre --- to die in childbirth, breaking both of the most important laws of the land and setting a curse in the making into motion.

VICTOR ( FATHER ): The previous Duke of Velthomer, and an infamous alcoholic and philanderer. He seemingly prided himself on his hedonism, gallivanting around while absolutely shamelessly abusing his wife and child and harassing anyone who had the misfortune of getting too physically close to him in full view of anyone who happened to be around to witness it. He’d originally been captivated by Cigyun’s beauty and set himself on entrapping her into becoming his wife to keep her for himself. Upon learning the truth about her bloodline he felt as though he’d been the one ensnared --- she had already tainted the Fjalar bloodline by bearing him a child with her cursed heritage before telling him of her true nature, and exposing her and having her and her son killed while Arvis bore the brand marking major Fjalar blood would mean that he, Victor, would be responsible for ending his own family’s holy weapon-bearing bloodline. He thus set himself out to make his wife’s life a living hell as best he could to get back at her, womanising wherever he could, drinking at all hours of the day, locking her away, etcetera. When he learnt of her affair with the prince he lost his mind with rage ( how DARE she betray him, after he’d been so TOLERANT of her existence ) and wrote a scathing letter denouncing the pair before making a show of committing suicide in full view of the house. He died cursing them; what he’d aimed to do happened. Cigyun, shaken to her very core and terrified in the aftermath of her husband’s grizzly death and the hot political scandal that had just been shared with the public, abandoned Velthomer out of confused desperation in the hopes that she could return to the Spirit Forest and just pretend she’d never left in the first place.

AZELLE ( PATERNAL HALF-BROTHER ): Victor was an overwhelmingly cruel and selfish man. During a night of drunken stupor he forced himself onto Cigyun’s favourite handmaiden and impregnated her. When he learnt of her pregnancy he beat her and used physical violence and verbal threats to attempt to force her out of the house and into banishment, but Cigyun, delirious with rage at how unimaginably vicious her husband was, flew into a rage and combated him, demanding that the maid be permitted to stay. The child she delivered was Azelle. In the aftermath of House Velthomer’s infamous tragedy post-Victor and Cigyun Arvis would come to regard Azelle as his only true blood relative, and set to raising him despite being a child himself. He would grow up as the most important person in Arvis’ life; in his own terms, he ‘means the world to [him]’. Azelle would grow up shy and subdued, both terrified by his brother thanks to witnessing what he could do when angry or provoked in his younger years and feeling like a burden towards him owing to Arvis’ immense talent and his comparative lack of it as someone of minor and not major holy blood.

DEIRDRE ( MATERNAL HALF-SISTER/WIFE ): Born in the Spirit Forest and raised by her maternal grandmother, the discrimination Cigyun faced was placed on her daughter tenfold. Since the residents of the forest knew her to be a forbidden second child but could not know the name of her elder sibling since Cigyun had died before she could share that information with anyone, Deirdre was outright forbidden from ever coming into contact with men at all for fear that she might have children of her own one day as a pawn being used by the Loptyrian Cult to bring a new vessel back into the world. She, like her mother, would eventually flee the forest after growing dispassionate over her status as a pariah and her treatment as one to wed Sigurd, a dashing knight who had needed her arcane assistance in defeating an evil sorcerer in a castle to the north. Shortly after they had a child together she would be kidnapped by Manfroy, her memories forcibly erased, laid out unconscious on the steps leading to Belhalla Castle for Arvis to discover. Unaware of their relation, of her previous marriage to Sigurd or of Manfroy’s schemes, he fell in love with and eventually married her with the king’s blessing. It would not be until some time after the events of the Battle of Belhalla that he would learn the full truth, but by then it was too late; they’d had their children, Manfroy had his vessel, and all was lost.

HILDA ( DISTANT RELATIVE ): Straight up evil. If it weren’t for Victor being such a scumbag and her having minor Fjalar blood Arvis would sincerely doubt that the two of them were even related. She also happened to marry into House Friege, a noble house that, apart from housing powerful warlocks, wasn’t exactly on his warmer side owing to the actions of Reptor. She’s unbelievably cruel for seemingly no reason whatsoever beyond the fact that she just gets off on power.

JULIA ( DAUGHTER ): Imperial princess of the Empire of Grannvale, and the inheritor of the Naga holy bloodline. She grew up happy and beloved by all, the more boisterous, spirited counterpart to her sickly twin brother, but that would swiftly change once Julius came into contact with the Book of Loptyr. When she awoke after her mother warped her out of the castle to die by her son’s hand in her daughter’s stead she had lost all her memory from the shock of the situation. Lewyn, a travelling bard and wind mage who happened to be nearby, picked her up and took care of her from then onwards. She would recover her memories eventually, once she regained her resolve to fight.

JULIUS ( SON ): Imperial prince of the Empire of Grannvale, and the inheritor of the Loptyr unholy bloodline. Long thought to be of Naga’s bloodline as the male heir to the throne by his maternal great grandfather King Azmur, the meek, mild-mannered boy grew up polite and happy to remain his sister’s quieter shadow, cheery despite his sickly constitution. That changed once he came into contact with the Book of Loptyr; immediately possessed by the dragon of the same name, Loptyr, relishing finally regaining a corporeal vessel, set his sights to immediately eradicating any threats --- that being the bearers of the Naga holy bloodline, that being the boy’s mother Deirdre and sister Julia. Deirdre was murdered with ease considering she had abandoned the Book of Naga and had refused to fight back, but she managed to warp Julia to safety before he could eviscerate her. Julius settled for overthrowing their father in the meanwhile and reshaping the Grannvale Empire into the second coming of the Loptyrian Empire of old in the meantime while he continued his hunt for his sister.

SAIAS ( SON ): Arvis’ firstborn son, born of a union out of wedlock as a teenager with his adjutant General Aida. Largely raised in secret mostly owing to his status as a bastard, he was discovered by the Loptyrian Cult regardless and deemed a large enough threat owing to his major Fjalar blood that he had to be murdered while still a child. An assassin came for him early into Arvis’ rule as emperor, but Aida, protecting her son, intercepted them and they cut each other down. Cowen, his maternal grandfather, took Saias and fled with him, placing him into the custody of the church so that he might be raised there for his own protection where the cult could not find him. As an adult he is Archbishop of Velthomer, his brother Julius’ personal house doctor and a genius tactician renowned enough to boost the morale of entire armies with nothing more than his presence alone on a battlefield. He eventually defects to Seliph’s side and plays a large role in the reconstruction of Grannvale postwar.

SELIPH ( NEPHEW ): Sigurd and Deirdre’s son, orphaned by Arvis’ actions during the Battle of Belhalla. Born in Agustria and raised in Tirnanog in northern Isaach, Seliph had been denied ever really entering Grannvale or seeing his homeland until after he invades it as the leader of the rebel army fighting back against the tyranny of the empire. Arvis does not meet him until their final fight to the death, where, unbeknownst to Seliph, his uncle had already ahead of time handed him the Tyrfing to kill him with and had been waiting for him to find him. In his hair and his jawline he sees Sigurd, and in his eyes he sees Deirdre. It feels fitting to him that he should die being cut by Sigurd’s sword when he died burnt by his fire.

ISHTORE ( DISTANT RELATIVE ): Hilda and Bloom’s son, Ishtore. Since Hilda only cares for people insofar as they can bring her power and Ishtore is neither engaged to anyone powerful or a bearer of major Thrud blood like his sister Ishtar, there isn’t much to talk about here. His parents don’t care for him much because he isn’t nearly as useful as Ishtar is to them. Poor Ishtore.

ISHTAR ( DISTANT RELATIVE ): Hilda and Bloom’s daughter, Ishtar. The Goddess of Lightning, the bearer of Mjölnir, and Julius’ betrothed, Ishtar is the single most powerful lightning sorceress on the continent at the point in the game where she appears. She and Arvis share an interesting bond in that they both suffer from Julius’ condition; there’s a strange mutual admiration there. She sees him as a sort of almost father figure, he sees her as a rare ally; together they move behind Julius’ back to attempt to sabotage the child hunts and set as many children free as possible before Julius can call for their execution.

#⊰ ♖ ⊱ DOUBT THOU THE STARS ARE FIRE! DOUBT THAT THE SUN DOTH MOVE / HEADCANON #;abuse mention for ts #;abandonment for ts #;rape mention for ts #;suicide mention for ts #;murder for ts #;incest mention for ts #(( if I need to tag this with anything else PLEASE LET ME KNOW DSHFBJS ))#(( I say these are hcs but this is... all mostly just... me putting down canon information smh ))#;long post for ts

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