#shizaya is my otp tbf

[shadowed-yet-vibrant]

Something Was Burning

Izaya x Shizuo

Word Count: 2050

CW: vehicle accident, blood

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. 

The end was supposed to have dignity. At least, with as much dignity as someone like him could hope to have when he took his last breath. Be it at the end of a gun or beneath the blade of a knife, there was supposed to be someone left for him to smirk at, the fleeting opportunity for one last laugh. The inevitable death was never supposed to be a sign of defeat, but rather the earnest embrace of karma’s overdue hands around his throat. 

It wasn’t supposed to end pinned between pieces of crumpled metal, nothing but a seatbelt left to suspend him above a sea of broken glass. Not alone, without an enemy in sight, without any of the intimacy that would come from something as tantalizing as murder. Not an accident that arose without any greater purpose, no motive emerging from deep inside a broken human heart. 

But something was burning. 

Above all else, Izaya ached. He could hear himself gasping for breath as though he were listening in from a distance, a shaky rattle coming from a bruised chest. The belt across his middle had taken the brunt of the impact, and it was from there the pain radiated outwards, a reminder of how just one piece of fabric had kept him from launching to certain death. His ribs had paid for the small modicum of safety, the pain of mortality left in place of what would have otherwise been blissful nothingness. 

Something was burning. 

Plastic, melting rubber, and chemicals on the verge of combustion, a caustic mixture which had launched a frontal assault on his tender senses. But there was nowhere for the man to run, and even if he had been able to free himself from the wreckage, he suspected the pain shooting up his right leg may have rendered such an attempt futile regardless. 

Izaya craned his neck to look at the car door above him, confirmation that the vehicle had indeed been thrown on its side in the crash. The last thing he had been able to comprehend was the truck speeding into the intersection and making contact with the driver’s side door in a brilliant flash of light. He felt no need to look forward toward the driver: there was no question the man was dead. 

However dazed he was from the pain, Izaya could feel his mind struggling to give him a way out, a computational process which had started the moment the car had come to a halt on its right side. Within moments he had calculated how long until the flames would reach him in the back of the cabin, and to place the estimate above mere minutes would be unrealistic.

At the same time he had been running through the options to free himself from the wreckage, and was coming up painfully empty. Though he hadn’t yet put eyes on it, he knew his knife was no longer nestled up against his body. Its familiar weight was gone, a gaping absence in its place. It was the same case with his cell, both small objects having been ejected from his pockets during the cash. Unless he was able to release himself from the seatbelt and heave himself up through the window, he was still damned to burn. 

He moved his hands to try and undo the belt, silently cursing Namie for pestering him about it so often that it had become habit. Though he would have surely died without it, in the moment he thought a quick death would have been somewhat more noble than this embarrassment. 

It was only when he was fumbling for the belt did he take another look at this right leg, an area from which the pain was only growing more intense with each passing moment. There was little that could bring Izaya shock any more, but his stomach flopped as he took in the sight in full. His limb extended outwards from his hip with a sense of familiarity, but it disappeared into a gnarled hunk of door pressed up against the seat in front of him. The wreckage had him pinned, his leg stuck in a vice that no human feat of human strength could ever pry open. 

Were there more time at hand, Izaya would have cursed to the skies. He would have reached forward and attempted to wrench himself free, emerge from the wreck like a hero, brush off help from onlookers who were still shouting in horror. But at the moment the only sound his constrained chest allowed was a short wheeze of laughter, a hollow sound that echoed amidst the deafening white noise filling the vehicle’s cabin. 

But before he could close his eyes and embrace the crackling flames rushing towards him, Izaya’s world lurched. His sense of balance, already all but destroyed from the vehicle spinning out of control, once again swung sideways. The sound of crunching metal resounded, and the car slammed into the ground right-side-up with a great rattling of the suspension. Izaya bit his tongue as his leg twisted where it was pinned, instead letting out a grunt as his body was jarred yet again. 

As soon as he was certain the car was back on its four wheels Izaya glanced out the window, wondering what force of nature could have turned the car over. And what met him at nearly eye-level was a familiar pair of tinted glasses, resting below angrily furrowed brows and a mop of blond hair.

In normal circumstances, this infuriating view would have taken his breath away in frustration. But at the moment, all he could do was give his enemy a dumbfounded stare, residual shock from the accident taking away all of his usual rage. Izaya could tell that it took the beast a moment to recognize just who he was looking at, expression frozen until those empty eyes widened ever so slightly. It was only then that Izaya found he still had enough strength for a fleeting smirk. 

“Izaya,” Shizuo hissed, voice low and husky in anger. That constant state of rage had never abated, even when the man had taken the time to arrive at the scene of an accident and commit a rare act of kindness. The logic of this uncharacteristic assistance was beyond Izaya as he currently stood, so he grimaced and pulled halfheartedly at his leg in the hopes the car’s grip had loosened. 

“What are you doing here, you brute?” Izaya asked, trying to buy himself some more time to focus. Now that the car was righted he felt as though there were some better chance at his survival as the flames grew nearer, his back already hot from their closeness. Death was licking at him, along with some distant thread of fear. He knew there was a decent chance that Shizuo would either walk away or speed up the killing process right then and there. Izaya would have preferred a chance to spar with Shizuo properly, rather than face his killer as nothing more than a rat in a cage, but it was still more dignified than succumbing to the chemical-fueled flames. 

He could see the thoughts forming in Shizuo’s eyes, their gaze flitting from Izaya’s face to the wreckage of the cars, then back to the flames which had engulfed the rear of the vehicle. By now they were crawling into the far window and lapping at the leather seats, waiting to catch.  Another few moments and Izaya knew that his soft collar and cuffs would begin to singe, his face already searing from the encroaching heat. 

A scowl overcame Shizuo’s face, and he flashed his teeth in what appeared to be anger. Izaya drew in another short breath, no matter how much it hurt, and returned a smirk in kind. If he was going to be killed here and now, the least he could do was smile in the face of it, piss off that blond-haired menace one last time. 

But instead of Shizuo’s arms reaching in through the broken window and making their way to crush Izaya’s neck, they wrapped around the side of the car door. The impact had crushed it inwards, making it impossible to open with merely human strength, but Shizuo was hardly human. Izaya watched in awe and shock as Shizuo secured his fingers into the ridges of the crumpled metal and pulled, grunting slightly as he did so. 

That simple action, one which appeared to flow without any excess of effort on Shizuo’s part, resulted in the door slowly peeling away from the body of the car. The metal groaned as the frame was bent and snapped, shifting the entire vehicle with the sheer force required. Shards of glass from the window flew into the cabin, and Izaya looked away just long enough to shield his eyes. Seconds later the catastrophic noise had ended and sunlight streamed in freely, half of the car peeled back as though it were nothing more than a tab on a can of soda. 

And it was now that the pain renewed in earnest on Izaya’s leg, and he gave an involuntary grunt as he looked down at it. Now that there was no longer a mass of metal pinning it up against the seat he saw his own flesh split open, his shin crooked and bone bulging beneath the skin as blood dripped from the lacerations. 

Keeping a side-eye on Shizuo, who was taking a deep breath and staring into the car, Izaya fumbled with his seatbelt one last time, finally releasing himself from its grip. The fire was around him now, the flames reaching up to kiss him from either side. But the very moment that he was contemplating how to drag himself out of the vehicle without being able to put any weight on his right leg, arms wrapped around his torso, yanking him free from the car in a swift motion that wrenched his body through space. 

It was all Izaya could do not to cry out, especially as his right leg bore the consequences of momentum and broken bone ground against broken bone. But he was freed, the smell of fire growing more distant, his limbs all freed from where they had been trapped. And now he was held surprisingly close to Shizuo’s chest, dangling from above the ground ever so slightly, suspended in an unexpected embrace. 

He felt Shizuo’s breath hot on his neck, a gentle hiss of exhalation in his ear. And he could feel the gentle brush of hair against his cheek, shifting as he was slowly lowered onto the pavement. Whether it was the shock or pain that made him freeze, Izaya remained motionless as Shizuo laid him somewhat gently on the ground, a few long paces away from the remains of the wreckage. And as the man knelt and put Izaya onto the sidewalk, for just one brief moment, the hot skin of their cheeks collided. It was such an unexpected sensation that Izaya felt his eyes widen involuntarily. The contact ended as suddenly as it had begun, and Shizuo was already pulling away from him before he could react. 

The sun framed Shizuo’s face in a way that was almost angelic, darkening his features as Izaya looked up at him, fighting to retain his comprehension through the pain. Unblinking, the man stood to his full height, finally releasing Izaya from his grasp. For a moment Shizuo was silent, expression pensive. Then he opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something, as though there was something on the tip of his tongue he was fighting to get out. 

Instead of speaking, however, the man turned his back. He walked away, quickly disappearing from Izaya’s field of vision where he lay on the ground. Now other spectators were rushing forward, their shock wearing off, and the sound of sirens was growing near. Others descended around him, their hands both eager and fearful to touch him, wanting to render aid. 

But all Izaya could think of was the brief moment where their cheeks had grazed, the tender way that the all-powerful monster had cradled his broken body. And where their flesh had met, something was burning.