Izaya had finally succeeded in arranging a date with Heiwajima Shizuo.
It wasn't that difficult to pull off, he had just created a new alias on the internet and chatted with Shizuo as a girl.
The actual difficulty was in convincing himself to accept his feelings for the blond. And decide to do it in the first place.
That was a few weeks back.
He had waited long for this moment, so many nights clutching a phone to his chest after they had texted their goodnights. So many days mulling over what to say, how not to anger Shizuo, how not to make Shizuo hate him again. So many days, and yet...
And yet it's all going up in flames.
Shizuo had ticked as soon as Izaya reached out to him at the train station, demanding what he had done to the girl he had been chatting with.
"It was me, Shizu-chan, really— I even have the chat logs--"
The phone in Izaya's hand flew and hit the train tracks with a thud, and Shizuo shoved Izaya against a large pillar, cracking the concrete.
Shizuo roared something, but Izaya couldn't hear through the blood ringing in his ears.
He lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the blond at all.
"Look, Shizuo, it was really me. It was! Don't you remember that time we talked about—
"I... DON'T... CARE!" The beast roared and grasped his hand.
Shizu-chan's hand clamped on his, generating a warmth that's quickly developing into a heat— not the good kind, the kind that begs him to pull his hand away, before the pressure could increase further, before the pain could multiply.
He could hear the cracking sounds, but no, he wouldn't. He would pretend to hear only the grinding of his teeth against one another, pretend to feel only the warmth and not the pain. The tenderness he imagines and not the violence that's happening.
His mouth finished rambling something— he was pretty sure it was stupid, being around Shizu-chan seems to have that particular effect on him, in addition to being emotional. And finally, finally Izaya allows his screaming instinct to react to take over.
Lightning fast a knife was plunged into the beast's hand, gripping his with such monstrous strength. If not for the horrible, piercing pain, and if accompanied by a single 'I would never let you go', it would have been romantic. It would have been like Izaya had secretly imagined, while getting dressed up for this date.
In reality though the blond let go with a soft repressed curse, and Izaya didn't stay to see any of the rest that happened that day.
The pain clouded his senses, and he barely remembers the train ride to Shinra's at all. It was all a blur of disappointment and pain, and not necessarily only from his broken bleeding hand.
He remembers sitting on the couch with his mangled hand in Shinra's though, listening without comprehending— no, that's not really right. He did understood it, on some level. Seeing the mess that was supposed to be his hand, registering detachedly that purpling lump of flesh with stark white bone jutting out.
"This is really bad... Izaya-kun. If the pressure had been aligned better, laying the hand carefully over along the right ridges, the bone could be made to break cleanly, easily re-arranged and un-fractured. The flesh could be made to heal and the hand usable again. But what we have here..."
Izaya remembers deciding, at some level of consciousness, that it was not after all, his hand, his limb. While the reasoning part of his brain thought that he wouldn't likely use that hand again, wouldn't be able to type as quickly or swing a knife with it, or grab the edge of a roof to propel himself up and parkour through the city with a blond cat... tiger? chasing him.
All of that, in exchange for what?
"Can you show me the position when the hand was broken?" Shinra asked, still consulting with an image of a hand anatomy— that fact makes Izaya a little more queasy than he already is, but Shinra is an underground doctor, not a specialized orthopedic.
So Izaya absently reached his other hand over, gripped Shinra's out-stretched one, positioned it as best he remembers, and shakily squeezed.
"Ok, thank you Izaya-kun. By the way, why were you with Shizuo anyway, and in this suit, no less."
"It was... complicated. I—
Izaya knew Shinra didn't really want an answer anyway. It was just a distraction, all the talking so far, because right then Shinra did something with his broken hand, and his teeth clacked together so hard that he felt the reverberation in his skull in the effort to suppress the jerking reaction, cutting off his reluctant speech altogether.
Damn, the anesthetics isn't working yet?
Izaya tasted blood, and began to protest, only to be cut off again by another jolt of pain. He knew better then than to continue talking, and only braced himself for every shift Shinra is making to right those bones.
Sometimes, righting a wrong is more painful than the wrong itself.
"It's like assembling a jigsaw," Shinra said, "Only it's hard to move the pieces around without triggering nerves... I've arranged the capitate and the trapzium and the trapezoid— the carpus is relatively intact, only dislocated mostly. The metacarpi though... those are the ones broken and jutting out... I have to..."
Izaya stopped listening. Distraction. He needs distraction.
He imagined himself enveloped by strong arms— inhaling a scent that his mind concocted, which he came to associate so strongly with Shizu-chan.
As cracks sounded and pain shoots up his arm and pierces his brain, he thought of Shizuo.
He could endure this— for Shizuo.
For Shizuo. For Shizuo. For Shizuo. For Shizuo.
So went the mantra that helped Izaya get through the tedious and painful rearrangement of his broken hand.
The anesthetics must have kicked in somewhere for he blinked open his eyes to a dark room, and when his eyes adjusted he sees that the hand he lifts up to his face is encased in a white cast.
With his other hand he took his phone from the suit pocket and saw that it was almost dawn, but the curtains seem to be drawn shut.
No text from Shizuo. Not that he didn't expect it. But it still stings.
He had been out for only a few hours. Yet, in those few hours he might just have lost Shizu-chan forever.
His hands tried to clench in reaction, but at the sudden pain Izaya regained himself and quickly relaxed them, taking gulps of air to suppress the urge to cry out.
Shinra's house is quiet and still tonight. No gangfights to generate patients this evening.
Izaya deftly slipped out the window, closing it for his friend. Shinra wouldn't appreciate getting a chilled room tomorrow morning, even if it would be a little less painful and a little more convenient for the informant.
While the loss of part of an arm will certainly affect his balance in parkouring, mere broken hands surprisingly is not that much of a hindrance, as long as he is careful not to move it by habit.
Being in a suit does restrict him a little though, and every time it reminds him of their disastrous date that evening.
Izaya cannot find it in himself to go back to Ikebukuro, so he made his way back to his own apartment, and spent the sleepless night ignoring the smarting wound on his heart by nursing the smarting wound on his hand.