Concussive

[UndergroundGod]

He was running as fast as his legs could carry him, but for once, it wasn’t because Shizuo was chasing him. No, Izaya had left the man standing speechless on the sidewalk, far behind him.

After Izaya had taken off, he’d spent a few minutes ducking down alleyways and behind buildings to keep out of Shizuo’s sight, even though he knew the man wasn’t following him. He needed to run partially because the man wasn’t following him. But he couldn’t run for long… his head was already beginning to spin, he needed to find somewhere to crash, and quickly. The way he was going, his office was much closer than his apartment, and though a cab could get him to either place in about the same time… Izaya was concerned that if he let his heart stop pounding the way it was that he would pass out in the cab before it could get him to his destination.

It didn’t take long for him to stumble into the building, swaying uncertainly as he waited for the elevator, and he hurried on once the doors opened.

His breath was coming in haggard rasps as he leaned his head against his arm. The elevator was moving quickly, but not quickly enough; the floor kept tilting violently, as if it was trying to buck him off, and it was doing a damn good job of trying. The fluorescent lighting inside the elevator was stabbing at his eyes—he just wanted to get into his office. He needed to sit down before he found himself involuntarily horizontal.

Finally, the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Izaya stumbled out into the blinding hallway, fumbled with his keys for a bit before cramming them into the lock and letting himself hurriedly into the room.

The office was dark except for the soft glow of the half-full moon through the wall of windows and Izaya was grateful. He ignored the light switch, slammed the door shut behind him, and staggered through the room to cross to the couch and collapse lifelessly onto it.

His elbows on his thighs, his head fell forward into his hands. It felt as though someone had hammered a wedge into his skull and now the bone was slowly splitting right down the middle. He could feel a damp stickiness on his fingers and on his forehead as he held his head, but he didn’t have the energy or will to confirm that it was blood.

Izaya’s clay colored eyes slipped shut and he wondered what the hell he was going to do now.

[Deleted]

She was about to kill that man.

It was three minutes after Izaya had entered his office. Namie’s normally-icy air was now fiery and murderous. Her shift had ended not too long ago, yet she was headed for her office with incredible speed. She accelerated with every step, her fists clenching tighter every minute.

When she reached the elevator, the button was pushed with such force it looked as if it would break. As she waited to reach her floor, she flipped open her cell phone once again.

The wallpaper picture of Seiji and her was replaced with Izaya’s face, sticking his tongue out like an immature child.

Every single one of her pictures containing Seiji was replaced with that ridiculous face. Every. Single. One.

Ding

“When did he even take it? It could have been any time last week, I don’t get messages on this phone anymore…”

The secretary grumbled as she stepped out, searching in her purse for her keys and something that could aid her in her revenge. Her lipstick dropped out, and she picked it up while briefly wondering whether or not she should vandalize his belongings.

“He must have something he values in the office somewhere…his laptop is pretty secure, it’ll take a while to hack…maybe that board game? Will it annoy him if I messed it up?”

She took out the office key and jammed it into the lock. The familiar “click” that indicated unlocking was absent.

“…?”

Namie blinked, startled at this small detail. Was Izaya still here? Did he expect her to come and try to take revenge? He’d probably heard her key just now…what should she say?!

Was he planning to hold her pictures hostage?

Again?

She gulped before slowly looking into the peephole. The apartment was dark—the lights were off, but she could see Izaya’s form in the moonlight. It appeared he was sitting on the couch alone, his head in his arms.

…His arms—

Something dark and liquid sparkled in the light, dripping down what was exposed of the his arms. It was hard to confirm whether or not it was blood, but she could think of no better explanation.

Except that it was another prank.

Though Izaya probably would have no trouble getting real blood to use for a prank.

Prank or not, Namie was curious. She was a woman of science, after all. She could honestly care less if Izaya was honestly hurt, but she’d love to know how one managed to hurt that sneaky master of parkour.

Slowly, the door was opened, Namie carefully peeping in the scene. She cleared her throat softly before calling:

“Izaya?”

[UndergroundGod]

Even through the mild ringing in his ears, he heard the sound of a key being slid into the door of the office. The only other people who had a key were the landlord and Namie, and Izaya highly doubted his landlord would be stopping by the building close to midnight.

He wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t need Namie seeing him like this, and if she was retuning for the reason he thought she might be returning for (he’d taken those picture six days ago, after all, it was taking her long enough to notice), he really didn’t have the coordination to handle a conflict right now. He wished he could hide, but he didn’t have the ability to get up and move.

There was a long pause between when he heard the key in the door and when the door was actually opened and the woman walked into the room. Honestly, at the very least, he wished his could sit up from the pitiful hunched over position he’d taken, but his head was spinning, and it honestly felt like the only thing keeping him upright when having his hands hold his head very still. He felt pathetic, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it other than hope to minimize any trouble Namie might want to cause him.

After all, he wouldn’t blame her for wanting to kick him while he was down. Izaya had done it to others, so he didn’t doubt that someone would do it to him.

He had a concussion. It was an obvious conclusion, considering his symptoms and considering that Shizuo’s skull had impacted his with the force of a train going full speed down the tracks. Izaya half-thought that a trip to the emergency would be a good idea… but the other half of him was violently opposed to it. He visited the people he incidentally put in the hospital, he didn’t get sent there himself.

Not even if the blow had split the skin and he was still bleeding rather badly. Not even if he was terrified of opening his eyes because he didn’t want to stare at the two coffee tables sitting in front of him.

Namie finally entered the room, and Izaya tensed, but couldn’t move otherwise. He heard her clear her throat, call his name and he wished he could respond to her in a more superior position.

But he could at least reply in a casual voice—if he could straighten out his thoughts long enough to remember how to form sentences. There was a delay between his name and his reply, before Izaya said in an almost nonchalant voice, “Namie. It's... late. What…” speaking was suddenly much harder than he’d ever remembered it being, “…are you doing here?”

[Deleted]

‘”What are you doing here?!”’

Namie frowned at the question and almost began to yell at him before she caught herself. If this indeed was a serious injury, any unnecessary stress may cause further damage, and she had no intention of increasing the mess she knew she’d have to take care of.

She took in a deep breath. Calm Namie, calm.

“You should know the answer to that question, and I should be the one to ask. What could you possibly be doing, sitting alone in the dark of your office, well past your normal working hours?”

She spoke as she moved towards where Izaya was seated. As she got closer, the familiar scent of blood became recognizable. Adding the delays in his words with that fact, it was looking more and more like an honest injury…

The secretary stared down at her employer, her arms crossed as if she was waiting for a child to confess his crimes. From the origin of the blood and Izaya’s lack of usual dramatic movements, she gathered he’d somehow managed to get a concussion. It was bad enough that it kept Izaya fairly quiet and immobile. A part of her wanted to laugh at him while he was in this pathetic state, and another part of her was worried that the source of her next pay check would go in a permanent slumber.

Not to mention she’d have to find a new place to hide herself and the head from the police.

Namie gave another sigh before walking to the kitchen. She swiftly returned with a bag of ice wrapped in washcloth and threw it on the coffee table.

“Hold this on your wound and don’t die. Yet.”

That should be a simple enough instruction for someone even with a physical head injury, right?

...Though she was quite sure he also had a far more serious mental problem in there.

Her cell phone was produced once again, greeting her with that unpleasant but very healthy face of Izaya. Her eyebrow twitched slightly in annoyance, and she scrolled down on her old list of contacts before turning to the man again.

“Would you rather I call Shinra then the hospital? Or are you too stubborn to admit you require help at the moment?”

The usual icy air surrounded the woman once again. She wanted nothing but to have this over with quickly and efficiently. She’d had enough of this man’s trouble for one day, and wanted nothing but to go home and replace the pictures with the ones she had saved in her computer.

[UndergroundGod]

Of course he knew the answer to her question, especially after her response. He wished he could give her that chesire grin and play innocent. Oh, he’d planned on this conversation being so much fun. Their teasing would go back and forth for hours as Izaya toyed with the idea of what it would take Namie to get her pictures back. Izaya had, of course, saved all her pictures of her brother, had the backup files encrypted on his laptop so that only he could access them, and he would have been willing to give them all back to her… for a price.

He’d planned on that negotiating session being so entertaining, but… right now, he didn’t have the mental capacity for such games.

Izaya could feel her moving towards him, approaching with caution as if still determining whether he was really injured or if it was all some elaborate stunt to put her at ease, and Izaya found he couldn’t blame her for having that cautious mentality. He wouldn’t have put it past himself to use a staged injury as a way to trick her or gain sympathy. Actually, her caution made him feel a little proud of the fact that she had caught on to his constant nonsense.

His eyes were still closed, afraid that opening them would egg the nausea on, so he couldn’t see her hovering over him like a disappointed mother. He couldn’t see her moving away from him and into the kitchen, but he did hear it, her footsteps moving away, and the sound of the refrigerator door, the ice. He knew what she was doing before the task was completed, but the sound of the ice hitting the table still made him flinch slightly.

It took a moment before he could move. He had to focus sincerely on balancing his head against one hand so that the other could reach to the table before him and grab the makeshift ice pack, but when he extended his arm forward, his fingertips just barely brushed the cloth. Which meant he was going to need to lean.

What was normally such a simple task somehow now seemed impossible. Even just shifting his head to one side had seemed laborious and daring, which seemed to imply that the dizziness he felt was only growing worse. To have to lean forward to grab the bag made him feel like he was leaning precariously over the side of a cliff; one wrong move and he would pitch himself over the edge into oblivion. As much as he wanted to extend his arm, to lean his body forward to grab the ice from the table, his brain rebutted him and refused.

And as much as he wanted to deny assistance, he wasn’t stupid. If the dizziness and other symptoms seemed to be getting worse and worse after the initial injury (of course, it was completely possible that he was just feeling the brunt of the injuries more now that the adrenaline was wearing off), it could mean that he was bleeding internally. Izaya hadn’t thought the injury was that serious, as they typically led to long periods of unconsciousness, and while Izaya had seen his vision go dark for a few seconds, he couldn’t have been out that long. That meant his injury couldn’t be that bad, could it?

Though Izaya wasn’t a doctor and didn’t know the specifics of all this. He’d never taken too much of an interest in the specifics of the human body, and so, was under-informed in terms of diagnosing himself.

What he did know was that dying was nowhere on his to do list. He had no intentions of dying any time soon, didn’t even want to consider it, and therefore, the most reasonable thing to do was to seek medical help from somewhere. And if he was too unwilling to go to the hospital, then that meant…

“Shinra,” he managed to spit out after a moment, keeping his spoken words narrowed down to as few as possible.

[Deleted]

Soon as the word was given, she pressed the ‘call’ button on her phone.

Riiing. Riiiing. Riiing.

Click.

“Ah, what a world we live in, where the technology to instantly speak to one another exists yet you cannot reach me at the moment! Love indeed grows stronger no matter the distance! I’ll get back to you soon as I can, Celty! Oh and other people too. Leave a message!”

Namie stayed quiet briefly until she realized the strange rambling was the voice message.

“This is Izaya’s secretary; it seems he managed to get a concussion somehow and requires treatment. It looks like he has a headache and is extremely weak. He has slight difficulty speaking and is bleeding rather badly from his head. Please come soon as possible.”

She closed the phone and stared at the glowing LCD clock. 12:24 A.M.

This couldn’t be good.

She did not possess the numbers of other doctors, as they were no longer safe for her to call. She didn’t recall any other underground doctors around Ikebukuro either…they were generally a hard find, especially someone of Shinra’s talent.

The secretary sighed and look towards Izaya, noticing that the task of grabbing the ice proved to be strenuous. She nudged the bag closer to him as she planned her next course of action. Her specialty may have been biology, but she was no doctor. She only had a basic idea of what a doctor would do to treat the patient, nothing more. All she could do is aid him to apply the ice on his forehead until some form of help became available.

‘How annoying…”

Namie furrowed her brows in irritation. Feeling useless had always peeved her throughout her life. It’s what got her up the ranks, after all. The fact that she had nothing important she could do was unacceptable. Her eyes gleamed when she found the notebook and the pen beside the phone as she took a quick look around the room.

After she took a pen and a piece of paper, Namie plopped down beside Izaya on the sofa. She crossed her legs and used her thigh as a surface under the paper.

“Shinra’s not picking up. I left him a message. Why don’t you tell me who you annoyed today to get that gash on your head? Feeling dizzy? Confused? Fell unconscious any time? How’s your vision?”

[UndergroundGod]

After a few seconds, Izaya heard Namie leaving a message, which must mean that idiot doctor hadn’t answered. Izaya would have groaned if he had the energy for it. Shinra was supposed to be on call 24/7. The man was paid well enough to have his phone on at all times, and the least he could do was answer the damn thing.

Though, to be fair, it was usually a familiar number that appeared on his ID. Perhaps he hadn’t answered because Namie’s number was foreign and he’d answer the message once he heard exactly who was calling. He may have answered if they’d used Izaya’s phone, but that was in his pocket, and would have required that he moved in order to get it, which simply was not happening. He’d just have to take the risk that Shinra was listening to the message now.

And there was always the possibility that Shinra was on another job, in the middle of surgery, though Izaya usually knew when that sort of thing was happening. His brain was rather fried right now, however, so there was a chance that Izaya just couldn’t remember Shinra’s schedule.

He was grateful when Namie pushed the ice closer and was finally able to wrap his fingers around it. Ever so slowly, he lifted the bag back up to his head to hold it softly against his pounding, bleeding skull.

Then the questions began.

Really, she was just being cruel now, asking so many questions at once. Not only did it take a minute for him to process everything she’d asked, it took him nearly as long to try to formulate an answer. His normally organized brain was now in massive disarray, as if it had been hit with an earthquake (though really, that was metaphorically exactly what a headache was) and he now had to pick through the rubble to even figure out the basic mechanics of speech. It took him longer than he liked to try to put the words together, bit by bit, to answer her questions regarding his symptoms, but eventually he began to tick them off to her, “Very dizzy… nauseous. Blacked out, maybe… a few seconds.”

To answer her final question, he forced himself to open his eyes, but there were still two blurred tables in front of him, when Izaya knew very well there should only be one. He quickly closed them again to stop the nausea from progressing into anything more.

“And my vision’s so great…” he told her, “that I have two of them.” Though the energy it took to force out the smart ass comment almost made it not worth it.

Now, the symptoms he didn’t mind telling her. They were simple enough, though he had neglected to mention the excruciating pain he was in. But… whether it was the pain he felt or just an effect of the concussion, just thinking about what exactly lead to the injury made a terribly unfamiliar lump form in his throat and he didn’t want to approach the subject. It didn’t really matter how he was injured, right?

[Deleted]

Namie watched as the man slowly lifted the bag of ice. She became wary for any chance that may allow Izaya to fall. When the pack reached his head, she returned her gaze to the piece of paper and began writing.

Reduced movement and speech, the former possibly due to disorientation. Lack of usual condescending remarks.

The large window of the apartment luckily allowed enough moonlight for her to see her paper, and she was grateful for that unnecessary design of the room for once. What was the point of that gigantic window when the view showed nothing but the city crowds? Well, now she knew.

Namie waited patiently for Izaya to collect his thoughts and form his words. She did shoot one too many questions at a time, after all. Not that she regret doing so in any way. If he didn’t get himself hurt in the first place, this would not have been a problem. It wasn’t doubtful that he did something to deserve it…no, she was 100% sure he did something to deserve it.

As these thoughts ran through her head, she continued to write down the symptoms as they were listed.

Dizziness, nausea, loss of consciousness for short spans—

Her pen poked through the thin material when the last comment was made. She sighed, rolled her eyes, crossed out the previous note about “lack of remarks,” and wrote the final symptom.

Sees doubles.

“You were behaving so well, I was starting to think you were someone else in disguise. You just couldn’t let that last, hm?”

Namie filled in the silence after noticing Izaya’s evasion towards the cause of his injuries. She lifted herself off the seat and left to fetch a pillow, bed sheets, and a bucket. The first two were thrown on the sofa, and the latter was placed by its side.

“Rest. The sole fact you aren’t trying to brag about how you’ve angered someone to the point of injuring you, and managed to succeed for once, is extremely curious yet worrying. If you need to vomit, you better not miss the bucket. I’m not cleaning after that. I’ll watch for Shinra.”

The secretary took her work laptop and sat on the other side. The screen glowed brightly in contrast to the rest of the room, and the computer began to whirr. A steady tapping of the keyboard immediately followed the quiet hum. She decided she might as well get some work done if she was going to stay.

[UndergroundGod]

Even injured, Izaya had a compulsive need to be a jerk, though he had to admit that being injured made it much more difficult. It was hard to create something witty to say when his brain was working in slow motion, when he had to snatch words out of the air like fluttering butterflies just to form sentences.

It made the entire process much more difficult for him. Honestly, he’d much rather just sit there silently, considering the effort it took to speak.

Izaya sat as still as he possibly could and held the ice lightly to his head. After her remark, Izaya heard her get up and return shortly, throwing something soft onto the couch beside him. He didn’t want to open his eyes to look but after she told him to rest, he assumed it was a pillow and a blanket.

But the last thing he wanted to do right now was lay down. In fact, he just didn’t want to move at all, ever. The room was already trying to dip and tilt and spin, Izaya didn’t want to provoke it by moving around. No, reaching for the ice had been adventurous enough, he didn’t want to even try lying down, considering if and when Shinra showed up, he’d just have to sit up again anyway.

Besides, he was pretty sure he’d read somewhere that people with a concussion shouldn’t be left alone to sleep for too long, and he wasn’t altogether sure that Namie would be willing to put in the effort to wake him up if he did lay down and happened to somehow doze off.

Her comment about him not bragging about this, though… that had to be the comment that was left ringing in his mind. That statement was the first thing his brain fell upon as he tried to devise something to distract himself from the painful throbbing of his skull; he had the sudden need to relive the event that brought him to this moment.

But as he thought about how he’d run into Shizuo, and what he’d said to make the man lash out so harshly… the unpleasant lump returned to his throat. Izaya swallowed hard, but, as he thought about how close he’d been to Shizuo, the way he could see the anger slide onto his features before he’d reared his head back and SLAMMED it forward, swallowing didn’t help. The lump stayed and grew larger.

It hurt to do so, but he squeezed his eyes shut harder, ignored the stinging sensation and pretended to forget exactly what that feeling meant.

As much as Izaya wanted to fall asleep right now, he knew the pain in his head would never allow it.

[Deleted]

The click-clacks of the keyboard continued, despite Izaya’s lack of reaction to the command. It was understandable that the pain from the concussion could restrain him from moving from his current position. At least, that was what she assumed was all that kept him from resting.

Namie opened several tabs and began to check for the updates and reports of information, many of which involved movements of certain suicidal individuals and gang fights occurring around the city. One by one, she saved and organized each report, closing the tabs until a certain report caught her eye.

“…?”

Her eyes read the words but her brain refused to register the first few times. She stared at the name, then at the full sentence, and then back at the name again. Even after accepting the information she couldn’t help but doubt its legibility.

‘Shinra Kishitani has been injured in a car accident.’

Namie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It couldn’t be true right? The world couldn’t be this cruel to her on this already shitty day. She was just stressed from today; her eyes were playing tricks on her. When she opens her eyes, she’ll see someone else’s name.

…

God damn it all to hell it still says “Shinra Kishitani.”

The picture attached crushed the very last hope Namie had for it to have been a typo. That face sure enough belonged to that doctor. Luckily he didn’t seem severely injured, but the crash was enough for him to make him fall unconscious. The doctor was strange, but she doubted even he’d ride on cars regularly in such an odd position.

The secretary slammed the laptop shut in frustration. Well, they were out of options. She was keeping Izaya alive whether he liked her method or not. She walked away from the man, took out her cell phone, and dialled “911.” After giving the address and symptoms, she immediately ended the call and stood on the other side of the table, a comfortable distance away from him.

“…I called 911. Shinra apparently got caught in an accident and I’m not having you die anytime soon.”

[UndergroundGod]

They sat there for a long time, waiting on Shinra, he supposed. After a moment, he was able to distract himself from the pain in his eyes by listening to the sound of Namie typing. It all sounded much louder than normal, and whether that was because of how dead everything else in the room was, or because the concussion made him ultrasensitive to noise, he was unsure. In the end, he decided he would just attribute it to both.

Regardless, even though it was mildly painful, having a distraction was a blessing. It meant he wouldn’t have to keep almost reliving what had just happened. He didn’t want to think about it, and he half-wished he’d had a case of that oh so famous retrograde amnesia that he heard often accompanied concussions. It’d be nice not to remember exactly what had happened prior to his injury.

Suddenly, Izaya heard the laptop slammed shut, and he heard the subtle sounds of Namie pulling out her cell phone and hitting three keys. She walked away from him, he could tell that, as her voice grew distant… but the office was small, and he could hear every few words. She was giving the address, listing off symptoms, so it didn’t take long for him to put the pieces together. Namie had called emergency services.

Izaya’s heart sunk at the idea, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. It was too late to stop her, whatever her reasoning may be.

When she headed back towards him and confessed, her logic was explained. Shinra wasn’t on his way anymore, apparently. Izaya wondered fleetingly if he was injured seriously, but didn’t have the ability to ask Namie, as his head was still spinning.

He groaned weakly in reply, and though he didn’t like what she had done, he at least understood why she did it.