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"I didn't think you'd be this much fun tonight." The most fucked up date Teshima had encountered in his life spoke too airily, between all their giggling, fingers slipping awkwardly at their belt. "I was just going out with you for a free dinner!"
He grabbed their hands. "What are you doing?" The world rocked - harsher than usual from how much his vision spun - it didn't help how much he wanted to collapse after running blocks without pause. The worst person he'd met in the last five years trying to undress between the trash cans at the back of the last open pharmacy in this part of the city was the last thing he wanted to put up with.
Ceaseless ringing responded in his head, in their petulant silence, until they asked, "How do you expect me to fix my leg otherwise?"
They shook his hold, but he shifted to grab their arm wholly instead. "No, what do you mean by that?" In a mess of escape from disgruntled restaurant employees, he had forgotten most beyond snark and sarcastic anxiety - forgotten that this didn't make sense, in the mess of his own temper. They dug their nails into his fingers, but it wasn't any worse than what they'd thrown at him before. Near tepid at this point, tightening his grip, "How the hell are you supposed to fix a dislocated leg with some thread and medical," and he pulled a little too hard - through the sleeve of their jacket, he could feel it go slack.
"Ugh." Their hand came up in a sharp smack across his face, and he drew away, cursing until the shock fell away to a slow throb in his cheek. "Of course ..." Teshima looked up at their voice, through watering eyes, to see their jacket and shirt pulled down from their collar. "I should have realized that would have loosened it ..."
"What?"
They ignored him. He leaned over closer, till they turned away, until he hit his forehead against the wall, until he could see bone sticking out where their shoulder was supposed to be set. "Oh, don't look at that," they muttered, "I can't fix this with thread at all." They hummed, thoughtfully. "I'll have to get home and get the pliers."
Teshima stared, unblinkingly. "The pliers." He pressed his fist over his mouth, trying not to shove it in entirely. "For your bone. Right. For your bone jacket arm problem." He slid a palm over his eyes. They didn't correct him - it wasn't more blood screaming in his ears, it wasn't the same fake ringing, they were supposed to correct him. "That makes a lot of fucking sense."
"Mhm!" There was a thump, presumably some part of their body, into trash, and he couldn't help but think about how fitting it was - for both of them, probably. "I mean, it isn't as though it's the first strange thing about tonight, after all."
He dropped his hands and shoved them under his arms, trying not to hyperventilate as they peeled their pants off with not much more than vague disinterest on their face - though, at this point, he was personally far more preoccupied with the way their right leg came off right with them. "Which part would qualify as the first strange thing then?" Panic set heavily into his gut, but shoved it all into a grim wide sarcastic smirk. "The part where I threw ice in your face? Was it strange because it wasn't a proper cup of tea?" It wasn't a prosthetic - if it was, it was dedicated to making anyone's stomach churn, with dried broken blood vessels and their inner hip entirely clear, chipped bone sticking out of their thigh. "Oh! Or maybe where we got into a fight in the back alley, and I didn't set a proper table first. You probably need elegant sets like that, considering what a high class date you are. Satin cloth, right? Blue, with white embroidery, that would have been just right before you hit me between the eyes." They dropped their leg to the concrete with a thud that was far too fleshy for any kind of comfort and Teshima raised his voice. "Maybe the part where we were chased by security for 30 minutes and I had to carry you for 15 of those? Was it weird I hadn't prepared a pumpkin carriage in advance?"
"Those parts were all kinda interesting," they hummed, "But I was thinking specifically the part where you punched me and accidentally snapped my sternum." Too lackadaisical, the whole time, more focused on the fact that they only just remembered to remove their shoe from the detached leg.
That was preferable to think about than lingering over just what he'd spent the night with, struggling to tear his eyes away from the mess of metal and bone that was probably once an ankle with actual skin. "I did what?" He still asked in something more approaching a scream than he intended.
That made them look up. "Weren't you wondering what you cut your hand on?"
"What cut?" Teshima looked at it, not seeing much in darkness, until he flashed his phone's light over it. Maybe that was why the clerk at the store had been staring at him in such concern - the clotting sticky mess of blood covering their right fist shouldn't have been so simple to overlook.
At least the situation was strange enough for it, especially as his date answered his rhetorical question, "Yep! Would you like to see where?" At that, they dropped their leg without a second thought and began pulling up their shirt.
He tripped over himself to grab them. "Could you stop undressing, for maybe five minutes?!"
They pursed their lips, from what little he could make out of their face at this distance, trying, trying to make himself stop screaming internally, and it only worsened when they laughed, short and empty.
"Five minutes. I suppose I could handle that. Sure."
Teshima jolted up from the ground. "Great." He dreamed, for a scant moment, of kicking them in the gut, making them curl up on the wet concrete alone to deal with this mess, alone, if he could so easily walk away afterward. Yet, there was an image in his head of his foot stuck in the cage of their ribs near inevitable - it would be better to avoid trapping himself with them anymore than he already had.
"But um ... my leg?" Even turned away, he could guess what kind of smile they were wearing. Just wearing - wearing as much as the clothes and limbs they managed to keep stripping. "Like you eloquently mentioned, I am having what can be called a bone jacket arm problem. It makes it a little hard to fix up my leg!"
"You want me to ..." He looked at the bag in his hand. "Sew it back on ... in the middle of a bunch of garbage."
"It isn't exactly my ideal locale for it, but you're spot on!" He assigned their laugh as a cackle instead, to try to make himself feel better. "How'd you guess?"
When he turned back to them, Teshima didn't pass up the chance to kick their leg onto what remained of their lap. Actually seeing the thin smile he'd imagined destroyed any sense of satisfaction he could have gotten out of it. He kept his head down, and tried to focus on the needle, refusing to ask them to hold up his phone as he struggled to shove the thread through the eye.
"Do you need help, now?" they asked, leaning close enough for the brim of their hat to jab into his scalp.
He slapped them away. "I've got it," sharp and frustrated and confused, he muttered, "I've done this before." Everything he said was something to regret, and he could hear their quiet contemptuous laugh before it was out of their mouth.
"If you say so," and as they leaned back, they said it in gentle mocking sing-song, "Teshima-san."
"It's Teshima," he snapped between his teeth on reflex, as with the thread from the spool. And paused. That was the wrong response - to something that sounded too familiar. "What did you say?"
"Did you think I said Kojima, again?" He could faintly see them blink from behind their cracked sunglasses, barely see an eyebrow raise from behind the hat and hair that hung down. "I'm not that forgetful."
He dropped the spool.
Date number bad luck thirteen - grinned as they took off their cap with a friendly flourish, revealing hair that never seemed to get properly matted down from hat or helmet, and their glasses slipped down their nose, just enough. "I suppose it's been a while, hasn't it?" Manami winked, and for a moment he could see how off color one was from the usual jaundice and blue, before they shoved their sunglasses back up.
They looked expectant, in the far off hum of cars driving past and between the silence over them. Like it was supposed to be some grand surprising trump card - like they had been waiting for just the moment to throw it in his face - and seeing that pride broken felt like the first victory of the night.
"Yeah." Teshima couldn't summon anymore of a reaction. The night had already sailed far beyond the event horizon. "I guess it has." Or maybe it all just fell into some strange sense of place if the answer to the miserable mystery of why was somehow Sangaku Manami, as impossible a solution as that should have been. He shoved the leg back into their hip socket with an uncomfortable crack, and they shuddered, all the way up to their teeth chattering. "What, you want me to be softer with you or something?"
"It's fine," they spat back. "I'm just used to skillful hands, you know how it is." Leaning a little closer, they laughed. "Or maybe you don't?"
"Oh, come on, you're not even giving me a chance here." He twisted into the bone as hard as he could manage, until they gasped harshly enough to double over into coughing - they tried and failed at flipping their pain back over into laughter, right until tears were rolling down their cheeks, and he asked, "That better for you?"
"Mhm!" Their glasses fell off and he could see their wide dilated eyes properly, mismatched and wrong - he couldn't tell if the new one was just a fake eye or if perhaps it used to belong to someone else. It seemed like something to wonder about - if it wasn't Manami of all people. "Perfect! Thanks so much!"
He dropped his gaze back to their hip, skin sickly gray even through the darkness, and stabbed the needle into their leg, thread running smooth and easy through their skin. It made everything about the situation feel just as unreal as it should have been. They hardly responded, past the way their fist shook - maybe from fatigue, or pain, or shock, or just plain anger. Teshima pulled himself together enough to say, "This would be a lot less inconvenient if we weren't hiding behind a dumpster."
"What, you want to take me home?" Their voice came at such a register as to hurt his ears, until they dialed it back. "Or back to my place?" They snickered from behind their hand. "I don't want to give you the wrong idea."
"I don't think you could at this point," more of a grimace gracing his face, "You couldn't even manage to stand for one night. I doubt you'd be capable of doing much more." He glanced up to meet their eyes, wide as their fake smile. "Though you could at least do me a favor and flip over so I can get the other side of your leg."
Manami ripped their leg out of his grasp and practically threw it over him, for their knee to rest at his shoulder. "You can do a lot more in a night than just stand."
He had to slam his hand against them to stop from being pulled over by their weight - cut the other side of his hand on the mess of bone sticking out of their arm - cursing as quietly as he could manage, until he hissed into their face, "What was that about giving me the wrong idea?"
Shaking, giggling into his ear, they answered, "Come on, Teshima-san, get your mind out of the gutter." He grabbed their shoulder - maybe it was something like the funny bone, he didn't have a clue, and wrenched at it until they dragged their nails down the other side of his face, slammed their working knee up and into his gut.
It made him freeze, gritting his teeth, but there was more gratification in twisting at cracked bone than anything they could return. "Don't worry, I only have one kind of thought when it comes to you. But I thought you liked pain, Manami. If I'd done this five years ago, you would have been screaming with joy." As over-confident as it was, he barely managed to say it, feeling as though they'd puncture through his cheek at any moment.
"I don't look happy to you? How sad," they started, hollow breaths right at his ear, "But a little recommendation. Try not to cause more damage. Unless you want to end up having to take care of it."
He couldn't tell if they'd scratched him hard enough to start bleeding - too cognizant of the fact that blood from his hand and what little seemed to come out of them was everywhere at this point - but they were right. In what little light ran down the alley, he could see old scars down the back of their thigh. There was so much he should have been questioning - bodies don't do this, people don't do this, sewing together body parts to just work was impossible, and nothing about this was sensible, or the least bit humane - but it was too much.
"I'm pretty good with needles, don't you think?" The question came out like cotton, more to fill the space, to pull his mind away from every absurdity they dragged in with them.
They slipped back as he pushed up their leg - they latched onto the back of his neck. "Better than some."
"I don't do much embroidery." Teshima couldn't stop talking once he started. "I'm better with knitting. If you went with yarn skin, that'd probably serve you better. And it'd do me the favor of making you a little softer, too. My knuckles don't always appreciate the trauma." He spoke his mind, only in the most humiliating ways.
"Maybe."
When they spoke, when they sighed, he could feel the faintest breath, but their chest hardly moved. They stared in silence through each line, every time he'd pull the thread through, puncture his finger on the needle as he pulled up and away to knock the back of his hand against their face, rather than that sharp point. He had forgotten how non-responsive they could be. It had been years ... and here they were, chilled fingers tangled in his hair and hardly held together. There were a thousand good questions.
"What ever happened to competitive cycling?" He had a talent for picking none of them.
They shrugged. "Things happened."
"Right," he muttered. His cheek ran smooth down and against their leg as he leaned closer, certainly from blood. "I had to stop a couple years back. Not like my body can keep up with that kind of thing," he went on, without thinking, "It's just some poorly put together vessel that's bound to fall apart."
"Oh, really?" He regretted his words the moment they spoke. "Well, I guess I wouldn't understand anything like that." They sounded playful, cheery in obvious disdain, and they made him want to throw them away. No matter what he did, nothing could keep up with them - not his best and especially not his worst.
Even after all these years, it was sickening just how much he wanted them to be his problem.
He started to lean down to snap off the thread and stopped, when he looked up to see their wide disturbed eyes. Instead, Teshima stabbed the needle full force, deep into their hip, until they jolted into a broken smile.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Manami narrowed their eyes at his unwanted response, and he wrapped up the mess at their leg and hip in medical tape. It took too long for them to remember that their leg was still draped at his shoulder, until they took to move and he took to brush it away at too much the same time.
He let them stand up on their own - poorly balanced and examining the fresh blood still drying on their cool skin. There was enough dead air to make him think someone had died - probably them.
"So." It was only fitting that it was them who broke it. Manami pulled their clothes back on as well as they could with one hand. "I'm a bit curious. How are you with pliers?"