Akio woke with a pounding headache and a crick in his neck. He was lying on dusty, reddish-brown dirt that stuck to the sweat on his cheek. He groaned as sensation came back into his body, namely the sensation of pain . “Ow…”
“Hey.”
He looked up. Levitan was sitting next to him, leaning against a boulder in the shade. Their stomach was covered in blood, there was a new hole in their shirt, and they were smoking a cigarette.
“Hey,” he croaked. “What’s going…” He looked down at his body, trying to situate himself, and he realized that something was very wrong. “ Oh my god, my neck is broken! ”
“Here, lemme help you with that.” Levitan reached over, took Akio’s head in their hands, and with one quick movement, snapped his neck back in place with a gross cra
