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Lupin opens the door to the hideout welcomed by Jigen's celebratory shout in Goemon’s face.
"Boom! Master of UNO and immune to worms, I’m the sexiest man alive!"
Lupin raises an eyebrow and tosses a plastic bag in the middle of the colorful cards. Last time he saw Jigen, he was face down on the couch in complete darkness. It makes the questionable joke welcome, sort of. He turns to Goemon, "What did you give him?"
"My grandmother's broth. It did not do much."
"You don’t say."
Jigen picks up one of the boxes of medicine that Lupin brought. "Codoliprane? I told you that one don't work anymore."
Lupin doesn't bother with an answer. He grabs Jigen's little black notebook off the table and looks at the last line: today's date and five crosses next to it. Means the migraine has been going for close to half the day already.
"Ibuprofen? Do I look like a 12 year old girl?"
Lupin closes the notebook and tosses it back the gunman's way. "You know, maybe you should go to a doctor with that."
Jigen scoffs. "Last time they scanned my brain all they found was ligma."
Goemon chokes on his tea.
When his joke isn’t acknowledged further, Jigen goes back to the bag. "Please tell me you got a triptan at least."
Lupin waves the question off on his way to the balcony's windows. "I'm a thief not a pharmacist."
"If you took care of the migraines as they came up, maybe they wouldn't last as long."
Jigen lifts his head to point out he doesn’t need any advice but he sinks back in his chair when the sun hits his eye.
Lupin closes the curtains before letting himself crash into the couch. He sees Jigen put something under his tongue and takes it as a small victory. Jigen has reasons not to rely on pain meds: he's got a long history of trying everything under the sun. Half the time, it doesn’t work; the other half it stops working after a couple months. Nowadays, there isn't much that can be discreetly grabbed from under a pharmacy counter that'll relieve the headaches, but Jigen still tries to do something about them. It's painful when his efforts are fruitless but it’s still a lot better than he used to have it. In his mafia days, Jigen would "power through it", which is to say he’d push himself into week-long crises and purposefully ignore his triggers. He’d sleep when he wasn't on a job as his only remedy, which only led to more migraines.
Lupin unfolds a map over the table. It's the blueprints to a bank not far from where they're staying, and he's highlighted where he intends to breach the wall of the safe. He explains the basics of the plan ("We enter here, watch out for the lasers, switch out the bills with this series of weights so the pressure plate doesn't get tipped, get out before security notices anything happened at all.") and concludes with a simple "Are you two in?"
A couple hours later, they run out of the bank back to the fiat with comically oversized bags of bills on their backs. Zenigata is already after them, yelling in beat with the police sirens and Lupin adds his own miscellaneous noises to the composition. Goemon all but slams into Jigen as he gets into the car and a second later they speed off.
"Why did you have to wear that big clunky earring today, uh?" Jigen's pinching and stretching Lupin's cheek to punctuate every other word.
"Don't diss Fujiko's gift!" He struggles to articulate the sounds. It did fall on the pressure plate and trigger the alarm, but he doesn’t see a reason to blame it for their current mess.
"Zenigata's getting closer." Goemon remarks.
Lupin elbows his copilot. "Go make yourself useful, gunboy."
Jigen pops out of the sunroof but not without complaining about it first. The car's speed blows the trim of his hat around, letting sun rays peer through. His head's still pounding, but he takes his magnum out anyway. He ignores the loud ringing of the sirens, the stench of gasoline and his shivering hands and focuses on loading bullets instead. He's already dreading the loud gunshot but he sucks in his lips, waits until his vision is cleared, and shoots the car's front wheel. The ice pick headache pierces his eye and for a second he panics wondering if he got hit by something along the way. But a couple seconds later, it goes away and he's left with the familiar pressure against the sides of his skull. He watches Zenigata's car swerve uncontrollably and he triumphantly plops himself back inside the fiat. As soon as he hits the seat, he growls. "Step on it, Lupin." He cannot wait to be back home.
The keys clink into the door and it's taking Jigen all his self-restraint not to bite someone. He flops into the couch before anyone has a chance to complain about his dirty shoes on the cushions. The other two go celebrate the heist on the balcony while Jigen stays there with his hat over his closed eyes. He feels the last bit of tension ease up when Goemon draws the curtains. After a couple minutes, he gets up again and makes his way to the mini-fridge. Staring into its light, his head only feels worse, but he needs distractions over anything else. If he doesn't think about it it's bearable, it sort of sinks into the background of his brain, and with a nice conversation going it can stop being registered at all. Jigen closes the fridge's door with his knee, beer in hand. He checks his watch to make sure enough time has passed before he takes a second triptan, and finally he joins his partners on the balcony with his sunglasses on.
Lupin quietly whoops when he sees Jigen sit down at the table and take a slice of salami. He knows sitting in the sun and drinking alcohol will probably make his whole situation worse, but in the very short term it will help him relax. He sees little worms of rainbow light so he picks up his notebook and writes down “aura” in a gesture fueled entirely by habit. The pain will still linger by the time he goes to sleep, with a bit of luck it might be gone in the morning. He washes the nausea down with more beer and lets the sun warm his cheeks. Everything clings to his vision with dizzying after-images but there are worse things to have burned into your eyes than your friends clinking glasses and smiling faces celebrating a job well done.