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It was a mostly normal day. There had been a minor issue with some of their suppliers that Akutagawa had taken care of through a moderate amount of murder, and he had cleared out a police station that had been causing the mafia some issues. But winter was coming, the weather was changing, and with everything that had been happening over the past several months, he hadn’t noticed until it was too late, until he’d been moving and fighting all day, and the cold wind whipped car exhaust in his face again and again and again, and when he finally moved into a patch of fresh air, Hirotsu decided it was the perfect time to light up a cigarette. If Akutagawa were a politer person who gave a rat’s ass what the man thought of him, he would have held in the coughing, turned himself blue from refusal to breathe, filtered his air through a mask of the collar of his shirt.
Instead, he let himself cough into his hands, shaking loose his lungs and hopefully allowing himself fuller passage of air. It worked, for all of a second as literally all of Hirotsu’s most recent exhale of smoke entered his lungs, and this time, coughing wasn’t even a conscious choice as he doubled over, the smoke choking his lungs which refused to expand to their full capacity because of course he had decided to wear his binder today. He continued coughing, despite his lungs having expelled all of the air, the muscles in his chest protesting their expansion and their contraction at once.
Embarrassingly, Higuchi was making a scene, taking him by the shoulders and keeping him upright as his lungs did their level best to climb out of Akutagawa’s body through his throat. Hirotsu kept smoking, too, which was really annoying, especially once Higuchi helped Akutagawa stagger against a wall and ran to get him some tea, as if that could possibly help when he couldn’t breathe enough to even stop coughing for long enough to spit the phlegm out of his mouth--instead, it dribbled down his chin like a baby and flew into the crook of his elbow, which meant that he was going to have to wash the coat again.
Akutagawa hated having to wash his coat, both because he felt that Rashomon was always sharpest, most ravenous, when lurking inside of it, and because, as stupid as it was, it was a gift from Dazai, a symbol of his joining the mafia and existing under the Demon Prodigy’s wing. He usually waited until it was stiff with bloodstains to clean it, but the shitty phlegm wouldn’t vanish into the dark fabric.
When Akutagawa had doubled over and was sinking down the wall, Gin moved. She usually hung back, in times like this--they had agreed long ago not to to show weakness for each other, not to let anyone else in the mafia know their relation, but the bricks were scratching up Akutagawa’s coat, and his coughs were becoming less cough-like and more deep, aching shudders of his chest to try and fail to get air in and everything else--including, now, blood, because his trash lungs had decided to get rid of that, too, as if he wasn’t already anemic--out, and technically it was fine of a subordinate to try and support her superior while he was clearly weakened by a coughing fit. Everyone knew Higuchi made an irritating enough habit of that, at any rate.
Finally, finally, Hirotsu finished his cigarette and the air began to clear. Akutagawa took a gasping, shuddering breath and pushed himself up, chest aching--seriously, why had he chosen to wear his binder today?--as Gin left and Higuchi returned with a steaming cup, pressing it into Akutagawa’s hands and babbling about chamomile with honey, to soothe and relax his throat.
Akutagawa had never relaxed a muscle in his life, and wasn’t about to start now, but he knew from experience that hot drinks made his lungs less likely to seize up again, and so he took a long sip, and then a long, slow breath that rattled around in his chest and burned as it entered. But it was a breath, nonetheless, which was a step up when his body was frantically trying to expel all oxygen and also his lungs.
Behind Akutagawa, Hirotsu opened up his pack of cigarettes, presumably to start a new one. Rashomon flicked through the air, slicing through the pack in a single deft motion.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Akutagawa rasped, squaring his shoulders and continuing to walk through the city.
“Very well,” Hirotsu murmured, and they continued on.