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When Higuchi woke up to a neck so stiff and sore that any attempts to move it sent a sharp pain through her body, she knew it would be a bad day.
It definitely didn’t help that she couldn’t stop snapping her fingers, either.
She dragged herself out of bed, nearly falling over as her thighs clenched tightly. Sheesh, that shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.
For a good minute, she just stood, staring at her bra. She didn’t want to put it on. It would just amplify the pain. Well… she’d probably be fine if she just buttoned her blazer. Yeah, she’ll do that instead. Anything to get out of wearing a bra.
Something about the way bra straps fall on her shoulders made Higuchi really uncomfortable. The way the edges pressed into her muscles felt like someone was poking her with needles. Wearing a bra when her body was already flipping out like this would be the worst possible thing she could do.
Getting dressed and ready for the day took longer than usual. It was difficult to control her hands and that lack of control made all the little things harder: buttoning her shirt, putting socks on, filling her water bottle…
It seemed like ages went by before she even made it to work.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket the second she plopped down at her desk. When she went to look at the message, her neck creaked. She hissed as pain pinched her skin.
Higuchi wanted to break her neck—to snap it in half in one, swift motion. Or maybe Gin would do it for her.
Maybe then it would stop hurting.
Heh, yeah right. That’s just a fruitless dream.
She groaned, squinting at the message on her phone. Great—it was from Mori. She really wasn’t in the mood for fieldwork right now. It was a simple mission to retrieve some medicinal drug, but he told her to take the Black Lizard with her as backup just in case…
And here she was hoping for a nice, easy day at the Port Mafia where all she had to do was write reports and do some filing. But when did it ever work like that?
Higuchi rolled her neck, slowly and deliberately. It cracked faintly, but only provided a second of relief before her skin burned once more. God, how was she supposed to fight like this today? Would she even be able to draw her gun?
A sharp jolt of pain sparked in her shoulder and ran down her arm when she attempted to do so.
Well… maybe they wouldn’t even need to fight. It was just a retrieval mission after all. Violence was only necessary if someone attacked them.
Ugh, well, might as well just head towards the garage. The Black Lizard would be waiting for her and she’d never hear the end of it from Tachihara if she was late.
She was the last one to arrive at the garage.
The Black Lizard leaned against their sleek, black company car. Hirotsu had a cigarette between his lips while Tachihara aggressively tapped his phone screen, probably playing some kind of game.
Gin was twirling a knife in their hand when they noticed Higuchi run into the garage. They waved, drawing the attention of the other two.
“Yo! Higuchi!” Tachihara greeted, saluting her. “Took you long enough!”
She rolled her eyes (and then rolled them three more times) and bit back the clicking sound that pounded her lips. “Please, I’m on time. Are you guys ready to go?”
Gin gave her a thumbs up as Hirotsu put out his cigarette. “We are. You have the instructions?”
“Yeah, I’ll—” Higuchi paused, clamping her mouth shut as a slew of tics rushed through her. Not now! She swallowed, practically panting once that tingling I’m coming sensation was gone. Or, as gone as it could be. It would aways linger like the smell of smoke. Hirotsu sent her a questioning look, but she continued before he could say anything. “Sorry, had the, uh, hiccups for a second, haha! Um, anyways, yeah! I’ll fill you in on the way!”
Tachihara nodded then dropped the car keys in her hand before sliding into the back, still tapping away at his phone.
Oh, God—she hadn’t even thought about driving! How the hell was she supposed to drive? Maybe she could ask someone else to… no, Tachihara was an awful driver and she knew Gin didn’t like driving and Hirotsu shouldn’t have to make up for her incompetency—
Gin raised their brows at her. Are you okay?
Shit. She wasn’t doing a great job pretending, was she? So, Higuchi plastered a smile on her face and nodded a little too eagerly. “Yeah, I’m fine!” she said, patting Gin’s back. “Just didn’t sleep well! You know how it is!”
Somehow, Gin managed to raise their brows even higher, narrowing their eyes at her.
Higuchi just smiled even wider. Sweat accumulated on her hairline. “Haha, well, uh. Let’s get going, huh?” She rushed into the car before Gin could stare her down anymore. God, it was hard to lie to Gin. They always managed to see through her.
Driving while having a tic attack was not one of her smartest moves.
Throughout the ride, her fingers itched to touch the curve of the wheel—to fill in the empty void that didn’t exist. They ached with longing, with a compulsive obsession. But she kept her back straight and her head forward (not that she could look back if she wanted to) and tried to focus on the road.
She explained their objective with clenched thighs and squirming toes, with burning eyes and scraping fingernails. She allowed a few noises, but did her best to suppress the rest. No one would take her seriously if she made pigeon noises all the time. The Black Lizard told her they didn’t mind her tics, but she had to keep up some level of professionalism.
By the time Higuchi pulled into the designated parking lot, her skin was crawling, her muscles so stiff it felt like one hard push would shatter them. And, God, her neck, back, and shoulders were even worse, now. The car seat was, objectively, not uncomfortable. It wasn’t the nicest thing to sit on, but it wasn’t awful either. So it shouldn’t hurt that much. It shouldn’t feel like her neck would fall off if she made one wrong move, it shouldn’t feel like someone was trying to break her shoulder.
But she had a job to do. So, Higuchi grit her teeth, snapped her fingers, and reread the text from Mori before exiting the car.
According to Mori, the drug was in an old, run-down pharmacy building in a more run-down part of the city. It got shut down for the usual stuff—corrupt doctors, unethical behavior, dangerous experiments… heh, Kaji would probably love the place.
Apparently some gang in Yokohama was using the pharmacy as a base and recently acquired a vial of this drug that Mori was in the mood to have. He sent her a picture of what it should look like, so she gave the Black Lizard her phone while she drove so they could see it and read the instructions themselves. Tachihara processes things better after physically reading, anyway.
“Okay,” she said as the others followed her towards the back entrance, “the boss said the drug should be—”
A gunshot rang through the air because of course? Why not? About a dozen people dressed in black formed a blockade around the door they were trying to enter.
“Alright! Gin, you grab the vial—it should be just beyond that door. Hirotsu, cover them. Tachihara, we’ll take care of everyone else.”
She swallowed back the barrage of tics that desperately crawled up her tongue, fighting to get out. Swallowing them was like swallowing knives, but she had a job to do, her words couldn’t get all muddled.
“Right!” Tachihara drew his guns from the holster, releasing a volley of bullets upon their attackers.
Higuchi strained for her gun, fingers brushing the grip before curling in on themselves. By the time she got it out, Gin and Hirotsu were gone and some of the guards were on the ground.
Together, she and Tachihara shot at the guards, ducking and weaving between bullets. Her body throbbed as she exerted herself, her fingers yearning to haphazardly brush the trigger. Despite that, she still managed to hit most of her targets. Albeit she shot slower than usual, but accuracy mattered more in the long run. Besides, she was with Tachihara who was the best shot in the mafia.
They managed to stop most guards from going after Gin and Hirotsu, and everything was going well until—
“Higuchi, behind you!”
She started to look over her shoulder at Tachihara’s shout, but… her neck wouldn’t move.
“Higuchi!”
I’m trying! she wanted to say, but her chest was so tight. Was she even breathing? It hurt—it hurt so much. And, God! She couldn’t move her neck! Her neck wouldn’t move and it hurt and it wouldn’t move and—
“Move!”
The next thing she knew, something heavy collided with her shoulder, shoving her to the ground. She barely managed to catch herself with her hands, wheezing and panting as loose gravel dug into her palms.
Something whizzed past her, burying into a car a few feet away. Shit—she almost got shot. That was… that was close.
Her shoulders throbbed now, aching with a vengeance.
Someone was yelling. Gunshots roared around her.
The noise was… it was so much. Her body didn’t like the noise. She panted as her shoulders hiked to her ears despite the pain. It hurt, shit it hurt so much. She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to drown out the yelling and banging and blasts. Her chin pivoted, jerking to one side and then the other.
And then… it was quiet.
When she peeled her eyes open and blinked away the sudden brightness (and then blinked another few times), she was greeted by Tachihara’s scowl.
“What’s wrong with you, Higuchi?” Tachihara yelled, grabbing her collar and yanking her to her feet. “You almost got shot! What’re you—”
He abruptly shut up, letting go when he saw the tears she’d been trying to hold back fall silently down her cheeks. “Shit. Did you get shot?” he asked, no longer angry. Instead, his voice dripped with concern, his eyes wide with worry.
That got the attention of Gin and Hirotsu, who were exiting the building.
“Higuchi-kun got shot?” Hirotsu asked, running to her, Gin at his side. He quickly scanned her for a gunshot wound.
“Did you… did you get the vile?” she rasped, grabbing Gin’s arm, though she had to let go a second later to snap her damn fingers.
Gin held up the vial in response before tucking it in their pocket.
“Yes, we got it,” Hirotsu said, still looking for a wound, “but I’m more concerned about Tachihara-san thinking you’ve been shot.”
“Not-not shot,” she stuttered through sounds upon sounds, scraping the stray tears with her nails. “I can’t-I can’t move my neck.”
The admission sent a wave of relief through her tense body. It was nice to finally admit what was wrong. Sure, she’d probably never live this down, but this way guilt wouldn’t corrode her mind. She didn’t like lying to them.
“What? Did they do something to you?”
She shook her head, well, attempted to. Pain flared up behind her skin, stabbing and burning. She let out a choked gasp. “No. I woke up like this,” she said through clenched teeth. “Bad-bad tic day, I guess.”
She laughed pathetically, squeezing her eyes shut again and hunching over slightly as her nose scrunched and the muscles in her thighs clenched tightly on their own accord.
God, she just ruined herself, didn’t she? How was anyone in the Port Mafia going to take her seriously after this? They all knew she had Tourette’s, but it never screwed her like this before. She convinced them it was better than this, made sure Mori knew it wouldn’t interfere with her work. She was supposed to be able to manage it, not fall prey to it.
Pathetic little Higuchi couldn’t even handle the most simple retrieval mission. She’d be the laughingstock of the mafia. Well, even more than she already was. Mori would fire her (and then she’d have nowhere left to go—the mafia was her home, she was with them more than her own sister), Akutagawa would hate her, the Black Lizard would forget she existed…
Everything around her was drowned out by the harrowing echo of the popping sound her lips kept making. God, it was so loud. She wanted to cover her ears but she just kept snapping.
And then suddenly a gentle hand was on her back, and she could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet. A finger was wrapped around her bangs, brushing through them slowly.
That small touch was comforting amidst her snapping and flinching and scratching and growling. She leaned into it while she floated, drifting through a cloud of agony.
When everything cleared up, she noticed that she was no longer at the scene or in the car. No, she was lying on… a couch? Shit, she must’ve been really out of it.
“We’re at Tachihara’s place.”
She whipped her head to the side, or, she started to. The movement sent a jolt of pain through her neck, and she cried out.
“Careful, ‘guchi. Hirotsu-san is warming up a heating pad for you and Tachihara is getting you some water and pain meds.”
“G-Gin?”
“Mhm. Try to relax, okay? The meds should help with the stiffness,” Gin said gently. It felt like a privilege to hear Gin speak. They didn’t like talking, but when they did, they had such a smooth, soft voice. It was nice and always managed to soothe her mind.
“What about…” she coughed, “what about the mission?” Mori would kill her if they didn’t get the drug.
“Taken care of. We dropped it off to nii-san on the way.”
Thank God, the mission was a success. Mori wouldn’t have her head. Gah, speaking of her head… it was pounding. It’s not enough that she was in the midst of a tic attack, no, she had to get a headache, too. At least Tachihara was on his way with meds.
Sure enough, Tachihara came into view a few moments later. He set a cup with a long straw on the arm of the couch along with two circular pills. “Here ya go,” he said, plopping on the couch by her feet. “Drink up.”
She was still snapping, though not as frequently as she was before, so she reached out with shaky hands, fumbling with the pills before she managed to get them both on her tongue. Then she leaned forward and took a couple long sips from the cup and swallowed the pills.
The cool water rushed down her throat, setting some kind of ease back in her body. Everything was so hot before—all burning and suffocating. The cold, smooth texture was soothing.
“So, a bad tic day, you said?” Tachihara asked. She nodded. “You’re having a tic attack, aren’t you?”
Again, she nodded, guilt flooding through her veins. She ruined the day and the others had to take care of her.
“Damn it, Higuchi! Why’d you come to work?” She flinched as Tachihara slammed his fist on the couch cushions.
Her chest was tight again, like something was stuck in there and couldn’t get out. Logically, she knew Tachihara wasn’t actually mad at her, but it was hard to remember when her brain kept screaming at her, kept telling her how useless and pathetic she was.
And then the hand was in her hair again, combining through it slowly. It scratched her scalp lightly, and her chest loosened.
“Well, the boss texted me and-and it usually isn’t that bad and—click click click—I can normally handle it. It was… just a bad day, I guess,” she answered, picking at the tag on her blazer.
It was a flimsy excuse at best and everyone knew it.
“That doesn’t mean you have to,” Hirotsu said as he entered her view. A grey rice pad steamed lightly in his hands.
She threw out whatever shreds of her dignity she had left and stared at the heating pad hungrily, practically drooling over it.
It looked so nice. It probably felt nice, too. She would kill to get it around her neck.
“You don’t have to come to work if you’re in that much pain,” Hirotsu continued, draping the heating pad around her shoulders.
The relief was instantaneous. It didn’t make the pain go away by any means, but it made holding her head up much easier. She welcomed the heat like she would an old friend, leaning into the pad as much as she could.
“But the boss—”
Tachihara snorted. “To hell with the boss,” he replied. “If he says anything, we’ll handle him. Besides… you’re more important than some stupid mission or… something. Whatever.” His cheeks flushed a dark red.
She blinked (once, twice, five times) and then, despite the pain, a shit-eating grin spread across her face. “Oooh, you do love me, Tachihara!” she cooed between yips and chin jerks.
Tachihara scoffed, rolling his eyes, but a second later, a hand wrapped loosely around her ankle and fingers started tapping.
“Tachihara is right,” Hirotsu continued. “It’s dangerous to work when you’re having a bad tic day. It’s like going out on missions if we didn’t get an adequate amount of sleep or enough to eat. There’s nothing wrong with needing a day for your health. We’d rather you take one than die.”
“O-oh. Well, I’m sorry for worrying you guys,” she whispered.
“God. You don’t need to be sorry,” Tachihara groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “Just… remember that next time or talk to us and we’ll cover you, ‘kay?”
Higuchi glanced between the three, and smiled. “Okay,” she repeated. “Thank you for having my back.”
Gin tapped her shoulder, redirecting her attention, then held up all ten of their fingers with a raised brow. How bad is the pain?
“Umm,” Higuchi flinched as her nails pierced her skin. Ugh, she hated that tic. “It’s an eight right now, I think. Better than earlier at least, haha.” Her laughter trailed into an awkward silence. It wasn’t funny, and eight was still a high number. She found it easy to joke about her Tourette’s and pain, but the others didn’t really like that she dismissed it like that.
Gin, Hirotsu, and Tachihara frowned, then glanced at each other in sync, their eyes crinkling and heads tilting; a silent conversation. Higuchi was pretty well-versed in Black Lizard speak, but the three had a level of wordless communication that even she and Akutagawa couldn’t decipher.
After a minute, Tachihara sighed. “Well, life is short and we never take time off. I say we play hooky today and stay here,” he suggested, leaning back.
The weight of his body against her feet increased, but it was oddly comforting. It didn’t stress her body out or make her feel closed in. It was kind of like a light hug.
Hirotsu and Gin nodded, then they all turned to her. “Uh, sure,” she said, swallowing almost nervously. “That sounds fun!”
And it did sound fun. When was the last time they hung out with each other outside of work? Their life was filled with gunshots and explosions, with blood and deception and decay. Sometmes it was nice to just… pretend they were normal. To exist outside of the mafia.
“Alright. I’ve got some movies we could watch,” Tachihara said. He pathetically reached towards his dvd player. “Hey, uh, Gramps, you wanna turn it on for us? Ya know since you’re still standing.”
Hirostu rolled his eyes but complied anyways, hiding a smile behind his hand. “I’m picking the movie, then.”
After putting the movie in, Hirotsu joined them on the couch. It was a tight fit, but they made it work, moving around to make room for him wordlessly. Their bodies were like puzzle pieces—they all fit together once it got figured out.
Hirotsu chose the movie Night on the Galactic Railway. Higuchi had never seen it before, and she was honestly surprised Tachihara even had it. Apparently it was one of Hirotsu’s favorites when he was younger.
In the end, she didn’t pay too much attention to the movie. None of them did, really.
Higuchi focused on the steady rise and fall of Hirotsu’s chest, the fingers tapping her ankle as if it were a drum, and the hand running through her hair.
The Port Mafia wasn’t really a lovey-dovey place filled with friendship and bright happiness. They didn’t aways have the privilege of loving one another.
Sometimes, amongst the blank faces and cold hearts, it was hard to remember that the Black Lizard cared about her, too. Hard to remember that the Port Mafia really was her family.
Caring for them was as easy as breathing. Then again, Higuchi always had a heart too big for her friends and family. The Blak Lizard was known for being the opposite—hardened and forbidding.
And sure, Mori may get mad at them for ditching work, but they were together, so Mori wouldn’t be able to get to them. Besides, he had plenty of other capable employees.
Higuchi didn’t like skipping and yeah, she was kind of scared of Mori sometimes, but sitting here on Tachihara’s couch, their limbs somehow all tangled together, Higuchi felt safer than she had in awhile, and she knew they’d have each other’s backs no matter what came their way.