Hawkins' neck was cold.
His hair had been so matted with blood that the monk in Ringo cut the lengths to his chin. Some Beasts pirate squirreled him away there from the fallen Onigashima in faint hopes that the Worst Generation captain might have a way out of Wano, to no avail, abandoning him to recuperate one arm and pauldron poorer.
Faust was so elated that his captain's Vivre Card pointed at land instead of open sea that the one scarf in the bag of Hawkins' things he brought ashore to Mogura Port was from a lifetime ago, when you knit a new one each year to match his growth spurts. Hawkins wore it like a babushka on his way to the Grudge Dolph, but not before performing the filial gesture he'd learned from you. It didn't transcend cultures in this region of the New World, how the monk most responsible for his care reacted in confusion to Hawkins taking the old man's hand and briefly pressing his distinctive brow to the wrinkled knuckles, but Hawkins spent less time bowing in Wano than he did greeting your elders.
They sailed where your Vivre Card pointed, to more temperate waters that Faust uneasily noted were certainly the territory of yet another Emperor of the Sea.
"It could mean nothing," Faust said. "She could just live there."
Buggy was no Big Mom. He had no sophisticated surveillance or garrison forces, just two patrol boats—corvettes—that meandered around Karai Bari, Cross Guild's headquarters. One cut off their approach to ask their purpose over Den Den Mushi, and Hawkins said your name like a breath stolen from him.
"Right," Faust took over. "If she's here we want to speak to her. If not, we'll—"
"You may continue." It was a different voice than the panicked underling, smooth and low, with an accent like the West Blue.
Hawkins and Faust looked at each other.
You looked like a queen, sitting on a sofa flanked by Sir Crocodile and Dracule Mihawk, Buggy to the side twitching nervously in an armchair.
"When Daz called from patrol," Crocodile said without so much as a greeting, "I considered sinking you. But." He grit his teeth. "My navigator likes your ship."
My.
"Thank you, sir," you said drily, like it was a joke, like you were comfortable with him. "But I thought I would have some privacy."
"With a notorious pirate?" Crocodile said, to which you elbowed him.
The three Cross Guild executives showed themselves out, Buggy making himself scarce first, followed by Crocodile with an irritated grimace, then Mihawk, staring the three of you down.
"You moved on," Hawkins said sharply.
You ignored him, standing to give Faust and bear hug and a garchu, something the Mink didn't usually indulge but returned with a teary laugh.
"Hawkins," you said finally.
Hawkins looked away from your face.
"Don't be stupid."
And you stepped close and wrapped your arms around his waist.
Your perfume was the same, your hold just as warm, but were you harder, more muscled. Stronger. Like you were training, not your cursory knife practice, but something more regimented. Hawkins placed his right hand between your shoulders, his habit, where he knew your tattoo was, and the muscles of his left shoulder flexed as if he could hug you back.
"Where have you been?" Hawkins said finally, over your head, into the open air, and he dimly registered Faust turning his back, not exactly free to move as he liked as a guest here.
"Lots of places." You pressed your cheek into his chest. "I heard you were in Wano."
"How?"
"Crocodile was upset you brought the Navy to our door," you said with an audible pout, to let him know you weren't serious, and Hawkins tightened his hold on you regardless. Our door. "That Marine we both suspected..." Drake. "...said he left you for dead."
"And what did you do?"
You mumbled into his shirt.
It was too familiar, pure instinct, how Hawkins cupped your jaw and tilted your head upward, and he regretted he had to stop holding you to do so. "What was that?"
"...Broke his nose."
Hawkins laughed, his first real laugh in months.
"I felt bad," you defended. "He came here on a hospital ship."
"So you assaulted an invalid."
"I wasn't going to let Mihawk bisect a med vessel because a cop made me cry."
He smiled. "You cried over me?"
At that, you seemed to realize your position and thumped him in the chest, stepping back. "Does that bother you still?" You gestured at his shoulder. "Buggy has doctors, from—"
"What are you doing?" Hawkins said instead of answering. "You said you couldn't be a pirate. Now you're, what, on a yonkou's crew? I can't even tell which one of them you're fucking."
The easy mood dissipated in a second.
Years ago, when you were so entwined you disappeared into each other, this sort of disagreement would've led to an explosion, or a passive aggressive simmer, ending with sex he wouldn't have even called loving. Instead, you moved past him to the big top tent's entrance, face impassive.
"Will you stay on the Grudge Dolph, or do you want a tent?" you asked no one in particular. "How many of the others are with you?"
"The ship is fine," Faust said faintly.
You nodded and left.
⸺
A Marine lifeboat bearing a white flag appeared off of Karai Bari one week after Buggy was named an Emperor of the Sea, and its mothership dropped anchor further back. According to Mihawk, it wasn't a standard battleship, but a ship-of-the-line repurposed by Marine hospitals for both transport and field medicine. To Cross Guild's surprise, the nurse aboard asked for you. By name.
"You want her to board a Navy ship." It wasn't a question in Crocodile's dry voice.
"You came ashore to ask so politely for a hostage," Mihawk said.
"W-why our navigator?" Buggy bluffed.
(You hadn't even sailed together yet; the flagship was still under construction.)
Crocodile would never reveal his attachment to you in front of an enemy, so he let Mihawk accompany you ashore, but not before resting the curved side of his hook on the small of your back for a moment, a gesture Hawk-Eyes caught and minutely smirked at.
"What is this about?" you asked as the nurse rowed you away.
"I have a patient who refuses to be admitted until he speaks to you."
He.
It couldn't be Hawkins. He'd be on a battleship used for prison transport, if he was tangled with the Navy, and he wasn't so weak they'd have to patch him together somewhere like this. The pirate that waited for you in the hull was a Supernova, but—
"I knew it," you said. "You're a Navy man."
"He said that, too," X Drake said. "That Magician."
You didn't know where you got the reflexes to leap onto his hospital bed and jam your elbow into his throat under his stupid chin. "Where is he?"
"W-Wano," Drake choked out.
Your eyes narrowed. "Alive?"
"I don't know."
"Why the hell not?"
"He—" Drake coughed, and you eased off just slightly. "He lost a lot of blood. The night they took down Kaidou and Big Mom."
"And what did you do?"
"Left him there," he strained to say. "I had to."
You punched him, and he let you.
Crocodile's M.O. was fucking away your grief, all distraction, while Mihawk picked apart the story you got out of Drake, saying "I trust a Marine less than I trust Morgans," but Buggy saved and then ruined your life again by pure accident with the question, "Did he ever give you something like a Vivre Card?"
You turned your tent inside out looking for it, to Crocodile's annoyance and relief at you doing something other than crying. When you parted ways two years ago, the sheet of paper burned up and healed itself with alarming frequency due to Hawkins' Straw Doll proxies, and made you so anxious you hid it away at some point in your travels. If you lost it, it was lost; if he was dead, it appeared lost.
At times, you're tempted to emulate him and ask the cards, but the most you do is draw a chart for the Battle of Onigashima, a day so ordinary apart from its lunation you regretted not keeping a diary, regretted not knowing exactly what comfort you lived in while your first love died.
"A lesser man wouldn't stand for this," Crocodile grumbled one night. So you peppered his face with kisses and apologies, and resolved to move on.
⸺
"You're an idiot."
Faust said it without any malice, because Hawkins was laying with his face buried in his pillows in the captain's quarters of the Grudge Dolph feeling plenty stupid on his own.
After Kaidou made a crater in Kid's base and Faust made rare use of his agility to evacuate the crew, the majority quit. Slowly, of course, as hope of rescuing Hawkins or ever entering the Land of Wano dwindled. They barely had enough to keep the sloop operational, and even then some of them were only aboard until the ship stopped somewhere they could stand to settle or pause to figure out their next steps.
Returning to Paradise, much less the North Blue, would be difficult without you. Not many entered the Grand Line and left again, whether by death or the navigational nightmare retracing the journey would entail. That was Hawkins' original instruction to Faust, but now...
"It wouldn't be nothing," Faust said. "Joining another Emperor of the Sea. He seems saner than Kaidou."
"He's a puppet."
"And she holds some of the strings, doesn't she?"
Hawkins closed his eyes.
He'd said worse to you before, as had you to him, but this wasn't how he envisioned your reunion. He remembered the cards he pulled for you before Onigashima. King of Coins.
"It's Crocodile," he concluded out loud.
"I think it's none of our business," Faust said carefully.
Hawkins didn't need to know the former Warlord's birth date to assign the Suna Suna no Mi holder to earth, to coins. "It is." He rolled onto his back and sat up. "It tells us who to avoid offending, and who she can influence most."
God, wasn't Crocodile almost 50?
"If she wants to influence him in our favor."
"You're that afraid?" Hawkins said. "We know her. Better than they do."
"...Two years is a long time."
How much had Hawkins changed in two years? He was stronger, but not strong enough, which was less about his abilities and more his cowardice. And he still orbited you, still hurt you, was still a boy when it came to you.
On the other hand, when you left him, you were already changing in ways Hawkins couldn't predict. You were subdued, cautious, and he didn't like it even if it drove you back into his arms, however briefly. Was this the result of that metamorphosis? Colder, sharper, but not without humor, and still affectionate, just... he wasn't there to see it happen. It was less time than had passed between his first leaving home and returning for you, but you'd each lived lifetime, it seemed.
"It's still her," Hawkins said, more confidently than he felt.
⸺
"I'm sorry!" Perona squeaked, apropos of nothing.
You were knitting in Mihawk's tent, the former Warlord reading, when Perona's noncorporeal facsimile flew right through the canvas.
"Perona..." Mihawk warned.
"You're asking forgiveness instead of permission again, aren't you?" you said warily.
"Remember how I promised I'd stop eavesdropping on you and Crocodile?"
She could have meant either of you, and you and Mihawk exchanged a glance.
"I was just so curious what he's like," Perona whined. "Your ex."
Lord. "You sent a ghost to the Grudge Dolph," you said.
"And what did you see, pest?" said Mihawk.
Perona's facsimile blushed, even though it was translucent. "He's still in love with you."
"You say that like it's a surprise," you said, like it didn't land like a punch to the gut. But of course Mihawk noticed.
"No, I mean—" And she got redder. "I saw him in the shower. He said your name. A lot. While—"
You set your knitting down. "Perona. You really need to apologize to him instead of me, then."
"He's uh—" She giggled her odd giggle. "I understand how you can take Crocodile."
Mihawk pinched his brow. "Perona."
"I'm not here to talk to you," she shot back.
"This is my tent."
"Well, I know if she's stressed she'll be here to do boring stuff with someone boring." With that, she stuck out her tongue and exited the way she came.
"I apologize," Mihawk said in his occasionally formal way.
"You didn't raise her. Despite what we call you." He sighed, more fond than anything. "Our surveillance has never been better, with a voyeur in our numbers, you have to admit."
Perona alerted the executives about the Grudge Dolph when it was dozens of knots away, which let Daz Bones board one of the patrol ships as they changed hands. Spending so much time out of her physical body or controlling hollows tended to tire Perona out, which should be reason enough for her not to dawdle, but you supposed it was on you for not specifying your former home was off-limits.
"Do you really trust them?" Mihawk said instead. "You haven't seen Hawkins in two years."
"That's unrelated to Perona's peeping. She could stick to common areas, or above deck, or—"
"You're hedging."
You bit your lip. "I trust that he's never felt lower, and if he asks for help or offers himself, he means it. He's..." You hummed. "He's very proud, but resilient. Isn't that a lot of Cross Guild?"
You were thinking of Crocodile stewing about Alabasta only as long as he was in prison, or Gecko Moria's own humiliation at Kaidou's hands.
"And what does your roommate think of you taking in strays like this?"
You winced. Crocodile used similar language when you returned to him seething over Hawkins' audacity. "You don't have to keep him."
"He's letting me decide."
Mihawk set his book down on the side table between you two. "If the World Government knew Cross Guild is controlled by the whims of two insane women..."
"Isn't that more fun?"
⸺
Cross Guild, or rather Buggy's Delivery, was an odd band of sycophants. As Hawkins and his men made use of Karai Bari's facilities, he heard whispers that Buggy's greatness was such that pirates from multiple generations respected him. They didn't seem deterred that one of his fellow emperors was among the youngest of the Worst Generation or that Hawkins himself had been part of an alliance clearly meant to challenge Buggy's supposed sworn brother.
In short, the Hawkins Pirates' presence in their camp bothered no one but those at the top.
Was it at your insistence they be treated like honored guests and not prisoners, not a skeleton crew with a crippled captain? It was any Emperor's prerogative what to do with rival pirates in their territories. Hawkins entered the New World when Fishman Island was in limbo after Whitebeard's death, and made his mark at Foodvalten in a way of which you'd never approve. Red-Haired and Kaidou only responded to Kid in kind. With what sort of fist did Cross Guild rule?
The smaller chamber Hawkins was ushered into, sans Faust, was less the sumptuous lounge where you seemed to hold court and more of a torture chamber where Buggy was more or less harmlessly drawn on a rack but nonetheless wept quietly, while Sir Crocodile flicked through a stack of World Economic Journal backissues and Dracule Mihawk brewed coffee in a press.
You were nowhere to be seen.
"She's sleeping in," Crocodile said. "Stressed by recent events."
Hawkins wanted to punch him.
"Your... emotional meeting doesn't need to be on our time," Mihawk clarified. "Coffee?"
"No. Thank you." That was more your beverage, and Hawkins noticed a small jar of marshmallows on the bar where Mihawk worked. You liked to pour hot coffee over one of the fluffy confectioneries and watch it melt and foam, even though the end result was just a sediment of sugar and gelatin at the bottom of your cup.
Hawkins also wanted to punch him.
"So." Crocodile gestured for Hawkins to sit in an armchair before flicking a newspaper down on the table between them. It was an inside page of the edition declaring Straw Hat and Buggy new emperors. "What really happened in Wano?"
"More or less what that says," Hawkins said. It was from an inside source, certainly one of the Beasts Pirates or their associates. "Why does it matter?"
"Because information is the only thing keeping you alive," Crocodile said. "Don't think your past is enough to save you. I'd be right to kill you here for what you let her go through."
"What I—?"
You weren't dishonest by nature, or prone to exaggeration. The events leading up to you leaving his crew were unfortunate, and no one's fault but the man you killed, now rotting at the bottom of the Devil Sea.
Crocodile looked at Hawkins like he was less than shit on his shoe.
Hawkins exhaled. "I was hospitalized for most of the aftermath, and nowhere near Straw Hat, if that's what you're after."
"Out with it."
"Not so fast," Mihawk interrupted. The other two men looked at him as he leisurely sipped what looked to be black coffee until Hawkins, then Crocodile heard heeled bootsteps approaching quickly. "Good morning," the swordsman greeted mildly as you burst through the door.
"You," you said through heavy breaths, hands braced on the doorframe, like you'd sprinted here, "think you're so cute."
"Only because you say so," Crocodile said.
"I mean you three," you huffed. "Perona almost hollow'd me trying to keep me there."
"You're getting better at dodging, then," Mihawk said.
"Hi, Hawkins," you added as you walked in fully. "Sleep well?"
No. Seeing you again overwhelmed his senses such that he slept in the narrow bed in your former office-turned-sickbay, and he watched you partake in your coffee ritual at total ease with Hawk-Eyes' proximity.
"Hawkins was just about to tell us about the last days of Kaidou," Crocodile said, like he hadn't just threatened Hawkins.
"And you thought I wouldn't be interested." You stopped to pat Buggy on the head and scratch an itch he'd apparently signalled to you he had on his face, given his relieved sigh.
"I thought," Crocodile said, "you'd prefer to hear it when you two have privacy."
"Well, I wouldn't make him repeat it, no."
Despite your barbs, you daintily shooed the newspaper stack away, and Crocodile speared it like a slab of meat so you could sit next to him, somehow not damaging the cushion. It was smaller than the three-seater sofa from yesterday, and even though there were no gestures of intimacy between you two, Hawkins all but felt an icy blast of exclusion. And he wasn't the one stretched out on a rack.
"Now that we're all here," Mihawk said as he leaned his hip against the loveseat on Crocodile's side. "How did you enter Wano?"
⸺
When the meeting ended, you invited yourself to walk Hawkins back to the Grudge Dolph. You didn't need to be told explicitly that was his destination, but he looked exhausted and withdrawn. He was never the most talkative—half of your problem with his divination—and you slipped a teacup into his hand partway through his recollection, glaring at Mihawk for clearly intimidating him away from serving himself.
You bumped into his side, what you hoped showed him you forgave him his defensive words form yesterday, like you always did. "How are you really?"
He frowned, deeply. "I don't have an arm to give you."
Shit. Since childhood, you'd held his left hand in your right or hooked your right elbow into his left. You'd even once knitted a mitten that let you stay skin-to-skin in winter.
You bumped him again. "My partner has one hand, you know."
"And two arms."
"You can be a yonkou with one arm."
"Don't flatter me."
"Well," you said, "You've seen four of them." Not all concurrent; Kaidou, Big Mom, and their successors, but—"It's not all it's cracked up to be."
You were more impressed than anything, amazed and grateful the boy who lived downhill from you had survived so much. But he would take it as a platitude, so you kept it to yourself.
"That partner of yours doesn't mind?" Hawkins dipped his head instead of speaking with his hands, a gesture that reminded you of how your family pointed.
"It's more complicated than you're thinking," you said. "More interesting." You were each other's first everything, and you didn't know how much more experienced he became after you, didn't want to shock him—
"Are you... open?" he said uncertainly.
You bit your lip, the oddness of it from him threatening to make you laugh. "I spend the most time with him. Live with him, mostly. But there's also Perona."
"You mentioned—them—?"
"Her."
"Her." Hawkins blinked, and for some reason you knew he was truly, innocently perplexed rather than titillated.
"Mihawk and Buggy are friends more than anything," you continued. "That's it, though."
"'That's it.'" Hawkins stopped short of the shore. "This feels familiar."
"What?"
He smiled. "You've been busy. I haven't."
"Again?"
Hawkins just shrugged, and the imbalance of it with one arm struck you. "I'm not that interested without you."
You wanted to cry. "Hawkins..."
"Do you want to come aboard?" He nodded at the gangplank. "It hasn't changed much. There's a few others who want to see you."
You bumped into his side again. "Let's go."
⸺
"Nervous?"
Buggy cracked his neck after his prolonged stretch on the rack, which really just tested the limits of his Devil Fruit with an intense massage. Crocodile excised him only after realizing Mihawk had also left them alone, probably to observe the port from wherever he tended to. Crocodile did so gruffly, his only gesture of aftercare being the glass of water he handed the clown as he collapsed onto the loveseat.
"About what?" Crocodile said.
"That's her ex. Her ex of what..." Buggy thought for a moment. "20 years? You're really that secure."
Buggy wasn't stupid enough to go for a power play in this realm. He really meant his concern, in part because whatever passed for Crocodile's good mood affected all of Cross Guild.
They didn't have this sort of rapport. Crocodile was growing ever closer to Mihawk, and explicit communication was necessary to the relationships you and he juggled, to which Buggy had been at best a satellite until now. But you liked him personally, and Crocodile trusted your judgment in most other things.
Crocodile pinched his brow. "If nothing else, he's more like her.... brother." He scowled even as he said it, because besides the unfortunate phrasing, he didn't believe it.
You treated Buggy like something between a pet and a friend. Sometimes, when Crocodile spent time with you and Mihawk, he felt like he was talking to one person split between two bodies. With Perona, you seemed your age, a giggling young woman instead of the morose thing your previous captain left you, whose melancholy Crocodile could admit he found attractive at first.
But you didn't resent Hawkins. You really mourned him after X Drake left, and Crocodile set the messenger's bounty to that of a vice admiral's for the sin of making you cry. Did Basil Hawkins get a pass from you by coming back from the dead?
"Losing to Kaidou aside," Buggy said, "She tells me he's a capable combatant. He wouldn't be a loss to keep around."
"What about my sleep?"
"You are nervous."
Crocodile took a deep, long drag of his cigar. He was never more conscious of his age than when you were with Perona, and seeing you with someone else from your generation hit him in the gut. He forgot you were young, between your knitting habit and your wariness, your competence like that of a seaman even older than him. Hawkins seemed out of pace, too, but Crocodile recognized it as the exhaustion of total defeat, a recent shock unlike your grace.
With Crocodile, you weren't demonstrative where other could see, not even in the enclosure of Buggy's camp, in large part because declaring your attachment would endanger you and discredit you both, or at the very least expose one of his few (precious) weaknesses. But he watched you sidle up to Hawkins like no time had passed at all, the younger man's easy acceptance of it, how you contrasted and complemented each other, and he could imagine the two of you as rookie pirates with stunning clarity, could understand how weak Hawkins would be against you, how he wandered into ruin for lack of you.
The generosity Crocodile managed for your sake—because he was secure you'd come home to him, after a night or nights away—all but evaporated when it came to Basil Hawkins. It was funny he didn't give a shit about that generation besides Straw Hat until you, and what an inconsequential loser to occupy his thoughts and Cross Guild's port.
But Crocodile didn't mean that, because Hawkins won where it mattered.
⸺
There were times Crocodile hardly stirred when you entered your tent, immersed in his reading or budgets in such a way that made you envious he didn't need glasses when he was so much your senior, but you could usually count on that he'd pull you to him once he joined you in bed with a dry kiss to your hair, what passed as an apology for his inattention. Other nights, if he seemed receptive, you climbed into his lap and peered at his work, and he complained to you of some oversight he was correcting or discarded it entirely to hear about your day.
Tonight, he sat erect in his wingback chair, staring directly at you.
"Buwaya," you said pointedly.
He didn't respond. His fingers loosely gripped a tumbler on the armrest, too clear like ice had melted. That was unusual; you both drank it neat.
"Is there something I can help you with?"
"I slept with Nico Robin."
"Excuse me?"
His pale eyes met yours, superficially placid, but even in the evening light you knew they burned with tension, the clench of his jaw all but tangible to you.
"I lied to you that night," Crocodile said. "When you served me this."
Your gaze refocused on the bottle next to him. It was the bottom shelf corn whiskey from your flat, what felt like years ago but was in reality a few short months. You knew it was the same because of the peculiar tear of the seal, and its low quantity. Was he so sentimental he packed it when you hadn't?
You planted your feet where you stood, feeling a headache coming on. Revisiting the Grudge Dolph was overstimulating, and you really wanted to turn in early, but your body pillow was being difficult.
"Do you have a reputation as an honest man that I don't know about?"
"Damn it, woman." He placed the tumbler on the side table with a firm thud without letting go. "You're too calm."
"I'm tired."
"Then you should've stayed on your old ship. Why bother coming back here?"
You closed the distance between you in two strides, prying the tumbler from his hand with no resistance. You gagged at the watered down taste. "We're going to bed. This is too stupid for words." You gripped his hook and tugged, but he used your momentum to pull you into his lap.
"So rational," he murmured by your temple. "So mature. Too good for either of us."
"What do you—" The odd syntax unscrambled in your brain, and you sighed, your breath fogging the gold alloy between you two. "Sir."
His right hand's grip on your waist tightened. You rested your cheek on his sternum.
"You be rational here," you said to his breast pocket. "He barely has a crew. I'd be an idiot to leave here with him. And you wouldn't like me if I was stupid."
"He loves you and can actually show it."
Love was so vulgar and out of place on his tongue you couldn't help your shocked laugh.
They were in a competition for anal retention, in your eyes. You mostly attributed Crocodile's to his age and the newness of your relationship, while Hawkins was more closed off than he'd ever been, his stupid pride wounded by groveling to his ex-girlfriend for refuge. It was a shame you found it endearing in both of them, maybe because you had the same impulse.
Just once, you'd like a more emotional man.
Crocodile growled, snaking his left arm around your back, and you nuzzled into his waistcoat in apology. "You... surprise me, sir."
"Forget it," he bit out. "Bed."
"That's what I said."
But he didn't move at all, just relaxing slightly as you squirmed for him to give you some air. You looked up at him, the tense set of his jaw, how he kept his gaze somewhere above your head, the very slight color in his cheeks.
There was the public humiliation from Cross Guild's first flier, and then there was this. The precious shyness he only showed when he felt cornered. Like you were an opponent, which to him was intimacy.
Your reached up and rested your hand on his cravat, communicating your intention, and he didn't stop you from undoing it. You had his waistcoat open and his right cufflink cupped in your hand when you said, "You're trying to make someone with multiple lovers jealous."
Crocodile grunted, the only admission he'd ever give that he was a fool.
"I am, though. I'm jealous Mihawk gets to fuck you in ways I never can. I'm jealous you have 20 years without me."
"Oh?"
"Don't you say the same," you said. "My twenty years were half childhood."
"Don't remind me."
"Other men your age are fixed on youth. To the exclusion of anything else."
"Don't remind me of him."
With that, he released his hook from his wrist with an audible click, letting you undo the cuff he was much more capable of on his own. The man was too stubborn to buy magnetic cufflinks. You watched him dress sometimes, and he had a method of putting them on that made sense and at which he was clearly practiced, but you knew he smarted at any evidence of his maiming besides the hook.
You bit your lip.
"What is it, bird?"
"I was hoping you'd talk to him," you said. "But I won't push my luck."
He exhaled, a near-snort. "About?"
He tossed the hook onto the loveseat, and you squirmed a little before setting your mind to it. "Limb loss."
Crocodile didn't miss a beat. "It's a pirate's life. There's more than one peg leg in Buggy's Delivery."
"...Right."
⸺
Faust was already ashore when Hawkins left the Grudge Dolph. You tutored some men of the former Buggy's Delivery in navigation, so as your replacement, Faust was your ideal teaching assistant and had really sailed more of the New World than you, albeit with a greater reliance on log compasses. Hawkins had grown a bit comforted by his total isolation on Wano and found he couldn't relax on his own ship, even with his reduced crew, so he took himself on a walk around the perimeter of the island after lunch time.
He was just returning to Cross Guild's main grounds when he caught a whiff of sugary perfume and a bare arm hooked through his.
"Stupid swordsman!" the young woman seethed, her other hand curling on Hawkins' bicep. "Hawkins," she greeted like they'd been introduced, and taking one look at her, he felt like they had.
"...Perona."
Her hair was the exact color of half the things you'd knitted for yourself.
"Walk me to my tent?"
There was what she said and then what she did, which was forcefully direct him in the unfamiliar campground, her taking unnaturally long strides to hurry away. She was about your height, but wore platform boots unlike any you'd ever choose. As they turned a corner, Hawkins caught Dracule Mihawk's deadly stare and wondered if he was somehow in greater danger than he already was.
"Do you like tea?" Perona said conversationally.
"Yes." He dabbled in tasseomancy more out of boredom than any dissatisfaction with the cards, though now... "Why?"
"Stay for afternoon tea," she said firmly. "Moria-sama will be there. He knew Kaidou."
Knew. Hawkins exhaled a laugh as he ducked into the tent's entryway. On the outside, it was as striped and garish as the rest of Buggy's Delivery, but it was chaotic and lived in with a canopy bed and a small parlor set suited for nothing but tea. One of your knit blankets was strewn over a bean bag chair, which Perona forcefully shoved him into. She tossed her heavy hair over one bare shoulder as she sat across from him, a teddy bear in her lap.
"Firstly," she sniffed. "I've been told to apologize."
"For?"
"Invasion of privacy." She held her palm up and a bizarrely cute spectre rose up from it, followed by another, and they circled her head like two fish chasing one another, Pisces. She sent one through the tent canvas and closed her eyes, laying back. "Your cat Mink is so cute," she said. "He's wearing blue. I think it should be lighter, though."
Hawkins hadn't even seen Faust today, but he knew exactly what she was talking about.
"You're Cross Guild's spymaster," he said.
"She doesn't believe me that Buggy's stupid men just want to stare at her," Perona went on. "But they're not listening to a single thing she says." Perona opened her eyes. "The kitty doesn't like it."
"Faust is uncomfortable with Lesser Minks having sex drives."
"So I'm sorry, but I was on your ship when there was no reason for me to be. You're not prisoners."
Hawkins didn't know what to say to that. His knees came up uncomfortably high in the impractical seating. His fingers found the edge of the blanket, and he recognized moss stitch when he felt it. Definitely your work.
Perona's eye followed his hand, and he stopped.
"Thank you," he said eventually.
"Are you still able to shuffle?"
The non sequitur bordered on invasive.
"I don't have a full deck on me," Hawkins said.
He hadn't tried since he drew the Tower the night of the Fire Festival.
"She has one in here," Perona said. "Would you be willing to read for me? Well. For our friend."
"Our friend."
This woman was direct, yet playful, and despite how pushy and strong-willed she was, she wasn't thoughtless. She stood and offered her hand to Hawkins to help him up and led him to the tea table.
"She told me there's a practice of letting the querent shuffle the deck. To make the reading really theirs," Perona said to Hawkins' non-answer.
He nodded. "Go ahead."
"We have this friend in common," Perona started as she overhand shuffled. "She has these two stubborn men she really cares about. Both Virgos, I think."
Hawkins sighed.
"And they each think she'd be better off with the other one," Perona said as she cut the deck. "Is there a spread for a situation like that?"
It should have been momentous, his first tarot reading since he lost his arm, but for some reason not reading for himself—well, not directly—felt right. He doubted he'd ever use the cards the same way again, and hadn't it been over a decade since he read because someone else asked? And years since he tried to discern something other than the future. That's what you said about the art: it wasn't telling the future, but re-telling the present.
Perona slid the deck across the table cloth, and Hawkins drew.
⸺
"Hawkins is here."
Crocodile murmured it into the hairline by your ear in the cold morning light, bending over the bed as he got a head start on you.
You hummed. "Yes, I know." Even though everyone was being so odd about it, it felt like a dream, so you burrowed into the warm spot he'd left behind in the sheets.
He chuckled. "No, I mean outside. I invited him for breakfast."
Your eyes flew open. "What?" Crocodile looked at you placidly, completely dressed, hook and all with one brow arched, and you hissed like a cat. "You want to make him uncomfortable."
"Come in," Crocodile called.
You had a tapestry separating the sleeping area from your joint office space near the entrance, and you wouldn't let your proud, petty lover weaponize the imum coeli like this, sitting there making small talk with your ex while you made your toilette on the other side, so you threw a chunky cardigan over your pajamas and stomped ahead of him.
"Hawkins," you said, "I'm sorry about him."
Hawkins looked you up and down, from your bed hair to your house slippers, and exhaled. "You look nice."
"Fuck you."
He looked nice, even with the shorter hair, which was wavier now with less weight. The ends landed near his collar bones, slightly longer than when you first met him.
"Buwaya," you said with a theatrically raised voice, "What are you two up to today?"
"We're discussing the terms of his crew joining the Guild," Crocodile said smoothly as he stepped around the tapestry. "Over at the big top tent."
"And you're here because..."
"You wanted us to talk."
You thought your heart would burst. "And I'm here—"
"To keep me nice."
The modest receiving area had four chairs. You could sit between them like a divorce lawyer, or you could sit across from Hawkins and risk making him think you were shutting him out. Instead of joining them, you tucked your legs under you on the loveseat. Buggy's men who arrived with breakfast for three from the mess tent didn't bat an eye at the seating arrangement, putting your coffee by your knitting basket, Crocodile's decaf in front of him, and a tea set for Hawkins to serve himself on the table.
You thought they'd never address one another, munching on bagels and English muffins in total silence until Hawkins spoke.
"How did you two meet?"
"By chance. You?"
"Her choice."
Crocodile barked a short laugh at that, but what followed was only more silence. You overlaid their charts in your head. Their Mercuries were conjoined, so maybe that meant they didn't need to speak. You cleared your throat.
"Hawkins, you both have Scorpio north nodes."
"That makes sense. Don't they take 20 years to orbit the planet?"
You walked into that one. "More like 18."
"I was your age when this happened," Crocodile said, and he clinked the cuff of his hook against the table.
Hawkins' lip curled.
Crocodile caught your eye, an all-but-audible see? in his brow.
Men.
"That was your Saturn return, too," you said.
Hawkins looked between you two and near-snorted. "Since when did you believe in it again?"
You shrugged. "I pretended for clients."
And you had a lover who humored you. You'd ask Crocodile what he was doing in certain years and months, and he answered if he could remember, and you found it all too coincident. You sometimes had a similar experience in consultations, but the intimacy and his patience made it more.
"By the way," you said, "that Marine said this happened at a full moon festival. Would that have been Virgo or Libra?"
Hawkins grit his teeth. "Libra."
"See?" you said to Crocodile. "It's useful to look up."
"So I'm learning," Crocodile said before addressing Hawkins. "If it came down to protecting Buggy or her, is it any question?"
"Of course not," Hawkins said. "It's what I should've done in this sea from the start."
What the—
You were the only one bothered by the change in subject.
"Good," Crocodile said. "We'll say you're our Emperor's personal guard."
"For what?" you said. "Tax purposes?"
"To tell those peons out there," Crocodile said. "Shall we?"
He moved to stand, gesturing for Hawkins to join him on the way to the big top tent, but you darted to the entryway and stood there with your arms crossed.
"What is it now?" Crocodile said.
"Both of you, stay. We need to talk about how you two are going to get along."
"I think we just did?" Hawkins said.
"No, I mean—" You took a breath. "Hawkins... Are you okay with this? Like—"
You bumped your hip into the back of Crocodile's chair and pecked a kiss to his temple.
Hawkins didn't react outwardly.
"It's just!" You scrambled. "You were always a little—I mean—we're not together again right now or maybe ever. But—"
"Think he needs more, bird," Crocodile murmured.
"We're not fucking in front of my ex," you said firmly.
"Unless he wants us to," Crocodile said. "Do you?"
You were sure you'd look over and see color high on Hawkins' cheeks, how self-conscious he always was on the Grudge Dolph, but he only cleared his throat and looked away.
You stared at him, unblinking. The sounds and images flashed in your mind all at once, how Crocodile would taunt him and you'd like it, how you'd never been so adventurous in years with Hawkins, but now—
"Because it's you," Hawkins said, so quiet you could have missed it.
Instead of dwelling on that, you nudged your knuckles against Crocodile's nape, like knocking for permission to comb your fingers into his hair, which he gave by leaning back.
"Sir," you said, "Do you understand habit? I feel—" You paused. "I feel myself regressing a little." There were so many close calls, from embracing Hawkins like it was nothing to leaning into the comforting wall of him that no one in Cross Guild quite matched, in his particular height or how he smelled like home in all its bitterness. On the ship the other day, you saw places you'd kissed and then some everywhere you looked, and fought down the urge to drag your former captain to his familiar quarters and have your way with him again.
Crocodile reached up to cover your hand with his.
They were both like that, you realized, and where you struggled to articulate yourself emotionally, Hawkins helped you get there with his at times inept questions, while Crocodile assured you like this that he knew you had more than you could bear saying, because he was the same.
You exhaled.