contents
1
"Come to bed," Crocodile grumbled somewhere behind you.
You hummed, focused on the task at hand.
The tent you shared on Karai Bari started looking like a home startlingly quickly. It certainly helped that Buggy or his men had the foresight to source the biggest, tallest bed possible that you honestly would have liked a stepstool for, soon followed by not one but two desks, a huge wingback chair your lover tended to brood in, and a loveseat for less gargantuan guests, though those were rare besides Daz or Mihawk.
"I can dim the lamp, if you want."
"Don't strain your eyes. What could possibly need your attention now?"
"Not a need. Something I'm curious about."
You heard him roll off the bed, still mostly dressed from the day apart from bare feet and a lack of hook or cravat, and felt him rest his hand on the back of your chair. "I thought you were done with fortunetelling." You smiled, and warmed at his attention to something new to him that didn't benefit him in any way besides having to do with you.
"It's not a horoscope. I'm just... taking notes."
You leaned back to admire his jawline as he scanned the labeled dots along the wheel. "Buggy?" he read aloud.
"You know," you said, "this organization has a lack of cardinal suns besides Daz, and a lack of fire besides Buggy."
"And that means?"
"Nothing at all. How big are you on birthdays?"
"I know yours."
You blinked. "Well, I know yours."
"And Buggy's. Doesn't feel very special." You shrugged at that, and tapped his arm to let you up, but he caged you in. "So you've been going around this camp, chatting up every man and woman you see, in the name of...?"
"Habit. They tend to tell me quickly."
"Well, you're..."
"Disarming?"
"Persistent," Crocodile said tersely. "I don't like how close Galdino's dot is to yours."
"Tell that to his mother." You stood incrementally and he kicked your chair away as you turned to sit on your desk, almost eye level, his arms bracketing either side of you. "You're more... sensitive than I expected."
"Is that so?" He stroked your hip with the marled flesh of his left wrist, and sometimes you felt like crying at the sign of trust from someone so guarded.
"All that talk of sharing earlier and I can't even share a sun sign with..." You peered over your shoulder theatrically even though you had it memorized. "Galdino, Mihawk, and Alvida?"
"You had a point?"
You bit your lip. "We could share a birthday cake."
Crocodile laughed, rich and low and in your ear. "Haven't you outgrown such things? Little girl." You felt your neck heat. It must have been visible how his lips spread from his near-permanent scowl to a mean, knowing grin.
"It's about good will among the company," you said lamely.
"Mmm. I'm sure."
"And we're very mutable. It's interesting you like me and Mihawk this much."
You pitched it neutrally, but your lover's crush on his fellow executive was glaringly obvious to you and even Buggy, how you traded a glance over lunch a few days ago at the two men arriving late with fresh panzanella. The swordsman started a small garden outside his tent almost immediately on arrival and asked Crocodile if he wanted any fresh produce, seeming to remember you as an afterthought, and you asked for basil not for sentimental reasons, but to complement your lover's request. You didn't know much about germination, but you suspected Mihawk brought his own tomato plant from Kuraigana with how quickly it fruited.
"Interesting? You're both smart."
"And suspicious."
"Skeptical," he corrected. "Careful."
"'Skeptical' is right," you conceded. "I'm not particularly curious about the rest of their charts." You didn't need to specify who among the three you meant.
"You like him, hmm?"
No, you do, you thought. Loudly. "We could do with a Gemini around here."
"I'll get on that right away," he said, and you pouted at his teasing tone.
You didn't think you'd get to joke like this with your captain again. You didn't think he'd be this much fun.
With that, Crocodile cupped your ass with his hand and steadied your waist with his left forearm. All that kept you from swooning at his size and strength was knowing he'd complain even if he was planning to flop you unceremoniously onto the bed to begin with.
"It's too damn tall," you said as he joined you.
"You could say 'thank you, sir.'"
"For putting me to bed? I haven't brushed my teeth yet."
"Too bad," he said as he pulled you against his front.
"Ugh. I feel gross if I don't."
"Do it in the morning. Imagine tasting like cigars instead."
"At least you're aware." It didn't bother you, but you wished his cologne complemented it better. "What do I taste like?"
His large hand wandered under your shirt, not groping, just resting comfortably on your rib cage. He burrowed his nose into your hair and inhaled deep before he licked the shell of your ear. You shivered.
"Mine."
2
Crocodile was so clean-shaven that you'd never felt even the whisper of stubble on him the rare times you could manage a kiss, so you were surprised to notice one evening that his hair was looking long. Well over his shirt collar, brushing his shoulders. You'd been with him long enough to know he cut it himself, so it struck you as damn near negligence within his otherwise careful self-maintenance.
"Sir."
He grunted.
You were sitting with your calves over his lap in the loveseat of your tent on Karai Bari, giving you an optimal view of his profile. His large hand was curled on your knee, occasionally leaving to arrange the sheets of newsprint he'd speared with his hook, and his brow was furrowed in either amusement or annoyance, depending on what he read.
"You know, I haven't smothered you in your sleep," you started.
"Yet."
You ignored that. "If you want to risk me cutting your hair for you, you can ask."
He was quiet for so long you wondered if he heard you at all. Just as you were about to repeat the offer, he finally said, "You don't like it?"
"…Do you like it? I thought you'd be warm, with your cravats and all."
Crocodile was totally still, and you could feel how tense he was. Oh no. He was proud, not in any way that made you afraid of rages, but sensitive like a boy. You considered it for a second before you raised your hand, slowly and obviously, to brush one pomade-combed lock behind his ear. "I like it, but I know you like your routine."
He flexed his hand, petting up your thigh with no real intentions, more of a habit. He looked somewhere to the right of you, unseeingly, as he said, "You also like Buggy, and that Ghost Girl."
You blinked. "I like Mihawk, too? And Sabo…" you said, catching a glimpse of the Flame Emperor on the back of the sheaf of newspaper he held.
"…and your Magician," he added, a near snarl.
Oh.
You decided your course of action in the moment.
"I haven't told you about my first crush," you said.
Crocodile huffed. "Haven't you? It's him."
"No. But he introduced me." You played with the ends of hair nearest to you. "It was a minor villain in Sora, Warrior of the Sea. I never read it closely enough to know what his deal was," you said. Hawkins was so unlike any boy except when it came to that damn comic. "But he had a bit of scruff, kind of a goatee, and very handsome crow's feet."
Crocodile gave you a withering look. "You were an odd girl."
"And he had dark hair that barely brushed his shoulders, but he always wore it slicked back. Usually under a hat. But he lost it when Sora defeated him and…" You rested your head on the back of the loveseat, studying his profile. "I liked seeing his temples and his forehead. How carefully he must have styled it every day, how a few strands fell in his face when he was fighting."
"I'm having a hard time believing such a villain existed. What was his name?"
You shrugged. "I don't remember. It started with a K, though."
"Convenient."
"You can check the WEJ archives!" you defended. "When I was a kid, 20 years ago. I swear."
"I was your age then," he said plainly.
You rolled your eyes, but moved to straddle his lap, carefully excising the World Economic Journal from his hook as your knees bracketed his hips. You stared up at him seriously, daring him to look away with your hands on his chest. "You're very handsome. The handsomest. Pretty is nice, too," you conceded, thinking of the silky hair he apparently envied. The idea of Crocodile growing his hair to Buggy's length was so strange you could have laughed, but not while he let you hold his ego in your palm like this. "Short is no good, either. At least Sabo's looks grabbable."
Crocodile wrapped his arms around your waist. "This little crush of yours is such a surprise."
"Wouldn't be my first blond." His lip curled at that. "Of course you can wear your hair longer. I'll like you the same either way. Though I have to wonder," you said teasingly. "Is there anything about me that's very… your type?"
It shifted the mood just as you intended. Crocodile looked away, and you knew under his many layers there must be color high on his chest.
"Sir…" you drew out.
"Can't I just say tits and be done?"
"Sir," you scolded.
To your surprise, he gathered both your hands in his. "Your hands. Your fingers, I suppose."
"Interesting. Fan of handjobs, I see."
"Don't be crass. I mean…" He rubbed the back of his neck with the curve of his hook. "I like watching you write. Draw charts. Knit."
Your heart constricted with fondness. You always thought your hands were disproportionate to your body, a bit mannish, if slender, but that was of no consequence to your generally large lovers. Women like Perona appreciated the length of your fingers, of course, but Crocodile's reasons were so… so…
You pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
3
Crocodile had to admit you surprised him every day. You surprised him the night you met, from how you interrupted another lonely dinner with your wit he could never predict, to how eagerly you took someone has brusque and brutish as him into your body and your confidence. Pirate though he was, watching your armor splinter for him, just for him was a treasure; receiving your devotion and being sure of it when you were so weary soothed his ego like nothing else.
But today?
You were pouting.
He shouldn't be surprised. More and more, as you and Mihawk's ghost girl fused at the hip, Crocodile was reminded you were a young woman, and perhaps Perona's propensity for tears and tantrums rubbed off on you. He hoped it'd be the other way around, and then maybe Hawk-Eyes would finally have a somber partner with whom to iron out whatever happened between them so all of Cross Guild could move on.
Instead, you stood rigidly between your two desks in your tent, your hands twisting in your sweater as you chewed on your lower lip, your eyes resolutely on his cravat as you waited impatiently for him to set down his current task.
"What is it, bird?" Crocodile asked, and it came out sharper than he would have liked, but you didn't flinch. You never did.
"Sir," you started, and he pushed his chair backwards to angle toward you. "Do you know what day it is?"
Crocodile glanced at the nearest newspaper, peeking out from under a ledger from the days of Buggy's Delivery he was working through, and to his annoyance it was for Tuesday, folded open to the crossword that you sometimes did together.
"Friday," he said.
"It's your birthday," you corrected.
His brow knit into a confused frown as he tilted his head to study your expression, which was difficult even if he was seated while you stood. "I've never celebrated it," he said.
"I see that," you said. "I know you love working and your balances and collecting debts, but—" You huffed. "Don't you ever rest?"
"Hmmm." He idly hooked his calf around yours, dragging his chair closer to you. "When you distract me like this."
"For more than a few minutes, I mean."
"I had a late start."
If this morning was your idea of a gift, he could come around to your girlish fixation on birthdays you hid primly in the charade of data. Your teasing little fingers sliding his pajamas down his thighs and how adorable you looked down there before the tip of his cock disappeared into your hot mouth... well. Crocodile never asked you for such things because he didn't have time, and he liked the sound of your throat struggling around him a little too much for how he tried to temper his sadism when it came to you, no matter how much you pleaded for him not to.
"Buwaya," you said softly.
"Hmm?"
"Take the afternoon off?" you said. "For me."
He smirked. "For you? How spoiled."
"I am."
Crocodile was a rich man. There was nothing he wanted he couldn't buy for himself besides you at his side, and the fine merino socks you knit all through the summer now stuffed into his shoes, and his pride that no matter how much he let your wander, you came back to him.
"As long as you know."
4
"Sir?"
"Mmm."
Subtle as it was, Crocodile was in a good mood. You were accustomed to his variety of scowls and frowns, and failing that had a fair read based on what he needed from you. Sometimes he hurried, the roughest he was without you asking, and the dry kiss he pressed to your head before leaving you in your bed was all the apology you'd ever expect for how Cross Guild kept him from you. If he had time, usually on land, he'd shut the two of you away for solitude you'd almost call dates, ridiculous as it felt with such a grump of a lover and how worn and beyond romance you felt. At sea, you giggled against his mouth at his efforts to distract you from your duty, chiding him for his envy of a rock in the sky you reminded him was the planet of love.
(You kind of preferred sailing with Mihawk as captain, if only because he had a greater interest in navigation.)
Tonight, Crocodile's hook glinted on its stand, and it was almost careless how he let you hold onto his forearm like a baby otter as he held you, his broad chest dwarfing the span of your shoulders.
"Who treated this?" you asked.
He exhaled, a long-suffering sigh you knew was affectionate. You grinned and kissed the scar at his wrist, which he stopped recoiling from some time ago. It was the greatest indulgence he afforded you. Not any of the gifts he showered you so casually he seemed bored of it, or how Cross Guild's numbers obliged you like your word was his, but this ritual you could rarely slow down for: removing his hook from its socket, peeling away his several layers until you got to the fine leather straps that secured the cup to his wrist.
After a long day, he'd hiss in relief at the lightened pressure, and you held your tongue so not to scold him for wearing the prosthetic too tightly, for not letting you dress him. At first he was embarrassed of the sweat, the occasional chafes and sores, but they were less frequent under your watch. You managed a version of this most nights, whether you waited up for him or sleepily herded him to the bathroom so you could wash and massage the area.
Crocodile was a self-admitted liar, but you believed him that no one had seen him like this in decades, and that he'd not died of some infection meant he took fine care of it on his own. But times like this, you flattered yourself he appreciated you.
"A naval doctor." You inhaled, and he tightened his hold on you. "Is that surprising, bird?"
"I thought you'd tell me about your first crew or something."
"Sentiment," he sniffed.
"Right."
You'd yet to ask him for the story outright, whether out of respect for his pride and his privacy or fear that he'd refuse, confirmation that his distrust still encompassed you and always would.
"Say you were poor or a criminal," you said, and in Utopia hung in the air like it always did if you were speaking in hypotheticals. "Would you receive the same care as someone rich? As the king?"
"There's this woman I know. Doesn't like kings."
You snuggled into him, drawing his arm between your breasts. "I'm serious."
"This is what you're thinking while getting fucked?"
"After."
"I'm too old to please you, then."
"No, this is part of it."
Crocodile grumbled. "If people are losing body parts in the streets, there's surely a larger problem to address."
"Yes. Public health. Especially if you're intent on making an enemy of the World Government, we need to be self-sufficient. You'll want a medically advanced nation or incentives for doctors to move."
"You've thought about this."
"Have you?"
You could almost hear him roll his eyes. "Obviously."
"No, not obviously. You could talk about it more."
"Healthy citizens are less likely to rebel."
"Oh? No more monopolizing resources for you, sir?"
"I'm not interested in chaos."
Anymore. Your most heated discussions were about Alabasta and to his annoyance, Dressrosa: how to, or rather how not to steal a nation. You were curious about the Land of Wano now that two new emperors ruled this sea, and Crocodile was, too, even if he didn't admit it.
"That's what I like about you," you said cheekily.
"Really."
"Among other things." You wiggled against him with a contented hum, and he groaned.
"Shallow woman."
"Happy woman."
At that, he nuzzled into your hair, wrapping his arms around you more securely. "You mean that."
It was dry as anything he ever said, but you knew the pitch of his voice, that it was as naked as question as he'd ever dare.
"Yes," you said simply. "The happiest."
5
If it had to be classified such, Karai Bari was a spring island whose particular set of seasons was incredibly mild, a fine business decision for which Crocodile would never commend Buggy. There was no extreme heat to shelter from or extreme cold through which to burn wood or coal (his money), and living in an encampment was bearable mostly for these conditions.
The island was also a convenient shape, with a spit that lent itself nicely to docks built early in Buggy’s settlement, and a private cove restricted only for the officers' use. When Crocodile first arrived, he sneered at the extravagance, the show of an illusionist's insecurity, and wrote it off as a symptom of waste and why Buggy's Delivery was a failure.
But today he scowled into the Bloody Mary you'd shoved into his hand as he watched you frolic on the beach with Dracule Mihawk, both of you wading into the ocean without a care.
"Croco-chan," Perona singsonged. She sprawled on a beach towel a few feet away from his lounge chair, her red-and-pink umbrella redundant to the massive one overhead but nonetheless perched in the sand, concealing most of her face from his view.
"What," he said sharply. He was more tolerant of the new addition to Cross Guild as she proved herself useful, in both surveillance and keeping you entertained in ways he couldn’t, but that didn't mean he liked her, in no small part because she caused Mihawk nearly as much stress as Buggy did. The clown snored loudly further down the beach, having dozed off some time ago.
"It's lonely, isn't it? I never knew until I lived with him." Mihawk seemed to be coaxing you back toward a discarded surfboard on the sand. "If you ask me, he misses that swordsman."
"From the Straw Hats." Crocodile was slowly learning more about his fellow executive, mostly filtered through your gossip, and that Mihawk spent the last two years training the twerp who defeated Daz was a surprise.
Perona hummed. "They'd swim for training and I'd sit just like this. Sangria and all."
"And Hawk-Eyes allowed this? With his wine?"
She stuck her tongue out, exactly like her hollows.
Crocodile woke up that morning to a pleasing sight, your ass and bare legs sticking out of his wardrobe before you turned to him with a frustrated pout. "Don't you own any swim trunks?" That's when he realized you were wearing a French-cut black swimsuit bordered with white piping, which even in the low light of your shared tent made your tan skin particularly fetching. He would have been content to peel the thing off of you and forget everything else, but you wriggled out of his grasp and informed him the two of you had a double date.
He didn't think Perona or Mihawk saw it that way, either, seeing as Perona invited Buggy and the two former Kuraigana residents had barely acknowledged each other.
"I don't remember a time without my powers. Do you?"
Crcodile considered dissolving into sand to get away from this woman, but then he wouldn't get to enjoy the novelty of Hawk-Eyes at relative ease. Both of you were more reserved, but Crocodile had the privilege of living with you in close quarters, had seen you cry over your foolish first captain and the girlish excitement that you tried to keep buried. Mihawk's perpetual glare relaxed behind sunglasses, and the neutral set of his mouth passed for a smile.
"Go join them," he said instead, to which Perona made a face.
"I'm getting to know you."
"Don't."
"Fine," she sniffed. "I don't know why she likes you. Mihawk makes sense. You're both boring."
"And I don't know why they like you."
"Hawk-Eyes doesn't like me." She said this quietly, more glumly, and Crocodile snorted. "What?"
"Nothing."
Reconciling them was your project, and he'd have no part.
⸺
"Do you think they're getting along?"
You got over the sight of Dracule Mihawk in the light of day due to the garden he kept outside his tent, and you suspected he was very pleased with Karai Barai's climate and what it did for his cultivars. It surprised you that such a pale man wasn't afraid to burn, but he maintained his complexion travelling on the glorified raft that was his Hitsugibune.
That said, his back and chest were near-blinding, so much so you couldn't look straight at him.
"Should they?"
"Buggy's right," you said lightly. "You two are bad at HR."
"Says the woman who's slept with both her captains."
You splashed water at him with as much force as you could manage, which he dodged easily.
"Forget Cross Guild," you said. "If we're all involved with each other outside of business, you'd better hope things stay as rosy as they are."
For all that Perona and Mihawk couldn't get by without a shouting match, they worked well together when both were on the Guild's flagship, perfect complements with two years of camaraderie behind them—you suspected the longest, most continuous intimacy either had ever shared. And Crocodile had no complaints about Perona as a subordinate, more about her father, who was still recovering from his ordeal at Hachinosu.
"You worry too much," the swordsman said. "It's your experience travelling with your... sweetheart," he said with a curl in his lip.
Both of these men annoyed you when it came to this: complaining about the Worst Generation with which you were only marginally involved, though you dared to think they were near-fond of Straw Hat and his crew. The rest were upstarts and greenhorns almost as offensive as Buggy, prone to such mistakes as challenging emperors and breaking your heart. It was their way of comforting you, you supposed, but you sometimes felt compelled to defend your ex-captain despite spending your last years on his ship criticizing him just as harshly.
"Pirate crews break up all the time," you argued. "Why should we be any different?"
Mihawk waded further out into the sea, clearly meaning to swim off without you, and you made up your mind to waddle back ashore to Crocodile when he said, plainly, "You're thinking of defeat."
Baroque Works. Thriller Bark. Hawkins.
"We won't be that stupid," Mihawk said.
You bit your lip as you watched him cut through the water away from you. Bizarrely, you were more comforted by Buggy's history than Crocodile's, and Mihawk had never been one to take risks at all. But survival was real. Your hopes were for safety and pleasure, and if that meant sticking by these wary men, you would.
You draped yourself over Crocodile, straddling his waist and planting a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He scowled. "Salty," he said.
"I didn't drink seawater."
"And sandy," he complained, swiping some sediment off your thighs and off the shirt he still wore, albeit unbuttoned.
"Hypocrite."
"I keep it to myself."
You jabbed him in the side, and that he let you made you warm with affection.
Perona giggled from the ground, where she had your favorite astrology primer bent at the spine, and you laid your head on Crocodile's sternum to look at her. She looked quite glamorous in a broad-brimmed black sunhat and a black bikini, and you felt your eyes begin to droop from the effort of keeping up with the world's greatest swordsman. Crocodile's arm rested across the bare skin of your back, and you could feel the leather straps that secured his hook to his wrist crisscrossing under his shirtsleeve.
You stirred when the sun had sunk lower in the sky to the sounds of bickering.
"Make your own!" Perona whined.
"Switch to water," Mihawk said coolly, along with the clink of ice cubes as he set her glass down on the table beside you and Crocodile. "You still put too much fruit in."
Perona inhaled as if to shriek, but Crocodile grumbled in warning, and she huffed instead.
"She's awake," Mihawk said, calling your bluff.
"You're both annoying me," Crocodile said.
You smiled against his chest.
6
Upon hearing Buggy's announcement over the encampment's loudspeakers, you didn't need the situation explained to you. You were on your way to meeting room anyway to check on them, possibly even plead on Buggy's behalf that the flagship wasn't so bad, but then he said... that. The members of Buggy's Delivery prone to fabulation had already made up their story about this treasure hunt, and they cheered as you made your way through the base and surely would've clapped you on the back or carried you there if they didn't respect Crocodile like they did.
"Boss," Daz said as you came through the big top's entrance. "She's here."
"Thank you," you said, breezing past the gathering of your fellow officers outside. You didn't feel the need to hover by these gatherings like Galdino and Alvida did since you trusted Crocodile to tell you what you needed to know, setting aside that Buggy's cries and whimpers made you feel a range of emotions and sensations you didn't want to address, but today empathy was not one of them.
Your lover and Dracule Mihawk sat at a table while their ostensible boss's detached head hung from a meat hook by his (thick, healthy) hair.
"Buggy," Crocodile snarled.
"Sir," you said. "Can I?"
After a moment, Crocodile grunted his assent, his pale eyes following your progress across the room while Hawk-Eyes looked unimpressed as ever. You stopped just short of the emperor and crossed your arms under your breasts.
"Buggy," you said lowly. "I can't read Poneglyphs."
"I'm sorry..." he blubbered.
"I know Crocodile wouldn't exaggerate, so where did you get the impression I could?"
The second night you spent together, when you were still nervous and half-terrified, you'd talked a mile a minute showing Crocodile all the alchemical symbols you knew, which you theorized were appropriated from the ancient script for silly applications like your own, among occultists and perhaps legitimate scientists who liked history. It wasn't so long ago, but you looked back with great fondness how seriously he looked at your notes with his cigar clenched in his teeth, his hand rubbing circles on your hip in that small flat you'd abandoned to join him.
Buggy sniffled. "I didn't say—"
"No," you conceded. "But you said our superior navigator will take us all the way to Laugh Tale."
Admittedly, your first thought was not the mortal fear and self-preservation that guided you now, but how you might actually attempt it without the Road Poneglyphs. A three-dial log pose hadn't gotten anyone that far, but that approach was terrestrial. Could you really? You knew the northern sky better than its southern counterpart, and the Grand Line after Mary Geoise—the New World—sloped northeast.
But that was none of your concern, unless Crocodile said so.
"Your men have already decided that's the case." You reached out and laid your hand on his cheek, gently, and he winced. "You need to restrict all travel and communications from here until you tell them to keep that idea to themselves, don't you?" Buggy nodded frantically, and you frowned. "I like you, Buggy. I think you have something these two neglect."
Crocodile scoffed, and you ignored him.
"You haven't given me a reason to dislike you besides putting him in a mood," you continued. "So why start now?"
"You put a target on her back," Crocodile growled.
"I didn't mean to!"
"If the government decides she's like a demon of Ohara—"
"Sir," you interjected. "It's contained." For now. You sighed and picked up the discarded Den Den Mushi. "Buggy?"
Buggy whimpered as you held the transmitter to his mouth. You were always impressed with his charisma, and this retraction made with his face caked with tears and snot and ruined face paint was no exception. You hid a stash of makeup wipes somewhere in this room, and you rooted around looking for it though it meant tiptoeing around and impressive array of torture devices.
"Worried?" Mihawk said, directed at Crocodile.
"The whole purpose of this charade is to let him take the fall," Crocodile said. "The fewer of us hunted by the Marine, the better."
"You are surprising."
Annoyed, you bumped your hip into Mihawk's shoulder as you passed. "Don't tease him."
Crocodile's brow quirked. "Woman. I don't need defending."
"It's no more than you do me," you said as you pulled a wipe from the package. "You're both bullies. Aren't they, Bug?"
Buggy didn't dare speak, and you cleaned his face carefully while Cross Guild's real leadership grumbled.