contents
1
"Buwaya, it's terrible hospitality if no one checks on them."
"'Hospitality'? They're not guests. Besides, I don't care for Moria."
"Ugh. I'll go. Be right back, promise."
"I'm timing you."
You swept out of your shared tent. Ever since you picked a long, light strand of hair from one of Mihawk's high collared shirts, you kept an eagle eye of your own out for who it could belong to, with no leads until the two Thriller Bark pirates arrived from Hachinosu and Perona's candyfloss curls shone in the sunlight. They made an odd sight in the light of day much like Mihawk did, at first, until you got used to seeing him with a sun hat in the mornings to tend the small garden he'd started by his tent.
Two of Perona's ghosts stood—floated—guard outside the entrance. Divided though the camp was between Cross Guild and the established Buggy's Delivery, Perona's tent was near Alvida's, and the odd thought came that it might have been yours if Crocodile weren't the way he was. The hollows just looked at you curiously when you approached.
"Perona?" you called clearly.
"Oh, good!" You didn't expect that reaction, but the younger woman pulled the curtain back quickly and grabbed your arm.
Her tent was as sparse as yours had been when you arrived, with only a double bed, currently occupied by a patchwork stuffed animal you couldn't confidently identify, a small desk and chair, and her trunk overflowing with clothes and cosmetics and hats.
Perona pushed a furniture catalog into your hands, and you onto her bed. "You're cute enough so I'll ask your opinion," she sniffed as she pulled the bear? rabbit? into her lap, sitting next to you with the ruffles of her skirt squishing against your thigh. You couldn't be offended since you found her almost unbearably cute yourself, and she smelled sweet, like creme brulee. Was that what did it for Mihawk? You had no illusions that what you did together meant a terribly strong attraction on his end, and it was more than a bit arousing how he treated you like a borrowed toy. But what was the swordsman like with someone he felt was his?
"Honored. What are you thinking?"
"I haven't had a bed canopy in two years," Perona mused, "but is that childish? Princess-y?"
You bit the inside of your cheek. "Princess" slipped past Mihawk's lips once, like a habit, and you caught the split second where his golden eyes widened before he corrected to "pet."
"It might help for privacy here. We have extra drapes in ours." To spare, or maybe deprive your neighbors. You and Crocodile didn't know each other's tastes in explicit terms, but he'd grunted in approval at the blue-blacks and deep, green-leaning turquoise you chose, and the dark navy matched the velvet duster he had tailored for you that same week.
Perona pouted, and her lipstick was the prettiest berry you'd ever seen.
"What's your favorite color?" you asked.
"It changes," she mused. "Red. Blue. Gold."
These two, you thought as Mihawk's glare flashed in your mind. "Black?"
"Well, of course," she said, like it was a given. "Like your hair." She plucked one lock off your shoulder with a coffin-shaped nail, and you shivered, not unpleasantly. "It's the first thing I noticed here. True black, night black." Perona laughed her strange little laugh, and it brought a smile to your face. She was so much more forward than most men you'd been with, although they were each masters of repression, weren't they. Virgos.
"I like yours, too," you said shyly. "Pink's actually my favorite, but no one would think it looking at me."
"Screw them," Perona huffed. She swept one side of your hair behind your ear. "Can I?"
You nodded, not sure what she asked exactly, but all became clear when she stuck her knee between yours, half-straddling you as she brushed the other half of your hair back. She studied your face seriously, like an artist, or a scientist. "So pretty without makeup. I'm jealous."
"Well. Foundation."
"Shh."
You were almost the same height, how you were eye level like this—another novelty—and Perona's dark eyes dropped to your lips. You fought the urge to bite down nervously, instead wetting them before you let the furniture catalog fall to floor so you could cup her face and kiss her.
She was just as sweet as you thought, dark fruit like sugared plums, and she licked into your mouth to reciprocate with an impatient little whine, and she ground against you through layers of fabric.
"Oh—Perona—!" you said in surprise.
"Please—"
And she pulled herself up your thigh, hiking up her skirts so they fanned out and covered you both.
"I saw you and Mihawk," she whispered as you splayed your hands on her back, the bare skin of her shoulder blades, the corsetry on her dress.
"How?" When? You hadn't even spoken since they arrived.
"I use my ghosts as scouts. I've had a few here for"—she whimpered at the denim you wore, rough through her thin panties—"days."
Your already flushed neck got hotter. Two nights ago, Crocodile waved the two of you off to start without him, and it ended with Mihawk taking you to the brink of asphyxiation and the two men cooing over you as you came and cried.
"I asked, he never—ever—wanted to do anything like that," she was saying, her lip wobbling before she hid her face in your neck, breathing deep. "What changed? Is it me?"
"I—fuck—" She dug her knee in sharply trying to find purchase, and it was a frustrating tease of simulation that you knew wouldn't get you anywhere. "Ask him—"
"I tried—"
"Perona—I don't want to talk about him right now—" You just held her as she rolled her hips, and raised your knee to give her a harsher angle as she worked her way past her emotional outburst, eventually kissing your jaw and dragging her tongue along your throat. Your giggle at the sensation turned to a moan, and you held her by nape of her neck, threading your fingers into the roots of her hair.
"You taste good," she said, sucking the skin there, and she hissed as you tugged reflexively.
"Sorry—"
"Harder."
As you obliged, your own busy mind conjured its own theories about Perona's sex life, what she wanted and what she was used to, but you set that aside to cradle this woman through her orgasm, which crashed through with a shudder and her panting hotly against your neck. She pulled her other leg over and straddled your hips properly, peppering short kisses all over your face. "You're so nice," Perona cooed. "So cute. What did that big brute do to deserve you?"
You grinned against her mouth. "He's nice in his way. So's Mihawk."
She huffed. "I don't want to talk about him."
"Seems like you care more about him than getting to know me."
"Hah?" It was indignant and darling. "I'm not done with you yet."
"Good." You awkwardly offered your hand in a close quarters handshake. "I'm Cross Guild's navigator."
Perona took it with a pantomimic flare. "Ghost Princess Perona."
"Is that a formal title?"
"Moria-sama's always said it."
You shrugged. "Good enough." He was an interesting man, too.
Perona tossed her mass of hair over her shoulder before she hooked her fingers together behind your neck. "Alvida said you read tarot."
Of all things... You treated it as a party trick, mostly, and somehow that's what the Guild other than your lovers remembered. "I'm mostly an astrologer." And you could tell her all about his chart, but that felt like a violation.
Her eyes lit up. "Really? Oh." She frowned. "I don't know my birth time."
"We can figure it out." You hadn't rectified a horoscope since you ran away to join the near-literal circus, but you were willing to try. For free, at that.
Perona giggled. "Don't you have to get back to Crocodile?"
"He'll live. You know, I'm supposed to see how that captain of yours is settling in, too..."
At that, she paled. "Not looking like this you aren't." And she rubbed at your jaw, showing you her fingertip with a smudge of pink pigment.
You tilted your head as you looked at her face instead. "Your lipliner is fantastic."
She preened for a moment before batting her pretty lashes at you. "Help me unpack?"
And you'd never understood Mihawk more.
2
Crocodile was lonely.
He never imagined he'd think something so pathetic, but these past few nights you only returned to your shared tent to grab clothes and toiletries, a few books and a tarot deck for your extended stay with the Ghost Princess of Thriller Bark. Of course you apologized—not that he needed it—and pecked him on the lips or his forehead, maybe more if he got his hook around you, but your excuse was, "The last woman she talked to regularly was a reanimated corpse."
Perona was a spoiled brat, in Crocodile's opinion, and she had you, Gecko Moria, and Dracule Mihawk wrapped around her finger, though only two of you would admit it. Yes, Crocodile would feel less neglected if his most constant companion of late wasn't Buggy. He'd sent Daz Bones off on business and sorely regretted it since Hawk-Eyes seemed to glower at a wine glass most nights, polishing off a bottle or two regularly since his former… roommate arrived at Karai Bari. If Crocodile knew anything about his other lover, it was that Mihawk savored wine for the taste, not the sensation.
So Perona had two strikes, in Crocodile's counting.
You were too conscious of looking like a kept woman to treat Buggy's Delivery like servants, always walking on your own two feet to eat your meals with the rest and often with Buggy; Perona had no such qualms. No one sighted either of you except for when you scurried on home to him for minutes at a time. Apparently the only other person allowed into the infernal woman's tent was Moria, who was too dense to realize his daughter in all but name was a grown adult and a menace.
"What do you want?"
Crocodile never needed to announce himself when he visited his fellow executive due to the man's eerie acuity, and it was early enough in the evening that Mihawk better not be in his cups already. He peeled back the tent flap with his hook and ducked under the entryway to see Mihawk set his book face-down, like you did, which stuck out as an odd habit for a man who was so careful of his other possessions.
"Dinner, here."
Mihawk exhaled. "Fine."
As with you, Crocodile could stay comfortably silent in the swordsman's company, though you were wont to silent gestures of affection while the two men kept their distance, still new to this dimension of their relationship. He accepted one glass of wine, if only to cut into Hawk-Eyes' supply.
"You trust that Ghost Girl." It wasn't a question.
"She's a better ally than enemy."
"That's what you said before." Before, when the Thriller Bark pirates docked at their shore, Perona floating ahead to plead her and her captain's case to the only person she knew: Mihawk. Their reunion was stilted and cold, Mihawk still as stone while Perona twitched as if she wanted to embrace him or sock him in the jaw, maybe both. When the executives broke away to discuss their possible addition, Mihawk only spoke to Perona's abilities, not Moria's, which left Crocodile to accept their fellow former warlord into Cross Guild.
"Is that not enough?"
Crocodile crossed his ankle over his knee. "Let me rephrase. Do you trust that Ghost Girl with her?" At that, Mihawk's golden eyes narrowed, but he didn't respond. "I'm indulging this because I trust my navigator, and I trust your word. But personally: what is Perona to you?"
They stared at each other, and the only indication that Mihawk was unsettled by the question was a slow blink, followed by a slow sip from his glass, and Crocodile followed the bob of his throat as the wine went down. Focus.
"A nuisance," Mihawk said at last. "A companion. Maybe a mistake, one I doubted I'd see again."
They were both proud men, so Crocodile knew such an admission was monumental. He wouldn't press. What he really wanted was you here, because you would. Mistake how? you'd say without hesitation. Or, Whose mistake? And you had a way of disarming, what some might call psychic, that Mihawk might just respond to.
"She isn't malicious," Hawk-Eyes continued. "Nor is she careless, despite appearances. I think," and it looked like it pained him to say it, "our girl could do her some good."
Our. Crocodile bristled at that, which Mihawk knew, given his minute smirk over the rim of his wine glass.
Perona wasn't his type, at all. Dainty as a knife's edge with poor manners, like a teenage boy, so he didn't understand how she enraptured two people he admired. You and Mihawk were quiet and wry, subtle and practical in all the ways Perona wasn't. Crocodile knew he was taken into your confidence, that you didn't wear your heart on your sleeve except to him, and the two of you were inching closer to that with Mihawk. On the other hand, Perona telegraphed her every emotion, often audibly, and you'd have to be an idiot not to know she was displeased with Hawk-Eyes.
"My turn," Mihawk said after some silence. "Is this jealousy disguised as concern?"
Jealousy?
When Crocodile said he was willing to share, he had two motives, the minimum for any move he made. He had your happiness in mind, borne of that rare, creeping insecurity he could usually ignore: that he wasn't suited to emotional intimacy and it was a mercy to give you options. Then there was the selfish animal of him who wanted to see you from all angles, knowing every inch of you was his no matter who gave you pleasure; and that appreciated the beauty of another man, and was serious about wanting to see someone of a more reasonable size kiss you like you deserved. Unfortunately, the most reasonable choice seemed to be a woman just an inch or so shorter than you who floated a foot of the ground anyway.
Crocodile wasn't jealous, no. He feared he could never begrudge you your needs or even your whims, how little you asked of him.
"What's different between me and Perona?" Mihawk continued. "Or is it that she's a woman? Many men have the opposite preference, who they'd see their partner fuck."
Crocodile huffed a laugh, more an exhale through his nose. "I'm not most men."
In truth, Crocodile saw how… soft your Magician was, his waves of hair and delicate features, and your odd affection for Buggy, the clown blushing as you absentmindedly twirled his blue locks in your slim fingers. Crocodile really was the outlier in your tastes, and however friendly you and Mihawk were, your bedroom escapades with the man were more for Crocodile than you.
Could he really stand you wandering like he claimed?
He'd have to. He'd said so.
But.
"What about you? Are you like most men?"
It might have been a trick of the light, or the alcohol in his veins, but Mihawk's cheeks were less-than-pallid.
That meant yes.
It was very humanizing for the Navy Hunter have such a pedestrian sexual interest as in seeing two women—both beautiful, Crocodile could concede—in each other's embrace, but it was a bit too intrusive even for him. Part of him was too annoyed by Perona's Devil Fruit, the humiliation of it all, but if Mihawk could find his way back into her good graces, she might just let him.
Crocodile grinned into his wine glass.
3
"This is pretty." Perona brushed your back with her fingertips, her breath landing on your shoulder from where she laid next to you on the plush rug. "Seems fated."
"I don't believe in fate."
(She wouldn't appreciate hearing that Mihawk said the same thing about the not-quite Maltese cross between your shoulder blades.)
"Funny you say that."
Perona was a bizarre contradiction of possessive over both of you, from each other. She simultaneously envied that Mihawk met you before she did, and that the sex you had with him was more varied than her time on Kuraigana.
If she actually deigned to talk to the swordsman, he'd confirm that you two were better described as friends.
But Perona was spoiled, and didn't want to share yet wanted so many things and people all at once. You found it mostly endearing, but sometimes you had to negotiate your way out of her tent to have a moment alone or with Crocodile. Last time you'd actually tricked her, leaving her tied with thick, velvet black ribbon and an extracted promise, through gritted teeth, that she'd stay still and good.
After that, you managed to sleep in your other lover's arms for the first time in a week, and Perona started creeping out to join you in the mess tent. She was growing fond of Buggy, or rather she enjoyed teasing the clown in a way that was only barely kinder than Crocodile's flavor of torment. Sadists, all of them.
Perona rolled onto her back, stretching like a cat and fighting a yawn, which brought her own tattoo to your line of sight: a pink bat, impressively saturated. You set your book down to return the gesture, poking at the ink.
"I got it when I didn't know whether Moria-sama was dead or alive," she offered freely.
Your brow furrowed. "Does he... like bats?"
She laughed her odd laugh. "You'll see him fight soon enough."
You didn't know if the man with the twin of your tattoo on his neck was alive, either. The remains of Thriller Bark joined Cross Guild just days after a Marine hospital ship dropped anchor in sight of Karai Bari, carrying an undercover captain who confessed to you he left Hawkins for dead in Wano Country. Ironically...
"Moria challenged Kaidou once," you said neutrally.
"Before I joined him," Perona confirmed. Her life was fascinating to you, really: she'd been a pirate longer than not, the doted-upon daughter of a Warlord of the Sea who patched her plush toys together with sutures. Cotton thread in recent years, though. Mihawk mended his own clothes.
"Does he talk about it at all?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Don't you dare."
"Because it's a sore subject," you said understandingly.
"No." Perona sat up. "Because he's around Crocodile's age." You laughed, a full belly laugh that had you turning onto your side. "I'm serious," she said hotly, chucking a throw pillow at your back as she scrambled up onto her bed to sulk.
"Perona," you said, getting your breath back. "Even I have a size limit."
"Ew!"
You pulled yourself up beside her, and spotted your knitting you'd taken to walking around camp with, forgotten on her bed since your little tumble on the floor. "Look at this." You held up the sock you were knitting for Crocodile and his absurdly cold feet. "It's practically a baby sweater."
"I would prefer if you said you won't fuck my dad," Perona whined.
"That's really up to him."
She shrieked wordlessly, hiding her face in her yet-unidentified stuffed animal briefly before glaring at you over its head.
"You're really similar," Perona said eventually.
"Moria and I?"
"You and Mihawk."
Crocodile said the same thing, in fewer words. "Does he also threaten to fuck your dad?"
"You're both annoying."
"Hmm." You grabbed the forepaw of the stuffed animal closest to you gingerly, between your thumb and forefinger, like you were batting at one of her shiny curls. "You're easy to get a rise out of. Maybe Mihawk finds it adorable, too."
"Wish he'd say so," she mumbled.
"He's quieter than me, at least. Or," you mused, "I'm used to impassive men."
"Huh?" She didn't need to say that Crocodile had quite the repertoire of scowls that was comparatively easy to interpret.
"Don't you think you should try talking to him, at least?" you tried. Crocodile could not understand what Mihawk did to upset Perona so much without you breaching your girlfriend's, and really his boyfriend's privacy, so you spoke in hypotheticals.
"Say Cross Guild was being targeted by the Navy," you said, to which he snorted.
"They wouldn't dare."
"Say they did, and we were all scattered. Buggy took his men and fled."
"He wouldn't dare."
"If I found out my previous captain was miraculously alive, and you loved me, would you really let me run off to him instead?"
"Well, you wouldn't be safe with that twit."
Infuriating man.
"I already said everything," Perona sniffed.
"He's not the most confrontational. Which isn't fair," you conceded, "but he's probably afraid of hurting you more. Or getting hurt."
It was still unclear to you exactly what the nature of their relationship was, but Perona described sounded serious and almost idyllic in its domesticity, and without a lick of her usual exaggeration. If anything, she was embarrassed to share how vulnerable she'd become.
Now she was a hissing and furious and lonely. If Perona wasn't so greedy, you'd fear reconciliation meant her forgetting you, but you saw how she hoarded and took loving, if sometimes roughshod care of her toys. It was in Cross Guild's interests for Mihawk to get his head out of his ass, and soon.
4
"Here."
You handed Perona a pair of straight knitting needles with a width of worsted, cotton candy-colored stitches cast on.
"Hah?" She accepted it uncomprehendingly.
"You were sulking earlier that I knit for other people while I'm with you," you explained. "That's leftover from a cardigan I made last year. Why don't we do it together?"
Despite your best efforts, Alvida didn't seem all that interested in bonding as the women of Cross Guild, so the boozy picnic brunch you packed ended up the date Perona wanted from the start. Unfortunately for her, your idea of a girl's day out involved crafting. Drinks and gossip, too, of course, and tarot, if the mood took you, but even as a professional reader you'd kept knitting in your lap to pick up between clients.
Perona held the cast-on edge in her right hand and the empty needle in her left, and you bit your lip.
"How about I show you first," you tried.
You figured it'd be the case, but you still quivered as Perona rested her chin on your shoulder and giggled, her arms snaking around your waist. You reclaimed her discarded needles and cleared your throat.
"I hold my working yarn in my left hand," you demonstrated. "You can do it the other way, but I don't know how."
"Mmm." Perona reached around you for her sangria.
Perona knew her way around a mattress stitch, apparently having learned from Thriller Bark's doctor, and had been mending her stuffed animals—and making horrifying cotton and corduroy chimeras—since childhood. You weren't your last ship's designated seamster; that honor belonged to your captain. But being a North Blue crew, you and many others habitually knitted, especially those from the upper latitudes. Karai Bari was quite temperate, but you didn't know where you'd take Buggy's charmingly garish clown ship next, and you'd rather not be caught out at a winter island.
You knit two rows before handing it back to her. She accepted it and sat back, giving you back your space, and you felt her absence even though you were warmed through with wine.
"It's not as cute as yours," she said with a frown.
Yours was a black, ribbed sock for Crocodile. "The bumpy thing you're making is in garter stitch. I'm working in ribbing."
"Bumpy?" You held out the sock for her compare textures, and she made a noise of recognition. "I used to wear socks like that. Thigh-high with stripes."
"That's uh..." You loved Perona's wardrobe, her voluminous dresses and bare shoulders and structured silhouettes, but you saw a few miniskirts and t-shirts in her luggage. "...a lot of fabric."
She sighed a little wistfully. "Makes me think of back then. Dealing with that stupid swordsman..."
(Roronoa Zoro was "that stupid swordsman"; Dracule Mihawk was just "him.")
You worked a silence for a bit, Perona making noises of frustration and much slower progress, at times throwing her swatch down, but you had to admire her odd mix of impatience and determination, her selfishness and her empathy. She didn't grow up in any normal way, whatever that meant, and was quite literally tossed from her childhood home, almost like a noblewoman passed from father to husband, but she turned out this rough-tongued, bizarre, strong woman with whom you were lucky to become fast friends, and more.
You pulled the picnic basket toward you, out of which both of your working yarns came, your black and her pink, and she groaned. "Don't tell me you have even more in there."
You grinned. The basket cooler was large enough to hold plural wine bottles—if Perona recognized it as a loan from Mihawk, she didn't say—but the charcuterie you munched on with your sangria and mimosas didn't warrant all that space. Perona, princess she was, let you carry the thing up hill, and her incuriosity served your plans well.
You popped the lid open and pulled out a paper pastry box the color of sugar-coated almonds, tied with a silver bow.
Perona tilted her head. "What—?"
You untied the ribbon, and it fell open to reveal three strawberry shortcakes.
"I baked the cakes yesterday and made the cream and assembled them just now," you said. "Happy birthday, Per—"
To your shock, she threw her arms around you, smashing the no less than four knitting needles between your chests as she blubbered in your ear.
"Two years," she whispered. "Two years with those stupid men and I never brought it up or learned theirs because—because—I'm a grownup, damn it, and—" She sniffled loudly, and if you didn't do all manner of disgusting things together you would've flinched. Instead, you laughed.
"Of course I know. I mean, I know a ton of people's, but I remember who matters."
Perona kissed your cheek wetly before leaning against your side, admiring the pastry. "Moria-sama celebrates when he found me, but..." She breathed. "My parents stopped doing anything for me. Once I ate the Horo Horo no Mi. Even if I still knew them, they wouldn't tell me my birth time." Her distinctive laugh had never sounded so bitter. You pressed your cheek to her hairline, rubbing her upper arm.
"Happy birthday," you repeated softly. "Happy, happy birthday."
You decided you were glad Alvida bailed, and you could split sweet cake with your sweet girlfriend only, on a day you selfishly wanted to belong to just the two of you.
5
Mihawk didn't often invite himself into your tent, especially not with the addition to Cross Guild of one Gecko Moria and his darling daughter who recently took a liking to Crocodile, so you startled like a horse when you finally caught the swordsman in the periphery of your vision.
"God, Mihawk, would you make some noise at least?"
"I made plenty. You're just careless."
Even if Perona didn't bias you with her grievances against him, you thought you might like Mihawk less now that he involved himself in you self defense training, seeing how freely he criticized you these days.
"Does your roommate know you're burning through our paper budget?" he said with a nod.
You huffed. Your writing desk was an impractical escritoire that you would have begged "your roommate" to trade if he wasn't Sir Crocodile, perfectly at home with his massive bureau, and you had five horoscopes and counting taped to its tiny desktop drawers.
"I'm busy."
"I can see that." Mihawk didn't need to squint to examine them from where he sat in Crocodile's armchair, and you scrunched your nose to readjust your drooping glasses. "...Perona, I take it?"
He said her name in a tone that would have passed for neutral if you didn't know him.
"Good eye." You would have mock applauded if you didn't think he'd chuck his cross knife at you.
"And squares are..."
His lips thinned and turned into a frown, and you felt a dangerous amount of pity well up in side you. He could read them well enough to discern angles, and knew the relationship between Perona's sun sign and his own—the same as yours.
You decided to pursue a tangent.
"You know, you and I are the only people here who know our birth times."
"Hm."
"I suppose piracy isn't usually a life for people with... well, people who know their parents." You wouldn't have been so eager to leave the North Blue if it weren't for your mother's rages, and Mihawk hadn't exactly shared his life story with you, so you didn't want to assume. "But you've totally seen an astrologer. Right?"
To your surprise, Mihawk groaned, his head knocking into the chair's winged back as he let out a totally frustrated near-roar unlike any noise he made in bed, and scrubbed his hands over his face and into his beard. "Red-Haired," he muttered into his palms.
"What was that?"
Mihawk moved his hands to glare at you. "Red. Haired. Shanks."
You grinned. "A yonkou took you to get your fortune told."
"No. Not mine. His." You knew the man would love nothing more than a dry red, how his eyes darted to your and Crocodile's modest bar cart. "The King of Pirates found Shanks in a damn treasure chest, and at some point he met his birth family and learned his birth date but had no desire to meet them again to get the time, so he told this astrologer he wanted it—calculated?"
"Rectified." You gestured at your possible Perona charts.
"—To prove he wasn't lying. Because he's." Mihawk sighed. "March 9."
It took you less than a second to realize. "The same as yours."
You knew nothing of Shanks' character, just the physical qualities of his hair and one arm, and that your fool of an ex-captain likely meant to challenge him in that stupid alliance.
"Wait. So did he know his age before then?"
Mihawk inhaled through his nose, what would've been a snort of amusement from another man. "You doubt the Roger Pirates could count?" You shrugged. "He's younger than me," he conceded.
"Well, there you go. Those are entirely different charts. It's not like you're twins or anything. But," You frowned. "Rectification takes a lot of time. A lot of interviews." When you were able to sit Perona down long enough to focus, you more or less grilled her on each year of her life she could remember.
"Is that what they call it?"
"Over multiple meetings," you said, ignoring him. "Then did Shanks... bring you to each time?"
"We got thrown out. He tried to charm them into doing it quickly."
You pursed your lips, trying not to laugh. "There's been attempts to start astrologer's guilds or professional organizations, what have you," you said. "You two would be blacklisted."
"Good thing I have you."
You were friends who sometimes fucked and you thought of him more as Perona's, or even more Crocodile's, so the idea of being had by Dracule Mihawk was odd, but not unwelcome.
"Let's look at yours later," you said. "More in-depth. I have some thoughts."
"Like?"
"My roommate likes Saturnine people. And now that I'm closing in on Perona's..." You chose your words carefully. "I've historically only done synastry for failed relationships. Or troubled ones."
Mihawk's lips turned up in an almost-grin. "It's a date."