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Buggy had been dragged into the relationship 6 months before he’d settled enough to watch the way his business partners turned tormenters turned bedroom partners interacted with each other.
He’d seen the papers years before, grainy pictures taken in a grainy bar, Mihawk leant on Crocodile’s arm. They were a little younger, back in their warlord days, Crocodile’s eyebags lighter and his gold tooth not yet in place, Mihawk’s sideburns still a little too big for his face. Buggy hadn’t taken the pictures seriously; the comments from the columnists were ridiculous and painfully unfunny, and half the pictures didn’t even look like either of them, just some tall dude with a goth on his arm. Could be anyone!
Moving in with them, their relationship still sailed straight over Buggy’s head. Sure, they tag-teamed bullying him, but his overzealous crew had embarrassed them both. Sure, Mihawk would sit in Crocodile’s office, sipping his wine while Crocodile worked, but it was Mihawk’s mansion he could go where he liked. Sure, Crocodile built up little sand paths and walls making it clear to the Buggy Crew where they could and couldn’t go on the island, but it also kept the Buggy Crew away from irritating him. Every little thing they did together, Buggy could find a rational explanation for.
His rationalisations seemed stupid in light of the revelation they’d dated on and off for years. Of course, the two scariest bastards Buggy had ever had to work with would be sucking each other’s faces. That was just his damned luck.
Of course, the two sexiest bastards Buggy had ever had to work with would be sucking each other’s faces. That was just his damned luck.
In the weeks following his being carted into their bed, bath and relationship, Buggy was walking on eggshells, convinced the slighted misstep would crush the patience they were suddenly showing him. The pair seemed to be taking it in turns to lift Buggy off the eggshells to let the other sweep them away, and then Buggy would go kicking the eggshells back over with some stupid comment or joke.
He wasn’t sure when the panic stopped but it was probably over a large skillet of shakshuka, a mix of spiced vegetables with eggs cracked into little wells, and a sheet of knotted bread to go with it. Buggy wasn’t sure how Mihawk managed to pull food like this together in the hour he got up before him and Crocodile, but it was impressive.
Buggy took a knob of the bread and dipped it in the egg, avoiding the tomato-based concoction around it. Then he panicked that he’d look greedy only eating the eggs, and scooped up a chunk of onion that was only half-submerged in that red hell-juice.
It was nowhere near as bad he’d feared. It was earthy, a deep warmth swelling to fill his mouth and nose as he chewed. The onion was sweetly caramelized, flavour climbing over the plain bread and only just losing the valiant fight with the tomato.
Crocodile grunted in appreciation, “This is amazing, my sweet.”
Buggy froze, brain flatlined. A phrase so soft in Crocodile’s mouth, that gold canine inlaid with emerald, that throat marinaded in tobacco smoke, that tongue that spat venom as vicious as his hook. My sweet shouldn’t sound so casual in his voice.
“Clown?” Crocodile’s voice was back to normal and dragged Buggy’s brain with it, “You’re not eating.”
“I… uh…” Buggy panicked, “I’m not super hungry today.”
“Odd,” Mihawk commented, “You’re usually insatiable on a morning.”
Buggy flushed; did Mihawk think he was greedy? “Yeah, I should probably calm down, right?”
“I rather took it as a compliment.”
Buggy stared down at his plate, a little puddle of tomato and breadcrumbs on the china from where he’d broken it off to avoid eating it. “I’m not a fan of tomatoes,” he admitted, “It’s great, I really appreciate you making it, but I can’t get past the tomato taste.”
Mihawk nodded. “There’s still ham from yesterday, if you’d rather have a sandwich.”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” Buggy got up to head for the fridge.
Mihawk rose with him, opening the fridge before Buggy could reach it. The fridge was impressively stocked and neatly organised.
“I’ll make it myself; you’ve done enough cooking this morning,” Buggy said.
“Sit down, Star Clown,” Mihawk said, “I don’t want you messing my kitchen up.”
Buggy grumbled, but flinched to obey as Mihawk took up a knife. He slid back into his seat, grabbing his coffee. Mihawk took a pan down and lit a burner beneath it, and Buggy didn’t question him.
Crocodile had pulled the shakshuka closer to himself, sand powers ignoring the heat. He dug in, egg yolk dripping down his hand.
“Shakshuka is one of Crocodile’s favourite breakfasts,” Mihawk said, “So it’s on regular rotation, especially as it uses vegetables up well. Perhaps baked eggs would be more your calibre?”
“You don’t have to make something special for me,” Buggy stammered.
“It’s hardly special. It’s a pan with eggs in it. The only extra work would be the washing up, which is one of your chores anyway. It makes no difference to me, and no sense for you to refuse to eat.”
Buggy stared at his hands. “I guess.”
Mihawk pressed a piece of bread into the pan and stacked ham, cheese and onions on top before topping with a second piece of bread and weighing it down under a lid strategically too small for the pan.
“Darling,” Mihawk tutted, “You’re making a mess.”
Buggy’s brain flatlined again.
Crocodile chuckled. “Take it as a compliment.”
“It’s a compliment from the clown. From you it’s just sloppy.”
“The fuck you mean?” Buggy demanded, brain not catching up to his mouth.
“That Crocodile tends to be uptight with his compliments and you are far more generous.”
Buggy swallowed a nervous joke in his coffee, something about being happy to give Mihawk anything Crocodile wouldn’t.
“Oh, do I not praise you enough, good-looking?” Crocodile said.
“Don’t layer it on now,” Mihawk rolled his eyes.
“Do you want compliments or not?”
Mihawk ignored him, turning back to the stove. He flipped the sandwich onto a clean plate, cut a diagonal across it and put it down in front of Buggy. The crust was a yellow gold, and the cheese oozed and pulled as Buggy picked one half up.
Crocodile put his hook around Mihawk’s arm and tugged him closer, smirk in place. He had a mushy mountain of tomato, egg and pepper balanced precariously on a piece of bread, the juices soaking through the dough. He held the piece up to Mihawk’s mouth.
“Stop it, idiot,” Mihawk chastised, “You’ll make more of a mess.”
“You want more compliments,” Crocodile moved the piece closer to Mihawk’s face, “There’s no bigger compliment on your food than you enjoying it. Open up before it falls apart.”
Mihawk rolled his eyes but complied, having to jerk forward to catch the morsel before it broke.
“You see,” Crocodile dipped the bread back into a broken yolk, “Why would you need compliments from me when your own tongue can taste your brilliance better than I can describe?”
“You sap,” Mihawk retorted.
“Only when you want it, my sweet.”
Buggy sat, bread disintegrating in his mouth, pull of cheese connecting the remaining sandwich to his lips. Mihawk pressed a kiss to Crocodile’s forehead and took up a piece of bread for himself.
“Jester,” Crocodile said, “Are you still pretending you’re not hungry?”
Buggy swallowed his mouthful whole, shaking his head. “No, just… brain’s not working this morning… y’know how it is…”
“Huh. I didn’t know you had one of those.”
“Dick,” Buggy muttered.
“No, I know you have one of those.”
Buggy blinked at him. Crocodile stared back, calm and even. A snort of laughter choked out of Buggy’s throat, and he clamped a hand over his mouth to hold it back. Crocodile smirked and dunked his bread again.
Mihawk slid into his seat, taking up a piece of bread for himself. The shakshuka was more than half gone already, and in the following weeks Buggy would observe that certain meals brought this kind of gastronomic eagerness out of Crocodile. At his desk, he would eat slowly and tidily, but away from his paperwork he devoured food like he’d never been introduced to cutlery, especially if Mihawk had made it.
Later, Buggy was helping Crocodile measure up for a new waistcoat. By this point, Buggy had revealed his sewing skills and his thriftiness in curating his own wardrobe like a magpie drawn to acid-bright colours. He’d offered to just fix Crocodile’s waistcoat up after a newly-hatched lemon-wani had slid off the table, latching her teeth and claws into Crocodile’s clothes as he barely managed to catch her. The acid seeping from her skin had also left an impressive bleach stain. The only thing that was going to fix that damage was to cut the piece out and replace it, which was going to be difficult without a matching fabric, and even then with the weaving of black, navy and gold there would still be a noticeable border on the mend. While Buggy quite liked the visible mend look, a stubborn determination not to let anything go, Crocodile was not so keen on it.
Buggy stepped up onto the stool to reach Crocodile’s chest. Crocodile was in his shirt, a fitted piece with darts down the sides to offer structure. The buttons were shiny little pearls, the fabric a soft airy linen, the cravat a charming lavender in the collar.
Nervous, Buggy found himself humming a tune from the Goa Kingdom. He adjusted the tape against Crocodile’s chest until it was even.
“Put your arms down,” he said.
Crocodile’s chest shifted as he moved, and Buggy dipped his head to hide the schoolboy blush that bloomed under his make-up. He kept humming as he peered at the number.
Buggy stepped off his stool to jot the number down. “There. Exactly the same as last time you measured yourself.”
Sure enough, Crocodile had a few pages in one of his notebooks to track his measurements. He only measured himself when he needed new clothes, which was less often than Buggy expected. And yet his size and shape barely changed.
“Star Clown,” Mihawk called. He’d sat and watched them, glass of wine in hand, “What is that you’re humming?”
“Sorry,” Buggy mumbled.
“I didn’t ask you to stop, I asked you what it was. I recall one of the nuns whistling it at times.”
“It’s a children’s song from the Goa Kingdom,” Buggy said, “Some bullshit about kings and queens putting their servants to work to keep them warm as they tease and flirt. Some of the older kids would sing a rude version about the queen getting sick of the king and fucking the servants and the king executing them all.”
“A charming little ditty,” Crocodile commented.
“Or a charming little dilly. Or diddle. Or neither of those things. Depends on where in the Goa Kingdom, it’s a dense little place.”
“What are you babbling about, Bonny Buffo?”
“The song. I get the words mixed up, but it doesn’t seem to really matter so long as you sing ‘dilly-dilly’ in the middle of the line. No idea what it means, though.”
“A ‘dilly’ would be an especially good example of something,” Mihawk said, “So this Cognac Amontillado is a dilly of a wine.”
Buggy blinked a few times. He took a deep breath and sang, lightly off key with lack of effort;
“Lavender green, dilly-dilly, lavender blue,
You must love me, dilly-dilly, ‘cause I love you.
When you are king, dilly-dilly, I will be queen,
Lavender blue, dilly-dilly, lavender green.”
Mihawk sipped his wine. “No, I suppose that definition wouldn’t make sense in the song.”
Buggy huffed a laugh. “I guess it’s just a noise.”
“Why have you got a love song on your brain, Little Lout?” Crocodile said.
Crocodile had taken to calling him these odd names, throwing two alliterative words together. Mihawk had stuck to Star Clown and Pretty Star.
“It’s the lavender,” Buggy said. He reached up to touch a rumpled corner of Crocodile’s cravat into his collar, “The song gets stuck in my head when you wear lavender. You look good in it. Not a lot of people can pull lavender off, but it suits you.”
Buggy’s gaze flicked from the cravat to the wearer’s face. The blush clung in the scar, darkening it to a beetroot red.
“Shit, sorry,” Buggy averted his gaze to the floor.
Mihawk huffed a chuckle. “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said, “The Good Sir just trips when people compliment him.”
“Shut up, Teeth,” Crocodile growled.
“I’m sorry, am I embarrassing you, Lavender?”
“The fuck kind of nickname is ‘Lavender’?”
“The fuck kind of nickname is ‘Teeth’?”
“You both kinda suck at nicknames,” Buggy said, “You could both do with more friends, I think that might help with the names thing.”
Crocodile gave Buggy a gentle smack to the head. “You could do to watch your mouth, Pretty Punchinello. My nicknames are perfectly reasonable.”
“You pull mine out your ass, and you just call Hawk ‘my sweet’!”
“I also call him ‘good-looking’.”
“That’s a compliment, not a nickname, Croccy.”
Crocodile grinned. “He’s a Haki user. Good-looking, and good-at-looking.”
Buggy groaned, and it melted into a laugh.
“Even the Clown thinks that’s terrible,” Mihawk said.
“It’s so bad it’s good.”
“Don’t encourage him.”
“Fine. I’ll encourage you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You,” Buggy sat down on the bench by Mihawk, “Just call him Darling. And you call me Star Clown – which I called myself already. You have no originality.”
“I’ve never claimed to have originality,” Mihawk said.
“Don’t need it when you have a big-ass sword,” Crocodile commented. He pulled his waistcoat back on, not his ruined one but a black number with a grey pinstripe.
“Precisely.”
“But that’s boring!” Buggy whined.
“Oh?” Mihawk turned to him, big yellow eyes burning into Buggy’s skin, “I bore you, clown?”
“That’s not what I meant!” Buggy flushed crimson.
“Then what did you mean?”
“I… uh… Nothing. Just forget it.”
Mihawk hummed and finished his glass. “I am not good at nicknames. I call you Pretty Star, as you are pretty and the star of your circus. I thought this was sufficient.”
“No, it’s great. Makes sense now you say it, suits you.”
“And for the Good Sir; you’ve seen how he how he gets when he has a way to help you. He’s such a darling.”
Buggy looked Crocodile up and down. His help was slightly terrifying: lifting Buggy to move him where he wanted him, confiscating what he was holding to adjust it, handing him gifts and standing over him as he opened it. As scary as he was, his gifts were thoughtful, he waited for Buggy to ask for his help before giving it, and he kept Buggy updated with where he was moving him to. They were small kindnesses, yet kindnesses they were.
“Hey, Croccy,” Buggy said, “Are you doing anything with that waistcoat?”
“Tossing it out,” Crocodile answered.
“Can I have it? I can trim the damaged piece out and put it back together for a waistcoat for me or Hawky.”
“You complain about my unoriginality,” Mihawk commented, “Yet call us ‘Croccy’ and ‘Hawky’.”
“Hey, uh….” Buggy stammered.
Crocodile chuckled. He sat between them, Buggy having to shuffle across out of the way. “Don’t fight about it, asshats. There’s no need for sappy nicknames. I have enough of a job keeping up with names for the agents, I don’t need to remember extra names for the pair of you.”
Buggy snorted. He took Crocodile’s arm over the back of the love seat as an invitation to snuggle into his side, and he took the invitation cautiously. On Crocodile’s other side, Mihawk poured himself another wine.
“Yes you may take the waistcoat,” Crocodile said. His hook rested on Buggy’s shoulder, glinting in the corner of his eye.
Buggy smiled, curling his legs up to snuggle closer into Crocodile. Mihawk put his wine down with a dull thud and propped his legs up on Crocodile’s lap. Crocodile rested his hand on Mihawk’s shins, a short moment of responsibility-free calm.