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the-obnoxious-sibling · 4 months

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in which buggy doesn’t sleep well, missed breakfast food so much in prison, tells tall tales, and schedules a—not a date. a… day to catch up with an old… person. shanks. whatever.

the next part to this story, which is a follow-up to this one, which was itself a second take at—actually, here’s a tag for all of the near miss stories & related talk, go there if you want the context. (i’ve linked to the chronological order sorting of the tag, so you should see the “thinking about near misses in east blue” post first.)

Buggy was still mad at Galdino hours later, when he got fed up with his feet being tripped over in the dark and the rest of him (sitting up in the rigging, sulking hiding just sitting) had gotten cold. But given the very limited space on the Red Force, it was either bunk with someone or sleep on the deck, and Buggy was not about to do that. The men—ugh, now Galdino had him doing it!—were way too excited about following Buggy’s every move, he shuddered to think what they might do at night. Assuming he could even get to sleep with all of them hovering like that.

So if he was bunking with someone, there was really only the one option: the only other guest on this ship who’d treated him like a human being.

But he wasn’t happy about it.

Galdino paid him no mind, using a borrowed mirror to inspect himself as he prepared for bed, applying a thin layer of wax along the edge of his hairline. When he was done with the mirror, he silently held it up so Buggy could look himself over. He used pretty long-lasting makeup, the better to survive bloody fistfights and brackish ocean spray—and some of it had even survived the sterilizing baths they dunked you in when you arrived at Impel Down! Buggy would write to the brand, to tell them to use that fact in their advertising, but that degree of longevity probably wasn’t a huge selling point now that Ivankov and his ilk had escaped the prison.

Anyway, nothing had happened today that could really mess it up. His face was fine.

…it could use a touch-up, though. Just to solidify the linework on the crossbones, make the edge of his lip really crisp. Buggy touched the corner of his lip, considering, and very much against his will recalled how it had felt for someone else to touch that part of his face.

It had been a long time.

Not so long that Shanks’ hand was the first to touch him since Shanks, mind you. But a long time all the same.

He scowled, and threw himself into bed. Touching up his makeup—and who, exactly, would he be doing that for?! That kind of thinking could wait until morning. When, hopefully, he would have recovered his sanity in full.

As he was drifting off, Buggy heard Galdino roll over and say, softly, “You may think of that guy as some dope you used to sail with, but fact is he’s an Emperor. One who’s taken an interest in you. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“And who asked you to do that?” Buggy muttered into his pillow.

“No one,” Galdino acknowledged. “But if I’m hitching my wagon to yours—and it sure looks like that’s what’s happening here—I want to make sure we aren’t about to ride off a cliff.”

With that grim visual in his head, Buggy sunk into an uneasy sleep.

The next day dawned warm and bright. Buggy had thoughtlessly picked a bed that sat under the one small window in the room, right where an early morning sunbeam would shine in his face. He groaned a protest, but unfortunately, once up he was up. Leaving Galdino to sleep his fill, he stretched, grumbled, and made himself presentable.

(This did not involve touching up his makeup in any way.)

A handful of Red-Haired Pirates were also up and about, though Buggy couldn’t tell how many were early risers and how many had been on watch overnight. A few nodded at him with the bleary eyes of hungover men. Uneasy at the acknowledgement, however small, Buggy ducked into the mess, praying that there would be something hot to eat at this hour.

Prayers were answered in the form of the ever-grinning Lucky Roux, who was setting out large pans of a few types of porridge under warming lamps, with toppings (both savory and sweet) laid out in small bowls. Buggy opted for oats with some dried fruit and syrup on top, something that would fill him up and leave a sweet aftertaste. Though he might go back for the rice porridge later if he could get a soft-boiled egg to go with it… oh, eggs. He’d missed eggs.

There were also two steaming pots of liquid sitting to one side, one a tisane that smelled oddly familiar—after a moment, Buggy remembered the hangover cure Rayleigh had sworn by, and had to bite back a nauseous stab of nostalgia. He went for the other, not caring what it was so long as it was hot. It turned out to be awfully bitter, so he stole a bit of the porridge syrup to sweeten it.

Loaded down with food and drink, Buggy set himself up next to the kitchen, facing the rest of the mess. No one would be able to sneak up on him but Roux, and the day a man that size could—

“Any special requests?”

Biting back a shriek, Buggy spun to see Roux poking his head through a small window between the kitchen and mess. “I’m no short-order cook,” he said with a grin, “but this early I’m happy to make people what they want, so long as I have the ingredients on hand.”

What Buggy really wanted was a hot dog. Fuck, he missed bread. And meat. But he didn’t want a cheffy take on it, he wanted the greasy sausage and halfway stale bun you got when you bought a hot dog at a boardwalk. Since that wasn't likely to happen… “Over-easy eggs and toast? Oh, and ham, or bacon, whatever meat you’ve got.”

“That, I can do.”

Buggy dug into his oats, watching other men slowly creep into the mess in varying states of wakefulness and dress. The most tired looking came straight to the kitchen, where Roux already had plates waiting—the night watch men, then, being rewarded for that unpleasant duty. That was smart, Buggy thought, reluctant but firm in his admiration. If he ever got a really top-tier chef in his crew, that’d be the way to get people to do the worst chores: give them good food after.

“Building Snake says we're making landfall this afternoon?” one of the night watch guys said to another. Buggy tried to lean in without making it obvious that he was eavesdropping. “Seriously, that soon?”

“We need to resupply if we're gonna keep housing these guys for much longer,” the other replied, glancing over at a cluster of Whitebeard Pirates around one table, Marco’s distinctive tuft of fiery orange hair poking out of the center. “We buy goods today, give all of them shore leave so they aren't in the way while we load up tomorrow, and if the winds favor us we offload the clown and his troupe the next day.”

Buggy twitched. What now?

“Oh, did Rockstar find the Buggy Pirates already?” Roux asked, handing the pair of men their plates. “When’s he gonna learn he doesn't have to work so hard to impress us?” The three of them shared a laugh over this overachiever who’d apparently found Buggy’s ship in under a day. (The hell were they doing so close to the Calm Belt?) Leaning down to hand Buggy his requested dish, Roux said, “Only three days from your crew! That must be a relief, huh?”

Ignoring the startled looks on the night watch pair’s faces as they ran off—yes, Buggy had been here the whole time, so good of you to finally notice—Buggy grabbed the plate and breathed in deeply. Eggs soft as silk, bacon just the far side of well-done, toast triangles gleaming with butter… god damn, but it was worth being awake at this hour to get quality food. “It’ll be nice to be home,” he said around a mouthful, “but I’ll miss this.”

Roux burst into big, booming laughter. “You guys! Always so appreciative of good food. I’d expected to rate higher than prison fare, but I’m flattered to hear I’m also better than your usual!”

In the middle of stabbing the yolks of his eggs with a sharp corner of toast , Buggy squinted suspiciously up at Roux. “What do you mean by ‘you guys?’”

“I mean Roger Pirates, of course!”

Buggy blinked.

“Shanks is always happy to eat whatever, but he can’t hide how much happier he is when I make his favorites. And that Silvers Rayleigh…” Roux shook his head.

Buggy nearly choked on an egg. “You’ve met Rayleigh?!”

“Oh sure, about ten years back? We’d barely been on the Grand Line six months, just hit Sabaody and were debating whether to move forward to the New World or stay in Paradise a little longer, and suddenly Shanks was running off to talk to this old man. Of course I had to feed him, if just to prove to the guy that I deserved my job. He really—” Roux sniffed the air, spun around and yelped, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

So that was how they had Rayleigh’s hangover cure on this ship. “Sabaody, huh…?” Buggy wouldn't have thought he’d end up there, with how often world nobles visited the place. Did Rayleigh have a death wish? Or was he just old enough at this point to escape notice? Buggy snorted. Lucky him.

A storm of feet came thundering from out on the deck, drawing the attention of most of the room—until the mess door flung open to reveal a cluster of men in ragged Impel Down uniforms. They spotted Buggy and cried out, “Captain Buggy! There you are!”

This got eye rolls and looks of annoyance all around, which Buggy almost wanted to join in on. Seriously, did these guys need their hands held on the way to the bathroom too?

“Here I am,” he said dryly, sipping at his drink. “Don’t you people remember what mealtimes are? Where else would I be at this hour?” Ignoring their responses (“Of course! Captain Buggy’s so smart!” “So logical!”), he edged a little closer to the wall, having a feeling he was about to get crushed.

The men did flock to his side the second they were able—attempting to offer choice bits of food to him, like he didn’t clearly already have something better on his plate—but their devotion was thankfully balanced by respect, and they didn’t sit so close he couldn’t breathe.

They were still totally incapable of keeping their mouths shut, though.

“Captain Buggy, will you tell us of another of your adventures?”

Buggy bit back a grimace as pirates less enamored with him gave his group a dirty look. Yeah, he wouldn’t want to be in tight quarters with them either, if he were hungover and not a Buggy fan. But how could he ignore their request? “Sure! Anything for you guys!” What stories hadn’t he told yet…? “Have I told you the story of… how my crew acquired our fiercest member, Richie the Lion?”

“A lion?!” “No, Captain Buggy!”

“Alright, then. It all started when my brave crew was exploring a jungle island, years ago…” The actual story of how they’d gotten Richie was nothing special—it was really the story of how he’d met Mohji, a mistreated performer in an East Blue circus where Buggy had hidden out until the first time someone mentioned his nose, at which point he wrecked the place. But who here would know if he adapted the story of a day he’d spent on a jungle island with Captain Roger and Shanks? (…besides the obvious person, of course.) So he wove a tale of cleverness and might, of Captain Buggy spotting a dangerous beast that had a crying child trapped up in a tree and tricking it into pursuing him instead, only for the lion to be instantly tamed by his sheer power… and of course, Buggy being richly rewarded for the rescue.

“And that’s why we named him Richie,” Buggy concluded. “After the riches and fortune he brought me that day.”

“How touching!” “How bold!” “How amazing!”

How exhausting. “Now,” Buggy said, mopping up a smear of egg yolk with his last corner of toast, “are you satisfied for the moment, or do you need another—” Glancing up, he nearly choked on his bite. Shanks was standing in the midst of the men, sipping from a steaming hot mug and watching Buggy with an amused smile on his face. That fucker definitely remembered being stuck up a tree with a lion clawing at their feet. “Shanks! W-what do you want?”

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” he said, glancing down at the man sitting across the table from Buggy. It seemed the men had been so captivated by Buggy’s storytelling that they hadn’t noticed Shanks either; now that they had, they quickly moved to accommodate him. Taking the suddenly empty seat, he set down his mug—Buggy’s nose wrinkled up, it was the hangover tisane—and leaned his chin on his fist. “If you’re taking requests, how about when we first met Oden? That’s a good story.”

“I—that—” Like hell Shanks just wanted a story.

Lucky Roux got Buggy’s attention, and held out a plate clearly meant for Shanks; it was the same kind of breakfast he’d favored as a child, down to the diced tomatoes perched atop the eggs—originally a deterrent to keep Buggy from stealing his food, at some point it had become a highlight of the dish for Shanks, the freak.

…maybe he did just want a story. For all that he was an Emperor now, Shanks didn’t seem to have changed much as a person. Buggy passed the plate along to Shanks, and tried to relax. “That is a good one.”

Turning to the men watching this exchange wide-eyed, Buggy barked out, “Now, who among you swabs recognizes the name of Kozuki Oden, once heir to the shogunate of Wano?!” This got a couple of looks of recognition, but mostly confusion—except for, from the far side of the room, a few angry grumbles. Buggy laughed. “Don’t tell me the Whitebeards still hold a grudge? Just because our crews fought for three days, and Oden chose to come with us in the end?”

This garnered a far more impressed reaction from the ex-prisoner crowd, and some narrow-eyed looks from the Whitebeards. Oh, they definitely still held a grudge. But Shanks was smiling ever so slightly, and that was enough to make Buggy smirk and say, “Well, feel free to offer corrections if you think I’m telling the story wrong.”

And then he told the most overblown, exaggerated version of events he possibly could.

Some of the Whitebeard Pirates threw out corrections—and insults against Buggy’s memory and honesty—but Buggy gave as good as he got, Shanks occasionally chimed in with falsely innocuous comments like “that’s not how I remember it” to their corrections, and the story was all the better for the pushback. That was the thing with lying: the larger lie sounded more believable when someone objected to small details, because your audience assumed that everything that hadn’t been corrected must be true.

For all the insults and slander tossed around about dead men, the mood in the room was significantly lighter by the time Buggy finished the story. Most of the Red-Haired Pirates had left, their duties for the morning calling, but the former prisoners and Whitebeard Pirates lingered to hear Buggy out until the end, with Oden and his family sailing off on the Oro Jackson, Whitebeard’s men calling out fond farewells and complaints at his disloyalty in equal measure.

Even Marco the Phoenix was convinced to speak up at that point, saying, “Pops never forgave Roger for that, yoi,” with a slight, sad smile.

“For stealing Oden?” Buggy snorted a laugh. “If you wanted him to stick around, you should’ve gone to the last island yourselves! That man wanted adventure, and we were going on the greatest one imaginable.”

Marco protested—Oden had been like family to Whitebeard, didn’t that mean something?—and with the story complete and the breakfast hour long passed, the crowd began to disperse. (They’d learned yesterday that people who lingered in the mess tended to get roped into dishwashing duty, whether they were crew aboard the Red Force or not.) A couple people still remained: Shanks, who’d spent so much time egging on the Whitebeards that he’d scarcely touched his food; Marco, going back for a third or fourth cup of the not-tisane; and a few especially devoted ex-prisoners, staring starry-eyed at Buggy.

“The last island…” One of them breathed. “Captain Buggy, what’s it like?”

Buggy blinked. “Laugh Tale?” He glanced at Shanks, who was watching him with a perfectly neutral expression, then down at the bitter dregs left in his cup. What to say? Buggy flushed. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—lie about this. “I, uh, I don’t know.”

“What?!”

“We didn’t go,” Shanks said, getting a grateful look from Buggy and surprise from the rest of the room. “Buggy got sick, and I stayed behind to look after him.” This won Shanks some undeserved admiration from Buggy’s fans—what a sacrifice he’d made, and for Captain Buggy’s sake! Yeah, right.

…well.

Well.

What other reason could he have had, to stay behind?

Galdino’s (terrible, awful) words from yesterday popped up in Buggy’s head. Gah, surely not that! Surely he hadn’t—not back then. Surely he didn’t now, for that matter! Buggy grimaced. It wasn’t like he could just ask, not around all these people.

Not around them. But maybe…

“Shanks, I—”

“Listen, Buggy…”

They blinked, dumbfounded. After a moment’s silence, Shanks gestured for Buggy to go ahead.

Buggy scratched at an itch along his jawline. It would be nice to be back on the Big Top, where he could get something like a clean shave again. But before that… if he could just get the question out. He gritted his teeth. Why was asking for things so hard? “Yesterday, you said you’d like to sit down and catch up if you weren’t so busy. If you really meant that… I hear tomorrow’s gonna be a shore day, at least for people who don’t have a real role on your ship, so I was thinking…” Buggy shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe we could do that? Can you spare an hour for me?”

“Yeah!” Shanks grinned, so wide and bright Buggy could hardly bear to look at it. “Yeah, I’d love that. But forget an hour, I can give you the whole day.” When Buggy frowned, puzzled, Shanks explained, “I was about to ask you to spend time with me.”

Buggy laughed under his breath. “Figures.” All those nerves for nothing! If he’d just kept his mouth shut a few seconds longer, Shanks would’ve asked, and then Buggy could’ve looked like he was doing him a favor by giving him exactly what Buggy wanted. Oh, well. Turning to the men hovering behind him, Buggy snapped, “You hear that?! You boys are gonna have to find something else to do tomorrow, I’m gonna be too busy to hang around telling you stories of my greatness!”

“Yessir, Captain Buggy!” (“Wow! An elite captain-to-captain meeting!”)

“And if any of you dare to follow or interrupt us, you’ll live to regret it! Spread the word!”

The men disappeared obediently. Buggy let himself bask for a moment—god, but it was nice to be listened to. Even if they did take it to extremes. And even if they only did it because they thought Buggy was a pirate on Captain Roger’s level, and not just a kid the guy had taken a liking to. And even if… with a little sigh, Buggy turned back around. Gathering up his dishes—even if he managed to avoid dishwashing duty today, clearing his place was the least he could do—Buggy glanced up at Shanks and froze at the look on his face. That fond little smile… heat rushed to Buggy’s cheeks, and he groaned, shoving a hand in Shanks’ face.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

“Like what?” Shanks laughed, pushing Buggy’s hand out of the way, still looking at him like…

“Like—” Buggy remembered Galdino’s words and violently shoved the memory down. He remembered a similar look on Shanks’ face, years ago, and violently shoved that memory down too. Getting to his feet, he floated his stack of plates through the kitchen window and bolted. “Just don’t!”

But even as he left, he knew Shanks’ expression hadn’t changed. He was still looking at Buggy like he liked him.

And Buggy had just agreed to spend the day with him tomorrow.

What had he been thinking?

#notfic #every day this thing gets less and less notficcy… i’ve capitalized things this time (gasp)#well ao3 crossposting *is* gonna happen so i might as well make editing for that eventuality easier on me #the near miss fics #one piece #shuggy #shanks #buggy

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