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The conditions for the night were simple: attend meeting, arrange trade, leave with their relationship with the other party still intact. No underhanded bartering; no insults; and definitely no episodes of violent sneezes that ‘accidentally’ set alight the shirt of a man big enough to snap the spine of the sneezer.
That was it. Straightforward. Smooth-sailing. In and out the back of the opium den in under ten minutes, taking the stink of the smoke back to the Moby along with the incredible amount of gold they would be hauling.
Don't ask what they were selling, what they had stolen and shipped from one of the most hardened places in the New World. Just don't. Better for everyone's blood pressure to leave that sordid detail to the imagination.
All had gone according to plan right up to the point where Thatch remembered he had agreed to bring Ace again, apparently not having learned from the sneezing incident some weeks back. Ace, who had not taken the numerous amounts of hints from everyone involved, had dragged Deuce along too, who had clung to Mihal for support, who had grabbed Skull by the scruff of the neck and hauled him into the little lifeboat as well. Where a party of four – Thatch, Ace, and two other men from the fourth division – had been more than sufficient manpower for the exchange, now they numbered seven for reasons that didn’t extend beyond oh go on, Thatch.
Which, of course, was not a problem (surprisingly). Assuming the extra bodies to be security muscle (a line which had made Thatch snort hard enough to fire something disgusting out of his nose), they had all been waved into the back office through the maze of silk and pipes, Deuce gagging, Mihal constantly readjusting his glasses, and Skull promptly asking for a suck on that there stick.
Again, not a problem. Thatch waved them off as new recruits, gently correcting the hilarious assumption that Deuce and Mihal could be muscle – nothing to worry about really, just inexperienced and young and please, big scary men with strength enough to make himself and Ace sweat bullets, just hand over the money and put down the knives.
That was when the further invitation was unexpectedly extended and, as guests, the pirates were offered the chance to join the rest of the family and patrons out front and, for lack of a better term, have fun. Not for long; not to arrange further deals or to make any other kinds of transactions… but to relax.
All had been fine; all had been fun, with Skull even getting his wish and inhaling enough smoke to kill a lesser man from the stick, as he called it, of a particularly beautiful woman with hair long enough to strangle a man.
All was fine and wonderful... until Ace found the alcohol.
What happened when alcohol and opium mixed? Thatch knew, of course – he was in his 40s and a pirate, for goodness’ sake; of course he'd made that mistake before – but Ace didn't, and neither did Deuce, and so Thatch didn't do the good brotherly thing and step in when he should have, instead watching in fascinated horror as the nightmare unfolded.
(A lie: the one that he would later tell Whitebeard and Marco in utter earnest after depositing his two young crewmates at the feet of their captain.
The truth: impressing the Still Very Scary men with the knives had taken priority, and Thatch hadn't noticed the drink spilling down Deuce's chest as he coughed, nor the smoke blown out of Ace's lungs with a decorative flash of fire, until not even a franticly waved signal at Mihal could have saved them.)
All it had taken was Ace innocently stating, “well, if you’re okay with alcohol, I’m guessin’ you’re okay with this, too?” and for Deuce, painfully obviously not wanting to lose face, to bluster and tsk and inhale too much too quickly when the pipe was passed over.
Thus, the loss of any credibility they had gained through their transaction. In the space of an hour, the two boys had not only managed to embarrass their crew with very loud, very elaborate stories that Thatch suspected to be fake, but had both tried to undress (why) and given up (again, why), resulting in them collapsing in a pile of slurred speech and limbs.
“This is powerful shit,” Thatch said with a sigh, watching Deuce absently pat the top of Ace's head with a vague, sleepy smile spread across his face, “both the drugs and the drink.”
“You don't say,” Mihal said stiffly, edging away from the barely clothed lady with the flowing black hair and the smoking pipe. “I have never seen Ace-san attempt to draw a portrait of Deuce-san using only his fire and the air around him. I'm concerned he will start crying the longer he fails to succeed.”
“Nah, he's too happy for that right now,” Thatch said, and, sure enough, Ace started giggling right on cue, taking the gold pipe from Deuce's hand and bringing it to his lips.
“I'm far too sober to be witnessing this,” Mihal sighed, frowning in Skull’s direction as he was discreetly led out of the room by the woman he had familiarized himself with very quickly. “Next thing you know, those two—” he nodded at Ace and Deuce and how Deuce had started prodding Ace's cheeks to count his freckles, “—will be being sick while trying to mount each other.”
“Yeah, probably, if they don't pass out first,” Thatch grunted, sipping at his own drink – a vile thing made up of too-strong whiskey and something nauseatingly sweet that really shouldn't have been mixed in. “I didn't think you drank, anyway? Weren't you the only one from your old crew not to dabble in the home-brewed beer?”
“Yes,” was Mihal's terse reply, “I quit when I joined the crew... but this,” he cast a hand out to the scene in front of them, and off to where the two from the fourth division lay slumped in a pile of cushions, expressions ones of bliss, “is enough to make me want to start again.”
Honestly? Thatch couldn't argue with that.
“We should go, anyway,” Thatch said with a sigh, heaving himself up to his feet, “we don't want to outstay our welcome; these guys feel like they could turn at any—”
“—Skull-san has just left the room. I don't want to fetch him, if it's all the same to you.”
Thatch scratched at his beard, humming. It was difficult to muster a coherent thought in the haze of smoke and murmured conversation around him – not to mention Ace and Deuce on the floor were distracting as all hell, what with their gentle back and forth swaying to a tune that only existed in their heads, their occasional comment, their answering hums of agreement.
“Here's a thought,” Thatch said – then, raising his voice slightly, he continued, “hey Ace, Deuce – you boys havin' fun?”
Their expressions were vacant, relaxed, as they looked round in unison, blinking at Thatch through the swirling gloom.
“It's Thatch,” Ace said happily, pointing at him.
“Yeah buddy, it's Thatch,” Thatch agreed gently, watching how Deuce picked at the pants halfway down his thighs where he had given up trying to get undressed, “and Thatchie was wondering if maybe you two would like to go get Skull from the room next door – whaddaya say?”
“Are we leaving?” Deuce asked, slumping against Ace when sitting up seemed to become too much of an effort. “I don't wanna leave; my face is missing.”
“You really gotta find that, Deu,” Ace said seriously, “you need that for like, life and stuff.”
“Right?”
“Right.”
“Nah, we're not going anywhere,” Thatch said consolingly, knowing better than to burst that bubble prematurely, “but I was just thinkin' how nice it would be to have Skull in here with us, and since you two love him so much, he'd be happiest seeing you rather than me.”
He was cruel – a fact that Mihal wasted no time in pointing out when Ace and Deuce finally got to their feet and hitched their pants back up with giggles and shoves to shoulders, intent on tracking down their crewmate. He was cruel, but not without reason – the Scary Men were starting to get Scarier, now that Thatch checked on them, talking between each other in low whispers and pointed looks at the tattoo on Ace's back as he collapsed through the doorway with a loud hiss of, “Skully! Baby! Where'd you go, darling?”
The nods and the looks and the running of thumbs to blades made little sense to Thatch, given that there had been no question as to which crew they belonged to or anything of the sort – but with Deuce's ensuing shriek, Ace's laugh of, “oh shit, lookit y'all go!”, and the pretty woman screaming for them to get out, Thatch quite agreed that it was time to collect his band of merry fools and hightail it out of there.
In all fairness, no one had warned any of them not to fuck the woman who later turned out to be the eldest daughter of the head of the country’s mafia. At least this tale would give Marco a laugh later on.