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Drake eats in a deliberate sort of way, as if he’s intentionally timing his bites. When Hina had first met him and Smoker, back before they were full-fledged Marines, he’d always eat last and always eat fastest, as if he was afraid both that someone else wouldn’t have enough to start with, or they’d still see he had some and take it. She hadn’t realized until later that he probably had been, a relic of a time he’d rather not speak about. He can afford otherwise now--he has been able to for a long time, probably, though there are more stretches about which HIna doesn’t know and about which Drake doesn’t speak and she and Smoker don’t usually ask, and about which she’s trying not to think so much. She adds another beri to her mental swear jar; it’s the first this morning, and already there’s enough in there to buy Drake something nice as a gift. Not an apology (she will not apologize for thinking of him as he is and how he had appeared, a part of his life to which she had been party, if under false premises) but an acknowledgement that Drake had never been that person and she knows it.
She thinks of him again, in the outfit that had always made him look a little like an oversized beetle, shiny black leather, masked eyes and a hat almost like horns--a vindictive thought she’d clung onto to keep her sane, like a float keeping her just far enough above water to have enough strength to hold on, because if not, then she’d have to let all of it tip her back and let go and sink down. And that pirate, who had fought and wounded and killed Marines in the name of piracy and injustice, of other pirates with higher bounties, all in the service of a greater goal, had existed, in some capacity. Drake had done all of those things, however reluctantly, for whatever purpose. Hina would not want to be in his position.
But he is here, eating breakfast with her, maskless, hatless, cutting his pancakes into even rows and picking them up piece by piece with his fork across from her at the splintering table in Smoker’s cabin, and Hina knows he is a man who had made the difficult choice to leave and the perhaps more difficult choice to return with the weight of his actions on his shoulders heavier than the justice he wears again on his back. Outside the porthole, the shadow of a seabird passes. Drake watches long after it’s gone and the only thing left to see is an aching blue sky, his fork still moving mechanically from plate to mouth.
A knock sounds at the door.
“Yes?” says Hina.
“It’s me,” says Smoker, pushing the door with his hip, three coffee cups in hand. “Tashigi just made.”
“Aren’t you glad she didn’t decide to be a barista?” says Hina.
“Can’t see her doing that,” Smoker says, setting the cups on the table.
“Thanks,” says Drake.
“Thank Tashigi,” says Smoker.
Drake still takes his coffee with milk and no sugar, the same as he had before. As he pours it in, the milk swirls and undulates, breaking at the surface and turning the color of his coffee to a softer shade. Smoker sits down between the two of them, his knee knocking Hina’s, and she hears the other one knocking Drake’s. The three of them together are too big for this setup (something Hina is quite familiar with, although she is not usually the smallest).
“How’s the barometer?” says Drake.
“Still the same,” says Smoker. “For now.”
(They’d plowed through a typhoon the previous day, and Drake had taken the wheel, pushing the boat forward though the wind and waves without sight--without him, they could have done it, but it would have been dicier, and at least five of Smoker’s men had asked her yesterday when Drake would be transferring to G-5.)
Drake nods. His last pancake is almost gone. He sees Hina’s eyes flick from him to his fork, and holds the fork out.
“Do you want some?”
Hina nods and opens her mouth, leaning forward until she can close it around the fork’s head; the piece of pancake is dry and bland (she prefers hers drenched in butter and syrup) but it’s worth it because Drake had offered. It’s perhaps even more worth it when both he and Smoker look at her as if she’d put something else in her mouth (probably that and that she’s wearing one of Smoker’s shirts half-unbuttoned; there’s not much that the two of them can’t see, not that they shouldn’t be used to it--though not that Hina’s complaining that she still has that effect on them sometimes). It’s too late for her to really exaggerate, but she lets the fork drag out of her mouth and can’t stop herself from grinning at the two of them.
“Hina likes it when you’re easy.”
“We’re not,” says Smoker. “Right, Drake?”
“Speak for yourself,” says Drake, downing half his coffee in a gulp that appears to burn his throat.
Hina’s knee is still next to Smoker’s; she nudges it and with her foot taps at Drake’s shin. Drake has begun to eat faster.
“Take your time,” she says.
Drake slows again, and Hina looks back at her coffee, still probably too hot to drink. Smoker takes a sip of his, one palm large enough to cup the entire mug in it. It’s been several years since he’d fought Vergo at Punk Hazard, and not quite so long since he’d started moving completely right again, but he’s okay. And Drake is here, his allegiance firm, nailed in and reinforced with steel. And none of them, right now, is off on some far-flung mission. It’s almost too good to be true, but Hina’s got no trouble believing.
Smoker throws a glance at the clock. “I do have to go on duty soon.”
“Fine,” says Hina, pushing herself to her feet only to sit back down in Smoker’s lap. “Hina and Drake will make it worth your while.”
She reaches for Drake’s free hand to squeeze it; Drake spears the last five pieces of pancake on his fork in rapid succession and shoves them all in his mouth at once, and she can tell by the slight shift in Smoker’s body language that he’d been paying attention to that as much as he had to Hina. Where this is going is pretty obvious.