Work Text:
Franky thinks with his hands. To be more precise (and Robin is always as precise as she intends to be), he thinks by acting. Whether he’s learning a new technique by feel, by timing, by his own reaction or he’s occupying his body by doing something it can focus on while his mind joins it or wanders, the way Robin has used a separate body—the result is the same. It’s how Franky works, and right now he’s carving a sculpture from driftwood with the miniature hands that live inside his hands. (They are only miniature relative to him; Robin’s are the same size.)
He can work with efficiency and expediency when he wants to, when he has to. He’s repaired the ship before Robin can send eyes to look at the damage while getting ready to launch an attack. He’d carved the rough body of a new violin for Brook from a wood block without blinking. (The rest of it had taken weeks, Brook stringing and unstringing it, fiddling with the bridge, tapping where he wanted Brook to make a change or two.) Surely, Franky could have carved what he wanted from the wood by now, but it’s not about the shape it takes. It’s the shaping. After all, so many shapes are already here, concrete, as permanent as anything gets in this world.
Robin brushes her thumb over Brook’s cheekbone; his laugh resonates in it, buzzing against her skin. The fabric of her shirt snags in Brook’s finger joints; Robin leans forward for him to get loose, her eyes following Luffy as he runs by, chased by Chopper.
Brook’s hand goes lower on her back.
“You’re quite transparent,” Robin says.
Franky cuts a shaving off the top (or is it the bottom?) of the driftwood; it’s forming something close to a point.
“But my bones are solid,” says Brook.
“I can have eyes in the back of my head,” says Robin. “Though it is quite flattering.”
“Would you doubt my feelings?”
Robin tilts her head up, reneging on her promise of where to put her eyes. “No. Nor your desires.”
Brook laughs again. Robin straightens up, rubbing her neck. Brook’s fingers weave into the belt loop of her skirt. The plank of wood now looks like a model canoe. Brook turns his head so that he, too, is looking at Franky; Franky is either too absorbed in his thoughts to register them or he’s noticed and shoved it aside. He and Brook enjoy being the center of attention in the same way; even when they’re not basking in it, dragging their hands through as if it’s a pool of clear water in front of them, it lights them up.
From a few meters away, without sending extra eyes anywhere else, Robin can see the shadows of Franky’s eyelashes on his cheeks. She wants them to flutter and scrape against her palm—later. (She’s often wondered what Brook’s eyelashes were like; the only image her brain can supply is Brook, as he is now, with false lashes glued to the top of his eye socket.)
“Hey! Robin! Brook!”
Out of breath, Usopp staggers over to Robin and Brook.
“Tired?” says Robin.
“Have either of you seen Luffy or Chopper? We were playing hide and seek.”
“That would be cheating,” says Brook.
“We’re pirates,” says Usopp. “I just thought I’d ask.”
“That way,” Robin says, pointing to where Luffy and Chopper had run.
“Oh, you’re choosing sides?” says Brook.
“I could have told him exactly where they were,” says Robin. “They’ll probably just run away again.”
The canoe in Franky’s hands has changed once more, to a more familiar shape. Franky scrapes the knife across, shaping the end to a knob.
“It’s nice to be young,” says Brook.
Robin nods.
“You’re not so old yourself,” says Brook. “Unless you’re lording it over me?”
“I feel old,” says Robin.
“Say that again when you’re my age,” says Brook.
Franky pockets his knife and withdraws the smaller hands; he holds his creation up in the air. It’s a bone, like Brook’s fibula in miniature. Like the skeleton Franky had carved for Chopper that hangs in his office—Chopper says it makes him feel more professional.
“Let me see that,” says Brook.
Franky sits down beside them, and Brook frees his hand from Robin’s belt, reaching behind her back to hold the bone in his hand. The effect is uncanny. If Brook had a brow to furrow, he would be doing so, staring as if he’s attempting to get an optical illusion to work as it should.
“Well,” says Brook. “I can’t say I’m not pleased. It needs a little more definition here, but it’s much better than your last attempt.”
“You want it?”
“Me? No, I have two hundred bones already.”
Brook’s hand drops into Franky’s lap. Franky leans back, but the two of them are trapping Robin between them like a moth inside a burnt-out paper lantern. She could push them aside, extract herself without trouble if she wanted.
“Did you work out what you were thinking?” Robin says.
“Yeah,” says Franky. “More or less.”
The refrigerator in his torso hums. He needs to fix his motors, but it’ll be fine for a while, better for Brook when he gets cold at night.
“Found you!”
Usopp’s voice carries over from the other side of the ship, followed by a protest from Chopper. The wind picks up.
“You should make me a guitar next,” says Brook.
“What about you?” says Franky.
“You should make a guitar,” says Robin, smiling up at Franky. “Though I did like those ornamental garden stakes you carved.”
“Oh, yeah,” says Franky. “The gargoyles. I wanted to do something else with them—give them sensors so they could pop up and squash any gnats.”
(Because, with Franky, it’s often less about the art than the function, the autonomy, of creating and letting one’s creation go.)
Brook leans in tighter to both of them, the contours of his ribs pressing into Robin’s shoulder, his hand fisted in Franky’s shirt. Franky smells like wood chips and the ocean air. Robin lets them keep pushing.