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Pirates are all the same--loud as freaking hell. He shoves his hands in his armpits, and the skin is warm beneath the shirtsleeve, even in the clime of March; bright and temperate, some kind of freshness to the air that makes the water’s sluggish warmth all the more enticing, as if a balm to every self-immolating cannon and unsound raft. If the sun weren’t already wavering, that’s where Franky would be: tangled in the drift, scrambling up over the unrusted scrap as he drags it, himself, the both of them all spun together, back onto the shoreline. He doesn't want to eat, and he doesn't wanna party. He wants to build ships.
He feels his own sweat gathered in the creased skin, and scowls, clawing up into the tenderness there to dislodge some of the dead skin that sits on top. Pacing back and forth in the little yard, listening to the glug of waste pouring circuitously from one of the city’s factories, waiting for the viscosity to increase so the sound of liquid on, upon, into and beneath and creating a skin of each other, is enough to drown out the merriment.
Cheers and congratulations. Happy birthday. Whatever. God, they’re loud as fucking hell!
“Franky! Quit swearing!” The door swings wide, but there’s nothing for it to slam against. Iceburg slams his fist against the door instead, blam blam blam! See, loud!
“Piss off!” He whips around, the same blur in Iceburg’s slamming forearm overcoming his shoulders. He speaks into the funnel of his splayed hands, even yelling across the mere few yards of distance between them.
“You guys are loud--can’t you see I’m trying to… to,” He starts to move from heel to heel, trying to configure some sort of appearance of preoccupation. Trying to look like he was doing anything but sulking and feeling foul, “uh.”
“I don’t care what you do, Flunky, just stop talking to yourself so damn loud!” He slams the door--this time with the sound of the latch slapping against the strike plate and sliding back into the door’s body. It’s really not that loud. Franky stares at it for a second--seeing the judder, the phantom image, Iceburg’s form still in his mind’s eye. Then, turns back away. He drops into a crouch, knuckle-dragging, and his neck sags so deeply that his silhouette is perfectly headless.
His lower lip juts. The refuse keeps glugging, but not loud enough. He thinks the pirates might be singing. The door opens.
“Hey, come inside.” Franky takes a couple awkward, shuffling steps sideways, still crouching. Like a crab, or a particularly dejected frog trying to look busy. Iceburg rests his forearm on the threshold, head tilting, “Tom’ll give me hell if you starve, whether you believe it or not.”
Franky looks over his shoulder at him, frowning. Iceburg frowns, too, at the sight of that frown, and watches him. They spend some time like that. It’s better, Franky realizes, because he can’t hear a thing while they’re watching each other.
Then, Iceburg smiles at him, for real, and his face is a bit red when he does it. “I want you to have a slice of cake.”
Goddamnit. Franky smiles, too, unable to keep his lips from peeling and his teeth from showing. Iceburg’s face gets redder--his smile even more irrepressible.
Franky doesn’t try to kick him in the face as they climb the ladder down to the lock, though Iceburg claps his bare sole with his palm in anticipation of it. The faint algae stains outside the main operations of Tom’s Workers are faded to the grey of the brickwork, worn into the overlapping pattern of gaudy heeled boots. It’s colder down here, and Franky sticks his hands beneath his pits again. Iceburg opens the door for him, and does no more, moving to sit at the only empty stool at the table, his back open to the door.
It’s like a clown car--how many idiots can you fit in one room? This room is for three idiots, usually, and for Kokoro. Yokozuna, too. He can count around a dozen, excluding usual denizens, and Yokozuna isn’t even here: It’s way over capacity.
“Hey, little man, I haven’t seen you before!” The one with the mustache and the big hat--the captain, surely, if Franky knows anything about mustaches--has an infectious, sincere smile, but the diminutive is enough to make Franky remember his upset. He ignores him--he doesn’t want to talk to him. He came here for cake. Tom seems plenty interested in talking, though, grinning to Franky as the pirate does, before turning back to their conversation. They speak uncouthly over the head of the man squeezed between them.
Well, whatever. Tom's fixing his ship, of course he's gotta talk to the guy. He feels bad for him--he's gotta be stupid, not to have noticed him out on Scrap Island.
The large one--well, maybe they’re all big, especially when Franky is so very small--with the funny haircut gives him a cheery wave, also crouching around their table. No one else pays him any mind, though, chatting amongst themselves as they hang against the sidewalls, leaning or sitting cross-legged with mostly-emptied bowls in their laps. Franky didn’t realize they even had that many plates.
The swabbies are tugging each other’s hair and metronome-ing between laughing brightly and arguing fiercely. He feels no real envy for them, though is somewhat sympathetic to the burden of being the swabbie, but it’s Kokoro’s curry staining their impassioned mouths, with the worcestershire and the ketchup. The barrel of spiced rum below the circular table is new, though, along with the oaken mugs.
The pirates are taking well advantage of them and drinking with abandon, sweating and spraying their alcohol breath all over the manuals lining the walls (they wouldn’t understand a lick of their contents), probably, and the longer Franky hovers by the door, the longer he watches the goings-on of their celebration, the more malcontent rises in him, the more ill at ease he feels by the entire scene. What’s so good about a birthday? He’s pretty sure pirates are all the same; Why would these ones care?
Kokoro is making a careful circle around the still-chattering crew, edging hip-first toward the table to collect the dirtied plates the squeezed-up blonde one had been stacking with his free hand. It’s then that Franky notices.
The swabbies drop their fingers from each others ears and quit jabbing each other in the stomachs to fix on their empty plates, their forearms drumming against the table in rhythmic pulses, each calling out something the other manages to mangle. On the table, thumping in time, there is no oaken mug: Instead, blaring in shapely glass contour and half-filled darkness, are two bottles of soda. From the fridge. Their fridge. He bought those.
Franky steps forward, away from the wall and into the room. No one notices.
“Hey, Tom." Only one or two heads turn, beyond Tom and the captain's.
"You know, it’s my birthday, too.” He blurts out, wiping his hand on Iceburg’s shoulder as he does. He spins, as if to complain--though his expression is milder, and somewhat sweeter than a precursor to a complaint--but stops halfway, angling his arm to sniff at his bicep. He scowls instead of speaking. It’s a somewhat obvious gesture in the sudden silence, but no one is watching it. Everyone’s looking at Franky; It wouldn’t be the first time in his life.
Why the hell did he say that?
Slowly, though, they turn to the one in the straw hat. The kid--doesn’t matter if he’s taller, and better fed than Franky has ever been, or if he’s got a sword whispering on his hip, ‘cause kids are kids, and that’s a kid, damn it!--goes quiet, staring down at the empty space on the table before him. His crewmates turn to look at him, puzzlement and trepidation or barely-concealed schadenfreude, but mostly bemused. The other kid, blue-haired and funny-nosed, gives him an unconcealed expression of distaste. Franky doesn't dissect it; the birthday boy moves.
He grabs at the brim of his hat with both hands, flipping them up to show the complete transparency of his expression. It makes a double framing of his face, between the arms and between the bangs, his whole being glowing with that warmth. His eyes are--oddly, when the light hits them right, violently red. Franky can’t tell if he likes him, but he knows his joy is uncomplicated and entirely unmixed, “That’s awesome! Really!?"
“We’re birthday buddies, man, that’s cool!” He giggles, half to himself, and half with that same utter openness, as if the world’s ambiguity has lent an ear to him, and his crewmates, without exception, look at him with fondness, though their interest begins to slide away again, slowly. He stays fixed, "Franky, right?”
Franky gives him a bug-eyed look, unliking of the fact that he had known his name without being told, unused to notice beyond what was necessary for alienation. He smiles on despite. “I’m Shanks!”
“Come here, look, here--Buggy, shove off--” He turns from his merry beckoning, pushing aside the other swabbie by kicking his stool a foot further, then scooching over to expose a gibbous, generous slice of varnished wood, overlapping his knees and teetering slightly to create the space, “Come sit with me!”
He keeps patting eagerly at the empty space until Franky, approaching slowly, but with urging of a hand on his shoulder he can’t place and further beckoning by the scoochings in of stools and the flattenings to of walls, eventually draws near. He hitches one thigh over his stool. He takes on a disaffected half-lean--Iceburg, in the doorway, watching him--with some building bewilderment, and glances at Tom for approval, who places his hands on the table with a grin.
Shanks takes a moment to scrutinize the posture with a tilted head, before he grabs his knee with shocking strength and throws it over his lap. The rest of his body follows until they’re squeezed atop the stool, Franky half-spilling over him. It shocks him into laughter, and Iceburg laughs at him when Shanks’ hand wraps around his shoulder to pull him in close. He’s shockingly steady, despite the awkward configuration of their bodies, and his skin is very warm, to the point that Franky wonders, very briefly, if he’s sick. Man, he really is taller than him by quite a bit.
“Aw, man, that’s so special…" He sighs, offhand, then beams down at him, eyes catching and hand squeezing and hair drifting beneath the shadow of his brim, and Franky--for the first time in his life--feels his entire inner world dominated by his own heartbeat. “Happy birthday, Franky!”
The pirate crew and the resident idiots all echo: Happy birthday, Franky!
The laughter overlays. Iceburg’s arms are crossed on the table, and he’s slumping into their cradle, as if keeping himself warm. Tom’s laugh rises above all, boisterous, the light moving over his teeth with a sinuous gaiety. They look at him, too, fond. Kokoro walks in, then, bearing a white-frosted cake, the kind rimmed with strawberries, perfectly generic and almost comically archetypal. His face feels hot.
The blonde one leans over, turning to Shanks and pressing his breast closely into his captain’s arm as he does so. He scents of spiced rum, too, wafting from his grin. “Would'ja look at that? And you were so worried about being alone this year.”
Shanks’ demeanor shifts subtly as the attention in the room splits, and he pouts openly, “Hey, mooom, that’s mean!”
“Don’t call me that!” Mom grumbles, and the captain laughs. “Usually, you’re all for talking about…”
They keep ribbing at Shanks, his ears pinkening in periphery. Franky doesn’t wanna listen, but it's a little hard to ignore with Shanks talking in his ear. It’s then that Kokoro comes up around his shoulder.
She sets a clean plate and utensil set in front of them, turning down to Franky with that levitous smile, “Franky! Why didn’t you tell us about your birthday?”
“Didn’t think it was important,” His face is even hotter, and he shoves the fork she set down into his mouth, chomping at the tines and trying to twist them with his teeth. Kokoro pats his shoulder and laughs; He’s not sure she believes him, but she doesn’t seem like she wants to call him on it. It makes him feel kind of stupid, and the touch of metal upon his sugar-softened molar sends a little electric jolt of pain down into his hips.
She leans a little closer, touching upon his wrist so he withdraws the fork. She speaks to him alone, sweetly and sincerely and entirely without censure or reprimand, “Happy birthday, Franky.” She kisses his temple, and he opens his eyes, non-cognizant of the fact he had ever closed them.
As she withdraws, his eyes flicker up; Tom is looking at him with warmth. Boom . Iceburg is smiling, and red: Franky’s favorite look. He doesn’t feel stupid anymore.
The lights go out, and the revelry falls into hush. Franky looks about him, temples wrinkled by the raise of his brow. Then, Kokoro, by his shoulder again, and emitting real light, flickering, “I only have one candle.”
Shanks' voice rises in the half-dark like a flare, “It’s all yours, Franky! I get enough." His hand is starting to get a little damp, there, on his bicep, so he shifts it up to the top of his sleeve. He pats him twice in affirmation.
“Huah?” Franky huddles a little nearer to him, and Shanks hums into his ear.
“You blow it out and make a wish.” Iceburg says, nodding--affirming, too, and the sudden, demanding intensity of the candle that's been slid before him obscures most of his expression. The light is still flickering on the knit of Tom's teeth.
"Close your eyes, boy!" He says, laughing gently to meet the dark, and Franky doesn't think to question the directive.
Happy birthday , Franky! Happy birthday, Shanks! Shanks and Franky, Franky and Shanks! The order muddles, overlays, but he knows the voices of his people. Shanks is whispering, too, by his ear, a different name, and he tries not to hear it.
He doesn't think of anything but that cheer when he blows, happy birthday . With his eyes closed, though, the clapping hands of the pirates sound just the same as his fellow shipwrights.
The lights return, and Franky coasts on the feeling of his wish, some hurt of his dislodged to leave him tender and odd, but happy nonetheless. Tom reaches over and begins portioning cake; everything is generous tonight. A piece larger than Franky's spread palm is slopped onto the plate, the strawberries slumping down the cream.
His voice, rising again: “Oh, did you know?”
He says it with such brightness, such temperate freshness, that Franky feels no humiliation, only the sweet succinctness of a curiosity never formed and nonetheless answered. He smiles a little bit, flushing, and nods at him, “We get the first slice! Take the first bite!”
“Really?” Franky tries to come across unimpressed as he retreats into affront, unable to parse his joy from the phantom of guilt, and therefore unable to fully adopt it.
“Yeah, why not?” Shanks shrugs, peering down at him curiously. He rocks them side to side a little bit, as if in instructive confirmation of his own content, or perhaps as a measure of proof.
"You gave me your wish already." Franky mumbles, sliding his thigh a little bit off his lap--not an attempt to withdraw, exactly, but a refusal of the fidgety little teeter. "It's your birthday, too."
The sickle of his smile is freshly sharpened in his periphery, "Yeah, but like I said, I get tons. I'll just get more later. You'd be jealous if you knew how many wishes I--"
His friend, the blue-haired one, nods viciously as he talks, leaning forward in compensation for the unprecedented, sly sweetness of the boy's voice.
Franky scrabbles at the cake, portioning off a hunk big enough to stain the whole of his mouth in cream and crumb, a halved strawberry bleeding vividness into the smear. The sugar brightness is broken by the leak of tartness, and the sponge is dense enough to require decent force of the jaw.
As soon as Franky shovels the mouthful in, scraping the fatty gloss of frosting his tongue with his tongue and chewing through the fruit's tenderness, Shanks is snatching the fork from his hand, mutilating their slice with undeft movement and shoveling his own down his gullet. He begins chewing thoroughly, intently, hard enough and close enough that Franky can hear the sticky, wet grind of mastication, and Franky recognizes the game. He chews harder, swallows first, triumph breaking in him.
Shanks squeezes his shoulder, shaking him around feigned indignation. Franky gags a little bit, and, when everyone laughs, he laughs too.
“Hey-hey-hey, what’s all this!” Franky squawks as he opens the fridge, helpless joy animating his face. Every spot in the door, occupied by full, dark, gorgeous glass bottles. Ohh, yeah, baby, that's the good stuff. The rubber insulation he’s clenching shivers under the force of his fingers, and he rocks on his heels.
“Restocked for ya.” Iceburg slaps him upside the occiput in passing, and he yowls exaggeratedly, but not loud enough to drown out his next words. The incredulity in them, slighted yet whole, critical yet bridging: “Happy birthday, Flunky.”
This whole birthday thing really wasn’t the worst idea at all.
