Archive of Our Own

All-Star King the Wildfire of the Beasts Pirates, sometimes known as Alber — the fearsome left hand of Kaido the Strongest Creature — was getting damn tired of Donquixote 'Ace' Rocinante's insipid antics, if he did say so himself.

More often than not, that moron just kept getting underfoot, disrupting his life and preventing Alber from doing his job — his duty to his captain and savior. Even now, the twit was doing his Geppo thing, kicking off the air, all up in Alber's face, as Alber's captain was standing off to the side, looking bored.

"Alber — " the dolt started.

"Whatever it is, no," Alber turned his back to that clown for good measure, and turned up his fire. Take that, you twerp, he thought.

"Oi, you nearly burned off my face, you know," a laughing voice rang in front of him: Rocinante sure was fast with his Geppo. Alber scowled.

"What a pity," he drawled in a tone that left no doubts that his one regret was the nearly bit.

"Sourpuss," the buffoon insulted him casually. "Look, I know how you love throwing tantrums, so I'd be glad to indulge you for a while, but we don't have much time. Get your ass moving, my man: we're going on an adventure!"

Alber shifted his gaze to Kaido. His captain briefly glanced at Alber, shrugged, and went back to indifferently regarding the ceiling.

He was not going to save Alber from this enthusiastic oaf here, then… Moreover, if Kaido was here too, it meant Rocinante dragged him along, and that meant —

"Just who," Alber said to verify his deductions, "do you mean by we?"

"You, Boss, and I!"

Alber was right, and he didn't like it.

"And what," he went on suspiciously, "do you mean by adventure?"

Rocinante's face glowed. The fuck was up with that man? Who the hell glowed like that? Now Alber knew why Joker always wore shades.

"We're going to see Golden Veil," Rocinante declared, his voice trembling with restrained excitement.

"What?"

"So you don't know about it either. It's a waterfall on Mae island!"

"Where…?"

"Except it's not really golden this time of year," Rocinante bemoaned, genuinely upset, "but it's still nice to look at. So we really gotta get our asses moving if we want to be there tomorrow, the place is a few hundred kilometers away. C'mon, let's go! Let's go, let's go, let's go!"

Alber gave Kaido a meaningful look that wordlessly asked, Did you understand any part of his babble?

Kaido answered with an eye roll that meant, Whether you like it or not, he's still dragging us to that Golden Veil place — you know how he is. So get your ass in gear, I'm not having any of this nonsense for a second longer than necessary.

It still astounded Alber that the Strongest Creature, the most ruthless and powerful pirate on all five seas, who was never soft or lenient on anyone, was so thoroughly wrapped around Donquixote 'Ace' Rocinante's little finger.

But then again, wasn't that man an exception to every rule?

Four out of five Kaido's All-Stars earned their names and ranks by being the strongest, most devastating calamities on the Beasts crew. Joker the Stampede, King the Wildfire, Queen the Plague, Jack the Drought — the mere names were enough to make pirates go silent, and send civilians scurrying in panic. But the fifth All-Star didn't wear the name Ace the Flood for his fighting skills, as impressive as those indeed were, or his coldhearted ruthlessness, of which he had little.

Kaido gave him that name and the second-highest rank among the five All-Stars because, as improbable as that sounded, he liked how Rocinante sang.

Anyone who ever heard that man sing, though, wouldn't be surprised by Kaido's benevolence or permissiveness.

The way Donquixote Rocinante sang could steal the breath from anyone's lungs, and make tears pour in an endless stream down people's faces, and get wide smiles to break out on their lips, and have their hearts dance and flutter in their heaving chests —

And, most miraculously, that magic voice could get Kaido the Strongest Creature to stop being gloomy.

Before Donquixote Rocinante came to Wano, nothing and no one could achieve that feat. The prettiest women were never enough to dispel Kaido's doldrums. The rowdiest parties were never enough to disperse the dark shadow upon his brow. The fiercest fights were never enough to chase the blue devils out of his soul… particularly because with Kaido being the Strongest Creature, very, very few fights were exciting enough for him to get his blood pumping.

Drinking helped. Drinking brought sweet oblivion, and with barrels of alcohol poured into the gaping hole in his soul, Kaido finally started smiling.

Well, that, or crying so miserably Alber's heart twinged in his chest… or just obliterating everything in the nearby vicinity.

Frankly, Alber cared not a whit if Kaido destroyed the whole country in his drunken rage. But no rampage could ever get him to shed his gloom for good — and that was a major problem in Alber's book.

But then, Donquixote Rocinante came.

That strange, bizarre, impossible man — so insolent it made Kaido smile, so ridiculous it made Kaido snort, so quixotic it made Kaido scoff.

So magical he made Kaido laugh, in joy.

.

.

Alber didn't know what he expected when Joker first told them he was finally bringing his brother to Wano.

He knew what Donquixote Rocinante looked like, and more or less what he was like. Few people on the Grand Line didn't know about Admiral White Seagull, or his famous feats, or his insane Observation that saw through all mental shields, or his reputation as the upright, stalwart beacon of virtue. Wings of Justice, they called him — the Navy legend, the public's favorite: the man who notoriously killed Shiki the Golden Lion with just one look, and badly crippled Red-Haired Shanks himself, and single-handedly defeated a whole army in his fiery wrath, for the sake of a single old woman taken prisoner.

There were still legends floating around the world — legends of a fiery black demon that tore through ten thousand people like a stray bullet, felling them like they were but helpless cattle in a slaughterhouse. The legends said that when the fire of his Haki blew out and the black of his Armament melted away from his skin, there was not a single spot on his body that wasn't red and dripping with blood — and they said the old woman he freed was so terrified by the sight she lost her speech on the spot.

Hence, Alber was deeply dubious that a Marine such as this would really spit on his Oath and follow his brother purely out of fraternal love to become a pirate on Kaido's crew.

The upright, stalwart beacon of virtue… hah.

What with the publicity around his defection, spurred by that scandalous photo in World Economy News Paper (which accounted for a 4x jump in the issue sales)… when Donquixote Rocinante arrived at Wano, he was already the Beasts Pirates' laughingstock.

Most disappointingly, the great Navy legend, one of the hailed Donquixote brothers, turned out to be a bumbling, stumbling, useless fool who evidently couldn't find his way out of a paper bag. Alber was quite unable to come up with any alternative explanation of how the fool even managed to wander into the secret Wisteria Hall while playing hide-and-seek with Yamato — when said hall was secret for a very good reason, and hidden remarkably well — and see Alber brooding there without his mask.

Every single thing the fool did after that, too, defied any explanation or logic. Alber still maintained that his supreme befuddlement was the only reason why he told the damn fool his true name.

He had no idea how the fool eventually managed to con him into sparring with him. He had no idea why he ultimately agreed to drinking with him. He had no idea why he shared his past with him, opened his soul to him… and why the damn fool didn't strike at once at his vulnerable underbelly.

Instead, the damn Navy man only told him he had a cute face.

Which was entirely inexplicable, and meant nothing. Alber was wholly indifferent one way or another. The supposed cuteness or excellence of his face had nothing to do with the fact that Donquixote Rocinante was a stupid idiot buffoon who thought too much of himself, and just wouldn't lose a single spar, damn it, like that puny human could actually fight on par with a Lunarian.

Which he couldn't.

Alber just had to prove it yet.

He didn't manage that in the first two weeks of their nearly-daily sparring — but his day was coming: Alber was sure of that. Very, very soon, the insolent little wretch would crawl to his brother-slash-lover with his faggot ass thoroughly kicked, and he wouldn't ever dare challenge King of All-Stars after that.

Alas, that particular day was not Alber's day. The damn fool's puny ass still remained unkicked, and they were somehow sitting side by side in their sweat-drenched clothes, drinking fine human liquor, and the damn jester thought to give compliments to Alber's face, which he insisted were simply objective facts — and when Alber was senseless enough to speak his heart, and let the fool thrust his hand into his old, festering, still-bleeding wounds…

When Alber was careless enough to speak of his greatest pain: his people, long dead and all gone, gone, gone, Alber the only Lunarian left behind — the last of his tribe, the last of his people in the whole wide world…

The impossible man called Donquixote Rocinante told him the most foolish, most stunning thing:

The people you mourn are not dead.

Your people are here now —

They are here with you, because you carry their spirits in your memories and your heart.

No man is dead as long as the living remember him…

Can you see them now, Alber?

Can you see their faces?

Can you see their wings?

Can you see the women and men of your tribe, smiling at you?

And suddenly, Alber could.

Through his closed eyelids, he saw their familiar faces, gone and lost to decades of time.

…He thought he'd never see them again.

He had cried out all his tears, till he couldn't cry anymore, for years. He had mourned and commemorated them in his people's ancient tradition — hoping, in vain, for a single moment of respite from his burning pain, and yet reluctant to let it go, because the pain was the last thing he had left of them; and in the ten thousand open wounds on his heart, each dead still bled.

In his faceless, nameless exile, their shadows were his only companions, even as just about the only man who knew what he looked like under the mask grew distant and cold.

But now… through some magic spell, some strange sorcery… his people were all here, back with him. Smiling at him.

And Rocinante, too, was there for Alber. He held his hand, and he witnessed his face, unmasked and open for once — and his voice charmed the cold, hissing, writhing snakes in Alber's heart and soul into stilling and lying down.

He was there for Alber — as though he would always be.

Hah. Even Kaido wasn't in the end.

(You are not alone. You won't ever feel lonely again, as long as you have me…)

What a slick, pretty… colossal lie.

But the damn fool listened to the voice of Alber's soul like to him, it actually meant something. And then —

Then, a miracle happened.

"I used to sing a bit," hah.

"I might sound shitty… no hard feelings if your ears fall off or anything…"

So he said, that consummate liar… so damn honest in every word.

And then, he proceeded to sing, for maybe the first time in the last three years — or so he claimed. He sounded rusty, he'd later complain. He was never entirely happy with how he sang, but for that very first time, he had nothing to say but gripes and criticisms.

He cried when he sang, and when he was done, he asked with a wide grin:

"How bad was it?"

How bad, indeed.

No word suited Donquixote Rocinante's voice as well as miracle.

That voice was perfection vibrating in the fragrant air, rising to the ethereal wisteria-draped ceiling. It was word-shaped magic — a hurricane that swept Alber away from this dreary world of sorrow and pain, and into the land of pure exalted beauty. It was love, hope, and fervor made sound. It was the heart itself, crying out through song.

Alber had never suspected that a mere song could shake a man's world so profoundly.

When Rocinante was done, he smiled.

On his face, shining and dripping with tears, that smile was the brightest light Alber had ever seen in his life. Even now, he remembered it very clearly.

His heart stopped in his chest, and all air left his lungs — and at the sight of that childishly wide, dizzyingly happy smile, his mind was numb, and his blood was on fire.

Donquixote Rocinante gained his famous epithet Wings of Justice for killing Shiki the Golden Lion with just one look — or, in truth, Stilling him into brain death with the most devastating long-range attack of his Calm-Calm Fruit. But to the general public, it looked rather like Rocinante just glanced at Shiki, and the man dropped dead — so now Rocinante was known around the world as the man who could kill with his gaze alone.

The way he so brutally and so coldly mutilated Red-Haired Shanks made pirates all over the world go quiet at the mere sound of his name. The way he single-handedly laid waste to a whole army, as terrifying as a demon in his all-black, burning Armament, made his name into a legend that only grew as years went by. Donquixote Rocinante hadn't spent much time in the Navy, having defected at just twenty-three, but what he did get to do as a Navy leader was enough to still make pirates pale when they heard his names:

Donquixote Rocinante.

The White Seagull.

The Wings of Justice.

When he came here, he shed all his names but one. He raised no weapons, and he waged no battles. All he did was sing.

His one song was enough to deal Alber a crushing, resounding defeat.

That one song was the reason why these days, Donquixote Rocinante wore a new name, bestowed upon him by the King of the Beasts himself:

Donquixote Rocinante, Ace the Flood of All-Stars.

.

.

"So, where exactly are we going?" Alber inquired, resigned but still dignified, when they met again on top of the Skull Dome, all ready to start their journey to — wherever the fool was taking them.

"I told you, my man," really, Rocinante should just cut it out with those smiles. Who the hell smiled like that? Alber wished he could look away without losing his dignity. "We'll be going to Mae island, to see Rainbow Falls, which is the most beautiful valley you'll have ever seen in your life. In that valley, there's one very tall waterfall called Golden Veil: it stands over a kilometer high, and thunders like a naval gun cannonade. That waterfall is crowned with a hundred eternal rainbows, just like its brothers and sisters around the valley — hence the Rainbow Falls name, see? But the most amazing, most special thing about that waterfall is something we won't get to witness this time — "

"Why don't we go sometime later, then?" Alber offered promptly.

Rocinante laughed, and fixed his old, worn Navy backpack on his shoulders. It was enormous (well, for Rocinante) — easily three times as big as its owner.

"Worry not, my man," he said cheerfully, "there's still much to see and admire on Mae. If you always wait for the perfect moment, you might just miss out on the very best things in your life. I say, we go now, and if you like the place well enough, we'll come back later, during the dog days, just for the sake of the miracle that only happens in those seven days in the middle of July."

"What miracle?" Alber grumbled. He was a busy man. He cared not for any 'miracles' or other such childish fancies of one Donquixote 'Ace' Rocinante.

But with the way Rocinante was talking about them, his soul all lit up with that solar fire, one couldn't help but listen and watch.

Kaido was silent behind his back, Observing the flaming heart in his Ace's chest. He, too, cared not for any waterfalls or whatever — but the light of that heart was the only thing that could dispel the dark shadows in Kaido's soul.

Rocinante gave them both a secretive smile, all vibrating with excitement, like a little child indeed.

"For just a couple minutes," he spoke, "during seven days in the heart of summer, the sunset light hits the Golden Veil's waters just so — and the water really turns golden."

Alber cared fuck all for any water, golden or not. But the way Rocinante said it, the feelings Alber so clearly saw with his Observation — those colorful flames in Rocinante's soul — gave Alber shivers.

"But that's a miracle for another journey," Rocinante went on, his voice back to his laughing normal. "This time, we're just gonna see the place, fly through the rainbows, see how you like them."

"What makes you think I care about any rainbows, servant?" Kaido finally spoke, his tone bored and derisive — like he really hoped to fool Donquixote freaking Rocinante with his insane Observation that saw all emotions, no matter how well-concealed.

(Well. Almost all emotions.)

"I don't think so, Boss," Rocinante shrugged. "But weren't you the one to tell me, I thought the world lost all colors? Well, now Imma show you they're still there, and brighter than you can imagine. And now… enough of us flapping gums. Follow me!"

And in a burst of white, he shot into the endless blue, too fast for an untrained eye to follow.

Hah. Alber was a Lunarian. No fast was too fast for him.

By his side, his great captain was rapidly going blue, elongating and twisting through half the sky: heaven's rightful ruler. And at once, the great azure dragon and the black-winged man shot after the fading trail of white steps through the blue, blue sky, chasing that small human shadow.

…

After about three hours of going at top speed, Rocinante slowed down.

"What is it, servant? Ran out of steam already?" Kaido jeered, strangely eager.

Rocinante rolled his eyes.

"As if," he snickered. "Not so soon, Boss, we've yet to see who's the loser."

What were they even talking about? Alber didn't understand a thing.

"It's a long way to the next island," Rocinante went on, "so why don't we take a short break, hydrate, and have a bite? No need to go hungry and thirsty if we can go full and rested."

"One soft little human you are," Alber sneered, but Rocinante was already rummaging in his humongous backpack, not paying him the slightest bit of attention.

Then, Rocinante fished out a huge canteen, and a couple of cookie bags. (Those eternal damn cookies of his. Sometimes it felt like the cookie crumbs littered the entire castle.) Rocinante irreverently threw the canteen and the bags at Kaido, who deftly caught them with his maw and both paws, immediately transforming into his half-beast form.

Like that, he could only use his existing flame clouds without manifesting any new ones, which meant they would indeed be taking a rest break to eat and recharge. Well, Alber didn't really mind: down below, the ocean was glittering in the high noon sun, like the biggest, most beautiful sapphire one could imagine — and the sky was clear, with no one around but the three of them for dozens, maybe hundreds of kilometers; and the wind was so fresh —

Most likely.

There was no bare patch of skin on Alber's body — no place that could feel the touch of the sea breeze, except for his wings. So he couldn't really know if the wind was fresh. He just thought that it had to be.

He didn't even remember the feeling: fresh wind on his skin. Or — any wind, really.

Alber was a Lunarian — the World Government's most prized prey. He couldn't risk uncovering even a shred of his skin outside of his bedroom or the secret Wisteria Hall.

…At least here in the wide open sky, he could glide so freely and easily, with that salty breeze softly carrying him like her favorite child.

Rocinante stopped rummaging in his backpack, and glanced up at him. Seeing the look on his face, Alber barely held back an, Uh-oh.

Rocinante prowled up to him through the air over the sea, a slow, sultry grin spreading on his face. Alber nearly took a step back.

"So. Soft little human, you say," Rocinante mused in a voice that did not bode well. "Is that a problem for you, my man? Would you like me hard?"

Never before had Alber been more grateful for his leather mask. Rocinante did not need to see how he flushed.

"If that Mae island is supposedly so great and lovely, how come I've never heard of it?" he grumbled, casting about for a change of topic.

"…Don't tell me you didn't know it existed." The shock on Rocinante's face was hilarious.

"I didn't know it existed," Alber said — both in his face, and because it was true.

"Hm," Rocinante bestowed upon him the look of utmost compassion. "What about you, Boss? You must have heard of it, right?"

"Of course I've heard about Mae island," Kaido scoffed. "It's the prime place for soft, rich loafers who've never once held a weapon in their lily-white hands."

"While you're not wrong," Rocinante admitted carefully, "don't you think there's a reason why the richest people in the world all come there to spend their vacations and honeymoons?"

Kaido's face was clearly showing that he didn't care, while Alber got somewhat curious.

"Say, do you know what else they call Mae, Boss?" Rocinante murmured. "There's another name people have for that place, you know. A very, very fitting name."

"The Paradise in Paradise," Kaido drawled in the most derisive voice ever. "So what?"

"And you've never been there, I take it."

"Course not."

Rocinante's face acquired a tragic, heartbroken expression.

"Have you really never visited the most beautiful place in the world," he asked slowly, "just because you look down on the local crowd?"

"Sure haven't."

"…You're so dedicated to your principles."

"Pot, kettle."

Rocinante looked at Kaido. Kaido looked at Rocinante.

Then, they snorted in unison, and laughed till they wheezed, even though they didn't even say anything all that funny. But, well, it was a thing they did: talking in no words at all, laughing over unspoken jokes no one but them understood.

For a brief moment, Alber felt bitter over not being in on those inside jokes — but then, there was a hot, hard arm thrown around his neck.

"My shy man!" Rocinante cried, shameless. "Why don't you take off your mask for a while? No one will see you here but us five."

"Five?"

"Boss, me, the sea," Rocinante listed, ticking on his fingers like a little kid, "the sky, and the sun. Five!" He showed him his hand, all fingers folded into a fist.

"You speak like the sky and the sun are people," Alber scoffed.

His own people used to believe that — long, long ago, for a very long while. They used to pray to the elements, asking for protection and blessings. They used to carry out rituals, talking to the land and the wind, to the sky and the sea — singing to them in the unique Lunarian way, all but lost and forgotten now that his tribe was gone.

On the days of worship, their land went alive with their prayer chants… the whole country, flooded with a river of songs.

But their tribe went extinct, and their prayers remained unanswered — and Alber had never prayed once after that.

…But then, Donquixote Rocinante came into his life, brazenly poking at his old, bleeding memories — and bringing them alive.

Donquixote Rocinante, who smiled for him now, brighter and warmer than that damn silent sun in the sky, which never heard Alber's blood-stained, tear-soaked prayers — or just never bothered to answer them.

"Well, the sky and the sun have seen more things than any people for sure," that impossible man shrugged, "and I'm sure they won't have any problem with your handsome mug. Air it out, will you, mate? Get some vitamin D."

Alber looked at Kaido, but his captain was sitting cross-legged on his flame cloud, thoughtfully chewing on a cookie and caring not for Alber's plight.

So with an exasperated sigh, Alber shrugged, and pulled off his mask. No matter how many years he wore it, he never stopped sweating under the leather, so he didn't really mind the chance to refresh his face.

Rocinante rewarded him with another blast of his supernova smile, and two bags of cookies, which he carelessly shoved into Alber's hands along with another canteen. Now that he thought of it, Alber found he was somewhat peckish, and the water, too, wouldn't go amiss.

…Damn, but those cookies were good. Or maybe he was just that hungry.

The three of them sat on the flame cloud, Rocinante's back to his own, and crunched in a disjointed chorus, sprinkling crumbs everywhere; and it felt good.

The moment they got back up, rested, refreshed, and all ready to continue their journey, the sky abruptly went cloudy.

"Hm," Kaido said.

"Fuck," Alber concurred.

"That's the Grand Line for you," Rocinante sniggered — and a moment later, the rainstorm hit them with all the force and fury of the New World's changeable weather, soaking them to the bone in the blink of an eye.

"It's all because of you and your dumb ideas," Alber groused. His hair was wet and dripping, whipping around his face and getting into his mouth. The sensation felt strange and foreign, after so many years of wearing a mask.

Rocinante just watched him: indulgent and smiling, and so endlessly fond that Alber could barely breathe.

"You whiny little baby," Rocinante said finally, barely audible through the howling hurricane.

"Little? Now that's rich coming from you…"

But Rocinante kept watching him, the gold-gray of his hair darkened and sticking to his face — and he was smiling again. It was all Alber could do to not look away from that blinding vision.

"Don't you know what comes after the rain, my man?" Rocinante finally murmured when his smile got positively unbearable.

"What?" Alber snapped.

"Rainbow," Rocinante grinned — and with that dumb beaming face of his, there was no need for the sun or a rainbow in the black, cracking, lightning-spitting sky. "A rainbow with all its colors. When you're braving a rainstorm, you're in fact making your way to a rainbow."

"You can fuck right off with your philosophies. I'm wet."

Kaido raised his eyebrow, clearly amused by Alber's childish, pathetic, most uncharacteristic whining — but if Alber didn't keep it up, he'd just go on his knee right here in the sky and confess his undying love to this oblivious idiot here, so whining it was.

"And I'm right," Rocinante shrugged, "see if I'm not, ha ha ha!"

No other man laughed like Donquixote Rocinante did. Like a child, or a lightning bolt… or the happiest, freest man in the world, no matter the heavy downpour whipping him on that dumb face and blinding smile. Even the chicken-egg-sized hail did nothing to diminish his joy —

But then, his eyes widened, and, with evident great distress, the miracle man called Donquixote 'Ace' Rocinante lamented:

"Fuck, I'm an idiot! Alber, sorry!"

"What?"

"I'm so dumb!"

"You are. Care to explain how you are dumb this time?"

"Okay, uh — please don't kill me?" But before Alber could get really mystified, Rocinante raised his hand towards the black clouds spitting lightning bolts, and his hand glowed blue, and he softly said:

"Still."

His hand went down, clenching into a fist and tearing through the rain, as if bringing the storm to heel. His whole body, too, briefly glowed blue, and then —

The storm was over, just like that.

No more rain. No more lightning. The dark heavy clouds went white and parted, letting the late afternoon sun shine through.

In fact, even the sea seemed to — be calmed? There was no wind whatsoever, and no waves on the ocean face, like the three of them stumbled into the Calm Belt water zone.

"What the actual fuck," Alber marveled. "You never told me your Calm-Calm Fruit could do this."

That terrible Fruit that could still, silence, or calm all things, including a human brain.

(Somehow, Rocinante never used that Fruit in their daily spars with Alber.

Somehow, Alber still couldn't defeat him, with all the might of his own Fruit and his Lunarian body. Which was — a fluke, that was what it was. A most strange, random two-months-long fluke, nothing more. Yeah.)

"Uh — before today, I've only done this storm-stilling thing once? For a certain other whiny little baby — "

"So help me, I will kick your puny human ass into the next millennium."

"…Whom I also wanted to protect at all costs."

That shut Alber up, because it wasn't like he could say something coherent to that.

Rocinante smiled at him — and really, what was his deal? Why was he so smiley? And also beautiful? He had no business being this beautiful. Alber's heart was not equipped to deal with it all. Rocinante could fuck right off with that smiley beautiful face, if Alber did say so himself.

"Maybe that's why I overdid it both times, with Law and with you," Rocinante mused meanwhile. "After all, this technique requires proper control and full focus, and I was so worried about your cold, wet, miserable ass — "

Alber silently lunged at him. There was a small skirmish.

"What are you two, little children?" Kaido mocked, breaking up the fight with his tail.

"Aww, you worried, daddy?" Rocinante stuck out his tongue.

Then he had to pound Alber on the back, because it felt like otherwise Alber would choke on his coughing.

"Do you even hear the shit that comes out of your mouth?" Alber finally wheezed.

"What do you mean?" On the damn fool's face, he saw the most innocent, puzzled look in existence.

"You're indecent, you fuckface," Alber hissed. By now, Kaido's amusement was written all over his face, but Alber didn't give a damn. Was Rocinante doing all this on purpose or what?! Who the fuck could look and act that sexy while still being so damn oblivious?

Rocinante gave him a weird look.

"You couldn't have caught a cold this fast after the rain, right?" he mused. "The bad cough, the delirium… You gotta get dry, man, pronto. Say, how about we race to that rocky little island, right over there, see?" He pointed to a small gray spot far away in the hazy distance, softly golden in the late noon sun. "The strong headwind will get you dry in no time."

"You have zero chance against me, human."

"Last time we sort of raced, I won by about a second."

"It was no formal race, and the distance was short! Your Geppo has nothing on my speed in the long run!"

"Why don't we check, then?"

"If you two exhaust all your energy and fall into the sea, I'm not carrying you," Kaido sneered.

"Aww, Boss, you are worried about us! That's so sweet."

Kaido just rolled his eyes, and — peeled out in the direction of Rocinante's island so fast they barely had the time to blink…?

"Now that's my kind of man," Rocinante rejoiced. "It's a race!" And just like that, he was gone with the sound of a small explosion, so fast that the outline of his body looked blurry in the clear blue sky.

All three of them got there more or less at the same time. Alber maintained he was still the fastest, due to the other two getting a head start. Rocinante just laughed at him, while Kaido gave him a haughty smirk.

Alber couldn't very well kick his captain's ass, so he settled for Rocinante's. Except once again, there was no definitive victor in their clash, because Kaido got miffed, and swiftly kicked both their asses, and rumbled:

"Where to now, servant?"

When he addressed his Ace that way, it meant he was annoyed.

"Look over there," Rocinante smiled at him, unperturbed. "See that rainbow? There's a small island right underneath."

Indeed, Alber could see a huge rainbow crowning half the evening sky, and a small distant island.

"Is that your Mae?" Kaido scoffed.

"Nah, Mae is much bigger. This here's a little prehistoric summer island. It's got mammoths! We can stop there to hunt us down a small mammoth, rest, make dinner, and take a nap. If we leave before sunrise, we should reach Mae by about 10am, provided we go at our current pace."

"That doesn't sound half bad," Kaido rumbled. "I'm impressed, Ace."

"You sound like you didn't expect me to have an actual plan, or even know where I'm taking you…"

Kaido just gave him a silent look that said, You're not wrong.

Rocinante stuck out his tongue at him. Kaido shoved him in the side with his great dragon snout. Rocinante gleefully pulled his mustache. (That mustache obsession of his…)

"How old are you two?" Alber grumbled.

"Twenty-four, why?"

And Kaido was forty-four, being exactly twenty years older.

"You two act like you're both just four!"

Kaido looked at Rocinante. Rocinante looked at Kaido.

They snorted at once.

"Look who's talking," they chorused, guffawing.

Now what the fuck did they mean? Alber was thirty-one — in fact, about to turn thirty-two in just over a month — and very mature, thanks a lot!

Eventually, they got close enough to the small prehistoric island to see that all of its uniform green was, in fact, a wide billowing steppe with barely any trees or brushwood. Behemoth dark-gray silhouettes with curved tusks almost as long as their whole bodies slowly wandered the peaceful landscape, grazing the grassland and unpleasantly reminding Alber of Jack. It wasn't often that Alber encountered animals almost as tall as he was…

He wondered if a mammoth might make a good meal, but then Rocinante silently raised his hand. Both Alber and Kaido stopped at his wordless request.

"What is it, Ace?" Kaido inquired, eyeing the mammoths with rapacious interest.

"Just wanna watch the sky for a bit," Rocinante said absently. Then he blinked, sensing the twin dubious looks, and shifted his gaze to Kaido and Alber's identically skeptical faces. "What…?"

"Have you nothing better to do, servant?" Kaido groused. He always got grumpy when he was hungry.

Rocinante laughed. It was a strange laugh.

He was so strange, that man. He seemed impossible to offend. He just laughed off all the barbs or acted like they held zero weight, and he never got angry, no matter how scornful Kaido's derision or how poisonous Alber's insults. Even now, with Kaido snapping and scowling at him, Rocinante didn't snap back, and he didn't feel aggrieved: he just watched Kaido with a smile, and there was nothing in that smile but endless fondness… and his laugh wasn't in any way mocking either.

It was simply — fond, like the giant rancorous dragon taking up half the sky, balefully glaring at him, was the cutest, dearest sight in Rocinante's life.

"You really get wild when you're hungry, don't you?" he murmured, like he was talking about something only Kaido and Rocinante knew.

The dragon rolled his eyes. Rocinante gently pulled his stache, which was the most reckless thing Alber had seen anyone do, ever.

"Why don't we go slow, then?" Rocinante offered a compromise. "You don't often take the time to appreciate the sunset sky, do you, Boss?"

"Not all of us are airheaded fools like you."

"And you're worse off for it… look, Boss. Look at all these colors. Aren't they miraculous?"

But Alber didn't give half a shit about any colors. He stared, bemused, at the way Rocinante was now walking backwards in the evening sky, facing the two of them as they advanced, with the setting sun right behind his head, tangled in his half-gray hair like a glowing halo.

How the hell wasn't he stumbling like that? On dry land, he could stumble and fall over while standing straight and doing absolutely fucking nothing — yet here in the sky, he moved freer than a fish in water.

"Look," he said, "the first star."

And he pointed his long skinny finger at the sole gleaming light in the fading sky, about to glow up with a myriad more.

"Oh, will you look at that moon sickle! So tiny, like a cutoff nail," Rocinante beamed, like he actually cared about the moon sickle or whatever.

"So poetic."

"I'm just saying the truth, Boss, is all. Besides, it looks cute."

Alber blankly stared at him.

"What?"

"This is the first time I hear anything about the moon being cute."

"Well, the more you know," Rocinante shrugged. "Look, my grumpy man. Look at all these colors. Have you ever seen hues this lovely? Watch this limpid champagne along the western horizon — see this faded, translucent blue. A lover's goodnight kiss couldn't be more tender than that. See how those shades shift and blend," he was watching a pretty regular-looking sunset, but his voice sounded like he was witnessing the greatest miracle in the world. "Have you ever seen a gradient this beautiful in your life?"

The last rays of sun were tangled in his hair, the warm breeze gently tousling the thick wavy strands: silver softly mixing and blending with gold.

"I have never seen a man this strange in my life," Alber said. "I can't tell if you're a lunatic or just a fool."

Rocinante laughed, not offended in the least.

"A lunatic and a Lunarian," he mused, "I like how it sounds. Like a match made in heaven!"

Alber watched him, and cursed his tongue that could never say the right words, always defaulting to barbs and insults; and he thought that the word starry-eyed must have been invented for the sole reason that someone, somewhere, a long time ago, must have known that one thrice-cursed, hundredfold-blessed day, Donquixote Rocinante would come into this old, wretched world… and become its most dumb, most miraculous thing.

"The sky always looks so dull and washed-out after the sunset glory fades," the miracle man mused, oblivious to Alber's reverie, "but straight after the evening colors go drab, the night creeps in — and the colors get thicker and richer again, and then… the stars come out. Isn't that beautiful?"

"It is," Kaido spoke then, and he said nothing more.

Rocinante watched him with a half-smile, and was silent in turn — and once again, they spoke in that wordless way, with their eyes and their souls alone.

Alber looked away from them, and watched the last seconds of the dying sunset.

Before Rocinante showed him, he had never really paid attention — even back in his childhood, when he still had a home and a family. If he were alone, he wouldn't look at the sunset sky any longer than necessary to locate where the west was, if he needed to find his way, or to check what the weather was going to be like tomorrow: a wise man could tell that from the look and color of the setting sun. To Alber, the sky had never been anything more than functional. It was his living space, his battlefield, and — that was all.

To Alber, sky had never been beautiful.

But Rocinante's childish excitement was very contagious — excitement and awe, as keen as if the sunset sky were music. Looking at this very regular sky, Rocinante was so profoundly, breathlessly amazed that Alber couldn't help but look where he looked — and see what he saw, and be amazed in turn.

The mammoth meat ended up being good, if quite burnt. Kaido nearly ruined it — no matter how great a man, he was a remarkably shitty cook — but through prompt coordinated effort, Alber and Rocinante managed to rescue the meat, and even make sure it tasted nice.

Resplendent in his dragon form, Kaido ate most of the mammoth, belched, curled up, and promptly dozed off. Rocinante brazenly snuggled up to Alber in the thick silky grass, because You're — uaaaaahhh! — you're warm. Feels nice. G'night, and then he was snoring.

Alber stared at his hair — silver softly mixing with gold against Alber's black leather-clad chest — and sleep evaded him.

The sky was so wide, and the myriad stars and galaxies so breathtakingly, dazzlingly bright over his head. Like Donquixote Rocinante's eyes, smiling at him.

…

Rocinante kept waxing poetic about Mae's various attractions as they cleaned up all traces of their camp, at Rocinante's insistence. According to him, Mae had the most beautiful and varied nature, and the most remarkable architecture, and the most exciting nightlife, and the most fun tours, and the most delicious delicacies, and the finest wines, and the most golden beaches with the softest sand.

Alber was deeply dubious. When something was overpraised like that, it usually turned out to be underwhelming.

They ate the last of the mammoth, and said goodbye to its brethren amidst the billowing steppes (well, Rocinante did while Alber and Kaido waited, annoyed). Then, they shot up into the dawn, and chased the sunrise in the opalescent sky, and bathed in the morning pink as it slipped all over Kaido's scales and Rocinante's longish, wild, windswept hair. They washed their faces in the cold roiling clouds, and they dried off in the warm light of the rising sun — their beacon on their way to the mysterious island called Mae.

Rocinante's humongous backpack looked thin and crumpled now, so Alber guessed most of its contents had been food and water for the three of them. It also meant that if they didn't arrive soon enough, they would be short on drinking water, which was never a good thing.

The sun was in its full blinding splendor, waves of heat pouring down and making him sweat something terrible in his leather. So bright it was that even Alber had to shield his eyes with his hand to see anything when Rocinante said:

"Here it is."

And then, Alber saw.

Here, from bird's-eye view, he could see all of Mae: the lush green of the steppes and forests, the pristine white of the tall, tall mountains — so tall they were, they even put Mount Fuji to shame — the yellow fringe of the sandy beaches, wrapping around the whole island with barely any breaks, like a golden setting for the gem that was Mae… and the hundred rainbows crowning the place, right in the heart of the island.

Even from this far away, Alber could roughly make out the outlines of what was, without a doubt, a remarkably tall waterfall. They were barely visible through the rainbow haze, like the most amazing mirage.

"This is where we'll be going now," Rocinante told them, pointing at the waterfall. "To the heart of the land."

Alber watched the distant vision, and thought there was nothing underwhelming about the island called Mae.

"See? Told you so," Rocinante murmured — he was maybe the only man in the world who could say Told you so with zero malice or gloating — and his face lit up with a smile.

Alber took one glance at it, and looked away, and jerkily reached for his mask to put it back on. No one could possibly look at the sun of that smile without getting blinded.

When they came close enough to see the white marble castle crowning the tall cliff over the azure sea — from this high, it looked like a child's toy to them, small and intricately detailed — Rocinante put his hand on his heart.

"Well met, mate," he said. "I missed you."

Was he talking to the castle or something? Nah, even Donquixote Rocinante couldn't possibly be that mad.

"I asked Doffy to check on Squire for us," Rocinante went on. "He says Squire's doing nicely — well, more or less. If he knew I was going here, I imagine he'd send his regards."

He bowed. Alber and Kaido looked at each other with a wordless question in their eyes.

"At least this here's not a bad place to rest," Rocinante laughed through — were those tears in his eyes…? "Eh, Claudio?"

They could fly right over to where the rainbow heart of the valley was slowly beating, visible even from this far away: immense plumes of colorful mist torn and thrown around by the wind gusts. But Rocinante insisted on landing on the edge of the tall ancient forest and taking a hike — so with much eye-rolling and a bit of grumbling, they did just that.

Down below, the air was heady and sweet with the smell of fir, and the trees were so unthinkably tall even Kaido looked tiny next to their golden trunks. Curiously, the whole time they walked down the neat, well-trodden trail, Kaido looked on his guard — almost like he expected an ambush or something. But when the Rainbow Falls valley revealed itself to their eyes, like a hidden gem in the rough palms of the breathtakingly tall, snow-capped mountains, even Kaido forgot all about his guarded caution.

With his mouth open, Alber stared at the miracle that was Rainbow Falls. It was only Rocinante's soft chuckle that made him tear his eyes away from the paradise rainbow land, and shift his gaze to his two companions.

Then, he witnessed a sight just as rare and amazing as the valley's colossal cascading waterfalls, crowned with a hundred rainbows of all sorts and sizes: regular rainbows, small fire rainbows, a giant double full circle rainbow crowning the valley, mystical fogbows all over the tall ancient mountains, a stunning array of twinned rainbows, and even a spectacular, mind-blowing sun halo.

That sight, which had Alber flummoxed and blinking, was Kaido — his great, stern, infallible mountain of a captain… gaping at the rainbow falls with a nigh-childish wonder that had his hard, heavy face look almost unrecognizable.

Then Alber looked at Rocinante for help, too surprised and confused to make sense of what he was seeing —

And he found that Rocinante wasn't watching the miracle valley and its many wonders. He was looking at them — the two of them, gaping at all the rainbows.

He was smiling. His eyes were soft and fond.

It almost seemed like — like no matter all the undreamed-of splendor behind their backs, he'd rather look at the two of them.

"You love it," he said, his words just as soft as his gaze. "You love it here."

His words held zero gloating. He was just happy that they were happy, and that was all.

I love you, Alber almost blurted. Then he coughed and scowled, furious at his tongue for nearly acting out.

"I thought on an October morning, Golden Veil wouldn't be much to see," Rocinante went on, as if never noticing Alber's inner turmoil. "On the dog day sunsets, it looks spectacular: like a tall, golden, glowing, mystical gate to another world."

He regarded the mind-bogglingly tall waterfall: the valley's main jewel. Even from this far away, they could hear its distant thunder.

"Sometimes you end up being wrong — and glad for it. You know what I mean, mate?" Rocinante mused. "I'm so glad I was wrong. I'd never have thought this," he pointed at the distant waterfall, "was even possible… I'd never have found out without you two. Damn, I'm so lucky to have you."

"Some logic you have there," Alber said, coughed again, and wondered if Kaido could even hear them.

His great captain was still staring at the valley of a hundred rainbows — a gigantic opal, a living jewel, glowing with the brightest, most vivid and vibrant colors in existence — and the crown of them all: the kilometer-tall waterfall that was apparently Golden Veil.

It wasn't golden now. It was a giant, rippling, undulating vertical rainbow, pouring the purest colors imaginable all over the valley.

Alber gaped, unsure if he was awake or dreaming.

"Can something like this really exist in this world?" Kaido spoke finally. His face was wet with tears.

Rocinante looked at him like there was nowhere else he'd rather look.

"How strange it is," he said, "that even someone as great and immense as you doesn't know how wide the world really is. It is wide, Boss, and full of wonders, both known and yet-undiscovered. There's so much to see… so much color to this miraculous, infinite world… so many things that can make you happy. But you never knew that."

Your life was dreary, and you thought so was the entire world. But in truth, it was just your life, and what you made of it, he did not say aloud.

"I never knew that," Kaido agreed.

Before I knew you, he did not say aloud.

Rocinante gave them a half-smile that spelled trouble — and briefly, the strangest feeling seized Alber's gut: the long-forgotten, breathtaking thrill of tumbling down from a great height, wings folded.

That lunatic Rocinante was clearly about to stir up some shit… and Alber was down for it, whatever it was.

"Yo, Boss," Rocinante grinned with the brightest, most reckless smile in the world, "follow me!"

He shot into the sky like an arrow, and zoomed straight into the rainbow maze.

By Alber's side, a colossal dragon surged into the sky, to dive through the hundred rainbows — and in the distance, Alber faintly heard panicked screams. With his Observation, he faintly made out a gaggle of terrified tourists: some frozen, some squealing, some trying to crawl under the nearest rocks, some scrambling to run away in blind dread.

And he smirked.

A moment later, a colossal black menace spread his wings high in the clear morning sky, a wildfire raging between them. In the black winged man's hand, there was a great flaming blade.

The screaming intensified. That should settle it, Alber thought: after the panicked tourist crowd rushed out of the valley, no intruders should bother the three of them till they were done sightseeing.

Rocinante was already perched on Kaido's draconic head, yelling into his ear.

"How's that, Boss?" Alber made out through the violent roaring of the wind. "You lovin' it?"

Kaido savagely grinned, and dove in the sky to slither between two rainbows, his long body somehow not touching either.

"Did you know your feathers reflect the rainbow?" Rocinante sniggered at Alber, coming out of nowhere after maybe half an hour of flying in the rainbow-embroidered sky. There was a small, gleaming black feather in his hand — bright and glossy in the high noon sun, and all iridescent with reflected rainbows.

Alber stared at it, and wondered if that was how the wings beating behind his back looked right now, to Rocinante.

"You keep grouching that I call you angel," Rocinante murmured, "but if you saw yourself now, you'd agree: you are supernatural."

Alber had nothing clever to say to that, so he blurted:

"Fuck off."

It wasn't his best moment. But Rocinante laughed like he knew Alber didn't mean it.

"Let's go down," he said, "to the foot of the waterfall."

Together, they stood in front of the greatest waterfall in the valley, and watched, all three of them silent.

It was barely possible to talk over the din of the falling water, but even if it were entirely quiet here, they would still be silent. This place, it was — sacred, Alber thought. In this magical place, the physical world seemed to touch the realm of transcendent.

And so they watched, and didn't speak a word. It wasn't a done thing, to talk in temples.

It wasn't often that Alber felt small — but Golden Veil dwarfed both him and Kaido so utterly he felt like a sand grain, facing a tsunami.

Except it wasn't exactly golden: it was a giant, kilometer-tall rainbow veil — an ephemeral, rippling wall of color and sound that felt bigger than their whole lives.

Eventually, Alber spoke.

"This waterfall… it reminds me of Buyant Göl," he said. His words were stilted and stumbling, because it hurt to say them, and it hurt to think of the things they meant. "Buyant Göl, the sacred waterfall in my ancient homeland."

"Was it as lovely as this one?" Kaido asked.

"Better," Rocinante said when Alber was silent.

"How did you know…?" Alber stared at him, wide-eyed.

"It was your home," Rocinante sighed. "Of course there can be nothing better than home."

And Alber was silent again, because Rocinante spoke everything that needed speaking.

"I want to listen to what the water has to say," Alber asked after a while, and Kaido nodded without looking away from the waterfall.

How strange it was: these days, the most beautiful women in his castle could only hope to gain Kaido's fancy for a night or two, tops, and the most valuable jewels in his crew's booty only commanded his passing glance — if that. The only things that could make him breathless were Rocinante's songs, which were a miracle great enough to make anyone breathless… and the sight of that living rainbow, connecting the earth and the sky in the cannon-fire din of the falling water.

Alber watched it, and wondered if it had a spirit he could maybe talk to, like his ancestors used to.

If maybe this waterfall had a name more ancient than Golden Veil, bestowed upon it by some unknown, long-forgotten people of old — or if it had its own life and will, like Alber's ancestors thought all things did.

The rippling rainbow veil right in front of him was the second loveliest sight he had ever seen in his life.

He closed his eyes to it — and he listened.

He listened…

He listened to the sound of water, and the stories she told him… her age-old, eternal voice, speaking of all the things she had seen, and the things yet to be… singing an endless song.

And for the first time in a great many years, he wanted to pray.

He didn't notice it when he started singing. He only realized there was a song pouring out of his throat when another song joined it: very wonky but still somehow right, in this place, for this company… for the water spirits that listened, and the mountain souls with those thousands of years upon their shoulders.

Alber opened his eyes. He could feel kargyraa rippling through his body, rumbling in his throat, shaking the earth herself and rising to where the water and mountain spirits were watching him —

Someone to talk to, for the first time in millennia.

He offered them the ancient song of his people, and they looked at his offering with benevolence.

By his side, he could hear the sound of birdsong: the clear flutelike note, piercing the din of the falling water, weaving through the immense jets of color over the ancient valley, soaring above the thunder and peal, shining as bright and pure as a mountain stream in the morning sun.

Rocinante's sygyt was still very, very, very far from perfect… and right now, right here, its faults meant nothing.

Alber's kin taught him this: When you come to pray to the spirits, it pleases them when your song flows well, but the sound means nothing if your heart is closed. When you come before the sun and the sea, when you bow to the land and the wind, your heart must be open, and your song must speak out your soul. Then, the spirits will see you are true, and look upon you with favor.

Rocinante had never heard the words Alber's mother told him. She was dead for many years now, and so was his kin… and so was his entire tribe.

These days, Alber was the only one left who still carried their ancient song in his chest — and he was hardly the best teacher. While Rocinante was a diligent student, he still made a great many errors, and one thing Alber would never admit to anyone but himself was that half of Rocinante's mistakes were probably Alber's own fault.

Rocinante was such a diligent student, and the Lunarian kind of singing was something no human had ever sung. Half the time when Rocinante's song sounded off, Alber wondered if he should have done a better job explaining to him how to get it right. But he wasn't good at explaining — the only thing he could do well was sing.

Rocinante wasn't singing well now. But the way he sang would have made Alber's mother smile.

His heart was true, and his song was honest — and to the valley spirits, it was all that mattered.

(But then again, wasn't he always…?)

So Alber closed his eyes, and sang, feeling himself dissolve in the sea of sound. Just like back in the days of worship, when the land of Lunarians went alive with all sorts of songs…

A living river of ancient hymns.

An endless flood.

Strangely enough, this was the first time he had ever felt so profoundly Lunarian — so connected to his people's rich, ancient culture and history.

So much like a true part of his people.

…Like he was a single green leaf on the branch of a great, withered, naked tree, rooted deep in the earth and rising high into the sky.

As long as he lived, breathed, and sang his people's songs, that tree was still alive. The Lunarians were alive, through him.

He saw it now. He only just saw it now…

He finally saw it.

His face was wet — whether with the waterfall spray or with tears, even he didn't know. What did it matter, though? Those two were the same thing.

They were silent as they walked out of the valley, through the age-old pine trees — each as tall as maybe fifteen Kaidos. The hike was long, and none of them hurried to make it quicker.

Their eyes were still full of rainbows, and their lungs were still full of wonder, and —

"I've been here before, twice," Rocinante spoke, breaking the resounding silence, "I thought I knew this place… I've walked the stones at the Golden Veil's footstool. But this here was the first time I felt like I was in the presence of God."

No one said anything to his words, but both Alber and Kaido agreed.

The hike to the nearest town took them another hour, during which they finished the last of Rocinante's cookie stash, and the last of their drinking water. The town walls were already in sight, and Alber idly considered raiding some restaurant and eating everything they had in the kitchen when Rocinante randomly brightened up, and cried:

"Alright, it's souvenir time!"

Alber and Kaido looked at each other, silently rolled their eyes, and scoffed in unison.

"What…?" Rocinante genuinely didn't seem to understand their reaction.

"Souvenirs are a dumb tourist thing," Alber explained patiently, "a way to siphon money from the mindless sightseer gaggles in exchange for useless products of dubious quality."

"Fuck you," ah, now that got Rocinante offended, "don't buy any if you don't want to, but I do! Doffy's gonna get so damn mad at me for leaving like that — gotta placate him somehow. And my Princess, too — I need to get him some presents!"

A double sneer was his answer. Rocinante snorted and shook his head.

"Honestly, you two are so grouchy, worse than Doffy. Say, how 'bout we go visit this nice little winery Doffy likes? I just know you're gonna love it, Boss: they have the best liquor there. I'll do my shopping, and you'll do your taste-testing, and we'll all be alright!"

Kaido stared at him. Rocinante stared back with a grin. Alber just knew what was coming next.

"Oh, we'd be alright if the wind was in our sails…" Rocinante started.

Before the second line, his voice was not alone.

.

.

That simple sea shanty was something Rocinante heard on his recent trip to his child, to the Paradise part of the Grand Line. Kaido seemed to take a shine to this particular shanty: the day before yesterday, when Rocinante came back from Paradise, Kaido had him sing it for him ten times in a row, and then told the two of them many stories of his erstwhile crew.

The Rocks Pirates were the shittiest crew to be on, he spoke, almost nostalgic, the dumbest thing you could do on that crew was trust your nakama. But sometimes, on the quiet nights, whoever was out on the deck would start a song.

It was often the same song: this very shanty. And, before I knew it, the whole ship would sing together.

He sighed. His normally dark, surly face looked lit up from the inside.

Those were good times, he said. Even back then, there were good times.

He was singing it now: his old captain, his savior, the man Alber loved with everything left of his soul — singing that simple old shanty, with his eyes so alive and his face so alight — and he was smiling, smiling wider than the whole world: just like that young man who came forth out of pain and hopelessness, to break Alber's chains.

.

.

The shanty lyrics were very simple, and very easy to learn. Alber knew them by now.

So he opened his mouth, and he sang: the third voice joining a chorus.

.

.

And it was like no argument ever happened. Just like that, they were alright.

…

On their way to get some, ugh, souvenirs, Rocinante mused:

"You two must be hella hungry — "

"YES," Alber said. Kaido gave Rocinante a concurring look. Their resident bard should really tread carefully, Alber thought, because Kaido got brutal when he was hungry…

"If you get to taste-testing the wines while you're peckish," Rocinante went on, impervious to Kaido's looks, "you'll get drunk on me. Drunk Boss and drunk Alber in a place like this — it's gonna be a disaster, ha ha ha!"

There was nothing funny about drunk, hungry Kaido, Alber thought grumpily.

"So first things first, I'll be taking you to get some street food — oh, don't be making those faces, the local street food is mad good. I know the place with the best yantiqs — "

"What?"

"Uh. It's — a kind of a grilled turnover? I'm telling you, those yantiqs are unforgettable. You must get the cheese-and-tomato ones — "

"What the fuck is this veggie shit? I want meat, servant! Meat!"

The townspeople were already staring, but Kaido's cry had them scurrying. Did they think Kaido was going to eat them or what?

Although with the way he sounded just now… Alber's captain really got out of control when he was hungry. Did he learn it from Big Mom or what?

Meanwhile, Rocinante regarded Kaido with the strangest expression, which had Alber flushing behind his mask.

"My," he finally purred, "how passionate. You know, Boss, even I have never been quite that wild for meat."

Kaido stared at Rocinante. Rocinante stared at Kaido.

Then, they howled with laughter, leaving Alber to blush his face off and remember how Rocinante looked, wild for his brother's meat, on the one occasion Alber saw him really let loose.

"You keep yapping how this place is mad good," he grumbled to change the topic. "Is it really that perfect or what?"

"Of course not," Rocinante said absently, rummaging in his pockets — for the cig pack, most likely. "Aha! There they are," he pulled out the crumpled pack. "You were right, Boss, in that it's a place for the very rich. That means it's beautiful and well-kept, but — there are some things you just can't get here, although they're easily accessible on other islands. Like, say — Oh fuck." He opened his cig pack, and his face acquired the most tragic expression.

Alber peered inside, curious what might have gotten him so heartbroken. In the pack, he saw a single crooked cig, sitting in the corner and looking pathetic.

Rocinante disconsolately retrieved it, still staring at the now-empty pack as Alber lit his sole cig. Then, he put the cig into his mouth, and bit through the filter.

"Aw, shit. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck, damn. Why do I have to be so clumsy?!" he lamented, looking at the miserable little cig stump lying on the ground.

"Why don't you just buy another pack?" Alber inquired, dubious.

"That's exactly what I was just about to say, mate," really, from Rocinante's voice, one could think someone died. "They don't sell my brand here: too cheap for this place. All they have on Mae is the luxury kinds, and I don't smoke that."

"What, don't I pay you enough?" Kaido rumbled. That had Rocinante smiling and Alber scoffing, because Kaido paid them both plenty enough.

"Or did you forget your wallet?" Alber sneered.

"You sure do," Rocinante told Kaido, "and I sure didn't," that was for Alber. "No, it's just that I always smoke this brand only. It's a memento of my time with two dear friends. I've tried other brands, and they were better, but this one has the taste of my youth. It's — nostalgic, you know? Brings me back to the time when two people I love were both still alive and well. Ah, what can you do, I suppose I don't really have a choice…"

It turned out that, as they talked, he led them right to a tobacco shop. It was large enough to accommodate even Kaido's tall stature, and the price tags on the shelves nearly had Alber whistling.

"Okay, so this is hoping against hope, but — asking never hurts," he heard Rocinante mumble. "Hello," that was addressed to the shop assistant: a young woman with the looks of a fashion model. A quality skirt to sell the quality smokes, heh.

"How may I help you, sir?" the girl asked, looking quite unruffled despite the presence of Kaido, the King of the Beasts.

"Do you perchance have this brand in your shop?" Even as he asked, Rocinante's face clearly said he expected a no. He showed the crumpled, mammoth-meat-juice-stained pack to the shop assistant, disconsolate in advance.

"We do," the girl said demurely.

"NO WAY," Rocinante was generally a merry man, but it wasn't that often Alber saw him this happy. "Do you really? I remember asking you like four years ago, and you said you didn't!"

"Our deepest apologies for that unfortunate incident, sir. We aim to satisfy our clients to the best of our ability. After you made your inquiry, we took care to procure the brand you favor. How many packs would you like?"

"Uh. A carton?"

"Please wait a minute…" In less than a minute, she brought out a whole carton. "Here you go, sir."

"You, my kind lady," Rocinante said fervently, "are a lifesaver."

He slapped several ten-thousand belli bills onto the counter.

"The whole carton costs four thousand bellis, sir," the girl started. Rocinante waved her off.

"Please, you just made me very happy, my lady. Money is nothing next to that," he beamed.

Making you happy is enough of a reward, Alber wanted to say. But instead, he sneered:

"Honestly, you act so rhapsodic you might as well sing for her."

"Now that's an idea!" Rocinante beamed wider. He looked so happy — he felt so happy, like he was about to float.

And he sang.

.

.

With Lunarian sygyt, Rocinante was still as far from perfection as he was from the moon — but with human singing, he was the moon, and the sun, and all the stars in the clear night sky.

Both Alber and Kaido forgot all about their ravenous appetite as they listened, enchanted.

This was far from the first time they heard this song: Rocinante seemed to favor it, so he sang it often. And somehow, every single time, it sounded new and alive — and perfect down to every last note.

(Alber would wonder if Rocinante was even capable of singing off-key if he wasn't his unfortunate sygyt instructor…)

When the song was over, Rocinante went on one knee in front of the flushed, wide-eyed shop assistant, and kissed her hand. The girl gasped and went beet-red. Kaido snorted.

Alber — would get hella jealous if he couldn't see very clearly, just like the girl did, that there was zero eroticism in that kiss. Right now, Rocinante was just a gallant knight, hailing a dame.

And Alber couldn't help but remember the one time he saw Joker kiss Rocinante, and Rocinante kiss back like there was no one else in the room but the two of them… just one time. Joker was the type to make out in full view of the whole country, but Rocinante was private. He didn't like showing off his love. The one time he did, he likely just forgot Alber was there too: he was high-strung and aflutter, and all he saw was Joker alone.

That night, that time, just that once, Alber saw what Rocinante could be like, with the man he chose — with the man he wanted.

He had been seeing it in his dreams ever since.

The photo, too… that scandalous photo he saw in the newspaper just before Rocinante arrived in Wano. Back then, it made him scoff, and put away the newspaper to later lord it over Joker and his brother-slash-squeeze.

Now, the newspaper was somewhat sticky.

The thoughts made him bitter and ill at ease, so he sneered:

"You sure are happy over some dirt-cheap cigs."

"But of course! Cigs are life!"

"I thought singing was life."

"It is. And so is flying, and so is my Doffy, and so are my kids, and so are you two. There can be many indispensable things to a life, you know," and Rocinante looked at him like there was no one else in the room, that lethal half-smile on his pink, chapped lips, and there was only so much of this Alber could take.

"Didn't you promise us yan-whatever?" he snapped.

"Right! You're hungry! And, come to think of it, so am I. Let's go get those yantiqs, my man!"

The yantiqs were mad good, just like Rocinante promised. Alber tried the mutton ones, and the cheese-and-tomato ones, and the mushroom ones, and then he nearly ate the whole stall.

"Oi, oi, my man, leave some room in that belly for the wine appetizers!" Rocinante eventually cried around his yantiq, repeatedly slapping Alber on the tight leather over his thigh. Rocinante's hands were all stained with meat juice, but at this point, Alber was so full he didn't even care. "Where we're going, they have mad good tapas!"

Once again, he didn't lie. By the end of the wine tasting, Alber was slightly tipsy, and so full his leather jacket felt uncomfortably tight on his stomach.

Meanwhile, Kaido wore a most beatific smile, and he had to prop himself up on the house roofs as he walked. Between watching him like a hawk and constantly catching Rocinante, who kept stumbling and almost-falling, Alber felt like they needed to make a stop.

"Oi, look over the — Keep upright, will you, idiot?"

"Can't," Rocinante gave him a beautiful smile, and hiccupped. "I'm clumsy."

"And drunk."

"And drunk," Rocinante agreed, and stumbled again.

"Get sober, then!"

"How?"

"What for?" Kaido rumbled in chorus with Rocinante, and Alber got a twin set of bemused eyes looking at him from up above and down below. He huffed, irritated.

"Enough of this. You," that was for Rocinante, "are a pest, and you," this was addressed to Kaido, "are about to fall over. Let's make a stop and take a break. Look," he pointed at a nearby shop, "doesn't the sign say Souvenirs?"

"It does! Thanks for pointing it out, Alber! You're the best friend!" Rocinante's eyes got large and watery.

"The flower of friendship sure is beautiful beyond all measure," Kaido sobbed, and wiped a tear with his long mustache.

"Why did you two have to get so drunk," Alber snarled. "C'mon, let's go get those — souvenirs."

Inside, Kaido pretended to carefully look at the stalls, very obviously trying to not fall asleep on his feet. Alber sneered at everything around, because everything around was sneer-worthy. Rocinante brightened up, and was fluttering around the place like he intended to spend his yearly salary on these — trinkets.

"Gotta get this for my little Princess… this one, too… oh, Yamato will love this one!"

Yamato this, Yamato that. Rocinante chose to socialize with all sorts of useless people. (Starting with his big brother.)

"We have a selection of choice rockrose products that are sure to make any little lady happy," the smarmy shop assistant offered, gesturing at a section that had even Alber intimidated by its sheer size. (And price tags.)

"Oh? Please do tell," Rocinante's face lit up like a chance to spend some more money on some flowery nonsense was a great blessing.

The shop assistant led him to the section with all sorts of products in more or less identical packaging, decorated with the same image of a hot pink flower, which was apparently some sort of a local curiosity. The flower looked admittedly pretty, and when the shop assistant sprayed some rockrose perfume on a slip of paper, the air filled with the most delightful aroma.

With some regret, Rocinante shook his head:

"I'm not sure my little Princess will appreciate the perfume, but I'll definitely be taking the rockrose jam, and the rockrose petal honey, and the candied rockrose petals, and — "

Honestly, he was going to make Yamato fat. Not that Alber cared.

"Are you sure your little lady won't appreciate a choice product or two to pamper her beauty?" the smarmy shop assistant wheedled. Rocinante got honest-to-Sky pensive.

"On one hand, I am pretty sure," he mused, "on the other hand, my Princess is very beautiful! I'm telling you, man, you've never seen a beauty like my little Yamato!"

"I'm sure, sir," the shop assistant nodded. Alber rolled his eyes.

"That's it, I'm getting him some rockrose soap and perfume, and he can throw them at me if he hates them, ha ha ha!"

Alber had to give credit where it was due: the shop assistant's double take at the "him" was very restrained.

Meanwhile, Rocinante regarded the beauty products section again, obviously scouring it for more things to shove at Yamato now that his mind was made up about the cosmetics thing — and for a moment or two, his face got pensive.

Then, it briefly went so sour Alber goggled.

Then, it shifted to morbid, resigned acceptance — and with the heaviest sigh, Rocinante grabbed a case of blood-red rockrose lipstick, and threw it into the pile of the useless trash he was about to purchase.

Was the lipstick also a present for Yamato or something? But the girl kept insisting she was a man, there was hardly any chance she'd wear lipstick when Oden hadn't…

When they left the shop, Rocinante's huge, formerly-floppy backpack was almost full again, with all sorts of garbage no reasonable person would ever want, and Kaido was still awake — which was a mild achievement, given how he clearly fought to keep his eyes open. Rocinante looked at him and chuckled.

"Why don't we go get some ice cream and take a rest?" he suggested. "I know a place where they have — "

"Mad good ice cream, yeah, we guessed it," Alber drawled.

"How did you know?" Really, Rocinante had no business being so innocently wide-eyed. "Are you a seer, my man?"

Oh, his face. Alber couldn't help it: he sniggered.

Then, he laughed outright. By his side, Kaido snorted.

Rocinante's face clouded, but then he just shook his head, and fondly looked at them.

"You're both tired," he said. "There's a botanical garden nearby — it has the most beautiful flowers, and the tallest trees, and the softest lawns, and I know a spot where you can see the sea. It's a great viewpoint — it's on a hill, so the vista is stunning — and the best thing is that it's remote, in the eastern part of the garden where people barely ever go. Why don't we hit that place and take a nap? I can tell you two need one."

"Ice cream first!" Kaido demanded. Alber goggled. Was Kaido still drunk or what?

Rocinante just sighed, and his face lit up with the same fond smile.

"You know, Boss," he said quietly, "sometimes you really resemble your kid a whole lot."

Kaido just scoffed and imperiously waved his hand. He even managed to almost keep his balance while he was at it.

"Lead the way, servant," he ordered. "Do they have sake-flavored ice cream there?"

"Uh. I'm not sure, but we can always ask…"

Once again, Rocinante didn't lie. The ice cream was mad good, and the vendor had XXXXXXXL-sized wafer cones for clients like Alber and Kaido, which was a very nice touch. Initially Kaido scowled at the lack of the sake flavor, but Rocinante most earnestly promised him that the kiwi one was mad good, Boss, cadet's honor! And if you don't like it, I can always finish your ice cream for you.

The arrangement sounded pretty dubious to Alber, but somehow it managed to persuade Kaido — probably because he was still so drunk and sleepy — and they ended up getting three kiwi cones.

Of course Alber had to carry them all on his own, because Kaido was wobbly, and Rocinante was Rocinante. But once they were in the garden — it was a comparatively short walk, and the place was lovely, just like Rocinante promised — and Alber got to park his ass on the lawn with the soft, thick, cool grass, and try the damn ice cream, he had to admit: it was mad good.

"Well, how do you like it, Boss?" Rocinante asked. He had ice cream on his nose, chin, fingers, and the front of his shirt, and his smile had no business looking so sweet.

"Not bad," Kaido allowed, "not bad at all."

Then he belched, stretched out on the lawn — it was only slightly longer than Kaido's normal body — and started snoring right away.

"I think he liked it," Rocinante told Alber secretively.

"No way," Alber deadpanned.

"And I think you liked yours too."

"Now what makes you think so?"

"You have ice cream on the tip of your nose," Rocinante sniggered.

Alber scowled, and wiped his nose. Indeed, his hand came off sticky with greenish-white goo.

"Keep watching," he instructed the dolt, dignified. "If anyone slips past your Observation and sees my face without the mask — "

"No one will," Rocinante promised him very solemnly. "The moment anyone comes too close, they get paralyzed."

"What, no coma thing this time?"

"Sending people into a coma is a bit too heavy for a nice place like this one, don't you think so, mate? So I just mute them some nerve cells for a while, put them into a sort of sleep paralysis. After that, people usually walk away real fast once they come to."

"They'd better," Alber groused.

"You're so grouchy," Rocinante said fondly. "Why don't you take a nap, follow Boss' example? I'll watch over you two. No one slips past me, cadet's honor."

Alber gave him a haughty glance to keep him on his toes, and made to lie down on the lawn.

"Why don't you take off that jacket?" Rocinante suggested. "It must be mad hot."

It was. Mae was a summer island, and it was still daytime, and Alber was sweaty.

He frowned, reluctantly tugged off his jacket, and had to wrinkle his nose at the smell that wafted from his sweat-soaked shirt. He didn't get to take a shower yesterday due to hanging out with the mammoths, and it was showing.

Rocinante watched him with evident pity. Alber scowled: this here was the one man Alber didn't want to get stinky with.

"When I think about how your poor balls must feel," Rocinante said, grave, "in that hot, airtight leather… it makes me shudder. Seriously, my man, why don't you consider getting some chaps? At least let your privates breathe if you're that into leather."

"You sure seem concerned with my balls," Alber sneered.

"Well, I owe them," Rocinante shrugged. Alber's face went sour: he still remembered that fight from six months ago all too well.

"You dirty cheat," he accused. "No true man aims for the balls."

"Now that's rich coming from you, calling me a cheat…"

When Alber woke up, it was sunset.

As he opened his bleary eyes, he was still swimming in and out of consciousness. The wind was soft and cool on his face, and a wistful flute melody soared through his foggy mind like a lonely swallow —

No, wait, what. Flute melody?

He sat up. In the pink light, in the blue shadows, he saw a lean silhouette, so dark against the setting sun.

It was a man — Alber couldn't make out his face, but he could tell it was a man. In his hands, he held a flute, and his fingers danced on the holes, making the flute's voice fly up to where the seabirds were circling in the fading sky, and join their plaintive cries.

By Alber's side, propped up on one elbow, rested a great mountain of a man, listening.

Alber blinked some, shaking off what remained of his sleep daze. Now that he was more or less awake, he could easily recognize both Rocinante and Kaido. Except —

"I never knew you could play the flute," Kaido rumbled when the song went silent.

…Except he never knew Rocinante could play the flute.

"What, did I never play her for you?"

Alber and Kaido silently shook their heads.

"Well, now I did," Rocinante chuckled.

"Why do you even have a flute with you…"

"I always have her on me. She's a memento of my late Mother… and a way to know if Doffy's alright. If, you know, no one knocked him out or anything."

"Is it made of his strings?"

"She is."

"What does your mother have to do with it, then?"

Rocinante grew solemn.

"My Mother, she — " For a moment or two, he went mute, like the memories clogged up his throat. "My Mother first gave her to me as a present when I turned five. Father got her this flute for their anniversary, and Mother cherished her greatly. But then she saw I was good with the flute, and loved playing it. So she gave her prized flute to me."

For a few moments more, he was silent, and that silence spoke volumes. In the flood of the blood of the dying day, spilled along the western horizon, he looked like a mourner on a grave that wasn't there.

"She died when I was six," he said finally, "just a week before Mother did."

His fingers absently caressed the flute.

"In two years, Doffy got a Fruit," he said. "His string copies tend to be worse than the real thing, did you know? String-String pants chafe something terrible, and String-String shoes can rub your feet raw in a minute or so — "

Alber didn't want to think why Joker would need to make fake clothes for Rocinante, and what happened to the real ones.

"But with his violin and my flute, Doffy really went all out. He tried so many times, and each time, the sound was off… just the tiniest bit sometimes, but Doffy'd still destroy the flawed copy, and make a new one… he's such a perfectionist, my Doffy," Rocinante smiled, small and soft and still half-sad and so fond Alber had to look away.

Doffy this, Doffy that. He sneered.

"And eventually, he did manage to get them right… maybe on the hundredth try, I don't know. But the violin and the flute he created still didn't sound quite like the real thing… they were better." And Rocinante's face lit up with awe and — something else. Something Alber only saw in his eyes when he looked at Joker. "He's had to remake my flute a few times since that day, because, you know, things happened. I've been carrying her with me ever since I was eight… five, even, if you count the time when my flute was real."

It felt unsettling: Rocinante being this open, this vulnerable in this preternatural half-light, in the vague, dreamlike shadows. He even looked — not entirely human: like he was a spirit, or maybe a deity, shedding his human shell for a short while in this liminal time between light and dark, when the day died and the night's umbrae came out.

It was disturbing and disconcerting, seeing that cheerful, clumsy, amusing fool called Donquixote 'Ace' Rocinante be so strangely — solemn.

It made Alber uneasy, and so he scowled.

"Enough of this — schmaltz," he scoffed for good measure. "Where to next?"

Against the backdrop of the red dying sun, he saw Rocinante freeze.

But even if he didn't… his Observation could tell him, in vivid detail, how this time, his words did manage to sting to the quick.

Kaido's silent gaze was judgmental, which didn't help in the least, now that Alber was feeling like an utter bastard. A tense silence hung in the air.

Then Rocinante — chuckled.

…Alber did not expect that.

"So grouchy," Rocinante mused with a small half-smile, "why are all my favorite people so grouchy? You two, Doffy, Law…"

Law? Ah, right, must have been that child Rocinante was so crazy about — enough to publicly challenge Kaido himself, in the most impudent, brazen way… and get away with it. Alber still found it hard to believe that someone — anyone at all — could have the almighty King of the Beasts on a string like that.

"Thank fuck at least my Princess is nothing like y'all," Rocinante said with the softest smile, clearly thinking of Yamato, and Alber scowled. Why the fuck did that worthless brat have Donquixote 'Ace' Rocinante on a string like that, wasting his time frolicking with Yamato, going along with all of the squirt's foolish antics?

"Yes. Most unfortunately, my son is a lot like you," Kaido's voice made it very clear that it wasn't a compliment.

"You're just too jolly, is all," Alber grumbled, still feeling excruciatingly guilty.

"Aww, more griping! Say, my man: could it be you're simply hungry?"

"I'm not hungry," Alber groused. His stomach rumbled, deciding to be unhelpful.

"Your belly begs to disagree, it seems," Rocinante sniggered. "Say, why don't we go get some dinner? I know a place where they serve mad good lobster!"

But just after they made it out of the garden, Rocinante stopped, and said:

"Oh fuck."

He sounded rather distraught.

"What is it?" Fuck, did Alber sound worried just now? He did sound worried. It was all because he was still feeling guilty. What did it even matter how he sounded, it would make no difference anyway, Rocinante was the most oblivious thing in existence —

"The place where I'm taking you — it has a black-tie dress code," Rocinante looked genuinely concerned, "and our gang sure doesn't look the part."

Sometimes Alber really couldn't believe the shit coming out of Rocinante's mouth…

"Do you honestly think that place will deny entry to Kaido, the King of the Beasts, just because he doesn't have a tux?"

"You have a point," Rocinante slowly acknowledged, "and I guess we have no choice anyway — the local tailors are good, but even they can't make two tuxes for your giant asses appear out of thin air in five minutes… But the next time we come here, I'm definitely getting you two proper dinner attire!"

Next time?

"You two?" Kaido drawled. "You have a dirty shirt and dirtier jeans on, Ace."

Indeed, one would have to be very generous to call Rocinante's formerly-white shirt white now, given the constellation of ice cream and mammoth meat juice stains on the front, as well as the grass blots on the back and sleeves. His blue jeans fared no better, now green more than blue. Overall, Rocinante looked like a right bum, with that cheap cig in his mouth, and that half-gray stubble on his chin, and that huge, worn, dirty Navy backpack on his back.

All of this had to be the furthest thing from sexy. How come this jolly bum was still the hottest thing Alber had ever seen in his life…?

Meanwhile, Rocinante looked down at his chest and legs, checking out his attire.

"Well, I'll be. I look like a right bum, ha ha ha! Hey Alber, would you give me change if I asked for some?"

As Rocinante kept laughing, Alber heroically managed to restrain himself from blurting, I'll give you anything you might want to ask for, my dick first and foremost.

"Jokes aside, this is disgraceful. It's gonna be so awkward, showing my face in a nice place like that, when I look like this. Next time, I definitely gotta make sure to pack my tux," Rocinante mused.

"What, do you mean you actually have one?" Rocinante and tuxes just — felt like entities from different galaxies.

"Yep. I have several, some made right here on Mae because Doffy decided all the old ones were boring — well, you know how he is. That's how I know the local tailors are good… Except all my tuxes are back at home, somewhere in Doffy's closets. Fuck, I'm hungry! Let's go eat, why don't we?"

The place looked posh — the luxury, highbrow kind with impeccably schooled staff, ostentatiously expensive decor, and an ungodly number of cutlery on the linen tablecloths. Alber didn't remember ever being in a restaurant like this one. Although there was that one time when he razed a similar place to rubble to make a point to a patron who had foolishly thought fucking with Kaido was a good idea…

Next to the slick men in formal suits, and wide-eyed, jewelry-studded women in floor-length gowns, Alber felt severely misdressed, and also undershowered. He definitely didn't look the part for the place, and neither did any of his companions.

The polished staff still let them in with no ado, because no poshest place would deny entry to Kaido, the King of the Beasts, just because the man smelled a bit off, and had no shirt on under his leather vest.

As their bummy procession advanced to a nice semi-private table in the corner, Alber could hear frantic whispers fill the whole place:

"Kaido, the King of the Beasts?! This can't be!"

"Lord have mercy on our souls…"

"Can't they summon the Navy admirals or something to get rid of him?"

"He brought his own. See the shorter man by his side? That's the defected ex-Admiral White Seagull."

"Hmmm. White Seagull, White Seag — no way! The one who did that thing all the newspapers wrote about back in the day, with Shiki the Golden Lion — "

"Indeed."

"The one who rendered Red-Haired Shanks a cripple?"

"That's right."

"The one who annihilated an army all on his own…?"

"Yes."

"…Oh my."

As they sat down, a smooth, unflappable waiter materialized at their table.

"The usual for you, sir?" he inquired.

So Rocinante indeed used to be a regular here… going with Joker, most likely. Alber had to wonder how Rocinante looked in a dinner suit, with a bow tie and stuff.

"Sure," Rocinante said absently, "same for these two, please."

When the lobster arrived — remarkably promptly for such a busy place — Alber stopped with the dreamy imaginings of Rocinante in dinner attire, and considered turning his wings leathery to better protect himself from lobster juice and meat bits squirting all over the place. Kaido was hungry, and Rocinante was Rocinante, and together, they were creating a right lobster fountain. Somehow, most of it was flying straight at Alber.

Torn between annoyance and awe over the spectacular lobster, he de-manifested his beak again after gulping down the lobster tail, and got a fat jet of lobster juice all over his mask.

Unblinking and dripping, he looked down to stare at the culprit.

"Sorry for spraying all over you, man. I gotta be me," Donquixote motherfucking clumsy ass Rocinante said with an apologetic shrug, as a lobster claw slipped out of his hands.

With an impatient huff-growl, Alber caught it before it ended up on the floor, deftly removed the meat, and offered it to Rocinante with a pointed eyeroll.

"Here. Surely you can't manage to drop this now?"

"Course I can," Rocinante shrugged, his eyes laughing, "never underestimate my clumsiness, my man. In fact, I better play it safe…" He leaned in, and gently held Alber's wrist, and — ate the meat right out of Alber's hand…?

Fuck, shit, fuck, his lips were so soft. Even through the glove, Alber could feel the softness.

"There, I didn't drop it now, all thanks to you!" Rocinante bragged. "You're the best, man."

"I can just see the press pictures," Kaido drawled, looking mighty amused.

"Nah, there won't be any," Rocinante winked at them — and really, for someone whose Observation could supposedly see through all shields and defenses, he was so oblivious it wasn't even funny. How the fuck couldn't he see what that one wink did to the bloody muscle hammering in Alber's chest…?

"What, have you already Stilled some paparazzi into brain death or something?" Kaido idly wondered meanwhile.

"So bloodthirsty," Rocinante shook his head with a light chuckle. "No, just put them into a coma for a while — well, them, and their Den Den Mushi. I don't want another newspaper picture debacle, you know."

"What, worried the photos wouldn't turn out as scandalous as the one from your defection? You were just acting pretty lewd here with that meat."

"I did no such thing," Rocinante hissed, his cheeks flaming.

"Sure did."

"Did not! Shut up and eat, Boss, your lobster is getting cold!"

"Are you trying to boss me around?" Kaido rumbled, his hand with the lobster meat stopping halfway to his mouth.

"I'm trying to get you to act decent! We're in a public place!"

This had both Kaido and Alber so taken aback that Kaido even forgot all about Rocinante's insolence.

"You're the one to talk about decency," Alber finally voiced their shared thought, shaking his head.

"Now what the fuck are you getting at? I'm perfectly decent at all times! Well, unless I'm alone with my Doffy… oh fuck, this meat is good." He ate the lobster meat and the tomalley, then stuck his fingers into his mouth and sucked off all the tomalley traces with the look of utmost bliss on his face. He made noises, too. It was all extremely indecorous.

Alber honestly didn't know how he kept his flame from burning down the whole place.

It was a good thing Rocinante threw his Silent sphere around them: the mere thought of other people listening to his moans made Alber's hackles rise like little else did. Which was foolish and strange: Rocinante wasn't even his own man. But — as little as it was, the sound of his moans, Alber still wanted to keep it all to himself.

Well, himself and Kaido, who was feeling supremely amused watching them both. Alber gave him a dark look, and vengefully cracked his lobster.

…Fuck, but this meat was good. Did he make a noise just now? Maybe he did. Fuck if he cared, though.

Done with their excellent lobster, they finally started paying attention to the outer world outside of Rocinante's handy Silent bubble — and that was how they discovered that the patrons' attention had already shifted from their happy band of bums to an ethereal silhouette of a woman.

The woman was thin and tall — well, tall for a regular human. Her face was long and narrow, and her blonde hair was pulled up in an elaborate style. Her dress was a dreamlike, misty gray, with a narrow, crystal-studded belt glinting and sparkling in the dim light of the ornate old chandeliers, and the train of that dress took up like half the restaurant floor.

She stood there, motionless in the middle of the sumptuous hall, soundlessly working her mouth — from behind Rocinante's Silent, Alber couldn't hear a thing, but he could tell she was singing.

Not a single patron was eating or drinking: they were all watching her, looking like they forgot how to breathe. Even the waiters took care to move as stealthily as humanly possible, to avoid disrupting the spell.

The faint blue glow of the Silent sphere dissipated, letting in the sounds of the outside world — and Alber's ears were hit with a voice that instantly gave him chills.

At first, he was just as spellbound as anyone in the restaurant, mesmerized by the woman's otherworldly singing and the mystical glimmering of the rhinestones — but then, strangely spurred by the song, he had to look down, at the man sitting by his side… because, in a way, that song was about him.

Rocinante was listening, entranced and enchanted, his cheek in his palm.

Alber was more than twice as tall, so from his convenient height, he had the perfect view of Rocinante's sinewy neck, his prominent clavicles in the open collar of his formerly-white shirt…

Those clavicles, so sharp in the dimmed half-light.

He watched Rocinante's longish hair, falling in soft waves on that pale neck that just wouldn't tan properly: half muted gold, half coarse gray. He watched how, despite the relaxed, easy pose, Rocinante's back was still ramrod-straight — Navy-straight.

He watched his profile, in stark relief against the warm, muted glow of the candles on the table: the thick silver-gold bangs, the straight, narrow nose, the prominent pointed chin… the lush lower lip, still glossy with butter.

The song was over, and the singer bowed and gracefully left the room — but the magic still thrummed in the charged night air.

What the song said, too, still stayed with Alber, beating in his mind like a night moth — mindlessly throwing itself, time and time again, at the glowing light of a lamp.

Alber wondered if the woman's song was maybe a prophecy, or a curse. Then he found that he didn't mind either.

Then he mused if he could maybe kiss Rocinante, just this one time, and get away with it without ruining this — this thing they had.

…Or if one kiss in a lifetime was really worth losing this man's devotion and friendship.

When Alber just about decided, with one more long look at Rocinante's profile, that yes, it was goddamn worth it, Kaido scoffed.

"Fool," he said. "What are you gaping for?"

Alber jerked. Rocinante looked up, with a sun of a smile on his face.

"Just enjoying a lady's song," he said, still keeping his voice low. "What, can't a man gawk at a beautiful lady?"

They both snorted at once.

"You're gawping like you aren't ten times as good a singer as she is," Kaido said.

People who didn't know him well wouldn't ever be able to see the genuine fondness behind his words — the fondness that, to Alber, still felt most strange and alien. Kaido had no true love for anyone — not even his own child.

But as he looked at that jester, that fool, that miracle man by his side, he was — fond.

Rocinante laughed, very obviously pleased and just as obviously unconvinced.

"I sincerely doubt it, Boss: that lady's magical. You might like my songs better, because she sings of love, and I of the sea, but that's no reason to disrespect her art."

"Why don't we see who's better, then? I'll be the judge."

"You're biased by definition, because you pay me…"

"Quit yapping and sing something, Ace. Captain's orders," Kaido seemed entertained, and Rocinante — well, he looked as fond as ever, as if nothing warmed his heart more than his good-natured squabbling with Kaido.

"Hmmm. Shall I sing you of love, then?" He batted his long golden lashes, and bit his glistening lower lip, which was — which was — just plain unnecessary, that was what it was.

"Why don't you sing of love and sea both?" Kaido suggested, picking his teeth with the nail of his little finger. "After all, they are much alike."

"True, that," Rocinante chuckled. "Alright, I think I know just the thing… It's a shame there's no accompaniment, because the score to this aria is a right banger, but — I suppose I'll have to make do. And it's a bigger shame I am no castrato — "

Alber choked on his cognac.

"…Because this piece was written for one. But alas, you'll have to put up with my imperfect voice, Boss. Well, it's not like you know any better," Rocinante polished off that sentence with a wink that had Alber yet again sincerely grateful to have his mask on.

And then, he sang.

The song — seemed to consist of just eight short lines? Except he sang them a great many times, in a great many ways, with all sorts of frills and flourishes, some of which seemed impossible for a mortal throat to produce — and the way he so easily went from the highest soprano notes any woman would envy, to his normal smooth, dark, smoky baritone, to the lowest, blackest of bass, had Alber gaping.

It was far from the first time he heard Rocinante sing as high as a woman, or as low as a purring cat, or as ornately as a nightingale — but in this song, that impossible man showed off all he had, and all he could do, and it was…

Miraculous.

He sang, with seemingly no effort at all — watching Kaido all the while.

.

.

And somehow, his song didn't even sound like a mere song.

As Alber listened, the sounds painted a vivid vision of heaving waves and howling wind on the high stormy seas — and a tiny ship, lost in the vastness of the violent waters. The low notes sounded like the roaring ocean, the high notes like the wailing of a lost, desperate soul — and the final lines with those mind-boggling vocal tricks were effulgent fireworks in celebration of a lost ship finally coming back home to her dear, safe, peaceful haven.

The song was over, and Rocinante went silent, still looking at Kaido, as Kaido was looking at him.

"Well, Boss," he asked with a laugh, "how did you like it?"

Kaido opened his mouth — but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by a round of applause that tore through the restaurant like a peal of thunder, and just wouldn't die down.

Rocinante jumped a bit, like he forgot there was anyone else in the restaurant but the three — or rather, two — of them. Then he gave an awkward smile and a little wave to the clapping people, obviously unsure as to how to react to the unceasing storm of applause, and took a sip of his cognac.

Still stunned, Alber barely made out Kaido's quiet, amused words:

"How was that song about love, Ace?"

"Uh — um — well, I guess it wasn't," Rocinante laughed, and scratched the back of his head, "not explicitly anyway. It's a part of a well-known Baroque opera, though, and that opera's all about love. Well, all of them are. But then again, what isn't?"

…

Full and pleasantly buzzing with quality booze, they wandered out of the fancy, ritzy place with all those posh people sitting at their posh tables in their posh attire, leisurely holding all those vapid, pretentious conversations to the subdued, refined sound of the background orchestra — and Alber's eyes, nose, ears were all assaulted at once.

Inside the restaurant, reigned the realm of snobbish, haughty formality, soaked with the stale moldy smell of old money.

Outside, the island looked like one huge, rowdy party.

There were mimes, and mummers, and jugglers, and sword swallowers, and street magicians, and a puppet show, and fire poi artists, and glow poi artists, and a regular artist or two, sketching quick portraits for quick money. There were street singers and street dancers: people with violins and guitars, people with castanets and tambourines, singing slow songs or dancing flamenco. Everywhere Alber looked, everything was a dizzying whirlpool of colors and smells, of sounds and light — just like those long, blood-red flying skirts of the tawny woman with that tar-black hair whipping around her shoulders as she twirled and tapped away the mad rhythm to the rough cries of the flamenco singer. It almost felt like his husky voice, his fingers on that torrid, lovesick guitar, and her burning dance were all a passionate ménage à trois.

"C'mon, mate," Rocinante murmured after her dance was over. His voice was so low and Alber was so distracted, he barely heard him at first. "Let's go get us some cotton candy and take a walk."

Alber honestly didn't think he was able to eat anything at the moment. It felt like today, he'd been eating so much he'd already had enough for the rest of his life. But when Rocinante held out a pink cloud of cotton candy, the thing twice as big as his own head, Alber couldn't well look at his smile and say no.

He took it. He tried it.

It was mad good.

His stomach, it seemed, still had some space to fill — and his eyes, too: Alber would have thought they'd be tired by now, too full of all the colors and sights, but, as the three of them walked down the seafront, his eyes kept greedily taking in more and more new impressions.

The night air was cool, so he didn't feel too hot in his leather mask — and even with that hateful, stiff, stuffy contraption still on his face, he could feel how the air of Mae was all soaked with that unique, sweet, dizzying aroma: the smell of rockrose.

Sea salt and rockrose and cotton candy, and Rocinante's soul by his side — not even the cognac got Alber as drunk as this heady cocktail.

Kaido ate all his cotton candy, and stopped by the first stall they came across to get some more. The vendor raised his head to look at the customer, and nearly pissed his pants, visibly going into shock. Rocinante had to calm him down through the power of his Fruit and his low, steady voice, and then he primly reprimanded Kaido as he handed him the new giant cloud of candy:

"Why, that was reckless of you, Boss. Don't you know you're so sexy the mere sight of you turns people to stone? Better delegate the shopping to me — "

Then, he couldn't keep up the straight face with Kaido guffawing by his side like Rocinante was the world's most amusing clown.

They stopped for a moment to laugh it out, and Alber deliberated for a moment or two… and then, he stole a bit of Kaido's cotton candy when his captain wasn't looking.

It was mad good.

The place in general was mad good. Their entire trip had been mad good so far. Where was the catch? There had to be one. There was always a catch. Something had to go wrong, one way or another.

"My surly, suspicious man," Rocinante purred into his ear, having walked three meters up in the air to reach it. "I say, away with the doom and gloom. The night is young, so why don't we enjoy it while we still can? After all is said and done, we all end up skeletons," he softly sang that Binks' Brew line, just for Alber alone, "and a skeleton can't possibly laugh, or gape at the dancers, or stuff its belly with cotton candy."

His arm was hot, hard, and heavy around Alber's neck, and Alber desperately wished he could feel Rocinante's breath through his mask.

"So let's have fun, my man," Rocinante whispered. "Let's make this night into something our naked bones will remember when we're dead."

And Alber was silent.

With this man scorching hot by his side, breathing tobacco and laughter in Alber's ear, he wanted to say,

Don't call me 'your man,' because I'm not — I'm not, I'm not, and I won't ever be…

And he wanted to say,

Make me your man. Claim me for your own. Take all of me, it's yours anyway. Let me kiss you like your brother does, and look at me like you look at him…

And he wanted to say,

Leave me the fuck alone, fuck off and never come back, can't you see that you're killing me, you're destroying me — by being here with me… by being you… by not being mine.

And he wanted to scream, because Donquixote Rocinante was too much to stay sane and in control of his faculties; and he fuzzily thought that if that Donquixote goddamn asshole clown Rocinante didn't step back right this instant, Alber would tear off that fucking mask, and kiss this impossible fucking man, and to hell with any consequences.

Rocinante stepped back.

He walked down the air, his eyes on something far, far away in the crowd.

Alber stood stunned, his head empty and ringing. He couldn't move, and he couldn't think. All he could do was look at that damn, thrice-cursed man, who was —

Pulling on his pant leg?

And grabbing Kaido's?

And dragging them — somewhere deeper into the buzzing, laughing, screaming crowd?

When they came closer, Alber saw what got Rocinante so curious. At the viewpoint on top of the large cape over the ocean — against the backdrop of the night sea in its shimmering necklace of city lights, the distant, flare-bedazzled Ferris wheel its main gem — there were dancers.

The light was sparse here, and the ornate lanterns were dim. In their mysterious half-light, the dancers with their dark, dark skin looked like spirits weaving in and out of shadows. They moved with inhuman, panther-like grace, and a prayerful, rapt abandon.

So lost they were in their dance, in the thick, relentless, mad beat of the drums, that they didn't even notice Kaido, the King of the Beasts, just casually stopping by to watch them perform —

And neither did the whole crowd around them. All eyes in that large, thick crowd were fixed on one thing only: the witching shadowy dance.

A minute ago, Alber was quite convinced he'd already seen all the miracles this place had to offer. Well, apparently not.

By his side, Rocinante watched the tall black male dancer with the long black dreadlocks, and his soul was wistful and sad.

"Oi, what's with all the saudade?" Alber murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

Rocinante looked up at him, startled, like Alber's words tore him out of some deep past or distant place. Then he chuckled, self-conscious.

"It's — it's nothing," and he sighed in a way that said it definitely wasn't nothing. "This man just — he reminds me of a dear old friend, is all."

"Everything reminds you of some friend or other. How many friends do you even have?"

"I don't know," Rocinante got honest-to-Sky pensive. "The more the merrier, though. Don't you think so?" he beamed.

I wouldn't know, Alber wanted to tell him. I've only got one.

But as he watched Rocinante watch the miracle dancers, heaven abruptly bloomed with a hundred colossal fiery flowers, and a great rumble tore through the sky:

Fireworks.

Alber took them in for a moment, and then looked down, to watch them in Rocinante's eyes.

Those eyes — so wide, so amazed… so full of lights.

"Look at all these colors, Boss!" Rocinante's voice was full of light, too. Was he talking about the fireworks or something? The rest of the night was mostly just dark.

"Shut up," Kaido rumbled, the left corner of his mouth ticking up. Rocinante shoved him in the side — well, more like in the thigh, given the height difference. Kaido ruffled his hair, and then they went back to watching, snickering all the while.

Once again, they were doing this — this thing they did: talking sans any words. Alber could see it in their faces, in their laughing eyes.

And briefly, bitterly, badly, he wished Rocinante would let him in on that talk at least.

The night was still alive with lights and laughter when Rocinante grabbed them by their pant legs again, and dragged them away, down the road that got narrower, darker, and emptier as they walked.

"Oi, are you taking us to the woods to perform some dastardly treachery?" Kaido inquired. From his face and his voice, it was very obvious that he was very full, and in a very good mood.

"How did you know?" Now who the hell said Rocinante was allowed to smile like that. A smile that insolent should be banned or something. "The local woods are really something else, Boss. Next time we come here, we'll get a proper hotel suite with beds, showers, and everything — " Really, next time? Not that Alber minded. "…But tonight, I want us to sleep in the woods with ants crawling up our pants, ha ha ha!"

Ahead of them, Alber could see said woods: tall age-old pines that dwarfed even Kaido, shooting a hundred meters into the sky. And he wondered how it would feel, sleeping with the sweet smell of pine in his nostrils, on the thick soft featherbed of the fallen fir…

But then, there was a hot hard arm on his shoulder — and a half-gray, disheveled, somewhat stinky miracle man was walking through the air by his side as easily as he had been walking the ground, and a lot more confidently. All the way up here in the air, he never stumbled.

"You can take off your mask now," the miracle man whispered. "There's no one around, and if I Observe any sentient creature get too close to us for your liking, I'll just Still them. You're safe here, Alber."

And then Alber was getting Rocinante's stare that was usually directed at Kaido: the stare that felt like Alber was the only person in the whole vast universe.

Awkwardly, he took off his mask. For some reason, his hands wouldn't obey him.

The hot, hard arm let him go.

…Alber wished it didn't.

He wished this night hike would never end. He wished to walk this path through the woods forever, with these two men by his side.

But eventually, the path through the pines came to an end — leading them out to a beach.

In the daylight, the beach had to be glorious, with its soft fine sand — so golden even in the limited light of Alber's fire on his back.

In the night… it was miraculous.

In unison, silently, they sat down in the soft sand to rest, and dragged off their boots to let the whispering waves lick their hot, tired, sweaty feet. (Holy fuck, did Kaido's feet stink… Theirs were barely any better, though.)

They watched the restless sea, and the sky full of glimmering stars, and the remote, ethereal vision of a white marble castle, as if suspended in midair over the moonlit waves.

From the bird's-eye view at Mae they saw just this morning — damn, it seemed like a year ago, what with all the things they saw after — Alber remembered the castle was, in fact, built on top of a very tall cliff over the sea. But in the dark of the night, in the moon's pale light, the castle looked like a dream made of clouds — a radiant, distant mirage in the cool night air.

"It's called the Nightingale Castle," Rocinante spoke finally, soft and low, as if hesitant to disrupt the moment and dispel the magic. "There is a legend… long, long ago, in the days of old, ages before the World Government came to be, there was a king who fell in love with a nightingale."

"Kinky," Kaido snorted.

"He spent dozens of sleepless nights trying to catch the nightingale, and when he did, he put it into a cage wrought of pure gold. But ever since that night, the bird fell silent: locked in its ornate cage in the opulent palace, it wouldn't sing for a single second. Bereft of its voice, the king slowly wasted away, till he got too feeble to hold a sword. Then, he mounted his horse, took the cage, and rode to Rainbow Falls. There, he prayed to the gods of the valley, and when the setting sun turned the waters of Golden Veil into light, he opened the cage, and the bird flew out."

Far, far in the distance, the castle faintly glowed, like a marble crown over the dark night sea.

"And when the shining spray touched the nightingale's feathers," Rocinante went on, low and solemn, "the bird turned into a girl."

For a while, he was quiet.

"The king took her for a wife," he said, "and he built her that castle. She sang like no human could, and on her wedding day, she wore a golden veil over her golden hair. When she died in childbirth, many years later, he had himself buried alive with her."

"Now that's hardcore," Kaido appreciated. Rocinante chuckled.

"After hearing this story from our tour guide, Doffy got curious, and did his own research," he went on. "He said the legend was bullshit. The castle was indeed built by a king of old for his queen, who was really called Nightingale, in the tradition of her royal family — but she couldn't sing even one true note. There were no magical transformations and hardcore burials. It was just a regular marriage of convenience, a way to establish an alliance between two powerful kingdoms — and the Nightingale Castle was more of an ostentatious show of wealth than a monument to true love. They did spend their lives together, the king and the queen named Nightingale, and they had some ten children together — and the king had a few dozen more, by a string of his favorites throughout his life. People sure like to spin romantic fantasy bullshit out of the simple, mundane things…"

He chuckled.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he said quietly, watching the moonlit castle, stars glowing bright in his eyes.

The double It is hung unsaid in the salty, fragrant night air. Between the three of them, there was no need for words.

Then, Rocinante poked Alber's side.

"Take off that leather jacket, will you, mate? Otherwise, you'll sweat yourself into canned brined tuna."

Alber hesitated. Rocinante sniggered.

"Don't worry, my man," he said, "all of us here stink to a certain extent. You can rinse your shirt in the sea and lay it out on the sand, it will dry in no time."

Reluctant, Alber took off his jacket. Indeed, his shirt needed some rinsing, badly.

By his side, Kaido was dragging off his own leather vest, which had Rocinante patently staring. He noticed that Alber noticed, and quietly laughed.

"Well, what's a man to do," he murmured, "Boss got one hot bod."

Kaido smirked and flexed his muscles. Rocinante applauded.

Then, he unbuttoned his own shirt — unzipped his jeans — dragged them off, stumbling over his pant legs and revealing more and more of his fair, scarred skin — and then, he was grabbing his shirt and boxer briefs, wading into the sea, washing and rinsing them — bent over, his pale butt so stark in the moonlight — Alber probably should be taking care of his own stinky, sweat-soaked shirt, but he was paralyzed, staring at that beckoning butt.

Was he gaping? It felt like he was. Except somehow, he gave zero fucks.

Then Rocinante was walking back to the shore — thank fuck Alber was still in his pants, because if he weren't, his hard-on would be waving hello — and carefully spreading his now-marginally-cleaner clothes on the sand to let them dry, and then — Rocinante slapped Kaido on the by-now-naked, very hairy butt?

The slap was resonant. In the trees, birds flocked up with shrill cries, their wings loudly flapping.

"Let's go take a swim, Boss," Rocinante enthused, "wash off all that sweat. Oi, Alber, what are you doing, still brining there in that leather? The water's mad good! Let's swim!"

"None of us can swim," Alber said the first dumb thing that came to his dry mouth. "We're all hammers, and you're hella clumsy. You'll slip, sink, and die."

"One of you two will rescue me," Rocinante shrugged. "C'mon, man, we're wasting time here. The night is short, and the water is lovely!"

Alber looked at Kaido for help, but — Kaido was already in the sea up to his waist? Then he just sorta — flopped on his back, raising a tall fountain with his fall, and emerged again, his long, thick hair water-soaked and running down his back in snaking black rivulets.

Well, if the water was so deep here near the shore, maybe it would hide Alber's hard-on if it ever emerged… and for now, Alber busied himself with imagining Queen doing a strip show as he unzipped his pants, which were indeed tight, hot, and unpleasantly sticking to his sweaty skin. His tactic worked: by the time he dragged off his pants and his own boxer briefs, he wasn't sure he was ever getting it up again.

He turned around. Rocinante was standing in the sea, waist-deep in the water, his skin all glossy and gleaming in the bright moonlight, and his wet hair was sticking to his face. He carelessly pushed it back, revealing his profile. This was the very first time Alber saw all of it, without those bangs.

Right. Queen doing a strip show, Queen doing a strip show… Briefly, Alber considered just spending the whole night with his eyes shut.

He carefully washed his smelly shirt and underpants, which were just about dripping with sweat. He doubted it would help much, but "marginally cleaner" was still better than "sweat-crusted and stinking to the High Sky," so it would have to do.

Then, he spread his clothes on the dry sand, the way Rocinante did, and stepped back in the water.

Now that he wasn't busy trying to sort out his clothes, he could feel: the water was lovely. So pleasantly cool on his overheated body…

They swam in the night sea — or, well, waded through water, or sat down in it, or just stood there, because none of them could actually swim. But it was still lovely, feeling the water's cool smooth embrace around him — all of him bared to the world for once.

The cool touch of seawater sapped his powers like little else did — but it still felt amazing, and for the life of him, Alber wouldn't go back to the shore right now. Sea was just like love in that way.

High in heaven, the sickle moon was big and bright: a silver pendant on the dark chest of the sky. Just like the one Alber's mother wore — long, long ago, when he was a small kid… when she was still alive.

Alber watched it, and wondered if it was all a dream — if he was just sleeping, or maybe seeing things.

The whole world around him felt — unreal, like an entrancing fantasy his mind conjured in the witching hour. Like a realm of spectral shades and crystal whispers… of ethereal spirits and mighty gods.

Then, one such ethereal, faintly glowing spirit splashed him so hard Alber'd get soaked from head to toe if he weren't already wet.

He blinked, and shook his head, his hair dripping water all over his shoulders.

"Fight me," the spirit invited with a mock growl and a savage grin, and —

Now this was real alright. This was familiar.

Up to his pecs in the seawater, Alber beat his wings. They raised a wave so high it brought Rocinante down.

He surfaced before Alber could lunge forth to fish him out.

"Now that was a good one!" Rocinante declared like a true connoisseur. "Take that, angel boy! Rokuogan."

The mighty water jet his technique produced actually knocked Alber off his feet. This was it. This was war!

(Even as he did his considerable best to emerge a victor, he kept glancing at Rocinante's arms. There was remarkable strength in them for a human, what with them being so toned and everything.

Was he staring? It felt like he was staring.

Well, Rocinante wouldn't notice anyway. He never did.)

Meanwhile, Kaido just kept chilling to the side, enjoying the pleasant water, and distracting Rocinante with the defined muscles on his wide back and chest, on his ripped arms, under the gleaming wet skin… until one of Alber's waves, by pure accident, hit him straight in the face.

Then, Kaido scowled, shot into the sky, turned into a dragon, and hit the water with his tail, once.

With that one blow, he nearly raised a tsunami, and just about drowned them both.

"Oof. You win, Boss, you win," Rocinante laughed, spitting seawater. His voice was admiring.

Kaido dragged him out to the shore, dropped him on the soft sand, and flopped down by his side.

"This is good," he said.

Alber followed suit, stretching out on the still-warm sand.

He watched the stars falling across the sky, through the endless universe. He watched the clouds racing and chasing each other, like the three of them did on their way here to this island.

It was good. It was mad good, and Alber wanted this night to never, ever end —

But then, Rocinante was getting up, and pulling his arm.

"What?" Alber snapped. He was comfy!

"I need your help." Okay, with the way Rocinante was looking at him, Alber was instantly ready to give him both his kidneys. "Let's go get some wood, my man." Wood? Rocinante could have his wood, especially if he kept calling him my man like that. "I wanna start a bonfire."

"What, isn't my fire enough for you?" Alber grumbled.

"It's not the same thing," Rocinante gave him a mysterious smile. "I want the three of us to sit around a big fire, play poker, and drink sake together."

"Sake?" Kaido raised his head. "King, go do what he says."

And, well, Alber couldn't really refuse now that it was an order…

When the fire was merrily crackling, Rocinante dove into his backpack. He still had nothing on, and his butt looked like a second moon: small, round, and glowing —

Alber hastily looked away. Queen doing a strip show, Queen doing a strip show…

Out of his backpack, Rocinante fished a few packs of marshmallows, a jar of sake, three cups, and a deck of playing cards. Was his backpack charmed or what? It held all sorts of things.

The next hour was spent playing poker — Rocinante really had the worst poker face ever — and drinking, and, when the fire burned out, roasting marshmallows on the twigs Rocinante found in the forest. And the sounds of songs and laughter spilled through the deep night quietude, drowning out the sea's murmurs, and the cool, salty sea air filled with the smell of good sake, and burnt marshmallows, and Rocinante's cheap cigs… and it was good.

It was all so good —

And then it was over.

The songs went quiet. The embers sizzled out. The laughter died, and their cups went dry.

In the dark, the three of them silently stretched out on the soft sand, side by side, looking into the sky.

All the way up there, Alber saw the silent half-smile of the moon, and the mocking stars, winking at him from their unreachable zenith.

Suddenly, he felt cold and foreboding. He turned his head to look away from that distant, indifferent sky.

Now that he was looking to the right instead of up, he saw a man.

And he didn't care if he stared. He watched.

He watched his fine-boned face and his hair: longish, thick waves of silver in the faint moonlight. So light and fluffy it was, it already went dry after their midnight dip.

He watched that lean, heavily scarred body, with those hip bones and ribs jutting out so starkly — and, try as he might, he couldn't wrap his head around the mind-boggling, chilling fact that just a couple months ago, this man was really about to starve himself to death.

Now the days when he barely ate, barely spoke, and never smiled had long passed. The Rocinante Alber was looking at was entirely different from the Rocinante that first came to Wano, to be mocked, laughed, and jeered at, because of that scandalous photo and his general non-piratey attitude. That Rocinante stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the unruly gang called the Beasts Pirates —

And this, at least, never changed.

He was still very different from all Kaido's underlings. He was nothing like them, or any other man in the world.

Why was it so beautiful?

Why was he so beautiful — that still-far-too-skinny man with his fluffy hair, half-gray long before its time, with his sharp, prominent hip bones and clavicles, with the countless scars marring his pale, pale skin?

That skin glowed like a hidden pearl in the dying moonlight. With the light this faint, Alber couldn't make out that Rocinante's pubic hair was just as half-gray as the wild wavy mane on his head.

He hated it that he knew it. He hated it that he wanted to look there, that he wanted to touch.

He hated it that he wanted to spread those long, lean naked legs, and discover what lay between them. He hated it that he wanted to taste those chapped lips and the smile on them, that he craved the tobacco flavor on Rocinante's spit.

He hated it that this glowing man here would let his own brother do all that, and more, when he wouldn't even look at Alber's excellent face like he was anything more than a friend.

He told him that Alber was hot.

Tall, dark, and handsome, he said.

So fine, he said, looking at Alber like he was a beautiful statue in a museum.

I love you, he told Alber and Kaido in his drunken honesty — and no I love you had ever sounded less in love.

My Doffy, he said, he's like no one else in the world. He taught me to fly, you know? Or rather, we learned it together. We took our first steps in the sky together. So much we've been through, together… so many nights we've shared… so many times he saved me… so many memories between our souls… a whole life.

All the hottest men on the planet mean nothing next to that.

Never before had any words flayed Alber's skin this ruthlessly, and slashed up his heart this carelessly.

He should have killed Rocinante at once — because right now, and every second of every hour of every day, Rocinante was slowly murdering him just by existing by his side. So close, at arm's length — and countless kilometers away.

He was nothing Alber had ever expected to love. He was everything Alber dreamed of.

He wasn't his, and he wouldn't ever be.

Rocinante felt his inner turmoil, and turned his head to smile at him.

His beauty in the moonlight overthrew Alber like no mighty blow ever did.

And Rocinante didn't notice a thing — that strange, strange Rocinante with his famous, uniquely powerful Observation that saw through all things but Alber's love.

"Hey," that strange man said softly, looking at Alber like the rest of the world didn't exist, "want a cookie?"

Alber didn't know what to say, what to do, how to keep existing around this man — so he mutely nodded.

Rocinante rummaged around, and fished a lonely cookie out of a rustling, newly-empty bag, and held out the snack.

Alber watched him move with bated breath. In the deep ink of the night, under the faint moonlight, even this simple, mundane activity looked like a holy ritual — a slow graceful dance of muscles under the pallid skin, in the sharp night shadows.

Rocinante held out the cookie, and Alber took it — and Rocinante's hand touched his fingers, bare for once.

The moment was so electric that Alber thought, with his frozen mind:

He wasn't ever forgetting it till he died.

He ate the cookie — slowly and carefully, like it was a sacrament. The sweet taste, the airy, flaky texture, the sights around him, the sounds of the wind and sea, the colors of the blinding soul by his side, the smell of salt, sea and tobacco, the fine sand under his back and butt, the faint heat of the human body next to his own — that long skinny body, the pinnacle of everything that was desire — all of that, Alber could feel so sharply he wanted to pray.

In this strange, magical, haunted night, every single small thing felt like a revelation, and every breath he drew felt like praise to some gods unknown.

He knew Rocinante could see the turmoil in his emotions. But Rocinante said nothing — just silently watched him, and smiled like he loved him.

The last of the cookie was gone, the taste still sweet on his tongue, the falling crumbs now mixed with the sand and swallowed by the night — just like these magical moments Alber wanted to cling to with all his might… slipping through his fingers to never come back.

Just this once, Alber let himself look at this unreachable dream of a man by his side.

He was long and lean and so bony, despite all the muscle, and his nakedness glowed like a holy vision. He looked like a mysterious spirit of the sea, and his eyes held all the stars in the night sky, and his half-smile was the most devastating thing to ever happen to this old, worn, wretched world.

Alber watched him, and thought:

I was so alone before I knew you.

He was still so alone with this man, who could somehow Observe all things hidden, big and small, in any soul — with the sole exception of Alber's wildfire of a love. But… with this man by his side, Alber somehow knew that he'd always be seen.

And with this agony of a love in his heart, Alber felt like a burned tree in spring: slowly, painfully coming back to life.

Loving this man here was torture. Remembering life before him felt like recalling an old, half-forgotten nightmare.

Imagining life without him hurt worse than death.

Right here with Alber on this starlit beach, there were two men. Both saved him and led him out of hopeless darkness, each in his own way.

Those two men were all Alber had.

He'd fight for them, and he'd kill for them, and he'd die for them — and Sky help anyone who raised his hand to any of these two men… the only people in the world Alber loved.

Rocinante's smile grew, like he knew what Alber was thinking.

Who knew… maybe he did.

"Go to sleep," that man whispered, his voice mixing with the soft susurration of the ocean waves like he really was the sea spirit Alber's people used to pray to; and then, he smashed Alber face-first into the sand.

After a brief naked tousle and a grumpy, Calm the fuck down and sleep, will you, brats? from Kaido, accompanied with twin boinks to their heads, they settled down and slept — and when it got chilly in the witching hour, Alber lit up his fire to keep his friend warm.

He woke up to the sounds of the sea and the cries of seagulls. When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with the distant sight of Rocinante's butt. The man was bent over his backpack and digging through it, in his boxer briefs now.

He had such a neat little butt. Alber's hands itched —

But then, Rocinante straightened. Out of his backpack, he had produced —

A backpack…?

Okay. Alright. Donquixote Rocinante had a backpack in his backpack. Now Alber had seen it all.

"Oi, I can tell you're awake, you know," came Rocinante's amused voice. Fuck, shit, Alber was very obviously hard —

Rocinante looked at him with a smile, and zero regard for his hard-on. Right, he probably dismissed it as regular morning wood or something. Still, Alber felt very slightly dejected.

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty." Okay, now Rocinante's gaze slipped down his body in a very appreciative manner… like Alber was a painting in a museum.

For such an innately sexual being, Rocinante's appreciation just now was remarkably sexless. Remarkably — friendly in nature. Did Joker put him under some magic spell or something? Like, some mental chastity belt?

"We gotta head back to the city," Rocinante declared, just as Kaido waded back to the shore after a morning swim.

His hair was dripping, and with his wet skin so glossy in the morning sun, his shredded muscles looked even more defined. Rocinante whistled.

"Hot damn, Boss," he said, "I'm calling the police."

"What for?" Kaido rumbled, amused.

"Well, someone gotta fine you for looking this fine, because it can't be legal. Alber! My man! Get up, it's time to get us some hearty breakfast. We've got a long way ahead, so we'll need a lot of energy… as well as some food and water to last us a day and a night." He held out the empty backpack. "And you, my man, shall have to carry our supplies, because my backpack is full."

Indeed, his worn Navy backpack was just about bursting at the seams with all the worthless souvenirs Rocinante procured for Joker, Yamato, and other such worthless people.

Alber made a face. Rocinante sniggered.

"It's up to you now to make sure we don't die of hunger and thirst on our way back home," he declared, slapping Alber between the wings.

They wouldn't actually die or even get too exhausted in a day and a night: the three of them were hardy. But traveling with food and water felt a lot nicer than traveling hungry and thirsty, so Alber could see Rocinante's point. Except —

"How do you suggest I wear this thing?" he sneered.

Rocinante dubiously regarded his wings, and the fire that burst between them. Then he brightened:

"No problem, man, just wear it on your chest, like this," he promptly put the empty backpack on his front instead of his back.

He looked like a heavily pregnant woman. Alber scowled.

"Why me?" he demanded. He did not want to look that ridiculous when Rocinante could see him.

But then he remembered that he was sort of the only option, because —

"How do you suggest a dragon wears a backpack?" Rocinante wondered, and at once, both of them looked at Kaido.

Well, Rocinante had a point…

"Though now that I think of it, that would be kinda cute," Rocinante thoughtfully eyed their captain.

Kaido tranquilly breathed fire.

"Alright, no backpack-wearing dragons, got it," Rocinante acquiesced with faint regret in his voice.

The three of them took another swim before they left, deciding they could walk through the forest naked to dry off. In the morning sun, the sea was blinding, and the birds sang like mad. The water was crystal-clear and sparkling: pure aquamarine at Alber's feet. The sun was so warm, and the sand so golden…

And Alber's heart was dark.

The last two days had been the best in his life. He did not want this to be over. He did not want to leave…

But he didn't have a choice.

"We'll come back," Rocinante answered the thoughts Alber never voiced. "We'll come here again, right in the middle of the dog days, when the sunset turns the waters of Golden Veil into pure gold. We'll get a proper hotel suite with a private infinity pool, big enough for your giant asses, and we'll climb the tallest Mae mountain — it's over 9000 meters, did you know? — and then we'll spend a whole day doing nothing at all, frying on a private beach and eating some ice cream. So you better get your hot body ready, angel boy, because the next time we come here's gonna be a right riot."

"Stop calling me angel," Alber said, his mouth dry.

"No," Rocinante stuck out his tongue. His half-gray hair was matted and getting seriously oily, and there was dirt on the tip of his nose, and some small cookie crumbs in the gray scruff on his chin, and there was nothing in the world Alber wanted more than to kiss him. "You can't stop me from stating facts."

He grinned. His smile was lighting that tore Alber's heart apart, for the ten-thousandth time.

But then, Rocinante looked away and up, at Kaido.

"Shall we, Boss?" he said.

"Lead the way, Ace," Kaido agreed, imperious.

And reluctantly, Alber picked up his smelly boots.

For breakfast, Kaido demanded yantiqs. There was a reason why people called him Wise King.

After eating the vendor out of all his supplies, leaving a small fortune in his cash drawer, and stocking up on drinking water and food, they ambled to the viewpoint they visited yesterday night: the one with the magical shadow dancers. Now it was sunlit and crowded with rich, pampered tourists, taking a promenade and eating ice cream, and last night's magic seemed like a distant, half-forgotten dream.

With no great hurry, Rocinante walked up the air, and stepped on the marble parapet. Like that, his head was just below Alber's pecs.

"Hey, Boss, Alber," he said quietly, "was it good for you? This trip. I mean, it wasn't too dreary or anything, right?"

He seemed actually anxious to hear the answer.

Kaido scoffed. Rocinante looked at him. There was legitimate doubt and worry written all over his face. How was he even real, that impossible man?

"You fool," Kaido said. "It was mad good."

Rocinante's face lit up with the widest, hugest, dumbest grin ever —

And he dashed into the air like a bolt of lightning in dirty blue jeans and a vaguely white shirt.

In the blink of an eye, he was far away: a small distant dot in the endless blue sky. Like just another white seagull.

"Oooooiiii!" Alber heard: a faint cry rolling through heaven. "Let's goooooo!"

Alber looked at Kaido. They grinned at once.

Flame clouds burst in the sky like huge chrysanthemum flowers, and a great azure dragon surged up, to the sky and the sun and the miracle man waiting all the way up there to take him home. Wide black wings unfurled and beat up a hurricane amidst the tourists' frightened screams, tearing a dozen umbrellas out of women's hands — and a dark-winged goliath in dark leather shot into the sky, to the soaring white seagull of a man.

Back in Wano, Alber's dreary work waited, as well as the people who had Rocinante's heart. But the way home was long — and for a whole more day and night, Alber was sure to have his two most precious people all to himself.

On their way back, they were in no great hurry: none of them seemed all that eager for their adventure to end. So they went slow — well, slow for the three of them. Slow enough to talk and sing high up in the sky, slow enough that it was already dark when they got back to the mammoth island.

They hunted, made dinner, and ate their fill, leaving nothing of the mammoth but bare bones — but even full, drowsy, and yawning, they were in no hurry to go to sleep. Instead, they sat around the flickering, dying fire, and talked, trading stories and singing songs.

They talked away the whole night and the dawn, and in an hour after they finally headed back home, having not slept a wink, Alber had the dubious pleasure of witnessing the most improbable sight:

In the fresh morning air, high up in the sky, Donquixote "White Seagull" Rocinante simultaneously yawned and stumbled for maybe the tenth time in a row.

He never stumbled when he walked the sky. The first time he did this, Alber wrote it off as a fluke — but by now, he was mildly worried.

"I don't pay you this much for you to drop down and drown now," Kaido rumbled, giving Rocinante a side-eye of great displeasure.

Alber just gave Rocinante a look. What was the fool even thinking? What if something happened to him here over the open sea? They were all hammers!

Rocinante just stuck out his tongue at him, and stumbled yet again. Honestly, that idiot.

Kaido gave an impatient sigh.

"Get on my back," he ordered. "You're a sore loser, by the way."

"Huh? Ah, true — uaaaahhhh! — that's true. You win, Boss."

"Damn right," Kaido smirked.

What were they even talking about…? Ah, no matter. Now that Rocinante was safe, Alber just had to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't slip off Kaido's back.

The man was lying on his belly, clutching the long black mane that went all the way down the dragon's spine. Like that, Alber couldn't see Rocinante's face, but he could taste the rising awe in his soul: Rocinante was looking at Kaido's scales from up close, and thinking that they were beautiful.

Alber could see how Rocinante slid his palm down those scales, briefly petting them before he drifted off: like Kaido was a priceless work of art, or a small baby. He could Observe the smile in Rocinante's soul as the man dozed off.

He could see the restrained, reluctant smile on Kaido's giant dragon maw.

Kaido, the King of the Beasts, was never soft on anyone. He wasn't even soft on his own child.

Right here, right now, he was soft.

But then again, wasn't he always — for this one man only?

And once again, for the ten-thousandth time, Alber bitterly thought how much better and easier it would be for everyone here if Joker just — never existed at all.

The nearer they drew to the shores of Wano, the sourer Alber got. With Rocinante falling asleep, the conversation naturally fizzled out, and now they were cutting through the air in complete silence.

…Then, a loud sound of yawn, and an,

"Aw, fuck — "

When Alber looked at Kaido's back, it was already empty. Shit!

He broke out in cold sweat, and lunged down to the sea to — see Rocinante leisurely walk up the sky, still yawning and scratching his goddamn neck, with his feet leaving small white burst-traces in the clear blue?

When Rocinante got up to where Alber waited, cold fury gathering in his chest, a mighty cuff was what greeted him, along with a,

"You Sky-cursed idiot!"

Kaido silently concurred via a blow of his tail to Rocinante's head.

"Ow, ow," Rocinante clutched his dumb head, "sorry, sorry, mates. Did I make you worry?"

"What do you think!" Alber thundered. "Of course not!"

Which — had Rocinante and Kaido roaring with laughter? For fuck's sake.

Alber huffed and turned his nose up — but their laughter was just too infectious, so he couldn't help but join in.

"You two sure are lively today," Rocinante mused then, as they flew side by side. "Say, Boss, why don't we race to Wano to work off that energy? See who gets first to the summit of Fuji."

His suggestion was met with identical dubious looks.

"The Lunarians are the fastest creatures in the world," Kaido snorted. "It's impossible to beat one in speed."

"Yeah? So you're just gonna give up without trying, Boss? Lame."

Rocinante really knew how to play him, didn't he?

"It's on, King," Kaido grinned savagely. "You ready to stretch your wings?"

"Always," Alber smirked.

"Let's gooo!" Rocinante jumped on Kaido's back, grabbing his stache like reins. So he wasn't intending on racing himself? Now that was unexpected. "Snatch!"

That crude samurai cry again… Yamato so was a bad influence on him.

"Will you leave my mustache alone, servant?" Kaido groused.

"Never. A fine stache is the greatest thing." Rocinante's face went so dreamy that briefly, Alber felt the strongest urge to grow a mustache, no matter how uncomfortable it would feel under the mask.

"Why don't you have your own man grow one for you to pull on, then?"

"Oh, he used to have one, at fifteen. A damn good stache it was, too. But then, he went and just shaved it off…" Here, Rocinante got visibly gloomy.

That had both Alber and Kaido staring at him for a moment. Sometimes Alber really didn't know what to make of that man…

"On my mark," Rocinante cried, his grin wide and ferocious. "Three… two… one… go!"

And the world warped into a blur.

Alber had to remind himself not to go too fast: after all, Kaido was his captain and leader, so it wouldn't do to disrespect him by showing off Alber's superiority… too much. So he made sure to always keep Kaido just a few dozen meters away, without letting him catch up for a moment.

He could feel Kaido grit his teeth and go faster, faster, faster… He heard his snarl.

He smirked, and let himself stop holding back… a bit.

Fuji's white, narrow peak was already in sight, and steadily growing closer. In five minutes, tops, Alber would be the victor.

So he thought when a lightning bolt snapped past him — and he looked around, and on Kaido's back, he saw no Rocinante.

That dirty cheat!

"I can't believe it," Alber kept ranting when Kaido finally got to the peak, his tongue lolling out. "I can't believe that you'd stoop this low! You dirty rascally cheat!"

"So you used me to conserve your strength and gain some advantage — " Kaido mused, paying no heed to Alber's diatribe.

"You even took a nap on Kaido's back. I didn't get a nap!"

"And then, with King weakened and you well-rested, you threw all your energy into the last stretch, to come out on top. A stratagem worthy of Donquixote Doflamingo himself," Kaido drawled, his gaze strangely sharp, the way it could get sometimes with Rocinante for target.

"I didn't even try that hard!"

It was the wrong thing to say. Under the stony weight of Kaido's dark, dark scowl, Alber had to push down the urge to take a step back.

"In the end, you were trying alright, my man," Rocinante rarely ever looked smug, but — oh no, even smugness suited him. "Well, now we know the true winner!"

"You cheated. Fuck off."

"And the winner is… friendship!"

For a few seconds, Alber blankly stared at him. Then he said:

"Oh, shut up."

"C'mon, man, you gotta know: there can be no winners and losers between nakama."

Sometimes Donquixote Rocinante really said the dumbest things.

He was watching Alber and Kaido, smiling again. Why was he smiling again? Didn't he know his smile was too much? Did he want Alber going into cardiac arrest or what? Someone should seriously ban him from smiling. All of Donquixote Rocinante in general was too much! It was a disaster.

Alber didn't know what to say, what to do, how to be around this impossible man. So he silently gave him a noogie.

With his Future Sight, Rocinante had to know it was coming, and that it would be savage. He didn't make a single move to save his dumb head from being noogied. Instead, he just laughed.

This high in the thin mountain air, at the summit of Fuji's everwhite peak, there was barely any life —

But today, the pristine mountain snow and the crystal-dry air were alive, with the triple sound of laughter.

.

.

.

.

Alber regarded the beaming Rocinante with some vague horror.

"You look like a lobster," he said finally.

"What, just as juicy?" Rocinante sniggered.

"No! Just as red! Why didn't you use sunscreen?"

"I used up a whole bottle."

"Why didn't you stay in the shade, then?"

"I was under the sunshade the whole time, remember? I only came out for a swim once or twice. I just burn real easy, is all. Even the sunscreen barely helps any."

"Why go to the beach if you're that weak to the sun, then?!"

"Why, my silly man," Rocinante grinned, "to make sure you and Boss were having fun! I know you two — if I left you to your own devices, he'd just drink the day away, and you'd brood non-stop, floating on the waves in your cute ducky tube."

"You're the one who foisted that tube on me," Alber said, dignified.

"But you did have fun, right?"

Yes… yes, Alber did have fun. It was his first proper beach day in decades. He had forgotten how much fun beach vacations could be…

"How is that a valid reason to burn yourself to a crisp?" he said aloud.

"Hmmm. Well, I need no other reason, if I do say so myself," Rocinante bestowed upon him another wide glowing grin — almost as glowing as the swollen red skin on his limbs and torso.

Alber floundered for a pithy answer, came up with nothing, and resorted to the trusty old:

"Fuck you."

"Aww," Rocinante snickered, "thank you, my man, your concern warms my heart. You're such an angel."

"Will you stop calling me angel!"