Work Text:
Crocodile awoke feeling that part of his back was not resting on his soft -and expensive- mattress, he opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling the only light was the soft bright of the moon - he had refused to sleep in a tent, choosing a room inside the ship, solid, with four walls around him. Daz followed him into the room near his, his aura comforting in the darkness.
Despite what most people might think, his eyes didn't glow in the dark, they didn't reflect light like cats, and above all, he didn't have the night vision superpower. What however could do at least half of the things listed above was certainly Mihawk, which made him extremely creepy after the sun went down.
The solid surface that had slid under his back made the muscles in his right shoulder ache, stiff from the inclined position, while the left sank into the soft mattress.
He propped his elbow into the bed and stood up, looking with irritation at what exactly interrupted his rest, only to find Buggy snoring on his stomach, in what seemed like an attempt to get as far under him as possible.
"What the fuck." He muttered, nudging him to the edge of the bed, and when the clown blinked in confusion, he kicked him, sending him tumbling backward onto the floor.
"Ow, shit." Buggy whined, his disjointed head rubbing the back of his neck with his hand detached from the rest of his body. "What the actual hell are your fucking problems, mate?"
"Get out."
"What?!"
"Go away, clown, you're preventing me from resting." He said with a patience he wasn't sure he possessed until he started working with Buggy. He wondered what was stopping him from grabbing the hook and hitting him.
"But what have I done?"
"You're annoying even when you sleep. Useless and annoying, my subordinates usually only have one of the two, but not you, no, congratulations, you're the perfect combination I didn't know existed until the unfortunate day I met you."
Buggy sulked and grabbed what was left of his tattered jacket from under the bed.
"All right, dammit." He muttered, chewing insults and walking away butt naked, leaving the ex-warlord in the - finally - quiet of his room.
***
"Crocodile." Someone called in his ear. Too close to be out of his bed, so definitely somebody he spent the night with and there were a handful of people he could count with just his remaining one that would let even come near his presence, less so let actually sleep with him.
He narrowed his eyes and in the moonlight, Mihawk's golden eyes reflected sinister glints.
“What's wrong with the clown?” He asked tilting his head. Crocodile suddenly remembered why he kicked the other man out of his bed after every night they had sex. The previous one had been an oversight on his part and the clown had taken advantage of it by staying snuggled in his warm bed.
Crocodile sighed, wetting his lips, ready to grab the man's torso by the scruff of the neck and throw him out the porthole. He stood up rolling his eyes, finding Mihawk lying on his back staring at him, a lock of blue hair peeking out from behind him on his right shoulder. Buggy had somehow managed, without using his devil's fruit power, to slide under the swordsman, back to back, one arm stuck between the mattress and just above his butt, the hand open and surprisingly attached to his body resting in the middle of them. His legs were curled up under the knees of the swordsman who at that point seemed more sitting in a strange chair than actually lying down. Crocodile privately asked how the man had enough patience to let it go that far.
"Apologies, I should have kicked him out before." He growled as he approached and grabbed a handful of the clown's hair and pulled it to jolt him awake and let various pieces of his body fall around the place.
"Uhh?" Buggy spluttered but didn't fall to pieces as usual. "Wha's goin' on?" He murmured, appearing much less alert than usual.
Crocodile raised an eyebrow confused by that strange act on his part, it was rare that the man didn't wake up already neurotic, jumping out of bed screaming and trying to escape as far away as possible.
Mihawk turned to stare at him out of the corner of his eye since Buggy's head was below his shoulders. They remained in a tense silence for a few moments, the clown showed no signs of wanting to move, nor any nervous outbursts.
"He didn't get upset." The swordsman commented, returning his gaze to Crocodile. "He didn't even activate his devil fruit."
As a demonstration, he grabbed the arm that wasn't stuck under his back and raised it, the clown was limp in his grip, his eyes closed again and his breathing regular, despite a sizeable chunk of his hair still in Crocodile's grasp.
"Hey!" He called out to him again, forcing him to open his eyes again. "Out of my bed, clown!"
"The fuck I did this time?" Buggy murmured thickly from sleep, pushing his forehead against the pillow, ignoring how his hair was even more stretched in the other's grip on the painful side. "I don't complain when you cover me with sand."
Mihawk dropped his arm and cleared his throat, getting the clown's attention, who finally opened his eyes and looked at him. His expression quickly changed to confusion, moving his arm slightly under the swordsman's back, as if to check his location.
"You're crushing me." Buggy noted and Crocodile rolled his eyes, letting go of his hair in an exasperated gesture.
Mihawk continued to look at him without blinking. “You want to be crushed.” He replied dryly. "Otherwise you wouldn't be in this position."
"Do not be ridiculous."
“Isn't it pathetic to use another person's weight to control your own power?” He countered without missing a beat. "You think don't I know that's what you're doing? I can't judge the quality of your sleep, but it sure doesn't make me sleep well." He continued, getting up and freeing the rest of the clown's body, which also moved, rolling onto the edge of the mattress with a grimace.
Crocodile tilted his head at the new information, deciding he didn't care. They couldn't sleep with Buggy or parts of his body stuck under their back, creating painful lumps.
"I have another solution, however, Crocodile." He announced leaning against the keyboard of the bed, his muscular body moving without making a sound even between the sheets. The swordsman was staring at him as if he wanted some sort of confirmation.
"Better than kicking him out?"
“Okay, I'm leaving, dammit.” Buggy blurted out, looking under the bed for something to wear that hadn't been torn to shreds. They had the bad habit of not caring for the clown's clothes, especially Crocodile who seemed to take a strange pleasure in destroying them with his hook.
"If it doesn't work he can always leave." The swordsman offered with a shrug. He grabbed Buggy's arm still on the bed, who seemed intent on actually finding something to wear and possibly resigning himself to going out for the umpteenth time with just a sheet tied around his waist. The clown stared at him, returning his attention to their conversation with an offended grimace on his face.
"Oi! I'm not a toy that you can use and experiment with whatever it suits you! I'd rather leave, I know I'm a freak show, you don't have to stress about it, Mihawk. I'm a splendid clown and surprisingly I still have some dignity! I'm leaving!"
"Stop screaming, clown, I'm next to you." He snapped annoyed, not letting his arm go and ignoring every word of his outburst except his volume. “If everything was easy and simple to solve, there would be no reason to exist at all.” He continued, grabbing the sheet with his other hand and ripping it off the bed.
"What the hell does that even mean?!"
Crocodile for his part had no intention of intervening, he was about to move when the swordsman stared at him and made him stop.
"I gave my solution." He sneered, leaving his work partner to his misery, with a confused Buggy, who started to lose even more pieces on the bed. "If you want to try something else, you're free to do so, as long as I don't find him under my back next time."
“Swaddling.” He responded with a subtle note of irritation at his companion's refusal to help.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Eh?"
"The problem here is that its devil's fruit favors breaking down, rather than staying together and it requires concentration to control the different parts, this concentration makes his sleep less restoring." He explained with a shrug as if he was telling the most obvious thing in the world and not something new even to Buggy. "For this reason, he instinctively searches for something that can anchor him, I suppose he normally makes up for it by sleeping in a hammock, which gives him less range of motion, but the moment the Clown tries to sleep in a bed the problem returns."
"Uh, and you know this because...?" Buggy stammered, his eyes wide with amazement mixed with a bit of fear.
“I have eyes?” He answered dryly, raising an eyebrow. "The possible solution is to prevent him from moving."
"We mummify him." Crocodile suddenly added with a cruel sneer, understanding the logical solution the other was proposing. "I have an alternative method if this doesn't work." He added, raising his hand that was dripping sand on the floor.
"Oi!" Buggy exclaimed, shuddering. "What the fuck are you suggesting?"
“It would certainly stop you from moving and wake me up in the middle of the night... permanently .” He responded by grinning sadistically, with a toothy grin, reminiscent of an alligator's.
***
In the end, they had succeeded, or rather, Mihawk with a firm hand and a pinch of violence had managed to convince Buggy to at least try the idea. He forced him to wrap himself in the sheet, binding his knees firmly together and his arms against his sides. At that point, Buggy looked like an enormous larva, a caterpillar ready to form a chrysalis and become a butterfly*.
"This is ridiculous." The clown complained, trying to move to slip into a more comfortable position.
"You're no more ridiculous than usual." Mihawk commented and Crocodile made what could reminiscence a mirthful snort through his nose, even though the swordsman didn't tell it as a joke but an observing fact.
"I'm going to get cramps like this."
“If you didn't have them before, I doubt you'll have them now.”
"Shut up now or I'll kick you both out." Crocodile murmured as he lay back down, his stump resting against his chest while his other hand rested on top of his head. "If you don't let me sleep, tomorrow I won't guarantee that all the useless clown's crew will make it to the end of the day."
Mihawk followed his example, lay down next to the ex-warlord, with his back to him, and threw a leg over Buggy who rolled ungracefully as well to face the opposite wall. Despite everything, the clown felt a strange calm in that position, the sheets pressing against his body prevented his brain from thinking of losing pieces along the way.
Mihawk counted to exactly five hundred and thirteen, before he heard Buggy's heartbeat calm down and his breathing evens out, replaced by a light snore. Beside him, however, Crocodile was awake, his gaze burning on his back.
"We could have kicked him out." The former warlord muttered and the swordsman wasn't very good at discerning people's tones, but something he had learned to recognize was when they were teasing him. "Did we have to keep him?"
"I don't usually leave the people I spend the night with unsatisfied." He replied seriously, unable to make out the meaning of the sound Crocodile made as an answer. Maybe it was an amused one, maybe a frustrated one. It was too late to use Haki, especially not for such silly matters. Human emotions were so boring and unnecessarily complicated to him.
"You know, sometimes I feel like we're getting too soft."
"I don't see how sleeping with someone can determine an individual's strength in a fight."
"That's not what I was saying." He answered soberly behind him, with a patience he rarely reserved for another person. "You helped him, for nothing in return? Why? What did you get in exchange? Mihawk, that's just a stupid idiot who'll get us killed."
“And I haven't changed my opinion about that.” The man nodded. "But it's not logical to create problems where there aren't any."
"I didn't make you the type to enjoy the company of other human beings." Crocodile put himself in the same category, even though Mihawk had never had any problems staying with him, toasting, drinking, co-existing in the same room, one smoking, the other reading. They had never caused problems for each other.
"I don't appreciate the company of those who impose theirs on me, those who persist in searching for me to challenge me even when they're worth nothing and are a shame for the swords they carry or hunt me down as if I'm a weapon to be used and manipulated. I reached the top a long time ago and I've been waiting for someone to reach me for just as long." He spoke calmly narrowing his eyes and staring at the wall of the room, feeling the warmth of Crocodile's body near his back. They didn't usually talk like that, it was more about mutual intuition and acting accordingly between them. "I don't deny that I was bored in my solitude, the clown was right about that." He concluded by finally closing his eyes.
Shanks had eased that loneliness, but then he had sacrificed part of his body for what he believed would be the next Pirate King. Mihawk didn't understand, but he accepted what happened, because the redhead had earned his trust and if there really was something he believed, Mihawk was willing to give him a chance. Shanks had been right, of course. He had seen the crew of Luffy, the little boy for whom his rival had sacrificed their rivality for, the rubber boy had brought him his successor and had demonstrated his charisma on the battlefield. Mihawk now, finally, had someone to wait for at the top, ultimately, something to break the monotony of that existence surrounded by mediocrity.
However, it wasn't enough. He had trained his successor as well, he had sacrificed his time and his well-deserved tranquility and he hated every moment of it, or so he had believed, until he returned to his beloved solitude and found himself hating every single second even more. The silence, the immobility, the lack of stimulation were dreadful.
"Ambition, huh?” Crocodile exhaled breaking his concentration, a move he was used to doing even when he wasn't smoking.
"What does it mean?"
"New ambitions, everyone here has them. Now, you too." He murmured without sounding amused or sarcastic, just resigned. "Ambitions feed dreams, ambitions are the drive that leads an individual to follow his dream, didn't you know?" He laughed slightly, making the mattress vibrate. Buggy moved disturbed, pressing his face against the pillow, but returned relaxed a few moments later. How he wasn't suffocating was a mystery.
“Isn't it strange that this is happening now?” He asked finally turning away from the other two, his back to the swordsman.
"There is something weird." Mihawk admitted without opening his eyes. The question remained open and both had not formulated a precise solution to that strange mystery. “But I suppose even a small flame can start a fire.”
"Huh," He laughed again sounding even more somber. "Something big's coming, Mihawk. Can't you feel it?"
Of course, he felt it as well, anyone with a fraction of power could hear the increasingly restless echoes of the sea. The swordsman, however, did not respond, allowing the premonitory words to lull him into a dreamless dream.