Chapter Text
The problem was, Bartolomeo had had this dream before.
Ok, maybe not this exact one, but the bones were there. A summons came at an off hour, Luffy sounded flustered, and he needed a favor. Yes, right now; no, no one else. You get the idea.
Usually, though, the dreams turned out to be a little more blue. Barto guessed that, if he had to, he could find a tint of it in his current reality: sweating and grunting in close quarters, Luffy's distracting stare dead on him. And, speaking of distracting—
"Dammit!"
His hand slipped and caught on a dull rim of metal. It took a chunk of skin out of his palm and he started to bleed. It wasn't too bad of a cut, but it hurt like hell and was going to get filthy. He wiped it on his stomach, wishing he'd brought some gauze along with him.
"You ok?"
Luffy's face ducked into full view. He bent at the waist and peeked into the hollow where Barto laid on his back, fiddling with pipes. There was… a lot going on under there, he had to admit. He didn't know how half of what he was looking at translated to a functioning steam bath, but a busted pipe was a busted pipe. He’d fixed plenty of those before, and how these came apart and reattached was straightforward. The Strawhat's engineer had eliminated a decent amount of guesswork.
“Yea,” he gritted out, making a fist to work the injury's sting out. “Great, just fine. How, ah, how are you?”
He realized what he said as Luffy started to chuckle, and remembered with a flush why he'd been planning to keep his trap shut.
“You're funny,” Luffy said, making Barto’s face go even hotter, “but don't be nervous. I'm sure you can fix it.”
Nervous? Who was nervous? Him? No, Barto felt fine. Hadn't he just said that? He xylophoned his tongue over the backs of his teeth, reminding himself to focus as he raised his tool.
“Don't Franky and Usopp usually do this?” he asked as he twisted a fixture loose, because he had to say something. He wouldn't get anything done, listening to the both of them breathe.
“Yea,” Luffy said, but instead of elaborating, he uncrossed his legs. In his periphery, Barto saw him slip onto his belly. Luffy shifted around, making himself comfortable, and it took all Barto had not to look. Focus, focus, he was focused. He had a job to do.
“So, they busy?” He cleared his throat and took a long enough pause to replace the fixture. The new one gleamed, and he wondered if he should polish what he wasn't replacing to match. “Not that I mind, just, am I good to be messing around in here?”
“Sure. I asked you to, didn't I?”
Barto grunted. A captain asking counted for something, sure, but engineers were a lot like cooks. They got territorial. Well, maybe both of them were busy, but wouldn't it have to be with one hell of a task for them to be alright with Luffy calling someone else over?
It wasn't that he was complaining or that he'd been inconvenienced. They were sailing together, theirs and Trafalgar’s ships all heading to the same island. Barto had only been a gangplank away for more than a week now, and he hadn’t been doing much. It wasn't anything like that, it was just…
Luffy sighed, and Barto forgot that he wasn't supposed to look at him. He glanced away from the pipe he was adding a new segment to, letting muscle memory guide his hands, only to have his tool slip his grip and smack him on the chest seconds later.
Luffy was closer than he'd realized; much, much closer. He'd wriggled over on his stomach to fit, head and shoulders, into the hollow where Barto was working. His cheek was squished against his knuckles and he was staring at Barto's hands. At least, that’s what he had been staring at. His attention flicked to Barto's face and he laughed at him again, the sound graveled and deep.
“You're kind of clumsy,” he teased.
Barto's brain stalled. He could smell spiced cocoa on Luffy's breath and the brine of his sweat. “N-not like I got much room to maneuver here.”
He only meant that the crawlspace was a tight fit for someone his size, even without all the pipes, but Luffy took it for bait. He rocked in further, crowding Barto, flashing a wink and sticking his long tongue out.
Barto bit through his cheek to keep from squealing and got back to work.
He threw himself into the task, but some of the segments fought him. They looked heat damaged, like someone had cranked the sauna up to full blast and forgot to shut it off. Some of the fixtures and pipes were outright gummed together, and he had to tear hard at them, making the surrounding pipes rattle in place.
The whole time, he could feel Luffy’s eyes tracking his fingers. Barto tried not to think about how scarred and busted they were. He didn’t have nice hands like Luffy; his were roughened, but still handsome. Barto’s made him look like a washed up thug.
“Where’d you learn this stuff?” Luffy asked.
Barto shrugged. “All over.” A stubborn nut finally grinded free. A segment of warped pipe fell out and Barto felt around the floor for a replacement. “Some of it, actually… Hey, I ever mention that I did a stint in the Gray Terminal?”
Luffy perked up at that. Barto glanced over and saw his eyes had gone as big around as teacup saucers, and he forgot all about his ugly hands, because that was the reaction he’d been hoping for. He’d been saving this conversation starter for a while.
“No way! Doing what?”
“What everybody did, scrap collecting. Some guys in Edge Town paid on the spot for it.” He felt a grin spread over his face. “There was one, this retired mechanic, who got kind of attached to me. He used to let me mess around in his shop. Taught me a lot.”
Luffy hummed, tilting his head. Barto thought he might want to know more about the old guy, but instead he asked, “when were you there?”
“I caught a boat over when I was thirteen and stayed for a few years.”
Luffy tapped his fingers on the floor, counting time back under his breath. “Oh,” he said softly, his mood taking an audible dip. “Maybe we passed you. We used to sneak through there into town, about that time.”
Barto wouldn’t have had to be bright to know who Luffy meant by ‘we’. His smile flagged. This might not have been as safe of a topic as he thought. He licked his lips, wondering if he should change the subject.
“Hey,” Luffy said, bouncing back quickly, “did you ever go to the New Years Parade?”
The resurge of pep had to be an act, at least in part, but Barto took the unsubtle nudge and ran like hell.
“That circus they toured through Town Center?” Luffy nodded. “Yea. Best day for picking pockets of the year.”
“But you watched the parade too, right? And got some noodles? And cocoa from Miss Chava? And, oh!” Luffy's mouth crooked into a small smile. “You had to have stayed up to catch the fireworks! They were the best. Me and Ace, we used to…so, there was this one guy—”
Luffy laid his head back down, rattling off things he remembered about the holiday. Barto didn't know half of them. He really had gone out just to steal, but it was nice to hear Luffy talk. When his voice got light and soft again, Barto relaxed and the moment tipped back towards a dreamy unreality.
Barto let him talk himself out. He didn't interrupt, and after a while he even stopped listening. Luffy became a part of the room, like the clanking pipes. The deck above creaked like someone was pacing. Waves beat the hull. Luffy's breath teased Barto's neck.
He polished the pipes when he was done after all, just to make it last.