Chapter Text
Before…
Buggy skidded around the corner, nearly kissing the deck with his face when his shoulder painfully connected with a doorknob, causing him to stumble. His following, “fuck!” was nearly drowned out by the resounding BANG! his collision created, but other than clutching at his throbbing arm, he didn’t otherwise slow his pace.
A door ahead of him opened, and Buggy grit his teeth in annoyance, because of course any and all obstacles possible would decide now was the perfect time to try and inconvenience him. Seriously, he had no time for this! He’d lost enough time on this so far fruitless endeavor already, thank you very much!
Buggy paid no mind to whichever crew member had stepped out into the hall, simply detaching his torso to fly both over and under the unsuspecting man, causing them to yelp and brace for impact.
“Hey, watch it, kid!” Buggy faintly registered Gaban’s voice, but still he didn’t stop. It wasn’t as though he’d actually run into the other man. Gaban would get over it.
He popped his body back together, grinning maniacally when the door to his captain’s quarters was within sight. Fucking finally.
Buggy barged in without knocking, smiling wide as he ran into the dark room.
“Captain! Are you ready yet?” He asked, eyes wildly searching the room.
A muffled groan came from the giant lump on Roger's bunk, and Buggy’s eyes immediately zeroed in on it. He quickly ran over, scrambling onto the blanket that hid his captain’s body from view. From this close, the sour scent of old booze was obvious, and Buggy scrunched his nose in distates. No wonder his captain was still in bed, the jerk was totally hungover!
Buggy adjusted his legs so that he sat comfortably on what he could only presume was his captain’s shoulder and leaned down, pulling away the part of the blanket that was shielding his captain’s face. Simultaneously, Buggy shot a hand out towards the closest porthole, ruthlessly ripping the curtain to the side and letting in a bright stream of sunlight.
Under him, Roger whimpered, face scrunching up in pain. He turned his face into his pillow, but Buggy was having none of it.
“You’re not even awake yet!”
Buggy grabbed at Roger’s mustache and began to not-so-gently tug at it.
“Come on, come on, come on!”
Roger groaned again, and Buggy internally rolled his eyes. Stupid grownups and their stupid hangovers.
“Whas th’rush?” Roger slurred, voice still gruff with sleep. Buggy threw his hands up incredulously.
“What’s the rush? What’s the rush?! We’re gonna be late!”
Roger rolled onto his back causing Buggy to slip off of him. He jumped back onto the deck, whirling around in time to see Roger’s best attempt at sitting up.
“Lahe fr’wha?” He asked, rubbing his eyes.
“The circus!”
“The whah?”
“THE CIRCUS!” Buggy started bouncing in place, thoughts of ferris wheels and cotton candy overriding all others. Fuck , it was gonna be so much fun! Now, the Roger Pirates were no strangers to traveling circuses. In their adventures across the Blues, they’d come across countless performances of varying degrees of pedigree. Even the blatantly criminal cover-up acts tended to have a specific pazzazz to them that Buggy just couldn’t tear his eyes away from.
All this to say, in any other circumstance, Buggy wouldn’t currently be losing his shit in his hungover captain’s room, but this wasn’t just any circus. Oh no, this was the world renowned Fantastical Brethren’s Traveling Circus! Buggy had been dreaming of seeing them perform one day for years! But, as his luck tended to go, the Roger Pirates always just barely missed their performances whenever they happened to be in the same Blue.
Well, no longer! Both their crew and the circus were docked at Pantomime Island–an island known for housing numerous attractions all year round–and Buggy was gonna see that show with his captain regardless of how difficult Roger had made all of his attempts thus far!
Gods, he hoped they’d have lions. What was even the point of a circus if there wasn’t at least one lion jumping through a blazing ring of fire?
Roger released a scratchy sigh—which, dramatic much?—and swung his legs over the side of the bed, bracing himself for a moment before grunting into a standing position. He ruffled his bed-hair, blearily squinting down at Buggy.
Roger’s brow was furrowed, his gaze skittering between both of Buggy’s eyes as though doing so would give him some semblance of clarity. “Circus?” He asks, his tone lagging and confused, and with it, something in Buggy’s gut tightens.
Buggy stops bouncing as a sickly, familiar feeling washes over him. He stares back up into Roger’s blank stare, pursing his lips and turning his gaze to his scuffed boots. “You forgot again, didn’t you.” He states quietly, rather than asks.
“What? No, I didn’t forget!”
“Yes you did.”
Roger sighs, wincing at an oncoming migraine. Buggy bites his tongue, already knowing what he was gonna say next.
“Hey, Bug, I don’t think I’m up for it today. ‘Sides, we’ve got a lot of stuff we still need to stock up on before we head out in a few days. How ‘bout I take you tomorrow? That sound good?”
“Today’s the last day.” Buggy mumbles.
“What?” Roger asks surprised, “I thought you said it was gonna be around for a whole month.”
“It was.”
“Oh…” Roger scratches his head uncomfortably. The following silence is awkward, and Buggy can’t help but clench his fists with how stuffy the room suddenly felt. Roger brings a hand to his temple and takes a deep breath, causing Buggy’s shoulders to hike up towards his ears.
“Look, kid, I’ll make it up to you, alright? Promise.”
“That’s what you said last time.” Buggy muttered more to himself than to Roger.
“What was that?”
Buggy didn’t bother replying, simply averting his gaze to the side. He settled his sights on an empty turned over bottle on Roger’s desk, willing himself to not look away when Roger started talking again.
“Tell you what, next circus we come across, I’ll drop everything and we'll march ourselves right inside, alright?” Roger stumbles past Buggy, pulling on a stained shirt as he makes his way to the door. “Augh, my head.” He grumbles before leaving the room.
Buggy stands there, the heaviness of the room lingering over him despite his captain no longer being present. The bottle begins to swim, and Buggy blinks once, hard, then blinks again.
Stupid bottle, stupid circus, stupid captain.
‘I’ll make it up to you, alright? Promise.’ Roger’s voice faintly mocks him, and Buggy’s mouth twists downwards for a moment before his expression slackens, the rest of his body deflating alongside it.
“No,” Buggy says softly to the empty room, eyes still burning a hole into the bottle. “You won’t.”
—
Roger bites his tongue, grumbling to himself when his little toe noisily connects with the leg of his desk. He wriggles it through the pain, bee-lining towards his bed where he’d last discarded his boots. He finds the left one easily enough, but the hunt for the right one has him making a few laps around his cabin. It takes him an embarrassing amount of time before finally finding it laying on its side underneath his bunk.
His door creaks when he slips out of his room and makes his way towards the thankfully empty kitchen. They’d been running low on alcohol as of the past week, numerous crew members making mention of it being added to the top of their priority stock-up list. At the barren Secret- Secret Backup Booze shelf that only Roger, Rayleigh, and Seagull know about, Roger is inclined to agree. He scans the rest of the kitchen, perking up slightly when he sees a promising bottle sitting by the stove top.
He picks up the nearly empty bottle and takes a whiff. Wine, though possibly of the cooking variety seeing as it was placed alongside the cooking oils. Well, whatever, booze were booze, and there were only maybe a few gulp-fulls left anyway.
He takes a swig. Passable.
Roger gulps down a few more generous mouthfuls before reluctantly placing the bottle back. As much as he’d love to down the entire thing right then and there, he knew he’d never hear the end of it from Seagull. Besides, Roger knew better than to piss off the guy in charge of his every meal.
A muffled giggle catches his attention, and Roger turns his head to the door just in time to hear Rayleigh’s distant shout of, “boys! I told you to go to bed an hour ago!” There’s a loud crashing sound followed by even more giggling and a very distinct shriek as the tops of two colorful heads thunder past, just visible from the small window on the door. Roger feels the corners of his lips tug upwards before freezing. His eyes glaze over from where they’re still trained on the door, thoughts of one particular cabin boy floating to the forefront of his mind.
Buggy…
His thoughts begins to wonder. There had been a notable shift in his red-nosed cabin boy since that disastrous performance a few months back. Before then, even. Roger can’t say for sure when the changes started, or what even set them off in the first place, but it was clear that things just hadn’t been the same since and didn’t look like they would be any time soon.
For months, seemingly out of nowhere, it had been nearly impossible to find a moment of peace away from the suddenly sticky boy. He was constantly sticking his nose into his or his nakama’s business, exerting more time and effort than he’d ever bothered having when it came to talking or engaging with the rest of them, even to his own detriment. Sure, the boy could be clingy at times, and had been plenty of times in the past, but not like this. Looking back on it now, there had been an almost desperation to it, but for the life of him, Roger couldn’t quite figure out why.
And now, just as suddenly, he found that they were facing the opposite issue. It was as though a switch had been flipped, and what was once a potentially overbearing presence became cold and distant. Buggy had begun to make himself…smaller. Quieter. There were some days that, unless Roger actively searched him out, he wouldn’t see Buggy once.
At first, Roger chalked it up to the boy just being embarrassed about the scolding he’d received. Roger had been rather short with him, more so than usual, but in his eyes, his own reaction had been rather tame considering the fact that Buggy could have easily burnt down the Oro right there in the middle of the ocean. Still, shorter than usual or not, it wasn’t as though that had been the only scolding Buggy had received from him, and if he knew his cabin boys, it wouldn’t be the last.
Roger had figured the boy just needed some time to stew a bit, lick his wounds and bandage his pride before inevitably bouncing back to his usual self. Except, he hadn’t. Not the next day, or the following week, or in the past month. And now, whatever had changed appeared to have taken a hold of Shanks as well.
Shanks had begun to do as Buggy had when all of this began, but rather than glue himself from person to person, he’d instead stuck to Buggy exclusively. This, of course, meant that Roger was seeing a lot less of Shanks as well.
Added to that was Shank’s own behavioral shift. While the redhead was still as sure, determined, and as easygoing as he always was, there was a hardness to him now, one Roger couldn’t even begin to explain. Once, any and all glares, strained smiles, and terse statements were reserved for either Buggy or the Roger Pirate’s endless stream of enemies. Now, more and more, Roger was seeing those looks directed at himself and the rest of their nakama.
Stranger still, and something that Roger definitely felt was a cause for concern, was the fact that Buggy hadn’t protested any of it. While Roger had no doubts that the boys cared for one another, he’d be daft to think they got along well. The two of them, at their worst, were no better than a heated pan being continuously doused with water and oil. So to see the two of them stick so closely to one another all this time without either causing a scene was apocalyptical.
If any of the others on their crew had noticed the change, they’d yet to come to him about it, though he was certain it wasn’t just him. He’d caught enough confused looks sent by various of his nakama, and the consistently furrowed brow adorning Rayleigh’s forehead was pretty telling. If he knows his first mate as well as he thinks he does, then that wrinkle is practically screaming at him, telling him that Rayleigh had definitely noticed something was amiss and was in the process of deciphering it. Roger figured it was probably about time he spoke to the blonde about it. Who knows, with any luck, Rayleigh may have noticed something he’d missed, or would have a better understanding of what may be wrong with the two seeing as he was typically the one who oversaw their chores and general studies.
Roger sighs and runs a hand down his face. It was late, the sun having disappeared beyond the sea at least a few hours ago, and Roger could feel a headache coming on from the strain he was putting his eyes through in the low light of the galley. Damn, that thought alone made him feel old. He eyes the bottle before swiping it up and downing the rest of his drink, setting the bottle down on the counter with a clink! Seagull be damned, he really fucking needed that.
Silently, he begins to make his way back to his cabin, eyes and ears strained for any odd noises filtering through the quiet echo of his crew’s snoring. He passes the crew sleeping quarters and stops just as he passes the last one closest to his own. He looks back at the door, hesitating for only a moment before walking back towards it.
He opens it slowly, mindful of its quiet groaning, and sticks his head inside. With the moonlight filtering in through the porthole, he’s just able to make out the two sleeping silhouettes of his cabin boys in the darkness. Gentle puffs of breath and nonsensical grumbling meet his ears, but it’s too quiet to know for sure whose producing which sound.
He slips inside and makes his way over, allowing his eyes to adjust before properly taking a look at the two. He easily reaches a hand towards the top bunk, carefully brushing the loose, blue strands from Buggy’s forehead, the source of the grumbling. The boy sniffs through a pout and turns onto his side with a tut. Roger smiles and pulls the blanket up to settle properly over the boy’s shoulders.
“Night, Bug.” He whispers before dipping down to kneel by Shanks’ bedside and giving the redhead’s hair the same treatment. His knees pop when he stands, and he internally huffs to himself at the sound. He gives the two one last look before shutting the door softly behind him and making his way back to his cabin.
Tomorrow. He’d figure it out tomorrow , he thinks, kicking off his boots and gracelessly falling onto his bunk. He shuts his eyes and waits, already knowing sleep would elude him. His worries, when they ever did manage to take ahold of him despite his best efforts, had a knack for making a nuisance of themselves. Tonight, it seems, would just be one of those nights.