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It's the beginning of September and Law will be starting school in a week's time.
After the expensive additional certificates which proofed that Law's illness is indeed not contagious, it was a relief when you finally received written confirmation from the school management that Law had been accepted as a first grader.
But after the bureaucracy, now comes the organizational part, which makes you lose your mind. You can hardly remember your own school enrolment, but you want to offer Law something – even if it's just a small ‘first day of school’ party.
You even downloaded several checklists: '10 tips for an unforgettable first day of school party'. Your pinboards on pinterest are overflowing with ‘ideas for back to school parties’, DIY decoration, instructions for homemade school cones and recipes for cupcakes and muffins.
And while Rocinante steers his Ford into his parents driveway with a wide swing, you’re still thinking about planning and organizing and despairing because you don't know when you’re supposed to make and bake everything until next Monday.
“That's where you live?”, asks Law from the back seat as he stares through the window in awe.
Roci's parents live in a multi-storey house in the posh part of the suburbs. The gardens here are well-kept, there are carports instead of garages and the houses (mostly cubist-style houses in various shades of gray) are unnecessarily spacious. You always feel a bit like an intruder when Rocinante parks his car in front of his father's polished Bentley and his mother's no less shiny black BMW.
Law is lounging in his child seat. You can see his slightly wrinkled nose in the rear-view mirror. If you interpret your son's look correctly, he also seems a little intimidated by the sheer size and elegant simplicity of the building.
You can't blame him.
When Rocinante took you here for the first time to introduce you to his parents, you were so excited that your stomach ached. You already knew that he comes from a rich family, but that's exactly why you were worried. What would his mother or father say if they found out that you were a single mother? Would they think badly of you? Would they try to convince Roci that you were only after his money – their money?
But your worries were unfounded.
Although Homing, Rocinante’s father, did want to know about your life situation over dinner, he was just as interested in your opinion on day-to-day political issues. He holds some high position in a chamber of commerce, but will soon be retiring. His wife Dahlia, who works as a lawyer, is quite a bit younger than her husband. As she sat across from you at the table, perfectly coiffed and wearing a color-coordinated pantsuit, she seemed almost youthful, but at the same time strangely stiff. They both earn well and it shows.
Roci's brother, on the other hand, is a caliber of his own.
Your boyfriend had warned you that his older brother was quite eccentric – an understatement, as it turned out.
You've only met Doffy twice so far, but the very first time you met him left a lasting impression.
He is two years older than Roci and towers over his brother by several centimeters, which means he has to duck his head under door frames. Doffy is also self-confident. So self-confident that it borders on arrogance.
But he doesn't seem to be there this time, which makes you breathe a sigh of relief. There is no screamingly ugly pink Porsche in the driveway.
At least that's one less thing to worry about.
Roci's mother is already waiting for you. She is standing in the open front door wearing a coral-colored dress. The sight of her makes your boyfriend fidget. As he gets out of the car, he catches a corner of his jacket in the car door and almost stumbles over the threshold into the outstretched arms of his mother, who has to jump up to give her son a kiss on the cheek.
“Did you have a good trip?” she asks with a smile. Then her gaze swings over to you and Law and with the kindness of a good-natured kindergarten teacher, she beams at your son: “And you must be Law, right? Nice to meet you, young man.”
Law looks up at her with owl eyes and can't seem to decide whether to be grumpy or friendly or to not react at all. You quickly give him an expectant look and luckily he takes the hint.
“Uh... hello, it’s nice to meet you, too,” he mumbles a little sheepishly and looks up at Dahlia before quickly looking elsewhere with childish embarrassment.
Dahlia smiles delightedly. “Why don't you come in? I've made coffee ... and I've texted Doffy earlier to bring a cake on his way home from the office. I hope he remembers.”
At the mention of his brother, Rocinante's smile tightens.
The Donquixote’s house smells of the anonymous cleanliness of hotels. The rooms are large and sparsely furnished with high-quality-looking couches, consoles and side tables. In the dining room, which opens onto the kitchen, the table is already set and, as always, you’re a little overwhelmed with everything because you don't want to expose yourself as a country bumpkin who doesn't know certain customs.
The three of you put your shoes in a white shoe cupboard in the hallway, which actually seems far too extravagant for such a clumsy name. Dahlia brings house slippers for guests and you try to your nervousness by stroking Law's hair, which has again successfully resisted every brush.
Radio music plays softly and two bulbous scented candles give off a subtle aroma of vanilla and cedar wood.
Homing Donquixote is sitting at the head of the dining table, reading the newspaper and stroking his thick wheat-blonde moustache, lost in thought. When you enter, he puts the newspaper aside, rises from his seat with a groan and approaches his son with stiff steps.
While Dahlia brews more coffee and asks Law what he would like to drink (“Orange juice, please”), the aggressive roar of a sports car engine becomes loud. Pebbles crunch in the driveway and the heavy guitar riffs of Metallica's 'Master of Puppets' sound muffled from inside of the screamingly ugly-ass pink Porsche into the dining room. The engine howls one last time and a little later Doflamingo Donquixote saunters into the dining room with an grin that oscillates somewhere between lewdness and mockery.
Dahlia embraces him with the same warmth as she did earlier to Rocinante and takes a square cardboard box with the logo of a bakery from her eldest son. The blueberry cake inside is placed on a glass cake plate lined with decorative white paper.
Dahlia cuts the cake and you can clearly see Rocinante's frozen expression out of the corner of your eye. Law is also eyeing the piece of cake that Dahlia has draped on his plate as if it were an unpleasant task that he now has to fulfill.
And then you notice your son and your boyfriend casting glances at each other. Roci must have made some kind of face, because Laws hurries to look back down at his piece of cake while the corners of his mouth start twitching and suddenly he presses his lips together so tightly that they turn white.
Both, Law and Rocinante, try their best to not burst out into laughter and you’re wondering what’s supposed to be so funny about a piece of cake.
Eventually Rocinante clears his throat and puts his hand on your thigh under the table. He gives it a quick squeeze, probably wanting to let you know that everything’s fine and that this visit will go well.
Doffy is sitting opposite of you, dressed in elegant fabric trousers with a designer belt and a black slim-fit shirt with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves. He has one arm casually draped over the back of his chair and is chatting with his father about some kind of ETF portfolios. As he talks, he gestures with his cake fork and uses it like a pointer to make his explanations seem even more important. But between sentences, his gaze glides far too often over the pigmented spot on Law's neck, which is getting lighter by the day.
You feel something inside you tense up.
It's not that Doffy has done anything in the past that would explain your antipathy towards him; it's his manner, his whole demeanor, that turns you against him. He is so completely different from Rocinante and although you can see their family resemblance, you always find it hard to imagine that the two of them are brothers and were once very close.
Their relationship is now distant but polite. You don't know all the details of what has happened back then (Roci keeps quiet about it), but it has something to do with the band they formed during their university days. The worn-out ‘Do Flamingos’ band shirt is floating around somewhere in the depths of your laundry basket.
You eat cake, you drink coffee and you hope that this visit will be over soon.
Next to you Rocinante and Law are both chewing with mechanical movements and petrified expressions.
Dahlia and Homing don't seem to notice. Doffy, on the other hand, does. With his eyebrows raised in interest, his gaze swings back and forth between his brother and Law. With an amused snort, he shoves a forkful of cake into his mouth and washes it down with coffee.
A little later, when Dahlia asks who would like seconds, both Law and Roci shake their heads so vehemently that Dahlia looks around in bewilderment, the cleaned cake cutlery already in her hands. You hold your breath for a moment and are about to give Law a warning look. But it's Doffy, of all people, who defuses the situation as he leans back in his chair and laughs his amused, mocking laugh in his brother's direction. “Don't tell me your girlfriends son has the same eating complexes as you?”
“It's not that the cake doesn't taste good,” Rocinante replies with a strained smile as Law shrinks down several centimeters in his chair. “But dough just feels like I'm chewing on a sponge.”
Law nods silently.
“You could have said something, brother, then I would have brought something else,” Doffy replies, shrugging his shoulders. Roci doesn't answer and pours Law some more orange juice, even though his glass is still half full.
The atmosphere is tense and even Dahlia's attempts to engage her sons in a conversation fail miserably. Homing also has an irritated look on his face and the man's blond brows almost meet above the bridge of his nose when Doffy suddenly asks: “By the way, what are the stains on your son's neck? Looks nasty.”
Within a moment, the tart-sweet taste of the blue berry filling turns bitter on your tongue and the shortcrust pastry is now more like a lump that threatens to clog your throat. Under the table, Roci's fingers dig noticeably into your thigh. Whether it's a reminder not to let Doffy provoke you, a reassurance on his part or his own anger, you can't tell.
Unfortunately, Dahlia takes the bait and now she too discovers the latest pigmentation spot on Law's neck, which sticks out several fingers' breadth above the collar of his shirt.
“It's just a normal pigmentation mark,” you reply coolly and look Doffy straight in the eye.
A thin smile still plays around his lips. “It’s quite a big pigmentation mark, isn’t it?”, Doffy probes with seemingly innocent words. His words are like arrows that he fires with pinpoint accuracy. Maybe he's doing it out of malice of maybe you’re just imagining it, because you have a very short fuse at the mention of Law's illness. And slowly the realization seeps into your mind, that Doflamingo Donquixote happens to know about Law’s illness. And just because he is able to, Doffy likes to inflict pain and uneasiness at the expense of others.
But this time it’s at the expense of Law. Out of the corner of your eye you can see your son’s face, staring with dull indifference at the bright red remnants of blue berry cream on his empty plate.
Hot anger flares up inside you; swallowing it down takes an almost inhuman effort. In this very moment you’d like to jump over the dining table and punch the arrogant smile out of his face!
But Roci's hand on your thigh is like an anchor holding you back.
“Uh, I was tidying up the other day,” Dahlia interjects with little enthusiasm, trying to defuse the tense situation somehow. “I found two boxes full of old clothes. From when you two had the band. I'd appreciate it if you could go through them later before I dispose of them. The boxes are in the basement, in the boiler room…”
“Mh-hm, I can do that”, mutters Rocinante. Then he suddenly stops and says: “Actually, I can do it now. Law, are you coming with me?”
Your son mumbles a lame “Yes, fine with me”, slides off his chair like a wet sack and shuffles after Roci, who simply ignores his father's stern look and his mother's stunned open mouth. You’re left alone at the dining table with Doffy and the Donquixotes, but you’re also grateful that Roci has just successfully maneuvered your son out of the line of fire.
“Nice boy you've got there,” Homing remarks after a while. “And he's well-trained, too.” Dahlia puts her hand on her husband's forearm and gives him an indulgent smile. It makes her visibly uncomfortable that he talked about your son like about an employee, or worse like about a dog. Well-trained ... You hold back a bitter laugh. As if it's a pleasant surprise for him that Law knows when to say 'please' and 'thank you' and has some table manners.
Homing doesn't mean any harm, you’re sure about that, but it's his careless choice of words that hurts deep down. It’s the insensitive demeanor of people who are suddenly confronted with something outside their usual wealthy bubble. Doffy, in his black slim-fit shirt and his ugly-ass sports car outside in the courtyard, fits seamlessly into this rich upper-class world. Rocinante’s brother looks down at his empty plate but you can see him smiling – it’s an ugly smile that this time goes at the expanse of you.
Even worse, you are sitting at the table with these people, dressed in a cheap blouse from the H&M SALE department, dark blue jeans and fake leather boots. You don't even own a car and you live in a small appartement on the outskirts of the city. More than ever, you feel like an outsider; like someone who, in the eyes of these people, is little more than a tick who has attached herself to their son not for love but for material reasons.
“Does anyone else want cake?”, asks Dahlia in a strained, high-pitched voice, trying to overcome the embarrassment.
You smile apologetically at her and shake your head.
You've lost your appetite.
…
“Your brother is stupid,” grumbles Law as they descend the stairs to the basement.
“Tell me about it,” Rocinante sighs as he fumbles for the light switch in the boiler room. Next to the quietly banging boiler are piles of moving boxes, unscrewed furniture and colorful knick-knacks on dusty thin-legged metal shelves.
The boxes in question are at the very back of the room.
“What's this?”, asks Law skeptically as Rocinante opens the first box.
The contents are reminiscent of a costume rental store. There are folded shirts with the distinctive white and pink lettering Do Flamingos shrink-wrapped in crackling plastic. Underneath lies a large white button-down-shirt with small red hearts printed on, two pairs of beige pants, rough brown leather boots with scuffed tips, a dark red cap with earflaps whose tassels end in felt hearts; a voluminous coat made of black feathers lies at the bottom. Used make-up containers, waterproof lipstick and sunglasses in all shapes and colors appear in the second box. A thin red tie. A white bucket hat with black dots on the hem. A second voluminous feathered cape in a candy pink color and tons of signed autograph cards.
Bewildered Law takes out one of the cards and looks at the picture with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Rocinante once told him that years ago he used to be a bass player in a “metal band”. ("What's a bass player?” “Something similar to a guitarist. Only with fewer strings on the instrument."). At the time, Law thought Roci was just trying to show off, because his mom's boyfriend looked like anything, but certainly not like someone who made “metal music.”
And Law knows for sure that for this kind of music you need to have long hair, which you have to shake wildly when you sing or play metal music. Eustass' older brother, who happens to be a guitarist in a well-known metal band, has long blond hair and even a shaggy goatee. During their shared pre-school class Eustass used to brag about his “big killer brother” and their “metal killer band”. From time to time Eustass demonstrated what he called “head banging”. Although his own red hair were way too short for this kind of activity, Eustass insisted that “metal men” need to have long hair. Because if they didn't, they couldn’t play “metal music.” Law had once seen the infamous “killer brother” waiting outside the kindergarten to pick up Eustass.
As he looks at the autograph card, he thinks back to the “killer brother”, who stood out like sore thumb among the mothers and grandmothers waiting in the kindergarten parking lot. Because Eustass' brother is not only very tall, but also quite broad and strong, and also thanks to his long blond hair, which really did look like you could shake it very well, he seemed quite impressive at the time.
Rocinante, on the other hand, is also tall but rather thin – and although his hair is blond, it's not long and he doesn't have a beard either.
So it's all the more bizarre to see a fully disguised Rocinante, made up beyond recognition, next to a no less disguised Doffy and three other men.
“Is that-? Is that you?”, asks Law looking up from the signed autograph card with horror and fascination at Rocinante, who grins and runs his hands through his hair in embarrassment.
“Yes,” he confirms and crouches down next to Law to look at the picture himself. His grin weakens, finally freezing into a hollow grimace. “I was in my early twenties then. That's my brother. He used to be our singer. And this, this and this” – he points to the other three band members – ”are Trébol, Diamante and Pica. We all gave ourselves different names back then.”
“Why did you do that?” asks Law looking from the picture into the box and pulling out the red earflap hat with the felt hearts. “Can I?”
“Go on,” says Roci good-naturedly and watches attentively as Law tries to put on the way too large black feather cloak. The boy almost disappears underneath a mountain of feathers. After that he grabs the red cap. It is way too big for his head as it easily slips over Laws black hair and his eyes. The boy has to tilt his head back to be able to see anything from under the hem.
Rocinante presses his lips together and pulls his phone out of his back pocket.
While Law is busy pushing back the feathery sleeves to free his hands (the fabric bulges around his shoulders and upper arms like feathered water wings), Roci hurriedly opens the camera app and takes a blurred picture of Law in his old feathered coat and the red cap.
Chuckling quietly to himself, Rocinante puts the phone back, only to feel Law's snide look on his face the next moment. “That looks stupid. Only girls play dress up!”, is the boy's verdict as he pulls up the hem of the cap.
Roci can't help but laugh in disbelief. “Well, that's how they used to wear it back in the days,” he tries to justify himself and is almost glad that Law can't read fluently yet and therefore can't decipher his squiggly signature on the autograph cards.
Doffy was the only one who had kept his name, he and the others had named themselves after the four card hands - he was 'Corazon'; hence the felt hearts on his cap and the hearts on his shirt and his red-painted lips. They had played a few gigs and once they had been the support act for a small, relatively unknown metal band – “The metal killers”.
Then the incident with Vergo had happened and Rocinante had left the band of his own accord as a consequence.
Law is now holding a white fluffy bucket hat with black dots all over in his hands looking at it curiously and with an interested gleam in his eye. The black feather cape is already lying forgotten and crumpled in the box. Roci can't say exactly where the bucket hat came from; it had turned up one day with all the other stuff in the basket full of band equipment. None of them had ever worn it – at least he doesn't remember it.
“Take it,” he says to Law instead, who promptly puts the cap back as if by reflex. “No honestly, Law, if you like it, then take it. I'll give it to you as a present for your first day of school.”
After some initial hesitation, Law swaps the red earflap cap for his latest find, and although the dotted bucket hat is also way too big for the boy’s small head, Roci can't help but admit that in a strange way it actually suits him.
“All right, then I'll take it,” Law grumbles, pushing his lower lip forward as if to emphasize his displeasure, as he is only taking the hat with him because Roci suggested it.
His acting talent is that of a child who wants to conceal his true motives at all costs. And Rocinante, as good-natured and understanding as ever when it comes to Law, plays along because he knows that the boy can't or doesn't want to show that he's really happy about this old, dusty bucket hat.
For this reason, he also lets Law go ahead after they have put the boxes back in their usual place next to quietly banging boiler. Although the boy doesn't forget to make an annoyed face because he ‘has to’ take the hat with him, he can't quite keep up the act.
On the way back, Law literally hops up the steps and turns the hat back and forth in his hands like a precious museum exhibit, which he eagerly examines from all sides.
…
"Do you even know how much I love you?", you mumble, half-asleep, as you slowly run your hand over Rocinante's belly, warmed by the blankets. He hums contentedly, pulls you closer, and presses a kiss to the top of your head. You snuggle against him, seeking the warmth of his skin, and sleepily crack open one eye. The room is dark. Outside, the quiet hum of nighttime traffic drifts by.
You're lying together in your bed. Tomorrow is Sunday. Roci has an appointment in the early afternoon, but there’s still plenty of time for you to have breakfast together. After that you want to continue planning the first-day-of-school party and distract yourself from today's visit, Doffy’s smug glances and Homing’s indifferent words.
Sometimes, you’re genuinely afraid of becoming bitter. Maybe you overanalyzed the situation with Homing and jumped to wrong conclusions over nothing. Anxious thoughts flood your mind — guilt, mixed with the constant urge to defend yourself against everything and anything. They whisper things to you that you wouldn’t dare think about during the day. Only at night do these thoughts crawl out of their hiding places to ruin your sleep.
But here, in your bed with Rocinante cuddled up next to you, all of that fades away shrinking into something small and insignificant. You curl up against him, tracing tiny circles and random patterns along his side with your fingertips. He holds you in his arms, his thumb gently stroking your shoulder. Every now and then, your lips brush against his bare chest, or his mouth finds your forehead in a casual, unspoken gesture of affection.
He smells like warm skin and the lingering scent of some rugged shower gel.
"You're so good to Law,", you murmur softly. "I know he doesn’t like to show it, but he really appreciates you – and that bucket hat you gave him today."
Rocinante hums in satisfaction, slipping his hand under the fabric of your shirt. "I would’ve loved to get him to take the black feathered coat and that ridiculous heart beanie too. But he definitely didn’t want those."
His fingers trail over your bare lower back before coming to rest on your hip just above of the hem of your panties.
"I would’ve loved to see that," you whisper softly against his bare chest. Suddenly, your boyfriend lights up like he just had a revelation. He lets go of you, turns over, and fumbles for his phone on the nightstand.
You have to blink several times; the brightness of the screen stings in your eyes. But Roci, still filled with excitement, scoots back toward you and presses you against his chest. You snuggle close, watching as he unlocks his phone.
"It's a little blurry, but you can still see everything,", he says opening his photo gallery.