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In the wake of the worst Aqua Laguna in living memory, Paulie takes up leading the restoration of the wreckage of Water 7 in addition to his work at the docks.
Franky leaves with the Straw Hats, and Iceburg folds his family into Galley-La with such public nonchalance that the citizens barely seem to notice.
Things go back to normal everywhere except inside Paulie's head.
It should not chill Paulie to the bone the way it does, the evidence that his boss is and always has been an excellent politician and liar. He’s known Iceburg had his secrets for as long as he’s worked at Galley-La.
Paulie throws himself into his work during the day, but in the dark hours of night when sleep evades his reach, he feels the dread of creeping awareness that he’s clinging to the vestiges of a world built atop a pile of lies.
Lucci, Kaku, Kalifa and Blueno were never irreplaceable to Water 7, as reality is proving day after day. Promising workmen are promoted to replace Lucci and Kaku; Iceburg is interviewing for a replacement for Kalifa; Blueno’s bar has been taken over by a few members of the Franky family, and Paulie suspects that Iceburg helped them rush the permits, if he didn’t waive them entirely.
It's another story within Paulie's life. He has a new camaraderie with Lulu and Tilestone as well as Zanbai and the rest of the Franky family, but he doesn't make new friends to fill the void the assassins left behind.
The story that Lucci, Kaku, Kalifa and Blueno have all left Water 7 to return to their hometowns has gone almost entirely unquestioned. It seems impossible to Paulie at first, and he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop; but as time goes by, it dawns on him that for those who knew nothing of the crisis at Enies Lobby, the destruction wrought by the Aqua Laguna had been the height of terror. There are others who left as soon as they were able after the trains started running again, and others still who are reported missing.
Even those who don’t believe that the four didn’t truly go home surely believe that the lie is covering their untimely deaths at the hands of Mother Ocean’s wrath.
It’s so very easy to lie and be believed, Paulie realizes—and he can’t help but wonder how many other lies he’s believed, unquestioning.
Iceburg, after all, is just as practiced at secrets and lies—he's good enough to come close to fooling CP9. Ultimately, his secrets and lies have been harmless, especially to Paulie—but the fact that he is capable of deceiving him as thoroughly as CP9 assassins sticks in his mind like a thorn.
Paulie watches Lulu and Tilestone sometimes, wondering if they feel it too, this discomfort of living in what remains of their world in the wake of CP9.
He sees no evidence that they do. Perhaps it didn’t affect them as strongly, given that they only heard of the deceptions second-hand, and never personally faced a murder attempt by the men they thought of as their friends. Or perhaps they, too, are far better at concealing their true selves.
Perhaps Paulie still lives in a world made up of lies, and he’s the only one who doesn’t know it.
*
Iceburg hires an eight-year-old to replace Kalifa.
Paulie hears about this through the grapevine, and sees red.
He doesn’t remember leaving the dock or storming into headquarters, and only realizes he’s done so when he finds himself standing in front of Iceburg’s office.
His breathing is heavy, his pulse is racing, and he’s not even fully sure what he wants to say to his boss.
He is still standing there when the door opens.
Paulie blinks at the thin air where a person should be—and then he looks down, and further down, and sees a small child in glasses, her black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail.
“Are you here to see President Iceburg?” she asks.
Paulie bites his tongue. He may be unapologetically rough and unrefined, but he knows better than to interrogate a child.
“Yes,” he says instead, even though he’s still not entirely sure what he wants to say.
“Do you have an appointment?” asks the child, and Paulie blinks at her. She stares very seriously back.
“Let him in, Alice,” comes a familiar voice from inside the office. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the room for a bit—I need to talk to him in private.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, and opens the door wider to usher Paulie in. She leaves the room after he is inside, and even after the door has clicked shut, he waits until he hears her footsteps receding down the hallway outside before rounding on Iceburg.
“You hired a child,” he hisses.
Iceburg blinks at him.
“She was the best candidate,” he says as if Paulie is the one out of his mind
“You made the labor laws, and you’re breaking them yourself?”
“She graduated from secretary school already. Some kind of prodigy, apparently.”
“What about her parents? What about workplace ethics? A small child among rough workmen? You know it’s not right. You’d never let an 8-year-old work the docks.”
“I let you foremen take apprentices of any age,” Iceburg points or.
“Yes, and there’s a chain of command to protect them. If the foremen are mistreating the apprentice, there are dock workers who can report to other foremen, or to you! Who can your secretary go to if you’re mistreating her? Who would be around to see?”
Iceburg fixes Paulie with a long look, and for a moment, Paulie thinks he sees a deep, overwhelming grief behind his eyes.
“What do you think I would do to her, Paulie?”
Iceburg’s voice is even. There’s barely an emotion there; it’s not even accusatory, not really, but it makes Paulie’s words freeze in his throat as if Iceburg has punched him in the chest.
“It’s not about what you will do,” he says, but his voice is raspy as between one heartbeat and the next, Iceburg transforms in his eyes from another person practiced in lies and deceit into another victim who is just as broken as Paulie. It feels cruel, suddenly—and yet Paulie knows in his gut that he is not wrong. “It’s just—sensible protection of employees, especially children.”
“And you think my employees need protection from me.” Iceburg sits back in his chair and closes his eyes, looking suddenly twenty years older.
Paulie wants to fall to his knees and scramble to Iceburg and beg his forgiveness.
It’s an old impulse, born of a combination of his childhood hero worship of Tom’s Workers and his adolescent crush on the up-and-coming Iceburg. It’s been years since Paulie actively had to hold himself back from doing something embarrassing before his idol.
“Everyone needs to be protected from everyone else, just in case,” Paulie says softly.
Iceburg is silent for a long moment.
“I called you in here to ask you to be my vice president,” he says without opening his eyes. “If Alice has a problem, she could report to you.”
Paulie’s heart stops in his chest for a moment.
“Vice president? Me?”
Iceburg says nothing. He doesn’t even open his eyes, and he still looks so very tired and so very old.
As Paulie stares at him, it occurs to him that this is not the first time that Iceburg has held him in a particular position of trust. It occurs to him that in his own fear of deception, he’s been putting distance between himself and the man who perhaps needs company the most in the wake of everything.
For the first time, Paulie gives in to the urge to kneel before his idol and mentor. It helps that Iceburg’s eyes are fully closed.
“Even that day of the Aqua Laguna, you chose me to give the decoy plans to. Not Lucci or Kaku or Lulu or Tilestone—me. Why?”
There might be no meaningful answer, but Paulie finds he needs to ask for his own peace of mind.
“You were my favorite,” Iceburg says at the ceiling, still not opening his eyes. “I considered that Lucci, Kaku or Lulu would probably be better at keeping a secret but I liked you best. And if I had to tell my secrets to one of you, if I had to answer any awkward questions in the wake of that decoy, I wanted it to be you.”
Paulie lowers his forehead to Iceburg’s knee, and doesn’t budge even when he feels Iceburg jolt with surprise at the touch. Paulie doesn’t look up to check if Iceburg is looking at him now. If he sees Iceburg looking at him now, starts imagining what he must look like through his eyes, on his knees for the man who’s shaped his life in so many ways, he might pass out from the shame.
“It’s an honor,” says Paulie. “But then are you offering me vice presidency for the same reason?”
Paulie feels something run through his hair and realizes with a belated jolt that it must be Iceburg’s fingers—stroking his hair as though with affection.
It’s very hard to think, but he makes himself focus on Iceburg’s response.
“Back when I chose you to give the decoy blueprints, I didn’t think you were the most trustworthy person there, and I was very, very wrong. If there is anyone in this company I trust to not only run things if something happens to me, but also to keep me in line, then that person is you.”
“I’m nothing special,” Paulie says, his voice hoarse. His fingers are curling into the soft material of Iceburg’s work trousers, and he is powerless to stop them.
“You are to me.” Iceburg’s voice is soft, and Paulie wonders if he’s imagining the note of vulnerability underneath—a kind of hoarseness, as if Iceburg is choking back something else he wants to be saying.
Paulie cannot imagine what it could be. Certainly he could fantasize about a myriad of things Iceburg might be refraining from saying, but such fantasies are ancient relics of Paulie’s old teenage crush on the idol of his hometown; they have no place in the very real relationship between himself and his boss.
His boss, who is asking him to be his second in command. A chance to be the person at Iceburg’s side. Not quite his equal, but as close as anyone can be in Water 7.
“You might do better to choose someone less…gullible,” Paulie confesses, though the words burn his throat. “I’m a simple man, and my simplicity may be a liability to you, and to the company.”
Iceburg’s fingers jerk in Paulie’s hair, and scrape his scalp. Electricity runs down Paulie’s spine and he has to bite his lip to keep from making some embarrassing sound, or worse, asking Iceburg to do it again.
“Is this about Lucci and the others?” asks Iceburg.
“Them and—everything else.”
“What else?”
Paulie closes his eyes and braces himself to confess. He doesn’t want to, but Iceburg is asking, and he doesn’t want to keep it bottled up inside him anymore.
“It’s—everything I never noticed. The way Lulu and Tilestone were so sure the culprits were Michael and Hoichael.”
“That’s just unfounded prejudice.”
“And the way I never noticed how intently the government was going after you, or all the secrets you were keeping.”
Iceburg goes very, very still.
“I have kept a lot of secrets,” he says, very quiet and very slow. “But it was not a mere matter of trust. I was trying to protect myself, and this island—but also there were others I might have exposed.”
“I know!” Paulie says, and his voice sounds entirely too loud in the too-spacious office. “I’m not—in my head, I know. But in a single day, I learned that my friends and colleagues were fakes, and that you were hiding so many secrets that it felt like—what have I even been seeing?”
“Paulie.” Iceburg’s voice is firm as his hand cups the back of Paulie’s neck, gently urging him upwards.
There is no force behind Iceburg’s hold—it’s only a suggestion. Paulie goes anyway, though he fears what his face may give away.
But Iceburg’s expression does not waver as Paulie raises his head and meets those eyes, and while there is a voice in Paulie’s head reminding him that Iceburg is better than most at deception, it is far quieter than it’s been for weeks.
“There was a time for secrets, but it’s over. Ask me anything, and I’ll tell you.”
Paulie stares.
“Truly? Anything?”
“Anything.”
So Paulie asks about Tom’s Workers.
Iceburg answers, and Paulie learns about his turbulent relationship with Franky; his love for the legendary shipwright Tom.
It’s a riveting story, something out of a fable, and Paulie barely notices that Iceburg never removes the hand on Paulie’s head, though it shifts periodically to stroke his cheek or run through his hair.
It is only later, after the sun has set and Iceburg has called an end to their meeting and removed his hand, that Paulie realizes that he is leaning against one of Iceburg’s legs, having long since shifted his weight off his knees to sit on the floor instead.
He scrambles to his feet, feeling the tingling in his legs of returning blood flow.
“I’m so sorry, I—I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I’m grateful you were comfortable enough to be honest with me,” says Iceburg, who is sitting upright as if he hasn’t spent the afternoon leaning forward with a palm pressed to Paulie’s face—which is weird, isn’t it? Paulie isn’t sure anymore. “I would appreciate it more often, if you feel so inclined.”
“I…thank you,” Paulie says, baffled.
He leaves.
He barely sleeps, haunted by the ghost of Iceburg’s touch on his cheek, neck, and hair. As he drifts sleepward, his imagination extrapolates what it would be like if that touch were to part Paulie’s lips, to pull him forward as Iceburg leans down—
But each time his thoughts wander that way, Paulie jerks awake and aborts them.
They’ve all had a rough few months. Iceburg is just being kind and supporting Paulie.
Paulie imagines the rough calluses of Iceburg’s thumb against his tongue, the way they might taste—and he has to blink himself awake again. This is not his to think about, he reminds himself.
*
The day Paulie officially accepts the promotion to vice president, he makes a point of speaking to Alice while Iceburg is out inspecting the docks.
"If there's anything you need that you're not comfortable talking to Iceburg about, you can come to me, okay?"
He's doing his best to be approachable, but the way Alice frowns at him suggests he hasn't succeeded.
"To you? Why?"
She seems genuinely baffled.
"Just in case," he explains. "It's not that you have to, just—it's a good business practice to have someone you can go to who isn't in your direct chain of command."
"Yes, I know," says Alice with a frown that seems to deepen every moment. "Typically, that would also exclude people who are emotionally entangled with people in the direct chain of command."
"What?" It takes a few moments for Paulie's mind to catch up with what she's implying, at which point he means to tell her she's wrong, but what comes out is a series of stuttering noises instead.
"Yes, I see that's too much for you to process right now," Alice says with a sigh as if she is the adult and he the child in need of guidance. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."
She leaves Paulie alone on the docks, still at a loss for words. Iceburg finds him there a few minutes later.
"Where did Alice go?" he asks, and Paulie looks up instinctively.
The sight of Iceburg's face, serious and right there within arm's reach, is too much for Paulie to handle. His mind fills with the memory of Iceburg's touch to his scalp, the imagined taste and texture of his thumb on Paulie's tongue, and his face feels like it's about to burst into flame.
"I—I have to go do—a thing," Paulie manages to say before he turns and flees.
All things considered, he tells himself that the fact that he managed to make words is a win.
*
It's two days later and Paulie is still feeling the sting of embarrassment whenever he looks at Iceburg. He does his best not to think about it and do his job. At some point, his job is supposed to involve being where Iceburg isn't around the company, but at this point, less than a week in, he still spends most of his working hours doing paperwork in close proximity to Iceburg at the temporary desk that's been set up for him on the other side of the president's office. He is only offered a reprieve when Iceburg leaves the office but Iceburg, whose distaste for paperwork and bureaucracy is legendary, seems to be spending an unusual amount of time in his office too.
Paulie is trying so hard not too look up that he doesn't notice when Alice comes in until she calls his name.
"Paulie?"
It's the impatience in her tone more than his name itself that gets his attention.
He looks up and to the sight of both other occupants in the room staring at him, Iceburg with concern and Alice with annoyance.
"Now that I finally have your attention," she says, "I have to inform you that the office that was being prepared as the vice presidential office is no longer available."
Iceburg frowns.
"Are the workmen giving you problems?" he asks.
"The problem is not the room itself, but the company structure," Alice says with the air of someone explaining the obvious to someone particularly obtuse. "It came to my attention that given the chain of command in this company and this town, Mr. Iceburg, you have a particularly tricky power dynamic on your hands with regards to myself and Mr. Paulie."
Iceburg freezes and Paulie feels his face grow hot as he realizes that she might be about to repeat in front of Iceburg what she'd implied to him. The denials, which have become familiar as they cycle through his mind for the last several days, are on the tip of his tongue.
"While your dual titles of president and mayor make it tricky to truly mitigate the power imbalance between you and any citizen of Water 7, it's in your own interest to at the very least have an HR department. I've taken the liberty of collecting applications from potential candidates from Pucci, St. Poplar and San Faldo, and narrowing the potential candidates down to five. They're waiting for you in the office that was to be Mr. Paulie's."
"Ah," blinks Iceburg. "Thank you, Alice. That's very…"
His distaste for the idea of having a third party between himself and his own company is evident in his expression.
"I understand this isn't how you have done things in the past, but given my age, it's best to have certain measures in place to protect you against untoward accusations and lawsuits."
Iceburg frowns. "I've never had a problem with that before, and the—certain parties were actively trying to pull me down. Thank you but I don't think it's necessary."
"Try meeting with them at least," says Alice, entirely unmoved. "They have come all this way."
Iceburg looks like he might be on the verge of saying no, when Alice glances away from Iceburg to meet Paulie's eyes instead. She wiggles her eyebrows in what looks like it's meant to be some kind of message, though Paulie can't figure for the life of him what it's supposed to mean.
He forgets for a moment that he's trying to avoid Iceburg and looks toward him.
To his surprise, Iceburg is sitting straight, eyes darting back and forth between Alice and Paulie as if he's understood the message that Paulie hasn't.
"Very well," he says, standing smoothly. "I'll meet with them. Paulie?"
"I have, um, paperwork…"
"If we might have a whole new department, you should come meet the candidates too."
It's a reasonable point. Paulie flushes, realizing he's almost put avoiding Iceburg before his new job.
"Of course."
Alice leads the way and Iceburg walks side by side with Paulie.
The five candidates are, unsurprisingly, all strangers to Paulie.
Paulie intends to simply observe the interviews, but neither Iceburg nor Alice seem to be inclined to leave him out of the process for a single moment.
They ask him almost as many questions as the candidates themselves.
It's the third candidate, a broad-shouldered middle aged woman in a suit, who draws attention to this dynamic.
"So I understand we've been recruited from outside Water 7 to curtail Iceburg's influence over us. Has he been harassing you?"
"What? No!" Paulie squawks, offended on Iceburg's behalf. "This is for Alice, because she's so young!"
"Hm." The woman sounds unconvinced. "He is very handsy with you."
"Handsy how?" Paulie demands. This is beyond insulting. If Iceburg were handsy with him he would have noticed. Iceburg doesn't touch anybody. All Paulie has to hold onto is a single memory of fingers in his hair, and he only got that much because he'd gone and put his head in Iceburg's lap in a moment of madness.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. Iceburg is the best, kindest employer anybody anywhere could ask for. I would like it if he were handsy with me, but he isn't. He never has and never would take advantage of anyone, how dare you suggest he would? Alice!"
He turns around, ready to demand what Alice was thinking, bringing in someone who would question Iceburg's integrity this way—and he's met instead with Iceburg's eyes, bright and sharp and trained on Paulie like he's the only one in the room. Paulie thinks, for a moment, that Iceburg looks a little flushed, but surely that's a trick of the light and projection. Belatedly it's dawning on Paulie what he's said in the hearing of Alice and the potential HR department and Iceburg himself and he thinks he's not going to be able to endure another day of sharing an office with Iceburg trying to pretend he's not out of his mind in love with the man.
It's nothing to be ashamed of, he tells himself. Half of Water 7 would agree with him without a moment's hesitation.
"Paulie," Iceburg says, and there is something serious in his gaze that makes Paulie pause and take notice, "she's not wrong."
Paulie knows he's right. He himself was just thinking—or trying not to think—about Iceburg's fingers tangling in his hair, the press of his calluses into Paulie's scalp.
"You've never touched me unless I touched you first."
Paulie strides across the room and slings an arm around Iceburg's shoulders. He feels the shoulders tense under his arm, and then slowly relax. He doesn't pay this much mind, as he's busy glaring at the woman who has had the gall to come into Iceburg's company on the island that's been saved by Iceburg time and time again and accuse him of being anything less than the best of humanity.
"See? I do this all the time, but Iceburg won't even put an arm around me in return."
"Do you want me to?" asks Iceburg. When Paulie turns toward his voice, their faces are closer than he'd expected. Conscious that they are being watched, Paulie nods first before carefully stepping away, hoping his face is not as red as it feels.
"I just mean—if you wanted to put your arm around me from time to time, you could. I would—" love that, he can't say, but despite the cut-off sentence, he thinks everyone in the room has heard him all the same.
The woman has a strange look on her face, like she has just seen something entirely unexpected.
"You're the vice president, yes? I see why your company has a sudden concern about HR."
"Hey! You're not suggesting that I'm a threat to the company, are you?"
The woman stares at him in a way that conveys that no, that was not what she was suggesting exactly, but that she thinks less of Paulie for his inability to parse what she does mean.
"You're hired," Iceburg says to the woman out of nowhere. "Alice, draft the contracts so that the HR department is answerable to you, with suitable protections from me and Paulie."
"What?" Paulie objects. "No! She—the things she was suggesting—"
"You're comfortable with her, and she sees what matters," says Iceburg, which makes no sense at all.
*
It takes a few days for Paulie to realize that he has undermined his own intention to maintain a professional distance.
Iceburg seems to have taken Paulie's unspoken but very clear preference for being touched. He still does not go out of his way to close the distance between himself and Paulie, but when Paulie steps too close, he is quick to put an arm around Paulie’s waist or a hand on his arm.
He doesn’t do this with anyone else.
It makes his skin tingle with want, with futile hope, and yet he can’t think of asking Iceburg to stop. Opportunities to be close are far more frequent than they were before, and with the sharing of Iceburg's office having become more permanent than originally intended, there seems no sign that this will change.
Despite Paulie's embarrassment, the new closeness is entirely too easy to get used to. He comes to expect the touches, to delight in them and step a little closer than usual in the hope of receiving one.
It takes both of them by surprise on the day when Iceburg’s arm around his waist dips a little too low and Paulie jerks away.
They stare at each other for a long moment, and the horror written across Iceburg’s face is what grounds Paulie.
“I’m so sorry,” Iceburg is already saying, taking several steps back. “I’m—there is really no excuse. I—”
“No,” Paulie cuts him off before Iceburg has the chance to say anything more, because he can already see them careening into a terrible misunderstanding. He would rather suffer humiliation than Iceburg’s unwarranted guilt. He is absently grateful that they are alone in the office that used to be Iceburg’s, which is now both of theirs—a far better use of space, in Paulie’s opinion. Alice is away getting Iceburg's tea. “No, I—I like it when you touch me,” Paulie says in a rush, turning his eyes to the ceiling in an attempt to minimize the humiliation. “Too much, in fact. That’s the problem.”
“Too much?” Paulie senses rather than sees Iceburg take a cautious step back towards him.
“Too much,” Paulie agrees, not entirely sure what else he is meant to add. The silence stretches between them.
“We agreed no secrets,” says Iceburg, taking another step toward Paulie, “but there are some things that I can’t be the one to say to you, even if it means keeping a secret.”
Paulie blinks at the ceiling once, and then turns to stare at Iceburg.
Those eyes are familiar—and not just because he’s been watching and idolizing Iceburg all his life. He thinks he sees in those eyes an echo of an answer to all the things he’s not even let himself admit he wants.
“I try not to think about it,” Paulie admits, and catches his hands as they automatically reach towards Iceburg. Both of them stare at Paulie’s hands, awkwardly suspended between them. “I think—if I admitted it, I might die of wanting.”
Iceburg looks at Paulie, and his face is a mask of impassiveness again—but Paulie thinks he can see through to devastation underneath. “Is it such a dire thing?”
Paulie can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes him. “Wanting the mayor of Water 7 and president of Galley-La? You act as if I haven’t seen the piles of marriage offers for you that Alice sorts through every morning.”
“They’re strangers,” says Iceburg.
“Not all of them,” says Paulie, who remembers seeing a marriage request from the daughter of the mayor of Pucci. She often accompanies her father on diplomatic visits, dressed to the nines and fluttering her eyelids at Iceburg.
“You,” says Iceburg slowly, “you are the person I chose among all others to—to entrust with everything that matters to me. I’ve chosen you again and again. You’re not the same as them.”
Paulie stares at Iceburg, and all at once, the distance between them seems—surmountable. Close enough to cross in a step or two.
His heart is racing, but he settles his resolve and looks Iceburg in the eye.
“Whenever you touch me, I end up focusing on trying not to wish you would kiss me, so it is very distracting—and the way your hand wandered earlier, it made me think thoughts that…no one should be thinking at work. So—I don’t mind you touching me, but you should know that. And don’t do it when I need to be focusing because it’s very distracting.”
Iceburg’s eyes are sparkling like this is the best thing he’s ever heard in his life. Paulie thinks he should probably be frightened, at least a little, but his throat is tight with anticipation.
“And what is the verdict right now?” asks Iceburg. “What would you like me to do?”
Paulie’s heart races.
“Kiss me?” he breathes, and a moment later Iceburg’s mouth is on his.
Paulie wraps his arms around broad shoulders and tilts his head to give Iceburg better access. Iceburg’s wide palms are spread across the expanse of Paulie’s back, every fingertip leaking warmth into him.
“Is this just about kissing?” Iceburg asks, leaving Paulie’s mouth to trail kisses up his jaw. It takes a moment for Paulie to parse the question.
“I love you,” he says, too drunk on kisses and touch to be anything but utterly honest. “I adore you.”
“I love you too,” says Iceburg, and Paulie can feel his smile against his cheek. “Move in with me?”
“Pushy,” Paulie snorts, Iceburg’s brazenness grounds him and reinforces that this is reality and not a mere fantasy. “Kiss me again and I’ll think about it.”
Iceburg does.
*
They report their relationship to the new HR department, as per updated company policies.
Gina, the newly-hired head of HR from St. Poplar, seems entirely unsurprised as she pulls out documents for them to review and sign.
Documents, Paulie realizes as he reads through them, that were already prepared for the eventuality of the president and vice president becoming romantically entangled.
"How did you know?" he demands of Gina.
"It's why I was hired, obviously," she deadpans.
"But—Alice!"
"The HR department is for everyone," says Iceburg, but the smile pulling at the corners of his mouth suggests that Gina is not wrong.
"You—"
Paulie can't think of words that adequately express the mix of flattered, terrified, valued and exasperated that he feels, so he grabs Iceburg by the vest and kisses him instead.
"I hope you don't make a habit of this in front of employees," Gina says.
"Lucky you're not our employee then," Paulie shoots back.
"Don't antagonize Gina," says Iceburg, then undermines his own point by pressing another kiss to Paulie's mouth.
Paulie does not admit to feeling mollified by that one chaste kiss, but he suspects they both know it all the same.