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Doflamingo started coming in more often.
At first it was every other day, then every day, then whenever he had time between meetings and paperwork.
Sometimes he stayed for breakfast. They didn't talk much, and when they did it was always about Rosalia.
Has she been drinking more milk.
Did she wake up during the night.
Safe things. Questions with answers that didn't cost anything.
Doflamingo would finish eating and read his documents at the table, in no particular hurry to leave. Rosinante would feed Rosalia across from him. The three of them at the east corridor dining table, close enough that Rosinante could hear the turn of pages over the sound of Rosalia drinking.
Too close.
For a second, the thought slipped in before he could stop it.
This looks like a family.
Rosinante choked. It hit too fast, his breath catching wrong, shoulders jerking forward as he coughed into his hand and tried to force it back down.
Rosalia startled at the sound, her face scrunching.
Before Rosinante had even steadied himself, she was gone. Doflamingo had already reached across and lifted her, one-handed, without looking up from his documents.
By the time the coughing eased the room had gone silent again. Rosinante picked up his cup and drank, still catching his breath.
He looked up.
Doflamingo wasn't looking at him. He was looking at Rosalia, who had one of his pink feathers in her hand and was clutching it tight, her fist opening and closing around it like she was testing what it was made of.
His hand came up, brushing lightly against her cheek.
"She has your nose," he said casually.
Rosinante blinked. "Doffy," he said, voice still rough, "we have the exact same nose."
It crossed Doflamingo's face before he could stop it.
Small and uncontrolled, almost amused.
It was gone just as quickly.
He picked up his documents without a word and turned a page.
Rosinante knocked on the office door.
No answer.
He waited a moment, hand still raised, then pushed it open and went in anyway.
Doflamingo was at the desk with documents spread in front of him. His brows were furrowed as he stared at the papers, lips drawn into a frown.
Rosalia was in Rosinante's arms, her face red and wet with tears that had clearly not stopped for a while. Her breathing came in uneven hitches, little hiccuping sounds breaking through every few seconds. The bottle had been pushed away again and again and was sitting untouched beside his elbow.
"Doffy," Rosinante murmured, stopping just inside the doorway. "She won't take it, I've tried everything."
Doflamingo glanced up at him, his expression unreadable. His gaze lingered briefly before dropping back to the documents.
Rosalia's wailing continued.
The pen stopped moving. Doflamingo set it down and held out his arms.
Rosalia was transferred without resistance. He adjusted the bottle once and she took it immediately, the crying cutting off so suddenly it left an echo in the room.
Rosinante exhaled without realising he had been holding his breath.
Doflamingo picked up the papers and started reading again.
"Thank you," Rosinante said.
Doflamingo didn't answer.
Rosinante hesitated, then pulled out the chair across from the desk and sat down.
It felt wrong somehow to sit there. In front of Doflamingo. In his office.
But Doflamingo didn't react. Didn't look up. Didn't tell him to leave.
So Rosinante stayed, watching Rosalia drink, watching Doflamingo read, time passing in small uneven pieces around them.
Rosalia's breathing slowed as she drifted toward sleep mid-feed, her fist going slack against Doflamingo's sleeve. Only then did he lower the bottle and set it aside, adjusting her slightly so she wouldn't slip.
He didn't hand her back.
Rosinante found himself staring at the edge of the desk.
Neither of them spoke after that.
The only sounds were the faint turn of paper and Rosalia's slow, steady breathing.
Doflamingo was reading.
The book was worn now. Edges softened from being flipped too many times, pages folded and marked.
Postpartum care.
Infant care.
Caregiver strain.
Words he did not linger on, except when they kept appearing in different sections under different names.
Sleep deprivation.
Emotional instability.
Failure to maintain basic intake.
He paused on that one longer than he meant to.
Then he closed the book.
He asked a servant once, in a tone that made her choose her words carefully.
“Has he been eating?”
She hesitated, keeping her head lowered as she searched for the correct answer.
“Somewhat, Young Master.”
“Define somewhat.”
Another pause hung in the air.
“He finishes when Lady Rosalia is calm. Sometimes he barely touches the food.”
Doflamingo was silent for a moment.
“Does this happen often?”
“Yes, Young Master.”
Through the gap in the door, Doflamingo spotted the tray on the table.
Food half-eaten and turning cold.
Rosinante was pacing with Rosalia in his arms. Her cries had broken into hoarse wails and breathless hiccups, her little body trembling with each one.
He held her tighter and hummed softly to her, rocking her against his chest.
Doflamingo watched them for a moment before stepping inside.
Rosalia's crying spiked at the movement and Rosinante looked up.
Doflamingo crossed the room and took her. She resisted immediately with small frantic movements, and as she was pulled away her fingers caught Rosinante's arm.
The bandage came loose, sliding off without either of them noticing.
Rosinante's hands stayed raised for a second, still curved in the shape of holding her. Like if he let go for even a second she would disappear entirely.
Doflamingo held Rosalia against his chest and adjusted his coat around her.
"Finish your food," he muttered, already moving towards the balcony door.
He opened it and stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him to dull the sound of her cries.
He loosened his coat and wrapped her more firmly inside it, one hand patting her back.
"Enough, Rosalia," he whispered. "You're fine."
Rosalia's cries wavered before slowly softening into tired whimpers.
Doflamingo rocked her slowly and murmured to her under his breath, standing in the cold with her until her breathing evened out.
Inside, Rosinante stood at the door and watched them through the glass.
When he convinced himself that his daughter was fine, he made himself sit down and picked up the fork.
He ate, not because he wanted to but because he had been told to, and somewhere in the process of eating, he realised his hands had stopped shaking
The balcony door opened, and Doflamingo came back in with Rosalia still wrapped in his coat, awake but no longer fussing. He carried her over to her cot and laid her down.
"Thank you," Rosinante breathed.
Doflamingo didn't respond. His eyes moved past Rosinante and then back, dropping slightly to his arm.
"Where is the gauze?"
"It fell off."
"Where do you keep it?"
"Doffy, it's fine. I'll handle it—"
"I'm asking where you keep it."
Rosinante pointed at the cupboard.
Doflamingo walked over, took the ointment and gauze, and sat on the edge of the bed.
He lifted Rosinante's arm, thumb pressing against the inside of his forearm as he tilted it towards the light to examine the wound.
Rosinante kept his eyes down.
The wound wasn't healing.
It should have been closing by now. The edges should have knitted, the redness should have faded to pink. Instead the cut was still open, still raw, the skin around it inflamed in a way that meant it had been ignored for too long.
Doflamingo's jaw tightened and he cleaned it without a word.
The dried residue came off slowly, and underneath the wound looked worse than the bandage had let on.
The ointment went on. The gauze followed. Layer over layer, wrapping Rosinante's arm firmly.
Rosinante's pulse was racing. He was certain Doflamingo could feel it where his fingers rested against his skin.
"You haven't been changing this."
Doflamingo's fingers ran down the length of the bandage before stopping at Rosinante's wrist.
"I—I forget sometimes."
Doflamingo's thumb pressed harder against his pulse point.
"When did it last get changed?"
Rosinante didn't answer.
"Rosinante."
"Some days before."
Doflamingo let go. The absence of his fingers left a mark on Rosinante's skin. A white imprint where the pressure had been.
He got up and turned towards the door, pausing with his hand near the doorframe.
"Tell me if you need help."
Rosinante blinked. "What?"
"She is not only your responsibility."
A pause, and then sharper, as if correcting the phrasing in real time.
"She is my child as well." His shoulders stiffened. "I will come when I can."
Then he left.
Rosinante stared at the door. He wasn't sure he understood.
Or maybe he couldn't bring himself to understand what Doflamingo meant.
He understood eventually, when Doflamingo was there.
Lunch. Dinner. Most days.
Not always long. Not always speaking.
He would arrive between work, or step out briefly from whatever he was doing.
Sometimes he came with documents in hand, already reading as he walked in.
Sometimes he sat across from Rosinante, Den Den Mushi pinned between his ear and shoulder, handling business while he held Rosalia against his chest.
But he was there.
Present, holding their daughter so Rosinante could finish a meal properly without having to choose between the two.
Rosinante told himself each time not to expect the next one.
He kept being wrong.
Doflamingo came to the room and found Rosinante forcing Rosalia into a onesie that had clearly lost the battle some time ago.
"She needs new clothes. She's grown out of almost everything."
"I'll get her clothes."
"This is the last of the three-month ones. She's only six weeks old."
Doflamingo looked at Rosalia, who lay in her cot entirely unbothered, her thighs slightly compressed by the defeated fabric. "She was premature."
"Yes."
"She's wearing three-month clothes."
Rosinante didn't reply, only huffed as he finally got the last button clipped into place.
"I'll have new ones made," Doflamingo said, and picked her up. She immediately grabbed his pink feathers, both fists closing around a handful.
"She loves your feathers," Rosinante said, a small smile tugging on his lips when Rosalia pressed her face into the coat before giggling.
Doflamingo looked at his smile and quickly turned away to face the window.
“I’ll get her one. Winter is almost here.”
Rosinante's eyes widened. “I'm not sure if that’s a good idea. She’ll rip them all out in a day.”
Doflamingo pictured it. His daughter methodically pulling out every feather.
His lips curled into a smile and he buried it in her hair.
“Then I’ll keep making her new ones.”
The shower was running.
Doflamingo paced the room with Rosalia held against his chest. She had stopped fussing a few minutes ago, her cheek pressed against his sternum and her eyes slowly closing.
He sat on the edge of the bed and adjusted her against his chest. Rosalia made a small sound of complaint before settling again.
He leaned back onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling.
Rosalia was warm, her heartbeat steady against his ribs.
He breathed in.
The sheets smelled like Rosinante. The shampoo he used, his skin, and underneath that, something Doflamingo had never been able to name but could recognise in any room.
He missed him.
He didn't want to think about this.
He thought about it anyway.
He missed touching him.
Helping him up when the pregnancy made everything difficult. Pressing his palm to the spot on his lower back that always ached.
The way Rosinante would press his face into his neck in the middle of the night and mumble something incomprehensible and fall back asleep there, like it was where he belonged.
Doflamingo wouldn't move away.
Sometimes his hand would even find Rosinante's back or his waist.
It only happened when Rosinante was half asleep, when neither of them had to acknowledge it.
He missed touching him in other ways.
How undone he looked when it was happening. Not just his face but his whole body, like he couldn't control any of it.
The way his fingers would curl into the sheets first, then into Doflamingo's skin, like he needed something to hold onto or he'd come apart completely.
The sounds he tried to swallow, pressing his face into the pillow or Doflamingo's shoulder like he was embarrassed.
How he looked after, wrecked and unguarded in a way he never was in daylight.
He missed the conversations. Actual conversations that weren't just about Rosalia.
The ones that happened late at night, when Doflamingo said things he wouldn't say in the light.
Rosinante had a way of being quiet that made Doflamingo want to fill it.
He would listen to Doflamingo talk about nothing in particular. Something that had gone wrong, someone who had wasted his time, small things that didn't exactly matter.
Rosinante would always listen like they did.
He thought about the night Rosinante had pressed his hand flat against Doflamingo's chest, then pushed himself upright with considerable effort just to look at him in the eyes.
Are you excited for the baby?
Hopeful. Like he already knew the answer and just wanted to hear it.
Doflamingo didn't remember what he'd replied.
He remembered Rosinante's smile growing. Then him leaning down. Then one thing leading to another, the way it always did.
In the dark, in bed, with Rosinante's hand on his chest, Doflamingo had felt like a person.
Not the King he'd spent sixteen years carving himself into.
A different night. Rosinante quiet in a way that meant something. His eyes elsewhere when he spoke.
Do you think you'll be a good father?
Doflamingo placed his palm on Rosinante's cheek to turn his face, forcing their eyes to meet.
I don't know. He said. I can only promise I'll do my best to take care of both of you.
He did not keep that promise.
He looked at Rosalia on his chest.
Her eyes were fully open now, staring at him.
He held her gaze for a long moment.
Then the shower stopped, the sound of water abruptly cut.
Doflamingo sat up too fast and moved away from the bed.
Rosalia stirred and made another sound of complaint.
He rubbed her back in small circles, automatic now, his body knowing what to do even when his mind was occupied.
He adjusted Rosalia against his shoulder and took a deep breath.
The kind that put everything back where it belonged.
The room was already bright when Rosinante woke. He turned his head and found the cot empty.
He jerked upright, his body registering the hour before his mind did.
Eight. No, past eight, which meant the six o'clock feed had come and gone and Rosalia should be crying but—
Doflamingo was in the chair at the corner desk. Rosalia was asleep against his chest, mouth agape and slightly drooling.
On the table were documents, a cup of coffee, and an empty milk bottle.
Rosinante stared at them. At Doflamingo. At Rosalia entirely at peace.
He had not been woken. He had not heard her cry.
This could only mean one thing.
Doflamingo had come in sometime before six, made the milk, and had been sitting here with documents in one hand and a sleeping baby in the other for what must have been at least two hours in the dark.
"Get dressed," Doflamingo said, glancing at him once before going back to his documents.
They went out through a side gate Rosinante rarely used, and the cold sea wind hit them immediately.
Doflamingo opened his coat and tucked her against his chest, pulling the feathers closed around her.
She fussed at the coldness, lips pulling downwards. Doflamingo's mouth was turned down in precisely the same way.
Rosinante looked at the two of them.
The identical frown, the identical creases of their brows.
He smiled and said nothing.
Rosinante was cold.
His coat was in the closet, hanging where he'd left it almost two months ago.
He couldn't put it on knowing what he'd done to the person who gave it to him.
The wind found the gaps in his shirt and stayed there.
Rosinante didn't shiver and he didn't cross his arms and he kept walking.
He saw it from a distance and didn't understand what he was looking at. Then he did.
A sheltered space, enclosed on three sides, catching the southern light. The ground had been covered in pale sand. Sand that had no business being in Dressrosa, too fine and too white, clearly brought from somewhere else.
Along the edges, flowers in varying shades of pink cascaded over the stone borders, softening the stone with clusters of colour.
In the centre stood a structure of dark carved wood. Low to the ground, rounded at the corners, built with steps leading up to a small platform and a curved slide polished smooth.
It was beautiful.
"It's very pink," he said, admiring the flowers.
Doflamingo looked at the garden, then down at Rosalia, who had pulled a feather loose and was turning it over in both hands with serious concentration.
"She likes pink," he said.
There was a bench along the near wall, stone, angled toward the garden.
They sat. Rosalia was playing with Doflamingo's finger with one hand, the feather still in her other fist.
"She won't be able to use it for a while," Rosinante said.
"I'm aware of that."
They sat in silence.
"I read your letters," Doflamingo said, his eyes staying on Rosalia. "All of them. Two years—you had two years of everything. I ran the numbers on the deals that collapsed."
Doflamingo clenched his jaw, swallowing thickly before speaking.
"Children. Every single time. That's all you ever sent."
Rosinante kept his head lowered and said nothing.
"Ninety percent of what you knew, you kept."
The silence stretched between them.
Rosalia turned the feather over in her fist before offering it to Doflamingo.
Doflamingo accepted the feather from her tiny fingers.
"I can't say I regret what I did." Rosinante whispered, faced turned away. "They were children, Doffy."
Doflamingo looked at his daughter, her cheeks red from the cold. Blonde hair fluttering in the wind.
Slowly, his eyes moved to Rosinante.
Rosinante was still cold when he went back to his room.
The wind from the garden hadn't left his skin. It lingered on his arms and in the space between his shoulder blades.
He placed Rosalia, who fell asleep, in her cot and got under his sheets. Rubbed his arms with his palms, trying to generate some warmth.
It didn't help.
His eyes found Doflamingo's cup on the table. The half-drunk coffee, still there from dawn.
He thought about the past week. The trays of food. The way Doflamingo would walk in, hand Rosinante a plate, and take Rosalia without a word.
Like it was easy.
Like it wasn't eating into his work and his rest and everything else.
Like it was ordinary.
None of this was ordinary.
Rosinante pressed his palms against his eyes.
He wanted to ask what it meant. Wanted to sit Doflamingo down and ask—
Are we okay?
Are we something again?
Do you still love me?
He knew better than to ask.
Doflamingo wouldn't answer. He'd either do something or stop doing something, and Rosinante couldn't handle either.
This was worse than the silence.
The silence had been empty.
This was full. Too full.
Full of things that might have meant something or might have meant nothing at all.
Rosinante couldn't tell the difference between Doflamingo being a father and Doflamingo being something else.
He's just doing this for Rosalia.
He'd been telling himself that for weeks.
Repeating it every time Doflamingo walked in, every time he stayed, and every time he left.
Chanting it like it could drown out the hope before it even formed.
This was what they were now. Two people raising a child together. Close enough to touch and never touching.
That would be enough for me.
The lie settled in his chest coldly, and he couldn't tell if it was that or the wind still clinging to his skin.
He looked at the cup.
He got up, took it to the kitchen, and washed it.
Leaving it in his room would mean more thinking. More hoping.
He couldn't do that anymore.
One evening, Doflamingo was standing at the window with Rosalia when a servant came in with a wrapped package.
The tag read: Lady Rosalia.
Rosinante took it and unwrapped it.
A miniature pink feather coat, the exact proportions of Doflamingo's scaled down to fit someone very small.
He smiled at it. Tiny, perfect, every detail right.
Then he held it up and the coat shifted and the inner lining flashed dark purple.
Dark purple feathers, almost black. Soft and dense, the same as his own.
He thought about his own coat. Given to him days after he arrived in the palace.
We're brothers, Doflamingo had said. It should show. Without ceremony, without preamble.
His eyes started to fill.
"You're crying over a coat—" Doflamingo was looking at him from across the room.
The chair scraped back and fast footsteps crossed the room.
Rosinante pressed his face into Doflamingo's neck.
Doflamingo felt Rosinante's tears sliding down his own skin and went still.
"Rosinante, it's just a coat." He shifted Rosalia to one side, making room.
Rosinante cried harder.
"It's reversible," Doflamingo said.