Work Text:
Crocodile had been having a quiet morning before Buggy’s wretched followers started running around in the offices like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming louder than usual. At first, he’d tried to ignore it. He’d tried to take a page out of Mihawk’s book: if it’s not your mess, don’t clean it up.
However, eventually he reached the end of his patience. He hooked one of the meaner-looking ones, a washed up pirate that he vaguely remembers being from Impel Down’s Level Three, by the back of his shirt and asked him, politely, what the fuck was going on.
“The boss,” the pirate had said, swallowing roughly, “the boss is-is sick.”
Crocodile raised an eyebrow and raised the pirate a little higher, feeling satisfied at the squeak the man let out. “Buggy’s sick? With what, a common cold?” Crocodile sneered.
That clown bastard was always so dramatic. It served him well when he was in front of a crowd, but it chafed at Crocodile when he had to deal with Buggy in person. Why couldn’t he just talk to him? Did everything have to be a whole production?
Crocodile liked his tricks and games, but at least he was straightforward about it. Buggy acted like it was all natural, like it was all he was.
“No, no. You don’t understand. The boss is very ill.”
Crocodile sighed. “Guess I better see what’s going on with that fucker.” He dropped the pirate into a heap of limbs on the floor before heading to Buggy’s rooms as the pirate scrambled to tell his accomplices what happened.
He was going to sort out this chaos no matter what. Buggy probably wasn’t that sick, and even if he was, Crocodile would just wrench him out of bed regardless. Buggy wasn’t allowed to get sick, not when he was the star of their whole operation. They were meeting with a potential investor for dinner, and Crocodile wanted Buggy there.
Crocodile wasn’t concerned about the man himself. He wasn’t that kind of person. He hadn’t been for years.
Crocodile didn’t bother to knock on Buggy’s door before opening it. If Buggy really cared about people going into his room without permission, he should’ve gotten a lock.
Buggy’s room was, predictably, cluttered. Crocodile stepped around multiple piles of what seemed to be clown outfits and ingredients for new Buggy Balls, mixed together almost interchangeably. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the sight, then at the smell. How much would it take for Buggy to pick up after himself?
The (utterly gross) man himself was laying in the equally messy bed in the center of the room. The silk sheets were twisted around him as he reached for a tissue. Crocodile tapped his hook on Buggy’s bedside table.
Buggy looked up at him, mouth hanging open. “Crocodile! What are you doing here?” He sat up, futzing with his hair, trying and failing to make it look more presentable. He also wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Crocodile’s gaze drifting down was purely to check Buggy’s fitness. It was necessary for those in their line of work. He was a professional, after all.
“Your delusional followers said you were sick.” Although laden with derision, his words came out softer than Crocodile expected.
“Oh, were you concerned about little old me?” Buggy’s face stretched into a mocking smile. It was off putting without his signature, stupid makeup. Crocodile suddenly desperately wished for there to be more distance between them. They were too close. This whole endeavor was taking them too close to something.
“You wish.”
“Bold of you to assume that, Crocodile,” Buggy said. He sounded tired, his voice was hoarse. Buggy rubbed his hand across his forehead, wiping away beading sweat. “Why are you here?”
Crocodile scrambled for something to say that would make sense. “You need to be presentable tonight. Competence is obviously too much to expect, but you need to look it,” Crocodile said. He felt like he was lying. He usually was, but. “You’re sick.”
“Bingo! Right on, Croc.” Buggy leaned forward. “Why the fuck does that matter to you?”
It shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t. Crocodile could do this meeting without Buggy. And if the potential client insisted, Crocodile was more than capable of improvising on the fly if Buggy fucked up this evening, and both of them knew it. Crocodile was here because of something else, and both of them knew it.
Crocodile took a drag of his cigar. Breathed out the smoke. “Are you in pain?”
“What? I mean, yes, I am,” Buggy said, forehead scrunching in confusion.
“You know Mihawk has medicine for that,” Crocodile said, stepping forward. “Whenever I steal from his medicine cabinet he doesn’t care.”
“Crocodile.”
“Buggy.”
Buggy looked at Crocodile, eyebrows raised. Crocodile glanced down at the ground, cursing internally. “Let me take care of you,” he said.
Buggy flushed. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked, his drama fading into vulnerability.
“I don’t fucking know,” said Crocodile. “I just…want to.”
“Really.” Buggy looked at him through narrowed eyes. Then, after giving Crocodile a slight nod, he said, “Then brush my hair.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Doing it myself makes me nauseous,” Buggy said,
Crocodile nodded, moving towards Buggy. Halfway there, he stopped, one foot hovering over an open space on the floor closer to Buggy’s bed. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had no plan, no clear goal. A rush of anxiety flooded him even as anticipation thrummed through his veins.
Buggy watched him, doubt flickering across his face in the furrows of his brow and uncertain tilt of his mouth. Seeing him, Crocodile realized that he cared about what Buggy thought of him. He cared about not messing this, whatever it was, up. “Where’s your hairbrush?” he asked in a soft voice, not unlike the one that he used to coax out stray cats in his hometown.
“On the cabinet over there,” Buggy replied, pointing to a tall wardrobe. Crocodile retrieved the brush and stepped over to Buggy’s bed, pausing before he reached it. Waiting for Buggy to tell him where he wanted him.
“You can sit,” Buggy said, amusement coloring his words. Crocodile huffed, and sat down next to Buggy, taking his shoes off as well. Not that he thought Buggy would care, but because he wanted to do this right.
“I haven’t done this in a while,” Crocodile admitted, fixing Buggy’s part as gently as he could manage. The strands of blue hair looked impossibly delicate held away by his hook.
“Hah? When have you done this?” Buggy asked.
Crocodile chuckled as he started brushing. “I had a younger sister. It was a long time ago.” Before he was a pirate.
“Oh. I never really had a family, until.” Until Roger let him and Shanks stowaway on his ship, Buggy didn’t say. Despite using Shanks as a claim to fame, Buggy rarely talked about him by name unless he saw something to gain from it. Crocodile didn’t know what happened between them. He didn’t much care.
Why would he care when Buggy was here, letting Crocodile touch him with the same hand and hook that had gotten Crocodile a 1,965,000,000 berry bounty? Crocodile didn’t like to share his past. He would never want it from anyone else.
“Well, biological families are nothing to miss,” Crocodile said. He hadn’t thought of his in years. Didn’t even know if they were dead or alive. He wondered if they knew how he ended up. If they connected the dots between their discontented daughter and the pirate that had almost conquered a kingdom.
Buggy laughed. The movement caused the brush to snag a rat’s nest, and he hissed. “Sorry,” Crocodile whispered.
“Shocking that it didn’t happen before,” Buggy said. “You’re pretty good at this, if you’re rusty.”
“Still.”
“Take the compliment,” Buggy said, with a small smile that Crocodile had never seen before. “I’ve never known you to refuse one.”
“Because I deserve them, asshole clown,” Crocodile said. He hadn’t known, before, how much skin one touched while brushing someone’s hair. Every time his hand brushed Buggy’s skin, he almost flinched. It was embarrassing.
After what seemed like ages, Crocodile finished brushing Buggy’s hair. He looked different, with his hair down and face bare. More vulnerable. It made Crocodile want to touch him more, and made him terrified of touching him more.
“There’s a meeting with a possible investor this evening,” Crocodile said.
Buggy barked out a laugh. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, I’ll be there. I might even be on my best behavior.”
Crocodile resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He was a professional, not a child. Besides, Buggy wouldn’t even be able to see it. “If you say so.”
“But,” Buggy said, “if you want to help me more…”
“What do you want me to do?”
“If you want to, you could help me with my makeup. For the meeting.”
Crocodile replied, “How do you want to do it?”
“Later, idiot! I’d mess it up if I put it on now,” Buggy said. He seemed more like his usual self now that he looked more like his usual self, Crocodile noted with equal amounts of gratification and dread.
“Alright. I’ll be back, then,” Crocodile said, brushing Buggy’s shoulders as he rose from his spot on Buggy’s bed.
“You’d better be.”
In the evening, Crocodile would come back to Buggy’s room. He would step carefully around Buggy’s piles of messiness on the floor, and he would do as Buggy told him. After painstakingly etching crossbones onto Buggy’s cheekbones, he’d hold Buggy’s face in his hands. He’d resist the urge to mess up his careful work and kiss him.
Instead, they would go to the meeting. They would charm the potential investor. They would leave together, plenty of time left in the evening for whatever they wanted.