#tos writes

It hits like a punch to the solar plexus, heart-stopping, the way reminders of Bobby always do. Buck makes himself breathe slow and even, and then the implications of the offer are a follow-up punch to the gut. He gasps, helpless. “Wha—Chim, he died for y—” Chimney winces, and Buck wants to smack himself. Stupid, thoughtless—like he needs that reminder! “W-what I mean is, I can’t ask you to do that for me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m asking if you want me to anyway.” Chim shrugs, a sad little smile on his face. “Not to brag, but I’ve lost a lot of loved ones in my time, Buck. Plenty of people I could memorialize in a name.” He leans into Maddie’s side, looking fondly at her. “Then again, Jee-Yun’s already named for my mom. Maybe it’s time we honor someone Maddie lost.”

It takes Buck a second. Daniel. Oh, jeez.

For a moment, he thinks about it.

But just for a moment.

Buck shakes his head. “Mom and Dad—”

“—can deal with it,” Maddie insists.

Buck smiles—he’d love to see her say that to their faces—but doubles down. “Do you really want to risk it, though? Another kid they can’t help but treat differently?” He sure doesn’t want to have to see that. Even though they’d be able to tell his nephew why Grandma wants to run away and cry when she says his name, he knows from experience how little difference having an explanation makes.

Maddie winces, and he knows she gets it.

“No,” Buck says, firmer now, “if you guys want to name your kid after Bobby, you should do it. You have my blessing, or whatever.”

The tension drops out of the room so abruptly Buck feels stupid for failing to notice it sooner. Maddie smiles, relieved, and Chimney says a solemn, quiet word of thanks, and he feels like such a heel for considering any other answer for even a second.

“Besides,” Buck jokes, fiddling with a biscuit, “it’s not like I even—I-I mean, who knows if I’ll… if I’ll ever.” He stops, the unfairness of it all strangling his voice, making his heart stall out in his chest.

Because even if he does, someday. Whoever, however, it doesn’t matter—a name is the most substantial thing he can give them of Bobby. And that’s nothing, it’s just a word, a pair of sounds. Two syllables. Compared to everything he should be able to give—!

Tommy gently extracting the crushed biscuit from Buck’s hand snaps him back to reality. “Hey,” he says, just as gently, wrapping his hands around Buck’s.

“Hey. Sorry about—” Buck cuts himself off at the familiar look this gets him. He sighs. “I have nothing to apologize for, I know.”

“Good,” Tommy says. He glances between Maddie and Chimney, stricken, and Buck, surprised by his grief yet again. “Not that anyone asked, but my two cents? I don’t see why anyone needs to declare dibs here.” He squeezes Buck’s hand, a move Buck has come to recognize as a sign of an incoming anecdote that means more to Tommy than he’ll let on.

Buck gives Tommy his full attention.

Tommy averts his eyes.

“Like, my cousin’s wife? Her family is huge, but you can tell which is the firstborn kid in each household because they all have basically the same name. Marianne, Marion, Marvin (middle name Andrew), Marybeth (middle name Ann)… all after their shared grandma, who died twenty years before any of them were born.” Tommy shrugs. “Sure, it gets a little confusing when they’re all in the same place and you’re trying to get one’s attention, but… I don’t know, I think it’s kind of beautiful? That woman was so loved, you can see her impact on a whole generation.”

He meets Buck’s eyes at last, and it’s almost unbearable how earnest Tommy looks as he asks, “Why shouldn’t Bobby get as many namesakes as he has people who love him?”

Buck blinks. Looks at Maddie and Chimney, who barely share half a glance before they’re nodding at him.

Buck smiles, kisses Tommy, wipes tears from the corners of both their eyes with his free hand, and turns back to Maddie and Chimney. “So what were you thinking, Robert Daniel?”

Maddie shakes her head. “I thought about it, but I don’t want Jee-Yun feeling like the odd one out. So I went looking, and there are a couple Korean names that start with Bo…”

As she goes on, listing names and their pros and cons, her husband watching with hearts in his eyes, Buck leans closer to Tommy. “So what name are you considering, then?” he murmurs. “You have something already picked out that goes nicely with Robert?”

Buck doesn’t take his eyes off Maddie, doesn’t let go of either of Tommy’s hands. They’re taking this seriously, now, or at least that’s what they said. If Tommy meant it, if he means it, he can answer this question without flinching.

All the same, Buck’s readied himself for a neutral-at-best reaction.

He’s entirely unprepared for Tommy to immediately respond, “Nah. It’s kinda old-fashioned, but I’ve always liked the name Roberta.” And he hums, a little off-key, the first line of a song that Buck’s heard a dozen times or more, in the background of quiet, comfortable dinners at Tommy’s place.

There came a day, hanging out with Shanks and his Red-Blue Pirates, when Luffy changed some lives forever, though it took him another ten years to realize what exactly he’d done.  That was the day their secondary ship, the Blue Moon, arrived at Windmill Village for the first time.

Shanks was at Party’s Bar along with a couple of his higher ranked officers, drinking and chatting with Makino, when the man who’d been on watch dashed in with a telescope in hand.  Panting breathlessly, he held it out to Shanks, who took it outside and peered through it for a moment before letting out a happy cry. Ducking back in the doorway he said, “Makino, prepare yourself!  We’re drinking your stores dry tonight!”

Beckman and Yasopp exchanged an amused look.  Lucky Roux whooped.

Makino smiled behind her hand, like that way the pirates wouldn’t be able to see it.  “What’s the occasion?”

“The rest of my crew has returned to me!” Shanks called over his shoulder, running out of the bar with another laughing shout of joy.  Luffy stared after him in shock; he’d never seen Shanks so happy.  Goofy, yes, having fun, all the time, but not, he realized now, really happy.  Luffy hadn’t known Shanks was feeling even a little bit sad until it all went away.  He was pretty good at hiding his true thoughts, for a grown-up.

“‘The rest of my crew,’ right,” Yasopp said with a chuckle.

“Just because there’s one person he’s happier to see than the rest doesn’t mean he isn’t happy to see everyone,” Lucky Roux said with a wide, wide grin that made Luffy think he maybe didn’t really mean what he was saying.

But that was fine; the idea of Shanks having one person he was extra excited to see interested Luffy.  And he had a feeling he knew who it was, too: Shanks’ first mate!

For weeks, Luffy was sure Benn Beckman was the first mate, because he was always the person Shanks’ guys looked to if Shanks wasn’t around, and who would that be but the first mate?  But the first time Luffy tried to be polite (a fairly foreign concept to Luffy, but it did make some people act nicer) by calling him Mr. First Mate, Beckman leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“I’m not the first mate, Luffy,” he explained, “I’m the second mate.  When Shanks and our first mate aren’t around, I’m in charge.”

“Oh, I see, so that’s the order it goes.”  Luffy nodded thoughtfully.  He squinted up at Beckman.  “Then who’s the first mate?”

“Ah, you haven’t met him yet,” Beckman said, scratching the side of his neck.  “He’s been off on a treasure hunt for a while.”

“Treasure!”  Now that was a pirate thing!  Luffy’s eyes shone at the thought.  “Why didn’t the rest of you go with him?  Don’t you care about treasure?”

Beckman laughed.  “No one cares about treasure the way our first mate does, Luffy,” he said.  “He gets so focused on one map, one story of hidden, lost gold, his treasure hunts can last for months.”

“Months?!”

“The longest so far was six.  Even Shanks can’t keep up with him that long, so they have an arrangement.  When our first mate gets the urge to hunt for treasure non-stop, he and a few crew members take one of our smaller boats, and Shanks and the rest of us hole up on a nice little island for a time, like this one.  When he’s found it, or given up—though he never gives up unless the Navy gets on his tail—he knows where to find us, and the rest of us get to relax, train, make some shorter trips in this part of the sea… whatever we want to do.”

“Huh.”  Luffy considered this arrangement.  “But isn’t he really the captain of that other boat, then?  If he’s never around, and you’re always doing first mate things?”

“These urges only come on him once a year or so, he’s around often enough,” Beckman said, taking a pull off his cigarette.  “And anyway, Shanks wouldn’t have anyone else as his first mate.”

Luffy blinked.  “Why not?”

Beckman laughed.  “That’s an excellent question.  You’d have to ask Shanks.”

When asked, Shanks laughed too.  “Did Beck put you up to this?  That guy.”  He shook his head, tsking, ignoring the way Luffy was starting to steam at his question being ignored.  “My first mate’s my first mate because he’s my first mate!  That’s all there is to it.”

Fuming, Luffy shouted, “What kind of answer is that?!”

“The truth,” Shanks said simply.  “The two of us are captain and first mate.  It’s always been that way, it’s always gonna be that way.”

There was something behind his tone of voice Luffy didn’t understand.  “Is it just because he was the first person to join your crew?” he asked skeptically.  “Did you have to promise he would be first mate forever to get him to join?”

“No.”

“Then…”

“Luffy.”  Shanks was looking very serious at this point.  “There are some bonds between pirates that are hard to explain to ordinary people.  The bond between captain and first mate is one of them.  You have to know each other well.  There has to be a lot of trust there.”

“Trust?”

“Yeah.  I trust him to have my back, to guard my weak points in a fight and look out for my interests in an argument.  I trust that if anything ever happens to me, he’ll look out for our ship and our crew. I trust that he believes we’re doing the right thing, that working together is going to get us what we want—and that if that ever changes, he’ll tell me so to my face.” Shanks smiled. “There’s no one I trust more than him.”

Luffy blew out his breath huffily. “Is that all? Trust?”

“It’s the most important thing, Luffy.”

“Hm.”  Luffy didn’t know anybody he felt that way about.  Would he make a bad pirate?

“Hey, what’s that worried face for?”  Luffy explained his dilemma, and scowled when Shanks laughed again.  He wasn’t taking Luffy seriously!  “Oh, kid, don’t worry so much.  Not everyone’s as lucky as me, to find that person before I even started looking!”  Shanks’ laughter trailed off and he sighed, leaning backwards to stare out the open door of Party’s Bar.  “How much longer is he gonna be, though…?”

“Oh?  But I thought you trusted him to find the treasure and take care of the ship and everything?”

“I trust him!  I just also miss him.”

The bonds of pirate friendship ran deep!  Luffy wanted to see it for himself!  With a wave goodbye to Makino, he ran off after Shanks.  New pirates!  He cheered at the thought.  What other kinds of pirates might work for Shanks?  Of the ones Luffy knew, all of them were human men, except for the monkey… maybe a lion?  A fishman?  A bird?!

At the dock next to Shanks’ ship was a small boat with a pointy front Luffy just knew was made for speed.  It proudly bore the Red-Blue Pirates’ flag, though the red and blue swords were swapped around and it didn’t have the three lines across one eye.  Weird.  Pirates—some that Luffy recognized, a few strangers—were carrying wooden boxes off the little boat and up onto Shanks’ bigger one.  Treasure!  Luffy shook his head furiously.  No!  He could stare at the treasure later!  He was looking for Shanks now!

But to his disappointment, Shanks wasn’t doing any happy shouting or cheering with his crew.  He was hugging, the laughing-spinning-clinging kind of hug Luffy only saw when Mrs. Chicken welcomed her husband back from one of his long fishing trips.  Luffy scowled and crossed his arms at the sight.  Here he’d thought Shanks was cool, but one visit from a long-haired jewelry-covered somebody and he got as gooshy as all the villagers did.

“Aw, what’s wrong, kid?” asked Yasopp, stepping up beside Luffy.  “Did they not let you see the treasure?”

Buggy let out a frustrated screech. “Excuse me?!”

“The way you flush when you get mad,” Shanks said, laughing a little at the baffled look on Buggy’s face. “Your whole face gets as red as your nose, it’s like you’re a tomato ripening at super speed.”

“Whose nose is as red and round as a tomato?!!” Buggy snapped.

Shanks blinked. “Yours, I just said so.”

Buggy yelled, a wordless cry, and stormed off, his shoulders trembling. Seemed like Shanks had pushed him pretty far. Hm… to push further, or to let it go? Shanks looked at Buggy’s ears, the only visible part of his face at this angle, a vivid red at the tips, and knew himself well enough to know what he had to do.

He leaned back on his hands again, putting on the casual affect he knew riled Buggy up something fierce. “Something I said?”

Buggy froze mid-step.

“I like tomatoes, you know.”

And before Shanks could blink, Buggy was in his face, hands dug into the collar of his shirt, pulling him close enough to count Buggy’s eyelashes… which were wet.

Oh, no.

“Do you?” Buggy asked, voice trembling, but with barely suppressed tears, not the rage Shanks had been expecting. “Do you like my stupid red tomato nose and my embarrassing red tomato face?? Huh?!”

Oh no. Shanks froze. He was totally screwed. If he told the truth, Buggy would think he was just teasing him more, like an absolute ass. If he lied, it would hurt Buggy’s feelings… more than he already had. And if he tried to defuse the situation, Buggy would think he pitied him, which would be worse than either of the other options by far.

Was there a fourth option? Could he prevent this moment from becoming a complete disaster?

“I…”

“Well?” Buggy spat, leaning in so close their noses touched.

There was one other thing Shanks could do… it might backfire on him, even worse than the others, but there was a small chance things would turn out for the better. All he had to do was tell the truth, and act on it before Buggy could blow up at him about it.

“I…”

Actually, maybe he should reverse those steps. Buggy could be real fast about blowing up at you if he had a mind to.

Decided, Shanks angled his head and leaned in.

Buggy’s lips were chapped and warm… and wet, and a little salty. Not to mention stiff as a board. Maybe this hadn’t been Shanks’ best idea ever. He pulled back, licking his lips reflexively, and opened his eyes to look at Buggy.

He was gaping at Shanks, wide-eyed, dumbstruck.

Shanks rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I do, actually. A lot.”

A strangled little squawk came out of Buggy’s mouth; he let go of Shanks’ shirt to slap his hands over it, and, still staring at Shanks, fled.

Beckman is in an early morning meeting with his captain, another in a long line of meetings with not a smile to be seen—not with so many big names anchored close by, their men cohabitating, waiting for a decision to be made—when a faint cry from on deck has Shanks shooting upright in his chair.  He turns an eye in that direction, his unerring observation haki telling him something that alarms him.

Beckman casts his own senses that way.  It feels like conflict between a couple low-level crewmen, with one gone overboard.  Concerning, but nothing serious enough to warrant Shanks’ personal intervention… but Beckman hasn’t been first mate of the Red-Haired Pirates this long for no reason.  When Shanks runs out of the room, calling over his shoulder, “Get Yasopp and a life preserver—actually, make it two—port side, as fast as you can,” Beckman’s already on his feet, doubting that they’ll make it in time.

Luckily Yasopp is quick to find—he prefers to be at the highest point of the ship when they have strangers on board, keeping an eagle eye on enemies and friends alike, and by his frown he has more of an idea of what's happened than Beckman.  Luckily Beckman just finished orienting new crew on the places where they store safety supplies, so the life preservers aren't blocked off and hidden by the barrels of supplies they brought on the day before last.  Luckily Shanks left a trail of his discarded cape and sandals that's easy to follow, easier still when it ends in a pair of foam-mouthed crewmen collapsed against a wall.

Beckman hears the quiet plup of a diver with excellent form entering the waters below without a hint of a splash, and leans over the railing to see a faint pale sliver of a figure swimming down, down, and away…

Yasopp measures the wind, hefts each life preserver consideringly, and nods.  “When he surfaces, I'll be ready,” he says.  “You go ahead, get those two out of sight.”

Beckman nods.  Whatever these men did, it riled Shanks up enough to use conqueror’s haki on his own crew.  It's worth a private interrogation, if nothing else.  Without saying a word, he hefts one over either shoulder and strolls back across the deck.  And if any of their guests notice, and pass word along to their home ships… that’s one less thing for Beckman to deal with.

“Well?” Shanks asks when Beckman returns to the main deck, not quite half an hour later.  He's ruffling a towel through his hair, which is going to dry in awful salt spikes later, but he appears, essentially, fine.  You'd never guess by looking at him that he'd gone in the water for anything more than a passing fancy.

His rescuee, on the other hand, is a miserable, bruised, half-drowned rat of a man.  His disembodied hands wring seawater out of his clothes and back into the ocean as he shivers under three oversized towels, but the glare on Buggy the Star Clown’s face would almost make you think Shanks had been the one to push him overboard.

“Spies for Blackbeard,” Beckman says.  Shanks frowns.  Disappointed, but unsurprised.  “Apparently Buggy caught them at it and attempted to blackmail them rather than turn them in.”  Buggy scoffs under his breath.  “They knocked him out and tossed him over the side of the ship, intending to claim he'd made an escape by—”

“I know what they intended,” Shanks says.  His chipper demeanor is long gone.  “Buggy, how did you spot them?”

Buggy scoffs again—or maybe coughs, his voice is so hoarse with saltwater that it's hard to tell.  “I didn't!  Those idiots assumed I was one of them, and came around to brag about how much progress they'd made in getting close to you.”  He coughed again, turning to hack a wad of phlegm overboard.  “The disrespect!  As if the Genius Jester Buggy would ever deign to work for that overgrown weasel.”

Shanks stays quiet; on a hunch, Beckman follows his lead.

“And of course the spies decided that I had intentionally tricked them into revealing themselves,” Buggy continues to rant, “and that I must have done so to blackmail them into handing over Blackbeard’s secrets, which outraged and offended them so much that before I could split myself they were beating on me until I blacked out.”  He rubs at a bruise-dark temple gingerly, then says, “I woke up just as they were hefting me overboard.”

A faint hint of a smile curls the corner of Shanks’ mouth.  “Things like this really do just happen to you, don't they?”

Gesturing expansively, Buggy says, “They really do!  People assume all sorts of shit about me, and whether I want to go along with it or not they don't let me get a word in edgewise, and then before you know it I'm a Warlord! or an Emperor! with no actual power to back up my position!”  Giving Shanks a look somewhere between misery and murder, he mutters, “You have no idea what it's like.”

“Mm, I don't know… people having a lot of undeserved expectations sounds pretty familiar to me.”  Shanks moves to fidget with the brim of a hat that he no longer owns.

“Oh come on,” Buggy scoffs.

“I mean it!  I was—Buggy, I was a child when the captain gave me that hat.  I wasn’t an exceptional pirate, or a prodigious fighter, or anything like that.  He didn’t give it to me to declare me his heir, he gave it to me because I was a kid on his ship, who thought his hat looked cool, and asked if I could wear it.”  A wry smile on his face, Shanks says, “The difference between me and you is I learned how to work around expectations, instead of being dragged in their wake.”

“There are way more differences between us than just that,” Buggy mutters.  “Like number of functioning arms.  Or braincells.”

“Oh, yeah,” Shanks says, faux-thoughtfully.  Beckman quietly braces himself.  Buggy bristles; he clearly recognizes that tone too.  “Underwater, I guess I do have more of those than you.”

“Barely!”  Buggy snaps.  Beckman takes the opportunity to grab the clothing Buggy had started to neglect during this conversation and pass it along to a crewman already headed for to the laundry.  He has a feeling Buggy’s charming personality won’t become more bearable if he drops his only outfit overboard while he’s distracted.  “And who the hell asked you to anyway?!  You’ve got a ship full of people who obey your orders, supposedly, why didn’t one of them, with the proper number of arms for rescue swimming, pull me out?!”

Shanks blinks.  “What do you mean, ‘who the hell asked me to?’  You asked me to.”

Buggy blinks.  Then blushes.

Yes, Beckman realizes, thinking back, that cry that first drew Shanks’ attention had sounded a bit like his name.

“I—that was—“ Buggy visibly fails to think of another word he could have possibly said in that moment.  He snatches away Shanks’ towel to bury his head under it and sigh, “An old reflex.”

Shanks crouches down, taking the towel back and running it over Buggy’s hair with more care than he’d given his own.  “After all this time, you still trust me to keep you from drowning.”  He waits for Buggy to look at him before saying, “How could I do anything less than honor that trust?”

Beckman feels, far from the first time, like he's interrupting something here.  The last time he’d asked, Shanks had just laughed.  Which was, he’d thought at the time, a very roundabout but unambiguous answer to the question.  Looking at Buggy’s face now, Beckman thinks he understands why.  Whatever it is he’s interrupting here, Buggy is aware of it too, and he’s terrified of it.