Mornings were probably the scariest time of the day for the next couple of days for the bandits. People were unpredictable in the morning. Who knew what one would do while still half-asleep and without coffee. Dadan was particularly nasty in the mornings on normal days and with the baby and its constant tantrums - which always seemed to happen at night - the bandits were walking on eggshells. They weren't sure who they should stay away from more, Dadan or Rouge.
They had quickly found out that Roger was an all around easy guy to be around despite his reputation. The first morning at the house he had walked into the kitchen in just his underwear and started going through the cabinets for food as if he had always lived there - and emptied them as if he'd always lived there. They were still frightened of him, but when weighing the scale of who was scariest between the parents in the morning, they had to say Rouge. While the stories about Roger were many and plentiful, they had yet to see the man angry or do anything that was said in the those stories. Rouge, on the other hand, the bandit's had witnessed throw a man through a freaking wall; And Roger brought in more food than they had ever had in the house, so they didn't really have anything bad to go on besides the rumors.
But in all honesty, the bandits thought that they'd seen the worst of morning people only to realize they'd seen nothing until they'd seen Rouge. She was the one who spent most of her nights trying to calm down Ace during his nightly tantrums because everytime Roger tried he just cried more, robbing her of most of her sleep.
There were no words to explain the crankiness of the new mother when she came into the kitchen, eyes red, purple bags under her eyes, hair in a tussle and the frown of frowns on her face.
"Good morning, gorgeous," Roger would greet her every morning with a kiss to her cheek.
She sent him a glare and said, "Don't mock me…" before grabbing a cup of coffee, dropped three sugar cubes in it, stirred and emptied the whole thing in one sweep.
"Long night?" Dogra asked carefully, he had a cup of coffee himself since he hadn't gotten much sleep either.
Rouge sat down at the table and rested her head in her hand, a refilled cup of coffee in her hand. "He wouldn't stop screaming… and that idiot sleeps like a brick and Ace won't let him help, and he won't sleep…" she muttered. "How did you not hear it?"
Some of the bandits looked sheepish. "They camped out in the bath house."
"Lucky you…" Rouge said, eyes dropping heavily. Then her head suddenly hit the table and the cup crashed to the floor, spilling hot coffee all over the floor.
It took less than a second for the room to explode.
"HOLY SHIT!"
"What the hell!"
"Is she dead?!"
"What do we do?!"
"Why aren't you freaking out? Your wife just died!"
Roger laughed at their remarks. So that was how people reacted when that happened. He had always been the one dropping and had never actually seen the way people reacted to it. He had seen Rouge drop before, but then there hadn't been anyone around that didn't know already about her narcolepsy. Not to mention that Rouge had always been meticulous about her schedule to keep her narcoleptic fits in check. The stress of being a mother had thrown that schedule out of order.
"She's just asleep," Roger said, carefully picking Rouge up in his arms.
"What…?"
A loud snore echoed through the kitchen and they all stared at Rouge. At first they all just stood there, confused as if they couldn't quite process what was happening. Then they all exclaimed at the same time, "SHE'S ASLEEP?!"
Roger snickered as he re-adjusted his hold on Rouge before he walked her back up to their bedroom. He placed her back onto the mattresses and wrapped her up in the blankets. She immediately grabbed the pillow and hugged it to her chest.
She looked exhausted.
It had been a rough journey for both of them, but Rouge had suffered more, especially since there had never actually been any plans to leave Baterilla after Ace was born. Roger was used to sailing and having a moving home, while Rouge wasn't. She had always had a steady homestead all her life and had never needed to run from the law. Quite the opposite of Roger who reveled in it.
He knew that she had chosen this life of her own free will. She had even hit him over the head when he had apologized for causing her so much trouble, telling him that she had only herself to blame and that she didn't regret any of it. But that didn't mean that it didn't take a toll on someone who wasn't used to it.
He gently caressed her cheek. She was very brave, being willing to leave everything and everyone behind for him.
Roger walked over to the makeshift crib, seeing Ace wide awake, thumb in his mouth and holding onto his toes. He was rocking back and forth on top of the wool. When he saw Roger he let out a loud noise that sounded a little like a laugh and a little like absolute nonsense while flailed his arms at Roger as said father picked him up.
"How about we let mommy sleep in today," Roger said, looking over to the sleeping Rouge. Ace only gurgled as a reply.
Rouge usually fed him when he woke up so, "Let's get you some food."
There were more than one pair of confused eyes as they all stared at the small carton. Roger pursed his lips as he read the instructions.
He had never fed Ace before, since the babe was still very young and Rouge still breastfeed him. He had been given instructions on what to do if she wasn't there to feed Ace herself, but Roger had never needed to do it. Plus, Rouge had been very specific on their journey that the carton was only to be used in special occasions - like now - and that Ace was too young to eat anything solid. Now seemed to be a good time, since she was asleep upstairs.
A few of the bandits had gotten curios when Roger came into the kitchen holding Ace and a blue box that looked sort of like cereal. After the man had stared at the back of it for a good couple of minutes, some of them had decided to look over his shoulder and then gotten engrossed in the process as well. For all that they knew it looked like rocket science.
They had gotten past the step about boiling water, which was just about done. It was the next part that was confusing them.
"Hmm… Like this?" Roger asked no one in particular as he filled the boiled water into the baby bottle. The steam rose high in the air.
"Then you add the powder, right?" one of the bandits asked, pointing at the bottle.
"Yes, but only three scoops," Magra said as he scanned through the instructions. "Then you shake it..."
"Shake it?" Roger asked and started shaking the bottle.
"Put in the powder first!"
"Oh, and then shake it?"
"Until it's evenly mixed."
"How do you know when it's evenly mixed?"
Then, as he started to shake it, the cap on the bottle came off and the contents scattered all across the walls and the people. Ace, being currently held in Dogra's arms, started whining and the entire room stared at the baby in anxious silence. They swallowed and then Ace started crying.
"You're supposed to screw the cap on!"
"Ops," Roger said, scratching the back of his neck.
Dogra looked down at the baby and then around the room - for someone so small he had a good pair of lungs on him. The bandits all turned to look at Roger who was still standing there, covered in baby formula and the empty bottle still in hand.
"You're the dad, do something!" a bandit exclaimed, grabbing the crying baby and replacing the bottle with baby Ace.
"Shh, Ace, you're going to wake mommy," Roger said, rocking him back and forth.
When Dadan came into the kitchen, tired, but with at least a few hours of sleep and saw the complete chaos she couldn't help but blink. The baby was screaming, everyone and everything was covered in formula and Rouge was nowhere to be found.
"The hell is going on?" she asked.
"We're feeding the baby," one of the bandits said.
"Trying to feed the baby," Dogra corrected.
"How do you try to feed a baby? Where's Rouge?" Dadan asked, looking around for the blonde.
"She's sleeping," Roger said, having gone from rocking Ace to rocking his entire body back and forth. It seemed to have worked since Ace had gone from screaming to tugging on Roger's mustache. He still looked incredibly displeased, though.
"Have you never fed a baby before?" Dadan asked.
"Rouge usually takes care of the feeding."
Dadan stared at the new father. What had she expected. A vein pulsed on her forehead as her already short temper was cut even shorter. Her brain had enough sanity left to remind her of the dangers to her life, but she lacked the necessary coffee to deal right now.
"Give me that!" she said, grabbing the carton. She quickly scanned the instructions. It was simple enough. What had there been that was so hard to understand? "Do you have a baby bottle?"
Roger looked around before grabbing the small bottle Rouge had told him to use when feeding Ace formula milk. Dadan grabbed it and started preparing the formula. It took about thirty minutes before Dadan stood with the powder in the water and looking around for the cap.
"Where's the cap?" she asked.
"Here," one of the bandits said, holding it out to her.
She took it and screwed it on before the started shaking the bottle until she deemed it good enough. Then she handed it over to Roger.
"Do you even know how to use that thing?" Dadan asked as Roger grabbed the bottle.
"Can't be that hard," Roger said, holding the bottle in front of Ace's mouth. He grabbed the bottle with his small hands and quickly started sucking.
It was quite the surreal scene. The Pirate King feeding a baby. Never had Dadan believed she would see something so incredibly unbelievable in her entire life. But here he was, standing in her kitchen feeding his kid.
When Ace released the bottle, Roger put him on his shoulder. At least he knew he needed to burp the kid. He patted Ace's back and the boy let out a small burp.
"I think he puked on you," one of the bandits said, not being able to hide a smile.
Roger looked over his shoulder, seeing a trail of puke down the back of his shirt.
After throwing the shirt in the hamper, Roger had gone to sitting outside with baby Ace. It was perfect weather, sunny and an almost clear sky. The air was humid but smelled strongly of wood and earth.
Some of the bandits that had been brave enough after the baby feeding incident had followed him outside, hiding in the doorway to spy on him. They had talked among themselves and decided that Roger wasn't as bad as they had thought. Incredibly strong and very much an idiot but he hadn't done anything worth being terrified over; besides, wasn't it better to be on his good side than his bad? Most of them hid or stayed away from him, sending glares in anger or disgust at him - not that he seemed to notice or care - but that didn't stop the curiosity of some of them.
It hadn't taken them long to slowly inch closer and closer, listening with interest to the stories the man was telling. He was doing grand gestures with his hands and made faces of excitement at the right parts to make the bandits sit on edge, exaggerated everything incredibly.
He had glanced at them halfway through one of his stories and had smiled at them, waving for them to come closer. Then he had continued on with his story, sounding more excited as he talked.
"...And, you won't believe it, but then she slapped me! Right across the face, as if I'd done something wrong - and Rayleigh was just laughing, that meanie," Roger said, waving a hand in the air. Ace followed the hand with his eyes and reached for it with his small chubby hands. Roger smiled and let him grab onto his finger.
"So Rayleigh demanded I go apologize - I didn't even know what I'd done to make her so angry. She explained it to me later - which meant I had to find her first. It wasn't easy I tell you. No one wanted to help me and sent me on a wild goose chase! It was really rude." He pouted - something no one on the planet who knew of his name believed him even capable of.
It was almost adorable - if anyone had ever used those words and Roger in the same sentence before - how he was telling stories to his son as if the kid actually understood what he was saying. If you'd never heard of him, you might have thought he was just your average dad.
"Did you find her?" one of the bandits asked, inching closer to the pirate king.
"Of course he found her, otherwise they wouldn't be here," another said, rolling his eyes.
"I did, but it took a while. She didn't live in the city with the rest of the people but outside by some cliff," Roger said. Ace gurgled and laughed.
"And?"
"What did she do?"
"She hit me with a frying pan," Roger grinned, beaming as if it was an achievement.
The bandits looked at each other and back at the king. "With her frying pan?"
Roger nodded.
"But how did you end up out here then, with that… uh, with… a baby?"
"She warmed up to me eventually," Roger said, tickling Ace's stomach causing a string of giggles.
"How do you go from hitting someone with a frying pan to having a kid with them?"
Ace turned his eyes towards the bandits, looking at them confused for a moment before he laughed. He reached out his hands towards them and smiled, wiggling in Roger's grip as if he was trying to inch closer to the bandits.
"W-what is he doing?"
"I think he wants you to carry him," one of the bandits said.
The bandit stared at Ace as if he was an alien as Roger held the babe out for him to take. He looked around at his friends who shrugged and then at Roger.
"Here, uh…" Roger frowned and leaned his head to the side. "Who are you again?"
"Uhm…"
The bandits looked at each and swallowed. One of them scratched his neck and laughed nervously.
"I'm Henry," he said, pointing at himself. "This is Folliard," he pointed at the strong built man, who Ace was currently reaching for, who waved carefully. "And that is Bowdre." Said bandit, a pretty regular man with no outstanding features, nodded.
"Nice to meet you," Roger smiled.
Folliard carefully reached out his arms. "You… You sure it's safe?"
"What are you talking about? Of course it's safe."
"Okay…" Folliard said and took Ace.
He was heavier than the bandit had expected and moved around a lot. "How do I…?" he asked as he tried to position Ace the way Roger had been holding him.
"I think you need to hold your hand like this, on the back, you know," Henry said, pointing to Ace's back. Folliard repositioned his grip, making it much easier to handle the kicking legs.
"He's heavier than I thought," Folliard said.
He had never held a baby before, had never expected to hold a baby either. But it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. While yes, Ace was heavier than he'd expected, especially for someone his size, and he was moving around a lot with his wiggling and kicking, but he was also incredibly cute as he looked up at him with those darkening eyes.
Speaking of his eyes, now that he was so close to him, Folliard noticed that Ace's eyes were different shades of brown. One was dark brown, almost black while the other was much lighter with some small specs of blue if he looked closely.
"His eyes are weird," Bowdre said, and froze. He chuckled nervously and waved his hands around frantically as he hurried to say, "I mean they're a weird color, you know… Two different ones, I mean…!"
"Yeah, they used to be blue," Roger said, crossing his arms.
The three bandits looked at the baby in confusion. "How did they turn brown?"
"Rouge said they do that," Roger said with a shrug. He seemed to be just as confused as they were.
The bandits looked down at the baby. Were they supposed to do that?
Folliard repositioned his hands carefully to not disturb the baby in his arms. It was weird to hold such a small human in his arms. There were so many more things you had to think about than he had thought. Hold the head, too young to hold it up himself, support his back so he's comfortable, careful he likes to grab with his hands, he also kicks, watch out for that!
But it was going well. He had managed to avoid a kick to the chin and while it was a little nasty to feel Ace's gums on his finger as the little guy chewed on them it was also really adorable. The slobber he could do without, though.
"He's so tiny," Henry said as he looked down at Ace. "Is he supposed to be that tiny?"
Roger shrugged. "Apparently he was born earlier than he was supposed to, but the nurse said he was healthy."
"Hm…"
"Are there… More stories?" Bowdre asked.
"Of course!" Roger said. He hummed for a moment and then lit up, there might as well have been a light bulb above his head. "Oh, the first time I met Newgate! I'm sure it gave Rayleigh grey hair," he laughed. "Now, it was in paradise-"
"Paradise?"
"That's what they call the first half of the Grand Line in the New World - second half of the Grand Line," Roger explained.
The bandits nodded.
"Anyway, it was in paradise at this bar…"
The mess that used to be the kitchen was left to the bandits to clean up, which earned Dadan a lot of complaints and whining. They had done it, of course, but had grumbled that the devil should do it instead since it was his mess. When Dadan had told them to tell him that they had gone directly to cleaning.
"Fucking freeloader…" one of them muttered as he wiped chunky baby formula off of the cabinets.
He was tired of going to sleep in fear at night. The gossip among the men was almost ridiculous and the baby screaming kept most of them - the ones who hadn't moved into the bathhouse, since there was only so much space - awake at night. The few who had earplugs fought to keep them, starting a mini war over who got to sleep peacefully and who got to suffer.
Everyone were terrified, walking on their tiptoes when in the house or when they knew Roger or Rouge was around. There were so many stories about Roger and the evils that he'd committed. Of how he'd leveled an entire city for the heck of it or how he defeated an entire armada all on his own. He hadn't earned himself the title of Pirate King, and thus the most wanted man in the world in the process, just for nothing. It made everyone paranoid that Roger could snap one day and just level the whole house with them inside.
It was horrible sleeping at night when the devil himself was sleeping just rooms away.
"You tell 'em that," the bandit cleaning the floor said with a scowl. His knees hurt and he had baby formula staining his pants. "It's your life on the line, but don't involve the rest of us who want to live."
"We shouldn't have to deal with this!" the bandit snarled, scrubbing harder. "We're not marines, they shouldn't push their problems onto us! And Boss just let let Garp walk all over her…"
"Shut up before you get us all killed," the third bandit in the room said.
The room filled with silence as they kept cleaning.
Rouge was having a wonderful dream, because it had to be a dream.
She was sitting on the moon with an array of colors and glitter sprinkled around the air and she had what looked like a milkshake made out of clouds in her hands. The air was sweet and tasted of strawberries, like the ones she had dipped in chocolate with Roger on their first valentine's day - not that Roger had had any idea of what valentine's day was back then. Her kitchen had turned into a mess of chocolate and mashed strawberries and there had been more touching than there had been dipped strawberries.
Dream-Roger, dressed in a suit, came up to her with a tray of different sweets and desserts. He gave her that grin that made her weak in the knees and caused butterflies to fly around her stomach.
"Strawberry cheesecake, my love?" he asked, leaning down like waiters do in fancy restaurants.
"Yes, please," she said, accepting the small slice. It looked absolutely delicious and tasted heavenly.
Yes, this was definitely a dream, she thought. But it was a nice dream.
Rouge snickered as dream-Roger leaned down and started peppering her neck with kisses. His mustache tickled her neck and chin as he pressed a kiss just beneath her ear and whispered words in her ear that no one else had ever heard him speak.
A hand snaked down her side and gripped her hip, pulling her closer onto his lap. She gripped his shoulder with one hand and ran her other through his hair. It was so much smoother than people thought, while a little greasy maybe.
It was so nice to be in his arms again. After crossing half the world and with Ace there had been no time for them to be alone with each other. There had always been something, be it a sea king attacking the ship, Garp and Roger getting into a fight - it was doomed to happen with the two in the same proximity for more than five minutes - or Ace being, well, a baby. It was so nice to just relax in the sweet calm again.
Calm…
She frowned. That thought alone was off, as if there was something wrong with there being silence. As if them being able to be alone after so long but yet so soon after Ace was born, it made her uneasy.
Her mind nagged at her, telling her something was wrong, that it shouldn't be this calm.
"Something's wrong," she said.
"Hm?" was dream-Roger's only response as he kept assaulting her neck.
"No, seriously, Roger! Something's wrong," she said, pushing him away by his shoulder.
There was something off about him, too, she noticed. He was wearing a suit, for one. She had never seen Roger in a suit, not even at the fanciest of events they'd gone to together, which to be fair hadn't been all that fancy but had still required some pampering. The most she'd managed to get on him was a tie over his normal white button up. It looked quite ridiculous, actually. Roger in a black tie, the white standard pirate shirt you'd see in fiction, his absolutely ugly ankle pants and those stupid sandals - she, and half his crew, had had a good laugh that night.
But the suit wasn't just it, there was something else. What was it?
What was it?
It was silent, Roger was silent, and their surroundings were silent. Serene, calm.
Why was it calm? Was Ace still asleep?
Was Ace…?
Ace...
She shot out of bed faster than she'd ever done before in her life. She almost crawled over the floor over to the makeshift crib only to find it empty. That small voice in the back of her head said that Roger was probably the one who had taken Ace and told her to calm down, but that didn't stop the panic from slowly spreading. She had fallen asleep before she'd feed Ace, he probably hadn't eaten yet. He must be hungry! Hungry babies cried, so why was it so quiet?
She ran out of the room and almost tumbled down the stairs looking frantically for Roger or Ace or anyone holding anything even remotely resembling a baby. They were among strangers, how could she have fallen asleep?
When she rounded the corner into the kitchen the first thing she took note of was that neither Roger or Ace was there. The second was that it was a mess and the third that three bandits had frozen in the middle of cleaning said mess.
She didn't even bother to stay but was gone before they could ask what was wrong.
Ace wasn't in the house. Roger wasn't in the house.
Outside?
Rouge ran out the open door, seeing Roger laughing with a small group of bandits. He waved her over when he noticed her.
"Rouge! Come meet my new friends!" he said.
He wasn't holding Ace.
Her eyes scanned the group and saw Ace in the hands of one of the bandits. She immediately snatched him into her arms and hugged him. She breathed a sigh of relief as Ace gurgled. The bandit held his hands up as if he was being held at gunpoint.
"Is something wrong?" Roger asked, looking around the area.
"No, everything's fine now," Rouge said and sat down next to him. "You shouldn't have let me sleep so long."
"You dropped," Roger said. "Couldn't wake you if I wanted to."
That was true. When she had a narcoleptic fit she might as well be a brick wall until she woke up on her own. She sighed, letting her grip on Ace soften when he started squirming. He was pretty calm for a baby who hadn't eaten yet.
She shrugged as she reached up for her shoulder strap.
"Do you mind?" Rouge asked the bandits who all looked away, blushing.
"I've already fed him," Roger said with a proud smile. She turned to him in surprise.
"You did?" Then it clicked. "Is that why the kitchen's a mess?"
He looked away cheepish. "Maybe…"
I decided to give some of the bandit's names because I can't keep calling them "the bandits" or "one of the bandits", it get's confusing. So have some named bandits that just made friends with Roger, yay!
