Chapter Text
Hina is asleep on the couch in the Galleon’s common area with Doc’s jacket draped over her like a blanket. There’s a frown line between her eyebrows, and even in sleep the corners of her mouth are turned down slightly. She could have slept in one of the cabins, but none of them can blame her for not wanting to be alone.
At the table, Daiki turns to Doc and says, with cheer that only sounds slightly forced, “Got any threes?”
Doc stares morosely at his hand for a moment and then pulls out a card and passes it over. “Here you go.”
“Wonderful, thanks.” Daiki flashes the card to the table–Three of Hearts–and tucks it into his own hand before saying, “Any kings?”
“Go fish.”
Daiki sighs theatrically and pulls a card from the top of the draw pile. “You know, if this were poker, I could conceivably be winning. Your turn, Joe.”
Joe raises an eyebrow over his hand of cards. “What makes you think you could beat either of us at poker?”
“Oh, it’d be easy. I’d ask you if you got that bounty on your head by being illegally gorgeous, and then while you were blushing I’d cheat.”
Joe snorts. “You wish. That might work on Doc, though, he always gets flustered when we compliment him.”
Doc turns bright red. “Joe! You can’t just, just–hey.”
“What? You have nice eyes, we have to remind you once in a while.”
“You can’t just say that kind of thing to me, though, you know how I get.”
Daiki has to put his cards down on the table for a moment, clapping a hand over his mouth. “Oh, I, don’t mind me, I’m not laughing you, I’m just remembering how easy it used to be to beat Tsukasa at poker when he was Great Leader the first time.”
“The first–I’m not going to ask, I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it.” Joe pauses. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of man to be flustered by compliments, though.”
“No, I’d just unzip his pants and win the game by default.”
A pause, and then Joe nods solemnly and says, “When it was just the two of us on the ship I used to beat Marvelous at poker the same way.”
Doc giggles hysterically. “You never mentioned that before!”
“Well, it’s hard to pull off when the whole crew is playing, if I tried that with everyone then Luka would just pull a few spare cards out of her sleeve while Marvelous was distracted.”
This time Daiki laughs, also semi-hysterical, and then calms down and pulls a flask out of his back pocket. “Drinks, gentlemen? Since we’re acting like this is a normal evening?”
Doc nods enthusiastically. Joe says, with exaggerated calm, “What, this isn’t normal for you?”
Elsewhere, in a space between worlds which is primarily nothingness but for them, two other men sit slumped back to back, heads drooping, eyes momentarily shut against the work they’ve laid out for themselves.
Tsukasa says, very slowly, “I always forget how much I hate dealing with Dai Shocker until I have to do it again.”
Marvelous huffs and nods. “I’ve spent the past week expecting to get knifed.”
“Yeah, that’s what it’s like.” There’s a long, exhausted silence before Tsukasa continues. “I can keep this up for us for maybe another half an hour. Give us both a bit of a breather.”
“Sounds good.” Marvelous tips his head back just as Tsukasa’s doing the same, and they bump into each other, staring in opposite directions at the nothingness and yet still in perfect accord. “You know how to play poker?”