#an entire short story about aft because that sounded amazing

[black-raine]

Squeezes | Heatwave/Chase

There he stood, the soul desire and lust of his spark; Chase. He was a magnificent blueberry color, the scent of freshness following with him as he walked with those small yet wide pearly white hips of his swaying side to side. It was annoyingly hard not to stare, and absolutely irresistible not to do the one thing Heatwave had in mind... 

Squeeze. 

"Gah!" Chase yelped, jolting straight up in a mad blush. Feeling what could only be a servo lingering on the bottom curve of his aft, cupping him firmly with a few curls of his digits in pressure. 

"What's the matter?" Heatwave asked, rubbing small circles into his aft with his thumb. "Cat got your tongue?" He paused, smoothing his servo over the curvy metal roughly. "Or...something else?" Breathing into his audios in a hushed purr he leaned over Chase's shoulder. A smirk revealing itself over his dermas. 

Chase was far too gobsmacked to even produce words that weren't either a stutter or simply nothing at all. Mind racing a mile a minute yet his movements stiff and unmoving as he locked optics with Heatwave's fiery amber ones, his mouth slightly agape and faceplates a tinted blue mess. 

Staring for a moment at his lover in contemplation Heatwave chuckled, a deep rumbling sound emitting from deep within him. A wonderful sound Chase would make sure to save to his databanks. "That's what i thought," he claimed. Removing his servo in a sliding motion, the grading of metal tickled up Chase's spine. 

When Chase thought things were over he relaxed his posture, feeling the touch of the other leave him. But what he wasn't expecting was when it came back in a faster motion, creating a rather loud slap sound echoing around the large room. "Heat-!" He yelled before quickly covering this mouth, obviously not wanting to alarm the others. "Wave..." He finished in a muffled voice, squinting in suspicion at the firebot who had only looked back to cockily smile at him with a laugh before exiting the room.

His gaze eagerly followed the crimson bot until he disappeared behind the open door frame. Chase stared after Heatwave for a while longer, wondering how he managed to surprise him again. How Heatwave managed to cause such an explosion within him so quickly, and with such little effort.

 "Why did he do that..." Chase muttered under his breath. His hands clenching into nervous fists, still feeling where Heatwave's hand made contact with his body, a faint ache already beginning to bloom from the heat of his embarrassment.

He didn't know whether to be grumpy or humiliated, but one thing he did know was he definitely wanted more of the mech. Wanted him to do something much more to him... The mech was a mystery at times; one of the most intriguing bots Chase had ever come across. Not only did he have the ability to affect him like this but also the drive to actually try to achieve those goals. He wondered if it was possible that they were compatible somehow, beyond the teasing Heatwave granted him and the small affection they shared for one another.

There had to be more, and Chase would make sure of it.

[542 Words.]

[tsarisfanfiction]

Hand (Tales From The Heart)

Fandom: One Piece Rating: Teen Warnings: injury Characters: Law, Shachi

While he was no stranger to hand to hand combat (with Lao G as a childhood teacher he'd hardly had a choice), Law vastly preferred using a sword in battle. A cursed blade like Kikoku was strong enough to deal with even the most stubborn of armament haki, especially when he combined it with the Ope Ope no Mi's abilities and his own haki, and while she was large and at times unwieldy to use (at least, until he'd grown tall enough that she didn't drag on the ground behind him) there was something comforting about her bladed edge that fists just couldn't compete with.

Wincing as he looked down at his poor hands, Law was reminded once again why hand to hand was a last resort. He'd been caught short, attempting an undercover supply run without bringing the marines down on the heads of himself and his crew. Kikoku was unmistakeable, so like his beloved hat she'd been left safely on the ship, Law confident that if a situation did arise, he'd be able to get out of it with his martial arts. His devil fruit abilities too, if it came to it, although that would ruin his attempt at anonymity.

While the subterfuge had worked enough to keep him unrecognised (it was amazing how many people overlooked him when he did something as simple as take off the hat and pass Kikoku to Bepo), it hadn't kept him out of a fight. Ruefully, he considered that maybe the drunk pirates would have left him alone if they'd known who they were messing with.

He had won, naturally. A group of no-name drunk pirates never stood a chance against him, even with his self-imposed handicaps. However, it hadn't been as simple as it should have been. He tried to flex his fingers and hissed in pain.

It looked bad, in the way anything looked bad the moment blood got involved. The pirates hadn't been impressive, but some of them had been physically large, and strong. For all his capabilities, Law still couldn't hide from the fact that his slender figure worked against him in a brawl, and he was relatively easily out-muscled by the majority of pirates. Another reason he preferred using weapons. Kikoku didn't care how muscular her victim was, they all bled red, and to a cursed blade that was all she needed.

The other problem was that if Law's hands were out of commission, the Ope Ope no Mi's abilities became that much harder to control. A lot of it was mental power, but the deft flicks of his fingers were the focus required to channel it without even more strain. Having his knuckles bruised and battered to the point that he could barely move his fingers boded ill for his ability to use his powers until his hands healed. Sadly, he couldn't accelerate their healing, because his hands were out of commission. A catch twenty two, and not one Law was fond of.

Next time, he groused as he lugged the fruits of his supply run back to the Tang awkwardly, I'm bringing a knife.

"What the hell happened?"

He looked up at the deck, distracted from working out how he was supposed to board with injured hands full of supplies and no access to his powers, at Shachi's indignant demand. The ginger gave him no chance to respond before jumping down onto the dock, hollering for the Heart Pirates closest to him to follow and extend the gangplank.

Most of them gathered up the supplies, slipping them from Law's protesting fingers with ease, while Shachi and Clione pulled Law's arms over their shoulders to help him up the tightrope-esque gangplank. Why they thought his injured hands meant he could no longer walk unaided, Law wasn't sure, but suspended above the water with only a misstep between him and an unwelcome dunking he let them do as they wished.

"What happened?" the ginger repeated once they were back on the safety of the Polar Tang's aft deck, tugging him none too gently through the door. Law followed because it wasn't worth the hassle to break free, not when he knew Shachi was leading him to the infirmary. Dragged or not, the destination would have been the same.

"Drunk pirates," he supplied, seeing no need to delve into the full story. His bloodied knuckles told the rest, and Shachi sighed as he directed Law to take a seat while hunting down the necessary antiseptics and bandages.

"Let me guess," he sighed, dabbing gently at Law's left hand to clear the blood and see the actual injuries. "You decided it wasn't worth blowing your cover by using a Room, so you went hand to hand. But one of the guys was tough enough to break your hands, and because you hadn't already activated a Room that left you a sitting duck."

Law saw no reason to dignify it with a response, especially as it was largely correct, as Shachi already knew full well. He watched Shachi work in silence, remembering the days, now long past, when he could barely tie a bandage properly. Now he and Penguin were the two best medics on board, excluding Law himself. Law's critical eye saw nothing wrong with the treatment his hands received, and he waited patiently for Shachi to finish.

"No Rooms for a few days," Shachi informed him as he clipped the last bandage in place. "It'll be enough of a challenge eating for now; there's no point straining yourself." Law nodded, knowing he could hardly scold Shachi for telling him what to do when the medical training he'd imposed upon the older had included telling patients what to do, even if said patient was a doctor himself.

He stood and made his way towards the control room, only for Shachi to intercept him and direct him to the recreation room instead.

"I'll take things from here," he said, and while Law wasn't entirely sure what he was planning, Penguin and Shachi were his seconds for a reason. Relaxing sounded like a welcoming idea, anyway, so he changed course silently, watching Shachi stride off towards the control room purposefully out of the corner of his eye.

His crew didn't bombard him with questions when he settled in his favourite seat – in the corner, by the window but with a perfect view of the room as a whole so he could watch his crew relax – only double checking that there was no-one they needed to educate.

Such offers were quickly stifled by the Polar Tang's sirens, indicating that the exterior doors were entering lockdown. Beneath them, the engines roared into life and the submarine glided away from the dock before entering a gentle dive.

Apparently Shachi's idea of 'taking things from here' was reading Law's mind and rounding up the crew so they could leave the island. Despite his bandaged hands, residual pain reminding him of his vulnerability for the next few days, Law managed a smile as he watched the waves lap against the window.

It was nice to have a crew he could rely on.

[rossl32123]

Delivering Sea Whisper - 11 Jan 17

Starting a blog of our trip when already halfway through it might not work, but people keep insisting I write something down.

Perhaps I should start with the day we left Brisbane, although this story began a long time before that.

The 8th of January was a nice lazy summers day and we had little planned for it, other than to do some familiarization on the boat. After spending a couple of hours visiting all the lockers in the aft cabin, sighing regularly, and replacing all the equipment found therein, we decided to take the RIB for a run. A swim somewhere was also planned so we grabbed our swim gear, nothing essentially useful like Life jackets, water, sunscreen, flares or radio, and proceeded to launch the tender.

Launching the tender isn’t easy, it is very heavy and needs to be lifted quite high to get it over the granny bars and safety rail. The technique I chose to use was to utilize the main halyard and a mast winch to lift the boat while Hunter maneuvered it between the shrouds and over the side. Half way over a stanchion dug into the underside of the hull and the whole arrangement tipped alarmingly to port. Suddenly it slipped off and the extra weight on the halyard ripped it out of my hands. It wasn’t elegant but it was launched!

Some quick lessons followed on the easiest way to keep the boat roughly near the dock so that we could get in it, followed by a paddle over to the fueling station. Here we discovered how hard it is to row an RIB. Once fueled Hunter rowed us back to the boat by sitting on the stern sheet and paddling backwards. This raised a comment from a passing yachtie along the lines of how poor our technique was, to which we retorted along the lines of the relative advantages to be gained by being able to see where you are going.

We collected our gear then motored out of the marina to Moreton Bay. Another lesson occurred here, the boat wouldn’t get up on the plane when I gave it the berries. The bow came up like doing a good wheelie, the prop quickly cavitated and we went nowhere. Hmm. If this is a story about recognising a problem and thinking through to a workable solution, then this was just another one of those in a long chain of problems to solve when you buy a boat. My poor bus driver brain has had a hammering since this day. A quick look over the back confirmed that the motor wasn’t right down on the mount and we were off. After blasting around for an hour or so we decided the best place to swim wasn’t anywhere near Scarborough, so we headed back to the boat.

About 300mts short of the marina the engine died. I thought it had seized so I didn’t bother to look any further, grabbed the oars and started rowing. It was a long and slow journey!

Once we had the boat back out of the water I decided to remove the big motor to the sail locker, another challenge for the day. Using the same technique as with the main halyard, only this time using the spinaker halyard we wrestled the beast into the locker, where it currently rests, awaiting service and repair, or replacement. I have yet to flush it out, no idea how but I have found the on deck fresh water outlet, the hose and the muffs, just haven’t worked out how to make the water move.

At this point we decided to forget the swim and instead of an early morning high tide departure, we would catch the high that afternoon. We made our preparations, like tying down anything that moved (we didn’t do so good on that score), kissed our loved ones goodbye forever, cast off our lines and departed Brisbane. Much discussion went into that procedure, and fortunately the gods were on our side because up to this point I had not handled the boat, in fact I had not handled anything even remotely the size of Sea Whisper. So we blessed our luck and taking our guidance from Navionics, motored out into Moreton Bay.

The breeze was steady and light from the SE, so I waited until we had a good long run out to the main channel before raising a sail. Fortunately it all went fairly smoothly, so I tried for two sails, and then sat on my luck at that point. It was a glorious evening, the sea was flat, cruise ships were steaming past, and we were slipping along at 6kts very nicely. At the first course change we had to tack to Port, simple you would have thought, but I had no idea what was going to happen. We got around, but it wasn’t pretty.

As night closed in I lost my nerve with the sails and got them down. We were headed into a narrow channel that wasn’t very deep, and I knew at the other end of it we would have to head directly into the breeze. At this point we also came out of the shelter of North Stradbroke Island, so the lumpy bit started. This was probably where our first real problem began, with the rocking and rolling the main halyard let itself loose to fly free momentarily, then to fall to earth, wrapped in the embrace of the main mast back stay, where it was destined to remain.

It was a long night of motoring. I had known it would be due to the forecast winds not backing until the morning. It is amazing how much stability you lose when sails come down, with only the motor driving us it was akin to being inside a washing machine. The noise coming from below sounding very much like an all in bar brawl, I could have sworn that everything in the boat was loose and crashing from one side of the boat to the other. We couldnt stand watches because Hunter wasn’t confident in keeping the boat on a course, and as it was there was very little to steer by. Most of the night I spend standing on the main sheet traveller track holding onto the back end of the cockpit roof, whilst steering with my feet. That way I could see the stars and pick one or two to guide me. This was fine, whilst the cloud kept away, then I would have to pick something else. There wasn’t much. At one point I chose some lights on the shore, but they turned out to be a ship coming the other way.

Eventually the dawn came and I realised the mainsail wasn’t going up and we were both exhausted, and although neither of us had thrown our stomachs to the fishes, we’re weren’t feeling like we could take a lot more, so we opted to head for the Gold Coast where we finally pulled in around 3 in the afternoon. Hunter drove us down the sea way to an anchoring spot, and thence round in circles for a while while I tried to figure out how to drop the pick. Another challenge met and overcome. I was expecting to see distance marks on the chain to tell you how much was out, Lionel had given me his colour coding, but all I saw was rust. Having no idea how much was out of the locker made me a bit nervous, but we were holding, and I was too tired to care. We got her ship shape above and below, before I totally ran out of steam. As Hunter did most of below I wasn’t aware of the worst of the cabin brawl, although I did note a few odd things lying around without a home.

I slept the rest of the afternoon, although I tried to get up twice. Finally I gave in and headed for bed.

Next day, after I recovered the lost halyard, we decided on an excursion to the shops to restock some vital things like water and Qwells. I had only brought 1 pack of 12, and Hunter thought he needed more so I got another 3 packs. Hmm. He got himself another pair of sunnies after the pair he brought with him mysteriously disappeared in the back of a cab, and we shopped in Coles for fruit and vegetables, and a chicken for me. It was a long haul back from the end of the bus route to our tender (we could have parked closer!), in the heat and humidity, so we couldn’t wait to get into the water for a swim and shower. To do that we needed to empty one or the other of the showers that were both filled with gear. Half of it we managed to fit in the other shower, and half on one side of my bed, which turned out to be quite useful, saved me having to put up the lee board.

The swim was glorious and cheered us up no end. A neighbor yachtie rowed over when he noticed our Canadian flag. I might leave it up, it seems to be a bit of a conversation starter.

Hunter prepared us nice wraps for tea and we headed off again on the tide for Yamba. Once again Hunter took us out down the sea way and out into the Tasman. Having just spoken to Brian on the phone, and suffered his derision at losing the mainsail halyard, bugger me it happened again, only this time it floated away so far behind us that I could not recover it. Finally I realized that the only way to get it back was to turn back toward the sea way so that it would drop closer to the boat and I managed to get it back with the boat hook. Unfortunately it had taken a lap over the triatic stay, which in turn meant I had to climb the mizzen mast to pass it back over. For some reason I wasn’t frightened about it, even though it was a very dangerous thing to do, but it was certainly the most difficult thing I have done possible in my entire life. It took all of my strength to cling on to the top of that mast while I gyrated around like an olive on the end of a swizzle stick.

So finally I got to raise the mainsail, although with night coming on I feared for having anymore sail that the main and the headsail. But what a difference from the night before. With a full moon most of the night, and stars to guide me it was a nice 6 to 7 knot jaunt down the coast to Cape Byron and beyond. By this time I realised that our coarse was setting us well away from the coast as we were running SE and the coast had turned SW, but I was loath to go up on deck in the dark to remove the preventer, then gybe onto a starboard run, to stay within sight of it, so I just kept on till dawn. When I finally bit the bullet to gybe in towards the coast and head for Yamba, I stuffed it up and tore the mainsail. Only a little rip at first, but it didn’t take long to rip right through from leech to luff, just under the first reefing cringle. So down came the main again.

We stood on for Yamba, from about 50nm out, for another hour or so before I decided to bear away for Coffs Harbour. The main reason was that it would mean we had a better chance of getting the sail fixed, and we would be closer to home, but Hunter wasn’t happy with the 8hrs it was going to take to get there.

We saw plenty of shipping, some coming in quite close, and dolphins kept popping up the whole way, at least I saw these things, Hunter was flat out most of the time, particularly after he realised that he could get his head down below without feeling sick anymore. Finally, we got close to Coffs and I could see thunderstorms ahead so decided to take in sail. It got quite scary with the lightning flashing all around and it really chucked it down from time to time. I might have been a bit premature getting the sails in, it took us two hours to motor in, but it did have one very nice positive for me, it gave me time to work out how the auto helm worked. I had thought it was stuffed, because it didn’t turn the wheel, but lo and behold, when you used it properly, she held a fine course. So I used it all the way into harbour.

About this time Hunter started complaining of feeling a little drunk, and he couldn’t read texts on his phone. It wasn’t until some time later that we suspected the Qwells, and having only read the first line of the instructions on the box (take 1 to 2 tablets every 4 to 6 hours), I decided to read the second line. Do not exceed 4 tablets in 24 hours! In the Caution section it said “THIS MEDICATION MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS AND BLURRED VISION. IF AFFECTED DO NOT DRIVE A VEHICLE OR OPERATE MACHINERY”. We laughed at that, he’d been taking them non stop for 3 days. He claims they work quite well. #journeyapp