#and it's almost certainly not worth pirating

[sodapuppy]

Oh, my job in the commune? I program the skatebroom physics. Yeah, they're killing me tomorrow.

[bleachification]

⸻ THE PRINCE(SS) & THE PROTECTOR

pairing: zoro x reader

word count: 3.5k

synopsis:  being in love with zoro is not for the weak, especially when such a love is unrequited. so it is all the more confusing when a certain pirate refuses to let you go when you decide to give your heart a break and leave the crew for good.

note: i really need to stop writing zoro fics with an arranged marriage and bodyguard/protector type premise. with that being said… enjoy xoxo

(also yes this is part ONE. here is the link to PART TWO)

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

Thunderstorms are the perfect weather conditions for silent rumination. You isolate yourself in a corner of the ship, eyes closed as rainwater glides down your face in cool streams. With a smile, you breathe in the scent of salt and earth that mingles with the southern winds. 

The crew is below deck, sheltered from the downpour and crackling lightning that splits the skies every so often. They’re all asleep and have been for a while now. You are the outlier. The strange one that decided to sit between a storm and the sea during the devil’s hours. Funnels of black clouds swirl angrily above you as it continues to pour. Your clothes, hair, everything is drenched. Soaked down to the very bones—some particularly weary ones. 

You relish the feeling of the water against your skin for another moment, reviving yourself from the bleak reflections plaguing your mind. By the time you make it inside, a decision was made. 

The next morning, faint sunlight filtered by sparse clouds light up the horizon in hues of soft orange and calm yellow. The water is still. Steady. Almost as if it had forgotten its role as a tempest’s plaything mere hours ago. It’s early. Much too early for most of the crew to be awake, but you can hear a faint tinkering from Usopp’s room and the steady footsteps of another member coming up the stairs to the upper deck.

A familiar silhouette appears in your vision. 

“Morning, Robin,” you say. 

The archaeologist comes to stand next to you and nods. “Good morning. You’re up early.”

“Had a lot on my mind. Doesn’t leave much room for sleep,” you point out. 

“Did you get any?”

“Some.”

She raises a brow, unconvinced. 

“About an hour's worth,” you shrug. 

An arm sprouts up from the railing you’re leaning on. It holds out a mug of steaming coffee. You take the cup gratefully. The smooth liquid warms you up in the crisp autumn air. Robin takes a sip of her own drink before responding. 

“What’s the verdict?” She asks. 

“I’ve decided to go.”

She sighs. “That’s it then. I understand there’s no point in trying to change your mind?”

You shake your head sadly. The past few weeks of turmoil and trepidation cemented that certainty. You can’t stay. Not when the fate of a nation falls on your shoulders… and certainly not with feelings as forbidden as the ones you harbour. 

“Is it because of him?”

“No. No,” you emphasize at Robin's doubtful expression. 

“Don’t lie,” she chides. 

You grimace. “Well, not entirely because of him.”

Robin scans the calm horizon with watchful eyes, a storm of thoughts whirling into action behind that piercing gaze of hers. The archaeologist has always been the most logical out of the crew, favouring rationality over emotion. It is the trait you admire most about Robin and the reason why you sought her counsel specifically, choosing to confide in her—and only her—about the decision you faced. 

“He deserves to know,” she says softly. 

You stiffen, the mere thought making your throat tighten up with anxiety. You shake your head, effectively ending the conversation. At the perfect time too, as one by one the rest of the crew pad up the stairs, ready to start the day. 

Luffy first, bounding up the steps with a large grin. Nami follows, then everyone trickles through the doors. Zoro is last. 

The swordsman yawns and stretches his arms behind his head, taut muscles glistening under the morning sun. He opens one eye, peeking at you from under sleepy lids. Your heart clenches at the lazy smile he greets you with. 

This is going to be difficult. 

“Mornin’,” Zoro mumbles, stifling another yawn behind his fist. 

The rest of the crew bustles about, running around the deck in preparation for the day ahead. You hear Luffy’s excited laugh somewhere in the background followed by familiar shouts of concern and beratement from Nami, Sanji and Usopp, each taking turns to scold the captain’s latest—and no doubt foolish—idea. Whatever it may be. 

The noise and chaos fades away the moment Zoro walks up to you, his warmth surrounding you despite the cold morning temperature. It makes it near impossible for you to focus on much else. Anything else. 

“Hey,” you say. 

He frowns, eyes scanning your face. You resist the urge to touch it, anxious. Was there something on your face? A pimple? An eyelash? 

“What? What is it?” You ask, nerves alight. 

“Did you stay up late?”

You blink, caught off guard. Did you really look that tired?

“Yes,” you answer plainly. There’s no point in trying to hide it from him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Zoro arches a brow. “Why not?” Concern laces the question. You almost crumble, seconds away from confessing the truth you’ve been hiding for weeks, when someone barrels into Zoro, knocking him over and effectively ending your conversation. 

Luffy, unfazed, pops up onto his feet and dusts himself off, his signature toothy smile never having left his face. Despite his right-hand man groaning on the ground next to him, Luffy seems as chipper as ever. 

“Sorry, Zoro!” He apologizes, not sounding very sorry at all. 

“I… hate… you…” Zoro grunts, still recovering from having the wind knocked out of him. 

Luffy only laughs it off and runs back to the rest of the crew, chattering about some new adventure that is bound to be more effort than it is worth. 

“You okay?” You press your lips together in an attempt to stifle a laugh. 

Zoro takes the hand you offer, warm palm wrapping around your own. You can feel rough calluses against your skin—a testament to his training. You pull him up and watch him steady himself. He doesn’t let go of your hand. Nervous, you break contact first. 

He shoots you a puzzled look, but decides against commenting on it. 

“I will be once I knock him upside the head.”

“Let’s not give the poor boy brain damage.”

Zoro snorts. “You mean more than he already has?”

You laugh, the sound almost entirely concealed by a burst of raucous shouts coming from the other side of the deck. Curious, you begin walking over to the crew. Zoro follows suit with his hands in his pockets. As the two of you make your way across the ship’s expanse, the sight of Nami and Luffy arguing comes into view. The others stand off to the side, exasperation and amusement colouring their expressions. 

“It’s too risky!”

“It’ll be fine, why are you being so boring?”

“I am trying to keep us from getting killed,” Nami seethes. Her face is set in a tight scowl that twists her features into something alarmingly frightening. You haven’t seen her this angry in quite some time. 

“Not if we’re careful,” Luffy defends. The captain looks bored and irritated at the same time. 

Nami’s right eye twitches.  

Oh dear. 

“And since when are you careful?” 

“I’m not. But [name] is.” Your captain jerks a thumb in your direction. 

All heads swivel to look at you. 

You raise your palms up, placating. “I… just got here.”

Nami runs up to you, eyes pleading. The ginger-haired woman grabs your shoulders and gently shakes you. 

“Please knock some sense into him!”

You tilt your head and lean to the left in order to peek at Luffy from behind Nami’s frame. The boy scratches the back of his head with a toothy grin. 

“Would you care to explain, Captain?” You ask bemusedly. 

Luffy’s eyes dance with mischief. “We’ve got a mission!”

It’s Zoro that steps in this time. “Just the two of you?”

“Well, yeah,” Luffy answers plainly. 

You gently pry Nami’s hands off. “Why?” 

“You’re the only one who knows the layout of the place,” he explains. 

You frown. “What place?”

“Aracorn Palace,” Robin interjects. There’s a small smile on her face as she watches the situation unfold. Always assessing. Always dissecting. 

Aracorn… such a familiar name. It takes a second before a sliver of memory tickles the edges of your mind. An image forms; one of a mighty castle built from silver and stone erected in the heart of a powerful city. 

You used to travel there for important delegations and social banquets. Luffy is right. You do know the area well. 

“We’re going there? What for?”

“And why only the two of you?” Zoro questions. 

“To be stealthy,” Luffy grins. 

“Right. Stealthy. You.” Zoro stares, unconvinced. 

Luffy ignores his second-in-command. “We’re going to go rescue someone. He’s being kept in the dungeons.”

So many questions. 

“Who is it?”

Robin, again, speaks up. “His name is not important. He may not even own such a thing. His role as an ex-member of an underground information guild named Kleios is what makes him useful to us. An execution date has been set for tomorrow evening, so if we are to save the man, we must do it soon.”

“Well? What do you say?” Luffy's enthusiasm is palpable. 

The rest of the crew watches you, assuming that you would wave it off. The danger is obvious, and you are—among most instances—level headed enough to pull the plug when needed. 

One last adventure. 

You surprise them. 

“I’m in.”

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 . 　  

You should have known it wouldn’t be easy. In fact, you should have known that the entire plan would fall apart because of course it did. Nothing ever seems to go right for the crew. Right now you curse such rotten luck. Although… it isn’t even luck, not really. It’s the captain… Zoro��� Nami… Sanji… the whole lot of them! No matter how organized—how meticulous—a plan was, it never actually fucking went to plan. You suppose you’ll miss it. That unmanned chaos. You suppose you’ll miss all of it. As for who you’ll miss most…

“Zoro!” You stare up at the swordsman in both relief and horror. He dangles from a rope ladder, cascaded off the side of a strange looking vehicle—one with wings and whirring motors that suspend its large metal body in the open air. Usopp sits in the pilot seat manning the impressive contraption. Sweat beads on his forehead from concentration. The others are likely protecting the ship from the nation’s naval cavalry. 

 You increase your pace despite the burning sensation in your lungs. Hot on your heels is a stretch of armed guards mixed with strange looking creatures that look to be a gruesome mismatch of different animals—both natural and mythological. 

Chimeras. 

Luffy, for once, listened and fled alongside you when shit hit the fan—albeit with extreme reluctance. The captain was able to deal with the first rush of soldiers and their Chimera, but the monster was vicious and even Luffy struggled. That was a mere one. The royal guard owned five. And all of them, snapping their fanged teeth and snarling in hunger, are quickly closing the distance between themselves and you—their prey. 

The prisoner was long dead. The whole thing was a trap designed to ensnare the Straw Hats, and Luffy and you had walked straight into it. By the time you both realized you had been played, the cavalry had already surrounded you. Thankfully, Luffy was the master of creative escapes. He was not, however, a master of subtle ones. What was originally one guard unit and its accompanying Chimera quickly turned into all of them chasing after you in a vicious frenzy. 

“Don’t engage! We’ll come to you!” You shout towards Zoro, urging him to stay aboard. You can see a sort of panic in his eyes, mottled by excitement. He’s itching to fight. But doing so would be his biggest mistake yet and likely his last as well if he does not heed your words. 

The murderous soldiers are practically breathing down your necks, and even with Luffy trying to fend off as many as possible, you will quickly be overwhelmed by the strength of the Chimeras. The monsters growl and roar as their heavy steps thunder behind you, bloodlust practically soaking them through. If Zoro abandoned the ladder and tried to fight them off… it would be sheer suicide. You won’t let that happen.

Luffy manages to stretch out and grab hold of Zoro in the near distance. With a yell, he swings himself up and grabs you along the way. You yelp, the sudden movement catching you off guard. You shut your eyes as the wind whips you in the face. With a soft thud you land against a warm mass.

Zoro catches you, arms encircling your waist. 

“Are you okay?” He murmurs into your ear. 

You sag into him from relief. “Yes. Is Luffy…?”

“He’s completely fine,” Zoro smirks. 

Luffy, who is sprawled across the floor, gives you two thumbs up in reassurance. You can’t help but laugh. 

“Usopp! Take us away.”

The pilot gives you a smile and a salute before he presses a button and pulls the wheel up. Slowly, you feel the contraption tilt upwards. Smooth and steady. 

CRASH!

Out of nowhere, you and the rest of the crew are violently thrown to the left as something punctures the metal wall of the vehicle and jerks the entire thing back. Before you go slamming into the wall, Zoro twists himself around and cushions the blow. 

“What the hell?” Zoro’s grip on you tightens protectively.

A strange red pincer curls into the crumpled sheet that—just a moment ago—was the side hull. It looks to be the same sort of armour that is found upon the back of a crab, except it bears a darker color. Not unlike a deep pool of blood. Its shape is almost identical to that of a scorpion's tail but riddled with sharp ridges that cover its surface. The thing is the size of your head—a grotesque limb extended from one of the Chimeras, no doubt. 

Zoro and Luffy both immediately jump into action, the former slicing at the pincer while Luffy tries brute force. Neither works. Solid and unbending, the pincer trembles then stills. The next second you are staring into the howling winds and open space. The army roars beneath you, fifty feet below. The ugly beast with the scorpion tail isn’t finished. It narrows its beady eyes and with astonishing speed, it whips its tail upwards, spearing the floor. 

Usopp does his best to recenter, managing to keep everyone upright and away from the gaping hole left by the ripped wall.

“Shit,” Zoro hisses. “The damn thing is too tough. I can’t cut through.”

“I can’t rip it out!” Luffy frowns, throwing punch after fruitless punch at the immovable pincer. 

Panic threatens to overwhelm you.

Shit, shit, shit. Shit!

Something glints in the corner of your vision. A solution strikes you and you scramble towards a device on the floor. 

“The laser cutter! I can–” but your voice is lost to the bellowing winds as the monster yanks its tail once more, causing the entire machine to shake. You fumble with the device and clumsily clasp it in your trembling hands. Vertigo strikes you as you look down for a split second. 

The ground is nearing at an alarming rate.

It’s too close. Too—

Zoro jumps. 

“NO!” You reach out in an attempt to pull him back but you're too late. The fabric of his shirt slips out of your grasp and Zoro goes tumbling down—straight into the unhinged maw of the monster below. 

You aren’t sure if the screams piercing the air are your own or if they belong to the dying men below. With fluid ease, Zoro manages to sidestep the beast. He dives into the mass, slashing through their ranks. It is beyond impressive. 

But it is not enough. 

The Chimeras have zoned in, their attention drawn to Zoro. Snarling and snapping, they circle their prey. 

Its suicide. 

“No…”

Luffy steps forward, ready to leap into the chaos, when familiar shouts sound from below. 

The rest of the crew are here. 

You collapse in relief, adrenaline draining from your body. 

He’s okay.

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 . 　  

“This is such a stupid fight,” you sigh. 

“This isn’t a fight,” Zoro frowns, unnerved by the very idea of arguing with you. 

Sanji pipes up. “It sounds like a fight.”

Nami pinches him by the ear and drags the chef out of the kitchen, scolding him as he protests and apologizes. 

“But Nami! They’re in my workspace!”

You and Zoro both ignore him, too preoccupied with the argument at hand. 

“I saved your life. His too. If anything, you should be thanking me.”

You scoff in disbelief. “I’m not going to thank you for your recklessness.”

“And I won’t apologize for it,” Zoro says firmly. 

“You’re going to get yourself killed one day! I refuse to stick around and watch it happen.”

He freezes as he catches onto the underlying meaning behind your words. “What do you mean by that?”

“I…” you hesitate, unprepared for this conversation. You didn’t mean to let news of your departure slip out. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. You’re both too agitated. Too riled up. 

“What do you mean by that?” He echoes. His voice is low and careful, tip toeing on the edge between urgency and trepidation. 

You want to turn around. Walk away. Lie. 

But this is Zoro. A man you entrust with your life and, occasionally, your heart as well. Secrets don’t belong in your relationship—as muddled as it is—and they will only consume what trust you have forged through the years. 

It is time to bear the truth in front of the most terrifying witness. 

With a rough swallow, you tell him everything. Your plan to leave the crew, to retain your birthright, and to finally settle your country’s score, once and for all, by bringing peace through union. A marriage between royal heirs. You and a foreign prince. 

You can’t look at him as the secret you’ve been harbouring finally spills over your lips like oil. If you look at him, you’ll cry. 

“…I leave in two weeks,” you finish. You’re still staring at the ground, heart racing a mile a minute. 

There’s no answer. Silence stretches on for a while, so quiet a person’s breath could be mistaken for thunder. So cloying, it stains your lungs. Finally, you can’t take it anymore. You snap your head up, ready to demand a reply from the swordsman, but the look on Zoro’s face wipes anything you have to say from memory. 

Shock, anger, disappointment, sadness. Those are all too shallow of description for the depth of what he is feeling. The best he settles on is desperation. An intensely unpleasant anxiety that borders on panic. That is what currently thrums in his veins. 

You’re leaving…?

“You won’t change my mind Zoro.”

He doesn’t answer. 

“Nothing will,” you add softly. 

Especially not him. 

This is your goal—your dream. He can’t take that away from you no matter how much he resents it. He simply can’t. But he can be angry, can’t he? He deserves that anger. Needs it to keep him sane. But before he can articulate it, you speak up again, turning the subject back to the argument before. 

“The point is you’re too rash.”

He’s barely listening. “It’s my job.”

“No,” you reply firmly. “No it’s not. You put that title on yourself—placed that burden on your own shoulders, never asking for a hand. Not even when so many would offer.”

“I don’t need help. I protect my friends. That’s what I do,” he grits out. 

“Even at your own expense?”

“Yes.”

You scoff in disbelief. “It's idiotic.”

“It’s my duty.”

“So you say!” You throw your hands up, exasperated and frustrated. “But that’s not all it is, is it? You fear losing that part of yourself—the protector, the bodyguard, the shield—because you would lose yourself in the process. Your entire life—your purpose—does not revolve around meaningless self-sacrifice and protecting us from a world we choose to exist in!”

He scoffs in sheer disbelief. “And you? What exactly is your role? Don’t you dare stand there and attempt to psychoanalyze me when you’re just a damn coward!”

You suck in a sharp breath, his words striking deep. “I am not a coward.”

“Then why the hell are you running away?!”

“Running? Running?!”

He nods, jaw clenched. He avoids looking straight at you—at the hurt in your eyes. “Yes. The only thing you know how to do.”

Anger replaces hurt. “You fucking hypocrite,” you spat out.

He shakes his head. “I’m just calling it like I see it.” 

“You are nothing without your so-called duty,” you hiss. “So you do not get to judge mine.”

“Is that why you abandoned it in the first place? I wonder where this valiant change of heart came from.”

“You could never understand.”

He drops his gaze to the floor and takes a heavy step back. Zoro can barely look at you. “You’re right. I could never understand turning my back on people who needed me.”

Those are the last words he says to you. The next morning, you are gone. All of your things and belongings cleared from your room—like you had never existed on the ship in the first place. 

[flammingnachos]

“𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 （）𝗋𝗈𝗋𝗈𝗇𝖺 𝗓𝗈𝗋𝗈 𝗑 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋 （𝘔）

𝖲𝗒𝗇𝗈𝗉𝗌𝗂𝗌；You know that Zoro's hygiene has been, to put it lightly, lax. You decide that enough is enough, and with a little encouragement from Nami, you decide that there's only one option to convince him. Shower sex.

It’s been 6 days. You think to yourself with a small shudder. The first few days, you almost don’t mind. It’s kinda sexy, the musty scent. It’s a reminder of the hard work that he puts himself through daily. And of course, the visual benefits of that work are certainly worth a mild stench. But 6 days? It’s beyond a mild stench now. It’s a fucking identity trait. You’d only been together for a couple months, so you don’t exactly know what the proper way to bring up this kind of shit. Like “hey babe, I’d love to really take a trip to the bone zone and all, but if we do right now, Brook isn’t gonna be the only dead one on the ship.” Even if you did say that, he’d be so confused, the adorable idiot, and probably pretty dejected too. You sigh, squeezing your eyes closed and press your fingertips to your temples.

“I’m just gonna have to manipulate the poor boy.” You decide out loud, having no idea how to manage that.

“Who are we manipulating?” Nami pops her head in the room with a sly grin. You nod your head in a greeting to her.

“Zoro,” you say with exasperation. “To take a shower.”

Nami laughs loudly. “Good fucking luck,” she’s almost crying with how hard she’s laughing. “I’ve been barking up that tree since the literal day I met him.”

This is not what you needed to hear. You groan and flop back on your mattress, clapping your hand over your eyes. After another few moments of laughing, you feel Nami sit next to you on the edge of the bed.

“Y/n, the answer is obvious.”

You raise an eyebrow and glance up at through the parted fingers over your eyes. “Oh?” You ask.

“Shower sex, duh.” Nami replies, sticking her tongue out at you with a wink.

You flush. Goddamn it. You think. Seductive manipulation is not precisely your forte. Especially with someone as completely dense as Zoro. In some ways, Zoro is one of the most intelligent people you know. He’s instinctual, able to observe his environment, adaptable and cunning in a fight. But with other people? That he actually likes? Let’s just say the wheel is spinning, but the hamster’s dead. Very dead.

“I was afraid of this,” you say gravely.

Nami rolls her eyes. “Christ, y/n. You’re acting like it’s such a chore to have sex with your boyfriend.”

“UGH.” You throw a pillow at her, and she cackles again as she stands up to walk towards the door.

“You’re a true champ, y/n. From all of us Straw-hat Pirates, we thank you for your service.” She salutes, dodging another pillow that you chuck her direction as she walks out the door.

As you sit on the edge of your bed, you grab the last pillow left and shove it into your face, letting it stifle the almost inhuman, frustrated screech that rips through your throat. The sound dissipates, and you stand up, heading up to the Crow’s Nest, where you know the smelly swordsman will be. Nami and Robin snicker at you as you pass and you flip them off crudely. You climb up the ladder to the Crow’s Nest and open the hatch, pulling yourself inside.

You smell him before you can see him.

Why am I doing this to myself? Why?

You turn towards the sound of heavy breathing and you see Zoro, in all his bare-chested glory, doing one-armed hand stand push-ups while he used the free arm to curl a massive dumbbell.

Oh yeah, that’s why.

His back is to you, so you’re able to watch the muscles of his back and shoulders ripple beneath his tanned skin effortlessly. He’s taken his long green coat off, leaving him in only his pants and boots. You can see droplets of sweat dripping down his back, each bead following a different muscular curve. He makes soft grunting noises with each rep and you feel the knot in your stomach tighten and your heart race. You clear your throat softly, hoping to gain his attention. He doesn’t turn, only switching the role of each arm.

So, you try again, this time a bit louder. You watch him stiffen at the disturbance, his head shooting up between his arms to look at the intruder. His steely eyes meet yours and soften, along with his body and he gives you a grin, clearly pleased to see you. He pushes himself up and flips upright to land on his feet before turning to greet you.

“Hey y/n,” He smiles again and grabs a towel off a rack to wipe his face and hair.

He begins to walk toward you and you almost forget your mission. He looks so handsome, especially with that wide grin that he typically only reserves for you. His green hair is damp, making it a slightly darker shade than usual, and he drapes the towel over the back of his neck. He halts in front of you, his hands moving to grip each end of the towel casually. “What’s up?” He says.

You realize you haven’t taken a breath for a few moments, and you inhale to reply to him. Rookie mistake.

The smell of him hits you again, and you cough without warning. Shit, you think. Don’t screw around, y’n. Get this damn mosshead in the shower with you pronto.

“Hey,” You reply, forcing yourself into a smile. “Just came up here to check on you. How are you doing?”

He smiles again, the oblivious bastard. “Oh, okay. I’m fine. Just doing the usual,” he replies. “Shit, your face had me going for a second. I thought something might be wrong,”

He chuckles. You pause a beat too long. He notices. Fuck.

“…is there something wrong, y/n?” He asks, now somewhat nervous.

“Oh no!” You say too quickly. “No, no, nothing’s wrong. I just came up here because…”

You know you need to calm down if you’re going to attempt anything that mildly looks like seduction. You take a breath and drop your gaze, now looking at him from underneath your eyelashes flirtatiously.

“I came up here because I was about to take a shower...” You place a hand on his warm chest and push up to the shell of his ear. You lower your voice. “And I was wondering if you might want to join me?”

You feel him stiffen again beneath the hand on his chest and his breath hitch. His hands come up to lightly grip your hips.

“You what?” He asks, his voice suddenly a little rougher.

You kiss the soft skin just beneath his angled jaw. “Join me. In the shower.” You repeat.

His grip on your hips tightens for a second before he grabs your hand suddenly, pulling you towards the hatch of the Crow’s Nest. It’s so fast that you almost can’t process what’s happening. He opens the hatch with his foot.

“Oh, so you want to come?” You manage. He swoops you up into his arms and jumps down the hatch without regard to the ladder. You land firmly on the deck below and he doesn’t bother to set you down.

“Zoro?” You ask, mesmerized by the concentration on his face. He shifts to hold you with one arm as he opens the door to the bath house room, slamming it behind him. He sets you down and wraps strong arms around your waist, kissing your neck.

“Get in the shower. Now.” He commands. Internal screams. And in that moment, as the water turns on and your simple, oblivious, gorgeous greenette quickly strips away the rest of his clothes, you don’t know what you’re more excited about, the amazing sex that you’re about to have, or the fact that the simple, oblivious, gorgeous greenette is finally going to be fucking clean.

“Get in the shower. Now.” Zoro commands.

Holy shit, you think. If I’d known this would be the reaction, I’d’ve done it ages ago.

Zoro can barely keep his hands off of you, only pausing for a brief moment to reach behind him and turn on the faucet. His calloused fingers roam your clothed body, and you instinctively arch into him. He hums with approval. His lips, hungry for contact, pepper your jaw and neck with affection. You sigh and push closer, only slightly embarrassed when you feel him smirk against your skin. He knows you want him. The knot low in your stomach confirms this. His hands grip your ass, pulling your hips together, and you feel that he wants you too. Through the rough material of his pants, you feel his insistent desire and you can’t help but moan quietly. This elicits a moan from the greenette as well, his head falling to your shoulder, and you pull yourself out of your depravity long enough to feel smug.

“A bit excited are we?” You tease in a whisper.

He growls and pulls your shirt off of your shoulder to bite your collarbone. “Did you not hear me the first time?” His hands go to the waistband of your shorts. “Get. In. The. Shower.”

Your vaingloriousness quickly falls to the wayside as he unbuttons your shorts and pulls them down swiftly along with your underwear. You feel a rush of heat over your body and your urgency now matches his. Deftly, your fingers do away with his pants and boxers as one of his hands now gropes your naked ass. The other, ever more impatient, moves to the nape of your neck and the collar of your shirt. All of your attention, by necessity, is on getting him naked, so you almost don’t notice the rip of fabric being torn from your body until you feel your nipples suddenly harden with exposure to the air in the room.

You mewl as the steam fills up the small cubicle. He doesn’t give you any more time. He lifts you up. “Wrap your legs around me.” It isn’t a question. You comply. With a moan, you feel your core tighten as another flood of wetness seeps out of your pussy.

He groans too. “Fuck,” He can feel your wetness against the base of his cock. He steps the two of you into the shower.

The heat of the water is only matched by the heat between the two of you. Your legs, already wobbly, drop to the floor as he pushes you against the wall, the water streaming down his back as he leans back to look at you. Zoro is sex personified. It’s almost too overwhelming to take in all at once. His breathing is ragged. Your eyes and hands devour his broad chest, feeling each hard plane and individually curated muscle. His hair, now saturated with water, has evolved from its usual hue to a deep jewel toned emerald. His jaw is tight, but his full lips are parted with anticipation. His silver eyes, intense and hooded, bore through you, disarming you with their fervor.

He can’t take it anymore.

His lips crush to yours and you groan loudly against his mouth. One of his hands tangles through your hair, holding your mouth exactly where he wants it. His tongue sweeps across your bottom lip, and you gladly open your mouth for his perusal. His other hand moves to your full breast, massaging it roughly for a moment before he deftly flicks his thumb over your erect nipple. You squirm under his touch. He hums because he knows you love when he plays with your tits. Your hand drifts down to his length, gently caressing the skin there.

“Y/n,” He breathes, ripping his mouth from yours as you wrap your delicate fingers around the base of his cock. The water, hot and unrelenting, streams down your arm as you do so, and you sigh at the warmth of the contact. You’ve always been impressed by every part of Zoro, and his penis was no exception. You marvel at his thick length like it’s the first time you’ve ever been blessed with the opportunity to touch such a monument of masculine sexuality.

As you continue your ministrations, his lips trail down your neck and collarbone slowly, all the way to the height of your breast. He intentionally avoids your sensitive peak, and you squeeze his cock lightly as if to say, no fair. The hand in your hair moves to your hip.

He chuckles and slowly, painfully, flicks his tongue over your nipple. Once, twice, three times, before he begins to swirl it around the area. And to make matters worse, he mirrors his movements on your other breast with his opposite hand. He is playing dirty.

Dirtier than he is after 6 days without a shower, you think sarcastically to yourself.

He interrupts your thought by suddenly taking your erect peak into his mouth and sucking harshly. Your other hand immediately shoots grip to his green tresses, urging his mouth to continue. You begin to pant, the steam from the shower making the air thick and hot and damp. You feel the hand that was on your hip suddenly playing around the edges of your wet folds. He starts with your inner thighs, only his pinky brushing up against your aching core. You begin to pump him faster, moving to play with his balls every so often. Though he is trying to remain composed, his ragged breathing gives him away and his patience with teasing you begins to slip. Zoro’s thumb begins to rub your clit while his fingers move to your dripping opening.

Despite his own almost unbearable desire, he can’t resist taunting you a little. He pulls his mouth away from your breast to look at you. “Is that the shower I’m feeling, or are you really this wet, y/n?”

You see the cocky glint his eye and you want to wipe that smirk right off his face. Without warning, you wrap your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck, hoisting yourself up to hover right above his stiff cock. Though he is taken off guard, he does not falter as he reflexively moves his hands to catch you. His strong hands hold you up under your ass as his mouth falls open slightly in surprise. He had enough strength for the both of you, and he holds you up with ease, keeping his balance and ensuring your safety as well.

You raise an eyebrow and tease your wet opening over his hard cock. You envelope the very tip of him, groaning as you feel him already stretching you. You both shiver with the promise of what is to come. Or who, is to come.

“Goddamn it, y/n, I can’t take it anymore,” He growls and slams you down onto him, immediately filling you to the hilt. The fullness nearly overwhelms you, your sight momentarily leaving you as you feel every thick inch of him against your inner walls. One strong arm wraps around the small of your back as he continues to hold you up. You love that he doesn’t need the wall for support, and your hand goes to grope his muscular shoulder and bicep in appreciation of his power.

Zoro, as with everything he does, is always intense in sex, and this time is no exception. The concentration is palpable on his face, a small v creasing between his eyebrows. His face is contorted in pleasure and a groan rumbles through his chest. His jaw is tight but his mouth is soft as he begins to thrust roughly into you.

“Oh God, Zoro,” You head lolls back, exposing your neck to him. He seizes the opportunity to begin kissing your neck and jaw, whispering your name again and again each iteration a little more wild, a little more broken. His cock feels incredible inside of you, the angle of each thrust stroking that undeniable pleasure point. The scene is entirely erotic. It’s all too much—far too much.

Each thrust is punctuated by a moan and the slapping of wet skin to wet skin. You feel Zoro’s body stiffen and you know that he’s getting close. The tell-tale build in your own core reflects the sentiment. With each stroke, you climb higher and higher and higher until your ecstasy is inexorable.

“Z-Zoro…” You manage with a gasp. “I’m about t-to…” He growls and his thrusts become even more wild—hard, manic, sure. Your lips find his ear and you gently tug on his earrings with your teeth, your last conscious action before your climax overtakes you. This is Zoro’s undoing.

“Y/n!” He yells, and you feel his seed spill hot inside of you.

You drown together in your pleasure, the waves crashing over both of you relentlessly. When your body is spent, you crumble against his chest and he wraps both of his arms around you. He kisses the top of your head, and rubs your back affectionately as he whispers your name under the still warm water. After a few moments, he sets you down. He offers his arm for stability and you take it with gratitude, leaning against him for another few moments before you separate. He smiles lazily down at you, almost bashful at his display. He rubs his free hand against the back of his neck, a slight flush on his face. You grin back and grab the bottle of soap from behind him and place it in his hand.

“Now,” You say after a long moment. “Get clean, marimo.”

He narrows his eyes. “You tricked me,” He says knowingly.

You grab your own body wash and begin to lather up. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

He stares for another long moment, considering, before he finally shrugs and squeezes some soap out onto his hands and begins to do the same.

You smile and kiss his cheek.

“Honestly,” He says, that grin creeping back on his face. “If this is what showering is going to be like with you around, I’ll shower every goddamn day.”

[rei-ismyname]

Ultimate Wolverine is FIRE

If you follow this blog with any kind of regularity you'll be aware that I don't enjoy Wolverine. He's overexposed, Flanderised, and his character growth stagnated at LEAST a decade ago. He says 'bub' a lot, 'SNIKTs,' and is misanthropic and violent to a fault. Ultimate Wolverine is ... Not that, at all. Not only is it different and new but it's a stealth X-Men book. This isn't a review as such, just some loose thoughts and pics. There will be spoilers.

That's not him praying

So, Logan was in the Opposition, a resistance militia fighting against the Rasputins' authoritarian rule of Eurasia. They capture him half dead and turn him into their Winter Soldier. Now a brainwashed killing machine, he doesn't say a word the entire issue. Not a peep. That's a really ambitious thing to attempt, but it works so well - he's efficient and primal yet there's ambiguity about how much agency he has.

Rasputingrad, wow. Piotr's ghost!

The first mission we see The Winter Soldier sent on is an assault on an Opposition church. Raven and Kurt are side by side but have very different approaches to resistance. Kurt seems to be a priest here, but don't get too attached 🥲

This is not the beer swilling oaf we're used to. He's no longer the man Kurt called his best friend. The Rasputins turned him into a silent, unfeeling machine of death. Kurt is fucking horrified.

The procedures that stripped away his personhood are revealed in flashes of cold, impersonal medical horror. We see almost nothing of who Logan was as he's only spoken to or about, but his pain on the operating table is clear. He's unable to scream here or express himself in anything but the simplest manner.

His silence while 'working' echoes that - it could be memories from his synapses firing randomly, or hints that he's still in there somewhere. We just don't know. Kurt certainly hopes so.

The Winter Soldier could be resisting his brainwashing. He might recognise his friend. The actual method of control is concealed so his every pause and movement, every sniff is open to speculation. The brainwashed killer is always freed, right? Yeah, but not in the first issue, sadly. Kurt fights back with tears in his eyes, exchanging the book for the bullet.

That's German for 'God bless'

Kurt performs a stunning BAMF/AK47 combo, firing from everywhere and nowhere. It's breathtaking action and shows us this is a more hardened Kurt. He's still an incredibly hopeful and optimistic person, which makes his death sting all the more. Logan stabs where he's going to be before he arrives and drives his claws right through his body.

The depth of their friendship is only properly revealed as Kurt is dying. If it means anything to Logan now he doesn't show it. He confirms everyone is dead, turns, and leaves.

I can't truly do it justice panel by panel with Tumblr image limits, and I'm not sure I'd want to. Logan returning as the state-owned Winter Soldier to kill his former friends is the emotional core and establishment of premise, but it's a wild ride when read sequentially. We're shown a lot of the what and why but not the how and when. Kurt and Raven won't be showing up but the Eurasian Republic is where all the mutants are - there's a lot of familiar faces for Logan to hunt. Pirate it if you have to - Ultimate Wolverine is worth it.

[layla4567]

A WHOLE NEW WORLD PT2

Shanks x Mermaid!reader

Summary: You decide to stay with Shanks for a while and see what happens. You will discover that life will give you obstacles that you will have to face.

Warnings: Again fluff things (pretty corny), beta read, Shanks never loses his arm because I say so, kissing, sfw, a bit of angst near the end (but don't worry is a happy ending)

Wc: 4k

A/N: This will be the final part! I wasn't planning on making a second part but someone reblogged the previous part wanting it to continue lol (thank you for that I feel honored) So I got some inspiration, I hope you like it

"YES! I KNEW IT! THAT'S WHY YOU WERE SO WEIRD!". Young Luffy said, jumping with his arms raised as he saw the two of you.

Shanks moved away from you a little and looked at the laughing boy.

"And when were you going to tell me that you were playing with a mermaid, huh kid?"

Luffy almost turned pale and ran away. You and the redhead burst into laughter along with the rest of the crew. Even in the pirate's arms he turned to see you again and give you a smile full of love. Your eyes expressed what words never could, they were shining in a special way at that moment as if you had the stars hanging from your pupils, shining just for him, like a gift. The captain, after looking at you for a long time in silence, swallowed and said.

"What will you do now (y/n)? Will you go back to the sea?"

Your smile faded a little and you could see concern in his eyes. An immense longing for you to stay with him. You didn't know what to say, was it worth going back to the bottom of the ocean after everything he sacrificed for you? Would you still call it home even if he wasn't there?

"Please stay with me… Just for a while at least". He begged in a low voice so that others couldn't hear him.

His tone of voice made your heart ache a little. He really wanted to stay with you, and honestly you did too. But you were worried about what could happen if you didn't return to the sea, your parents could start a war to search for you in the sky, land and sea. But when you saw Shanks' eyes you knew it was the right thing to stay.

"I will, I'll stay"

The smile appeared on the previously dejected pirate and grew larger. Very gently he made you wrap your arms around his neck and lifted you up holding your tail. He took care of you carefully out of the raft and put you on the boat.

"What are you doing standing there watching? Come on move and get something where she can be in the water!"

The pirates, as if they were dolls that had been wound up, moved quickly like ants trying to get something for you. You smiled amused, Shanks seemed like a good captain because his entire crew always obeyed and you knew that this was because they liked him and felt comfortable with him, otherwise a severe and feared captain would not have been able to obtain the same results because at any moment his crew could stab him in the back. He held you firmly against his chest and you moved the tip of your tail up and down, waiting patiently. Suddenly a pirate dragged a wooden bathtub full of water, it wasn't very big but you could get into it. The red-haired man gently placed you in the bathtub. The water was perfect, neither too cold nor too hot. You shook your tail happily, splashing some water as he looked at you smiling. The other pirates gathered around you, completely surrounding you and looking at you with curiosity as if you were a creature from another planet. Well, you certainly weren't something you saw every day, but it still seemed overwhelming to you. Shanks noticed your concern and ordered the others to move away.

"Oi cods, give her space, come on, move away and continue doing your tasks!"

Again, although somewhat reluctantly, the crew slowly dispersed to different areas of the ship. Only you and Shanks were left on the deck. He approached and crouched down to be at your height, he placed a hand on the edge of the bathtub and slid his fingers into the water, checking the temperature, moving them and playing with the sensation of the liquid on his skin. Without stopping looking at you with a smile

"I hope you can adapt and feel comfortable on this boat, and don't worry about them, sometimes they are a bit airheaded but they are harmless"

You laughed softly and he admired every inch of you.

"Do you think this will work?" . You said a little worried and your brow wrinkled upwards, always so expressive.

"We'll make it work, you'll see."

Your face relaxed, when you were with him you felt safe. Your fingers touched his that were still in the water and you took his hand, intertwining your fingers and giving it a gentle squeeze. They looked at each other smiling, sometimes words were unnecessary when looks could say everything, he didn't want to leave your side.. A couple of pirates had stayed in a corner looking at their captain with amusement while they laughed softly and whispered among themselves. Suddenly their giggles caught your attention and when you turned to see them they were shamelessly mocking each other by drawing hearts in the air with their fingers or pretending to hug themselves and cuddle while kissing the air. You couldn't help but burst out laughing and Shanks, who until now only had eyes for you, looked in the direction of the other two pirates and opened his eyes wide as he frowned and blushed slightly. Disturbed and ashamed, he jumped to his feet.

"Damn seaweed, didn't I tell you to get to work?!". He exclaimed exasperatedly as he addressed them with his hands up, chasing them away as if they were dogs while you were still laughing.

Little by little you were getting used to life on the boat. It was still difficult because due to your status as a mermaid and your tail you had to always stay in the water, but the wooden bathtub they had gotten you was perfect and they had also placed one in what was your new room, so the only thing I had was What Shanks did was pick you up and carry you to your room, and he was always happy to do it.

Shanks had decorated your room in the best way possible. I had placed some shells on a desk and hung starfish and seaweed from the ceiling, so you wouldn't miss the sea so much. That gesture had touched your heart deeply. Who knew a pirate could have such a soft heart? You imagined them to be heartless and malevolent but he was different. Fun, attentive, kind… your parents might have been wrong in judging humans. Every night he came to wish you sweet dreams and sometimes he stayed a little longer chatting with you until you fell asleep.

You were sleeping peacefully in the bathtub with your hands resting on the edge and your head resting on your arms when you heard in your dreams that a door slowly opened. You blinked several times until you opened your eyes. The morning light streamed in through the ship's round window. When you looked towards the door you saw Shanks standing leaning against the frame smiling at you. You finished opening your eyes and smiled at him.

"Hello sleeping beauty, ready to start the day?". The pirate said as he approached you.

You closed your eyes and smiled toothlessly as you stretched like a cat, wrinkling your nose tenderly. He squatted down and rested his arms on the edge of the bathtub.

"Did you sleep well?"

You finished stretching and feeling your body more relaxed, you sighed "Like never before, thank you."

"I'm glad to hear that. Well beautiful, how about we go on deck? Luffy is waiting for you"

I then slide my hands into the water and surround your tail to lift you up. You, who were still half asleep, let out a surprised shriek that made him laugh. As always, you surrounded his neck with your arms and, yawning tiredly, you laid your head on his chest. Shanks, who was not expecting this, felt his heart speed up a little. When you reached the deck, Luffy was already waiting for you next to the bathtub. He had his arms up to the elbows in the water and moved his hands playfully as he concentrated on seeing the inside of the bathtub. The redhead arrived laughing when he saw the naughty boy. Luffy, upon hearing his footsteps, quickly took out his hands, caught red-handed, and blushed.

"Oh hi! I was just uhh checking to make sure it's not too cold for you!"

"Yeah sure, and you looked like a lot of fun doing it". Shanks answered mischievously.

Young Luffy got a little nervous and the pirate laughed amusedly. After leaving you in the tub he shook Luffy's hair and walked away. The curly-haired boy sat on the ground while still looking at your tail in admiration. His little eyes were big and bright and you thought they were adorable.

"Luffy do you like my tail that much?". You said laughing

"Is that is so pretty! I've never seen a mermaid up close, and she looks like the color of Shanks' hair."

You turned to see the captain who was busy at the helm. "That's true."

And so I spent the afternoon with you and Luffy playing. He was crawling around your bathtub and you were trying to catch him. Throughout the ship the only thing you could hear was the laughter of the two of you. From time to time the red-haired captain looked at the two of you, smiling warmly.

"Catch you!!" . You exclaimed as you touched the boy's back with the tips of your fingers.

Luffy squealed laughingly as he felt the water slip from your fingers and wet his shirt. He got up exhausted from having been crouched for so long but as happy as ever.

"You're very fun, I like playing with you!"

"You are too, in fact you are the purest child I have ever met. You are like a little walking rainbow, always knowing how to come out at the right time and bringing joy to everyone". You said solemnly

The young boy smiled until his little eyes wrinkled and hugged you tightly, hanging on to your neck. You gasped in surprise and giggled and hugged him back, rubbing his back. Shanks watched the scene from afar, sighing tenderly. Being so good with the children, he couldn't help but think how good a mother you could be one day.

When the child broke away from your embrace, he whispered in your ear.

"Could you sing that song you taught me one day, please?"

Smiling motherly at his cute request, you nodded, satisfying his wishes. Luffy sat cross-legged on the wooden floor and clearing your throat you began to sing. Suddenly the entire ship succumbed in silence to hear your voice, as if you had put them under a spell. Without realizing it, the other pirates had gotten a little closer to you and had also sat down like children waiting for their turn to ask Santa Claus for their gifts. It was a beautiful lullaby, it talked about longing for the old days and enjoying the little things like the warmth of the sun or the blue sky. You intoned each note with your heart. Everyone was looking at you and sighing with their faces resting on their hands, the only one who didn't seem so surprised was Shanks himself since he had already heard you sing, even so it was always a delight to hear you as if it were the first time. At the end of the song everyone applauded happily, you shrugged your shoulders blushing and smiled shyly. You looked in the direction of the redhead and you smiled at each other, holding your gaze for a few seconds.

That same night when the captain took you to your room bridal style and left you in the bathtub, he stayed with you a while longer.

"It seems like you won their hearts out there, should I be worried that they'll pay more attention to you than me now?". He said playfully.

You laughed softly, shaking your head vigorously. "Never that. They love you, you can tell that you are an excellent captain for them."

He nodded smiling and then took your hand to kiss your knuckles "But I love you and no one else but you."

You blushed and smiled looking down as he massaged your knuckles with his thumb always keeping his eyes on yours.

"You know, I love that you get along with Luffy, he's someone important to me and…"

Shanks stopped there mid-sentence, suddenly not knowing how to continue. He wanted to share his thoughts with you but he was afraid that you would reject him or get angry with him.

"Yes? Please continue, what were you going to say?". You said anxiously

He swallowed hard. "Uh, I think… you'd be good with kids someday… if you wanted to."

You looked at him open-mouthed and you felt your heart hammering in your chest. Was he trying to say that he wanted to have a child with you? Your cheeks began to heat up slightly and you could swear that the water would begin to boil and evaporate if he stayed there with you any longer. You accidentally leaned closer to him and he did the same.

"Shanks.. do you meant it?" You breathed close to his lips, looking at them.

His gaze went from your lips to your eyes "Yes… but I don't want to force you into anything, it's just-"

You didn't let him finish. You crashed your lips into his in a passionate kiss. You swallowed his gasp of surprise, you just wanted to taste his lips and eat his mouth. He slowly slid a hand into the bathtub, searching for your tail. When he found it with his open palm he ascended, caressing you gently. His touch tickled your belly. When he reached your stomach he rose a little more and the warmth of his hand made you let out a weak moan. You placed your hands on his shoulders and circled your waist, resting his hand firmly on your hip. Before things could continue to heat up you separated, catching your breath. You saw that he kept leaning drunk and eager for your kisses and when his lips approached yours again you laughed softly and gently pushed him back.

"Good night Shanks, sleep tight."

He looked at you with sad puppy eyes and gave a slight pout that almost made you change your mind but you stood your ground, you didn't want to wake the others. He understood and gave up, walking away towards the door. Before leaving he told you

"Rest (y/n), and dream of me". He winked

You giggled at his playful tease. When he closed the door you sank into the water and closed your eyes, and as if it were some kind of visionary, that night you did dream about him.

For a crew to have a mermaid was a good thing and with your knowledge of the entire ocean and its depths, the pirates you lived with had to take full advantage of that. So since you couldn't move on land you would do it by sea. Every noon when the ship set sail they would take you down into the boat and you would go into the depths of the water guiding the ship towards safe areas or warning of any rock that could not be seen with the naked eye and could sink the ship and leading the way. You were their eyes while they were up there

That day, like so many others, they had put you on the raft and then lowered you into the water.

"Be careful down there, okay?". Shanks told you something fearful

He was very protective and not only of you but of Luffy as well. He knew you could take care of yourself but he couldn't help but worry every time he left you alone.

You placed a hand on his cheek, reassuring him. "Everything will be fine, don't worry."

A few minutes later, the crew lowered the raft and with a splash it fell into the water where with one jump you sank into the sea. You were faster than any fish so immediately the boat set sail and tried to follow you closely. You explored the deep ocean without finding anything alarming. From time to time you let yourself be carried away by the happiness that came from being in the water where you had grown up and greeting one or another dolphin that passed near you. Satisfied with your search, you stuck your head out of the water a few meters from the boat and shouted to them that you had found nothing and that everything was in order.

Relieved, they looked at you smiling and prepared the raft to get you back on. Happy you looked towards the horizon enjoying the view. You stayed like that for a few seconds until you noticed something was wrong. Suddenly a small whirlwind began to open in the water. At first it was small but as the minutes passed it grew. Like a black hole that swallowed everything. They hadn't noticed it yet but you turned pale and your heart raced, I already knew what it meant. The whirlwind now seemed like a tidal wave and the blue sky was being covered with gray clouds, as if a storm would break out at any moment. At that precise moment Shanks looked at the sky and realized what was happening. He ran to the railing of the boat, sticking his head out, and saw you there unable to move in the water.

"(Y/N) WHAT'S HAPPENING?"

"IT'S MY FAMILY! I KNEW SOONER OR LATER THEY WOULD FIND ME!". You said desperately

Shanks noticed that the ocean currents were getting stronger and shaking the ship. Without thinking twice he let go of the raft, bringing the boat closer to you.

"COME ON UP, QUICKLY!"

You swam with all your strength feeling like something was following you but you didn't know what it was. You jumped onto the raft and when they were lifting you something jumped out of the water and grabbed your tail, pulling it and pulling you back into the sea. You screamed and clung to the raft, when you turned to see what had caught you you saw that it was your cousin with her face twisted with anger.

"Traitor!! You went with the humans and abandoned us!"

"No! That's not true! Let me go!!". You exclaimed scared.

Shanks along with his crew raised the boat at full speed but now with two mermaids it was heavier and they had to use force. When the raft reached the top he leaned down to grab you and you clung to his arms, shaking your tail hard to get rid of your cousin who was holding you firmly like a tick. Shanks leaned closer and closer to try to lift you up and onto the deck but he made a serious mistake. By bending so much he was at the complete mercy of your cousin who was blinded by anger.

"So this is the damned pirate that took you away from us, YOU'LL SEE WHAT I DO WITH HIM!"

And with the strength of a thousand horses she grabbed him by the arms and threw him into the sea along with her, sending him to the bottom.

"NO CORAL DON'T DO IT!!!". You screamed in anguish, your face scrunched up in terror.

In panic you saw how she was taken to the bottom of the ocean and in desperation you jumped after her, while the aquatic whirlwind continued to happen and the sky continued to get grayer and grayer, shaking the boat. You swam with all the strength that your tail allowed you. Your cousin dug her nails into the pirate's shoulders and you saw how he writhed. Your cousin, who was older than you, was faster and had more resistance, so little by little she was moving away. Frightened, you watched as Shanks was losing strength and moving slower, closing his eyes. This lit a fuse in you and, frowning, you swam further and further until you reached her, you weren't going to let them take him from you, you weren't going to lose him. With a strong and abrupt push you pushed your cousin away from him. Your rage and determination were so great that the blow sent your cousin away and when she tried to follow you you were already swimming towards the raft.

You nervously placed Shanks' unconscious body on top of the wooden raft as best you could and then climbed onto it, protecting his body with yours as if you were a shield. They took you up quickly and when you reached the top they helped you get on and put the captain's body on the ground. He dragged you quickly and desperately towards him while the others gave you space.

Luffy approached, scared and distressed. "Would he be okay?"

Distraught, you turned to see him, he was in the middle of two pirates looking at you scared. You turned to see Shanks who still had his eyes closed but was breathing. You also wanted him to wake up so with all your heart you hoped and hoped that he would be okay.

You moved closer to his face and placed your hands on his chest, his wet hair sticking to his face. Your brow furrows upward and your face wrinkles with sadness.

"Please, please wake up! Tell me something!". He implored with moist eyes and a broken voice

But he was still unconscious and you didn't get a response. You couldn't help it and burst into tears. Luffy wanted to sit with you and comfort you but a pirate stopped him by putting his hand on his shoulder. You clung to the captain's soaked shirt that was sticking to his skin.

"Please I want you to wake up. Don't leave me, I love you". You sobbed and rested your forehead on his chest.

A dead silence reigned on the ship. A couple of tears fell from Luffy's eyes. You felt terrible and deep down you felt like this was your fault. If you had not been so curious and so reckless, if you had listened to your parents and not approached humans, none of this would have happened. But another part of you didn't regret anything, because you had discovered a completely different and wonderful new world, you had met equally beautiful people, for the first time you had known what freedom was.

You were so deep in your thoughts and emotions that you didn't realize that Shanks had woken up. He slowly opened his eyes and when you heard a pitiful moan you raised your head with your eyes wide open. He began to cough and turned around to spit out the water he had swallowed. From afar Luffy shouted and clapped his hands happily. When the captain recovered he was still lying on the floor and you were on top of him. He looked at you smiling and a little tired but happy. You laughed and cried at the same time, relieved and letting out all the sorrows and emotions that you had saved. Shanks cupped your cheeks and placed his forehead against yours.

"I was so scared, I thought I was going to lose you and-". You said between hiccups

"Shh don't say that, I would never leave you, I'm already here". He calmed you down.

It was like a balm. They both merged into a strong hug while the crew, always happy that their captain was safe, smiled with relief. Suddenly the redhead separated a little from you and whispered in your ear.

"(y/n) I love you too much and I mean it since I saw you, you have opened my heart. When I was under the water I realized something and that is that I can't live without you. Would you do me the honor of being my wife?"

You felt your eyes glaze over again and you broke away completely to look at him before you could answer. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out something. When he handed it to you you saw that it was a ring, a wire hoop with a pearl set in the center. It was simple and simple but it seemed like the most beautiful thing in the universe and even more beautiful than if they had given you a diamond ring. The crew gasped in surprise. You covered your face with one hand and crying with emotion, you nodded your head several times. Feeling like his heart would burst out of his chest with happiness, Shanks smiled hugely and grabbed your hand to put the ring on it. The crew went crazy just like little Luffy and celebrating their captain's achievement they all shouted happily. Suddenly when the red-haired man finished sliding the ring on your finger you felt a tingle on your tail and you noticed that it started to glow. Shanks got up and you moved away and sat down, watching as your tail began to glow more intensely to the point of dazzling you. You covered your eyes a little and out of the corner of your eye you noticed how the tip of your fins was disappearing as if it were becoming invisible and some toes appeared in their place. The transformation continued until only two legs were left instead of your tail, you tried to cover yourself, embarrassed since you weren't wearing anything down.. Luffy opened his mouth in astonishment and a pirate covered his eyes so that he could not continue seeing.

Shanks saw you stunned but when he noticed that your legs appeared and that you were naked from the waist down he quickly took off his shirt and wrapped you in it.

"I-I don't understand why your tail disappeared?"

You looked at him smiling "When a mermaid commits to a human, she loses her tail and her status as a mermaid."

"Does that mean you're human now?"

You nodded, looking at him lovingly. You noticed that the waters were now calm and the sky clear again. Shanks approached you confused and crouched down next to you.

"You really gave up being a mermaid for me?"

"Oh love, I would go to the end of the world for you"

And you two looked at each other and, touching your foreheads, you felt that the best was about to begin…

....

"And what happened next!?". Exclaimed a small voice full of impatience

"Yes! What happens next? Come on, tell us!". Said another with annoyance

A tender laugh came out of a woman's mouth, while the children looked anxiously. "Well, let's say that the little mermaid and the brave pirate got married, had two beautiful children and lived happily ever after. Did you like it?"

The boy and girl sitting on the floor of the ship shouted happily in agreement while the woman laughed tenderly. Suddenly a handsome boy with a straw hat and brown hair approached the anchored ship and jumped up onto the deck.

"How are little Nerea and Luca?". He said smiling and looking at the children

The girl and the boy gave Luffy a big hug and you got up from the barrel you were sitting on and looked at them, feeling your heart warmer. Luffy has grown so much and now he even has his own crew called the Straw Hats. Shanks had given him his precious hat and now he cared for it like it was gold, he was so proud of it. Sometimes when Luffy had time he would come visit you two and tell about his adventures with pride. Although you were now the mother of Nerea and Luca, you still saw Luffy as a third son.

And talking about them you couldn't be happier. They both looked so much like their father. They had inherited her hair color, red as fire but Nerea had your eyes. And they both appreciate the pirate's personality, especially Luca. Shanks finished his work and came to your side, putting his arm around your shoulder and kissing your cheek. When the children saw him, they ran towards him.

"DAD!!"

"Hey flea! Come here darling"

The pirate lifted his daughter, kissing the tip of her nose.

"What about me?". Luca said a little sad and jealous.

"Oh you too, rascal, come." Shanks raised his son with his other arm, making him laugh. Luffy watched everything amused and you got emotional every time Shanks played with them. He was a loving father

In the end everything turned out well, you got used to your human life and you had built a beautiful and happy family. And you had seen Luffy grow up watching him become a pirate and captain of his own ship. You were proud of everything you had achieved and what your loved ones had achieved too.

But if it was about achievements, you couldn't leave your husband behind. He was with you through thick and thin, during pregnancy and when the twins were born. You looked at him and he looked back at you with a smile.

"I love you, you know that?". You said

"I know because you tell me every time you see me." He laughs "But I love you more."

He approached and kissed you lovingly, earning an eww from his children. Laughing Shanks tickled them and chased them around the ship with you running behind laughing happily, spreading joy. Yes, sometimes life takes away, but it also gives.

I'm a slut for Disney movies (the classics especially) so after doing a marathon of classic princess movies and some live actions this is what came out :P

I just love fairy tales and happy endings 😭✨

[obscureaestheticist]

DC & MARVEL are awful at publishing their own amazing stories...

Read some western comics for the first time in a while this year. I wanted to start reading more in general anyway so I added comics and manga to the list. HOOOOOOOOO GGGAAAD DAYUM some of this stuff is good! I wanted to start with DC's Absolute & Marvel's New Ultimate. I've read mostly DC but have never fully gotten into a series or mini series before. These new books were meant to be jumping on points for newcomers so I wanted to give it a try.

And I gotta say... these need more attention... By their own publishers, I mean.

Even though I only really started in the last 3 months of the year, I get peoples frustrations with these being monthly releases and the fact that a lot these you HAVE to buy individually and not part of a magazine or some other form of collective release. At least until a volume release. On top of that these are NOT easy to find, not where I live, and not online either. You need a subscription service for the digital releases and you need to find a comic book shop to even buy it physical. These aren't cheap either! If I wanted to buy, say, a manga volume's worth of issues to try and catch up, its almost 5x that of a cheap physical manga volume. And the only place you're going to be getting a volume of some of these is at a book store, not a comic shop, just because there's way more bookstores generally. By the time those volumes have released there's no gaurantee the series that you like is even still running, because they havn't made it easy to even find these to read and it might've been cancelled due to low sales. So that leaves me with a problem... I either cave in and get a subscribtion or I pirate it. I'm poor af, of course I'm going to pirate it. MOST people will. Except they won't because barely anybody knows these comics even exist. There's little to NO marketing around any of these comics. Seriously, why aren't these in a magazine?! Why aren't these easily veiwable digitally? I don't want a subscription service just to look at a few books. I'm DONE with subscription services. Even if it's just a website where you pay to read online per series, or even throwing these into webtoon behind a paywall, it'll be infinitly better. At least that way people actually get to see the amazing work they're putting out there. And... yeah, the monthly wait on these is agonising. If the wait cannot be shortened then a weekly magazine is needed DESPERATELY, because there is NOTHING in the way of audience interaction for newcomers except a very limited fandom which might be gone in a few months just cause the series could be up and cancelled at the snap of their fingers. Their websites suck... Like, straight up, they suck. Nothing unique or stylised about them, not even a bit of background music or some flare, it's trailers for games, movies, and TV. Theres not even viewer guides for comics, bits of info on the world, or even those silly "who is the strongest/fastest/richest,etc" graphics like in old magazines. there's no fun. It's painful because the stuff thats out there is genuinly good. A lotta bad, certainly, but the recent stuff is thoroughly engaging. Another thing, the issue 1 crisis. If you don't know what this is, it's publishers resetting issues back to number 1 to bump up the price. It's disgusting. Especially when it makes it a NIGHTMARE to try and find the series you're looking for... and its same name as 8 other series only seperated by a date. THESE NEED TITLES! I was reading Ultimate Black Panther and Black Panther recently... Or rather, NEW Ultimate Black Panther: T'Challa vs. The Moon Knight, and Black Panther[2023]: A King Without A Crown. The naming alone causes frustrations when trying to navigate and find a story you might actually like. King Without A Crown is a title I just made up for the 2023 release. Its a great story, the art is some of the best I've seen in any comic. And the premise is very enganging, about T'Challa having been exiled from Wakanada, returned to watch over it as a secret protector and trying to reconnect with the people in places he believed he'd overlooked. To try and deepen his understanding as a king, and as protector of his country. It's Cyberpunk Crime Thriller Sci-Fi with a mix of central African mysticism. It even comes with an official map.

It got cancelled. Only lasted 10 issues... New Ultimate X-Men / Secret Society X Men is a shojo horror mystery set in japan inspired by major works of J-Horror... and it's FREAKIN' X-MEN Nobody talkin' about it. New Ultimate Spider-Man is about Peter, married to MJ, Father of 2, becoming Spider-Man after receiving word from the future that he was supposed be a hero and that it was taken from him, and Uncle Ben is alive in this... Nobody talkin' about it. New Ultimate Black Panther is kinda slow but it's about 2 warlords trying to infiltrate and take over wakanda who are posing as this world's versions of Konshu & Ra and leads to a greater conspiricy about Vibranium itself. Nobody talkin' about it. I LOVE the absolute series. I'm a DC fan, but these Marvel works also need more love, like... guys. Not to mention Spider-Man and Ult X-Men is fanfic and fanart GOLD! LIKE GET ON THIS SH!T NOW! There are other big issues i've got with western comics but I wanted to talk about it's accessibility. I love comics and manga a lot, it was what got me to start reading in the first place, and I want these cool stories to continue in a way that is like, actually enjoyable. I wanna talk about these with people, but there's no point if nobody is out there to enjoy it with. In the meantime, if you like these stories but can't afford them, make fanwork of it. Fiction, prose, poetry, art, music, silly comments, anything. Same goes for Manga and Indie works that you like. Don't let a company's incompetence stifle your ability to enjoy art that has ACTUAL passion behind it.

[andypantsx3]

Deceiving the Duke | 1 | Todoroki Shouto

pairing: Todoroki Shouto x Female Reader length: 2.5k of 30k words | 1st of 9 chapters summary: When Camie Utsushimi elopes on the eve of her society debut, scandal threatens to destroy the family’s prospects. It’s up to you, a maid, to impersonate Camie throughout the Season, long enough that her elder sister can make a match. The only trouble? Lord Shouto Todoroki is also intent on making a match—and that match, quite impossibly, appears to involve you. tags/warnings: romance, regency au, class differences, hidden identity/identity porn, aged up characters, eventual smut

You knew Camie had done something terrible before you’d even opened the note.

It lay there on her pillow, addressed to her mother in her horrendously girlish hand, a riot of wild loops and curlicues.

Camie had gotten into enough trouble over the years that you recognized when she was trying to obscure her misdeeds under aggressively elaborate flourishes of ink. And with the volume of ink on this letterface—coupled with the fact that it was the letter in her bed, rather than the girl herself–it could only mean the message within was going to be her biggest misdeed of them all.

Your first instinct was to hide it–stuff the letter away up the chimney flue, where it would hopefully crisp and burn, never to be read by human eyes. Specifically by Mrs. Utsushimi, who was prone to even more exaggerated fits than Camie. If she never read it, she’d never be able to spiral into the dramatics you were certain would follow on its heels.

In your years of service to the Utsushimi family, you’d learned only too well how her theatrics usually ended with a mess of new things for you to mend–spilled tea to soak out of the table linens, runny eye powder to wash out of her handkerchiefs, dress collars in need of restitching after she tore them, clutching dramatically at her breast.

Camie was usually the root cause of the high dudgeon, though she was usually here to make amends to you afterwards. But now, you knew she’d never return permanently to this house. You knew the letter meant the end.

Things would be even worse, though, were Mrs. Utsushimi to be given no explanation for Camie’s disappearance, left to her own devices and flights of fancy. There would most certainly be talk of rogues and pirates and highwaymen, and you’d be sent to fetch the police.

So instead of squirreling the letter away, you carried it down to the morning room, your stomach churning.

Mrs. Utsushimi was predictably overwrought, her eyes growing wide as she snatched it from you.

“Kidnapped!” She sobbed as she opened it over the breakfast table, reaching her conclusion before the letter had even fully come unfolded. “Camie’s been kidnapped!”

You carefully suppressed the eyeroll you might have once given Camie over her mother’s head.

Camie was missing, but she had most certainly not been kidnapped.

As a maid, you didn’t have much background in the kidnapping business, but you rather thought that any criminal worth their salt might have targeted a family of more means than the Utsushimis—who were well to-do, but untitled, and living off a stipend that did not extend itself much beyond the daily upkeep of three women.

Any criminal progressing through the house would be able to tell that the majority of the Utsushimi’s belongings were concentrated in their sitting room, so as to appear well-off to any visitors, but the rest of the house was starkly barren of almost any decor. The Utsushimis’ jewels sparkled prettily by candlelight but a close inspection would reveal them to be paste, and the retention of only two household staff–yourself and a cook—would have made it clear to even the most inexperienced criminal that the Utsushimis had no funds with which to ransom a kidnapped daughter.

The note itself was also a giveaway. You doubted a kidnapper with any dignity would dare address the letter face with: Sweet Mumsy, please don’t be angry.

Finally, there was the fact that Camie had been in love with Lord Inasa Yoarashi since they were children to contend with. A note left in the dead of night announcing their elopement and subsequent honeymoon on the continent–to give Mrs. Utsushimi time to calm down, you suspected–was not entirely unexpected.

“She’s not been kidnapped, mama,” the eldest Miss Utsushimi said–Caroline, the only voice of reason in the Utsushimi household. “She’s with Lord Inasa, and you know he will take good care of her.”

“Take good care of her?” Mrs. Utsushimi echoed in disbelief. “What good can come of this? She’ll be ruined!”

Caroline shook her head. “The town will talk, but you know Camie, and you know Lord Inasa. They will be good for one another. And Lord Inasa has the means to ignore the ton–she’ll want for nothing.”

“Then what of us?” Mrs. Utsushimi cried. “What of your prospects? Already in your second season. A younger sister, wedded before you, and a history of scandal in the family? Caroline, you know very well this means no proper gentleman will have you now!”

Caroline paused, as Mrs. Utsushimi buried another sob in her handkerchief. Even you shifted awkwardly in the doorway, feeling slightly guilty.

A younger sister married off before the eldest would suggest something was wrong with Caroline, that she somehow might be damaged goods. And an elopement in the family would cast suspicions on Caroline’s own purity.

You didn’t like Caroline as much as you liked Camie, who had always been so free with her affections, even to the servants. You and Camie were of an age, and she’d taken to you immediately when you’d first come to the family as a specky teenager, desperately seeking a job to support your family. Camie had taught you to read, taught you card games, snuck you refreshments out of family dinners, and unabashedly gifted you many of her own ribbons and trinkets as she outgrew them, much to the dour disapproval of her mother.

Caroline had been somewhat more aloof, comparatively, clearly more aware of your status as a servant. But she had always been polite nevertheless, and she had definitively looked the other way whenever she caught you and Camie at your hijinks.

You did not think that Caroline, standoffish as she was, deserved the fate Camie had all but sealed for her. You counted Camie your closest friend, but even you could see this had been thoughtless of her.

You gathered yourself together, making an awkward noise like the clearing of your throat to get their attention.

“That’s only if they are seen,” you said, trying to sound reassuring, and also like it was at all your place to interject. “And as Camie’s not had her first season yet no one will recognize her.” You hoped you sounded confident in this.

Privately, you thought Camie was as unsubtle as six baboons riding a tiger dressed in petticoats playing the trombone–and the combination of Camie and Lord Yoarashi would be even worse. But no one knew Camie on sight, considering this season was meant to be her debut into society, and as long as she didn’t talk, the Utsushimi family might, just might, be saved from scandal.

“And what are people to think if she doesn’t debut this year?” Mrs. Utsuhshimi demanded, swiping a scone off the breakfast tray and buttering it angrily. “I’ve already announced the Monomas’ ball this week as her coming out. People will start talking if she’s not present.”

“She’s taken ill,” you supplied. “Perhaps she’s been sent to stay with a cousin while she recovers.”

“The ball is two nights from now, and I’ve still got an order in for her dresses, due to arrive this afternoon. I’ve made no mention of their being unnecessary until now.” Mrs. Utsushimi looked put out. “People will talk if the illness is so sudden. And what if they think Caroline a vector of the same disease?”

It went unsaid that Caroline could ill afford to be avoided. Especially not now that her efforts would need to be redoubled, to be married before news broke of Camie’s own nuptials.

You wracked your brain for a solution as the two women breakfasted. Illness was a no, pretending as though Camie hadn’t actually been meant to debut was a no…“Perhaps…if Camie did debut…..” you said, thinking aloud.

If they could feign an illness just long enough to recall her, and send her to subsequent events as though she were not already married…

Mrs. Utsuhimi’s sniffles seized in her nose. “If she—how would she debut now, girl?”

But it was probably far too late to recall Camie, and you could only guess where she’d be. Even if you could dispatch someone to collect her, you thought she would probably never agree to participate in the Season, far too put out and having been denied her adventure.

You’d have to think of something else.

“No, it’s silly–” you started to say, but Mrs. Utsushimi cut you off with a dramatic gasp.

“That’s it!” She cried. “No one knows Camie—and if we can get Caroline married off before the plot is revealed…”

You stared at her. What plot? Hadn’t you only now discussed how excuses might damage Caroline’s reputation? And what married off? Where were you supposed to find her a bridegroom at this hour?

But Mrs. Utsushimi quickly clarified the depths of her insanity. “It’ll have to be you. Anyone else might be talked into betraying her.”

You blinked. What would have to be you? That sounded almost like—

“We’ll have to alter her dresses–well, you will–and Caroline will have to imbue you with some etiquette, of course. I don’t suppose Camie left any of her jewels, did she? If not, you might borrow a few of my pastes–”

You dropped the silverware you’d been rearranging, the fork plopping into the butter with a flat little spat noise.

“You mean—impersonate Camie?” You blurted, mind suddenly reeling. “At—in public?”

“Well we certainly don’t need it here,” Mrs. Utsushimi said shortly, waving her handkerchief impatiently.

You took comfort in the expression on Caroline’s face, a horrified gape of her pert mouth that mirrored your own shock. “Mama,” she started, but her mother waved her off.

“Mrs. Utsushimi—ma’am—I couldn’t. That’s not—”

“Hush, hush,” Mrs. Utsushimi said, looking impatient. “It’s just until Caroline finds a husband. We’ll be uncovered, eventually, but Caroline will already be matched by then, and her virtues proven upon consummation.”

Caroline looked uncomfortable.

You too, could not think of a woman who might like to start her married life off on such a deception. Your heart twinged at her predicament.

But of course this entire scheme could not play out this way. You definitely could not pretend to be Camie. Not only because it was an idea so insane it beggared belief, not only because you were sure to be the least convincing gentlewoman of all time, but also because there was no benefit to you.

If the scheme was revealed, which it would be as soon as Camie returned from the continent and was decidedly a different person than the girl who’d flitted in and out of parties all season—you would be caught out. Propriety would obviously demand you be dismissed from the Utsushimi household, no matter how complicit the Utsushimis themselves were in the scandal, and you’d never work again in this town.

And besides taking care of yourself, you had parents in the countryside who needed looking after, and your wage, meager as it was, was essential to their upkeep.

“I can’t do it,” you said firmly, catching Mrs. Utsushimi’s eye. “I am sorry.”

Mrs. Utsushimi’s face pulled into annoyance, flapping her handkerchief dramatically at you. “Of course you can, I’ve just laid out the plan—”

“I mean that I have to look out for myself, ma’am. When I’m uncovered, you’d have to dismiss me, and I won’t have a job to go to next. I need the money for my family.”

Mrs. Utsushimi hummed, taking a thoughtful sip of her tea. Her eyes narrowed at you over the rim of the cup, and her voice emerged slightly muffled. “You mean you’d do it, otherwise? If your wages are taken care of?”

You blinked. “I—well, possibly—I’d need to consider…”

Mrs. Utsuhimi hummed again, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers. She was quiet for a long moment, staring at you with an intensity that had you squirming uncomfortably.

Finally, she made a pronouncement.

“While you are in between jobs, I will pay you a stipend of your regular wages,” she said. “I will also secure additional reimbursement from Camie’s new husband. Lord Inasa would think nothing of giving it.” This you knew to be true, from the little you’d interacted with him. More money than sense, that man. But generous, too, and fairly good-natured.

“And if you are unable to find work,” Mrs. Utsushimi continued, “I will ensure that Camie will secure you a place in her new household.”

Your heart warmed.

That sounded true enough. Already embroiled in scandal herself, and your friend besides, Camie would think nothing of giving you a place in her home. And given the judgmental nature of the ton, it was improbable she would be entertaining from her social set for quite some time, meaning you would likely never have the uncomfortable experience of waiting on someone you’d once duped.

It sounded foolproof—well, as foolproof as a plan that was foolish by its very nature could be.

It was utterly hare-brained…but if it meant money, and a place in Camie’s new home…

There was just the matter of you being convincing enough to pass as a member of Musutafu’s gentry.

You’d spent enough time with Camie to affect some of her genteel mannerisms, but there would be all manner of things you’d only heard tell of that you’d have to familiarize yourself with. How dance cards worked, the steps of dances themselves, affecting an educated conversation, which silverware pieces to use at the table—all of it sounded overwhelming.

With only a few days to prepare, you didn’t know if you could do it.

As if she sensed your hesitation, Caroline leaned forward at the other end of the table. She looked as though she still had doubts–you certainly did–-but you sensed a bit of resolve in her, as well. There was only so much a lady of her station could do–and she did need to marry well.

This was for her benefit.

“I’ll…help you,” she said, giving a tight, but genuine smile. “If we…if we really are doing this. We can start lessons after breakfast, and I will show you everything I know.”

You nodded, and Mrs. Utsushimi gave an artful wave of her handkerchief.

“Then it’s settled,” she pronounced, in tones that sounded terribly final. “For the next few months, you will be Camie.”

Your stomach turned over with a sudden bout of nerves. It meant risking everything about your current situation–and it would mean a new life in just a few months.

“A hundred pounds, I think, would be suitable?” Mrs. Utsushimi said, as though she could read your hesitation.

A hundred pounds. Enough to keep your parents comfortably for a few years, if you were smart about it. Enough that it was worth the potential risks.

And that settled it.

You would do it. You would be Camie. You would deceive the ton—all the lords, ladies, dukes and duchesses.

Or you would risk it all trying.

[thewillofdeez]

A Very AkaTaka Birthday

18+! Minors DNI!!!

Summary: It's Mihawk's birthday. His girlfriend gets him a very special surprise......a visit from his boyfriend, Shanks.

Characters: Mihawk, Shanks, Fem Reader

Warnings: Smut, smut, and more smut. Some plot at the beginning, established relationships. Threesome, polyamory, shibari, cum play, oral sex, 69, anal sex, straight sex......

Note: Started this almost a year ago, dropped it for a while, then scrambled to finish it in time to post today, on Shanks and Mihawk's birthday. This is the dirtiest, most foul, nasty, pornographic thing I've ever written in my life. Hope you enjoy! ^_^

It was Mihawk’s birthday, which meant it was Shanks’s birthday too. Mihawk had never been a big fan of his birthday and never actively celebrated it when given the choice, but every March 9th he found himself wondering if that choice would be taken away from him by his long-term partner…or as Shanks liked to say, his “birthday buddy.” Mihawk hated the term, and hated how most people didn’t respect his desire to not celebrate, but he did love Shanks very much and found it hard to say no to the man, who always, he had to admit, made it worth his while. Regardless, Shanks wasn’t here, and he was spending the day hiding in his room on Karai Barai Island. Just to be safe.

For a couple that had been together for over a decade, the two couldn’t have been more different. Mihawk was thoughtful, reticent, and careful. Shanks was fun-loving, boisterous, and pretty much an open-book. And yet, somehow, they worked well together. Sometimes Mihawk found himself wondering if the reason that they worked was because of their unique arrangement. Mihawk enjoyed living his life in a mostly solitary manner, while Shanks was the captain of one of the most powerful pirate crews in the world. They met up a few times a year, and perhaps it was this absence that made their hearts grow fonder. Sure, Mihawk missed his partner when he was away, but it just made the time they got together all the more special.

On top of that, their relationship was ethically non-monogamous. Shanks had a mix of casual encounters and long-term partners (none of whom had outlasted Mihawk yet for a variety of reasons), while Mihawk preferred to keep his sex life casual…well, he had anyway. That was before he met Y/N.

Y/N was the fourth member of the Cross Guild, and an old friend of Buggy’s. Buggy had asked her to join to manage some areas of the business that neither Mihawk, Crocodile, nor himself were adept at, and she jumped at the opportunity. Mihawk started falling for her when they first met….it was rather terrifying for him. His whole adult life he’d never carried such feelings for anyone besides Shanks. And yet, here she was….beautiful, skilled and – beyond his wildest dreams – falling for him too, and completely okay with his existing relationship.

Mihawk thought back to when he’d told Shanks about the new person in his life.

He’d stood before the transponder snail nervously for several minutes. Why the hell was he so nervous? He’d been on the receiving end of this call a dozen times, and it was always fine….but he’d never been the one making it. He’d never had a problem with Shanks sharing his heart in addition to his bed, but he wondered how his lover would handle being on the other side for the first time.

Taking a deep breath, he’d picked up the receiver, listening to the familiar ‘badabadabada.’

“Well hey there, Hawk-eyes,” Shanks drawled over the phone, his smirk visible through the snail. “How’s the business going?”

Mihawk couldn’t help but smile a little. He always forgot how much he enjoyed hearing Shanks’s voice.

“It’s fine, I suppose. It’s certainly lucrative. Shanks, I…I’d like to talk to you about something.”

Shanks’s brow furrowed in concern. “Of course, ‘Hawk….everything okay?”

“Yes, everything is fine….” Mihawk replied nervously. “Shanks…I met someone here. A woman. I….think I love her.”

The line was silent for a moment, then Shanks’s boisterous laughter came over the line. “Mihawk! That’s awesome! Holy shit, man, I thought you were gonna break up with me for a second there.”

Mihawk let out a nervous chuckle, “No, we’ve already established that I’m stuck with you for life. I’m just nervous…I’ve never felt like this about anyone except you. It’s strange. And scary. And…I wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”

Shanks grinned broadly. “I’d be a hell of a hypocrite if I wasn’t okay with you having a relationship while I’m over here having three including you. ‘Hawk, you deserve love too, since I can’t be around to give it to you all the time. It’s more than okay. Tell me about her.”

Mihawk smiled softly and told him about Y/N…how they met, how they got together, what he loved about her, everything. He also assured Shanks that she was aware of the situation, and that everything was consensual and she was fine with it.

Shanks chuckled. “You’ve got it bad, man. She sounds perfect. Can I meet her? Or at least talk to her? If you’re both okay with it, that is.”“She’d love that, actually, she’s asked me the same thing. I’ll arrange with her some time where you two can talk in private.”

“Perfect. I can’t wait. I love you, Mihawk.”

“I love you too.”

That was just a few weeks ago. True to his word, Mihawk had arranged for Y/N and Shanks to speak, and he was surprised when the conversation lasted well into the night. It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that she’d snuck into his bed.

Mihawk had groggily rolled over to capture her in his arms when he felt the bed shift beside him.

“I take it the call went well?” he’d said, his voice heavy with sleep.

Y/N let out a soft chuckle and curled up next to him. “It did. He’s fun. And he obviously loves you a lot. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Mihawk planted a soft kiss on her head, holding her close. “You have no idea how happy that makes me.” And with that, they both drifted off into sleep.

A knock on the door broke Mihawk from his thoughts. He looked up to see Y/N’s head peek in.

“Are you hiding?” she said, her voice teasing. She walked over to the large armchair where Mihawk sat and crawled onto his lap, bringing him in for a kiss. He paid little mind to the bag she was carrying.

“Until it’s tomorrow, yes,” he replied, wrapping his arms around her. “How did things go without me today?”

Y/N shrugged. “Business as usual, nothing too exciting. Buggy’s crew made you a cake.”

Mihawk rolled his eyes. “They would.”

She giggled and began kissing his neck. “You’re more likable than you think, you know. They love you.”

“That’s because we’re cult leaders, they don’t have a choice,” he deadpanned. She laughed in response.

“There you go, saying the quiet part out loud again.” She smiled and kissed his lips, placing a hand on his chest. “So….I know your birthday isn’t your thing…”

“Ugh, not you too, Y/N…” he said with a scoff.

“No, no, listen!” she said quickly. “I have a surprise for you. I promise you it’s something you’ll like, and you don’t have to leave this room for it. You don’t even have to think of it as something for your birthday, you can just think of it as…..something special that happens to occur on March 9th. Will you trust me?”

Mihawk narrowed his eyes at her. “It’d better be a sexy surprise.”

“Oh it is,” she smirked, her voice getting lower and she kissed along his neck and jaw. “Very sexy. But when I say I need you to trust me…I need you to trust me . Okay? If you want to stop at any point, it’s fine, I promise…but let me at least get started?”

Mihawk wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. It was still the early weeks of their relationship, and while they had certainly explored things each other liked and knew about what they didn’t like, he was a little cautious to be working off of no information. But he did trust her, entirely.

Mihawk nodded. “I trust you, Y/N, completely. Do I get to know anything about what we’ll be doing?”

“Nope,” she replied with a mischievous grin. “You’re going in blind. Now, I need you to strip down to your boxers.” She began unbuttoning his shirt, kissing along his neck and collarbone. When it was fully unbuttoned, she removed herself from his lap.

Mihawk chuckled. “As you wish,” he replied, obeying her request. He removed the shirt, then his pants and socks, leaving him in only his tight black boxer briefs. Y/N grinned, seeing how he was already becoming excited.

“Perfect,” she replied. “Now come over here.” She picked up the bag with one hand and with the other guided him to the large bed. “I want you to kneel on the bed for me.” Mihawk obeyed without a word, kneeling by the headboard and resting back on his calves, curious as to where this was going. He watched as she pulled out a long silk scarf from the bag.

“And where exactly will that be going?” he asked curiously.

Y/N crawled onto the bed and knelt before him, kissing him deeply. “Over those pretty eyes of yours, of course. Is that okay?” He nodded slowly, and she folded the scarf and wrapped it around his head, tying it tightly but not too much so. “Is that comfortable enough? Can you see anything?”

“It’s fine,” he responded, “And no, I can’t.”

“Good,” she said, running her fingers down his chest. “And no Observation Haki either. That will spoil the fun. Promise me?”

“I promise…” he said in a shuddering breath as he felt her fingers along his skin, the sensation already becoming heightened.

He heard her chuckle, then felt the bed shift, and heard her rummage through the bag. He desperately wanted to know what else she had in there. He got his answer when he felt thick, silky material being dragged across his skin: rope.

“I know you usually prefer to be the one doing the tying….is it alright if I tie you up?”

He smiled, appreciating that she was asking him at every step along the way. It made him feel more comfortable with being in a vulnerable position. “You know mere ropes can’t restrain me….but you can certainly try.”

“That’s all I needed to hear…” she said. He felt her move around him as she began tying him up, using some of the more simplistic shibari knots he had taught her. When she was done, his legs were completely free and still in a kneeling position, but his arms were bound completely behind his back and to his torso. He struggled a little, testing the strength of the ropes. Yes, he could certainly break them into strings if he really wanted, but he wouldn’t….not unless she asked him to anyway.

He felt the mattress shift as she removed herself from the bed. He could feel her eyes on him. “You look so good like this,” she said as she ran her fingers through his hair. “Now, I’ll be right back. I need to prepare your surprise….and remember: no Observation Haki. You promised.”

Mihawk smirked. “I did indeed. Do what you need to….I’m not going anywhere.”

He heard her giggle and walk away. Mihawk knew that she knew that Observation Haki wasn’t so easy to just turn on and off like a lightswitch. It was basically second nature. So in order to obey her request, Mihawk relaxed his body and focused on breathing, trying to bring himself into a slightly meditative state - enough that he wouldn’t instinctively focus on his Haki, but not enough that he wouldn’t be ready when she returned.

Mihawk’s reverie was broken when he felt the bed shift again and soft lips meet his. He grinned. “Welcome back,” he said, his tone sultry.

He was surprised when he felt another set of lips on his immediately after - rougher, and surrounded by coarse hair. He felt his breath catch in his throat. “Shanks?”

Mihawk felt the blindfold being untied from behind his head. He shook it off, desperate to see if he was right. Opening his eyes, Shanks was before him, the younger man already stripped down to his burgundy boxer briefs and a crooked smirk on his face.

“Hey there, Hawk-eyes,” he said with a grin. Y/N came up behind the red head and draped her arms around his shoulders, kissing his neck softly.

Mihawk couldn’t suppress a smile. “Well if this isn’t the most welcome sight I’ve ever seen. I can’t say I haven’t dreamed of this happening….it’s just a shame I can’t touch you,” he said, struggling against his restraints halfheartedly.

Shanks chuckled. “We’re in charge of your pleasure tonight. All you have to do,” he began, pushing Mihawk’s body back against the pillows and headboard,”....is relax.” Shanks straddled Mihawk and began to rub his clothed cock against the dark-haired man’s. They both groaned in pleasure at the feeling as Shanks moved his hips in slow waves. Shanks leaned into Mihawk’s ear and whispered, “Let the people you love take care of you…”

Mihawk and Shanks looked into each other’s eyes, then shared a deep, passionate kiss. Y/N sat at the edge of the bed, enjoying watching them. When the kiss broke, Shanks turned to her. “I didn’t come all this way just so you can watch,” he said with a grin. “Come here.”

Y/N obeyed and joined the two men, the three of them kissing passionately, licking, biting, and exploring each other’s bodies. Well…exploring each other’s and Mihawk’s body, as Mihawk was still bound, much to his frustration. But they made it worth his while, their hands roaming over his body, their lips on his skin all over…it was almost overwhelming. Eventually the three broke apart, panting and catching their breath. Shanks looked at Y/N mischievously and moved to the other end of the bed.

“Come here, pretty lady,” he said, beckoning her to him with a curled finger. She crawled across the bed to him and they embraced each other, kneeling on the soft mattress and kissing passionately. Mihawk couldn’t deny he loved the site, both on a sexual level and as something deeper…he couldn’t wait to see where this night would take them, but he had a good feeling.

Mihawk watched as his lovers kissed and touched all over, shivers shooting through his body as Shanks latched onto her neck and caused her to moan, after which he lowered his body onto hers, pushing her down on the bed.

Shanks looked up at him with a smirk. “It may be your birthday, Taka no Me,” he said, “But it’s mine too. And if it’s okay with you….I’d like to fuck your girlfriend.”

Mihawk huffed out a laugh, his heart pounding in his chest. “Do it. I want to see you fuck her. I want you to make her scream the way I do.”

Shanks smiled widely, then turned his attention to the woman under him. Mihawk watched as they kissed passionately, their hands roaming. With a smirk, Y/N helped Shanks remove his underwear, leaving him completely naked. She reached down to stroke him a few times, and Mihawk could feel his mouth beginning to water. It had been far too long since he’d felt Shanks’s cock in his mouth….but that would have to wait.

He watched as Y/N stripped herself of her remaining clothes until they were both naked together. Shanks knelt between her knees and ran his fingers along her hips and thighs, and Mihawk could see the goosebumps forming on her skin. Her body arched as Shanks inserted a finger into her dripping core, then another, slowly moving them in and out.

Shanks chuckled. “She’s so wet, ‘Hawk. Does she taste as good as she looks?”

Mihawk grinned devilishly. “Why don’t you find out?”

With permission given, Shanks sunk down and buried his face in her core, causing her to arch her body against him, craving his touch. His tongue was relentless, swirling around her clitoris and running up and down along her folds, dipping ever so slightly into her dripping hole. He worked her with his tongue and fingers, and her moans filled the room. Mihawk knew, at this point in their relationship, exactly what to touch and lick in order to send Y/N over the edge, but Shanks didn’t. From this vantage point he could see Shanks trying all of his tricks, trying to find what made her react in the ways he wanted.

“Fuck, Shanks!” she cried as his tongue flicked her clitoris just right, letting him know that that was the spot, right there. His fingers worked harder, the pressure just right. “Please keep going, please don’t stop…..”

But Shanks was, if nothing else, a tease, and nothing turned him on more than having his partner begging and pleading for him. He pulled away, licking his lips and smirking as she looked up at him with wide eyes.

Shanks looked over to Mihawk, his brown eyes sparkling. “Fucking delicious.”

“Mind coming over here and giving me a taste?” Mihawk replied. Shanks grinned and went to where Mihawk was still kneeling, his body tied, his erection pushing the elastic of his boxer briefs to the limit. He leaned in and kissed Mihawk, his tongue going deep into the other man’s mouth, allowing him to taste what Y/N gave him.

Y/N watched as the two men shared her release. She flipped herself onto her front, watching and waiting for Shanks to join her again, eager for the red-haired pirate to finish what he started. When they separated, she wiggled her ass playfully, letting him know she was ready. Shanks returned to her and knelt behind her, lining his cock up with her pink, puffy lips. He sunk into her quickly, all in one thrust, and began to move.

It was almost animalistic, Mihawk thought, as he watched Shanks fuck Y/N. Her back arched like a cat in heat as Shanks pounded into her rapidly, his hand gripping her hip tightly. Shanks and Mihawk locked eyes as the younger man moved, a look that said ‘ Patience…this will be you soon enough .’ Mihawk’s eyes watched hungrily as his boyfriend fucked his girlfriend, so hard and fast the bed shook until they both came. Y/N collapsed, clearly in need of a break. Shanks pulled out and watched as his release dripped out of her core and down her thighs. He placed two fingers at her core, gathering their mixed releases on them and then sticking them in his mouth, sucking them dry as Mihawk watched hungrily. He then grabbed a small towel and helped her clean up, kissing her softly.

“You take a break, get some water,” he said. “I think our man has waited long enough. Come join us when you’re ready.” Y/N could only nod and give a quiet uh huh , retreating to the other side of the room to catch her breath.

With Y/N in recovery, Shanks turned his attention to his bound partner, a playful grin on his face as he leaned in and kissed Mihawk again, his hand wandering down along the soft black ropes and Mihawk’s pale skin until his hand grasped his cock through his underwear. Mihawk let out a groan, his head rolling back.

“You’ve been so patient while I have my fun,” Shanks drawled, running his hand along Mihawk’s erection. “You deserve to be rewarded.” Shanks began tugging down the fabric, and Mihawk’s cock popped out, fully at attention and dripping with precum. Shanks mindlessly licked his lips before lowering his head and tasting the liquid that leaked from Mihawk’s cock. “Goddamn, Hawk-eyes, I missed you….” Mihawk tried to respond but the words were ripped from his throat and replaced with a moan as Shanks’s lips wrapped around the head of his cock and began sucking, his tongue swirling around the tip and flicking at the frenulum.

“Fuck, Shanks…” Mihawk could only gasp out. The sensation was like electricity in his veins, he could feel every nerve in his body igniting at once as Shanks’s mouth worked him. Shanks’s head sunk down, taking all of Mihawk’s length in his mouth with barely a gag, a skill Shanks was incredibly proud of. His hand reached below to play with Mihawk’s balls as his head moved up and down, bringing his lips all the way up to just kiss his tip before taking him entirely again.

“Shanks…” Mihawk rasped. “Shanks, let me suck you. Want your cock in my mouth. Missed it so much.”

Shanks released Mihawk’s cock with a soft popping sound. “Now, now, Mihawk, it’s my turn to pleasure you.”

Mihawk shook his head, the need to feel Shanks’s cock against his tongue making him feel almost desperate. “Please. Shanks…please.”

Shanks chucked. “Aww ‘Hawk, baby, you know I have trouble saying no to you.” Shanks positioned Mihawk so he was laying down flat on the bed.

“Can…can you untie me? Please?” Shanks looked over to Y/N who was sipping on some water and watching the scene before her with interest. She only shrugged.

“He’s the birthday boy too. We should give him what he wants.”

Shanks nodded. “All right then. Y/N, give me a hand? I only have one,” he quipped with a wink.

She came over and helped Shanks undo the shibari knots, taking her time and enjoying how red and full their cocks were in anticipation. Eventually she removed the ropes entirely, discarding them on the ground. His hands now freed, Mihawk pounced on Shanks, kissing him deeply, his fingers running through his partner’s red hair. Shanks was just as eager, and they fell back on the bed, their bodies entwined. Y/N returned to her chair to continue enjoying the show, allowing her partner and her new friend to enjoy each other some more.

Mihawk was almost frantic in his movements as he pushed Shanks back on the bed and latched onto his cock. Shanks threw his head back as Mihawk swallowed him in one swift movement, his nose buried in the coarse auburn hair surrounding it.

“‘Hawk, fuck …..,” he rasped. “Come here, I wanna take care of you too.” Mihawk quickly removed his mouth from Shanks and rotated his body so Shanks could pleasure him as well before sucking him down again. The two men found a comfortable position on their sides, their mouths latched onto each other’s cocks as they sucked and licked at each other. Mihawk groaned at the feeling; Shanks always did fit perfectly inside of him. He relished the remaining traces of Y/N’s release and swirled his tongue around Shanks, trying to get every remaining drop.

Y/N watched the two men tangled together, Mihawk’s arms wrapped around Shanks’s legs, pulling him so close they looked like they could be absorbed into each other, and Shanks doing the same. This dance was so intimate, so loving, and she smiled at how much they clearly loved each other.

Mihawk came first, his body tensing as he shot his load down Shank’s throat. Shanks came just a few seconds later, Mihawk swallowing every drop with ease. The two men separated, rolling onto their backs, and panting at the exertion.

Y/N sauntered back over to the bed. She sat down by Mihawk, leaning down and giving him a soft, gentle kiss, then giving Shanks the same.

Mihawk, for his part, was feeling a little overwhelmed, but in a good way. The desire, the passion, the sheer fucking love he felt for these two people beside him. He wanted them both desperately, wanted to hold tightly to them and never let them go.

“Shanks, Y/N…” he rasped. “I need you. Both of you.”

Y/N and Shanks exchanged a look, understanding what their lover was asking for. She kissed Mihawk one more time, and he kissed her back, his tongue snaking its way into her mouth.

“How do you want to do this?” she asked.

Shanks grinned. “You lay down, Y/N. Near the edge of the bed but not at it.” Y/N obeyed, taking her position, her legs spread wide before them. He then turned to Mihawk, his hand running slowly down the swordsman’s chest, both of their hearts beating with anticipation. They had never done this particular act before with a third person, but it was certainly something Mihawk had always dreamed of doing - and tonight that dream appeared to be coming true.

Shanks and Mihawk shared one more, deep kiss before breaking apart. Mihawk opened a drawer on the side table, pulling out a tube of lubricant and unscrewing the top, handing it to Shanks. Mihawk then knelt on the bed and positioned himself between Y/N’s legs, his cock once again hard and dark red, and eager to be buried deep in her warmth. He looked down at the woman before him, her skin freckled with love marks on her neck and shoulders, and it occurred to him that he must look much the same way. Capturing her lips in a kiss, he entered her slowly, groaning at the sensation of her tight pussy engulfing him entirely. When he was fully seated inside of her, he waited, fighting back the urge to move and start fucking her; as difficult as it was, he knew his patience would be rewarded. Y/N, for her part, was squirming below him, desperate for friction. Mihawk gave her a sultry look and a short, reprimanding bite on his shoulder.

“Patience, darling,” he said softly, “It’ll be worth the wait….for both of us.”

Just then, Mihawk felt Shank’s lips on his shoulder, and craned his neck to the side to allow the other man access. “You two ready?” Shanks asked.

Y/N nodded. “Ready.”

Mihawk sat up and captured Shanks’s lips with his own before returning to his position. “There’s nothing I want more.”

He broke the kiss and adjusted his position so Shanks could enter him from behind. Mihawk was positioned on his knees near the edge of the bed, his cock buried inside Y/N. He splayed his legs out wider to allow Shanks the best access, and Y/N wrapped her legs around Mihawk’s torso. His breath shuddered when he felt Shanks behind him, the tip of his lover’s cock prodding gently at his entrance. Mihawk took a deep breath and Shanks entered him, the pain and pleasure so familiar and so overwhelming he felt like his body was on fire. He moved his hands to take both of Y/N’s in his, pinning them above her head and squeezing them tightly as his back arched.

What felt like ages was only a few seconds - and the three of them were joined together, Mihawk buried deep inside Y/N, and Shanks buried in Mihawk. For a moment, Mihawk and his two lovers remained still, enjoying the feeling of being connected in this way. Mihawk looked down at Y/N, and she smiled up at him, brushing a damp lock of black hair from his face. Behind him, Shanks was running his fingers gently down Mihawk’s back. And then, Mihawk began moving.

He pulled his hips back slowly first, feeling Shanks filling him completely, then, thrusted forward roughly, causing Y/N to let out a loud moan. With every pull back Shanks filled him more, and with every thrust he filled Y/N, and it wasn’t long before the three found a perfect rhythm, a chorus of moans and whimpers filling the room. Mihawk’s hips rolled with abandon as he enjoyed both of his lovers in the most intimate possible way.

Shanks’s hand gripped Mihawk’s hip, as he met each of Mihawk’s thrusts with one of his own, his lover’s ass gripping his cock tightly. On Mihawk’s other side, below him, Y/N could feel everything, not only the cock of the man inside of her, but every thrust Shanks offered from behind him as well, making it all the more forceful.

Mihawk’s mind was a haze of pleasure. He’d never felt this, both filling and being filled, and what’s more, by the two people he loves more than anything in the world. The people he’d kill for and die for, the people with whom he sometimes allowed himself to fantasize about a life after piracy together. The feeling of love, the feeling of Y/N’s core sucking his cock in, the feeling of Shanks ramming in and out of him, it was so much, it was too much it—

Mihawk roared as he came, a sound that surely must have been heard by everyone on the island. Y/N followed almost immediately after, her fingernails leaving deep red marks down his back, and then Shanks, whose thrusts shuddered erratically and then stilled entirely.

They were a mess of sweat and cum and blissful, ridiculous love. Shanks pulled out first, cleaning himself and Mihawk off gently with a towel. Mihawk felt like his heart would never stop beating this fast, his ears wouldn’t stop ringing, and his mind would be eternally this blank - surely, a sacrifice that would have been worth it. It was only when he heard Y/N giggle below him that he started to come back down to earth.

“Hey. You can’t stay like this all night, you know,” she said with a playful grin.

“Can’t I though?” The words were barely more than a whisper. She kissed him softly and lifted herself up onto her elbows. With a begrudging sigh, Mihawk pulled out of her, almost losing his balance as he tried to stand. Shanks was quick to catch him, his arm wrapping around the swordsman’s torso.”

“Come on, ‘Hawk. Let’s get you some water and get cleaned up.”

Y/N poured Mihawk a glass of water, then headed towards the bathroom. “I feel like we could all use a bath right about now.”

Shanks collapsed on the bed with a grunt, the only sound of affirmation he could make. Mihawk then handed him the remaining water in the glass, and he drank it down. Shanks then turned to his partner with a crooked smile.

“Happy birthday, Hawkeyes. I love you.”

Mihawk smiled, the kind of gentle, genuine smile so few ever got to see. “I love you too, Shanks. Thank you. For everything.”

The two men kissed as the ambient sound of running water from the bathroom created a relaxing sound like white noise, and they once again lost themselves in each other.

Shanks broke the kiss. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Mihawk replied, his voice low. “Anything.”

“How would you feel if you and me and Y/N were…a thing? A closed thing? Just…the three of us?”

Mihawk’s eyes widened in surprise, then he laughed. “Is this your idea of settling down?”

Shanks grinned and rolled onto his back. “I dunno, maybe? I…broke things off with my other two relationships. They were fine, but….I guess I’m at an age where I’m kinda craving some sort of stability. And with the way things are going…..I have a feeling that it won’t be long before my duty to protect the One Piece is fulfilled. And then…..”

“And then we can do whatever we want. Together.” Mihawk smiled, taking Shanks’s hand and kissing it gently. “I would like that, Shanks. I really would. I don’t know what that life will look like, but if it means I can be with you and with Y/N for the rest of my days….I’d like that. And I think she might too….but I’ll let you broach that topic with her on your own. We’ll figure it out, all of us together.”

Shanks nodded, “I hope so. I like her, Mihawk. Just talking to her on the transponder….I feel like we really clicked. And in person? Wow...” He sighed. “You got yourself a good one there. I think we all could be really happy together, for a really long time, if that’s something she wants too.”

“Guys, come on!” Y/N’s voice rang from the bathroom. “This tub is far too big for just one person!”

Shanks chuckled. “Sounds like our girl needs us.”

Mihawk smiled. Our girl. “Then let us not keep her waiting.”

[ghostmath]

actually you know what i’m going to start putting it here. if all i’m writing right now is neopets fanfic then that’s simply what all of you are going to have to see. or scroll past, according to your desire. anyway here’s my two-chapter short story (novelette??) about the aging Internet, the struggle to find a place for yourself in the grown-up world, and how nothing lasts forever, especially the things that felt like they would when you were a kid. It’s also about ghosts. obviously

MOVING PARTS: Part One

(Part Two here)

GIVING UP THE GHOST

Neopian Adventurers Must Adapt to Changing Times or Be Buried With History

by Corey Copperbottom, Neopian Times correspondent

NEOPIA CENTRAL — A long, long time ago, an especially unusual Neopian Times article was penned by an especially unusual predecessor of mine, one Tanya Deanyn. Justifiably regarded as something of a sensationalist in her day, Deanyn had made it her mission to scout the next big adventure hero (bear in mind, this was before the discovery of several now well-trodden locales such as Geraptiku and Moltara, and certainly before the well-publicized budget cuts earlier this year forced the Defenders of Neopia to shutter its doors) and subsequently use the platform afforded to her by the Neopian Times to skyrocket her champion (and presumably herself as well) to fame and glory. Why she picked a scrawny, ghost-hunting teenaged Shoyru—barely out of high school and with all the charisma of an Almost Gummy Rat (Grape)—remains a mystery to this day. And as it’s now been several years since anyone at NT Headquarters last heard a peep from Ms. Deanyn, it seems doubtful anyone will be solving that particular mystery soon, if ever.

But mystery was an inescapable part of life back then. Deanyn’s “Ghostchaser” stories—pulpy tales precipitated from the chemical reaction between a quirky ghost-hunting youth and a mediocre writer with ambition so inexhaustible and gloriously out of proportion with the scope of her work that it frequently approached megalomania—passed for journalism because they were exactly what the average Neopian wanted to read with their morning cup of joe. In that changing world, where the unexpected lurked around every corner, people wanted to know that there was someone out there keeping them safe. Tanya Deanyn’s work was moderately popular. For a while, Kiyoshi Paco, Deanyn’s eponymous “Ghostchaser”, became a household name.

Then the market crashed.

Almost overnight, the jobs dried up. Danger and mystery are expensive, and citizens learned to be safe, rather than sorry. Suspected pirate hideouts were demolished, city walls got taller. Royal mages were called in to cast anti-ghost charms around settlements prone to haunting. Adventurers like Paco, who had until that point put food on their tables largely through charitable donations and the goodwill of those ordinary Neopians they ostensibly served to protect, found themselves in the difficult position of needing neopoints to survive but being incapable of earning them. Before young Paco fell off the map, records show he was making minimum wage as a clerk at the Guild of Explorers headquarters here in Neopia Central. What became of him after his scant five months of employment there came to an abrupt end is unknown, because he never again achieved anything worth reporting.

And he’s certainly not the only would-be hero to suffer this ignoble decline in relevancy. Around the globe, that old image of the classic adventurer—his grin roguish and his collar popped as he fearlessly charts a course through the unknown—has faded from the minds of modern Neopians. The current generation is more likely to know Jake the Explorer from a cereal box than they are to recall the legendary jungle adventures that made him the early face of the Guild of Explorers in the first place. For what is there left unknown that’s even worth knowing? Does the discovery of the tomb of some long-dead king in the Lost Desert help me run my tax-filing business in Shenkuu? Will the temporary banishment of a ghost from a house in Neovia lower my rent in Neopia Central?

As a society we have well and truly moved beyond the childish need for adventurers to come and save us, and it’s high time we admit that—lest we fall victim all over again to some opportunistic new “reporter” who’s just a couple coconuts shy of a coconut shy.

After all, everyone has to grow up someday—even ghost hunters.

*

One of the last holdouts of adventure was, of course, the Guild of Explorers, whose venerable headquarters stood near Neopia Central’s old town centre on emerald green lawns that were just a touch overgrown, its huge double doors flanked by marble columns whose numerous nicks and scuffs were only noticeable on close inspection. It was within the hallowed halls of this prestigious institution that a split Aisha named Tyra Magena was spending a pleasant summer evening enjoying a small adventure of her own.

“This will be the end of exploration as we know it!”

The Aisha responded to the heated declaration with practiced nonchalance, letting her hands slide down along the burnished wooden edges of her lectern until her arms were fully extended, framing the roughly brick-shaped metal gadget on display. Her expression was perfectly calibrated to convey a sort of dignified indulgence as she peered over the top of the device at the belligerent Tuskaninny in the first row. He was on his feet (so to speak), his angrily puffed red cheeks making him look very much like some variety of freshly boiled seafood.

“Mr. Blom, as we have discussed at many other points in this series,” said Tyra, “Exploration will live on as long as we explorers live on to do it. My invention will keep all of us alive longer, so we can spend more time doing just that.”

Scoffs and retorts broke out across the packed lecture hall.

“This conversation is going nowhere! I can’t believe the Guild is still humouring this ludicrous proposal!” Mr. Blom the Tuskaninny whipped his head around, appealing to the blue Kougra seated at the moderator’s desk next to Tyra. “Jake old boy, I beg of you. Put an end to this sham and send this deceitful technophile back to her evil lab.”

“The Guild reminds all members that personal attacks are not tolerated in the course of an academic debate,” Jake intoned, spinning a pen between his fingers absently. “Your concerns have been noted, Mr. Blom, but as this is an open forum, you must remember that not everyone here shares them. A portable communicator like one being presented by Ms. Magena would make many of your fellow explorers feel safer in the field.”

“That’s right! Some of us aren’t as young as we used to be!” shouted a grey-bearded Ogrin near the back of the hall. “If I fall into a pit trap and can’t get up again, I should jolly well like to be able to call for a lift!”

“Have we really gotten so soft?” A grizzled Skeith a few rows away had twisted around on the bench so she could shake her walking stick menacingly in the Ogrin’s direction. “Back in my day, we’d fall into three pit traps before breakfast on most adventures! And we’d like it.”

“Maybe that’s why your joints sound like Scarblade’s hull every time you move!”

“The Guild reminds all memb—“

“Peril builds character!”

A clear but pleasant voice spoke up. “I think we’re all being a little selfish.”

At once, the bickering died out, and a sheepish silence fell over the hall as all eyes turned to a young spotted Lupe at the end of the first row. With her wildly curled orange hair and bright, earnest expression, she made a striking impression that seemed to effortlessly command the respect of the other guild members. She closed the notebook she had been writing in, wholly unbothered by the sudden attention on her as she continued, “The whole point of a guild is to connect as many different people as possible under a common goal, isn’t it? We’re all very different people, it’s just silly to assume we’re all going to agree on something like this. We all have our preferred tools and techniques for exploring, and Tyra’s comm would just be one more option. No one’s forcing you to use one.”

“Well said, Aley,” said Jake after a moment’s silence. “As usual. We’d all do well to remember that the point of this series is to generate conversation about the applications of technology for the modern adventurer, not to debate the validity of the technology itself.”

“How do we even know it will work?” demanded Mr. Blom. The colour of his face had become marginally less alarming, but he still stood, now pointing accusingly at the silvery brick on Tyra’s lectern. “If we pin all our hopes on some little box that runs out of batteries right when we need it, we’ll be worse off than if we never had it at all!”

“Tyra wouldn’t do that,” Aley said. “If she says it’s gonna work, it’s gonna work.”

Jake sighed. “Once again, Mr. Blom, our speaker’s credentials are not up for debate. Ms. Magena’s expertise speaks for itself. Many people in attendance tonight, including Aley and myself, have used her inventions before and can attest to the reliability of her workmanship.” He removed his fedora, running his hands through his hair. “Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, so long as this technology takes a support role to the people actually doing the exploring, I’m all for it. Adventure should be about challenging yourself, I agree—using all your senses to experience everything the world has to offer. But you can only do that if you’re not spending all your time worrying about getting lost, or hurt, or worse. Let’s face it. Guild enrollment is down, and it gets lower every year. Anything that gets more people out there is a good thing in my books.”

Tyra nodded, speaking up. “And remember, the specific device being presented here is just a prototype. It’s perfectly functional already, but it’s only one example of the kind of utility technology could bring to our discipline.”

“Not to keep kicking a dead Whinny about it,” drawled a rugged-looking Island Shoyru with his boots propped up on the back of the row in front of him. “But there shouldn’t be a buffer between an explorer and the unknown. Call me old-fashioned if you want. But adventure with convenience is just tourism.” Murmured noises of agreement followed his remark, but Jake cut them off.

“I can see we’ve reached the end of any productive discourse for tonight, so let’s leave it there,” the Kougra said, putting on his hat as he rose. “As a reminder, this series continues tomorrow night at 6, when we’ll all have the distinct honour of going through this all over again. Thank you for your time once more, Ms. Magena.” He strode across to her and shook her hand to scattered applause, although an equally audible rumble of frustrated muttering filled their ears as the attendees began to shuffle back through the tiered seating towards the exits.

“Sick of us yet?” Jake asked her under the commotion.

“Are you kidding?” Tyra flashed him a grin as she stacked her papers and grabbed her prototype comm from the lectern. “I live for this.”

On her way out through the darkened foyer, she was unsurprised and a little smug to see Mr. Blom lurking near the open front doors, looking agitated. At the first sight of her, he pounced.

“How many lectures has it been now, Magena? How many more until you’re satisfied?” A string of spittle swung from his mustache, glittering in the moonlight. “Are you trying to punish us for something?”

“Mr. Blom,” Tyra said with a dramatic sigh. “It’s 10:30. This lecture was supposed to wrap up over an hour ago. Go home.”

The Tuskaninny moved to block her path. “I think you want us to fall apart. You’re trying to make us fail like you and your little Ghostchasers gang failed all those years ago. Oh yes, there’s no point in denying it. We know all about it. Don’t you read the Neopian Times?”

“Yes, and there’s very little I enjoy doing less,” Tyra said, sidestepping Mr. Blom while he continued to bluster and froth.

“Don’t walk away from the truth, Magena!” he yelled after her, even as she started down the steps outside. “You haven’t heard the last from me!”

“I’m counting on it,” she called back over her shoulder. It’s what’s paying my rent.

*

Kiyoshi was just getting to Thyme when he heard keys at the door.

“Hey,” Tyra’s greeting sounded especially tired tonight. She stepped into the apartment and slung her briefcase down on the chair by the door, then looked around and blinked. “Wow,” she said. “Did you clean up in here again?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess,” the Shoyru replied absentmindedly. He fished out the jar that he’d just spotted hiding behind the nearly-full spice rack and scanned its label, which proudly declared its contents to be Cinnamon!. Suddenly overwhelmed by the cruel machinations of destiny, he groaned, sinking into the bar stool and surrendering his head to the oblivion offered by his arms.

Through the depths of his despair, he was vaguely aware of Tyra coming closer, then stopping when she was in front of the kitchen island he’d spent the last hour labouring away at.

“Kiyoshi,” came Tyra’s voice after a couple of seconds. “Are you alphabetizing my spice rack?”

“It didn’t work,” he said wretchedly, lifting his head just enough to cast a withering glare upon the jar clutched in his fist. He used it to gesture at the top row of the spice rack, where the neatly organized little jars had indeed failed to preserve even the slimmest space in their lineup that might now accommodate their fallen brethren Cinnamon!. “It’s okay. I’ll start over.” And with that, he grimly began the process of removing the jars from the rack.

“I don’t even cook,” Tyra said. “You know that.”

“I didn’t have anything else to do. I finished the bookshelf earlier today.”

“The… which one?” Tyra said, dumbfounded.

“Oh. The last one. All of them.”

It’s going to take me years to figure out where anything is, Tyra thought, but managed to calm her voice before she spoke again. “Kiyoshi, you really don’t have to do any of this.”

“I‘m not doing anything else,” he mumbled, focussing on his domain of spices.

Tyra slid onto the stool next to him. “Did you ever meet up with that girl with the haunted swimming pool?”

“Yeah,” Kiyoshi said without looking at her. “False alarm. It was a setup for her podcast.”

“Another podcast?”

“She said she’d pay me in exposure. Like I need any more of that.”

Tyra struggled to think of something to say. “There’s gotta be a legitimate haunting somewhere in Neopia Central. One of these days someone will really need you.”

“The one time there was actually a ghost, the ghost was in on it too.”

“Kiyoshi—“

“Those paint brushes should be illegal.”

“Kiyoshi, it’s not your fault that people aren’t being honest with you.”

“But it is my fault for not being honest with myself.” The jar of Cinnamon! rolled off the counter and clattered to the floor. “If people don’t need a professional ghost hunter anymore, that’s fine. That’s good, actually. But I need to be able to move on with the rest of the world. I thought if I could keep that job at the Guild of Explorers, at least that’s kind of related to something I’m almost good at, but…” He shrugged his shoulders heavily, slumping onto the countertop again.

“They didn’t deserve you,” Tyra said automatically, but Kiyoshi’s wings curled around him further and she immediately knew it had been the wrong thing to say. By all the light of Fyora, she was bad at this.

“I just feel bad staying here for free,” Kiyoshi mumbled.

“You paid the whole rent for like the first three months after you sold your neohome,” Tyra said firmly.

“And then never again.”

“Yeah, but you can’t help it if the neohome market is abysmal. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My parents are still paying half my rent, even after all the times I’ve asked them to stop.” She shrugged. “I’m probably making more than them at this point, with all the honorariums I’m getting from the GOE. Seriously. Don’t worry about the rent. Besides, I’m happy you’re here. You’re a good roommate, and a good friend.”

He looked up. “I am glad you’re doing well, at least.” He gave her a small smile. “One of the three of us had to be successful.”

“I think Jeri qualifies as successful,” Tyra said, remembering how the final member of their old ghostchasing party balked at the prospect of a steady job with the Guild of Explorers and ran away to Krawk Island with his old treasure-hunting partner Aidne, “if getting as far away from a desk job as possible counts as his measure of success, which I think it does.”

She hopped off her stool to pick up the Cinnamon! “I know this is going to sound ungrateful,” she said. “But for what it’s worth, I still don’t really feel successful. There’s so much more I could be doing with this tech. I hate feeling like I’m not allowed to take it as far as I know I can.”

Kiyoshi sat up a little, studying her. “NaKaranth?”

Tyra sighed. “Yeah.”

Tyra’s first communicator—the clunky original that she had taken on countless excursions over the years, that had gotten their old team out of countless scrapes—had been a collaboration between herself and an unusually sociable Alien Aisha named NaKaranth. He had scavenged the components for her comm from space junk he found floating around the Virtupets station. Without his help, she would never have been able to build anything like it, and NaKaranth knew it. His people had rules about the dispersal of advanced technology to Neopians, rules that she had consistently persuaded him to bend in her favour. But her plans to mass-produce and distribute a smaller version of her own comm had definitely crossed a line. Even though (as she had attempted to explain to him) the inner workings of her prototypes were ‘paraphrased’ and not ‘transcribed’ from the original comm, the situation had stressed the Alien out enough that he had jumped planet and returned to the Homeworld. He once mentioned that some of the snoopier Homeworlders had started asking questions about her, but at the time she had stupidly internalized it as a compliment.

So now here she was: tiptoeing along on an annoyingly short leash that she couldn’t bring herself to break. She hadn’t talked to NaKaranth in over a year but she still found that she was unable to fully dive in and explore the comm to its fullest potential—somehow knowing that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself, and the already strained threads of their friendship would be torn beyond any hope of repair.

Tyra realized that Kiyoshi was still watching her. To stop herself from feeling self-conscious, she said suddenly, “Do you ever feel like your whole life has just been packing for a trip you haven’t taken yet?”

Kiyoshi swivelled his stool back and forth, laughing a little. “I’ve often felt the train could hurry up a little, yeah.”

“Very inconsiderate of it to leave us waiting at the station all these years.”

“It’s like. If this is the real world everyone told us we needed to be a part of, why is it so hard to find anywhere we fit?”

Tyra sighed. She placed the Cinnamon! randomly on the third shelf of the spice rack, which made Kiyoshi frown. She propped her elbows on the counter and leaned back languidly. “We’ll get there eventually. We both will. Me? I just need to have a stroke of genius and find the perfect battery for my comm, and then it’ll be smooth sailing.” She made a half-hearted pantomime of a boat sailing by with her hand.

Kiyoshi seemed unconvinced, but interested. “What, um. What do you need for the battery?”

Tyra rolled her shoulders. “The original comm has this big crystal wired into it that feeds into every system in the machine. NaKaranth called it Zigzagium and I still don’t know if he was lying. But I can’t get more of it anyway, so I have to find a substitute. The placeholder battery I’ve got in the prototype is…” Tyra considered her words. “Bad. Like, really bad. It needs to be plugged in every few hours to recharge. Ask me how well I think that would go over with the Guild if they found out.”

“Could you use magic somehow? Is that weird?” Kiyoshi said abruptly.

Tyra laughed, but Kiyoshi pressed on, even as his cheeks flushed. “I mean. I know I don’t know anything about magic, but you’ve been studying it on the side, haven’t you? I don’t think Alien Aishas can do magic, so maybe it’s something only you could think of? Can you even combine magic and technology, or is there like. Some cosmic rule against it?”

“No, it’s a good idea,” Tyra said. “I’ve been thinking about it. But it’s tricky. The more complicated the solution, the less likely it is that it’ll work. The new comms are so small, there’s no space for any extraneous parts. Every single one of them needs to be the perfect match for the job it’s meant to do. And if I’m going to try working magic into it, I barely even know where to begin. I’ve got this whole list of materials and reagents I’d like to try experimenting with somewhere along the line, but I haven’t really had a chance to go out and buy any of them yet.” She yawned. “These stupid lectures are eating up all my time. Prepping the lectures, delivering the lectures, staying to give witness reports after the lectures…”

“Can I see it?”

She looked at him blearily. “The witness reports?”

“The list,” said Kiyoshi. He was sitting up straight now, eyes brighter than Tyra had seen them in a long time. “Can I borrow it?”

Tyra blinked at him, then rummaged around in an inner pocket of her lurid green overcoat until she found a crumpled piece of note paper. “I guess you can,” she said hesitantly, “but listen, Kiyoshi, don’t worry about it. I can get this stuff myself. It’s my problem anyway. I just need to stop losing track of time in my workshop, and be better about sticking to my schedule, and maybe start waking up a little earlier…”

She didn’t remember closing her eyes, but the next time she opened them with a start that nearly had her slipping off her stool, Kiyoshi was standing in front of her, already holding the tattered list in his hand.

“Tyra,” he pleaded. “For the love of Fyora please let me do this for you.”

*

The first few items on the list were easy enough, but by noon the next day, Kiyoshi started running into problems.

“Angelpi don’t lay eggs, and even if they did, I wouldn’t give you one!” snapped the green Usul at the Petpet Shop, clambering onto a stepstool to toss a handful of seeds into the cage of squawking Pawkeets that hung over the checkout counter.

“They don’t?” Kiyoshi said uncertainly, but only the excited screeches of the Pawkeets answered him. The Angelpuss on the counter tottered over and rubbed against his hand. He scratched it under its chin and it purred contentedly. “Then where do baby Angelpi come from?”

The Usul hopped down from the stepstool and snatched up the Angelpuss, which yowled indignantly. “They come from the Petpet Shop,” she said acidly. “Which, I’ll remind you, is the name of the business, my business, that you decided to wander into and monopolize with your weird questions. If you’re not here to buy a petpet, then scram. Your sloppy clothes and bad vibes are upsetting the petpets.” She pointed sharply at the Pawkeets.

Kiyoshi wondered if the vibes that could do anything but upset the Pawkeets had even been discovered by modern science. He glanced at the list and decided to try again. “Do you sell Puppyblew tails?”

“OUT.”

Back out on the bustling, sun-warmed streets of Neopia Central, Kiyoshi grumbled to himself. “Why is everything to do with magic so inherently suspicious…”

He glanced down at the list. Still a good few things to check for, and there were plenty of neopoints left in his belt pouch from what Tyra had given him. So next on the list was…

“Egg hot dog,” Kiyoshi said to himself, shoving the note back in his coat pocket. A couple of shoppers casually gave him an extra wide berth as they hurried past. “Okay.”

Just outside of Neopian Fresh Foods, a clamour from inside the store stopped Kiyoshi in his tracks. More yelling, followed by a crash. He had just taken a hesitant step towards the sun-faded flyers plastered all over the front of the cheeseburger-shaped building, when the front doors swung open and a greenish-blue figure came flying out at him. The Shoyru gave a choked gasp and stumbled backwards as that someone collided directly with him, then went straight through, instantly freezing the air in his lungs. For Kiyoshi, the sensation of the ghost passing through his body was as familiar as the reflex that had his hand reaching for his slingshot before he remembered with a pang that he had left it back at Tyra’s place.

While the Shoyru wheeled, catching his breath, an enormous jar of purple baby food came soaring out the front doors, falling short of the streaking tail of the ghost and exploding on the sidewalk near Kiyoshi’s feet. As the ghost vanished through the wall of a nearby shop, the Chia shopkeeper came stomping out of the food store, nearly knocking Kiyoshi into the crash site of broken glass and purple goop as he did so.

“And STAY OUT!” the Chia hollered after the ghost, shaking the handle of a broom in the air, although not a trace of the figure remained. The Chia glared at the wall the ghost had passed through, then jammed his chef’s hat back onto his head and marched back into his shop.

Speechless, Kiyoshi glanced around at the other Neopians on the street and was again taken aback to see most of them already recovering, murmuring to each other in unconcerned tones and shrugging their shoulders before they continued on to their destinations. Kiyoshi glanced one more time at the wall where the ghost had vanished, then spun on his heel and caught the door of the food shop before it could close.

“Wait!” he said, staggering into the store and almost slipping on some of the baby food that had apparently gotten under his shoe. He caught himself on a rack of bread products, struggling to catch the loaves before they tumbled to the floor. “Wait, what was that?”

The Chia turned around, his expression falling into a disapproving scowl as he glanced from the loaves bouncing out of Kiyoshi’s hands to the streaks of purple across the floor behind him. “That’s my own personal poltergeist, that’s what that is,” said the Chia shortly.

Kiyoshi’s shoes squeaked as he took a step forward. “That was a ghost, wasn’t it? A real, actual ghost?”

“Boy, you city kids sure don’t catch on quick, do ya?”

“You were chasing it away.”

“Well, obviously!”

“So it wasn’t a customer? Wasn’t just someone painted ghost for… for personal reasons?”

The Chia laughed incredulously, retreating behind his cash register and replacing his broom against the wall. “A customer? He doesn’t have any money! Not that it stops him from coming in every day and trying to buy the same blasted container of Flotsam Flakes over and over again!”

Kiyoshi’s mind whirred. “Every day?”

“Every day, same time, same jar of Flotsam Flakes! Been going on for months! I tell ya, I’m being pranked from beyond the grave! And he has the audacity to check his stupid see-through pockets every single time and act like he’s surprised he still doesn’t have the neopoints. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he didn’t even know he was a ghost!”

Kiyoshi slammed a handful of neopoints onto the counter with so much force the Chia jumped. Glancing suspiciously between Kiyoshi and the pile of coins, the shopkeeper said, “What’s this for?”

“Gimme a jar of Flotsam Flakes.”

[the-most-adorkable-smile]

Okay so I just finished re-reading Girl Genius again this morning (I’m blaming you @prokopetz for reminding me it is a webcomic that exists in more than just thrice-weekly updates) and I’m urging everyone to read it. Re-read it if you’ve already read it once. Re-read it if you’ve read it a million times before. Re-read it if you just finished re-reading it (don’t do this it will never end and you will think too much about which jäger is the cutest).

Okay but for reals two reasons:

1) Girl Genius is basically what would happen if One Piece, instead of being nautical- and pirate-themed, pivoted to steampunk science-fantasy schlock horror adventure. It’s got a million characters, all with god-like powers, and the primary tensions in any story tend to revolve around which characters will fall in love with each other. There’s scheming, politics, and weird monsters.

2) It started in 2002. It’s been updating pretty much non-stop, three days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, for nearly twenty-one years. There is so much Girl Genius now that, even if you’ve read it, I guarantee you’ve forgotten a solid third of the story. Yes even if you just read it. Yes you forgot about the two-year timeskip. Yes you forgot about the lady with the flying rats. And that one happened just before the current side-story which has been going on for almost a year! Even if you’ve read it a hundred times before, you’re almost certainly forgetting some awesome thing that you’ll want to re-read again.

I have nothing else to say. Girl Genius is weird, steampunk One Piece and every so often I think “huh, it’s been a while since I read through all of Girl Genius”

And then I lose two weeks worth of evenings to obsessively reading through it!

...Again.

[writtenjewels]

Terrible Dancing

Kaidan and Ashley exchanged curious looks with each other as they followed Shepard along the path that would take them to the lower wards. They hadn't been back to the Citadel since Shepard became a Spectre. With good reason: they found themselves unexpectedly busy, answering one distress call after another or stumbling upon space pirates or any number of things. And on top of all that, they recently encountered the Thorian.

Shepard hadn't said a lot about the Cipher, but Kaidan could tell it was weighing on him. This visit to the Citadel might have just been an excuse to get off the ship without stumbling upon another part of space that needed Shepard's help.

Kaidan was starting to recognize their surroundings. His steps slowed a little the closer they got to Flux. What was an attractive environment for most people meant a lot of stimulation for him. He hoped that it wouldn't trigger a migraine. He followed Shepard and Ashley to a table, eventually relaxing enough to join the two in a drink.

“Great way to blow off steam, right, Kaidan?” Shepard said with a smile.

“Right,” he agreed. And so far the lights and noise weren't too bad.

“Are you going to spot us credits for Quasar, skipper?” Ashley teased.

“No way. I've seen you play, Chief.” The two laughed, Kaidan smiling politely. He was happy to be here, but knew he wasn't a social butterfly like Shepard or Ashley. He tried chiming in when they started chatting, but he mostly stayed quiet and listened.

Eventually Shepard got up and moved to the dance floor. Kaidan watched him with amusement. He wasn't much of an expert, but the bobbing and arm wiggles didn't look like they counted as dancing. He caught Ashley's eye and saw she was trying not to laugh.

“At least now we know he's not good at everything,” Kaidan remarked to her.

“I know! God, I wish I had a camera!” She was still grinning when she nudged him. “You should go up there!”

“Come on, Ash. He's bad, but he's having fun.”

“I meant,” she clarified, rolling her eyes, “you should go up and join him.”

“What, dancing?” He couldn't tell if she was joking. “I'm not that much better than him.” Ashley raised an eyebrow, as if to say, So?<?i>

“Go have fun, LT. Seriously.”

Why not? He got to his feet and headed over to the dance floor. Shepard stopped his bob and wiggle moves when Kaidan got close enough. The commander's cheeks were a little flushed, his eyes bright when they focused on Kaidan. Without a word, he grabbed Kaidan's wrist and pulled him fully onto the floor.

“Thanks for coming over,” he said.

“Ashley insisted.”

“Really?” Shepard glanced over to their table. “Then I owe her another drink.” Kaidan didn't know what the commander meant by that, but it made him a little nervous. “You like dancing, Kaidan?” Shepard asked, resuming his bob along to the music.

“I don't know. I don't dance a lot.”

“Me neither.”

“No kidding.” Kaidan couldn't help giving him a teasing smirk.

“All right, Lieutenant, let's see your moves, then,” Shepard retorted with a gentle nudge. Kaidan chuckled and started moving along to the music. It was unintentional, but he was starting to bob in a similar way as Shepard. “There you go,” Shepard encouraged, now doing his arm wiggle. “You're about as good as me.”

“I certainly can't get worse,” Kaidan joked. Shepard laughed, and the two danced together through two more songs.

As they made their way back to the ship, Kaidan couldn't help notice the way Ashley was smirking at him. Like she knew some big secret. When he raised an eyebrow at her, the smile grew and her eyes darted briefly in Shepard's direction. Kaidan felt his face get hot, and Ashley's smirk grew even more.

Kaidan did end up getting a migraine later, but it almost felt worth it for those moments of terrible dancing.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

Hello!! I love all ur shuggy posts and i just wanna ask wats ur opinion of buggy being a clown? Or having the red nose? Do you think its a narrative device? Like is there significance as to why oda chose to use a clown motif to one of the apprentices of the rogers? Cuz like there is the importance of joyboy... JOY-boy, and what else is the profession that brings joy n sillines? Clowns 👀

I mean we dont even know wer buggy came from,, so idk if the red nose has lore or its just something that oda decided to do for funsies, i just wanna ask ur thoughts on dis cuz imo uve been very informative n rational w ur posts and this has been plaguing my mind😬

thank you!! informative and rational, huh? i almost feel like that should be my tagline at this point; it certainly seems to be a common theme in the anon compliments i receive.

the clown thing is tricky to get to the root of! from a doylist perspective, i think oda just wanted to draw some silly pirates, what with the clown/circus themed crew and the cat themed crew appearing in quick succession. (the potential clown man-joyboy connection is something i never considered before… i don’t know that i believe oda had joyboy figured out that early on, but if he did it’s definitely worth thinking more about.) watsonianly, i’ve said time and again that i believe buggy picked the clown theme in order to hide his most recognizable feature in plain sight—

but that doesn’t answer your question: why does he have that big clown nose?

honestly, i don’t have a clue. and i don’t think we’ve been given any hints in the text to pull theories from, so any guesses would be pure speculation on my part, and you know i don’t like to speculate wildly like that.

that said… here’s a few reasons we’ve been given for other op characters’ unique features. maybe one of these will turn out to explain buggy’s situation?

it’s a leftover, benign symptom of an obscure disease he had as a child

he’s a member/descendant of a tribe or family of similarly-featured people

it’s a simple, if rare, genetic mutation that made small-minded people dislike and avoid him

[allthatmay]

(about the smoker/ace ask) i see the same in their dynamic !! theyre both very passionate, stubborn people. whereas shanks is the ~suave guy who knows how to play ace, smokers the typa to add fuel to fire in an argument (whether he means it or not). i can easily see them ignoring the other other for weeks and then angrily hate fucking when they stumble against each other at a random place.

lots of miscommunication and lack of trust are guaranteed (more on the ace side with his self–esteem and roger issues, methinks); its the type of relationship where both make mistakes even when they genuinely want it to work. again, theyre on the same side of the coin personality wise, so things end up pretty heated without someone to balance it out. great for one night stands, not so good when these stands end piled up into something more intimate.

theres also the secret relationship thing, with one being a pirate and the other a marine ... (it has been quite the open secret for a while now, but no one really talks about it cause of the garp factor). on the side, theres almost everyone furiously recommending each of them to give up already (“that kids not good for you, smoker, just look how he has you...” “i get that you love him, ace, but the guy ain't worth all your tears”).

this has ended in more of a ramble than i had expected, and i also added some of my own hcs ... apologies for that !!

Hahaha, I read this whole thing while nodding, like, "This person gets it!! We're on the same level!!"

Yes, Shanks can work with and around Ace's insecurities and proclivities, whereas Smoker would butt heads with him. There'd definitely be a lot of hate fucking, like you say! (But we love a good hate fuck.) I totally agree that they'd be making mistakes even when they want things to work; that they'd make more mistakes trying to fix the last. There would definitely be moments of intimacy and tenderness, but ultimately, things would be hard for them. And that's certainly in part because of the secret relationship stuff!

That aspect of their relationship is what I enjoy most about it, probably. "Forbidden love" is always enjoyable. I also like the idea that their friends would be trying to convince them to give the relationship up. You just know Tashigi and Thatch would be leading the charge on their respective sides. Thatch would use food to his advantage; Tashigi would just be insufferable. Maybe she'd buy Smoker a real nice set of cigars before sitting him down for a chat.

I think their relationship would culminate in a battle—a draw, obviously. And they'd break up right there, on the floor, tired and fucking defeated. The bad end. (But we like those too, sometimes.)

In general, I think toxic relationships can be super fun to explore in fanfiction. Just because a relationship is bad for you in the long run doesn't mean there isn't still value to be found in it (and the lessons you learn from it). Smoker and Ace are a prime example, in my eyes.

Thanks for your thoughts! Loved hearing them! Very much agreed.

[shallowoak]

Design Chatter - MLP Grand Line Gang!

>> Link to the art here! <<

I really enjoyed rambling about the East Blue Crew, so I'm back again to talk your ears off about the rest of the crew now that I've finally posted them! Once again, fair warning that this will be long and there will be spoilers!

I kept a few simple guidelines for myself in mind:

Keep it fun and surprising, in the spirit of the original!

I draw in the G4 style, but features from every gen and toy line are fair game

I love back card / blind bag style character blurbs. I live for crumbs of worldbuilding XD

I've purposefully not included cutie marks because I suck at drawing them and I'd never finish a piece if I had to draw them :v (maybe a post for another time?)

🌸Chopper🌸

In-universe:

Further than the Crystal Empire, even beyond Yakyakistan, Chopper hails from the frozen north. A skilled potion maker, he loves to brew warm healing tonics with ingredients found on the mountain. He's hoping he can learn to skywalk like the Reindeer in Robin's books!

Design:

Every now and again, it's nice to do a 1:1 translation of a character rather than a full reimagining! Reindeer appear in G4 during the special Best Gift Ever, so it's the little changes that make Chopper 'ponified'- the lighter patches on his face, ears and tummy. The swirls in his inner ears. Changing his hoof/antler colour to be just a little more pink. One thing I did add was little baby deer spots shaped like blossom for an extra pop of colour!

I chose to draw him in Defence Point because it's cuter 🥺 my mind also thought to draw Brain Point in the Equestria Girls style and I'm not sure the world is ready for that 😂 Defence Point was also supposed to harken back to a popular fluffy fan character- before I found out their creator isn't someone I want to be celebrating. But you live and learn when trying to reference fandom culture 🤷

📚Robin📚

In-universe:

Many hooves make light work! Having studied at the Mythica University and Golden Oak libraries alike, this magic scholar always has a spell to get her crew out of a pinch! During her travels, the wily CP9 tried restraining her magic with a tennis ball!

Design:

Hm. Put into pony form, Robin kind of looks like Twilight. Similar key colours and hairstyles can't really be avoided. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, though. Something about this combination must just give off 'bookish'! Besides, there are plenty of character foils to Twilight that look like her in canon, too. Moondancer, Sunset, Starlight... Robin could fall into this category- a promising student led astray by forces beyond her control. It certainly isn't easy being a magic student.

Rather than an odd outward appearance, Robin's fear factor is based on people's perceptions of her abilities. I feel like she's similar to Nami in looking normal and still getting demonised. Left to her own devices, she just likes to travel and study! So I didn't want to give her a super edgy design and feed into those misconceptions. Robin is at her coolest when she chooses to be wicked for herself!

She's a normal pony, but she's still a little more dark and mysterious than someone like Twilight. That sweeping black mane, heavy hooves, and curved horn—not to mention that colourful glint in her eye—make her sturdier than a Unicorn like Sanji, and her calm confidence lets you know it! I like to think Nami has inspired her to look into getting a big flowery leg design, but she's a little worried about being even more recognisable.

⭐Franky⭐

In-universe:

Self-acceptance and found family are super! Building each other up is almost as satisfying as building new airships... almost. This loud n' proud Griffon makes Canterlot cruisers and Ornithian pirate ships alike! Lately, within the crew, he's been helping Usopp come to terms with being a Cutie Mark-less creature. Every creature has worth and is deserving of love, with or without a mark!

Design:

Franky just kinda washed up from somewhere and that really ignited my imagination when it came to his appearance. From the start, I was adamant that he should be a creature with 'fingers'. There's something about crafting with your hands that can't be recreated with Unicorn magic.

MLP Griffons are known for their strong personalities and love of precious metals- so I thought one was a great fit for the unapologetic, totally authentic Franky! This larger body also gives him more space to customise, more feathers and fluff to style!

Horse noses are very closely linked to the shape of their mouths, so having the top half of his beak be metal avoided a lot of weird imagery. His pre-time skip design shows less of his cyborg nature, but being able to use bird forelegs definitely helped to dampen the weirdness of his bulky arms more than the noodly legs of a pony. Without the differentiation between fore and upper leg, I think he'd just look swollen! Besides, you do not want to take a strong right with added claws 😬

I think it's definitely easier to imagine a solo Griffon making ships than a solo pony! His large wings and long tail help keep him safe and balanced while he works high up, and his muscular back limbs help shift heavy materials. Those back legs are coloured to look like his Speedo, as they appear less fluffy than the rest of him.

🎶Brook🎶

In-universe:

This lifelong sailor knows no pony is an island. Music can bring every creature and animal on the seas together- if only you stop to listen ❤️ All our paths are bound to cross again one day, even if the seas are wide! Magic works in mysterious ways, no bones about it!

Design:

I felt that if I was going to go to the effort of drawing a full pony skeleton, I didn't want to then cover my hard work up with clothes. Now I'm thinking I should've- the structure on those limbs was hard to draw! I looked at real horse skellies, the Hidden Dissectibles figures, and even the 'Don't Mine at Night' MLP crossover parody song... None of it made it any easier 😂 would not recommend.

Seeing as there wasn't much I could do with his base design, I decided instead to add to it! In the climax of the Rainbow Rocks movie, the Siren villains summon giant magical projections of themselves to attack. This reminded me of Brook's soul leaving his body- so that's what I drew! Though it doesn't have any mind control powers, I still wouldn't advise touching this frosty apparition... or any of the sound waves it produces!

☀️Jinbei☀️

In-universe:

Design:

Keeps up with 'current' affairs! This sagely Seapony is a pillar of the community as well as Equestria! He helps the crew stay on course (emotionally and literally) as the world changes and expands around them- it's always an exciting time both above and below the surface!

I should've been more forward-thinking and drawn him up for Mermay! Seaponies have a long history with the MLP universe, appearing alongside their land counterparts at the start of G1- a fact I think is very fitting for his character. Of course, Jinbei's design is based on Whale Sharks, and Fishmen/Merfolk as a whole are so unique with how they can be designed. Seaponies too are different in every generation- so I had a lot of fun incorporating as many unique elements as I could!

I couldn't exactly make a horse wide and flat to mimic a Whale Shark's body as he does in his canon appearance, so I decided instead to lean in more to the cute spots and shark-shaped tail fin! Then I extended his sideburns to create a softer border between his body colours and to add back some visual interest lost by removing the large membrane fin G4 Seaponies have. Jinbei is already pretty hefty and strong, so a little extra fluff doesn't noticeably slow him down.

It's certainly more difficult to imagine hair as fins; they're so much more rigid. Without individual strands or the ability to curl like natural hair, it's a lot harder to suggest diverse textures. But I still think the semi-transparent look is a lot of fun to look at and layer, and it helps his blonde streaks stand out!

Though I could've put the sun brand on his flank, it just didn't look or feel right when we're so used to seeing it on his chest. Seaponies don't usually get their own marks, and the sun is a widely used symbol of freedom. Leaving his flank free still gives me the option of giving him a unique mark in the future- he's still a prominent individual in his own right!

[burnwater13]

Concept art by Brian Matyas, of Grogu meeting Ahsoka Tano on Corvus as Din Djarin watches them from the a small distance away. Image from The Mandalorian, Season 2, Episode 5, The Jedi.

His name was what? Grogu? What kind of name was Grogu? Then he laughed nervously inside his own mind. What kind of name was Djarin? He hadn’t been named after his father or any relative he knew. His mother had told him it meant ‘finder’ but he didn’t know what language that was from. It certainly didn’t mean anything in Gal Basic. He wondered what Grogu meant?

To the Mandalorian, Grogu meant trouble. But it also meant kindness. Curiosity. Sadness. Strength. Responsibility. And determination. The kid was really determined to stay with him and Din Djarin couldn’t figure out why. 

He wasn’t some sort of experienced father who knew how to raise children. He didn’t even know people like that. People who raised their children to be kind and helpful and sweet rarely got picked up on bounty fobs. They didn’t steal from their employers. They didn’t kill people. They weren’t pirates, or spice runners, or criminals. They worked at steady jobs like running a diner and they paid their way and if they fell on hard times they worked twice as hard to provide for their family. 

Or so he’d been told, by his former commander. Laac had a number of children. All raised to be Mandalorian warriors. They had been brave and smart and a credit to their parents and their clan. Din Djarin didn’t know where they were now, probably gone given the way things had worked out for so many Mandalorians. But if they had survived the Imperial attack on Mandalore, he was sure that Laac, his wife, and their children lived on a planet that was free from strife and made an honest living. At least he wished that was their destiny. 

He wished that primarily because it meant that there was someone he could ask for advice on what to do with Grogu if this Jedi didn’t agree to take him. Ahsoka Tano had been happy to meet Grogu. Almost ecstatic. But then her attitude changed. Became aloof and questioning. He didn’t understand that. Everyone else who met the small green boy seemed to fall instantly in love with him. Even as a happily unattached person, Din Djarin had found Grogu too genuine, too engaging, too vulnerable to ignore, although he had tried. 

Then there had been that moment when he realized that he’d given a bunch of ex-Imps a child who just wanted to play with a toy. An innocent, vulnerable, controllable child. What was he doing? It had been an affront to everything he’d been taught and not just by the Children of the Watch on Concordia. His parents had taught him that it was better to be a helper than a trouble maker. Those lessons had sustained him when he had to pick up the threads of his life and learn to be a Mandalorian and follow the Creed.

He looked at the child now, speaking to the Jedi without actually speaking out loud, and wondered how he ever managed to give him up. Yes, a camtono of beskar was worth a lot of credits and he had an absolute duty to recover that beskar for the Tribe and the foundlings they supported, but giving a child to anyone who might harm them was against the Creed. Of course that had lasted long. Thankfully. 

He wouldn’t be mentioning anything about that to Laac. He’d lectured himself enough in his former commander’s voice. Every time Grogu cried out in his sleep, Din Djarin blamed himself. Every time Grogu gave him that sad look, when his ears drooped and the corners of his mouth sagged and his eyes… dank farrik!, his eyes would fill with tears and the bounty hunter would remember every time he’d felt that same way. He wasn’t just remembering the loss of his parents and his friends and everything he had loved about the village where he had grown up. He was remembering every time he’d disappointed his creche leaders, his instructors, and his commanders. 

He especially remembered going on a test mission with Laac Straso and he had made every rookie mistake you could make and still survive. He’d been too eager and too inexperienced and too wrapped up in his own view of things. At the end of that mission, on their way back to their barracks, Laac had taken him aside.

“Djarin, I don’t know that this is the right path for you. You are a good hearted man, but you are not a hard hearted man. To be a Mandalorian you must acknowledge that every mission could be your last. That the foundlings, your creche mates, and your squad mates depend on you to know that and take appropriate actions. That first action is to get out of your own way. Know you are not and never will be the smartest, the best, the most indestructible Mandalorian to ever wear armor. But, if you think first, evaluate your options, and remember what you are taking any risk for, then you have a chance to make it to the next mission. I will not take you out again until you can show me that you can do that.”

That had almost broken him. But then he remembered being rescued by the Mandalorians and what that had meant to him. What it had meant to the other survivors of the attack on Aq Vetina. He had a duty to not just follow the Creed but to support it with his every action. 

Later that day he had sought his commander out and apologized for his behavior and explained what he had come to realize and told him that he hoped to regain his trust. Lacc had simply replied ‘This is the Way’. Eventually, they went on another mission together and Din Djarin had gotten out of his own way and it went better than well. He graduated from the program and became a member of Laac’s squad until he was compelled to take up bounty hunting. 

Now here he was, many years later, staring at his foundling and wondering if he was getting in his own way again. He wanted the best outcome for Grogu. He’d been told by the Armorer to find his people. But was this Jedi really the right person to hand Grogu off to? Was any Jedi the answer to his quest? He didn’t know. 

But he worried that he wasn’t the right person either. He had been adopted by the Children of the Watch, hence Din Djarin. Adoptee Djarin. He had no idea why ‘Din’ meant that and he never asked. It just was what it was. But he had no family line. No history to gift a child. The only thing he could give Grogu was a Clan to be part of, Clan Mudhorn. A clan of two. Was that enough for such a special child? He wished he could ask Laac that question. But then he heard Laac’s voice in the back of his mind, “Did you need more than that? Every child is special, Djarin. Every one. Get out of your own way.”

Under his helmet Din Djarin, Child of the Watch, smiled to himself. There was other work to do before he had to make any decision. He could enjoy this time with Grogu and help Ahsoka Tano with her task and then determine the path they needed to take. They had time and that was a luxury he hoped Grogu would appreciate. A clan of two for another day. This is the Way.

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Falling For Your Fools Gold: Chapter 10

A/N: The slow burn is officially burning! I need everyone to know that this chapter is 5k words and half of those words are smut! Who is she? Writing 2500 words worth of smut? Also! A fun history fact for everyone: back in the golden age of pirates, a common form of birth control was lemons. Women would often shove a lemon rind or a lemon-soaked rag right on up there before intercourse. It was believed that it would provide a barrier to help prevent pregnancy and also that the acidity of lemons acted as a bit of a spermicide. So, now you'll get Emerie's joke in this chapter and have a fun fact to share at parties ;) But all in all, I hope everyone enjoys chapter 10 of 15 of this fic :) Just reminding everyone of how many chapters this fic is going to be again for no particular reason…

Chapter Masterlist // Previous Part // Next Part

“You have to make sure you keep your elbows tucked in tight.”

Cresseida frowns at the comment, glancing down at her arms, at the stance she’s currently standing in. She shifts her arms, resetting how she’s holding them up before glancing over her shoulder toward Cassian, a silent question in her gaze. The pirate captain steps closer, raising his own hands but pausing before they make contact.

“May I?” Cassian asks. At Cresseida’s nod, he places his hands on her arms, gently guiding them into the correct position. “Like this. Then you can punch forward without overextending, but make sure you hit like this to avoid breaking any fingers.”

Cassian continues to help ensure Cresseida’s form is correct before finally stepping back, focusing his attention on Emerie and Gwyn next. Nesta can’t help but watch him, track his movements as he moves between the three women. The way his smile is friendly and open. The way his hands are gentle as he corrects their stances, their punches. The way he offers kind words of encouragement.

It doesn’t help that the sun is shining bright overhead, a beacon and a spotlight in the wide expanse of blue. The rays catch on the dark strands of his hair, currently pulled away from his face and tied with a leather strap atop his head. The heat led to him rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, the laces at the collar loose and open. It’s a tease of the golden skin beneath, practically glistening in that damn sun. As if he can feel her gaze on him, Cassian’s eyes catch her own, the shade almost a molten gold glinting beneath the light.

The catch of a dagger hilt against her jaw jolts Nesta back to reality.

“You’re distracted,” Baz chastises, amusement swimming in his brown eyes.

“I am not,” Nesta defends with a huff, readjusting her grip on her dagger. She and Baz both know she’s lying through her teeth, but neither comment on it. “We go again.”

Nesta and Baz continue their spar, Nesta trying to remember everything she’s learnt. It’s certainly more difficult with the added element of daggers, even if both are safely sheathed in their scabbards to avoid any accidental injuries. Nesta has to pay extra close attention to Baz’s right hand while still dodging his other punches and moves. She ducks under a jab from Baz, turning and preparing to swing her own arms when she feels pressure just beneath her ribs. She looks down, surprised to find Baz’s dagger poised there. She’d lost track of his right hand.

“And, you’re dead,” Baz tells her sadly, offering a wry smile as he tucks the dagger away on his belt.

Nesta lets out a frustrated huff, dropping her hands back to her side. “Damn it…”

Baz steps over to the freshwater barrel they have up on deck, pouring a tankard and holding it out for Nesta to take before pouring a second for himself. “You’ll get it next time.”

“You said that the last two times we sparred.”

“No one is perfect right away,” Baz reminds her, already walking backwards away from her to return to his first mate duties. He holds up his tankard in the mimic of a cheers. “Until our next match, Nesta.”

Nesta sighs softly, knowing he’s right. She allows herself just one more moment of self-pity, sipping at her water, before turning her attention back to Cassian and her friends.

“What if someone grabs you and pins your arms?” Gwyn asks, fiddling with the end of her braid. “And you can’t punch?”

“Care to help me demonstrate, princess?” Cassian requests, his gaze cutting toward Nesta. “Might be easier to show than explain.”

Nesta rolls her eyes, but she sets her water down, stepping over to Cassian and dropping her voice to ask, “looking for an excuse to get your hands on me?”

Cassian’s smirk has Nesta’s heart stuttering in her chest, his hazel eyes glinting as he stares down at her. “Always.” With his hands on her shoulders, he carefully turns Nesta around so her back is to him. “Now, most likely, if someone is trying to grab you, they’ll do it from behind so as to take you by surprise.”

Cassian demonstrates just that, his arms wrapping securely around Nesta. He has her arms pinned down against her sides, but all Nesta can focus on is the press of his chest along her spine, the way one of his hands spans across her entire waist, fingers digging in in their grip, his hot breath skating across her skin where his chin is tucked over her shoulder. Pressed this close together, the warmth of him burrows beneath her skin, the scent of pine and low burning embers flooding her senses.

“Nes?” Cassian whispers, his voice laced with quiet concern.

Nesta gives herself a mental shake, clearing her mind of the slippery path her thoughts threatened to tumble down. She brings her foot up and slams her heel hard against Cassian’s toes, his grip around her loosening enough that she can drive her elbow back and into his gut. Cassian doubles over in pain and Nesta steps cleanly away from him, offering a wide smile to Gwyn, Emerie, and Cresseida, all three of them looking at her with various degrees of shock.

“And that’s how you get out of that,” Nesta offers brightly, turning her head back toward Cassian. “Right, Cassian?”

“You didn’t want to hold back even a little for the sake of the demonstration?” Cassian wheezes, still clutching at his stomach.

“I thought it was important to make sure our demonstration was accurate.”

“Is that so?”

Cassian stands back up to his full height, stepping closer until he’s looming over her. Nesta scoffs at his scare tactics, crossing her arms and raising a pointed eyebrow. Waiting. Daring him. Cassian’s smirk is wide, his lips parting.

“Captain!”

All five pairs of eyes turn toward the quarter deck, Cormac standing there with expectant eyes. Whatever silent conversation passes between him and Cassian has the pirate captain nodding in understanding.

“Continue with the training, princess,” Cassian tells her, daring to lean down and press a kiss to her cheek before retreating across the deck.

Nesta bites her lip around a smile, fighting against the heat beginning to pool from that contact point. She clears her throat and turns fully back to her friends. Unsurprisingly, Emerie is smirking, but Nesta settles her with a warning glare before she can say anything.

“You’ve really been doing this every day?” Cresseida asks thankfully, stretching her arms above her head until a wince mars her face. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to lift my arms tomorrow.”

“It gets easier,” Nesta promises, grimacing as she remembers her own first few days training with Baz.

“I don’t even care. I’ll do this every day,” Gwyn tells them, sitting down so she can stretch out her legs. “Especially if it means we can stay. I still can’t believe we got to join the crew.”

“That’s because while he may be the Lord of Bloodshed, Cassian understands that happy wife means happy life,” Emerie snickers, settling down beside Gwyn. “Isn’t that right, Nesta?”

“It’s not like that. At least… I don’t think it’s like that.” Nesta glances over her shoulder, making sure no one else is near before also sitting down on the deck and dropping her voice. “I mean… we did kiss the other day.”

Emerie reaches over and smacks Nesta on the shoulder. “You did what? I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on us.”

“I’m not sure it means anything, though. I mean, sure, back in Adriata, it was considered improper to kiss anyone except your husband, but we’re not in Adriata anymore. I don’t think the same is true on a pirate ship.”

“Normally, I would say a kiss doesn’t mean much,” Cresseida jumps in to offer. “But considering the way the Captain looks at you? It means something.”

“The way he looks at me?” Nesta asks, looking between the three for answers, but they all seem to be wearing similarly exasperated expressions at her question.

“Like he loves you,” Gwyn sighs almost dreamily.

“Like we’re going to have to stock up on lemons at the next port,” Emerie snickers at the same time.

~ * * * ~

The words of her friends echo in Nesta’s head for the rest of the day. While she helps Bram to sew and repair a small tear in the sail. While she picks at her dinner. While she unwinds and gets ready to sleep. The words play over and over on a loop, sinking their claws deeper and deeper into her mind with every go around.

She tries to think of how Cassian looks at her, tries to understand what her friends have apparently seen in just a few short days. He’s certainly always smirking, since the very first day she met him in fact. Often there’s a fire sparking and blazing in his gaze, but there’s something softer hiding amongst the greens and golds too she’s noticed. Something soft in the way his fingers will brush along her cheek, in the smile that Nesta has started to suspect is only for her.

And there’s definitely something in the way he kissed her.

Nesta pauses where she was brushing out her hair, pressing her fingers against her lips. She swears for a moment she can feel the phantom brush of Cassian’s mouth against her own. With a quiet huff, she shakes away her friends’ words and goes back to finishing her hair. She braids it back loosely along her back, tying it off with a ribbon. She stands up and walks over to the bed, getting comfortable beneath the blankets and balancing a book on her raised knees.

She tries to focus on the words, on the characters and the stories, but the ink starts to blur together on the pages, those thoughts unrelenting and still gnawing for attention in the back of her mind. Even being here feels as though it means something. When she’d first been informed this was where she’d be sleeping, she didn’t think much of it, especially since she was the only woman aboard. But now, Gwyn, Emerie, and Cresseida have all settled in below with the crew, and still, here Nesta sleeps.

The cabin door opening finally snaps Nesta back to the present, and she turns her head to watch Cassian stride inside and close the door behind himself. He pulls the leather strap free from his hair, raking his fingers through the strands until they fall back down around his shoulders, before beginning the process of removing his outer layers of clothing. He doesn’t turn or say anything toward her, but Nesta suspects that he can feel her gaze regardless, especially when he reaches to the hem of his shirt, making a big show of pulling it up and off, stretching his arms high over his head so the muscles of his back flex.

Nesta rolls her eyes and slams her book shut. “Are you courting me?”

Cassian’s movements pause for a moment, almost like the flickering of a flame, but then he continues his routine as if she hadn’t spoken. When he finally turns and walks toward the bed, he still doesn’t say anything. Instead, he merely kneels on the mattress, leaning in close to Nesta. His hand reaches back for her braid, pulling it so it falls over her shoulder. His fingers make quick work of tugging off the ribbon, carding through her hair until the braid unwinds.

“Is this going to become a trend then?” Nesta asks quietly, unable to take her eyes off his. “You always undoing all my hard work braiding?”

“I like when you wear your hair down,” Cassian explains, using both hands to straighten out how her hair tumbles around her shoulders.

“It’s a nuisance,” Nesta corrects, but she doesn’t move to fix it, to re-do the braid. “And you didn’t answer my question. Are you courting me? Now that you’ve kissed me.”

“Sweetheart, I’ve been courting you since the moment I met you.”

Nesta frowns, thinking back to their early interactions. “That was courting? You’re quite terrible at it.”

Cassian laughs, the sound light and easy, his hands shifting until her face is cradled between his palms. “My apologies.” He closes the distance between them, pressing his lips firmly against Nesta’s until the breath is stolen straight from her lungs. “Finish your chapter, Nes.”

“I have finished,” Nesta tells him breathlessly. It’s not necessarily a lie. She never did start the chapter with her spiraling thoughts to begin with.

Cassian plucks the book from her lap, stepping away from the bed and setting it down on the desk. He leans down and blows out the candle next, blanketing the cabin in darkness. It gives Nesta enough of a reprieve to compose herself. She swallows hard, trying to calm the way her heart had started to flutter after that kiss, and shifts to lay down properly.

She feels the mattress shift behind her, feels the blankets lift as he gets comfortable as well, and Nesta squeezes her eyes shut, praying that sleep takes them both quickly before her mind can spin out over the fact Cassian kissed her, again, and has apparently been courting her this whole time.

An arm reaches through the darkness, curling around Nesta's waist, and her eyes snap open as she's hauled backwards. Cassian's warmth seeps through her shift and burrows beneath her skin, and she can feel every hard line and muscle where they're now pressed together. Cassian's hand shifts, his fingers gently brushing Nesta's hair aside. His nose slides along the skin of her neck, his lips soon following the same blazing path. There's no stopping the stuttering sigh that tumbles past her lips, her heart tripping over itself between her ribs. Nesta tilts her head as much as she can, giving him better access, and presses back even more, her skin already beginning to prickle with heat.

“Have you ever laid with a man before?” Cassian asks lowly, his breath skittering across Nesta's skin and leaving goosebumps cascading in its wake.

“You know I haven't. I'm a lady, remember?” Nesta shoots back, her words dying off into a whine when Cassian's teeth dig into her pulse point. “But I'm not stupid. I know how it works. I've read about it plenty.”

To prove her point, Nesta rolls her hips back, feeling the hard line of Cassian's own growing arousal pressing against her ass. He lets out a soft groan at the movement, his hand dropping to grip Nesta's hip. It feels like a delicious brand even through the fabric of her shift, adding to the fire already threatening to swallow her whole.

“In your smutty romance books?” Cassian asks, continuing his attention to Nesta's neck.

“Yes.”

“And did you ever touch yourself?”

“So what if I did?”

Cassian's hand slides down to toy with the hem of her shift, and just that teasing touch has the heat shifting to pool in Nesta's gut, has her breath hitching in anticipation. It's with agonizing slowness that his hand moves up her thigh, pulling her shift up with the movement. His fingers dip to trace senseless patterns along her inner thigh, and it takes everything within Nesta to keep still, to not shift and press her hips closer the way she desperately wants to.

“What did you imagine? Did you imagine some strapping knight? A prince perhaps?”

“Well, I certainly didn't imagine some arrogant pirate captain.”

Nesta feels more than she hears Cassian's chuckle, the sound seeming to rumble from deep in his chest before being lost where his lips are still pressed against her skin. His teeth nip gently in retaliation, but that traitorous hand slips an inch higher along her thigh all the same.

“Tell me to stop,” Cassian whispers right against her ear.

Nesta reaches her own hand down, fingers curling around Cassian's wrist, daring to slide his hand even higher. “Don't stop.”

There’s silence and stillness for a moment, the whole cabin, the whole ship, seeming to shake and rattle with anticipation, as if even the gods themselves are holding their breath. This is the true line in the sand, the one that Nesta cannot take back, and yet she’s ready and wanting to tumble head first over it.

The first touch of Cassian’s fingers is light and teasing, just a gentle swipe with the pads of his fingers, but it has Nesta gasping all the same. The second touch is firmer, more purposeful, Cassian burying his own groan against Nesta’s shoulder.

“Already so wet for me, princess? We’ve barely started.”

The next press of his fingers is directly against her clit, and Nesta doesn’t have time to stifle her moan. Her eyes flutter closed, her head falling back against Cassian’s shoulder, as she focuses on the tantalizing circles he draws with his fingers. His hand pulls away, and she would feel ashamed about the whine that tears from her throat, especially when Cassian chuckles again, but the pleasure licking through her veins has her desperate and toeing the line with delirium.

His hand moves to her knee, and for a moment, she's confused, until Cassian tugs her leg back so it's draped across his hip. It opens her up for him, ready for the taking. His fingers return to where Nesta wants them most, but this time, Cassian sinks one into her. His finger is longer and thicker than hers ever were, and Nesta clenches tight around it, her breath stuttering out of her in a quiet whimper.

Slowly, Cassian starts to pump his finger, and Nesta presses her hips down to meet every shallow thrust, desperate to chase the friction. Her every nerve ending feels like it's sparking, wildfire blazing across her skin, with every stroke of that finger.

“That's it, Nes,” Cassian praises, pressing in a second finger beside the first. “Take what you need.”

“Cassian,” Nesta moans, her head emptying of any other thoughts when he curls his fingers.

“Fuck, my name sounds so good falling past your pretty lips.”

“Please… I… I need—”

Nesta's breathless plea is cut off with another gasped moan when Cassian's thumb returns to press against her clit. He works the bundle of nerves in time with his fingers, until Nesta is nothing but a writhing, moaning mess. She feels as taut as a bowstring, every muscle curling tighter and tighter, the flames of her pleasure stoked higher and higher. One more stroke of his fingers, one more press of his thumb, and release crashes into Nesta like a wave. She clenches down around him, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she's half aware of a choked off sound of his name tearing from her throat.

"So beautiful," Cassian murmurs, pressing a sweet kiss to her shoulder.

Cassian's hand retreats from her core, and Nesta wastes no time turning in his arms. Somehow, blindly in the dark, she's able to find his face, crashing their lips together again. Cassian kisses her back just as fervently, his tongue pressing past the seam of her lips and into her mouth. Nesta throws her leg back over his hips, and with her shift still rucked up around her waist, it gives her the perfect vantage to grind against his erection. Cassian groans into her mouth, and Nesta greedily swallows it down, his fingers digging into the flesh of her ass. Her hands slide down his chest to the waistband of his pants, but she only gets one good tug against the laces before Cassian is catching her wrists, halting her movements.

“What's the rush?” Cassian asks, his voice husky and breathless.

“You said you've been courting me since the moment we met.”

Even through the darkness, Nesta can see the way Cassian's eyebrows dip in confusion, his lips tugging down in a frown. “I have.”

“So that means that night, at the inn in Windhaven, when you spoke of your future wife…”

Cassian's grip tightens slightly, and Nesta is sure he must be able to feel how her pulse pounds beneath his fingers. “I was speaking of you.”

“And do pirates not bed their wives?” Nesta dares to ask.

A beat passes, and then Cassian is kissing her again. He presses her back against the mattress, and Nesta goes happily, his weight settling atop her. She buries her hands in his hair, tugging until he's groaning against her lips, until his hips rock down against her own. Cassian's own hands return to the hem of her shift, pulling away enough that he can tug it off completely. He takes a moment to stare down at her, and Nesta tries not to squirm beneath the attention. Her chest heaves, and she can feel a flush creeping down from her neck, but she stays still, swallowing hard. One of Cassian's hands comes up to gently cradle her jaw, his thumb sliding across her bottom lip.

“Beautiful,” Cassian breathes, his voice full of quiet reverence.

Nesta is almost glad she can't see his face properly. Just that one word has her breath catching, her heart squeezing almost to the point of pain in her chest. Before she can think too hard about it, Cassian leans down and kisses her again. She tries to reach for the laces of his pants, but once again, he catches her wrists, pinning her hands up by her head this time. He tears his lips away from hers, pressing hot kisses down the column of her throat, over her collarbones.

When his mouth closes over her breast, Nesta arches up against him. He takes his time, laving attention to one before switching to the other. With his tongue swirling around her nipple and his hand palming at the unattended breast, Nesta can do nothing but pant and keen, fingers gripping into the pillow beneath her head. He finally pulls away, but he continues his descent, pressing kisses along Nesta's stomach until he's settled comfortably between her splayed legs.

“I know I may not have your experience,” Nesta says, tilting her head so she can watch him. “But I'm quite confident this is not how it's done.”

Cassian smirks up at her, his hands sliding along her thighs so he can shift her legs to drape over his shoulders. “Just trying to ensure my future wife is well satisfied.”

Before Nesta can even think of a retort, let alone say anything, Cassian's mouth descends upon her. Nesta is sure the whole ship can probably hear her loud moan. If she thought Cassian's fingers felt amazing, it's nothing compared to his mouth. He devours her like a man starved, tongue moving against her in long, thick strokes. He swirls his tongue against her clit before sucking the bundle of nerves between his lips, and Nesta's hips buck wildly off the bed. Cassian settles an arm across her stomach to hold her down, focusing on pumping his tongue the same way his fingers had.

Nesta finds herself on the edge of that precipice once again, but she can't find it in herself to care about how quickly that heat has pooled again. Not with the way Cassian groans against her, the vibrations felt all the way down to her curling toes.

“Cassian,” Nesta pants, reaching a hand down to the pirate captain's hair, holding him where she wants. “Cass… Cassian.”

Despite her inability to string together a coherent sentence, Cassian seems to know what she needs. He focuses his mouth's attention back on her clit, sinking his fingers into her, three this time. It's all Nesta needs. She shatters with a cry, head thrown back and spots dancing behind her closed eyes.

She sinks back against the mattress, trying to calm her racing heart, trying to bring her breathing back down to normal. She can feel the way Cassian shifts again, the way he rises and presses over her. When she blinks her eyes open again, his face swims back into view, that cocksure smirk firmly in place.

“Wipe that look off your face,” Nesta scoffs.

“Feeling satisfied, future wife?” Cassian asks smugly, all male bravado.

Nesta rolls her eyes and tugs him down into another kiss. She can taste herself on his tongue, and it sends a thrill ricocheting up her spine.

“Please,” Nesta murmurs against his lips.

“It may still hurt. Even with everything.”

“I know, but I want to. I want you.”

Cassian presses their lips back together, the kiss searing. He tries to pull away, but Nesta follows him up until they’re both sitting up, Cassian kneeling between her spread legs while his hands cradle her face. Finally, he pulls away completely, clambering off the bed. He makes quick work of the laces of his pants. Nesta bites her lip, eyes tracking the way his body looks in the trickles of moonlight that spill in from the small cabin window.

Even in the low light and shadows, he’s gorgeous. His hair spilling around his face while he dips his chin to focus on the laces. The broad lines of his shoulders and the dark lines of tattoos swirling along his skin. The way his muscles flex and move as he shoves his pants down his legs and off. The large appendage now standing to attention between his thighs.

A finger beneath Nesta’s chin has her gaze rising to meet Cassian’s again as he climbs back onto the bed. “You say stop, and we stop.”

“I thought I told you not to stop,” Nesta challenges, shifting to lay back, an open invitation.

“You’re going to be the death of me, sweetheart,” Cassian mutters.

He settles above her again, guiding her leg up so her thigh rests against his hip. Nesta can feel her heart thundering away between her ribs, but she still bucks her hips up, gasping at the drag of his cock through her folds. Cassian’s answering groan spurs her on, but then his hand is gripping her hip, stilling her. His hand shifts away, dropping between them, and then Nesta feels the first press of him. Every rock of his hips has him sinking another inch, and Nesta tries to breathe through the new, slightly uncomfortable feeling, the stretch like she’s never felt before.

Cassian drops his head to press hot kisses across the skin of Nesta’s neck, and soon, the pain gives way to a delicious feeling of fullness. Nesta wraps her arms securely around Cassian’s shoulders, her nails digging into his shoulder blades. Cassian lets out a groan, moving his hips with more purpose, and the friction and pleasure is indescribable, moans falling freely from Nesta’s lips.

“You take me so well,” Cassian breathes hotly against her ear. “Like you were made to take my cock like my good girl.”

A whimper tears its way free from Nesta’s throat, and she starts to buck her hips to meet every thrust. Cassian lifts his head to press his forehead against hers, and Nesta tries to keep her eyes open, tries to meet that burning, hazel gaze, but it’s hard to focus on anything other than the fire licking across her skin, the way her mind has gone intoxicatingly fuzzy, the way his hips grind down against her own with every stroke in and send sparks flying.

“The next time we do this, I'm going to leave the candle burning. I want to see that pretty flush on your cheeks, see perfectly when you fall apart on my cock,” Cassian continues, his words sending Nesta higher and higher, release glimmering just out of reach. “You're already so beautiful, but I know I'm going to want this sight branded on the back of my eyelids forever.”

One of his hands slinks between them, finding her clit with ease. He strokes it in time with his snapping hips, and Nesta feels like she’s being consumed whole. She tries desperately to grasp at coherent thoughts, tries to form words, but she’s quickly dissolving into a mess of moans and Cassian’s name, a chant and a prayer.

“Come on, Nes. Give me one more,” Cassian requests, his own hips stuttering. “I know you can do it. Be my good girl and come all over my cock.”

The command snaps Nesta’s final tether. Her back bows off the bed as she arches up against him, pleasure like she’s never felt before racing through her veins. Her toes curl, a near shout of Cassian’s name tearing from so deep within her chest, she swears it leaves claw marks behind. She’s half aware of Cassian continuing to move against her, but for a moment, she feels like she’s floating, like her body isn’t her own.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Cassian groans against her throat. “Fuck, nothing feels like you.”

Cassian’s hips still against her own, and then the cabin is blanketed in silence once again, just the sounds of their heaving breaths slowly quieting. Carefully, Cassian pushes off of her, and Nesta winces slightly at the drag.

“Sorry,” Cassian murmurs, pressing a sweet kiss to her forehead.

Cassian clambers off the bed, grabbing a cloth and dipping it in the freshwater basin so they can clean themselves up, and then Nesta finds herself once again laying in bed with Cassian’s arms secure around her waist. Only this time, she lies facing him. This time, there’s nothing between them, not her shift, not his pants. This time, it’s just bodies pressed together, limbs tangled beneath the blankets.

Nesta’s whole body feels sated and heavy, her eyelids already beginning to droop, but she continues to trace the lines of Cassian’s tattoos that she can make out through the darkness with her fingertips, following them down his shoulders, over his collarbones, and down his chest. Her fingers skate over slightly raised skin, and her movements stop, a frown tugging down her lips.

“A sword,” Cassian answers the unasked question, his fingers curling gently around Nesta’s own and guiding her to trace the scar across his chest. He guides her hand to his other shoulder next, more raised skin, although the scar is smaller. “A dagger.” Their joined hands travel down until they’re pressed against his lower stomach, until Nesta feels puckered skin. “A pistol. During the war.”

Nesta swallows hard, a lump pressing against her windpipe, suddenly at a loss for words. She traces around the scar, feeling where the bullet must have hit, and barely tapers down a shudder. Cassian lifts her hand away again, this time bringing it up to his lips. He presses a kiss to her palm, and places her hand flat against the center of his chest, his heartbeat fluttering just beneath her touch.

“Yours.”

—

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