#buckle up friends we're going on a trust-winning roadtrip!

[missmungoe]

Hot damn. I just read your soulmates AU and I just want to say. I absolutely adore it when you write Shanks trying to gently and sweetly coax Makino into calming down. Into relaxing. It was also one of my favorite parts of the original Siren tale, when they first enter the bar and Shanks tries his darnedest to put her at ease because he isn't trying to hurt her. It's just so comforting to see him like that.

Oh I think you're going to like the next chapter then ;) Have another wee snippet as I edit, because it's been three years<3

He froze in his tracks, her order answered without hesitation, but then he’d already seen it with his haki, a split second before she’d ripped the corkscrew from her belt.

He felt the prick against his throat where the sharpened tip touched her skin, not enough to properly hurt, but pain was pain, and the soul-bond responded accordingly, like it had for as long as he could remember, only this time it wasn't to a nameless figure in his mind, whose gentle hurts had never disrupted the course of his life.

And yet seeing her now, and knowing what she was, Shanks thought she might as well have taken the corkscrew and driven it right through his heart.

Doe-brown eyes held his from across the darkened windmill, her breaths shivering where she held the corkscrew to her slender throat; the same one Shanks had seen her use to open a bottle of wine earlier that evening, but where it hadn’t faltered in her hands then, it shook now, gripped between her trembling fingers. The deadly tip pricked his skin, but it was the conviction in her eyes that bound him, and that kept him from taking another step.

Makino hadn't moved, her back still pressed against the wall of the windmill. It hadn’t been hard to track her down, but then it was a small village, and even if it hadn’t been, his haki would have been enough.

She had a gentle presence; it was one of the first things he’d noticed, walking through the doors of her bar. Still, like water, except when she was upset, where it churned like a whirlpool.

It did so now, all her feelings bared to him, but then Shanks didn’t need his haki to know what she felt, finding them on her face, her beautiful features illuminated by the shaft of moonlight piercing the windmill’s only window, the big brown eyes and the soft mouth that had kept his gaze captive all evening, shaped now with defiance, and fear.

In his whole life, no one had ever looked at him like that. He’d seen pirates and marines turn tail and run at the sight of him, and had known the fear of death in the eyes of his opponents, but nothing like the terror that filled Makino's now, and that he could feel in her whole presence. This was a primal fear, and one that went deeper than simply fear for her safety, or her life.

“I’ll do it,” she breathed, and only the quaver in her voice betrayed her conviction. The silver moon glinted off the sharpened tip of the corkscrew, pressed against the soft underside of her chin. Her bottom lip trembled. “I’ll—”

Her voice broke, terrified tears spilling over her cheeks with her sob, and seeing an opportunity, Shanks seized it.

She started when he appeared in front of her, his cloak rustling where he’d kneeled down, and heard her breath hitching loudly as her fingers seized around the corkscrew, before his fingers covered hers gently, stopping her.

Their eyes met. In the moonlight, they looked bottomless, which only made the depth of her terror more apparent, and the pain that lanced through him this time wasn't from the corkscrew.

He didn’t know how he found his voice, the rough timbre stirring the quiet as Shanks told her, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Makino didn't move, the little hand under his still gripping the wooden handle. She was so small; it felt even more pronounced now than it had with the counter of her bar between them, and with how big he was in comparison, a fact that hadn’t escaped her, from the way she braced against the wall behind her, her knees pulled up protectively between them. He could feel how tense she was, the slender hand under his fairly trembling around the corkscrew.

His thumb pressed gently to her wrist, coaxing her fingers to loosen their grip. Her eyes hadn’t released his, full of terror and defiance, and he heard the sob she stifled with her teeth as he carefully took the corkscrew from her hand, placing it down on the floor, still within reach, although the realisation found him right after—that she couldn’t use it on him without also feeling it herself—and his breath shuddered roughly, but then he was still reeling from the discovery.

He was still kneeling in front of her, their bodies so close he could feel the warmth rising off her skin, her scent filling his nose, and knew he should move, feeling how tense she was, but he could barely think, arrested as much by the bond as the look in her eyes.

“Makino,” he said gently, and saw her flinch—as though she heard more than her name in the speaking, and he felt the bond responding as she did, like the barest pulse in his fingertip. Aware of it now, Shanks didn’t know how he hadn’t realised the truth sooner.

Or maybe he had, recalling her in the bar. The calm he’d felt, being around her, and that he hadn’t been able to put his finger on, his wayfaring soul finding its mooring, after so many years.

“Please,” he said, the rough scrape of his voice stirring the quiet. “I just want to talk.”

He saw the doubt in her eyes, her back braced against the wall and her beautiful features etched with defiance. “I don’t,” Makino said, the tremble in her voice betraying more than fear now, something fiercer in it, sharpening the gentle cadence. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for—” you, she didn’t say, but Shanks felt it like she’d slapped him.

He didn’t know where the feeling came from, after so many years where his soulmate had barely been an afterthought. Now, looking into her eyes, knowing it was her, she was all he could think about, a sudden defensiveness rising in him, leaving his voice guttural. “You’re my—”

“No!” Makino cut him off, like before, only this time she fairly spat the words, “I told you, I am not yours.”