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SHANKS

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( shanks sits up a little straighter at koby's next messages, obviously typed so frantically he hasn't bothered with his usual formalities — and without thinking, shanks reaches out to find that shade of pink, the shape of it so much smaller than it usually is, tightly wound and nearly imploding in on itself. a sharp twinge of panic seizes shanks' pulse for a moment — from koby or himself he can hardly tell — before he shoots off his response, careful not to let any of his own anxiety bleed into his messages, deliberately resisting the urge to rush to koby instead. whatever happened, they'll deal with it here, in the safety of shanks' harbor. )

Always. The door's unlocked.

( koby knows this, but it still bears repeating. a gentle reminder that shanks meant it when he said his door was always open, any day, any time, no questions asked. (it's as much for koby as it is for shanks, a roundabout, indirect way of saying company is always welcome.) shanks may not make his life story or his emotions readily available, but this is something that's always been important to him: being physically available for those he cares about, in whatever capacity that might be. )

[It's probably something Shanks has been doing since they met, reaching out to feel where Koby is, what he's doing. But now he feels it, now that he knows it's there to feel, a spark of red in the back of his mind, splintering the panicky memory spirals into shards. Koby wants to grab onto that flicker, wants to wrap it around himself, have it ward off the ghosts, have it remind him he's strong enough, good enough, worthy of breathing and living and existing in this world (in any world).

His knees are locked, and it takes a concentrated effort for Koby to make himself lift one foot, then the other, down the hall, towards Shank's room. It helps to pull back, to slip into that place where he doesn't feel his own body, to slam shut every dark corridor that keeps threatening to open in his mind by shutting down everything. Compartmentalize, put things in boxes, break apart every part of you and hide it so nothing can hurt. Don't think about it, don't think about anything.

The only real thing -- that flare of red, the steady warmth of it. Koby's at the door before he realizes it, not bothering to text back, just shoving his phone in his pocket and fumbling at the knob, stumbling inside and scarcely aware that he's breathing ragged, stilted. Everything feels off, feels disjointed, his chest hitching on every inhale. He freezes by the door like it had taken all his courage just to get to the room, get inside, and it's suddenly abandoned him all at once. For a moment there's just Koby's uneven breath, then, the perhaps-expected first thing out of his mouth, in a hollow rasp of a voice:] S-Sorry.

( moonlight filters in from the bay window, illuminating the sheer curtains and sails above shanks' bed with an eerie glow that almost looks like rippling water. some nights, it almost feels as if he's back at sea, even without the gentle sway of the waves beneath him — but most nights it's still too foreign: the bed too soft, the sheets too smooth. he imagines the upscale hotel rooms in sabaody must be like this (not that he's ever been able to afford one, nor has he ever been particularly interested in such finery; he'd rather leave all that nonsense to the world nobles to makes fools of themselves over). perhaps it's meant to make them feel safe, putting them up in rooms like these, but shanks is more inclined to believe the balfours simply have too much money like so many of the world nobles do and don't know what else to do with it. (a familiar inequality that seems to be prevalent throughout many different worlds.)

he can feel koby shutting down, shuttering off something shanks can't make sense of yet; by the time koby steps through the threshold into shanks' room, shanks is already halfway to meet him, a shell of the curious, defiant person shanks has become used to seeing. there's something much deeper, much more traumatic bubbling up from the surface than all of koby's usual anxieties, but shanks can only feel the edges of it, like trying to decipher the carvings of a poneglyph blind. )

Koby... ( softly, as gentle as a passing cloud — though there is a hint of trepidation in his voice, a swelling concern for what caused all of this. he reels koby into his chest, palm at the back of koby's head tucking him under his chin, stroking koby's hair with a soothing hand. more firmly, he adds: ) You've nothing to be sorry for. ( which is as much a reassurance as it is a silent command: no more apologies, not with me. he leans down to press a feather-light kiss to the top of koby's head, his voice nearly a whisper now, a promise for only koby to hear. ) It's alright, I've got you.

[By the time Shanks reaches him, reaches out, everything's shuttered away, stuffed into chests and triple-quadruple padlocked in the corners of Koby's mind, secure and unbothersome. The parts of him that are terrified and fragile and vulnerable have been forced into silence, and Koby is actually opening his mouth to apologize again, to say he was just being stupid, he didn't mean to intrude, he's find now and he can go back to his room and they can pretend none of this ever happened.

And then there's Shanks's hand over his hair, Shanks's voice rumbling through him and the padlocks shatter and the chests bursts open and there's nothing Koby can do to stop it. He draws in a horrible, shuddering, sobbing breath, arms coming up around Shanks, clutching to him like an anchor as the mindless, senseless fear at the root of who he is swells up like a crashing wave. There are thoughts, memories, splinters of sensation -- cold and hungry and terrified and alone, in the orphanage in the woods in the river on a ship in this house, all of them blurring together, Koby at nineteen, sixteen, thirteen, nine, innocent and timid and vulnerable and a walking, talking target and what happens when someone cruel and greedy and hungry for power spots that target and digs her teeth in, unmakes something fundamental at his very core and breaks it so thoroughly he doesn't think it'll ever, ever heal, he'll always be that terrified, starving, desperately lonely kid locked in the hold and sobbing into his hands every night for two long, long, endless years.

He's not crying now, not doing anything but shivering and trembling against the onslaught of old hurt that only wakes up this late at night, when Koby's too tired and too distracted to shore up his defenses, when he hasn't taken good enough care of himself to banish them with the warmth of someone else, another body pressed to his, reminding him it's over, it's gone, he's safe. Shanks's touch now is a rope thrown in the midst of a monsoon, holding for the moment, but likely to snap, to slip through numb fingers and leave Koby lost again. He presses closer, breath raspy, fingers curling into Shanks's shirt, and he thinks -- Otherworld, the smear of pink and glitter and liquor across his mouth, the pulsing ache of need down his spine, pooling hot and slick between his legs, everything that had come after, every way Shanks had satisfied that need, had banished every thought that wasn't him, wasn't his voice, his touch, his body.]

I need -- [Koby's mouth clicks shut, too embarrassed even now, even caught between sheer panic and senseless dissociation, to verbalize it. He pulls back enough to look up at Shanks, eyes hollow and haunted and agonized, hoping he understands, hoping he realizes what Koby's asking, why, why it's the only thing that'll help. That he's sorry, he's so so sorry he's like this, that he can't keep those chests locked away, keep them from spilling over every time he's too tired or scared or in control.]

( it slams into him like a cannonball, like the huge crest of a wave, like the force of roger's divine departure. shanks holds koby tighter, his grip in koby's hair twisting for some imaginary purchase, steadying himself from the invisible blowback of every emotion bursting forth, rudderless, chaotic, wild. were shanks a man of lesser skill, it might have knocked him off his feet completely, weakened him at the knees — but he stands firm, in control, forcing his mind to calm even as the worst of it sears through him, striking the flint of a different kind of haki, bright sparks of red and black energy crackling outward like a lightning storm brewing at sea, searching futilely for the source of koby's terror and shame — a source it will never reach in this world, no matter how far shanks extends himself.

koby trembles against him and shanks consciously reels himself back in, tempers the swell of his rage long enough to feel koby's fingers pull at his shirt, anchoring him back to this moment, this world, this night — or, not just this night, but that night in the otherworld, too, the heat and the desire and the ache and the blissed out emptiness that followed, the warm buzz, the quiet. there's an echo of that night in koby's words, in the way he trembles at the thought, the way he stares up at shanks with pleading eyes — devoid of any of that heady desire now, replaced by mounting horror, begging shanks to save him.

of course i will, he should say, but his palm settles against koby's cheek instead, warm and solid and real, still buzzing like the static of an old television. his brow pinches almost imperceptibly, the concern written more in the set of his jaw and the steadiness of his gaze, the faint glow of red in his eyes fading back to amber brown. koby is already teetering on a gangplank; shanks won't be the one to push him over because he couldn't keep his own emotions in check. it's a delicate balancing act: showing koby he understands without revealing how deeply the worry has carved into his chest. too much, too soon might only make things worse, especially when the root of the problem feels so completely entrenched that shanks can barely distinguish the fear, the panic, the trauma from koby himself, his aura like fractured shards of glass in the shape of a person, his emotions a tangled web of rigging. )

Are you sure?

( shanks understands the desperation, the aching need to make everything go away, to be so close to someone everything else becomes white noise (in the wake of edd war, he and buggy had been even more inseparable than they were before, to a point that may have been mildly codependent — buggy, the eye of the storm raging in shanks' head; buggy, the only quiet part of all the noise; buggy, who never shut up unless shanks made him, being shanks' only solace; buggy, who could have drowned, learning how to drown shanks with his mouth and his tongue and his hands in places they shouldn't be) — but he understands how easy it is to beg for something that isn't good for you, too, to plead for something that could hurt as easily as it heals. (how many times has he drunkenly begged beck to let him call buggy, just to hear his voice, not to talk, knowing for all the seconds of joy it might bring, it will only make the inescapable longing and loneliness in his chest stretch that much wider? how many times has beck indulged him when he shouldn't have?) shanks would never hurt koby on purpose, and he's certain koby knows this, but he needs to be sure koby isn't trying to hurt himself by asking shanks to do this. still, just to be clear: )

I'm not saying no. I just need to be sure.

[There’s a flash of – something, Koby might be deep in his own emotions and thoughts right now, but he catches that much, the strange crackle in the air, the sense of something looming, like the air charged and snapping before a storm. But he’s also not fully there, flicking between the reality, the warmth of Shanks so close to him, the low rumble of his voice, that odd flash in his eyes, the way Koby’s whole body is shivering where it’s pressed against him, the way his knuckles ache from how tightly he’s clutching at the pirate’s shirt and – the ache in his knuckles as he scrubs at the splintered, blood-stained deck, the wood scraping his hands raw every time, he’s done the entire deck twice already, his back hurts and his ribs ache and when he was done Koby knew, he knew he’d need to do it again, it usually took five or six times before she was satisfied –

A shuddering inhale, a concentrated effort – calm, breathe in, slowly, quiet your mind, quiet it – and Koby’s back, for the moment, eyes locking with Shanks’s, trying to ground himself in the deep amber warmth of them. His own are wide, but present, lucid, here. There’s a sharp edge of loathing there, too, self-directed, hating his own weakness, his vulnerability to his own thoughts, the one thing he should be in control of.]

Am I sure? [The question makes Koby laugh, a hoarse, hollow thing, one shaky hand reaching up, raking backwards through his hair.] No, I’m not – sure of anything. [He inhales, ragged, looking back upwards, and there’s an echo of that usual awe, that hero-worship that never quite goes away, not with Shanks, not even after all this time.] But it – everything after was – with you it was.

[Koby swallows, words too big, too fumbling in his mouth, emotions bleeding out like water from a spout, welling up and tumbling down like the tears he’d normally be crying right now. But instead there’s just the desperate, shameful way he reaches up, covers Shanks’s hand on his face, looks up at him with those big, haunted, terrified eyes.] You made it quiet. You made all of it stop. I want – that. Please? [Softer, free hand slipping around, ghosting slightly under the hem of Shanks’s shirt, remembering what had made him shiver, what he’d liked before.] I want you. Please.

( shanks could shut out the onslaught if he wanted to — and maybe he would if koby were a stranger, a passerby, someone of little consequence in shanks' life. but koby is more than that to him: more than an acquaintance or a friend of a friend. koby is someone shanks feels compelled to look after, someone he shares a special, unusual, unexpected connection with. and so he opens himself to all of it, to the ache and the fear and every feeling of worthlessness and suffering, because this is important for shanks to understand. this is something only shanks can understand — without words, without having to voice every horrible thing out loud, with only the endless depth of feeling and memory.

it would be easier, with two arms, to keep koby close, but his hand remains a single, steady point of contact despite koby shuddering under him, his hollow laugh cutting through shanks like a knife. there's no pity in shanks' expression, only the weariness of bone-deep empathy, the concern that he doesn't have the words to make it better (a silent apology he isn't sure is his own or an echo of koby's), the guilt that, for once, he's powerless to rip the rotting root from the earth. and still, koby's hand is light against shanks' waist, his confession and his touch making shanks' breath hitch, a sound barely audible were they not standing so close.

you made it quiet. i want you. please. )

Alright. You'll have me, then. ( as if there was ever any doubt, really, that shanks would have given himself over willingly in the face of such a plea. his hand twists away from koby's cheek, drawing the back of koby's hand to his mouth and he presses a chaste kiss there, lingering. ) We'll take it slow.

( he leads them back to the bed (the buggy pillow safely stored on the top bunk), only letting go of koby's hand when he climbs in, expecting koby to follow his lead as he lies on his side, beckoning koby with his arm outspread. )

Lie with me. ( because sometimes the answer isn't mindless, meaningless sex, it's the intimacy of being with another person in body, mind, and soul — it's connecting with someone physically and emotionally, feeling your body and theirs move as one, being in your body as much as theirs, finding your center even with the world spinning and harsh and loud, drowning out the noise one shared breath at a time. when koby joins him, shanks trails his hand over the bare patch of abdomen exposed by koby's shirt riding up his torso, his mouth pressed behind the shell of koby's ear, warm and inviting. ) Ask me anything you want and I'll answer.

( no games, no maddening obfuscations. this is the anchor he offers freely, more than his touch, more than his body — his voice, his untapped knowledge, which he intends to whisper against koby's skin, peppered along the column of koby's neck and the slope of his shoulder and the plane of his back until every thread of the tangled nightmare in his head has come undone. )

[There hadn't been any doubt, not deep down -- and that's why Koby had come here, wasn't it, because he knew Shanks would understand, would know how to give what he needed, how to slip into the fractured, fragmented bits of emotion and memory and fear that made him up and help solder them back into a solid whole. There was a relief in not needing to articulate it, not having to verbalize every horrific event, every moment of indignity, every sleepless, cold, hungry night, every insidious word (nothing, useless, worthless, unwanted, unloved, unmissed) that had dug down to Koby's bones and made their home there. Scar tissue, like the ones on his chest, the ones on Shanks's face, no longer raw and sensitive but there, impossible to erase.

So he doesn't try to talk about it, doesn't try to put the loneliness and the fear and the relentless pain into words. It's right there, flickering on a kaleidoscope-quick shudder of images and sensations, echoing sharp and disjointed through his mind, jabbing through occasionally, like holding a handful of broken glass tighter, tighter, until it slices into your palm. Koby takes Shanks's hand, follows him to the bed, kicking off his shoes before he crawls in, settling on his side, back to Shanks's front, needing to watch the door, to stay on alert, to protect himself. It's wariness and trust tangled together, a hypervigilance Koby can't turn off, but the shivering length of his back pressed to Shanks's front, unafraid of a knife slipping between his ribs, a hand around his throat. Not here, not as he tucks himself closer, breath still rattling in and out of his lungs, hoarse, shaky.

Shanks touches him, hand broad and warm on his stomach, and Koby reaches down one shivery hand to grip onto his wrist, needing that contact, that physical tether. The voice helps, murmured against his neck, his shoulders, and he pressed back into it, trembling full-body, despite the blanket drawn up over them. For the moment being held is enough, enough to start drawing more of those tethers to reality, to safety. A trembling inhale, fingers drawing slow, absent designs along the back of Shanks's hand, before Koby makes his request:] Your crew.

[It's very small, very shaky, and the tears he's been fighting are inevitable, behind the faint words. Koby swallows hard, licks his lips, nudges Shanks's hand up under his shirt, to spread over his stomach, his ribs, coaxing him to touch more.] Tell me about your crew. [It's not the big questions he has, the ones he's puzzled over for months now -- the answers would be too big, too complex for the fragile way he feels just then. instead, Koby craves softer, gentler words, tales of the men Shanks has sailed with for at least a decade -- if not longer -- the ones Luffy had known, the ones he'd left behind. The sort of adventure stories Koby had loved as a child, before any wonder towards piracy had been beaten out of him. Before every pirate was a monster, waiting outside his door, in the shadows, looming over him, ready to strike.]

( shanks holds koby for a moment, his hand flat against koby's chest, pressing his back into the warmth of his own chest, trying to sync the rise and fall of their breaths, to feel the rhythm of koby's pulse beneath his palm, still too frantic, too wild — willing a tiny fraction of his own calm to overtake koby's spiraling anxiety.

he huffs in surprise at koby's request, fond and amused, but no less willing to tell koby what he wants to hear, no less willing to fill the warm air between them with stories of the men shanks calls family, home — to whisper the love he has for them in the moonlit dark, to let that love seep through him and into koby who so desperately needs it, his hand and mouth a roaming confirmation of his own dedication to making koby feel good in spite of all the bad. )

It started in the East Blue, of course. ( of course, because roger was executed in the east blue, in the very town he was born. because shanks was left there to fend for himself in the wake of it all, in the wake of the roger pirates disbanding and the captain's death and buggy leaving and the rain and the loneliness — and shanks hadn't known what to do with himself for a long time, not until he met — ) Beckman, my first mate, was stationed out of Loguetown when I first met him. ( a ghost of an amused smile pressed against koby's jaw, as if to say see, you aren't the first marine i've corrupted. but how beck got there isn't important; that's a story for another time, perhaps.

he leaves a trail of lingering kisses from koby's jaw down the length of his neck, infusing each press of his lips with a feeling that permeates through him: how he felt that day, meeting someone he knew would change his life, the simultaneous hope and enthusiasm and melancholy, wondering if this was what roger had felt like meeting rayleigh for the first time; how he still feels now, grateful and secure knowing beck always has his back, knowing how deep beck's calm adoration goes even if shanks will probably never be in a place to reciprocate. )

He wasn't a very good Marine, if I'm honest. I must've stolen my weight's worth in Berry and a ship before he seriously tried to arrest me. ( his hand drifts lower, teasing almost, until — ) I talked him into sailing with me instead, to follow me to Syrup Village to investigate a rumor I'd heard — and if he still wanted to turn me in after all that, I'd let him. ( — it slips beneath koby's waistband, his fingers suddenly smooth and cool to the touch, a light thrum of energy pulsing around them as he rubs a gentle circle of pressure against koby's clit, wanting to hear him gasp, to release a notch of tension in his shoulders. ) He's been with me ever since, free from the shackles of the Marines. ( he eases his fingers into koby's cunt, already slick with want, his mouth pressed to the slope of koby's shoulder when he admits: ) You'd like him, I think. You're both dedicated, loyal, whip-smart — and Beck is always there to put me to rights when I need it. Sometimes when I don't even know I need it.

( what he doesn't say is: i don't know what i'd do without him, because he is, in fact, quite aware that he has no idea what he's doing here without beck right now. koby, in a way, has become almost the same sort of north star that beck has always been, a fixed person in his life to keep him present when so often all he wants to do is slip back into the past. )

[The hand over his stomach spreads out, warm and rough and familiar, by now, even if the context is usually much – different. Koby’s become accustomed to that touch on his shoulder, his knee, his arm, grounding him when he’s focused so intently on his own energy that the rest of the world feels far away, unreal. It does something similar now, with his emotions jagged-edged and chaotic, jumbled into that painful, sharp mess that he clutches so, so tight, heedless of how much it’s hurting him, how much better it would be to let go. Because letting go feels dangerous, feels like untying the sails and cutting loose the anchor and surrendering himself to the whims of tide and wind, and Koby doesn’t (can’t) trust himself yet to stay on course.

But he trusts Shanks. He trusts the press of lips to the back of his neck, goosebumps shivering up his spine, an instinctive physical reaction that reminds him you’re here, you’re alive, you’re real and what’s in your head is not. He trusts the gently lilting murmur, painting a picture of a place that also doesn’t feel real anymore, the East Blue, the place Koby himself was born and raised, the sky and the water and the villages laid out like beads from a broken necklace, scattered tiny and bright through the sea.

It takes a moment for Koby to actually register the words – my first mate and stationed in the same sentence, about the same person, but when he does, there’s a physical jolt of surprise, the anxiously teeming ball of energy in his chest turning away from the nightmares, the grim, haunting images for just a moment. There’s a flash of the curiosity, the stunned bewilderment at how casually Shanks drops that information, that his first mate, the person he undoubtedly trusts more than anyone alive, who he has trusted for at least a decade, probably more – was a Marine.] Stationed. [It’s repeated quietly, on a shivery inhale as Shanks’s hand dips lower, lower, as the sudden revelation and the physical touch combine and bring Koby back, back into his body, back into the present.

And beneath it, the layer of warmth, of trust that Shanks has in this man – bad Marine or good Marine or mediocre Marine, but a Marine nonetheless, enough to issue him a bemused challenge, enough to invite him along on with his crew – it warms like whiskey, like rum, burns a line down Koby’s throat and spreads through his chest like he’s swallowed it, and if it’s a lie, it’s a convincing one. It’s enough to make him think – Syrup Village and his own attempts to be a good Marine, Luffy’s reaction both gentle and unflinching, “don’t try to stop me”, and Koby hadn’t, hadn’t been able to, hadn’t done anything until Coco Village, until it was down to Garp and Luffy and he’d stepped in between. And he wonders: if Luffy had offered, there in the tangerine grove, for Koby to come with him, to sail under the pirate flag for a week, a day, an hour, would he have said yes? Who would he be now, if he had?

It’s almost ironic, that it’s right when Koby’s thinking about Luffy that Shanks’s hand slips beneath the loose waist of his pants, that he teases slow and thrumming and dizzying through the gathered wetness there, and brings him back to earth with a sharp, soaring stab of sensation that does, in fact, make Koby’s breath catch, his body arch up towards the touch, thighs twitching and hand moving to grab at Shanks’s wrist, keep it there, keep him from pulling away. It’s sudden, the switch from only half-present to fully, but it’s tethered in the murmured voice against his bared shoulder, in the long, thick fingers stroking him open, pressing inside, and suddenly Koby is very, very much back in his body. Everything feels – more, heightened, the brush of the sheets against his skin, the firm, heated length of Shanks pressed to his back, the way he throbs and aches and drips around the fingers inside him, impatient and needy for more.

Shuddering out another exhale, leaning back against Shanks’s shoulder, Koby closes his eyes tight, arches up towards that hand and manages:] Ok-kay, keep – keep going. [Keep talking, keep touching, both, either, any.]

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