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SHANKS

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[redforce]

( 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. )

[kobes]

[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.]

[redforce]

( 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. )

[kobes]

[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.]