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SHANKS

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[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.]