For the Spotify Top 100 ficlet prompt: 55, One Piece, whatever you're feeling!
Por la boca vive el pez- Fito & Fitipaldis
(It's my absolute favourite rock ballad in the world, the singer is basically playing around with the popular saying 'por la boca muere el pez', meaning 'the fish dies because of its mouth', meaning 'liars usually rattle themselves out', and he's using that to say how he cannot live anymore while denying his feelings).
“I apologize”.
Mihawk’s words throw Shanks out of a loop. He closes the door of his cabin, his other hand lightly squeezing Mihawk’s shoulder as he tries to search his face. The penumbra elongates the swordsman’s gesture, making him seem… sad? Embarrassed? In the lonely light of the only couple of candles lit up on Shanks’ desk.
“...My behavior was unfitting”, Mihawk continues. Shanks blinks, a total loss of words. “I’ll understand if you—”.
“What are you going on about?”, Shanks cuts him off, heart pounding in his chest as his mind automatically jumps to every single instance throughout the evening in which Mihawk has been uncharacteristically handsy. How Shanks moved Mihawk’s legs to let people use the stairs of the ship they were drinking on and Mihawk just kind of. Left his legs on Shanks’ lap. How he gently took Shanks’ hand and put it again on his knee, every time Shanks thought that he was getting tired of him idly running his fingers on it.
Mihawk, ever so helpful, gives a non committal shrug.
Shanks takes a breath.
“Look”, he says, directing Mihawk to sit on his bed: “I took you out because you usually do not get this drunk, not because—”, he strips him of his coat, then kneels to take out his boots and hopes that not looking at him helps him say something that makes more or less sense, “they’ve done wilder shit— hey, I’ve done wilder shit, it’s just. You usually do not get this drunk”.
Because that’s the thing. His mind keeps circling back to Mihawk touching him —to things like that little displeased noise he made every time Shanks moved his hand away— but the reality is that the swordsman has been pretty out of it throughout their entire meeting. Hell, he already seemed a little weirded out in the morning, when he’s shown up to their customary duel.
He looks up at Mihawk’s somber face, and squeezes his thigh even though the other doesn’t look at him.
“What’s going on?”.
It cannot be the marines, and thinking about the possibility of a rival making Mihawk this sad makes Shanks internally laugh. That leaves the prospect of Mihawk being in this state by something Shanks adjacent, but he cannot think of anything the swordsman wouldn’t tell him upfront, Mihawk’s tongue being at times as sharp as Yoru.
Well, nothing realistic, anyway.
“At this point you’ve got to know that you can tell me about whatever’s going on, and that I won’t use it against you”, Shanks says, because it bears to be said, apparently. “Except if it’s about how you’re bad at fighting with knives. But I already know that”, he teases with a smile.
Mihawk huffs, and it almost sounds like a snort, and if Shanks pays attention, he can almost see a corner of the swordsman’s lips pulling up. His chest feels warm.
Warmer, still, when Mihawk’s eyes drop to his lips.
He closes his mouth. His heart is beating out of rhythm, impossibly loud in his ears in the silence of the room. Half of Mihawk’s face is obscured, the light of the candles a tenuous glint on his golden iris, stuck on Shanks’ lips. Does Mihawk feel the warmth of his cheek, when he cups it? Does he blame it on the alcohol?
The spell is broken when a wave makes Shanks’ tense position tip, hands scrambling for support on Mihawk’s thighs, straw hat tipped back and hanging on his back and— he grabs the other’s hand without a second thought, pulling it back to his cheek where the swordsman left it first.
“...This is okay”, Shanks mutters, because it apparently also needs to be said. It tips Mihawk’s surprise into something close to fondness, if Shanks is reading him well.
The swordsman kisses his grin away.
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//ableism mention tw
ok just gonna say something really quick: i absolutely hate Abe's characterisation in the reboot of Clone High because it is nothing like how he acted in season 1 and it just. isn't funny. they've turned this good-intentioned but flawed loser kid who just wants to be like the original Abraham Lincoln but doesn't know how to, into a self-centered and arrogant asshole who literally almost said a horrible ableist slur twice in the first episode. like. i'm being serious, he almost says the R-slur twice in the same minute and i dunno about you but i really don't find it very funny when a) the only "joke" behind it is "oh look at how bad Abe is compared to the more progressive sensitivities of the new generation of clones, isn't he just terrible", and b) they felt the need to completely rewrite a pre-existing character that fans are already attached to to do something against his own morals for the sake of a shitty joke, and c) TOPHER WAS RIGHT THERE!!! isn't he supposed to be the asshole or am i missing something?? like...
i'm not saying you can't have "edgy" or "dark" comedy or whatever, but personally, i don't find it very funny when a character that actually means quite a lot to me and is one of my favourites is twisted and rewritten into an arrogant asshole in an apparent attempt to appeal to the people who hate Abe for his flaws in the original show. especially when he's rewritten to be someone who would say a slur that's literally been used against my fellow disabled peers, myself included. it just feels... wrong. it actually hurts a lot to see a character i once loved and found to be one of the funniest and most important characters in the show be turned into an arrogant dick, with barely any thought or meaning put into him. i don't like what they did with the rest of the OG cast as well (such as Joan making a complete 180 in her entire character, JFK's character assassination, the removal of Gandhi, Cleo barely being in it etc.), but to me, they did Abe the dirtiest in this season and i'm really disappointed that one of my favourite shows had to continue like this :(
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decided to switch things up and rewatch the first 4 min of season 1 and the tone is so different but also quite similar?
the first 4 min are the fight at the club and the beginning of wille's speech saying he's going to hillerska. it sets the tone that he's going to be this bratty privileged kid who's used to everything going his way and throws a fit when his parents tell him no but it also sets the tone that he's going to be alone.
whereas season 2 opens on him totally broken. the only 'happiness' wille experiences is a dream and once he's awake he walks through the palace like a ghost. he doesn't talk to or look at anyone. he physically shuts kristina out when he closes the door on her and although we see his responses to august we don't actually see him send them. he doesn't acknowledge anyone.
both seasons start with wille alone but the difference is this time he's also lonely. in s1 when he got sent to hillerska he was alone but he wasn't lonely because he could still text or call erik if he wanted to talk (like on parent's day and before rowing practice) but this time? he's lost his brother and has both loved and lost simon. he has no one. we know at some point he talks with felice but at this point in time he is well and truly on his own.
the opening of s1 was purposefully misleading because we had to meet the characters and get to know them to understand their motives. but by the second episode wille was already friends with simon and still had erik. but this season? all bets are off. we know how things were left. even though wille and simon didn't end on bad terms they still ended. ngl i was originally skeptical when all the actors kept saying s2 was darker because s1 was plenty dark. but after that opening. after feeling the hopelessness and grief wille's experiencing? i fear we've only begun to scratch the surface of how far wille is willing to go now that he has nothing to lose.
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