#a couple of lines and its always about htem and i get it but she doesnt get to be her own person

[yuudamari]

ill be like idc about jjk and its true but then i see satoru and suguru and its over

[vwoodes]

@jcllyfisn warning in advance i wrote this with my head switched off, but the inspiration had me. probably completely ooc but //clenches fist// i love htem.

It starts like this.

It starts slowly, seeping through cracks she didn’t know were there, sneaking up on her and settling in her bones before she can do so much as guard against it.

It starts on quiet nights and early mornings, in messy breakfasts and walks on the beach, happens with little nudges and snarky comments, drinks shared over laughter and tears, with fights and with embraces and without even a little warning at all.

It starts here.

Val is zoned out, sitting, staring at nothing as she usually does; as she has been, for the past hour. Somewhere in the back of her head, she registers the ache seeping into her bones along with the cold, her muscles stiff and angry. She doesn’t move. She sits, and she stares, and she ignores the world for a moment, lets her mind go blank and deliberately doesn’t think of anything. Doesn’t think of the way her hands ached with bruises. Doesn’t think of how her split lip had scabbed, weird and pinched and going to heal wrong. Doesn’t think of the look in that girl’s eyes as Val had pounded her father — murderous, drug-running, but still a father — into the ground. She doesn’t think of any of that, and instead she fills her head with nothing and everything, gaze fixed on the horizon where dusk stains the sky with crimson, and sits. Her ears are filled with a constant buzzing, the back of her eyes tattooed with static-y and off-coloured shapes that make no sense. But the ocean is calm, the beach is empty, and only the soft crash of breaking waves in the distance disturbs her vigil.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed, maybe a minute, maybe an hour, but eventually she blinks and night has fallen. The red has leached out of the sky, replaced with violet, and indigo, and a million tiny pinpricks of light. There’s someone standing in front of her, a darker shape in the dark of the evening, and the light of the moon allows her to pick out details like the line of a nose, or the pattern of a coat. None of that matters though, because Val would know that shape by heart, no matter how it changes.

They don’t talk, but Olivier takes a seat next to her, close enough that Val can feel the way her raincoat creases as she moves, can feel the heat of another human being, hear her breathing in and out in time with the waves, slow and steady. Val lets her eyes slip closed. She leans, just that tiny bit it takes until she’s resting her head on Olivier’s shoulder, and basks in the warmth that radiates between them, spreading throughout her body. Her back aches, and her fingers cramp when she moves them, and she’s pretty sure that if she tries to stand up her legs will be numb — but it’s nice.

It’s quiet.

That’s the beginning, but looking back, it’s not until later that things change. Like a ball rolling down a hill, it starts slow and builds momentum, and Val is left chasing after it and wishing she had realised sooner.

It’s a fleeting touch on the back of her neck as she teases Quartz, tiny grin bared for all to see as Val gives the kid a heartfelt noogie (Quartz hisses and spits and struggles in her arms, but Val knows she could easily break free if she wanted to — and isn’t it something, that this wounded, broken, wonderful child has come to trust them even this much? The inevitable bites and scratches will be worn like a badge of honour, smug because, ha! In your face Thatch, Quartz likes her). It lingers both too long and not long enough, and Val leans into the touch, as she always does, but doesn’t give up on her quest to embarrass the kid. Olivier passes by, her hand trailing along the nape of Val’s neck and over her shoulder, and the shiver along her spine has nothing to do with Marco’s tired glare and everything to do with the glance Olivier left with — one alight with hidden mirth and something like affection. Arms slackening around her prize, Quartz breaks free in an instant, hair fluffy and sticking out in every direction, cheeks adorably flushed as she bites out curses Val would be proud of if she weren’t distracted. She tracks Olivier’s progress across the deck and resists the urge to follow after her, resists the gravity that has her facing the door Olivier vanished into, like Mercury orbiting the sun.

But the pull is there, and it never quite disappears.

It’s the way her hair catches the light of late afternoon, one day by the deck. There’s a party in full swing around them, a welcome or a birthday or something, but Val is rooted to the spot, hand half raised in greeting. People laugh and chatter and push by her, there’s music starting up, and someone’s said something that makes Whitebeard roar with laughter — and Val stands there and remembers. She remembers that sunset from months ago, and thinks Olivier’s hair is the same shade of violet. Exactly the same, Val thinks. Lit from behind with the light of the sun, warm and cool meeting and melting together seamlessly, she can almost see it soak up the scarlet sky until it’s dyed a boundless indigo and dusted with stars. It should be nothing, just a passing fancy, but it leaves her struck still.

And then Olivier turns, and sees her, and smiles, and Val’s chest catches fire.

It’s a tiny thing, that smile, tiny and sweet and real.

The fire in her chest has burnt it’s way up to her cheeks by the time Val manages to move, but she doesn’t continue on, she spins on her heel and leaves, manages to make it to a hallway below deck with only minor stumbling, and she swallows and counts that as a win.

Time passes, as it always does, and it becomes normal, feeling a wildfire burning inside her when she’s around Olivier. Sometimes she will smile, or tell a joke, or get that light of mischief in her eyes that means she’s about to prank some unfortunate soul, and the blaze will flutter and spark like a gust of wind fanned through it; Other times, times when they haven’t seen each other in weeks, months, times when events catch up to them, when she says something wrong, or forgets — then it feels like going hungry and losing appetite at the same time, fire sputtering to embers and glowing coal; but it never goes out.

Val learns to adjust to the inferno beneath her skin.

Even with that, it takes more. Val’s on an island, alone for the first time in what feels like forever, but has really only been a couple of weeks. There’s a good lead on a bounty, plenty of money in her wallet, a great bar just down the road, and she even has a place to stay. By all rights, she should be thoroughly enjoying her stay here, but. She’s not.

There’s something trailing at her footsteps, a need to call out, but nobody to call to. A reminder, in lilac baubles and strange seafood. A glimpse in a window, half expecting there to be two reflections instead of the one.

She’s. . . not restless, that’s the wrong word for the emotion curled in the hollow space between ribs, around her shoulders, pressing her down. She’s not restless, but it’s similar. She’s. . .

Lonely.

Val pauses in the street, let’s the bounty she’d been trailing round a corner without her. Loneliness is an emotion she hadn’t allowed herself in years, not even when separated from Johnny and Yosaku, and to feel it now sends a dull thorn into her mind. It’s a crack in her mental blocks, and now that she recognises the one, others come tumbling after: she’d been sad, to leave the ship. She’d been happy, to be wished well on her travels. She was eager to leave the island and return h-

She stops that thought there, turns around and heads for the bar.

When she does return to the ship, a month later than she’d promised last she wrote, it’s with sheepish apologies for the worry and many souvenirs. The gifts are received with mixed reactions, but that’s fine, she hadn’t really been paying attention when she bought them this time. She’d been distracted by feelings, of all things, and it had taken an unfortunate amount of time to wrap her head around the fact that that was okay now, that she was allowed to feel. And what a revelation that had been, face down in the sand with a nest of empty bottles around her, leagues away from the people who caused it. No one has ever accused Val of being the smartest crayon in the shed, but she tries not to cringe as she thinks of it. She really is dense, sometimes.

She’d missed them, the Whitebeards. And most of all, Olivier.

Thoughts of returning had buoyed her borrowed sails, and this time she didn’t let ending up on the wrong ship steer her off course. She wasn’t part of the family, she wasn’t even friends with most of them, but they made her feel welcome in a way precious few had before, and it struck her that she’d never told them how much that meant. She wanted to, now, wanted it with a passion she rarely felt and even rarer acted on. Olivier isn’t there, but she’s probably away on business and Val doesn’t let it bother her. She opens her mouth to say something, her small gathering by the rails comparing presents and ribbing each other in a happy mess of bodies, and then she spots her. Olivier is next to her father, gesturing at something before heading their way, and Val thinks, I should wait for her, and, her coat looks a bit singed, and, Stephan got bigger again.

And then their eyes meet.

It starts like this: a flash of purple, a fleeting touch, a secret smile.

It burns in the back of her throat, and makes her heart beat raw and aching, and steals the breath from her lungs to make room for- for other things.

Val meets Olivier’s eyes across the deck, and it’s like stepping off a ledge, her stomach swooping in ways that probably aren’t healthy.

Something grows in her chest, sinks deep into her veins and hooks into her skin, strips the words from her tongue and shifts everything inside her just a bit to the left, just enough to tilt the world on its axis. Or maybe she’s the one tilting (though it feels more like falling), and regardless she reels from it. Head spinning, the world settles around her in a new and unfamiliar way when she finally finds her feet.

“Oh,” Val says. Breathes the word out, because there’s no room left in her for anything but realisation, and the importance of air and oxygen leave her mind in the wake of it. And then she says it again, because, “Oh.”

She’s in love.