I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT EX HUSBAND SHANKS 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Okay I was thinking a relationship that’s like SUPER chill and casual. Like literally fuckbuddies turned lovers; u stay on ur home island and he’s off most of the time. Was based close by in the first year or two y’all met and got close so he was around more often but eventually it becomes him stopping by every few months for a few weeks and the two of you keeping up contact while he’s gone. The progression from just messing around to a committed relationship is slow and largely unsaid until Beckman tells you his captain has turned down every other woman for the past two years and you realize you aren’t much searching for other men yourself; soon enough you’ve got matching rings and as untraditional as it is it works.
And I’m just thinking abt how like…….. ur happy w ur life on ur little island, it’s relatively safe all things considered under his protection and you’ve lived there your whole life and all you rlly wanna do is keep your head down and stay there. Getting involved with Red-Haired Shanks puts a major flaw in that plan but it’s easy to forget who exactly he is. He doesn’t hide it, ofc not, but he’s so… unremarkable seeming that it’s difficult to remember, especially when your interaction with him is isolated to a scant few days or weeks when he’s most at ease and the only thing he’s thinking about is you.
But………. then you’re reminded otherwise. It’s silly really, because of course you know. It’s been years since you first met him, you’ve seen the wanted posters and you’ve heard how people talk about him, but knowing in abstract—contrasted by the man who’s managed to marry you, all wide smiles and incessant drunken love confessions and never dodging a well-placed swat from your hand—is far different from seeing in person.
You board his ship for a little trip; something small, only a few days to go retrieve a gift for you that Shanks had foolishly left a few islands away, low-risk and entirely in his territory. But it all goes sideways and you’re forced, quite suddenly, to realize just who you’ve managed to fall for—and exactly what kind of power and prestige he wields—while trapped with nowhere to go but remain on his ship with him and his crew for the days it takes to return.
You feel stupid more than anything, balking like this after one (frankly minuscule) fight. You don’t leave his cabin the whole trip back. He brings you meals, holds you when he can, tells you how much the crew misses you, but he doesn’t understand just how much you’re questioning. How much, you wonder, do you really know Shanks? Bordering on ten years is quite some time but when you only see him a scant few weeks out of those years, how much does it matter?
The ring on your finger, the way he looks at you—they settle on your shoulders more like a noose now, no longer making you giddy. How long until some bitter rival of his storms your home searching for you because they can’t touch him?
How much is he worth it when the lives of everyone in your hometown stand at risk?
You’re smart enough not to pick the fight until you’ve returned. You have it at the door of your home, long overdone and frankly terrified, all but melting down once you’re truly alone with him for the first time in a week. He doesn’t yell back—doesn’t do much, after attempts at soothing you fail, except watch you with a mildly surprised expression on his face.
For the first time in years you don’t let him stay the night, or see him off when he leaves the following day. You sit up on your roof and watch his ship disappear over the horizon and assure yourself that clearly you aren’t cut out for being his.
(But two months later that ship appears again, and an hour after docking there’s a knock at your door, and you can’t help how your breath hitches when you see that red hair beyond the peephole…)
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Would you pretty please turn this picture into an Eddie munson fanfiction? I've been searching the Internet and have yet to find anything like this. If you not comfortable, I totally understand!!
me: writing break!
mailbox: 🫶
me: …..umm ANYWAY *frantic typing*
I LOVE THIS PROMPT SO MUCH U HAVE NO IDEA
tw: cursing, angst, panic/anxiety attack, dissociation, night terrors, depressed/anxious reader, post-v2 (fixit)
it takes a long time for your nights to go back to a state of semi-normalcy. a long time of regaining the ability to lay in bed comfortable and calm and eager for sleep, a long time of healing and bandages and pained tears, a long time of struggling for the smallest crumbs of comfort. but you had each other, and that made it easier of course — but it was still an uphill battle for those first few months. there was a lot of heartache, a lot of tears and strain, but far be it from eddie and you to let the darkness come out on top. you were both fighters, and when the battle got too rough for one of you, the other always managed to gather enough strength to keep the both of you pushing, moving forward. persevering.
when the darkness got the better of you, eddie was there to blind it with his brilliance.
nights… you’d come to dread them. during the day the sun could blot out your thoughts, soothe worries with its warmth, and you had things to do and places to go and people to see; the day didn’t give you the time to worry. but when night fell, when it was just you and eddie and the quiet — not that you didn’t enjoy those things, but with the night and the quiet, and the memories you and eddie now shared… nights were still sometimes difficult.
the thing is, eddie doesn’t remember that night. he doesn’t remember anything after the bats.
but you do.
you remember, and you’ve had to watch it again, and again — at first it was every time you tried to sleep, then just when you slept at night, but always sleeping during the day became a problem. then after a while, after nights started to feel somewhat tolerable, it was every other night. every few nights. you were down to once every few weeks now, but even then, the idea of just trying to get some rest had become so stressful it was just a frustrating cycle of exhaustion at this point.
and how could you bother eddie with this? he knew, but you didn’t complain beyond the initial waking up from the dreams. sure he didn’t remember that night, but he still remembered facing the bats. he still had to go through the stint in the hospital, recovery at home. you were both dealing with your individual traumas. he always assured you you were allowed to feel it too, you didn’t need to act tough around him — you’d become so quiet. so tired. he would always tell you the way through was together, that he had your back. but you still felt like it would burden him. far be it from you to be a burden.
really though, there’s only so many times you can say you’re okay when you’re not before it becomes too much to handle alone.
tonight it takes you by surprise. tonight you fall asleep in eddie’s arms, but you wake up and, you’re there. you’re in the wasteland that is the upside down and you’re running but you can’t run fast enough and there’s not enough air in your lungs. the red flashes are too bright, too disorienting, you can just barely make out the swarm.
when they suddenly drop from the air, you see the body they surround and you drop too. it’s too much, too heavy, too real — the little air you have rips from your lungs and you crawl to him, you know you can save him if you just go fast enough but you can’t move any faster, no matter how hard you scream you can’t get to him any quicker, like you’re pulling yourself through drying concrete. you hear dustin crying.
you reach, so hard your muscles pull and you cry, and you grab his vest and drag yourselves together, gripping him tight light you’re about to be pulled away from him again. you try and talk him awake but your lips move slow too, it’s muffled in your ears like you’re underwater, clogged and distant. if you’re loud enough, cry hard enough, scream loud enough, maybe he’ll wake up. your foreheads are pressed together as you beg for him to wake the fuck up —
“please wake up please wake up please wake up,” his eyes snap open and he holds your face, talking to you quickly, quietly, murmuring a pleading song.
you feel like you’re being pulled up through water.
you wheeze deep and suddenly breach the surface, gasping wildly into a dark space, but that voice remains and keeps guiding you from the murky depths; it’s soft, always soft — calling to you with a tender earnestness.
“i’m here. i’m here — you’re safe; you’re awake.”
you start to wail, and eddie leans over to turn on the lamp before pulling you into his lap, into his arms, careful but quick. he tries not to waver, not to show how startled he is — but he can’t help the tremble in the way that he holds you, the break in his voice.
“it’s okay, y/n it’s okay — i promise. you’re not there. you’re home. i’m here.”
“i-i-i — fine — i’m fine — i’m fine,” it almost hurts to speak, takes effort between the deep breaths and hiccups and sobs. eddie leans you away a bit, pushes damp hair from your cheeks and cups them in warm calloused hands that are firm but loving, urging you to look at him.
through the tears you see his eyes are wide but tired, concerned and sad and alarmed, when you try to look away he holds you still, shaking his head firmly.
“no. no sweetheart you’re not okay.”
he looks at you a moment longer before pulling you back into him as you shudder, quaking with the force of it, gripping his shirt tight to ground yourself as you weep into his shoulder.
eddie shushes you softly, holds you so tight his arms tremble and hides his face in your hair.
“i’m here. you’re safe. i’ve got you. i promise.”
“wh-what about you??”
“i’m safe too, baby. we’re safe. we’re home.”
one of his hands slides around one of yours, soothes it open to release his shirt and then guides it down to the bedsheets.
“feel our bed? the sheets?”
he takes your quieting cries as a ‘yes,’ and smiles small, kissing your temple. you’re starting to focus on him, on your surroundings.
“feel my shirt? an’ my arms?”
you nod, running your thumb over the faded black fabric held tight in your fist, full of holes and tears. you’d got it for eddie when he took you to see judas priest, the metal conqueror tour. you guys hadn’t started dating yet. some dude spilt beer on you and shouted at you for the audacity, eddie had punched him in the face, and then you’d started dating.
“hey! there’s a smile!” eddie peers down at you with a smile of his own, and you sniffle but hold it for him through the stubborn tears. “there you go. where’d that come from?”
“you,” you respond simply, tearfully.
eddie laughs softly and pulls you in again, rocking you in his arms, muttering gentle affirmations.
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ocean theology
“Zoro—”
“Did you know?” he repeats, desperate, and Luffy just looks at him. And he wonders, then, how much of this has been preordained—how much of this is real, how much of this is him. How much of what he’s felt since they were wedged side-to-side in a shitty wooden boat on the East Blue has actually mattered, and how much has been the universe pressing him down into the mold of someone else's heart.
And then Luffy is gripping his horns, bringing his forehead down to meet his, repeating, “Zoro? Zoro?” like his name is a mantra, like he’s gone somewhere far away and gotten lost on his way back.
And Zoro blinks at him, then, and sees both of them at once—both of them—and he grips Luffy’s face in his own hands (claws) and presses his lips (violent, full of teeth) against his. Because this is who he has been waiting a thousand years for, the brightest and most beautiful of them all, the one thing he could never have—could never see, not if (Luffy, Joyboy, Nika) had made different (worse) choices—the thing that could never thrive in the darkness, just like he could never (has been unable to for centuries) survive without it—
pairing: roronoa zoro/monkey d. luffy
word count: 40,565
ao3 tags: canon-compliant reincarnation; melodrama (affectionate); spoilers through the end of wano; mild body horror (horns teeth claws); it's about the Yearning and the Devotion; graphic depictions of violence; archive warnings are for violence inflicted BY the crew not ON the crew; hurt/comfort/comedy at a 30/60/10 ratio; 40k words and i forgot to write "Asura" even once
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