#taffrail

[ltwilliammowett]

The Taffrail

A taffrail is a railing at the stern of the ship or the handrail around the open deck area at the stern of a ship or boat. The term is a shortening of taffarel, the original name for this ornament.

The stern of the Prins Willem with a wooden carved taffrail and a Captain on the Poop deck taffrail, by William Heysmann Overend (1851-1898) (x) (x)

Sometimes the railing refers only to the curved wooden top of the stern of a sailing ship or an East Indian ship.  It could also be a complete handrail along the poop deck. The rail of these wooden sailing ships usually had hand-carved wooden mouldings, which were often highly ornamented.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

one of my favorite details in the Fjord comic is Sabian taking his coat off before he jumps off the ship. like, yeah, obviously you'd want to get rid of your coat before jumping into the sea. but it's so charming that it was included.

[wyvernest]

cregan stark x f!targaryen!reader

first part - previous part - all chapters list

>>Queen Rhaenyra has sent you away from the brewing war to safety since your brother, Jacaerys, has secured the Pact of Ice and Fire. You have to honor it by marrying Lord Cregan Stark, Warden of the North.

chapter cw: smut, fluff, ANGST, explicit description of a wound

Wind's howling. The sea simmers with wrath and death.

The deck creaks and groans under you like an old beast waking from a decade-long sleep, bones cracking and jaws grinding with vengeance.

There is no crew, no captain. The ship is a wraith, and you, a speck of dust in the darkness.

You step towards the taffrail, looking down into the abyss. Terror washes over you, a raw instinct of deathly peril. Your heart thumps in your ears, and you feel the blood race through you.

Deep below, a wreckage drifts on the tides, carried by charred tongues of fallen beasts, licking its last life away. Atop, a small, frail creature, claws at the damp wood, drained and wounded.

Your throat tightens, a deeply rooted, dreamlike feeling of being bound to the creature rushes through you like wildfire. It tenses and crawls, its blood seeping into the black waters like a frozen breath leaving warm lungs for the last time.

The wind wails louder as you bend forward, seeking help, life, hope, with terror biting at your every sense. You slip over the ledge, and the void swallows you in your fall.

You awaken in your bed, the night barely pierced by the first lances of sunlight through the clouds. The fear slowly retreats, your breathing slowing down.

Cregan is still asleep next to you, lying on his stomach and facing away from you, his hair splayed messily over his shut eyes. You get up, quietly leaving his side to soothe yourself with cold water.

The castle is silent and imperturbable, a welcomed calmness following your nightly terrors. You walk like a ghost through the halls, lulled by the newfound safety, yet your mind is still imprisoned in thought.

Why would I even dream of such things? I cannot recall the last time I saw a ship, I cannot recall the last time I saw a storm at sea.

It is long past four moons since you first arrived in Winterfell, four moons since you last saw Dragonstone, your family, your brothers and sisters. The tenth day of the twelfth moon of 129 A.C. And for four moons, you haven't missed them nearly as much as now.

Perhaps it is the war, the news of Rhaenys, the murder, the unavoidable dread of death that knows no borders. Whatever it is, the dream shook you out of any serenity Cregan has struggled to settle in your heart.

“This is war. And the finality of death harrows even the toughest of men.”

But it was not the harrowing of your heart that woke you now. You would accept the night terrors every time you slept if it meant you could see your family alive and well again.

When you return to your chamber, Cregan shuffles to look at you, still lying down. He smiles, lazy and content, until he notices the strain between your brows, something you did not mean to bring back to him.

“My love?” He calles for you, but you push him back down before he could rise. You fall beside him, letting his warm hand cup your freshly washed cheek. “Did something happen?” His voice is still groggy with sleep, and the closure subdues your bleak worries.

“Just a dream.” You whisper, closing your eyes. His hand brushes over your hair lovingly.

“Tell me.” His hand moves to caress your back, pulling you closer to him.

“There is no need. All is good now.” But is it?

And yet you cast your worries aside when he drags you nearly under him, his free hand running over your waist and hip, dipping into the valley between your thighs. You cast your worries aside when you feel the coarse hair of his abdomen brush up against your belly.

Your mind goes numb when his massive body encompasses yours, as he breathes hotly into your neck, slipping himself inside you lazily; when he whispers to you of how he'll protect you, ah, love, you're mine own now, no harm will come to you.

But when his warmth leaves you, deep in the nights to come, the dreams find you again.

The second time they came with the same black waters, the drifting wreckage, but now shadows danced in the skies. Sinister serpents, prowling like enormous crows above a fresh cadaver. They pushed the clouds beneath them with behemothic wings, and you felt as though the whole night sky was coming down on you, in all its weight and darkness.

You dared look up once, up into the mirroring abyss. And then, you saw it. Through the gloom and mist, a ghost of a citadel atop a sunless hill. Perhaps there are many castles you may confound in such obscurity, but this was not one to be mistaken for something else.

Estrangement, guilt, it was, that claimed you in all these nights. A terrible shame, inexplicable for your position. You were sent North, you did not abandon your cause. But the creature in the sea bled every night, clung to the wreckage every night, and died every night.

It soon became an obsession. And weeks past, well near the end of the twelfth moon, your uneasiness bolts as Cregan receives another raven from Dragonstone.

The flying shadows. - is your first thought upon reading. The serpents swarming the skies. Though the letter should soothe you, with the notion of the Blacks’ forces finally recuperating, all you see is the black sky in a cobweb of smoke and thunderclouds. You see them much clearer; your family’s dragons stalking above the seas like starving vultures.

A broad hand on your lower back makes you turn back to Cregan.

“Word of this reached me shortly before the raven arrived.” He admitted, referring to new riders. “Your brother waited until the last dragon was mounted to write to us, but the people have been spreading the news like the plague ever since he first called for willing men.”

An overwhelming feeling of helplessness muffles out his voice. It's all amounting to the dream.

“They have fighting dragons.”

“You have fighting dragons, beloved. I dared not believe it without his testimony.”

You force yourself to smile at him, laying your head on his collarbone, the message still in hand.

“This is wonderful news.”

He kisses your forehead, taking the small scroll away. You briefly rub your fingers in its loss, as if the news had burnt your very skin.

“I am glad to know that I was able to please you, as well.” He remarks smugly, his tone laced with the honest surprise of seeing your brother quite literally tell on you.

Sudden nervousness momentarily rips you from the illusions of your distress. You scrunch up your face, as if you hadn’t already given him your maidenhead.

“Few brides have the comfort of wedding handsome men. Fewer, able men, and even fewer kind men. But …” You trail off, taunting his patience. He gazes at you, eyes squinted, the corners of his mouth ever so slightly raised. Even as a wolf, he often times held the cunning gaze of a fox, which amused you to no end, for you know it was only reserved for you. How he had the talent of drawing you out of dark thoughts with nothing but a jest or a tease.

“Well, don’t stop now.” His voice went down an octave, now sly and intimate.

“But to gain all three …” You kiss his cheek, dangerously close to his mouth.

His arms wrap around you in response. “To find yourself next to a man so strong-” another kiss, on his jaw. “- so resourceful -” another, on his lips, but so hasty that he doesn’t catch it.

“ - and yet so considerate and gentle. You hard warriors have no idea how important that is.” You stop, softly pushing him away to speak, your tone masquerading a scold. “You think it’s enough to butcher away any foes and any peril. But after that…” a kiss on the bridge of his nose. He looks at you like you’re preaching the word of gods. “ - to be able to lie in his arms, to know that these hands, that bathe in blood to protect her, will only ever touch her to caress, to fondle, to hold so dearly.” Your voice spills into seriousness, and he heeds your confession.

“That is when she truly feels safe.” You smile at him, accentuating your discourse by playfully shaking him twice by his shoulders. “And to have that, is more than any woman bargains with the gods for.”

He kisses your face, the slyness faded from his eyes.

“...And I can’t say you don’t look the part.”

He giggles, and your heart beats a little faster.

“I did not yet have the chance to truly protect you, love.” He corrects, and your heart sinks at his humble words, or more so at the recollection of your worries. “I haven’t yet spilt blood for you. Trust that I will , should the occasion arise.” That was no longer a jest, you realise. “And afterwards …” He leans into you, and seeing you do nothing to flee, he kisses your neck. “I’ll hold you, however you want, wife.”

Tonight you can barely shut your eyes without your heart thumping in your chest. After tossing and turning beside your husband, tiredness finally takes you and the visions creep over.

The nightsky rains with arrows. They snap and ring against the wooden shipwrecks like so many sharp teeth of jaws closing in on utter desolation.

Faceless, weightless, you step on the waters while the black wings dance and stalk restlessly, as the shafts hit the debris in a cacophony of wails, winds, tides crashing and roars of wrath.

And in this moment, it feels as though this cut is too deep even for time to mend. This place would never recover from such decay. Chaos has conquered the bay, irreversibly.

Death itself growls in the heavens above, blocking out the light of the moon. The sea heeds the call and drowns whatever escaped its claws, and the Red Keep stands still and cold and silent on the shores, an ill omen of rot and ruin.

The man on the rubble is dead. A snapped arrow coated in blood bore into his neck, the impact twisting his upper spine so unnaturally that he lies lifelessly atop the wreckage like a mayhem of boneless limbs discarded.

Only a hand quivers away in agony, the last semblance of a decapitated animal’s tremble.

You stomach turns.

Jacaerys!

You awaken in a sweat, with a shriek that rips Cregan from his slumber as well.

“ ‘S alright, come here, you're safe.” He cradles your still shivering hands to his chest, running a hand over your hair and back.

“ ‘m sorry.” You speak, muffled, remorseful and ashamed.

“It's no fault of yours.”

“...Cregan?”

You whisper, your limbs still tangled with each other. He hums, as attentive as he always is. The sun is just starting to show, and the dimness of the morning makes him look astonishingly beautiful.

“Would you do anything to shield me from pain?”

“ ‘course I would. What do you need of me?”

You hesitate. You know he would forbid you from fleeing, though you can not bring yourself to hide from your husband any longer. Whatever needs to be done, you ought to discuss it together.

“I need to fly South.”

There is a moment of complete silence. His face, for all you’ve grown to know, is now as impenetrable as The Wall. You cannot tell if you, indeed, sense anger or if it is only your expectations, for asking such a thing. You both get up as tension becomes unbearable.

“My men are already gathering at the White Harbour.” He speaks with patience and softness, understanding of your predicament, though stern and clearly unwavering. “In Barrowton.” He continues, “Roderick Dustin should be ready to march by week’s end. I-”

“ ‘Should’, and ‘by week’s end’…” You repeat to yourself in sorrow, too late releasing you quite rudely interrupted him. But the urgency of the issue can no longer afford gentleness nor much civility. “My family needs me, now. I dreamt of it, Cregan. You must believe me! And even if it’s wanton, even if the peril is still at bay, then I shall return safely. You mustn’t worry.”

“Wife.” His tone is demanding. It silences you, but deep in your heart you loathe him for it. You loathe him because of your dreams, because of the war, because greybeards can only ride so fast and so far, and will definitely not head for The Blackwater Bay.

“I have faith in your courage.” He begins, still holding you, yet the frost in his gaze is anew. “I do not doubt your loyalty. But as husband, I cannot allow you to risk such a thing. As warden, I cannot allow you to forsake the Queen’s command.”

“That’s your desire to protect me!” You speak hastily until your voice breaks, yet you go on. “What of me? How am I to live on knowing I could have saved someone so dear?! How am I to live with the remainder that I saw what would happen and did nothing?!”

“Dreams can be bad omens. But what if it was nothing more than a dream?” His voice escalates into the clear image of your demise in his mind. “What if you die for nothing? How would I live with that? Knowing I could have prevented it?”

“Cregan.” You brush an arm over his shoulder.

“I will say no more. You are not leaving Winterfell.” It is a command. And yet you hear him mumble, “I can’t lose you.”

Your heart sinks into your chest, and your throat tightens with unspoken pleas and cries.

Fortunately for you, Cregan is a heavy sleeper. He was still off soundly when you roused, during the hour of the wolf.

He was still undisturbed when you gently kissed his cheek, as an apology and farewell. He was unmoved when you slipped out of bed, changed into riding skirts and threw chainmail over your chemise and underneath the leather cloak.

“Lady Stark.” A reverential voice echoes in the halls when you depart from your shared bedchamber. For a heartbeat, your blood freezes at the thought that Cregan might, at last, awaken because of it.

“I have orders from Lord Stark to ensure your safety. Allow me to accompany you.”

“Oh, there's no need. I only mean to clear my mind on the battlements.”

Before he could reply, you turn your back to him and stroll off to the winding stairs. Your footsteps feel heavy, heavier than your masked armour, heavier than the dagger at your belt.

The cold, high winds hit your face as you reach the top of the castle. The merlons thin out the howling of winter gusts, but the cold dread is no less horrifying.

“Māzīs! Aderī!” (Come! Quick!)

The Godswood shivers with the call, but it does not matter. No one in the yard could be fast enough to catch you now.

Soon enough, a high pitched shriek answers as a slithering, white ghost of a cloud emerges from behind the high walls of Winterfell.

The silence of the night wails, broken, as Suvion brings his wings down, and with one, two swings, he's landing atop the tower, his hawk claws scraping the stone.

He brings his head to you, slightly frenzied by your tone and distress.

His icy scales shine with the dampness of the snow he had been dousing in, and his sheer beauty in the moonlight soothes you. He has grown. His wings are stronger. The cold had hardened him, as it did me.

“Sister!”

You halt, right before mounting.

“Sara.”

“Off on a nightly prowl?” she jests, but the moment she comes closer, eyeing your attire, her playful smile fades.

“Tell Cregan” you hesitate, pondering, “-to tell the lords he sent me on a secret scouting mission.”

She frowns, disheartened, lost, confused. After a few beats of unbearable ache, she speaks, as icy as Cregan had.

“Did you loathe it all from the beginning?”

“Sara, I cannot-”

“Is this what you'd always hoped to do?”

It's not an accusation. It's forlornness. Betrayal, and the grief of it.

“If I don't go, I will carry this burden with me for the rest of my life.”

She remains silent, but even Suvion twitches at the sound of her soft weep. You mount, shivering, with the cold, with regret, with doubt and fear, and guilt.

“If I do not return by the new moon's end, I loved him. Tell him I loved him. Tell him it's not his fault.”

With nothing but the sound of his wings, Suvion takes off from the tower.

a/n: that was quite the chapter

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[helios-writings]

Headaches

Roronoa Zoro x Sanji x gn! Reader

wc: 1.3k

warnings: none

Sanji and Zoro have been fighting a lot more lately, and you’re determined to find out why

You were tired of stopping fights. It seemed almost every day at this point that it was happening, you wake up, Sanji and Zoro are bickering. You make port, they’re fighting. Even Chopper was getting tired of patching up their bruises.

You knew they bickered, you saw it from the very beginning, but you have no idea what could’ve made it worse. So far, it’s been a normal day on the Sunny, heat bearing down and the ocean carrying a cool breeze, one that leads you to a small town.

It’s as you’ve gathered your things that you hear a loud crash from up on deck, and you rush upstairs, fearing the worst. But when you reach the top, it’s Zoro and Sanji again, the former having shoved the cook so roughly into the taffrail that it’s broken.

Franky and Usopp both let a bewildered cry, but you? You’re steaming. A scuffle here and there is one thing, but this has gotten out of hand.

You storm up to them, pulling them apart with the help of Robin before practically getting in both of their faces. “What the actual fuc- no, you know what, let’s go somewhere else.”

You drag the two men below deck by their arms, not struggling to break free even though they could. You shove them both down onto two separate chairs.

“What the actual fuck has been wrong with you two? I know you bicker, but this is out of hand!”

They - well, Sanji, - look sheepish, but stay silent. You look at them both and then the nearby window. Luffy won’t even notice if one of them goes overboard, right?

The swordsman cracks under the weight of your glare. “Fuck, alright. Tell her, Curly.”

The chef gawks. “Me? What about you?!”

“It was your idea!”

“The hell it was!”

You pinch your nose bridge. “One of you just spit it out. Now.”

They explain the situation, leaving you wide eyed and jaw open by the time they’re done.

“You just decided to fight over who gets to go out with me?! You didn’t even ask me!”

“We thought-“

“Well, please never think again if that’s the kind of ideas you two are going to come up with.”

“We’re sorry.” Sanji tells you, elbowing his partner in crime in the side.

“Yeah, sorry.”

You know that Zoro is just annoyed, so you don’t take his half assed apology to heart. You do level with them, however.

“You’re both insane if you think I’m dating either one of you after this.”

Both of their eyes widen. “But-“

“I’m serious. What would you have done if one of you had won and I didn’t even like you? You didn’t make any efforts to win my affection, you didn’t take my feelings into account at all. The only thing either of you gave me was a headache.”

“Well, then tell us how we win you over.” Zoro says, a fierce look in his eye.

“Oh, so you don’t even know how, okay.”

“I’m serious. He’s serious. Tell us what to do.”

You sigh. Knowing Zoro, you know he’s not likely to do anything halfway, and Sanji is sure to do the same. Headaches, the two of them.

“Well, for starters, no one likes breaking up fights everyday and hauling you to the doctor. So start there, start trying to get along.” You think, oh there’s no way they go along with this.

But the two men just sigh with sad acceptance. “Alright. What’s next?”

You truly don’t know what to say, you didn’t think you’d get this far with them. “Being helpful would be nice. Uh, I hear people like gifts.”

“Don’t tell us what other people want,” urges Sanji, “tell us what you want.”

You groan. “I don’t know, okay? I’ve been on the sea with you two for years, so I don’t have a lot of people trying to woo me. Just….I don’t know, be nice to me or something. Talk to me. Make an effort to actually get to know me.”

They both nod and you dismiss them from their seats. After Sanji leaves, Zoro turns to you.

“Hey. We really are sorry about what went down.”

You just nod. “I know.”

***

There really is a change in the air over the next few weeks. The fighting between the two isn’t gone, but there’s less of it. Sanji asks for your help in the kitchen and Zoro often asks if you want to spar with him. When you go into town, one or both of them follow you, bickering over who gets to carry what. It really is sweet to see, and it does flatter you. You’re almost surprised at how much you like being around them.

“Hey, come look at this!” Sanji calls over to you, Zoro already standing close beside him.

You walk up to the little stall. “What's up?”

The chef grins, holding up a few bracelets to you. “Which one do you want? Fair warning, Mosshead wants the black one even if he says he doesn’t.”

Zoro lets out a protest, but you can tell he doesn’t mean it. You settle on a green and yellow one that looks pretty enough, the elaborate braids combining the colors in a way that you enjoy. That leaves Sanji with a black and blue one.

Sanji ties the bracelet around your wrist, his deft fingers making quick work of it. “There. Nice, right?”

You nod, feeling your face get warm. “Do you need help with yours?”

“I’ve got it, but between you and I, Zoro might need help with his.”

You shoot him a puzzled look, but walk over to the swordsman, who is indeed struggling to fasten the small bracelet.

You laugh quietly and take the bracelet from him, he then hands you his wrist. His skin is warm to the touch in your hand, this close you can see the calluses and scars from the many years of sword fighting. You fasten the bracelet for him.

“There. Now we all match.” You tell them.

They both turn red.

***

That night, as you venture into the kitchen after everyone’s asleep, you stumble upon quite a scene. Sanji is pressed against the counter, Zoro against him, pressing kisses into his neck and hair.

You gasp in surprise and they turn, mortified and jump apart.

You go to walk away but Sanji practically leaps across the room to stop you.

“W-wait! Let us explain.”

You still and let Zoro guide you to a chair. Sanji slides a cup of warm tea over to you before they both sit in a chair.

“We do like you.” The chef supplies before you can say anything.

“But, spending time with you and getting our own shit together….well. Curly’s insatiable.” Zoro has a smug grin on his face, which makes Sanji smack him.

Your head, however, is spinning. “Wait. Explain one more time.”

“We,” Sanji starts, gesturing between the two of them, “want to date you. Together.”

“How….how would that even work?”

“I don’t know,” Zoro answers, “but I want to try.”

You nod. “Okay.”

Sanji grins before leaning forward, only stopping when you nod. He kisses you softly, it makes warmth blossom from your chest and you smile into it.

“Okay Curly, my turn.”

The chef rolls his eyes but pulls away, kissing Zoro briefly before the other man does the same to you.

Zoro’s kiss is different. Where Sanji was soft, his was almost desperate, lips pressing fervently against yours. Sanji laughs softly in the background.

“You’re going to suffocate them if you keep that up.”

Zoro flips him off, but lets you go almost reluctantly.

Your head is spinning, but you smile. “Well, you two can get along.”

“It’s hard work, but it paid off I suppose.”

You took their hands in each of your own. “I think this’ll work out.”

They grin back at you. “I think so too.”

[inoreuct]

drink from me

a sherry-laced conversation about thirst and running away. zosan | 2k | hurt/comfort

Being a coward isn’t as easy as one might think.

It’s juxtaposition in its own right; cowardice is, as defined, a lack of bravery— And yet Sanji supposes it takes bravery to be able to ditch everything you stand for. To turn tail and run. Bravery to bear upon your shoulders the disappointment of everybody who had ever believed in you. 

He sighs deeply, tilting the bottle in his hand so that the dregs of liquor slosh within. This is why he doesn’t drink.

It’s relatively easy most days. To lock his past behind a set of double doors, bar the handles with a padlock and chain so he can pretend that everything he’s running from isn’t just three paces behind, snapping at his heels, starved and ready to eat him up whole. Alcohol slots the key back into place and twists it without his permission. Twists his heart until it aches.

He doesn’t know why he’d started. The bottle of sherry had sat, nondescript and guileless and half-full on the galley table after the night’s dessert, and Sanji had paused before he’d slowly wrapped his fingers around the neck of it and let his nails scrape against the dark glass.

The cork had popped almost too easily and here he is now, taffrail digging into his forearms as he takes a long drag from his cigarette and lets bitter smoke fill his lungs full to bursting. Blood orange coats the back of his tongue, cloyingly sweet, thick on the roof of his mouth— He’d made a layered trifle with cacao nibs and caramelised cream that had been slathered between slabs of boozy vanilla sponge, and the aftertaste clings to his teeth. Sanji peers down as what’s left of the sherry glimmers vaguely inside the bottle and fights the urge to chug the rest. 

He could, if he really wanted to. He hardly drinks but it certainly doesn’t mean he can’t. 

A soft scrape against wood catches his attention, barely perceptible. He fights to keep his spine from stiffening, fights to maintain his loose-limbed, easy demeanor; the liquid warmth in his veins helps some but not enough, and he’s halfway through another drag when near-silent footsteps stop just behind him. 

Zoro’s haori shifts in the wind, palm loosely wrapped around the end of Wado’s hilt where she’s strapped alone to his hip. “Was wondering where you went,” he says easily, looking out over the ocean. 

Sanji scoffs. It burns his throat more than the sherry did. “For someone built like that, you’re surprisingly quiet, marimo.”

The immediate urge to kick himself is something new. He rarely feels it— It appears often, don’t get him wrong, he just. Ignores it. It’s a little more difficult tonight. Built like that. The noise that escapes him is mirthless. What’s that even supposed to mean, huh? Alcohol’s always made him snappy and he does feel bad for once — But he’s tired, and the chores won’t do themselves. 

“Make it quick, would you?” he mutters when Zoro still hasn’t replied, low and quiet in the still evening air as he curves down to dig the heel of his palm into his temple. “My spice jars are still all over the counter, and I have to mop the floor before I wash the dishes—”

“It’s done.” 

Sanji blinks, before his eyes narrow and he turns his head to look at Zoro properly. “The dishes?”

“Everything.” The swordsman huffs when Sanji gives him a dubious look, gaze flicking over and away again as he rolls his eye. “Luffy asked me to clean up the galley. Said you needed a break.”

Well. The cook exhales, measured, and buries his face into the crook of his elbow. Taps his cig so that ash doesn’t fall into his hair where he’s holding it aloft above his head. “Tell him thanks, but I don’t.”

He clocks it out of his peripheral vision when Zoro smirks and waves a hand to gesture to his cigarette and his slouch and the glass bottle dangling against wood. “What’s this, then?”

I don’t know. Shop’s closed, please fuck off and come back tomorrow morning. 

The other words that sit at the tip of Sanji’s tongue are far more scathing. He feels them, bites them back viciously before he can burn anyone other than himself. “If there’s a single thing out of place in there I’m gonna—”

“Kick my ass, I know, I know.” Zoro chuckles under his breath. “Don’t you get tired of saying the same things over and over again?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t constantly choose to be selectively deaf, moss-for-brains.”

The swordsman huffs another soft laugh, and conversation peters out after that. Sanji feels an itch building at the base of his skull, flickering just under his skin; it’s making him restless. He taps the bottle against the rail just to fill the silence. Zoro reaches a hand out and Sanji gives it to him easily, unthinkingly, watching and pretending he isn’t as the swordsman thumbs over the faded paper label that’s peeling at the corner. 

Zoro’s hands are scarred, he notes. He knows this, of course, but he never gets tired of letting his gaze drift over tan skin and old scars, thin slivers of pearly tissue painted silver in the moonlight. A breeze ruffles his hair as Zoro finally drinks, and he’s distantly surprised to see that it’s a measured sip and not a swig like what it usually would have been. 

Fucking hell. Sanji’s inhale shudders when he pushes himself up and stands straight, now-free hand wrapping around lacquered wood as he finishes his cigarette and tosses the butt over the side. He needs to stop thinking. He’s paying too much attention. There’s a pressure building behind his forehead and Zoro is an overwhelming presence beside him, unavoidable, stoic and staunch as ever, perfect posture, perfect honour, a sentinel with a pure white sword like some sort of— of hero from a storybook. Perfect perfect perfect.

It’s all building like a scream behind his lips, a river at a bottleneck, and he clenches his jaw to keep it in. Grits his teeth until he hears them creak because what would happen if he opened his mouth? Nothing good, he’s sure. Nothing anyone needs.

Sanji nearly startles when the bottle taps against his elbow. “Talk to me.”

“Nothing to say,” he replies immediately, taking a careless gulp and holding in a cough. 

Zoro’s slow exhale feels like it shifts the wind itself. Their ship creaks gently. “You always have something to say, curls.”

“Look, you—” He cuts himself off, tempering his breath. “I’m tired, alright? So can you just get to the point?” Fuck, he needs another cigarette. 

Maybe that’s the problem. He knows he’s the problem, sure, but Sanji suspects that he’s been running for so long that he’s forgotten how to walk. It’s grown into him like weeds wound through his ribs, the way he sees poison in water that’s perfectly clean, the way peace makes him more anxious than chaos does. He needs to stop running. He doesn’t know how. 

Zoro pries the sherry from his fingers and it’s only then that he relaxes the death grip he’d unintentionally had, a shudder slipping over his shoulders. Zoro holds the bottle loosely between his scarred fingers and doesn’t drink.

The silence thickens. Static crackles within his bones.

Sanji doesn’t know why he starts talking. Doesn’t know why it feels like a dam breaking in his chest, but his mouth is open, and the words are emptying out. “I’m tired of looking over my shoulder for something that isn’t there. Luffy gave me something to run towards, for once, but—”

He doesn’t know how to say it’s not enough without sounding ungrateful, without being greedy. “Sometimes I think I could… consume every one of the Blues, and still want more,” he allows. “Need more.” His fingers lace together, and Sanji dips his head with a wry smile even as he looks at the endless expanse of sky in front of them. “I’m afraid I’ll drink the world and still come up dry.”

There is a thirst in him. Something different than what had wracked him for a month on that barren rock. Hunger he can handle; he eats just enough to stave it off and goes about his day. This, though— Sanji can’t help the way it buzzes in the back of his head and keeps him wound up like a coil of electrical wire. He kneads dough and whisks egg whites just to have something to do with his hands. He defaults to his usual barbs when he’s feeling ungrounded so he can kid himself into thinking he possesses some semblance of normality. His shoulders ache as he stares out over the sea and wonders what it’s like to hold so much and still, still, be so achingly empty.

The winds change, carding cool fingers through his hair. 

“Drink from me,” Zoro says, and Sanji’s breath catches between his teeth.

His head snaps up to find Zoro already looking at him, face unreadable, elbows on the taffrail and bottle cupped in his hands. The swordsman looks serene, Sanji thinks. Gaze trained straight ahead, ever clear of his objectives as Wado gleams at his side, starlight in an ivory sheath. 

“Drink from me,” he repeats. The words are solemn as they always are in moments like these, the liminal space just after dusk but before true night, as his eyes shift over to Sanji and lock in place. “I won’t let you go thirsty again.” 

Sanji’s mouth dries. It’s hard not to feel pinned as Zoro looks at him; the weight of his gaze is almost physically tangible, like a familiar green coat settling over his shoulders. That’s the thing about Zoro— For all Sanji jokes about him having plant life in his skull, the swordsman has a penchant for dropping absolutely earth-shaking statements without even seeming to think about them at all. The cook swallows once, twice, tries to find his words as his lips part and loses them as soon as he takes his next breath.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop feeling like a ticking time bomb. But as Zoro’s lashes flutter and he looks away, Sanji feels something in him settle. The relentless buzz that always seems to sit just beneath his skin soothes out into a quiet hum. 

Maybe part of it’s how Zoro’s scarred and still perfect. Untouchable. Sanji couldn’t hurt him even if he tried, even if he blows apart.

His fingers wrap, unthinking, around the neck of the bottle as it’s pushed back into his hand, the pressure of Zoro’s touch lingering until he’s sure that Sanji has a good grip. The swordsman’s boots brush softly across the planks as he turns to leave and he’s halfway to the stairs before Sanji speaks.

“Marimo.”

He knows Zoro turns without even looking. “Hm?”

“Did Luffy really ask you to clean up the galley?”

A pause, before Zoro starts walking again. “Get some sleep, cook. I’ll take the rest of your watch.”

The silence he leaves in his wake is honey-thick. First watch is Sanji’s shift, it always is— He cleans up the galley and stays awake until Zoro comes to take over. 

(The galley is clean. His watch is covered. His mind is quiet.

For once, he can’t find himself another reason to stay.)

 

The sherry holds no evidence of them ever having shared it. Sanji lifts the tinted glass and there’s no trace of Zoro, no proof that his mouth had ever been where Sanji’s is— None of the candied orange and rosemary from the duck they’d had for dinner, gamey and blood-sweet.

I won’t let you go thirsty again.

Sanji tastes it still, gentle in the back of his throat as he drains the bottle.

[oxittocin]

drowning (nico robin x reader)

nico robin masterlist

@edgeray said pining but make it nico robin's pov

cw: gn!reader, drowning and falling in love are pretty much the same thing

The Devil’s Fruit has always been a trade off. Even so, between land and sea, the risk of drowning has always seemed more pleasant than the cruelty of people. Warm looks that once welcomed her with open arms turn cold and menacing the moment they find out who she was, and what her existence entails. Betrayals and exploitation time and time again has served to reinforce one thing - there is no safety for her, land or sea. Exiled is she, in every part of the world, every sense of the word.

———————————————

The Going Merry had left the shores of Arabasta a couple weeks ago.

Leaning against the taffrails of the ship, Robin couldn’t keep her eyes away from the horizon line where the sea meets the night sky. The cool sea breeze blowing through her hair felt unfamiliar. After all, 4 years in Arabasta had left her accustomed to the endless stretches of sand and warm prickly heat on her skin.

“Do you prefer being on land or out at sea?” You had asked her, attempting to make small talk in the midst of guard duty. When she didn’t reply, you continued, “Your weakness to the sea and you staying in a literal desert makes me think you prefer the land more.”

Turning to face you, eyebrows arched in amusement, Robin hummed softly as she shook her head, “Fair guess, but the land has nothing left for me.”

She had a faraway look in her eyes as she turned towards the sea again. You didn’t feel the need to press her further for an explanation, content to busk in the comfortable silence of her presence.

———————————————

What was the sea to Nico Robin?

She had learnt from the moment she took a bite of the Devil’s Fruit that it was a place she shouldn’t venture out to. For a long time, it marked the edges of her world - one step too far and she may sink into the depths, ceasing to exist. Still, she enjoys walking along the shores, soaking her feet in the shallows, as if playfully testing fate.

The sea wasn’t all bad, though, because the sea brought Saul to her. The waves carrying him safely to the shores of Ohara, presenting him like a gift to her - her very first friend. It drifted him into her life at a time where she needed a companion the most.

The sea is a giver, she thought.

No, she corrected herself almost immediately, it gives and it takes.

———————————————

An oasis in the desert.

You were her oasis in the desert, and in your presence, she felt free. Free from the fear that has haunted her since she left Ohara, free from the guilt that has continued to stick to her like a shadow.

Even so, she knew that she had to keep a distance. It is an inevitable fact of life. The storm and rain will pour relentlessly on the people she holds dear.

She couldn’t risk it happening to her oasis.

The time will come eventually for her to leave. She knows this all too well. For the first time in her life, she sent a silent prayer upwards. If she could be so selfish to make a request, then she would ask for just another week, just another day.

———————————————

The moment you’d kissed her was the moment it dawned upon her.

You weren’t an oasis, you were the ocean itself.

When your lips pressed against her in a sweet, fumbling attempt at a confession, she felt like she was drowning. Granted, Nico Robin had never drowned before but if she ever had, she’s sure it would feel like that.

Palpitating heart. Breathlessness. Her chest hurts. Eyes shut tight. The background noises muffled out. All she could feel were your soft lips on hers - an overwhelming sensation. She felt like her soul was being sucked out of her body.

It felt like drowning, but she didn’t hate it.

In fact, if this was drowning, she’d risk her life over and over again for another taste.

When you pulled away, she pulled you right back, her lips crashing against yours messily.

Again, and again, and again.

Like the ocean, you were sapping away at her strength and will to leave. She knows your kisses are bad for her, she knows your kisses will make the eventual goodbyes sting even more.

For once in her life, she indulges herself, and kisses you over and over again until you’re both breathless, gasping for air.

Drowning in you feels like home, she thought.

———————————————

Nico Robin was practiced in the art of saying goodbye. In her experience, the easiest goodbyes are the ones where you simply leave without a word, erasing your entire existence. After all, a single glance at the look of disappointment and hurt on your face might sway her enough to stay, and if she stayed, what would CP9 do to you and the rest of the Strawhats?

She gently touches her lips with her fingers, remembering your kisses from the previous nights - kisses that continue to linger on her lips like a promise. Kisses that will continue to be the source of her nightmares for many years to come.

She wonders if you’ll hate her, and if you’ll ever understand why she made the choice she did. She knows her decision will shatter you, leaving you ruined and wondering if you’d done something wrong. She wishes she could tell you that she didn’t have a choice. She wonders if you’ll blame her for leaving so abruptly. More importantly, she wonders if you would ever regret kissing her that night.

She hoped not.

After all, it was drowning that showed her what being alive truly meant.

[the-real-treasure]

Treasure Treasure!

An OPLA Sanji x Reader

Master List Here

Previous Chapter: Mon Cœur Est Un Petit Âne

Chapter Nine: Treasure Troves in Orange Groves

Summary: The crew chases after a girl with tangerine hair through memories lined with sweet citrus scents and orange trees, only to discover that the bitter attitude is to make up for the deep seeded pain.

Trigger Warnings: Trauma, destruction, parental death, fire Word Count: 3,929 **Edited: 17/09/24**

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Dolphins leapt out of the water at the bow of the Going Merry, as Usopp attempted to follow Buggy's directions.

"But you said five degrees starboard."

"Yeah, it's the other starboard, Captain Shit-tastic."

"Watch your tone," you rumbled from beside the barrel he was perched on, a bucket of salt water at the ready to douse him for bad behaviour.

"I thought clowns were supposed to be funny," Usopp muttered.

"What was that?" Buggy hopped around to face him. "Why don't you say it to my face?" He squawked in irritation as you ladle salt water over him, making him splutter and spit as Zoro comes up behind Usopp. "Hey! Morning, champ!"

"I know Luffy made a deal with you to find Arlong, clown, but if this is another trick-"

"What are you gonna do? Bleed on me?" Buggy laughs at himself for a moment before Zoro grabs him by the scalp, retreating with him to the stern. "Whoa, whoa! WAIT! WHOA! Whoa, what?! Because I said bleed on me? Wasn't the crazy one's bucket enough?! You can bleed on me if you want." You and Usopp smirk at each other as Zoro dangles him over the water. "I mean, a deal's a deal, all right? You want your map back, I want my body."

"How do we know you're not leading us to a trap?"

"Zoro, buddy! Honour amongst pirates! Right?! Come one, how about I sing a nice sea shanty to pass the time. ♪ Oh, there once was a girl with tangerine hair, Stole my map and left me stranded somewhere ♪" Zoro pulled him back into the boat and moved to dump him in the barrel beside you as he continued singing, "♪ Truly a crafty and crooked young lass, But you can't deny she had a spectacular--♪ OW! God, right on my nose!" With your clown-watch duties halted for the moment, you abandon the salt water bucket on top of the captive's barrel and move down to perch along the railing between Sanji and Luffy as they fish.

"Does it always take this long?" Luffy was leaning over the taffrail and peering into the water, eyes peeled for any fish below him. Sanji chuckles.

"We've only been here two minutes. Be patient. Some days, they bite as soon as you drop the line, and some days it takes hours. And then there are days when you don't catch anything at all." Sanji looks up from the rod to side-eye your captain. "But we're not talking about fishing, are we?"

"I just want to know if Nami's okay."

"She will be," you answer his concern, "when we get her back, she'll be just fine."

"How'd you know?" His question is quiet, which is a strange way for Luffy to be.

"Because no one with a dream like that won't be okay. It might take time. But we'll have her back with us, and we can look after her." Sanji hums in agreement with you, eyes back on the fishing line.

"A beautiful, talented woman does not choose to ally herself with a pirate like Arlong."

"Not without good reason." He nods along to your addition as your mind drifts.

(The orange-haired woman. A girl with blue hair. A small ramshackle house in the centre of a grove of orange trees)

"Nami clearly needs to be rescued."

"Her tattoo says different."

"Zoro." You say his name warningly.

"Tattoos don't tell the whole story, and like any woman, she's a mystery."

(A windmill made of an orange peel, stuck into the ground of a fresh and simple grave)

"Nami made her choice."

"But you don't know why." Zoro looks at you, your eyes still focused on somewhere far away. Sanji moves his head from behind yours to meet Zoro's gaze with a harsh glare. He still hadn't forgiven him for your fight, even if the pair of you had started to move past it. Zoro returns it with a scowl.

"Only thing I want to hear from you are dinner specials. You don't know the first thing about Nami."

"She's Y/n's friend. That's all I need to know. Besides, it sounds like you don't know her either." He snaps in return. Luffy leans back from the rail, interrupting their glaring contest as he speaks.

"I'm sure Nami has her reasons. Whatever choice she makes, I just need to hear it for myself." Luffy moves away to join Usopp at the rudder, and the tension again tightens through the air.

"Nakayoshi." Both your and Sanji's eyes turn to the green haired swordsman, his own gaze fixed out to sea. "Have you seen the same as with me?" You blink and frown.

"What?"

"With her dream." He finally looks up at you. "You know what it is, why it is what it is. That's why you're so sure."

"I'm so sure," you reply, "because she's my friend, and I trust her to make not entirely stupid decisions." Your fingers begin to tangle, Sanji's own hooking them between his as you click your teeth. "Sometimes, I get context with peoples dreams, because the path to it isn't the clearest." Your eyes dart to him, but he's still watching silently. "Sometimes, it's images of where it will be, like if I squeeze my eyes shut tight I can perfectly picture the All Blue, all the fish and seaweed and spices swirling together in a crystal clear pool." You do so, and miss the way Sanji's eye soften and the smile grows on his face. "But with dreams like Nami's, or yours, I get more history, like flashes of memories. Sometimes, there's a lot of them, like your friend and you training and the forest and her sword and memorial. Other times,"

(A orange-haired woman)

"its just a few things,"

(A blue-haired girl)

"but always the same,"

(And an orange peel windmill)

"over and over and over." Your eyes drift open again to the sight of the azure waves rolling past you.

"And how do you know," Zoro's voice is deep and quiet, "that it's a real dream at all? That it's not fake?" You smile over at his glum face.

"If it was fake, it wouldn't be there. Only the true stuff comes through."

"LAND HO!" You all turn to look at Usopp's call and he points across the water to collection of white stone islands jutting out of the sea.

The Conomi Islands.

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Back at Baratie, Akito calls over his shoulder as a group of men walk in.

"Dining room is closed for renovations." One of the men spoke.

"We need to speak to the owner." Akito slowly turns to them.

"I'm afraid the chef is busy with..." his voice trails off as he sees the group of Marines standing behind him, Garp front and centre with Bogard, Koby and Helmeppo trailing behind him. "My apologies, of course. He'll be right with you." He rushes off to retrieve Zeff.

He comes out of the kitchen, peg leg repaired and gait wide as he approaches the group.

"Marines, and a Vice-Admiral at that. A little late to the party, aren't we?" The older men stance up in front of each other. Koby can hear where Y/n got their funny lilting tone of voice from.

"I always wondered what happened to the infamous Red Leg Zeff."

"Sir, do you know this man?" The pinkette queries.

"Only by reputation. Captain of the Cook Pirates."

"Yeah, well those days are far behind me. I'm retired, I'm a chef now. And the only thing under my command is this restaurant."

"Retirement doesn't mean you couldn't have trained someone else to do your dirty work from now on. We're not here for you, Red Leg. We've had word that a pair of pirates came through here recently." He holds out his hand, and Bogard places a roll of paper into it, which he unfurls and holds out. "One is reported as being a member of your staff, and was travelling with one by the name of Luffy." Zeff peers down at the now familiar wanted poster embellished with 'Nakayoshi Y/n' and your haunting visage. Zeff shakes his head.

"I can't help you."

"Can't?" Bogard asks, "Or won't?" Zeff shrugs.

"These days, I'm lucky if I remember my regulars."

"Oh, you'll remember this one. Straw hat. Always running his big mouth."

"No, I'm drawing a blank."

"Even if I tell you this one," he shakes the wanted poster out again, "is wanted for the murder of a civilian in the Gecko Islands." Zeff hesitates, looking at him for a moment longer.

"No. But, how about a meal on the house? I've got a dozen T-bone steaks and a busted cooler. It'd be such a shame to let all that delicious marbling go to waste."

"We're not here for a meal. We're here-" Garp interrupts his second in command.

"That steak..."

"Medium rare?" Garp nods, a smile growing across his face.

"More rare than medium."

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Your crew walk through the empty and dilapidated homes of the village you had just arrived at, the entire place seemingly empty. You stare at one of the buildings, seemingly torn from it's foundations and now close to four feet off the ground.

"Never seen that before." Zoro mutters.

"What could've done this?" Sanji stares at it. Usopp stutters behind you.

"Maybe I should head back, make sure the Merry's secure."

"Arlong did this." Luffy snarled, ignoring the sharpshooter's concerns. Buggy's voice escapes the bag slung over Sanji's shoulder.

"Hey, shit-hat! I think we can all agree that Arlong's a bad fish. But why don't we quit lollygagging and get my body back?"

"Pipe down in there." Sanji spoke down to the bag.

"Or what?" The decapitated clown snarked, "You gonna whip me up a soufflé?"

"How about you take him a while?" Usopp leaned away and eyed him. 

"Ooh, new guy carries the clown head."

There was a crowd of people up ahead and one man stood before them, calling to them all desperately.

"We don't have much time, and we're short again this month."

"Is it enough?" They seemed to be collecting donations in a box carried by the calling man, who shook his head at the question.

"Do we have time to get some more?"

"No." The flat familiar voice chimed over the dine, silence falling as the crowd parted. Nami stood at the gates of the town, arms crossed and face blank. "You don't." A woman with blue hair steps out in front of her as she moves through the crowd, and Zoro has to stop Luffy advancing as well, his hand flat against Luffy's chest.

(A girl with blue hair...)

"You've got a lot of nerve showing your face here." She spits into the dirt at Nami's feet.

(...chasing a little girl with orange hair)

As she turns and stalks away, you all watch her go before Nami turns to the man from earlier.

"Got something for me?" He hands her the box, and she flips open the lid peering in. "You're short." The crowd around them begins to disperse as the man pleads with her.

"Nami, please. This is all we have. Arlong has bled us dry."

"Then find more blood." Her teeth are grit and a scowl twists her face as she speaks to him. He turns away himself as Nami's eyes fall on your crew, and she begins walking over.

"Luffy? What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

"This is where I belong."

"I don't believe that. This is not you."

"No. This isn't the me you want me to be."

"Nami..." his voice was quiet as he looked at her, "...if you need our help-"

"No, I don't need any of you. Arlong wanted the map, and I conned you idiots into getting it for me. And you bought it. I was never part of your stupid crew."

"I don't believe that." Nami's head snaps to face you, eyes alight with rage as they seared into you, and Sanji grabs a hold of your wrist, pulling you slightly more into him.

"You don't believe that? It doesn't matter," her voice is emotionless and the laugh that falls from her mouth matches, "what you believe. You don't know anything about me, how could you possibly know, what with you, so clueless and running around, chasing other people's dreams because you're too dumb to recognise just how little you matter and how useless you are to everyone around you." Your eyes begin to itch, reacting to the waves of anguish rolling off her person, and you know you're right. You know.

(Pleasepleaseplease)

"I know," Your resolve splinters and you clamp your teeth down on your lip to halt the trembling, "that someone who wants to be here, doing these things, would never,"

(Helpmehelpmehelpme)

"...wish so hard to be free." Her blue eyes go misty but she shakes her head at your words, and a scoff tumbles from her lips.

(A dark room, empty apart from the little girl's form, surrounded by maps and shackled to the floor)

"I have never meet such a stupid person in all of my life." Her bitter words sting at your fractured composure, but it's the energy rumbling through you in a rage that makes you hold firm. Luffy stands straight as her glassy enraged eyes move to him again.

"You don't mean that."

"Take the rest of these clowns and sail away from here. I never want to see you again." With that she turns her back on you all, marching away as the echoing pleas of her wish fade from the air around you, box still clutched tightly under her arm. Usopp laughs awkwardly to dispel the uncomfortable stillness around you.

"Okayy, that went about as bad as it could. So, back to the boat before the fishmen find us?" You shake off Sanji's loosening grip and step up alongside your captain's still form. "Sail the hell out of here? Okay."

"There's something else going on here." Sanji's voice sounds behind you as Luffy side eyes you.

“She was very clear she wants us to leave.”

”You don’t know women. They never say what they mean.” 

“Tell me again why the cook gets a say?” The boys stance up against each other with Usopp stuck in the middle.

“Don’t you guys get it? She’s one of them. She’s a bad guy.”

“No." Luffy’s voice cuts through Usopp’s. He turns to you fully. “Y/n. What did you say ‘bout her dream?” He takes a hold of shoulders and leans in close to your face, “What did you mean, what do you know?” The words catch in your throat, the ripples of her dream’s energy long having faded and you stare at him wide-eyed.

“I can’t- it’s not,” your ears burn and your power coils in your chest. “I'm not a mind reader Monkey D. Luffy!"

"No! You're a dream reader! And that's even better!" Luffy’s fingers dig into your skin. “There has to be more, tell me.” His voice drops from quiet to a near silence “There is more.”

Your mind splutters, drifting to the image of a girl with blue hair as your eyes drift to the path the woman had stomped down previously, and Luffy’s eyes follow as well.

Usopp shrugs “The villagers are still terrified of her.”

”Not all of them.” He releases you finally, and turns back to the town centre. “Hey! Scar guy!” The man reemerges from his house, watching as you all approach. “Who was that lady? You know, the one with the cool hair?”

”Wo wants to know?”

”I’m Monkey D. Luffy. I’m a pirate-”

“-hunter.” Zoro cuts him off, stepping up beside him. “Pirate hunter. We’re here to collect Arlong’s bounty.”

“You? I’ve seen. Men twice your size and with twice your number go into Arlong Park. None of them ever came back.” A smile grew across Luffy’s face. 

“We just want to talk to her.”

”Trust me, you don’t. But if it’ll get you out of my town try the house down that road, on the edge of the tangerine grove.”

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Luffy takes the well worn paths through the head height orange trees at a lolloping pace. You match, and sometimes even outpace, his speed, the trail through the trees familiar to you through the images of Nami’s history, your feet falling into the familiar groves of borrowed memories and the citrus scented air trills with the whispers of girlhood races long lost as echoes of the past that danced through with the breeze.

Usopp speaks, gasping breaths coating his tongue, as he spoke.

“I think I got more of a boat body than a long-journey-on-foot kind of body. Anybody else missing the ocean? No? Okay. I could go bring the boat around if we don’t want to walk all the way back.” As they emerge from the tree-line, they spot the house. 

Honestly it was more of a ramshackle hut, but the warm nostalgia of Nami’s memories painted the building in an aura of happiness perfumed with tangerine juices. As they approached the top, the door slams open, and the woman, azure hair aquamarine in the shade, levels a rifle at the captains head. Usopp lets out a yell of shock and ducks behind Zoro, who barely reacts other than raising his eyes to her. Sanji moves you immediately behind him and you nearly topple over. 

“Turn around and leave. Now.” Usopp chimes up from behind the swordsman.

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

”Hey.” Luffy chirps happily, “I saw you earlier. I think maybe you and I have something in common.” She cocks the gun and drops the barrel lower. You lean out from behind Sanji to peer up at her.

”I’ve got the gun, and you’re standing in front of it. What could we possibly have in common?”

”Let’s start with Nami. Seems you know her very well.”

”She’s a thief with no conscience. And when there’s no more left to take, she leaves and doesn’t turn back. Now get off my property.”

””Nami’s part of our crew. She’s our friend.” Luffy smiles up at her, gun and all. You step out from behind your Sanji.

”You’re her sister.” Her gun rounds on you, eyes darker but sharp and dangerous in a way painfully familiar. The barrel of the gun is shaking in your eye line.

”My sister,” she starts, her voice shaking, “doesn’t have any friends. The sooner you guys realize that, the better.” Sanji looks down at you.

“Sisters. That makes sense, how’d you know?” Your eyes don’t leave the woman’s wavering stare.

“She showed me.” She shakes her head at you.

”Give over. There’s no way she would ever share that with you. I can tell she really did a number on you guys. You’re not special, and I can’t help you.”

”How about a meal?”

“What?”

“An exchange of sorts for your valuable time and information.”

”You cook?” Zoro huffs.

“He’s a waiter.” You glare at him.

“He’s the best cook on the ocean!” 

“Yeah, best in the East Blue, you never tasted anything better in your life! Usopp’s word!” You and Sanji smirked at each other.

“You’d be surprised how much I a make with very few ingredients. Come on, how a’bout a little dinner? A little conversation?”

“Fine.” She dropped the gun completely. “But there better be dessert.”

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

“Dinner’s served.” Sanji placed down a few more dishes on the table as your crew around dug in, the sun having long since set. You and Usopp smiled smugly at each other as Nojiko groaned in bliss at the food she was shovelling into her mouth.

“Told you.” She grins up at where Sanji was leaning against the door frame.

“You know, this is the best thing I’ve eaten in my entire life.”

“Listen, there’s plenty more where that came from, but first we really need to know about Nami.” She swallowed thickly and looked away.

“The truth is…”

Her eyes filled with tears and her chest heaved as she told you the horrible tale of how she and Nami had lost their mother to Arlong when he first invaded Coco Village. It filled in gaps in the memories she had left you with, connecting most of the dots between the gleeful girl you had seen to the hopeless and agonised young woman you know now. Sanji coughed to hide a sniffle and you rub at your eyes fruitlessly.

“Wait. Nami’s working for the pirate that killed your mother?” She nods to Usopp’s question, but you respond as well.

“There’s more to it than that.” Your mind flashes to the dark room filled only with hand-drawn maps and a manacle shackled to the ground as Luffy stands from the table and walks outside, “Luffy?”

You don’t follow Luffy or Zoro as the head out into the darkness, instead staying perched at the table, glaring at the clown heads as he harassed poor Usopp as he made up his exploding ammunition. With a scream of “BOOM!” and his cackling laugh, Nojiko threw down the dish towel she was using to dry.

“Yeah, I’m gonna go get some air.”

“Can you just be quiet?” Usopp asked as you pick up and folding the dropped towel Nojiko had abandoned.

“Aw, come on. Where’s the fun in that? Do you really think your little toys can get through the skin of a fishman?” Usopp’s hands are shaking as he caps the small ball up, now filled with powder.

“These are smoke bombs.”

“Smoke? That’s rich. Makes me think of how long it’s been since I’ve had any smoked fish.” He swallowed harshly and peered up at the three of you, “Maybe if you guys had some extra? Please?” You and Sanji look over as Usopp continues to ignore the severed head who begins to roar in anger, “Ah screw you guys! Arlong’s gonna bite the shit out of you anyway! You know you don’t stand a chance against him and his army. And you dumb pieces of garbage, you ain’t gonna do anything against that stupid-" He grunts awkwardly as Sanji stuffs an orange into his mouth whole, gagging him and completely cutting off his tirade.

“New guy shuts up the clown head.” Buggy tries to spit out the citrus fruit to no avail as you glare down at him.

“I miss my seawater torture bucket.”

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You all stood on the path through the orange grove, listening in silence as the darkness around you ripples with the roar from your captain. After Nojiko had run off and followed Nami, Zoro had returned to your trio inside and urged you to come out and wait for him.

You and Usopp looked up at him as he stomped down the path, now sans a hat and still missing Nami. He doesn’t make eye contact as he glares ahead, complete focus now on Arlong park.

“Let’s go.” His command is firm and you all respond as one.

“Right.” As you all stand, the scent of smoke catches you over the citrus fruit scent on the wind. Usopp peers past you at the now glowing horizon, but instead of daybreak, its blazing fire that lights up the night sky.

“What’s that?” You hope someone will come up with a different explanation than what you all already know.

“They’re attacking the village.” Usopp supplies to your question, and explosions and gunshots join the smoke now wafting through the atmosphere.

It seems Arlong had brought the fight to you.

Next Chapter: Poisson d'Arlong

[goodbye-exclusion]

xx || masterlist || 02 ->

⋆༺𓆩 01 LAND! 𓆪༻⋆

"Hey, Nami! What's that?" Luffy calls out, leaning over the taffrail.

Nami hums, not bothering to look up from the newspaper. "Hm? What's what?"

"There's land! A biiig island, the size of 10 million Usopp noses. No… 100 million!" 

"Hey, what type of measurement is that?" Usopp yells, and Nami is inclined to agree, not having an inkling of how big the island really is.

"It's probably Roguetown," she says dismissively. "Let me take a look anyway." Nami sets her newspaper down before stretching. She blinks a few times to adjust to the bright sun as she steps out from under the parasol. 

As she approaches Luffy, she furrows her eyebrows. The island was, as a matter of fact, not Roguetown.

"I don't know," she murmurs. 

After retrieving her map and compass, Nami's confusion only grows. It didn't exist on the maps, despite it being a massive continent with its own smaller islands forming an archipelago just south of it. 

"We'll stop here," she announces.

[■□□□□□□□□□] 

After nearly 4 weeks of travelling, you arrive back at Weh'le. You had ventured far Southeast to collect Vlonqo flowers and Raikkon berries, the main components of the ink mixture you use for tattoos. You refuse to settle for anything less than the perfect ingredients, and that means fresh and ripe berries, so you had already made the ink as you collected them.

Which lets you set off again after a quick half hour of settling everything in place at home, aside from the satchel situated at your hip. You'll be back soon anyway. 

After all, with the Spirit Blossom festival coming up in less than a week, you won't have much time to venture off. Of course, you'll have your booth to set up, but you're always glad to help decorate the rest of Weh'le Market for the celebration. 

So before you spend the better part of your days with those preparations, you set off to visit two of your dear friends in the forest.

Typically, you're happy to take your trip slowly. Admire the beauty of the magic around you and appreciate the scenery that nature has spent years and years detailing.

This time, though, you're off to see Lillia and Ivern after a month, and you're impatient.

Such a time, however, is short relative to their ages. Lillia is nearly 200 years old (197 this year), and even that is considered rather youthful in comparison to the old forests. And Ivern, the Green Father, is far older, to the point where nearly any amount of time is no longer significant to him. Living for thousands and thousands of years would do that. But all that time never made him jaded. He cared for you as you grew up, and he cares for you now, just as he cares for every other living being.

You can't stop the smile from spreading across your face as you think about them. Your run turns into a strong sprint, eager to see them again. 

Past the stony base of the mountain that Weh'le is tucked against, past the river separating the rocky ground from the rich soil, past the hills and through the trees, is the grand forest of Navori. You're a bit out of breath, and the sun is nearing its peak, but you've made it.

Magic flows around you. Sitting on a smooth rock, you close your eyes and bask in the floating magic mixed with the gentle sun dripping through the trees' canopies. 

The quiet sound of trotting on soft soil announces Lillia's arrival. You turn your attention towards her with a smile. 

And although she's only peeking her head out from behind a tree, you still wave to her. "I'm back!" you greet.

And Lillia thinks you look breathtaking, smiling softly with patches of sunlight draping over you. Her heart floats, thinking about how that smile is just for her. 

"I missed you so much, [Name]. Ah, of course w-we all did. The whole, um, the whole forest did!" she adds on quickly.

"I missed you, too," you assure. "Come, sit with me!" You pat next to you on the rock, even though she can't really sit directly with you.

At last, Lillia rounds the tree and makes her way towards you, staff in hand, semi-confident with the knowledge that you might have missed her a fraction of how much she missed you. 

She's a fae. Where her legs would usually be is instead the body of a deer. Her fur is a soft tan, growing reddish-brown near her hooves. Instead of human ears, she has somewhat droopy, long ears. Reaching just below them, around the small of her back, is purple tinted magenta hair with an almost glowing blue hue at the tips. Two smaller sections are parted away into pigtails, held together with leafy bands. 

"You look lovely as always," you say, and her face reddens. 

The purples and blues in her eyes shine at the comment. "Oh m-my, thank you so much!" She giggles nervously, lying down in the grass in front of you, in fear that her legs may give out from excitement. 

Without a second thought, you move from your seat on the rock down to the grass next to her. 

"Oh, [Name], your clothes will get dirty!" she frets. You chuckle, and she sighs. "I k-know you don't mind at all, but, well, I've heard many humans do. If they were to think poorly of you for it…"

"It's alright, Lillia. Most people are lovely people, I'm not sure anyone would care all that much."

And she can't exactly argue. After all, you're the only human she's ever spoken to. But she's still seen many, many humans come and go in the decades she's spent observing them. If only you knew, she thinks, of all the horrible things humans will do without a care, then you may not think so. In fact, you might decide to come live in the forest with her! 

She sighs dreamily at the thought.

"Something on your mind?" you ask.

Lillia shakes her head, but she can't help but smile at the thought of you and her living together. "Not really. So, tell me about your adventures! What kind of things did you see? What kind of humans did you meet?"

You hum thoughtfully. You open your satchel and pull out your journal. It's a relatively new one, but it's already filled to the brim with stories and notes and drawings. Lillia happily adjusts herself next to you to look at everything you've documented in the past few weeks. 

You show her several pages dedicated to your experience with an older lady, who had helped you for a day and housed you for a night. She taught you how to make white tea from Xaolan flowers and a delicious toast spread from Kiwa berries. Your tea was nowhere as delicious as hers, but she simply smiled and told you that it was just fine.

I'd be far more impressed had it turned out poorly, she had said. That nature must have seen the idiocy of too many hard headed humans and decided to make it easier on us.

And a few pages held detailed sketches of your experience there. A page for her small cottage. Half of a page for the small plate of toast with Kiwa spread and cup of tea, the other half containing drawings of the berries, flowers, and trees themselves. Then, a full page of her.

An old lady with a bright smile, one she must have worn for many of her days given the crinkles lining her eyes. Her name was Ahn, and when you asked for her age, she chuckled and said to take a guess. 

"No older than 30, I would imagine," you said, and she agreed.

"28, actually."

And with that, you decided that it didn't really matter.

You flip the page.

Immediately smiling, you begin to tell Lillia about the tall man you drew sitting in a field. Four patches of flowers were almost perfectly positioned behind, in front, and to the sides of him.

Lillia nearly saw red at how brightly you spoke of him. She glared. Glared at the drawing of the cute little matching flower crowns you made for the two of you. At the fact that you were so enthralled with talking about him that you didn't notice how clearly upset she was. Can't you see how unsettled it makes her? Don't you care?

Look at that man. He had a mask, far from organic, far from nature. His body looked stiff, like the limbs of a puppet. Don't you like nature? Don't you like her? 

"He was so kind," you say. "For a while on my journey, I felt followed, like a creepy force always behind me. We happened to meet on my way back, and he travelled with me for a few days."

She could make you feel safe, too. Does she seem too weak?

In the midst of her silent rage and your distracted rambling, a light voice interrupts both of your thoughts.

"My children!"

The two of you snap out of your own minds. 

"Ivern!" you greet.

His long, thin legs fold beneath him as he takes a place next to the two of you in the grass. 

"I trust you've been safe in your ventures," he says, and you nod eagerly. 

"I was! How have you been?"

"I've kept well. I know you must be in a hurry with the Spirit Blossom Festival preparations. Go, child, we can gossip later!" 

The two of you share a giggle before you depart, saying your farewells to the two.

When you're out of range, Ivern turns to Lillia, frowning.

"My child, do you wish to talk about it?"

Lillia stomps one of her hooves and scowls. "You sent them away! You're going to make them leave me for good!" she accuses. 

The elder simply shakes his head and sighs. "Perhaps one day you'll grow up."

Shivers run down Lillia's spine. She's not a child anymore. You're the only one who takes her seriously. You're the only one who truly cares. 

[■■■■■■■□□] 

The sun that once burned at Nami's eyes and skin seems like a dream now. 

Instead, a thick fog wraps around the Going Merry. It feels heavy, spreading across the ship's deck. Nami's compass is circling aimlessly, spinning almost as much as her head is.

Usopp and Luffy's babbling doesn't help, either.

Nami rubs her temples as Sanji tries to get the two to quiet down, but ends up yelling, too, out of frustration.

Zoro sighs, regrettably getting up from his nap. "Quit freakn' out already, there's land right behind us," he calls. 

"Behind us? When did we get so turned around… And just how far have we gone?" Nami murmurs to herself.

But she finds that, sure enough, there's a glimpse of a port not too far away. The docks poke through, as if inviting them. It's the only direction the fog lightens up—or rather, the fog feels like it's purposefully blocking out everything else, leading them where it wants them to go. 

Luffy is thrilled, bouncing and pointing at the newfound sight of land. "We're not lost!" he cheers. 

But Nami can't shake this bad feeling that twists her gut.

[ltwilliammowett]

Ship’s Lanterns

Ships had large lantern fitted on their sterns. These were particularly useful when sailing in a fleet at night, because they allowed the ship astern to keep her station. Large ships, of the third rate and above, usually carried three lanterns. In 1722 it was ordered that fourth rates should also have three, but in 1804 it was decided that ships below the first rate needed only two, except when they were fitted as flagships. It is clear from this order that a private ship lit only the two outer lanterns, even before the middel one was abolished. These gave the following ship some indicattion of how far away the other ship was, and relative aspect.

Sovereign of the Seas (1637), a 100-gun three-decker ship of the line (x)

The middle one served solely to identify the flagship. In the 17th century, the centrkal lantern was far bigger than the other two. It was especially large on prestige ships, such as the Sovereign of 1637. It was quite easy to mount this lantern centrally aft of the taffrail, but in the first half of the century the mounting of the other two caused problems. The stern itself was very narrow, so the outside lanterns had to be mounted above the quarter galleries, where they were considerably lower than the central one, and could possibly be obscured by it at certain angles. By about 1650, after the stern had become yet wider, they were mounted on the outer corners of the taffrail. In the early 18th century the stern tended to become yet wider, and the lanterns were mounted a little way in from the quarter, so that their position in relation to one another remained unaltered.

Lantern of HMS Victory,1765 (x)

Early 17th century lanterns were usually hexagonal in plan, with parallel sides. Around 1650 the spherical lantern made its appearance, and it became the most common type for the next 40 years. It was made up of scores of tiny panels of mica. Because of developments in the glass industry, larger panels of plate glass became available towards the end of the century, and in the 1690s the parallel sided hexagonal lantern came into use again. In 1702 all ships were to fitted with stern lights and gallery lights, ranging with those of the stern, made of stone ground glass. By about 1707 the lantern had developed into a standard shape, hexagonal in plan, with a base which was narrower than the top, and a curved roof which carried roof which carried some decoration , this remaind standard until the early 19th century. Each stern lantern was supported by a bracket leading aft from the poop.

Most of these were quite simple, with a horizontal arm leading out, and a short diagonal extending upwards to support the lantern. Others had several arms converging at the base of the lantern, so that it was braced from the sides and from below. The top lantern was used by flagships, and ships in charge of a convoy. It was fitted to the edge of the appropriate top, according to the rank of the admiral concerned: the main top for a full admiral, the fore top for a vice admiral, and the mizzen top for a rear admiral. In 1804 the Navy Board pointed out one of the disadvantages of the abolition of the central lantern: when a ship is appointed for a convoy, it is not unusual for one of the poop lanterns to be removed to the main top.

[50shadesofoctarine]

PIRATE AU

Unsecured cannon balls on a ship? What could possibly go wrong!

@goodomensafterdark

This was/is going to be a frame in a larger comic called "Piracy Is Hard" but I liked it as an image on its own so I'm posting the panel without the rest.

Rendering this one was a pain in my arse but also lots of fun. I spent hours going through Hornblower frame by frame to figure out what the heck a taffrail on an 18th century frigate looks like. Is that not worth two dollars month??? 🥺

This artwork is from The Mines™️. The Mines are artworks where I specifically add a bunch of elements that I've struggled with in previous drawings (e.g. in this one: perspective, that fucking hand position, that fucking foot position, pistols, rope climbing, tricorner hats, shiny hair, etc.) in order to build up my weakest skills.

On a more serious note, I'm starting uni post being kicked out of home and a little extra cash goes a long way. My commissions are open and I try to ensure everything I make is as affordable as physically possible.

[monstersandmaw]

Changing Tides - human prince 'cursed' into merfolk body (sfw)

Hello! This has been up on my Patreon for my $3 and $5 tiers to read for a week now. If you want to get early access to stuff, and to access my entire back catalogue, here's a link.

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Anon sent me this message and I responded with almost 8000 words:

"human prince who got cursed and turned into a merman, and while his family and the royal court struggle to find a way to break the curse he finds he's actually happier as a merman"

It's 3rd person, sfw, and features an orca clan who adopts our frightened prince, and there's a hint of mlm romance for one of the orcas with a human in the future... Anyway, I hope you like something a little different. 

Content: some mild elements of body horror during the curse/turning scene, brief but not gory/too explicit mention of marine animal death, some implied trauma resulting from a transformation against his will/separation from family and previous existence at a young age, brief description of blood/injury from a harpoon to another character

Wordcount: 7965

Dusk gathered over the gentle swells of the open ocean, gilding the new yardarms and painting the perfectly crisp, white sails of the Royal Navy’s flagship with a pink and orange watercolour glow. The ship’s guests drank and laughed, and celebrated The Sea Rose’s maiden voyage, utterly unaware that they were enjoying their final few moments of life as they knew it.

Unremarkable in almost every way, a small porpoise had been playing in the bow wave, its small, dark body darting mere inches from the stem each time it plunged in and out of the spray and waves.

It didn’t hear the warning from the sea witch racing to catch up with it, and when the young porpoise’s concentration slipped and the black-painted stem of ‘The Sea Rose’ collided with its solid little body, no one on board noticed the tragedy of its passing. Even if the guests hadn’t been half drunk on the heady mix of wine and their own self-importance, there was no one on lookout in the crow’s nest that day; the new ship was flanked for her safety by two frigates a little way off, both crewed with the Navy’s finest and bristling to the gunwales with cannon and ammunition. There was no need to keep a watch this time.

There was, after all, no danger.

And yet, the animal’s accidental death would not go unmarked, unmourned, or unpunished.

Heedless of the vengeful danger rising swiftly from beneath the ship, the king himself strode along the main deck in his white and gold finery, leaving his guests for a moment as he spotted his thirteen year old son standing at the taffrail on the afterdeck and staring out at the ship’s trailing wake.

He slapped the skinny boy on his shoulders by way of a greeting, and nearly sent him toppling over into the sea from the force of his jovial blow. Hauling him upright again with a meaty fist at the scruff of his velvet doublet, the king laughed, cheeks red with drink and the bracing sea air, and he grinned down at his second eldest son.

“What’s got into you, lad?” he asked, his words a little thick and his green eyes a little glassy. “You’ve begged me for years to be allowed to go to sea, and now you’re here, you look like you’d rather be anywhere else! You’re not seasick, are you, lad? You’re going to be Admiral of the Fleet when your brother ascends the throne — can’t have you turning green at the slightest bit of swell!”

“It’s not that, father,” he said, mustering a smile for the king. “I’m sorry. I was just… thinking.”

Down below on the deck, the little prince’s older brother was talking with a few of the captains and admirals, and the boy felt suddenly every bit as young as he was. ‘King’ Eolan was a title that would suit his brother one day, with his regal bearing and his noble features, while the younger boy was gangly and too skinny to fill out the doublet he wore or the fine leather boots on his small feet.

He didn’t get the chance to observe the Crown Prince in action for much longer though, because a shudder ran the length of the new ship, and conversation sputtered and died.

The sails quivered and the rigging shook like spiderwebs before a coming storm. All the hands looked to their stations while the royal guests shifted uneasily and someone dropped a wine flute into the silence of the swelling sea. The Crown Prince scuttled up the stairs to the afterdeck and joined his father, tense and alert, though not before laying a hand on his little brother’s shoulder and offering a reassuring smile.

While the ship sailed past the stricken porpoise in a foaming, heedless rush, the creature bobbed past with its back broken, dead on impact, and the sea darkened around it and then began to boil and churn along the sides of the ship.

Finally, a shout went up and someone standing by the rail on the port side pointed and then reeled back in alarm. They were joined by more guests and sailors until half the ship’s company was hanging off the side and staring into the water that had turned an inky black around the corpse of the sea creature.

The thirteen year old prince followed his father to the railing of the high afterdeck and peered over in time to see a humanoid figure rise from the water. Her long, wet hair hung around her shoulders like a veil of moonlight, and her eyes flashed the colour of the ocean on a summer’s day. Her skin was freckled and oddly iridescent and the air around her seemed to shimmer like the road on a summer’s day. In her right hand she held a staff that was the silvery brown of old driftwood, wrapped around with seaweed like the leather on the grip of a quarterstaff, and her lower body appeared to be that of a leopard seal.

The prince’s breath caught and he stared, slack jawed down at her, forgetting to be afraid.

At the sight of her though, the guests recoiled and grabbed at the charms and holy pendants they wore around their necks, but it would do them no good. The witch raised her staff and let out a wordless scream of grief. As if whisked by a winter squall, the sea rose up around her at her call and a huge wave sloshed against the side of the ship, rocking it and sending a wall of spray and foam across the main deck.

Wherever the droplets of water touched, a flurry of white feathers appeared, and from the afterdeck, the king and the two princes watched a flock of startled seabirds flounder upwards into the sky. In their wake, the main deck lay completely deserted.

The king swore and unsheathed the steel sword at his hip but the young prince simply clung to the wooden railing and continued to stare down at the sea witch.

All his life, he’d heard tales of merfolk and of the magic they wielded, but he’d never dared dream they might be real. He’d spent hours begging the merchants who came to the castle for stories from the fish markets, since every sailor claimed to have fallen in love with a selkie or kissed a mermaid on one of their voyages, but he’d never truly believed that merfolk really did exist.

“What is the meaning of this?” the king bellowed down at her over the sound of the settling sea. “Return this ship’s crew and my guests to me at once, witch!”

“Never!” she snarled. “They’ve flown far away now, oh great king,” she added sarcastically, still sneering, “Your pretty birds won’t return to you now!”

“Why? What prompted such an act?” he barked. To his younger son, he suddenly gestured and added, “Come away from there!” With a desperate look over his shoulder, he hissed at the Crown Prince, “Eolan, protect your brother!”

The witch smiled and the younger prince saw tears tracking down around the corners of her smile as it turned from malice to grief. “Father…” he breathed, wanting to warn the king, but not knowing quite why or of what.

“Quiet!” the king hissed with a sharp motion of his hand. “Eolan, fetch a harpoon. I will have her hide on my wall!”

The Crown Prince snuck away down the stairs, out of sight of the sea witch, and then disappeared below decks. As he left, the younger boy finally let go of the railings and came to stand behind his father.

“Your ship,” the witch called above the wash of water against the sides of the vessel, “Is an abomination! You toss your refuse into the sea to choke the life from those who live there, tangle us in your nets, capture us… skin us!”

She paused and choked something raw and visceral and far beyond articulation. Drawing energy into the staff in a swirl of mist, she came to the real crux of her grievance.

“Your ship took my familiar from me and you didn’t even care to notice!”

“Your what?”

“Shadow!” she wailed, and that sorrow finally crystallised into rage. She pointed as the body of the dead porpoise floated over towards her and then with another heartbroken shriek, she raised the staff not at the king, but at his son. “I curse you!” she spat at him. “I curse you! May your son’s frail human legs fail him and may he know the plight of our people first hand! May the air choke him and the water you disdain be his only solace!”

A bolt of lightning seared down out of a clear sky and struck the deck of The Sea Rose behind the king in a spray of splinters. Ozone and singed wood filled the air as he turned around at the wheezing gulp that left his son’s throat. At the sight that greeted him, the gilt steel sword dropped from his fingers to clatter across the deck at his feet.

The boy’s legs had gone completely limp and he hit the deck hard, eyes wide with terror.

“Father,” he tried to choke in panic, but the sound lodged in his throat.

He brought one hand up instinctively to claw at his neck as he failed to breathe, suffocating in the ordinary sea air, and a moment later his fingers found the three slits of gills in his skin that had not been there before the lightning of the witch’s curse had struck him.

Before the true terror of his discovery could sink in, however, a blinding pain erupted in his chest and his hips, and his legs began to spasm.

The boy tore at the trousers which were suddenly constricting and strangling him, cutting into his legs, and he rolled on the deck as he ripped them off to reveal the distinctive opal-green and black pattern of a mackerel’s skin beginning at his hips. He clawed wildly at his skin in horror trying to halt the change, and his father dragged the fabric away just as the transformation ran its course, and his son arched his back and writhed on the deck like a landed catch, unable to breathe and blind with terror.

Footsteps on the stairs announced Eolan’s return and when he saw his brother lying on the deck with the barbed tail of a mackerel, he crashed to his knees beside them, the harpoon forgotten.

Not knowing what to do, the king knelt at his son’s side and stroked his curly, black hair out of his eyes which were bulging as he failed to breathe.

“Father,” he mouthed, chest spasming.

The skin of his remaining human body turned a grayish silver, like tarnished pewter, and between his fingers as they scrabbled at the deck the king could see a thin webbing stretching and flexing. Black, wickedly sharp claws raked the wood of the deck to splintered furrows as the boy twisted and panicked.

“What do we do?” Eolan whispered, tears filling his eyes. “Father? He’s dying… He can’t breathe!”

Acting on the most fragile of hopes, the king picked his son up in his arms and held him briefly, kissing his forehead. “I love you,” he said. “I will find a way to reverse this.”

Before the cursed prince could work out what was happening, he had been flung over the side of the ship and hit the water with a heavy smack.

The rush of cold seawater across his new gills was a relief beyond anything he’d ever felt. Instinctively, he drew in water through them and let his body start to sink.

Above, the shadow of a second ship, the frigate ‘Persistence’, announced itself with a volley of musket fire, and the sea witch dived out of sight, dragging the body of her slain familiar with her into the depths, the young prince forgotten entirely.

In all the commotion, the prince disappeared into the depths of the coastal waters, alone and afraid for the first time in his life.

__

The clan of orca-folk cautiously breached the surface and paused to watch the selkie on the shore light the driftwood pyre with the tip of her staff, and dipped their heads as one in respect. The creature at the heart of the kindling blaze was most likely her familiar, and they decided not to trouble the witch in her grief.

Leaving her, they swam in silence out of the cove and moved along the rocky shore, casting uneasy glances at each other. Magic was rare among the merfolk, but those who changed their shape at will, like the selkie folk and their distant, inland relatives, the kelpies, had it more strongly. There had been turmoil on the sea that day, and even now that the stars had blinked to life in the sky above, the waters still churned with unease.

A younger member of the clan swam on ahead, not quite understanding the wary reverence her relatives had for the sea witch, and, distracted by the passing of a very ordinary but still very quick seal, she raced off in a stream of bubbles to play with it. Yes, her kind hunted seals, but when they were being that obvious about their pursuit, the seal was in no danger.

She blasted around the rocky promontory but splayed her wide flippers to bring herself to an abrupt halt when she spotted a boy about her own age lying curled on the sandy bed of the next cove’s floor. He was hunched in on himself and seemed to be in some kind of distress, so she swam slowly over to him. He had the dizzying markings of a mackerel — black lines and opal shimmers like summer sunlight on the sea’s surface — and she wondered if perhaps he’d been left behind on the annual migration.

As she approached, he raised his head and his mouth opened in a soft ‘o’ of surprise, gills flaring.

“Hi,” she grinned. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “You alright?”

He shook his head.

“Pearl?” Her older brother’s voice sounded from close behind her, wary and warning, and she glanced back over her bare shoulder at him. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just found him.”

Hook swam past her, pushing her roughly to one side, and he loomed over the terrified stranger and bared all his sharp teeth at him. Hook was only a year older than Pearl, but he liked to play the grown up with her, and it irritated her no end. She grabbed the wide flat of his tail as it wafted past and yanked him sharply backwards. It wasn’t enough to move him much, but it brought his long, black and white hair drifting into his face and undermined his attempt at a tough persona a little.

The strange boy cringed away, hands above his head, and Hook relented when he saw he was no threat, and clearly terrified.

“You hurt?” he asked, though he could taste no blood in the water. “Where’s your shoal?”

In no time, they were joined by the whole orca-folk clan, and it was decided that the stranded boy would swim with them for the winter until his people returned to these waters to claim him. The boy didn’t speak, but he seemed able to understand them, and something told Pearl he’d been through something more awful even than being abandoned by his shoal.

Over the next few weeks, she first coaxed some tentative smiles from him, and then, when they had stopped to rest one night in another rocky cove further to the south, he laughed.

It happened when Hook got his finger clamped by a massive lobster and he swore and flung the thing away before washing it further from him with a great sweep of his tail, scowling. He was growing into his body and would one day outgrow even their father, and the motion sent the offending crustacean spiralling away on the temporary current.

When the wash of water in their ears had settled, they heard a quiet giggling and looked around to see him sitting near a bed of kelp, one hand over his mouth, and laughing softly. His eyes were the most beautiful brown, like a seal’s, and when Hook saw who was laughing, his indignation at the incident melted away like the ice in the spring, and his whole body softened.

Pearl watched as Hook swam over to the strange boy, the one they’d taken to calling Mackerel for the beautiful patterns on his tail, but the boy stopped laughing almost immediately. Hook’s shoulders dropped and he looked mortified when he saw unease and uncertainty in the boy’s eyes.

“It’s alright,” Hook said with a half-smile. “I deserved to get pinched the way I picked her up,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. You want to see if we can find another one and I’ll show you the right way to do it?”

Tentatively, the boy nodded, and Pearl watched as the boy swam off at Hook’s side. He didn’t swim like normal merfolk, but more like a newborn still getting used to his tail. Sometimes he started to sink and panicked, and the first few times it had happened, Hook had actually had to lift him up to keep him from sinking completely. Unlike them, he was a piscine merfolk, meaning he could breathe water and not air, while they were mammalian and needed to surface. When Hook went up to gulp fresh air those first few times, Pearl would watch the boy and make sure he didn’t sink until Hook returned.

He seemed to grow in confidence though over the winter, and by the time of that first laugh, he was just a bit awkward in the water. He couldn’t hope to keep up with Hook, but her brother had a kind streak to him for all his brash bravado, and he kept pace with Mackerel. Slowly, the boy began to talk with them, but he never spoke of what had happened to him, and any time they asked him where his shoal was or where he’d grown up, he shut up tighter than a clam and refused to talk. Eventually, they stopped asking.

He did till them his name though, and they were surprised to learn it was a human name. Pearl had been named for the lightness of her irises — such a pale blue it was almost silver — and Hook had been named because the patch of white under his tall dorsal fin looked like one of the barbed devices that humans used to catch fish. Mackerel, however, turned out to be named Theo, and when asked why he had that name, he just shrugged and said his parents must have liked it. They stuck to calling him Mackerel, or Macks, and he didn’t object in the slightest, only smiling shyly the first time Hook used his new name.  

When spring came to the waters where Pearl’s clan hunted, no piscine merfolk came looking for Mackerel, so he simply stayed with the orca folk.

One year became two, became three, became five.

Hook grew into a monster of a merman, with muscles rippling over his body and a reputation for taking on anything he deemed a threat to his clan, from great white sharks to fishing boats. Mackerel grew as well. Gone was that awkward, faltering motion as he swam — he could out pace any of them in a race and he was lithe and graceful and elegant when he moved. He laughed a lot too.

Pearl noticed how he would watch her swim past and then look away, and when Hook caught him staring at her like that, he washed him playfully away with a wave of his massive tail and sent him spiralling off into the murky depths with a laugh and told him to come back when he could win against Pearl in arm-wrestling.

Then, one summer evening, Mackerel disappeared.

They’d been swimming nearer to the shore than was wise in the warmer months, when humans often gathered on the shore with their fires to dance and sing and make a strange music of their own. Hook and Pearl’s mother called the clan back from the shallows and led them away when they heard the strange notes of human song and saw the orange lights dancing on the shore like strange, swirling blooms of plankton that spat sparks into the sky, but when Hook turned to Pearl to ask her something, he tensed and looked around.

“What?”

“Where’s Macks?” he asked, his hold tightening on the driftwood spear he usually carried in his right hand. Its ghostly-white blade was made of honed whalebone, and it had gutted a great white from nose to tail only the week before. The colour had drained from Hook’s usually tanned face, and he looked around frantically in the gloom that night had cast on the sea.

“Maybe he didn’t hear mother calling?” Pearl whispered.

“Stay here. I’ll go back for him.”

“Careful!” Pearl hissed, but he was already sliding away like a shadow, consumed by the growing darkness.

Hook searched the cove where they’d been intending to rest until they’d discovered the humans too close for comfort, but found nothing. Panic began to rise as he looked further along the dark, jagged rocks of the shoreline.

Eventually he started to run out of air, and surfaced carefully, mindful of the massive dorsal fin that stuck up like a sail behind him now that he was full-grown. If the humans spotted it glinting in the dark, they’d hurl harpoons at him or try to snatch him for a trophy. Merfolk — both saltwater and freshwater — didn’t last long in captivity, and he had no intention of being taken.

Then, at the far end of the sweeping cove, he spotted the opalescent glimmer of Mackerel’s scales and saw his greyish body draped over a rock. He was leaning on it, staring at the humans. His black hair, which, in the water, was flat, had started to curl, and Hook couldn’t believe he was out of the water at all. He was going to asphyxiate if he stayed up there too long, but the orca kept watching him a little longer. He liked Mackerel’s body; how it was different from the powerful orca folk. He was built for speed and agility where Hook was built for a combination of wild bursts of power and slower endurance. He might have begun courting him, bringing him gifts of carved whalebone and rare trinkets from the seabed, if Mackerel hadn’t clearly been attracted only to his sister or her female friends. So, he’d kept his affection for him chaste, and now as he watched, he realised with a jolt that Mackerel was crying.

Slowly, he swam over to him, keeping in Mackerel’s line of sight, and when his best friend turned to look at him, Hook’s heart cracked and sheared apart at the look on his face.

“What?” Hook asked, pausing and bringing his hands up to speak in the Hunter’s Tongue they used with each other when they needed to be silent in the water. He’d taught Mackerel himself, and he’d soon picked it up like he’d been speaking it all his life.

Mackerel only shook his head though and then dipped his neck below the waterline to breathe before rising up and staring again at the humans.

Hook turned to watch, but didn’t he understand. Humans were fascinating, sure, but they weren’t beautiful enough to make grown merfolk cry, surely?

Strange structures had been erected on the soft, pale sand, which looked like they were made of the same material that humans used to catch the wind and drive their boats and ships. These though were coloured the same shade as the urchins and starfish that hunkered down in rock pools at high tide, and whatever they were made of glittered occasionally like the sun on the water. The humans were laughing and moving around in odd patterns around their fires.

“What is it?” Hook whispered when he was close enough to Mackerel that their bodies touched all along one side.

“I miss them,” Mackerel rasped back. His voice didn’t work very well above the water, needing the cool caress of the waves to make it audible.

“Miss who?”

“My family.”

Hook went still. Macks had never talked about his family in all the years he’d lived with Hook’s clan. He looked from Mackerel to the humans and back again. “What do you mean?”

Mackerel bit his lip. “These people…” he said. “I know them. Hook, I was —”

A shout went up and something lanced down out of the dark, piercing the water and glancing off Hook’s large, rounded flipper. He cried out in shock at the sting of it as blood blossomed in the dark water, and he yanked Mackerel down into the waves just as another spear flew into the waves like a diving bird.

This one landed in Hook’s flat tail, and it wasn’t a spear. It was a harpoon.

Thick and barbed, the weapon lodged itself in his tail and he found himself hauled up the beach by a small party of humans before he could even flounder or lash out. His own spear had been dropped when he’d reached for Mackerel and he only prayed that his friend had the sense to swim for the depths. Not that he was about to go down without a fight, he thought as he readied himself to lash out with his fists, and even his teeth if he had to.

Of course, Mackerel had the self-preservation instincts of a piece of seaweed in a Spring Tide, however, and he breached the water a second later with a screech of distress that made even Hook’s eardrums hurt. For an instant, the tearing pressure on his tail was relaxed and he heaved his body with all his might, knocking the shadowed figures aside and sending them tumbling into the sand.

Then he saw Mackerel hauling himself up the beach, and the men started to run for him too.

Panic set in to Hook until he heard Mackerel yelling at them. He was yelling a name. A human name.

The figure at the front of the group skidded to a halt in the wet sand and stood there in shock while a wave washed up the shore to him and sloshed over his boots. “Theo?”

“Eolan…” Mackerel wheezed. “Please… Let him go…”

The figure crashed to his knees in front of Mackerel and tilted his face up to look him in the eye.

Hook seized the opportunity and swung his tail again, scattering the last of the humans tugging fruitlessly on his line now that there were too few of them. The barb of the harpoon was right through the meat of his tail and it was bleeding everywhere, turning the sand a nasty dark hue.

“Let… him go… Eolan. For me.”

“Brother? Little brother?” the human choked, bowing over him.

“Yes. It’s me. Let. Him. Go.”

The human turned his face to look at Hook then, and Hook recoiled. He looked like Mackerel, just… older. And harder too.

“Get back into the water,” Hook growled at Mackerel. “You’ll choke up here.”

That made the human — his brother? — look sharply back at him, and when Mackerel nodded and his lungs started to seize, the human dragged him unceremoniously into the water himself by the tail.

Hook meanwhile clawed his own way back down the beach, dragging the harpoon with him. If it ripped out of his tail, he’d bleed to death, but if he didn’t get away from these humans, they’d hang him up like the sharks and the tuna they took great pride in catching, and they’d wait til he bled out or died from the stress of it.

He yanked at Mackerel’s tail and dragged him the last way into the water too, then half-swam and half-sank down into the safety of deeper water. Pearl was waiting for them with Hook’s spear in her hand and swam at him, crying out when she saw the harpoon in his tail.

“It’s bad, Hook. We have to take you to the sea witch,” she said. “Mackerel, what in the name of the Deep were you thinking?”

“I…” he croaked. Like a piece of flotsam caught in the grip of the tide, he didn’t know whether to return to the beach or follow them into the sea. Hook didn’t have time to wait though, and he let his clan bear him away, looking back over his shoulder at Mackerel in disbelief and confusion.

Pearl drew Mackerel after them, and he followed in mute shock.

The sea witch’s lair was somewhere most merfolk avoided, mostly because magic was as unnerving to them as human fire, and the sea witch was powerful. She had never been known to turn away anyone in distress however, and when she scented blood in the water and saw Hook being borne into the protective ring of rocks around her home by two of his kind, weak from blood-loss and pain, she darted over immediately and hissed a curse.

“Humans,” she said through gritted teeth as she instructed the orca folk where to leave Hook. He found himself drifting in and out of consciousness on a soft bed of woven kelp, and when he looked up she smiled at him. “Easy, sweetheart. We’ll get you taken care of. I’ll need you to be brave, and you might need to hold onto someone while I take it out. There’s no easy way to do it, but my magic will patch you up afterwards. It’ll scar, but at least you’ll have your tail, eh?”

He nodded. “M… Mack…” he moaned, but Mackerel didn’t appear. When he cracked his eyes open again, he saw Mackerel staring at the witch with abject terror in his big brown eyes.

“It’s alright, lad,” she laughed, waving him over. “Come. Your friend needs you now.”

But Mackerel didn’t move.

When he remained, drifting on the currents like a mindless jellyfish, the witch tutted and gestured more impatiently, until she went still and really looked at him. “You’re… You can’t be… By the Deep, you’re him, aren’t you?”

Slowly, he nodded.

When Hook let out a groan as the water drifted over his injury and moved the harpoon, the witch focused again and said, “No time for that now. Someone hold him while I heal him up.”

Mackerel did move then, and he swam right around her and came to hold Hook’s hand in a firm grip. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault. Humans are awful. I hate them,” Hook spat. “I hate them all, I —” He cut off as the witch yanked the harpoon out and immediately began to heal it. Hook’s eyes rolled and he lost consciousness at last.

When he came to, he found Pearl at his side, curled up asleep the way she had done when they were really young. He stroked his hand over her hair and she stirred, blinking and rolling over.

“You’re alright?” she asked and he nodded.

Moving his tail experimentally up and down, he found that the pain had gone, and the wound had been mended to leave a silvery scar in the top and a pink one in the white of the flesh underneath. “Where’s Macks?” he asked and she swallowed and looked away. “Pearl?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Hook jerked upright and glared at her. “Gone where?”

“He talked with the sea witch for ages and she gave him something, and then… he just left.”

“Without saying where he was going?”

“He swam to the surface like he was one of us running out of air. I don’t know what happened.”

“Where is she? Where’s the witch? I want to ask —”

“I’m here,” came the witch’s harsh voice from nearby. “Don’t get your flippers in a flap,” she added, rolling her eyes. “And something tells me your boy will be back…”

“He’s not my boy,” Hook growled.

The witch just rolled her eyes. “Maybe not in the way you wish, but he’s not for you anyway. Your blood told me an interesting story when I drank half of it in by accident earlier. How are you feeling?”

She moved her seal’s lower body from side to side in a sinuous sweep and lifted up his enormous fluke, nodding with a satisfied grunt when she inspected the scar.

“I’m fine. Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s not really my story to tell, if he’s not told you already,” she said carefully, “But I lashed out a long time ago when humans took my familiar from me, and I took it out on the wrong person. I wanted the humans to know what it was like to suffer at the hands of someone you feared, so I gave one of them a tail and gills in a fit of pique to make his father pay. I was so wrapped up in my grief at Shadow’s death that I clean forgot about the lad when the humans opened fire on me, and I’ve not thought about him from that day to this.”

“Mackerel…” Hook exhaled, his blue eyes wide. “He… He was human, once, wasn’t he?”

The witch nodded. “Pampered little princeling out on his father’s brand new ship. Shadow got too close and the ship hit my familiar. The shock of it broke something inside me that day, but I never should have taken it out on an innocent child.”

“Where is he now?”

“I gave him the means to return to his people. If he stays on land for longer than a single cycle of the sun and moon, he’ll stay there and never return. If he returns to the sea within that time, he’ll never be able to return to his human form again.”

“Why would you make him choose like that?” Hook demanded, face like a thunderhead.

“My magic isn’t infinite, boy,” she scoffed. “I can’t give him a shifters gift. He must choose, his family in the water or his family on land. By all accounts, the humans have scoured the land looking for a way to get their cursed prince back, but no witch has been willing or able to help them.”

Pearl shook her head. “Probably no one wanted to go against the Sea Witch…”

The witch blew a stream of bubbles from her mouth and shrugged. “If they had, I might have heard about the situation and remembered the poor boy I tossed into the ocean like a piece of discarded bait. Your clan shamed me with your honour in taking in the boy as your own.”

Hook swam out of the witch’s lair not long after that and made straight for the cove where the humans had been frolicking on the shore like spinner dolphins in the surf before they’d spotted him and Mackerel.

There, sitting close together on the beach by the dying embers of the fire, he saw his best friend and the human who’d called him ‘little brother’.

For a long time, he watched, transfixed.

Mackerel was wrapped in a piece of fabric that looked like a small, patterned sail, only it fell softly around him, and from under it, Hook could just see a pair of feet. His gaze snagged on them, and he wasn’t sure how long he stared. He wondered what it was like to have two limbs instead of one — perhaps it was like controlling his flippers and his tail separately…?

Suddenly, on the rocks above him and to his right, a male voice cleared his throat, and Hook jumped, lurching away with a snarl.

“Sorry,” the man said with an earthy chuckle. “Didn’t want to spook you, but I figured you should know I was here, and that you’d better not try anything either,” he warned.

Hook’s upper lip peeled back to show his row of sharp teeth. “If he wants to be there, I won’t stop him,” he growled. “Who are you?”

“Crown Prince’s bodyguard. You?”

“His friend.”

Hook eyed the man up and down and found he didn’t dislike him, physically. Like Hook, he was clearly a warrior, since he had what the humans called a ‘sword’ belted to his hip, and he carried a long spear in his right hand. His clothes looked like they’d been made of fish scales though, and Hook immediately wanted to touch. The fabric shimmered in the torch light and clinked softly, almost musically.

When he saw where Hook was staring, the man chuckled. “Yeah, mail’s a bit like fish skin, I suppose.”

“Mail?”

“This,” he said, plucking at the shirt that ended halfway down his thighs.

He crouched down, leaning on the spear for balance, and at the sight of the dark, soft fabric underneath the mail and covering his legs, Hook’s curiosity surged and he swam a little closer.

“Fuck,” the man breathed when he saw the way Hook moved.

“What?”

“Never been this close to one of your kind.”

“Without hurling a harpoon at us, you mean?” Hook growled, gripping the rock at the man’s boots and raising himself up out of the water enough to reveal his entire torso. Then, with one hand, he grabbed at the man’s mail shirt near his neck and hauled him close.

The spear dropped from his hand and clattered onto the rocks, but the human didn’t resist him.

“Holy shit,” he exhaled instead.

Hook snarled, lip rising again on one side, and he heard a shout of alarm from the beach.

Flinging the man aside so that he toppled and landed hard on his backside on the rock behind him, Hook looked over to find Mackerel standing shakily and staggering on the sand. The ‘sail cloth that wasn’t sail cloth’ fell to his waist and he grabbed at it, just as his brother lurched to his feet and helped to steady him.

Together they walked shakily around the cove and over to the rocks that jutted out into the sea like a dock, but the shore was too jagged for Mackerel’s bare, human feet, and besides, he was too unsteady on his unfamiliar legs.

He beckoned Hook over though, and Hook glanced back at the Crown Prince’s bodyguard, then sloshed into the water and drove himself at the shore with a few powerful sweeps of his tail. There, he half-beached himself, looking up at Macks.

Mackerel crouched, keeping the soft fabric around himself and half hiding his strange limbs from Hook’s view for some reason, and the older man stepped back when Mackerel nodded at him. “You’re human?” Hook croaked, looking up at him.

Mackerel made a little sideways motion with his head. “For now. I’m sorry I never told you what happened. I… I was afraid you’d… that you wouldn’t want me in your family anymore if you knew the truth. I know how you talk about humans…”

Shame twisted in his gut and he looked back at the man on the rocks who was standing up at the approach of Mackerel’s brother.

“You going to stay with them?” Hook asked.

“I’m not sure. I want to talk with my brother a bit longer. While I can. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Hook nodded. “I understand.”

“Hook…?”

He met Hook’s blue eyes with his brown and reached for him. His skin was warm and soft in the firelight, and Hook found he missed the stony grey it had been before. Being human didn’t suit him, but he didn’t feel it was his place to say that, so he just swallowed and nodded. “Take your time. You know where we’ll be.”

“Hook, whatever I decide, you're family too. All of you. Pearl and you and the whole clan. You took me in and cared for me in a way my family on land never really did. They sheltered me and they loved me, but… not the way you did. I’ll always love you all for that. You know that, right?”

Hook nodded once and shoved his weight backwards in the sand, awkwardly carving a channel in the wet shoreline with his massive body. He glared as Mackerel’s older brother strode back across to join them, and he helped Mackerel to stand. His legs trembled and wobbled, and he laughed and leaned into his brother, and the two retreated up the beach to talk some more.

At the whispering of metal rings sliding like scales across one another, Hook glanced to his right and saw the guardsman approaching along the sand. He set down his spear and held up his hands, laughing softly. It was a warm, chuffing sound, and it stirred something in Hook’s gut that he’d thought only awakened for Mackerel.

“What do you want?” he asked, though it came out more petulant than threatening, and it only made the human warrior snort another little laugh. “You sound like a seal with a cold, making that noise.”

That made the man’s laughter grow and he shook his head. Hook saw that his hair was wavy and dark brown, and it looked impossibly soft. A shiver ran down his whole body and he felt a spark of arousal thrum through him. He was glad he was lying on his front, for one.

The two princes talked long into the night, and Hook stayed with the guardsman.

Slowly, he got over his hostility and started to ask questions about the humans’ world, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. The guardsman had plenty of his own questions too, and by the time the sun was well up into the sky and hammering down on them, Hook’s deep voice was hoarse and his golden-brown skin was dry and prickling.

“I should…” he rasped, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the water behind him. “I’m going to turn into one of your baked fish soon.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” the guardsman said. His name was Kit, it turned out, which Hook thought was a very funny sounding name. “You need a hand getting back in the water?”

He didn’t, but the thought of having this human’s hands on him sounded suddenly and bizarrely appealing, so he shrugged. “You strong enough to actually help me, or are you just looking for an excuse to get your hands on a merman?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Again, Kit laughed. It seemed so easy, so natural for him to laugh, but Hook felt a little flicker of pride all the same at having made him do it.

“With all that muscle you’re packing? Probably not,” Kit admitted. “Seemed polite to ask though.”

Hook snorted too, and shook his head. His hair had dried while they’d been talking and it was tickling his face. The guard surprised him by reaching out and tucking it behind his ear with a smile. “I’m glad I met you, Hook,” Kit said. “Maybe… no matter what His Highness decides, you’ll meet me here again some time?”

“His… Highness?”

“The one you call Mackerel. He’s a prince, you know?”

“He’s just… Macks,” Hook scowled.

“Yeah.”

Kit straightened with a grunt and dusted the sand off his legs, and Hook used his forearms to back himself back out into the surf, tail lifted so it didn’t drag like an anchor.

His back was burned, and the saltwater was agony to start with, but it had been worth it to spend so long in the company of the strange human. He ducked beneath the water without a word and vanished, deciding to wait out the rest of the time until Macks’ spell conditions were met in the solitude of a nearby kelp bed.

Occasionally he surfaced, but he didn’t go back to the shore, and finally, when the moon was starting to rise again, he breached the water one last time and looked to the beach. There was no sign of Macks this time, and he realised he’d probably made his choice.

Grief struck him a worse blow than even the harpoon, and he curled inwards with a grunt as saltwater leaked from his eyes and he realised he was crying. He doubled over and turned towards the open ocean. His scarred tail gave a throb of pain as he pushed himself to the limit and blew past his clan who had been waiting nervously out in the open water all day.

Pearl yelled after him but he ignored her. He wasn’t sure how far along the coast he swam but eventually he doubled back to familiar waters and located his clan.

And there, in the middle of all of them, was Mackerel.

Hook halted and stared, and the motion of his black and white tail attracted his best friend’s attention enough that he stopped mid-sentence and darted away from the girls, his body flashing like a minnow between the figures of orca merfolk. He shot out and blasted over to him at a pace even Hook hadn’t known he was capable of, and collided with him with the speed of a racing tuna fish. He gave a soft ‘oof’, a cloud of bubbles rising up to the surface in a foam as the air was knocked from his lungs and he started to cough. Mackerel tugged him up to the surface and made sure he got a good gulp of air before hugging him again.

“I know you don’t see me as your brother,” he said, “And I’m sorry I can’t give you what you wanted, but… I hope you’ll accept me back into the clan all the same.”

“I love you,” Hook said, “No matter what, or how. I can’t believe you stayed though. I thought… I thought…” He squeezed him tightly, using his flippers as well as his arms, and Mackerel laughed.

“Turns out I actually prefer being a merman,” Mackerel laughed. “I was always out of place on dry land, but here… I think I’m meant to be here.” He waited a beat and then said, “My brother’s guardsman seemed quite taken with you. Maybe you can keep flirting with him when I go and visit my brother?”

Hook shoved him away and then used his trademark tail-wipe to wash him even further away, and the two of them laughed.

“Race you?” Macks asked.

Mackerel did an easy back-flip in the water, rolling gracefully and then twisting like a strand of kelp in the current. When Hook thought back to how he’d been in those first few weeks — when, he now knew, he’d only just acquired a tail instead of legs — he realised how Mackerel had really grown into that pretty tail of his.

As pretty as it was though, it somehow wasn’t as appealing as Kit’s legs anymore, and Hook hid a secret smile as he let his slippery friend scoot away from him before setting the muscle of his tail to good use and powering after him like an incoming breaker.

Relations with the humans changed after that. The old king died some years later, though not before he got to see his lost son one last time, and over the course of the next year, trade and new laws governing fishing rights and shipping lanes were established for the safety and benefit of the merfolk.

And if Hook disappeared from the clan for extended periods of time, and if those periods happened to overlap with Kit’s time off duty, well, it was only a sign of better things for both worlds, surely?

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[yzeltia]

FFXIVwrite2024 1. Steer

Featuring: @goldencrusader 's Ioh'Juhn Reign as Juhnathan Leviathan Characters: Khassandra Leviathan (Jannie Eyradoux Fortemps's Shard), Yachai Leviathan (Violet Fisher's Shard), Rhion Leviathan (U'rahn Nuhn's Shard), Elidbibus Expansion: Shadowbringers(Context) Rating: T Notes: There have been 7 Rejoinings since the Sundering. We're likely to never know what happened to those worlds to reach their abnormal ascendancy. This is a story from the 5th Shard, a world that might have been. This continues from the continuity of The First Union

Glossary: The Five = The five great seas of the star Catter = Miqo'te Merfolk = Sahagin Levinfolk = Lalafell

“The Five is our kingdom. I sailed them all, as did your uncle, and our father, and his father before him, all the way back to the first King Leviathan of the Whitestones, who united all of Catter and Merfolk kind to make  peace with the land dwellers under the banner of the Seawyrm. He claimed the oceans for us so that we may always have our bellies filled with fish and would have freedom to travel as far as the horizons would take us so that we might never be reliant on the land again!”

“Except for fresh water.”

Juhnathan crossed his arms as he turned toward his daughter as she kept her eyes windward, ensuring that they continued perpendicular to the coast to the east. His sons snickered a bit, both leaning against the larboard taffrail as they waited to listen to their father’s speech.

“I don’t understand. How come Khassandra gets the helm? I’m the eldest. I should be the first mate,” Yachai signed toward his father as the man tried to remember where he’d left off.

Rhion rolled his eyes. “The last time we sailed close to Home, you got us beached on a sandbar. If it wasn't for a generous wind we’d still be there.”

Yachai flitted his ears backward and glared at his brother as he quickly signed, “ I didn’t ask you,” before giving him a middle finger.

“Oi! Cut it out you two,” Juhnathan scolded, muttering. “We should have stopped at one,” soon after.

“HEY,” Rhion and Khassandra called out, the twins’ tails both thrashing.

“I’m kidding. I’m kidding…mostly. Anyroad. Khassandra is steering because she is the most patient and the least likely to be distracted,” Juhnathan said, putting his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Our numbers grow less and less every year. Yes, the winds and terrible storms they have brought have seen many of our brethren lost to the depths of The Five; however, a well trained sailor can weather any squall. One day you will be King of the Five and a good king knows that he can not always be at the helm. Sometimes we must put our pride aside for those who can do the most good.”

Yachai looked down, tightening his fist then brought them up to sign, “And where is Uncle Zhonathan then? Was he not doing good enough for you? I can’t call out orders. Are you going to send me away too!?”

Juhnathan frowned, taking a step back as Yachai pushed past him in a huff, the boy heading grumpily downstairs toward the bow to sulk by himself. Rhion sighed, shaking his head as he moved beside his dad then looked up at him. “He just missed Uncle Zhohnathan. It is kind of lonely out here with his ship in tow and Uncle always let him helm his ship.”

Juhnathan raked his hand through his hair, watching Yachai brood across the ship. The king remained silent for a moment before shaking his head. “It is lonelier, isn’t it.”

A crack of thunder echoed through the Blackwood, causing Rhion to sit up in a sweat. A hiss escaped him as he felt his head throb, making him wince and palm at his forehead finding it lightly bandaged. He followed the wrapping around to the back then hissed again as he felt a tender wound beneath it. Getting more of his bearings he looked around, finding himself in a rather small room and atop two small beds for Levinfolk pushed together to accommodate his size.

“There was little time to move you to visitor quarters. King Ramuh wanted you taken care of quickly. They had to push you through a window to fit you inside,” a familiar deep voice called out through the dark.

Rhion rubbed his eyes then peered through the dark toward a cloaked figure. “Elidibus? Is that you?” he called out in a near whisper, weary to raise his voice too much.

“Yes,” Elidbus answered, moving closer to kneel at the edge of the bed in his white robes, hand reaching out to press upon Rhion’s chest. “Your father heard whispers that you’d have an accident. I felt compelled to see that you were safe. Apparently you had a rather hard fall from the bow. Perhaps you indulged King Ramuh a bit too much in spirits? Do you need water?”

A shudder ran through Rhion as Elidbus felt over his chest. He huffed, taking the other by the wrist to pull his hand away before offering it a small kiss where it pulsed. “I will not ask how you came to be by my side so quickly but I am happy for the company. I didn't have a chance to sit down with the King. There was a rare break in the clouds so that you could see up into the night sky. It just so happened there was a meteor shower. I must have been in such awe I lost my footing and fell,” he said before looking toward the window as a streak of lightning illuminated the panes. “And then I had the most vivid dream…But it wasn’t a dream. It was more like reliving one of my own memories from the outside.”

Rhion jumped as Elidibus suddenly jerked his shoulder toward him. His eyes widened a bit as the other pulled back his hood and ripped his mask off, having never seen the other without it. Elidibus’s bright blue eyes searched his face, frantic and near tears.

“Do you know me?” Elidibus asked breathlessly.

“Of course I do,” Rhion said, touching the other’s face before giving the other sly smile, “In all the ways one could possibly-”

“Say my name.”

“Elidibus…?”

“No. Say my name.”

Rhion leaned away as he finally sensed a desperation in Elidibus’s demeanor that he’d not thought possible for the normally stoic and soft man to have. He slid from the bedding, getting on his knees to put his arms around him, holding him still. “You have always been Elidibus to me,” he said, into the other’s ear.

Elidibus’s shaking ceased. His body almost seemed to go limp against Rhion’s, the Catter having to quickly unfurl his legs to be able to sit comfortably as the other came down upon him. They laid there quietly, save for the storm raging outside. Unsure what to do or what to make of Elidibus’s state, Rhion took to rubbing his back and singing softly.

 “Upon the seas, long ago, a Catter had too much to drink. 

He offended a pirate captain, and nearly landed in the clink.

But a Catter wise, as he, or so they say,

And with his cunning linguistics, spared himself jail that day.

He said ‘If you let me go, Captain, I’ll tell you of a great sea prize,

As I am a clever Catter, and have made The Five my wives.

Now the Western Sea is our home, as we certainly all know

And the Northern Sea is too icy, not a great place to go.

The Southern Sea is sunny and warm, the perfect place for me

But if I had to go and hide, the rock islands of the Central I would be.

So to the Eastern Sea you’ll set your sails, crossing ocean wide

If it's a massive treasure you do seek, on the farthest end it will reside.

Go Captain! Fly! Leave me here while you seek,

As going from Central to East will take at least a week!`

And so the Captain thanked him, leaving him on shore,

Then sailed his men toward the East and then was heard from no more.

And so the wise Catter lived safe the rest of his days,

As the Eastern Sea is notorious for swallowing ships in its waves.

“That is a ridiculous song,” Eldibus said softly, unable to shake the amusement in his voice.

“I didn’t write it. Dad used to sing it to us when we were little. It’s comforting,” Rhion replied with a small shrug.

“You are ridiculous,” Eldibus sighed, before lifting himself up, staring down at Rhion calmly, though still with an air of searching for something he wasn’t finding.

“So is that mask you wear all the time. This is the first time I’ve seen you without it, you know. What about the priesthood says you have to keep it on. Even during-”

“I am just married to the old ways. It has long been an important custom to my people. I am often afraid that I might forget our ways. Even now names and faces slip from me. I feel it might drive me mad if I don’t find comfort in the familiar,” Elidibus explained.

“I think I understand…” Rhion trailed before touching Elidbus’s bare cheek as he sat up to draw his face in for a kiss before pulling back with a playful grin, “You’re kind of in love with me. Aren’t you?”

Elidbus froze again, mouth opening then closing before shaking his head. “Azem! I mean Gelos. This is all very-”

“Azem? Gelos? Who’re they?” Rhion asked, flinching as the other suddenly pulled away.

“You are well. I must return to the temple,” Elidibus said sharply, ignoring the question while picking his mask up off the floor.

“Woah! Hey! You just got here,” Rhion said, reaching out to grab for Eldibus’s wrist as he retreated. “You’re acting more elusive than normal. What’s going on?”

“I’m clearly mistaking you for someone else. Let me go.”

“Where are you going to go? There’s a storm raging outside and it’s the middle of the night,” Rhion protested, keeping his grip firm. “And for that matter, how can you mistake me for someone else? I’ve always been me. I’m the same person who’ve you-”

“You are nothing! An imitation…or perhaps just a fraction of who you are supposed to be,” Elidibus snapped.

Rhion swallowed, letting go of Elidbus’s wrist. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but even so it felt like the other had singled in on some raw nerve he never knew he had. A wave of hurt was replaced by anger before rounding back to confusion. “Even if that’s true…whatever that is has you drawn to me,” Rhion said defiantly, trying to mask his frustration with confidence. “Go if you must. You always seem to know how to find me…”

Rhion turned away from Elidibus as the man retreated into the shadows. A chill crept up his spine as he suddenly felt himself alone in the room. He turned to look back, Elidibus seeming to have vanished from the space without so much as the creek of a door hinge. With a huff, he sat down, raking a hand through his hair trying to replay where exactly he went wrong.

[empressofmankind]

Me, literally 0.5 seconds in: "SHHAAAAAANNNXXXXX"

They have such a nice-looking ship though; I am so about it. The prow dragon? The taffrail details? The overall colour scheme? Yes, please.

Oyé, Shivs' other ex got gray? Granted, he did hit the 5-0 post time skip. Not a bad look at all though, ngl.

Throwback time to precisely today in '99, episode #4 airing:

Probably don't have to explain further, I think? 😉

Shanks @Marco: "Idiot! I am not high maintenance! Right, Bec?" Benn, in complete deadpan: "No, you are." Shanks: "WhAt?"

You can probably tell why that was a thing that happened for a while. Same energy, whomst. Poor Shanks. What did he do except exist to deserve all that sass?

Sanji still being Sanji is never not entertaining, by the way. Stay dramatic, shrimp. Also, shout out to Zoro's look in the whole arc. It is such a solid design.

Who am I kidding, all three of them look excellent in their gear.

[Part II]

[giuliettagaltieri]

Be Careful Not to Spill

Pairing: Eren Jaeger x Marleyan! reader

Synopsis: Eren does not agree with the euthanasia plan and he will show them, with a little help from you.

Warnings: AOT S4 spoilers, violence, misogyny, dubcon, noncon, forced pregnancy.

Word Count: 2149

As a Marleyan you know three things as a fact.

One, the Eldians are monsters and they deserve every hate this world has to offer.

Two, to keep the balance from tipping, violence is necessary.

Three, the island beyond the sea is where the enemies are.  

Or at least, that was what you were told.

When you find your ship being lifted off the waters, you start to consider if everything that was instilled in your brain is true.

You wanted to come to the island with clear judgement, free of prejudice, but it was difficult to do so when your ship is thrown to the ground, sending you to your knees, and breaking your skin.

They held Niccolo hostage apparently.

He is afraid, you can see in the way he shakes and how he screams in desperation as he asks for the Eldians to be shot despite the fact that it would cost him his life.

An honorable deed.

But then again, who would want to be taken alive by these devils?

The captain aims his gun but you walk over to him and place your delicate hand on the barrel to lower it down.

"What are you doing, Miss Y/N?"  The captain demands.

You smile at him sardonically.  "Are you that desperate to have your comrades die or can you not see that titan behind us?"

He glanced at the looming titan and he wobble on his feet.  Yet the panic in his eyes was quick to turn into madness and he pushes you hard and aimed at the Eldian.

"Say hello to this!"

A gunshot rings on your ears and pieces of what should be inside his skull splattered on the deck.

A hand was offered for you to take.  You thank Yelena and you stand by the taffrail and you try to put on a polite smile.

Negotiation is the only option you have.

"We'll gladly take up your offer."  You announce, ignoring the commotion of the other soldiers around you as your comrades spring to action.  "Shall we have a cup of tea?"

You are quick to establish rapport and gain their confidence, after years and years of being Marley's military strategist taught you how to bargain with people.  Apparently, the same principles still apply in this corner of the world.

It was all falling into place.

The pieces start to fit together.

But you miscalculated.

You let yourself get too immersed of being a part of the people of the island.

And you notice how your eyes always seek him in crowds.

How your heart pounds when he is close.

How he can win an argument, with you not even trying to defend yourself as your brain struggles to keep up.

Eren clicks his tongue at another easily won conversation with you.

He wanted to hold a longer conversation, to rile you up and get you to tell him about your true intentions.  But all he ever got from you were nods, it infuriated him how you always avoided his eyes.

He leaves you in your previously shared table.

And you wanted nothing more but to curl up and curse yourself for acting as you did.

It unnerved Eren, how tame you were.  He understood that there is a something that is being kept from him but you had no business offering him your hanky when he transforms back into human form after a quick test supervised by you, the highly regarded strategist of their enemy country.

He takes the sickeningly sweet-smelling piece of the softest fabric that he has ever had the chance of touching, his eyes never leaving your face, which erupted in a flush, mumbling a quick excuse and scurrying away.

There was nothing smart about you.

There was nothing cunning about you.

You were just a lovesick fool.

And Eren knew it.

It would be a shame to not make the most out of it.

How does the Marleyan military function?

Suddenly, he was holding doors open for you.

What happens if soldiers receive injuries from a war?

He's constantly bumping into you and offering to carry your papers filled with your intricate plans to bring this country to the ground.

“Carefull, you’re spilling.”  Eren carries the bowl of water that you were struggling not to slosh around and placed it in front of your stallion.

Your horse mysteriously collapses to the ground even though you made sure that it was well rested and well fed, making you have to ride on Eren's horse as he was quick to offer.

Eren hops off and clasps his large hands round your plump waist.  He easily lifts you back to the ground.  You flinch when he drags his hands to your hips but you try to think none of it, he was just steadying you.

Of course, he meant nothing by it.

Especially when you see him in Mikasa's embrace and seeing Eren kissing Mikasa's forehead brought you back to your senses.

It was difficult.

You were sent there to see the plan through.

But now, you were too occupied in thinking if your presence was ever significant to him, even just for a while.

It was gnawing on you.

Perhaps it was for the best.  

Eliminating any traces of your affection for him would make the execution of the plan go smoothly.

It was not like it was supposed to go anywhere in the first place.

Naturally, anywhere where Eren is not, surprisingly becomes disorderly, and in need of your exceptional wisdom.

They needed you there, you don't care if you've checked their progress twice within that hour already.  They're in need of your help and you are required to stay there.

Traveling from one base to another was the best possible option.

That way, you could monitor your people more closely.

And you will not have to worry about certain individuals who will make you question your value in their lives again.

Especially not one of these devils.

"Eren just arrived at camp."

You sit straighter as if a rod of steel materializes on your back.  Your eyes snap to Floch.

"That is not possible, he was supposed to be in-"

"Don't assume that we are telling you everything, Marleyan."  He spat.

Your brows furrow.

You witnessed racism more times than you can count but you have never been on the receiving side of it.

Until now.

Of course.

You are a fool.

You just gave yourself to them as hostage now, haven’t you?

The answers came to when you could no longer be permitted to go out of your tent.

Meals were served to you and the only times that sunlight touched you was when you have to go to bathrooms.

"I admired how well you could make everyone, including yourself, believe your lies."

You look up from the crackling fire when you hear the voice and you are quick to slip your bookmark between the pages of your book.

"How have you been?"

He scoffs.  “Let’s skip the formalities.  I know about Zeke’s plan.”

You stand up, sighing.  Eyes flashing to the letter opener, knowing how futile it was against Eren but its presence brings you a false sense of reassurance. 

“Tea?”  You ignore him as you pour yourself a cup of the golden-brown liquid.

It was difficult not to spill when you feel him step behind you, his warm breath making the hair on your nape stand on end.  You feel his fingers supporting your elbow when you accidentally pour a good amount on the saucer.

“Careful.  You’re spilling.”

You gently place the tea pot on the table, swallowing the lump on your throat.  “I need to meet with Yelena.  Could you arrange a trip for me?  Your people are adamant on having me remain here but frankly I do not see the need to-”

You gasp when Eren’s firm hands grasp your jaw, squishing your cheeks together as he lifts your chin up to make you meet his eyes.

“What makes you think you have the right to decide for our race to die out?”

His voice made your blood freeze up, your fingers turning cold and numb as you feel your knees buckle, and you would have long collapsed if Eren was not holding you too tightly.

Eren found it pathetic how tears were quick to erupt in your eyes, making your lashes clump together.

“It is necessary.” 

His grip tightens.

“Eren, please.  You’re hurting me.”

He almost did not hear you from how small and quivery your voice has become, losing its natural serene yet commanding tone.

One corner of his lip rises, a flash of his teeth made him look more menacing.  “Did you honestly think you could come to the Island of the devils and leave unscathed?”

Before you could process his words, you feel the world tip and your impact against the table sent a sharp blow to your rib which made you suffocate on your own breath, the pain making it difficult for you to take in air.  You could only slam your fist on Eren’s chest when he flips you on your back.

Your blood red dress decorated with the finest lace was ripped.

It had you realizing despite the panic that previously scrambled your thoughts.

“Unhand me!”  You screamed.

The cold blunt edge of the letter opener dug on your hips when Eren held you down by placing his large hand on your abdomen.

“You’ll be coming back to Marley with a little souvenir.”

You choked up, eyes begging as pleas spill from your delicate mouth.

Eren was getting drunk on your fear.

He was quick to undo the strings holding his clothing and he leans down to press his body against yours, smothering you with his heat as he skims his nose along your cheeks that has gone streaked with tears.

“You’re so pathetic, you know that?”  He catches your bloated lip between his teeth as his deep green eyes stare intently in your eyes that are blurred with tears.  “You are not meant to be in a war.”

You are so beautiful it almost physically hurt him.

And he hated it.

Rough fingers glide on your hips and thighs.

“Women like you should be staying at home.”  You hold your breath and squeeze your eyes close when he spreads your delicate petals.  “Nursing a child.”  He gathers your sweet nectar and taints your lips with it.  “All the while, heavy with another one on the way.”

You cry out when his thumb traces your sweet pearl.

He lifts your arms to place them on his well-built shoulders as he rests himself against your flower that is slowly blooming just for him.

Eren’s eyes land on your bosom and he is quick to notice the buds becoming perky.

His lips part to take them in his mouth and your legs kick up in surprise, his name dripping from your tongue like the sweetest honey.

In contrast to all that he is, Eren nibbled on your bud so gently it had you clenching your thighs on both sides of his hips and you accidentally call his name so dearly, startling the two of you.

You come to your senses and try your hardest to push him away when he lifts your hips to place his tip on your untouched flower.

“Eren, please stop!”  You cry out.

It falls on deaf ears as Eren sheaths himself between your quivering legs.  He groans against your neck as he feels your juices sliding on his heavy balls, slowly dripping on his hulking thighs.

He breathes against your shoulder and snapped his hips. 

You scream, feeling your dignity being peeled away.  Every thrust sends your breath hitching.  He was unforgiving, bruising your shoulder with his grip as he used it for leverage to sink deeper into you as if wanting to sear this fragment of time in your head, to keep him immortalized in your memory.

He can’t let his brother’s plan be fulfilled.  He won’t allow it.

Marley’s name would be shamed with the result of this union.

Their esteemed strategist all rounded up because of Eren Jaeger, a devil from Paradis.

You let out the most beautiful song as you seized up against him and he captured your lips as you gush around him.

He can’t lose this.

Eren growled as he pulled you closer to him, you fear your bodies might mold as one.  He kisses your cervix and showered your velvet walls with his thick seed.

You cover your face with your hands, not wanting to face the monster that defiled you.

He pulls your hands by your wrists and cups your face to kiss your jaw.  He straightens up and pulls himself out of your warmth, sending his milky seed trickling out of you.

Eren clicks his tongue and presses your thighs close.

 “Carefull, you’re spilling.”

[rnenageries]

JUNELEZEN 2024 DAY 4: DEPARTURE

"The day she's sent to the colony for the first time is an eerily quiet one. Calm harbour, calmer seas, almost unnervingly so. The Bosun tells her that's usually an ill-omen for a voyage, but the fresh-faced young woman is too concerned with what happens after they land to bother taking her seriously.

You'd think living on an island would have prepared her stomach better for sea travel, but as she spends the duration bent over the taffrail, pale and sweating, clearly not.

[inoreuct]

thinking about mermaid sanji and sailor zoro,,,

the sky is cloudless, the sun’s glimmering off the calm water, the crew’s relaxing on the deck as they’re sailing through a clear patch of ocean; by all accounts, it’s a perfect day. luffy hasn’t gotten them into another shenanigan as of yet and zoro’s chilling up in the crow’s nest, half asleep and lethargic with the heat— and then he swears he hears laughter. and it isn’t coming from the ship.

he’s up on his feet immediately and squinting against the glaring light, wondering for a second if he’s seeing a mirage or a trick of the heat shimmer, because they’re sailing by a large, flat rock.

a rock with merfolk on it.

zoro’s shimmying down the mast in record time, ropes lashing around him as his boots hit the deck and he tries not to look like he’s running to the taffrail to catch a better look. (look, he’s curious, alright? merfolk aren’t a total myth, but they aren’t a common sight either.)

(that, and he feels oddly like someone has cast out a fish hook and it’s lodged behind his sternum, tugging him forward and forward until his hands are pressed palm-flat to the railing and he’s leaning over the edge.)

he hears that laugh again, rich and bright, wide eyes snapping to the mer who made it. golden waves shimmer over a leanly muscled shoulder, curling around a sharp jaw to reveal the mer’s pale, slender throat as they tip an oyster back into their mouth. leaning back on his hands — zoro is rather sure he is a he now, as a deep, smooth voice fills his ears, though he’s had enough tongue-lashings from nami to know not to assume — and tossing his hair back affords zoro a glimpse of a beautiful smile and bright blue eyes, blue as the goddamn sky. or maybe the sea. or perhaps the bioluminescent algae that had speckled the walls of this one cave that he’d been to ages ago—

he’s getting sidetracked. some sound must escape him, because suddenly a gaze so keen he feels his skin prickle is on him and he gulps involuntarily. and then for some reason, he opens his mouth. “are you a siren?”

the man’s curly brows narrow in irritation. “are you dead yet?” he snarks, casting zoro a flat stare and sighing in annoyance when zoro just stares back blankly. “no, I’m not a damn siren. lucky for you, we happen to be their… less bloodthirsty cousins.”

“less bloodthirsty meaning…?”

he shares a bored, bemused look with the woman on her elbows beside him, a mer with the richest purple colouring zoro’s seen in his life and a one-shoulder top made of shiny black kelp. “meaning we wouldn’t drag you down to the depths and feast on your carcass, but keep running your mouth and I might just change my mind.”

the mer’s tail is folded elegantly to the side as he lounges, fan-like tail fin trailing in the water, turning his body so that he can look at zoro properly as he tips back another oyster like it’s his god-given right. a tiny voice at the back of zoro’s mind whispers that this isn’t a good idea, whatever this is. it goes ignored. flaxen hair flutters in a slight breeze, sticking to the man’s milky skin in darker spirals where the tips are wet, and zoro’s breath catches as he watches the mer smile with teeth that are just erring on the side of too sharp.

the words register all at once and zoro lurches back, away from the railing, away from golden curls and blue eyes and pale skin. “what did you do,” he grits, resisting the urge to press the heel of his hand into his chest where it suddenly aches.

the mer shrugs. “nothing.”

“bullshit.”

“what’s the matter, sailor? feeling charmed?” that laugh, again, and zoro feels his heart throb. he watches the other man cock his head, studying another oyster in his hand, tilting the shell back and forth as he sucks on his teeth. “we can’t thrall,” he says finally, posture slackening with a sigh and a pout that seems to say what a shame as he picks up a knife and spins it deftly, shucking the shell open with a neat flick of his wrist. “only sirens can do that. whatever you’re feeling, whatever it may be, hasn’t been borne of any influence of mine.”

the oyster goes down and somehow, that sentence makes zoro feel even worse. it’s like he’s had the air punched out of him; he’s rooted, eyes wide, breathing hard as the mer makes a noise of pleasant surprise and pulls a pearl from his mouth, shimmering between his elegant fingers under the sun.

(zoro doesn’t know it yet, but he’s doomed. he was doomed from the start.)

*

back under the ocean, sanji has a crisis. he doesn’t see humans. he doesn’t meet humans. he and robin had just gone up to enjoy the sunshine and then this— this— brute swings by, with his stupid green hair and his three earrings and his obscenely grimy used-to-be-white shirt— sanji is fuming and he doesn’t know why. swimming laps back and forth across his cave isn’t helping either.

"might you possibly have something to get off your mind?" robin asks lightly, the pages of her book drifting in the water.

sanji does an about-turn and holds in a screech with all his might, forcing himself to relax with an exhale. "i'm just fine, my dear. peachy keen."

"you're making grooves in the floor."

"i'm redecorating."

he rolls the pearl from earlier between his fingers, squeezing it tight until his hand aches. "are you a siren, he asks," he mutters mutinously, fins fluttering as he throws himself onto a seaweed bed with a scowl. "how could a human be so stupid? if we were sirens he'd have been a waterlogged ball of moss on the sea floor by that point— and that hair. he looks like— like—"

"algae?" robin supplies helpfully.

"algae! sentient plant life, that's what he is, a kelp bed. water lettuce. duckweed, even." oh, he's so mad. that marimo pisses him off. the whole lot of them had sailed away, good riddance, because sanji never wants to see any of them ever again. they probably all smelled horrid anyway.

*

the merman's been following them.

the crow's nest is zoro's territory for a reason; he's the crew's lookout, and he's damn good at his job. for the past few days he's been seeing flashes of a broad tail fin and twists of golden hair. (he very firmly tells himself that he's not just seeing what he wants to see, because one, he might have one remaining eye but his eyesight is still as sharp as he keeps his cutlass, thank you very much. and two, why the hell would he want to see that merman? he isn't about to win any awards for his own manners but that guy had been stuck up and prissy and just rude. he's only been allowed to tag along this far because he hasn't presented himself as an outright threat. zoro doesn't want to see him. nuh-uh.)

(zoro sees things in his dreams, too. ocean eyes and a sly smile. a pale torso, knife in hand and teeth too sharp. he reaches out to see if the other man's hair feels as soft as it looks and he always wakes before he finds out.)

rum doesn't help to loosen the tension that settles against his spine at night, like he's waiting for something. he doesn't know what. anticipation, maybe, would be a better word— but that has a slight positive connotation, and— no. this man might not be a siren, but zoro’s enough of a sailor to know that it sure as hell doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous.

he can't afford to go off chasing pretty mermen when he has a crew to protect.

*

the ship docks for a few days at a barren island. sanji swims laps around the sandy coast and pretends that the thought of his the sailor being beyond his reach doesn't make an anxious itch ripple beneath his scales.

*

water splashes against the side of the boat, and zoro's at the railing in an instant whether he wants to be or not.

“hello, marimo.”

the merman treads water leisurely, golden hair swirling about his shoulders and gleaming in the faint lantern light. it's early enough after sunset that the stars aren't out yet and it's dark as hell. zoro squints.

a laugh echoes in his ears, light and melodious. already familiar. zoro tries to be mad about that. “a little more to your left, moron.”

“well, i can’t very well fuckin’ see, can i?” he scoffs, and bites back a gasp when the water starts glowing, what the fuck. his stupid heart stutters when he sees him, lit up with gentle blues and yellows from below, flickering with the push and pull of the tide and sweeps of that powerful tail. "hey."

"hello," the mer hums again, lashes long and wet enough that they catch the wavering light. "gonna tell me your name, sailor?"

zoro almost lets it slip. almost. but he bites his tongue as he feels a chill run up the back of his neck; sure enough, a glance over his shoulder confirms that nami is glaring at him. don't do anything stupid, her gaze says, and he turns away with a shudder. their navigator is a threat in her own right. "no."

"okay. marimo it is."

"you— that is insulting," he hisses, because it is. he is roronoa zoro. he came from nothing and made a life for himself out of it. he's one of the best swordsmen on the damn seas and he's part of the best crew he's ever known, and he's been reduced to, what? a floating ball of moss?

"it's accurate," the other man corrects with a smirk. "unless you tell me what else to call you."

zoro fumes, fingertips digging into the taffrail. he's sure his nails are gouging scratches in the wood. "no."

"marimo."

"shut up."

"mosshead."

"shut up!"

"algae-brained, kelp-haired, water cabbage-headed—"

"zoro!"

the mer finally stops, lashes fluttering as something passes over his face.

"my name," he ekes out, "is zoro." nami swears somewhere behind him.

the merman's lips part around the syllables of the word, before he draws in a breath and grins, smug. "okay, marimo."

"wh—?!" zoro throws his hands up in exasperation, scofffing. "you bastard!"

"i asked for your name. never said i would use it."

"you're a piece of shit, blondie."

"call me that again and i'll show you how hard i can bite," the mer sneers with all his teeth on show, blue eyes lit up furious, turning away as he prepares to dive and—

"wait!" zoro yells before he can stop himself, and he curses under his breath. ah, fuck it. already got one foot in it anyway. "what's your name?"

"...oh, darling," the mer sighs, half-amused and airy, his voice slipping away. "you're gonna have to work a little harder for that."

it feels like hours later when zoro steps back with a shaky sigh. the merman reminds him of a strong brandy he’d had what feels like lifetimes ago, burnt caramel and warm sugar and smoke with enough hidden bite to take you by surprise, to sink its teeth into you three shots down. enough to intoxicate if you weren’t careful.

he yelps when nami slaps him across the back of the head, faking a lunge at her with bared teeth even as he rubs a hand over his aching scalp with a huff. her nagging about being more careful barely registers. his hair's getting long; maybe he needs a trim.

(that little voice in the back of his head is wary. hesitant. but now it's asking what if.)

*

the ship docks again. this island is teeming with life, thriving, lush with rich green foliage and thick forestation— and beautiful women who all seem to find zoro the height of masculine appeal, apparently. sanji curls himself into a nook in the coral reef and lets his fins trail in the water, the corner of his mouth ticking up a little when a baby clownfish comes to nibble curiously at his fingertip. he's not sulking. he's not. that would be fucking embarrassing for so many reasons and he refuses to think about even one of them.

it's the first time that he starts to feel a little stupid. it had been all fun and games, in the beginning when he'd upped and left on a whim; curiosity and intrigue and the good old urge to stick his fingers in all the cracks this human had until sanji understood every part of him, laid out in the sand like the skeleton of a great sea beast.

but now he's so far away from home, aimlessly following a ship— no, not even a ship. following one person on a ship for no real reason at all.

the clownfish ducks beneath his hand, and sanji cups it carefully in his palm. "you're lucky you don't have to deal with romance yet," he tells it sagely before gently shooing it out of his hiding spot. the water above ripples. it's dark again; the crew must have returned to their boat for the night. sanji sighs and unfurls his tail.

it honestly seems like blind optimism at this point, but he really hopes he's not being played for a fool.

zoro's there when he surfaces, peering over the railing and backlit by the lanterns. sanji focuses and brings out his bioluminescence until the little cove they're in is filled with coloured light. "marimo."

"swirly brow," zoro greets in return.

sanji raises one said swirly eyebrow. "that's new."

"i've got more. blondie, of course. curly head. fishboy—"

"fishboy?!" he squawks, enraged. "fuck you!"

"you wish."

"more like the ladies did," sanji scoffs, and immediately wants to try drowning himself.

zoro frowns. "the hell you talking 'bout, curls?"

the burst of bitterness at the back of his throat is just enough to take him by surprise and loosen his tongue. "they were hanging off your arm like—" mm. nope. he's not gonna go there.

the swordsman's eyes widen like he's just realised something, and sanji does not like that at all. "you're jealous."

"no."

"you are!"

"fuck you," he spits, gills flaring. "i am not." he has no reason to be jealous. they are nothing. this— there is nothing between them.

zoro just grins. "catch."

a white thing drops downwards and sanji darts forward on instinct to let it fall into his cupped palms. "what, s'this supposed to be a present for me, marimo?"

"it's— yeah."

he opens his mouth to reply, before he realises what exactly it is he's holding.

the water lotus fills his hands, its soft white petals edged in pale pink, velvety against his fingertips. something catches in his throat and he dips beneath the water to submerge his gills, carefully holding the flower aloft. his heart squeezes.

the waves lap at the bridge of his nose, hiding half his face as he watches zoro rub at the back of his neck, uncharacteristically shy. zoro isn't shy. sanji knows this much. he is loud and unabashed and unashamed with everything, with how he lives, with how he talks, with how he loves his crew and everything they entail.

but he looks almost— he's blushing, just a little, red across the tips of his ears as his gaze darts away, looking very much like he's mad at himself. "nami said it means strength and resilience, or something." the breath he huffs is harsh as he scratches at his nape. "i don't know, it's stupid, curly, i just—"

"sanji."

"what?"

"sanji. my name."

sanji doesn't want to know what he looks like as he rises out of the water to cup the flower to his collar. dumb, probably. rightfully so, because all of this is a very dumb decision and it's probably going to end in shambles with his heart broken into pieces in the silt but zoro— he looks up, floating on his back, and zoro's already looking at him with something that could be wonder, if sanji dared to name it.

"where did you get this?" he murmurs, tail fin creating large ripples as he swims a circle, holding the lotus like it's fragile.

"there was a pond full of them on the island. thought you'd like it."

"you don't know what i like." it comes out breathy. his hair melts against his shoulders as he tries to push himself closer, closer, across the space between them, like a fool. "you don't even know me."

and yet, he startles back when zoro jumps the railing, splashing feet-first into the water boots and all and shaking his head like a dog when he resurfaces. sanji shrieks and shields the lotus with his body, everything else momentarily forgotten as he whacks zoro with his tail just hard enough to send the sailor back underwater with a sputtered laugh. "you fucking brute!"

"i want to."

"that made no sense—"

"i don't know you, but i want to." zoro treads closer, and sanji's light ripples off his skin. his eyes are grey. warm granite and the inside of an oyster shell. "will you let me?"

sanji wants. there is nothing between them, but he wants there to be. he wants so hard it hurts. it feels like he's holding his heart in his hands and not a flower. it's the only way to explain how he's suddenly aching, hollow, in the face of something that isn't even a goddamn confession but feels too much like one. there is a flower in his hands and he wants.

“why?”

“dunno.” he gets a shrug, blunt and earnest as ever even as zoro’s mouth twists up at the edge. “maybe i’m charmed.”

he swallows hard, his mouth dry, and he doesn't want to say it but he has to. "if this is some sick thing about me being a mer—"

"wh—? no!" zoro blurts, and he looks so fucking horrified at that moment that it settles something in sanji's stomach instantly. "god, fuck, no. no. it's not like that. i swear on my life."

there are reasons why merfolk don't interact with humans. sanji grew up with the stories. he's seen the skeletons on the sea floor, mangled with the hunting tools of man, incomplete remains of his kin tossed away to their deaths, unable to swim or save themselves— still a better fate than the ones who never returned. the ocean is gentle after the burn of her salt; her waves are familiar, and her children are raised in their push and pull. captivity, at the hands of men for whatever reason, is never so kind.

he inhales sharply as callused hands cup his.

"i'm sorry," zoro says softly, rushed and maybe a little desperate, throat bobbing as his eyes dart across sanji's face. "i'm sorry. i didn't think of that at all."

"good," he finds himself replying as he looks down. "that means it didn't cross your mind."

a muscle ticks in zoro's jaw. "that's fucking sick, curls."

"i know." sanji's tone is matter-of-fact. "but it's what we have to deal with, sometimes." he deflates with a soft huff at the expression on the other man's face, looking away. "if you start saying shit like i'll protect you or whatever, i'm gonna smack you. i can handle myself."

zoro sighs through his nose, slowly, and his hands tighten around sanji's. "i know you can. i've watched you hunt. doesn't mean i can't be mad about it."

his eyebrows go up. "you saw me hunting?"

"mhm," the swordsman hums. "you're strong. fast. resourceful, too."

sanji preens. he knows he is, knows he’s one of, if not the best, but hearing it from zoro is another thing entirely.

"...also, my captain's been begging me to get you to fish for us because we're all crap at it."

that startles a laugh out of him, and he smiles so wide so quick that his cheeks ache. "that can be negotiated."

up this close, it's easy to see that zoro's hair is shorter than it was before, shorn short at the back and blunt enough that it just had to be freshly cut. the possibility of it being for him does something funny to his chest. the dark green strands are spiky, sticking up everywhere now that they're wet, and sanji wants so badly to touch.

he looks down at the flower in their hands, and he doesn't.

"this can't survive in saltwater," he murmurs instead, carefully putting his lotus into zoro's scarred palms. "take care of it for me."

he watches zoro trudge back to shore, one hand with the flower held above his head. he yells, "it better still be alive the next time i come check, marimo!" and he doesn't bother waiting for an answer. he knows zoro heard him.

sanji's gonna play this slow. he's gonna play this smart. and if zoro fucks up, well— he’s on friendly terms with a particular shiver of great whites.

*

zoro does not, in fact, fuck up. but now he’s constantly being given shit about his pretty merman boyfriend and as much as he pretends he hates it, he really doesn’t. luffy takes one look and declares that sanji’s crew now, zoro, you can’t hog him! dinners are now seafood more often then not, mussels and clams and all sorts of fish, even lobster when sanji finds out it’s nami’s birthday, and franky engineers some sort of transportable bathtub to get him on board.

(sanji brings robin around and franky falls all over himself making transportable bathtub 2.0, but that’s not the point.)

*

“bioluminescence, right? am i saying that right?” zoro asks, spinning this way and that as he tries to get a good look at sanji’s glowing tail under the water, eyes wide.

“mhm.” the mer lifts his tail fin out of the water, pulling himself closer so zoro can hold both of them up seeing as the pool they’re in is shallow enough to stand in. zoro’s hands twitch around nervously until sanji reaches out and grabs his wrist, pressing his palm flat to wet scales, and his chest aches at the look on zoro’s face.

the cave they’re in is small enough for every little sound to echo. sanji’s tail drips rhythmically, punctuated by the staggered breath zoro sucks in as he hauls sanji closer with an arm low over his stomach. careful fingers trace over the glowing patterns on his tail, fading upwards into his torso, and zoro slides a palm flat against sanji’s spine to lift him up as he presses their foreheads together.

“beautiful,” he breathes, reverent. the reflections from the water dance off his wet skin, and his eyes are mother-of-pearl.

sanji wants to touch, and so he does. he winds his fingers into zoro’s hair and pulls him down and kisses him, tastes salt and rum and the promise of blood when his teeth catch and zoro doesn’t shy from the bite. for the first time in a long time he is safe enough to let himself drift; his tail drapes itself over zoro’s side like a elaborate feather fan, and he giggles at the mental comparison.

he feels zoro smile at his laughter. feels calluses and gentle hands as zoro carries him back out to sea. tastes love when zoro pulls him in for one last kiss before saying goodbye for the night.

*

it starts with more flowers. then jewellery, intricate metalwork that would be hard to come by under the sea, fishnet cords and crystal pendants and pretty trinket rings, then daggers, silver hairpins with edges sharp enough to slice bone and a particularly beautiful watered-steel knife in a sheath of butter-soft leather. sanji cannot help but feel like he’s being courted, which makes no sense, because zoro knows nothing about merfolk courting traditions.

and then they talk as zoro braids shells into his hair the way perona taught him to (“you didn’t tell me you had a sister?!” “she just never came up!” “what do you mean she just never came up, marimo, what the fuck! this is important?!”) and sanji finds out zoro talked to robin about it, the sneaky bastard.

a tail doesn’t stop him from tackling zoro to the sand to kiss the crap out of him, braids unfinished and hair wound through zoro’s fingers. his heart feels fit to burst when zoro turns to ensure he takes the brunt of the fall because they both know how much sanji hates getting sand stuck in his scales.

*

the first time sanji gets hurt, zoro goes rather frantic.

it’s barely a scratch, just a slice near the base of his tail courtesy of a rock he hadn’t been able to avoid while hunting, but zoro bodily hauls him back to the ship between bouts of very concerned yelling and yanks off the black bandana always on his arm, scrubs it clean in hot water for good measure before wrapping up his wound, all while making sure no parts of sanji were drying out in the tub.

“marimo, i am fine,” sanji stresses for the twentieth time, shifting up to cup zoro’s face and sighing in resignation as zoro just shakes his head again.

“i don’t care,” the swordsman announces, throwing his hands up like deal with it. “i don’t care. no more hunting until this is completely healed.”

“it is a scratch. a scratch.”

“i don’t give a shit. you’re staying with me for the next few days.”

sanji groans and grumbles and bitches about it, and when zoro bickers right back it just riles him up even more.

(he stays put. he lets zoro scoop him into his lap with unnecessary care. he leans into the kisses zoro presses to his temple and he feels like crying because he is grateful. always.)

*

slavers attack the ship. sanji may not be a siren, but that does not mean he isn’t dangerous. he has his tail, and his knives, and his love for his crew. this is his crew.

he drags those slavers into the ocean and drowns them one by one.

*

now, sanji’s friend ivankov is a literal sea witch— so when they toss sanji an amulet and a wink on his birthday, sanji already knows it’s gonna be good.

the amulet gives him fucking legs.

only while he wears it, of course, but when he stumbles out of the surf like a newborn fawn zoro nearly chokes in shock. they spend the day falling over each other laughing as sanji tries to walk. he eats shit more times than he can counts and gets enough sand in his mouth for a lifetime.

later, there is a blanket beneath them and the moon above them and the endless ocean, shimmering under the light as zoro gathers his hair out of his face and kisses him so softly it hurts.

“beautiful,” zoro breathes. he preaches it like the truth. swears it like a promise.

their hands fit, calluses against calluses as zoro thumbs over the tiny patch of scales on sanji’s wrist, iridescent yellow-blue. their fingers lace in a motion they’ve done hundreds of times and still it never feels different than the first.

sanji lays back, and all he sees are stars.