mariademetal ౨ৎ

Ace merely grins, sees himself flicker on the hues of fire on your cheek with the lamps dotted 'round the quiet Moby Dick and agrees, "sure do!"

He realised two days into your sudden stay that you're the pirate from Whitey Bay's crew that Izou was always talking to, had been providing general crew expansion updates for. He recognises your voice, the intonation that betrays your hailing from the east. Izou's doomed Ace though, talked enough about Ace that you've picked up an awful misconception that Ace was going to kill Whitebeard. It's not his fault— Ace considers himself a new man, a phoenix from the ashes of his multiple failed attempts to kill a dying man, but all you see is a squawking chicken running around headless.

Your brows furrow and you don't look fairly impressed. In fact, you are so unamused that it wins over your curiosity and suspicion of Ace, so your next move is to stretch out your foot and continue walking to where you were previously heading before Ace barged into you.

The flare warps, stretches out with the short toss of wind that your body kicks up when it passes him and follows after the shape of you— snaps away from the safety of his chest and then disperses like it'd never been his in the first place. Ace frowns after you, confused at best.

You're still around after that, dotted in between crew members that Ace hasn't quite gotten close to, joking around with the sterner division leaders who are always beating him up in guise of 'training', and scolding Whitebeard on behalf of your own captain. Ace doesn't exactly know why you're there, but it's easy to find you since Whitebeard's crew is namely full of men.

You talk a couple more times after that and Ace knows that you're still testing him, checking to see where his loyalties lie with every passing conversation.

Unfortunately, you don't seem to take to his charm like the Whitebeard pirates have so easily, who saw something endearing about him trying to kill their father— he remembers something about Dadan saying that women are so much better than men at detecting bullshit. That only serves to confuse Ace though, 'cause as far as he's concerned, he's accepted his role as Whitebeard's son.

He makes up his mind to ask you about it after a particularly stern staring contest that gave him indigestion, but you're gone the next day.

"She don't like me much." He stirs the spoon 'round the soup that he's left long enough for it to draw a film over the top. He's only musing to himself, speaking it aloud to see if it makes much sense— Ace thinks that it does, but he ain't too sure why he feels weird about it.

Haruta frowns at his cooling soup, judging him probably. "Why'd you think that?" The twist of his face only deepens when Ace uses his spoon to bring the clump of film up to his lips, eating it without care.

Ace looks at Haruta like he's stupid, the way the twelfth division leader is already looking at him, "did'ya not see the way she was looking at me?"

Haruta kicks Ace under the table, so hard that it rattles his bowl of soup— luckily, Ace manages to stabilise it in time and when he offers some look of betrayal at the man, Haruta's already looking at him weird. "Don't be mean; that's just her face. She's insecure about it."

That's the only thing that Ace really takes away from the conversation, that and the fact that Haruta is a liar; no woman glares like that unless she fully well means to do so. It was intentional.

Ace doesn't see you again until Marco has the scare of his life as Whitebeard has a bad reaction to some new medicine that he's administrated. It's lucky that Marco's devil fruit essentially makes him immortal, otherwise he'd have lost half the years of his own life taking care of Whitebeard's.

The closer of the fleets loiter around their father's ship, even as his stats come back to normal; unfortunately for Ace, Whitey Bay is one of those. That gives you an excuse to linger around odd corners, watching him like he's the reason that Whitebeard had taken his pills with alcohol (like he always does behind Marco's back) and that was— unsurprisingly— a horrible idea.

He's mature enough to ignore it, years with Luffy had nurtured him into the bigger person so he's pretty good at tolerating the weird stuff. That is, of course, until you accost him tucking himself back into his pants after a piss.

He'd like to say he's proficient with his devil fruit now— and not just as an excuse to get out of devil fruit mastery training with Marco— and moments where a sudden jerk or an unexpected scare makes him burst into flames have been scarce and far between, but you get it out of him. Manage to coax out that hypnic jerk, make the fire explode through the pyre laid beneath his chest first before swallowing whole up to his neck and he feels hot, but he knows it's not the fire but the embarrassment.

"What the hell are you doing—!"

"Oh," you blink, pinching off the fried crisps of your bangs, "it's hot."

Ace baulks, he feels like he's talking to Luffy about something that should be common sense. "Of course it's hot! It's fire!" He fumbles with the zipper of his shorts, turning his front away from your view, he remembers Luffy again for some reason— very specifically his stupid face with a finger up his nose— and then a dreadful realisation comes dawning upon him. "Is this the reason why you've been glaring at me?"

You seem almost upset by the accusation, "I haven't been glaring— plus, you're cold."

With his pants no longer at risk of dropping to his ankles, Ace finally spins back around to face you. "What?"

"You're cold, but you're made up of flames." You carefully explain to him— the way that Makino used to talk to him and the brothers when they were younger, "don't you think that there's something wrong with you?"

"I don't want to hear that from a gal who walked in whilst my dick was out!"

"Don't worry, it doesn't look like there was much to see."

He ends up yelling at you— which has been a lot of conclusions to his conversations with Luffy actually so it gives him a strange sense of deja vu, makes him miss Luffy even more. It really ain't the time to think about it though because he's got you by the shoulders, pushing you out of the men's bathroom when Thatch stops at the corner down the hall, blinks, and then just very carefully takes a step backwards and continues away.

Though he's mortified and his pride is irreversibly damaged and some of the division leaders are clapping him on the back and giving him congratulations and unnecessary advice on keeping women happy, you manage to get somewhat closer. You've got a dry kind of humour, a cut–throat habit of speaking before thinking, a childish kind of thought process that Ace can't help but find endearing sometimes. He thinks it's those moments where he can draw out the similarities of your personality and Luffy's or Sabo's; being around you reminds him of the fire.

And not only because your question gave him some kind of identity crisis (because why is he cold when he's literally fire?), but because you stoke the flames. It's the way you want to test whatever unreliable theory you've formed up in your head about his diametric body temperature and his logia; how easy it is for you to sweep your hands over him, part away the flames through your fingers like you're cutting through wisps of his hair to remind yourself it was hot. Then, press your palm against his bicep, curl your fingers around the 'a' of his tattoo and then drag down until you're at 'e', palm prickling with the frostbite as you do.

You're at his side often. The Whitebeards think you guys are in your honeymoon phase. Ace knows that he's merely a lab rat, even when Vista whistles lowly when you intentionally sit close enough to have your arms pressed against Ace's. Bare skin against his tattooed arm, warm and smooth against his cold and prickly, scritching, tickling. Then, like it doesn't matter, you'll touch with your fingers— feel it all out.

"Have you always been cold? I mean, before the devil fruit too?"

You're not shy about these things.

"Yeah. Always." Luffy and Sabo complained when they had to sleep next to him.

Ace ain't the kind of guy to flush and fumble over some light touching either but what you're doing feels light years away from what he's trying to rationalise it to be.

No one's ever been the kind of person to touch like you do— to caress and linger; Luffy was always big on touching, but that's only because he ain't ever learnt any better. He's the kind that smothers, chokes Ace out and leaves him as a heap of grey ash and black smoke. Your touch is the tending kind. Treading carefully, dropping another body onto the pyre, feeding the hollow with blood and flesh, keeping him a weighty full.

The next time you come 'round to the Moby Dick, it only seems natural that Ace feels the fire burn through his flesh, accelerating with a revv and leaving him with the sensation of skidding against carpet. A full body friction burn.

It's an immature thing: when you draw close, it excites the hearth, spitting out specks of broken coal and wisps of flames, threatens to melt all the calcium in him. Then, there's the cold after it, where Ace feels himself ooze back into his own skin, solidify against the cold of his flesh when you're far. The collapse of a star: the rapid energy that swirls into an intoxicating roast, spins itself round 'til it catches smoke, edges frayed and lighting up into bright hues of citrus until it's shot out as flecks of cool greys, goes around, comes around, goes and then comes, goes, then gone.

Haunting him is not the fire. Not the way you brush past him, dig your finger in and scrape your calloused print against the fold of his nape; not the way you don't stop; not the way you continue to walk off, talking to Whitey Bay about your provisions, what you got, what you don't. It's your back when he turns to follow, seeing you getting further away, feeling the warmth of your fingers fade away, fuzzy and carious and thoughtless. It's the cold after that haunts. The thought that comes to him after the frown, the soft, nagging insecurity that leaves him confused.

The day after, Whitey Bay has plans to set sail so Whitebeard makes it an excuse to celebrate, to have a drink.

Pirate parties are always the same kind of chaos.

Ace settles in front of all the food, never strays too far from the feast and lets himself be laughed at when he slumps face–first into his plate. Whenever he glances up to try and find you, you've moved. Weaseled your way into conversations with fleet members of other crews that he assumes you don't get to see often.

You'd started the night out by his side with your usual routine of checking the temperature of his flesh with your hands, assessing him carefully. Appraising his skin without even looking up to glance at him, leaving him with only the view of the top of your head— he wonders if you've got that glare on, the thoughtful one that makes him think you don't like him. He'd fallen asleep wondering that and when he woke up, you were gone. Must've not been too long since you left though, 'cause he can still feel an impression of the burn you left, fingers at the top of his shoulder, curling around to reach his collarbones before you've dragged your hand— fingers, palm, fuck, maybe even the shy of your wrist, all of it, intimate— down the curve of his slumped back.

You ain't come back since.

It's the third time that Ace has fallen asleep mid–chew. It's not as funny as it was the first time but there's still some splattering of laughter, a fuzzy noise over the tankards of beers and glasses of wine. Ace wipes the grease and spit from the corner of his mouth with an arm, yawning loudly to get air to kick start his brain and his bleary eyes wander around the beach of the stray island that they'd docked at.

He's chewing the meat that was already in his mouth when Thatch starts a second round of stir–fried something in front of him, the oil he pours into the fire revvs it alive, kicking and roaring to a metre of a man and a monolith of life until he slams a pan over it. The fire splits and breaks apart, when it parts over the edges of burnt steel, Ace sees you.

Mid–laugh, you are, lips curled back thin and your cheeks full, lava spluttering out of the dimples, warmed from the fire in front of you. A laugh that's so evident with the fire splitting through rakes of leaves and branches. Shoulders stuttering up, down; body shaking; drink sloshing out of your glass with the shake; foot stomping a rhythm against the ground that slaps and twangs loud in his skull— the flames smother, spread out even and he feels his flesh warm just beneath the skin. Your hair bulges with the hues of the campfire that crackles, billowing with the sweet lick of a sunrise dawn, melting into all the strands at the low of your chin. Violent and fond: Ace can see how the fire stirs at your feet, encroaching so carefully as not to alarm. He knows how it works, more intimate with the flames than you, so he can almost know how quickly it'll burn through your lens, taking the world down with it until it's a calm, quiet landscape with only the fact that you won't want to acknowledge.

Whatever he feels though— whatever stands in that clear landscape across from him comes and goes, quick because it's a blink of his eyes and then he's falling asleep again, with that image of the bright, supernova you: haunting.

To you, it seems unfair that Luffy had managed to uncover so many of your firsts. His unwavering presence by your side as you learnt how hard it was to live on sea, the intonations of your screaming when a marine canon was pointed at you, to live so freely away from the confines of restrictive justice, how it felt to have a hand in yours to promise forever and then some. Luffy has no preferential treatment when it comes to people he loves; he treats them all the same, no hierarchy could dream to disrupt that.

With the same sandals he uses to stomp on the faces of Marine's, he could demand food from Sanji, money from Nami, Zoro to play with him— instead, you watch him whine Sanji, food and dissolve into a puddle when his cook orders him to wait, he allows Nami's fists to fall onto his head when he makes any financially impulsive decision (or even thinks them), and he idles himself with drawing on Zoro's face with Usopp and Chopper, with the previous two of them taking the psychical brunt of their consequences. (Chopper is let off with a mere promise that he won't join in with their shenanigans again when it involves making Zoro into a fool and a growing bump underneath his hat.)

Luffy, from second to fourth gear, is tender aggression when it is love.

His form is bizarrely respectful when the door opens and light dawns upon your face; you see him through the gaps of Nami and Sanji's legs and towering forms over him, his hands on his thighs and feet tucked underneath his bottom. He slurs out an I'm sorry that lets you know that his face is definitely messed up and then follows up with an I was hungry though!

Then Nami messes him up some more for his shitty justification.

She leaves him— some caricature of her anger— on the floor with her hands on her hips and Sanji trailing after her with hearts in his eyes at her dominant display of power. As she passes Brook, he asks for the colour of her underwear and earns himself the same treatment. It's then that you laugh. Luffy snapped his head up, following after the trembling air of your laughter and then calls out your name, the syllables are all messy around his swollen cheeks and a missing tooth that will come back after a few minutes but you cannot rid yourself of the thought that it's sticky with love that you only remember hearing when you were just a babe, screaming and crying in the arms of a tired and ill mother in a hospital. You were introduced to a group of midwives with same love you hear now, their idle finger catching into both your small hands; Luffy's hand dances across the air, breaking apart your laugh with urgency and catching onto your wrist.

You're not sure if it's you who had been pulled to him or if he'd managed to catapult himself into you but you both end up a mess on the floor regardless. Limbs tangled around each other in a wave as you both fall to the deck, Luffy does not correct the length of his arm and takes to wrapping the limb around you like a vine snaked around the trunk of a tree. You don't know a start nor an end as Luffy nuzzles his beat–up face on your shoulder. "Hey captain," you raise your head to look down on him, trying to wrench a hand through the tight spirals he's coiled around you.

"I'm hungry," he whines in lieu of a response, "and I'm bored, Usopp kicked me out after I ate one of his ketchup stars." He doesn't relent with his hold on you, simply loosening the coil that you're trying to work your hand through before tightening again once your arm makes it past to trap it against your side. You don't question the fact that Usopp's ketchup stars may be laced with gunpowder or what the small dose of gunpowder may have done to Luffy's internal organs.

You guess even Usopp has his limits when it comes to his childish captain. "I can't do a lot about either of those things if you're keeping me hostage here." He looks up at you, his exaggeratedly large lips in a pout that matches the swelling of his cheeks and then says your name again, like you’ve done him wrong. It's a disordered collection of the letters again but you find you can't really do anything to fight against it. Instead, green tendrils sprout from your trapped arm, each vine wrapped in a light of leaves and strain against his extended limb before he gives in and, instead, laughs as he wraps his rubber arm around the spindly, twisted branches splitting open layers of skin on your bicep. His skin coloured against the green runner keeps the bine from wilting down to meet gravity.

You let Luffy do whatever he wants, with an expression that you're not sure you're too familiar with etched out on the lines of your face. Thinking back on it, you could've simply done as Nami had or Usopp, ignore or scold him enough into submission but his fingers catch one of the fronds and it curls between the meat of his fingertips, reaching out to tickle his palm and something soft blooms inside you. You know it must be you, not the work of your devil fruit, because as much as you've tried in your lacklustre pursuit of beauty, you've never been able to sprout any kind of flowers.

When Luffy finally lets you go, you find your way into the kitchen and give Sanji a smile. You apologise for interrupting him and tell him that you know that lunch had been served only an hour ago but, if he wasn't too busy, you were still a little peckish. Sanji shoots up immediately and asks you what you've got a taste for— you assure him any leftovers from lunch will do and he tells you, though this doesn't come as any surprise, that Luffy had worked his way through any grain of leftovers with a laugh. You laugh along with him and well, you seemed to be craving meat right now.

The plate he prepares seem to be more about quality rather than quantity, with sauce underneath the red meat drizzled across the white ceramic, a slab of meat already cut into bite sized pieces for you and a decorative herb stuck between the fatty slices but when the light oozes down into the stretch of meat, you don't think Luffy will complain too much.

You, of course, were right about that.

The shattering grin he greets you (the plate of meat, however small it seemed) with gives you the faint smell of sticky rain drenched in the light of the sun, and you almost give him your hand when he reaches out for the plate. Brook's guitar strums in the background and your heart shakes in time with his strings and Luffy's incessant chewing.

You've really no problems with Usopp asking you to help him with target practice, it's fairly common for you to help the crew with their unique fighting style— save Nami and Franky for fear of losing your life with their less than particular aimed area of damage— it's easy enough really. You don't even have to be mentally present for it; shaking through layers of flesh, vines grow across the deck of the Sunny and rise up straight to tower over Usopp as he fixes his goggles over his eyes. You keep a quarter of your mind instilled in every chloroplast that shivers across the skies so you can keep them moving but the other three quarters are focused on the card game you play with Robin, Chopper, and Franky.

You hear the snapping of elastic and your finger twitches against the back of playing cards as the particular vine shot to the left, glancing curiously at Chopper's hand across from you when he turned to Franky and accuses him of looking at his cards.

"It's not my fault!" Franky frowned, fixing his comedically small glasses to perch on his metal nose. "Your cards just happen to be in my view when I'm looking at the pile 'cause you're tiny!"

Chopper takes to this horribly (you reshape a vine that has fallen to one of Usopp's stones and keep it relentless across the wave of air) and he grows into the much less cute and broader, more human version of himself to hold his hand out of Franky's view. (Two vines snap together and they take the path to slice through air to where Usopp stands, you hear the cracking of wood as Usopp shouts at you, saying he only wanted to focus on offence. An apology is drawn out with the green arm in the air.)

"Ivy," your eyes flicker to Robin and she gestures to the pile of discarded where the two of spades had been placed on top. "It's your turn." You glance down at your hand, eyes flickering over the collection of 7's in your hand. 

"Bomb." (You feel a vine break apart into pieces, think about the fact that it's lucky you've no nerves attached to the tendrils, and keep the one down to give Usopp a little win.) Franky curses your name as Robin chuckles.

Chopper glances at the four 7's with a sense of wonderment that you're sure is too dramatic for the moment. "No wonder I had no sevens!" You give him a sly grin and watch Robin pass her turn, ignoring Franky's levelled glare behind his glasses.

In the end, Robin wins anyways, ridding herself of her hand with her final card being the two of hearts. The loss is taken bitterly by both you and Franky though you think Franky definitely takes it worse than you do as when he stands to sulk away, cards fall out of his speedos, and they leave a trail after him. Robin, in all her morbidity, laughs behind a hand as you and Chopper drop your jaws in disgust.

Chopper collects the cards, hesitating with the ones that had been on Franky until Robin points out that you've all played many rounds and there's a chance that all of them had shared the same fate. (Another vine shutters down to the floor, broken apart and particles flown across the deck.) The cards slowly fall to the floor as Chopper cries out in disgust. Shaking your head with some colourful amusement, you use the two vines fallen to pick up the cards and start shuffling them.

Responding to Chopper's call, Luffy shoots his way from Sunny's figurehead. "What're you guys doin'?" He falls graciously to where Franky had previously been sitting; his eyes are ever so impatient to glance over the cards being shuffled. "Oh," he says with great interest, "are you guys playing 'go fish'?" He leaned towards you— the cards in your possession, actually— and blinks at the shuffling. "Lemme in!"

"We weren't playing 'go fish', Luffy." The little doctor has since calmed down, taking a seat between Luffy and Robin and shaking his head. "We were playing—" he turns his head up to Robin, to which she supplies 'bài tiến lên' with the intricate accents and all, "that!"

A flash of thinking places itself on Luffy's face, crossing his arm and tapping the side of his sandals on the deck, then it's gone. "Let's just play 'go fish' then."

Chopper whines, saying that 'go fish' is boring and that Luffy always snatches more than one card from other people's hands, which is cheating, and that he doesn't want to play.

Luffy turns to you with a pout, eyebrows furrowed at the dip where his nose bridge starts and then straightened out towards the end. The two vines that had been expertly dodging all of Usopp's shots and taunting him by doing silly dances and twisting into words in the air both crumple down to the floor at the same time, they follow the curve of your spine as you double over, a breath stuttering in your throat. You hear Usopp call your name and the deck of cards slip out from the vines that had been shuffling this entire time, your hand wraps around your throat and you hack out a cough you've managed to choke on.

"Are you dying?" Chopper shoots up, frantic as you keep coughing and choking— both violent in temperament, and scampers around, shouting for a doctor.

Footsteps tap closer as a shadow forms over you, Usopp's hand patting your back ferociously comes after the sound of shoes stop.

The blur that came with tears invading your eyes gives you the confidence to look at Luffy again before you're calling Chopper to a stop. "I'm fine, just choked on air."

You don't mention how it felt like you were breathing through a cheesecloth, how your lungs feel so restricted with every inhale as you all compromise on 'chase the ace' and how easier it feels when Usopp pushes his way between you and Luffy, too intimidated to pick from Robin's hand; when you all finish up for dinner, Robin is looking at you in a way that makes you think she's caught onto how you've been struggling.

Dinner is a strange ordeal. It's characterised with its usual events: Luffy sneaking his hands into people's plates though his stands full, Usopp trying to hold his plate out of his way, Zoro tending to his glass bottle of beer, Sanji making some quip about Zoro's show of alcoholism, Nami getting increasingly annoyed by the noise around her, Brook's laughter, Zoro escalating the situation with Sanji, Chopper screaming when Luffy clears Usopp's plate and then goes for the doctor's, Robin watching the scene with the patience of a saint, Franky pretending he was better than the rest, Usopp exacting revenge on Luffy by swapping their plates. It all ends with Nami telling them all to shut up and Luffy taking one final chicken leg from Zoro's plate. You stare down at your plate and count the missing bits, Luffy hasn't really touched any of the potatoes or asparagus, so you finish them up.

Two chicken thighs sit in stark contrast to the plate, thinking about having them anywhere near your mouth makes you a little sick for some reason, the weight of them in your stomach, the taste of caramelised skins, crisped with wells of juice sat next to a tinge of burnt flesh; you push the plate over to Luffy and detest the way he can take the colour of well–done oranges between his teeth and not care about the juice dribbling down his chin.

Luffy says thanks with his mouth full of chicken; Nami glares at him and turns a more concerned face to you (that also makes you sick) and inquires about you not eating. You mumble out some excuse about not being hungry, not feeling well, having a little bit of a headache, feeling tired— something along those faux lines, you don't remember but you remember that you don't tell them the truth exactly. "Sorry Sanji," you fix into your shitty excuse after, running a hand through your hair, to make yourself feel better about the entire ordeal.

He offers to make you a more palatable porridge or soup instead.

You take a cigarette and a red apple, going to bed hungry and angry at some unknown thing that brews on the tip of your tongue.

The next island is of great interest to Luffy.

The entire crew knows that its history nor culture was not either reason behind his excitement, only the mere prospect of digging his sandals into new, uncharted land is why he's running around the deck, filling up the empty spaces with bubbling laughter. Sanji finishes up bentos for those that are leaving, taking unnecessary extra care with Nami’s, and wishing he had it in him to starve Zoro whilst Nami is giving everyone an allowance. You take two bentos, yours and Chopper's, and head out onto the deck. Luffy only seemed momentarily sad that you were going with the doctor but bounced back immediately after when the trees come closer enough to intimidate so you push down the offer to join him instead. Franky joins up with Usopp, Luffy'll run off alone regardless of who he ends up going with, Nami ends up going with Zoro (to Sanji's displeasure), and you and Chopper make plans to find a pharmacy and a library for Robin.

Being around Chopper is easy enough with this unsettling prick of poison that's forced minimal responses, curt words, a flurry of tiredness, a sickening chill through your days recently. The little doctor is a lot more mindful of changes in mood, it's not any imminent injury either so he doesn't press to know why. Out of guilt (for being a brooding asshole lately), you ask him about his rumble balls and all his different forms. He answers cheerily and you can only pick out every other word with a persistent headache as the smell in the air changes from salty skies and bloody fish to sweetened foods and something unfamiliarly clean.

It's a bright island. You hear a faint bell in the distance that is traced over with the sound of children and stall owners; Chopper's hooves rhythmically sound beside you on the pavement and you find yourself counting them in groups of four. "Ah, there." You pick up your head and turn to follow the direction of Chopper's eyes. A sign is hung on the side of the building, the library. "Robin wanted a book of North Blue diseases for some reason," Chopper mumbles to himself as you two push open the door.

It's a small bookstore, walls lined with books and the paths carved with more standalone bookcases. "North Blue diseases?" You repeat, confused, "do they have North Blue exclusive illnesses?"

Your question goes unanswered, though it looks like it opens a vault of new questions for Chopper. Books aren't of great interests to you, so you follow behind Chopper as he walks through each section and grab whichever book he tells you to bring down for him. On the way back, you tell Chopper to keep going and change your course in search of something you're not too sure of.

You stray away from the town centre and head deeper through the small alleys of the town, there's no destination in mind; without the urgency of a fights and with the domesticity of a small knit community, you wander adrift. There's a dampness in the air to the walk around a shadowed hide of the place that loosens up the tension below your ribs, many different eyes follow after your form as the heel of your shoes click against a null path; shadows ooze around the soles of your shoe and lacquer up between the carved maze of black rubber of your soles until you find your way into a dead end.

It's a little bit of a cliché to be met with a ragtag group of delinquents when you turn to go back. Your eyes trace over them. In the hand of the one closest to you sits your wanted poster.

Something blooms inside you again— it's a much more pleasant feeling than the unmoving sap of ire that's been invading lately. Each man before you is physically bigger, towering over you ominously and shadows eating you but they all have swords and guns in their hands and that's why they lose. You, to the detriment of all life around you, are a weapon in and of itself; you choke out the vitality from others and steal their nutrients. They strained against their confines as their skin blossoms through shades of blooms, you are not the merciful rubber of a human, so your constraints don't relent, they squeeze and squeeze until the bark splits apart, until blood is cut off at the source, until they wither, until you are full.

On the way back, you buy a gift for everyone with the money you hadn't used and when they take to it, all in their varying degrees of joy, you feel less bad about the dead end alley full of brothers and sons. You tell yourself, handing Zoro a gift of alcohol, if not them, then it'd have been you.

You end up staying anchored to the island for a week to your displeasure. The longer you're stuck there, the closer you are to exploding; you always keep an eye out on the log pose strapped to Nami's wrist like you could quicken the process if you stare enough. Usopp starts avoiding you out of fear you'll blow like a poorly constructed cannon, Zoro makes you train with him to see if it'll help blow off some steam, Sanji brings you iced drinks at a rate that keeps you dizzy but you always feed it to Luffy or redirect it to Chopper's or Usopp's office with a little note.

On the third day, you follow in Zoro's example and sprawl out on the deck to rest your tireless mind. You've always wondered how sleep was ever a possible option for him when the feet thundering across the deck came with obstructive vibrations, no doubt slapping any chance of sleep away from his mind, but you find that it's almost pleasant. Beats all from familiar loves translates through the groves of wooden planks and etch through the back of your spine, you feel a bone fall back into place after Nami's heels against the floor and the thunderous kick that lands where Zoro was standing manages to work its way up your head to ease a headache.

The sun burns cries into your eyes and the skies move fluidly, they don't ripple as clouds shrivel against a light blue you're unfamiliar with; even as you close your eyes, you continue to feel the burn of the sun. The slapping of weaved straw against a sticky, sweaty sole then the deck comes as you slip into sleep.

Dreams have never been so amicable enough to become a recurrent in your life; more often than not, you're shown memories all blended together into a mess that leaves you sick, the abhorrent now and the nostalgic then bleeding past their confines until you see your mother stood next to that deceitful Marine admiral, both with that same look in their face. You wake up with a start when a loud bang scours its way through a flurry images you're unfamiliar with and then your body escapes you. Your head weighs with the heaviness of the bodies dropped to the floor, arms cold as if dipped into the river Styx, bones locked in place with a restrictive pain, muscles burning, aware of every breath that shivers through your suddenly odd body.

"Owww," three Luffys blur around each other as you pushed a hand to the floor to straighten up, you try blinking away the other two, but they're glued to the captain reflecting in your eyes; he looks down at what he's tripped on and follows it back to you. Your hand is met with something curved in shape when you go to push yourself up and when you look down, you see vines underneath you. You realise then that a burst of them had grown beneath you, splitting through the lawn deck and uplifting some of the planks underneath the greenery and inching upwards towards the guard rails of the ship. They take the form of something you think you met in your most recent sleep.

Luffy has managed to crawl his way towards you in the time you spend wondering why your devil fruit had been acting up— in your sleep no less and he wraps a hand around your ankle to get your attention. "Hey, you're really cold." He pointed out, eyes flickering down to the flesh between his fingers and then trailing his fingers up your thigh as he shifts closer to you on his knees.

The touch makes you violent and tender. "Really?" You managed to puff out, giving too much air back to the world with how much you're panting, "I feel a little warm though."

Luffy hums, clapping his hand over your cheeks with gentleness he only shows to those he loves, and it feels wrong. You get an itch underneath your skin that urges you to move, move, move but you can only push Luffy away with a ferocity he'd never shown you as you tremble under the bursting of violent air hacking up your throat, your shoulders strain as you wrapped your arms around your stomach, trying to heave out something that wasn't there.

Luffy scrambles back immediately, not caring for you shoving him away, and soothes away the rattling of your core with his clammy hands on your arm. "Are you sick?"

No, you think as a retch comes up your mouth; maybe, you correct as the path is marked by drool slipping down your chin and tears streaking across your cheeks. You shake away Luffy again. He's less submissive this time, his legs open over yours to plant his knees by your thighs. You hear him call for Chopper and it's obvious he has something of a frown marked on his face; you keep burning beneath your skin, but Luffy keeps rubbing his palms over your arms like you're cold.

You realise what your vines had drawn underneath you when Chopper comes out, fretting over you as he takes Luffy's place close to you. A grave. The image makes you laugh as the reindeer instructs his captain to haul you up after you'd ignored his inquires on if you could walk; your arm bends around the shape of Luffy's shoulder and your laughter erratically convulses into a collection of coughs from the skin on skin high.

You forced into bed rest after Chopper does a preliminary round of tests on you and declares you've simply gone down with a cold. You take to the diagnosis apprehensively, though in Chopper's defence, how was he meant to accurately diagnose you if you don't tell him all your symptoms? Instead, you sit in his office and spend the minutes, all alone, trying to retch out the feeling of having a piece of hair down your throat; you claw at the blanket and keep hacking until you've got a blanket full of tears and spit. The feeling does not pass.

At lunch, you get a visit from Franky who comes by to complain that you've made unnecessary work for him. "—seriously, how did you manage that in your sleep? Were you having a nightmare?" He ranted, legs crossed and leaned back in the visitor chair in a way that pushes his skinny, hairy legs close to your face.

Scrunching up your face, you sit up. "It was the future." You rebut, in between all his fantastical stories of his nightmares and talking about how he'd never attack Sunny even if Chopper grew a mechanical, giant arm and overthrew Luffy to become their captain. "A future," you correct yourself before turning to Franky with eyes judgemental, "are you scared of Chopper?"

"You weren't there at Enies Lobby," he tells you, which serves as a cruel reminder of sorts. You think about all the scars you've seen littered on the crew's skin and wonder which ones they've collected while they were with Luffy and who knows of which. The faint, protruding marks underneath Nami's tattoo, the stitches around Zoro's ankles, the ones pulled across his chest; you wonder if Sanji's got one hidden underneath his bangs. "The future?" Franky repeats after a moment, "are you a prophet?"

"It's a working theory," you brush off instead. "Though I can see in my mind's eye that Luffy is currently eating all the food and you’ll be left to starve if you don't go back."

Franky scrambled up from the seat not a second after your words.

With him gone, you settle back onto the bed and wonder about too many things to recall.

Between the hours after lunch and before dinner, Luffy comes by. He settles himself on the bed and forces you up as well, the shifting causes another cough to burgeon in your throat and you turn your head the other way to spit it out in an uncontrolled group of four. "You're not feeling better?" He frowns.

You see now that he's holding two pieces of barbequed meat in his hand, he's got the bone in his palm as he holds it upright like a sword, juices from the flesh dripping down to his hand and the smell gives you a headache. "Do you want this?" You move your eyes to Luffy, he's got his eyebrows furrowed together and his lips straightened out in a line when you don't answer. "Both?" He looks over at you, then the meat, and then you. "You," he swallows, "you can have them," his knuckles turn red around the bone, "since you need energy and you're sick." You think he's trying to convince himself to give them up.

You reached out and watch Luffy's face turn sour as his expression squeezes altogether around a midpoint trapped in his nose; you retract your hand and watch his face relax and his body unwind, you think he's moved his hand back a little. You repeat it again a few more times until laughter comes up and dislodges the uncomfortable feel of hair set deep in your throat. "It's fine, Luffy, you can have 'em."

"Really?"

"Mhm, go for it."

He moans around a bite of meat, crying your name as he chews and says thank you. The feeling is back as soon as it left.

No one comes to visit after that. Chopper comes by before he heads off to bed to make sure you're all set for the night and tells you that he expects to be woken up if you feel any symptoms get worse. You agree to his conditions, though can barely make yourself seem like you were taking him seriously with his cute face scolding you, but it seemed to work well enough as he's gone after he leaves a cup of water by your side. Sleep lingers around the corner, shirking away from your twitching fingertips and restless eyes; you give up after a few minutes, thinking about Robin who'd been thrown on watch tonight.

After going back and forth on the details, you bundle up yourself in the blanket (not wanting to have to mimic any semblance of serious guilt to get through Chopper's less than intimidating scolding if you get any sicker in the morning) and wander to the deck. The darkness of the sea would be safe for you, twisting around every limb extended to grope your way through your chosen path and oozing out from strands of hair to empty at your feet if not for the lamp of the moon ahead of you. Its light a forecast of tragedy, reflecting off a blade that would drive through the blood of a man who faced an unlikely love with only disgust and betrayal. "Robin?" The light hangs onto your word with a vehemence to uncover your unjustifiable deeds.

"Ivy," a shudder of surprise rattles your head to duck to your shoulders as you turn around. "Sorry, did I scare you?"

You give Robin a frown, tugging your lips down. "Yeah, my weakened bones nearly fell to the floor." She huffs a laugh. "Please announce yourself before you appear." Robin traces over your palish face and your features soften into a smile when your eyes meet.

"Can't sleep?" She asks once you two settle at the side of the Sunny where you'd napped earlier today, some of your vines still wedged between planks and parts of the floor haphazardly missing. You lean your back against the side of the ship and lower your eyes to the floor.

It's a total void, welcoming you back home. "No," you answer, a little breathless. The moon doesn't shuttle into the hole of the deck and something reaches a hand out for you between the atoms of a black hole. Roots twist out, easing close to your feet and sinking beneath the soles of your shoes. "I napped a little earlier." It's safe.

Robin hummed— I know rattles through her hum— and her elbow falls onto the guard rail of the ship. For the next few moments, you regret coming out. Robin's always been more receptive to the details and fine lines; it's not surprising that she can nitpick through a flurry of fronts and covers to the feelings you want to hide. They beckon out to her, wanting to fill that hole that's grown smaller with every day she wakes up to the open seas and the lively sound of her crew. "Chopper said you were sick?"

"A cold," you sniffle, bringing the blanket closer to you. Finding some semblance of confidence inside you, your eyes flicker over to Robin but she isn't looking at you— only turns when she feels your gaze levelled on her. You hesitate, searching for something to say and land on extending an arm and opening the blanket to invite her into your bundle. "You cold?"

She laughs, "it's fine, you should go back in if you've got a cold though." Her head tilted with a smile, "it'll be bad if the night air makes you worse."

Not wanting to find yourself softened in moonlight nor her eyes, you nod and bid her a goodnight before shivering your way back into your room. The door opens and light from Sunny's hallway is swallowed into the darkness of your room before it's banished out with the slam of your door, you shuffle around odd things thrown on the floor and slip into bed.

Your sleep is broken through with intervals with coughing, curling into yourself, shivering still though you burn in the night like a sibling of a star. When you wake up, sometime in the afternoon, you're heaving and reaching out your arms all around your duvet to haul together the skin that feels like it's melted down. Your palms prick against the leaves of vines that have overtaken your room, they fluoresce around your body and branch outwards to all corners of your room. The mess all blur together as your brain thrashes in your head with every splutter, you shake and twitch, trying to make sense of anything. Skin burned raw as you attempt to kick away the shrubbery that's keeping the blanket contorted around your body.

Your throat skinned and crude with its imminent thoughts of water.

A hand reached back blindly to grope at your bedside table for the cup that Chopper left for you last night. What you find instead is the burning touch of the sun, it seeps through the micro wounds stabbed through lines of your fortune and inflames every nerve straight to your heart. Your hand snaps back towards your body, the bones shivering from the imminent heat. Your entire body twitches at different paces, an invasive and hungry need drowns your senses. You need water, you need not for this to happen, water, you need for your sleep to be calm, you need to stop burning, you want to stop losing control, water first. You want water. Water— you turn your head to find the water, you need— Luffy?

Luffy is sat on a chair that you don't remember being there and when you look a little closer, you see that your vines had granted him a throne to comfortably lay on, other than that, they avoid him like the near plague. His body is leaned forward, his chest laid against the side of your mattress and arms crossed on your bed to sleep on like a pillow. You retch up some acid and, like the bowed head of a priest, a gentle petal disrupts the stream, flowing against the tide. It's a beautiful purple colour that's light against the transition to white towards the middle and an eye-catching yellow streaking against the white; lines of a deeper hue stretch through the petal and it's oddly reminiscent of veins.

The petal sits on the puddle of stomach acid that warms your thighs, your head bowed down to stare at it; you feel your soul unfurl at the sight of it, branches stretched outwards over a riverside, the heavy head of buds pulling weighted branches down to drink from the stream. Everything else blurs with a ripple, the petal is withstanding no matter no much you try blinking away an oncoming headache. The river near dries up in your attempt to wash down this unnerving disgust; you hunger for more.

Little changes when you find out what this 'cold' truly was. The lighting in Sunny's library is several shades warmer than the light of the sun, it draws upon the hunched shoulders down to your back as you tilt your head to hear the bones crack under your ear. Four syllables, that's all your death is. A lot of words are four syllables. Anonymous; unfortunate; hilarious; adventurous; hanahaki. It doesn't mean a lot by itself, so you try giving it some context. You pretend to tell Chopper that you're dying, you have hanahaki and that it's something he can't cure in a way you'll accept and you still feel nothing. You think about Chopper's face. He adamantly tells you that he'll cure you, he'll do it. The you in your imagination tells him no. Faced with your refusal, Chopper cannot do anything. In the end, it is a grave that cures you.

Death, as it stands, was something you had accepted when you stepped onto a pirate ship. Even someone with as stubborn a character as Zoro could be welcomed in by death, even Luffy. For a while, you wonder about death. The air in the room pauses as if to grace you with the silence to ponder on it, all you hear is the sound of your own breathing.

The closest thing to death comes searching for you a few minutes later.

You've always been interested in Brook. A skeleton with nothing but a sword; he has no lungs yet still sings, no heart and still smiles, dead but human in all his actions and behaviours. "There you are." He sneaks up behind you, bones falling onto your shoulder as you think, he smiles down at you. "Luffy asked if I’d seen you earlier.” He looms over you for a moment before he's straightening back up and calling out loudly, "but I'm a skeleton so it's not like I have eyes to see anyone anyways!"

It's the two syllables 'Lu–ffy' that shakes you the most. You stifle a cough in your chest and feel it tear through your ribs instead, searching for a path out. "For what?" The breaths rattle in your chest and shudder through your words.

"He wanted to show you a beetle." He takes the seat next to you, peering down at the picture book that you have open. You wait for him to make a comment about seeing what you were reading before disregarding it all with a lack of eyeballs so he wasn't seeing it really but he doesn't say anything, so you're forced to talk instead.

"Brook."

"Yes?"

It takes a single breath to prepare you to say this, it's warm and evident that you've not yet truly succumbed to your illness. "Do you see yourself as dead?"

Death is the art of those who do not live. It's something that keeps people tethered to the moment; it's the one thing that keeps humans humane. It's evidence you've lived, no matter how full nor how long. She's beautiful in her own right.

"I cannot see myself as anything because I am a skeleton with no eyes!"

Brook does not get to elaborate because Luffy shuttles in moments later, whispering loudly. (He'd learned somewhere that you're meant to be quiet in a library when he was younger but his whispers still manage to shake the room somehow.) "You're here! I found a beetle to show you!" He tip–toes to your side, "what're you reading— oh, hi Brook! The flowers here are pretty!" He points a finger down to a sunflower; his index covers an entire petal and he strokes it upwards to the middle. "Do you think they're edible?"

He turns to you with a smile.

You meet him with the same, "their seeds are." He gasps and picks up the book to scour through the letters in search of a name of these seeds. You take in a shuddering breath and when you feel another urge to cough, you cannot stop it.

When vines splatter around the room, they uproot the place; they've always been disruptive in this way. A wave of them washes various bouts of furniture to the floor, through the pounding of your ears, you hear the sound of books thudding as green appendages snake through bookcases and rattle them at the base; Brook's chair collapses as a vine chokes out one of its legs into splinters, the world blurs into a hue of greens and purples. A hand reaches from down in your throat, you heave around gaps of allowance for air and gag, cough, retch up more acid and some tea that Sanji brewed earlier this morning in lieu of breakfast. It's unpleasant. It's ugly in a way death should not be, though you guess the dead don't get to choose how to live in the same way the living cannot choose their death.

You're hauled off to Chopper again.

Chopper's voice comes as the hollow sounds of keys on an old piano. He does another round of tests on you— this set lasts a little longer than the previous and he takes extra caution with some. He finds that your heart is a little faster than it should be, he nitpicks at the bluish tint around your fingers and notes the concerning amount of weight you've lost in the past few weeks. When he asks you, what's wrong, you tell him that that's what he should be telling you.

Hypoxia; another four syllables for your cause of death. "Some of the symptoms are there," Chopper frowns, mumbling to himself. "It's when your tissues aren't getting enough oxygen, do you have difficulty breathing?"

You placed your cheek into your palm, elbow on Chopper's desk. "You're a pretty good doctor, Chopper."

The effect is immediate, he starts blushing and kicking his legs in his seat, a hoof goes to rub at the back of his head and nervous laughter comes from him. "That isn't distracting me at all, you bastard." You smiled and watched the compliment break any semblance of professionalism in him.

He gets back on track a little while later, placing a stethoscope on your chest and asking you to cough. You're not sure exactly what he's looking for but you give a soft cough into your elbow and you can say for certain— just based off the way he jumps back and looks at you a little quietly for a second, it's nothing good. Chopper spends a few minutes looking at your fingertips, then your lips, then some other parts of skin already exposed and humming to himself, troubled.

For now, he says, he wants you to try not to exert yourself— maybe leave fighting to everyone else and focus on resting until he can figure out a better way to confidently diagnose you. His lips are pulled into a frown, hands in his lap and trying his best to be professional and keep his emotions at bay. Before you know it, your hand is on top of his pink hat and fondly rubbing over the material softly. "Thanks Chopper, I'll keep that in mind."

He nods. You hesitate for a second before you're getting up to leave so that everyone else can see that you're not dying— or maybe you should tell them you are, you're not sure you could take another session of Franky accusing you of destroying the Sunny to create more work for him.

Your hand wraps around the doorknob and twists, stopping when Chopper speaks again. "You're not hiding something from me," he accuses gently, "are you?"

Your hand tightens around the doorknob. A flash of that imaginary Chopper comes back to you— heartbroken and confused at your refusal to be cured— you steal an unnecessarily large breath from the world. "I get sudden cravings for sweet things if that means anything."

Chopper, unbeknownst to you, takes those words and carves them true and raw into himself. His eyes are unwilling to leave you for more than necessary during the times you eat together, he watches you push aside the food on your plate, tearing small bits of meat off the bone to chew on it for a couple minutes too long before swallowing. He makes note of the way you have no problems finishing up everything but any sort of meat, sliding them over to Luffy, or one of his victims.

You're met with another blossom soon after lunch. You've made a bad habit of leaving the table early to escape the smell and resign yourself to the open deck, sprawling out on the grass like Zoro usually does. You're certain you're about to fall asleep shivering but the slap, slap, slapping of your captain's sandals are nearing closer so your brain kicks awake with a start; your eyes twitch, eyelashes shuddering in the wind. The darkness over your eyes morphs into a shadow of Luffy hovering over you, head tilting with a hand on his hat— your mind supplies you with the frown— and then you hear him taking a step back and sitting down next to you.

A troubled melody hums through his lips and when you open an eye to peek at him, you see his hands wrapped around his ankles, legs loosely crossed; he turned back to you and you quickly close your eyes. Here is where you finally learn that when Luffy touches, he's never placated with a simple tap, a light knocking between skin— no, he must stroke, he drags his fingers up the side of your thigh, he shivers from the coldness of your flesh and, even then, crawls closer. Then he's silent for a worrying amount of time and for a moment, curiosity takes you over. You find yourself wanting to draw light upon the disgusted features when he's met with someone he thinks close to him is growing closer and closer to a grave amongst the roots.

He leans his forehead against yours whilst you shuffle through the despicable crawl of your heart through your bones, something shifts in you and when you reach to itch at your side, it dislodges. It takes no more than a simple flip for your entire world to shift; you think you saw Luffy hovering over you momentarily before you had snapped to the side.

A fragment of the world greets its end.

Something strangles you, a hand of a giant pressing two fingers against the sides of your neck until everything in you bursts and splatters against parts that have gone unknown until now. There's nothing new to the tremor of vine that erupts through your skin, bubbling through the surface of flesh like a geyser; the tentacles claw their way your throat until you're choking around them, searching for an allowance for air. Your knees shuffle up to find some balance, head ducked to meet the lawn across the deck and elbows digging deep into the dirt. Your spluttering comes in time with the sound of Luffy calling your name, shouting for Chopper; there's a knot tied inside your mouth, you shake away tremors and tears all the same. You erupt yet there's nothing to be burnt, it's only ash that leaves your mouth— only the colourful petals of the wisteria plant that wash over the green of the open deck, burnt in hues with blood.

The next island is a spring island, known for their sweet peaches and sweeter music.

You watched Luffy devour two peaches in his hands, the ripe skin melting underneath his teeth— pale with a dusted blush until it snapped into a bloody red, melted at the pit. Then he's gone with a rustle of mikan trees as you held out a basket for Nami to delicately place her mikans in; apparently, she'd managed to catch the attention of some peach vendor with her sweet tangerines and swindled the poor man out of his money for a basket.

The streets are lined with lively hums and a strumming of odd instruments, music escapes through every crevice of a worn-down building as Luffy jumps from stall to stall, drooling over the goods before you're beckoning him back with his lunchbox and a promise of meat after you finish this errand for Nami. On your way to the stall, you hear faint chattering that doesn't interest you but Luffy straightened up beside you and turns to stare at the people as they argue on who had managed to grow the biggest peach this year.

You sigh, grabbing hold of Luffy's collar when he stops to stare at them and drag him off to the stall vendor who had fallen victim to Nami's schemes. The exchange is easy enough— give him the basket (ignore the fact that Nami had managed to make it look like it was overflowing by artfully bunching up a cloth on the bottom and filled gaps between the fruits with flowers) and make sure you've got the correct amount of money. It's when Luffy asks the stall vendor who has the biggest peach this year that things begin to go downhill.

Rather than answering Luffy's question, the man goes on a tangent about some kind of festival for a God and how the biggest peach will be the offering to said God this year— apparently, Shumi (the woman who owns the fabrics shops) had managed to get her hands on this, that, or the other to help her husband grow a peach large enough to bring doubt to the fact that Gyupuri had managed to grow the largest peach (again) this year.

Luffy insists on tracking them both down to help the people come to a decision as he wiped away the drool on his chin. Resigned, you managed to find Shumi first with her shop being the only one in town that sold fabrics and she denies you both permission to see the peach; Gyupuri, on the other hand, is more than happy to show you to the peach he grows. He takes you straight out of town, into the forest, and then up the mountain to where there's a clearing full of nothing but flesh coloured peaches.

As you listen to Gyupuri's story on how he was merely taking after his father to grow these strangely sized peaches, you have to keep Luffy in your hold so he doesn't go running to the giant peach and take a bite out of what could be for a God. Somehow though, he manages to get a handful of flat peaches when you weren't looking and when you attempt to apologise to Gyupuri, he doesn't seem to be fazed, shoving a few more peaches into your hand and telling you it's fine.

"So, who is this God anyway?" Luffy asks, his legs wrapped around your waist and chin hooked on your shoulder as he leaned back, satisfied with cheeks full of the peach you were holding in your hand. You turn to give him a look, but he merely stares at you back.

The people here must have made a unanimous decision to answer questions from the left side of the field because Gyupuri only tells you the name of this God when he drags you and Luffy up a hill to stare at a statue of this God carved out of generic stone.

To be polite, you call the statue pretty; Luffy feels no need to be polite, so he says it's not really. When you look at him to furrow your eyebrows at him, he's already looking at you.

When you're back on the ship, money handed to Nami, you think about that moment so much that it grows moss in your mind and vines burst through the crevices of the worn–down artifact you've made out his gaze to be. You throw up everything you manage to eat and feel hollow and worthy when you meet Luffy's eyes in Chopper's office again.

There's a chill that follows your days after that.

It's persistent and stubborn in a way that cruelly reminds you of Luffy. On a brighter side, you've got an excuse to be lazy in bed though it irks your bones not to have the weight of you walking thrumming up your body. You get visits from the Strawhats, get your food delivered to you, some of the crew shuffling into your room to keep you entertained with some card games and the likes— you get Luffy consistently making his way into your room and treating it as any other room on his Sunny. He comes in, always makes himself home on the bed, and talks about what he did today. At some point, it becomes less endearing and more annoying to be treated as though you were actually dying. (You hadn't told them for a reason.)

Four days after Chopper had resolutely punished you with bed rest, Luffy decides that he was going to start sleeping in your room. Apparently, your face had translated over what your head was thinking too quickly because he starts whining, saying that he wouldn't get to see you enough if he doesn't do this and, well, since you've always had a tender, raw, skinned soft spot for the boy, you end up saying yes.

He spends his first night telling you what he was going to spend tomorrow doing and you come to the realisation that every other sentence contains you. (Going to find more beetles to show you... Chopper told Sanji it'd be good to get more meat into your diet... Zoro accidentally cut snakes and ladders in half so Nami is giving me money to see if we can find one for you so we can play... Robin said there's a really pretty flower on this next island… For you… For you...) It’s all there laid bare and you cannot face it. You hide your face into the crook of your elbow and wretch out a cough. Luffy frowns but doesn't mention it. He talks himself into sleep and you lay awake to him, trying to keep yourself from blooming throughout the night so he doesn't wake up, cold and still.

When you're startled awake with misty embrace in a dream, you see that Luffy has gone.

What he has left is his straw hat and a mouthpiece of his greatness. The straw is rough against your fingers, resembling the thorns that grows along roses and you stare at it in your lap until you can feel the roughness in your throat— just when you think you need to get water, Sanji shows up with breakfast. You eye the cigarette in his lips and ignore the settling of the tray on your bedside table, watch the smoke fight the smell of scrambled eggs and bits of bacon to take over your room.

"We're at an island?"

Sanji walks around your bed, finding himself comfortable on the couch across the foot of your bed. "We docked early this morning," you watched his smoke rise, ash falling to the wooden floor of your room, waving and grasping hands up to God. Sanji keeps himself entertained by looking around your room, his foot pushing around odd leaves and petals on the floor before he nods over to the plate. "Eat." Then he's gone.

You stare at the tray, settling Luffy's straw hat aside, you shuffle to the end of your bed and take the fork in your hands— you look at the plate until you swear you can taste the eggs in your mouth and the slight bursts of saltiness that'll come from the bacon and you have to wash it down with the glass of water he's given you. You push it aside and opt to go back to sleep.

You dream of a still life on top of a hill, overlooking a dock as the Sunny pulls back out into the sea; you thrash but find every part of you rooted down to one spot, the wind picks up and you feel tangles of what could be hair or leaves hitting against a part of your body. You're still rooted despairingly in a garden of silks and duvets when you wake, Luffy had found himself unable to keep away from your breakfast but when you sit up and look a little closer, you see a pile of the diced bacon bits shoved off to the side as he shovelled eggs into his mouth.

Shattering free from the earth with a faltering cough broken into four, you shuffled yourself up and spit out a cluster of wisteria. At this point, you do not need to look at Luffy to know what his face looks like; he turned to face you, cheeks full and quickly finishing the eggs to shuffle closer to you on the bed with a book in his hands. "You left your book under the plate."

It's a hardback children's book, pulled out of Sunny's library and coloured a light blue that resembled the sky and broken apart by a sunflower in the middle and petals around it, the title curled around the sunflower. You know that the book was left in the library when you were having your episode. The cover is smooth to the touch as Luffy gives it to you and ends up knocking his shoulders against yours in his attempt to get closer; your eyes moved over to the tray of food and you think of Sanji, who'd grown up in the North Blue where this children's story was more popular amongst the romantic commonwealth. 

He knows, you think, and it fills you with a dread that the wisteria blossoms feast upon delightfully; he knows, and he could tell everyone, the vines throb over your heart as Luffy opens the book over your lap and looks up, expectantly at you.

Myrsa was a pretty girl, enough so that praises sang for her ended up calling upon the scorn of love's Goddess. The depiction of her getting cursed is almost comical, stricken by lightning as she returns from a forest with a basket full of flowers and mushrooms. "What happens next? What happens next?" Luffy pushes his face closer to the book, tangling a rubbery leg with yours as he moves impossibly closer. "How does Myrsa beat up the God?"

It's the certainty he holds that Myrsa will beat up God that makes you laugh, it's the fact that she does not beat anything that makes you tremble, shaking coughs and petals out your throat. Luffy seems to think that the book is too excitable, trying to pry it away from you and saying that he can ask Robin to read it to him later so you should just rest. "Don't you want to know if Myrsa will beat up the God now?" You ask instead, knowing the answer will be yes.

Perhaps they were the wrong words to convince Luffy because when you're on the last page, Myrsa buried in a forgotten land and her love used as fertiliser for a field of sunflowers, he's threatening to beat up a God made up to exact revenge for Myrsa. It's a lot more cheerful than you had expected— all the characters drawn with round faces, small bodies, and black dots as eyes. It makes death seem redeemable. 

After Luffy hauls himself out of your room, in search of the God had turned Myrsa into sunflowers, you force the bacon down your mouth and bring the tray out to Sanji. You linger in the kitchen, eyes watching him as he scrubbed the dishes and danced around the kitchen, no doubt knowing why you were there. He doesn't seem to want to be the one to approach the topic just based on the way he refused to stop even for a moment for the past fifteen minutes you've been there.

You know nothing about Sanji past the fact that he's blond, he's a cook, and he used to be a prince from North Blue's Germa Kingdom.

"You know Myrsa didn't die because she had hanahaki." Your hip meets the edge of an island, arms crossed over your chest as you watched Sanji finally slow to a halt, throwing a glance over at you. He takes his cigarette between two fingers, breathing in for a moment and then takes it out, holding it out to you. "What she was cursed with, wasn't ever meant to be able to kill her."

"I know."

Sanji takes the cigarette back after you shake your head, shrugging a little as he continued. "Myrsa died."

You laugh a little, "I read the book."

There's a point he's trying to make that's as foreign to you as the notion of a love that doesn't hurt but he turns a glance to you that almost reads like he's disappointed in you and it settles nicely against the vines choking you through. You straighten up, uncrossing your arms and his visible eye wanders back over the pots he has boiling on the stove. "You liked the ending?" The ending of the North Blue story was a two–page spread of a sunflower field, a planet of bright yellows and a dull light blue, clouds breaking apart overwhelming tones of sunny golds and drowning diamonds.

A tree split awkwardly in half due to the spine of the book, curved in shape and pinched in the middle until you held the pages at the edges and pulled to straighten in down. "It was pretty," a gentle breeze running through the leaves shedding from the tree, a shiver to the wooden flesh that split apart if looked at the right way by the right man. Myrsa was beautiful, even in a death she didn't pick treated her well.

How could you hope to live when she did not?

You find a lot of things pretty now; you wonder if that's the dead crawling in you that is beginning to appreciate the life around. Robin sat on the deck with a cup of cooling coffee on a table in front of her and a book in her hand, Nami stood between her rows of mikan trees, Zoro straining under the weights of his responsibilities, Brook with a violin to his shoulder. The sky drowned over the ocean as Luffy leaned his head against you on Sunny's figurehead, his voice a soft beat over the water rushing against the hull of the ship. He's talking about Shanks and his dream and your heart aches selfishly; his skin gulps down the orange light of the dawning sun and you resigned yourself to a death loving him.

You wonder if Luffy still thinks of his dead brother, your tongue slips against the bark of your gums, and you open your mouth without thinking. "Luffy," you hear spoken into the wind, "will you tell me about your brother?"

"Sabo?" He's clapping his feet together excitedly, turning from the sky to you with a large grin on his face, "he's a part of the Revelation Army— no, wait revocation? Revenge Army? Renovation Army! Wait— that's not right."

"No, the other one." A whisper haunts the wind, 'the dead one' written in its movement.

There's a certain hesitation to his words that brings you to the realisation that being loved by Luffy is a wonderful thing. He's never been one to be articulate with words, picking the simple ones that come to mind first without a moment's hesitation but strangely the simple–minded way served him well when it came to love. Love is not articulate either— it's one of the simplest things in the world— so when it's met with someone like Luffy, it blossoms into an art form of all things beautiful.

You regret have not meeting Luffy when Ace was around. Dancing around his features is a tender skip of tightness; his shoulders pulled up to his ears, head ducked down, lips awkward and tongue thick as he told you the story of being accepted to be Ace's brother. Hues of embers fluoresce, dripping down on Sunny's figurehead as you reached an arm around him; his words are stained in blood and adoration, strained and slow but Luffy persists, his love persists.

"You should've met him!" He finishes, turning to you with a light chuckle. "You would've loved him."

Your hand falls onto his shoulder, pulling him closer despite the crawl of vomit up your throat and you leaned your head against his straw hat. "Maybe I will."

Death is another thing you think is simple. It's as easy as slipping into Chopper's office to find him hunched over his desk, his hooves holding onto a pestle as he circled the butt around in a mortar. "Ah, you're here?" He glanced over his shoulder as you walked around him and settled onto one of the beds he has in his room. "Give me a second! I nearly have your medicine ready."

"Chopper," you think you've played this out in your head before, "I have hanahaki."

His arms slow down to a halt, his face dropping by several degrees; the previous petals that made up his hopeful and cheerful expression flutter to the floor, guided by the winds you'd altered with those four words.

"Hanahaki?" Chopper's words are slow as he settled the pestle down, "I thought— but it doesn't exist?"

"Funnily enough, it died off." You tell him with a little laugh. "As more people took to the seas and chased after the one piece, less people fell victim to hanahaki." The Chopper you've told this to before in your mind was definitely less devastated and surprised to be greeted by the fact that you have hanahaki.

He's stumbling over his words, trying to pick something to focus on first as his face was scrunched up, eyebrows furrowed, and lips open into disbelief. "How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me? You'll have the surgery, right? You can trust me; I'll definitely save you. When did it first start?" Your head is pounding with the incessant questions he spits at you, unable to answer any of them as any allowance for a response was filled in by another inquiry. Suddenly, he's pulling his mind to a stop as he turned back to you, solemn and sad and asks, "who is it?" 

It's easy to tell how Luffy has touched people, Chopper makes note of the way your head tilts and you smile and it's obvious that there was no one else capable of calling upon your love.

"And the surgery?"

The look on your face, although foreign to you, tells him all he needs to know.

That doesn't stop him though, he keeps himself by your side and urges (pleads) you to have the surgery; his constant presence becomes a problem when he makes a point of forcing Luffy away from you. It's small at first, trying to distract Luffy with other things, claiming to want to be the one to watch over Luffy when you all dock so you're not given the chance, clinging onto your arms and demanding your attention when Luffy threatens to take it away from him. Then, when Luffy notices that he's been holding onto this flower for hours, fingers pinched around a sunflower stem to ask you how you get seeds from the flower to eat, and every time he's seen a speck of your colour from corners, Chopper shows up to drag you away or points a finger somewhere to shout about a meat mountain, he has a problem.

You notice it's about the meat mountain at first though.

He's slamming the door to Chopper's office after the fourth time, shouting, "Chopper! Where's the meat mountain you keep talking about?" He doesn't seem to care about the fact that Chopper is checking up on you as he stomps into the room, plopping himself down right next to you. Chopper pushes him away when your shoulders brush against each other and you're coughing out bloodied petals. His attention diverts when he hears the shaking of your cough, how you knock into him uncontrollably as your torso leans to meet your thighs, hands deep into the foam edge of the mattress. Petals splatter onto your shoes, clinging to the leather with saliva and re–painting the laces in a sickly red. Luffy’s touch is intrusive, a hand tightened on your thigh that burns your skin to ash and forces vines to splutter out your skin. They attack him, you reel yourself away from Luffy in hopes that they don’t reach him but in some disgusting way, they force themselves to new lengths to coil around his limbs. Spindling up and up and up and you can’t see his face anymore as a thick rope of vines in the shape of his hand reaches out for you, they keep moving up until you only see his hat— your back knocks against the wall. You sternly tell yourself this death is acceptable; the vines grow limp.

When you’ve calmed down enough, the first thing Luffy asks you is, “why aren’t you better yet?” And you feel as though you’re being scolded for some reason; your eyes flicker over to Chopper, fingers tangled together in front of your thighs from the corner of the room you’ve forced yourself into. When Luffy catches the wandering glances— as if you’re trying to keep him out of something— he treats you exactly how you’re acting. Like a criminal.

“Chopper?” It’s unnerving how his eyes are still on you, no trace of expression on his face, “out.”

“But—”

“Out.” Chopper throws you an unhelpful glance as he passes you to get to the door.

You’ve always had the wrong impression of Luffy— everyone that doesn’t know him has the same image; he’s a pirate that has taken down warlord after warlord, who has brought horrifying change and shifts the balance of authority wherever his feet take him. Hearing hushed whispers of him and his close affiliates in the lightened haze of booze, to distract from a tooth getting knocked out of place never does much for his image either. Though it wouldn’t be right to say that Luffy is wholly good either— he’s selfish. Selfish and impossibly kind and downright disgusting with the handling of his own needs; the sound of your name fizzing between his teeth has you startled, nodding your head back to him on the bed you’d left him at.

“You’re hiding something.” It’s not a question nor is it an accusation of any kind. It’s an observation. Luffy slides himself off the bed, his sandals comically slap against the floor of Chopper’s office, “tell me.” His hands fall onto your shoulders, one stays there and the other slides down. He treats your skin like an amusement park for his pleasure; his nails drag across the goosebumps of your bicep, pressing down on raised scars and then splashes into the palm of your hand, dragging ripples in the centre.

You hesitate, twisting your fingers together and pulling as if to attempt to dislodge the odd feeling that follows his fingertips. “Are you asking as a captain?” Despite how general expectations of Luffy remain pretty low to those who do know him, it’s also known that Luffy has a nerve in him that’s impossibly receptive to hurt. There’s a certain way to activate it and when it’s on, it doesn't quieten down until its idiot owner is pleased. Luffy scrunches his face up in an odd way, displeasured at your question as if he couldn’t believe you’d ask him something that hurtful, and his head tilts.

“Tell me.” You’re met with an unwavering stare, the hand on your shoulder tightens and there’s a hardness to it that you’ve never associated with your rubber captain— you can feel the bone in his fingers, stern and undeniable. Your eyes trace over the exposed, tanned skin of his bicep and you wish that you could force your vines through his skin to crawl into his chest and listen to the tremors that’ll run up your devil fruit from his beating heart for some kind of answer. There’s a sudden breath that’s available to you that isn’t tainted and clogged, trapped before it even meets your lungs, but it burns in a new way as you stare at Luffy, scared and terrified of a new life that’ll be forced upon you if you tell him what’s wrong with you.

You open your mouth with an excuse, but Luffy huffs and the words shrivel in your mouth, collapsing to a grain on your tongue and when you close your mouth, you taste dirt. “Luffy,” you beg, “I can’t— just, I’ll be fine.”

There’s a hint of some anger in his gaze before it turns into a haunting realisation, “Chopper knows, doesn’t he?” He pushes you aside, “I’ll just ask Chopper.”

There’s a ringing distant in your ears that chimes like the bell of the church from that place two islands ago, maybe three— you haven’t been too good with time recently. Sunny shakes like the earth as a body hits the pavement, you feel disgusting and heavy and an itch claws through your palms where Luffy’s hand has just been. You’re sure it’s Chopper he’s shaking an answer from but you hear Robin’s voice, calling for him to calm down and when that doesn’t work, Sanji cuts in. It all gets further and further away, you think about the planks of Sunny opening to welcome you back into that darkness from nights ago, you think about being choked by one of your vines, you think about the wisteria blooming whole in your lungs— you think and you think and think and suddenly, it’s all nothing. You’re dying, you think, that’s a fact, what else? Luffy is the reason. Or maybe you’re the reason.

“Luffy,” were you the one talking? “Luffy.” The voice comes again, stern and your eyebrows furrow with the same tension that the voice is carrying. “Thank you for being my captain.”

Still, he thinks if heaven had the capacity to ever come close to him, it'd never compare to this moment— never come close to the settling of your calloused hands over his slacks, your teary eyes looking up at his expression in search of validation. It surely wouldn't, he has no doubt about it. Zayne's hands settled on your cheek, a low grunt shudders from him through your body as he traced his fingers up, wiping your tears away with an elegance removed from the moment.

Zayne is no more than a man ruled by simple desires, every want in him fluctuated beneath a single layer of skin that erupts through his pores whenever you're close, it's why he managed to get himself cursed in the first place. Zayne knows that, he makes no effort to feign ignorance to himself. In another life, perhaps he'd be less man and anything else more and never allow you to your knees to serve him. In this life? He was chalked up of nothing but pure grieving desires; anything you offer to him, he'll take no questions asked. He would've followed the wisps of you back down to hell at Hades' feet and made a home beside you after light graced his face and gave him enough temporary assurance to turn back to see your shadowed features. It's wrong, it's unjustly cruel to have you on your knees for his mundane pleasure but his head swims with the warmth of your lips wrapped around him so he disregards the guilt that tells him no.

Days where he didn't have a shift at the hospital, either of his or others' he'd graciously offered to cover, used to come unsettling. His bare hands itched where ever he lay them, some gentle reprieve came from when he reached into his fridge and felt the cool air kiss upon his fingers like the cold metal of a scalpel; the towel draped over his shoulders after a needed shower came without the threat of twisting around his neck to strangle unlike his stethoscope— an unnerving flight of fight response kicked in whenever he tried to relax.

He'd made his peace with the gnawing discomfort when he was at home, flicking through patient reports and eyes always steady with his phone in view in case anything had happened to his patients, in case they needed his capabilities. Zayne would feel this way even in sleep. It's why he always finds himself in the hospital, picking up stray shifts for co–workers that he doesn't truly know; even then, he's a man of rational practices so he knows that even through the discomfort, the promise of null action is just as important for his body and mind.

Somewhere along the line of his stationary life, you entangled yourself into those lacklustre days. Creating a ragged incision down his chest and clawing your way to his beating heart, squeezing it in time with your deafening breaths and forcing him into your tempo; you've corrected his timid heart to beat in time with your soft steps across the wooden flood of his apartment and stitched him up so messily that it'll leave an inevitable scar. You uprooted all that he knew, made a home of.

The pillow underneath your knees will never truly recover from your weight, the feathers will always know how it felt to give you little measly comfort as you gagged around him. Zayne's head falls to the back of the couch, his scrunched up expression turned up to the ceiling as a pleasured sigh leaves him. His curt words of affirmation burning through your skin despite how far away they felt, your head heavy as your nose met the neatly clipped tuft of hair peeking out through his boxers. You feel your breath escaping you through your nose, face scrunched up as you forced a gag to settle back down.

You're unaware of Zayne's eyes on you until his hands are on your cheek, alleviating the burning heat of your cheeks and grounding you back into the moment, and guiding you back. "Breath."

Dizzying images of Zayne settled in your eyes, mirages of the concern in his otherwise blissed face collecting in the tears sat in your waterline as he pulled you to your feet. You stumbled, your legs feeling weak from kneeling. "You haven't cum yet," the clear oxygen runs heavy through your system.

"I'd rather you not pass out," he informed, an unamused look on his face as he guides you onto his lap. "Plus, this night is about you as much as it is about me."

There's a softness to the moment, one of his hands on your back and the other on your waist, that allows you to slump into his arms. "Give me a second then." The few seconds you take to catch your breath in an attempt to steady your mind feels impossibly tedious. Still, Zayne is meticulous in his ministrations, tying down all the nasty thoughts that cloud his head with refined touches.

Zayne— plastered in the heat of the world, stubborn frigid in all that he wants— offers you an out. "We can stop here if it's too much." His voice is gentle, a husky promise that denies the desirous part of him that beats loudly against his ribs, the him you've created with your fingertips makes an attempt to rip through his skin.

He isn't aware of his heavy, irregular breath on your shoulder until you shake your head against his chest. His otherwise ironed shirt crumpled in your fist as you say, "no, it's okay, I can keep going for you."

The next breath he takes feels as though he's squeezing out all the oxygen that's ever been available to him, it shudders through his entire being as your words ring in his head. This moment, you've stated, was for his pleasure. Zayne wants to confirm that you're sure, you've no doubts about it despite having slept with him so many times over the course of your relationship but he hears 'for you' again distantly and it feels as though you're not close enough even though every part of you that could stick to him undoubtedly is.

The world turns on its head, screeching to a halt as the clock continues ticking on the wall of Zayne's bedroom; he hovers over you in the new position, a hand stabilising himself by your head as he ducked his head down. It's nothing to be questioned as his lips met yours in a fervour that you've never imagined possible to come from the man but you respond anyways merely because it's Zayne. In its desperate need, improbable heat— as he manages to pry open your mouth and ease in his loving intrusion— it's Zayne at its brutal core. You've barely had a chance to reciprocate even a quarter of the searing vehemence of his tongue licking over the plaque of your teeth before he's moving down, kissing and sucking on your skin of your neck.

His teeth scrape over your skin as you gasped, licking over your teeth to chase after his taste, pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth so it doesn't feel so empty without Zayne. Nimble and methodical fingers have already managed to work through the buttons of your shirt and despite the moment, you find yourself embarrassed when he brings his head back to study you.

You see a blurry image of yourself reflected in the field of green of his irises, each unclear feature swarmed with the fluttering of adoration. "You're staring," you pointed out, bringing up your hand to cover his face, his eyes so you couldn't see yourself in them anymore.

Zayne's face is foreign to you as his lips crack up into something resembling an amused smile, a crackling of chuckle lights your palm on fire as he hold his hand over yours. You give him an aggrieved look as he keeps your hand against his cheek, "aren't I allowed to stare?" His eyes are invasive, flickering from the slope of your collarbones, hooking onto your wet lips, clawing into your every ministration, features and softness laid bare. "Aren't I?" He asks again, his eyebrows raising slightly.

You don't answer but you must have given something away— you know you have because his amusement smooths out into unadulterated affection as he turns his head to press a kiss onto your palm. An itch settles beneath your skin where his lips meet, one you know you'll never be able to soothe even if you hammered through the spot with a nail. You struggle to know how Zayne will move as the moment softens throughout the room, turning into something malleable. He's nothing but slow, full of pliable details ebbing silky as he lowers his head back down.

His hair tickles as he ducks his head into the fold of your shoulder and neck, each otherwise perfectly laid strand creasing as they dust over the skin of your jaw. Squirming a little, you find your hands on his shoulders, the usual attentiveness in his actions running a little deeper than they always do. Zayne sucks at the skin of your neck, his teeth scraping along the expanse of unmarked flesh as he brings a knee between your leg. A sturdy arm comes over your front, a hand settling on your shoulder, arm running down the stretch of skin between your chest, and elbow down on your rib. "Don't move," a mere whisper that etches deep to your bones, "you're running from me."

"Running?" Your eyebrows crease and you squirm again, the heels of your feet digging into the mattress as you feel yourself move up the bed, weight shifting as your head hits the bottom of a pillow. "Oh," falls out your mouth dumbly as you realise you have been inching away from him. "Sorry." You allow your hands to fall from Zayne's shoulders, fisting the bed cover into your hands.

"Don't apologise," his soothing voice calls. When you turn your head back to look at him, his eyebrows are furrowed and his lips pressed thin, "you don't have to apologise." Zayne takes one of your hands and moves them back to their place on his shoulders. "Just let me care for you, keep still, hm?" You're more astutely aware of the aether core pounding in your heart now, its vibrant light pouring through your skin and how often Zayne has had the chest piece against your bare skin, how his eyes narrowed from behind rectangular frames as you shuddered from the cool metal.

You think that your heart has managed to resonate with his evol without your knowledge— with how often he's got his hands on you, professionally or otherwise, it wouldn't be too surprising. After a moment, you realise that Zayne is still waiting for an answer so you nod your head, opening your hand to press your palm against his shoulder blade. "Staying still."

Zayne gives you something close enough to a smile and lowers his head back down.

It's haunting how you recognise his moves enough to predict what he'll do and respond in kind, your head inches off the bed as you meet his lips again, legs parting under him as he slides a hand over the inside of your thigh. Intimacy with Zayne is staggering purely due to how cold he runs— you think it's all natural how his fingers run like ice over quivering flesh despite how warm his chest is when he's got you pinned underneath him. He's burnt where you've touched him, charred into muscle and cartilage are your fingerprints, your teeth, every mark of your nails that flame impossibly red. You're nothing short of heaven.

The fabrics of Zayne's adoration for you exists around him as a second skeleton, as your hips raise slightly for him to catch the waistband of your joggers and your hand falls next to his in an attempt to push them down without moving your lips from his. Pants and moans are transcribed into his tongue, he remembers the taste of every one, he'll think of them when he misses you, when he's forced away from his short instance of heaven as he wishes his hands ran a little warmer. The lingering salt of previous whines echo in his head, all from weeks and months ago flowing back to the cusp of his mind as your bare thighs finally grace his fingers. He wraps a hand around the meaty flesh, groaning into your mouth at the simple touch.

A shivering inhale from you makes Zayne's mouth turn cold as the oxygen is sucked all up, he takes the chance to move back down. He's got a hand sneaking up the half unbuttoned pyjama top you're wearing, another hand impossibly far away from your heat; you can't tell if it's too much or not enough. A gasp sounds in time with Zayne's hand over your chest, you feel a hardening nipple press up against his palm; the rest of the buttons trip over the loosening wear of the fabric and slide off your stomach. Your skin turns cold where he takes in a stuttering deep breath, his face hidden from you as he mouths at your other breast. "So," he murmurs, lips closing around your nipple. A lilting whine only acts to spurn him on, his hand dragging down your side and his nails light over the path that his palms works onto your skin, his teeth catch onto your nipple. "So— you drive me crazy." He confesses after cutting his own thought off prematurely, his saliva pooling around a stiff nub.

"You must know that right, dear?" Zayne continues talking, offering curt words in his impassive tone, slightly out of breath with his hair dishevelled. His cold hands are blistering upon your skin, lighting up nerves scathingly. Adding a little pressure between his teeth has you impossibly light–headed, one hand on your hip and the other close to your cunt. Zayne is nothing more than a drunken mouthpiece of his loving whenever he has you under him, all the words he's forced frozen in his throat over the course of years spilling out as your heat melted away the labyrinth he's had them locked in. "Do you do it all on purpose, knowing I'll never rid myself of it?"

You're moaning a 'please' before you know it when you feel a deft finger pushing against your slit through wet fabric. "If you're asking like that," he glances up at you, head tilting, "there's nothing else for me to do but oblige." The intrusion comes unpleasant first, walls tightening around a sole finger and quivering at the rigid temperature. Zayne lowers his torso closer to you, allowing you to wrap both arms around his shoulders; his eyes are still on you, studying each scrunched up wrinkle on your face with an almost apologetic look on his face. He leans down to press a kiss at the end of your eyebrow as his middle finger tactfully stills inside you.

"Keep going," you pant out, burrowing your face into the crook of his neck. "S'fine, you don't have to keep worrying."

Zayne wants to doubt your words, he'd never want any memorable pain tied back to his name when it comes to you, but he knows you've stubbornly pushed through worse. You're a shedding of God, one he doesn't really care for, a child of man that managed to cheat death nearly daily. "Don't keep quiet if you can't take it." He urges one final time.

You manage a breathless chuckle, "we both know I'd never take anything that hurts quietly, Zayne."

The response you're given makes you shatter, icicles spreading throughout your skin as Zayne shakes his head, a small smile on his face. Taken away from you are the next few moments to appreciate it as Zayne continues thrusting his finger inside you, managing to get in his ring finger, his palm kisses your wet folds with every decisive thrust. He bends his thumb upwards to work circles on your clit— that alone has you quivering, a hand going to grasp at his wrist but your arms are weak with his relentless work into making pleasure burst in your system.

The fables of heaven has never been described in any physical manner, nothing of soft clouds under foot, feasts that melt sweet on the tongue, wine that runs smooth down the throat; it exists only as the promise of eternal pleasure, therefore, is it a lie or an exaggerated truth if Zayne calls you his heaven? When he finally manages to pull that blissful cusp of orgasm over you, the response is delightful; your legs shake idly by your sides and you're clawing for something for to hold onto though you both know nothing will be solid enough in your grasp to keep you grounded to the moment.

His first thought is to offer you an apology, when he pulls three fingers out and watches you cry, shaking your head as your hips move back down in a search for him. The brief moment where he's away from you doesn't last too long as he aligns his aggrieved tip against your wet entrance, bringing his head down to press a chaste kiss on your lips. "I'm here," he comforts. "Right here, darling, relax for me."

You take in a breath from the heated room and keep it locked in your throat as the stretch burns through your body; nails digging into Zayne's shoulders. A broken whine eases through clenched teeth as Zayne pushes in slowly, miniscule inch by inch and keeps a hand on your face, brushing sweaty hair from your forehead and muttering idle love confessions. When a sigh smooths over your eyebrows, you know he's finally sunken all the way in. "Do you need another reminder to breath?" You hear his deep voice distantly, coloured in layers of amusement.

You huff, blowing away the trapped bit of oxygen in your throat.

"There you go," his words are nearly shy off being a sweet coo as his hand travels over your stomach, pressing down on the heated skin. "Feel me?"

His words causes a ricochet of mindless nods, "yeah, yeah— please Zayne." Your legs wrapped around his hips, feet filling into the dimples on his lower back. Zayne, with no other choice, gives you what you want. There's nothing that feels wrong about the moment, he's more certain of the fact than he'd ever been about anything that came previous to him. The pressure of the balls of your feet pressing into his skin, nails digging scars where he'd never allow anything else to draw blood, the weight of you brokenly calling his name like you were the one to have met your God. Each thrust back into you creates the stern foundation of Zayne's cruel and selfish humanity, it's like he's never known anything else— he's not sure he even wants to.

Nothing of his will ever want to know anything that's not you later on; rejection will the inevitable end of any attempt of a rebound that he'll try to introduce to his home. Zayne understands this notion, how would you expect him to go back to his previous norm when he's learnt how it feels to love at your feet? You could maybe remove yourself of him but Zayne is a stubbornly, almost idiotic, lover; he'll give chase after your scent in the wind and after the whisper of your laughter in the trees. 

The moment your legs shake, trembling back down onto the mattress as you squeeze around him so delightfully, Zayne finally knows the sinful taste of heaven. He knows what how it feels to be weightless, as his feet met with the opaque clouds that gave away to his unassuming strides, as light followed his every move, how angels would echo his every devious thought in their hymns until God catches on. How much would He resent Zayne? Nothing but mere man, of flesh and bones; no more and no less, singing the praises of another one of His creations and stripping the holy title from God to plaster onto a husk of bones and absolute divinity. Whatever heaven is, Zayne knows he'll never care for it.

There's no basis in its existence. You, on the other hand. You writing underneath him, you with your blunt nails that'll be stained in his blood, you as you found your high in his timely thrust, you calling his name, you turning boneless as you came with a moan. You, you, you. Pants stained his name, a hand dusts over his cheekbones, brushing hair back from his forehead. Zayne meets the gates of heaven with his last shaky thrust, sloppy in aim as his weight expels through his bones and he falls down onto your sweaty chest.

A laugh passes through your lips before you're aware of it, wiping away salty sweat caught on the bridge of his nose with your sleeve pulled over your palm. "You got so into it," you pointed out with a smile on your face. Zayne drags his face to look up at you, his chin hovering over your collarbone. "I didn't even think you heard me when I said I was going to cum."

Zayne gives you a thoughtful hum and you give him an exaggerated frown. "Where you thinking about work again—?"

"I was thinking of how much I adore you," he cuts you off with a pointed look, "but it seems as though I'll have to rethink how much exactly."

"Nooo," you reached out for his face. "I was kidding! Please tell me how much you adore me."

He gives you an unimpressed look but says nothing more as he straightened up, pulling himself away from you. Your face turns an unruly colour of red when his eyes linger on where he was previously so intimately joined to you, snapping your legs closed. Zayne raises an eyebrow at you, if he has anything verbal thoughts on it then he doesn't express it as he gets to his feet. "Shall I go over every feature I adore in detail in the shower?"

You think he's joking as his arm hooked under your legs and the other spanned across your back. It's why you pressed your lips into a straight line, giving a thoughtful nod, "yes, in excruciating detail too."