Sparks And Smiles

So Dragon clenches his teeth together. Allows his fingers to feel the skin raised by tattoo and soulmark alike. Warm. Fairly warm to touch. Where Dragon can’t reach, Imu obliges by moving closer to provide more in reach for him. Turning towards him more fully, looking at him with deep ringed red eyes. 

A hand with sharp nails, almost like claws, extends out. Towards Dragon’s left arm, where a soulmark lies. 

He hesitates. Touching is one thing. Being touched back...even that can feel weird with Dad sometimes, Dad who’s never careful with personal space in his shoves and grabs and Punches of Love. 

“It’s only fair,” Imu coaxes him. And it is, isn’t it?

So he stays still, as his soulmate rubs long greedy fingers on his arms and shoulders. Peeling off his shirt in the process, a weird realization to come to after said shirt’s already off his body. 

Dragon’s own soulmark is mostly hidden among the swirls and grids of the tattoos he has surrounding them. Red, like those same tattoos. Meant to make them blend in, to hide, by having similar pictograms among them. 

Not too different from Imu’s own tattoos, now that he’s directly seeing and comparing them, actually. And it seems that Imu’s realized that too, by how he’s smiling at Dragon as he traces a bolded ink line of scarlet.

“So similar.”

“You’re not offended by me doing that?” Dragon traces one of his own tattoos himself, next to where Imu rests a finger. “Most people would be, I hear.”

“Mu is not most people, hm.” 

There’s an arrogance to that, a thought leveled out that Imu is somehow better for not being the same as others. Hn, that’s...

Dragon finds his hand on Imu’s soulmark again, placed there by Imu’s hand. 

“Explain why, then, if you were afraid to mark your flesh so about your soulmark,” Imu urges. 

Well, he does suppose he owes an explanation here, after freaking out over nothing. “Dad always said my soulmate might not like their soulmark looking like that in the first place, that other people might, you know, think it’s fake. And then my soulmate would...” How does he put this? “...get mad at me about it.”

Because Dad’s always said soulmates can be really messy like that. 

Red eyes narrow and almost flare. “Mu would never do that to mu’s soulmate. Your father is a fool.”

(That’s not true!)

His hand clenches at the words, forgetting that there’s warm flesh underneath it. 

“Ah!”

Shit, he didn’t mean to-!

Dragon pulls back his hand, like from a hot stove. People aren’t as sturdy as Monkeys, Dad always said, so he has to be careful. But he wasn’t, with someone he’s supposed to be the most careful with. 

But Imu isn’t crawling to get away. Nor is there that familiar fear in those eyes. No, there is only more of the intent...interest. Along with something else, something else that Dragon only learns the property of much later.

(That property is hunger. Want.)

“Oh? Did you like that, Dragon?”

“Like what?” Dragon narrows his eyes at Imu. It’s none of his business.

Nevermind that Dragon himself isn’t entirely sure what that was in the first place, not really. 

“Allow mu to show you.” Imu once more grabs at his wrist. Returns the fingers to the position they were before, right at the soulmark. Right where Dragon’s name lies. Push the fingers together at the skin, until Dragon himself is pinching, scratching enough to-

“Ah!” A cry of pain, like before. 

Seeing Imu in pain- something leaps in Dragon’s stomach. Something different, something that doesn’t feel...bad, actually. 

“You like to see the pain, Dragon,” Imu almost coos, leaning closer. “Do you want to hear mu’s response to digging in, to drawing blood, just picture-”

“Stop!”

Dragon’s on his feet, he doesn’t know when that happened. Anymore than he knows what happened to have the heat in his cheeks or in that, on visualizing the thoughts Imu put into the air. 

What is wrong with him?

“Nothing is wrong with my Dragon.” 

A long hand imperiously beckons him back to the long couch.  

“Causing pain can merely be another part of how one feels their way through the world. To raise the heat in one’s veins.”

“I’ve never heard anything about that,” Dragon says skeptically. Dad always said to never hurt people like that. Not without a good cause to do it for. 

Red eyes curve together over smiling lips. 

Until the day Sabo is gone.

Then Luffy wakes up with the same gasping, but instead there are dreams are full of fire and smoke and gunfire and it's all the same feeling except when it isn't.

And Luffy thinks, oh.

Those are nightmares.

But there's nothing he can do, nothing he knows. Until another terrible day, where everything goes wrong wrong wrong.

-

"Love, welcome mu's dear son," the shadow person says.

Luffy's heart feels all funny, wobbly inside, as another shadow thing peels itself out the darkness and stares at him with red spots for eyes.

"Child, this is Lili, your aunt. Greet her politely."

The shadow moves closer and it's like a snake except when it's not, all crawly like a centipede with too many legs that he can't see but know are there!

Behind, he can hear Ace inhaling. "What the hell is that?"

And a tail reaches out from behind the shadow person, the shadow person that say they're Luffy's parent, and it lashes out. Knocking Ace over on the ground.

"What a ill-mannered pet you are."

Luffy puffs up the best he can, with the wibbly wobbly cuffs on him. "Leave him alone!"

"He doesn't know better, my heart." The shadow thing talks and it's hissing and chirping in his brain and almost familiar. It twists and shapes a little head-knob that it nods at Luffy with.

"Hello nephew of mine."

His heart jerks again in his chest. Ouchie. Feels bad.

"Hello ghost lady."

A rattling laugh. "Yes, that's me, ghost lady. Welcome to the Heart of the World. I hope you enjoy your stay."

Luffy glares. "I won't." Because this isn't home, not Dawn Island, and his hat is gone and Ace is on the floor, hurt.

"Fair."

The shadow person sighs. "Lili."

Ghost lady jerks, a flinch. "Very well." Then she crawls back, a centipede again, to the shadow of the shadow person. Making it darker.

Shadow person's clawed hands fold together. "Now. Where were we?"

-

That night, under the bed with Ace, Luffy feels cold. He opens his eyes and there's red eyes and darkness and something moving closer.

He kicks at it. It doesn't go away. Only snarls and draw closer.

Ace stirs. "Wait, is that a snake-"

Like a snake, Ghost Lady strikes! Sinks dark fang things into Luffy's arm and Luffy yells and punches back but his punches are not as strong as pistols with the weird cuffs on.

And no, there's the bed being turned over, with the shadow person looming over them all, with Ghost Lady screaming and struggling in their hands. Ghost Lady who looks more like a lady now than a snake, a lady with dark blue hair and skin who's still cursing.