#finito

Because he arrives.

You were prepared to be unimpressed. Honestly, you had planned for it. You’d heard the stories. “Greatest swordsman in the world.” “Cold as ice.” “Can kill with a look.” You expected the edge. Drama. The general scent of blood, leather, and an unresolved rivalry, with a hint of eyeliner.

What you did not expect… was perfection.

Dracule Mihawk steps off his ship like a man personally offended by the concept of grime. He’s wearing full black leather—crisp black leather—and somehow not sweating. His coat sways dramatically in the absence of wind. His boots shine like they’ve never touched sand. His beard is lined. His hat has no lint. No one has no lint.

You squint. Scan him from hat to heel like a customs officer at the end of their shift.

Nothing.

Not a speck. Not a smudge. Not even a hair out of place.

Even his sword is polished. You can see your own annoyance reflected in it.

You, in your sensible boots, travel-stained cloak, and utility belt full of antibacterial wipes, suddenly feel like a disgruntled librarian crashing Fashion Week.

“Is that leather?” you ask, almost accusing.

“Yes,” Mihawk replies, voice dry as imported wine. “And clean.”

You twitch. “How?”

“I’m not married to your captain.”

Shanks, several feet away, chokes on air and lives.

You inhale through your nose. Deep. Dangerous. The kind of breath that could power a war crime.

“You know what? Fine. Great. I hope your laundry folds itself and your moisturizer never runs out.”

“It doesn’t,” Mihawk says with calm finality. “I have a system.”

You glare. This man has a system.

Even you don’t have a system that gets leather that crisp after sea travel. You’ve tried. It always ends with humidity and muttering threats at mold like a feral exorcist.

Shanks leans in, barely containing laughter. “Jealous?”

“I’m offended.”

Mihawk glides away like a gothic swan in head-to-toe couture. His coat billows behind him as if it were blessed.

“I’m going to bite him,” you mutter.

Shanks beams. “As your husband, I cannot approve—”

You whip your mop at him like a divine judgment. Benn catches it midair with the resigned grace of a man who’s already picturing his escape goat.

“You’ll be mad about this for weeks,” Benn sighs.

“Years,” you growl. “Leather. On a ship. And it was clean.”

Somewhere on deck, Mihawk polishes a wine glass like he knows.

Later. Much later. After the warlord has gone and a well-dressed swordsman has thoroughly challenged your self-worth, you decide to process things constructively.

With threats.

“Hawkeye’s ship has no mold,” you say one morning, inspecting a suspicious smear on the railing like it’s personally offended you.

“Mm,” Shanks hums, upside-down in a hammock. “That’s because he sleeps in a coffin lined with rejection.”

You ignore him. “He has a skincare routine.”

“So do barnacles.”

“He wears leather.”

Shanks sits up. “You want leather? I’ll wear leather.”

“You’ll sweat. You’ll smell. You’ll cry and beg for talcum powder.”

He pouts. “But I’ll look cool doing it.”

You sip your tea. Smile. It’s sweet, dangerous, and full of vengeance. “Maybe Mihawk would treat me to leather that breathes.”

Shanks blinks. Once.

Then stands.

Then walks away.

You assume—foolishly—he’s gone to sulk like a rational pirate-husband.

He returns ten minutes later. Shirtless. Smirking and wearing leather pants.

They creak when he moves.

You drop your mug. It hits the deck with a clatter loud enough to make a nearby crewmate flinch.

“You absolute menace—”

“I will not be replaced,” Shanks declares, standing like he’s on stage at the final act of a very dramatic opera. Shirtless. Glowing. Wearing leather pants that creak with every self-righteous breath.

“Yonko rules. Pirate law. Also—” he lifts a hand, fingers wiggling—“I copied the marriage license again. And laminated it. So legally? You’re stuck.”

You stare at him.

“You laminated a copy?”

He beams. “Triple laminated. Waterproof. Fire-resistant. Mold-proof. You’re welcome.”

“You don’t even laminate navigation charts.”

“Those don’t keep my wife from eloping with that emotionally stable steak knife.”

You inhale. Sharp. Controlled. Murderous.

“Where is it?” you ask flatly.

He grins wider. “Hidden. Somewhere… poetic.”

You blink.

“Did you hide it in Mihawk’s hat again?”

Shanks gasps. “How did you know?”

You throw your second mug. It misses. He catches it mid-air and toasts you with it, smirking.

You blink. “You touched his hat?”

“I fear nothing but losing your approval.”

Then he steps forward, voice low, arms sliding around your waist like a sea-born threat. “Try to leave me,” he murmurs, “see what happens.”

You narrow your eyes. “What happens is I marry Mihawk and live in a minimalist coastal estate with organized spices and a bidet.”

He growls.

Then he lifts you bodily and flops you onto the nearest hammock.

“Fine,” he mutters. “I’ll clean the kitchen. I’ll wear the gloves. I’ll get conditioner. But you are not,” he kisses your neck, “leaving me,” kisses your collarbone, “for a man who dresses like a villainous steak knife.”

You lie there. Heart pounding. Pride obliterated.

“…Maybe I’ll visit Mihawk,” you whisper.

He throws you over his shoulder. “THAT’S IT. BRIDAL CAPTIVITY.”

And somewhere, far off on a misty cliffside, Mihawk sneezes. Delicately. Then glances skyward with a faint frown.

“…I feel watched.”

Meanwhile...

Benn Beckman stands at the edge of the deck like a man awaiting a tidal wave made of taxes. His cigarette burns low. His patience burns lower.

Behind him, chaos.

Lucky Roux is chasing a deckhand with a ladle. Yasopp is locked in a philosophical debate with a mop. Shanks just ran by shirtless, shouting “EMERGENCY SEDUCTION PROTOCOL,” and you? You’re in the crow’s nest, hurling annulment forms like shuriken.

Benn lights a second cigarette off the first.

“If I fake my death,” he mutters, “I could open a bookstore. Sell maps. Sleep eight hours.”

Someone screams. Something explodes.

He doesn’t flinch.

“Just need a small island. A roof. Coffee. Maybe a goat.”

Shanks appears beside him, barefoot and glitter-covered.

“Hey, Benn—guess what she called me this time?”

“No.”

“She called me a moldy towel with abs!”

“…She’s not wrong.”

Shanks claps him on the back. “You love us.”

Benn exhales smoke into his face. “I tolerate you.”

“Same thing!”

You scream from above: “IF HE’S IN MY SOAP AGAIN, I’M SETTING THE BATHROOM ON FIRE!”

Benn doesn’t blink.

He stares at the sea.

And mutters, “I’m retiring next year.”

He’s been saying that for ten.

Not even the goat he hasn’t bought believes him.

The crew still isn’t clean.

Not really. Not ever.

There’s always at least one sock drying on the helm, waving like a cursed flag of defiance. Someone used your backup toothbrush to stir coffee last week, and then returned it to its holder proudly, as if they’d done you a favor. You caught them. You labeled it. They still did it.

You’ve accepted—grudgingly, bitterly, through clenched teeth and disinfectant spray—that the galley will never meet your standards. Lucky Roux genuinely believes that boiling water counts as “sterilizing” everything from kitchen knives to his actual elbow.

You complain.

Loudly. Daily. Systematically.

And yet...

You’re still here.

Somehow, through divine punishment or karmic slapstick, the mop-based marriage still stands.

Shanks calls it “our sacred union of rum and questionable decisions.” You call it “a bureaucratic nightmare soaked in liquor and regret.”

Because the truth is…

You didn’t mean to marry him.

Not really.

You were drunk. He was very charming. And you were halfway through a bottle of something called “Sealegs” when the barmaid clapped her clipboard, declared you hitched, and started sobbing tears of joy.

You did check, later, furious, sober, and wielding a quill like a weapon.

Turned out, she was a legally recognized officiant in two of the four seas.

You don’t talk about it. Not with Shanks. Not with Benn. Not even with Hongo, who tried to diagnose you with “psychosomatic marital distress” and ordered a week of bed rest while handing you tissues and a vitamin regimen.

But still… You haven’t left.

Ports have come and gone and passed like lifeboats of logic while you stayed stubbornly, irrationally on board.

You’ve stood on docks, hand on your satchel, spine straight, fully prepared to walk away.

And yet, you’re still on this damn ship. You stopped trying to escape two ports ago.

You still make the tea just the way the crew likes it. You still correct the maps when someone confuses “northwest” with “nah-weast.” You still spray people with disinfectant in the middle of a conversation.

And when they dodge? They laugh.

When Shanks calls you love, you roll your eyes, but you don’t correct him.

When Benn casually asks what port you’ll disembark at next, you smirk and say, “The cleanest one.” You never pack.

You’re not happy about the wedding. Not really. Not in a traditional, bouquet-tossing, fond-memory kind of way.

You did not want to wake up married to a barefoot Yonko with sea salt in his hair and a grin that could undo years of trauma.

But the truth is...

The ship’s not so bad.

There’s laughter. There’s chaos. There’s precisely zero personal boundaries, and you’ve caught two grown men trying to sanitize a cannon with mouthwash, but there’s also... something warm beneath the grime.

There are good stories. Bad hygiene.

And, unfortunately, fun.

You’ll never admit it. Not out loud. You’d rather mop the entire sea.

But when the crew yells “Welcome home!” every time you step back on deck, when you find your favorite tea restocked, or a new notebook tucked in your drawer, or your ring quietly polished and left beside your pillow like a promise…

You don’t say anything.

You just mutter, “Still disgusting,” and make damn sure they wash their hands before dinner.

You’re not happy. Not really.

But you’re also not leaving.

Because love, apparently, is a Yonko. One who cleans for you.

It’s not flowers. It’s not poetry. It’s certainly not common sense.

Love is you, standing in the corridor of a ship that smells like old rum and new regret, hands on your hips, glaring with holy fury at the man who ruined your life by accidentally making it bearable.

Shanks leans in the doorway of his cabin, shirt unbuttoned just enough to be suspicious, sleeves rolled like he’s ready to do either housework or heresy. His grin should be classified as a maritime threat. His voice is a felony all by itself.

“Wanna see my cabin?”

You blink.

You smile. It’s not a kind smile. It’s the kind of smile pirates whisper about in cautionary tales.

Then you turn, take two purposeful steps to the storage closet, and return with a bucket, a mop, and the cold steel of intent.

“Absolutely,” you purr, hefting the mop like a weapon forged in bleach and personal boundaries. “I can’t wait to disinfect the sins out of it.”

Shanks pauses.

Winks.

“You’re really into foreplay, huh?”

You toss him a pair of gloves. Not pink. Industrial black. The gloves of someone who has seen things. Survived them. Labeled them.

“Put these on,” you say sweetly, “before I throw you into the bilge.”

He catches them easily. Grinning. Hopeless. Gleaming with that same rogue stupidity you married into without your knowledge.

He’ll follow you in. Of course, he will. He’d follow you into the sea if you told him lemon-scented miracles were waiting on the ocean floor.

Because love, in this godforsaken floating germ colony, isn’t candlelight or roses.

It’s bleach.

It’s threat-based romance.

It’s shouting “WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE TOUCHING ME” in front of the entire crew and meaning it.

It’s you, him, and a bucket full of industrial-strength disinfectant.

That’s your holy trinity.

And damn it…

You wouldn’t have it any other way. (Not that you’ll ever say it out loud.)

Regret is waking up in his cabin.

Naked. Warm. Annoyingly well-rested. Shockingly clean.

The sheets smell like soap and danger. Like someone finally took your rage-stained cleaning schedule and whispered romance into it.

The air is quiet. Too quiet. And the smugness radiating off the man beside you is so thick it might even qualify as fog.

You open your eyes slowly.

And there he is.

Shanks.

Single arm thrown across your waist. One leg tangled possessively with yours, like you’re driftwood and he’s the tide. His red hair is a disaster across the pillow, the kind of beautiful chaos only someone like him could turn into charm. His mouth curves in his sleep like he’s dreaming of winning an argument he never even entered.

Like he knows.

You stare at the ceiling.

You want to scream. Or dive headfirst out the porthole. Or travel back in time and slap yourself the exact moment you said: “Fine. Show me the cabin. But I swear to God, if it smells like feet—”

But it didn’t.

Because the bastard cleaned it.

Deep cleaned. Marine-standard, you-standard, divine-level cleaned. The walls were scrubbed. The floors were swept. The sheets were new. The air smelled like lemon oil and repentance. The candles weren’t even crooked. There were shelves. Organized shelves.

And the mop you’d left behind as a threat was still in the corner, polished. Standing upright. Respected.

And then he leaned in, maddeningly close, voice soft with triumph, and whispered:

“See, sweetheart? All clean. Now there’s nothing between us.”

You blame the soap. The lighting. The fact that he was wearing shoes and didn’t track in a single grain of sand. You blame the fact that, God help you, you noticed his hands were washed correctly.

You didn’t mean to sleep with him.

You were supposed to win.

And yet, here you are.

Naked. In his bed. Again. In a marriage you didn’t agree to, beside a mop you’ve grown emotionally attached to, and lying next to a Yonko who now knows he can seduce you with lemon-scented order and a lint-free throw blanket.

Regret is real.

So is the slow, maddening smile still curled on his face.

You grab the nearest pillow and shove it over his face, not with murderous intent, but just enough pressure to remind him that you are choosing violence today, but in a soft, therapeutic, married kind of way.

He laughs beneath it. Muffled. Smug. Completely unfazed. Like this is a morning routine now.

“Good morning to my favorite wife,” he says, voice distorted by cotton and cheek.

You hiss like a vampire caught in direct sunlight, clutching the sheet like it wronged you. “I’m your only wife.”

“Mmhmm,” he agrees, utterly unrepentant. “That’s what makes you the favorite.”

You press the pillow down harder.

He snorts.

Then, with the slow, luxurious confidence of a cat who’s claimed the warmest spot on the bed and the owner’s affection, he stretches under the covers, arms above his head, toes pointed, torso bare, grin criminal.

“Turns out,” he drawls, blinking up at you with those lazy, sea-glass eyes, “cleanliness is next to godliness.”

You stare at him.

The mop was still respectfully standing in the corner.

At the sparkling shelf of neatly folded towels behind his shoulder.

At the man who deep-cleaned a pirate cabin just to impress you and then had the audacity to be hot about it.

You throw the pillow off him with a groan and flop onto your back beside him. “I hate you.”

“You love me,” he says, rolling onto his side.

“I hate that you’re right,” you grumble, glaring at the ceiling.

He leans in and kisses your temple, obnoxiously gentle. “Which part?”

You shove your foot into his thigh.