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2/2: Mihawk x Reader Length: 13k+ Rating: 18+, Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence (Eventually), Psychic Invasions of Privacy, Obsessive Tendencies, Emotional Dysfunction Played for Humor and Angst, Questionable Consent (Mental Realm), Long-Term Ghosting, Suggestive Themes, Unsolicited Sword Metaphors, Language, Mentions of Hormonal Meltdowns and Crayon Consumption

You locked him out. You tried silence, distance, and deflection. He made your mind his battlefield—and now he’s here, in your life, in your space. What started as a telepathic draw ends in the worst realization: you may like mean swordsmen.

PART ONE

For @ari20002

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-X-The Cold War-X-

After Mihawk’s latest display of cold detachment, you did the only sensible thing. You threw him into what you privately referred to as the restricted brain section, including the spraybottle of shame to spritz when he hisses. Bad Mister Sea Ghost, bad. 

No more shared thoughts. No glimpses. No shadowy echo of his presence brushing your mind like an unwanted breeze.

“You were always foolish. But this is beneath even you.” He said, irritated.

You locked the door. Tight. Enough that he’d feel it. No trust. Just two emotionally constipated soulmates, broadcasting silent contempt across the link like spies behind mirrored glass. Watching. Waiting. Withdrawing.

Because you didn’t trust him.

How could you?

He’d been there. Listening for years. Saying nothing. Not even a name. No warning. No comfort. Just static in your head and silence when you cried. A phantom who judged you from afar, unseen and unkind.

And now he expected what? Gratitude? Forgiveness? Recognition?

No.

The bond clicked shut with a psychic finality that made even him flinch.

Across the sea, Mihawk stood slowly. Cape rustling. Wine forgotten. His gaze sharpened. His aura stirred. A blade, barely unsheathed.

Years of being watched. Of wondering if you were imagining things. Of feeling shame leak through the bond whenever your feelings swelled too loudly. Of hearing breathy, judgmental silence during moments meant to be private.

And he’d let you suffer in silence anyway.

“You ignored me,” you muttered aloud to no one. “Mocked me. Haunt me like some snide, invisible art critic. And now I find out you’ve been sailing around under a title that commands kings, and you couldn’t say, ‘Hey, by the way, might be relevant’?”

He said nothing.

Which was nothing new.

The same man who bore your panic, your heartbreak, your telepathic accident during one particularly hormonal summer, without a single comment or sliver of mercy.

You ghost him.

No more cats in boots.

Cold. Clean. Clinical. Sometimes the bond pulsed faintly like a memory trying to crawl back into your bed. Like a cat scratching at the door it once ignored.

You didn’t open it.

Cold War: Phase 1 — Radio Silence

You mute the bond.

You imagine draping a velvet curtain over it, thick and dark, like the kind that blocks out both daylight and regret. You meditate. You burn sage. You flip off the universe and whisper,

“No thoughts. No spectral swordsmen. Not today, you petty poltergeist.”

And then… nothing. Mihawk says nothing. No snide “you’re flustered” remarks. No ghostly eye-rolls over your posture. No midnight sighs about your tragic wine pairings. Not even a psychic scoff.

Silence.

Flat. Undisturbed.

You blink. Think, Huh.

Maybe you broke him. Maybe he’s mad, sitting in his imaginary gothic man-cave with a half-drunk goblet and a tragic internal monologue. Maybe he’s stewing. Brooding. Brooding harder than usual.

You feel smug.

No, you are smug.

You lean back in your chair like a villain who just pushed the self-destruct button.

He’s embarrassed, you tell yourself.

That’s what he gets for tossing unsolicited smut through a sacred soul bond like it’s psychic fan mail.

Cold War: Phase 2 — You Begin to do Self-Therapy (Stupidly)

You didn’t tell him what you were doing. Of course not.

You had stopped confiding in the voice years ago, after it ignored your pain, your fear, your grief, with all the warmth of wind passing through stone. You used to think it was shy. You used to believe in fate.

You don’t anymore.

Now you believe in action. In boundaries. In silence as survival.

Unfortunately, action isn’t always enough. Not when you aren’t on your guard.

You were alone in your attic room, trying to journal about composting, healing, or how you positively do not need his validation. And then it happened.

Suddenly, you were not journaling.

You were somewhere else entirely, watching your own body writhe against a stone wall under the flicker of candlelight. His mouth was on yours. His voice spoke into you like a secret being claimed. His hands moved with the weight of practice and sin, pinning your hips like he had been planning it for years.

Your brain stopped. Blank.

Your hands trembled.

Your soul immediately began filing restraining orders in four languages.

You slapped your quill down and stared up at the ceiling with all the righteous fury of a woman who had just been psychically mugged.

“Are you insane?” you shouted. “I was eating grapes. You are a walking restraining order in lace cuffs with attitude problems.”

He said nothing.

Not even a twitch.

You scowled harder.

“And if you are so interested, why don’t you ever show up? Huh? Why don’t you come out of your creepy mind castle and say it to my face?”

You slammed your mug onto the windowsill.

“I live near the sea and I’m not scared of you!”

You were mortified. Furious. Desperately trying to shake him from your mind. You had already tried everything. Cold showers. Tax math. Mentally reenacting the worst job interview of your life. You had imagined falling down stairs and breaking your ankle just to keep him out. Nothing worked.

“I am not flattered,” you whispered another night, pacing your floor like a woman possessed. “I am horrified.”

You pointed to the ceiling as if the stars would carry your rage.

“I should be allowed to bathe without my soulmate turning it into psychological warfare.”

You threw your arms wide in defeat.

“And I am still finding sand in my boots. Stupid fine-grain sand.”

You didn’t notice it at first.

That detail.

Stupid sand.

You hadn’t been to the beach in weeks. The nearest road was citystone and grit, not coastal. But the sand in your boots was pale and fine, the kind that stuck to leather and refused to leave. The kind from a quiet cove, not a muddy shore.

You were angry all over again. It had been nineteen days of silence, and he still had not apologized. Not for haunting your bond. Not for sending you an unsolicited mental novella about what your thighs would look like draped over his lap.

So you did what you always did when the storm inside became too loud.

You talked to yourself.

“This rain smells like rotting pears,” you muttered, throwing your cloak over the chair. “I bet that smug bastard has never even seen a bantam pear tree. Let alone prune one.”

You kicked your boots off by the fire and added with a growl, “At least it’s quiet here. Not like that tavern in Highledge. Ugh. Never again. Who puts lavender in beer?”

And just like that, without meaning to, you gave him everything he needed.

-X-The Slip Up-X-

Back in Mihawk’s Mind Palace™

He’s on a ship. Alone. Reading quietly. You may be spiraling. 

Mihawk is calculating.

You have not spoken to him directly since The Incident: Otherwise known as the unsolicited mental rendering of you pressed to stone, moaning his name like a prayer no one should have heard.

You never responded.

You built a wall. He felt it.

But you are not very good at closing the bond.

You constructed your barricade with fury, but he found the flaw in your architecture and slipped through like smoke with vertebrae. The kind that winds down the spine and lingers.

His Observation Haki is not the gentle kind. Not the polite knock at the door. It is the blade already pressed under the chin, invisible and certain, with no sound and no warning. It is the kind that stops grown warriors mid-breath.

It is also the kind that follows. A lighthouse in a storm. He can always get a general read. He just needs particulars.

Then you say the sand thing.

And he freezes.

His eyes narrow over the edge of the book. Slowly, carefully, he folds the page’s corner without looking. He sets the book aside and speaks into the empty deck with crisp precision.

“Interesting.”

He stands.

Adjusts the sail. Shifts the rudder.

Course change. South coast. Narrow inlet. Pale sand. Not volcanic.

He passes another ship on the water, cutting through fog like the ghost of a warship. The sailors panic. One drops the spyglass.

Mihawk simply calls out, calm as ever.

“Have you passed a fishing inlet with white cliffs? Shallow tides. Less than five miles wide.”

The helmsman, shaking, stammers, “Sir, that’s a sixty-mile range—”

“Forty-seven.”

Because Mihawk does not guess.

He calculates.

Specific Clues You Gave Without Realizing:

"Sand in my boots" — fine pale inlet sand.

"The wind tastes like seaweed and regret today" — there is a dried kelp processing village nearby, population 112.

"Why does the bakery lady hum sea shanties?" — cross-referenced as a coastal sailor tradition, passed down matrilineally. Confirmed.

Later, in his private study aboard the ship, he sits in silence with a map stretched across the table. A celestial globe rests beside it. Several ledgers lie open, annotated in his steady hand like assassination briefs. A quill is tucked behind his ear. The sword rests within reach.

His fingers trace the coastline, eyes sharp and still.

“Rotting pears,” he murmurs.

He flips open his weather log. Of course, he keeps one.

“Autumn. Inland. Humidity above sixty percent. Orchard decline within a twenty-kilometer radius. South-facing winds.”

He drags his finger west.

“Lavender beer,” he says next, flipping through an annotated book of regional trades. “Only brewed in one village east of Highledge. Elevation four hundred thirty-two feet. Known for migratory seabirds with yellow bellies.”

And the final detail?

You said ‘hush’. Angry librarian style.

Not just as a word, but as a wish. As something sacred. You said it like someone who used to live above a tavern, who knows what it means to pray for stillness. Like someone who had once been surrounded by shouting drunks and now guards silence like treasure.

There are only three libraries in the region.

And you are likely hiding in the smallest one.

He pins the map.

Target acquired.

Mihawk does not need a name.

He does not need a face.

He has your tone of voice. He has your commentary on rotting pears and lavender beer, your offhanded mutter about sand, and the way you said at least it’s quiet here with the hollow conviction of someone who hasn’t felt happy in weeks.

He triangulates.

Bad beer. Strange humidity. Seabird patterns. Regional orchard decay. Subpar shanties. Your voice.

And, frankly, there are not that many civilized places in your backwater archipelago.

-X-Home Invasion-X-

It starts with the bell.

A soft chime from the front door. Faint. Harmless. The kind of sound that barely registers over the rustle of old pages and the soft ticking of the clock above the desk.

You hardly notice it.

People come and go. Sometimes the baker drops off her borrowed romance novels. Sometimes a fisherman comes in to check the tide tables, pretending not to read poetry. Sometimes you hear that bell, and it means nothing at all.

You don’t feel anything. Not at first.

No shift in the bond. No psychic ripple. No warning.

Just silence.

You keep shelving, fingers tracing worn spines and titles faded by time. You think about soup. About whether it might rain. About nothing in particular.

Then you hear a chair scrape.

Not loudly. Just enough to register. A single wooden leg dragged slightly along stone, too careful to be clumsy.

You freeze.

The library is not extensive. You would have heard footsteps. You would have heard someone say hello. You should have felt something.

But you didn’t.

Your heart begins to pound, sharp and uncertain.

You inch forward. Peer through the gap between shelves.

And you see him.

Sitting in your chair at the front table. Like he has always belonged there.

A long black coat settles around him like a shadow draped in fabric, tailored not for comfort, but for quiet command. It flows with his movements, whispering with each shift like it also has secrets to keep. His posture is elegant, yet unbothered, as if he’s grown used to being the most dangerous man in any room and no longer finds the need to announce it.

Mid-thirties, maybe. He feels ageless in the way of cathedral stone, weathered not by time, but by purpose. His skin is pale beneath the subtle gleam of candlelight, sharp angles and sharper silence carved into his face like a statue chiseled by intent.

His eyes—gold, cold, impossibly dark—cut through the stillness like twin blades honed on solitude. They do not flicker. They see.

At his chest, a golden cross glints beneath the open edge of his coat, not for piety, but for precision. 

Behind him leans his sword-girlfriend, whom you're pretty sure he named, like a beloved body-pillow. Tall as a grave marker. Silent. Familiar. Like something that has killed and remembers it. It rests not because it is tired, but because it will certainly be needed again.

And he does not draw it, because he does not have to.

He is the threat. The promise. The punctuation at the end of fate.

In his lap rests a book.

Your book.

The one you had annotated last week. The one with your notes in the margins, your thoughts scribbled in the corners, your dried flower marking the chapter you hadn’t finished yet.

Mihawk turns a page with careful precision.

“Are you going to run?” He says, calm and as real as the voice in your head. “Because I’m not above chasing you through five more provinces.”

You freeze like an ant before a magnifying glass.

He should not be here.

He should not be real.

You did everything right. You silenced the bond. You buried your thoughts beneath the pages of composting manuals and the weight of sleep deprivation. You filled your head with rain, receipts, and bitterness.

But he is here anyway.

Your feet move before you think.

You step back. Bump the edge of a shelf. Books shift, one nearly falling.

His eyes rise.

Yellow. Cold. Certain.

They find you instantly.

There is no surprise on his face. No hesitation. Only confirmation.

As if this moment had already happened for him. As if he had been expecting you to appear in the gap between shelves and run.

You turn.

You don’t remember making the decision. You don’t remember grabbing your coat, the key, or even your breath.

You just run.

Past the biographies. Past the tea kettle on the counter. Out the back door and into the alley, boots slapping against the wet stone.

You bolt out of the library, boots slapping wet stone, breath ragged in the twilight air.

You duck alleys. Vault walls. Switch cloaks.

Your heartbeat is a war drum.

But his presence is everywhere.

Not in sight.

Not in step.

But above you. Around you. Inside you.

“Faster,” he murmurs across the tether, smooth and amused. “I decided to give you a five-minute head start. Even after all the sailing I did.”

You don’t scream.

You snarl.

“Five minutes?! This is a death run! I’m being hunted!”

“Correct,” he replies. “And I’m finally enjoying myself.” His voice is calm and distant. Sliding through the cracks in your mind like a dagger into flesh.

You stop breathing.

Not because you’re afraid (but yes, you are) but because he sounds amused.

You are outmatched in every conceivable manner.

But you don’t stop. Down the narrow hill trail, boots grinding against loose shale, lungs burning, your cloak snagging on branches.

The crows. The feeling in your spine. The pressure. Even without hearing anyone behind you, you can feel the way stalks towards you.

Somehow, everywhere. 

Your blood sings run, run, run…

Then it stops.

Because he’s there.

Just ahead.

Still, already waiting. He tilts his head, barely, eyes shockingly bright against the sharp angles of his handsome face. Black coat. Wide-brim hat. A sword that hums like it remembers every death it ever delivered.

“You led me on quite a pilgrimage. It was rude.” He drawls, casually, “But not unexpected.”

You turn to run the opposite way, into the forest.

He raises a hand.

You freeze.

Not because you want to obey.

But suddenly, the ground feels like it might crack under you. Something hits you not like a wave, but a precision strike, just enough to choke your instincts and send every cell in your body whispering apex predator.

Mihawk walks toward you slowly.

He’s measured and balanced. A perfect weapon, not even touching his sword. But he closes the final distance in one step. His hand brushes your chin, bare, careful, and cold.

Like fog and like dread.

Like something your blood knew before your brain caught up.

And that face. Those golden eyes.

“You are Mihawk.”

Your voice cracks mid-syllable.

He gives a little sigh, rolling his shoulders like this conversation is mildly inconvenient.

“Unfortunately.”

You take a step back, and he watches it like a man indulging prey.

“That wasn’t a joke. That’s you. That’s your bounty. You’re the warlord.”

He lifts an eyebrow.

“Bureaucracy is tedious.”

“You’re Dracule Mihawk.”

“Please don’t say my full name like it’s a murder spell.” He says drily. 

“You’ve been in my head for over fifteen years—”

“I’m aware. Believe me.”

You’re spiraling. Your hands are shaking. Your voice is rising.

One step. Two.

Then crouches before you, balanced and quiet.

“But now you’ve seen me. And you can’t unsee it. And your entire town just witnessed your meltdown, and will soon be letting the local marine office know I’m here, and soon they’ll realize why.”

He rests one hand on the hilt of his blade, more relaxed than threatening.

But his gaze?

It could pin a god.

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out.

And Mihawk—former Warlord of the Sea, silent psychic menace, walking weapon of dry wit and existential dread—smiles ever so slightly.

“That’s the first time you’ve shut up in seventeen years.”

You’re not having a mental breakdown. You’re having a Mihawk. You’re a Dream. A Screaming, Flailing, Cursed Dream.

“What the hell do you want?!”

You stop. Breathing hard. Cheeks flushed.

He stands to his full height, letting his shadow fall over you. Watching you. Like he’s at the opera. With wine.

“What I want,” he says mildly, “is for you to keep talking. It’s better than theater.”

You sputter. “This isn’t funny!”

“You are hysterical.”

“I’m losing my mind!”

“Exactly.” He gestures vaguely, like you’re a fine painting. “It’s riveting.”

He laughs aloud, which is more disarming than his silence. At one point, you scream into your arm. He has the audacity to chuckle. It’s not even mean. Just… entertained. Like you’re the first bright thing he’s seen in years.

“I’m not well,” you mutter, collapsing into a seat on a flat stone. “I’m having a breakdown.”

“Yes,” he agrees, sitting beside you like you invited him. “But you’re lovely when you panic.”

You glare at him. “I’m going to kill you.”

He sips imaginary wine.

“The attempt would be adorable.” 

The longer you spiral, the calmer he gets. It’s as if your rage, your disbelief, your disaster meltdown, all confirm something for him: That you are real. That you have teeth. That you are exactly as he knows you: chaotic, clever, and intolerable in the most captivating way.

“You are a dream,” he murmurs. “A very loud, mildly violent, deeply caffeinated dream. With opinions.”

You choke. “You’re mocking me.”

“I’m enjoying you.”

“You didn’t even like me. You just came here to terrorize me for those puss in boot thoughts.”

“Perhaps.”

He turns to you, eyes gleaming like obsidian and wine.

“But I have waited years and watched you sabotage yourself. Watched you grow teeth. And now you’re here.” He leans in slightly. “So I’m going to watch you unravel. In person. Just for a while. In person, just to be sure of what I want.”

Yes. Perfect. 

You’ve just finished your full-fledged meltdown. Your heart’s still thundering, you’re covered in mud, your cloak’s ripped on a bramble, and your legs are shaking. The reality of Mihawk is too much: Warlord. Soulmate. Closet telepath. Absolute menace.

You point at him, still breathless.

“Are you going to kill me?”

He doesn’t hesitate.

“It would be easier.”

Then, you yelp.

Because this man, this walking cathedral of judgment and precision, this former Warlord of the Sea, grabs you like a sack of flour and flings you over his shoulder as if it's go time.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“Solving a logistical issue. You’re loud. And prone to running.” He snorts.

“I WILL BITE YOU!”

“You’ve said that before. It was ineffective.”

“PUT ME DOWN!”

“Eventually.”

-X- CAUGHT -X-

He walks back to the village with you slung over his shoulder like an unwilling parcel.

You scream the whole ride. You hurl an apple at his head. You kick. You curse. You make wild, flailing attempts to wriggle free. At one point, you try to leap off his shoulder with all the conviction of a martyr diving into the sea.

He catches you by the back of your shirt with two fingers. Effortless. Like a disappointed cat dad.

By the time he reaches the edge of the cobbled lane and turns down the narrow alley that leads to your rented lodging, you’ve cycled through all five stages of soulmate grief and are hovering somewhere between fake-your-own-death and start a new life in a barrel.

He doesn’t knock.

He opens the door with his hip, balanced and fluid, utterly unbothered. His other hand is still occupied with you.

Your sanctuary greets you with the scent of bergamot and betrayal.

It was yours.

The modest one-room above a sleepy bookstore. The kind of place with creaky floors, moth-soft curtains, and a single small drawer where you kept your most sacred things: a handful of old letters, a bundle of dried sea lavender, and the last remaining shreds of your dignity.

He sets you down. Not because you asked. Not because you fought. Simply because, at this point, where would you go? The entire village saw him carrying you in like an unapologetic kidnapper. Only one brave old woman dared to ask what was going on, and instead of Mihawk’s boot, she received a curt, almost polite answer.

“Soulmate business.”

Now your drawers are open. Inside and out. The town knows your business, and Mihawk knows where your journal is.

The sea lavender has been placed in a glass.

And the world's greatest swordsman is lighting a candle at your desk with the kind of ease that suggests ownership, like he has always been here. Like this room has been waiting for him to arrive and fill the silence with something heavier.

You stand frozen in the doorway, the frame barely brushing your shoulders. You do not bother to close the door behind you.

Shock has calcified into fury, a quiet, gnawing pressure in the back of your jaw.

Your cloak is torn from the chase. Your boots were caked with mud. When you tried to enter, he gave you a judgmental look fit for a grandmother.

All while he wears that stupid open jacket like he just stepped out of a cursed oil painting that drinks moonlight and never fades.

Your head aches. Not from injury. But from the migraine that is the growing, irreversible knowledge that your lifelong psychic squatter is Dracule Mihawk.

The greatest swordsman alive. The Warlord. The myth. The recluse rumored to live in a fortress surrounded by sword-wielding monkeys and unspeakable solitude. And he is here.

Lounging in your rented room like it’s a war camp and you are the next siege. His presence fills the space. Thick as smoke. Rich. Heavy. Unwelcome.

And impossibly smug. And also wearing boots, just like your little Puss in Boots stories, but that’s a redundant point.

“Are you insane?” you manage, your voice hoarse and furious, barely more than a whisper.

He exhales through his nose. Calm. Slow. Although your question may seem uninteresting, it did raise a point.

“No.”

“You broke into my room.”

“It wasn’t locked well.”

“You unpacked.”

“You were behind schedule. I assumed you’d flee again.”

He gestures toward the teacup on the table, your teacup. The chipped blue one with the ink stain from a letter that bled too much when you cried on it.

“Sit,” he says, not even looking at you.

You do not sit.

You march forward, planting your hands on the table with the full weight of your fury. The candle flame between you sputters slightly.

“You do not get to invade my room like it’s your ship,” you say. Calm. Clear. A final warning, delivered with restraint you do not feel.

Candlelight carves his cheekbones into cruelty, throws shadows like war paint beneath his eyes. His gaze finds you slowly, deliberately, as if the moment must be earned. And when he speaks, it is quiet. Flat.

“You’ve been haunting my skull since you were eight. Like I planned to have my soul grafted to a little brat who talked to herself and recited poetry about cosmic romance while I was committing high-seas murder. Consider us even.”

Before your body can react (before your soul can scream no, no, no), he grabs you by the waist and tosses you over his shoulder like yesterday’s moral compass.

Again.

You yelp. Thrash. Kick him in the ribs. He does not flinch.

“You kidnapped me!”

“You weren’t moving fast enough.”

“This is illegal!”

“So are most of my hobbies.”

He sets you down. In the only chair in the room. The chair he has decided is yours, just as he has apparently decided the bed is now his.

He lies back on it like a man returning to his estate. One arm was folded behind his head. One boot still on. A soft sigh leaves him, the sound of a tyrant pretending to be tired.

Your jaw drops. Your left eye twitches.

“You’re in my bed.”

“That’s incorrect,” he says without blinking. “This bed now belongs to the better swordsman. And I have seniority.”

You lunge for your tea. Desperately. You sip. You sputter. You spit.

“What—what is this—salt?!”

He does not look at you.

“You didn’t sit when I told you to. That was your cue.”

“You swapped my sugar with salt?!”

“I had time.”

You stare. Fists clenched. Mouth still tasting betrayal. He lies there like a god who has always owned the sky. Calm. Certain. Disgustingly composed.

“You’ve gone mad,” you whisper.

“Undoubtedly,” he says, almost cheerfully. “But you’re the one who named your potted plant Destiny and wrote diary entries to the void. So let’s not pretend this is a one-sided descent.”

You throw a pillow at him. He doesn’t flinch.

You throw the second. It lands square on his chest.

He places his hand over it like a man shielding a sacred heirloom.

“Thank you. I was cold.”

You storm to the window.

He watches you go, and for once, there’s no smugness behind his gaze. Just something unreadable. Something weightier than you want to name.

The street below is quiet. Sunlight crawls across the stone in fractured reflections, molten and slow. The scent of candle wax and lavender still lingers behind you.

You don’t turn around.

He rises slowly. Deliberate. Not threatening, but absolute. His shadow stretches across the floorboards like a curtain pulled across fate.

“You articulate your words differently when you’re nervous,” he murmurs behind you. “I like it.”

You spin, fists raised, heart lurching.

But he’d already moved past you and returned to your desk. Already examining your ruined tea as if it were vintage wine, not seasoned betrayal.

You hate him.

You hate that he’s in your space. You hate the way he fits into it like he’s always belonged there. You hate the bond, the silence, the truth of it blooming in your chest like a bruise that won’t fade.

And worst of all, you hate that he’s right about everything.

You’re barefoot. Furious. Unmoored.

You’re still not convinced this isn’t a hallucination brought on by mild dehydration and chronic heartbreak.

“You can’t truthfully be the Mihawk,” you say again, one last frantic grasp for reality.

He doesn’t blink. “You’re not particularly observant.”

“You look like you’re wearing eyeliner.”

“Precision is a lifestyle.”

“That was my grandmother’s.” You point, wild and accusatory, at the chipped teacup now resting like a crown on your nightstand.

“Then she had taste.” He still hasn’t raised his voice. Not once.

And that’s the worst part.

Not the abduction. Not the psychic freeloading. Not even the way he caught you bridal-style when you tried to leap from a second-story window ten minutes ago.

No.

What’s killing you is that he is perfectly calm. Smooth as an untouched pond, like he expected every detail of this interaction and made contingencies for every variable. 

The switch from him not giving a damn to suddenly caring is jarring and unfair.

“You didn’t even tell me of your existence for ten years.” You say softly.

He looks at you now. Fully. Quietly. No smirk. No mask.

“Because you weren’t ready to know it,” he says evenly. “I let you believe what you wanted.”

And somehow, impossibly, that makes it worse.

You want to punch him in the neck. Or cry. Possibly both.

Instead, you jab a trembling finger at the shelf where your tunics are now neatly folded in unnatural, militarized stacks.

“You packed.”

“You don’t fold your tunics correctly. You create unnecessary creases.”

“That’s not your job.”

“Everything about you is now my job,” he says, so flatly it feels like law. “I didn’t ask for it. But here we are.”

You slam your hand on the table. It makes a dull sound, and nothing changes. 

“So what now? You’re… staying here?”

“I stay wherever I choose. Right now, that’s next to you. Or on top of you. Depending on how the afternoon goes.”

You shriek and launch the closest object (your book of poetry, no less) at his smug, stupid face.

He catches it one-handed. Doesn’t blink.

“Predictable,” he says, thumbing through the pages. “But charming.”

You bolt for the door. You reach for your boots. You freeze.

Because Mihawk, in a feat of quiet, deliberate sabotage, has removed the laces from your boots and braided them into one long decorative cord, now tied neatly around your window curtain.

You stare at it.

Then at him.

He meets your eyes calmly, like this is a normal thing to do in someone else’s home.

“If you can’t walk,” he says, “you can’t run.”

Your entire body turns to wildfire.

You whirl on him, fists clenched, voice shaking. “Why now? After all this time? Why show up now?”

He leans back again, folding his arms behind his head. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.

And for the first time all night, he gives you the truth.

“Because I thought you were a child. Then a fool. Then a fantasy.”

He pauses. Then he stands.

The shift is subtle, but the room feels it. The air folds in on itself. Your lungs forget how to breathe. His presence doesn’t just occupy space; it claims it like gravity, remembering how to pull.

“And now, you’re a problem.” His eyes lock on yours, gold and unblinking, like judgment cast in metal. “And I make it a point to solve problems before someone else does.”

And he does solve his problem—you—by staying.

He makes himself at home with the quiet efficiency of a siege. The kind where the gates don’t fall with fire, but with inevitability.

You tell him you have to go back to work. 

That you have a schedule. A duty. A life.

He nods once and returns your shoelaces like a concession in some bizarre diplomatic negotiation. He doesn't stop you. Doesn't follow. Doesn’t smirk.

Because he knows.

He knows the worst punishment he could inflict is letting you walk out that door and pretend the world still makes sense.

The library is packed.

Too packed.

Patrons line the aisles, whispering furiously behind the spines of borrowed cookbooks. Someone from the apothecary section stares so hard that they knock over a display of herbal remedies. A child points at your neck and yells something about fate marks.

And when you reach the front desk, your assistant, God bless her, leans in and murmurs, with the wide-eyed panic of someone who’s just seen death leave a tip, “We called the local marines. They said if it’s soulmate business, we should… stay out of it.”

You nod. You smile. 

You attempt to shelve a book.

You drop it.

Because none of this is normal. Because he stayed.

Because the worst part isn’t the chaos or the attention or the whispered rumors from the herb aisle.

The worst part is that somewhere in your chest, beneath the salt and fury and migraine, something terrible is beginning to bloom.

The creeping, traitorous understanding that he was right. Things wouldn’t be the same now that people knew.

You make it through the rest of your shift at the archive in a state of functional dissociation. Your fingertips are ink-stained. Your bag is heavy with reports no one reads. Your patience has been chewed through by gossiping patrons, ancient shelving systems, and one particularly nosy old man who asked if your “scary husband” would be joining you for lunch tomorrow.

You trudge home. Up creaking stairs, down a narrow hall. You open the door.

And there he is.

Sitting in your chair like he paid rent. Long legs crossed. Boots off. His coat, your least favorite symbol of tyranny, hung neatly on your wall peg, like it belongs.

A book is open in his hands. Your book. The spine cracked to a page you know you dog-eared last winter during a nasty rainstorm.

He does not look up.

“You’re late.”

You stop.

Just inside the doorway.

The air shifts. Pulls. Tightens. Like something enormous has moved into place behind you. Like gravity has clicked. Like the game, you didn’t know you were playing, and he has just revealed the board.

Your voice scrapes out low. Dry. Almost a whisper.

“Have you just been… sitting there?”

He turns a page. Calmly. Like this is ordinary. Like your life is ordinary.

“You were delayed. And your neighbor gave me a scone.”

You blink. “She what—”

“She asked if we were fighting. I said no. She said you throw books when you’re upset, and offered me a bribe to be gentle.”

You stare at him. At your chair. At the steaming cup of tea beside him, your chipped blue one again, salt mercifully replaced by something real.

He glances up at last. Eyes like golden blade-tips.

“I’ve marked the pages you skipped,” he says. “Your annotations are inconsistent. But interesting.”

And for a second, for a single second, you forget how to breathe. Because the man who invaded your room, stole your boots, salted your tea, and dropped into your life like a guillotine.

Is reading your favorite book. In your chair. And remembering your marginalia.

It would be romantic if it weren’t horrifying.

Or maybe it’s horrifying because it is romantic.

You drop your bag. You don’t realize you’ve done it until the thud echoes like punctuation at the end of a sentence you didn’t mean to write.

He closes the book with care. No smirk. No triumph. Just quiet inevitability, the same expression one might wear when claiming a plot of land they never needed to conquer.

“You can’t still be here.”

He sets the book down. “I am.”

“This is my room.”

“It’s no longer just yours.”

You laugh: sharp, thin, brittle. It cracks halfway through and falls apart like glass. “You think this is normal?”

He finally looks at you. Gold eyes calm, flat, deeply unbothered. “No.”

“Then why—”

“Because I tolerated your presence in my head for over a decade,” he says smoothly, like this is diplomacy and not madness. “And I endured it in silence.”

He stands. Slow. Not looming, steady. 

“Now,” he says, stepping toward the counter, “you can endure mine.” He picks up the chipped mug again. Your chipped mug. Cradles it like it’s worth something.

He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t cajole. Doesn’t plead.

He just moves.

He lays his sword across the top of your bookshelf like it belongs there. The wood creaks beneath the weight of legend.

He moves his coat aside and hangs your own in its place. Hangs it neatly, like a man setting roots.

He glances at your disorganized bookshelf, the pages skewed, ink curling at the corners from nights when your hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

He sighs. Not judgmental. Not impatient. Just quiet. Like it’s going to be a long job. But one he’s already committed to.

You pace the room. Back and forth. Again. The wooden floor creaks beneath your steps, as if it's trying to warn you. The air is thick with the scent of candle wax and fresh ink; your dinner remains untouched on the counter. You can’t eat. Can’t sit. You can barely think.

“You didn’t care before,” you snap, rounding on him for the fourth time in five minutes.

Mihawk doesn’t even look up from where he’s inspecting the edge of one of your kitchen knives. He runs a cloth along it, slow and precise.

“I ignored it before,” he replies evenly.

“You ignored me.”

“Yes.”

It’s maddening. The calm. The lack of guilt. The fact that he’s polishing your knives like he’s lived here for years.

You spin toward him, sharp and breathless. “And now what? You’re going to pretend we’re bonded and play house?”

He doesn’t so much as blink. Doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t scoff.

“I don’t pretend,” he says, smooth and dismissive. “How puerile.”

It’s not a fight. It’s not romantic. It isn’t even angry.

It’s strategic.

He is strategic.

He doesn’t storm into your life; he settles into it. Like frost. Like mold. Like smoke that never really clears.

He’s already labeled your herb jars. He’s sharpened every blade in your drawer. He rearranged your library, again, this time by “moral alignment” and something called “author’s probable blood type.”

You’d asked where your favorite novel went. 

He said, “Neutral Good doesn’t belong beside Sociopathic Cowardice.”

And that was the end of the discussion.

You noticed your window wouldn’t open.

“Did you add a lock to my window?”

“You were vulnerable,” he replied without glancing up.

“To what?”

He looked at you, calm, cool, certain. “You have a face that invites trouble.”

“You are the trouble.”

He steps past you without touching you, and you freeze, not because you’re afraid, but because the air changes when he moves. He picks up your chipped mug like it belongs to him and sips as if the tea were poured for him.

“I will run away,” you say under your breath. “Again.”

“You won’t.”

And it isn’t a threat. It’s not even a dare. It’s just true.

Because you know, horrifyingly & irrevocably, you’d come back even if you did.

He moves through the room like he’s already paid rent.

He lays his sword gently across your bookshelf. He lifts your coat off the hook and hangs his in its place. He eyes your stack of unsorted journals and exhales through his nose, just once, like a man resigned to cleaning up a mess that’s already his.

Finally, finally, you can’t take it anymore. You round on him, arms shaking at your sides.

“You could just… ignore me, couldn’t you?”

Your voice cracks in the middle.

He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t raise his voice. He pours two cups of tea. He sets one in front of you.

Then, with all the finality of a blade laid flat.

“Get used to me.”

And he means it. Gods help you, he means it.

He makes you so mad that, once again, you try to run. No warning. No packing. Just boots on and gone, storming down the hillside trail behind the bookstore, into the tangled trees that lead toward the cliffs.

It’s not graceful. It’s not planned. It’s not even rational. But it feels like defiance.

At least until you misstep on loose stone and twist your ankle trying to prove a point.

Now you sit on a cold boulder halfway down the slope, your ankle pulsing with pain, your palms scraped, soaked in sweat and pride and the overwhelming desire to scream into the sky.

The woods are quiet. Until they’re not.

You don’t hear him approach, of course you don’t, but suddenly he’s there. A shadow in a black coat, stepping out from behind the trees like the forest decided to conjure your humiliation into human form.

Mihawk crouches in front of you.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t gloat. He just sets down a roll of linen bandages beside his boot and unrolls them with the same reverent care he probably gives a dying man or a dull sword.

You try to hiss through your teeth, but it comes out as more of a growl. “You followed me.”

“You limped through a ravine in pitch-dark. I followed your trail of bad decisions.”

You glare. He lifts your injured ankle with all the tenderness of a man handling priceless crystal.

“Don’t touch me.”

He tightens the bandage a little too perfectly. “Then stop hurting yourself.”

His fingers brush your calf. You flinch. It’s not the pain. It’s the heat. He’s warmer than you expected.

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’re injured. Sit still.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“Humph.”

He says it so simply. Not out of cruelty, but inevitability. Like gravity. Like time. Like the bond you tried to outpace and now can’t seem to undo.

You look away, jaw clenched, hands fisted in the fabric of your coat. The silence stretches. The bandage tightens. The pulse in your ankle steadies.

When he finishes, he doesn’t let go. Not right away.

He stays crouched. Looking up at you with that unreadable expression, all shadowed eyes and moonlight, quiet and relentless as the tide.

“You can’t keep doing this,” you whisper.

“Neither can you,” he replies.

And there, in the hush between pride and surrender, something shifted. Not in the world. In you.

You hated him. You hated him more than anything. More than the ache in your ankle. More than the sweat clinging to your back. More than the absolute certainty that he would not leave you alone.

His eyes lifted. Calm. Steady. Exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the climb. It was the kind of exhaustion that came from bearing weight for too long. From silence worn like armor. From watching the storm arrive and deciding to stand in it anyway.

The quiet between you lengthened. Not the soft, companionable kind that came from mutual understanding. This was a sharp, brittle quiet. The type that preceded wars. The kind that pressed its palm to your chest and said you were not supposed to find me.

And yet, here you are.

He reached for the bandage again, his fingers precise and movements practiced. The fabric pulled against your skin, and you flinched.

“Careful,” you snapped.

He did not pause. “Stop moving.”

“You are bruising me.”

He paused then. Not in guilt. But in resignation.

"You bruise easily," he said, voice low. "Emotionally and otherwise."

The words caught. You did not answer. Could not. Something about them had reached too deep, like a wire struck behind your ribs.

You turned your face toward the woods. The air was sharp, filled with pine and the faint salt of the sea. The leaves were still. Not even the wind moved.

And then, so quietly you almost regretted the question before it left your lips, you spoke.

“Was I that awful?”

He finished the wrap. Secured it with a final knot. Then he stood.

He looked at you from his full height, not towering, not gloating. Just standing in the fading light like he had always been part of the scenery. Like the trees had known he would come.

“You’re my cross to bear,” he said. “But it’s not a heavy one.”

There was no heat in it. No venom. Only truth, delivered without mercy.

You winced. Just slightly.

He adjusted his coat, his expression remaining unreadable.

“I didn’t want this,” he said. “You didn’t want me. We agree on that.”

His gaze shifted to the horizon. The sky was beginning to turn purple. A single star blinked through the clouds.

“But fate does not ask what we want. It simply binds.”

You bit your tongue. Pride burned hotter than your ankle now.

Still, some defiant part of you stirred.

“You could have chosen someone quiet.”

He glanced down at you. One brow arched.

“You think I deserve peace?”

“I think I deserve a thank you for not stabbing you.”

“Try it,” he replied, voice like velvet stretched over steel. “And this time, I’ll let you.”

Silence bloomed again. You seethed. He remained still.

He was impossible. Arrogant. Smug. And yet he was not leaving.

You stared at it. Then at him.

He turned without waiting for praise or thanks, the edge of his coat brushing past your knee. It was barely a whisper of fabric, but it grounded everything: your pain, your rage, your helpless awareness that no matter how hard you fought, he was already two steps ahead.

You blink.

He walked past you, slow and steady, as though the conversation had ended the moment he stood.

“Get up when you’re ready,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re not going back to that town.”

Your head snapped up. “Why not?”

“Because I burned it.”

You gaped at his back. “You did what?!”

“Metaphorically.”

A pause.

Then, muttered under his breath, too soft and too honest: “Mostly.”

When you finally returned to the village—limping, furious, bracing yourself for the fallout—you found it more or less intact. The bakery still had its crooked sign. The bookshop still had its faded awning. But the marine office? That was… different.

A clean, surgical gash ran down the front of the building. Not scorched, not smashed. Sliced. Right through the stone, like a blade had passed through butter.

“What the hell?”

You stared.

It hadn’t exploded. It had simply been cut.

And Mihawk, of course, stood next to a modest wooden cart and horse like he had personally invented civility. Most of your belongings were already stacked neatly inside, tied down with knotted ropes and folded blankets.

Your cloak. Your ink bottles. Your small, chipped tea set. He’d even remembered the potted plant named Destiny, currently tucked in with extra straw like a fragile heirloom.

You didn’t ask where the cart came from. Or how he convinced someone to lend it to him. Or if he had simply stared at a farmer until one was surrendered.

Instead, you stood very still, your bag still over one shoulder, your ankle throbbing, your heart twisting.

“I like my job,” you said, voice thin.

He looked at you but said nothing.

“I had a routine. People there were kind to me.”

Still nothing.

Your eyes burned. You bit the inside of your cheek, but the tears still came. Quiet. Frustrated. The kind you hated.

“I had stability,” you whispered. “And you—you just—”

Mihawk didn’t apologize. Of course, he didn’t.

“The marines were getting nosey,” he said, as if that somehow justified tactical destruction and the abrupt upheaval of your entire life.

Then, with the same stoic indifference he might show a misbehaving cat, he bent slightly, hooked an arm behind your knees, and lifted you off the ground.

You squawked in protest, clutching your satchel like a lifeline. “I can walk, you tyrant—”

“You limp,” he said, flat and factual. “Poorly.”

Before you could bite back a reply, he placed you directly into the cart. Right on top of a folded wool blanket, wedged between your favorite tea tin and the box where you kept old letters and loose buttons. Like you were another belonging to be loaded. Something that had always been his.

You scrambled upright, breath shallow, heart pounding. “This is abduction.”

He didn’t look at you.

He just adjusted the edge of the blanket so your legs wouldn’t chill and tucked the satchel into your lap. Then he handed you a handkerchief.

Black. Embroidered. Absurdly expensive.

You stared at it, then at him. “Are you serious?”

“You’re leaking,” he said simply. “Use it.”

You wanted to throw it at his head. You wanted to scream. Instead, your fingers curled around the fabric. It was soft and warm from his pocket.

Because goodbyes always hurt. Especially when you’re being stolen. Even when the thief carried you like something worth keeping.

-X-Emotional Turning Point-X-

Being kidnapped by the world-famous Warlord was actually quite dull.

There was no rope. No threats. Just a cart, two mismatched mugs, and the occasional sound of Mihawk's boots crunching the path ahead.

He didn’t even look like a kidnapper. Not really. More like a judgmental grim reaper in high fashion. You were the one sitting in the cart like unwanted luggage, wrapped in a blanket he’d probably folded himself, seething with the realization that you were, against your will, comfortable.

But boredom didn’t last long.

Because by the time the sun began to rise, Mihawk had already started his silent campaign—what could only be described as: Subtly, Strategically, and Downright Manipulating You Into a Relationship Without Ever Saying the Word “Date.”

He didn’t force anything. He simply appeared beside you when you went to collect water. He handed you the ladle like he’d always been there. When you glared, he only raised an eyebrow. When you returned to camp, the fire was already lit, and the teapot—your teapot—was quietly steaming.

“You packed this,” you accused, horrified.

 “We can't carelessly leave grandma behind,” he replied, without remorse.

You noticed the blanket draped over the fallen log just before you sat down. He’d placed it there too, probably with obscene precision. And now he handed you tea like this was normal. Like you weren’t supposed to be furious.

You said nothing. But you drank it.

He sat across from you. Unbothered. One leg folded, coat resting over a low branch, sword within reach but untouched.

“You’re treating me like a child,” you finally muttered.

“No,” he replied, calm as ever. “I’m stabilizing you.”

It got worse.

When you reached for your satchel, the straps had been repaired. Reinforced. When you leaned down to check your boot, the laces were already retied. Your spare journal had been alphabetized by theme.

He even fed the potted plant. The damned potted plant named Destiny.

You didn’t speak for hours. But your fingers reached for the teacup again when you thought he wasn’t looking.

And he said nothing. Did nothing. Just refilled it when you weren’t paying attention.

By the time the next dusk settled and the sky turned to lavender ash, you weren’t sure when the day had stopped being yours.

Somewhere between the tea and the silence. Somewhere after Mihawk fixed your boot laces, but before he rearranged your journal stack without asking.

His words were relentless and harsh, but his actions spoke of care.

“We should reach my ship before midday.” He said casually.

Mihawk stood to stretch, slow and languid, like a blade unsheathing itself on instinct alone. His movements were fluid, every shift of muscle deliberate, controlled, effortless in a way that made your mouth go dry. He rolled his sleeves with the casual grace of a man not preparing for battle, but for something far more intimate. Something certain.

Then he glanced toward the horizon, checking the perimeter with that same impossible stillness, as though danger itself would think twice before approaching. Not because he was tense. But because he wasn’t. Because he had survived nights darker than this one and made them kneel.

And somehow, without ever saying it, he was there.

Not looming. Not chasing. Just there.

Unshakeable.

And nothing was scarier than that.

Not the sword. Not the bond. Not the quiet.

But the fact of him. The certainty of his presence. The way he sat beside the fire, like he had always been part of the frame. Like, he would still be there tomorrow. Like somewhere between silence and salt, he had simply decided: You are mine to deal with.

He handed you a book earlier. The title was something disarmingly ironic, probably selected intentionally. You had laughed. That, too, had been part of the trap.

Later, by lantern light, you flipped through it out of boredom. And there it was. One paragraph. A line you couldn’t unread.

Emotionally distant men often create dependence through calculated absence, building intimacy by scarcity. They offer silence, then attention, absence, then relief. This rhythm becomes the hook.

You stared at the page.

Then threw the book so hard across the room that it knocked over a log.

When Mihawk’s ship came into view the next morning, tethered at the edge of the rocky dock like some gothic punchline, you almost turned around. His strange little vessel looked more like a floating coffin than a ship, dark and elegant, trimmed in metal and secrets. No crew. No name. Just wood, silence, and inevitability.

He stood near the gangplank, arms crossed, watching your approach with the patience of a man waiting for weather. Not smug. Just certain.

You reached the top step. He inclined his head slightly.

“I didn’t agree to this,” you said.

“You didn’t object either,” he replied, and stepped aside. 

Inside, the ship’s cabin was unexpectedly warm. Dim candlelight glowed in wall sconces. The furniture was minimal yet solid, made of dark oak and well-maintained. There was a desk. A long weapons rack. Two chairs. And one bed.

One long, low bed made up with immaculate hospital corners, a stack of folded blankets on the end, and a book resting open on the nightstand.

You froze.

You had been waiting for your library to receive that specific book for months.

He brushed past you without fanfare, removing his sword as he moved toward the desk. “You kick less than I expected,” he said plainly, as if the sleeping arrangements had been discussed, agreed upon, and finalized in some meeting you had apparently missed.

“Wait,” you stammered. “We’re sharing that?”

“It is the only bed.”

“You don’t have to be in it!”

He looked at you, then at the bed, then back at you. “I’ll stay on my side.”

That night, you lay flat on your back at the very edge of the mattress, tense as a trap wire. The cabin creaked with the motion of the sea. Candlelight flickered low. Mihawk didn’t so much as breathe loudly.

He lay still, arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed like he hadn’t just rearranged your entire life and claimed half your sleeping quarters without so much as a polite may I.

You didn’t sleep. You simmered. You stared at the ceiling and planned five different ways to reclaim your autonomy, your dignity, and your pillow. But when you woke, it was morning. You were covered with your cloak. Your book had been closed and moved beside the bed, a ribbon marking the page. And there was a steaming cup of tea waiting on the desk.

Not just tea. Your favorite blend. With honey. No salt this time.

He wasn’t even in the room. Gone somewhere, likely checking sails or sharpening something dangerous. You hated the quiet efficiency. The way it made you feel considered. Seen. Handled.

And it didn’t stop there.

The affection continued in the form of routines. A second cup of tea left for you beside your boots. Your laundry is done, cleaned, and folded. Herbs restocked. Your favorite ink bottle, mysteriously refilled.

He explained nothing.

You would mutter complaints under your breath. He would answer them as if you had spoken aloud. You paced when he disappeared. You stiffened when he came too close. But somehow, every day, he adjusted to the gaps you didn’t know you had.

No declarations. No confessions. Just consistency.

The courtship of a swordsman was not flowers and poems. It was calculated silence. And then, suddenly, a perfectly timed need is met.

A cleaned blade. A perfectly repaired satchel strap. An extra pillow tucked behind your back while you read.

One night, in a half-sleep daze, you turned over in bed and reached for him. Not out of longing, but habit. And he said nothing. You drew your hand back like it had burned you, face flushed with something unnamable.

You began eating the food he cooked without comment, only realizing days later that he had been adjusting the ingredients in microscopic increments to suit your tastes. 

He never gloated. Never teased. He just noted the shift. Tucked it away. Like a botanist pressing a petal between pages. Like a swordsman counting your stumbles before the final strike.

You were the flower. You were the opponent. You were the fool who fell for it without ever being asked to.

And one morning, after a night too quiet and a dream you didn’t want to admit, you woke to the sound of gentle waves and creaking wood. Your boots were by the small galley stove, cleaned and repaired, soles warm from the fire. The kettle was already on. The scent of your favorite tea curled through the cabin like a soft invasion.

You hesitated in the small galley, bare feet pressing against the worn planks. Your eyes landed on the chipped cup waiting at your usual seat. Steam curled above it like a signal. The quiet was not empty; it was considered.

Your defenses cracked in the warmth like sugar dissolving in a kettle.

“You’re conditioning me,” you whispered, half-bitter, staring at the tea.

Mihawk looked up from the book he’d been reading at the small table. He didn’t blink. He didn’t smirk. He simply closed the book with one hand, reached for the kettle with the other, and poured a second cup.

He set it beside yours. Careful. Precise.

“Good,” he said. “Then you’re learning.”

You got injured, a shallow cut during a storm docking, and Mihawk appeared at your cabin door like a bloodstained angel of judgment. He didn’t knock. He simply entered, knelt, and cleaned the wound with quiet precision. His hands were calloused. Steady.

When you were sad, he said nothing at all. He just stayed. His presence folded into the quiet like a second heartbeat, anchoring you without permission.

Eventually, you stopped calling him invasive. You stopped pushing. You started asking.

“Are you staying tonight?”

He shrugged. “Unless you object.”

You didn’t. And you began to sleep better when he was near. You hated that. You craved it anyway.

It was a slow unraveling. Subtle. Precise. He colonized your world with clean edges and silence, until one night, curled in the corner of his absurd little ship and clutching your favorite cup, you muttered under your breath,

“We’re not even dating.”

He blinked. Slowly. Like a snake preparing to strike.

“You invited me to stay.”

“You broke into my home.”

“You said the tea was comforting.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“You allowed intimacy.”

“I never—”

“You didn’t stop me.”

And in Mihawk’s warped, calculating, elegant worldview, that was consent. That was courtship. That was love.

It was terrifying. It was effective. It was him.

And when, days later, you finally snapped—when you slammed your hands down on the table and demanded an explanation, a real one, for the mess he had made of your life—he didn’t blink.

He just looked at you. Calm. Certain.

“You are mine,” he said. “You’ve always been mine. I am simply waiting for you to realize it.”

-X-The Climax-X-

You hadn’t meant to do it. Truly. You were strong. Principled. Above it all.

But living with Mihawk on a boat the size of a large coffin with sails had done something irreversible to your sanity.

His voice—his smug, infuriating, telepathic voice—had been curling through your mind like smoke for weeks. Judging. Correcting. Observing. Like a disdainful ghost with a doctorate in brooding and an unfortunate affinity for your every passing thought.

And now? Now you were one insult away from lighting the boat on fire.

The wind outside creaked the mast. Inside, the cramped cabin was too hot and lacked sufficient air circulation. Mihawk sat at the narrow table, sharpening a dagger, the sound a slow drag of steel over stone. Your cot was pressed against the wall. His bedroll was unrolled beside it, not touching, but close. Too close. Like everything on this damn ship.

“If you’re going to have fantasies,” Mihawk said aloud, slicing through the quiet, “at least make them strategic.”

You glared up from the mess of documents you had been pretending to read.

“I will end you.”

“You couldn’t end a mouse.”

“I have a knife.”

“You also once said ‘pickle philosophy is underrated’ in front of a Navy informant. Let’s not pretend competence is your lane.”

You slammed the book shut. The boat swayed. So did your self-control.

Your neck was hot. Your palms itched. The soul-bond was glowing, literally glowing, a faint heat at your spine and down your arms. You could feel him, too vividly. His presence pressed in from across the narrow room. Too solid. Too calm.

You stood, pacing the three paces the cabin allowed.

Your voice came out low and dangerous. “I swear, if you don’t shut up—”

“You’ll what?” he asked without looking up. “Take it out on me?”

You stopped. Dead still.

“You wouldn’t,” you said softly.

He set the dagger down.

“Wouldn’t what?” His voice was a slow drag of velvet. “Exploit an opportunity? Savor a moment? Drag your mind screaming into clarity?”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You’ve been denying us for too long. Your not mad. You ache.”

You clenched your fists. Heat flared under your skin, sharp and traitorous. You turned away, facing the wall like it might shield you from the bond, from him, from yourself.

But the boat was too small. The air was too thick. And you could feel Mihawk rise. Could sense the weight of him as he crossed the distance, slow and precise.

“You’re not supposed to be mine,” you muttered. “Not like this.”

“But I am.”

He was close now. You didn’t need to turn to know it. The heat of him radiated at your back, measured and quiet. You felt his hand hover near your hip, not touching. Waiting.

The silence between you wasn’t peaceful. It thrummed like a bowstring.

“You hate me,” you whispered.

“You make it difficult to enjoy peace,” he said, just behind your ear. “But I’ve never been happy at peace. I burn for your war. I’d hate the quiet far more.”

You turned then, too fast, too breathless, and he was already there. Still not touching. But close. His eyes held no arrogance. Just precision. Wanting, distilled through restraint.

Your voice broke when you asked it. “What do you want from me?”

He tilted his head. Not cruelly. Not smugly. But like he’d just been given the coordinates to a treasure no one else had dared to name.

“Everything,” he said, voice quiet as dusk. “But I’ll take what you give.”

The bond flared. Hot. Gold. Blinding.

Your breath stuttered in your chest.

And then, gods help you, came the worst decision of your entire chaotic existence.

“Then take everything,” you said, sharp and confident, like a threat you couldn’t walk back.

Silence. Not the soft kind. Not the tense kind. This silence had teeth.

He inhaled once, slowly and in control, but dangerously.

“Excuse me?” he said, like he was testing whether you were a hallucination or a particularly bold ghost.

“Five minutes,” you repeated, louder this time. “You get five goddamn minutes to do whatever it is you’ve been threatening to do with your telepathic cheekbones and your stupid voice, and then we never speak of it again.”

His eyes were fire and flint. And something older than both, primordial and fierce as the molten sun.

“You’re asking for everything?” he said, almost gently.

“I’m authorizing it. Shut up and clock in.”

The change was immediate. Tangible. The air thickened like a storm had crept into the cabin. Heat licked up your spine, under your skin, inside your lungs.

He hadn’t moved. Not even a step. But your knees buckled anyway.

And then, images.

Sounds.

Fantasies that weren’t yours and yet felt carved into your bones. You saw his hands on your hips. Felt his mouth on your neck. A phantom weight pressed your back to the wall and stole your breath. Your heartbeat punched your ribs. Sweat prickled at your collar.

Mihawk’s voice coiled through your mind, velvet and venom.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” he murmured.

Your spine arched. Your breath caught. The bond pulsed hard enough to dizzy you.

“You shouldn’t have worn that,” he added, voice dark with heat.

Your clothes, your plain, harmless clothes, suddenly felt too tight. Too revealing. Like silk spun wrong across flesh he already knew too well.

You whimpered. A shameful, wretched sound. One he’d remember forever.

“You hate this part of you,” Mihawk said with maddening calm, reading your thoughts like scripture. “But I will take you apart and forge you stronger, so you may enjoy it.”

His hand finally lifted.

Only one.

And even then, he didn’t touch. Not really. Just hovered near your throat, not even brushing skin, and you tipped your head like he had pulled it with a string.

Your mouth was dry, your body on fire. His smirk was slow. Lethal. Worshipful.

The sky stretched out above you in a velvet sprawl, dark and vast, dusted with stars that gleamed like the sharp edge of memory. The wind moved in slow, deliberate pulls across the deck, tugging gently at your hair, fluttering the edges of your coat. Somewhere below, the water sighed against the hull, steady and endless.

You had meant to win.

Instead, you were here.

Straddling him. On his captain’s chair. Chest heaving, mouth parted, pulse hammering in your throat.

Mihawk sat like a man carved from stone and ritual. His hands rested lightly on the armrests, not touching you, not even acknowledging the way your hips brushed his. His shoulders were relaxed. His posture was perfectly aligned, perfect like the swordsman he was. But his eyes told the truth.

They watched you with the kind of focus that made time slow. Cold amber, smoldering beneath the surface. He looked like a man who had waited years for this moment, and now that it was here, would not rush it.

You pressed your hands to his chest. Not to push him away. Not yet. Just to ground yourself. Your fingers curled slightly in the fabric. His coat was warm where it clung to him, layers of silk and cotton stretched over lean strength.

“You don’t get to look like that and act like this,” you said.

It came out quietly. Rough. It sounded like surrender.

The corner of his mouth twitched, the barest hint of amusement. He did not respond. He did not need to.

Your legs trembled. You hated that they did. You started to shift back, heart thudding in rebellion, but it was already too late.

He moved.

Not suddenly. Not cruelly. Just with purpose.

His mouth met yours like a drawn sword. No hesitation. No warning. Just contact. Direct and absolute.

It was not soft.

He kissed you like someone who understood violence and chose it often. Like someone who had been planning this for longer than you dared ask. His hands stayed where they were, unmoving, while yours slid upward, into his hair, curling with something that felt far too close to need.

You bit him, hoping it would make him stop. Hoping it would make you stop. You made a sound low in your throat, dark and pleased. Hoping he'd use his damn hands.

That was your first mistake.

Because he noticed.

He drew back slightly, just far enough for breath to return, though barely.

His eyes narrowed.

“…Do you like being punished?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

“No,” you lied.

His gaze dropped to your mouth. He studied you like a blade he was considering wielding.

“Interesting,” he murmured, raising a single digit.”Let’s test that theory.”

Three minutes. That’s all you had lasted.

Three unholy, soul-emptying minutes in his lap, on his chair, with the moon watching and your dignity unraveling with each breathless gasp. He hadn’t even touched anything lewd at first and hadn't needed to. He let your own need destroy you. Let the bond burn hotter with every second you pretended not to want him, until your body answered for you with a truth too old and raw to deny.

You remembered the moment it shifted.

The sharp inhale as your hips rocked forward. Encouraging it. His voice is low and godless in your mind.

“I feel it,” he had said, cold and exact. “Every time you pretend otherwise.”

And when he finally touched you?

You broke.

You had clung to him like he was the only solid thing left in a storm, nails dragging across his coat, trying to leave a mark. Anything to prove you hadn’t gone willingly. But he had already known. He had known from the moment you dared him with five minutes. He had known when your breath hitched, when your voice trembled, when your eyes lost their fight and gained hunger instead.

Now, your back hit the mast with a dull thud. He caged you there with one hand planted beside your head and the other sliding down your side. His hand was cool against overheated skin, and it moved with patience, with possession. He found the laces of your shirt and tugged slowly, watching your mouth part with every loosened loop.

“I hate you,” you whispered, already shaking.

“You burn for me,” he replied, just as sharp.

His fingers dipped beneath fabric, found your bare skin, and traced slow lines along your ribs like a cartographer mapping the edges of surrender. When he finally kissed you again, it was not an attack. It was a sentence. A vow. Teeth and tongue and everything you had refused to admit you craved, all in one punishing pull.

Your knees buckled. He caught you.

Then he took his time.

On the captain’s chair. On the warm boards of the deck. Against the mast. In your mind.

There was nowhere he didn’t reach.

Your name, once a weapon in your mouth, became a prayer in his. He said it once, low and reverent, while pulling your hips down onto his lap, and it made you cry out. 

He pulled his own first name out of yours. And when he did, he didn’t smirk. Didn’t gloat. He just held you tighter, like he’d been waiting for you to break like that.

And you did.

Over and over.

Until your legs no longer listened. Until your voice was hoarse and your nails dug red lines into his shoulders, until his back was red with welts. Until the sky turned to pale ash and the sails began to glow with dawn.

You lay against him in the aftermath, breathless and ruined, draped in his coat, while he sat silently, his arm around your waist, his gaze lifted to the stars.

“Fine, we’re dating,” you rasped, clawing at the last ragged thread of your dignity like a soldier too stubborn to surrender the battlefield.

He didn’t even open his eyes.

Didn’t shift.

Didn’t breathe a little harder. Not a single sign of acknowledgment beyond the smallest, most insufferably contented hum.

His hand does twitch, close to your thigh. One eye cracks open to give you a look.

You swallowed. Air still burned in your lungs. Your knees still trembled. Your inner thighs burned with the full-body reminder of what had just happened on the captain’s chair. Of how little effort it took for him to dismantle you.

“Married,” you muttered under your breath. “Whatever. You win.”

“You’re welcome,” Mihawk said smoothly, his tone practically glowing with victory. He didn’t even try to hide it now. That rare, razor-edged smugness had bloomed into something bright and appalling, delight coated in silk. “Would you like a summary report? Perhaps an annotated breakdown of the bond’s neural response curve?”

You didn’t speak.

You glared. The kind of glare that would have reduced most men to ash or at least made them stammer an apology. But Mihawk? No. He had the gall to smirk. Slight. Elegant. Devastating.

“Would you like a sword through your astral projection?” you asked, voice low and deadly.

He exhaled. Amused. Delighted. Downright victorious. “You’re cranky when satisfied.”

“I’m homicidal when outmaneuvered.”

“I’ll allow it,” he said, folding his arms behind his head. “For balance.”

You hated him, and the way your hands twitched toward him again. You hated how your pride burned in your chest like a bruise, right next to the slow, molten sting blooming between your thighs. You hated that, despite all the fury, all the embarrassment, some part of you was already glancing at the curve of his mouth again.

Already craving round two.

You slumped deeper into the carved wooden chair like a puppet with cut strings, defeated in every sense except the one that mattered most, because gods help you, you had never felt more alive.

“I need tea,” you muttered. Anything to anchor you. Anything to make this feel less like unraveling.

“You need hydration,” Mihawk agreed, rising with that infuriating ease of movement that made it seem like his body had never known tension. “And possibly prayer.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re repeating yourself,” he added, placing your favorite cup beside you with quiet precision, not unlike setting a blade down after a clean strike, “but you came in three minutes.”

You stared at the tea.

Still warm. Steeped exactly how you liked it. The right amount of sugar. The kind of stupid, intimate detail no one should have remembered unless they had been watching. Measuring. Preparing.

Of course, he had.

Because Mihawk doesn’t manipulate in the traditional sense.

He doesn’t sweet-talk.

He doesn’t seduce.

He doesn’t even flirt.

No, Mihawk is something much worse. Much slower. Much more terrifying.

He restructures your reality with quiet, surgical precision. Until you're orbiting him without realizing you've left your axis. Until the sound of his boots on the deck is normal. Until his silences speak louder than other men's promises. Until you're living in the center of his gravity and swearing it was your idea.

He makes falling for him feel like a logical choice.

Like the natural outcome of long exposure and shared silence.

Like inevitability.

Like how the tide wears down stone until the cliff is gone and the sea simply says, mine.

Not with flowers. Not with grand confessions. But with consistency. With attention disguised as apathy. With small, precise acts that made you feel seen in ways that made you furious. Because you hadn’t wanted to be understood. Not like this. Not by him.

He doesn’t court your heart. He colonizes it. He lets your protest wear itself out on the jagged rocks of his patience.

And then, when you’re exhausted and when the fury has burned through your pride and left only want behind, he meets you there.

Calm.

Ready.

Waiting.

You sip the tea, bitter with awareness. It’s perfect. Of course it is. The warmth settles in your chest like surrender, like something you didn’t ask for but can no longer deny.

You’re not sure when it started, this slow unraveling, this tactical invasion of your better judgment, but you know exactly where it ends. Right here. With him. On a ship that smells like old wood, sea salt, and sharp steel.

And he’s already there.

Watching you come undone in the quiet. Not saying a word. Just existing. Just being that maddening, inescapable force that slipped into your life like a dagger in silk.

Now you know exactly who your “Prince Charming” is.

And he’s a sword-wielding introvert cryptid with wine breath, a trench coat that sways like a villain’s cape, and more emotional repression than a whole kingdom’s worth of poets. He owns four identical shirts, treats declarations like tactical risks, and communicates primarily through narrowed glances and alarming acts of devotion.

But he’s real.

And, against all logic, better judgment, and prior resistance, he’s yours.

Even if he won’t say it out loud until you’re both old and grumpy and halfway through a duel-flirt at dawn. Blades drawn. Eyes locked. His version of a proposal sharpened to the point of blood and poetry.

Which, in Mihawk’s language, is a declaration of eternal love.

-X-Honeymoon-X-

Cosmic Joke Status: Hilt-Deep

Congratulations.

You’re now mentally shackled to a six-foot-something warlord who treats emotional intimacy like a duel and considers eye contact an act of aggression. He sharpens his swords more often than he speaks, drinks wine like a judgment, and once leveled a naval outpost because they lost your marriage paperwork. Because somewhere between his silent tea offerings and the way he adjusts your grip on a blade without a word, you realized, this isn't subtlety. It's a lifetime commitment. And you’re already ruined.

And the worst part?

You’re starting to like it.

Hi, anon! Doing pretty well over here! Hope you have a great day as well! This is such a great trope! Here are some recs for you!

this charade (was never going to last) by @scrunchyharry

On the surface, CitizenX, an international caritative nonprofit, looked like any other nonprofit, funding humanitarian missions worldwide and striving to make the world a better place, one donation at a time.

At least, that was what Harry thought, until he was hired as a computer specialist for a spinoff agency called carish, whose true purpose was to reveal CitizenX’s tangled web of lies.

As if the whole ‘industrial spy’ business was not stressful enough, Harry found himself in a hatred-at-first-sight relationship with one of his new coworkers, Louis, a man intent on detesting Harry.

When the worst happened and Harry and Louis found themselves thrown together in hiding, with only each other to rely on, Harry never could have predicted the turn their relationship would take.

Nor could he anticipate that it would all be taken away from him and he would have to decide how far he was willing to go to get Louis back.

You're Not My Type (still I fall) by Imogenlee / @imogenleewriter

His mum is going to kill him!

Well, not kill him. Just give him a right telling off, make him admit she'd been right, then try to confine him to his room until they found a hefty Alpha to look after him and rein him in or something.

She wouldn't manage, of course. Harry is only twenty-four and has no inclination to settle down at all, especially not at the behest of an Alpha.

But, as his mum would point out, that was the same stubborn attitude that got him here: in his car, in a thunderstorm, on the side of a forsaken lane of some little countryside town in Yorkshire. His mobile's got no signal, his GPS isn't working, and he's running low on petrol, so he can't even use the heater.

Oh, and most importantly, his car is stuck in the mud, so even if the GPS was working and he knew where to go, he wouldn’t be able to.

He's been in stickier spots; he reminds himself. Way stickier. This is just a bit of rain; it'll blow over. Then Harry will just... well, alright, he isn't entirely sure what to do when the rain stops because he'll still be stuck and lost. But, hey, there won't be any rain, which is something to cheer about.

Etched in Salt (is a cathedral of the world) by @helloamhere

Louis asks for very few things in life, and they are: to solve cases, to keep bad people from doing their bad things, to get good coffee, to go home to a spacious apartment with nobody else in it, and to manage his stupid telempathy powers with minimal interference. And now he's stuck in a tiny cabin in a snowstorm in the middle of god-awful-nowhere with Harry Styles. Because of course he is.

Anywhere With You by sweetums

“Do you want some gum?” Louis’ lovely voice interrupts his train of thoughts.

“No, thank you.” Harry responds quickly.

What? ‘No, thank you’? What was he thinking? If Louis Tomlinson offers you gum, you take it. If Louis Tomlinson offers you a vial of vomit, you take it.

“On second thought, gum would be perfection.” Harry actually considers just dying right there as he reaches over to pry the piece of gum out of Louis’ perfect little hand, eyes flitting over to the other man’s amused face.

Why did he say that? He could’ve said, ‘I’ll have some gum’ or ‘gum would be great’ or even a simple ‘thanks’ but no, no, for Harry, ‘gum would be perfection’.

He loathes himself.

Some storms destroy you… and some lead you exactly where you’re meant to be. ❄️❤️

When Emily runs from the wreckage of her past with her children in tow, the last thing she expects is to be snowed in with a man carrying heartbreak of his own. But sometimes healing begins in the quiet moments between two broken souls.

If you love emotional romance, forced proximity, second chances, and characters who fight their way back to hope, Calm Before the Storm is waiting for you. 📖✨

Read now on Amazon:

Hunter

Therapy isn’t going to fix me. Court-ordered, mandatory, whatever they want to call it—it’s just punishment in a circle of strangers.

Until him.

Golden curls, painted nails, a voice too soft for a world this cruel. He looks at me like he sees every scar I’ve tried to bury. And I hate that I want him to keep looking.

Charlie

I escaped. The church. The backwoods. The conversion therapy that tried to break me. The city is louder, faster, and sometimes dangerous—but it’s mine.

Here, I can breathe boy in makeup and chipped nail polish.

I’m ready to move on from it all.

But then there’s Hunter. Six feet of rage.

He terrifies me even as he draws me in. And he’ll either me by undoing or my salvation.

Tropes you’ll find inside:

– Grumpy x soft

– Hurt/comfort

– Trauma healing

– Forced proximity therapy sessions

– Dark edges with a tender core

Pre-order now: https://books2read.com/Hunter-Toxic-Heart-Club

#forcedproximity #mentalhealthrep #sharedworld #mmromance #gayromance

Rating: 5/5

Book Blurb:

Blaire Monroe is the only woman I’ve ever loved, and the only one I’ve let break my heart.

It’s been ten years since she ran from this town, chasing a life that didn’t include the cowboy next door who blurred the line between best friend and something more.

Now she’s back. Fresh off a busted engagement and hiding out on her grandmother’s crumbling strawberry farm like the past never happened.

Like she doesn’t still linger in every part of me I’ve spent years trying to erase.

But Blaire isn’t the kind of girl you forget. She’s wildfire: reckless, untamed, and impossible to hold without getting scorched.

We collide the second we’re in the same room. Too much heat. Too much history. Not nearly enough distance. The tension crackles, the pull is impossible, and before long, we’re right back where we swore we’d never be—pressed against the wall, her hands in my hair, my mouth on hers like I’ve been starving for a decade.

I tell myself I can handle it. But the truth is, this cowboy was never meant for casual. Not with her. And sure as hell not again.

Review:

The kind of cowboy book that hits you right in your heart and completely lassoes you in! Cowboy Casual was such a delightful read that captured me from the first chapter! I loved the chemistry between Colt and Blaire! The slow burn tension was so good and the banter between the two of them had me clenching my hands. COLT WAS SUCH A FUN LOVE INTEREST!!! I love a second chance romance and this one between them was so so good. I had such a great tim reading this, all the found family elements, the side characters, and the second chance romance just so perfectly worked for me and I can't wait to read the next book in this cowboy series! ITS SO GOOD!!

Release Date: October 7, 2025

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Valentine PR for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Pre-order your copy today!      

Amazon: https://bit.ly/4jvW6vw