Shut up I'll post something non-fandom eventually
Title: Waking
Pairing: Lucci/Luffy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,133
Summary: Lucci had never intended to stay on the Sunny.
A/N: Sequel to Nightmare that I wrote for lily22 because she's made of awesome and unicorns. P.S. Someone make me an icon for this pairing. XD
The Thousand Sunny had always been a unique ship, but after everything - the fall and subsequent drastic restructuring of the World Government, the finding of the One Piece and crowning of the new Pirate King, the fighting, the peace treaties, the claiming of the New World - it was the central hub of attentions across the political spectrum, the point of orbit for world affairs both bureaucratic and civilian. The Straw Hat crew was constantly picking up stragglers, dropping off stowaways, ferrying people between ships and between ports and across the Red Line and everywhere else. They had cultivated something of a fleet over time, and it was not uncommon for the Sunny to be used as a rendezvous point for world leaders and other figures of import.
In short, it was often home, however temporary, to people who belonged there when they might not belong anywhere else. And to Rob Lucci, ex-Cipher Pol 9 agent and recent member of the directionless unemployed, it was beginning to feel like home. Home, as in somewhere he was at least slightly welcome, where he could sleep with both eyes closed, and where everyone wasn’t waiting for him to leave.
And it had gone on long enough.
He had never intended to stay there. He didn’t even know why he was there, aside from the somewhat weak fact that Monkey D. Luffy wasn’t leader of the new era for nothing and could make the words “You said you would” sound like the kind of firm, unarguable affirmation that came at the heels of natural disasters. Maybe it was because he’d had nothing better to do. Maybe it was because twenty years of taking strictly-worded orders had conditioned him not to fly in the face of undeniable authority, no matter how inadvisable the inevitable outcome. Maybe it was because no one but no one said no to the Pirate King, particularly if he wanted to make them useful after too long being useless, particularly when requests were preceded by the sort of passionately physical persuasion that no proper human being could simply walk away from, even if they weren’t a very proper human being after all.
But the fact was that Lucci couldn’t stay. He knew it, and he’d known it for the past two weeks. Now that the Sunny was escorting a team of emissaries to a summit at Mariejoie for further peace negotiations, Lucci felt that he had a way out. Doubtless there would be something for him to do there, or somewhere nearby, and failing that, he could find another outgoing ship to take him somewhere that he could find a purpose again.
But between now and then, there were two days journey and a captain with a knack for turning up everywhere Lucci looked.
So he sat sequestered in his room, with his pigeon for company, thinking too hard about things that necessitated little consideration. He had his own room, one of the cramped but well-appointed guest rooms recently added to the ship; they had been quick to offer it, explaining that he would doubtless prefer it to the snoring and stale sweat stench of the communal men’s quarters, that the guest room would allow him some privacy and space to himself. Lucci was reminded, that first day, of his reluctant admittance to the ranks of CP9, and the introduction to his new home: you do not belong here, you are not a part of this, and here is your box. But the Straw Hats were polite enough, fearless as they were after all their travels, but wary, as they should be. The sniper was apprehensive and the swordsman suspicious, as the navigator assured him they were wont to be. She, aside from her captain, was the boldest, the most accepting, the one he knew would be first to fight him to the death if he turned on them.
His quarters really were miniscule, with no room to pace, but the hallway was daunting in the way that corridors leading to potential traps always were. Lucci sat at the end of his bed, pretended to meditate, and wondered about his former teammates, scattered to the metaphorical winds. He didn’t like to wonder about things. But he considered them, wondering if any of them might object to being called on at random by a wandering ex-coworker: Blueno had that bar he was planning to open, and Kumadori was in the mountains searching for his mother, and Fukurou may have taken a job offering from his brother, but Lucci hadn’t bothered to remember for sure. He did know, unless it has changed in the past year, where Kaku and Kalifa had staked their base of operations as bounty hunters, but they had the mutt with them, and Lucci didn’t--
The door opened unceremoniously, sweeping Lucci’s train of thought away with the motion, and there was the source of Lucci’s seclusion, who didn’t bother to ask before coming in but at least had the decency to shut the door behind him. Rousted from his napping spot on his master’s shoulder, Hattori fluttered sleepily to the headboard and settled there, offering no assistance to the situation at hand. Lucci glared at him, and then fixed the look on Luffy, who remained standing by the doorway, staring with his head tilted to one side, gaze fixed and open.
Lucci broke first. “What do you want?”
“You missed dinner,” Luffy responded simply, perplexed, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine why anyone would ever do that. Lucci considered that it was perfectly likely that such was exactly the case, and only raised an eyebrow in response. “Sanji wanted me to come get you. He doesn’t like it when people don’t eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The corner of Luffy’s mouth turned down, brows drawing together in confusion. “You’re not hungry? But lunch was hours ago.”
“Not everyone possesses your staggering and explosive metabolism,” Lucci pointed out, knowing it was useless. Neither of them had moved, but now Luffy shrugged, swinging his arms back and forth at his sides, rangy muscle shifting under rubber skin.
“I guess not,” he said reasonably, and Lucci glanced back up to his face, which was now neutral, if faintly concerned. “You should still eat, though. Do you not wanna come out of your room? Someone could bring you dinner, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to come out. Dinnertime is fun!”
“Everything is fun to you,” said Lucci. He knew he was avoiding the inevitable, but he wasn’t sure what, in this case, the inevitable was. Luffy shrugged again, in apparent agreement to this statement. He had his vest unbuttoned again today, in accordance with the weather, and there was sweat beaded on his chest and on the side of his neck highlighted in the lamplight.
“Hey, Pigeon Guy.”
Briefly, Lucci closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his gaze flicked to Luffy’s face, and he breathed out through his nose, aggravated and long. “I have a name--”
“Are you scared of me?”
Lucci paused, mentally retracing that sentence to be sure he’d heard it correctly. “What?”
“Why are you hiding from me?”
He looked upset now, lips quirked in distress that almost looked exaggerated if one didn’t know any better, and Lucci hated it, hated being looked at like an object of disappointment. It was ridiculous, and childish, and stupid. He still felt something that, were he pressed to identify it, he might have labeled guilt. He stared at the wall behind Luffy’s head.
“I am not hiding.”
And then Luffy was moving, and Lucci automatically tracked the motion as the captain crossed three feet of room and - …climbed onto Lucci’s bed. He sat, folding his legs underneath him on the mattress, staring at Lucci with the same intense scrutiny as when he had first entered the room, close enough that Lucci could feel his heat, pick out the long-healed stitch marks in the scar under his eye. “It sure seems like you are,” he said reasonably. “If you’re not hiding from me, what are you hiding from?”
There were a few long seconds of silence, the two of them staring at each other, unwavering. Lucci looked away, fixing his gaze on Hattori’s sleeping form on the headboard. “I’m leaving when we reach Mariejoie.”
Luffy didn’t move; his expression didn’t shift. “Why?”
“Because I--” and he stopped, because anything that may have come afterward was inadequate. He couldn’t admit that it was because he didn’t belong there, and saying that he wanted to was a lie. “I have to,” he finished, hoping that would be adequate.
“No you don’t,” said Luffy, and that was enough to drag Lucci’s gaze back to his face. “You have to stay here. With me.”
That was difficult to argue. “Why?”
“Because you’re nakama,” Luffy said, simply and firmly, as if instructing a very bright child that showed a lot of promise if only he would stop being so stubborn. Lucci felt that this would be an appropriate juncture at which to roll his eyes, but he didn’t.
“I am not.”
At this, Luffy looked taken aback. “Yes you are. I asked you to come with us and you said yes.”
“I was in a poor frame of mind for decision-making--”
“And you came with us, even though you didn’t have to.”
Lucci used the highest-grade glare he had to his name. It did nothing to dispel the captain’s resolve. Finally, Lucci looked away. “I can’t stay here. This is not where I belong.”
“Where do you belong?”
The view beyond the porthole failed to respond to Lucci’s glare with equal fortitude. “I can’t answer that.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Because I don’t know.”
“Then you’re wrong,” Luffy said firmly, and that was one thing that Lucci loathed to hear, but when he looked back to correct it, Luffy planted a firm hand on his shoulder and met his eyes with unflappable determination, just as always. “You do know where you belong. You just don’t think we want you here. But we do. Even Robin didn’t fit in at first, but I said she was gonna stay, so she did. And now she’s nakama, just like you.”
Lucci had no response to that, even after two false starts and further glaring. The heat of Luffy’s hand was soaking through his shirt and into his skin, and he didn’t want to be anywhere else or with anyone else right now, not after three decades of being on his own. This was new, and it was pointless and human and strange and stupid and good, and if not thinking had gotten him into this mess, thinking wasn’t going to get him out of it. He reached up and circled Luffy’s wrist with his hand, not pulling him away, watching the flux of emotion on the captain - his captain’s face.
“So are you gonna stay?”
Don’t think, Lucci reminded himself. “Yes.”
“Good!” Luffy exclaimed, and he bounced a little on the mattress, giggling, clearly ecstatic as only he could be, and then he was flopping back onto the bed and pulling Lucci with him, and Lucci wasted no time in pinning him down, sliding hands under his open vest and pulling it away, licking salty sweat from his neck and letting Luffy do whatever he wanted with his shirt to get it off even if it meant ripping the seam because he wanted skin, more of it, right now. And he was still irate with himself for needing this, just like the first time and the second on that day before they’d left on the Sunny, but the burn of it was beginning to fade and right now, all Lucci hoped was that he’d have ample chance to get used to it.
“I didn’t think,” Lucci said, somewhere between having his shirt inexpertly torn off and a slick, searing, decidedly distracting kiss, “that you wanted me anymore, now that you’ve already enlisted me.”
“What?” Luffy said plaintively. Another kiss, hands in his hair, and “I always want you; you’re nakama!”
“Right,” said Lucci, trying for dry and missing a bit. “But you haven’t--” He cut himself off, too busy tracing a faint scar on Luffy’s shoulder with his tongue for further comment. While he was occupied, the captain locked his knees around Lucci’s hips and rolled them over abruptly, ending up on top and wedged against the wall, bed too narrow for extensive maneuvering. This accomplished, he pressed his hands to Lucci’s shoulders, holding him still, and gave him a pained look that Lucci judged to be three quarters faked and one quarter almost genuine.
“Being captain is hard, you know,” he sighed, and Lucci didn’t laugh, but he did smirk, and he pulled the captain down.
Pairing: Lucci/Luffy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,133
Summary: Lucci had never intended to stay on the Sunny.
A/N: Sequel to Nightmare that I wrote for lily22 because she's made of awesome and unicorns. P.S. Someone make me an icon for this pairing. XD
The Thousand Sunny had always been a unique ship, but after everything - the fall and subsequent drastic restructuring of the World Government, the finding of the One Piece and crowning of the new Pirate King, the fighting, the peace treaties, the claiming of the New World - it was the central hub of attentions across the political spectrum, the point of orbit for world affairs both bureaucratic and civilian. The Straw Hat crew was constantly picking up stragglers, dropping off stowaways, ferrying people between ships and between ports and across the Red Line and everywhere else. They had cultivated something of a fleet over time, and it was not uncommon for the Sunny to be used as a rendezvous point for world leaders and other figures of import.
In short, it was often home, however temporary, to people who belonged there when they might not belong anywhere else. And to Rob Lucci, ex-Cipher Pol 9 agent and recent member of the directionless unemployed, it was beginning to feel like home. Home, as in somewhere he was at least slightly welcome, where he could sleep with both eyes closed, and where everyone wasn’t waiting for him to leave.
And it had gone on long enough.
He had never intended to stay there. He didn’t even know why he was there, aside from the somewhat weak fact that Monkey D. Luffy wasn’t leader of the new era for nothing and could make the words “You said you would” sound like the kind of firm, unarguable affirmation that came at the heels of natural disasters. Maybe it was because he’d had nothing better to do. Maybe it was because twenty years of taking strictly-worded orders had conditioned him not to fly in the face of undeniable authority, no matter how inadvisable the inevitable outcome. Maybe it was because no one but no one said no to the Pirate King, particularly if he wanted to make them useful after too long being useless, particularly when requests were preceded by the sort of passionately physical persuasion that no proper human being could simply walk away from, even if they weren’t a very proper human being after all.
But the fact was that Lucci couldn’t stay. He knew it, and he’d known it for the past two weeks. Now that the Sunny was escorting a team of emissaries to a summit at Mariejoie for further peace negotiations, Lucci felt that he had a way out. Doubtless there would be something for him to do there, or somewhere nearby, and failing that, he could find another outgoing ship to take him somewhere that he could find a purpose again.
But between now and then, there were two days journey and a captain with a knack for turning up everywhere Lucci looked.
So he sat sequestered in his room, with his pigeon for company, thinking too hard about things that necessitated little consideration. He had his own room, one of the cramped but well-appointed guest rooms recently added to the ship; they had been quick to offer it, explaining that he would doubtless prefer it to the snoring and stale sweat stench of the communal men’s quarters, that the guest room would allow him some privacy and space to himself. Lucci was reminded, that first day, of his reluctant admittance to the ranks of CP9, and the introduction to his new home: you do not belong here, you are not a part of this, and here is your box. But the Straw Hats were polite enough, fearless as they were after all their travels, but wary, as they should be. The sniper was apprehensive and the swordsman suspicious, as the navigator assured him they were wont to be. She, aside from her captain, was the boldest, the most accepting, the one he knew would be first to fight him to the death if he turned on them.
His quarters really were miniscule, with no room to pace, but the hallway was daunting in the way that corridors leading to potential traps always were. Lucci sat at the end of his bed, pretended to meditate, and wondered about his former teammates, scattered to the metaphorical winds. He didn’t like to wonder about things. But he considered them, wondering if any of them might object to being called on at random by a wandering ex-coworker: Blueno had that bar he was planning to open, and Kumadori was in the mountains searching for his mother, and Fukurou may have taken a job offering from his brother, but Lucci hadn’t bothered to remember for sure. He did know, unless it has changed in the past year, where Kaku and Kalifa had staked their base of operations as bounty hunters, but they had the mutt with them, and Lucci didn’t--
The door opened unceremoniously, sweeping Lucci’s train of thought away with the motion, and there was the source of Lucci’s seclusion, who didn’t bother to ask before coming in but at least had the decency to shut the door behind him. Rousted from his napping spot on his master’s shoulder, Hattori fluttered sleepily to the headboard and settled there, offering no assistance to the situation at hand. Lucci glared at him, and then fixed the look on Luffy, who remained standing by the doorway, staring with his head tilted to one side, gaze fixed and open.
Lucci broke first. “What do you want?”
“You missed dinner,” Luffy responded simply, perplexed, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine why anyone would ever do that. Lucci considered that it was perfectly likely that such was exactly the case, and only raised an eyebrow in response. “Sanji wanted me to come get you. He doesn’t like it when people don’t eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The corner of Luffy’s mouth turned down, brows drawing together in confusion. “You’re not hungry? But lunch was hours ago.”
“Not everyone possesses your staggering and explosive metabolism,” Lucci pointed out, knowing it was useless. Neither of them had moved, but now Luffy shrugged, swinging his arms back and forth at his sides, rangy muscle shifting under rubber skin.
“I guess not,” he said reasonably, and Lucci glanced back up to his face, which was now neutral, if faintly concerned. “You should still eat, though. Do you not wanna come out of your room? Someone could bring you dinner, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to come out. Dinnertime is fun!”
“Everything is fun to you,” said Lucci. He knew he was avoiding the inevitable, but he wasn’t sure what, in this case, the inevitable was. Luffy shrugged again, in apparent agreement to this statement. He had his vest unbuttoned again today, in accordance with the weather, and there was sweat beaded on his chest and on the side of his neck highlighted in the lamplight.
“Hey, Pigeon Guy.”
Briefly, Lucci closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his gaze flicked to Luffy’s face, and he breathed out through his nose, aggravated and long. “I have a name--”
“Are you scared of me?”
Lucci paused, mentally retracing that sentence to be sure he’d heard it correctly. “What?”
“Why are you hiding from me?”
He looked upset now, lips quirked in distress that almost looked exaggerated if one didn’t know any better, and Lucci hated it, hated being looked at like an object of disappointment. It was ridiculous, and childish, and stupid. He still felt something that, were he pressed to identify it, he might have labeled guilt. He stared at the wall behind Luffy’s head.
“I am not hiding.”
And then Luffy was moving, and Lucci automatically tracked the motion as the captain crossed three feet of room and - …climbed onto Lucci’s bed. He sat, folding his legs underneath him on the mattress, staring at Lucci with the same intense scrutiny as when he had first entered the room, close enough that Lucci could feel his heat, pick out the long-healed stitch marks in the scar under his eye. “It sure seems like you are,” he said reasonably. “If you’re not hiding from me, what are you hiding from?”
There were a few long seconds of silence, the two of them staring at each other, unwavering. Lucci looked away, fixing his gaze on Hattori’s sleeping form on the headboard. “I’m leaving when we reach Mariejoie.”
Luffy didn’t move; his expression didn’t shift. “Why?”
“Because I--” and he stopped, because anything that may have come afterward was inadequate. He couldn’t admit that it was because he didn’t belong there, and saying that he wanted to was a lie. “I have to,” he finished, hoping that would be adequate.
“No you don’t,” said Luffy, and that was enough to drag Lucci’s gaze back to his face. “You have to stay here. With me.”
That was difficult to argue. “Why?”
“Because you’re nakama,” Luffy said, simply and firmly, as if instructing a very bright child that showed a lot of promise if only he would stop being so stubborn. Lucci felt that this would be an appropriate juncture at which to roll his eyes, but he didn’t.
“I am not.”
At this, Luffy looked taken aback. “Yes you are. I asked you to come with us and you said yes.”
“I was in a poor frame of mind for decision-making--”
“And you came with us, even though you didn’t have to.”
Lucci used the highest-grade glare he had to his name. It did nothing to dispel the captain’s resolve. Finally, Lucci looked away. “I can’t stay here. This is not where I belong.”
“Where do you belong?”
The view beyond the porthole failed to respond to Lucci’s glare with equal fortitude. “I can’t answer that.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Because I don’t know.”
“Then you’re wrong,” Luffy said firmly, and that was one thing that Lucci loathed to hear, but when he looked back to correct it, Luffy planted a firm hand on his shoulder and met his eyes with unflappable determination, just as always. “You do know where you belong. You just don’t think we want you here. But we do. Even Robin didn’t fit in at first, but I said she was gonna stay, so she did. And now she’s nakama, just like you.”
Lucci had no response to that, even after two false starts and further glaring. The heat of Luffy’s hand was soaking through his shirt and into his skin, and he didn’t want to be anywhere else or with anyone else right now, not after three decades of being on his own. This was new, and it was pointless and human and strange and stupid and good, and if not thinking had gotten him into this mess, thinking wasn’t going to get him out of it. He reached up and circled Luffy’s wrist with his hand, not pulling him away, watching the flux of emotion on the captain - his captain’s face.
“So are you gonna stay?”
Don’t think, Lucci reminded himself. “Yes.”
“Good!” Luffy exclaimed, and he bounced a little on the mattress, giggling, clearly ecstatic as only he could be, and then he was flopping back onto the bed and pulling Lucci with him, and Lucci wasted no time in pinning him down, sliding hands under his open vest and pulling it away, licking salty sweat from his neck and letting Luffy do whatever he wanted with his shirt to get it off even if it meant ripping the seam because he wanted skin, more of it, right now. And he was still irate with himself for needing this, just like the first time and the second on that day before they’d left on the Sunny, but the burn of it was beginning to fade and right now, all Lucci hoped was that he’d have ample chance to get used to it.
“I didn’t think,” Lucci said, somewhere between having his shirt inexpertly torn off and a slick, searing, decidedly distracting kiss, “that you wanted me anymore, now that you’ve already enlisted me.”
“What?” Luffy said plaintively. Another kiss, hands in his hair, and “I always want you; you’re nakama!”
“Right,” said Lucci, trying for dry and missing a bit. “But you haven’t--” He cut himself off, too busy tracing a faint scar on Luffy’s shoulder with his tongue for further comment. While he was occupied, the captain locked his knees around Lucci’s hips and rolled them over abruptly, ending up on top and wedged against the wall, bed too narrow for extensive maneuvering. This accomplished, he pressed his hands to Lucci’s shoulders, holding him still, and gave him a pained look that Lucci judged to be three quarters faked and one quarter almost genuine.
“Being captain is hard, you know,” he sighed, and Lucci didn’t laugh, but he did smirk, and he pulled the captain down.