![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chibi_trillianTitle: Vice
Series: One Piece.
One Piece: Not mine.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dethorats, request "Shanks and Ben stuffs in any way, shape, or variety." A bit of a character study, as seen through the lens of favorite vices. Hopefully not too much with the suck and the OOC.
You could tell a lot about a man by his vices.
Shanks preferred drinking, consuming his firewater until it burned his veins, scalded his cheeks, and turned his reason to ash. The near-omnipresent tankard in his hand gave him a chance to act the merry fool, laughing and joking, a happy drunk, sodden and harmless. But like the alcohol he so loved, all it took was one spark to set him ablaze, burning away the veils of misdirection and underestimation that he surrounded himself with.
Ben, on the other hand, was a smoker. No brain-fogging booze for him—instead, he inhaled thick smoke, heavy and spicy with the taste of foreign shores, wafting through the air, outlining his words or simply curling upwards in undisturbed silence as he read. A quiet habit, the soft rustle of rolling papers and fluttering pages merging, nicotine and ink on his fingers, convenient source of flame always handy for his huge, heavy flintlock rifle—after all, sometimes that flint took a bit of a beating against someone’s skull and wouldn’t spark for the pan, but a precise flick of his cigarette usually solved the problem.
They were an unlikely pair, the boisterous drunk and the quiet smoker. Most of the crew was of their captain’s persuasion, drinking heavily and suffering for it in the morning, properly piratical in their love of grog. But somehow that made Ben all the more valuable, his opinions and thoughts like chunks of lead on the scales of shipboard opinion—after all, Ben was a smart man, a scholar who had ventured out of his ivory tower with a book in one hand and a gun in the other, and when he said something was a good idea it generally was. But Shanks was the captain, and his words were as gold, outweighing anything else on board. Ben might be their brains, but Shanks was their luck, and they loved him for it.
When smoke and firewater clashed, they usually did it in private, Ben’s voice low and icy, Shanks’ sharp and increasingly loud. Those moments were tense, the crew finding tiny things to fiddle with, polishing brightwork until it threatened to wear away or painting over some infinitesimal flaws in the paint on the railings as they strained their ears towards the captain’s cabin. Shanks usually won, leaving Ben chainsmoking in barely-concealed anger on the quarterdeck, but sometimes Ben wore him down and Shanks snapped out orders with the harsh bite of bathtub gin to them.
The moments when they lay in balance were far more frequent than those in which they clashed, though, and some nights Shanks would steal a drag from Ben’s cigarette, grinning impishly and pretending not to notice when his first mate took a sip or five from his tankard of rum. Those nights, the crew again found things to do when Shanks dragged Ben off to his cabin—things that made quite a lot of noise, thank you very much, and completely drowned out any sounds that might be coming from behind that closed door.
An ashy tongue licked traces of rum from smiling lips as the swordsman’s fingers meandered down the scholar’s back. Later, the snap-flare of a match lighting a post-coital cigarette softened the scars on Shanks’ face and the stress-lines on Ben’s, fire flickering between them for a moment before dying away to comfortable embers and a blurrily muttered reminder not to ash on the blankets.
Series: One Piece.
One Piece: Not mine.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: For
dethorats, request "Shanks and Ben stuffs in any way, shape, or variety." A bit of a character study, as seen through the lens of favorite vices. Hopefully not too much with the suck and the OOC.You could tell a lot about a man by his vices.
Shanks preferred drinking, consuming his firewater until it burned his veins, scalded his cheeks, and turned his reason to ash. The near-omnipresent tankard in his hand gave him a chance to act the merry fool, laughing and joking, a happy drunk, sodden and harmless. But like the alcohol he so loved, all it took was one spark to set him ablaze, burning away the veils of misdirection and underestimation that he surrounded himself with.
Ben, on the other hand, was a smoker. No brain-fogging booze for him—instead, he inhaled thick smoke, heavy and spicy with the taste of foreign shores, wafting through the air, outlining his words or simply curling upwards in undisturbed silence as he read. A quiet habit, the soft rustle of rolling papers and fluttering pages merging, nicotine and ink on his fingers, convenient source of flame always handy for his huge, heavy flintlock rifle—after all, sometimes that flint took a bit of a beating against someone’s skull and wouldn’t spark for the pan, but a precise flick of his cigarette usually solved the problem.
They were an unlikely pair, the boisterous drunk and the quiet smoker. Most of the crew was of their captain’s persuasion, drinking heavily and suffering for it in the morning, properly piratical in their love of grog. But somehow that made Ben all the more valuable, his opinions and thoughts like chunks of lead on the scales of shipboard opinion—after all, Ben was a smart man, a scholar who had ventured out of his ivory tower with a book in one hand and a gun in the other, and when he said something was a good idea it generally was. But Shanks was the captain, and his words were as gold, outweighing anything else on board. Ben might be their brains, but Shanks was their luck, and they loved him for it.
When smoke and firewater clashed, they usually did it in private, Ben’s voice low and icy, Shanks’ sharp and increasingly loud. Those moments were tense, the crew finding tiny things to fiddle with, polishing brightwork until it threatened to wear away or painting over some infinitesimal flaws in the paint on the railings as they strained their ears towards the captain’s cabin. Shanks usually won, leaving Ben chainsmoking in barely-concealed anger on the quarterdeck, but sometimes Ben wore him down and Shanks snapped out orders with the harsh bite of bathtub gin to them.
The moments when they lay in balance were far more frequent than those in which they clashed, though, and some nights Shanks would steal a drag from Ben’s cigarette, grinning impishly and pretending not to notice when his first mate took a sip or five from his tankard of rum. Those nights, the crew again found things to do when Shanks dragged Ben off to his cabin—things that made quite a lot of noise, thank you very much, and completely drowned out any sounds that might be coming from behind that closed door.
An ashy tongue licked traces of rum from smiling lips as the swordsman’s fingers meandered down the scholar’s back. Later, the snap-flare of a match lighting a post-coital cigarette softened the scars on Shanks’ face and the stress-lines on Ben’s, fire flickering between them for a moment before dying away to comfortable embers and a blurrily muttered reminder not to ash on the blankets.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-25 08:33 am (UTC)This is just...Oooh, you captured so many things here and so prettily too. The line about Ben coming down out of his ivory tower and the entire paragraph about the arguments and the last ending sentence, and just the whole damn thing....love. It's just beautiful.
Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-25 08:45 am (UTC)and didn't kill me for copping out on the porn. ^_^(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-25 08:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-25 11:19 pm (UTC)Love this line especially:
The near-omnipresent tankard in his hand gave him a chance to act the merry fool, laughing and joking, a happy drunk, sodden and harmless.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-14 08:25 pm (UTC)<3!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-14 08:58 pm (UTC)