the stars have all gone

iv

There weren't many men or women willing or stupid enough to contend with Crocodile's size, so when your eyes darkened with interest as they followed the gulp of wine down his throat, he only wanted to see how far you'd go. Maybe you'd recoil the closer he got, his scarred face more grotesque in the candlelight. Maybe the two of you would even touch before you realized just how easily he could break you, and you'd look for an out, however graceless. You might even make it all the way to his bed, and for that bravery he was almost content to entertain himself with what could have been.

What he didn't expect was ease. You took your seat in his lap like you belonged there, still trying to hold a conversation with smoke from his cigar floating over your head as he coaxed you to ride his thigh. "Not enough," you grumbled into his chest, and despite not feeling like much of a monster that night, he gave in to your pleas with a stack of pillows shoved under your hips at the edge of the tall bed and his gruff warning that it would hurt, the cursory stretch of his fingers too impatient for someone as small and tight as you. He'd heard it all before, from bluffers and masochists alike, but you smiled as you cried and thanked him, and he thought it was utterly dangerous to him and his business interests how he relished turning you from the sharp-minded woman who crashed his dinner to this. He watched you sleep beside a known killer like some trusting fool, a naiveté that didn't suit someone who'd sailed half the Grand Line.

Crocodile didn't pay any of that generation much mind beside Straw Hat, so he was singularly unimpressed at how this blond hack—your words, three glasses in—squandered such a valuable crew member, and if he read between the lines, a delicious little bedmate. He'd sailed long and stared at the horizon often enough to know what you described made sense, and even picked up the sextant you'd ripped off your neck in frustration to try and see what you see. Hell, you navigated them all the way from the North Blue. What sort of idiot would let you go?

Not him.

⁂

Crocodile removed his hook in front of you for the first time at sea.

Your departure was a whirlwind and really a sandstorm, how you cajoled him to take a trunk of your navigational equipment and books to his ship while you tied loose ends on land. If killing you didn't cross his mind before, it did then, but he gave you a withering look and flew out the boardinghouse window in a cloud of sand.

The ship was on loan from one of Crocodile's mostly-legitimate businesses, a xebec designed to carry more cargo than crew where he and Daz switched watch shifts to supplement the merchants' defenses. When you hobbled below deck with your luggage, the swordsman jerked his chin at a hammock bunched up on a hook in the corner of a lounge to the side of the galley, a fair distance from the dormitory full of men. It looked cramped for Daz, so you couldn't imagine Crocodile enjoyed it down there, either. You passed that first day observing how the mercantile crew worked and tried to be friendly with the navigator, who seemed curious about your methods but leery of your association with the two pirates. It didn't help that Crocodile really watched you take your sights and calculations from his odd perch on one of the many cannons on the lower deck.

You'd already turned in for the night when you heard Crocodile enter the lounge and sit heavily on the sofa, and a unique click that could only be his golden hook releasing from the plug at the end of his arm. You didn't know if it was ruder to stare or to pretend to be asleep, so you settled for openly admiring the muscles and veins under skin you hadn't seen before. He'd held you to him with his shirtsleeves still buttoned, and now you were part of a slim minority to see him this vulnerable.

"Careful, witch," he said without looking up.

You swallowed. "Doing what?"

"Looking at me like that. Or do you want all these sailors to hear you?"

You felt your neck heat, and still you burrowed under the wool blanket you packed, peeking at his broad, undershirt-clad back. It wasn't until he arranged himself on the couch that you noticed the smell of his cigars permeating the lounge, the ash tray on a side table, the valise in the opposite corner. "This is your room?" you croaked. "Did I take your bed?" The hammock was certainly longer than the sofa, and a second one was stowed away above you, but you didn't see a ladder for you to make it up there.

"Of course it is."

Right. Why would a man as paranoid and proud as him ever share? That meant he deprived the merchants of their common area. But equally, why would he let you in?

"There's nowhere else for you, unless you want to freeze to death on deck."

"How do you know what I'm thinking?" you blurted.

"You're painfully expressive."

Privately, you disagreed. Sure, you weren't stony-faced as Hawkins, which you thought made your readings more honest, but frankly you didn't know the last time someone observed you this closely.

"You're too tall to sleep there." You managed to land on your feet as you tumbled out of the hammock, throwing your pillow and blanket on the couch.

He grumbled, but stood anyway, and you tried not to thrill at commanding a former warlord of the sea.

You soon smelled why he was so amenable.

"Ugh!" You dry heaved, sticking your face in your pillow that still smelled like your flat, for now. What did you expect from a fabric sofa on a commercial vessel where personal hygiene seemed optional? Your frown deepened into a petulant pout as you rolled onto your front to look at him with your chin on the armrest.

You didn't want to ask, and you didn't have to as Crocodile blinked one eye open. "I'm relieving Daz in two hours."

"I don't mind waking up. I need to sleep like a seaman again."

"All you do is impose," he groused, but opened his right arm in invitation.

You bit your lip to keep from grinning as you dragged your blanket over. Climbing in was a bit of a maneuver, but you settled into his side, pulling your blanket over just yourself until he grunted, "Share."

You knit it to be over seven feet long thinking to accommodate a tall partner, albeit not this tall. Your feet landed somewhere near his knees, and he insinuated one between yours as he used his stump to draw the blanket up to his shoulder, covering your head. You wriggled up his body for air, slightly grinding into his thigh as you went, and you sighed at the feeling.

"Stop moving."

"Sorry, sir."

You knew he didn't trust you, but he at least found you harmless enough to sleep beside, even if it was clear he was waiting for you to doze off first. You were practically nude in your thin slip, with nowhere to hide a weapon, and if you moved to get one the hammock would sway incessantly. You shouldn't trust him, either, but you threw in your lot with this man, and for what? Your ego? You were caught in his orbit, but you found it hard to mind. Maybe you were more bored with your life ashore than you thought. But enough to risk your life? At the side of a man whose bounty was six times that of Hawkins?

"Why aren't you sleeping?"

"I'm... thinking."

"I can tell."

You hesitated. "You said something about teaching me."

"Mm. Tomorrow. Daz first."

"Daz?"

"Did you want to spar with me right away?" You rubbed your thighs around his knee. "Nevermind."

"Does Daz's power ever... slice all his clothes off?"

"Ask him."

"I don't think he likes me."

"You just met."

"I just met you. More or less."

"You're crewmates. Try and get along, hmm?"

"Yes, sir." To your surprise, he patted your head with his right hand, and your lids drooped.

If the former Mr. 1 distrusted you, he hid it well, or his deference to Crocodile trumped all. He was about Hawkins' height, if completely different in build, but that meant you weren't totally cowed by him. When two sessions passed without him so much as scratching you with his powers, Daz simply said, "The boss said not to." Of course, you weren't any less sore from his obviously pulled strikes you failed to evade. When you told him you had a dagger you were familiar with, Daz all but snorted before dismissing you for his watch.

Crocodile didn't ask about your lessons and you didn't complain, but at night his large hand rested lightly over your darkest bruises. You didn't do much in these quiet hours beyond grind in his lap, sometimes waking up still warming his cock when duty summoned either of you above deck. The way he followed you even if he had nowhere to be, you thought he must like seeing you jump out of your skin and hurriedly wipe evidence of your activities on your pajamas on your way to catch twilight. He threw your blanket or his coat over your shoulders then, which you would take as a tender gesture from anyone else, but his eyes narrowed when you thanked him.

"This is a sailing ship."

"I know that."

He scanned the deck as he lit his cigar, and you tightened your blanket around you as the flame drew your eye to the crescent of your teeth marking the fleshy heel of his palm from when he muffled your cries only hours ago. Was he embarrassed by you, or by sex in general? He was awfully concerned with manners. Or was it courtesy to the crew? He didn't show any sort of caution when your lease was on the line.

"And did you flounce around your Magician's ship in negligee, too?"

Negligee? "This is cotton."

Crocodile exhaled through his nose. If you were any taller, the smoke would get in your eyes. "Don't act obtuse. It doesn't suit you."

You figured out just what he meant back in your room with your nightgown bunched up around your waist, his hand landing mean slaps to your ass and thighs. As if the stains marring your others weren't enough, he used his hook to push the skirt out of the way, piercing and ripping the fabric as he went. "I'll buy you more," he muttered before fingering you open, and you pillowed your head in your arms to avoid the couch cushions he draped you over. It was the roughest and sweetest he'd been with you so far, how you fell asleep sprawled over him as he soothed your heated skin, even with the cool alloy capping his left wrist. That's also how you discovered a slightly disturbing consideration possible only with his Devil Fruit: you woke to your legs and hips pressing directly into the hammock netting as his body dissolved into sand under you, his chest rumbling a "Sleep, bird," before disappearing, too.

If he wasn't on watch or otherwise stretching his absurdly long legs above deck, Crocodile spent his time doing business via Den Den Mushi in your room. You preferred fresh air yourself, but he didn't shoo you away or have a problem with your direct questions about what you heard. On the contrary, he seemed to welcome your presence, whether you just popped in to grab something or you needed a break from the other men. You sometimes sat on the floor by the couch, resting your head against his knee as you read or added to your navigational log. Other times he pulled you into his lap, and you lit his cigar for him, fully knowing the smell would embed itself in your clothes and your knitwear. It unsettled you how easy you found it all.

⁂

He didn't know why he indulged such behavior, but Crocodile went to such lengths to find you and could just as easily get rid of you if you posed more risk than reward. You were too smart not to realize this journey to Karai Bari was your trial run, and you had yet to disappoint. You naturally woke before sunrise despite being months out of practice. You were disciplined about your morning and evening sights; you could be greedy and insatiable any other hour of the day, but come twilight you weren't afraid to leave him hard and aching in the name of geolocation. He'd taken log compasses for granted, that he'd always island hop with little awareness of his surroundings, but your precision had him looking at the globe you packed with interest. It was quite a boring route otherwise with an Eternal Pose, but you showed him the Grand Line anew.

Then there was how... sweet you were, something alien to the life he led. Of course you often wanted something in return, usually sex, but those times you were so frank he almost felt bad suspecting you like he did everyone, which made you a true threat. You liked his fingers on or inside you and kissed them in thanks, you greeted him good morning in the pitch black below deck, you sat by his feet like a pet and eyed his lap hungrily. You claimed you were avoiding that foul sofa, but you sighed happily with just his fingertips rubbing at your scalp and could fall asleep with your cheek on his calf—that trust you didn't show in your waking life.

What should bother him more was how you read his mood. You had a smart mouth he enjoyed taming and you teased him more than any person he'd left alive, but you kept to yourself if you weren't flirting with him or discussing astronomy. Crocodile could fall into a foul temper depending on news he received or the mere thought of the clown who had his money or even if his back hurt from that damn hammock, yet he never found it in himself to take it out on you, even if you had something to do with the last point. You were an ideal companion to match his reticence, which only made those pretty sounds of yours more addicting.

According to Daz, you had good survival instincts and were unafraid to play dirty, so Crocodile was gratified to know you wouldn't be too much of a burden. The way you said you were weak while you fisted your skirt over that paltry blade told him you'd been scarred somehow, if not as literally as him. Titillating though your little thigh holster was, he wanted you to have something quicker, and Daz wasn't the one to train you to wield a weapon. Weeks ago, when Crocodile made up his mind to come back for you, he saw an elegant folding knife with pearlescent handles at a market and bought it without a second thought, only later realizing it was from your home country. Would you know? Would it make him look thoughtful? It made him sick.

Maybe Crocodile was softening in his old age, or defeat affected him more than he cared to admit, but if he didn't hold his tongue he'd promise you even more than he already had. Your previous captain's head, for one. It struck him as a damn shame a woman like you wasn't covered in jewels, though as he looked at his ringed hand on your skin he thought silver suited you more. White gold, like the moon you could find at high noon.