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Tears didn’t make a man, but how he shed them did.
Shanks learned that the good way. The long way, from a life lived well enough for heartbreak. He’d sailed more seas than half the world, and crossed half the world to do it. He’d seen beasts in men, and men in beasts, and every shade between the two. Shanks wasn’t afraid to cry now. He wasn’t afraid to live either, not even when living cut the deepest.
Shanks shed tears as a man should— without shame, without anything but pride. He cried with his chin held high, and he cried as many as he must. But the first tears he ever truly shed were for grief, and he hadn’t been a man then.
He’d been a boy.
“Do you remember when we first met?” Shanks asked, on a whim. Shanks loved plans more than whims, but Mihawk— Mihawk loved whims. Oh, no one would dare to put money on it, not when Mihawk seemed forged from stern lips and cold eyes. But people were poor gamblers, Shanks had found. They put their money on all the wrong feelings. Shanks knew better. Shanks bet better, and walked away from any table all the richer.
If Mihawk could truly fly, Shanks thought whims would be the wind that carried him.
“It would be difficult to forget,” Mihawk answered, wine caught on his fingers, and wrist balanced across his chair, “as you remind me yearly.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” Shanks leaned in, and Mihawk leaned back, till his lap was ripe for the taking, and his wine was forgotten as their meetings were not. Shanks took that invitation. Settling into Mihawk’s lap, he grinned. “You’d never forget that anyway. I nearly impaled myself on Yoru.”
“Many people are nearly impaled on Yoru,” Mihawk cut in, and oh Shanks loved how easily those hands came to steady him, to keep him close. “Most have the dignity to follow through.”
“Never had much dignity,” Shanks gave, settling his weight across Mihawk like an anchor settling to the seabed. He might be down a hand— and Mihawk might never forget it, let alone forgive it— but who needed a hand like this? Certainly not Shanks. No, Shanks thought. He had everything he needed caught between his thighs, looking up at him.
On a whim, Mihawk would claim.
“Besides, even if many people are nearly impaled, not many do it themselves,” Shanks began, nostalgia creeping into his bones like an east wind, “I had that special something.”
“Special is one way of putting it,” Mihawk added, dry, like that wine he loved so much. Shanks would have Beck pick out a few more bottles for next time. Mihawk must be nearly out, now, and Shanks could use the excuse to visit.
Mihawk liked excuses too.
“I challenged you to a duel,” Shanks continued, ignoring the barb with the ease of long practice. A life well lived, and all that, “and you accepted it, sweetheart. I was a scrawny kid of fourteen, with more tears on my face than hair, and you accepted my challenge.”
“It was a whim,” Mihawk ended, as he always did. “Nothing more.”
Shanks laughed. What a pretty liar he had, caught between his knees. What a lovely blade of a man, all for him.
Mihawk leaned forward, beckoned by the laugh alone. Oh, but did Shanks love him.
“Glad you’re such a fickle thing, then,” Shanks said, long after the story should end. Endings were too neat for what they had. Too neat for any life well-lived, and Shanks would have none of them. “That whim has carried us for a long while.”
And it had given as many tears as smiles, in the end. But Shanks didn’t care. For Mihawk, he’d shed as many tears as life had to give.