Title: Wild as the Wind
Characters: Benn Beckman, Shanks, mentions of Buggy and Luffy
Pairings: Heavily implied Benn/Shanks, mentions of past Buggy/Shanks
Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece.
Setting: Introspective. Takes place inside Benn's head.
Warning: Benn Beckman is introspective.


Benn Beckman wasn't a stupid man. In fact, it was his intelligence that caught the attention of one Akagami Shanks. Beckman had never intended t be a pirate, but when Shanks had offered him the position he found himself unable to refuse.

Shanks was witty, fun, and undeniably attractive. He was intelligent to be sure, but he could also put his brain to the side and have a stupid kind of fun. He was everything Benn wished he could be.

More than anything, beyond all of Shanks' other endearing traits, was his freedom. No thing and no one could weigh down Shanks. Countless individuals had tried to keep him, but each only managed to anchor themselves. Shanks always sailed away, free as the wind that moved his ship.

For a brief time Benn though that Luffy might manage to anchor Shanks, but the redhead bit off his own arm and was once again free of the trap of emotional attachment.

Once, when Shanks had gone to visit his old rival, Dracule Mihawk, Benn had given the entire crew shore leave and gone The clown pirate had ranted and raged and drank the entire night away, moaning that Shanks had ruined his life. Beckman understood that the clown wasn't as upset about, Devil's Fruit or the gold he had lost as he was about Shanks not coming back to him. In the wee hours of the morning Beckman tucked Buggy into bed and sailed away, back to his crew.

Shanks was waiting for him when he returned to the Red Force, but he never asked Beckman where he had been; there was no need for him to know and Benn never said.

For all that the past held sway over the hearts of Shanks' former flames it was irrelevant aboard the Red Force because now Been understood. Shanks' nature was as flighty and unbridled as the wind, infuriating to those who sought chain him, unsurpassable to those who fought against him, and devastating to those who invoked his wrath. It took a skilled navigator to sail such unpredictable winds and Beckman would be damned if he the best the New World had to offer.

After many challenges he and he alone had sailed to the eye of the metaphorical hurricane that was his captain to where the real Shanks waited.

This Benn knew because in all of his years Shanks had never waited anyone until the day Benn found him awaiting his return.