A/N: Hey yo not dead.
She's bare foot and her hair is plaited back into something bumpkin looking, but Hancock still has the perception of a queen.
"You're upset because you've somehow convinced all these people you actually entered the world like the rest of us and the guilt is finally catching up with you."
Zoro gives her a look over the shoulder, half his face unreadable with how slight a movement it is.
Or it could be because he regards her with the eye that's no longer there.
"What are you still doing here. The other strippers left hours ago."
The vein in her forehead swells and she hates how almost endearing their banters have become since they first made it clear they were going to be sworn enemies for the rest of their lives. But she's been drinking, so she could use that as her excuse if anyone wonders why the laugh escapes her lips this time.
He blinks in surprise. Or she's guessing that's what's happening on the half of his face that isn't illuminated. She might have said that out loud because it's scrunched again, eyebrow flung down to reflect annoyance.
"You were almost cute."
She doesn't hear that over the burp that erupts from her throat. Most of it, anyway. She ignores the fact that he's prepared for her to sit beside him by shifting his position on the ship's railing and flings her legs over like she's still disturbing company.
"If you're mad because I didn't get you a present, you can stop with your bitching and moaning. I haven't decided when to bestow it upon you."
"Actually, I haven't been giving it much thought. I don't want one of your "blessings". I'd like to live to see another year."
"Look at this rude asshole…"
She pinches the skin away from his canines, mercilessly pulling until he's grunting with the effort to not complain about the pain.
A ripple peels layers off her irises, an idea distributing light through all her features and she lets him go with such a sudden yank, that he nearly falls off the ship and into the half moon's reflection on the water.
"ARE YOU NUTS? THIS IS WHY I-"
He rights himself just as she's sliding off the wood, the perfect rolls of her butt in a pair of Nami's daisy dukes giving themselves up to gravity and following the flow of her body into the sea.
There's a small pause while he registers he's going to have to go in anyway now, and he steals enough time to heave a sigh. The residual splashes from her entry claw at the sides of the ship. When he decides to follow, the clawing is more desperate.
Zoro isn't a stranger to retrieving fruit users. The dark water is like a luke warm second home. It glitters tonight like a glass house. Her legs are glowing white, and she crawls further through the water slow as a reluctantly trashed angel from a foamy cloud.
He's never thought of her in such a way. Or unearthed the ability until now, anyway. Probably the excess carbon dioxide.
He grabs her by the braid and yanks her up for air, then ignores her angry, watery coughing while he drags her up the anchor chain and tosses her onto the deck.
"You really are a brute…not a shred of gentleness…"
"If you can talk," he grunts, falling beside her and letting the cold soak into his skin with the wind's insistence, "then you're fine."
"Come 'ere."
To his own surprise, gut turning with familiarity, his phantom eye turns to honor her uncouth request. A clammy hand comes up to his face, shaking, pulling him in until she catches the corner of his mouth with her teeth and bottom lip. It's painfully obvious she's never kissed anyone before.
He's still in a daze though when she falls back to the wood, cups a hand over her eye and stares out at whatever she's seeing.
"It's the same," she mutters, maybe to herself, maybe to him. "Same thing."
He licks his lips and pulls one of her long black hairs from his shoulder.
"I guess."