Scare

Characters: Ikkaku, Clione, Law. Rating: K+. Warnings: None

Ikkaku sat down on the bench with a muffled groan, pressing her head against the cool metal of the table. Her hands curled as tightly as she dared around her abdomen as her stomach churned unpleasantly. In actuality, the last place she really wanted to be was in the mess hall for breakfast, surrounded by the scent of the various breakfasts her nakama were scarfing down and the sharp tang of coffee – usually a beloved beverage – in the air. But if nothing else, she really needed a drink of water, which she hoped she'd be able to keep down.

A little bit of nausea wasn't worth bothering the captain about if she wasn't actually sick, after all.

"Yo, Ikkaku!" The bench groaned in protest as Clione threw himself down onto it with entirely too much force, jostling Ikkaku slightly in the process. She grit her teeth and sent him an unimpressed look through her mane of uncombed hair. "What's wrong?"

"Do you need coffee?" Uni chipped in, placing a mug down in front of her. The scent of black coffee did nothing for her lack of appetite and she sighed in annoyance.

"Water," she grunted, taking one hand away from her abdomen just long enough to push away the offending drink before returning it to its position.

"I'll get you some," she heard Uni say, and felt a light pressure on the top of her head before footsteps signalled someone walking away. The scent of coffee lessened, to her relief.

"Seriously, what's wrong?" Clione asked her, resting his own head against the table and reaching out with a hand to shift the curtain of thick, untamed curls so he could see her face. "You look pale." He paused suddenly, and she saw the exact moment a theory formed in his head by the way his own face took on a look that screamed he'd rather be anywhere else right then. "Is… is it your, y'know?" he stumbled, one hand gesturing less subtly than he probably thought to her lower abdomen. "That?"

Any other day, Ikkaku would have had great fun tormenting him until he spat it out, but she wasn't in the mood for such entertainment right then so she took mercy on him.

"Nope," she mumbled, head still pressed to the table. "It's being late this month, pesky thing, but that's not it. Just feel a little sick, that's all. Nothing some water won't fix."

The sound of a shattering mug made her jump, the more sugar than coffee concoction Clione liked to drink splashing her boots.

"Clione?" she muttered, dragging her head away from the cool metal to properly face him. He was as white as a sheet. "What's wrong?"

"Are you pregnant?" he shrieked, instantly silencing the hubbub of chatter in the room.

"What?" she snapped bolting upright and grimacing as her stomach protested. "No! Whatever gave you that idea?"

"What was that?" she heard someone ask in the background, and didn't need to look around to know that all of the Heart Pirates in the room were gravitating towards her. "No way."

"W-well if i-it's late, and you're sick, what else is it?" Clione asked, his voice still at a volume far too loud for the setting. Her eyes widened as distressed murmurs broke out from her surrounding nakama. She supposed it was a fair assumption for him to make, although she both wished he hadn't shrieked it out for everyone to hear and knew with certainty that wasn't the case.

She opened her mouth to remind them all that there were plenty of reasons she could be sick, and her uterus deciding to shed late far from had a monopoly on them, but her protest was drowned out by her nakama, who appeared to either be in a total state of shock – like Uni, she could see – or had moved on to discussing who could possibly be responsible for her condition and whether they thought the captain (miraculously absent, although Ikkaku half wished he was there so he could calm everyone down) would give them permission to hunt him down and make him pay.

Once she got over the initial surprise and annoyance of their incorrect conclusion, she realised their reactions were rather endearing. It felt a little bit like having several highly protective brothers, she thought, and even her stomach couldn't stop a small smile forming on her face as she mumbled a correction and let her forehead come back into contact with the metal table while the boys debated amongst themselves.

"What are we going to do?" one of them asked, his tone one of despair. "How is a kid going to survive this lifestyle?"

"I don't know anything about looking after one," another admitted, to a chorus of agreeing voices. "Does anyone?" Negative sounds filled the room and Ikkaku found herself chuckling lightly.

"Any kid raised by this crew would have far too many weird and crazy uncles," she mumbled, just loud enough to catch their attention. The mix of complaints and agreements she received for the comment were quickly drowned out as the idiots took her words as confirmation that she was indeed pregnant, and she sighed again. Idiots, the lot of them, although she wouldn't have them any other way-

"When did you last sleep with a guy?" Clione suddenly demanded, once again shoving his face into her personal space. She gaped at him. "Who was it?"

"That is none of your business!" she snapped, lashing out with a fist and sending him cascading into the next table over. "I don't ask about your sex life!" she complained loudly over his groans of pain. "You don't get to know anything about mine."

"What's going on?" Their captain's voice carried clearly over the crowd, silencing the residual murmurs instantly.

"Ikkaku's pregnant, captain," Uni mumbled behind his cloth. Ikkaku saw her captain's eyes widen as they sought her out, a question in their gaze.

"I'm not, captain," she refuted immediately, trying to stand up and clutching at her stomach as it rebelled at the action. "I just feel a bit queasy, that's all." Law cocked an eyebrow at her, clearly disbelieving that their nakama would get a stomach bug and pregnancy muddled, so she added a mumbled "and my period's a little late."

"Infirmary," was all he said, crossing the rest of the distance towards her and scooping her up in her arms, to a noise of protest.

"I can walk!" she insisted, only to be fixed with a golden stare that she knew full well meant that she had no choice but to surrender to her captain's decision.

"You should have come to me instead of here," he scolded as he carried her through the Tang's corridors towards the infirmary. No-one was following, although she'd caught a glimpse of Penguin and Shachi standing in the doorway of the mess hall as they'd passed through. They'd looked a little pale and panicked themselves, but presumably were reminding the rest of the crew to give her some space.

"I'm not pregnant," she defended herself, and felt the arms around her tighten slightly.

"I was talking about the nausea," he pointed out and she shut her mouth with a clack, aware that he was right, even though she hated the idea of running for help the moment she didn't feel a hundred percent. "If you're this certain you're not pregnant then I will take your word for it, although if you allow me to check then I can reassure all the idiots back there."

Despite the insult, his voice was full of nothing but fond amusement, much like Ikkaku's own thoughts towards their well-meaning but overenthusiastic nakama at that moment.

"Sure," she agreed. "Go ahead."

"You're a bunch of idiots," she told her nakama later, when they finally crowded into the infirmary to see her and apologise after Law gave them the rundown on her wellbeing – very much not pregnant, simply a little under the weather. "Never change."

A little bit of lighthearted nakamaship for a change! Managing to panic the crew without hurting anyone wasn't something I thought I'd ever manage, but here we go, I guess.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari