firefly dance

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3 – TARANTELLA

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When Sakura goes down to the hotel's dining hall the next morning, the boy is there waiting for her. He's sitting languid at an empty booth, slouched in a way that emphasizes the long, lean lines of his body. Splayed on the table in front of him is the hand she crushed last night. It's tightly bandaged, but she suspects he did that only to appear pitiful, because it's also whole and functioning and not at all in the same terrible state that she left it.

She hadn't meant to use so much force, of course. It just exploded out of her. He had been far stronger than she expected, and she really, really didn't want to lose. That his hand hadn't turned to pulp is amazing, and that the pain hadn't made him tear up or sweat is even more so.

His cloak, which was kept tightly shut last night, has fallen open around him, revealing black slacks and a ruffled white shirt that unashamedly displays the defined lines of his pectorals.

Slut, she thinks.

Sakura catches herself before a fond smile can find its way onto her face, and settles in the seat next to him, demanding, "What are you doing here?" There's no heat in it — she's surprisingly unsurprised — but it's the principle of the thing.

"I'm here to be your new purse," he declares proudly, beaming at her. "I've already dealt with your tab here, so just tell me when you're gonna leave for town."

"You know what I meant," Sakura sighs. She makes a face at his unrelenting grin. "You didn't follow me last night, so how'd you find me?"

"How do you know I didn't have you followed?" he asks, lifting his chin in challenge.

"I just know," she tells him, idly glancing over the breakfast selection. What Sakura loves about this place is that meals are included in the room fare, and a complimentary buffet is available for each guest to enjoy at all mealtimes. She's looking forward to enjoying luxurious resort food for the next few days.

"I just couldn't imagine you staying at any of the shitty places in the rest of this dump of an island," he admits. He sounds like he's being honest, and she allows that his logic is reasonable enough. "I'm told this is the least shitty hotel around these parts."

His thoughtless, patrician disdain for most things is something she'd noticed about him almost immediately, but it slides from one ear to the other now just as it had last night. He does it in a way that's so matter-of-fact that it doesn't even particularly bother her. Instead, Sakura peers past him at the feast being offered this morning.

The buffet itself is arranged on a long table in the center of the huge room, not too far from her own seat, and this makes it easy for her to pick out which dishes she wants to try first. She's already got her heart set on several tiny pastries and some of the interesting looking fruits. When she cranes her neck to locate the meat platters though, she finds her view obstructed by a face.

Sakura looks back at the boy blankly. "What?"

"Pay attention to me," he commands. She blinks and tilts her head to the right and then to the left and then below, but he follows her gaze doggedly, blocking her view of the buffet table at all angles. When she stands up, he stands with her and looms in such a way that she can't leave the table without tripping over her chair or crawling over the tablecloth.

He's pretty tall for such a brat; she has to lift her chin to meet his eyes. Somehow, this is more annoying than anything else he's done. Sakura puts both hands on his shoulders and pushes down with increasing force until he drops back into his seat. "I'll pay attention to you when I'm less hungry," she finally tells him.

He squints at her. "You promise?"

"Sure, puppy."

"You'd better," he says, vaguely threatening, but she just waves a hand at him as she strolls over to the buffet. Those sausages aren't going to eat themselves.

When Sakura finishes her breakfast and gets to her feet, the boy immediately offers his arm to her. She takes it and the two of them make their way out of the hotel, chattering leisurely about whatever topic comes to mind. As they pass the threshold that marks the border of the grounds, though, the transition from tropical resort to grungy pirate paradise is clearer than day.

It's especially obvious to Sakura, who only manages to take a dozen steps into town before some drunken bastard attempts to vomit on her open-toe shoes. She quickly hops away from the man, accidentally crushing the grass of someone's prettily trimmed front yard, and crinkles her nose at the smell. The boy by her side doesn't bother to stifle his guffaw.

Sakura primly ignores his attempts to tease her as they make their way deeper into the maze of streets, and it's only when they pass under a pirate on the second floor of a building, hacking up into the gutter, that she deigns to talk.

"Disgusting," the boy sneers, pulling her away so that they walk a wide berth from the scene.

"This may well be the filthiest town I've ever visited," agrees Sakura. "Filthy, but—"

For a moment she struggles, but she can't find the proper words to describe it. In some places, the town is indeed lazily filthy; there are dive bars where men fall down and sleep in their own waste, and some of these roads would be better cleaned by a shovel than a broom. But there are also neat rows of flowers, freshly-painted houses, people living their own uncomplicated, mundane lives, indifferent to the blood and the mess.

It reminds her of home, although of course it is completely unlike it. There is a clear divide between the residents of Mock Town and the pirates who visit. They depend on each other, they fool around with each other, spend money on each other, but at the end of the day they'll go their separate ways and probably not remember a lot.

It's a bit of a lonely thought, and that realization makes faint melancholy spark in her, something that downturns the corners of her mouth until the boy presses close to her and says, "Oh? Do you want to go somewhere else then? I know some nice islands."

He speaks so casually, and his goggles cover up his bright, fevered eyes so well, that she can almost convince herself that he's really as calm as he appears.

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"But what if I show you a real good time," he says, and — amazingly, incredibly — does a cheesy eyebrow wiggle. Sakura bites her lip in a futile attempt to kill her smile. She tries to turn away to hide it when he throws his arm around her shoulders.

"Listen!" he says, pulling her against his front. "Listen, listen! This powerful pirate captain is speaking to you and you dare—"

Laughter explodes out of her, and the both of them shake with the force of her giggles. Sakura is laughing so hard that she crumples into the boy's chest, and only his hold on her keeps her from doubling over. When she manages to reign it in, she finds that the boy is watching her with a wide grin.

Wiping a tear from her eyes, Sakura steps away from him, looks him straight in the eye and says, "Well, gee, I sure do like strong things, mister. When you talk to me like that I don't know how I could possibly resist."

A bark of laughter escapes the boy's mouth. "Is that a yes?"

"It's a maybe," she tells him. They resume walking, still bantering. "What's your name, anyway? I can't call you puppy forever."

"Will it be a yes if I tell you my name?"

"Not at all," says Sakura, blithely. "Though, I suppose it would help make it slightly less of a May and more of a Be."

"Well then." He throws out a hand with a flourish and gives her a shallow bow, his cloak falling dashingly over his shoulder. "Rejoice, peasant, for you stand in the presence of the one and only Vinsmoke Niji."

She tilts a brow at his theatrics and dips into a sarcastic curtsy. "Your highness," she drawls, as dry as bone. "I know not how to contain my ecstasy for having met you."

"The name doesn't ring any bells?" Niji asks, straightening up and watching her curiously.

Sakura blinks back at him and the two of them continue their meandering path down the road. "Was it supposed to?"

"I suppose not," Niji says, chuckling. "What are you called, then?"

It seems only right to return the favour of his full name with her own. Still dripping with sarcasm, Sakura says, "This humble one is called Haruno Sakura."

"And I'm called Hettie," a nearby stall keeper announces, completely out of the blue. A tiny block of cheese on a toothpick is abruptly shoved right in front of Sakura's face. "Would the humble Miss Haruno like to try some aged mozzarella?"

Both Niji and Sakura stare at the middle-aged lady for a beat, nonplussed, and then a crooked grin takes Sakura's face.

"The humble Miss Haruno would indeed," she says, taking the sample from the woman. She plops the cheese into her mouth, and slowly slides the toothpick out from between her teeth. "Mm," she hums.

"It's good?" asks Niji. Sakura nods, glancing up to see him watching her intensely. "Gimme one too."

Obediently, she takes another toothpick from the lady and offers it to him. Rather than take it from her by hand, Niji bends down and takes the cheese into his mouth. Without breaking eye contact, he draws his head back, allowing the cheese to slip off of the stick, and chews thoughtfully.

"Mm," he agrees throatily. Sakura gives him a stink eye, because the cheese isn't that good. She knows what he's up to and she'll have none of it.

Niji just grins roguishly at her and hands a few bills to the eager shopkeeper. "Gimme six of those," he tells her, and the lady immediately begins to pack up six wheels of the aged mozzarella. Sakura squints at the bags of cheese in his hand but refrains from comment.

They manage another several steps before they are accosted by another shopkeeper handing out samples, this time of wine. Sakura tries it and declares that it's delicious; Niji agrees with far too much enthusiasm, and he buys six bottles of it. This pattern repeats itself four more times with loaves of bread, jars of honey, parsels of beef jerky, and bags of a type of grape that's sticky like mangoes but tastes like apples, until Niji is weighed down with bags from six different shops. This is when he suddenly decides to end his personal buying spree.

Sakura only manages to contain her curiosity for several more minutes before it gets the better of her and she blurts out her most immediate question. "What's with you and sixes?"

"Well," he starts, smirking. "I suppose I have a particular relationship with the number six."

She regards Niji with great suspicion, but is quite promptly distracted by the signboard hanging over his head. 'STAMP'S BOOKS,' it says.

It's a bookstore.

Sakura immediately slides past Niji and pushes through the solid wooden door; overhead, a cheerful chime welcomes them in. She looks around and holds her hands to her chest, sighing softly to herself. Her own few bags crinkle against each other, the noise muffled in this dusty sanctuary.

"I can't believe Mock Town has a bookstore," says Sakura. Her voice has taken on the absent-minded, almost dreamy quality that signifies her attention is elsewhere.

"I'm not sure this counts as a bookstore," Niji replies, looking around skeptically. He and his legion of bags barely fit. "It's smaller than my closet."

Unbothered by this, she says, "I'm sure most stores are."

The bookstore, if it indeed can be called that, is tiny and crammed with books on every available surface. The shopkeeper — whose name tag proclaims him to be 'Stamp' — is a balding man in his fifties who is reading a newspaper and seems content with leaving them alone as long as they don't cause a mess.

Sakura floats over to a shelf to pick up a book and flip through the pages, squinting at the author's introduction. There's a photograph of a person — she's going to assume it is a person — wearing at least two parkas and a pink hat, their face almost completely covered by a surgical mask and big glossy sunglasses.

Niji is standing so close that she feels his little puff of laughter against her neck as if he's touched her. "Groundbreaking fashion," he says.

Sakura snaps the book closed and puts it back in its pile. "Well, you know, we can't all wear— um—" She glances at him over her shoulder, examining him closely. "You know—that—whatever it is you're wearing."

"What are you wearing?" Niji shoots back. It sounds like the prelude to some filthy letter-writing, and Sakura throws her head back and laughs.

"What, you don't like it?" she asks cheekily, doing her best twirl in the cramped space available. The hem of her yellow sundress spills outward, flowing and fluttering between their legs like liquid sunshine.

Niji watches the flashes of milky thigh exposed by the movement with great interest. "I would have liked it better if it were shorter."

"You're an incorrigible pervert," she tells him, smacking the bare part of his chest with another book. "Go stand in the corner and think through your wrongdoings."

"It's gonna take months for me to get through all of those," he replies impishly, snatching the book from her and tossing it on top of another random stack.

"Then you better get to it," she sniffs, her nose in the air. She flounces off into the narrow maze of bookshelves, leaving him caught near the entrance, encumbered by all the bags in his hands.

Without a care, Niji drops his bags at his feet, right on the welcome mat, and goes to follow her.

Their peaceful definitely-not-a-date is interrupted by a man stumbling into Sakura on the street. He's tall but hunched over, pale and sweaty and trembling, and grabs onto Sakura as if she's his lifeline. He doesn't manage to do much more than that before Niji slams a large, bare hand into his throat and tears him away from her, lifting the man as far from Sakura as his arm can reach.

"P-please…" the man chokes out, clutching at Niji's arm, which doesn't waver even as the man flails and kicks out. "You have to h-help me…!"

Sakura tugs Niji's sleeve; he responds with a gloomy, unwilling look, but nonetheless abruptly drops the man, who manages—barely—to land on his feet. Ignoring Niji's curling upper lip, she steps in between the two and asks, "What's wrong?"

Amidst his hacking coughs, the man chokes out, "My mother, she—we were on our evening stroll—she just collapsed, and I don't have the strength to carry her by myself, won't you please help me—she's just over there, over there—"

The man points a shaking finger over to a small alleyway not too far away, shaded by tall buildings on either side. Sakura is already taking a step towards it, assent rising in her throat, when a long leg snakes out past her in a blur and rams into the sickly man's gut. A bright shock of electricity bursts around the point of contact, followed by a short, hoarse scream. The man collapses, convulsing and retching into the dirt.

"What the hell?" Sakura cries, spinning around to glare at Niji, who is looking down at his uninjured hand. She makes to rush towards the poor man's side when an arm falls around her shoulders like a steel bar and pulls her back. "What'd you do that for, he just wanted help!"

"Why would he ask you for help?" Niji says, glowering darkly down at the stranger. "I'm the man, I'm obviously stronger—"

"No you aren't," Sakura interrupts, scowling hard. Furious at him for trying to restrain her, she grabs either end of the heavy, bandaged forearm pressed up against her collarbones with both hands.

Just as she prepares to snap it in half, Niji bends down to her ear and murmurs, silkily, "Yeah, but how does he know that?"

She pauses. Her grip goes slack.

This is a very good point. How does he know that?

By all appearances, Niji indeed looks far stronger than she does. He may be young but he's built solidly, tall with broad shoulders. When they stand next to each other, he dwarfs her, especially because she's rather petite compared to the average person in this world.

Most importantly, he's a man. Sexism is a real thing here, even more so than back home.

"He's seen me before?" she guesses. It's certainly not as if she's been hiding her strength at all; she's only been on this island for a day or so, but a crowd of people has already witnessed her throwing a man.

"Bingo," he says. "Look at this."

He loosens his hold on her and spreads his broad hand open so that she can see the palm he had been inspecting with such interest. It's covered in something chalky and white, like flour.

Before she can reach out to touch the substance, Niji pulls away and stalks over to the sickly-looking man curled up on the road, who is whimpering softly. He places one shiny shoe on the man's cheek and begins to grind down. Under his sole, the white powder begins to rub off to reveal a healthy tan and the faint outline of a tattoo.

"This fuckface is wearing face powder," he sneers. Having proved his point, Niji wipes his hand off on the man's shirt and gives him a final, lazy kick in the jaw for good measure.

Sakura wisely doesn't comment at the sharp crack that results. Instead, she says, "He could just like wearing makeup. Maybe his mother really did faint."

Niji looks at her as if doubting her intelligence, his one curly brow raised so high it's approaching his hairline. "There's no one in that alley, idiot."

"How do you know?"

"I just do," he tells her with a sly smirk, throwing her words from the hotel back in her face. "He probably wanted to get you alone and jump you for your money."

"But I wonder how he knew that kind of scheme would work on me," she says thoughtfully. She peers down at the man's face, trying to tell if she's seen him before. "Most people in this town wouldn't fall for that kind of thing."

"No they wouldn't," Niji snorts. "No one here's as pointlessly goody-goody as you."

"Rude," she replies, even though she's not particularly bothered.

"But true."

"But rude."

He laughs and steps over the man's prone body, collecting their dropped bags and returning to his dogged sentinel at her side. Niji has been hanging around so closely all day that she's had to push him aside on several occasions while browsing the shops. "He probably saw you checking on the asshole having a dirtnap yesterday. Not many people would bother."

"What," she says, thinking back to the previous afternoon. She doesn't remember seeing someone as shifty as him in the audience, but of course he could have been in any of the surrounding buildings. "You saw that?"

"Of course I did," replies Niji, unbearably smug. "I put him there."

Confused, Sakura squints at him. "What for? He wasn't even injured."

"Bait," he says blithely.

She stares at him for a moment, her face wiped of expression, and finally says, "I'm not going to ask."

Niji laughs again and wraps his free hand around her opposite elbow, leading her back into a leisurely stroll. His palm is hot and rough against her skin. They leave the man—probably still alive, if barely—face down in the dirt, and continue the rest of the outing without much incident.

Later, they leave town with a truly incredible number of shopping bags, all paid out of Niji's pocket. He brings all of her things up to her room for her and leaves his own purchases too, calling them gifts.

When he asks Sakura to come sail with him again, though, she just laughs and tries to shut the door in his face. He catches it with his foot and shoves his head into the gap between the door and the frame.

"Maybe wasn't a yes," she reminds him, poking his cheek in an attempt to squish him back out of her room.

"How do I make maybe into a yes, then?" he says, pushing himself bodily through the opening. He catches her finger before she can poke him again, his fingers engulfing her hand, and looks steadily at her. She finds herself suddenly glad for his goggles, the way they allow her to pretend his gaze isn't as feverish as it is.

"Come find me when you're at least seventeen," says Sakura, after a thoughtful pause.

Niji is silent for a long moment, and then says, "Then… give me your den-den mushi number."

She gives it to him.

Earlier, he had told Sakura that no one was in that alleyway.

That was a blatant lie.

The truth is this: there had been at least a couple dozen presences in that tiny, enclosed side-street, far more than there was any right to be. It was this, and not the residue powder on his hand, that had brought Niji to the realization that the pathetic wretch had been talking out his ass. Though to be fair, Niji hadn't needed a reason to mark the guy for death, really, he had already decided to kill the scum the instant he'd put his disgusting hands on Sakura.

Niji barely got to touch her the whole day, and this worm thought he could drape himself all over her? Ridiculous.

The ugly jolly roger tattooed on the man's uglier face was an even more incriminating piece of evidence that—while not necessary—helped clarify why Sakura, in specific, had been targeted.

It was a rarely seen pirate mark but, funnily enough, he'd seen that particular skull before. In fact, he'd seen it just last night. In the tavern. Right before its wearer went flying out an open door.

A familiar jolly roger, a staged act to get Sakura into a secluded area, a side-street filled with a crowd of people who shouldn't be there — it was clear as day what was meant to happen. Niji hadn't allowed Sakura a proper look at the tattoo, because while he understood that Sakura must have a great deal of strength to be able to deal any amount of damage to his enhanced body with her bare hands, and while he himself is perfectly capable of wiping the floor with any number of low-lives from the first half of the Grand Line, telling her the truth would have meant allowing their date to be interrupted even further.

Inexcusable.

The lie came easily. Sakura may be gorgeous as fuck, but she's so astonishingly gullible that it's a wonder she's gotten even this far through the Grand Line travelling alone. Who knows what could have happened today, if he hadn't been there.

In any case, now that Niji is alone, soothing the sour taste of the fury he'd had to suppress earlier is a simple matter. Prowling through an alleyway in the dying light of the day, he drags a struggling man across the grimy floor by the hair, paying no mind to the corpses lining his path. Finding a suitably tall pile of bodies, Niji throws himself onto some poor sap's back and makes himself comfortable in his makeshift throne, his captive still dangling from his hand.

He yanks the fistful of hair he's got in his hand to eye level and glares down at the face revealed by the motion: it's the same man who bumped into Sakura earlier this afternoon. His victim squints at him through two swollen eyes and rasps, "Why are you d—doing this?"

"If you have to ask why, you're a bigger idiot than I thought," Niji sneers. "Obviously, I killed the rest because they're weaklings who deserved to die. As for why you aren't dead yet, it's because I won't be satisfied until I see you grovel for forgiveness. So get to it."

"Fuck…you," the pirate hisses, attempting to spit onto Niji's face. Niji tilts his head so that the lob of saliva flies over his shoulder and jerks the man's scalp back so hard that it nearly folds his neck in half; already hoarse breathing cuts into a choked gurgle.

"You shitty worm, I—" Niji begins to say, before he is cut off by the abrupt ringing of his transponder snail. With a disgusted noise, he throws the man to the ground and presses one glossy shoe over his throat in warning.

Niji rummages in his cloak for the transponder, preparing to keep his voice level and his expression calm, just in case it's Sakura — then he realises that he never gave her his own number. A scowl takes his face as he lifts the receiver to his mouth, and into it he says, curtly, "What."

The voice that emerges from the snail's mouth is Ichiji's. "Your men have reported that you're still stationed at Jaya. Surely it isn't taking you this long to finish such a simple job."

"Of course I finished the job," Niji snaps. Annoyed, he grinds the heel of his shoe against his victim's thick shoulder. "What do you take me for?"

"Then why are you still—"

Through a half-closed throat, the writhing man under his foot seethes, "You'll never get away with this...!"

Niji presses the sole of his shoe against a sallow cheek, bruised and purpling. "Shut up."

"Did you just tell me to shut up?" Ichiji says, his voice dark. The snail's face is stormy.

"Not you," Niji says.

He gives the pirate in front of him a hard look, but the man, delirious with hatred, ignores the glare and continues to babble, "Kill… I'll kill you…"

Niji tosses the transponder snail onto another prone body and abruptly rises from his seat. "Didn't I tell you to shut up," he snarls, rearing his leg back and beginning to smash his foot into the man in a frenzy. "You—nearly—made—my brother—angry," he growls, every word forcefully emphasized with a merciless kick; the last one is followed by one, two, three kicks sunk into the limp pirate's gut until the flesh is as soft and tender as overripe fruit. He doesn't even bother with electricity, wanting to feel the satisfying crunch of every hit.

The man lies bloody and still and blessedly silent. Niji gives one last lazy kick to his face before harrumphing and going back to his call.

"Who was that?" Ichiji drawls.

"Shut up," Niji tells him. "None of your business."

"Hmph," says Ichiji, but he nonetheless does not pursue that line of conversation. "You said you finished the job. What are you doing still there? Do you have the money?"

Niji pauses and looks at the receiver in his hand. Carefully, he says, "… Most of it."

There is a long pause on both sides of the call. "What do you mean most?"

"Well," Niji starts, "There was a girl…"

The snail's face suddenly shifts from Ichiji's general expression of dull indifference to something obnoxious and provoking. Yonji's distinctive voice, filled with laughter, sings, "Father said no prostitutes."

"She wasn't a prostitute," Niji says, his voice an annoyed rumble. He has to forcibly relax his fingers so he doesn't accidentally crush the receiver.

The snail's face changes again, this time into sly amusement. Reiju. "Was she cute?"

Niji leans against somebody's torso and smirks. "Very."

There is a shuffle as Yonji takes back the receiver. "If you want a cute girl, there are a ton of them over here. Why are you wasting so much time and money in some trashy nowhere-town?"

"She wasn't just cute, she was spectacularly hot, too," Niji says, his smirk becoming increasingly smug. "She drank a bar half-dry and crushed my exoskeleton with one hand. As if any girl in North Blue can do that."

"Oh?" says Ichiji, sounding mildly interested.

"What's her name? Which island were you at again?" demands Yonji, sounding extremely interested.

"Fuck off, I found her first," Niji replies, to the both of them. Greedy bastards.

Yonji's scowl comes out distorted on the snail's elongated face. "Didn't anyone teach you to share?"

"No they didn't, and no one taught you either, shitface."

"I'm glad you're having fun, but hurry back," Reiju says, interrupting their bickering. "Father has accepted a new contract, and it is an urgent one that requires all four of us."

Lazily, Niji replies, "Yeah, yeah, I'll head out now."

"But what does she look like?"

"Fuck off, Yonji," says Niji, hanging up.

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️Notes:

And then they got married. The end

Canon Niji is pretty bad in the first place but my Niji is graphically, vividly terrible, so if you like him then you're also terrible. (Me too.) I got a chapter done in under a week! Woah! It's a major miracle! Don't get used to it!