Chapter Text
In Makino’s bar, a black and white monkey with a striped long tail sat in Shanks’s lap, poking at a gem that he had brought for her from their latest trip.
“Hey, Luffy”, Shanks called out to the happy boy who was scarfing down food next to him.
“Yeah?” Luffy responded distractedly, fully focused on his second lunch.
“Can I ask Meggy a question?” Shanks asked, aware that it wasn’t common for people to speak to other people’s daemons unless they were close to each other, as in considering each other almost like family. It was considered polite to ask the human first if someone wanted to talk to someone else’s daemon.
Luffy looked at him with bulging cheeks, like he had asked him a stupid question. He glanced down at his daemon, who was right there in Shanks’ lap.
“She’s right there”, Luffy responded, like he was weird before returning to his food.
Shanks sighed, he should’ve known that Luffy would answer like that. Those two weren’t exactly like others and had been that way since Shanks first met them.
“Hey, Meggy”, Shanks began again, looking down at her in his lap.
“Yeah?” Meggy answered, quickly losing interest in the gem as the pirate captain shifted his focus to her. She let the gem fall down on the floor with a clatter and without waiting for an answer, she climbed onto his shoulders, letting her long tail curl around his face. She seemed oblivious to the fact that it tickled his nose and made it harder for him to continue. Instead, she seemed intent on leaning over Luffy to see if there was any food left for her, using her tail around Shanks’s face as an anchor.
“Meggy”, Shanks sighed again, blowing some fur out of his mouth. “You know, most daemons don’t climb all over other people like this.”
“Huh?” Meggy said in surprise, stopping what she was doing and looking back at him in surprise.
“You don’t feel uncomfortable?” he asked curiously. He knew from his own experience that when his daemon touched someone else, it required immense trust for letting someone else touch a part of your soul. There was something very exposing in letting yourself bare for someone else to touch as people could get a flash of the person’s inner self and feelings. Most people felt fear or embarrassment from it. But all he could feel from Meggy was curiosity.
“Why would I?” she tilted her head in confusion.
“… I don’t know”, Shanks responded after a moment with a quirk of his lips as he returned to his drink.
“Shanks is weird!” Luffy laughed loudly for the whole bar to hear as he finished his food.
“Ah! You didn’t leave anything for me Luffy!” Meggy shouted in distress.
“You little brat”, Shanks’s brow twitched as his crew around them laughed.