Flammable; SmoAce fic
There’s goddamned pirate sitting on his desk.
Smoker is frozen in the doorway, one hand still outstretched in pushing the door open, brain practically stripping gears trying to assimilate this information in any way that makes sense.
“Ne, taisa, you shouldn’t leave all your paperwork out where someone can just stroll by and take it,” Portgas hums, leafing through a stack of memos that hadn’t been sorted yet. His boots are braced against the back of the chair, ridiculously orange hat tipped back on his head like he hadn’t just waltzed onto the ship and into the cabin of a marine commodore.
Smoker barely has the presence of mind to kick the door closed when he takes a careful step forward, hands curling into loose fists. The closest set of seastone cuffs is in his desk drawer on the far side of the Mera eater and the pirate’s fire is explosive enough to punch through into the neighboring cabins in the time it would take to unsling his jitte. Tashigi is probably asleep only one door down. They both know that smoke does well enough at containing fire, but not in an enclosed, flammable space on top of the cold ocean.
The silent threat hangs heavy over Smoker’s head. “What do you want?” he manages to growl, jaw locked to keep his cigars from being bitten through.
Millions of beli worth of outlaw gives him a slow blink. “Right to business, ah? No hi, how do you do, you’re under arrest? How rude. I expected more from you, Smoker.”
Unimpressed and on edge, Smoker narrows his eyes and exhales a harsh lungful of smoke. The pirate has ugly smudges under his eyes, the paleness of exhaustion under his tan and the shape of wind-whittled brittleness in his expression. Shuffling through the paperwork, his fingers move the slow and sure pace of someone resigned and fixed to a fate.
“You look like shit,” the older man says.
That startles a laugh from Portgas, short and sharp despite its genuine flavor. “I didn’t realize you cared, old man.”
“I don’t.”
“Too bad, you should.” And before Smoker can open his mouth to ask why, Firefist jumps tracks. “I need a favor, Smoker.”
“You would come to a marine and expect a favor?” the White Hunter asks, footfalls heavy on the wooden floor as he stalked forward. Taking the cigars from between his teeth and stubbing them out in the ashtray on the desk puts both men well within each others reach. Smoker could lift a hand and have it around Portgas’s neck, but there’s a dark glitter in those eyes that warns him off.
This is not the Portgas D. Ace he had clashed with in Alabasta, not the brat he had bantered with in that restaurant. Some kind of desperation has hollowed him out, leaving nothing but embers and ash and flat steel. Smoker has absolutely no pity for any man fool enough to pull a dragon’s tail, but he still wonders what the fuck the dragon wants him to do about it.
“I want you to take this,” Portgas overrides his implied question, handing Smoker a sealed fullsize envelope, “and do your marine thing and follow the instructions. That’s all.”
The explanation is too simple to be anything but half the story and the commodore wastes no time in ripping the envelope open and pulling out the single sheet within.
In the absence of cigars, Smoker’s molars grind together. “Where did you get this?”
The brat knocks his hat back and idly runs a hand through scraggly hair. He looks like he’s half an inch from either collapsing or exploding. Wherever his fire is, his spark, he’s buried it pretty deep. “That page? I forged it. The original skeleton? Stole it. Or bought it, depending on how particular you want to be.”
The paper crinkles in protest when Smoker’s hand tightens into a fist. “And you expect me to follow falsified orders? Has your fruit finally melted the rest of your brain?”
“Look, taisa,” Portgas sighs, rubbing at his eyes with one set of knuckles. “The orders are valid, I just changed the recipient. I was also hoping I could bunk with you for a few days, but I guess that’s too much to ask. That stick up your ass takes up too much room in here.”
Despite his size, the White Hunter can move like lightning even in solid in human form. Firefist, however, is sluggish as he jerks backwards and ends up rolling off the desk to evade the jitte, which skims over his head instead of breaking his jaw. Unfortunately, that puts the desk between them and the pirate is up and primed by the time Smoker half leaps, half smokes over it.
“Stop!” the young man barks, one partly flamed hand extended between them and the other flung in the direction of the wall - the wall that separates Smoker’s cabin from Tashigi’s.
The commodore goes very, very still.
“Smoker, I don’t want to go that far but I swear on Whitebeard’s name that I will if you push me,” he promises.
Shadow sculpts sharp edges along Portgas’s jawline and hides the bruises around his eyes, masking the weakness of exhaustion and framing the grit of ruthless necessity. The pirate is, in a tactical sense, the one in control of the situation, so he shouldn’t have desperation in the sheen of his eyes, despair in the tense tremble of his shoulders.
“Portgas…” Smoker rumbles something that resembles a sigh and pulls out a virgin pair of cigars, chewing on them unlit. “Tell me why.”
The brat’s chuckle is like gravel. “I realize that I’m just a lying, thieving, whoring criminal of a pirate, but you can trust me when I tell you that you don’t want Marshal D. Teach to be part of the shichibukai. I’m also trying to avoid having to start a war. So, really, helping me with this one little thing is in your best interests.”
It takes a moment for Smoker to digest that. When Portgas shuffles forward and stretches out a finger, it’s only to light his cigars. The natural smoke lingers between them like a peace offering. It doesn’t appeal the pirate to him at all, but it speaks volumes on how badly the younger man needs his acquiescence.
“So, how does me reporting to some backwater marine base help you stop war?” the commodore presses, wary and curious despite himself.
“Further orders have been left for you - or rather, not for you, but it should still work - there.” He pauses, but continues on when Smoker merely grunts. “All you have to do is show up and exchange that letter for another one detailing Teach’s current location and your orders to go provide an escort, presumably to Impel Down. You can either give me his location then or I can just trail you there. I take him out, and there’s one less bastard pirate for you to lose beauty sleep over.”
To Impel Down? Notable pirates are often offered a position within the shichibukai so long as they hadn’t directly targeted the Government, but it isn’t unheard of that an outlaw aspiring to join offers up something - or someone - as an entrance fee.
Realization curls in Smoker’s gut and sits there like lead. “Who does he have?” Teach had been one of Whitebeard’s, and taking in a fellow crewmember, one of Portgas’s nakama… yeah, he can see it wringing the brat out like this, maybe. But intuition tells him it’s beyond that.
“My brother,” Firefist hisses, and his dark eyes reflect the flame that lights across his shoulders for a brief moment before he snuffs it out.
Feels like it hits the commodore hard, just under his ribs. Strawhat belongs to him, first of all, and secondly…
“You would start a war, for Strawhat?” Smoker asks harshly. The leather of his gloves creaks when his fists tighten.
Portgas gives him a long, disgusted look. “Without Teach’s location, I’m left waiting at the gates of Impel Down for him. You think your Government doesn’t already know this? They’re keeping the news hushed for now because they don’t want Blackbeard ambushed on the sea; won’t announce it until Luffy’s under the sea in prison. All three Admirals have already been summoned to Impel Down, won’t be long until you get the call too. I have to get to him now, before that happens, or I’m going to be waging war on the entire goddamn marine fleet.”
“You?” the older man is quick to growl, two long strides putting him right in the brat’s face. “Against the whole fleet? You wouldn’t make it past the docks. That’s suicide, not war.”
Snap and snarl, the pirate whirls away from him with a flicker of fire to keep Smoker from getting between him and the door or the porthole. “Fuck you, junsho. You think it’ll be just me showing up? I don’t just back Whitebeard, he backs me. It’s a two way fucking street. You think Shanks will sit back and let them take the kid that’s practically his son? You think Luffy’s crew won’t pick themselves up and drag their asses over?” There’s the anger boiling over the determined calm, tearing open the badly cauterized helplessness.
“Last I heard, some of the other Supernovas were itching to get involved. Nothing like a little war to make their mark on the World Government,” Firefist continues, ramping up the more he goes on. “Luffy’s got his own allies too; he got chatty with Roger’s old first mate in Shabaody, didja know? Hell, every sap he’s ever smiled at will be there. You want that, Smoker? Do you? Can you imagine how many marines will die because Blackbeard made shichibukai?”
Smoker is silent. He can imagine it all right.
“You know what? You can say no, not help me. Of course you can. And I’ll walk off your Lady Justice peacefully, places to be and things to do and all that. But if anything happens to Luffy because of that, you know who I’ll come for afterwards? You.” Portgas draws out the silence, holding Smoker’s gaze with his own so the commodore can see the promise there. “You, and maybe your pretty ensign before that.”
Smoke fills the cabin in an instant and the pirate’s back hits the corner of a bookcase, held there by the jitte against the hollow of his throat. “Taking care of you here and now would fix that. Might even get you a cell beside your brother in Impel Down,” the White Hunter suggests, voice low and even.
But damn him, there’s not an inkling of caution or reason in the brat’s stare. That when it hits him, really, that Portgas will take half the pirates in the Grand Line, Yonkou included, and tear Impel Down up by its roots if he has to. His brain tells him that there’s no point in averting that disaster because the same thing would happen when he brings Strawhat in later, himself. His gut tells him that he won’t ever catch Strawhat, just like it did after he got the Enies Lobby report.
Something else occurs to him, them.
“Blackbeard, was it?” Smoker keeps one hand splayed on the younger’s man’s chest but draws the jitte back half an inch off his throat. “How did he catch Strawhat?”
There’s a cruel twist to Portgas’s grin. “Taking notes, taisa? Doubt you would try his methods, though. He took some of Luffy’s crew hostage, gave them a few new scars to show off, got Luffy to trade himself. Silly, confident fool,” he murmurs the last part. “Teach stole a Devil Fruit from a division commander on his way out earlier, Yami Yami no Mi. He can… disable other Devil Fruit eaters, somehow. Among other things.”
Brat’s right; Smoker will catch Strawhat by catching Strawhat, end of story. Still, considering the rest of the Strawhats, the Yami eater must be something to accomplish such a feat. Instinct says he doesn’t want a demon like that playing shichibukai.
Realizing that he’s actually weighing the pirate’s original plea, the commodore backs up another step and releases him completely. “So then how the fuck do you plan on taking him down, boy?”
“Get Luffy out and then blow the whole fucking ship,” Portgas snarls, arching his back. “Put him on the ocean floor, see if that works.”
Smoker doesn’t bother poking holes in that plan because he knows that Portgas won’t care and that the D. brother will make it work somehow, even if he has to drown himself along with Blackbeard to do it. The commodore’s brain works furiously to point out the mistakes in this entire idea, but he’s already made up his mind and he knows it.
“Fine,” the older man growls, turning abruptly to stride back towards his desk. A tendril of smoke picks up the dropped letter of recall on his way. “I’ll play along, but I’m not going to stick my neck out to save your damned brother. And I’m not keeping you on my ship.”
There’s a muffled thump behind him and Smoker knows what it is even before he looks back at Portgas out of disbelief. The brat’s facedown on the floor, asleep. He doesn’t even stir when the Moku eater picks him up and dumps him on the bed, strictly so he isn’t underfoot. The commodore has too much paperwork to do to think about sleep until later anyways.
*
He’s never lied to his crew before and he won’t start now, even by omission. Smoker lays down the whole story in the morning and doesn’t have to give them the why’s. They already understand. Their course is changed accordingly and Firefist’s little raft is pulled on board and covered properly instead of scraping paint off the hull beneath Smoker’s porthole.
The pirate is still dead to the world in Smoker’s cabin, who doesn’t care. He expects to see the brat for lunch, or dinner at the latest.
*
Portgas’s arrival in the mess hall at lunch is announced by a yelp when he bumps into one of the sharpshooters in line. Tension makes the air vibrate, but the pirate tells a joke and shows off some sleight of hand to score a second treat and the ice is safely broken.
Of course, he plops down across from Smoker with his plate piled ridiculously high. There aren’t even traces of shadow in his expression, and most of the sallow exhaustion has cleared from his face. Tashigi blushes all the way to her roots when he winks at her while obscenely sucking chocolate pudding off his spoon and the commodore pitches him backwards off the bench with a billow of smoke.
It’s disgustingly domestic.
*
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Smoker rumbles before he turns in early. Twenty five hours without sleep is starting to get to him.
Portgas gives him a wicked grin and no promises. In the morning, the commodore finds out that the brat passed out in the night watchman’s lap, arms cinched tightly around the poor marine’s waist until the smell of breakfast made it up to the crow’s nest. He gives Firefist a second degree glare whenever the young man’s mere presence causes a certain crewmember to turn an alarming shade of crimson, much to the laughter of the rest of the crew.
He tells the D. brother in no uncertain terms to keep his hands to himself, but just gets laughed at.
*
He’s staring hard at the letter Portgas gave him and still can’t tell it’s a forgery. And hell if that doesn’t prick at him.
“You said you had the original?” he prompts in the middle of the pirate’s senseless rambling.
“Original what? I’m all original, baby,” Firefist teases, bowl of rice in one hand and an open book from one of the floor to ceiling cases in the other. Nothing in any of the bookcases is classified, so Smoker doesn’t bother kicking him out. Better if the brat stays in his sight, and occupied.
The marine growls around his cigars, elbows digging into the oak of his desk. “The original letter.” He doesn’t dignify the flirting with a response. The commodore has lots of evidence that the boy flirts with anything that has a beating heart.
Portgas keeps the book out and balances the bowl on the inside of his forearm, fishing a folded piece of paper out of one of the pockets in his board shorts, the only this he has on besides the beads and boots. Despite Smoker’s early attempts, the brat constantly loses any shirts given to him and so the White Hunter decided to save the rest of his patience and bow out of that budding tug of war. A growl echoes deep in his chest whenever he gets an eyeful of Whitebeard’s mark, and Firefist feigns ignorance.
The boy tosses him the paper, and surprisingly, it sails over in a perfect arc. He had folded the fucking thing into a paper airplane.
Smoker sends him an acidic glare and only gets an eyeful of a grinning tattoo, Portgas having turned back to choose a different book. He carefully unfolds the contorted sheet instead of strangling the damn brat.
As promised, the orders on it are identical to the fake, with only the name altered. It also drives home how perfect the forgery is, which unsettles the White Hunter more than he admits even to himself. “What happened to Rear Admiral Deval?” he has to ask instead. It’s the recipient name listed on the original document, and he almost doesn’t want to know.
“Alive,” Firefist says lightly, not turning around. “Probably still nursing a serious hangover and a mild case of food poisoning. Doesn’t recall ever receiving that letter by now.”
“And you stole it after poisoning him, or did you pay someone else to do it?” Smoker rumbles, remembering what the pirate had mentioned about it originally.
A noncommittal hum. “No, he showed me where it was and I took it myself.”
“Oh? And where was Deval at that point? Already poisoned?” Hard sarcasm.
“Yes, but at that particular moment he was dead to rights in bed, completely fucked out.” His voice is so mild that it takes Smoker a moment to pick up the implication.
The commodore sneers at the pirate’s back. “Whore.”
“Yes, I believe I mentioned that already,” Portgas murmurs, and doesn’t turn around. Smoker can’t decide if he wants to see the brat’s expression or not so he just goes back to his paperwork.
*
He tries not to think about it and mostly succeeds for a couple days, until Portgas strolls out of his shower with a towel sliding low on sharp hips. There’s a fading blotchy yellow bruise on each of the pirate’s hipbones and a set of almost healed of scratches across his ribs that stands out from the heated water.
Unexpected lust hits Smoker hard.
It surprises him more than anything. Instead of being turned off by the lingering marks, he wants to take Deval’s presence off the boy’s skin and replace it with his own, bruises and scratches and scent. He wants to fuck Firefist until the brat forgets that Rear Admiral’s name.
“Enjoyed yourself, apparently,” he says, and manages a snide tone.
Portgas has the nerve to be surprised, glancing down at himself before catching on. “Maa, am I sensing some jealousy, taisa?”
“You wish,” Smoker snarls, and throws a pair of his own jeans at the brat’s face. The pirate’s own shorts are being washed.
“Maybe I do,” Firefist parries, and flees back into the head to dodge the boots that the older man throws at him next. The marine pretends he didn’t see the flash of genuine longing on the boy’s face.
At least until Portgas comes back out barely a minute later, one finger hooked in a belt loop to keep the too-big pants up. Well, ‘up’ in a general term, because they’re even lower than the towel had been. Smoker can see the beginnings of dark curls vanish under his waistband. “What’d you do with my belt, old man?” he mumbles, looking preoccupied.
The commodore’s mouth is bone dry but he still manages an answer. “On the bed.”
When the lanky pirate leans over the edge of Smoker’s bed, jeans riding so low it’s the definition of obscene, there’s the beginning of another set of scratches visible on the high ridge of one asscheek. It looks like a crosshatching of scabs that must have been pretty bloody to still be so raw nearly a week later.
“Your Rear Admiral had talons, I see,” Smoker rumbles as casually as he can.
Firefist’s pause is notable before he starts threading his belt in, mostly turned away from the marine but Smoker can still see his profile. “Claws, actually. Neko Neko no Mi, jaguar or something else with black fur.” There’s a faint grimace on his face but even from his desk the marine can see gooseflesh break out on the boy’s shoulderblades and over the inked letters on his arm. Portgas hesitates on the belt buckle, closes his eyes, and breathes out slow through his nose. There’s a faint flush across his cheekbones and Smoker is on him before those dark eyes are fully open.
The Moku eater solidifies just in time to swallow the other’s sound of surprise, lips and teeth and tongue, hands on Firefist’s ass to lift the pirate up against his rapidly swelling erection. Portgas gets over his surprise and gets on with wrapping long lean legs around Smoker’s waist pretty quick, nails digging blunt dots of pain into the older man’s skull as he opens his mouth wider and fights back.
The bed is pressing against the back of the marine’s knees but he pivots instead and slams Portgas into a wall. The brat throws his head back, tearing his mouth from Smoker’s with a yelp and arching his chest out sharply when his back hits the cold glass and metal of the porthole. With a satisfied grunt, Smoker flicks at the presented nipples with his thumbnails to draw a low keen from the boy’s gaping mouth which he rapidly re-covers with his own.
“Fucking-- hell, bed was-- r-right there, uhn--” Portgas manages between bruising kisses. “--‘m gonna be stuck t-to this, this, aah, fuck, porthole, you bastard, m-move!”
Without removing his teeth from where they’re worrying at a spot under the pirate’s jaw, Smoker obligingly whirls and crosses the room in a handful of strides and lets Firefist’s shoulders fall back - right onto the surface of his desk, inches from the ashtray where two cigars still have a dull glow to them. Brat jolts and swears and digs his knees into the White Hunter’s sides. “Desk, fucking unreal, you commanders and your desks! I swear to high heaven, if I get any more splinters in my tat I’ll… ooh…”
One tanned arm sweeps out, sending two and a half stacks of paperwork to the floor. Smoker tells himself that it’s the gesture and not the words that lights a wildfire in his gut. He crushes Portgas’s hips between his own and the desk; the inked back comes right up off the oak. One big hand grabs at dark hair and pulls Firefist’s head back, forcing the body beneath him to stay in that sharp bridge as Smoker leans over him and pushes his tongue back into that hot mouth.
Portgas is squirming in short, sharp bursts, but the commodore holds him down as those edged hips thrust a mirroring hardness up against his own. A bare foot unlocks from his waist and toes hook onto the waistband of Smoker’s jeans, pushing down on them hard but they don’t budge until the older man undoes his belt buckle and fly with one hand, and then they’re pooled around his ankles with only one layer of denim between them.
There’s not a lick of fire on the pirate’s skin and the White Hunter doesn’t even remember his smoke.
It’s almost funny the way Firefist is wriggling under him, trying to shimmy out of the pants that are already down past his hips because Smoker’s molded to him too closely to fit hands in and pull them down properly - rather, it might have been funny if the movement wasn’t coaxing drops of precome from the older man’s cock with the best kind of torture.
Brat’s gasping something into his mouth but all he can make out are heavy vowels, so Smoker eventually withdraws slightly with a trailing tug on a swollen lower lip. “What?” he hisses, voice rough and weighted like it’s been tumbled by the ocean.
“Lube!” Portgas nearly moans, also taking advantage of the space to drag the marine’s fingers out of his hair. “Tell me you have some?”
Straightening, Smoker lets the Mera eater have his hair back, other hand still braced against the oak as he admires Firefist’s heaving chest and palms his own cock. “No.”
The next moan is more frustration than pleasure, but it still goes straight down the commodore’s spine. “My pockets! Where’re my shorts?”
“Not here,” Smoker growls through clenched teeth, bracing his thighs against the desk’s edge to use his supporting hand to divest Portgas of his pants instead. Much better use of the appendage. He has to step out of the circle of strong legs to get the jeans completely pulled off, and tanned knees get him in the chest when he goes to step back in.
Firefist catches the commodore’s gaze with his own, flushed and bruised and more than fuckable, but his eyes are hard and black. “No lube means prep, jackass.”
Pushing his sleeves up past his elbows instead of shedding the jacket completely, Smoker reaches to pull one of his leather gloves off with his teeth until a tanned shin catches him sharply in the side of the head.
“No, no, no,” the pirate hisses thickly. “God, leave them on. Open your mouth.”
The Moku eater obeys when Portgas comes up to meet him using nothing but abs and thighs, but instead of a set of lips he gets two fingers in his mouth and a tongue like fire tracing a long line between his pecs. The general idea becomes clear and he grazes his teeth over rough fingertips even as he sucks on them. Leather-covered thumbs stroke hard over fading bruises on hipbones, which produces a gratifying shiver.
Then fingers and tongue are gone and Portgas is crawling back further onto the desk, heels digging into smooth oak for purchase as he opens himself up with ruthless fingers and choppy groans. If Smoker was the brat’s lover, he might have said something like, Ease up, relax, but he’s not and instead he just appreciates the view and the punishing pace the boy sets for himself. The marine ruffles pale spikes of hair to keep his hands off his own cock because he wouldn’t last a second with the show in front of him, and Firefist’s length is similarly gorged and weeping and he wants the Mera eater to come with Smoker inside of him.
Firefist is spinning and rolling over, suddenly he’s belly down across the desk and there’s just hot and wet Smoker clamps a hand back in that dark hair to keep his cock all the way down that tightening throat. Brat lets himself be held there for a handful of long seconds, jaw and cheeks flexing, before he jabs fingernails into the flesh of the older man’s inner thigh and Smoker forces himself to let Portgas up.
Another spin, roll, Whitebeard’s ink is again flush against oak, there’s one tanned lag hooked on the marine’s hip and one up over his shoulder and his glistening cock is pressing against a firm entrance. The marine leans one palm against the tanned skin over the boy’s sternum to anchor the both of them, other hand refreshing the bruises on a hip. Firefist opens his mouth to breathe or moan or say something and Smoker doesn’t bother waiting to find out; pushes his hips forward in one hard, steady thrust, but the brat’s tight and it’s slow going and neither of them could possibly go faster if they wanted to anyways.
It’s a whine being pulled from the pirate’s mouth. Then a gasp. A growl rumbles deep in Smoker’s throat when Portgas starts pulling at the hand braced on his chest.
Another gasp. “Can’t,” the brat wheezes, “breathe!”
The commodore reluctantly moves his hand to grip at both the boy’s hips instead. He has enough presence of mind to at least let Firefist take a couple gulps of air before he pulls back by inches and starts to thrust.
Any breath in the pirate’s lungs comes out in a whoosh. Even though his eyes are dark, they’re wide enough that Smoker can see the exact moment the pupil eclipses the iris. The older man imprints that angle in his memory, rolls his hips backwards and then back in hard and fast. Portgas throws his arms up over his head, hands scrabbling at the edge of the desk, braces himself and pushes back harder and faster.
Smoker’s shoulders round as he bends over the pirate beneath him, growling out each exhale against smooth collarbones. The brat feels obscene, looks and sounds the same, wanton and demanding and ridiculously lush. There are words for this, words like seduction, fraternization, treason, but Smoker’s mind is narrowed in on the whipcord body sprawled on his desk and words aren’t a high priority unless they have to do with the sensation of his cock being superheated and ripple-massaged.
An elbow shies off Smoker’s temple twice and he realizes Firefist is bringing one of his arms halfway down only to return it to the desk edge above his head in an abortive movement when one hand doesn’t give him enough purchase. Making an educated guess, the commodore moves one hand to wrap around the leaking erection skimming against his abs; leather makes it hard to judge pressure against the pads of his fingers so Smoker’s grip is probably just this side of too tight but maybe that’s exactly what does Portgas in.
Head thunking back against oak, lips parted wide, throat working, Firefist looks like he’s screaming but he’s utterly silent as heat splatters Smoker’s hand even through the glove and liquid fire paints his stomach, the tightness around his cock is suddenly constricting and then he’s done for too. He comes into Portgas with a rush, taste like spice on the back of his tongue and orange like sparks behind his eyelids and embers in his lungs until he goes back to breathing.
Sweat has plastered the marine’s jacket to his back, one sleeve fallen back down to his wrist, he’ll have to do something about his gloves, and the jitte rattles across his spine with every exhale. When both men’s chests have stopped heaving, a long leg slips off Smoker’s shoulder, only to plant a bare foot on his chest to push him up and back and out of the pirate. He almost trips over the jeans still caught around his ankles when he steps back, drawing a snort from Portgas.
“May wanna hit the shower ‘fore you run into Tashigi,” the brat snickers, grin sharp and widening. “You smell like pirate sex.”
Smoker smacks him upside the head before he can roll out of reach. Firefist laughs through it anyways, scooping up his borrowed pants and yanking them on in one motion. He’s still working on the belt as he yanks open the cabin door and ducks into the hall to avoid the pen Smoker throws after him, for once without shoes and beads.
The stupid orange hat alternatively grins and frowns at the commodore from its position on the bed as Smoker dissolves into smoke to drop his clothes in a heap and push the hall door closed. He billows into the head and slams that door closed as well before shifting back into solid humanity, looking forward to a cool, unwinding shower.
As the water glides down his back, he wonders what Portgas is running from.