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Mihawk looks beautiful, looking up at the snow quietly falling around them and bringing a hush over the cold winter night. The lights strung up on the porch give him a warm glow, bringing out his golden eyes and his pink cheeks, and Shanks watches a snowflake fall on his eyelashes and stay there just for a moment, before Mihawk blinks and it flutters away. Then Mihawk turns that gaze on Shanks, and Shanks’s heart flutters too.
When Mihawk exhales slow, condensation fogs up his mouth. Shanks tries not to stare too closely at the way the mist obscures only briefly before it clears up to reveal plush red lips, forming words, “You never told me what you wanted for Christmas.” Mihawk sounds soft in the late hour, his voice the golden-lit glow in the deep blue of the night.
Shanks opens his own mouth to reply, but finds he doesn’t have anything to say. There are no more deflections, no more excuses. He’s not even sure he’ll be able to speak coherently, standing beside a man he thought he’d let get away, never to see him again. It’s hit him several times over the last few weeks, but now more than ever, Shanks can do nothing but marvel at the way life brought him back to Mihawk. Why, when he’s this lucky, should he take this chance for granted?
With the man he’s never quite stopped loving just inches away, finally within the reach of Shanks’s fingers, aching with the desire to hold him and just quietly be together while the snow falls—why, in this moment, should Shanks be anything but honest?
“Mihawk,” Shanks says, instead of the myriad other nicknames he’s pulled out for the man over the last few weeks of re-knowing him. Mihawk looks a little surprised at hearing his first name and the nearly imperceptible wavering behind it. Shanks has no doubt Mihawk’s picked up his nervousness, his unsteadiness. His heart is beating out of his chest.
“Shanks?” Mihawk asks in reply, also using his first name as he turns to face him more fully. His voice is quiet, a hush to match the snow.
Shanks smiles slightly. “No, that’s my answer,” he says with a hint of humour. Mihawk’s brows furrow, and Shanks can tell he’s about to tell Shanks to stop joking, so Shanks preempts that by reaching over those scant few inches, fingers reaching over to slip between Mihawk’s own.
“Mihawk,” Shanks says again, looking right into Mihawk’s eyes and trying to bare all the vulnerabilities he has to offer in this moment. He wants Mihawk to know he’s serious. He wants Mihawk to see him, to listen. To know. “Mihawk, please,” he breathes, stepping a little closer. “For Christmas… Fall in love with me?”
Mihawk inhales, his eyes widening. Shanks is close enough to see the Christmas lights reflected in his irises, bright spots glowing against Mihawk’s deeper-toned golds. Mihawk blinks, and his cheeks flush deeper, and his hand twitches in Shanks’s before gripping tight.
“What?” Mihawk whispers.
Shanks bites his lip and watches Mihawk’s eyes trail down to track his mouth, and Shanks tries not to get ahead of himself. “Fall in love with me for Christmas,” Shanks repeats. “Won’t you? Please?” he asks, as sweetly as he can. He delights in the way Mihawk’s brain seems to stall as he blinks again and then a third time.
“For Christmas,” Mihawk states, seeming to process.
Shanks hums. “For Christmas, for my gift,” he affirms with a small nod. Then he takes a steadying breath to calm his heart as he continues, “And then I get to keep it. Forever. Because that’s how gifts work.”
“It,” Mihawk repeats. “As in… my love.”
Shanks hums again, chewing on his lip nervously, starting to wonder if he’s ruining this conversation. “Please just fall in love with me,” he says one more time, more of a confession than an ask now. “I—Mihawk, you have to know. I’ve never stopped thinking of you, even when we went our separate ways, and I’ve never quite let go of you. Seeing you again this past month has been nothing short of a miracle, and I just—don’t want to let you go again. If you’re amenable!” He rushes that all out and takes one more deep breath to leave it all out, putting his heart right into Mihawk’s cold hands. “So, so if you want this too… and if you want this forever. Forever with me. Then that’s what I would like.” He nods once, more to himself than anything, to conclude his little speech. “For Christmas. That is what I would like.”
There’s silence once more, and it’s just starting to become unbearable when Mihawk huffs out a small laugh, and then another. Shanks’s heart is on the edge of breaking, and he tries to pull his hand away, but then Mihawk pulls harder. Shanks stumbles minutely forward and finds himself caught on a solid chest, one hand warm in his and an arm coming around his waist.
“Don’t leave, Red,” Mihawk says affectionately, so close to his ear that Shanks’s mind blanks out a bit. “I didn’t mean to laugh like that, sorry,” he murmurs.
Shanks flushes, confused because the words sound like a rejection, but he can feel Miahwk’s body heat even through their coats, and it’s making him fuzzy. “What’s going on,” he mumbles.
Mihawk rests his forehead on Shanks’s shoulder, leans his temple into Shanks’s nape. “I can’t give you what you already have, dummy,” Mihawk says into Shanks’s coat.
Now it’s Shanks’s turn to blink, brain stalling and processing. He swears he can hear dial-up noises. “Uh?”
Mihawk chuckles, and it’s astounding, it’s magical, Mihawk’s laughter pressed up against him. The man pulls back a moment later so he can look at Shanks’s face again, and moves his one hand from Shanks’s waist to his face, the other still tightly clutching Shanks’s. The hand on his face is a little cold from the winter, but gentle, and warming fast from the heat in Shanks’s cheek.
“I’m already in love with you, Shanks,” he says, and he looks achingly fond when he says it. “I want forever with you, too.”
“Oh,” Shanks says as elation begins washing throughout his entire body, so much that he’s been frozen still.
Mihawk hums. “I’m already yours, Red,” he says. “You’ll have to make do with the Christmas sweater I bought you.”
A laugh bubbles out of Shanks without his conscious input, and suddenly he’s rushing forward, bridging the non-existent distance between them and letting go of Mihawk’s hand so he can wrap his arm around Mihawk’s shoulders, pulling him in. “I’ll wear you like a Christmas sweater,” Shanks says nonsensically, feeling delirious with joy.
Mihawk’s arms find his waist and hold him close, and he huffs out another laugh. “Make more sense, Red.”
“Nah,” Shanks replies. “Just found out the man I love loves me back. Don’t need anything to make sense ever again.”
“Sweet talker,” Mihawk murmurs, voice low and full of promise, right in Shanks’s ear. Shanks shivers, Mihawk’s breath brushing up against his cheek as the other man moves to line up their mouths.
He doesn’t move any further than that though, the tease. Shanks can play along though. “That’s rich coming from the guy who just called himself already mine.” Their noses sweep against each other and it takes everything Shanks has not to just nuzzle Mihawk like a sap.
“It’s not sweet talk if it’s true,” Mihawk says, the fucker. Shanks can tell there’s a smirk on his lips from the way his voice sounds, and he’s weak to do anything but kiss it off him immediately.
Mihawk’s lips are soft, his beard also softer than other beards Shanks has brushed up against in his time, and he presses gently forward like Shanks is something precious. Mihawk’s fingers press into Shanks’s hips enough to feel comfortably through his coat, and when Shanks opens his mouth for more, Mihawk sighs into it like he’s daydreaming. Shanks is absolutely enchanted—he feels like he has everything he’s ever wanted in this moment, and it feels like the Christmas miracle he could have only ever wished for, alive and holding him tight.