okay ooh tell me more:
what does your siren call sound like? are you aiming to sink him or save him? does he know? does he resist or are you simply that alluring? does he crash willingly? what does he see when he looks in your eyes? have you ever called before? has he ever sank before? will you spare him? has he ever heard anything so sweet?
Oughhhh I am quite simply aiming to devour him im afraid………
In my head this is something of an au where it’s More Normal (idk very POTC esque in vibe) bc siren in the op canon doesn’t quite have the same mystique but there’s still a haki/willpower element to certain people being more capable of resisting siren songs, so shanks has encountered quite a few and been entirely unaffected. Which is why I take him by complete surprise………
I call to him as the sun’s final light dips beneath the sea. He’s ashore, taking a walk on the beach quite some ways away from the others, and I’m hidden in the waves watching. I don’t tend to venture far from the deserted island they’ve landed on and Ive never gotten the chance to hunt anything so handsome, it has me pouring my all into my song—this yearning thing, beckoning and full of promise.
(On his end, he’s ensnared with the first note. He sees me in the water, the glow of my eyes and the billowing cloud of my hair. That haunting melody sinks deep into his chest and steals the breath from his lungs before the water has even brushed his feet, and he’s drawing closer with the sudden, zealous need to draw me into his hold. He knows with a burning certainty that if he could touch me, I would never disappear; that time would stand still and we could float forever, fulfilled and whole, entwined for eternity…)
Yasopp is the one who sees the thrashing. It takes the combined strength of Beckman and Lucky Roux to pry me off their Captain, hissing and spitting—they’re both left with more than a few claw marks but it’s nothing on the bites that litter Shanks, who still struggles against his first mate’s hold and babbles desperate pleas to feel my touch again.
The deepest of his wounds will surely scar, a ring of teeth over his bared shoulder, an imprint of the ones I bare in a crimson snarl before I finally dart off, teal green scales glinting in the moonlight.
Uncharacteristically shaken from the event—their stalwart Captain still too incoherent for any proper questioning—the Red-Haired Pirates set sail as fast as possible, eager to leave the island and whatever inhabits the surrounding waters behind. And soon Shanks does return to his normal self; a bit sheepish, but bright and jovial and wearing the marks without shame as they heal.
Days after they weighed anchor, however, he spies the glint of deep teal scales in the water.
He watches my head surface, breath hitching as it tilts in playful curiosity. And though he knows, rationally, that he ought to turn round and tell his officers, a much more rapacious voice tells him that no other can be allowed to see me.
Now bone white, I bare those teeth in a grin.
