Hunger

Chapter 15

Adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream from miles away was what jolted him awake. As Buggy broke free from the nightmare he grasped for her with hands and arms he didn't have, the dead weight of having nothing to wrap around Columbina and pull her towards him nearly ripping a scream from his throat.

Not her too...Fuck--! Please, Gods...not her too...

A million thoughts raced through his head as he gasped himself back into consciousness, the smell of Columbina's pheromones bringing him fully back into the cabin on the Strawhat ship. Soft strands of what felt like silk brushed against his face. He was drenched in cold sweat.

In his sleep he'd somehow managed to migrate from his side of the bed to hers, his round nose now nuzzled into the side of her neck. Columbina must have at some point given up on the braids. Her hair, lovely and soft and splayed against her pillow looked like streams of salt water taffy. What he wouldn't have given to caress it, have it fall between his fingers. He let himself inhale, thankful as all Hell that there was at least something tangible for him to cling to and that Columbina also hadn't just disappeared from him...

As he forced his heart rate to return to a steady rhythm he found he couldn't take his eyes from her. Moonlight poured into the room from the night outside. It landed on her like it was privileged to grace her skin, illuminating for him that the small, female body was still there. She was so very delicate and graceful-looking while she slept, even with the covers tousled around her, her body partially covered with one leg on the outside of the blankets. Possibly she couldn't decide whether she was hot or cold.

Now that he was closer to her Buggy could see that her eyelashes were long and thick, black to the point they looked like she'd been born with kohl applied to them. They swept downward on a face that was dotted cutely with freckles. She wasn't without her imperfections; he could see a scar or two here and there, a testament to the fact that she was a fighter, and probably a much more capable one than his dream had allowed him to witness.

His eyes moved to her chest, watching it rise and fall, still drawing oxygen into her lungs. In her sleep, Columbina's mouth was parted slightly. Buggy watched as her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, his mind telling him to retrace that path with his own.

He shook the thought from his head. He was a piece of shit on a good day of the week but she'd chosen to put her trust in him and he wasn't about to break that for a second time if he could help it. Even if the first time had been imaginary. As he lay next to her, unmoving, an uncharacteristic sense of gratitude fell over him that he'd even gotten to spend some time around her.

Notwithstanding the fact that in the dream Columbina had made mention of Buggy's missing and probably dead wife.

It had just been a dream. It had just been a fucking dream, his past trauma and the confusing thoughts he was having towards this woman coalescing into whatever distortion his electrical meat sack had decided to project onto him.

A surge of emotional pain unlike anything he'd felt in recent years threatened to choke him and Buggy quickly untangled himself from Columbina's hair before the proximity of another woman brought old memories rushing towards him. He was suddenly afraid to be too close to her.

There was a window directly above the headboard of the bed. With some effort Buggy hopped himself up to it, trying his best to not make too much noise. Outside the ship the waters were black, relentless, fathomless. Granya had disappeared beneath the waters of the South Blue thirteen years ago, to a place where Buggy and his Devil Fruit powers could not follow her. She'd been helping him search for treasure, because of course she had, her partial mermaid heritage having been a tremendous advantage to his crew.