Imagine seven year old Luffy seeing some baby animals (maybe wolves?) play-biting out of affection and deciding to do the same. So he goes up to Ace and just gently *nom*.
Ace is confused, cause what? He asks, and Luffy just says that he saw someone else do that to their siblings. Ace, not realizing that Luffy saw baby /animals/ play-bite their sibling, and runs with it. After all, Luffy has the most experience with kids their age between the two of them. (Sabo’ as experiences don’t count to them because “Nobles are weird”)
So the two (or three if it happens before Sabo’s accident) just start biting each other as a way of showing affection. No big deal, just average wild child stuff, only it continues once they’ve set out and gathered crew.
I imagine Ace ended up gathering the Spades in a similar manner to Luffy, one by one kind of way but no more than two at a time. By the time the next Spade joined, the previous one was not only accustomed to but joined in with affectionate biting. It wasn’t much, or often, but still present enough.
Ace doesn’t even realize that it’s not a normal thing until after he joins Whitebeard, when he affectionately bites Thatch for bringing him food. A whole shenanigan-esque scene happens where they try to explain to Ace that No, humans do not tend to bite each other in affection outside of lovers in intimate situations. Once it finally sinks in, all he can say is “Oh no, my brother’s poor crew.”
Luffy doesn’t hesitate to affectionately bite his nakama, and they just take it as part of him, just like how he’s rubber. It mainly becomes a thing when the other Straw Hats start doing it as well.
Zoro, I imagine, would be the first, and would first do it to Sanji. Like, he just woke up from a nap, and sees Sanji handing him a bottle of booze. So, as thanks, he instinctively gives Sanji a gentle nip on his wrist as he takes the bottle. Sanji is so shook he doesn’t even start a fight over it, and just numbly walks over to the girl(s). “You know how Luffy keeps biting us?” “Yeah, he’s like a damn mosquito, only he doesn’t draw blood.” “Zoro just bit me. Like how Luffy does.” “…What?”
From there, it spreads. Gentle nips as thanks, worried noms for those injured, soft bites as just general “I’m glad you’re here”. Every one of the Straw Hats bite each other. (I imagine Brook has a bone in particular that he lets them nom on because he’s so tall, and they don’t want to upset him by making him feel like a chew toy, and it just has various teeth marks simply because of how many times they’ve gently bit him. He’s very thankful for it, because on nights when he can’t sleep because he’s suddenly thrown mentally back into isolation, he can feel their marks on his bone and remember that he will never be alone as long as they live.)
The Whitebeards are thrown through a loop if/when they meet a small crew captained by their Second Division Commander’s precious baby brother, and finds that a l l of them have the same way of showing affection, and none of them brought up how weird it is.
(If Sabo was still around when Luffy came to this conclusion, I imagine it’d gotten stuck in Sabo’s instincts to nom with affection. Koala is the first -and only for a long time- person he bites, and she doesn’t question it because “maybe it’s an amnesia thing? Like him not even knowing his name?”, and doesn’t even bring it up. The others only find out once Hack gets bitten for delivering a tired and hungry Sabo a snack after training. “You know I’m not food, right?” “Yeah?” “So then why did you bite me?” “I bite Koala all the time?” “I thought it was an amnesia thing, is it not?” “No, it’s not even really a human thing, with some very age-specific exceptions.” “Huh. Normally, I just feel like biting, so I bite. Normally, it’s a ‘I’m glad you’re here’ or ‘hello/goodbye’ bite. That was a ‘thank you’.” “…all right.”)
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hi! i've been stalking your page for literal hours and i love how you write poly marauders so much!! could you write how they would react to the reader coming home from a night out with a black eye or something like that?? <33333
Thank you lovely! And thanks for being so patient while I took literal months to get to this request haha, love you! <3
cw: reader is drunk and has a black eye
poly!marauders x fem!reader ♡ 1.2k words
“Hey, gorgeous,” Sirius says as you come in the door. Remus shushes him, and he lowers his voice. “How’re the girls?”
“Good,” you reply, cautiously quiet as you kick off your shoes.
Rounding the couch, you see James asleep on Remus’ shoulder, a small puddle of drool soaking into the material of the taller boy’s pajama shirt. They’re all in pajamas, actually. Envy strikes you through the heart. They look so unbearably cozy, better than you in your scratchy jeans and too-tight top.
“I hope you didn’t wait up,” you say as Remus flips his book closed, and Sirius chuckles. You’ll learn later that you’d been slurring your words.
“We don’t mind,” Remus confirms your suspicions. “You didn’t walk home by yourself, did you?”
You shake your head, flopping into the spot beside James on the couch. Only you hadn’t quite thought that through, and Remus tuts as he starts to rouse.
“Sorry,” you whisper. “Um, the girls dropped me off out front.”
Sirius nods his approval. James hums as he picks his head up off Remus’ shoulder, spotting you.
“Hey, lovie.” He transfers his affections to you, wrapping his arms around your neck and letting himself weigh heavily against your front. You giggle, your favorite monkey. “Did you just get home?”
“Uh-huh. Oh, Jamie!” You gasp as a memory makes its way out of the fog of your brain. “I saw something you would have loved.”
“What’s that?” he asks.
“We came across a dog park, and I didn’t even know those could be open at night but—”
“No, angel.” He’s stopped hugging you, an unpleasant development, one of his hands leaving your neck to hold your cheek. “What’s that on your face?”
“Hm?” You don’t remember anything getting on your face. “I dunno. Jamie, I’m trying to tell you about the puppies.”
“Just hold on, darling, sorry. Is that a bruise?”
“What?” Sirius is in front of you before you know what’s happened. Vampire-fast, you think fascinatedly, wondering if he’d have been a streak across your vision had you bothered to look. Though, to be fair, your vision is generally streaky at the moment. He takes your chin in his hand, tilting it up and to the side. “Remus, point your light here.”
There’s a low creaking as Remus adjusts his reading lamp, and then you’re squeezing your eyes shut.
“Jesus, what the hell?”
Remus curses softly, and you squint to see him leaning closer to you. Your boyfriends’ faces crowd your vision like a three-headed monster.
“Baby,” Sirius says, sounding heartbroken, “what happened?”
“I don’t—can you move the light away?”
More creaking, and you can see again. You blink, eyes watery, and Sirius lays a painstakingly gentle thumb over the skin beneath your eye.
“It must be bad if it’s already bruising,” he says.
Remus stands. “Then we should put ice on it.”
You pout as he disappears into the kitchen, but Sirius recaptures your attention by turning your face toward his.
“I need you to think.” He fixes his stare on yours gravely. His eyes are the color of the moon reflecting off water. You try to tell him so, but his frown doesn’t abate. “Listen,” he says, “what happened to hurt your eye? You have to remember.”
You purse your lips, shaking your head at him. “I feel like I’d know if something happened,” you say self-assuredly. “It’s probably just makeup. Can you get me a wipe?”
“Angel.” James’ eyebrows have hooked upwards in the middle. He’s looking uncharacteristically serious, too. Your boyfriends are really not being a ton of fun tonight, you think. “It’s all red and purple. You can’t tell me that doesn’t hurt, babydoll.”
You shrug. That may be so. But if it doesn’t hurt, who really cares?
Sirius gets up just as Remus comes back with what looks like a balled-up dish towel. He passes it to you with a tender look on his face.
“Put this on your eye, honey,” he says. Then, “Sirius, love, where are you going?”
“To call Evans.”
You touch the cloth to your eye, but it’s freezing cold, and you opt to let it rest in your lap instead.
“She won’t even be home yet,” Remus argues. “And what do you think you’ll accomplish if you do get ahold of her? She can’t tell us anything now that she won’t still know in the morning.”
“What if somebody did this to her? If Evans saw, I want to know about it tonight.”
“Don’t you think,” James says, “that if someone hit her, the girls would’ve come in and told us?” You lean against his side, and he wraps an arm around you automatically, rubbing your shoulder. He smells like strawberries and laundry detergent and something ineffably homey. “They wouldn’t have just dropped her off out front.”
“What if no one saw?”
“Then what do you think calling will do, love?”
“I just…I feel like I have to do something. Don’t you?”
You lean your head on James’ shoulder and snuggle into the familiar sounds of your boyfriends’ voices, overlapping and intermingling. You don’t realize they’ve gone quiet until Remus’ hand wraps around yours, and you open your eyes.
“You’ve got to actually hold this on your eye,” he chides lovingly, taking the dish towel from you and pressing it to your face.
The edge of something hard beneath the cloth digs into a tender spot beneath your eye, and you flinch. “Ow.”
Remus’ forehead creases sympathetically. “Sorry.”
But the pain brings another memory out of the fog. You pick your head up as you feel your good eye widen in realization, meeting Sirius’.
He flicks up an eyebrow. “What’re you smiling about?”
“I remember what happened,” you admit, a touch of embarrassment to your tone. And if you hadn’t had everyone’s attention before, you do now.
“What was it?” James rubs your shoulder reassuringly. “You can tell us.”
“It’s…when we were at the dog park, I got distracted.”
Remus’ eyes narrow. “Go on.”
You rub your lips together self-consciously. “I may have walked into a sign. About poop bags.”
James leans away from you to see you better. “Like, a metal sign?”
You nod, and he winces.
“Ouch, lovie.”
“Fucking hell.” Sirius covers his face with both hands, loosing a big breath through the cracks in his palms. Remus reaches back to pats his leg consolingly. “I was ready to go after whoever did that with a tire iron.”
You shrink into the couch cushions. “Sorry.”
“You could still take a tire iron to the sign, I suppose,” James says.
Sirius ignores him, crouching in front of you and taking your face in both hands. Remus lets the cloth drop rather than maneuver around him. “Don’t ever scare me like that again, understand?”
“Yeah,” James agrees, “if you injure yourself in the future, ask for a pen and make a note on your arm or something. Save us the worry.”
You lean forward, pressing a lingering, heartfelt kiss to Sirius’ cheek.
“Thanks for worrying,” you say, and where your lips touched him the skin glows pink.
“You’re taking years of my life, you know,” he says quietly.
Remus chuckles. “Don’t worry. It looks good on you.”
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