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mew-ya · 6 months

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hello everyone! i'm proud to share my halloween-themed fic for raven's (@swampstew) event, where writers all incorporated a costume + a character into a fic! at the end of the month on October 29th, there will be a vote to see who wins the costume contest! check out the other fics and get ready to vote when the time comes!

character: Charlotte Katakuri

warnings/notes: no warnings (SFW fic), so fluffy it hurts, non-gendered reader, gender neutral reader, reader is average human sized

length: 4,016 words

summary: Your employer, Charlotte Cracker, Minister of Biscuits, gives you a last-minute invite to the Charlotte family's yearly Halloween party. As a newer resident of Totto Land, you'd not yet been to one of the Charlotte family's reputed parties, so your curiosity led you to the foot of Whole Cake Island on the night of Halloween.

You’d heard the Charlotte family threw a party for every occasion. And based on your arrival at the foot of the great Whole Cake Island, Halloween was certainly no exception. Hosted by Big Mom herself, every candied and frosted structure was painstakingly decorated by Streusen and his team of chefs. The cakes lining the horizon were decorated in the colors black, orange, red. Creepily smiling bats, balloons in deep red, and cotton candy clouds of a deep blue filled the darkening sky, contrasted brightly against the orange sunset. Fake blood oozed from the frosted fences lining the cracker-laden paths that led you to the delicious town of Sweet City. The singing, dancing homies you’d grown accustomed to seeing were eerily silent, silence a rare and disturbing thing in the archipelago you’d come to reside in. You spotted a few homies who took the shape of gravestones, attracted by the only sound in the whole area beyond the plodding footsteps of other partygoers. The gravestone homies sang a dark dirge as they sullenly watched a shovel homie dig up a fresh grave. Even the juice river had been dyed red to look like blood, deep red reflecting on the horrible grins of the trees peering from the edge of the Seducing Woods.

Having once glimpsed the true darkness of Totto Land, you couldn’t help but wonder if its morbid, Halloween-themed makeover was the truest reflection of its nature. Memories flashed back to your initial arrival to the archipelago. You watched the man in front of you die as Big Mom’s Incarnation swiped the final months of his life as payment for his residency. Vivid memories of him collapsing to the floor with a final breath danced in your brain, followed by the hollow smile of the creature with its white glowing eyes. The creature you’d come to pay twice a year for your ability to live here.

You shuddered at the thought, shaking away the uncomfortable memories. You’d lived here for about 3 months, happily, but saw the hints of darkness creeping behind the picturesque frame of the candy-encrusted landscape…

Inside Whole Cake Chateau, the highest of extravagance was on full display. The smell as you stepped inside the massive cake building was perhaps the most memorable—powerful, luscious notes of candy corn, lollipops, gumdrops, marshmallow, chocolate all tickled your nose in unison yet each distinct. The large buffet table to your right was a mountain of confections modeled after zombie parts, skeletons, bat wings. The serving dishes were massive and well-stocked, an army of chefs and rook knights replacing every calorie taken from the table with finesse and speed. To your center, a red velvet chocolate fountain so large that it rivaled an Olympic swimming pool. Guests dotted every corner of the ballroom to your left, dressed from head-to-toe in expensive costumes of classic horror creatures, characters from the latest trends, jokes, and other displays of amazement and fantasy.

You recognized some of the partygoers, primarily from your work as a baker in the cracker bakery housed on Biscuits Island. Visitors from across the entire archipelago came to your workplace to place orders for customized cracker flooring—the area’s edible replacement for tile flooring. While most often you’d seen the Charlotte family’s aides and assistants placing orders at your workplace, some of them preferred to complete the work themselves. Charlotte Katakuri was one of them—an ominous figure he painted against the colorful showroom, tall, dark and quiet. But his attention to detail and patience with ordering the perfect set of cracker floors for each of his projects made you come to realize that there was more than meets the eye with him. He was a figure that intrigued you more than you’d care to admit, but you’d only ever seen him in a work setting. He was a person that you looked forward to seeing, though you held your feelings about him deep within—he seemed too perfect, too unobtainable.

Until today. The most extravagantly dressed you recognized as members of the Charlotte family, who were both the children of the land’s queen as well as its appointed politicians. Charlotte Smoothie stood out immediately, tall as ever, effervescent in a red and blue princely outfit, epaulets encrusted with rhinestones and a beautifully detailed sword laying at her hip, her hair in a low ponytail like a fairytale prince. Charlotte Compote was next to her in a vampiress costume, signature bowl hat filled with a deep red liquid like blood, hair adorned in a slick black wig, fangs poking from red lips, and a beautiful blood red gown, and they appeared to be discussing the décor in detail. Young children in a rainbow assortment of costumes swarmed around their feet, and given their appearances, you could only assume those were younger Charlotte children as they ran in circles at Compote’s feet. From a distance, you spotted a tall figure dressed as Frankenstein’s Monster chatting with a woman dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein, though most of their outfits were obscured by the crowd.

As you approached Compote, another regular of your cracker establishment, you heard Smoothie call out: “Katakuri!” and the Frankenstein’s Monster turned his head. You immediately saw that Katakuri’s skin was painted a pale green that made his pink hair, irises, and tattoo pop in contrast. Steel bolts were attached to each side of his head, and his mouth was covered, as usual, by a scarf, although this one was tattered and worn to fit the outfit. Before she could say anymore, Katakuri was there, crouching down and saying something to the children with a gentle, yet stern look in the eyes peering above his tattered scarf. The way they stopped and listened to him so intently was telling of their respect for him—could these be his own children? Ah, well. After he spoke to them, they became quiet and orderly, walking single file towards the pink candy spiral staircase leading up to the second floor. The woman dressed as his bride showed up behind him, cooing, “Oh Katakuri—you’re always so good with them.” With a nod of acknowledgement, he stood back up silently, and noticed you standing 15 feet from them, staring directly at him. He looked at you up and down, and blinked.

“You’re the one from Cracker’s bakery,” he uttered at you with the gentlest hint of a furrow in his brow. The woman dressed as Frankenstein’s Bride next to him grimaced, the wrinkles in her face scrunching to her brow as she failed to hide her frustration. You felt an ounce of hostility from her, and wondered if she had somehow noticed your fascination with Katakuri…

You nodded coyly in response and approached the group of large individuals, but before you could try to politely continue the conversation, you felt a smack on the flat of your back. A large figure leaned in next to you, grin penetrating a hole in the side of your face. “You made it! I’m so glad,” Cracker exclaimed a little too loudly in your ear.

Smoothie groaned, “speak of the devil…” and Cracker gave her a smirk as he acknowledged his siblings standing before him in a circle on the ballroom floor. You noticed Cracker wore a bordering childish lion costume with a mane created from craft paper. Compared to the other costumes, it didn’t make sense to you until you saw him later on in the evening next to the rest of the Wizard of Oz cast…Mont-d’Or in a scarecrow costume, Moscato in a tin man costume, and Poire in an adorable and well-crafted Dorothy costume. You had learned their names because they all stood together in a line to be judged at the costume contest you watched later in the evening.

The siblings bantered around you, discussing each others’ outfits, nearly forgetting you standing there, small in stature and already quiet to begin with. You craned your neck to follow the conversation going on in the air above you.

It struck you as a bit odd that Cracker invited you, one of many employees of his, to this party. There was no one else from your workplace you recognized. On top of that, the Charlotte family all in a single room was a party entirely on its own, without any need for additional guests. This party appeared to be much the same, thick with Charlotte blood, common folk mostly appearing in (Halloween-themed) serving garb, some friends and in-laws dotted between the unusual shapes and sizes of the Charlottes.

You mostly enjoyed yourself throughout the party, learning everyone’s names and becoming more familiar with Cracker’s close siblings. The woman Katakuri was with was named Brulee, though you spent most of the night averting your eyes from them, feeling awkward for having ever had a crush on him. Of course he had a wife, or a girlfriend, or whoever she was.

Instead, you paid attention to the costume contest put on by Perosperos and Charlotte Linlin. The contest’s comically large scroll full of rules that’d been penned throughout the years of their lives together as siblings was read through at the very beginning like a very boring educational speech. Poire explained to you that it basically boiled down to: “make your costume yourself, don’t use devil fruits, and anyone discovered cheating on either of those rules would be banned from participating in the costume contest forever.” After learning that, your eyes opened to the absolute craftsmanship of this family’s dedicated costumers. Even the worst costumes such as Cracker’s childish lion seemed less bad after considering the amount of work he had spent at a craft table, hot gluing whiskers to his hand-sewn furry hood.

You had come wearing a mummy costume, but it was store bought and nothing special. Just something cobbled together last minute in preparation for the party, so you had no reason to enter the contest.

There was no real prize beyond the ability to brag—but bragging rights were an incredibly important prize to the Charlottes, and doubly so when a party was involved. Even a cool woman such as Smoothie was swayed by its power, giving her all to craft the most beautifully detailed prince costume this year in the hopes of winning. A teenaged girl named Flampe was swarmed with chess knights all dressed up in the theme of her costume: a musician with all of her adoring fans. You weren’t really sure what popstar she was supposed to be—her skin was painted like a skeleton, hair curled densely, a large crown upon her head, heart shaped sunglasses resting on her head with an orange feather boa around her shoulders. She held a green guitar shaped like a shark that she never actually tried to play. Given how nearly everyone in the room watched her entrance and participation on the stage, you guessed it was someone famous.

Later on in the event, you noted that Katakuri and Brulee joined as a team with their matching Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein outfits. You wouldn’t have pegged Katakuri as the type to want bragging rights for anything, but the crowd’s response to them was incredible—for Katakuri in particular. Oven noticed your surprise. He leaned down to you and explained, “he’s been voted the most popular brother, after all. He’s cool, perfect, and utterly undefeated in battle.”

In the end, the costume contest voting boiled down into a popularity contest, as things so often do within the family’s politics. Charlotte Linlin, dressed in the most expensive and extravagant Queen costume, sat at the large chair behind the judge’s table and laughed her signature “mama-mama” when she counted the results. Flampe’s skeleton musician-themed group was the winner and she accepted the honor with the smallest amount of grace, followed by Katakuri and Brulee’s Frankenstein pair in second.

The party came to a close, its music dying down, the youngest children all retired to bed or gone home. You’d been invited upstairs into one of the many candy-rococo rooms in the upper echelons of the Whole Cake Chateau by Cracker, and sat on the floor with a grouping of older Charlottes and friends sitting in a circle, all laughing and chatting. Katakuri and the woman he was with were there.

You’d chosen dare. A bottle was spun in the middle of the group. Whoever it landed on would be the second player of 7 Minutes in Heaven—a game typically played by hormone-ridden teens looking to make out in a closet. But you were adults, joking around. You’d been recruited as the first player in a game of 7 Minutes in Heaven, which made you feel a bit uncomfortable—this was a party your boss invited you to, after all. You weren't usually a dare person either, but you’d never gotten to play spin the bottle growing up, so you figured why not. The gentle haze of an alcoholic beverage helped, too.

The bottle stopped. Of all the people in the circle, it pointed at Charlotte Katakuri. Brulee looked uncomfortable, but didn’t say anything—why would a married couple play this game? You thought to yourself. But in the single night you knew him, Perosperos was the one making up the rules, and he was a stickler for those. You decided not to protest. Maybe you’d stand silently in the closet for 7 minutes with the perfectly terrifying Katakuri as he gazed down upon you in the darkness.

Words were exchanged, and you were both sent to the closet for 7 minutes of heaven.

You entered the dark closet, shuffling in and out of a multitude of large dresses belonging to Charlotte Linlin, the fabric nearly engulfing you. The door shut behind you both, and a voice rang out, “timer starts now! Don’t get too naughty, you two!” followed by Brulee’s audible groan.

You heard Katakuri audibly gulp above you. The feelings of shock and nervousness had blinded you to his expressions, so now that you were smashed together in the dark, you had absolutely no read on him whatsoever.

So you quietly asked, “Katakuri…?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Why did you—aren’t you married? Isn’t this weird?” but you were interrupted by a large gloved hand on your shoulder, sending a wave of nervousness in a whirlwind through your body.

“I am not married,” he responded, simply.

You gulped, biting your lip.

“But, Brulee…?” you responded in your head, but the words didn’t come out. Somehow, he heard you anyway.

“Brulee is my sister. She likes scary movies a lot, so we dressed up for the contest.” He changed the subject. “I think your costume is nice,” he gestured, withdrawing his hand on your shoulder to touch the fabric with a respectful tap of his finger, unable to point in the darkness.

“Wait, then whose kids were—well...Okay. Thank you,” and you laughed a little as you went along with him. “If you’re wondering, I didn’t make it. The mummy wraps came pre-stained.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t know you guys had all these rules. Hell, I didn’t even know there was a contest. I just grabbed something from one of the shops last minute. You did such a great job on your costume, I feel embarrassed for you to even have to look at me! Cracker didn’t even tell me about this party until the day before.”

Katakuri sighed. “Sorry.”

“What’re you apologizing for?”

“He invited you because of me.”

You didn’t understand what he meant. Katakuri continued.

“I…mentioned you once...” That revelation piqued your interest. He talked about you? Why?

Katakuri shifted his weight from one foot to another, causing some of the dresses around you to move. “Because I thought you were…cute.” The words choked out of him, you could almost feel the heat of his blushing cheeks radiating from above you as he spoke. He cleared his throat.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

An awkward silence filled the closet—he’d stunned you twice in a row, first with the truth about his relationship status, and second, that he’d requited your attraction. What to do?

Katakuri cleared his throat again, uncomfortable and trapped in a closet with his head nearly touching the ceiling, stuffed awkwardly against the shelf with the person he’d just admitted he liked. You wanted to respect his request to drop the subject, so you didn’t push it.

Following his earlier lead, you offered a compliment. “I like your costume too.” You lightly touched the thick canvas fabric of his baggy pants where they tucked into his heavy platform boots, outlining a patch stitched with wide embroidery thread. “You really made all this yourself?”

The leg under your hand shifted in its pants as Katakuri kneeled before you, pushing Big Mom’s hanging clothes surrounding you out of the way by sheer size of his frame. A protective arm rested on the floor next to you, and he uttered, “Yes. The rules are very explicit. You can incorporate basic, store-bought items such as shirts, pants, but they must be modified in some tangible way.”

“Is it okay if I touch?” you asked, not wanting to be too presumptuous. You continued, “I didn’t have much of a chance to look at your costume too closely, but it must be good if you won second place.”

“I worked hard on it, but I am not sure it was deserving of second place. You’re welcome to touch it.” The air felt less thick between you as the awkwardness simmered into a cool comfort.

You explored the details of his costume in the darkness, your hands small against the 16’ man’s frame. The large arm resting on the ground next to you was adorned in the sleeve of a thick blazer, artificially weathered by his own hands, its threads exposed and rough with rips and tears near the seams. Thickly woven patches were sewn into his entire suit using embroidery thread. The blazer was opened at the center to reveal his shirtless chest, and although you couldn’t feel it, you remembered how his skin had been carefully painted green around the pink tattoos, and how the juxtaposition of those two colors created such a bright and engaging contrast on his skin.

“Did you sew the patches with a machine? The detailing feels so even,” you asked as you felt the perfectly squared stitching, betraying the imperfect nature of the Frankenstein Monster.

“I sewed all of the modifications by hand, though the jacket and pants were something I had already owned. Have a couple of injuries on my fingers to prove it.” Katakuri replied as he twisted his wrist, opening his palm next to you.

“You? Injuries? One of your brothers told me you were undefeated. To think you’d been bested by a needle and thread…” Reaching down to his hand, you ran yours against his palm to the ends of his fingertips. He let out the lightest flinch when your hand pressed against a small needle injury at the end of his pointer finger.

“How the mighty fall,” he answered with a spark of amusement.

Resolving not to waste this private moment, he made a move.

Katakuri wrapped his hand around yours, and with the softest motion, pulled you in towards his body as he leaned his head down. You were close enough to him to feel the warmth radiating from his core. You swore you smelled a hint of fried dough. The ruggedly tattered scarf wrapped around his lower face tickled your skin as electricity grew between you and the seconds stretched into what felt like minutes. You were so close that you felt his breath on your nose, but the scarf stayed put as a barrier between you. You looked into the eyes you couldn’t see in the darkness, and yearned for the touch of his lips against yours.

Both yourself and Katakuri imagined the feel of each others’ lips pressed against skin, the taste, the touch, the smell—although you had no idea what his mouth looked like. He always covered it, so your imagination ran wild in the dark. You kissed the scarred and torn lips of the face you imagined in your head, then you kissed a mouth with sharp teeth so pointed that your own lips were cut in the process. Maybe he had big cute buck teeth under there that stuck through a pair of swollen lips. You kissed that too. Your imagination ran through the possibilities like a rolodex, and each was good, wonderous, and electric.

Meanwhile, Katakuri’s rolodex of imagined scenarios was not so idyllic. He imagined the multitude of ways in which you’d reject him, how you’d take his scarf from him and embarrass him, how you’d reveal the secret of his mouth to the entire world, painting a target on the backs of all his siblings. He remembered all of his past relationship failures, and most of all, he remembered the great bloody wound across his sister Brulee’s face as he stood there powerlessly. He froze.

The hesitation began to hang thick in the air like a fog, and you were nearly able to feel the discomfort circulating from his body. You weren’t sure what changed. Time had been dilating and you wondered how much longer the 7 minutes would last.

You took your chance.

You grasped his hand which held yours so gently but stiffly, and pulled it close enough to plant a sweet kiss upon the top of his painted knuckle. Underneath your lips, his body notably relaxed. The gesture brought him back to reality.

Katakuri’s eyes glinted with the color of the future, where he saw the moment the door opened to light, just moments away. In a flash, he pulled your hand through his scarf to his lips and returned the kiss so quickly that you could hardly process what might be under there by feel. He then stood straight up and gave you both a once over that lasted no more than a single second, any hair or mummy wrapping out of place put in its proper configuration by the quickest swipe of his finger. As if nothing had happened.

The door opened.

His siblings joked, poked, prodded, and laughed at what they thought may or may not had happened between the two of you. He spent the rest of the night avoiding your eyes, as if nothing had happened. Eventually, his siblings dropped the subject. Deep down, they were rooting for Katakuri—most of the older Charlotte children had already been married, through virtue (or iniquity) of arranged marriage. But perhaps the strongest and most perfect Charlotte, intentionally held from the world of political marriage, would be allowed to pick his own partner.

The party moved on. Other games were played, other topics broached, other siblings bullied and jested and the family was having a great time. Katakuri thought he’d gotten away with keeping up his perfect illusion that he’d kept his distance during the closet game, but sometime later, his eyes widened at you like plates, face turning red under his scarf, burning through the green face paint. He observed his hand and saw a hardly noticeable kiss mark on his knuckle. It’s already too late, he thought to himself.

Seconds later, Cracker’s burst of laughter turned the entire room to your face.

“Hold on, hold on! Your lips are GREEN!”

“GREEN?!”

“What did those two get up to…?”

“Katakuri! You DOG!”

Brulee looked concerned and attempted to play interference by standing between you and Katakuri to block the line of sight. She’d grown to be very protective of him, knowing that his hidden heart was kind and undeserving of the expectations those had thrust upon him. While she knew he was truly not the perfect being the world had decided him to be, she would do anything to help him protect that because it is what he had chose.

Despite Brulee getting in the center of it, the chatter raged on, the rumors spread, and you gained some kind of reputation. Your eyes met Katakuri’s as he leaned over Brulee to look at you. You furrowed your brows at each other.

The start of a beautiful relationship…

#charlotte katakuri x reader #multiple other charlotte family members appear as well!#one piece x reader #charlotte katakuri #katakuri #buggy's spooktacular special #mew writes

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