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Rayleigh is not blind, as some of his crew mates would often claim in jest, referencing the wired frames he wears. He can clearly see that she's beautiful in the wanted posters that the younger boys have collected like treasure, passed around to boast; he's just choosing not to comment. He can let them have their fun, but as the Roger Pirates' first mate, he's supposed to be the responsible one– especially when his own captain gleefully joins in the chorus of praise for one of their rival pirates.
As a frequent, first-hand observer to Roger's enthusiastic attempts in courting Shakuyaku, Rayleigh can see how much more potent her beauty is in her full physicality than in the flat imagery of her wanted poster anyways: in not just her face, but in her curves and her voice and the way she moves. How she gracefully and cleverly thwarts any misguided attempts at capturing her heart.
But unlike Roger, Rayleigh wasn't an idiot.
He admits that he's well aware of her, but he treats that feeling in his gut like the threat it's supposed to be. She throws plenty of coy smiles and sways her hips like she's tempting him to just try and chase after her too, but he won't be goaded into a futile fight with the Kuja Pirates when he's often the last person on his crew left standing. Someone needs to be the rational one.
Rayleigh resists another flirtatious wink when Shakuyaku saunters away from him. She's been piling her charm on him pretty thick, lately.
He sighs as he charts a new detour for restock while he waits for his captain and his crew to regain their consciousness, about an hour or so after the Kuja Pirates have long sailed away with another round of their loot.
It's bound to be another predictable trial and outcome when his captain announces yet another challenge for Shakuyaku's affection as soon as her telltale red sails are spotted on the horizon. Rayleigh knows his captain's passion defies rationality, but he tries to reason with him anyways.
“Please,” Rayleigh drags out the word in his exhale, kneading the hard knot at his brow, “Now's not the time, Roger. We can barely make it to the next island with what supplies we have left.”
“All the less we have to lose then!” Roger claims, undeterred. “Forward, Gaban!”
“Hell yea, Captain!” Gaban responds, enthusiastically spinning the helm towards their rivals' pirate ship.
Shakuyaku seems to have even less patience in these types of matter after being promoted to Captain and Empress. She makes quick work of Roger and his pirates without indulging them in a playful preamble, scattering their bodies across the deck of the Oro Jackson within a quarter of the hour – a new record. She dismisses her attention from the unconscious men with a sharp turn of her high heel, while she motions for a few Kuja Pirates to follow her downstairs to their storage hull. Rayleigh trails after them, having not much else to do now but act as a spectator on their own ship.
When Shakuyaku sees the sparse state of the storage room, she glances at Rayleigh with some indignation. “Is this really all you have?”
Rayleigh leans against one of the wooden foundations with his arms crossed, shrugging indifferently. At least Roger had the good sense to dump their gold at one of their stronghold islands the week before, but Shakuyaku doesn't need to know that.
“This was hardly worth the effort, then,” she scoffs, turning back to direct her crew mates to start hauling crates upstairs. “Girls, take every last crumb!”
After a few rough battles on rougher seas, the Roger Pirates had used up much of their supplies on an ill-advised victory party for morale purposes, but Rayleigh's not looking forward to the regrettable consequence of poor planning – suffering starvation for the next few days – before they're about to reach the next safe shore. He watches as their scant crates of food dwindle into nothing with each leaving girl, so just before Shakuyaku lifts up the last box of dried jerky onto her shoulder, a weary comment slips past his practiced stoicism. “Couldn't you spare just one this time?”
She pauses in her step in front of him and raises an eyebrow. “Oh? You have something else to offer instead?”
It was only meant as rhetorical, but maybe he's lucked into a serious negotiation. In the meantime, she daintily returns the crate to the floor and then takes out a cigarette while she waits on his proposal.
“What else do you want?” he asks, running down a mental list of the remaining inventory that might satisfy as a substitution. He doubts that she'd be convinced by their dirty clothes or old, broken tools and weapons. The egg is out of the question. Perhaps they could part with a few cannonballs, but... Preoccupied in thought, he almost misses Shakuyaku's next words, spoken mildly.
“How about a kiss?”
Rayleigh's gaze snaps to hers. He sees her eyes curved into crescents, sees the corner of her mouth curled up around her lit cigarette, pale smoke in the air.
Ah, so she's only teasing him, as per her usual routine. But he probably needs to call her out on her bluff some time or another, as an effort to preserve whatever's left of the Roger Pirates' dignity. As any good first mate would do.
“Fine,” Rayleigh says.
To her credit, she doesn't flinch, but without any other reaction he's unsure which answer she had expected from him in the first place. Her posture remains calm and collected, still waiting.
He arms himself with his own clandestine smile, pushing off the pillar and moving in a straight line towards her. It's only about three paces before he reaches her, but with each step he watches her eyes carefully track his movement, sees the slight tilt of her chin up when he's less than a foot away, feels a heady current of tension humming in the few inches left in between them. He removes the cigarette from her mouth between his index and third finger, then takes a drag from it.
“Where do you want it?” Rayleigh says, exhaling a soft plume. He uses his free hand to reach for one of hers at her side and lifts it up in an imitation of a royal greeting, close to his mouth, close to mocking. “Here?”
He drops her hand and takes a half-step between her feet to bring his fingers up to her face, brushing aside a strand of her dark hair before drawing a slow knuckle down her cheek. “Here?”
He lets his thumb catch on her bottom lip, feels her breath hitch rather than sees it, because he doesn't break eye-contact with her once, mesmerized by the diminishing rim of her irises. “Or- right here?”
Shakuyaku's answer comes in a shallow whisper and parted lips that are too dangerously close to his. “I'll leave that up to you, Ray-san.”
He pushes his glasses to his forehead before he moves in to kiss her; his hand curves to cup her face to pull her in deeper. He's not shy while he lets himself succumb to his attraction towards her, though he stays methodical in his technique, kissing her with the intent of making her gasp or surrender. He feels up the side of her hip, then the bare skin of her waist, stopped from going any further with the reminder of her cigarette still precariously balanced between his fingers.
Maybe this might be more than she initially bargained for, but she doesn't seem too upset about it when she's matching his ante.
Her hands aren't shy either when they stroke across his chest and shoulders, one eventually landing under the collar of his loose shirt and the other left caressing the nape of his neck with her fingernails, sending pleasant warmth down his spine. She opens her mouth and tongue for him and arcs her body flush with his, as if pressing all of herself against him, to overtake him in a sensation of heat and smoke, or some other ephemeral thing.
He breaks off the kiss when his lungs seem to stop working; his hand still tangled in her hair tugs her away just enough so he can breathe again.
“Satisfied?” he asks, more hoarsely than he would've liked. So close, he catches a flickering expression on her face, and sees how her eyelashes flutter slowly in an unexpected daze–
“Lady Shakky, we're all set onboard! Ready for take– oh!” Tritoma peeks in from the deck above, blushing at the sight of their incriminating proximity. She leaves quickly with a lilted voice. “I didn't see anything!”
Rayleigh lets go of Shakuyaku and steps away, with the previous moment turned into an awkward pause between them.
“Good enough,” she finally replies, looking down. A blush tints her cheeks while she releases her hand from his crumpled collar to smooth down nonexistent wrinkles on his coat. The gesture is oddly endearing, even more so with the faint smile forming on her face.
He might have offered to try again, but her head jerks away towards the staircase to leave, her demeanor abruptly formal with their deal apparently completed. “Why don't you keep that too, Ray-san?” Shakuyaku teases from over her shoulder, her usual attitude re-emerging in her wink and strut, “Call it a bonus.”
“Sure,” he says without thought, pulling down his glasses to be more distracted by the familiar sway of her hips than her still-lit cigarette left in his hand, and he only follows after her a minute later.
Her ship is already departing, and he watches her go without so much as a goodbye.
As he quietly waits for the others to regain consciousness, Rayleigh leans over the side rail of the Oro Jackson, smoking her parting gift while he stares out in the direction of the sea. He notes the color of the lip stain that she left on it – a mauve, petal pink – as he ponders how his spontaneous decision somehow worked in his favor, resulting in a rather enjoyable contest, for lack of a better term, between him and the Kuja Empress.
He wonders if he should take this memory to the grave, to keep the torment of enlightenment away from his ignorant peers for their own good; they’re better off not knowing about the profile of her scent, the sound of her sighs, the softness of her body pressed against his. Actually, it's probably be more so for his own self-preservation, he thinks, with a wry chuckle. Roger would be pissed.
Only after the cigarette is burned down to a nub does Rayleigh discover a folded piece of paper that Shakuyaku had somehow slipped into his pocket. He reads her note, and he's not sure whether his heart leaps or plummets at the implication of her words.
"Come and take me."
So then, that sight of her after the kiss, – cheeks flushed, eyes glittering moon bright, lips swollen pink, expression inexplicably shy – was an image of a young maiden in love, he realizes, far too late. Maybe he has been blind. The discovery of her reciprocity makes the weight of the kiss heavier than he thought it could be, because that brings into existence the possibility that he didn’t allow himself to even dream of before, because he’s supposed to be the rational one.
But...
Rayleigh takes one last long drag before flicking the cigarette into the deep ocean, smoke gone with the wind. He can hear his captain stirring awake on the deck.
Roger would be pissed.
He has to do what any good first mate would do.