This is purely for fun. It was a concept I came up with due to the idea that Luffy is often portrayed as not knowing or understanding anything to do with any kind of romantic relationship for various reasons. And I like it when him and Shanks are compared as similar, so what if Shanks was like that too? And then I was all, but who would Shanks even crush on without realizing he has a crush? My mind decided it had to be Mihawk, but it couldn't stop conjuring up a female version of Mihawk so I just went with it.

Female Mihawk is very interesting. She went Alanna the Lioness route, bound her boobs, and trained into the ground until she could easily destroy all contenders, not even caring about her gender. A couple of other things but...

:I do not own the characters. Citation at the bottom.

Nobody except Benn Beckmann, and later the rest of the crew of the Red Haired Pirates, noticed it for a long time. Oh, it could be argued that Roger and the remnants of his crew either knew or suspected, but they weren't telling anyone.

Even Buggy, with his animosity with Shanks, spoke not a single word about it until after it became common knowledge. At least the Clown could say that in this he knew more and was greater than Shanks at.

Benn knew, of course, from the way Shanks would talk about his sparring partner and 'rival', and the way he would gush about the scars he had been given. It wasn't his captains feelings that surprised him.

It was the fact that Shanks didn't recognize his feelings for what they were. Actually, it was more than that.

There were certain needs that his captain didn't meet, didn't even know about if the cluelessness about what some of the crew got up to during shore leave. Benn had thought it impossible for someone not to know, because it was a biological imperative, but… If no one explains it to someone, would they figure it out?

Because he knew his captains history nearly as well as is own. Knew that he'd lost his crew and guardian figures very young, had set out by himself unlike Buggy, and that for the last couple of years before this loss the crew might very well have been too busy trying to reach Raftel to actually sit down the cabin boys and tell them about the Birds and the Bees.

"And," Benn thought wryly to himself, while pondering these topics during his shift at watch, "Even now Shanks pretty much tunes it out whenever one of the crew tries to tell him. Or gets interrupted by some weird coincidence."

So perhaps it was just not meant to be for his captain. Benn could except that… Were it not for the fact that his captain was so clearly in love. Or crushing badly. Or something.

Now, Benn Beckman understood that not all relationships were built on the physical aspect, or even had to include it. And that was all very well and good, but his captain had also seemed to skip over romantic relationships in his childhood. And thus, regardless of feelings-that he didn't even really understand- Shanks was incapable of just ASKING HER OUT ALREADY!

But years went by, his captain remained clueless, and she seemed to have also skipped something in her childhood because that women, for all that she cared about Shanks just as much seemed as clueless as he.

One day, Benn Beckman vowed silently as they headed to Raijin island again, he would figure out how to pound it into Red Haired Shanks that romantic relationships were an actual thing, and then make sure that he and Dracule Mihawk, the World's Greatest Swordsman*, both understood that yes, they should totally date. Or get married. Or something other than pine and flirt without even seeming to know what either of those words meant.

:Eiichiro, Oda. One Piece. Shueisha, 1997. 85 Vols.

This is more going to be a series of humorous one shots focusing on Shanks and Female Mihawk, as a clueless Shanks inadvertently tries to woo her, and an emotionally constipated Mihawk shows off for this guy that she doesn't really mind it when he bothers her- but wont admit it out loud even.

*Swordsperson, the various Women's Groups declared. Not that Mihawk really cared what she was called, or even really noticed that she was all that different to men barring her exceeding irritation once a month.