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It’s a peaceful day on the Thousand Sunny, Nami thinks as she carefully inks a new line on her tide chart. Of course, that means she’s expecting it when the inevitable disaster strikes.
“Namiiiiiiiiiii!” Luffy calls as he bounds onto the deck. “Where’s Zoro?”
“Literally right there, ” she growls, pointing to where he’s sleeping on the Sunny’s lawn. “But good luck waking him up.”
Usopp laughs at her frustration from next to her, taking his goggles off and looking up from his newest project.
“Awwwww,” Luffy whines. He walks over to Zoro and pokes and pulls at his cheeks until he is satisfied that Zoro is truly not waking up. “I wanted to train with him.”
“I can tell him when he wakes up,” Usopp offers.
“Will you? Thanks Ussop! Tell him I’m up in the training room!” With that, he promptly grabs one of Zoro’s swords and scampers off towards the crow’s nest.
Ussop and Nami stare after him in bewildered silence for a second, then-
“ Shit! ”
“Goodness, Nami, what’s wrong?” Robin asks as she walks in with three cups of tea. “Compliments of our beloved cook,” she adds, setting the cups down.
“Luffy just took one of Zoro’s swords and ran off to train with it,” Nami answers.
“So who’s gonna protect him when Zoro wakes up?” Ussop asks. “I mean, I’m always ready to take over as captain. I practically am captain right now but-”
Nami interrupts his nervous rambling. “Luffy can take care of himself fine, but can you imagine the damage those two would cause if they fought?”
Robin seems to find this mildly funny, but Ussop and Nami are still freaking out. “Maybe he won’t be too mad?” Robin suggests. “Zoro’s always been sweet on our captain.”
“Heh, yeah, he’s whipped,” Ussop laughs, distracted for a second before a new terrifying idea dawns on him. “What if Luffy took the one that cuts mountains in half???”
“Oh my god???” Nami shrieks. “I have to go find him,” she says, running off followed by Robin’s amused chuckles.
~*~
“Heyyyy Luffy,” Nami says cautiously as she inches into the training room. “Whatcha doing?”
It feels disconcertingly similar to the times she would chase after village dogs and carefully try to convince them to drop the tangerines they’d stolen.
“I’m learning to use a sword!” Luffy exclaims, swinging it dangerously close to her.
“Cool, cool, that’s great Luffy,” she says. “But Zoro really loves his swords. He might be mad that you took one.”
“Oh, this is Wado Itchy Monkey!” He explains like it’s obvious. “The one that goes in his mouth! He’s had her since before I met him, isn’t that cool?”
Well at least it’s not the one that cuts mountains in half, she thinks.
“Wado’s his favorite,” Luffy continues. “She’s really nice. Zoro says Emma’s bitchy and Kitkat is cursed so I’m not supposed to use them.”
“Luffy,” Nami tries to reason with him. “I think Zoro would be really upset that you’re using any of his swords, especially his favorite.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” a rough voice says, and Nami turns to see Zoro wandering into the room, still looking half asleep.
“But Luffy, I told you only when I’m with you,” he continues. “You’re gonna get yourself killed swinging it like that.” He walks over to Luffy and carefully rearranges his grip on the sword with a frown.
Okay. That’s new. Nami touched one of Zoro’s swords once, just to move it, and he nearly bit her head off.
“Um. Okay,” she says, and they both turn and look at her as if they forgot she was there. Rude. “If you two cause any damage, I’m doubling your debts.”
As she walks away, she hears Zoro gently say “Here, like this, Luffy.”
She can’t tell if she should file this away for blackmail or talk to him about it. Probably talk to him. A shame though, it would make excellent blackmail material.
~*~
Late that night, Nami snags two bottles of sake from the kitchen and heads towards Zoro. They both need to be tipsy for this conversation.
She sits down next to him where he’s on watch and silently passes him the bottle. He nods in thanks and they drink for a few minutes, looking out at the endless swells of waves.
“So,” Nami starts eventually. “You’re teaching Luffy to use a sword.”
“Yeah. He asked.”
“If I asked, would you teach me?”
“Why would you ask?” he says with an eye roll. “You’ve been working with your weird magic stick for years. You’re strong. It’d be ridiculous to try a new weapon now.”
Nami fiercely pushes down the part of her that glows at Zoro calling her strong and answers with her normal wit. “It’s called a climatact, you fool. And Luffy has been developing his gum gum powers since he was a kid. He’ll never be competent at using a sword, and you know it.”
“Yeah but,” Zoro mumbles, looking guilty. “He asked.”
“So? You shoot people down all the time.”
“He said I was cool,” Zoro says, like he’d rather be anywhere else. “And he-”
He reaches for Nami’s bottle of sake, having apparently finished his, and downs the rest of it in one go.
“He does this thing with his eyes where they get all big and-” He groans and pulls his hand over his eyes. “I’m pathetic aren’t I?”
“Yep!” Nami answers cheerfully. “But don’t worry it’s a cute look on you.”
“Shut up, witch,” he grumbles.
“Listen,” Nami sighs. “I really think you should tell him you’re in love with him.”
“What’s the fucking point? He doesn’t fucking feel that way.”
“You sure? He’d do anything for you.”
“He’d do anything for all of us.” Zoro doesn’t look bitter. If anything, he looks even more love struck, and slightly proud.
“Yeah, he would,” Nami says fondly, running her fingers over the deep scar under her tattoo and the memories that came with it. “But you’re special to him. Everyone can see that.”
“I’m his first mate.”
Nami sighs. She isn’t really getting anywhere. She truly believes that Luffy loves Zoro back. He’s more touchy with Zoro than the rest of them, which is saying something. He’s always beaming at Zoro, and exactly three times she’s seen him offer to share food with Zoro. From Luffy, that’s practically a marriage proposal.
But Zoro won’t believe any of that, too caught up in his drunken pity party, so maybe she should try a different approach.
“Listen,” she starts, “you know I was in love with Vivi? Still am, actually.”
He looks at her in utter shock for a moment, before- “Ooooooooh. That checks out.”
“Yeah,” Nami says with a small laugh. “I was so scared to tell her. Before you guys I was never safe enough to fall in love. I’d hooked up with girls a few times. I dated Carina briefly. But Vivi was my true first love.
“I thought it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. With everything going on in Alabasta it felt selfish to burden her with my feelings. But I told her, and she loved me back.”
Nami gives an uncharacteristic giggle. “I kissed a princess.”
“Yeah, yeah, congratulations. Can you stop rubbing it in?”
Ah shit, that didn’t go as planned. “No, listen, what I’m saying is, well, neither of us are great at the whole feelings thing. Before I met you guys, I didn’t let myself get close to anyone because I knew I would lose them.”
She leans back, wishing she’d brought more sake. “But I knew Vivi wouldn’t be forever. Hopefully I’ll find my way back to her eventually, but for now? I really fucking miss her, Zoro. And I’m constantly worried sick over her. I want to be there for her so bad. But despite it all, I don’t regret telling her I loved her. The time we spent together was wonderful. I’ll always treasure it.”
Zoro grunts and leans a little closer to her. “She’ll be okay, Nami. She’s strong.”
“Yeah, she really is. So brave too.” She quickly scrubs at the tears threatening to spill from her eyes and turns to Zoro with a glare.
“So you better pull your shit together and be brave too,” she says, hitting him upside the head.
Zoro exhales slowly, looking out at the stars. “I’ll try. I really will.”
“You better tell him. For Vivi. For the time she and I didn’t have.”
“Oh you fucking witch. That’s a dirty trick.”
“You know me. I get my way.”
“You always do.” He sighs and scoots closer to her until their shoulders are touching. “We won’t let Vivi get hurt. Luffy won’t.”
“I know, I know. I’ll be with her again soon. I swear it.” She grabs his hand and squeezes it, giving him thirty seconds before saying “If you want to get touchy, you better take a fucking bath. You smell awful.”
~*~
“Zoroooooo,” Luffy complains. “This is boring. Teach me cool stuff!”
“Luffy, maybe if you could hold the sword properly, I could teach you to swing it,” Zoro grinds out.
“Hrrrrrrrmph,” Luffy whines, and Zoro can tell he’s gearing up the puppy eyes. “At least show me something cool.”
“Okay, okay,” Zoro says, ruffling his hair and unsheathing Sandai Kitetsu.
He looks around the room for some trick to impress Luffy, and his eyes land on one of the lamps they lit when it started to get dark. He raises his sword but Luffy stops him.
“No, no, no, do it with your mouth.”
Zoro sighs; he doesn’t like having swords other than Wado in his mouth, but before he can put Kitetsu in his mouth, Luffy shoves Wado in instead.
Zoro ignores the flip in his stomach at how well Luffy knows him, and carefully swings the sword so that the crisp burst of wind extinguishes the guttering flame.
“Coooooool,” Luffy exclaims, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Doesn’t your jaw get sore though?”
“It used to, when I first started training with a third sword, but my jaw muscles are plenty strong now.”
“Shishishishi strong Zoro,” Luffy giggles and immediately starts poking around Zoro’s jaw, feeling his muscles.
“What are you doing, Luffy?” Zoro grumbles. He tilts his head slightly but makes no effort to move away from Luffy’s wandering hands.
Horrifyingly, Luffy decides his next move is to stick his fingers inside Zoro’s mouth, and start poking at his cheeks and jaw from the inside.
“The fuck are you doing, Luffy?”
Luffy doesn’t answer, simply letting out another quiet chuckle. “Your mouth is all soft inside, how do you even hold your sword?”
Zoro knows he should feel disgusted or embarrassed or angry, but Luffy is looking up at him so trustingly with those big brown eyes and sticking his hands in Zoro’s mouth. The mouth that holds the great sword Wado Ichimongi. The mouth he uses to slay hordes of enemies for Luffy’s sake.
He bites down on one of Luffy’s fingers, and it simply squishes between his teeth.
“You said your jaw hurt when you started training with a third sword. So you had two already. Why start using a third?” Luffy asks, and the moment is broken.
“Feel around your own mouth, weirdo,” Zoro sighs, pushing Luffy away and sitting on one of the large bean bags in the corner of the training room.
“No fun,” Luffy explains, bouncing over and sitting down pressed up against Zoro’s side. “It’s all rubber. Not like yours.”
“Disgusting.” Zoro leans back, letting his head thump against the wall. He’s fucking tired. Not of Luffy, of course. Despite everything they’ve been through, every crazy idea that goes through that man’s head, Zoro can never get enough. He’s tired of himself and how absolutely, pathetically weak he is to Luffy’s eyes and Luffy’s smile, and just Luffy. He knows some of the crew laughs about it behind his back (Nami and Sanji laugh about it to his face), but he can’t blame them.
“So why?” Luffy pushes, poking Zoro in the ribs.
“Why what?”
“Why a third sword?” Luffy’s always pushy when he wants to know something, but this is different. There’s an intensity, a gravity to his eyes that contrasts with his normal carefree nature.
“Oh.” Oh. Luffy and Zoro have always had an unspoken rule: no need to talk about their past. There were a lot of things neither of them wanted to remember, and Zoro had found it incredibly freeing to follow someone who took him at face value, no tragic backstory, no dead friends, no questions.
But then Ace died. Ace died and Luffy was broken and all of the sudden Zoro needed to know about Luffy’s past, because if he knew, maybe he could stop something like that from happening again.
It had taken a long time, but eventually, when the wounds weren’t too fresh to talk about, they would stay up in the crows nest on nights like this one, and Luffy would tell him stories about Ace and Sabo and Garp and Dadan and Shanks, and Zoro would drink sake and let himself drown in Luffy’s voice and eyes.
There were many times that Zoro opened his mouth to tell Luffy about his past, but something stopped him. It never occurred to him that Luffy might want to know just as much as Zoro had.
“Wado Ichimonji,” he begins, choosing his words carefully, “belonged to a dear friend of mine.
“Her name was Kuina. She was a swordsman training at the same dojo I was. The strongest one there. She whooped my ass over a hundred times. But one day she told me that her dad said she could never be a great swordsman, because she was a girl, and her body would grow weaker as she got older.”
“That’s stupid,” Luffy interjects.
“Yeah, I told her so. Back then she was the most powerful person I knew. I couldn’t help but to look up to her, and the idea of her ever being weak seemed impossible. We promised each other that one of us would become the world’s greatest swordsman.
“She was never weak. But she was just a kid. Two years older than I was. Fragile, I guess, though it feels weird to call her that. About a month after we made that promise, she fell down a flight of stairs and died.” Zoro breathes deeply. He’s never said this outloud before, and the words burn in his throat, tears welling in the corner of his eye.
Luffy is looking at him intently. It’s the same single minded focus he fixes on their enemies sometimes, but softer. He wraps one rubbery arm around Zoro several times over, and squeezes. Zoro manages to take Luffy’s hand in his own through the tangle of limbs and sighs. The pressure of Luffy’s arm around him is comforting. Grounding. Kuina had slipped away from him so quickly, but Luffy was right here. Luffy wasn’t letting go.
“After her funeral, I asked her father if I could have Kuina’s sword. Told him that I would become the world’s greatest swordsman so that my name would reach heaven. So that’s my promise. To her, and then to you. My two best friends.”
Luffy is silent for a second. He reaches up to scrub Zoro’s tears away with the hem of his shirt. The red fabric is rough against his face.
“She sounds amazing, Zoro.”
“She was,” he whispers. “I think you would have adored her. I think she would’ve liked you too.” He bumps his head gently against Luffy’s. “Haven’t told anyone about her since she died.”
“Do you feel better?”
Zoro has to think about it for a moment. He feels tired. But almost the good kind of tired, like when he sits under Nami’s tangerine trees and naps in the sun. Like he could melt into Luffy’s arms, and just sit here, being held, forever.
“Yeah, I do. I think- I think I wanted you to know about her. Because-” He chokes on his words slightly. He’s not sure what he’s saying, but he can remember Nami’s words. “You two have been the most important people in my life.”
“Hey, Zoro?” Luffy asks with a strange look on his face. “Can I kiss you?”
Um. What the fuck?
“What?” He chokes out.
“I really want to kiss you right now,” Luffy answers simply. His arm is still wrapped tightly around Zoro, and their sides are pressed together. Zoro thinks he might be dreaming.
“Yeah, yeah, of course. Please,” he whispers hurriedly.
Luffy’s flashes one of his blinding grins, before placing his free hand on Zoro’s cheek and leaning in to kiss him.
Zoro figures out pretty quickly that he’s not dreaming. Luffy is a much better kisser in his dreams. In reality, Luffy is kind of sloppy. There’s a little too much tongue and drool, and at one point he accidently bites Zoro. But he keeps his hand cradling Zoro’s cheek, and it’s so soft, and Zoro thinks blearily that when death comes for him, this is how he wants to go.
Hesitatingly, he brings his hands up and places them in Luffy’s hair. He’s constantly ruffling Luffy’s hair, or tugging on it, or taking any excuse he can to get his hands in it, because he loves touching Luffy’s hair. Apparently Luffy loves it too, because he hums happily against Zoro’s lips and kisses him deeper.
When Luffy pulls back, he looks at Zoro and giggles, wiping some of the saliva away from Zoro’s lips and chin. “Zoro looks pretty like this,” he says, as if it’s a simple observation. Zoro feels a little lightheaded.
“What was that for?”
“Told you already. I wanted to kiss you,” Luffy says, like Zoro’s stupid. “Have for a super long time, but I wasn’t sure if you were ready.” He tilts his head, his fingers playing absentmindedly with Zoro’s earrings. “Did you like it?”
“Yeah,” Zoro says breathlessly. “Yeah, I loved it, I love you .” He freezes, realizing what he said. Well. At least he can tell Nami he did what she told him to.
“Perfect!” Luffy exclaims. “I love you, too!” He places a wet smooch against Zoro’s forehead. “We’re boyfriends now.”
Zoro’s head is reeling. Luffy said he loved him? Luffy said they’re boyfriends? “Luffy, can we slow down for a second?”
Luffy leans back, frowning slightly. “Do you not want to be boyfriends?”
“No, I do, of course I do, Luffy, I’m just a little confused.”
“You said you love me, right? And I’ve loved you since forever. You’re my first mate! Raleigh said it was pretty common for first mates and captains to fall in love. I told him all about you.”
Zoro dimly registers in the back of his mind that maybe Captain Kid and the Massacre Soldier were together, if what Raleigh says about captains and first mates is true. But more importantly, “Since forever?”
“Well maybe not forever,” Luffy amends. “Since your fight with Hawkeyes, maybe?”
“When I got my ass kicked and nearly died?” Zoro asks. He has imagined Luffy falling in love with him plenty of times, but they usually involved Zoro doing something strong and impressive, not getting nearly sliced in half due to his overconfidence.
“Well, yeah. It really made me realize how brave and strong you are, and how committed you are to your dream, just like me! You made me your promise, and I knew I wanted to take you to the ends of the world with me.”
“Wow,” Zoro whispers in disbelief. Luffy has been in love with him for more than two years? “Why didn’t you do anything about it before?” He snaps, gently smacking Luffy on the head.
“Wasn’t sure how you felt. But then you told me about your friend, and the way you were looking at me- I thought maybe you loved me too.” He beams at Zoro. “And I was right! So, when did you fall in love with me?”
Zoro can’t pinpoint when exactly he fell in love. Maybe sometime in the East Blue, maybe sometime later. Devotion and love blur together for him, but he certainly knows the moment he realized it.
Zoro realized he loved Luffy on Thriller Bark, when he had gotten on his knees and begged Kuma to take his head instead of Luffy’s.
However, that realization was followed by the worst pain he’d ever experienced in his life, weeks of recovery, and then the Sabaody incident. He can’t tell Luffy about Thriller Bark, so he gives him the second best thing: when he was forced to confront his feelings.
“You know how Kuma sent me to Mihawk’s island after Sabaody?”
Luffy nods.
“Well when I found out about what happened at Marineford, I fought off the entire island of feral fighting monkeys and, when Mihawk wouldn’t give me a boat, I swam out to sea to find you. Mihawk and Perona dragged me back eventually, but I think that clued them into something.”
“Wait, who’s Perona?” Luffy interjects.
“The annoying girl with pink hair and ghosts.”
“Oh yeah!” Luffy says. “I like her.”
“I guess you owe her one, because she basically annoyed me into confronting my feelings for you. Teased me mercilessly. Even Mihawk sat me down and tried to talk to me about it. Did you know he and Red Haired Shanks used to be…involved? Can’t believe he told me that.”
“No way!” Luffy says giggling. “Funny that Mihawk is in both of our stories. Maybe we should send him a gift or something.”
“What?” Zoro snorts. “A bouquet of flowers and a note that says ‘Thanks for almost killing me, and then giving me a really awkward dad talk, I’m now dating my captain’?”
“Something like that,” Luffy hums happily, leaning in to kiss Zoro again.
Zoro wraps his arms tightly around Luffy and grins into the kiss, thinking that Luffy really is right. He’d follow this idiot to the ends of the world.