Chapter Text
The night they got married, Nami swore it didn’t count. That they were doing it only to appease the island they’d grounded on, stuck until they could make repairs from the last storm.
The island was short on women.
And she was a single woman. Unattached. Free for the taking.
One of the elders met them late at night, his hood pulled high, to frantically get her hitched—insisting that it was for her own safety. If she were already married, she would be left alone. Their culture valued marriage, he promised.
Sanji had gone off in a rage, ranting up and down the galley, and the poor older man had hunched on the bench by the table as if afraid of being struck—and Nami had felt sorry for him. And grateful. He was risking something by being here, if his nerves and attempts at hiding his face on the way to their ship was any indication, but he’d cared enough about their well-being—her well-being—to risk it anyway.
“Well… who should it be?” Usopp had asked, looking around at them all with a panicked expression. As if it might be him.
Sanji had sighed dramatically. “I’ll…”
“Zoro. It should be Zoro.”
At first Nami had thought it was a joke. A prank. A moment of idiotic enthusiasm on Luffy’s part (“a holy union between my navigator and my swordsman!”), complete with Usopp flopping back in his chair in relief and Sanji going into another rant, demanding an explanation that Luffy was infuriatingly refusing to give, only looking between Nami and Zoro with such satisfaction that she wanted to hit him.
Zoro, for his part, had kept drinking. Didn’t even glance up.
But then the elder had admitted he had, many years ago, been ordained a cleric.
An actual cleric.
He’d pulled out a document from his robes, glancing at the door with the jumpy expression of a deer expecting a bear, and asked if she and Zoro agreed.
Well, what had she been supposed to say? ‘No, thank you, I’ll take my chances with the masses of single men who had gathered the docks the moment they pulled in that day’? She didn’t like it, but Nami wasn’t stupid. She’d folded her arms, sighed, and said, “Yes.”
Zoro had grunted with a short, sharp nod.
She’d figured they could forget about it as soon as they left the place. That this was for appearances only, except after he’d scribbled on the document, the elder had then had then press their thumbs to a small ink pad and then to the bottom—and looked at the crew, at the chaos, at the fact that Zoro and Nami were both bored and obviously not putting too much thought into it, and shrugged, rolling the document up.
“This is, technically, legally binding. I must go submit it, so that it can be looked up anywhere. I am sorry it was done in this way, but you’ll thank me later—this will help you in more places than just here.”
Nami had screamed.
Zoro had choked on his drink.
Luffy had cheered so loud the Going Merry’s mast shook.
That had been two days ago.
The hoards of men had, as the elder had promised, gone away. News of the new woman’s attachment to the giant scary swordsman had scattered them within an hour the morning after their ‘marriage’, and their time here had been rather uninteresting and boring ever since. Sanji had replenished their supplies, Usopp had negotiated for supplies for the repairs, and Luffy had explored to his heart’s content and somehow not stirred up any trouble.
They’d seen the elder once more, in passing, during a supply run. The relief on his face had gone a long way towards easing Nami’s anger at him; he’d only been trying to protect her, she knew.
She still ground her teeth.
Tonight the ship was quiet, the sea rolling under a dark velvet sky, and Nami found herself standing outside on the deck—the part of it that Zoro used like a confessional, like a place he could beat the world away with the repetition of blade and breath. He’d been here for almost the entirety of the last two days, only pausing when Usopp needed help with a repair or for his turn on the night watch. He’d taken Sanji’s cutting remarks and snarls in silence, and avoided her entirely.
She told herself she was only here because she needed to talk about maps. That she needed help with some of the math—they were heading out in another couple of days, after all. Usopp was almost done.
Certainly not the fact that “legally binding” still echoed in her skull.
Zoro was shirtless, of course—sweat slick on his chest, glinting in the moon and lantern light, muscles shifting with his slow, controlled arcs as he moved through motions and positions that looked half meditation, half threat.
He didn’t turn. Didn’t pause. Just rumbled with his low, calm voice: “You’re up late.”
Nami clenched her jaw. “You knew I was here?”
“You snorted,” he said, switching to a downward slash that carved a ribbon of air. “Or you sighed. Hard to tell.”
“I wasn’t sighing.”
“Mm.”
He kept moving.
Nami held onto a support beam and tried not to stare at the thin sheen of sweat trailing down his spine, the lines carved into him like someone sculpted a hero out of stubbornness and old scars.
Okay. So she stared.
Not like Zoro noticed—except he did. Of course he did, him and his annoying ability to notice everything around him even if he wasn’t looking. His movements shifted subtly; slower, grounded. As if he were making himself more visible, not less.
He was letting her look.
She hated him for that.
She loved him for that.
She wanted to kick him into the ocean for that.
Damn it. What’s WRONG with me?
“You done?” she asked.
Zoro finished the last movement—a clean, precise arc—then slid Wado Ichimonji back into its sheath with the familiar reverence that always hit her in the sternum. And then he turned and finally, finally looked at her.
Nami held his gaze. His chest rose and fell in slow, controlled breaths, the lantern-light warming the lines of him. Old scars. Newer ones. The muscles he carved into shape with discipline and pain.
“Depends,” he said simply. “You need something?”
“No,” she said, then mentally slapped herself for so quickly forgetting her excuse for being here. Map papers crinkled under her arm, reminding her of their presence too late.
He blinked once, then stepped closer.
The thing about Zoro moving toward you wasn’t the walk—it was the way he walked. The intention in it. The way he took up the air, rearranged the gravity. Shifting the energy.
She should’ve stepped back. She didn’t.
“You’re staring,” he murmured.
“You’re in the way.”
“Of what?”
“Everything,” she snapped, too fast. Too defensive.
Zoro huffed. He stopped in front of her, just close enough that she could see a bead of sweat slip from his collarbone and race down the lines of his chest.
She looked away.
“You came to talk about the marriage thing,” he said, blunt as always. “Didn’t you?”
“No.”
“We should. We are…married.”
“Only according to Luffy and an old man.”
Zoro tilted his head in that maddeningly calm way. Something flickered in his eyes. “And you… want it undone.”
“No!” she blurted, then cursed herself. “I mean—yes. Maybe. I don’t know—”
“You’re nervous.”
“I’m not,” she spat.
“You are.” His voice was quiet in the night air. “So am I.”
And Nami, usually a master of emotion and manipulation, felt something inside her go very, very still. “Zoro,” she said, quieter, “I don’t… know what I want this to be.”
Zoro’s voice was like the far-off, lazy rumble of distant thunder. “I know.” His eyes flicked to her hand—the one she kept clenching at her side. “We can divorce. Since this is legally binding. At the next island, or town. Or—have it annulled, or whatever.”
She blew out harshly through her nose, eyes flickering like knives across the deck, over the ocean she knew and could read so well. “What a mess.”
He was quiet.
Nami watched the swells and small, foamy white caps, felt the ship rock gently, and finally sighed. She could be honest with him. She’d always been able to be honest with him, from the night they’d played that silly drinking game on the Baratie, back before they were friends, much less nakama—but starting to be.
He looked the same now, she realized. The same still, open, guarded, watchful look he’d worn after telling her he’d had “one friend.” Moonlight glinted like single, bright shards in his eyes, dark in the nighttime shadows.
“I suppose we could. Sure makes things complicated, though, it’s not easy ending a—pff, whatever this is. Marriage,” she said, gazing out again at the white caps instead of the white points reflecting in his eyes.
He turned and looked out at the sea as well, folding his arms across his chest, the muscles bunching and damn if Nami didn’t feel a little thrill shoot through her middle at the sight.
You know, a treacherous little voice whispered, You ARE married… you have the right.
“I’m sorry.” The rumble of his voice was so low she almost missed it over the sound of the water lapping at the hull.
She looked back at him, confused. There had been a note in his words, in his tone. Regret? Remorse? Guilt? Whatever it was, she’d never heard it before, not from him. “For what?”
“Luffy.” He looked up at the stars, and she watched the silhouette his throat formed when it stretched like that. “That it’s me. I know you would’ve preferred the cook.”
A disbelieving laugh cracked out of her. “What??! And been asked the rest of my life how I wanted my water, ma'am, and other ridiculous things like that.”
He dropped his chin and his eyes. The moonlit reflections disappeared under his lashes. “You like him.”
The quiet after wasn’t natural. Nami stared, deaf to the lapping water and breeze and creaks of the ship. The way he’d said that was unmistakable in its brevity—Zoro believed she didn’t like him.
For a full minute she just stared, letting her thoughts run through his words, the implications, the revelations, and what all it meant, and then she blinked and shifted her weight to one leg and put her hands on her hips. “Wait, is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”
He turned and looked across the deck. His arms tightened.
Do NOT look at how that just bulged his chest more, Nami, now’s NOT the time.
“Just cause this island’s full of perverts doesn’t mean it means anything,” he said. “It’s just a piece of paper. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“Oh for—” she rolled her eyes. “Zoro, I don’t even know what ‘it’ is yet. I never got to grow up imagining marriage or a guy or anything romantic like that. But if I have to be married to keep those pervy single men out there off of me? I’m glad it’s you. Okay? You. Not Sanji.”
He frowned. Lantern light flickered along his face, highlighting the planes of his cheekbones and jaw. “Uh huh.”
She crunched up a blank sheet of paper from the stack under her arm and threw it at him, pleased to see that if he didn’t have the reflexes of a damn cat and batted it away with an insulted look, it would have hit him dead center of his beautiful face. “Because you’re you, you idiot. You’re not all swoony and ridiculous and ‘sweetheart’ this and ‘darling’ that or asking me if I want my damn water in a mug or a crystal cut wine glass!” She scoffed. “Geez. Sanji’s fine and yes, I like him, but as a friend. I like you too.”
His hands dangled at his sides now, relaxing from their ready state when she didn’t throw more paper balls at him. “As a friend?”
She glanced sideways at him, purposefully letting her eyes drag from his face down his body to his legs, and then back up again. To her inner delight, a faint flush darkened his cheekbones for a moment.
Nothing much has to actually change. The voice was back. But it could be—more benefits.
To her surprise, she couldn’t find a way to refute that. And if she was honest, she had spent more than one night imagining what it would be like to touch the hard planes of muscle on his body, feel them flex under her hands, and what those pecs would feel like under her palms and fingers. Or the smooth curved line of his back. Or his throat…
She snapped her eyes back to his, stomach warm, and realized she hadn’t answered him. He was still waiting, the flush still in his cheeks, and she wondered just how obvious her study of him had been.
Too obvious, by the expression on his face.
“I think—we both need time to figure out what ‘it’ is,” she said slowly, and was surprised and secretly pleased when the next words came easily, and more than that—that they were true: “But I’d very much like to find out. What about you?”
For a beat he was silent, staring. Then he nodded, small and quick. “Not against it.”
“You know I’m talking about sex, not just the relationship side, right?”
His eyes couldn’t have gotten darker. It wasn’t possible, in the darkness of the night, with his eyes already being dark.
But Nami could swear they did.
“I don’t know how much has to change between us regularly,” she said, folding her arms and holding his gaze, ready to read any micro-change in his always quiet, still face. “I like us. How we are.”
“You’re bossy.”
“And you like it.”
The ‘tch’ that left him as he rolled his eyes was normal, a good sign.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she challenged. “Tell me you couldn’t just stay on the ship if you wanted instead of letting me drag you all over to carry my stuff during shopping trips, Mr. I-Do-What-I-Want-And-Don’t-Much-Care.”
“You’d raise my debt if I didn’t,” he challenged back.
“As if those debts are actually real things, which you very well know!” she shot back, her blood thrumming with the return of their familiar bickering. “Or are you telling me you’re actually going to pay back the hundreds of millions of berri you owe?”
“Only cause you keep increasing it by 300%!”
She smirked. “So. You like me being bossy.” He scoffed, but she went on. “You better. Because I like being in charge in other ways, too.”
He lifted an eyebrow. Confused.
Oh, sweet moss-brained idiot.
She rolled her eyes again. “If we are ever intimate, oh single-minded swordsman, I like to be in charge. Hope that’s not a problem for you.”
His face flushed. Dozens of little micro-expressions flashed across his face, the dominant one being flustered. “We’re not even sure this is a real marriage, and you’re laying out rules for sex?”
“I’m not saying we’re going to,” she said. “But if we’re going to figure out what we want, it’s good to know these things. What about you?”
He sucked in a breath.
“What do you like?” she pressed.
The frown was back. And he looked away.
“Come on,” she laughed. “It can’t be anything crazier than what I’ve read about or fantasized over. Try me.”
He wouldn’t look at her, and a strange thought flickered to life as she watched the move of his throat, the pinched set of his mouth, the flex of his jaw.
Oh.
Oh.
He wasn’t really..?
She wasn’t, but it had been a one night thing with a mark, and it had been her last option in a no-good-option situation. Two minutes of basically nothing (how pathetic) and she’d made good on her goal after, leaving a lipstick ‘bye’ on the mirror for him the next morning. And then one short-lived relationship when she’d been stuck somewhere for months, and that had been when she’d discovered she liked being the one making the calls and doing to instead of being done. Otherwise her experience had been on her own, and with good and varied reading materials.
But Zoro…
Was he?
“I’ve not,” he said. Short and simple.
Nami sucked in a breath.
“Oh.” Her elation at the idea of being a married-friends-with-benefits sank to the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t use Zoro that way, casual and ‘maybe’ and have that be his only experience. “That changes a few things. A lot of things.”
Anger flashed across his face. “Like what.”
It made sense. He’d grown up in a dojo, and his upbringing was all about being a swordsman—single focused, no dreaming about anything romantic. Not even close. And then he’d been on a sing-minded drive towards fulfilling his promise, and then—and then they’d met Luffy.
She looked him up and down again, at his size, his form, the warm light highlighting his edges and curves, and while she wet her lips and her breath deepened, she said, “What I just said. About what this could be.”
“Because I’ve never done it?” he said, a sharp note in his voice.
“Because you’ve never gotten to figure out what you like or don’t.” She held his gaze, hoping he saw how much this mattered, how much she didn’t want to hurt him. Married they may be by law, but Zoro was her friend, and she wasn’t about to ruin that or him by taking more than her share. She was a greedy creature by nature, but she wasn’t cruel. “Because we don’t even know what ‘it’ is yet, and now I’ve just added a whole layer of pressure—”
“I don’t mind.” A heavier wave rolled into the ship, and he glanced around as the ship tipped and swayed gently, the lanterns dancing on their hooks. Then he looked back at her, and his eyes were deep and steady. “If it’s you, if… if it’s what you want. I trust you.”
She hadn’t heard right. “Even after what I just told you? You are the epitome of control.”
He shrugged, the muscles in his shoulder flexing with the movement. “You’re careful with things. With things you value.” His cheeks colored again, faint beneath the skin, as if just realizing he’d counted himself as something she might value and wanted to take it back.
Instead of being relieved, Nami felt frozen. Numb. Not upset, but—the level of trust he’d just admitted to her, she wasn’t sure if Zoro even realized it himself. He did not trust easily, much less with his person. Much less in such an intimate, vulnerable way.
And he was not someone who said things like that without meaning them.