Summary: Everyone aboard the Polar Tang knows you draw. Landscapes. Islands. The crew. But after all, every artist has a favorite subject. Law certainly doesn’t have a clue… until one forgotten sketchbook changes everything.
A\N: I loved writing this!! 🥹 Thank you so much for the request, I hope I did it justice and that you enjoy it. Lyyy
Word count: about 6.3k
Contains: artist!reader, friends to lovers, established relationship, domestic fluff, mutual pining, slow burn, Law being the prettiest muse imaginable, anatomy references, crew shenanigans, very lovesick Law.
Warnings: fem!reader, use of y/n a few times, reader draws Law shirtless for anatomy studies (non-explicit), mentions of tattoos, lots of fluff.
From the occasional oil painting to the countless sketches and drawings chronicling your adventures, the Heart Pirates had always known you were the artistic sort.
It had been your combat skills that first caught the captain’s attention and earned you an invitation to join the crew, yet it didn’t take long aboard the Polar Tang for everyone to discover that your talents extended far beyond the battlefield, reaching into all manner of creative pursuits.
More often than not, your drawings had a documentary quality to them, quiet observational pieces you worked on whenever you found a spare moment between steering the submarine, carrying out missions, or exploring the countless islands you visited.
Your sketchbook was practically an extension of yourself, tucked beneath your arm wherever you went, ready to preserve whichever moments happened to strike you as the most charming or interesting.
Within the quiet comfort of life aboard the submarine, away from responsibilities, you immortalized little moments for yourself.
Bepo laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath. Penguin and Shachi bickering over something neither of them would remember five minutes later. Law reading. Shachi asleep with a book draped across his face. Law nursing yet another cup of coffee. Ikkaku playing cards with Jean Bart. Law performing surgery. Bepo napping on the deck. Law fighting to keep his sleepy head from dropping onto his desk.
You had even drawn the Polar Tang itself from nearly every conceivable angle.
Looking back, you probably should have noticed just how often one particular man in a spotted hat kept finding his way onto those pages.
You never did.
It simply seemed natural that he would be there, considering he was the person you spent the most time with, constantly helping him organize paperwork in his office.
Even then, your drawings had been beautiful, but there was a certain distance to them. You simply captured the scenes unfolding before your eyes, nothing more. Everyone knew that.
Sometimes the captain would even ask whether you had finished a particular sketch, taking it into his hands and studying every detail despite how embarrassingly self-conscious it made you to have him inspect your work so carefully.
As time passed, though you never consciously noticed it yourself, he began appearing more and more often.
Then again, why wouldn’t he? The two of you spent so much time together that his presence had quietly become part of your everyday life. No matter where you went, he somehow ended up there too.
Even if you stumbled upon a vast meadow bursting with wildflowers on some distant island and wandered off to paint it in peaceful solitude, your grumpy doctor of a captain would inevitably appear not long afterward, muttering that he failed to understand what was supposedly so fascinating about flowers in the first place.
“Spring is coming. I feel sorry for those who don’t think that’s important…”
He would roll his eyes, mumbling something about you being far too much of a romantic, yet settle down beside you anyway, quietly watching you work.
You really did have perfectly reasonable explanations for your drawings. Honest.
Whenever you decided to practice drawing hands, you somehow ended up filling half a sketchbook with studies of Law’s from every possible angle and position.
“He’s got the most defined bones out of everyone,” you would explain. “Besides, the tattoos create great shadows.”
If your sketchbook happened to contain studies of his hoodie or his hat, it was only because you were practicing different fabric textures.
Obviously.
And if you happened to be studying facial expressions, then of course it only made sense to have half a dozen sketches of him frowning over paperwork, followed by another ten or so of him smiling faintly while reading one of his comics from various positions.
Everything was perfectly logical.
Perfectly easy to explain.
Which was precisely why Bepo’s reaction made so little sense one afternoon as the two of you lounged around together while he absentmindedly flipped through one of your filled sketchbooks.
“There’s… a lot of Captain in here,” he observed.
You merely shrugged, taking another sip of your coffee.
“There’s everyone.”
He turned another page.
“He’s in this one too… And here… This one’s him as well.”
“Coincidence,” you replied, dunking a biscuit into your coffee. “I draw everyone. We probably just spent more time together that day, so I ended up sketching him a little more.”
The polar bear said nothing.
Silently, he counted thirty-two drawings of Law…
…and two of Penguin.
You only began questioning the state of your own emotions when you noticed that one of your sketchbooks was nearly full, yet didn’t contain a single drawing of anyone else from the crew.
There were still the usual everyday sketches of Law scattered throughout its pages, of course, but now they were joined by an ever-growing collection dedicated almost entirely to his tattoos.
Heat spread across your cheeks at the mere thought of wanting a better look at them. Up close. Close enough to faithfully capture every intricate line, even the ones hidden beneath his clothes.
Somewhere along the way, you’d forgotten that those pages had originally begun as anatomy studies.
Now they were filled with careful observations of the muscles in his arms and chest, how each tattoo stretched and shifted ever so slightly as he moved.
You had even asked him not to move once while trying to capture a particular angle.
“Hold still.”
Law didn’t so much as glance up from the medical journal in his hands.
“…Why?”
“Your forearm tattoo curves weirdly when you rotate your wrist.”
Too absorbed in his reading to question it, he simply extended his arm toward you without another word, letting you do… whatever it was you were doing.
It wasn’t until nearly ten minutes later that he realized you’d been staring at him the entire time.
Your mind drifted back to all the afternoons spent watching him from the opposite side of the office, your heart racing as you quietly melted at the sight of him getting irritated over paperwork that refused to add up.
Without realizing it, you had filled pages with sketches of his furrowed brows, his slightly pursed lips, the faint puff of his cheeks whenever he grew annoyed, somehow ending up with eleven different versions of that expression alone.
Then there were the shadows his eyelashes cast across his cheeks.
The subtle curve of his lips whenever a smile escaped him.
His eyes.
His eyes in every imaginable expression: irritation, concentration, curiosity, happiness.
Oh God.
I’m in love with our grumpy captain.
The doctor of the Heart Pirates found himself increasingly confused by your recent behavior.
He would never admit it aloud, but he was worried.
For the past several days, although you still spent your usual hours working beside him in the office, you had begun avoiding him whenever you could.
You still sorted mountains of paperwork as diligently as ever, only now you always wore your headphones, leaving little room for conversation. Whenever he asked you something, you’d slip one earbud out just long enough to answer before immediately putting it back in. Sometimes you didn’t even hear him the first time.
He never commented on it.
Everyone had days when silence was preferable to the noise of other people.
God knew he had more of those than anyone.
Still, your company had always been one of the few he genuinely enjoyed, and he couldn’t shake the quiet hope that perhaps tomorrow you’d be a little more willing to talk to him again.
It felt strange in other ways too.
Whenever he found enough free time to join the crew for an evening card game, you were no longer sitting beside him as his partner.
Instead of exchanging knowing smiles and whispering advice over your next move, you now found yourself across the table beside Shachi, laughing every time he stubbornly ignored your suggestions and confidently played exactly the wrong card.
A faint pang of jealousy, one he would sooner die than acknowledge, settled somewhere deep inside his chest as he caught himself glancing in your direction throughout the evening.
Across the table, Bepo seemed equally distracted, nervously darting his gaze between the two of you while absentmindedly throwing random cards onto the pile.
Law had always claimed he enjoyed card games.
The truth was, his favorite part had never been the cards.
It had simply been sitting beside you.
Faced with the alternative, he couldn’t help but admit to himself that he would’ve rather skipped the game altogether.
The following afternoon, after excusing yourself from the office for half an hour to go listen to Penguin’s newest collection of music he’d picked up on the last island, the submarine’s brooding captain remained behind to finish his paperwork.
Or rather…
He sat with his pen hovering uselessly above the page, wondering whether he’d done something over the past few days to upset you.
Perhaps he’d been too cold.
Perhaps you’d finally grown tired of trying to get through to him and decided the more entertaining members of the crew were simply better company.
Regret quietly settled over him. He should’ve asked you to go somewhere together on the next island. Just the two of you.
Now charismatic Penguin had probably charmed you with his music collection…
…and who knew when you’d come back to him…
His spiraling thoughts were interrupted by an unusually cheerful polar bear entering the office with a steaming cup of green tea.
“Captain, where’s Y/N?”
“What does that have to do with me?” Law answered with mild irritation. “She can spend her time however she wants.”
After a brief pause, he muttered,
“As long as she gets back soon enough to finish this documentation, she can spend time with whoever she wants for as long as she wants.”
Bepo pretended not to hear the second half.
Still smiling to himself, he set the cup beside Law, who acknowledged it with a quiet nod of thanks.
“Hmm… Y/N really is a wonderful artist, isn’t she?”
Silence.
“As you know… she draws everyone on the crew.”
“Hm.”
“You have the most pages, though.”
“…What?”
“Not fair,” Bepo chuckled as he walked out of the office. “You’re one lucky guy.”
He left behind one thoroughly bewildered captain.
Later that day, the two of you were updating the submarine’s library. Law stood atop a ladder placing the newly acquired books onto the shelves while you handed them up one by one, carefully recording each addition.
Every so often your fingers brushed against his.
Each fleeting touch sent an unwelcome current racing through both of you, one you silently agreed to ignore. You’d pretend to examine the bookshelves with great interest while embarrassment painted your cheeks, and the tips of his ears.
This angle is really not helping my increasingly ridiculous crush, you thought, looking up at your captain from almost directly below.
From there, the sharp line of his nose seemed even more striking, and you found yourself watching the slow rise and fall of his long eyelashes.
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
The word echoed through your mind later as well while the two of you worked in companionable silence, cataloguing documents together.
It echoed again as your pencil unconsciously recreated those same thick eyelashes arching above serious golden eyes.
Then the tattooed heart with the smiling Jolly Roger emblazoned across his chest.
You jolted when you heard your captain calling your name, snapping your sketchbook shut almost instantly.
“Could you take these books back to the office?” he asked. “We’ll go through them properly tomorrow. Keep two or three with you and leave the rest on my desk. Then head to dinner. I’ll join you once I’m finished here.”
Still distracted, you nodded, gathering the towering stack of books into your arms.
The pile was so high you had to steady it with your chin to stop it from collapsing like a house of cards, a sight that made an unexpected wave of fondness wash over Law.
In your haste, however, you failed to notice that your sketchbook, buried beneath the stack, had slipped free and remained behind on the table as you left the library.
Once he’d finished highlighting the necessary information and sorting tomorrow’s paperwork into neat piles, Law finally prepared to head for the dining hall.
That’s when he noticed something lying on the table where you’d been sitting.
Of course.
You’d forgotten something.
He walked over and picked up the light-colored sketchbook, intending to return it the next time he saw you.
Still…
Curiosity quietly tugged at him.
Just one look.
He opened it.
A drawing of himself.
He turned the page.
Another one.
He flipped to the middle at random.
Him again.
Another page.
A detailed anatomical study of muscles.
He flipped toward the back.
A meticulous rendering of his hands.
…What the hell?
He stood there staring at the sketchbook in complete silence, so stunned that his thoughts seemed to short-circuit altogether.
More than embarrassed, he was simply… astonished.
Not because someone had documented him in such painstaking detail.
But because you had.
And not because he was the captain.
Simply because he was him.
After everyone had finished dinner, full and ready to retreat for the night before another day awaited them, Law quietly asked you to stay behind.
“I think you forgot this,” he said, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
If the earth had opened beneath your feet and swallowed you into its deepest depths, straight to the bottom of the Grand Line, you wouldn’t have protested.
You felt like you were dying.
Before you could snatch the sketchbook from his hands, he deliberately opened it to one of the more detailed portraits, the kind that made it painfully obvious you’d spent hours bringing it to life.
“You spent that much time on this?”
“…Maybe.”
Silence settled between you, and for the life of you, you couldn’t decipher what was passing behind those amber eyes.
“You got the eyes wrong.”
That…
That was not what you’d expected him to say.
“What?”
“They aren’t always that harsh. Or that distant.” His gaze lingered on the drawing for another moment. “They’re softer. Especially depending on who’s standing in front of me.”
He tried to sound casual, though the warmth creeping into his cheeks betrayed him far more effectively than his voice ever could. It was, whether he intended it or not, a confession.
“You’ll have to take another look from up close,” he continued, gently placing the sketchbook back into your hands. “You can fix it tomorrow, when we visit the next island.”
With that, he turned toward the door, wished you goodnight with the smallest of smiles, and left.
Your heart threatened to leap straight out of your chest and join the rest of his collection.
Not that you would’ve minded.
And that…
That was how it all began.
By the time the two of you were together, the quiet blooming of your relationship could be traced through your sketches alone.
Little by little, they transformed into increasingly intimate moments, the sort only someone who shared another person’s quietest hours would ever have the chance to witness.
Law lying in bed, still wearing his glasses as he read.
Law fast asleep with his head thrown back, mouth slightly open, snoring without the slightest hint of dignity.
Law first thing in the morning, hair hopelessly disheveled, not quite awake yet.
A cup of coffee slowly growing cold beside him.
Law laughing so hard he doubled over.
His head resting in your lap while insisting he was only “resting his eyes.”
Whenever his gaze happened to fall upon one of those sketches, an unfamiliar feeling quietly settled inside him.
He had expected studies.
Those had never embarrassed him. To your pencil, he’d simply been another subject worthy of observation. A body was a body, and as a doctor, he understood the fascination that came with studying the way muscles shifted beneath skin or bones dictated movement. Those were the kinds of drawings an artist made when captivated by form.
But these…
These were something else.
They reached far beyond anatomy, and that singular way you saw him unsettled him in a manner he couldn’t begin to explain.
This wasn’t merely what he looked like.
It was what you had chosen to see.
Not the captain.
Not the Surgeon of Death.
Not the man whose name people spoke in hushed voices.
Your gifted hands had filled page after page with the version of him that existed only in the quiet spaces between responsibilities, in fleeting moments rarely witnessed by anyone else.
As though those ordinary, forgettable fragments of his life possessed a beauty he had never once thought to assign them. As though simply existing beside him had been enough to make them worth remembering.
Much like every moment he spent beside you had become filled with countless little memories he knew he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
He hadn’t even realized you had been watching during those moments of quiet contentment. He’d always assumed those tiny glimpses, the rare instances when he allowed himself to truly relax, belonged to him alone. They were the sort of moments no one else would notice, let alone consider meaningful.
And yet…
There they were.
Preserved with the same tenderness another person might reserve for sunsets or constellations.
His breath caught.
The feeling blooming inside his chest was unlike anything he had ever known, something impossibly gentle brushing against his heart, as though wings had suddenly begun to unfurl from it, eager to lift it free and carry it out into the open air.
As your relationship settled into something comfortably familiar, Law gradually became the most frequent subject of your artwork, much to the dismay of certain rather jealous members of the crew, who weren’t above voicing their complaints every now and then.
“There has to be something of me in here somewhere,” Penguin muttered as he flipped through your sketchbook. “Captain… no, Law… Captain again… Captain… Ca… AAAH!”
He yelped, dropping the sketchbook in sheer panic.
It never reached the floor.
An already irritated Law caught it with one hand before it could even come close.
“Be careful.”
“I CAN’T BE CALM WHEN I JUST ACCIDENTALLY SAW TWELVE DRAWINGS OF YOUR ABS, CAPTAIN!” Penguin cried, his face turning scarlet.
He immediately yanked the brim of his hat down over his eyes as though it might erase the memory.
“I can’t believe you never drew the time I absolutely demolished that guy!” he continued dramatically. “It was legendary! A once-in-a-lifetime moment! But no! Apparently all you ever feel like immortalizing are this Surgeon of Death’s hands and ridiculously thick eyelashes.”
He stared at Law in theatrical disbelief.
“…Who knows what else I would’ve found if I’d kept turning the pages.”
Now it was your turn to blush.
“Penguin, no… I’ll draw you soon, it’s not like there’s any—”
“That’s none of your concern,” Law interrupted flatly, still holding the sketchbook securely against his chest.
“She can sketch whatever she wants.”
His golden eyes shifted toward Penguin.
“And if you’re ever that careless with her artwork again…”
A brief pause.
“…we’ll have a conversation in my office.”
Penguin visibly paled.
“…You know what? I suddenly feel very well represented already.”
Even your anatomy studies had grown more detailed.
More intimate.
By then, you could shamelessly ask him to stay perfectly still for ten minutes so you could capture the angle of the tattoo stretching across his chest. The easiest position usually involved you reclining halfway against his lap so that his torso angled ever so slightly toward you, allowing every contour of his chest, abdomen, and arms to reveal itself beneath shifting light. Every muscle found its place upon the page, every subtle ridge and hollow observed with painstaking care.
“Don’t move.”
“I’m not moving.”
“…Your breathing counts.”
He sighed.
“That also counts.”
You frowned at the page, erasing another line.
“Something’s wrong…”
Law leaned forward just enough to glance at your sketch.
“You’ve pulled the pectoralis major too far toward the sternum.”
You looked up at him.
“…Do you enjoy ruining my confidence?”
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I enjoy preventing anatomical inaccuracies.”
“…That’s somehow worse.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Your tattoo work is flawless,” he said, his eyes returning to the page. “It’s just the muscle beneath it.”
“…You couldn’t have started with that?”
“You would’ve stopped listening.”
Sometimes you drew him while he was occupied with something else, and other times, simply because those quiet moments together filled you with such contentment, you found yourself sketching those beloved muscles and bones entirely from memory.
One evening, the two of you sat close together as Law leafed through a medical textbook while you frowned at a sketch of his back, trying to make sense of the broad planes shifting beneath his skin.
So absorbed were you in your work that you never noticed him leaning over your shoulder.
“The trapezius overlaps the latissimus dorsi more than that.”
You looked at him blankly.
“…Do you ever say upper back like a normal person?”
“No.”
Having long since accepted that you would never possess his encyclopedic knowledge of osteology and myology, you had resigned yourself to spending the rest of your life with one impossibly adorable, hopelessly pedantic doctor who insisted on correcting you every chance he got.
“You’re looking at the tendon, not the muscle.”
“Law.”
“Hm?”
“I’m going to need you to use words normal people actually know.”
He sighed, as though you had just asked the impossible.
“…The stringy bit.”
Laughter burst from you before you could stop it.
“See? You can do it.”
“That’s the flexor digitorum profundus,” he informed you knowingly.
“…Mhm.”
“You have no idea what I just said.”
“Not a clue.”
“You’re pretending to understand,” he accused, already preparing an impromptu lecture.
“I love listening to you talk.”
He froze and blinked twice.
The tips of his ears bloomed a brilliant shade of pink as something entirely incoherent escaped beneath his breath, quiet enough that you couldn’t make out the words, though they still managed to tickle something warm inside your chest.
“You sound cute when you get all professor-like.”
Watching your normally composed, reserved boyfriend become so hopelessly flustered filled you with entirely unreasonable satisfaction.
I could get used to endless medical lectures if teasing him always earns me this reaction.
After months of constant reminders about proper anatomical terminology and what felt like several medical lectures every month, though you would never admit just how much you’d secretly enjoyed them, you gradually found yourself using words that had once sounded like an entirely foreign language.
There was something undeniably attractive about having such an absurdly brilliant and beautiful boyfriend all to yourself.
The first time Law had enthusiastically begun explaining the intricacies of the human neck and casually mentioned the sternocleidomastoid, your instinctive response had been to blink at him and mutter, “Bless you.”
Now, whenever he gently corrected your drawings with the same term, you simply nodded.
“I know, I know.”
Without even looking up, you adjusted the line.
“It attaches to the mastoid process, and mine’s too straight.”
Law slowly looked up from his book.
“…I’m proud of you.”
You stared.
“…Was that a compliment?”
“I’ve given you several.”
“You’ve given me homework.”
You teased him, fully aware that countless more assignments would follow, each one secretly becoming your favorite. Every now and then he’d even reinforce those lessons in practice, tracing surprisingly gentle kisses along your neck as he pointed out precisely where each muscle and delicate bone lay beneath your skin.
You had barely blocked in the basic shapes before a familiar voice drifted over your shoulder.
“You’ve exaggerated the deltoid.”
Law had been quietly watching you work for quite some time, long enough that, for once, you had begun to believe he’d found nothing to correct.
Alas…
It had simply been too good to be true.
Without even turning around, you let out an exaggerated sigh.
“There he is.”
“What?”
“My insufferable anatomist. I was wondering how long you’d last before correcting me.”
“I lasted twelve minutes.”
“That’s a personal record.”
A quiet hum escaped him.
Almost a laugh.
“I was trying to let you finish.”
“You failed.”
He rolled his eyes, muttering beneath his breath.
“I’m only trying to help.”
You smiled despite his incurable inability to leave your drawings alone.
“I know.”
Your voice softened.
“You always do.”
Something shifted behind his eyes.
“I know how seriously you take your work.”
His voice had grown quieter now.
“I want your references to be as accurate as they deserve.”
He hesitated before adding,
“…I’ll survive even if that means you’ll keep calling me insufferable.”
He leaned forward just enough to study the page more closely, one finger hovering above the paper without touching it. He knew better than to smudge charcoal.
“The contour’s right,” he said after a moment. “It’s just the insertion that’s slightly off.”
A brief silence followed.
“…The shading’s beautiful, though.”
You blinked.
“You noticed the shading?”
“I notice everything.”
There was an almost bashful quality to his voice now.
“I’ve known you long enough to learn a thing or two myself.”
He cleared his throat.
“…Though you should still fix the deltoid. It’s exaggerated.”
“No. I made you look stronger.”
“I don’t need artistic charity.”
“No?”
“No.”
You erased the line with theatrical reluctance, grumbling under your breath.
“It looked good.”
“It looked inaccurate.”
“It looked handsome.”
The faintest blush dusted the tips of his ears.
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
More often than not, Law would catch himself watching your hand move across the page, your pencil gliding with practiced confidence as it gathered fragments of him into graceful lines.
The feeling it stirred inside him remained wonderfully unfamiliar, equal parts strange and intimately warm. Somehow, in your drawings, he always appeared calmer than he’d imagined himself to be, softer around the edges, and with time he came to realize that the version of himself reflected through your eyes was the one he preferred above all others. It was the man he wished to be when you looked at him.
And perhaps that was why he found himself hoping you would never stop observing him with those endlessly hopeful eyes that seemed to hold love in every blink.
With all of that in mind, it wasn’t long before Law noticed something else.
In every drawing of the crew, whether they were gathered around the dinner table, celebrating at a festival, pelting one another with snowballs, or simply spending a quiet evening together in the lounge, one person was always missing.
You.
Not just from that sketchbook, but from every sketchbook he’d ever seen.
At most, a hand would occasionally appear, or perhaps a glimpse of your legs stretched across his lap in one of the quieter sketches of the two of you together, but you were never there as part of the crew.
He didn’t ask you about it immediately.
Instead, he continued to watch in silence, patiently waiting until the right moment presented itself.
It came while you were sketching Shachi’s birthday celebration.
Everyone was there.
Penguin and the birthday boy laughing as they clapped each other on the back.
Ikkaku and Jean Bart raising their glasses in a toast.
Bepo sprawled comfortably across the couch beside what had to be his fourth slice of cake, absentmindedly rubbing his contentedly full stomach.
The captain of the Heart Pirates sat at the far end of the sofa, wearing the faintest smile as he spoke with someone outside the frame.
The only indication of that unseen person was a pair of legs draped lazily across his lap.
“Why aren’t you ever in these?”
The question escaped him before he could stop himself.
You blinked, lowering your eyes to the drawing once again.
“What?”
“You draw every member of the crew.”
“…Yeah?”
“Except yourself.”
Your expression turned genuinely puzzled, tinged with a hint of embarrassment.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never wondered why?”
“I guess… it just feels… strange.”
You hesitated, searching for the words.
“I can see all of you. I know your faces, the way you move, the energy each of you carries. But I don’t know how I’d even draw myself. It feels awkward.”
A sheepish smile tugged at your lips.
“And I’d probably ruin the whole picture.”
“Hm.”
Law understood that feeling better than most.
The quiet estrangement of looking at yourself and finding a stranger where you ought to have felt at home. He had spent years treating his own body as little more than a vessel for a mind that never quite seemed to belong inside it, as though the two merely happened to coexist rather than truly belong to one another.
So he carried your confession with him long after the conversation had ended, already wondering how he might one day convince you to see yourself with the same tenderness you so effortlessly gave everyone else.
It had been the end of one of those wonderfully uneventful days, the kind that settled over the submarine just before setting sail from another island the following morning.
The two of you had spent the evening tucked away in your room, reading, dozing, and quietly enjoying one another’s company.
Your head rested comfortably in his lap, your eyes closed in contentment as the long, deft fingers of one hand lazily combed through your hair, gently scratching your scalp. With the other, he absentmindedly flipped through the latest pages of your sketchbook.
More than once, his eyes lingered over the confident strokes of your pencil, quietly admiring the remarkable skill behind them. It filled him with a strange sense of pride to know that the same hands capable of holding their own in brutal pirate battles could also create something so delicate, so patient, so impossibly beautiful.
Then his breathing caught.
He had reached another sketch of himself.
He was lying curled against you, his head resting on your shoulder, lips slightly parted in deep, peaceful sleep while the brim of his hat had slipped low enough to shade his eyes.
Of you, only fragments remained.
The curve of a shoulder.
A curtain of hair cascading over it.
The soft folds of your sweater.
He noticed immediately that the drawing hadn’t been finished. The shading remained incomplete, certain details lacked the refinement so characteristic of your work.
Had you been fully awake, you probably never would’ve let him see something unfinished.
But that wasn’t what held his attention.
Near the bottom of the page, written in your careful handwriting so small it might easily have gone unnoticed, were three simple words.
My favorite view.
It was almost unbelievable that three ordinary words could settle so deeply beneath his ribs, finding a place he had long believed incapable of holding this kind of warmth.
As though, without ever searching for it, he had stumbled upon the final dream his soul had been quietly waiting for all along.
It wasn’t the sketch itself that moved him.
It was the realization that someone had looked upon one of his most unguarded, most ordinary moments and found it worthy of preserving.
Worthy of calling beautiful.
Worthy of returning to again and again.
For as long as he could remember, Law had believed love always demanded something in return. That it had to be earned, repaid, or would inevitably be lost.
And yet, within every careful line you had drawn and every shadow you had patiently built, there had been nothing except a quiet admiration for the man he was when he wasn’t trying to be anything more than himself.
For the first time in his life, it occurred to him that perhaps it truly was possible to be loved not for what you chose to show the world, nor in spite of everything you carried within you…
…but simply for who you were.
Perhaps…
Perhaps this was happiness.
Not the loud, fleeting kind he’d always assumed belonged to somebody else, but the quiet sort that slipped beneath your skin unnoticed until, before you realized it, all you wanted was for the moment to linger a little longer.
He didn’t know how to put any of it into words.
Instead, his fingertips drifted slowly across the paper, careful enough that one might have thought he feared smudging the graphite with a single careless touch. He traced those lines for longer than he needed to before gently closing the sketchbook.
Then he drew you closer.
Burying his face in your hair as though it were the safest place in the world, he pressed countless quiet kisses against your forehead and the crown of your head, holding you with a tenderness that said everything he could not.
Basking beneath the golden light of the setting sun in a meadow on the newest island you’d docked at, you and Law had quietly slipped away from the rest of the crew, content to spend the afternoon wrapped up in one another.
Reclining in the grass, you watched clouds drift lazily overhead, you pointing out the shapes they formed while your ever-skeptical boyfriend dismissed each one with an amused scoff, the two of you talking about nothing in particular.
After a while, Law reached into the backpack he’d thoughtfully brought along for your little excursion away from the submarine and pulled something out.
It was the sketchbook you’d been searching for days, the one you’d eventually given up on finding and replaced with a new one before you had the chance to finish it.
“Where did you find it?” you asked, eyes widening as you instinctively reached for it.
Instead of handing it over, Law shifted a little closer, gently guiding you back until you were sitting comfortably between his legs. Then he opened the sketchbook to its final pages.
There, spread across a single sheet, was someone who looked remarkably like you.
You were lying on your stomach atop the bed, surrounded by towering piles of books. The books themselves had been drawn with stiff, ruler-straight lines, yet each one had been filled with painstaking, almost childlike details, right down to your favorite titles and editions. You rested against the fluffy white blanket he’d done his earnest best to capture, your hair spilling loosely around you in delightfully unruly strands, your smile warm and just a little crooked, every tooth nearly the same size. He had even attempted shading, and truthfully, it wasn’t bad at all.
Ever the meticulous man, the Captain of the Heart Pirates had even placed his familiar spotted hat beside you at the corner of the bed.
You stared at the page, speechless, as warmth stung unexpectedly behind your eyes.
“…There was one person missing,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. “I may not be very good at this, but…”
He never got to finish.
You threw your arms around him so suddenly that you nearly knocked him onto his back.
He let out a quiet, startled, “Mm…”
“It’s beautiful! Thank you so much,” you said, your voice thick with emotion as you peppered his cheeks and the corner of his lips with grateful kisses, leaving him blushing a deep shade of red. “You’re actually not bad at this. We might have to become colleagues.”
A quiet laugh escaped through his nose.
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.
“It’s perfect.”
“It objectively isn’t.”
“It is.”
“The perspective’s wrong.”
“I don’t care.”
“My line weight is inconsistent.”
“I don’t care.”
“The left eye…”
You kissed him again, effectively silencing yet another critique before it had the chance to escape.
You couldn’t help imagining him, a man who had never been blessed with an artist’s hand, sitting down with nothing more than a pencil anyway, enduring every crooked line and every failed attempt simply because, somewhere along the way, he’d decided you deserved to be seen. To be remembered. To see yourself through his eyes.
No one had ever loved you so deliberately.
And in that moment, you silently promised yourself that you would never let that happiness slip away from your heart.
It was well past midnight by the time you began teaching him how to draw hands.
You gently turned his wrist.
“Loosen your grip on the pencil.”
“Like this?”
“A little.”
You nudged his fingers into place.
“You’re holding it like you’re about to perform surgery.”
“…Old habits.”
As everyone aboard the Polar Tang already knew, drawing hands had long since become second nature to you. While you carefully sketched Law’s hand, he concentrated on drawing yours.
On the same sheet of paper rested two intertwined hands.
One was long and slender, tattooed from wrist to fingers, its elegant bones subtly visible beneath the skin as the thumb traced a gentle caress across the other.
The second was smaller, the fingers a little stiff, the nail beds broader than he had initially managed to capture. Fortunately, under your patient guidance, it changed shape minute by minute until it became something that felt perfect to the two of you, even if any self-proclaimed art critic, whose opinion neither of you had asked for in the first place, would’ve called it an awkward collision of two entirely different styles.
The finished page found its place in a frame on your bedside table before the two of you drifted off to sleep, laughter still lingering softly between you in the darkness.
It would stay there for years afterward, long after dozens of sketchbooks had come and gone, because neither of you could ever bring yourselves to replace the first piece of yourselves you had left on the same page.
Hello! I realllyyyy enjoy your fics, Can I request a law x reader fic where reader gets a rough head injury when fighting and forgets her memory, specifically the time period when they started dating each other ,but her memory comes back after some days, and also Id love it if they had something like a love-hate relationship before they started dating.
Minor Head Trauma (Law x Reader)
One Piece | Law | 5.5k | One Piece Masterlist
You were on a submarine.
It was… quaint, you supposed. A little claustrophobic and cold in a way that seemed to radiate through the walls. The engine hummed somewhere beneath your feet, its vibration travelling faintly through the soles of your shoes. You didn’t really know what else there was to say about it as you ran your fingers over the helm.
“We don’t plan to surface for a while. Considering this condition is likely temporary, I see no reason to change our course.”
You looked over your shoulder at Law. His expression was very carefully controlled; not an ounce of information betrayed itself through his eyes. Looking at him felt strange. Like peering through fog at something you couldn’t quite make out.
Another thing you’d ‘forgotten’.
“I’m still a little wary about all of this,” you said, hand tracing over the controls.
“Understandably.”
You reached up gently; just above your brow, a large and bruised cut made you wince when you touched it. “I don’t understand how it’s possible. How did I lose memories of your crew from a single bump?”
Law crossed his arms. “It was hardly a bump.”
“I’m kind of worried I’ve been kidnapped or something.”
“I know better than that. I’ve tried it before but it never stuck.”
You laughed softly, humoured by the idea. They’d already established you weren’t kidnapped by telling you enough things about your early life that you had to believe, somewhat, that the haze in your brain was blanketing out countless memories from the past years. Unless the infamous Heart Pirates were also the world’s best stalkers.
You rubbed your eyes and looked over his shoulder at the crew. They were familiar. Like people you’d met once and your brain could faintly make out their shapes.
The bear, though, was by far the current biggest redeeming factor of this ship. Submarine. Whatever it was. You remembered his name vaguely… Bepo, right. Him and his eternally bad habit of walking up from behind and looming above you like a predator about to drop his jaw to your head.
“Are you okay?” he asked, whispering though there was really no point in doing so. Voices bounced easily off the metal walls.
“Bepo,” you said. “I was remembering your name.”
His eyes sparkled immediately and he nodded fast enough that you worried his head might pop off his shoulders. “Yes! You remember that?”
“It’s coming back to me,” you said.
That was some of the best proof you’d had that this wasn’t a kidnapping disguised as a medical emergency. You knew some of their names though you didn’t remember how you’d learned them. Law was different though. You remembered him through wanted posters and rumours more than you did in this space.
Yet when you looked at him here, you found it hard to place him anywhere else.
He cleared his throat and you realised you’d been staring.
“You already know my name,” he said. “You knew it long before you joined us.”
“You’re quite infamous,” you agreed and you did remember how you’d thought of him and his terrifying power. But it wasn’t so scary anymore. “Now you’re telling me we know each other well?”
“We do.”
You waited for a more detailed answer but he gave you nothing so you looked toward the rest of the crew. They immediately dipped their heads, looking toward the ground or the ceiling in the most suspicious way imaginable.
Alright. You’d have to figure out what they were keeping to themselves at a different time.
“We know each other well and I’m apparently not kidnapped,” you reasoned. “And the last memory I can firmly grab at, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t inside a metal tube. So that means you’ve somehow convinced me to join a pirate crew?”
“I didn’t convince you of anything. You walked in and wouldn’t leave.”
Somebody in the crew snorted with laughter and you glanced over, smiling at the idea. It sounded right.
“But I don’t have a jumpsuit,” you reasoned, noting the dress code that was apparently enforced.
“Oh, that’s because it’s in the wash,” Bepo hurried to assure you. “It had a bunch of blood on it so we had to clean it.”
“Right,” you said slowly. “Because I got a head injury.”
Law’s attention flicked to your brow briefly. “You did. At least it occurred close enough that I could treat it. There could be worse places.”
You hummed. “I’m not doubting your skills but wouldn’t most doctors tell their patients important information?”
He didn’t flinch even as the rest of his crew began to quietly avert their eyes. You stared at him patiently, waiting for a response. The bare basics weren’t enough to explain the massive hole in your memories. You wanted to know in far greater detail.
The silence stretched before he shook his head.
“There’s a risk with information,” he said. “Your amnesia means your mind knows there are missing memories. If we fill in the gaps for you, you may start repeating what we tell you instead of recovering the memories yourself. I’m not risking that. A week, maybe more.”
You weren’t sure you appreciated that. “So, if you tell me about my memories, you think I’ll just accept them as fact.”
“I worry it could happen,” he acknowledged. “So, for now, it is best if you rest and regain them in your own time.”
You wanted to push for more. This wasn’t right. You knew the memories were floating just beyond your grasp but you had no way to reach for them unless somebody helped.
Then again, it wasn’t an ideal time. Your headache from earlier was beginning to return as whatever pain medication he’d given you began to wear off. It radiated through your brain in a steady throb and you lightly rubbed your temples.
“If you won’t give me memories, what about facts?” you asked. “Like how long I’ve been here for? How much time is even missing?”
Law didn’t seem willing to budge. “You’ll remember with time. For now, you’re struggling and walking around the ship was already against my recommendations. I think you should rest before we discuss it.”
You looked over his shoulder to the others. “Can I have a second opinion?”
“No.”
His stubbornness was stirring up faint feelings that curled around your chest. Something that complemented his manic reputation although, you could hardly find it in yourself to be nervous around a man whose hat resembled a seal’s pelt.
A brief memory surfaced of finding a vaguely similar mushroom while browsing a market. You remembered holding it up, voice distorted through time, and you saw his unamused expression faintly.
Even then, he seemed far less guarded than he was now.
“Alright,” you relented, satisfied to have retrieved one memory, useless though it may be. “I do want the headache to fade. I don’t think I remember where my bunk is.”
You looked toward the only other woman on the crew, hoping she might help but Law answered before you could think of it for too long.
“You’ll be remaining in the recovery bay for observation,” he said. “They’ll move what you need there.”
“Captain?” Bepo asked, his voice soft. “Wouldn’t she be more comfortable somewhere familiar?”
“Nowhere is familiar right now,” Law clarified. “That’s the problem.”
But he was wrong. Everything was familiar. Even the way he tilted his chin faintly when he spoke to somebody behind him was familiar. You just couldn’t place why it had become familiar in the first place.
What you did know was that you woke up the next day to a lot of stuff that didn’t really need to be in the recovery bay.
It wasn’t a complaint exactly because, if you needed anything, it was incredibly easy to find, but also, this felt like an excessive number of things to be brought through for a temporary stay. Far, far too many actually.
Every item you owned had been brought through and laid out on the surrounding berths so you didn’t have to look for it. If you did have a storage chest, it must have been emptied for everything to be dragged up here.
And yet…
Shachi and Penguin stepped in with another armful of clothes and you looked toward them. They both smiled as they laid it all out.
“Where are you getting all of this from?” you asked.
They froze, looking to each other for a second.
“Storage,” Shachi said.
At the same time, Penguin said, “Your room.”
You raised an eyebrow at them. “So, I have a room? I don’t stay with the rest of the crew?”
“Technically?” Shachi said slowly, already taking a few steps back.
They hurried out and you listened to their footsteps disappear down the corridor before you shook your head. They had always been such awful liars. You remembered briefly telling them as much in the past when you were walking around an island, trailing them slowly.
Another small memory of the crew and yet it answered nothing about why all your things were piled here.
You looked at the surrounding items before your gaze lingered suspiciously on a mug. For a second, you didn’t know what was wrong with it being there (nor why it annoyed you so much that it was) but then you remembered buying it. It had a twin.
A twin that was decidedly nowhere in this collection of things.
You considered it for a while before you swung your legs from the medical berth and rolled your shoulders. If they were running your stuff from somewhere, there would be a space missing your things.
And though you couldn’t remember it when thinking of it directly, your legs carried you through the Polar Tang with little thought.
Your steps echoed through the metal halls with a marked rhythm as you took your time looking through the rooms. You knew this submarine well. You loved walking through the submarine and knowing what room would come next.
Your fingers brushed along the cold walls, tracing the bolts in the metal as you glanced out the windows and into the churning ocean below.
You’d seen all kinds of things through this glass. All manner of aquatic life had swum by you before and you remembered how charmed you had been to watch them in the past; once you’d even seen a massive sea king disappear into the depths.
Your reflection caught your eye against the window.
You reached up to touch the bump and the stitches, trailing your fingers over the lines slowly. They ached, even now, but they annoyed you more than hurt.
Apparently, all your memories had leaked from your head through this one smack and that got under your skin far worse than any pain could have. Not to mention, you were partially sure it had been your fault to begin with.
If you remembered, and that was a stretch, you remembered a faint self-complaint of stupidity before the pain arrived.
You continued to walk, looking for something you couldn’t describe before you came across a door. It didn’t have a key and a lock but rather, a keypad, waiting for a code that you couldn’t remember the numbers of. And yet when you raised your hand, you pressed the numbers without thinking and the door slid open.
Law wasn’t in his office, but the space felt warmer than any of the rooms you’d passed before. The air held the faint smell of coffee, ink and antiseptic, and the chill that had followed you through the corridors seemed to stop at the door.
It was plain and sparsely decorated and yet you recognised it. Knew where you wanted to go and where you wanted to stand. You walked in slowly, carefully examining the room.
Sitting on his desk, filled with untouched coffee, was your mug’s twin.
The coffee looked cold, abandoned there some time ago. There was no steam left, and the bitter smell had gone flat. Next to it, there was a stain on the wood, spreading around a second coaster that held nothing.
You remembered the look he gave you after he realised the coffee mug had spilled but you couldn’t quite grasp what had happened before it.
You didn’t linger for long, stepping out of the office with the memories hanging over you as you made your way to the dining hall instead. This, at least, you could place concretely as the room where you’d first met the crew, with its large tables and metal furnishings. Although now, it seemed Law was sitting there instead.
He sat at one of the benches with papers and books around him as he paged through an unrecognisable medical journal.
This wasn’t where he’d normally do this but it was where he usually sat. You strolled closer, shoes clicking against the floor. And yet, instead of looking up, he just moved some papers away to clear a spot next to him.
You were already seated there before either of you realised the habit.
You looked over his shoulder at the study he was going through, saw a flash of your name written on a folder and tilted your head.
“I have a file?” you asked.
“Everybody has one,” he said, back straightening as he looked to you. “I thought your instructions were to rest.”
“I’m rested enough. Does the amnesia really need to be noted?”
“Yes.”
You were sitting very close when you thought about it but it didn’t feel natural to sit elsewhere. Though you wanted to complain about the time and how he was still working… you caught the grumble on your tongue for a second.
It wasn’t dinner yet. He could work here, if he wanted to.
He watched you for a moment more before he went back to the books, flipping through the pages, and you watched from his side, reading the paragraphs that caught your eye and wondering why your memories seemed to struggle so much with this.
“I think it should be put in as temporary amnesia,” you said.
Law flicked the page harder than needed. “Once you’ve regained your memories, I can change it,” he said. “Until then, it will remain as I’ve diagnosed.”
“I’m certain it’ll come back,” you said. “I made my way around the submarine with no problem and found my way here. I know what in my stuff is missing and where it probably is.”
“Do you remember the name of the submarine?”
You paused, thinking on it although it hung just beyond your reach. He nodded after an awkward length of time passed.
“There are still things missing.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be fully moved into the recovery bay?” you suggested. “My own bed might be enough to trigger memories.”
“No. It’s safer to have you somewhere you can be observed.”
“Why can’t you observe me where I usually sleep?”
He didn’t actually answer your question, seemingly invested in ignoring whatever truth was being held around your regular quarters. You were becoming increasingly suspicious that there was something else there.
Footsteps caused you to raise your head. Shachi and Penguin both smiled warmly when they saw your seat and you smiled in return, even knowing you were about to corner them.
“I was looking for you two,” you said. “Earlier, you brought me a mug and some part of my brain is itching to tell me it has a twin somewhere. What happened to it? Or have I forgotten breaking it.”
They both immediately froze.
“No,” Shachi said. “You didn’t break it. It’s just being washed.”
“Because it was in the storeroom,” Penguin said. “It’s dusty in there.”
You raised an eyebrow. “But you said you got those things from my room.”
“It’s dusty in there too?” Shachi offered but his voice was far too meek to be believable.
Law didn’t raise his head but you heard the faintest sigh of disappointment under his breath. You almost laughed at it.
“You’re both awful liars,” you told them. “I’m glad to see that memory was right.”
“It’s because when they start talking, they don’t stop,” Law said. “And because they feel the need to tell you far too much.”
They both nodded, hurrying to their own table as they took their captain’s non-subtle hint to continue moving. You watched them go before looking down at where you were sitting. Your memories might be hazy but you could notice that you hadn’t been hurried along at all.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“I just keep remembering little things about you,” you said. “Like I think I got you that pen.”
“Mm.”
“And I’m also wondering why you won’t just tell me everything. You’re my captain, right?”
“Right now, I’m your doctor. That means you follow my orders until your head heals. I want to be sure that your recovery occurs smoothly and without outside interference.”
“Why aren’t you in your office?” you asked. “All of this seems to belong there, right? You must have brought it all out.”
For a second, Law stopped turning the page and he breathed out slightly. There was a strange tremble to the sound; one that had you tilting your head to him.
Your body moved before you thought it through and you shifted your hand closer, resting it over his for a second. He didn’t move, hand adjusting under your own for a second as though he wanted to leave it there, before he stood. He picked up his work and headed for the door, gone before you could register how natural it felt to hold his hand.
The memories crept closer, flitting away when you grabbed for them but you had a feeling that if he’d stayed for a second longer…
He avoided you as the days passed, harder than ever, but you somehow kept finding him.
If you explored the ship, you’d figure out the best path to guess where he’d be and more and more fell into place as you did. Names and places. You called the ship the Polar Tang while you were chatting with Uni and you recalled the exact path to get from the medical bay to anywhere else.
You remembered Bepo’s favourite food after you remembered where the snacks were kept. The week ‘deadline’ crept closer and more of your memories returned, but you still felt you were missing something very important.
The problem was that the very important thing seemed to be what everybody had been banned from talking about at all. So, you had nothing to trigger it.
Law’s checkups were far too quick for a conversation. He didn’t even ask about what you’d managed to recall, fixating on the head wound, and then immediately leaving you to go and hide somewhere in the ship. And you felt pretty comfortable in calling it hiding because that was what it clearly was.
And whenever his fingers brushed your hairline, or gently pressed against your skin, you knew that you wanted to touch him.
The urge should have been ridiculous because your memories of his reputation to the public and what you knew of his more reserved nature contradicted it entirely. And yet whenever you reached for him, he never glared. He always simply created the distance himself.
And your memories desperately refused to let you just leave it that way. They screamed that there was a reason even if your brain struggled to grab why.
Six days in and you were done with it.
You grabbed Bepo first; snatched his enormous paw that was easily the size of your whole head and tugged him along with a telling fearlessness. Penguin and Ikkaku you dragged from the galley. You found Shachi near the boiler room, until you had every Heart Pirate you could find gathered in the dining hall and completely ignoring their duties.
Law might not allow you to force him into sharing information. But you knew that they were all already at the bursting point.
You planted your hands onto your hips. “I’ve remembered a lot over the past few days,” you said to them. “But seeing as our Captain has decided to be stubborn, I’m going to ask you to fill in the blanks.”
Their smiles faded immediately.
“Captain did say we’re not meant to tell you anything,” Bepo said softly.
“Right,” you agreed. “But I’m done hanging around waiting for things to click into place so he’s going to have to suck it up. Now, where was all my stuff before it was brought to the recovery bay?”
Penguin glanced toward Shachi and they both lowered their eyes quickly. You stared at them both, waiting for the weight of your glare to wear them down.
“Different places?” Penguin offered.
“No.”
“Captain’s quarters,” Shachi said. “Mostly. Some of the stuff really was in storage though! Uh, we just left that stuff there because you probably wouldn’t need it.”
You nodded and things began to click slightly into place. A system that you kept messing up whenever you reached for something. Because he was organised in a way you couldn’t easily predict so you’d given up trying.
A memory pushed through as you looked over where everything hung and felt a hand reaching past you for a shirt. The sound of his voice close to your ear as he told you that if you reorganised his wardrobe again, he would throw everything you owned into the ocean.
You’d laughed at him and purposefully moved his coat to your side.
“So, I stay in his room then,” you said. “Which is why he chose to keep me in the recovery bay?”
“Well yes…” Penguin said. “He is right though. It would be really weird to explain that to you if you had no memories! And then he wouldn’t sleep in there.”
“It’s also why he told us to bring out literally everything,” Uni explained. “Because he didn’t want you to ask and then have to tell you where something was.”
“Then why did you only bring me one of the mugs?”
“The other one’s Captain’s,” Penguin said.
Shachi nodded. “He’d already made coffee in it anyway. Just left it sitting on his desk.”
“Fine. Then why isn’t he in his office half the time?”
Ikkaku sighed and you looked to her to find her expression soft. “He is today. I think he’s been moving around because he’s avoiding it. There’s a lot of you in there.”
“A lot of me?”
Bepo nodded slightly. “You’re in there a lot,” he said. “And we took out most of what we could find but like, we can’t remove everything. That’s probably why he was working in laundry yesterday.”
You frowned. “That’s ridiculous. Not the memory part but like… he hates the sound of those machines.”
“Yeah but he’s also avoiding you so…”
“I know that. He could have just changed the code.”
Bepo’s eyes watered, his ears twitching slightly. “He could have but you love being in there. So, why would he want to stop you?”
The word triggered something in your chest before you could stop it. Like a small puzzle finally clicking into place. Because that had been the word you were missing.
The one that made you lean over Law’s desk and steal books from his hands when he hadn’t looked at you. The one that had him throw a coat over your shoulders while he worked, one hand resting against your back as you slipped toward sleep. The memories seeped back in slowly.
“Alright,” you said, as they still returned. “And this whole not telling me anything was because he was scared he was going to force me to remember it?”
“He didn’t say it exactly, but I think he was worried you’d feel obligated,” Ikkaku said. “That you would love him only because we said you should.”
Obligated into what? Into waking in a warm bed, your face pressed between his shoulder blades because he often turned away from you in the night?
You nodded and stepped away. “I love you all. You are all idiots.”
“Where are you going?” Shachi asked.
“To find him.”
You found him in his office this time, opened the door and stared for just a second until he looked up from his desk. Then you closed the door behind you and locked it.
“Okay,” you said and you walked without thinking around his desk. “I spoke to everybody.”
He leaned back in his chair, expression impassive. “Have you now?”
“They’ve done a very good job,” you acknowledged. “But I decided I was done waiting and demanded that they actually tell me where my clothing came from. And why it is that you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Old habits returning, I can see,” he said. “You’ve always bullied them.”
You smiled faintly and stepped around the desk, leaning against its side. “I know.”
You reached out slowly and took the hat from his head. He didn’t move away, allowing you to run your fingers over it as you looked down at him, warmth curling deeply in your chest as you did so.
“We share a room,” you said. “But you won’t tell me that.”
“I don’t want to implant things into your mind without them coming naturally. Otherwise, you might remain reliant on me for everything related to it.”
You moved against the desk and your leg brushed against his own. He didn’t move away. You’d done this countless times. The first time, he’d complained only briefly about it but then he came to accept it as somewhere you stood.
“See, the thing is, the actions are waking things up in my mind,” you said. “I remember them clearer when I do it. I know I want to touch you. I know I’ve done it before.”
“I’m not going to question every one of your actions and wonder whether it’s something you genuinely remember or something you think you should be doing.”
You bumped him with your knee. “Valiant, aren’t you?”
“Not at all. But this is important.”
You ran your fingers once more over the top of the hat before you moved it to the side, dropping it over a medical journal about amnesia. “Yet you’re leaning back in your seat because you already know where I’m moving.”
“I know where you would normally. Do you?”
You didn’t waste any time. You stepped closer, settling into his lap like you had a hundred times before. He didn’t stiffen but you felt him adjust, hands moving for a second as though to catch your waist.
“I do. I also know that you let me do this only when you aren’t busy. If you had something else to do, you wouldn’t have moved your chair back.”
“You sit where you want to. I’ve tried bringing other chairs in here but you care little about them.”
“Because I like to be here even if it gets in your way.”
He sighed softly and for a moment, there was silence as he looked up at you, expression lingering over your features. Then he raised a hand gently, brushed his fingers across the injury where it sat with an unreadable expression.
“It’s not very pretty,” you commented. “It’s going yellow.”
He scoffed. “Do you really think I care if a head injury looks pretty?”
“Does it look like it’s healing, at least?”
“Physically, it is,” he said. His fingers lingered there, thumb brushing gently over your eyebrow. “Do you remember the fight that caused it?”
“Not fully,” you admitted. “But I remember seeing your coat and I know there was the smell of something sweet in the air. Other than that, the fight itself is a bit of a blur.”
His jaw tightened, hand lowering until it hovered over your hip, suspended for a second too long before he gave in and just placed it there. It felt far more right than having him holding the chair, his palm warm against you.
“That’s unfortunate. I’d hoped you could tell me how it happened. I wasn’t watching you.”
You didn’t even remember the opponent but really, you didn’t care to. All you cared about was the fact that Law had spent a week silently carrying the knowledge that you liked to sit in his lap like this.
And that you didn’t remember that you enjoyed it. Something that was pulling tightly at your heart.
“I can guess,” you relented. “I probably just got too close and stopped watching. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”
“No,” he said. “Sometimes I think you believe I’m capable of miracles for how often you get hurt.”
“But this is the worst it’s been?”
“Not physically. Your body recovered well from the other injuries.”
“I think it’s the worst,” you clarified. “Though the broken ribs were bad. Especially when we landed on that stupid island while I was still recovering and I sneezed for days on end. And you laughed at me for it.”
You caught the faintest curve of his lips before he got it back under control.
“I suppose there was also that time I almost drowned while ice fishing with Bepo,” you hummed. “But that was also more his fault. Do you have any idea how much he weighs?”
“He’s a mink,” Law said and the hand on your hip squeezed faintly. “It’s not like he’s heavy for his species. Although he took considerable offence to your expression when he said the number. Do you know he almost cried?”
“He did cry when he got me out of the water.”
“I know.”
“He thought you were going to kill him for letting me fall.”
Law inclined his head. “I considered it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did. Just briefly.”
You laughed softly and raised your hand to rest it against his cheek. He leaned faintly into the touch and you couldn’t help but smile. Those memories were returning faster than ever now. They clicked into place as you considered the man in front of you, who had spent an entire week carrying the memory of your relationship alone.
Your eyes watered and you raised a hand to wipe away the tears before they could fall. He beat you to it, fingers delicately sweeping them from your lashes.
Your breath hiccupped.
His touch lingered against your cheek as more tears began to fall and you tilted your head back slightly to breathe through them.
“This one is absolutely the worst,” you finally managed to say. “By far. And not even because it’s going to take me ages to get all my stuff back into our room. But because this past week has just been so stupidly lonely.”
“If I had been paying enough attention – ”
“Stop it,” you muttered before he could continue. “It’s not your fault.”
“I should have been watching you.”
“Since when do you nanny me on a battlefield?”
You couldn’t stop crying. You fought to get rid of the tears to no avail, finally dropping your head onto his shoulder as you gave up controlling them. His arms immediately moved around you, drawing you closer.
“Fuck’s sake,” you muttered. “I planned to come in here and be all ‘oh, I love you so much’ and now I’m just crying.”
“You’re making a convincing case, if that helps.”
He sounded faintly amused but underneath, you could feel something raw in his voice. A relief you rarely got to hear from him. You stifled a small, overwhelmed hiccup against him and tried to figure out what emotion was even causing it.
It didn’t matter. You couldn’t stop them either way.
Minutes dragged by as he rubbed soothing circles against your back, your shoulders trembling hard beneath his touch. Then you sat up slowly, scrubbing away the tears as best you could and taking a deep breath. His eyes were warmer when he looked at you now, cautious but no longer completely guarded. For a second, something bright caught in them. Then Law blinked, and it was gone.
“I love you,” you said. “And I really need you to know that I love you.”
“I can see that,” he said.
You leaned in and kissed him. And for just a second, he went still. Then his hand slid to the back of your neck and he kissed you back, caution disappearing entirely.
He drew you closer until there was no space left between you, fingers curling into your hair as though he needed the proof of you there. The kiss was warm and firm and painfully familiar, unlocking fragments faster than you could follow them: his mouth against yours in dark corridors and in spare moments before duties.
When you finally pulled back, his forehead remained pressed against yours, his breath unsteady against your lips.
“At least I can officially update your records to say temporary amnesia now.”
You rolled your eyes. “I think you should remove it entirely. It isn’t going to happen again.”
“No. It’s not,” he agreed. “I’m getting you a helmet.”
There was simply a part of him, however foolish it may be, that took affront to the idea that Luffy – of all people – had managed to romance a woman across the ocean. He reasoned it might be because she’d never witnessed the captain inhale two plates of food at once but still, it was hardly fair.
Sanji had spent years perfecting compliments, meals, timing, and the correct degree of dramatic devotion. Luffy, on the other hand, threw wet pieces of paper into the ocean and got better results.
And this friend of his was most certainly charmed by his letters. Affectionate, even, if her responses were anything to go by.
Worse still, he understood it. A lady’s affection, written so carefully across years of paper, was not something a gentleman could dismiss.
The letters weren’t particularly poetic or elegant and surely, with so much paper, there had been enough of them written that anyone could expect shorthand. Yet not a single one was scrawled or hurried through.
At Nami’s sweet request, he found himself sitting and going through the letters whenever he had spare time. She was certain there had to be something there that might help and Sanji would gladly devote any amount of time to making her life easier.
After all, they had made land on this small, inoffensive island and he had time between his supply run and when he’d begin preparing a meal for the black hole on their crew.
He’d attempted to get Franky to join in but the shipwright was very uninterested in sitting and reading letters for hours on end. And he was nowhere near as scared of Nami as Usopp was (who often grumpily paged through them in the evenings).
Sanji lit another cigarette as he flipped through endless pages of little stories from years passed before he found one that stood out. Not many of these had stains but this one did, marked just on the edge with what looked like grease.
I’ve managed to fit it in your box but it was hard. When I asked some of the locals, they said the name translated to cliff boar and I can’t spell its actual one so that’s what I’ll call it.
I don’t remember how they cooked it when I was there but I tried my hardest to replicate it. It’s not the best but it has been in my freezer for ages now and I think it got burned by the cold… anyway, I doubt you’ll enjoy it but good luck!
Also, could you please send me something as soon as you can? I want to send you a letter this evening to tell you about if these work.
Sanji paused at the letter, at first affronted by the idea that preparing a dish with freezer-burnt meat was ever going to taste good. But as he reread it again, he noticed more in the letter that he’d missed on his first scan.
The name of an animal could help Nami. If the beast only lived on a handful of islands, then perhaps it would give her another thread to pull through this impossible knot. Not that Nami-san needed his help, of course. She was brilliant enough to map a storm while standing in the middle of it. But if he could place even one useful thing in her hands, he would gladly spend the afternoon buried in damp paper to do it.
But other than that, there was one more thing.
The request at the end sat strangely with him; it grew only worse the longer he considered it. He looked over the pile of letters beside him.
Hundreds of them but every single one a reply. Not one that he’d seen had been the start of a conversation. Each one was only a response to something that had been sent first. A continuous conversation, maybe, but possibly…
Sanji set the letter aside and no sooner had the captain slingshot himself into one of the trees aboard the Sunny, did he pick it up again.
“Oi, Luffy. Can this friend of yours send you letters first?”
Luffy tilted his head to the side. “Like without me sending one?”
“This letter implies she’s waiting for you to send her something first,” Sanji said.
Luffy scratched the back of his neck, thinking about it before he hummed. “Uh… I don’t know. She always sends her letters back with whatever I give her. I’ve never asked though. Maybe I should ask.”
Nami’s shoes on the deck made Sanji snap into a better seat, his smile warm as she approached to see the letter he was holding. She leaned over his shoulder and he held it up to the light so she could see the words easier.
“Cliff boar,” she said, entirely unbothered by the potential information about the devil fruit. “It’s a generic name but maybe somebody will know what it is. Was there a butcher on the island?”
“Two,” Sanji answered. “Nami-san, I would be happy to escort you – ”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I’ll go speak to them by myself. There are other things I want to shop for that I don’t need everybody around for.”
He nodded. “Of course. But if you do need help, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Luffy dropped down at the table, shoved some of the older letters carefully back, and began to scribble a note. Sanji glanced toward it, mentally comparing the rough scrawl to the finer responses.
Nami glanced toward him too. “I know you don’t want to ask her about the name of her island but would you at least ask how far the one with the cliff boars is? It’ll help me find this impossible island.”
“And, if she could get one, a replacement cut of the meat,” Sanji said. “It’s a disgrace to judge it off one dish. I’m certain with the right preparation, it will be perfect.”
Luffy nodded enthusiastically.
Across the sea, you were busy sorting through your top kitchen drawer which no longer contained only your utensils but a massive box of old candles, four sets of silverware cutlery with barnacles growing over them, and a bag of coins large enough to prevent you from opening the thing fully.
At least, you hoped the bag was filled with coins.
You braced one knee against the cupboard and reached into the gap, fingers scraping over wax, metal, and something unpleasantly soft before they found wet cloth. With a tug, you pulled out a rolled-up kitchen towel, cold seawater dripping down your wrist and into your sleeve.
You pulled it out and unfurled it to find a soaking letter, smiling faintly. You hadn’t expected another one so soon after they made land.
Back early because this island is super boring. You wouldn’t even like it because there’s nothing to do. Zoro and I walked around the whole thing and found nothing except for this one flower that looked like it could be made from meat but definitely wasn’t. Then Zoro wandered off so I came back.
Sanji found one of your letters though and he said it seems like you can’t send me anything first. Is that true? So you can only write back after I send something? That seems really annoying.
And also, he wants more of that gross boar meat from wherever you found it. And then Nami wants to know how far away the boar island is from your one.
Do you think there are real meat flowers? Usopp said a flower tried to eat him once but I don’t know if that means the flower is made of meat too. What do you think?
You smiled faintly and put the letter over your drying rack in the kitchen. The rag itself was soaked. You would have to wait for it to dry before you could wrap your own letter up in it but that should be fine.
Were his crew reading through your old letters? First the request from Robin and Nami and now this… it was sweet and a little mortifying. You’d been writing responses since you were far too young to know how to write properly and some of what you’d shared with Luffy was private.
Though strangely, despite his mention of Nami’s letter, you’d yet to find it amongst the pile of damp papers in front of your letterbox. And it hadn’t rained in some time now.
You considered asking about it, already grabbing a pen and paper to write your response before you heard footsteps outside.
You sighed and put both down.
A familiar man stood in your garden, half-shadowed beneath the arch of climbing vines you had trained over the path last spring. One boot crushed the edge of your thyme patch. His shoulder brushed against the crooked post where you had hung the shell chimes, making them clack softly in the breeze while he drank from one of the bottles you always left on the table for him.
You opened your front door. “Good afternoon. Lost again?”
He turned to you immediately, one hand falling to the swords at his waist before he recognised your face. “Oh, it’s you again,” he muttered. “Are you still stalking me?”
You leaned against your doorframe. “I promise I’m really not stalking you.”
“Right,” he said and he downed the bottle. “You and your house just always seem to appear.”
“I’ve told you. It’s because you’re lost.”
“I’m not lost,” he scoffed. “I’m going back to my ship right now. Or, I was, before you showed up again.”
Most people found your island once, if they found it at all. They arrived pale and shaken or laughing too loudly, stayed only long enough to drink water, mend a sail, or ask where they were, and then they were gone. He was different. He came back with the irritated persistence of a bad habit and still seemed convinced you were the one putting yourself in his way.
“If you continue walking along the path, you’ll find your way back,” you advised with a small smile.
“Yeah, yeah, I know where I’m going. You just need to stop confusing me by putting your damn house in the way all the time.”
You rolled your eyes playfully. “If I promise to try harder, will you consider a map?”
“I don’t need a map.”
“I really don’t agree. I think you should consider a permanent investment in one. Or maybe get a dog that knows your way home.”
He gave you a dirty look. “I’ll find my way back.”
You smiled and watched him begin off down the same path he always took. The one that curved toward the beach. You always used your fruit to return him to wherever he was coming from when he visited but you had to admit, you liked the company, bristly as it might be. Though you did wonder who even needed three swords. Surely, two would suffice.
You returned to writing your note, preparing to send it back once the rag dried.
Sanji’s right, I’m afraid. I can only respond after you’ve sent me something.
I suppose that does mean I’m waiting, in a way, for letters from you but that’s not so bad. I have plenty to do around the house and I’m always trying new things in the garden.
I’m sorry but I don’t have any more of the meat. It’s regional and I doubt I’m still close to the right islands for it. But maybe I can find the name and the next time you sail past, you can try and stop there? I’ll see if I still have a map for it. Or try and figure out which islands I’m close to today.
I’m sorry your island was boring but it’s probably better than having to fight off meat-eating flowers! But I don’t think they would be made of meat because they’re probably still petals to be flowers. Maybe they would grow here though, if I tried hard enough. I’ve managed to get almost anything to grow here.
I hope your next island is more exciting though!
You considered asking if his crew were reading through your letters but you hesitated in case they weren’t and then you seemed rather foolish. Surely, Luffy’s crew had enough adventures to entertain them without worrying about old letters.
Maybe Luffy was just entertaining them with stories while they went through this patch of quiet, heading for their next big journey.
You glanced toward your kitchen drawer, still stuck half out and sighed. That would be your adventure for the day. While you watched, you saw the junk shift angrily up as something else arrived and you sighed. Could it not appear anywhere else?
You sent the rag back later when it was mostly dry, letter wrapped neatly inside.
Sanji found it sitting on the kitchen counter it had been stolen from, tucked quietly against the wall with a letter folded between the fabric. He handed it to Luffy who was halfway through a chunk of meat as a pre-dinner snack.
Luffy unfolded it while still eating, his eyes scanning it rapidly before he frowned. “Oh. You were right.”
Sanji had imagined so. He slid discarded vegetable tops and skins into a pot to boil into stock while he prepared dinner. “About which part?”
“I have to send her something first,” Luffy said. “That’s dumb. What if she wants to say something? Makes sense why she was so worried that one time I didn’t send anything. I thought it was weird she didn’t check in.”
Sanji felt mildly affronted at that. “You stopped writing to her without warning?”
Luffy lowered his meat to his plate which was concerning enough that Sanji slowed his preparations, indignation quietening. The captain stared at the letter instead of the meat briefly, pondering something.
“After Ace,” Luffy said. “I… I didn’t want to write for a bit. I thought when she didn’t send anything, she knew.”
“But she couldn’t send anything,” Sanji concluded. “So, to her, it looked like you’d just disappeared.”
“Yeah. That’s why she was crying so much when I sent her a letter again.”
He looked back at the letter and found the words waiting there felt heavier than they had before. To live alone and only be able to answer when someone remembered to reach for you first... no wonder she had cried. Any lady would. Anyone would, though he would sooner throw himself into the sea than say so aloud.
“Her devil fruit is rather unfairly balanced then,” he concluded.
Luffy put the letter down and went back to eating, seemingly having ignored it for now.
Sanji cleaned his hands and walked over to the table, choosing to let his captain handle the new revelation while he considered the rest of the letter. There was no meat tucked into the cloth so he imagined she had offered a different explanation.
Instead, he found something more confusing.
“Still close?” he repeated aloud. “But she’s on an island. If it was around her once then surely it would be around her still.”
Luffy shrugged. “There’s always new islands around her.”
“How?”
The door swung open far too loudly. Zoro marched in looking vaguely annoyed, a bottle in his hand and sand on his boots. Sanji fixed him with an unimpressed look for traipsing filth into the kitchen.
“Out,” he ordered.
Mosshead ignored him entirely and dropped down next to Luffy. “This island is stupid,” he muttered. “You walk onto the beach and the next thing, you’re back in the town.”
Luffy laughed, seemingly back to normal for now. “Did you get lost again?”
“No,” Zoro snapped in a way that immediately betrayed the truth. “I went looking for somewhere to get a decent drink and ran into that weird woman again. She keeps showing up.”
Sanji rolled his eyes. “This again?”
“Do you want to go there? I remember the exact way.”
“I think we’ve all followed you enough times to know you don’t have the directional ability to take us anywhere,” he said dryly. “Trust me, mosshead, the only woman you might have following you is a bounty hunter. If that.”
“It’s probably all different women with the same hair colour,” Nami said as she walked in, a large paper bag in her arms. “Zoro can only tell the difference between swords. Here.”
Sanji hurried to take the bag from her before her beautiful arms could suffer too much from the weight.
“What’d you get?” Luffy asked.
“It’s some random cut of meat,” she said. “I had to buy something to get the guy to talk to me. I don’t know what it’s good for but I’m sure Sanji will make something with it.”
“With absolute pleasure,” he assured. “Tell me what you want and I’ll make it happen.”
She nodded, smiling proudly. “The good news is, I know where to find cliff boars. So I can narrow down our search to islands in that area.”
He flinched and Nami, far too smart and observant to miss it, immediately narrowed her eyes at him.
“What?”
Sanji nodded toward the letter on the table. She picked it up slowly, the type of movement more suited to a dangerous woman than a sweet navigator. Though he did admit, she could turn quite intimidating when pushed past the edges of her patience.
Her eyes ran over the words once. Then again. Then she looked to Luffy who had finished polishing the bone.
“What islands she’s close to today?” Nami repeated. “As in, it changes?”
“I think it might be a moving island, Nami-san,” Sanji said.
“What? Like that one where we fought the shadow guy and his giant?” Zoro asked.
Nami lowered the letter back to the table and sighed through her nose. “That was a ship, not an island.”
Her gaze turned to the paper bag Sanji was holding and he hurried to move it into the fridge before she remembered how much money she’d paid for information on an island that didn’t help her investigation in the slightest.
You, though, genuinely couldn’t find out what you were close to through no fault of your own. By evening, the fog had thickened until the garden wall looked unfinished at the edges and the path down to the shore vanished before it reached the first bend. The sea beyond it shifted and breathed in the dark, too loud for water you could not see, and you had never been fond of sailing over black waves that seemed to move underneath you rather than below.
So you’d planned to go to bed early and do your investigation the next morning.
You pulled your covers back, inspected the bed for any strange lumps, and only lay down once you were certain nothing was beneath your pillow.
The moment your weight settled, something cold squelched under your spine.
You jolted upright. Your hand came down on something round and slippery. Another object knocked against your ankle beneath the blanket and you launched yourself out of bed so quickly your heel caught the edge of the rug. For a breath, you simply stood there in the dark, heart hammering, staring at the shape of your bed as though it had betrayed you personally.
Then you pulled the blanket back.
A pile of random objects lay strewn across the mattress, each one damp enough to leave spreading marks on the sheets. All of them tied with wet scraps of paper marked in Luffy’s uneven numbering.
All except for one.
Okay, then here! Don’t respond to them all at the same time but now you have a bunch of letters so if you want to send something first, you don’t have to wait! And if you run out of these, I’ll send more!
For a second, you stared down at the letters and the pile of random objects cast over your bed, each one a small opportunity. A chance to not have to condense all your thoughts into a single letter. A chance to amend if you forgot to include something.
Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, sudden and warm, because he had understood the problem in the clumsiest, kindest way possible. You wiped them away before they could fall.
You gently picked up each letter and whatever random item they’d been attached to and carried them into the wing of your house. You put the letters out to dry next to their items, heart aching awfully as you did.
Then you picked up the instruction one and the small teacup it had been tied to.
And for the first time ever, you wrote a single line in response.
You’re the sweetest person in the world. Love you.
Because for once, you weren’t scared of what would happen if you didn’t get a reply.
While luffy is being trained by Rayliegh, and reader is being trained by Shakey, they often send letters of how they are, and words of encouragement. But accidentally sends a personal letter of expressing their feeling for him. But reader believes they’re not worth for him, since they feel like they should’ve done more to save Ace (reader was sent flying to the whitebeard pirates). Only able to save a few of his beads, hold Luffy hand while he was in surgery, and lend a shoulder to cry. I’ll let you decide how Luffy confess to the reader too
Letters To The Pirate King
Song: Needed Me - Rihanna
Author’s note: Please like, reblog and share this! 🫶
The air on Rusukaina was thick with the scent of ozone, damp earth, and the metallic tang of blood—both yours and the beasts you fought daily.
Your training under Shakky was a different kind of hell compared to Rayleigh’s tutelage of Luffy, but it was just as grueling. While Luffy was learning to master his Haki amidst forests of giants, you were learning the art of precision, speed, and the kind of tactical observation that Shakky demanded of those who walked in the shadows.
It had been a year since the nightmare at Marineford.
Sometimes, when the moon hung low over the island, your mind would involuntarily drift back to the docks of that blood-soaked bay. You remember the sound of the chains, the heat of the magma, and the crushing, soul-splitting hollow in Luffy’s chest when he realized he’d failed.
You had been sent flying by Kuma to a different sector, scrambling desperately to reach them.
You arrived only in time to scoop up a few of Ace’s obsidian beads that had scattered across the deck after his necklace shattered. You had held Luffy’s hand through the frantic, agonizing surgery on the submarine, his grip so tight it bruised your bones, and in the aftermath, you had sat in the silence of his recovery, offering nothing but your shoulder for him to soak with his tears.
You felt like a failure. You were a stowaway to his destiny, someone who had stood by and watched the world burn. Every day you trained, you did it so you could be strong enough to never let that happen to him again.
The letters were the only thing that kept you anchored.
“I fought a giant lizard today,” Luffy’s messy script would sprawl across the parchment. “Rayleigh says I’m getting better, but I’m still hungry. Hope you’re eating enough, Y/N. Don’t let Shakky work you too hard. I’ll see you soon. We’re going to be the strongest.”
You would reply, your hand shaking slightly as you dipped the quill. “I’m learning to anticipate the enemy’s heartbeat, Luffy. Keep pushing. I’m proud of you.”
It was a Tuesday, the air heavy with impending rain, when the mistake happened. You had spent the evening writing a letter to Luffy, fueled by a moment of intense vulnerability after watching a sunset that reminded you of the fire that took Ace.
You had written your heart out, pouring every ounce of the love, the guilt, and the desperate yearning you held for him onto the page.
“I’m not worth this, Luffy,” you had written in the heat of your panic. “I stayed by your side, but I couldn’t save him. I only held his beads and your hand. I feel like I’m just a ghost haunting your grief. But god, I love you. I love you so much it makes it hard to breathe, even when you aren’t here. I want to be enough for you, but I fear that I am just a reminder of everything you lost.”
You meant to burn it. You meant to write a polite, encouraging note about training instead. But in your exhaustion, you tucked the wrong letter into the waxed envelope, sealed it with your crest, and handed it to the messenger bird that Shakky kept for your correspondence.
It wasn't until the bird was a speck in the sky that you realized what you had done.
The next three days were a waking nightmare. You contemplated jumping into the ocean and swimming to Rayleigh’s island just to intercept the bird, but you knew there was no point.
The damage was done. You had confessed, but worse, you had confessed your deepest insecurities—things you never wanted him to carry.
On the fourth day, the sky over the island turned an angry, bruised purple.
You were mid-spar with one of Shakky’s training automatons when you felt it—a shift in the air pressure. A presence. Haki that felt like a tidal wave of sheer, focused intent.
You skidded to a halt, your heart hammering against your ribs. Standing at the edge of the clearing, drenched in the sudden downpour, was Luffy.
He didn't look like the boy you had left behind. His shoulders were broader, his posture radiating a dangerous, quiet power. He wasn't wearing his straw hat; he held it in his hand, clutching it tight. His eyes, usually gleaming with mischief, were dark, focused, and unreadable.
"Luffy?" you breathed, dropping your combat staff. "What are you doing here? Rayleigh—"
"I told him I had to go," Luffy interrupted, his voice deeper, raspy from the rain. He started walking toward you, his boots sinking into the mud. "I didn't finish the letter before I left. I didn't want to write back."
Your breath hitched. "Luffy, listen—I made a mistake. That letter… it was meant for me, not you. I was tired, I didn't mean to send it, please, just tear it up and forget—"
He reached you in two long strides, his hand shooting out to catch your wrist. His skin was scorching hot, a stark contrast to the cold rain. He didn't pull you in; he just held you there, looking at you with an intensity that forced you to meet his gaze.
"Forget it?" he repeated, his brow furrowing. "You think I could forget that? You think I could just rip up the only honest thing anyone has said to me in a year?"
"I’m not… I’m not enough, Luffy. I watched him die. I didn't do anything."
Luffy’s expression shattered. He pulled you abruptly against his chest, his arms wrapping around you with a ferocity that stole your breath. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his hair dripping water onto your collarbone.
"Don't," he growled, the vibration resonating through his chest and into yours. "Don't you ever say that. You weren't a ghost. You were the only thing that kept me from drifting away entirely."
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw. His eyes were fierce, filled with a raw, unshakable resolve.
"You think you’re just a reminder of what I lost?" he whispered, his voice trembling. "When I was in the hospital, when everything was black and the world felt like it was ending, you were the hand I held. You were the one who stayed when I was screaming in my sleep for someone who wasn't coming back. You didn't just hold his beads, Y/N. You held me together."
"I failed him," you sobbed, the dam finally breaking.
"We both did," Luffy said, his voice firm, leaving no room for argument. "But we’re alive. And I’m not going to let you go through the rest of this journey thinking you’re a failure for loving me when I was at my worst."
He took a shaky breath, his thumb moving to your lips. "I didn't know how to say it. I didn't know how to love anything else when my heart was broken. But every time I finished training, I only wanted to come here and tell you that I didn't want to be the Pirate King alone. I want you there. I want you to be the one standing beside me when I reach the top."
You looked up at him, the rain washing away the grime of the island, leaving only the two of you—survivors, broken but mending, forged in the fires of loss.
"I love you, Y/N," Luffy said, and his voice was simple, singular, and absolute. It wasn't the voice of a boy, but of a man who had decided exactly what he wanted. "You aren't just 'worth' it. You’re the reason I’m still fighting."
He leaned down, his forehead resting against yours. The rain continued to pour, but in the circle of his arms, the world felt still. He kissed you then—a desperate, clumsy, yet overwhelmingly certain press of his lips against yours. It tasted of salt and rain, but beneath that, it tasted like a promise.
When he pulled away, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter. It was soaked and wrinkled, the ink bleeding into the paper. He didn't throw it away. Instead, he tucked it carefully into the inner pocket of his vest, right over his heart.
"Now," Luffy said, a small, genuine smile creeping onto his face, his usual spark returning to his eyes. "Teach me how to spar properly, so I can hurry up and make you my first mate."
You let out a watery laugh, wiping your eyes. "You're an idiot, Luffy."
"Yeah," he grinned, grabbing your hand and lacing his fingers through yours—a grip that was firm, steady, and never, ever letting go. "But I'm your idiot."
Summary: There are battles even the strongest swordsman can’t win with a blade. Sometimes, all Zoro can do is stay by your side and hope the people he trusts make it back in time.
Request: Hi! I was wondering if you could make a Zoro x reader, and reader is sick because she was poisoned and the rest of the Strawhats go find the cure but Zoro an Chopper stay wirh reader (they're kind of a found family inside the strawhats, chopper is the son and reader the mom and Zoro the dad) Zoro and reader are dating. Please and thankyou🌸
Word count: about 9k+
Contains: hurt/comfort, established relationship, protective Zoro, devoted Zoro, lovesick Zoro, vulnerable Zoro, caretaker Zoro, Chopper being the sweetest little doctor, Straw Hat Pirates friendship, found family, poison, antidote hunt, emotional comfort, hand holding, gentle touches, sleepless nights, quiet confessions, recovery, happy ending.
Warnings: fem!reader, use of y/n a few times, poisoning, serious illness, fever, delirium, blood, injury, medical treatment, emotional distress, temporary discussions of death, no major character death.
On the churning, overcast sea, the Going Merry cut through the waves with difficulty, carrying a crew that had only just come within a hair's breadth of suffering a far crueler fate.
A vicious pirate crew had seized control of an island. That, in itself, was hardly a problem for the Straw Hats, who had once again brought freedom to another helpless town. Still, victory had been anything but easy.
Chopper was still tending to everyone’s injuries, especially Sanji’s, after one of the scoundrels had ambushed him from behind and driven a blade deep into the side of his abdomen.
There hadn’t even been time to celebrate or properly recover before the Marines had inevitably appeared, as they so often did, arriving only after the fighting was over and there was no need for their so-called heroics. Besides, the Log Pose had already settled on its next destination, making it painfully obvious that setting sail immediately was the smartest option.
Compared to the others, you would have said you’d gotten off rather lightly. Your only injury was a shallow slash across your side, left by the enemy swordsman’s massive blade after it barely grazed you.
Of course, that had been more than enough to earn him Zoro’s wrath.
Not only had the coward avoided facing a fellow swordsman in a honorable duel, he’d committed the one offense Zoro considered utterly unforgivable.
He had laid a hand on the woman he loved.
The seas would run dry and mountains would split of their own accord before the green-haired swordsman allowed something like that to happen. Least of all without consequences.
He hadn’t been thrilled when you’d stubbornly insisted there was no need for your sweet little reindeer doctor to examine you afterward, brushing the wound off as nothing.
Still, he knew better than to argue.
After all, he wasn't exactly any better when it came to accepting treatment himself.
And, truth be told, you genuinely looked perfectly fine.
You were still full of energy, and aside from the cut itself, there wasn’t so much as a bruise on your face, arms, or anywhere else anyone could easily see.
Maybe he'd simply grown soft since you'd become part of his life.
Or maybe spending so much time around that infuriating lovestruck cook had started rubbing off on him.
Whatever the reason, the mere thought of you losing so much as a single hair was enough to fill him with a level of unease and fury he’d never experienced before. Somewhere along the way, your safety had quietly become the foremost objective of every battle he fought.
Looking back, perhaps the first warning sign should have been when you sat with Luffy and Usopp, listening to yet another one of the sniper's wildly exaggerated adventure tale.
Normally, stories like those had you doubled over with laughter.
This time, they earned nothing more than a faint, tired smile through half-lidded eyes.
Then again…
Who wouldn’t get tired of those two idiots eventually?
Maybe today was simply one of those days.
The next odd thing came when you turned down Sanji’s chocolate soufflé with vanilla ice cream, which he’d enthusiastically prepared the moment Chopper finally released him from his worried little hooves, a fresh bandages still wrapped around his stomach.
You had an infamous sweet tooth.
It was rare for you to refuse dessert of any kind.
Still, you insisted your stomach was simply unsettled after the excitement of the battle and promised you’d indulge a little later, thanking the blond cook with your usual warmth that even he couldn't bring himself to argue.
Once the Merry finally reached calmer waters, and after you’d finished helping Nami with navigation, it was even stranger that you declined her invitation to lounge on deck with Robin, reading and chatting over drinks while Sanji eagerly fussed over the three of you.
You claimed you were simply exhausted.
You’d taken the night watch before dawn, your eyelids felt unbearably heavy, and if you lay down now, you’d fall asleep instantly.
You didn’t want that.
You wanted to wake yourself up instead.
To accomplish that, you'd decided to train with your boyfriend.
Had anyone been worried before, that alone would've been enough to dismiss every suspicion. It was practically unheard of for you and the green-haired swordsman to go more than a day or two without training together.
Although your fighting styles differed considerably, that was precisely what made your sessions so valuable. Where one lacked experience, the other compensated.
A grin tugged at Zoro's lips as he launched into his usual Oni Giri stance, only for you to slip past him with practiced ease, darting around him as though you'd vanished altogether.
There.
That was more like it.
You stumbled ever so slightly.
Still, you recovered quickly enough to throw a counterpunch, only to arrive a fraction of a second too late.
Your mosshead deflected it effortlessly with a familiar click of his tongue.
“Tch. You’re slow,” he said, studying you carefully as he swung again. “Focus. I won’t go easy on you. And neither will anyone else."
You knocked the attack aside and immediately answered with one of your own, rolling your eyes as you did.
“Wouldn’t dream of asking you to.”
Finding the opening you’d been waiting for, you drove your fist forward and knocked him off balance.
“I won’t go easy on you either.”
He smirked.
For a moment, pride and competitive excitement lit his face.
Then they vanished, replaced by unmistakable concern.
“…Y/N?”
You looked unusually pale.
And were you…
Swaying?
He was on his feet in an instant, closing the distance between you before resting one rough, calloused hand against your forehead.
His eyes widened.
You were freezing.
Not merely cool to the touch, but so cold that it almost burned against his skin, while tiny beads of sweat gathered and stuck hairs plastered to your forehead with a contradiction that made no sense at all.
You caught his wrist and gently pushed his hand away.
“It’s nothing,” you murmured. “Guess the rain from this morning got into my bones.”
Taking a nearby towel, you lowered yourself onto the floor.
The room spun for a fleeting moment.
Something you would never, under any circumstances, admit to your caring overly protective boyfriend disguised as a grumpy brute.
“Tch. How’s that ‘nothing’ when you’re shaking like someone tossed you into the freezing depths around Drum Island?”
He tossed his swords aside and sat beside you.
“Come on. We’re going to Chopper.”
He reached for your hand, intending to pull you to your feet, but you stubbornly refused to budge.
“If I’m not feeling better later, we’ll go. I don’t want to worry him over something so silly. The poor kid’s been through enough today.”
You reached up with icy fingers and gently stroked his cheek.
Typical.
Absolutely typical.
Part of him was annoyed.
The rest of him was, rather inconveniently, softened by that stubborn kindness of yours.
That was just like you.
Whenever things became chaotic—and with the Straw Hats, chaotic days were hardly uncommon—simply because, as you always put it, you didn't want to "be a burden."
He studied you once more, lingering on those impossibly kind eyes, eyes so deep that he'd always been able to glimpse the quiet strength hidden behind them.
Lightly flicking your forehead, he pulled you firmly into his chest instead.
His warm, solid body wrapped around your trembling one, and without thinking, you melted into your grumpy swordsman in a silent attempt to steal as much of his warmth as you possibly could.
It always felt safe in his arms.
Now more than ever.
"If you're not feeling better in twenty minutes," he muttered, burying his face in your hair, "I'm dragging you to Chopper myself, and I don't care how much you beg, argue, or threaten to curse me."
Several quiet minutes passed before he reluctantly decided that a warm cup of tea might do you some good.
The moment he shifted, trying to unwrap his arms from around you, you protested immediately, nestling even closer and pulling them right back around yourself before he could get very far.
"Tch. Easy there, woman," he grumbled, unable to stop the corner of his mouth from twitching upward despite himself. "I'll be back in a minute."
Ignoring your sleepy little complaints, he reluctantly pried himself free.
“I’ll be back,” he repeated, casting one last worried glance your way.
He looked over his shoulder one last time.
You’d already curled into yourself, trying to preserve what little warmth remained.
Sighing, fully aware there was no point telling you to go lie down in the girls’ quarters because he’d almost certainly end up carrying you there anyway, he headed for the kitchen.
Fortunately, it was empty.
He immediately began rummaging through the neatly arranged cabinet.
What kind of tea do you even make for someone like this?
Rosehip?
Green tea?
Mint?
Chamomile?
Maybe sage?
Or lady’s mantle?
He was still squinting at the labels when the most irritating voice on the entire ship rang out behind him.
“Get your filthy paws off my perfectly organized cabinet!”
Curly Brows practically hissed the words.
“What do you want?”
Zoro shot him an irritated glance and grabbed the first tea packet he could reach.
“None of your business, cook.”
He waited for the kettle to finish boiling.
That only deepened the blond's disbelief.
"I'm sorry... what?"
He eyed the teabag in Zoro's hand with open suspicion.
“What does a clumsy gorilla like you need tea for? Or is this just a distraction while you raid my sake stash again?”
Zoro slammed a fist onto the counter, splashing boiling water over the rim of the mug.
“Would you shut up? I can drink whatever the hell I want.”
Snatching the mug, he stormed out, leaving Sanji grumbling behind him as he wiped up the spilled water.
When he returned to the Crow's Nest, where the two of you had been training, you immediately tried to stand the moment you heard him come in.
One eyebrow lifted as he took in your face.
Your cheeks had regained a faint flush.
“What're you getting up for?”
He awkwardly held the steaming mug toward you.
“Here.”
You accepted it with shaky hands, smiling despite yourself.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Taking a careful sip of the warm herbal tea, you couldn't help smiling a little wider. The fact that your rough, soft-hearted swordsman had brewed it himself was obvious enough from the tea being completely plain—no honey, no lemon, nothing Sanji ever would've allowed to leave his kitchen—yet somehow that only made it sweeter.
“I’m already feeling much better.”
A faint blush dusted Zoro’s cheeks at the nickname, but he kept watching you closely.
Your lips were still unnaturally pale.
Even holding the mug seemed to take effort.
He stepped toward you, reaching for your hand, only to pause the instant your skin met his.
Moments ago, it had been ice cold.
His brows drew together as he tightened his grip ever so slightly before placing the back of his hand against your forehead, his eyes widening in genuine alarm.
Only minutes ago you'd been cold enough to make his fingertips ache.
Now you were scorching, your skin hot as the steel upon which Wado Ichimonji itself had once been forged.
"Woman..."
His voice came out lower than he'd intended.
“You’re burning hot.”
You laughed weakly.
“Now isn’t really the time for compliments.”
He clicked his tongue, rolling his eyes in a way that barely concealed his relief that you still had enough energy left to tease him.
“Come on. We're going.”
He tugged gently at your arm.
"No," you protested with the same stubbornness that always managed to test the limits of his patience. "I don't feel sick at all. I'm just tired."
Enough was enough.
This is for your own good.
He was already preparing to scoop you into his arms and carry you to the infirmary himself.
He never got the chance.
The rapid clatter of tiny hooves echoed across the wooden floor before a small pair of antlers poked through the doorway.
“Y/N!”
Chopper beamed, a book tucked carefully beneath one arm.
“I brought the book we’re reading before bed tonight. I think it’s the one you mentioned—”
The smile vanished from his face almost instantly.
He hurried over.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s not feel—”
“It’s okay, dear Chopper,” you interrupted brightly before Zoro could finish, already pushing yourself to your feet. “I think I just caught a little cold.”
You smiled as though nothing whatsoever was out of the ordinary.
“Zoro’s making a fuss, you know how he is. Hypocrite. As if he’d ever let you examine him over something this small.”
You lifted the mug ever so slightly.
“See? I'm perfectly fi—”
You took one step.
Then another.
Tiny green specks suddenly danced across your vision as darkness began closing in around them, spreading slowly from the edges until it swallowed everything before your eyes.
It felt as though something impossibly heavy had wrapped itself around your body and pulled you downward like a stone, while the mug slipped from your fingers, striking the wooden floor before rolling away, its warm contents spilling across the planks.
For one strange, suspended moment, it felt less like falling and more like flying.
Like drifting through a dream where the ground never came.
In reality, strong arms caught you before you ever hit the floor, pulling you tightly against a broad chest while voices called your name somewhere in the distance, their words swallowed beneath the persistent ringing in your ears.
You couldn't make out anything beyond that dull buzzing and those muffled voices, only the strange sensation that you were moving farther and farther away, as though you were no longer standing on solid ground at all, but floating gently downstream, wherever the current chose to carry you.
The tiny infirmary was filled with a chaotic chorus of voices, some calm and collected, others bordering on outright panic.
“Lay her down like this.”
“I’ll get the thermometer!”
“Robin, cold water!”
“Nami, grab some towels.”
“Everyone, back up a little. She needs air.”
“Sanji-kun, panicking isn’t helping right now! Go prepare the herbal stimulant mixture for me. It’s on the shelf in the left corner, second-to-last bottle.”
Everyone rushed about in a frenzy.
Everyone except Zoro.
He still held you tightly against his chest, barely registering the commotion around him until Chopper called his name several times.
“Zoro… Zoro!”
“I can’t examine Y/N properly unless you let her go.”
Only then did the green-haired swordsman realize how fiercely he’d been holding you, as though loosening his grip would somehow make you slip away.
Unsure of what else to do, he reluctantly did as Chopper asked.
He stepped back, lowered himself onto a stool in the corner of the room, and buried his face in his hands.
He felt useless.
His mind replayed the entire day over and over, tormenting him with every missed warning sign.
He’d noticed every little hint that something wasn’t right.
Every single one.
And yet he’d still let you convince him it was nothing.
She sparred with me… I knew she looked pale…
I should’ve made her come here sooner.
Nami hurried back with everything Chopper had asked for and looked down at you anxiously.
“She probably just pushed herself too hard,” she murmured, unable to tear her eyes away from your pale, sleeping face. “She’s been overworking herself lately.”
Sanji appeared beside the bed almost instantly, handing Chopper the strange herbal concoction he’d prepared.
“Exactly, Nami-san! Our hardworking, wonderful Y/N has completely exhausted her poor little body! She’s been fighting nonstop this past week, insisted on taking night watch, and then this heartless marimo made her train on top of all that!” He glanced toward Zoro. “Is that why you came looking for tea?”
Zoro didn’t answer.
He simply stared at the floor.
“…No.”
Chopper’s voice was quiet as he checked your pulse.
His expression changed instantly.
He counted again and his face paled.
“This isn’t good.”
He gently lifted one of your eyelids and shone a small light into your pupil.
“Her pulse is much slower than it should be… And her breathing’s labored. This isn’t exhaustion.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Even Luffy, how ever unusual it may be, had nothing to say.
Carefully, Chopper lifted the hem of your shirt to examine the cut on your side.
Then he froze.
The wound looked nothing like it had only a few hours ago.
If it had been healing normally, a thin scab should already have started forming.
Instead…
The skin surrounding it had turned an unnatural shade.
So dark it was almost purple.
Tiny blood vessels had burst beneath the surface, spiderwebbing around the wound.
Medical books were scattered across the infirmary floor.
Stacks of them surrounded Chopper, while Robin knelt beside him, helping him flip frantically through page after page.
With tears welling in his eyes, the little doctor desperately searched for any poison whose symptoms matched yours.
Dozens of books later…
Nothing.
He’d ordered everyone else to keep you awake, terrified that if you drifted off to sleep, your pulse might slow even further.
Nami quietly replaced the cold compress on your forehead.
Sanji hovered nearby, fussing over you even more than usual, trying to coax you into taking soup, broth, vitamin tonics… anything that might bring even a little color back to your face.
Usopp enthusiastically launched into one ridiculous story after another, while Luffy, partly out of habit and partly in an earnest attempt to keep you awake, repeatedly patted the mattress or nudged your shoulder.
Each attempt earned him an immediate chorus of horrified protests.
“Easy!”
Sanji barked, promptly introducing the captain’s face to the floor with the sole of his foot.
Throughout it all, Zoro remained silent.
Motionless.
Sitting beside your bed, he held your cold hand in both of his, absentmindedly stroking your wrist every so often, never once taking his eyes off your barely-open ones.
“Damn it!”
Chopper’s small voice cracked.
A heavy book slammed into a shelf.
Then another rustle.
In equal parts fear and frustration, Chopper hurled yet another useless medical text aside. It struck one of the shelves, knocking loose a massive old encyclopedia.
The worn leather cover had been rubbed so smooth that even its title had long since disappeared.
Robin picked it up first.
“…Chopper.”
“...I know this.”
Together they quickly realized it wasn’t a medical encyclopedia at all.
It was a collection of records describing the unique flora, fauna, and natural characteristics of various islands in this region of the Grand Line.
Tucked away within one small section was a passage describing a rare toxin extracted from a plant found only in the forests of the very island they’d just left.
Long ago, the island’s warriors had coated their weapons with it.
The poison was infamous because even the smallest scratch was enough.
The victim would appear perfectly fine at first.
Days later, horrifying symptoms would begin to emerge, ending in certain death if left untreated.
“Quick! I need a sample!”
Chopper bolted toward your bedside, ushering everyone out of the infirmary.
He hesitated only briefly before allowing Zoro to stay.
The little reindeer hurriedly prepared his instruments before carefully moving toward the wound.
“I’m sorry, Y/N…”
His voice trembled.
“This is going to hurt. But we’ll save you.”
“…Do you hear me?”
Tears blurred his vision as he searched your half-lidded eyes for any sign that you could still hear him.
Almost imperceptibly… you smiled.
Then gave the faintest little nod.
Without a word, Zoro tightened his grip around your hand.
By the time the anchor was dropped off the neighboring island and the sails had been lowered, the Straw Hats had already worked out a plan.
Chopper had compiled a list of every herb they would need, complete with careful sketches to help identify them.
“You have to be as fast as possible.” His voice wavered despite his best efforts to steady it. “Robin, Sanji, you’re looking for the Frostveil Bellflower. It looks like an ordinary daffodil, only slightly larger, but we need its root. You’re also searching for the Veinshadow Nightbloom. It resembles a dark violet, except its leaves and petals are shaped like aloe. You’ll find both deeper in the forest.”
He turned to the others.
“Luffy, Nami, Usopp, search the open fields and ask the locals if they’ve seen either the Cryofern Rose or the Venomspire Lily.”
His little hoof tapped anxiously against the floor.
“Don’t lose the drawings. We have to be absolutely certain.”
He looked down at the papers scattered across the desk.
“The best outcome would be finding all of them…”
His voice cracked.
“…but even one of these plants could make all the difference. Every minute matters.”
As he began folding the sketches with trembling hooves, Robin rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
She’d already memorized every single plant.
Not only the ones assigned to her and Sanji, but the others as well.
Just in case.
“We’ll bring back everything we find,” she said gently, her voice calm and unwavering. “As quickly as we can.”
Luffy adjusted his straw hat and gave a thoughtful nod before flashing the bright grin everyone needed.
“She’ll be okay before you know it! …Right?”
He walked over to your bed and cheerfully smacked a hand against your knee.
“Captain!”
A chorus of horrified voices immediately filled the infirmary once again, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of Zoro’s swords shifting ever so slightly in warning.
Your eyelids fluttered open just a fraction, enough for Luffy's grin to widen even further.
“We’re gonna be even faster than ya think! So hang in there, okay? You’d better be there to welcome us back!”
“I will,” you whispered, your voice rough and barely audible.
A tiny smile found its way onto your lips.
Your caring crew hurried to prepare for departure.
Usopp busied himself checking his ammunition, stuffing his arsenal of gadgets and improvised weapons into his satchel.
Nami spread a map across the table, carefully marking routes and possible search areas while assigning responsibilities.
Despite the obvious fear in his eyes, Usopp straightened his back and bravely declared that he'd question every local they came across if he had to.
At one point Sanji slipped out without a word.
When he returned several minutes later, he was carrying two wicker baskets and a backpack slung over one shoulder.
Nami frowned.
“…What’s all that?”
“Our supplies,” he replied, patting the backpack, though that much hardly needed explaining.
“And these…” He carefully placed the baskets on Chopper's reading desk. “…are for these two idiots.”
He nodded toward Zoro and the the reindeer.
“They'd forget to eat altogether if we left them to their own devices. This way they'll have everything within arm's reach.”
Only then did he turn to Chopper.
His voice softened immediately.
“I’ve already made enough soup to last our dear Y/N-swan three days. There are vitamin drinks in the refrigerator.”
It was his quiet way of lifting at least one burden from the shoulders of an overwhelmed doctor and a devastated swordsman.
At least they wouldn’t have to worry about cooking.
Sanji stepped over to your bedside and carefully tucked the blanket more securely around your shoulders, as though a little extra warmth could somehow chase the illness away.
“Don’t you worry, dear Y/N-swan. You’ll be back on your feet before you know it. We’ll make sure of it.”
His eyes drifted to Zoro, who had remained seated beside your bed all this time, rooted to the floor, the conversations around him barely reaching his ears.
Sanji rested a hand on his shoulder and gave it a brief, sympathetic squeeze.
“Come on, mosshead. Snap out of it. She's tough. We'll find everything and be back before you know it.”
The green-haired swordsman gave the faintest grunt.
It was his own peculiar way of acknowledging both the words and the gesture.
He’d memorized every herb himself, despite having no intention of leaving the ship.
Someone had to protect Chopper.
Someone had to protect the Merry.
Most importantly…
Someone had to stay with you.
He hated how utterly useless he felt.
Yet the thought of leaving your side—even for five minutes—not knowing whether he'd ever see you again, was unbearable. Worse than any agony he had endured, worse than every wound that had ever carved itself into his body.
His rough fingertips absentmindedly traced the delicate bones of your hand, gently rubbing his thumb over your fingertips as he silently blamed himself for everything.
Most of all for the fact that this wasn’t something he could simply cut down.
He would’ve carved a path through every forest on the Grand Line.
He would’ve burned the world itself, from the depths of hell to the highest heavens if it meant finding even one cure that could save you.
“I can’t go after it.”
His voice was barely above a whisper.
Even saying the words left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“So I’m doing the only thing I can. I’m keeping you here until they bring it back.”
He swallowed hard against the lump tightening his throat.
“You hear me?”
His fingers closed around yours a little more firmly.
“You don’t leave before they get back.”
One by one, the crew turned toward the exit.
Each of them had spoken to you before leaving, offering encouragement, reassurance, hope.
Whether you could truly hear them or not didn’t matter.
They wanted you to know they’d do everything they could.
“We’ll be back soon!” Luffy called as he reached the door.
Then, for the first time since this nightmare had begun, another voice cut through the room.
“Bring back everything,” Zoro said without taking his worry-clouded eyes off you. “Even if you’re not sure it’s the right plant.”
The crew paused.
Nobody needed him to explain.
If there was even the slightest chance a plant could help…
Chopper would figure it out.
“Aye, aye!”
And with that, they broke into a run, disappearing from the deck into the island’s forests, leaving behind the quiet infirmary and the dear, weathered little ship that—for what felt like the first time ever—had fallen unnaturally silent.
No laughter.
No shouting or bickering.
No clatter from the kitchen.
No footsteps racing across the deck.
The Merry felt impossibly still.
Almost mournful.
As though even its little sheep figurehead had drawn its wooden mouth into a sorrowful frown and quietly wept alongside the crew.
Tiny hooves worked diligently, cleaning your wound as carefully as possible, trying to remove every trace of the poison before replacing the blood-soaked bandages with fresh ones.
The moment the white gauze came away, what little color remained in Chopper’s face vanished.
The strange discoloration had spread farther, while the darkened veins branching from it had only grown more pronounced.
At first glance, someone might have thought the wound was improving. It bled less than before.
But the wound itself told a far different story.
Barely conscious, you watched the little reindeer through heavy eyelids as he apologized every single time he had to touch the injury, knowing full well how much it hurt.
At Zoro’s insistence, Chopper hurriedly showed him exactly how to clean and redress it.
The swordsman was determined to do something.
Anything.
Even through the haze clouding your mind, you somehow found the strength to lift your hand and rest it atop the fluffy doctor’s hat.
That little reindeer…
You remembered the story he'd once told you—the loneliness, the rejection, the years he had spent believing he had no place in the world—and the moment you'd heard it, you'd known that if he ever chose to join your crew, you would do everything in your power to protect him.
Just as you had.
Your fingers weakly patted the top of his reddish-pink hat.
“…You always apologize. You don’t have to.”
Your gaze drifted toward the small window in the infirmary door.
Darkness had swallowed the sky.
Had you really slept through the entire day?
“…Did you two eat?”
A familiar click of the tongue answered you before words ever did.
Zoro carefully lifted a glass of water to your dry lips.
“Do you ever stop, woman?”
His calloused hands tilted the glass with surprising care, though not quite enough to keep a few stray drops from slipping down your chin.
You looked up at him.
Something about him felt…
Wrong.
Lost.
You’d never seen him look like that before.
“So... you didn’t.”
“We did.”
His answer came immediately.
“You wouldn't know. You were asleep.”
Brushing the damp strands of hair away from your face, he let the back of his fingers linger against your forehead long enough to check your temperature while Chopper quietly slid the thermometer into place once more.
“Think about yourself for a change. Tch. Just rest.”
He adjusted your pillow before settling back into the chair beside your bed.
Whether it was the gentle rocking of the Merry or simply the exhaustion weighing down every inch of your body, you couldn’t tell.
Warm, heavy drowsiness slowly settled over you once again, drawing you back into sleep's embrace.
When the thermometer finally chimed and displayed yet another disappointing number, neither of your boys said a word.
They merely let out quiet, weary sighs, and Chopper rested his head beside your legs.
The quiet scrape of wood against the floor broke the silence.
He looked up just in time to see Zoro opening one of the baskets Sanji had prepared before pushing it toward him.
“I’m not hungry,” Chopper murmured, barely audible.
His forehead still rested against the edge of your bed.
“You are.”
No answer.
“Chopper.”
Only the steady rhythm of waves against the hull.
“Eat.”
Zoro pulled out a sandwich and all but shoved it into the little doctor’s hooves.
“Or I’ll feed you myself.”
A pause.
“You know she’d be worried sick if she found out.”
Only after Chopper reluctantly took it did Zoro grab one for himself.
“Tch. Unbelievable. Even now she’s still nagging us about eating.”
His voice faded into little more than a whisper.
I’d sooner let the fires of hell swallow me whole…
Be forgotten by the world…
Lose every battle I’d ever fight…
…than never hear that nagging again.
It was the dead of night.
The hour sailors called the witching hour, when even the sea itself seemed to be asleep.
Zoro jolted awake from a dream he hadn’t even realized he’d fallen into, his heart still racing.
He’d been running as fast as his legs would carry him, chasing that damned pirate just as the bastard lunged toward you with his blade once again. He had been close enough to stop him—close enough that one more step would have done it—but the instant he swung, all three of his swords shattered into countless pieces, scattering across the ground before he could reach you..
He took a slow breath, forcing his pulse to settle, and looked up.
You were still there and breathing.
Reality, mercifully, had turned out kinder than the nightmare.
His hand still rested around yours.
Something else, however, weighed across his lap.
Warm.
Tiny.
Soft.
Blinking the last remnants of sleep away, he looked down.
Chopper had somehow curled up against him, fast asleep, his hat lying forgotten near Zoro’s feet.
…How did this even happen?
He honestly couldn’t remember.
Carefully rolling the stiffness from his neck, Zoro slid one arm beneath the little doctor and gently lifted him.
He froze for a moment when Chopper stirred.
But the reindeer only mumbled something unintelligible before settling again.
Zoro tucked him into the spare bed in the infirmary before quietly returning to your side.
He brought your cold hand to his lips, holding it just tightly enough to remind himself you were still there.
“You still owe me that rematch.”
His fingers slowly combed through your tangled hair.
“You cheated. You counted that punch after I told you it didn’t.”
He enclosed your hand between both of his, warming it with his own breath as though the two of you were stranded somewhere in the snow.
Idiot.
“Don’t you dare think I forgot.”
The bitter, slightly sour taste of another vitamin tonic still lingered on your tongue.
You could barely keep your thoughts together, though the clumsy way your green-haired brute of a boyfriend and your tiny, fluffy son fussed over you almost made you smile.
The moment you weakly gestured that you wanted water, they both jumped to their feet at the exact same time.
Before either of them reached it…
The Den Den Mushi rang.
Zoro picked up the receiver while Chopper hurried to bring you a fresh glass.
“Any luck?” Zoro asked quietly.
Static crackled.
“Not yet.”
“Keep looking.”
He hung up without another word before gently replacing the cold compress on your forehead.
The deep furrow between his brows hadn’t left in days.
Neither had sleep.
Chopper looked just as exhausted, dark circles settling beneath his small eyes.
“…Sorry…”
Both of them leaned toward you instantly.
“What?”
“…Trouble…”
Chopper broke first.
He buried his face against Zoro’s leg as quiet sobs shook his tiny body.
Zoro simply closed his eyes.
Absolutely typical.
Even now, you were apologizing.
The mountains in your chest rose with trembling effort before sinking again, as though each breath was saying its own reluctant farewell.
After setting aside the bowl of soup that had ended up spilled across the blankets far more than it’d ended up inside you, Chopper quietly sat beside your bed and watched your frail figure..
Life had become so much brighter after joining the Straw Hats.
After meeting you.
He had found safety beneath the wings of his new family, but most of all in your embrace, and against Zoro's broad chest—or, more often, behind his legs whenever danger appeared and instinct sent him running toward the strongest place he knew.
You read bedtime stories to him.
Made cookies together after persuading Sanji to let you take over the kitchen.
Prepared hot chocolate.
Patched up the little injuries he brushed off after training.
Comforted him after difficult days.
Wandered flower fields and collected medicinal herbs beside him.
Played with him until sunset.
Made him go to bed when he got lost in his studies.
Now…
He was the one caring for you.
Changing your bandages.
Replacing the cold compresses.
Counting every heartbeat.
He’d even tried reading the very book he’d brought the day you collapsed, hoping some part of you could still hear him.
The words never made it halfway down the first page.
His voice gave out.
His little body shook with tears.
“Oi.”
Zoro was beside him immediately.
“What happened?”
“I-I-if I’d n-noticed the cut sooner… We would’ve had hours... hours more to hel her. I f-f-failed her…”
“Don’t.”
The word came sharp.
Firm.
“No.”
Zoro blamed himself enough already.
There was nothing the kid could have done.
“We’ll make it.”
It sounded less like reassurance…
…and more like a prayer offered to whoever might still be willing to listen.
They hadn’t heard from the others by the time a storm rolled in.
Not that it mattered much. Shut away inside the infirmary, they barely noticed the rain hammering against the ship.
What frightened them far more was that, like the sea outside, you too had become restless.
You tossed restlessly beneath the blankets as beads of sweat rolled endlessly down your temples. Your body burned with fever, yet shivered uncontrollably, but that wasn’t the worst part.
What truly terrified them was when you began talking to people who weren’t there.
Reliving memories no one else could see.
Sometimes your voice turned bright.
Almost joyful.
You smiled with innocent happiness, speaking as though you were once again leading Chopper through a field of spring flowers on some long-forgotten island.
"Come on," you laughed softly, reaching into empty air. "Give me your hoof. Let's race to that tree over there."
Your hand missed him entirely as you tried to sit up, only for your boyfriend's strong arms to ease you gently back against the pillows.
Then, without warning...
...the dream became a nightmare.
“No… Please… Let him go!”
You shook your head frantically as tears streamed down your face.
Zoro and Chopper kept calling your name, trying to pull you back, but nothing reached you.
“I’ll do anything… Just let him go… No…”
Chopper couldn’t bear it anymore.
He broke down crying too.
Meanwhile Zoro stroked your arm, calling your name over and over, trying to gently shake you awake, speaking in a voice so impossibly soft that even he hadn't known he possessed it.
He had no idea how much time had passed while he held you against his chest, rocking you with slow, instinctive motions as Chopper clung silently to his leg.
Only after your breathing finally settled did he notice how violently his own hands were trembling.
Some time later, you drifted back to yourself just long enough to weakly beckon the little doctor closer.
“You’ll take care of everyone for me… right?”
Before Chopper could even react...
Zoro answered. Firmly and immediately.
“You aren’t going anywhere. So stop talking like that.”
He took your hand again, replacing the cold compress on your forehead with the other.
“Save your strength. Especially if you’re just going to keep saying crap like that.”
Afterward, he muttered a quiet apology under his breath before leaving to make yet another cup of tea from the herbs Chopper kept in the infirmary.
Maybe this one will help.
The storm inside his chest only grew fiercer.
Helplessness.
Fear.
Guilt.
Rage so fierce it barely fit inside him.
They had cornered him from every direction.
Before heading toward the galley, he stopped beside the ship's railing and drove his fist into the wood with all the strength he had.
The impact echoed through the empty deck.
It hurt.
But not nearly enough.
The little reindeer’s fluffy head had quite literally fallen into one of the medical books, finally defeated by the relentless pull of exhaustion.
The poor kid had done everything he possibly could. Every medicine had been administered on schedule, every bandage changed, every vitamin tonic and herbal remedy coaxed into you. Your fever had finally, stubbornly, come down a little, and your pulse had stabilized enough for him to breathe.
For what felt like the hundredth time, strong arms carefully lifted him from where he’d fallen asleep and carried him to the spare bed, tucking the blanket around him with all the clumsy care of someone terrified of waking him.
“He wore himself out,” your voice rasped quietly through the silence. “Both of you did.”
Zoro returned to his place beside you, lowering himself to one knee next to the bed as his calloused fingers brushed through your hair before tracing the increasingly pronounced curve of your cheekbone.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
Gathering what little strength remained, you lifted a trembling hand and cupped his cheek.
“…Are you scared?”
“No.”
The answer came through gritted teeth.
“…Liar.”
A faint smile tugged at your lips.
“As if there’d be anything to fear. Those idiots will come barging back with the cure any minute now.”
“Zoro… if…”
“No.”
He cut you off immediately, refusing to hear whatever was coming next.
“If something…”
You tried again.
Two fingers came to rest lightly over your lips—not harshly, but with quiet resolve.
“Don’t waste your strength on things that aren’t happening.”
He drew in a slow breath, his gaze drifting upward for the briefest moment before returning to yours.
“You made me a promise. No backing out now.”
Across the room, Chopper stirred in his sleep.
His half-asleep ears twitched at the sound of your voices.
He didn’t dare move.
Didn’t dare make a sound.
“…I don’t know how to do this without you,” Zoro admitted quietly.
“You don’t get to…”
His voice faltered.
“We’re supposed to chase our dreams together. You promised all of us... You promised me... and the kid.”
The little reindeer’s ears slowly drooped against the pillow.
He squeezed his eyes shut, pretending to remain asleep so he wouldn’t interrupt.
Silence settled between the two of you.
Long enough that Chopper thought the conversation had ended.
“…Some protector.”
Zoro rested his forehead against the edge of your mattress.
“I always thought…” he murmured at last, lifting his head just enough for his eyes to settle on your intertwined fingers, holding them as though loosening his grip for even a heartbeat might somehow make you disappear, “…I always thought my job was to stand in front of the blade. The bullet. To take the hit instead of you.”
A bitter laugh escaped him.
“And it turns out I never even noticed the thing that was killing you while it was right in front of me.”
He closed his eyes.
“I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
Zoro had never been afraid of blood.
He’d spent years drenched in his own.
But yours…
Yours made something inside him seize.
Every bruise blooming beneath your skin, every tremor running through your body, every ragged breath you struggled to draw… he felt each of them as though the poison had chosen the wrong victim.
It should have been him.
It didn’t matter that fever had left your skin slick with sweat, or that you were too weak to lift your own head.
You were no less beautiful to him.
No less precious.
If anything, seeing you stripped of every defense only made the ache to protect you grow sharper.
When he finally looked up, there was nothing left in his eyes but unguarded truth.
“There isn’t a single thing this poison can do to you that would make me turn away.”
His voice remained low.
Steady.
“If you can’t walk, I’ll carry you. If you can’t eat, I’ll feed you. If you’re afraid…” his thumb brushed slowly across your knuckles, “then you’ll have someone to be scared with. If the fever makes you yell at me… if it makes you hate me… I’ll wait until it passes. And if you look at me and don’t remember who I am…”
He swallowed.
“…I’ll introduce myself all over again.”
Now he took both of your hands in his own, holding them with the desperation of a man who felt as though he were pleading with fate itself.
“Listen to me. I don’t care how much this hurts. I don’t care if you’re afraid. I don’t care if you’re tired.”
He slowly shook his head.
“Just hold on a little longer... Just a little longer, okay?”
His eyes wandered across your face as though trying to memorize every feature.
The thought angered him the instant it crossed his mind.
No.
He wouldn’t have to remember.
You were going to be here.
“You can’t leave now.”
The words came out softer than he’d intended.
“Not before they get back. Not before Chopper gives you the cure.”
He took another slow breath.
“After that…”
A tiny smile ghosted across the corner of his mouth before disappearing just as quickly.
“After that, you can yell at me for forcing all those disgusting medicines down your throat. You can tell me my tea tasted awful. You can tell me I panicked over nothing. I’ll even admit you were right about that one argument.”
His voice caught.
“And then… We’ll pick up right where we left off.”
He watched you for a long moment.
“I’m not finished with you yet. We’ve still got too much left to do. We still have stupid things to argue about. You still have to convince Chopper to take your side against me again. You still have to get on my nerves.”
His grip around your hand tightened.
“You still have to grow old with me.”
Only then did he realize what he’d said.
Yet there was no room left for embarrassment.
It was simply the truth.
The truth he’d needed you to hear.
His eyes lowered once more.
“So…”
He searched for the words for a long time.
“…don’t take that away from me.”
Dawn had yet to fully break over the bleak sea when the rest of the crew finally returned to the Merry, exhausted and desperate.
Zoro wasn’t sure exactly when the endless darkness of night had given way to the soft lilac hues that came just before sunrise, but the hurried pounding of feet against the wooden deck snapped him from his thoughts. Voices echoed through the ship, calling names, accompanied by a faint whistling sound that grew louder with every passing second.
Then the infirmary doors flew open as your filthy captain practically launched himself through them.
“Chopper!! We did it!”
He landed squarely on top of the little reindeer, knocking him onto the floor before Zoro could even react. A heartbeat later, the swordsman was already hauling Luffy back by the collar, ready to scold him for causing such a commotion and nearly flattening the very doctor you all depended on.
“Have you completely lost your damn mind?!” Sanji shouted as he rushed in right behind him, somehow managing to be just as loud despite yelling at Luffy to be quiet. “You can’t charge into an infirmary like that, you reckless idiot!”
The cook looked as exhausted as everyone else. His blond hair was full of leaves and tangled from pushing through the forest, dirt streaked across his clothes, but the moment he reached your bedside, all of that seemed to disappear.
“How’s our dear Y/N-swan holding up?” he asked quietly.
Zoro simply gave a small nod.
You’d held on.
Long enough for them to make it back.
One by one, the rest of the crew crowded into the room, each in varying states of disarray. Robin’s clothes had been snagged and torn by branches and thorns, Nami stood there breathing hard with windswept hair, while Usopp was practically covered in mud from head to toe.
“No time to waste!” Chopper cried, hurrying over to them, his eyes shining with hope. “What did you find?”
Robin and Nami immediately set two large sacks filled with herbs and flowers onto the table.
“We gathered everything that resembled the illustrations,” Nami explained. “And the locals suggested a few other plants they thought might help, so we brought those too. Everything we could find.”
Chopper didn’t wait another second.
His little hooves dove straight into the bags.
“Where’s the Bellflower? …Good. You brought the roots too? Excellent.” He looked up so suddenly that everyone nearly jumped.
“JUST TELL ME YOU DIDN’T WASH THEM!”
Robin calmly stepped beside him, instantly becoming his second pair of hands.
“These three belong together,” she said, sorting the plants with practiced precision. “The roots for these were separated… and Cook-san wrapped the Veinshadow Nightbloom individually. We barely managed to find this one. Apparently it’s out of season.”
Her steady presence settled the frantic atmosphere threatening to overwhelm the room almost immediately.
Meanwhile, Sanji had already thrown himself into preparing everything else.
After hastily washing the dirt from his hands, he placed a glass of water beside Chopper before rushing into the galley to boil water for sterilizing the knives and instruments. Bowls, mortar and pestle, cloths, every tool that might be needed for preparing the medicine was arranged within easy reach before anyone even thought to ask.
Nami quietly leaned toward Chopper.
“…Is it enough?”
The little doctor ran his hooves across leaves, examined roots, smelled flowers, compared every petal to the illustrations spread across the table.
Nobody dared speak.
Every pair of eyes remained fixed on him.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, his little ears lifted.
His eyes lit up.
A tiny smile spread across his face.
There was hope.
“…This is it.”
Usopp let out a laugh that sounded as though it had used the last of his strength before collapsing flat onto the floor with his arms behind his head.
“See?! I told you I’d find everything! It wasn’t easy, but…”
“YES!” Luffy cheered. “She’s saved! Sanji! Get the meat ready! That’ll cheer her up right away!”
For the first time in days, laughter almost found the room.
Almost.
Through it all, Zoro never left your side.
Your hand remained clasped securely in his as he silently waited for instructions.
At the worktable, Chopper had already begun.
He grated roots with painstaking precision, mixed resins and plant extracts together, heated them to exact temperatures inside tiny glass tubes before cooling them again, measuring every drop, every change in color, every shift in consistency. Robin silently passed him each instrument before he could ask, while Sanji adjusted the flame without ever interrupting the process.
Everyone wanted to help.
No one dared interfere.
Silence settled over the infirmary.
Glass gently clicked against glass.
Only short instructions broke the stillness.
“Mortar.”
“Knife.”
“More water.”
“Not that one.”
As Chopper carefully drew the finished medicine into a syringe, his hooves began to tremble.
The entire crew held its breath.
This was it.
If this didn’t work…
Sensing the little doctor’s fear, Zoro carefully supported you exactly as instructed before placing one steady hand on Chopper’s shoulder.
A silent promise.
I’m here.
Swallowing hard, Chopper uncovered the wound once more—darker now than ever before—and gently drove the needle beneath your skin.
Now…
All they could do was wait.
One minute passed.
Nothing.
Five.
Still nothing.
All the while, Zoro held your lifeless hand inside both of his, offering silent prayers he would never have admitted aloud.
Take anything from me.
Anything but—
Then…
Was that…
A pulse?
Or had he imagined it because he wanted it so desperately?
His head snapped upward, studying your face before his gaze dropped back to your joined hands.
One finger twitched.
Barely.
The slightest pressure against his palm.
His breath caught so sharply it almost hurt.
Warmth spread through his chest, melting away days of fear and guilt all at once.
He didn't think he'd ever known happiness that felt quite like this, nor gratitude so profound. Strange as it was, he found himself thankful even for the anguish that had brought him here, because without it, he might never have understood how precious this moment truly was.
Even the ache in his chest felt like something to treasure.
It was a feeling he'd never been good at expressing, yet one he suddenly never wanted to lose.
“…Chopper.”
His quiet voice drew every eye in the room toward him.
“…She's squeezing my hand.”
The sun finally rose over the Merry as she continued rocking gently upon the waves.
From somewhere on deck came a very familiar voice.
“YEAH!! TIME TO CELEBRATE! SANJI! BRING OUT THE MEAT!”
You were still asleep, but your temperature had finally stabilized, and the dark veins surrounding your wound had begun to recede.
That alone was enough for your exhausted crew to celebrate.
The ship gradually came back to life.
Everyone bustled about the deck and through the halls, tidying things, preparing food, talking louder than they had in days.
Only Zoro remained rooted beside your bed.
And Chopper, who constantly hurried between Robin and Sanji before rushing back to check on you again, unable to stop himself from making sure you were still breathing… still sleeping… still there.
Your green-haired swordsman waited for only one thing.
To see your eyes again.
To look into their familiar warmth one more time.
Only then would the weight crushing his chest finally lift.
He understood that the poison had drained every ounce of strength from your body and that you needed sleep more than anything.
Still…
He couldn’t help being impatient.
Just one look.
One smile.
Then maybe he could finally allow himself to sleep too.
His thumb absentmindedly stroked your hand, which was growing warmer by the hour.
He felt your fingers move.
“You’ll complain later that your back’s gone stiff,” you murmured, your voice rough with sleep though unmistakably brighter than before. “You should go lie down.”
A little color had finally returned to your cheeks.
Zoro was on his feet before he even realized he’d moved, still refusing to let go of your hand.
You couldn’t help laughing at how utterly lost he looked.
He finally collected himself before rolling his eyes.
“You scared the hell out of us, idiot.”
He knelt beside the bed again, gently placing your hand against his broad chest.
Only now…
Only now could he breathe again.
“I’m sorry.”
You smiled sheepishly.
“I didn’t even know what was happening.”
He clicked his tongue.
“Don’t apologize,” he muttered.
Your thumb traced absentmindedly over the thickened scar across his chest.
“From now on,” he said firmly, “you’re getting examined after every fight. I don’t care.”
“Deal.”
You smiled and then looked at him with quiet understanding.
“You were really worried, weren’t you?”
“Tch.”
His eyes wandered toward the chair across the room.
“Oh…”
You added almost casually.
“I accept., by the way”
“Huh?”
“The rematch.”
A teasing smile tugged at your lips.
“I still think that punch counted… but if you want another chance that badly, I’ll beat you again as soon as I’m out of bed.”
A quiet snort escaped him.
“Yeah? I'd like to see you try, idiot.”
You were teasing him again.
That alone was enough to convince him everything would be all right.
In that rare moment of privacy, relief washing over him now that everything had finally turned out all right, he lifted your hand to his lips and kissed it, lingering where your pulse beat beneath your skin, simply to feel that wonderful proof of life one more time.
“I missed y…”
Rapid little hooves pattered across the floor before the sentence could leave his mouth.
“Y/N-san!”
Chopper practically launched himself onto the bed, wrapping both little arms around yours and nuzzling against it with a relieved sob.
“I’m so happy you’re okay!”
Tears streamed freely down his cheeks.
“I-I-I was s-so scared…”
You gently wiped his face, smiling as you wrapped your free arm around him.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
That only made him cry harder.
“Z-Zoro didn’t sleep for t-three whole days… I thought…”
“Y/N-SWAAAN!! AN ANGEL HAS DESCENDED FROM THE HEAVENS! THE LIGHT OF THE GRAND LINE HAS RETURNED!”
Sanji burst through the door carrying your favorite dessert along with a beautifully arranged platter of fresh fruit, several pieces meticulously carved into little hearts.
With his free hand he shoved Luffy away, who was already reaching for one.
“I knew you’d be fine! I brought meat too!” Luffy beamed, triumphantly holding up an enormous drumstick while chewing on another.
You laughed again as Chopper pushed your captain away with both little hooves.
“She can’t have that yet! It’ll make her sick. She hasn’t eaten properly in days!”
“THAT’S EXACTLY WHY SHE NEEDS IT!”
Nami and Robin squeezed in beside you from Chopper’s side, effortlessly pushing Luffy even farther away.
“DON’T EVER SCARE US LIKE THAT AGAIN!” Nami snapped, eyes suspiciously bright despite the stern expression she was trying to maintain.
Robin simply smiled softly before patting your knee.
“You’re precious to all of us. We’ll have to take even better care of you from now on.”
“Good thing we made it back in time,” Usopp declared proudly, puffing out his chest.
“All thanks to Captain Usopp! Every local we met fell to their knees, offering rare medicinal plants to honor my unmatched bravery!”
“Oh, please. Give me a break.”
“Then I ventured deep into a deadly jungle, defeating every terrifying beast that dared stand in my way…”
“...There were only rabbits in that forest.”
The room gradually filled with louder laughter, overlapping voices, playful arguments, and the warmth of life returning exactly where it belonged.
You smiled wider and wider, overwhelmed with gratitude for the incredible people surrounding you.
Your family.
Turning your head, you gently squeezed the hand your green-haired swordsman still refused to release.
His eyes were already drifting shut.
With his free arm, he carefully lifted Chopper, who had fallen asleep sitting beside the bed, settling the tiny doctor comfortably against his lap.
A tired smile crossed his face.
He pressed one last kiss against the back of your hand before leaning his head back.
Sleep claimed him almost instantly.
Still smiling, you reached for a nearby blanket and quietly draped it over both of your boys.
Then you settled back against your pillow, listening to the colorful chatter filling the room, every now and then glancing toward the two sleeping figures at your right.
⋆𐙚 ̊ this has been proofread but mistakes may be present so I apologise in advance! I had so much fun writing this out, I love a good soulmate au! warning: yandere zoro, mentions of pain and injury, see pinned post for banner and fan art information!
Your scars were not battle scars and your pain was not your pain; it was the result of your green haired soulmate fighting like a demon. Ever since you were a little girl, you suffered from this but as you grew older, it had gotten ten times worse. His scars were your scars, and his pain was your pain. You knew who he was, what he looked like, thanks to the wanted posters around town, but you never wanted to meet him.
You were a florist, he was a pirate, what good would that bring to your business?
Still, you had to do something which is why you were standing before the Thousand Sunny, arms crossed as you wait for someone to arrive.
To your relief, The Straw Hats docked their ship on the harbour of your homeland to restock. When you received the news, you jumped at the chance to speak to Zoro and hopefully get him to calm it but now you were regretting your decision.
What if he doesn’t listen and tells me to go away?
You tap your foot to the ground, your nerves at a high, when a man called out to you.
“Madam, are you in trouble?”
You look up.
Black Foot Sanji, and the Straw Hat's pet. To ease the reindeer you wave at him and he waved back.
"You've been there for about ten minutes now. Chopper was getting anxious."
“Oh no, I just… I need to speak to someone on your crew.”
“Well, you can speak to me.”
“I’d rather not.”
Chopper laughed as Sanji dramatically clutched his chest.
“Who are you even looking for?” Chopper asked.
“Roronoa Zoro.”
“M—Marimo?” Sanji seethed. “What business do you have with him?”
“Yeah, what business do you have with him?”
You turn around. The members of the Straw Hats had their hands full with supplies. The one who spoke was Franky who frowned at you.
You suddenly felt out of place. Why are they all so beautiful?
Feeling comfortable with the women, you turn to Nami. Her hands were free.
“Um, hi.” You sheepishly wave at her.
“Oh hello! Are you okay?” Nami asks as Robin stands beside her, ready to protect her if needs be.
Nami eyed the scar on your eye, and on your body.
Where has she seen those scars?
“Not really, no,” You say. “I’m looking for someone. His name is Roronoa Zoro, I want a quick word with him.”
“Zoro? He should be here soon.”
“He got lost. Again. Seriously, I don’t know what his problem is!” Nami snapped, getting onboard. “Well, if you need him, you’re going to have to wait. Usopp will bring him to you.”
“Haha, your scar looks like Zoro’s!” Luffy, their Captain, beamed at you, his face surprisingly close to yours. You reel back in shock.
“That’s right!” Nami says, turning to you. “It does look like Zoro’s!”
“What looks like mine?”
If heaven was a sound, it would be his voice, and if it had a scent, the angels would be directing him towards the gates of hell because your soulmate absolutely stinks. You turn around and meet him face to face; your eyes land on the scar over his eye.
“Oh,” Usopp blinks. “Who are you?”
“I don’t know, but I like her, she’s joining the crew!”
“Oi, Luffy, you can’t just—”
“You’re Zoro.”
Zoro frowned. “And you are?”
You clear your throat. “Look, I won’t keep too much of your time, and you’re free to do as you please. But can you… tone it down?”
“Huh?” Zoro pulled a face.
Everyone watched you both like a hawk.
“Tone what down? I don’t even know you!"
“Oh right, sorry,” You grin sheepishly. “I’m Name, your soulmate!”
“WHAT?” Sanji screamed, about to fall over the barrier, if it wasn’t for Nami pulling him back. “That beauty is his soulmate? Scrap that, Mosshead found his soulmate first before me!”
“Sanji, calm down!” Nami snapped. “Seriously, you’re all idiots! If Zoro’s your soulmate, show us some proof!”
“Are the scars not proof enough?”
You take off your top, leaving you in just your bra and work pants, and Sanji flew back thanks to his nosebleed.
Luffy put his hands to your back. “Oh Zoro, that looks like your scar!”
For some reason, Zoro wanted to burn Luffy’s hand for touching you.
He looked at you intently. You did not cower under his gaze.
You put your top back on and smile awkwardly. “I’m not asking you to stop fighting, I’m asking you to take it easy. It’s awkward having to explain to customers why I’m in the middle of making their order then suddenly I’m collapsing on the ground, half-dead.”
Zoro remains silent. Stared at you. Drank you in.
Then, he let out a tsk, and walked away.
“I thought as much.” You grumble, looking at Nami and Robin. “If he gets hurt can you handle him for me?”
“You don’t want to know him?” Nami asked you.
“Oh, he has his life and I have mine. I wouldn’t want to be a bother. Besides,” You smile. “A florist and a pirate will never work.”
You take out a jewel.
“As a thank you for listening to me.”
You toss it in Nami’s direction. She caught it with ease and gasped at its beauty.
“Wait, seriously?” Berry signs were in her eyes.
“Ooo, do you have something for me?” Luffy asked, his eyes shining with stars as his mouth watered.
You let out a laugh. You lift up your basket. “Here, homemade dinner.”
You give it to him.
Luffy wrapped his arms around you for a hug and you hug him back.
“Thank you!” Luffy laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want to join our crew?”
“I’m sure.” You smile softly. “Now, take care all of you! You’re all treasured friends to me, despite us barely knowing one another!”
“You too, big sister!” Nami beamed, waving at you. “Till next time!”
You laugh. “Till next time.”
Turns out till next time would be a few hours later. The Thousand Sunny did not leave at the designated time and instead, all the crew members were huddled around one another, awaiting the news.
“Did you find him?” Nami asks.
“No,” Luffy frowned. “Seriously, where could Zoro have gone?”
“Tsk, I think I have a feeling.” Sanji says, lighting a cigarette.
“So do I.” Robin says. “We just have to wait and see.”
You were cleaning the countertop, humming a tune, when you felt him. Or more like smelt him.
“Do you shower?” You ask, not looking at him. “I’d rather not have my nostril hairs burn. They’re important, you know.”
“You’ve got jokes I’ll give you that,” Zoro says, hand on his sword as he watched you like a hawk.
The second you left, every primal urge inside of him raved at him to chase after you. So, he listened, and concealed his true intent with an excuse. He’s not a man who loves, he’s a man who craves and having a soulmate was the complete opposite of that. Or so he thought until he saw you. He craved your touch, he craved the taste of your cooking and your smile, your laughter and your kindness.
“You’re coming with me.”
“Zoro.” You sigh.
“Don’t say my name like that.”
“Fine. Roronoa.”
“That’s even worse,” Zoro steps forward. “Now, pack your things and come along. I’m not going to ask again.”
You turn around to face him. “I have a life here, Zoro.”
“And you can return to it once Luffy becomes the King of the Pirates.”
“Why can't you abandon your Captain and stay here?”
“I made a promise.” Zoro says. “I intend to keep it. I also intend to keep you safe.”
“Big words for a man that doesn’t shower.”
Zoro grinned. Said nothing.
“Look, I have orders to complete.”
“You don’t have anyone that could lend a helping hand?”
“Only one. Kaz. He—”
“He?”
“Calm down, Roronoa.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s Roronoa or nothing.”
“He’ll watch the shop. If anything happens to it, I’ll slit his throat.”
“Uh, maybe not—”
Zoro caged you in with his body and your breath caught in your throat. To make matters worse, he didn’t wear any suitable clothing so his chest was in front of you.
You couldn’t help yourself.
He hissed when you touch him and he caught your wrist.
“Careful.” Zoro says.
You've always had a choice in the decisions you've made but not this time. If you were stubborn, what the hell was he? You try to move, he caged you in. You push him, he hisses, but lets your hand rest on his chest. You knew he wouldn’t hurt you; It was written on his face, but this was your life; your home - land to sea is a drastic change.
You didn’t realise you were crying until Zoro wiped a lone tear from your eyes.
“Don’t do that. You’ll be back.”
“With you?”
Something passed in his eyes.
“Maybe.” Zoro says. “I ain’t got time for picking flowers though.”
Was this the right choice to be making?
Zoro tilts your head up to look at him.
He liked what he saw in your eyes. He looked at the scar there. It wasn’t as deep as his, only faint, and you could still see out of it.
He looked at you.
“I’ll write a note.”
“Attagirl.” Zoro moves back. “I’ll be waiting.”
Finding you was a lot easier than going back with you.
“You stink and get lost easily?” You huff, flabbergasted that this was your soulmate.
“Shut up,” Zoro snapped. “They’re the ones who got lost!”
“It’s a good thing I know the way then—” You say, smiling when the ship came into view. “See! What did I tell you, Roronoa?”
He let out a tsk.
The crew were impatiently waiting for Zoro and when they saw him, Chopper was the first to exclaim,
“He’s here! He’s here!”
“Tsk, seriously,” Nami grumbled, but her face lit up at the sight of you. “Oh, are you joining us?”
“Yes. If you’ll have me.” You say, smiling softly.
“SUPERRRR!” Franky did a super sign.
“Of course!” Robin beamed.
Chopper laughed and Usopp gave you a thumbs up.
“Name-chan!” Sanji screamed. “Forget about Mosshead and be my soulmate instead!”
“Shut up, Curlybrow!” Zoro snapped.
“Name, I’m excited to taste more of your cooking!” Luffy grins and you grin back.
You really should stop letting Luffy drag you into his plans.
Somehow it always ended in the strangest situations. Fun ones. But weird, nevertheless.
“You should sit closer,” you murmured when you noticed the waiter look at you. “Couples normally sit together.”
Luffy immediately wrapped an arm around the back of your chair and dragged it, wood screeching loud enough to make two people at the next table glance over, until it was flush to his own. “Like this?”
He was warm against your side, careless and easy about it in a way that made the whole thing feel much less fake than it should have.
You laughed softly. “Not fused, Captain.”
“You said closer.”
“Yes but still at a distance where we can eat,” you said, shuffling your chair a little further away. “You can put an arm around me if you want while you wait for the second course. It would sell it better.”
His arm immediately snaked around you and settled warm and heavy across your middle, like he had been waiting for permission to commit to the entire idea with his whole body. You sighed.
“I just meant on my shoulder or my hip,” you said. “But this is fine too.”
A salt-filled breeze moved lazily through the patio. Not a cloud in the sky and the refreshing sparkle of the drink in your hand made this almost seem like a normal trip to an island. Almost.
“What… are you two doing?”
You turned your head toward the sidewalk that meandered just on the other side of the restaurant’s half wall. Usopp and Zoro were looking at Luffy’s arm wrapped around you and the drink in your hand.
You smiled and nodded your chin toward the restaurant’s window. “We’re dating. Considering that couples eat free today.”
Usopp looked at the sign and then snorted. “Fair enough. Good food?”
“Great food!” Luffy corrected.
“We just have to keep up the act,” you said with a small smile. “Want to try some of the breadsticks? They’re good.” You offered one to Usopp who snatched it before Luffy could.
“Hey,” your captain complained. “You said they were finished.”
Usopp hopped the wall to take a seat next to you, grabbing Zoro and tugging him over before he could wander off. “Did you apologise to them beforehand for how much they’d be feeding Luffy?”
“I felt bad for a second,” you said. “Then I spoke to some locals and found out this place is a bit of bad news so…”
“Serves them right?” Usopp asked.
“Exactly.”
Zoro dragged over his own seat, slouching into it. “Makes more sense,” he scoffed. “I thought I had missed something.”
“You did!” Luffy said cheerfully. “They already brought the first round.”
“Not what I meant,” he scoffed. “Is there booze?”
Luffy pointed toward the sign with a bone. “Yeah. Couples drink free as part of the plan.”
Zoro looked at you and you shook your head. “Don’t look over here. I’m taken. You can date Usopp.”
He looked to his side then shrugged. “Whatever. As long as I get free drinks.”
“What?!” Usopp squawked.
“We’re dating,” Zoro decided. “Don’t ruin it.”
“Says who?!”
“Whoever’s in charge of booze,” he said, looking back over his chair for the nearest waiter.
“Are we allowed to do this? This feels like the kind of thing people get thrown out for.”
You pressed a hand over your mouth to fight off the laugh at Usopp’s distressed expression, made far worse when Luffy slammed both his palms into the table.
“Yeah! Usopp and Zoro are dating too! That means they’ll bring more! But you guys should sit closer together.”
“No!” Usopp said.
Luffy immediately looked to you for assistance and you shrugged. “They don’t have to. Sometimes people sit further apart but you sitting close is easier than you trying to compliment me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Captain, give me a compliment.”
“Okay.” He looked at you for a long moment and you nodded. “You’re good at hiding food from me.”
“Yeah, stick to sitting closer,” Zoro said dryly. “Oi!”
The waiter who stepped over was tired enough from Luffy’s appetite that he only took a look at the other unconventional ‘couple’ and sighed, bringing the drinks Zoro wanted with resignation. Them not having to prove it was probably much better for their sanity.
You ended up returning to the Sunny far later that night, cheeks sore from laughing while Usopp firmly dragged a drunk Zoro along. Luffy looked at the two of them and immediately snaked his arm around your waist instead. You sighed and just moved his hand to rest right above your hip.
“More here for actual couples,” you whispered though it didn’t really matter if the restaurant heard you now.
“Oh okay.”
His hand stayed there until you boarded and he eagerly explained the plan to Nami who honestly looked impressed at the lack of money spent. You’d thought that was the end of it, even if his touch still lingered on your side.
But no sooner had you arrived at the next island and hopped off the ship than Luffy’s hand was resting on your hip again.
You looked down at it, noticing Franky’s confusion from next to you.
“And this, captain?”
“We might get more free food,” he said with a grin.
“Luffy,” Nami sighed. “They’re not going to have something like that on every island.”
“You don’t know that,” he said with a broad grin. “It worked great last time and I know what to do now.” He was maintaining the close thing, that was for sure. His body was practically flush to your own.
You took the hand from your hip and laced your fingers through his instead so you were holding hands. “This looks much better,” you promised with a small laugh. “Holding hands is much more common.”
Luffy swung his hand with yours happily. “Alright. Let’s go find somewhere that has food then.”
“Good luck,” Nami said to you and you shrugged.
“Just remember to not run ahead if you want this to work,” you told him. “Or you’re going to pull out my shoulder.”
“Right.”
That island had no restaurants with promotions and no heart-shaped signs in windows. By noon, Luffy had already been distracted by three food stalls, a beetle, and a man balancing knives on his chin.
His hand still stayed locked around yours.
At first, you told yourself it was easier not to mention it. He was following the rules you had given him, after all, and Luffy could be stubborn once he thought he understood something. But when you slowed to look at a row of painted shells, he slowed too. When you stopped, he stopped beside you, fingers warm between yours, patient in a way he almost never was around food.
You looked down at your joined hands and decided, very carefully, not to ask why.
And that just turned into a habit.
On the next two islands you found, no sooner had you made land than your captain’s fingers would be laced with your own. He made no true complaints about following your exploration or helping with the tasks you were given to handle. If you slowed, he matched your pace, exactly like you had asked the first time.
One day, when you found a stall with beautiful jade jewellery, you found his arm move from your hand back to your waist again while you looked, more and more weight pressing onto your side.
“You can go and find food,” you told him, turning over a bracelet between your fingers. “I’m not going to keep you here.”
Luffy made a thoughtful sound and leaned his cheek against your shoulder. Then his arm looped around you twice suddenly.
“I’m good.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll wait.”
“Captain.”
“Mm?”
“You’re very close.”
You reminded him as though his arm wasn’t continuing to snake around your entire torso. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this but it was new outside of fights where he used it to move you from danger.
“I know,” he said, seeing no problem with the proximity.
“Alright,” you said, fighting not to laugh. “But it makes it quite hard to look at things.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He unwound himself from you and stood normally at your side, rocking back on his heels with his hands in his pockets. You looked at him for a second longer, smiled, and then went back to considering the jewellery.
It didn’t even take ten seconds before something warm touched your hip and you glanced down to see his arm slowly winding its way around you, as though if he moved carefully enough, you might not notice several feet of rubber.
Luffy started whistling when you tilted your head toward him, eyes fixed very purposefully on the opposite stall.
The old woman behind the jewellery display gave a soft laugh. “That is quite the devoted arm. Very interesting devil fruit power.”
“Eh?” Luffy asked, looking around him.
“Yours,” you clarified, poking his arm that had already wrapped twice around you. “But it really is, isn’t it? I think I’ll take the bracelet, thank you.”
The woman smiled. “Half-price for such a sweet couple,” she said with a small twinkle in her eyes.
“Really? Thank you.”
You paid and Luffy didn’t let go of you when you walked away, still rather curled around you as he laughed.
“See. I told you the couple thing would pay off!”
“You weren’t wrong,” you admitted, smiling at the small bag. “Though, I must say, this is a bit close for a normal couple.”
“You said I should be close.”
“When sitting.”
“Standing and sitting are basically the same.”
You laughed and left it. You certainly weren’t about to admit that you really liked it when he was this close and wrapped around you. It felt wrong to say the pounding in your heart was caused by the press of his chin against your shoulder.
The act continued onto the next island too.
An island where there were no discounts for couples and no heart-shaped signs anywhere. No reason for Luffy to be holding your hand as though the two of you were about to be inspected at any moment.
Yet his fingers were firmly through yours even as the group split and you joined Nami, Robin, and Chopper in walking through a shopping district.
The two women were definitely giving you looks but Chopper mentioned it first after he almost walked between the two of you and got caught on your joined hands.
“Is this still the dating thing?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Luffy said easily. “It works.”
You didn’t really have an answer so you stayed quiet, even when Nami looked over her shoulder, very unimpressed.
“There are no couple promotions here.”
“You don’t know that,” Luffy said. “We found the last one by accident.”
Robin, who honestly looked far too entertained, commented, “You’re very committed to the role of a good boyfriend.”
“I am!” he said brightly.
“He has taken all my lessons to heart,” you admitted with a slight laugh.
He grinned at you and something in your chest did a stupid little flip.
Robin disappeared into a tiny bookshop not long after which meant the rest of your little group settled onto a bench outside to wait. Well, most of you did. Luffy instead chose to drape himself over your shoulders, winding around you like the world’s most enthusiastic backpack. His head rested on your shoulder, hair tickling your face.
“This is boring,” he said into your ear.
“You didn’t have to come,” you reminded him, hoping he didn’t notice the shiver that went through you when he spoke so close.
Nami looked over from the bag of fabric samples she’d been sorting through and then frowned. “You two really don’t need to be so close for this game.”
“Huh?” Luffy asked.
“You’re practically on top of her.”
You lifted one hand in mild protest. “Technically, he’s behind me.”
“You can hold hands again,” Nami said. “That works just as well as… whatever that is.”
“We got food out of it once,” you defended though your heart was pounding. “You never know when it might happen again.”
Chopper frowned up at you. “Why would you get food out of that?”
Luffy, utterly unbothered by the stares he was getting, leaned even more of his weight against you. “Because we’re good at it?”
“Good at what?”
“Dating.”
You made a small sound that was supposed to be a laugh and came out far less convincing when he was so warm against you.
Nami looked at you and you hurried to look away.
He dropped his head back to your shoulder, nose tickling the side of your neck as he sighed. “I’m hungry.”
“Me too,” you said, immediately grateful for the escape route. “Let’s go find somewhere to eat while we wait.”
He was off you so quickly that the sudden lack of warmth almost startled you and you hoped Nami would go back to whatever she had been doing. She wasn’t. She was still staring as though you were losing your mind.
“Can I come with?” Chopper asked.
“Of course.”
The restaurant you found was quiet enough that you could hide your fluster in the dim light. They didn’t offer any couple’s discounts but they had meat enough that Luffy quickly forgot about his acting and set about inhaling the plates.
You helped Chopper guard his meal as you shuffled your own plate closer, waiting for the inevitable.
A hand darted toward your plate and you smacked it lightly without looking. Luffy, entirely undeterred, tried again, this time far too fast for you to stop. So instead, you sighed and reached over to take something from his plate.
He glared at you. “Hey, that’s mine.”
You put it pointedly on your plate. “You started it.”
“But I’m your boyfriend.”
You nearly knocked over your water glass. Chopper frowned up at you and you fought to keep the embarrassment from your cheeks.
“Even then,” you established, trying to regain control of the whole pretend thing. “Couples share. They don’t just rob each other’s plates.”
Luffy huffed and then picked up another piece from his plate and dropped it onto yours with exaggerated slowness. As though it even made a dent in the massive pile he had in front of him. You laughed and leaned over, kissing his cheek before you could think better of it.
“Good boyfriend,” you teased. “Thank you.”
Luffy blinked once.
You realised as you stared at him that that probably was a bit too much. But then he swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned in to kiss your cheek in return.
“Thank you too.”
And he went back to eating like nothing happened.
Chopper stared at you both for a second. “Is that… part of it?”
You took a very careful sip from your drink and tried to pretend your face wasn’t heating up substantially. “It can be. A dating thank-you thing. Sometimes,” you said, voice slightly too thick.
Unfortunately, it seemed Luffy took that lesson and ran with it.
At breakfast the next day, half of your plate disappeared, only to be replaced with the fruit from his before you could even protest. You sighed and looked at him.
“Captain?”
“Yeah?”
You gestured at your plate and caught his wrist before he could grab from another piece. “Not an invitation,” you corrected. “What was that?”
“Oh right.” And then he leaned over and kissed you on the cheek. “Thank you.”
It flustered you enough that you let go of his wrist and he beamed as though having solved some kind of puzzle.
Sanji, who had been refilling your glass, froze and the water spilled across the rim, splashing across the table and straight into Usopp’s lap.
“Hey! Watch where you’re pouring!” Usopp yelled as he jumped back.
Sanji didn’t respond. The jug was still pouring as he looked between you and Luffy with not a single ounce of comprehension. He opened his mouth as though to ask but before he could, Luffy dropped something onto your plate.
“My turn,” he said, leaning his cheek toward you.
You pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, trying to ignore the eyes all burning holes through your skull. “It’s a way to say thank you,” you said to nobody in particular.
Brook laughed heartily. “A kiss as thanks? How romantic. Though I suppose I would have to receive mine directly on the bone.”
“Nope. They’re our thing,” Luffy said with enough surety that you had to take a second to get your heart rate back to normal.
This fake dating thing was really starting to go a bit far. And then, of course, you ended up making it much worse.
You were in the pantry, trying to reach a jar somebody had shoved onto the highest shelf which was ridiculous considering that half the crew had no real way of getting it. You’d been stretched up onto your toes, reaching desperately for it when a familiar arm stretched past your shoulder.
“Here,” Luffy said.
“Thank you.”
And without thinking, you turned to give him a kiss on the cheek the way he’d apparently taught you to both do now. Only Luffy turned his head at the exact same time.
Your mouth met his. Not his cheek.
For a second, your heart just about stopped.
The jar slipped from your hands and Luffy caught it before it could fall. Your shoulder bumped into the shelf behind you as you stared blankly at him, not certain where to even begin defending that one.
“I…” you trailed off.
The words just weren’t forming in your brain.
“I was going for your cheek,” you finally managed to say.
Luffy nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at you then and smiled. “Why? That was fun.” He leaned in and kissed you again, quick and certain. Not long enough for you to move but not short enough for you to pretend it hadn’t happened.
“There,” he said. “Now we’re even.”
You stared at him, finally starting to realise that this might be something you should talk about.
He picked up the jar and twisted the top off with a pop, peering into it curiously. “What’s this for?”
“I forgot,” you said honestly because your memory seemed very caught up on what had just happened.
You should have asked what that meant. You knew you should have. But asking meant giving him the chance to laugh and say it didn’t mean anything at all, and you hated how quickly that thought made your stomach drop.
Things became much harder to explain neatly after that. Because the cheek kisses were a thank you that you’d accidentally taught him but the others were… less easy. Mainly because Luffy seemed to use them for everything.
He’d give you a proper kiss at random points throughout the day. To say good morning. To ask you to move over so he could sit with you. To thank you for moving over so he could sit with you.
It was something you should have stopped. Probably.
Or at least should have admitted that it was a little strange.
Instead, when he leaned in across the breakfast table and kissed you quickly before stealing the last piece of toast from your plate, you only stared at him for a second before saying, “That’s… not a fair trade.”
He grinned with the toast already between his teeth.
The worst part was that you stopped needing a reason too. Once, he leaned over your shoulder to look at the map in your hands, and you kissed his cheek simply because he was there. He grinned for the rest of the afternoon.
So you accepted it as part of whatever game you were playing and every time he did it, it sent your heart into a complete panic. And you found he was weaker to those sorts of kisses too. Especially when you wanted him to do something, there was no easier way.
Which ended up being a problem when you forgot this was far from normal for the others to see.
Luffy had wrapped himself around you with terrifying efficiency. One arm was looped around your waist, the other hooked over your shoulders, and his chin was planted stubbornly beside your head. He was warm and heavy and impossible to move when he decided gravity was somebody else’s problem.
“But it’s my turn to be on watch,” you told him.
His arms wound around you an extra time. “Well, I’m the captain and I think somebody else should do it so you can stay here.”
“That’s not fair,” you said with a small laugh squeezed from your ribs.
“So?”
You tried to pry him off to no avail and Nami had already tried a lecture that went nowhere. And you had no chance of actually beating him in a competition of strength so you relented.
“Okay, okay,” you said. “If you let me go on watch, I’ll buy you whatever food you want the next time we make land.”
“Nope.”
“Captain…”
“What? I want you to stay here.”
He was close enough and you were distracted enough that instinct moved you toward the one thing you knew would work. It was a quick peck, done mainly out of exasperation and because it was the best way to say please.
You just forgot you were very much surrounded by others who didn’t see kissing their captain as an effective way to beg for release.
Sanji dropped a knife from the plates he’d been carrying. It clattered over the floor and stopped alongside Zoro’s foot who kicked it back without looking.
Nami had gone completely still, one hand frozen halfway through sorting a stack of coins. Usopp’s mouth was hanging open and Robin was openly smiling behind her hand. You could have heard a pin drop in the room.
Luffy, apparently caring about none of this, groaned and dropped his head onto your shoulder, his hair tickling your face.
“You can’t do that to get your way,” he complained.
You had an answer but it didn’t really seem to be forming because everybody in the room was staring at you. You hurried to look at him instead as he unfurled his arms from you rapidly.
“Fine,” he huffed. “But only this time. Nami, you can’t put her on night watches anymore. It’s not fair.”
Robin cleared her throat. “So…” she said. “This is new.”
Nami opened her mouth. Then closed it again. And you realised with a very sinking a sinking sense of doom that there wasn’t really any room for misunderstanding that you had, in fact, just kissed Luffy. Very much in front of everyone.
“Habit?” you offered in a very weak defence.
“That’s worse!” Sanji exploded suddenly in a very wounded tone. “I have spent years perfecting the art of romance and he gets kisses out of habit?”
“There is no way this is a game anymore, right?” Nami asked, finally managing to get her voice back. “You two cannot be serious.”
“It’s not that weird,” you defended.
“Yeah,” Luffy agreed and you should have known that he was going to say something slightly worse because he immediately followed with, “But we always do this.”
Brook leaned forward at the table. “All the time, you say?”
“Brook,” you warned.
“It’s normal,” Luffy said and he grabbed your face and kissed you firmly on the mouth. “See?”
Sanji dropped the knife again.
“You picked it up just to drop it?” Zoro asked.
“Shut up!” Sanji snapped though he was staring at you with betrayed horror.
Robin laughed softly. “It’s certainly unusual,” she said. “Sanji feeds all of us without anybody needing to pretend to be a couple.”
Luffy blinked as though that hadn’t even occurred to him. “Yeah, I know. I’m not doing it just for the food though?”
You turned to him, your last defence against this entire thing shattering as you heard him. What did he mean he wasn’t doing this for… The entire time you’d been telling yourself to stop your heart from fluttering as it did and… Your brain wasn’t working.
Zoro scoffed. “Sounds like dating to me.”
“Yup,” Luffy said and you stared at him helplessly.
“We are?”
Nami groaned and just moved all the coins into her bag, sorting forgotten. “You cannot tell me the two of you fake-dated into actually being together. I knew it. I hate that I knew it, but I knew it.”
“Captain,” you said and Luffy looked at you, far too eagerly. You forced yourself to speak before you forgot. “We’re dating?”
“Yeah,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “You didn’t know?”
“No,” you said, softer now. “I thought we were doing the fake dating thing. You never told me it was real now.”
“Right,” Franky said. “Super normal fake dating. You two have been acting like a couple for weeks.”
You gave him a sharp look. “I don’t… I told him to do all those things.”
“Yeah, so we could date better,” Luffy clarified.
And you didn’t really have an answer for that one because the more you were thinking of it, the worse your excuses became.
“We were pretending,” you reiterated. “At first.”
“I stopped pretending ages ago,” he said. “Didn’t you? I mean, there wasn’t free food afterwards.”
You stared at him, realisation creeping up on you with the same heat as the embarrassment crawling over your neck. No, there hadn’t been any free food. Not for weeks. There had just been his hand finding yours every time you stepped onto a new island, his weight against your shoulders while he complained about being bored, his mouth pressed to yours like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“No,” you admitted. “I wasn’t pretending either.”
Then he grinned widely. “Good.”
You laughed before you could stop yourself, helpless and embarrassed and absurdly happy. Around you, the silence finally broke. Usopp made a strangled noise, Sanji said something wounded and dramatic, and Nami dropped her face into her hands. Even Zoro huffed a laugh from his seat.
Luffy only looked at you, still grinning, as though this had all been settled ages ago and he had only been waiting for you to catch up.
portgas d. ace cannot fuckin’ believe this is happening.
portgas d. ace swallows. his calloused hand trembles as he snakes it into his unbuttoned shorts.
all the while, he can’t look away from you — his best friend — touching yourself.
this whole thing started with an awkward conversation about the half-hard cock digging into your backside after an afternoon nap. there was no avoiding it, not when ace buried his face in his hands and grumbled something about being pent up.
you, in turn, made a joke about how you haven’t gotten off in weeks.
ergo: you get it, you’re pent up, too.
there was a beat of tension. then:
“you… uh… i mean, if you need to… take care of it…?” you said, eyes darting to the curve straining against the front of his shorts. ace felt dizzy. you chewed your thumbnail.
isn’t that how most things like this start, slow and curious?
“i mean, we’re best friends,” are the words that put the metaphorical nail in the coffin, mumbled around the nervous habit of a bitten nail, “think of it as… mutual support...?”
he agreed too quickly, swallowing down a bout of unnerving want.
“right. i’ll do me. you do you," he rasped, head nodding and pupils blown wide, "yea. mutual support. good thinkin’, scraps."
that nickname felt like foreplay. it punched the air out of your lungs.
and so it began: mutual support. more like mutual masturbation, but who's correcting the record in a moment like this? not ace. definitely not ace.
no, portgas d. ace is too busy trying to remember how to breathe. is it hot in here? it feels hot in here. fuck, yep, it’s hot because he’s doing the thing — the thing where sparks of ignition dance across the sweat on his skin. it’s a dead giveaway that he’s excited. losing his edge.
your hand steadies under the waistband of your underwear, your head against the pillow. ace lies beside you, your shoulders barely touching, body heat bleeding into one another. your leg is thrown over his thigh, and your bunk has never felt smaller.
portgas d. ace is panting, and not once do his eyes break from yours.
not when you bite your lip so hard it almost bleeds, not when he thumbs the head of his throbbing cock, not when you slip your fingers through your folds. his jaw falls open, nostrils flare, and finally, his eyes fall to the pearling of your nipples through your tank top.
“fuck,” he mumbles, “…is this… is this okay?”
“yea. yea, it’s… it’s good. are y-you good?” you breathe, and your eyes fall to the sight of his cock, pulled from his shorts. you almost whine, because it’s pretty. thick and throbbing and he’s stroking himself faster now and his forearms flex while he does and that’s your best friend—
your faces are close now, shoulders touching. your toes curl against his calf. your eyes dart back up to his. he’s staring while he nods, his gaze is intense. enarmored. the look in your heavy-lidded eyes is no better.
portgas d. ace’s abdomen tenses, his breath stutters, and he sighs out:
"keep — fuck — keep looking at me like that."
you’re biting your lip again when you nod, working a tight circle against your clit beneath your bottoms. your lashes flutter, and your breath hitches higher, and you make a soft sound in the back of your throat. his mouth is parted, and so is yours, and when you both huff out a needy pant, it mingles.
portgas d. ace can’t resist. his eyes snake down again, toward where your fingers work themselves quicker and needier beneath your bottoms — ace wets his lips, curses to himself.
this is uncharted territory. the kind of territory that isn’t supposed to exist between best friends.
“fuck, you’re so hot,” the honest appraisal rushes out like a tie between a prayer and a revelation, “m’close, scraps—”
portgas d. ace is fucking up into his own hand while staring at you, and good fuckin’ god, it is the hottest thing you’ve ever seen. his hips roll, his muscles tense, and you whine when you spy the precum beading at the head of his cock. you’re right there, right at the edge.
“—me too,” it breaks from your throat in a whisper; you squirm, and ace’s breath fans across your face, “i’m… i’m gonna—”
“yea?” his forehead knocks against yours, and he nods, “you gonna come?”
he’s goading you; his nose brushes against yours. you can’t help that his name trembles out of you with a hunger. “ace, ace—”
that’s all it takes. ace smothers the sound of his release in a kiss that’s devouring. it’s the sort of kiss that doesn’t happen between best friends. the kiss sends you over the edge, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that watching your best friend finish across his chest while you come around your own fingers isn’t really best friend material, either.
portgas d. ace, kissing you like a man starved while you finish hard enough to tremble, certainly isn’t going to complain. after all, you’re best friends. best friends help one another out.
PERSONALLY I like that the strawhats are preoccupied with their dreams ambitions and sailing the seas w their friends and don’t think romance is narratively necessary, but it’s legitimately so funny how oda was like “the old generation of pirates? biggest fucking sluts you’ve ever seen”
Once, when you thought you had a good understanding of how he worked, you were certain Shanks was best enjoyed in pieces.
Drinks shared and nights spent with his hand at your hip and his mouth against your neck before dawn. But always in fleeting moments. Never for more than that. It was easier that way. If you stayed longer than a night, it became more difficult.
And Shanks had never been the type for anything more than easy.
You had assumed, at least.
The first time he made the offer was in a room already hot with the lingering aftermath of the evening. Rough sheets twisted around your legs, sticking to sweat-slick skin while the open window did little to chase away the summer air. Bruises were already beginning to bloom along your throat from the lazy path of his mouth before he slipped between your legs and pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, softer than anything he'd given you before.
“Come with me tomorrow,” he said, offering another further up your thigh. “Sail with us.”
You lifted your head, curious at the gentleness of his words and his touch. “Join you?” you asked. “Do you not have a full crew already?”
“We do,” he said, his smile lazy as ever. “But I’ll make space for you.”
You laughed quietly to yourself, brushing some of his hair away from his face so you could appreciate him better. Too handsome for his own good. He knew he could get away with anything if he looked at you like that.
“I see a problem with your offer,” you said and he kissed further along your thigh.
“What is it?”
“It’ll make you lose interest too quickly.”
Shanks paused, leaning his cheek against your skin. “Lose interest?”
You moved your leg from his shoulder and leaned down to drag him higher up your body, fingers tangled in his hair and lips locked in a messy kiss. He still tasted of the drinks he’d downed earlier and that explained enough about his impulsive offer.
“It won’t be fun if I’m already on board your ship,” you teased.
“Nonsense. If I had you on my ship, I'd never get anything done. Becks would have to start captaining properly.”
“Don’t you do that when I’m around anyway?” you asked.
He hummed and kissed you again as though to distract you. “Maybe.”
You chuckled softly, unwilling to admit to him how much his offer tempted you. He was far too addictive to turn down. Especially when his tongue was in your mouth and his hand was dragging your leg back up his hip. If you didn’t focus, you could almost believe he wanted you to stay with him. But pretty words alone couldn’t sway you.
You still left the next morning and he didn’t stop you, just pressed a kiss to your shoulder as you slipped from the bed.
“We’ll see each other soon,” he said and he sounded far too confident.
You smiled. “I suppose it depends on if the sea favours us.”
“The sea’s a big friend of mine,” he reassured you. “I’m sure she’ll bring you back to me.”
He wasn’t wrong. No matter how far you sailed, the ocean didn’t give you long before it reunited you with the Red Hair Pirates. You stopped shying away from them after the third encounter, growing bolder with each offer Shanks tossed your way.
Now when you saw the Red Force docked in harbour, her flag snapping high above the masts, you'd wander the island until you found the right tavern. It was never difficult. Somewhere there would be a building with music spilling from the windows, laughter loud enough to shake the walls and patrons pretending not to stare at the cluster of infamous pirates occupying half the room. The Red Hair Pirates had a talent for making themselves at home wherever they landed.
They were a friendly crew. A mostly peaceful one, even. But they were the crew of an emperor and people respected that deeply.
You walked in most times, walked out with your hands in Shanks’ hair every time, and it was never a problem.
Not until the one evening when you waltzed in and half of his crew nudged their captain as though he hadn’t already raised his head to look at you. You smiled at him and made your way to the bar, not bothering him and the woman currently pressed to his arm.
But he never wasted time in approaching you, even if he was busy. He slipped up behind you as you ordered your drink and nodded to the bartender.
"Whatever she's having is on me."
You hummed. “You’re going to run your ship dry if you pay for the drinks of every girl that smiles at you.”
His arm slipped naturally around your waist, resting on your hip as though it belonged there. “Not every girl with a great smile,” he corrected. “Just the ones who need a bit more convincing to dance with me.”
The music in this tavern wasn’t quite suited for dancing. It was softer and almost impossible to hear over the shouts of his crew.
“I might need more convincing than a drink,” you commented.
“Name your price.”
Shanks was far too good at making your heart flutter, no matter how often you were exposed to his seemingly endless charm. He already knew he’d get what he wanted that night and you knew it too but sometimes, making him work for it was part of the fun.
“You’ve been trying to guess at my price for a while now,” you said. “You haven’t gotten any closer.”
“I’ll figure it out with enough time.”
You turned to face him fully, draping your arms loosely over his shoulders. “I’m lucky I managed to find you without any other pretty women around, hm? Ones with more reasonable demands?”
He chuckled and leaned in to press his lips against the side of your throat. “There are plenty. Funny thing is, I keep ending up back here.”
You tilted your head to the side. “As easy to lead back to your bed?”
The expression he gave you was off – a smile that didn’t quite get to his eyes. “Such little faith in me. You’re lucky I don’t get hurt easily.”
“It’s not a lack of faith,” you corrected. “But I know you enjoy the chase more than the reward.”
“I enjoy both as long as you’re there.”
You smiled. “I think you’d miss it too much.”
“Miss what? Waking up alone? Sounds awful.” He pulled you closer. “Can’t say I’d mind having you there instead.”
“The pining,” you corrected. “The wondering when you’ll see me again. Trying to convince me every time. If I was already there, it wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”
Something unreadable flickered over his face. “You think I’m trying to convince you for fun?”
“You wouldn’t do it if it was unpleasant.”
“Or if it wasn’t worth it.”
You couldn’t help being flattered by him, always so smooth. You loved the way he spoke sometimes – the way he made you feel as though you were the only important person in the world.
“I’m surprised your crew isn’t filled with women thanks to those pretty words of yours,” you said. “Even I struggle to tell you no.”
Shanks laughed, a short sound. “Wouldn’t have guessed you struggle with it.”
You leaned in, your mouth hot against his. He kissed you lazily as though you had nowhere else to be, allowing you to lead him through it.
“I’ll get us a room upstairs,” you said with a hum.
For a second, he smiled. Then he leaned in to press a swift peck to the corner of your mouth and said, “No.”
It was as though even the music itself paused as you blinked at him. “No?”
“As much as I love chasing you,” he said, stepping away and leaving the space in front of you feeling very empty. “I’m starting to think you enjoy being chased more than you want me. We set sail in the morning. The offer still stands.”
You watched him walk away in mild confusion, still a little lost before his words caught up to you.
Was he serious?
The bartender placed your drink down next to you but you barely heard it. The music carried on around you as though nothing had changed. A few members of the Red Hair Pirates were starting up a song. The woman he’d been talking to earlier grinned when he returned but he took a seat aside Yasopp instead.
You looked around the party and shrugged, taking your drink and a seat at the bar. If he didn’t leave, you had no reason to either.
Maybe he was trying to prove a point? You thought he might look for another woman whose words didn’t sting as bad as yours did, but he drank and laughed with only his crew and you pretended not to see the way he looked at you. As though he was waiting for something.
You finished your drink and swung off the stool, sliding the beri across to the bartender.
“Isn’t – ”
“I can pay for myself.”
The cold night air was refreshing against your face but the familiar curl of cigarette smoke drew your attention to a very unaffected Beckman. You paused when you saw him, not sure if he had something to say. He looked like he did.
“Running away again?”
“No idea what you mean,” you retorted.
He tilted his head toward the swinging door of the tavern; each time it moved, the raucous din bled through into the night. Beckman wasn’t even really what you would consider an acquaintance but he’d dragged Shanks out your bed more times than you could count.
“It’s early for you to be leaving alone,” he noted.
You didn’t have any reason to explain the break in routine to his first mate. And yet…
“Change of pace tonight,” you said. “I think I offended him.”
Beckman nodded. “You did.”
“I didn’t even know that was possible.”
He shrugged and offered you a cigarette. “I didn’t think it was until recently. Not many people can get under his skin.”
“I’m not wrong though,” you defended yourself.
“No,” he agreed. “You weren’t at one point. I’ve long since lost track of how many women I’ve had to drop off at port in the mornings but none of them were recent. Since he met you, there’s been no others.”
You didn’t want to admit to the way that made your heart flutter just slightly. “It’s the challenge. He tries to get me to join your merry little crew, I do, and then he gets bored in a month.”
“It’s possible.”
You didn’t know why it annoyed you so much that he agreed with you but you felt the glare before you could stop it. True or not, he could have said it in a better way.
“Why does it bother you so much then?” Beckman asked. “If you’re so sure that it’s the truth?”
“It’s still not nice to hear.”
“Because you’ve fallen in love with him?”
You shot him a sharp look. If you didn’t know quite how dangerous this man was, you may have snapped a little more venomously. How you hated him for saying the quiet parts of your worst thoughts out loud.
“I don’t fall in love that easily,” you huffed. “I just don’t particularly feel like joining a pirate crew to be a pretty face on the sidelines.”
“He says you have good enough aim that you won’t be wholly useless. And I’m sure he’ll teach you more if you ask.”
You had no other defence. On a different crew, you may have believed him but you’d heard the legends of the Red Hair Pirates and their skills. You would not sail with an emperor just for the sake that he found you attractive. That was a ridiculous decision. Even without the risk that he lost interest once you gave him what he wanted.
“You can see where we’re docked?” Beckman asked.
“Hard to miss.”
“Then you may as well prove your point.” He blew a puff of smoke into the sky. “You can be useless, let him lose interest and I’ll concede that you’re right.”
“And if I would rather things remain as they are?”
“They won’t. You’ve already ruined that part.”
You almost didn’t board. The Red Force came to life while you stood on the dock, shrouded in shadows and watched the sun rise over the horizon the next morning. The crew woke with complaints of headaches and aches as they got to work.
They were about to weigh anchor by the time you finally found the courage to walk forward, catching Hongo with a look right before he raised the ladder.
He stared for a second and then gestured you to board.
It was a strange feeling to step onto the Red Force. The gangplank creaked softly beneath your boots and the ship rose and fell beneath you with the easy rhythm of the sea. For years she had existed as something distant, spoken about in stories and rumours across countless ports. Yet the deck felt solid beneath your feet. The tarred ropes smelled no different from those of any other vessel. No monsters waited beyond the railings. Just a few curious glances and shouted greetings as the wind swelled her sails.
“He’s downstairs,” Hongo said. “Drank more than usual so he’s still nursing a hangover if you want to see him.”
You looked toward the ship’s doctors. “With how much you lot drink, I’m honestly surprised you don’t have a cure already.”
He smiled. “Maybe I do but I simply enjoy the peace in the mornings. Do you want a tour?”
It wasn’t as though you had anything better to do although it did catch you off guard just how unsurprised the Red Hair Pirates seemed to be about your arrival. Not one of them even mentioned your arrival as the wind caught her sails.
Not even Beckman who gave you a simple nod.
The Red Force was kept in beautiful condition. She was evidently loved and no room felt neglected as you followed Hongo through her passages.
Hongo walked you through the galley, the infirmary, the stores, and everywhere else you might need aboard. You memorised the route as best you could, making note of scuffed boards and chips in the wood rather than considering the ship as anything more. It was easier to focus on that, you realised.
Hongo stopped at a door at the end of a passage that led through the quarters and he pushed it open with casual ease.
“This one’s yours.”
You frowned at the way he said it before stepping inside.
A warm, clean room waited beyond the doorway. Sunlight spilled through the small window, stirring the pale curtains where the sea breeze caught them. A narrow bed sat against one wall with blankets folded neatly across the end while an empty chest waited beside a small desk untouched by clutter. Nothing looked lived in. Nothing looked abandoned either. The room carried the strange feeling of something prepared and patiently waiting.
Guest quarters maybe? Though that hardly made sense and this didn’t look like a spare room, briefly swept out when you stepped aboard. They wouldn’t have had time for that.
There was an explanation that made sense though not one you fully grappled with.
“How long has this been here?” you asked.
“Couple months now. Captain wanted it ready if you ever changed your mind.”
You tried not to let it show just how much that made your stomach twist. He’d prepared a room on his ship in case you joined?
Still, you tried to ignore the topic for a little longer by returning to the deck after leaving your bag. You found an opportunity to lean against one of the cannons, talking to Yasopp about nothing of importance while you watched the island fade behind you.
The door onto deck opened and Shanks stepped out, dishevelled and hiding his eyes from the sun.
Naturally his crew all shouted at once in response to his obvious headache and he winced visually, which only made the others laugh harder. You couldn’t help but smile, chuckling softly at their torment.
He spun at the sound, grin disappearing at once.
Your heart lodged in your throat as you stared, not certain what you should say.
“You’re here?”
Well, he didn’t have to sound so surprised.
“Have been for the whole morning,” you said, your voice quieter than you meant for it to be. “But I thought I should let you get your beauty sleep.”
He chuckled as he walked over, smile gentler than you’d ever seen it before. His eyes glinted with barely concealed excitement as he approached. “Did somebody show you around? To your room?”
“You set that up a while ago,” you said. “Very confident.”
“Hopeful,” he clarified. “How long are you staying for?”
You hesitated before you answered. If you really wanted to, you could disappear the next time you found yourself at an island. But something about that room sitting and waiting for you made leaving feel far less appealing than it ever had before.
“I haven’t decided yet,” you settled on saying.
“That’s fine. When you do leave, just tell me before you go.”
“I will,” you promised.
How many years had passed since you made that promise now? You thought back on it, trying to remember while you swirled the drink in your hand, Shanks’ hand still resting on your hip where it belonged.
“Lost in thought?” he asked.
“Lost in memories,” you corrected with a small smile.
“Oh?” He leaned in close and pressed a kiss right behind your ear in the way that always made you laugh. “Which ones?”
“Ancient ones. I realised that I’m still waiting for you to get bored of me so I can run away.” You took a sip of your drink and tilted your head toward him. “You getting there yet?”
He laughed proudly. “Nowhere close. I should probably be more careful though. Think you’d sooner shoot me than run away now.”
You chuckled in agreement and leaned in to kiss him, slow and lazy as ever. “Maybe. I’m no longer much of a runner.”
Chapter 6: Fuel for your dream is like Wind in your sails.
Word Count:
Contents: Luffy X Traumatised!DevilFruitUser!Reader. Long&SlowBurn. Fluff. Angst. Eventual Romance&Smut. Strawhat Crew X Reader. SPOILER WARNINGS. Character Building&Growth. Long Read, Several Chapters.
Content Warning: Mention of Abuse. Brutal+Violent scenes targeted towards and against reader. Traumatic Events. Death of close ones. (Let me know if I’ve missed any!)
Summary: From being Ace’s right hand girl, to meeting Monkey ‘D Luffy for the first time in Alabasta, Then watching everything that was once important to you vanish mercilessly infront of you. You find yourself on a strange journey you never expected standing alongside none other than Ace’s brother.
Chapter Summary: Rayleigh is forced to accept a new kind of training, one that was never meant for you or Luffy. A dream emerges with no sight of fuel, anxiety growing as you spend the final day on the island.
RAYLEIGHS POV
The days seemed to blend together. Wake up, Train, Fail, Sleep. Or at least attempt to. The routine repeated itself so many times that the stargazer stopped counting the days entirely. Rayleigh would arrive each morning just as the stars disappeared.
"Morning."
"Morning."
Then the same lesson would begin.
"Hit me." The answer never changed.
Miss. Miss. Miss.
"Again." The word had become more familiar than her own name.
At first she had treated the training like a challenge, Something to overcome, Something to solve. Every night she sat by the fire creating new plans, New attacks, New combinations, New ways to catch the old pirate off guard. Every morning Rayleigh dismantled them effortlessly.
By the second month she stopped creating plans.
By the third she stopped believing there was a solution.
The island itself had begun to feel different now, Colder, Larger, Emptier. The silence that once felt peaceful now felt suffocating, Even the stars seemed quieter.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the island, Luffy wasn't doing much better. The boy still trained, Still ate, a decreasing amount. Still fought, with weakening haki. But the energy that normally surrounded him had dulled. Stories ended halfway through. Conversations were held with nobody. Several times Rayleigh caught him talking before remembering he was alone.
One afternoon Rayleigh watched Luffy launch himself at a target, a simple exercise, One the boy had mastered months ago. Luffy missed, entirely, his fist flew right past the target as it barely dodged with a single step. The beast itself was thrown back by the way the boy had missed. Although enemies a few of the abnormally sized beasts had become to enjoy the fights that were used as training.
The old pirate frowned, Luffy frowned harder. "Again."
By the fourth month both had started going backwards, Not physically, Mentally, Emotionally. The confidence they'd built over two years seemed thinner somehow, as though something fundamental had been removed.
Neither complained. Neither understood what was happening. Neither realised the other was experiencing the exact same thing. Rayleigh did. And every day he became more concerned.
The fifth month was when Rayleigh stopped believing the problem would fix itself.
The old pirate sat alone overlooking the ocean. Watching the waves crash against the rocks. Thinking. What was he doing wrong?
He had trained pirates before, Many pirates, Strong pirates, Weak pirates, Idiots, Geniuses, People who listened, People who didn't.
Never once had he watched a student move backwards.
The stargazer should have improved, Instead she had become hesitant, Distracted, Exhausted.
Luffy should have improved, Instead he had become reckless, Impatient, Unfocused.
The separation was supposed to force independence. Instead it was breaking something.
Rayleigh found himself replaying every lesson he had taught, Every decision he had thought, Every conversation he had spoken, Searching for the mistake. Where was it, where was the mistake, what is causing this situation.. this mistake.
One evening he watched the stargazer swing, Miss. Again, Miss, Again, Miss. The frustration on her face looked familiar. Not because she'd shown it before, but because Roger had, years ago. Whenever he couldn't understand something. The thought made Rayleigh pause.
Roger, the old pirate, closed his eyes. Remembering, Remembering stories, Remembering laughter.
Remembering a drunken captain staring up at the stars and speaking about bonds nobody could explain. "The strongest bonds aren't made by blood, Rayleigh."
The words echoed through his memory, Shared dreams, Shared pain, Shared freedom.
Rayleigh opened his eyes. A long sigh escaped him. "No." The answer felt ridiculous, impossible. Yet every piece of evidence pointed towards it.
Maybe, just maybe the problem wasn't the training. The problem wasn't them. The problem… Might be him. For months he had tried teaching them how to stand alone. How to fight alone. How to live alone.
What if that was the wrong lesson? The thought lingered, refusing to disappear. The next morning Rayleigh made a decision.
One final test. If Roger was wrong, everything would continue as normal. If Roger was right… The old pirate wasn't entirely sure what he would do.
"Stargazer."
The girl looked up from the fire, eyes empty. The stars that used to fill her eyes hidden away.
“Meet me at the old training ground by noon.” Was all he said as he already started to walk back in the same direction he did almost every second night.
"Luffy."
The boy stopped mid bite, as he chewed his breakfast.
"Meet me at the old training ground after you finish your meal."
The old training ground hadn't changed, The same dirt, The same trees, The same broken rocks from countless fights. Only the people standing within it felt different.
Luffy arrived first. He had stopped before the meat stock finished, extremely unlike him as if he was anticipating something. Immediately sitting on the ground. Immediately complaining, immediately asking where his lunch was hiding. Rayleigh found the behaviour strangely reassuring.
Several minutes later another presence entered the clearing. The stargazer. The moment she stepped into the clearing, Luffy's head snapped towards her. The same happened in reverse. Neither seemed surprised to see the other. Neither said much.
"Hey."
"Hey."
That was it. Yet something shifted. Immediately. The old pirate noticed it before either of them. The tension that had become normal over the past months vanished. The exhaustion seemed lighter. The atmosphere itself felt different. More alive.
The realization made Rayleigh uncomfortable. "Right." The old pirate stood. Crossing his arms. "Hit me."
Both groaned. Simultaneously. Rayleigh ignored it. Luffy moved first, A punch. Rayleigh stepped aside. The stargazer followed, A kick. Rayleigh leaned backwards.
Miss. Miss. Just like always. Good. The old pirate relaxed slightly. Perhaps he had been overthinking things. Luffy attacked again. The stargazer moved at the same time. Something felt different. Not stronger. Not faster. Different. The air around him tightened. Not enough to hurt. Not enough to restrict him. just enough to notice. A strange pressure wrapped around his chest. His next breath caught unexpectedly. For the first time in years, Rayleigh found himself aware of his own breathing.
Rayleigh stepped left to avoid Luffy. Only to realise the stargazer had already adjusted. He shifted backwards. Luffy changed direction. His eyes narrowed. The movements weren't faster. They weren't stronger. Yet somehow every adjustment he made was already being answered. Not individually. Together. For a brief moment, the old pirate found himself reacting. Not predicting. Reacting. A fist brushed his shoulder. Rayleigh froze. Silence.
The strange pressure vanished. Just as suddenly as it had appeared. His lungs expanded fully once again. The sensation gone before he could properly understand it.
Luffy blinked. The stargazer blinked. Rayleigh slowly lowered his gaze. The fabric of his shirt had shifted. A faint mark sat on his shoulder. The two younger pirates looked at each other. Then back at him.
"...Did we get him?" The old pirate said nothing. "Rayleigh?" Concern began to creep onto both of their faces. Why wasn't he saying anything?
Because for the first time in months, he wasn't thinking about the attack. He was thinking about everything that came before it. The sleepless nights. The frustration. The failed lessons. The regression. The silence.
How the stars that sparkled in your eyes had slowly disappeared with each month.
How Luffy’s goal of becoming the king of the pirates was said out loud less and less. The way Rayleigh felt as both of their sparks slowly disintegrated in front of him and had caused him to rethink everything. And how quickly it had reappeared the moment they saw each other. The moment they stood beside one another. The moment the island felt alive again. His mind replayed the exchange. Again. And again. And again. Searching for the answer. The attacks hadn't changed. The speed hadn't changed. The strength hadn't changed. So what did?
The pressure against his lungs returned to his thoughts. That impossible feeling. Like standing before a creature far larger than himself. Like something unseen had briefly wrapped itself around the clearing. Watching. Waiting. Rayleigh frowned, no, that wasn't possible. The air couldn't do that. The atmosphere itself couldn't change. There was no Haki technique he knew capable of creating such a sensation. No Devil Fruit ability either. Yet he had felt it.
The old pirate stared at the two confused faces standing before him. A childish idiot. And a stargazer who still looked half asleep. Neither seemed aware that anything unusual had happened. Which somehow made it even more unsettling.
For months Rayleigh had searched for an answer. A flaw in their technique, a weakness in their Haki, a mistake in their training. There wasn't one. The answer had been standing in front of him the entire time. The lesson had never belonged to them. It belonged to him.
By the time Rayleigh had snapped out of his thoughts Luffy was already celebrating. Running around the clearing shouting about finally hitting the old man. He moved his gaze to you. The stargazer looked confused. As if she couldn't understand why Rayleigh had gone silent, concern still written all over her face. Neither understood. Rayleigh smiled, A genuine smile, The first in months.
"You two are impossible." The statement only confused them more. But made the concern distant itself. Not worried.. still confused.
Roger's voice echoed through his memory. "The strongest bonds aren't made by blood, Rayleigh." Shared dreams, Shared pain, Shared freedom. For years Rayleigh had assumed Roger was speaking philosophically. Like he often did after too much sake. Now he wondered if the old fool had understood something long before him. The old pirate looked between the two of them.
One swinging around trees, yelling in celebration, with a massive grin over his face. The other with a small closed smile pretending to not be watching him. Months apart, Both became weaker, One hour together, Everything returned. No. Roger wasn't entirely right. The strongest bonds weren't forged by blood. But they also weren't forged by freedom, Or dreams, Or pain, Those things only lit the fire. Trust was what kept it burning.
A laugh escaped Rayleigh. Small and Quiet, Almost disbelieving. For months he had tried teaching them how to stand alone. Only to discover their greatest strength came from standing together. "You stubborn old fool." The words escaped before he could stop them.
Luffy looked around. "Who?"
Rayleigh laughed. "An old friend."
END OF RAYLEIGHS POV
The separation ended that day. Neither you nor Luffy fully understood why. Rayleigh never explained. The old pirate simply stopped sending either of you away. And strangely… That was enough. The following weeks felt different. Lighter. Sleep returned, Not immediately, Not perfectly, But it returned. The nights that had once stretched endlessly now disappeared in the blink of an eye. You found yourself waking up rested again. Luffy stopped waking during the night. Stopped wandering around camp. Stopped staring into the forest as if he'd forgotten something important. The campfire returned too. Not the fire itself. The conversations. The endless stories. The pointless arguments. The races through the forest. The complaints. The laughter. The sparkle in your eyes grew with each night, the stars eventually shining as bright as before, glistening. Luffy’s dream he stopped hiding, saying it after every victory, saying it at least once throughout the campfire stories. His spirits had lifted. The island felt alive again. Training improved almost immediately. Not because either of you suddenly became stronger. Because you could focus again.
One afternoon Rayleigh watched as the two of you sparred. Luffy launched himself forward. You stepped aside. Grabbed his arm. Used his momentum against him. THUD! Luffy crashed into the dirt. The silence lasted exactly one second.
"You cheated."
You stared at him. "No."
"Yeah."
"No."
"Yeah."
Rayleigh sighed. The argument continued for another twenty minutes. The old pirate smiled into his tea. For the first time in months. Everything felt normal. The weeks passed. Then months. Time slipped through their fingers once again. The seasons changed. Storms came and went. The monsters became easier. The training became harder. The island slowly stopped feeling like a place they had been sent. And started feeling like home again.
One morning Rayleigh found himself watching the two of them from a distance. Neither noticed him. Both too busy arguing over breakfast. The old pirate smiled. Roger would've liked this.
The announcement came without warning. Which was exactly how Rayleigh liked doing things. The three of you sat around the campfire. The same campfire. The same clearing. The same island. The only difference was the people sitting around it.
"You've finished." The words were so casual that neither of you reacted.
Luffy continued eating. You continued staring into the fire. A moment passed. Then another.
Luffy blinked. "Huh?"
Rayleigh laughed. "Your training." The old pirate gestured between the two of you. ”It's finished."
The silence that followed felt strange. For years everything had revolved around training. Getting stronger, Learning, Surviving. Now there was nothing left. No next lesson, No next monster, No next goal. The realization settled heavily around the campfire.
"You mean..." Luffy sat up. "We're going back?"
Rayleigh smiled. “You're going home."
You couldn't help but grin at Luffy's reaction, even though your stomach was twisting itself into knots. "You're going home." The words replayed in your mind. Home. The conversation continued around the campfire. Luffy was already celebrating. Rayleigh was smiling into his tea. The atmosphere was warm, happy. You should have been happy too, instead, anxiety began to crawl beneath your skin. You forced yourself to smile, forced yourself to laugh, forced yourself to stay present. But eventually it became too much. Quietly, you excused yourself, Neither of them stopped you. You weren't sure if they hadn't noticed… Or if they had.
Your feet carried you towards the beach without thinking. The same beach where you had first arrived two years ago. The same beach where your training had begun. You lowered yourself onto the sand. Pulling your knees against your chest. Wrapping your arms tightly around trying to ground yourself. The waves rolled in and out, steady and calm. Unlike your thoughts.
Where was your home? Why weren't you happy? You had just completed two years of training. You had survived, You had grown stronger, You should have felt proud, Instead, your chest felt tight, Your breathing felt shallow. Tears burned behind your eyes, You blinked them away, Not here, Not now. That would be stupid.
But what were you supposed to do now? Luffy had somewhere to go. A crew was waiting for him. Friends, No, Family. He had a ship, A dream, A destination, A future.
A tear slipped free despite your efforts. Your voice came out as little more than a whisper. Unable to keep them inside.
"What am I supposed to do?" The words disappeared into the wind. "Where do I even go?" You stared down at the sand. "Even if I wanted to go back to the Whitebeard Pirates..." Your throat tightened. "It wouldn't be the same." The thing that had fueled you was gone. Gone for over two years. Would the crew even still be together? Would there even be a crew left? You laughed bitterly. "I don't have a ship." Another tear. "I don't have a family." Another. "I don't even have a dream." Your hands clenched. "Why don't I have a dream?"
A familiar presence settled next to you. You jumped, quickly wiping your face. Rayleigh sat down beside you as though he'd been invited. His arm rested gently across your shoulders. You leaned into it without thinking. The realization made you huff out a small laugh. Two years ago you would've punched him. "You heard everything, didn't you?" Your voice was quiet.
"Even the things you didn't say." Rayleigh chuckled. The sound was soft, Comforting. For a moment neither of you spoke. The waves filled the silence.
Then Rayleigh spoke again. "You said you don't have a dream." Your smile disappeared instantly. "So tell me." His voice remained calm. "What did?" You frowned. "What fueled it?"
The question hit harder than expected. You opened your mouth, closed it, opened it again. "I..." Nothing came out. Rayleigh waited patiently. "Ace." The answer slipped free before you could stop it. "Ace did." Your gaze dropped. "He was my dream."
"No." The response was immediate, firm and certain. You blinked. "He wasn't."
You stared at him. "He was the reason I kept moving."
"That's different." Rayleigh squeezed your shoulder gently. "A dream is where you're trying to go." His gaze drifted towards the ocean. "Fuel is what helps you get there." The words settled heavily. "Ace wasn't your destination." A small smile appeared. "He was the wind in your sails, so tell me, where were you sailing too?”
You swallowed hard. "I..." Rayleigh remained silent. Waiting for you to answer his previous question.
"When I was younger..." Your voice was quiet. Small. “I used to look up to the stars whenever things got bad, because no matter what happened,” You lifted your eyes to the darkening sky. “No matter where I was, they were always there, they always came back.” A shaky breath escaped you. “I used to spend hours looking for one, a special star, a star that would follow me no matter where I went.” Your gaze moved back down to your lap. “A star that I could always see, a star that could guide me, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find one that stayed, they all eventually got replaced and covered with darkness.”
Another sigh escaped you as you let your words free. “There wasn’t one. So.. I wanted to become one. I wanted people to look up and feel something, a star that could guide you no matter where you were.”
You looked back up to Rayleigh leaving a moment of silence as you thought your next words carefully.
“But I think that's changed.” The old pirate raised an eyebrow but remained silent.”I don’t want to just guide people anymore, I don’t want them to look up and only feel.” You felt yourself gulp breaking the sentence. “Something. I want them to feel what I feel right now.” You scanned Rayleigh's face, his eyebrow still raised.
“I want someone who’s scared to look up and feel safe, I want someone who’s lost to feel a path, I want someone who’s alone to feel like they're not.” You laughed softly,
“I want to create and become a star that gives people that same kind of comfort you do.”
For the first time all evening, Rayleigh looked genuinely caught off guard.
You continued before he could interrupt. “Not because it tells people where to go, or what to do, but.. Because it reminds them that wherever they’re going, whoever and whatever they’re up against.. that they’ll be okay, I want to leave behind my own constellation, that tells people they’ll never be alone as long as it shines, and it always will.”
The old pirate was quiet for a long moment. Then a smile slowly appeared beneath his beard. "That's a far better dream than the one you started with, Stargazer."
The squeeze on your shoulder intensified pulling you in closer. Rayleigh sighed.“ You really are one of a kind.” He continued before you could gather up a response.
“Ace fueled your dream, now the fuel has run out.” He paused for a moment as he felt you tense back up. “Fuel can run out, but a dream? A dream can’t.” He paused as he felt your gaze back on him, your eyebrows had furrowed at his words. “A real dream doesn’t change. But fuel?”
Silence followed as you waited in anticipation for him to fill his unfinished sentence. He didn’t, only making your eyebrows furrow more, a small crease lined between them. He watched your expression as your mind was filled with relentless thoughts and questions you didn’t have answers to yet.
His palm raised to his forehead as he sighed. “When was the last time you felt the fuel burn?” He paused as he looked directly at you. A soft and comforting tone returned. “When was the last time you hesitated?”
You could feel your heartbeat start to increase as the intensity in his questions grew. The silence he left between each one not helping your wandering mind. He shifted his gaze out to where the dark sky cut off the sea. His questions make you more and more restless. They were so simple. Why did you have to think so hard? What was he trying to say? Even more questions spiralled through the wind.
“When was the last time you felt yourself hiding your feelings.”
Before you could comprehend any of the other questions you felt yourself pick up on one instantly, having a response. “Tonight” You knew what he meant, you still couldn’t stop the childish response leaving you.
Rayleigh picked up on your surprised expression as he realised you couldn’t hold back the banter. “You call that hiding your feelings?.. I followed you for a reason” a small amused gruff escaped him.
He finally seemed to take a deep breath in, clearly preparing himself for the final question.You felt your whole body tense as he took another breath in, his demeanor instantly shifted, still comforting, still reassuring but serious.
“If you left tonight, what would you miss? What would you look for first?”
You didn’t respond to his question. He didn’t force it either, he simply held you for a while til you managed to completely calm your anxiety. It was still there but you didn’t feel like collapsing in a pool of your own tears anymore.
“If worse comes to worse, I won’t leave til you find your fuel.” His words soothed your thoughts even more.
Eventually returning to the campsite. When you returned you felt a sudden surge of panic. Rayleigh must have felt it rolling off you as he quickly broke the silence. “Oh, I sent Luffy off for some very specific flowers.” Your gaze lifted to Rayleighs.”He won’t be back for a while.”
You couldn’t help but laugh as you realised what Rayleigh meant. Poor Luffy. You rested down on your rock, unnaturally grateful that Luffy wasn’t there. It allowed you to think, without any distractions. You let the questions from earlier replay. One question after another. Many memories resurfaced. The questions finally had an answer, so why were you still confused, why did nothing connect.
“Hey, what's wrong?” Luffy's voice cut through your thoughts, you lifted your site to watch him running quickly over to you. Placing a hand on your curled up knee.
You didn’t realise you had your tears freely flow, You blinked whilst staring at Luffy with almost begging eyes. Please don’t push me, Please don’t push me. I'll collapse again.
"Hungry?" You shook your head. But glad he got the hint.
"Cold?"
A smile appeared on your face. "A little."
The tension instantly left his shoulders. Without hesitation he dropped beside you. Throwing an arm around your shoulders. Pulling you closer. This was new. You had expected him to use your shoulder as a pillow, Not this. His warmth wrapped around you instantly, Comfortable, Safe, Familiar. Within minutes his breathing slowed, Then came the soft snoring. You laughed quietly. The stars above were beautiful. As beautiful as they'd always been. Sleep found you quickly that night. One thing replaying throughout your dreams. ‘If worse comes to worse, I won’t leave til you find your fuel.’
The following morning arrived quicker than expected. You took a deep inhale trying to capture the last air of the island before you stepped onto the smallish boat. The boat cut smoothly through the ocean. The island growing smaller with every passing minute. Luffy stood at the front. Excited as ever. Blabbering about how much his crew must have changed, and how excited he was to show them how strong he had become. You sat closer to the middle. Watching the horizon. Watching the past slowly disappear and the unknown future coming closer and closer.
Rayleigh remained silent. Content simply watching. Then finally. After almost a week. The islands appeared. Sabaody.
The old pirate smiled. "Well." He stood. Brushing off his coat. "This is where I leave you."
Neither of you spoke immediately. The islands grew larger. Closer. More real. The training was over. The waiting was over. The next chapter of your lives sat directly ahead. And for the first time in two years. The future no longer felt distant. It felt close enough to touch.
Let me know how you liked the POVs, the Poll was so close so I have decided I’ll mix in both POVs and dialogue!
Next Chapter ➡️ (link will be provided when it’s posted)
I just absolutely LOVE the way you write Luffy. Sooo 👀 I was wondering if you can write abt him falling in love and then confessing? Thank you so fricking much!!
forever, okay?
— pairings: luffy x fem!reader
— a/n: hii and thank you so much for the request and compliment !! it really does mean a lot, and i hope that i did your request the way you wanted it 🩵 i hope you enjoy .
Luffy can’t exactly remember when his feelings for you changed.
Similar to nearly everyone else on the Sunny, he quite literally told you to join his crew when he first met you on your island.
Usually, you would have said no at such a request, but something about the bright, wide grin on Luffy’s face made you reconsider.
That and his hand tugging yours, urging you to come with him.
Now, of course, he’s never truly been the type to think too much about his feelings. He thinks about food, adventures, his nakama, becoming the King of the Pirates.
Normally not about love.
It’s a word he’s heard Hancock use towards him, followed by Granny Nyon scolding her for being naive about a man. He didn’t pay it mind then.
So why now?
Luffy’s mind hadn’t jumped to love immediately. Nothing was off at first, really.
All he knew was that he liked having you around.
He liked hearing you laugh at Ussop’s exaggerated tales.
He liked sitting beside you during meals, even if you smacked his hand away when he tried stealing from your plate.
He liked following you when the crew stopped at islands for supplies.
He liked the way your eyes would light up whenever Chopper showed you a new medical book.
He liked coming into your room in the middle of the night, waking you up to ask (tell) you to come eat with him.
He liked you.
But Luffy being Luffy, he didn’t think to put an actual title to it.
Not until Robin points it out after dinner one evening.
“Careful, Captain.” There’s a knowing smile on the archaeologist’s face as she observes Luffy. “You’re staring.”
“Huh?” Luffy glances over at her, blinking.
"You've been smiling at her for ten minutes now."
“…I have?”
“You have, Luffy.” There’s an amused tone in her voice as she leans on the railing.
Luffy glances back down at you, There you are, sitting with Franky as he explains one of his new inventions to you, excitement written all over your face as you try it out.
Sure enough, he’s been staring. “Huh.”
After a moment, the ravenette turns to Robin. “Is that weird?”
“Not to me,” She chuckles lightly behind her teacup. “I think it’s rather sweet.”
"Sweet?" Luffy repeats, scratching the back of his head.
"Mm. Though I wonder if you've realized it yourself yet."
"Realized what?"
Robin merely smiles.
"Nothing." She turns on her heel, quietly retreating to the library for the night. “Goodnight, Captain.”
He stares after her for a moment, before shrugging and returning his attention to you. Whatever Robin is talking about, he’s sure he’ll figure it out eventually.
For now, he’s content with watching you smile as Franky gives you instructions, helping you point the device at the sky.
And when you glance up to the upper deck, giving him a small wave and a warm smile, a warmth spreads through his chest.
Weird.
He doesn’t remember that happening a while ago, and it’s getting more and more frequent. But Luffy can’t say he minds it.
So he grins and waves back enthusiastically, nearly falling over the railing in the process.
Your laugh reaches his from below, causing his grin to widen.
He likes that sound, too.
A few days pass. Usually, Luffy wouldn’t dwell too much on something like this, but he can’t shake that weird feeling in his stomach.
But after that conversation, he begins paying attention. And suddenly, he notices much more.
How pretty you look whenever he puts his hat on you.
How fast his heart starts beating when you look at him for too long.
How happy you become when he returns from an island, and the way you reciprocate his tight hugs.
How worried your eyes get when you patch him up,
How he always misses you whenever you’re not near.
It’s… strange.
He’s met all types of people in his journey, and yet…
Nobody has ever made his chest feel all weird and fluttery. Nobody has ever made him want to share his food with them. Nobody has ever made him feel the way you do.
So finally, one evening, as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, he thinks:
Maybe Robin really was talking about something important.
So of course, he goes to find her.
“Robin!”
The archaeologist looks up from her book, a curious look on her face. “Yes, Luffy?”
He closes the library’s door behind him, before practically flopping onto the couch across from her. “Remember that conversation we had the other night? I keep thinking about it.”
She closes her book, setting it aside. As if she already knows where this conversation is leading, she smiles lightly. “Oh? About it, or her?”
“Her.” Luffy admits, his gaze locked onto the ceiling as he rests his arms behind his head. “It’s so weird. Whenever I see her, my chest gets all warm.”
“Mhm.”
“And I like looking at her smile.”
“Mhm.”
“And I miss her when she’s gone, and I never want to stop going on adventures with her!”
A beat passes.
Then, finally:
“I see.”
When Luffy looks over at Robin, there’s the same, knowing smile on her face. “So?”
"Captain… I do believe you've figured it out."
"Figured what out?"
"You've fallen in love."
The room falls silent. Luffy’s mouth snaps shut as he processes her words. He sits on that revelation for a moment, staring blankly at her.
“...Oh.” He blinks. Another pause. “That’s what love is?”
Robin nods. “Usually, yes.”
He sits there for another moment, before a smile breaks out across his face.
“Okay.”
“You seem happy.”
“I am!” He stands, already making his way towards the door. “I’m gonna go tell her. Thanks Robin!”
And with that, he leaves the library, looking for you, the girl who apparently, he’s fallen in love with.
It takes him approximately two minutes to find you. You’re sitting on the deck, leaned back on your hands as you watch the sunset.
"There you are!"
“Hi, Lu.” There’s a soft smile on your lips as you look up at him.
He plops down beside you, mirroring your position.
You shift to him slightly, turning your attention from the horizon. “You okay?”
“I just talked to Robin about you.”
“...About me?” You tilt your head. “And what happened?”
“I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
"Love."
"Love?"
"Yeah!" He nods enthusiastically. "That's what she said it was."
"What?"
"The warm thing in my chest. And missing you. And wanting to go everywhere with you forever."
His grin widens.
“I love you.”
Silence. A seagull caws in the distance. The waves gently lap against the Sunny’s hull.
You blink for a moment, taking in what he just said. “...You what?”
He laughs, and for a second, you lose yourself in that same grin that brought you onto this crew in the first place.
“I really like being around you. And I like hearing you laugh. I like eating with you. I like when you hug me. I think you’re really pretty, like gold. When I become King of the Pirates, I want you there too. And I wanna keep going on adventures with you forever.”
"So…" he tilts his head.
"Stay with me forever, okay?"
Your poor heart.
It stutters deeply, thudding heavily in your chest as you stare at him in disbelief.
“I—” You swallow quickly, before repeating weakly, “Forever?”
He nods happily, his smile not faltering for a second. “Forever.”
His answer is so simple. Like forever is the easiest thing in the world.
Like loving you is the easiest thing in the world.
Before you know it, tears prick at the corners of your eyes. You can’t help but think back to all the times you’ve felt the same way as your captain.
Whenever you felt sad, he’s always been there to cheer you up like no one else could.
Whenever you wanted someone to explore with, he was the first person you thought of.
Whenever something exciting happened, he was the first person you wanted to tell.
Whenever he was in battle, worry gripped your heart like nothing else.
And when he returned with that bright grin on his face, your heart felt lighter.
Perhaps you should've figured it out sooner.
A shaky laugh spills from your lips, and you look away wiping your eyes.
"Luffy…"
"Hm?"
"I love you too."
For a moment, he simply blinks.
Your back is hitting the grass before you can even speak again, and he’s wrapped around you like a giant rubber octopus. “Luffy!”
His arms stretch around you at least twice, a warm laugh drowning out any other thought you might have had.
“That’s awesome.”
You laugh through your tears, doing your best to return his embrace. "I can't breathe."
His grip loosens immediately, arms sliding back into place. Only for him to roll onto his side beside you, still grinning from ear to ear.
For a moment, neither of you say anything. The sky above the Sunny is painted gold and orange, the last rays of sunlight dancing across the waves.
Then—
"So you'll stay with me forever?"
You turn your head toward him. There’s not a hint of doubt or hesitation in his eyes, only an unwavering certainty.
"Yeah, Lu."
His grin somehow widens. "Cool."
Another laugh escapes you. "Cool?"
"Yeah!" He nods. "Now we can keep having adventures together."
satosugu are cheating on each other with you, part two.
part one here!
you knew your nebulous position as the other woman was never going to last. when you’re the affair partner of both people in the same relationship, it’s inevitable that the truth will eventually come out. you just decide to have it happen on your own terms.
you escalate your own behaviour; with suguru, who you mostly have sex with and share the occasional drink, you up your antics. you leave behind lip gloss, you kiss bruises in places he won’t immediately notice, keep your nails sharper to scrape lines down his skin. you moan in his ear as he fucks you and ask, “what would your husband think, if he walked in here right now? watching me take you like i’m the one you’re married to?” just to relish in the way his voice strangles on a heavy groan as he comes.
with satoru, who’s far more interested in the emotional side of things, you devote yourself fully to the role of secret girlfriend. with suguru, you might be a nice, illicit fuck for when his husband’s busy. with satoru? you’re the partner he wishes his husband was. he takes you on elaborate dates, he buys you flowers, he flourishes with every sweet kiss and whispered affirmation. when he calls you late at night, paralysed with fear because he just knows his husband is cheating, you leave suguru in bed to console him from the safety of your bathroom. he can barely look at you when he fucks you, refuses to turn the lights on, then shudders in your arms as you nurture him in the aftermath.
it’s manipulative. you’re halfway in love with them from the thrill alone. you let it build and build, watch as their marriage slowly falls apart from their own actions, and, when it’s all coming to a climax, you arrange a threesome.
in the end, it’s easy. you invite them. suguru tells you happily that his husband’s out of the prefecture that weekend, and he misses you so much, sweetheart. can’t stop thinking about you. satoru tells you his husband is definitely with that homewrecker, so why can’t he spend a weekend with you? they don’t even care about the third, so long as you make sure they’re hot.
then they both show up, and it’s glorious.
after all, aren’t you blameless? it’s suguru that told you he wants something casual, satoru who said he doesn’t mind if you see someone else at the same time, since he’s doing the same. it’s not your fault they’re cheating. it’s not your fault they’ve accidentally fallen for the same woman outside of their marriage. it’s definitely not your fault that you accidentally arranged a threesome with both of them. how could you know? it’s not like suguru’s ever seen you snooping through his apartment. it’s not as if satoru has given you any details about his wayward husband, either.
there’s a moment of silence. of shock. they stare at each other in obvious disbelief while you smile cluelessly. you tell them you “just know they’re going to get along!” and they “have so much in common.” they don’t correct you. no, suguru does something better:
“it’s nice to meet you,” he says, perfectly neutral. “i’m geto suguru. i’ve heard a lot about you.”
satoru looks heartbroken. he looks angry. “gojo satoru,” he replies. “can’t say i’ve heard much about you.”
“looking forward to learning more, i hope.”
“something like that.”
you’re giddy with excitement. how couldn’t you be? they don’t even know. they’re playing some secret, private game between just the two of them, unaware that you know. that you’re a witness to it—better yet, that you’re an orchestrator.
they fight over who kisses you first, and when you goad them into kissing each other, satoru bites suguru so hard his lip splits. suguru growls, pulls him by the hair, and tells him that if he can’t mind his teeth like a good boy, suguru will tie him up so he won’t be able to use his hands, either.
somehow, that’s exactly what happens.
satoru bites and scratches as you all undress, a ball of tightly wound feeling he can’t quite get ahold of. when suguru kisses your neck, satoru tugs at his long hair so hard his neck cracks. after that, well, suguru doesn’t let it slide. he sits you in satoru’s lap and watches satoru bite his way across your tits before pulling his arms behind his back and tying him to the headboard. satoru’s legs follow, winding his calves to his thighs. it says something that satoru doesn’t argue.
“you act like you two know each other,” you say breathily, chest sore from where satoru bit your breasts on the wrong side of too hard, skin pinkening and indented with the shallow divots of his teeth.
satoru groans, watching as suguru pulls you away, situating you in his lap with your back to his chest and your legs spread over his thighs, presented to his husband. “never met the guy,” he says lowly, “and if i have, i don’t recognise him.”
“don’t worry,” suguru croons. “we are going to get very familiar.” his hand caresses down your side as he says it, thumbs rubbing strong circles into your skin.
satoru’s eyes stay fixed on your face.
suguru takes you apart with careful efficiency, teasing you until your pussy flutters with each brush of his fingers against your thighs, your navel, just short of the apex of your thighs. when he finally touches you where you want him, his fingers are long and slow and languid as he spreads you open, fingering you with lazy contentment as he sucks wet kisses down your neck and back. he leaves you straining and whining, makes satoru watch until he’s groaning as if he can feel the phantom touch of suguru’s every caress.
suguru bends you forward until you’re on your hands and knees, head just barely brushing against satoru’s knees. satoru parts his legs further, staring down at you with something close to awe. a little scared, a little sad, and very aroused. suguru crowds your back, bending over your figure and biting the shell of your ear as he slowly, slowly sinks into you.
“my good little wife,” suguru says, loud enough for satoru to hear. satoru chokes on his next breath, bordering on a sob. “should’ve married you, sweetheart. i could keep you like this forever.”
“suguru—“ satoru pants.
his skin is red and raw from his shuffling, his dick rock hard and straining against his black boxers. from the way his chest heaves, his eyes burn red-rimmed with tears, you’d think he’s the one being fucked. when he catches you looking, he lurches forward with a low groan, cut off as the rope tightens around his muscular thighs. he murmurs your name on a strangled groan.
a hand moves, grabbing you by the cheeks and pulling you to look over your shoulder, neck craning at an awkward angle. “ignore him, sweetheart.” suguru whispers in your ear. “eyes on me. he’s not the one fucking you so good, is he?”
“i could be,” satoru growls. “i have. fucked her hard and fast, like a whore. she must be, if she’s willing to fuck you.”
it’s mean, unnecessarily targeted at you when the ire is really directed at his husband. suguru’s eyes crinkle on a smile.
“that’s not a very nice thing to say, is it? she’s always so sweet, so good. maybe you just don’t fuck her right.”
“i’ll show you—“
you stop listening. suguru thrusts so hard and sure, just slow enough to have you craving more, just fast enough to satisfy you. stamina has always been his strong suit, and he fucks you into over sensitivity. his thumb moves, sitting heavy and mean over your clit, rubbing firmly against you with every thrust forward. you fall apart warbling his name, hands reaching backwards to scratch at his thighs. then he fucks you to tears, keeping eye contact with satoru, muttering filth in your ear all the while.
“should knock you up, so you have no choice but to marry me.” he says, watching as satoru’s mouth drops on a whine. “keep you happy and full in my bed, so you never have to leave. you’d be the perfect wife, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”
satoru comes untouched with a breathy whine of your name. your name, as if his husband isn’t right there. as if he hadn’t just watched his husband fuck the girl he’d been playing around with. suguru follows soon after, spilling into you unprotected.
they both stay the night. you share a quiet, almost awkward breakfast, where you play the fool and chatter with your usual enthusiasm. when they leave, it’s at the same time.
you don’t know what happens when they get home. what you do know is that suguru texts you a few days later to come over. satoru asks you out on another date. and, a few weeks later, you fall back into bed with the both of them.
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