➳ summary: How Sanji, Nami, Law, Zoro, Kid, Koby, & Sabo secretly hold your hand.
➳ notes: happy 300, and happy valentine's! 🧡
Sanji
Sanji isn't ashamed of showing affection publicly, so he holds your hand most of the time.
However, he does so in such a way that he considers pretty mild.
Some of the Straw Hats believe otherwise, though.
Notably, Zoro calls his affectionate hand-holding initiatives "shameless" and insults him for his disgraceful public display of affection.
But Sanji can only chuckle to himself as he continues with his gestures—Zoro doesn't know what he's talking about.
This is pretty mild, and it's not at all shameless.
Just how would the swordsman react when he sees how much more physical Sanji gets in private?
Sanji is a sucker for you. He loves getting physically touchy once you show that you're comfortable with it.
Holding your hand is just another way that he shows his affection; he usually shows it through light feathery kisses on the back of your hands and lips, but in public, the safest option is hand-holding.
When you're around people, your fingers are loosely intertwined with his.
When you're alone together, Sanji massages and plays with your fingers gently and intimately. Sensually.
Even then, it doesn't bother you because he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself.
He runs his fingertips across your skin, feeling its texture and seemingly memorizing the way your fingers curve.
He admires your nails as his brain gradually shuts off after a long day of working at the ship.
Sanji doesn't care what you're doing as long as he gets to play with your hands. You can be reading a book or dozing off calmly, and he would continue with his movements.
Some days when he's extremely tired, he falls asleep holding your hand loosely and it makes you feel warm inside. On those occasions, you cuddle up beside him and drift off to sleep as well.
Nami
Nami is secure woman.
That said, hand-holding is just another lovely gesture that you have both grown accustomed to in your relationship.
It's a normal occurrence that doesn't strike any embarrassment or shame.
In all honesty, it's not her favorite romantic gesture, but it's an action socially acceptable enough when you're in public.
Even then, you don't hold hands 24/7.
But it does come in handy when someone attempts to flirt with her.
Yes, Nami can handle herself just fine against creepy people, but sometimes you just have to step in and do something, you know?
One time at a bar with some of the Straw Hats, a guy approached her and started using lame pick-up lines to win her heart.
Nami seems disinterested as usual, but you're head is burning with rage from the other end of the room.
You walk up to them briskly, and you immediately lock your hands with hers.
The dude doesn't get the hint, though. "Siblings?" he asks.
Nami clenches her hands with yours. Her eyes narrow, the hues in them darkening.
Yeah, this guy is stupid.
"Lovers, actually," she corrects.
And just like that, he's gone.
It's a great tactic, one that's funny, effective, and certainly something you would repeatedly do to keep people away from flirting with your girlfriend.
Law
Law is too shy to initiate romantic gestures in front of his friends. Ironically, he's more comfortable with being spotted by strangers in public than his friends or crew.
(It might be because he's always one tease away from ending up a pathetic blushing mess... compared to Penguin and Shachi, at least strangers know how to mind their business.)
Anyway, you don't understand his odd preferences, but you don't question it as long as he displays physical affection. The gestures aren't extreme; they're rather tame, but even the tamest of gestures in anyone's eyes is already the boldest of them in Law's mind.
He holds your hand when he's certain that nobody is around in the Polar Tang, or when the public space is clear of his eavesdropping crewmates.
His tattooed hand holds yours in a loose grip as the other rests on the sheath of his Kikoku over his shoulder, a sign of his relaxed demeanor as you walk side by side.
Law would tighten his grip when you drag him around or when he senses danger nearby.
One time, you were walking around Sabaody Archipelago when crowds of concertgoers swarmed the area and caused a bustling commotion at the grove.
Law's first instinct was to clench his hands with yours and pull you closer to him as strangers among strangers bumped into you after failed attempts to control their budding excitement.
Times like those call for Law's protectiveness, and whenever it happens, he tends to keep you close to him in fear of losing you in the crowd.
It almost happened before when a rival pirate crew raided an island the Heart Pirates were on, and Law was genuinely frightened.
From that day onward, he vowed to always hold your hand in some way.
Zoro
Zoro doesn't do hand-holding.
However, he does it in some way.
For one, if you have to dismount the ship or you're descending from a flight of stairs that can mess with your balance, he would, of course, offer his hand to help.
For two, if you get scared to walk alone at night or at a sketchy island with obstacles that can endanger your life, he would let you hold his hand.
You generally get a pass because it's you. If it were anyone else, he would feel uncomfortable.
When he sees Sanji swooning over a girl, his hands caressing her fingers as she laughs, Zoro notices how much she likes his touches.
The sight made Zoro snort. Frankly, Sanji looks stupid.
However, it gave him an idea to try it with you just once.
Just once.
He doesn't know how to initiate it because he never does these things.
When you want to be physically intimate, you do it through other means.
So as expected, Zoro executes it awkwardly, not until you show a reaction that has your whole face lighting up.
It's a normal day at the Thousand Sunny, with everyone on the crew busying themselves with personal work.
Zoro's resting at the upper deck by Nami's tangerine trees when you sit yourself beside him and lean your head on his shoulder to rest with him.
Zoro takes that opportunity to place his hand on top of yours, which shakes the sleepiness away from your senses and instead brings you energy.
He instantly feels warm inside seeing how happy you look, but he promises to never tell you that.
Kid
Oh, Kid loves to hold your hand, alright.
He realized recently how much better it is to hold you rather than to use his powers in magnetizing whatever metallic garment you're wearing so he could pull you next to him.
He holds your wrist with his metal hand, the size difference driving you insane.
But most of the time, he holds you with his human hand, which is still evidently larger than yours.
It's a sweet act in some way—the hand that represents his humanity is what he uses to hold you.
Anyway, he often drags you around the ship or island while holding your wrist tightly.
Sometimes, you initiate the hand-holding and make a poor attempt to lace your fingers with his.
It's a bit difficult to do since his fingers alone are so much larger than yours, but Kid silently enjoys it.
He likes to see you try, and it's a nice break from the usual way he holds you.
More often than not, he gets made fun of by Killer and his crew for acting so soft around you.
You don't take offense to it because they have made it clear that they were only making fun of their captain, the one who usually puts up a dominant exterior.
Kid wants to punch them for teasing him so badly, but their teasing doesn't stop him from holding hands with you.
Because deep inside, he knows that they don't mean any harm.
Koby
Shy Koby. You can only imagine the amount of time it took him to progress from minimal skinship to holding your hand for extended amounts of time.
Hint: it took him a couple of months.
Part of which is attributed to his shyness, but he also had to make sure that you were okay with it.
The first time it happened drove him insane, to say the least. Although it lasted shortly, feeling your hot skin on his sent a different type of surge through his body.
Sure, Helmeppo hugged him often, and Garp punched him when he misbehaved, but those were different.
Way different.
He wasn't used to it, but it didn't help that he had a crush on you, on top of the circumstance when it happened.
The both of you were cleaning up after Garp's mess at his office, arranging the upturned furniture and binders upon binders of confidential Marine documents.
Koby didn't realize just how close you were to each other when he bent down to help you. At that time, he was focused on cleaning up the office before Garp got back.
Suddenly, you both reached for the same fallen document on the floor, your skin coming into contact.
Your hands froze. Silence came. After a few seconds, you decided to calmly pull away and let Koby do the job, pretending to ignore what just happened.
Koby had to take a deep breath for himself after that encounter.
It escalated soon enough when you began to notice his reactions to your touches. To say that he enjoyed them was an understatement.
As time passed, it was without question when you began to make your interactions more intentional, passing the barrier of accidental physicality and achieving a level of comfort that didn't exist months before.
Eventually, Koby warmed up to the physical contact and could now maintain skinship without mentally malfunctioning every 30 seconds.
Currently, he loves to hold your pinky finger because he thinks it's a cute gesture without being too loudly affectionate, but there are times when he does just hold your hand with fingers intertwined.
At the end of the day, no matter the way he holds your hand, you're just glad that he gets to do so without no longer feeling awkward.
Sabo
When Sabo develops a crush on you, his way to your heart is to make his presence physically known all the damn time.
He initially expresses his interest through his words, but he soon realizes that verbal flirtation isn't enough to express just how much he's into you, so he decides to become intentionally obvious... through physical intimacy.
It's subtle when he does it, but he deems himself a master because it works every single time.
Sabo makes it a goal to stand beside you at any given moment, even moving closer when he realizes that you're comfortable with having him be that close.
It becomes a mutual understanding over time that there is something romantic in your coupled actions, so when he gets the opportunity to initiate skin-to-skin contact, he seizes it before he loses the chance.
He specifically loves to hold your hand because it's a subtle gesture good enough to make your heart flutter.
He does it often when people are around because he wants everyone to see, but doesn't want to at the same time.
(He thinks it's like a game. Also, he enjoys the thrill.)
One thing he does a lot that testifies to that thought is to gently place his hand on top of yours under the dinner table.
Everyone would be eating their meals and involving themselves in conversation, yet you have your hand under Sabo's in a secret act of flirtation.
Sometimes, he would look at you knowingly and start playing with your fingers, causing you to reciprocate and give him your full attention.
Over time, it becomes your favorite way of holding hands with him (not that you do it a lot to begin with)—suddenly, the thrill of people finding out excites you.
...until you were eventually caught by none other than Jiron during dinner.
The little geezer dropped his fork on the ground, so when he bent forward to pick it up, he saw Sabo's hand on top of yours under the table.
He ended up making a commotion over it, and just like that, your little secret was out.
It didn't stop you and him from holding hands, though. If anything, it fueled your physical intimacy even more.
One Piece is a series that rewards conviction, which is something Coby has in spades. He's not strong enough to take on Akainu, but despite being scared shitless he made a decision that fit his resolve, not regretting the fact he was about to die for defying a superior officer.
It's important that Coby is small and powerless in the same way Luffy was small and powerless on the pirate side of things. Yet they didn't let that stop them, and the actions of both changed the course of history forever.
