For @elalmadelmar, who asked for a throwback to One Piece!
Nami has practically lived with Zoro since their freshman year of undergrad. In all that time, she's never seen him bring anyone home.
They met the very first week of their freshman year, Nami majoring in Geography, Meteorology and Climatology with the Natural Sciences department and Zoro majoring in Japanese with the Language and Cultural Studies department. She, being the enterprising sort that likes to think ahead, had marched herself right into her poor undergrad advisor’s office on her very first day on-campus and said, “What would make me an extra-appealing candidate to employers, post graduation?”
“Learning a second language can make you a particularly strong hire, especially with international organizations,” her advisor had told her.
Strolling into Intro to Japanese—101, not 103, which was for heritage speakers and clearly was where Zoro needed to be; no one had told him, but she’s happy to keep him here and mine him for help with homework—Nami had scoped out the biggest, meanest-looking fucker in that room and sought him out like a heat-seeking missile.
Piercings, tattoo sleeve, violently green hair; Zoro was perfect.
“Hello,” she had announced herself, dropping down into the uncomfortable plastic seat beside him all the way in the furthest back row of the lecture hall. “I’m Nami.”
He had looked at her out of the barest corner of his dark eyes and grunted, a true gentleman. Yeah, Nami remembers thinking, he’ll do just fine.
It was a tactic Bellemere had taught her that very first year Nami had entered the foster-care system under her roof. Whenever you’re scared or unsure, find the biggest, toughest, meanest son of a bitch you can find and be their best friend. It was advice that had served her well her whole life.
It’s easy, too easy, for people to fuck with Nami. She’s not very tall, not very strong, and has big tits and good looks. If that weren’t bad enough, she’s loud. She’s opinionated and mouthy and has a catastrophic temper. She has a hard time making genuine connections and men have only ever looked at her for one reason and one reason only.
“Zoro,” the guy had finally admitted after a beat of silence that Nami refused to let deter her.
“Zoro,” Nami had repeated dutifully, committing the name to memory. She handed him her phone. He stared at the marble and gold patterned case like it was going to bite him if he wasn’t careful. “Add yourself,” she demanded, and shoved the device at him such that he’d either have to take it or drop it.
He took it.
“Why,” he said. Said, not asked.
“Because we are going to be friends,” Nami informed him, arching a brow.
Zoro stared at her like she’d grown two heads. Then, he pulled a face—an ew face. Comical. Childish. It was incongruous with the general aura of “don’t fuck with me” he boasted.
“I’m gay,” he’d snapped.
Nami had just blinked, blue-screening entirely. It took her a moment to catch-up. She was wearing a low-cut top and a short skirt and sandals that were a bitch to walk around campus in but that made her look damn good and—
He thought she was hitting on him.
She tapped her nails—pale orange; she’d painted them herself last night while her roommate had complained about the smell—on the old desk. Someone had scribbled over it in pen so hard it had left little grooves behind.
“Great, so am I,” she replied. “Now put your phone number in. Are you any good at Japanese?”
Zoro gave her a look. “Are you asking me because I’m Asian,” he said, dryly—didn’t ask.
“I’m asking because we’re in fucking Japanese 101 and I want to know if my study-buddy is any good at the thing we’ll be studying.”
“Oh.” He put his number in and carefully passed her phone back. “Yeah.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
They’d been fast friends. They always sat together in class, Nami always brought him a coffee when she stopped for Starbucks, and sometimes he even went out to parties with her, whether they were at clubs that didn’t care to check IDs or at the Greek Life houses on Fraternity Row. He hated the frat parties the most, but he could drink like a fucking horse, and they quickly developed a bit where they pretended not to know each other and engaged the other in loud, public drinking competitions; everyone always bet on Zoro and no matter who won—sometimes it was Nami, sometimes it was Zoro—they split the winnings.
When her roommate, Alvida, was intolerable and brought the worst, sleaziest, creepiest, most disrespectful guys over without even giving Nami a warning, she went to Zoro’s dorm—a double he shared with a kind and bubbly engineering major named Usopp—and she slept in his bed while he slept on the floor.
When Alvida found out Nami was a lesbian and started harassing her, she stopped letting Zoro sleep on the floor and they shared his extra-long twin for the rest of the Fall and the Spring semesters. When she cried (because she was anxious, because she was lonely, because her loans are high and she needs to take out more and more each term just to afford her books and her software and her shitty dorm she can’t even sleep in because her roommate is a fucking homophobe that thinks Nami is secretly into her) Zoro never called attention to it, just held her and kept her from exploding completely.
She was distraught when he dropped out after their freshman year. Not distraught—she was livid.
He was her fucking person. He didn’t get to leave.
“My friend’s brother has a place for rent. Two bed, one bath. About twenty minutes away from campus by bus, like fifteen on bike. There’s a gym, around the corner,” he said when she had finally stopped scream-sobbing at him.
“A gym,” Nami had repeated, heaving for breath and face wet and red with tears. He was leaving her and he wasn’t allowed to do that. Not to her. And he's talking about a gym?
Zoro blushed. “A gym,” he said. “Martial arts.” Quieter, he said, “Kendo. There’s an opening for an instructor? I’m going to apply. For that... and the place.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I need a roommate.”
“Oh.” She buried her face in her hands, feeling all the fight drain out of her body. “Why didn’t you start with that?”
So they moved in together the summer that Zoro dropped out of his program and started working full-time at the gym. Their rhythms stayed the same—Nami studies while Zoro lifts weights, she brings him Starbucks if she gets herself one, they watch shitty movies and eat dinner on their secondhand couch, they go out to parties and race each other to drunken oblivion.
And in all that time, she’s never seen him bring anyone home. Not to his dorm, not to this place—their place.
But, as she gets home today and kicks off her shoes with violence, trudging heavily up the stairs to their unit, she hears voices.
It’s four-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon. Who the fuck is here but Zoro?
There’s a guy in the kitchen—blonde and pretty, sort of twink-ish. He’s standing at their stove, prodding at something that smells fucking amazing with their shitty Ikea spatula. Zoro sees her, standing there and staring at this strange creature in their kitchen, doing incredible things to their cookware.
Zoro turns tomato red from the tips of his pierced ears to the bottom of his feet, bare on the linoleum floor.
Nami grins.
“Hi!” She chirps. The twink startles. “My name is Nami and I’m Zoro’s best friend.” Zoro thunks his head down onto the countertop and makes a noise like he’s dying. Nami only grins wider, so wide it starts to hurt. “Tell me everything about yourself.”
