Chapter Text
Luffy wakes up groggy. Nami is bent over the bed, her head pillowed in her arms. The braid Zoro put in her hair is barely holding on. Zoro is asleep sitting against the wall, his swords propped up against his shoulder. He doesn't remember how he got here. His mouth tastes bad. Maybe he ate some bad meat? They’re clearly in the infirmary.
He reaches out to run his hand through Nami's hair and she shoots up, knocking his hand away.
She blinks. "You're awake."
"I'm awake!" He agrees easily. "What happened to the feast?"
Nami's face falls and she looks away, worrying at her lip. He looks around and catches Zoro’s eye, now open. There's a bandage stuck on either side of his cheeks. Nami has her legs tucked under her, but he can see white wrappings around her feet. His hat is sitting on the bed, flowers half crushed.
He reaches for her again and she sits further up, turning towards the door. "I should probably get Chopper and tell him you're awake—"
She cuts herself off when he grabs her wrist but keeps her back to him.
"Sorry, Nami. I dunno what I did but I must have ruined our date, right?" He chuckles sheepishly.
Nami jolts, facing him and tangling their fingers together. "No! No. You didn't. I did. I mean, I was the one who suggested it and…”
He squeezes her hand as she trails off. Zoro still doesn’t say anything but Luffy sees he way he watches the door, both vigilant and avoidant. This won’t do.
He sits up and tugs Nami up out of her bedside vigil, ignoring her halfhearted protests with practiced ease. He pulls her into his lap and threads his fingers into her hair, combing out the braid as gentle as he can manage.
“Oi, I worked hard on that!”
Luffy sticks his tongue out at Zoro without looking away from his task. “Then Zoro can redo it later.”
Nami laughs, a little watery, pulling her legs up to her chest. He reaches around her and pulls out two flowers from the brim of his hat, only a little wilted. Luffy tucks one behind her ear, her hair once again cascading in waves down her back. He tucks the other behind Zoro’s ear, for good measure.
She runs her fingers over the petals. “I should have noticed they were being so weird. The guy at the exchange and the clothing store ladies. They were so weird and I didn’t notice. I’m sorry.”
He catches Zoro’s eye again before he returns to watching the door and Luffy still doesn’t know what exactly happened. But he thinks he knows the important part. “So Nami broke us out, right?”
“But we wouldn’t have been there in the first place if I wasn’t just thinking about money and—”
“Thank you, Nami!”
She huffs and turns around to face him. Her face looks angry but her eyes are wet as she squishes his cheeks between her palms. “You are so stupid.”
He’s smiling as she kisses him.
“Is Luffy awake yet—Ah!” Chopper cuts himself off with a squeak as he opens the door. “Congratulations, sorry for interrupting but I really should examine him!”
Nami scoots off the bed with a bright red face and Luffy just laughs as Chopper bustles about.
He's checking the wrappings on Nami's feet when Zoro pipes up, "Congratulations for what?"
Chopper squeaks again and his hooves clatter together as he flutters them anxiously. "For getting together…? I've been rooting for you for a while and Usopp considered putting together a betting pool, but it would feel wrong without Nami. Oh! And Sanji might grumble about it but he will be happy for you guys. Franky had mentioned something about…"
He trails off as the three of them stare at him. Nami puts her head down on the mattress with a groan, turned so the flower doesn't get crushed. Zoro puts his face in his palm, the tips of his ears flushed.
Luffy just bursts out laughing.
"Why are you laughing at me?!"
Nami groans louder into the cot and Luffy, still giggling, runs his fingers through her hair, "Nami, Nami, Nami, when did we get together? I can’t remember and I know Zoro doesn’t remember either."
Instead of responding, she flips him off, her face cherry red.
Chopper looks between the three of them, utterly baffled. "What do you mean?"
"Well," Luffy draws out, rocking in place. "I don't remember when it was but we were sailing and I was keeping Zoro company on watch and Nami came and joined us and we were just doing our usual thing and then I decided to kiss them and then we got together! It was a while back though…"
He blinks at them before squeaking once more, "What! Why didn't you tell anyone?"
Luffy tilts his head. "You guys didn't know?"
"You never acted any different!"
Nami makes a sound like a boiling tea kettle and he laughs again. "Why would we act different?"
Chopper throws his hooves up in exasperation and putters about the infirmary, pulling out bandages and other weird trinkets. "I don't know! Luffy—stay still, I want to make sure all of that drug is out of your system."
"Drug?" He questions, but he doesn't get an answer as Chopper does weird things like shine lights in his face and press cold metal to his chest. He struggles not to fidget under the scrutiny, still petting Nami with his free hand.
"It seems like you're in the clear, though I'll want to check back tomorrow to see how the sea stone affected your resistance and metabolism.”
Luffy whoops with the all clear, earning him a smack on the thigh for being too loud. "Thanks, Chopper, you're the best! Are Nami and Zoro all clear too?"
"Ah yeah they should be—Wait do I need to give you guys literature on safe—"
Zoro cuts him off by standing up abruptly, his expression carefully neutral and his cheeks flushed. "Okay, thanks Chopper."
Nami moves to stand up and Luffy stops her. "Wait, your feet are hurt right? I'll carry you!"
"Luffy, if you throw me over your shoulder, I will only take us to boring islands from here on out."
“I wasn’t gonna! Please take us to cool islands!”
She glares at him but clambors onto his back when he offers. Zoro leaves first, avoiding eye contact and heading towards the gym. He frowns at his back but hikes Nami up and starts for the girls’ room.
The first touches of dawn light are cresting over the horizon and the Sunny is quiet. Sanji will probably be starting breakfast soon and the rest of the ship will come alive with it, but for once Luffy is not thinking about how many slices of bacon he will manage to steal.
Nami is quiet on his back. She doesn’t yell at him when he opens the door with a kick. She doesn’t say anything even though Luffy remembered to take his sandals off in the entryway this time. He would almost think she fell asleep if not for the grip she has around his shoulders.
He drops her onto her bed and she doesn’t even complain about the bounce, just pulls her legs up to her chest like she did in the infirmary.
She does yelp when he flicks her on the forehead though.
“What was that for!?”
“Nami’s being stupid.”
“Oh and you think you get to call me stupid?”
“Yup! Nami is really, really smart but that doesn’t mean she knows everything and that’s okay. It’s okay. We’re all alright, Chopper said so.”
She picks at the wrappings around her ankle. “You were bolted to the floor, Luffy. Zoro was in a muzzle.”
Luffy can’t help but laugh. “They muzzled him? That’s so funny!”
“It wasn’t—” She glares at him, biting the inside of her cheek. “I’m pretty sure he broke someone’s arm with his teeth.”
He plops down on the bed next to her, grabbing her hand. “That’s so cool. Nami’s cool too, for getting us out.”
She turns, burying her head into his shoulder, and he pulls them both back, laid out on top of the covers. He kisses her on the forehead, right where he flicked her, and wraps his arms around her. “I’ll say it as many times as I need to for Nami to stop being stupid. Thank you.”
She squeezes him, hands gripping the back of his shirt. “Thank you.” And then, mumbling into his chest, “I love you.”
He laughs and threads his fingers through her hair, “I love you too.”
Later, when Sanji calls for breakfast and Luffy scrambles out of the room, she yells at him about drooling on her pillow and all he can do is smile.
Zoro is being weird. The towering form of Felic is slowly disappearing behind them and most everyone is out on deck, enjoying the spring weather before they leave Bright Island’s stable zone. Zoro, however, can’t seem to decide whether he wants to work out on deck or in the crow’s nest, climbing down the ladder with his weights over his shoulder doing a few reps before hauling them back up and presumably doing the same.
Rinse and repeat.
He disappears into the crow's nest once more and Luffy bounds up the ladder before the trapdoor can finish closing.
"Is Zoro doing some sort of climbing exercise?"
Zoro pauses mid squat at his question, mulling it over for a moment before finishing out the rep and racking the bar. He doesn’t look at Luffy as he answers. “No. Just keeping an eye on everything.”
Luffy hums and drapes himself over Zoro’s back, sweaty and overheated from his workout. Zoro doesn’t even grumble at him, just accepts it. He pokes his cheek, avoiding the bandage still plastered on.
From the muzzle, he realizes. He had laughed at the image earlier with Nami. He doesn’t now.
Part of him wants to get Jinbe to turn the Sunny around, to beat the people who had dared to do that into the ground. He doesn’t.
There’s something more important in the here and now he needs to attend to.
He moves his finger from Zoro’s cheek to tracing idle patterns on his shoulder, full of tension. “We’re okay.”
A sigh. “I know.”
“Nami’s okay and I’m okay too.”
Another sigh. “I know.”
“And,” Luffy draws the word out, pressing his finger deeper into Zoro’s skin like he can tattoo it into his flesh and Zoro will remember he doesn’t have to carry it alone, “Our crewmates are okay. Plus they’re strong. Brook’s cool ghost power and Robin’s eyes would have found us super quickly and those guys would have been no match for Usopp and Sanji! Though Sanji might’ve had trouble with the singer lady… Anyways, then Jinbe could have flooded the tunnels behind us and Franky would blast us and the Sunny away from there and Chopper would make everyone okay in the end.”
Zoro doesn’t respond.
“They’re strong and they have our backs, always.”
“I know,” He sighs, the tension draining from his shoulder. “Are you gonna keep drawing dicks on me?”
Luffy laughs and dances away before Zoro can grab at him, shouting “You’re it!” as he leaps down the ladder onto the lawn.
Later, after everyone briefly gets roped into their game of tag (until Brook falls overboard and Sanji has to fish him out), after a rowdy dinner briefly interrupted by a freak hailstorm, after Jinbe succumbs to Chopper’s puppy dog eyes and tells some stories, after a night of the Strawhats being the Strawhats, Luffy finds Nami sitting at her cartography desk with Zoro napping up against the side. The flowers are still tucked behind their ears.
His heart swells and he bounds over, careful not to crash into Nami’s desk. “Hey Nami, are you almost done with that?”
She holds up a finger in her face, writes some more numbers down, and then puts her pen down. “I am now. I was planning on just going to bed though, I have third watch tonight.”
He pouts and she rolls her eyes at him pushing her glasses up into her hair. “Only for a little bit. What did you want?”
Zoro, never as asleep as he seems, opens his eye and looks up at them, eyebrow arched questioningly.
Luffy pulls them both to their feet and takes out the tone dial he got from Brook and Usopp. The sounds of Brook’s violin fill the aquarium bar and he grins. “Will you guys dance with me?”
They aren't wearing fancy clothes. Nami's hair is in a messy bun with her glasses on top. Zoro's face has a line on it from where he was pressed against the desk leg. The flowers still in Luffy's hat are wilted and missing petals.
Maneuvering the three of them in a dance is awkward, more swaying than dancing. They all step on one another’s feet a little and they laugh into each other every time they do.
The song repeating goes unnoticed, caught up in their own world.
It’s perfect.