Sin título

A pleasant breeze filled the sails of a frigate far away, chasing the clouds across the sky and bringing a whiff of something sweet and flowery. The sea twinkled in cerulean blue, bright little light kittens jumping from one cresting wave to the other engaged in a never-ending game.

And Nami ran for her life.

The shouts of pursuit mixed with the sharp tap-tap-tap of her sandals hitting the cobblestones and the occasional scream as a well-aimed lightning bolt hit its target.

She dodged hanging laundry and open shutters, weaving through narrow alleys and ginnels barely wide enough for a cat. Terracotta roofs leaned in overhead, casting deep shadows that turned into blinding light when she burst out onto a wider street or a square. Church bells rang overhead; not in warning, but because it was noon and they had rang at noon for a hundred years and would not stop for something so petty as a little chase through town.

She ran, and ran, and ran, and harangued her companion who, impressively enough, managed to keep up with her pace.

“We wouldn’t be here if someone hadn’t alerted the whole port town at seven in the morning!”

“Blame you own captain! Or better yet, teach him to read!” Trafalgar dodged a bullet and slashed aimlessly behind him, the toppling houses creating a makeshift barrier and buying them a few moments. “I explicitly said -and wrote, just to make that abundantly clear- that we were supposed to start at seven in the evening!”

Nami swore under her breath at the combined effort of running, balancing the power of her Clima-Tact and trying to figure out the microclimates at once.

She really needed to up her cardio.

“Fine, I’ll blame Luffy for the flares and the foghorn. But I will blame you for the regatta.”

Trafalgar threw up his hands in exasperation. “Here I just try to do something nice for you—” they skidded around a corner, coming out on the high street.

It was a picture of serene summer stillness. Colourful bunting hang between whitewashed houses, covered in honeysuckle and wisteria and roses. Parents were leaning out over intricately carved windowsills painted in all the colours of the rainbow, calling for their children to come home to dinner, while the youth, in that liminal space between childhood freedom and adult responsibility, converged around the few remaining market stalls to tease out the complexities of ‘does she like me’ or ‘will he notice me if I do this’.

And down through this all, Nami and Trafalgar Law tore, like a couple of mad dogs. Children scattered, youth whooped and applauded as Nami did a particularly daring somersault over a stall, and parents gasped (before throwing their shutters closed) at the approaching ruckus and rumble of the navy on the couple’s tail.

“Nice it might have been, but what did you expect would happen with Luffy, Kid and yourself in the same port?”

“Excuse me!” Trafalgar snarled as he picked up speed, flying over the cobblestones. “But it was you who decided to invite them and make a whole spectacle out of it! I thought we’d just have a nice little trip to the nearby island to have a beach day since this island doesn’t have any beaches and you said you wanted a beach day!”

“IT WAS LUFFY WHO INVITED YOU ALL, YOU UTTER IDIOT!” Nami screamed over the cannon fire breaking out behind them and Trafalgar had to do some rather impressive Shambles, if he’d say so himself, to displace the approaching cannon balls with some flowers from a nearby field. He caught one, which Nami tucked daintily behind her ear.

“FINE, IT WAS THAT MENACE,” Trafalgar answered, grabbing her hand and dragging her along the promenade before turning down on the rickety pier. Although the market square had slowed down the navy, the pier was slowing him and Nami down too with an abundance of slippery boards, missing steps and sudden chasms. “But it was still you who managed to get Kid and Hawkins to actually crash!”

“I did no such thing,” Nami protested, balancing along a slippery beam where several planks had apparently fallen into the water. Suspiciously neatly cut, she noted. “I just took an alternative route.”

Trafalgar snorted. “Which you know they would follow and you knew they’d hit the reefs.”

“Not my fault they can’t read a map.”

He couldn’t see the Tang; good, Hakugan and Jean Bart had followed protocol and taken her out of port. They knew Captain would find his way back.

There was, however, a merrily bobbing ship with a lion’s head for a figurehead at the end of the wooden pier.

They were still a good way away when Nami took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs, “JINBE – CAST OFF!”

Trafalgar grinned when he saw the ship start to move away, slowly but surely. It was good that the Straw Hats finally had another braincell on board.

He could see Nami’s captain waving to them from his perch on top of the lion as the Sunny picked up speed, wide grin visible from all this way away.

He sighed, throwing up a Room and grabbing Nami, ignoring her indignant squeak as he pressed her against him.

“Shambles.”

-_-_-

“You knew I’d get us on board.”

Law’s tone was even, and not just because he was still trying to catch his breath.

They stood by the railing, watching the rapidly disappearing port. Some bustling along the pier and around the navy ships indicated that the navy might have been in pursuit, but Usopp’s assurance of their propellers being quite out of order due to a ‘sudden infestation of sargasso seaweed’ made them both breathe a bit easier.

“Of course,” Nami scoffed, leaning against the railing beside him. “I’m just annoyed that you didn’t use it earlier and forced us to run through the whole town.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “And yet I didn’t hear you complain or suggest it when we were running.”

Nami hit him in the shoulder. Hard enough to make a point, but not hard enough to hurt. “Shut it.”

“And there’s this…”

Law threw her a small, clumsily wrapped gift and watched from the corner of his eye as she carefully picked the paper apart, revealing an oblong wooden box. It was thin, with a pattern of nacre creating endlessly repeating waves with sparkling crests on the lid.

“Happy birthday.”

The soft gasp that escaped Nami as she opened the box almost escaped in the wind, but Law stood close enough to catch it, as well as the look of wonder in her eyes as she lifted out the thin golden chain decorated with a small, shimmering tangerine.

And suddenly she was there beside him, her warmth pressing into his side and her arms wrapped around his midriff. A whiff of something sweet and flowery filled his world as she pressed a kiss to his temple.

“I might have been woken up by a foghorn a foot from my face and almost gotten burnt by a flare let loose in the kitchen.

“You do understand that I also got woken up by that foghorn,” Law interjected, enjoying the feeling of Nami’s nails scratching lightly at his side. “And I want some credit for disappearing that flare before it went off.” He hummed in thought. “It was quite pretty when it went off outside.”

“Shush,” Nami said, nose in the air as she pinched him lightly to stop his nattering. “As I was saying; we managed to crash a whole regatta, and the navy might have chased us across half an island.”

She drew a deep breath, pressing another kiss to Law’s cheek. “Thank you.”

Her smile filled the world as the little port town disappeared into the distance, the navy cursing on its shores.