Top Posts Tagged with #izzy.op

just one night 5: honeymoon arc I

pairings: yandere!straw hats x afab!reader, platonic!chopper, platonic!franky, platonic!jinbe, and platonic!brook, poly romance with sanji, nami, zoro, robin, usopp, and luffy summary: start of the honeymoon arc; now aboard the thousand sunny, on your way to a new island with the crew that brings out a plethora of new feelings. feelings that are quickly developing fast for several members content: relationship building, descriptions of previous injuries & healing, fast relationship bonding, slight mentions of self-doubt (reader), smut, fxf, threesome(nami, reader, sanji), sanji watches, finger sucking, vaginal fingering(reader), semi-public sex, wc: 14.8k read part 1 here | read part 2 here | read part 3 here | read part 4 here

honeymoon arc part 1 | part 2 | part 3 wednesday

18+ MDNI • 18+ MDNI • 18+ MDNI • 18+ MDNI •

The first few days blur together.

Not completely, but enough that time stops feeling structured and starts feeling measured in smaller things, moments in between the amount of sleep you were getting. Faint flashes of moments spent with Chopper healing, telling you that it was normal how much sleep you were getting, 'it was needed for your healing.' And with the way your body aches less when you move every time you wake, it makes you believe in what he says.

The ship moves beneath you, constant and unhurried as you lie there a moment longer, cataloging bruised ribs, still tender on the left side. The cut along your collarbone sealed now, courtesy of Chopper's hands and a salve that smelled faintly of eucalyptus and something sweeter underneath. The swelling at your cheekbone is mostly gone, leaving only a yellow-green smudge when you catch your reflection in the small mirror above the washbasin.

You've looked worse. You've felt worse, though it's been a long time since you've allowed yourself to admit that.

And so you spend almost all of your time your first week aboard the Thousand Sunny in the infirmary. Not because anyone forces you, but because it's simply easier. The world outside that room requires a version of yourself you're still reassembling, and in here, at least, no one expects anything from you except to get better.

It helps that the crew keeps you company throughout your stay in various ways that show how much they care and help keep your spirits up. You remember various moments with different crew members, all doing their best to get to know you or comfort you as you heal. Or resting, as most times when you woke, there was one or two crew members in the room with you.

Chopper barely leaves your side. At first, it's strictly medical; he checks your vitals with a consistency that borders on compulsive, rewraps bandages with exacting care, notes every bruise and tiny shift in your condition as if each one is a crisis he must personally keep locked down. He keeps a small log, one that you've seen him writing in, his handwriting surprisingly neat for someone working with hooves, and you don't ask what's in it because you suspect it would be both deeply touching and slightly alarming.

As the days go by and you stabilize, he doesn't back off. If anything, he grows quieter, more intentional. The frantic energy of the first days — when his movements were fast, and his eyes were too bright, and he kept asking you questions in rapid succession to check your alertness — settles into something slower and more deliberate. He's still watching, just watching differently now.

"Your color's better today," he announces on the fourth morning, clinical and pleased, his stethoscope still warm from where it pressed against your skin. He examines the bruising at your side with hooves so careful they barely register as pressure. "The inflammation's going down properly now. You should be able to move more without it pulling."

"I've been moving," you say.

He gives you a look. A look that, somehow, a small reindeer has perfected into something remarkably withering. "Shuffling to the deck and back doesn't count."

"It absolutely counts."

He puffs up slightly, which you've also learned is his version of losing an argument gracefully. "Fine. But eat the whole bowl this time. Sanji said you left half of it yesterday, and I had to hear about it."

You bite the inside of your cheek. "You had to hear about it?"

"For a while," Chopper admits, with the gravity of a man who has suffered greatly. "It was a whole thing."

You eat the whole bowl at dinner that night, winking at Chopper when he stopped by to do his nightly routine check-in.

After that, talking becomes easier. It starts with something small — you mention, offhandedly, how some leaves hold their color longer when preserved in certain solutions, how the temperature of the water changes what survives. You're not sure why you say it. It's just the first thing that surfaces, some half-remembered detail from years of working with materials, and you expect it to land and sink without much reaction.

Instead, Chopper's ears perk up so fast you almost laugh.

He pulls his stool closer. He talks about medicinal herbs, about how combining them changes their properties entirely, about how the same plant grown in different conditions can have almost opposite effects. His voice takes on a different quality when he gets into it — faster, more certain, the carefulness he usually carries around you giving way to something more like enthusiasm. You listen, actually listen, tracking the logic of it, and that pulls him in further. He starts drawing diagrams on a spare piece of paper to illustrate a point. The diagram becomes a second diagram. By the third one, you've both forgotten how the conversation started.

It's somewhere in the middle of this that he pauses, tilting his head, ears twitching with some internal calculation.

"So if you understand something," he asks slowly, "you could recreate it?"

You nod. "Roughly, yes."

"Not just paintings."

"No." You adjust the blanket over your legs, choosing the words with some care. "It started with art, but it's more than that. If I understand the structure of something — how it's meant to exist, what holds it together — I can make it real."

A pause, because the next part still feels strange to say out loud, even now.

"I can make it real."

Chopper blinks. His pencil has gone still. "Anything?"

"Not anything," you clarify, gently. "It depends on how well I know it. The more I understand something, the more accurate the result. If I only half know it—" you tilt your hand slightly, a wavering gesture, "—it's weak. Or it doesn't hold."

He leans forward, fully focused now in the way he gets when something has genuinely caught him. "So you could make medicine?"

"Basic compounds," you say. "If I know the formula. Complex mixtures that need exact ratios — that's riskier. The margin for error is smaller."

"What about tools?" A beat, then faster: "Surgical instruments?"

"Yes," you answer, without hesitation. "If I've studied them."

His eyes go wide. "What about—" He stops. Starts again. "What about weapons?"

You hesitate for just a moment, just once.

"…Yes."

The word carries weight, and you both feel it. Chopper doesn't flinch from it, though. He just looks at you for a second — steady, processing — and then moves on, which tells you something about him that you file away carefully.

"And plants?" he asks. "Could you recreate an entire plant? Roots, leaves, everything?"

You smile, quiet. "I've done it. But they don't grow naturally afterward. They exist as I made them — a fixed moment. Accurate, but static."

"Like a snapshot," he murmurs.

"Exactly like that."

He exhales, slow and wondering. "That's incredible."

You laugh softly. "It's useful."

You don't say dangerous, but the word sits in the room with you anyway, patient and familiar, the way it always does when you talk about this. You've learned to let it sit without looking directly at it.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

During your confinement, you were able to take the time to notice things about your new crew members.

You learned that Sanji doesn't hover. You noticed the deliberateness of it, the way he finds reasons to be nearby without making it a performance.

He brings food at irregular hours, small things; a cup of broth in the late afternoon when the air turns cool, fruit cut in careful pieces left on the windowsill of your borrowed room, a plate balanced on his forearm that he sets down without announcement and then lingers beside, checking the porthole or the lantern or anything that isn't you while he makes sure you actually eat it.

On the fifth evening, you catch him doing it, and something in you said go for it.

"You can just sit," you say.

He turns back, the light from the porthole is turning amber at that hour, and it catches in his hair and the edge of his jaw, and he looks, for a moment, like something from one of your paintings. Something you would have rendered in warm ochre and tried to make real.

"I wasn't—" he starts.

"I know," you say. "But you can anyway. I'd love the company."

He sits down slowly, as if he was unsure. He doesn't bring anything with him, no cigarettes, no distractions. Just himself, in the chair pulled close to the porthole, the evening light between you warm and unhurried.

You don't talk about Vane. You don't talk about what they walked into below those streets, or the way Chopper went pale when he smelled your blood, or any of the things that have been sitting just below the surface since the ship left Veloria's harbor. Those conversations are coming — you know they are — but not tonight. Tonight the sea is flat, and the light is good, and Sanji is just sitting with you, and that is enough to be remarkable on its own.

"Tell me something," you say eventually.

He considers it, his gaze on the water. "About what?"

"Anything." You lean back against the wall, your knees pulled loosely to your chest, careful of your left side. "Something that isn't the last week."

He's quiet long enough that you think he might not answer. Then: "My first time cooking for someone who actually cared what it tasted like. I was young, maybe twelve. I made something terrible—" His voice breaks to let out a loose laugh, shaking his head. "I don't even remember what, some catastrophic approximation of a stew, and she ate the whole thing anyway. Told me it was the best she'd ever had."

A pause.

"She was lying," he adds. "Obviously. But she ate every bite."

You watch his profile, and there's something in it, something soft around the edges that he doesn't often let through. "You still cook for her?"

He exhales slowly. "No." And then, quieter: "Not anymore."

You don't push, understanding what was left unsaid. You understand the shape of a loss that still holds its outline even when you stop looking directly at it. You know it from the inside.

"She would have liked the broth," you say instead. "It was really good."

The tension in his jaw eases, just slightly. He glances at you, a brief, private thing, open and full of emotion. "Yeah?"

"Don't fish for compliments." But you're smiling when you say it.

He looks away again, and something in the line of his shoulders settles into something looser, something that might be close to ease.

You sit together until the light goes, and neither of you mentions it when it does.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

Nami finds you in the infirmary the next day, which isn't all that surprising. What does surprise her is what you're doing.

You're not resting; instead, you're sitting with your legs folded beneath you and a sketchbook open across your knees. She notices it's one of the ones she helped pack from the gallery, spine cracked from use, pages warped with old water damage at the bottom corner, and you're drawing the window.

Just the window. The porthole with its brass fittings and the circle of sea beyond it, clouds in the upper quadrant, the low horizon line. Your hand moves in a way that is clearly habitual, that doesn't need her to be watching, that would carry on exactly the same if she turned and walked away.

She doesn't walk away.

"You draw from observation," she says instead, stepping into the room. "Not from memory."

You don't startle; your hand continues its motion as if you knew that the navigator was there the whole time. "Sometimes both."

"The pieces in your gallery, the large ones. Those weren't from observation."

Your hand slows, just slightly. "No."

Nami crosses to the chair across from you and drops into it with the particular ease of someone who owns every room she enters, even rooms that aren't hers. She props her chin on her hand and studies you openly. You've noticed she does that — looks at people the way she looks at maps, like she's working out the coordinates of something.

"You're trying to figure me out," you say, not accusatory, just mildly amused.

"I'm always trying to figure people out," Nami replies, unashamed. "It's a survival skill. Usually I'm faster." She tilts her head, curiosity clear on her face. "But you're harder to read than most."

"I've had practice."

"I can tell." She's quiet for a moment, watching the pencil move. "Does it hurt? Drawing. With your ribs."

The question is practical; that's what you've been learning about Nami: her care comes dressed in practicality, the way other people's come dressed in warmth. It means the same thing, just different packaging.

"A little," you admit. "I'm being careful."

"Chopper will yell."

"Chopper will not find out."

Nami's expression does something complicated, the ghost of a smile over a more serious look underneath. "You know he can literally smell pain, right?"

Your hand stills, while you let out a little gasp. "He can?"

"Just a little." She is clearly enjoying this. "He's been very polite about not saying anything."

You close the sketchbook with a sigh that catches at your ribs, and then you're both laughing. Yours is a careful, abbreviated thing, hers bright and unguarded; and it surprises you, how easy it is. How the room adjusts around it as the sound belongs there.

"Show me your maps sometime," you say, when it settles.

Nami blinks. Of all the things you might have said, you've clearly landed on one she wasn't prepared for. "My charts?"

"You talked about them your first night, when you were explaining the route. The way you described the current patterns—" you pause, something genuine in your expression. "It sounded like you loved it."

A beat. Something shifts in her face, small but real.

"Yeah," she says, after a moment. "I do."

"Then show me sometime." You lean back carefully, resettling. "If you want. But I'd love to get to know more about what your passion is."

Nami looks at you for another moment, working out just exactly who you are, then she nods, once, decisive.

"Yeah," she says again, softer. "I will."

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

Robin comes in the evenings, when the ship quiets and the lanterns have been turned low. She doesn't ask if you're sleeping; she seems to know when you aren't. She brings tea she's made herself, sets it within your reach, and opens whatever book she's carrying without preamble, and you've understood from the first night that this is not an intrusion. It's an offering, it's Robin's way of saying I am here, and I am not going anywhere, and you don't have to perform being okay for me.

It is the most restful form of company you have ever been in. But also stressful, feeling like she's waiting for you to confess something.

One night, you finally ask: "How much do you know?"

She doesn't look up from her book, turning a page before answering you. "About you?"

"Yeah. Or about what I can do."

A pause. The ship moves beneath you, the lantern sways once, twice, before it settles.

"Enough," she says. Which is the same answer you gave her, once, and you know she knows that. "Enough to understand why they wanted to keep you." She looks up then, her dark eyes finding yours across the low light. "And enough to understand why you hid it."

Your hands are folded in your lap. You look down at them, the familiar lines of your palms, the faint calluses at the base of your fingers where the brush sits. Tools you were born with. Weapons other people have been trying to requisition your entire life.

"I was eight when I first did it," you say, which isn't something you planned to say. "By accident. I drew a bird, and it moved." You pause. "I screamed. My mother came running and found me standing over this painting of a sparrow, which was just sitting there. On the canvas, looking at me, but obviously wrong."

Robin's expression doesn't shift into alarm or hunger. It settles into something quieter, something that looks almost like recognition. "Wrong?"

"I was eight, I didn't know about all the intricacies of a bird, and living animal creatures. Living creatures are difficult; there's a lot to include for them to work. Things I didn't know when I drew the sparrow. It didn't have what it needed to live."

"So, what did she do?"

"She picked it up," you say. "The painting, and she showed me what her hands could do." You exhale slowly. "She took the canvas and altered it so the bird became a toy. So that it didn't need organs and everything a living creature does. And then she explained that the world would not always be kind about what we were. But that we were it anyway."

Silence.

"She sounds like someone worth missing," Robin says, very quietly.

The words land somewhere deep and clean, like a key turning in a lock you'd forgotten existed. Your throat tightens. "Yeah," you manage. "She was."

Robin doesn't offer comfort after that, doesn't fill the quiet with anything. She just stays, her book open in her lap, and lets you have the grief without trying to take it from you. Which is, you think, exactly the right thing to do. Which is the thing that makes you trust her, not despite the silence, but because of it.

You stay like that for a long time, the two of you and the lamplight and the moving sea, until the words come more easily and the grief sits smaller, and you find yourself talking about your island in the present tense, as if it still exists somewhere, as if you could still sail back to it.

Maybe it does, maybe one day you can.

The next morning, Usopp's energy finds you like the weather; you can feel it coming before he rounds the corner. He carries sound the way some people carry light; there's always more of it in a room once he's there, more movement, more momentum, the sense that something is about to happen even when nothing is.

He doesn't know what to do with someone healing. You can see him working it out in real time, the visible recalibration every time he arrives at your door, the slight compression of his usual self into something he hopes is more appropriate. You appreciate the effort. You appreciate it enough to make it easier for him.

"You can just be yourself," you tell him, when he sits down across from you with the careful deportment of a person in a library. "I won't break."

He looks at you. Then the compression releases, all at once, like a breath held too long, and he slumps into the chair in his actual natural position — lopsided, comfortable, one knee pulled up — and he says: "Okay, good, because I have been dying to tell you what happened with the fish."

"The fish," you repeat.

"The fish." He leans forward. "The fish that Luffy tried to befriend two mornings ago, while you were sleeping, and that Sanji had to physically intervene about. The fish is important background context for the story I actually want to tell, which involves Zoro, a compass, and the fact that he managed to get lost on a ship."

You stare at him. "On a ship."

"On the ship," Usopp confirms, with the gravity of a man delivering sacred testimony. "His own ship, that he has lived on for years."

By the time he's done — and the story is long, embellished in ways you suspect are artistic liberties but can't confirm, crescendoing in a fashion that involves Franky, a pulley system, and Zoro emerging from a storage hatch with absolutely no explanation for how he got there — you've laughed hard enough to regret it, your left side protesting in a way that is absolutely worth it.

"Stop," you gasp, pressing your hand to your ribs. "Stop, I can't—"

"I'm done, I'm done." He's laughing too, that helpless, self-defeating kind of laugh that overtakes you when the thing is genuinely funny, and you've lost control of the bit. "Are you okay? Do I need to get Chopper?"

"If you get Chopper, he will ban you from the room."

"Oh, yeah, never mind," Usopp agrees, and settles back, and the laughter winds down into something warm and residual, something that sits in the room after it ends like sunlight after a cloud passes.

"Thank you," you say, once you can breathe properly.

He tilts his head. "For what?"

You consider it. "For treating me like someone who needs a good story more than she needs to be handled."

Usopp looks at you for a moment with an expression that is more serious than his face usually allows. Then he shrugs, but it's not a dismissal. "You've been handling things on your own for a long time. Pretty obvious." He picks at a thread on his overalls. "Figured you were probably due a break from it."

You look at him, this loud, extravagant, fundamentally kind person, and think: I didn't expect you.

You're finding that's true of all of them, in different ways. That the versions you held of them before, built from stories and rumors and the brief bright terror of that first tavern night, don't quite fit the shapes they actually occupy. That they're larger in some places and quieter in others, and that the gaps between what you expected and what you're finding are filling in, slowly, with something you don't quite have a word for yet.

Something that might be home, or at least, something that might be getting close to it.

"Zoro really got lost on the ship?" you ask, breaking the silence.

"Every word of it," Usopp swears, raising his hand, a little smirk on his lips. "I would never lie about something this important."

You bite your lip. "Not even a little embellishment?"

"The pulley system might have been slightly more dramatic in my telling."

"Right."

"Only slightly."

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

Unlike the others who stop by for longer chats or to hang out, Zoro is a bit of an enigma. He doesn't visit, exactly; instead, he chooses to pass by.

This is a distinction that matters to Zoro, though he'd find it difficult to explain to anyone who asked. There's a difference between going somewhere with intent and simply ending up there because your feet knew the way before your brain caught up.

He passes by in the mornings, usually. On his way from wherever he ended up sleeping to wherever he ends up next. The door to your room is often open, the ship's air moving freely through it, and he slows without fully stopping. Checks the room in one sweep, an old habit, and confirms you're there, you're upright, you're okay.

Most days that's enough.

One of the last mornings of your confinement in the infirmary room has you sitting at the window, the porthole pushed open as far as it goes, the sea air moving your hair. You have the sketchbook in your lap but you're not drawing. You're watching the horizon with the particular focus of someone thinking something through.

He stops, almost like he couldn't help it. You don't look right away, and he's not sure if you know he's there, and then you glance over your shoulder and the question answers itself.

"Morning," you say, cheerful as ever, despite the fact that your life has completely shifted course with no clear path for a future.

"Morning."

He doesn't move to leave, and you have to calm yourself from the excitement that maybe the swordsman might actually want to engage with you. You just look at each other for a moment, and it occurs to him — not for the first time — that you're comfortable with quiet in a way that most people aren't. That you don't rush to fill it or smooth it over, but are comfortable just letting it be what it is, same as you let most things be what they are.

"Come in or don't," you say finally, turning back to the window. "Either's fine."

He comes in, shoulder leaning against the wall near the door, arms crossed, cautious not to come too close. The room is small enough that not close is still close, but the green-haired man is still wary that breathing wrong could lead to you getting further injured.

"How's the side?"

"Better." A pause. "Don't tell Chopper I said that. He'll make me demonstrate by doing something terrible."

Zoro makes a sound that might be amusement. "He won't hear it from me."

Quiet again, but different. The ship rolls gently, as somewhere above them, Zoro can hear Luffy yelling something at Franky. The ordinary sounds of the ship in the morning, unchanged, the same as they were before Veloria and during it, and now after.

Something about that steadies him, every time.

"What are you thinking about?" He asks you, head tilting to rest on the doorframe, eyes focused on your response.

Your hand stills on the sketchbook. "What makes you think I'm—"

"You get a specific look." He shrugs. "Like you're deciding something."

You consider that, turning it over. "I've been trying to figure out when to tell the rest of the crew properly about the full extent of my history, my powers, not just—" you pause. "Not just what I've said or what you've already pieced together."

"Robin knows the most," Zoro says. Which isn't a secret; anyone watching could see it in the way they sit together in the evenings.

"Yeah." You're quiet for a moment. "Does it bother you? "

He thinks about it, actually considers it, which is the answer in itself. "No," he says finally. "It'll come out when it comes out. Pushing people doesn't usually get you what you actually want."

You look at him then, fully, the way you do sometimes, like you're recalibrating something. "That's surprisingly patient of you."

The swordsman huffs out a laugh. "I'm full of surprises."

"You really are," you say, and there's something in your voice, something that isn't quite a tease and isn't quite sincere but sits exactly in between, and he finds he doesn't mind it at all.

He stays for a few more minutes, doing nothing, saying little. And when he leaves, it's without announcement, without ceremony, the same way he came. But the door stays open behind him, as he found it, and that feels right.

He thinks, walking back up toward the deck: she's settling in.

It's not dramatic. It's just real. The way she's stopped measuring the exits, or the way she sits fully in a chair instead of perched at its edge. The way her voice has started to relax at the end of sentences, losing the careful, clipped control she carried on land.

Good. That's good.

His jaw sets, briefly, with something that might be remembered anger — the tunnels, the blood smell, the look on Sanji's face when Chopper said too strong — and then it passes, filed away. Dealt with. Not forgotten but contained.

She's here. She's okay. Everything else is details.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

The first time you come to dinner on your own, Chopper clears you for it on the afternoon of the seventh day with the solemnity of someone issuing a royal decree. You are allowed to walk at a normal pace and sit for extended periods. You are not allowed to lift anything heavier than a cup, a rule which seems reasonable until Sanji puts a dish in front of you and you remember that you are on a pirate ship and cups are not the heaviest things you'll encounter.

But this, this you can navigate.

The galley is louder than you expect, which is its own kind of comfort. Franky is mid-argument with Usopp about something structural that you don't fully follow; Brook is playing something soft and instrumental in the corner that keeps getting drowned out and keeps starting again, undeterred; Luffy has apparently attempted to steal from Sanji's pan and is currently receiving a lecture that he is visibly not absorbing. Chopper sits beside you immediately, which you were counting on. Nami has claimed the seat to your other side before anyone else can, which you were also counting on, though you wouldn't have said it aloud.

Robin takes the seat across from you. Her eyes find yours, and she gives you the small, private smile that she gives when she's decided something is good. You answer it with one of your own.

Zoro is at the end of the table. He is asleep, or near enough to it. He surfaces briefly when the food arrives, eats with his usual efficiency, and then slips back into whatever he was doing. His eye opens once, in your direction, and then closes again. You understand this to be an acknowledgment, and are happy with it enough for now.

Sanji sets the plate in front of you last, which means he's been watching you to see how you're managing, and has timed it to arrive when you're settled and comfortable and not thinking about it. You've been cataloging the ways he does this, adding to the list.

"Eat slowly," he says, not looking at you, moving already to the other end of the table to clean up various plates.

"I know," you say, eyes not leaving his body as he moves around the space, weaving in between the chaos of meal time with the crew with no problem.

"I mean it." He looks at you once he's done placing the dirty dishes away and grabbing new plates filled with delicious food.

"I know that too."

Usopp leans across the table toward you, conspiratorial. "He made three different versions of this. Three. I watched it happen, and the worst part of it? I wasn't allowed to taste any of them."

"It was a process," Sanji says, from the other end of the table.

"He has the hearing of a bat," Usopp tells you, in the same volume.

"And the patience of a man who is running low on it," Sanji adds.

You look down at the plate. It's simple, deliberately so — soft textures, nothing that would require real effort to eat, seasoned with something warm and faintly sweet that you can't immediately identify. Beautiful, the way all his food is, in that way that good cooking has, where the care is visible even when it isn't performed.

You take a bite.

Down the table, Sanji is looking out the porthole, smoking. His ears, you notice, are faintly red at the tips.

You say nothing, focused on eating slowly, the way he asked, while Usopp resumes his structural argument with Franky, and Chopper weighs in with unexpected expertise. Luffy announces something that has nothing to do with the conversation, Jimbe tries to calm the overeager man before he knocks down all the food, while the table absorbs it all the way; it absorbs everything, with noise and motion and the particular warmth of people who have decided to be in a room together on purpose.

This is what you didn't know to miss. Not safety, exactly, as you've had approximations of that before. Not belonging, you had that too, with your friends, with your gallery. Something more specific than either. The feeling of being known without being explained, of sitting in a room full of people who've decided to know you and have simply gotten on with it, and who make space for you without making it a production.

You take another bite.

Outside, the ocean moves. Somewhere ahead of you, an island you haven't seen yet is waiting, and beyond it another, and beyond that one more, and the chain of them stretches out into a future that still feels unreal in certain lights. Too large, too open, too full of the possibility of things you haven't imagined yet.

Right now, in this moment, that's okay.

Luffy finds you on the deck after dinner, which is where he expected you to be. The others are still inside, voices audible through the open hatch, and you've slipped out into the dark and the salt air with the quiet ease of someone who needed a moment.

He drops down beside you without asking, the way he does with all his crew. If you mind, you don't show it. You just shift slightly to make room, keeping your eyes on the water.

The stars are out, briefly distracting the man, before he turns to look at you.

"You're different," he says.

You glance at him, eyebrow slightly raised. "Different how?"

"On the island you were—" he thinks about it, which takes a moment, because Luffy thinks in feelings more than words, and translating between the two requires effort. "Coiled, like you were ready to move, to fight." He tilts his head, eyes fully looking at you, almost like he can see your inner thoughts. "Now you're not."

You're quiet, turning that over. "Is that good or bad?"

"Good," he says, immediate and certain. "Obviously good."

The water moves below you, the ship cutting through it steadily. Someone inside laughs — Nami, by the pitch of it — and the sound carries up and out and over the water and disappears.

"I keep thinking about my friends," you say. "Mira and the others. Whether they're okay."

"They will be," Luffy says.

You look at him. "You can't know that."

"No," he agrees, untroubled. "But worrying about it from here doesn't help them, and it hurts you, so." He shrugs. "Better to trust that they're okay until you know otherwise."

You stare at him for a moment. "That is extremely simplified logic."

"Yeah." He grins, leaning towards you. "But did it work?"

A pause, as something in your face shifts, reluctant and real, a smile you're completely unable to hide. "A little bit."

"Good." He settles back on his hands, looking up at the stars again. "We'll get your letters out at the next port. Nami already knows which route. She thinks they'll make it in about two weeks."

Something in your chest loosens, the sudden release of a pressure you'd been carrying without full awareness of it. "She already—"

"She figured you'd want to write; she just didn't want to push." He says it plainly, like it's obvious. Like, it's simply what you do when you've decided to take care of someone: you anticipate their needs and handle them before they have to ask.

You look back at the water, your throat is tight in a way that you're not entirely sure what to do with.

"Luffy."

"Hm."

"Why did you want me? Actually." You pause. "Not the version you said at the cliff. The real one."

He considers it seriously, which is how you know it's going to be honest. Luffy doesn't perform sincerity. He just is or isn't.

"Because you walked into a room full of strangers and stood between them and trouble," he says. "And you did it like it was just — what you did. No calculation, no expectation." He pauses. "That's rare."

"That's a terrible reason to recruit someone," you say, but your voice is not even slightly convincing.

"It's the reason," he corrects. "The best crew isn't the one with the most power, it's the one that shows up." He looks at you. "And you showed up."

The words sit in the air between you, simple and enormous.

You look at him — this strange, absolute, rubber-boned person who will one day be King of the Pirates and who currently has a smear of something from dinner on his chin and who is looking at you like you are a fixed point that he's already built his route around — and you think: I didn't know I needed this. I didn't know I needed any of this, needed you.

"Thank you," you say quietly. "For coming for me, and for saving me."

"Of course." He says it the way he says most things, like the answer was never in question. "You're ours."

Not possessive or threatening, just stated, a fact of the world, as clear as the horizon.

You exhale. The tight thing in your chest gives way to something warmer, something that expands instead of contracts, something that you haven't felt in long enough that you'd almost forgotten what it was.

Safe. You feel safe.

"Don't tell Sanji I said this," you say, "because I will deny it. But the dinner was incredible."

Luffy bursts out laughing, loud and unconstrained and entirely his own, and you laugh too, softer but real, and the sound goes out over the water together.

Inside the ship, someone shouts something, the lanterns sway, and the ocean keeps moving.

It occurs to you, sitting here in the dark with the stars overhead and the crew's voices filtering up from below, that you have been holding your future at arm's length for nine years. Planning for it, working toward it, keeping it abstract and far away so that hope couldn't become another thing they could take from you.

You are not doing that anymore.

You are on a ship in the middle of the ocean, and you have no idea what's coming next, and your ribs still ache, and your heart still has gaps in it that will take a long time to fill, but you are here, actually here, for the first time in longer than you can name.

And that, for tonight, is everything.

When you and Luffy enter the dining room, still playfully bantering, more physically affectionate than you both were when you left.

The crew is talking about the island that Nami says they'll reach tomorrow morning. The island sits on the horizon like a rumor the water is only just beginning to confirm, and the crew moves around each other with the practiced ease of people who have done this a hundred times before, voices low and overlapping as plans take shape.

You step closer, listening as supplies are discussed, routes mapped out, the question of who is going where decided in the shorthand of people who know each other well enough not to need full sentences.

And then, without planning it, without deciding to, you speak.

"I'd like to go. I can help around here now that I'm mostly healed."

Simple and clear, your words land in the middle of the conversation like a dropped anchor, and the motion stops, causing multiple heads to turn.

"No." The response comes fast, too fast, from more than one direction, the word overlapping itself like an echo. Too firm to be casual.

You don't back down.

"I'm not staying behind," you say, and your voice is steady despite the dull throb that still lives somewhere beneath your ribs, that you've quietly been ignoring for the night. "I've been inside for days. I can walk. I can move." A pause, deliberate. "I just want to see the island."

The wind moves through the silence that follows.

"I won't get in the way." You throw in, trying to entice the crew to let you join them.

There's tension in the space now. Not loud, not dramatic, but the quiet kind that has weight to it, that you can feel pressing lightly against your sternum. They look at you. At your fading bruises on your skin, at the faint stiffness in the way you're holding yourself, the slight, careful quality of every breath. At each other, over your head, in the silent language of a crew that has had this kind of conversation before, just never about you.

Finally, Nami exhales, slow and deliberate, through her nose.

"Light activity," she says.

Jimbe's voice follows, calm and even, adding on. "No wandering off."

"And you stay with someone at all times," Chopper adds quickly, his little hooves fidgeting at his sides, the anxiety of it visible. The whole crew nods their heads, making it clear they all agree on this.

You nod, immediately. "Fine."

It's not a full victory, but it's enough, and you know the difference between the two.

As the conversation shifts back to planning, routes adjusted, someone assigned to stay close, Chopper already listing conditions under his breath that you suspect will multiply before you reach shore, you become aware of something loosening in your chest.

Sanji saddles up next to you, looking earnest as ever, bringing you a new drink for you to enjoy. "If you'd like to come with me, I'm going to the market for food shopping. It's been approved by the doctor as a light activity that you could enjoy."

A smile appears on your face as you reach out to grab his hand and interlace your fingers together. "I would love that! Thank you, Sanji."

The chef has a faint blush on his ears as he nods before raising your hand to his lips, giving you a light kiss as you both turn back into the conversation with the crew.

A knot you had stopped noticing because it had been there so long it stopped registering as separate from everything else. The island is still just a shape on the water, small and unhurried on the horizon. But you're going to stand on it. You asked, and they adjusted, and they're going to let you.

You're not just being protected anymore. You're being included. Consulted, even, or close enough to it that the distinction feels almost irrelevant.

They don't fully realize it yet, maybe. But that changes everything.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

The next day, you wake slowly.

The warmth of the bed settles around you first, then the familiar sway of the ship beneath it, and for a moment you simply lie there, staring up at the ceiling while you try to place where you were. You slept in the girl's bedroom for the first time since you left Veloria with the crew. You slept peacefully and felt well rested for the day ahead. You're here, you actually left, and you're going to be able to explore and be free.

The thought arrives with a small, private smile before the sounds filtering in from down the hall pull your attention gently back to the present. From the galley, distant but distinct, you can hear him.

The soft rhythm of chopping, the low clatter of cookware settling into place, the faint hum Sanji falls into when he's focused and doesn't know he's doing it. You've only been on this ship a handful of days, and you already know the sound. Already find it grounding in a way that surprises you.

You push yourself upright, running a hand through your hair. Swing your legs over the edge of the bed and sit there for a moment, taking stock. The air is warmer than you're used to, the kind of warmth that clings rather than passes through, that tells you the island is close even before you've looked out the porthole.

Behind you, there's a shift, and you turn to see that Robin is already awake.

She's sitting up with that same composed ease she always carries, the kind of stillness that never reads as sleepiness, only as patience. Her gaze settles on you almost immediately. There's a brief pause as she takes you in — a quiet, unhurried assessment — and then her eyes move to your outfit, and she hums, low and thoughtful.

"You'll be too warm in that," she says. Simply, without preamble, already moving toward the closet.

You blink, then take the silent instructions to follow her.

The closet is small. You're both aware of it in the way you become aware of space only when there's less of it. The proximity, the slight adjustment of movement to accommodate each other, but Robin doesn't seem bothered. She moves through it with her usual unhurried confidence, fingers passing over fabrics with the quiet certainty of someone who already knows what she's looking for before she finds it.

She selects something lighter before she holds it out to you.

You take it, and she turns away to give you space, and you change quickly in the small warm quiet of it, aware of her presence even with her back to you. When you turn back, she's holding something else.

A necklace, simple, delicate, a thin chain with a small pendant that catches the light when she tilts it. She considers it for a moment before she continues on.

"This will suit you better," she murmurs.

Before you can respond, she steps behind you.

Her hands are steady as they lift your hair, her fingers brushing against the back of your neck as she brings the clasp together. The contact is precise, deliberate, without being obvious. You feel the cool slide of the chain settle against your collarbone, and then her fingertips move, just slightly, tracing along your shoulders as she smooths the fabric into place. Slow and unhurried, like she has all the time in the world and has decided to use it here.

Your breath catches, and you still, almost afraid to move, and spook her. You just stand there in the small warm space while her hands are still against your shoulders, and the moment stretches in a way that feels entirely intentional, strung between the two of you like something neither of you is quite ready to name.

Then she steps back, and you turn.

There's a faint smile on her lips, the kind that tells you she noticed your stalled breath, the stillness, all of it, and that she filed it away with the same quiet attention she gives everything.

Neither of you says a word. The moment holds itself open for exactly one beat longer than it needs to before it's broken by a soft, muffled groan from the bed.

Nami shifts, barely lifting her head, blinking toward you both with the unfocused displeasure of someone dragged out of a genuinely good sleep. Her hair is doing something spectacular, though she doesn't seem aware of it or concerned.

"Why are you two up so early?" she mutters, less a question than an accusation.

She rubs at her eyes, blinks again, and then actually looks at you. Her gaze sharpens a little, a fraction more awake, and she hums, something approving in it. "Better," she says. "That actually fits the island."

"High praise," you say.

"It is," she agrees, without a trace of irony, already pushing herself upright.

You step out of the closet, Robin following behind you, unhurried. "Sanji and I were going into town," you say, glancing at Nami.

That lands differently than most things do before Nami has had coffee, clearly jolting awake. She sits up properly, the last traces of sleep fading from her expression. "Oh, right! I'll meet you guys there later. You'll need things that actually fit you for the various island temperatures and whatever you need."

Something brightens in you at that. "We could also sell some of my pieces while we're there," you add, a little more eager than you meant to sound. "Help out with the ship's funds."

Nami goes still, then she looks at you, and the smile that crosses her face is sharper than her usual ones; pleased in a way that is entirely genuine and entirely Nami, the look of someone who has just had her opinion of you upgraded without warning.

"Now that," she says, "is a very good idea."

The warmth of it, the specific warmth of being seen as useful, as someone who contributes rather than someone who needs to be carried, moves through you before you can think to tamp it down. You step closer without really deciding to.

"Thanks," you murmur, and lean in to press a quick kiss to her cheek.

She goes still. It's brief, just a second, maybe less, but you feel it. The small suspension of her, the slight intake of breath she doesn't quite manage to hide. And then, before you can step back, before the moment can resolve itself into something casual and easy and forgotten, she turns her head, her eyes finding yous and they're more awake now than they've been since she opened them. Clearer, focused in that particular way of hers that means she's already made a decision and is simply acting on it.

She leans in.

The kiss is quick, but it is entirely, unmistakably intentional; not a reflex, not an accident, something chosen. It lands and it lingers, just slightly, just long enough, and your hands lift without your permission and frame her face, and you kiss her again, slower this time. A breath longer before you both pull back, both of you with the same faint smile, something warm and slightly astonished settling into the space between you.

"You're going to be late," Nami says. Her voice is even, but her eyes are bright.

You laugh, soft and helpless, and step back. "I'll see you in a bit."

She watches you go with an expression she doesn't bother to school into anything more neutral. Behind you, Robin has been quiet through all of it. Observant in that way of hers where you can feel the attention even when she isn't visibly directing it. You fall into step beside her as you move out onto the deck, the morning air hitting you warm and salt-bright as you step into the light.

For a few steps, neither of you speaks. The sea moves around the ship, somewhere below, the steady sounds of the galley continue.

Then the question slips out before you can decide whether to ask it.

"Was that…wrong?"

Robin doesn't stop walking, immediately understanding what it is you were talking about.

"No," she says, simply and without hesitation, without the slight pause that would have made it feel like reassurance rather than fact.

You're quiet for a moment, turning that over. The deck is mostly empty this early, the light still gold and low, catching in the rigging and in the water beyond. "Is it okay to want more?" you ask, softer now. "With everyone, I mean."

She looks at you then. She turns her gaze to you with the same unhurried quality she brings to everything, and she takes a moment to actually look at you before she answers. Not surprised by the question, or startled or hesitant. Just observant, like you've confirmed something she already suspected.

"I think," she says slowly, "we would all welcome it."

Your breath catches. "All of you?"

"All of us," she says, with a quiet certainty that leaves very little room for doubt.

You walk in silence for another few steps, the weight of that settling over you. Not heavy, exactly, but substantial and real. The kind of thing that changes the shape of a room just by existing in it.

"In fact," Robin continues, and her voice drops just slightly, warm and low, "you may find that you'll be encouraged more than you realize."

You glance at her, thrown. "What does that mean?"

She doesn't answer immediately, choosing to instead step a little closer, and then pulls back. The quiet, breathy sound she makes is almost a laugh, intimate and private. Her fingers brush your hair from your face, gentle, and linger there for just a moment.

"Not yet," she murmurs.

You look at her, at the careful warmth of her expression, the deliberate quality of every movement she makes around you, and your eyes drop to her lips without your permission and without any particular desire to take it back.

"Soon?" you ask.

Robin exhales, soft and unhurried, and leans forward until her forehead rests lightly against yours. The contact is barely anything, but it is also, somehow, everything.

"Yes," she says quietly, her voice very close now. "Soon."

The word settles between you like a promise with its own gravity, and you stand there together in the warm morning light — foreheads touching, the sea moving beneath you — while the ship carries you both forward into whatever comes next.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

By the time you make your way toward the dock, he's already waiting.

Of course he is.

Sanji stands near the edge with his arms loosely crossed, scanning the area with the particular quality of attention he has: alert without being tense, taking in everything without appearing to look at anything specific. But the moment he sees you, all of that drops away. His posture shifts, his arms uncross, and his attention locks onto you completely, the way it does when he stops cataloging the world and simply finds something in it worth looking at.

His expression does something soft and automatic, like he isn't entirely aware of it.

"You look beautiful," he says, as you reach him. Low and certain, with none of the performative flourish he sometimes wraps around compliments. This one arrives clean, undecorated, like a fact he's simply reporting.

Your cheeks warm, but you don't look away. "Thank you," you say, a little softer than you intended.

He steps closer without hesitation, his hand finding yours like it already knows the way there, like it has been finding its way there for years, and your arrival just made it official. You let him take it easily, no pause or question, just the natural pull of it as he turns and starts leading you toward town.

The walk is easy, thankfully. The morning is still gold and unhurried, the island spreading out ahead of you in layers of green and stone and the distant murmur of a market waking up. His thumb moves once across your knuckles, absent and warm, the way it does when he's focused on something else and his hands remember on their own.

You fall into step beside him, and then your curiosity takes over before you've fully decided to let it. "Tell me your favorite cooking technique," you say, glancing up at him.

He blinks. "What?"

"Favorite technique. Go."

A brief pause, processing, and then the corner of his mouth curves. "Searing. When it's properly done. Most people rush it."

"Okay." You nod seriously, like you're taking notes. "Superstitions?"

"I don't have superstitions."

You scoff and roll your eyes before looking at him. "Everyone has superstitions."

He exhales through his nose, giving you a small smile of amusement at the life you're showing on your face. "I don't start a dish if the first attempt at the fire doesn't catch."

"See?" You look up at him, pleased. "Superstitions. Hmm, favorite fruit?"

"Depends on the season."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one." He glances down at you, something like amusement pulling at his expression. "Are you going to keep going?"

"Probably," you admit. "What's something you hate making?"

He's quiet for a moment, and you get the sense he's actually considering it rather than deflecting. "Anything that gets credited to someone else," he says finally. "I don't mind hard. I mind invisible."

That one lands differently than the others. You look at him, and he's looking ahead at the road, his jaw relaxed, his profile unguarded in the morning light, and you think: there it is. There's the real one.

He glances back and catches you looking, and something shifts in his expression. Not embarrassed, more like he's working out what your expression means.

"You're going to keep asking questions the entire walk, aren't you?" He asks.

"Probably," you say again, and smile.

He laughs — low and genuine, the kind that doesn't perform itself — and the sound settles something warm in your chest. But underneath the amusement, something else is moving in him. You can see it in the slight softening around his eyes, in the way his hand adjusts around yours, not tighter but more deliberate.

He understands what you're doing.

Not collecting surface things; not his favorite color or his coffee order. You're asking the questions that find the shape of a person, the small specific truths that accumulate into something real. You're trying to know him, and it moves through him quietly.

You were meant to be here. The thought arrives without announcement, without the fanfare he might have expected from a realization of that size. Just settles, simply and finally, like something slotting into place.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

The market greets you with noise and color and the particular organized chaos of a place that's been doing this long enough to have its own rhythm. Vendors call out from stalls stacked with fabric, produce, and things you can't immediately identify.

Somewhere to your left, something is being cooked over an open flame, and the smell of it reaches you before the source does. Children weave between legs without looking, following lines only they can see.

You stop for just a moment, taking it in, and your hand tightens slightly in his as you orient yourself to the scale of it. Much larger than anything you've witnessed in Veloria or the earlier islands you visited on your journey.

He notices immediately. His grip shifts into something less guiding and more grounding, his thumb pressing once, gentle and steady against your palm. I've got you. Take your time.

"Take your time," he says aloud, as if he knew you needed to hear it as well as feel it.

You nod, and step forward.

Slowly at first, then with more confidence as the noise resolves itself into individual threads you can follow. You move through the stalls together, and you find yourself watching him as much as the market; the way he navigates it, talking to vendors with an easy fluency, negotiating with the particular charm of someone who knows exactly how much he's worth and doesn't need to announce it. He selects produce with the focused attention of someone who actually cares about what he's touching, turning things over, checking them with his fingertips, discarding the ones that don't meet some internal standard without comment.

"You look like you're judging them," you say, watching him set aside a persimmon.

"I am," he says simply. "There's no point in buying something that won't be what it's supposed to be."

"And that one wasn't?"

"It would've been fine." He moves to the next stall, already purusing what's there. "I don't cook fine."

You laugh, and the sound surprises you slightly; easy, unguarded, rising out of you before you thought to check it. He glances over at the sound of it, and the look on his face makes you laugh again because he looks so quietly pleased with himself.

The banter with vendors comes easily after that, light and warm, and you find your voice in it — slipping into conversation with a woman selling woven cloth, learning three things about the island's rainy season that you didn't ask for and are glad to know. Sanji listens without interrupting, his hand finding its way back to yours between stalls, a compass returning to north.

When you pause at a small flower cart near the edge of the market. Just a pause long enough to look, your hand reaching out to brush the edge of a petal without any intention of stopping, and he doesn't hesitate. Sanji points to the flowers you were looking at and provides the man the appropriate amount of money for the flowers, giving him a smile when he looks at the pair of you with a knowing glance.

Sanji then picks up a small bunch, pale and warm-colored, tied with a piece of twine, and holds them out to you.

You stare at them. "Sanji."

"They suit you," he says, easily, like it requires no explanation.

"I didn't—"

"I know." He tilts them slightly toward you, patient, waiting.

You take them, and you stand there for a moment in the noise of the market with a small bouquet in one hand and his hand in the other, and the morning light coming down warm around both of you, and something in you goes very quiet. The kind of quiet that isn't empty, and instead it's full of something you haven't named yet but recognize.

"Thank you," you say, eyes soft and filled with meaning.

He hums, soft and satisfied, and moves you gently back into the flow of the market.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

Later, once your purchases have been arranged for delivery back to the ship, you drift away from the main noise almost without deciding to. The market thins at its edges, giving way to a small stretch of grass set back from the road, shaded unevenly by a tree that's grown at a slight angle toward the sea, but quiet enough to breathe. The kind of place that exists in every busy town, waiting for people who need a moment.

You find it together and comfortably settle into it.

He sits close, making sure he's not crowding, just there, the warmth of him solid beside you, his shoulder almost touching yours. He reaches into the bag beside him and pulls out a handful of apples, and then, without commentary, produces a small knife from somewhere and begins to peel one with practiced ease. The motion is smooth, the peel coming away in one long continuous curl, the kind of thing that speaks to years of repetition.

"You don't have to do that," you say, watching him.

"I want to," he says. He doesn't look up as the peel drops. He quarters the apple cleanly, cores it, and holds out a slice.

You take it from his fingers. The fruit is crisp and cold, sweet with a faint tartness underneath, and you eat it in the dappled shade while the sound of the market drifts toward you from a comfortable distance and the tree above you moves gently in the wind off the water.

He peels another, looking completely at ease.

"Can I ask you something?" you say, watching the way the wind blows through his hair.

"You've been asking me things all morning," he points out. "I don't think you need permission anymore."

"This one's different." You look down at the grass, turning the stem of your bouquet lightly between your fingers. "Did you mean what you said? In the alley." A pause. "That you don't need me to ask. That you just want to be part of it."

The knife stills for just a moment, then continues its path, gliding against the curve of the apple.

"Yes," he says, simply.

"Even knowing what it involves? What I am? And the danger that comes with me?"

He sets the half-peeled apple down and turns toward you, and when you look up, his eyes are already on you, steady and direct in the way he gets when he's decided something matters enough to say properly.

"Especially knowing," he says. "None of that changes anything. If anything—" he stops, considers, then continues more quietly. "It makes more sense. Why you move the way you do. Why you stepped in front of us the way you did. You've been carrying something that heavy for that long and you still—" he exhales. "You still just show up for people."

Your throat tightens. "Sanji—"

"You don't have to say anything," he says. "I just wanted you to know that I meant it. All of it."

The words settle into the space between you, warm and unhurried. You look at him — at the afternoon light catching in his hair, at the particular quality of his expression in this moment, open in a way he doesn't always let himself be — and you think: he's been waiting to say that. He's been holding it carefully until the moment was right.

You reach over and your hand finds his, the one resting on the grass between you, and you turn it gently until your fingers are laced together. His hand closes around yours immediately, like it was waiting.

"I'm glad I'm here," you say quietly.

He looks down at your joined hands for a moment. Then back up at you. And the smile that crosses his face then is not the charming one, not the polished one he wears for the world, it's something smaller and more private, something that reaches his eyes before it reaches his mouth.

"Yeah," he says softly. "Me too."

The afternoon sits around you, gentle and unhurried. Somewhere in the market behind you, something cheerful is being played on an instrument you can't name. The sea murmurs at the edge of everything, patient and constant. He peels the rest of the apple, and hands you slices one at a time, and you sit together in the shade while the world turns softly around you.

Something gentle, something real, something that feels, with every quiet moment that passes, more and more like it was always going to be this.

Eventually, time slips by without you noticing.

The market softens around you, the press of midday thinning into something more navigable, and you and Sanji drift toward the agreed meeting spot with your hands still loosely intertwined, conversation fading into something quieter. The kind of silence that only exists between people who have already said enough for now and don't need to fill the space.

You spot Nami before she spots you — and then she does, her sharp eyes finding yours across the distance with the efficiency of someone who has spent years scanning horizons for things worth finding. The moment they land, she moves.

Direct, certain, with no preamble.

She closes the distance without hesitation and kisses you; quick, but not fleeting, not the kind of thing that can be filed under casual. It lands with intention and leaves you blinking in the warm air, warmth spreading across your face before you've fully processed what happened.

She pulls back, looking at you with that expression of hers, the one that's already decided and is simply waiting for you to catch up.

You don't pull away, focusing on just look at her for a moment, and then — instinctively, before you've thought it through — you turn toward Sanji.

You lean up and press a soft kiss to his cheek.

"Don't feel left out," you murmur, and your eyes linger on his for just a second longer than the words require.

The question lives underneath them, unspoken but present.

Is this okay? Are we okay? Is all of this—

Sanji doesn't miss it. He never misses it. His expression shifts almost immediately, something warm and deliberate moving through it. Not performed reassurance but the real kind, the kind that comes from someone who has already made their decision and wants you to know it. He exhales a small breath, and the tension in his face softens completely, and he lets out a quiet, unhurried laugh.

"Wow," he says, and his voice carries something light but genuine underneath the ease of it. "How lucky am I? Escorting two beautiful women around town like this."

"You're here to carry bags," Nami corrects, already turning toward the nearest shop.

Sanji straightens. "That too."

You laugh, actually laugh, the tension dissolving from your shoulders so quickly you hadn't realized how much you were holding. And just like that, the three of you fall into step together, and the shape of the afternoon rearranges itself around this new configuration of people with a naturalness that surprises you.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

Shopping with them is, it turns out, an experience unto itself.

Nami moves through it like a campaign. She pulls outfits for you without hesitation, already building combinations in her head before you've stepped fully through the door, holding things up against you with the practiced eye of someone who understands cloth and color the way she understands currents and charts. She has opinions. Detailed, specific opinions, delivered with the calm authority of someone who is correct and knows it.

"That one," she says, holding something up.

"It's a bit—"

"Trust me."

You trust her.

Sanji offers his opinion when asked, which is less often than you'd expect given his general willingness to have thoughts about things. Mostly, he watches. Not intrusively, just present, noting your expressions, the slight shift of your face when something feels right versus when you're being polite about it. He's cataloging you the way he does ingredients, with the quiet attention of someone building toward something.

Between stores, though, that's where you take over.

You tug them toward the places that catch your eye. Furniture shops where you circle pieces slowly, crouching to examine joints and grain. A weapon stall where you run your fingers along the flat of a blade with your eyes half-closed, feeling for balance. Small galleries, medicinal stands, a glass workshop where you stand for nearly ten minutes watching a craftsman work before Nami puts a gentle hand on your arm and reminds you there are other streets.

You don't buy much, focused on studying these items.

You move slowly through everything, taking angles, hovering your fingers just above surfaces without quite touching, absorbing detail with a focus that has nothing performative in it. You're simply somewhere else for those minutes, somewhere interior, breaking things down into their component parts and filing them away. The weight, the structure, the imperfections that tell you more than the perfections do. You're memorizing, building, in the way you've always built things: from the inside out.

Neither of them interrupts you when you do this. You don't notice that they've both gone quiet, that they're watching you more closely in those moments than they do in any others. You're too far inside it.

What you do notice, eventually, when you're inbetween racks of various clothes with Nami, is that Sanji is no longer beside you.

You glance around, unhurried at first, already mid-thought about a question you wanted to ask him. You find him across the shop, leaning casually against the counter, speaking with one of the workers, a young woman. His posture is relaxed, his smile easy, and it's the smile that catches you because you know it. You've seen it before, turned in your direction.

The same warm ease, the same particular quality of attention that makes whoever he's looking at feel like the center of something.

The twist in your chest is immediate. Small, but quick, arriving before you can reason it away or talk yourself out of it. You turn back before he sees you looking, fixing your gaze on the clothes rack in the case in front of you, and the pieces blur slightly at the edges.

"Hey. Nami's voice is quiet, close.

You look up, and she's already watching you, not with alarm or with the sharp efficiency she wears in most situations, but with something more measured. She'd noticed before you'd looked away.

"That's just how he is," she says, not dismissive but factual.

"It doesn't mean anything more," she adds, more firmly. "Not for him. And definitely not the way it does with you."

You look at her properly, uncertainty and doubt clear in your eyes. "Are you sure?"

She holds your gaze, hoping you can gain some reassurance from her words. "Yes."

Something in the certainty of it, the complete absence of hesitation, makes the knot in your chest loosen, just slightly. But not entirely.

"It's just—" you start, and stop.

"Say it," she says, firm but still encouraging you to speak your mind.

You look back at the clothes, trying your best to express yourself. "It's harder than I expected," you admit, quietly. "Knowing that it's all of you, these incredibly strong and infamous pirates that could have anything you want. And that you all want me—and I want this, you—but that doesn't make it simple."

The words come out more honest than you planned them to, but once they're out there, you can't take them back.

Nami is quiet for a moment, then she reaches out and adjusts the sleeve of the blouse you're still holding, her fingers brushing your arm, deliberate and grounding.

"He flirts," she says. "It's reflexive. It's not nothing, but it's not the same as — this." She glances toward him briefly, then back to you. "There's a difference between how he moves through the world and how he moves around you. You've seen both now." A pause. "You know the difference."

You do. You do know the difference, the careful dinners, the way he sits with you in the evenings without needing to be anywhere, the way his voice drops when he talks to you specifically. You know. And knowing it intellectually and feeling it in your chest when he smiles at someone else are two entirely different experiences.

"And the crew?" you ask, softer. "Is it—" you search for the word. "Is it strange? For everyone? That it's not just—"

"The crew works the way it works," she says. "Big decisions together. Luffy has final say, but he listens first." She meets your eyes. "We talked about you, before any of this. We make decisions together."

You go still. "About me?"

"About wanting you with us." She doesn't flinch from it. "About what that looked like, and what it meant." A small pause. "It wasn't a small conversation. We're not a crew that does things by half measures."

You absorb that; the idea of them, around that galley table, working through the shape of something that included you before you'd agreed to any of it. It should feel strange, presumptuous even, and instead it feels like something else. It felt like being thought about carefully, being worth the conversation.

"With you," Nami says, and her voice shifts into something lower and more deliberate, "it's different than it's been before. I don't think any of us were prepared for how different." She searches your face. "But yes, all of us. And the hurt you just felt—" she tips her head toward where Sanji still stands, "—that's real, and it's allowed. You don't have to perform being fine with everything immediately."

Your throat tightens. "I wasn't—"

"I know you weren't performing." The corner of her mouth moves, just slightly. "That's why I'm saying it."

The honesty of it moves through you quietly. You look at her, at the care that lives in her practicality, that doesn't soften things unnecessarily but doesn't cut where it doesn't need to either, and something settles. Not resolved, exactly, but held.

"Thank you," you say.

She hums, then her eyes move over your shoulder, and her expression shifts into something more decided.

"Sanji."

Her voice is not loud, but it carries, clean and direct, cutting through the ambient noise of the shop without effort.

He turns instantly, and that alone — the immediacy of it, the way his attention snaps to her before she's even finished saying his name — tells you something. This is not a man who ignores Nami when she uses that particular register of voice.

"Come here."

No question in it or softening.

He comes, crossing the shop with his usual ease, though something in his expression has already shifted. He's reading the room, reading her, working out the temperature of the moment before he arrives in it. His hand lifts automatically as he reaches you, the habit that he's started since you've joined them, always looking for a way to connect with you—

Nami's hand comes up, pressing lightly against his chest to stop him before he could make contact.

"Don't touch her."

He stills as his hand drops. He looks at Nami, then at you, and his expression is careful and open, a man who has walked into a moment he doesn't yet fully have the context for and is choosing to wait rather than assume.

Nami doesn’t give him time to question it. She reaches for both of you, guiding—no, directing—you toward the dressing rooms with a decisiveness that leaves no room for argument.

The air shifts with her, and whether you fully understand it yet or not, this moment is about to change something.

Nami ushers you both into a dressing room, her eyes scanning the space before she locks the door with a decisive click, a mischievous smirk playing on her lips as she turns to face Sanji. The room is dimly lit, filled with the soft hum of distant conversations and the rustle of fabric.

"Now, Sanji?" Nami begins, her voice a sultry purr. "I think you've been a bad boy, haven't you?" She takes a step closer, her eyes gleaming with a mix of amusement and reproach.

Sanji, taken aback, casts a glance towards you, hopeful that you'll provide him some sort of answer,r, but you keep your gaze averted, causing a flicker of hurt to cross his face.

"Don't act like you don't know," Nami continues, her tone sharpening along with her gaze. "The brunette at the counter doesn't bring something to mind?"

Realization dawns on Sanji's face, his eyes flickering between you and Nami as a flush of shame creeps up his neck. He looks at you fully, pieces falling into place, and regret washes over him. "Ma belle, I didn’t—“ He exhales heavily, his head hanging down. “I’m sorry.”

You meet his gaze, seeing the sincerity in his eyes, but before you can move to comfort him, Nami interjects, her voice commanding. "Good. Now go sit in that chair, Sanji, and don’t move. You’re not allowed to touch, only watch."

Confusion flickers across both your faces as you turn to look at Nami, awaiting her explanation. She approaches you slowly, her hands finding your waist, her eyes locked on yours, seeking your approval before she goes any further. Nothing that would potentially aggravate your healing body, but enough to hopefully loosen up the tension and doubt in your mind, while serving as a punishment for the chef. As she squeezes your hips and looks at you with hooded eyes, you understand her intent, feel desire building, and shyly nod your consent.

With your approval, Nami turns you toward the mirror and the corner seat where Sanji sits, his eyes wide and his face slack with disbelief. The room seems to hold its breath, the air thick with anticipation.

The air in the room thickens as Nami’s fingers work the buttons of your pants with practiced ease. Each pop of the buttons echoes in the quiet space, and her knuckles brush against the damp fabric of your panties through the denim. She leans in close, her lips almost brushing your ear, and her whisper cuts through the haze of desire: “I bet your greedy little cunt’s already soaked, isn’t it? You’ve been dripping since you saw us both looking at you.” The crudeness of it hits you square in the gut, and a low, involuntary moan escapes your throat. She pulls back just enough to wink at Sanji, whose jaw is slack, his visible hand trembling where it grips the chair beneath him.

Her hand slips inside your open pants, fingers sliding past the waistband of your panties. The first touch of her skin against yours is electric. Her fingertips are cool, but the heat of your sex makes her gasp softly. She doesn't dive in immediately; instead, she traces the edge of your pubic bone, dragging her nails lightly through the trimmed hair, making you shiver. Her other hand trails up your torso, palm flat against your stomach, then glides upward over your ribs until she cups your right breast. She squeezes gently, her thumb finding your nipple through the thin fabric of your shirt, rubbing in slow, deliberate circles. The dual sensations—the pressure on your breast and the teasing near your cunt—send a jolt of pleasure straight to your core, and you instinctively buck your hips forward against her hand.

Sanji lets out a strangled moan, a sound caught between a gasp and a groan. His eyes are wide, pupils dilated, fixed on where Nami’s hand disappears into your pants. You glance at the mirror, and the reflection freezes the moment: you, half-undone, breasts lifted by Nami’s hand, your face flushed with need; Nami, calm and predatory, her orange hair catching the dim light; Sanji, obediently sitting in the chair, his crotch straining visibly against his slacks. The image is obscene, perfect, and it sends another wave of arousal through you, dampening your underwear further until you feel the slickness against your own thighs.

Nami nods, a slight, knowing tilt of her head, and without a word she hooks her fingers into the waistband of your pants and underwear, dragging them down in one smooth motion. The cool air hits your exposed skin, and you feel the moisture on your inner thighs. She nudges you closer to Sanji, her hand on your hip, guiding you until you’re almost pressed against him. Sanji presses further into the chair, his back straight, his breath coming in ragged bursts. Nami taps your left leg twice, her voice dropping to a sultry command: “Place your foot here on Sanji’s thigh. Open nice and wide so our chef can have a good view.”

You obey, lifting your leg and planting your foot on his thigh. The fabric of his pants is warm against your sole, and you feel the muscle tense beneath. The position spreads you open, exposing your glistening sex fully to the mirror and to Sanji’s hungry gaze. Your labia are swollen, parted, a sheen of arousal coating them. Sanji’s eyes roam over you, tracing every fold, every glisten. His hand finally moves, not to touch you, but to grip his own thigh, knuckles white as he restrains himself, a bead of sweat rolls down his temple.

Nami’s fingers dance over your lips, tracing the outline of your folds. She circles your clit with the pad of her finger, not pressing, just teasing, and the sensation makes you gasp and jerk.

“Look at that,” Nami murmurs, more to Sanji than to you. “She’s already twitching for us.” She dips her finger lower, collecting the wetness, then brings it up to circle your clit again, this time with more pressure. You moan, a long, drawn-out sound that fills the room. Sanji’s breath hitches, and he and Nami exchange a brief, heated glance—a silent conversation of shared ownership and desire.

Nami’s fingers delve deeper, one finger sliding inside you with ease, the slick heat welcoming her. She curls it, finding that spot against your front wall, and your knees buckle slightly. She adds a second finger, stretching you, and the fullness makes you cry out. Her thumb finds your clit, rubbing in firm, tight circles as her fingers pump in and out, faster and faster. “That’s it,” she whispers, her voice a soft command, “let me feel you clench around me.” Her praise drips like honey, and you feel your walls flutter, a response beyond your control.

Nami lets out a chuckle, meeting Sani's eyes once again, seeing the desperation and admiration clear on his face. "Kiss her Sanji to keep her quiet. Wouldn't do to have everyone know what we're doing in here."

Sanji leans up, his lips finding yours, but not in a gentle kiss. It’s a desperate, hungry thing, his mouth covering yours to swallow your cries. His tongue pushes past your lips, tasting your gasps, and you feel his stubble scratch against your chin. The kiss is messy, full of shared breath and muffled moans. Nami’s fingers keep their rhythm, plunging deeper, faster, her thumb working your clit until you’re trembling on the edge. “Come for him,” Nami whispers against your ear, her breath hot. “Let go, I’ve got you.”

And you do. Your body arches, your foot presses hard into Sanji’s thigh, and the orgasm crashes through you in waves. Your inner walls clamp down on Nami’s fingers, and you feel your own wetness gush, dripping down your thighs. Sanji breaks the kiss to watch, his eyes wide, his mouth open, panting. Nami holds you through it, her fingers slowing, gentling, until your shivers subside.

Then she withdraws her hand, glistening with your release. She brings her fingers to Sanji’s lips, a silent offering. “Taste her,” she orders gently, and he complies without hesitation, his mouth closing around her fingers. His eyes never leave yours as he sucks your essence from her skin, his tongue lapping at every trace, his expression one of worship and aching want.

The room falls silent except for the wet sounds of his mouth and his ragged breathing.“I’m sorry,” he mumbles around her fingers, his voice thick with regret. Nami shushes him, her other hand stroking your hair. She leans down to give you a kiss, which you eagerly respond to, both of you lost in the moment temporarily only thrown out of it when Sanji lets out another soft moan, resting his head against your still raised leg.

“It’s okay, Sanji. But you know the rules.” She turns back to you, her smile encouraging. “You did so well,” she whispers, her thumb brushing your cheek. Then to Sanji, “You’re still on punishment, no touching. Not yet.”

Sanji nods, a small pout playing on his lips. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees quietly, “That’s fair.”

Nami doesn't give him long to wait. She looks between the two of you, and the decision in her is complete and unhurried, the way her decisions always are once she's made them.

"She saw you," she says, simply, to Sanji. Not an accusation, just a fact being placed on the table for everyone to see clearly. "And she needs to be reassured that you still want her."

Sanji's expression changes.Not defensive, but the opposite. Something opens in it, something that looks almost like relief at being told directly rather than having it go unspoken, and he turns to you fully, his voice dropping into something lower and more careful.

"Hey," he says. Just that at first, making sure you're looking at him before he says anything else.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry it landed the way it did." He holds your gaze. "You're not a footnote. You're not one of many. What I feel for you isn't the same category of thing as—" he stops, and you can see him choosing the next words with actual care. "It doesn't come from the same place. I need you to know that."

The sincerity of it is disarming. You've braced for deflection, for charm deployed as a shield, and instead he's just standing there, looking at you like you're someone he's decided to be honest with at whatever cost.

You exhale.

"Okay," you say quietly.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Okay," you repeat, and mean it.

Something in his shoulders releases, subtle but visible. Nami stepped back just slightly, giving the moment its space, watching with that thoughtful quiet she carries in the moments that matter. Then she glances between you both, and the authority in her manner gives way to something softer, the specific warmth she saves for things she actually cares about.

She kisses your cheek before leaning down to help you put back on your underwear and pants.

"We'll figure it out," she says. Not to either of you specifically, rather to all three. "That's how this works. Together."

She reaches for your hand first, then looks at Sanji, and there's something in the look — an instruction and an invitation at once — that has him stepping close, his shoulder finding yours from the other side, his hand settling warm and present at the small of your back.

The three of you stand there for a moment in the shop at the edge of the street, with the afternoon light coming in low and gold through the window, and the day still stretched out ahead of you, and something new taking shape in the space between you that none of you has a full name for yet.

But it's there. Real and warm and carefully, collectively held.

"Now," Nami says, her hand squeezing yours once before she turns back toward the racks with the energy of someone returning to a task she takes seriously. "There are at least three more shops I want to get through before the light goes."

Sanji makes a sound that's mostly amusement.

You laugh, soft and genuine, and let her pull you forward.

‿︵‿ 𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼 ‿︵‿

a/n: was having difficulty uploading the length of the original fic due to spacing etc, so the second half of this is already uploaded, and you can read it here!

thank you for your patience with uploading this! i know i'm a couple days late, but i was struggling with editing, since i would get to it late at night! i also hoped you guys enjoyed it! sorry if the pacing for romance is like super sonic speed, but there's a lot of story and dynamics that i wanna get to, so that's why we have the honeymoon arc, where everything is going well and everyone's falling in love. then comes the good stuff. i have something around 3-5 more arcs planned, so we have a story going!

as always, likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated! i love you very much, here’s a kiss from me to you 😘

dc masterlist | anime masterlist. | tip jar

taglist: @katbug27 @uniquecutie-puffs @savagenctzen @flow33didontsmoke @mybones537 @fangirlingbookworm1 @jellyjamheadobb

taglist: @not-aya @kcupid @romancedawn333 @stranger-chan @jamesp4l @bi-forest-fire @silvervinewine @sylum @pinkykats-place @csbnova @multifandomfangirl99 @the-reas0n-is-y0u @calabazazap @cocooola @charliepoopyfart @xxj0rd13xx @differentluminaryruins @bayteuil @abarofsoap @yuyureadss @mil3ss-wonderland @depressed-but-make-it-cute @iheartdaenerys

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#izzy.op

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#izzy.op