modern au where you’re the sister to luffy; off-limits by default, protected by chaos, claimed by no one, but wanted by practically everyone.
they don’t say it out loud, but they don’t have to. you’re the untouchable thing in the room, the one they orbit but are hesitant to touch.
but that doesn’t stop the romantic sanji from always bringing you flowers. or bringing you a fresh, nutritious meal when you’re studying too long and forget to eat. or leaving positive encouraging notes for you to find in your books, your pockets, your car. (you never tell luffy about the more lewd notes that you find in your underwear drawer and under your pillow)
doesn’t stop usopp from leaving little trinkets and puzzles he made for you, loving the wide smile you give him whenever he surprises you and the look of concentration on your face while you try and solve it. and he’s completely normal about it when you give him another smile and a hug that lingers once you’ve finally solved the puzzle
doesn’t stop luffy’s best friend zoro from eyeing the skin you’re showing more often. he’s always been the protector, the one you can call if your older brothers aren’t available, he’ll help you out of whatever mess you got yourself in. at least that’s what he tells himself when he finds his eyes tracking you across the room, watching the way your skirt moves around, quickly showing him a glimpse of your ass
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this thought came into my head this morning so i had to write this real quick so ignore mistakes please and thank you!
been thinking about older!strawhat crew (in thejr 40s) who are all retired and enjoying their lives.
all of them are a bit more relaxed and not seeking adventures as aggressively as they did in their youth. they’ve all reached their goals, and are just basking in the success that they’ve finally reached.
they have semi-regular meetings where they all meet up and hang out with one another, and it almost feels like it did when they were all young, just starting on the journey.
while it’s never the same mixture or grouping, everyone always tries to make at least one meeting. regardless of how many years have passed, these people helped them in some of the darkest times, and were there for decades of their life.
this time it’s the original 5 crew members, all enjoying the relaxed company that comes with knowing people so long. they met at sanji’s restaurant, as the chef didn’t want to leave it for too long once it’s finally started drawing in a consistent crowd.
they’re exchanging stories, sharing drinks, engaged with the newest dramatized version of one of their old tales told by usopp, as a sort of silence fell over them.
they thought that they’ve done it all, had it all. this is all there is to life now. they enjoy their own lives, enjoy these moments and wait for the end to come.
they’ve come to terms with it, they’ve had more than their share of adventure, so if they live a boring older life, well it is what it is.
at least, that’s what they thought until you walked into the restaurant and immediately drew their attention.
you were sweet, smiling at the bartender that sanji had hand selected, seemingly oblivious to the various looks you received from people that littered around.
from the vip area on the second floor, they had a clear view of the skin your outfit showed, the shorter hemlines of the top and pants that you wore.
you were practically a vision, and a forbidden desire for them, for the most important aspect about you, is how you look to be half their age.
but as you turned around in your seat, surveying the restaurant while your drink was being made, you finally saw them.
and the way your eyes widened when you looked at them and the way you couldn’t look away from them for longer than 10 minutes, made the thought of the age difference disappear
because it had been a very long time since anyone had looked at them like they were something to be discovered, instead of something already known.
summary: while he’s always been an admirer of women, in his older age there’s nothing sanji loves more than taking his time with you
content: sex, spit kink, light choking kink, delayed orgasm (f receiving), dom/sub tones, dom!sanji, sub!reader, multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, praise kink, light aftercare, he cums inside,
wc: 2.8k
a/n: this was not listed to be posted in may, but i couldn't help myself, enjoy!
You barely register the strain of your own trembling arms, your fingers gripping the overhead railing so hard your knuckles burn white. The pressure of your palms anchors you in the present, reminding you that you’re suspended in that humid, balmy darkness, your body draped over him. Your thighs bracket his, clinging to him for purchase, and your knees thud against the mattress in a steady, building rhythm.
Every muscle in your legs shakes from the effort of holding yourself up, but you refuse to slacken, refuse to let go. It’s as if relinquishing that grip would break the spell you’re under, the one that has him staring up at you, his eyes half-lidded and burning, his own hands forging bruises into your hips.
Sanji hasn’t looked away from your face, not once. Every bounce, every hesitant circle of your hips, every desperate grind—he tracks it all with a hungry patience, as though he’s cataloging every microexpression for future reference. His hands are all over you, sometimes both anchored at your waist, sometimes splaying fingers around your ribcage or snaking up to stroke the column of your throat. When you try to move faster, to chase the friction that’s already setting your nerves on fire, he simply tightens his grip and slows you back down, setting a deliberate pace that has you clenching around him, breathless and on the edge of sobbing.
You whimper, voice hoarse, letting your head fall back as you try to drag yourself down harder onto him. The ache inside you is overwhelming, hunger so sharp it feels like it might turn into pain, but Sanji’s relentless in the way he holds you, the way he draws every motion out just to the edge of unbearable.
“Please,” you gasp out, the word almost unrecognizable in the thick air of the room. You don’t know what you’re begging for. Release, maybe, or just the end of this exquisite torture.
He only laughs, a low, rolling sound that vibrates through your whole body. “No, no, no,” he croons, voice syrupy and cruel. “You don’t get to rush this, baby. Not tonight. Keep those hands right there. That’s why you’re up there in the first place.” He strokes you with the words, makes you feel small and wanton, and you realize you’d do anything he asks of you, just for the reward of that voice, of his approval. “Tonights all about taking our time.”
He keeps you moving, keeps you straining, each upstroke and downstroke orchestrated by the subtle, relentless pressure of his hands. You feel like a marionette, and he’s the puppeteer, pulling your strings with infuriating precision. It should be humiliating, should make you feel powerless, but it’s the opposite. Your entire mind has narrowed down to the perfect, aching alignment of your body to his, the way he fills you, the way he refuses to give you anything you haven’t earned.
You bite down on a moan, try to keep your breathing even as you feel your orgasm approach, but he notices anyway.
“That’s it,” Sanji says, almost purring now, hips thrusting up in time with yours, his own head thrown back as he groans. When his eyes meet yours, they’re dark and lidded, his voice containing a rasp. “Feel it. Don’t hide from it.”
He lets go of your waist with one hand and slides it up your body, trailing his fingertips from hip to ribcage to sternum in one sinuous line. You shudder, and your eyes flutter closed, but he’s not having that; he grabs your chin and tilts your face down so you’re forced to look at him.
He kisses you then, all tongue and teeth and insistent need. It’s not gentle; it’s messy, domineering, and you never want to end. Sanji sucks your bottom lip between his teeth and pulls until it hurts, then shoves his tongue into your mouth. You melt into it, let him have you, and when he finally pulls away, you’re gasping, lips numb and swollen.
He uses that same hand to grab your jaw, squeezing until your mouth falls open on its own, your tongue lolling out for him. The look on his face is pure delight, thrilled at his own power over you. Without warning, he spits into your mouth, and you shiver at the hot slickness of it, at the obscene intimacy. “Swal—,” he starts to order, but you’re already doing it, eager, desperate to please.
You see the approval on his face, feel it in his accidental hip thrust that, and your body thrums with pride. “Good girl,” he says. “That’s what I like. Love it when you listen to me. You’ve been so good, I think it’s time for your reward, don’t you think?”
He shifts underneath you, adjusts his angle, and the new position makes you see stars. You whine at the sudden, perfect pressure, and he grins up at you, wicked. “Can you take more?” he asks, his voice almost gentle now, a dark promise.
You nod, speechless, and he brings both hands to grip your waist again, this time rolling his own hips up into you so that the force of it nearly knocks the wind out of your chest. You cry out, choked, and the sound makes his pupils dilate, his cock twitching inside you. He starts to fuck up into you in earnest, meeting every bounce with a thrust that leaves you writhing, your body slick with sweat and trembling with effort.
‘Fuck, thank you for being so good to me. God, you’re incredible like this, the way you’re squeezing me.”
He keeps you at that edge forever, until your legs are shaking uncontrollably and your whole body is locked up, rigid with need. You try to hold yourself together, but you’re unraveling under his hands, already verging on tears from the intensity. He watches the whole thing, his gaze sharp and attentive, never missing a single detail.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, almost reverent now. “So fucking gorgeous like this. Ruined for me.” He leans up just far enough to catch your nipple in his mouth, sucking it hard and biting until you gasp again, then laves over the sting with his tongue. He does the same to the other side, and then pulls back, leaving your chest streaked with saliva and flushed red.
He slows the pace for a moment, just enough for you to catch your breath. Sanji’s pupils are blown wide, nearly swallowing the color of his irises as he watches you fracture apart beneath his hands. “You want to come?” he growls, voice low and feral. You nod frantically, all dignity lost. “Go ahead and be loud for me.” Is all he says before he brings his thumb down to your clit, rubbing in tight, merciless circles that almost make you scream.
It feels like a live wire, pressure so precise it borders on unbearable, each circle dragging you closer to dissolution. You clamp down around him, the sensation too much, and you know you’re going to break. Your own arousal coats the inside of your thigh and his hips, the wet slide of your bodies sounding obscene in the otherwise quiet night, punctuated by his rough breathing and your choked whimpers.
Sanji leans up, mouth at your ear, and says, “Come for me, right now.” You obey, because you can’t do anything else, your body spasming around him in violent, convulsive waves. You sob through it, raw and wrecked, legs locking tight around his hips, and he holds you together, rocking you through every aftershock until you finally collapse against his chest, spent and shaking.
Afterwards, he shifts his hands to cradle your head, running his thumb over the sweat-damp line of your temple as you still tremble, clenching occassionally around his cock. You don’t want to move, not ever, and he seems to know exactly what you feel. Sanji gathers you, an arm banded tight around your back, the other stroking slow patterns from your shoulders down your spine. He holds you there, murmuring praises. “You did so good for me, baby. So good.”
Your body hums with aftershocks, not just in the throbbing ache between your legs but in every cell. For a moment the fear that you’re still too exposed, too wanton, that you’ve crossed some unspoken line and can never go back, flickers through your mind. But then Sanji’s lips are on your cheek, and then your jaw, and then making slow, lazy circuits along your hairline, and all you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and let yourself drift in the warmth of his praise.
“You’re perfect,” he breathes, and you want so badly to believe it that you think maybe you do. You sink into him, equal parts exhausted and wild, and you feel something almost like peace settle over you.
You’re not ready for him to move, but he does, with surprising gentleness. He slides his hands under your thighs and flips you, rolling you onto your back and pinning you to the damp sheets with his weight. You blink up at him, dazed, your arms splayed out like you’ve been crucified by pleasure.
He nudges your legs wider, presses in, still hard enough to make you whimper at the sudden stretch. “Lemme fill you up,” he murmurs, words slurred with need, and he fucks you deeply now, the rhythm heady and unrestrained, every thrust pushing you deeper into mattress and into him.
You can feel how desperate he is now, the way he shudders and flexes his jaw, the way Sanji keeps his eyes locked on your face. He barely speaks, just a tumble of curses and gasps and endearments, “God, you’re so beautiful like this—fuck, the way you squeeze me, you’re dripping,” His voice cracks as he focuses on picking up the speed, your back arching up to meet him, nails scoring lines down his back in a desperate clutch. You’re oversensitive, overstimulated, but he keeps going, chasing his own oblivion with single-minded greed.
“You’re perfect, meant for me, only me.” It’s a prayer and a promise and a warning all at once, and you find yourself helpless beneath it.He comes with a guttural sound, buries himself to the hilt and pulses inside you, pelvis grinding against your overstimulated clit in a bruising, messy climax. The sensation sets off another, smaller orgasm that ripples through you, making you sob and cling, your legs locked tight around his hips.
He slumps, heavy and hot, blanketing you with his body. You could die like this, you think. You’d let him crush you into the mattress, leave the world behind, as long as it means you’re held this close. Sweat cools between your skin and his, and you’re both breathing in time, chests rising and falling as if you share the same rhythm.
You don’t know how long you lie there, fused together, his arms tangled around your shoulders, his nose buried in your hair. When he finally softens and slides out, you whimper at the sensation, the emptiness, but he hushes you, rolling you gently to your side and spooning up behind you.
You’re shaking, you realize—shock, or maybe just the body’s way of recalibrating. He wraps himself around you, legs tangled with yours, hands splayed over your belly, and hands caress you slowly, like he’s trying to settle your bones.
“Shhhh,” he whispers, mouth at your ear, “I got you. You did so good for me, angel. You can let go now, relax. I’m not going anywhere.” You feel the press of his lips into your shoulder, the soft, almost chaste kisses that trail along your spine. You want to turn around and see his face, but you’re too spent.
Your mind fizzes with static. You expect the silence to be awkward, but instead it’s vast, full of meaning, like the hush between thunderclaps. You don’t know what to say, or if you even can.
The room is humid and heavy with the scent of sex, sweat, something wild and animal and new. Your hair is pasted to your forehead, your thighs still slick, your body marked with his teeth and hands. You wonder if you’re ruined, if you’ll ever be able to walk around in the daylight without betraying the memory of this moment.
He doesn’t let you drift too far. Sanji buries his face in the crook of your neck and breathes you in, his hand tracing lazy circles over your hip. “Did I hurt you?” he asks quietly, the question gentle but insistent. You shake your head, but he lifts himself enough to look at you, really look, blue eyes searching for any waver, any lie.
He picks up your hand, brings your wrist to his mouth, and presses a kiss to the inside of it, right over your racing pulse. “You can tell me, sweetheart. Did I push too hard?”
“No,” you manage, voice hoarse from use and emotion. “It was perfect.”
His smile is soft, slow. “Good. I want you to tell me if anything ever isn’t perfect.” He kisses you again, this time on the lips, slow and reverent. “You did so good, honey. You’re incredible. I’m so, so—I’m just—fuck, you’re everything.”
You laugh, a ragged sound, and suddenly you feel the burn of tears at the corners of your eyes, hot and unbidden. You’re not sad, not even overwhelmed; it’s just that something about being seen, being praised, being held so tightly and so completely, unlocks a well inside you that you didn’t know existed. When you start to cry, Sanji just hugs you closer, gentle hands stroking your hair and your back, murmuring nonsense and endearments until the tears dry up and you’re left empty and luminous and free.
You could stay like this for hours. You’re not sure how much time passes before he eventually shifts, gathering you up and rolling the both of you to the far side of the bed. He tucks the sheet around your shoulders and arranges your limbs so you’re cradled into his chest, your face pressed against the fluttery beat of his heart.
He smells like smoke and sweat and something faintly citrus, and you inhale it, greedy for more of him. He cards his fingers through your hair, untangling the knots left by your previous exertions, and every gentle tug sends a new shiver up your spine.
You’re so relaxed you could melt, and yet you’re more awake than you’ve ever been. Your mind skips ahead to the consequences, the morning after, the dangers of letting yourself be this soft. But all of those fears are drowned out by the simple, animal rightness of being here, in this bed, with him.
“You’re not gonna leave after this, are you?” you mumble, so tired your tongue fumbles the sentence. It’s a stupid question, he’s just as ruined as you, clearly, but you can’t help it.
He laughs, a soft puff against your temple. “You think I could let you go after that? I’m keeping you, baby. I’m never letting go.”
His words settle over you like a blanket, heavier than the sheet, and you let yourself believe them, just for tonight.
At some point he gets up, cleans you both up with a towel and a glass of water, fussing over you, making sure you’re warm and safe and comfortable before he returns to your side. He pulls you back into his arms and kisses your forehead, whispering, “I love you like this. Completely wrecked and all mine.”
You don’t answer right away. You just close your eyes and let yourself drift, held together by the arms that shattered you. Even as sleep overtakes you, you know you’ll never want anything less than this; than being wanted, being claimed, being ruined and remade in the space of a single night.
He doesn’t let you go, not yet. “Now lemme fill you up.” He flips both of you in one smooth motion, pinning you to the bed with his weight. You’re still oversensitive, still riding the edge of pleasure and pain, but he’s not done with you. He thrusts into you again, harder this time, chasing his own release. He murmurs various things along the lines of how well you fit him, the way you’re sucking him in, and how he wants to keep you filled with him. You cling to him, nails digging into his back, and he bites your shoulder to stifle his own groan.
You feel him pulse inside you, his hips grinding against yours, and the sensation triggers a second, smaller orgasm, leaving you gasping and boneless. He collapses on top of you, breathing hard, and you both lie there tangled together, silent except for the pounding of your hearts.
Eventually, he pulls out, careful and gentle, and you whimper at the loss. He rolls to the side and gathers you up, pressing your face into his chest. You can feel his heart beating, steady and strong, and it lulls you into a hazy calm.
He runs his fingers through your hair, untangling it, and you realize you never want to move from this spot. Not ever.
He presses a kiss to your forehead and whispers, “I love you like this. Completely wrecked and all mine.”
a/n: and guess what? i have older 40s! zoro written and an idea for older 40s! luffy. i clearly have a problem.
what’s that rihanna say? must be smut on the brain!
but in reality, this is loosely tied with that little blurb i did on older 40s! straw hat crew, if you wanted to go check that out.
as always, thank you for reading! likes, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated! here's a little kiss from me to you to thank you!
wanna read more? check out some of the links below! wanna request something (open till may 15th), read the rules first!
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pairing: roronoa zoro x afab!reader
summary: you’re roommates with zoro but didn’t expect this weird habit he has. or, modern au! where zoro likes to sleep on the same bed as you!
content: modern au!, sharing the same bed, light angst
wc: 1.3k
buy me a coffee | dc masterlist | anime masterlist
He always ends up in your bed.
At first, it had been confusing, walking into your room after a long day to find Zoro sprawled across your mattress like he owned it. Boots still on one foot, the other half-pulled free and dangling off the edge. One arm thrown over his face, the other hanging off the side of the bed, knuckles nearly grazing the floor. Dead to the world.
(You’d checked, the first time, to make sure he was actually breathing.)
You’d shoved his shoulder hard enough to rock him. Said his name twice, then louder. Grabbed his arm with both hands and pulled.
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
So you’d peeled the spare blanket from the closet shelf and spent the night on the couch with a crick in your neck. The second time, you tried again. The third time, you banged two pot lids together in the doorway like cymbals. The tenth time, you just dropped your bag, kicked off your own shoes, and got in.
He didn’t stir. Didn’t say a word.
The first time you’d found yourself trapped under his arm, you watched the digital clock cycle through four whole hours, unable to move without dislodging him. You wondered if he’d planned it, if this was some kind of prank or challenge, an escalation of the passive-aggressive war he seemed to be waging against your boundaries. But the rise and fall of his chest against your back was so even, so mindlessly peaceful, that it was hard to imagine it as anything but instinct.
The second time it happened, you tried to wriggle free, but he only tightened his grip, drawing you closer like a pillow or a security blanket. By the third time, you gave up. There was a strange comfort in it, after all.
You started to look forward to the ritual: to the sound of heavy boots hitting the hallway and Zoro wandering through the door with all the finesse of a tranquilized bear. Sometimes he made it to the bed on his own, sometimes you found him dozing in the bathroom or face-down in front of the fridge, his face pressed against a pack of cold cuts. But no matter where he fell asleep, he always migrated to your bed by the end of the night. It was as if he was tethered to you, drawn in by some invisible force neither of you could name.
You tried to keep your life in order. You cooked, cleaned, did laundry with the same mechanical efficiency as always. You went to work, answered calls, did your best to ignore the lingering scent of his shampoo on your pillowcase. You barely spoke during the day. He didn’t ask about your job, you didn’t ask about his. Sometimes he would disappear for hours or even days, and you would feel a complicated relief when the apartment was empty, as if you could finally think straight. But it never lasted. He always came back, and you always let him in.
At night, when the lights were out, you would lie awake and listen to the sound of his breath. Sometimes it was so quiet you weren’t sure if he was still there, and you would shift, just slightly, until you felt his arm tighten in response. It was a silent dialogue, a conversation held entirely in muscle memory and the subtlest of movements. You wondered if he remembered any of it in the morning. You doubted it. He had the kind of face that held no secrets, at least not the kind you could read in daylight.
But despite all of it—the 3 a.m. intimacy, the way his arm always found your waist, the way he would murmur your name in his sleep like a question—nothing had actually changed. You were still just roommates. Still single. Whatever existed between you was as formless and nameless as ever.
So when someone asked you out at work one afternoon, you said yes. A couple of dates turned into a few weeks. He was nice, easy to talk to. Normal in a way your life wasn’t.
And eventually, it felt natural to invite him over. You texted Zoro beforehand, short and to the point, and a few minutes later, your phone buzzed:
👍
You huffed a chuckle and didn’t think twice about it. You cleaned the apartment before he came, lit the vanilla candles you kept in the back of the cabinet, and swapped out the mismatched throw blanket for the nicer one you normally kept folded on the closet shelf. The kind of small, invisible effort that no one notices unless they’re looking for it.
You’d stepped out to shower, leaving him on your bed, scrolling through his phone, shoes off, completely at ease in your space.
The apartment was quiet. So when the door creaked open, he glanced up, expecting you, still mid-scroll.
The footsteps were wrong. Too heavy. Too slow.
“And who are you?”
Your date jolted upright, phone nearly clattering to the floor. “Ah!! Who am I? Who are you?!”
“I’m asking the questions.” Zoro stepped fully into the room, a pillow tucked under one arm like he was returning from a long trip, voice unhurried, almost bored. “Since you’re sleeping in my bed.”
“What?!” He scrambled back against the headboard. “She told me this is her bed!”
Zoro didn’t answer that. He just kept walking, slow and even, like the man’s presence was a minor inconvenience at most—a chair pulled out of place, a cabinet left open. He stopped at the edge of the bed, set his pillow down, and looked at him the way you look at something you’re about to move.
The silence lasted about four seconds.
“Yeah, nope. This is weird, like this is really weird—“
He was off the bed before he finished the sentence, snatching his jacket from the corner of the mattress, nearly catching his foot on the bedframe on his way out.
Zoro didn’t move to stop him. Didn’t say another word. Just stood there and watched him go, then set his pillow against the headboard and sat down.
When you got out of the shower, you were humming something you heard earlier, steam still following you down the hall.
You stopped short in the doorway, surprised by what you were seeing.
Zoro was in your bed. Pillow behind his head, one arm folded across his chest, eye already open and tracking you with the mild expression of someone who had been there for hours. He nodded once.
You looked around the room. “Where’s...?“ You went back to the hallway and called his name, but received no answer. The vanilla candles had burned down a little, the nicer throw blanket was slightly askew.
Your phone buzzed on the vanity.
Hey, I’m sorry. I had to go. This was all a bit too weird. Should have let me know you had a boyfriend.
You set it back down. Stood there for a moment with your hand still on it, towel tucked tight under your arm, water dripping off onto the floor as you reread the messages.
Then you turned around to see that Zoro had already looked away, adjusting his pillow with the focused attention of someone who had absolutely nothing to answer for.
“You’ve gotta stop doing this.”
“Doing what?” His voice was low and unhurried, directed mostly at the ceiling.
You grumbled, then turned around to get ready, pulling open the top drawer hard enough that it rattled, and grabbed the first things your hands found. The room went quiet. Just the soft drag of fabric, the small sounds of getting ready for bed, the candles guttering faintly in the corner. Then—
“So are you gonna change the sheets?”
You turned slowly. He was looking at you now, one eye open, expression completely, infuriatingly earnest.
“Because I don’t wanna sleep on the same sheets as that guy.”
You grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at him. He caught it without sitting up, which somehow made it worse. The smug tilt at the corner of his mouth made it worse still.
The makeup brush caught him right across the bridge of the nose, as satisfaction bloomed through you. He didn’t catch that one.
a/n: this idea popped up in my head this morning, and i haven’t posted for the week yet, so i knew i had to get this out!
i hoped you enjoy this silly little idea! as always likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated! i love you so much, here’s a kiss from me to you! 😘
i’m working hard on editing the next chapter of just one night, but i keep working and rewriting it so it’s taking me longer! thank you for your patience!
hopeful to get to some requests this week and put them out, so keep an eye out for that later this week! alrighty, love ya!
buy me a coffee | dc masterlist | anime masterlist
unleashed desires
⟡⟡ 40s older!zoro x younger!afab!reader (late twenties/early thirties)
content: older man x younger woman, doggy style, rough sex, creampie, implied multiple rounds
18+ MDNI | 18+ MDNI | 18+ MDNI | 18+ MDNI | 18+ MDNI | 18+ MDNI
in the same verse as:
original • older!sanji • older!luffy coming soon (vote at the bottom for who after)
You’re on your stomach, face pressed into a pillowcase still faintly sun-drenched from the afternoon, hips arched by the wedge of Zoro’s thighs and the casual leverage of his fists anchored around your waist. His hands settle, fingers always seeking new territory—sometimes gentle, sometimes a little too rough, but you crave both, and he’s learned how to toggle between them with an intuition that feels like muscle memory. Tonight, he starts out mechanical, a metronome wound too tight, but the steadiness is deceptive.
Every beat, every friction-burned slide of skin, is a test: how much can you take before you shatter. You feel the sweat tracking down your spine, the way your body braces and then gives, and you know in your marrow that he’s holding back.
He always does at first. Zoro is a man who obsesses, who runs his thumb over the edges of his own boundaries until they’re smooth as river stones, so when he finally lets himself go, it’s never by accident.
You’ve learned to read the signs: the catch in his breath at the base of his throat, the subtle tightening in the hands that have callused themselves against a thousand repetitions of sword and steel but still soften when they touch you. You know what it means when his jaw sets, when his scar twitches, when the air vibrates with the static charge of his need. Sometimes you want to be the one who breaks him first.
Tonight you feel it coming on, the pressure building in waves, and you want more. You need more, need to see him snap the leash. So you twist beneath him, craning your head so he can see your eyes—pinned, pleading, fierce. “Don’t hold back,” you say, and your voice comes out steadier than you expected, like an order you’re both desperate to obey. “Fuck me like you want to.”
The rhythm stutters. For a beat, he hesitates, as if waiting for some unspoken confirmation, but you’re already pushing back, rolling your hips up and into him with all the leverage you can muster. “You heard me,” you insist, biting down on the words because the need is starting to hurt. “Fuck me like you want to.”
It’s like you’ve flipped a breaker inside him. Zoro’s breath hitches—no, it cracks—and the sound he makes is something between a growl and a gasp, not quite human. He drags you up by the hips, shifts his weight, and pins you broadside, the new angle sending a jolt up your spine that’s half pleasure and half pain but all of it necessary. He sets his jaw, lips drawn back in a grin that’s all wolf, and you realize you’re trembling, not from fear but from the anticipation of what’s coming.
“Sure?” he asks, voice ragged, every syllable scraping over you like gravel. His thumbs dig into the tender groove above your ass, and you can feel how close he is to the edge. You know he wants this just as badly as you do.
“Don’t stop,” you manage, breathless. “I want to feel it—I want to feel you lose control.”
He laughs, low and dangerous, and the sound vibrates through his body into yours. He pulls out almost all the way, the emptiness sharp, then slams forward with a force that shocks a sob from your lips. You clench the sheets, white-knuckled, but it’s not enough; you need something else to hang on to. So you grab for the headboard, the wall, anything, and when you can’t reach, you settle for a pillow, crushing it to your face as if you could muffle your own animal sounds.
Zoro finds a new rhythm, not the old measured one, but something wild and unpredictable. His hands chart your body with greedy precision, one slipping to your shoulder to keep you steady, the other palming your flank so hard you know you’ll wear his fingerprints for hours after. Each thrust lands deeper, harder, and you feel yourself shudder with each impact, the soreness blooming inside you in a way that feels holy.
He’s not talking now, not really, just gritting out half-words; the syllables of your name, a string of curses, a running commentary on what it feels like to take you like this. You can only answer in gasps and whimpers, the heat in you building to something unspeakable, something that feels like it’s going to tear you apart if you don’t get more.
But you do get more. Zoro is tireless, relentless, a machine when he wants to be, but tonight he’s something else. A man stripped down to the need for friction, for violence, for the kind of connection that leaves marks. He rears back, hauls you up so your spine bends in an impossible arc, and you feel the sweat-slick heat of his chest flush against your back.
“Can you take it?” he rasps, and you realize with a shock that you’re crying, tears leaking down your face not from pain, not exactly, but from how fucking intense it is. You nod, unable to articulate anything coherent, just riding the wave of his rhythm and the way his cock splits you open in a way that feels like surrender.
You want to say more, to give him back his own words, but all you can do is offer up the sounds, the proof of your need. He answers with action: a hand fisting in your hair, tugging your head back so you can’t look away from him, so you have to see how lost he is in you, how gone. His other hand brackets around your hip, fingertips digging in with bruising insistence, and the pain is a punctuation mark on the pleasure.
“Good for you?” he growls, and the question is almost rhetorical. He can feel you coming apart around him, can see the way your body arches, desperate for more. “The way an old man fucks you, that what you need?”
“Only you,” you gasp, and it’s the only truth you have left. “Only you can—god—“
He grins, teeth bared, and the rhythm gets ragged, desperate. You hear the mattress groan, the echo of flesh on flesh, and for a moment you’re both unmoored, nothing but sensation and the certainty that you’re going to remember this every time you try to walk tomorrow.
His eye drops to where your bodies meet, glassy and fixed, and he crosses his forearms over your hips to pull you back onto him with each thrust, the new angle making you seize around him involuntarily.
You don’t remember crying out, not at first, but then the echo is everywhere, a raw and shameless sound that ricochets off the walls and back into your open mouth. Zoro’s voice is a jagged counterpoint, low and ruined, so intimate in your ear that for a second you can’t tell if it’s him or you making those noises.
“There.” His breath punches out on the word, all hunger and heat. “Feel that? Feel how much you want it?” There’s a moment, a taut silence, broken only by the filthy, helpless cadence of each meeting of your bodies—something primal, the wet snap of skin and the wetness between, as if you’ve both boiled down to the friction and what it makes of you. Then, voice breaking, he says, “Gonna cum.”
“Inside.” You cut him off, greedy on the edge, thrumming with the need to drag him over with you. “Please—inside—“ It’s not a question, not even a plea; it’s a demand, and he answers as one soldier to another, all discipline fracturing.
He slams home, one last time, and the world swings loose. His rhythm breaks apart, thrusts stuttering and fragmenting, every one deeper, the pressure bright and brutal where your bodies join. You’re convinced it will split you, that you’ll break open and scatter, and then the answering pulse of him inside you snaps everything to white. You shudder, boneless, caught in a detonation of pleasure so blinding you bite your own arm to keep from screaming.
He doesn’t let go. He stays locked to you, both arms bracing your hips as if he could hold you together while the aftershocks roll through. Every twitch of him inside you draws out another spasm, each one lighting you up, and the wet heat pooling where you’re joined is so obscene it feels sacred.
Zoro doesn’t collapse right away; he’s trembling, too, and you feel it through every inch of him pressed to your back. His hips keep rocking, involuntary, like he can’t bear to stop even after he’s emptied himself. In that moment, the idea of separation is unbearable—you want to claw him closer.
His head drops to your shoulder. You can feel his breath cooling the sweat at your nape, the way his chest is heaving, rhythm synced to your own. There’s blood in your mouth, faint copper, from clenching your teeth too hard, and the taste of it grounds you in the aftermath.
“Hey,” you whisper, because you want to make sure he’s still there, not just a graven image fused to your back. He nuzzles your neck in answer, lips and teeth finding the damp place behind your ear, and you shiver again, this time from something softer.
He folds over you, body blanketing yours, and finally goes still. His weight is a comfort, not a crush; you want to live there, in the soft endless press of him, forever. His mouth moves against your skin, a string of nothing sounds that resolve, eventually, into one set of words:
“Good girl.” He’s not joking. His voice is stripped down, reverent, as if you’ve done something holy. He kisses the sweat-salt from your jaw, the red imprint on your shoulder left by your own teeth. “Give me a few minutes. and we’ll go again.”
a/n: a surprise because this anime has a chokehold on me rn! also, because i’m trying to distract myself and what better way than with unrestricted smut. i also had these stockpiled, so if you see another smutty op one shot (luffy, usopp, nami x reader) that's what happened!
i have an older!luffy planned, but who do you think should be next?
which older!straw hat should be after luffy?
nami
usopp
monster trio together 👹
Voting ended onMay 18
i had issues with a client postponing on me, and it's left me scrambling for other jobs. that being said, i will be shameless and promote my commissions are open, please consider requesting some work from me, visit my masterlists to see my other work.
or leave an encouraging message, that'll make me smile! or a request for next month's session! as always, likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated! here's a kiss from me to you!😘 see ya tomorrow!
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Secretly a Freak! Luffy who gets handsy with his archivist! reader after the battle in wano 😶 (since you and I are ovulating, keep that freak uppp)
18+ MDNI; cw: rough sex, he's cumming inside, possessive notes, excessive dirty talking, luffy's a pussy worshipper,
a/n: something clearly came over me, thank you for sending this, i hope you like it. also, idk about you guys but i like it when my normally nice partner loses their shit and breaks that nice persona and shows how crazy they get, ya know?
"Luffy, let me focus." You tell your captain, turning in your chair attempting to be stern, already knowing that it was a losing game when you felt him laugh. you both know how this is gonna play out.
The rubber man continued, his hands slipping under your shirt as he placed his head on your shoulder, before letting out a slight chuckle. 'I think you're focusing on the wrong thing,” he murmurs into your skin.
You laugh as you try to continue writing the latest adventures of the Straw Hat pirates in Wano and all the different tales and battles that the crew went on.
You were halfway through a sentence about Zoro getting lost in the Flower Capital again when Luffy nipped gently at your earlobe. The pen stuttered in your grip, making a splotch of ink on the page.
"See?" Luffy mumbled, his lips ghosting along your jaw as he grinned. "You write too much. You should play more."
His fingers flexed against your skin, rough and warm under your shirt. His touch was everywhere at once, poking at your sides and splaying across your chest, and every time you tried to refocus, he shifted, stubborn as ever. With every distracting press and teasing tug, he made it impossible to remember where you’d left off. Kaido? The Onigashima raid? You honestly forgot, and at this point? Couldn't care less,
Luffy's hands roam greedily under your shirt, fingers splaying wide on your waist as he hauls you fully onto the desk. His mouth claims yours again, tongue pushing deep while his hands roam, before his fingers tug on your waistband, taking everything off in one firm tug.
Luffy lets out a low moan when he sees you're soaking, just waiting for him, probably as desperate for this as he is.
He stands up, stepping back in between your legs, his hips grind forward, the head of his cock sliding through your slick folds.
"Fuck, look at you," he growls, voice rough and low as he leans forward to give you a kiss. "This cunt's already dripping for me. You were trying to write about the crew, but your body's telling me exactly what you need."
He lines up and slowly sinks in, burying himself to the hilt, a guttural groan rips from his throat as your walls clamp down around him. "Shit—tight, so fucking tight. You were made for my cock, weren't you? Made to take every inch of me."
Luffy doesn't wait. He pulls back and slams in again, setting a relentless pace that makes the desk creak under you. His mouth never stops moving; kissing your jaw, nipping your neck, sucking at your shoulder while his hips snap forward. Each thrust drags his cock along your inner walls, the wet sound of your bodies meeting filling the room.
"Grip me just like that," he pants against your skin, teeth scraping your collarbone, his voice almost slurred, like he's drunk on the sensation, the connection. "Fuck, your pussy's squeezing me so good. Like it—FUCK! Like it knows who it belongs to.”
His hand slides up to cradle the back of your neck, holding you in place as he drives deeper. The possessive edge in his voice grows thicker with every stroke. "Like it knows I'm the only one who gets to fuck you like this."
His voice gets lower, letting you hear the emotion in his voice, the almost painful realization of what could have happened. "We almost lost everything out there. Almost lost you.”
His grip gets tighter as he thrusts in deeply, kissing you deeply, before pulling away, an almost manic look in his eyes. “But you're here, alive, and taking my cock like you were born for it."
"Luffy," you gasp, fingers clutching at his shoulders. "Slow down, I—"
"No," he cuts in, voice ragged as he thrusts harder. "Can't slow down. Not when you're this wet around me. Tell me how it feels, tell me you want more."
"It feels—fuck—you feel so deep," you moan, hips jerking up to meet him.
"That's it," he growls, forehead pressed to yours. "Say it again. Say how deep my cock is inside that tight little cunt."
"So deep," you breathe, nails digging into his back. "You're stretching me so much."
Luffy groans loudly, his hips snapping faster. "Good girl. Keep talking. I want to hear every sound you make while I fuck you."
His forehead drops to your shoulder, breath hot against your skin as he focuses on the rhythm. His thrusts turn sharper, more desperate, chasing the tight drag of your cunt around him. "Don't stop clenching like that, feels too good. You're perfect—every squeeze, every sound you make. This pussy was made for me."
"Luffy—please," you whimper, legs tightening around his waist.
"Please what?" he demands, teeth grazing your ear. "Tell me what you want. Want me to fill you up? Want your captain to pump every drop inside this greedy cunt?"
"Yes," you cry out, voice breaking. "Want you to come inside me."
"Fuck yes," he snarls, pounding into you with renewed force. "Gonna give it to you. Gonna stuff you full until it's dripping out. Gonna keep it all in? Please?"
"Yes—yes, Luffy," you moan, body shaking under him.
"That's my girl," he pants, kissing your neck between words. "Squeeze me harder. Milk my cock while I fuck you stupid."
Hiii I saw that your requests were open so I’d loove to request something please. I hope this isn’t weird, can you write a vampire reader x either luffy or zoro the topic doesn’t really matter soo you can write whatever buttt can there be a scene where the reader has to drink blood. Sorryy its not rlly specific its totally alright if u dont have time to write this rnn!!
this was so much fun to write, thank you sm for sharing this idea with me, i hope i did it justice and to your liking! i ended up doing both luffy and zoro x reader, so i hope that's okay!
if given the choice, i'll probably always go with 'and' rather than 'or' lmao
wc: 4.5k
pairings: luffy x afab!reader, zoro x afab!reader
content: blood sharing, vampirism, devil fruit enhanced blood, zoro and luffy take their jobs as leadership seriously. of course that extends to giving you blood when you need it, what are crew mates for?
The walls were stone.
You knew that already, you'd memorized every crack, every moss-stained seam, every place where the ceiling met the floor in the hour or so you'd been trapped down here. You knew it the way you knew everything now, due to your status as a vampire, with a sharpness that felt less like a gift and more like a curse: in perfect, excruciating detail. Every groove in the rock, every drip of water somewhere deep in the dark. Every—
Heartbeat.
Two of them. Strong, steady, and completely unbothered, which was somehow the most aggravating part.
You pressed your back against the far wall and breathed through your nose, the way you'd taught yourself over years of learning what you were and what you were capable of, the kind of discipline that lived in the body rather than the mind. Slow and even. Think of the larger picture.
But you could always hear them, your ears didn't care what you wanted.
Zoro's heartbeat was low and rhythmic, unhurried even now, the pulse of someone whose body had made peace with danger so long ago it no longer registered as such. It thudded with a kind of quiet authority, steady as a metronome, and the sound of it moved through the stone chamber and directly into the part of your brain you were desperately trying to shut off.
Luffy was faster, brighter somehow, eager even at rest, like the rest of him. It skipped occasionally with what you could only assume was excitement, because of course, being trapped underground with no clear exit was just another Tuesday for the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates.
"Okay, so that didn't work," Luffy announced from somewhere behind you.
"Obviously," Zoro said.
"What if we—"
"No."
"You don't even know what I was going to say."
"It doesn't matter, we already hit it with all our best attacks."
You hear Luffy sit down — the shuffle of his sandals, the thump of his back hitting stone. "Yeah, we've tried everything," he said, in the tone of someone conducting a very serious post-battle debrief. "Your attacks, my attacks, both of our attacks at the same time—"
"The wall is still there," Zoro noted.
"The wall is still there," Luffy confirmed gravely.
You said nothing, focused on the wall in front of you. Specifically, a crack in it, about three inches long, that you'd decided was the most interesting thing in the room. More interesting than the two of them, and has to be more interesting than the sound of blood moving through living veins at a distance of approximately eight feet.
Focus.
"Hey." Footsteps. Solo or both? Both — coming closer, unhurried. "You've been quiet."
Zoro. You recognized his gait now; heavier on the left from years of carrying swords on that hip. You knew too much about both of them and none of it was helping.
"I'm thinking," you said, and were proud of how even your voice came out.
"About what?"
Nothing you want to know about. "An exit strategy."
A pause. You hear him lean against the wall nearby — the small exhale of breath, the quiet clink of his earrings catching each other as he tilted his head. Gold, all three of them. You've always been drawn to the accessory, and have practically been hyper-focused on it since you fell down here together, the way the low light bounced off it when he moved. You'd noticed, specifically, how they drew your eye down the long slope of his neck, the strong line of it, the place just below his jaw where his pulse beat the most visibly, a small and faithful rhythm.
You looked back at your crack in the wall.
Breathe.
"You've been over here for twenty minutes," Zoro mentions.
"I'm aware." Fuck, it's only been twenty minutes?
Another pause, and you know that he wasn't going to push it; that much you'd learned about him in the months aboard the Thousand Sunny. Zoro didn't ask questions that weren't necessary. He watched, he weighed, and he filed things away for later, patient in the way that only seemed to exist in people who had spent years alone with nothing but their own discipline for company.
Which meant he was already noticing something, and you couldn't have that.
"I need some space to think," you said. "I work better alone."
"We're trapped in the same room."
"I'm aware of that too."
The next fifteen minutes were the longest of your life.
You counted them by Luffy's heartbeat, which was a terrible idea and the only thing keeping you grounded, which made it both the problem and the solution simultaneously. You mapped the room for the hundredth time with your eyes, cataloging exits that didn't exist, taking stock of things that couldn't help you, and slowly became aware that the discipline you'd been leaning on was starting to thin.
Hunger was not the right word for it, not really.
Hunger was what you felt an hour after a missed meal, a mild inconvenience easily solved. This lived in the architecture of what you were, in the changed biology that had reorganized you from the inside out, and when it came, it didn't ask, it demanded.
Two heartbeats, eight feet away. Strong, and warm, and—
Stop.
You heard Luffy stand up. heard the shuffle of his steps. He's rummaging in what sounded like his vest pocket, and then, entirely without warning, he was right beside you, appearing in your periphery with the cheerful obliviousness of a man with no concept of personal space and a smile that probably disarmed people more effectively than any weapon.
"Here," he said, holding something out. "You must be thirsty, right? We've been down here a while."
You looked at his hand to see a canteen, small and dented, tied with a piece of red cord. Water. Of couse, that's what he means.
"Luffy," you started.
"Just drink it, you look like you're gonna fall over."
You take the canteen, and you're so focused on not looking at his face, on keeping your eyes on the dented metal in your hands, that you almost missed it. Almost.
His wrist, right there turned upward in the casual, completely unconscious way of someone who had never once had reason to guard against creatures like you. The thin skin of his inner wrist looked pale in the low light, and beneath it — unmistakable, inescapable — the flutter of his pulse. Quick and bright, just like his heartbeat. And you thought, with the helpless clarity of a mind slipping its leash, sweet. You thought about how sweet it would be, this boy who had eaten a Devil Fruit and carried something extraordinary in his blood, who smiled like that even underground, even trapped—
The canteen hit the floor.
You heard it as if from a distance as you're brought out of your daze. You could hear Luffy say your name and that sound was what brought you back. Your name in his calm, slightly confused voice, making you look down.
Your hands were around his wrist.
Not tight, at least not yet, but firm. And you felt it then, felt the change happening: the drop of your fangs, slow and inevitable as a tide, and the heat behind your eyes that meant they were turning; the red bleeding in at the edges, the pupils going dark.
You released him like he was fire.
Three steps back, then five. You hit the opposite wall and stayed there, pressing both hands flat against the stone, breathing hard. The hunger roared in the sudden space you'd put between you, louder without his closeness to anchor you, and you thought: this is bad. This was very, very bad, and the shame of it burned almost as hot as everything else.
"Don't," you said, and your voice came out wrong, too rough and low. "Don't come near me right now."
Luffy's sandals had gone still, and you could hear Zoro, too, now; no longer leaning against the wall, his weight shifted forward, alert. You'd given yourself away, all of it, and there was nothing left to do with that.
"Hey," Zoro said carefully. "Look at us."
"I'd rather not."
"Yeah, I don't think that's actually your call right now." His voice was even, measured, but not unkind. "How long?"
You laughed, and it came out cracked at the edges. "How long what?"
"How long since you've eaten?"
The silence said everything.
"Right," Zoro said, frustration and annoyance clear in his voice.
"I'm fine," you said, which was such an obvious lie that saying it felt almost aggressive. "I just need — I just need a minute. I just need you both to stay over there, and I'll be—"
"Yeah, but your eyes are red," Luffy said.
You closed them. "I know."
"And your teeth are all different."
"Luffy."
"I'm just saying what I see." He didn't sound scared, he sounded— interested, almost. Attentive. The way he got when something new presented itself to him, a puzzle to poke at until he understood it. "Does it hurt? You look like it hurts."
"It's fine."
"That's not what I asked."
You opened your eyes. They were both looking at you; Luffy with his head tilted and his expression open and unclouded, no trace of the wariness that would be entirely reasonable given that you had just reached for his wrist with your eyes turning red. Zoro with his arms crossed, brow slightly furrowed, doing that thing where he assessed a situation with the same energy he brought to sizing up an opponent; quiet and thorough and already arriving somewhere.
"Yes," you said finally. "It hurts. It's—" You stopped. The admission costs something. "It gets harder to think. Everything sharpens, and I can hear your heartbeats, both of them, right now, and it's — I'm trying very hard not to be something you should be afraid of."
Luffy blinked, then he looked at Zoro.
Something passed between them, one of those wordless conversations that you'd watched happen a hundred times on deck, the kind of exchange that happened between people who'd fought alongside each other long enough that language became redundant. Luffy's chin dipped slightly while Zoro's jaw set.
"Okay," Zoro said.
"Okay," Luffy agreed.
"Okay?" you repeated.
Zoro uncrossed his arms and walked toward you.
"Stop," you said immediately. "Zoro—"
"I'm not stopping." He said it the way he said most things. Not harshly, just as a statement of fact, the way gravity was a fact. "You need to eat. We're not getting out of here faster by watching you white-knuckle it against the wall."
"You don't understand what you're—"
"You reached for Luffy's wrist," he said. "I'm not an idiot, I understand fine." He stopped a few feet away, close enough that his heartbeat was suddenly everything, and looked at you steadily. "Do it."
The words landed strangely, too simple, like he hadn't just offered you something enormous and personal.
"Zoro," you said carefully, "if I start, I might not — the hunger, when it's this bad, I don't always—"
"Then I'll stop you if I need to." The corner of his mouth moved. "You're not stronger than me."
"I might be right now."
"I said what I said."
Luffy made a noise behind him that might have been suppressed laughter, but Zoro didn't look away from you.
"Frankly, we're lucky this hasn't been a bigger problem earlier. I'm sorry for not thinking of that. I have failed you in that aspect as your vice-captain."
Your heart pounds louder at that, almost breaking if it were capable. This man carries so much self-inflicted weight and responsibility on his shoulders, showing truly how much he cares for his crew that he'd take this circumstance as a lesson in failure for himself, instead of the freakish accident it was. "Zoro—"
"He goes second," he continued, voice dropping just slightly, "because if something goes wrong, I'd rather it be me, not him." Said so plainly, another statement and fact of life. And it was, the truth of it, offered up like it cost nothing, like stepping between something dangerous, and Luffy was such a deeply instinctive act that he hadn't even deliberated about it.
Something in you, underneath the hunger, underneath the discipline and the shame, went very soft.
"Nothing's going to go wrong," you said quietly.
"Then there's nothing to argue about." He jerked his chin, giving you a slight smile. "Come here."
He sat down against the wall, and you stood between his knees, and you thought, abstractly, that there was something deeply surreal about this; the first mate of the Straw Hats looking up at you with a calm that was almost aggravating, his neck bare, his pulse unhurried even now.
"You're not scared," you said.
"Should I be?"
"Most people would be."
He shrugged one shoulder. "Most people haven't watched you spend the last hour turning yourself inside out trying to protect us from yourself." He said it simply, no particular softness to it, and yet. "You're not a threat, you're hungry. There's a difference."
You held his gaze and felt something in your chest shift. All that careful distance you'd put between yourself and them, and here was Roronoa Zoro looking up at you from the floor of a stone room like the answer was simple.
"Okay," you said softly.
He nodded once, done and decided.
Your hands settled on his shoulders, and you felt him breathe, grounding himself and, in turn, you. The pulse at his throat was right there, and you didn't let yourself hesitate again, because hesitation would make it worse, for both of you.
You leaned in.
The bite was quick and clean, the kind you'd learned over years of careful practice. Pressure first, then the fangs, minimizing the pain because you'd always hated the idea of hurting anyone. You heard his breath catch, then felt his hands come to your hips — not pushing you away, just landing there, grounding, the way he'd grounded himself against every difficult thing — and then his blood hit your tongue and the sound that came out of you was shameful and helpless and entirely involuntary.
Relief.
There was no other word for it. Like surfacing from underwater, like a fist unclenching after hours of tension. It crashed through you in a wave, and your hands tightened on his shoulders, and you heard him exhale; slow, controlled, but not entirely steady, and you understood without looking that the pull wasn't entirely one-sided. That there was something in being fed from, apparently, that was its own strange gravity. His hands flexed at your hips, once, then again.
You gave yourself three long pulls.
Three, and then you lifted your head.
You made eye contact with him, and his gaze was darker than usual; not alarmed, not pained, but carrying something you'd file away to think about later, at a safe distance, when you weren't still tasting his blood. His pulse was slower now, but not dangerously, just the steady deceleration of someone coming down from something.
"Thank you," you said, and meant it enormously.
He said nothing. Gave you a look that translated roughly to obviously and also stop making it weird.
You almost smiled.
You pushed your sleeve back and bit your own wrist quickly — vampire blood, healing properties, one of the more useful things you'd discovered about yourself over the years — and offered it to him. He took the single drop it required with no ceremony, and you watched the small punctures at his neck begin to close. Then you unclipped the bandage from your bag — always there, always prepared, because you'd learned to be — and wrapped his neck with the careful efficiency of someone who had done this before and hated every moment of needing to.
"Stop," Zoro said.
You paused. "I'm just—"
"The face," he said. "Stop making it. It's annoying me."
That makes you snort despite your conflicting feelings. "I almost—"
"You didn't." His voice was flat and final. "You pulled back, you always pull back, I watched you do it for an hour before this. So stop." He waited until you looked at him. "You need it to survive and we can give it. That's the whole equation, don't make it complicated."
You looked at him for a long moment. He looked back, entirely unbothered, as though he hadn't just dismantled something you'd been carrying for years in about fifteen seconds.
"Finish the bandage," he said. "And then go eat properly so we can figure out how to get out of this before I die of boredom."
You finished the bandage.
Luffy had found a rock to sit on while you weren't looking. He was perched on it like a gargoyle; knees up, arms resting on them, neck already tilted to one side with the focused expression of someone who had given this significant thought and arrived at a very clear conclusion.
The conclusion was: yes, obviously, go ahead.
"You've been waiting," you said.
"Yep." He patted the space on the rock beside him. "Come on."
You crossed the room and sat beside him. The warmth of him hit you before anything else. Luffy ran hot, always had, and this close it was like sitting next to something bright and generative. His smile didn't waver, and his heartbeat was quick as ever.
"You don't have to be nervous," he said.
"I'm not nervous."
He gave you a look. "You're doing the same thing you were doing with the wall. The staring-at-nothing thing."
Fair, accurate, and annoying.
"Luffy," you started carefully. "My bite is going to—"
"Hurt a little, probably, and then you'll feel better," he said, with the breezy confidence of someone summarizing a process they'd already fully signed off on. "That's fine. I don't mind hurting a little." A beat. "Actually, I hardly even notice anymore. Zoro says I have a weird pain thing."
"That's— yes, I know, but that's not—" You stopped. "I'm trying to tell you that with Zoro I could feel when I'd had enough. With you, your blood is going to be different. You're a Devil Fruit user, I don't know how I'll react."
Luffy considered this with great seriousness. "Okay," he said. "So if you start acting weird, Zoro'll pull you off."
"That's your whole plan?"
"It's a good plan." He glanced past you at Zoro, who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching. "Right?"
"One of our better ones," Zoro confirmed.
"See?" Luffy said. "We've got it, now stop stalling and more biting." He tilted his head further, an offering so casual it knocked something loose in you. The sheer openness of it, the complete absence of second-guessing. His hand came up and settled at the back of your neck, not pushing, just present. Stay and take what you need. You're allowed.
"You're a lot," you said softly.
He grinned. "Yep."
You leaned in, and this time when the bite landed, Luffy made a small sound — not pain, just sensation — and then his blood touched your tongue, and the world went strange.
Not bad strange, just different. Where Zoro's blood had been iron and salt and something mineral, deep as bedrock, Luffy's was almost effervescent. Light and odd and slightly — rubbery? The thought crossed your mind with a kind of bewildered sincerity, and underneath it something began to hum in your chest, low and expanding, like a frequency you'd never heard before starting to vibrate through your bones.
Your free hand, without your conscious permission, stretched.
Three feet to the left.
You felt it stretch. Your arm. Your actual fucking arm, extending well beyond any dimension it should possess, your fingers brushing against the stone wall with a rubbery sort of boing before snapping back to normal length.
You pulled back from Luffy's neck so fast you nearly fell off the rock.
"What," you said. "What was—"
Luffy looked at his arm, then looked at yours, finally at your face.
And then he lit up completely, the way he did when something delighted him past his ability to contain it, and grabbed your shoulders with both hands. "YOU CAN DO IT," he shouted.
"*What is happening?"
"YOU CAN STRETCH! STRETCH WITH ME!"
"Luffy—"
"DO THE ARM! DO THE ARM AGAIN!"
"Luffy, I don't— I don't know how I—"
"It went to the left!" He was absolutely beside himself. "Zoro did you SEE that?! Her arm went to the left!"
Zoro had both hands over his face as he appeared to be having some kind of internal experience. "I saw it," he said, muffled.
"It's your blood," you said, staring at your own hand while flexing your fingers. Completely ordinary. Completely ordinary fingers. "Luffy. I think, when I drink from a Devil Fruit user, I absorb—"
"YOU GET MY POWERS!"
"Please stop shouting—"
"THIS IS THE BEST DAY," Luffy informed the ceiling.
"We're still trapped underground."
"THE BEST DAY!"
Zoro lowered his hands from his face; his expression was the very particular one he used when something was genuinely funny, and he refused, on principle, to admit it. His mouth was doing something complicated. "Okay," he said, to no one in particular.
You looked at Luffy, who was still holding your shoulders, practically vibrating, grinning so wide it looked like it should be anatomically impossible. And then you looked at your hand again, your completely ordinary hand that had, moments ago, extended three feet to the left of its own accord, and something bubbled up in you that was mostly helplessness and a little bit of genuine, startled wonder.
"This is temporary," you said. "It should wear off when your blood metabolizes."
"BUT RIGHT NOW—"
"Right now I could theoretically stretch my arm," you said, and immediately tried to stop the smile and failed completely.
Luffy made a noise that could only be described as triumphant.
You sat back against the wall, Luffy pressed warm and solid to your left, Zoro to your right with his arms crossed and his eyes shut in the way that meant he was awake and thinking. The hunger had receded to something manageable, a distant awareness rather than an immediate roar, and in the quiet that followed you felt it: the particular tiredness that came after crisis, when the body stood down from the edge.
"Thank you," you said, quietly, to both of them. "Seriously. I know that wasn't — I know I scared you earlier, when I reached for Luffy's wrist, and I'm—"
"Not scared," Luffy said immediately.
"Luffy—"
"I'm serious." He looked at you with that direct, uncomplicated honesty that always managed to go straight past every defense you'd ever built. "I wasn't scared of you. I was worried about you."
He said it as if the distinction were obvious, like it was the only reasonable interpretation of events. "There's a difference."
The words settled over you. Beside you, Zoro cracked his eye open. "You should have said something sooner."
"I didn't want to bother."
"We know," he said. "Say something sooner anyway." He closed his eye again. "That's not a request."
Luffy's hand found yours on the stone floor. Casual. Easy. A captain's hand around yours, warm and unhurried.
"Your problems are ours," he said, like he was reminding you of something you should already know. "I mean it. If you need to eat, we're here; that's what being crew means. Your problems become mine, all of them." He squeezed once. "Understood?"
You looked at him. At the easy certainty in his face, the total absence of condition or calculation. This man who'd made a crew out of sheer love of people and the refusal to leave anyone behind.
"Understood," you said softly.
He beamed.
The Thousand Sunny's deck was bright when you finally surfaced. Someone had blasted through the ceiling eventually, which turned out to be Robin, because of course it was, and the whole crew was there, descending on you in their various ways. Chopper immediately went into doctor mode, rotating between you and both men, checking pulses and examining the identical cloth bandages wrapped around two swordsman-and-captain-shaped necks.
Nami looked at the bandages, then at you, but ultimately said nothing, filing it away with the very efficient internal system she kept for things that would become relevant later. Usopp saw them and started to ask a question, and then very wisely reconsidered.
Robin smiled, which meant she'd already inferred most of it.
It was Sanji who broke first.
He came around the mast with a tray of something warm to eat, took one look at the matching bandages on Zoro and Luffy, and stopped dead. His eye traveled from Luffy's neck to Zoro's neck to your face, which was both a question and a verdict.
Then he let out a long, aggrieved, theatrical groan.
"Are you serious," he said.
Luffy looked up brightly. "We were trapped! And she needed to eat! And then guess what, Sanji?! Her arm went sideways—"
"I'm not — I'm not talking about the logistics of it," Sanji said, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. He looked at you with an expression that was both deeply put-upon and, underneath that, extremely sincere. "I'm talking about the order of things." He gestured at Zoro with something approaching affront. "He went first?"
Zoro looked like he was considering saying something, most likely rude and ribbing, and had decided against it.
"I offered," Zoro said.
"You wouldn't eat properly if it wasn't for me!" Sanji said, volume rising with the injustice of it. "You drink so much sake, it's a miracle you can get drunk anymore! Do you have any idea about nutrition? About balance?"
He turned to you, and his voice shifted into something that was trying to be casual and landing somewhere more earnest. "I'm a chef. Do you understand what that means? I think about what goes into a body. I care about what goes into a body." A pause. "My blood is almost certainly better. Healthier. Almost certainly more, I don't know, flavorful."
Silence on the deck.
"Did you just," Usopp started.
"I said what I said," Sanji said, very dignified.
Zoro opened his mouth.
"Don't," Sanji said.
Zoro closed it. But the look on his face suggested he was going to be thinking about this for quite some time.
You looked at Sanji, at the faint color that had appeared on his cheek that had nothing to do with the sea wind, at the hand he'd shoved into his pocket, at the complete and slightly overblown sincerity of the whole performance, and felt something warm spread through your chest that had nothing to do with the blood still moving through your system.
"Okay," you said.
He blinked. "…Okay?"
"Next time," you said. "You can go first next time."
The smile that broke across his face was immediate and enormous and then very quickly composed back into something more appropriate for a man of his refinement. He straightened his tie, then cleared his throat.
"Obviously," he said. "I'll also prepare something for you to eat in the meantime." He lifted the tray, smooth and immediate, the chef reasserting himself. "You look like you've had a day."
"You could say that," you said.
Behind him, Luffy was already explaining, at great volume, about the discovery of your temporary powers, encouraging you to stretch your arms out in display, something you and Luffy had practiced while still trapped.
---
thank you all for your love and support! note that requests are open till june 14th; posting week: 15th-21st, read rules here before requesting
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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 😘