#luzo fic

“Should we?”

“It’s usually safer,” Zoro explains, eyeing him.

Luffy’s crouched on the floor of the boat like a frog. “Hm.”

Zoro saves Luffy from drowning. Luffy might just save Zoro back.

Luffy was kneeled in front of him, haloed by a wisp of smoke with a lockbox tucked under his arm. He was covered in black, powdery snow, his shorts singed at the edges. His eyes were glassy and big and dark, dark brown, the kind that burned into your retinas and stayed there long after you blinked. He was smiling, unharmed and whole and alive and perfect.

The feeling in Zoro’s chest—previously smothered in cloth and waterboarded by meditation down to a single smoldering piece of coal—ignited in an instant. Every safeguard Zoro had put in place disintegrated like spun silk on a stove. Every sound or look or touch that he tried to suppress shook him at his very core. It was never fucking ending. This, this would be never fucking ending.

There was something deeply wrong with Zoro. And he knew precisely what it was.

tags: road trip AU, hurt/comfort, attempt at humor, mutual pining, asl angst, slow burn, canonical character death, angst with a happy ending

Ace being back in Foosha after five years of radio silence was supposed to solve all of Luffy's problems. Kind of a stupid thought in hindsight considering Ace's whole deal, but that's what happens when you miss someone.

(OR: Luffy leaves behind Dadan's Bed N' Brek, the only home he's ever known, and gets into a pick-up truck with a stranger who has swords and has probably killed people. He was good company though, so. You know. Pros and cons.)