#zonasummerfest

“Are you okay?” The words left her slowly, cautiously, like she was hesitant about bothering him when he was exercising. Still, he could tell by the look in her eyes that her concern was much too overwhelming for her to pretend that she didn’t notice him.

It still didn’t make sense to Zoro as to why her sudden show of sympathy forced her to interrupt him. With his mallet still clenched between his hands high above his head, he lost his breath momentarily when he answered her, “Yeah.”

“Huh.” Nami replied, obviously unconvinced of his short answer. “I just came up here to water my grove and I heard you grunting over there a lot more than usual. It sounded like you were in pain or--”

“I’m not!” He promised. 

Nami immediately shrugged off his irritation, deciding to let her worry go. “All right.” His aggression had stolen away her interest in their interaction, which worked out well for the swordsman who was ready to make his one thousand fiftieth throw. His fingers twitched around the handle, his core warned him that it was growing tired, and yet he took his time to reposition himself properly so that his next swing was still refined.

‘One thousand...fifty!’

“Oh! Zoro, what the hell!?” Once again, her screeching startled him until he became still. At least this time his arms were down. 

“What!?” Zoro bellowed. It took all of the air in his lungs to shout at her, which was something he was quite happy to do.

“Your back… It’s burnt! Can’t you feel it?” Nami couldn’t decide if she felt like pitying him or chastising him as both were reflected in her tone.

‘Of course I can, idiot.’ He thought to himself.

“Relax! I’m fine.” Zoro chose to answer her more carefully. He knew that the greatest threat to his sunburn was an irritated, offended navigator, so he chose to keep his true sentiment a secret.

If the anger in her eyes could have manifested into flames, Nami would have simply incinerated him and made the issue of his sunburn moot. Zoro moved his gaze to those scowling, pink lips of hers and anticipated the flamethrower she was about to launch at him with her surely scathing words, since he knew she wouldn’t just walk away quietly now that she was riled up.

Except, that was exactly what she did.

Almost as if she had taken offence to his yelling for the first time in their entire relationship, Nami stomped off in her ridiculous heeled sandals until she had successfully opened the small trap door, climbed down the ladder that would take her to the kitchen and disappeared completely from his sight. 

“Tch.” Was his response to the entire conversation. He hadn’t meant to be so rude, if the truth be told. The stress of his exercise routine plus the added burning sensation along his back had put him in a foul mood already. Her interruptions were unnecessary and unwarranted. 

Maybe he’d save her from some future villain as a form of an apology.

For now, Zoro was grateful for the peace and quiet once again. He was grateful to return his attention to his mallet and resume at one thousand fifty strokes. With roughly only one quarter of his practice completed, there was still a great deal more to get through before dinner time. All he really needed to do was even out his exposure to the sun and turn his body around until he faced a different direction, he hypothesized. 

For the rest of his routine, Zoro decided to face the back of the ship and take in the view of the ocean, particularly paying attention to the waves that were broken up by the Sunny’s rudder. 

Never mind the pair of heels he heard behind him once again. Zoro chose to believe that it was nothing more than Robin coming to water her own garden, that he scared Nami away with his crass behaviour and he was free of anymore of her meddling. Almost as if he feared that he might be wrong, Zoro reached for the grip of his mallet and was more than ready to complete his one thousand fifty-first swing…!

“Agh!” He screamed when something frightfully cold slammed into his slightly singed skin. Zoro’s entire body recoiled from the frigid touch, causing him to dance around the wide range of his mallet’s head in order to escape such cruelty.

While he wasn’t surprised that it was Nami who subjected him to something so unpleasant, he also wasn’t too thrilled to see her again. All of his previous guilt evaporated. “What the--!?”

“You can’t see it,” Nami began, infuriated. In her hand was checkered dish cloth wrapped around something jagged. He easily deduced that it was a huge collection of ice cubes she stole from the freezer in the kitchen down below, but the size of the cluster looked absolutely insane. “But your sunburn makes you look like you’re wearing Luffy’s vest. The one he wore when we first met him.”

“So you thought you’d hit me with some ice and make it all disappear!?” Zoro called out her lunacy loud enough so that the entire ship could hear.

Unbothered, Nami continued, “If it hurts so much that you’re whimpering, just take a break and put on a damn shirt. Or better yet, get some sunblock on. You know I use it all the time when I’m tanning. You could have asked me nicely for it just now instead of whining like a kid.”

“You could have just minded your own business!” Zoro retorted. 

“I’m trying to help you! If it ends up blistering, you won’t be able to work out for a week until it's all healed! Then, you’d be wishing you’d listened to me!” Nami fired back.

Uninterested in anything else that was even remotely heated, he was ready to burn this conversation down with some scorching hot words of his own. “I didn’t ask you to give a damn about it! You can’t just mind your own damn business, can you? Go back to your trees or your maps or whatever and leave me the hell alone! Got it!?” 

It was her fault, he concluded.

He wasn’t going to blame the sun for his bad mood when Nami was more often than not the cause of it.

This time, he didn’t wait to see if she’d respond or storm off in a huff. Zoro made the decision to turn his back on her first. 

His dismissal of her was not received well. 

“Rgh! Dammit!” shouted a forcibly chilled swordsman when he felt a handful of ice slip underneath the back of his haramaki. The ice cubes jostled around beneath the heavy fabric and even started to melt before he could claw them out. When he realized he had missed two of the slippery devils, he simply pulled on his haramaki until there was enough room for them to fall right out. Looking back and forth between the pair on the floor and the bunch that he held, he realized he had been attacked with nearly blocks of ice!

An unladylike snort escaped his attacker.

Zoro lifted his one good eye to glare at Nami, who appeared to have found his involuntary, flustered dance rather amusing. Her mouth was curled into a rather wide grin, her big brown eyes were wide with delight and they even sparkled with some kind of satisfaction too. It irritated him thoroughly to see her so happy at his expense…

That was when Zoro realized that there was enough ice in her hand for him to exact some kind of revenge.

The mound of ice cubes was unwrapped in her hand since she had just shoved some underneath his haramaki, allowing him to snatch a large amount with his quick reflexes and large hand. Shock crashed down upon her face so fast, Nami’s mouth fell open when she realized that she had foolishly supplied him with ammo.

Just in case she thought they were going to simply resolve this with words, Zoro offered one kind word of advice: “Run.”

Nami fumbled over her sandal-wearing feet at first when she tried to run away from him, much to his amusement. It was his turn to smirk at her as he took one large step, then another, and another until he was hot on her trail. He gave chase after the supposed cat burglar like the angry mutt he was, only his cruel chuckling replaced what should have been enraged barking. There was nowhere to go on this section of the ship unless she planned to jump the railing or take her time trying to climb back down into the kitchen. 

It’d be amusing for him either way.

But of course, nothing was ever easy with Nami. She decided that her best course of action was to run around her precious trees in a poor attempt to put some distance between them. Zoro’s physical power plus his longer limbs managed to close any sort of added gap before she could look over her shoulder to see if it worked.

“Ah!” She yelped the moment she saw how close he was.

Trailing around the back of the main mast, Zoro felt strong, in control. He seized the moment to tease her for once. “What’s wrong, Nami?” “Stay away!” She screamed.

“Don’t you want to cool down too?” “I’d rather fall in the ocean than let you touch me!”

“I can help you with that too.”

“No!” Her piercing plea only entertained him more. 

Zoro knew he was much too engrossed in playing the predator against his typical tyrannical enemy. Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to stop until she knew what it felt like having ice stuck in her…

Well, her bikini bottoms, he supposed.

No matter where he put them, he’d enjoy watching her reaction.

“Hey!” Shouted Zoro’s greatest annoyance through the trap door down below.

For some reason, it panicked him to think that someone would find him behaving so fiendishly with the navigator. Anyone else in the crew would probably view his actions as predatory, even if Nami was definitely more of a danger to the average man than he would ever be. Their dynamic might be misunderstood by anyone else in the crew, especially the Prince of Dumbass Kingdom!

So, he reacted reflexively.

Zoro reached out in a desperate attempt to stop Nami from running, and he managed to catch her arm just as they had circled back around the mast. With her grove acting as the perfect cover, he knew they would be shielded if Dartboard Eyebrow tried to climb the ladder leading to the kitchen. 

Still, he knew that if he was caught tormenting a bikini-clad Nami, he’d spend the rest of the afternoon fighting off the ‘vengeance of love’.

Before he knew it, his large build had pinned Nami against the back of the main mast. He towered over her otherwise petite frame, with only her breasts keeping him from pressing his entire body flat against hers--

No, it wasn’t just her breasts.

She had been holding her arsenal of ice cubes close to her torso, and the impact of his abs against her hands caused the entire bundle to tumble out and slither down their pelvises, thighs and crash down onto their feet. 

There wasn’t any time to react to the chilling assault when the Sunny’s residential asshole called up from down below, “Is something wrong, Nami-san?”

“U-Uh, n-no!” She chirped frantically. 

Zoro observed the way her eyes couldn’t seem to focus, felt the way her entire being shivered against his. The way she wiggled and squirmed… caught his attention more so than some melting pellets of ice ever could. With his brow arched curiously to see what she would do next, he merely listened when she was further questioned by the blond idiot, “Oh, it sounded like you were being chased by something up there.” “I-It was a bug!” Nami lied while staring him dead in the eye. When he smirked at her fib, she made sure to add on defiantly. “Just a really big pest! But I got him.”

“That’s my Nami-swan!” Was the idiot’s reply, completely fooled by her words.

Zoro, however, wasn’t. Instead, he couldn’t help but notice the way Nami’s right shoulder shuffled ever so slightly just as she started to regain control of herself after the initial impact their bodies had. A twinge went off inside of him, warning him not to let her strike!

His large hand rose high enough to catch her wrist just in time, and clasped between her fingers was a stray cube of ice.

Admiring her moxie was one thing. Wanting to avoid being pelted again was another. He knew he was in complete control of both her actions and the last of her arsenal, so Zoro did the only thing he could think of: he brought her hand to his mouth and made her feed him the ice. It crossed his lips and instantly chilled his tongue, yet he managed to stick the tip of it out and lick the slight dribble off of his mouth easily enough. All the while, Nami’s eyes were wide while she observed the way he chomped on the remainder of her supply.

“Hm, maybe you were right: it is kind of refreshing.” He admitted with an evident edge to his tone, one that was meant to grate on her last nerve.

No longer surprised or amused, Nami tore her wrist free and shoved at his sweat-slick chest. “You moron!” She scolded him with a fury that was most likely hot enough to rival the sun she was trying to protect him from in the first place. “Burn, for all I care! I hope you’re aching the next time you have to fight someone!” Then, she placed all of her weight onto her heels and stomped away once again.

Zoro was ready to let her go stew in her anger, return to his training and move on with his day. When he turned to face his resting mallet, though, he felt something cool run along the edge of one of his abs…

Before she could turn the corner around her grove, the swordsman picked the melting ice out of his haramaki, aimed it at her bikini bottoms and threw it across the deck…!

“AH!” 

“Nami-swan!?”