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“Non-exclusive dating, huh.”
“What? You have a problem with that?” Nami asks.
Zoro takes another swing from the pint of beer that he’s been holding and frowns. “Of course not. It’s understandable,” he adds. “Can't do anything about distance.”
He can’t blame her for being unorthodox either, given all of their circumstances. As a general rule, Zoro doesn't blame. Good thing about pirates is that they’ll rarely ever judge you, mostly because of a very real possibility that whatever you've done, the things that they've done are way worse in comparison. Or maybe, being unable to judge is just a trait that his crew and others like them share. He wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t even be a pirate without them.
“Yeah, well. It does suck. But Vivi and I decided we won’t force one another to be lonely and miss out on the experiences we could’ve had just because we love each other, so.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Zoro says, voice flat.
Nami eyes him. “You call it sad? I’m someone who is only attracted to women, living on a ship full of men, and I still get more action than any of you do. I should be the one feeling sorry for you lot. Well, other than Luffy, ‘cause he’s just weird like that,” she adds. “Besides, I’ll take being a little lonely but having fun with other people over living with someone I’m into and still not being a man enough to do something about it any day, really.”
“What can I do about it? He’s not even interested in-”
Zoro freezes, realizing that Nami didn’t say anything about him specifically. He hears her laugh and gets the urge to break something. He really did himself in on this one, didn’t he?
“How do you know, though?” she asks. “And, which one of the two did you mean?”
Damn everything, she reads him like an open book.
“Don’t give me that look,” she tells him, noticing he’s gone quiet - not scared - he’s a fearless warrior and he is not someone who gets nervous about tipsy girls figuring out who he finds attractive, damn it, he’s not. “I won’t tell a soul. You know that, right?”
“What, do I have to pay up for your silence or something?”
“No,” Nami states simply, “I won’t tell. You have to do something on your own. If you ever decide on it, of course.”
This almost makes him disappointed, for reasons he can’t exactly pinpoint. He empties the pint all the way to the bottom and wages acting on the urge to throw it down to the floorboards just to see it break, but in the end puts it back onto the wooden table and sighs.
“Shit.”
“Come on, it’s not that bad.”
Zoro snorts, disbelief radiating from him so strong he can practically smell it.
“What? It’s not. Though, I guess you’re different than me, at least I had a good role model as a kid.”
“What do you mean?” he asks her, pouring another one for himself and watching her open one more bottle of whiskey; that girl could outdrink him anytime and the thought terrifies him.
“My mother,” she says simply.
Her mother? “She was-”
“Yeah.”
“But she had kids,” he blurts out, confused. Nami counters it with an even more confused look on her own face.
“What’s having kids have to do with anything?”
“No idea.” It really doesn’t, he thinks at that point. He really doesn’t know anything about anything.
“And besides, even if she wasn’t gay,” she continues, “I had an advantage of growing up with someone who didn’t fail to teach me and sis that we’re allowed to love whoever the hell we want; that loving others is in human nature. Should feel like common sense, but... I guess, for some people it's not.”
Zoro doesn’t say anything to that. He stays there for a while, lost in thought for some time before he realizes that his pint is almost empty once more, and that Nami is letting him think about things. Of course she is. “You never talk about it, though.”
“Why would I?” She laughs. “It’s not like it’s anyone’s business. And besides, guys are nicer to girls if they think that we’re interested.”
“You’re absolutely despicable,” he tells her, and can’t resist grinning. That’s their navigator, alright.
She grins right back. “I try.”
“Most of the crew probably don’t even notice.” He shakes his head. He didn't even notice before she told him, even if it should’ve been glaringly obvious.
“Probably.” Nami shrugs.
Zoro thinks about it. “Really, with how they act… Especially that shitty cook of ours, there’s no way that he-”
“Oh, Sanji knows,” Nami tells him matter-of-factly. It takes a second or two for her statement to reach his brain; he waits a couple more just to make sure that his inebriated state isn’t messing with him. But, no, he should know better. He never loses his ability to think clearly, no matter how drunk he is - until he passes out, that is.
“What.”
“Yeah, he found out.” She seems to be finding his reaction amusing. “Caught me and Vivi kissing in the bath, when he tried to peep on us, and, well.”
Unbelievable. “He’s still flirting with you, though.”
“He sure is," she counters darkly.
“But he knows you won’t respond to the shit he does,” Zoro says. Why do it, then? It makes no sense.
“Yeah, no joke. I’m also pretty sure I won’t be changing my mind anytime soon.”
He lets out a short ha before he’s back to thinking about the ordeal. He taps his fingers against the wood, cold night air not doing much to sober him up. It doesn’t make any sense at all.
“He’s trying to compensate for something, don’t you think?” Nami says, looking at the distance - one that's always surrounding them, being in the middle of nowhere at any given time. It took him a while to start finding the view poetic. But he always did like empty spaces, quiet hours with no one awake.
He used to train with Kuina after everyone had gone to sleep; the moon bright, shining down on a pair of clumsy kids and the sounds of hitting metal against metal, the two of them the only noise around. And now he’s sitting on a ship with a bunch of partied-out, passed out pirates all around them, reflecting on his love life with a girl from his crew, being weird enough to compare the two. Go figure.
“What do you mean?”
She looks at him, the faint light emitted from dying oil lamps and the night sky dancing on her face. “What do you think I mean?”
“He’s not interested in me.”
Nami doesn't say anything, but the look she gives him tells him that she’s not buying it.
“What?”
After she just keeps staring, keeping that same You’re such an idiot expression the entire time, he decides it’s been enough.
“No,” he tells her.
“What do you mean, no? How can you be so sure that he’s not?”
“No,” he repeats. “I’m not doing this,” he tells her, and the look in his eye dares her to laugh again. He’s been living in acceptance, not being wanted a constant not even worth thinking about. Both of them, all the same: a man who wants no one, and a man who wants everyone but him. He’s not in the mood for even starting. “Not gonna list all the reasons why he isn't into me.”
“Why?”
His scowl deepens. He doesn’t want to continue about this. But he wants to shut her up. “Because,” he says; does he really have to spell this out for her? She always seems to take pride in being subtle. “He likes girls. It... should be pretty damn obvious.”
He settles for the lesser evil, as well as the lesser of his infatuations. He won't mention Luffy. He knows that everyone on the crew is in love with their captain, in a way; not exactly news, and not something that's of any use talking about. Something that doesn’t feel quite as finite seems a better choice, so he makes it and waits for her to say something smart.
Nami sighs. She seems tired, spent in that specific way that one gets after a night of celebrating, her eyes getting unfocused and glazed over, and he knows she will want to go to bed very soon. Bed, of course; god forbid she just passes out like the most of them, lying on the cold, hard floor that doesn’t even have a pillow on it.
“He goes along with everything I say,” she says anyway, slowly, resting her elbow against the table, “Like he does with any other girl he meets. He gives me treats and compliments, never tells me off, and listens to every single one of my stupid requests, even when he obviously doesn’t agree. He keeps that same stupid, eager facade on, whenever a girl as much as looks at him. Saying what he really means… he never even thinks about it.”
She waits for some kind of reaction from him, and only continues talking when she doesn’t get a satisfactory one. “He’s only that honest with you, you big dummy.”
-
“Don’t you think Franky swings both ways?”
Leaning on her hands, nearly incoherent as a result of the evening just passed, Nami looks at him from across the table through half-lowered eyelids. Waiting for his judgement, most likely, even though Zoro doesn't know why that should be any of his business.
“He’s dating Robin," he says. Of course she wants to gossip when she’s in this state.
“So? We caught him making out with the Iceberg guy that one time. Doesn’t have to mean anything, but still.”
“What.”
She makes an undignified sound that’s somewhere between a snort and a giggle and slides her elbows down to the table, letting her head hit the surface, and Zoro thinks about all the people in the world that he wouldn’t be putting up with while they’re like this - which is pretty much everyone he knows, not counting his crew. She’s lucky he loves her.
“Who did?” he asks her.
“Weelll. I mean. Robin was there, and I’m pretty sure Luffy too but when did he ever care about shit like that. It was so funny, when they noticed we noticed Franky just laughed and Ice guy said something like, Sorry, we’re not here, can you kindly get the fuck out ?”
“That sounds ridiculous.” And very much like something Iceberg would say.
“Sure does. And now Ice-guy has to be super nice to all of us - well, me specifically, in order to keep that a secret.”
Zoro nods. “Government wouldn’t like it if they found that out about their president.”
“Yup! Ah, blackmail,” she sighs wistfully, wipes an invisible tear from her eye.
Zoro shakes his head, amused despite himself. She seems - stranger today, relaxed in a way but somehow more tense as well. He isn’t used to seeing her drunk, of all people. “I suppose you don’t wanna go to bed?”
“Hell no.” Figures.
He takes a discarded bottle on the table away from her when she tries to grab it to drink more.
“Give me that.”
“Nami, you're hardly sitting straight.”
She giggles.
“That's not even funny.”
“Yeah it is.”
He looks at her. What the hell?
“Aw, come on, night’s still young! Get more booze, get more girls! Let’s drink to Zoro’s sad love life!”
“If you were anyone else, I would kick your sorry ass for that.”
He didn’t want to drink a lot that evening; didn’t feel like it for some reason. Happens to the best of us. Right now, he feels like that decision is coming back to bite him.
“Um, excuse me, my ass is amazing?” Nami tells him.
Yeah, yeah. “Couldn’t say. So, Franky’s bi?”
“I’d say so, yeah. I swear, Luffy has some kind of a, I don’t know, sixth sense or something.” Nami waves her hand around, “Really, I’d say none of us human members are exclusively into the opposite gender. He’s onto something, I’m telling you.”
He may as very well be. Zoro has both seen and lived through far too many, even stranger things in relation to their captain, to be against the assumption in itself.
“Usopp?” he asks after a moment.
“Please. I’ve seen the way he looks at you whenever you take your shirt off.”
“The way he what.”
Nami throws her head back and laughs; too far back, it seems, because her chair tilts back as well and suddenly, her eyes are wide open and she’s waving her hands around, as if swimming through the air, trying to grab whatever would help her keep her balance.
Zoro reaches over the table to catch her, but realizes that something pushing Nami’s back was faster than he was.
“You should be more careful,” someone says from behind, right next to the back of his head, startling them both. Zoro is pretty sure that, if he didn’t have a heart attack right there and then, he’s safe for all the other occasions in his life.
“Fuck,” he manages after he’s calmed down a bit, “Don’t do that ever again.”
“And a good evening to you, too,” Robin says calmly, all smiles.
“Oh- oh, hey, Robin! You look resplendent.” Nami beams at her.
“Why, thank you, Miss Navigator.”
Robin sits down on the table in between the two of them and somehow manages to make the action seem elegant. Zoro faintly remembers her going to bed the earliest that night, excusing herself while yawning into her hand. They must’ve woken her up, or she got up by herself. He doesn’t know much about her sleep cycle, even now.
Zoro grunts in acknowledgement at the action.
“What are we talking about?” Robin asks, like she’s been here from the start.
“Your boyfriend's into guys.” Nami barely even shapes it like a question, without any introduction at all. He can’t even be embarrassed for her, it’d take too much brain power. Robin nods, approving.
“Who?”, she asks anyway.
“Franky.”
“Ah.” It comes to him that Robin probably wouldn’t use the word herself, as well as that he isn’t completely sure about the nature of their relationship. Which, well, of course. The woman is an enigma, through and through. “Indeed he is.”
“Nice! Got it right.”
“He isn’t very subtle about the fact, you know.”
“Got that right," Nami insists to Robin's amusement.
“Ignore her, she’s plastered,” Zoro says. Robin doesn't seem surprised at this, which isn’t strange in itself, but the remark seems to make her think. She seems completely unperturbed, not even flinching as Zoro ducks to avoid a fork that Nami throws at him.
“I am not!” she attempts to say, but just bursts into laughter somewhere mid-sentence.
“An unusual occasion,” Robin hums. “Unlike this kind of gathering in particular, is it?”
He shrugs. So she knows. “You’ve never joined until now.”
“No.”
“But you’ve probably been listening.”
Robin smiles. “Caught in the act.”
“I thought you were sleeping,” he adds.
“I woke up sometime around Mr Cook’s tabletop dance. Didn’t get much rest after that,” she tells him, making Nami snort.
“That was amazing, really. He killed it in high heels, I think he might be better at wearing them than I am.”
“...which isn’t that hard to accomplish.”
“Shuddup, Zoro, no one asked you.” She wags her finger at him. “I’d love to see you try pulling that off before putting down anyone else. Your boyfriend could beat you with his eyes closed.”
“Not my boyfriend.”
“Yet.”
“What the fuck.”
Before Zoro knows it, caught up in their banter as he is, Robin is sliding off the table’s surface. She bends down closer to him, her mouth an inch from his cheek, and he feels her hair tickle and doesn’t get it.
“Ask her about newspaper,” she whispers into his ear before leaning away and walking off into her cabin once more, slowly swinging her hips as if she’s got all the time in the world. Zoro will never understand her, not ever in a million years. But, her presence is soothing, somehow, he’ll give her that.
He thinks about saying goodnight, but she leaves before he gets to. Like things such as proper etiquette even matter anything at all around people you’ve lived with for years.
He considers Robin’s vague remark.
“Hey, Nami?”
“Mm?” she replies, half-coherent, face still buried in her elbow.
“Are you-" ...okay , he means to ask, but then stops because that question doesn’t even mean anything. What the hell. He's never been good at this kind of thing. "You know."
Nami snorts, in a way that she would probably call very undignified in some, more usual circumstances. "What."
"You don't get drunk often."
"Your point?" She looks at him as if something's wrong with him , and he scowls and almost walks right out, just to make a point that he's not up for playing any games with her. Though, who is he fooling - he would never actually go through with it, just on account of what Nami is like. It wouldn't do any good, either; it's not like he would sleep, or do anything any more fun than what they're doing right now.
He does care, even if he would rather swallow one of his swords whole than say it outright, and besides, something's definitely up with her, he was right. And of course that woman had to be cryptic and not spell it out to him.
"Robin told me to ask you about newspaper," he says bluntly. He was never one for subtlety, and frankly, he doesn't give a shit about it either way.
She pauses. "I- what?"
"Fuck if I know, ask her what she meant if that doesn’t mean anything to you."
Nami opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again. She looks lost, her shoulders slumping downwards and Zoro wants to act on it, to do something. Action is so much easier than waiting, talking things through. What good does that do, anyway? Though, he’s still here, waiting for her to start talking.
"Am I really that obvious?" she asks, resigned.
"No idea what you're talking about, so I'd say, no, you're not."
"Not relevant, of course you wouldn't notice."
"Hey, now."
This makes her huff out a laugh, so Zoro counts it a success. She looked like she was so close to starting crying after he brought it up. He hates it when people cry.
"Is there any more alcohol somewhere?"
"Nami, what the fuck."
"Okay, okay." She takes a breath, but doesn't say anything else for a while. Barely even moving, she looks like she’d start on the issue, but doesn’t know from what side to start biting it off.
"You don't have to say any-" Zoro starts after a minute or so, but Nami cuts him off - again - having started to talk at almost the exact same time as he did.
“It’s so stupid, you know?” Sitting up straighter, she’s being careful not to look him in the eye; glancing over the ship, the sky, a few broken plates in the corner, everything but. Likely embarrassed, but Zoro still doesn’t have any idea what she could be embarrassed about. “It’s silly but I can’t stop thinking about it. That we don’t have a future, not really.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he wants to ask, but settles on the first word only. Seriously, she has to know that he’s not a mind reader, far from it.
“Like, the reporters are all blowing it up, I can bet whatever on it. Her father probably made some offhanded comment to the media and they went from there and built it up into a story that never existed, I know how these things work. But knowing it doesn’t make me feel any better, you know?”
No, I don’t, Zoro thinks, but stays sitting there, not saying anything. Nami finally looks at him and shrugs, like it’s not a big deal after all.
“All those articles on how Vivi’s getting married soon.”
Oh.
“Oh,” he says, stupidly.
“I mean. I know they’re bullshit. But they got me thinking, you know?”
“About what?” He isn’t sure he gets her problem. Their situation hasn’t changed at all from before she saw those stupid articles. So, if they're fake, there’s no reason for her opinion to change, either.
“About," she says, irked, like it should be obvious enough. “The fact that - these things, they don’t really last, do they? Not if we can’t see each other for years, and the only communication we’ll get until we do are things like bounty posters and mentions in news, maybe a letter once in a blue moon. It’s bullshit.” She’s shrugging like none of this is any important, but from the look on her face, he can see that she’s once again seconds away from bursting into tears. “I can’t see how that’s any better than just breaking it off and letting her live her life like normal. But I don’t want that.”
“So, that’s why you’ve gotten yourself pissed drunk?”
“Fuck you," she swats through the air with her hand, not close enough to actually reach to slap his arm as she does. “I told you it’s silly.”
He nods. “It really is.”
“Hey!”
“What? I’m agreeing with you.” He idly considers the bottle he took from Nami, the liquid in it lukewarm and likely disgusting by now. Probably tastes like piss. He should open it.
“Don’t you know how to take a hint?”
“I’m not a gentleman and you know it. And besides, don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?” she asks.
“Know to take a hint.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Mildly annoyed, Zoro stops mid-opening the disgusting bottle just to look at her again, attempting to look reliable as one can hope to be while mildly inebriated past midnight. “Do you love her?”
Nami pauses. “Yes? What kind of a question is that?”
“And, does she love you?” he asks, ignoring her following question.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “She made it a point to keep telling me until I believed her.” This makes her smile. “Silly girl.”
“See? So, what are you worrying about?”
The moon is huge, shining down on them. He doesn’t say much else, or acknowledge as he hears her laugh softly.
“It’s that simple, huh?”
“That simple,” he repeats, taking a swing.
-
They end up talking the whole afternoon and well into the night, sharing stories, impressions, everything that happened to each of them while they were apart. He doesn’t think any of them realized how much of it was there to say; how much they missed each other in the meantime, until they gathered once more.
It's been two years, after all.
As the excitement dies out and the last of the rest of their crew slowly retreat - Sanji being the first one, this time, and Luffy the last, probably not even drunk, as usual, climbing up the stars of their common room - he isn’t surprised to find that the two of them stayed the longest.
He raises his eyebrows as Nami gets up and plops on the other side of the sofa he's sitting on, puts her feet up in his lap. She doesn’t even have to ask.
It used to be a fairly common occurrence, a logical consequence of their high alcohol tolerance. The comments about how You two aren’t even human , coming from various friends and strangers that they used to laugh at. But that was then, and the then has been gone since a little over two years ago, and he doesn’t feel like it should be this effortless, like not even a day has passed.
Still, it is, and Zoro is surprised by how easy it is to slip back into every habit from before everything, before Kuraigana. And this counts as one of them, as well; the two of them staying past their post-celebration undefined bedtime and talking, sharing viewpoints, a peculiar mood about it, unusual for them. He is neither good at talking nor at reading the mood, but he knows what he knows and this is something they seem to be on the same page about, even if he doesn't quite know why.
He can hear the storm raging outside, the ship slightly swaying, and he watches her watch the aquarium fish.
“Feels so strange,” Nami says, first one to speak up.
“It does,” he agrees, not knowing what else to say.
She hums, raises one of Sanji’s martinis to her lips but doesn't do much else. “We talked the day away but I still don't know how different we are.”
“We all got stronger,” he says after a short pause.
She shakes her head, amused. “Of course that’s the first thing you’d comment on.”
“We did.” He shrugs.
“Yeah. But, that aside... it feels both like we changed so much and like none of us changed a bit.”
He considers this. “Your hair changed.”
She gives him a playful kick. “I didn't mean that and you know it, you dork.”
“You didn’t?”
“Shut up.” He hears her giggle anyway and feels like he’s won some undefined prize. “I didn’t bother cutting it; guess I was thinking about other things. Dunno if I should shave one side. I think it’d look cool.”
“It would. Do it,” he replies without thinking.
“Hah. Probably will. But I meant... all this. We’re all family, no matter how much time passes. I like that.”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
She leans more into the big pillow against her back, martini in her hand, going back to looking at the fish swim by. She’s always loved this room, he knows. He also knows exactly what she means.
It feels good, going back to something like this; a home. Another one of his firsts.
“The two of you are the same as ever, too,” she adds with that grin of hers that spells trouble. “Though I shouldn’t have expected anything different, really.”
To hell with her. He knows exactly what she’s saying. “The fuck are you talking about?” he asks anyway.
“I saw that, this afternoon,” she continues as if uninterrupted, “Our cook napping with his head in your lap. Without any of you guys’ fighting about it, too.”
“Only ‘cause he was asleep,” he corrects her. “He tried to kick me for not moving him as soon as he woke.”
“But he would've woken up if you did.”
“I know, that's what I said!” he retaliates, with some stupid pride about Nami agreeing with him. Dumb cook. He looks really nice when asleep. Zoro would rather die than saying it out loud, though, that or anything any similar to it. “But then he had to be an ass about it. Sparring with him is one of the things I didn’t miss at all.”
An answer to this, Nami’s sigh borders on exasperated. “You two are so weird.”
“Weird?”
“Listen, I once hooked up with a girl who was into bubble baths and playing with soap, but what you two are doing is the strangest foreplay that I've ever seen, by far.”
Does she really think-? “That's disgusting.”
“Haha ha.” It’s a fake laugh, and that look on her face just one of the many indicators of how horrible she is. “That headlock lasted for like two minutes and included at least as many hard ons, I bet.”
Fucking asshole. “Take that back or I'll make you.”
She looks at him, eyebrows raised enough to be disappearing under her bangs. Neither of them make any attempts to move from where they’re sitting. “Look me in the eye and tell me you've never gotten turned on by sparring with him and I will.”
“...I hate you.” Why does the only person he can talk with about this shit have to be someone as insufferable as her?
“You love me,” she says, with such confidence that would have him disagreeing immediately, if only if this wasn't her, and he can’t do anything about the fact that she tends to be incredibly right about most things. This still doesn’t make her any less of an asshole.
-
She's sitting there with her arms crossed, wrapped in a long sleeved piece of clothing that Zoro doesn’t recognize. It gets pretty chilly at night where they are right now, and Zoro knows his friend is absolutely not above stealing some guy’s shirt because she’s cold. Well, being nice enough for someone to lend it to her, is how she’d probably put it. He resists shaking his head at how predictable everyone gets, once you get to know them.
Nami seems deep in thought, miles away from here and now, but he knows that she's aware of everything that is happening around them, like she's been the entire time. She’s completely still before she stands up, abruptly, locates him with her eyes and gives him a nod, but goes to the kitchen instead of going over to where he is.
She drank seven guys under the table not even hours ago, but doesn't settle beside him until she's went rummaging through the cupboards to find a few more bottles of whiskey for the two of them while they talk through the night. Not even a question at this point, really.
"Would've never guessed that could happen." Hunched forward, still not looking up, he makes a comment when the floor creaks and Nami leans onto him, opening the bottle. It was a long night.
They've been at it for several days now; understandable, considering everything they've been through, as well as Bartolomeo's crew being absolutely overjoyed at the proposition of celebrating together with their biggest heroes. They’re all taking it pretty well, Zoro would say.
Chopper was the first one to fall asleep, checking out after throwing up overboard into the dark sea beneath. Usopp and Sanji attempted to have a hand stand competition that had to be put on hold because neither of them was sober enough to actually manage doing it in the first place, and Robin was having a lot of fun listening to several conversations at a time. Franky spiked his cola with rum but then went to sleep early, having barely even touched it. Brook was the way he always is, singing and dancing and enjoying the attention he finally got to have this time, with every request to see people’s undergarments, and Zoro has nothing against Brook, he really doesn't, but if he has to look at Bartolomeo's underwear any more than he already has he thinks he might have to throw the both of them overboard.
Somewhere around the time people were starting to excuse themselves or just fall loose and start snoring wherever they found themselves to be at that particular moment, their captain said his goodnights, waved at everyone who was still awake, took their ally by the hand and dragged him off to his cabin. So casual and easy that Zoro almost missed it; almost.
It's not like he didn't notice, their not-so-subtle touches - like Luffy could ever be subtle at anything he does - the air somewhat different around the two of them, more private. It's all perfectly clear, the nature of it, no room for misconceptions about what's going on. He doesn't understand it one bit.
"Yeah, me neither. I don't get it at all," she says against his shoulder, as if she can hear his thoughts - a possibility which he wouldn't discard completely at this point.
"You can say that again,” he says.
Nami hums. “Must suck big time.”
“What?”
“You know." She shrugs. "Getting to watch him be like that with someone else. Another guy, too. Gods, I had no idea that he could be more physically affectionate with anyone than he already is with us all. I almost feel sorry for Traffy."
Zoro doesn't, not really, all things considered.
"You think he's actually getting some?" he asks, only half serious.
Nami snorts. "Probably not."
This weirdly makes him feel better. A part of him that doesn't want anyone else to have what he can't finds the idea extremely satisfying. Though, even without her comment, he would've guessed the same.
"Poor guy,” he says, and she drinks to that - or just in general, then hands him the bottle after she's done taking a swing. He doesn’t take it in his hand until he’s finished the thought. “At least he's aware of what he's getting himself into.”
“They do seem to have good understanding about what they want from this. I don't even know if whatever they're doing can be classified as a relationship, but.”
Zoro shakes his head. "Whatever, I'm too tired to be thinking about that now.”
"Or thinking at all." She pokes him with her foot.
"Screw you."
“Now, or any other time of day-” She continues poking until he turns to her, dead serious.
“Left side of your stomach. Neck”, he lists. “Under your armpits.” I know your weak spots, you terrible person, and I’m not afraid to use them, is what he’s saying. He doesn’t even remember how he found them out in the first place, the places where she’s the most ticklish. Such things tend to happen when you’re living with someone for years.
“Mentioning Vivi, if I wanna be as low as you usually are.”
Nami laughs, a short, ringing sound that dies out in a few moments, after which she seems to settle and get lost in thought again. Trying to figure it out, most likely. He gets it.
He should be irritated, at the very least even just slightly hurt over this, and yet, he really can't bring himself to be. The fact has to be the strangest thing about all this.
"He's just so..." Nami shakes her head. "It didn't seem like he thinks about people like that. It still doesn't."
True. It's been almost three years that they’ve known him, and they've all been through enough that Zoro can say with confidence that, clearly, the only thing that Luffy associates with desire is food, and possibly near-death experiences. And he’s pretty damn sure that this won’t change, now or ever.
"He still looks at him like that."
The sea is quiet and still, the half moon hanging over their heads. He thinks that there might be something that he's missing, something big, just out of reach. He leans against Nami and tries not to think about it.
"Yeah."
-
There’s faint snoring coming from whichever side of the ship, empty plates and clothing pieces scattered around the floor and tables, their ears ringing with the absence of the loud music that they've been hearing since early evening. The sky is liquid and dark and nothing is awake anymore, other than the two people who managed staying up the longest, seeing through the aftermath of the chaos that unraveled that night. A usual sight.
He knows what topic she'll want to start this time, if she found out about a few nights ago - Sanji's hands on his hips, secondhand smoke in his mouth, a sense of rushing not leaving them for the entire time, like they've waited enough, like they've waited way too much to not be as frantic and as fierce as they've been with each other ever since they met - and somehow, he doesn't doubt that she did.
No problem at all, he can talk about it if he tries.
Or really, he can’t, but he’ll try. He isn't one to back away from a challenge.
Zoro clears his throat, starts to say something before he shapes it into words but she beats him to it, as she seems to do: voicing a thought right before he begins his own. She walks right up to where he's sitting with his back against the wooden wall and slides down beside him, by some miracle not even spilling the drink in her hand, and crosses her legs when she's settled.
“I told you so,” she says, no introduction whatsoever, and he knows exactly what she's talking about.
“You only said that he’s a huge moron in denial,” he feels the need to point out. “You didn’t say that something was going to happen now.”
“Maybe. I also didn't say anything about it just now, but you did, so thank you for confirming that it did, in fact, happen.” She sticks her tongue out and he grabs the bottle by the neck like he wants to strangle it.
Damn her.
“I’m glad,” she goes on after waiting some. “You both really took your sweet time. How long have you been at it, three years?”
“Shut up. We’re not all like you, woman.”
She nods, plays with her drink, tilting the glass around and then pulling it back just moments before it spills over the rim. “But the world would be a much simpler place if we were.”
A world full of people like Nami. Even the thought is unsettling.
“Okay, just…” He takes a few moments to regain his composure, gives up after a few more when he doesn't. “Just tell me, how the hell did you even assume anything?” Why now?
“A lady doesn't reveal her secrets,” she tells him, the smile not leaving her face.
Zoro raises an eyebrow. “What lady?”
Nami smacks him.