Archive of Our Own

Realization hits Luffy with enough force to knock the wind out of him, and his dinner plate shatters on the floor.

“Hey,” Ace gripes at him as he rounds the counter to where Luffy’s standing stock-still, staring at the wall across from him while his heart roars in his ears. It pounds with an unnatural beat, growing until it crescendos into spots of color dancing in his vision, and then Ace’s knocking a hand against his shoulder. “Thank you for—dropping dinner all over the floor.”

And he snaps back, reality thundering down around him until all is quiet again, and Luffy curls his toes against spilt pasta and broken ceramic. Spaghetti sauce coats the top of his foot, and he watches it soak into his sock before he raises his gaze to meet Ace’s, who’s regarding him with a curious look, no longer grousing at him for making a mess of his cooking.

It’s another gut punch, this one a little more visceral than the last—or, this one is the punch whereas before, whatever that was, was more like being doused with water cold enough he felt like he was burning. Ace stands in front of him, brow knit instead of teasing, and it feels like a hole’s been punched through (not) his chest. 

He tastes bile in the back of his throat, swallowing against it as his head spins in something that feels like loss, and his tongue is heavy when he replies yeah, he’s fine. He thinks?

An ache creeps up the back of his neck, and he shuffles across the floor in sauce-stained socks, picking up the remnants of his dinner. His vision blurs and then unblurs, and for a moment their tiny kitchen smells like brine and cigarette smoke instead of tomatoes.

“Be careful, I think we’ve broken enough plates as it is,” Ace says, and he acts bashful enough as he chides him.

“I didn’t mean to,” Luffy tells him, but it sounds more defensive than he means for it to be. He looks at Ace and Ace is (standing in front of him in the desert and cackling, then crouched in front of him and a scream is ready to rip out of his throat while he’s) giving him an odd look.

“I know. You good?”

“Yeah.”

“You look sick.”

Luffy swallows around a scream that doesn’t sound like him. “Probably just your cooking.”

Ace’s expression sours. “You think you know how to cook, you brat? If it were up to you or Sabo we’d be eating Pop-Tarts for dinner.” 

If it were up to him, Ace would (still be alive) take over all of the cooking duties since he’s the only one with any decent culinary skills in their (treehouse turned third story) apartment. Meanwhile Sabo’s gone (and never came back to them) for the next few days and his culinary skills are pretty limited to boiling noodles and microwaving sauce. 

Wait, that’s not right.

“Sabo makes the same three meals,” Luffy mutters, gathering up the rest of the plate for the trash while Ace fetches the mop. “It’s good but it’s boring.”

Ace huffs and all but chases him out of the kitchen with the mop, and his laughing lessens some of the tension, though Luffy can’t place it entirely. It feels a little bit like he just woke up from a nap, or like he fell asleep on the couch and woke up (after getting bandaged up after another tough fight that should have killed him) at two a.m. with a bad informercial on. Shouldn’t someone else have been cooking?

Ace tells him to pick out their movie and Luffy, unable to focus, picks the first one he can find. It doesn’t matter much anyway, seeing as his brother dozes off maybe five minutes into it, and Luffy finds himself unable to tear his gaze away, watching him sleep in the blue, then orange, then white glow of the TV. With his head pillowed on his lap, Ace having given up on shoving him off after two attempts, he watches him sleep, gaze leaping between his face and chest like he doesn’t know what to expect (and howls).

A hand drops to rest against his forehead and his lungs burn, expanding too far against his ribcage and then Ace dozes off again.

His head hurts and he closes his eyes at the touch, the burning sensation creeping up onto his cheeks and into his eyes. He’ll figure it out later.

In his dream he is on a ship, and the ship is familiar in a way that all pieces of dreams are, where logic gives way to the subconscious and everything makes perfect sense. This ship is on a journey to a grand destination, he’s sure of it, and he stands proudly by the masthead, watching the horizon. Nami is there, which surprises him but doesn’t, because she’s shown up in his dreams before, like how playing hockey turned into something with bears going after mikans or other dreams. 

In some dreams he dives deep, deep down into the sea, where the soft blues give way to navies and blacks, and large fish like dragons circle around him, waiting.

This time though it’s different. It’s like she’s supposed to be there. Her hair is longer though, longer than when it covered her undercut, and she holds up a map like that time they were taking a roadtrip and Ace fell asleep. Her gaze is sharp, fixated on a point beyond him, and he turns on instinct.

The man beside him has a presence that’s more calming than commanding, somehow, a stance that puts him at ease even as he folds his arms. He watches his earrings sway in time with the sails above, and when he turns Luffy says, I know you but doesn’t. What the man says is, where to, captain?

A voice that’s not his voice but is says are you coming back? and he plunges into the sea.

Nami is the first one to remember, but it takes too long, in his opinion. Somehow it feels like he’s going through things backwards, like he’s doing something wrong, but that would hurt her so he’ll never tell her that. 

He’s spent almost a week with these memories building up in his head, full of names and places he knows but doesn’t, grand feats he could only dream of now that feel so real they make him want to shout. Each is more fleeting than the last, and he thinks, Nami, thinks Usopp, thinks Brook, but only one of those names sticks around long enough to truly take hold.

The more he thinks on it the farther the image fades. It’s like grabbing at the last few trickles of sunlight before it slips away into dusk.

But Nami’s been busy so he couldn’t get to her, and for the first few days all he did was feel like his head was going to split open and he stayed curled up in bed long enough that Ace took his temperature and asked if he wanted to go to the doctor. The first morning, after… remembering, he supposes, it had hurt to look at Ace. Not just because of (him smiling at him, hurting, dying, and he’s screaming at) what sits in his head, what he knows now, but because he quite literally had double vision and trying to focus on one thing had only made the ache worse.

He thinks if he had to endure it any longer he might burst.

He’s known Nami since (he stood on the rubble and declared she was one of them, that she was his friend, but that’s all) he can remember. Her face pinches with a heavy breath, and Luffy wonders if that’s what he looked like to Ace. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything, he thinks. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked, just to make sure he wasn’t the only one losing his mind.

“Luffy,” she says, like she’s never said his name before. He nods and then starts when she lurches forward and he’s caught in the circle of her arms. It isn’t like he’s never hugged her before—he did a month ago when she broke up with her girlfriend (and she took her leaving the crew harder than the others) and they sat on the floor of her living room and ate freezer burned ice cream in silence.

But it feels like (the first time they got back to the ship after they freed her village and) he hasn’t seen her in a long time, and he winds his arms (twice and then three times) around her a little tighter until she stops shaking as much. He hugs her and the image flickers through his head of her short hair, and then long hair, and ink stains on her palms and a fever in her cheeks and frost biting into his fingers.

“We just spoke yesterday and now I feel like we haven’t seen one another in years,” she gets out after she pulls away, dragging her fingers through her hair. Nami rounds on him and (she’s building a map of the world as) her expression shifts between confusion, horror, and acceptance like he’s going back and forth through a flip book. “My head is killing me. What the hell is this?”

His face falls because he figured if either of them could figure it out, it would be Nami. She’s taking it much easier than he was, or maybe she’s just better at hiding her splitting migraine as her brain forces her to remember two different lives. If that’s what they are.

It feels like someone is missing. Multiple someone ones. Thinking about that too hard leaves an ache in the space between his eyes and a starburst of pain crossing his chest.

“It feels weird, like I’m in someone else’s head and shouldn’t be,” he says as they sit on the steps leading up to her apartment. “I remember learning how to ride a bike, but I also remember looking for beetles in the woods? Except not here. I can remember a boat but not where it was going. We hung up a picture of us with Sabo before he went off to college but now I don’t think that’s real. It feels wrong, but it all makes perfect sense at the same time.”

“No, I think it’s real,” Nami says, but she says it like she’s afraid of admitting it. Her hand brushes against her arm, along the tattoo she got (when she finally felt free and wanted to reclaim her body, her life) right after they graduated high school, except instead of being angry her mom just laughed. She doesn’t look at him when she asks, “Do you remember others?”

“Others?” he asks, leaning into her space; where usually she’d pull away she draws her arms tighter around herself. 

“Yeah, like … I just have brief glimpses and I can’t remember their names. There was a woman though, I think, and I remember the sound of someone cooking?”

Luffy’s brow knits. “Huh, that’s different than mine.”

“Wait, who do you remember?”

“You, mostly. And Ace was … ” he swallows and thinks better of voicing a thought that even now makes him sick. “Ace was there, but I also remember someone else, but I can’t really see his face. He was there with you though.”

“What were we doing?”

“Just standing on a deck. I’m not sure if it was a dream or a memory—we were just on a ship and I don’t know where we were going.” His head tilts. “Not much happened in it, but he called me captain.”

“Captain?”

“Swords and earrings,” he says. “He had two, maybe three swords, and he was wearing earrings.”

Luffy rests his elbow on his knee, his cheek on his palm.

“If we remember, do we lose everything we have?” Luffy asks, voice too heavy for how bright and sunny the day is. For some reason his head feels remarkably naked. He can feel fingers running through his hair, someone ruffling it and then someone else squeezing the back of his neck, leaving color flaring up his shoulders except there’s no one there but the two of them. 

Nami doesn’t say anything, and he’s a little grateful she doesn’t have an answer for that.

He thinks of swords and earrings and that was the burden of being captain, and blood that isn’t his on his hands and I’ll never be defeated again and how could this happen when you were here and his hands are rougher than his and he stands a little closer sometimes and he says you moron but he rolls his eyes. 

He’s familiar and he watches the edges of his features sharpen, knows there’s a scar that runs down his chest that should have killed him but he would never, because he made a promise, and Luffy thinks of an incredible ship, and then another, marvelous one he mourns, and then another, the first one that meant anything, where there was no leg room and the sun left him blistered. And oh. His head aches down to the hinges of his jaw with the memory.

She sits up again, and he watches a (familiar) grim determination set across her features. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to figure anything out just sitting here.”

Luffy stands as she does, but he pauses and smiles and it must catch her off guard. His smile feels a little sad, he thinks, but just for a second, sad he isn’t here, now, but it splits to show his teeth when he thinks of all of the possibilities.

“Zoro,” he says. I remember Zoro."

They camp out at a café they’ve grown up frequenting because Nami says going back inside her apartment doesn’t feel right. She stops in long enough to grab her bag, and they elect to walk because something about taking her car feels weird right that second. Makino (shouldn’t be here, should she, but she) waves as they make their way to their usual table, and an unsettling feeling crawls up the back of his neck.

He grew up with Makino, she used to (teach Ace manners and give him lunch on a ‘treasure tab’ and hugged him when he left, not) babysit him and his older brothers when Gramps (left them there or) had to work or Dadan threatened to take him to court.

Maybe they shouldn’t be here either, he thinks, but there’s enough midday activity going on around them that it works as a nice distraction.

“Okay, I think we need to figure out a base point to start with,” she says, falling a little heavier into her chair than she normally does. Luffy himself falls in a sprawl of limbs, torn between wanting to know and wanting to avoid feeling his head is (squished and pushed and pulled but isn’t) going to burst. When he hesitates, twisting toward the menu board and Makino beneath it, she frowns. “You don’t have your wallet, do you?”

“I was in a hurry,” he says, head snapping back around to face her. His neck cracks and she pulls a face. Did his joints not used to pop before? They definitely did. That seems to be answer enough, and her expression wavers into something soft before it hardens again. She grumbles before fishing into her bag and sliding a bill his way with a wordless request.

He can’t wait to find Zoro. He’d been dwelling on that their entire walk over, while Nami seemed to be deep in thought and he offered a “huh” and “I dunno” to her occasional question. Does he know how this all works? No. Does he want to? Sure. Does it matter? Probably not. Doesn’t look like they have a lot of choice in the matter either way.

Will Zoro remember him? Will he take one look at him and smile wide and shout his name? His arms remember his weight like muscle memory. Small things click into place slowly: the way Zoro says his name, the groove of his back as he slings his arms over his shoulders, and he can feel a red tint crawling up his ears. Nami (says they seem awfully close and he says yeah, because Zoro’s his and) drags her fingers through her hair as she pulls it back, but he can’t tell if her frown is toward him or the situation or a bit of both.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Luffy swipes a finger across the crack in the screen, frowning at the image of a reindeer Nami set as his lock screen for the holidays, which he should probably change because (that won’t make him happy, you stupid human, even if) that was months ago. Wasn’t it?

Ace has texted him Where are you? to go along with two missed calls, and he belatedly realizes he left without saying much beyond a quick squeeze hug and home for dinner this morning. Ace is (on the hunt for someone who betrayed his crew and) probably on his lunch break right now, and rather than admit to having an identity/existential crisis, he responds adopted by pirates. He gets a thumbs up emoji and Good luck, be safe. in response and shouldn’t there be a flame attached? Why’d he pick pirates? And then Ace says, Wait you mean abducted? I’m not paying a ransom.

“Luffy, focus,” Nami cuts in, and he looks up to her scowling at him. She holds up a bill pinched between her fingers and is probably going to lecture him on how much he owes her.

“I am, I can’t just ignore Ace!”

Her gaze flickers, and “Is Ace…?”

“Here,” he says, and leaves it at that. 

He knows she wants to push, because maybe she remembers something, but he also remembers something about her mom, something he wishes he didn’t, too, even if the story is a little fragmented. But she’s here, let him spend summers in the backyard with Nami and her sister, digging their toes into the dirt, plucking mikans while he watched her draw a bunch of (lines and charts, maps of places they’ve been and an entire world she was going to see, though to him it may have looked like) nonsensical doodles in the summer sun.

He takes the proffered cash, crumpling it in his fist a little as he kicks himself out of his chair and stands. He mulls things over but also tries not to at the same time as he stands in line, because following certain trains of thought is like grasping as the last bits of a dream right after waking up, and others make a white-hot sear of pain shoot up the back of his skull still.

It’s annoying, mostly.

“Hi Luffy,” Makino says when he comes to stand before her, footsteps mechanical because he swears there are names, too, to go along with the faces he’s forgetting. Her smile falters some at his blank expression. “Luffy, you okay?”

“What?”

“Are you doing okay?” she repeats, and he blinks like he’s suddenly coming back into himself. Usually, he’s much chattier, he realizes. More often than not he’s prattling on about something or other, big ideas he can’t remember now, to the point where someone behind him in line might clear their throat extra loud.

“Oh! Yeah, yeah I’m good,” he says a little too fast, but if she picks up on it she doesn’t question it (or his dreams of setting out to sea, to be the best of the best).

“The usual?”

“What? Yeah.”

She (used to pour him juice at the bar and laugh at his antics) makes a soft sound in the back of her throat, and that’s about the extent of their conversation for a moment when her attention shifts to the register.

“So, do you have any exciting plans for this summer?” she asks as she fills Nami’s cup with a little less ice than usual, and his mouth ticks down into a frown. Other than trying to piece together which memories are more recent and which are, uh, not, no, he doesn’t, not really. Unlike Nami, Luffy also didn’t apply for or get into college, and Sabo had kindly told him that working various odd jobs was only going to get him so far.

Somehow, though, finding steady employment and a 401k seems to be the least of his worries. He has friends that are missing and need him—their captain—to find them.

It doesn’t help that he has a debt with (300% interest) with Nami, though.

“Probably going to spend more time at the beach,” he says over the hiss of espresso being brewed, and she raises an eyebrow. “My swimming skills are still only so-so, but I’m pretty sure this might be the year I finally convince Nami to let me bury her in the sand. She wouldn’t let me last year and threatened to push me off the pier the year before that, but maybe this one will be different.”

Makino chuckles to herself and shakes her head. She might put an extra pump of syrup or something in Nami’s cup, but he gets distracted by the new girl coming up alongside Makino with his bubble tea. Her name tag says something like Koa, but he doesn’t catch the last couple of letters.

“Anyway, Sabo will probably tell me that my future’s on the line and maybe Ace will let me pick up some shifts, who knows.” He shrugs. Talking about work is one of the last things on his mind. Not that it was ever really a huge priority for him to begin with, but it’s kinda on the back burner now more so than usual. Talking about his brothers is making his throat hurt. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Is he still managing the movie theater?”

Luffy hums. Ace’s been (out on the sea since they made their promise) there since he was fifteen, with the owner, Ed, who thinks of him like a son. He’s a big, tall man, friendly enough the first time Ace brought his brother along and said he couldn’t find a sitter, as if Luffy couldn’t have been home alone for a few hours at twelve. Which, come to think of it, was probably true, and Ed had just laughed and called him kid, said welcome to the crew (he didn’t need to be part of since he already had his own) and shoved a bag of popcorn in his hands and shuffled him off to the office.

Luffy kind of wants her to stop talking about him, too.

“He bartends a couple nights a week too at that, um.” He gestures vaguely in one direction or another. Thankfully, Makino takes it in stride. “Bar Tie? That place’s been there for a while."

“Baratie? I’ve been meaning to try them out.” She fills in the blanks for him, adding the finishing touches to Nami’s drink. There was another redhead she used to pour drinks for, but the image of Shanks standing next to him right now is too jarring. “You know, I’m pretty sure I saw a sign in the window that they were looking for bussers.”

“Yeah, I’ll check it out,” he says, which is probably a nice way to say he’s most likely going to forget about it by the time he sits down. His voice is a little strained, but he beams back at her. “Thanks, Makino.”

Nami has her glasses on when he rejoins her, having made quick work of pulling a notebook and pen out of her bag. Sometimes he wonders why she doesn’t just wear them all the time if they help her see better, but she just wordlessly holds her hand out for her change after he sets her iced soy something something drink in front of her. As he sits again, he spots a WHY THE F and LOSING MY MIND both crossed out at the top of the page, like she couldn’t decide what to name her list. Luffy frowns down at the tabletop, ice cubes clinking together in his bubble tea.

It’s … very jarring. For a split second interacting with Makino is almost normal, and he can pretend for a moment.

Luffy sucks up two, then three, then six bobas before immediately bursting them with his teeth because he feels like his head might explode otherwise. He fixes his gaze on the board behind her, a collection of want ads and a flyer for Soul King (yohoho) performing this upcoming Saturday and a local photography exhibit by (the incredible, mighty, Captain) Sogeking.

“Okay,” she says. “We need to figure this out somehow.” To herself, she mutters, “Where do we start?”

“Here, I guess. Do we find Zoro? Makino seems familiar.”

“The manager?” She glances back in her direction. Something tells him she’s not supposed to know her, or maybe they haven’t met before. They’ve been coming here for years though, haven’t they?

“Don’t we have other friends? I keep trying to go back over the years, think about who else we used to hang out with, but right now it’s like everyone else’s face is blurry except for yours.”

“Maybe I’m your only friend,” he says, but he doesn’t really mean it in a bad way.

“Thanks.” Drumming her fingers on her notebook, she says, “What if we … tried to describe the people we remember seeing? Maybe that’ll jog our memories.”

If that’s what they are. Unless maybe somehow the two of them manage to share the same fever dream.

“They feel pretty real to me. Don’t you think if they remembered we would have known by now? Most of what I’ve been remembering over the past few days are like quick flashes. I think I heard a few names and voices, but nothing long enough to really focus on it.”

“Maybe it takes a little longer to figure it out?” she suggests. Her eyebrows bunch. “How long have you known?”

“What day is it?” he asks around his straw.

“Wednesday? What does that matter?”

He backtracks, the farther he goes the heavier the stone in his stomach feels.

“Last Thursday. It was Ace’s turn to—” he freezes, plastic cup creaking under his grip. He’s said it again, because part of him doesn’t believe it, like he didn’t see him just this morning, like Makino didn’t just ask about him. Didn’t get a smack on the back before he left for (the seas instead of) work. Ace is (alive, whole, breathing) the next door over at night, just down the hall. “Ace is here.”

The other night when he woke up after the movie was over, it was to Luffy clinging to his waist. His attempts to dislodge him had been half-hearted at best, clearly picking up on something being wrong with his little brother. He’d resigned himself to sleeping on the couch that night, even if it hurt his neck and Luffy was too old (because he doesn’t have anyone else). Squeezing his eyes shut, his throat had burned.

It feels weird every time he says it. Like it’s not supposed to happen. It’s the third time he’s said it today.

Sabo is too, he knows this in his bones. It doesn’t quite hurt the same. Is it because he hasn’t seen him (in his arms, breathing his last) in person yet? Will he see Sabo and feel like the backs of his eyes are burning or his limbs no longer work?

“My mom is too,” she says, hand stilling. She doesn’t look up from the paper. Another thought gives her pause, her pen hovering over the page. “Why did you wait so long to say something?”

Luffy opens his mouth to speak and freezes.

“Zolo?”

That’s not it, is it, but it’s familiar, almost, zips through his body like lightning and he’s crouched on the masthead of a ship. They both jolt and where the color seems to drain out of Nami’s face his is about two seconds from breaking into a wide grin. It’s familiar, like (join my crew!) a song he hasn’t heard in years (the hell I will!) and his brain is trying to dig up where it stored all of the words. He knows, he knows, he knows, he remembered—

He nearly topples his chair over when he bolts out of it. Behind him there’s a guy with green, green hair and earrings (that he used to knock together in a dinghy to see if they sounded like wind chimes) that reflect the soft light. His back is to him as he picks his way to the counter through the thin crowd, and Luffy is all of a breath away from launching himself through it. 

It’s like with Nami, hitting him full force, but it’s so much more than that as the reality of it all comes crashing down around him. Zoro, his (first mate, first friend in this world of pirates, first crew member and first one he swore an oath with), his—he isn’t even sure what to call him. There’s too much but too little to describe him.

Zoro. Zoro, who—no, no, no offense to Nami—should have been first. Zoro, who’s a constant, and he’s practically vibrating with the need to reach and touch him, make sure he’s really real. His tongue darts out to wet his lip as he steps forward, crowding into his personal space and finally grinning because I found you!

“Zolo?” Luffy repeats. 

The other man sighs. “No, it’s Zor—oh.” And he pauses as he turns, spotting Luffy as opposed to Makino, who’s probably said something like an apology for his name being spelled wrong. 

Luffy wants to call him an idiot, because it figures he would get lost finding his way home.

But Zoro just blinks at him, flushes, looks at him with two eyes, one still framed by a familiar scar and says, “Oh, sorry,” and makes it so much worse when he says, “Do I know you?”

It’s like being dunked in the cold, salty spray of the sea that time he and his brothers went to the beach too early one morning. Zoro may as well have stabbed him too, he thinks, as his chest swells not in celebration because things finally make sense, but when the man who swore he would lay his life on the line for him stares at him like he’s a complete stranger.

He looks at him and (yells his name, arms out to grab him as he leaps through the sky because it’s been forever, and he wraps his arms around him and smells like grass and steel as he buries his face, leaving them fumbling) awkwardly shifts from one foot to the other. Ice rattles in a cup wedged into his drink tray.

Luffy doesn’t realize he hasn’t moved until Zoro does, grunting with an “oi” as his shoulder is jostled, and he twists away to cast a glance to the person who’s bumped into him. His bag swings and knocks Luffy in the knee before he hikes it back onto his shoulder.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to,” Nami says, her eyes calculating in a way Luffy’s known for forever. He thought he knew Zoro’s too: the slant to his mouth when he was trying to hide a smile, the glint to his eye just before a fight. Now it’s dull, even in the sun and warm lighting above. One of his eyes still carries a scar he would know anywhere. Is absolutely positive of it now.

“No worries,” Zoro says, and then he shuffles between them. They’re probably causing a minor scene or at least drawing attention to themselves. Luffy can’t find it in himself to care.

“Thought I knew you,” Luffy says, belatedly realizing it sounds more like a barb than an apology.

He isn’t being rude, doesn’t stare like he’s looking through him, but only nods in acknowledgement before stepping around him. The sounds of the rest of the café turn into a dull roar, rearing up and then turning into nothing, and Zoro’s arm brushes his as he passes him by. He wants to reach out and (jostle his arm, steal a bite from dinner, twist around in the middle of the open sea with a dinghy and dreams he can’t name, but at least he can) touch him, but won’t. Can’t. 

The build up he had in his head of their reunion, of all but slinging himself at him (he can’t, maybe he isn’t as flexible as he used to be?) and shouting his name, grabbing his face with both hands like he (used to be or) was afraid of letting him go (again).

A threat of harakiri looms over his head, a whisper with a voice he knows but can’t place, and while it’s gone as quickly as it had come, yeah, he thinks, pretty much.

“Luffy?” Nami says, breaking him out of his staring contest with one of the menu boards behind the counter. The new barista shoots him a quick glance but seemingly thinks nothing of it. When he turns, her face is pinched in an expression he’s sure mirrors his own. No luck either. “I don’t know how this works, but we’ll get him back, okay?”

She nudges him to go sit down, and part of him wants to fight, and she says (Luffy, help me) they’ll get him back and he wants to know how? It’s Zoro, he’s just supposed to know.

Little rings of condensation dot the table when she gets him to sit again, and Luffy’s somewhat decent mood finishes evaporating. Zoro, he thinks, who’s (the first one he turns to, who might laugh at his jokes and sometimes shares food with, always looked back to check on him as he was) walking out the door now, and Luffy keeps up the cruel act of watching him go.

Zoro’s always been right (there, always, one to lean on like a hitching post for safety and security, who harbors his utmost faith and who he trusts like no other) in front of him. He can’t believe it took him this long to find him. How many times have they passed one another by?

“Luffy,” Nami tries again. He finally turns his gaze away from the window once the green hair is completely out of view.

“He had two drinks,” he says, watching her expression falter for a quick second before, “Zoro left with two drinks in his order.”

Maybe Zoro doesn’t remember, but maybe he’s friends with one of their friends that does? Maybe he found another one of their crew without even realizing it?

Hope bubbles up deep in his chest, even with a small twinge of pain.

Nami lifts her hand off of the table just enough for him to catch a glimpse of something hidden under her palm and he chokes out a snicker. Leave it to Nami, who’s conniving and (greedy and the perfect navigator and someone he couldn’t do without, because she’s) brilliant and he’ll give her nimble fingers a pass as she taps Zoro’s wallet.

“Don’t you think maybe we should find out where he’s heading?”

The two of them make a mad dash back to Nami’s apartment—or, at least, Luffy does, spilling most of her iced coffee on the sidewalk and promising he’ll get her a new one. If they remember anything about Zoro’s sense of direction (where south is down) they may have some time. He helps himself to her fridge and then paws through the cupboard where she keeps the good snacks because they didn’t eat at the café.

Normally, Luffy would feel a little bad about going through someone else’s things, if not simply be disinterested in it, or tell Nami hey, she promised she’d stop doing things like this. But he can justify it’s for a good reason, and he fumbles through Zoro’s wallet like answers will come spilling out of it.

“No way,” Nami says while she’s thumbing through cards. “No way, I don’t believe it.” Luffy’s head snaps up from where he’s scouring a punch card for Patty’s Bread and a business card for Dr. Kureha’s office with a mouthful of cold fettuccine. “Zoro got his license?”

“Why would he have his license?” he asks, wiggling fingers at her in a universal gesture, and she holds it just out of his (extendable but suddenly not) grasp as she reads it over again. He swallows. “So he figured out how to drive. I don’t have one. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal,” she says, pausing long enough to look at something before finally handing it over, “is that—no, it isn’t a surprise to me that you failed your driver’s test six times—Zoro got his license. Which means that we have an address. This also means someone trusted Zoro behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.”

“So we know where he lives,” he mutters. They know where he lives and in his photo his face is softer than it was (after their run-in with Arlong, then with Enel, then beyond that and) during their exchange at the café. There’s a note for restrictions he doesn’t pay much attention to, and then he bolts up off his stool at her breakfast bar, cold noodles forgotten. “Get your keys!”

Nami shouts after him as he scrambles out of her front door, leaving it wide open and banging on the small shoe rack. She calls after him in annoyance, left to gather up the rest of Zoro’s cards while he nearly trips over himself down the stairs.

As usual, she’s cursing up a storm as she fights with her keys and locks up behind them, calling out not to tug insistently on the handle on her car door like he is already. She’s careful to make sure each card they sorted through is tucked back into the same spot in the same order they were in. He notes that she didn’t try to grab the cash out of it, but that’s probably because there wasn’t any cash left to begin with.

“Nami,” he whines, dragging out the last syllable. “C’mon, we gotta go find Zoro!”

“Better not be going anywhere,” he catches her grumble. She’s barely unlocked the car before he’s spilling himself into the passenger seat. There’s a grove worn into it that he’s sure is solely from him and the years she’s spent playing his driver. He drums his feet in the footwell.

How odd to think of her having a car now, odder still to see her climbing into her own seat, punching up her navigation app on her phone. She (says they need to wait for the log pose to reset and tells him to unfurl the sails before she) nudges his shoulder for him to buckle himself in. The ride is (choppy and the seas unruly, leaving the crew shouting orders back and forth and yet he grins into the harsh spray despite things being) tense, and Nami doesn’t even bother to fiddle with the radio beyond turning it off. Aside from his fidgeting and her chewing on her lip, said tension is only broken by the occasional direction from her (skills, not) phone.

By the time Nami tracks the last known residential whereabouts of Roronoa, Zoro, Luffy has practically pressed his face into the window in an attempt to catch sight of him.

“This one on the right,” she says, and he follows her line of sight to an otherwise unremarkable one level house, its side a pale color in a stark contrast the vibrant ivy twining up the side and the splashes of color dotted along the walk that extends to a ramp leading to the front door.

Nami’s barely even parked when he makes to propel himself out of the car, and she snags the back of his collar with a tug.

He approaches the walk with a more respectable pace, even if every cell in him is vibrating with the urge (need) to move faster. He just barely lets Nami knock before he risks punching a hole through the door. It took her no time at all to remember, so even after a hiccup surely Zoro—

“Coming!” a voice that is distinctly not Zoro’s calls back from the depths of the house, and he and Nami exchange a quick look before he’s staring down the worn wood paneling again. He feels like he’s about to vibrate out of his own skin because now they’ll definitely get him back, Zoro has to remember, and Nami’s fingers give his wrist a small squeeze.

After Zoro, maybe Ace, but then he’s afraid of those consequences and doesn’t want to think about that, so maybe not, and instead he shifts his attention back to the sound of movement on the other side of the door.

A girl he doesn’t know swings it open enough to give them a view of her puzzled expression and not much else. She glances between the two of them, a hand dropping to one of the wheels of her chair.

“Can I help you?”

“Does Zoro live here?” he asks, her gaze snapping back to him so fast it immediately puts him on edge. He doesn’t know her, but apparently she knows Zoro. She has to. Luffy doesn’t remember her from any of his past experiences, or any of his dreams or the images that flash through his mind.

“Excuse me,” Nami says, stepping in front of him just enough to serve as his saving grace, even if he wants to tell her he doesn’t need it. He has a question, and this girl probably has an answer. “I’m sorry about my friend here. We were wondering if there was a Roronoa Zoro who lived here?” She fishes Zoro’s wallet out of her bag like (she’s never done this before, never left a bunch spilling across the deck or her sticky fingers haven’t plucked money out of unsuspecting pockets that weren’t hers or) she didn’t snag it out of his bag. “We were out earlier and found this. We thought he’d definitely want it back.”

The girl’s eyes widen in surprise at the sight of the worn leather as Nami opens it, and then it immediately dissolves into a smirk. “Oh my god, that’s awesome. I mean, awesome that you returned that, definitely, but I can’t wait to hold this over his head.”

Nami laughs. “I bet!”

She pauses, seeming to weigh her options, or like she’s assessing them both. Luffy wants to tell her to get on with it. Is Zoro here or not. Whatever she’s looking for, she seems content.

“I usually don’t allow people I don’t know into the house, but do you guys want to come in for a minute? Zoro should be back soon.” Neither is quick enough to school their expressions. “Yeah, no, I will definitely kick your asses if you try anything. Plus, I want an audience for the look on his face when I tell him he lost his wallet again.”

“Again?” Nami murmurs, though she steps over the threshold slowly as the girl wheels away from the door. “Thanks—are you sure it’s okay if we come in?”

She shrugs, closing the door behind them as they both toe off their shoes.

“You’ll be fine. Like I said, Zoro should be back any minute.”

Luffy scowls at Nami while she wheels toward the kitchen he can make out through the archway, and she elbows him in the side. He grunts at her but doesn’t say anything beyond that.

“I’m Nami,” she offers, taking a seat at the table. She still holds herself too rigidly, which makes perfect sense given that a stranger just let them into her house. Zoro’s wallet passes between their hands. “And this is my friend, Luffy.”

“Kuina,” she says, leaning her elbows onto the table. Her gaze keeps landing on him, and he can’t quite tell how he feels about it. He doesn’t know her, and even that part of him that’s been harboring in the back of his mind with all of the other memories and whatnot he has can’t place just who she is, not at first. Important to Zoro, at least, he figures that much. Didn’t he talk about her once?

The two of them make amiable small talk, the bulk of which he ignores because it isn’t relevant to him, so he lets his mind wander some as they talk about how long they’ve lived in the area, how much it sucks that some shop is closing down, Kuina checking out Nami’s tattoo.

Beneath the table, his leg bobs, and he works his teeth around every part of his lower lip before he runs the risk of say something stupid. Luckily he’s spared the humility at the sound of the front door clicking open again, and he nearly (stretches his neck too far so it’ll spring back while he) whips around in his chair.

“Kuina, you’re a pain in the ass, you know that? Got your stupid drink,” comes a grumble, and he fists the material of his shorts because that’s Zoro. Zoro’s right there again. He didn’t remember the first time and it hurts and still does, but give him a few more minutes and he will. “Made sure all the ice is nice and melted for you too, so you just—oh. You guys.”

He (flashes him a grin from the other side of the battlefield, face smeared with dirt and blood, bracing himself for when Luffy closes the distance between them, but now) frowns at the sight of them, turning to Kuina. He stands there, drink tray in hand and the other on the strap of his bag, and in his frown he sees the ghost of the person who lives in his memories. Not quite the one who stood on the deck and called him captain like in his dream last night, but the one who appears in flashes before the frown fades into something softer. Something he knows but now he thinks maybe wasn’t for the others.

They still need to find the others.

“Your friends here have something for you,” Kuina says, sitting back in her wheelchair. In her hand she holds his wallet. “Anything you’re missing?”

For a brief second he blanches, but he doesn’t pat himself down like Luffy imagined he would have. It almost makes him want to laugh. Nami’s hands are folded a little too tightly.

“Oi, give me that.” He sets the tray on the table and makes a grab for it, but then she passes it to her other hand. “Where did you even get that?”

Kuina smacks his arm and snaps back, “Don’t look at me! You’re the one who lost their wallet, you bozo!”

“Well I,” and he pauses, hand still outstretched, though turned with the palm facing upward, waiting, this time. To them, he says, “I see you had the misfortune of meeting Kuina.” 

“Shut up, Zoro.”

“—and I’m Zoro. Thank you, I appreciate that. You didn’t have to come all the way out here though.”

“I’m Nami; this is Luffy. And it was no problem,” Nami says, because of course they did. They’re the whole reason behind it. It was also like a five minute drive that felt like two hours. That thought incenses Luffy because that means Zoro has been right here the entire time. Zoro has always, always been right here. 

His gaze passes between the two of them, the way Kuina riles him up and Zoro eggs her on in return. Something green sparks in his belly.

“Wait, is Zoro your boyfriend?” Luffy blurts out.

Kuina looks at him in surprise, and then confusion, and then abject horror. Zoro looks ill. “Oh god, ew, no. Zoro’s like. Zoro’s like the step-brother your mom promised you would only have to put up with during holidays because he’s annoying.”

“Thanks,” he mutters. In her stupor he manages to snatch back his wallet. “No, tragically for me, I'm her cousin. Which means I’m stuck dealing with her and her stupid almond-soy-no-whip-light-ice-whatevers.”

“I only get them because I think it’s hilarious watching you try to order them,” Kuina says, sounding rather satisfied as she plucks the cup out of the tray. The cardboard is wet where condensation has dripped off of it. Zoro’s is something green, and she curls her lip at it.

“Why can’t you just order tea or something simple like a normal person,” Zoro mumbles (frowning into his sake and then), flipping through his wallet.

“I can relate to that,” Luffy says, the first not dumb thing he’s said so far; he glares in Nami’s direction. It earns him a glare of his own, but at least it gets Zoro to crack a grin. He’ll take it. Zoro slides his wallet into the pocket of his sweatpants. “Nami always orders the weirdest things and it takes her forever in line.”

Her glare deepens. “Just because you order the same two bubble teas doesn’t give you room to talk.”

“See? I think Luffy gets it,” Zoro laughs. He gestures to him, green drink sloshing around in his cup, Luffy finds himself sitting up a little straighter. Zoro’s smiling at him again, just a small one, but it’s there. He nods to Nami. “Thanks again."

“It’s no problem at all,” Nami tells him with that perfect air that’s gotten them out of more than one jam in the entire time he’s known her (even if she’s put him in one and then calls him boss and he peers at her through the bars of a cage). “I know it’s a little weird to have us show up at your door so suddenly, so I apologize for any trouble on our end.”

Kuina waves a hand, dismissive, like she didn’t just let two complete strangers into her home. On the one hand, Luffy’s glad she did because now that gives him a better opportunity to corner Zoro than a public space would allow.

“If anything, you saved this one some; don’t worry about it.”

Zoro shoots her a glare from where he’s (trying to nap against the mast as opposed to) digging through the fridge.

“I already said I appreciated it, don’t make me grovel,” he mutters, though his gaze is softer when it shoots in Luffy’s direction. Hmm, Luffy thinks. It falls on Kuina for a beat as he nudges the door shut again with his hip. He shoves a sports drink in his bag on the counter. “Where’s the old man?”

“He took Perona to her appointment,” she says, twisting to look at him over her shoulder.

From the way he’s been digging his teeth into his lip, Luffy’s sure it’s going to bruise. Aside from two stupid things and then muttering to himself he hasn’t said much of anything and it’s eating at him. Nami’s the one with the plan, though he insisted upon her following his lead.

Zoro rounds the island and (ducks a foot aimed at his head with a hissed not quite insult but) does he remember now? If he looks at Luffy again will he call him by his name or captain? Will he ask Nami where to? How does Kuina fit into all of this, is she like Ace? Is she not supposed to exist and is he a bad person for thinking that?

His gaze has barely left Zoro since he came into the room, and he knows the girls notice it, judging from the looks he gets, even if they don’t say anything. He watches the other man take his wallet back out and poke through it, and his head tilts when Nami laughs and tells him not to worry about it, everything is there (even if it’ll cost him).

He notices it in the slight way Zoro turns a little more to compensate, or how he seems to favor his right side as opposed to his left. He’s surprised he didn’t totally notice it before, especially when he was staring right at him and the scar was staring back.

“Is one of Zoro’s eyes fake?” he asks, with the least amount of couth he can manage, he’s sure Nami is about to say. She brings her heel down on his toes, hard, and he is convinced that once upon a time (month, year, universe, life) it wouldn’t hurt, just annoy him. But it does hurt, and the pain radiates up through his crushed toes.

The other two gape at him, Kuina’s expression a little like she’s about to demand he leave, and a muscle ticking in Zoro’s jaw.

“Uh, yeah.” Zoro blinks and his eye isn’t forever shut, despite the scar cutting across the lid (as Luffy traces his fingers over it and asks what happened, but he says not to worry about it).

“Dammit, Luffy,” Nami hisses through her teeth at him, and he at least has the decency to look somewhat embarrassed.

Zoro just laughs.

“What? It’s not like it’s a big secret. I’m just surprised someone noticed.” He pokes Kuina’s shoulder. “Damn, I think you scared him for a minute there.”

Giving Nami a pointed look, he goes to nudge her with his foot, except it’s Luffy, so he ends up kicking her squarely in the shin.

At the outright (overly familiar) murderous look in her eye, he wastes no time in standing and asking, “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Down the hall and to the right,” Kuina says while Zoro points, and as he power walks away he can hear her telling Nami not to worry about it, they’ve both heard a lot worse. Zoro says he has to finish getting ready for work, which means their window is slipping closed.

His foot still hurts.

There is a small collection of photos on the wall full of people where he only recognizes three—well, four now, if he counts Kuina. In one Kuina and Zoro stand side by side, both with determined looks on their faces, except it looks like they’re both smiling just a little, probably from some match for—what is it, kendo? Zoro (was never without his swords, making them as much a part of him as the straw hat he no longer possesses but he) was probably one of the best, he thinks. No, he was—is—the best. One of the men in another picture he doesn’t recognize, but another gives him pause, sharp eyes (that watched Zoro plummet into the sea after slicing him open) glaring back at him beside a girl with bright pink hair (horororo) who looks like she was forced to be there.

Nami and Kuina are still talking as he continues his wandering down the hall, and his exploration leads him to one closed door, and the next leading to a room he knows instinctively. 

The walls are a warm brown (the Adam wood smooth to the touch as the shipwright crones about how suuuuper it is, a joy) he recognizes, the bed half-made like someone left in a hurry. There are a surprising number of books he notes, though he doesn’t bother reading their spines. Underneath the small TV shoved in the corner is a pile of the same exact B horror movies he grew up with, partly because Dadan said (she had no business raising children but) maybe he’d learn his lesson and stop asking, and partly because Ace had a mean streak and wanted (nothing to do with him but) to see him squirm.

He feels Zoro’s presence like he’s attuned to it, and he turns to find him standing behind him with a raised eyebrow.

“I was looking for the bathroom,” Luffy says, like he isn’t awkwardly standing just outside of his bedroom.

Zoro blinks back at him. “Oh, you just passed it.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder like Kuina’s directions were too vague. “I was gonna shower before heading back out, but no rush.”

“Wait!” Luffy says, a little too fast and a little too loud. The conversation down the hall lulls for a beat. He tries again, “Wait.”

“Okay?”

He shuts the door behind him and stands there for a few minutes. He’s not about to go through their shower or bathroom drawers, because that’s personal stuff and not his business. Nami would also yell at him for going through personal things, but that would make her hypothetical. She would also tell him he used the wrong word.

But since he didn’t actually need to use the bathroom, he stands there for a few minutes, watching the reflection of someone he used to know. He doesn’t look as tired as he remembers feeling, even if there was always a sense of adventure coursing through his veins. His nose and cheeks are covered with more freckles than he thinks he once had, and if he takes off his sweatshirt he knows there would be more spilling down his shoulders. If he lifts his shirt his chest has a few nicks from being a bit of a daredevil as a kid who never turned down a challenge, and a nasty scar he’s grown used to, the one where Dadan almost lost custody and threatened Gramps with losing visitation rights. He tries not to think about that one too much.

There’s still a scar underneath his eye that was his own doing, trying to prove something to his brothers (and Shanks, who only hollered and told him to knock it off, what the hell, was he okay, what was he thinking).

Luffy washes his hands to keep up the ruse, drying them on his shorts.

When he makes it back to Zoro’s room, it’s to find him grabbing a change of clothes and tossing others in the hamper without looking.

“You’re leaving again?” Luffy asks, causing him to raise his head. “You just got back though.”

“Yeah, I went to the gym and then got Kuina a drink before I have to get to work.”

The fake eye looking back at him looks so real, almost like it isn’t missing at all, and (Zoro turns his head into the touch as he rests a hand at the side of his head) in a way, for a split second, it’s hard to place the memory side by side with the reality facing him. Was Zoro also hurt the way he was before? Does he still have a scar nearly cutting him in half, the one he can feel against his fingertips if he thinks about it too much?

He cocks his head. “Hey, if you have your license, why did you walk all the way home?”

“I don’t mind the walk and, ah, my old man has the car,” he says, but it sounds an awful lot like Zoro’s not supposed to drive anymore, which makes a lot more sense to him. He probably failed his test a number of times too, or passed based on luck.

Luffy nods, eyes wandering the room again before centering on Zoro. “Where do you work?”

“Uh, you know the sports club down by the library? It’s in the same building as that arts studio or whatever. I teach junior kendo,” he says, watching as Luffy nods accordingly.

“You work with kids?” Zoro grunts, but he looks pretty pleased. “That’s cool. I was gonna work with kids last summer as like, a camp consulter or something, but they said I was too much of a safety hazard to myself.”

Zoro chuckles a little. “You mean counselor?”

“I’m sorry about earlier, at the café,” he continues. “You looked like someone I thought I knew so I figured you might’ve been them.”

“Nah, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Zoro pauses. He looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it, and Luffy wants to lean into his space (just like he always does) to see if maybe…  “Is it… is it weird if I say the same about you? That for a second I thought you looked like someone I knew?”

His chest tightens and he wants to call Nami! call Zoro! Wants to reach over and shake Zoro’s shoulders because (there’s a new island and it’s time to explore or) maybe that’ll knock something into place. Instead, he shrugs and says, “Guess we can be weird together then.”

This time, Zoro really does laugh. It’s a sound he would know anywhere, anytime, any place. Luffy does not try to hide his wide smile.

“Looks like it.”

The rest of his things sorted—he wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing—Zoro waves his wallet as if to prove he hasn’t lost it again. The corner of his mouth ticks for a second.

“Well, I don’t want to be rude, but I really do gotta shower and head out. Thanks again; I’ll see you around?”

Luffy’s gaze darts away and then back, coming up with a last ditch effort before he loses his shot to keep Zoro closer. He can’t just keep showing up at his house since he knows his address now—he could, but that would probably be too weird. “Do you like scary movies? But only really bad scary movies, the kind that make you laugh more than scream.”

He can see a smile tugging at his mouth even as confusion flickers across his features. “Yeah, I do.”

“The movie theater in town is having a showing of some of my favorites. You should come with me.”

Zoro looks at him (while squinting in the sunlight, frowning when he asks where he expects this little dinghy to take them, and gives him the biggest smile with one eye permanently closed, arms up snatch him out of the air, and now) like he vaguely recognizes him in that second, and then he shrugs. He looks happy though, just a little.

“Sure.”

“Good! Great,” Luffy says, and then he’s telling him to hang on, stay right there, before he’s darting back down the hallway to the kitchen. Nami and Kuina both start at his sudden appearance, staring at him in bewilderment when he says he needs a pen, c’mon, and after a delay Nami digs through her purse and hands him a permanent marker.

Zoro is right where he left him, though he looks amused when Luffy hurriedly gestures for him to hold out his hand.

“Saturday,” he tells him, taking extra care to write out his phone number along his forearm as opposed to his usual chicken scratch. “Saturday, okay? Don’t be late!”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Luffy,” Zoro says, and even if he might not remember him, Luffy believes him.

Nami buries her face in her hands the minute she closes the car door behind her, a stark contrast to the way Luffy hasn’t stopped beaming since he told Zoro he’d see him later.

“What the hell,” she murmurs, and then again, “what the hell.”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? We need to figure out where to go from here. I was chatting with Kuina for a while learning things I already knew or things that didn’t match up with what I remembered.” She drums her hands on the wheel. “Not that she was super into sharing a bunch of personal details, but ugh, it feels so weird to have two sets of memories. None of this crap makes any sense.”

He frowns. “Things that didn’t match up?”

“His family life, mostly?” her gaze shoots to him. “Zoro was an orphan, remember? We didn’t really learn much about his life before the crew—or much of anyone’s, really. We didn’t exactly sit down and share all of our childhoods with one another if we could help it. Zoro didn’t have siblings growing up.” Nami’s lips pucker. “Like I said, she didn’t really overshare, but I put a couple pieces together. There was an accident, which is how Zoro lost his eye and why Kuina’s in a wheelchair.”

“Huh,” Luffy says, sitting back in his seat. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, just in case Zoro’s texted him in the past few minutes and he missed it. There are no new notifications. “I don’t remember meeting Kuina, but Zoro mentioned her a few times before… y’know. She wasn’t his sister though.”

“Then… ”

“Can we go somewhere else? I don’t want to do this here.”

Nami lets out a breath through her nose, which means she’s about two seconds from telling him off, but she just starts her car and pulls away from the curb. The longer he stares at his phone screen the longer nothing happens, and his face is sore from where it had stretched into a grin earlier.

His head thumps against the headrest, and he works his jaw as he watches the scenery pass by without really seeing it. Without looking he knows Nami’s brow is furrowed in thought, and she turns the radio down after a few minutes of it probably interrupting her thought process.

His head starts to hurt a little more as he lets his mind wander, and faces that weren’t there last week, came fleeting over the last few days, were blurry in the café, start to take shape again. He thinks he could put a few concrete names to them too, if he thought about it some more, if the thoughts weren’t slipping through his fingers like rain water. With Zoro it was a sense of longing; here it’s a sense of peace. Something soon.

He doesn’t know how to tell Nami or whether he should.

They end up at the beach, the same place they always go when they need to get away from too much happening or just to get out. He’s not surprised she chose this spot, since it’s instinctual—and now he gets why—and it’s better than one of their apartments.

Zoro still hasn’t texted, though that doesn’t dampen his mood too much.

Nami twists and digs around in the backseat for a minute, and Luffy passes the time by alternating between toying with the zipper on his hoodie and then the drawstrings of the hood.

“Here,” she says. In her hand she holds out a worn baseball cap. “You can keep this. You don’t look right without a hat on and it’s all I have.”

“Isn’t that Vivi’s?” he asks, taking it slowly. They hadn’t been together all that long, but he knew Nami took their breakup pretty hard. He’d been sad to see her go too, but she’d (needed to stay behind and help her kingdom heal and rebuild) moved too far away and the long distance had put too much strain on their relationship. They still talk on occasion, he thinks, and Vivi reaches out to him her fair share, too.

“Yeah,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. There’s a soft oh, god under her breath he doesn’t think he was supposed to hear. The earrings she’s wearing had been a gift from Vivi too, early on, from a little shop called Nanohana she said reminded her of home. “Looks like you need it more than I do right now.”

After a few adjustments it’s … comfortable. Not as familiar, but it feels better than the naked feeling that’s been plaguing him for almost a week now. He can pinpoint where that one started.

“Thanks.” It comes out around a sigh as they both clamber out of her car, a beat up little thing that was her pride and joy at one point, and Luffy runs his fingers along the orange paint of the hood in the late afternoon sun and smiles a little to himself. At some point, maybe tonight as he lies in bed unable to sleep, he’ll think about all of the little ties that linger from their previous selves.

The sand gives and then pushes against his flip flops, and he nearly stumbles over himself when Nami steps in front of him. He plops himself down with little finesse, whereas Nami makes herself comfortable with slow, careful movements before coming to sit beside him with her bag. She pulls her knees up to her chest, watching the waves, and Luffy’s focus shifts between those and the weight of his phone in the pocket of his shorts.

How much more convenient than snails and dials. He almost laughs.

He watches the sea; not far from them there’s another man taking pictures of the landscape, and on the tail end of a breeze he catches a whiff of cigarette smoke from the man beside him that makes his nose wrinkle but his chest tighten. His gaze trails after them as they head farther down the coast, even still as they head toward the pier and leave. His gaze snaps back to the horizon.

“Zoro and I are going to the movies on Saturday.”

“I—ah,” she starts, turning to face him. “Well, that’s good. Maybe it’ll help him remember, and it might go a little smoother than our awkward run-in at Party’s.”

“Oh yeah, we talked about that too. Zoro said he recognized me too, or that at least I looked kinda familiar.”

She’s cracking a grin and he can see some gears turning.

“That’s actually hilarious. The guy has no idea who you are and then two hours later says yes to you asking him out.”

“I didn’t ask him out.”

Humming is her only response to that, and Luffy grumbles, legs splayed before them as he watches the waves. Trapped by the hat, his bangs keep blowing into his eyes.

“Do you think they’re here? If you ’n Zoro and I are all here, couldn’t they be too? Do you think we ran into them by accident and didn’t know it?” The grin from earlier is back, and he’s about half a second from pitching himself back to his feet when Nami levels him with a certain look.

“We would have noticed, right?”

He nods, then shrugs, then can’t decide what he wants to do with himself. “I don’t know, maybe!”

“Hang on, Luffy.”

“We should start finding the others! Do you remember anything else?”

“Luffy, wait—”

“What, Nami?”

“And then what?”

He makes an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. “What do you mean? Do you not want to find everyone?”

“Of course I do! But be serious for a second: what’s your plan then? Do you actually have an end goal to this, if we find the others? It’s not like we can exactly pick up where we left off,” Nami says, and his mood immediately sours with an acidic bite.

She’s always been the more realistic of the two, so maybe it was stupid to think she might actually let him enjoy his moment before she started poking holes in it. It’s like bobbing around in a life raft that’s slowly deflating and he’s been putting off acknowledging the inky, freezing chasm below just for one more glimpse of the brilliant sky above.

“Would you rather be alone forever?” he comes back with.

“Luffy,” she says around a gasp, and he knows he’s hurt her, he just can’t find it in himself to be bothered right that second. In the span of (the entire time they’ve been out to sea, since he called her his friend, eclipsing) the years he’s known her, they’ve only said a few real, nasty, hurtful things to one another. Only a handful of words they can’t take back.

“What? Would you rather not look for everyone else, or just pretend everything’s okay when we know it isn’t? I don’t want to be alone and I don’t think you do either.”

It isn’t often they use their biggest fears against one another. He winces internally, clinging to her presence because (then I don’t got anyone else!) he isn’t sure what he’ll do if she leaves, too. 

“Sorry,” he says, and thinks he’ll apologize to her later, when it sounds more like he means it. A heel digs into the sand. “You’re asking what we’ll do after we find the others. What does it matter so long as we find our friends? Nothing changes, everything changes—that’s not the point. I didn’t plan on going back out to sea and being pirates. That isn’t our life now, even though I really wish it was. We find our friends like we’re supposed to and then we go from there. We don’t need a big plan.”

Nami's quiet for a long while and that sourness flickers into a flash of guilt. How can she even say something like that, though? Because it almost sounds like she doesn’t want to look for their friends; doesn’t trust his (her captain’s) judgment.

“Like we’re supposed to,” she parrots.

“I can’t see why else we’d suddenly start remembering things. We get the crew back together, find our family, and we figure everything else out later.”

“And then what? Are there consequences for it?”

“Do you think I don’t know that? That I haven’t spent the last week thinking about it? Nami, our crew means everything to me; you guys are my family and my best friends, and I won’t let anything happen to you guys.” Or couldn’t—wouldn’t—he doesn’t know. “So right now, only knowing where two of you are and knowing for a fact that only one of you knows who I am, or that one of you knows anything? That sucks. It’s the worst feeling in the world, and that’s on top of a whole life of hurt. Or two, maybe—or more than that, I don’t even know.” Has this happened before? How many times has he awoken in this world alone? How many times have all of their friends? “So don’t—please—don’t tell me I need to come up with a better plan to keep you guys safe, because that’s the only plan I have right now, and I’ve already failed at that once.”

He can feel her watching him, even as he fixes his glare back on the waves, back on the foamy white crests and thinks a lungful of salt water might (come as a cold shock as he’s vaulted over the railing, plunged into the dark, but even his eyes slipping closed don’t make the salt in his weeping cuts) sting less.

“If we’re here now, that means we,” his tongue feels thick, like it’s engorged as he forces himself to swallow, “died, Nami. I have no idea when or how, but we must’ve died, and I don’t remember. Was I there? Were you guys all alone because we got separated again? Were you afraid?”

The backs of his eyes burn. He’s supposed to keep his crew together. He can’t even do that. Supposed to keep them safe and together and—

“You never failed as captain, Luffy,” she says, tone firm and words heavy. It isn’t clear which Luffy she’s talking to. “Don’t think I don’t know that it hurts, because it does, and I’ve barely carried that hurt with me for a day. I don’t know how you’ve managed doing it for a week.” Sand gets under his nails when he curls his fingers into it. “I’ve never felt safer than when I was with you. But I do think we need some sort of plan—hear me out. It doesn’t have to be right this second, but we need some idea of how we’re going to find the others, and maybe what we’re going to do after that. We don’t know how the rest of our crew is going to react when they start remembering things, or what we’re going to do after. Since we can’t go back to the lives we had before, we’re going to need to come up with some sort of new normal.”

She lets that settle between them, and he stops clawing his fingers through the sand.

“My head hurts,” he says, though that’s not the only thing. It bubbles up in his chest, into every fiber of his being until he’s saturated in it. There has to be a reason they’re all here, why they’re all scattered (across the sea, and he’s screaming until his throat is raw because they’re losing and he failed) everywhere.

Wordlessly, he removes the hat and pulls his phone from his pocket, where there’s still no new messages. Nami, at least, has turned her gaze back on the water.

Luffy tugs his hood over his head in lieu of a straw hat, pulling at the drawstrings until his view narrows down to a tight cloth circle that slowly darkens. It’s usually a sign to Nami that he either wants her to keep talking as a distraction, or to stop talking to him entirely as he lies in the sand. 

Luckily, she reads it as the latter, and he stares up into the sky, watching the clouds and listening to the waves, and, were it not for the distant hum of traffic, he’s sprawled across the deck of his ship.

For a little while longer Nami sits with the scratch of her pen as she jots down notes or maybe doodles in the margins. Eventually she sighs and pushes herself to her feet, and he hears the shift of sand and rustle of clothes, but he doesn’t look up until she’s waded into the water. Without a sound, she disappears into the surf, and he sits up a bit to keep an eye on it, waiting for her to resurface.

It was something they used to do when they were younger, when things reached a head. The salt water worked wonders for washing away tears and was perfect to gather up screams. 

He wonders how loud it would be if she was still on the beach, how pained it is, muffled beneath the waves. He doesn’t bother to disrobe as she does, his sweatshirt gathering up ocean spray and sand as he wades after her, hood loosening to fall back around his neck, and Nami resurfaces, face bright enough to match her hair.

The water weighs him down and (he’s tired, so tired, could slip away to sleep in the gentle, terrifying caress of the ocean as a strong arm loops around his waist and) he’s wading out farther still, where Nami treads water within arm’s reach. She does not say his name. They don’t speak. They don’t have to.

Luffy ducks his head in the next wave, submerging himself, and screams into the water until he thinks his lungs might burst.

His eyes are red and puffy when they tromp back to Nami’s car, though she only gives him a little less grief than usual for the trail of sand and soaked clothes. Not for the first time, there's probably a ring of salt left on the seat, too.

“We’ll figure it out,” she says when she drops him off, after they made a stop and he’s plied himself with enough food his stomach feels like it’ll hurt for the next week. “We have to.”

“Don’t really have a choice,” he says, voice tinged somewhat like an order. He’s tired.

Ace isn’t home when he gets in, and he’s a little grateful for that. He doesn’t think he’d be up for much conversation at this point, and he kicks his flip flops off one by one by the front door as he locks it behind him. He does the decent thing for himself, at least, mostly at Nami’s behest, and drags his feet to the bathroom to give himself a quick rinse to get all of the sea water off, but mostly because he also really has to use the bathroom this time. The wet clothes get left in a heap on the floor as a problem for Tomorrow Luffy, whereas his phone and keys have a safe perch, balanced precariously on the edge of the sink. His hair is still sopping wet when he pads his way down the hall to his own room, so aside from a slight scent, his condition really is no different.

At a second glance—well, listen really—it turns out Ace is home, if the rumbled snoring coming from his room is any indication. He probably stayed up a little later after getting back from his dinner shift to wait for Luffy, who feels a little bad he didn’t text him much aside from that afternoon’s pirate abduction excuse and how he was getting dinner with Nami, so not home for dinner sorry.

Briefly, he considers knocking on his door and letting himself in, but it’s hard to voice what’s troubling him to someone not involved. He also doesn’t want to think about the ramifications for what happens if Ace suddenly remembers too.

Tomorrow Luffy’s troubles are piling up.

Grabbing the first clean pair of clothes he finds, he flops onto his bed with a disgruntled huff. He’s exhausted and probably not going to sleep well anyway.

On his phone screen there’s a notification from an unknown number, and he squints at the harsh light in the dark before his eyes widen. The dark cloud that’s been gathering in his core dissipates—just for now, just until they find the rest of their crew—and he swipes his phone open with a toothy grin.

Sorry to text him late, but he got caught up at work and then his phone died. This is Luffy right? and Luffy laughs quietly to himself. He squirms, wriggling around until he’s comfortable in one spot and then makes quick work of telling Zoro not to worry about it, and then just as quickly confirms that they’re still on for Saturday.

He can picture Zoro laughing or rolling his eyes in that exasperated affection he wears like he thinks Luffy (finds himself seeking it out with a little shishishi of his own or) doesn’t see it. That bitter, sharp burning feeling from the beach still lingers too, but he drives his shoulder into his pillow and decides that bothering Zoro at midnight is a perfect distraction.

Texting with Zoro is very much so like speaking with Zoro, with the way he pictures his expressions or him sighing or humming every so often. Even with a week under his belt with dual memories and lives coexisting in his skin, it’s still weird to think of Nami or Zoro or Ace texting, let alone driving, let alone one of them with no sense of direction navigating.

For the briefest of moments there’s a flicker of doubt, and was Zoro alone when he—? Was that before or after Luffy—? but Zoro quickly derails that train of thought when he says he’s looking forward to seeing him on Saturday.

You better be sounds a little egotistical, but Luffy used to be powerful enough to command the seas in another life, so he thinks it’s warranted.

It’s late by the time he falls asleep, and he comes to with a harsh snort and a cheek covered in drool at the shrill ping of Nami’s ringtone. He catches a gruff, annoyed Luffy from the direction of Ace’s room, and he paws around the blankets for the source of the most obnoxious sound he could find, which she hadn’t appreciated.

“’s six in the mornin’,” he says instead of a hello, but her greeting doesn’t fare much better.

“Yeah, and? I don’t care.” It’s not apology, because they won’t address last night. He forces an eye open at the crack in the blinds to watch the sunlight come pouring through. “You know how I said I remembered a woman and someone cooking?”

He yawns around an “uh-huh, ’n you—”

“Robin and Sanji,” she gets out all in one breath. Fully awake now, he sits up on his bed. “Don’t you remember? Sanji made the best food you’ve ever had and Robin—”

“—could sprout extra limbs and was one of the funniest people after you got to know her.” He digs his heels into the mattress. He can’t pinpoint where it’s all coming from now, but he’s not about to stop it, not about to go Nami, pause, where did this all come from, because what does it matter. Sanji, he thinks, who stood tall (with his blond hair falling into his eye, who tells him to get the hell out of the kitchen but tosses him a pack of fresh biscuits to tide him over before dinner) and would go to the ends of the earth for any of them.

Sanji, who smells like cigarettes and fresh bread and home, and Robin with her soft smiles and who told him (I want to live!) he made a fine captain and she had no regrets with stowing away. He has no idea why she’d have any regrets about that, since he thinks it was an excellent choice and their crew could always—

“Usopp,” he says. “Usopp.”

“I—Luffy?”

“He’s one of our friends. Don’t you remember? He always tells the best stories, even if most of them are lies.” The nails on one hand dig into his knee, biting into the skin with little crescents (during Usopp’s explanation of the mighty battle with Enel before he and Nami went plummeting into the white clouds below). “He wasn’t in the dream I told you about, since that was you and Zoro. I remember him though. It’s like it just popped into my head. I can’t really explain it. Can you explain how you remembered?”

“Not really, I just … woke up like this?” And she laughs once, long and loud and free, free just like way back in Cocoyashi, and it’s follow by a thump on what he’s sure is the wall between her kitchen and the neighbor’s with a shut up!

Luffy cackles and is rewarded with a grumble of his own from his brother in the next room. Tucking his lips between his teeth only serves to muffle the noise somewhat, and so he burrows back into the covers, tossing the blanket over his head like it’ll cover up conspiratorial whispers.

“Luffy, there were more; do you remember, ah, ah, Franky!”

“Suuuper!” Luffy gets out, and his laugh catches in his throat a little. “Where do you think they are?” 

Last night he asked if maybe they’d seen one another multiple times and just hadn’t noticed. He believes it more, now, the more they share, the more they remember, the more it makes his head and chest hurt in a way that’s almost comforting, somehow. The grin from earlier is back, and he’s about half a second from pitching himself to his feet (to see what new creation the workshop has in store today, a hulking mass of skin and mechanics blocking his view because it’s a super surprise for the captain) before he gets tangled in the sheets and Nami makes a sound she’s been making a lot over the past day.

“Since we have no reason to think otherwise at this point, I’m banking on them being here. Finding everyone else is another story.”

“Eh, if anyone can, I’m sure we can!” He falters for a split second because hang on, the most unrealistic thing he’s seen now, here, was Ace (alive, for one thing, but also) beating him at the marshmallow challenge to see who could fit the most in their mouths a few years back. He may also be flexible, but never to the point he remembers being. “Do you … do you think Chopper … ?”

It’s hard to miss the way her breath catches, what he’s sure is the twist in her expression as he voices something they’d rather not think about.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” he says, voice firm. “He has to be. First we just have to find the rest of our crew and go from there. We can figure it out later. You can work on that plan you keep talking about.”

“Right,” she says, and then again, with more confidence: “Right. It would make sense—as much sense as this can really make, all things considered—that we’d all be here, as opposed to just the two of us. I can’t believe we haven’t run into each other before. Did we really have no friends aside from each other?”

The displeased tone goes over his head, and of course they had friends outside of one another. There are names and faces there too, but no one of real note. Not to extent of their crew, and maybe it makes perfect sense that they were drawn to one another years ago. Why it was just he and Nami, he doesn’t know.

Luffy hums, deciding to ignore that for now, and huffs as he kicks the blankets the rest of the way onto the floor. He has things to do and people to find now, and he’s not going to get any of that done by drooling into his pillow, dead to the world. He also decides that Last Night Luffy is a jerk because he has no clean clothes and because Ace is going to give him grief for leaving his waterlogged ones on the bathroom floor.

Nami’s muttering to herself—or probably talking to him, he just hasn’t been listening—as he hurries across the room to wrench the blinds open and let the sun in. Her voice abruptly cuts off when he starts snickering to himself, a shishishi into the receiver.

“Luffy?”

“I’m pretty sure Zoro called Mihawk ‘dad’ yesterday.”

After a beat, Nami laughs so hard she almost drops her phone.

Ace keeps shooting him looks where Luffy sits, flip flops slapping against the tiles. To kill some time he’d given him an inventory checklist to look over for back stock, which meant Luffy had counted the same drawer of sour candies twice while his gaze kept falling on one of the big windows facing the street, looking out for a familiar shock of green hair.

“Give me that,” his brother mumbles, snatching the list out of his loose grip. “We really have three thousand sour ropes?”

“Huh? Yeah, probably,” Luffy says distractedly, turning back to find his mouth twisted into a frown, highlighting a scar on his lip. Drumming his fingers on the back of the clipboard, Ace shakes his head and drops it back on the counter.

“Okay, fess up. What’s actually on your mind?”

“Meeting someone.”

“Meeting someone.”

“Uh-huh,” he cranes his neck, peeking out from under the brim of the baseball hat that still feels a little tight. Saturday took way too long to get here, but on the bright side, their scouring of the town had given them a few brief leads, most notably the Sogeking poster Nami ripped off a board at the library while an almost-familiar voice yelled a hey! at them and was then immediately shushed.

Which is where Nami is now, and she’s supposed to keep him posted on whether she finds Usopp or not at the show. She’d asked if he was coming or not, but he’d reminded her he was meeting with Zoro, and she’d just given him a knowing look.

Enjoying your date? her last text says, to which he replied Its not a date. Go find Usopp already and that had been that for a while.

Zoro should be here soon, he thinks. He may have also told him an hour early, mostly because he wanted to spend as much time with him as he could, and partly because he figured his sense of direction would get in the way.

“Uh-huh he says,” Ace says, like all he can do is mimic Luffy. It’s kinda weird, and also something he used to do to rile up his brother when they were younger. Sabo was quick to step in, most times, even if he was also guilty of doing it. “Who are you meeting? Do I know them?”

He pauses long enough to make a soft sound in the back of his throat because yes, but no, maybe? He (did once back in the desert when they camped out for a night and then all another one had to go off of were stories Luffy whispered when it hurt too much to keep them in so he) probably wouldn’t remember. Has Zoro come here before? Were he and Luffy here at the same time once before, maybe? Did he come with Kuina or Mihawk or Perona?

“Maybe? I dunno.” At that Ace huffs, sounding like he’s clearing phlegm, and Luffy leans over the counter far enough that the edge bites into his hip and (once before he would not think it) hurts.

“That is the opposite of—”

And then at the edge of the window he spots him, and Luffy slingshots back to his feet so hard he almost crushes Ace’s nose with the back of his head.

“Zoro!”

“Who?”

He launches himself over the counter, something Ed has told him to stop doing, face split into a wide grin as the door to the small lobby opens, letting in the sound of outside life and traffic, and with it Zoro. Ace is still watching him with confusion, which Luffy elects to ignore in favor of waving to his (first crew member, first mate, friend, his—) visitor. Zoro’s head tilts in a greeting with a small smile of his own, though a note of hesitation flickers through his eye that leaves a buzzing sensation thrumming under his skin.

“Zoro!” he yells again, just in case he didn’t hear him the first time.

“Luffy!” Ace chides, while at the same time Zoro shouts back, “Luffy!”

Sandals slap against the tiles as he scurries over, chuckling to himself at his side like (he does every time, and Zoro just lifts his arm and lets him tuck himself under his armpit while) he’s about to meld himself to him.

“You made it!”

“Well, yeah,” he says, corner of his mouth dipping into a frown for a brief second. “What, did you think I wasn’t coming or something?”

“Nope! I didn’t doubt Zoro for a second.”

He shakes his head and he’s probably thinking something like how Luffy’s odd, or maybe questioning why (he so readily agreed to join his crew, something he doesn’t regret for one second just like) he agreed to come in the first place, which is something Nami has said she’s thought once or twice herself. It’s always with some kind of affection though, so he always just shrugs. Or maybe he’s thinking about something like how Luffy seems familiar, and maybe he can’t place it just yet, but Luffy decides he will. If he needs to give Zoro some time so be it, but he doesn’t have a very big window.

“Uh, hi,” Ace chimes in, like Luffy forgot he was there but he didn’t. Zoro raises the arm Luffy hasn’t latched onto in a wave. His fingers dig in just above his elbow.

“This is Zoro! Ace, Zoro. Zoro, that’s Ace,” Luffy fills in for them both. Ace is a pretty mellow guy, but he’s probably gonna want to ask something about how they know each other since he’s never seen Zoro around before, and as much as Luffy would like his brother and his Zoro to be friends, he doesn’t really have the patience to explain everything right now. His brother looks amused, if not a little confused at how close they stand.

Ace also … doesn’t remember anything, as far as he knows. It’s probably better that way, too.

“Zoro ’n I are gonna watch some bad movies!” he says, tugging on Zoro’s arm.

After a second, Ace barks out a laugh. “Don’t let Pops hear you say that; he said this is a weekend of cinematic genius.”

“I didn’t think giant sea slugs in space counted as a marvel of cinema,” Zoro deadpans. His free hand goes fishing in his pocket.

Luffy tugs on his arm again. “What? That’s my favorite one! There are space pirates who fight them and the special effects are really bad. It’s awesome.”

“Of course you like it,” his brother mutters; his eye roll is warm and he’s grabbing one of the bigger popcorn buckets. Zoro pulls out his wallet as if to point out that it—unknown to him—hasn’t been stolen again, but Ace just shakes his head. “You and pirates. I think I’d be a great pirate—really let those sea slugs have it.”

“Who would’ve thought piracy had so much to do with slugs,” Zoro says, even though it really doesn’t, opening his wallet with one hand while Ace pulls a face and shakes his head again, firmer this time.

“I’d be a better pirate than you,” Luffy says to his brother, but doesn’t really mean it, not this time. Ace was always his cool older brother, even when he wasn’t cool (or even when he kept pushing and pushing and pushing him away), and even when Luffy promised he was going to surpass him someday and did. He shifts his attention back to Zoro, who hasn’t tried to shrug him off. “Would you want to be a pirate?”

“I dunno,” he murmurs after a moment of consideration, head tilted. “Never really gave it that much thought.”

Since he doesn’t tiptoe around issues much and wants to get his greedy little hands into his brain and see if he can’t make him remember, he tries: “What about a pirate with swords? That would be cool.”

Zoro hums and he thinks well—! “A swordsman pirate. Yeah, I guess that would work.”

“Great! I’ll be King of the Pirates and Zoro can be a master swordsman pirate. It’s perfect.” His gaze cuts to Ace, “And Ace would probably just set everything on fire.”

His brother glares at him and for a quick, fleeting second, he thinks maybe that phrase sparked—haha, oops—something, and as much as he would like his brother back, really, truly, he’s worried of the consequences if his brother remembers that he dies. He’s gotta stop thinking about that.

“Shaddup,” he mutters instead, shoving the bucket of hot popcorn into Luffy’s chest. “Go enjoy your stupid movie. All the good ones start later, so there’s no crowd.”

Luffy beams and shouts c’mon! like Zoro’s down the street as opposed to not even a full foot from him. For seeing him as a guy he met all of two days ago, he’s—oi—surprisingly easygoing with being dragged around, something Luffy decides to take full advantage of because (it’s exactly what he did before and) maybe it’ll jog things faster.

There are a whopping three other people to watch the movie with, and as soon as it starts he realizes how bad of an idea this was.

The problem is there isn’t much to do with sitting in the dark for two hours, and he’s already been shushed four time while trying to talk to Zoro, who looks amused, then annoyed, and then zones out and dozes off for a few minutes in the time it takes him to annihilate the rest of the popcorn.

If Luffy’s antsy twenty minutes in, he’s about ready to put his head through the wall half an hour in. He can’t even enjoy one of his favorite dumb movies properly, and he can’t tell if that’s because he has limited interaction with Zoro, or because pirates aren’t like that, or they wouldn’t do that, or because there’s this strange ache in his chest.

Even the bad effects don’t make him laugh as much as they used to, and he spends more time watching Zoro out of the corner of his eye than he does the screen.

They sit there and he wants to wedge himself under his arm, tucked into his side (as the greatest marksman alive and his cohort tell them to get ready for a super fireworks display) but it feels like it would be a little awkward to now. If he can’t do that, can he maybe touch his wrist? Knock their ankles together like it’s a reminder they’re both here?

It doesn’t help they’re sitting right next to one another the entire time, and this was the stupidest idea ever, because he should have just said to come watch bad movies at his apartment. Then they could have talked more, or seen one another more, or something, because watching a puppet slug crash through the hull of a cheap plywood ship is not going to lead Zoro to a dawning epiphany that oh, sitting next to him actually is Monkey D. Luffy, King of the Pirates and his captain, and he’s Roronoa Zoro, who mastered the Three-Sword Style and was called the Demon of the East Blue when they first met, not Zoro who teaches kendo during the week.

He wants to poke and prod and pry, like he could crack Zoro open and he’d suddenly jolt and remember, and he catches Luffy staring a couple times. He elbows him gently, and it’s a mix of comfort and reassurance and he feels like his chest might split open. Even in the dark, it looks like his cheeks burn.

By the time the two hours are up he’s practically vibrating in his seat while Zoro stretches. He opens his mouth to speak and Luffy, immediately worried he’s about to say that was fun, but he’s gotta go, nearly shreds the empty bucket in half.

He’s blunt with: “That was kind of boring and I don’t feel like sitting through another movie. We should do something else.”

Zoro’s eye falls on his hands and then back up. “Uh, okay. I was gonna ask if you were hungry, but—”

“Yes,” he interrupts, worry melting into a lighter feeling that balloons in his stomach. “I could always eat!”

Zoro laughs and he thinks, awesome, then, not good, not great, but better than before. Better than him glancing him over and asking who he was. He shakes his head and stands, Luffy following in short order; his neck pops as he stretches again.

“Alright, Luff, I got a couple things in mind,” he says, nudging his shoulder. He hasn’t been called that in a long time—or at least, not in that tone, not with that voice. 

As they leave Ace is slumped at the counter, fist propping up his cheek while he snoozes, to which Zoro pauses, probably to ask if he’s okay, only to get shoved in the back because hurry up, he’s starving.

Zoro promises him food, and that promises more time, neither of which Luffy is going to turn down. He might stand a little too close to Zoro too, might nearly walk under foot as he pesters him, but Zoro (takes it in stride, nodding at the right moments or interjecting on occasion from where he lounges against the mast and) pays it no mind and elbows him toward his car.

Which is how they end up with gyros at the beach, a sight that makes Luffy want to laugh so he does, tzatziki dripping down his fingers and into the sand while Zoro gives him (a bemused) strange look.

“You wanted to take me to the beach?” he asks around a mouthful of meat and spinach, a stray leaf sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He licks up the side of his hand, but at least Zoro doesn’t look grossed out, just unsurprised (because there are a lot of things Luffy does that have long since stopped coming as a shock) or maybe almost fond.

His expression shifts. Maybe he struck a nerve. “I thought … ” he starts and stops, either weighing his words or gauging Luffy’s potential reaction to them. “I thought you might like it. I dunno, I just had a feeling.” He stops, turning away. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“No it’s not,” he says, perhaps in too much of a rush. “It’s not stupid. I like coming here a lot. It’s nice to come here with you.” The last bit comes out in a whisper, and he’s a little afraid Zoro might tell him to stop talking to him then, might stand and brush the sand off and say great, enjoy the first (time they do Luffy digs his toes in the wet sand while the water laps at his ankles) and (Zoro takes his wrist and tells him to be careful, the tide’s going out and they need to weigh anchor) only time (that stretches out before them but they never seem to have enough between the two of them).

He’s quiet for a minute, quiet enough he would have thought maybe he fell asleep were it not for the fingers drumming against his knee. His dinner sits in his lap, only half-eaten. Clouds pass over the sun that’ll be setting soon, casting Zoro’s earrings and profile in shadow.

“I haven’t been here in a long time—I can’t remember the last time I was,” Zoro tells him. What made him want to come here, Luffy wants to know, if it was maybe that itching, buzzing feeling under the skin that calls to old, familiar things. His features twist a little in the shadow. “Felt like an instinct. Lucky guess?”

Luffy digs his toes into the sand, just out of reach of the surf. The water crests in gentle, foamy waves, and an instinctual part of him cries that it’s dangerous to tempt fate, but the more realistic side says it isn’t like he hasn’t been to the beach before. He’s spent most of his summers getting burnt by the sun or spitting out a spray of salt water after Ace dunked his head under the waves.

There’s a different familiarity with it this time, this visit less punctuated by his brothers stealing chips from one another, less by he and Nami arguing, and as he gazes out over the darkening horizon he thinks there’s another ship to look for, one that isn’t a sailboat or from the regatta the town hosts every year.

Beside him, Zoro shifts, granules sliding as he folds his legs, and he glances over to find him frowning. He seems to do that a lot, more than (usual, since he can’t recall when) he’s (last, the last time) seen him smile.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he starts, and then says, “I don’t know you,” which hurts about as much as it did the first time, and it makes Luffy want to yell or claw out his stomach. His head cants. “But part of me feels like I do though. It’s like—it’s familiar, maybe we met once before and didn’t realize it. This sounds so stupid.”

Zoro (reaches out and cups his jaw with his hand, breath harsh as they press their foreheads together, and Luffy’s grin stretches impossibly wide because Zoro —?) scrubs a hand down his face. Luffy sits up straighter, digging his heels into the sand and gathering it up in his sandals.

“I’ve never met you before,” Luffy says, and it sounds like a lie before he’s even finished saying it, and he’s never been a good liar. He’s glad his sitting on Zoro’s left, where he can’t properly see him. It’s a cowardly move. He wants to touch the back of his hand but doesn’t. “Feels like I’ve known you a long time though.”

Zoro turns and (shoves his hat down over his head, leaving him teetering on the railing, and he laughs, pushing it back to find) his eyes carry a different weight to them, even the fake one he called too much attention to that first (second) time they met.

In his head another Luffy remembers and this Luffy doesn’t remember a courtyard, does but doesn’t a man bearing his teeth at him and swearing—no? pledging? denying?—an oath that meant more than he could have ever comprehended at the time. Except right now Zoro doesn’t. Right now Zoro recognizes the guy who showed up in his kitchen three days ago and forced himself into his life and took it in stride. They’re strangers; they’re (incapable of being) nothing to one another.

It feels a little like falling backwards, but he’s been rooted to the ground the entire time. It makes him tired and annoyed and angry all at the same time. He’s glad when Zoro looks away so he can force back the emotional whiplash clogging up his throat.

“Do you want to go swimming?” he asks before Zoro can say anything else, but he seems to come back to himself and goes huh? and then he says, “I don’t know how.”

“You want to go swimming but don’t know how?”

“I do, I’m just not very good.”

Beside him he huffs a laugh, picking at the wrapping of his gyro. “Maybe next time.”

It’s more promising than a goodbye, even if his next bite is heavier than the last and it’s tougher to swallow. Zoro leans back on his palms, staring up at the sky and Luffy at him. 

For a minute they’re a captain and swordsman sitting on the beach, waiting for the rest of their crew to return from a supply run and he says every cloud looks like food and he’s hungry. For a moment the swordsman turns to him so he can see him roll his good eye and tells him to stop whining, and the captain pouts, only for him to shove his shoulder. 

For a moment he wants to turn and run his fingers across the scar bisecting his eyebrow and eyelid. For a moment he wants to turn and press him into the sand, shove his weight against him and ask if he remembers, if he will, if he’ll promise, if he’ll try. For a moment he wants to bury his face in the side of his neck again, and then feel him nosing at his temple, then the hinge of his jaw, a sensation that aches in the backs of his teeth because Zoro sits all of two feet away. For a moment he wants to press him into the surf and ask remember now? and are you ready to go home?

He loves Zoro, always has, in a way he can’t quite explain because he’s never had to before.

Zoro sighs and Luffy is selfish. If he needs some time he won’t have much more to give—Nami took time too, but at least she remembered. He doesn’t know what to do if Zoro doesn’t. His wrist burns with the ghost of a rough palm circling it and the backs of his knuckles split under that of chapped lips, and he tugs his sleeves over his hands.

According to Nami, she came up to Usopp in public and he screamed. It’s a little funny in retrospect, but apparently it had drawn a crowd she didn’t want. Luffy at least has the decency to only leave ten minutes early from his “shift” because Ace got him filling in at the theater, which is fine because he can make some money from Pops, but it’s also kind of boring and he has other priorities. He doesn’t think he’s ever run so far and so fast in his (this) life, and when he rounds the corner toward Nami’s place Usopp spots him first.

“Luffy!” And suddenly hearing his name shouted like that is the best thing in the world, and he nearly cracks Usopp’s head open on the steps when he catches him in a tackle.

His hat hits the ground, head butting up into Usopp’s chin as they go down in a tangle of limbs and fresh bruises. “Usopp!”

Nami’s yelling at them both to knock it off, they’re going to cause a scene with her neighbors, and Luffy pries himself away to crouch on the steps and start poking at Usopp’s face, who, in his somewhat dazed state, allows it. His hair is longer than it was before, originally tucked up into a hat before Luffy sent him to the ground, and he groans out his name before trying to sit up again.

“Do you have a beard?” he asks, and he rubs a hand over the stubble on his jaw from where he’d just been cracked in the chin.

“Uh, no,” he flexes his jaw with a popping sound. “Ow! Good to see you too, Luffy.”

He beams. “Yeah! Where were you? Nami said she found you and you started screaming.”

“I—!” The comment is met with indignant sputtering, smoothing down his plaid shirt, which is an odd sight and a far cry from his overalls and he can’t spot his bag (that was always full of tools and an array of exploding stars). He sits up straighter. “Far from it, actually! It was Nami who started shouting—and crying absolute tears of joy upon seeing me, might I add. It was a remarkably touching reunion that made me realize how much she truly missed me.”

“Oh as if,” Nami mutters, but her prodding his shoulder with her foot from the steps above is more affectionate than anything. She guides them both into her place before prying eyes get a little too nosy, and Luffy beelines it past them while Usopp rubs a spot on his back.

He stops and folds his arms while Nami closes the door behind them, and Luffy watches him (panic because there’s no way he can take on Kuro on his own, and then grind his teeth as he latches onto sea prism stone bars and tug before glaring at Crocodile with a nervous) frown.

“How many of the others have you found, or are we it?”

Nami gestures between the two of them with her thumb. “We’ve known one another for years. He figured this out last week though.”

“I found Zoro,” he says. “He doesn’t remember though, which is really annoying.”

Usopp nods, and Luffy’s heel bounces against the kitchen floor because that means he’s cooking something up. He raises his eyebrows, expression wide and open and impatient, and out of the corner of his eyes he can see Nami’s narrow. He tugs his hair back with an elastic band, jaw working.

“I know Sanji,” he says, tongue darting out to wet his lip. “It’s kinda funny I never noticed it before, since the Bara—”

“—you were at the beach!” Luffy interjects, loud enough he startles Nami, who’s gotta expect a thump on the wall from the neighbor because they’re too loud again. “You guys were at the beach the other day taking pictures!”

He pauses, brow furrowing, and follows it with another nod, this one slower than the last. And then he does it a little firmer, and again like his head might snap off and he laughs, that short, trite kind he does when he’s in pain. It’s followed by another, this one happier.

“Right! I wanted to get a couple shots for a contract gig and Sanji came with me to scout the location out.”

“Does Sanji know?” Nami asks, which is the real question here. He does kind of wonder what Usopp’s been up to in this life though, but he can wait since they’ll have time to all sit down together and share stories soon enough.

Usopp’s gaze flickers back to her. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Or if he does I haven’t gotten any impression.”

“Is he still at the Baratie?” Luffy asks. He hums. “Makino told me I should get a job there. I could tell Zoro to meet us there too!”

“You’re talking to Zoro?” Usopp asks, but he’s already digging out his phone, tongue caught between his teeth in a grin. He snickers but says nothing more, and instead sighs like he’s finally released a tension he didn’t mean to hold onto. Nami squeezes his shoulder and Luffy raises his gaze and (you knew how this would end up!) meets his eyes. Usopp stands up a little straighter, like he should. Luffy beams. It’s about damn time.

This has to be the most back and forth Luffy has done in weeks, he thinks, but if it means gathering his crew back together he’d circumnavigate the globe a thousand times over. Zoro agrees to meet them there after he’s finished up at the gym and showered—oh thank god, Nami says, and wait, did Zoro drive? Someone trusted him too? Usopp says, which gives them a little more time to … get Usopp accustomed to this weird new normal of theirs. 

It gets a little easier, somehow, over time, Nami tells him, and when she glances pointedly in Luffy’s direction he shrugs. Sure, a little. Some times it’s easier than others, like when he’s hanging out with Nami and everything is just familiar, but there are times with Ace where he still stares, or the times with Zoro where he wants to yell.

Two sets of memories come to exist side by side, but his head feels less and less like it’s going to split open. It’s still a strange sensation to get used to, but Luffy figures he doesn’t really have much choice either way.

“So basically this is great but it also sucks,” is what Usopp comes to.

“It doesn’t suck,” Luffy says bitterly at the same time as Nami mutters, “Yeah, pretty much.”

His gaze bounces back and forth between them like his eyes might pop out of his head. Luffy drums and then slaps his palms against the table, growing increasingly bored because they can fill each other in later, but Usopp knows where Sanji is, so maybe he knows where one of the others is too, if that’s anything to go by.

Usopp, unfortunately, is not overly subtle in his gawking at Zoro when he finally walks up, which earns him a glare from Nami and Zoro leaning in to whisper, “is he always like this?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Luffy tells him, keeping one eye on Zoro and another out for Sanji, though he finds he doesn’t have to wait all that long. It’s beyond pretty annoying that they really should have done this much sooner. He doesn’t get why things changed last week or what caused it.

It should have been expected, too, that the only one who gets any decent service is Nami, which is familiar in a bone-deep-ache way, to which Zoro grumbles and Usopp tries to break things up by prattling on about the first things that come to mind. The shrimp here is delicious, but there are also three different shrimp dishes, hang on, and Luffy successfully manages to piss Sanji off the first time he opens his mouth.

“I’m hungry but I’m not picky, so I’ll order whatever you wanna make.” He’s all teeth and smiles and Usopp looks up at the ceiling.

“Right.” Sanji gives him a blank stare, the kind (of one he gives before taking the time to slowly light a cigarette and then inhale and then exhale before asking him to repeat what he said about them being out of chicken like) he’s used to. “You wanna narrow that down?”

Luffy smiles. “Nope.”

His fingers twitch, probably itching for a cigarette, but he’s not supposed to be smoking in the restaurant. Nami acts as a saving grace though, because it’s funny to watch Sanji’s demeanor shift entirely when she clears her throat to get his attention.

“He’ll just take the scallopini, if you don’t mind,” she says, pasting on a smile, but he can see the quick flash in her eyes as she looks up at Sanji. He doesn’t know what he expects: for him to start calling her Nami-swan and crying tears of joy or something, or to maybe start laughing as he looks them all over.

But instead he beams and tells her, “Not at all! I’ll be right back with your drink!”

Luffy’s still grinning at him even when he gathers up the menus and frowns at him, which Ace once told him wasn’t great for customer service while working concessions, but he can’t find it in him to care. Sanji stands on the other side of the table right in front of his crew, and Luffy could almost burst into hysterics at the scene. Is the old man here too, looking for a chore boy like Makino said he was?

Just as he turns away—not without one last flirty remark to Nami—Luffy calls out, “Thanks, Sanji!”

Sanji waves a hand in the air without looking behind him, the gesture (not unusual and) dismissive, but he knows he always has a soft smile when it comes to food. “Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome, Luffy.”

Nami and Usopp both freeze for a quick second, recovering smoothly enough by launching into another discussion, and Zoro raises an eyebrow while he goes over the wine list (he won’t drink unless there’s no other choice, though Sanji always made sure they had his preferred sake on board) that was left on the table. 

And so the other three miss the way Sanji stills across the dining room, his body gone rigid and immobile until a tremor races up his back. He pivots on his heel slowly, knuckles white on the menus and his eye wide (as his cigarette drops from between his teeth) as it meets Luffy’s. Even from here he can see the sharp rise and fall of his chest, the moment when things click into place—so that’s what it must look like; he only caught the very end of Nami’s moment of realization—and as his head tilts, Sanji’s expression slips from shock, to grief, to longing, to a sense of peace.

This time when Luffy kicks Nami under the table, it’s not as hard as it was in front of Kuina. She still scowls at him, but he lifts his chin and she makes a soft, pleased, oh sound.

“You know that guy?” Zoro asks, and her brow furrows and Usopp I—ah—ah, yeps beside him.

Luffy gnaws on the end of his straw. “You could say that.”

Their reactions to remembering vary: Nami looks like she’s about to cry, Usopp does cry, and Sanji runs a hand through his hair and sighs like a giant weight has been lifted and lets Luffy hug him.

They pull a proverbial snatch and grab behind the Baratie later, after they’ve parted ways with Zoro, where Usopp shakes his shoulders and Nami allows an elongated embrace from Sanji, who’s luckily also agile enough to brace himself and catch Luffy when he leaps at him and laughs, as opposed to poor Usopp who he’d nearly concussed.

Dragging Sanji out is a little more challenging, and he ends up telling them to give him a minute before ducking back into the back door, followed in short order by a gruff voice Luffy thinks sounds a lot like that old man (glowering at him from where he’s propped up against his headboard, telling him he better get to work if he wants to wrap up his year as chore boy faster) telling him he can’t just leave. Doesn’t seem to stop Sanji though, which also doesn’t stop Luffy from tugging on him because they have Nami back, and Usopp back, and Sanji back, and it’s still irritating that they don’t have Zoro back, but this is better than the nonexistent crew he had last week.

Ace isn’t home and Nami’s neighbors are too annoying, and Luffy nearly kicks the front door off its hinges as the others follow him inside. It makes Sanji chuckle a little in a hollow sort of way, and his gaze flickers back over each of them through his bangs while Nami marches over to the kitchen island and Usopp busies himself with examining the living room.

It isn’t anything too exciting, Luffy doesn’t think. It’s mostly just old furniture and the coffee table is stained with old condensation rings with a few books and movies stacked in a haphazard pile on the end. Usopp laughs, and he turns to find him looking over some of the pictures Sabo hung up on the wall above the couch. He sits on a stool by the island, folding his legs and observing, watching Usopp hum to himself as he looks over a picture of him and his brothers as kids, and then one with Dadan, a candid of Ace asleep in the lawn and then one of the three of them before Sabo went off to college.

“What the fuck is this?” Sanji asks. He’s gone digging in the fridge and holds an old takeout container in his hands.

Luffy frowns. “Lemme see it?”

“What? No. I think this thing could probably kill you just by looking at it for too long.” 

“Okay guys,” Nami says, and the three turn on her instantly, just like they always have (did) when she adopts that no-nonsense tone and is about to get them out of trouble. It makes Luffy grin and he braces his hands on his knees, leaning in. “It’s time to go over what we have so far.”

Nami adjusts her glasses and then she’s digging through her bag for her notebook again, though it looks like she’s written a lot more in it since they went to the café the other day. The other two bend over it, curious, and the screws on the stool groan as Luffy tries to sneak a peek too.

Sanji plants his palm on the counter and upside down Luffy can make out some names and varying events, which she’s denoted as Before and After. He doesn’t think he would call it that because it doesn’t sound that cool, but he also can’t think of anything else.

“Luffy figured things out first and then came to me,” she points between the two of them, and then gestures to the empty spot on the other side of the counter, “And then we found Zoro, who’s either stubborn or stupid, and then I found Usopp, who found Sanji.”

“My vote is stubborn,” Usopp says, scouring the page still. Luffy gave up on reading it; it’s nothing he doesn’t already know, anyway.

“Wait, why doesn’t Zoro know?” Sanji asks, but he doesn’t call him Moss Head or any one of his other dumb insults like Luffy thought he would. It’s a little disappointing, and he pouts.

“I have no idea and it’s getting on my nerves,” Nami says, as if she’s been the one hanging around Zoro and today wasn’t the first time she’s seen him since she stole his wallet. She looks back up at Luffy and he doesn’t like the gleam in her eye. “They have a date tonight though, after he’s out of work.”

“It’s not a date. Stop calling it that.”

Nami raises an eyebrow. “You’re going to the beach.”

“That’s adorable,” Usopp offers, and Sanji’s apparently too caught up in reading over the notebook Nami’s slid his way, trying to speed run his catching up to say much aside from “uh-huh.” He digs around in his pocket, probably looking for a pack of cigarettes, Luffy thinks.

“You and I have gone to the beach hundreds of times,” Luffy says, mouth falling in a grimace. It never really got a name Before. He and Zoro always just spent a lot of time together, sometimes just the two of them, and often it involved doing things like kissing, things he never really thought about doing with anyone else. He narrows his eyes a little. “Do you want to date me, Nami?”

Her expression darkens. “Now I want to kill you.”

Usopp clears his throat and commands attention again. “Murder and bloodshed aside, why is Zoro taking so long?”

“You have to ask?” Sanji asks from his new vantage point by the kitchen sink, holding his hand out the window where he took out the screen when Nami was too busy glaring at Luffy. “Seriously though, who knows. I ran into Luffy once and almost started dropping plates on the floor.” 

Nami huffs out a breath through her nose. “Luffy flattery aside, none of us know how this works. I’ve been trying to figure that out for the past few days and all I did was give myself a migraine. If one of you wants to take a crack it, be my guest!”

Sanji blows out smoke. His voice sounds a little pinched when he asks: “What happened with you guys?”

“Nami chased me down and started yelling at me.”

“I was not—Luffy and I have known each other for years, so I have no idea why it just started happening now.”

“What about you, Luffy? You remembered first, right?”

“I guess? Last week was the first time any of it made any sense.”

Three sets of eyes hone in on him, and he blinks back, unfazed.

Following a slow exhale, Sanji is the first to speak. “What do you mean by that?”

“What? Just a couple dreams here and there, nothing big. I dreamt about a pirate ship when I was younger because Ace always got me books on pirates, and I didn’t realize until now it was the Going Merry.”

The name draws something from Usopp, something like a wistful sound and he slumps into the vacant stool next to him.

“Have you always had those dreams?” he asks while the breezes rolls through the open window and Nami tucks her glasses away. It doesn’t feel really relevant since it doesn’t answer any questions, but he’ll humor them for another minute, maybe.

“I mean, I guess? People dream all the time and most of them just felt like dreams and not memories anyway.” Luffy yawns. “Never felt like anything was missing before last week.”

“Does Ace remember?” Sanji asks, which causes him to immediately decide he’s done humoring them then. He scowls from under the brim of his borrowed hat.

“No, and I would prefer if he didn’t.” His tone is a little more vicious, because the last thing he wants is for one of them to take it upon themselves to go behind his back and seek Ace out. If he remembers on his own, that’s something he’ll deal with—another Tomorrow Luffy problem, even if he would like to have his brother back, fully. But he doesn’t know if that’s something Ace will be able to handle. 

Ace, who just wanted someone happy he was alive, and Luffy thinks I am, I am, I am.

“The last thing that happened to Ace was that he died. We died too, probably, but I don’t remember how that happened or if we were all alone. Right now Ace is alive ’n happy and he’s supposed to be here.”

Usopp is the first to try: “Well, technically, we died too, and we’re pretty well adjusted.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?” Sanji mutters, eyeing him from the sink.

Nami is watching him in that careful way and Luffy decides he’s done with this now, then. There isn’t anything happening and standing here isn’t going to do much. They can hang out here if they want, or go through the cupboards or go through his room or whatever, he doesn’t really care.

“Anyway, this is boring,” he says, his jagged nails digging into the counter as he propels himself to his feet, “and I gotta go.”

A hand reaches out to grab his arm, and he looks up at Nami, who’s not quite mad, not quite upset, and her gaze moves from one eye to the other and then to his hat and back. She holds her other hand out, palm up (like she’s about to tell him he owes her the change from his allowance) and he wordlessly hands over his phone.

“Text us,” Nami says, and it’s still a little weird when she says it out loud. “I wanna know how things go with Zoro, because if he doesn’t start remembering soon I might try to force him myself.”

“Nami’s cute when she’s threatening people,” Sanji says, head out the window. Usopp gives him a dry look.

Luffy doesn’t think he’d call it cute, and as he stomps down the stairs he thinks no, he’ll make Zoro remember. He has to. He’s going to. It’s about damn time Zoro finally came home.

Leading Zoro up to the pier feels a little like walking up the execution platform to accept his final judgment, but Zoro follows alongside easily enough. Even before they left the Baratie Luffy decided this was his last chance, a thought that weighs heavily on him even as they fill in the walk with mindless chatter. There are a few slick patches along the mix of wood and concrete, and briefly Luffy thinks that Franky would definitely be able to improve it before shifting gears back. It’s old and most of the railing looks rotted or like a strong (Gomu Gomu no—) sneeze could splinter the wood.

Zoro also seems a little off during the walk, with the muscle in his jaw twitching or his fingers curling and uncurling and Luffy decides it’s only a matter of time now. He thinks the late afternoon sun and sea would be nicer to look at if his mind wasn’t so ablaze with the fact (his first mate, his best friend, his—his—) Zoro wasn’t standing right next to him and too stubborn and too stupid.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asks when they reach the end, which has a note of finality to it that Luffy decidedly does not like.

“Okay,” Zoro says, his jaw (clenching around the hilt of a sword with a feral grin) working before he settles against the railing beside him. “What’s your deal?”

The thing is, Zoro doesn’t say it in a malicious way. He doesn’t sneer at Luffy, doesn’t mock him or pity him (or belittle his dream, because he will always defend that) but Luffy’s also selfish, impatient, and frustrated, and this is all taking too long so he will make him remember.

“Why don't you remember me?” he grinds out, which means he’s shooting himself in the foot and Nami’s going to yell at him and Zoro will probably never want to see him again. Which is fine, because apparently deep down he doesn’t really want to anyway if he isn’t making the effort. “I’m trying and you’re not, so it kinda feels like you don’t want to and it’s pissing me off. I thought I had to be patient and I was! I gave you a couple of days but nothing’s happening and it makes no sense, and I’m sick of it! I knew you were dumb but I didn’t think you were this stupid.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Zoro bites back after his initial shock (as Luffy howls down a dusty alleyway). He turns his back to him (and wounds there are a swordsman’s shame) and Luffy could claw at it as he paces the short length of the end of the pier. “Damn, I thought you were just caught up on some weird bullshit. You’re the one who keeps asking me to hang out!”

In his pocket his phone buzzes once, then twice, and he wants to pitch it into the sea and he tries to be inconspicuous when Nami asks how it’s going and he writes back Bad. Pissed off Zoro.

He’s met with How bad? and What do you mean? What’s going on? in short order by the other two.

“Can you try?” Luffy says, shoving his phone away even as it buzzes insistently. “You said before that you thought you knew me, and I thought I knew you. I do know you, and I also know you need to come back.”

“I’m right here!” he yells, spinning back with his arms splayed wide. “I don’t know what you want from me! Hanging out with you was fun until you kept coming back to this. At first I thought maybe you were trying to be funny, or you believed in that fate crap or whatever, and I figured okay, fine, he’s a decent guy so I can deal with that because I wanted to spend time with you, but you won’t let it go.”

Luffy doesn’t believe in things like fate or destiny, because that requires relinquishing control of his life to something else and he doesn’t like that. What he does believe in are things that make sense: his friends, his crew. Things like sitting on the beach with Nami or watching bad movies with Zoro or falling asleep in the sun and listening to the waves. Being free.

“You said you thought you knew me. You said I was familiar but you didn’t know why. You said that on the beach and you said it was instinct! You said you felt like you knew me! Or were you lying?”

Zoro hums (as he presses his temple against his, earrings cold against his cheek) and for a second it feels like he’s ruined everything. The sound makes him want to head butt him and crack his lip open, kiss him and punch him in the head. He’s standing right there and he made a promise and he broke it.

“Luffy,” he starts; he leans into his space too, fingers gripping worn wood and pressing, grounding, and he couldn’t look away from Zoro if he wanted to. He looks pissed but also like he’s in pain and Luffy wants him to get his shit together. “I don’t know, I—”

A resounding crack interrupts them, and all Luffy can do is let out a yelp as he goes ass over tea kettle over the edge of the pier, the look of shock on Zoro's face the last thing he sees before he goes under, followed shortly thereafter by the thud of boots. He’d probably laugh, a pithy sound if it weren’t for how startled he is, or how he’d get a lungful of seawater.

Figures, doesn’t it. Kinda funny in a way that isn’t at all. He’d scream if he could, too.

He kicks, arms sluggishly pinwheeling and waterlogged shorts not very conducive to going for an impromptu swim. He kicks again, because dammit! because this is all so stupid and not going right at all, and he knows he ruined it because dammit! Zoro should remember already. All the others have. All of the others tried.

A strong arm winds around his waist, and he shoves at it for a second before it tightens and drags him up or down or sideways, he can’t tell.

He breaks the surface with an ugly spray of spit and salt water, nose burning as he drags in a ragged gasp, and it takes a moment of blinking through his bangs and swiping at his face with the hand not clinging to the arm for his vision to clear somewhat.

“Luffy,” Zoro grits out into his ear. At his hip he can feel the steady kicks as he treads water and his own jerkier ones. He’s pretty sure he lost a flip flop.

“Pleh,” is the eloquent sound Luffy makes when he spits again. All he tastes is salt and a small twinge of embarrassment laced with anger, and his free hand slaps through the water like that’ll keep them afloat.

“Luffy,” Zoro says again, though more strained this time.

“Uck,” he mutters, on a roll with making weird noises. He frowns (and it’s not the first time Zoro has plucked him out of the water) before hacking out a disgruntled, “thanks.”

“Luffy.”

His voice is full of grief and Luffy finally turns to him, brow furrowing as he stills. He looks at him like he mourns and celebrates all at the same time, his voice thick and heavy and lips moving like he’s forming words neither of them can hear. It feels like he’s been plunged under again, the cold creeping up the back of his neck, clawing at his shoulders in the middle of the café with do I know you? And his lungs scream and eyes burn and Zoro says his name one more time like the weight in his arms isn’t real.

“Zoro?” he says, louder than he feels like it should be. He blinks at him, expression shifting, and he grunts with little time to prepare before Luffy’s pitching himself at him, buoyancy be damned. “Zoro!”

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream, so he does a little bit of both, letting go of Zoro’s arm to grab his shoulders, legs around his waist as he buries his face in his neck.

“Zoro!”

“Hey Luffy,” he says, one hand pressing firmly against his back. A chuckle rumbles out of him, though it sounds a little pained, so Luffy tightens his grip and pays no mind to fact he’s practically mouthing at his neck with a litany of his name, skin salty and warm and too focused on Zoro, Zoro, Zoro.

“I knew I would find you again,” he says, voice full of conviction. It feels like a confession, like words unstuck from the inside of his rib cage. “Didn’t matter how long it took, even if it was taking you forever.”

“Yeah, well, took long enough.”

“Duh! It was annoying. You really pissed me off.”

He catches the sound of feet pounding down the length of the pier, one pair followed by another and another.

“Luffy! Zoro!” He turns his head enough to catch a glimpse of Nami out of the corner of his eye. Mouth agape, she grips an unbroken part of the railing and takes in the sight of the two of them entangled in the water. Usopp appears over her shoulder with a shout, followed by a bewildered Sanji. “What the hell are you morons doing?”

“Nami!” Luffy hollers, to which Zoro winces. “Usopp! Sanji!”

She watches them with a pinched expression, and Luffy can feel the edge of his jaw against his crown when Zoro smiles.

“Nami.”

Her face slackens with a sharp inhale, and Luffy thinks her eyes might be a little shiny, but she’ll just say it was a trick of the light. He grunts out Usopp and Sanji’s names because there’s a bicep pressing into his throat.

“Zoro,” she says, and Luffy’s grip around him tightens as he laughs.

Getting out of the water is a little more awkward and a little more strenuous seeing as how Luffy can’t quite swim, doesn’t bother to try, and doesn’t let go of Zoro in the slightest. Zoro doesn’t seem to mind too much though, and Luffy tightens his grip as he cuts through the water.

They stumble into the sand as he wades out of the tide, one arm wrapped around Luffy like a brand while the other acts as an attempted counterweight. Just out of the surf he drops to his knees and Luffy lets out an oof when his weight squishes him for a second before pushing himself back onto his elbows. Distantly he can hear Usopp shout to them, and he at least lets go of Zoro’s waist so he can find his balance. 

Zoro’s fingers wind through his hair, grinding sand against his scalp as wet curls twine around his knuckles. Luffy’s cackling and beaming, the sound punching out of him until everything is bright and loud and he thinks he might burst. 

The hand at his hip—his entire presence, so close it could be suffocating—is grounding, and Luffy cracks an eye open long enough to watch Zoro lean down, resting his forehead against his own. There is sand and seawater in his eyes, and Luffy shifts to press his mouth against his. It’s a warm, familiar feeling that bursts across his ribs, and the fingers in his hair tighten as he hums above him, kissing him back.

Luffy pulls him impossibly closer, and (they drift from one sea to another, and he croons about how far they’ve come, how they still have so much farther to go, and he asks if Zoro will come with him as if) he wonders if (there was ever any doubt) this is a good time to laugh at fate. He doesn’t believe in it, even as he curls a hand around the back of Zoro’s neck and tilts his head; doesn’t believe in it because he was always going to find Zoro again.

By the time he pulls away he opens his eyes to find the expression above him pinched, but almost in that fond way he remembers, like when he suggested something (brilliantly) stupid and he would just roll his eyes (and say aye, captain). The fingers twined in his hair brush through it instead, and when he turns it’s with a warm smile on his face (that he will never admit to). 

Luffy twists to find Nami making her way to them, eyes darting between the pair tangled in the sand and her footing as she fights her way across the miniature dunes. From his vantage point he can certainly spot what look like tear tracks on her cheeks and scrapes on her knees, likely from where she vaulted herself off the break wall and slipped as she hit the ground in her hurry.

Sanji calls after her, hot on her heels and asking if she’s alright, and Usopp struggles to keep himself upright.

Wet sand pushes back against him as he squirms out from underneath Zoro, shouting her name, and she shouts his and then Zoro’s back before she’s finally within arm’s length, hitting her knees and hissing because it hurts. Zoro pushes himself up, Luffy hanging onto him with one arm still looped around him.

Paying no mind to the fact he’s covered in spit and tears and salt, he extends a hand toward Nami (stretching out across the distance to wrap around her until she shrieks and rockets toward him) with his palm and fingers splayed. He extends a hand even if it doesn’t stretch, even if he can’t wind his arms around his first two crew mates multiple times over. But he’s found them and they’re safe, and Nami’s definitely crying and calls him gross as she takes his hand.

“Nami, we got Zoro back!” he yells, because it sounds better every time he says it.

“Idiot. Do you think he took long enough or what?” she asks, her smile a little lopsided. It looks a little pained too, but this is something to celebrate. She sniffs, and Zoro nods with a sigh. This time Luffy does pull away from him, but remains close enough that neither one of them can get anywhere. Sanji crouches beside her, and even if he looks exasperated Luffy can see some of the worry bleeding out of his shoulders.

“Hey Nami,” Zoro says, voice sounding rough from misuse, but also a little like grief. He still has that small smile when he asks, “How much do I owe you now?”

Nami’s laugh is wet. She doesn’t hug him, but she does lightly smack his arm, which is probably the most emotional interaction between them he’s ever seen.

“Hey guys, that was … ” Usopp gets out, hands braced on his knees where he’s bent at the waist. “How about we never do any of that … ever again?”

“Which part?” Sanji mutters.

“All of it! We pick one nice spot where it’s all safe and no one who can’t swim goes diving into the ocean!”

Luffy’s shishishi is full of sand and water and his grin all teeth. “No promises! But I definitely think we stick together—captain’s orders.”

“Aye, captain,” Sanji says, rocking back on his heels. Usopp lets out another pant but raises a thumbs up. 

He turns, awaiting a response from the other two, only to find Nami watching Zoro with an expression he can’t decipher and the latter looking like he’s bracing himself to get slugged. Not wanting to get hit himself, he scoots to sit closer to Sanji, but still close enough he can grab Zoro’s arm if he wanted to.

“I’m only doing this once,” she says and then she pulls Zoro into a hug.

Luffy allows them their moment before wedging himself in and yelling around a laugh, and he presses his face back into his neck while his giggles border on hysteric.

Nami grabs a fistful of Usopp’s sleeve, who in turn latches onto Sanji in an attempt to brace himself, and Luffy snakes out a hand to grab onto Sanji’s arm. He’d wind his arms around them twice, three times, four times, a hundred times if he could, and he feels like he might burst, still. His head and chest splinter open, left in bits and pieces like broken shells, but at the same time he feels much more whole than he has in a long while, he thinks.

Sanji sits back on the beach and lights a cigarette while he and Zoro trade heatless barbs back and forth. Usopp fishes his hat out of the water while Nami wrangles him out of a soaked sweatshirt and tries to comb the sand from his hair. Luffy closes his eyes and lets her, still grinning too wide.

Zoro says he knows Franky, because Franky was the one who installed the ramp for Kuina and kept going on about his super girlfriend. Usopp thinks he might know Brook but needs to double check—as if there’s really any doubt—and Nami says okay, they’ll have to compare notes, and then she shrieks when Luffy grabs her wrist and pulls her up.

He kicks up sand and bits of shells which makes his feet hurt, but he stomps and hollers, spinning her around until her shout breaks off into a laugh, and Usopp follows in short order, a loud, joyous sound as he throws his arms over his head. Sanji snickers and lets out a cheer of his own before Luffy pauses long enough to eye Zoro from where he’s been watching them all, his gaze burning into him with a pleasant feeling, his smile never fading.

Luffy launches himself at him, laughing, and it tastes of copper and sunlight and salt. He can feel the steady beat of Zoro’s heart, stronger now, as he melds himself into him, palm splayed just above the muscle like he could push through the skin, and Zoro turns to tuck his face into the side of his, nose pressed against his cheek, and Luffy think he smells like grass, steel, salt, and the sea.