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Luffy’s been pacing back and forth in front of her for almost twenty minutes now and Nami has done her best to focus on the newspaper in her hands, but it’s gradually becoming more and more difficult.
Especially given that, at first, Luffy had been walking a longer path, almost long enough that she hadn’t realized he was pacing. At least, not until the fourth time he walked past her, pausing awkwardly, continuing, and then abruptly turning around and walking back. He’s also started to whistle, in what she assumes is supposed to be an extremely casual matter. His eyes dart toward her and away. Nami grits her teeth in frustration and then looks up and at him directly.
Their eyes meet. Luffy straightens up immediately, exhaling in a rather sharp whistle, as Nami narrows her eyes, and shakes her paper out in front of her pointedly.
He snaps his fingers, mutters something that sounds like 'oh right!' and then walks off to the left. Nami breathes a small sigh of relief when he’s out of sight. It’s much too hot for all of this now and she does not want to deal with her captain and whatever harebrained scheme he’s cooked up. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back and takes a moment to relax and work the cricks out of her neck from bending over her desk for so many hours this morning. Which is when she feels like someone is looking at her very intently.
She doesn’t want to, exactly, but she opens her eyes and Luffy’s face is inches from her's-- his neck stretched out, body not visible.
“Oh, Nami!” He grins and then his body snaps toward him and he flings himself toward her, landing by her chair, cross-legged and grinning up at her. “Hi!”
Nami looks to the heavens for a few seconds, praying for patience, before she gives up and puts her paper down. “What can I do for you, Luffy?”
Luffy frowns and crosses his arms, looks up at the sky and then back to her. “Are you reading?” He asks, and Nami has to closes her eyes and take a deep breath, remind herself that Luffy might seem irritating and childish sometimes, but really it’s just because he is sometimes irritating and childish and …wait.
“Yes, Luffy. Or, I was trying to.” A little more pointed than is strictly necessary, maybe, but she hadn’t gotten to read earlier due to certain antics of certain crew members, which will remain unmentioned and unnamed, respectively.
He nods a few times in response to her words, really seems to ponder them, staring down at his crossed legs. Then he takes another deep breath in through his nose and pushes the air out through his mouth, evenly and loudly, and they sit there, as the breeze weakly tries to fight with the sun. Nami’s surprised Luffy doesn’t pass out, given how long this is taking.
“Luffy.” She snaps and he stops immediately, looks back at her. “What can I do for you?”
“Would you, I mean, if you’re not reading, which you are, but when you are done or something, then. Would you maybe, could we maybe play cards or maybe go fishing or maybe just…” Luffy stutters to a stop and stares at the clouds, like there are answers up there. He waves his hands in front of his face and then re-crosses his arms. Sinks back into his ‘thinking position’. Sweat beads on his forehead and Nami is genuinely not sure if it’s from thinking or from how hot it is.
“What?” Nami asks, bluntly. Just in general, not even the fact that the sentence had trailed off but what?
“S’just that Franky and Usopp are working on something and they seem really serious and when I tried to help they told me I wasn’t helping and that it wasn’t ready yet so I needed to wait and Chopper is doing something Very Serious With Medicines,” Nami can literally see the capital letters in the way he pronounces each word, “and he even has Robin with him and I was going to help but there was a lot of being still and measuring things and not moving and so I went to find Zoro but Zoro is sleeping and he refuses to wake up, like really he might be DEAD he won’t wake up but then when he did he did that thing where I thought he was going to KILL ME and then he went back to sleep and Sanji is preparing for dinner and he's still's mad at me because of the thing with lunch that was not even my fault and besides I don’t want to bother him because it’s dinner and it’s important but he won't even give me a snack and I’m bored and it's hot and we’re barely moving and there’s nothing to do and I just thought if you weren’t doing anything maybe you would--”
“Okay, okay, okay, stop, stop.” Nami waves her hands in front of his face, resisting the urge to pinch his lips together. Clearly he had been holding a lot in. “So I’m your last choice, is that how it is? When all else has failed, see if Nami's free?”
Luffy’s eyes widen instantaneously with horror.
“No! No, but, Nami, before you were doing your maps so I wasn’t going to bother you at all at all. But then you came out here and weren't doing maps and I thought, I thought that maybe--”
Nami doesn’t bother to resist the urge this time and pins his lips together with her fingers before he's off again, swings her feet off the edge of the chair and sits up. She tells herself it’s not really sweet that Luffy originally skipped over her entirely, when he saw that she was working on her maps.
“I got it, I got it. Hush, it’s too hot for misunderstandings. But it’s going to cost you, you know? I was reading and there's no shade if we're fishing."
Luffy narrows his eyes, as though he's considering, and then mutters something at her through his closed mouth. Nami narrows her eyes.
“Did you just say,” Nami cannot believe this, but she’s pretty sure, because Luffy averts his eyes extremely fast, “that it’s captains orders so I have to?”
There is an extremely long pause, and then Luffy nods defiantly. The sun beats down on them and Nami does not move, until Luffy starts to squirm and pull at his face. Which really doesn’t take all that long, to be fair.
“Now it’s definitely going to cost you.” She lets go of his mouth and Luffy immediately falls into a practiced pout at her feet. There is a sheen of sweat on his face, his hair gently lifts in the pitiful excuse for a breeze, and Nami notices just how long it’s getting. She runs her fingers through it affectionately, tousling it until he drops the pout and pulls his head away, grumbling and batting at her hands. “Luffy, was all that pacing really necessary?” Nami questions softly. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
“Well,” Luffy considers, “I thought you would say no!” He sounds so distraught that Nami finds herself smiling, and she sternly tells herself not to laugh. “And I thought you would say it would cost me, but I don’t have any money so I was trying to figure out something else and I just thought of the captain’s orders thing like two minutes ago. I didn’t think it would work, but also you didn’t hit me when I said it so maybe it did!”
She shakes her head in wonder, thinks back to what it used to be like before Luffy and can’t believe that she says what she says next.
“Alright, special for the Captain, I’ll give you a discount. Only 1,000 beli.”
“Cheap!” Luffy practically shrieks, jumping to his feet, “Cheap! It’s a deal, it’s a deal! Let’s go, let’s go! Go get ice cream from Sanji! He’ll give it to you even if he won’t give it to me!”
Totally using her for food. Unbelievable.
Or, actually, since it's Luffy, entirely believable.
But Nami finds, after conning some ice cream out of Sanji, that she's not even mad. She not mad because Luffy's laughing and his eyes are lighting up and when she feels like she's getting a little bit sunburnt, before she can even mention it and go to get a hat from her room, Luffy puts his hat on her head, like he's worried that if she leaves she won't come back.
The ice cream is sweet on her tongue and his fingers are sticky where they accidentally brush her face and they catch absolutely no fish and it's sort of a perfect afternoon.
She figures she will just read the paper later. There are certain things that can wait, and the world is one of them. Everything she needs to know for this afternoon is right here in the way Luffy is grinning and talking to her, telling her memories that all start with 'that one time when we' and end with 'the best'.