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It’s cold out on the Grand Line, where the weather changes almost instantaneously and the seas are calm one moment and threatening to capsize them the next. It’s easier to use that as an excuse for the way Luffy’s stomach turns and the back of his throat tastes of guilt.
The sensation has plagued him since they first set out from Whiskey Peak, after Igaram’s ship had gone up in an angry blaze and Miss All Sunday had left an ominous feeling trailing after all of them.
It reaches a head right in the middle of dinner that night after their departure, when they all sit together for the first time, and Nami and Vivi take turns filling Sanji and Usopp in on what they’d missed over the past few hours.
Zoro turns his head to weigh in on the events Nami missed, and Luffy pauses, nearly choking on a mouthful of roasted chicken. The side of his face is marred by a nasty bruise, the skin around his eye purple and red, blooming down his cheek and toward his hairline in contrast to his earrings, and as Luffy’s fingers close around his fork he recognizes the shape of his fist.
For a brief second Zoro makes eye contact with him, regarding him with a curious look before he snickers at something Usopp’s said. His stomach clenches around his dinner, and even if he’s never one to turn down food, he suddenly isn’t hungry anymore.
Luffy stares as Vivi tells them something about Alabasta that’s probably important, long enough that someone else notices, and he swallows thickly before finally averting his gaze and turning to Sanji with a, “huh?”
He excuses himself from the galley as soon as he can while the others wrap up dinner, forcing down his last few bites before making a beeline for the masthead. His stomach churns with chicken and barbecue sauce and green beans, just like he told Sanji he wanted, but the aftertaste is bitter. He stares out in the dusk without truly seeing anything, only watching the waves and the distant horizon.
Nami graciously omits parts of their fight when she tells the story, leaves it at calling them boneheads without elaborating, and Vivi either doesn’t know them well enough or isn't comfortable enough with contradicting her. Aside from the two involved she was the only one privy to their brawl, but with her focus currently elsewhere she never comments on it.
Luffy curls his fingers until his jagged fingernails bite into his palms, but it does nothing to soothe the ache in his throat.
The morning comes and he hardly sleeps, swinging in his hammock and staring at the wall. Luffy and Zoro aren’t avoiding each other, not at all. Besides, on the Going Merry it’s hard to wander the length of the ship without running into someone at least twice, and that goes double for any room below deck.
With Vivi on board there is just … so much more to be concerned with; a bigger picture to focus on rather than the inner workings of their small crew. An entire kingdom is on the brink of outright civil war, so Zoro and Luffy not making eye contact during every interaction pales in comparison. It doesn't matter it leaves Luffy aching and choking on his guilt when he catches sight of the left side of Zoro's face.
He’s making his second round of walking in circles when Usopp appears beside him with a grin and thrusts a fishing rod into his hands. It’s hard not to return it, and soon enough he's scampering down to port aft and being cajoled into arguing over who’s going to have the bigger catch.
Both he and Usopp have their preferred fishing spots, and there very well may be grooves worn into the railings of the ship at this point. It's quiet and comfortable, and Luffy swings his feet as they take turns recasting their lines.
“Zoro has quite the shiner,” Usopp says, leaning back to twist his head to spot where Zoro’s currently lifting weights, and his temporarily good mood immediately vanishes.
Luffy doesn’t take his eyes off of the waves below them under the guise of keeping an eye on his line. Truth be told he knows exactly what Usopp’s talking about, of course, has thought about it every time Zoro passed him by, every time they sat for a meal, every time he’s turned to hop off the masthead since they left Whiskey Peak.
There is a cut under Luffy’s other eye, one under a thin bandage he can pass off as a graze. Zoro’s is a little more prominent. His lower lid is swollen enough to be noticeable, as if the mottled skin high on his cheekbone and curling into his temple wasn’t.
Usopp’s words only add to the guilt that has been festering low in his belly.
“What happened?” he continues, leaning forward again. He should already know the story by now, so Luffy isn’t totally sure why he’s asking. “Nami said there were a bunch of bounty hunters—were they all after Vivi?”
“I did that.”
“You did—” And Usopp pauses to do a double take; Luffy reels in his line some. They should probably recast elsewhere. Nothing’s biting today. Usopp’s gaze is fixed on him, parsing through the updates Nami gave both he and Sanji, and whatever rendition Vivi must have shared. Luffy and Zoro have never really been the wordiest of the bunch in regards to storytelling. The small details also hadn’t mattered: it was the bigger picture, that this criminal organization was looking to cause an all-out war in another kingdom and was after its princess that had been important. Usopp starts again, quieter: “You did that?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Luffy nods. “Yeah. I thought he cut down all of those people who took us in and fed us. Didn’t think they were bounty hunters.”
“You thought Zoro just killed them all?” It isn’t accusatory, but he feels like it might as well be.
“At first, yeah. One of 'em was still alive and said he attacked.”
“You gotta know he would never do something like that,” Usopp says, fishing rod all but forgotten as it hangs limp between his knees. “Zoro might be a lot of things, but he isn’t … he wouldn’t do that.”
Luffy recasts his line.
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean, ‘at first?’”
“Nami broke up the fight.” He watches the line, waiting. “She said what you said, that he would never … Zoro wouldn’t do that and that I should know that.”
“You guys fought?” His stomach hurts, and it only hurts all the more the more Usopp presses, the more he asks little questions to the little story he’s getting. Luffy’s never been a storyteller; he prefers actions over words, and sometimes only words that really mean something.
Luffy nods. He pauses, wondering if maybe he’s making the association with the cut on his cheek before Usopp turns away again. He picks his rod back up.
“I said I was gonna kill him,” Luffy says, voice barely above a whisper. He can’t be certain what’s worse, either: that he said it, or that he meant it.
He’d swung with full force too, and it hadn’t fully set in until after, when Nami had pulled them apart and he’d tried to laugh it off, that Zoro had been purely on the defensive until he’d been pushed too far. Zoro hadn’t raised a blade until some floating lady with an umbrella had interrupted again, after he’d spent long enough dodging blows between hang on and let me explain!
There’d been something else in Zoro’s eyes too in the hours of too-early morning, something cross between shocked and appalled that Luffy would doubt him, and something Luffy hesitated to question was fear. His crew could be a lot of things in regard to him—annoyed, irritated, roll their eyes, or laugh, or smack his arm at the dinner table, or call him a dumbass—but he never once wanted them to fear him.
That was no way to captain his ship, and the mere thought of having one of his friends afraid of him has him staring up at the ceiling in his hammock at night, or his throat bobbing just as his line does when the hook catches for a fleeting second.
“You didn’t meant that,” Usopp says, voice too firm when Luffy’s jaw clenches because yes, he did, and how does Usopp know that, but then he continues, “Maybe at the time, but do you feel that way now?”
Luffy shakes his head. Of course he doesn’t, what kind of question is that? If there was a crew member he felt that way towards they wouldn’t even be on the crew in the first place. No matter he’d spat it at his first mate barely two days ago and swung at him with the intent to do serious bodily harm.
“I’m not saying you should have attacked him, but I’m not blaming you for it either.” His gaze cuts to Usopp, who’s busying himself with fighting for a moment before he, too, loses his potential catch. Luffy picks at his rod like he means to pull it apart. “You didn’t have the full picture, but surrounded by the bodies of people who were kind to us and took us in, fed us and made us feel welcome, what were you supposed to think? I would have taken a swing at him too.”
Luffy keeps staring, and eventually Usopp turns to face him.
“You know he’s gotta be kicking himself about the whole thing,” he says, and then mutters something about one of the biggest guilt complexes he’s ever seen, and he should know, under his breath. His brow furrows a little. “Have you talked to him about it yet?”
“No?” He gives him an incredulous look because what is there to talk about that hadn’t already been discussed as Vivi explained Baroque Works to them? Zoro hadn’t seemed too fazed beyond the initial build up to their altercation.
But then Zoro has … also been keeping a pretty wide berth lately. Not outright avoiding Luffy, but doing that sort of thing where he’s only speaking when spoken to and napping on the other side of the ship instead of his usual spot near where Luffy and Usopp fish. Their conversations are brief at best, and only initiated by Luffy. There’s a tension that exists between them that wasn’t there before. The thought makes him nauseous.
“Why would Zoro be upset?”
Usopp closes a hand over Luffy’s to still his fingers. “I may not know him as well as you do, but you and I both know loyalty is a big thing for him. Fighting with you is definitely going to weigh on him. You’re his friend and his captain; that’s not something he takes lightly.”
Luffy wants to tell him that that’s the whole point: he should know Zoro just about as well as he knows himself, if not better. Zoro would never kill someone in cold blood, never just for the thrill of it. His stance had loosened and he’d looked relieved to see Luffy, and then Vivi’s first proper introduction to the Straw Hats had been watching the captain and first mate try to kill one another.
But Usopp is right. Luffy has seen the glares Zoro has shot at others when he’s questioned; when he follows with barely a word; when Luffy finds himself in yet another altercation with Zoro hot on his heels, ready to step in if need be.
Zoro’s unfailingly loyal and has already bled enough for Luffy in such a short period of time. Luffy isn’t supposed to be the one to make him bleed.
That guilt and nausea kicks up a notch because this could be Zoro’s incentive this crew, this captain is not for him, that Luffy is in the way of achieving his dream. An incentive that they—he—would be better off if he left. Or would he consider that mutiny? Would that be another blow to his loyalty and honor?
“Luffy.” Usopp’s hand grips his tighter, and he looks down to find his rod splintering beneath his fingers. “You can’t keep beating yourself up. Is it bad that you guys fought? Well, yeah, but the outcome could have been much worse than it was. You’ve just … learned that you need to trust each other’s judgment a little more and not jump the gun, that’s all.”
Luffy doesn’t see how trying to kill one another builds trust, but he doesn’t argue it. His hand hurts where the wood stabs into his palm, though it doesn’t break the skin.
“And sometimes that’s all the crew has, right? Trust in one another. Sure, we might disagree on some things and not always get along, but at the end of the day we have each others’ backs no matter what. There are gonna be times we’re not going to like each other, and times we’re going to butt heads.”
“But we’re still a crew,” Luffy says, fishing line long forgotten. His bait’s probably long gone at this point.
“Yep,” Usopp hums and pulls his hand back. He reels his line back in and pauses, mouth twisting. “You … should still probably talk to him though. Clear the air a little. I think it’ll make you both feel better, plus the crew's a little tense right now.”
Luffy watches the water, the small waves against the hull and tiny ripple his line leaves as it trails alongside them.
He nods once, then twice, then plants a hand on his head to hold his hat down as he swings his legs back over the railing.
“Right, I can do that!” He stands a little straighter, stomach still roiling, and leaves his marksman to snag his fishing rod before it goes clattering overboard. “Thanks, Usopp!”
Tracking Zoro down is a little more difficult than he would have figured it would be, given that their ship is on the smaller side. There aren’t exactly a slew of hiding spots—or at least, any new ones he’s privy to since Nami nipped he and Usopp’s last game of hide and seek in the bud when she found him in her closet. She'd deemed her room off limits, just as Sanji had the kitchen.
He finally corners him in the cannon deck, and he’s loathe to admit it’s only because Nami told them it was a good time to cast anchor and that was Zoro’s duty. He’d made his way back through the ship, and after tying off the mainsail Luffy had nearly tangled himself up in the futtock shrouds in his haste to follow him.
If Zoro’s surprised to see him he doesn’t show it, but he huffs a breath as he rises from his crouch and steps away from the capstan to double check the anchor line.
“Cap—”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
Zoro blinks back at him and raises an eyebrow. “The cook said our supplies were getting low, so I was looking forward to a hunting trip when we reached Little Garden. I won’t if you don’t think we should, though.”
“No—the crew,” Luffy tries. It’s harder now when it feels like there’s bile rising in his throat.
Zoro’s jaw works and that stupid black eye stares back at him. He wants to smudge it away with his fingers and wipe that entire lack of trust from memory. Maybe Usopp’s right; maybe they do need to talk about it. Maybe that's supposed to make it hurt less.
When he speaks again, Zoro’s voice is soft.
“Did you want me to leave?”
There’s that flicker of—not fear, not shock, but a bit of resignation, and a bit of he’s thought about this, a bit of hurt quickly masked by a genuine question. It’s a mix of acceptance and guilt that mirrors his own. It’s a look that says he wouldn’t blame Luffy if he did.
What is it—what is it with this crew and blame? I wouldn’t blame you if this, I wouldn’t blame you if that and Luffy wants to scream no, no blame him. Blame him for his lapse in judgment, blame him for his lack of trust when there never should have been any doubt in the first place. Blame him for Zoro second-guessing his position on this ship, for spending the better part of two days waiting for his captain to tell him good riddance.
“I don’t,” Luffy manages to get out. He’s angry—not at, not at Zoro. Not like before. Angry at himself, at the circumstances. He swallows. “I don’t want you to leave.” He ducks his head, brim of his hat only giving him a view of Zoro’s feet, and somehow that’s better. Easier. “I don’t want you to leave—unless you want to go.”
And he would let him, too. It would hurt and he would rage inside and always resent himself for it, but he would resent himself all the more if he forced Zoro to stay if it wasn’t what he wanted. That's not freedom there, a lack of choice.
He would fight for every damn one of them, but he would never force any of his crew to do anything against their will. But god help him, he would follow Zoro to the ends of the earth if he had to, if that kept him by his side. It would be like with Ace all over again, but different this time, somehow, and Luffy’s stomach and then his chest hurts at the thought of loneliness, creeping up his spine like a ghost left long-ignored.
Zoro stares at him and then has all of half a second to brace for impact when Luffy launches himself at him.
He winds his arms around his abdomen, and would again if he didn’t think that would be pushing it, burying his face in Zoro’s chest and the brutal scar bisecting it. The position dislodges his hat, but he doesn’t hear it hit the ground.
“I don’t want you to leave,” he says, voice muffled. “I don’t want you to go, but I get it if you do and I won’t stop you because it’s your choice. You’re my friend and my crew, but I’m not gonna make you stay if you don’t want to be here.”
A beat passes, and Zoro's arms shift, not to push him away, but to fall into a gentle, hesitant embrace.
Luffy tightens his grip and squeezes his eyes shut. Zoro lets out a soft breath.
“Captain,” he tries, and part of Luffy wants to yell not to call him that; call him by his name, not title, not the title that puts a little distance between them, no matter the pride he often carries with it. Just Luffy, just Zoro right now.
A hand braces against the space between his shoulder blades, palm warm and fingers digging into his vest; he can feel the heel of his other fist against his back where Zoro holds his hat. There’s comfort in that, under all the hurt and strain curling around his chest.
“Luffy.”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says. The shirtfront is damp against his cheek, and it might be sweat, it might not be. “I … I know why, but—”
“I am upset,” Zoro cuts in, and Luffy’s tongue feels like lead pressing against the backs of his teeth. “I’m ... ashamed of myself.”
That is … somewhat unexpected, and he raises his head a little to peek one eye up at him through his fringe. There’s a bandage below it, and he knows Zoro is looking at it before he meets his gaze.
“Shouldn’t be. You didn’t—everything’s all wrong,” Luffy mumbles. He wants to howl.
Zoro’s expression is pinched before he speaks. “I’m supposed to be your first mate. I raised my blade to you, and that crossed a line that never should have been crossed. I can’t just forgive myself for that or pretend it didn’t happen.”
That’s Zoro, with his infallible loyalty, the same who pledged fealty to a man who claimed he would be King of the Pirates with nothing but a dinghy and dream to his name in the middle of a dry courtyard. Zoro, who of course would harbor guilt to rival Luffy’s over their fight, for not having explained himself better, for not having his captain’s trust, for daring to unsheathe his swords in an answering challenge.
Luffy stares at him for a while longer, grip steady as ever and Zoro as unwavering as he’ll always be.
“Why did you say ‘supposed to be?’” he whispers.
Zoro’s palm presses a little firmer.
“I don’t want you to leave, but it’s your choice if you want to stay or not.” His chin digs into his pectoral. “I trust you more than anything, and I’m sorry I didn’t before. It won’t happen again. Do you want to leave?”
He doesn’t say anything to that, and that guilt hardens into panic, into fear and that unwelcome feeling of a permanent goodbye. No lighthearted see ya or well wishes to meet again sometime. Zoro mulls over his response and the longer he waits the more unsettled he feels.
He said he understood if Zoro wanted to go, not that it would be easy to accept.
Luffy squeezes his eyes shut and tucks his face back into his chest.
“I’m not going anywhere, Luffy,” he says, voice just above a murmur. When he doesn’t get a response, he jostles him. “Luffy.”
“Are you sure?” His voice is muffled.
Zoro shifts to better embrace him, resting his chin on the top of his head. He hums, and Luffy can hear and feel it all the way down to his toes, deep and reverberating through every part of his rubbery being. The tension is still there, though it melts away only partly. There's a relief he's afraid to cling to, like it'll dissipate or slip out of his grip if he reaches for it too soon, but Zoro never relinquishes his hold.
Luffy presses himself into him like he’s going to meld them both together, and Zoro rocks back on his heels until they come in contact with the wall. He grunts before sliding down it, though never once does he let go of Luffy. To his credit, he wastes little time in plastering himself to him, uncaring of how compromising or inappropriate it might be. Zoro doesn't say no, doesn't say anything, and doesn't push him away—Luffy feels a pull and a tug and sinks into him.
He tucks his head under his jaw, only dislodging himself somewhat when Zoro’s next breath sounds more like a wheeze.
Zoro moves his arms into a more comfortable position, Luffy half on his lap and the brim of the straw hat lightly scratching against his knee. The latter keeps his head against his shoulder, gaze flickering between the hat and his jaw. His earrings swing in the brilliant light spilling through the porthole.
“I’m sorry if you doubted your place in the crew,” he says again, and if Zoro doesn’t believe it he’ll repeat it again and again until he does. There is an awful lot of weight in those words, as he’s been reminded of since he was young, since Ace and Sabo and Makino and Dadan. You aren’t supposed to say something unless you mean it, and he flinches internally at the words he spat down a dusty street.
The hand resting against his back moves, and again he fears being shoved away before fingers trace just below the cut on his cheek and then curl into tangled dark hair.
“Yeah?” Zoro chirps back, and at another time he might think them a sorry sight to see indeed, but for the time being he gives into the urge to embrace Zoro a little tighter. He wheezes again. Luffy presses his cheek to his chest and even from the opposite side he can hear the steady beat of his heart. It's more of a comfort than anything, as is his promise to stay and the nails scratching against his scalp. (That in itself is a promise too, he thinks.)
Luffy nudges his jaw with his crown and closes his eyes for a moment as Zoro sighs above him. His shoulders sag and he pulls Luffy closer to his chest and he happily follows, chest and throat burning for an entirely different reason and guilt dispelling like cooling embers. Luffy closes his eyes again, forehead resting against the pulse point in his throat to the rise and fall of Zoro’s chest.
He tunnels his fingers into his hair and tugs. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“Sorry about your eye,” Luffy says, corner of his mouth caught in the beginnings of a grin. He turns his head so he isn't mumbling into cotton and sweat and his own teeth. “You look a little cooler like that, though.”
“Are you calling me ugly?”
He waits a beat and then nods.
“Oh yeah, like you’re a real looker yourself.”
Luffy snickers at that, a sound that starts out soft and small, and then he snorts into Zoro’s shirt and only laughs harder when he nudges his shoulder. It bubbles up out of him after the last two days, and he can feel him shake beneath him as he struggles to stifle his own, a few slipping out before he can stop them. The sound makes him want to nestle in further, burying his face back into Zoro’s chest.
“Come on, get off,” he mutters, though his pushing is half-hearted at best. If he really wanted Luffy to let go he’d be on the other side of the room by now. That speaks more volumes than anything, and Luffy has to fight with himself not to wind his arms around him again, burrow back into Zoro because his first mate is a permanent fixture. “Your stink is starting to get to me.”
“You stink more.” He’s all but cackling, stomach settling and a wide grin splitting his features, but he relents and starts detangling himself from Zoro. It’s more of a process with the way he’s wedged his arm, and Zoro gives his bicep a strong flick.
He mutters “pain in the ass” again and Luffy beams at him.
Zoro climbs to his feet with a groan shortly after Luffy bounces back to his full height. He turns the straw hat once in his hands, eyeing where the ribbon is starting to fray, and then delicately shoves—if that’s possible, Luffy thinks it might be—it back onto its proper owner’s head. He stretches, cracking his neck, and Luffy waits until he’s about ready to step away when he speaks again.
“I’m glad Zoro’s staying,” he says, voice full of all of the determination and conviction he can muster. Within arm’s reach, Zoro blinks back at him, gaze set in that way it was when they first became crew mates, just before they set sail together for the first time, and Luffy’s chest is less constricted than it was before. He raises his chin. “I’m not sure what I would do without you, but it would probably suck a lot.”
He lets that settle between them, almost like it has a different weight to it now, and then Zoro lets out a breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for a long time.
“You and me both.”
Nami says the winds will be favorable and they should set out soon, so Luffy and Usopp take advantage of the calm seas to resume their fishing spots. His fishing rod boasts minor repairs, and Luffy grins with a, “thanks, Usopp!” who tells him not to thank him just yet—he’s about to kick his butt with a bigger catch.
Thriving on the challenge, he casts his line with a chuckle and only minor elbowing between the two. Usopp seemingly thinks nothing of Zoro joining them, even if it’s just to recline against the wall behind them and nap.
Luffy smirks down at the water and then reaches back, stretching out a rubbery arm to place a straw hat on his head.
“Keep that safe for me, will ya?” he asks without looking back, like it's second nature, but he can sense the way Zoro stills before relaxing again. There is more to that than an entire conversation could ever convey, than could be said if Luffy thought of every single word he knew, and his hand lingers long enough to adjust the hat. Zoro sighs.
“Aye, captain.”
He doesn’t mind the sound of it, now.