First off, apologies for this rambling author's note. Don't worry, I don't make a habit of them. Unless necessary, there won't be any more longer than one sentence. (:

This is a collection of One Piece drabbles, since drabbles are all I have the attention span for. Truthfully, I lost most interest in anime ages ago, but One Piece can still amuse me. So.

I did something similar to this ages ago with GetBackers (which is on a different account) and it was pretty popular. Then, though, I stuck to 100-word drabbles, whereas here they're going to lean more towards 200-300 words. No more than 500 ever, I think.

In terms of pairings, I usually write Sanji/Zoro, Luffy/Nami, Ace/Smoker, Robin/Franky, Lucci/Kaku, and/or Shanks/Ben... but since romantic writing is NOT my forte, for the most part, you can expect gen. And a fair amount of crack. Also, I don't usually write het. This is the first fandom in which I've been drawn to a het pairing in a looong time. XD

I'm starting out with a Luffy/Nami one because, well, I'm not entirely sure why. It's boring and introspective and I don't like the flow and I did almost no editing... but it pretty much IS what I picture their relationship to be. So I like it. I don't often like my drabbles.

Title: Romance

Rating: G

Pairing: Luffy/Nami

Word Count: 463

A/N: Timeline-wise, this could probably be mashed in at any time after Alabasta, but I prefer to think it takes place sometime after the current manga arc, so... in the future. Obviously.

It sounded cliche, but if anyone had told Nami way back then that she would eventually enter into a... relationship with Luffy, she would have assured them that they were surely joking, delusional, or at the very least severely misinformed. The notion was absolutely absurd, utterly irrational.

Yet here she was.

They were the worst kind of couple. She was book smart and vastly intelligent and had a wealth of common sense. He was naive and gullible and possessed the internal calm of a rat on a burning boat. They contradicted each other in every way.

They were the best kind of couple. She was closed and cynical and couldn't always believe in herself enough. He was always open and had an innate wisdom that stemmed from being able to look at the world in such a straightforward manner. And he always believed in her. They complimented each other in every way.

She watched him. She watched him be free and honest and i good /i in the way that only a person made up of such complex simplicity could be. She watched him liberate kingdoms and conquer corruption and laugh in the face of the world that dared to label him a criminal.

She guided him. She navigated him towards his dream in the nautical sense and the rational sense, reining him in whenever he lost control, then pointing him in the right direction and setting him loose again.

It worked for them.

It was so innocent. As if it could have been anything else with Luffy. She'd fall asleep sunbathing on the deck and wake up an hour later with his chin on her shoulder, his arm draped across her stomach, the breath from his quiet snores tickling her neck.

She'd offer him one of her mikan in a rare moment of generosity and instead of just shoving it in his mouth like he would with any other food, he'd carefully peel the whole thing and eat it a bit at a time, treating it like it was something special - something worth more than any amount of treasure.

Whenever he felt like she hadn't been paying him enough attention, he'd wander up to her and plant a quick but enthusiastic kiss on her lips, no warning, no heed to what she might have been doing, then dash off again to play with Usopp or Chopper, or to badger Sanji about lunch.

It was enough. It was more than enough. Initially, she'd found it vaguely perplexing to discover that she didn't need the passion and mystery and fantasy that she'd imagined when she was a child. Even more-so when she realized she didn't even i want /i it anymore.

What she had was far from perfect, and it was perfect for her.