Category: Mild Romantic Fluff
Characters: Sanji, Nami
Requested By: fangirlingwithnoregrets (Tumblr)
A contented sigh breezed past Nami's lips as she savored the heavenly feeling of the warm island sand between her toes. The sunlight gleamed over her shoulders, reflecting on the thin layer of sunscreen slathered over her skin, as she rolled them with satisfying pops. Behind her, she could hear the rest of her raucous crew climbing out of the little Mini Merry II to splash into the surf; she had been the first to exit the boat to come ashore.
It was a little island right before their intended destination of the Saobody Archipelago. Though it had not registered on the log pose, being really just a wee spit of land in a vast sea, Luffy has spied it from his usual perch on the Sunny's figurehead and of course demanded that they stop to investigate it. At first glance, it didn't seem like much, just a sandy atoll with a few coconut trees and shrubs decorating the thin circle of fine white sand, but the coral reef it hid in its unassuming figure was exceptionally impressive. Nami couldn't wait to break out her snorkeling equipment to explore the underwater tropical haven; who knew, it could be hiding a chest of gold!
"Franky! Gimme a boost! I wanna get some coconuts!" Luffy cackled as he all but zoomed past her in a mad dash for aforementioned trees. Nami watched with a bemused expression as he jumped up onto the cyborg's shoulders in a delicate balancing act to pluck the furry fruits one by one from the broad-leafed tree until he was dangerously wobbling about with an armful of enough coconuts for the lot of them. With an alarmed cry he toppled right off of Franky's shoulders to land roughly on his back in the sand, all the coconuts crushing into his chest to knock the breath out of him before rolling off in various directions. If Nami didn't know Luffy and his medically impossible uncrushable bones, she would've wondered if he had broken a rib or two; he laid there a minute before jumping right back to his feet, seemingly non-winded as he rapidly scooped up his prizes and scampered back over to the waiting cook. "Sanji! Can you cut these open?" he grinned widely as he plopped them into a neat little pile at his feet.
"Sure, but it'll take a while to crack these open. Twenty of thirty minutes, probably," Sanji responded as he crouched down to observe the coconuts for any sign of decay or disease. Luffy let out a wheedling whine; impatient as ever, he was.
"Can't Zoro just cut them all with his swords?"
"Theoretically, yeah, but then he'll just make a mess and there won't be any coconut milk in them by the time he's done!" Sanji snorted in response as he lit up a cigarette and pulled out a kitchen knife to begin working on the coconuts. "You're just gonna have to find something else to occupy your time, Luffy." Nami rolled her eyes at the agonized groan that spilled from her captain's mouth. It's so hard to believe that such a childish man has taken down some of the most fearsome pirates on the Grand Line! She thought as she watched him stamp his feet and cross his arms. It took all of two seconds for his attention to be captured by a hermit crab scuttling across the sand. He crouched down to watch it, then began shambling along after it in a mocking manner with a giddy "shishishishishi!"
"Good grief, that boy…" she muttered under her breath. Still, as long as he was occupied and Sanji was nearby to babysit him to ensure he didn't try to wrestle a shark or something, Nami could do as she pleased. Humming a tune contentedly under her breath, she walked to the edge of the sand leading to the inside of the atoll. Just mere inches from where the crystal clear water lapped at the edge of the sand, the coral reef spilled out in all its glory. Nami removed her tee shirt and jean shorts to reveal a white floral-patterned bikini underneath, taking care to unhook her snorkeling mask from her belt loop before folding her clothes neatly and placing them well out of splash range. Because the coral was packed so tightly together, she decided against wearing flippers, because she would certainly feel guilty about destroying any of the beautiful formations in her exploration. Securing the mask over her face, she stepped a few paces out into the water. It was wonderfully warm. Careful to step on the patches of sand between the corals, she waded out into the atoll until she was about waist-deep, then leaned over to hover just at the top of the water and behold the colorful world just below the ocean.
Her movement startled the local fishes, sending them darting into various nooks and crannies. Nami, attempting to ease them back out, moved very slowly as she meandered over the reef toward its center. Even without the tropical fish, the corals were magnificent in their own right; despite sailing most of her life, Nami could easily say that this was the most beautiful she had ever seen. Most of the corals were a dull brown, creamy white, or blood red, but this reef actually had vibrant color to it, too, lavish purples and summer yellows and even earthy greens. The corals populated every inch of bare rock they could to form towering formations. Shelf corals stretched out beside bumpy stag corals. Corals sat like little tea tables on the sandy bottom, or sat clustered at the rock base in swirling, foliage like arrangements, or encrusted the surface of the rocks in rough-looking layers. Fan corals waved gently at Nami as she swam by, while cup corals wriggled their tentacle-like appendages in greeting instead. A massive brain coral was surrounded by plumes of leaf coral, making it seem like an egg sheltered in a leafy nest. As Nami arrived at the center of the reef, the local sea life had finally acclimated to her presence and had gathered their courage to investigate the strange newcomer.
A school of patterned butterflyfish drifted close to poke and prod at Nami's lightly tanned skin, making her giggle. As the bubbles streamed up to the surface from her grinning mouth, some parrotfish ambled through them, their coral-crunching beaks opening in closing as if they were trying to vocally greet her. A colorful sea star scuttled across the bottom underneath her, startling a flounder that had buried itself and sending it careening off to find a better hiding spot. Nami approached one of the corals to find with glee a blue-and-white sea slug slowly sliding down its side, while a few clownfish in a nearby anemone watched it carefully. A few spiny sea urchins were clustered around the barrels of a large green sponge, and they rolled about a little as Nami came onto the scene, unsure whether to stay or go. Just as Nami sucked in a breath to roll onto her back and appreciate the way the sunlight dappled across the shifting surface of the water, a spotted ray glided overhead, looking like the bottom of a mysterious ship sailing overhead. Wow… It's all so gorgeous, she thought in great awe as she rolled back over. It was then that she noticed the collection of small shells littering the sandy bottom. I could make a bracelet out of those! She thought. The bottom was well within reaching difference, so she didn't even have to dive down to get them.
Over the course of her adventure with Luffy, Nami had taken to making her own clothes and jewelry. Sometimes they would spend weeks at sea, and Nami would simply grow tired of her wardrobe, so she had taken to purchasing raw fabrics and jewels in the like so that she could always make a new outfit if she wanted to. It was a great way to relieve her stress when mapmaking wasn't available. She had found that her mind often drifted to creating clothing ideas eyeing just the most random things, and now her mind was captured by the accessory potential of the little shells of the atoll. Nami didn't take many, just enough to make a cute bracelet or two out of, because she didn't want to disrupt the ecosystem by eliminating potential homes for the hermit crabs. After taking what she dare, she waved jovially to all the little fish and sea creatures before clutching her collection of shells to her chest and returning to the surface. She pulled the mask off her face and tossed her sodden tangerine hair about, blinking away the water that was streaming over her sun-kissed face.
"Nami-swan! The coconuts are ready~!" came Sanji's joyful trill from the beach.
"Coming!" she called back and began carefully picking her way back to the sand. She held the little shells tightly as she walked up to where her clothes were. Sanji was there waiting for her with a towel stretched out nearly as wide as the grin on his face. "Oh, thank you," she smiled and turned her back to him so he could delicately throw it over her shoulders. Sanji practically melted at her acceptance of his little gesture, clasping his hands and wriggling about while he sang compliments about her cute bathing suit. Though at first she had taken advantage of his incessant crush for her to win favors, Nami had actually grown to appreciate his little gestures. They really were sweet, and borne out of a true desire to please her, so what girl wouldn't swoon a little? It was a little much sometimes, how much he gushed over her, but Nami couldn't help the smile that came to her face every time.
"Here, Nami-swan!" Sanji chirped over her shoulder, and she turned around to see half a coconut filled with succulent coconut juice, complete with a bendy straw and a little umbrella. Nami dropped the shells down beside her clothes to take the drink and sipped at it experimentally. Naturally, a contented "Mmmm!" came next, because the coconut milk was just the right blend of sweet and hydrating, and she flashed Sanji a grateful smile. "Only the best for my beautiful Nami!" he cried while dramatically posing. Nami just giggled before sitting down in the sand, coconut in one hand while the other sifted through her shells to try and piece together how to arrange them into jewelry. Rather than rejoin the rest of the crew piled on the other end of the shore drinking their coconut milk and cutting up, Sanji crouched down to observe her. "Oh? Are you going to make something out of these?"
"Yep! I'm thinking a bracelet or a necklace."
"You should make a matching set! They would look great on you, Nami-swan!" he nodded approvingly. Before Nami could say anything else, Luffy screaming particularly loudly caught both their attentions; it seemed he had pissed off the hermit crab that he had been following, as it was now very aggressively pinching his nose. As he jerked his head back, unsuccessful at pulling it off due to his skin's rubber properties, the rest of the crew was less than helpful, settling for rolling around in the sand laughing at his expense.
"It's not funny, guys! Get it off!" Luffy wailed very nasally. Sanji snorted in laughter and slapped his thighs with his hands before standing up to his tall height.
"Hang on, Luffy, I'm coming," he laughed as he strode back across the beach. Nothing but trouble. Honestly, what would any of us do without Sanji? Nami mused silently before looking back down at her shells. A matching set, huh? An idea hatched in her mind as she considered the prospect, and a satisfied grin formed on her lips. Yeah, I definitely like the sound of that… Bringing the straw to her mouth, she took a big sip of the coconut milk as her creative mind began to waltz with the vision of her finished products…
While the rest of the crew occupied themselves by playing in the sand or taking a page from Nami's book and exploring the island, the ginger-haired navigator remained rooted to her spot, meticulously stringing the shells together into jewelry. Robin had been kind enough to take a trip back to the Thousand Sunny to retrieve her jewelry-making kit from their bedroom; the case was currently open beside her, with a half-used spool of clear plastic string and a small pair of pliers in close reach. The trickiest, and most time-consuming, part was punching a small hole in the shell without breaking it, but with a sharp needle and some precision, Nami was able to manage just fine. The sun was just beginning to hover over the horizon by the time she finished. With a grin, she held up her handiwork to admire it.
At Sanji's suggestion, she had indeed made a matching set. The feature piece of the necklace was a small one-fourth piece of a sand dollar, and strung bilaterally were alternating red-and-white-striped scallops, white baby ears, and tiny limpet shells up to the gold clasp in the back. The bracelet bore the exact arrangement, with a small piece of a sand dollar instead so it would not be cumbersome or heavy. The golden light spilling from the sunset jumped over her shoulders to catch the reddish and gold accents of the jewelry, accentuating the colors to make them almost glow. Nami set down the bracelet to pull the necklace around her neck and fumble with the clasp at the back; though she had put on plenty of necklaces in her life, for some reason today she seemed to struggle. She stuck out her tongue in annoyance as her fingers just couldn't seem to open the clasp wide enough to secure the damned thing. Suddenly, she felt someone's nimble fingers brush aside her own to take the necklace and quite easily do what she could not. As the necklace fell about her chest, she turned around to see who had helped her.
"Oh! Thank you, Sanji." Of course he would notice her plight from afar. He was crouched down next to her again. He gave her a cheesy grin before gesturing to the bracelet.
"Would you like me to help you with that, too?" When Nami shook her head, he knit his blond eyebrows together in slight concern, thinking that she was just being prideful. They shot up his forehead though when she picked it up and held it out to him expectantly.
"It's for you!" His face turned the color of the burning red sunset. He did not moving except to look at the bracelet, then her, then back at the shell jewelry. "It's a thank-you for all the little things you do for me, Sanji." He swallowed thickly and ran a shaky hand through his blonde hair. Nami could tell that he was absolutely overjoyed, so much so that he couldn't even direct his energy into squealing and wriggling about like he normally did. This made Nami exceptionally happy, because that just showed that he truly appreciated her little gift. With a happy smile, she picked up his hand to make his wrist available to her. He obediently left it hanging in open air so she could slip the bracelet on and secure the clasp, then turned it so the piece of the sand dollar was facing up. "Do you like it?" she asked, suddenly worried that she was misjudging his reaction. After all, Sanji wasn't exactly the jewelry-wearing type.
"Of course, Nami! It's exquisite!" Her doubt finally seemed to spark his brain into working again. A serene smile graced his lips as he admired it happily. "You worked so hard making it for me. How could I not like it?" He turned his wrist a little, watching as the bracelet shifted on his arm. "I'll wear it proudly, forever! It'll always remind me of my wonderful Nami-swan!" he grinned cheekily. Nami laughed lightly, and as she opened her eyes to smile at him, it came to her attention the way the light was playing over him. With his back to the setting sun, he was framed in shadows, perfectly accentuating the stark line of his jaw and his broad shoulders and his toned muscles bared by his muscle tee and swim trunks. His golden hair seemed to soak up the dwindling sunlight like an eager, selfish sponge, giving it an almost halo-like glow that directly contrasted those dark accents. Nami found a heat rising to her cheeks as the first thing that popped into her mind was handsome. Of course she knew that Sanji was a good-looking guy; girls wouldn't fawn over him like they did if he wasn't, but it was the first time that she had truly realized it. As he noticed her staring, the grin fell off his face to be replaced by a quizzical look. "What is it, Nami?"
"Sanji… Really, thank you for everything you do," she murmured. Her expression was blank, unsure just quite what she was feeling, but her voice was thick with some sort of emotion. He blinked at her, unsure how to react to her strange behavior. Nami stared at him a moment, chewing on her lip as she pondered her next move, before she willed her body closer to him. She saw him stiffen as she slid across the sand until their shoulders were just brushing. Nami could smell the scent of sea salt and coconut milk mingling with her own natural tangerine scent as her head rested in the area just above his shoulder. Sanji had a scared yet exhilarated look on his face as he watched her, unmoving. Nami tilted her head downwards to flutter her lashes at him, making a haze of pink graze his cheeks, before she craned it to the side a little so her lips could meet their target- just at the corner of his mouth, not quite his lips but teasingly close. She pressed her mouth there for a moment, then pulled back a few millimeters to breath huskily, "I sure hope you wear it forever, because I want all the girls to know you're mine." Nami had never thought of being jealous over Sanji, but in that moment, she sure as hell was. Sanji had always insisted on calling her his, and all of a sudden, Nami had the overwhelming desire to return the sentiment, after all that time.
"O-okay," Sanji exhaled sharply in response. The color of his cheeks mimicked the skin of a ripe apple now. The tips of his fingers were trembling lightly as he once again compulsively ran his hands through his hair, lightly curled and crimped from a day in the sand and sea. Nami's nut-brown eyes met his one of cloudy grey-blue, watching carefully, waiting for him to react. He blinked, and his eye flooded with warm admiration and dare she say, love. "Of course, Nami-swan," he purred while a hand reached up to softly caress her cheek. "I'm all yours."
"I mean it," she warned with a stern look. She was not stupid enough to think that Sanji's flirtatious behavior would disappear. His shoulders shook as he chuckled warmly.
"I mean it, too!" he reassured her. His hand slipped from her cheek back into her short waves of tangerine-colored hair, while the hand adorned with the bracelet rose to trace a line over the matching necklace hung at her neck; it ran down the string of shells to linger at the piece of sand dollar, which was situated right over her heart. "I love you, Nami," he breathed with so much want and need that it made Nami's heart constrict. It was painfully apparent that he had meant it, and had for a very long time, and Nami had spent so long writing off his affections.
Well, she was going to spend the rest of her life making up with that, that was for damn sure.
"I love you, Sanji," she whispered back. This time, she kissed him fully on the lips. He instantly melted against her as their mouths met in a sweet, emotionally charged kiss, simply pressing together and savoring the feeling off it. His hand dropped down from the necklace to curl around hers, holding it in a tight embrace. Even with her eyes closed, Nami could feel the warmth of the sun rapidly fading as the horizon swallowed the sun, but it was all right; spreading outward from her pounding heart was a gentle pulsing heat that filled every fiber of her being, leaving her humming with warm, fuzzy energy. At the moment Sanji pulled away, the sun bid the earth farewell, falling under the curtain of night and glittering stars. Even without the sun's golden hue, Sanji still looked beautiful, as his blonde hair was dyed silver by the cool light of the celestial bodies above. They stared at each other lovingly, quite content to just do so, until a polite, awkward cough made them both spin around with alarmed expressions.
"Sorry to interrupt a touching moment, but Luffy is having a meltdown about dinner," Robin smiled in slightly amusement before gesturing to said rubbery pirate. From across the thin line of sand, Nami could hear Luffy's angry wails to the sky echoing in the emptiness, demanding meat right that instant. Sanji ground his teeth and muttered under his breath while he stood up and stomped over to grab Luffy by his rubbery neck and proceed to throttle him all while yelling at him for being impatient and ungrateful, while Nami watched with a mixture of defeat and amusement. "So, you and Sanji finally got together, huh?" Robin asked with a coy, playful smirk that made Nami flush. Of course it wouldn't escape the rest of the crew's attention that they were practically making out on the beach.
"Heh… Yeah. He finally managed to reel me in, I guess," she chuckled softly as her eyes drifted back to the cook. She caught the glint of the seashells against the dark backdrop of the sea at night and smiled wider, tracing her own jewelry with a finger.
I'm all yours, too, Sanji.