Despite the exciting and numerous guests on their ship, Lucy makes sure to spend time with her nakama. She's missed them after all, and she hasn't stopped feeling a little thrill of joy in her chest when her senses register all eight of them on the ship, going about their business.
Mostly, Lucy doesn't have to think about it to make time with her friends. She just does. Robin teaches her to read and she plays games with Usopp and Chopper and sometimes Franky if he's up to it, and listens to Brook play and tell jokes as she watches Sanji cook and Zoro seeks her out almost as often as she finds him to kiss in spare corners of the ship or sometimes just be in each other's presence for a while or spar or sometimes he just wants to hold her while he naps, because Zoro gets grabby when he's sleepy, though he'd never admit that.
(The only time she minds are when she's really not tired and none of her other nakama are around to entertain her.)
With Nami it's a little different though. She has a much more active job on the ship than most of them do, one that requires her near constant attention, and a million little adjustments to course as she gets new information. Lucy has no idea how Nami charts a course from the little twitches of her fancy log pose, and wind speeds and sometimes the shape of a single wave on the horizon, but she does. And because her job is so demanding, Nami sometimes spends the whole day up in the navigation library, only coming out to shout instructions to the crewmembers on deck and eat at least one meal in the galley with the rest of them at Sanji's—enforced through Lucy's—insistence. Lucy usually only sees her in the bedroom they share with Robin after they've weighed anchor, on nights like those, and then Nami's usually too frazzled and tired to do anything but sleep.
So sometimes, Lucy feels an itch, as it may be, to go and seek out her navigator, and make sure she's alright. She can't have Nami falling into the same trap as Torao, after all—they need everyone in top shape as they approach Dressrosa.
And maybe, just maybe, she wants to continually reassure herself that she still knows her crew, still has their dreams rightly in her heart.
It's been two years, after all. Things could have changed for any of them.
So Lucy swings into the navigation library five days into their journey to Dressrosa. Nami's been working hard for most of the journey, lost in a pile of books and tracing routes on charts with a compass—a mathy one, not a spinny one—in precise strokes. Lucy doesn't understand any of it, wouldn't be able to read a chart if she was handed the step-by-step instructions on how, but it just makes Nami cooler every time she does it.
She seems more relaxed today though, which is part of the reason Lucy bothered to interrupt her at all. Lucy learned way back on the Merry that she's more likely to get thrown to the foremast than anything if she drops in while Nami's in a frenzy.
"Whatchya doin'?" Lucy asks from the doorway, head cocked to the side. Nami's leaning over the desk with a look of intense concentration on her face, her eyebrows furrowed and her lower lip between her teeth as she makes slow, careful strokes with her fancy pen. She doesn't look up when Lucy walks in, but she doesn't throw her out, either, so Lucy figures it's safe.
"Drawing a map," Nami mumbles. She checks a list of figures on a pad of paper beside her chart, and makes another careful line. Lucy sits down in the chair opposite her, and watches with rapt interest. "Don't touch anything," she orders absently.
Lucy knows better than to do that, too, so she just nods and watches curiously as Nami makes little notations in the margins.
"You're like Robin, aren't you?" Lucy asks, suddenly. Nami looks up from her map, and just barely avoids dripping ink on the parchment when she starts a little in surprise. "You're a genius."
Nami's expression warms and a smile pulls at her lips as she puts the pen in its ink pot. "I'm pretty good with numbers, yeah."
Lucy shakes her head, grinning. "I can tell! Even if I knew all the math rules and stuff I'd never be able to do what you do. You're amazing, Nami!"
Nami flushes a little at the praise. "Thanks, Lucy." Then she looks a little wary. "Uh...you don't want me to teach you math, do you?"
Lucy wrinkles her nose. "No thanks. Reading's hard enough."
Nami lets out a sigh of relief. "Thank God. That's just a disaster waiting to happen."
Lucy nods in complete agreement. Lucy and math do not mix. She can count and stuff, and do basic things like adding and subtracting and, if the numbers are small enough, multiplication and division, but anything else is kind of beyond the scope of Lucy's grasp. Maybe one day, waaaaaaayy off in the future, when she's learned how to read to Robin's satisfaction, Lucy will ask Nami to teach her more math. For right now, that's what she has her navigator for.
"What's that a map of?" Lucy asks curiously, nodding at the chart between them. It's about three-quarters of the way finished, but Lucy doesn't recognize it at all.
"The western coastline of an island we passed yesterday," Nami tells her. "Didn't get close enough to get a full read on it, unfortunately, but I got enough for this much.
Lucy eyes the map in awe, because she doesn't remember seeing any islands so that means Nami's drawing the map entirely by the little twitches of her log pose. "Nami you're amazing," she repeats, meaning it. Then Lucy frowns. "But wait, you want to make a map of the whole world, right? So shouldn't we go back and get all the numbers for you?"
A pleased flush crosses Nami's face. "You remember."
Lucy frowns, making sure Nami can see the solemnity in her eyes, and the offense. "Of course I do." Her nakama's dreams are just as important as her own, after all. Lucy hasn't forgotten about any of it, not All Blue or Laboon or the True History of the world or her promise to take the ship to Raftel and back to Water 7.
"Well it's not like I run around ranting about it like some people I know," She snips defensively. Then she shrinks back in her chair, looking a little embarrassed. "Sorry. I shouldn't have thought otherwise."
Lucy frowns at her, a little dismayed. Clearly they've been leaving Nami up here alone too often if she thinks Lucy wouldn't remember something like her dream.
"Show me," She demands. "Your map. Show me what you have so far."
Nami blinks at her for a second, then nods in agreement, a little light of pride showing in her eyes. "All right." Then she reaches into a drawer of the desk, pulling out a big leather-bound book. It's about three inches thick, and the cover is about a square foot in total. It looks big and heavy and impressive.
"I incorporated some of my log in the maps, sometimes," she warns, handing Lucy the book. "Be careful."
Lucy nods, solemn. She's holding her nakama's dream in her hands. Her treasure. She sets it across her lap, feels the leather stick to her thighs, and eases the book open slowly, with the reverence it's due.
The first map is one she recognizes, even after years away.
"Orange town?" Lucy asks, a little bewildered. Lucy always got the impression Nami didn't really want to remember her life before Arlong Park was destroyed.
Nami coughs, clearly embarrassed. "I. Uh. Wanted to make sure all our journeys together were recorded properly." She smiles, and the expression is a bit softer than usual. "They made for some pretty good memories, after all."
Lucy remembers sunshine and sea on two swaying boats, and Zoro's gruff voice and Nami's haughty interjections, and agrees wholeheartedly.
The next is a map of Gaimon's island, which Nami generously titled after the odd little man.
"Guy spends twenty years in a box waiting for treasure that doesn't exist, he at least deserves to have the island named after him," Nami observes dryly. Lucy giggles in response.
The next is Syrup Village, and Lucy notices a note on the back of that one, detailing that they picked up another crewmember, and a proper ship there, and a list of the potential allies they still had in the village, as well as potential future enemies. Lucy finds it pretty doubtful that they'll ever run into Kuro again, but she supposes it didn't seem that unlikely at the time.
The next map is a broader shot, detailing the journey they took between the three previous islands, the currents, other small water features, and the time of year they sailed. Lucy's no navigator, couldn't follow a map to save her life, but even she's aware she's holding exquisite work in her hands.
It went on. The map of the Baratie included the monthly route the ship took in order to stock up on supplies and make itself available to as many seafarers as possible. Lucy wonders if Sanji helped after the fact, or if Nami asked about it on the ship.
Then there's Cocoyashi, with the ruins of Arlong Park demarcated in ink as a smoking pile of rubble. Then Loguetown, and then another wide shot detailing the previous three stops on their journey, before an even wider shot of East Blue at large, a bobbing line swaying from Orange town down to the City of the Beginning and the End, with the Reverse Mountain marked the lower left-hand corner.
"Wooooaahh I didn't know the Reverse Mountain looked like that!" Lucy says eagerly, observing the four conveniently placed canals.
"I figured it had to be something like that, considering how strong the current was and the general impossibility of it. But the three other sides of it are from reliable maps I found. No measurements then," she says, holding up her log pose.
Lucy blinks in realization. "Oh yeah, you were still using a compass." It's even more impressive, honestly.
Lucy looks through the book slowly, taking in each map with care. Nami was obviously careful—very careful—to take very precise measurements with each island and each stretch of seawater. Everything is drawn perfectly to scale and, maybe even more impressively, it's all consistent. The maps of some islands, like Alabasta, required more than one page, with Nami drawing first one half of the island, then the other to her normal scale, and then a zoomed-out version of the whole thing, the geographic features expertly drawn and marked with care. The back of the big map explains Vivi's story, and ultimately, her decision to stay behind.
It almost has Lucy tearing up, the obvious care in Nami's words. Lucy still misses Vivi too.
It goes on and on. Every island they've visited, every stop along the way. Their course is perfectly charted, perfectly recorded in this beautiful labor of love Nami's crafted with her own two hands and a few measurements.
Then she gets to Sabaody, and the maps just stop, the book blank.
"Nami…?" Lucy looks up curiously, and sees Nami look down.
"I left eight pages blank. I figured we might end up at the places everyone was sent to one day and I—" Nami blinks rapidly. "I figured I would add those islands then. Whenever we got to it." She reaches over to turn the page a few times, and Lucy is treated to a map of Weatheria, the island Nami spent the last two years on. It's from a birds'-eye view, but unlike the others it also includes a side-view, and an indication of the island's average height and general location.
"Oh," Lucy says quietly. She can't imagine a reason they'd go back to Ruskaina, but maybe if they visit Hancock sometime Lucy will bring Nami out to the island for her map. She smiles at her navigator. "I like it."
Nami smiles back, and Lucy flips to the next filled page, which is, of course, Fishman Island. Here, too, Nami had to get creative. The first page is a birds-eye view of the main bubble, the second a map of the palace, and the third a view of the island from the side, and on the back a list of instructions on how to get down there in the first place, and how to navigate the ocean from underwater.
"Jeez, Nami, no one's going to have another adventure again after reading this," Lucy says with a frown, unsure if she should be impressed or kind of sad at the idea of being the last discoverer of...anything.
Nami smirks. "Oh, I think they'll still find some adventure in it yet." Nami gives Lucy a wink. "I may have left out a few important details."
Lucy gapes, then laughs. "Nami that's mean."
"They'll sink or swim, it's not my fault either way."
Lucy giggles, and moves on.
Then there's a couple of maps like the one on Nami's desk right now—just unnamed coastlines, without much context. Then Punk Hazard, and a map of how they got there, whales and all.
Punk Hazard is the last map in the book, but Lucy has a feeling several more coastlines will be added soon, if the pile on Nami's desk is anything to go by.
"It's amazing, Nami," Lucy tells her seriously. "It's like being in all those places again!"
Nami's smile turns proud. "I've still got a long way to go."
Lucy nods vigorously. "Yep! We've got lots of adventures still." Then a thought occurs to her, and she cocks her head to the side. "Hey, Nami, didn't you see any islands while you were on Weatheria?"
Nami coughs. "I. Err." She flushes. "I...I still want to make a map of the world, but…" She shrugs, a little helpless. "I want to do it with the islands we see together." Nami's flush gets deeper. "That's why we don't need to go back to the islands," she says, gesturing at the coastline on her desk. "We'll get 'em next time around. When you're Pirate King."
Lucy blinks at her, feeling very...emotional, all of a sudden. Then she nods, a grin on her face. "Yeah, of course!"
Nami smiles in response, carefully replacing her treasure in the drawer on her left. "Now go bug someone else. I've got a map to finish."
Lucy nods, grins, and bounds away, but the knot of knowing unease in her gut is gone, faded into the ether, and knows all is well with her navigator.
"Lucy, for the last time, you cannot pull off a beard."
Lucy frowns behind the fake beard, turning to Zoro with a pout on her face. It doesn't exactly help the gluing process, but Zoro deserves a pout.
Zoro is unimpressed by her bearded pout, if the raised eyebrow is any indication.
Obviously Zoro doesn't get it. The beard is essential. She's in disguise, after all.
It's pretty clever if she does say so herself. She's running around Dressrosa as an old man. She's too slight to pass for a boy, especially when she's inevitably forced to fight, but with enough stuff covering her face and (very subtle, practically nonexistent) curves, she can probably pass for a once-athletic old man who's gone frail with age. So she's done everything—she's covered her hat with another, less conspicuous one, and got longer shorts out of storage, left her skirt and jacket on the ship. The shorts are loose—too loose for Lucy, but she has them staying up with an extra pair of Usopp's suspenders, so even though it's annoying, it's not a problem. And then she filched one of Zoro's old shirts, too, from before Sabaody—a black, short-sleeved button-up with cheerful yellow and orange sunflowers printed all over it.
Honestly, it probably wouldn't even fit him now—he's too broad in the shoulder and chest—but it swamps Lucy, covering everything from her elbows to her upper thighs. She's still wearing the black leather underneath, because she's grown used to it and there's always a danger of the shirt getting ripped. Or ripping it up herself, if she's outed as a girl and gets sick of it swishing around her midriff, like she already is. She's pretty sure Zoro won't mind much if it's destroyed.
Judging from the way he is oh-so-carefully not eyeing her shirt, he certainly doesn't mind that she grabbed it. At all.
He really does have a thing for seeing her in his clothes. At least it's an easy kink to satisfy, and it's not like Lucy minds. It's usually pretty beneficial on her end, at any rate, even apart from the many benefits of getting him turned on.
"Seriously, no one's going to buy that you're an old man."
Lucy sticks her tongue out at him and is rewarded with a mouthful of artificial beard-hair. Gross. "They will too! No one looks twice at a beard! They're inherently trustworthy!"
Zoro snorts, leaning back on the Mini Merry's rail behind him. "I think you might be overstating it."
"Am not!" The adhesive on the beard is finally starting to bond to her skin, thank goodness.
Zoro rolls his eyes and looks her up and down. Lucy suddenly feels kind of tingly and excited. The way she does when they kiss and their bodies start moving on their own and she can hardly think about anything except him and his hands everywhere and her hands everywhere on him.
It's not fair that Zoro gets to look at her like that when he's wearing a tux.
Zoro looks good in a tux.
Zoro looks amazing in a tux.
It makes her want to strip it off of him. With her teeth.
She thinks about their conversation the other night, the look in his eye when she asked him about sex, the desperate way he touched her, and burns a little, low in her belly.
…honestly, she gets why Zoro told her they should hold off just a little more. She does. She even agrees. Lucy still doesn't know what she's doing half the time when they kiss, and she imagines the effect will only be amplified during sex. But when Zoro runs around looking like that and looking at her like he wants to eat her, it's really hard to care about anything but jumping him.
(And it's second-nature to trust Zoro. With everything, anything.)
"…I guess you can maybe pull it off. So long as no one looks too close. Apparently people dress pretty bizarrely here anyway."
Lucy nods, remembering the frilly dress Nami showed her back on the Sunny—a find she picked up in Fishman Island which was, apparently, originally from Dressrosa. It was way too elaborate and girly for Lucy, which is why she ended up in Zoro's shirt and oversized shorts.
Lucy shuffles toward him, intending to present her beard for inspection. Zoro's arms open up for her automatically, which is a good thing because she manages to trip over some rope and nearly pitches into the sea—would have, if Zoro didn't catch her by the elbows and yank her back before him. Lucy's upper lip itches, and she tests the beard carefully.
"You look like a girl wearing a mustache, not an old man," Zoro complains. Lucy purses into a stubborn pout. He sighs.
"We need to disguise her somehow," Sanji protests from behind. Zoro looks up to glare at him and, probably unconsciously, pulls her a little closer, possessive and clearly annoyed at the interruption. Lucy can feel the beard start peeling away, and presses it back to her lips as Sanji continues. "She's even more recognizable than Torao."
"That's right, Cook-bro!" Franky agrees, "The others will bring the ship around tomorrow and drop Caesar off on the island at noon. Until then we gotta lay low, which means" Franky says meaningfully, flicking Usopp's nose, "we gotta cover up our most recognizable traits."
"What exactly do you think you can do about my nose?"
"My arm has a buzzsaw feature."
"Oh ha ha ha, good one. Like I've never heard that before."
"You can't chop off Usopp's nose!" Chopper protests, horrified. The little reindeer throws himself at Usopp, tears beading in his big brown eyes. Lucy just hopes he'll be able to steer the Mini back to the ship after they're through. "At least not without antiseptic and a sterile surgical environment!"
"Oi, didn't you go along with that a little too quickly?" Usopp asks, irritated. Then blinks. "Hey wait, what about, like, pain stuff?"
"Unnecessary."
"Oi, aren't doctors supposed to minimize pain?"
"Relax, Chopper, Franky's teasing," Sanji chides. Lucy smiles, because even Sanji isn't immune to Chopper being cute.
Usopp pries Chopper loose with a glare at the cyborg. "Yeah, he's just not very funny."
"Me and my many manly hairstyles resent that."
Lucy takes her hands away from her face slowly, carefully testing the adhesive. Zoro eyes it skeptically when it stays up, and then he reaches over to tug at it gently with one hand.
"There's got to be a disguise that doesn't involve gender reassignment," Zoro muses, looking a little resigned at this point. The mustache comes off when he tugs a little firmer, and Lucy reaches up to try and set the glue again.
Lucy frowns up at him, a little annoyed. Her costume is awesome, obviously. "Don't I look nice, Zoro?"
He freezes, and Lucy feels a flash of panic from him that seems sort of disproportionate considering the question.
Behind her, Franky snorts and Sanji snickers with Usopp. Lucy turns to look at them quizzically, and sees Kin'emon nod in solemn pity. Possibly for Zoro, possibly for the Straw Hats in general.
"Yeah, Sword-bro," Franky chuckles. "How does your cross-dressing girlfriend look right now?"
Lucy doesn't really get it, but for some reason she senses him panic more at Franky's question.
"I didn't know Lucy-san was devious enough for a trap like that," Sanji says admiringly. "She must have taken advice from Nami-san or something."
"Nah, Lucy's not like that," Usopp mutters, snickering. "She just does things like this on accident."
"Zoro?" She asks, thoroughly confused. She's more concerned about his panic than his fashion opinions at this point.
"I. Uh. Good?" He stammers. Coughs. "I. Um. Like the shirt." Then he blushes furiously, probably because he finally admitted he likes when she wears his clothes.
Lucy grins at him, still a bit bemused, but willing to move on now that his panic has subsided into embarrassment. "Thanks, Zoro! You look good too!"
Then, because she can and he looks really good and also a bit embarrassed, she tugs on his collar—perfectly cut to tease his collar bones and muscle underneath, the white and black striking on his frame and damn, Zoro needs to wear suits more often—and he lets her pull him down obligingly. Kissing through the beard is a little weird, but Zoro's mouth finds hers and tastes like sake and something kind of dark and spicy, just like always. Fingers press gently against her jaw, and she lets him angle her mouth against his a little harsher, leans into him eagerly, and she stands up on her tip-toes to press into him better.
"Public displays of intimacy and erotic interest are entirely inappropriate outside of brothels and concubine houses!"
"Oh shut up you old perv," Usopp rebukes.
"Jeez, who would've thought it would be worse after they got together?" Sanji complains.
"They smell weird."
"Chopper, either stop smelling hormone changes or stop telling us you smell them. It's weird, man."
"You two can't do that in town, you know. We don't know how open-minded this place is and Aneki's supposed to be a guy!"
Lucy pulls back, grinning. Zoro rolls his eye at her, but she doesn't need to hear his Voice or feel his heartbeat beneath her palm to know he's anything but irritated with her.
"Here, Zoro, you get a disguise too." Usopp shoves a moustache and a pair of sunglasses in his hand. Zoro sighs, shoving the glasses on and ripping off the paper to expose the sticky backing.
"Franky, you gotta do something about your shoulders."
"My shoulders are beautiful, Nose-bro. Beautiful."
"Your shoulders are noticeable. And you skip leg day."
"Do not bring up leg day, Nose-bro. Not cool."
"Sanji should probably wear a hat," Lucy adds absently, tugging at her beard to test. Zoro looks good with the moustache, which miraculously goes on in one try. Lucy is almost jealous of his clearly superior adhesive. "His cool eyebrows are swirly."
"Thank you for your consideration, Lucy-san!"
The little boat bumps against the shore and the six of them about to depart stand in anticipation.
"Alright, we're off!" Cheers Usopp, waving a goodbye to Chopper, who's settling himself behind the Mini's stern.
"To the land of passion!" Sanji declares, jumping to the rocky beach, and Franky follows him with a caution to be quiet on his lips as he makes too much noise himself.
Zoro makes to follow them when Lucy stops him, reaching out. He looks down at her, waiting for an explanation, an eyebrow rising above his dark sunglasses.
She doesn't have a reason for stopping him, exactly. Just a very important piece of information to depart.
Lucy lowers her voice, forcing him to lean in and making the gravity of her statement known, and has the gratification of watching his pupils dilate in surprise when she whispers, "You look good in a tux."
And then, before he can react, she reaches around and slaps him on the ass.
"Oi!" He protests, but Lucy just sprints away, giggling like mad and she can hear Zoro spluttering in either shock or irritation as he gives chase.
"Lucy! Get back here!"
Lucy just bellows in laughter, pushing her speed up the path to the village, and just manages to catch it when Chopper grumbles, "Oh, sure, I'm the weird one. Human mating rituals make no sense at all."
Seriously, when was the last time Nami's dream was mentioned/brought up? Like, she's frequently complimented on her skills as a navigator, but her dream is to make a map of the whole world, right? So she basically wants to make a world atlas. But we never see her do any mapmaking or any evidence that she's done that kind of thing in the past. I'm hoping that with the road poneglyphs, she'll make a "map no one has ever made before" or something. I'm just hoping she gets a role in that.
It's my head canon that Luffy really did steal Zoro's shirt during Dressrosa. Not in a shippy kind of way, just in a friends sort of way. I don't know if guys usually do that (?) but Luffy actually has done just that before, back on Skypiea. He runs around with a bracelet and armband the whole arc he stole from Usopp and Sanji, and that's according to Oda. Plus, that shirt really does look like the type of thing Zoro would wear pre time-skip. I think in the same interview where Oda confirmed Luffy was wearing Usopp and Sanji's stuff (btw, it's SO FUCKING CUTE that they lent him their stuff), Oda also said neither Luffy nor Zoro had any sort of fashion sense. So yes, I think Luffy stole one of Zoro's old shirts. It certainly doesn't look like the type of thing Luffy wears.
Well. Let me know what you think. There are many, many Dressrosa chapters, so good things are on the horizon.