Thank you for your patience.
When Nami moved on, she took some of the spring with her. The city was much greyer and colder without her fiery character and warm smile.
At least in Sanji's opinion.
And his brothers', if the never ending torrent of thinly-veiled begging for her number from two of them was something to judge by. He just sighed and blocked them. Again.
But if there was something to be said for a Nami-less Paris in spring, it was that the grey and cold and sudden bout of persistent icy rain kept some of the tourists at bay.
This did, however, not help Sanji in the slightest, not since that fateful day when Zeff's restaurant had been tagged in some 'Ten greatest obscure places' list online and the queue started going around the block rather than just hanging around the entrance. He had been running ragged since sunrise and would do so until long after the last lanterns and fairy lights of Montmartre had been extinguished and he wouldn't have it any other way.
But it was still pure murder on his poor back. However much he loathed accepting Zoro's expertise in anything, he probably should start that back exercise program he had recommended.
"Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome. Table for one, coming right up," he greeted the next person in line, craning his neck to see if the table he had been counting on was cleaned already. Gone for a few years, and already the staff were beginning to slack off–
"Vinsmoke Sanji?"
A somewhat familiar deep barytone edged with surprise made him whip his head around quickly enough for a loud crick to form and pain to shoot through his neck. Fine, there might be something to those stretches Zoro was always harping about...
"Trafalgar?"
But no, his watering eyes didn't play a cruel trick on him as he massaged the aching juncture of shoulder and neck. It was Luffy's thesis supervisor, and the bane of Nami-swan's existence if certain moments in their irate group chat was to be believed, in the flesh. He looked surprisingly formal in a well-cut suit, spotted hat nowhere to be seen.
A harumph behind him, accompanied by a quick slap to the back of his head courtesy of Zeff reminded Sanji of his duties and he showed Trafalgar to the now acceptably clean table.
"Not to be rude, but what the fuck are you doing here?" he asked as he handed Trafalgar a menu.
"Are you this nice to all your patrons?"
"Fuck off."
Trafalgar merely raised an eyebrow and opened the menu. "Just here on business."
"Didn't know you had business in Paris."
"My business is mine."
A prickly silence filled the space around the small table, skittering along the red-and-white checkered tablecloth and coiling around the unlit candle.
But Sanji was good at those. Years of practice with Zoro had honed his skills at being just the right amount of annoying until the other snapped.
He knew how to stand to be just on the wrong side of intruding on anothers' personal space. He had perfected th skill of humming out of tune in a pitch that slowly turned the other's brain to mush.
He could time his breathing to grate across the nerves of another like a cheese grater across a window pane, if need be.
Finally Trafalgar snapped the menu shut, an annoyed furrow between his brows. "Fine. I have a research project going on with Université Paris-Saclay. Our project manager recommended this place. Said it was the best tartiflette she'd had."
Sanji couldn't help but stand a bit straighter at the words, professional pride taking over for a moment. The queue spoke for itself, but it was always nice to hear someone appreciate your cooking. "It bloody well is. All's made in-house. But the matelote is even better-"
"You know your worth." Against his will, Law was impressed. It was seldom someone was so forthright with acknowledging their own skills, although from what he knew of the Frenchman, he would be one of the more direct ones.
"-but neither of those is right for you." Sanji regarded the older man for a moment, head cocked to the side. He then apparently came to some sort of conclusion as he nodded to himself, refilled Law's water and gathered up the menus. "I'll get you your food."
"I haven't ordered?"
"Ta," Sanji said over his shoulder, moving towards the kitchen.
For the first time in a long time, Law sat stunned at the sheer audacity of a blond man.
Of course, when Sanji came out with a small cast iron pot filled, it was delicious.
"Hate to admit it, but you were right about the food. It is delicious. Although I'm curious to know what the tartiflette tastes like now."
"For future reference and orders, this was quenelles de brochet. And you'll just have to try the tartiflette another time," Sanji said as he refilled Trafalgar's water once more and took away his suspiciously clean plate. "It is really good, just wrong for the weather today. Last week, Nami—"
And Trafalgar choked on his drink.
It was interesting how far water could spray from an unsuspecting person.
Sanji filed the reaction away for later as he handed Trafalgar a pile of napkins.
Meanwhile, Nami was lost.
This was a very unfair state of affairs, since she never got lost, but somehow the mix of modernist and neoclassical houses, interspersed with the frilly touch of baroque work and clean lines of renaissance construction, had managed to turn her around somewhere.
And her phone was dead.
On one hand, it was completely understandable as she had spent the last leg of her train journey in a video call with Vivi, giving her a tour of the southern German countryside through the windowpane of a moving train. On the other hand, it was very unfair, in Nami's unbiased opinion, that she didn't have access to any sort of map when she needed it the most.
Of course, she knew her general location as well as the address of her temporary apartment, but that didn't help when she didn't have the map of the city memorised yet.
"För alla huvudlösa helveteshundars hiskeliga—"
"What's a pretty girl like you swearing like that?" an amused voice behind her asked.
If Nami didn't have nerves of steel, honed by years of living with Usopp and Luffy, she would have yelped.
Now she only eased her stance a bit, like Zoro taught her, before turning around with her hands balled into loose fists, ready for anything.
Well, almost anything.
Anything except the hat on the guy's head.
Before her stood a man, not much taller than herself, clad in what looked like a slightly singed lab coat.
And the most atrocious hat she'd seen since Usopp lost a bet with Luffy and had to wear a hat of his choosing for a week.
It had not been pretty, whatever Luffy claimed.
"...I'm sorry, but what is that on your head?"
"You don't like my hat?" The man said good-naturedly as he flicked the neon pink brim of his bright green hat. "I'll let Peng know that his gift is still not working as intended and yet another woman has been repulsed by it."
"I'm sure it's working exactly as he intended," Nami said with a smile, eased by both the man's ability to laugh at himself and the respectable distance he kept to her. "And I'm just cursing my phone's abysmal battery life and the fact that I can't find my new apartment." Something hit her. "And how did you know I was cursing? You don't sound Swedish."
"I'm Scottish, actually, but there's just something about the tone of a cursing voice that tells you all you need to know," the man said with a shrug. "You're new in town? Well, let me help you, fair maiden! Where are you going?"
"I thank thee for the compliment, good sir," Nami answered with a laugh. "And I'm looking for—"
Shachi, as the kind stranger introduced himself as, helped her find her way to her new apartment just around the corner from the Technische Universität München, the host university of her exchange term. He then cheerfully forced her to accept an invitation to one of the many Biergartens scattered around the city, as well as introduced her to the rest of his research group who had been out for their weekly afterwork.
They managed to keep up with her drinking pace, when even the battle-hardened rugby players from the Welsh rugby team, in town for a friendly match and to, for some peculiar reason, promote rugby in the hallowed land of Fußball, fell down in snoring heaps around them. An impressive feat in itself, her respect was only truly earned when a tall postgrad with a black and white bobble hat noticed her pinching his wallet.
"You are a quick one," she laughed and handed him back his wallet. "I wouldn't have expected that from a postgrad."
"I'm not known as Tiger for nothing," he said, preening a tad under her amused smile.
"You are not," Shachi scoffed. "You are known as Penguin."
"Oy!" The-man-formerly-known-as-Tiger said, cheeks turning rosy. "Don't torpedo all my chances with this lovely lady."
"Those chances were dead in the water," Shachi said with a smirk. He was quickly becoming one of Nami's favourite persons in this part of the world, and not only because he kept buying her beer. "And your name has nothing to do with it."
"Shut up."
"I'm sorry," Nami interrupted. "But what was your name again?"
"...Penguin." The blush on the taller man's cheeks spread over the bridge of his nose.
Nami startled. "You're really called a penguin?"
Shachi let out an undignified sound, something halfway between a chortle and a guffaw. If the guy apparently named after a marine bird could get any redder, he'd probably burst into flames.
"你好。 我叫彭光荣。"
Nami stared.
The guy translated.
"I'm called Péng Guāngrón, but most people call me Penguin around here."
"…all right…"
"And with all the introductions over," Shachi cut in, throwing an arm around his blushing friend, "What are you doing here, fair lady?"
"I'm here on my exchange term," Nami answered, taking a swig of her beer.
"Why Germany?" Shachi asked. "What drew you to this bureaucratic and bratwurst-loving part of the world?"
"Why not?" she shrugged. "Beer and football, what else can you wish for?"
"True." Penguin and Shachi laugh in tandem, the din of the beer hall wrapping them all in a warm cocoon.
And so the first few weeks of Nami's residency in Münich flew by as the few days of February moved into the grey skies of March. Shachi and Penguin proved to be a great diversion and their excellent tours of the city helped her get acquainted with the lively Bavarian capital.
But not everything was as rosy-cheeked as Penguin when she shot him a beaming smile.
Although the courses were interesting and the city beautiful, Nami couldn't help but feel homesick from time to time.
She missed the sounds and smells of the Sunny and Sanji's cooking. Her nights were no longer interrupted by sudden swears or screams as Usopp braved the Shed, and she could finally keep her snacks out in the open since no wandering rubber-hands threatened their paltry existence. She missed Chopper's soft snores when he fell asleep in front of the fireplace and Zoro's excuses for being lost once more.
Her tiny studio, although cheap ('Don't ask and you won't have to tell' as Sanji very mysteriously had put it when he gave her a slip of paper with a number to call) was verging on claustrophobic. So she took to roaming the streets.
The training regimen she had asked Zoro to create for her after that horrible night in November required her to take regular runs, which she now adhered to with slightly more regularity than she had back at home. She also started taking the long way home from class and saw the city turn from grey winter to the first light greens of new leaves on the trees. In one of the smaller parks close to her apartment, she even found an orchard with both apple, plum, and cherry trees, which suddenly were shrouded in white and pink, the petals slowly drifting in the breeze.
And she walked. She walked up the shores of the river Isar and around the Numphenburg castle's neo-baroque Botanical Garden. She trekked past roads named after Galilei, Kepler, Röntgen and Liszt and mapped out the paths of the Grubenpark, the Tierpark and the Olympiapark. She got to grips with the surrounding countryside and even found her way up to the Neuschwanstein castle a time or two, to the utter delight of Vivi and Rebecca who made her send approximately a thousand pictures from the fairytale castle with its white spires and blue roofs, perched high upon a mountaintop.
She had known the two of them were fairytale enthusiasts, but when Vivi asked her to try and break into one of the castle's many towers to get a better shot of the dramatic Alpine surroundings, she'd had enough.
One beautiful March morning she was loitering around the English Garden, drinking a cup of tea and scrolling through her latest social media feed, as a notice from Usopp popped up on her screen. Vaguely intrigued by the onslaught of emojis used, she opened the Sunny's group chat.
A pinned message greeted her: a beautifully rendered picture of Zoro flashed at the top of the chat, the words "WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE!" printed beneath a sepia photo of their resident sword-master.
Who had apparently gone missing.
U: Anyone seen Zoro?
N: Is he gone?
S: For good?
U: No, since last Tuesday
C: His phone is in his room :(
N: Let's just hope he finds his way home when he gets hungry enough
L: he's not a dog nami :(
U: And the man survived on berries and mushrooms a month when he got lost in that Swedish forest.
U: He won't get home just because he's hungry.
N: What can I say, Swedish berries are delicious
C: Yes, Nami, but the mushrooms were poisonous
N: He survived, didn't he?
S: He did :(
L: RIP :(
It was at times like these that homesickness hit her with an extra ounce of force behind it. She could see the way Usopp would sit curled up on the sofa, brows furrowed as he perfected the shading on Zoro's WANTED!-poster while Chopper sat beside him, compiling a list of potential places Zoro could be. And Luffy would be draped over the backrest, complaining that they were boring and declaring that 'you're being silly, Zoro always finds his way home, eventually'.
Nami shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought. No use in ruminating on things she couldn't change.
It was a beautiful day. The leaves were just about to burst forth from the barren branches; there were children playing in the muddy fields which would become grassy lawns before long; and there was Penguin, dripping wet as usual.
Just a normal—
"Penguin?" Nami exclaimed, eyes round as she tried to take in the scene before her.
Penguin, clad in a dripping wetsuit and carrying a surf board under one arm, was waltzing up the garden path, leaving a string of wet footprints in his wake.
"Nami! Great to see you!" the tall man exclaimed, a pleased grin spreading over his face.
"Pardon my French, but what the fuck?" Nami stared at his dripping hair, the combination of surfboard under his arm and wetsuit the last thing she'd expected to see on a cold March morning in the middle of a German park.
"There's a surfing spot just down there," he said, gesturing down the path still decorated with his wet footprints. "I usually go surfing when Shachi goes running."
"Oh." Nami craned her neck and could just make out a black-clad person falling down in a stream a few hundred meters down the lane, the next one in line waiting a breath before they threw down a board and jumped on. "I didn't know there was something like that here."
"It's fairly popular," Penguin said. "I was just wondering if I should wait for Shachi, but it's getting cold, so—"
"Shachi?" Nami cut him off, noticing an approaching figure. "Who's coming up now?"
And right enough, the unmistakable red shade of Shachi's hair came slowly into view round the bend and soon enough the man himself was wheezing in front of Nami's bench.
"You were… quicker.. than you.. said.." Shachi panted, hands firmly planted on his knees and back bent.
"Someone's out of breath," Penguin said in a sing-song voice, the curve of his broad smile taking a mocking angle.
"Oh, shut.. up.."
"Get over it," Penguin said good-naturedly. "You'll get back to it soon enough."
Shachi stretched, hands clasped overhead. As he saw Nami's questioning mien, he shrugged, shifting his weight to stretch out his hamstrings. "Unfortunately our research project has been a real pain and I haven't had the time to run as I use to."
"Let me know when you're out next time and I'll join you," Nami said. "I've been slacking off since I got here and Zoro would kick my ass if he—"
A sudden tightness in her throat cut off the rest of her words. Zoro. Who was somewhere.
And even though she knew he'd manage, she still wasn't there. She wasn't with the others to joke about his appalling sense of direction and scold him when he finally found his way home.
"Everything all right?" The concern evident in Penguin's voice was touching. Nami blinked a few times, squashing the tightness in her chest down to manageable levels.
"Sorry," Nami said. "Just thinking of home."
"I know the feeling." The soft smile on Penguin's face told her he did actually know. Nami wondered what had caused that knowledge to be born. "And I also know what could help."
He exchanged a look with Shachi, in which a surprised eyebrow quickly turned into a pleased arch.
"Come skiing with us!" Shachi exclaimed, a bright grin splitting his face.
"Skiing?"
Surprised, Nami leaned back in her seat. Of all the things she'd expected the two of them to propose, going skiing was fairly far down the list.
Especially since Penguin had started shivering lightly in the brisk March air, the reality of standing around dripping wet having caught up with him.
"Come join us next weekend. We're going skiing in the Alps with a few friends of ours. Want to tag along?"
Thoughts of home and her family disappeared in the face of the proposal of a fresh field of snow, the last vestiges of homesickness buried under the avalanche of hopes and expectations.
"Sure," Nami said with a grin. "It's been a while since I was on a pair of skis."
"Great! If you could just input a phone number into this phone here so we can get a hold of you…"
"There are easier ways to get a girl's number," Nami said with a laugh as she saved her number into Penguin's phone. "But I'm for once looking forward to your call," she finished with a wink that sent Shachi blushing and a smile that sent Penguin reeling.
This would be fun.
A comment would mean the world to me - I read and treasure every single one, and they motivate me to continue working on this fic!
All credit for Penguin's name goes to the great coderedalert on tumblr! Go find them, their art and writing is phenomenal.