Fic post, part 1 of 3

[rainsometimes]

I’ve had this story on the backburner in a rough draft form for a fairly long time, and it might well have remained there but for scribe_protra’s professed interest and subsequent kind encouragement, which prompted me to feel better about it and to take the trouble to rewrite and polish it. So you can totally blame her - I mean, I’m completely responsible, of course! ^_^ Many many thanks to scribe_protra, however! And constructive criticism of any kind would be totally cool and very much welcomed.

The intro or prologue to this piece has a bit of a different tone from the rest of it – almost standalone-ish, except it does point forward – so I’m posting it separately. The rest will follow soon enough.


Title: Erratic Equilibrium
Intro/Prologue
Rating: G or faintly PG in this part; PG-13 in the rest
Setting: This part is after Enies Lobby but before Thriller Bark. The rest is after Thriller Bark.
Pairing: Luffy/Nami/Usopp
Summary: In which Luffy likes secrets, Nami likes balance, and Usopp thinks they’re all in over their heads



Disclaimer: The characters and situations of One Piece was created and is owned by Eiichiro Oda. They are used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. This fic is not to be used for profit in any way.



Luffy doesn’t mind secrets. It’s fun to have some secrets, to know something someone else doesn’t, to grin and hint and giggle about it until they lose their patience and start chasing you. He never winds up having those kinds of secrets for long, they just tumble out of you without you knowing how it happened. But they’re still fun while they last.

Then there are other types of secrets that aren’t hard to keep at all, maybe because he doesn’t think of them as secrets too much. They are just things that happen that he can’t forget but that there doesn’t seem to be any point in talking about, either. They fall into him somewhere and drift down to the bottom and stay there. Where they won’t get in the way.

To kiss someone seems to be like a third type of secret, more like the first one than the second because it’s a bit like a game and it makes you feel good. But it’s easier to keep quiet about than the teasing secrets are. Like not saying anything to anyone else is like holding hands with the other that no-one else can see, and he kinda enjoys that feeling.

Although when you think about it it’s not like he’s not holding invisible hands with all of them, not just the two he’s played that kind of game with. But... he can’t explain why, it’s just different in some way.

He doesn’t know why there’s only been those two so far but he doesn’t let it worry him either. For some reason, kisses seem to go with Nami and Usopp and not really with anybody else. At least not yet.

Maybe that will change someday, with the others, although he doesn’t think it will when it comes to Zoro. He knows he can’t kiss Zoro, because Zoro needs for him not to do that: because Zoro is the kind of person who thinks that you can only be really close to someone if you don’t touch them. Or maybe it’s more that he thinks if you know someone really well then you don’t need kisses and that kinda stuff, like it would only spoil things. Or something like that. Luffy isn’t sure what exactly, they’ve never talked about it – but he’s sure it makes sense for Zoro and so it does for him too. If he couldn’t let Zoro be Zoro he wouldn’t feel he was doing a good job being Luffy.

Nami, she’s the same as always, laughing and kissing him back, or smacking him and telling him to get lost, or rolling her eyes with a sigh telling him not to be so damn silly. Or maybe she’ll sneak up and surprise him with a peck on the cheek, or hand him a tangerine and a long deep kiss while going through his pockets, or just give him that sly deep knowing look only she ever does – or dozens of other things, all of them reliable and Nami-like and not confusing in the least, because he knows Nami.

True, sometimes it does seem she wants to do more than just kissing and touching and maybe a little rubbing, and sometimes Luffy thinks that would be nice and cool and probably really interesting. Only, so far she’s always seemed to changed her mind about that and said ‘okay, let’s stop for now’, so of course Luffy does stop, because it’s no fun if she doesn’t feel like doing stuff too. (And besides, Nami's punches can hurt a lot when she's mad.) But that part’s not new either. It’s just something else that Nami can do.

But kissing Usopp is somehow different these days, because now he never takes the first step anymore like he sometimes used to. And he always flinches when Luffy starts kissing him. That doesn’t seem good. On the other hand he never says no or pushes Luffy away anymore either. And he always kisses back a lot stronger and almost hungrier than before.

So it seems to be both a good and a bad difference. That is a little bit confusing.

Normally Luffy would just take the good stuff and run with it and not think about the bad stuff unless he absolutely has to, but

‘Luffy, not everyone can live their lives by always only looking ahead the way you do!’

he’s not sure he should do that when it comes to this.

So he waits. For what exactly he doesn’t really know. But since waiting feels like the right thing to do, he’s not worried.


Edit: Link to Part One

Comments

[serrende.livejournal.com]

Totally due to you, m' lady.

And thank you. <3