Chapter Text
Barefoot and with both hands on her waist, Nami stood in the middle of the room. Still with her wet hair wrapped in a towel around her head after having come out of the shower some minutes ago, she had put on a light blue dress but found the sandals that she wanted to match it with to be nowhere around.
Her brow slightly furrowed, she looked again at the usual places -wardrobe, under the bed, by the desk- but the situation remained the same.
More than half her shoes were gone.
She crouched again to look under their wardrobe. Her sneakers were there, and so were her flip-flops and a pair of flat sandals, but the rest of them had disappeared.
The ones on Robin's side of the closet were all there though, and nothing else seemed to be missing, a quick glance at the hanging items of clothing showed her favorite dresses, coats, and jeans all were there as well.
Nami sat back down on her knees and stared at the space where her shoes used to be with such dumbfounded bewilderment that she didn't know what to make of it.
She eyed the door when it opened and Robin entered with a book in hand.
“Everything okay, Nami?”, she asked walking up to the small library to leave the book.
Nami stared at her and opened her mouth a few times to speak, nothing coming out each time because she had no idea how to wrap her mind around this situation.
“Robin, I can't find…”, Nami sighed, baffled, and half lifted her arms to point at the room. “I don't– Where are all my shoes?? ”
Robin switched the book she was carrying for another one in the library and looked at the dumbstruck navigator sitting on the floor.
“Oh, Luffy took them while you were showering”
“What- Why?!”
“I don't know”, Robin said while staring at the book cover as if she wasn't convinced of that one being the right choice, “But he is throwing them off the board”
“WHAT?!”, Nami screeched and got up, sprinting out of the room so fast the towel fell on the way.
The moment she stepped out on deck she saw him, right by the railing, throwing one of her sandals away and carrying only a pair of boots on his other arm.
The fact that there were no more shoes around ran a chill down her spine.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING !?!”
Usopp, who had been fishing next to him, though not close enough, clearly aware of how this could end based on the look on his face, quickly fled to the other side of the deck where Chopper was mixing some ingredients with the same expression of fear, to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
Luffy threw one of the boots before turning his head in her direction.
Chest heaving and breathing rapidly, Nami stared at him holding the last one of her boots. His blank expression gave nothing away, he wasn't smiling, he didn't look scared when he saw her, he didn't even seem to mind getting caught, his eyes only slightly widened in recognition, and without breaking eye contact he lifted the hand carrying the last boot…
“Nonono!!”
And threw it away.
Nami ran to where he was, aware that no matter how fast she wouldn't be able to reach it, or that it wouldn't even matter if she did because the other had been already discarded to the deepest of the sea.
Holding onto the railing, Nami saw how the boot hit the blue sea with a low plop that hurt her in her heart and wallet and was lost to her forever.
“WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?! YOU THREW ALL MY SHOES!!”, she snapped at him, with a grip so tight over the railing that would soon move to his neck.
“No, I didn't”, he calmly said, “I left some”
One of Nami's eyes twitched.
“What- You… How- HOW DOES THAT MAKE THIS ANY LESS INSANE?!”, Nami screamed, shaking her arm in the space where her shoes were no longer.
Not once averting his eyes from hers, Luffy took a short intake and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at her as if she were the crazy one right now.
“I don't know what happened but ever since we reunited when you wear those shoes you get taller than me. I don't like it”, he said with a determined straight face and then his eyes gazed down towards her feet. “You don't need to be barefoot, I left all the flat ones”
Nami followed his gaze down to her own feet out of instinct, she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
“I'm not taller than you, we are the same height!!”, Nami snapped back at him, hand waving in between them.
“Right! So when you wear those-”, he pointed with his right hand and a tilt of the head to the sea, “- you get taller than me. You can't be taller than me, I'm captain”
“That doesn't make any sense!! Pretty much all the crew is taller than you!!”
Luffy almost took a step back at that as if she had just confronted him with some revealing piece of information that unraveled all his thinking.
Nami heard Usopp's snort and she snapped her head in his and Chopper's direction with a glare so menacing that recoiled his laugh right back to them pretending what Chopper was doing was the most interesting thing in the world.
“Either you two go get my shoes at the bottom of the sea or scram”, she threatened and the both of them wisely chose to scram.
Then she looked back at Luffy and with an eyebrow raised, edged him for an answer.
“Yes, but uh- But you're a woman!”, he said, but the little stutter betrayed the conviction he meant his words to carry, and by the look on his face it was clear that it had been the first thing that had just come to his mind to justify his reasons.
Nami closed her eyes and massaged her forehead.
“Robin’s been taller than you since day one, Luffy”, she pointed out with an exasperated sigh and then looked at him with a smile that was all but nice, and a hand stretched out in the direction of the cabin, “And all her shoes are perfectly fine in our room”
Luffy gulped with the face of someone caught between a sword and a wall. Logic was catching up to his reasoning and he was beginning to see the problem he had gotten himself into, yet he still was determined to be right. The lightbulb of an idea popped up in his brain and with a smile he clapped his fist with his palm.
“Robin is older than us, so it's okay if she's taller!”
“What kind of misogynistic eight years old logic is that?!”, Nami exclaimed, stomping one foot forward in his direction.
Luffy angrily puffed out his cheeks and took a stomp in the same manner in her direction. “I don't know what that word means but you can't be taller than me, a kiss would look weird!!”
Nami blinked, taking that step forward from earlier back, “What?”
“What?”
“What did you just say?”
“I DON'T KNOW YOU CAN'T BE TALLER THAN ME!”
Face getting slightly warmer, Nami bit the inside of her cheeks and for the first time since this craziness started, she wasn't really thinking about her shoes. She crossed her arms against her chest and shifted in place, not sure how to react to this new piece of information that had just been thrown at her.
“When we dock onto the next island you're buying me new shoes, you hear me?”, she said with a tilt of the shoulder, making an extra effort in trying to push back the smile that wanted to flash on her face at what had been said before. “I don't care if that leaves you with no money to eat”
And if it did, she was going to end up buying him his favorite meat.
“Fine”, Luffy stubbornly said, hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet as he slightly kicked some dust off the floor.
Nami sighed and turned around to go back to her room, thinking that her hair was probably a mess because she hadn't had time to dry it off correctly when Luffy spoke up again.
“But flat ones”