Chapter One: A Din in the Dinning Room

Standard disclaimers apply

The incident began on what would have been a typical day for the Straw Hat crew, the sky was overcast, the wind was fresh, and the Thousand Sunny was moving along at a spanking pace. Nami's best estimates put them at arriving at the next island within two or three days and the crew had just sat down to enjoy lunch in the dinning room. The air was filled with playful banter and the occasional flash of temper as plates were passed and people helped themselves to another fine example of Sanji's cooking. With mouths full of fried noodle, none of the crew had yet noticed that both their captain and their navigator seemed to be unnaturally still.

In the cheerful hustle and bustle around the table Nami had suddenly felt a strange sensation across her thigh. It took her a moment before she realized that it was a hand gliding over her leg to gently grip her backside and squeeze. Nami froze in shock. 'Who the hell?'

In her growing anger Nami quickly scanned the table. Any person she might have classed as a suspect was sitting far away from her, then she noticed Luffy. Sitting two places down and across from her she saw that one of his hands was out of sight under the table and he was holding very still. He slowly raised his dark eyes to met her shocked gaze with an expression equally startled. Then the hand on Nami's ass gave another squeeze...

"GYAAA!"

"UWAAH!"

The crew choked on their noodles as Luffy and Nami simultaneously launched themselves backwards off of their stools with a shout. From the floor Nami raised a shaking finger at Luffy.

"Y- you pervert! You groped me!"

Zoro inhaled a noodle and started to cough.

"What?!" The crew exclaimed with various expressions of disbelief.

Luffy was staring at his hand as if he'd never seen it before. Nami got to her feet and stomped around the table toward him. Grabbing his vest with both hands she hauled him up to his feet and yelled.

"What the hell have you got to say for yourself Luffy? How dare you grope your beautiful crew mates backside?!" She gave Luffy a shake as he stared down at her with an expression of confusion and trepidation. To the side, Sanji began to light up with flames of wrath as Chopper slapped Zoro on the back in an effort to help him breathe.

"But I, I didn't.." Luffy trailed off.

"What the hell do you mean you didn't?! Pervert Captain!" Nami began to slap Luffy repeatedly across the face as her towering rage exploded.

Ussop raised a hand that still held a fork full of noodles. "Nami," he asked, "did Luffy really touch your..." His question died as Nami glared at him while continuing to whack Luffy across the cheeks causing his head to bobble slightly.

"Yes he did! No matter what he says to deny it."

Sanji cracked his knuckles in the background, his visible eye burning with a promise to bring a world of pain to his idiot captain.

"But this is very strange," said Robin from her chair, "Luffy has never done anything like this befor-..." Robin trailed off in mid sentence, an expression of mild shock stealing over her features.

Nami looked down at her in confusion then followed her gaze up to Luffy. The hand she had been using to hit him was now caressing his face. Everyone in the dinning room froze as in a breathless moment, Nami's hand went from resting against the fresh swelling on Luffy's cheek to a gliding curve down his jaw causing her thumb to brush over his bottom lip. Luffy swallowed hugely but otherwise held perfectly still. His eyes were as wide as Nami's felt as they gazed at each other for a full heartbeat and then,

"WAAH!"

The moment holding Nami frozen vanished and she threw herself backwards again. Luffy rocked back on his feet from the force of her push but remained standing. His features frozen in shock. It took another moment for the crew to react and then the dinning room erupted into pandemonium. Nami collapsed on the floor staring at her traitorous hand with a feeling close to panic.

'What the hell was THAT? I didn't want to... I had NO intention of touching him like that' Nami's brief moment of confused thought was interrupted. The din in the dinning room was truly impressive. Sanji was yelling at the top of his lungs and was only being prevented from pounding on Luffy by Franky's forceful intervention. Zoro was turning a frightening shade of violet and Chopper was preparing to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him. Ussop was running in place screaming something about one of the four signs of the apocalypse being fulfilled, and Brooke had decided to break out his violin to help him think of a skull joke to fit the occasion.

Nami slowly got to her feet, her face on fire with embarrassed confusion. She made her way out the door to the railing ignoring the ruckus behind her. Then she turned and jogged up the stairs and yanked open the door to the library and slammed it shut behind her. She needed to think. She paced around the room following the walls as she tried to analyze what had just happened. 'What the hell WAS that? I KNOW I didn't mean to touch him like that! That was weird, no, more then weird, Scary! That was scary! I had no control. I bet Luffy didn't either, he looked so surprised...' Nami's thoughts trailed off and she shivered. It was more than scary. When she had realized that he was squeezing her ass she had froze. Just like after when she touched his cheek. There had been a moment when she honestly could not have torn her hand away. She supposed it had been the same for him. She pressed her hands to her still burning cheeks and then clutched at her orange hair. She murmured, "What on Earth was that?"

Just then, a knock at the door sounded and Robin entered the room with faint strains of polka music mingling with what sounded like a bar fight drifting up from outside.

"Nami-san? I thought you might be in here, are you alright?"

Nami turned toward her friend with a strained expression. "Ah, Robin. I honestly don't know. What's happening with the guys?"

Robin smiled a bit ruefully, "Well Sanji-san did beat Luffy quite savagely, but he calmed down once Zoro got on his feet."

"By 'calmed down' you mean Zoro and Sanji started to fight. Geeze, this is nuts. Did Luffy say anything about it?"

"Well," said Robin, "I did overhear him say 'mystery hands' but his face was rather misshapen at that point so I might have misunderstood."

"No you probably heard right, it just means that he has no clue either. As usual." Nami sighed and collapsed on a bench cradling her head in her hands. her voice came up muffled.

"Robin, it was really weird. It was like I blanked out. Like touching Luffy's face like that had nothing to do with me or what I intended. I wasn't in control."

Robin looked grave, "That does sound concerning. Am I right in thinking that this is the first time this has happened?"

Nami snorted.

"Yes, perhaps that was a foolish question." Robin smiled gently.

"The whole thing is just too surreal, I can almost imagine that it was just a weird dream except.." Nami paused, "we haven't run into any devil fruit users lately, we didn't make any enemies at that beet farming island we visited last week, we haven't even seen another ship since we sailed. There's nothing to explain this."

"Hmm," Robin agreed. "Perhaps the wisest course of action would be to see how things play out now. It may have been an isolated incident."

Nami raised her head. "Do you really think so?"

"Well, we need more information before we can say for sure. It will be interesting to see what develops." She said with a small gleam in her eye.

"Heeey Robin, thats mean." Nami pouted and then rose to follow Robin out of the room. As they made their way out onto the deck she reflected on how grateful she was to have a female shipmate. Walking together she felt brave enough to face the rest of the crew and the awkwardness of the situation.

Robin and Nami made their way across the stern deck with the wind practically blowing them along. Nami checked her log pose and determined that they were still on course but a quick glance up made her decide that the sails needed to be adjusted to take better advantage of the wind. Another glance down to the grassy deck below showed her who was available to order around. She saw a slightly roughed up Luffy, Ussop and Chopper sitting on the grass in a circle. Chopper was applying a disinfectant to one of the fading bruises on Luffy's swollen face and Ussop appeared to be speaking earnestly to Luffy. Franky was at the helm and Brooke was beside him playing a playful waltz that seemed to keep time to the rhythm of the waves. Sanji and Zoro were nowhere to be seen but that was fine by her at the moment.

She gave a shout to get their attention and when they had all turned toward her she started yelling orders. Any questions they might have had for her were left unasked as the crew bustled about maneuvering the jib and gaffles just so and tying everything into place according to her directions. As Ussop and Chopper finished up this well practiced proceedure, Luffy snapped out an arm to the railing next to Nami and in the next moment was staring at her pensively from his perch beside her.

"Hey Nami. I'm sorry about before." He said and then flinched as if expecting her to hit him. He blinked and looked up when she did nothing. She was just staring at him with a confused and faintly angry expression.

"Did you do it on purpose?"

"NO! I mean, the guys said it was really bad to touch a girl like that and that I should apologize. I don't want you to be mad at me." Luffy's earnest band-aid covered face peered into hers, the wind toyed with the hat on its string around his neck and caused strands of his black hair to blow across his eyes.

Nami blinked. "I'm not mad at you," she muttered feeling uncomfortable. "And I apologize for touching you like that too."

"Shishishi! That's nothin', you hit me harder then that all the time!" Luffy exclaimed with a relieved grin.

Nami's temper flashed. "Idiot! I'm not apologizing for slapping you! I'm apologizing for the... way I touched your face."

"Oh that! That's ok, it didn't hurt a bit. It was really weird though." Luffy trailed off in thought and continued to stare at her as if his mind was far away.

Nami was about to ask him what he meant by that when she felt a strange sensation steal through her, she felt as though she was falling backwards into a dimly lit tunnel. As if she was watching it happen to someone else, she stepped closer to Luffy, moving from a casual distance to where she could feel the body heat radiating off of him. She stopped inches from his face between his knees which were splayed to either side as he balanced on the railing. She raised her hands to his shoulders and rested them on him lightly. She stood like that for a moment gazing up into his face in a way that would make her blush fiercely when she remembered it later. But it was gazing into his eyes that helped her bring her back to herself. Luffy was holding perfectly still, in fact he wasn't even breathing. In his dark eyes behind the surface of her own face reflected from too close a distance, she dreamily watched the transition from simple curiosity at her behavior to confusion and then anxiety. And then it was as if his eyes were burning into hers, begging her to snap out of it. The cobwebs drifted away a bit and she became aware that she was just centimeters from his face. With a mild horror she realized that she was going to kiss him. She blinked at Luffy in wide eyed panic, unable to do anything about the situation. His startled exhale puffed against her parted lips as she leaned toward him and then,

"Cinco Fleur!"

A sudden blossoming of arms from the deck railing and even from Luffy's chest pushed Nami away from him. The strength left Nami's legs when she broke contact and she collapsed as the strange power that had held her captive vanished. Luffy rocked on the railing from the force of Robin's push but didn't fall. He stared down at her with a blank expression that did little to mask the shock he was obviously feeling. Nami gazed up at him from her sprawled position on the deck at Robins feet with an expression of horror on her face. She raised a trembling hand to her mouth and breathed,

"Oh, hells!"

My very first fanfic! Please let me know how I did!

*A/N: If someone is choking on their food and they are still coughing, don't hit them on the back. If they are coughing that means they are still getting air and the coughing mayl help bring the food item out. Whacking them on the back will make them loose their air and then they could start choking in earnest. Isn't that a fantastically romantic A/N =) please review, I really appreciate it.