Good Night. Tonight, Nika Luffy Got So Excited While Kissing Zoro He Burned Both Of Their Tongues. Zoro

thinking about how none of the strawhats have ever known a luffy without zoro.

everyone joined the crew to witness this oddly content and peaceful, terrifying duo. their dynamic is sweet and funny, almost gentle, something you would expect from childhood friends who have been next to each other for so long they don’t always need words. and then again, they are something else when they are in battle.

they trust each other like they are extensions of themselves, they know each other inside and out like they are telepathic, they get each other so completely.

i’m sure everyone who joined the crew looked at them and must’ve thought at one point that there has never been a time where they have not known each other. until nami tells them, oh, they met a few weeks before i joined.

the shock that must come from learning their bond is nearly as young as all of theirs, and not a product of existing next to each other for years.

how baffling it must be to watch them save each other like it’s breathing, to rely on each other without question or thought in fights, and to realise they only spent such a marginal time alone before everyone else began to join them.

to never know a luffy without zoro, or a zoro without luffy, it must be hard to ever imagine a time where they weren’t by each other’s side.

Stop Smoking, We Love You

I wrote a little thing based on @unkat's chilaios EMS AU, which has consumed my little pea brain. you don't need a whole lot of context though. 1k words, cw mentions of medical trauma, smoking, drugs. title comes from the car seat headrest song which makes me misty eyed thinking about my stupid boys.

Chilchuck relished the icy cold breeze on his sweaty face as he burst out into the rear parking lot of the hospital, the one for the employees that visitors still park in. He patted himself down until the sharp corner of a fresh pack of Newports hit his palm, and he remembered he’d been trying to use the inside pockets after he’d accidentally dropped a pack during a call and wasted thirteen bucks and tax before he’d even opened the damn thing. He was fortunate enough to have remembered his lighter, too; Senshi’s visiting family this weekend and he has no one else to bum a light from. He’d gotten in trouble the last time he asked a patient out of desperation.

He flicked his zippo and lit it in one smooth motion, a party trick that had long worn out its novelty and was just about to put it to the menthol-cool cigarette between his lips when two large hands entered his vision. One clapped the zippo shut and the other pinched the cig by the filter, tugging both out of Chilchuck’s grip.

“Yoink.”

“You mother fucker—”

Laios laughed as Chilchuck lunged after the precious nicotine clutched in his big hands, held just out of reach.

“This doesn’t look like twenty feet to me,” Laios grinned.

“I was going to hold it in until I reached the grass, fuck off, alright?”

“Then you won’t mind if I walk with you?”

Laios returned what he’d taken, and Chilchuck snatched it back. “Fine, fine, whatever. Come freeze your ass off with me.”

They crossed the parking lot, stepping carefully across black ice and hopping the curb to stand in the grass, a foot beyond the premises. Chilchuck made pointed eye contact with Laios as he stuck the cigarette between his lips and flicked the lighter open and shut, taking a long drag. He debated breathing it in Laios’ face, but decided to turn away. He blew a thin plume of smoke that caught on the brisk wind and whipped away. “Happy?”

“Not exactly,” Laios admitted. “You shouldn’t smoke, Chil.”

Chilchuck scowled. “Oh, here we go… listen, it’s my right to poison my body however I want. Just look at our patients.”

Laios fought a grim laugh and failed. “Hey, you asked.”

“What’s it matter to you anyway?” Chilchuck asked, slurred around the filter. He took another long drag and tapped out the ash into the frozen grass.

“As a medical professional, I prefer not to watch people die.”

Chilchuck released the smoke through his nose, rolling his eyes. “Preference doesn’t matter much to us, does it?”

“I guess not.”

Another long drag. He’d somehow blasted half the cigarette already. “You sound like my youngest,” Chilchuck breathed, with a fondly exasperated smile. Laios shifted around, his cheeks going pink in the cold. “She’s in the middle of some kind of health course and it’s got her all freaked out. ‘Daddy, don’t smoke those, they’ve got rat poison in ‘em!’” Chilchuck said, affecting a raspy falsetto. “It was kinda cute, but she was pretty upset,” he sighed. “She was crying. Must be a pretty heavy-handed program.”

“I had that growing up,” Laios said. "They had a cop come in and everything. Showed us pictures of tracheotomies.”

“Is that what they’re doing?” Chilchuck hissed. “She’s nine! She’s too young for that shit. I’m gonna complain to the PTA.”

“Hey, it kept me off. Do you want her on it?”

Chilchuck’s mouth drew into a long, thin line. “I guess not.”

They stood there, Chilchuck smoking, Laios doing fuck all with his hands in his pockets. Chilchuck wondered why he was out here at all if he hated cigarettes and smoking so much. It was biting cold, blustery, damp. It was a holiday weekend and there was only a matter of time before they got another Narcan call, he could be catching a nap before rush hour, but he was here.

“Does it help?” Laios asked. “With the stress, I mean.”

“Gives me an excuse to step out,” Chilchuck shrugged. “Gives me something to look forward to. Gives me a reason to breathe in and out for a few minutes that isn’t that dippy yoga shit.”

“Have you ever done it? That dippy yoga shit?”

“Hell no.”

“You want to try it? I can show you a few poses.”

Chilchuck choked on smoke, something he hadn’t done in twenty years. “You? Yoga?” The ass definition suddenly made a lot of sense.

“I don’t take classes, but you can learn a lot from YouTube videos.”

“Hm.” It had been the class aspect that turned him off the most. It felt somehow more embarrassing than just rocking up to the gym at three in the morning and dissociating on the treadmill for a few hours. “I’ll think about it.”

“I think it’d be fun,” Laios said, and Chilchuck almost believed him. “And it’s helped me, you know. After rough calls.”

Chilchuck sucked down the last of his cigarette and blew it upwards, a brief break in the wind allowing it to coil in upon itself in midair, minute particles glittering in the warm, flickering glow of the light post and simmering down in his lungs. He leaned down to smash the smoldering filter into the curb, putting the butt in his junk pocket to avoid being further nagged.

“Alright,” Chilchuck relented. “Why the hell not?”

Laios beamed at him. Chilchuck could think of a thousand reasons against meeting up with his boss to do anything that didn’t involve getting a beer, but looking at that self-satisfied grin gave him one very good reason in his favor. “It’s a date.”

“No it’s not!” Chilchuck squawked. Laios skipped away. Skipped. “It’s not a date, Laios!”

“See you then!”

“Nice HR violation!” Chilchuck screamed. “Mother fucker.” He muttered to himself, tapping his pack angrily against his palm and flipping up a lid for one more, just to spite him, and looked down at the neat rows of little paper cylinders, pristine and fresh.

Chilchuck crammed the box back into his pocket and trudged inside.  

zoro coming back after the timeskip with a red sash as a part of his iconic, base outfit is something i am fascinated by.

red, a colour so uncommonly associated with zoro; it’s the antithesis of him. the only time we see zoro intertwined with red is when he is decorated in blood, whether it’s his own or countless others. red is just not a character colour of zoro's, like we see all the strawhats lend themselves to colour palettes and personal preferences. as a character he is shrouded in black and green, with blue and white as secondary variations when the arc calls for an outfit change. he is peaceful like a winter's breeze, grass tipped in frost, and dark like the grim reaper's cold embrace.

zoro is not red, he is about as red as he is light pink or neon orange. red is, while also opposite to green on the colour wheel, opposite to his characteristics. yet for return to sabaody and onigashima he seems to wear it like a good luck charm. always when the situation is planned and monumental will we see zoro have a small token of red with him each time. quite unarguably, red means one thing in one piece. even more, red means one thing to zoro. red means luffy.

so a red sash? coming back after the timeskip shrouded in green and black, understandably for zoro, with an additional searing red sash around his middle. dressing for the final battle against kaidou and all his men, adding a contrasting red sash to his entirely black outfit. zoro wears red in significant yet small ways like it's something he doesn't own. zoro wears red like it's something to always bring with him, not like a fashion choice.

and that makes so much sense. zoro, sentimental and loving, would wear the colour of his captain at the centre of his outfit like a medal. he would long to be reminded of luffy, especially during those two years apart. zoro follows luffy with such eagerness i can see him already, choosing his outfits with purposeful swelling and devotion in his heart. zoro wears red, not because it's his own, but because it is luffy.

the situations and how he wears it are additionally significant. zoro wears red for the strawhat’s most important ordeals, like a symbol of his loyalty, a subtle sign of pride and alignment. he also wears it in his core outfit more than anything, like it’s a fragment of his very foundations. red is an intrinsic piece of his identity, luffy will always be integrated in his heart, eternally a part of him. lastly, he wears it as a sash; what holds his swords. it's like zoro's tying everything precious to him, his captain and kuina held against him, luffy holding onto wado. his two treasures.

zoro's red sash is a small detail i really love.

just watched a production of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee where they made Mitch Mahoney a butch lesbian and Douglas Panch another lesbian. Mitch carried douglas in their arms this is the best day of my life

*enemy attacked*

*Nami and Usopp got scared.*

Zoro's only priority: LUFFY. Save. Luffy.

Also,

The way he doesn't want to let go of Luffy. He just gently place it on Luffy's shoulder...

He's so gentle...

zoro’s lifelong isolation and his unspoken elation to finally have a home (expressed by his unwavering protection and devotion). paired with luffy’s lifelong abandonment issues and clamber of loneliness; how relieving it must be to have someone devoted to you, to think of you as a home he cannot lose. even their issues & insecurities wordlessly assure and complete each other, zolu soulmates in every way

Kuina would've loved Luffy.

Luffy doesn't care about gender, race, biology or any of that shit. If you piss him off, he'll tell it directly to your face. If you hurt his friends, he'll kick your ass. 

You're a girl? So what? He'll punch you in the face if necessary.

Oh, you're a fishman who is known to be 10x physically stronger than an ordinary human? Biologically impossible to beat, you say? What a lame excuse. You hurt his navigator. You're done for. 

Kuina would've loved Luffy.

If Kuina says to Luffy that her dream is to become the World's Greatest Swordsman, Luffy wouldn't laugh at her or judge her like her father or all the other adults do. He would've smiled brightly. He would've cheered her on! He may even think she's cool!

Oh, if only you could have met him, Kuina. Zoro muses as his gaze falls on the sword that holds both his and her dreams together.

If only you had met him. I know you would have loved him too.

And Zoro knows, deep in his heart, she wouldn't mind that their dreams are now tied to Luffy's as well.

zoro unlocking conquerors/supreme king haki while having a flashback about luffy, explaining him as the reason he did so, was insane narratively.

zoro’s devotion is as unquestioned as humans’ need for oxygen, his loyalty is as sure as the need for ground beneath our feet. but to place luffy at the center of even his willpower and ambition, that’s something.

supreme king haki is an unteachable, one in a million power that’s tied with having ‘kingly’ qualities. but zoro doesn’t want to be a leader, he relishes in following. he states, with a picture of luffy in his mind, luffy commenting that he needs no less than the world’s greatest swordsman, that he made a promise. his promise to kuina and luffy is at foundation of his drive.

zoro’s supreme king haki does not stem from the ambition of a king, it comes from wanting to be his king’s very best soldier. he wants to be the greatest, and he wants to be no less than that for luffy. a king, sure, but in the way that a king would answer to a god.

when asked “so you intend to be a king, then?” zoro’s initial instinct was simple, “what?” because that had never even crossed his mind. but he agrees shortly after, with the image of luffy in his mind, “that’s right.” and he became the king of hell, serving a god of the sun.

zoro doesn’t have ambition to conquer, not in the same way luffy does, but he wants to conquer whatever stands in luffy’s way. his ‘kingly’ attributes are accelerated by devotion, like a king would devote his life to his country, his everything. while becoming the world’s greatest swordsman is a convoluted example of a king, sitting atop a throne of symbolic power, i think it’s more accurate to call what zoro unlocked ‘supreme soldier’ haki. ‘conquerors’ haki in the way a marshal would lead an army for his king, and not the king himself. conquering the battlefield as a victory for not only himself, his ambition interconnected with others (those he loves).

i don’t mean to diminish zoro’s ambition, to be the world’s greatest swordsman is a king in itself and that should be recognised. but nothing can detract from the fact that as he unlocked this power, the power of ultimate will, his mind was full of luffy and his smiling face. luffy has always and will always be at the base of zoro’s goal, since the day he met him. becoming the world’s greatest swordsman was no longer solely tied to kuina but now equally his captain, who could have no less than the world’s greatest swordsman.

and what an interesting development we saw happen in front of us. comparatively, the reason for every strawhat’s dream is born from their past, but we witnessed the reason behind zoro’s dream evolve in present time. he no longer strives for kuina alone. he will be a king, because it is what luffy needs as well. he will be the world’s greatest swordsman because he’s got a promise to keep to his captain and his best friend.

a one in a million power, unlocked as a result of a promise. zoro’s devotion is indescribable, his loyalty and his love is quite literally one in a million. if not even rarer as we have never seen an instance of supreme king be activated for someone else. i cannot articulate the beauty of it

So... I found this amazing hermitcraft au by @the-twilight-forest and the first page is a doodle of grian and iskall, and then some fanart of a one shot.

The second photo is just a head cannon that if grian gets a little out of hand they bring one of his parrots (yes he has multiple, change my mind), a jukebox, and a few music discs and grian just watches the dancing parrot.

I'm sorry for the crappy quality these are very late doodles I had to draw to show my love for this au!

canonically jealous tummy ache zoro is soooooo embarrassing for him and he knows it! bro knows the entire world sees him as luffy’s second hand man & first mate, that he’s been with luffy since day one, that he IS strong and loyal and fierce and these are all qualities that luffy values, that he understands luffy on a nearly telepathically linked level and their bond transcends definition……and yet the second luffy compliments how strong or cool someone else is he cannot bite his tongue fast enough to stop himself from being a little bitch about it