Experience

By: Liete

Disclaimer: Alas, One Piece is not mine.

Nami was brilliant and beautiful, her navigation skills unmatched and with a great body to boot. No one would ever guess that she had about as much experience with love and the displays of affection that went along with it as a young child. All she had were fantasies and others' experience to build a flawless façade of someone who was educated, so to speak.

She had used her body to get out of many a tough scrape, but provocative implications were the extent of those gestures. She'd always escape or knock out whoever she was trying to fool. She had never even kissed anyone, keeping a silly dream of her first kiss being amazing and from her true love instead.

But finding out that even Luffy had been kissed was almost too much. She had something of a reputation to maintain, even if Luffy couldn't care less about that kind of thing.

Nami didn't even remember how the subject had been brought up, though Sanji might have been involved somehow. Anyway, she had ended up in a very uncomfortable conversation with Luffy as he sat on his usual seat on Merry's head.

"Yeah, girls in my town were always making me do it." Luffy said. "I don't see what the big deal is. I always thought they were wet and messy."

That was her cue to refute that statement, but she honestly didn't know if kisses could be anything but what Luffy had just described.

"The only thing you like is food," Nami replied as nonchalantly as she could. Luffy didn't need to know, and wouldn't know if she didn't tell him.

Luffy tilted his head and frowned slightly. "I like you, too."

It was Luffy, so that was a completely harmless remark. Still, Nami's cheeks flared up and she didn't know what to say. He jumped from his perch and approached her, and her heart rate increased tenfold until he was right next to her and she was frozen in fear and anticipation.

Luffy bent forward and Nami's breath hitched. She was surprised he didn't comment, considering that her heart was pounding so loudly that she swore the entire Grand Line could probably hear. He was going to kiss her, she realized and she slammed her eyes shut at the last moment.

It was clumsy, but pleasant. Not amazing like she had hoped, but not the sort of annoying mess that Luffy had made it out to be. It was simple and sweet--kind of like Luffy.

"That wasn't as bad as I remember," Luffy mused with a grin, backing away from her slowly.

She returned the grin nervously, but quickly cleared her throat in an attempt to regain her composure.

"Yeah, you're not that bad, Luffy," she said coolly and folded her arms.

"We'll have to do it again!" Luffy exclaimed, his already impossibly wide grin spreading as he returned to his perch on the bow.

She was glad he turned away, because her cheeks flared up again. She licked her lips slowly and smiled to herself. That was one less thing she had to fake, and it seemed she'd get more of that experience she supposedly had. Maybe that conversation wasn't so bad, after all.