One Piece x Reader Oneshots (NO REQUESTS)

Closer (Zoro x Reader) SOULMATE AU

You felt soft sunlight on your eyelids, filtered through cheap motel curtains. The smell of freshly made instant coffee—bitter but welcome nevertheless—roused you from sleep, though it was still not enough to mask the scent of the cigarette smoke that permeated the very walls of the place. But you didn't mind. As far as mornings in motel rooms went, this was pretty close to perfect. Especially when said coffee was being brought to you by a half-naked man in grey sweats that left little to the imagination.

He set the coffee down on the stained nightstand, running one hand through still-damp green hair. You smiled sleepily up at him.

"Mmm, good morning," you said.

"Morning," he grinned back.

You sat up and stretched, sighing appreciatively as your joints popped. "What time is it?"

"Just after nine. We got plenty of time."

You peered at him curiously from under your lashes. "Plenty of time for what, Roronoa?" you teased. You took the opportunity to really appreciate him in all his post-shower glory. Droplets of water still clung to his bronzed skin, sliding down his bare chest to catch in the waistband of his sweats that hung low on his hips. The edges of a tattoo were just visible beneath his left hip bone, raw and wild and everything that embodied Zoro. You tore your eyes away from it. Looking only made it hurt more to know that some stranger bore its counterpart when it should have been you all along.

Zoro noticed the downturn in your mood and tackled you to the bed, peppering kisses over your face and neck, before lavishing attention on your shoulder where your own tattoo stood out like a beacon on your skin. You flinched away from the touch of his lips and he pulled back, the skin between his brows crinkling in a slight frown.

"Hey," he said, running the pads of his thumbs across your cheek bones. His eyes captured yours, daring you to look away. "I love you. No ink is going to change that."

"You've never met them. You don't know that."

"Would you ever go back to him?"

"Not in a million years."

"If you can walk away then so can I. Trust me, [Name]."

"It's not you I don't trust. It's fate that's trying to keep us apart."

"Then we keep running. As long as we need to."

You smiled then. "And never look back."

He grinned back. "There's my girl. Now, we have an hour before we need to check out of here and the this is the first time we've had a real bed in a week."

It was mornings like this you lived for. Quiet motels in the middle of nowhere. No one to recognise you, no one to judge you, to hold you back or tie you down. You could take as long as you needed—it was as if time itself waited for you, the occasional truck thundering along the highway outside the only sign it was even still moving at all.

Some mornings it got away from you, and you would miss your checkout time. Neither of you minded. You would simply pay for another night—you had nowhere to be. On the road, time didn't exist. Only the feeling of each other's skin in the back of your Land Rover, of the sharp sting of teeth on your shoulder, mismatched tattoos bared shamelessly to the world. Together, you felt like you could live forever.

But fate doesn't like it when you disrupt its plans.

"Babe, wake up, we're nearly there,"

You opened your eyes blearily and looked at the time. Almost 1am. "Wow, you only managed to get us lost twice this time," you teased.