Luffy is like staring into the sun.
At least, that is what Zoro thinks the first time he sees him. But then, his first coherent thought had been it’s too bright upon their initial meeting, looking up from glowering down at the ground to raising his head and squinting at a too big, self-congratulatory smile and do you want to join my crew?
Then it had been simple enough to blame the harsh sunlight blinding him, framing Luffy’s profile and that bright grin, and he’d bitten back the hell I will one minute and had a sword and an oath clenched between his teeth in the next.
And so Zoro follows the sun.
He follows and his skin reddens and blisters and peels; it splits at the seams and bleeds as he burns, and still he follows. It aches and cracks, and still he reaches out, twining his fingers through promises and a loyalty that will not bend.
Luffy curls a hand around his jaw and it’s a different sort of burning, flaring up into his eyes and down to his very marrow. And Luffy asks, where will you go? Nowhere, Zoro says as the words gather in his throat, raw and parched, and he chokes on them, anywhere.
His touch is a balm as fingertips skitter across his skin, soothing and pressing and digging and prying, and Zoro thinks he would burn again and again, blinded by the sheer brilliance of it all.
And then it’s dark out on the open sea, some nights, and then others too many stars dot the horizon, gathering up above them like they’re spilling out of the slit open belly of a giant, and Luffy tilts his head, blistering heat where he rests against his shoulder and looks at Zoro and says, I think I know where, and would you come with me?
And Zoro is a drowning man with a lungful of sea water, salt gathering with blood at the corners of his mouth and asks, of course, and where?
Luffy smiles and it’s a gathering of starlight and the sun, and it makes Zoro want to shove his fist into his mouth and shatter every one of his teeth, and Luffy would just laugh and bite down on his wrist and lay claim to his pulse point, like he doesn’t already live inside its every thrum.
No telling, he says. Will you still come with me?
And Zoro burns and it rages in the pit of his belly right into the raw skin of each scar, into his fingertips as they dig into Luffy’s scalp. How dare he have to ask, grin with the knowledge that he already knows the answer, and Zoro turns to follow the sun and says, yes, says I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
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Today I was reminded of the movie Baby's Day Out (AKA Home Alone but it's a baby), which I loved as a kid and haven't thought about in years.
And I had the thought, "if I watch this movie with the presupposition that this baby is a divine entity of chaos, will that make this movie more enjoyable to rewatch?
The answer to this question is obviously yes without even having to test it out, so I decided to make it a little more interesting and update my very scientific hypothesis:
If I watch this movie with the aforementioned assumption, then will that in fact make Baby's Day Out into the best version of The Omen??
I'm testing my hypothesis now. I don't think I've seen this movie in like 20 years. Man. It's hard being a scientist doing important science work sometimes.
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