Chapter Text
Zoro is waiting up on the couch when Sanji lets himself in, and he immediately sets his tablet down and looks up, attentive and concerned. “Hey, how did it–”
Sanji doesn't let him finish, striding across the room in a few steps and bending to press a kiss to Zoro's lips, too excited, for a moment, for words. Zoro makes a startled noise, and Sanji laughs helplessly and pulls back so he can grin at him.
Zoro raises his eyebrows. “So, it went okay?”
Sanji laughs again. He feels light and carefree, chest bubbling with relief, ready to float right off his feet. “Reiju,” he announces, barely remembering to keep his voice down so he doesn't wake up Kuina, “is four months clean and sober.”
“Shit, really?” Zoro asks, face lighting up. “That's great.”
“It's amazing,” Sanji says. His cheeks ache with a grin that hasn't faded since he left. “She's got a job, she's staying at a sober house over in Baterilla, and she said she'd really like to meet you.”
Zoro’s grinning now too, eyes soft and fond. “I'd love to.”
“Her schedule is a little tricky to work around,” Sanji warns him. He can't stop smiling, dances back a few steps and bounces in place to try to work off the frantic, delighted energy coursing through him. “She's working part time so it varies from week to week, but she said she's got early afternoons free all next week, if you have a longer break between clients? I can bully Patty into giving me my lunch break actually at lunch time for once. Or, shit, if we wait till this weekend we could go somewhere with her and Kuina, she thought the card was sweet and I know Kuina would love to ask her about her hair–”
“Hey, hey.” Zoro reaches out and catches one of Sanji’s wildly gesticulating hands, and Sanji makes himself stand still as he squeezes Zoro’s fingers. Zoro’s still smiling, but it looks a little tighter. “I would love to meet Reiju,” he repeats, voice and expression sincere. “But I want to do that before we introduce her to Kuina. Nami probably will too, when she gets back.”
Sanji stops bouncing. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, that– I mean, of course, yes, that's…” He can feel the giddiness fading. He squeezes Zoro’s hand tighter as the sudden drop leaves him feeling unsteady. “Why?”
“It's nothing bad,” Zoro says quickly. “I am really happy for you and Reiju both, okay?” he says. “And I'm not saying anything about her or her recovery, or that I don't believe it, or anything like that.”
He takes Sanji’s other hand. Sanji doesn't move, just stares down at him with wide eyes and tries not to feel hurt.
“It's just that Nami and I don't know her,” Zoro says. “You know I'd want to meet anyone first before introducing them to her.”
Sanji presses his lips together. “But especially someone like Reiju, right?”
Zoro didn't exactly scope out Baratie before he and Kuina came by the first time.
Zoro hesitates a moment, then huffs a sigh. “Yeah,” he says honestly. “Because four months isn't that long, and Kuina’s little, and I don't want her to get hurt.”
“Who says Reiju would hurt her?” Sanji asks incredulously, and Zoro quirks an eyebrow.
“You did,” he reminds him. “Just last night, you said Reiju shouldn't shouldn't be around her unsupervised.”
“When I thought she might be using,” Sanji snaps, yanking his hands back. Zoro lets go without protest. “But that's obviously not an issue now, and getting lunch all together isn't leaving them alone unsupervised, anyways. Things are fine; it's not a problem unless you make it a problem.”
Zoro raises his other eyebrow to match the first. Sanji groans.
“What the fuck do you want me to tell her?” he asks. The excited energy from before is twisting into something hot and tight in his chest, all that adrenaline melting into familiar anger at Zoro acting like every other person in Sanji's life who’s treated Reiju like a monster over the years, like she wants to be sick. “‘Hey, sorry, you can't meet my whole family right away because Nami and Zoro have to– to run a background check and interrogate you first because they think you're gonna shoot up in front of our kid–’”
“That's not what I said,” Zoro says sharply. “Don't put words in my mouth. Reiju’s doing a hard thing, and I get that and I'm happy for her, and I don't want to make it any harder. But my priority is Kuina, always. If doing that makes me the bad guy, then that's fine.”
Sanji’s mouth flaps soundlessly. He can’t tell if he wants to cry or scream.
“But she's okay,” he says, and damn it, his voice cracks. Crying it is, then. “She's here and she's okay, so it's fine.”
“Curls.” The frustration bleeds out of Zoro’s expression, and his voice is damnably soft as he pushes himself to his feet. He reaches out slowly; when Sanji doesn't move, Zoro settles his hands on his hips and tugs him closer. “I want this to go well,” he says softly. “I do, baby. But for Kuina’s sake and Reiju’s, I think we should go slow, okay?”
Sanji's lip wobbles despite his best efforts to stay steady. “I just want this to work for once,” he says. “I really think it can this time.”
“Me too,” Zoro promises. “And whatever you need from me, I'm happy to give you. But Reiju’s still recovering, and Kuina can be a handful. I don't want to throw a little kid at her until we know they'll both be okay with it.”
Sanji searches Zoro’s face, looking for any hint of pity or disgust, and finds only genuine affection and concern. And there goes Sanji blowing up and getting defensive at the first hint of resistance, bristling at Zoro's hesitation like he'd suggested Reiju should never be allowed around any of them, like he's ever been anything but supportive when Sanji talks about her.
Sanji groans and drops his forehead down onto Zoro's shoulder. “Fuck. Yeah. Sorry.”
“It's all right.” Zoro steps closer and wraps his arms around him, rocking them gently back and forth. “You're going through the shit right now, I get it.”
“I really want this to work,” Sanji whispers again against his shoulder. “She's doing so well, and I just…”
Zoro presses his cheek to Sanji’s temple. “I know. You want it to last.”
Sanji nods silently and slips his arms around Zoro's waist. He hasn't even taken his coat or shoes off yet. He feels ready to collapse, exhausted after the sudden whiplash of emotions, but he just sags against Zoro instead. “Tonight did actually go really well,” he mumbles. “It was basically perfect.”
“That's good,” Zoro says. “I'm glad.” He pulls back just slightly, and Sanji lifts his head to see him grimacing. “I'm sorry for dropping that as soon as you got home,” he says. “I was gonna wait to say anything, but you brought it up and I got…”
“No, it's fine,” Sanji sighs. “You're right. I can’t pretend everything is normal just because I want it to be. You and Nami should get to know her first. I get that.”
Zoro may have a somewhat overdeveloped protective instinct, especially when it comes to Kuina, but Sanji can't really fault him for being concerned about this. Reiju is complicated, and even clean and sober, she can be unpredictable. She's found plenty of ways to break his heart over the years even without relapsing, and that's with him being used to the disappointment. Kuina hardly has that practice.
And that's assuming Reiju doesn't relapse again.
“We should…” He swallows, then forces himself to continue, “Even if you guys feel okay with her meeting Kuina, she shouldn't come to the house.”
“We don't have to talk about this right now,” Zoro says.
“No, it's fine,” Sanji says tiredly. “It's just that she used to come to my apartment sometimes and, you know, hopefully that won't even be an issue anymore. But if it is, I don't want her to show up here with no warning.”
“Okay.” Zoro sweeps a hand up and down his back, a counterpoint to the unfairly soothing swaying. “If that comes up, you can tell her it was my idea, if you need to. I don't want to make things harder for the two of you.”
Sanji ducks his head again to hide the way his face crumples at that, tucked into the crook of Zoro’s shoulder. “Do you ever get tired of being perfect?” he asks thickly. “It's gotta be exhausting, right? You can be a shithead for a while if you need to.”
Zoro snickers and tilts his head to press a kiss to Sanji’s temple. “Yeah, I'll get right on that. You need to shower tonight? I can wash your hair.”
“Fuck. Off. You stupid. Perfect. Man,” Sanji grumbles, punctuating each word by thunking his forehead against Zoro’s shoulder. “Yes, please. Fuck you.”
Zoro tugs him towards their bedroom, and Sanji just barely manages to keep from tearing up again when he sees that Zoro’s already laid out one of his own hoodies and a pair of pajama pants for him and grabbed a fresh shower melt from Sanji’s stash under the sink, clearly anticipating that he'd need some comfort after meeting with Reiju, however it went.
Sanji recounts the evening to him while they shower, tilting his head back into Zoro's hands and filling him in on everything Reiju told him and how she's doing. Zoro, in turn, catches him up on the chapters he missed and tells him that Kuina was very careful to save him some pizza, making sure to set two slices aside in the fridge before she and Zoro even ate.
The easy conversation, Zoro’s steady hands, and getting to replay the evening with Reiju relax the worst of Sanji's wound-tight nerves. He's not as thrilled as he was earlier, nearly delirious with excitement, but this easy, peaceful contentment feels better anyways, a little less fragile and desperate. Things aren't perfect, but they're better than they have been in years. He can be happy about that while he braces himself for any more hurdles up ahead.
Zoro retrieves his tablet from the living room and settles into bed while Sanji finishes getting ready, reading quietly out loud to himself as he flips through his emails. Sanji listens with half an ear to his barely-audible murmurs, a soothing background noise as he puts lotion on and grabs a pair of socks. It's possible that joining Zoro and Kuina for bedtime stories so many times has had a Pavlovian effect on him; he can feel himself getting sleepy as Zoro’s steady, methodical voice washes over him.
Fuck, speaking of bedtime with Kuina.
“Hey, has…” Sanji hesitates a moment, fiddling with his hoodie strings, then sucks in a deep breath and asks, “Has Kuina been telling people I'm her stepdad?”
Zoro blinks. “Has she?”
“Apparently she told her teacher that her stepdad was picking her up today,” Sanji says with a small shrug. “I don't know if it was a one time thing, or what.”
“She hasn't said anything to me.” Zoro watches him carefully over the edge of his tablet. “That okay?”
“I don't know,” Sanji admits. “I mean, it's fine, obviously. It doesn't bother me, it just…” He trails off. “It's okay with you?”
“‘Course it is.” Zoro sets the tablet aside and settles back against the pillows so he can give Sanji his full attention. “I mean, you kind of are her stepdad, aren't you?”
Sanji winces. Zoro squints. “Okay?”
“It's not bad,” Sanji says quickly. “It doesn't– I'm not– ugh, fuck this.”
He gives up on maturity and distance and flops onto the bed next to Zoro. He lands with his head near Zoro’s hip, feet dangling awkwardly off the end of the mattress, and Zoro’s hand lands in his hair.
“I need you to just be nice to me about this because Reiju’s got me all in my head so I'm not gonna make any sense,” Sanji mumbles into the blanket.
“I'm always nice,” Zoro says, then immediately disproves that by asking, “But what's your excuse the rest of the time?”
Sanji tilts his head just enough to glare at Zoro, who smirks back and keeps playing with his hair.
“I've been thinking about my dad,” Sanji says quietly, and the smirk vanishes. Ha. Take that, supportive boyfriend who refuses to make jokes about Sanji’s mess of a childhood. Chalk one up for Sanji for ruining the playful mood.
Zoro rubs gently behind his ear. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Sanji sighs and rolls onto his side so he can see Zoro better. “It's just that… I can't have kids,” he says. “You know that. Obviously. But I always thought… I always wanted kids.” He worries his lip between his teeth for a moment, then continues, “And the last time I thought seriously about having them was before I really started transitioning, and I always thought…”
Zoro’s eyes are soft. “You thought you'd be a mom, huh?”
“Not like my mom fucked me up any less than my dad,” Sanji says. “She was just nicer about it.”
Zoro sweeps Sanji’s bangs out of his face, pinning them back against his forehead to keep his stupid cowlick from knocking them into his eyes again. His voice is carefully, deliberately non-judgmental when he asks, “Would stepmom feel better?”
Sanji makes a face. “I mean.” Zoro’s taking this seriously, so he does the same, stopping to actually consider it. “Better than stepdad,” he decides after a moment. “But then there's the whole other issue.”
“I don't want to make you uncomfortable,” Zoro says quickly. “Just figured it was worth trying.”
“No, I know,” Sanji says, dredging up a smile for him as he reaches up to grab Zoro’s hand. It means his hair immediately flops down over his eye again, but hey, at least he's holding Zoro’s hand now. Win some, lose some. “You didn't, don't worry.”
Zoro rubs his thumb back and forth across the back of Sanji’s hand for a moment, searching his face for something. When he speaks, his voice is soft and uncharacteristically hesitant. “Would it be so bad? Being her dad?”
“It's not…” Sanji trails off, frustrated with his inability to gather his thoughts, because he knows what Zoro’s thinking, knew exactly where his mind would go when Sanji brought this up, and he doesn't know how to phrase it to explain himself properly. “You're the first sort of… not-shitty dad I've ever known,” he settles on. “‘Dad’ was never something I looked up to or wanted to be. It’s always meant something really different to me than it does to you.”
Zoro’s brow furrows, and he fixes his gaze on their clasped hands instead of Sanji’s face. “Zeff?”
“Is a tolerable grandfather,” Sanji says. “And a disturbingly good great-grandfather.” He flicks his eyes down to their hands too, unable to look at Zoro’s expression when he says, “Look, he and I have worked all our shit out, right? We've talked everything to death, he's made his amends, and I trust him, but he…” He swallows past the lump in his throat. “He really wasn't good to my mom.”
It had been a brutal realization, all those years ago. He'd been old enough by then to know that Sora had been wrong about a lot of things, and he'd been more than happy to assume that applied to everything she had told them about her childhood. He'd cried for days when Zeff corrected him. Parts of her version were wrong—he was never violent, never hit her, never did any of the more horrible things she had insinuated to Sanji and outright described to Reiju—but enough of it was true to make Sanji have to seriously consider whether he was willing to keep the old bastard in his life. Missed her graduation, drunk at her wedding, too busy trying to drown his PTSD with whiskey to notice the signs of his daughter collapsing in on herself. He'd made things so tense and miserable at home that he'd all but chased her out of the house and into Judge’s arms.
Sanji might not have ever forgiven him for it, if he hadn't grown up watching Reiju running at a full tilt down the same path. He's learned how to keep loving people when they hurt him.
“It's not Kuina,” he says. “It's not even kids in general, it's just… being a dad.”
“Okay,” Zoro says, subdued. “I don't want to push you into something you don't want to be. Just…” He gulps, and Sanji’s eyes snap back up to his face. He's still not looking at Sanji. “If you talk to her about it, wait until you have a better name you want her to use, okay? She's a little kid, she won't– don't just say you’re not her dad, she won't get it, and–”
“Hey, hey.” Sanji lets go of Zoro's hand and scrambles up onto his knees, dropping himself unceremoniously into Zoro’s lap and grabbing his face. “I would never,” he says seriously, when Zoro finally meets his eyes. “Mosshead. Zoro. I love Kuina. I love her more than anything, I am not gonna just drop this on her, I promise.”
“Yeah,” Zoro says. His voice has gone hoarse around the edges. “I know that.”
Sanji loosens his grip a little, cradling Zoro’s face instead of just holding it. “It's just the word, sweetheart,” he says gently. “That's all. Not anything about what it means to her. I'm not about to make my shit her problem, okay? I want all the stuff that ‘dad’ is supposed to mean. I'm gonna be coaching her soccer team and crying at her graduation, and you're gonna have to arm wrestle me to get to walk her down the aisle one day.” It's his turn to stroke Zoro’s hair back from his face, short green mop tickling his palm. “I'm here till you kick me out,” he promises. “And even then, I'm suing you for custody and taking her with me.”
Zoro snorts and, ever the romantic, says, “Nami would very obviously get custody if there were ever an issue.”
“Then I'm seducing Nami.”
“She's a lesbian.”
“Then I'm detransitioning and seducing Nami.”
Zoro finally cracks a smile at that. “You're so fucking weird.”
“And yet here you are,” Sanji grins. It softens a moment later, and he slides his hand down to cup Zoro’s cheek again, fingertips brushing against his earrings. “Listen, whatever hangups I have about being Kuina's dad, I don't have any issue with her being my daughter. Okay?”
“Yeah,” Zoro says, softening. “I know that. I don't mean to– sorry, I just got…”
“Don't apologize,” Sanji says. “I've had something like five separate breakdowns on you in the last twenty-four hours. You've got some catching up to do.”
Zoro snorts and tilts his head up for a kiss. “Yeah, yeah, we're a couple of trainwrecks,” he murmurs against Sanji’s lips.
“Match made in hell,” Sanji agrees. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Zoro slumps back against the pillows, hands landing on Sanji’s thighs to squeeze gently. “For what it's worth, you're a really good… whatever you are to Kuina.”
Sanji snickers and flicks Zoro’s earrings teasingly, trying to hide the way that makes his heart melt. “I'm learning from the best,” he says blithely, then yawns. “Well, I'm about out of things to cry about tonight, unless you had something else?”
Zoro, in response, swats his thigh and unceremoniously shoves him off his lap, sending him tumbling onto the mattress. Sanji laughs and wriggles under the blankets, and Zoro, after checking that his tablet is plugged in and flicking off the lamp, does the same, immediately rolling onto his side and drawing Sanji back to his chest. Sanji sighs, exhausted from the early morning and the adrenaline crash finally catching up with him, and curls in close, head pillowed on Zoro's arm. He'll inevitably end up stealing the blanket at some point in his sleep and waking up in a cocoon by himself, but for now, the cuddling is nice.
“I'm glad tonight went well,” Zoro murmurs, and Sanji hums.
“Me too,” he says. “And we can try to get lunch some time this week? You, me, and Reiju?”
“I'll look at my schedule,” Zoro promises. “I'd really like to.”
“I'll text her,” Sanji says sleepily. “We’ll figure it out.”
He's half asleep already, but he still feels the way Zoro tucks him closer, hooking his chin over the top of Sanji’s head, and he hears the unshakable certainty in his voice when he says, “We will.”
Figure out lunch plans, figure out how Reiju fits in their lives, figure out how Sanji might be fitting into Kuina’s, figure out every new curveball life keeps throwing at them.
All problems for the morning. For now, Sanji closes his eyes and lets himself sleep.