Archive of Our Own ^beta

It would make sense, that of all ways to get their shit swordsman in bed is to wave a heaving mug of beer in front of him. Except Sanji’s known the guy for years now and was convinced that the mosshead had the romantic aptitude of a stagnant rock in the middle of nowhere.

But, no, not this time. Another port, another liberated island, and another feast in their honor later, Sanji witnesses firsthand that their stagnant rock can indeed pull. It’s not intentional, of course—why would anyone want to spare a brute like Zoro a second glance when the fairer sex is abundant, beautiful, and ready to be served all around them?

No, Sanji only notices after he matches eyes with a dancer flouncing in their honor—a beautiful woman with sharp eyes and plump lips and soft everything. During a lull, they sneak away to a quieter, unassuming bar and he vows to fetch her a drink.

“Don’t keep me waiting,” she purrs in his ear. It’s a melody so beautiful that Sanji has a hop to his own step as he makes it to a bartender. More specifically, the very empty bar.

Sanji waits a whole minute—longer than he wishes, because no lady should be kept waiting that long. Then he makes his declaration: “The missus is in dire need of a drink. How could anyone let her go even a second dehydrated?”

“Tch.”

To say he doesn’t notice Zoro in the bar would be a lie—Sanji chose ignorance on purpose. Of course Zoro would be at a bar, because all the idiot does is fight, drink, and sleep, and drinking outweighs napping the way a beautiful woman will always outweigh the ugly moldy brutes in Sanji’s eyes (because that actually makes sense.)

“Sorry ‘bout that,” says the bartender. He doesn’t click his tongue or roll his eyes or scratch his armpit like the savage at the barstool that always gets under Sanji’s skin. Instead, he grabs a water bottle and hands it over.

Sanji thanks the bartender, pays, and is on his merry way, leaving just a hint of a conversation behind.

“—lways like that?”

“An idiot? He was born that way.”

Sanji strikes out with the bellydancer, unfortunately—but he doesn’t let it discourage him. There are plenty of beautiful women who need their praises sung tonight, and he gets the blessing of spreading this message.

He’s in and out of the tavern for different reasons. By the fifth one, the bar has mostly emptied out and he has to excuse himself when a dribble of blood trickles down his nostril. It forces him to slow down enough to wash up in the tavern’s restroom—and then he notices Zoro. Like, notices him.

It’s not unusual for Zoro to stick to one spot in town if they can supply him with ample alcohol. He preferred the quieter areas and often fisted his drink like it was a fourth sword, ready to swing and let it meet his lips. A good night for that oaf meant never having a mug go empty.

The bartender is still slow—which made more sense in the livelier part of the night, but Sanji notices it now: the posturing. The leaning. The bartender is in Zoro’s space intentionally—and not just at the service of a customer. Sanji’s familiar with the look on the bartender’s face. He’s had that look, a few times, at the Baratie when his clientele consisted of more than their crewmates. He shot his shot, and accepted his losses.

Tonight? That bartender was evidently scoring. With Zoro.

“...five more minutes,” he overhears the bartender murmuring. “Then my shift’s over.”

“Can’t wait,” Zoro says, and Sanji is flabbergasted.

Zoro is getting laid. Zoro is getting laid with a man. Zoro is getting laid and—well, Sanji isn’t.

He excuses himself from the bar to remedy that situation. Neither the stupid swordsman nor the (presumptively) gay bartender notice.

*

The night is still young and the crew doesn’t intend to meet up again until the morning. Sanji runs out of women to woo and worship, which sucks—but he can always appreciate the privilege of being in their presence. They probably noticed he was unsettled, anyway. So instead in early dawn, he makes it back to the Sunny and starts the mental checklist of items needed to make breakfast.

That keeps his mind off things.

What he saw was clearly flirting. Or at least, the vague concept of flirting. Like, caveman-painting-stick-figure shapes that Robin-chan could interpret more fancifully, like alpha-male posturing (she’s really good at studying an older time with neanderthals, after all, but Robin is amazing at everything.)

It’s just—in all the time he’s known Zoro, he’s never seen that look. Yeah, okay—maybe with a really good bottle of liquor on the line. Maybe when Mihawk appeared out of nowhere in the East Blue and Zoro pounded his chest like a beast, thirsting for a title that wasn’t his to have yet.

Yet, Sanji emphasizes, because Zoro’s getting there. He’s got fucking dumbells for brains, but Sanji would never scoff at a dream.

Which brings him to his other revelation of the night. Was Zoro getting laid tonight? Was Zoro gay? Bi? Pan—? Swordsexual, he believed, that idiot would get off on some pain, but Zoro was getting hit on and he looked like he was enjoying it. Sanji has seen Zoro in bliss. It usually involved Wado between his teeth and a grin that stretched from cheek-to-cheek. Or a high-proof bottle. Or benching twenty-two times more his weight instead of twenty.

Zoro doesn’t look at Sanji like that. Which is fine, because he doesn’t normally look at Sanji at all. So fuck, why does it even bother him? Were they not arguing enough recently?

They hadn’t talked about Whole Cake Island. Sanj was more than relieved that Zoro greeted him with the same amount of indifference as before. He braced himself with all the shame that came from beating up their captain and leaving Luffy to starve, but like usual, there wasn’t enough time to discuss the situation, and by the time their adventure in Wano ended, Zoro was as blasé about Sanji’s existence as before.

Still, was Zoro happy? They didn’t usually talk about this kind of stuff—mostly because it didn’t come up between sword slashes and kicks and stupid marimos trying to raid the liquor cabinet—but Sanji’s curiosity eats at him.

The sun has yet to pierce the sky when he’s settled. Sanji hangs off the edge of the ship with a cigarette in his mouth. Breakfast won’t be prepared for another hour or two—with no guarantee of when everyone will return. Regardless, he’ll have everything ready for the crew.

He catches their swordsman meandering back to the boat. Zoro looks disheveled—sure—but it’s rare for that idiot to ever look put together. So it’s hard to tell, really, if the mosshead got laid.

“What?” Zoro asks as he climbs aboard, because Sanji admittedly isn’t subtle in his staring. “Something on my face?”

“Yeah, bastard. Whole lot of ugly.” Before Zoro can send his own biting remark, Sanji exhales a plume of smoke. “Surprised to see your ugly mug first thing. Y’get a head start so you didn’t get lost?”

“Fuck off.” Zoro coughs at the cloud of smoke in his face. Then, with more ire, he asks, “What?”

Okay—so Sanji might be staring openly. Shamelessly. No visible hickeys—which would be on full display, with how little their swordsman wears a shirt. Maybe Zoro just isn’t a hickey kind of guy—or he’s more conscientious of where they appear. That would imply the idiot had any shame, and Sanji has seen the moron get lost enough to know that just isn’t true.

So he gets straight to the point. Because it’s killing him. Why? Sanji doesn’t know. If there’s an extra mouth to feed some day, then he should know, right—?

“Oi—if you’ve got nothing else to say to me, I’m leaving.” Zoro waves a hand in front of him, irate and voice raw. It comes out in his usual timbre, with no hint of I-just-got-laid-itis, only deep and baritone. But how does Zoro sound when he’s getting laid?

Fuck, ew. Ew, ew, ew—but also, what—? “Saw you getting it on with the bartender back at the tavern.”

Zoro’s hand pauses mid-wave. If he’s shocked, he does a good job hiding it. If it’s supposed to be some big secret, Sanji can respect that—but Zoro was doing it out in the open, where anyone could see. How many times has he done that, and Sanji didn’t notice? Was it the first time? Second?

“Yeah?” Zoro asks, not even a beat later. From his tone of voice, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. “So? Got a problem with that?”

Zoro’s always oozed with confidence (an infuriating amount that leaves Sanji with the slightest bit of envy—not that he’ll ever admit it.) In this instance, he crosses his arms over his chest, one eyebrow arched. Sanji has Zoro’s focus. This could go any way—with a kick, or a sword slash, or a shit-cook and stupid marimo—

“Of course not,” Sanji says immediately. “Just didn’t know you swung that way. Or at all.”

Zoro frowns. “You insulting my swings now?”

“What—? No, not like that, you idiot—I would never—” Sanji takes the cigarette from his mouth and rubs his temples. “How you swing sexually. I didn’t know you liked men.”

There’s a silence. With closed eyes, Sanji assumes Zoro is processing the big revelation—but Zoro isn’t. Instead, he’s greeted by an eyebrow arched in the air, and Zoro stares at him like Sanji’s the idiot. Is he offended?

“It’s just,” Sanji starts—and he has no idea why he feels the urge to defend himself. “How have I known you this long, and not known?”

“Please. Dangle a pair of tits in front of your face and you don’t even remember your own name.” Zoro tuts, apparently more amused than he let on.

“That’s not—” Okay, yeah, no, it’s true. The contrarian in Sanji just wants to argue, but his curiosity is just biting at him. “What magic words did that guy say to get in your pants? He dangle some sake in your face or something?”

If Zoro has done this before, Sanji hasn’t noticed. And while he doesn’t care about the filthy hot takes that his crewmates have around love, romance, and intimacy, there’s a stark difference from Luffy caressing a giant rack of ribs versus how he saw Zoro bat his eyelashes at the bartender.

Zoro shrugs. “Guy said he had a big dick, and I told him to prove it.”

Sanji chokes on the next inhale of his cigarette. By the time he’s at the end of his coughing fit, he catches wind of the petulant smirk on Zoro’s face, like the two blades of grass in his head sparked a thought.

“Well,” Zoro declares, “I gotta piss. Bye.”

“You—!” Sanji wheezes. By the time he regains his composure, Zoro is lost on some other part of the ship. Goddammit.

Sanji lights a retribution cigarette, if only to forget the morning.

*

Everyone makes it back to the ship at sunrise. Sanji has eggs benedict, freshly squeezed orange juice, and a whopping plate of bacon for their captain. Brook sings a jaunty tune, but the melody of silverware against plates filling mouths is the only sound that Sanji needs.

He makes brief eye contact with Zoro—if one could call it that. There’s no hint of their conversation in the early morning. The exchange was so shallow and brief that if it were a puddle, Sanji wouldn’t have even gotten his feet wet.

Zoro likes men. Water is wet. Fire is hot. That kind of shit. Sanji doesn’t know what bothers him so much about this exchange. Sanji wonders if the rest of the crew knows. Robin and Nami are as lovely as ever, not an ounce of beauty misplaced from this revelation. Jinbe? Likely not, as their newest member. Luffy often had a sixth sense for this kind of thing. Robin’s brilliant mind knew everything.

There isn’t a lapse of silence in the galley, only a hiccup in Sanji’s brain as he can’t get it to shut the fuck up.

After a final check-in of supplies and other necessities, Nami informs them that the skies are clear and that the next island is only a week away. Sanji trusts Nami and her beautiful brain. The best way to get over this (absolutely-not-at-all) obsession with Zoro and that idiot’s preferences is to focus on stuff Sanji actually enjoys. Sanji must be really bored to be this fascinated with their resident mosshead’s love life. Or, sex life. Succulents bask in the sun with no maintenance, but much like the brute and his crow’s nest, it’s nearly impossible for them to leave their pots.

Guy said he had a big dick, and I told him to prove it.

No, nope, no thank you.

Sanji nearly scrubs the skin on his forearm raw while washing the dishes as he forces the thought out of his mind.

No thoughts about mosshead getting bent over asking for…that. Make refreshing drinks for the beautiful and lovely Nami and Robin, double check the lock on the refrigerator to make sure Luffy hasn’t tried to break in again, and open up a new packet of cigarettes.

Sooner or later, they’re going to run into another ship on their way to the next island, get into a huge duel with either another pirate crew or marine ship, and he’ll need to jump into the ocean and save Luffy mid-stupid Luffy-thought.

Zoro and big dick are just a blip, and Sanji intends to get back to his routine.

*

The best way to forget about bad thoughts is to have bad dreams. It isn’t Sanji’s first choice, but even in his own head, his brothers are a stampede. It didn’t matter if he was seven or nineteen—his body aches from the cobbled floor of his jail cell. Sanji tries to distance himself from old memories, but even an echo of Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji just makes him feel small.

So despite the two years of training he endured in Newkama Island, and despite the many years training under Zeff, he still feels like a kid pinned down in a dark dungeon regretting the need for fresh air. Yonji pushes at the hinges of Sanji’s helmet—bigger and stronger, despite being the same age—and it isn’t a merry tune or the jangle of silverware and fed mouths that fill the stale air, but Ichiji and Niji’s cruel laughter while Yonji force feeds a weeping Sanji a spider—

He wakes up with a gasp. The sound is second only to the creaking of bunkbeds swaying in the men’s quarters, and a mixture of snoring and snork-mimi-ing from Luffy and Franky.

Sanji’s wrists ache, and a disgusting taste bleeds into the back of his mouth. Whether it’s Ichiji and Niji pinning him down, or some damn gold bracelets—

He forces himself to escape the thoughts onto the upper deck. For fresh air, because he has that fucking agency. Sanji’s hands tremble only a little bit as he lights a cigarette, and he inhales with the desire for his lungs to burn.

It’s been weeks since he last saw them. Longer than a month. He hates admitting the horrid family reunion having any effect on him, because admitting to such would be a weakness. Over a decade later, shame still washes over him at the idea of showing weakness in front of Vinsmoke Judge and he hates it. Zeff taught him to be a better man—a stronger man, but the trembling hand that lights his cigarette is enough to make Sanji hate himself and unravel the last fourteen years of distance he’s placed between him and his family.

It always does.

Unfortunately, he’s flustered enough that he doesn’t catch the footsteps behind him.

“You’re up late.”

Sanji tries not to groan, but he can feel the vein throbbing in his own neck. He takes another drag and refuses to turn around. “Not now.”

“Jeez, what’s got your panties in a bunch?”

It’s usually easy to bite back and clear his head with a kick to the marimo’s face, but Sanji can’t even muster that. Of all the crewmates that had to find him after a dream like that, it had to be mosshead.

Had to be the one that looks most like Sanji’s childhood bully.

“Franky’s got rancid cola farts again,” Sanji says, which isn’t necessarily a lie. He’s grumpy, annoyed, and—fuck, Zoro just isn’t the person he wants to see right now.

Zoro chuckles under his breath—a soft snort. And because he’s never listened to a word Sanji’s said a day in his life, Zoro stays instead of pissing off. He leans against the railing of the Sunny like he fucking belongs next to Sanji, and Sanji’s fight-or-flight almost itches him to ignite a leg.

Except, Zoro takes a long swig of sake instead, and while they could be dicks to each other, Sanji just doesn’t have the energy in him. Not because he’s weak. He’s tired, sure, but starting a fight in the middle of the night would make him feel worse.

“When the hell did you swipe that?” Sanji asks.

Zoro shrugs with one shoulder. He’s covered in a layer of sweat, glistening even under evening twilight. Sanji can smell him—the musk of a midnight workout mixed with the fresh grass of the Sunny. “Not my fault the cabinet was open.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Get as pissy as you want, cook. A nightcap might do you some good. Unknot those panties.”

Sanji grits his teeth around his cigarette. But in a way, it’s almost comforting. Bickering with Zoro is nothing like taking the blows from Yonji or the rest of his brothers. As much of an eyesore Zoro could be, he was never more than that. Never haunted Sanji the way his family did.

Stripped down to nothing but his pants and haramaki, Zoro’s well-earned scars are nothing like Sanji’s brothers. His muscles aren’t artificial—but the result of a deep, ridiculous need to exude testosterone with every footstep. Zoro could probably match Yonji in mass, easily. He’s a better man. One that bites Sanji’s head off—and Sanji can appreciate being able to bite back.

In a way, waking up to Zoro beside him after falling asleep to Yonji pinning him down grants Sanji a quiet relief.

“Thanks,” Sanji says before he can help himself.

Zoro grunts—though whether he understands the weight of Sanji’s gratitude is doubtful. He isn’t pressing Sanji’s buttons like he normally would. Could. It’s weird, but Sanji won’t question it. He’s too tired.

Then, Zoro takes a swig of his drink. “Getting a few extra kicks in tonight won’t make you stronger than me, cook.”

“Yeah, dumbass? Lifting a few weights won’t raise your bounty, either.”

Zoro grits his teeth and Sanji meets it with a smug grin, and things feel a bit better. Zoro bites and Sanji is allowed to bite back. He doesn’t fear it.

Still, neither move. Sanji watches Zoro in the moonlight as the swordsman lifts the bottle once more to his lips.

Sanji recalls the night too easily. “All it took was a big dick?”

Zoro eyes him quickly. It’s been three days (not that Sanji’s been counting), but Zoro knows. He doesn’t wince or blush or get embarrassed. Instead, he shrugs. “Helps when they know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Cool, cool, cool. Sanji can have this conversation like a normal person, absolutely.

“Bet he put a big bottle, just like that one, in front of you and compared sizes.” Sanji wouldn’t normally speak this vulgarly aloud, but it’s Zoro and he’s curious. He’s grateful that the rest of their crewmates are asleep, lest he wanted to hang his head in shame if Robin and Nami overheard him.

“Please.” Zoro huffs. “You think I’m easy?”

“I’m asking because I don’t think you’re easy,” Sanji protests. Somehow, the conversation is still civil. Maybe because of his fascination. “You have the beautiful Tashigi-chan out there, and the lovely Princess Hiyori, and never once have I seen you try to romance them—”

“Yeah. Because I’m gay as fuck.” Another very stark line in the plankboard drawing a difference between Zoro and Yonji. Zoro wrinkles his nose and downs the sake like water.

Sanji racks his brain to keep the conversation going. Once Zoro empties that bottle, there’s no doubt he’ll be off to find another. “Like…at every island?”

“When I feel like it.” The answer is short and simple, just like their mosshead’s brain. “Why do you even care?”

“I don’t,” Sanji sputters. “I mean, I do—but I don’t.”

Zoro tilts his head. And fuck, Sanji is thinking of it again.

Guy said he had a big dick, and I told him to prove it.

“I…support you?” Sanji squeaks. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs.

Of course, Zoro waits for the perfect moment to strike again. “If it bothers you so much, just try it out yourself.”

Choke, choke, cough—Sanji’s cigarette ends up overboard. “What?”

“Yeah.” Zoro stares into his bottle, frowning. It’s closer to empty than when they first started.

“Are you asking me to—” Sanji can’t even finish the conversation. Clearly, he heard wrong. Right? Right?

“You realize me bent over is the longest conversation that we’ve had, cook?” Zoro bares his teeth, grinning with an evil amusement. Fuck, he planned this. Fuck, Sanji should’ve been more subtle.

Fuck, is he getting made fun of and being propositioned at the same time?

“I’m not—” Sanji’s face reddens, scandalized. “There’s no way—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Sanji rubs his temples and grits his teeth. He hates that in closing his eyes, all he can see is that. Zoro. Bent over.

“I hate you,” Sanji spits.

“Take all the time you need to think about it,” Zoro declares. “Just don’t make it weird.”

Then he walks away, like this whole conversation isn’t a big deal.

Water is wet. Fire is hot. Zoro just offered to bend over for him.

Yeah, nothing to be weird about.

*

In no universe is Zoro not just screwing with him. Sanji takes a second to internally berate himself for choice of words—but this is just what mosshead does. He gets under Sanji’s skin, growing like a goddamn weed and tracking his stank ass dirt everywhere because he’s big, and bulky, and showers as often as it rains in the desert.

Because not only does Roronoa-fucking-Zoro fucking propositions Sanji—the idiot swordsman goes about the next two days as though the interaction hasn’t happened. They bicker, bitch, and whine at each other like always. There’s no hiccup in the way Zoro treats him, but Sanji swears there’s a lingering nature to Zoro’s gaze. There’s a way Zoro nurses a bottle, hand furled around the base of the bottleneck that just seems—

Ugh.

An invading ship doesn’t come fast enough. Some pirate fleet with a forgettable Jolly Roger that counted the measly number of pirates on the Thousand Sunny and was convinced they’d be an easy target. They strike first with a cannonball, and Zoro hops out of the crow’s nest, right in front of Sanji, to slice it in half before Sanji can send it flying with a diable jambe.

“That was MINE!” Sanji hisses.

“Didn’t see your name on it, cook.” With Wado in his mouth, Zoro looks especially smug. Sanji’s tempted to kick him offshore. “Don’t slack off, now, Curly.”

“Don’t even.”

Their competition starts when their beloved captain slingshots to the other ship with a loud, YAHOOOOOOO! Then, Sanji is kicking as much as Zoro is swiping swords. Zoro rattles off numbers, smug—

“You got time to talk, you got time to kick ass, asswipe!” Sanji snaps. Then—”One-seventy-four!”

“Doesn’t count,” Zoro insists begrudgingly, even though it absolutely fucking does.

There’s a feminine shout, which is all Sanji needs to bullet through the corridors of the ship. There are hostages, go figure. Whoever thought they were easy targets clearly underestimated how they earned their bounties.

They fight, mosshead does not one-up Sanji with a last minute kill, and they liberate the tiny ship. Luffy insists on a party with the freed hostages, which means Sanji has an impromptu feast to cook. He’s back in his comfort zone, after confirming the ladies aboard are situated. Usopp is mixing tall tales with embellished truths to the younger passengers aboard, and Chopper is nestled between a dozen of them, equally wide-eyed and enticed.

Franky has agreed to help repairs on the ship that attacked them. Sanji assumes Zoro is hiding away in the crow’s nest with a bottle of sake—but finds him leaning against a wall of the Sunny instead, chatting up some guy.

Well, some guy is chatting up Zoro, while Mossy germinates the wall with his annoying presence.

Now that Sanji knows it’s a thing, he can’t unsee it. His brain just goes to, how often does this happen? And he racks his brain, angry, because Zoro has the audacity to crack a grin. Zoro doesn’t even grin at him! He’s too busy pounding his chest and spouting out nonsense numbers to outdo Sanji. It’s one of three sentences that Zoro can actually remember, which takes up any potential space for being directionally coordinated.

Before he can help himself, he drags their resident sentient houseplant into the galley by the wrist.

“Hey—!”

“I need a date.”

Sanji’s head bats back and forth between the kitchen and the galley. He’s got Zoro pressed up against a wall, forcefully, unlike whatever song and dance Zoro was playing with the rando outside. Sanji fists Zoro’s long coat and looks him dead in the eyes. Well, eye.

Zoro blinks owlishly at him, the vein clear on his forehead for all of a second while he processes Sanji’s declaration. “You want to date me?”

“What? No—” Sanji could vomit from the absurdity. He’s one step away from strangling Zoro with his own haramaki. His cheeks burn, and even he knows how stupid he sounds, but there isn’t a universe out there that exists where he sounds dumber than Mosshead. So, his jaw tightens. “If we do this, I need a date.”

“Okay,” Zoro says, “so, like, a fluffer—?”

“NO!”

“Well you’re not making any damn sense, you stupid cook!” Zoro attempts to wrestle out of Sanji’s grip, which wouldn’t require much wrestling at all. Sanji’s fists are tight in the fabric of Zoro’s coat, though. They’re close.

Fine, so Sanji’s thought about it. He’s contemplated why the fuck it bothers him so much that Zoro got hit on, and then got laid, and then had the gall to talk about big dicks like some human precursor to homo erectus. He doesn’t like the answer, but he especially doesn’t like the fact it keeps nagging at the back of his head like a wet sock.

“If we do this,” Sanji proposes, “we go on a date first.”

Now Zoro definitely looks at him like he’s crazy, and hey, Sanji is one exploding brain cell away from that anyway. He wrinkles his nose. “I’m looking for a good fuck, cook, not—”

“I need a date first.”

“You don’t even like men. Forget it,” Zoro huffs. “This was supposed to make you less annoying, not more.”

Still, Sanji clings onto whatever sanity he has left. It’s in his stupid moral code, even if the body he’s pressed up against is—is different. Sanji’s spent nights wrestling with Zoro’s damn request until he could find some solid footing. It’s laughable, him, needing solid footing. “It’s for me to feel better about this.”

He can’t really tell what’s going on in Zoro’s head, but he’s also blinded by the blaring alarm in his own brain telling him to disengage and forget the whole damn thing, since Zoro hasn’t brought it up since the night on the upper deck.

(If he disengages, Zoro wins, and Sanji has pride, dammit.)

Zoro rolls his eye, but Sanji continues.

“If I’m going to fu—” Shit. Sanji swallows hard. He keeps eye contact, but he knows Zoro caught his hesitation. “If we’re going to do…that, then I’m not half-assing it.”

“What, you’re going to woo me?”

“Yes, you idiot! I’m going to woo your fucking mossballs off!”

There’s a hairline wrinkle that appears between Zoro’s brows. Zoro pinches the bridge of his nose, not fighting his way out of Sanji’s grip, but not giving way to it either.

“I don’t do that shit,” he says. “All that…cringey stuff you do. Flowers, chocolates, giggling—”

“Giggling is the most beautiful sound in the world,” Sanji protests. “From women. If you giggle, Chopper’s gonna have to check you for an aneurysm.”

Zoro rolls his eye once more, and the message is clear across his stupid wrinkled brow—Curlybrow has gone fucking insane—but he shockingly doesn’t say it aloud. Sanji might have gone a little insane—but in all his thoughts in the past few nights while stirring this particular pot, he needs to be in control of the situation.

Needs to be in control the next time he steps into something that he won’t be able to handle. There are no wedding invitations or forced wedding processions, or disappointed brides involved—but something feels similar. Sanji refuses to disappoint, and he refuses to have Zoro of all people disappointed in him. Nami was heartwrenching. Zoro would be shameful.

“I’ll let you kiss me,” Zoro says finally. “Before and after.”

Sanji doesn’t realize how heavy the silence was until the words are uttered. His own brow furrows. “You weren’t going to let me kiss you—?”

“I’m trying here, cook,” Zoro snaps—and Sanji sees an even deeper fracture. There’s red in Zoro’s cheeks. Zoro looks like he’s rolling his eyes, but he’s actually looking in every direction other than Sanji’s face. “Fuck—meet me in the middle. I’m not some chick who needs to be wooed. But you’re not getting a date out of it.”

Okay. Okay, sure. There isn’t much he can expect from a guy who would opt for five minutes longer of a workout session than brush his teeth.

“You seriously fuck, and that’s it?”

“If it’s good enough,” Zoro mutters—then his eye actually trails down Sanji’s body. Specifically to his crotch. Sanji feels his entire body redden from head-to-toe.

“You let me buy you a drink at the next island,” Sanji tries instead. “Then things will lead that way.”

Zoro actually perks at that. Of course. “Two drinks. And you don’t get to do anything weird.”

“Deal.”

Then Zoro is grinning, like Sanji is the one that got scammed.

Sanji peels his hands off the swordsman, suddenly feeling out of his skin. He shivers, and shakes his hands. He’s shocked how easily Zoro agreed to it. Is it really that simple?

“I’m going back upstairs now,” Zoro declares. He points a thumb towards the exit. “Unless you want to try some of that wooing shit here.”

His face twists with disgust. It’s strangely comforting.

“No. Get the hell out.” Sanji shoves at Zoro’s shoulder, and Zoro’s smug laugh bounces off the walls.

That idiot is probably going back to the guy who hit on him, unfazed. What reason does he have to be? They’ll probably jump straight to sex, since Zoro doesn’t believe in wine-and-dining. (The dining part, at least.)

Sanji exhales a breath, feeling giddy, nervous, and light all at the same time.

He’s not gonna be weird about this. Zoro’s the fucking weird one.

*

In theory, laying out the terms to the mosshead should’ve been enough to clear Sanji’s head. In actuality, he just fucking asked the mosshead to go on a date with him, was turned down, and cut a deal that they were allowed to kiss before and after sex. In the remaining two days before they anticipate landing, Roronoa-fucking-Zoro has never been more in Sanji’s head, and Sanji’s practically burning holes in his kitchen floor while he paces (and he sure as hell is blaming the mossball for that one, too.)

As the day encroaches upon Sanji’s already-dwindling sanity, he gets nervous for a number of reasons. He could back out, but Zoro would call him a chicken, and he’s not. It’s a serious enough matter that Zoro might not call him a chicken, but that doesn’t stop the word from clucking in his head. Plucked, blanched, poached, and roasted, fresh from the hencoop. He’s already pacing around the kitchen like his head’s cut off (not that he would admit it.)

On the other hand, Zoro really has paid him no mind the last two days—probably to play more fucking mind games, even if the other part of Sanji is reminding him that the marimo isn’t smart enough to know how to play mind games and would bluntly declare as much himself.

There’s always a chance that Zoro is just fucking with him to the nth degree, and that’s just cruel. Hell, it might even be a punishment for ditching everyone for Whole Cake Island, and that…that thought takes him out of his stride for a minute. Luckily they dock before he lets that thought loom.

“Sanji! Don’t you look spiffier than usual,” Nami says when he grazes above deck.

“You flatter me, my darling—I would never want to embarass you by looking anything less than presentable.” Sanji rolls to the tips of his toes, enlightened by the presence of their beautiful navigator all for a second, before he catches a glimpse of green from the corner of his eye. “Unlike that one.”

“Ha?” Brutish as usual, Zoro exits off the Sunny scratching his belly under his haramaki. Ugh.

Sanji spent twenty minutes this morning contesting what outfit to wear for the…occasion, and Zoro is probably on day four without a shower. He shouldn’t expect anything less. ”Need I say more?”

Zoro, predictably, squares his shoulders and is about to take the bait before Nami pinches his cheek.

“It’s too early for that this morning!” She declares.

“Whatever, witch!”

“Don’t call her that!” Sanji’s nostrils flare, and this time Nami pinches him too. “Ow! Nami-dear—”

”Are we going or what?” Zoro demands of Sanji.

There’s a pause. The silence is palpable, save for the waves hitting the shoreline.

“Zoro,” Nami says, emotional, “you want to go with Sanji?”

“You don’t want to get lost?” Usopp asks, baffled.

“Did you hit your head?!” Chopper squirms, hooves clutching either side of his cheeks.

Sanji chokes back a laugh as Zoro balks, red in the face and annoyed. Serves the damn swordsman right for fucking with him mentally.

Luffy, who somehow hasn’t weaseled his way into town yet, only titters. “Sanji propositioned Zoro!”

The most miniscule squeak squeezes out the back of Sanji’s throat. It’s certainly not manly.

“He’s buying me a drink for carrying the damn groceries,” Zoro interjects. He grunts. “Two drinks.”

“Y…Yeah. That.” Sanji’s voice is flat. He hopes his face doesn’t look as mortified as he feels.

“Oh!” Nami, the beautiful goddess that she is, smiles with a pride that does things to Sanji’s heart. She’s pleased they’re not fighting. “Well, be sure to load Zoro up! He can take it.”

Sanji would never accuse the sweet-hearted Nami of a double entendre, even if his chest, heart, and brain are all squinting.

“Yeah, cook,” Zoro says. He slaps a hand over Sanji’s shoulder, clearly amused. “Load me up good, won’t you?”

“I hate you.”

Sanji would be lying if he said he wasn’t skittish. He keeps looking over his shoulder for a flash of red hair, or a long nose that may pop up out of nowhere. Luffy might even just sling himself across town just to demand meat and food, which, Sanji can at least reassure will be restocked by the end of this grocery run.

“You’re being weird,” Zoro declares.

“No, I’m not.”

Zoro does enough eyebrow work that reads, bullshit, for Sanji to know his jitters are literally palpable. “Look, cook—”

”Scared?” Sanji blurts out. “I knew you would be.”

Please, for the love of god, be scared—but dominoes don’t normally fall that way for Sanji anyway. Zoro’s nostrils predictably flare as he takes the bait, and he scoffs. “As if.”

“Liar. Back out. You know you want to.”

“I do not, you dumbass.” It’s said in a biting tone that should not make Sanji’s face flare red, but it does. Mostly out of embarrassment, and partly from self-consciousness.

“Good,” Sanji spats, “because I’m not giving you another chance to back out. This is binding.”

“Fine,” Zoro says. “Good.”

“Good,” Sanji emphasizes for extra measure.

Grocery shopping, thankfully, does calm Sanji’s down. Picking fresh produce, bartering, and making conversation with vendors—he’s very good at it. He doesn’t suck at it. He inspects ginger root at one stall and manages to talk down the price by twenty-percent. Another vendor entices him with mangosteen—which they definitely have not had on board for a while.

Zoro yawns on occasion, but otherwise makes himself useful without complaint.

Sanji doesn’t have to think about what’s going to happen after this until he catches a glimpse of the end of the food market. Then, he’s racking his brain for anything he might’ve second-guessed produce-wise to slow their ascent to the end.

“M’not saying shit to the crew about this,” Zoro grumbles out of nowhere. “So don’t freak out.”

The swordsman’s voice is strangely cutting, despite Sanji being aware of his giant green shadow all afternoon. Sanji is furtive as he stares at each cut of beef. “I’m not freaking out.”

“I’m discreet, y’know.”

“Yeah, which is why it took three years for me to discover you like men,” Sanji retorts.

Again, Zoro scoffs, and his eye roll is pretty much audible. “S’not like it was some big secret, dumbass. Don’t get all pissy with me just because you’re too straight to notice this shit.”

“Is that why I can walk in a straight line and you can’t?”

“Fuck off, the island moves—”

”In your dreams, mossball.”

“Why the hell are you taking this so personally?” Zoro barks eventually. He’s exasperated. “This changed literally nothing between us, cook, you’re just being overdramatic.”

Sanji huffs. He opens his mouth for a biting remark, but true to the last few days, he can’t muster one. Sanji’s been baffled by the whole thing. He’s even more baffled at the fact that he’s baffled.

He lights a cigarette and skirts Zoro’s gaze.

“Just,” he mutters, “a taste of my own fucking medicine, I guess.”

Who is he to judge what secrets there are to keep? If this is some weird punishment for Sanji being so protective of his past, then Zoro’s done a hell of a good job making him suffer. Sanji will fight many things, but going against Luffy will still be his biggest regret.

There’s a bigger lull than anticipated. Zoro just grunts and rearranges the bags in his grip.

“Not like I was hiding it,” Zoro mutters. “Even if I was, that’s my call. Doesn’t change how you should see me.”

They’re strangely comforting words. Sanji gets the same odd feeling in his chest as the night Zoro stumbled upon him after a harrowing nightmare.

“I’m not—you know, prejudiced against that sort of thing,” Sanji says lamely. “So…yeah.”

“I would hope an island of gay men would shift your fucking worldview.”

Sanji winces—because maybe that’s—

“God I can hear you dooming from over here. Fine, whatever—thank you for being an ally.” There’s a streak of red in Zoro’s cheeks, pained to even be having this conversation. “Now quit acting weird. I want a drink.”

There’s a dry plea in there. Sanji’s empathy was one of weaknesses with his family. He’s never shied away from it with his crew, but he can sure as hell empathize why this entire thing is so fucking awkward.

They drop the groceries back with the Thousand Sunny. By the time Sanji’s finished his tasks and plucked their houseplant from going in the wrong direction, the sky is orange.

Zoro won’t fold to a bouquet of flowers or kisses to his germ-infested hands, but it doesn’t stop Sanji from setting a plate of onigiri in front of the man once he finishes restocking the pantry.

“Line your stomach with something,” Sanji reasons.

“Like I’m gonna get drunk tonight.” Zoro rolls his eye, but doesn’t reject the food. He scarfs down the rice balls in a bite and a half, grains of rice matting around his lips like a savage.

“Humor me, Marimo,” Sanji drawls wryly. There’s hardly any romance in the air tonight—but at least to his quiet relief, the rest of the crew have made themselves scarce in different ways. Surely they’ll have to pick Luffy out of some restaurant he’s eaten dry, either before or after uncovering a corrupt organization monopolizing the town.

Zoro eats without much of a fight, which is how he’s handled most of the day.

Then, they’re back in town as the sunlight dwindles and the small town’s nightlife awakens. Zoro visibly shirks away from any singing or dancing, and looks like he’s going to chew flowers being sold by a nearby vendor.

Sanji settles for a bag of potpourri, and wrestles it over Zoro’s neck.

“What the fuck—? I said no cringey shit!” Zoro shrieks. “Did you curse me?”

“Au contraire.” Sanji sighs and rolls his eyes. “I just thought a patch of grass like yourself might want to return to his roots. The ones that smell good, at least.”

Zoro huffs, but he stares at the bag thoughtfully.

“Oh please, marimo. I could do so much worse.” Flower crowns, bouquets, waltzes in the middle of town square. A lot more flirting, but any eloquent comment is likely to go in one ear and out the other for this brute.

Sanji is toning it down as best he can to meet Zoro in the middle, where the swordsman has bitten his head off a lot less than usual. Maybe he shouldn’t have prodded the issue as intensely as he did, but he’s less paranoid and more satisfied.

They settle down in a bar Zoro noted earlier by whiffing the air. Sanji orders a plate of wings to pair with Zoro’s first drink of the night, and Zoro doesn’t hesitate to dig in.

“You realize I’d let you fuck me either way, right?” Zoro asks between mouthfuls, and Sanji blushes and knees him hard beneath the table. “Ow! What the hell?!”

“Do not ever use that combination of words with that many fingers in your mouth and that much food falling on you ever again!” Sanji’s face burns and he scowls, but the familiar cadence isn’t unwelcome.

Zoro scowls and glances at him, undoubtedly annoyed.

“As annoying as you are,” Sanji professes, emphasizing each word as he goes, “at least I get to choose who I end up with this time. Even if it’s just for an evening.”

The swordsman pauses mid-wing and examines Sanji. He sets the half eaten wing down and wrinkles his nose.

“Yeah,” he says simply. “That tracks.”

“So does your lack of manners and resisting all the cringey shit,” Sanji retorts. His neck is heated, annoyed, but Zoro only chortles.

“What, you didn’t expect us to butt heads before bumping uglies, cook—?”

“Oh my god.” Sanji shoves a napkin in Zoro’s mouth. He’s ready to intimate his five-point-plan in absolutely maiming the stupid mosshead, which will inevitably end with them getting kicked out of the bar and ruining the night.

Zoro spits the napkin out on his plate in a less than demure manner and curses him out. “Whatever. Don’t know why I didn’t think you wouldn’t half-ass this. You don’t half-ass anything.”

The comment is laced with flattery and firmness that Sanji doesn’t expect. He forgets he’s mortified for a moment, while Zoro picks at his teeth with his pinky.

“This dating shit ain’t half bad, Curly.”

Sanji takes a long drag of his cigarette and stares at Zoro disdainfully. He sighs, not quite as unsettled as before, and rests a cheek in hand. “I shouldn’t have expected you to half-ass being an ass. Pretty sure that’s just in your genetic makeup.”

Zoro grunts, which does everything to prove Sanji’s point. Really, it’s like satiating a dog. Zoro takes to his mug like a canine to a bone, and no insult gets under his skin.

There’s a strange peace to this that Sanji is grateful for. They haven’t talked much since Wano, but Sanji’s nerves are finally settling. This cadence with Zoro is different, and yet not exactly wrong.

“Sorry you had to get married to a woman and shit,” Zoro says next.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with being married to a woman, you absolute savage.”

Zoro, having proved many times over by now how gay he is, makes a nonplussed, convent noise. Sanji rolls his eyes.

“But yes,” he continues, “I wish it was under better circumstances.”

Zoro didn’t like any of the cringey stuff, but those were the stories that Sanji liked to read growing up. His mom spoke of love as such a sweet and tender thing that it was wonder how she ended up in the lap of Vinsmoke Judge of all people. His blood curdles when he thinks of it.

“I added, ‘and shit,’” Zoro points out emphatically. He holds the sack of potpourri around his neck like a medallion, nearly swinging it. “I know all that hoity toity crap means a lot to you.”

Sanji rolls his eyes again. “Yeah. Bet you didn’t think I’d agree to this at all.”

“‘Course not,” Zoro says point blank. Then, “but I’ve never known you to turn down a challenge, no matter how stupid it is.”

“You’re the stupid one, marimo—“

“S’hot.” Zoro shrugs. “All I’m saying.”

Sanji blushes past the collar of his shirt. Hot. Roronoa-fucking-Zoro, the biggest himbo in all four seas, called him hot. Sanji’s heart hammers in his chest in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. Something is tugging at his heart. Hope. It’s not just Zoro calling him hot, it’s something else, too.

“Mm,” Zoro mutters. “Your food’s better.”

Still, he’s eaten every wing on the plate because Sanji would yell at him for wasting food otherwise. He’s tolerated most things Sanji has put him through today with minimal complaint (for Zoro, at least.) Zoro doesn’t believe in the hoity-toity cringe-y shit, but it’s ambitious of Sanji to think Zoro wouldn’t put up some kind of fight because of his own sense of self. So, if Zoro is willing to compromise rather than the two of them pummeling each other, then they’re better men than they were two years ago when they were stupid teenagers.

“So?” Zoro bottoms out his mug and burps. “What do you want to know?”

Ugh. Never mind, Zoro’s still as disgusting as he was when they first met. Sanji wrinkles his nose.

Nonetheless, Zoro crosses his arms and straightens his back.

Sanji inhales his cigarette and pretends to examine the filter. “What’s your…experience level?”

“What, my bodycount? I dunno, like, four?”

Somehow hearing the words bodycount and a singular number in the same sentence feels foreign and wrong out of Zoro’s mouth. Sanji points his cigarette to Zoro, aghast—

“Oh. Head,” Zoro says. He starts making tick marks with his hands. “Fingering. Anal. Rim—”

”You fucking tactless plant—” Sanji kicks him beneath the table, scandalized. “This is why women are so much better than your disgusting ass—”

”Geez, then why do you want me, cook?”

The rest of Sanji’s rant dies in the back of his throat while Zoro takes every kick without complaint. Zoro’s face stretches into something cranky—but that isn’t new. There’s a lump in Sanji’s throat, built with the headache he’s worked himself into all week. He mentally prepared himself for this question. And yet, he still hasn’t been able to detangle the answer.

Does he want Zoro?

“Why do you want me?” Sanji blurts out almost immediately, because he can’t resist being contrarian. Not with Zoro.

He expects a, I asked you first, stupid cook, or something along those lines, but Zoro just studies him instead. There’s a wrinkle between his furrowed brow that Sanji can’t help but notice. It reminds him of a pie crust intended to be warmed in the oven. A pie crust needs to be perforated—touched, poked, and pressed so it doesn’t create an uneven surface while baking, despite how pristine the dough is in the beginning.

“Don’t ask questions you’re not gonna like the answer to, cook,” Zoro says finally.

A part of Sanji deflates, though he doesn’t combat Zoro. No—it’s not a matter of disliking an answer. It’s being downright terrified of what it could be.

“Time for that second drink,” Sanji declares. He waves the server over.

*

Kissing, as it turns out, isn’t the odyssey of trials, tribulations, or needless bickering that Sanji dreaded. He foots the bill at the bar and they head to an inn to request a room in slow strides, not really speaking between steps. Sanji’s mind works on an endless merry-go-round of, holy shit, I guess we’re really doing this.

He doesn’t chicken out when they step into the inn and the cute receptionist greets them. He doesn’t chicken out as they walk up to the second floor, either. Nor does he chicken out when Zoro puts the keycard through the slot, nor when the door closes behind them.

Neither of them move from the doorframe, and Sanji’s heart beats so loud that he could confuse it for Franky fixing something on the Sunny.

Sanji’s closest to the door, which feels intentional. It’s not too late to back out. To chicken out. He doesn’t know why he wants this, other than maybe curiosity, and he dreads Zoro’s answer even more.

Then, Zoro announces, “Gonna shower.”

Sanji stares. And stares. “What?”

”Gotta get clean for this. Obviously.” Obviously. “Try not to dig a hole through the floor if you’re sticking around.”

If, because again, Sanji’s place by the door is intentional. Zoro deferred to Sanji at the receptionist to ask for the room because it was Sanji’s call. Zoro came up with the measly excuse for the rest of their crew so Sanji didn’t have to dwell.

He can’t believe Zoro volunteering to shower is the hottest thing he’s ever heard.

(Man, his standards have shifted.)

“Okay,” is all Sanji says.

So, Zoro disappears into the shower and Sanji is left to his own devices. Of course he lights a cigarette. He’s still tingly from their conversation at the bar—not necessarily good, nor bad. Just different. Sanji gets through two cigarettes in the time that Zoro cleans up. He hammers his brain on equal footing—asking why is he suddenly excited about this, along with why has he not left yet. The concept of playing a game of chicken disappeared sometime during dinner, but Sanji doesn’t despair.

Eventually, he hears the shower come to a squeaking halt. His skin prickles at the slightest hint of steam beneath the door.

When Zoro comes out, he’s all bronze skin and green hair. The towel at his hips is comically small—or Zoro is just that bulky. Sanji’s heart is in his throat, palpating in an unhealthy way, but the next exhale of his cigarette is surprisingly soothing.

Akin to a few minutes ago, Zoro is stuck near the door, one hand fisting the towel. He stares Sanji down, all bare skin and grooves of muscle, and his lips press into a narrow line.

“Not too late to…” He doesn’t get to finish. Sanji saunters over and kisses him.

Fuck it, Sanji thinks, while his heart rattles loudly and his head pounds violently. Fuck this, fuck this situation, fuck the fucking mosshead. Kissing Zoro feels like taking the plunge off a skyscraper, and Sanji learned how to skywalk years ago. He shouldn’t have a fear of falling.

It’s different in many ways to kissing a woman. Zoro’s more taut than he is soft, more angular and sharp than he is delicate, with a more rugged jaw than Sanji is used to. There’s a musk of shampoo that overtake Sanji’s nostrils and swells in his chest, sprinkled with a manufactured floral scent from the hotel soaps that comically doesn’t fit the Demon of the East Blue at all.

Then, when Zoro kisses back, it’s absolutely nothing like Sanji’s had before. Not with coy and demure women. Zoro drinks him like a vice, hands cradling the base of Sanji’s neck like he would a cold mug of beer, and Sanji feels it all the way down to the tips of his toes.

It isn’t weird at all. Seriously. Zoro kisses the way he fights, like an honorable endeavor to see through until the end, and Sanji has spent every moment of their romanceless relationship stubbornly matching pace and effortfully proving himself. It should freak him out more how it doesn’t feel weird.

“Cook, I—” They part for just a moment, Sanji’s palms framing Zoro’s face, and Zoro’s fingers tangled in his hair. “Sanji—”

Sanji, Sanji, Sanji. Holy shit, does the name sound different in that vocal register, with that baritone voice. Sanji’s chest aches, and he can’t go a moment longer without another kiss. “Bed?”

Zoro grins in a way Sanji has ever associated with a new challenge or a fight. Eager, excited, and because of him.

Sanji gets more reminders that Zoro isn’t a dainty woman as Zoro falls onto the bed with a loud plop. A moan (moan!) from Zoro is low, and an all-consuming vibration that Sanji can feel in his finger pads and elbows. Zoro matches pace, consuming Sanji as Sanji inhales him. He tastes like beer and wings, and somehow exactly what Sanji would expect for mosshead to taste like. Zoro always speaks in a blunt, brutish manner but Sanji feels the abrasive palate now against his own tongue.

No-fucking-wonder Zoro’s “compromise” was kissing. Despite a bodycount of four, he’s really fucking good at it.

His confidence falters as Zoro urges him to continue on. Having anyone grab him by the wrist sounds alarms in Sanji’s head. Zoro drags Sanji’s arm across his collarbone in a manner harder than a caress, but gentler than goading a fight.

“C’mon, Cook,” Zoro mutters against his ear. The vibration rocks Sanji to the bone. “I know you’ve got more in you.”

It’s their teasing, laced with something else that Sanji can’t quite decipher. It calms trembling in his hand. Sanji presses a palm to the middle of Zoro’s chest, and of course the fucker moans as his head hits the mattress. Sanji wouldn’t be surprised if mosshead was into that kind of thing.

There’s a knot in Sanji’s throat as he stares at the man beneath him. He props himself on Zoro’s chest, hand squeezing a pec. It’s warm, and still a little wet from the shower. Nowhere near as soft and flouncy as a beautiful woman, but Zoro moans all the same. Even louder when Sanji pinches a nipple.

Zoro is hard for him. For him. Sanji stands between Zoro’s thighs, watching the towel naturally spill off bronze skin on its own. Zoro is like a wolf exposing its belly. His gaze is no less piercing, even like this.

“Yeah,” Zoro murmurs, and he cradles Sanji’s hand as Sanji cradles a man-tit. “Not that different from a woman for you, huh, cook?”

Sanji’s laugh flutters through him like easing tension. It’s not mocking or derisive. Neither exchange is. “You are by far the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen, marimo.”

And the most intoxicating thing that Sanji’s ever had the pleasure of consuming. He lowers his head into another kiss, and is smug that Zoro is there to meet him. Of course Zoro does. They’re in sync as ever, on-or-off the battlefield.

With much more confidence, Sanji kneads Zoro’s chest in a way he’d liken to prepping dough. He’s rougher than he ever would be with a woman, prying apart Zoro’s ribcage to find the thumping beneath his palm.

He thinks he might’ve jumped the gun peppering kisses down the scar that lines Zoro’s torso. Actually—Zoro sounds disarmed by it.

”You’re so soft,” Zoro murmurs. It’s not a scathing remark, nor an insult. Surprise, maybe. Sanji is surprising himself tonight with this enthusiasm, but he’s very much a lover in the same breath Zoro sees him as a fighter, and Zoro said it best. He doesn’t half-ass anything.

As the towel pools and flattens around Zoro’s hips, Sanji feels the lump in his throat. Zoro’s cock is a sunkissed bronze like the rest of him, sitting beneath a patch of green curls that Sanji would’ve made fun of in any other circumstance. He remembers in that split second how nervous he is. That split second spills into another second, and slowly the back of his head pounds with the panic that he’s staring way too long, intimidated. The tiny voice at the back of Sanji’s head is laughing. You’re bad at this. You’re bad at this and everyone knows.

Zoro breathes, “Curly—’

”No,” Sanji says. “I’ve got this.”

He wraps a hand around the shaft, provoking a yelp, then covers the head of Zoro’s cock with his mouth.

As an appreciator of women, Sanji likes to think he’s pretty good with his mouth. Sure, there’s more protrusion than what he’s used to, but it’s not…it’s not bad. Zoro is silent for a second longer than Sanji would like, then he elicits a full-body moan that tingles in Sanji’s mouth.

Then, Zoro’s hands knot in Sanji’s hair with the same familiarity of holding the hilt of any of his swords. They don’t force him down. In fact, Zoro exhibits a steady discipline that’s almost infuriating.

“Cover your teeth. Yeah, just like that,” Zoro murmurs. “Holy fuck.”

Sanji bobs, fitting in as much of Zoro’s shaft in his mouth as possible. He understands, and he’s trying to make it very clear between licks on the underside of Zoro’s perennium that he understands. Yup, got it, understood. There’s a saltiness at the base of his tongue, slick and filthy as he inhales Zoro in a way he does a cigarette: calming, and exciting at the same time.

“Yeah,” Zoro rasps. “Good cook—”

There’s still that little voice in the back of Sanji’s head, akin to his jerk brothers laughing and mocking Sanji for everything under the sun. He’s gonna fuck this up somehow. Somewhere, soon—

Zoro, in his blunt way, pulls Sanji off his dick with a needy gasp. Sanji doesn’t get a chance to protest as their teeth clank together in a messier kiss. He tastes Zoro in a myriad of different ways—wet in his mouth, around his mouth, and near Zoro’s fingers.

“I…do okay?” Sanji asks in a lapse of vulnerability that makes him self conscious. Why did Zoro stop him? Was it bad? Is he shit at this?

Zoro arches an eyebrow, and the expression isn’t unfamiliar. Red dusts his cheekbones in a rosy hue, and Sanji isn’t oblivious to how sharp and angular Zoro is compared to what he’s used to.

“Yeah, Curly, you did good.” There’s mirth in Zoro’s voice, but not in a mocking sense. “Doesn’t seem fair I’m the only one buck ass naked, does it?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Sanji doesn’t realize how hard he’s gasping for air until he tugs at his tie. His fingers shake, jittery from the fact he just had Zoro in his mouth, and there’s an ache behind his teeth missing his new oral fixation. Zoro undoes the tie like he’s done it a thousand times.

“C’mon, cook,” Zoro whispers in a low rumble. “It’s just me.”

Yeah, and it fucking terrifies Sanji. He hears a strained whimper as a hand suddenly squeezes him through his trousers and realizes it’s his own. He’s not shocked that he’s hard. In fact, he’s surprised how into it they both are.

“What,” Sanji starts. Stop. His throat is painfully dry. “What do I do now?”

It’s shy coming out of his own mouth, and mortifying. He expects to be mocked and ridiculed. Sanji has made love to women before. He’s been smug about these pleasures and proud of his ventures, but Zoro’s a different beast entirely. He mocks Sanji’s chivalrous nature on the regular, even though it’s the chosen baseline with what Sanji’s come to identify.

But instead, Zoro eyes him with a hunger that makes Sanji twitch his pants. “Lube’s in my coat.”

It is absolutely in character for a bottle of lube to be right next to Zoro’s sword polish. Of course Sanji makes fun of Zoro for it, and of course Zoro says, so, what?

“You simple-minded marimo,” Sanji banters in a familiar melody.

“You love it.”

In this particular moment, Sanji’s willing to admit (at least internally) that there might be some fondness there.

There’s a tightrope they’re balancing on, where they both balk at the idea of a safety net. The risk of falling is meeting a death of mockery and humiliation. Sanji can usually glide across a tightrope, easy. Zoro, though directionally challenged, is persistent. They could falter, stumble, or fall. Or they could make each other better, like they always do. Stare at each other from one end of the tightrope, to the other.

“I’ll tell you when to stop,” Zoro says, unblinking. “Yeah. Like that.”

Sanji frowns. “Doesn’t seem like enough.”

“I like a little pain,” Zoro explains, and fuck if Sanji doesn’t shiver. “Bet you never thought you’d be doing this with those pretty hands of yours.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sanji says with no venom. His ears are warm, because Zoro just called his hands pretty. Sanji’s exposed in many ways, having unbuttoned the dress shirt that took him twenty minutes to pick out this morning. He wanted, to what, make a good impression?

It shouldn’t be so sexy how Zoro lifts his hips. Zoro advises him to use two fingers, and the texture is unlike anything Sanji’s ever touched before.

“Holy shit,” Sanji says louder than intended. He gets two fingers into Zoro, and it’s tight. He shivers, feeling Zoro’s moan through every joint of his fingers as his hand wrestles for space. It’s warm and soft, not too different from what Sanji’s familiar with, and somehow he feels more exposed.

“That’s it,” Zoro rasps. His moan is low. “Curl your fingers a bit, cook. Upward.”

Every chance of embarrassment is navigated carefully by the man beneath him. Zoro’s fuck-all with directions, but he does a full body convulsion that makes his scar ripple like an ocean wave.

“Fuck,” Zoro nearly purrs, “yeah, that’s the good shit. Knew you could do it, Curly.”

The encouragement does more to Sanji than he’s willing to admit, but he follows instructions well. That’s half of following a recipe, after all. Slice, saute, glaze, plate. Sanji’s worked in the kitchen long enough to follow instructions. He’s lived in one long enough to bring out the epitome of taste in every meal he’s ever made. So, Zoro coaches him through it, but Sanji follows the way Zoro moans and twitches beneath him with a conscious eye. He’s ambitious as he slips a third finger in, pumping and ramming into the spot Zoro instructed vigorously, and he can tell it’s appreciated.

Zoro is chiseled marble, a sculpture of muscles, but he folds like molding clay in Sanji’s wake. Sanji kisses either thigh, eliciting a whimper not too different from when he traced Zoro’s scar with his mouth. Sanji’s doing that. Sanji’s the one making Zoro sing—no one else.

He’s got a good rhythm going. So well that it startles Sanji when Zoro grabs him by the wrist.

“Did that hurt?” Sanji asks, alarmed.

“Your nose is bleeding.”

Oh. “Oh, fuck, it is, isn’t it?”

“You’re turned on by this.” Zoro sounds incredibly surprised.

“Only because it’s you,” Sanji blurts out, but he grimaces immediately. He scrambles for the tissue box on the nightstand to hide his embarrassment.

Zoro laughs, all hearty in a way that makes the scar on his chest again. “You just had your hand up my ass and now you get all shy, pervy cook?”

“Shut up,” Sanji barks. He’s got a fistful of tissues under his nose.

Zoro is enjoying every moment of this. He’s not shy as he peels his thighs back, giving full view of his asshole and the lube that creeps out. “Why don’t you make me?”

Oh, fuck, shit.

Sanji grabs another fistful of tissues. Zoro laughs, but it’s all in good spirits. Something like this would have him apologize profusely and kill the mood for a dame, but Zoro takes it all in as-is. If anyone has seen Sanji at his lowest, it’d be his nakama.

So he wrestles out of his pants and his dress shirt, only to nearly fold them in the corner.

“Lube yourself up,” Zoro instructs. His eye is consciously tracing Sanji. Goosebumps riddle Sanji’s skin, and the shameless gaze only makes him harder. “Good. You’re ready for me, cook.”

If someone told him two years ago that he’d have a man sprawled across a hotel bed to be fucked, Sanji would’ve laughed. If someone told him that person would be Zoro, he would’ve kicked them in the face. Hell—Sanji can’t fathom trying this when they were young and stupid, still trying to find their way across the East Blue.

Now, he stands between Zoro’s stupidly muscular legs with the tip of the most vulnerable part of himself pressed at the curve of a prominent and worked out ass. Zoro looks at Sanji’s dick like a thing to be devoured. Yet another thing that he never halfasses.

Sanji gets the tip in with slight resistance—but once the head is in, the rest of him glides into Zoro as easily as a sword to its sheathe. There’s a collective moan, and while Sanji knows it’s partly him, his ears are locked in on Zoro instead.

“Oh, shit,” Zoro whispers. “We really did this.”

Sanji swallows hard. He’s very aware of himself in Zoro’s ass, of every squeeze and pulse. Zoro’s taint rests against his stomach, dick still very hard and swollen with moisture at the tip.

“Well,” Zoro says after a moment of silence, his voice flat, “I hope I don’t need to explain this part.”

“Shut up and let me ravish you.” He strains his neck, forehead pressed to Zoro’s own for emphasis. He can see the surprise in Zoro’s eye—then they’re kissing again.

It’s instinct for Sanji to embrace his lovers. He rocks into Zoro, and feeling Zoro moan on his dick of all things is a wild experience. Sanji finds Zoro’s hands and knots their fingers together in an immovable grip.

Zoro’s sounds of pleasure are nothing like a woman’s. It’s guttural and low, and vibrates against Sanji’s skin. He returns the clasp of Sanji’s hands with his own palms, but two jerks later and he’s framing Sanji’s face with calloused palms.

“Fuck,” Zoro moans. He arches his back, chin high in the air as he sinks into pleasure. Sanji feels the twist around his cock and moans shamelessly. “Yeah. That—that’s it, cook. Don’t hold back, I’m not glass—oh, shit—”

Sanji rises to the challenge, the carrot dangling in front of him. He would never, ever in a million years touch a woman the way he’s touching Zoro—gripping tits in a way that’s sure to bruise over, or rocking the bed so hard that it screeches as the posts scrape the hotel floor. He thrusts hard because he knows Zoro can take it, and Zoro insists because he trusts Sanji can give what he needs.

Their tightrope begins at the base of Sanji’s cock, strung in a direction meant only to unravel Zoro. Because it’s Sanji, he can’t help kissing down Zoro’s bare chest, leaving no piece of flesh unloved. Because it’s Zoro, Sanji takes a nipple between his teeth and gives it a hard suck.

There’s something carnal about this. Sanji feels the last few days of tension shake out of him with each thrust. His grip also tightens around Zoro’s legs, pleased.

Him. Zoro is stuttering between moans because of him. Zoro wraps a leg around Sanji tightly, driving Sanji deeper into him because he’s enjoying this.

Sanji comes because Zoro does. A steely gray eye rolls behind eyelids, and every muscle is prominent and flexed as Zoro’s orgasm pumps through him. He squeezes Sanji hard, spilling across his own chest. The grip is all consuming and tight, and Sanji moans loudly as his stomach tightens and he explodes.

He buries his face in the crook of Zoro’s neck, determined to feel every wave of pleasure and ache. Zoro’s wanton sound buzzes in Sanji’s ear, and he shivers. Arms are wrapped around Sanji’s shoulder blades, and Sanji faintly knows he didn’t place them there. Zoro chose to.

They stay there a beat longer than they need to. Sanji’s almost afraid to move. If his face is buried, Zoro can pretend he’s just some random fuck, and Sanji can walk away, thinking…

No, Zoro feels too different from any soft body Sanji’s ever lain with. It’s really fucking obvious. And, without a doubt, the best sex Sanji has ever had.

“Sit tight,” he instructs. Sanji peels away from Zoro.

Zoro lets him go, but the latency he peels his arms off almost seems like he wasn’t expecting it. “What are you—”

Sanji returns from the restroom with a wet towel, and the gesture somehow baffles Zoro.

“You don’t have to—”

“Ass up, marimo,” Sanji instructs. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t clean you off?”

Of all things Zoro suddenly gets flustered about, it’s aftercare.

“Not even you are stupid enough to walk back to the ship with an ass full of cum—”

”No. I can handle this part myself, is all.” And Zoro is red from his roots down to his neck. Unbelievable. “HEY!”

Sanji flattens Zoro to the bed and kisses down his collar bone. “You—” Kiss. “—have had shitty—” Kiss, kiss. “—partners, if no one’s ever cleaned you up before.”

Zoro stops fussing, but he huffs, clearly flustered. He makes an indignant sound as Sanji moves from cleaning cum off his stomach to his ass. “I’m not a baby, Curly, st—ah—p.”

The hole is still fairly sensitive and swollen as Sanji touches it. Zoro’s yelp is so good that Sanji grins.

Zoro takes one look at his face and huffs angrily yet again. He’s quiet for a moment, aside from a squirm or two as Sanji works cum out of his ass. Then, “Partner, huh?”

Sanji freezes. The word slipped out of his mouth without much forethought. This whole experience is supposed to be a one-off thing—but while he makes that insistence in his head, something in Sanji is bothered.

“Guess that makes sense,” Zoro mutters, not privy to Sanji’s internal monologue. “On and off the battlefield. ‘Course it’s you.”

“Oh. Right.” Sanji flops onto the bed beside Zoro and stares at the ceiling.

Silence.

“Well,” he says, “that happened.”

“Mm,” is Zoro’s grunt. Between them are two soiled towels.

“Is it…” Sanji doesn’t even know what he wants to ask. “Normally that intense?”

“If they know what they’re fucking doing, yeah.”

Somehow, Sanji’s pleased with that answer. Smug, even. “Based on the sounds you were making, I think the whole damn hotel can agree I know what I’m doing.”

He expects Zoro to take the bait and start a fight, Instead, Zoro sighs in contentment, cradling his own head beneath him.

Sanji is giddy. Somewhere in his chest, his heart is doing somersaults but nowhere with the dread of before. There’s a brief moment where it creeps that away again as he props onto his elbows, stretched sorely over his silence.

“So—”

“Nothing leaves this room,” Zoro promises. “Don’t freak out.”

“Oh. Okay.” Sanji’s stomach stirs with a feeling he can’t decipher. He hesitates—then asks, “we have the room until tomorrow morning, don’t we?”

Zoro opens his one eye and grins.

He promptly rolls over to straddle Sanji.

*

They use the words one-night-stand very liberally in the upcoming hours. Sanji wakes up to a green-headed dolt sucking him off in the middle of the night. Zoro denies interest in taking a shower, but follows Sanji’s naked form into the bathroom with a premise of just making out. Sanji learns that Zoro’s butt jerks just a little bit when he brushes his teeth, and he learns eating out ass isn’t too much different than what he’s used to.

They’re all over each other down to the very last second before checkout, and Sanji is strangely reluctant to leave the room.

Zoro looks at him, as nonplussed as before as he straps all three swords to his hip. From the way he holds himself, it’s hard to decipher if anything happened at all. Almost like the other night.

Except, Sanji is aware Zoro sauntered back to the ship not too long after him. Zoro didn’t stay past sunrise, like they are now, and Sanji hates himself a little that his heart is trying to insist that it means something. Unlike the other night, the mottled spots across Zoro peek through his long coat. Sanji would never mar the skin of a fair lady, but, well, Zoro insisted.

Zoro insisted.

Zoro speaks first. “Hell of a night, cook.”

The statement is punctuated and definitive. It punctures through Sanji like a dart to a balloon, and his cheeks bleed red.

“Don’t you know anything about modesty?” Before Sanji can help himself, he compulsively reaches out and yanks the coat closed.

Zoro grunts indignantly. “Not my fault you’re a biter.”

If he wasn’t red before, then he’s burning now, like he took one of his own kicks to his face. “Not my fault you liked it so much.”

Then there’s this telltale smirk at the edge of Zoro’s mouth, eye on him like the wolf from the night before. It…does things to Sanji, making him as tingly as before. His grip lingers longer than intended. He doesn’t notice Zoro’s hand on the inside of his wrist. Compared to last night, the touch is as light as a leaf falling onto skin.

Finally, Sanji peels away from Zoro and scratches that itch with his other vice. “We should head back to the ship.”

One foot out the door, and they leave everything behind.

Of course, that idiot is naturally inclined to show more skin than he needs to by the time they make it to the docks. Photosynthesis and all. His long coat slides just enough that Usopp and Franky wolf-whistle when they catch a look at him.

“Zoro-bro! You look like you had a super night!” Franky grins like a goddamn maniac, posturing as usual.

“Mmm?” A bite mark the size of a pepperoni is visible, clear as day on Zoro’s clavicle.

“You idiot,” Sanji hisses.

“Wow, Sanji, you must’ve been one hell of a wingman last night.” Usopp grins, rubbing an elbow into Sanji’s side. “Who’s the lucky lady, Zoro?”

”The size of the mark seems larger than the average female mouth,” Robin observes—and Sanji tries his best not to despair. “Perhaps a wolf is likely.” His brain short-circuits, torn between complimenting Robin’s detective prowess and dying of his own embarrassment.

Sanji tries not to be obvious in catching Zoro’s glance, which works too well because Zoro is clearly too stupid to look his way.

“Was a pretty damn good beer,” Zoro declares—and he moves forward. He has the audacity to scratch at the hickey on his shoulder, making it even more prominent in the sunlight. “Cook, I’m hungry. Feed me.”

“Oh, you piece of—”

Zoro is either a mad genius, or is staying as indifferent as before last night. Either way, they drown out the inquiry with no abnormal amount of bickering.

*

Things, despite Sanji’s fear, are back to normal without a struggle. Zoro, the mossball idiot that he is, has no interest in lies and scheming, but he doesn’t disclose anything he doesn’t want to, either. Franky, Brook, and Usopp all try to coax an answer out of him, but Zoro just feigns disinterest. Or he’s just that uninterested.

There’s one instance where Brook requested details of this ‘fair lady’s’ panties, and Zoro absently informed them that panties weren’t involved. Mortified, Sanji kicked both of them upside the head and played it off as, Don’t speak of such delicate and inappropriate matters in front of Robin-chwan and Nami-swan.

“Well there weren’t! Jeez, Curly, don’t get your panties in a—”

Sanji kicks him again, and chases Brook and Zoro out of the galley with just an echo of Yohohoho!

Zoro’s bluntness is a double edged sword, because of course it is. Luckily, the crew takes it in their normal stride. All the curse words and threats deafen any suspicion of which Sanji is paranoid.

He thinks it might be a trick of a light, but he swears he catches Zoro’s gaze lingering on him more than usual.

One day they spar in the afternoon on the ship between Sanji’s kitchen duties and Zoro’s naps. Luffy and Chopper are cheering for one reason or another. More specifically, Luffy lays out his terms that if Sanji wins, they should have a feast, and if Zoro wins, they should have a party.

Bandana equipped and bare chested like a gorilla, Sanji’s only a little disappointed to see the line of hickeys fading down Zoro’s chest. Of course the brute heals quickly. Sanji’s mind wanders to the night he had palms on either side of Zoro’s chest, and—

God. Fucking. Dammit. He almost gets a sword to the face. He lifts a leg instead, but the grin Zoro has with Wado firmly set between his teeth is hard to miss.

“Don’t pull your kicks now, Curly,” Zoro rouses.

“I would never,” Sanji balks. He reaches for another kick, but Zoro blocks it with the fluidity of water. Even more so, now.

“I know,” Zoro says. There’s a confidence there that throws Sanji off. “I can take anything that you can give me, Curls.”

Almost…like…flirting?

No, not with him. Zoro has to rub two blades of grass together in that thick head of his just to form syllables.

“That a challenge?” Sanji rouses.

There’s a glint in Zoro’s eye, wolfish and excited like a child in a candy store. Which is ridiculous, because Zoro doesn’t even like sweets. “That’s a promise.”

Yeah, Sanji definitely knows that.

“Did you guys tie?” Luffy shouts from the upper deck. “Does that mean we can have a feast and a party?!”

“As if we’d ever tie!” Sanji and Zoro bark at the same time. Just like that, any hint of romance dies in the air.

At some point (time is an illusion and Sanji’s brain won’t leave him alone) Zoro is working out in the crow’s nest, and Sanji is bringing up a refresher.

It can’t get more blatant than that. Zoro doing pull ups, his chest expanding and concaving with each bend of the elbow. There’s a 500LB weight between his teeth that makes him look like a savage, but all Sanji can think of is how to mold the skin beneath his fingers.

Zoro spits out the weight in the most undignified way, one hawk-tuah to the ground. He continues pulling himself up with a singular hand. “You can leave the drink there, cook.”

“Uhuh.” Sanji’s not staring. He’s not.

Zoro lowers himself on the rack and squints at Sanji, which usually looks hilarious with just the one eye. “You’re not wearing a tie.”

Oh. Yeah. Sanji took it off before coming up to the crow’s nest. So what if he undid a few buttons. “Hot today.”

They’re in a staring contest, but also not really. Zoro’s gaze is unblinking, but it’s also not directly into Sanji’s eyes. Sanji would know. He’s not staring into mossball’s eye, either.

“Yeah,” Zoro agrees—which is a rare occurrence for them.

The last straw that convinces Sanji that Zoro is fucking with him is when he passes Zoro after his bath. Zoro is bare chested as they pass each other at the entryway to the restroom. Sanji steps left as Zoro steps right. Then his right meets Zoro’s left.

At this point, Move, marimo would be snapping at his tongue, but it dies in his throat.

“Need something?” Zoro rouses.

“Of course not.” Sanji side steps Zoro. “You?”

Zoro’s gaze lingers. By now, Sanji knows what it means for Zoro to have that look on his face. “Course not.”

They both go their separate ways.

*

Sanji is convinced he’s hallucinated the last few days. He isn’t one to call attention to it—out of slight fear. Bickering has turned into…teasing. Putting it in words makes the whole ordeal sound ridiculous, but there's a difference, dammit. Worst of all, Zoro isn’t the only one instigating it. Sanji is, too.

Zoro said in the very beginning not to make it weird. So Sanji, of course, can’t control his brain from doing so anyway.

The solution, of course, is for his brain to play tricks on him. He’s cooking in his dream, in the comfort of the galley with a warmth in his chest. Excitement puts a waltz to his step, excited to serve the beautiful silhouette sitting in his kitchen. Normally he doesn’t like people in his domain, but they’re here for him. They wanted to see him.

He’s giddily chopping up vegetables, filled with love and excitement to plate this food for its intended recipient. Sanji wants to show love the way he knows best.

“Who would ever love a failure like him?”

Sanji cuts his finger. He knows it’s a dream because he would never do that in real life. It’s easy to place the voice, but hard to accept. Pudding was always going to get the worst end of the deal with his presence.

“Is Sanji feeding the rats again?”

He hears the howls of laughter from his brothers, and he’s shoved to the floor of his own galley. The floorboard turns into cobblestone, and metal mutes his ears. Still, he knows there’s laughing. He feels it in his core.

“Let go!” He shouts. “Let go!”

In this dream, he thrashes and kicks—and suddenly it’s not Niiji or Ichiji he’s trying to kick.

It’s Luffy.

“I’m not moving an INCH!” Luffy wails, stern even as his voice trembles. “I WON’T EAT ANYONE ELSE’S FOOD!”

“Shut up,” Sanji hears his voice saying—with a venom that burns his veins. “Shut up, shut up, shut up—“

Sanji wakes up in a sweaty mess—screaming and shaking.

Then the third feeling bleeds through him—the one that always hits him straight in the gut. Shame.

*

Sanji is—was—a docile child by nature. It’s what Judge found most disdainful about him, what his mother adored, and what his sister wanted to memorialize in their mother’s name. Under the tutelage of Zeff, Sanji learned how to protect that child, so he would never break beneath Judge or his brothers ever again. He could go to bed on the Baratie, proud of what he accomplished and how far he’d come.

So, he hated that pinch of hope in the pit of his chest—that rotten speck of grease that wouldn’t disappear no matter the amount of scrubbing—that he could make Judge proud of him somehow. He hated that something the size of a grain of salt in the sea of all of his accomplishments would overtake his senses and make him the little failure getting left behind by his laughing brothers, and how it told him everything he’s done in the last fourteen years made him weak in Judge’s eyes. Because he didn’t believe it, but that little boy did.

Him, now, just hates who he was when he left Luffy to starve and denounced himself as the Strawhat Pirates’ cook. No matter how complicated the situation, that was enough to overtake all the terrible feelings he had about the Vinsmokes. He has days where he knows he’d tell that kid in the cage that it gets better, but after Whole Cake Island, he can’t even look that little boy in the eye. It gets better doesn’t look like kicking the crap out of one of his best friends and leaving them out to die.

It’s an hour too early for meal prep, but Sanji wouldn’t fall back asleep even if he wanted to. His head’s a garbled mess, filled with an anxious merry-go-round of derisive laughter and echoes of memories of himself that Sanji doesn’t want to remember. He may have moved past being the failure of the Vinsmoke Family, but he still failed as his crew’s cook.

If his dreams didn’t take such a sour turn, he’d actually laugh at the footsteps making their way to the galley. They started out so happy and loving in a way that Sanji yearned for as a child. He’d been filled with the same awe and warmth from when he’d sit in his mother’s lap, feeling safe and needed.

But no, it’s just Zoro.

“I’m not in the mood,” Sanji says bitterly.

“Clearly,” Zoro remarks. “The hell are you fighting, cook?”

Sanji seethes around his cigarette. The dreams had been far and few in between over the years. He hoped everything that happened in Wano would overtake the rest of his thoughts with regard to Whole Cake Island, but that was wishful thinking.

“Why do you care?” Sanji asks.

Zoro’s quiet, but Sanji is sure there’s an arched eyebrow and a ridiculing look staring at him. “It’s my job to protect every crewmate on this ship.”

Right. Obviously, that’s the reason, and not the other thing. The other thing that shouldn’t have grown so big and was as ridiculous as the idea of Vinsmoke Judge being proud of him. Sanji doesn’t want to be docile right now. Not in front of Zoro, of all people.

“So I’m still a crewmate?”

“What are you on now, cook?”

Zoro isn’t a mindreader, and would thankfully be a shitty one at that. So of course it sounds like a garbled, disorganized mess out of context. Sanji doesn’t do disorganized messes. Everything in his kitchen has a place, and every meal has steps towards perfection. Zoro’s not going to know what’s going on in his head. Hell, Zoro’s usually the reason why he acts less than himself most days. And…more, on others.

“I left,” Sanji says.

“You came back,” Zoro says without missing a beat. “You said you would, and you did.”

Sanji peeks through blond fringe and finds Zoro standing on the other side of the kitchen counter. It’s no later than half-past three in the morning, and neither of them were on the roster for watch tonight.

“I almost didn’t—”

“You came back. And even if you didn’t, you would’ve had a perfectly good reason—”

“I lied.”

“Usopp lies all the time.”

“Why are you fighting me on this?” Sanji closes his eyes and rubs his temples. He laughs around his cigarette, but only at himself. Only ever at himself.

“Don’t we always?” Zoro quips. He’s not a man of many words, but always finds the ones that get under Sanji’s skin. It’s infuriating as it is relieving.

“Not like this,” Sanji says quietly. He peels the cigarette from his mouth and glares at his food. He wishes he could go back to the first part of his dream, in that ounce of happiness that his subconscious dangled in front of him, but every bit of happiness is always overshadowed by misery. “I deserve…less, than this.”

“So, what,” Zoro says, “you want me to yell at you? Slice you to pieces? You wouldn’t dare take it lying down, cook, you’re not that kind man.”

Sanji exhales slowly. He lowers the knife onto the cutting board—well aware of what he was making, and who he was making it for, even subconsciously. “I’m not the man you thought I was.”

“The fuck you aren’t, you stupid pervy cook,” Zoro grumbles. “I’ve fought alongside you long enough to have my own opinion of you, Curly. You’ve got a big enough head as you are now for me to give a shit about your past. Still get nosebleeds over a pair of tits and can’t say a bad word about your precious Nami-swan and Robin-chwan.”

The way Zoro pitches his voice is enough to make Sanji snort. And—a ripple in his routine in this particular way is a welcomed comfort, versus his normal eight stages of misery. He fans his hand in a way that almost looks like a wiggle.

“I don’t sound like that.”

“To hell if I don’t know what you sound like after all this time. I do.”

The last two words seem to combat what Sanji’s brain wanted to deny him. But you don’t, was ready on his tongue, but Zoro’s cutting determination is clear.

Of all people Sanji is willing to concede, he does for Zoro. He knows the bastard won’t back down, anyway.

“It wasn’t all bad,” Sanji mutters quietly. He reached for seasonings in no particular order, knowing by heart how to make it taste good. “Used to sneak into the kitchen to make meals for my mom and then find my way over there. Every single bit of it was trash. She ate it every time. Told me she knew I made it with love.”

“Good,” Zoro says. “She didn’t waste food.”

God, if Zoro didn’t understand him best at that moment. Sanji reaches into a drawer to grab the next item for prep. He checks the stove and flakes rice with a paddle.

“She’d let me sit there and read books to me. Then when she got sicker, I’d read to her,” Sanji says. “All these fairytales where the knights would save the princess and they’d fall in love. I never understood how my mom could end up with a lowlife piece of shit like my dad. She deserved more. She deserved to be…”

He trails off.

“Treated like a lady?”

“Loved.” Sanji plates the meal. “To be showered and to know she was loved every day. She was worth all the effort, and Judge used her like a fucking incubator.”

His voice knots in his throat. Strained and choking, like when he was little and thrown behind bars. Hell, just a few months ago when every word tasted awful as he delivered them to Luffy in a large green field.

Sanji seethes and looks away, a hand to the bridge of his nose. He’s mortified, again, but too pathetic to remedy the situation. Not tonight.

“You did that for her,” Zoro points out. He wasn’t there, but he states it as a fact. “You do that for everyone.”

“I could always do more,” Sanji protests, but it’s weak. Raw. Three pieces of onigiri with fish that was caught earlier in the evening. He places it across the buffet line in front of the Strawhats’ first mate. “I feel better when I do.”

“Ah,” Zoro murmurs. “M’not…good at this kind of thing.”

Sanji knows. Zoro will never be a woman he’ll come to love and cherish for her warmth and softness. Not her demure nature or smile on gentle lips. He won’t sit back to get whisked away, or entertain a waltz or flirt back. He won’t need to be protected because he’ll always fight back.

Sanji knows, and it fills him with relief. “Can I kiss you anyway?”

*

During their second goabout, Sanji’s better equipped. He knows what he’s doing and casts a shadow across bare skin with his touch. It may just be pity on Zoro’s end, but Sanji vows (internally) to make it feel good all the same.

He’s licking the inside of Zoro’s mouth clean on top of the crow’s nest, the taste of seaweed paper and seasoned rice lingering from their time in the galley. Sanji kisses to forget, and like on the battlefield, Zoro moves in perfect synergy.

Sanji is desperate to fill the cavity in his chest—the one that decays every so often when the negative thoughts linger. Zoro is the perfect antithesis for his family. Strong, firm, caring. Sanji has never felt defenseless in front of Zoro, and Zoro has never treated him as such. No, Zoro reminds him in a filthy voice that he’s a fighter as much as he’s a survivor.

Zoro’s moans are a welcomed familiarity against Sanji’s skin. There’s relief, again, in knowing Sanji’s not the only one who wants it. Zoro corners Sanji into a bench and straddles him firmly, like he belongs there.

It’s an intense exchange of eye contact as Zoro grinds them together, panting. Sanji’s hands travel in tactile need to feel something between his fingers, squeezing bare skin and kissing faint battle scars where he can. Zoro moans all the same in his ear, and it’s all the encouragement Sanji needs to continue.

The whole thing is so carnal and rough in ways that Sanji would never perform for a lady, but is very much acceptable in Zoro’s wake. He wouldn’t expect Zoro to change in this way for him, after all, otherwise he wouldn’t have sought it out in the middle of the night. Likewise, though insistent on his distaste for it, Zoro doesn’t protest the roaming hands or fortuitous kisses Sanji lays on skin above the waist.

The protests come afterward, when Zoro goes as stiff as a board when Sanji reaches for a (hopefully) clean towel and wipes Zoro down.

“My stupid marimo,” Sanji punctuates with a bit of disappointment, “can you just let me do the bare minimum and let me take care of you?”

“This is me doing the bare minimum.”

Sanji might as well be scrubbing laundry against a washboard. Zoro remains in his lap, still, like he’s the most behaved cat taking a bath.

Better than nothing.

“You’re behaving so well,” Sanji remarks flatly.

He must be mistaken about seeing red in Zoro’s cheeks. It’s certainly different from what Sanji saw moments ago when Zoro was moaning obscenities in his ear.

“Aftercare is such a mandatory thing,” Sanji continues with a tut. He circles Zoro’s ass with the towel and doesn’t miss the way Zoro’s nose wrinkles. “Why can’t you just let me take care of you?”

“‘Cause you need it more.”

Sanji’s grip on the towel goes limp. Zoro’s face seems redder, and his eye is anywhere but Sanji’s face.

It’s a conscious decision not to desperately claw for a hidden meaning behind Zoro’s words. Even more conscious to show his appreciation through a kiss.

*

“Robin-chan! Up bright and early per usual! My morning isn’t complete without seeing your beauty.” Sanji has a cup of coffee plated alongside a ramekin of perfectly measured cream and sugar.

Robin smiles at him pleasantly and thanks him. “Likewise. Seeing you in such high spirits is comforting.”

Oh. “You flatter me Robin-chwan~”

“Oi, cook.” Zoro appears in the doorway with his heavyset foot and yawns. “It’s a new day. Where’s the sake—?”

“It is early!” Sanji snaps. “Go back to your mancave and I’ll call you for breakfast at a reasonable time!”

“I said booze!”

“And I said no, mossball!”

Zoro grumbles, and he intentionally stomps louder out of the galley like an overgrown child.

“I see he’s in high spirits this morning, too,” Robin muses. “What a treat to see you both so bright and early.”

Sanji pretends his gaze isn’t lingering on Zoro’s back. Easy to do, with a beautiful woman to entertain. “Only second to you, my darling.”

*

Things kind of change after that. It startles Sanji a little; he was still working out the mechanics of bargaining with Zoro for it to happen again, and then it kind of did. And it keeps happening.

They still fight, bicker, and spar, sure. Sanji finds himself looking forward to it more and more each morning, even when Zoro pisses him off. Then, on the nights when everyone is asleep, Sanji satiates his palate for one marimo atop the crow’s nest, or in the pantry in a rare instance where the brute can be convincing enough.

It’s not the physicality of intimacy that satisfies Sanji. Sure, the orgasms are amazing. Zoro responds and reciprocates, and Sanji loves the post-nut clarity that comes with it. He loves pouring himself into Zoro and knowing it’s appreciated. Behind every kiss and squeeze and whisper in the night. He’s selfish to chase Zoro in this way, and knows being tender is to make himself feel better. It could end at any time, and Sanji’s had enough things taken away from him to not cherish what’s in his arms now, even if there’s not quite a word for it. Putting a word to it might even make it disappear.

Sanji…likes this intimacy. Yearns for it, while Zoro may tolerate it. He kisses bare skin as he cleans Zoro off every single time. He leans into Zoro while rebuttoning his shirt. On rare occasions, he lets Zoro’s clumsy hands seal away the last of bare skin, only so the swordsman can hangover his shoulder, nose pressed firmly into the crook of Sanji’s neck. Not necessarily a kiss, but something so earnestly Zoro that Sanji wants the sensation tattooed into his skin.

It’s not their usual dynamic. Sanji hates feeling weak, or vulnerable. But instead of his knees getting kicked in, he leans into Zoro’s body, supported and encouraged. The flip isn’t extreme. They still argue and fight and hold contests in the daylight, but there’s an excitement that hums in Sanji’s chest during their back and forth.

Small things change. Zoro starts lingering in the kitchen until his watch shift. Sanji willingly pours their swordsman a nightcap. When Sanji brings Zoro an afternoon refresher, Zoro stops intentionally in the middle of his workout to receive it.

On the next island, Zoro shadows him unprompted to the marketplace. Whether it’s peculiar a second time to their friends is a mystery. When he’s being a particularly good mossball, Sanji casually puts an extra bottle of sake in their basket and warns Zoro about drinking it too early. Sanji has to redirect Zoro twice. By the third time, he’s yanking Zoro by the wrist through the end of town, and Zoro is grumbling something about moving pathways, but allows himself to be guided.

In some evenings, when they end up falling asleep instead of going about their business, Sanji wakes up thrashing and screaming and kicking. He wriggles in Zoro’s grasp, blinded by shameful actions of the past, and Zoro just holds him until he settles down.

“Don’t use your hands, cook,” Zoro murmurs in his ear with only an ounce of awareness. “They’re too important.”

So, Sanji rasps for air and takes deep breaths until he can calm himself down. Eventually he peels out of Zoro’s grip and takes a drag of a cigarette. The burn in his lungs reminds him he’s awake.

Zoro is guaranteed to be there when his heart settles, making room on the tiny makeshift bed in the crow’s nest for when Sanji’s ready to fall back asleep.

*

It gets weird an evening before they’re supposed to arrive at the next island. A winter island that Sanji isn’t too keen on, but whatever. After a week at sea, he knows the captain is itching to make landfall. The air is already crisp and makes his nose itchy when he takes his afternoon cigarette, so he hides in the pantry for the time being.

Sanji goes on autopilot and makes a mental checklist of what they need to restock for when they go into town. A hearty stew would be good for the first night of dinner. He mentally lays out the ingredients for a flavorful beef stew with the remainder of meat left in the refrigerator and compares what’s needed to the budget Nami allowed him.

Very few people would be stupid enough to bother him while he’s taking inventory—which would include Luffy trying to bargain for a mid-midday snack and Zoro swiping some alcohol. When the door opens quietly behind him, he’s pleased to have the latter. Not that he’d say that without giving Zoro a hard time.

“Don’t tell me. You were trying to find the bathroom,” Sanji remarks as Zoro fails to sneak up behind him. There’s no venom. There hardly is these days—other than some light teasing.

“Please. It’s not time to bathe yet.” Zoro falls in line behind him, wrapping around Sanji . “That’s tomorrow.”

Zoro’s face is wet as he burrows it into the crook of Sanji’s shoulder, and the kiss makes him yelp.

“You disgusting piece of mold,” Sanji chastises with just a little bit of heat. He shivers when Zoro nuzzles him, but that’s beside the point. “You marched your sweaty ass all the way down here in my pantry just to fuck with me?”

“You like it.” Again, that’s beside the point, and even if Sanji does like it, he isn’t going to let Zoro know that.

Sanji turns around, clipboard in hand, and is met with a stupid shit-eating grin.

“Your waist is so small,” Zoro remarks. He makes a show of pinching Sanji’s hips. “I can wrap my arms around you twice over.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, definitely my legs.”

“Marimo.” Sanji makes a show of bopping Zoro with the clipboard, even if it’s just the two of them. “You stink. Go take a shower and then maybe we’ll talk.”

“Will you join me?”

Sanji considers it. It’s one of those evenings where everyone else is above deck. They had a bonfire going in the Sunny’s grassy area, and Brook was fiddling with a song. Sanji had made hot chocolate for everyone—sans the swordsman with a disdain for sweets—and sneaked away to the warmth of his pantry. Of course Zoro followed him here. No one else would miss him.

“Ten minutes,” Sanji declares. “And you better actually shower.”

Zoro grunts, which could really mean anything, but Sanji’s learned to decipher hell yeah from fuck no.

They aren’t going out of their way to be discreet. Zoro is snoring on the couch when Sanji emerges from the storage room. So Sanji bops him on the head and delights in the halfhearted grumble Zoro greets him with.

“Aren’t you the type of plant that survives in the winter?” Sanji teases. “I want my money back.”

“Get in line after the witch. Ow—!”

“Don’t call her that.”

Half the crew should either be passed out around the fire or sloshed from the Bailey’s that Sanji included with the hot chocolate. When he’d first left them to their devices, Luffy was convincing Chopper to gather snow to make snow cones. Franky had whipped up some insane device, and the lovely Nami pointed out, why would you want to eat snow cones while it’s snowing?

Either way, Sanji doesn’t think much of the hand he has on the small of Zoro’s back, determined to prevent their swordsman from getting lost on his own ship. Zoro clearly doesn’t think much of it, either. .

Usopp does, though.

Red from cheek to ear, wobbling back and forth in the middle of his current tall tale to Chopper, he raises his mug. “Here, here! To the happy couple on our ship!”

Sanji freezes.

“What?” Zoro’s eyebrows furrow and he frowns.

Chipper gasps, and he stands to the tips of his hooves with his unaltered mug of cocoa. “Wait, for real?!”

“SUPER!” Franky shouts, and he openly weeps. “I never thought the time would come, bros! You’re at each other's necks, like, always!”

With each word, Sanji gets paler and paler. Frozen.

“You IDIOT!” Nami hisses and bricks Usopp with the bottom of her mug. “You weren’t supposed to say anything!”

“Say what?” Luffy seems to be snacking on something. Whatever it is, Sanji can’t grasp where he’s currently standing. “Oh, about Zoro and Sanji being in love?”

Usopp looks puzzled. “Well, aren’t they?”

“No,” Sanji says quickly. “Usopp lies. Usopp is a liar. What couple? There’s no couple here.”

“We’re a couple, right babe?” Franky gestures to Robin, who gleams at him pleasantly.

“That we are, Franky.”

“That’s a couple,” Sanji blathers on. He gestures to Robin and Franky. “A really weird couple that I don’t quite get, but whatever makes my Robin-darling happy. We’re not a couple. Mossball is a man! See? See?”

He gestures wildly in Zoro’s direction for emphasis, even putting some distance between them.

“Tell them, Zoro!” Sanji laughs loudly, nervously, and kicks Zoro in the foot. “We’re not interested in each other like that, at all.”

“M’not his type,” Zoro grunts.

“He’s a he!” Sanji waves his hands more. “He’s a hardass! He smells! He’s not soft at all and he doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body! I would never go for someone like him!”

Dead silence.

“I love women!” Sanji shouts loudly. The words echo against the glaciers around the ship. His throat is raw and cold, fingers numb while the rest of him is mortified.

“Uh,” Usopp says drunkenly, “okay. Hey, Chopper, I tell you about the time I went toe-to-toe with a warlord?”

“What?!” Chopper shrieks, enchanted.

Everyone goes about their usual business, singing around the campfire and swaying to Brook’s songs.

Sanji sighs in a wild relief and pats Zoro on the back. “That was a close one, huh?”

“Sure, cook.”

“Mossy?”

“I get it.” Zoro detaches himself from Sanji, the glare evident. “You’d never go for a person like me.”

Oh, shit.

“Zoro, wait—”

Zoro stomps off, clearly intending to get as far away from Sanji as possible.

*

A lot of emotions go through Sanji. First of all, he’s straight. Not a lot of things made sense growing up, but his sexuality was never something he had to question. He wanted glorious romance like in the fairytales his mother used to read for him. He wanted to be strong, like the princes and the knights who saved the princess, and worthy of their love. His family might find him weak, but he vowed to be strong for his true love.

Marimos didn’t need saving. Not from dragons, but definitely from labyrinthian straight paths that weren’t complicated in the sort. But—that’s what he liked about Zoro. What he’s found solace in, in the last few weeks. Months. Sure, it was confusing, but they were never supposed to make it weird enough to get confusing. Sanji adamantly reminded himself that every day. Confusing isn’t what Zoro would want, and Sanji desperately kept a tight lid on it for that exact reason.

Except Sanji put his foot in his mouth. Both of them.

He trails after Zoro, up the rigging into the crow’s nest. The crew received the news and carried on like it was nothing but a passing gale. Water is wet, fire is hot, ice is cold—oh, okay, Zoro and Sanji aren’t a couple in any shape, manner, or form. Sanji didn’t even have to go into an explanation of what they were doing, not that he knew what to call it anyway. Trying to put a name to it scared him, too. He didn’t think Zoro cared, so why should he?

Because Zoro just stomped off, clearly hurt. Clearly feeling more than Sanji was giving credit for. Sure, Zoro likes men, and Sanji wouldn’t shame someone else for their sexuality. He’s jealous, even, that Zoro’s preference is unwavering but the crew is questioning his own. He doesn’t need the crew in his business like that.

Sanji is so nervous he doesn’t even knock on the door. He calms the faint trembling in his hand.

Zoro is sprawled across the floor, working on what could already be his hundredth push up. He doesn’t look up when Sanji comes in. Barely acknowledges Sanji.

Sanji lights a cigarette. His drag is slow as he tries to figure out what to say.

“Let’s quit here, Curly.”

Sanji’s eyes widen.

With perfect concentration, Zoro continues his pushups. Other than those four little words, he says little else.

Sanji doesn’t know what to do. He at least thought he had more time leading up to this conversation. “Is…is it because I said you stink?”

Zoro pauses, palms flat on the floor. “No. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

Zoro doesn’t want him anymore.

“I—you.” Sanji pulls the cigarette out of his mouth. “You’re just saying that. Because I hurt your feelings. I’m—I’m sorry.”

Zoro doesn’t want him anymore.

“What?” Zoro’s nose wrinkles. “You tell me I smell like shit all the time. And I hate that prissy crap you pull. Why would that hurt my feelings now?”

He says it with such an ease that Sanji’s brain can hardly process it. They might as well be having two different conversations. Zoro is that uninterested. He’s bickering, while Sanji is processing. “But—but why?”

“Why do you care?” Zoro snaps back. “Don’t make it weird, cook.”

Oh.

Right.

That was their whole stipulation from the very beginning. Sanji could try it out, so long as it didn’t make things weird between them. He’s tried very hard not to do that, but tonight’s events—his headache inducing performance—was just that. It’s been his mantra since the very beginning—the line that he knew he shouldn’t cross but dreaded he was tiptoeing.

But…hearing Zoro say it aloud is soul-crushing.

Sanji made it weird, so Zoro doesn’t want him anymore.

“Got anything else to say?” Zoro doesn’t look at him. Sanji’s made sure he’s not worth Zoro’s time.

“I.” The wind feels knocked out of Sanji. He can’t breathe.

But he’s been here many times. He always knew he was always going to end up wanting more than what he deserved.

“No,” Sanji says stiffly. “I hear you loud and clear, mosshead.”

*

Things are frigid after that. Cold, which is Sanji’s least favorite type of weather. Nami informs them that the log pose will take a week to reset, so they’re stuck here. A little town rests deep in the woods, called Snowden Town, which accumulates, as one might guess, a shit ton of snow.

Zoro doesn’t want to talk to him. Which is fine, because Sanji doesn’t want to talk to Zoro either. Sanji spends the night in the galley, confident Zoro would stay on the other side of the ship. He stands in his kitchen, hoping a new sliver of inspiration would get his mind off things, but…he has no idea what to cook. And he definitely doesn’t know who he’s cooking for.

Sanji made it weird in a lot of different ways.

First, he thought it was clear that he was straight. But, if it was clear that he was straight, then it was clear they had a stipulation, too. Sanji fucked that up. Maybe he wasn’t as straight as he thought (maybe he’s always known that) but he’s an idiot to go fucking around with Zoro of all people.

Of course Sanji would end up wanting more—he always did, but Zoro wasn't the person to test that on. Zoro wasn’t soft. He, while upholding a swordsman’s noble code of honor, scoffed at the things Sanji thought were chivalrous. Zoro was simple. He wanted to protect the crew and become the world’s greatest swordsman. He said Sanji promised to come back, and Sanji did. End of story.

Sanji shouldn’t have fucked around with Zoro. Because fucking around with Zoro has only ever invited Zoro fucking him back, and they were both too hotheaded not to push each other too far. Sanji’s…Sanji’s too hotheaded not to push it too far. Too scared that he’ll always give more than he’ll get, and too scared of yet another thing in his life not aligning with what he wants.

They don’t talk for those first few days. It’s obvious when people come rolling around during breakfast that first morning. Robin rolls in for her freshly brewed coffee at 7AM sharp, followed by Brook, and the rest of the crew meander in. All except Zoro, who’s usually late, but doesn’t show up at all for breakfast.

“That’s weird,” Usopp remarks, “why wouldn’t he—ow! Nami, why’d you kick me?!”

Sanji’s in the kitchen, pretending he doesn’t hear the conversation. He’s focused on the extra plate he made instead, wondering how the hell he’s going to deliver the food up to the crow’s nest all casually.

There’s loud whispers happening at the table. He can hear Nami’s beautiful voice berating Usopp over something (“You dolt!”)

So, people know. Sanji’s not as straight as he thought he was, and he’s made a damn fool of himself in front of his crew (again.) He fought with that realization for most of the night, then concluded it didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. Water is wet, fire is hot, Sanji and Zoro aren’t in a relationship, but they weren’t not in…something, either. At least to Sanji.

Eventually, Luffy chimes in. “Hey, Sanji, if you want, I can taken that plate up to Zoro—”

“YOU’LL JUST EAT IT, YOU LIAR!” Nami shakes him ruthlessly. Then, in her honey-sweet tone, she says, “Sanji-kun, would you like me to drag Zoro’s ass down here so he’ll eat like a proper gentleman?”

Sanji likes women too. He loves beautiful, soft, jiggly women and their fair smiles and coquettish demeanors. He’d shout it a thousand times into the sun and mean it every single time. So he’s flattered Nami would ask.

“Save your strength, my darling,” he says. “I couldn’t ask you to interrupt your own meal.”

Thus, he mans up and climbs the rigging to the crow’s nest to deliver the food. Sanji couldn’t sleep the night before, so he spent the waking hours rehearsing what he was going to say to come off as smooth and casual as possible. Things should go back to normal.

“Your food, mosshead.”

“Leave it there.”

“You’ll eat it, right?”

Zoro’s back is to him, form hunched over in some meditative state. “Yeah. Leave it there.”

Sanji should leave the tray of food beside the door and be on his merry way. No harm, no foul. “Why did you want to stop?”

There’s a slight twitch in Zoro’s neck, as though he’s craning his neck to hear Sanji better. Otherwise, he doesn’t move. “‘Cause you don’t want me, cook.”

“You don’t know that—”

“I do,” Zoro says, and he turns around this time. “And it’s fine. I’ll eat, cook, just leave me the fuck alone.”

Sanji does all he can to keep his lower lip from quivering. He’s not going to show weakness—not to Zoro. They don’t do that, and he doesn’t plan on starting. “Okay.”

So he leaves.

But fuck it if he believes he hasn’t hurt Zoro’s feelings.

*

The first day on the island, Zoro volunteers to watch the Sunny by rolling over and taking a nap. If Sanji could fall back from going into town, too, he would.

Instead, he scopes out the marketplace to get an idea of what meals he can make with the island’s current resources. Zoro stays mostly out of sight for lunch and dinner, but Sanji finds each tray he’s made washed and stacked in the dish rack when he comes back.

The second day, Sanji leaves the ship with the intent of grocery shopping. He isn’t expecting Usopp to shadow after him, knees buckling and shoulders to his ears.

The Sunny is a speck in the distance when Usopp clears his throat and breaks the silence.

“S…So, u-um…” Usopp clears his throat once again. “It’s c-come to my attention that I might’ve…shed l-light on something that should’ve not…had light shed on it.”

Ugh. Sanji resists the urge to light two cigarettes for this conversation. He knew it was coming based on the way Usopp loomed outside the galley this morning, but it doesn’t make it any less painful. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, really?”

Sanji glares.

“Oh—no, yeah, okay.” Usopp cowers in his boots.

There’s only so much anger that can be directed toward him. So with a sigh, Sanji just makes a beeline to the entry of the marketplace, shopping list in hand.

“F…For what it’s worth, uh,” Usopp stammers, “I’m sorry.”

“What the hell made you think we were a couple?”

In an instant, Usopp’s quibbling cowardice comes to a halt. He stands at full height, brow uncharacteristically furrowed, and stares at Sanji oddly. “I mean—it’s pretty obvious—”

“We weren’t a couple.”

“Eek! Right, right. What I meant to say, man, is that it’s pretty obvious when you and Zoro are getting along versus when you’re at each other’s throats. You both get a twisted joy in pushing each other’s buttons, but, like, you also seemed…happier?”

Sanji wrinkles his nose.

“But, none of us were sure at first and neither one of you were saying anything, and Nami—Nami, mind you—thought maybe you two would be too dense to say anything at all.” Usopp’s explanation spills in a flurry, half-fearful and half-rambling. “I-I’m sorry man—you guys came out of the kitchen looking so lovey-dovey the other night that I was just happy for you. We all were. And then you said you weren’t together, so we were gonna leave things be, but then…the next morning it looked like you and Zoro weren’t getting along anymore. And not in the usual way.”

A sigh falls from Sanji’s lips. He plants his snow boots into the ground, ears red at the explanation for many reasons. “You accepted what I said pretty easily, Usopp.”

“Well, yeah, obviously. What reason do I have to doubt you?”

“Because it was a lie. I lied.” Sanji’s past was a lie. He didn’t want to lie to the people he cared about again, but he did.

“Okay, whoa.” Usopp waves his hands in front of Sanji’s face, gesturing for a timeout. “You weren’t ready to say anything, so who are we—who am I to push it? You could either tell us when you were ready, or never tell us at all. I shouldn’t speak for the whole crew—but we don’t push each other to talk about things we don’t want to. If it’s a secret, then there’s a reason it’s a secret. We trust each other.”

The Vinsmoke name was a secret for a reason. No one on the ship saw Sanji as lesser for keeping that to himself. Not Nami, not the Captain, not Zoro.

“Plus, lying’s my whole thing,” Usopp interjects. He scratches his head sheepishly. “I lie all the time, and you all still like me, don’t you?”

Sanji snorts. “Yeah. I guess that’s true.”

“I really am sorry, Sanji,” Usopp says apologetically. “It was an accident.”

“I get it. You’re fine, Usopp. Something was gonna give eventually, anyway.”

Usopp looks even more pathetic. He looks ready to cry on the spot. He throws his arms around Sanji, and Sanji willingly hugs him back.

“You’re the best,” Usopp wails. “I knew it was the right decision to go to you first! You’re not nearly as scary as Zoro! I knew you wouldn’t beat me up, you’ve got a heart of gold!”

Okay, Sanji does take offense to that. “I am just as scary as that sack of grass! Don’t be stupid!”

“Eek! R-Right—right, got it!”

*

Their captain, surprisingly, has very little to say about the matter. On the fourth day, Sanji is smoking near the masthead, where Luffy already happens to be. He gives a wave from Sunny’s head, then joins him aboard.

Another thing Sanji loathed about the cold: how quickly the sun sets. Everything becomes bleak, and hopeless. Years of separation from that cell, and Sanji still shivers at the thought.

“Hey Sanji! Would you make me a snack?”

“Yeah, captain. Let me finish up here.” Sanji takes in the waning light and notes how the end of his cigarette manages to be brighter. If Sanji ever wanted light in his life, he had to make it himself.

Luffy is enjoying the peace, entertaining himself in his own way as he always does.

Sanji wants to enjoy the silence a little longer, but he’s never been nice to himself. Not if he doesn’t deserve it. “How’s he doing, Cap?”

“Who? Zoro?” Luffy snickers in his usual fashion, unbothered. Zoro’s never done anything to warrant anything less from their captain, after all. At least not to Luffy’s knowledge. “I dunno. I think he went drinking with Nami.”

“Ah. At least he’ll find his way back to the ship.”

“Aw, you know Zoro. He’ll find a way to get lost.”

Sanji snorts—because ain’t that the truth? He shifts between his feet and tucks his free hand into a pocket. Sanji’s gaze falls to his shoes, and he can’t bring himself to look any higher. He’s not sure if he deserves to. “I…fucked up, captain.”

“Why? ‘Cause you called Zoro stupid and stinky? It’s true, though.” Luffy shrugs and places his hands behind his head.

“No,” Sanji seethes, but he holds himself back. He could never be mad at Luffy, Not really. In a quieter tone, he continues, “No—because I…I hurt his feelings. I screwed up the ship dynamic.”

“Nah. S’not like you two didn’t go between fighting or ignoring each other before. Besides, you’ll make up.”

“You’re so sure about that?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause you care. It’s just who you are.” Luffy elbows him in good-nature, not one lilt in the conversation. “You came back to me, didn’t you?”

Sanji’s chest tightens. “You let me come back.”

“Duh. I told you I wouldn’t eat from anyone else.” Luffy leans into him with a clear laxness. “He’s my swordsman and you’re my cook. Who else would I want?”

Luffy wants him. The crew wants him. Zoro might not, but everyone else does, according to Usopp. They were going to let him figure his shit out, respectfully, or let him spend the rest of his life lying to himself. So long as he was happy.

Sanji's breath catches in his throat, knotting with the inhalation of smoke. The cigarette feels feeble between his fingers.

Luffy wraps his arms around Sanji three-fold—just an extra instance than what Zoro vowed he could do himself. “Can I have that snack now?”

They both pretend he doesn’t sniffle. “Sure, captain.”

*

On the morning of the sixth day, Nami and Robin come back with shopping bags in tow, looking extra beautiful in the new peacoats that they’ve purchased. Sanji practically launches himself off the ship to help them bring everything onboard.

After a few evenings to himself, Sanji was able to collect his thoughts. So, he asks, “Nami, my beloved.”

“Yes, Sanji-kun?”

“Wasn’t the mosshead with you?” He keeps his tone as casual as he can.

“Oh, you know him. I dropped him off at a bar a few days ago. He and Jinbe were in a drinking contest when I left.”

“Oh. I see.”

Jinbe had come back to the ship mid-afternoon. He was astounded how much the cold bothered Sanji, but otherwise made no mention of interacting with their swordsman. Sanji was more than willing to stay on the ship and avoid the wintery hellscape, but did so on the off chance he’d find Zoro wandering around the halls, too.

Nami eyes him carefully. She stares at him differently since Whole Cake Island. At first, it hurt—Sanji would have to live the rest of his life knowing Nami wouldn’t look at him the same way. But in this instance, she was looking…at him instead of through him. She hadn’t looked through him in a long time, but the way she glanced at him now had Sanji feeling it to his core.

“That was two days ago. For all we know, that idiot might’ve gotten on a fisherman’s boat and is stranded at sea.” Nami shrugs tiredly.

“This is true,” Robin agrees. “Perhaps someone should go find him before he succumbs to hypothermia. He’d make a hearty meal for the right apex predator.”

Yeah, okay—if Sanji waited for Zoro to come back to the ship, the Sunny wouldn’t set sail for another three months. “Such a smart idea, Robin-chwan! I’ll get right on that.”

*

Sanji isn’t one to enjoy snow beneath his feet. Snow is too cold, and being cold reminds him of isolation. The weather is fair, but the wind is just strong enough to sweep snowflakes across the landscape and hide the footsteps behind him after a few hours.

Which means Zoro definitely got lost and definitely would not make it back to the ship anytime soon. Great.

He spends the first part of his trek into town rehearsing what he’s going to say. Then, when it sounds too stupid in his head, Sanji rewrites the sentences in his head. Again, and again, until they sound just right.

Hey, Mosshead, I’m really, really sorry that I said I didn’t want you and I’m sorry I’m shit at figuring my shit out.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s basically what he wants to say.

The truth is…

Sanji stops as he makes it to the edge of town.

The truth was, figuring his shit out meant accepting he had it less figured out than he thought he did. And he avoided trying to figure it out because he knew, in the end, he’d fuck it up.

Luffy says they’ll make up because he cares. It’s fucking painful laying himself out bare for others to see—but he’d let Zoro see it in the last few weeks. He trusted Zoro with it when he knew it was a bad idea, because even when they loathed each other, he could trust Zoro with anything. Zoro offered so much warmth that the cold didn’t seem possible.

If he says all that, then Zoro definitely won’t look at him the same way again.

Not that Zoro’s looking at him at all, these days.

Sanji kicks a rock. Probably (definitely) with more strength than intended.

He finds Zoro at the third bar in town, and suddenly Sanji is livid.

Brook is there, playing a jaunty tune on the piano. There’s a fireplace at the end of the bar, warming the quaint halls of the log cabin-esque building. It’s a well-loved establishment, and many patrons are gleeful.

It’s the same exact scene. Zoro at the countertop, with a bartender who’s smiling ear-to-ear in front of him.

“Yohoho! That’s my chef over there! Everyone say Hi, Blackleg Sanji!”

“Brook!” Sanji hisses.

But either the patrons are oblivious to his bounty or just plain stupid. They all repeat after the Soul King, “Hi, Blackleg Sanji!”

The greeting prompts Zoro to look up. He stares Sanji dead in the eye—and then turns back to the bartender when another cool mug is placed in front of him.

Sanji is a smart man. But he’s also a very stupid man.

“What the fuck?” So he marches over to Zoro, filled to the absolute brim with rage, envy, jealousy, and anger, and drags Zoro by the collar of his jacket out into the streets. “What the fuck? What the actual fuck, marimo?!”

“What the fuck, ‘what the fuck,’ Curly?” Zoro snarls. A mug of beer shakes in his fist, somehow managing to keep ahold of it like the fucking idiot he is.

Sanji sees red. “So you’ll let any guy fuck you so long as it isn’t me? So long as he has a big dick?!”

“Hah?”

“Why don’t you want me?” Sanji chokes. His hands are tight in Zoro’s coat. “Why—why can’t you want me as much as I want you?”

“What are you—?”

“I’m sorry I said you weren’t good enough for me. I’m sorry I called you stupid and smelly, even if you could stand to shower more.” Sanji’s hands shake, and his vision blurs. His voice fills as full as his heart does empty, and he feels rotten to the core. “I’m—I’m sorry I hurt you before I had the chance to have you. I wasn’t freaking out about you, I was freaking out about me and—and my shit. You—”

He sobs, because the idea of Zoro with another man—anyone else—sucks. It suffocates him, and makes him want to die.

“You’ve been perfect, and I’ve been stupid,” he finishes. Sanji’s hands fall to his sides, defeated. “So fucking stupid.”

For a long time, there’s nothing. Then Sanji’s lip is quivering again and he’s letting loose the tears he wouldn’t allow the other night. The ones he especially tried to leave behind with Germa, but never quite could. It’s mortifying to hear his own sobs, but Sanji deserves it.

“Cook. Curly. Sanji. Holy shit.” Then, Zoro is all over him, uncharacteristically floundering. He wipes Sanji’s eyes with the corners of his sleeves, which have been cleaned once in a lifetime, at best. “Why are you crying?”

Why is he crying? Why is he crying? “I’m trying to tell you I’m in love with you and you can’t figure out why I’m crying?”

Zoro’s eye widens, somehow still not expecting the answer. They don’t do tears. They don’t do feelings. Not like this.

“I hurt you,” Sanji says miserably, “and it upsets me.”

To his surprise, Zoro grips him by the face. Zoro looks completely at a loss, not at all in his element.

“Stop crying,” Zoro snaps.

“Fuck you!” Sanji rebukes. He sniffles. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Fuck you.”

“Curly. Sanji. Sanji. You call me an idiot four times a day and complain about my bathing habits because I don’t prescribe to your prissy standards,” Zoro says flatly. “You really think I give a shit?”

Sanji peers back at the swordsman. The beer is forgotten on the ground, with Zoro’s sole focus on him. There’s a vein throbbing in Zoro’s neck, and his ears are comically red—either from anger or embarrassment.

“I said we should stop,” Zoro says sternly, “because I made it weird.”

Sanji stares. Slowly, his vision becomes clearer as Zoro wipes the tears from his eyes. The more of Zoro he sees, the more evident the blush in his cheeks. “What?”

The touch is gentle and warm. The kind of heat that provides comfort in the frosty air. Sanji’s missed it so, so much in these last few days. He misses falling asleep to it, and waking up tangled in Zoro’s arms. The cold sucked. Being away from Zoro sucked even more.

So he hates it when Zoro tries to retract his hands. Sanji reaches out and grabs Zoro by the face just to counter. Zoro will look everywhere but Sanji’s face, and Sanji realizes how familiar he is with this particular expression.

“What, marimo?”

“Fuck—I said I made it weird.” Zoro’s face reddens. He hangs his head, distinctly embarrassed. “I know you don’t want me. I’ve known that. I’ve known the whole time.”

“Have you…” Sanji squints. “Have you not been listening—?”

“No!” Zoro shouts, arms in the air. “You want romance. You want flirting and dancing and all that cringey bullshit. You want flowers. You wanna give me flowers. I’m shit at getting flowers, Curly. I’m shit all the things you like and I don’t have big tits! You! Don’t! Want! Me!”

Sanji’s mouth falls open.

“And I,” Zoro finishes, “am always going to want you more than you want me. Always have.”

The knots at the back of Sanji’s throat unfurl. He stares at Zoro at a loss for words, while the big lug has the audacity to hang his head low in defeat. Zoro doesn’t admit defeat. Zoro refuses to show his back to anyone or ever run away from battle. Now, though, he looks like a Doberman unable to look its owner in the eye.

“I realized having you as we were wasn’t enough for me,” Zoro mutters. “I fucking—I knew it wouldn’t be, but I asked you to go along with it anyway. I got in too deep, and know I can’t give you what you want. I’m not it, Curly.”

Sanji doesn’t know what to say. “You…want me?”

Zoro sighs this obvious sigh, like Sanji’s just asked something stupid.

“But you do have big tits,” Sanji supplies weakly.

“Ha?”

Sanji swallows hard. “You could’ve just told me.”

Zoro looks like a semblance of Sanji’s Zoro. Confused, moronic, and finally looking at him. Sanji’s been there to recognize the frustrated wrinkle between those green brows. “No—I couldn’t. Not when your personality revolves around how much you love women. You shouted it to the fucking glaciers in the sky the other night.”

Right. “And then I saw you in a bar.”

“And then you saw me in a bar,” Zoro agrees warily.

Now Sanji understands how he hurt Zoro. Not the insults, or the intimacy itself. Just from floundering along in happiness while he avoided putting a name to this feeling. Zoro was able to name it a long time ago, and Sanji was either going to get there eventually, or never at all.

“My brothers…” Sanji trails off, then clears his throat. “My brothers and Judge, they had a pretty fucked up idea of what being strong was supposed to look like. So much so that I leaned hard in the other direction to protect women like my mom, who were too good for them. Zeff taught me well, but I don’t think either of us expected me to get…here.”

He awkwardly fiddles with one of his coat sleeves and peeks through his bangs. Zoro is listening, like he has in the past. There’s no threat of him running away, and just that alone offers sweet relief.

“When I first met you, I thought you were gonna be an ass or a brute like them,” Sanji explains. “And then I actually got to know you, and…care about you, and learn how you care about other people too.”

He takes a sharp breath.

“And finding out you like men, was like discovering another way we connect, even if I didn’t know it at the time. Even if I squandered it, and stomped all over your feelings—”

“Stop selling yourself short,” Zoro interjects quietly. “I hate when you do that.”

Sanji exhales, and the breath is clean. He looks Zoro dead in the eye and squeezes Zoro’s hand.

“You’re a better man than the ones I grew up with,” Sanji says. “You say shit like that because you don’t see me as a failure. You’re the—you’re the goddamn knight that I wanted to be in the stories my mom and I read together, and you treat me as an equal. How could someone not fall in love with you?”

In one glance, Zoro looks taken aback by the statement. His eyebrows knit together, and Sanji can see the reflection of his own hope in that lone eye. He’s listening because Sanji’s finally hearing him.

“I want you,” Sanji reaffirms. He squishes Zoro’s cheeks between his palms before the thought can be chased away from him. “I need you in my life, marimo. Zoro. I do.”

“No,” Zoro says hesitantly. “That’s not…”

“Give me credit, marimo.” Sanji squishes Zoro’s face even more, so absolutely nothing can interrupt them. “It took me a while to get there, but I love you. Even more than you.”

Zoro’s shoulders fall, gaze still as guarded as when Sanji braved his way up the crow's nest. Sanji gets it now, though. “No you don’t.”

Sanji pinches Zoro’s cheeks. “I love you, marimo. You. I’m sorry I’m an ass and it took me so long to get here, but—I’m here. And I promise you I want you more than you want me.”

“No you don’t.”

“Zoro—”

“You couldn’t possibly love me more,” Zoro rages on, suddenly annoyed for some reason. “I love you more, you stupid love cook. Trust me, I’ve had years of practice, and experience, compared to you all in your head and freaking out like you always do.”

Sanji stares at this big, stupid idiot one more time. “Marimo, are you trying to out-love me?”

“Have been,” Zoro huffs. “I win that game every time.”

He’s pouting. Roronoa Zoro is pouting and leering at Sanji with the least amount of ferocity Sanji has ever seen, and yet with a minute clarity that Zoro truly believed it. Like how some day Luffy would be King of the Pirates and how he’d someday be the World’s Greatest Swordsman.

How long has Zoro been playing this game? Years, he said? He’s wanted and loved Sanji for years?

“Then I,” Sanji declares, “am going to outdo you every day and show you how much I love you. Down to my very last breath. You’re going to feel so loved that you’re going to be singing love songs to my name, mosshead.”

Zoro makes the most disgusted face—but Sanji can finally laugh. The weight in his heart is lifted, and his chest doesn’t hurt anymore. Then Zoro’s demeanor grows serious, and his hands cup Sanji’s face in happy tandem.

“If I kiss you right now,” he asks quietly, “you’re mine?”

Mine. Mine, mine, mine.

“Not if I kiss you first,” Sanji says. “That makes you mine.”

There’s a grin that meets him. Sanji sweeps in and does as he threatened.

It’s a draw.

*

There’s not enough time in the world to show Zoro all the ways Sanji loves him. He likes the idea, actually, of wrinkling into a dusty prune like the old man, laying beside an equally raisined Zoro, and waking up every morning just to whisper I love you, forever and always, marimo, down to his very last breath.

Sanji is tugging Zoro along to the nearest hotel, hopping along the snow while Zoro entertains his whims. Crew be damned if they knew anything about tonight. Sanji wants Zoro all to himself.

“My sweet lover,” Sanji whispers in the shell of Zoro’s ear, when they’re tangled in the sheets. He wants to whisper sweet nothings on every inch of Zoro’s skin. He wants to kiss sweet nothings into Zoro’s skin, like little scars of his own so Zoro is always carrying a part of him. “My beautiful, stupid, charming—”

“Is this supposed to be romantic?” Zoro retorts. “‘Cause last I checked, calling someone stupid isn’t romantic.”

Sanji grins clumsily, more delighted than he could ever put into words. “No, marimo, but it is us.”

There’s a sparkle of something in Zoro’s eye that Sanji can’t believe he hasn’t noticed before. This little ounce of doubt and disbelief as they look each other in the eye, like it’s all too good to be true. Sanji clocks it immediately now, because he’s familiar with it himself.

Then, Zoro looks away, uncharacteristically embarrassed and flustered. “Hurry up.”

“No, my beloved. For you, I want to enjoy every second.”

When Zoro peers back, Sanji’s grin is more devious and shit-eating than it is adoring. “Oh, fuck you—”

“We’ll get there, darling.”

Making love to Zoro doesn’t require as many instructions as their first time. Sanji isn’t as nervous as before. He’s held onto every piece of advice Zoro has to offer and more, easily able to season the ways to pleasure Zoro than ever before. It’s not gentle or docile, but it isn’t cold or unfamiliar, either.

No, it’s really fucking fun, and Sanji’s heart is skywalking to heaven with each of Zoro’s filthy and saccharine sweet sounds.

When they finish, Sanji gives Zoro an extra long kiss before pulling out. He retrieves a towel from the bathroom. Zoro’s light grumbling is expected, but the other pillow talk is a pleasant surprise.

“I didn’t give a shit about the bartender,” Zoro says—recalling something that already feels so long ago. He lays flat on his back and gives Sanji extra access to his stomach. “Or that guy from the ship we liberated. I don’t put my dick in every hole that’s offered to me. I’m not you.”

Sanji makes a noise. “Excuse you?”

“I’m just saying,” Zoro relents. He turns over for Sanji to wipe him down. “I don’t fall in love with every guy that bats his eyelashes at me. Don’t have sex with everyone I meet, either. Just when I felt like it.”

That…makes more sense in Sanji’s head. He’s wondered for a long time how he didn’t know Zoro’s sexual preferences, when he knew Zoro’s diet down to the very last macro.

“You’ve been different from the start,” Zoro continues earnestly. “Sex with you has always been good. Exciting, even. Like when we fight.”

He doesn’t turn red. So he’s not embarrassed to admit that. Still, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fluster Sanji.

“Yeah, well—I still can’t figure out if I like men now or if it’s just because it’s you,” he confesses. He discards the towel in the hotel’s dirty laundry hamper.

Zoro grunts. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t be with any man who isn’t me,” Zoro insists now—and he looks Sanji in the eye. “I told you, you’re mine. Get stupid and make an ass out of yourself in front of any woman. At the end of the night, you go home with me.”

Oh. “Marimo, that is somehow the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

Zoro smiles, looking extra pleased with himself. The edge wanes slightly, and he has the gall to look nervous. “I don’t do this shit.”

“I know.”

“Fucking silly love songs,” Zoro mutters. Rants. “Dates. Poems. Flowers. Suits, ugh, I don’t know how you wear them all the time. I hate it all.”

“I know, marimo.” Sanji lifts Zoro’s hand and brushes it against his lips. “I didn’t fall in love with you for those things. Why start now?”

Zoro’s expression softens. He looks away, as shy as he always does after sex. When all Sanji wants to do is take care of him. Then he squeezes Sanji’s hand, firm and interlocking their fingers.

“I like this, though.” Zoro gestures between them. “And I don’t…mind the other stuff.”

Sanji is shackled in the best way possible. His face aches from smiling, and yet he’s ready to do it a thousand times more tonight.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “me too.”

*

Sanji doesn’t fear the next morning when they check out. They exit the inn and enter the snowy abyss. He wrinkles his nose and lights a cigarette. Then, as he goes to stuff his lighter in his jacket, a hand is waiting for him.

Outside the hotel room, they’re still together.

This early in the morning, the town is still waking up. Sanji thinks he sees a reindeer dressed in Christmas ornaments. A tall and short pair of brothers pass by them, chattering in a dialect Sanji can’t quite understand.

They stop at a booth, which just so happens to be open on their way back to the ship. Zoro makes a noise when Sanji gives him a spoonful of sample pomegranate seeds—then looks pleased.

“Not too shabby, cook,” he says. He splays a hand out for more seeds. They’re a good balance of tartness and sweetness.

“I’ll take four,” Sanji tells the vendor. “You know, with the right materials, we could make some wine out of this.”

Zoro cocks his head in amazement. He suddenly looks enamored. “Booze comes from fruit?”

Sanji stares at his newly minted boyfriend oddly. “My stupid marimo, where did you think booze came from?”

“A bottle.”

With a sigh, Sanji shakes his head and pays the vendor.

“Well I’m not wrong,” Zoro protests.

“You’re not, and that’s what’s worse.”

They take the steps back to the dock. Sanji only has to yank Zoro a handful of times to steer them in the right direction. It’s a benefit that he’s definitely going to exploit in the future.

“I don’t mind this,” Zoro mumbles as they get closer to the ship. He gives Sanji a firm squeeze, and the sensation finds its way in Sanji’s chest.

“Yeah?”

They stop just short of climbing aboard.

“And a date,” Zoro continues, “wouldn’t be so bad. So long as we get to beat something up.”

Sanji takes careful note how singing, dancing, poems, and other cringey shit aren’t off the table with that statement. He grins and presses a kiss to Zoro’s knuckle. “Your wish is my command, darling.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fuck you. I’ll call you whatever I want. You’re mine now.”

It’s not an argument Zoro is trying to win. Sanji thinks he even sees a smile past that pout.

They make it aboard the ship, where everyone is prepared for their next adventure. Someone (hopefully Franky or Usopp) has lit the fire pit once more to roast s’mores, and Chopper and Luffy are happily stuffing their faces.

“Ah,” sweet and amazing Robin says. “Cook-san, Swordsman-san. You’ve survived frostbite.”

All eyes are on them now. Sanji reflexively tightens his grip around Zoro’s hand. Zoro doesn’t waver.

“So, uh,” Sanji announces, “we figured shit out and we’re together.”

Stares. Then, Nami squeals and envelops them both in a hug.

“Super!” Franky shouts.

“Wonderful,” Robin acquiesces.

“Yohohoho!” Brook cheers gleefully.

Usopp dispels a huge sigh of relief and shakes Sanji’s hand until his entire shoulder is bobbing. “Thank god! I’m so glad I helped the two of you get together!”

“You did nothing!” Nami chastises. “You made things worse!”

“He pissed me off,” Zoro says. “That’s something.”

“Hey,” Sanji remarks, “same.”

Usopp shrinks behind Chopper’s small form and peers at them both cautiously, but all Sanji can do is laugh.

“Captain?” Sanji nods his head in Luffy’s direction, who looks as content as ever.

Luffy’s laugh is hearty for all of them. “Knew you’d come back. Let me know when I can officiate the wedding!”

“There’s going to be a wedding?!” Chopper gasps.

“Hey—” “Shut up!”

Sanji’s face burns red and Zoro’s ears steam.

“C’mon! If we have a wedding, we can have cake! And a feast! Hey, if Franky and Robin get married we can have double the cake!”

“Oi!”

Someone inevitably throws Luffy overboard.

Jinbei inevitably saves him, and they’re back to their usual tomfooleries as they ready the Sunny to sail to the next island.

“See you in a bit,” Sanji tells Zoro before he disappears to make breakfast in the galley.

“Yeah.” Zoro kisses him before going back to his usual spot in the crow’s nest—quick, but not urgent. Surely the first of many during their voyage. There’s no foreseeable end.

Sanji smiles, watching as Zoro’s form climbs up the rigging.

Water is wet, fire is hot, and Zoro and he are going to be okay. More than okay.