Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A rare, peaceful day on the Sunny is set to shatter with the weekly News Coos.

Sanji exits the galley with a tray of colorful drinks in hand, making his usual rounds when a heatwave strikes to deliver cold beverages to his crewmates.

Several of the Straw Hats are nowhere to be seen, and the ship is eerily quiet aside from the rhythmic sound of waves hitting the hull as she slices through the warm summer waters.

The occasional sound of a page turn is the only distinct interruption as Robin reads quietly in the shade. Nami is laying out on a deck chair with the foldable mirror Usopp designed to maximize skin coverage as she tans, the scent of her tangerine sunscreen wafting lightly on the wind.

Sanji’s eyes pop appreciatively, nose flaring to take in the smell, his cigarette smoke curling into a heart-shape—seeing a lovely lady in her bikini never gets old.

“Here’s a sweet treat for you, my dear. I hope you like it—I hand squeezed the freshest fruits from your personal orchard, switched to a low-calorie sweetener in line with your new diet, and had Franky adjust the temperature on the ice box to the ideal—”

“Thanks, it looks great, Sanji-kun,” she cuts in brightly, turning on a polite smile without moving her neck to look at him, though he can’t be sure if her beautiful eyes are on him through the dark-tinted sunglasses.

“Have you checked what the news gull dropped off this morning?” Robin asks as he hands her a drink made with blackberries and non-alcoholic sour cherry liqueur.  “I think you’ll be surprised.”

Nami sips her straw aggressively loud to mask the uncomfortable cough threatening to escape, unwilling to interfere with the older woman's scheme—of course she can’t be trusted not to stir up trouble, and for once, the sneaky redhead wants no part of it.

She has little sympathy for the cook knowing how Zoro will feel about his negative reaction to the news—Sanji is a kind man at heart, but he can be tactless at times, and this is a sensitive subject for both men to say the least.

“I was busy preparing lunch because I knew Luffy would be ravenous after the shit that went down on Elbaf—is he still sleeping?”

“Like a log,” Nami chimes in before Robin can answer.

The darkhaired woman grins slyly but doesn’t correct her lie. Things will fall into place without any more external pressure from them—it's enough to simply plant an idea in the curious cook’s head, and he will inevitably heed the lady’s words.

Like clockwork, the blond continues hunting down his crewmates in their respective hangouts, saving the swordsman for last who is up in the crow’s nest, probably meditating by the calm state of his Haki.

Sanji checks the men’s dorms and finds it empty, then goes to the back deck where the guys often like to fish. There’s no one in the storage rooms, cannon perches, or even the bathhouse above the library where Jinbe is on watch at the observation window. Brook is playing a curious tune at his piano when the blond looks in the aquarium bar, tipping his hat in gratitude for the drink delivery.

“Much appreciation, Mr. Cook! I’ll try not to drink it too fast and get brain freeze—”

“Except you don’t have a brain, dumbass,” he finishes for him—Sanji has heard this one before and wonders vaguely if Brook can go senile or if he’s just getting lazier writing his skull jokes. “Got the newspaper? Robin said there was something surprising in there. I love it when she’s cryptic!”

“Hmm…I do in fact have the newspaper from this morning, but I can’t think of anything that stands out—we knew what to expect in the headlines. Perhaps she was referring to the new bounties?”

“WHAT?! WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME!” Sanji explodes, consciously reigning in his outburst because he is an adult. “Where’d I fall in the rankings—higher than Jinbe?—What’s that shitty-swordsman’s bounty?—bet it went down because I was there making him look bad by comparison,” he says smugly, reflecting on their tag-team attacks on Elbaf.

Surely all those witnesses could tell that the cook is the stronger of the two.

“Honestly, I was rather surprised myself…I’m afraid I don’t recall any exact figures…yohohoho…” Brook’s typical sing-song manner of speech has less gusto than usual, tacking on his signature phrase out of nervous instinct rather than genuine amusement.

The cook turns on his heel and leaves the aquarium bar the way he came, eyes scanning the deck with fresh suspicion for his missing crewmates.

Something doesn’t feel right. Why isn’t Luffy running around proudly announcing the recent bounties—did his actually go down in some last-ditch attempt by the government to discourage people from claiming the Fifth Emperor’s head? Are they actually planning to focus on catching him themselves instead?

Why isn’t the marimo rubbing his new price in the blond’s face? Maybe he hadn’t seen yet, or maybe…did Sanji finally surpass him, and he's too embarrassed to show his face?!

He quickly tracks down the others with his Observation Haki and is surprised to discover them holed up on the lower deck in Franky’s Weapon’s Development Room—or maybe it was Usopp’s Factory—Sanji can’t remember which side is which and has never actually been down there.

His crewmates are huddled around a single workbench downstairs except for the women out front, Zoro and Jinbe on watch in the observation towers, and the singing skeleton. Half of them gathered in one place, making barely any noise, too, is unheard of for the Straw Hat pirates. What are they all doing there? Looking at a new invention? the blond wonders.

Sanji heads through the galley trapdoor into the bowels of the ship, carefully balancing his tray as he descends slowly with one hand on the ladder. When he reaches the docking system and enters the long hallway leading to the back workshops, their voices become a muffle of distant chatter—hushed but distinguishable as Luffy, Usopp, Chopper, and Franky’s.

They’re arguing in muted tones like they’re trying not to be overheard, even all the way down here, which sets off alarm bells in Sanji’s head.

None of these people are known for being sneaky, least of all the captain and doctor who're the worst liars on the crew, but it’s Luffy and Chopper’s exchange that the cook catches first as he approaches a small crack in the door.

“It’s not lying. You have to think of it like a prank—a game!” the little reindeer is saying, gesticulating wildly with his small hooves.   

“But why can’t I tell Sanji that Usopp made them—they’re really good! I bet Zoro will like them, too.”

“The whole point is that he has to think it’s real, Luffy!”

“Eh? I still don’t get it—Can you explain again from the start?—about the western marriage thing?”

“You’re completely hopeless but thanks for the compliment!” Usopp blushes. “It’s uncanny, isn’t it? I really have outdone myself!”

“He’s gonna ruin the whole thing—our captain’s just too honest a dude,” Franky sniffs, emotionally moved by Luffy’s inability to tell a lie, especially to his friends.

“Oi, what are you bastards doing in here?” Sanji interrupts, swinging the door open the rest of the way to a comical tableau of his crewmates frozen in shock at his sudden appearance. “I made refreshments, assholes. You don’t have to beat the heat by hiding out down here—ugh, it smells like motor oil and lube—What do you even do in here?!” the cook questions, directing it at the sharpshooter and cyborg who spent the most time below deck fiddling with their respective gadgets.

They’re currently in the section Usopp claimed as his personal workshop, separate from the pointy metal hell that is Franky’s next door, but the longnose man avoids Sanji’s eyes, knees trembling with both hands behind his back.

“What, are those the new bounties?” the blond asks, pointing at the papers hiding in Usopp’s hands which had scattered when he startled at the cook’s entrance—two had fallen to the floor where Chopper is attempting to inconspicuously kick them out of sight, but he's pushing in the wrong direction, making them more visible in the middle of the hardwood floor. “Robin-chan already told me. What are you trying to keep secret?”

Sanji lunges for the papers beneath the little reindeer’s feet who slips on them, tumbling backwards into a crate with a loud crash—they all scramble to catch the flying pages, but Sanji is the fastest and no one on their crew is a match for his speed. He doesn’t even drop the tray or a single drop from any of the drinks, setting it safely aside during the commotion. 

“What the hell?!” the cook exclaims when snatches up the papers and looks down at his hands covered in smears of fresh paint. “Did you make your own bounty posters?” he asks the sharpshooter in genuine confusion.

The blond’s left hand is bright-yellow from where he accidentally grabbed the replica of his own likeness painted on a fake bounty—it's made from regular white paper, dyed brown with what smelled like coffee to appear aged like the bounty pages.

In his right hand, he holds an identical copy except the picture and information are for Roronoa Zoro. Nine bounties are clutched in Usopp’s shaking hands—the real ones that must have arrived today—and he still won’t meet the cook’s eye when he reluctantly hands them over, knowing they’re caught.

“It’s the, uh, one on the bottom—and for the record, I voted against making fake ones—they blackmailed me and held me down with a loogie dangling over my face—it was disgusting, Sanji! I’d never lie to you—you know that, r-right buddy?” he stutters nervously, long nose dripping and eyes wet. “P-please don’t kill me—I was under duress!”

“You’re lying right now! He was the first to vote yes,” Chopper breaks down instantly, revealing the truth as he bursts into loud, snotty tears. “We’re s-s-sorry, Sanji! Franky said we had to because of adult stuff—I don’t really get it, but I know lying is bad—”

“Hey, bro, don’t put this on me! I only said it was a sensitive topic and that I didn’t want to be around to get caught in the crossfire—you were the one worried about Sanji having a heart attack!” the cyborg shouts, pointing accusingly at the reindeer who morphs into his human form to wag a big finger right back.

 “I’m supposed to consider all medical possibilities, and you know how upset he gets about this stuff! I was just trying to help—I didn’t want to pretend!” Chopper wails.

“What the fuck is going on?! Give me those!” the cook snaps, fed up with being the only one out of the loop. 

He rips the stack of bounties out of Usopp’s trembling hands and flips through the first eight, noting the expected increase in all of their amounts—even their “pet” doctor finally cracked quadruple zeros—but the stack is notably one poster short.

Sanji flips over the final paper with a sick sense of dread. Slowly, like opening the door to a haunted mausoleum, terrified of what might be lurking on the other side, he pans his gaze down from the photograph of him and Zoro standing back-to-back—a candid shot from the battle on Elbaf—covered in the blood of their enemies.

At the bottom is a double-bounty listed in bold print—more than twice the amount of their previous ones put together—higher than Jinbe’s but still second to their captain’s newly minted five billion.

WANTED

Dead or Alive

Sanji & Zoro Roronoa

4,500,000,000

The Straw Hats scramble out of the room before anyone can offer their condolences, rightly realizing that it would be a very, very bad idea to say anything about Sanji’s personal nightmare unfolding in his hands—he stares at the poster like it might come alive and set fire to them—his precious hands that're clenching the edges of the paper with stiff claws, knuckles white.

“What the fuck is this bullshit?!” he hisses through his teeth to the now empty room.

It takes a few more seconds of gaping for the cook’s brain to process the change in his name, and his face flames when he realizes the possibly implications when placed next to Zoro’s like this—the questions people would ask, the rumors and assumptions—the cook and the swordsman already had more than enough public attention as a duo, the two wings of the prospective Pirate King.

Whoever chose this format is getting a very strongly worded letter, doused in the most flammable oil Sanji can find in his kitchen, and a celebratory cigar sent with a faulty lighter!

He takes only the offending flyer and storms out of the workshop, leaving the rest in a pile on the floor, scattered and forgotten. His crewmates are wisely keeping out of his path of destruction, having cleared the kitchen and front deck, their Haki signatures gathered in the men’s dormitory which had two separate escape routes—the cowards.

Hiding from the person who feeds them can only work as long as they aren't hungry, and the cook is nothing if not patient. They’ll get their comeuppance soon enough, especially Usopp whose artistic contribution would not be overlooked regardless of whether he was under duress at the time or not—he produced those portraits with the express intent of tricking the cook and the swordsman, so he's liable to get his ass whooped and he knew it.

Zoro’s Haki is still steady in the crow’s nest, unbothered by the events happening below. Sanji debates going up there and decides that, if nothing else, the swordsman will understand the blond’s anger and frustration—for once, there's no number to fight over because some stupid fucking photographer or their intern had the brilliant idea to market them as a pair.

Double bounties can only be claimed if both parties are captured and turned in to the government—they encourage ganging up on the strongest, pitting them against multiple bounty hunters who make alliances to defeat two opponents for a higher combined price than they would each fetch on their own.

Dorry and Broggy, the giants they met on Little Garden early in their journey, are one such example—a legendary pair whose relationship shared similarities to Sanji and Zoro’s infamous rivalry, evident in the way they fought tooth-and-nail over a long-forgotten feud, always testing their mettle against the other while never losing the honest respect between them—inseparable warriors of the sea.

The cook is still convinced that his catch was bigger than Zoro’s—Sanji won’t admit it, but at the time, he really wanted to impress the other man and prove that he was at the swordsman’s level. Since then he became less insecure about his own power, but between the recent events on Wano that triggered new Germa abilities and the current state of his blood pressure spiking in response to a fucking poster, the cook is reconsidering his personal growth.

Maybe he’s just as insecure as the little crying kid who ran away from home all those years ago, except now he’s learned to mask it better.

“Oi, Shitty-swordsman!” Sanji shouts as he barges into the crow’s nest with their new bounty in hand.

Zoro doesn’t move an inch in his lotus position, sitting shirtless with his legs folded and arms resting palm-up on his knees, face smoothed out as he breathes slowly in and out, chest rising and falling in a rhythmic wave—he ignores the cook’s dramatic entrance just long enough to make Sanji feel silly before cracking a cool, grey eye open and piercing him with an alert gaze.

Too alert—the fucker knows—Sanji sees how his eye immediately glazes over the paper in the blond’s hand with purposeful avoidance—no way the swordsman doesn’t care about the obvious bounty being brought to him.

“What’s up, Curly? It’s not dinnertime already, is it?” he asks, feigning confusion. The bastard actually fucking lifts his arm to look at his wrist, which has never worn a watch in the man’s life.

Sanji wants to take both of his thumbs and press them over the swordsman’s eyes until he feels the pads sink into the smooth surface of his stupid, monkey-brain.

He slams the poster on the workout bench next to Zoro, face-up, waiting for a response with his hands on his hips, toe tapping anxiously on the floorboards. “Well? What the hell are we going to do about this?!”

The swordsman blinks and stares at the photo of them, saying nothing as he reads the words below, taking them in as if for the first time—the cook is certain it’s all an act because Zoro doesn’t react in the slightest, face blank.

“About what? You can’t complain anymore—they even put your name first—what’s the problem? Were you expecting me to be a sore loser because Z comes last in the alphabet? Tch—as if,” the swordsman scoffs, closing his eye again like the conversation had run its course, settling back into a meditation pose in clear dismissal of the cook.

Sanji aims a kick at the back of his head, forcing him to jerk forward to avoid it—his swords are on the bench, and the force behind it is too great to block with his bare arms.

“Take this seriously, asshole! We have reputations to uphold!” the blond yells with two more kicks for emphasis—the swordsman catches his ankle on the third downswing in a crushing grip, gaze flitting to the angry blue iris that’s searching his face for similar signs of disapproval, finding nothing. “How are you not at all bothered by it?!”

“I have no idea what you’re on about,” Zoro tells him with a dangerous glint flashing in his eye as he tacks on, “Don’t interrupt me while I’m meditating,” in the flattest tone possible.

He tosses Sanji’s leg aside like a branch hanging in the way of a walking trail and resumes what he was doing with blatant disinterest. The cook fumes, face flooding with the heat of betrayal—he thought the swordsman would at least acknowledge the interference in their rivalry—demand to have it changed back.

“They removed Vinsmoke,” Sanji states the obvious, forcing the last word out like poison through his teeth, nose wrinkling distastefully.

“So what? You hate that name.”  

“That’s not the point—”

“What is the point, Cook?” Zoro cuts in, sounding unusually tired for a man sitting in complete stillness for the past hour.

“…”

Is the swordsman really trying to make him say it out loud? Why would he want that when it would be just as embarrassing for him if someone misunderstood the reason for their names being combined?

“I can’t tell if you’re actually unaware of western naming conventions or just being intentionally obtuse to annoy the shit out of me—and honestly, I don’t have the mental energy today to care—I’m burning it,” the blond announces, snatching up the poster and fishing his gold mermaid lighter out of his jacket pocket.

“You’re not even gonna ask first if you can destroy our bounty poster? It’s mine, too—maybe I want to hang it up.”

Oh, he’s definitely trying to get Sanji’s goat—That broccoli-headed bastard thinks he’s funny, huh? the cook thinks spitefully. “I will hang you by my fucking tie before I let anyone see this poster!” he spits.

“Tch. Good luck with that—they print ‘em worldwide.”

“AND HALF THE WORLD IS GONNA THINK WE—GOT MARRIED OR SOMETHING!” he screams wildly—finally letting it out in the open.

The words clearly read, “Sanji & Zoro Roronoa”—not “Sanji & Roronoa Zoro” like it would usually be written in the East and South Blues where placing the family name first is traditional, but many islands in the North and West reversed the order—even “Sanji Vinsmoke & Zoro Roronoa” would have been more acceptable. Although he hated being linked with Germa, at least then it would be obvious that they still had separate surnames!

A stranger who doesn’t know any better might easily read into the change and assume it means something it doesn’t—especially a certain type of fan—with the swordsman standing on the right side, both of their left hands are out of frame, begging the question if they're wearing wedding rings.

Sanji and Zoro’s names had been public for years, and the addition of Vinsmoke had made a big splash—everyone and their grandmother wanted to know how the Straw Hat’s cook is related to the infamous Germa 66, and now there would be countless speculations on why it's missing.

The most obvious answer is that Sanji’s father or the cook himself requested it be removed before the next print release, but another much less rational explanation might be that the blond decided to take the swordsman’s last name in marriage, dropping his own.

When Sanji announces what he thinks is the huge elephant in the room, Zoro just looks genuinely confused, eyebrows pinching together like he suspects the other of not being in his right mind. “Yeah, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Can you even read?!” the cook snarls meanly. “It’s obviously a mistake that needs to be fixed!”

“Oi, you don’t need to be fucking rude! What do you want me to do—file for a fucking divorce?” Zoro asks flippantly with a hint of underlying seriousness creeping into the sting of his retort—like he’s considering it as a real solution to a problem he doesn’t fully understand.

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last person on the entire planet!” the cook spits out vehemently in righteous denial.

The swordsman recoils slightly like he’s been slapped awake and splashed with cold water—the expression on his face transitions though a dawn of realization as he absorbs the venom in Sanji’s tone—cycling from mild confusion to slow understanding, quick acceptance, and then back to confusion.

“Nobody cares what your name is, though.”

It’s a devastating bomb of truth dropped on an unsuspecting victim of his own ego, and now the blond is the one recoiling, cheeks flushing red in embarrassment.

“You’re the only one it matters to,” Zoro goes on with an awkward shrug of his shoulders. “No one’s stupid enough to believe you’d marry me, Cook. If you hate your name that much, you should definitely change it—but would having mine be that bad?—worse than Vinsmoke?” he demands, throwing Sanji for a complete loop.

“A name is something you should earn,” the cook says in an attempt to walk back his harsh comments. “I took on Zeff’s namesake and made it my own—Blackleg is mine because he gave it to me—but my shitty father took that away with his connections, left me with nothing.”

“Then take it back—it wasn’t a lie,” Zoro tells him, correctly assuming that Sanji stopped using that name out of guilt when his real identity was discovered. “Reclaim it.”

The blond wonders if his old man saw the new poster yet—him and the other chefs at the Baratie—what did they all think of the change? Were they disappointed not to see “Blackleg” anymore or grateful to be rid of the association with Judge Vinsmoke’s son?

“I can’t,” Sanji admits in a much smaller voice than he means to. “I ruined that when I ran away—to Whole Cake. I—I almost got them all killed—” He sucks in a sharp breath, eyes wide with terror, sick to his stomach even now at the thought of what almost was.

Because I'm so weak, Sanji thinks wretchedly at the same time the swordsman growls, “You’re not weak for getting captured by an Emperor who was already out to get you—Nami said you saved her and the others from getting taken, too. If you hadn’t gone with Big Mom’s subordinates and helped them escape when you did, who knows what could’ve happened, right?”

Are they finally talking about this? Is Zoro actually trying to comfort him with his words—the stoic swordsman?—Unbelievable. It’s a little sweet how bad at it he is, but the swordsman doesn’t give up even when the next attempt makes the blond cringe internally from second-hand embarrassment.

“I don’t think you should throw away your old pirate name, but if you want to be given a new one, why not just take mine for now?—What the fuck more could you do to earn it? Even if we’re not lovers, or haven’t exchanged sake as sworn family like Luffy and his brothers, we’re still partners, right?”

By the end of this short speech, Sanji’s face has finished cycling through seven stages of mortification, landing on grateful. It could’ve been a lot more awkward, but Zoro at least has the decency not to look directly at him when he says “partners.” 

The blond’s fair complexion cannot handle how it sounds, face blazing bright red. He knows the swordsman means it platonically, but it still kind of feels like being proposed to—as if Zoro is saying, I think you’re worthy of any name you choose—you’re my equal—take my name if it makes you happy—be whoever you want to be—like it’s natural. Obvious.

The blond might as well go for broke—lay everything out on the table. “You did make that insane promise to kill me on Wano,” Sanji reminds him fondly. “Luffy could never do it, and I knew you would rely on me if roles were reversed, so I guess ‘death ‘til us part’, eh Marimo?”

He says it too casually, voice wavering at the end like an out of tune vibrato on Brook’s violin. An all too familiar image flashes across his mind's eye of a barren cliffside—curved by waves of the unforgiving sea, high noon sun beating down on brittle bones, turning the stony surface into a hellish rockface that shimmers with rising heat like a sizzling pan, cooking him alive—no one around for miles, not a soul to mourn him.

Dust to dust—there wouldn’t even be ashes—carrier birds would ravage the corpses of the old man and the boy with blond hair, leaving nothing but their skeletons.

“Yeah, about that…” Zoro says, snapping him back to the present, though the sharp smell of saltwater and human suffering lingers. The swordsman scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, gaze focused on the tip of Sanji’s nose. “Changed my mind. Sorry.”

The words connect like a physical blow, knocking the air out of the cook’s chest, and now his self-esteem is officially dust—smashed to smithereens—Fuck you too, then, Shitty-swordsman! I didn’t want your bulky ass crowding up my deathbed anyway!—is what he should be thinking, but he’s not.

The devastation hits a little too close to home—he feels rejected in a way he hasn’t experienced in a long while, not since he was a young man taking the abusive words of women much older than him, expecting more than an inexperienced bus-boy could give—the hurt lodging itself deep just like it had back then.

Useless little boy…

Her voice still haunts him sometimes—the cloying, sickly-sweet scent of her perfume clinging to his collar, ruby-red lipstick on his throat the only reminder of a failed sexual encounter, not the first and unfortunately not the last—he was only seventeen.

Even at twenty-one years old, the reality of his rival, his crewmate and friend, wanting to take back the promise he made out of loyalty to the cook at his most desperate moment—it’s dejecting in a way that forces Sanji to swallow the pit in his throat and lie through his teeth.

“Don’t worry, Marimo, it’s not a big deal. If the worst comes to worst, I’ll take care of it myself, and if it’s too late for that—well, I won’t be me any more, so whatever happens to my body doesn’t really matter. You guys will make sure no one gets hurt—just lock me up or whatever.”

An ugly silence stretches between them as Sanji’s false normalcy trails off, his fake smile slipping fractionally. Zoro just looks at him with sadness so deep that the cook scrambles to come up with something to say to lighten the dour mood.

“Anyway, thanks for the offer. I should probably get over my deep-seated need to be liked by people, huh?—I guess it’s not the worst thing to be in a duo with the future World’s Greatest Swordsman even if it’s just for a publicity stunt, so yeah—I’ll get over it—”

“Sanji.”

The name is coated in a thick layer of fury, stinging the insides of the blond’s ears which rush with the sound of his own blood as if an ocean is stirring in his head, waves crashing as a raging storm breaks out from the sheer force of Zoro’s anger—the swordsman’s Haki flares like a beacon, encompassing the cook’s in hot, burning rage.

“What the fuck are you talking about?!—Locking you up like you’re some sort of animal? I—we would never—I just meant I decided it’s not an option to kill you! Whatever happens, we’ll find another way—Chopper, Robin, Franky, Usopp, Law and Luffy’s other allies—he knows tons of smart guys. We met Vegapunk in the flesh, and that apple-headed bastard kinda owes us a favor after all we did, don’t you think?”

“We don’t save people for favors, Shitty-swordsman!” Sanji interjects disapprovingly.

“I’m saying we’d find another way before I’d ever consider that as a last resort—and it would be the absolute final resort, you hear me?—the greatest failure of my life. As the Straw Hat’s swordsman, I refuse to take your life with my blade if there’s any way around it. That’s non-negotiable, Cook,” he finishes firmly.

And shit, Sanji might actually cry because—What the fuck?!—That was really goddamn sweet! His brain scrambles to reorganize itself, cheeks tinting pink. Zoro’s brow pinches curiously because he’s still staring at the blond’s nose where the flush is starting to creep over the bridge, a pretty color, the swordsman thinks idly.

Sanji is indescribably nervous out of nowhere, skin prickling with goosebumps, hair standing on the back of his neck as if sensing a predator nearby—his heart jackrabbits in his chest, pulse jumping when Zoro’s eye widens fractionally like he finally recognizes the emotions there—fear and exhilaration floods his blue eye in equal measure with a hint of something more primal. Anticipation without expectation.

A taut wire snaps between them like an angry huff, invisible until that moment, releasing all the tension in the room as Sanji utters a single word.

“Fine.” He can’t manage anything more elaborate—the blond’s face is emanating heat like a radiator, visible eye gone round like a guilty lover caught in the act.

“Good,” Zoro says bluntly, crossing his arms.

“Good,” the cook repeats even more curtly, unconsciously copying his pose as the swordsman snaps, “Fine!” a little too loudly, snapping his lips shut.*

They stare at each other a few seconds more, seething internally with rage and something else entirely, grey eye locked with blue in a heated exchange. Saying everything and nothing at once.

“Usopp did a pretty good job painting us—did you see the fakes?” Sanji asks airily to break the awkward silence.

Zoro shrugs, shoulders stiff. “Yeah. He’s good.”

“And all of you were, what, just going to pretend until I saw a real one hanging somewhere in the streets? Leave me the only one in the dark?”

“You’re so sensitive about shit like this,” the swordsman grumbles, taking the chance to yank the poster out of his hands while the cook is distracted—off-balanced by the kindness being shown to him, for once, from someone who typically held back his true feelings, too. “We didn’t want you going apeshit over it.”

“I did not go apeshit,” Sanji says tightly, curly eyebrow twitching menacingly. “Gimme that back—I’m torching it, and then I have to write my old man a letter to clear this fucking shit up.” He gestures impatiently for the paper, but Zoro pulls it into his chest protectively.

“No way, you’re not destroying my bounty poster!”

“It’s ours—you said so yourself! Give it here.”

The swordsman ducks his handswipe, avoiding the incoming fingers by dancing an arms length away, snatching up his swords as he goes and hooking them to his hip. “Wanna go, Curlybrow? Winner gets to decide what we do with it,” Zoro challenges, lips pulling into a grin.

The cook ignores the tightness in his throat, jaw clenching as his cheeks continue to burn—the swordsman is still shirtless from his post workout meditation session, barefoot and smiling like Sanji will make his whole day if he accepts.

He’s handsome, the blond thinks suddenly, surprising himself. Of course he knows that Zoro is good-looking—always understood it on some level despite constantly saying the opposite—but he never thought it before in so many words, almost none really.

The swordsman is undeniably handsome. Charming in a himbo kind of way. Loyal.

He had women throwing themselves at his feet on every island, and an endless choice of men who would pay good money to be welcomed into his bed, not that Zoro had ever spent a dime on someone nor would he have any interest in such a thing.

Sanji instinctively knows what kind of romantic partner he would be. Quiet but thoughtful in his actions. Passionate. Never looking at anyone besides the person he chooses to stand with him, protect his back. Their banter would be fun even when it gets stale—the swordsman would find new ways to get the cook’s goat, make him feel everything, everywhere, all at once…

“—said we should try to avoid the banisters on the portside…which one is that again? Franky just assumes I speak sailor.”

“Huh?” the blond says stupidly, having completely tuned out his words. Zoro has a bit of a cupid’s bow going on around his lips—the bottom one is thicker by just a millimetre, wet from an impatient flick of his tongue.

“Portside? Is that east or west?”

“You don’t use east and west while standing on a moving ship—it’s left,” Sanji tells the swordsman who just raises an eyebrow and scratches his chin. “The side without your swords—it’s literally your blindside—how do you still not know left from right?!”

He stops when he sees Zoro’s little smile, always egging him on just to watch the cook get fired up—Sanji looks the best when he’s angry, and the swordsman likes seeing how his eyebrow gets curlier and curlier, nose pinching cutely in disdain.

“So what if I don’t?” he prompts, flicking out the hilt of his cursed blade, Enma—Haki thirsting, both his and the sword’s.

Sanji takes out a cigarette and lights it, inhaling a long drag before speaking easily around the filter—Zoro’s gaze zeroes in on his teeth and tongue maneuvering the stick without breaking the flow of his words, cherry lips stretching into a catlike grin to match. “Best two out of three?” the cook suggests.

“Tch. I already did my warmup today—three outta five?” the swordsman counters.

Sanji answers with a quick start from complete stillness, muscles tensing for a split-second before exploding into motion, foot flying for Zoro’s face in a burst of speed that only the swordsman can expect right off the bat.

He blocks with a quickdraw, just the tip of Enma’s blade remaining nestled in its purple saya, flat edge turned to catch the cook’s heel before it lands on his right hip. Their Haki sings in resonance, mingling as they exchange swings while moving toward the open window.

Sanji launches himself backward off the sill by one shoe, Sky Walking with his hands in his pockets to hover just outside the crow’s nest until Zoro drops down, boots thunking heavily on the deck, drawing all three swords.

He wants a real fight, the blond realizes—and the cook will give it to him, but not here on the ship where they can cause significant damage. She’s still in recovery after their close escape from Elbaf, so for Franky and Usopp’s sake, Sanji scans the horizon for any sign of land. 

In the far distance, directly off the front bow, is a knobbly rock jutting out of the sea similar to the ones Luffy and the sharpshooter liked to use for practice shooting. A fond memory strikes of the “chore boy” explaining how he’d wrecked Zeff’s roof with a wayward cannonball while doing exactly that.

Perhaps Johnny and Yosaku wouldn’t agree as the victims of Usopp’s genius marksmanship, but Sanji would be forever grateful that his captain is such a terrible shot. It brought them all together—fate and the words of a rubber man from a small island in the East Blue.

“Last one there’s a rotten egg!” the cook yells between outstretched palms, fingers fanned out on either side of his face like he’s holding a giant megaphone. He turns on his heel—in the fucking sky like a damn cartoon—and speeds off toward the rock rising in the distance, blowing a childish raspberry as he goes.

“Bastard!” the swordsman growls under his breath, watching Sanji streak through the air like a meteor, legs catching fire to leave a burning trail like jet fuel.

Zoro is so in love with him his head spins. He feels high. 

Shaking himself, he kicks off the ship’s rail and follows the cook with much more difficulty, using the momentum from swing after swing of his swords to blast the surface of the water before he touches it, travelling like a rock skipping on the surface in a relatively straight line, though he has to redirect a few times when he gets turned around.

He probably would have found himself lost in the middle of the ocean if not for Sanji’s glowing path lighting his way. The swordsman touches down a few minutes later, joining the smug blond on the expanse of barren rock, dotted with a few shallow pools of rainwater, a scuttling crab or two, and—

“Look! This little lump of land must be the origin of all marimo life! Wave hello to your mossy relatives—guys, this is Roronoa Zoro—he’s going to be the World’s Greatest Seaweed! Can you see the family resemblance?” the cook teases, strolling up to the swordsman whose chest is heaving slightly now, the corner of his lips twitching up in amusement while his brow frowns in irritation—posessed by dual muses of comedy and tragedy.

He smooths his face out and puts on a winning smile as he mimes introducing Sanji to the green algae growing on the moist rock. “Nice to meet you all—and this Roronoa Sanji—personally, I think it’s a little soon to be bringing him home to meet the family, but he’s a romantic—probably wants to ask you for my hand like an old-timey gentleman.”

“You don’t introduce your partner with your last name, idiot—that’s supposed to come after!”

“So we skipped a few steps. Who cares?” Zoro responds casually, gesturing to the plant life with a thumbs up. “They certainly don’t.”

The blond stares at him, blushing madly and cursing his face for its complete lack of melanin—Thank you, Judge Vinsmoke, for the perfect Aryan complexion—What a genius leap in evolutionary advancement—such great genes—Why won’t it fucking stop?! the cook laments, feeling his cheeks glow brighter by the minute.

“Very funny, Marimo—making me the wife in your little play fantasy.”

“Huh?” Zoro responds with a twinge of disgust. “Gross. You’d be a terrible wife.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Wives are supposed to be sweet, loving homemakers—you stabbed me with a spatula this morning over adding too much salt—”

“PANCAKES ARE MADE WITH SUGAR, YOU PLEBIAN! You’re supposed to pour syrup on top like a normal person!"

“Didn’t realize we had a kitchen cop. I hate sweet things—”

“I specifically got you a spicy maple syrup which was super rare and hard to find, by the way, not that you even give a shit! I went to twelve different places because the first eleven used an ingredient that Usopp is allergic to, and you know he’ll get into anything spicy for his experiments, so I had to pre-order it by mailing a handwritten letter to the next island—if you remember, that was the one where Chopper got kidnapped, and the butcher’s wife felt so terrible about her husband’s conduct that she helped me track down the address to an illegal apothecary run by a man who spoke some sort of dead language and wore a cape made of dead rats. It was a lot of fucking effort, you know, and then you went and used salt instead?! I’m gonna have a bloody conniption remembering it—I need to sit down.”

He wilts like a standing flower—if there had been a chaise lounge nearby, the blond surely would have lain down like a princess struck with fever and tilted his head back, hand resting over his forehead and legs stretched across the fainting chair dramatically—instead he switches gears again when the swordsman remarks, “Wow, I guess you’ll make a decent housewife, after all.”

“What century are you from, musclehead? I’m gonna kick your ass straight into the modern era!”

They clash with a burst of Haki, shaking the ground beneath their feet and sending the crabs scurrying into their holes—pooling water vibrates from the energy surrounding the pair as they square up.

“You’re the one who assumed the wife’s role just because I talked about introducing you to my family. That’s not even a gendered thing—gay people do the same shit, too—everyone wants their partner to get along with the people they care about.”

“I—I don’t like men!” Sanji squawks, turning redder than the swordsman has ever seen him. “I might—I mean, maybe I like a man, but that’s—it’s different than being gay!”

“...Like an exception?” Zoro asks with stunning calmness. Simple curiosity. He doesn’t ask who the cook is talking about, just assumes it’s him and accepts it like it isn’t a big deal to receive such a confession from the woman-loving cook.

Inside the swordsman is panicking so badly he can’t even hear the words coming out of his own mouth, only the sound of Sanji’s little gasp, his tiniest intake of breath, blue eye softening shyly—the blond has no idea how fucking hot he is, how fascinating his expressions are, every tick, every miniscule movement of his face—Zoro takes it all in and does his best to just breathe.

Respond. React. 

Sword on leg, foot to blade. 

Back and forth they exchange attacks, never landing anything close to a fatal blow though they’re both slowly turning black and blue within ten minutes of fighting, soon dragging on to twenty. 

Around the half hour mark, Zoro loses his footing in one of the puddles, slipping in the thin layer of grime collecting at the bottom, arms pinwheeling. For a split second, his ankle rolls and it looks like he might tip off the edge of the rock—he’s backed into a corner, so-to-speak, tilting off-balance towards the plummeting cliffside.

Sharp rocks jut out from the bottom where waves crash against the wall of rock, eerily familiar to where the cook’s life almost ended all those years ago if it hadn’t been for the man with the same dream who saved him—Zeff had kept Sanji going after all the traumatic shit he went through, held his hand in the middle of the night when he cried for his dead mom, allowed him to carry on his legacy in the kitchen and on the battlefield—his old man.

Now the cook is grown, and there's a different man taking care of him—this infuriating, headstrong, beautiful man—currently falling down a fifty-foot drop ending in deadly perforation.

Zoro sees the cook’s eye go wide with terror, staring straight through the swordsman into his own past, pale hand striking like a snake to catch the collar of his kimono in a vice-like grip. He anchors them on the cliff with a violent yank, pulling their chests flush together.

“Shit—watch where you’re fucking going, dipshit!” Sanji snaps, rather unreasonably since it was his foot that sent the swordsman flying in that direction in the first place.

“Why?” Zoro snorts. “You’ll just fly down there and save me.”

“Because I’m a knight in shining armor!” Sanji huffs, flipping the hair fringe out of his eye to double the power of his glare.

“I thought you reserved all that prince stuff for the ladies?”

“One exception won’t kill me. Probably,” the cook tacks on, shooting a bold wink—clearly, he’s out of his mind—the moss must be releasing infected spores into the air, and now it’s eating away at his brain.

Zoro follows the curl with his gaze as it dips with the blond’s eyelid, noticing a change that stands out from the stark images filed away in his memory of Sanji’s various expressions, quickly pointing it out with no attempt at refinement.

“Your face got even stupider. Is that a Germa thing?” He gestures vaguely at the cook’s mirrored brow with his jaw—it’s always impressive how the swordsman can form the words around a sword so easily, and the cook wonders if he even has a gag reflex, ears tingling at the thought and then burning red with the jealous realization that Zoro has most likely tested it—but not with Sanji.

That thought is a little more sour. 

The blond’s body feels too hot as the exchange of blows becomes lazy, stunted with distraction on both sides—he’s having a full-on gay panic attack while the swordsman is so completely enthralled with the sight of Sanji finally figuring out what’s going on between them, he forgets to block the next kick.

Zoro really does go flying over the cliff this time, and the blond swears under his breath—blasting off to Sky Walk down from the ledge to the swordsman’s form in freefall, catching him before his unprotected back smashes into the jagged rocks below.

They tumble back onto the rockface and roll to a stop, shoulders touching side by side staring up at the evening sky as the first stars start to shine through the hot fog gathering in the upper atmosphere, sun dipping slowly below the horizon, glowing orange and red against the darkening sky like a lone coal beneath a dying bonfire.

“Can you try and cut me?” Sanji asks suddenly, holding his right arm across his body, sliding down the sleeve to expose his pale forearm, unmarked beside the dusting of blond hair lightly waving in the night breeze. “I just…want to be sure.”

His voice is as quiet as the setting sun, words floating between them to stick to Zoro’s skin—they sink into his face to meet the heat rising to the surface as he takes Wado out of his mouth, turning her blade to angle its sharp edge against the pale skin of Sanji’s arm, shining white in the dim starlight breaking through a blackening canvass.

What would he look like naked under the silver moon? The image drifts into Zoro’s mind unbidden, and he knows it’s a poor imitation of the real thing. The man in front of him is too perfect to be constructed in simple memory—fantasy is nothing compared to flesh and blood, alive with fire in his veins, flushing his face so gorgeously.

Blond hair falls across the curve of his cheek as he leans in, lean body pressing into the swordsman’s along the entire length where they touch from shoulder to hip, hip to knee, feet tangling briefly when they turn towards each other. Zoro’s sword is primed to make a shallow cut on the cook’s inner arm where the meat is thickest, right below his elbow.

The swordsman’s cursed blades lie at his side where he let them go after their tussle came to an abrupt stop. Sanji probably could have made a smoother landing if he wanted to, but a moment of panic had made it hard to think clearly—panic that he knows is the result of his past trauma rather than any real danger.

“I lost someone once,” Zoro says gravely. “In a fall down some stairs. My master’s daughter, Kuina—she was a year older than me, and I could never beat her in swordsmanship—not once out of two thousand matches—she was just eleven years old. Of all the stupid ways for a kid to die, right?” he asks, almost to himself, lowering his blade to kiss Sanji’s skin. 

The swordsman frowns when Wado’s blade doesn’t pierce the cook’s exoskeleton, coating her edge in Haki which makes gooseflesh rise on the blond’s arm from the intimate sensation ghosting over his skin, finally slicing through the top layer. “You still bleed the same as her. Red as the rising sun.”

It pools in the wound and drips down his forearm, dark circles forming on the swordsman’s green kimono where it lands. Sanji stares at his own blood flowing out in double scarlet rivers, twin snakes creeping out from his exposed veins at the ends—Zoro’s cut is so perfect that the middle section looks nearly untouched, as if the skin hasn’t realized yet that it’s split in half.

The drum of Sanji’s heart beats harder and pumps more blood from the cut—it leaks out as the edges of skin curl back, running along the thin line and sticking to the swordsman’s blade. Zoro wraps his free hand around the mess, enclosing his fingers around Wado with a small jerk that draws a shocked intake of breath from the blond.

“It’s the same as mine, too. See?” The swordsman opens his hand to show the shallow slice on his palm, pressing it over Sanji’s wound like some sort of weird blood pact. Somehow, the cook finds this act of manly bonding endearing rather than absolutely disgusting and unhinged.

Zoro is clearly trying to say something in his own way that he can’t put into words—You and I—together—we’re one—two hearts beating in tandem—and the sentiment is so moving that Sanji starts to feel choked up looking at their entwined hands. 

The cold cliff beneath his back is startlingly familiar, as is the endless stretch of sky above this barren piece of moss-covered rock, and the distant sound of a ship’s foghorn approaching. Last time, it was a signal of his salvation.

This time, it’s the Sunny catching up to the cook and the swordsman with Jinbe at the helm, steering them in the direction of Sanji and Zoro’s brief fight. They probably consider the pair the same as two stubborn dogs getting into a junkyard scrap—simply needing to let off some steam in a safe location—boys will be boys, after all.

Zoro brushes the blond’s hair behind his ear, more gently than Sanji thought possible for someone who moves with the grace of a tiger hunting its prey. The swordsman’s hand is much larger than his, like a dinner plate blocking all light when it passes to shift the fringe and expose more of the cook’s face.

Two blue eyes reflecting pinpricks of yellow in the night sky, swallowing the light with pupils that adjust slowly to the setting sun—each a black, expanding sphere hanging on a backdrop of blue like the shadow of a full moon cast on the surface of the sea.

There’s a bruise forming on his jaw that the swordsman doesn’t remember giving him—he has to work harder to protect the cook’s delicate face, and Zoro tells him this under his breath, earning a hard glare in return—the swordsman notices that the blond’s eyebrow is switched back to normal now.

“I don’t think you need to worry about my face,” Sanji says in a much darker tone than the words imply. He takes Zoro’s bloodied hand and brings it to his cheek where the backs of his fingers meet purple flesh—it’s already fading back to normal as if he had never been bruised in the first place.

The swordsman waits patiently, watching in fascination as Sanji’s skin color evens out, gaze flitting to the cut on his arm that’s back in Zoro’s light grip, staunching the blood with minimal pressure without squeezing too hard.

Like a video tape playing in reverse, the cook’s skin stitches itself back together beneath the swordsman’s palm—when Zoro withdraws his sliced hand, the wound on the blond’s arm is gone just like his bruises. Healed as if by magic, although he supposes it’s just science repackaged to seem miraculous to the uneducated eye.

“Does it bother you? Being different now?” Zoro asks, eye panning down the cook’s long body in search of any sign, any tell that he’s less than normal—not that it matters to him whether Sanji is a human, alien, cyborg, or whatever else.

He shrugs, shaking the swordsman with the motion who hasn’t made any moves to put more space between them. In fact, Zoro presses closer to hear Sanji's answer like it’s a precious secret that can’t be overheard.

“Honestly? I know it shouldn’t—but it does. What about you?—Would it bother you to fuck a freak that’s not even human?” he asks in doubletime, trying not to trip over the word “fuck”—it’s one of his favorites, but he suddenly feels dirty saying it in this context.

“Are you asking if it bothers me that the guy I’m into has a self-repairing ass? Because that’s literally the only thing I’m hearing,” Zoro fires back, not missing a beat.

“…?!—I didn’t say—Why would you even—?—Where the fuck is your head right now, Marimo?!”

“Between my legs getting harder by the second. Why’s it bother you so much? Are you still worried about losing your mind?” Zoro asks in a series of sentences that move progressively into more familiar territory. “Or is this about it being physically different for you, and that’s what’s scary?”

“I’m—I don’t know. I think my mind is fine, or as fine as it’ll ever be, anyway—but it’s really fucking weird not being able to control my own body. My skin starts to feel like somebody else’s—and I don’t mean like I’m wearing someone’s skin—but changing out of myself—like it’s my body, but at the same time it’s not.”

“That sounds fucking awful,” Zoro states with a sympathetic squeeze of his hand, a pitiful show of support in the swordsman’s opinion, but it’s the only thing he can think to do. “I wish I could help you.”

“You do—are—helping, I mean,” Sanji gets out, face hot and palms sweaty. “This, um, is nice,” he adds pathetically, envisioning throwing himself off of the cliff because his words sound painfully lame. It’s so awkward that he wants to die—preferably drop dead right there.

Whatever happened to the suave, flirtatious cook who can woo any woman without fear, never getting discouraged by rejection or a lady playing hard to get? Plenty of men have flirted with him before, too, and although he used to get a little uncomfortable before eventually coming to terms with his attraction to Zoro, he had never been at such a loss for words.

“What do you like about it?” the swordsman asks seriously, not helping Sanji’s flaming face situation one bit. He lifts their entwined fingers as if to say, Yay or nay on the hand-holding?

“It feels…” The blond searches for the closest word and comes up short. “Solid? Like I can’t—I dunno—leak out?” he tries unsurely.

“Hmm,” Zoro hums, thoughtful. He turns to look at the cook’s aristocratic profile, the high bridge of his nose, soft curve of his lips, scruffy chin. “I think maybe you’re just the kind of person who always overflows.”

Sanji’s neck snaps to the side to find the swordsman already looking at him, gazes locking. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?” he asks quietly, but he actually finds the abstract wording pretty relatable.

The cook often feels like his brain is a faucet that won’t turn off, thoughts filling his head and spilling out into his limbs, choking his chest, and putting a nervous tap in his toes—a trembling in his fingers, except for when he cooked, then he felt himself starting to relax.

It only ever lasts so long before he bursts, though. “You’re like a dam, constantly cracking under stress,” the swordsman elaborates with scary accuracy. “You stand strong to protect us, but sometimes you need help relieving that pressure—and since all the water comes from inside you, all we can do is try and levee it—give you more time to repair the cracks.”

Sanji is struck dumb by the comparison. The warm weight of Zoro’s hand in his feels both heavy and light, heart hammering in his chest like a hummingbird trapped in a cage, beating its wings frantically against its cell walls. Except he doesn’t want to escape this moment—he wants to treasure it—hold onto it as long as he can—but they’re about to have company, and the Straw Hats aren’t exactly known for subtly.

The cook lets go and shifts a few inches to the side before their eagle-eyed sharpshooter can spot them getting too friendly. Zoro waves with his now empty hand so their captain can spot them, rubberman flinging himself from the bow to where the cook and the swordsman are dusting themselves off on the barren cliff.

“Did you finish?” he asks Sanji who stammers incomprehensibly, eye going wide.

“F-finish—what? W-we were just looking for a good place to beat each other off a bit—up—beat each other up a bit—he pissed me off, okay?! Let us work it out like adults!”

“He means we got into a fight. Sorry Captain,” the swordsman cuts in with a barely stifled snort. “At least the ship isn’t damaged.”

“Your face is so fucked, Zoro!” Luffy laughs wholeheartedly, pointing out how, historically speaking, “Usually Sanji makes people better looking. Shishishishi!”

“Can’t mess with perfection, I guess.”

“I would never alter the marimo’s beautiful caveman features—his bones should be donated to science to help study the origin of our species!”

The dark-haired man takes a huge breath and shouts, “SANJI THINKS ZORO IS PRETTY ENOUGH TO BE STUDIED!” at the top of his lungs, sprinting back to where the Sunny is coasting around the rocky outcrop waiting to pick up their cook and swordsman.

“THAT IS NOT WHAT I FUCKING SAID, LUFFY!”

The cook looks about five seconds away from actual murder, and Zoro doesn’t really want to deal with a pirate coup right now. Although he thinks Sanji would make a pretty decent captain, he has to stop the blond from losing his shit on their captain so they can set sail smoothly—a dead man can’t make it to the end of the Grand Line, and the swordsman wanted to see all his friends achieve their dreams, heads intact.

Sanji is obviously contemplating the best way to remove Luffy’s without getting too much blood everywhere. His brain is working like clockwork behind his eyes, planning, teeth clenching so hard that Zoro will hear the grinding as a permanent backtrack to his nightmares from then on.

“Relax, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” the swordsman says reassuringly as he and the cook climb back onboard—Sanji is faster getting to the ladder with his longer stride, so Zoro averts his gaze when he follows the blond up, consciously forcing himself not to glance at his ass, just putting one hand after the other.

He fails miserably, and it’s perfect—the cook has the best ass for miles, maybe in the whole Grand Line, definitely the best in the East Blue. It's tight and perky, rounded symmetrically with just enough fat to grab onto, pulled taut over muscles that had the power to launch himself to incredible speeds, fast enough that he can’t be seen by the average gaze—Zoro would give up his remaining eye to be able to hold those glorious mounds in his hands, squeeze them just once…

“But Luffy always knows things—how—?”

“He’s just teasing, Cook. You know he doesn’t understand crap about relationship stuff—I don’t even know what’s going on—you’re kinda hot and cold, you know. Not exactly easy to read your mind. It’s a fortress of fuckery.”

“Say that again to my face, bastard!”

Zoro hops the rail after him and squares up shoulders, but Nami swoops in to drop her fists of love on their heads, shrieking, “Will you idiots please at least tell somebody when you go flying off from the ship—Usopp just barely noticed—Weren’t you still supposed to be on watch, Zoro?!”

“Thought I spotted an island. Went to check it out. Was just a big rock,” he states as simply as possible.

The sea witch can sense a lie in the vibrations of the air, so he clips his sentences short and stares at her tits because he knows how much it irritates her, even if he has zero interest in anything under there. She rolls her eyes dismissively, but it bothers Sanji who kicks him sharply in the side and tells Zoro to keep his slimy gaze to himself before the cook removes it with a melon baller—whatever the fuck that is.

“How many times do I need to say—I’m gay—before you stop accusing me of perving on the girls?” he grunts through the pain, sadly, no exoskeleton for him. “I will literally suck your dick if you give me five fucking minutes of peace today, Cook. I just want to get back to my meditation.”

Zoro makes sure to say the second part quietly enough that no one can hear but Sanji, grinning wickedly when the blond stutters a half-hearted refusal and chooses not to reply because Usopp is moving within earshot, holding up a test bomb made from spicy syrup extract. 

He comments on the blond’s flushed face, asking if he wants the sharpshooter to build the cook a retractable parasol or special sunblock for his sensitive skin—Nami might have some she’s willing to share—haha fat chance. “It would be no trouble, really! We can’t have our cook getting heat stroke,” Usopp tells him sincerely.

“He’s too hot for his own good. Better get him something to hydrate—look at how he’s gone all red around the cheeks and neck,” the swordsman says to Sanji’s utter embarrassment, but the longnosed man is somehow completely oblivious to the double entendre and actually goes to fetch the cook a glass of cold water, bless his heart.

“Are you feeling ill, Sanji? I can give you a check-up if you come with me to the infirmary—”

“I’m fine—leave me alone, you assholes!” he explodes to Chopper’s visible confusion.

“Did I say something wrong?” the doctor asks, blinking innocently as the blond storms off into the safe familiarity of his kitchen. “Sanji did look unnaturally flushed—do you think he has a fever? Should I have stopped him?”

“Don’t worry, buddy. Curlybrow’s okay—he’s going through some stuff right now, but I’ll help him. He’ll tell you if he needs anything,” Zoro reassures the doctor with an affectionate ruffle of his fur. “Can you make sure no one bothers us? Kitchen’s off limits until dinner ‘cuz the cook and I have to, uh…do a deep clean. I can count on you to stand guard, right?”

“Aye, aye, Zoro! I won’t let a single soul inside, even if Brook does that thing I really, really hate where he floats around without his body—I won’t allow a single mouse, not even a fly, or—”

“You got it, Champ. Thanks.”

The swordsman salutes his naïve crewmate and follows the cook into the galley with their double bounty folded inside his kimono, locking the door behind him and making a detour to the second entrance to flick the inside latch shut on the trapdoor as well. He has the sense that Sanji might actually be open to exploring whatever’s between them, and he does not want to be interrupted during a critical moment nor does he want to push too hard and scare the blond away if it’s too intense, too fast.

The galley is empty, but the infirmary door is wide open and there’s a jumble of clatter and muffled swearing coming from inside. Zoro crosses the room with long, silent strides, popping his head in to see what the cook is doing. He’s bent over looking through Chopper’s cupboards, fishing out basic medical supplies and placing them on a rolling tray.

Gauze bandages in various sizes, adhesive tape, burn ointment, and a bottle of something marked USOPP’S MIRACLE DISINFECTANT! KILLS 1000% OF GERMS! IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE—TELL YOUR FRIENDS! with what is clearly a homemade label, though the handwriting is curvy and feminine—maybe a favor from Robin or Nami—the swordsman has never really noticed anyone’s handwriting, so for all he knows Sanji has a hidden talent for penmanship and made the label himself.

The cook seems comfortable with the bottle, like he’s used it many times before, opening the lid one-handed with a practiced flick of his finger, plastic top spinning off and skidding across the floor as he absentmindedly turns toward the sink and douses his left and with the stuff. The cook switches hands and disinfects the other one, rinsing and drying them with a paper towel faster than Zoro can step into the room and firmly shut the door behind him.

“Oh, Marimo, good—I was just about to call you—sit.” He tosses the wadded-up ball into the wastebasket without looking at it and kicks a low footstool on wheels toward the swordsman—the paper towel sinks in the bin as it rolls across the tile and bumps Zoro’s knees.

He’s too confused by the blond’s sudden, chipper attitude to respond and just follows the order like an obedient dog, happy to sit down where his gaze is eye-level with Sanji’s belt, tight pants leaving little to the imagination—his mind goes there anyway, remembering the recent glimpse he got in the bathhouse on Wano when they were joined by Yamato.

Sanji’s naked body arching through the air with blood spewing from his nose plays on repeat in his head until the cook snaps his fingers in front of Zoro’s face to bring him back into focus. He’s already forgotten about the medical supplies, letting out a hum of interest when the blond starts fussing with his clothes, wrestling his kimono off his shoulders with clinical precision and reaching for the disinfectant to splash it on his neck.

“Hey—what the—?”

“Shit, that looks like it stings. My bad.”

“Huh?” the swordsman grunts stupidly. Sanji’s hands are chilled from the water, but they quickly warm up as they land on Zoro’s furnace of a body, turning him fractionally in the chair with both hands on his thick biceps, facing him directly at the cook.

The blond’s long fingers twitch once, unable to wrap fully around the cobra-like arms of his crewmate who stares straight ahead at his crotch, straightfaced. Zoro’s battle-trained brain informs him that the slight bulge in material is exactly two inches from the tip of his nose.

Nice.

It isn’t until Sanji slaps a cold cream on his already too-hot skin that he realizes the cook skimmed him with one of his flaming kicks earlier, reddened flesh the size of a small grapefruit tingling on the left side of his throat just above the collarbone. It burns slightly then cools down like magic as Chopper's special tincture promotes healing and relieves the pain of inflammation.

Zoro vaguely recalls it happening in a moment of weakness, distracted by the righteous fury in Sanji’s eye—looking like an avenging angel with the golden halo of blond hair framing the sharp, handsome features of his face—his dodge going half an inch short, careless.

The pain registers as quickly as it soothes and he grins a little, prompting the cook to say, “What’s that smug smile for? You just got your ass kicked, Shitty-swordsman.”

“Tch. Tell yourself that if it helps you sleep at night—obviously you need it, Eyebags.”

This is a blatant lie—Sanji does not have shadows under his eyes—his skin is flawless and they both know it, but the cook refuses to rise to his bait, as fun as that may be. He has a job to do, and the drama with their new bounty poster lingers in the anxious tapping of his toes, black dress shoes clacking rhythmically on the floorboards as he zeroes in on the task at hand.

Zoro is really warm under his palms, and he’s acting strangely docile, fixing a curious gaze on the blond’s quick hands as they work efficiently to clean and bandage the burn he caused. A few minutes pass in silence, not completely comfortable because of the cook’s raging anxiety and the swordsman’s hyperfixation on the blond’s presence, the smell of him—tobacco, kitchen spice, and something he can only describe as “ocean” as if the sea itself exuded from Sanji’s pores—but the tension is muted. Manageable.

Just when the cook thinks his heartbeat is finally going to settle, fingers falling into the familiar motions of dressing a wound, the swordsman opens his mouth and launches the elephant straight into Sanji’s dumbstruck face with a metaphorical cannon.

“I’m impressed you actually made it five whole minutes, Cook. I guess that means I lost. Should I put my money where my mouth is?” Zoro asks cockily, gaze sliding directly to the cook’s dick.

The swordsman licks his lips. Sanji’s face pales then turns bright red like someone turned on an infrared lamp, going from ghostly to toasty in less than ten seconds, every inch of him covered in an embarrassed flush from hairline to collar, ears, neck—even the tip of his nose is redder than Buggy the Clown’s.

Go big or go home, the swordsman thinks, shucking his clothes back on to provide a barrier between himself and Sanji’s frantic gaze. Zoro is nervous about propositioning the cook so blatantly but too tactless to dance around the subject any longer—he’s been head over heels for the blond since the day they met and Zoro saw him kick major ass at the Baratie, so he can’t bear a drawn-out courtship like the other man is probably used to.

“Yes?—No? We don’t have all fucking day—I locked the doors, but you know there isn’t a padlock in existence that can keep Luffy out—How many times has he broken into the fridge?”

The cook is stuck in some sort of loop, opening and closing his mouth like a koi fish, completely frozen in place like his system is performing a factory reboot, brain updating the new information and refreshing. He doesn’t move or speak until the words can reorganize themselves in his mouth.

“I—don’t want you looking at my dick!” Sanji blurts out indignantly, eye widening as if he can’t believe what he just said.

Zoro doesn’t believe it either because they’ve seen each other naked plenty of times changing in the men’s dorm and sharing baths with their crewmates, so he can’t quite understand why the handsome blond is shy about his cock all of a sudden—it’s above average in length and rather pretty in the swordsman’s humble opinion. Zoro has seen plenty in his day to know that Sanji’s is nothing to scoff at, and the cook must know it, too, since he’s sensitive about his appearance.

Even so, he tries to come up with a solution because Sanji hasn’t say no yet to the blowjob. “You could blindfold me with your tie?” Zoro suggests thoughtfully, eyeing the black and blue stripes tucked into the cook’s suit coat, gaze shifting from the knot to the hidden fabric wrapped around his neck beneath a sharp, white collar—there's a speck of blood on one of the pointed folds, either his or Sanji’s from their fight.

Zoro is looking at the spot of blood when a hand claps over his working eye, throwing him into darkness. The cook’s breathing is loud in the room, too rapid to be natural—he sounds emotional.

“I guess this works, too,” Zoro comments uncaringly. “So, can I?” he asks the back of his eyelids. “Suck you off?”

May as well be as clear as possible—no ifs, ands, or buts.

It works—miraculously, the straightforward approach flusters Sanji so badly that he ends up feeling more secure about considering the question because Zoro isn’t looking at him. The swordsman sits still and waits for an answer, boldly letting his lips pull into a smarmy grin. He knows the cook is thinking hard—can practically hear the gears turning in his head.

He waits a little longer, grin twisting at one side with a confident quirk. The timing is perfect. They’re alone, exhausted, horny, and secluded in the infirmary with everything they might need—Zoro doesn’t care how far they go, he’s just thinking about the current moment—holding his breath until Sanji makes a small noise of frustration in his throat and says, “Were you raised in a barn? How can you ask me that right now—did I kick you in the head too hard during our fight? We’re covered in dirt and blood, Marimo—I—I at least need to shower!”

The swordsman snorts. “I don’t give a fuck about that. I wanna do it now,” he clarifies, modulating his tone at the end from cocky to sincere. He wishes the cook would move his hand so Zoro can properly give him the bedroom eye.

Sanji says nothing at first, doesn’t even breathe. If he moves his hand and the swordsman doesn’t open his eyelid, then he would only be able to tell the cook is still there from his Haki signature because even his heartbeat seems to have stopped.

“Yes, or no?” Zoro repeats. “I won’t be upset either way.”

Technically, it’s a lie—he knows he’ll be devastated if the blond turns him down, but he won’t be upset at Sanji himself, just in general for missing out on the experience—and the swordsman can accept defeat gracefully should that be the cook’s decision.

But if there’s even a tiny sliver, a fraction of a smidge of a chance, that Sanji might want to then Zoro is definitely willing to risk lifelong embarrassment and mild disappointment—in the end, he’s happy just to get to see the cook most days, eat his delicious food, bicker and spar—that's already more than enough.

His hopes aren’t dashed immediately—Sanji is still considering it, his warm palm burning against the weathered skin around the swordsman’s eye, temperature now exceeding Zoro’s which is quite a feat—maybe he really should see Chopper to check for fever.

Finally, a single word escapes the cook’s lips like a bursting balloon, loud and clipped. “Yes!”

He doesn’t move his hand, face burning. Zoro smiles so wide it hurts his face—bright and genuine beneath the cook’s palm. “Cool,” he gets out, equally as curt. Not exactly the picture of eloquence but succinct.

Sanji looks like he’s stepped into a dream, standing stock-still with his arms hanging limply at his sides, watching the swordsman reach for his belt buckle as soon as he had permission, mouth gaping slightly. The blond’s lips suddenly go dry, so he wets them with a flick of his tongue and coughs to clear his throat, stuttering, “W-wait—you—um, maybe I should sit?”

A quiet hum rumbles in Zoro’s chest as he thinks about it, deciding, “Yeah, let’s switch.”

The instinct to take a step back is strong when the swordsman stands, crowding Sanji’s space who does a quick side-step—they sort of dance in an awkward circle, Zoro guiding him with a firm hand around his bicep, dropping him into the stool.

There’s a medical cot right next to them, perfectly pristine with a clean white sheet and two fluffy pillows waiting for its next injured patient, but the swordsman predicts that the cook will be a grabber and would prefer it if Sanji anchors himself to Zoro.

The cook sits on the stool which has no back, spine snapping straight and head tilting up automatically to look the swordsman in the face rather than directly at his dick. Seeing the sharp angles of his handsome profile from below proves too much for the blond to handle, however, and he quickly ducks back down to look at the floor.

He tries and fails not to take in the swordsman’s bulge as his gaze flits by, pants tented slightly and loose fabric stretched over what he knows is an impressive cock—he’s seen it, against his will, in passing quite a few times, and it never fails to make his heart clench with an emotion he struggles to name.

It’s not exactly jealousy, since Sanji is perfectly happy with his own size, nor arousal exactly—the phantom squeeze comes and goes like a cramp that twists itself into a knot and then releases tension a second later, usually after the cook rips his gaze away and locks it on something trivial, pretending not to have noticed.

Nudity is just a part of pirate life—it used to be nearly impossible to avoid seeing each other on such a small ship (Rest in peace, Merry <3), but even the Sunny had limited options for true privacy, certainly a lack of comfortable spaces suitable for something like masturbation which most of them did regularly.

The cook and the swordsman can each count on both hands the amount of times they walked in on someone doing it, not often but it’s bound to happen on occasion. Zoro had not been lucky enough to catch Sanji in the act who once experienced—and then immediately suppressed—a moment of absentmindedness where he stepped into the bathroom in the early hours of the morning to find the swordsman in the midst of self-pleasure, having stolen a moment alone between night watches when the cook would usually still be asleep for another hour or so.

If that memory existed somewhere in Sanji’s head, and hadn’t been completely purged by the fires of his shame, then it must be buried deep under lock and key inside some impenetrable vault in his subconscious marked, DANGER! DO NOT ENTER! 

All the cook remembers thinking at the time were panicked thoughts about the telltale signs of a nosebleed oncoming, a wave of dizziness like he was about to pass out—how mortifying it would be—the excuses he would have to make—everything else was a blank slate with haunting circus music playing in the background.

The cook stares at the lid to Usopp’s disinfectant, which had fallen to the floor a few inches from his left toe, until Zoro suddenly crouches and his tented dick is right there—thighs spread shoulder-width, touching the backs of his calves—knees bent with a hand braced on each, balancing briefly on the balls of his feet.

It’s a split-second transition as the swordsman adjusts himself to kneel between the cook’s long legs, slightly parted and sitting stiff as a cyborg, but it’s enough to burn the image into his brain—straight into the danger vault it goes, only to be touched on a rainy day.

Sanji swallows loudly—now his mouth is too moist—he’s salivating like a dog, perked up in the stool like a bloodhound catching a scent. Zoro’s huge hands land on the tops of his thighs, fanning out his fingers and squeezing once, a firm test of the cook’s steely muscles going rigid under his hot palms.

Heat radiates through the material, seeping into his skin, hair rising out of sight. “Please excuse my rudeness,” Zoro mutters under his breath in a strange, formal language that Sanji has never heard from him before—it’s a well-known phrase within polite society, used to express an action that might be seen as inconvenient to the other party, such as when entering their home.

In this context, the cook understands it to mean that the swordsman is about to undo his pants and suck him off, but why he would come out with that particular polite expression is beyond him—the blond’s already reddened cheeks go even rosier because it sounds really, really hot in Zoro’s rough voice, each syllable uncharacteristically clear and notably softened. Reserved.

Sanji doesn’t know what he expects exactly—clothes being ripped away, animalistic growls maybe, definitely tons of swearing—all typical Zoro-like behaviour. The marimo is a complete caveman with no class—that’s an accepted scientific fact—but this muted formality of his is way out of the cook’s zone of prediction.

The swordsman takes the blond’s belt buckle in both hands, concentrating hard on the interlocking parts before systematically disassembling it like he’s following pre-planned steps in his head, quick and efficient, sliding the leather out of the loops with a slick sound that echoes off the walls, folding it over the back of Chopper’s doctor chair at the desk.

Sanji watches the twisting of his toned ribs, abs flexing beautifully as he half-turns to set down the belt, snapping his gaze to Zoro’s face when he moves his hands back to the cook’s pants, gripping the waistband next to the button which he pops expertly, making the blond’s eye widen with mild surprise.

He’s never seen the swordsman actually unfasten one before—all his clothes are tailored for practicality, no use for fashion—so the cook wonders how he’ll fare with the dress shirt buttons, His face tingles—he’s getting ahead of himself. Slow the fuck down, Sanji. Focus!

The mental mantra continues—focus, focus, focus, focus—as Zoro undoes the zipper in half-time, like the world itself is slowing. The universe narrows its focus down to the cook’s crotch, existence itself hinging on this moment—if he passes out, will everything just…end? Poof. Instant implosion of the universe—or maybe it would wink out like a flame being snuffed.

“I like that you’re a little on the small side. It’s cute,” Zoro goads just to trigger him.

Sanji doesn’t remember the swordsman taking his dick out of his underwear—it’s as if his brain glitched and lost a portion of his memory while it was happening, but the white brim of his boxer-briefs are tucked neatly underneath his balls, like two nesting Easter eggs, pastel pink with the flush of arousal.

“Good thing we’re in a doctor’s office ‘cuz you obviously need to get your fuckin’ eyesight checked!” the cook scoffs, falling easily into the trap. “Maybe you've actually been going blind this whole time, and that’s why you can never find your goddamn way, Shitty-lost-swordsman.”

Zoro looks immensely pleased with this reply, grinning like a madman with Sanji’s cock in his hand—seriously, when did it get there?! “Touchy subject?” the swordsman asks with zero regret.

He’s touching my cock, he’s touching my cock, he—oh shit, it’s hot—his hand is really hot, the cook thinks dazedly, squirming in his seat. He curls forward slightly as if in prayer, placing his hands on the swordsman’s thick shoulders for stability because he doesn’t know what else to do with them and can’t keep still, toes clenching and unclenching in his shoes.

A band of fire surrounds his erect shaft, forming a snug circle snug around the base, just holding on. There’s a good few inches between the top of his hand and the ridge of Sanji’s cut cockhead, flushed red with blood and slightly sticky, transparent precome glistening on the tip.

“Thank you for the meal,” Zoro says—again, using a nearly archaic version of an expression the cook is used to hearing from upper class patrons at the Baratie every time they started eating their meal—a sign of respect as a way of showing deep gratitude for the food.

It’s too much.

Sanji keens out a quiet lament for his dignity and gives into the anticipation, sucking in a sharp breath that he lets out in a long sigh as the swordsman ducks his head to wrap his lips around the tip and sink his mouth down—once, twice, thrice for good luck—then pulling back to admire the slicked-up shaft and wet head, twitching happily in his hand.

“Gonna be honest. Been thinking about this forever,” Zoro tells him candidly, licking his lips like he’s preparing to taste test a new sake.

“Nngh.” I thought you couldn’t stand me, asshole.

“Yeah, you’re annoying as hell—but also hot as hell,” the swordsman reveals, and Sanji realizes that he said the thought out loud without meaning to.

“F-fuck—you—!” Sanji starts through gritted teeth—Zoro gives him a single, firm, delicious stroke then squeezes him punishingly. “So you’re just a pervert, then?” the cook asks with a mean sneer to mask his pang of disappointment.

It was perhaps a little silly of him to have thought this is anything more—in retrospect, the blond should have tempered his romantic idealizations knowing that Zoro is a man of instinct, definitely a hit-it-and-quit-it kind of guy, which is completely in line with his sea-faring lifestyle, never staying in any one place long enough to form deep attachments.

The swordsman is loyal to a fault when it comes to his crew, their allies, and his swords, but he isn’t sentimental like the cook in romantic relationships—he famously doesn’t bother with any of that, focusing only on his goal, his training.

So Sanji is surprised to say the least when Zoro admits, “I don’t make this offer to just anyone. I’ve never even wanted to give anyone head before—being perverted’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

“Then why?—I mean, I thought—because you said you wanted to…” the cook trails off awkwardly.

“I do,” he clarifies, soothing Sanji’s wave of anxiety that hits when he thinks that the swordsman is forcing himself to do something he doesn’t like. “This might be an unpopular opinion, but it’s—it’s different from casual sex or even a drunken make out—more like how you are about cooking for people—a love language. I dunno how to explain it better.”

He's doing a decent enough job, returning diligently to his task. Sanji thinks he can understand what the swordsman is trying to say—they’re both a little flustered. Zoro is finally showing a crack in his confident façade, hesitating a little before diving back down to take the blond into his mouth again. It’s a small thing, but as the recipient of many blowjobs from lovely ladies of varying skill, the cook can usually tell when it’s someone’s first time handling a dick.

The swordsman manages it better seeing as he’s a man himself—he knows where to grip and how hard, the best places to put his lips, and even has some of the timing down—but it’s evident as he swallows awkwardly around the hard length on his third try, throat seizing until he pulls back fractionally, compensating with a shallow stroke of his hand, that he’s a bit out of his comfort zone.

He doesn’t gag on it though, adjusting to the size and shape after a short pause, getting used to the new feeling of fullness that isn’t at all comparable to having a sword in his mouth. Sanji is thicker than Wado’s handle, first of all, and he had a natural taste unlike the fading material Zoro is used to over steel—his cock is musky and slightly salty, weight satisfying on his tongue—it reminds the swordsman of something he might taste at a seafood barbeque, making his mouth water.

The flavor is wholly fresh to his palate, different from tasting skin somewhere else, though Zoro doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe it properly. Sanji would probably be able to with his experience in the kitchen—the swordsman wonders what his own cock tastes like—would it offend the cook’s delicate sensibilities or might he find it an acquired taste, maybe even like it? 

Is that at all within the realm of possibility, or is the swordsman slipping into blind fantasy now—he doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Sanji will kick him if he hates it, that much is for sure. 

He’s not one to hold back how he feels, either—if the blond isn’t happy with his performance, Zoro will surely get a vicious tongue-lashing—and he desperately wants that, figuratively or literally, if fate smiles upon him, ideally both.

In a perfect world, the cook doesn’t stop him after a minute and a half of experimentation. However, they live in a cruel reality where physics and biology (usually) followed scientific laws—Sanji is too worked up from the drama with their bounty poster, his crew’s’ relentless teasing, and the swordsman’s wet mouth sucking periodically as he explores the surface of his cock with his warm tongue, lips, and the silky insides of his mouth and throat.

Zoro is taking it like it’s a competition, gradually getting deeper and swallowing more and more of the swollen shaft—it’s twitching at the base, blood filling thick, blue veins that appear more stark against his pale pink skin. Sanji’s groin constricts to make it stand tall—muscles pulling taut, cock slick with spit and precome.

“A-ah—Zoro—fuck—that…feels so good…” Sanji babbles, voice breaking through the dam of his lips, unbidden—he already can’t hold back the flood of unfiltered word vomit—it’s hard enough just to keep in his pleasured moans.

Despite his inexperience, the swordsman’s mouth feels absolutely heavenly on his cock. Anything touching the pervert-cook there—hell, even the wind—is liable to trigger a boner, especially after a certain two-year dry spell during which he refused to touch himself in fear of his fantasies being infected by the strange culture of the island.

Iva and their buddies on Momoiro helped Sanji see (after many exhausting nights unsuccessfully escaping the okama in the early days and being forced into what the queens call “talking therapy”) that what he’s really running from is his own preconceived notions, hiding behind his gentleman’s persona and rejecting anything that doesn’t fit the mold.

Fuck it—he can admit wearing the dress wasn’t that bad—Sanji might possibly even want to try something like it again, tailored to actually flatter his body of course, now that he’s come to terms with a lot about himself. Since reuniting after those two years with the marimo, who is essentially the sole cause of his sexual confusion, the cook had been forced to face some hard truths about himself.

Maybe he’s in love with Zoro. Wait a minute—what the hell did he just say?! Sanji’s mind hollers, a fog horn blaring through the whiteout of his jumbled thoughts. He replays the swordsman’s words from a moment ago in black and white because Zoro is sucking everything out of his dick, leaving no spare brainpower to fill in the memory with color.

It’s different from casual sex or even a drunken make out—more like how you are about cooking for people—a love language.

“Z-Zoro—what—?” He tries to ask why the swordsman chose that particular phrase—with that specific word Sanji always says at the drop of a hat to every woman who crosses his path but never means in a true, romantic sense.

The cook loves Nami and Robin—Nojiko, Vivi, Rebecca and Viola, Shirahoshi-chan, hell, even Pudding who stomped all over his heart and spit on it for good measure—he truly cares for them on a level beyond the shallowness of sex or attraction to gender. Sanji loves them as friends and pseudo-family—used to think that some might become potential lovers, certainly—but he’s never been in love before—always has his fall arrested before reaching the peak.

Recently, after the desperation he felt on Wano and reflecting on his personal relationships—the darkest parts of himself that he wants to hide and is still afraid to show, even to the people he loves who love him in return—Sanji is questioning whether or not anything he believes is real.

He certainly feels like a man in love right now, and not just because he’s enjoying the amateur head, which is all the more better for it—definitely a novel experience getting to feel Zoro getting the hang of it, falling into a steady rhythm, the quick learner that he is—but because it feels like the continuation of a destiny already in motion while also still being fresh and poignant. A new milestone representing the start of something much grander. Emotion.

It’s heavy and stifling in a comforting way, like a thick blanket from your childhood. Protective—Sanji feels protected from everything outside these walls, everything besides their two bodies, connecting at a single point of pleasure.

It spreads outward in rivers, flowing through his entire body in channels that extend to the tips of his toes, the top of his head—bubbling under the surface of his skin as his orgasm builds.

Zoro adds little licks here and there, flicking his tongue over the hole in his cockhead, pressing inside, swirling around the top, under the ridge where the veins bundle together—the cook goes crosseyed from the sensation, eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings. 

He wants to keep them open, but the sight of the swordsman kneeling on the hard floor between his legs is unbearable to look at for too long—like an eclipse—he’ll go blind if he stares longer than a few seconds at a time.

“Sh-shit—mmm—I feel it coming—s-slow down!” Sanji chokes out—begs.

The cook estimates that maybe three minutes have passed, but it could have been thirty or three hundred—he’s lost in the sensation, eyes screwed shut, blond hair sweaty around the roots, chest heaving slightly.

Zoro has found his fucking element—he’s clearly enjoying this, pants tented painfully high now. There’s a darker wet spot spreading where his hard cock is leaking through the material—spunk soaking straight through two layers of fabric, staining his underwear and trackpants.

The swordsman is making low noises, closer to what the cook initially expected to hear from him—not animalistic growls per se, but rather unintentional signs showing how he’s feeling.Quiet groans of pleasure, little hums that vibrate along Sanji’s shaft and make him see stars on the insides of his eyes, and his favorite—encouraging sounds in response to the twitching cock, each squeeze of his fingers digging into the swordsman’s shoulders.

Suddenly, Zoro shifts his hands, letting go of Sanji and moving his palms from the cook’s thighs to grip him under the legs, just above the back of his knees where the skin is sensitive—no one has ever touched him there—it’s a strangely intimate place, but he doesn’t have a second to process the feeling because the swordsman throws both of the blond’s legs over his shoulders, hooking them across his broad body like backpack straps, holding them firmly by Sanji’s upper thighs like Zoro wants his skull crushed between them.

“Ahh—f-fuuck—! I said slow down not—” the swordsman swallows around his shaft and sinks as deep as he can go, burying his nose in the darker blond curls crowding the base and breathes through his nose. Short puffs tickle the sensitive skin above his groin, happy trail quivering as the muscles in his stomach flex unconsciously, defining the sharp cut of his abs under taut skin.

Sanji’s back arches obscenely when his orgasm crashes over him, arms wrapping around the swordsman’s head and shoulders, forehead tilting to the sky, legs seizing—everything stops functioning as he briefly loses control of his limbs, feet pressing so hard into Zoro’s lower back that he knows instinctively there will be two heel-shaped bruises tomorrow from the dual force of his famous legs.

“Fuck yeah—do it harder, Curly.”

His words are perfectly understandable even with the dick in his mouth, but Sanji hears them as if they’re coming from underwater. He comes so hard his vision goes black, then white, then turns a color he’s never seen before—unidentifiable to the human eye—spiky flashes of yellow intermingle with the glaring white lights of the infirmary when he peels them open with a broken howl.

Zoro swallows the entire load of come—throat working to keep from choking without releasing Sanji from his mouth—it’s hot and sticky inside, a moist cave of wonder surrounding him in warmth. The slow withdrawal is agony, shaft still twitching and spilling whatever’s left in his balls which spasm like baby birds about to hatch from their eggs, flushed rosy-red from the sweet constriction of his underwear below.

The cook curls forward again, blushing when the swordsman doesn’t let him go, large hands running up and down the blond’s leg like he’s trying to soothe the blond or maybe himself. He looks shaken—grey eye wide and out of focus, not quite meeting the blue directly—body swaying slightly like he just survived a barrel ride over a waterfall.

It’s a miracle the cook doesn’t fall off the stool when Zoro looks up at him—the swordsman couldn’t risk seeing Sanji’s face during the actual dirty deed because he would’ve jizzed his pants immediately, and that’s too embarrassing a secret to reveal just yet. 

Coming untouched is rare for him, but it’s happened before when he was thinking about Sanji and fingering himself—blowing his load from pure enjoyment and rubbing fabric alone would be a bit perverted for someone his age, though the swordsman doubts that the cook will have any reason let alone brainfunction to complain.

In fact, Zoro would bet all three of his swords that Sanji will love it when he finds out—the blond is a textbook narcissist, after all. The swordsman uses this fact to his advantage, hoping to pull off a little harmless manipulation while the cook is tired and satisfied. He pulls out the double bounty poster from inside his green kimono and holds it up innocently, swiping the cook’s come from the corner of his mouth with the back of his thumb and licking it clean.

“I actually really like this picture of us—we look badass—and you can see Usopp’s nose poking in on the right-hand side—you know he’ll love seeing it hanging up with the others. Would you actually be mad about it?—I mean, all the guys have seen it already, and your precious ladies never step foot in that toxic wasteland of a dorm, anyway—Please, Curly?”

The use of polite language is the final nail in the coffin—Sanji is such a sucker for sweet-talk, totally weak against it, eyes turning to hearts. He takes the arrow straight through his heart like a stuck pig, doesn't hesitate to say, “Yeah, sure, no problem, Marimo!” and they both look at each other, wide-eyed, because his tone sounds exactly like how he would answer the girls in the same airy, lovestruck voice. If he had a lit cigarette in his mouth right now then the smoke would be curling into a heartshape, too.

Zoro cracks a triumphant grin and leans forward with his hands planted firmly on each of the cook’s thick thighs, still trembling slightly from post-orgasmic spasms, using them as leverage to push off the ground and tilt his face up. He plants a hard smooch on Sanji’s dopey grin who melts into the stool like warm butter.

“I—” the cook cuts himself off with impossibly wide eyes, skin pulling on the backs as pressure builds until Zoro worries that they’ll pop right out onto the floor. I almost said something stupid, Sanji thinks, mortified by the close call.

“Love you too, Cook,” the swordsman murmurs against his lips, expertly tucking his sticky cock away and rebuttoning his dress pants. Sanji blinks in awe—Did I hear that right? he thinks, shaking his head in denial.

Zoro leaves Sanji’s zipper undone because he knows that the blond is too flustered to notice. He wants to point it out in front of everyone during dinner to embarrass him, already thinking about what he would say. Look, the pervert’s fly is open again—Nami, you should start charging him extra interest on his debt as a public indecency tax—the man’s a menace!

“Where the hell did this come from?! It’s not fair—you—you fucking blindsided me!”

“Like I said, I’ve always felt this way. Not my problem you’re oblivious as fuck. Nami was the one who gave me the advice—said it's called ‘shooting your shot’—so blame your precious angels, ‘cuz she and Robin have been plotting to get us together for ages.”

“They WHAT—?!”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this—actually, it brings me an immense amount of joy to burst your bubble—but Robin thinks of us like her little brothers, and Nami is in love with Vivi, and also a lesbian.”

“I—of course I know that!—Did you think I didn’t?! It—it was obvious,” he stammers—a bold-faced lie if Zoro ever saw one, but he decides not to call the blond out on it and spare the poor man further loss of dignity. It’s been an emotional day for him.

“The girls aren’t falling for any lies we tell, so one of us should relieve Chopper from guard duty soon if you don’t want anyone getting curious and asking questions—that freaky flower woman can make eyes grow in here to snoop.”

“Robin-chan would never spy on us!” the cook defends his lady’s honor immediately. “She just likes to…quietly observe.”

Zoro doesn’t point out that’s basically the same thing—they both know Robin is unhinged and lacks proper boundaries, but her heart is in the right place and they love her to death, no matter how morbid her jokes are.

The cook and the swordsman love all their crewmates, but they agree to keep this new development between them for a little while and continue things as norma—at least until they find the One Piece. 

It would probably come out anyway, but for now they can enjoy the bliss of ignorance and the fantasy of privacy—except for the little reindeer blushing outside the infirmary door after coming inside the kitchen to offer his help cleaning and hearing a noise that sounded like Sanji crying out in pain from the other side.

Chopper is a medical professional and an animal by nature—he can keep a secret.

The last person to clue in is, of course, Luffy who naively believes the drama surrounding the poster to be a lighthearted joke. He doesn’t figure out that his left and right wings are in an actual, real relationship until he sees them kiss in celebration of their victory in the Final Battle.

“EH!?—S-SANJI JUST KISSED ZORO!—IS EVERYONE ON THIS CREW GAY?!” the Pirate King exclaims, eyeballs literally popping out and rolling away in the dirt.

“I can update the flag with a rainbow!” Usopp suggests excitedly, pupils focusing on something only he can see, darting back and forth across the sky as he paints the image in his mind’s eye. “Should I add it as a drawing behind the Straw Hat, or swap out the entire background with colored stripes? Think that’ll be too busy?” the sharpshooter muses.

They argue extensively about the significance of the color black in a pirate’s flag before it gets heated when they decide that yes, it has to have a black background, and Franky points out that, technically, black isn’t a color but an amalgamation of all wavelengths in the visible light spectrum absorbed, so isn’t it already kind of like a rainbow? 

The captain decides that, logically, all pirate crews must be flying pride flags, so maybe he should try being gay, too? Nami punches him with her fist of love and says he’s a hopeless idiot but thanks him for accepting everyone on the crew regardless of who they love—also, that Franky doesn’t know what he’s fucking talking about—rainbows are literally just light reflecting off the air, which is the exact opposite of black, and he should know that because his lasers are built with advanced light optics.

The cyborg pipes in that what she probably means to say is “refraction,” not reflection, to which the redhead responds with a vicious purple-nurple, twisting both of his nipples like she’s angrily adjusting the gas dials on a stove while screaming for him to stop mansplaining weather-related shit to her—he’s wrong, anyway, because rainbows are partially caused by the internal reflection of light in water droplets—at this point, all of them have checked out of the debate and are searching the lawn on their knees.

Luffy loses one of his eyes under Usopp’s failed experiments—a catapult with a hand-shaped basket like the ones in cartoons that shoot pies, except Sanji refuses to let him waste any real pies, of course—and apparently the captain’s powers of imagination aren’t as simple as thinking things into existence.

He can’t manifest actual food from nothing like his aesthetic goggles, but he can float comically a few inches off the ground and drift after the enticing smell of food like a shark scenting blood in the water—it’s fun, hilarious, and fucking weird just like their lives.

They find the captain’s missing right eye three days later, and Luffy tosses it overboard because he thinks that the temporary eyepatch Chopper gave him looks too cool to ditch so soon, plus he’s already gotten used to having just one.

Zoro watches the Pirate King’s blind side on the right, Sanji is there to cover the swordsman’s left, and they all watch each other’s backs. After defeating Mihawk in one-on-one combat, the Monster Trio continue sailing on the Sunny to find the All Blue—because what the fuck else are they going to do except loop around the ocean again while Nami redraws her world map? 

Everyone agrees to keep chasing the rest of the Straw Hat’s unfinished dreams together, except for Usopp who briefly returns to Syrup Village to have a couple kids and later invite Kaya and their twin daughters along for the journey—she studies medicine under Chopper and learns to fight with poisoned arrows, protecting her family alongside her longnosed warrior of a husband.

It’s a cool addition to their crew’s collective fighting style, though Sanji isn’t a huge fan of the method himself, he understands the lady’s choice and respects her commitment to learning how to defend herself. Even if the cook doesn’t enjoy wasting edible ingredients in her sometimes failed concoctions, there’s already two new adorable little mouths to feed, so the cook gets used to a more relaxed, messier kitchen than he otherwise might tolerate.

Luffy chooses a random path because the geography looks nothing like it used to—the Red Line is gone, islands sunk into the sea, new ones forming after the Great Quaking—and Sanji still believes his dream ocean is out there somewhere in the vast expanse of the One Blue.

Maybe it existed once, long ago in the past, before the world changed over and over again—always changing, never standing still, weathering the test of time with these creatures crawling on its back, building boats, and sailing through its waters with hope in their hearts—the desire for grand adventure driving a never-ending pirate era.

Life will always seek what it can’t see right in front of it, and people like Sanji lead the world to new discoveries—never before tasted foods—with kindness and empathy, strengthened by years of fighting for what he believes in, while the World’s Greatest Swordsman takes a new vow to protect that ocean which the cook values so deeply—two fearless warriors tied together by love and dreams.

Chapter Text

The short-lived, little known ‘scandal’ surrounding Sanji and Zoro’s double bounty poster inadvertently ended up predicting the future of the cook and the swordsman’s tumultuous relationship.

Many new pictures were taken of the pair since the original edition—neither man bothered correcting the name situation in the press—and by the time they both turned forty, there had been more than two hundred issues released with their faces on it by various governing bodies shuffling leadership until the balance of power finally stabilized after nearly two decades.

Society may look vastly different, but humans were still the same as they always were—at least in the ways that mattered most.

The Straw Hats also remained pretty much the same, though they grew more powerful as a crew, wiser as people, and richer in spirit.

Nami aged like a fine bottle of wine—Sanji swore Robin aged backwards and actually looked younger than she did twenty years ago even with a full head of grey like her mother Olivia.

“Testing. Testing one, two, three.” Stop. Rewind. Playback. “Testing. Testing one, two, three.”

“Check complete. Okay, starting broadcast…This is Sammie Snapper speaking for the Ebijin Post*, coming to you live from a chaotic scene on Amazon Lily where a battle is currently ongoing between the New Kuja Pirates and the extreme terrorist organization known as the EOF—or Empire of Youths—known for their increasingly violent attacks on independent islands and pro-neonational rhetoric—cut—too wordy. Edit in post.

“They announced their goal last year to ‘restore the glory of the old days and reestablish the great World Government as the sole international body of leadership, consolidating all countries into one harmonious nation’. That’s a direct quote from their leader—shit, what was his name again?—Let me tell you all what I’m looking at in front of me because this ace reporter can hardly believe their eyes!”

The amateur photographer slammed the button on the hand-held recording device, an old model given to them by their grandfather along with their first camera.

Hard-hitting journalism wasn’t easy, and there was a literal warzone happening around them, blood and bodies scattered of the women of the isle—Sammie forged on with the lens poised and ready to capture any action on film, steeling their nerves against the horrific sights of death and destruction.

The Editor in Chief gave them all specific instructions not to get too close to the battle, but sometimes it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Success doesn’t come to those who sat waiting on the sidelines—only action and fearless determination could set them apart from their peers.

Hiking inland from the coast where his company deployed them was treacherous while transporting expensive technical equipment—Amazon Lily was famously covered in swaths of beautiful jungle foliage, though it had been severely burned, its acres decimated by the fire bombs spreading flame across their lands—yet giving up wasn’t an option.

One picture of the Straw Hats, even just one member alone, would fetch enough of a bonus to change Sammie’s entire future. They could go to journalism school, replace their busted-up camera with a newer model, and afford Xander’s piling medical bills which had nearly run both of their savings dry—a wedding was out of the question let alone starting a family.

The economy was still in shambles since the last world war. Jobs were few and far between, and print journalism would soon be completely dead, but Sammie had hope for it continuing in private publications—it was their passion, after all—but changing with the times was necessary.

“OH SHIT!”

A massive crater exploded at the far end of the alley they just came from, dragging tired feet through the man-wide concave in the dirt only for it to be hit a second time, miraculously, in the same place by another detonation from above.

“Bloody sky warfare,” Sammie grumbled, heart racing as the air pressure from the explosion knocked them back into a brick wall.

Camera check. Not broken, thankfully. Bones—also fine. What luck. The unnatural clouds swirling above concealed the enemy aircrafts from eyes on the ground, only brief flashes of geometric shadows flickering across the dark cumulonimbus can be seen through the thick haze of dust and debris.

“It’s completely in shambles! Luffy is gonna lose his shit on these half-baked terrorists—” a voice cut through the ringing in Sammie’s ears—cocky and filled with gravel like he’d smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before breakfast that morning. “Back in our day, we knew how to strike fear in people’s hearts just by pulling up in a straight line—since when are they busting out fighter jets to intimidate a bunch of innocent women?!”

“You sold so old right now, Cook,” a second voice drawled teasingly, and Sammie’s heart just dear name leapt out of his chest because he knew even before he saw them rounding the corner that those voices belong to none other than The Roronoas.

Sammie and Xander were lifelong fans of the older men—it would not be dramatic to say that the Straw Hat’s cook and the swordsman were their heroes. Sanji was on Xander’s “list” and the gorgeous Roronoa Zoro was on Sammie’s, but nothing was going to distract the photographer today. Not even if the World’s Greatest Swordsman himself offered anything he wanted, Sammie wasn’t talking that Hall Pass. Getting a picture was more important than anything.

“Fuck you—half your ugly melon head has gone grey—you look like you’re molding, Marimo, and I don’t look a day over twenty-eight!”

“Alright then, be delusional. I’ll still hit it whether you look twenty-eight, forty, or eighty-nine.”

“Gross. I won’t have this ass when I’m that old—literally—we’ll have Franky replace everything below the waist by then,” Sanji said with an audible shudder.

“Also gross. Kinda cool, though.” The swordsman sounded genuinely intrigued by the prospect. “I’m not sure I want that cyborg pervert touching my old-man-penis to swap it out, but having a new bionic dick sounds pretty awesome.”

“Speak for yourself—I’m giving up sex in my seventies and getting a fully functioning oven down there.”

Zoro burst into raucous laughter, the sound booming off the walls and helping conceal the sound of Sammie slipping inside the nearest abandoned building.

“Well, I always said I’d like to be able to put a bun in your oven—but the Sanji I know wouldn’t give up sex even if he lost both arms and legs—who are you and what happened to the man I married?”

“He’s getting bored of following the plan,” the blond whined.

Sammie shuffled quickly through the house to the corresponding window which was coated with a layer of dust on the outside, a brown film blocking the camera’s view. With a silent prayer of apology, holding Xander’s face in mind, the chronically cheerful grin and dark smudges under both eye—a stark reminder of the blood disease—the weakened body and contrastingly strong mind.

“I’m sorry,” Sammie whispered, smashing the window glass to position the camera with an unobstructed view.

The two famous pirates were making their way closer and closer to the open clearing in front of the house where a bronze statue used to stand of the Pirate King himself, built by the former Empress Boa Hancock to honor her one-sided love, now derelict and half-buried by the bombs.

“Fuck the plan,” Zoro growled with a general wave at the destruction around them. “The plan went up in smoke the second they toppled the gates. We didn’t make it in time, and now look at this shit—!”

“We came as fast as we could—you know that,” Sanji placated him, one hand landing on his broad shoulder as he blew a calming puff of cigarette smoke over the swordsman’s face, tanned eyes crinkling at the sides as he squinted in frustration through the dust, giving him crow’s feet.

An old scar stark bisected one eye, less stark against his skin in person than it looked on his bounty posters—three swords hanging on his hip opposite to the ear that used to have earrings, now just closed-up holes in their place.

“I’ll barrier—you fuck ‘em up, Curls.”

Roronoa Sanji nodded curtly, seeming to understand exactly what this means although Sammie wasn’t quite sure—the answer came soon enough when the blond pirate suddenly blasted off into the sky like a rocket, tearing through the clouds the way an arrow strikes the surface of the ocean, ripples flowing out in concentric waves from the whirlpool he formed in the centre.

Loud echoes of smashed metal started ricocheting through the air—in seconds, pieces of plane began raining down and the swordsman leapt into action to form a physical barrier between himself and the incoming debris.

It was the most devastating and awful display Sammie had ever witnessed, like violent fireworks arching through the sky, exploding steel sparking with fire and smoke instead of colorful bursts of chemical light—a firestorm of dying stars—instant death on a scale Sammie couldn’t comprehend.

They snapped a couple pictures of the sky alight with burning debris, the invisible wall deflecting falling pieces as the swordsman streakes like a comet—back and forth—protecting the houses and all the injured people strewn about the decimated city from his husband’s destructive attack.

It was over in less than ten minutes, the sky clearing in a slow roll of clouds that part for Sanji’s decent, feet slowing his fall with the occasional jerk of his flaming leg as the blond floated down like a warrior angel—blond hair fanning his aging face in a halo of fire reflecting the orange glow of the downed planes.

“Do you think Miss Viper got away safely?” the cook asked as he touched down, lighting a cigarette casually, practiced thumb flicking a small fire to life between cupped palms—the swordsman added one to help cradle it from the fierce winds which haven’t yet settled after their joint efforts—like the gesture was ingrained into him, completely subconscious.

“I don’t know, she was still fighting the EOF’s Chief of Command in the castle courtyard when I left to meet up with you. In any case, I’m sure she’ll be happy when Luffy shows up to save her—again.”

“He’s really got to let that poor woman down easy already.”

“You’d think seeing your mom chase the same man for years and nearly die of heartbreak would turn you off him completely—not to mention he’s twice her age—but he is the Pirate King, and she’s even more stubborn than Boa, so why not add some fresh blood to the harem?”

“That is absolutely disgusting, you pig!”

“Coming from the man who was going to marry an inappropriately young girl before me.”

“Viper is a lovely lady, and with her mother gone AWOL and her eighteenth birthday passed, by law she has to act as Empress. We should be sensitive to the challenges that come with culture shock like that—leaving the home you know and being thrown into politics after one of the worst periods in history, everyone expecting you to stabilize and lead your people—”

“She started an entire war because her crush didn’t call her back!”

“She’s passionate like all the amazing women before her!” Sanji insists. “That’s old news, Marimo. We took care of it, didn’t we? Focus on the problem at hand.”

“Luffy’s gonna be so bummed about the statue.”

“We’ll commission Usopp to make a new one as a gift to Her Majesty Empress Viper! I’d like to get back in her good books after last time,” the blond announced with hearts in his eyes.

The swordsman caught him by the ponytail during his dramatic, lovestruck spin, yanking him to a stop by his blond hair, arms pinwheeling as he steadied himself and pouted at his greenhaired husband.

“Wasn’t that sucker punch from her brass knuckles enough to teach you to stop perving over girls half your age, creepy old man?!” the swordsman berated him.

“Stop being so jealous—I’ve haven’t looked at someone else in twenty years—not once since we got together!”

“You’re so full of shit, Cook, that cameraman can probably smell it from here.”

CLICK! went Sammie’s shutter, spine going stiff as a tripod. Shit—they noticed me!

“You couldn’t even admit it to your dad,” the swordsman was going on as the pair continued strolling casually through the wasteland.

“I did too!”

“Five days before our wedding?” Zoro pointed out with a smile in his voice.

“That—that’s your fault for being such an asshole on the phone when he called about the bounty poster!”

“Oh man, he was so mad!” the swordsman chuckled heartily.

“I’d be mad too if I thought my kid had shacked up with a second-rate swordsman like you—”

“Oi, oi, oi.”

“—and you just had to tell him you were ‘taking care of me’ in the most socially inept way possible. Zeff had plans to stick your ass like a pig, boil, braise it, and roast you over a spit.”

“It was a misunderstanding and we solved it.”

By now the cook and the swordsman had turned the corner into the alley where the two bombs had dropped during Sammie’s scramble to the safehouse, Sanji’s scoff barely unintelligible over the background noise—luckily, the bombs had stopped and an echoing laugh could be heard ringing faintly in the distance, filled with joy as a drumbeat picked up a rhythm that shook the entire island.

“Sounds like the captain’s arrived,” Zoro said eagerly, ready to finish off the fight and banish the rest of the terrorists from their friends’ homeland.

“Let’s hurry this up so I can start dinner, yeah?” Sanji replied as if liberating an island is just another day’s work in the kitchen for the blond chef.

Their voices faded away and were replaced with the rushing blood in Sammie’s ears, fingers shaking as they turned camera lens toward the ground and carefully pressed through the settings with a sweaty thumb—opening the recently added folder in the device’s digital memory—it was an old model, but it had been state of the art at the time, rest in piece gramps.

The picture flashed on the screen, bright light flooding the abandoned living room—Sammie didn’t take notice of anything in the room, gaze zeroed in on the two pirates in the exact center of the frame.

Eyes wide, they realized that somehow in the split second the camera went off, the cook and the swordsman had posed as the flash went off—back-to-back, grins in place, standing in an identical position as the very first double-bounty poster that Sammie had hanging in his childhood bedroom along with eight others.

The only differences were the background, nothing but brown dust and unidentifiable debris, the length of their hair—Zoro’s cropped short at the top, shaved at the sides, Sanji’s in a blond ponytail that snaked halfway down his trim back—he even seemed to be wearing the same black suit though the swordsman’s cloak was navy blue now, not green—and the missing earrings.

Their hands now glinted with silvery-gold, two custom wedding bands sitting where there used to be nothing, explaining the reason for Zoro’s bare ear. Perhaps the cook had sacrificed a knife in the process, who could say? That was a story for another day.

Sammie released the breath they were holding in their lungs in one long, slow stream, face cracking into a watery smile. International Institute of Journalism here I come! Xander is gonna flip, oh my God—should I have gone out and asked for an autograph?—no, keep it proffesh, Sammie—shit, shit, shit, I can’t believe I actually got it! Our whole life is about to change, baby!

They quickly save the picture to a portable hard drive and back it up on another, then a third USB just to be safe. The image stared them in the face, both Sanji and Zoro Roronoa’s grins inspiring them to pack up and retrace their steps back to the coast with the precious cargo.

Sammie couldn’t stop looking at it even if it would be safer to put the camera away in the travel bag—they see Xander and themselves standing in the pirates’ places, rings gleaming on their fingers—I’ll buy you an entire apple orchard—we’ll get married in a field like your parents did, hire a bunch of hot farmers to work the land while you tell our kids stories about how we met—I’ll get the best doctors in the world to finish your treatment and even take your last name.

Sammie Baron doesn’t have quite the same ring as Sammie Snapper—certainly wasn’t as marketable in this line of work—but who needed a gimmick like that to get a leg up—their words would speak volumes, draw in hearts and change minds across the world, no need for a catchy name—they could come up with a clever catchphrase or pen name instead.

“Wait a minute…what’s that in the sky?” Sammie muttered to themselves, pausing in the middle of a dirt road to furiously tap the zoom button, then the arrows to recenter the image with the sky in the middle, zooming again. “No fucking way—we’re gonna be rich, Xander!”

In the clouds above the cook and the swordsman’s heads, you could see a bright flash illuminating the dark like the sun reflecting on the ocean, perfectly round and white except for a distinct shadow blotting out a giant, man-shaped silhouette—Nika dancing across the sky in his Straw Hat.

Now that’s a money shot!