Esrite Iatha

“Relax, I’m solving the crisis.” He tucks his thumbs under the nearer edge, lifts the far edge with his fingertips. The roll starts: back and forth as he coaxes the tobacco into a neat little cylinder. The paper shushes against itself, the line of leaf bulking and slimming under the pads of his thumbs, evening out with each pass. He can feel Zoro watching with the particular, concentrated attention he gives his blades, his path, anything sharp. It lands on Sanji’s hands and stays there, warm and unnerving.

“Didn’t know you rolled your own,” he says after a beat. “Thought you were too fancy for that.”

“I’m versatile.” He lets himself glance up, just for a second, to where Zoro’s eye is fixed on Sanji’s fingers.

He clears his throat. “Figured you had, I dunno, some prissy contraption. Brass and gears. Sad music built in.”

Sanji snorts. “Sorry to disappoint. Sometimes you just have to use your hands.”

Zoro’s jaw does a tiny, traitorous twitch and Sanji pretends he doesn’t notice. He tips the paper up so the glue edge catches the light, lining it up, checking the evenness out of habit more than need. When he’s satisfied he lifts the half-rolled cigarette to his mouth and holds it there loosely between his lips. His other hand drops to his hip, fingers tapping once against his thigh like he’s counting himself in.

“Watch and learn, Marimo.” He lets his voice go lazy, a drawl that covers for the way his pulse kicks before his foot snaps once against the floor. It’s just a precise little strike, the barest spark but heat flares in his ankle like a struck match and runs up through his calf in a tight, controlled wire.

When he lights the cigarette off it, the flames paint his knuckles in warm gold. Shadows the tendons in his hand, hollows his wrist. Smoke has nothing on the look Zoro gives that little curl of fire – his eye widens, then sharpens, and the rest of his sentence dies somewhere in his throat.

Sanji pretends not to see that. The galley shrinks to this: the tiny hiss of tobacco catching, the faint grit of paper tightening, the warm sting of smoke at the back of his throat. Zoro’s stare, heavy on the side of his face like a hand.

Sanji eases the cigarette back out with a small roll of his lower lip, letting it drag against his mouth just enough to feel it. A curl of blue-grey smoke climbs from the tip, lazy and thin as he snaps the flame out, leaving only the phantom tingle in his skin. 

“Show-off,” Zoro mutters but it comes out rough around the edges, a little lower than usual.

“It’s called resourcefulness,” Sanji smirks. The smoke is harsher than his usual brand, rougher, but his nerves latch onto it like a drowning man. Nicotine hits his blood and his shoulders loosen a fraction; the knot lodged between his shoulder blades eases. He exhales through his nose, slow, stream thin and controlled. 

Zoro watches the whole journey like he’s tracking the path of a blade, eye lingering Sanji’s inhale, the way his lips shape around the filter, the hollow of his cheeks, the slow spill of smoke. Sanji lifts the cigarette away with two fingers, ember glowing bright. “Problem?” he asks, light, even though his own heartbeat’s climbing like the damn thermometre in the oven.

Zoro’s eye drags from the smoke to Sanji’s mouth, then to his hand. “Just thinking.”

“That’s new.”

“About,” Zoro goes on, ignoring him. “How many ways Chopper’s gonna kill me if you cough yourself inside out before dinner because you’re busy doing parlour tricks with fire.”

Sanji grins around the filter. His lips part just enough to show teeth. “Careful. You sound worried.”

Zoro’s ears do that faint flush, high and quick. “I just don’t want to listen to you hacking up a lung when I’m trying to nap.”

“Sure.” Sanji taps ash neatly into the sink, the motion precise. “That’s why you’re hovering in my doorway instead of going back to your weights.”

The distance across the galley is nothing, but Zoro manages to turn it into a slow-rolling approach. Boots dull on the boards, shoulders steady, the kind of momentum you feel more than hear. He stops on the other side of the prep bench and says: “Give me that.”

Sanji blinks. “What, suddenly you’re a smoker?”

“Just wanna know what the fuss is about.” His gaze drops, brief and very not-subtle, to Sanji’s mouth again. “Unless rolling’s the whole point.”

There’s a beat of silence where Sanji’s brain genuinely buffers. He can feel Zoro’s request in the air between them, solid and ridiculous and dangerous. The kind of thing they don’t do. The kind of thing they’ve been not doing for what feels like years now.

He could toss it across the bench like a normal person but god knows they’ve never been normal. He lifts his hand instead, wrist loose, cigarette balanced between first and middle finger, and holds it out halfway. Not close enough for Zoro to grab without moving, not far enough to be casual. It’s an invitation, hanging there in smoke and air.

Zoro hesitates for exactly one heartbeat before he comes right up to the edge of the bench, crowding the opposite side, broad shoulders filling Sanji’s horizon. His hand closes over Sanji’s fingers instead of the cigarette itself, using the grip to guide the cigarette toward his own mouth, knuckles brushing along Sanji’s. For a second, Sanji can feel Zoro’s breath on his skin – warm and shallow, before Zoro’s lips close around the filter.

He inhales, lashes drop, dark against his cheek. Sanji watches the rise of his chest, the small pinch between his brows as the harsh blend sinks its claws in before Zoro has to break away with a cough. 

“Burns,” he rasps. “Tastes like… dirt.”

“Artisan North Blue dirt,” Sanji manages, faint. His hand still tingles where Zoro touched it; the smell of smoke and Zoro’s skin is doing something catastrophic to his ability to form thoughts. His brain stays perfectly, brilliantly blank for the grand total of five seconds before it lurches back online with the worst possible idea.

“You know,” he says, casual as an open blade. “If you hate the burn that much there’s a way to make it softer.”

Zoro stares at him. “Thought that was just an excuse to put your mouth on someone else’s.”

“Well.” Sanji lets his eyes close, just a little. The nicotine and the heat from his foot and the way Zoro’s standing across from him like gravity personified all combine into something reckless and bright in his veins. “Sometimes it’s about sharing.”

Zoro’s throat moves in a small swallow. “And sometimes?”

Sanji smiles, all teeth. “Sometimes it’s about not wasting good smoke.” He’s not sure which one he’s selling harder but he doesn’t give himself time to think. Thinking is how you talk yourself out of cliffs.

They meet halfway between the stove and the sink, in the narrow pocket of floor where Sanji spends half his waking life. The space is suddenly tiny with both of them in it, shoulder-to-shoulder, chest-to-chest if Sanji stepped in a few centimetres closer. He doesn’t, not yet. He raises the cigarette instead, takes another controlled drag. Smoke pools heavy in his lungs and his body is saying this is a bad idea. His heart’s saying do it anyway.

Zoro’s looking at his mouth like it’s a weapon.

Sanji lifts his free hand, fingers curving up toward Zoro’s jaw and he hesitates only briefly before letting his knuckles brush along stubble, thumb finding the angle just below his cheekbone. Zoro goes utterly still at the first touch, like Sanji’s slipped a blade between his ribs.

“Open,” Sanji murmurs. The word comes out softer than intended, caught somewhere between tease and plea.

Zoro’s breath ghosts warm over Sanji’s fingers, mouth parting obediently, faces close enough that Sanji could tilt a fraction and kiss him, no cigarette, no smoke, nothing between them but years of not. Instead, he angles their mouths close enough that when he exhales, slow and controlled, the smoke moves across the tiny gap right into the warmth of Zoro’s mouth.

It’s neat, at first. Clean. Controlled.

Zoro inhales, steady, even as his hand lands on Sanji’s hip, his fingers spreading over bone like he’s bracing for recoil. The smoke slips between them in a pale ribbon, dragging the heat of Sanji’s breath with it and Sanji should stop there. Pull back. Declare the experiment over.

He doesn’t. He goes in again, another drag, another burn. Another soft exhale, this one a little slower, a little closer, his lip just catching on Zoro’s. The smoke curls through them both, old habit in Sanji’s chest, new ache in Zoro’s.

Sanji can feel him shaking apart at the edges; his fingers tighten on Zoro’s jaw, just enough to steady him. He thinks, a little hysterically, look at that, I finally found a way to shut him up and then Zoro surges forward, hand clenching to pull him in that last gap. The other comes up in a rough, startling sweep, catching the back of Sanji’s neck, fingers fitting there like they’ve wanted the spot for a very long time.

Sanji’s gasp is still halfway to forming when Zoro’s mouth catches his properly, opening against Sanji’s like he’s been holding himself back for months and the leash finally broke. The last of the smoke smears between them, sharp and bitter and hot. Sanji makes a startled noise that Zoro swallows like he’s starving. His mouth slants, insistently seeking a better angle, nose bumps Sanji’s cheek and his breath is harsh, hot, tasting like the remnants of smoke and whatever passes for self-control burned out. He’s not gentle, not really – he’s trying to be, Sanji can feel the restraint in every shaky exhale – but underneath it is something wild and desperate.

Sanji lets him have it for a few dizzy seconds and then he gets his hands back, puts them exactly where he wants them, in Zoro’s hair and on his neck, his throat. Zoro exhales a broken, startled laugh against his mouth that he bites off when Sanji tilts his head and finally, finally kisses back. Zoro opens for him with ridiculous, instant obedience, like his body has been waiting for this set of instructions his entire life. Zoro stumbles them both a half-step backward into the bench until the kitchen’s turned into a three-point circuit: the bench at his back, Zoro at his front, the floor somewhere far below his knees.

He’s vaguely aware that his lungs would probably like to inhale something that’s not swordsman right now, but his body’s busy prioritising more. He gentles it, just a little, softening the pressure to angle back for air, and when Zoro tries to follow, he tightens his grip in his shirt, holding him exactly where he wants him.

“Easy,” he breathes against Zoro’s mouth, the word more ragged than he’d like. “You trying to asphyxiate us both?”

Zoro’s eye is blown wide, dark ring swallowing green. His chest rises and falls in those quick, sharp bursts that mean he either just finished sparring or just derailed his entire life with one catastrophic decision.

“Maybe,” he rasps. His voice is wrecked, all gravel and want. “Can you shut up for five seconds and just –”

Sanji kisses him again before he can finish the thought, slower, deliberate. Not an explosion but a claiming, hand at the back of Zoro’s neck guiding, his body deciding that actually, this is his kitchen, his domain, his rules and Zoro goes with it. When Sanji pulls back enough to nip lightly at his lower lip Zoro swears under his breath and leans into it like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

They end up with their foreheads pressed together, both breathing hard, lips tingling. The galley’s deadly quiet. The cigarette on the floor sends up one last sad little thread of smoke, then dies.

Zoro’s eye flicks down to Sanji’s mouth, up to his eyes, down again. His voice has dropped to something barely above a whisper. “So... that your… official technique?”

Sanji laughs, helpless, because he doesn’t know what else to do with the way his heart is trying to punch out of his ribs. It comes out softer than his sarcasm wants, frayed at the edges. “Idiot,” he says. “That wasn’t the technique.”

“No?” Zoro’s thumb traces an idle, distracting little arc against his hipbone. “What was it, then?”

Sanji swallows. His own hand’s still at Zoro’s neck; he could angle him back in at any moment. He could keep doing this until they both forgot how to stand up. “Call it… improvisation. Field test. Got away from me.”

Zoro exhales a breath of a laugh and for a moment Sanji thinks the other man’s going to launch at him again anyway but instead Zoro leans in just enough to brush the faintest, softest kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Might need more lessons.”

He plants both elbows on the table, leans forward and asks: “How do people get together?”

Nami doesn’t look up. “Bribery.”

Robin sets down her cards with exquisite calm and feral curiosity. “There are many methods. When you say together, what are you hoping for?”

Luffy hums. “I dunno. Romance. Like, when people start doing the whole kissing thing.”

That does it: Nami’s hand stills and she turns her head slowly, scenting blood in the water. “Why are you asking us this?”

Luffy gestures with both hands, broad and obvious. “Zoro and Sanji are still being stupid and it’s been years now.”

Robin makes a small sound that contains several years of detailed observation, probably. Nami presses her lips together in that way that means she’s trying not to laugh and also trying not to admit Luffy’s right about something. “You noticed.”

Luffy scowls. “I’m the captain.”

Nami’s expression turns fond as she leans back in her chair, tapping the cards against the table a few times like she’s trying to align her thoughts. “Okay, hypothetically. If two idiots were in love —”

“They are.”

“Yes, of course they are. Anyway, with any two normal people one would just confess because they have, say, emotional intelligence.”

“Boring,” Luffy mutteres, then thinks about Zoro staring silently at walls instead of talking and Sanji setting things on fire with his eyes because someone was nice to him. He clicks his tongue. “That probably won’t work here.”

Nami’s mouth twitches. “Probably not.”

Robin lays a card down. “Sometimes danger can clarify what people are unwilling to say.”

Nami points a card at Luffy before his grin can get too wide. “Do not put them in danger on purpose or so help me!”

“I wasn’t gonna,” he sulks, only mostly lying.

Robin chuckles. “There is also forced proximity, when two people are placed in a situation where avoidance becomes impossible. Sharing a room, that sort of thing.”

“This crew is a disease.” Nami pinches the bridge of her nose.

“A lively one.”

Nami ignores that, leaning forward to narrow her eyes at Luffy. “The point is, those two don’t need more chances to yell at each other. They need a situation where the yelling finally runs out.”

Luffy nods slowly, absorbing this, thinking about a place they can’t run and a place where fighting isn’t enough. A place where Zoro can’t just sleep through his feelings and Sanji can’t smoke them away. Robin smiles behind her fingertips. “Or they could come to a mutual understanding through consistent emotional vulnerability.”

Luffy stares at her, deflating a little. “Oh. Boring again.”

Nami must see his thoughts forming, because her eyes get sharper and her voice drops into the tone she uses before she brings down thunderstorms and ruin. “No. You are not specifically creating a disaster to get your crew to kiss. Why don’t you just talk to them about it?”

“If I tell them Sanji will yell. And Zoro will pretend he didn’t hear me.”

“Zoro always pretends he doesn’t hear people.”

“And then they’ll both be worse,” Luffy continues, with the certainty of someone who knows his crew down to the marrow. “Sanji will make too much food and get made if Zoro eats it, and Zoro will sleep somewhere dumb and they’ll fight for days and pretend it isn’t because they wanna kiss.”

There’s a little silence, soft with the afternoon light and the sweet sway of the Sunny beneath them, Robin’s expression going a little distant in the way it does when she’s thinking of histories no-one’s written down or scars people carry like secret maps. “Sanji-san does have a talent for retreating from sincerity.”

“You mean sprinting from it,” Nami mutters. She throws her cards down onto the table. “Look, if you want it to happen you need an environment where they can’t run away from it.”

“Okay!” Luffy’s already half-standing, renewed energy fizzing under his skin because it sounds like Nami’s talking about a quest and a quest is perfect — they have tasks and monsters and running and probably meat, if you look hard enough. Quests give people things to do with their hands when their mouths are being useless.

Nami catches his wrist before he can launch himself out of the room. Her eyes are serious and warm, because Nami’s always been good at knowing when something is funny but still matters. “Listen. Don’t force them somewhere they can’t choose. THose two are idiots, but they’re our idiots. They need a push, not a cage.”

Robin nods. “And perhaps remember that sometimes people need to arrive at happiness believing they found the path themselves.”

Luffy thinks about it very hard and grins. “So I make the path for them to find.”

She smiles. “Close enough.”

Usopp’s easy to find, because god knows the sniper’s always in the middle of something that looks like a warzone but definitely smells like an apology just waiting to happen. He’s in the workshop, where the benches are cluttered with his genius, from tools to coils of wire to jars of seeds and scraps of leather. There’s something in the corner that looks like a welded frog wearing a tiny paper hat. Usopp’s bent over the bench with his goggles pushed up into his hair and his tongue caught between his teeth, hands moving with precision, brilliant and probably mildly explosive.

Luffy leans against the bench and taps the frog. It starts ticking, alarmingly. “How do people get together?”

Usopp goes still, face doing something extremely interesting, starting with panic and then understanding and then delight and then horror and then, finally, some type of solemn resignation. “Is this about who I think it’s about? Because oh my god, finally.”

Luffy frowns. “Finally?”

“Luff, I’ve been living inside a stage drama for months. Months. Years, even! Do you know what that does to a man? Do you understand what it’s like to eat breakfast while two people argue about pepper and make it feel like foreplay?”

Luffy considers this. “No.”

“Exactly!” Usopp points at him with a screwdriver. “You’re free! Your brain’s uncluttered. Mine has become some kind of haunted… theatre.”

Luffy leans forward, emboldened, eyes bright. “So you know how to fix it.”

“I didn’t say that.” He glances at the door like he’s considering escaping, before apparently remembering that escaping Luffy’s impossible at best. “Romance is delicate, you know.”

“They aren’t delicate.”

“That’s the problem!”

Luffy rolls his eyes and hoists himself up onto the bench and waits it out. He’s good at waiting when he wants something, even if his whole body hums with impatience and his toes tap and his shoulders rock. He’s learned to wait with the enormous confidence of someone who knows the world will eventually give him what he wants, one way or another.

Usopp lasts eleven seconds before he drags both hands down his face, spreading soot everywhere. “Okay. Okay, we need a strategy. We’re dealing with two emotionally constipated combat monsters who think vulnerabilty’s something you punch. We need pressure, not bad trauma pressure — definitely not trauma pressure, we’ve got enough of that around here. We’re stocked with trauma. We’re overflowing. We could sell it wholesale.”

“Pressure.”

“Right! A situation where they have to rely on each other, you know? Like, emotional pressure.”

Luffy knocks his heels against the bench and thinks about what Nami had said. “Like a quest. But a good one.”

“No such thing as a good quest with you lot. But yes, unfortunately. Probably.” The frog ticks louder and he turns and yelps: “Not now!”

Luffy grins at him. “You’re really good at this.”

Usopp preens. “Yes, well, genius is a burdern. Anyway, they already trust each other. That’s the hard part and somehow they did it. You just… have to give them somewhere to put the rest.”

“The kissing.”

“The feelings,” the other man corrects and then groans. “But yeah, sure, probably also the kissing.”

He saves Law for last, because Law is… different. Nami gives advice like she’s sharpening knives and Usopp like he’s building a bomb and hoping for the best. Robin gives advice like she knows the ending and is just patiently waiting for everyone else to catch up. Law, though… Law gives advice like he’s removing something from beneath the skin, which seems fitting. It’s always careful and reluctant and annoyed that it’s come to him in the first place.

Luffy borrows the Den Den from the navigation station and, yes, he’s not technically supposed to touch Nami’s things without asking, but Nami is asleep, and Luffy is brave, and the snail is sitting there looking extremely available, so. Luffy rocks on his heels while the snail’s antennae quiver once, then twice, then three times before Law’s narrowed eyes and tired mouth and little spotted hat are translated absurdly onto the creature’s soft head. “Why are you calling at this hour?”

“I have a question.”

“No.”

Luffy laughs. “I didn’t ask yet! How do people get together?”

Law’s silence makes the DenDen’s little mouth stiffen. “What?”

“How do people get together?” Luffy repeats, patient. “Like kissing and romance and stuff.”

Law’s stare sharpens, the tiny snail’s eyebrows drawing together. The room seems to grow quieter around them, the sea hush pressed up against the windows like it wants to listen, too. Law’s voice comes out slowly. “Why are you asking me that?”

Luffy shrugs, letting his body slump against the wall. “I mean, it’s obvious, right?”

“Obvious,” Law repeats, carefully, like he’s measuring this word for word. “You should be sure, before you do anything. If you change something like that it can be… difficult to return to what you had before.”

Luffy frowns. “Why would I want to go back? If it gets better, it gets better.”

The silence after that is enormous. The DenDen is very, very still. Then Law mutters: “You make it sound simple.”

“It is simple.”

“No, it certainly is not. People aren’t always sure what they want and sometimes wanting something does not mean you can keep it. Sometimes crossing a line costs more than you expect.”

Luffy listens with a frown. Law says things like this sometimes— heavy things, dark things, things with old blood still on them. Luffy doesn’t always understand all the pieces but he understands the shape, understands when Law’s talking about something that hurt him.  He understands when the other man is holding a knife by the blade and pretending his hand isn’t bleeding. He chews his bottom lip, watching the way the moonlight spears the sea beyond the window. “So, what do I do?”

Law takes a slow breath, quiet long enough that Luffy starts poking at the DenDen’s cheek until the poor snail looks offended. It does, however, get Law talking again, even if his voice comes out more strained than usual. “Make it clear you mean it. Do you mean it?”

Luffy nods immediately. “Yes.”

Law’s voice lowers. “Completely?”

“Yes!”

“You understand it may change… everything.”

“That’s the point,” Luffy snorts, cheerful and absolute. “Everything’s supposed to change.”

Law goes silent again; Luffy can practically feel him thinking through the line. Too many thoughts, probably, because Law always has too many thoughts. They crowd behind his eyes and make him look older than he is. Finally, he sighs. “Then meet me at the next island.”

Luffy grins at once. “Okay! Thanks, Traffy! You’re the best!”

For one strange, suspended second, neither of them says anything and all Luffy can hear and feel is the Sunny breathing around him, holding him firm. Then the call clicks off, the DenDen’s face melting back into its own sleepy expression, antennae drooping and Luffy sits there for exactly two seconds, vibrating before he launches himself out of the room and bolts down the hallway to find Nami.

x

The island waits for them in layers of green, rising from the sea like something ancient and yet somehow half asleep, all black cliffs veined with silvery water and jungle spilling down towards the shore in glossy waves. Vines hang from the trees like ropes, every flower too bright and every insect too loud. Somewhere deep beneath the canopy, something heavy moves and sends birds shrieking upward in a burst of wings.

It’s probably dangerous and definitely interesting and ultimately perfect, so Luffy’s already grinning by the time the Polar Tang surfaces in the cove. The sea foams around her as she settles, steady and strange beside the Sunny’s bright, open warmth. The Tang always feels different to Luffy, quieter and sealed, a den full of secrets. Like its captain, really. Law looks tired, because he always looks tired. He also looks sharper than usual, something stiff in the line of his body, guarded and deliberate, like he’s spent the entire trip here preparing for an ambush but the ambush is just… Luffy saying hello.

Luffy lights up anyway, waving with both arms. “Traffy!”

Bepo waves enthusiastically. “Hi, Luffy!”

“Bepo!” Luffy yells back, thrilled.

The Heart pirates spill onto the shore in a loose cluster, boots sinking into damp sand, voices rising as they greet the Straw Hats. The two crews mingle in that strange, easy way they have now, still separate and still their own odd shapes but familiar enough to share jokes and complaints and stolen snacks. Usopp immediately begins explaining something to Penguin with large gestures while Chopper runs straight to Bepo, Nami talking to Shachi for exactly three seconds before he looks frightened.

“We’re gonna fix it today,” Luffy vows and Law’s mouth tightens. His hand shifts near Kikoku’s hilt as his voice drops. 

“And you’re still sure.”

“Yep,” Luffy says cheerfully. “I made a plan.”

Across the beach Sanji’s unloading supplies with far more force than necessary, Zoro hovering nearby with his swords and doing absolutely nothing useful, which is apparently enough to make Sanji’s shoulders creep up toward his ears.

“You could help,” Sanji snaps without turning around.

Zoro tilts his head. “Looks like you got it.”

Sanji whirls, cigarette flashing between his teeth. “That’s not the point, seaweed-head!”

Zoro’s mouth twitches. “You asking for help?”

“I’m asking you not to stand there looking useless!”

It’s worse on the island, somehow. Away from the routine of the ship, stripped of breakfast and chores and familiar corners to hide in, the tension has nowhere to soak. It hangs in the humid air around them, bright and charged as heat lightning. Sanji moves like he’s one insult away from either kicking Zoro into a tree or kissing him hard enough to bruise and Zoro watches him like he’d accept either outcome.

Luffy’s grin spreads slowly because yeah, this is going to work. Law follows his gaze and whatever he sees makes his face go blank in a way that isn’t blank at all. “Wait… what exactly are we fixing?”

Luffy points with both hands. “Them!”

Law doesn’t move, not at first. For one strange second, Luffy thinks Law looks almost disappointed, before he turns his head away, voice perfectly flat. “Of course.”

Luffy grabs Law’s sleeve and pulls him toward the tree line. “C’mon on! Adventure! Zoro, Sanji, let’s go! You guys are strong, you can help us explore!”

Sanji’s lips part in some kind of halfhearted sneer around his cigarette. He looks like he wants to argue but unfortunately Luffy has chosen one of the few compliments Sanji never knows how to deflect without becoming awkward. But then Zoro snorts and Sanji immediately recovers. “Something funny, Mosshead?”

“Didn’t say anything.”

“You breathed like an asshole.”

Zoro’s grin is small and mean and almost fond. “You listen to my breathing a lot, Curls?”

The silence that follows is so loud even the jungle seems to pause. Sanji’s ears go faintly pink and Usopp makes a tiny choking sound somewhere behind Nami. Luffy rocks on his heels, thrilled, feeling the thread between Zoro and Sanji draw tighter and tighter, tight enough to hum. Law sees it too, apparently: his mouth thins.

“Fine,” Sanji snaps, slamming the crate down. “Someone has to keep you from wandering into a sinkhole.”

“You’d miss me.”

Sanji’s whole face does something dangerous. “I’d miss having something stupid to kick.”

“Eh, same thing.”

Luffy laughs and launches himself toward the trees, letting the jungle swallow them whole.

The beach’s clean salt wind disappears behind a wall of green heat, the air turning thick enough to drink, practically: water is constantly dripping from somewhere unseen, pattering onto leaves and sliding down trunks and gathering in the curled throats of flowers big enough to cup in both hands. The ground breathes underfoot, soft with moss and old rot, insects whining about in shimmering clouds.

Luffy leads like he always does: straight forward, no fear, trusting his instincts like the world’s on his side because, hey, it often is. Zoro follows slightly to his left, silent and alert, one hand resting near his swords. He always becomes quieter in places like this, absorbed into danger’s rhythm. His eye tracks movement in the underbrush while Sanji follows on Luffy’s right, complaining under his breath about the humidity and the bugs and swordsmen who think good hygiene’s optional. He moves beautifully despite all that, cigarette somehow still lit in air too wet for fire to make sense. Every few steps his gaze cuts toward Zoro and every few steps Zoro’s gaze meets it and then both of them look away like they’ve been caught stealing.

Law brings up the rear, coat brushing damp leaves, face composed in a way that suggests he’d rather be cutting out his own appendix with a spoon. Luffy glances back at him and grins anyway. They walk until the trees thin just enough to reveal a cliff face rising ahead, black stone slick and sunlight spilling over the ledge high above, bright and tempting. The wind moves differently here, carrying the sharp cry of birds and Luffy stops so abruptly Sanji almost walks into him. “Let’s climb the cliff!”

Sanji squints up at the cliff with a sullen little scowl. He adjusts the backpack he’s brought, scuffing the toe of his boot into the ground. “This is stupid.”

“Yep,” Zoro agrees and starts climbing anyway. Sanji looks like he might choke them all out of sheer spite, before he clicks his tongue and kicks off the ground, Skywalking upwards with each step cracking the air beneath his feet. He passes Zoro halfway up just to be petty and Zoro’s grin flashes, feral. “Show off.”

Sanji doesn’t look down. “Keep climbing, decorative moss.”

Law stands still for a moment, considering, before blue light blooms around him, clean and cold against all the jungle’s damp gold. Space bends and then the next thing Luffy knows, Law’s on a ledge halfway up the cliff, coat settling around him with insulting calm.

Zoro looks over from where he’s gripping a vine. “Cheating.”

Law snorts. “Efficiency.”

Sanji lands on the top edge first, arms crossed, hair bright in the sun. “God, you’re both insufferable.”

Zoro drags himself over the ledge a moment later and stands too close to him on purpose. “Both?”

The jungle falls away below as the cliff top opens around them, a green sea rippling under the wind. The breeze is cooler up here, clean enough to cut through the humidity, carrying salt and bird cries and the smell of lush greenery. Above them, the sky is full of wings as huge seabirds wheel on the currents, their long tails scissoring through the light. Their bodies are dark as ink against the sun, throats flashing red when they turn as they ride the wind with ease, sporadically dropping into violent dives and screaming at one another like thieves.

Zoro squints up. “Those gulls are huge.”

Law, who has apparently been personally offended by this error, sniffs. “They’re not gulls. They’re frigatebirds.”

Zoro glances at him. “What’s a frigatebird?”

Law stares. “A bird.”

Sanji snorts. “Brilliant. Doctor and scholar.”

Law ignores him with the strength of a captain who’s had to make ignoring idiots into some kind of survival skill. “They can stay in the air for weeks as their feathers aren’t waterproof, so they can’t land on the water. They like to steal food from other birds mid flight.”

Zoro’s interest sharpens. “They steal it?”

“Well, they harass other birds until they drop or regurgitate food.”

“Respect.”

Sanji turns on him, betrayed. “Respect? For aerial mugging? Quit bonding with him over criminal birds.”

“Jealous, Curls?”

Sanji’s whole body goes rigid. “Of a… bird?”

“Of Traffy.”

Law’s eyes close. “Do not involve me.”

Luffy watches, chin in both hands, practically vibrating with joy because there’s that thread again, running from Sanji’s clenched jaw to Zoro’s lazy smile, from Zoro’s attention to the pink climbing Sanji’s ears. Every insult pulls it taut, silence twisting it tighter. They look like they’re fighting, but Luffy knows fighting. This is something else wearing fighting’s clothes.

The sun’s started sinking toward the western edge of the island and the jungle shifts around them in kind, afternoon heat melting into evening gold. The leaves stop shining and begin glowing deep green at the veins, vines rimmed in light. Something sings from the canopy, low and sweet and something else answers by shrieking like it’s been murdered. The frigatebirds snatch fish from each other mid air and sweep upwards and upwards again and again, triumphant and rude. Zoro watches them with obvious approval and also watches Sanji, because he’s always watching Sanji. His gaze keeps flicking back to the side of Sanji’s face, heavy in the late sun, before he looks back toward the birds.

Luffy’s grin softens.

They’ve climbed and argued and almost maybe complimented each other. No-one has kissed yet, which is disappointing, but god knows Luffy’s learned from Nami that some treasures take time to dig up and from Usopp that rushing explosives is bad unless you want your eyebrows gone.

He decides on snacks, thinking maybe people talk better when they are eating. Sanji knows this better than anyone, which means he can’t even complain when Luffy uses it against him. “Snack time!”

Zoro sits down on a flat stretch of stone with the immediate obedience of a man who supports a good snack attack regardless of whatever motive lies beyond it. Sanji, on the other hand, gives a long-suffering sigh, but he reaches into his pack to produce wrapped rice balls, sliced fruit, little skewers of grilled meat and a tin of something sweet dusted with sugar. He lays everything out on a plaid cloth with more care than he’d ever admit to using. Luffy watches his hands along the way; Sanji’s hands are always good to watch, quick and precise and tender when he thinks no-one’s paying attention. They arrange food like small promises and brush crumbs away and tap ash off cigarettes. They bandage wounds while his mouth complains about idiots.

Luffy loves those hands because they feed his crew and thinks — knows — Zoro might love them for that, too.

Zoro reaches for a skewer but Sanji smacks his hand without looking. “Wash your hands.”

Zoro makes a show of looking around at the absolute lack of water within reach before deliberately taking the skewer with his fingers.

Sanji’s eye twitches. “Were you raised in a cave?”

“Dojo.”

“Same thing.”

Zoro shrugs and bites into the meat, probably not even clocking the way Sanji tries not to look pleased when he hums low in approval. Luffy, who’s been waiting for an opening and also chewing three rice balls at once, decides this seems like a pretty good place to start. “What’s important in a partner?” 

Everyone stops. A frigatebird howls overhead and the three men with him do not move at all, until Sanji finally turns his head to stare. “In a what?”

“A partner,” Luffy clarifies around rice. “Like, if you’re with someone.”

Sanji looks at Luffy for several seconds and then at Law, then at Zoro and finally back at Luffy. Suspicion sharpens across his face. “Why are you asking that?”

“Because I wanna know.”

“That’s never been a safe answer from you.”

“It’s true!”

“It can be true and unsafe.”

Zoro swallows down whatever he’s been chewing, expression distant as he stares off into the sky. “Strong.”

Luffy points at him, delighted. “Strong is important?”

Sanji scoffs, recovering his ground because mocking Zoro is easier than engaging with the question, apparently. “Of course that’s your answer. Romantic as a brick through a window.”

Zoro glances at him with a narrowed eye and a pursed mouth. “You like strong.”

The pink comes back to Sanji’s ears, darker this time. “I like competence, there’s a difference!”

Zoro’s mouth curves. “Sure.”

Luffy leans forward with his chin in his hands and studies the both of them, their matching flushes and averted eyes. “So, competence is important?”

Sanji looks like he has just realised he answered a question he meant to avoid, judging by the way his shoulders stiffen. Smoke slips from his mouth in a thin, annoyed line. “Sure,” he says finally. “Competence, obviously. You should be able to trust someone not to fall apart the second things get difficult.”

Zoro snorts and Sanji’s gaze cuts to him, ruthless. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was a very loud nothing, asshole.”

Zoro rolls his eye and glares out toward the ocean. His voice comes out low and sure. “You like people who don’t run.”

The words settle between them like something heavier than teasing and for a moment the whole world seems to hold its breath around them, from the birds high above to the sea far below, to the cloth between them weighted with food and fading sunlight. Sanji’s cigarette burns untouched between his fingers. His mouth tightens and Luffy watches him, carefully, because Sanji is so loud when he’s hiding. He fills rooms with smoke and shouting and all those sharp, bright manners. But… sometimes something gets past the noise, something small and true, and then Sanji goes terribly quiet.

“Yeah,” he says, finally. Softer. “Maybe.”

Luffy feels warm all through his chest, even as he turns back to Zoro. “What else?”

Zoro gives him a flat look, implying just how badly Luffy’s betrayed him by continuing the conversation. “Why d’you need to know?”

“It’s important to me.”

Law makes a quiet sound into his tea that might be pain. Zoro’s eye narrows but he answers anyway; Zoro always answers Luffy eventually. “Someone who keeps up.”

Sanji laughs once, sharp. “God forbid anyone walk at a normal speed while you get lost behind them.”

Zoro ignores him. “Someone who can stand beside you in a fight.”

Sanji’s expression changes again, just a little. His gaze drops to the food, to the sunlight pooled gold over the fruit slices. His fingers flex against his knee and Zoro continues, slower now, like he’s pulling the words from somewhere stubborn. “Doesn’t have to follow. Doesn’t have to lead. Just… there.”

The wind lifts the edge of the cloth. Sanji’s hand comes down to hold it in place at the same moment Zoro’s does, fingers touching and for one long breath neither of them moves. Sanji finally snatches his hand. “Very poetic. Did the birds inspire you?”

Zoro’s mouth twitches. “Maybe.”

Luffy laughs, delighted, and glances at Law. “What about you, Traffy? What’s important in a partner?”

Law’s head lifts, face blank in a way that makes Luffy pause. The late sun catches the gold of his eyes and makes them look warmer than usual, less like a surgeon’s instruments and more like something buried deep under glass.

“Trust.” The word comes out flat, but Luffy knows Law well enough to hear when flat means careful. Sanji’s expression sobers and, opposite him, Zoro goes quiet too. Law rests one wrist over his knee, fingers loose, tattoos dark against his skin. “Someone who sees the worst possible outcome and stays anyway, who doesn’t confuse fear with weakness. Someone who understands that running toward danger is not the same as being brave unless you know what you’re protecting.”

Luffy listens, chewing slower now, frowning at the way Law’s voice has changed again. It does that sometimes, dropping lower and sharper at the edges, like he’s talking about a battlefield and a hospital room and a promise all at once.

“Someone who comes back,” Law adds quietly.

Luffy smiles again, frank and true, unable to help it. “I always come back.”

Law’s gaze flicks to him and, for that single moment, everything in Law’s face opens and closes too fast for Luffy to understand. It makes Sanji look away and makes Zoro glance between them with sudden, lazy interest. Law exhales, slowly. “Yes. You do.”

Luffy grins, pleased to have understood at least that part and Sanji coughs into his fist. “Fuck, that was embarrassing.”

“Said the one who said competence like you were hiring waiters or something,” Zoro mutters.

“Excuse me? Your answer was just strong, you emotionally bankrupt cactus!”

“Strong matters.”

“Yeah, well, congrats on your taste in, what, walls!”

“Walls don’t kick.”

“Not with that attitude!”

Luffy giggles into his food, pleased all the same. He watches Sanji hand Zoro the last skewer without looking at him and watches Zoro take it without teasing and watches Law watching him from the corner of his eye, expression tucked away again but not gone.

Love, Luffy thinks, is strange. He knows people make it hard because they’re scared or because they think wanting means losing or, hell, sometimes just because they’re too proud to say stay here when they could say idiot instead. But the feeling itself seems simple to Luffy: it’s just wanting someone at the table. Wanting them in the fight. Wanting them to eat first or last or more.

Wanting them to come back and to stand beside you by choice.

Luffy loves his crew like that, big and easy and ferocious. He loves them in a way that has teeth, enough to tear down walls and punch gods and declare war and steal food and share food and chase. Enough to wait and laugh and bleed and believe. He knows Zoro and Sanji love like that too. They just haven’t noticed the shape of it yet.

The sun dips lower still, rimming every stone with light. The birds become black cutouts against the burning sky. The jungle below is already gathering blue shadows in it and Luffy dusts the crumbs off his shorts, set on the second act.  He beams at them. “Okay! Law and I are gonna go back now. You guys need to stay here overnight.”

Sanji stares at him, wind lifting his hair softly around his face. He looks like he’s considering throwing Luffy clean off the cliff. “Fucking excuse me?”

“To make sure the island’s safe.” Luffy shrugs, because he hadn’t actually thought of a solid reason for this part just yet. It makes sense though, with the birds and the… beautiful jungle and whatnot.

Zoro looks at Luffy for a long, assessing moment. “The island?”

“Yep.”

“This cliff?”

“Yep!”

Sanji gestures a little too aggressively at the open sky and the entirely peaceful plateau. “From what, exactly?”

Right on cue, one of the frigatebirds screams overhead and Luffy takes it for the gift it is. He points upwards. “That! It might be dangerous.”

Law looks annoyed. “They're not dangerous.”

“See, Traffy says it’s dangerous,” Luffy tells Sanji.

Sanji throws both hands into the air. “I’m trapped in a nightmare made of idiots!”

Luffy smiles at him, bright and warm, but softer now too. “You can do it,” he says and knows it’ll work, because god knows Sanji can argue with nonsense forever and can kick logic into pieces and set fire to reason and call everyone involved several creative names but he can’t argue with Luffy trusting him, not really.

Zoro shifts beside him, silent, gaze sliding to Luffy first before returning back to Sanji. He lies back against the stone with his hands behind his head, like staying overnight on some random cliff was his plan all along. “Fine, whatever.”

Sanji whips towards him. “You know this is stupid!”

Zoro closes his eye, mouth softening as he settles in. “You’ll live.”

“I’ll kill you before dawn.”

“Eh, I’d like to see you try.”

Sanji makes a furious sound but he’s already peering at the food and the angle of the wind and the coming dark, clearly making camp in his head despite his verbal protests.  Luffy starts tugging Law back towards the foliage, almost surprised that Law actually lets himself be pulled. Behind them, Sanji shouts: “If I die up here I’m haunting you first, Luffy!”

Luffy cups his hands around his mouth. “Okay! That sounds fun!” By the time he’s dragged Law halfway down the cliff path, he’s decided that leaving them alone is a good idea in theory and a terrible idea in practice because if he leaves them alone then how’s he meant ot see whether or not it’s working? He stops so suddenly Law almost walks into him.

Law catches himself with a sharp inhale. “Straw Hat.”

Luffy turns, finger to his lips. “Shh. We’re hiding.”

“No,” Law hisses immediately, tugging his hand free.

“Yes,” Luffy argues, already crouching so he can peer through a gap in the leaves. From here, they can see the clearing spread out under the wide sky and the way Sanji’s still standing near the food spread with both his hands on his hips, glaring at Zoro. 

It’s a perfect view. An excellent bush. Luffy reaches up to tug insistently at Law’s coat until the other man huffs with irritation and slinks down to his knees. “I crossed half the sea for this.”

“Yeah!” Luffy whispers happily. “Thanks!”

In the clearing, Sanji’s getting down to business. “We need shelter.”

Zoro doesn’t even open his eye. “Sky’s clear.”

“Sky’s clear now.”

“So?”

“So weather changes, you brainless compost heap.”

Zoro grins. “You scared of rain?”

Sanji points at him. “I’m scared of waking up with moss growing on me because you think damp rock’s a mattress.”

“That happened once.”

“It happened twice!”

Luffy guffaws and leans into it becuase this is good and familiar: bickering is how Zoro and Sanji circle anything that matters, the sound they make when they get too close to saying something real. Still, after a while, it’s also a little… boring. They spend nearly ten minutes arguing about whether to build a lean to beneath the trees or sleep closer to the cliff edge where the wind’ll keep insects away. Sanji makes several excellent points and Zoro makes one point, which is that if something attacks them he’d rather see it coming. Sanji responds that this assumes Zoro will be awake, which historical evidence just… does not support.

Law watches in silence, arms folded over his knees and Luffy glances at him. “Sooo. Bepo looked happy.”

“Bepo is often happy.”

“Because he’s nice.”

Law’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

Luffy smiles at him, softer now. “You look less tired. Less like you’re gonna bite someone.”

Law’s mouth almost moves, close enough to giving in that Luffy feels warm with victory.

Below them Sanji’s apparently won the shelter argument, because he’s now dragging broad leaves and flexible branches into a tidy pile while insulting Zoro’s entire worldview. Zoro, despite claiming shelter is unnecessary, has gotten up to gather wood and is moving through the edge of the clearing with that grounded strength of his, cutting fallen branches down to size with quick and efficient strikes.

Sanji watches him from the corner of his eye, badly.

“You know,” Law drawls, “For people supposedly unaware of each other, they’re remarkably committed to stalking.”

Luffy’s grin stretches wide. “Right?”

As the hour drgas on the world around them turns honey thick, evening pouring across the plateau in slanting bands, catching in Sanji’s hair until the blonde looks almost molten. Fireflies wake one-by-one and at first it’s only a few sparks tremble in the undergrowth. Then it’s dozens, blinking through the dusk in soft pulses and gathering around the clearing where Zoro and Sanji are building their temporary little world. The air fills with their glow until it looks like the stars have come down early.

Sanji pauses with an armful of branches and just looks, face gone quiet in the light, all the usual noise slipping off him for a moment. “Damn,” he whistles and the word comes out softer than it was probably meant to, soft enough that even Zoro looks up to see where fireflies tremble around Sanji’s knees, winking in and out of the world.

“It’s beautiful,” Sanji admits and behind the leaves, Luffy makes his body be still, recognising that certain kind of quiet that comes over their cook when he’s caught by something lovely. It smoothes the sharpness from his mouth and loosens his shoulders, making him look younger and older at once, like the boy he used to be and the man who survived him are standing in the same light.

Zoro glances around at the open sky and the slow pulse of fireflies, and the last red seam of sun caught on the far edge of the sea. “Yeah, looks good.”

Sanji’s expression shifts back toward familiar territory, one eyebrow rising and mouth beginning to open, but it doesn’t quite make it. The softness is still there, betrayed by the light, by the way his gaze lingers on Zoro’s face like he’s trying to decide whether to laugh or hide. “Miracle of miracles,” he mutters. “Roronoa Zoro thinks something looks good.”

Zoro shrugs, eyes on the twigs in his hands. “Lots of things look good.”

Sanji lets out a laugh under his breath, a little thin. Nervous, maybe. Startled, definitely. Like something in Zoro’s voice has hooked under his ribs. “Do they now? Bet you can’t name three.”

Behind the thicket, Luffy breathes so loudly in anticipation that Law presses one hand firmly over his mouth before disaster can happen.

In the clearing, Zoro looks back down at the kindling. For a man who can split steel, face down monsters and walk into a war like it’s an errand he suddenly looks deeply frustrated by the fact that words exist. He shifts a stick from one palm to the other, thumb dragging along the bark, slow and rough, catching on a sharp edge he doesn’t seem to feel. His jaw works visibly, shoulders set too squarely, like he’s bracing for a blow no sword on earth can block.

“The sea,” he says finally.

Sanji snorts, though his eyes don’t move from Zoro’s face. “That barely counts, everyone likes the sea.”

“The Sunny.”

“Ugh. I guess that’s better,” Sanji allows grimly. “Sentimental, even. I’m disturbed.”

Zoro’s thumb stills against the bark, fireflies blinking and for one scary heartbeat Luffy thinks Zoro might stop there, that he’ll retreat into a grunt or an insult or the silence he wears like armour sometimes. But then Zoro inhales once, sharp, and says: “You.”

The sound seems to pull back from Zoro and Sanji, leaving a hollowed space between them where the word lands and stays. Sanji stares at him, the branches in his arms shifting slightly, leaves whispering against each other. “What?”

Zoro’s grip tightens until one twig cracks in his hand.

Luffy feels something open in his chest because he knows — he knows — Zoro is brave in all the ways that are easy to see. He’ll step in front of blades and jump into lightning and fight his way into impossible odds. He’ll bleed until standing becomes a kind of argument and will take pain into his body like it is simply another weight to lift, over and over. But this? This clearly costs him somewhere, letting himself want something in a place where wanting can be answered or refused. 

His mouth pulls into a grim line. He looks, frankly, like he’d rather be stabbed than continue this conversation but Luffy also knows that once Zoro’s committed then he’s in. “You look good,” he says, rougher this time. “That’s three.”

Sanji doesn’t move. The dusk deepens around him, the firefly light turning his stunned stillness into something almost holy and unbearably human.

“Oh!” Luffy whispers behind the leaves, eyes wide and sparking. Law’s hand clamps tighter over his mouth and Luffy holds himself very still, trembling with the force of not jumping from sheer glee.

In the clearing, Sanji visibly swallows. “You can’t just say shit like that with your stupid swords and your stupid face and just… you’re supposed to call me a shitty cook and ruin the whole moment.”

Zoro’s mouth curves, barely, even as he stands slowly, kindling forgotten. “Fine, you’re a shitty cook. You still look good.”

That does it: Sanji crosses the space between them, hands fisting in the front of Zoro’s shirt to pull him into a kiss. He kisses Zoro like he’s trying to win an argument and survive it all at the same time, fierce and precise and furious, and Zoro kisses back like patience has finally worn through to hunger. Sanji makes a muffled sound against Zoro’s mouth and Zoro huffs something almost like a laugh before catching him by the waist and steadying him. It becomes something warmer and slower, a wonder so naked it makes Luffy’s heart feel too big for his chest.

Zoro’s grip at the other man’s waist goes careful and grounding, thumb pressing once into Sanji’s side, like a small steady answer. They break apart only a few centimetres, Sanji’s forehead resting against Zoro’s. He looks dazed and bright, mouth redder than before. “You’re so bad at this.”

Zoro’s smile is real, so fucking real. “Worked, didn’t it?”

Sanji laughs and kisses him again and, honestly, not cheering at the top of his lungs is one of the hardest fucking things Luffy’s ever done, actually, which is saying something considering he’s fought emperors and sea monsters and Nami. Unfortunately, though, Law still has one hand wrenched into the back of his vest and the other hovering near his mouth like he’s prepared to physically silence him again if necessary. Also, Sanji and Zoro are still in the clearing, wrapped up in each other in the bluish gold dark and even Luffy understands that some victories are loud only later.

His chest is so full it almost hurts.

He made the path, he did. He asked the questions and listened to the answers and dragged the right people to the right cliff and left the right amount of snacks and invented a dangerous bird situation with very little planning. And now Zoro and Sanji— his Zoro and his Sanji, who trust each other with blood and blades and still somehow needed help trusting each other with softness — are standing under the first stars, kissing like the world finally, finally makes sense to them.

Beside him, Law exhales through his nose. “Now we leave before your cook notices us and attempts murder.”

Luffy nods very seriously. “But they’re still kissing.”

“Which is exactly why we need to leave, because the kissing won’t stay kissing at this rate.”

Luffy considers this and figures it makes sense, probably. He lets Law tug him backward through the brush, though he keeps his neck stretched as far as possible until the last sliver of the clearing disappears behind leaves. He catches one final glimpse of Zoro pulling Sanji’s shirt off and is so damn delighted about it he makes a noise only dogs and Chopper might hear.

They slink down the narrow cliff path, half crouched at first, even when there’s no longer any reason to crouch. Luffy does it because sneaking’s fun sometimes and Law does it for three steps before straightening with as much dignity as possible, brushing leaves from his coat. The trail falls away from the other two, cutting through fern and moss and stone still warm from the day. The fireflies flash between the trunks, caught in the dark like little lanterns Luffy wants to scoop.

Instead, he walks with his arms flung behind his head, sandals scuffing stone, humming under his breath. 

Zoro and Sanji are together. Or almost together? Or kissing, at least, which is close enough to together that Luffy’s gonna count it unless Nami says there are legal forms. The island is beautiful, the plan worked and Law is here and that part makes Luffy happy too. “Thanks for coming, Traffy.”

Law’s mouth tightens but the corner of it almost moves into a smile. “For coming to watch you manufacture an emotional wilderness exercise?”

Luffy laughs, bright and open, and the sound goes skipping down the trail ahead of them. Law winces like laughter is something that can attract predators and, hell, maybe it can but Luffy’s always thought predators are more interesting when they come over themselves. The happiness has nowhere to go, so it fills all of him: his chest, his arms, his knees, the soles of his feet slapping against the path. He bumps his shoulder into Law’s arm, careless and affectionate. “For coming to help.”

Law looks like he wants to be annoyed and he is annoyed, probably. Annoyance sits on him naturally, like his hat or his coat or the dark circles under his eyes, but Luffy also knows by now that Law’s annoyance has layers. Some of it is real and some of it’s just habit, but some of it is a blanket he throws over anything warm before anyone else can see it. Sometimes there’s something tired and folded carefully away there, a map Law doesn’t want anyone else reading because it shows where all the soft places are buried. 

The cove appears through a break in the trees ahead and the sight of it makes Luffy’s whole body soften. The Sunny’s glowing, round and beloved and ridiculous, frankly, against the darkening water. Her lion figurehead catches the last scraps of sunset and grins out toward the sea like she knows a secret. Beside her, the Tang rests pale and quiet in the tide, lanterns low along her hull, less like a ship than something that surfaced from a dream. Both vessels rock gently in the evening water, side-by-side, as voices drift up from the beach in faint, broken threads. 

Luffy breathes in the awareness of his people. His crew below, his swordsman and cook above, Law beside him and his heart feels stretched wide enough to cover the whole damn island. He doesn’t even notice Law stop walking until he realises the space beside him has gone empty. He turns back, blinking. “Traffy?”

Law stands in the middle of the path, half in shadow and half in the last shreds of light filtering through the leaves. He almost looks carved out of the hour itself: dark coat, pale skin, the brim of his hat cutting his eyes into something difficult to read. His face is turned slightly away. “Earlier, when you… when you asked about partners.”

“Oh!” Luffy brightens at once. “That worked, too! Sanji said competence but he meant Zoro. And Zoro said someone who keeps up but he meant Sanji. And you said someone who comes back and that was good, too.”

Law’s jaw shifts. “Yes, that.”

Luffy waits; he’s getting better at waiting for Law. It’s definitely not a perfected skill, but it’s better and that has to count for something. He knows Law’s words come slowly when they matter. They have to climb over too many bones. Finally, Law asks: “Have you ever thought about it?”

Luffy tilts his head. “About what?”

“What you would want.” His eyes come back to Luffy’s face then, sharp and unreadable beneath the shadow of his hat. “In a partner. In a… partnership.”

Luffy blinks. The truth is, he’s thought about lots of things. He’s thought about meat and the sea and adventure. He’s thought about being Pirate King and helping his crew’s dreams. He’s thought about whether clouds taste like anything and whether beetles know how cool they are and how to punch things bigger than him. How to keep his friends smiling. How the One Piece might feel under his hands when he finally finds it.

He hasn’t thought much about being with someone, not like Sanji and Zoro, with kissing under stars and hands at waists and quiet, burning attention. Not like that. Luffy loves easily and completely. He loves with his teeth and his fists and his whole rubber heart; he’s never had much use for sorting love into separate boxes. Crew, friend, ally, brother, mine. Those words matter but they overlap in him like waves, all part of the same endless sea.

“I dunno,” he admits, honest and Law’s expression tightens, the tiniest amount. This time, though, Luffy sees it: the carefulness around Law’s mouth and the way his shoulders go still. The small, almost invisible way he prepares himself, like he’s asked the question while already bracing for the answer to hurt. Law’s clearly thought about this. Law’s clearly thought about it a lot. “Oh. You wanna know for real.”

Law’s mouth presses thin. “I asked, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Luffy frowns. Then, because the truth is suddenly standing right in front of him, shy and sharp and wearing Law’s face, he adds: “But it matters to you.”

Law looks away, jaw clenched and Luffy can’t help but think about what Law said earlier, about someone who sees the worst possible outcome and stays anyway and someone who doesn’t confuse fear with weakness and someone who comes back. About how he’d said he always comes back, because it was true, but Law had looked at him like the truth was a wound.

“Traffy,” Luffy says quietly, and steps a little closer. 

He can be careful when he wants to; his crew has taught him that too. Nami with her maps and scars, Robin with her silences, Chopper with his small hands. Sanji with food set down gently in front of someone who needs it and Zoro with wounds he lets Chopper touch because trust is sometimes staying still.

Luffy can do careful.

For Law, Luffy can do real fucking careful.

“I never thought about it much. Being with somebody.” Law’s face doesn’t change, but something in him goes quieter. Luffy continues, because once he finds the truth, saying it is easy. “I’m gonna be Pirate King and I’ve got my crew and there’s always stuff happening. Islands and fights and food and people crying and bad guys needing punching, so… I didn’t think about… dating?”

Law’s voice is low. “I see.”

“But.” Luffy scratches his cheek, thinking hard. His thoughts are rarely tidy things, is the problem. They don’t line up in neat rows the way Nami’s do; they move like waves and beasts and hunger, crashing into each other and running ahead and doubling back. He makes himself think very carefully about what he wants to say here. “If I did, I’d want someone strong.”

Law still doesn’t look at him. “Of course.”

“Not just fighting strong.” Luffy taps his own chest. “Here, too. Someone who says no to me but still comes with me. Someone smart but not boring-smart. Interesting-smart? Someone who knows things about birds and bodies and islands and plans and gets mad if I don’t always listen… but helps anyway.”

Luffy sees Law’s expression shift like dawn starting.

“Someone who cares about their crew,” he continues, quiet but firm. “A lot. Even when they act like they don’t. Someone who looks scary but is nice to bears.”

Law closes his eyes. “Bepo is not —”

“Someone who saved me,” Luffy cuts in, feeling the air between them shift in a way he’s only heard about in stories. He looks at Law and realises, with a warm, simple wonder, that he’s not describing a made up person. He’s describing a person who came when Luffy called even though he thought it might hurt, who complains and stays and sees the worst possible outcome, calculating every terrible angle of it, and stands there anyway. 

“Oh,” Luffy says again. He knows wanting. He knows hunger and the shape of someone reaching without moving their hands. “You want to be with me.”

Law’s fingers flex once at his side. He looks at Luffy for a long moment before he says, very quietly: “Yes.”

Luffy feels something bloom in his chest, surprise at first, followed by warmth and a pleased, curling excitement that feels a little like seeing an island on the horizon and knowing there’ll be something wonderful there. He grins, slow and bright. “Oh,” he says, for the third time, because sometimes the first two are just practice. “That’s… good.”

Law’s face does something truly complicated. “You understand what I mean?”

Luffy steps closer again. “Yeah.”

Law studies him, searching for something, maybe doubt or confusion or even the wrong kind of ease. Luffy lets him look because it seems important: Law trusts hard evidence only, so Luffy gives him his face and his smile and his stillness, as much honesty as he can fit into one body.

“I don’t know all the rules,” he admits. “About… dating.”

Law lets out a breath that’s nearly a laugh. “That much was clear.”

Luffy’s hand curls around Law’s sleeve first, familiar fabric under his fingers. He tugs, gentle instead of demanding, and rises onto his toes, watching the way Law leans into him before Luffy has to pull any harder. That makes Luffy’s grin soften, even as he presses a kiss to Law’s cheek.

Law looks at him like his entire world’s been rearranged. “Oh. That was…”

“You want another one?” Law’s ears go very slightly pink and Luffy’s eyes widen with delight. “You do!”

“Lower your voice.”

“You do!”

“Straw Hat.”

Luffy grins up at him. “Luffy.”

The jungle seems to hush for a second. Law looks at him, and this time whatever he feels doesn’t disappear fast enough to hide. It stays there in his eyes, startled and raw and almost unbearably fond. “Fine. Luffy.”

It sounds different when he says it, careful and rough, like a word he’s wanted but not let himself touch until now.

Luffy laughs and grabs his hand, pulling him in the direction of their ships because now there’s even more to celebrate and Nami definitely needs to know at least one of his plans worked. Law lets himself be pulled. After a few steps, his fingers shift in Luffy’s grip, settling properly and Luffy’s grin feels enormous.

Behind them, high on the cliff, Sanji and Zoro’s fire begins to glow through the trees like a small, stubborn star. Ahead, the ships wait in the cove, full of light and noise and people Luffy loves.

x

anon: asks for zosan

me: ok but how about lulaw sjdfk sorry beloved i simply cannot control my brain

Vinsmoke taps one hand once against the desk. “I’d like to see his chart.” 

The nurse blinks. “I’m… sorry?”

“His medical records,” the man drawls. “Current condition, attending physician, scan results. I assume those are available.”

Zoro actually snorts and the nurse glances at him, then back at the man. “Yeah, nah. They’re not available to you without the patient’s consent.” 

Vinsmoke’s expression cools another degree, which Zoro hadn’t thought possible. “I’m his father.”

“And he’s a grown man?” the nurse scoffs. “You’ve got buckley’s. Unless he waltzes out here and okays it himself, we’re not getting anywhere.” 

Zoro’s hand goes to his pocket before he fully thinks about it, because he doesn’t really know what else to do. This guy hasn’t raised his voice or swung a fist — he’s just standing there being exactly the kind of threat that doesn’t leave bruises right away and Zoro doesn’t know enough to proceed, here. He doesn’t know what Sanji would want, doesn’t know if going back into the room and telling him immediately would make it worse. He doesn’t know if this man can legally force his way in, or whether calling backup would somehow create a bigger scene but he does know, above all else, the way way his whole body’s screaming not good. 

He leaves them to argue, moving far enough not to draw attention to call the only person he knows who can cut straight through panic. Luffy picks up on the second ring in amongst the background noise — traffic, maybe, or just the way the world sounds whenever Luffy’s moving through it. “Zoro? What’s wrong?”

“Some guy’s here,” Zoro whispers. “Says he’s Sanji’s dad.”

Luffy goes quiet in that way he does when he’s actually thinking and not just feeling his way forward with his whole heart. “Did Sanji say he was coming?”

“No.”

“Does Sanji know he’s there?”

“No.” Zoro looks down the hall toward room 412 and its closed door. Everything beyond it feels too far away. 

At the desk, Vinsmoke’s voice goes flatter, sharper. “Then get me someone who can override policy.”

The nurse says: “Are you — no?” 

“Don’t let him in.” On the other end, Zoro hears Usopp’s voice faintly in the background, asking something, probably about snacks or whether hospital gift shops sell flowers. Then Luffy comes again, more focused: “We’re coming over.”

Zoro nods before remembering that’s useless over the phone. “Okay.”

“Don’t punch him unless he deserves it, yeah?”

Vinsmoke is still at the desk, still composed, looking very much like he deserves a punch or two, still trying to pry open hospital policy with the word father like it should just magically work on strangers. There are two nurses there arguing with him now and he hasn’t raised his voice but that makes it seem worse. He just keeps pressing in the same smooth tone, like he’s accustomed to the world folding around him eventually. “I’m not asking for anything unreasonable,” he says.

The first nurse, who Zoro is now prepared to defend with his life, doesn’t even blink. “We’ve got a real different idea about reasonable behaviour, pal.”

“I asked for medically relevant information about my son.”

Zoro’s tossing up whether he should say something or not when the elevator opens, permitting Law, through in navy scrubs. He looks exactly the way he always looks when someone has interrupted his day with any kind of nonsense, which is to say exhausted and irritated and somehow more awake than everyone around him. “Can I help you?”

Vinsmoke turns at the sound of the voice and his expression, already frigid, goes flatter. “Who are you?” 

Law stops at the desk, glances once at the nurse, once at Zoro and then finally back at Vinsmoke with that kind of cool, clinical boredom that Zoro reckons has probably made grown men confess things by accident. “Surgeon.”

“Then perhaps you can be useful.”

Law’s eyes go dead. “Unlikely.”

Zoro almost smiles, but Vinsmoke draws himself up, the movement neat and contemptuous. “I am here for Sanji Vinsmoke. I’ve been informed the staff here is under the mistaken impression that paternal relation does not entitle me to his medical information.”

Law’s head tilts very slightly. “In a shocking turn of events, they’re correct. He’s an adult. You’re not his proxy. You’re not listed as next of kin on his intake file so no, you do not get his records, his imaging, his labs, his notes or a guided tour of his symptoms because you showed up and had a little tantrum.”

The nurse looks like she wants to marry him a bit, but Vinsmoke goes still in that way rich white men do when they’re not used to being spoken to plainly. Law, clearly encouraged by this, continues.

“In fact,” he says, voice getting softer in a way that is somehow meaner, “What you do get is one warning: if you continue to pressure staff for protected information, I’ll have security escort you out and document the attempt in the patient access log. Then if the patient wakes up and wants to know whether anybody tried to violate his confidentiality, there’ll be a neat little record waiting for him.”

Something electric hums in the air for half a second before Vinsmoke exhales once through his nose, sharp and contained. He straightens his shirt. “I’ll return when Sanji is capable of speaking for himself.”

Law doesn’t even blink. “Then I suggest you wait to be invited.”

Vinsmoke’s gaze hardens into something purely cutting before he turns and walks away, slinging his coat over one arm and spine rigid enough to split wood. Nobody speaks until the elevator doors close behind him and then the first nurse lets out a breath. “Cunt.”

Law rubs a hand over his face. “That’s one word for it.”

Zoro pushes off the wall, the knot in his chest finally forced into a shape he can stand upright around. “Cheers.”

“He awake?” Law glances down the hallway and frowns. “Don’t tell him yet.”

Zoro kind of freezes, already thinking about how to do exactly that. “Why?” 

Law’s expression goes flatter, which usually means he’s saying something he thinks should be obvious. “Because he has a concussion and blood pressure that spikes everytime he pretends he isn’t in pain. The last thing he needs is surprise family politics. There’s clearly a reason he didn’t go speak to Sanji himself.” 

Zoro exhales. “Right.”

Law studies him for a second longer, dark eyes sharp and slightly too knowing. “You should eat, too.”

“I’m fine.”

Law’s stare says that’s not a real answer but he’s clearly too tired to trouble himself about it. “Right, well, I’ll get back to my actual patient, if you don’t mind.”

The hallway seems too quiet again he’s gone, until the second nurse gives Zoro a small smile. “Your boyfriend has interesting friends.”

“Yeah,” he mutters, because what else can he say? 

He heads for the stairs instead of the elevator and by the time he hits the ground floor cafe the whole thing has started settling in under his ribs in pieces instead of one solid block: the name, the entitlement, the way he’d said my son like Sanji was some random paperweight he’d misplaced and come to reclaim. Underneath that, though, sits the duller discomfort of realising maybe he doesn’t know that much about Sanji, after all. 

He knows what Sanji looks like when he’s lying about being tired and the exact pause before Sanji throws the first insult and which vegetables Sanji cuts finer when he’s stressed. He knows the smell of his preferred cigarettes, the sound of his laugh when it slips out real, the weight of him asleep against his shoulder.  He knows how Sanji walks into every room like he’s daring it not to deserve him and how soft he gets around children and old women and anyone hungry enough to be honest.

He knows how to kiss him.

He doesn’t know enough to understand what happens when a man with Sanji’s face shows up and says father.

He stands in front of the little refrigerated case full of sandwiches and diced watermelon and gross chia puddings and feels suddenly, violently, like he’s fourteen and underqualified for everything again, because he’s realising that he doesn’t know if this is even normal. This is his first relationship, technically — he doesn’t know how this works. Maybe people get together and then find out the ugly pieces later, one at a time, and everyone keeps walking because that’s just how time works?  Maybe Sanji not telling him isn’t about trust. Maybe it’s just… his and maybe Zoro’s not entitled to any of it, not yet. 

The barista asks if he wants the chicken sandwich toasted and Zoro blinks. “What?” 

“The sandwich?”

“Yeah. Toast it.”

He gets tea, coffee, two waters and a yogurt that looks like some form of punishment. He’s standing there while the sandwich press hisses and thinking about asking someone if they know more, his phone buzzes in his pocket before he can really make a decision. Zoro stares at Zeff’s number for a few seconds before answering, hesitating only because the number of times Zeff has willingly spoken to him has been approximately zero. “Yeah?” 

Zeff doesn’t bother with hello. “How bad?”

Zoro shifts the bag of food to one hand, throwing a nod at the barista as he shuffles out. “Looks worse than it is.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Zoro glares out through the hospital reception glass at the grey morning rain. “Concussion? Doctor said it could linger. Broken wrist. Cracked ribs. Knee’s fucked up but they don’t think it needs surgery.”

He hears Zeff huff about on the other end. “He awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Being a pain in the ass?”

“Constantly.”

Zeff grunts. “Good.” That, weirdly, is the warmest thing anyone’s said all morning.

Zoro pauses to stare at the vending machine. “He’s alright.”

“I know he’s alright,” Zeff snaps. “He’s too stubborn to die in traffic.”

Zoro almost smiles but then the question rises and sits on his tongue for a second, heavy and awkward and wrong. He could ask. Zeff would know, probably, or at least know enough to tell him whether that man showing up means danger or just trouble. On the other hand, Zoro can already feel the cost he’d have to bear if Sanji ever found out. “I’ll get him to call you… after. After he gets out.”

“I’ll call him myself.” The line goes dead and Zoro stands there with his phone still in hand, staring at his reflection in the vending machine, someone who can cut through whatever and still has no fucking idea what to do with either of Sanji’s fathers.  

By the time he gets back to the hospital room, the tea has gone lukewarm in the cardboard tray. He stands outside the door longer than he needs to, noting that the nurse at the station has changed. Everything looks normal enough again that for one stupid beat Zoro almost wonders if he imagined it all, right up until he looks down at the cup in his hand and remembers Law’s face when he said don’t tell him yet.

Inside, Sanji’s still propped against the bed with the blankets twisted around one leg and the TV on mute to some daytime cooking show he’s definitely not watching. The room is dimmer now; one of the blinds has been half shut against the afternoon glare. His hair is still a mess, his face still too pale under the bruising, one arm still in the sling. “Wow, you look like shit. Did you fight the cafeteria lady?” 

Zoro shuts the door behind him with his hip. “Won easy.”

Sanji’s mouth twitches. “Did you get me real tea?” 

“Depends how low your standards are.”

“So, no.”

Zoro shrugs and sets the food down, feeling the words he needs to say sitting under his tongue like a splinter. He hates this kind of thing, honestly, this balancing act of tell him / don’t tell him. Worse, he hates how he doesn’t know if telling the truth in this room’s going to make everything worse or just make him feel less like he’s lying by omission.

Sanji picks up the tea with his good hand and squints at it. “Did you —”

“Your dad was here.” 

Sanji turns his head very, very slowly. “Zeff’s on the other —”

“No. Your… the other one. Big boofhead looking guy.” He swallows. “Wanted your records or something.”

Sanji’s fingers have gone too tight around the cup, and Zoro watches in real fucking time how everything that makes the blonde recognisably himself — the edge, the sarcasm, that restless intelligence in his mouth and eyes — just disappears, making him look younger and older both, like somebody stripped down to the bone. Then, almost as quickly, Sanji throws himself back together. The whole thing snaps back into place with so much speed it’s almost frightening. His tone comes out bright and harmless. “Well, what a charming fucking surprise. And here I thought this day had already done its worst.”

Zoro watches him take a sip of tea and immediately pull a face. “I said he was asking for your records, Curls.”

Sanji shrugs with his good shoulder. “Sounds like him.”

Pulling the visitor chair closer, Zoro drops into it because standing there while Sanji does this fake little routine feels like watching someone balance on a tightrope and pretend the drop’s not there. “Law shut it down. I guess Luffy called him?”

Sanji closes his eyes for a second, exhaling steadily. “Sure. Of course.”

Zoro scrubs a hand over his face, knowing this is the part that he’s bad at — the part where there’s something real moving under the surface and he has to get it out through a mouth that’s, so far, been mostly built for arguments. “I didn’t know if I should tell you.”

The shift in Sanji’s expression is tiny, but immediate. The brightness dims by just enough. “Right.”

“But…” He has to stop himself because the but is the whole fucking thing and he doesn’t have the right words lined up. He doesn’t know how to have the right words lined up. He looks down at his own hand, wrapped around his own coffee. “But I figured it’s… your shit. So you should know. I’m not… Curls, you know I’m serious about this, right?”

Sanji blinks at him. “What?”

Great, fantastic, incredible. Zoro would very much like for the ground to open up and swallow him whole, but in lieu of that he grits his teeth. Sanji’s still looking at him like the conversation took a left turn he wasn’t prepared for, so Zoro makes a point of slowing the fuck down and trying not to sound like he wants to physically fight his own voice. “I know it’s new and I know maybe this stuff is… different. For you. Or private? Or whatever. But I’m not — I’m not messing around, here. With you.”

The words are clumsy and not enough and too much and he wants to say i’m not temporary and i’m not here for the easy version of you and i want to be let in where it’s ugly, too but what comes out is: “I just. I mean it.”

Sanji’s face does something terribly complicated, edging into baffled before tipping straight into incredulous. “Yeah? I know you mean it?”

“Oh.”

Frowning, Sanji leans back against the bedhead very carefully, that awful too-bright cheer dropping the fuck away enough to show whatever’s happening for him underneath. He rubs his temple with his fingers. “That’s not the problem, Moss.”

Zoro can feel the way his mouth flattens. “Then what is it?”

Sanji looks at the blanket instead of him, the TV chef moving silently in the corner of the room. Somewhere a monitor goes off and the tea gets colder by the second. When he finally speaks his voice is quieter than Zoro’s heard it in months. Years, maybe. “I know you’re serious. We both are, we wouldn’t be here if…” 

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“You make it sound simpler than it is.”

“It should be simple.”

Sanji glances up at that with the old flash of heat in his face. “Oh, should it?”

Zoro’s temper stir in reflex, tale as old as time, but whatever answer he was going to give dies when he really looks at his boyfriend, at the old weariness sitting on the blonde’s face that Zoro can’t place and doesn’t have the context for. Sanji turns the cup in his hand. “It’s not like I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d dump me. I know you’re not… like that. But I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding insane.”

“Try.”

That gets him a sharp look, before Sanji sighs. “It’s not about whether you mean it. It’s not even about trust, fuck. It’s just that some things don’t get better by being shared, you know? Some things just get… bigger. And if I tell you something shitty then I have to see what it does to you, too, and maybe that’s selfish or stupid or whatever but I know how to deal with my problems. I can do that. I don’t know how to… fix that for you, too.”

Zoro leans forward, elbows on his knees, coffee completely forgotten. He’s trying very hard not to say the wrong thing, which mostly means he’s saying nothing and getting angrier by the second. The whole problem feels stupidly close to his hands and impossible to grab. “If something's bad I’m not asking you to tell me so I can fix your feelings or whatever. I just want to know. I want you to let me know.”

“Wow,” Sanji mutters. “This is my first concussion ever and it’s still somehow not the worst headache you’ve ever given me. I can’t believe you really thought I didn’t know you were serious about this.”

Zoro’s face heats. “Yeah, well. You make it hard to tell what you know sometimes.”

Sanji looks at the sling and the blanket and the tea and anywhere but at him. His lips are pursed. “I know.” 

“You can tell me anything.”

Against all odds, Sanji looks even more baffled. “Again, that’s really not the issue here.”

“Yeah.” Zoro slouches in his chair, letting the sting hit. “I’m getting that.”

After a few minutes Sanji takes a bite of the sandwich and makes an expression of mild surprise. “Wow, this is actually decent? Maybe I should get hit by trucks more often.”

“Try it and I’ll kill you myself.”Zoro sits there while Sanji eats the hospital sandwich and drinks terrible tea and pretends none of this is as bad as it is. He still doesn’t know who Vinsmoke really is to him beyond father and asshole. He still doesn’t know why seeing Sanji’s whole face change in the space of one sentence made something in him go cold. Worse than all of it, he doesn’t know what, exactly, he’s supposed to do with the fact that love and access and trust are possibly not the same thing in Sanji’s head.

But when Sanji finishes half the sandwich and, without looking at him, nudges the other half toward him on the tray table like sharing is easier than saying anything else, Zoro takes it and stays.

x

Sanji gets discharged a few days later under a cloud of paperwork and warnings and Chopper’s increasingly specific instructions.

“No bright lights if you can help it,” He says, standing at the foot of the bed with a tote bag full of pill bottles and pamphlets and the righteous authority of a man a third of everyone else’s size and twice as terrifying. “No long shifts. No drinking! No heavy lifting. No screens if they make the headache worse. No pretending your headache isn’t bad when it is bad!”

Sanji, wearing his own clothes again and looking more human for it, though still too pale and too tired around the mouth, nods along with visible impatience. “Yeah, I got it, Chop.”

“And no trying to go back to work in two days!”

Zoro, leaning against the wall by the door with the flowers Franky insisted on and exactly one of the hospital blankets that somehow got folded into their things by accident, nearly smirks. “Trust me, he’s not going back.”

Chopper nods, satisfied. “Good.”

Sanji glares at both of them like they’ve both committed mutiny and it’s almost weird how quickly Sanji’s apartment rearranges itself around injury. The pain meds and water bottles take over the kitchen bench and the couch gets a permanent nest of blankets because Sanji’s headache’s better in the living room in the afternoons where the light is softer. An extra pillow appears in bed for the knee. Zoro’s bag ends up by the wardrobe and then doesn’t leave. He’d said it matter-of-factly, while Sanji was trying to lower himself onto the couch without looking like it hurt: “I’m staying.”

Sanji had glanced up from under the hair that Nami really needs to trim, tired and suspicious both. “Til when?”

“Until your head stops being stupid.”

“My head is not stupid.”

“Your stupid head got hit by a truck.”

Sanji had laughed and then immediately regretted it when his ribs complained, and Zoro’d been beside him before the sound fully left his mouth, one hand already at his side, the other hovering uselessly because he still doesn’t know where to touch when pain’s involved and love’s making him panic.

Their friends come in waves, Luffy bursting through the door the day after discharge with enough groceries to feed a family of six. “I didn’t know what you’d need!”

Sanji, horizontal on the couch with a cool cloth over his eyes, flinches. “Bloody hell.”

Law comes in carrying a smaller bag and looking like he’s reconsidering every life choice that led him to this moment, which is pretty standard. He checks Sanji’s pupils with a penlight despite not being Sanji’s doctor, like, ever. “You still have light sensitivity.”

“I have you sensitivity.”

“Hopefully it’s fatal. Hold still.”

Luffy, meanwhile, has somehow ended up seated crosslegged on the floor by Sanji’s knees, unpacking snacks with the grave concentration of someone preparing emergency rations for winter. “I got the good crackers. The wattleseed ones you like.”

Sanji blinks down at him, expression gone affectionate. “Thanks, Luff.”

Luffy beams like he’s been handed the moon and the visits keep coming. Nami sweeps in one evening in a coat that costs more than Zoro’s bike repairs for a month and takes over the kitchen like she has every right, which isn’t exactly untrue. She brings flowers, fruit, three kinds of electrolyte drink and a spreadsheet on her tablet that she sets down on the coffee table like a threat, divvying up every single one of Sanji’s alleged chores between the whole friend group. Robin comes with books and a kind of serene menace that somehow makes the whole apartment feel safer, sitting by the window in the low light and reading awful, smutty romance fiction novels aloud when Sanji’s headache is bad enough that conversation feels like gravel under the skin. Usopp and Chopper come together and somehow make the place feel younger. Usopp brings magazines, stupid little gadgets and puts on a whole-ass shadow puppet show.

Sometimes the apartment is full and sometimes it’s just one person dropping in after work, staying an hour and eating the food Zoro reheated wrong. Through all of it, though, there’s the small miracle of normalcy reasserting itself: Luffy asleep half off the chair and Nami arguing on the phone in the hallway while Robin waters Sanji’s basil and Usopp somehow managing to lose at cards to a concussed man because he’s too busy telling a story and Law standing in the kitchen at midnight reading ingredient labels because Sanji said the pharmacy painkillers were packed with garbage and has taken that as some kind of challenge.

They settle into a rhythm Zoro doesn’t have a name for, Sanji on the couch with his head tipped against Zoro’s shoulder while some terrible cooking competition murmurs from the television and Zoro in the kitchen making tea badly enough that Sanji heckles him and the two of them in bed, not always touching but always aware of where the other one is. One evening Sanji wakes cranky and starving and with the kind of headache that makes overhead lights feel like a personal attack so Zoro cooks. He likes to think that over the last week he’s improved from catastrophic to merely offensive, but Sanji sits on a stool by the kitchen bench in one of Zoro’s shirts and lasts about thirty seconds before he scowls. “You’re cutting those wrong.”

Zoro doesn’t look up from the carrots. “Really not.”

“You’re hacking them.” Sanji’s watching him with his chin propped on his hand, eyes still a little dull from the headache but way more himself than he’s been in hours. There’s a faint groove in his cheek from the pillow amd the sight of it hits Zoro so damn soft in the chest that it almost pisses him off.

“You wanna do it?”

Sanji lifts the bad wrist. “Aw, sucks to be you.”

Later, after dinner and meds and a card game Nami starts over DenDen and Luffy hijacks, they end up on the couch again, Sanji half curled into the corner with his head against Zoro’s shoulder. Zoro has one arm along the back of the couch and the other resting low across Sanji’s thigh and Zoro’s so fucking in love with him that he has to stare at the muted TV and think about how weird it is that something can still feel so new and so, so inevitable at the same time.

He tilts his head against Sanji’s hair. “You want anything?”

Sanji doesn’t open his eyes. “Mm. Stay.”

Zoro’s throat tightens. He presses a kiss into the other man’s hair. “Alright.”

A week later Zoro takes his first shift at work since the accident, doing a half-day so he can come home for lunch despite Sanji’s repeated insistence that i’m fine, moss, i don’t need a fulltime babysitter. Work’s brutal in a very phsyical way, leaving him smeared with grease and grime and someone’s oat latte they accidentally spilt on him, and by the end of the shift all he wants is a quiet night on the couch. Maybe they’ll find something terrible on TV and maybe Sanji will wear one of those old, soft shirts he only wears at home, leg stretched out because the knee’s still bad enough that bending it too long pisses him off. He stops by the pharmacy on the way and then the Thai place next door to it, grabbing pain meds and too many noodles for two grown men to reasonably consume. 

He unlocks Sanji’s door with the spare key, instantly relieved that the apartment’s warmed than the world outside, already stocked full of the layered smells of Sanji existing. There’s low music playing from somewhere in the lounge room, too soft to make out, floor lamps on instead of the overhead light. He shrugs his jacket off and shakes the rain out of his hair and then realises there’s a woman standing near the coffee table, tall and pink haired. Zoro’s brain has just enough time to register that she looks like Sanji — same bones somewhere under the polish, same mouth in a different shape — before he realises Sanji has frozen on the couch and that’s what tells him this is bad. His face smooths over as whatever room lives inside of him goes dark.

The woman’s gaze flicks over Zoro, quick and assessing, before shifting softer in a way that feels deliberate. “You must be the boyfriend.”

Zoro doesn’t get the chance to answer — Sanji’s voice comes flat, quick.  “Reiju was just leaving.” 

Zoro feels the name drop into place and make everything worse, even as Reiju looks at Sanji. Whatever she reads in the room seems to settle something in her because slides her arm into her thick coat. “I was,” she agrees mildly.

Sanji doesn’t look at her. “Mm.” That tiny sound is somehow more alarming than if he’d snapped and Zoro has to set the paper bag down on the floor, because his hand has started tightening almost painfully around the handle.

Reiju only pauses when she reaches the front door. “Think about it.”

Sanji’s jaw tightens. “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

Reiju’s expression changes by almost nothing. The click of the door shutting behind her sounds too loud, Sanji staring hard at the wall above the TV while Zoro just stares at Sanji. He’s seen Sanji angry plenty of times, is the thing. He’s seen the blonde smug and furious and starving and sleep deprived and bleeding and hungover and incandescent with the need to yell at someone for being stupid but this? This is cold little absence? This is new.  

He clears his throat. “What’s going on?”

Sanji shrugs with his good shoulder, too careful of the other, too practiced about pretending the movement doesn’t hurt. “Family crap.”

The answer is so useless it almost makes Zoro laugh. “Family crap,” he repeats, sounding a hell of a lot blanker than he feels. 

Sanji’s expression is enough to be a warning, but not sharp enough to be fully alive. “Yeah.”

“And? She’s your sister, right?” 

“So?” 

Zoro drops the bag on the kitchen bench harder than he means to. “And you’re gonna leave it there?”

Sanji’s eyes narrow. “What d’you want me to say?” 

The question lands harder than it should because Zoro doesn’t actually know. He doesn’t know what the correct question or answer is here. They’ve only been dating for a few months, sure, but they’ve been in each other’s lives for years now and somewhere in Zoro’s head those two facts have already braided themselves into something permanent. Sanji, though… Sanji’s looking at him like this still belongs in some private place Zoro hasn’t earned a key to, hospital conversation be damned.

“I want to know what that was,” Zoro says slowly.

Sanji lets out a breath through his nose. “My sister came by?”

“No shit.”

“Then congrats, Moss, you know what happened.”

Zoro feels his own temper spike, hot and frustrated. “That’s it? That’s all I get?” 

Sanji’s mouth twists. “You’re not ‘getting’ anything. I’m not a fucking prize machine.”

The line should piss him off more than it does, but it doesn’t. It sinks straight into the tenderest bruise he’s got because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? He’s never thought he’s owed anything for showing up with soup and pain meds like some stray hoping to be let inside. He knows better — he’s always known Sanji gets to keep whatever pieces of himself he wants. Still, standing here in the quiet that Reiju left behind, Zoro can’t stop the smaller, quieter hurt from unfolding anyway, cracking open a little behind his ribs. Maybe Sanji hasn’t even tried letting him in. Maybe he never will.

“Right,” he mutters.

Sanji rubs at his forehead with his good hand, fingers pressing careful. His shoulders are drawn tight, exhaustion laced through every line of him. “I’m not doing this tonight.”

Zoro lets out a slow breath, the fight draining out of him before it can even catch. He drags the bag over to the coffee table and the gesture feels heavier than it should, like an offering he’s not sure will be accepted. “You eat?” he asks, voice softer than he means it to be.

“Not since lunch.”

“Good. Means I brought food at the right time.” He opens lids one handed because Sanji’s cast makes it awkward while Sanji complains about the soup being from the wrong place but eats it anyway. Zoro hands him his meds with water without asking first and Sanji takes them with only a little grumbling. The record turns over into something softer and the apartment warms around the edges again, or at least pretends to. Later, he helps Sanji up because standing still makes the knee lock and getting to the bathroom’s still some form of demonic project management. Sanji hates every second of it, obviously. 

“Don’t hover,” Sanji mutters while Zoro steadies him by the elbow.

“You’re wobbling.”

“I am not wobbling.”

“You’re literally wobbling.”

“That’s because you’re distracting me with your ugly face.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep moving, Curls.”

Sanji brushes his teeth with his bad wrist held away from the sink and when they get to bed it’s all quieter. The apartment lights are off except for the one in the hallway and the soft orange spill from the streetlamp outside. The room smells like faint smoke that’s always in Sanji’s hair no matter how many times he washes it. Sanji gets in carefully, all the easy grace he usually carries stripped down to logistics and Zoro leaves enough space that Sanji can choose what he wants, which is apparently to move closer. The line of his good shoulder fits against Zoro’s chest when he finally settles and Zoro puts one hand over his waist and breathes him in, smoke and all. For a while they just lie there listening to the city through the window, until Zoro swallows and tries again. “Sanji.”

Sanji breathes in and out and keeps his voice very even. “She just invited me to dinner.”

The word invited sits there between them, Zoro’s hand tightening at the other man’s waist before he remembers himself. “That doesn’t sound like an invitation.”

“No shit, Moss.”

Zoro stares into the dark over Sanji’s shoulder. “When?” 

“Next Thursday.” Sanji shifts carefully, face turned into the pillow now, voice already starting to go blurred at the edges with exhaustion and pain meds. “She says it’ll be easier if I go.”

“Easier for who?” 

Sanji lets out one of his awful dry laughs. “Exactly.”

The frustration in Zoro’s chest is too heavy and too deep to be simple anger anymore and the words feel useless the moment they leave his mouth. “You don’t have to go.”

“I do.” Sanji makes a small, tired sound, something between a sigh and a surrender. Zoro feels the shift happen in real time: the slow uncoiling of tension in Sanji’s frame, muscle by muscle, until his weight settles heavier against Zoro’s side, warm and solid and impossibly trusting in sleep. 

“Curls,” Zoro murmurs, one last try, but there’s no answer so he lies there in the dark while this new piece of the map lodges itself in his throat, cold and unfamiliar and jagged. He knows the Sanji who built himself sharp and brilliant and untouchable but he doesn’t know the foundations underneath. He doesn’t know what was torn down or buried or burned to make room for the person he’s holding now.

maybe this is just how it works, he thinks. Maybe being with someone means discovering, bit by bit, how many safes they still carry inside them. Maybe a few months in, this is as close as anyone gets. The thought doesn’t comfort him at all, because he wants in anyway, wants to be the one Sanji calls before the sister walks in.

He just… doesn’t know how the hell to get there.

x

When he meets up with Luffy the next day, the dojo’s mostly empty. The smell of it usually settles him quicker than anything else on the planet (except, maybe, one very smoky man) but it’s taking a little longer to kick in tonight. There’s something about a room built for impact that makes the world simpler, all polished boards and stacked mats and lights buzzing overhead. The familiar give and drag of bare feet against sprung floor. In a place like this, every problem reduces down to to distance and timing and angle and force, a language Zoro understands better than any.

The beginners karate class had cleared out ten minutes ago, leaving behind one abandoned water bottle by the mirrors and the only sound now is the rain ticking against the windows and the occasional thud from another room where somebody’s doing bag work.

Luffy bounces on the balls of his feet at the centre of the floor, grinning like he’s been promised dessert and violence in equal measure. “You’re late!”

Zoro drops his bag by the wall. “You’re annoying.”

“Yeah,” Luffy says cheerfully. “You look worse.”

Zoro ignores that in favour of peeling off his shirt, tossing it aside to roll his shoulders out. The tightness there doesn’t shift; it hasn’t shifted since he opened Sanji’s apartment door and found his sister standing in it. Luffy watches him with that open, bright face of his that fools strangers into thinking there’s nothing going on behind it but there’s always something going on behind it. “Stretch properly.” 

Zoro flips him off.

Luffy beams. “See? Worse.”

They bow because the old habits are built deeper than thought, then circle. Luffy comes in first, quick and loose, all instinct and joy. Zoro blocks and pivots, landing a hit to the shoulder that Luffy takes with a delighted laugh nbefore he ducks low and sweeps. Zoro jumps it clean and for a blessed minute the room narrows to easy things: weight and balance and breath. The problem is, his body’s off. He knows it by the third exchange: he’s overcommitting, following through too hard and leaving openings he normally wouldn’t. His timing is there, sure, but his focus keeps sliding just before contact. 

Luffy’s foot catches him in the ribs and hops back. “You’re thinking too loud.”

Zoro wipes sweat off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Shut up.”

Luffy tilts his head. “See?”

Zoro comes in on the next pass with more force than he needs but Luffy takes it, redirecting to shove. Zoro ends up taking two fast steps back to keep his footing but Luffy doesn’t press, not this time. Instead he bounces twice before dropping into a loose stance and says, like they’re in the middle of a normal conversation and not halfway through kicking the hell out of each other: “Sanji, right?”

Zoro’s jaw tightens.

Luffy points at his face. “That’s your Sanji face. It’s kinda like your regular face, but more angry.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means you’re worried.”

Zoro exhales through his nose and gestures vaguely with one hand. “Again.”

They go again but Luffy’s always been impossible to spar properly when he’s talking. He fights like a storm and talks like he’s eating, which is to say constantly and happily, with no sense of conservation. Zoro clips his arm and Luffy lands a heel against his thigh and they break and circle and close.

“When’d you know?” The words come out in the middle of movement, falling out before Zoro can really stop them.

Luffy blinks, then grins so wide Zoro briefly considers walking out. “Know what?”

Zoro nearly says nevermind but he huffs and catches Luffy’s wrist to shove him away. “With Law.”

That gets Luffy’s full attention; he resets his stance, softer now and less playful.

“When it stopped being one thing,” Zoro continues because god knoiws if he says the rest of it straight he might actually die on this floor. “And became… something else.”

Luffy’s quiet for exactly one heartbeat. “It didn’t stop being the first thing. He’s still my friend. It just got… more.”

They trade a quick burst until Zoro has to jerk back from a fist, breathing a little harder, trying to figure out how to explain that it’s not that he expects Sanji to tell him everything just because they’re dating now. He’s not ignorant enough to think that few months changes the way privacy works. If anything it’s the opposite: to Zoro they’re still everything they were before — friends, the kind of people who could stand back-to-back in a fight and trust the other one not to flinch — and now there’s more on top of it. He had thought, stupidly maybe, that Sanji felt that too.

Luffy watches something change in his face and immediately punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t get all dramatic in your head.”

Zoro rubs the spot. “You talk too much.”

“Yeah.” Luffy rocks back on his heels. “You do when you’re upset too, but only inside.”

“Inside is private.”

Luffy snorts. “Not if your face keeps telling on you.”

They circle again, slower this time. It’s less sparring now than moving their bodies through the shape of it so that the talking can happen without having to sit still and look each other in the eye like civilised people. “If somebody doesn’t tell you stuff… the bad stuff. The old stuff. Does that mean they don’t trust you?”

Luffy’s expression changes, just minutely. He gets quieter around the eyes, even as he wipes the sweat from his brow, hands running through this sopping hair. “No. Not always.”

They come together again, more out of habit than necessity. Luffy catches Zoro’s forearm and Zoro catches his shoulder and they break. The floor groans softly under their feet.

“Sometimes it means it hurts,” Luffy explains, voice a little clipped, a little careful. “Sometimes it means they don’t know how to talk about it yet. Sometimes they think keeping it to themselves is helping.”

Zoro thinks of Sanji in the dark, already halfway asleep, saying i do in that exhausted voice like it was obvious.

Luffy shrugs. “Sanji gets weird about stuff that hurts. He thinks he’s gotta handle it.”

Zoro looks away toward the mirrors, to where their reflections are moving, two men circling each other in an empty dojo, one all lean weight and restraint and the other loose and bright and impossible. Something in his chest pulls tight. “I don’t know if I’m asking for too much. I know he doesn’t have to tell me everything. I’m not saying —” He cuts himself off, jaw working. “It’s just…”

Luffy waits patiently, head cocked until Zoro scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know if he gets that it’s different now.”

They’ve only been together a few months, sure, but Zoro isn’t doing this casually. He never was. He doesn’t know how to be casual with anything, let alone the first person he’s ever wanted. Loved. He’s with Sanji for as long as Sanji will have him but maybe Sanji still doesn’t believe that. Or, worse, maybe he does but doesn’t know what to do with it.

Either way, Zoro keeps running into that fact like a wall.

Luffy rocks back on his heels, thinking. “You’re one of us and you’re his boyfriend. Those aren’t different teams.”

Zoro sighs, because yeah, that’s what he’s been failing to explain even to himself. He doesn’t want to stop being Sanji’s friend just because they kiss now and sleep in the same bed and know how the other one sounds right before they come. He doesn’t want a new category that erases the old one — he wants the old one to mean more now, wants to be allowed to carry different weight with it.

They move again, more lightly now. Luffy throws a kick; Zoro catches it and shoves him off balance and the other man just goes with it, rolls, springs back up with entirely too much delight.

“How d’you know?” Zoro asks, before he can stop himself. “If you are pushing too hard.”

Luffy answers so quickly it’s obvious he doesn’t need to think about it. “You ask.”

Zoro scowls. “That’s not —”

“And then if he says no, you listen,” Luffy says over him. “But you can still tell him you wanna be there.”

The dojo hums around them as Zoro looks down at his hands and thinks of Sanji’s apartment and the cast and Reiju standing in the warm light looking at him, like she was passing off responsibility or asking for help or both. He thinks of next Thursday. “I don’t know if he’ll let me.”

Luffy drops down to the floor and rocks around a little, stretching out those long limbs. His expression is pensive. “Law doesn’t tell me everything either, not right away. Not when it’s bad. He gets all weird and quiet and acts like if he just keeps holding it by himself, it’ll stay smaller.”

That sounds familiar enough to make something in Zoro’s chest ache. “So what do you do?”

Luffy smiles, certain. “I stay where he can find me.” Zoro rolls his shoulders again and the tightness in them hasn’t gone, exactly, but it’s changed shape. It feels less like panic and more like some kind of decision and Luffy brightens all the way back up. “There! You’re less stupid now.”

Zoro lunges at him just to stop the talking and Luffy yelps with delight and meets him head on. They hit the mats hard, laughing and swearing and trying to choke each other out — Zoro gets Luffy down eventually, forearm braced across his chest, knee pinning his arm until Luffy laughs, thrilled. After, they both sit on the edge of the mat for a minute, sweat cooling, shoulders knocking once. Outside, the rain has softened to a whisper. Luffy takes a drink from his water bottle and says: “If you love somebody, you tell them where you are. Then they can come get you.”

There isn’t really anything safe to say to that, not without cracking open doors he’s not ready to walk through, so Zoro pushes to his feet, snatches his towel and smacks it across Luffy’s face with just enough force to make him laugh.

Later, stepping out into the damp night, Zoro finally knows what to do with the knot that’s been twisting under his ribs for days.

He still doesn’t know what vinsmoke truly means to Sanji, what kind of poison it carries or how deep the scars run or what version of himself Sanji has to become at that dinner table, or whether any of this is normal, but. He knows where he stands and that what he can’t live with — what would hollow him out — is pretending the line between friend and boyfriend means he should stand back now, arms crossed, giving Sanji more space instead of pressing closer. Closer to the sharp edges, closer to the ugly parts, closer to whatever Sanji is still trying to carry alone. He won’t do it. He can’t.

And on Thursday, if Sanji tells him no… well. At least they’ll have the fight honestly instead of letting it rot in the dark.

x

The days leading up to the dinner fray from bad to worse, but the decline is so quiet and so carefully hidden that no-one else seems to notice. They see Sanji moving and talking and cooking but Zoro clocks it immediately, the way he reads the smallest shift in the balance of his swords: by weight, by muscle memory, by the faint wrongness that settles under his skin and refuses to leave. He knows the shape of Sanji’s moods like he knows his own blades, intimate and instinctive, impossible to ignore once felt.

Sanji returns to work in short, cautious shifts where he’s banned from anything that isn’t planning menus and ordering stock. He comes home smelling like garlic and onions and fish and then cooks anyway, disappearing into methodical rituals of chopping and stirring like it’s the only language his hands still trust under pressure. He still calls Zoro a seaweed-brained idiot with that familiar spark of heat, still lights his cigarettes with the same flick of the wrist, still collapses into bed beside him at night.

The real change is subtler. Sanji, who usually moves like forward momentum given human, has started disappearing in plain sight. He’ll stand at the kitchen bench with a knife poised in his hand, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the tiles, lost in a silence so complete it feels like he’s stepped out of his own body. Then, without warning, he’ll jolt back with a too-bright anyway! like he can outrun the gap he just left behind.

Each time it happens something twists sharp and helpless in Zoro’s chest. He wants to reach in and pull Sanji back to solid ground. He wants to stand between him and whatever ghosts are crowding in but all he can do is watch and sit the knowledge that the man he loves is folding in on wounds Zoro still isn’t allowed to see.

He starts catching the blonde staring at the kettle as it boils and at the dark apartment window after midnight and at his own phone facedown on the table like it’s a dead animal he doesn’t want to touch. His wrist’s still stiff and his knee’s still a problem and the concussion is a jerk in quieter ways, bringing headaches and fatigue that drops on him at random times and a sensitivity to shop lights that makes him come home meaner than usual.

His phone goes off at all hours, now, and sometimes he ignores it outright but sometimes he picks it up, stares puts it back down. Reiju, maybe, but there are so many random numbers that flash across the screen and Zoro doesn’t ask. That’s becoming its own quiet strain: the way Zoro catalogues every small fracture and says nothing beacuse speaking feels too much like pressing a thumb into an open burn. He doesn’t want to pry. He doesn’t want Sanji to think being together automatically grants him keys to every secret inside of him but underneath that careful restraint sits the deeper frustration that he knows is unfair. Or maybe it isn’t unfair, maybe it’s just impatient. A few months isn’t a lifetime, after all, but Zoro’s body had made its decision long before the calendar caught up: this person was his to stand beside, his to fight with, his to hold through whatever came. The want had rooted deep and fast, stubborn as the rest of him.

So he hovers. When Sanji cooks, Zoro leans in the kitchen doorway pretending to scroll on his phone, stealing glances at the tense line of Sanji’s shoulders. When Sanji slips outside for a smoke, Zoro follows without excuse, settling his shoulder against the cold brick beside him while the city murmurs below them. When Sanji dozes off halfway through a show on the couch, Zoro stays right there, one broad hand resting warm and steady on Sanji’s ankle, the TV’s flickering light washing over them. In return Sanji shuts down in waves, lashing out in unpredictable bursts, all sharp jokes and sudden fights, nitpicking the way Zoro holds a knife, anything to drag the room back onto safe, familiar ground. Zoro lets him, every single time.

He’s also getting very, very tired of letting him.

On Saturday they have dinner with the others because Nami, after years of bossing around dysfunctional men through all kinds of disasters, announces they’re seeing the world and none of them are allowed to object. They go to some little neighbhourhood izakaya that has cheap beer and grilled skewers smoking under the vent. Luffy’s already on his second plate before everybody’s sat down. 

On the surface, it’s a normal night with their friends: Zoro sits beside Sanji and the others spill around them in bright, noisy waves. Nami steals half of Robin’s edamame and Luffy reaches across three plates for more karaage and gets his hand slapped by just about everybody in range. Usopp starts a debate about whether one could survive a dingo attack by projecting enough confidence and Sanji laughs and throws comments like knives, relaxing into Zoro’s shoulder and it’s normal except how it feels like some part of the blonde’s running separate from the room, parallel to it, counting down to something nobody else can see.

Zoro feels it everytime Sanji’s phone buzzes in his pocket and Sanji doesn’t check it and in the way Sanji comes back from the bathroom looking exactly the same except for the tiny set of his mouth. Luffy notices, too, catching Zoro’s eye across the table while Usopp’s in the middle of claiming he could absolutely seduce a dangerous heiress if the mission required it and gives him one brief, very un-Luffy frown.

Zoro looks away first.

On the walk home Sanji’s quiet and back at the apartment he peels off his jacket and hangs it up with too much care, then stands there with his hand still on the wall like he forgot what came next. Zoro watches him from the kitchen doorway, irritation moving slow and hot under his skin.

Sunday is marginally better but Monday is worse again. Tuesday passes in a blur of work and painkillers and one stupid fight over nothing that ends with Sanji apologising too quickly and Zoro feeling like an asshole. By Wednesday the air between them has become so loaded with what they’re not saying that even the good moments feel sharp edged which is why, maybe, the softness catches them both off guard when it comes, the apartment dark except for the bedroom lamps. Sanji’s standing by the wardrobe in boxers, hair damp and curling at the ends where it brushes his neck. He pulls the shirt over his head one armed with more awkwardness than he’d ever admit. It catches for a second on his wrist and he swears under his breath, so Zoro gets up and hooks his fingers into the hem, smoothing it down over Sanji’s ribs before pulling him into a kiss, sleepy and warm. The kiss is familiar in a way that still surprises Zoro sometimes — that this is his now, this mouth, this body leaning into his, this private ease after years of sparking off each other. Sanji kisses like he does most things: with skill and attention and an edge of wit even when he’s half gone with tiredness and Zoro kisses direct and certain and learning by contact. Together they make something that still feels occasionally miraculous.

Sanji’s fingers catch in the front of Zoro’s shirt and Zoro’s hand slides from his waist to the small of his back and the world goes quiet around them. Sanji’s mouth curves against his and Zoro kisses the smile because he can and because it makes Sanji make that small pleased sound he tries to swallow and fails.

“Better mood,” Zoro murmurs against his mouth.

Sanji’s eyes are still closed. “Maybe.”

Zoro kisses the corner of his mouth and his jaw and the soft skin just under his ear and then, because he’s an idiot and his brain makes the stupid mistake of tenderness for safety and because he’s still trying to feel his way around where the line is now, he says easy and offhand: “Think your family’ll kill me if I don’t know what a cumberband is?”

Sanji goes completely rigid under Zoro’s hands. The shift hits him before his brain catches up and Zoro’s stomach plummets like he’s missed a step on a sheer drop. “Forget it,” he says at once, voice rough with instant regret. “Bad joke.”

Sanji takes one single step back but the distance feels cavernous, like the whole room just stretched thin and cold between them. His voice comes out flat. “Yeah. No shit.”

Zoro opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. The words tangle uselessly. “I didn’t mean —”

“I know.” Sanji sits on the edge of the bed, spine straight and at this point Zoro’d rather Sanji yell or throw something or kick him out or tell him to fuck off. Anything but this dead, polished calm that makes Zoro feel like he’s standing on a glass floor.

“Sorry,” he mutters. He doesn’t even know how much of it he means — sorry for the joke, sorry for pushing, sorry that every step closer still feels like it costs Sanji something.

Sanji rubs the back of his neck with his good hand, slow and tired. “S’fine. I hadn’t scheduled a fight in tonight, but we both know I’m flexible.” 

Zoro forces his breathing steady, trying to keep his pulse from kicking up. “Who said anything about a fight?”

Sanji finally turns his head and looks at him, the eye contact landing like a punch. “We’re definitely having one eventually. Might as well not waste the evening.”

Zoro knows he should back off: they still haven’t figured out how to fight without drawing blood, not like this. The words slip out anyway. “I’m not trying to waste anything, Curls.”

Something flickers across Sanji’s face — guilt, frustration, or just the awareness that they’re both fumbling around the sharp edges of something neither of them knows how to hold without cutting themselves. Then it shutters closed and Sanji lies down with his back to Zoro, and the rejection stings deeper than it has any right to. He turns off the lamp and slides in beside him anyway, careful to leave space this time. The sheets feel colder than they should. After a long stretch of silence, Sanji inches back until their calves brush, tentative and wordless, a small bridge in the dark.

Zoro lies awake longer than he wants to, listening to the steady rhythm of Sanji’s breathing, the faint creak of the mattress whenever one of them shifts. He thinks about timing, about categories that refuse to stay neat, about all the ways two people can be closer than ever and still feel worlds apart. About how maybe loving Sanji means learning to sit with the secrets and the sudden silences and the fear that he’ll always be one clumsy word away from making it worse.

Tomorrow can go to hell, he decides. Right now, all he wants is the quiet warmth of Sanji’s leg against his and the stubborn certainty that he’ll keep trying anyway.

x

Tomorrow does go to hell.

The morning light slips through the curtains thin and reluctant, the kind of pale winter bleed that never quite commits. It pools across the sheets, doing nothing to warm the mess of dread that’s already lodged behind Zoro’s ribs when he wakes up.

Beside him, Sanji’s already awake, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling with that weird, robotic stillness of someone trying to delay the start of the day and Zoro watches the subtle bob of his throat as he swallows, the faint tension at the corner of his mouth. Then Sanji turns his head on the pillow. “You’re running late.”

Zoro grunts. “Got the day off.”

Sanji’s forehead crinkles, faint and confused. “Why?”

Zoro gives him a flat look. “Really?”

Sanji blinks once before something softer catches him off guard; his mouth goes a little blank, like he doesn’t know where to put the unexpected weight of it. “Oh.”

Zoro rolls onto his back and folds his hands behind his head, trying to make it look casual, like he always takes days off for shit like this, like he isn’t already trying too hard. The ceiling stares back at him, the same boring white it always is but it’s easier than looking at Sanji’s surprised face right now. “C’mon. We’re not sitting in this apartment all day waiting to die.”

Sanji snorts despite himself, the sound fragile. “Optimistic.”

“I’m serious.”

“I can tell. It’s awful.”

Zoro elbows him lightly under the blankets. “Shut up.”

The day goes better than it has any right to. They walk two blocks for coffee because Sanji declares that if he has to face his blood relatives tonight he at least deserves a decent long black, which seems fair. Afterwards they wander the neighbourhood slowly, shoulders brushing now and then, past the florist with its peeling painted sign and the corner shop where the owner knows Sanji’s cigarette brand by heart yet judges him for it every single time. They pass the park where the grass has mostly surrendered to mudm, where two kids in oversized puffer jackets are wrestling a kite into the weak wind with more hope than sense.

Sanji talks the whole way, about the coffee’s bitterness and the idiot at work who thought aioli came from a bottle and the ridiculous little dog they pass wearing boots and a yellow raincoat. He talks about anything except the clock ticking towards 6:30, every sentence another brick in the wall he’s building between himself and the evening. Zoro plays along, letting himself be pulled into a silly debate over whether the dog looks cute or tortured. Zoro says tortured and Sanji says cute. They nearly stop at a bakery window, then don’t. At one point Sanji falls half a step behind as his knee catches and Zoro slows without comment until they’re back in rhythm.

For a while, the day almost feels salvagable. Sanji’s shoulder bumps his at a crossing and they bicker over whether to get groceries now or tomorrow but end up at the market anyway because Sanji insists they need lemons. Zoro retaliates that they don’t need twelve lemons — Sanji claims Zoro’s palate was ruined in infancy. The stall owner watches them argue their way through apples, parsley and a loaf of bread with the nonchalance of someone with no fucks to give.

The moment they get back to the apartment, the fragile normalcy starts to fray. Sanji puts the groceries away too hard, cupboard doors slamming with sharp little bangs. He stands too long at the sink afterward, both hands braced on the edge, head bowed over nothing, shoulders tight beneath the shirt he’s changed into. His fingers keep drifting to press against the wrist cast through his sleeve, checking it’s still there like it’s some kind of talismen.

Zoro watches the next few hours fold inward around the coming evening. Sanji’s edges sharpen. The banter thins, the pauses between his words stretch longer and emptier, pieces of him already leaving the room ahead of schedule. By three he’s pacing, window to kitchen and kitchen to bedroom and bedroom back to the lounge room — like a caged thing trying very hard not to look caged. Zoro sits on the couch with one arm slung over the back, pretending to be absorbed in some terrible action movie playing too low on the TV. He wants to say something but he has no fucking idea what.

you’re going to wear a hole in the floor. sit down. talk to me. don’t go. it’ll be fine. we don’t need them.

He draws in a deep breath and hopes for the best. “You should eat. It’s not like you’re gonna eat there.”

Sanji stops in the doorway between the kitchen and lounge room and looks at him like he’s been addressed from underwater. “That’s stupid.”

Zoro shrugs. “Fine. Pass out at the table, then.”

That earns him a glare, but it’s a weak one, barely there. Sanji drags one hand through his hair, then abruptly crosses back into the living room. He stops right in front of the couch, and Zoro straightens on instinct. Sanji just… looks at him. His eyes are too bright, too wired, like every fear and dread and surge of adrenaline he’s been outwalking all day has finally caught up and is clawing for an exit under his skin. His hands tremble faintly even after he shoves them deep into his pockets.

“Curls?”

Sanji leans down and kisses him, immediate and desperate and starving. Zoro kisses back instantly, because Sanji kissing him like this always short circuits the careful parts of his brain and god knows Sanji’s mouth has always been the fastest way out of his own head. But even as Sanji climbs into his lap, pushing him back into the cushions, even as the room turns hot and close and electric around them, Zoro knows what this is: Sanji grabbing for the nearest escape hatch inside his own body and dragging Zoro through it with him. Sex is simpler than waiting and want is simpler than dread but Zoro doesn’t mind, not really.

His palms find the warm dip of the other man’s waist and hold on, trying to anchor something — anything — through touch alone. They kiss fast and messy, breathless at the edges, Sanji making a wrecked little sound when Zoro’s teeth catch his bottom lip that shoots straight down Zoro’s spine. By the time Sanji’s kicked his jeans aside and settled atop him again, Zoro’s blood is roaring so loud in his ears that nothing else exists: just skin and heat and the raw sounds Sanji lets slip when he forgets to hold them back.

Afterwards, the apartment settles into a heavy quiet. Zoro sits there catching his breath, listening to both of them slowly return to earth. Sanji presses a kiss to his collarbone, then another to his hairline, almost reverent and Zoro’s thumbs stroke slow, soothing arcs over the bare skin just above his hips. He can feel the faint tremor still running through Sanji’s thigh as the silence stretches, as it becomes clear Sanji’s finally run out of ways to outrun himself. He’s already starting to drift again, pulling back into that familiar guarded distance even while their bodies are still tangled and it hits Zoro like a slow blade: the helplessness, the frustration coiled tight in his gut because no matter how close they get in these moments he can’t reach the parts Sanji keeps locking tighter. He wants to be let in so badly it spikes and the spike just keeps growing and the words tumble out before he can stop them, surprising even himself. “My parents died when I was a kid.”

Sanji licks his lips slowly, his expression softening into something puzzled and almost tender. “You really know how to pillow talk, Mosshead.”

Zoro stares up at the ceiling, heart still hammering against his ribs, the words feeling clumsy and half formed before they leave his mouth. “You know Koushirou pretty much raised me.”

Sanji goes quiet, even though he does already know. Luffy knows. Nami knows. The whole damn group knows, because some histories don’t arrive clean — they come in jagged fragments over years and slowly become part of the shared map. But Zoro says it anyway because this isn’t about telling Sanji something new. It’s about trying, badly, to wedge a door open where none exists. A clumsy, imperfect offering because it’s all he has left to give.

“Koushirou was…” Zoro frowns, searching. “Good. Quiet? Didn’t say much unless he had to. Just let me smash my own face into shit until I figured out how not to.”

Sanji snorts softly against his shoulder. “Shocking that that suited you.”

“Yeah.” Zoro hesitates for half a breath, then pushes forward. “Whole friend group’s got shit parents or dead ones, apparently.”

Sanji lifts his head now, eyebrows arched in open disbelief. “This is your attempt at comfort?”

“It’s not worse than your attempts.”

Sanji lets out an exhausted sound, something that might’ve been a laugh once, his eyes fluttering shut as he rocks into it again, finding a lazy rhythm. Zoro’s hands slide up the warm length of his back, feeling the stubborn tension knotted along his spine. Sanji’s breath ghosts uneven and warm against Zoro’s neck, fingers twisting tight in his shirt. Every roll of Sanji’s hips drags through Zoro like a current, pulling him under even as he keeps talking.

Sanji’s voice comes out strained. “It’s not the same.”

“I know it’s not. I know I had someone who gave a shit about me and you clearly didn’t. Not the way you should’ve.”

Sanji goes very still for a heartbeat. Then his hips press deeper, a deliberate, grounding roll that drags a sharper breath from both of them. He buries his forehead harder against Zoro’s neck, like he can disappear there and Zoro keeps going because he needs Sanji to keep talking, to stay here, anchored in this moment instead of slipping away again. “I don’t know what they did to you but I know you’ve come a long fucking way from whatever they tried to make you into.”

Sanji doesn’t respond with words. Instead his body answers, moving like he’s trying to press the truth of it into Zoro’s bones, like motion can outrun memory. Zoro feels the way their breathing has gone uneven and synced, hears the quiet, broken sounds Sanji presses into his collarbone. For a moment it feels like they’re actually getting somewhere, like the door is cracking open just a little, until Sanji’s phone alarm blares from the coffee table. Sharp and insistent and merciless.

Sanji freezes completely as Zoro opens his eyes, hands still firm on Sanji’s waist, still buried deep inside him. The alarm keeps ringing into the sudden, awful silence. Zoro swallows, hard. “We should… get dressed?”

“We? You’re not coming.”

Zoro blinks up at him in confusion as Sanji eases off him, the loss colder than it should be. Sanji kills the alarm and disappears into the bedroom without another word, pale in the light, mouth pressed into a hard line but Zoro stays there a second longer, chest tight with that familiar helpless frustration, before he does his jeans up and follows. He waits outside the ensuite door until Sanji reappears, already pulling on armour he doesn’t need.

“Yeah,” Zoro says, quiet but stubborn. “I am.”

“No.”

Zoro leans back against the bedpost, folds his arms and scowls. “That’s not your call.”

Sanji laughs once, short and sharp and utterly humourless. He pulls on a new pair of pants with sharp movements and pulls out one of his nicer button-up shirts. “It is literally my family, Mosshead.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“Exactly why I’m coming.”

Sanji stares at him and for one awful second there’s almost no expression on his face at all, just that terrible flatness Zoro now recognises as danger. Then everything comes back too fast at once: anger and disbelief and a flash of something that looks a lot like fear before it hardens. “Absolutely fucking not. Cut it out.”

“Cut what out?”

“This!” Sanji flaps his hand between them, clearly furious. “This stubborn macho bullshit where you decide the answer first and then expect me to clap because you think you’re, what, protecting me?”

Zoro’s jaw tightens. “You think that’s what this is?”

“I know exactly what this is.”

“No,” he snaps. “You don’t.”

“I’m going to a dinner I don’t want to attend with people I don’t want to see,” Sanji’s voice is climbing now, clipped and bright and dangerous. “I don’t need you deciding to make some big fucking point in the middle of it because your pride got involved.”

Zoro takes one step closer. “My pride.”

“Yes, your pride,” Sanji sneers. “This has absolutely your stink all over it. You heard family and immediately decided somebody had to bare their teeth on my behalf.”

“That’s not what this is.”

Sanji barks out another laugh. “Then enlighten me!”

The room feels smaller but the rain at the window sounds louder and Zoro’s pulse is up now: he can feel it in his neck and his hands and the back of his teeth. Hhe frustration that’s been building under Zoro’s ribs all week flares hot and ugly. He’s tried so hard not to make this about him, not to let his own hurt twist Sanji’s pain into some referendum on whether they’re actually together, but Sanji is making it goddamn impossible. “I’m coming because I’m with you.”

Sanji’s mouth twists. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What d’you want? You want me to thank you, darling, for appointing yourself to a job nobody asked you to do?”

Zoro snarls and folds his arms tighter, harder, meaner. “There’s that thing you do, where you act like caring is some kind of insult.”

Sanji’s face flashes. “Don’t.”

“Why, hit a nerve?”

Sanji takes one limping step forward and stops too close, eyes bright with rage stretched over panic so thin it’s nearly transparent. His voice is low and vicious. “You have no idea what those people are like.”

“Then fucking tell me.”

Sanji recoils half an inch and that small movement hurts more than yelling has. “You don’t get to ask me that now. I’m an hour away from having to sit at that table and let them look at me and I’m already wasting too much energy on you.”

Zoro goes dangerously still. He sees the instant flicker of regret behind Sanji’s anger, watches it get shoved down and buried. It still lands like a blow. “Right.”

Sanji drags a hand through his hair. “Oh, don’t do that. Use your words if you’re going to be pissed off.”

Zoro’s laugh rips out of him — mean and awful and sour, nothing he ever wanted to hear himself make. “You want words? At some point this stops sounding like safety and starts sounding like you just don’t want me there.”

The room goes dead silent. Sanji stares at him like Zoro just slapped him across the face, Zoro’s heartbeat thundering in his ears, louder than the rain lashing the window, louder than the pipes groaning and the fridge humming in the kitchen. He keeps going anyway — the wound’s open now and pretending it isn’t feels impossible. “You keep acting like I’m still standing outside this. Like I’m just one of your friends waiting around for you to come back once the shitty part’s over.”

“That’s not what this is, Zoro.” Sanji’s hands clench at his sides. “This is me trying not to take you into a room full of assholes who’ll figure out exactly what you are to me and use it.”

“Oh, so now you’re worried I’m just something else for them to ruin.”

Sanji’s temper snaps completely. “Fucking hell, you really do love making this all about you, don’t you?”

Zoro takes another step forward, forcing Sanji to tilt his head down to hold eye contact. “I’m making it about the fact that I’m your boyfriend.” The word comes out hard, almost accusatory, because if he says it softer he’ll hear too much of the raw need underneath.

Sanji’s laugh is a sharp, disbelieving sound that cracks in the middle. “And what, that changes the fucking laws of physics? Suddenly you’re bulletproof?”

“It changes where I stand!” Zoro’s voice rises to match. The frustration that’s been festering under his ribs all week boils over, hot and ugly and impossible to shove back down.

Sanji’s mouth opens, then closes. For a beat he looks truly lost, like the idea hasn’t occurred to him in the same shape — like he genuinely never understood that to Zoro, boyfriend meant the line had moved. That it meant standing closer, not further away. “To you.”

Zoro goes cold all over. He could back off. He should: any sane person would hear that quiet to you and leave the room before the rest of the damage lands, but the hurt is louder than sense right now. “You think because it’s only been a few months I’m only here for the easy parts? That’s it? What, we just fuck around and I don’t have to care about anything that matters to you?”

“I think,” Sanji snarls, breathing too fast, chest rising and falling sharply, “That you’re trying to walk into a room full of sadistic monsters with no fucking clue what they’re capable of because somewhere in that thick skull of yours you’ve decided this is romantic.”

“I know it’s not romantic,” Zoro snaps, the words tearing out of him. His throat burns. “I’m just saying I love you.”

The confession drops between them like a livewire: Sanji stops moving entirely. The whole room feels different with those words hanging in the air, like the walls have shifted, like nothing fits the same way anymore. Zoro hears his own ragged breathing, the faint electrical hum of the lamp by the bed, and horribly, his own voice still echoing like something that can’t be unsaid. Sanji’s face has gone blank again, but not the cold kind. This is worse, somehow, all struck through and wrecked, like he doesn’t know which part of himself to react with first. When he finally speaks he sounds like he’s barely holding his voice together. “Can we not do this right now?”

Zoro’s throat tightens painfully. Before he can answer, Sanji’s phone lights up on the bed, casting a harsh beam upward into the dimming room and he sighs, dragging both hands over his face like he can wipe the whole conversation away. “Car’s here.”

“They sent a car?”

Sanji snatches the shirt off the bed and starts wrestling it on one armed, furious and graceless. The movement clearly aggravates his wrist but he powers through it. “Of course they sent a fucking car.”

Zoro steps in automatically, reaching out. “Let me —”

“Don’t.” Sanji jerks away, gets the shirt on by himself, breathing hard by the end. He buttons it wrong the first time, swears viciously under his breath, rips two buttons open and starts again. His phone dings again. He stares down at his wrists for a second, like he’s considering cufflinks, before his shoulders slump in defeat. They won’t make a damn bit of difference anyway. “Just… hurry up and get dressed.”

They leave the apartment without touching, the silence between them heavier than the rain drumming against the windows. The car waits downstairs like something out of a nightmare, long and black, polished to an obscene mirror shine that catches every streetlight in thin, predatory streaks. It idles with its engine purring low as the driver steps out, umbrella snapping open crisply.

Zoro had already figured Sanji comes from money, given whatever he’d already glimpsed of Vinsmoke at the hospital, but this is worse, somehow. Clinical. Predatory. It occurs to him, uneasily, that he has no idea whether Sanji gave them this address or if they’ve simply known it all along.

Sanji looks at the car like it’s a corpse he once buried and has now been forced to dig up with his bare hands. The fight still hums between them, line gone cold but still lodged somewhere under the skin. Zoro can’t stop hearing his own voice cracking open in the apartment: i’m just saying i love you. He can still see the way Sanji’s face had emptied out, the way he’d been completely unready for it and, worst of all, the way neither of them had been allowed to do anything with it. The confession had spilled out raw and clumsy in the middle of a screaming match, another weapon instead of the offering it was meant to be and absolutely nothing like the way Zoro’s ever wanted to tell him. 

The regret sits in his throat, a weight that only gets heavier as they climb into the car. He keeps replaying it like a fool, the way he’d pushed and the way he’d let his own hurt twist everything until the truth fell out sideways. He’s spent months trying to prove, without ever saying it outright, that he’s here for all of it and now the first time the words actually leave his mouth they landed like a grenade in the middle of a battlefield. 

He catches Sanji’s wrist, blurst: “Wait,” and doesn’t even know what he’s asking for — some small confirmation that they’re not walking into this as strangers, maybe — but he folds Sanji’s hand into his palm. The contact twists something deep in his chest, hot with everything he doesn’t know how to say right.

Sanji pulls back fast. “Don’t.”

The rejection slices clean through him; Zoro feels it settle low in his ribs first, then rise sharp and hot behind his eyes. He blinks hard, but one stubborn tear still pricks at the corner of his eye, threatening to spill until he wipes it away, rough and mean. 

He’s not the guy who cries in the back of some asshole’s luxury car. He’s the one who stands, the one who fights, the one who keeps showing up even when Sanji keeps trying to build distance like it’ll keep him safe, but right now it hurts more than any sword cut ever has — this awful helpless sense that no matter how hard Zoro pushes closer, Sanji might always flinch back. That maybe this relationship means something different to each of them.

The city changes the farther they drive, streets straightening and widening, growing cleaner and also colder. Old stone facades rise behind carefully manicured hedges and delicate iron fences that no one ever actually leans on. The noise of the city fades completely as Sanji sits angled toward his window, one hand braced tight against his knee, every line of his body locked down and held too still. Zoro watches the reflection of his face slide across the dark glass and thinks he might throw himself out of the moving car if the silence goes on any longer.

“Is this your… are we going to your house?” he forces, latching onto any sense of practicality he can. 

Sanji doesn’t look at him. “No.”

The car turns off the main road onto a narrower lane bordered by tall stone walls and dark trees dripping rain. At the end sits an estate too massive to be called anything but a compoun, beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful, all white stone washed silver by the wet and tall windows lit. There’s a sweeping front driveway and wide steps complete the picture — even from inside the car, Zoro can tell this place isn’t a home. It’s staged: a fortress dressed up as a house, built entirely to impose.

“Not theirs,” he mutters before he can think better of it.

Sanji glances once through the window at the looming building before glaring back at the seat in front of him. “Of course not.”

They leave the car under a fine mist of rain that slicks the stone steps and beads on their coats. A man in dark clothes is already waiting with an umbrella, posture too perfect, stance too balanced and Zoro doesn’t need context to read it — he knows a fighter when he sees one. His whole body shifts into alert without conscious thought, muscles coiled, instincts sharpening. Beside him, Sanji seems to shrink and harden at the same time. The soft, exhausted man who had been trembling in Zoro’s lap just hours ago, the one who let himself be held open, is gone and in its his place is someone sharper, already retreating behind layers Zoro hasn’t earned the right to touch tonight.

As much as he wants to, Zoro doesn’t reach for Sanji’s hand again. 

He’s learned that lesson, at least.

The man at the entrance inclines his head. “Mr Vinsmoke.”

Sanji’s face stays perfectly still. “Evening.” His voice isn’t fake, exactly, but it’s been hollowed, every trace of warmth carefully stripped out so nothing can be grabbed and used against him. This is the version of Sanji built for houses like this, Zoro realises, where sincerity’s a liability.

The man’s eyes flick to Zoro. “Your guest has been accounted for.”

Zoro bares his teeth in a smile that carries absolutely no warmth. “How reassuring.”

The entrance hall is enormous and utterly lifeless, from marble floors to dark wood paneling and paintings so expensive and impersonal they might as well have been chosen by committee on another planet. A sweeping central staircase vanishes into shadow overhead and somewhere deeper in the house, a string quartet recording plays. Flowers bloom everywhere, perfect and scentless and artificial.

Reiju appears from a side hallway before they can be announced further. She’s dressed head-to-toe in black, like the whole family gets off on attending their own funerals. Her eyes move from Sanji to Zoro, relief flickering briefly before something heavier settles in, worry, maybe. Resignation, definitely. “You came.”

Sanji scowls. “You sounded pretty sure I would.”

Reiju winces, the movement so small most people would miss it. “I’m glad you did.”

Sanji laughs once, low and bitter. “Makes one of us.”

She doesn’t bite back. Instead her gaze cuts to Zoro again. “It’s in the dining room.”

They follow her down a long hallway lined with more soulless art and that’s when Zoro sees them — two men who are definitely not butlers. Their jackets sit wrong, the way they stand is wrong, the way their hands rest is wrong, the faint bulge under the fabric is definitely wrong.

Zoro’s stomach drops like he’s missed a step on a sheer cliff, pulse spiking hard and brutal. He’s trained with blades since he was a kid, spent years turning his body into a weapon through sweat and broken bones and sheer stubborn will. But guns? Real ones, carried openly in a house like they’re part of the dress code? The realisation hits him at once, that this isn’t just everyday family drama but something way worse, and that maybe Sanji had meant bulletproof literally. Maybe the Vinsmokes aren’t just rich or mean or rude — maybe they’re the kind of powerful that keeps armed guards on the payroll like it’s normal.

Maybe this is the kind of deep shit where normal rules don’t apply and people like Zoro get erased without a trace.

Sanji must feel him tense, because without turning his head he mutters: “Don’t start anything.”

Zoro’s jaw locks so tight it aches. “Not starting anything.”

“Wonderful. A low bar.”

There’s strain bleeding through the sarcasm, and it twists in Zoro’s chest even harder now. He wants to say i know, or i see it, or even why the fuck didn’t you warn me? He wants to grab Sanji and drag him back out the door before whatever’s waiting in that dining room can sink its teeth in, but it’s too late. They’re already inside: the dining table is a masterpiece of intimidation, all white linen and crystal and silver cutlery laid with surgical precision, candles burning in perfect alignment. Zoro feels the threat of it it in his spine, his clenched jaw, the empty weight of his hands at his sides. His body reacts before his mind finishes cataloguing the threat: this isn’t dinner. This has never been dinner.

Vinsmoke stands at the far end of the table like a man posing for his own portrait, still a mess of hair, clothing immaculate and every angle calculated. Beside him sit three brothers, identical to Sanji, malice carved into the family mould so clearly it turns Zoro’s stomach. “You deigned to come.” 

There are no servants now, just people in dark suits stationed too precisely near every door and every corner. All Zoro can think about is how he’s barged his way in thinking it was about pride and locked doors, and it turns out this has been about something worse all along. 

Sanji stops beside his assigned chair. “That was the arrangement.”

Vinsmoke’s gaze slides to Zoro, slow and assessing. “And you brought company.”

“Zoro,” Sanji cuts in before Zoro can speak, providing only the name without context, without claim. Zoro doesn’t know if he’s meant to feel insulted or not.

The blue-haired brother smiles, small and amused and instantly punchable. “Interesting.”

Vinsmoke ignores the interruption and nods at Sanji. “Sit.”

The worst part — the thing that makes Zoro’s stomach clench like a fist — is how Sanji obeys without hesitation. His body folds into the chair on pure muscle memory, so Zoro sits beside him because there is nowhere else he belongs and because if he stands there any longer he’ll start thinking about the dead look that just crossed Sanji’s face. 

That way lies murder, so.

Reiju takes the last seat and the room settles into a silence that feels pre-loaded. Wine appears, poured by one of the suited ghosts without a word. No-one touches it. Vinsmoke folds his hands on the table like a king holding court. “The Baratie remains under pressure.”

He says it like he’s laying a knife in the centre of the table but Sanji’s expression doesn’t flicker at all, despite how sharply Zoro feels the floor tilt under him. The Baratie. Zeff. Sanji’s whole world. What the fuck does Vinsmoke have to do with any of it?

“The present structure is no longer efficient,” Vinsmoke continues, smooth. “Too many intermediaries. Too many quiet monthly interventions. Too much discretion wasted in the wrong direction.”

Zoro’s mind is reeling, repeating the words monthly interventions on a loop, even as the facts slot into place, even as it becomes obvious Sanji has been doing this — paying and appeasing, feeding this monster — all along. Right under everyone’s noses, because Zoro knows enough to acknowledge Zeff would never let Sanji put himself in this position and Sanji would never let Zeff know. He presses his lips together until it hurts, biting down on the inside of his mouth, fists curled tight on his knees under the table. 

Sanji’s voice stays eerily calm. “Then say what you want.”

Vinsmoke inclines his head, almost pleased. “The restaurant is viable. The debt is useful. The old man remains in place. There is no need for this to become unpleasant.”

The red-haired brother laughs softly into his glass. “Picturesque, even.”

Sanji says nothing so Vinsmoke keeps going, each sentence measured and civil and utterly fucking vile. The debt can stay manageable. The lease complications can be fixed. The pressure can stop. All Sanji has to do is stop pretending he’s outside the family by making some appearances and joining consultations. Using the Vinsmoke name. Head a future hospitality venture under Germa’s luxury arm, legitimised by Sanji’s own talent and reputation. It’s not outright ownership. It’s something cleaner and so much worse: they want to take the life Sanji built in spite of them and knead it back into family property like it always belonged to them. Zoro looks at Sanji and sees that he already understands every clause and has probably been dreading this exact conversation for years.

Sanji laughs only once, venomous. “Wow. There it is.”

Reiju tries, quietly. “Father —”

“No,” Sanji cuts across her, eyes never leaving Vinsmoke. “Let him say it.”

And Vinsmoke does. Calm and reasonable, laying out extortion disguised as negotiation while Zoro listens on in horror, something inside him going very, very cold.

The green-haired brother smiles at Zoro over the rim of his glass, all lazy venom and perfect teeth. “You look surprised. Did you think this was personal?”

Sanji’s fingers tighten on the stem of his water glass until Zoro hears the faint creak of crystal but Vinsmoke doesn’t even glance at Zoro. “Sanji has become unexpectedly marketable. It would do us well to indulge in our investment.”

That one lands like a blade between the ribs, enough that Reiju flinches visibly. The last ghost of life in Sanji’s face collapses inward until there’s nothing left — even his breathing looks like a calculated performance.

Zoro keeps his own face locked down while Vinsmoke lays out the rest, talking terms and money and visibility and control. The Baratie stays safe only as long as Sanji remains useful. And then, just when Zoro thinks the night can’t get more fucking vile, the blue-haired brother turns toward him with a soft, almost kindly smile. “You should feel special. He usually saves this little act for people who actually have something to hold over him.”

The words detonate.

Zoro’s chair scrapes back, fist landing clean across the asshole’s jaw, impact singing up his arm, the sickening crunch of teeth behind a split lip. He goes sideways out of his chair with a strangled, childish yelp, blood already bright and smeared between his fingers as he hits the floor.

The two guards by the wall move instantly, jackets flare open and weapons pulled free — one steps toward the table while the other shifts to block the door. The exits vanish so quickly it makes Zoro’s stomach lurches with animal horror. 

“Zoro!” Sanji snaps to his feet as the brother claws upright, blood dripping onto the pristine white linen. 

Rage has stripped every ounce of polish off his face, revealing the spoiled, vicious little monster underneath. “You son of a —”

“Stand down, Niji.” Vinsmoke doesn’t raise his voice. He hasn’t moved a bit from the head of the table.

Niji freezes mid lunge, blood on his mouth and murder in his eyes. The guards halt, too and Vinsmoke finally lifts his gaze to Zoro, cold and dissecting.

Reiju is on her feet now as well, panic cracking through her composure. “That’s enough.”

It’s not clear who she’s talking to: Vinsmoke ignores her completely while Niji spits a thick wad of blood onto the table runner, the red stain blooming obscenely between the candles. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and laughs, short and wet.

“You brought this animal here,” he sneers at Sanji, “And this is what he does?”

Beside Zoro, Sanji has gone deathly pale, almost green in the candlelight. His chair is still shoved back, one hand white knuckled on the table edge, the other clenched at his side. He looks furious, glaring at the guards instead, at the guns, at the walls closing in exactly the way he’d tried to warn Zoro they would. 

Vinsmoke folds his hands on the table like a king passing sentence. “You misunderstand the scale of your place here, Roronoa. You were extended a courtesy because of Sanji’s momentary lapse in judgment. Not because you matter to the arrangement.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Sanji hisses at Zoro, voice cracking with the rage of it all.

Zoro wants to snarl back what he deserved or what you should’ve done years ago but behind every defense he hears the soft shift of holsters, the quiet threat of men who kill for a living. His mouth twists anyway. “He needed it.”

Niji laughs again while Reiju closes her eyes like she’s praying for strength. The other two brothers are leering at each other like this is the best entertainment they’ve had in months but Zoro ignores them all. 

Sanji scowls. “Yeah, we’re done here.”

The guards shift again; Vinsmoke doesn’t. “You’re confused.”

“Nope,” Sanji snarls, voice low and feral. “I got it now. Cheers.”

Reiju’s voice cuts through, thin but steady. “Sanji. Go.”

“If a single fucking thing touches the Baratie —”

Vinsmoke cuts him off with a single, withering look. “Then perhaps you should have chosen your company more carefully.”

That’s the last thing said before Zoro realises if they stay one more second he’s either going to deck Vinsmoke himself or Sanji’s going to kick someones’s teeth in — either way, it won’t end well.

Sanji falls into step beside him without touching him once as they leave, together and not together. The space between their shoulders crackles with everything still unsaid, rage and fear and betrayal and exhaustion. Reiju doesn’t follow. The brothers stay silent. Vinsmoke lets them walk out because, in a family like that, even freedom is just another leash.

The drive back is its own kind of violence. Rain streaks down the windows in thin silver blades, smearing the city into bleeding gold and red and black while traffic surges around them like nothing happened. Up front, the radio murmurs softly about market futures or an incoming cyclone or both. The driver might as well be a statue. In the backseat, Sanji sits twisted toward the window again, coat buttoned wrong, every line of his body wound so tight it looks like it hurts to exist. Zoro can’t stop seeing the guards’ holsters, the way the exits sealed shut the second his fist connected, the calm with which Vinsmoke had let it all unfold.

He can’t stop thinking about how Sanji had known the whole fucking time and still walked in there with him. The hurt of it burns like acid under Zoro’s ribs: months of watching Sanji disappear in pieces, of fighting for scraps of closeness, and all of it because Sanji was out here doing fuck knows what to keep his family off. 

By the time they get upstairs, the fight is already waiting for them like a third person in the room. Sanji gets inside first and delivers a roundhouse to the door so vicious the wood splinters and buckles. He makes it three steps before spinning around. “Well?”

Zoro drops his coat over the back of the chair. It misses and slides to the floor but he doesn’t pick it up. “Well what?”

Sanji laughs, and it’s a fucking awful sound, shredded and vicious and cracking at the edges. “Oh, you wanna pretend like you don’t know what just happened?”

Zoro’s temper ignites instantly, hot and ugly. “I know exactly what happened.”

“Do you?” Sanji takes one limping step closer, then another, catching himself hard on the bench when his knee buckles. “You want to explain what the fuck you thought you were doing in there?”

There are a hundred answers, all of them wrong and all of them true. Zoro goes with the ugliest one first, voice low. “He deserved it.”

“No shit, Zoro. We were all fucking there.” Sanji’s voice climbs, bright and ugly with leftover adrenaline and nowhere safe to put it. “You still think this is about whether that piece of shit deserved it?”

Zoro grinds his teeth until his jaw aches. There’s too much in him right now, fury at the Vinsmokes and at Sanji’s endless walls and at himself, most of all. “No.”

“No?” Sanji repeats, the word cracking like a whip. He’s trembling now, hands fisted at his sides, eyes bright with rage and something that looks a lot like fear still bleeding through. “No? That’s fucking incredible, because from where I was sitting it looked exactly like you decided one line hurt your precious feelings and that gave you permission to turn the whole goddamn negotiation into a bar brawl! With armed men in the room, Zoro! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Zoro’s chest tightens painfully, humiliation and self loathing surging in hot, equal increments. He did fuck it up. He let his rage take the wheel the second they insulted Sanji, exactly like Sanji had feared he would. He’d wanted to protect him and instead he’s probably painted a bigger target on both their backs. “I would have if you’d told me about it like I asked!”

Sanji’s voice breaks higher, raw and furious. “You have no fucking clue what I’ve been juggling for years to keep the Baratie and Zeff breathing! The payments, the favours, the fucking — all of it! And you just— you just punched your way into it like it was some bloody sparring match!”

The words land like blows. Zoro feels them in his gut, the years of silent sacrifice, the financial drain, the emotional rot Sanji’s been carrying alone while smiling and cooking and pretending everything was fine. The hurt twists deeper, mixing with white-hot anger at Sanji for never trusting him enough to say it, and even hotter anger at himself for proving Sanji right. “You never told me, not once. Not even a hint that we were walking into a room full of fucking criminals!”

“Because I didn’t want you there!” Sanji shouts, stepping closer until they’re nearly chest-to-chest, voice shaking with everything he’s been holding back. “I didn’t want you seeing it, I didn’t want you in it and you went and proved exactly why I was right to keep you out!”

That hits like a slap to the face. Some small part of Zoro is embarrassed, humiliated in that deep, gut twisting way he’d rather die than admit out loud. He’d walked into that house like a blunt weapon and gotten handled like one, like a fucking amateur who didn’t even know the rules of the game. He drags a hand through his hair, voice harsher than he means it to be. “Yeah. I was exactly the kind of problem you said I’d be. But you should’ve fucking told me.” 

Sanji blinks. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“No, I heard you, I just…” Sanji laughs, the sound jagged and disbelieving, shaking his head. “Of all the fucking things you could decide to be pissed about right now.”

Zoro’s voice drops low and mean, controlled in a way that feels dangerous even to him. “You let me walk into a house full of guns and, what, hired killers without a single warning.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“No.” Zoro cuts him off sharply, stepping closer. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to act like I’m demanding your deepest darkest secrets. You could’ve just told me they were dangerous. That this wasn’t just normal family bullshit.”

Sanji’s jaw clenches so tight Zoro can see the muscle jump. “I knew exactly how dangerous it was to tell you.”

“Bullshit!” Zoro’s voice rises. “You let me go into it blind!”

Sanji looks like he might actually hit him. God, at this point Zoro would almost welcome the pain. “And what the fuck do you think would’ve happened if I’d told you? Huh?”

“At least I would’ve known! At least I wouldn’t have just strolled in there like a fucking idiot!”

Sanji laughs again, furious enough to shake. “Oh, that’s brilliant. Right. Because what that evening really needed was a version of you who knew there were guns before you sat down. That definitely would’ve made you calmer, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have done something stupid the second they looked at me wrong?”

“No,” Zoro snarls, chest heaving. “But it would’ve made me less fucking surprised when I realised how bad it actually was.”

“Exactly the problem!” Sanji explodes, pushing off the bench and starting to pace despite the obvious pain in his knee. Every third step buckles, but he powers through it, limping hard, the movement frantic and unhinged. “You think if I’d said ‘by the way, they’re criminals, oh, and sometimes they have bodyguards’ you would’ve gone in there and been subtle? You think I don’t know exactly what your face would’ve done the second I said the word gun? You would’ve walked in already loaded, ready to swing, exactly like you did anyway!”

Zoro opens his mouth, furious, but snaps it shut. Because some part of him — the worst, truest part — knows Sanji’s right. He would’ve been worse. 

Sanji keeps going, voice wrecked and rising. “I was trying not to walk into that house with a weapon pointed at our heads! And you get to be mad at me for not handing you the detonator?”

Zoro stares at him, stunned, hands opening and closing uselessly at his sides. The image flashes too vividly: the guards drawing, exits vanishing, Vinsmoke’s ice-cold voice saying stand down, and the gut-wrenching knowledge that if the Vinsmoke had wanted it worse, well. It would have been a lot worse. He drags a hand down his face, fingers catching on the rough stubble along his jaw, still feeling the ghost of Niji’s teeth under his knuckles. He flexes his fingers like he’s trying to shake the memory out of it. “Look, I’m good in a fight. I’m good when somebody comes straight at me. Maybe you’re right, maybe dinner with criminals isn’t my strong suite.”

Sanji’s mouth presses into a thin, bloodless line. He rubs at his temple with two fingers, then drags the same hand down over his mouth like he’s trying to wipe something filthy off his skin. “That’s not what I meant, Zoro.”

“It’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“No.” Sanji’s shoulders curl inward for a second before he forces them back. “No. What happened is I didn’t know how to tell you enough without making you exactly what they’d use against me.”

Zoro looks at him and feels it land somewhere low and ugly. He can see it now, the nights Sanji must have spent turning this over in his head, weighing every angle and every possible outcome. How many times he must have almost said something and swallowed it instead, carrying the weight of it because he thought he had to. The thought twists Zoro’s anger into something messier. 

Sanji’s eyes drop to the bench between them. His fingers twitch once against his thigh, like he wants to reach for something and stops himself. He stays quiet long enough that Zoro almost thinks the words missed before he says, very softly: “I didn’t— I should’ve told you, yeah.”

It should help but it doesn’t. Zoro has to stand there and breathe through his nose like an animal trying not to bolt. He glares at a knot in the wood of the bench until his eyes sting, pulse still roaring in his ears.

“God, if this is it, just say it.”

Zoro’s mind genuinely blanks. “Huh?”

Sanji laughs again, but this time there’s nothing warm in it, just nerves and expectation and the kind of pain that’s learned how to hide in anger. His eyes are already shining too bright at the edges, wet at the lashes, and he blinks hard, angry at himself for it. “C’mon, Moss. Don’t make me drag this out, I know how it goes. So just — just say it. Save us both the fucking speech.”

Zoro stares at him, stunned, and realises they’re not having the same conversation at all. For a split second the apartment blurs at the edges and his mind drags him backward, fast and uninvited to the first time Sanji had kicked him in the head during a spar and then grinned, sharklike, when Zoro had returned the favour. The way Sanji had started cooking for him without being asked, always too much food, always pretending it was leftovers. The late nights on Luffy’s balcony when everyone else was asleep, Sanji smoking and Zoro pretending not to watch the way the ember lit up his face. The first time they’d kissed like it was a fight they were both trying to win and the way Sanji had started letting Zoro touch him, careful at first before turning hungry, like he trusted Zoro not to break anything important. All the small, stupid, perfect things that had built into something Zoro’s based the past few months of his life around. 

The thought hits him like a blade between the ribs, that they might actually lose this before it’s even really started. Before Zoro has a chance to prove he can be steady, before Sanji has a chance to believe someone will stay when the ugly parts show up armed. The possibility sits cold and heavy in his gut, worse than any punch he’s ever taken. He takes a step closer without thinking, the floor breathing under his weight. “You think I’m leaving?”

Sanji’s face flickers, something ugly flashing across it before he locks it down hard. His mouth twists into something mean and self deprecating, the kind of joke that tastes like blood. “I think you just walked out of a house full of my family’s bullshit and realised I’m a mess, so forgive me if I’m not assuming that improves my odds of keeping you around.”

Zoro’s mouth goes flat. “Don’t call yourself that.”

Sanji gives a frayed snort, finally looking at him. His eyes are glassy now, tears threatening despite how fiercely he’s trying to blink them back. Embarrassment burns hot across his cheeks. “Don’t pick one fucking word out of —”

“I’m not leaving.” Zoro hears himself say it before he’s fully decided to, the words coming out rough, almost angry with how much he means them. “I’m pissed off. I’m not gone.”

This close, he can see the way Sanji’s pulse jumps in his throat, the tremble in his fingers where they hang at his side. Zoro reaches out and catches his elbow, carefully, listening to the way Sanji’s breath catches. Sanji’s hand comes uo to close around Zoro’s wrist, fingers pressing in like he’s not sure whether he’s holding on or pushing away.

Zoro keeps his voice low, steady, even though everything in him feels cracked open. “I’m angry because I’m in this, not because I’m out.”

Sanji’s eyes slide shut for a second. “You don’t know what being in even means here.”

“Then tell me.”

Sanji shakes his head, exhausted and furious and open in all the places that hurt most. His fingers tighten around Zoro’s wrist like he’s afraid Zoro will disappear if he lets go. “It’s all terrible.” 

Zoro lets out a quiet, rough sound that’s almost a laugh but isn’t. His thumb strokes once, slow and deliberate, over the inside of Sanji’s elbow through the coat sleeve. “Yeah, you know what else is terrible? Thinking I’m going to fuck you over because things are shit.”

Sanji closes his eyes. A shaky breath leaves him. “Yeah.”

“Look, I… I know I shouldn’t have hit him.”

“No,” Sanji’s voice cracks just slightly. “Really? You think?”

Zoro’s thumb keeps moving, small, grounding strokes against the fabric and then underneath, until he can feel Sanji’s pulse under his fingers, grounding in the same way it’s always been. “But I’m not leaving, Curls. That’s not what this is.”

Sanji looks at him like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop anyway, like he’s already bracing for the moment Zoro realises he’s made a mistake. The tears have dried on his lashes but the rawness is still there, sitting heavy in the space between them. “Okay.”

Zoro’s chest feels too tight. He’s still angry — angry at the Vinsmokes, angry at Sanji for carrying all of it alone, angry at himself for proving every fear Sanji ever had — but underneath it all is the louder, simpler truth that he almost lost this tonight and before he can talk himself out of it, Zoro risks a kiss to the inside of Sanji’s wrist. It’s too much. It’s everything Zoro doesn’t know how to say out loud right now. He’s about to say something when Sanji yanks him forward by the front of his shirt, pulling him into a kiss that’s nothing like the careful one Zoro offered. It’s messy, Sanji’s mouth crashing into his like he needs proof that Zoro is still here, still choosing this, still choosing him even after everything. Zoro makes a startled sound and kisses back just as hard, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of Sanji’s neck while the other stays wrapped around his wrist. 

They don’t pull apart so much as break for air, foreheads pressed together, breathing ragged. Sanji’s fingers are still twisted tight in Zoro’s shirt like he’s afraid Zoro will disappear if he lets go so Zoro shifts just enough to press another kiss to Sanji’s temple, then one to the damp corner of his eye where a tear had slipped free. 

Sanji lets out a shaky laugh against Zoro’s mouth. “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah,” Zoro murmurs, because that’s definitely not up for debate. He presses another kiss to the corner of Sanji’s mouth, softer this time. “But so are you, so.”

One of his hands finally loosens its death grip on Zoro’s shirt and slides up instead, fingers curling into the short hair at the back of Zoro’s neck like he needs the anchor. “This is… you know it’s going to be fucked up now, right?” 

“No shit.” Zoro exhales slowly, the last of the fight draining out of him in one long breath. He wraps his free arm around Sanji’s waist, pulling him in properly and they stand like that for a long time, long enough for the rain to soften against the glass and long enough for the worst of the adrenaline to finally ebb into something heavier and quieter. 

x

Morning comes thin and grey and mercilessly normal. Zoro wakes to the pale wash of city light through the curtains and the groan of the heater trying and failing to make the apartment warm. His body feels like it’s been put through a meat grinder, jaw sore from clenching, knuckles stiff and swollen, an ache in his chest that only comes after too much adrenaline and not enough sleep and the kind of argument that shifts the floor under your life by several centimetres.

Sanji is warm along his front, half on him and half under him, all heavy, exhausted lines. One leg is tangled with his, one arm folded awkwardly between them because of the wrist brace, face tucked into the hollow under Zoro’s jaw, breath slow and warm against his skin. Zoro can feel the exhaustion in Sanji’s body too, the way he’s still curled in even in sleep, like he’s bracing for something even now.

“Morning,” Zoro says, voice rough with sleep.

Sanji squints up at him, eyes still heavy-lidded. “You smell disgusting,” he mutters, but there’s no real bite in it. 

Zoro brushes his thumb once, lightly, over the back of Sanji’s neck. Before Sanji can pull back into himself and before the day can start piling on, Zoro pulls him into a kiss. Sanji’s good hand slides up to the side of Zoro’s throat, still clumsy with sleep, and exhales steadily against his mouth. They make out for a while in the morning light, Zoro’s hand splayed wide at the small of his back. There’s an occasional wince when one of them forgets about Sanji’s ribs and shifts wrong, and a quiet laugh into a kiss when Zoro’s stubble drags across sensitive skin and Sanji mutters: “S’like making out with a wire brush, fuck.”

Zoro kisses him harder for that, and for one dangerous, gorgeous moment the whole room narrows to mouths and heat and the certainty that wanting each other is still the easiest thing they do. When they finally part to breathe, Sanji leaves his forehead against Zoro’s for a beat too long.

Zoro lets his hand move up Sanji’s spine, slow and grounding. “So, what the hell do we do now?”

Sanji groans and closes his eyes again, face still tucked against Zoro’s neck. “I dunno. I know they’ll move fast. Whatever they do next, they won’t sit on it.”

Zoro nods. “You think they’ll hit Zeff first.”

Sanji sighs and nuzzles at Zoro’s collarbone, biting it lightly before resting his chin there. “I think they’ll hit whatever’s easiest and Zeff’s the quickest target if they want to hurt me.”

Zoro looks at the ceiling for a second, then back at him, feeling the weight of it settle deeper. “So we need help, then. Luffy. Nami. Robin. Usopp. Law, probably.”

Sanji makes a face. “Can we scrap that last one?”

Zoro brushes his knuckles over Sanji’s cheek, thinking about the crew, how they’d burn the world down for one of their own without hesitation. “We’ll need Zeff too,” he adds carefully.

Sanji goes very still for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice is smaller. “He’s gonna kill me.”

Zoro strokes his hair, shrugging. “Probably. But he’ll still help.”

“Yeah.” Sanji is quiet for a long beat. Then, so softly Zoro almost misses it: “I, uh. I didn’t have the best… things were bad, when I was a kid.”

Zoro’s hand pauses in Sanji’s hair. He can feel the shape of it: Sanji small and alone, already carrying weight, already learning how to survive people who should’ve protected him. The anger that rises in him is sharp and protective and helpless all at once. He wants to go back in time and find that kid. He wants to burn every Vinsmoke to the ground, wants to go back to last night and slam his father’s head into the table. Instead he just pulls him closer, voice low and rough. “That’s… sorry.”

Sanji shrugs one shoulder against Zoro’s chest, like it’s nothing, even though they both know it’s everything. “Not your fault. Just… how it was.”

After a while Zoro says, more carefully: “You could go to the cops.”

Sanji lifts his head and stares at him like he’s suggested they go commit arson together. “Are you fucking insane?”

Zoro shrugs. “They’re criminals, right? Extortion, whatever the hell else they’re running. If you know anything — enough of anything — you could tell them.”

Sanji’s face does something complicated, fear flickering behind the exhaustion. “He’ll have contacts everywhere, they change their shit all the time. They don’t settle. We could tell the wrong person and it’d be over before we even left the station. They’d know, Moss. They always know.”

Zoro lets the thought breathe before answering, more gently now. “Then we figure out what you’ve got, what they’ve got, who actually handles this kind of shit when it’s bigger than us. We do it smart.”

Sanji’s eyes narrow. “That almost sounded thoughtful.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“You like when I’m an asshole.” Sanji’s voice is quieter again. He looks down at the sheets, at their tangled legs, at Zoro’s hand resting against his skin. “It’s been me against them for so long.”

“I’m not saying it fixes anything tomorrow, Curls. I know it won’t. I’m just saying we stop acting like they’re the only ones allowed to have a system.”

Sanji exhales slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, alright. I’ll think about it.”

There’s a softness in him now that Zoro almost doesn’t know what to do with, less certainty that every hard conversation is secretly a prelude to loss. Zoro brushes his thumb once under Sanji’s ear, then kisses his temple and his nose until Sanji laughs, shaking his head, and tucks his face back into Zoro’s chest.

For a long moment he just stays there, breathing against Zoro’s skin like he’s trying to gather the words. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and rough, almost reluctant, like the confession is being dragged out of him by the weight of everything they’ve survived in the last twelve hours. “I love you, too. Obviously. Years.”

Zoro nearly forgets how to breathe for a second. “Years,” he repeats stupidly, something that feels an awful lot like hope springing up in him, so fast it’s a little dizzying.

Sanji doesn’t lift his head. His fingers tighten once in the fabric of Zoro’s shirt, like he’s bracing for impact even now. “Obviously.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to make your life easier?” 

Zoro’s startled into a laugh, rough but real, and Sanji watches him with that look still in his eyes so he shifts closer to kiss him again, gentler and slower this time, like he’s trying to answer with his mouth what he can’t quite get out in words yet. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against Sanji’s. “Yeah. Me too.”

Eventually Sanji exhales. “So. We tell the others. And Zeff. And maybe, if I don’t vomit first, we talk to somebody in law enforcement… if they’re not crooked assholes.”

Zoro nods. “Yeah.”

Sanji squints at him. “You enjoying how often you get to be right this morning?”

Zoro kisses him again for that. When the kiss ends, Sanji stays close, forehead resting against his for one quiet beat too long.

“Alright, Moss,” he says, with the smallest ghost of a smile. “Let’s figure this out.”

x

zoro: my bf doesn’t love me :( :(

sanji: frantically googling top 10 ways to avoid the love of your life getting shot