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Everything is perfect the day that Sanji's life as he knows it ends. It's warm, the sun is shining, and the breeze only blows hard enough to cool them down. Luffy and Usopp play volleyball with Zoro napping to the side as the world's worst referee. Franky is below deck working on some surprise alteration on the Thousand Sunny.
And, most importantly, Nami and Robin lounge together in the shade, allowing themselves to be doted on by Sanji.
"For you, Robin, tiramisu using that espresso you loved in Water 7," he says, and sets the dish on the table with a barely perceptible clink . Her name is written on the edge next to a cartoon bat drawn with a coffee syrup he made from reducing the leftover coffee with sugar and extra Grand Marnier. "With an iced Americano, just the way you like it."
"Thank you, Sanji," she says kindly, bookmarking her page and smiling up at him. Her undivided attention makes his heart flutter.
Nami's drink and dessert plate start to shake on their tray. He hooks his thumb over the edge to steady it with confusion, but it doesn't stop the shaking. The spoon on Robin's plate vibrates off the edge and into the dusting of cocoa powder.
"What on Earth," he mutters. Luffy spikes the volleyball over the net.
A crack of thunder explodes over the ship. A flash of purple lightning follows.
There's a man at the center of it. A sword in each hand, one clenched between his teeth. Three sword style? He glances at Zoro to see him awake and sitting at attention, one hand on the hilt of Wado Ichimonji and his gaze locked on the man above them.
He's twenty feet above the ship and a breath from their captain between one blink and the next, and it becomes a blur of instinct and reflex. Zoro bounds forward as Sanji sets down the tray holding Nami's food with practiced ease. Luffy's got his arm stretching back. Zoro's in front of him with two swords out. The man isn't slowing down, can't probably, but before he reaches them he…
Sheaths the two swords in his hands.
They clash with an ear splitting clang. The man's momentum alone makes Zoro slide backward an easy five feet. Deep trenches trail him. Sanji's breath catches at the thought of that man putting any force at all into the strike.
Zoro doesn't flinch, doesn't falter. He glares the man down.
The man with green hair falling over his forehead that he pushes back with a scarred, tan hand. With three swords at his hip and an open black coat that reveals a scar bisecting his torso. He looks from Zoro and to the man. Once. Twice. Then one more time.
This has to be a devil fruit user.
The man takes the sword from his mouth and sheathes it. His body language is inoffensive, but Sanji can't yet read him as a friend. Not with the power oozing from every inch of him. Not when he's wearing Zoro's face.
"How did I get here?" The man asks in a familiar voice, a tinge of confused desperation laced through his tone. Zoro blinks at him. His hands lower in his confusion, then raise again when he remembers himself.
" What? "
"Am I on the Thousand Sunny?" The man asks further, and turns his back to Zoro as he inspects the ship he's on. Zoro bristles at the disrespect.
"Hey! Don't turn your back on–"
"How the fuck did I get here?" He says again, quietly and to himself. He runs a hand through his hair, down his neck, around his jaw, and rubs his chin. From this angle Sanji can see another scar that's stolen his left eye, and three gold earrings hanging from his ear.
" Hey! " Zoro yells at him, and the man turns back to face him. He looks Zoro up and down and then rests his other hand over the hilts of his swords, clearly having sized Zoro up and found him a non threat. Sanji wonders if this was how everyone else felt to meet their crew, ignored and pissed off.
"Huh?" He asks, like it's an afterthought. Sanji can practically see the smoke coming out of Zoro's ears as the gears in his brain work overtime.
"What're you– who– you–"
"Who are you?" Sanji butts in, coming to stand next to Zoro. Closer now, it's clear that if this devil fruit user was trying to imitate Zoro, he must've gotten his wires crossed. He's old, with deep smile lines around his mouth and a wrinkle digging between his eyebrows. There's grey starting to infiltrate the green hair around his ears. The man looks Sanji up and down. His eyes are hard and unreadable.
He points to himself with his thumb.
"Roronoa Zoro," he says.
"No, I'm Roronoa Zoro," Zoro says from beside him. He sheaths one of his swords, but keeps Wado at the ready by his side.
"God, you're fucking stupid," Sanji breathes.
"Maybe it's Zoro's dad!" Luffy says from behind them, and Sanji can hear Usopp whisper so cool from the other side of the deck. Sanji pinches his nose in annoyance. He'll kill them all one day.
"No," he says, "this is clearly someone pretending to be the Mosshead." Zoro curls his lip at him.
"Then why is he old? " He sneers, jumping on the only flaw in Sanji's logic. The other Zoro grumbles i'm not that old as Sanji turns on his counterpart.
"Maybe because you're so slow they mistook you for a senile old fart." Zoro lets out a squawk of protest.
"I'll show you slow!" He shouts as he swings at Sanji, who blocks with the sole of his shoe. He grins, though his leg trembles from the effort it takes to meet Zoro's force. If he's not careful, Zoro will surpass him. The thought makes him grimace and throw his weight forward to make Zoro stagger.
"I bet you will!"
"Fuck you!"
"Fuck you! "
Sanji leaps into a front flip with his heel driving down to crack Zoro's head. Zoro side steps in the last moment and swings Wado in an arc to cut across Sanji's stomach. Sanji lowers himself from his hands to his elbows and tucks his knees to his chest to dodge it. The moment after the blade fwips over him he's back up, launching himself back up to standing. He aim's a kick for Zoro's gut, but Zoro darts out of the way just in time. Zero to zero, no points made for either of them. Sanji snarls.
Zoro inhales to throw out an insult, but is interrupted by a man walking through the space between them with a pen cap between his teeth and a clipboard in his hands.
"--them that if they don't like it they can eat my fucking cock on a plate for all I care!" He shouts, head bowed and full focus on the clipboard. His long blond hair is clipped back in a bun, but strands have fallen out and have either been left to hang down past his shoulders or been haphazardly tucked behind his ear.
"And you damn well better quote–" he looks to his side as if he expects someone to be trailing after him, and stops mid step when he realizes they aren't there. He looks up and meets Sanji's eyes, one of his own covered by a long bang. The uncovered eye widens, and above it, a curled eyebrow raises. He, too, looks older, with a close trimmed beard and lines around his eyes. His hot pink sleeves are rolled up past his elbows and his collar is open, just enough for Sanji to spot a thin gold chain. Another thing these fakers got wrong - Sanji isn't the type for jewelry, and certainly not gold.
"Are you supposed to be me?" They ask at the same time.
"First Zoro, now Sanji?" Usopp exclaims. "I better be next!"
"Zoro?" The other Sanji breathes, looking towards the sound of Usopp's voice and finding the other Zoro standing before him instead.
He doesn't move for a very long stretch of seconds.
Then the clipboard snaps in half under his grip.
" You, " he snarls.
"Oh, fuck." The other Zoro takes a step back. Unlike how he regarded Zoro and Sanji himself, his reaction to this other, older Sanji is laced with real concern. He hovers a hand over his swords.
The other Sanji casts his clipboard to the side and leaps across half the deck in one step. He takes his second step on the air itself, and his leg is already in flames when he aims a kick for the other Zoro's side with an enraged yell. Usopp sprints out of the way, skidding to a stop behind Luffy and watching from around his shoulder.
"What the hell is going on!?" Usopp asks.
"Devil fruit, maybe?" Zoro answers. The other Zoro blocks with a grunt, skidding like he'd done to the younger Zoro not ten minutes prior.
"There's two of them." The other Sanji is already building for another strike, pushing off the blade of the sword and bounding back towards him off of thin air once again. The flames are creeping up both legs now, licking his torso. The other Zoro doesn't raise his sword but to defend.
"Then there's gotta be a third controlling it," Sanji says.
"Wouldn't they be attacking us, though?" Luffy points out. "They're just trying to kill each other."
"It's probably a distraction. When we let our guards down they'll turn on us," Usopp says.
"Who do you think they'll pick off first?" Robin asks, lounging in her chair and cutting a spoonful of cake for herself.
"Don't make me think of that!" Usopp shouts.
" Three years! " The other Sanji yells. He sweeps a kick to the other Zoro's side and uses the force to power a second at the other Zoro's face. It hits a blade instead. "Not one word! In three! Years! " The other Zoro nearly throws him backward to keep him off for long enough to speak.
"I know I went about it the wrong way–"
His entire body explodes into flames.
"You went about it the wrong way? " He asks. "You didn't go about it at all! You vanished off the face of the fucking Earth! You could've fallen overboard for all I knew!"
"And how long did it take to fucking notice?" The other Zoro asks back, ice in his voice. "I've been with Luffy for two years, Cook. Not a god damn word."
"I've been busy! "
"Too busy to pick up a den den mushi? For two years!?"
"You– don't try to pin this back on me, Mosshead! I may be a shit friend, but at least I'm no coward! You left me, and you were too chickenshit to even say goodbye!"
Usopp's jaw drops, his mouth making a wide O as he sucks in a deep breath. The younger Zoro makes a strangled noise beside him. Luffy's laugh is low and giggly.
They're having a fucking lover's quarrel.
Six months. That was how long it took Sanji to stop sleeping on Zoro's side of the bed. One hundred and ninety-six mornings until he could muster the energy to rise from that side of the bed without Zeff yanking him out of it. It took another ten months to take the ring off his finger. Four hundred and ninety-six days of dragging around his stupid, broken heart.
Sometimes he's afraid it didn't leave him right in the head. He was truly, bone deep, sad, and the eighty hour work weeks and blunts and bottles of wine did nothing to cure him. He was terrified that Zoro leaving him was one tragedy too much, and this time he wasn't going to get back up.
But now, standing in front of him three years later, all he can feel is blind rage.
"Don't you dare call me a coward," Zoro says. "Leaving was the hardest thing I ever did."
Sanji hates how calm he looks. Hates that even so he can see how he's positively boiling underneath it, because he still knows him inside out.
He hates that Zoro isn't angry like he is, but broken down and hurting.
And all Sanji can think is how dare he, how dare he, how dare he.
How dare he be upset. How dare he act like leaving Sanji took courage. How dare the man he once thought of as the strongest in the world be so fucking weak as to destroy twenty years of love and work without having the balls to look him in the face as he did it.
"I should kill you," he says.
"I won't let you," is the answer. Not a challenge. A statement. A reminder, almost, that Zoro is the best in the world and Sanji can't take him, not really. Arrogant fucker.
" What happened!? " Comes the panicked cry from behind. Sanji turns, Zoro leans around.
Franky, thick fingers in his blue hair, observes the damage that he and Zoro enacted on his ship with despair.
Footstep shaped fires litter the grass. Deep skid marks and kicked up chunks of dirt mar the lawn with brown. Sanji cracked one of the railings when he kicked off of it. Zoro had sunken the floorboards ankle deep when he chose to take the force of an overhead strike rather than dodge.
Franky flits from damage spot to damage spot, becoming increasingly inconsolable until he can go on no longer, and falls to his knees.
"You maniacs! " He cries, and punches the floor. "This ship is a week old! Can't you last a week without blowing it up!?"
"Sorry, Franky," they say at once, while he laments and mutters damn you, damn you freaks to hell.
"Hey!" Luffy yells at them. He's so small, so young . Nothing like the man Sanji knows now, built thick with muscle and painted with scars. He'd almost forgotten that Luffy was small like that, once. He'd always seemed bigger than life. Like he could take the world and crush it in his fist if he wanted to. "Are you really Sanji and Zoro, or are you faking?"
"I'm real," Sanji says.
"Don't be stupid," Zoro says.
"See? They're not going to kill us!" He tells his crew, little just like him. Sanji can't help but huff a laugh as young Usopp and Sanji punch and kick him respectively, hollering they could just lie, dumbass!
"If you're really Zoro and Sanji, tell us something only they would know," Nami suggests. Sanji presses his lips together, parsing through memories. He grins when he decides on a suitably memorable and secret one, and beckons Sanji in close. He cups a hand between his mouth and the boy's ear and informs him of the summer fashion magazine he'd kept hidden under his mattress when he was fourteen, and his favorite page. It's a more recent, more embarrassing, memory for this young Sanji, and his face flushes red at the mention of it.
"He's real." His voice cracks as he says it. Young Zoro imitates him, exaggerating the crack in his voice, and Sanji watches the two fight with a clenching ache in his ribs.
Then it's Zoro's turn, and he takes Wado Ichimonji from his belt and hands it, scabbard and all, to the younger version of himself. He inspects the scabbard, kept clean and spotless through all these years. The ito has been replaced after thirty years of wear and tear, but this doesn't seem to phase the young Zoro who runs his thumb over the material and can tell by feel that it's been done right and with care. He unsheathes the sword an inch and raises it to the light. Polished, sharp. He pushes it back closed, and tosses it back to its owner.
"He's real," he says resolutely. The two nod to each other as the aged Zoro clips Wado back onto his belt.
"I told you," his Zoro says.
"What's it like being on the same crew as the King of the Pirates?" Luffy asks them, and Sanji grins with wonder. Not have i become king yet , not do i become king . There's not a shred of uncertainty that Luffy will, and that by Sanji and Zoro's time he already has. It reminds him of why he loved the kid in the first place.
"Fuckin' awesome," Zoro tells him, and roughly ruffles his hair. Luffy beams. He punches the air with a woop.
"Old Sanji! Make me something!"
"I'm not that old!" He scolds, kicking the back of his head.
The Straw Hats are always looking for a reason to party, and stumbling onto the time displaced versions of their friends seemed like as good of an excuse as any. The drinks flow easy, and the two Sanjis cycle between supplying food and sharing tricks that the younger Sanji hadn't learned yet or the elder Sanji had forgotten.
Zoro watches them with his heart as tight as a fist. He misses Sanji. He misses his laugh, the fire in his eyes, his strong legs and his soft hands. He misses the warmth of his back in the morning, the curl of his mouth when Zoro teased him.
He never stopped missing Sanji's presence. It's lonely without him.
But at the end it had been lonely with him, too. He's come to find that it's easier to miss someone that isn't there, rather than someone that is.
The younger Zoro comes to sit down next to him. He rests his forearm on his knee.
"I don't want to know anything," young Zoro says. He's more lean than Zoro remembers being. They're all smaller and more soft faced than he remembers, actually. The world had felt so fragile back then. It was easier to forget that they were just kids.
"Whatever you've been through, with Mihawk, or that thing between you and the Cook." Young Zoro reaches out and scratches Chopper behind the ear. He fell asleep in Zoro's lap with his head tucked into his chest thirty minutes ago, and Zoro hadn't moved since. "I don't want to know any of it. I don't want it to impact my decisions. I'm not going to take the easy way out of the lessons I need to learn."
He understands how Mihawk looked at him, now. The kid beside him is a stubborn ass. It's his own fault his life is so difficult, intent on learning the hard way and driving head first through brick walls. Counterintuitively it makes him strong in a way no one else is. It's what will make him the strongest one day.
If he can tell by a snatch of a conversation, he's sure Mihawk could too, the smug old bastard.
"Suit yourself," he says with a self satisfied smile. The younger raises an eyebrow.
"That's it? You're not going to insist on some deeply important life lesson?"
"You just said you didn't want me to."
"Yeah, well–"
"I'm still you, kid. Age doesn't change you that much." He thinks of how different he really is than this version of himself. Still a stubborn ass, if Nami has anything to say about it. "And if you're not stupid, then you'll have the same time to figure it out that I have." The young Zoro scoffs.
"Old people," he says, with disdain, as he stands.
"I'm not old, " he says, and sweeps a foot across young Zoro's ankles hard enough to send him face first into the ground without so much as jostling Chopper. "You're just fresh out of the womb." Young Zoro jumps up, insulted and ready to fight, but Zoro puts his hand on Choppers head and looks at him unimpressed. He may be old, but he's faster and more skilled. He could cut Zoro down, Chopper undisturbed, by the time it took his younger self to draw. Young Zoro's own head tilts to the side.
"Are your nails painted?"
Zoro hums and looks his hands over. Perona uses his nails as test strips for her own polish every time he visits. His pinky finger is grey, his ring finger is baby pink - which is very different from the taffy pink on his middle finger and the ballet slipper pink on his forefinger, she had insisted, despite him seeing no god damn difference - and his thumb is black because she'd gotten a new bottle from a new brand and apparently drying time was a factor in her experiments. His other hand is a mess of purple and green and orange, because she always said she was going to switch her base color scheme sometime but then never did.
He doesn't care either way. That's just what she told him. His thumb, forefinger, and middle finger are all different shades of purple, because he said it would be fitting on her complexion.
He still doesn't like her.
"Yeah," he says.
"Why?" Young Zoro says, lip curled in confusion.
"You'll find out," he answers. Young Zoro cracks a smile at that one. He shakes his head and tilts his personal bottle of sake to his lips, and rejoins his crew. Zoro pets his hand down Chopper's back. His stomach is starting to sweat from the shared body heat.
"Alright, big man, it's bedtime," he says, and gingerly rises to his feet. He idly scratches the back of Chopper's head as he walks him to his bed in the sickbay.
Chopper is the first to go, and the elder Zoro doesn't return without him. Usopp is soon to follow. Robin gives her farewells some time later, and her departure is like a cue for the party to end. The last standing are the two Sanjis and Zoro. Zoro lounges on the kitchen table while the Sanjis debate over chores.
"You can head to bed," Sanji tells his older counterpart. "I'm used to this."
"Are you sure? This'll take you all night by yourself." Dirty plates are stacked high on the kitchen table, leftover food still needs to be put away for the night, and bottles of liquor litter every flat surface. But the elder Sanji is yawning as he says it, arms stretched over his head, and the decision is already made.
"I'll help," Zoro says. He rolls his body weight forward, and it carries him to his feet. He drops his bottle of sake in the trash chute. "You wash, I dry, yeah?" Sanji hums his agreement and makes a performative gesture to the elder Sanji as if to say see, i've got all the help i need. It doesn't take more than that. The elder Sanji pulls a cigarette from his breast pocket, brown and thicker than what Sanji now smokes, and puts it between his lips.
"I'll see you crazy kids in the morning." He pushes the kitchen door open with his back. It swings back shut again, and the two men are left alone.
They work in silence. Sanji sets stacks of dirty plates on the counter to his right. He dunks them one by one in the soapy water, scrubs them clean, and dunks them one last time to wash off any lingering chunks of food. He hands them over to Zoro, who dunks them in the clean rinse water before he polishes them off with a dry rag and stacks them on his left. When they finish one stack, Sanji gathers another stack of dirty plates while Zoro stashes the clean ones.
They've gotten through three stacks when Sanji pauses to wash his hands clean and light a cigarette. Zoro leans his elbows on the counter while he does. He drags his fingers through the rinse water, back and forth, looping around, back and forth.
"So," Sanji says in that long, stretchy tone that people use when they're unsure of how to strike up a conversation. The smell of tobacco follows.
"So," Zoro parrots, to show he's listening.
"Me and you, huh?"
Zoro looks up at him from the corner of his eye. Sanji is fiddling with the roll of his sleeves, trying to get it perfectly straight and unwrinkled. He snorts a little laugh and nods.
Zoro and Sanji. If there's one thing he never could have seen coming, it's that. Sanji may be reliable in a fight, and fun to fuck with despite how irritating he is, but Zoro doesn't exactly like the guy. Maybe it's a relief to be around someone that plays into his antagonism and gives as good as they get, that he doesn't have to hold back with, but so what? It doesn't mean he ever looks at the Cook beyond the platonic. He doesn't chase after Sanji and needle him until he blows up so that he can have Sanji's attention, he does it because it's funny.
"Me and you." He looks out the window over the sink. It's well past midnight and there isn't much to see. The moonlight teases whitecaps and glimmering waves over the ocean, but that's about it.
"They're married," Sanji tells him, before Zoro can say that he really doesn't want to know. It's none of their business. "Or… they were. I dunno. It's fucking… bizarre ."
"Maybe they're from another universe where you're not a major prick," Zoro suggests. Sanji's lips twist, predictable in how he falls into Zoro's goading.
"Maybe they're from another universe where you're not a colossal dipshit," he fires back. Zoro knees him in the thigh, as solid as a brick wall. Sanji takes his cigarette between his thumb and middle finger and inspects it, eyes sad. "I always thought I'd marry a princess. I get you instead."
"Faggot," Zoro says, because something about the disgust in his voice is different, it hurts, and he doesn't want to think about it for longer than it takes to hurt him back. Sanji inhales sharply - he hates that word, and Zoro knows it. It doesn't mean anything to him. He wonders what it means to Sanji.
"Fa– You marry a man!"
"So do you!"
"Well, I–" He smashes the cigarette in the ashtray secured to the windowsill. His face is red and angry when he starts scrubbing plates again, lips pressed into a thin line. "You don't have any right to call me that," he says finally, voice sharp like a tripwire.
"It's just a word," Zoro answers. He's not going to apologize. They don't do that. Maybe they will when they get married.
"It doesn't change that it's cruel. It's wrong," he says, hands working furiously, "it's– just– don't. You don't call a man a faggot and you don't call a woman a whore and you– you're not going to call me that word." Zoro sighs as Sanji hands him the shining plate. He has an urge to tell him he missed a spot, but doesn't.
"I don't understand you," he says instead.
"I'm completely fine with that," Sanji says.
"Why him? " is how little Sanji pulls him from his hazy slumber, fully relaxed into his hammock and his blunt half burnt and dead between his fingers. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes with both hands.
"Huh?"
"The mosshead! Why would you ever marry someone like him!?" He taps his foot impatiently. One hand gestures off somewhere that Sanji doesn't follow, and the other runs through his hair. "He's an arrogant, brainless, heartless shitweed, and–!"
"Quiet down, you'll wake the others," Sanji warns, and the young Sanji looks up at him with a wide, imploring eye.
"I don't understand," he says. "Why him? It was supposed to be someone wonderful."
"It was," Sanji tells him. "You don't even–" he interrupts himself with a sigh. "What time is it?"
"A little after five," he says. Sanji looks up at the ceiling. He would've been up within the hour, anyways. He taps the ashes off the tip of his blunt and tucks it back into his breast pocket. In a practiced move he tips his body weight to the side, and the hammock dumps him onto his feet.
"Alright," he says. He scratches his head underneath his bun. "C'mon. I'll make coffee."
He leads Sanji back toward the galley with his hand on his shoulder.
Young Sanji takes a seat at the bar as Sanji sets the kettle on to boil. He scoops coffee into the filter on autopilot.
Why Zoro?
He hadn't asked that question in so long. Why Zoro– because it made sense. Because it happened to fall together that way. Because they were young and horny and touch starved and Zoro was just as lonely as Sanji was, even though he wouldn't admit it. Because Sanji's heart suffocates him and he isn't capable of screwing around. Because Zoro's heart is a blackhole that devours everything in sight and he was happy to take, and take, and take.
Because Zoro's heart isn't a blackhole, really, and every time he took, he gave. Sanji gave his affection and his heart and his food. Zoro gave his energy and his time and his body.
The kettle screams, and Sanji pulls it from the stove. He waits until the bottom stops rumbling before he pours the water over the grounds.
"Moss man took it too far, I'm guessing," he says, back to the young Sanji and watching coffee drip into the pot.
Young Sanji scoffs from behind him.
"I don't get him," he says. "He knows I hate that word, and he still uses it. He has no right to call me a– you know." He trails off. Sanji turns his head, and sees him scratching at a dried spot of curry on the counter.
"Fag?" He guesses. Young Sanji looks up with his eyebrows furrowed in anger. "He thinks it's a one way ticket under your skin. He doesn't know why you hate it."
"If he's supposed to be my husband, he should know." Sanji pours the coffee. Black. He prefers steamed milk and sugar, but always drank it black when he cooked for the Straw Hats. It stretched their resources.
"Let me stop you there," he says, and places his coffee in front of him. "That boy that you argued with is not your husband. Get that out of your head. He doesn't seem like the love of your life because he isn't yet. You're only nineteen. We…" he takes a big, burning sip from his own coffee.
They were meant to start fooling around any time now, actually. Sanji had kissed him after Thriller Bark. Overwhelmed at carrying his corpse, blood on his hands and iron in his nose. He watched that corpse cough back to life. Take its ragged first breaths. Zoro kissed him back.
don't tell anyone about… this.
about what?
"We weren't officially together for another two years. And we weren't married until we were twenty-five. That's six years from now - a long time for both of you to grow up." Young Sanji squints at him.
"What do you mean officially? "
"There was– it was–" Sanji shrugs and spins his cup. He's not embarrassed, but he also knows himself. His first time with his future life partner was supposed to be tender, romantic - sweet even . In reality, a half drunk Zoro had dragged his giggling self into a storage closet. Their pants hadn't come off, and the most romance he'd gotten was a wet smash of Zoro's lips on his before he slipped out the door. But he could still remember the glint of the light coming from under the door in Zoro's eyes when he'd looked up at him from his knees, and every time his own went weak.
"Do we hook up? " He whispers with horror. He runs his hands through his hair. "Why!?"
"Don't act all high and mighty, shithead," Sanji snaps back, "I'm you. I know that you've thought about it." He watches the young Sanji stumble over himself.
"I guess," he says, face getting more and more red with every passing second, "but I don't– I couldn't see it being more than, just… that."
"And you shouldn't have to," he says. "Truth is, kid, neither of you are ready to love each other yet. Love requires a level of emotional maturity and vulnerability that you do not have. It also necessitates understanding and respect, which you don't have towards each other - tonight being an example."
"I understand him plenty," Sanji says into his coffee cup. "I understand he's a moron that doesn't care about people's feelings."
"That's not true." He leans his elbows on the countertop. "If you look closely, my Mosshead has a scar right here." He touches his upper lip just to the side of his front teeth. "I got sick of being called a faggot all the time, and because i said so doesn't work to make the fucker do anything unless you're Luffy. So I told him that if he ever, ever called me a faggot again, I'd kick his fucking teeth in." Little Sanji's lips twist to hold back a smile. "And I did. He said it again, and I kicked him right in the mouth. I cut his lip in half. There was blood everywhere. And after Chopper stitched him up, he asked me what the hell my problem was. Why I was giving some dumb word so much power."
"What did you tell him?" Young Sanji asks.
"The truth."
Young Sanji grips his coffee cup with white fingers.
"I told him about our brothers, and how they called us a stupid, pathetic faggot when we were too weak to fight back. How the word brings back all those demeaning moments, and so is demeaning to me. I told him that no one else on this planet knew that about me except the people who'd done it. He's never once said it again." Little Sanji is looking at the countertop. His eyes aren't in the room. Sanji knows exactly where they are, and he reaches across the counter to grip young Sanji's shoulder to bring him back.
"He doesn't know what you went through, Sanji, he can't even imagine it. He was raised by people that respected him and wanted him to succeed. If you want him to acknowledge your scars, you'll have to show him that they exist in the first place. Love isn't all rose petals on heart shaped beds and feeding each other desserts," the young Sanji snorts at that, no doubt trying to imagine Zoro ever allowing him to spoon creme brulee into his mouth, "sometimes it's doing what seems hard and scary. Like letting someone know you instead of kicking their teeth in."
"If it was so great, what happened?" Young Sanji asks. It's not a cruel question, or, not meant to be. Sanji shrugs helplessly.
"I dunno. Everything was fine, and then… he was, uh, he was gone." He sinks his weight onto the counter. He presses his lower lip between his teeth with his thumb. "Whatever I did, I wish I could take it back, or fix it somehow."
There hadn't even been a fight. The one thing that kept him from thinking Zoro had just up and left him was that he could be just as explosive as Sanji when he wanted to be, and to be angry enough to leave him he should've destroyed the entire restaurant.
What hangs in his mind, though, is Zoro asking him how long it took to notice his absence. Obviously he'd noticed when he wasn't in bed with him that night, or when he woke up the next morning. But Zoro had his sleepless nights, and Sanji didn't have the time or the energy to worry when he was falling into bed at two and getting up at five-thirty. He was stuck in the kitchen from sunrise to sunset, a hastily eaten bowl of rice and sauteed mushrooms his only meal. The catnap he took during closing turned to waking up with Patty's coat over his shoulders the next morning and an ache in his neck from sleeping on a fifty pound bag of rice.
It was only then, when he'd gone back to their quarters to clean himself up for another long day, that he realized that Zoro's side of the bathroom sink was empty. No toothbrush, no toothpaste, no razor. Bottle of shampoo-conditioner-bodywash missing from the bath. Then his side of the wardrobe, too, cleared out.
Everything was gone.
And as he lowered himself to the edge of what was their bed, he realized he hadn't seen Zoro in two days, and hadn't even thought to check on him.
They'd argued about it before. i never see you. even when you're with me you're not here. you can't take one day off? usopp called - he misses you, everyone does, don't you miss them? i hope this dream of yours is worth it.
Sanji taps the countertop with his fingers, and wonders if he didn't get one last explosive fight because Zoro didn't leave out of anger.
Zoro had given up.
"That's not for you to worry about, Sanji," he says with a plastic smile. "We'll figure it out. Maybe. Probably." He clears his throat and pulls young Sanji's coffee cup towards himself. "You worry about getting some sleep."
"I need to make breakfast–" he starts to rise, but Sanji gives him a look that makes him sit back down.
"Go to bed," he says. "When was the last time you slept in?"
Zoro wakes facedown on the bed in the sickbay with Chopper shaking his arm, telling him it's time for breakfast. He scrubs the crust out of his eyes with his sleeve and follows him to the galley.
The chaos that hits him the moment he opens the door is nostalgic. Usopp and Luffy yell and bicker over something, Usopp holding his plate close to his chest and Luffy not allowing the argument to stop him from stuffing his face with french toast burritos - a Luffy invention made of bacon and breakfast sausages rolled in a slice of french toast.
Nami eats with her right hand and guards her food with the knife in her left. Robin makes Chopper a plate with two extra arms that rise from the table. She chases down bites of her quiche with sips of coffee.
The younger Zoro dumps another helping of eggs over his rice. An arm materializes from his shoulder and spoons the salad of sauteed zucchini, halved cherry tomatoes, and avocado onto his plate. He leans forward and glares at Robin, but pointedly shovels half of the vegetables she portioned for him into his mouth.
His Sanji stands to the side, taking the place of his younger counterpart. He leans hip against the counter and holds a slice of quiche in one hand and his coffee cup in the other. He's wearing one of his younger self's shirts, and the buttons are left open down to the middle of his chest to give his shoulders room to move. It shows off the thin gold chain around his neck.
The thin gold chain where a thin gold ring hangs.
His heart skips a beat. His fingers are nervous when he takes a plate like he's nineteen again. Sanji kept his ring. Zoro's own burns in his pocket.
"Yo, Zo-bro," Franky says in greeting, and slides the younger Zoro's body down the bench to the sound of loud dissent and porcelain as the young Zoro refuses to let go of his plate and drags it down the table with him. He pats the now empty space next to himself. "I gotta talk to you, man."
"Shoot," Zoro replies, and squeezes into the space. He loads up his plate as Franky pulls a blueprint out of his breast pocket.
"I'm calling it the homing cannon," he says, and unrolls it. "You and S-man get in here–" he points to the top of the long cylinder– "then I turn it on–" he points to something that looks suspiciously like a fuse– "and boom, you guys get shot off back to where you came from."
Zoro stares at the blueprint.
"I like it," he decides, after a pause.
"No–" Sanji interjects, one hand on Zoro and Franky's shoulders each– "that's just a normal cannon."
"But Zo-bro came from the sky, right, so I was thinking–"
"Can't hurt to try," Zoro adds.
"Well the one of us with a brain says it will, and I already said no before you got here."
"I didn't realize your opinion had so much more weight than mine. My bad for opening my mouth." The hand on his shoulder releases. The table falls suspiciously silent. Usopp pretends to keep cutting his toast as he watches them.
"You want your legs blown off, then? Fine by me. It's not my job to keep you in one piece anymore - you certainly made that clear." Franky looks back down at his plate with wide eyes and awkwardly shoves an entire slice of french toast in his mouth. Zoro rises to his full height, eyes level with Sanji and barely a breath's distance between them. Sanji doesn't take a step back.
"Don't think you can intimidate me, Roronoa," he says through his teeth. Behind him the younger Zoro shifts almost imperceptibly, still eating but one hand on Wado and one leg out of the bench. Nami, beside him, is completely shielded with his body. She stares at the scene over his shoulder.
On his Sunny, with his crew, he would've picked a fight. He knew they were strong enough to get out of the way or even stop them if they had to. But these kids weren't at his level yet. They couldn't handle what Zoro and Sanji could now do to each other.
So he picks up his plate and shoulders Sanji out of the way.
"Bring the plate back when you're done," Sanji calls back after him. He slams the door.
"You turn into a real d-bag, dude," Franky says from inside.
Zoro trots down the stairs. The crows nest is his destination. It is, as it always has been, his place to get some peace and quiet. Young Sanji is leaning against the railing at the bottom of the steps, enjoying a cigarette.
"Mornin'--"
"Word of advice," he says, not slowing down and not looking back, "never get fucking married."
"Uh… okay," he says confusedly.
Zoro climbs up the ladder and sits down next to the window with his plate in his lap. He takes deep breaths to quell his anger. He shouldn't even be angry, he scolds himself, he was the one that snapped at Sanji first. And Sanji had every right to hold the way he left over his head.
His breakfast is delicious and he hates it. He wishes he could be back in Mihawk's castle where everything was sliced too thin when Mihawk made it and over seasoned when Perona made it. Instead he has the world's fluffiest scrambled eggs and a vegetable salad with just the right amount of feta and balsamic to not overwhelm the natural flavors brought from the vegetables themselves, all over white rice. Protein and carbohydrates and vitamins - a perfectly balanced meal.
It's made with love, but not for him.
The door to the crow's nest knocks. Sanji's head peeks up and Zoro's blood freezes, but no. There's peach fuzz where there should be a beard, round cheeks still hiding the sharp bone underneath, and short styled hair. He doesn't fill out the shirt he's wearing, yet. It's the one that's more annoying but less painful to look at.
"Occupado," he says.
"I'm coming up anyways," he says, and Zoro huffs as he comes up the rest of the way and kicks the door closed with a deft hook of his foot. Zoro scoots back in his seat and crosses one ankle over his knee.
"No offense, but you're probably the last face on this planet I want to see."
"I heard," Sanji says. He cranks the window to crack it open with one hand while opening his pack of cigarettes with the other. "They're all calling Mosshead an asshole in there."
"You didn't stick around to join in? That's not like you." Sanji laughs as he sits.
"Maybe," he says, muffled by his lips pinching to hold his cigarette, hands cupped around the end. He blows the smoke out of the window when he gets it lit. "But I'm trying to build habits."
"Habits."
"Habits. Like looking after the guy you're married to." He raises his curled eyebrow, and Zoro frowns.
"We–" he gestures between them– "are not married."
"Why not?"
Zoro frowns even deeper. His stomach twists. He doesn't think about that. He hates thinking about it, so he doesn't.
"None of your business."
"The other Sanji made it seem like you guys made a pretty good team. It doesn't make sense to me why you'd just up and abandon what you had."
"Well, you don't know me. Sorry to tell you, but you've got a few years before that." Sanji narrows his eyes at him, and he pointedly eats some of his eggs.
"I know that Zoro hates justifying himself. I know he's a big, grumpy asshole that thinks his actions should speak for themselves, and would rather take the blame and look like a villain to his friends if they can't see the truth through them."
Well. He had him there. He keeps his eyes on his plate.
"Tell me what happened. It'll feel better to have somebody on this ship that understands, right?"
"Why are you so intent on this?" He asks. Smoke blows from Sanji's nose. He tucks his foot under himself and examines his nails.
"I dunno. I've just been thinking that right now I can't imagine being in love with the Mosshead of all people, but the other me talked about loving you like…" he shrugs. "Like it completely changed how he saw the world, y'know? And I want that."
"Then go make out with him and get it," Zoro says flatly, remembering how one second he'd been gasping for air, heart thudding in his stomach and pain in his everywhere , and the next he had lips crushing onto his and Sanji crying over him and everything had clicked into place. He'd wanted to marry Sanji right then. He never got the chance to ask, though. Sanji had beaten him to it.
"I meant the partnership, dumbass," Sanji answers, equally flat. "I'm saying, just– I don't want to go into it thinking that one day it'll all be over. Maybe if I know what made you leave, I can stop myself from making the same mistake."
If Zoro could pin point the exact moment his heart rips itself in half, it would be when he hears that last sentence.
Sanji is fighting for a relationship he doesn't even have yet.
What the hell happened? When had their breakfasts together turned to quick kisses that meant hello and goodbye all at once? When had Zoro gotten used to going to bed alone, eating alone, to being dismissed?
What had he done for Sanji to decide he just wasn't worth the fucking effort?
His vision is blurred over before he realizes that for the first time since he stuffed all his shit into a duffel and made for Mihawk's island, he's crying.
"Good Christ," he says, and rises to his feet to get away from Sanji's line of sight. This is what he gets for refusing to talk about why he left with anyone. Shrugging off concerned eyes and dismissing any attempts at bringing up Sanji for three years led to this - meeting his breaking point in a nineteen year old that just wanted to be loved.
He takes a deep breath through his nose and presses his fist over his eye. He is not going to cry in front of the younger version of his ex husband, he tells himself. It is simply not going to happen.
Sanji whistles.
"I didn't think you had it in you, Mosshead," he says.
"Eat shit and die, Cook," he answers on reflex. "I hate what you do to me," he says much quieter.
"Everybody's gotta confront their feelings sometime, y'know."
"I don't have feelings."
"Just allergies, then?"
Zoro turns on him with one fist raised, grief somehow taking a backseat to his annoyance, but falters at how stiff the lines of Sanji's body are despite his relaxed posture. His blue eye looks him up and down with concern.
"Please tell me," Sanji says. "I never want to make anybody feel like this."
He deflates. This sucks. He wants to curl up in a ball and be held like a child. He wants Luffy, his Luffy. He wants his other half to not hate him, and for him to not deserve it.
He sinks to the floor and leans his back against the bench Sanji sits on. He stares at the wall.
"It was dumb, is what it was," he decides. "Just a slow descent into nothing. Everyone was settling down - Ussop had his kids early, and Brooke went and found Laboon a long time ago. But then Robin wanted to start up a Library, and Franky went with her to go build it. Nami finished her map, so she started charting the weather patterns wherever Luffy dragged us to. We were the only ones that hadn't done anything new.
"He wanted his restaurant. I wanted to be wherever he was. So… we went. Took a year to build and staff. Everything was exactly how he wanted it." He picks at the threading on his coat. "That first year was tough, but we knew it would be. We made, y'know, an effort to stay a team. Tried not to fight over stupid shit, planned alone time.
"Then the damn place opened. He was terrified of something going wrong, so he tried to be there for all of it. Supply runs at four in the morning, cleaning the equipment after closing that night, and working lunch and dinner in between. He was burnt out within the month, but he refused to stop. He wouldn't ask for help from anybody, me or the old man. Said he didn't wanna trouble the geezer, and me, well– he didn't have the time to humor somebody that had no idea what they were talking about."
"Sheesh," Sanji says to his lighter as he lights up a second time. "Guessing that was a pretty epic fight." Zoro snorts, partly amused and partly furious at himself.
"Nope," he says. "I let it slide. Told myself he was just stressed. Eventually he'd realize he couldn't keep this up and take a break, and everything would go back to normal."
"And it didn't."
"Correct," he says. "The old man started taking on some of his workload by force some six months in. Stupid shit, like inventory and bills. It should've given him more free time, but it was like we'd fallen into a habit of being apart. I tried everything, kid, I'm almost embarrassed to say how badly I wanted him back. I woke up early, I went to bed late, I even tried picking fights. He acted like dealing with me was just another chore to worry about, no matter what I did. I don't even think he realized it, he was so worried about that stupid restaurant."
"When did you decide you'd had enough?" Sanji asks him, leaning forward in interest.
"Can't remember," he says honestly. "One morning I woke up and… I wished I could just die. I hated it. I felt like a burden. I felt alone. It was so fucking awful that it jarred me to reality. I asked myself who else alive could make me feel the way the Cook had been making me feel and walk away with their fucking head attached. Couldn't come up with anybody."
"You didn't try to talk to him?" Sanji asks. Zoro looks at him out of the corner of his eye.
"I'm going to tell you something that doesn't leave this room," he says. "None of this leaves this room, actually. Promise me that."
Sanji puts his cigarette between his lips and wordlessly crosses over his heart.
"The Cook is right. I was a coward. I didn't try to talk to him because I wanted so badly for him to beg me to stay. I told myself that I was scared of what I'd do to him if he didn't. That I'd kill him, or worse. The truth is that I was terrified of looking into his eyes and seeing the proof that I'd truly lost him. So I ran. Tail tucked between my legs like the pathetic coward I am. I've never felt so disgusted with myself in my life, but I couldn't, I…"
His chest feels carved out, empty. This shame has been a tight ball holding him upright for so long. He'd kept it safe with shrugged shoulders and gruff, one word dismissals from Mihawk's golden eyes and open ended statements that were actually invitations, saying and here i was thinking you'd last - i've always wondered what ended partnerships as strong as yours. Had pretended he hadn't heard when Nami said into her drink, i always pictured you guys turning into two old men bickering at each other, raising hell in a nursery home or something. i was so sure you'd be obnoxious together for the rest of our lives.
He'd been so humiliated at his own weakness that he couldn't admit it to anyone. So furious that he hadn't faced his loss like a man. How would Luffy, the man who trusted him to guard his back against the biggest threats of the world, react to hearing that his right hand had lowered himself so far?
And now, the vacuum of Sanji's silence allows him to say aloud, though his voice cracks–
"I could take anything but losing you, Sanji. I was so selfish; I gave you up instead."
Sanji's been acting weird all day and it doesn't concern him as much as it makes him curious. His older self hasn't come down from the crow's nest since breakfast. It's annoying. He wants to train, and the lack of exercise is putting him on edge. Stupid old men and their feelings - spending too much time with Sanji clearly fucks with his brain.
"I'm taking booze," he announces to the galley as he enters, and Sanji hums with his back to him. There's a steady chop chop chop chop as he opens the pantry and grabs the first bottle he sees.
"Not that one," Sanji says. He hadn't even looked up.
"You don't even know what bottle I have," he says.
"Hana," he says, and dumps the mushrooms he'd sliced into a collinder in the sink. "The fuji apple one." Zoro reads the label.
"Lucky guess."
"I've got plans for that. Put it back." He wipes his hands off on his apron and steps directly into Zoro's space to parse through the pantry himself, forcing Zoro to either take a step back or get a noseful of his flowery, fancy conditioner. He takes the step back, but he takes a deep breath as he does it.
It's a nice conditioner.
"You trying to pick a fight, or something?" He asks, and Sanji glances at him once from the corner of his eye and then does a double take, looking him up and down. His fingers are around the neck of one of the bottles, and when he lets go it rights itself with a little clink . He reaches further back in the shelf and pulls out a suspiciously nice looking bottle of sake. He sets it in Zoro's hand.
"This one," he says. "I'm trying to get rid of it."
Zoro looks at the bottle. The cap has been dipped in blue wax to keep it airtight. The label is hand written, though reprinted. It has a bow for god's sake. He's not that dumb.
"I'm not drinking this," he says, used to Nami's traps.
"Then you're not getting booze," Sanji answers. He closes the pantry, and slaps his open palm against the door when Zoro tries for the handle. Zoro narrows his eyes. Sanji raises his chin.
"Fine," he says.
"Fine," Sanji answers.
Zoro really needs this drink. His skin is crawling out of itself from restlessness. He eyes the bottle, and then looks back to Sanji. Sanji's going to ask him to play pack mule at their next island or something. It can't be that bad. Not compared to the gross tension of the air from every direction, which will be gracefully muted once he gets this bottle of very nice alcohol in his bloodstream.
He's not that dumb, he tells himself as he tugs on the bow. He just likes to play odds. The ribbon opens the wax seal as he unties it. He cracks open the bottle, and immediately gets a waft of fresh, delicate fruit. Plums, maybe.
He might've just fucked himself.
Zoro lifts the bottle to his lips and takes a sip.
Christ alive it's delicious. Silky in his mouth and fragrant like fresh fruit, but less syrupy sweet than the real thing. He thinks that Nami let him try a bite of a fruit tart Sanji had made her once, and the aftertaste was something like this.
"Good?" Sanji asks innocently, and returns to his cutting board.
"It's fine," he lies.
"Well," he says, and deseeds a pepper as he does, "since you've gotten your grubby mouth germs all over my finest bottle of sake–"
"God dammit–"
"You owe it to me to help me with something."
It's alright, Zoro knew this was coming. He takes another long, long sip.
"Name your price," he says.
"We're going to get us back together," Sanji declares. Zoro watches him with his lips pressed together. He sets the bottle down on the counter.
"Nope."
"What!?"
"That's too much, pick something else."
"You told me to name my price. I named. Now pay up."
"We have no business fixing their marriage. You're a weirdo, I'm a dick, we grew apart and hate each other, too bad. Everything dies, even love, and our love is dead." Sanji sets his knife down on the cutting board and turns on him with something troublingly hopeful in his eyes.
"That's the thing, I don't think they hate each other. There's still love there, I can feel it."
" No ," Zoro says, discomforted at his own discomfort. The idea of him and the Cook is… it's weird. It makes his chest all fluttery and it's uncomfortable and strange, and he's much more comfortable looking at two men who can barely stand each other than the idea of those same men being, what, in love? Of looking unabashedly and holding and kissing and– he must be allergic to something in this wine because his face is burning hot. "I don't want to."
"Why don't you?"
"Why do you!?"
"Because they had something beautiful!" Sanji shouts, and Zoro leans back in surprise. "Love is something extraordinary and beautiful, and I had it. I had it , okay?" He holds his hands out and flexes his fingers like he's presenting something heavy and precious. "And I took it for granted and I lost it, and I can't let that happen. I need to fix it."
Zoro looks at Sanji. His eye is blazing and posture is wide. Why did he have to be so damn passionate about everything?
"It really means that much to you?" He asks.
"Yes," Sanji breathes. "It fucking does. And for the record, I'm sorry it's me. But, fuck it, there's a chance that we have something special one day. And if my head is too far up my ass to fight for it twenty years from now, then I'm going to fight for it today. Alright?"
Zoro's heart is pounding.
This is stupid. He is stupid.
"You're stupid," he says. "But I'll do it for the sake."
Operation get sanji and mosshead together no don't call me mosshead in our plan fine how about numbskull yeah numbskull and zoro oh screw you yeah you wish let's fucking go then was in order.
Who was he kidding. This was a nightmare.
"I've already got old you to trust me," he says, and puts the black king next to the white knight. "And obviously I trust myself, but he's going to suspect me too easily. So you're going to have to get old me to trust you." He slides the white king to the black rook.
"Why am I the rook? That's a dumb piece."
"Because I said so. Did you hear anything that I said?" Zoro waves his hand.
"I've gotta seduce you or something."
" No, " Sanji says, and chops his hand between the white king and black rook. "No seducing. Trusting."
"Seduction requires trust," Zoro negs, with a toothy smirk. Sanji sets his heel on the tabletop. "Fine. I've gotta befriend old you, or whatever. How do I do that?"
"Talk about… cooking. Or something."
"I don't know anything about cooking."
"I know you don't know anything about cooking!" Sanji snaps, hands raised to strangle him. He wishes he married someone that didn't get under his fucking skin so badly. Like Nami, who gave him nothing but happiness. Instead, one day he'll be head over heels for the only person that made him want to break his vow to never enact violence with his hands.
Sanji massages his temples. This was going to be harder than he thought.
"Just… do whatever you do when you're trying to get people to like you."
Zoro scoffs. He crosses his arms and leans back in his seat.
"Sorry, Cook, but I don't try to get people to like me. Unlike you, I'm not pathetic enough to beg for attention."
Telling him will achieve nothing, he tells himself. Telling him that he was willing to grovel for Sanji's attention will do nothing but start a fight. He doesn't have to say it. Oh, he wants to. The look on his face could keep him going for a week.
"You…" it takes actual effort to stop himself, "just. Wait here." He rises to stand, and wonders if taking his chair and breaking it over Zoro's head counts. Maybe he could kick it. No.
He parses through his own books on the bookshelf. Him and Zoro have to share a shelf, because Zoro owns about ten books total and Sanji is the only one that didn't fill up an entire wall with his own collection. North Blue classics (a thick hardback), delicacies in the West Blue (a browning paperback), fruits of the world (a thin but tall encyclopedia), shared cultures and co-evolution, an all blue hypothesis (a stapled together essay). He knew he's gotten to the end of his collection when he finds the art of war (a paperback the size of Sanji's hand with a spine so worn it was taped). He flips through a cookbook titled how the east blue changed cuisine, and other recipes.
"Here," he says, and hands the book to Zoro on an open page. Zoro takes the book and squints at it.
"What the hell is a piss-takio?"
"It's pistachio you dimwit," Sanji says. "Ask him to teach you how to make it."
"This shit makes my head hurt," he says. He runs his hand through his hair, back and forth, then comes to a stop at the base of his neck.
"I could read it to you," Sanji suggests, and the look Zoro shoots up at him is black.
"I just don't understand why I gotta care about cooking. That's your thing."
"Exactly. It shows him that you're interested in what he's interested in. Tell him you wanna surprise me or something. Then you're thoughtful, too."
Zoro gags.
"Oh, sorry. Being thoughtful would suggest you have thoughts. My mistake."
"Y'know, just because we're getting married, it doesn't mean you have to be on my dick all the time." Zoro runs his thumb over the page number, committing it to memory, and snaps the book shut. He points at Sanji with it. "I'll make your stupid piss-taco financials. But the next thing is my idea."
"Pistachio financiers. It's pronounced–"
The door slams shut.
The cookies turn out lovely. The elder Sanji isn't suspicious at all, but that might be because Zoro spent their time together completely focused on the recipe and never once brought up his older self or their marriage. Cooking is, after all, Sanji's thing and not his.
Sanji sits side by side Zoro on the grassy deck of the Sunny and shares misshapen, delicate, perfectly crisp pistachio financiers. They're the perfect compliment to a black tea he'd gotten in Alabasta, and he shares that too. He doesn't share the knowledge that Zoro has a swipe of flour on his cheek, because something about it disrupts the sharpness of his face into something more human and youthful.
"Your turn, Mossy."
"I'll brainstorm with a nap," Zoro says through a yawn. He interlaces his fingers behind his head and sinks into a comfortable position. Once he finds it, he closes his eyes and hums. "Get back to you in thirty."
"You have zero sense of urgency, you know that?"
Zoro snores, face relaxed. Sanji glowers at him and kicks his calf to no response.
"There's no way you fell asleep that fast," he grumbles to himself, and catches a little smile out of the corner of his eye. Bastard.
"Sanji?" Comes Nami's voice from behind, and he cranes his neck to smile at her.
"Yes, my love?" He asks.
"We're about a day out from the next island. Could you check our inventory so I can get your allowance together?"
"Of course, Nami-sweet," he coos. "You're so prepared and thoughtful." Something that sounds akin to loser sneaks between Zoro's snores. Sanji slams his heel square in his stomach, but he must've seen it coming because his abdominals are tensed and it's like he kicked the Sunny's mast.
"I have my idea," Zoro says, and locks his arm around Sanji's ankle before he can draw back.
"Oh really?"
Zoro grunts and nods his affirmative. Sanji tugs for his leg back but isn't granted it. He blinks in confusion as Zoro starts to lean in, his free hand on Sanji's hip.
"You're not gonna like it," he promises with a sadistic grin, and then his grip on Sanji's slacks clamps down tight and Sanji is shouting as Zoro plants his feet on the deck, arches his back, and throws him over his head.
He realizes Zoro's little plan is not going to end well for him when Zoro presses his own allowance into Sanji's hand in front of the entire crew and says, "Go ahead and keep it, Cook, cause I'm not paying for a single drink tonight."
"You're not that cute," Sanji says, and Zoro rolls his shoulders to stretch them.
"It's called a hustle, Curly. Watch and learn."
He teams up with Nami, which should be cheating. Zoro leans over her at the pool table, hand gently guiding her elbow as she blinks her doe eyes up at him and acts like she hadn't once pocketed half the rack on a break. He stands to the side as she breaks the rack just enough to get a few of the pool balls rolling away. She waves her hand sheepishly, like that's the best she can do, and he taps her arm in encouragement with his knuckles before he takes his turn.
Zoro beats her on that round by a landslide. He beats her a second time as Sanji orders himself a red wine. It's closer, that time, with Zoro only one ball ahead when he sinks the eight ball.
The third time, Nami wins by the skin of her teeth as they both battle for the eight ball. A skeezy looking man with fluffy, curly hair and a thick gauge septum ring saddles up to them.
"You're pretty good, honey," he tells her.
"Beginners luck," she giggles into her hand, and Zoro rests his hand on the nape of her neck and tells her something about how she shouldn't be so hard on herself. Sanji curls his lip at that.
"Here it comes," the elder Zoro says from beside him, and takes a sip of his whiskey neat.
" Let me put you on to a little tradition, " the elder Sanji says in time with the skeeze hanging around the pool table. The elder Zoro snorts and glances behind Sanji's back to grin at his former husband. He's got his hair down tonight, falling over his shoulders in loose blond curls, and when he grins back he tucks a strand behind his ear.
"We like to play with stakes around here," he says. "How does fifty berries sound?"
Nami looks up at Zoro, who shrugs. The elder Zoro laughs around the rim of his glass as the elder Sanji glowers at him.
"It's up to you, babe," Zoro says. He barely spares Sanji a glance as the wine glass shatters in his hand. He promises himself he'd knock out a tooth for that little stunt, even if they were pretending. Nami is so much more than a babe. She's a flower, a goddess, the sun itself. Babe. What a–
"Alright," Nami says with a nod. "It'll just be this round, though. I get competitive."
The skeeze grins like it's his birthday.
"Sure thing."
Nami loses. She groans at the ceiling, and Zoro comforts her with an arm around her shoulders.
"Alright," she said. "How about a hundred? Then I'll stop."
"Nami…" Zoro warns, and she waves him off.
"I'll just try to break even. If I lose it… I'll just owe you." She winks at him. She winks. She never looked at Sanji like that. Zoro's nostrils flare with discomfort, even as he tries to laugh it off.
"What're they doing?" Sanji asks his older self, half curious and half miserable.
"Hustling," the elder Sanji sighs. "They're not as good at it as they'll get to be."
"Me n' Nami could've gotten him to a thousand berries already," the elder Zoro says with pride.
Nami and Zoro, at the pool table, don't get to a thousand berries at all. They get to four hundred and decide not to push their luck. Nami clears the table in half the time of their last rounds. She even skips the cue ball over his to pocket the eight as he watches with horror at the realization that he'd been had.
Nami smirks as the berries are shelled out into her hand, hip cocked and leaning on the pool table. That's the Nami that Sanji knows. Confident, assured, and standing with Zoro at a respectful two feet of distance.
"Fucking sharks," the skeeze says as he slaps the last bill into Nami's hand with a little too much force to be just disrespectful. Zoro flexes his crossed arms as he takes a step closer. His muscles strain the fabric of his shirt, and the skeeze looks him up and down before he makes the correct assumption that challenging Zoro isn't worth the ass beating.
"One for you, and three for me," Nami says as they come back to join their friends. Zoro crinkles the bills under Sanji's nose before he motions to the bartender with it. Sanji kicks him in the knee.
"Weak," the elder Zoro says.
"Says the broke old man," Zoro taunts. "You couldn't get that much if you had all night."
The older one downs his drink and sets it on the bartop. Sanji looks between the two men, then back to his older self. He's looking at his ex husband with a fond smile.
"Feel free to take notes, toddler," he says and crosses the bar to single out Usopp of all people. He sits across from him, elbow on the table and hand raised.
"You really think you could beat me, the Great Captain Usopp, in an arm wrestling match?" Usopp declares to the entire bar. He slams his own bony elbow down on the table and flexes. Even so, two of his arms were the size of one of Zoro's.
He's big, Sanji realizes as he accepts the shot Zoro pushes into his hand. Not that he hadn't known, he wasn't oblivious. Even at their age Zoro was all thick ropes of muscle and hard lines, but it always seemed so normal. Zoro faced down opponents twice his size in battle and threw around weights the size of Sanji's oven for light training. He had to be built like a brick shithouse, he didn't have another option if he wanted to survive. But he never watched Zoro in these moments of normalcy where he was twice Usopp's size in width alone. Where it was clear that Zoro, albeit twenty years older and the world's greatest, could crush the lanky fingers held in his hand.
His mouth is dry, and he takes the shot to remedy it.
Older Zoro lets Usopp win with enough effort to draw attention. He shakes out his arm, cracks his neck, and leans in for a second round.
"I was just getting warmed up," he tells him.
"Oh, whatever! Just admit you're nothing but a small fry compared to me, Usopp!"
The elder Zoro glares at him, and Usopp presents his hand again with a shy smile.
"Two hundred berries the kid beats his ass!" the elder Sanji shouts from behind his hand. Zoro raises his eyebrows at him as the bartender takes the bill from between his fingers and slides two more shots to him.
"Oh please, this guy's huge! No way he loses again!"
"Are you joking? That's the great captain Usopp!"
"You don't even know who that is!"
"Three hundred on the kid!" Nami shouts from the other side of the bar.
"Nah, I'm all for the green haired guy. No way that scrawny kid can beat him."
"Four hundred on the green haired guy!" One of the patrons shout.
"How long did it take you to get to four hundred berries, again?" Sanji asks Zoro, who pauses in handing another shot to him and instead dumps both of the shots in his hands into his mouth at once.
It's at six hundred on Usopp and eight hundred on the older Zoro when they start. Usopp pushes his entire body weight against Zoro's arm, red in the face and sweating. Zoro flexes his bicep and grimaces to make it look like he's trying at all.
Finally, he slams Usopp's hand down on the table as half the bar cheers. Even the older Sanji whistles with his fingers between his lips, as silly as it is.
"Man, I get strong," Zoro says. He's ordered another round already, and shoots his own back as he hands the other glass to Sanji. "Kinda feel bad for you," he tells him.
"Excuse you?" Both Sanji's say, the elder Sanji's tone significantly darker. Zoro flicks the shot glass into the center of the bar counter.
"My older self is a bad ass," Zoro says simply.
"And I'm not?" the older Sanji asks.
"You said it, not me," Zoro answers.
"Fuck you, Mosshead! That's me!" Sanji snaps. He shoves Zoro's shoulder. Zoro pops him in the stomach.
"And you can't take me," Zoro says as Sanji tips forward. He steadies him with a hand on his forearm.
"I could fucking take him," the older Sanji says. "You think I couldn't take him? We've been on the same level for decades! You don't know what you're talking about!"
"You couldn't get a hit in on the Sunny," Zoro says. "And he wasn't even trying." The older Sanji sets his wine glass down on the table and rolls up his sleeve.
"I am just as strong as he is," the elder Sanji says. He starts on his second sleeve. "I could take him. And you better watch your mouth, 'cause I could certainly take you. "
"I'd hope so, you've had twenty years to catch up," Zoro goads him. The older Sanji's nostrils flare in annoyance.
"You're saying I'm not at your level now ?" Sanji demands. "I could rip you limb from limb!" Zoro grips his elbow, hard , and gives him a warning look.
"This is a matter of honor," the elder Sanji tells himself, glaring all the while at the Zoro that's currently still sitting at the table racking up berries by drunkards willing to pay for a chance to arm wrestle him. He snatches Zoro's last bill from his hand and stalks towards the table.
The older Sanji slides into the chair across from his Zoro. He presents the bill before he throws it down between them and raises his hand in challenge.
The older Zoro looks him up and down, licks his lips, and the same look that Sanji's own Zoro gets in his eyes before a spar passes over his face. Eyes dark and overjoyed, grinning wide with teeth bared. He takes Sanji's hand in his.
Sanji sees them count down together, and Zoro is the one who mouths go.
At first, there's no movement, other than the rock hard tension showing how much effort they're putting in. Older Sanji grits his teeth. He looks up from their hands to say something that Sanji can't hear from the distance, but whatever it is makes older Zoro huff a little laugh. Their hands shake in their position as he slackens his grip for a millisecond.
"Can't believe it worked," Zoro says beside him, and Sanji tears his eyes from the two older men to his friend.
"You planned this?" He asks.
"I'm not an idiot," he answers with his nose in the air. Then, "it was mostly Nami." Sanji goes back to watching their older selves. Older Zoro is winning, their arms at a forty-five degree angle, but they're both laughing and their eyes are shining. Older Sanji grips the edge of the table for leverage and starts pulling. He sees older Zoro say something about cheating.
"How'd you know this would work?" Sanji asks. Zoro shrugs. He plays with his empty shot glass.
"Figured I should get 'em competing," he says. He flips the glass end over end in his fingers. "'Cause it's my favorite thing about… us. So it'll sort of remind them of what they had, or something. I dunno." He shrugs again, head down, and something mischievous lights in Sanji's stomach as he sees the red burning Zoro's ears.
Was he being bashful, of all things?
Roronoa Zoro, blushing over admitting he actually enjoyed their rivalry. It was quite the sight.
"Well, you certainly had it right," he says, and leans into his space until their arms are pressed together. The glare Zoro passes towards them is negated by the flush of his cheeks. "Who knew you could be such a romantic?"
"Fuck off," Zoro says, without any heat to it.
"No," Sanji answers. He motions to the bartender with the allowance Nami gave him. "You're gonna let me buy you a drink."
"Why?" He asks. The bartender is pouring them another shot, and he doesn't realize until it's pushed towards him that this'd be three shots in about twenty minutes with no food or water in between and when this inevitably hits him all at once he might actually die.
"You're doing this for the booze, yeah?" Sanji says. He taps his glass against Zoro's. "Take my payment as thanks."
"Not gonna turn it down," Zoro says, and his shot is already down the hatch and back on the counter by the time Sanji has willed himself to take his own drink.
The table cracks under older Sanji's hand, and older Zoro laughs so hard that Sanji slams his hand down on the table with a horribly loud slap. He continues to laugh as his Sanji jumps from his seat and hoots.
"We're kinda cute together," Sanji says. The older Zoro is looking up at his ex husband with a heartbreaking fondness in his eyes as the elder Sanji aggressively mimes him shoving it.
"If you're into that," Zoro says beside him. Sanji bodily shoves his shoulder.
"Into what, actually enjoying someone's company?" He smiles as the elder Sanji pulls his counterpart to his feet and they make for the bar. "Look at his eyes, man. Old me's got that Moss heart in his hands like a little bird. You're just scared of being that vulnerable to somebody."
"I'm not scared of anything," Zoro says, and punches him hard in the shoulder. Sanji's body moves from the hit, but he could've hit him through a pillow for how much he felt it. Maybe he was more tipsy than he thought.
"You're scared of losing me," Sanji says, lips curled upward and taunting. "He told me so." Zoro turns to face him.
"That's him. Don't get it twisted, Cook– just cause they're all mushy it doesn't mean I gotta give a shit about you."
Sanji presses his lips together. A part of him knows that isn't true - Zoro gives him far too much attention to be indifferent. But he says it with so much intensity that his rapidly decaying mental faculties are completely convinced.
And it shouldn't fucking hurt that bad, it's Zoro. He should be glad that Zoro doesn't give one fuck about him, because a week ago he would've thrown his hands up in the air and declared good, he better not! at the mere idea. But god, he really wants to be in love. He wants to be in love so badly it feels like it could suffocate him. The knowledge of a guaranteed true love is the carrot dangling in front of his face, and Zoro refusing to care is like having it snatched away when he reaches for it.
"I was just teasing," he defends softly.
Their older selves come up from behind. A stack of bills is set between them by the oblivious older Zoro.
"Next round's on me," he tells them. Zoro, his Zoro, waves the bartender over. He buys all four of them two shots each.
Taking them is the last thing Sanji remembers.
"I don't think I've ever seen you this drunk," someone says right next to him. Zoro can only bob his wet noodle head. Something warm is pressed against his cheek, his stomach, wrapping around his thigh. He opens his eyes, and the pebbled ground whizzes past far too quickly for him to keep his eyes open. He groans miserably.
"'Cause you'd always be blacked out by the time I was," comes his own voice. "Actually, I'm surprised you're still standing."
The warmth underneath him rumbles with laughter.
"If you leaving me did nothing else, it built up an alcohol tolerance," the voice says. It sounds a lot like Sanji, but rougher. He wonders where Sanji is, but can't will himself to actually look. He's tired of thinking about the guy all the time, anyways.
"I'm sorry," his voice says gently.
It's fucking stupid. This whole scenario is fucking stupid. He doesn't want to be Sanji's husband, he doesn't want to be anybody's husband. And sure, Sanji was nice to look at with his big blue eyes and defined nose and long, long legs. And maybe Sanji pushed him in ways that not even Luffy could because no one was so neck and neck with him like Sanji was. Their constant competition kept him from getting restless - or worse, complacent - and it was good for him. He could even admit that it was fun.
That didn't mean he loved him. It didn't mean he ever had to love him. But apparently he would. And now, thanks to Sanji's insistence on the matter, he can't stop thinking about it.
Should he love Sanji? Does he already, and he just doesn't know?
His stomach turns, and drops, and for a millisecond he's terrified that it's his body's way of telling him that was the truth.
Then his throat clenches, and hot bile starts coming up.
"Wait– fuck, he's gonna throw up," is Sanji's voice, and then he's being shifted and his hands are clenching into rough gravel and dirt as he empties the contents of his stomach. "There you go, love," Sanji's voice comforts, and there's a hand rubbing between his shoulder blades. He's too drunk to think about how nobody's touched him like this since he was a child. He does anyway.
Zoro's torso relaxes for long enough to suck in a breath before it's clenching tight and stomach acid and alcohol are burning his throat again. He doesn't know how long it goes on for, couldn't even measure it. He lost track of how many bottles he'd had.
"'m sorry," he forces out between violent dry heaves.
"Don't worry, kid," Sanji's voice says, "it's what I signed up for." Zoro spits onto the ground, his body trembling. "Remember when you ate that rotten sea king meat?" He doesn't. He's not the one being spoken to.
"That was Luffy's idea."
"You still did it. You threw up so much, I thought you were gonna die. I stayed up with you all night, getting you water and shit. You didn't want Chopper to know, cause he'd be mad at you."
"I remember you being mad at me."
"Oh, I was furious ," Sanji laughs. "But I didn't mind, really. I was grateful you let me take care of you. You've always been so strong… sometimes it felt like you didn't need me at all." His fingers card through Zoro's hair. "I guess I ended up being right, in a way."
Another uncomfortable silence. Zoro graciously fills it with another fit of heaves. Dirt cakes his fingernails as he claws at the ground.
"I always thought it was the opposite," his own voice says. Something settles down on the ground next to him. "I felt like a big muscle headed idiot, trailing after the best chef in the world. And at the end, it seemed like everything I did pissed you off. I couldn't get anything right, couldn't make you happy to save my life."
The hand in Zoro's hair stops moving.
"I really made you feel that way?"
"Yeah." A cleared throat. "It wasn't that I left because I didn't need you. I left 'cause, y'know, I didn't… I didn't want to hear you say you didn't need me. I don't think I could've… I don't know how I'd keep living after that."
"I'd say it was shitty for you to put me through it instead, but I get it. I had no idea what I had until I lost it." The hand moves back down, rubbing back and forth across his shoulders. "I was so… everyone else had achieved their dream by the time I even started. You were the greatest in the world, Luffy was pirate king, and I was building a restaurant hoping it would work out. I was so scared I'd fuck it all up like I always do."
"You could've asked for help."
"I thought it'd… cheapen it. Everyone else got to where they were on their own, and–"
"Are you kidding? Luffy would've died decades ago if it weren't for us. He said himself that he could never have gotten as far as he did without his nakama. I never would've become the greatest if I hadn't I begged Mihawk on my fucking knees to become my mentor. Don't ever say that shit. It's not about getting there all by yourself. It's about getting there at all."
A sigh. The fingers move back up to scratch his scalp at the base of his neck. He spits again, but snot is persistent on his upper lip.
"I know. I know that rationally. But it– it feels like–" a thump as something makes contact with clothed skin– "like I needed to prove myself. I needed to do it on my own. It was my dream, and I kept telling myself it was my chance to show I wasn't dead weight. Not being able to figure it out myself would've made me…"
"Weak?"
"Yeah."
"You're stupid then. And fuck you, also."
"Fuck off."
His earrings clink in his ear as they're fiddled with.
"I'm sorry. I should've known better. Zeff told me after you left that he saw it coming. He said he saw you getting sick of my shit, that you would only put up with so much." A snort. "He still hates you for it, though."
"Bastard never liked me in the first place."
"Please. That old bag is obsessed with you."
"I'm glad you had him." A little hm.
"Are you finished, kiddo?" Sanji asks him. Zoro takes in a breath, then another. He smooths his hands over the rough ground.
"Think so," he mutters. Something wipes over his mouth and nose.
"Alright. Let's get you back to the ship," Sanji says through a grunt as he throws Zoro's arm over one shoulder and tucks his other into his hip, "and into bed." There's a pressure on Zoro's torso, and then he's fully hanging off Sanji's shoulders.
Sanji is warm, and his shoulder is firm against Zoro's cheek. He takes a deep breath and relaxes into the hold. He's drunk and limp enough that when he tucks his chin up over Sanji's shoulder and presses in to soak up a little more of that warmth, he does so with confidence that Sanji will ignore him.
"You used to be so cute," Sanji whispers as he gently lays the snoring young Zoro in his bed. He tugs off his boots one by one and sets them on the ground, then pulls the bed covers out from under him and gets to work tucking him in. When he glances up, he sees his Zoro sitting on young Sanji's bed dutifully untying his shoes. He holds young Sanji's ankle and removes the shoe by the heel to avoid needless creases in the leather, and there's so much care in the action that Sanji can no longer move.
"Me? Look at you." He lifts young Sanji's leg to show off socks covered in cartoon baby chickens with frying pan helmets and eggs with little chicken legs sticking out of them. He sets young Sanji's legs back down on the bed and throws the covers over him.
They go through their nightly routines in silence. Zoro hangs his hammock while Sanji brushes his teeth, and then they switch. Zoro shrugs off his coat and tosses it over the couch. Sanji's eyes follow his back as he unties his own shoes. He unbuttons his shirt. His hands start to shake as he feels Zoro's eyes on him.
Zoro takes calm, measured steps towards him. His hand reaches out. He touches his fingers to the chain around his neck. Sanji bites his lip as he hooks his forefinger into the gold ring hanging there.
"Why d'you wear it, still?" He asks him softly. He's watching the ring as he rolls it over his finger.
"I dunno," Sanji answers honestly. He's watching Zoro's eye as it analyzes him. "Reminds me of you, I guess." That eye looks up, and his soul itself feels laid bare. He doesn't look away.
"Don't you want to forget about me?" he asks further. Sanji covers Zoro's hand with his own when he traces the shape of his knuckles.
"You're my husband," is his reply.
Zoro takes in a breath from between barely parted lips. His other hand comes to rest at the side of Sanji's neck. He rubs his jaw with this thumb. He's so close, painfully so, and when he touches his forehead to Sanji's his chest explodes. He hasn't had this in so long. He couldn't even remember how it had felt, then, but the touch is so familiar it hurts.
"Sanji," he whispers. His fingers curl at the back of his neck. Sanji's eyes fall closed. He touches a tentative hand to Zoro's bare hip.
"Please kiss me," he begs, so quietly, terrified of asking for too much and shattering whatever thin tendril of peace finally bridges them.
All of his breath swoops out of him through his nose when Zoro tilts his head and touches their lips together.
Warm and dry and pliant, Sanji almost whimpers at the feeling. He reaches up to hold Zoro's cheek, to touch his fingers over his eyebrow, to trace the shell of his ear. He kisses Zoro again, and again, and again.
His heart thuds in his throat and it's whole.
Sanji wakes with a shirt from twenty years ago still hanging on his arm. He scrubs his eyes and feels for the solid weight that should be next to him, but there is none.
Familiar dread yanks his stomach down as he shoots up to a sitting position, only to find himself alone in his own bedroom, in his own bed, looking at a porthole that shines grey light over the floor.
It wasn't a dream. It had to be. It couldn't be. Sanji massages his shoulder and it aches. He cranes his neck to find a dark bite mark exactly where Zoro left it.
He jerks his other arm through his shirt sleeve and runs out of his bedroom, shirt still unbuttoned.
" Sanji? " Carne calls after him as he rushes past. "Where have you been, squirt?"
"Don't worry about it!" He shouts back, bellowing corner! before he swings into a turn. He darts through the server's alley, the quickest way to his office, and Zeff catches him through the window.
"Sanji! You've been M.I.A. for two days! If you don't come do your job right now, I'll–"
"Well you survived, so I'm sure you can manage to not burn down my restaurant for fifteen more minutes!"
A slam, Patty's laughter, and then Sanji is wrenching open his office door and damn near tackling the den den mushi on his desk.
He breathes heavy from his run. He holds the receiver to his mouth as he dials the number. It rings, and rings, and–
"Hello?" Comes Zoro's gruff voice, thick with sleep. He exhales a tight sob.
"Moss man," he says. There's the sound of rustling as Zoro goes through the same process Sanji had only minutes earlier.
"Cook–"
"Pack your shit," he interrupts. He swallows a thick lump in his throat and wipes his sleeve under his nose. "It's time to come back home." Zoro breathes on the other end. Sanji clenches his ring in his fist.
"I'll be there by morning."