Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i. how to break your rival’s heart in one step or less without even knowing it

In Nami’s complete defense, she didn’t wake up that day realizing that life was going to sucker punch her in the face, because when you’re a college student who signs up for an 8:00 AM class, you kind of assume that life is going to sucker punch you in the face regardless. 

Case in point: it is 7:00 AM and Nami is considering manslaughter. This in and of itself is nothing new or exciting because she switches between body-gripping homicidal rage or deep-seated stress that veers dangerously toward nihilism on a daily basis. Every day, she reminds herself that college is a voluntary institution, and every day, she thinks about her crippling college debt.

Above her the fire alarm shrieks, as if someone had taken a cat and shoved it into a blender. It’s exactly how Luffy is going to sound when she gets her hands on him. 

Luffy lives in the apartment across from her with his roommate, Zoro. For all that Zoro acts as a part-time gym rat, part-time babysitter for Luffy, he is woefully inept in everything else that doesn’t include weights, kendo, and competitive drinking.

This means that neither of them knows how to cook and that the fire alarm goes off more often than anyone in this housing complex gets laid. 

Nami reaches for her bag, shoving last night’s cartography assignment into her folder. After a moment’s consideration, she kicks last night’s clothes into the hamper leaving only seven articles of clothing scattered on the floor instead of eight, and stumbles into the living area where she and Usopp blink blearily at each other.

Robin, the last of the holy trinity making up the “common sense” unit,  is already seated at their small dining table with her legs crossed, sipping her morning tea and typing away at her graduate thesis. Something about archeology? Sociology? Something-ology. It’s too early for this. 

Nami grabs a Valley Nature granola bar and a piece of plain bread. Usopp’s breakfast this morning consists of pouring cereal directly from the bag into his mouth, then drinking coffee to wash it down. Nami’s sure that Robin lives off of like, tea and sunflower seeds or whatever elegant people eat. 

As long as Sanji, their complex’s de facto nutritionist, doesn’t see them, it’s fine. The sleep-deprived burnt-out culinary student above them dangles on the precipice of committing arson out of pure spite on the daily, and their eating habits might send him over the edge. 

Normally, Nami condones violence, but this is a situation she’s hoping to avoid as none of the residents here can afford rent elsewhere. (Except Zoro, but he’s finally honed his internal compass to this address so having him move would destroy years of work.)

The morning passes by in a blur. “Heading out now,” Nami mumbles, flapping her hand vaguely in Robin’s general direction.

“Have fun at school,” Robin calls after her, extraordinarily gracefully. Her face is a picture of tranquility. It reminds Nami of the grace of a rich widow whose husband just mysteriously passed due to unusual circumstances. “Remember to play nice with the other kids and don’t do drugs in public.”

It’s nothing out of the ordinary, and therefore, she isn’t ready for the deck to the face that is finding out that Zoro is dating Hiyori. 

#

The Thousand Sunny has a total of ten occupants and four apartment units. Six of the ten are undergraduates at New World University. The first floor of The Thousand Sunny is a parking garage. On the second floor, there’s Nami, Usopp, and Robin, who make up what is affectionately dubbed the “common fucking sense” unit. 

Usopp, bless his soul, is the worst compulsive liar Nami’s ever met in her life, but he’s a mechanical engineering major so it makes sense that he has problematic coping mechanisms. 

Nami’s studying Geography with a minor in Accounting and suffers a penny-pinching compulsion so bad that it makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like Oprah. 

The last of the trio, Robin, is pursuing her Ph.D. in archeology which is fine, but also has dubious ties to the mafia which is less fine.

All in all, they’re the most put together in The Thousand Sunny, meaning the bar is so low that the Mariana Trench might as well be Everest. 

Across the hall from them are Luffy and Zoro, who defy nature simply by being alive. No one’s seen Luffy eat a single thing besides meat, and by all accounts, he should have been dead from scurvy.

 Zoro, on the other hand, should be dead from a couple of things, which include, but are not limited to: liver failure, the huge-ass knife wound bisecting his chest, and his shitty sense of direction which once led him into a literal drug den on the Southside of town. 

The knife wound and the drug den are unrelated incidents. 

Living above Nami, Usopp, and Robin are Sanji, the aforementioned chef, and Chopper, a freshman pre-med student. 

Chopper, besides being the youngest, has reluctantly taken on the position of The Thousand Sunny’s underground doctor, since not only are most of them broke, they’re also uninsured and can’t afford trivial things like hospital medical fees.  

The last unit on the third floor has three people: Franky the landlord, Jinbe the biology professor, and Brook, a music professor with an annoying tendency to play jazz at four in the morning on Sunday. 

Nami doesn’t have classes with Jinbe and Brook, but they seem nice, like they would listen if Nami needed help. Jinbe’s supervising a research fellowship overseas now, so he’s MIA for the most part, given the time zone differences. Neither faculty member calls the cops when it’s obvious that one of the kids has hotboxed their apartment, which makes them good in Nami’s books. 

Franky, their landlord does maintenance, but he has a tendency to not only fix the thing that’s broken but add ten different completely unnecessary additions to it. For example, they can now boil water on top of their toilet tank. 

On the crime board that Nami created one night when she was drunk out of her mind on shitty bottom-shelf box wine, she tried to map out everyone’s relationships because honestly, they’re all really weird people. Chopper has a little brother dynamic with Zoro, and Usopp has one with Sanji. Robin has a weird kind of flirtationship going on with Franky. Everyone loves Luffy. 

When she got to Sanji and Zoro, though, she paused. Sanji and Zoro get on like the ocean and the BP oil spill, bickering and swearing at each other like sailors every time they meet instead of saying hello like normal people. They’ve hit it off in the most technical sense, as in they hit each other occasionally with their fists. 

Their fights have led to rants that probably qualify as public education. Nami’s learned what motherfucker and green and stupid fucking dipshit are in French all from eavesdropping on Sanji muttering under his breath. That’s more than Duolingo’s ever been able to hammer into her brain.

For a long time, Nami had a running bet with Usopp on whether or not Zoro and Sanji’s relationship was charged with bloodlust or plain lust. 

Usopp insisted that Sanji was a capital s Simp for women and capital h Hostile toward Zoro. And yeah, Sanji does spoil women, and he does call her mellorine in that soft crooning way of his, but Nami knows casual flirting, and she knows flirting when someone actually wants something, and Sanji never wants anything back. 

That just makes Nami's heart sore because fuck it, maybe Sanji deserves good things, alright? Maybe she’s tired of watching him act as the human embodiment of The Giving Tree.

Zoro gives as good as he gets. The two of them act like homicidal Tom and Jerry, except neither of them are smart enough to be Jerry and both of them would rather kiss a cactus than avoid an opportunity to go at their strange alpha male sizing up ritual. Disaster attracts disaster. It makes sense why the two orbit around each other. 

The notecard she was going to pin to their string was labeled “belligerent sexual tension”, but the back of her mind itches as if tapping her on the shoulder to say "are you sure?" As if she’s seeing but not actually looking.  

She pins it anyway. The board is still shoved underneath her bed, collecting dust, and as she later learns, very outdated. 

#

“What?” They’re standing on the balcony of a random mansion. Behind them, a house party rages, and someone runs into the wall of glass paneling with a thud. 

“I’m in love with Zoro,” Sanji tells her. It will be two years before they start not-really dating and three months after she’s created her crime board.  Sanji’s surprisingly matter of fact about it, as if he’s making a comment about the weather. There’s no grim set of his lips, no unhappiness, but he’s certainly not going to be skipping in fields of dandelions anytime soon either. “Or at least I think I am.”

Usopp owes her twenty dollars but Nami’s more focused on the boy leaning against the railing than her monetary glee. A part of Nami already knew, she thinks.

It wasn’t even subtle, the way that Sanji’s eyes would linger on Zoro, able to pick him out in the crowd, or the way that he often set out to fetch Zoro when he got lost, albeit not without complaining about it. The way the fights weren’t really fights at all, but a conversation, a dance of a sort.

An opportunity to be close to one another.

Nami’s stomach sinks to the floor, because Nami knows that look in Sanji’s eyes, has seen it too many times in her own, back before Luffy, Sanji, Zoro, and Usopp fought off Arlong and his loan sharks that constantly circled her in her youth.

It’s tired acceptance. The worst kind.

“Yeah? Are you going to tell him?” 

Sanji hums, hands reaching for his pockets for a cigarette. His lighter flicks, once, twice, before he lights the end of his cancer stick, and breathes in. “Nah,” he says, exhaling. “What good is it going to do? Things are fine the way they are.”

“First of all, you’re going to kill yourself smoking. Quit already. Second, Zoro wouldn’t—he’s good, Sanji. He’s not going to stomp on your feelings, even if he is built like a goddamn brick house.” 

Everyone in their group of friends knows this. That beneath his scarred chest and stern steely gaze, Zoro has a kind heart, and loyalty etched into his bones. It’s disgusting how good he is deep down. Thinking about it makes Nami want to yak in one of those expensive rose bushes. 

“I know.” Another drag. His blank mask chips at the edges. “If I knew this was going to happen, I would have asked you to put me out of my misery a year ago. Maybe you can do it now. We’re on the fourth-floor balcony, after all. A single shove should do it.”

The blank indifference cracks into despair.  “The mosshead. Christ.”

He removes the cigarette from his lips and stamps out the ember with his shoe. “Is he attracted to anything beside booze and kendo?” 

“I guess there’s no accounting for taste,” Nami says, elbowing him into the side, and that coaxes a laugh from Sanji. 

“What does that say about you? Oh, mellorine , don’t put yourself down like that. You are, of course, a goddess incomparable, a shining—”

Nami snorts and swats his arm. “So, you want to talk about it? How are you feeling?” 

“I’m fine,” Sanji deadpans after considering her question. “Although if you’d asked me when I first realized a couple of days ago, I was ready to fistfight God. Out of all the people it could have been, it had to be a muscle-headed idiot with a death wish and impending liver failure. Once again, why couldn’t it have been you, or even the lovely Robin?” 

“It could be worse,” she tries to console him. “At least Zoro’s not terrible to look at.” 

“There is that,” Sanji concedes. “I just—” Oh, there’s the soft longing again. The way that Sanji’s face gentles makes him seem younger than his twenty-one years. 

Then the expression shatters, hardening to something more hollow. His hands clench and unclench, reaching for another cigarette. 

“He doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t like me, so it would only cause unnecessary drama. We all live in the same housing complex, so our mess would become everyone else’s. There’s no need for that.” 

“You don’t know that,” Nami insists. Fuck, are emotions hard. She kind of understands why Zoro has been lobbying against them since he popped out of the womb.  “I mean, we all know Zoro likes people based on their personality, so it’s not like the two of you are completely out there.” It’s a little out there, but it’s more Mars instead of Neptune, per se. 

“Alright. Even if what you were saying was true, the point is that he doesn’t like my personality,” Sanji counters. “If I gave him the opportunity, he’d run me over with a car, then reverse it to hit me a second time. He tolerates me because Luffy likes me.”

He pauses. Then quieter: “I don’t blame him. I can be a pain in the ass occasionally.” 

You can’t seriously think that, Nami thinks, but honestly, it’s hard to recall any memories that point to camaraderie, much less love, at least from Zoro to Sanji. She knows that Zoro likes Sanji, sees him as part of the family that they’ve created in The Thousand Sunny, but she doesn’t have the evidence she needs to reassure Sanji. 

Besides, the day that Zoro says something remotely close to “I care dearly for you,” is the day that the world gets sucked into a black hole or pigs start flying into airplane jets. 

Zoro’s always been an action speak louder than words kind of guy, letting Chopper fuss over him after his kendo matches, or painstakingly quizzing Usopp concepts for hours before midterms.

Unfortunately, Sanji is the kind of person who needs people to grab him by the shoulders and just yell all his doubts away with a couple of words. Zoro is good with the grabbing and the bluntness. Less so with emotional anything, much less vulnerability. 

Alas, therein lies the problem. 

“I don’t think that’s true,” she says firmly anyway. “But if you’re not going to tell him, that’s up to you. Hey, if you do tell him and he’s a dick about it, I’ll curb stomp him into the cement myself.”

“Not to doubt your curb-stomping ability, Nami darling, and but Zoro most definitely has the body-weight advan—“

“—and by the way, your whole thing about dragging us into your mess is absolute bullshit. We’re friends. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Yeah,” Sanji deflates a little, teasing and flattery tempering down to a close-lipped smile. “I’m going to hold you to that, you know.”

“Not too much, I hope. I do not need you singing praises about Zoro’s six-pack abs or his pecs—”

He sputters. “As if I would sing anything about that fucking mosshead—”

“—would, don’t lie to me, because you—”

“—have nothing in loathing for my heart for that—“

Now, that’s more in character. She was tired of seeing him so pensive, so unsure. While he’s ranting, she raises her beer bottle, she presses the cold glass to his head. He freezes in mid-insult. “Cool down your head, yet?” 

This time, his smile touches his eyes. With the purple glow of the lights behind them, he looks ethereal. “Yes. Thank you, Nami.”

Still, because deep down, Sanji’s stupid when it comes to his own happiness, he keeps his silence, too hesitant to shatter whatever delicate thing they have hanging in the balance.

And two years later, Zoro is none the wiser. 

#

Once Nami knows, she starts seeing all the little moments that she hadn’t noticed earlier. Surprisingly, Sanji and Zoro aren’t always trying to tear each other’s throats out. In between, there are small blips in time, where she wants to tell Sanji that it might work out. 

.

There’s the quiet way that they wash and dry dishes together, standing close enough that their shoulders are almost touching. Sneaking by the kitchen door, she catches snatches of their conversation, about the professors, about Sanji’s new recipes he’s experimenting with, or Zoro’s upcoming kendo tournaments. 

“...and I’m thinking of calling it All Blue, but property and rent these days is absolutely insane…”  

.

Another: At a beach campfire, sitting across the flames, one arm slung around Luffy, she notices the two of them off to the side, watching over the rest of The Thousand Sunny. Sanji reaches for another cigarette, four or five butts already littered in the sand around him. 

With a casualness that shocks her, she watches Zoro catch his arm, and pluck the unlit cigarette from his fingers. Through the flicks of fire, she sees Sanji roll his eyes, and put back the cig into the carton. 

“...enough for today, don’t you think, shit-cook?”

“Are you my mother?” Sanji drawls without malice, voice barely heard over the crash of the waves, the crackle of the bonfire, and the laughter surrounding them. 

“Fuck no,” Zoro growls, and Sanji chuckles, taking another sip of his beer. He offers his bottle to Zoro, who places down his own empty beer beside him, and gratefully takes a swig of Sanji’s. 

“Sweet of you to care, though. You sure that you didn’t hit your head anywhere?” Nami tunes them out before they start bickering again. 

 .

Another: Nami’s standing outside of their complex, staring up at the stars. It’s late out, and the sun has long set behind the mountains, but she’s looking for Orion’s Belt. It’s been a long time since she’s seen it, and she misses it. When she was younger, she used to look for it together with Bellemere.  

“ Mellorine ?” 

“Sanji, what the—it’s one in the morning!” 

It’s at that moment when she notices Zoro standing behind him, looking resolutely anywhere but her. “Yes, well—” Sanji drags a tired hand through his hair. “The resident plant-life over here got lost on his way back from his kendo tournament, and then, surprise of all surprises, his car breaks down before he can get on the highway.”

Nami stares hard at Zoro, who looks up, to the side, and down at the ground. “Your tournament was a two-hour drive away.” 

“Yep,” Sanji says dryly. “It was. Except when you can’t follow a GPS, you end up four hours away instead of two.” 

“It’s a Wednesday,” Nami says slowly, like she’s talking to a small child. She knows his schedule inside out—they’ve all sent them in their group chat—and today was not an easy day for him. “Sanji, you’ve been in the kitchen since five this morning.”

Zoro wheels on him. “You didn’t mention that,” he accuses. “What the fuck? You shoulda told me when I called you—” 

Sanji waves him off, despite looking like he crawled out of a Doomsday bunker. “We need you on Luffy duty. Don’t say I didn’t do anything for you.” He sniffs. “Take a shower. Don’t need you stinking up the complex too. Might have to air out my car, now that I think about it.”

Zoro flips him off when he stalks back into the house, but if Nami notices him voluntarily taking on grocery shop pack mule duty, or putting up less of a fight when he’s been selected for Sanji’s random taste testing, she keeps it to herself. 

Give and take. Give and take. They fit together, in a strange clunky way. Challenge each other, help each other strive for new heights. They could be something, which is why when it all comes crashing down, Nami inexplicably aches.  

#

The domino blocks fall on a Monday morning, which is fitting. The only thing missing is a little rain and a depressing K-pop ballad and they’d be golden. 

Zoro slides into the seat beside her in their STAT 201 class and passes her a cup of black coffee like clockwork. It’s not Starbucks because Zoro is drawn to supporting local businesses without even realizing his aversion towards conglomerates, while Nami is a proud slave to consumer capitalism, but free coffee is free coffee.

“You’re ten minutes late.” At this point, she says it so consistently that she does it without thinking.

Zoro slumps down in his seat, far too relaxed in his forest green hoodie and army patterned cargo pants for a 10:00 AM class, and peers at her with one open eye. “It’s math.”

Normally, when people say “It’s math,” they spit it out with venom. Zoro, for some reason, says it in the I already know this and this comes naturally to me sort of way because God has forsaken him in nearly everything else besides the ability to count. 

Nami rolls her eyes and squints at her notes. Because she does not give a single shit about statistics until 48 hours prior to any exam, she can’t read her own notes, nor can she muster up the energy to care. 

Beside her, Zoro’s phone pings. Then pings again. Then again. 

The teacher pauses, eyes flickering in their direction. It’s clearly permission for Nami to kick Zoro in the shins which she does with more than a little glee. 

“Ow?” he says, but silences his phone, raising a hand in apology toward the professor. 

“Is that Perona?” Nami asks. 

Zoro’s father might be a DILF vampire living in a castle, but his sister Perona live laugh loves being a pastel goth and has a pretty good gig in Los Angeles hosting and organizing music concerts and EDM raves. Her favorite pastime, as Zoro has constantly complained about, is annoying the shit out of her little brother. 

The whole family setup makes Zoro seem normal, even with his green hair, insane One Punch Man gym workout, and weird obsession for kendo. 

At least Nami can justify the kendo addiction with Zoro’s status as a student-athlete and his qualifications in the World Kendo Championship. What is she supposed to say about the fact that she’s 99% sure she saw Zoro’s dad sleeping in a literal coffin? 

“Nope.” He checks his phone. “Hiyori.” 

The scalding hot coffee goes down the wrong pipe, and Nami tries to stifle her coughs. “What?” 

“She wants to grab dinner on Friday.” Zoro shrugs like it’s no big deal, when Nami knows deep down it’s a really big deal. 

“Like…as friends?” she asks, mind immediately flying to Sanji. Maybe this can all be saved. It could be a misunderstanding, except Hiyori kind of sort of maybe has had the biggest crush on Zoro since the day he saved her from a stalker like he was Edward Cullen and she was Bella Swan. 

“Um,” Zoro says. “I actually don’t know.” 

“How do you not know?” Nami demands. When the teacher glares at them, Nami mutters out of the side of her mouth: “We are talking about this later.” 

“Whatever, witch,” he mumbles. 

If Nami couldn’t concentrate before, she sure can’t concentrate now. She imagines Sanji finding out, the way his smile will fade behind his carefully crafted mask of distance, and how he’ll pour more time in the kitchen than humanly healthy. 

She desperately wants to sock Zoro in the face, but that would be doing Sanji a disservice. He deserves something nice to look at after the shit that may or may not go down. 

#

The moment the class is dismissed, Nami pounces on Zoro, who looks ready to sprint for the door. The uneasy look in his eyes reminds Nami of a hunted animal, which she relishes in deeply. Maybe she should talk to a therapist about that. 

“Spill,” she demands. “Don’t leave out a single detail or I will end you.” 

“You, your stick arms, and whose army?” he grumbles, but slows his pace to match hers, even if it means that he has to take smaller steps. 

Once or twice, he begins turning on the relatively straight road through their campus because Jesus, of course he does, but Nami grabs his arm each time, and pulls him back in the right direction.  

“I know people in the IRS, you dick. Do not test me because they will be on your tax-evading ass like Luffy on a KBBQ platter.”

“I pay all of my taxes!” he protests. 

“Correction: I pay all of your taxes. I do everyone’s taxes except Robin’s, and I can damn well mess them up and sic the Feds on you. Now. Spill.”  

“Not sure what you want from me,” he grouches. “Hiyori and I have been talking a bit after the whole stalking incident, and now she wants to grab dinner together. That’s it.” 

The itty bitty problem that Nami overlooked was that prying a story from Zoro was like pulling teeth, if the teeth were dipped in cement instead of human gums and the operation was done in the dark. “Okay, what did you talk about?”

“This and that. Normal stuff.”

“Oh my god.” She nearly throws her hands in the air. For Sanji’s sake, she presses on, but he’s going to owe her for this. “Based on the context of your conversations,” she says slowly. “Is this a date, or not?” 

He raises an eyebrow at her, looking out at her from the corner of his eye. “Even if it were, what’s it matter to you?”

It’s not about me, idiot, she wants to say. Don’t you get it? But part of her understands that Sanji trusts her with a secret that he holds dear to him, so she presses her lips together and says with a little more irritation seeping into her voice than necessary, “I need to know whether or not you’ll be kicking Luffy out more often and if we have to take on the role of housing him for the night.”

Zoro stares at her. An emotion that Nami can’t place her finger on swims in his gray eyes, before his phone pings again. 

“What is this about?” He demands, ignoring the text. “You’re acting strange.” 

“And you’re withholding information!” 

“Look,” Zoro says, stopping in his tracks, scuffing his combat boots on the cobblestone pathway, and holding her gaze. “It’s complicated. It is a date, but we aren’t dating.” 

The fight leaves Nami’s body, cutting her loose like a puppet. The confirmation leaves her cold, down to her bones, and seeps deeper still, to the marrow, but Sanji isn’t dating Zoro, and as much as she wants to see Sanji happy, she also wants to see Zoro happy. Besides, Sanji’s so good at hiding the most important parts of him that it’s hard to pin Zoro for being oblivious. It’s a hard life when your boys are stupid. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Baratie,” he says. “Sanji’s dad’s place.” Holy shit, way to kick a man when he's down. 

“Fancy,” Nami notes. “They have a dress code and everything. Can your wallet afford it?” 

“It could if you weren’t always adding money to my debt,” Zoro responds. His phone pings again. This time, he fishes it out of his pocket and shoots off a response immediately. Nami purses her lips. 

Even when they tag him in the group chat, Zoro’s response rate ranges from one to three hours. It’s easier to literally find him and tell him whatever they want to tell him in person than to try to contact him on his fancy paperweight of a smartphone. 

“You must really like her.” 

“She’s pretty great, yeah.” He slides his phone into his pocket. “Let’s get lunch. I’m starving.”

“You’re treating,” Nami commands, head swimming in a haze of emotions. 

Lunch with Zoro is a quiet affair. Normally, she talks his ear off and he grunts and makes little comments here and there when it’s appropriate. 

This time, there’s far too much to think about, and if Zoro notices that Nami’s more in her head, he doesn’t comment on it. 

He heads off to kendo, and her to her next class, when her own phone chimes happily with the ringtone that she set for their group chat: a hearty shishishi. Luffy’s laughter. 

strawhat pirates

usopp: what’s this i hear about hiyori and zoro 

full disclosure this is not a lie heard it from one of hiyori’s friends in my mech e class i swear on my senior project

 

robin: Oh? How interesting. Care to elaborate? @zoro

 

franky: wait, rlly? thats SUPER, bro! get some! 

 

nami: he’s going on a date at the baratie friday night

 

robin: That’s lovely. I’m sure Sanji is willing to give some pointers with the dress code, isn’t that right? @sanji 

 

chopper: yay! congrats @zoro! 

 

luffy: hehehehe remember to bring home leftovers @zoro 

There’s no message from Sanji, probably still in the kitchen flambulating and sauteing or whatever they do in culinary school. 

Regardless, Sanji tends to respond pretty quickly, within ten minutes, but as the time ticks by, there’s only radio silence from his end.

usopp: hey nami

usopp has sent you a Venmo request for $20

usopp: but more seriously how’s sanji taking it

 

nami: what are you talking about

 

usopp: bruh

i mean, have u seen the way that he looks at zoro sometimes 

should i pick up alcohol for friday im at safeway

what does sanji like to drink

actually should i get him what he likes to drink or what will get him wasted quicker

 

nami: wdym “have u seen the way that he looks at zoro sometimes”

what the hell you literally bet in the name of heteronormativity??? the fuck?

 

usopp: yeah that was in the beginning when sanji was still all ~mellorine~ and ~robin darling~

now i’m realized yeah kinda but also not really

 

nami: bisexual. the word you’re looking for is bisexual 

he likes whiskey but grab some vodka too

and everclear if he really wants to get fucked up as like a plan z

A soft shishishi breaks her thoughts, and she swipes over to the group chat.

strawhat pirates

sanji: Yeah, sure. I’ll help the mosshead look presentable and talk to the old man about a friend’s discount or something.

What time is the reservation?

 

zoro: forget it i dont wanna be on dish duty for the next 7 months asshat

 

sanji: Consider this congratulatory present on the house. 

Nami waits patiently for a follow-up quip from Sanji, about having to help a hopeless mosshead keep a girl, or something equally as inflammatory, but the chat remains eerily silent.

usopp: okay sanji is unnerving me that’s not a good sign

loading up on whiskey and vodka rn

ii. how to prove that dating is a social construct while under the influence

“What the hell is cocktail attire?” 

“It’s the opposite of whatever—” Sanji gestures in disdain in Zoro’s general direction. “—you have going on over.” 

“I think it’s like actually a thing,” Usopp says from where he’s sitting next to Nami on their beat-up old couch that they found near the dumpster on move-in day. 

It’s the four of them, with the others still at university or the library, and Luffy off doing who knows what. Maybe he’s at McDonald’s. Maybe he’s off exploring the archives. It’s a secret between him and God. 

“Like Zoro’s style is a legit fashion trend.” He scrunches his nose, before snapping his fingers. “Hypebeast. That’s it.” 

“Heathen, more like,” Sanji corrects. “You want a tie?” He doesn’t even glance at Zoro, digging through a drawer. “Nevermind. Shut your mouth. I don’t care.” He pauses through his rummaging, finally sparing Zoro a look. “Do you…do you own a tie?”

“Yeah.” Zoro drops beside Nami, sinking against the squashy couch. “I was ten. Wore it for a funeral, then lost it.” 

“Charming,” Sanji mutters. He sounds no more bitter than he usually does, but he holds himself more carefully, cautious to conform to their expectations of SanjiTM. “It can’t be helped. You’ll have to wear one of mine.” 

“Or you could tell your dad to relax his dress code,” Zoro suggests.

“See,” Sanji muses, tuning out Zoro for the tenth time today. “This would be so much easier if you didn’t have green hair. Now we actually have to care about the color scheme. Purple is regal which you absolutely aren’t and it clashes—Aha!” He yanks out a dark emerald green tie. 

“Here, wear this, you lout. You do know how, right?” 

“‘Course, I do,” Zoro says, yanking away the tie. 

No one moves. 

Nami raises an expectant eyebrow. 

Then Usopp says slowly, “you don’t, huh.” 

Sanji opens his mouth, then clicks it shut. “Nothing Youtube won’t fix, I’m sure,” he says, forgoing the easy opening to dish an insult at Zoro. “Do you have any watches? Might add to the appeal.” 

Zoro squints at him as if trying to piece together a particularly difficult riddle. He snatches a golden watch that comes shooting at his forehead out of the air from Sanji, and slowly straps it to his wrist. From the look on his face, anyone would think it was a shackle instead of a timepiece. 

You clean up alright, kelp-for-brains,” Sanji says after a pregnant pause. 

Apparently, that's the straw that breaks the camel's back, or in this case the irritated tiger's. “What the fuck,” Zoro says, replacing the air in the room with a suffocating tension. “Why are you being so nice.”

“I—oi, dingus, not all of us are assholes by default, alright?” Sanji runs his hand through his hair. “I can be nice!” 

“Yeah, when there’s a pretty girl around,” Zoro retorts. Nami notes the way that the emerald fabric wrinkles as he clenches it in his hand, knuckles white, veins popping. “And it’s not just you. Nami’s acting pretty strange too.” 

“We’re just happy for you!” Usopp squeaks, then cowers when Zoro turns his darkening gaze onto him. 

“Now that’s a lie if I ever heard one. Spit it out. What’s your problem?” Zoro demands. “You jealous, cook? Maybe if you worked on less fawning, you'd get a date.” 

“It’s not that,” Nami says weakly, because it really isn't. Yes, Sanji wants a date but it isn’t with some random girl. “It’s—”

“You’ve never dated anyone before. Can’t blame us for being surprised,” Sanji cuts in cooly, clearly finished being flustered. 

He gropes for a lollipop, since Chopper insists on a no-smoking policy indoors, and pops the blue raspberry candy into his mouth. “It’s not a bad thing, it’s just unusual.” 

Chills dance down Nami’s spine. If he wasn’t so passionate about cooking, Sanji could probably make it big as an actor in Hollywood.

"Yeah, Zoro, that's exactly it," she says firmly before Zoro can get on Sanji's ass for not taking the bait again. 

Thankfully what Sanji said isn't a lie, which Zoro has an uncanny ability of spotting miles away, but it isn't the whole truth either.

Zoro holds her gaze, scrutinizing her before deciding she passes some inane test of his. Then, he huffs, and crosses his arms, the fight smothered out of him. 

“Fine, you’re not used to it. Whatever. But you don’t have to act so…weird about it,” he says, and Usopp and Nami exchange glances.

“Can’t take a compliment, can you.” The suspicious look resettles on Zoro’s face but before he can get a word out, Sanji claps his hands and breaks the spell. “It's good. Makes you seem humble, which might be your only redeeming trait. An angel like Hiyori deserves better.”

“What the fuck did you say?” 

“What, now you’re going deaf?” 

Nami leans back and closes her eyes, counting the number of spots on their ceiling. At around 6:30 PM, Zoro breezes out of the apartment, heading out to pick up his date, who lives ten minutes away. The twenty-minute cushion is there for when he inevitably gets lost.

"Go get her, tiger!" Usopp calls. In all honesty, a touch of pride wells up in Nani’s chest. Zoro’s grown up so much, she thinks, and resists the urge to wipe a fake tear from the corner of her eye.

"Text us if you need us to bail you out," Nami yells. "I'll call you and pretend your grandmother died or something."   

Sanji watches him go, his eyes stuck to Zoro’s broad back. The only thing he says is, "don't chew with your mouth open, you animal."

The flimsy white door clicks shut after Zoro flips all of them off, and Sanji bites down on the candy, shattering it to pieces with his teeth. 

“Want me to get alcohol?” Nami asks gently. 

Sanji closes his eyes. They let him stew there in silence, helpless as he sinks down to sit on the kitchen floor. “Sounds fantastic.” 

Nami moves to sit next to him, rolling her eyes at his squawk of protest about her sitting on the dirty floor. Usopp rifles through the fridge and pulls out the whiskey. 

“You shouldn’t have,” Sanji mutters when he sees the newly purchased drinks instead of the half-bottle of vodka that’s been sitting in their fridge for a month. He cups the plastic cup in his hands, like it’s a fragile thing, too precious to be dropped. 

There are other fish in the sea,” Usopp tries, settling down on Sanji’s other side. “You’ll be okay. Zoro’s more of a tiger shark. Maybe you’re a goldfish kinda guy. Do you like goldfish? Or maybe anglerfish?”

What the fuck, Nami mouths to Usopp over Sanji’s head. 

I don’t know, Usopp mouths back.  

“And besides,” Usopp continues, because he doesn’t know when to shut up. “Zoro’s like—what? A Political Science major? Everyone knows they suck. They’re always talking about…um, science that’s political.” 

“Zoro’s always talking about swords,” Nami adds. At her words, Sanji downs the glass, reaches for the bottle, and pours himself another shot. “Not helping, right, sorry.” She reaches over and yanks Sanji into a tight hug. 

“It’s not his fault,” Sanji sighs, breaking out of her embrace. His head thuds dully on the wooden drawer. “It’s not like he could have known, and let’s be honest, it’s good to see that he’s found someone to love, and who loves him.” Another shot. “Must be nice.” 

“Oh-kay,” Usopp sings nervously, plucking the glass out of Sanji’s hands. “That’s two shots in two minutes. Let’s pace ourselves here, yeah?” 

Besides being a legendary chef, Sanji is also a legendary lightweight. 

“No one blames Zoro, Sanji,” Nami says, pouring herself a cup of straight vodka. She’s too sober for this conversation. Already, she knows it’s going to just make her sad and she’d rather be drunk and sad than sober and sad. “He’s a good guy and deserves someone good. The way it turned out just sucks.”

Usopp nods sympathetically on his other side.

“We want Zoro to be happy,” Usopp tacks on. “But we also want you to be happy.” 

“I’m happy,” Sanji insists, a little loose-tongued. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got the two of you here, right? And Luffy and Brooke and of course Robin—” 

“You can have something and still be sad sometimes,” Nami says quietly. “We all know what it’s like to have nothing and sometimes, when we finally get something, we feel like we have to be content with that small thing. Because like in comparison, it’s a huge thing. But Sanji, you can still want more. You know that right?” 

Usopp pours her another shot for that. She thanks him with a small lift and downs it. 

The sting of alcohol burning down her throat, she thinks of Bellemere and orange trees, of sunlight filtering down behind the gaps of green trees. There are nights where she dreams of having them all, her old family, and her newfound family. 

Sometimes, they eat dinner together. Her sister Nojiko is laughing with Luffy, and her adoptive mother Bellemere is teaching Sanji how to make her tangerine sorbet. 

Sometimes, they’re just in a room with her, existing in harmony. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. In all of these dreams, she has them all. 

“When I was—when I was a kid,” Sanji says, words slightly slurring. He’s gotten his hands on another shot. Nami raises her eyebrows at Usopp who shrugs without shame. If they have to take Sanji to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, they’re taking his car. 

“I used to think that being in love would be, I don’t know, like this life-changing thing. I don’t know, like it would fix you. But—hey, you know that weird twitter thread that was going around, the whole ‘do you love this person or do you love the feeling of being in love?’ sometimes—” he swallows, changing course. 

She’s never heard him sound so tired before.  

“I don’t want him to just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I don’t have anything to compare it to except this, like, vision in my head of what I think love should be. And I know fairy tales are bullshit, I know that, but that’s all I had growing up.” His voice pewters out. “I don’t want to be doing this wrong. I’ve—haven’t I been selfish enough?”

A vastness fills the room at his question and Nami wonders who Sanji, one of the most selfless men she knows, thinks that he’s taking advantage of. 

Usopp inhales, then exhales slowly. “I think,” he says quietly. “That you’re a good guy, Sanji. Did you know that I, Usopp, the legendary gentleman, wooed many girls back in Syrup Village? Hundreds of them, in fact.” 

A laugh burbles out of Sanji. “Yeah?” 

“Yes,” Usopp gently sets Sanji’s plastic cup aside. “They were all beautiful, naturally, but there was one that set this gentleman’s heart afire.” 

“Kaya,” Sanji murmurs, putting a name to Usopp’s long-distance girlfriend. “Was she—was she a goldfish?” 

“That’s right. It was Kaya. But she was rich and beautiful and had everything she already wanted. Out of concern for her,” Usopp says, thumping his chest. “I thought she was making a mistake when she fell head over heels for me, as all women eventually do.” 

“Naturally,” Nami pipes in, rolling her eyes. 

“So how did this legendary gentleman overcome his fears?” Sanji wonders, head tilted upward toward the sky. Maybe he’s asking the ceiling this, maybe he’s asking God. 

“He, um—he faced them head-on! Like the brave warrior that he is! And he said, ‘I’m not going to let any self-doubts stop me!’ And then, she fell in love with his handsomeness and assertiveness, and they lived happily ever after.” 

“Oh.”

Damn, they suck at this. Nami fills up half her shot glass with Everclear. “Hey,” she says slowly when this drink has settled in her blood. Everclear should be illegal. 

There’s a period of soft silence when suddenly, it hits her like a sledgehammer to the face through the warm haze. “I’ve got an idea. Hear me out, alright? It’s—” she begins giggling. “—it’s brilliant. Albert Einstein level.” 

“Alright, Ms. Brilliant,” Sanji says, lolling his head toward her with a lazy grin. God, are they drunk. “Let’s hear this master plan of yours.” 

“So, your problem,” she says, poking Sanji in the chest. “Is that you don’t know if you love Zoro or if you love the idea of falling in love, right?” 

“Yep.” 

“Okay,” she giggles. “What if you and I went out. But like, as besties.”

“What,” Usopp says flatly. God, being the designated sober must be so rough on him right now “Like outside?”

“No no no, like we started dating except it’s not like dating-dating, it’s like an agreement to call it dating which makes it real dating, but we don’t have feelings so it’s not like, society-dating.” 

“Because fuck society.”

“Because fuck society.”

Usopp stares at her like she’s grown five heads. “What the hell.”

“That would clear a lot of things up,” Sanji hums.  Holy guacamole, they’re on the same wavelength. A feeling of triumph buoys Nami up, only to pop when Sanji’s face turns serious. “Except I couldn’t ask you to do something like that, Nami darling. You’ve already done so much for me.”

“Okay, okay, hear me out. First, I’m the one suggesting this, not you, so this is on me. Don’t try to take that away from me, alright? Obviously there would be no kissing or anything,” Nami says. “I don’t like you that way, and I know for a fact you don’t feel that way about me even with the whole mellorine thing.”

“I like flirting and spoiling people,” Sanji protests, then sighs. “But no, you are right. In all these years, it pains me to say that I’ve never seen you more than a friend, albeit an incredible one.”

“What the fuck is going on,” Usopp asks, head twisting to look at the two of them. “What the fuck is going on.”

“But!” Nami continues. “If we go on dates or these platonic hangouts and you get your daily dose of like friendship or whatever fulfilled and you lose feelings for Zoro—”

“—then I’m in love with the idea of being in love or it’s because he’s sometimes friendly and I’m really really affection starved.”

“And if you’re still pining away over Zoro, then you love Zoro.”

“Disgusting.” 

“Very.” 

“Okay, as the designated sober,” Usopp says. “And a member of the common sense unit, which by the way, I’m revoking your membership to, Nami, this sounds like a terrible idea. Like worse than the stovetop toilet Franky installed and that was terrible.” 

Nami frowns. Her logic seems sound to her. There’s nothing that could possibly go wrong. 

“Also,” Usopp continues, a tad desperately. “People can go on dates and not be dating. Like we don’t know if Hiyori and Zoro are official or if they just went on a date, you know? This sounds like a conversation you two should have sober.” 

“Okay,” Nami agrees. “Let’s talk about it when we’re sober.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sanji says amicably. 

“Dodged that bullet,” Usopp mumbles in relief. 

#

Usopp, has in fact, not dodged that bullet. Usopp has not only fully taken the bullet, but is also forced to reckon with the consequences of his actions. 

“Heyyyyy, buddy, friend, absolute apple of my eye,” Usopp says, sidling over to Zoro, who tugs at his tie. 

He’d entered Sanji's apartment noisily, but his gray eyes flickered over to Sanji and Nami sleeping peacefully on the white tile, her head on his shoulder, and his head resting on hers, and had closed the door quietly behind him. 

“Looks like you guys had quite a night,” he comments, voice hushed so as to not wake the two of them. 

“Yeah, Chopper texted. He’s staying with a friend to study for his organic bio exam tonight, so we had the place to ourselves.”

“Ah.” Zoro finally frees himself of the tie, and walks over to the couch, grabbing the ugly throw blanket that Chopper had stress-knitted, and no one had the heart to throw out. 

With a casual flick, he airs it out, and lets it drift over Sanji and Nami. 

“So, how’d it go?” Usopp asks, fidgeting. “How was the food? What did you guys talk about?”

“Food was good as expected.” He lets a wry smile steal over his face. “Don’t tell the love-cook. He’ll never let me live it down.” 

“And?” 

Zoro examines him, and slowly exhales. “Date was good. I liked talking to her. Chatted a bit about her family.” He smoothes out the tie, and slowly folds it with steady fingers. Removes the watch and sets it down carefully on the coffee table. 

The million-dollar question: “Are you two dating now?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” 

Usopp nods, making a mental note to consult with Robin on what he needs to do next. Robin knows everything, and Usopp consults her regularly on random things like the weather and the effect of the international oil supply chain shortage on the solar panel industry. “Okay. Congrats.” He means it.  

“Thanks,” Zoro says with a nod. 

“Do you…do you want a congratulatory shot?” Usopp offers. The alcohol is right there and it seems rude not to offer. 

“Yes,” Zoro nearly groans in appreciation. “All they had was this fancy champagne which was fine but—”

Usopp shoves the shot glass into Zoro’s hands. The cup is empty before Usopp can even blink. 

Zoro sends another glance at Nami and Sanji, and sets down the glass. 

With a deep sigh that Usopp feels in his soul, he says, “I’m going to head out. Get outta this tux, it’s suffocating me. You need help getting Nami back to your dorm?” 

Usopp pinches the bridge of his nose. “Nah, it’s all good. I got it.” He grins cheekily. “You’re not the only one hitting the gym these days, you know? Nami’s like a feather now.” He buffs a bicep dramatically. 

A ghost of a smile flits on Zoro’s face. “I can tell. I’m gonna leave it to you then. See you tomorrow.”

“See ya,” Usopp waves back. 

He sends one look back at Nami and Sanji as if making sure they’re okay, then vanishes out the hall. Usopp waits for him to leave, then slaps a hand to his forehead. The only thing he’s banking on is that Nami or Sanji fall victim to alcohol-induced amnesia, realize how ridiculous this whole thing is, or actually get literal amnesia, the kind that cartoon characters get when they get bashed on the head with a wok. 

He glances toward the kitchenware cabinet, considering, then stops. Sanji would murder him first for putting a dent in any of his pots or pans, if this insane plot doesn’t kill him first. 

Usopp sighs, trying not to think of the way Zoro described the date, and trying even harder to ignore the fact that he didn’t act exactly like a man in love. 

No one loves the same way. Usopp loves loudly and Zoro is quiet. More importantly, Zoro has always been honest about his feelings through his actions. He’s not the type to string someone along, so if he says he’s dating Hiyori, then there’s something there that Usopp just isn’t seeing. 

#

Zoro breaks it to them that he’s officially dating Hiyori through Usopp, who tells Robin, who smiles and tells Franky. Franky shouts it at the top of his lungs in surprise and now everyone in The Thousand Sunny knows. 

Nami sends Sanji a worried glance, his head resting on the common sense unit’s breakfast table. 

“How are you doing?” she asks, poking his forehead through his mop of blonde hair. 

“I want to die,” he groans, clearly feeling the wrath of his hangover. Nami hums sympathetically, ruffling his hair. 

“Don’t we all,” she exhales. “So, on a scale of one to absolutely-fucking-smashed-I-don’t- remember-the-damning-conversation-we-had, where are we?”

Sanji peers up at her with one blue eye. “I thought I hallucinated that,” he admits. 

“Nah,” she says. “Originally, it was a limited-time deal, but I’m not an asshole, and you’ve clearly been run over by fucking bullet train. Metaphorically. So take some time to think about it, then let me know.” 

Yes, Nami could back out, but once she says something, she commits to it. 

Sanji closes his eye, wincing. “I don’t think I can think of anything without wanting to give myself a lobotomy, but since we don’t have any feelings for one another, what exactly does this all entail?” 

“We go to places that would be embarrassing to go to as a single person. You tell me about your day or whatever, I tell you about mine.”

“So like friends.” 

“Eh, like best friends but also like mutual poor people therapists.” She shrugs. “I guess we can do nice things for each other, like buy each other things but neither of us are obligated to. We’ll just be friends who vibe, and if people ask, just tell them whatever you’re comfortable with.” 

“What are you going to tell them?”

“We’re friends with benefits,” Nami tells him with a straight face. Sanji chokes on his own spit and starts coughing violently. “Except the benefit is friendship.” 

“So, like, friends. You’re literally just friends,” Usopp monotones from his room.

They both choose to ignore him, Nami out of spite, Sanji because he’s preoccupied with not dying. 

“Friends with benefits seems crass,” he wheezes out between his hacking. “Someone as wonderful as you doesn’t deserve such an ugly title. Why is putting a label on it so important?”

“Out of context, that was definitely a fuckboy question,” Nami says cheerfully, smacking him hard on the back. “Also we don’t hate on friends with benefits in this unit. Let people fuck. Don’t be a dick.”

“My apologies, mellorine, ” he sighs apologetically. 

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Usopp pipes up from his room. 

“Your opinion has been noticed, noted, and ignored,” Nami yells back. 

“Where would you want to go?” Sanji asks her after a long moment of stewing in his whiskey-induced migraine. “For our first ambiguously-defined-date.”

“There’s this really nice coffee shop a little off-campus,” she tells him excitedly. 

The place is expensive, but they have these adorable lattes that Nami’s been dying to post on Instagram. Part of the problem is that because they’re so pricey, it’s embarrassing to go alone. You go under the impression of spoiling someone or being spoiled. “Dressrosa.” 

Usopp strides into the room, beelining toward the fridge. “She’s trying to rob you, my good man,” he says to Sanji who hums despondently. “Dressrosa is sell-your-liver expensive.” 

Sanji laughs weakly. Robin glides in, fills up a glass of water, and slides it over to him. “Well, I’ve been meaning to see what the secret to their flan was. I’ve never been able to make them so creamy.”

“So it’s settled then.” 

Robin’s brown eyes twinkle. “Does this have to do with your nebulous gray area relationship?” 

“Robin, I love you,” Nami says seriously. “But please don’t say it like that. Speaking of which, how do you know about—it was Usopp, wasn’t it.” 

“Usopp did tell me, yes,” Robin agrees with a congenial smile as she mercilessly throws him under the bus.

Beside them, Usopp visibly shrivels into himself. 

“Dressrosa sounds lovely,” Robin remarks, putting water on the kettle. “Although perhaps when our cook here is in a state to be viewed on social media?” 

“You’re right,” Nami says, reaching over to pat his arm. “No offense, but you look like you’re extremely hungover, which you are, but my thousands of Instagram followers don’t need to know that.” 

Sanji groans, and pushes himself into an upright sitting position. “I guess we should put a time and date onto it?” He visibly recoils when he leans too far back and the light seeping in from their glass balcony door hits him in the face. 

“Oh fuck me,” he snarls, a tinge of the feralness he only shows Zoro bleeding through, and Nami wonders if he’s literally going to burst into flames or if she should grab a rosary. 

“You good?” Usopp says nervously, edging closer. 

“I want to die,” Sanji intones again, voice muffled in the sleeves of his blue hoodie. 

“There, there,” Robin consoles. “Death will come sooner than later, and for now, dear cook, let’s hope for later, shall we?” 

“Just for you, Robin dear,” Sanji says into the fabric. 

“So,” Nami says, fishing out her phone. “Does this upcoming Thursday work for you? You can pick me up from my last class of the day, which I think is at five.” It’s not the most ideal day for her; that would be Tuesday, but Sanji’s bone-tired on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and pretty much every other day besides Thursdays and the occasional weekend when he’s still bone-tired but a little less so. That doesn’t mean she’s going to be considerate out loud. She has a reputation to uphold after all. 

“I think Thursdays work.” Sanji makes a visible effort to get back up and doesn’t immediately turn to dust.

Nami logs it into her Google calendar. “Thursday it is.” She scrolls through the menu and takes in the little cakes, and latte foam bears. “I’m going to eat you out of house and home,” she tells him seriously.

He huffs out another breath of laughter, genuine this time. “Too late. Luffy’s already beat you there.” 

“I fully intend to give him a run for his money.” 

“A run for Sanji’s money, more like,” Usopp mutters under his breath, yelping when Nami clonks him over the head. 

Sanji props his head up on his hand, elbow to the table. “If there’s anyone I’d like to have robbing me of my life savings, it would be you, Nami.”

Robin laughs. “Not a certain kendo master?” 

Sanji’s face flushes bright red. “I—Well—”

“Sanji would rather share his life savings with Zoro,” Usopp adds helpfully. “You know, like in a married way. Except Zoro would probably drink it all or buy ten more swords, and they’d have to couch surf because they can’t afford to pay rent anymore.”

“They could rely on Zoro’s DILF vampire dad,” Nami suggests. “He might make you guys sleep in coffins if you move in with him though, which I imagine would put a real damper on your sex life, but hey, people with old money do all sorts of weird shit.” 

“Wait, wait, wait.  Hold up. Did you just say that Dracule Mihawk—” Usopp says slowly, as if treading through dangerous waters. “---is a DILF? No. We are not going to DILFify Zoro’s dad.” 

“He’s objectively a DILF,” she retorts, taking a steaming mug of Earl Gray from Robin. “I’m not DILFifying him. Three-time All-Japan Kendo Champion has DILF already built into it. Don’t fear what you don’t understand, Usopp. I know it can be scary—” 

“I’m not scared of DILFs! 

“You seem scared of DILFs,” Robin objects thoughtfully. “Does your phobia apply to MILFs as well?” 

“I’m not scared of hot old people!”

“Unless they have children.” Sanji ribs. 

“Hey, at least I’m dating Kaya, unlike some people who’ve been pining for years!” Usopp howls, then immediately winces. “Oh, shit. That was a low blow.” 

Sanji shrugs, but from the way he stiffened it’s still a painful subject. He’s clearly tried to jump all the way to the acceptance stage already, having gone through the other stages last night hammered out of his mind. Whether or not he’s successful is a different story.

“I still can’t believe Zoro’s dating Hiyori,” Nami grumbles, now that they’re back on topic. “You save a girl from a stalker and now you’re dating her. What is this? A soap drama? What does she have that you don’t? Wait, don’t answer that question. I know what it is. You—” she shoves her finger into Sanji’s chest. “We are going to start on affirmations right fucking now. Repeat after me. I am hot. I am sexy. I have an amazing ass—” 

“We are not talking about Sanji’s ass this early on a Saturday morning,” Usopp complains and Nami flips him off. 

“So,” Robin cuts in. “Dressrosa. Thursday at five.” 

“Yeah,” Nami says, exchanging a look with Sanji. There’s an amused smile tugging at the edges of his lips.  “Sounds like a plan.”

Chapter Text

iii. the art of war (against yourself because you are your own worst enemy)

There is a beauty about Dressrosa that Sanji can appreciate. Nami’s honey eyes sparkle in the fairy lights that drape from the ceiling like swooping vines. They’re dressed up, well, Nami dressed up, wearing a soft red sundress that he thinks complements her skin well. She’s persuaded him to forgo the dinner jacket and he feels a little vulnerable in just his cornflower button-up, but he supposes it doesn’t matter when they’re sitting down at a mahogany table for two. 

The thing is, he knows that the marimo would never spring for a place like this. He wouldn’t dress up, or maybe he would, if the Baratie was any indication of the fact that Zoro’s willing to step out of his comfort zone for someone special. He quashes that thought, trying to shake his head. Zoro has someone special. It isn’t him.

Besides, he doesn’t even know if he likes Zoro for Zoro. That’s the purpose of this whole thing and why Nami’s going out of her way to plan these outings. 

“Hey,” Nami says, not unkindly. “What do you recommend?” 

“Hm?” 

“On the menu.” 

Sanji drags his eyes back to the menu. It’s clearly meant to be more hip, based on the witty descriptions and the cute leafy cartoon vines embossing the sides. “Maybe the churros with chocolate. Or the cheesecake.” He feels awkward here, not because of the present company, of course, but he can’t explain the inescapable urge for a cigarette. 

A waiter waltzes in with teacups of water. Teacups. Sanji tries not to let the judgemental look flicker across his face and fails terribly when Nami cackles. 

“Smile,” she says before snapping a photo and immediately deleting it. “Okay, definitely not a smile.” 

“Alright,” she says, lacing her fingers together. “How was your day?” 

“It was good,” he says. “Tiring. We’re on the flash freezing unit.” He rubs his eyes. “We have to design an original dessert for our upcoming midterm.” 

“That’s cool,” Nami hums. She’s making an effort to seem interested, which he appreciates. “What do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking of a matcha base,” he admits, hoping that the lights mask the flame in his cheeks. “It’s ah, not too sweet.” And green. 

Nami studies him carefully, but doesn’t press. “A cake?” 

“I’m working on it,” he says. “I was thinking of implementing it into an ice cream, or infusing it into a cream.” 

“Zoro would be a good taste tester,” is the only thing that Nami says. “He doesn’t like sweet things.” 

“I know.” 

The waiter strolls up behind Nami, and with crisp clarity, she orders a Tarta de Queso for herself and an Americano, at Sanji’s behest. Sanji asks for a leche flan with one of their medium roast coffees. Then, as an afterthought, orders churros for the table. 

“I’m paying for it, aren’t I? It’s okay,” he says when Nami opens her mouth to protest the additional fifteen-dollar charge. She clicks it shut.

“So, then,” Nami says, with a little more pep in her voice. “Zoro. If you’re ready to talk about the whole dating fiasco.” 

“As ready as I am to cut off one of my fingers,” Sanji chirps. “But that might be my default answer for a while.” 

“Well,” Nami says, considering this. “Why do you like him?” 

Sanji falls silent at this. “I’m thinking,” he assures Nami, as her expression grows more and more uncomfortable.

Why does he like Zoro? He thinks of Zoro’s focus, his single-minded devotion. He thinks of the way that Zoro only ever laughs genuinely, and that it always comes from the soul. Zoro sees him as an equal, one of the few people that Sanji feels comfortable insulting, never having to put on an impenetrable mask for fear of being seen as that eight-year-old being beaten down by those ingrates that happen to be blood-related to him. 

The way Zoro remembers how careful Sanji is with his hands, and volunteers to do projects that require any kind of heavy wear and tear. The way that he knows Sanji’s coffee order by heart. The way that he trudged all the way through campus on a rainy day with an umbrella because Sanji had forgotten his. 

Aside from Luffy, there is not a single person in the world that Sanji trusts to have his back as Zoro. Secrets spill from Sanji’s lips, and Zoro keeps them all. He holds them to his chest, makes a place in his heart for them even though Sanji has only ever been another member of the Thousand Sunny. 

(The only one that Zoro is unhesitant to fight with, the only one that Zoro knows is safe to blow off steam to. Luffy is too good, and Nami is more like an annoying younger sister. The older members are too mature, and Usopp would probably wet his pants if Zoro tried to start anything. 

And maybe there’s safety in Sanji too.)

And sure, maybe Zoro is good-looking. Maybe Sanji likes the dimples in his cheeks, and the sharpness of his jaw, and the slope of his nose. Maybe he appreciates the fact that his insane gym routine has carved out the body of a Greek god. Sanji can be stupid sometimes, but he’s not blind. 

“It’s hard to put into words,” he admits as the waitress places two small gold-gilded teacups in front of them, swapping out their water-filled ones. 

“Luffy feels like home. But for Zoro—” he pauses. “I am asking that you do not tell him this,” he prefaces. Nami rolls her eyes but nods. 

“Luffy feels like home, but with Zoro. I don’t know. I want—” he wants to carve out a piece of himself to make a place where Zoro doesn’t have to be strong, or wary, or a pillar of stability. He wants to see Zoro laugh easy instead of the scarce rations of joy they so often get. 

“I think I want him to be happy,” he says. “Not that I don’t want anyone else to not be happy, but I don’t always want to make a home for them.” He busies himself with the coffee, taking a tentative scalding sip. “If Hiyori is doing that, then that’s a good thing.” 

“Huh,” Nami says, clearly rolling his words around in her head. “Well, that’s disgustingly sweet. I could never.” 

The pastries are set down at the table. Sanji takes out his phone, and on instinct, starts photographing, taking into consideration the angles and the presentation of each dish. Nami, with the patience of an absolute saint, waits for him to finish, even though the food smells heavenly. 

“Good?” she asks, as he swipes through his photos critically, before adding them to the alarmingly large dessert album of his phone. 

“Yes, wait, give me a second. Smile.” 

Nami raises a teacup and turns to show off her side profile as she takes a sip. Looking very much like a model, Sanji snaps a photo. “Wait, let me see. Oh, that’s good. Send it to me. Now—” she says, swiping up her phone. “Your turn.” 

“What?” 

“I’m damn good at photography,” Nami says. “I’m going to make you look hot as fuck with these pics, just you wait.” She takes a couple pictures of his bewildered face before clicking her tongue. “You look like there’s a stick shoved up your ass.” 

“I—” He doesn’t know how to respond to that. (If it was Zoro, he’d send a flying kick at his head, but this is Nami, and therefore there are certain rules of chivalry to be had here.) 

Nami snorts. “No worries. Just wait.” 

“How have your classes been?” Sanji asks as Nami digs into her Spanish cheesecake. Her face lights up at the no doubt rich taste. 

“Shit,” she groans. “Some of my profs are old as shit and their knowledge on a lot of the tools and concepts are so outdated. Did I tell you—” she launches into a story about one of her professors and Sanji listens, nodding his head in all the right places, and asking all the right questions. In between, he steals small bites of his flan and sips his coffee, soaking in each word. “—Thirty percent of our grade is a group assignment which is fine. I’m a fucking fantastic team player, but of course, they had to pair me with Enel.” 

Sanji makes a face sympathetically. “Enel’s a bastard.” Enel has a strange thing for electricity and a god complex to boot. Sanji’s pretty sure he grew up sticking pennies and forks into electrical sockets. 

Nami also has a thing for electricity but in the form of her tasers as her go-to form of self-defense. 

“Christ, did I tell you about the time he tried to start a cult and began trying to recruit people in our geography class? The professor shut it down fast but it was wild.” 

The image is so outrageous, Enel handing out pamphlets or telling people to join a new religion where he’s no doubt the reincarnation of God, has Sanji laughing. If their coffee is going to be Enel slander, then he has no trouble jumping onto that bandwagon. The guy has his head so far up his ass that Sanji’s frankly surprised he can see anything besides himself. 

“God, has Usopp told you about his whole NASA conspiracy theory?” 

“No, what?” Nami says. “I mean I heard it happened, but you’ve got to fill me in.” 

The talk between the flows easily, and when Nami has him in stitches as she regales him with a tale in which Luffy and Usopp tried to sneak in purple hair dye into Zoro’s shampoo, he hears a soft click. 

Looking up from where he's still laughing, he sees Nami with her phone, the camera aimed in his direction. “There we go. Third time really is the charm.” 

“Wait, let me see it.” Sanji has a bad history of being unphotogenic, with almost all of his photos having him in some ludicrous pose or expression. There’s a reason his main account is a food account and not one he ever poses personal photos on. 

“You look good,” Nami insists, stretching her arm away from him. “Would I ever lie to you?”

“Of course not,” Sanji fibs, because deep down, Nami would (in his best interest, of course), but he’s not going to tell her that. That’s just rude.

“Trust me,” she says. Behind Nami, the bell chimes as a new customer walks in. “I’ll make you look like the Mona Lisa. Sanji Lisa.” and for some reason that has Sanji cracking up because it’s just so stupid , riding the high of the past thirty minutes of laughter.

Nami’s trying hard to stifle her own laughter. “No seriously. Maybe not the Mona Lisa. Maybe like Marilyn Monroe. But for real? I don’t think this photo needs that.” 

“Nami—” his phone pings, and he unlocks it to see the photo in the strawhats group chat. 

It’s a good photo. He’s caught in mid laughter, eyes scrunched up, facing straight at the camera, smile soft. He looks happy, and the lighting behind him casts him in an amber glow. With the hanging plants behind him, he looks like he’s in another world. 

The messages pop in one at a time.

strawhat pirates

usopp: a picture of sanji…and he looks good? its an xmas miracle

 

robin: It’s currently spring, Usopp. 

It is a good photo though. You look quite dashing, Sanji. 

I assume the date is going well? 

 

luffy: oooo that flan looks really good! 

 

brook: Yohohohoho, excellent, excellent. Young love is in the air, I see!

“So, I’ve got to ask,” Nami says, locking her phone and putting it face-down. “When did you first realize that you had feelings for Zoro?”

Sanji knows exactly when the oh shit, I might be in love with this asshole moment hit him like a wrecking ball. It had been sometime in their sophomore year. 

Culinary school had been hitting him hard. He’d finally gotten in the swing of things, only for sophomore year to ramp up the levels tenfold. He slaved away in the kitchen more than he slept or ate or some days, it felt like breathed. 

Robin had told him not to burn himself out, but it was too late. He felt the edges of disdain leaking into his everyday life, his passion for cooking slowly turning to charcoal every day. Luffy stopped asking him to make him meat. Nami started bugging him to go to sleep, but how could he, when he was so desperate to reclaim that fervor for cooking he could feel slowly slipping from his grasp? He was doing something wrong. He just didn’t know what.

Zoro said nothing, except for a stern judgmental gaze while Usopp wrung his hands nervously. Sanji was losing weight, and wasn’t that a great bit of irony. A chef losing weight. 

“Hey cook,” Zoro had said one day, ambling into the kitchen, ready to snag a bottle of sake from their fridge. He’d stopped, no doubt taking in the pale pallor of Sanji’s skin, the dark permanent bags under his eyes. “I’m hungry.”

“I’m busy,” Sanji threw over his shoulder. He had to get this glaze right. It wasn’t congealing the way he wanted it to, and yesterday, a professor had pulled him aside and told him that he didn’t seem focused enough. Not fucking focused enough. “Grab fucking Postmates or something.”

“Make me something to eat.” That was the thing with Zoro. All of his requests were phrased as demands. Whether or not he’d been taught the art of intonation in his life was a complete mystery, but Sanji was ready to bet money that he hadn’t. That, and manners. 

“Does it look like—”

“Cook.” There was something in his voice that made Sanji turn. 

“What.” 

“Sit the hell down.” The matter-of-factness made Sanji bristle.

“Are you fucking stupid?” 

“When was the last time you ate?” 

Sanji wanted to scream. “Use your eyes, jackass. Does it look like I have time to eat?”

Zoro sighed long-suffferingly, and ambled into the kitchen, pulling out the rice cooker, pushing Sanji out of the way. “Go stir your soup on the couch,” Zoro told him as Sanji stood baffled enough that he didn’t snap that it was a glaze and not a soup. 

“You think that you can kick me out of my own kitchen and—”

“Sanji,” Zoro said, softer than Zoro ever spoke to Sanji, and that was made Sanji acquiesce. Zoro only called him by his name never. It was always love-cook, or curly-brows, or just cook. 

He sat down on the couch. 

A moment later, someone was shaking him awake. He blinked wearily and pushed himself up, only to come face-to-face with a plate of onigiri and cup of water. 

“Is onigiri the only thing you know how to make,” he rasped. The coat, Zoro’s coat, that had been draped over him dropped to his lap. His bowl of glaze rested peacefully on the coffee table. 

He didn’t recall putting it down.

“Whatever,” Zoro huffed, ignoring the fact that everything else he tried to make tended to set off the fire alarm. “Try it.” 

Sanji made direct eye contact with him as he took a bite. It didn’t poison him immediately, so he tentatively took another. Before he knew it, he’d wolfed down five, much to Zoro’s smug ego. The tuna-mayo flavor burst in his mouth, and he could hear himself make small noises of appreciation. 

“Is something on my face?” Sanji asked, tilting his head. Zoro’s cheeks burned red, and he was staring resolutely at the wall. Idiot probably forgot to put on sunscreen during one of his outdoor workouts. 

“Yep, the curliest eyebrows I’ve ever seen,” Zoro said. It was weak by his standards, but Sanji shrugged and continued to eat. 

“Thanks,” he said when he had finished. He moved to wash the dishes, and was surprised to see that Zoro had already cleaned off all the bowls and kitchenware he’d used. 

“Sure thing,” Zoro said with a shrug, then vanished out the door as if there was a bat on his heels. 

It wouldn’t be the last time that Zoro cooked for him, albeit it was always onigiri because he hadn’t been joking when he asked Zoro if that was the only thing he knew how to make without incurring structural damage. 

It also wouldn’t be the last time that he’d woken up on the couch with Zoro’s coat draped over him. Once he swore he’d felt someone’s careful and calloused fingers running through his hair soothingly. Maybe he’d been delusional from how tired he was. 

But those were memories that he’d rather keep to himself, precious bits of a long-lost treasure, never to be seen again.  

The glaze turned out perfectly. 

The thing is, he doesn’t want to like Zoro for the wrong reasons. When you’ve been lonely for so long, it’s easy to make that slip-up and the line is only so thin. 

A familiar ring tone pings, snapping him out of thought, but it isn’t his phone or Nami’s. Sanji’s head shoots up so fast he hears an audible crack. 

He could have sworn— his eyes drift behind Nami toward the entrance to Dressrosa and his entire body physically locks into place. The blood drains from his cheeks as the noise around him fades into a muffled static. His smile slides off his face and shatters on the mosaic tile floor. 

“What?” Nami asks, turning to look behind her. “Oh. What the fuck?”

Standing at the entrance, wide eyes locked on the two of them is Zoro, phone in his hand. Someone behind him moves into the light to reveal cascading dark blue hair and an equally beautiful face. 

Hiyori. 

#

“I’m going in for the pre-emptive strike,” is the only thing that Nami gives Sanji before waving at the couple at the door. 

“Are you kidding me?” Sanji asks, trying to slump down on his seat, and hopefully below the table out of sight. “What the fuck? Why is Zoro following me like the fucking demon from It Follows?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Nami hisses out of the corner of her mouth. Hiyori and Zoro get closer and closer to the table as Sanji’s stomach drops lower and lower. Shit, he just had flan. He’s not throwing up because the food here is expensive, but that might be the only reason. That and sheer willpower. 

“Um, hey,” Zoro finally says, looking extremely uncomfortable. 

“Hey,” Sanji says flatly, if not a little miserably. 

“I’m sorry,” Hiyori says, her voice musical. If the situation wasn't as outrageous as it currently is, he’d deign to find it beautiful. “We didn’t mean to crash your date. I’m—”

“Hiyori,” Sanji shoots her a winsome smile that he hopes doesn’t convey that he’s spent at least three hours of his life skimming through her social media profiles and trying not to scream into his pillow. “So we’ve heard. You look lovely.”

“You’re this idiot’s girlfriend,” Nami clarifies, raising her eyebrows. Don’t say creepy things out of context. “You're a legend in our housing complex. Has anyone told you that you’re too good for Zoro?”

Hiyori giggles, and Sanji manages to tear his eyes off of her onto Zoro. “Well, no worries. We were just about to grab the bill and go, so perfect timing.” 

“I didn’t know you two were—” It’s the first time that Zoro has said anything except for hey. Sanji can’t even blame him because honestly, what is a guy supposed to say when he runs into his enemy-rival on a date with one of his best friends while you are on a date with your girlfriend that you saved from a creepy stalker? 

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know, algae brains,” Sanji says. “Most likely because there’s nothing in that skull of yours.” 

Zoro’s eyes flare, looking vaguely homicidal. Sanji smiles back, all teeth. If Zoro wants to fight ugly, then Sanji’s more than happy to oblige. He’s got some equally ugly feelings reeling in his chest ready to go. 

“Boys,” Nami says sharply, and they both look away. “If you get us banned from Dressrosa, so help me God, I will punt both of you to the moon. Stay here. I’m running to the restroom. Do. Not. Fight.”

Sanji waves over the waiter and asks for the check. 

“So, you and Nami, huh?” Zoro says awkwardly. 

“It’s not like that,” Sanji mutters, scanning the bill and calculating a 25% tip. The American restaurant industry has a ludicrous way of paying their servers. 

“You seemed like you were having a pretty good time when we came in.” 

“We were.” Suddenly, it’s like he doesn’t know how to talk to Zoro at all. Like they’re strangers bumping into each other on the street after years of pretending to try to meet up and never following through. 

“I don’t think I caught your name,” Hiyori says in the oppressive silence. “You’re…”

“Sanji Black,” he says, placing his card down and giving her his full attention. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

“Oh! You’re Sanji!” Hiyori’s hand flies to her mouth. “Zoro’s mentioned you before.” 

Sanji does a double-take as the words register. “That…” he whirls around to stare at Zoro. “What exactly did you tell her?” 

Probably nothing good, now that he thinks about it. “Whatever he tells you is a lie,” he tacks on.

“Everything, hm?” she says, nudging Zoro in the side, which, weird but okay. Maybe Zoro likes people digging their elbow into his ribcage. 

“Hiyori,” Zoro groans, but it’s clear both she and Sanji know that he’s all bark, no bite when it comes to her. 

“What, it’s true!”

“You better treat her right, mosshead,” he says, suddenly a little drained. Everything has been going so fast, snap snap snap that he hasn’t had the time to internalize everything. But now it’s starting to sink in, and he feels his heart slowly bruising, rotting like an expired peach. “Let me know if he isn’t. I’ll cave his head in.”

“Sanji,” Zoro says, and wow, he’s saying his name a lot more. It would be an addicting thing if Sanji had the energy to relish in it. As it is, it just rolls off of him like a wave. “Are you.” he stops. “You look tired.” 

“I got five hours of sleep last night and I’ve been in the kitchen before the sun came up,” he explains, glancing back at the ladies’ restroom. 

God, he needs that cig, or something to do with his hands. Instead, he takes the white fabric napkin and folds it carefully into a square. 

“It was wonderful to meet you, Hiyori,” he says, when the bristling sensation beneath his skin gets too much to bear. He rises to his feet.

Nami strides up from behind him and a wane smile of relief stretches across his face, “So are we putting this on Zoro’s tab or dine and dashing?” 

“I’ve already put my card down, so we can go whenever you’re ready.” Sanji tries not to think of Zoro’s furrowed brow, or the sour pressure building up behind his own skull and chest. 

Idly, he thinks that if Zoro plans to give him the shovel talk for being with Nami, he can wait for when they’re in the privacy of the Thousand Sunny. 

Was love always supposed to hurt?

Nami opens her mouth, catches the desperate look in his eyes, and takes mercy on him like the angel she is. 

“Sounds good,” she says. “You know what they say, the night is still young.” Briefly, her large eyes flicker over to present company. A wave of unspeakable gratitude nearly bowls him over when he realizes that she’s keeping it light-hearted for his sake. 

Speaking of present company, Zoro watches their interaction like someone who’s been forced to swallow a lemon whole, peel and all. That is to say, in the nicest way possible, pained. 

Sanji raises his eyebrows. 

Before he can make a snide comment about basic manners, Hiyori frowns and places a concerned hand on Zoro’s forearm. That strange melancholy sensation wells back up again at full force and he snaps his mouth shut with a solid click. 

Turning to Nami with a rather resigned smile, he asks, “Where to now?” 

After tonight, the chances that he might ask Nami and Usopp if they’re free again for more shots exponentially skyrockets. Is two times a week pushing it? 

As they leave, Hiyori waves goodbye to them. There’s a strange look on her face that Sanji can’t put his finger on, but he decides against asking her what’s on her mind. 

It’s not his role, he reminds himself. He’d only be sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and then what? He and Zoro get in a fistfight in the non-smoking section of Dressrosa? 

Besides, at the end of the day, it technically is Zoro’s responsibility to look out for her, to cherish her as she should be cherished. The whole dating the man Sanji’s been in love with for two years thing aside, Hiyori does seem to be a nice girl. Sanji really doesn’t bear any ill will toward her. 

It takes stepping out of the restaurant into the cool evening air to knock him out of what feels like a fever dream. “Did that just—”

Nami is looking at him like he’s one of those abandoned puppies in an adoption shelter ad. “Yep.” 

“And they just—”

“Yep.” Nami reaches over and pinches his arm. She leaves behind a red mark, which yes, hurts, but more importantly, doesn’t wake him up. “You good?”

“No, I’m cursed,” Sanji groans despondently. It’s the only conclusion that makes sense. “We need to go to a church right now and tell God that I am not his strongest warrior.” 

“There, there.” Nami slaps him on the back in what she clearly thinks is a reassuring manner. “There’s no way I’m stepping a foot into the Scientology building across the street, but hey—it could have been way worse. They could have been all over each other and I would have had to pour bleach directly on my eyeballs.”

“Thank god for small favors,” Sanji sighs, reaching for a cigarette. 

He lights it and takes a drag. Halfway through, Nami reaches over and plucks it out of his fingers, digging in her bag for a lollipop instead. 

He indulges her, popping the lemon-flavored candy into his mouth, and crushing the butt on a trash can ashtray at a wide grassy park. 

“Sorry,” she says, breaking the silence. 

Sanji blinks, racking his brain and coming up empty. “Hm? For what exactly?” 

“I don’t know. It’s not really anyone’s fault but it feels like one of those things where you deserve to hear an apology from someone. So. Sorry.” 

“Oh.” Well. It’s a strange but kind sentiment. “You don’t need to do that, but thanks.” 

“I could challenge her to a knife fight behind a Denny’s parking lot,” Nami offers, and Sanji can’t tell if she’s kidding. “To protect your honor. The winner gets Zoro’s hand in unholy matrimony.”

“You say that like Zoro isn’t going to have a knife in his hand himself.”

“Oh, no, he absolutely is,” she agrees. “In fact, I’m banking on it.” That familiar twinkle settles back in her eye, and Sanji relaxes, that comfortable warmth slowly reclaiming lost territory from earlier. 

“He’s going to ask about how we got together,” Nami says. “I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say you don’t want to tell him it’s because of your sad pining.”

“He is, isn’t he.” A pause. “Shit.” His hand goes to his pocket again, and Nami smacks it away. She pulls out another sucker from her purse.

They pass by a small food truck selling smoothies, and Sanji purchases their citrus blend, passing it wordlessly to Nami. “What if we’re vague about it?”

“We cannot be vague about it,” Nami counters, fixing him with a look that would make flowers wither. “This is Zoro we’re talking about here. Much as I hate to say it, he’s like a bloodhound when something doesn’t feel right.” 

“That’s…true.” The number of times that Zoro’s been able to tell that Sanji was trying to mask his exhaustion or play off a bad day is more than zero. It’s almost uncanny. “What do you have in mind then?”

Nami taps her chin thoughtfully. “What if…what if we met on a ship during her maiden voyage and fell madly in love within the course of two days, but then the ship hit an iceberg but we survived with nothing but the power of plot armor. So, like trauma bonding.”

Sanji trips over nothing, steadying himself in the nick of time.

“As fantastic as that sounds, I’m not sure even Zoro will buy a rehashed version of the Titanic as the reason we started...seeing each other?” Is that what they’re doing? 

“Too unrealistic? Alright, you and I are members of feuding families and meet at a party—”

“I’m going to have to nix what I sense is blatant Shakespeare plagiarism,” Sanji apologizes. “The marimo is dense but not that dense.” 

Nami takes a sip of her smoothie, waving him off. “I mean, who knows. Zoro can be pretty oblivious sometimes.” She waves her hand carelessly. “We’ve got time. I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

They peruse the park, walking along the cobblestone sidewalk as the street lights flicker on, one by one. Eventually, their path gets intersected by a small man-made river with gray slabs cutting through it. 

Nami carefully hops from stone to stone to get to the other side, Sanji behind her in case she slips on the water-slick rocks. 

The moon rises. They watch a group of elderly grandparents practicing tai-chi, their movements slow and precise. 

Eventually, they make their way to a small wooden bench. Nami takes a seat, tossing her empty cup into a trash can with startling precision. Tracing his finger over the plaque embedded on the top of the bench, Sanji takes a moment to read the dedication (Noland, whose legacy of kindness and truth shall prevail in the hearts of those who knew him) before sitting beside her in comfortable quiet companionship.

“Hey,” she says, head tilted up, trying to see the constellations between the foliage of the trees. “Besides the whole ambush, today wasn’t terrible. You sort out that whole love paradigm yet?”

Sanji sighs. “You know,” he says, leaning back his head along with her, scanning the sky for stars. The pangs of that sour feeling from the cafe have subsided but not disappeared. 

Is it loneliness? Sanji forced to reflect on his own insatiable craving for company? 

Is it love? “I’m not too sure.” 

#

They’re walking back to the Thousand Sunny when Sanji’s phone trills with a message notification from an unknown number. 

He frowns. It’s not the ringtone he set for the strawhats group text, and he can’t think of anyone who would be texting him at this time. 

unknown number : hello. it was lovely meeting you tonight. this is hiyori, by the way.

Sanji freezes. What the hell. 

Nami peers over his shoulder, frowning. “Is she texting using lowercase letters and proper punctuation?”

“It makes her seem both friendly and business professional, I guess?” Sanji defends weakly once he’s regained use of his limbs. His phone dings again. 

unknown number: i apologize if this seems strange, but after our run in tonight, i thought i'd reach out! my friend pudding who goes to grand line culinary institute had your number. i hope you don't mind that she gave it to me. you and nami seem like nice people, and zoro speaks very highly of you both. he’s usually very quiet about himself, but if there is one thing that is obvious, it is that he cares about you two very much. 

i’d love to get to know you both better. would you and nami be free the weekend after next weekend after midterms? i would have to check in with zoro, but i think a double date would be a lot of fun. let me know :)

Sanji stares at the paragraph of text until the words begin swimming off the page. 

“What,” he says, not registering the words. He tilts the screen so Nami can read it better. 

“What,” Nami parrots back, also not registering the words. 

Her own phone pings, the home screen preview revealing a similar text. She locks it without even opening the actual message, looking dazed. 

They stare at each other, both not entirely sure what the fuck is going on. 

“Okay,” she says after his own screen has gone dark from inactivity. Crickets chirp. “On second thought, you know how you mentioned that prayer earlier? I take it back. Let’s see if that Scientology church is still open.” 

iv. top ten ways to deal with unwanted emotions: number one, the opposite of whatever sanji black is doing

The Big Question: Is Sanji in love with Zoro or the idea of being in love?

Hypothesis: If he’s in love with the general idea of being in love, then avoiding Zoro and spending more time with Nami should be enough to sate his basic desire for companionship wrought by perpetual loneliness. 

He’s got the spending more time with Nami down pat. They’ve had a couple of small get-togethers after Dressrosa, exploring the small university town that makes up most of the area surrounding New World U.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t been doing him any good, thoughts still flying to the resident plant life downstairs, which means that Zoro, as usual, is the main problem here. 

Issue: It’s hard to avoid being around someone when you live in the same housing complex.

See, it turns out that having resolve isn’t enough, but setting alarms on your phone based on someone’s schedule for the sole purpose of avoiding them is. 

Is it unnecessary? Sure. Is it above and beyond what would constitute as antisocial? Absolutely. 

But it’s all in the name of science, much like cooking. Experimentation, and what have you. Sanji slips into the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays after six when Zoro is at kendo practice, and on Mondays and Wednesdays, he makes sure to do his studying on campus until nine o’clock. 

Breakfast is dropped off at the door like Sanji’s a personal DoorDash delivery man because, despite it all, he doesn’t want Luffy and Zoro to starve. He responds to the mosshead’s texts with the same irritated banter, albeit his own messages tend to be much shorter these days. 

What else is he supposed to do? Block him? So far, his system’s worked out pretty well. He's being civil. 

The only concerning thing is that Zoro might be catching on. 

Zoro’s tried to initiate conversation more often with increasing urgency, an act that is extremely out of character for someone who wears Aloof, Dark, and Handsome like a leather jacket. 

.

“Oi cook.”

“Sorry. Can we rain-check this? I have a Zoom meeting with my career advisor in a few.”

.

“Hey, Luffy’s asking why the—”

“Gotcha. I’ll text him. Thanks.”

.

“Curly brows, what’s going o—”

“Marimo. As much as I’d like to stay here and chat with you, I’m running late for a study session.”

.

It’s only a matter of time before Zoro reaches his tipping point. First of all, Sanji’s running out of excuses. How many times can a man meet with his career advisor in the span of three days? 

Every time he sees him, Zoro grows more and more irritated, and Sanji picks up the pace each time he walks away.

It all comes to a head on Day 4.

#

Day 4 happens to be a Monday, which means that Zoro’s first class is at ten o’clock in the morning. This also means that the mosshead should be sleeping like a log until approximately nine-thirty if the schedule he sent in the group chat at the beginning of the semester is accurate. 

Sanji’s coming back from his apprenticeship with Chef Terracotta, who’s moved into the pastry portion of their lessons, when he gets the sneaking suspicion that the political science major is using his god-given brain cell. 

Bread needs to be prepared at the crack ass of dawn, so he’s out of the house by four, rushing to grab his stuff at six, then hopping onto the metro to make his way to his morning class at Grand Line Culinary Institute at seven. 

He should not be reenacting the Spiderman pointing meme with Zoro, who swung open his door right as Sanji was about to walk past their room, nearly breaking his nose in the process.

“You.” Zoro looks murderous. Like he could use some more sleep. Which, you know, he should be doing. 

“Me,” Sanji agrees amicably. 

Then he bolts.  

There are a number of things that he could blame his poor decision-making on. Caffeine withdrawal. Sleep deprivation. A very real chance of being killed. 

After all, Sanji was technically going to be crashing his date with Hiyori two weekends, which would be enough to infuriate any man. He’s going to cut himself some slack though—it wasn’t completely done out of free will.

.

“What should I say?” Sanji had asked, panicked and defeated all at once. It was the exact feeling he had when his cactus was in the process of dying, and he’d murdered it’s nine predecessors in cold blood. 

Expected, but still. Not great. 

“How about ‘no thanks,’” Nami suggested. “Then add a smiling emoji to make it seem less harsh.”  

“Okay, the goal here is to ensure that Zoro doesn’t completely despise me,” Sanji stressed, about to rip out his hair. “Blowing off his girlfriend with two words and an emoji doesn’t exactly fit that criteria. How about something along the lines of ‘We wouldn’t want to impose on your quality time together. It was wonderful meeting you too.’ ” 

“Okay, but what if she insists that it’s no proble—are you texting this right directly in the message box?”

“Um, yes?” 

Nami slapped a hand to her forehead helplessly. “Wait no, stop. Draft it in the notes app otherwise she'll see you typing,” she advised, reaching for the phone. Sanji had fumbled it, and they watched in horror as it clattered to the ground. 

“Holy shit,” Nami hissed, hands flailing. “I am so sorry. Is it broken?” 

“Not a problem.” He had been the one who dropped it after all. “It’s not even chipped or—” He’d unlocked it, scanned the text thread, and immediately felt the blood drain from his face. “The message sent,” he informed her weakly. 

Her eyes bulged out of her sockets like a Funko doll. “What?” 

Below Hiyori’s just let me know :) was the following message: 

sanji: We wouldn’t want to 

That was it. That was the whole thing. 

In what can only now be described as one of the most chest-gripping, anxiety-inducing moments of Sanji’s life, the text bubbles indicating that Hiyori was typing popped up on his screen. 

“Oh shit,” he said, scrambling for a response. Nami snatched the phone from him, fingers flying across the keyboard. 

sanji: impose. Sorry about that. I was teaching Nami how to sauté an onion.

“Good save,” Sanji praised. Then, with concern: “Do you need me to teach you how to sauté an onion?” 

“Yes. No.  Maybe. That’s not important. The important thing is, if she insists that it’s no big deal, we have to go, otherwise, we look like assholes who purposely sent that first message.” 

hiyori: that’s quite alright! i really do insist.

“…you really are cursed.”

"That's what I've been saying this entire time." 

.

He cranes his neck back to see Zoro chasing after him, and holy shit does the adrenaline shot hit him hard. Sanji would rather throw himself out of a window than give Zoro an explanation about why he’s trying to give him some distance.

He lunges for the stairwell doorknob, and sprints down the stairs. In the enclosed space, he can hear the rapid steps of Zoro descending down after him. As he reaches the exit, he hears a loud thud.

Looking back, Sanji notices how Zoro leaped from the fifth bottom stair, bypassing the steps below, gaining quite a bit of ground. 

He looks pissed. 

Sanji fucking books it. 

There is no way he's going to be able to take his car today. It's an old reliable ride but it takes a ton of time before it starts in the morning and unfortunately extra minutes are not something that he has on hand. Technically, he should have driven it to the apprenticeship, but no, he chose to be environmentally friendly this morning and walk and now look where it's landed him.

The train it is.

He sprints past the parking garage. When he glances back a second time, Zoro’s vanished. Normally, this would be a good thing, but now he’s scared out of his wits that the marimo’s going to pop up from around the corner like a demented jack-in-the-box. 

He’s seen enough horror movies to know that it’s game over for him if he stops running. 

Thank the universe he listens to his gut, because right as he races past an alleyway, Zoro appears hot on his heels, having the navigation prowess to apparently take a shortcut but not find the way back to their apartment complex. 

“Sanji, what the fuck? Stop fucking running!” he hears, and yeah, that’s not advice that he’s going to take to heart. Sanji’s going to die today if Zoro catches him. 

“Nope, nope, nope, fuck this,” he hisses under his breath. 

His lungs are on fire but that’s better than the impending mortification he’s going to face if Zoro snags him. 

Sanji vaults over the turnstile at the station, nearly ramming into a businessman glued to his phone. 

The station guard approaches him to tell him off for not paying and ripping off the public transport industry, sees Zoro hurdling over the stile, then looks away. 

In what feels like a scene yanked straight out of a movie, the train is waiting patiently, doors about to slide close as Sanji dodges around the bustling crowd, headed to work in the downtown district. 

He barely makes it, and the doors nearly knick his heels as they close not a second later. 

Between the little windows of the sliding doors, he catches a glimpse of Zoro as the train speeds off, a pensive expression flickering across his face and a steely look in his eye. 

#

The brilliant thing about having a Macbook is that you’re able to pretend like you’re following along to the professor’s low-effort Powerpoint slides or taking notes when in reality you’re shopping on Amazon or scrolling through Reddit or gossiping on iMessages. 

She's half-awake during this 8:00 AM class and she's supposed to see Zoro in their shared upcoming STATs lecture where she'll finally shed her noncaffeinated, bitter shell into something more human. Approximately thirty-three minutes and sixteen seconds into the lecture, a text notification pops up on the right side of her screen.

From Zoro. 

Unprompted.

zoro: hey

The typing bubbles appear. Then disappear. Then reappear. Is Nami the only one who understands the value of drafting messages in the notes app? What is society coming to? If the news reported that the apocalypse was happening tomorrow, Nami might say good riddance. 

When Zoro’s typing indicator appears for the fifth time, Nami takes pity on him. 

nami: ? hi? why are you up so early

 

zoro: i need ur advice

She squints at her laptop. 

nami: you know i charge for my advice right? and last i checked—

She swipes over to the Excel spreadsheet on her computer labeled Thousand Sunny Debts and Fees, clicking on the Zoro tab at the bottom. 

nami: last i checked you owe me around four-thousand thirty dollars and eleven cents not including interest

 

zoro: its for a friend

Bullshit. Nami wasn’t born yesterday. She glances at the empty seat next to her and sighs. It’s this or GIS data acquisition, and since this lecture builds upon the foundations of the last lecture, she has no idea what the hell is going on anyway. This is the lesser of two evils, she tells herself. 

nami: okay out of the goodness of my heart i guess can give you a free consultation whats up? 

 

zoro: so i have this friend

 

nami: ofc 

 

zoro: and like hes friends kinda with this other guy

and theyve been good and everythings been great

then suddenly his friend is giving him the cold shoulder 

 

nami: has your friend tried talking to him? 

 

zoro: see he tried and then the cook fucking sprinted away 

fuck

the other guy is also a cook the cook is not sanji 

just wanted to make that clear

 

nami: right well if hypothetically not sanji lives in the same housing complex as your friend

then maybe he isnt trying hard enough to talk to him since the only thing separating them is a literal floor and that’s it :)

hypothetically ofc

 

zoro: dont like what your implying witch

is it a bad idea if my friend goes to the guys school to talk to him

Nami has to take a minute. She closes her laptop. Then she reopens it. 

nami: zoro tell me you are not on the train going to glci 

 

zoro: uh

 

nami: zoro youre a fucking idiot

 

zoro: its not my fucking fault he RAN AWAY 

When Nami was younger, Bellemere had bought her a comically cartoonish book called “A Smart Kid’s Guide to Social Etiquette: What to Say and Do With Class.” Zoro would benefit from that book immensely. Maybe she can thrift a copy for him. She pulls up Amazon on her browser, but before that, she shoots off a couple messages. 

nami: hey heads up zoros heading to glci

hey 

hey

No response. Today’s Sanji’s Business Hospitality lecture, which enforces a strict no cellphone, no laptop policy like they’re taking classes in the Dark Ages. 

At the very least, no one can say she didn’t warn him. That’s got to count for something. Drumming her fingers against the table, she exits out of the messenger window and turns her attention back to the lesson. She's definitely not getting paid enough for this. 

#

Sanji knows that seeing is believing but in this particular situation, he neither wants to see nor believe. 

Zoro is leaning against the wall right outside of his Hospitality Management class, hands shoved deep in his black cargo trousers, paired with a black hoodie, looking thoroughly bored out of his mind. He doesn’t even seem to notice the culinary students craning their heads to gawk at him as they walk by, because as attractive as Zoro is, he’s also as out of place as a mole in the Pacific Ocean. 

For a split second, Sanji nearly turns on his heel and walks straight back into the lecture hall. 

Instead, he sighs, squares his shoulders, and turns to the directionally-challenged intruder. 

“Are you lost, marimo?” he drawls, making his way to Zoro, whose head jerks up. “Hate to break it to you, but New World University is on the other side of town.”

He is resolutely pretending this morning did not happen. He did not run away from Zoro and a chase scene worthy of a cop-criminal movie did not happen. Nope, whoever it was, it wasn’t Sanji. Must have been some other blonde and green-haired man. 

“Cook,” Zoro says, pushing himself off the wall. “We need to talk.” 

“We’re talking right now.” 

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Zoro says flatly. “I can’t have a conversation with you that’s more than five words long before you suddenly remember you’ve got ten other things to do or you run away.” 

Then, in a voice so low that Sanji nearly misses it, he hears Zoro mumble, “You didn’t even tell me that you and Nami were a thing.”

To Sanji’s horror, he sounds hurt.

Sanji is not emotionally equipped to handle this. 

Normally, he shoves food in someone’s hand and does the whole gruff listening gambit, but he one, has no food and two, Zoro has a monopoly on the gruff listening gambit industry, so he knows all the tricks of the trade. 

Still, it’s Zoro, and yeah, okay, maybe Sanji hasn’t been dealing with the whole crisis as well as he’d like to think he is. He can admit where his shortcomings are.  

“Alright, then,” he says, putting his Hospitality Management skills into practice and making a snap executive decision. “Come on, mosshead. I’m not having a heart-to-heart with you in public with all these witnesses around. There’s a couple empty study rooms in the library.”

In what should be a relatively straightforward walk to the DeBarr Library, which is only one building over, Zoro gets lost a total of two times before Sanji just grabs his wrist and drags him along, like he’s walking this fully functional college student to the Child Services Department at the mall.

The first time he takes a single eyeball off Zoro, he wanders into a bustling kitchen. Sanji has to pull him out of the way of at least ten students who look like they’re plotting to throw the seaweed-for-brains man into the oven a la Hansel and Gretal style. 

The second time, the directionally-challenged lunkhead gets lost somewhere between the Bali and Bahama cookbook aisles. 

It’s a wonder he managed to find Grand Line Culinary Institute, much less Sanji’s class. 

“Well, take a seat, I guess,” Sanji says once they’ve made it to their destination in one piece, and he feels like he can finally let go of Zoro’s wrist. It’s not like Zoro can get lost inside a study room when he’s essentially been walled in. “Let’s talk. What’s going on?”

Zoro sits down on one of the black wicker chairs, but doesn’t respond, raising a judgmental eyebrow. “How should I know, shit cook? You tell me.” 

Sanji blinks at him, then huffs. If that’s how it’s going to be, then fine. He sort of deserves it after the fiasco from this morning.  

“Alright, I’ll bite. Is this about you and Hiyori or me and Nami?” 

For a second, Zoro lets him stew in silence.

“Both.” he finally exhales, hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “We were fine the day before the whole Baratie dinner. Then, it was like someone flipped a switch and we took ten steps back on our… friendship.” 

His voice drops in volume toward the end, but he stares resolutely ahead until the words are out of his mouth and in the open. 

Doing what needs to be done. Zoro’s tenacity has always been an admirable trait, Sanji thinks, reluctantly fond. 

Suddenly, the record screeches. Sanji’s brain flashes back an Error 404: Does not compute. Realizing that he’s taken a second too long to respond in the conversation, he allows himself to transition his shock into a leery grin. “Sorry, was that the F word that I heard?”

“Fuck you.”

“Close, but not quite,” Sanji sighs, letting it go. If Zoro says that they're friends again, one of them might explode from emotional overload. “For your information, I was being nice, which I suppose is a concept you've never heard of.”

“Nice, my ass. I’ve got to listen to enough doublespeak from the rest of the kids in my PoliSci classes. You were being fake.” 

“Well,” he exhales. It’s true. What's he going to do? Plead the fifth? “Can’t argue with you there, Counsel.”

Zoro snorts. “So what was it?” he asks, less belligerently, and there’s something about the way that his eyes soften, the way the tips of his lips quirk in that not-quite smile, that makes Sanji realize he is well and truly fucked. “What’d I do to piss you off?”

“You want an itemized list or something?” Sanji jabs back, tamping down the fluttering sensation bouncing off the insides of his stomach. “Sit tight because we’re going to be here all day.” 

He sobers after that, because it is a serious question that’s looking for a serious answer. On one hand, he’d prefer to err on the side of honesty, but on the other, he’s not keen on confessing to Zoro at this very moment, especially if it causes a rift in their friendship, or worse, Zoro’s relationship with Hiyori.

“I think,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “You and Hiyori made me think a lot about what I wanted, and that made me realize that I’ve just gotten comfortable with how things are. And that things can change. It gave me a bit of a crisis. Shouldn’t have taken it out on you, though—that’s my bad.” 

“Still speaking in circles, cook.” 

“Live with it. This is the most emotionally vulnerable I’ve been sober, so consider yourself honored.”

“Uh-huh,” Zoro says, making a show of humoring him. He reaches over to swat the bastard, but Zoro wheels his chair an inch out of striking distance. “It’s fine. I think I get it. So you and Nami then?” 

“It’s complicated,” Sanji admits because what else is he going to say? 

Hey, Zoro. Yes, Nami and I are platonically hanging out and calling it dating because I don’t actually understand the extent of my feelings for you but we’d sooner swallow a live roach than like actually date in the societal context of the word. 

Zoro squints at him, leaning forward. “You better not just be jerking her around,” he warns. “Otherwise I’m actually gonna have to put you in a body bag.” 

“Please, marimo. I think that you and I both know that mellorine is more than capable of putting me in a body bag herself, but I appreciate the concern on her behalf.” 

Zoro grins at that, throwing his head back, with a single bark of laughter. 

“Long as you’re aware.” 

Sanji thinks of her offer to knife fight Hiyori behind Denny’s. “I’m very aware. So,” Sanji says, going on the offensive. “You and Hiyori Kozuki.”

“It’s—she tells the story a lot better than I do,” Zoro explains. “But she asked, and I said sure, why the hell not.” 

That doesn’t seem completely like what happened, but Zoro looks so uncomfortable that Sanji actually feels bad for him. 

Zoro never does anything he doesn’t want to, but love can be tough. It can be a lot. For someone like Zoro, it’s probably more than he expected. 

He doesn’t need the local plant life to start diving out of windows because they have to confront their Feelings for the first time. 

“Yeah, no, I’ll just ask her this coming weekend then. Don’t strain yourself. Are we good?” 

“Guess so,” Zoro relents. “Hey.” He halts, wavering before committing to the rest of his sentence. “You know you can tell me things, right? As much as we dick around with each other, we actually are friends. You don't even have to run away next time.” 

There’s that F word again. Maybe it’s like exposure therapy, Sanji muses. The more Zoro says it, the easier it is. Still, despite the rather kind sentiment, some things can not be said out loud without Sanji wanting to abandon modern society to become a rice farmer. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sanji dismisses flippantly. “C’mon. I’ll skip my next class. Let’s get your truant tuition-wasting ass back to campus.” 

“Oi,” Zoro says, but he’s smiling, and God, Sanji knows it’s not his to have, but he tucks that memory in a small fold of his heart. 

What no one knows won’t hurt them.

#

“—And then, he called me his friend!” 

Sanji is pacing around in the common sense unit’s apartment, while the actual residents of the apartment listen patiently. 

The response is underwhelming. 

Usopp just stares at him. “Okay, I don’t want to be that guy, but am I missing something or isn’t that what you two are?”

“Yes, that is what they are,” Nami answers from over the university newspaper that's three days old. The headline: Justice or Tyranny? Dean Akainu’s Problematic Rant Caught on Recording. “Okay, but honestly, Sanji, what did you think you were?  Rivals with homoerotic tension?”

Robin looks at him a little pityingly. “Oh, dear.” 

“Yes to the rivals, eh to the homoerotic tension since it was always one-sided.” He hurriedly notes the depleting late-night pancakes and darts back into the kitchen to whip up some more. 

“I can’t believe I’m the only one who’s surprised by this,” he calls. “You should have warned me before I was caught off guard. That’s a point in his favor, you know.”  

“Trust me.” Nami flips the paper. The headline now reads: Student Purposely Hit By Bus In Ploy To Get Tuition Reimbursed.  “You would know if Zoro didn’t like you.” 

“Yeah dude, he’d like lay you out,” Usopp says, grabbing a muffin. “Um, not in the like fun sexy way either. Like in a painful kind of way. On the floor. With his fist.” He pauses thoughtfully: “Not that pain and sex are mutually exclusive or anything because our unit does has a strict no kink-shaming rule, but you know what I mean.” 

“Sadly, I do know what you mean and I would like you to stop,” Sanji mutters, loading the platter with the new batch of powdered sugar pancakes.  “It’s just—It’s one thing to know you’re friends and another to hear it. I’d thought I’d have to get hit by a car before he’d admit anything remotely related to friendship.” 

Nami sets down the newspaper and reaches for a pancake. “At least you don’t think he’s the one driving the car that’s running you over anymore."

“Yeah, there is that,” Sanji concedes half-heartedly.

#

So yes, Operation Cooks Against Invasive Plant Life was a complete and total failure. Bickering returns to the halls of the Thousand Sunny once again and Sanji and Zoro’s relationship shifts from genuinely homicidal back down to questionably homie-cidal. 

Regardless, the mosshead still spends most of his free time with Hiyori. (She needs the support, Usopp hears from his friends who’ve heard from Hiyori’s friends who’ve heard from Hiyori. She’s filing for the restraining order against that creep Orochi.) 

In the meantime, Sanji attends a modern art exhibit together with Nami where they spend most of the time trying to figure out what half the pieces even are. 

“I think it’s supposed to be a heart, but like, deconstructed?” Sanji wonders. 

“You could tell me it’s a peanut butter jelly sandwich that’s deconstructed and I’d believe you,” Nami says, circling around the weird amalgamation curiously. “Wonder how much it’ll sell for. You think Zoro’s dad would pay thirty million for this?”

“I mean, it’s this or his fifteenth castle, right?” 

Midterms creep up on them all with spindly fingers, leaving behind dark eye bags, and trash cans filled to the brim with discarded Starbucks Dark Roast K-Cups. Sanji spends longer and longer hours in the student kitchens with the rest of his culinary peers, experimenting with white chocolate, fruit-based syrups, and matcha. 

Soon, as it always does, food devours any available brain space in Sanji’s head, and there’s no time to think about Zoro and Hiyori and impending double dates. These days, it’s about tablespoons and cups and ounces. 

The midterm that has Sanji on tenterhooks requires them to design a dessert by incorporating most of the techniques they've learned in class. After days in the kitchen, he settles on a final design: a blue half-carved sphere cake base frosted at the bottom with matcha meringue. Using dark chocolate, he painstakingly crafts shells of fish which he carefully injects with a strawberry fusion before hand-painting them with edible watercolors. Rock candy lines the bottom of the dessert diorama, and strips of taffy so thin that you can see through them elicit memories of seaweed.

Sea at World’s End is as much of an art piece as it is an edible design. 

For the next couple of days, the group chat trills with the same consistent good luck messages, as one by one, each of the students enters the lion’s den. 

On the day of Sanji’s midterm, the second to last midterm of the household (Chopper has one tomorrow), the same messages light up his phone. Gin looks at him funny when he can’t stop grinning like a lunatic before exams.

By the end of the allotted testing period, Sanji is completely burnt out. All he can think of is his bed and peaceful oblivion. 

Consequently,  it comes as a surprise when Zoro pounds on his door at midnight, wearing his pajamas which is a ratty t-shirt with either a dried ketchup or bloodstain on the hem.

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. He’s making a clear effort to hold eye contact and not bust a gut cracking up. “Let’s go get spicy rice cake.” 

“What the hell is wrong with you,” Sanji glowers, sending a well-placed kick at Zoro’s shins. Just moments earlier, he’d just gotten out of the shower, and is now currently shirtless, with a green tea mask plastered across his face.

“Is that Zoro?” a younger voice calls, and Chopper zips out of his room, taking a much-needed break from his late-night studying. “Zoro!” 

“Hey kid,” Zoro says, helplessly soft as Chopper jabbering excitedly to him about his day and genes and ribosomes while the fake science major nods helplessly. 

In the bathroom, the fifteen-minute timer rings and Sanji washes off the foam, grabbing an old black button-up from his dresser and tugging it on over a pair of slacks. 

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Zoro says, raking his eyes over his outfit. “But this is a food stall run, not a photo shoot for Vogue or some shit.” 

“Ha-ha,” Sanji monotones. “For your information, I am dressing down.” 

“Are you guys grabbing tteokbokki?” Chopper asks. “Can you grab me some too? I can pay you back!” He dashes off and comes back fumbling through his wallet. “How much is it again?” 

“Don’t sweat it. It’ll be my treat.” Zoro ruffles Chopper’s brown hair. “How spicy do you like it?” 

“But—”

“It’s fine, Chopper,” Sanji cuts in. “We got it.” He slides open the balcony door and sticks a hand out. Not that bad. He’ll forgo the jacket then. 

“Okay! In that case, a little spice is good but not a lot! Sometimes it’s too spicy and—” Chopper titters on as Sanji grabs his wallet, his phone, and his keys, shoving them into his pockets. He also snags two peppermint dinner mints and tucks them away for later. 

“You got that, Zoro?” Sanji calls, knowing that no, Zoro has not gotten it. “I’ll be counting on you to order for Chopper.” 

The glare that Zoro sends his way isn’t venomous enough to stop him from snickering. “Chopper, is that an eagle?” 

“Huh? At midnight?” Chopper turns toward the window, and Zoro takes the opportunity to flip Sanji off because he’s a literal three-year-old. “Where?”

“Must’ve disappeared,” Zoro says apologetically. “Drink some water and get some rest, yeah? We’ll be back with food in a few.” 

The streets below the Thousand Sunny come alive at night, filled with food stalls and merchants, and restaurants that light up with humming yellow lights run by shop owners who are willing to give discounts if you’re not an asshole to their customer service.

The tteokbokki stand has always been a college student favorite, the line snaking off toward the side. Sanji counts six students in line in front of them as more people line up behind them.  

“So? What’s the special occasion?” 

“What, celebrating that you’ve stopped running away from me isn’t occasion enough?”

“Never going to let that go, huh?”

“Nope.” 

Sanji groans. “Bastard.” As the line trickles down to four people, then two, Sanji’s phone dings. 

nami: interesting do my ears deceive me 

chopper told me you were out of the house with a certain kendo addict

getting spicy rice cakes with your enemy at midnight because you hate each other so much

#justrivalthings amirite

 

sanji: nami i am begging you to wipe that conversation from your memory

 

nami: hm 

nah

hey btw pick me up a spicy tteokbokki with no anchovies will you 

plssss

“Who’s that?” Zoro asks, and Sanji jerks his head up so fast he hears something crack. Zoro’s brows raise. 

“Oh, just Nami. She’s asking if we can order her something too.”

“Ah.” 

“So, how was the competition yesterday?” He slips the phone into his pocket, pretending Luffy hadn’t made all of them watch the livestream of the kendo tournament last night. 

“Not bad,” Zoro hums, stepping up to the food cart. “Oh, uh, one mild vegetarian tteokbokki, one extra spicy tteokbokki with everything, one…” he hesitates, glances back at Sanji, then shakes his head. “That’ll be it.” The grandmother loads up his dish, and Zoro pays with his gold Mastercard. He’ll be the first to go in the class war. 

“Hello,” Sanji smiles, stepping up to the stall once Zoro’s been handed his orders. “I’ll have a spicy tteokbokki with no anchovies, a classic spicy tteokbokki, and a spicy tteokbokki with everything,” 

Sanji Apple pays the vendor who beams sweetly at him and piles a little extra on his dishes. He doesn’t know this woman on a personal basis, but implicitly, he understands that he would lay down his life for her. 

“Who’s the extra for?” Zoro asks, standing off to the side with his rice cakes in white paper takeout boxes. 

“Your black hole of a roommate,” Sanji says. “You know how it goes. We walk in there, he finds out that we grabbed something to eat without him, then bam. He gets all mopey, which—” he continues watching Zoro shudder. “—you get to deal with.”

The mosshead nods. “Want me to pay you back?”

“No, you trust fund baby, I don’t want you to pay me back. It’s fine.” At the skeptical look that Zoro shoots his way, he quickly tacks on a “Promise.” 

They make their way over to one of the nearby benches where other college students are chatting and meandering around, some cracking open beers, some eating lamb skewers from another college favorite food stall. It’s an amiable night. 

“What were we talking about earlier?” Zoro cracks apart his pair of chopsticks beautifully. They’re eerily symmetrical. Sanji used to be able to split them in half perfectly when he was younger but now he applies too much force or too little and the chopsticks always come out lopsided. 

“How you kicked ass in the tournament?” He purses his lips, studying the wooden sticks in his hand. Maybe confidence is the key here. 

Zoro reaches over and cracks them apart for him and Sanji’s heart tries to rip a hole through his ribcage, thudding loud and quick like drum beats. The yearning that he’s forgotten about comes thundering back in full force, like a reopened knife wound. 

“Huh. And how would you know I kicked ass?” 

Sanji can hear the shit-eating grin on his face even before he sees it. Ignoring the dryness of his mouth, he says, “Because you said it went fine, which in your monosyllabic neanderthal language, means that you swept as expected.” 

Immediately, he realizes he’s dug himself another hole. 

“As expected—?”

“How’s PoliSci treating you?” 

Zoro snorts. “Great topic change. PoliSci’s going fucking phenomenal. Can’t stand some of the people in my class, but I’m sure some people can’t stand me either, so fair’s fair.”

“Honestly,” Sanji says, biting into the tteokbokki, the plush spring of the rice cakes and the kick of the spice nearly making him forget what he was going to say. “Damn, this is good. Honestly, I didn’t peg you as a PoliSci kind of guy.” 

“Figure that it’s as good of a major as any,” Zoro explains. He hasn’t touched his food yet, which is strange because Zoro usually eats like a horse and he initiated this outing. “Don’t care about the law one way or the other, and that makes me a perfect lawyer.” 

“Pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

“I don’t care enough to have any moral hangups about exploiting the law, and I don’t care enough to go out of my way to break it,” Zoro says with a shrug. “Law’s law. There are good ones and bad ones, and everyone has a different idea of what justice is. I just present the facts of the case skewed one way or the other. It’s just another match, but with arguments.” 

He huffs softly, and Sanji freezes, rice cake halfway to his mouth, pinned under Zoro’s gaze. “Guessing you always wanted to be a cook?”

“Chef,” Sanji corrects. “And yeah. Even before Zeff adopted me, it was all about food. You ever see someone’s face light up when they eat something good? I love that feeling.” 

He immediately feels sheepish by how corny the words must sound. Blood rushes up to his neck. He hopes the lighting is bad enough that Zoro can’t tell. “Though, I did have a brief period of time where I entertained the idea of being a wedding planner.” 

“Why am I not surprised, love cook?” Zoro teases, finally digging into his food. “Always gravitating toward romance, huh?” 

“Something like that.” A gust of warm air blows over him. It sends their brown napkins flapping from where Sanji’s wedged them under their trays of food. “Hey, you ever been in love?” 

Zoro fixes him with the very same expression from the study room earlier this week, from that one trip on the beach, from the conversation about All Blue months ago. 

Every fleeting thought, every squashed wish, everything he’s repressed during midterms comes rushing back to him. It makes Sanji’s palms sweat. It makes him want to burn Zoro into the back of his eyelids. It makes him want to hope even though there is nothing to hope for. 

“Once,” Zoro says quietly, looking down. The wind seems to die down to hear his voice too. “Only once.” 

And Sanji knows he's talking about Hiyori. He has to be. Who else could he possibly be referring to? 

Yet, his traitorous heart continues to pound, bruised and swollen and still so full of love. 

#

Shit. 

Shit.

#

Conclusion: It’s Zoro. It always has been. 

Chapter Text

v. don't hate the player, hate the game

It’s a well-known fact that Totto Dining Hall on the east side of campus has the best desserts in the area, knocking out Zou and Elbaf with relative ease. 

It’s not perfect, obviously. The Freshman’s Guide to Surviving New World University claims that the cooks put enough sugar into their entrees to send students into cardiac arrest, and consistently send out raw chicken, but even with food poisoning, Totto is still considered miles above Elbaf. That, in and of itself makes Totto Dining Hall a hotspot at New World U. 

It also doubles as the de facto Situation Room for the two members of the Sanji Support Squad. Given that D-Day or the Double Date with Hiyori is occurring in less than twenty-four hours, the Squadron has made the executive decision to initiate Crisis Mode.  

Sitting in the booth, with two plates of cookies and another piled to the top with chocolate brownies, is Usopp, who has out a clipboard and Zoro’s stolen reading glasses perched upon his long nose. 

Nami is seated across from him, back ramrod straight, focusing intently on the words coming out of Usopp’s mouth. 

“Okay, let’s try that again. What made you fall in love with Sanji?” 

Nami makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat that sounds like a frog being stepped on. 

Fixing her with an unimpressed look, Usopp scribbles something on his clipboard. “Subtracting points for being suspicious.” 

“How was that suspicious?” Nami protests. “I didn’t even say anything yet!” 

“Okay, okay, fine. Let’s take it from the top. I, Hiyori, am super totally interested in what made you fall in love with Sanji.” Usopp points his pen in her direction. “What was it that made you swoon? Was it his swirly eyebrows? His chiseled jawline? His long legs?” 

“What the fu—time out. Time out.” Nami’s face twists as if she’s in pain, and Usopp is genuinely worried that the undercooked chicken got to her.

“Alright.” She takes another deep breath. “Um, I don’t care about superficial things like that. I like him because he’s nice.”

Usopp waits for her to continue. She doesn’t. “Is that it?”

“It’s hard for me to think of him like that, alright? What’s the next question?”

“Uh.” The next question written down on Usopp’s clipboard is what’s your favorite sex position but Nami might implode if he asks her that, and they need her alive on this double date tomorrow. “Do you like…kissing?” 

Nami stares at him. “We’re fucked,” she says solemnly.

“It’s a yes or no question. And there’s one right answer.”

“We’re fucked,” she repeats.

In a moment of insanity, Usopp wonders if he could pass for Nami if he just slapped on an orange wig before deciding, more rationally, probably not. “Alright, you know what. Let’s focus on the bright side. So far, we’ve been able to introduce ourselves, which is good. And introduce Sanji as our boyfriend. Which is also good.” 

“Hi. My name is Nami. It’s nice to meet you. This is my boyfriend Sanji,” she recites under her breath before reaching for a cookie. 

Usopp pokes at her fingers with his fork. “No cookies for bad actresses.” 

“Hey! She could talk about the political economy of Korea or the Illuminati and we wouldn’t have a problem.” Nami tries for a dessert again, then grabs at his fork when he tries to fend her off. “It’s just the relationship part that’s throwing me for a loop.” 

“She’s not going to not talk about your relationship on a double date.” 

“You know what was good?” Nami says, finally wrenching the fork from Usopp’s grasp. “The 1940s. People minded their own business in the 1940s.”

“Yeah, because everyone was off fighting a literal World War,” Usopp informs her. “Kind of hard to mind someone else’s business when you’re being shot at in battle.” 

Nami throws her hands in the air. “Everyone’s a critic.”

“You’re the one who asked me to help you improve your fake dating skills! Which by the way, in case you were wondering, you’ve answered a single question and you already have negative points.” 

“Stop being mean to me,” she grumbles. “I’ll ask Sanji to fight you for my honor.” 

Usopp huffs, putting away his clipboard. Even he can see it’s a lost cause, much like telling Luffy to go to class or Brook to stop playing his violin at 2:00 AM. “Sanji wouldn’t hurt me. I’m his best friend.”

“Excuse you?” Nami is seconds away from throwing hands in front of Usopp’s poor brownies. “Are you the one he’s in an undefined platonic relationship with? I don’t think so.”

“Sanji’s and my relationship transcends fake dating,” Usopp sniffs. Speaking of which, “I still can’t believe he wants to go on this double date after everything.”

Nami crosses her arms, bloodlust fizzling out. “You know how he is. Hiyori already got us tickets to Whole Cake World and planned out rides and he doesn’t ‘want to ruin it for her.’”

On today’s episode of Masochist or Martyr, Sanji Black everyone.

Usopp slumps back in his seat. Sanji can’t help who he is. It’s just his nature to care too deeply for others and too little for himself. “You’re going to look out for him right? As one of his best friends.”

Even while crunching down on a cookie, Nami manages to embody James Bond, ready for her next mission, nevermind that Hollywood would never cast a female James Bond. “Duh. What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?”

#

nami: hey just checking in

are you sure that you want to go

like 100% sure 

 

Sanji: Hello Nami! Thank you for checking in!

Yes, I’m sure. It would be rude if I cancelled now. 

But if you don’t want to go, I completely understand. I’ll cover for you. 

It is an awkward situation haha.

 

nami: dumbass 

if youre going im going 

you think im going to let you third wheel z*ro and hiyori all by yourself?

youre going to have backup buddy i havent been cutting my nails in case i need to fight someone

 

sanji: I sincerely hope that we don’t have to fight anyone but I think I’m touched by that gesture? 

Thank you.

 

nami: sure no prob see you tomorrow at 9 

:)

 

sanji: :)

#

Whole Cake World is an indoor amusement park, complete with a shopping mall, a movie theater, arcade games, and park rides. It stretches toward the sky at a whopping five stories tall, and retail ticket prices are going for one-hundred seventy-seven dollars. Nami checked. 

Couples and children and families roam the park holding swaths of cotton candy and teddy bears. This is more of a one-year anniversary location, not a double date situation for college students who are living off of microwavable meals in the clearance section and instant noodles, but Hiyori had won four tickets from a shamisen contest. 

Apparently, instead of giving her cash, they handed her four passes only redeemable at one specific location at one specific time of the year. This then kickstarted the butterfly effect that landed Nami and Sanji’s asses on a double date with the love of Sanji’s life and his girlfriend.

Nami’s seen enough multiverse movies to ask this particular universe, Hey, what the hell? You couldn’t have given the girl a Target gift card or something? 

The morning had gotten off to a smooth start, regardless of Usopp’s less than optimistic assessment the day before. 

“You two make a cute couple,” Sanji said when Hiyori picked them up in her Tesla, the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. 

There had been no hostility in the words. No anger. Just a tinge of poorly concealed wistfulness and she had been reminded of how quietly Sanji liked to nurse his wounds, how he kept them to himself until they became too much to bear and he found himself on the kitchen floor, world-weary and love-beaten.

“It’s not too late to bail out.” Nami had whispered earlier when Hiyori just pulled up to the curb. “If you collapse right here in my arms, I can tell them that you just had a heart attack and that we can’t make it.”

“The student insurance doesn’t cover ambulance costs,” Sanji muttered out of the corner of his mouth, resembling a man walking toward an electric chair instead of an electric vehicle. 

Then, he’d played his role perfectly.

In fact, he and Hiyori are currently leading them toward the drop tower, chatting with such animation that Nami would think that they were two scientists on the verge of curing cancer. Last she eavesdropped, they were heatedly debating the merits of fondant and buttercream. 

This means, naturally, that she’s been delegated what Sanji affectionately calls “plant duty” and has been left with Zoro, who thank the fucking gods, would rather cut off an arm than discuss romance. 

She’s perfectly fine with that. Hiyori had pelted her earlier with enough questions to rival a legitimate police interrogation. Nami should have had a lawyer on speed dial and her rights read to her. All in all, she thinks she’s held her ground decently well. 

Unlike his better half, Zoro’s easy to deal with unless Sanji is involved, in which case he turns from a fully functional human adult to a toddler that ignores warning labels out of spite. They fall into their typical routine of Nami taking the reins of the conversation as Zoro listens. Occasionally, he asks a question or huffs out a breath of laughter when someone in the story Nami’s telling does something particularly stupid. 

At some point, when Nami’s run out of things to talk about and they’ve lapsed into a comfortable silence, she makes the mistake of glancing at him.

Immediately she nearly runs into a pillar. 

Zoro is staring ahead at the duo ahead of him. There’s nothing strange about that, but it’s the way that he’s staring that nearly gave Nami a Grade 1 concussion. 

It's as if Hiyori has cut out the moon and hung it in the sky, as if he has been waiting for her to notice him his entire life and now that she’s with him, never wants to let her go. 

She forgets that she’s blatantly staring until he turns his attention on her with a raised eyebrow. “You want to take a photo, witch?” 

“I think you’d burn out my camera lens with how love-struck you look.” 

Zoro blanches in a way that Nami’s only ever seen when Perona visits unannounced with Mihawk in tow. 

For some reason, she feels bad for teasing him. Hell, she should be proud that Zoro’s achieved what she’s always considered technically impossible and beat her to the dating scene. Official dating scene. What she and Sanji are doing is more akin to the unpaid internship done before actually entering the very scary job market. 

“Hey, I was just kidding. I’m glad that you found someone who makes you happy. Your girlfriend seems nice. She has my stamp of approval.”

She pats his incredibly firm bicep reassuringly. It doesn't seem to help. She pats a little harder. 

“Nami,” he says with sudden urgency. “Wait I need to tell you—”

“We’re here,” Hiyori calls back to them. The drop tower looms over them menacingly. People scream as the ride plummets. “Is everything alright?” 

She defers to Zoro, who just says, “We're fine. Nami—”

Then, Sanji strides up to them, hands shoved in his pants pockets, and whatever was on the tip of Zoro's tongue pewters out. “If you’re bullying mellorine, I will personally gut you like a fish and feed you to the sharks on the third-floor aquarium.”

The anxiousness plaguing Zoro evaporates, replaced with an arrogant smirk because of course he’d take the bait. “Tch. Keep dreaming, curly brows.” 

“Hah? What was that?” 

Nami’s mind floats back to the night in the kitchen and thinks, forget the goldfish, forget the anglerfish. Zoro is a particularly dumb piranha that keeps getting reeled in, only to be saved by government-issued catch and release laws.

Hiyori shoots her a sympathetic smile, in the they’re idiots but they’re OUR idiots sort of way, and Nami has no idea how to tell her, yeah, but you and I are not the same. 

Hiyori and Zoro probably have done scandalous shit like holding hands. Nami and Sanji have done scandalous things like pretend to date each other. 

“Next,” the coaster attendant calls. 

“Shitty neanderthal,” Sanji barks. “Have you considered getting prescription glasses? Did you eat the lead paint off the bars of your crib as a brat?”

“Says you, you womanizing bastard,” Zoro fires back. “Bet Zeff smacked you over the head with his leg one too many times when you were a kid.” 

Distantly, Nami sees a mother cover her child’s ears and walk in a twenty-foot large radius around them. A couple of people stare. One girl holds up her phone, about to record the bickering happening in front of the drop tower. 

She can see it on TikTok now: fellas is it gay to pick a fight in front of the Whole Cake World drop tower just so you can shove your face less than an inch away from the other guy’s?

“Um,” the poor beleaguered attendant pipes up. “If you don’t mind taking a seat—” 

Nami restrains herself from slapping her hand against her forehead. “I got this, uh,—" She skims his nametag. "—Zeus." Zeus doesn't appear to believe her and continues searching for security with increasing desperation. With a solid yank, she herds Sanji and Zoro to their respective spots and dumps their asses there. 

“Do you know how much the average babysitter is charging in this economy,” she asks them flatly. It is a rhetorical question. Neither of them better answer. 

Both of them mumble something under their breath, twisting their head away from one another, and Nami rolls her eyes. Good enough. “You ready, Hiyori?”

Hiyori already has the overhead restraint down and ready to go. “Yes,” she flashes Nami a quick ok sign with her hands. “Everything’s perfect on my end.”

Hiyori is truly too good for Zoro. They should just leave the two arguing nimrods and get drinks together or something.

Once Zeus conducts the courtesy safety check, the ride raises them high above Whole Cake Land, and soon park attendees begin to resemble colorful moving specks instead of people. The contraption creaks to a halt. 

“What a view,” she hears Sanji mutter, awestruck. He sounds breathless. 

“Yeah,” she hears Zoro mumble in agreement, and Nami scans the place for something so striking that it’s worthy of a ceasefire. 

She’s still in the middle of peering at the park when the machine plummets to the ground.

Nami sees her life flash before her eyes. It’s really seconds before death that you realize all the important life lessons. For example, no one is too young to write a will.

Her stomach presses up against her sides and she presses her lips together so tightly she’s most likely cut off circulation to her mouth.

Right before they hit the ground, the ride careens up again, then hurtles downward, until they’re finally lowered back down to earth. They stumble off the ride in varying states of amusement, with Hiyori mostly unaffected, Nami about to kiss the ground, Zoro dazed, and Sanji having the time of his life.

They eventually make their way up to the second floor, where the arcade is located, filling the space with neon flashing lights and clanking jackpot bells. 

Sanji and Zoro spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to outdo each other’s scores on each janky console until Nami and Hiyori had glanced at each other, come to a mutual understanding, then pulled them away because there is only so much basketball hoops, Whack-A-Mole, and Dance Dance Revolution a girl can stand. 

Never mind the horrors of third-wheeling Hiyori and Zoro with Sanji. She’s third-wheeling Sanji and Zoro with Hiyori. 

#

After about nine different rides later, Nami is ready to lay down on the floor and tell the rest of the group just to leave her there. She’s not the only one. 

“Is anyone hungry?” Hiyori asks as they reach the food court on the fourth level. “I wouldn’t mind a hotdog.” 

“You and Nami take a seat,” Sanji says, leaping into action. All he needs is a white horse and shining armor and he’s ready to be set free in a storybook. It’s the waiter that’s been drilled into him waking from its dormant stages. “The mosshead and I will grab you two something to eat and drink.”

Nami raises an eyebrow, but before she can say anything, Sanji is dragging Zoro away, their usual tug of war back on display at full force. 

“Never agreed to—hey where are you—let go—!” 

Hiyori’s hand flies over her mouth to cover her smile. “They’re delightful.”

Delightful is a debatable word choice. Nami usually chooses pissy or mind-boggling dense. “That’s one way of putting it. Can’t take them out in public anywhere without causing damage to public infrastructure, but sure, delightful works too.” 

“Did you have a good time today?” 

“Yeah, it wasn’t bad.” 

“Good.” The sincerity of the word startles Nami. “I’m glad. I was hoping that I’d get a chance to talk to you one-on-one.” 

Nami instantly starts scoping out emergency exits. The hot dog was a trap. Hiyori’s got her right where she wants her like a butterfly in a net, and she’s about to pin her onto the corkboard. If she starts asking for love, or god forbid, sex advice, Nami’s going to be the one to keel over from a heart attack right here in Whole Cake World. “Well, I’m more than happy to chat. What’s up?”

“Did you know that the restraining order against Orochi was approved yesterday?” 

Nami grins, overjoyed on Hiyori’s behalf. “Really? Congratulations! It’s about time.” 

Hiyori’s returning smile is radiant. “Thank you. He’s a bastard, and I hope he rots in hell,” she spits, and holy shit, she’s terrifying, but Nami loves to see it. 

“Zoro’s been incredibly supportive,” Hiyori continues. “In his stoic but kind sort of way. I can’t convey my gratitude enough, and I owe him a great deal.” 

“…Right,” Nami says, not sure where this whole conversation is going. 

Hiyori twists her body to face Nami completely. “Do you mind if I ask you for an extremely large favor? You’re under no obligation to agree.”

Nami blinks. This is not the turn that she expected the conversation to go. 

Still a little wary that Hiyori’s going to ask her for a liver or a kidney, she probes, “Depends on what the favor is.”

Hiyori closes her eyes. Inhales then exhales.

Nami frowns. “Is everything—”

“Break up with Sanji Black.”

#

Nami stares at Hiyori. Hiyori stares back. In one of the most eloquent moments of her life, Nami opens her mouth and says a single word that would leave Shakespeare quaking: “What?” 

Hiyori has the audacity to look taken aback. “Um. Please break up with Sanji Black,” she says a little slower as if Nami misheard her the first time.

“That’s not…what the fuck. Why would you ask me that?” Nami says, anger snapping up her chest with a furious snarl. “How could you possibly benefit from me breaking up with Sanji?” 

Because, no matter how Nami tries to justify the statement, there’s not a single thing that she can think of Hiyori would gain from their breakup besides hurting Sanji even more. 

Sanji’s doing his best to wave the white flag, goddamnit. He’s long resigned himself to prioritizing Zoro’s happiness by bowing out if it meant that Zoro found joy being with Hiyori.

He’s so stupid and good and kind that it makes Nami want to grab him by the shoulders and scream, “Stab someone or embezzle! Do crime! Be selfish!” 

The fact of the matter is that she and Sanji had agreed to end their weird pseudo-relationship after today, but the sheer audacity of Hiyori’s request is enough to send Nami into attack mode. That Sanji doesn’t love her as anything more than a friend is a given. The reverse is the same and Nami likes it that way, but that’s all irrelevant right now. It’s the principle of the matter.

He’s her friend. 

And Hiyori is asking her to what, essentially abandon him? 

She imagines Nojiko, taking her by the hands. Breath in. Breath out, she used to say. Nami follows those instructions to the t. 

“I thought…oh, I may have misinterpreted. Do you…love him?” Hiyori says, and Nami’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. Misinterpreted what? 

Before Nami can ask, Hiyori puts her head in her hands. “Fuck. Fuck. I am so sorry. I was certain your relationship was fake too.”

Nami feels ice spike into her veins. They've been discovered. She thought that she and Sanji were doing well, but Hiyori's caught them in the act. How is she going to break it to him? The least she can do is be there when Zoro finds out, take some of the heat off of him. 

Then, the word ‘too’ hits her like a bowling ball to the face. 

“What do you mean ‘too’. What the fuck is going on.”

“I asked Zoro to start a fake relationship with me to scare off Orochi,” Hiyori explains slowly, as if unsure whether or not they’re on the same page yet. “It ended yesterday when the restraining order went through. He’s been in love with Sanji for the longest time, so I thought I’d help get them together as a form of gratitude since his feelings seemed to be requited.”

Holy fucking shit.

Nami’s mind races back to every mention of Hiyori’s stalker, Usopp’s casual comments about the restraining order, the lead-up to this entire damn conversation.

“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my fucking god.”

#

“A hot dog, huh?” Sanji muses, more to himself as he scans the directory of restaurants. “Just any hot dog? Wonder if your girlfriend’s tried Korean hot dogs before. First time for everything, right? I’ll get them one.”

Zoro grunts, because his uncultured palette doesn’t give a crap about what kind of hot dog it is as long as they get a hot dog. Still, he follows Sanji to the Korean restaurant without complaint, even though the American hot dog stand was just twenty feet away.

Sanji squints. There’s something off about the marimo, a sort of tripwire tension running through his body that sends Sanji’s own nerves on edge.

He places his order, running through all the different scenarios that have Zoro so off-kilter. An insult that might have crossed the line? Was Sanji too close to Hiyori? He makes a mental note to dial it back, just in case.

When his order is finally called, the clerk gives Sanji a broad smile. “You want any sauces with it? We have cheddar, mayo, curry, and sweet chili.”

Nami is more partial to sour flavors, but he has no idea what Hiyori wants. At a loss, he says, “Both with sweet chili, one on and the other on the side, if you don’t mind.” If Hiyori decides she doesn’t like it, at least her food won’t be smothered in it.

Zoro offers to take the bag when Sanji returns, a casual hand turned upward, but Sanji just shakes his head. They’ve had a conversation, sure, but that lingering awkwardness has yet to fade and for the first time in a while, he’s hesitant about using Zoro as a pack mule.

“I wasn’t sure what Hiyori wanted,” he says off-handedly. “You know, for the sauces. I should have asked you since you’ve been going out and all. What does she like, by the way? Might be good to know for the future.”

“The what?”

“The…future?” Sanji repeats slowly, wondering if there’s an earwax cloggage or something going on that he should be aware of. To be honest, it’s not like Sanji wants to have this conversation either but the only thing he has left here is his dignity and the very least he can do is act with grace. “I assume that you’ll be dating for a while, yes? That means she’ll probably be coming over more often and at some point, she’s going to be eating something that I cook. Is any of this basic human logic making sense to you?”

He adds on the last jab to try to reel back some semblance of normalcy, because the more that he speaks, the more anxious Zoro seems, and genuine concern washes through him with the force of a Category Five hurricane.

“Yeah, no. I—fuck. Okay—” Zoro snaps, dragging a hand down his face. He's the picture of distress, leaving Sanji at even more of a loss. “I can’t do this anymore. Cook, it’s not like that, alright? Hiyori and I aren’t actually dating. We never were.”

Sanji feels every muscle in his body lock into place as the floor is dragged under his feet. Then, just as quickly, the earth begins turning again, and he’s able to breathe.

There’s a logical explanation for this. Zoro’s making a joke.

“I’m not criticizing your sense of humor,” Sanji chides, still shaking off the initial shock. “Even if it does match a brick wall at times, but that’s a shit thing to say.” He, for one, would be heartbroken if his significant other pretended like they weren't dating, and he won't tolerate that sort of behavior toward an innocent girl like Hiyori. 

Zoro remains silent, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Sanji desperately wants to unravel them.

“Wait,” he hears himself say. “Are you for real? Then why did Usopp tell us that you said you were dating?”

“Ever heard of pretending, shit cook?” And yes, Sanji’s heard of pretending; some might call him an expert in it, but not to this extent.

A sneer is etched into Zoro’s face, but he won’t make eye contact, and Sanji pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to map out what to do. He’s not completely sure of what is going on here, but he does recall Zoro’s words in the study room from what feels like a lifetime ago.

That at the very least, despite everything, they’re friends. That they can tell each other things.

Whatever this is, it’s clearly eating Zoro up inside.

“Alright.” He finds them a booth and pushes the food aside. There are more pressing matters at hand. “Start at the beginning. I’ll listen.”

#

The story that everyone on campus knows: Zoro saved Hiyori once from her stalker and she’s been enamored with him ever since. 

It’s somewhat true, and at the same time, not entirely true. 

Stories, you know, can be rather unreliable depending on who’s telling them.

#

After ten deep breaths and a good five minutes, Nami settles down to a somewhat more normal breathing rate. 

Hiyori apologizes an exorbitant number of times for the confusion and Nami apologizes an equally preposterous number of times for nearly clocking her in the face.

Once they’re both done verbally forgiving and asking for forgiveness, Hiyori begins from the very start. 

“It’s true.” She’s lost in thought. “In the beginning, I did like him. You should have seen the way that he stood, glaring at that clown with his three shinais. Orochi, who by the way, deserves to fuck himself on a cactus, had been stalking me for a while and I was in a bit of a predicament since, at the time, I was babysitting. Toko and I managed to get outdoors, but he was closing in.”

She laughs, bringing a hand to her mouth. “I thought for sure it was fate when I bumped into your friend. He reminded me of a roaming samurai of the past.” 

Nami tries her best to see what Hiyori must have seen. Zoro, backlit like something divine, something heaven-sent. She fails, picturing only the scowling debt-owing impulsive dumbass turning the wrong corner and accidentally running into Hiyori on his way home. “Uh.” 

“That ended quickly,” Hiyori assures her. “It was obvious he was in love with someone else.”

“...Right.” 

#

“She asked for my number in case, you know, she ever needed help again. Kinda just took my phone and punched it in.” Zoro sips on his beer (when he purchased it, Sanji has no idea), studying his face for a reaction.

Sadly, Sanji has no clue how he’s supposed to react. “That makes sense?” He says, but it ends up sounding more uncertain than contributory. “She liked you?” 

“Huh.” Zoro appears genuinely surprised. “Did she? I had no clue.” The worst part is that he doesn’t even sound like he’s lying. 

Sanji winces. Turns out he and Hiyori might have a couple more things in common than their taste in green-haired algae. “Did she text you?”

“Sure. Not about Orochi or anything urgent until later though. She wanted to get lunch or coffee for the most part.”

“Did you go?”

“Nope.” 

Sanji frowns. “Why the hell not?”

“The first time, you and I had plans to watch a movie, which now that we’re talking about it, why the fuck would we watch the La La Land when they’re showing Pacific Rim at the same time?”

He smirks as Sanji sputters, but keeps on going. “The second time, you were making curry and asked for a taste-tester and the third time was for brunch but you already made all of us breakfast.” 

Sanji sends Hiyori a quick mental apology for unintentionally cockblocking her not once, not twice, but three times in a row. He’s pretty sure that’s a one-way ticket to hell. “Okay, that doesn’t explain—” he gestures. “—this.”

“Things with Orochi got worse.” Zoro’s face darkens. “It was pretty bad and the cops were useless. She was worried that the asshole was going to try something before her restraining order went through. So, she asked if I could help ward him off for a bit.”

“And you said yes.”

“You would have wanted me to.”

Sanji has no idea how to react to that observation whatsoever.

#

“See, at the time, all I really needed was a boyfriend who was intimidating enough that Orochi and his goons couldn’t fuck with them. Fake, real, anyone would have worked.”

It’s starting to all come together. “And Zoro fit the bill.”

Of course, Zoro fit the bill. The man's pec muscles were larger than Nami's own chest. His biceps were probably two of Hiyori's arms stacked together. 

“Yes, his physique and his looks didn’t hurt either,” Hiyori reminiscences. Her comment makes Nami want to brain herself. Yes, he’s fit as fuck. The sky is also blue. The grass is also green. Let’s not spend more time gazing at Zoro through the female gaze than we have to. “But it was nice having someone to ask questions to about legal jargon and the proceedings who wasn’t an attorney, even if he was rather blunt. More importantly, I didn’t see lick or hide of that jackass for a while.”

Imagine getting job experience because of a fake relationship. Zoro’s Political Science major is actually seeing some action.

Mixed emotions churn in Nami’s stomach. On one hand, holy shit is Hiyori resourceful, a trait that Nami admires immensely. She mentally notes to befriend her on LinkedIn. On the other, she remembers the brittleness of Sanji’s demeanor. The perfect smile, strained at the edges, and she wonders if it was all worth it. “That was,” she says, picking each word carefully. “Smart of you. You had us completely fooled.”

Translation: That was incredibly smart of you and I’m glad that Zoro was able to head off Orochi, but you also sort of took my best friend’s heart and smashed it into pieces.

“Thank you,” Hiyori says, with a quirk of her lips, not exactly reading between the lines. “So back to my original question. Are you and Sanji purely platonic?”

Nami closes her eyes, exhales, then opens them again. She’s going to be petty, middle-school mathematics style. Let Hiyori show her work. “What gave it away?”

“A couple of things. Earlier when I asked you how you met, you just summarized the plotline of To All The Boys I Loved Before, for starters.”

Nami winces. Alright, not her best work.

“But to be fair, neither of you gave me solid answers about your relationship when I asked. Nor did I notice you initiating any sort of romantic contact with one another which is atypical for a new relationship. And of course,” she huffs almost fondly. “The way that those two look at you and I can hardly compare to the way that they look at each other.”

It hits Nami right then and there that the heartachingly soft gaze that Zoro was directing forward earlier at the drop tower was meant for Sanji, not Hiyori.

How did she not see?

“It was meant to help give him closure if he wanted it,” Nami explains because the cat’s out of the bag, and Hiyori’s more than earned an explanation with her evidence. “Help him decide whether he was in love with Zoro or, I don’t know, in love with the idea of love. He figured it out pretty quickly. We were planning on ending it after we got through today.”

All the tension leaves Hiyori’s body. “I’m glad that I took that leap of faith. Can you imagine how this conversation would go if I had been incorrect?”

Poorly, Nami would imagine, given the way that it was about to descend into a World Wrestling match right here, right now.

“If Zoro and Sanji start dating,” she says hesitantly, a troubling thought blipping into her brain. “There’s not going to be any rumors or anything about him dumping you and using Sanji as a rebound, is there?”

“No, it shouldn’t be a problem to shut down any gossip-mongers,” Hiyori says with a stern nod. “I’ve already filled in my close friends about the situation yesterday, and they’re 100% ready to help clear up any confusion.”

“You’re…going to gaslight the entire university into thinking that it was a misunderstanding?”

“Politicians do it with entire countries.” Not for a second does Hiyori lose her placid smile. “And I have a lot of influence on campus. It’s unsavory, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do if she intends to wingwoman for her friend, no? Especially if that friend plans on silently pining until he’s on his deathbed.”

Nami laughs. She can’t help it. The situation is so absurd, yet she finds herself saying: “He pines a lot, huh?”

Hiyori’s face falls. “I feel like I know Sanji better than Sanji knows himself,” she groans. “Did you know that he played soccer from ages ten to thirteen? And that he’s partial to black tea over green? I could go on, but we’d be here for days.”

“Hey.” Kindred spirits indeed. “I completely get it. Sanji’s the same. Usopp and I probably have white hairs dealing with his Zoro rants.”

“And he doesn’t even know he does it.”

“And he doesn’t even know he does it.”

There’s something special about this moment, the creation of a deep mutual connection built from suffering in close proximity to stupidity that only the two of them can understand. It’s liberating.

“Well.” Nami hops up from her chair and cracks her back in three different places. “They can’t get together if the two of them think Sanji and I are still bound to our agreement, right? Let’s go. I have someone I need to break up with, and the sooner I do that, the sooner they can finally work things out.”

“There’s a bar here that sells decently good margaritas,” Hiyori needles, the edges of her lips twitching upward. “I think we’re due for some drinks after this.”

“You have no idea how good that sounds,” Nami sighs. She extends a hand to Hiyori, who takes it, and with a pull, she helps her to her feet. “And you know what? Maybe I’ll even treat you to a cocktail or two.”

From the twinkle in Hiyori’s eye, Nami already knows that Zoro has regaled her with horror stories about her stinginess. Good. She wears that badge with pride. “Consider me honored.” 

#

“Okay so you aren’t dating Hiyori,” Sanji clarifies once he’s gathered his wits about him.

“No.” 

“Were you ever dating Hiyori?” His wits are not entirely gathered, if he’s being fully honest with himself. 

Zoro snorts. “It was more of a work relationship than anything.” 

“Then why the hell are you on this double date?” 

Zoro begins ripping at a sugar packet, dumping the fine grains onto the table. “Court system is all kinds of messed up. We didn’t know how long it was going to take to get a decision, so we ended up planning too far in advance in case there were any delays. And now—” he does jazz hands in the most deadpan voice Sanji’s ever heard, “—Tada.” 

No wonder Zoro is gunning to be a lawyer. If Sanji didn’t know all his tells, he’d buy his explanation, hook, line, and sinker, but with the way that Zoro’s eyes flicker over to the side, and the way that he’s sitting straight like a man about to negotiate a business deal, he’s overcompensating, and Sanji can tell. 

Sanji eyes him sullenly. "You should have told us." 

"I was gonna," Zoro admits, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "But Usopp's kinda a gossip and Hiyori was worried that Orochi was going to start trying to interrogate my friends like he was doing with hers. So." 

"You could have at least told me or Nami." It would have honestly saved Sanji a lot of mental distress, because what in the world. This is some prime-time telenovela bullshit come to life and Sanji has been...what is Sanji? The yearning side character caught in the dark?  

"I could have." The marimo doesn't elaborate any further. Sanji knows when a conversation is over and drops it.

Frankly, Sanji should be overjoyed right now, but his head is spinning like Wile E. Coyote after he runs into a wall. Zoro is single. Fucking fantastic. 

Sanji’s hyper-aware of the fact that Zoro’s still under the impression that he’s dating Nami, and he can’t just ditch her. It’s basic manners, and even a friend (?) relationship deserves a face-to-face breakup. Another thing: Zoro’s emotions are an enigma, and Sanji isn’t in the mood to be launched face-first into the friendzone anytime soon. 

He slams his head down on the table. 

No matter how he wraps his mind around it, he’s stuck on square one.

“Uh,” Zoro says, a tad bewildered and a lot concerned. “You good?”

Sanji lifts up a single finger weakly. “Give me a moment.” Finally pushing himself up onto his elbows, he sighs. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?” 

“This is a child-friendly area, idiot.” 

Shaking his head, Zoro stands up, chair scraping against the ground, and heads toward one of the restaurant stalls. Sanji watches him in a haze, barely processing when the mosshead returns with an iced tea and shoves it at him. 

“What is this?”

“What do you think it is? It’s mud,” Zoro responds flatly. “Bone-apple-titty.” 

“I hate you,” Sanji groans, taking a sip anyway. The chill of the beverage shocks him back into reality. “Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it.” 

Still, something itches at the back of his skull, nudging his curiosity incessantly. “Hey, can I ask you another question?”

“If you can string together a sentence after bashing your brains out on the table a couple minutes ago, sure.” 

Sanji thinks about their conversation in the park. Is it wrong of him to want to know about the one person Zoro’s ever fallen in love with? 

No, he concludes. It’s self-preservation. Once Zoro confirms that it’s someone not-Sanji, he’ll nip his feelings in the bud, or at least, take action to abate them. 

Worst case, if he can’t get a grip on himself, he’ll move housing complexes. He doesn’t want to, but this is mentally straining him to a point where it’s going to drive him insane. He knew Zoro was going to be the death of him eventually. He thought that it meant that Zoro would accidentally stab him with a katana or knock him out, not that Sanji's so attracted to him that his mental compartments are malfunctioning.  

But this is the make-or-break moment. There's no turning back from here.

“Back in the park, you mentioned that you’d fallen in love once.” Zoro freezes. “If it wasn’t Hiyori, who was it?”

Right now, Zoro reminds him of a house of cards. Frozen, but about to collapse if someone so much breathes on him. "Marimo?" he prompts, not unkindly. "If—"

“I can’t—ask me any question but that one—“ Zoro manages to grit out. “Sanji, don’t ask me that.” 

“Why not?” 

“Don’t.”

“Because it’s embarrassing?”

“Because you’re dating Nami!” 

The lightbulb clicks on over Sanji’s head. 

Zoro’s awkward energy in the restaurant. 

The way he took the time out of his day to repair his relationship with Sanji. 

That peculiar expression that had crossed his face each time Sanji had mentioned he was texting Nami. 

This is what it all comes down to: Zoro’s in love with Nami. Probably has been, for God knows how long, and Sanji just swooped in and stole her away. Forget the yearning side character. He's straight up the villain. 

Sanji’s heart wrings, twisting bittersweetly, but hey, it’s just a fact of life that he’s unlucky in love, it seems. “No worries,” he says, “So funny story. Don’t laugh, but, uh, Nami and I were in a fake relationship too?” He draws a line in the sugar that Zoro’s dumped on the table. “We were going to end it tomorrow after the date today, so no need to be heartbroken over it, you’ll get your chance.” 

He chuckles weakly, keeping his eyes trained on the groves he’s carving into the white powder. “Sorry, this is really embarrassing to admit. I probably should have told you sooner, all things considered. I’m sure that you and Nami will make a hell of a power couple.”

“You think I’m in love with the witch?” 

Sanji shrinks down in his seat when he feels the eyes of everyone on the fourth-floor turn in their direction. “Holy shit. Lower your voice. I know you’re shameless, and Nami deserves someone who’ll love her proudly, but maybe confess to her instead of me?”

Zoro looks seconds away from shaking Sanji by the collar. “I’m not in love with Nami, swirlybrows,” he growls. “I’m in love with you. I always have been.”

Oh. 

vi. take my hand (take my whole life too)

“Maybe you should text him,” Hiyori suggests. “Like, let’s break up.”

“That’s a brilliant plan,” Nami says as they weave their way past a gaggle of teenagers. The problem with this place is that there are too many damn people here. Another con of overpopulation: you can’t find the person you need to break up with. “Except Sanji’s with Zoro.”

“What—” Hiyori nearly trips, and Nami steadies her. “Thank you. What does that have to do with anything?”

“There’s a high chance he’s not going to check his phone when he’s with Zoro. There’s no room in Tweedledee’s brain for anything other than Tweedledum. Where are they? I don’t see them anywhere.”

Hiyori stands on her tiptoes, to no avail. “Do you have Find My Friends?” she asks. “Maybe the universe will give us a sign. Venus is in retrograde after all.” 

“Shit, the signal here is ass.” Just like every time T-Mobile fails her, Nami vows to change to AT&T, and every month, she renews her contract with T-Mobile out of sheer laziness. “Don’t think Find My Friends is going to work. And please tell me you believe in astrology ironically.” 

“Sometimes? It started off ironically, but slowly became unironic?”

Nobody’s perfect, Nami thinks. Even model musician masterminds have flaws. Astrology’s a pretty serious one, though, up there with chewing with your mouth open and snoring. 

Luckily, Hiyori doesn’t sound too far gone, so they can probably still save her. More importantly, they’ve got a relationship to slash. 

“We’ll come back to that,” Nami says. “But let’s scan the perimeter one more time.”

#

“I—you—no,” Sanji says a little frantically. “You can’t be in love with me.”

Zoro flinches like Sanji’s struck him across the face. “Why the hell not?” 

There are many reasons that Zoro can’t be in love with Sanji. For starters, Sanji is a bit of a mess. He’s a workaholic who doesn’t know when to stop. He has the temperament of a particularly angry badger but most importantly, this is a good thing, and good things don’t just land in Sanji’s lap. There’s always a catch or he’s always had to take the hard path round and earn his happy ending.

Maybe miracles exist, but they don’t happen to Sanji Black. This is a fact he’s known all his life, but how does he put that into words?

So, instead, what he says is: “Because I’m in love with you! I’ve been in love with you for the last two years,” he snaps.

Instead of rescinding his confession, the marimo just rolls his eyes and leans back against his chair, recovering from the initial shock rather well for someone who went through the whiplash of being rejected and confessed to in less than two seconds. “Well, I’ve been in love with you for the last three years, so shove it, cook.” 

“You’re such an asshole. I can’t believe this. Fuck you.”

“You wish, huh?” Zoro shoots back. The familiar back-and-forth releases the tension from Sanji's shoulders, which he realizes, was Zoro’s intention all along. A warm flush of affection courses through him and he swallows hard.

“I am not talking about this with you right now. We can discuss this later. The correct order of things is to settle things with Nami first.”

“Mm. I was wondering if we would be circling back to your fake relationship.” 

“Pot meet kettle,” Sanji grumbles. “And I don’t know what it was. I use the term fake relationship loosely but honestly, your guess is as good as mine.” 

“Why did you get into that thing with Nami?” Theories are clearly drifting through his mind because malicious energy oozes off of Zoro a split second later. “Is someone stalking her?” 

“No, you dolt. I was trying to figure out if I liked you for you or if it was more of a personal crisis.” 

“Okay,” Zoro considers. “And?” 

“We are discussing this later.” Sanji stands up, grabs the bag, and starts toward where they last left the girls. He can feel his face heating, the blood rushing up to his cheeks. He turns his head away, but Zoro sees the embarrassed flush before he can hide it.

“You love me,” Zoro croons, deducing the truth. Sanji swings at him with his bag, which Zoro catches with ease. “You do,” he repeats, this time with a smidge of wonder in those two words, and Sanji can’t help but reply begrudgingly.

“Yeah. I do.”  

#

Finding Sanji and Zoro becomes an impossible task in this sea of people. It turns out that there are three New York hot dog vendors and none of them have seen a blonde with bangs or a jock with green hair. Which, you would think would stick out like a sore thumb, but apparently not.

“Shit,” Nami mutters, jabbing at her phone and hoping for a miracle. The single connection bar blinks back at her. “I’m going to sue the crap out of them.”

“Should I try calling?” Hiyori asks. “I have Verizon.”

“I’d say yes in any other circumstance, but everyone in the Sunny is a victim of T-Mobile. Family plan and all,” she says. “It’s a real money saver but is shooting me in the foot right now. Chances are, if I’m not getting a connection, they won’t pick up either, but give it a shot.”

“Went to voicemail,” comes the confirmation a few minutes later. “We could stand on a table? I imagine that they shouldn’t be very hard to spot.”

“Don’t see any empty tables. Maybe we’ll run into them if we keep searching.”

Thirty minutes later, they have decidedly not run into them, and Nami is this close to pulling out her hair.

In a park this big, there is no speaker that can make such a widespread announcement, so going to Child Services is out of the question.

As she paces in front of some fake potted plants, her eyes drift toward a random Whole Cake worker that passes them, most likely on his lunch break based on the yakisoba in his hands. There’s a walkie-talkie hanging off his belt. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have an idea. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

.

“Hi there Zeus!” Nami beams, back once again in front of the drop tower. Zeus physically takes a step backward. “Whatcha up to?”

“Uh,” He scans the area behind them, then upon not seeing Zoro and Sanji, clears his throat. “Are you here for the ride again?”

“We were wondering if you’d be able to help us locate our two friends.” Based on the tone of Hiyori’s voice, the request is not debatable. “We purposely came when we noticed that there were fewer people in line, and your coworker seems to be managing the ride fine on his own, so you can help, right?”

“It’s really serious,” Nami adds grimly. “But it appears our two companions have been breaking some rules here. Is there a Whole Cake World security team? For the sake of saving this multi-billion dollar corporation that obviously exploits its employees, you have to detain them.”

“There’s a Whole Cake World jail, isn’t there? For unruly guests? Please, before they do this park any more harm.”

Wow, she and Hiyori are nailing this. 

Zeus smiles nervously. Good. “Do you have a physical description of them, maybe?”

“Blonde,” Nami says.

“Green-haired,” Hiyori adds.

“Swirly-browed.”

“Three earrings.”

“Weird emo bangs.”

“Could most likely bench press you.”

“Flirtatious. Extremely flirtatious.”

“Has what one might call a resting bitch face.”

“O-okay,” Zeus says. “And what rules did they break?”

“What rules are there that can get you sent to Whole Cake jail?” Hiyori inquires.

“Um, stealing?”

She and Hiyori exchange glances. “Yep. That. They stole.”

Zeus stares at them. They stare back.

Finally, he raises his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Hello, can I get the security detail? We’ve got a code 415.”

#

“Shitty phone isn’t working,” Sanji grumbles. “The girls probably can’t reach us either. I guess we should start looking for them on foot then.”

Right as he stands, a guard wearing a Whole Cake badge emblem strides up to them, scanning him and Zoro up and down. “Yeah, I found them,” he says into his walkie-talkie. “You two Zoro Roronoa and Sanji Black?”

“That’s us,” Sanji says. “What can we help you with?”

The guard lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Please follow me. You’ll be escorted to a room where park officials will review the evidence and decide whether or not to eject you from the park, and if necessary, ban you permanently. Do not make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”

“What?”

“We’ve gotten a report that you two have been shoplifting,” the guard monotones. “Among other things.”

Sanji’s jaw drops to the floor. Identity theft is a real and pervasive problem. Sanji just never thought he’d be a victim of it since it primarily targets the elderly and people who believe that the Prince of Nigeria needs a donation as soon as possible.

“I think you’ve gotten the wrong people.”

The guard exhales slowly as if he hears this on a daily basis. “Nope. Swirly eyebrows. Green hair. Definitely you two.”

“Wait a damn—" he turns to Zoro. “Shouldn’t you be asking them to read us our rights or something?”

“Pretty sure Whole Cake World doesn’t give a shit about your Miranda Rights,” Zoro huffs before turning to face the guard. “Was this an anonymous tip?”

“Two girls. Now, sirs if you’ll please come with me,” the guard says in a way that makes it obvious he'd rather be anywhere but here.

Two girls. Like a lightning bolt striking his brain, everything makes sense.

Sanji runs a hand through his hair and tries not to groan. He thought he’d understood the extent of his bad luck, but it turns out that he forgot to factor in the possibility that after getting confessed to by his crush of two years, he’d be immediately arrested by Whole Cake amusement park police. For some reason, that scenario never crossed his mind.

“I’m going to kill Nami.” Zoro’s expression doesn’t change but he sounds downright murderous. It’s sort of impressive. The guard fidgets awkwardly.

“Sir, I am obligated to warn you that attempted murder of any sort is not permitted on the property.”

Sanji fixes Zoro with a glare. Do not make this worse than it needs to be, mosshead. “We understand. Take us away, office.”

#

Hiyori and Nami have been waiting in Whole Cake jail for about fifteen minutes when a guard comes in with Zoro and Sanji trailing behind them. If Nami’s being honest about it, Whole Cake jail is kind of nice. It’s styled like a 90s-themed diner, which is sort of tacky, but not terrible. The worst part is that they have Funkytown playing on repeat and that there are creepy clown paintings glowering down at them. Nami thinks if she pressed her ear to the wall, she'd be able to hear the ghost children from Coraline. 

“Nami?” Sanji sputters when he passes the threshold.

“Nami,” Zoro growls venomously.

The distribution of blame is a little unfair, all things considered. “And Hiyori?” she suggests.

Hiyori waves.

“Thank you for finding them, officer,” Nami says. The officer nods. They sit there in tense silence, all pointedly ignoring the dark cloud looming over Zoro. After a good five minutes, another person steps out of the security room.

“We’ve reviewed the shop footage, and the vendor verified that they paid for all their purchases, so they’re good to go,” he says to the first guard. Turning to Hiyori and Nami, he says, “You know, you could always call instead of going through the trouble of faking a report, right?” Then, more sympathetically: “Cellular connection?”  

“Yep.”

“Alright, yeah. Not the first time this has happened. Let them go.”

“You are dead to me,” Zoro says flatly once they’ve initiated their jailbreak and are released back into the wild. “Dead. I am never buying you another coffee ever again.”

“With what I’ve had to go through, you should be buying me twenty coffees,” Nami grumbles. “Shoo, go away. I want to talk to Sanji.”

Sanji steps forward and extends out an elbow, which Nami takes, and the two of them step aside from the main group. Where were you? I thought you were getting hot dogs?”

“Korean hot dogs,” Sanji clarifies a little apologetically. “Zoro has them if you’re hungry.”

“Going to go out on a limb here and say that Zoro isn’t in a very generous mood right now. Anyway, I have something important to tell you.”

Sanji nods. “So do I. Do you want to go first?”

“No, you can go.”

“Hiyori and Zoro are in a fake relationship. Well, were in a fake relationship. He was just telling me about it and—” he bites his lip. “I think we should break up.”

“Because he’s in love with you.” Nami fills in the blanks, unable to help the way that her smile spreads across her face. “And you’re in love with him.”

“Yes,” Sanji exhales. He glances up at her like he’s expecting her to scold her. You better treat him well, shithead, Nami tries to telepathically communicate to Zoro. Do you realize how lucky you are? “Are you—you’re not mad, are you?”

“Sanji, what the hell, of course, I’m not mad. Do you know how happy I am for you?” That’s an understatement. The giddiness within her is ricocheting off of every corner of her soul. “This is—God—you deserve to be happy.”

“Still,” he says, a little apologetically. “I’ve dragged you into this and—”

Nope. Nami is going to stop this right here. “Who suggested this whole thing, you or me?”

“You, but—”

“And who got the ball rolling by organizing the first date, you or me?”

“You, but Nami—”

“You,” she says, poking him in the chest. “Didn’t ask me to do anything that I didn’t want me to do. So stop overthinking, and don’t let yourself ruin this. Now, don’t you have something to ask me?”

Slowly, tentatively, Sanji’s own lips curve upward. “Yeah,” he breathes. Then more firmly: “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I do.”

“Time is money, you know. I’m not getting any younger here,” Nami teases, and that pulls a snort from Sanji.

“Don’t be so eager; you’re wounding me.” He takes his hands in hers. “Nami. Mellorine. A queen among women. You have been nothing but supportive and an excellent partner-in-crime.”

Somewhere behind her, Nami swears she hears a passerby mutter, “Is he proposing to her?” and has no idea how to break it to them that they’re currently celebrating the end of a relationship.

“However,” Sanji continues. “As we both know, all good things must come to an end. But I have nothing but gratitude for everything you’ve done for me. Are you alright if we call an end to this, uh arrangement?”

“Are you kidding me? Sanji, you idiot. I was literally running over here to dump your ass. Yes, let’s call an end to whatever the fuck this was.”

Releasing his hold, Sanji chuckles and takes a step back. “I mean it. Thanks. Really.”

“Of course. It’s my duty as a Sanji Support Squad member.”

That just gets Sanji to laugh more. It’s a good look on him, she thinks. She hopes that with Zoro, that happiness will only get more consistent. “Well, know that as a member of the Nami Support Squad that if anything comes up—well, maybe not a fake relationship,” he says, glancing in Zoro’s direction. “—but the same level of insane comes up and you need someone, call me. I’ll always pick up.” 

“You better,” Nami says, unable to keep the goofy smile off her face. "After all of this? I expect you to pay me back with interest."

“Are you guys done?” In the time they've been gone, Hiyori seems to have filled in Zoro on their side of the story.

“Yep. Guess who just broke up! Good riddance.” 

Sanji clutches his chest, feigning hurt, as Hiyori attempts to politely applaud, two Korean hot dogs in her hand. Nami wheels toward her, nearly vibrating out of her skin at the thought of copious amounts of alcohol. “Alright, Hiyori and I will leave you two to it then. We’ll see you at the gates at—” Four? She mouths to Hiyori who gives her a thumbs up. Or at least, tries her best to. “—four. Go, I don’t know, do cute shit and try not to kill each other.”  

“No guarantees,” Zoro says. It would be more convincing if Nami didn’t know how whipped he was. How did she miss the signs? 

She shakes her head, wondering if she should text Usopp before deciding against it. There’ll be an announcement in the group chat soon enough. It better be good because Nami has invested way too much time and effort into this. 

She jerks her head toward the bar area, and together, she and Hiyori exit stage right.

#

“Guess it’s just you and me.” Zoro nudges Sanji’s foot with his shoe. The cook turns to him, exasperated. 

“Seems like it, now that the ladies have gone out for drinks,” Sanji quips, stuck in his own mind again. Gently, Zoro reaches out and smooths out the furrow between his brows, noting the way that Sanji takes a step back to gape at him. 

“C’mon cook. Let’s find somewhere private to finish our conversation. We both know how much you hate being vulnerable in public,” he can’t help but joke, then immediately has to dodge a kick to his ankle.

The tiny problem about finding somewhere private in an amusement park to dissect your new ambiguous relationship is that it’s nigh impossible with the crowd, which is why somewhere private ends up being in the carriage of the Ferris Wheel.

“So, you love me for me, huh?” Zoro hums once the attendant has locked the door and walked over to check on the other riders.

“Don’t ask me why. You have horrible manners, no sense of personal hygiene, terrible directional sense, are stupidly stubborn, and yet.” Sanji runs a hand through his hair and tugs. “Yes, I do. And it’s reciprocal?”  

“Took you long enough to realize,” Zoro says, removing Sanji’s hand before he can do any more damage to his roots. With a groan, the ride slowly inches upward. “Luffy and Brook had a running bet going. Though, the whole you and Nami thing threw Brook and me for a loop. Luffy just called us both blind.” 

“Hm. I just—you said three years, huh? That’s about when we first met.”

“Yep.”

“What, you going to tell me something cheesy like it was love at first sight?”

“Thought you liked cheesy romantic stuff like that, cook,” Zoro jests, not denying the accusation either, Sanji raises his eyebrows, picking up on the subtext.

The carriage rises higher and higher, bit by bit.

“I don’t know if it was love, but it was something,” he admits a moment later. “I didn’t think I’d see you ever again, so I didn’t think much of it.”

“But here we are.”

“Yeah. Funny how that works, huh?”

The first time that Zoro had heard of Sanji had been through Luffy, who kept blabbering on about some hot shot cook who was going to take the cooking world by storm. “His name is Sanji and he’s so cool, Zoro. You should meet him!” 

The thing about that was that Luffy had a million friends and he thought they were all cool and that they should all meet Zoro. Zoro, on the other hand, purposely used his selective memory to forget about eighty percent of the people he was introduced to ten minutes after they had said their names.

Of those that he remembered there were two categories: One, he genuinely liked them (the people at the Sunny for instance), or two, they beat their way into his memory by just being plain weird (Tralafagar Law, for instance, who had DEATH tattooed across his knuckles, and Eustass Kid whose hair looked like someone had rolled a paintbrush in flaming Hot Cheeto powder).

He'd thought he'd forget about Sanji.

He hadn't.

Sanji, whose laughter filled the room. Sanji, whose eyes scrunched close when he smiled, hair golden in the light. Sanji, who created himself a whole new category, a whole new reason to be remembered.

His first run-in with the cook had been at a house party at the beginning of freshman year. Luffy had persuaded him to go with minimal dragging but maximum whining until resisting was no longer worth it and the temptation of free booze trumped his reluctance to socialize. 

He'd seen the cook, chatting with a long-nosed boy he later learned to be Usopp, gesturing animatedly with his hands. He'd stood there staring, a little transfixed, tuning out the conversation he was supposed to be having with Ace and Marco. 

A pair of fingers snapped in front of his face. He wrenched his body around to see Luffy with a mischievous grin stamped on his face, and the sort of dread that he'd only experienced once in his life when Luffy tried to use one of his swords as a pole vault stick roiled in his chest.

Sure enough, Luffy’s hot breath ghosted into his ears, singing, “Zoro has a crush, Zoro has a crush.” 

“Don’t be stupid,” Zoro snapped, pinching Luffy’s cheek and pulling, finally pulling his eyes away from Sanji. “He’s just…it’s not like I’m ever going to see him again. Drop it.”

Luffy cackled, reaching over to pat Zoro’s cheek in retaliation. “Don’t worry. I like Sanji a lot! He makes great food.”

Zoro sighed, dragging a hand down his face. If Luffy liked someone, there was no doubt that Zoro was going to see them often, and that included the long-legged blonde with eyes so blue that it should be illegal.

And maybe if Luffy hadn’t latched onto Sanji, hadn’t decided, as he tended to do, that Sanji was one of his, it would have just been that: a crush. Instead, like an idiot, he’d left the small embers of interest unattended, and they’d exploded into a wildfire, the kind that ate up acres of national parks.

Every new side of Sanji that he saw lit another fuse, set afire another dynamite explosion, and all Zoro could do was watch it all go to hell.

There was the way that Sanji ached to do good, despite being a force to be reckoned with in of himself. His old kendo sensei had once mentioned something about the balance between strength and gentleness. It was a codex that Zoro strived to follow, but Sanji embodied it, devoured it whole until it became a part of who he was.

There was the way Sanji dreamed of All Blue, born from a desire to surpass and honor a legacy. Zoro had Wado Ichimonji. He understood honor, understood legacy, and knew that all vows to carry someone’s spirit on your shoulders were one and the same.  

Sanji buying too many desserts at a cake shop so he could ask some of the children salivating outside of the shop to help take some of his hands. 

Sanji taking one look at each of them, at Zoro, and instantly knowing if they’d had a good day or a bad day within minutes of interacting with them.

Piece by quiet piece, unseen until the impact of it all nearly bowled Zoro over. 

By the time he realized that he’d been pulled into Sanji’s orbit, it was too late. Forget falling heads over heels. Zoro had done a backflip over his fucking feet, conked his skull on the metaphorical pavement, and laid sprawled on the floor like he’d challenged Mihawk to a duel and gotten his ass kicked. 

He’d wanted to trace the curve of his smile. He’d wanted to be the person to take care of Sanji when Sanji was taking care of everyone else. He’d wanted to tear out his own heart and serve it to the cook on a silver platter.

Here is what I have to give to you, he wanted to say. Memorized coffee orders. Umbrellas during rainy days. Banter when you need to keep your mind off of whatever chatter is going on in your head. A coat for when it gets cold out. Someone to talk to when you get home, no matter how late it is.

Here is my devotion gift-wrapped into something you could cup your hands around, something that you can crush if you want. I am giving it to you with no strings attached. You don’t have to love me back. Just allow me to love you unconditionally. 

The fake relationship with Hiyori was a spur-of-the-moment decision driven by the erraticism of love. When she asked, waiting for him in front of his Comparative Politics class, all he could hear was Sanji's voice, babbling on about chivalry and doing the right thing and needing to help someone in need (the word ladies was probably tossed in there somewhere too), and he'd said yes without even realizing that the words had left his mouth. 

Once he committed to something, he didn't back out. That didn't mean he wasn't tempted to when he thought Sanji and Nami were together. His heart had squeezed, this terrible gut-twisting grief and loss stabbing through him like nothing he'd ever experienced before. 

I've developed a heart condition, he'd told Hiyori one day in a rare bout of honesty as they poured over papers and documents. He figured that she should probably know in case he dropped dead during one of their dates. 

Do you need to see a doctor? Hiyori had asked, alarmed, and he shook his head.

Doesn't ache now, he'd explained, a little puzzled. It’s only when I see the cook these days. 

Oh. Hiyori had said, softly. Well, I’m not a doctor, but love can be a terrible thing sometimes. 

It didn’t make sense to him then. He'd come to associate spending time around Sanji with a content feeling, a sort of satisfaction not dissimilar to the kind he got after a good workout. 

Sometime in between, the comfort had turned into pain when he wasn't paying attention, and he didn’t know what to do with the weight of it all, boring down on his lungs, snatching away his breath, and leaving him neck bared, belly up, ready to be sliced open.

He'd resigned himself to his quiet pining, unsure of when or if it would ever end. Zoro knew himself better than he knew anyone, knew the levels of his dedication, his loyalty, and knew that pigs would fly first before he'd just roll over and give up on something that was his, even if it was a love for someone who had found happiness elsewhere. 

Then it turned out that Sanji's and Nami's relationship was as real as his and Hiyori’s. 

And then it turned out that his unrequited feelings weren't so unrequited after all. 

“Zoro,” Sanji interrupts his train of thought. He’s biting his inner cheek. “Shit.” 

The cook is an open book and wears his heart on both sleeves. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce what it is he wants but is struggling to ask. Zoro huffs. 

The carriage is almost on top of the Ferris wheel. Everything below him appears so small, so irrelevant compared to the world inside this compartment.

“Take some time to work things out. There’s no rush.” Zoro’s been waiting for a while. What’s a little longer? Besides, he’s had a long time to figure this out.

It’s important that he and Sanji are on the same page. 

“It’s not that I don’t want this,” Sanji grumbles. “I’m thinking of how to word this right. I want you to say yes.”

“Hah?” Out of all the concerns that the cook might have had, that was not one of them. Zoro was fully prepared for something along the lines of having second thoughts (“You know, you are strangely obsessed with kendo.”), or Sanji informing him that their relationship is good as is (“Why change something that works, mosshead?”). 

(Because just as Zoro has the power to hurt Sanji, Sanji also wields the power to hurt Zoro, to close his hands together and smash Zoro’s hopes before they can dream of taking flight. Zoro gave him this power himself. There would be no one to blame but him.)

But the more Zoro thinks about it though, the more he realizes should have seen this coming. “Oi, just ask. You know that I’ll say yes. Just quit overthinking.” 

He would. Say yes that is. If it was Sanji asking, there is no doubt that he is too far gone to let that opportunity slip by him.

“Fine, fine. Fuck, there is no romantic bone in your body.” Sanji sucks in a breath. "Zoro. Idiot mosshead. Pain in my ass. I know we've had our fair share of fake relationships and I—Fuck it. Zoro, will you be my boyfriend?”

Finally. “Hm, is that all? Not as romantic as I thought it’d be but sure. I guess I’ll date you.” Pure unadulterated joy is coming to a boil in his veins and he thinks that if he died right now, he’d die happy.

The Ferris Wheel creaks to a halt, having reached the summit.

Sanji rolls his eyes and grips each side of the collar of his jacket with both hands, shaking oh so slightly. His eyes are blown with desire but he still leans in slowly enough so Zoro can push him away. Some part of Sanji is still unsure that this is what Zoro wants, that criminal self-doubt gnawing away at his confidence. 

At this rate Zoro's going to be ninety by the time they kiss. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Zoro surges forward to meet him, impatient, feeling intoxicated off the curve of Sanji’s smile against his lips. 

He’d go through the past three years again and again just for these short blissful five minutes. Of course, he would. How is that even a question?

“Stupid,” Sanji mumbles as if reading his mind. “We have all the time in the world.” 

One hundred-sixty feet above ground, Sanji kisses him again.

#

zoro has sent a photo to the strawhat pirates

 

luffy: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!

 

nami: congrats but keep the pda to yourself

 

franky: heck yeah bros! that’s SUPER! 

ngl kind of confused on who’s dating who tho

 

robin: I believe that Zoro is now dating Sanji. Nami and Sanji, along with Hiyori and Zoro must have officially ended their respective fake relationships. @franky

 

nami: yup robin is right on the money

wait did you know hiyori and zoro were in a fake relationship 

 

robin: :)

 

franky: oh gotcha! That’s cool as long as you remember to have healthy communication and use protection. STDs are no joke.

 

chopper: ahhh! cute photo! Congrats!!!

 

brook: yohohohohoho alls well ends well!

 

usopp: can’t believe the visual image of sanji and zoro making out in front of the Whole Cake World ferris wheel is my villain origin story

but congratulations long time coming

especially since sanji kept pining like oh he likes me not he likes me he likes me not

 

sanji: Prepare to see God tonight @usopp 

 

zoro: lol no keep going @usopp

 

luffy: HAHAHAHA no i totally get u zoro was the same he woke up at like 5 in the mrning when sanji was ignoring him 

like do u think he h8s me and i was like no?? and he was like r u sure and i was like no??? and he was like are u sure sure and i was like yeah im sure sure

wait lemme pull up screenshots

 

zoro: wait no @luffy stop 

 

sanji: HAHAHAHAHA SEND IT 

 

luffy has sent a picture to the group chat

 

usopp: damn dude taken down by text reciepts from LUFFY out of all people. press F to pay respects

 

nami: F

 

franky: F

 

robin: F

 

brook: F

 

chopper: F

 

sanji: F

 

luffy: F

 

zoro: wtf

#

Because parties have food, and Luffy loves food, according to the transitive property of mathematics, Luffy also loves parties. Therefore, the Zoro and Sanji are together! party shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to Nami, even if it is two months late. 

It’s a small thing, limited to their closest friends and housemates because Zoro and Sanji both prefer to keep things more on the down-low. And Nami’s on board with that. It’s no one’s business but theirs. 

Still, there’s something jarring about walking into a room with Happy Birthday decorations altered so that the Birthday part is crossed out and the word Dating is scrawled with permanent marker. 

There’s a cake in the middle of the room, half-green, half-blue, with the words CONGRATS U GOING OUT in three dollar icing made yesterday under Robin’s supervision Why nobody has tried to trash it is anyone’s guess because the thing looks terrible, but she has a sneaking suspicion that it’s because everyone in the Sunny is fond of the effort Luffy put into it. 

Different bottles of alcohol surround said centerpiece like they’re cultists trying to summon the devil with the cake as sacrifice. No Everclear, thank the stars. 

Hiyori waves at her from the couch where she’s listening to Vivi talk about her hometown of Alabasta. The guests of honor themselves are nowhere to be seen, and the possibilities that they’re fucking are unfortunately higher than zero. 

“Hey,” Usopp says, as he joins her. “Shot?”

She takes the glass from him and throws it back. The vodka burns going down. “Thanks. Where are Zoro and Sanji?” 

“Great question. I don’t want to think about it,” Usopp responds, deftly pouring her another shot. “Cheers.” He clinks their glasses together. “We did good, huh?”

“If the ends justify the means, then absolutely. For some reason, I don’t think that being someone’s wingwoman includes dating them, but hey, whatever works right?” 

“You did good,” Usopp affirms. “With your help, agent, we’ve fulfilled our duties as members of the Sanji Support Club.” 

Nami drinks to that. “They make each other happy in their own weird way, don’t they?” 

For all the back-and-forth, to their little competitions, there’s a language embedded within that Nami doesn’t understand that says volumes about what they mean to one another. They’ve been speaking it long before Whole Cake, and Nami can’t imagine what it must be like to finally hear a response back from the other side. 

“That’s love, isn’t it? Making each other happy in your own weird way?” Usopp’s phone lights up as it receives a notification, revealing a lock screen photo of Kaya standing by the ocean, her hair pushed back by the wind. 

Nami knows that Sanji’s own phone's wallpaper is a photo of Zoro at a kendo match, mask off, rest of his protective gear on, half a smile directed at the man behind the camera. 

Zoro’s lock screen is a simple picture of Sanji’s latest dish which the culinary student spent hours pouring over, trying to get right until he was satisfied. 

Nami’s is a family photo, Bellemere on their porch, Nojiko and Nami flanking her, beaming into the sun, but the wallpaper when the phone is unlocked is a group photo of the Sunny. 

Platonic love. Romantic love. Familial love. No wonder Sanji was so worried about getting them confused when there’s only one word to encompass so many different kinds of affection.

“I guess you’re right. That is love.” 

#

When Nami’s social battery dies down to about ten percent, she staggers out onto the balcony, blood humming with tequila and rum and coke. Gulping in lungfuls of fresh air, she lets the wind wash over her face, soaking in the chill of the April night.

Sanji and Zoro had reappeared about five minutes after Nami’s conversation with Usopp, unlocking the door, then standing there so still they could have given a statute a good run for their money. On the bright side, they weren’t having sex within a twenty-foot radius of Nami. The bad news was, it looked like they were completely blindsided by the party. 

To their credit, they’d taken the whole celebration in stride, adjusting easily to the surprise. Zoro’s hand was intertwined with Sanji’s. Even as they flitted from conversation to conversation, they continued to be laced together, sometimes looser with their fingers almost slipping apart, and other times with their hands pressed palm to palm. 

The sliding door rolls open behind her, then shuts with a gentle click. A lighter snicks alight. She smells the smoke before she hears Sanji’s voice. 

“It’s rather chilly out here, mellorine,” he says, shrugging out of his cardigan and draping it over her shoulders. “I don’t want you to catch a cold.” 

“It’s not that bad” Nami turns to face him. “Congratulations,” she says, letting the warmth carry in her voice. “Your boyfriend is very lucky to have you.” 

“Thank you. I’ll let him know that,” Sanji plays along. Then, in a more tender tone: “I’m awfully lucky to have him too.” 

Nami studies Sanji carefully. Compared to two years ago, there is a lightness in his steps now, and the bags under his eyes have receded quite a bit. She can imagine Zoro bombarding Sanji’s phone just to make sure he’s getting more than four hours of sleep. Yet, she thinks wryly, it takes him who knows how long to respond to anyone else. “I guess I don’t have to ask, but he makes you happy?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes. He does.”  

“And do you make him happy?”

“I think so.” A pause. “I hope so.”

“You do,” she says firmly. She doesn’t believe in spiritual healing or whatever, but she will always channel her inner positive reinforcement guru whenever Sanji needs it. “I don’t think I’ve seen him smile as much as he has these past couple of months. It’s a full-on transformation. You’ve got your hands full as a Zoro translator and a magician.”

He laughs at that. “Thanks for everything,” he says, once that light airy feeling has dissipated into the night, leaving behind a comforting blanket of familiarity. “I don’t know what I would do if you didn’t have my back.”

“Struggle, probably,” Nami teases. “Damn, we jumped through so many mental hoops back there, huh? We really were just friends doing friend things, then calling it dating.”

“It all worked out in the end, so I’m not complaining.”

There’s an alarming bang from behind them, followed by the wailing of a smoke detector. “Sanji!” Luffy yells, sliding the door open with a little too much force to be structurally sound. “The pasta caught on fire!” 

“What the fuck,” Sanji snaps. “How did you even do that? I’m so sorry but I have to make sure the mosshead’s kitchen isn’t ash by dawn.”

“Have fun with that.”

“I won’t but thanks.” When she tries to shrug off the cardigan, he just shakes his head. “If you’re just going to stay out here, then give it back whenever.” 

“Is this a ploy to get Zoro to give you his jacket?”

“I’m pleading the fifth on that one,” he says, the conniving bastard. “We still on for our movie night next week?”

“Absolutely.” 

Sanji beams, the sort that reaches his eyes, and makes his way back into the apartment, the door clacking shut in his wake. Through the glass, she can see Zoro approach him, quizzically cocking his head to the side. Sanji points in her direction. The mop of green hair just shakes in exasperation, but Zoro takes off his jacket anyways, wadding it up, and thrusting it into Sanji's waiting hands. It's not an interaction Nami would stereotypically define as romantic, but it seems to work for them. 

She closes her eyes again. The air feels nice.

“Hi,” someone says in what feels like a minute later, and she turns to see Hiyori. Nami didn't even hear her, she thinks, ice rushing down her spine. “Did I scare you?” 

“No,” she lies. Hiyori could have shot her, 90s noir-style, and her ghost would probably have no idea who to haunt. “Did they put out the fire?”

“Yes, Sanji handled it. Mostly everyone's in the front yard right now. I’m not quite sure what they’re doing.” 

"You're not going to join them?" 

"Thought you'd like some company." 

Franky’s loud voice bellows, something about a fantastic show about to start. There’s a bottle of Jose Cuervo in Hiyori’s hands, which she uses to top off Nami’s red solo cup before placing it on the ground. “Wait one moment,” she says, retreating into the house, and returning with a cup for herself. 

“Okay. I think a toast is in order,” Hiyori says, once she's filled her own glass with enough tequila that a highway patrol officer would arrest her on sight, but hey, this is college so if there was ever a time to get messy and make poor life decisions, it's probably now. 

The four of them would know better than anyone else. 

"A toast," Hiyori announces, raising her drink. “To wingwomen.”

“To basic communication,” Nami adds.

“To happiness.” 

On the ground, something rockets up into the heavens where it explodes into a glittering star of light and color. Three more fireworks follow it, booming in the night. They paint the sky red and gold, shimmering as they make their way down to earth, tiny dying manmade shooting stars. 

Nami taps their cups together. 

“To love," she says with finality. "To love."