Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-/-

In the storm of chaos following the news of Sanji’s kidnapping, they don’t immediately notice the ringing of a transponder snail. In fact, it goes unheeded for awhile, until Zoro manages to wrestle his frantic captain to the ground and sits on him to calm him down, and Law finally realizes the humming he’s been hearing has been coming from Zoro’s haramaki.

“You have a transponder snail?” It’s a big one, too. Actually, how in the world was he keeping it hidden?

“Yeah, got it from Mihawk,” Zoro says absently. “Said he wanted to be able to reach us if he needed to. But Perona is the only one who ever actually calls me. What do you want?” he adds into the receiver.

“Oh, good, you finally remembered how to answer the snail,” comes Mihawk’s smarmy tones, the snail adjusting to mimic his expression as he speaks.

“Mihawk? The fuck are you calling me for?”

“Your etiquette still needs work too, I see,” is the dry reply. In the background, Zoro thinks he hears shouting and a crash, and something whizzing by the receiver, but if he does Mihawk doesn’t acknowledge it. “Really, I can't possibly imagine why you have yet to win that boy’s affections. Truly, it boggles the mind.”

“Get to the point, old man,” Zoro snaps, hoping to head off that particular topic of conversation. The last thing he needs is his crew being aware that not only is he completely stupid for their cook, but that he’d spent the better part of two years bemoaning this fact to Dracule fucking Mihawk.

“Curiously enough, that relates to my point. I'm calling to let you know we have your cook—” Another sound like an explosion, closer this time, and an impact that is unmistakably a diable jambe— Zoro’s witnessed enough of those to identify the sound of one hitting, even in the background of a transponder snail call. Whyever they took Sanji, he’s not making things easy for them.

Naturally.

At the same time as this, Luffy, hearing his words, throws Zoro off of him and grabs the snail. “You were the ones who kidnapped Sanji?! Give him back! He’s my cook! You can't have him! I’ll kill you!”

“Do calm down, Straw Hat, I was actually—”

“Sanji! Sanji! Can you hear me?!”

A slight scuffle, as of someone grabbing the receiver.

“Hey Captain, I hear you, but I can’t talk, I’m a little busy right now—!”

There’s another crash, and a roar that sounds like Crocodile yelling, “Get back here, brat! I’m going to break every bone in your fucking body! There won’t even be enough left for a box when I’m done with you!”

Another scuffle follows this, and a shriek of someone else yelling, “Nonononononononononooooo!” in the background.

“As I was saying,” Mihawk says, having apparently retrieved the receiver, “I would like you to come get your cook before—” Crash, “—Crocodile goes through the SECOND WORST BREAK UP HE’S EVER LIVED THROUGH!!”

This last bit called away from the receiver, followed by another crash, and Crocodile bellowing back, “Yeah?! Well I’ll tear you and that compensating for something sword of yours into atoms! Now let me go so I can kill that little bastard!”

Beyond them, another, unfamiliar voice calls, “How dare you back out on our deal, Clown!” and then the unmistakable voice of Buggy the Clown wailing, “Please, please, it was a misunderstanding! Fellas? Come onnn!!”

And then there’s a loud thud, and Mihawk saying, “Sit down, you overgrown sandbag! I already told you, we are not provoking Straw Hat. Now shut up, I am trying to talk on the snail.” He huffs, and when he speaks again some of the chaos seems to have been tamed because he says, much more calmly, “As I was saying, Roronoa, please come retrieve your boytoy—” (“Whose boytoy?!” Sanji demands in the background, and is ignored.) “—so that I can return to what little peace and quiet I am allowed these days.”

“Uh,” Zoro says intelligently. Nami snatches the receiver from him with a glare.

“We're on our way, sir!” she says. “Just tell us where!”

-/-

In hindsight, the kidnapping is kind of embarrassing.

Siren Mask, the captain of the Mask Pirates, had done her homework before even setting out to retrieve him. Biding her time, waiting until the crew had split up and then waiting even further to when they reached Zou and found themselves stretched thin trying to help the Minks— and when she had finally chosen her moment, she’d lured him away on his own, overpowered him with a team consisting of only women, and used her Song-Song powers to knock him out before he could escape.

He was on her ship before he even knew what hit him, with no trace left behind for the other Straw Hats or the Minks to follow.

Well, maybe not that embarrassing. He has to give her credit, she’s as brilliant as she is beautiful, he’s assuming, being unable to see her face to tell. But she’s probably beautiful. He assumes. It would be embarrassing to lose to her if she’s not.

After over a week on her ship, they’d joined up with the 66 and he’d been forcibly reunited with Judge and his siblings, and then—

—well, to be honest, he’s never even heard of Cross Guild before. They’re newly formed, and judging from what Reiju has told him, their main appeal to Judge is their sheer numbers. Between their numbers and Germa’s tech, Judge is convinced that will be enough to reconquer the North Blue.

Of course, Reiju didn’t bother to tell him who Cross Guild actually are, or rather who they’re made of, meaning that the first time he finds out who he’s actually dealing with is when he’s led into a plush and tacky room and finds himself face to face with Buggy the Clown, Sir Crocodile, and Dracule fucking Mihawk.

He stares at them. They stare back. Mihawk is the first to speak.

“Oh, we’re fucked.”

“Isn’t that Straw Hat’s cook?” Buggy asks, quivering.

“That is absolutely Straw Hat’s cook,” Mihawk confirms. “Which means there’s no way in hell he’s here of his own free will. People don’t just leave Straw Hat’s side, especially not to get married and especially not to their former enemies.”

“I assure you,” Judge tries to begin, but a snap of Mihawk’s fingers silences him, a fact which seems to surprise him as much as it does Sanji.

“I wasn’t talking to you. You. Boy.” His yellow eyes bore into Sanji’s. “What does he have on you? How is he getting you to agree to this?”

For a moment, Sanji considers not answering truthfully, or even at all. These men are enemies of the Straw Hats, some moreso than others, true, but not to be trusted all the same, and he doesn’t want to give them any ammo for how to hurt him should the desire to do so strike their fancy.

On the other hand, he and Zoro have talked a little bit about their time training, and reading between the lines of what Zoro says and doesn’t say, he’s been able to get the idea that Zoro likes Mihawk, and despite knowing it’s foolish, part of him feels that he can trust the man to not hurt him in at least this specific situation.

“He threatened to hurt Zeff and the rest of my family at the Baratie if I didn’t comply.”

This gets an eyebrow from Mihawk, but it’s Crocodile who responds.

“Zeff,” he says. “As in Redleg Zeff. The pirate cook.”

“He’s just a regular cook now,” Sanji says. He takes out a cigarette and lights up, taking a long drag. “You know him? Or just by his reputation?”

“We met once, about twenty years ago. I was running a personal errand in the East Blue and my food had run out, so when I came across another ship I was going to attack it and steal some of their food. When I tried, the old man kicked the shit out of me, gave me bruises I’m still feeling to this day, and then cooked me lunch and sent me along with a few days worth of rations anyway.”

It sounds like a fond memory, and Sanji can’t stop himself from grinning at that, suddenly overcome with a burst of affection for the old geezer. That sounds exactly like something he’d do. It sounds like exactly how Zeff raised him to be.

“That’s my old man!” He turns his head enough to blow a cloud of smoke in Judge’s direction. “This asshole said he’d hurt him if I didn’t go along with his stupid plans, but I owe that old bastard everything. I couldn’t let him get hurt because of me.”

“Hm,” Mihawk says. “You are every bit the noble self-sacrificing idiot my dear protege made you out to be, then.”

Sanji lowers his cigarette. “What? Zoro talked about me during his training?”

Mihawk props his head up on one fist. “Extensively. Which is why I know that any attempts to force this farce of a marriage to go through would result in more death and chaos than I feel like dealing with right now. Not to mention the blow to our numbers here. It would be dreadfully inconvenient.”

“The greatest swordsman in the world is afraid of one measly little boy?” Judge asks. Taunts. Sanji rolls his eyes.

“The greatest swordsman in the world has reasons he would prefer not to be counted among that measly little boy’s enemies,” Mihawk corrects. “For the moment, at least. Besides… I’ve grown rather fond of Roronoa, and I know how much he’ll be wanting his—” He pauses, looks aside at Sanji, and clears his throat meaningfully. “—rival back.”

“If you’re doing this for that mosshead, don’t bother,” Sanji huffs, smoke clouding around his head. “He’ll be happy to see me gone.”

“Well I know for a fact that isn’t true.” He stands and makes his way over to the transponder snail sitting on the table. “I think the easiest way to deal with this is simply to call and have him come pick you up.”

While they were having this conversation, unnoticed by Sanji, Crocodile was staring him down, and as Judge makes a noise of protest at calling Luffy to come get him and Mihawk dials the code into the snail, Crocodile suddenly leaps to his feet with a yell.

“You!” he growls. “I know that voice! Mr. fucking Prince!”

“Ah, shit,” Sanji says, and launches himself ceilingward as a golden hook rockets towards him.

-/-

“What are you planning, Hawkeyes?” Crocodile asks once Mihawk hangs up.

There’s soot on his clothes, and some of his skin has been marked by strangely glassy footprints, but once Mihawk knocked him flat he seems to have at least calmed down from his murderous rage, and once he was no longer fighting for his life, Roronoa’s dear cook had calmed right down too.

“What do you mean? I’m simply saving us the trouble of getting on the bad side of Straw Hat and his crew. I would think you of all people would be able to get behind that.”

“Yeah right,” Crocodile says, resuming his usual seat on the tacky green couch beside Mihawk. “Since when are you afraid of Straw Hat?”

“I’m not,” Mihawk says bluntly. “However, I have no desire to face the wrath of his father.”

At the (supposed) mention of Dragon, Crocodile bares his teeth in a snarl, and Mihawk rolls his eyes.

“Down boy. You know very well I’m referring to that red-headed vagabond of mine. I’ve only barely escaped the doghouse after drawing my blade on the boy at Marineford; I can only imagine what fate would have in store for me if it got back to him I’d allowed…” He flicks his fingers vaguely in the direction of Judge and Buggy. “This.”

“You know,” Blackleg says, taking a long, casual drag on his cigarette, “This is a very strange conversation you’re having.”

“And you don't know the half of it. Now, come along.” He rises and extends a genteel hand to Blackleg to guide him away. “I have some wine squirreled away for special guests, and then I want to know all about how Roronoa is doing these days. You can tell me if he's followed a specific piece of advice I gave him before he left.”

“Uh,” Blackleg says intelligently.

“Or I could leave you with Crocodile and Vinsmoke?”

Blackleg puts out his cigarette in one of Crocodile’s ashtrays and takes the proffered hand.

“That’s what I thought.”

-/-

Honestly, if there’s anything weirder than sipping wine with Dracule Mihawk in a tented kitchenette while his biological father stews in the next room over not having his way, it’s having Mihawk then offer to make him some lunch.

“I’m afraid my cooking doesn’t compare to yours in any way, but seeing as you’re a guest it seems only fair that I not make you prepare your own food,” he says.

Sanji frowns. He doesn’t think Mihawk ever ate at the Baratie, but he might have just missed it. “When have you ever eaten my cooking?”

“I haven't, but I did spend two years hearing from your crewman about how you’re the best cook on all the seas, so I assume it must be good.”

“Zoro again? I… I didn’t know he’d have mentioned me at all, except maybe to trash me. Definitely not to brag about my cooking.”

Mihawk snorts, and moves over to a fridge to retrieve a few things. “For two years, every meal I set in front of that little ingrate, all I heard in thanks was how much better you would have made it. Under different circumstances it might have even been a blow to my ego.”

Sanji watches him work. Judging by the ingredients, he’s making spicy seafood pasta, and Sanji’s head is spinning with the sheer implications of Mihawk deciding to make that dish for him. He tears his eyes away from Mihawk’s slender hands preparing the food and up to his face instead.

“I hope you’re not suggesting he turned his nose up at your cooking just because it wasn’t mine.”

“No, he always made a point to eat every bite I gave him. He even finished off mine and Perona’s if we ever found our eyes bigger than our stomachs. Said the last thing he’d ever do was waste a single bite of food.” He pauses his work and looks up. “Are you hurt, Blackleg? Your nose is bleeding.”

“Huh? It’s fine!” Sanji retrieves his handkerchief and sets to cleaning himself up, while Mihawk finishes preparing their lunch and brings it over. Yep, spicy seafood pasta. Something inside of him aches. “That looks amazing. If it’s anything like you were giving Zoro, I can’t believe he’d object.”

“I think it was more the circumstances he was objecting to,” Mihawk says. “He missed the people he wasn’t eating with.”

And doesn’t that just dredge up unhappy memories? Sanji shoves a forkful of pasta into his mouth, letting the blend of the seasonings and spices burn the sorrow of that time from his memories even as it burns his throat. Mihawk doesn’t use the same recipe or even style Zeff taught him, but it’s still delicious.

“You know it’s a funny coincidence, this is actually my favorite dish,” he says, a desperate attempt at making the subject more lighthearted. For some reason, all this earns in response is an ever-so-slight incline of Mihawk’s eyebrow that makes him feel like an idiot.

“Still,” Mihawk says after a moment, “it’s nice to have another mouth to feed, albeit temporarily. I’m afraid I’ve started to miss having Roronoa and Perona underfoot since they left. I have no intention of cooking for Crocodile or that wretched clown, but it’s simply not the same when I’m only preparing enough food for myself anymore.”

“I know what you mean,” Sanji laughs. “Iva wouldn’t let me cook for anyone but myself for ages while I was with them. When you’re used to feeding a whole crew— especially a crew with Luffy on it— it gets hard to stop being in that mindset.” He stares down at the plate of pasta in his hands. It is good, delicious even, and he can’t imagine Zoro finding any fault with it at all. That just makes him feel a way he doesn’t want to analyze, though. “I know we took that time to train because we needed to be stronger, and everything Iva and the others taught me has been poured back into my crew so I can’t even regret it in the long run. But… I belong with them. Not being able to take care of them for two years was the worst experience of my life. What if they were starving, and I wasn’t there?”

He finally looks up to find Mihawk watching him thoughtfully.

“The pair of you are truly cut from the same cloth,” Mihawk murmurs. “When he didn’t actively have a sword in his hand all Roronoa did was moan about how worried he was for all of your safety.” He dabs lightly at his lips with a napkin. “Still, I suppose failing to keep you all safe was the kick he needed to actually ask for help training, so there are silver linings.”

Sanji is not aware of standing until his chair crashes to the floor, until his hands slam onto the table. Some distant part of him is yelling at him to sit down, that Mihawk is his only ally in this place and he needs to stay on his good side, but the insult has sent fire singing through his veins to burn that part of him away.

“How dare you?!” he demands. “Don’t ever talk about him like that! No matter what weird dynamic you two have going on, nothing gives you the right!” He glares. Leans closer. “He might be the single most infuriating person I’ve ever met, he might have the brains of a caveman and even less manners, he might he crass and boorish and have an ego the size of the Grand Line, but he has never once failed us!”

He fixes Mihawk with the full force of his fury, and is strangely unsurprised to find Mihawk looking placidly back.

“Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?!”

“Currently, you. Sit down, Blackleg, I meant no offense to your dear swordsman.”

Sanji snorts out twin streams of smoke, but rights his seat and resumes it anyway.

“I don’t care if you are the world’s strongest swordsman. I won’t let you talk about Zoro like that.”

“Better and better,” Mihawk says, resting his chin in one perfect hand. “Truly spectacular. Very well, I expect an invite to the wedding. It’s the least you can do for me since I’m going to set you up with your dear little mosshead.”

“Uh,” Sanji says intelligently.

-/-

Chapter Text

“Mouth closed, Blackleg, you’ll catch flies.” Mihawk spins a fork through his pasta and raises it to his lips, taking careful, delicate bites while Sanji stares at him.

“I’m not…” Sanji tries, and then falls silent.

“What are you…” he tries again, only to find those words lacking as well.

“How did,” gets cut off, because no way in hell he’s finishing that sentence.

After a moment, Mihawk gives him a bored look. “Take your time.”

“What do you mean you’re going to set us up!?”

“Precisely what I said. I think it is far past time for you to sort yourselves out, and as you seem to have no interest in taking action for yourself, I will simply have to take matters into my own hands.”

“Why?”

“Boredom.” Mihawk shrugs one silk-draped shoulder idly. “And, I suppose I have also become rather fond of that little rabbit of mine. I’d like to see him happy.”

“Then why—?” Sanji begins, and is silenced by a look from Mihawk that makes him feel utterly, utterly stupid. He turns his eyes down to his plate, to the pasta he hasn’t finished yet, and picks at it meekly. Something about Mihawk makes him feel tiny and insignificant, just by being in his presence.

Fuck, is this how Zoro felt? Two years in the man’s own house, submitting himself to his training, knowing intimately just how far he’ll have to climb to reach, let alone surpass, him?

And doing so willingly, because he knew he’d need to be able to protect the crew when they reunited?

“I don’t see why not,” is Mihawk’s eventual answer to Sanji’s aborted question. “I am intimately aware of how high you sit in his regard, you are a member of his crew and therefore you will not need to submit to a long-distance relationship, and you are exquisitely beautiful, so really all the more fool him if he has no interest in you.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Sanji says weakly, but even he can hear the tone in his voice, that one that says he’s trying to convince himself as much as the stupid world’s-greatest-swordsman with his stupid compensating-for-shit sword and his stupid shitty facial hair who is once more looking at him like he’s an idiot.

Mihawk just reaches over to refill his wine. “It works exactly like that. You’ll see.”

-/-

Zoro has been pacing the deck of the Sunny in agitated circles since they left Zou. It’s just the four of them on the ship: Zoro, on the grounds that he’s the one Mihawk told to come, Luffy, on the grounds that he’s the captain, and Nami on the grounds that she’s the navigator. Robin makes up the rest of their little skeleton crew: she’d given them a serene smile and said, a little expectantly, that they would need the extra hands to man the ship with so few of them on board.

“The extra hands,” she’d repeated, when none of them had reacted.

“Our dear cook will be fine,” she tells Zoro now, pausing his pacing. “However he ended up with him, it’s clear Mihawk has no intent to hurt him.”

“I know exactly what Mihawk’s intent is,” Zoro says darkly, folding his arms and glowering in what he thinks is the direction of Karai Bari (it is not).

“You think we could be walking into a trap?”

This, curiously, seems to give him pause, and he turns a baffled look at her. “No? If I thought it was a trap I’d have said so.”

“But you think that Mihawk has ulterior motives for returning our cook to us?”

“Course he does, he’s fucking Mihawk. Guy doesn’t go to the shitter without ulterior motives.” He punctuates this with an adorably awkward shrug. “S’just there’s something I said to him while I was on Kuraigana, because I didn’t figure he and the cook would ever meet, so he’d never get to use it against me, and now I know it’s coming back to bite me in the ass, that’s all.”

The face Robin turns to him is serene and passive, giving no hint to what could be going on in her thoughts at the present, a carefully maintained facade that she’d had to turn to to survive before coming to the Strawhats, and that she’s had far less use for among them.

Currently, the thoughts being concealed behind that mask are a long chain of question marks, because there is no way in all creation that Zoro told Mihawk, Mihawk, about his big stupid obvious and positively adorable crush on their dear cook.

And yet, that is the only explanation possible.

“I suppose,” she says carefully, “that as long as you don’t believe it is a trap, we’ll simply have to be patient and find out what awaits us on Karai Bari in due time.”

“Easy for you to say.” Zoro folds his arms and grumbles, “You’re not about to get kicked through a wall over what Mihawk is definitely telling the cook about me right now.”

-/-

Robin stays with him for awhile, letting her own calm soothe his agitation until he eventually ceases his pacing and takes up a spot beside her, the pair looking out over the sea beyond them. Zoro is dimly aware of Robin’s spare limbs up in the rigging, keeping them on course as they go along, but he ignores that. It doesn’t matter.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay to come along with us for this?” he asks suddenly, as much to distract his own thoughts as wanting to check in that she’s alright.

She turns a small, inquisitive look to him. “Shouldn’t I be?”

“I mean. S’Crocodile,” he shrugs. “He tried to kill you last time you guys met. Just making sure.”

Her smile is a little warmer this time. “True, but this was after I attempted to betray him, so I have little grudge over the matter. Besides, I have to admit at least some of my motivation is a desire to see him again. We worked together for four years. Strange as it must seem, I’m rather fond of him. I’d like to see how he’s been doing since we parted ways.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t press further; he’d be a hypocrite to remark on anyone having ‘it’s complicated’ feelings with someone who’d nearly killed him, after all. “If he tries to finish the job, I’ll kill him,” he says instead.

“Your care is appreciated,” she says gently. “Thank you.”

-/-

If the weather holds, the Sunny will be at Karai Bari in a little under a week. Sanji sits staring at the snail, thinking about Nami’s reassuring update about their course and Luffy’s attempts to talk to him while, if Sanji has any guess, being held back by Zoro so that Nami can talk uninterrupted.

Mihawk gives him a bright smile that comes nowhere near his eyes and turns to address the group. “There now. We’ll be playing host to this young man for the better part of a week. And we won’t be killing him,” he adds with a pointed look at Crocodile, whose glare is boring a hole into Sanji’s head.

“What about our arrangement?” Judge demands. He has thus far not been particularly happy about the way things are developing, but willing to put a game face on if the end result is him getting what he wants.

Mihawk just turns to him and looks him over as if he’s only just noticed his presence. “Right, that is what you’re here for, isn’t it? Clown.”

It apparently takes Judge a moment to realize that he’s addressing Buggy and not calling Judge a clown, though Sanji privately thinks both things can be true and bites down on a snicker. Unsuccessfully, if the way Judge glares at him is any indication, but he knows he has the upper hand currently, and gives Judge a smile more teeth than mirth.

“Buggy,” Mihawk is saying, “Why in the world did you agree to seal this alliance with a marriage?”

Buggy squirms, but the dual glares of his partners has him relenting with a nod in Crocodile’s direction and, “I’d hoped getting laid might mellow him out. We both know he’s going through the dry spell of the century over here.”

Crocodile says nothing to that, just reaches over and catches the corner of his hook on Buggy’s mouth.

“Would you like to try repeating that, clown?”

“Not really,” Buggy whimpers, slurred a little where his cheek is being pulled taut.

Sanji snorts, and when this draws the eyes of the others, he decides to play their game, calmly lighting up a cigarette and taking a long drag while making a show of raking his eyes over Crocodile’s body. He blows a cloud of smoke away with a nonchalance he doesn’t quite feel, and says, “You’re not really my type anyway.”

Crocodile snarls at that, but whatever Mihawk has on him to make him agree not to kill Sanji must be pretty powerful, because all he does is storm out.

“And people call me dramatic,” Mihawk says with an eyeroll. He stands. “Come along, Blackleg. I’ve decided to sink Germa’s fleet and I suspect you will enjoy helping me.”

Judge startles to his feet. “What?! Why?! This wasn’t in our agreement!”

“There is no agreement.” Mihawk rolls his eyes again. “You attempted to give your unwilling son in marital slavery to a pirate as a prize, after kidnapping him from his crew and holding the rest of his family hostage. There is no way any of that ended without everyone involved being targeted by someone with an interest in the boy’s safety even if he wasn’t a member of Straw Hat’s crew, and unlike you, apparently, my plans do not currently involve Straw Hat Luffy or his first mate gunning for my head. So I will be sinking your fleet, one, because I am bored, two, because I don’t like you, and three, because I have a great deal of aggression to get out, and taking it out on those cretins who serve Buggy’s whims would be impractical. Blackleg? Are you coming?”

Sanji nods and stands to follow, and then sits back down in stunned silence as Judge, not satisfied with this response, moves to attack him and is set to rights faster than he can blink.

It is only a very powerful observation haki that lets Sanji follow what happens at all: Judge, attempting to tackle Mihawk with his back turned, and Mihawk drawing the small blade at his neck and stopping Judge in his tracks, the tip of the blade pressed against Judge’s throat, kept at bay by Mihawk’s haki.

“I wouldn’t. If I were you.”

And Judge, for the first time that Sanji has ever seen in his life, backs down like a cowed animal and resumes his seat. Sanji doesn’t blame him. He’s not sure his own legs are up to the task of supporting him either, if he’s being honest.

“Sanji?” The voice is much gentler, much less smarmy, than he’s used to. Sanji has a distant thought of if Zoro ever heard him so gentle, and looks up to see yellow eyes staring at him in concern, Mihawk looking down at him while standing between himself and Judge. “If you don’t want to join me, so be it. But I hesitate to leave you alone with this man.”

(“I’m here!” Buggy says, and is ignored.)

“He can’t hurt me,” Sanji replies slowly, looking around him at Judge. It’s true. He’s more than strong enough to beat Judge one on one, and equally sure that with the added leverage of Mihawk being on his side, he won’t even try to challenge that. “But— I would like to flatten the fleet with you.”

“I had hoped you would.” He holds out that genteel hand again, porcelain touch guiding Sanji away like he’s a delicate fucking flower.

-/-

Sanji is in a daze when he comes back in for supper that night. In part, he knows, this is from the catharsis of watching everything Judge has built be flattened to the ground and the snails that make up the mass of the fleet released out into the open waters, leaving behind just the one to carry Judge and the rest of Germa’s people away.

(“I would hate to encourage him to lengthen his visit,” Mihawk had said dryly.)

He had even been cooperative enough to, at Sanji’s behest, allow his siblings and the other people on the ship to leave before the destruction started. Many stayed, and Sanji’s three brothers made a valiant effort to defend their homeland, but that just suited Sanji, really. He’d enjoyed getting to fight his brothers without holding himself back, flattening two and only needing a little help from Mihawk to finish off the third before Reiju and a few of their soldiers carted them away.

“I could kill them right now, if you wish it,” Mihawk had said. Sanji, hands trembling around the cigarette he was lighting, had simply shaken his head and murmured something to the effect of simply wanting their power stripped away. Surprisingly, Mihawk had complied. All of that power at his disposal, and he’d banked it at Sanji’s whim.

That’s the other thing that has Sanji in a daze. Sinking Germa’s fleet had not simply been a way of killing time for Mihawk: it had been a way to let loose on the power that he keeps coiled tightly within him at all times, unneeded. The display had Sanji’s heart thundering in his ears in terror, reached into his brain and reminded it that humans have long been prey to more powerful creatures, and slammed against every flight instinct Sanji has. It was only his own strength of will, his will and the knowledge that this power was in no way being directed at him, that kept him from fleeing during the destruction.

And judging by the way Mihawk had looked at him as they were leaving the rubble later, he knows this.

In fact, Sanji thinks he might have just passed some kind of test.

He’s quiet when he joins them for supper. Mihawk seems intent on keeping him close and sits him at the table with himself and his partners, but they’re not the only ones in the lush lounge this time, several of their higher ranking officers joining them as well, the highest command of Buggy’s crew and a few of Baroque Works’ former members, as near as Sanji can tell.

He takes the time to watch them as he eats (the food is prepared by the Cross Guild kitchens this time; he absently makes a note to visit them later). Mihawk is different with the subordinates present; more annoyed, less transparently amused. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere than where he is right now.

Crocodile is different, too, carrying himself with a bit more bravado than before. Maintaining appearances. Sanji wonders what it means that he’s been allowed to see the version of Crocodile who is more at ease, who doesn’t need to constantly project a glaring neon sign that reads “I am Sir Crocodile and I will destroy you if you cross me”. It’s not like it’s ceased to be true. It’s just that now he’s bothering to broadcast it.

“You’re one of the Strawhats, aren’t you?” one of the officers asks suddenly. Sanji slides his gaze over to him. Daz Bonez, he thinks his name might be. Mr. 1. Zoro told him about their fight later, about how he’d learned to cut steel during it. He wonders how the fight would go now. Zoro is stronger, now, but no doubt so is he. Would he still give Zoro trouble? Would he give Sanji trouble?

“I’m their cook,” he says, turning his attention to his soup.

“What are you doing here?”

This does give Sanji pause. He glances to Mihawk, wondering how much he’s willing to make public.

“A bit of a misunderstanding in our arrangement with Vinsmoke Judge,” Mihawk says primly. “The arrangement has been cancelled, and Straw Hat will be arriving to pick up his cook shortly.

“Straw Hat is coming here?” one of Buggy’s crew, the animal guy, asks. He glances over to his captain. “Is that really a good idea?”

“He’s not coming for a fight, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mihawk shrugs. “We have done nothing to provoke him, and as long as we take care of his cook, it will be a peaceful visit.”

“What if we don’t want a peaceful visit?” another of Buggy’s crew, the weirdo with the unicycle, asks. “Some of us have old grudges to settle with Straw Hat and his people. I owe Roronoa a beating after the way he humiliated me last time we fought.”

“Roronoa would flatten you in seconds,” Daz Bonez says. “Haven’t you been paying attention to the news? The man is an absolute demon now.”

“What about you?” Sanji asks suddenly. “You fought him back in Alabasta.”

“I wouldn’t mind a rematch. I would welcome the chance to test myself against him again. But I don’t hold a grudge for beating me. The stronger man simply won. I would only want to fight him again to find out if I could beat him this time.”

“You couldn’t,” Sanji says, surprising himself with sureness he didn’t feel moments ago. In his periphery, he sees the faintest quirk of an amused eyebrow from Mihawk, and reaches for his cigarettes now that his plate is clean. “If you have improved in the past two years, that’s all well for you, but I guarantee it’s nothing on how much stronger Zoro is. You couldn’t beat him now anymore than you could beat him two years ago. Actually,” he adds, “You couldn’t beat any of our crew.”

“I dunno, I could probably beat that little raccoon thing you guys keep for a pet,” one of the Buggy pirates muses. Sanji snorts twin jets of smoke.

“Keep dreaming.”

“I would still enjoy testing myself,” Daz Bonez says. “Whatever the outcome.”

Sanji shrugs, because he doubts Zoro would object to the opportunity, and goes back to his own thoughts, letting the drift of the conversation mingle with the cigarette smoke and wash over him. His mind is back to Mihawk’s display earlier, but that just puts him thinking about Zoro. He’d spent two years in the presence of that power. Had Mihawk loosed himself that way with Zoro? Was that how he lost his eye? Or had Mihawk kept himself contained, always out of reach of his pupil but never letting on to the true extent of the gulf between them?

“I think I’d like to lie down now,” Sanji tells the table at large, hoping one of them has had the forethought to consider where they’re putting him for his stay. He’d certainly had no intention of going back to the remaining Germa ship, even if Judge hadn’t already fled. “Is there somewhere I can go to rest?”

“I’ve had a room prepared for your stay,” Mihawk says, rising gracefully. “Come along.”

And there’s that hand again. Sanji feels distantly like he should be offended, like Mihawk treating him like something precious and delicate should get his back up, but something about the way Mihawk offers his hand, not as if he will shatter but as if such delicacy is deserved, leaves him wrongfooted.

“Berry for your thoughts?” Mihawk asks. Sanji stumbles. He hadn’t been expecting the man to break the silence between them.

Mihawk just folds his hand around Sanji’s where it rests in his, allowing him to steady himself before they resume walking. Sanji eyes him in his periphery.

“Were you like this with Zoro?” he asks suddenly, surprising himself, and Mihawk as well judging by the raised eyebrow he gets. The eyebrow brings him up short; he stares down at his feet, dropping that delicate hand. “No, that’s a stupid question. Of course you weren’t. Zoro doesn’t do gentle, and he was there for training. Forget I asked.”

Except Zoro does do gentle, he knows, he does gentle when he naps with Chopper, when he sits by listening to Brook play, when he goofs off with the boys and sits listening to Robin reading out loud to Luffy. Gentleness even when he and Luffy wrestle, always careful to keep his real strength carefully contained not for Luffy's sake but for the Sunny’s. He’s even gentle with Sanji, in the few quiet moments they grant themselves, when their endless fights have quieted and their natural gravitational pull has brought them together all the same, sitting side by side on the deck in comfortable, companionable silence.

Of course Zoro does gentle. But Zoro also doesn’t know how to appreciate gentleness when it’s shown to him, and the thought of him allowing it from Mihawk leaves a sick feeling in the pit of Sanji’s stomach that he shies away from explaining.

Mihawk studies him while he chases these thoughts, and says, “Do you know what he said after he lost his eye?”

Sanji’s gaze snaps to Mihawk. How Zoro lost his eye is a story he’s carefully avoided telling, responding with a casual, and final, “Lost it,” when Sanji asked, tone clear that they would be dropping the subject now.

“He said,” and here Mihawk adopts a rough edge to his voice, to mimic Zoro, “‘Damn, Curly’s going to think I’m copying him’.”

“What has that got to do with—?”

“He wouldn’t allow a gentle touch,” Mihawk interrupts. “Not from me. Even when the training paused for rest, even when he was hurt, even when he lost his eye. He said that wasn’t what he was here for, and not what he needed from me.”

There’s something frustrated in his tone, and in his bearing as he leads Sanji the rest of the way to the guest room waiting for him. At the curtain blocking the entrance, he stops.

“Do you care for him?”

“Of course,” Sanji says. “Fighting aside, we couldn’t be crew if we didn’t—”

“Not what I’m asking.”

Silence. Sanji says nothing, but Mihawk’s eyes demand an answer, staring down at Sanji with that imperious look that makes Sanji feel like a speck of nothing under his gaze.

“Yes.”

“Good. Meet me in the kitchens for an early breakfast, and then we’ll get started.”

“Get started? With what?”

“I have a week to get you ready to see Roronoa again. That is not nearly as much time as I spent on Roronoa, and even with two years it wasn’t enough.”

“What—”

“Get some rest, Blackleg,” Mihawk interrupts again, pulling aside the curtained door and shoving Sanji into it.

And then he’s gone. Sanji stares at the still-swishing curtain.

“What?”

-/-

Chapter Text

Over breakfast the next morning, Mihawk tells him, “You could always be that way with him yourself, you know.”

Sanji gives him a dead-eyed, half-awake look, and reaches wordlessly for his cigarettes.

-/-

Ages ago, before the Grand Line, Zoro and Sanji had sat propped up against each other on the deck after a spar, basking in not-awake, not-quite-dozing contentment as the Merry rocked on the waves and their crew occupied themselves to their own devices. Something about the atmosphere had made Sanji think of his mother, and as much to soothe the pain of the memories as indulge them, he’d asked Zoro about his own family.

“Don’t got one,” Zoro had said in a distant way that meant it wasn’t a painful memory to keep at arm’s length, merely a meaningless one he didn’t have use for. Zoro shrugged against Sanji’s side. “Parents and grandparents all died when I was pretty young, so I barely remember them. I think Sensei was like a distant cousin or something and that’s why I ended up at the dojo, but I was in with all the other boys there and he didn’t have time to spare for just me, so it’s not like we were really family.”

The revelation had made something ache inside of Sanji: a dojo full of other little boys, in the care of a cousin who had no time to be a parent to him, was not the sort of place where Zoro could be truly nurtured.

That was the first time he’d realized he wanted to be gentle with Zoro, to touch him with care and reverence and hold him like a treasure, to pamper and spoil and dote on him in a way that surely no one had since his parents died. Even Sanji’d had someone to be gentle with him: Zeff was a gruff bastard who showed his affection more readily with a kick in the backside than a kiss to his brow, but he’d still held Sanji close when they were taken off of that fucking rock, made sure the ship’s doctor and the cooks saw to him first before submitting to their hands himself, and when they’d been dropped off at the nearest port with nothing but some hastily acquired castoffs from the crew, a few nights worth of provisions, and less treasure than they’d been rescued with, he’d said, “Well, you might as well stick with me as anything, Eggplant,” and not rescinded it later that night when a storm rocked the inn they were staying at so hard it sent Sanji scurrying from his little trundle cot into Zeff’s bed. All he’d done then was let Sanji burrow his trembling form into his warm, welcoming arms and murmured half-asleep, soothing noises until Sanji had slipped back into dreaming.

No, Zeff was gnarled and rough and demanding, and his lessons were taught at the end of his leg, but he’d had plenty of gentleness for the little boy he’d taken out of the sea when he’d needed it. It hurt to think that Zoro didn’t even have that. Who had held him when he’d had nightmares? Who had kept him comfortable when he was sick or injured? Did whoever was responsible for making sure he was fed bother to make sure he was getting enough to support a growing body and the demands of his training? The simplicity of his palate and the fact that he doesn’t like sweets very much carries an implication, there: the rice-and-meat he prefers to more complicated dishes are probably all he had to eat growing up, and rarely fruits and desserts and candies. He never had the opportunity to develop a taste for anything, because there was no one to make things for him to develop a taste for.

Well, that was what Sanji was for, and he’d decided it was about time the mosshead got some of that pampering he was far overdue for, so he’d pulled out all the stops of everything he knew about Zoro’s palate and created a truly magnificent dish that would be familiar enough not to be intimidating, but new enough that he could start finding out what he liked. And he’d handed it to him and waited with bated breath to see what he’d think of it, had said he was trying something new and hoped Zoro liked it, and Zoro had taken the plate with nothing more than a grunt of thanks and eaten it with the same care with which he ate everything else, that is to say, none at all, and said, “Yeah, s’good,” and something inside of Sanji’s heart had shattered and fallen to the seabed, discarded and abandoned somewhere in the East Blue between Conomi and Loguetown.

He’s tried again since then, of course. Reaching out tentative hands from time to time to touch Zoro gently, but Zoro always pulls away, and after their time apart, Sanji hasn’t tried to reach out again.

Part of Sanji is relieved in a mean sort of way to learn that he hadn’t let Mihawk gentle him either, but another part, the part that wants Zoro to be spoiled even if he’s not the one to do it, despairs. If even Mihawk, the pinnacle of achievement, is not allowed to handle him with a gentle touch, who is?

-/-

“Zoro won’t let me be gentle with him,” Sanji finally says, once that first cigarette is down to ash and his coffee is nothing but dregs. “We’re equals.”

There’s that eyebrow again. Sanji is starting to have wicked thoughts about removing it by force.

“Who better? The only man I allow to treat me with delicacy is the one man I consider my equal. A weaker man does not deserve it; a stronger man I must be on my guard.”

Sanji raises his own eyebrow at that, watching Mihawk over his cupped hand as he lights up cigarette #2. That red-headed vagabond of mine, he’d said. No points for guessing that one. He keeps it to himself, though.

“I’ve tried. He won’t let me. Says he’s not some frail little weakling who needs to be handled with kid gloves.”

“Well, there’s your problem. Don’t treat him like some frail little weakling who needs to be handled with kid gloves. Treat him like something deserving of gentleness.”

“I think for Zoro those are the same thing.”

Dracule Mihawk is a master of many things, and apparently one of those things is rolling his eyes without moving any part of his body, including said eyes. He makes a frustrated noise.

“I cannot do all of the work for you, Blackleg. You will have to do some of it yourself or it will mean nothing.” When Sanji continues to watch him blankly, he drums his fingers on the table and says, “Do you believe your dear navigator to be frail? A weakling? Do you treat her gently and pamper her because you believe she’ll shatter if you don’t? What about Nico Robin the Devil Child? She sank a fleet at eight and you treat her as something precious.”

“That’s because she is,” Sanji snaps, Enies Lobby still raising its ugly head over his memories even after two years. It wasn’t Robin who’d sunk those ships, but the government who’d pinned the blame on her had left a little girl to the mercy of the world and she’d spent twenty years alone because of it. “She’s strong, as strong as steel, and I treat her with reverence because that’s what she deserves.”

“Does she know this?”

“Of course she does!”

“Then why can you not make this same distinction with Roronoa? Why do Nico Robin and your navigator warrant abject worship but you cannot treat Roronoa gently with anything but kid gloves?”

“Because he won’t let me! Aren’t you listening? I’ve tried, okay?” He jabs a finger onto the table. “Do you know why Zoro likes my cooking so much more than yours? It’s not because I’m an objectively better cook— it’s because even a simple palate has complexities, and I know what he likes. I create dishes that are perfectly tailored to both his tastes and to meet his specific nutritional needs. And do you know what I get in thanks? A grunt. If I’m lucky.” He groans and runs his hands through his hair. “I would love to make a fuss over him the way I do Nami and Robin. He deserves it. But I also know if I try, he’ll be insulted. He'll think I’m doing it because I think he’s weak.”

If his outburst has any effect on Mihawk, he doesn’t show it. When Sanji finishes, and has slowly scooted back in his chair, still on edge but no longer yelling, Mihawk steeples his hands in front of him.

“The way I see it, you will simply have to make him understand the difference between fragile and precious.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Sanji bites off.

“Not interested.”

-/-

Mihawk says nothing more while they finish their breakfast, but once their plates are clear he offers to give him a tour of their little neck of the island, once more holding out that genteel hand to guide Sanji’s path, the one that makes Sanji feel like a maiden in one of those trashy romance novels Zoro brought back from Kuraigana.

He says as much. Mihawk gives him an amused side-eye, something smug in his eerie eyes that makes Sanji think he’s being laughed at.

“Maidens,” he murmurs, the implied laugh curling his mouth ever-so-slightly. “You haven’t read them, have you?”

“Don’t really need to,” Sanji says. “Zeff had a bunch of them when I was growing up, when you’ve read one you’ve kind of read them all.” And Sanji had read them all, and learned how to be a gentleman from the dashing heroes featured within.

“I think there may be some distinct differences in my tastes and Redleg’s,” Mihawk says. “And Roronoa’s, for that matter. Did he tell you why I sent the books with him?”

“He said Perona used to read to him while he was injured and sent the ones she decided were his favorites with him when he left.”

Mihawk hums at that. “A partial truth. She sent them at my behest, because I thought there might be someone on his ship he would allow to read to him next time he found himself on the verge of death.”

“Oh.” Sanji is brought short by a sudden pang at the suggestion: would Zoro allow that? Next time he’s on death’s door, would he let one of them retrieve one of the novels from his locker and read to him? Would he let Sanji read to him? He doubts it, but he suddenly wants it more than anything.

As if he can see these thoughts chasing themselves around in Sanji’s head, Mihawk falls silent, at least for ahwile: when he does start talking again, it’s for the sake of the tour.

It’s pretty simple, as tours go: most of the work for Cross Guild is done within the big top tent itself, with a tent village behind it that has sprung up to house those subordinates who aren’t at sea and who, for whatever reason, aren’t currently residing on their own ships. The everyday scutwork and chores are done by a carefully maintained rota of minions, and already those hangers on of the people who’ve turned away from the law to chase Marines have begun to filter into the inevitable population that always ties itself to a place like this.

What gets to Sanji, though, is the way Mihawk behaves on the tour. It’s not just the hand to steady his path, for all that he has no need. It’s the way he checks in to see how Sanji is doing. The way he asks how the weather of Karai Bari is treating him. The way he wants to know if the food is to his liking, if he slept well, if there’s anything he needs to be more comfortable.

It’s the way, when he’s showing Sanji the little greenhouse he’s set up in order to continue his agricultural hobby, he oh-so-carefully cuts one of his flowers from the stem and places it with such a delicate hand into Sanji’s buttonhole.

It’s the attentiveness, the way he won’t let Sanji lift even a finger on his own behalf the entire time he’s presenting Cross Guild to him for his approval. Like his approval means everything in the world.

It’s enough to leave Sanji flustered and weak-kneed and just a teensy bit smitten, and enough to make him think longingly of Zoro at the same time.

-/-

The tour over, Mihawk leads Sanji back to the inner lounge that seems to be the centerpoint for Cross Guild’s leadership. The room is empty when they get there, apart from the pile of sand topped by a golden hook laid out on the sofa that he can only assume is Crocodile. Mihawk gives the pile a disdainful look as they come in, beckoning for Sanji to have a seat before moving over to fill the teakettle.

He doesn’t say a word about the matter, but once the kettle is full he moves over to the couch and upends it onto the sand. The pile hisses and reforms into a flailing Crocodile, who hooks his arm over the back of the sofa so he can haul himself up enough to glare at his partner, still staring down at him with the empty kettle in hand.

“I thought I told you to quit doing that, Hawkeyes.”

“And I thought I told you to quit being sand on the sofa. You always leave some behind and then it gets everywhere.”

His piece said, he moves over to put the kettle up and comes back with three wine glasses and a bottle of wine. While he pours them all wine, he asks a conversational, “Why are you sulking? Is it because I won’t let you kill Blackleg?”

“No, I’m over that,” Crocodile says. He’s making himself comfortable on the couch, hooking one ankle along the back, folding his hand up under his head, but he pauses this to fix Sanji with a look that says he is very much not over that. Sanji flips him off without a word. He adds, belatedly, “And I’m not sulking.”

“Yes, of course,” Mihawk says. “Silly me. Is it because Straw Hat is on his way here?”

Crocodile doesn’t deign to respond, but Mihawk seems to read something in his lack of a response, because he takes a sip of his wine and gives Crocodile a look that, to Sanji’s eye, almost looks pitying.

“It’ll be the first time you’ve seen him since the Paramount War, won’t it?” he asks, and gets little more than a grunt in reply.

“You helped him, didn’t you?” Sanji says suddenly. “He told us about it, and the way Jinbei told the later part you basically saved his life.”

“I had my reasons,” Crocodile says, not turning his gaze Sanji’s way this time. “They’re none of your business.”

“No, of course not,” Sanji assures him, hands raised placatingly. “I guess just… thanks, for that. Whatever your reasons.”

Mihawk smirks. “I suppose,” he says idly, “if I had my entire ass handed to me by an upstart rookie fresh from the East Blue with nothing more than five crewmen and a princess, I might also be inclined to sulk if I was going to see him again.”

“You know he was working with more than just five crewmen and a princess.”

“Yeah,” Sanji says, because he apparently has a death-wish. “You forgot about the camel and the duck.”

Crocodile is fast for such a big guy, but Sanji is faster, and is well away from the chair before Crocodile brings his hook down onto it. Mihawk continues to sip his wine while he watches them brawl, and sighs irritably.

“At least Roronoa and the ghost girl had the excuse of being children,” he huffs.

-/-

When Sanji first found Zeff’s little library of romance novels— about a dozen of them, stacked neatly in one of the drawers under his bed on the Baratie— Sanji had initially tried teasing him, only for his words to fall flat as Zeff just shrugged and said he had nothing to be ashamed of.

“Even a hardened sea-worn one-legged pirate has a right to dream about softness and romance,” he’d said. “And why shouldn’t I? I’m a man the same as any other.”

And Sanji, who had always liked the thought of soft pretty romantic things anyway, and had recently discovered the concept of women in more than just the abstract and liked the look of the women on the covers of these book, who were clad in clinging, gossamer thin nighties and spilling out of tight ballgowns, had helped himself to Zeff’s little library.

Sanji had taken his cue from these books when it came to being a gentleman. In Zeff’s books, a man found a woman worthy of his time and then became her devoted slave, and Sanji was more than happy to mimic them with every woman he met. It was, after all, only their due. He would, he decided, treat every woman like a goddess, and sooner or later he would find the goddess who would reign over his heart above all others.

That the goddess would end up being a demon instead had come as a shock, but an even more devastating blow was that Zoro refused his attempts. Sanji would happily devote himself to pampering and spoiling Zoro if Zoro would only let him, but Zoro’s attention only comes in the form of being irritating and he only allows the same from Sanji.

“Stupid Mosshead,” he grumbles, folding his arms on the table and burying his face in the crook of his elbow.

He’d assumed this action would go unnoticed by the others in the room— apparently there’s a lot of admin involved in running Cross Guild, and Mihawk and Crocodile had buried themselves in paperwork on their ugly green couch ages ago, leaving him to his own devices— but Buggy is apparently not required for any of this admin, and takes the opportunity to distract himself from whatever indignities Crocodile and Mihawk have inflicted on him most recently.

His arms and head fly over to land on the table in front of Sanji, mirroring his pose with his chin resting on them, giving Sanji a taunting, smug smile.

“What’s the matter, kiddo? Having relationship issues?”

Sanji leans back and glares down at the clown, who looks unfazed by this.

“C’mon, tell Uncle Buggy all about it. It might make you feel better~” he croons.

“Uncle Buggy?”

“Come on, between Red-hair and your captain, Crocodile and the devil girl, and whatever Hawkeyes and Roronoa have going on these days, we’re practically in-laws. Look how intertwined we are! So come on, spill all. I’m all ears.”

To punctuate this, his ears pop off of his head and waggle themselves at Sanji pointedly. Sanji is starting to understand why Crocodile is so tense all the time.

“Not to mention,” Buggy adds, with a sly glance at the other two, “Certain other connections—”

“Clown,” Mihawk says warningly, pressing Yoru’s tip against Buggy’s clavicle, which he’d left behind on the floor by the couch with his body.“Mind your words.”

Buggy just snickers, and turns his attention to Sanji. “It’s that demon kid, right?” he says. “You’re all moony over him cause he won’t let you be nice to him?”

“Wait, how do you—?”

“I got eyes and ears everywhere. Nothing goes on in this place that I don’t know about.” Over by the couch, his body clambers to its feet and ambles over to the table, his arms and then his head reconnecting as he pulls out a chair and takes a seat. “Listen, I’ve known plenty of people like Roronoa. Think that any kind of softness is a show of weakness. Oh, I don’t need you to be nice to me because that’s coddling me and that makes me weak. Tchah! D’you know, the day I met Roronoa, he stabbed himself in a wound I’d already inflicted on him just to make a point about it not being enough to slow him down? The kid’s insane.”

Mihawk makes an exasperated noise from the couch, one that suggests he’s commiserating with Buggy’s experience against his will. Sanji glances over and gives him a weak commiserating look of his own.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Sanji says. “If you told me he’d cut his eye out himself, I’d believe you.”

“He didn’t, for the record,” Mihawk sighs, “but it certainly would have been in character.”

“Right, exactly!” Buggy says. “So how do you get a guy like that to agree to being pampered and spoiled? You just need the right angle.”

Sanji stares at him expectantly, and when nothing more is forthcoming, gives in and says, quite against his will, “And that angle is?”

“Oh, um.” He shrugs. “To be honest, I was hoping something would come up by the end of the sentence. But really, it comes down to why he thinks he needs to be so strong all the time. Once you know that you can probably figure out the angle.”

“What an idiot,” Sanji grumbles, moving over to the balcony that overlooks the crowd of followers. They glance up at Sanji’s appearance, and then resume their activities when they see it’s just him. He lights up a cigarette and leans on the railing, letting his thoughts drift along with the curls of smoke rising to the top of the tent.

Buggy is annoying, and not saying anything Mihawk hasn’t already, but he has succeeded in turning Sanji’s thoughts in a new direction, and he’s made one good point: if Sanji understands why Zoro feels that softness challenges his strength, maybe he figure out what it is Mihawk is desperately trying to tell him.

So what is it, then? Why does Zoro feel the need to be so strong, even when his strength is uncalled for?

-/-

Normally when they’re on their way into enemy territory, Zoro can spend the time preparing for the upcoming battle, or the crew can spend the time strategizing, or something. But right now, even though Karai Bari is technically enemy territory, they’re going on a peaceful visit, and Zoro feels in his gut that it isn’t a trap. He doesn’t know what to expect, but he also knows Mihawk isn’t setting them up.

So all he can do is sit around waiting for them to get to the island.

He finds himself, ironically, in the galley. Without Sanji there to cook, someone else needs to feed them. Nami and Robin are too busy manning the ship, and like hell is Zoro letting Luffy into the galley just because Sanji isn’t there. Zoro might not be a Fishelin Star chef or anything, but he fed himself and occasionally Johnny and Yosaku for years before Sanji came along. It won’t be fancy, but it’ll be edible, and that’ll do for now.

“Rice, meat, and sauteed bean sprouts?” Nami asks, slipping into the galley and eyeing the stove, where the rice is already cooking, and then sliding her gaze to the bean sprouts he’s currently washing.

“Gimme a break, it’s the only thing I know how to make,” Zoro says. “At least it’s edible. More than we could say for whatever Luffy would have made.”

“True.” She leans on the counter and watches him thoughtfully. “Hey, Zoro?”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been awfully antsy lately.”

He turns just enough to raise an eyebrow at her, then back to his work.

“You have to ask why? Our cook ran off without an explanation and then fucking Mihawk called and told us to come get him. We’re sailing into enemy territory. Why wouldn’t I be antsy?”

“But you already told us that you don’t think it’s a trap. In fact based on what you’ve said, you should be looking forward to this visit. Aren’t you and Mihawk, like, friends now or something?”

“Or something,” he mutters, checking the pan and then dropping the bean sprouts in it, followed by the meat he’s already cut up as well.

He can feel her eyes on him, boring into his back and demanding answers, and after awhile the expectant silence seems to suck him open and pull out the answers he knows she’s looking for.

“Alright, look. I wouldn’t say we’re friends or anything, but yeah, Mihawk and I aren’t enemies and even though I don’t trust him, I do in this instance trust his intentions. I know he won’t hurt the cook, or let anyone else hurt him, or anything like that. It’s just his other intentions I don’t fully trust.”

“What do you mean? You think he might harm Sanji some other way or use him against us or something?”

“No, nothing like that.” He sighs. “While I was on Kuraigana, Mihawk found out about—” He pauses, and glances over at the galley door. He doesn’t sense any lurking listeners, though with Robin on board it’s pretty likely anyway. “—you know. My feelings for the cook.”

Her eyebrows climb up to get acquainted with her hairline. “How did he find out?”

“Not important. The important part is, before I left, he told me I should take matters into my own hands and pursue my feelings.”

“And you haven’t d—”

“And I haven’t done that.”

“Why not?”

The stir fry is done. Zoro switches off the burner and turns to level an unimpressed frown at her.

“Why would I? I don’t feel like getting laughed off of the Sunny, you know.”

“I told you, that’s not going to happen.”

“And I told you that that’s the best case scenario.”

“Do you really think so little of Sanji?”

He scoffs, and comes around to sit next to her, pillowing his head onto his arms. Supper is ready, but it can wait long enough for him to have his pity party, seeing as Nami wants to throw one for him.

“I don’t know where you got the idea that I have a shot with the cook. I don’t see him making me fancy desserts and doing nice stuff for me and puffing out smoke hearts when he looks at me, or any of that other crap he does for you and Robin and every other woman under eighty that we meet.”

“Would you even want him to?” Nami points out, and when Zoro responds not by confirming but by looking away, she reaches over to tangle a hand in his hair and drag his head back up, turning it to face her so she can look him in the eye. “Zoro. Do you want Sanji to treat you the way he treats Robin and me?”

“No,” he pouts, and then tugs his head free and adds, a little quieter, “Maybe a little bit. Sometimes.”

His sulking earns him a scoff, and Nami pushes herself back from the counter, reeling.

“Are you kidding me? Then why do you always throw such a fucking tantrum every time Sanji tries to do anything nice for you?”

“Because I don’t feel like getting my heart broken when the next pretty girl comes along and he forgets all about me.”

“What are you—? Ohhhh my god, you are so frustrating! No wonder you two haven’t managed to pull your— augh, I cannot HANDLE you sometimes! Sanji isn’t that fickle! Or have you somehow missed that after three years, he still treats Robin and me like goddesses?”

“That’s you. Cook and I have a different relationship. I don’t need him coddling me and treating me like some kind of porcelain doll that’ll break the first time he handles me too hard.”

“But apparently you want him to, right? You want him to worship you the way he does me and Robin.”

“No.” He tosses his hands up. “I don’t mean— it’s not like I want to be like… above him and shit. I just don’t want to give in to something that I know isn’t going to last. I’d rather never have him at all than have him and lose him as soon as he gets bored. And that’s assuming I could have him at all.”

Nami shakes her head. “I don’t get you, Zoro. I really don’t.”

“What’s not to get?! Ugh, whatever. Go tell Robin and Luffy that dinner’s ready. I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Do it yourself, I’m not your maid!”

-/-

Chapter Text

“Yeah, Mihawk’s making sure the others don’t give me any trouble but to tell you the truth he’s the only person here I feel like I couldn’t handle in a fight. Even Crocodile isn’t nearly as overwhelming as he was two years ago.”

“That’s good to know,” Nami says. “We’re still a good three days out, but Jinbei joined up with us on our way here and it turns out he’s a helmsman, so we’ve managed to put on some speed.”

“Hey, that’s great! That means we’ll have his help with— well, you know.”

“Yeah, and right now he’s helping Zoro keep Luffy out of your kitchen.”

She listening for it, so Nami hears the slight catch in his breath at the implication. She grins.

“Yeah, apparently Luffy thought that not having you on the ship meant the galley was a free-for-all. Zoro’s been keeping him wrangled, but you know how hard it is to cook and wrangle Luffy at the same time.”

“Obviously that Mosshead wouldn’t be up to the task,” Sanji says weakly, and Nami’s sure she can recognize the tone that suggests he just lost a lot of blood very quickly. “Y-you said he’s been doing the cooking?”

“Most of it, since Robin and I were busy. It’s all pretty bland so I can’t wait till you’re back with us, but his stir-fried bean sprouts are surprisingly tasty.”

“They’re Yosaku’s favorite,” Sanji says. “He learned back when they were traveling together.” She hears him mutter something, and then in a harsher tone asks, “How does my kitchen look? I’m sure it must be a disaster if Swords-for-Brains has been using it.”

“Dunno, wasn’t paying attention. If he’s got it messed up, I’ll increase his debt and make him fix it when you get back, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Mellorine.”

-/-

Mihawk rejoins him moments after the call is over, while Sanji is trying to clean up the twin streams of blood dripping from his nose and down his chin. He raises an eyebrow; Sanji just rolls his eyes.

“Apparently that shit swordsman of mine has been using my kitchen on the way here,” he says. “When Nami told me I got so angry I must have burst a blood vessel or something.”

Mihawk gives him another one of those looks that clearly says ‘are you stupid or do you just think I am?’ and chooses not to respond to the blatant lie. Instead he says, “I’m afraid I have a great deal of work to do today, which means I will not be around to entertain you as I have been.”

“I don’t need to be entertained,” Sanji says, rolling his eyes again. “And I think I’ve more than proven I can handle Crocodile if he gets his undies in a bunch, so you don’t have to worry about leaving me unguarded, either.”

“Need, perhaps not,” Mihawk agrees. “However, you are our guest, and I should like to call myself a good host. Surely your customers back at the Baratie don’t need to have their wine poured, their flatware carefully arranged, their chairs pulled away for them? I certainly don’t, and yet every time I’ve visited your beloved restaurant, I have received nothing less than the absolute pinnacle of white-glove service.”

This gets a surprised noise out of Sanji. “You’ve been to the Baratie?”

A perfectly arched eyebrow raise. Does he practice them in the mirror? “I’ve been a regular customer there since shortly after my first meeting with Roronoa. In fact, that day I was planning to dine there after dealing with Krieg. Obviously Roronoa had other plans, but I went back later, when the restaurant finally reopened.”

“So you’ve met Zeff? I mean…” He trails off, embarrassed. He wants nothing more than to ask after the old man, but there’s no way Mihawk would have paid much attention to an old cook while he was eating.

“Yes, in fact the man had a great many words for me on the subject of dropping Krieg on his doorstep without finishing what I started.” He grimaces. “Some of those words were even fit for polite company. Still, the food, once I was actually allowed to eat it, was exquisite.”

Yeah, that sounds like Zeff, alright. Sanji can’t help beaming proudly at the description. Of course Zeff wouldn’t be intimidated by a Warlord, and would be more interested in the damage his actions had caused.

“That shitty old geezer,” Sanji says fondly. “I hope he’s doing okay… I don’t like to think what kind of trouble I’ve caused him from my unfortunate birth relations.”

“I doubt he would consider it trouble you had caused,” Mihawk says. “In fact I daresay he’ll be more upset at the notion that they’ve caused you trouble than anything.”

“Maybe.” Sanji reaches for his cigarettes rather than respond, unwilling to have a heart-to-heart about his family with Hawkeyes Mihawk of all people. “Anyway, getting back to our original point, there’s no reason to worry about me while you’re working. I can find my own entertainment.”

“Of course. In fact I came in here to make some suggestions— you may avail yourself to our kitchen, but if that doesn’t suit you, I have a library in my quarters and you’re welcome to a selection from that, or I can arrange for you to spar with some of the crew if that would be more to your liking. And you are of course welcome to pursue other interests.”

Both sparring and cooking sound good, but he decides to start with the library. He can go ahead and grab something to read during his breaks, and not need to bother Mihawk later. Mihawk agrees to this logic and leads him through the big main tent to the one he apparently sleeps in, gesturing to a shelf in one corner. There are about two dozen or so books lining the bottom row, and Sanji can tell with one look at the spines that they’re more of those trashy romance novels Zoro had talked about Mihawk owning.

“The bulk of my library is still in Kuraigana,” Mihawk says, “but I brought a few of my favorites along with me when Crocodile called. And the one that’s historical fiction about Gold Roger,” he adds. “I’m hoping it will upset the clown when he finds out about it.”

Sanji is perusing the titles as he says this, and spots one that reads ‘The Crown of the Pirate King’ in beautiful golden curlicues. There’s a bloodstain on one corner. Mihawk follows his eye and smirks.

“Red-Hair threw it at my head when I showed it to him.” There’s a mischievous glint in his eye that somehow reminds Sanji of the smile Zoro wears right before saying something that he knows will provoke Sanji into trying to cave his ribs in.

“Uh,” Sanji says intelligently, and decides to just pick something, grabbing a book that reads ‘Swan-Cloak vs the Demon King’ without looking further. Swan-Cloak has implications of a swan-maiden, and he’s always been charmed by the thought of such beauties.

Mihawk’s eyes flick briefly to the title. “An excellent choice. I quite like that one. The titular demon king seems like a big scary tiger, but turns out to be a total pussycat of a man, and darling Swan-Cloak starts off seeming timid and cowed only to show a backbone when the chips are down.”

“I like swan-maidens,” Sanji mumbles as they make their way back to the main lounge.

-/-

“Sanji says Mihawk is deeply fucking weird,” Nami says by way of greeting, flopping down in the grass beside Zoro where he’s been trying to nap.

He snorts. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Apparently he’s taking really good care of Sanji while he’s with them. And Sanji’s been sparring with Crocodile.”

This gets Zoro to sit up. “What?”

“Or rather, he keeps provoking Crocodile into attacking him, and then they fight until Mihawk tells Crocodile to stop.”

Nami watches Zoro’s eyebrows twitch as he tries to figure out how to respond to that, and then finally his expression smooths out and he says, “Well, I definitely didn’t know that.”

“At least it sounds like he’s enjoying himself. You know how much Sanji likes a good spar,” and really she’s not being fair but this game has gotten old, and one of them will need to break sooner or later, so she pretends not to notice that Zoro has turned a sick shade of purple at the suggestion.

Zoro stands abruptly. “I’ll be up in the crow’s nest,” he says stiffly, and disappears in that direction without another word.

-/-

Sanji heads down to the kitchen tent after parting from Mihawk, where he spends an enjoyable morning with the various pirate cooks that work for Cross Guild’s kitchens. He wasn’t expecting to enjoy their company, but cooks are cooks, and he throws himself into helping them prepare lunch for the commissary tent with gusto.

By the time he’s plated up his own lunch, he’s tired, but not in an exhausted, weary sort of way, just ready for a break, so he takes his tray up to the lounge, where he’s left the book he borrowed from Mihawk earlier. He’ll do a little reading while he has lunch, and then after he’s eaten he’ll go down and see about having a spar with some of the crew.

Satisfied with this plan, he grabs up the book and makes himself comfortable at the table to read.

-/-

Sanji only found out about Zoro’s collection of trashy romance novels by chance, because Zoro was going through his old, now-much-too-small clothes while Sanji was putting his things away after they left Sabaody.

“New wardrobe?” Sanji asked, watching Zoro sort through the pile, creating three smaller piles that Sanji had no idea how to parse the purpose of. This had just gotten him a grunt of affirmation, so he’d added, “It's good. I like the new look.”

“…Perona dragged us on a shopping trip a few weeks before I was set to leave,” he’d admitted finally. “She and Mihawk spent hours treating me like their personal dressup doll.”

“And you allowed that?”

Zoro’d just shrugged. “I’d been wearing Mihawk’s old shit up till then, after my own clothes wouldn’t do anymore. It was either let them pick out a new wardrobe and have a modicum of say in it, or show up with a bunch of billowy shirts that didn’t even fit right no matter how much Mihawk let them out.”

Sanji’d had to admit the logic of that, even if the image of Zoro dressed in a billowy shirt like the hero of some romantic fairy tale was stirring his blood in embarrassing ways. As much to dodge the possibility of a nosebleed he didn’t feel like explaining as anything, he’d cast his gaze to the inside of Zoro’s open locker, and been surprised to find four books tucked onto one of the shelves.

“Since when do you read?” he’d asked.

“I read,” Zoro’d said, bristling a little, but Sanji’d just waved his hand.

“I know you can read, I just meant since when do you, you know, own books and read because you want to?”

“Huh? Oh.” Flicking his gaze over to the books, he’d rolled his eyes. “That’s Perona again,” he’d sighed. “Mihawk’s training was absolutely brutal, I kept getting injured, like, all the time.”

“How shocking.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, ‘Rona always got stuck taking care of me when I was convalescing, and at some point she started reading to me. It was actually kind of nice,” he’d added, “except for the part where every book Mihawk owned that didn’t have to do with swords and swordsmen was a trashy romance novel.”

“So what about those?” Sanji’d asked, gesturing at the books in his locker.

“When I was packing everything up to come back, Perona brought those and stuffed them in my bag. Said they were my favorites and I should take them with me— though how she decided these were my favorites is anyone’s guess.”

Suddenly curious, Sanji had strolled over and picked one up. There was a well-oiled hunk on the cover carrying a sword and wearing a robe, and there was something to his look that reminded Sanji of Zoro, just a little bit.

“Seduction and the God of the Blade,” he read, and Zoro had snatched the book back and returned it to its home. “I can’t imagine why she might have thought you liked that one.”

“It’s actually pretty good,” he’d admitted. “The author clearly researched different sword styles in order to properly describe the techniques, and there’s a lot of sword fights in between the, erm, raunchy bits.”

There was a faint blush staining his cheeks then, and Sanji had latched onto the opportunity to tease him mercilessly about reading dirty books until they’d been brawling just as if they’d never been apart. But the thought had lingered in Sanji’s head long after that conversation, of if Zoro was… interested in the raunchy bits, or if they were just a coincidence of where he’d gotten the books.

He does clearly enjoy them: they haven’t made many appearances, but Sanji has seen them in his hands once or twice since they left Ryugu, usually when he’s resting or nursing some injury or other, so he knows that whyever he has them, he gets something out of them.

But that doesn’t mean the raunchy bits are what he cares about.

Okay, cards on the table time: the simple fact of the matter is that Sanji has no clue where Zoro stands in terms of his own sexuality, and no way of asking without it being very, very awkward.

He knows, or at least has enough experience to suspect, that Zoro has no interest in women: the times that he’s accused Zoro of making advances to beautiful women have been met with a range of confusion to outright disgust depending on the circumstances, enough times that Sanji can guess that women aren’t his inclination.

The trouble is, he’s not sure men are either. He’s certainly never seen any suggestion of that, at least not that he knows how to recognize— and, having grown up on a ship where the owner refused to hire women, he’s better able to recognize that than he lets on. Such environments attract a certain type of man after awhile; he’s aware that at least some of the men in Zeff’s kitchen were there because it let them escape the expectations of seeking female companionship.

Which had left him with the uncomfortable conclusion that Zoro doesn’t really have a sexuality, or at least that he isn’t bothering to acknowledge it because it doesn’t have anything to do with swords or booze.

But there’s still the books. Zeff read his romance novels because he liked to imagine a kind of soft romance that wasn’t available to him; Sanji read them and used them as templates to create the chivalrous side he wanted to be where women were concerned. But Zeff’s had also had a lot of discreet fade-to-black cutaways from the steamier parts, and absolutely nothing in them that could be described as raunchy, unless you were eleven and already tenting your chef’s whites at the mere suggestion of a woman’s breasts.

On the other hand, Zoro’s books are second-hand, and the only one Sanji’s aware of in any way is the one that Zoro said had sword fights in it, and he wasn’t the one that picked them out in the first place and said that he didn’t know what criteria Perona had used, and so Sanji had spent a solid three days chasing his thoughts around in circles trying to figure out what, if anything, Zoro’s newly-expressed predilection for romance novels was expressing about himself before he’d finally tossed it aside and decided there were better ways to find out where Zoro stands re: sexuality and, by extension, if he even has a look-in in the first place.

-/-

Okay so: there are no Swan-Maidens in this book.

Well, not entirely true. She’s never on-screen, but the titular Swan-Cloak’s mother was a Swan-Maiden.

Swan-Cloak, on the other hand, is decidedly not. And Sanji is fully aware of this because the first scene in the book is Swan-Cloak seducing the Demon King. On screen. Graphically. With florid and detailed descriptions.

Somewhere in his periphery, Sanji is aware of Mihawk entering the room, a lunch tray of his own in hand. Sanji doesn’t even have to look at him to know he’s raising that fucking eyebrow again.

“Are you alright, Blackleg? You seem a bit… flustered. And on fire. Please do not burn down this tent.”

“I… might have missed some memos about this book when you loaned it to me,” he squeaks out, desperately trying to quell his embarrassed flames.

Mihawk takes his seat primly. “More graphic than you were expecting? I don’t imagine Redleg’s collection was quite so… steamy… as mine, but I do like what I like, and make no apology.”

“Steamy, yeah,” Sanji chokes out. “And with… significantly less women than I expected.”

“Women? Why in the world would I want women in my porn?” Mihawk pauses with his glass halfway to his mouth, and pierces Sanji with a studying look. He lowers his glass. “Blackleg,” he says slowly, “I’ve been laboring under the assumption that you share our proclivities. Was I wrong?”

Our. Does he mean—?

“N-no,” Sanji says. “Not really.” And, because he knows Mihawk will ask, “Just Zoro. Women and Zoro. I don’t know why he’s the exception. Iva said that happens sometimes and if I’m happy I shouldn’t worry about it so much. So. It’s just women and Zoro.”

“Fascinating…”

“S-so, your entire library is like this…?” Sanji asks. He thinks of Zoro having this book, and others like it, read to him for two years. Surely he wouldn’t have gone along with it if he wasn’t into that, right?

“Some are less explicit than others,” Mihawk says with a delicate shrug.

“Oh, that makes sense.” He peeks down at the book in his hands. “It’s just weird to think of Zoro of all people reading… well, you said it yourself. Porn.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. He’s just always making such a fuss about me flirting with women and being a perv and stuff… guess it always struck me as something he felt was beneath him. You’re giving me that look like I’m an idiot again. Stop it.”

“Stop being an idiot, then.”

-/-

Zoro finds Jinbei up by the helm, and approaches carefully, politely.

(Sanji would probably disagree with the idea that Zoro knows how to be polite, but that’s because Sanji’s idea of manners is being a phony, and he doesn’t understand just being respectful is all you really need. Also because Zoro’s never shown him any since the day they’ve met, but mostly the first thing.)

“Hey, Jinbei,” he says. “Mind if I hang out up here with you?”

“By all means.” He gestures broadly at the deck around him, and Zoro takes the invitation, settling himself nearby with a huff. Jinbei glances aside, and asks, “You seem annoyed by something.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. The witch is really driving me up the wall about this Sanji thing,” he answers absently. “I’m kinda hoping your new guy aura will keep her away for a little while. You know, not let on how annoying we all are.”

Jinbei just chuckles at that. “I’ve already suspected as much, but perhaps she won’t realize that.”

Zoro hums again, and settles back into a prime nap position, but he doesn’t close his eye, instead staring out into the distance deep in thought. Eventually, he says, “Hey, you know Crocodile pretty well, right?”

“Well enough, I suppose.”

“So what do you think we can expect here? I mean, I know Mihawk probably won’t hurt the cook or anything, we have a pact and he knows if he hurts my crew it’ll interfere with that. But Crocodile is kind of a wild-card. We ruined his plans in Alabasta and got him locked up in Impel Down, but he still saved Luffy at Marineford. He tried to help him save Ace.”

There’s a long silence as Jinbei considers the matter before answering. “Crocodile, in my experience, doesn’t do anything that isn’t going to benefit him in some way. Whatever he does, he’ll have an agenda for how he gains from it.”

“According to our calls with the cook, he thinks Mihawk might have something on him that he’s using to keep him in line.”

“I can’t imagine what, though I suppose that is the nature of blackmail. There are things about Crocodile that I know he wouldn’t want to become common knowledge again, but I can’t see him changing his behavior over the matter. He’d be more likely to kill the people who know, as he has done in the past.”

At Zoro’s inquiring noise, he waves an absent hand to dismiss the question, and goes back to silent contemplation while he mans the help. Zoro, likewise, falls silent, once again considering what Mihawk could have on Crocodile that would keep him in check.

-/-

Chapter Text

The next morning finds Zoro in the galley before the sun is even up, staring at the pantry in thought.

It’s true that his skills in the kitchen are mostly limited to what he was able to do when living rough. While he preferred eating at restaurants, that wasn’t always practical when he’d sometimes be at sea or on the road for days, and he prefers rice to rations. And of course he’d been taught to hunt and fish since he was young, and while his prowess with preparing said meat and fish stops at ‘put it over the fire until it’s done’ and he’d never call it delicious, it’s at least filling.

But then in Kuraigana Mihawk had made him learn how to cook with seasoning. He’s not very good at it, but he’d at least learned.

Mihawk also made him learn one specific recipe.

Zoro hadn’t understood. “He’s a cook,” he’d scoffed. “Anything I make he’ll just think about how he could do better.”

“Exactly, he’s a cook. And from what you’ve told me, one prone to acts of service in general. Correct?”

“Yeah, he’s always taking care of us and looking after us and doing shit to make sure we’re happy. More for the girls than for the rest of us,” he’d muttered as an aside.

When he’d glanced over at Mihawk again, the man was smirking. “And that is precisely why you are going to prepare a meal for him for a change. You will speak to him in his own language. Now. What is his favorite dish?”

Well, that was easy enough for Mihawk to say, but even if Zoro did have any faith in this idea of his, that didn’t make it a viable plan. Sanji isn’t prone to letting anyone else use his kitchen, let alone Zoro.

Except now he’s not on the ship.

It’s literally the only chance Zoro will ever get.

“So what’s for dinner tonight, Zoro?” Luffy asks, hopping up onto the counter in a way that inevitably gets Sanji kicking him.

“Spicy seafood pasta,” Zoro says, grabbing the front of Luffy’s shirt and hauling him onto the floor with one hand while his other reaches into the pantry for the necessary ingredients. “In fact we’re having it for every meal until we get to Karai Bari, cause I need the practice.”

Luffy brightens immediately, completely nonplussed by being on the floor. “You gonna make Sanji his favorite food to tell him you love him and want to be boyfriends and kiss and junk?”

Zoro casts him a smirk over his shoulder, still loading up his arms with ingredients. “That obvious, huh?”

“Well, yeah, how else would you do it?”

“Tch. There’s a hundred ways.”

“Then why haven’t you done any of them yet?”

-/-

Sanji has a problem.

True, in the grand scheme of problems he has right now, this one isn’t a very big one. Still, he currently has a veritable mountain of onigiri in front of him, because he’s been craving it, and as soon as he started making them instinct took over and he’d made as much as it would take to fill not only himself but also a certain swordsman with the palate of a food-insecure nine-year-old.

He can’t waste the food, but something about just giving these onigiri to anyone else makes him twist inside. Subconsciously or not, he made them for Zoro.

He’ll just have to get over that, he decides. He can’t eat them all himself, they won’t keep until Zoro gets here, and he refuses to let them go to waste. He’ll just have to make more when he’s back on the Sunny. Maybe if he does Zoro will hear the things he wants to say and can’t.

Mihawk looks up from cleaning Yoru when Sanji thunks the plate down at his elbow. He arches one eyebrow at him.

“Look, you’ve been really nice to me the whole time I’ve been here, and this situation could have been a lot worse than it is, so just… have those.”

All he gets in response is a faint hum of acknowledgement, but Mihawk does pick up a cloth to wipe his hands clean before reaching out for one of the onigiri. At the first bite, though, his eyes widen fractionally.

“Ah,” he says once he’s swallowed. “I can see now why Roronoa wouldn’t let either of us make onigiri for him during his stay, no matter how much he complained of missing it.”

A blush rises from Sanji’s neck all the way up to his hairline, and he says, “It’s just onigiri. It’s not even hard to make.”

“No, I think there’s a very special ingredient in these particular onigiri that make them so good.” He eats the rest in one big bite, something like satisfaction tugging at his lips.

Sanji doesn’t need a mirror to know that his entire face is bright red now. He clears his throat. “Well, um— that’s all. I’m, I’ll just, um, I’m— over there.”

And with that he scurries over to his own seat at the table, staring down at his own plate like it holds the secrets to life the universe and everything while he wills away his embarrassment and completely misses the knowing look Mihawk is directing at him.

-/-

Mihawk is taking his own time cleaning Yoru, the plate of onigiri set aside for when he’s done. Sanji has long since finished his own food and is lounging on one of the settees with his book, watching him thoughtfully in his periphery.

He’s no stranger to watching a swordsman tend his sword, of course. He’s spent many a longing hour watching Zoro with his own; he treats his swords with far more respect and reverence than he does his own body.

“And why not? The swords are actually important to him,” Sanji mutters irritably, glaring down at his book. The demon king in the book reminds him a little bit of Zoro, though so far the king has left his companion to fight every challenge to the throne for him. Zoro wouldn’t do that. Zoro would face his challengers himself.

“Did you say something, Blackleg?”

“Huh?” Sanji glances up from his book. “No, just… thinking out loud, I guess.” He nods toward the sword Mihawk has been cleaning for what feels like hours now. “You remind me of Zoro. He can spend ages doing that.”

“I should imagine so. A swordsman and his blades are one body, you know, and with three to care for…”

“Tch. You spent two years with him; you know as well as I do that Zoro doesn’t treat his body nearly as well as he does his swords.”

“And that upsets you?”

Idly, Sanji wonders if Zoro also had ideas about shaving off Mihawk’s eyebrows so he wouldn’t be able to raise them knowingly anymore. “He doesn’t give himself time to heal before he gets back to training. He treats his body— his life— like it’s expendable— disposable. Like it doesn’t mean anything at all. Of course that upsets me. Even if I didn’t feel the way I feel, how could I not be upset by one of my crew being so cruel to himself?” He sighs. “I wish he’d show himself the same reverence he shows those swords of his. Then maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about— well— anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

Sanji shrugs. “I don’t see much I can do about it. If Chopper can’t get him to take care of himself, what makes you think I could?”

“So do it for him.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He’s finally finished with his work. He sets his things aside and raises Yoru to the light, apparently satisfied with the job well done because he sets it back down on the table and reaches for the plate of onigiri.

Before Sanji can formulate a reply, a few of the others come in, including Buggy, who spies the onigiri and grins.

“Oooh, onigiri! Feel like sharing, partner?”

“Absolutely not,” Mihawk sniffs, sliding his plate a little closer.

“Aw, come onnnnn,” Buggy wheedles, leaning in close with wiggling fingers. His other arm is tucked away, unnoticed, so it’s not much of a surprise when, while Mihawk is focusing on his obvious grabby hand, his other is slipping to the plate from behind.

And it’s equally not a surprise when, fast as a blink, Mihawk has the hand pinned to the table with the dagger that hangs at his throat, his foot connecting with and shoving the rest of the clown away with a haki-powered kick that breaks Buggy into pieces as he flies back.

Buggy’s head lands in Sanji’s lap. Sanji squawks and lashes out with a kick of his own, this one leaving the head dazed, on fire, and tangled in the curtains that block this room from the main tent.

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to share those with me, are you? There are too many for you to eat on your own,” Crocodile asks, stepping carefully around Buggy’s scattered parts and making his way to their faithful hideous couch. Almost absently, his arm is turning into sand and drifting over to put out the fire that Buggy is in danger of spreading to the rest of the tent.

“Perhaps, but Blackleg made them for me.”

“Actually, I just made too many because I’m used to feeding my crew,” Sanji points out, tucking a finger into his book and laying it in his lap. “And I don’t like food going to waste. So I really don’t care.”

Mihawk looks unimpressed, then sniffs delicately and holds out the plate.

“If you take more than three I’ll cut off your head.”

“Tch!” Crocodile scoffs, but does as he’s told and only takes three. His fingers do a complicated little dance as he slips his cigar free with one finger before cramming two riceballs into his mouth, freeing up his hold somewhat for his cigar and remaining riceball while he settles onto the couch.

“You disgust me,” Mihawk says, but Crocodile just waves this away with his hook, expression one of obvious enjoyment as he chows down. Once he’s swallowed, Mihawk adds, “Good?”

Crocodile hums vaguely, taking a bite out of his remaining riceball. “If I’d known ahead of time you could cook like this, Mr. Prince, I might not have been so quick to break our agreement with Vinsmoke. I can see why Straw Hat is so eager to get you back.”

Sanji bristles at that, ready to snap off a retort, but doesn’t get to before he’s interrupted by the clown’s whining.

“Aw man.” Buggy’s legs haul themselves upright, hopping around in search of each other for a moment before managing to connect. They trot over to the other parts to collect them while Buggy’s head wriggles free and drops onto the couch beside Crocodile. “Why does he get to try them? I want to try them. Everyone says Straw Hat has the best cook in the entire Grand Line. I want to try his cooking!”

“Who’s everyone?!” Sanji squawks, and adds for Crocodile’s benefit, “And I already told you, you’re not my type!”

“You know, everyone.” Buggy’s body has finally reformed; he comes over and grabs his head, plopping it onto his neck before taking his usual seat in front of the couch at Crocodile’s feet. He flaps one hand vaguely. “Rumor is its own currency here on the Grand Line and it pays to know everything you can about your enemies. Straw Hat’s appetite is legendary and the cook who can keep up with it even moreso.”

“He is unfortunately right,” Crocodile says, nose wrinkling slightly over being forced to agree with Buggy. “But it’s clear rumor doesn’t even come close to doing you justice. If you were anyone else, I might even be tempted to keep you for myself after all. It’s too bad you’re also a massive pain in the ass.”

Sanji smirks and blows a cloud of smoke in Crocodile’s direction. “Imagine how much it would suck to be married to me, then,” he says smugly.

“Yes, I can’t imagine many people who would be insane enough to volunteer for the job,” Mihawk says drily, and adds, “Or indeed, more than one.”

Sanji startles so much at this that he ends up inhaling his cigarette; he manages to hack it free, stamping on it before it can light anything on fire, and fixes Mihawk with a glare.

“You suck,” is his weak retort.

“Not anyone here, I don’t.”

Unwilling to touch that with a ten foot pole, Sanji turns back to Crocodile and says, “I know rumor is valuable on the Grand Line, but I didn’t realize that rumor was specifically being spread about Luffy’s appetite. That’s such a weird thing to talk about.”

“Not when you leave the larders bare every time you leave a place,” Crocodile points out. “The rumors run the entire gamut— from Straw Hat being an incorrigible glutton who will eat anything edible he sees, to his willingness to overthrow entire governments in exchange for just a meal.”

Sanji chuckles softly. “That one’s not far from the truth, but as usual rumor removes the nuance. It’s not that Luffy is susceptible to bribery or willing to be led by the nose by anyone who feeds him. He just believes that if someone makes a great sacrifice to help him, that should be repaid in kind, usually by removing whatever factor it is that makes it a sacrifice. A lot of the places we go, people are being starved by people in power. Luffy goes after the people keeping them from the food— or whatever resource they don’t have enough of. Though I guess I don’t need to tell you about that,” he adds, blowing smoke in Crocodile’s direction before adding a pointed, “Yuba?”

“I remember.” Crocodile gives him a grim smile and blows a smoke cloud of his own. “At the time I thought it was a sign of weakness. What sort of pirate worth his mettle would let himself get so worked up over one man digging holes in the desert? I underestimated his ability to turn his sentiment into a weapon. The next time we find ourselves on opposite sides of a fray, I’ll remember. I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“You fell for multiple snone scams from the same person,” Sanji reminds him. “Not that it matters, of course. You couldn’t hope to hold a candle to Luffy these days if you can’t even beat me.”

Crocodile snarls, and, “I will make you eat those words!” is all the warning he has before a large body is hurling straight at him and he has just enough time to dodge, cackling a taunt as yet more of Cross Guild’s ugly furniture is wrecked beyond repair.

-/-

By the time they’ve finished fighting, Crocodile is lying sprawled on their tacky couch, and Sanji is starfished on one of the settees, both breathing heavily. Mihawk hums idly and finishes the last of his onigiri, then stands and picks up both his and Sanji’s plates from the table.

“If you’re quite done,” he says, standing over Sanji. He shifts the plates to one hand and holds out his other. “Come along. With Jinbei at the helm I suspect your crew will be arriving the day after tomorrow, possibly tomorrow if they get very lucky, and I still have some things to finish before I hand you back over to Roronoa.”

Sanji stares at the hand in question, taking it extremely tentatively and with a renewed flush as he remembers his comparison to maidens before. Funnily enough, now that he has a little more context, it isn’t the more delicate and admittedly waifish Swan-Cloak that Sanji feels like here but his demon king, who despite being a completely mannerless boor is still reduced to a blushing, flustered mess every time Swan-Cloak treats him with the hand of the prince that he is.

“What things?” he asks as he’s being led away.

“Wardrobe, for one. You’ve been wearing those clothes since you came here.”

Sanji wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, they’re starting to whiff a bit, but it’s not like Captain Mask gave me a chance to pack an overnight bag before I left, and sacrifices must occasionally be made under the circumstances. But I don’t know what that’s got to do with the mosshead,” he adds. “I don’t think he’d notice, or care.”

“No, but you do, and you must be at your best for this meeting.”

Sanji decides not to ask why, and instead plucks at his shirt to say, “These aren’t my clothes, you know. Well, I mean, they are, but they’re from Germa. Judge took my clothes and made me wear these because it was more befitting of royalty.”

“Then we’ll just have to get you a suit by tomorrow.”

In keeping with this, he takes Sanji to the quartermaster’s store, where any dry goods obtained by their ships are stored until they’re needed again. As soon as they’re through the door, a pair of squat pirates in colorful silk finery scuttle out of the shadows and bow low to them.

“Lord Mihawk! You grace us with your presence again so soon?”

“I hope our latest offering hasn’t proven a disappointment.”

Mihawk shakes his head and guides Sanji further into the room. “Not at all, gentlemen, your work is exquisite as always. In fact I have another commission for you. This is Blackleg Sanji. He needs a new suit.”

“Oh, Blackleg! We’d heard about your guest, of course.”

“Your highness,” this accompanied by a bow, and the second says, “My name is Snip, and this is my brother Stitch. If a suit you need, a suit we will be happy to provide.”

“If you’ll just step this way—”

Snip and Stitch guide Sanji up onto a stool and immediately he finds himself being assaulted by a flurry of measuring tapes. He raises a questioning eyebrow at Mihawk, who has taken a seat in the corner and folded one leg over the other.

“Snip and Stitch are members of Buggy’s crew,” he explains. “The only members of value, if you ask me. They’re tailors, costumiers, and quite good ones too, though you wouldn’t guess from the way the rest of the crew are dressed. Boys,” he adds, “We’re getting him ready to reunite with his young man. Make him look like a treasure to be sought after.”

Sanji flushes again at the blatant, damning phrase, but Snip and Stitch ignore him in favor of flinging themselves into their work, manhandling Sanji like little more than a mannequin, mumbling between them about cuts and fabrics and fibre content, naming various islands he’s heard of and others he hasn’t, all in the context of the suit they intend to make for him. Sanji knows about suits and their cuts, but even he can’t follow this discussion, and eventually gives up in favor of looking over and meeting Mihawk’s gaze where he’s watching proceedings with an idle sort of interest.

“Why are you doing all of this?” he asks suddenly.

“Doing what?”

“This.” He makes to gesture, but his arm is caught and returned to the position Snip and Stitch had him in already. “What does it matter to you if I can make Zoro love me or not?”

Mihawk’s eyebrow twitches, but for once he doesn’t raise it, and Sanji would swear his expression even softens.

“It is not often I allow myself attachment,” he finally says. “But even I could not withstand two years in the boy’s company without succumbing to his charms, such as they are. I find myself invested in his happiness despite my best efforts.”

It’s on the tip of Sanji’s tongue to make a self-deprecating comment about how he’s probably not the way to go, then, or to argue against the idea of Zoro having charms, but there’s something like sincerity in Mihawk’s expression and the words fall away before he can form them.

“Thanks,” he murmurs instead, eyes dropping down to watch Snip and Stitch so he doesn’t have to see that earnest gleam in Mihawk’s golden gaze any longer.

-/-

“Thanks to Jinbei, we’ve managed to cut time off of our trip and we should be at Karai Bari tomorrow,” Nami says over dinner that night. They’re having spicy seafood pasta again. They’ve had it for every meal since Zoro decided to put Mihawk’s plan into motion. “I already called Sanji to let him know we were on our way.”

“How’s he doing?” Luffy asks.

“Pretty good, all things considered, but he’s definitely ready to come home, that’s for sure. Apparently Mihawk is the biggest weirdo he’s met since Luffy and Crocodile is boring to spar with. And the less said about Buggy the better.”

There isn’t much to say to that— apart from Zoro seething quietly into his pasta for reasons he doesn’t want to analyze.

“And after he’s home?” Robin says after awhile. “How do you mean to enact your plan, Zoro?”

Zoro huffs out an irritable noise. He hadn’t intended the others to realize what he was doing, but in hindsight it was probably really obvious once he started serving Sanji’s favorite dish every meal.

“To be honest I’m not really sure,” he admits. “Cook’s never going to willingly let me into his kitchen, so the only hope I have is if the food is already ready when we get to Karai Bari. Maybe I could set everything up in the crow’s nest…? But I’m not sure if I could actually get him up there long enough. You know as soon as he gets back he’ll want to be in the galley putting everything back to rights. I’ve kept it as close as I can to how he likes it but I’m sure he’ll find a reason to bitch about it.”

“What about a lunchbox?” Nami suggests. “You could get him off on his own while we make an excuse to not immediately leave and give it to him then.”

Zoro rubs his jaw thoughtfully. That’s an idea. “What kind of excuse?”

“I could help there,” Robin says. “One of my reasons for coming along was a desire to speak with Crocodile again. I would be happy to buy you an hour or two.”

“Why do you want to see that guy again?” Luffy says around his fork. “He tried to kill you.”

“True, but I also betrayed him. Besides, while I was with the Revolutionaries I discovered he has a small past connection with them, and I’d like to clarify a suspicion I have about that past.”

“Crocodile used to be a Revolutionary?” Nami asks.

“I think it is more accurate to say that his goals and Dragon’s were once aligned. He was only with them for a little under a year before they parted ways.”

“Crocodile knew my dad?”

“Yes. What a small world it is, isn’t it? This would have been just before you were born, though, and I get the impression they didn’t part on good terms.”

Luffy hums around his dinner at this, but as with most things involving his father, he has little active interest, so when it becomes clear that Robin has no more information forthcoming, he turns back to Zoro.

“Does that work for you?”

“I can work with that,” Zoro agrees. “Though, if we’re sending Robin off with Crocodile, I’d feel a lot better if you went along too, Luffy. I don’t trust him alone with her.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Robin says. “However, I’m not sure Luffy’s presence would aid my intent. Due to Crocodile’s history with both Luffy and with Dragon, he may be less forthcoming on this matter if Luffy is with us. I’m prying into his past. He’s going to be tightlipped as it is, without giving him further reason.”

Zoro hrms in discontent, and before he can protest again Jinbei says, “Would you feel better if I was nearby? I’ll give you privacy, of course,” he tells Robin, “but I wouldn’t go far and would able to come to your aid should the need arise.”

“I would be okay with that,” Zoro agrees. To Robin he adds, “I trust you can take care of yourself, but I would feel a lot better about sending you into the lion’s den if you had backup ready.”

For one moment, the echo of old hurts passes across Robin’s expression before it once again smooths out into her usual calm. She gives Zoro a small but sincere smile. “I can accept this compromise.”

“So that’s the plan?” Nami asks. “Robin gives us an excuse to stick around for a few hours and Zoro drags Sanji off for a picnic?”

“Picnic is a strong word. This is a box lunch.”

Nami just waves this away. “So just so we’re clear, and I will be having this conversation with Sanji later, ground rules are no sex in the public parts of the ship and no making out on the deck.”

Zoro knows his face must be a brilliant red here. “That’s not—!”

“The whole ship’s public,” Luffy points out.

“…hey, yeah!”

“You have a bedroom!”

“I do? Oh, hey, yeah, I do. Forgot about that.”

“Look, I just don’t want to run the risk of sitting somewhere I know your bare ass has been. Okay?”

Zoro buries his face in his hands. “Luffy? Can I get a little help here?”

Luffy cocks his head thoughtfully. “Nami has a point, though. You guys should probably keep your sex and stuff private.”

“I meant I don’t want to have this conversation anymore,” Zoro says, muffled by his hands. “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. The odds of this working at all are a longshot as it is.”

“No, it’ll work.”

Jinbei laughs. “Maintaining sexual privacy on a ship isn’t exactly easy,” he says. “Everyone has to learn to accept a little bit of knowing things they rather not know, seeing things they’d rather not see, and sharing things about themselves they’d rather not share. But I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. Is this the first relationship that’s sprouted among the crew?”

“As far as we know,” Nami says, while Luffy begins trying to pry Zoro’s hands away from his face.

“If it wasn’t, you would probably know,” Jinbei assures her. “Unless there’s a brand new relationship that hasn’t had time to get out.”

“No, there’s not,” Luffy says with utter confidence. “Unless you count Nami and all of her girlfriends.”

“Hey!”

“Nami’s the kind of pirate to have a girl in every port,” Luffy continues, while Zoro finally drops his hands in favor of howling with laughter at Nami’s indignity.

-/-

Chapter Text

True to prediction, late evening sees the Sunny on approach to the island. They’re about an hour out when Nami calls ahead, and as soon as he’s hung up the snail Sanji steels himself and turns to Mihawk.

“So. I need a favor,” he says. He gets no response beyond a raised eyebrow, which he decides is an invitation and presses on. “I want to get Zoro away by ourselves for a little while. Something tells me that if I don’t try now, before we leave, I won’t get the nerve to try again later. So I need some reason to stall so that we don’t just sail away immediately.”

Mihawk does him the courtesy of considering this request, then glances to Crocodile. “Miss Nami mentioned that Nico Robin was among the group coming to pick Blackleg up, I believe.”

Crocodile snorts. “Tch. I know what you’re getting at— yeah, no problem, I’ll convince Robin to stick around and catch up before taking off. That should buy a little bit of time.”

Sanji squints at him suspiciously. “Just so we’re clear,” he says firmly, “If you hurt her again, I’ll kill you.”

“Hey, she betrayed me. I wouldn’t have tried to kill her if it wasn’t for that. Besides, I already forgave her for that.”

“Don’t care. Hurt her and you’re dead.”

Crocodile huffs out a cloud of smoke and turns pleading eyes to Mihawk, who rolls his own.

“Aren’t you the one who once told me you regretted that you weren’t able to retain Miss All Sunday as easily as you did Mr. 1 and Mr. 3?”

“Tch. That doesn’t matter. Miss All Sunday was a lie. I’m not as interested in Nico Robin. Still, I can play nice so you can get back to making your dollies kiss.”

“You’re too kind,” Mihawk replies drily, while Sanji rises and heads to the door. He raises another eyebrow. “Blackleg?”

“Seeing as you’ve agreed to buy me some time with the mosshead, I’m going to go do something about all this nervous energy and make him a lunchbox. Better make one for Luffy too while I’m at it or we’ll never get a minute alone…”

-/-

Shortly before it was time for Zoro to return to Sabaody and rejoin his crew, Perona had pointed out that Zoro, having nearly doubled in size during his training, was in need of a new wardrobe. Which was unfortunately true: even the clothes he’d arrived in had long since given up the ghost, a combination of wear from his training and the strain of being worn by a body no longer small enough to be contained by them leaving them as little more than rags, hanging onto him by threads until Mihawk had replaced them with castoffs from his own wardrobe.

(It was nothing more than a flouncy light blue shirt and a pair of tight dark pants, but Mihawk had also taken it upon himself to personally take in and let out the seams where necessary so they’d fit him, and Zoro still doesn’t know how feels about that evening he’d spent watching Mihawk, the greatest swordsman in the world, sew up his clothes.)

In any case, the shopping trip had been Perona’s idea but Mihawk was on-board as soon as she suggested it, completely ignoring Zoro’s protests and attempts to point out that he could get in a lot of trouble and potentially lose his warlord status if important people found out he was harboring one of the Strawhats.

“And what do I care about that?” Mihawk had said with a delicate shrug. “I am a warlord because it is convenient to me, but if I must lose my status, then so be it. I am a pirate above all other things. With or without my status, I will always do exactly what I want, no more, no less.” His lips had curled into a predatory smile. “And what I want is to see to it that I don’t return you to your captain with nothing to wear. Don’t worry, Bunny, I’ll make sure she doesn’t put you in ruffles.”

And that had been that, but even worse was that about halfway through their seventh store, carrying a package that contained a bulk pack of underwear and a pair of plain black sleep pants and nothing else because getting the three of them to agree on Zoro’s wardrobe was even harder than beating those damn monkeys had been, Zoro had apparently lost his mind and said, “At least Cook will be happy. He’s always on me about dressing better.”

Perona had, of course, pounced on this notion, cooing about how they were going to make him soooooo pretty for Sanji, just you wait—!, and Zoro had given in and put voice to the thought at the back of his mind the whole time and said, “Look. I’m not going to change who I am, okay? If Cook doesn’t like me then that’s that. But… it might not be so bad… to be a me that could… get his attention…?”

So that was how they’d ended up with the robes. Zoro had liked these a lot more than the various things that Perona had been trying to stuff him into; they reminded him of the clothes people wore in Shimotsuki, and were far more comfortable to wear and move in.

And then Mihawk, so far silent, had said, “You said your young man enjoys bosoms?” before reaching over and, easy as you please, undoing the clasps holding the robe he was trying on closed. It fell open over his chest, baring his torso to the world and causing the robe to hang on him in a way that even he could recognize looked good— like a vagabond, but the kind of vagabond that would end up on the cover of one of Mihawk’s books, well-oiled and clasping a waifish blond to his... bosom.

Mihawk looked over at Perona and said, “Yes?”, and Perona looked Zoro up and down and up, and grinned, and said, “Yes.”

Along with the robes for everyday wear, Mihawk had also bought him a few other things for different occasions, including a seafoam yukata with waves swirling on it, which Mihawk had picked out ‘for your young man’, and has been sitting folded in the back of his wardrobe since he got back.

Until now.

“Wow, where were you hiding that?” Nami asks when he joins them on deck, a pack containing Sanji’s lunchbox tossed over one shoulder.

He shrugs, and manfully resists the urge to blush. “Just something I got before I left Kuraigana. Think the Cook will like it?”

“Do you like it?” Luffy asks.

“S’comfortable,” Zoro shrugs. “I can fight in it if I need to. Mihawk made sure everything he bought me was something I could fight in if I need to.”

“Of course he did,” Nami says, rolling her eyes, but she gives him another pleased once over all the same. “I think it looks really good on you. Even Sanji couldn’t complain about you wearing this.”

“I’m sure he’ll find some way to,” Zoro sighs, and joins them in getting the ship pulled into the dock.

-/-

Captain Mask and an entourage of her crew are there to welcome them when they dock. Behind her eyeless crescent-moon mask her slightly muffled greeting informs them that The Great Captain Buggy (andLordMihawkandSirCrocodile) await them in the inner chambers with their cook. Also no hard feelings about the kidnapping.

“No. Lots of hard feelings,” Luffy counters, giving her a firm look, but allows her to lead their group through the big top tent and up to the inner chamber, where she directs them to wait beyond the curtained entrance so she can announce them properly.

She’s barely got the words out of her mouth before Luffy grumpily shoves the curtain aside and shoulders his way in anyway.

“Sanji! Where are you? Sanji!?”

Which is about all the warning they get before Luffy has flung himself with a twang at Sanji, who is standing near a tacky green couch where Crocodile and Mihawk are seated. He nearly topples over as Luffy latches onto his face with a laugh, but a collection of arms sprouts from behind him and steadies him forward.

“It’s good to see you too, Luffy,” Sanji says, once he’s managed to pry his captain off of his face. The others have entered as well; it is not lost on Sanji that both Zoro and Nami seem to have taken it upon themselves to position themselves between Robin and Crocodile. “Anyway, please greet our hosts, things are going to get awkward if you don’t.”

“What? Oh yeah.” He turns over to the couch, eyes landing first on Buggy. “Bucky!”

“That’s BUGGY!”

“Crocodile,” he goes on, voice dripping with disdain. Crocodile rolls his eyes.

“And Mihawk! I wanted to see you especially!”

And before anyone knows what’s happening, Luffy is on the floor in a full kowtow.

“Thank you for taking care of Zoro for me when I couldn’t!” he chirps. “And now Sanji, too!”

The room falls into stunned silence. The position is one that on anyone else would be humiliating, a sacrifice of pride— that had been the case when Zoro had bowed before this same man and begged for his training. It should be humiliating. That’s the entire point, it’s meant to humble a man to bow to another.

But Luffy doesn’t seem humiliated, or even humbled. The only thing radiating off of him is gratitude: gratitude, and joy at the chance to express it.

The silence is broken when Mihawk bursts into delighted, almost fond laughter.

“Straw Hat, you never cease to surprise me. Get up. Come over here. I’ve heard a great deal about you from a long list of people, and I’d like to make your acquaintance properly myself.”

Luffy beams at him, rising and moving over to the ugly couch at the same time Crocodile stands, leaving the space free for him while he approaches Robin (and Nami and Zoro, who are giving him the stinkeye to end all stinkeyes).

“Nico Robin,” he says politely. “I have something to show you. Will you walk with me?”

“Of course,” she says. “I had a matter I wanted to discuss with you anyway. It’s alright,” she adds to her crewmates, who are increasing the strength of their stinkeyes.

All the same, Nami catches Crocodile’s eye with a glare. “If you hurt her,” she begins, but he just waves that away with his hook.

“You’ll kill me, yes. Get a new tone dial, that one is getting old. Robin,” and with that, he extends his arm for her to take, by all appearances a proper gentleman.

As they leave, Jinbei exchanges a glance with the others and turns to follow as well. Zoro clears his throat.

“Hey, Cook. Looks like they’re gonna be awhile. You wanna go for a walk? You can show me around.”

A blush rockets into Sanji’s face. “R-right,” he says. “Let’s, um. That.”

Almost in unison, each tries to give a surreptitious look to Mihawk for encouragement. He responds by rolling his eyes, and turning to the one remaining Straw Hat.

“Do join us, Miss Nami. I have a feeling we have a great deal to discuss as well.”

-/-

Zoro tries watching Sanji in his periphery while they walk, but this is made difficult by the fact that Sanji is attempting the same thing and they keep catching each other’s eye by accident.

“So,” he says hesitantly. “What was all this even about, anyway?”

Sanji rolls his eyes so hard at that Zoro briefly worries he’s possessed. He huffs around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. “My— fucking. Blood relatives reared their ugly heads and tried to sell me off in a political marriage to fucking Cross Guild.”

“Cross Guild?”

“Here, Marimo,” Sanji says, gesturing around with his cigarette. “The company founded by Mihawk, Crocodile, and Buggy.”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“Neither had I, until Judge brought me here.” He lets out a slow, steady stream of smoke. “Fortunately you seem to have charmed the pants off of Mihawk while you were staying with him because he immediately decided he wanted no part of making us his enemy and called the whole thing off.”

“Yeah? You told Nami he’d been taking really good care of you…”

“He has. He’s been a perfect gentleman the whole time I’ve been here.”

His smile is downright sunny, and something cold shoots through Zoro’s heart. Ah. He comes to a stop, the lunchbox in his pack suddenly as heavy as any of his weights. Sanji, noticing his halt, stops as well and turns to face him with an inquiry in his eyes. Zoro shrugs.

“S’weird,” he says, and hopes nothing is coming through in his voice. “When I was with him he was a real bitch. Well, I guess we were together for different reasons…”

“Hm,” Sanji says, setting his cigarette back to his lips and turning away, unimpressed. He starts walking again; after a moment, Zoro hurries to catch up. “Nami said you were doing the cooking while I was gone?”

The lunchbox takes on a few extra pounds. Zoro fidgets with the strap of his pack. “Someone had to, and the witch would have charged us.” He shrugs. “I mean, I mainly only know how to make rice and cooked meat, so it’s not like it was anything special, but at least no one starved. Figured it was the least I could do seeing as our cook ran off to get married without warning.”

“I got kidnapped, Grass-for-brains. It wasn’t like I had any kind of say in the matter. Besides, Judge threatened to go after Zeff and the Baratie and the Candies in Kamabakka if I didn’t go along with things.”

“Tch. Where’s this Judge guy? I’d like a word with him. Or three.”

“Gone. Mihawk and I flattened Germa my first day here and he ran off in the flagship with my siblings and what was left of his people afterward.”

Mihawk again. Zoro grits his teeth. “Glad you two’re getting along, I guess.”

“I’m lucky he was here. Things could have gone a lot differently if he hadn’t decided to help me instead of going through with Buggy’s plans.” He wrinkles his nose. “They were going to have me married to Crocodile, Marimo.”

“Crocodile? Not Mihawk?”

Sanji raises an inquiring eyebrow at this, dropping the butt of his cigarette and stamping on it. “No? Buggy said that he picked Crocodile because he was going through a dry spell. Ugh.” He scowls. “I can only imagine what he expected me to do about it.”

Zoro’s lip curls in disgust. “Asshole.”

“Fortunately I don’t appear to be his type. Which is good because he’s definitely not mine, either, the big ugly brute.”

“No kidding,” Zoro grimaces.

There seems to be nothing more to say to that. Silence falls once more, an uncomfortable, sticky silence that Zoro isn’t quite sure how to break and Sanji doesn’t seem inclined to.

“Are you hungry?” Sanji finally says. “I made everyone dinner when I knew you were all close.”

“R-right.” Zoro realizes they’re standing outside of the kitchen, and glances inside. There’s a stack of lunchboxes sitting on the end of the counter. His heart pings.

It only takes a few seconds for Sanji to have the lunchboxes for the others sent along to them by the kitchen staff, and then Sanji picks up the final pair. “Come on, there’s a really nice spot out on the rocks, we can eat out there.”

Zoro hums a vague acknowledgement and follows after him, trying desperately to ignore the way his lungs feel like they’re overflowing with icy-cold water.

And then, casually as you please, Sanji stops at an admittedly pretty rocky overhang that gives them a breathtaking view of the sunset over the seas beyond Karai Bari. He turns to look hopefully at Zoro, and the way the light catches him from behind fills Zoro with a longing ache somewhere in the vicinity of his pancreas. [1]

“Oh, I forgot, Mihawk arranged for me to have a new suit made while I was here,” Sanji says, spreading his arms and turning to show it off, and Zoro is brutally slammed back into reality.

He’s been trying not to notice the suit, actually, lest he do something incredibly stupid. It’s so much better than Sanji’s usual ones, even the really nice ones he came back from Kamabakka with, courtesy of Iva. It’s green, a deep, rich green only a few shades darker than his own favorite robe, with a pattern of pinstripes that only serve to accentuate the lines of his figure and make his impossible legs seem even longer. Two lines of gold buttons travel all the way up to his stiff collar, and small white ruffles peek out of the collar and the cuffs. Tucked through the buttonhole over his breast is a red silk tulip.

Zoro’s mouth is as dry as Alabasta as he gives the suit a quick, barely-there once-over before turning his gaze to the lunchboxes Sanji is carrying.

“It’s nice,” he says, and points at the lunchboxes. “One of those is mine, right?”

He knows, he knows, he’s said the wrong thing, because Sanji looks like Zoro’s just decked him, but he does hand over the lunchbox without argument. They sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder on the ledge, legs dangling over, looking out over the sea while they eat the dinners Sanji prepared for them. They eat in uncomfortable silence.

Zoro feels like he could cry from how good the food is. He’s forgotten, just that quick, how readily he starts to miss Sanji’s cooking as soon as he isn’t eating it every day. When he was traveling and living rough, he’d never cared if his food didn’t taste good as long as it didn’t taste bad, and convinced himself that was practical.

Now that he’s tasted what Sanji can do, he never wants to go back. He wants to eat Sanji’s cooking for the rest of his life.

“It’s been nice, though,” Sanji says suddenly. “Apart from Crocodile’s repeated attacks— which I admittedly kept provoking— and the, you know—” He flaps his hand vaguely in the direction of the tent, “—it’s actually been a bit like having a little vacation. When Mihawk wasn’t playing host and Crocodile wasn’t trying to kill me I spent my time helping in the kitchen and reading a book Mihawk lent me. It was nice.”

Mihawk again. If Sanji mentions him one more time Zoro is either going to do something to get himself another scar or grind his teeth into dust. Or he could compromise and grind Mihawk’s teeth into dust. Maybe the bitter taste of rejection will be enough to bridge the gap that still lies between them.

If Sanji has noticed Zoro’s annoyance, he gives no indication, and instead continues with, “It’ll be nicer to be home, though. It’s been fun to take a break, but I belong on the Sunny with my crew, not here in Karai Bari watching Mihawk and Crocodile harass Buggy because they’re bored. I’ll be glad to leave.”

It is frankly disgusting the way hope flutters in Zoro’s chest at this statement. Ha, take that! He’d rather be on the Sunny with me, not here with you!

“Sure you can pry yourself away from Mihawk long enough?” Zoro says to that, because he is an idiot.

Sanji gawps at him like the idiot that he is. “What did you say!?”

“You heard me.”

“Well I must not have,” Sanji says icily, “because you can’t possibly have said what I heard. I know you can’t possibly have implied I’d rather stay here with Mihawk than be with my crew. My family.”

“And I know you haven’t shut up about the guy since we got here.”

“I’ve only brought him up a couple of times, in the context of my stay here on the island! What’s gotten into you, Mosshead? I thought you’d be glad he’d taken such good care of me.”

“Tch. Sure I’m glad, and I’m just as glad for him if he wants to keep taking care of you. You’ve got plenty in common, you’re both prissy frou-frou bastards obsessed with appearances.”

“What the fuck did you just call me?!”

“You heard me! I’m not repeating myself again!”

“Fine! If that’s the way you want to be—” Sanji rises to his feet in one smooth motion, grace personified, and if he wasn’t so furious and heartbroken Zoro would be admiring the way he moves. “I’m going back inside. Enjoy the rest of your meal, asshole.”

And with that he storms off, leaving Zoro to stare after him and wonder where and how everything went so wrong.

-/-

[1- Chopper made him memorize an anatomical chart once so he’d be able to follow along when getting yelled at for taking off his bandages early.]

Chapter Text

Zoro assumes that Sanji will go storming back to Mihawk, so he’s surprised when he eventually makes his way back to the inner chamber where Mihawk, Nami, and Luffy are sipping wine and gossiping (well, Mihawk and Nami are gossiping) to find that not only has he not returned, but that Mihawk has no idea where he is. Zoro stares down at the lunchbox he’d been so proud of earlier, and shoves it in Luffy’s hands.

“Here,” he says. “You know how Sanji is about wasting food.”

Luffy stares down at the lunchbox, thoughts Zoro can’t read twitching across his face; on the couch beside him, Mihawk rubs his temples like he’s getting a headache.

“Roronoa,” he says wearily, jaw tight, “I practically gift-wrapped him for you. How did you screw up this badly?”

“I didn’t screw up anything,” he snaps. “It’s not my fault you’re more his type than I am.”

“Oh my god.”

It’s not often Zoro gets graced with a real emotional display from Mihawk— the vow they shared at their first meeting, the day he begged for tutelage, and the aftermath of losing his eye are the only times he can really bring to mind— but the tic jumping in the man’s jaw suggests he’s about to be subjected to another one.

“You’re an idiot,” comes a voice from the floor, and all four of them turn stunned eyes at Buggy, who has, apparently, been sulking down there the entire time. He sniffs disdainfully. “The kid is over the moon about you. How can you not tell?”

“Did that clown just call me an idiot?”

“He did, and as much as I hate to agree with him, he’s right,” Mihawk says. He looks like he’s calmed down from his near outburst. “If you think Blackleg has any interest in me, you’re sorely mistaken. There is nothing about me that could appeal to him the way you do.”

“You don’t know that,” Zoro says sullenly, and a tic jumps in Mihawk's jaw.

“Buggy’s right, you’re an idiot,” Nami says, once more cutting off a display. “Seriously, even he can tell how stupid Sanji is about you. The question is why can’t you?”

“Hey, I’m sitting right here!” Buggy complains. “You could be less hurtful!”

“Quiet clown,” Mihawk scolds, giving him a few light kicks in the side to silence him. “Nobody asked you.”

Buggy whines but quiets down, folding his arms in front of him in a huff while Nami and Mihawk turn the combined force of their stares at Zoro, who suddenly regrets bringing Nami along for this.

Sure, they wouldn’t have actually been able to make it without their navigator, but that’s beside the point.

Luffy stands. “I’m going to go find Sanji,” he says, and without waiting for any kind of input or comment, turns on his heel and walks out.

They watch him go, and then Mihawk looks from Zoro to his vacated seat and back. “Sit, Bunny,” he says, and his tone leaves no room for argument. Zoro sits.

-/-

The intention is for Sanji to storm off to the Sunny and sulk in his galley, but halfway to the dock he spots Robin, Jinbei, and Crocodile out on the beach with an enormous tortoise in a cowboy hat, and stops short. Okay. That looks like a sufficient distraction. He course corrects and heads down to them, hands in his pocket and a fresh cigarette between his teeth.

Up close, he thinks he recognizes the tortoise from that first night they met Robin, as Miss All Sunday, and this is supported by the way she’s hugging the tortoise’s snout and scratching its jaw with her spare hands.

“I take it things didn’t go well, Mr. Cook,” she says as he approaches, peeling herself from the tortoise while leaving behind a pair of hands to continue hugging his snout.

Sanji lets out an explosive sigh. “Either I was that obvious or Crocodile has a big mouth.”

“It was a bit of both,” Robin says. “What happened?”

“I have no idea.” He tosses his hands up. “Things weren’t exactly going well already, and then he just blew up at me thinking I wanted Mihawk!”

“Do you know why he would think that? Was it something you said?”

“I have no idea!” he repeats. He flaps his hands vaguely. “I mentioned him in the context of how I’d spent my time while I was here, and that was it!” His shoulders slump. “He didn’t even like my suit.”

“Our dear swordsman is not exactly the type to pay attention to clothes.”

“I know, that’s why I made sure to draw attention to it and show it off.” He gives her a pathetic, kicked puppy look.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” Robin says gently. “Perhaps if you go over your conversation in its entirety, we’ll make sense of this.”

“Okay,” Sanji agrees, and begins going through the conversation, keeping as close as he can to each talking point, even referencing actual quotes where he can remember them.

By the time he gets to the end of the conversation and mentions referencing Mihawk lending him a book to read, his shoulders are sagging. Zoro is right, he did keep bringing Mihawk up. For him it had been completely innocent— he’d also brought up Crocodile several times, though not as often or as favorably— but he supposes that, from Zoro’s perspective, it must seem like he’s a bit stuck on his host.

“You’re an idiot,” Crocodile chuckles around his cigar. “No wonder the kid’s got his nose in a sling.”

“I don’t remember asking you,” Sanji retorts with a glare.

“I need an invitation? Tch.” He snorts. “If you two don’t get your shit together before you leave this island, I’ll be the one that has to contain the resulting explosion. You don’t know what he’s like fully unfettered. It’s a sight to behold, but it doesn’t tend to leave behind survivors.”

“I just don’t know why he’d jump immediately to that conclusion though,” Sanji muses. “Why would he even assume I’d want Mihawk at all? It's Mihawk."

Crocodile shrugs. “Just because you can’t tell how desirable Hawkeyes is doesn’t mean everyone else is as blind. The kid clearly has a type, too— you and Hawkeyes have more in common than you realize, you know. You think he’s never had a crush? Even just a celebrity crush?” He huffs out a laugh. “Probably got over it after Hawkeyes spent two years beating the shit out of him, mind you— though given what I hear about your relationship with him, I wouldn’t put money on it. I’m a gambling man, but there are some bets even I wouldn’t take.”

“I think I liked it better when you were trying to kill me.”

“What can I say, Hawkeyes’s got me invested.”

Robin lays a soft hand on Sanji’s arm. “If you lay aside his taunting and the evidence that he has a crush of his own on Mihawk—”

“Excuse me?!”

“—Crocodile is making some very valid points. Our dear swordsman no doubt has every reason to already believe himself not to be a prime target for your affections, so to put praise on someone who represents the pinnacle of what he hopes to achieve, with whom he already has a complicated relationship, no doubt dug up all of those doubts and gave them light.”

Before Sanji has a chance to wrap his thoughts around that and decide on how to respond, he hears his name being called from the docks. He looks up to see Luffy approaching across the sand, carrying a lunchbox in one hand.

“There you are, Sanji. I came to give you this.” He shoves the lunchbox into Sanji’s hands, beaming, and before Sanji can process that Luffy just willingly handed over food to someone else goes on, “Zoro made it for you, so I don’t really know why he gave it to me. He must have gotten confused. Anyway, I’m getting kind of sick of eating spicy seafood pasta, it’s all Zoro’s been feeding us for days because he needed to ‘get the recipe right’ or something. You’re going to make us something else for dinner, right? You’re not going to make us eat more spicy seafood pasta, right? I want meat, Sanji. Meat!”

Slightly dazed by the onslaught, Sanji opens the lunchbox and stares down at its contents. Spicy seafood pasta. Zoro made him a lunchbox of spicy seafood pasta.

A tiny sniffle escapes him, and he looks up at Luffy. Luffy is still beaming at him.

“You should talk to him,” he says, “because this is getting really old and we want to see you both happy. Also, Nami said I had to let you deal with it yourselves but Mihawk said he giftwrapped you and Zoro still didn’t get a clue, so I figure at this point it’s time for a direct approach.”

And, still beaming, he ambles over to the tortoise with a delighted greeting, leaving Sanji to stare into the middle distance. After a moment, Sanji remembers the lunchbox in his hand and turns his attention to it.

The first mouthful of pasta is perfect. Zoro had practiced, isn’t that what Luffy said? He’d given them this same dish for every meal just so he could get it right. Tears spring to his eyes, not just from the spices, either, and splash unheeded down his cheeks and off his chin as he makes his careful way through the pasta.

Where did Zoro learn to make this? Not from Sanji, it’s not his recipe. It’s like the kind Mihawk made for him that first day, but better. He must be using Mihawk’s recipe— which means he learned it from Mihawk. On Kuraigana? Zoro had mentioned once that Mihawk taught him a few cooking basics, but Sanji’s been assuming he just meant things like ‘season your meat’ and ‘don’t let the fat drip in the fire, you’re losing all of the flavor, you idiot’.

He’d taught him how to make spicy seafood pasta? He’d taught him how to make Sanji’s favorite dish? Why? For some purpose? Or had Zoro simply been thinking of Sanji and asked?

Sanji is pretty good at identifying ingredients, and he automatically finds himself categorizing Zoro’s recipe without much thought, but he’s not able to get the whole thing.

“He put something in this that I can’t identify,” he says absently. “I’m not sure…”

“It was probably love,” Luffy calls over from the tortoise’s head (Robin and Jinbei have joined him. Sanji makes a note to ask about the tortoise at some point).

“Probably,” Sanji says, shoveling the last bite of pasta into his mouth and reaching up to scrub away his tears. Before he can, a hand materializes and halts his arm.

“Here,” Robin says, coming over and offering over a handkerchief. “You don’t want to ruin your lovely suit, do you?”

“O-oh. Right.” He takes the proffered hankie and blows his nose.

(While this is going on, Crocodile idles over to the tortoise as well, taking a place beside Jinbei, who is watching Luffy with open fondness while he scratches the tortoise’s jaw.

“Sure you want to take up with these kids, Jinbei?” he asks, setting a fresh cigar in his mouth and flicking out his lighter. “Cross Guild has a place for you, if you want company with a little less… youth.”

“No thank you,” Jinbei says, letting his hand drop as the tortoise begins moving, Luffy and Robin perched on his head. “I like these kids. And Luffy is the man who will be king of the pirates. I’d like to see that through to its conclusion.”

Crocodile gives him a searching look, and then a cocky grin. “Think so, do you?”

“I have faith.”

“Tch. The charisma on that kid. Takes after his old man, I guess.”

“You’re acquainted with Luffy’s father?”

“I was once, a long time ago.” He blows out a steady stream of smoke and waves away any questions with an absent hook. “Watch yourself with the kid. If he’s anything like Dragon, that charisma of his is a black hole, and it’ll suck you in until you don’t know who you are anymore.”

“A black hole?” Jinbei smiles. “No. I think Luffy is like the sun.”

He doesn’t say anything further; Luffy calls out to him then, and he ambles after him to see in what way he can indulge the young man’s joy, leaving Crocodile to watch them go. He drops the butt of his cigar into the sand and crushes it under his toe with a sigh.

“I know,” he murmurs, “but that’s just as dangerous.”)

-/-

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Nami says. “You picked out the suit Sanji is wearing?”

“I had hoped Roronoa might get the message if his young man greeted him wearing his own colors.”

“And you picked out the robe Zoro is wearing now?”

“I understand Blackleg likes the ocean, so I thought the waves might go over well.”

“So. You basically gift-wrapped both of them for each other?”

“Yes.”

“And still…?”

“Still.”

Nami sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. “Zoro, what are we going to do with you?”

Zoro folds his arms over his chest and sinks deeper into the sulk he’s been in the whole time Nami and Mihawk were gossiping about him. “I don’t remember asking your input, Witch.”

“Tch—!”

“Behave yourself, Roronoa. This young woman is clearly one of the few people on your crew with two brain cells to rub together. You should treat her with more respect.”

Nami preens, while Zoro snorts and stands to storm out.

“Where are you going?” Nami demands.

“Somewhere I don’t have to listen to this shit.”

“Well just don’t get lost.”

“Ah, so it wasn’t just my castle giving him trouble—”

Whatever else they have to say about him is lost in him stomping out of earshot, grumbling to himself over the indignity of being subjected to one of his crew gossiping about him with his… whatever Mihawk is to him now. Guy he has a pact with. Whatever.

Contrary to their warnings, Zoro doesn’t get lost, but after a good near hour of wandering aimlessly he does have to admit he has no idea where he is. Oh well, if he can hit the beach all he has to do is follow the shoreline and he’ll get back to the docks eventually. That in mind, he spends another ten minutes wandering around until he finds the beach and begins walking.

“The dock is that way, Bunny.”

Zoro’s jaw clenches, and he turns around to find Mihawk approaching. He gives the man as disdainful a look as he can muster.

“What do you want?”

“Miss Nami went back to your ship and I was tired of keeping company with the clown.”

He draws up alongside Zoro, the two side by side and looking out over the dark waves. He bites back a sigh, and then finally says what’s been on his mind.

“I was going to say something when we met back up in Sabaody,” he says. “But he was in the middle of restocking when we found each other, and I thought it’d be best if we waited till we got back to the Sunny. And then everything kind of went to shit, and then we were on our way to Fishman Island before I could even figure out what to say.”

“Yes, I thought that might be part of it. It would hardly be a conducive atmosphere.”

“No kidding.” Zoro kicks at a lump in the sand. “Then we got to Fishman Island and he just… went absolutely ga-ga over those mermaids. Just made it so goddamn clear that he only liked women, so I just… decided not to say anything. What would be the point? Cook’s not mine to chase. I get it. Message received.”

“Roronoa, the reason I told you to express your feelings wasn’t because I had any kind of insight as to whether your young man returned your affections. For all I knew your insistence that he didn’t share our proclivities was completely accurate. I told you for your sake. Whether reciprocated or not, allowing the feelings to ferment would only prove detrimental in the long run. Best to know, one way or another, rather than live in a deadlock and wonder.”

Zoro scowls down at the sand, scuffing his toe into it irritably. “What do you know anyway?” he grouses, and gets a raised eyebrow for his efforts.

“I know how long Red-Hair left me waiting for my yes,” he tells the waves at the shoreline.

Zoro turns a surprised look at him. “…huh.”

“Yes?”

“I just thought… from what I know about you and what Luffy’s said about him, I always figured he’d been the one chasing you.”

“Really?” Mihawk actually looks surprised. “You think the man who left a seven year old with nothing but a hat and a promise would be more likely to give chase than a man frequently likened to a predator?”

“I guess not when you put it like that, but you do live alone in a spooky castle with a bunch of monkeys.”

Mihawk hrmphs. “I’ve told you before, I do precisely what I want, no more, no less.” A sigh. “It’s just my luck that list happens to include a certain one-armed wastrel. But to get back to the point at hand, even if he had said no, I would rather that than leave me without knowing at all. It was the not knowing that interfered with my progress, moreso than the feelings themselves. My intention was to remove you from limbo. One way or another, you would know.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Mind you, I vastly underestimated your ability to ruin your chances when the object of your affections is presented to you on a silver platter.”

“Hey!”

“I could not have made it easier for you if I’d tried, Rabbit.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should have told Curly that talking about how good another guy has been treating him isn’t the way to go!”

Mihawk sighs and rubs his temples. “I suppose I also vastly underestimated his ability towards self-sabotage as well.”

Zoro decides to take the concession without further argument, and falls into sullen silence, watching the dark waves lap at the shore.

“Given the late hour, I suppose this is the part where I invite your crew to remain on Karai Bari overnight and leave in the morning.”

“You just don’t want us leaving without resolving this.”

“Perhaps.”

-/-

Heart not really into playing with Robin and her tortoise friend, Sanji begs off and heads back to the Sunny. It’s late, and he’s feeling suckerpunched and overwhelmed, and all he really wants to do is spend some time alone to process his thoughts. Putting his galley back to rights after Zoro has been using it all week seems like the best way to do that.

When he returns to the galley, though, he gets another suckerpunch: there’s nothing for him to put back to rights. The mosshead has, apparently, kept the place immaculate. Apart from the ingredients he’s used up, the only giveaway that anyone else has used the place at all is a lone recipe card sitting abandoned on the counter.

It’s a recipe for spicy seafood pasta, written in Mihawk’s neat hand. Well, he’d guessed, but it’s nice to confirm. It’s a really detailed recipe, too; Sanji sits at the counter smoking as he reads it through. Mihawk has written down every single step in extensive detail and an explanation of each one to boot. Sanji snickers. The man had done his absolute best to make sure Zoro couldn’t ruin the pasta when he made it.

There’s more writing on the back of the card. Sanji flips it over, expecting more instructions, and is surprised to find a note instead.

The most important thing to remember is this: your young man communicates through acts of service. It will not be enough for you to do this for him now, or even do do things for him in perpetuity. You must also let him care for you. Let him speak to you in his own language.

Your crew will not come to harm if you allow one person to handle you with a gentle touch. However, the people who care for you would be very unhappy to know that they cannot even return their care to you in kind.

Sanji sets the card back down, a strange, hollow feeling in his middle. He sets his cigarette back to his lips and lets the smoke curl above him in silence.

-/-

Sanji has made it through four more cigarettes by the time Nami finds him.

“Thought you might be in here,” she says, coming over to sit beside him.

“Hi, Nami,” he says, only barely managing to muster the energy to put some of his usual reverence into the tone because it’s what Nami deserves even if he’s not currently feeling it. Apparently sensing this, she reaches over and gives his arm a squeeze before retracting it.

“You know,” she says, “I’ve been telling Luffy for ages that we needed to let you guys sort everything out on your own. I thought you’d be best if we didn’t try to interfere or meddle. Hell, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure if you were ready for that yet and couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t run for the hills at the mere suggestion.”

“I might have,” he agrees. “Before Kamabakka. Before Iva.”

He’d worried, at the time, what it would mean for him to have feelings for a man. What would it mean for who he was? But Iva had just laughed and said, who says it has to mean anything? No one’s saying you have to be anything or do anything or change anything that makes you happy. All it really means is that you like this man. Isn’t that worth chasing? If it turns out to mean something later on, deal with it then. But for now, let your Mossy-boy be an exception, and leave it at that. There’s no need to get yourself tied up in knots over it. Unless you’re into that sort of thing! Wahoo!

“How did it get so messed up?”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

She softens the insult with a smile, though, and he must look pathetic because she punctuates her words by rising and moving over to wrap her arms around him, letting him lean his head on her shoulder. He twists away enough to blow out the last of his smoke, stubbing out the cigarette in the ash tray rather than let any of the smoke get into her beautiful lungs.

“And so is Zoro, but I think if you guys talk, it will be okay. You just needed a little help getting onto the same page, that’s all. And for Mihawk to read him his rights about not being so stupid. Though I have no idea what he gets out of all of this.”

Your crew will not come to harm if you allow one person to handle you with a gentle touch. Sanji shrugs. “Probably just bored. Crocodile called him making his dollies kiss.”

“That is so weird. I can’t wait until Zoro beats his ass.”

Laughter bubbles out of Sanji at this, and Nami grins and presses a kiss to the top of his head. His heart sings with joy at the affection.

“We should see if we can track down the others. I’m sure the Marimo has managed to get himself lost by now.”

“Okay.” She releases him with one last squeeze, and adds, “By the way, I already had this talk with Zoro, but ground rules are no sex in the public parts of the ship and no making out on the deck.”

Sanji’s face heats so much he’s surprised he doesn’t catch fire. “Nami! You can’t just say things like that!”

-/-

Chapter Text

They join up with Robin, soaked from the waist down, laughing softly with Crocodile as they and Jinbei trail back up the to inner chamber. Sanji raises a questioning eyebrow at Jinbei, who shrugs.

In the inner chamber they find the rest of their crew, both crews: Mihawk has resumed his usual place on the ugly couch with Buggy at his feet and a book and wine in hand, while beside him Zoro has sprawled back for a nap, Luffy draped in his lap with his limbs wrapped around and around Zoro’s torso, also napping.

“I’m amazed he can breathe like that,” Mihawk tells the room at large.

“Tch,” Sanji says, unimpressed. Zoro has napped through way worse than a cuddly Luffy. He strides over to the sleeping Marimo and gives him a few kicks in the ankle. “Oi, Mossy. Wake up. We need to talk.”

Zoro snorts awake with a grumpy noise, but Sanji catches Luffy’s eye instead, peering up at him from where his face is squashed into Zoro’s chest. [1]

“Luffy, can I borrow your pillow for a few minutes?”

“You can borrow him for as many minutes as you want as long as you promise to stop being dumb,” Luffy says, unwinding his limbs with a twang that snaps him backwards out of Zoro’s lap.

“I… can promise to try, Captain,” Sanji says with a look at Zoro.

Impulsively, he holds out a hand, palm up, like a proper gentleman, eyes begging Zoro to just go with it.

Your crew will not come to harm if you allow one person to handle you with a gentle touch.

Zoro eyes the hand warily, like he’s worried Sanji might be trying to trick him, and then finally lays his own in it, letting Sanji anchor him as he rises to his feet.

“We should probably go somewhere private for this,” Sanji says, glancing around the room. Along with the chief officers are some of the other high-ranking Cross Guild members, who have been making themselves mostly scarce while company was around but have begun wandering back in now that it’s gotten late.

Zoro nods, but doesn’t say anything as Sanji leads him from the inner chamber and down the tented corridors in the direction of the little guest room he’s been staying in. Once they’re away from the crowd, Zoro starts to pull his hand free, but Sanji tightens his hold on it. He does let it fall, though, so that their hands are clasped between them, and his heart sings to the heavens when Zoro doesn’t try to let go this time.

“Where’re we headed?”

“Well, seeing as the romantic picnic overlooking the beach while we watched the sunset fell through, I figured this time we should just try to find somewhere private. They put me up in a guest room while I was here. We’re going to it.”

“Oh,” Zoro says, and falls silent. When Sanji peeks over at him, he’s staring down at their joined hands, face red and jaw clenched.

They reach the little room after an agonizingly long time. Zoro looks around it curiously once they’re inside.

It’s not much— there’s a futon that takes up most of the floor, and a little table beside it, with a lamp and the book he’d borrowed from Mihawk. He’s about halfway through it; it’ll be disappointing to have to give it back.

Zoro eyes the book thoughtfully, and says, “Oh, Swan-Cloak. You’re going to like the ending of that. It’s really mushy.”

“Good to know. I just got to the part where Swan-Cloak betrays the Demon King and I’ve been dreading what comes next. It’s too bad I’ll have to give the book back, but maybe I’ll find a copy on an island or something. It’s not like they printed one and stopped the presses.”

“No need, you can borrow my copy. It’s one of the ones Perona picked out for me when I left.”

He lowers himself to sitting, legs folded in seiza and his swords lain beside him, and Sanji takes the implicit invitation in his gaze to sit next to him, angled so they’re almost, but not quite, facing one another.

“I suppose that makes sense. The Demon King is a swordsman, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but it’s actually Swan-Cloak I like. The Demon King just kind of exists— Swan-Cloak is in an impossible position and has to make the most of being stuck between a rock and a bigger, harder, deadlier rock. I admire the strength of his will in getting out of that situation.” He pauses and clears his throat, and, blushing, adds, “Also, he can turn into a thirty pound bird with a ten foot wingspan and a serrated beak. That’s cool as hell.”

“Yes, I suppose you would like that, wouldn’t you?” He sighs. “We’re stalling, Marimo. We didn’t come here to talk about trashy romance novels.”

“Right…”

And then they don’t say anything at all, both of them wanting to break the ice but terrified of ruining things again. Why is it so hard? Everyone and their grandmother has made it clear that Sanji’s feelings are reciprocated. Hell, even Zoro has made it clear. So why can’t he just come out and say how he it himself?

“I’m not interested in Mihawk,” is what he finally does say, hunching a little when Zoro gives him an unreadable look. And, well, in for a berry, in for a bounty. “Or any other man, for that matter. Just you.”

“Uh,” Zoro says intelligently.

Sanji draws his knees up and hugs them to his chest. “You made me a lunchbox,” he says, something embarrassingly smitten and longing in his tone. “And you kept my galley clean. And this—” He reaches over to pluck at the sleeve of Zoro’s yukata with a tiny smile.

Zoro shrugs. “You’re always doing shit for us. All the time. Taking care of us. It was suggested to me that I try talking to you in your own language for this.”

“For what?” Sanji asks, even though he knows.

A flush crawls into Zoro’s face; he turns his gaze down to his lap. “You know,” he mumbles, and damn, he’s adorable like this. Sanji may in fact be in love with this man.

“Tell me anyway.”

Zoro looks up, fixing his eye on Sanji’s, and finally says, “I like you, Cook. I like the way you’re always looking after everyone around you, and I like the way you push me to be better than I am, and I like the way you light up when you’re talking about your magic ocean, and I like the way the galley always smells just a little bit like cigarette smoke because it’s your space. I like your eyes and your hair and your impossible legs and your stupid swirly eyebrows and I like that you can set yourself on fire without getting burned because there’s always a stronger fire going on inside of you. I like when you cook for me even when you’re feeding everyone. And,” he says, drawing himself up straight as he can without standing, “I really like that suit.”

His face is still a brilliant scarlet, but he speaks with so much earnestness that suddenly all Sanji can think of is how much he wants to kiss this man.

He’s a little afraid of what might happen if he does that right this minute though, so instead he says, “My eyebrow goes the wrong way.”

Zoro deflates like Luffy when he’s gone more than an hour without eating. “What?”

“My eyebrows.” He pushes his bangs up so Zoro can see both of them. “They’re supposed to be sideways sixes and point the other way, for Germa 66. That’s the way it is with all of my siblings.”

“These the same people that tried to sell you to Crocodile?”

“Yes.”

“And your eyebrows are different from theirs?”

“It’s one more way that I’ve been marked as a failure and a disgrace to the Vinsmoke name.”

Zoro grins, and reaches a hand out lightning fast to fist in the front of Sanji’s suit, dragging him close so that he can press the gentlest, chastest of kisses to the swirl of Sanji’s left eyebrow.

“Then I like them even more now,” he says.

And, well, really, how can Sanji be blamed if his response to that is to tackle Zoro to the floor and kiss him, really kiss him, properly?

-/-

[1: Jealous? Sanji? Never.]

-/-

Zoro’s first kiss was at fifteen, with another boy at the dojo who used to sneak him extra rice from the kitchens and was never going to be a good swordsman but had nowhere else to go and was very good at helping the younger students even when his own skills were at best mediocre. Zoro had spent weeks watching him coach struggling beginners before he got up the nerve to kiss him, and they’d had almost a month of stolen kisses and wandering hands held under the moonlight before the boy’s affection had waned. When Zoro, hurt, had asked but I thought you loved me. I love you… he had given Zoro the most pitying look and said, we’re just kids, Zoro. We’re just having fun.

That was the day Zoro had learned that other people didn’t love with the same intensity he did, and he’d been reluctant to open himself up to loving anyone else after that, not unless he could be sure, really sure that they wouldn’t get bored of him and write him off after awhile.

“When did you know?” he asks Sanji. They’re on the futon now, because Sanji had raised the extremely good point that it made no sense to lie on the hard floor when there was a perfectly serviceable futon right next to them. Zoro hadn’t wanted to stop kissing Sanji long enough to move but he has to admit, this is much more comfortable.

Sanji is leaning over Zoro, absently tracing the line of the scar over his chest with one hand while he stares fondly down at him, which Zoro thinks he should be embarrassed by but mostly he’s just feeling really floaty and content.

“When did I know what?”

“How you felt. About me.”

“Ah.” A pretty pink blush crawls into his cheeks. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Only if it’s dumb,” he says, and Sanji pinches him in retaliation before sighing.

“It’s a little dumb… and it’s kind of complicated, because I didn’t know know until Kamabakka, but the moment I knew I felt differently for you than I did anyone else was…” He ducks his head to rest his face against Zoro’s chest. “Do you remember the day you told me about your family? It was a few days after we left Cocoyasi and were on our way to Loguetown.”

“Not clearly, no,” Zoro says, wracking his memory for the conversation in question. He vaguely recalls telling Sanji about his parents’ and grandparents’ deaths, but he can’t remember the specific circumstances, or anything particularly notable about the conversation.

“I guess it wouldn’t have been a conversation you’d have reason to remember,” Sanji shrugs, “but for me it was lifechanging.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“We-ell…” Sanji finally removes his face from Zoro’s chest, but follows that up with sitting up entirely, which is not good because Zoro was really enjoying him right where he was. He reaches for his cigarettes and lights one while Zoro follows him up, wrapping his arms around his waist and leaning against his back. There, that’s better. He feel when Sanji takes a long, deep drag on his cigarette now.

“At the time, all I remember thinking was that it sucked that you didn’t have anyone to take care of you growing up. I just got all into my own head about all the affection and pampering you missed out on because you didn’t have anyone whose job it was to make sure you got it.”

Zoro frowns. “I don’t need pampering. And I don’t need you pity-liking me either.”

He starts to loosen his hold, to pull away, but Sanji just grabs his arms and holds them in place until he gets the point and stills. Once it’s clear he’s not going anywhere, Sanji starts tracing patters in his arm with his thumb.

“Everyone needs pampering sometimes, Marimo, but that’s not the point. The point is, I thought about it and decided that I was going to make that my job, for reasons that I did not understand at the time, and I then went and used all of my knowledge of your food preferences— all of one week’s study— and made you a dish that was sure to please your palate and delight your senses and make you feel so special.”

It’s a really good thing he has his back to Zoro, because Zoro is staring at him a bit like a rabbit in a spotlight.

“Y-yeah?”

“You probably don’t remember the first time I made seafood paella for the crew but I made it because I was hoping you’d like it.”

Now it’s Zoro’s turn to bury his face in Sanji’s back. “I liked it,” he says, muffled by the fabric of the frilly shirt Sanji was wearing under his suit jacket.

“Hm?”

“I really, really liked it. I like everything you cook, but I really liked that. It was perfect.”

“You barely said anything, though.”

“I ate four bowls!”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?!”

“Because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of loving you when I knew you move on from love so easily!”

“…what?”

“You fall in love with every girl you meet. You give into them and declare your devotion and then as soon as the next girl comes along you do it all over again. I knew if I gave you even an inch you’d leave my heart in the dust even if I did have a chance with you.”

“Oh, Mossy…” Sanji twists around in Zoro’s hold and pushes him forward, pinning him against the futon and kissing him soundly. “Do you really think me as fickle as all that?”

“Not now,” he says a little breathlessly. “It’s been years and you keep coming back to Nami and Robin, so I know you don’t stop loving one woman just because you start loving another…”

“At least you understand my devotion isn’t wholly faithless but you also need to understand that what I feel for you is miles from what I feel for the women I love, even my beautiful 💖Nami and Robin💖.”

Zoro rolls his eye at this, but Sanji has apparently anticipated how unimpressed he is because he halts any further response with another kiss. It’s actually a little concerning how quickly he figured out that trick. Zoro’s never winning another argument against this man again in his life if he keeps this up.

“It took me a really long time for me to understand that was what I was feeling. It took Iva literally beating it into me that it was okay that that was what I was feeling. But even before then I knew that I wanted to take care of you for the rest of my life, whether I understood what I wanted that to look like or not.”

“Why were you talking about me with Ivankoff?”

“Sorry, what?” Sanji raises onto his arms and stares incredulously down at him. “The greatest swordsman in the world (so far) is invested enough in my love life to have orchestrated getting us together, and you have to question why I would be talking to Iva about you?”

“Yeah, cause I didn’t shut up about you for two years. Cause I liked you and I didn’t think you guys would ever meet and talk and it was a safe space for that. So why were you talking about me with Iva?”

“You—” Sanji begins, and then cuts off. He squints down at Zoro, and then gives him a smug smile. “Tricky bastard. Are you trying to weasel compliments out of me?” And when Zoro says nothing, fully aware that he’s blushing again, Sanji just grins and leans forward to kiss the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. “I’ll give you all the compliments you want, you jerk. It’s because I missed you so much that every conversation Iva and I had looped back around to you, over and over. Whether you were getting enough to eat. Whether you were safe. Whether you’d found someone to train with like I had. Whether there was anyone to make you rest and heal when you got injured. I wanted to know where you were and how you were doing. I wanted to talk with you and fight with you and tease you and sit on the deck resting with you, and when Iva called you my boyfriend and I freaked out about the implication I got subjected to so many lectures about sexuality that my ears are still ringing with them. And at the end of all of that I came out the other end knowing what I wanted from you, even if I still didn’t think I was ready to ask for it.”

“Ask me now.”

“Now? I already…”

“Sanji.”

Zoro cuts him off with a word, and stares earnestly up at those beautiful eyes staring down into his. He looks terrified, like even with everything Zoro’s said and done so far he still thinks he’s about to be rejected. Zoro finds his hand and laces their fingers together, laying them over his chest and giving it a squeeze.

“It’s okay. Just ask for what you want.”

Sanji ducks his head in embarrassment at first, but does Zoro the same courtesy of looking him in the eye when he says, “I want… to take care of you. I want to treat you with the same reverence you show your swords. I want to handle you with a gentle touch.”

Zoro stares up at him, searching for something, and then reaches up his free hand to pull Sanji down into a kiss, this time softer, more lingering, and smiles as they part.

“Yeah. Okay. Whatever you want.”

-/-

In the end, they don’t get around to rejoining their companions. They fall asleep cuddled together in the futon, at which point Sanji learns that 1: Zoro is a sleep cuddler, and 2: sleep cuddling him is a bit like hugging a bit of volcanic rock. Somehow neither of these things surprise him, though, and he burrows into the cavern of Zoro’s arms and finally, finally gives into his urge to bury his face in Zoro’s magnificent chest, an act that is between him and whoever has to clean the bloodstains out of this futon after they leave.

Morning sees Sanji awake first as is typical, but without needing to make breakfast for the crew he decides to enjoy this rare peace and quiet, and wriggles out of Zoro’s vice-like grip enough to sit up. Zoro immediately limpets back onto him, wrapping around his waist and resting his head in Sanji’s lap, all without waking up, but this position suits Sanji just fine. He grabs the book he’s been reading and returns to it with one hand, his other scratching gently at Zoro’s scalp like he’s always wanted to do.

This is the position they’re in about fifteen minutes later when the curtain door is thrown aside and Luffy appears, beaming like the sun as soon as he sees them.

“Good morning, Captain,” Sanji says, scratching a little more firmly at Zoro in the hopes of waking him. He’s rewarded by Zoro stirring a little, not fully awake but coming around.

“Oh good, did you guys finally get your shit together?” Luffy asks.

“Yes. Finally.”

“That’s good.”

He lets the curtain fall and comes over to join them, dropping down to sit at the end of the futon. He’s still smiling, but there’s a serious undercurrent running beneath that smile, reinforced by him taking off his hat and laying it in his lap.

“So, Nami says that if you’re going to be together I have to lay down ground rules. So here’s my rules, and if you can’t follow them you can’t be a couple on my ship, got it?”

Zoro’s arms stiffen around Sanji’s waist, but he otherwise doesn’t give any indication he’s worried about what these rules might be.

“What are the rules?”

Luffy holds up a finger. “Rule number one: you have to make each other happy. Couples who make each other miserable shouldn’t be couples. That’s dumb.” Another finger. “Two: if you get married I get to do the wedding. That’s not negotiable.”

As if they would want anyone else. Sanji glances down and can see the same thought on Zoro’s face, but says nothing.

A third finger joins the first two. “Finally, number three, if you break up you have to do whatever you can to work it out so that you can work together in the same crew. I need both of you and I won’t accept either of you leaving just because you couldn’t get your relationship to work. If it breaks, find a way to fix it. Got it?”

The pair exchange a look. The idea of breaking up, now that they have each other, that’s hard to even think about, but it’s also such a fair rule. They can’t know whether they’ll work out or not, and Luffy has his crew to think about.

“Got it,” Sanji says, and hears Zoro rumble an agreement of his own.

And just like that the serious look is gone, replaced by a much more playful one.

“Not that I’m worried,” he goes on. “I know Zoro and Sanji love each other so, so much. But Mihawk and Croccy were talking about crews they’ve known who lost members to breakups, so I wanted to make sure that couldn’t happen. By the way, Zoro, Mihawk is really nice and not even that weird.”

“He does seem very determined not to make an enemy of us,” Sanji muses. He taps Zoro’s head. “I think he’s rather fond of you, Darling.”

And holds his breath waiting for a reaction to the appellation, but all Zoro does is shift around so that he’s sitting up before saying, “I think he just wants to stay out of the doghouse. We leaving now?”

“Yeah, Mihawk wanted to load us up on supplies to replace what we used getting here but that wasn’t much, so they should be done by now. He also said he wanted to give you a bit more time just in case you were still being dumb.”

“What an ass,” is all Zoro has to say. He hauls himself to his feet and holds out a hand for Sanji, who takes it with grace before grabbing his book.

“I should take this back,” he says, waving Luffy on ahead they leave the room, but unsurprised when Zoro slips a hand back into his and trails after him. “We’ll be along in a few minutes.”

-/-

They find Mihawk in his room, and by the way he’s sitting in the armchair in the corner sipping his wine Sanji suspects he’s been waiting for them.

“I figured it was only right to return this,” Sanji says, setting the book down on top of the shelf while Mihawk’s eyes flick to their joined hands. A blush crawls into Sanji’s cheeks. “Um.”

Mihawk just takes a final sip of his wine before setting the glass on the table at his elbow. “I see you’ve managed to work things out between you. That’s good. If you’d failed a third time, I might just have flattened this entire island in frustration.”

“Whatever, you weirdo,” Zoro scoffs. “If you’re done meddling in my life…”

“I suspect I never will be, unless you succeed in your goal of killing me. Now. Do you have anything to say to me, Bunny?”

“Tch. Get fucked.”

“Unfortunately not, at present.” He sighs, and gives Sanji a commiserating look. “Very well, Blackleg, he’s all yours. I did try to civilize him for you, but I am no miracle worker. I’m afraid you’re stuck with him as is.”

“That’s fine,” Sanji says fondly, giving Zoro’s hand a tug. “I wouldn’t have him any other way.”

Mihawk reaches for his wine and makes no move to follow, but as they’re about to pass through the door he adds in parting, “Don’t forget, I want an invitation to the wedding.”

“What’d I tell you? What a weirdo,” Zoro says once they’re away. But Sanji thinks of the message on the recipe card, and the trouble Mihawk went through to teach Sanji how to be gentle with his protege, and shakes his head.

“No… I think he just cares about you.”

-/-

Chapter Text

They make it down to the docks to find the rest of the crew waiting to board, with Crocodile and Buggy there to see them off. Buggy is pouting, but Crocodile seems to be having a downright pleasant conversation with Robin and Luffy, the latter of whom is laughing up a storm at something Robin is saying.

“I don’t like the way he keeps staring at Luffy,” Zoro murmurs to Sanji as they approach.

“He was doing that on the beach yesterday too,” Sanji murmurs back. “Want to distract him?”

“Sure.”

So, once they reach the dock, Sanji drops Zoro’s hand so he can light up a fresh cigarette, casual as you please, before saying, “By the way, Crocodile, I meant to tell you. A snail call came in for you yesterday. Someone is trying to reach you about your ship’s extended warranty.”

And punctuates this with the most shit-eating grin he can from behind the hands cupping his lighter.

Crocodile’s expression goes from rage to deadly calm in the space of a second, and he says, “I’m going to kill you… and then kill you again.”

This time when Sanji dodges the incoming attack, Zoro is there to catch it, and Sanji’s grin becomes exhilarated. This is what he’s been missing all this week: whether fighting each other or against a shared enemy, fighting with Zoro is what keeps his blood burning hot and his heart soaring high.

He’s half-expecting Luffy to interfere, given his feelings about Crocodile and how much he loves fighting as well, but he seems content to leave them to it, cheering them on alongside Robin, Nami, and Jinbei while they fight, a contrast to the handfuls of Cross Guild employees who were around the docks and are also watching the fight unfold, cheering on Crocodile.

By the time they’re all done, Mihawk has come out to join them, calling occasional encouragement to Crocodile (and kicking Buggy in the ankle until he does as well), and Sanji can sense the way Zoro is showing off for the man from the moment he appears.

He narrowly avoids taking a hook to his ear when he has the realization that he’s what Zoro is showing off.

All three of them are breathing heavily by the time they finally stop, Crocodile leaning on his knees while he takes deep, ragged breaths around the fresh cigar he’s just lit up. His hook is gone, sliced clean through by one of Zoro’s swords and leaving behind the hidden knife inside, and his cravat and vest have been discarded at some point as well, both now absently draped over Mihawk’s arm.

“Fuck,” Zoro huffs out, leaning heavily on Sanji while he gets his own breath back. “I missed that. Don’t ever leave me again, Cook, it’s so much more fun fighting with you than without.”

Sanji turns an incredulous look at him, a slow smile spreading across his face before he reaches up with the hand not currently around Zoro’s waist and catches his chin, turning his head enough that he can nip lightly at him before dragging him into a kiss.

“Deal,” Sanji murmurs, and ignores the reactions of the crew behind them.

-/-

While they’re getting ready to leave, for real this time, Luffy takes off his hat and rummages a piece of paper out of the band. He tears a bit off and hands it to Mihawk.

“We don’t have them for anyone else in the crew yet,” Luffy explains, “but that one’s mine. Since Zoro has yours it only seems fair.”

Mihawk looks down at the vivre card in his fingers and arches one perfect eyebrow.

“This is a very dangerous power you’ve placed in my hands,” he says. “Do you understand what this means?”

“Yep!” Luffy says, beaming. “It means that I trust you.”

-/-

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-/-

To Chopper’s eternal delight and gratitude once the dust has cleared on Wano, Sanji has managed to find the solution for getting their stubborn swordsman to hold still while he convalesces— or more accurately, he’s discovered the efficacy of a method already pioneered by Perona.

“‘But,’ the King said, ‘I can acknowledge my own folly, and all I can do now is beg another chance to win your heart.’

‘You foolish king,’ Swan-Cloak choked out around the tears still he was still fighting back, ‘you already own my heart. It is yours to do with as you please.’

‘It hardly seems fair,’ and here the king swept him up into his muscular arms, ‘that I should have your heart when you’ve nothing to show for it. Take mine in its place, then. It is all I can offer you, though it is of far lesser value.’

The tears now flowed freely from Swan-Cloak’s beautiful brown eyes. ‘I think you’ll find it is the most valuable treasure in this entire kingdom, and one that I will accept freely, my liege. It is an equal exchange.’

And with his piece said, Swan-Cloak took hold of the king’s horn and dragged him down into a kiss, the first, he hoped, of many more to follow.”

Sanji closes the book with a content sigh, looking down at the head pillowed in his lap. Zoro’s eye is closed, but he hums pleasantly when Sanji starts carding his fingers through soft green hair, signalling that he’s otherwise awake.

“You were right,” Sanji says. “I did like that. But I don’t know what you were talking about with the Demon King simply existing. He’s obviously a good man who wants to protect the people dependent on him, even though it’s clear he had no idea what kind of situation he was inheriting, and he repeatedly makes good on his word to fix his kingdom. Besides, throughout everything, he always knows his exact worth, and never wavers on that.”

“If you say so,” Zoro says dubiously, reaching up to take the book so he can set it aside before reaching up to tangle his fingers with those on Sanji’s free hand. “A more important discussion is whether you plan to stop reading to me now that you’ve finished that book. I’ve got three others, you know, and there’s more books in the library if you can’t stomach the raunchy bits of those.”

“As long as I don’t have to worry about Hiyori coming in on me reading said raunchy bits, I should be fine,” Sanji says, blushing at the mere memory of that moment. “Though, it may be beneficial to see what Wano has available in the way of light fiction. I think most of what’s in our library is research material for Robin and Nami.”

Zoro hums vaguely. “The old man mentioned passing on a few Shimotsuki heirlooms and other keepsakes from my great-uncle. I think he said one of them was a book he and my grandmother used to read to each other from as children. You could read to me from that. If you wanted.”

Sanji smiles down at him. “You know, Mossy, if I didn’t know better I’d say you like being read to. The way you talked about Perona doing it I sort of thought you’d resigned yourself, but I do believe you enjoy it.”

“I like it when you do it,” Zoro clarifies. “You have a nice voice. And you care about the story. And you play with my hair while you read. S’nice.”

“Oh, it’s nice is it?” He leans over, folding himself practically in half so he can squash Zoro’s face between his hands and press a kiss between his eyes. “I’m onto you, you algae-covered house-cat. You do like being pampered and spoiled, don’t you? Admit it.”

He’s expecting Zoro to argue playfully against the notion, or perhaps get his back up and deny it for the sake of his pride, but rather Zoro just takes one of his hands and moves it over enough he can press a kiss to his palm before looking Sanji earnestly in the eye and saying, “I like it when you do it.”

And, well, really, what is there to do to that but kiss the man senseless where he lies?

-Fin-