Full of Nasty Habits

by Trixree

Summary:

“I am not a pretty thing,” Zoro tells him, scratching at her freshly shaved neck. Uneven strands of green hair, just long enough to barely brush the tips of her eyebrows, flop wet and graceless into her face as she turns to scowl at him. “And even if I were a pretty thing,” she adds, “I wouldn’t be yours. I wouldn’t be anyone’s, Cook.”

Roronoa Zoro swore an oath that she would become nothing less than the greatest. The fact that she is a woman changes nothing.

Notes:

Title from Elton John's "The Bitch Is Back"

Chapter 1

 

“Hey,” a young boy from the dojo says. He's prodding at her with his foot. 

“What,” Zoro growls at him from where she’s doing pushups on the floor. She doesn’t bother to look at him, or at the friends that she knows are gathered like swarming flies at his shoulder. Forty-eight, she continues to count. Forty-nine… 

“No one’s ever gonna’ marry you, you know,” the boy sneers, as if his opinion really matters to Zoro at all. 

Fifty-one… 

“Girls aren’t supposed to be strong, you’re supposed to be wives,” he tells her, voice rising as he fails to get a reaction. 

Fifty-four… 

“No one’s ever gonna’ think you’re pretty. And no one is ever gonna think you’re strong, neither! Just a silly, stupid, weak girl—”

Zoro pushes up out of her form and socks the little fucker right in the nose. She doesn’t hit him hard enough to break it. She hits him hard enough that it’ll sting and it’ll bruise something nasty, but she didn’t break it. 

While the boy tries not to cry and his friends buzz uselessly around him, a loud laugh cuts through the space. Kuina comes down the stairs, holding her sword, smiling and giggling. 

“Idiots,” she jeers at the boys, who are now scrambling to get away. Kuina is a few years older than them (and Zoro, too) and because of it, she towers over them. Naturally, they are terrified of her. She can knock their teeth in as easy as pie and they know it. “I told you not to mess with Zoro!” She shouts after them. When they're gone, she ruffles Zoro’s hair. 

“Knock it off!” Zoro grumbles, swatting at her. “I’m not a baby!” 

“Nah, you just hit like one.” 

With a wordless snarl, Zoro lunges at her and misses, falling flat on her face. She staggers to her feet while Kuina looks on, smiling but merciless. 

“I’m gonna be even stronger than you, one day,” Zoro growls at her through clenched baby-teeth. 

“Good,” Kuina says, vicious. “I better not be the only woman at the top of the world. That sounds stupid.”

 

---

 

Kuina doesn’t live long enough to see the top of the world, though Zoro has no doubt that she would have. Kuina was destined to. Something inside of her burned brighter than any fire, smarted harder than any bruise, and dreamed bigger than the whole of deep, fathomless sea. Zoro will carry her sister’s dream on her shoulders and at her hip when she makes it to the top. 

Although they were not sisters by blood, they were sisters in every way that mattered. In the end, Koshiro does not hesitate to hand over Kuina's sword to a weeping, snotty-faced Zoro. 

Her hair is about the length of Kuina’s when she sets off from the village, Wado and two other swords knocking against her side as she walks.

Zoro cuts it all off with the edge of a blade. 

 

---

 

Zoro grows into all hard edges and jagged planes of muscle. She has very few skills, so she does hard labor in exchange for meals and a place to sleep in the towns she travels through. As a result, her body is made out of sinew and rock. Most that see her mistake her for a boy because she is tall and flat-chested and mean-looking with thick biceps and a hard jaw. She keeps her hair short, shaved close to her neck--never long enough to touch her ears or get in her face.  

This is just fine with her, as she doesn’t really give a damn about what she looks like—only that she’s strong and people leave her alone. 

 

---

 

The first (and only) time she can ever remember caring about how she looks, she's in an East Blue city called Maine Cape. She’s fifteen years old but looks closer to seventeen because of her height, so she manages to earn some easy belli lifting crates for some fishermen by the docks.

Only once they’ve paid her and she’s on her way does she realize she has to piss pretty badly. She walks for awhile trying to find a fucking bathroom—it wouldn’t do her any good to piss any old place as she often does when traveling; Maine is a busy enough city that she’d be arrested for it—and it doesn’t help that all the damn streets look the same and all the buildings keep moving. 

Eventually, she gives up and knocks at the first door she sees. It’s some kind of tattoo parlor. Marines and fishermen and some rough looking men mingle inside, talking loudly over a persistent mechanical humming. An older woman with slick, black hair and all sorts of piercings in her face opens the door. 

“Can I use your bathroom?” Zoro manages. 

“Knock yourself out,” the woman replies. 

As soon as Zoro gets her pants down, she realizes something is wrong.

There’s blood everywhere. It’s coming from inside of her. 

She’s pretty fucking sure that she hasn’t gotten injured there of all places. She’s really very fucking sure that she would have noticed if she had. But the undeniable truth of it is staining her pants and her thighs and her hands now, too. 

She takes care of her business, cleans up as best as she can, and hurries back out towards the woman with the metal in her face.

“Hey,” Zoro starts, feeling awkward. “Do you have any bandages?” 

The woman gives her a more thorough once-over. “You injured?”

No, Zoro thinks, unable to place the blood to any wound or source of pain. Maybe she’s sick from the inside and is going to die right here in this stupid, shitty city in East Blue, having gotten nowhere and having done her sister nothing but a great disappointment. 

“N—Yeah?” She manages, staring hard at the floor. 

The woman quirks an eyebrow. “Well? Which is it?” 

“I’m… bleeding,” Zoro hisses out eventually. She doesn’t really know what more to say than that. After a moment, the woman hums in understanding. 

“Kid, why didn’t you just say so? This your first time or something?” The woman starts to head back towards the bathroom. She rummages around under the sink and eventually gives Zoro a bundle of items. “There’s a shower in the apartment upstairs, go wash yourself. Leave your clothes outside the door and I’ll scrub ‘em for you. When you’re done, yell and I'll explain what you do with this.” She sets what looks like a densely packed roll of cotton atop the bundle. It’s no longer than Zoro’s middle finger. 

Feeling much more out of her depth than she has in a while, Zoro does as the woman tells her. Admittedly, the shower feels great against her aching muscles. When she’s finished, the woman brings her a spare set of plain clothes and a glass of a strong, bitter alcohol. 

“You’re a woman, now,” she says, encouraging Zoro to drink with a nod. She teaches her about all sorts of shit no one ever bothered to—about “feminine hygiene” and “her womb” and sex and where babies come from, of all things. With a very serious expression, the woman places her hands on Zoro’s shoulders and says, “Don’t get pregnant. You look like you’re a tough kid. I’d hate to see all of that go to waste because some asshole couldn’t bother to use a rubber.” 

Swallowing hard and wondering why anyone would ever want sex, Zoro nods. 

The woman claps her on the back and ushers her down towards the main floor of the parlor. In the work-space where men are getting art inked under their skin and talking in loud, rancorous voices, the woman opens a drawer and pulls out a vast collection of metal jewelry like the things that decorate her face. 

“Pick whatever you’d like, kid. It’s on the house.” 

“What?” Zoro blinks at her, not understanding. 

“The day I became a woman, my mom took me to get my ears pierced.” She points to a few silver studs in her ear lobes. “It’s a right of passage.” 

None of that really makes any fucking sense to Zoro, but she’s distracted anyways. She selects three identical gold bars out of the case.

“I want these,” she says, overcome by a strange feeling of rightness. 

“Good choice, kid.” 

 

---

 

Eventually, Zoro makes a name for herself as a bounty hunter. Slowly but surely, she’s climbing her way up in the world. Each new town she enters, a rumor seems to have gotten there first, carrying her name and gathering infamy with each mouth that speaks it. 

In Shells Town, she is seventeen, and technically, is not allowed in this bar. (But, with each year that goes by, she just gets taller and her shoulders get broader to the point where no one questions her age. It is admittedly very convenient.)

So, when she saves some little girl from a rabid dog and her mom offers a free meal and a free drink at her bar as a token of her gratitude, Zoro keeps her mouth shut and accepts. 

But since she’s not supposed to be in this bar anyways and she doesn’t really feel like spending the night in the local jail (wherever that may be) she keeps her head down as a smarmy-looking marine starts harassing the owner. It gets a little harder to play oblivious when the weasel-faced fuck starts getting  aggressive  with her. It gets impossible to ignore when his goons get violent and the owner’s little girl cries out, “Mommy!” and Zoro is suddenly to her feet at a truly alarming speed. 

There’s a brief confrontation before Zoro admits to the murder of this asshole’s rabid fucking animal. The little girl is crying in her mother’s arms and Zoro wants it to stop—wants these genuine and kind (but weak, so, so weak) people to go about their lives—so she agrees to the sadist’s deal. 

 

---

 

Zoro is seventeen and tied to a pole in a marine yard in the hot, hot sun and there is an idiot in a strawhat squawking about being a pirate and what the fuck, even? 

Writing him off as a hallucination caused by heatstroke and dehydration, Zoro thunks her head against the unforgiving wood of the pole and closes her eyes. Her bandanna is soaked through with sweat. For the most part, she tunes him out. 

As he walks away, strawhat bouncing on his head and black hair tickling at his shoulders, Zoro could swear that he looks like Kuina, for just a moment. 

She writes this off as a symptom of heatstroke, too. 

 

---

 

After the fight, the three of them (Luffy, this bean-headed wannabe marine, and Zoro) head back to the nice mom’s bar and she feeds them the most impressively sized meal Zoro has ever seen. Luffy inhales most of it which really shouldn’t be surprising, considering how loud and excessive this kid is in every other respect. 

“Zoro-chan, would you like a bath?” the owner says after the commotion of the meal has died down. 

The pink-haired bean-headed kid that Zoro hasn’t bothered to learn the name of looks like he’s about to stroke out. His eyes go wide. “W-w-wait—Zoro-kun is a girl?” he stammers.

Luffy turns to him with a quizzical expression, half of a chicken-wing hanging out of his mouth. He stares at his weird little friend like he expects him to start speaking entirely in riddles. 

“Yeah,” Zoro says, pushing up from the table. “What of it?” she glares at the kid. Wannabe marine or not, she’ll kick his ass. 

Luffy swallows the chicken-wing whole. 

“Your bounty poster didn’t say that!” Luffy exclaims, not looking particularly off-put by the unexpected gender-reveal either way. Just curious. 

Zoro shrugs. “Why would it?” 

Luffy seems to think on that for a moment. “Good point!” he says eventually. He tucks back into the meal with gusto. Luffy’s friend just blinks at Zoro slowly with a not insignificant expression of awe. When Zoro swings her eyes over to him, he jumps and flushes pink from the head down. 

“Don’t use all the hot water!” Luffy calls after her. 

 

---

 

Sharing the dingy with Luffy isn’t bad. Actually, Zoro might say it’s kind of nice, if she would ever admit to such a thing. Luffy is an endless fountain of energy and stories and excitement that makes even the endless, quiet days at sea amusing. He’s good natured and reckless and free with his affection, flopping down into Zoro’s lap and using her as a pillow whenever he pleases. The first time he did it, she almost cut his balls off. It took her a bit to realize that the idiot didn’t really mean anything by it—he’s just overly tactile and doesn’t have a good concept of boundaries. 

She acclimates to him and almost comes to be fond of him by the end of their first week together. 

Nami, however, is a different story. 

Nami is everything that Zoro is not and she has an instant distrust (and distaste) for the other woman. Nami is smooth, unblemished skin and dainty, feminine limbs. Her hair is short, but not boyishly short like Zoro’s—just short enough to still be feminine. She’s got freckles all over her brilliant, glowing skin and carries various balms and glosses for her pink lips. She bats her eyelashes and sticks out her ass and sizable breasts whenever a man with an equally sizable wallet walks by. Her laughter is like bells and her heels click-clack against most surfaces.

“You two smell like a barn,” she tells them, scowling particularly at Zoro. 

They’re taking a couple days of rest in the town doctor’s infirmary while Zoro recovers from her stab wound. Luffy thinks Nami’s mothering is delightful. Zoro would rather get stabbed again than listen to Nami talk about skincare for a single second more. 

After ushering Luffy away for a much-needed bath, Nami sighs and sits on the edge of Zoro’s infirmary bed. “How did you end up with a boy like that, anyways?” she asks and no—Zoro does not do this.  She shrugs. Zoro does not engage in gossip. Zoro is not going to chat while Nami paints or files or sharpens her nails or what the fuck ever. That’s not who she is and it is never who she will be. 

Nami is the kind of girl that has an adventurous phase in her teenage years and then either gets married or gets knocked up and lives an uneventful, but pretty little life, Zoro thinks. She almost loathes her for it. Zoro will never be that. 

“I don’t trust you,” Zoro says instead, because there’s gotta be a reason why a girl like this is out robing pirates for fun, and a simple “adventurous phase” isn’t motivation enough, in Zoro’s book. 

Nami’s eyes narrow. 

“Whatever,” Nami says, feigning nonchalance.

It doesn’t work. Zoro is a swordsman. She knows when she’s cut someone. 

 

---

 

Usopp is great because he’s just the right type of wild to keep Luffy occupied so that Zoro doesn’t have to. Also, Usopp has connections that can do things like build ships and Zoro is pretty fond of having a bed now, even if she does have to share the room with the Sea Witch. (At least it’s not the unforgiving wood floor at the bottom of the dingy.)

“Well, it was nice to meet you guys,” Usopp says, awkward and nervous on the beach. Zoro rolls her eyes. 

“Get on the ship,” she tells him. He scrambles to obey, overjoyed.

Luffy gives her a knowing (and almost smug, she would say, if she thought Luffy was capable of being smug) smile and she wonders, is this what it is to be first mate?  

 

---

 

The lanky, leggy twig of a blonde chain-smokes his way over to their table at the floating restaurant. He fixes his single visible eye at Nami from underneath a truly ridiculous blonde fringe. His expression is sultry and he's trying way too hard to be cool. 

“Hello,” he croons, his voice not entirely unpleasant.

Then, Zoro gets her first glance at his whole face and has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing outright.

His fucking eyebrow. She’s never seen anything like it. It’s hilarious. She kicks Usopp under the table and his eyes leap to her with a question heavy in his face. She nods frantically at the waiter. 

Usopp’s eyes go comically wide and he claps a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking in muted laughter. The movement catches the guy's eye. He looks to Usopp, scathing, before his eyes settle on Zoro. She can see him inhale slowly, startled. 

“Well, hello there, my equally-as-lovely flower,” he starts. Nami erupts with terribly-suppressed laughter at the other end of the table. Usopp is nearly crying with the effort of holding back beside her. 

“No,” Zoro says.

“Hm?” The waiter hums, batting his eyes at her. “Does the atmosphere not please you, my darling? Let me fetch you a rose for the table, or a bottle of wine, on the house.” He winks.

“No,” Zoro repeats. “Actually, yes, booze. Bring booze,” she amends.  

“Oh my god,” Nami whispers to Usopp. “This is priceless. Someone get me a Den-Den Mushi. I have got to take a picture of Zoro’s face.” 

The waiter fucking… bows?  She doesn’t even know. “As you wish, my delicate rose,” he simpers. 

Zoro exhales and pushes back from the table. She stands to her full height, finding herself eye to eye with the ridiculous curly-brow. She crosses her arms and has the absurd urge to flex and show him just what he thinks he’s calling delicate. This guy is so skinny, she thinks she could probably throw him over one shoulder if she had to. She fixes him with a flat stare. 

“Look, Curlicue, I’m not delicate.”  There’s a limit to the condescending shit she’ll put up with from men. 

Impossibly, he holds her stare. Then, he flushes pink. She can practically see his heart jump in his chest. “No, I guess you’re not,” he says, sounding positively enamored, which is honestly very counterproductive to Zoro’s goal of scaring the shit out of him.

Before she can retort, he saunters off. She sits back down and tries to glare Usopp into silence. 

Nami, the witch, leans across the table. “What was that?” She says, grinning, cat-like. “I’ve never seen you square up to a man like that before.” 

Zoro does not like what she’s implying. 

“Oh, put those things away, you damn hustler,” Zoro says, gesturing at Nami’s boobs where she has them pushed up comically against the table. “They’ll spill out of your shirt and sink the restaurant.” 

 Nami huffs and very pointedly does not adjust her tank-top. 

 

---

 

“Please, not him,” Zoro says to Luffy.

Luffy whines, pouting. “But Zoro… He’s a cook.” 

It occurs to her belatedly that this might be a losing battle. 

 

---

 

Mihawk arrives at the Baratie and Zoro’s blood sings. She’s ripping her bandanna off of her arm and tying it around her head before she can even breathe through the excitement.

This is it, she thinks, hand tight around Wado. This moment feels a lot like destiny. 

“Zoro?” Luffy asks, and there’s a lot in the prompting of her name. 

“Captain,” Zoro breathes, finally. Her eyes fixed on the legend in front of her, on the goal of her life’s dream. She will defeat this man. She will take his title between her teeth and she will wear his mantle of Greatest at the very top of this world. 

Luffy lets her go. 

“Wait, woah, hold on, she’s not going to fight him, is she?” The simpering idiot-cook says. It is background noise, now. All that matters is the impending duel. Zoro’s skin hums with adrenaline, her whole body alight with it. 

“Zoro is going to be the greatest,” Luffy replies. 

“No, you—you have to stop her—he’ll—” The cook sounds panicked, almost. 

Luffy places a single hand on the cook’s chest, holding him back, (not that Zoro sees.) “This is her dream,” her captain says, simply. 

This is enough. 

 

---

 

Her own blood is thick and metallic in her mouth as she swears an oath to her captain. She knows that she is crying—she can feel the warmth of her own tears against her face. She will not lose again. She will not lose. She thinks she understands what she saw in Luffy that very first day in Shells town—she saw the same inexorable will in the boy as she did in Kuina all those years ago. Luffy's does not dream bigger than the whole deep, fathomless sea. Luffy dreams bigger than the ocean itself.

Luffy is destined to reach the top. Zoro can feel it in her bones. 

Nearly bisected, choking on her own blood and burning with fresh sea salt in her wounds, she swears to the sky, to her captain. She will not lose again. 

Luffy receives her words with a smile. 

 

---

 

Okay, so. Usopp is not much of a doctor. 

Zoro drifts in and out of consciousness, partially from the trauma of her wounds and partially from the blood loss, too. It feels like there are hands inside of her chest, pulling out her guts and spreading them all over the deck. She thinks she cries out, but she can’t be sure. 

When she finally, fully comes around, the ship they’re on is frighteningly empty. 

“Zoro!” Usopp cries out, his hands are on her shoulders, gently urging her to lay back down. Johnny and Yosaku hover nervously just out of sight. Her entire body is in agony. 

“Where—”

“Luffy ordered us to pursue Nami. He and Sanji will catch up later. You need to rest—you’re… you almost…” She hears him loud and clear, although he doesn’t finish. 

“Thank you,” she tells him. She means it, too. Although he is afraid, Usopp is incredibly brave. His hands were steady as he stitched her up. This much she knows. 

“Y-yeah. Just… don’t make me do that again, okay? We really need a doctor,” he says. Her vision is blurry and out of focus but she forces her eyes open. There are tears in the corners of his eyes. She can tell there’s still something he wants to say. 

“Spit it out, Usopp.” She’s fighting for consciousness, here. If something is really, really wrong, she’d like to know before she passes out again. 

“I’m sorry!” he splutters. 

“What?” She forces out. 

“Well, I—I had to—you see, the wound was on—um—your shirt was—well—and I—”

“Usopp. Are you kidding me right now?” 

He gathers himself and bursts out, “The great captain Usopp is nothing less than a perfect gentleman, but extenuating circumstances—”

“Usopp. Oh my god, I was going to bleed out. I don’t care if you saw my tits,” she says none-too-gently. 

“ Ohthankgod,” Usopp exhales all in a rush. “I thought you were going to kill me, if you survived.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she tells him. It’s the last thing she manages before she passes out. 

 

---

 

Sanji is infuriating. 

“Look, we’ve gotta’ fuckin’ talk,” Zoro growls out, cornering him in the kitchen of the Merry after breakfast one morning. Cocoyashi is long behind them and the Grand-line is waiting. It will be a few days until they reach Loguetown, but this shit can’t wait. It needs to stop. Now. 

“Anything, Zoro-chwan,” Sanji starts, hearts in his eyes. 

“Oh my god, you’ve gotta cut that shit out.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Stupid ero-cook… Look, you’re gonna get yourself killed over nothing.” 

Now he’s taking her seriously. “Whatever do you mean, my darling?” 

Zoro gestures to encompass all of him. “This! This thing that you do with women, it’s ridiculous. You were going to get yourself killed trying to keep me out of the fight at Arlong Park, you stupid fucking idiot. I can fend for myself.”

“You shouldn’t have to—”

Well and truly pissed, Zoro gets up in his face. “Really? Why? Cause I’m a fucking girl?” 

Sanji splutters, but he doesn’t have to answer. She knows the truth of it without him having to say it. 

“Get this through your fucking curly-brow skull. Your ridiculous chivalry bullshit routine? It doesn’t help anyone," she says in a growl. She can feel her own words vibrate deep in her chest. "Women aren’t lesser, women aren’t greater. Nami might not care if you simper around her and lose half your blood volume every time she wears a low-cut shirt, but if you get between me and a fight again? I will cut you down, nakama or not.” She backs up from him, practically boiling with anger. 

“You’re not noble, Cook. You’re a fucking misogynist.” 

When she leaves the kitchen, slamming the door behind her, Sanji does not follow. 

 

---

 

(Zoro is a swordsman. She knows when she’s cut someone.)

 

Chapter 2

Notes:

Well, the rating has changed.
...for reasons.

I literally had a million things I needed to do today, like study for my biochem exam and do my laundry and visit my boyfriend and go to the gym and instead THIS happened

In Lougetown, Zoro meets a Marine woman that looks an awful lot like Kuina. She makes a great deal of fuss about Zoro’s swords and is all around a pain in the ass. It’s satisfying, to clash blades with someone that makes her feel so conflicted. Zoro hasn’t had memories like that come up in a while. 

“Hey! Ladies shouldn’t fight!” Sanji calls over the howling of the wind and the deafening roar of rainfall. Zoro can see Luffy tug on the cook’s sleeve from the corner of her eye. 

“Stay out of this, please!” The Marine woman calls back, saving Zoro half the trouble. “This is between Roronoa and I!” 

“You heard her!” Zoro responds. “Go on ahead.” She doesn’t turn to Luffy or Sanji. She can trust her captain, of all people, to let her fight this on her own. 

The fight is short, breathtakingly so. This woman, Tashigi, is strong, but not strong enough. 

Lightning cracks through the sky, casting Tashigi’s face in shadows. She’s afraid. Good. Behind them, the streets are flooded with torrents of rain and sea water alike. The current rising on the pavement swipes at Zoro’s pant legs. 

“I can’t lose this sword, no matter what,” she tells her, fierce. Swiftly, she sheathes her blades. It was almost useless to send Luffy and Sanji ahead. This hardly took anytime at all. “Bye,” Zoro says, “I gotta go.” 

It was nice, she thinks, to duel someone with the respect for the art, if nothing else. She can’t really help the sorts of conflicting emotions this woman sparks in her. She’s wearing a dead-girl’s face, after all. 

“Why didn’t you kill me?!” Tashigi screams at her back. “It’s humiliating to have someone go easy on you in a duel,” she spits, words like talons. “Is it because we’re both women? Do you think you owe me something because of that?” Zoro can feel her shoulders start to shake. “I didn’t pick up this sword to play around!” Tashigi howls, voice reaching a fever-pitch and breaking like glass over the words. 

It shatters Zoro’s composure. “I can’t stand the fact that you exist!” she shouts, mouth pulled into a horrible snarl, “That face you wear? It’s exactly like my friend who died a long time ago! To hear you spout that bullshit ? Out of her mouth?” Zoro stalks forward, pushing into her space. She doesn’t back down. “It’s a fucking disgrace!” 

Tashigi splutters, turning red in anger. “What a childish thing to say!” she hisses, drawing up to her full height like an angry cat. “I’m not your friend and I don’t owe you anything!” 

“No, you aren’t her,” Zoro growls, “Because she would never blame a defeat on her sex. I didn’t kill you because I don’t need to. You’re outclassed.” 

Thunder claps again, furious and booming. It sounds how Zoro feels on the inside, gaping and angry and unfathomable. 

She escapes to the ship just in time. 

 

---

 

Sanji is straight-up avoiding her. Which, okay, whatever. He’s an idiot, this isn’t news. With a princess now on board, it’s like he’s dialed up his swooning and coddling to full-blast. He’s dizzy with stars in his eyes almost ninety-percent of the time. But, annoyingly, he avoids Zoro completely, like he doesn't know what to do with her, now. 

“Why do you let him treat you like that?” Zoro asks between reps. Nami and Vivi are not far away, reclined in the lounge-chairs and sipping iced tea drinks under the afternoon sun. 

It’s Vivi’s first day aboard the Merry, and aside from a few careful winces and nervous laughs, she seems to take all of Sanji’s fussing in stride. Zoro just doesn’t get it.  Vivi blinks her owlish blue eyes up at Zoro. God, she's fucking cute. Zoro turns away, refusing to blush. She completes another set of bicep curls, counting off while she waits for Vivi’s thoughtful reply. 

“Well, it’s… nice, almost. To be fussed over.” She swirls her straw through her drink, ice cubes clinking gently against the sides. 

Zoro rolls her eyes. “Is it?” 

“Really, Vivi-chan? But you’re a princess! To be honest, I thought you might want a break from all of that, too…” Nami says, thoughtful. Zoro notices how Nami very carefully avoids looking Vivi straight in the eyes. Her gaze is fixed somewhere around the expanse of Vivi’s sun-darkened collar bones, like she can’t tear her eyes away from the princess’ skin. 

Vivi sighs. “I have not been home in a long time, now.” She smiles, briefly. “I guess all the fussing makes me nostalgic. Besides, it’s all well-meaning.” 

Zoro and Nami grimace in tandem. 

“Well…” Nami starts. 

“Oh?” 

“Zoro and Sanji have… a history,” at Zoro’s abrupt glare, Nami rephrases, “of conflict. Sanji-kun doesn’t think Zoro should be fighting… They’ve gotten in quite a few arguments about it.” 

“Really? But Ms. Bushido-san is so strong!” Vivi exclaims. 

“Sanji has his… misgivings about this kind of thing,” Nami says, gesturing vaguely in the air. 

“He’s an ass,” Zoro growls. 

Vivi hums thoughtfully. “Well, if he doesn’t think you should be fighting… why don’t you show him!” Nami quirks an eyebrow. Vivi sits upright, gesturing animatedly as she speaks. “If you challenge Sanji-san to a fight, he has to confront your strength! Then I’m sure he’ll come to his senses.” 

Zoro rolls her eyes and, with a sigh, sets down her weights. “Yeah, but there’s only one problem.” 

“What is it?” 

“Sanji doesn’t hit women,” Nami explains. 

Vivi narrows her eyes thoughtfully. “What if you didn’t give him a choice?” 

 

---

That night, the three women retire to their cabin, only to come up against a slight road-block. There are only two beds. Vivi is all frantic head-shakes and blushes. 

“No, no, that’s fine! I don’t want to put either of you out—” But Zoro is already gathering her shit up. She pushes her swords up against the wall and throws a couple of dirty shirts on the ground where she then kicks them under the bed. 

With a shrug, she says, “It’s fine. Take it.” 

“Ms. Bushido-san, really, I couldn’t,” Vivi stammers.

“Vivi-chan, let her give you her bed. She snores, ” Nami sighs dramatically. Zoro rolls her eyes. Their relationship has much improved since the battle at Arlong Park. Zoro admits that she had the other woman totally wrong from the beginning. Nami isn’t anything like those good girls that settle down for a quiet marriage and pop out three babies by the time they’re thirty. Nami is a wild, untamed thing with dreams of her own. They are different from Zoro's dreams and different from Kuina's, too. But dreams all the same.  

And, she’d rather accomplish her dreams in heels. (Which, Zoro can respect. Nami had her try a pair on and she could barely stand the things for five minutes, let alone wear them while running from all sorts of scorned marks.) 

Her teasing is good-natured, but she still gets on Zoro’s nerves sometimes with all her “use conditioner” this and “wear perfume” that.

“The men’s bunk will suit me fine,” Zoro shrugs, starting up the stairs. 

“Believe her, Vivi-chan. Zoro and Luffy slept at the bottom of a dingy when I first met ‘em.”  

Their voices fade away as Zoro closes the door and emerges on deck. From the look of it, it appears that Usopp is on watch tonight. Zoro shuffles down to the men’s cabin in the dark.  Luffy makes a bleary sound as the ladder creaks on her descent. 

“Mhn—Usopp?” He slurs, peering into the dark. 

“Shh,” Zoro says, settling a hand on his head briefly. “Go back to sleep.” 

“‘Kay,” Luffy mumbles before rolling back over in his hammock and dropping off again. 

There are three hammocks, and one is empty since Usopp is on watch. His hangs above Luffy’s and it’s no small feat to hoist herself up into it without disturbing Luffy again. Surely the sniper won’t mind—it’s just one night. 

Zoro peels her bra off under her shirt, pulling it through a sleeve and throwing it somewhere in the dark. Pajamas are overrated—she doesn’t see the point in owning more than one or two shirts. (Even the shirt she wore in Cocoyashi was offered to her by a concerned villager that saw her wandering around covered only in thick bandaging from the waist up.) She sleeps in what she’s got, minus her grubby old sports bra. She’d rather do a whole day of training in Nami’s heels than sleep in her bra again… 

She drops off to sleep in no time. 

 

---

 

“Hey, idiot, who’s on watch?” 

Zoro wakes to someone shaking—no, rocking— her bed. She struggles to sit upright and grunts out a very intelligent, “Hrugpgh?”

“ WhattheohmygodImustbedreamingcutesocute—” Zoro’s eyes snap open as something warm splatters her face and a loud THUD echoes through the cabin. 

“What the hell, shit-cook!?” She shouts, rubbing at her cheeks only to find that Sanji projectile-nose-bled all over her face. The bastard in question is laying comatose and twitching on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. His face is screwed up into a dopey, lovey-dovey grin.

Zoro hops down from the hammock grabs a random shirt to wipe at her face. 

“Hey, Zoro, what’s this?” Luffy asks, holding up her bra from where he’s found it on the floor. 

Sanji, only just having sat back up, makes a sound like a dying whale and promptly face-plants again.

“Mine,” Zoro grumbles, swiping it out of her captain’s hands.

Usopp comes bumbling down the ladder with a concerned, “Uh, guys?” He double-takes. “Zoro?” 

She rubs at the back of her neck, feeling exhausted already. “I used your hammock last night so that Vivi could use my bed,” she explains. She can hear Sanji begin to mumble, “o h my god, I slept with a lady” over and over again as he fans himself. 

“Oh, that’s alright!” Usopp waves her off.

“ I slept with a lady!” Sanji screeches, leaping up with renewed vigor to do a victorious dance. 

Zoro is surrounded by idiots. 

 

---

 

Nami gets sick. 

It’s bad. 

It is clearer now more than ever that the crew needs a doctor. 

 

---

 

After Drum Island, the crew gains a new member and thus, a new pain in Zoro’s ass. 

“ Zoro-chan!” Chopper swats her over the head in Heavy-Point. “It is a miracle that you’re alive!” 

“Ow—yeah, yeah, I get it,” Zoro mumbles, shuffling awkwardly on her feet. 

As his first act as the ship’s doctor, Chopper had wanted to conduct thorough physical examinations of all of the Strawhats. With a truly terrifying gleam in her eyes, Nami had volunteered Zoro to go first. That woman is truly a sadist. 

Now, sitting shirtless on the exam table with Chopper openly gaping at her scar from Mihawk, Zoro is wishing she’d put up more of a fight about it. 

Gently, Chopper prods at the ugly gnarled scar. It had been irritated by the cold on Drum (and it probably didn’t help that Zoro had been in that blizzard without a shirt or a jacket or much of anything, honestly) and the little doctor doesn’t look too pleased with the way it’s healing, if his expression is any indication. 

“Zoro-chan, would you be comfortable removing your top?” Chopper asks, referring to her bra. “It obscures a significant portion of the wound and I need to do a full examination.”

Zoro isn’t shy about nudity, but she is shy about medical care. She’s never liked being poked or prodded. Wordlessly, she nods and strips entirely from the waist up. 

The scar runs from her left shoulder over the top of her left breast through her chest and ends down at her right hip. The fresh scar tissue is shiny and puckered, irritated by the stitches that she’s probably left in for too long. 

Chopper turns his big, watery eyes to Zoro. “Between this and the wounds on your ankles, you’re almost the worst-off out of this whole ship!” he squeaks. 

“‘S fine,” Zoro assures him. She scratches nervously at her head. “I don’t really feel it.” 

“That’s not the point, you idiot!” Chopper cries. He starts gathering supplies that Zoro doesn’t know the name of. She grips the edge of the cot hard between her palms as Chopper starts in with the disinfectant. “I have to remove these old stitches and clean the wound. We might have to re-stitch some of it,” he explains, dabbing gently at the top of the scar with cotton. 

“Oi, Chopper—” Sanji takes this exact moment to barge into the room. “You said you had some of those painkillers for my back—?” 

There is a horrible moment of silence where Sanji and Zoro sit frozen, staring at each other from across the room. Sanji blinks at her. He looks down. His eyes snap back up to hers and go dinner-plate wide before dropping back down again. He turns scarlet red from the neck up. All at once, Zoro’s faculties return to her. 

“GET OUT,” she yells, grabbing a silver tray and hurling it at the shitty, pervert-cook's head. Sanji barely manages to dodge in time. 

“ Sanji-kun!” Chopper squeals, rushing Sanji out of the room. “I’m with a patient!” 

“I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY,” Sanji cries, dashing from the room like his ass is on fire. He leaves a trail of blood in his wake. Chopper closes the door and leans against it, blocking it with his body. Zoro stares at him in stunned silence. 

“Mellorine, mellorine! Ah, my beautiful rugged rose,” Sanji sighs distantly. 

Zoro screams, “ YOU DON’T SOUND SORRY!” 

Fucking idiot. 

 

---

 

In Alabasta, Zoro learns to cut steel. 

Once the dust has settled and the battle is over, the Strawhats retire to the royal palace to recover and celebrate. The people are great and the music and food is wonderful and Zoro is elated by her newly acquired skill. It’s a time like no other to celebrate.

So, she gets drunk.

At one point in the night, Nami, quite possibly also drunk, throws an arm around Zoro’s shoulders and ruffles her hair. “It’s getting pretty long, Zoro!” she singsongs. 

“So what?” Zoro rebukes. “I’ve been busy.” 

Nami throws her head back and cackles. “Yeah! Busy being badass!” she cheers, sloshing fancy wine everywhere. 

Zoro grins like a shark and pours Nami a shot. “I’ll drink to that!” she cries and they both cheer. They get more of the liquor in their laps than in their mouths.

 

---

 

Later finds Zoro still pleasantly buzzed, using a sharp shaving razor to tend to her hair. She’s almost finished when the door to the bathroom swings open and Sanji steps inside. 

He blinks at her. “Oh, Zoro-chwan…” he blinks again, looking confused. “This is the mens’ room.” 

“Huh,” Zoro responds. “Must’ve gotten lost.” 

The cook must be pleasantly drunk, too, going by the flush on his face and the sway in his step. He leans against the counter next to her, his hip jutting out like Nami’s does when she is trying to swindle a sap out of his money. The cook looks at her from under his ridiculous blonde hair. His swirly eyebrow is dizzying to Zoro when she’s this drunk. 

“Hello, pretty-thing,” Sanji murmurs, smiling. His eyelids are heavy with wine or whatever the hell it is he likes to drink. “Funny seeing you here,” he says before laughing at his own line. 

“I am not a pretty thing,” Zoro tells him, scratching at her freshly shaved neck. Uneven strands of green hair just long enough to barely brush the tips of her eyebrows flop wet and graceless into her face as she turns to scowl at him. “And even if I were a pretty thing,” she adds, “I wouldn’t be yours. I wouldn’t be anyone’s, Cook.”

He stares at her thoughtfully. “You’re right. Well, about that, at least. You are pretty, though,” he says, carefully. 

Zoro furrows her brow. “Uh-huh,” she says. “You’re just drunk.” 

Sanji shakes his head vigorously. “No, no.” Shaking his head seems to make him dizzy and he places both his hands on her shoulders to steady himself. “ You are pretty,” he tells her with the emphasis of a man that is very, very wasted. Before she can interject, he continues. “You’re sooo pretty. And I din’t know how much ‘s bothered you… How much I bother’d you. You’re pretty an’ strong an’ you don’t apolgise—apologize for any of it.” 

Helpless, Zoro laughs at him. “No, it’s true, Zoro…” he draws her name out, like he’s tasting every syllable. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally. 

“Oh,” she replies, removing his hands (warm, graceful hands, with surprisingly slender and well-built fingers and— god how are they soft?) from her shoulders. “Well, okay. Tell me again when you’re sober.” 

He nods very seriously. “Yes, when I’m sober.” 

 

---

 

He finds her a few days after they sail away from Alabasta, all of their hearts heavy with the loss of Vivi. (And some of them more suspicious than others of their newest ship-mate, Nico Robin.) 

Zoro is training out in the sun when Sanji walks right up to her and sets down a green, iced drink with a little slice of orange on top. She sets her weights down and picks it up. The glass is sweaty and cool on her skin. Thoughtlessly, she rolls the glass cup against her sweaty neck before taking a gulp. 

“It’s good,” she says after a pause. Sanji is frozen, watching her sip from the cup with a faint, pink flush on his cheeks. “Snap out of it,” she grumbles, kicking him (lightly) in the ankle. 

He does. Sanji shakes his head as if to clear something from it. He takes a deep exhale, blowing a plume of smoke out above their heads. When ash falls from the end of his cigarette, it falls between them. 

“I’m sorry, Zoro-chan,” he says. Zoro promptly chokes on an ice cube. 

She had thought he had forgotten that night in the bathroom. But, well. Apparently not. 

“I…” he stops. Starts again, “I was treating you… differently because you’re a woman. But, you’re nakama first and I… realize that I was acting as a roadblock for your dream.” He bows, formally. Zoro’s never seen anybody do that. Not for the first time, she wonders about Sanji’s background and how he knows all of this fancy, noble-people etiquette shit. “I’m sorry for how I have behaved towards you.” 

She flicks him in the forehead. 

He straightens out of his bow with a yelp and a half-hearted glare. “What was that for—?” 

“If you’re really sorry…” Zoro says, setting the drink down and taking slow, purposeful steps to where she’s got her swords resting against the cabin. Sanji raises his stupid, curly eyebrow. 

“What—”

“You’ll spar with me,” she finishes. Wado comes from her sheath slowly. 

“H-hey, I won’t—I’m not—” he stammers, raising his hands in a universal sign of peace. 

“Oh?” Zoro laughs, taunting him. “Were your words just that, then? Words? You still won’t hit me, ‘cause I’m a lady?” She stalks towards him, swinging Wado in lazy arcs as she goes. “C’mon, shitty-cook, don’t you want to find out which one of us is really stronger?”     

With a clean slice, she severs Sanji’s tie neatly into two halves. 

His visible eye narrows and he growls, unthinking, “You damn Marimo…”

The same eye goes comically wide as he realizes what he’s said. Zoro bristles, “What the fuck did you just call me? Huh?” This time, when she swings, Sanji takes a graceful half-step back, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You curly-brow, pervert, peeping, shitty half-rate chef!” 

This time, when she swings her blade, the sole of a shoe rises to stop it in its arc. 

Holy shit, Zoro thinks, breathless with anticipation. He’s strong. 

“I’ll show you half-rate,” he growls, fire in his eyes. 

On Zoro’s next swing, she whoops with laughter, feeling the energy of an impending fight—a true challenge— sing through her veins. Sanji pares with another kick. 

“Zoro’s gone feral!” Usopp shouts from the crows nest. Zoro glances up and can see him waving his arms around in alarm. 

A kick swings out for Zoro’s head and she just barely raises her sword in time to catch the end of the Cook’s heel. There’s power in every hit. She’s seen him fell enemies before, seen him nearly out-swim Fishmen, seen his competence in a fight… But she never could have guessed that all this power lived behind his kicks. 

Zoro ties her bandanna around her head. 

“Tch,” Sanji scoffs, snuffing out his cigarette under his heel. “Of course you just wanted to fight. Muscle-head,” Sanji grumbles. 

Simultaneously delighted that he’s insulting her (finally) and irritated that he’s insulted her, Zoro taunts him back. “Oh? Least I have muscles, you shitty twig.” 

Sanji blushes and growls, lunging for her in unbridled fury. “I’m not a twig!” 

Then there’s no time for talking. 

They fight their way all across the Merry, to Usopp’s abject horror. Zoro sends Sanji flying into the guardrail and cracks it with a sickening thud. (“His back, Zoro!” Chopper cries in horror as Sanji’s spine connects with the wood, splintering it on impact.) Sanji sends her crashing backwards into the mast. Involuntarily, she bites her tongue on impact and her mouth fills with blood. She spits it in his face and lunges back into the fray. ( “Gross,” Nami comments while Robin sips tea and hums at the exchange thoughtfully.) Sanji kicks her in the ribs and she feels something   crack (or bruise, at the very least). She slices a clean line across his thigh before he can back-flip out of range. 

The fight is a brutal and bloody culmination of everything that had built up between them—all of Zoro’s resentment and fury and all of Sanji’s posturing and frustration. Each time their bodies collide, something gives between them. 

It’s powerful. 

Sanji manages to disarm her of one of her swords. 

It’s bloody. 

He gets too close and she headbutts him, hard. He staggers back, cursing. 

It’s cathartic. 

His knee connects with her side and she loses balance, tumbling to the deck. 

It’s incredible. 

It is Luffy who decides the outcome. 

Just as Zoro is gearing up to charge again and just as Sanji leaps with his leg raised, Luffy slingshots into them both— sending all three of them overboard and into the sea. 

The water is freezing compared to the warm boil of Zoro’s blood. Divested of two of her swords, it’s no work at all to shift one to her mouth and gather Luffy in her arms as she kicks to the surface. Usopp throws over a rope just as Sanji comes spluttering out of the water, looking like a drowned rat.  

“You look like a drowned rat,” Zoro says around the hilt clasped between her teeth. 

“I hate that I understood that,” Sanji hisses at her. 

“Mhfffah,” Luffy says, incoherent, head lolling on Zoro’s shoulder. 

 

---

 

Oddly enough, kicking the shit out of each other was what they seem to have needed all along. Sanji no longer ignores her and Zoro no longer wants to throw him into the ocean every time he blinks in her direction. 

Zoro naps in the sun and Sanji wakes her up for lunch with a kick. 

Sanji leaves the kitchen for a moment and Zoro steals as much cooking rum as she can carry. 

Zoro says something stupid and Sanji hits her upside the head. 

Sanji gets a nosebleed watching her train and she throws her hundred-and-fifty-pound weight at his stupid, target-brow face. 

Things are surprisingly fine. 

 

---

 

Luffy pisses off the wrong guy in a bar. 

It’s kind of a fucking mess. 

“Zoro, don’t take them on. No matter what,” Luffy orders, jaw set in a grim line. Zoro nods her assent. This is not a fight that is won with fists. Her captain knows this. 

“Yes, Captain,” she replies.

 

---

 

“What. The. Fuck,” Sanji breathes as soon as he sees them. He erupts into motion, skittering to a halt half-way across the beach when he sees the expression on Nami’s face. She has been crying nearly the whole way back to the ship and her eyes are red and puffy. When he sees her, Sanji’s hands shake. “Nami-san…” he says, but she pushes past him without a word. 

Baffled, Sanji’s eyes settle on Luffy and Zoro. 

Zoro knows they look pretty fucked-up. There’s an awful lot of blood that keeps dripping into her right eye and she keeps having to blink it out. Luffy’s no better off. In fact, he looks like he’s got it the worst. His body is decorated with bruises and blood and scrapes and cuts. But, what seems to get to Sanji the most; Zoro is missing her shirt. 

(Bellamy’s men hadn’t crossed that line. Luffy would have ended it without hesitation if one of them had, and that’s if Zoro didn’t get there first. They just taunted them, hurling all sorts of lines about what they’d like to do to the captain’s bitch. One of Bellamy’s men had grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and ripped it straight off her body. There is the impression of a hand smeared in purple bruises and burst blood vessels on the side of her neck. The man had squeezed her there when he whispered what he wanted to do to her.)

(Luffy had sought Zoro’s eyes. Zoro said nothing. They continued to stand their ground. Eventually, the man fucked off, laughing.)

Sanji knows none of this. Sanji’s fists are shaking at his sides. 

With a wordless snarl, he lunges at Luffy, grabbing him by the shirt and shaking him. Hard. 

“ What happened, huh?!” He howls in his face. There’s something desperate in his eyes. (Zoro’s always known there was a vicious protective streak in him, fueling his casual sexism and the layers upon layers of learned self-sacrificial bullshit. She never imagined it would leave him looking so torn-open, when she saw it laid bare.)

“ Luffy!” He shouts. “What. Happened?! Why was Nami-san crying?! Why is—” Sanji’s eyes flicker to Zoro for a fraction of a second before the cook thinks better of it.

“Cook,” Zoro starts.

“Zoro, it’s okay,” Luffy says. “Go check on Nami.” 

Irritated at the dismissal more than anything, Zoro stalks off. 

They’ll work it out.

...Probably. 

 

---

 

Nami is crying in the girl’s bunk. Robin points Zoro in the right direction, looking vaguely alarmed. Chopper nearly has a fit when he sees Zoro, but with a helpless look to Usopp, he decides to intervene and distract Chopper on Zoro's behalf for the time being. 

“Nami,” Zoro says, shuffling awkwardly in the middle of the women’s bunk.

She hasn’t slept here in a long time. Robin now uses the bed that used to be Vivi’s and was Zoro’s before that. Zoro sleeps in the hammock (or bed, sometimes) of whoever is on watch that night. This space doesn’t really feel like hers anymore. She shuffles awkward on her feet, a bumbling intruder into this place. 

Nami is pacing back and forth, swiping angrily at the tears accumulating on her cheeks. 

“You’re a fucking moron,” she snaps at her, finally. Her orange hair is a halo to her fury. 

Zoro shrugs. 

“Are you okay?” She asks, after a moment. 

“No, I am not fucking okay! ” Nami shouts. “Why did you— how could you—?” 

“If we had fought, we would have lost,” Zoro explains simply, because it truly is just that simple to her. Nami seems even angrier at that. 

“There are more important things than winning! ” Nami screams back. 

Zoro says nothing because she has nothing to say. She watches Nami pace and cry and shout wordless exclamations of frustration until, finally, she burns herself out. Nami throws herself backwards onto her bed and covers her eyes with an arm. 

“I don’t understand how I got stuck on a ship with nothing but idiots,” Nami laments. 

“I thought I was a moron,” Zoro replies. Nami chuckles, but it’s a hollow sound. 

Mercifully, there are footsteps on the stairs. Robin appears, holding a shopping bag like a peace offering. 

“Swordsman-san?” The woman prompts, extending the bag to Zoro. “Our doctor would like to see you. I picked up some clothes for you on my trip earlier.” 

Zoro takes the bag. “Thanks,” she says. Zoro does not trust her. Not yet. Robin’s eyes are kind, though, so she leaves her with Nami. 

Zoro visits Chopper for some antiseptic and some harsh words. Then, she takes a long, long shower and changes into the clothes that Robin had picked for her. Blessedly, Robin seems to have shopped with Zoro in mind. There’s a plain, dark blue tank top in the bag, a plain black sports bra, and black track pants. 

(There’s underwear, too, but Zoro doesn’t like to wear underwear if she can avoid it, so she leaves that in the bag.) 

As she exits the bathroom, she nearly bumps into Sanji. 

“Fucking watch it!” she hisses at him. “Wait… Were you peeping on me?” She growls. Why else would the fucking ero-cook be lurking by the bathroom? 

“No, fucking moss-head,” Sanji growls. His eyes are grim and he hasn’t jumped at the bait like he usually would. Zoro stands in the doorway, waiting for him to get on with whatever he was going to say. 

For the longest time, Sanji just… stares at her. (Admittedly, she’s had a long fucking day. If anyone were to ask, this is what she would say to explain the fact that she lets him stare. Honestly? It seems like Sanji has had a long fucking day, too.) 

His visible blue eye makes a steady crawl up her body. Usually, when men stare at her like this, it’s because they’re sizing her up for a fight. She’s too tall and too muscular and too flat chested for men to leer at her in public. Her hair is too short and her face is too angry and her body is too scarred. So, generally, men don’t look at her. 

But Sanji is. But he's not "checking her out"—no, what Sanji is doing is… different. It’s not lecherous or sexual or violating. He’s just… looking. 

His gaze climbs up from her bare feet to the pants on her legs, and to her waist. His eyes linger there, on her hips with a steady focus. Wordlessly, he reaches out for her, and she doesn’t fight it—she lets him take her steady around either wrist and extend her arms out for him to see. 

There are a few scrapes and cuts from where a broken bottle had fractured against her shoulder. Chopper bandaged the wound itself and removed all the glass, but her uncovered arms are a constellation of scrapes and tiny, dotted wounds. 

Sanji turns each arm over gently, tracing up from her hands to each of her shoulders with his eyes. If Zoro thinks it’s strange, she can’t say anything now. There’s an odd spell that’s come over the room. Something heavy hangs in the space between them. He gently lets her arms go and resumes his catalog of her body. He averts his eyes with visible effort at her chest and lets them focus instead on her neck. Here, he visibly tenses, shoulders going ramrod straight and stiff. 

At first, it doesn’t occur to her what he’s looking at so intently, but as he brushes his fingers feather-light across the base of her throat and the tip of her collarbone, she realizes. The bruise. 

Her skin is dark enough that it isn’t the worst thing—the purple doesn’t stand out on her like it does on Luffy or like it would on someone with Nami’s complexion. Sanji easily finds the shape of it anyways, his fingers ghosting slowly across each line. His jaw is tight. 

(Zoro does not think about how his hands are warm. She does not linger on how soft his fingers are, nor on the way he smells standing so close to her. Her body feels electric—super-charged where he touches her and painfully alive everywhere else. There is heat low in her belly when he brushes his knuckles against her neck. She does not think about his hands and how he cares for them so tenderly.)

Goosebumps erupt down her arms. 

His eyes meet hers and the spell is broken. This closely, she can see the blue of the other eye peek out from behind the curtain of his hair. Zoro does not have the words for the intensity of his expression. 

“You’re okay?” Sanji asks. 

His voice is dark—a low rumble that she’s never heard before. The heat pooling at her core is molten and slow, like lava. 

Not trusting her tongue, she nods. 

Sanji seems to be looking for something in her eyes. Zoro can’t help but hold her breath as she holds his gaze. His stare is endless. 

Finally, he steps back. Truthfully, Zoro had not realized how close he had come to her. 

“Okay,” he says, digging in the pocket of his hoodie for his pack of cigarettes. 

(Zoro rarely sees him dressed so casually. When she comes into the men’s cabin at night, she comes in late and in the dark so that none of the boys fuss or give her trouble. To be honest, she hardly ever registered his casual clothes as disparate from his immaculate suits until this very moment. The hoodie is light blue and has an ocean wave embroidered on the front. At her sides, Zoro’s hands twitch.) 

Without another word, Sanji steals away, leaving Zoro rooted to the spot. 

 

---

 

That night, after the fuss with the South Bird and the old man’s gold, the crew stumbles back to the half-destroyed ship and the make-shift campsite, dreary and exhausted. Zoro flops down face-first onto the grass. She’s content to just lie there until the sun comes when a cold, sea wind sweeps over her bare arms. 

“Fuck,” she groans, staggering back to her feet. 

“Zoro?” Luffy asks, rubbing at his eye in sleep. 

“Just gonna’ get a jacket from Merry,” she says, waving him off. 

“Tell that beautiful ship that I love her,” Usopp moans deliriously into the grass, “Because I am never moving again.”

They chased that fucking bird all up and down the forest for hours. Each and every one of them is wrecked. 

The ship is a mess of wreckage and chaos, but Zoro picks her way through Merry’s bones anyways and finds herself in the men’s cabin. Although she had intended to find the girl’s cabin, it’s close enough. Usually, someone keeps a few blankets lying around. 

Something on the floor catches her eye and Zoro freezes. 

Sanji’s blue hoodie has fallen out of his locker and is laying on the floor. Gingerly, Zoro lifts the thing to her face, cautious as if it’s going to bite her. When it makes no indication that it is sentient, she pulls it on. 

It’s soft, really fucking soft, and well-worn, but it’s a little tight in the shoulders and arms. That’s to be expected, though. She’s bigger than the cook. But it's fine, it’s not like she’s going to do any fighting in it. 

If Sanji notices that she’s stolen it as she drops back down in the grass outside to finally get some fucking sleep, he keeps the knowledge to himself. 

 

---

 

There are clouds that you can walk on and people with wings that live in the sky. There’s also an angry, lightning-controlling freak that thinks he’s a god. There’s some complicated history between the people of this place that Zoro doesn’t really follow and doesn’t really care to follow, either and there is a giant snake, too.  

But, at the end of it all, there is a party. 

The bonfire in the center of the ruins is massive. There’s music from those weird dials and from a live band of Skypiean people, too. There’s drinking and laughing and dancing and food—oh god, so much food—and Zoro is just grateful that everyone is alive.

She’s watching the party at a distance, nursing a mug of something alcoholic and sweet and warm, but she’s perfectly sober and content with it, too. Sometimes, there’s no better feeling than knowing the people you care for and have fought to protect are alive and well. 

Sanji interrupts these musings, flopping down beside her with an oof. 

Wordlessly, she extends her drink. 

“Thanks, Marimo,” he says, taking a small sip and passing it back. She hums, letting the fucking nickname from hell slide, for now. 

She’s reminded, suddenly, of a drunken night in the palace of Alabasta. They stood side by side in a quiet bathroom and they sit side by side in a quiet outcropping of ruins, now. 

“Hey, did you mean it, what you said in Alabasta?” tumbles from her lips without conscious effort. She blinks harshly at her own hands, as if they are responsible for the words that escaped into the night. 

“Hm?” Sanji asks, turning to her slightly. “What did I say?” 

Zoro hides her pink cheeks in her mug. “N-nothing.” 

Sanji elbows her in the side. “C’mon, spit it out.” 

Zoro mumbles the words into her cup. 

“What? I didn’t get that.” 

“I said…” 

“Zoro, there’s this thing called enunciation—” 

“I said, did you really mean it when you said I was pretty?!” She says it far too loudly. Her face burns scarlet red and she turns away from him, staring pointedly back towards the party.  Impossibly, infuriatingly, Sanji starts to laugh. Zoro slugs him hard on the leg and he yelps, but it doesn’t stop him from continuing to dissolve into giggles. 

“You laugh like a girl,” Zoro tells him, shoving at him ineffectually where he’s slumping into her side. 

Eventually, he settles down. Enough time passes that Zoro could almost forget what she had asked by the time he responds. 

“Of course I meant it,” Sanji says softly. He’s looking out at the party with a faint smile on his face. The light from the distant bonfire reflects in his eyes. He’s awfully close to her. 

“Huh,” Zoro says for lack of anything else to say. 

Sanji turns to her, his face startlingly open. “You thought I didn’t mean it?” Zoro shrugs. “Well, I do.” She blinks at him. “ Did!” He hastens to correct. 

“Uh huh,” she says. 

“Of course you’re beautiful,” he says, suddenly, like the words are erupting out of his mouth. 

She laughs at him. “You’ve got shitty taste, Cook.” 

“Well, apparently not that shitty, since you took my blue hoodie,” he teases, looking smarmy and awful in the low light. 

“S-shut up!” she stammers. “It was soft and there and I was cold—”

“Are you cold now?” Sanji asks. Oh god, when did he get so close? They’re pressed together, side by side, and his body is one warm line against hers. His face is so close and his voice is so low and so warm. 

“Kind of,” Zoro breathes out. She can feel the words take shape between them. 

When Sanji smiles at her, it is not a smile she has ever seen on him before. It’s a private little thing, open and easy and just between the two of them. Sanji has dimples, she realizes after a moment. Warmth gathers low in her gut and Zoro shifts, suddenly uncomfortable. 

“C’mere,” Sanji says, and he’s tugging her over and— wow, um— between his legs, her back to his chest and his arms around her waist. His (impossibly strong) legs are on either side of her body and his chin brushes her head when he talks. “Is this okay?” He asks, tentative and honest in the sudden silence between them. 

His fingers trace idle circles on her arm.

“Yeah,” Zoro says, because it is. If only she could get her body to calm down about it. She feels like she swallowed a bunch of bugs and they’re all caught somewhere in her chest, trying to get out. Each stroke of his (warm, soft) fingertips against the bare skin of her arm sets them buzzing in a frantic pitch. 

Sanji tucks his chin on top of Zoro’s head (which is funny, because she’s just as tall as him—they’re the tallest people on the Going Merry— and it’s only because she’s slumped down in his lap that he can reach the top of her head at all and— oh. 

His heart is beating really, really fast. 

Oh. 

Each exhale of his brushes by her face, smelling of smoke and the drink they shared. 

Oh… 

“You like me,” Zoro says, sudden but quiet. Sanji goes tense, like he’s about to bolt. “Don’t—I mean it’s… fine,” she gets out, making it very clear that she is not going to be moving anytime soon by relaxing further into his hold. 

She can feel him swallow, he’s pressed so close.

“Okay,” Sanji says after a moment. 

His hands are too still. Fucking idiot, she thinks. I shouldn’t have said anything. 

“You can keep…” she puts her hand over his and tries to mimic the little circles he had been drawing against her. Embarrassed and grateful that it’s dark so that he can’t see her blushing like fucking crazy, she pulls away. 

“O-oh,” Sanji starts, and then he’s doing it again and Zoro feels like she could melt and drift away, right here. After a moment or two, he presses the side of his face against hers. He breathes out, “Thank you,” and the feeling of the words coupled with the warmth of his face against hers is too much—she shivers. 

Sanji gasps, just a little. She just barely catches the sound. His hands freeze. His heartbeat is so loud. 

“Don’t—um. You don’t have to stop,” Zoro says, and it comes out like a whisper. It’s barely there. Her eyes stare out at the party, unseeing. Shadows from the bonfire dance across their legs as his hands begin to move. 

He exhales against her skin and it is shaky and gasping. Impossible to hide or control it, she shivers again, feeling that odd heat in her gut burn brighter. She shifts her legs, just a little and— oh… 

A sound skips out of her lungs. 

She’s… wet. 

In an instant, Sanji is pressing his face into her hair. His hands move from her arms and a protest dies in her throat as he whispers into her scalp, “Tell me to stop,” and then his warm, impossibly warm, graceful hands slip under her shirt. 

She gasps, legs jerking against the ground and Sanji drops a groan unlike anything she’s ever heard into her hair. His hands are shaking on her skin and it’s like nothing she’s ever felt—no one has ever touched her like this and it’s— 

One of his hands grips her side while the other slides up and up and up until his fingers brush the edge of her bra and her skin is on fire. 

His legs clench once around her, squeezing, and her lungs don’t have enough air—

“ Sanji,” she gasps and he freezes. 

Zoro swallows. She realizes that she’s panting, they both are, and they’ve barely moved. Sanji is frozen against her. When the thought comes, it comes slowly, like molasses...

She’s in control. 

She unsticks her tongue from the top of her mouth. “Go ahead,” she whispers, her voice barely there. His hands move and Zoro’s own hands come down to grip at his thighs on either side of her as his hand slides under her bra and slides over her breast. Belatedly, it occurs to her that he’s holding the one that’s scarred, that was nearly bisected that day on the floating restaurant, but Sanji doesn’t seem to care if the sound he makes is any indication. 

“ Fuck,” he breathes, sounding reverent. His face is still buried in her hair. The hand he has squeezing at her hip spasms and his breath jumps in his chest like some wild, unrestrained thing. 

“Sanji,” she says just for the rush of saying it. She doesn’t know if she’s ever used his name before. “Sanji,” she repeats. Zoro relishes in the way it makes his thigh muscles jump under her hands. He presses his face in the juncture between her shoulder and her neck. 

“Fuck, Zoro, you don’t know what you’re doing to me,” Sanji breathes. He gets her nipple in between his fingers and pinches and Zoro can’t help but squirm, gasping at the sensation between her chest and the slick-slide of her thighs against each other as she moves. 

She needs to touch herself—the lava at the core of her is hot like a fucking fever. 

Sanji rolls her breast in his palm and her train of thought completely derails, her mind dissolving into dust. Suddenly, Sanji’s hips jump against her, like he just can’t help it. The thought makes her head swim. 

She feels it then—he’s hard against her, the hot curve of his dick pressing insistently against her back. Zoro pushes back against him, grinding up against it and Sanji drops his mouth to her shoulder and groans into her skin. 

“ Fuck, Sanji,” she hisses. She can’t fucking wait anymore, she has to fucking touch herself or she might die, but as soon as Sanji catches on, he’s stopping her with the hand that he had around her hip. 

“Let me, let me, please, fuck, let me,” he whispers, hot and urgent against her neck and who is she to deny him this? 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” she replies, and she lifts her hands up behind her and around his neck. 

His hand slips under the waistband of her pants and he makes a sound not unlike the one he makes when he takes a punch. “ Fucking hell, Zoro, you’re going commando?” he sounds delirious with it, his hand petting at the bare skin of her navel. 

Zoro gasps out a laugh. “I don’t like underwear,” she says, and it sounds perfectly reasonable to her. But then a single finger dips low, ghosting over her slit, the most feather light touch that’s ever existed and she nearly screams. 

“Oh my god,” Sanji whispers, tracing up and down the lips of her sex. “Fuck, you’re so…” 

“Come on, Sanji,” she growls, then. She grinds her body hard against his erection. With an answering sound of his own, he hooks his finger and dips in and oh— 

Zoro breaks off into a sigh, her voice hiccuping as she squirms to try and get more of him inside of her. It’s perfect and not enough at the same time and she’s going to combust if he doesn’t do something. She’s so relaxed and wet already that she craves something bigger almost immediately. 

He pushes in up to the knuckle with almost no resistance, stroking against her insides like fucking velvet and it’s incredible and not enough at the same time. She throws her head back on his shoulder and his other hand clenches around her breast, hard. 

“Oh my god,” he pants against her, his hips making these little involuntary circles. He’s as hard as diamonds and Zoro wants to scream for all the sensation in her body at once. “You’re so wet,” he tells her like she doesn’t already know, like she can’t already feel it running down her thighs. 

“God, fucking, more, Sanji, c’mon,” she eggs him on, bearing down against the single finger inside of her. 

“I want to taste you,” Sanji says, and all of Zoro’s higher brain function promptly whites out. “Can I taste you? Please, Zoro, please,” and oh, she never thought she cared one way or another about begging, but the sound of it from Sanji? It's heady and hotter than anything she’s ever felt before. 

“Yeah, yes, yes,” she groans. 

With a bitten off, “fuck” Sanji grabs her by the hips and rearranges them, laying her out flat behind a chunk of stone rubble that will hide them from view of the party. He lays across the front of her, hands on either side of her face, his groin pressed tight against the core of her, and they blink, frozen, staring at each others’ faces. 

“Sanji,” she says at the same time he says, “Zoro” and then, like that, they are kissing.  

They’re both obviously inexperienced and far too horny to care. Saliva smears down both of their faces as they pant hot and heavy into each others mouths. Like he just can’t fucking stop himself, Sanji grinds down against her with every thrust of his tongue between her lips. She could kiss him forever but she’d much rather have the storm of arousal in her body addressed so she eventually breaks away by biting his lip. 

With a little, punched-out moan and a particularly hard buck of his hips, Sanji pulls away. 

“C’mon,” Zoro urges, tugging at his hair. It’s stupidly long. He goes with it, leaning into the sting on his scalp like it’s everything he’s ever fucking wanted. His eyes go half-lidded and hazy as she re-gathers it between her fingers and really truly yanks. 

Sanji outright moans and then he starts to slide his way down her body, taking her pants with him as he goes. 

Soon, Sanji is seated between her naked thighs, her pants discarded, and he’s staring at her with open adoration. It’s the most naked Zoro has ever been in front of another person before. The knowledge of it burns bright in her core. 

She shimmies out of her bra from underneath her shirt and tosses it away. She leaves her tank top on (it seems like Sanji likes it) and the cold air leaves her nipples peaked and hard through the fabric. Sanji has lost his shirt and is only wearing an impressive amount of bandages and his pants, which are ridiculously tented. 

“Touch me,” Zoro says and he dives in over her like a man starved. 

At the first touch of his tongue to her clit, Zoro’s thighs clench hard around his head and she shouts , biting down on her fist only after the fact. Sanji’s hands grip the underside of her thighs and dig in to the muscles there hard enough to bruise, his tongue laving hot and wet at the entire length of her cunt.

“Go up, up,” she pants, wanting him back on that fucking spot and he hastens to obey. His lips touch her swollen clit and she nearly fucking screams. “Harder, fuck, Sanji, harder,” she moans, feeling unhinged and wild at the sensation. One of his hands leaves her thigh and then there are two fingers pushing hot and insistent up into her, curling inside and he begins to suck on her clit in earnest. 

Sanji’s face is positively buried between her thighs and all she can see is a single eye, closed in concentration, and his stupid blonde hair. Zoro reaches down and brushes all of the hair out of his face. His eyes—both of them, so, so fucking blue— snap up to meet hers in surprise. His stupidly asymmetrical brows are the perfect icing to the dessert that is the ruddy blush on his cheeks. 

Sanji must see something he likes in her face because he moans against her and the vibrations send Zoro flying into orgasm. Every part of her clenches as she comes. It pulses through her whole body in spasms, radiating out in time with her heartbeat and Sanji lets her ride his face through it all. 

“I’m sorry, I—” he pulls away from her just as the spasms start to slow and gathers her ankles in one hand. The other, he braces against the ground. With his face scrunched up in a painful kind of ecstasy, Sanji grinds forward into the meat of the underside of Zoro’s thigh, his hips jumping once, twice before he pitches forward into release, gasping hot and loud into the night. 

He drops her legs after a moment and slumps down on top of her body. Zoro wraps her legs around his waist to keep him there. The crotch of his pants are wet against her abdomen where her tank top has ridden up. Her whole body is singing like she’s just fought an incredible battle and won. Sanji is panting against her chest, breathing in big, desperate gasps. Zoro blinks down at him and the lower half of his face is absolutely glistening with her wetness. 

It hits her like a punch to the gut as Sanji licks his fucking lips and then hides his sticky face between her breasts, his chest heaving against her. 

“Oh my god,” he muffles into her chest. “I’m so sorry,” he says and Zoro is there, gathering his head up and out of her cleavage with desperate, sweaty hands. 

“Why the fuck are you sorry?” she gasps, unable to stop the giggling laughter that bubbles out of her chest. She feels absurd, petting a hand down his sex-flushed face, frantic with the urge to soothe whatever is happening behind his eyes right now. Frankly, Zoro is still seeing stars from that orgasm. It is completely like the cook and completely unacceptable for him to be unhappy and ruin this afterglow. 

“I—” Sanji blushes something furious. “I didn’t even get my pants off,” he whispers, like it’s fucking shameful, like he’s  embarrassed,  like even the admission of it pains him. 

“God, Sanji, you were perfect,” Zoro says, because what else is there to say but that? “Fucking incredible and you’re goddamn apologizing to me?” She arranges his face until he has nowhere to look but right at her. “I cannot fucking feel my legs, I came so hard,” she tells him with deadly sincerity. 

Finally, something in him cracks, and the cook smiles, sheepish but pleased. God his face is still so wet with her and the sight of it sends Zoro’s heart skittering into mad palpitations. 

She smiles right back, helpless to stop it. “C’mere,” she mumbles eventually, tugging him up against her just enough that he’s no longer boob-level but so that his head can fit against her neck. “I’m cold again,” Zoro grumbles once she’s gotten him where she wants him. 

“Okay,” he whispers, painfully intimate against the side of her neck. 

Together, they are warm. 

 

---

 

Zoro has never really cared about how she looks. She likes her earrings and she likes being strong and she likes it that men mostly leave her alone (with one notable exception). She doesn’t grow her hair out and she doesn’t give a damn about her clothes, Sanji be dammed. She spends ninety-percent of her day training and the rest of it fighting and sleeping in turn. Her body is covered with mottled scar tissue and bright red love-bites. (Those, she likes the sight of.)

She is a woman of sensation and feeling—the crack of bone beneath her swing, the sound that Wado makes as she slices through the air, the arterial spray of an enemy hot against her hands as she cuts them down… the feeling of Sanji’s breath rushing across her skin in his sleep, the warmth of his hands and the delicacy of their motion, the brush of his lips when he kisses her because he’s angry and wants to fight with their mouths instead of with their fists. 

She cherishes these like other women cherish rich perfumes or silken shirts. (Although, Sanji does get her a couple of silk shirts and she’s gotta admit, they’re kind of great.) 

 

---

 

“Hey, Zoro!” Luffy calls, catching up to her as she wanders aimlessly through a town’s market. 

“Yeah?” she asks, watching as her captain and Usopp come barreling into her space, their eyes bright and mischievous. 

“When you marry Sanji,” Luffy starts, and all of Zoro’s words die on her tongue, “which one of us is your best man?” 

It takes her awhile to recover from the shock long enough to answer. But, eventually, she does. 

 

---

 

(For the record, Luffy was very disappointed that Usopp would be the one to take the title of Zoro’s best man. But, then Zoro clarified that Luffy would be the one to actually marry her and Sanji, whenever that day may arise-- whether it be two or twenty years down the road. This is a responsibility fit only for the captain, after all.)

 

 

 

Notes:

I've have a bunch of drafts and half-finished updates just sitting in my drive right now and what did I do instead of finishing or working on any of those things? I started a new thing

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