Chapter Text
It is a beautiful afternoon on board the Thousand Sunny. Her residents have finished a full and heart-filling lunch, and now are spreading out to bask in the glowing sunlight. Luffy perches on the head of their beloved ship, smug as a cat; his eyes gazing somewhere higher than the blue sky. Usopp tends to his slingshot in the corner of the deck, spurred on by a sudden spurt of creativity to update his bombs and bullets. Chopper sits to the right of their shooter, eyes sparkling as he enthusiastically poses questions about the explosive chemical qualities of Pop Green, to which Usopp replies with equal zeal. Franky chugs on a bottle of cola, nodding his head along with Brook’s joyous melodies. Robin stretches out on a lounge chair, a book in her hands, reading as always, though her choice of literature seems to be more light-hearted than usual.
Zoro climbs up from the path to the men’s quarters, fresh out of his post-workout shower and determined to nap the rest of the lovely afternoon away in the shades of Nami’s mikan bushes. Just as he closes his eyes, the redhead marches to him, a brand-new outfit adorning her voluptuous body as she stops right above his head. Her skirt is thigh-high; its ruffles move a little with the wind.
“Zoro,” she calls, earning a grunt from the man, “What d’you think?”
“‘Bout what?”
“This.” Nami gives it a twirl. As if telepathically, Zoro cracks an eye to look at her. She has chosen a (fashionably) tattered tank-top, its fabric snugly hugging her bosoms. The color goes nicely with her skirt, as do her various necklaces. The boots are also a new addition to her wardrobe— they are black and shiny, a little unusual for her palette.
Still, she looks ravishing. She looks out-of-this-world, and yet the man laying right under her skirt nonchalantly closes his eyes and passes her a dismissing comment, “It’s fine. Why are you even asking me this? Robin’s right there.”
“You know why!” Nami huffs, exasperated by his non-reaction, “Robin helped me pick out this ‘fit, but she’s not exactly… well-versed on the subject.”
“It’s about the incident?”
“It is about the incident.”
“I don’t see how I’m better than Robin on this.”
“Yeah, you’re dense as fuck,” nonetheless, she kneels down to pester and poke at his face, “But somehow your sixth sense is crazy accurate, so help a girl out!”
Zoro rolls onto his side, away from her, but there is no need for body language to express the assurance in his voice, “You’re fine as you are, their opinion shouldn’t matter. Wear a pin or bracelets if you want. They don’t believe you, we beat the shit outta them.”
Nami seems to be weighing his words between her scrunched eyebrows, before patting his shoulders in silent gratitude. As she walks across the lawn, a few good-natured whistles pass by, before peace reigns again: Brook plays his violin, Franky sips on his cola, Robin reads her book, Zoro dozes off in the shades,
and Sanji—
Sanji does not know what the actual fuck just happened.
Let him run the facts here.
Exhibit A: Nami in a tight tank-top and just-long-enough skirt, showing off her ethereal legs.
Exhibit B: Zoro on the ground, having a full view of those legs and maybe a glimpse of what underneath that skirt, and did not even attempt to show any sort of reaction.
Now, it is common knowledge that the moss on Zoro’s head grew thick and curled into his skull like artificial hair on a doll’s head, so the part of his brain where healthy hormonal attraction to the opposite sex resided is irreversibly damaged. Sanji would pity his incapability of appreciating true beauty—because really, without women, Sanji would lose the will to live—if he is not offended on Nami’s behalf. The least Zoro could do was acknowledging Nami’s wonderful legs were no place of his to look and turning away immediately.
But that damn seaweed had the nerve, the audacity, to look unaffected. And to give their magnificent navigator a half-assed comment. What the hell did he mean by “It’s fine”?! She is very much more than “fine”, she is painstakingly beautiful—
Then again, Sanji can’t blame Zoro for a brain defect. It isn’t like the mosshead was that unique— Luffy suffers from the same condition, though their Captain has always been different... Moving on!
Exhibit C: Nami asked Zoro, of all people, for fashion advice.
Robin is right there. Hell, Sanji is right here, a few steps behind her, on his way to pick a few tangerines for his panna cotta recipe. Usoppe’s branch workshop is not that far, Franky would have been adept should she need a male’s perspective. Brook has a decent fashion sense (though Nami would punch him when he makes an underwear comment.) Even Chopper and Luffy would at least offer her some positive feedback!
And yet she deemed Zoro the right man for the job. Zoro, who probably owns under 5 garments in his wardrobe.
“Why couldn’t Nami-swan ask you, Robin-chwan?” Sanji turns to her after a few minutes of standing still and staring into Zoro’s back. The navigator mentioned something about a six sense—
Robin smiles cryptically, “Our swordsman is good at reading people.”
The lovely afternoon soon morphs into a lovelier evening, and Sanji is left with his confusion uncleared. Though with his Captain’s incessant cry for dinner, all is forgotten.
***
Sanji inhales a generous lung of breath as he steps down from the dock of the Sunny. They have been at sea for months, and while he loves sailing in the free wind, the steadiness of unmoving islands grounds him. They still have a month or so to reach Sabaody— a stop for supplies and relaxing on land is a bit overdue. They are anticipating another two months of sailing, so Nami has found a nice autumn island with nice enough people for the crew to stretch their muscles.
“Okay guys, remember to come back by 3!” Nami, the goddess that she was, reminds them, before rushing toward the nearby market. The rest of the Strawhats follow suit, gradually spreading to different parts of town. Luffy immediately grabs Chopper and makes a run for food stalls, and Sanji only trails after them because he feels sorry for the merchants serving them.
As expected of a port town, there is an abundance of seafood at a reasonable price. Sanji busies himself with checking out fresh ingredients, bargaining, and making sure Luffy isn’t starting another war.
By lunch, Luffy drags them into a café to take up the challenge of eating a giant hotdog. Sanji, with various kinds of meat, spices, and dry vegetables stocked up, decides to indulge in a hearty sandwich and a parfait, all the while paying for Chopper’s sundae. The weather is breezy, a little cloudy. Sanji lits a cigarette, watching the smoke curl out of the window, floating invisibly above a cowboy hat and a bright green head—
What are Robin-chwan and that mosshead doing over there?
Damn— turns out, while he’s stuck babysitting, moss-for-brain is hanging out with the angel herself.
Zoro whips his head around a few times, seemingly on edge, while Robin has her resting amused face on. They’re chatting about something, Robin hides her chuckles behind her hand and Mossy side-eyes her, mildly annoyed. Sanji has the sudden urge to force his way into whatever hidden joke they are having.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Sanji catches a young woman running toward the duo. Zoro probably has not noticed her, still looking around in other directions, but Robin certainly has. A flash of mischief shines in her eyes before she steps to the side.
Sanji chokes on air when the lady collides with Zoro’s back in a crushing embrace.
“I found you!” She yells, “Please, mister swordsman, go on a date with me!”
“ARGHHHH!” screams the man in her arms, in tandem with Sanji himself, because what the fuck? A lovely girl like her can do so much better than algae-on-muscles, so there has to be something else going on. Zoro looks downright petrified, wide-eyed— he knows that look, the mosshead is one second away from rudely shrugging her off. Sanji rushes to intervene, the day he let a woman feel bad on his watch would be his last day breathing. (And causing a scene when a Marine station is near enough to be visible—even as a tiny, white dot—does not bode well.)
“Miss, please respect the wishes of our swordsman,” says Robin before Sanji could make himself known, grinning like a Cheshire cat and very much enjoying Zoro squirming in misery, “If you let him go, I would tell you the reason why you wouldn’t want to go on a date with him.”
The lady huffs her cheeks, weighing her choices, before bobbing her blond head in disappointment and unwrapping her arms around the mosshead. Sanji promptly steps up and extends his hand.
“The reason is this dumbass can never appreciate you properly, he only has eyes for his swords. I’m Sanji, and if I may, I’d like to stand in his place as your date for today, how about that?”
Although she offers him her hand to kiss on as a greeting, the lady persists, “No way, he saved me from those men! He must be kind!”
“I’m afraid he was only using them as whetstones—” tries Sanji.
“He didn’t draw his swords at all!” the girl cries, “And I only wanted to repay his kindness with a date, but he kept refusing me. I want a reason!”
Zoro groans when Sanji glowers at him. How can moss-for-brain be this insensitive! Even if he isn’t interested, he could at least accept her offer out of decency! It is not every day a woman stoops to his barbarian level and asks him out, why can’t he just enjoy it!
Robin snickers from beside him, Zoro groans at her, too, but it is with less animosity and more exasperated pleadings, which only makes her grin wider. The lady turns to her, expectant. Robin simply passes Zoro a look, to which his eyebrows raise and he flicks his eyes between her and the other woman. Sanji knows it is the same joke again.
In the end, Robin takes pity on the mosshead and bends her knees to whisper to the lady. It only takes a few seconds before her cheeks blooms in embarrassment and she starts to profusely apologize.
“It’s alright.” Almost uncharacteristically, Zoro grumbles, soft but a little awkward. He looks at the young woman dead in the eyes and asks, “You do know you don’t have to offer your body to random men to show your gratitude, right?”
The lady tilts her head in such an innocent manner that Sanji feels sick in his stomach for having asked to be her substitute date, “I thought it’s how it’s supposed to be— in our town, at least.”
No wonder the mosshead is so adamantly against her proposal. Zoro may be a crude, barbarian primate of a man— but he never is immoral, no matter the nickname people have assigned to him. He sighs at her for what feels like the hundredth time.
“Never, ever, do that again, if you want those men to stay where I’ve put them.”
After a moment of silence where the young woman contemplates his words, he is rewarded with a blinding smile and another hug. Zoro looks as if he’d rather quit alcohol than hug her, Sanji notes, but he makes no effort to push her away. “You’re kind, mister!” She laughs and suggests a bottle of sake in lieu of a date, which the mosshead accepts easily.
Sanji watches in a daze as she tugs at Zoro’s arm and drags him to the local liquor store. He’d never… regarded it this way, how men expect women to force themselves into unwanted courtships as payment for decency.
“Our swordsman is good at protecting people, isn’t he?” Robin muses from behind him, fond and nostalgic, perhaps speaking from her own experience.
When she puts it like that, Sanji can’t bring himself to disagree.
***
It has been two years since Sanji last saw that bright shade of green, though it only takes two seconds of seeing it again that he arrived at a frustrating conclusion.
For unfathomable reasons, women flock to Zoro.
Sanji thinks helplessly when the Thriller Bark’s princess—Perona, his mind supplies—floats around a certain moss ball like a balloon. She bickers and prods at him, swirling around and sticking her tongue out in retaliation to something the swordsman says. Zoro flips a middle finger at her, petulant and childish for a twenty-one-year-old. Sanji silently draws the similarities between them and various pigtail-pulling romantic tropes he’s read at Kamabakka Kingdom— but they’re not alike, not in that way.
Still, he finds himself asking, “What is this, Marimo? Your girlfriend?”
When both Zoro and the stunning Perona crack their necks to glare at him, Sanji takes a moment to check for a second head he might have grown. He finds none.
“Are you sure this is your nakama?” Perona floats to inspect him, her pink hair bobbing in the wind. Sanji revels in her sweet perfume, acutely aware of the lack of women in his life for the last two years. She scowls, taking full offense at the mere insinuation of being involved with the mosshead—which Sanji can get behind, “A not-cute brute like him? As if! I have very high standards.”
“Your standards are either deceased or inanimate or an ugly old man like your captain.” Zoro sneers at her. Perona throws a hand on her head and gasps.
“How dare you bad mouth Captain Moria! He may be old and ugly but he’s still my wonderful captain! And a simpleton like you don’t have a say about my standards, especially when your taste in—”
“Guys, look!” Luffy exclaims, pointing to the sky. A large bird looms over them, carrying a waving Chopper. Luffy stretches his arms to leap onto the bird and gives their doctor a bone-crushing hug. Sanji sky-walked up to them before wrapping Chopper in a hug of his own.
Only when the bird flaps lower instead of taking flight does Sanji realize the mosshead has not jumped on yet. He peers down with half the mind to urge him.
“There’s intel about Marine ships coming here,” Perona almost sounds worried, which is strange, considering all the insults they’ve thrown at each other’s faces, “You’d better hurry up.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Zoro grimaces as if he is trying to vomit words out of his mouth rather than speaking them, “Thanks, for the last two years.”
The ghost princess puffs her cheeks in reply, but her eyes are misty. Then— then she does something Sanji never dreamed of witnessing—
She smacks a kiss on Zoro’s cheek.
He waits for the moment one of the three swords would be pressed to her neck. It never comes.
Sanji’s jaws are still hanging when the mosshead lands on the back of their feathered vehicle. Even though Zoro has wiped off her lipstick stain with the back of his hand, he can still see the barest hint of teeth marks. A beautiful goth woman with immaculate taste has kissed Zoro hard enough to hurt.
“I hate you!” Perona calls after them with no malice in her voice, to which Zoro yells back, “You’re fucking annoying, woman!”
It’s like— like a code or something. Their code. Sanji can’t fathom this. How can Zoro just— How is he so—
“What in the fuck was that!?”
How is he so comfortable around them? How are they so comfortable around him? While Sanji spends his whole life dressing, serving, acting as a gentleman, Zoro—brutish, rude, ungainly Zoro—does nothing to achieve this level of trust in a woman. In multiple women.
“Ah. Spent two years living with her.”
It’s not fucking fair. Kuma sent him to an island with no-one other than men pretending to be women, and Zoro got sent to live with a beautiful girl for two years! If it had been Sanji, he would have cherished her like the gothic angel she is. It should have been Sanji. He tries so hard— so damn hard— to appreciate the fairer sex, to express his undying love, and yet he knows they are never fully at ease around him.
The bird arrives on the deck of the Sunny. Sanji watches as Nami turns to Zoro after hugging him. It’s easier to see when it’s their straight-forward, strong, independent Nami— there’s a barrier between him and her when they wrap their arms around each other, the barrier which ceases to exist in the way Nami squeezes Zoro’s back in an embrace. They bump their fists together and Nami smiles with ease.
(Sanji will realize later, in the moment their navigator buries her tears in the lapels of his shirt, how mistaken he has been. But for now, he is stuck wondering just what is different between him and Zoro. What is he doing wrong?)
***
The land of Wano has been kind to Sanji. In the prospering Flower Capital, his ramen stall attracts the attention of women of all ages, and despite what Usopp may think, intel from the ladies is not to be underestimated. After the living hell that is Whole Cake Island and his god-forsaken birth family, serving good food to beautiful women proves to be a nice change of events. Even with the nagging feeling of danger coming at them every passing moment, Sanji decides to relax a tiny bit and indulge in the praises and coins the ladies in town throw at him.
Of course, the moment they see Zoro, all hell breaks loose. Yasuie has just been executed, and the mosshead pushes O-Toko into his arms as he draws his swords and aims at the pompous bitch of a shogun. Zoro’s anger seems to have overtaken his reasons, which is noble and all, if not incredibly ill-timed. Sanji tries to talk him out of it, he really does, though his attention is divided to a giant dinosaur’s feet at his head. Clutching Toko’s pink head closely to his chest, Sanji leaps into the air and strikes, before entrusting the poor girl to Usopp. Children should stay as far away from battlefields as possible.
Just as Sanji delivers a flaming blow to X-Drake’s head, he hears a sound—
There’s no mistaking it, that’s a woman in distress!
Roughly stomping a final kick at the dinosaur, Sanji determines her location and rushes toward her. The lady is trapped between two men as they forcefully grab her arm. She is resisting in vain, she is on the verge of tears, and Sanji would be damned if he couldn’t kick the brutes in the face for coercion of a woman—
Sanji almost falls on his face. Out of nowhere, Zoro pushes him out of his tracks and the lady falls into the mosshead’s arms instead of his. What in the fuck?
Zoro’s blade shines through the dust they’ve swept up from fighting as he hugs the woman sideways. Instinctively, she wraps her arms around Zoro’s neck, bracing herself for the impact of him dragging her like a bag of flour. Sanji almost scowls at the ungracious treatment before he sees her face free of the cloth covering her head, and then he scowls for real.
“Why are they always chasing you?!” She is a goddess. She is the most breath-taking woman Sanji’s ever seen—
“I’m so sorry, Zorojuro-san! I tried to hide my face, but…” Her voice is angelic. Her eyes are sapphires shining in the sky. If someone had said she was the treasured oiran of the nation, Sanji would have believed them in a heartbeat. She—
Apparently, she knows Zoro. What in the hell was the mosshead up to when he strayed away from the crew?!
Before Sanji can interrogate him, Zoro runs away with all of his might, a trail of Orochi’s underlings hot on his heels.
***
(The next time they reunite with Zoro, Sanji stumbles upon the mosshead and their navigator conversing in a secluded corner of town.
“I heard about what happened in the bathhouse. From Brook.” speaks Zoro, his voice stern.
“It’s alright,” Sanji can’t see Nami’s face from this angle, but he catches a glimpse of her hand patting the side of Zoro’s arm, “It’s just Sanji. Got used to it after god knows how long we’ve been traveling together.”
“You shouldn’t have to. I’m gonna slash his ass.”
“Zoro. Drop it. I said I’m fine,” Nami repeats, more convincing herself than the swordsman, “I’m fine. I know what I have to face when I choose this style. I’m not letting them change how I want to dress.”
Zoro may have quipped “You weren’t even dressed” in return. Sanji doesn’t know— he has run away, the coward that he is. Them, she has called, he is them. Briefly, the swirly eyebrows and colored hair that haunt his night terror flash before his eyes, and Sanji throws up under a nearby tree.
This is the difference between him and Zoro.)
***
After everything has gone down in Wano and they narrowly escape the evil clutches of Death, the people of the land throw an enormous party for them in true Straw hat fashion. Zoro and Luffy have just woken up from their battery-recharging slumber, and are currently downing anything and everything edible within their reach. As moss-for-brain drains a giant sake bottle, Hiyori—the most beautiful woman in Wano and the very one he’s missed the chance of rescuing—plasters herself to his side, giggling and blushing in the prettiest shade of pink. Zoro is, of course, oblivious to her beauty and her obvious interest in him—he’s going to break her heart when she finally confesses, and Sanji can’t take it. It’s unfair to her that the damn moss ball operates with a malfunctioning head.
So Sanji, naturally, sets out to talk some sense into him. She is an oiran; he is a samurai (more or less, anyway). She’s righteous and dazzling; he’s (ugh) strong and (ugh) not bad-looking. They met when he rescued her from forces of evil, and she has fallen head over heels for him ever since. When he travels the world to conquer his ambitions, she’ll stay to provide a home for him to return. Sanji has dreamt of a romance like theirs since he was holed up in a cold and dark cell in North Blue. As much as he doesn’t think Zoro deserves her with the indifference he poses, Sanji is a romantic at heart and would like to see his (ugh) friend happy.
He is also a tiny bit jealous. Not that Sanji would admit it out loud.
“Oi, Marimo,” Sanji approaches them with the most serious expression he can muster, “I need to talk to you.”
“Oh, yeah,” Zoro glares at him and draws all three of his swords, “I came back from hell just to kill you.”
Well— that hasn’t been what Sanji wants to talk about. He’d rather not talk to Zoro about it at all. He can hear the nakamaship of don’t-you-dare-die behind his words, however. It’s making him a bit touchy-feely, so he responds with the only way they communicate—a brawl.
(Hiyori is smiling behind her hand as she watches Zoro swing his swords around. The mosshead is dense as fuck, Sanji concludes, but he’s nakama.)
Some time afterward, Sanji decides to approach the perfect Hiyori about it, because Zoro is a lost cause when it comes to delicate matters of the heart. To his surprise, the princess of the land simply arches her neck in a feathery, elegant laugh.
“I’m not interested in Zorojuro-san,” she says.
“But you’ve been making all the passes at him— all the offers.” Why bother doing that if you didn’t want him?
“Ah, yes, that,” Hiyori sighs as she gazes up at the sky, the benevolent moonlight falls on her cheeks, “You know, Sangoro-san, back then when I lost everything, I was left no choice but to enter the path of an oiran. Men did horrible, horrible things to me. They were greedy, so greedy, and it’s always an illusion of choice between serving in pain, or serving in power,” her voice is unsteady, as do her hands. Sanji takes it upon himself to place his hand above hers.
She smiles in gratitude, “I chose power. If I made the first move, men would think they’ve somehow impressed me with their prowess, and I wouldn’t be free, but my value would increase to stroke their own ego. Sooner or later, I would be more than what they could afford.”
“People say the fair oiran only used men for their money,” Sanji jokes light-heartedly, “I have no objection to that, by the way.”
Hiyori nods in enthusiastic agreement, “With Zorojuro-san, however— you know who he is. I’ll admit I had harbored a bit of a fleeting crush, how could I not? But he’s made his rejection clear. I keep pestering him because I know he’s aware I’m doing it out of gratitude, I know he wouldn’t take advantage of it. It’s… freeing, in a way, to be rejected.”
To be seen as human, not a sparkling, voiceless trophy. Ah, he finally gets it.
The princess falls silent, then. She smiles softly to the moon. Sanji thinks she looks free.
“And of course, Zorojuro-san’s partner wouldn’t like it if anything happened between us.”
What the—