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Uncharacteristically, Zoro’s the one who wakes up first.
It wasn’t a very good nap, clearly, because his head is throbbing and he’s sore everywhere, like he’s just finished a particularly grueling workout. There isn’t an inch of him that’s not covered in sand; it’s caked onto his skin, burrowed deep in the fabric of his clothes, packed into his mouth, crusting up the corners of his eyes.
When he tries coughing it up, he spits out seawater. The briny taste of it on his tongue brings back flashes of the ocean—violent and black and turning, waves tall as houses crashing mercilessly against the Merry. Zoro recalls clinging onto a piece of driftwood for dear life as the water rose up over his head. Clinging onto the driftwood, and clinging onto—
Zoro sits up like a man possessed, instantly forgetting any grogginess or stiffness in his joints. He scans the shore above him, where a huddled, lanky form is sprawled a few feet ahead.
Zoro clumsily staggers over. It’s hard to get his legs to work at first; his feet feel like they’ve been encased in cinder blocks, water-logged and numb. He makes it most of the way over before he slumps back down onto his knees in the sand, although he’s hardly worried about that anymore.
“Hey,” he calls. His voice is like gravel in a blender, awful even to his own ears. “Cook. Wake up.”
He reaches out and jostles Sanji’s shoulder. “Cook,” Zoro tries again, to no avail. It’s alarming how limp he is, how light his arm is when Zoro lifts it in a futile attempt to draw a response from him. Paired with Sanji’s unresponsiveness and the unnatural pallor of his face—paired with the fact that they’ve washed up on an island in the middle of buttfuck nowhere—panic seizes Zoro in its curled, vicelike fist.
He is no stranger to how quickly death can strike. He still remembers how, only a day before Kuina died, the two of them had snuck out of a lesson early to go down to the river. How they took turns plunging their swords into the water trying to spear the fish on their blades, how Kuina’s voice sounded reflecting off the pond’s surface, echoing and bright and so tangible and so close, just for her to be gone the very next day.
Zoro is already fearing the worst, that this is what’s become of Sanji now—here one moment, gone the next, a flame snuffed in seconds—when Sanji suddenly bucks once, violently, under his grip. Zoro releases him and watches, stupefied, as Sanji flops onto his side and coughs up seawater for nearly a minute.
When he’s hacked up the last of the water in his lungs, Sanji pushes himself up on his palms and turns. Despite how exhausted he looks, his eyes are still wild when they latch onto Zoro’s face.
Sanji starts out, “The Merry—”
“Not here,” Zoro tells him. “There was a storm. Remember?”
“I was getting Chopper off the deck,” Sanji says slowly, frowning, like the mere act of recollection is giving him a headache. “I went over.” He looks up as he remembers: “You jumped in after me.”
Zoro nods.
“Did the others…”
“They all stayed on board.”
“Good. That’s good. They’ll have a better chance of finding us here, that way.”
“Right,” Zoro says. “Except I’ve got no clue where here is.”
They’ve touched down on enough islands by now for Zoro to be able to tell, relatively quickly, what a civilized one looks like. The signs are clear early—the vegetation is managed, docks or ports decorate the shoreline, roofs are visible over the tips of the trees.
As far as Zoro can tell, whatever islet they’ve just washed up on is uninhabited. They’re surrounded by wily trees and thick, overgrown bushes. Vacant silence seems to stretch out in every direction.
Of course, Zoro thinks. This is just the kind of luck they would have.
Sanji sinks back down, letting his head drop back against the wet beach. The specks of sand scattered across his face and hair look almost like stardust. He shuts his eyes against the fierce sunlight and murmurs again, “You shouldn’t have come after me, idiot.”
#
If Zoro had been holding onto any hope that there was a single acre of hospitable land on this islet, it’s squandered by the time they break beyond the treeline. They’re barricaded on every side by a mountainous range of rocks, each one sharper and less inviting than the last.
Less than five minutes have passed since they both regained consciousness when a new argument starts between them. The longest they’ve gone without bickering, Zoro guesses, was probably the hours they spent knocked out on the beach together. This time, the argument is over what course of action they should be taking: Zoro wants to search for any possible inhabitants, Sanji wants to start a fire.
“It’s going to get dark faster than you think,” Sanji reasons, glancing out towards the water. “We don’t even know what time it is. If the sun goes down, and we don’t have a fire going, the night’s going to be miserable.”
“If the sun goes down and we get attacked by Marines or monsters or who knows what else is living here, we’ll be dead,” Zoro retorts. “I’ll take miserable over that any day.”
“You seriously think we’ll find Marines here? Here, on this tiny scrap of land in the middle of nowhere that’s probably not even on Nami’s map?”
“We’ve had worse surprises before, haven’t we?”
“We should be thinking practically. I know you’re probably just itching for a fight, but we need to think about self-preservation first.”
“Maybe we should just split up, then.”
“Maybe we should,” Sanji says, or starts to say, when he’s cut off by an ear-splitting crack of thunder.
The sound is like cannonfire, and for a fraction of a second Zoro actually thinks they’re under siege. He has two immediate instincts: the first reaching for Wado, and the second reaching for Sanji.
But then there’s another echoing boom, accompanied this time by bright-blue flashes of light that strike them in epileptic bursts. If Zoro wasn’t already connecting the dots, Sanji spells it out for them: “Storm.”
Right on cue, the first few icy droplets of rain land on Zoro’s head, which is the only warning he gets before precipitation is suddenly pelting down on them. Zoro can’t remember the last time he’s seen it rain this hard, or if he has ever seen it rain this hard, period. Each raindrop strikes like a bullet, stinging against his bare skin, drenching them in a matter of seconds.
“Shit,” Sanji hisses, lifting the hems of his pants legs, as if that will help at all at this point. “It’s already flooding. We’ll be swept away at this rate.”
“We need to get to higher ground.” Zoro starts up the pile of rocks, wedging his shoes into rocky footholds where he’s able. It feels frighteningly easy to slip right now, all the rocks glossy and slick with rain.
Sanji is close on his heels, following Zoro’s lead as they start to scale the stony hill. “What do you think I was implying?” huffs Sanji, indignant.
“Nothing,” Zoro grunts in reply. “It just sounded like you were complaining a lot to me.”
“Unlike you, I actually have survival instincts.”
“I have survival instincts!”
“You have kill-it-with-a-sword-if-it-moves instincts. There’s a difference. I don’t think you’d last a day stranded here on your own.”
Another retort is curling on the edge of Zoro’s lips, but he abandons it when, out of nowhere, Sanji makes a startled noise, almost like he’s being strangled. Zoro turns just in time to see Sanji losing his balance, hands scrabbling desperately for wet rock, but it’s no use, it’s raining too hard to grab hold of anything—
Zoro’s hand shoots out, bullet-quick, and he grabs Sanji by the wrist. There’s no chance his grip isn’t crushing the cook’s hand, but there’s even less of a chance Zoro is loosening his hold and risking Sanji slipping anytime soon. He yanks Sanji up, only there’s not much room on the rock he’s standing on for another person to perch, so the resulting effect is Sanji spilling right against Zoro’s chest, their bodies tangling together.
As soon as Sanji’s on both feet again, Zoro wraps an arm around Sanji’s shoulders for good measure and tries not to look down. He tries not to estimate their elevation from where they started on the beach, tries not to imagine what might have happened if he’d been a second later to react, tries not to imagine Sanji falling down the slope and hitting the jagged rocks below and splitting his skull open in one lethal instant—
“Marimo,” says Sanji, who’s alive and warm and rain-soaked in Zoro’s arms. Beneath his hand, Zoro can feel Sanji’s heart thrumming fast against his ribcage. “Hey. Idiot. You can let go of me now, I’m fine.”
Zoro blinks himself out of his petrified stupor to peer at the cook. “You’re shaking.”
Sanji gives him an odd look. “No, you are.”
Sanji’s right, Zoro realizes. He’s trembling like a leaf, and he’s pretty sure it’s not just from the cold; Zoro never gets cold, having trained any physical responses to temperature out of himself years ago. Which means something even worse—he’s shaking from fear. This isn’t supposed to happen, either.
Sanji is already frowning, placing his hands against Zoro’s quivering arms, moving them up and down just slightly. The touch is enough to make Zoro want to die right here on this rock—from shame or humiliation or gratitude, he isn’t sure. “We need to get you out of the rain,” says Sanji, and Zoro doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he isn’t really cold.
“We need to get out of this rain, period,” Zoro agrees gruffly, pulling himself away from Sanji’s prying hands and eyes as roughly as he can without sending them both tumbling over the rocky platform again. Scanning the landscape, he spots a gaping crater in one of the rock faces on his right. “There,” he says, climbing toward it, too eager to get away from the perilous cliffside and Sanji’s scrutinizing gaze.
Inside, the cave is small, cramped, dank. It smells of petrichor, earthy and damp. Zoro climbs in first, then looks to Sanji expectantly. Sanji just stands in the cave’s entryway, arms folded, rain pattering against his hair and shoulders.
“I’m not going in there,” says Sanji, petulant.
“Why not?”
“It’s disgusting. There’s probably centuries of grime packed in there.” Sanji shudders. “And bugs.”
“Quit whining.”
“Of course you don’t mind,” Sanji grumbles. “That thing’s covered in moss. You probably feel right at home.”
“If you’d rather stand outside in this rain, be my guest.”
Sanji stares at Zoro for a long moment, eyes brimming with passionate loathing. Zoro has made plenty of enemies throughout his life—Marines who want him behind bars, pirates who want him dead—and he doesn’t think any one of them has looked at him with as much feeling.
Finally, just when Zoro thinks Sanji really is just stubborn enough to stand outside in the thunderstorm, the cook relents. With a long suffering sigh, he crawls in through the narrow cave mouth and pulls himself into a sitting position opposite Zoro.
“Of course,” Sanji mutters as he wrings the rainwater out of his shirt. “Of course it’s not bad enough I had to wake up here with you. Of course we have to deal with a hurricane on top of it. Just my luck.”
“You think I feel lucky right now, shit-cook?” Zoro growls.
Sanji doesn’t look at him. “You brought this on yourself. I didn’t ask you to jump after me.”
“Next time I’ll just let you drown, then, is that what you want?”
“Yes,” Sanji snaps tersely, and any retort Zoro was coming up with abruptly dies in his throat. Sanji squeezes the last of the water out of his shirt before crossing his arms and facing the cave wall.
After a while, it’s Sanji who breaks the silence. “This rain doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon,” he says, still not looking at Zoro. “Get some rest if you want. I’ll wake you up if the island monsters come knocking on our cave door.”
Zoro elects to ignore the pointed sarcasm, folding his hands over his chest and turning over. He closes his eyes and tells himself he probably lost the right to complain anyway. Sanji’s right—it wasn’t like anybody told Zoro to jump in after him. And it wasn’t like there was any rational thinking involved in the decision. Zoro could have just as easily stayed on the ship, and nobody would have blamed him or batted an eye.
But he did. In that split-second of watching Sanji free fall into the rolling waves, Zoro made up his mind to dive in too. Now he wonders how he made that decision so quickly, and why, and just as he feels close to understanding, a dark blanket of sleep envelops him.
#
The very first thing Zoro registers when he snaps back into consciousness is the sound of Sanji shouting.
In a flash, Zoro is sitting up, already reaching for his swords and scanning the tiny cave space for the threat. He doesn’t find one. He just finds Sanji, flailing and making guttural noises that Zoro’s never heard from him before.
“What?!” Zoro demands. “What the hell’s going on?”
“There’s a—on my—” Sanji finally slaps his hand against his sleeve, and a large black spider jumps off of him, skittering onto the ground.
For a few seconds, all Zoro can do is stare at the tiny insect in disbelief. Zoro has never known Sanji to scare easily; he made less of a fuss when they were being swallowed alive by Laboon. All this, over a spider?
The spider starts scuttling toward them again, and Sanji makes a strangled noise. In one swift motion, Zoro unsheathes Kitetsu and skewers the spider clean through the middle. He flicks it off of the sword as far away from them as possible, then uses his shirt to wipe the blade clean afterwards.
“It’s gone,” Zoro announces. When he turns back around, Sanji has his legs drawn up to his chest and his knuckles pressed against his mouth. “What are you doing?”
Sanji inhales deeply. “I’m,” he says in a strange, garbled voice, “uh, trying not to have a panic attack.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Zoro huffs, thinking this is just another one of Sanji’s typical histrionic routines. But Sanji’s breathing doesn’t even out as he presses himself back against the cave wall, eyes wide, twitching slightly. “Are you serious? You’re freaking out this much over a spider?”
Sanji’s face reddens. Hard to say whether it’s from embarrassment or oxygen deprivation. “You can,” he pants out, “go back to sleep, I’m fine.”
The humor of the moment dissipates as Zoro listens to Sanji wheeze. “Breathe, cook.” When Sanji continues to heave ragged, shallow breaths, Zoro stretches a hand toward him. “Hey—”
Sanji weakly slaps Zoro’s hand away. “I said I’m fine,” he hisses. To his credit, his voice comes out much steadier. “I just—need a minute. Ignore me.”
As if that’s possible, Zoro thinks but doesn’t say aloud. There’s only so much of ignoring anyone can do when they’re the only two people holed up in a crawlspace roughly the size of a broom closet. But out of respect Zoro averts his gaze, as if it matters anyway in the darkness, and for the next few minutes he just listens to Sanji’s panicked breathing slowly even out. By the time it returns to normal, Sanji has curled his legs up to his chest and looks thoroughly miserable.
Zoro clears his throat awkwardly. “Are you, uh…”
“I told you to go back to sleep.” Sanji’s gaze is distant, stormy. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t know you were afraid of spiders.” Zoro tries to think whether he’s ever gotten a glimpse of that before; he recalls Sanji complaining about gnats and fruit flies in the kitchen, another instance when the two of them were out on the crow’s nest together at night and Sanji got up and left the moment he caught sight of a cricket nearby. None of those times had Sanji reacted like this.
“Go ahead. Laugh all you want. I know it’s pathetic.”
The word pathetic is jarring, a shock of cold water to the face. They make their jabs at each other constantly, sure, but never over anything real—never when one of them is genuinely suffering. But Sanji says this with such conviction, like he’s so certain he’ll be persecuted for this singular display of vulnerability, that Zoro feels slightly seasick. He wonders who might have convinced Sanji that this sort of thing made him pathetic, deserving of ridicule.
For a moment, Zoro is quiet, straining to think of what to say. Then he decides: “I’m scared of heights.”
Sanji looks up at this, peering through his damp curtain of blonde hair. “Huh?”
There’s a moment of silence that feels like the first step out on a tightrope—that feeling of, Am I really doing this? This isn’t information Zoro volunteers readily—at all, really—and it makes his stomach twist itself into knots. He can still stop now, if he wants to. He can retreat. Walk back onto solid land.
“When I was younger,” Zoro says, “someone very close to me died falling down a stairwell.”
He doesn’t even say her name, but her face comes right to the forefront of his brain, exactly how she looked the last time he saw her. They’d returned from spending the whole day together at the river, both of them sun-kissed and sweat-damp, so she looked tanner than usual, her eyes still bright from all the laughing she’d done that day. She was holding the giant carp she’d caught with Wado. He remembers it down to the second, down to the word: Goodnight, Zoro, see you tomorrow. He’d said it back to her: See you tomorrow.
What an ignorant, arrogant thing to say in hindsight, as if tomorrow was a certainty. As if anything was. He didn’t know then it was the last memory he’d ever have with her, that they’d never be able to make any more together.
It’s Sanji’s face that pulls Zoro away from Kuina’s, his brows knit together in patient concern. Zoro inhales, letting the picture of her fall away in the practiced way he knows after doing it thousands of times now.
“For a while I didn’t like going down stairs. Whenever I stood at the top and looked down, I just imagined…” Zoro trails off, swallowing. “Then it wasn’t just stairs anymore. It was looking down from any high place.”
Realization dawns on Sanji’s expression. “Like the rocks earlier.”
“Just like that,” Zoro agrees. “Anyway. I’m not making fun of you for being scared, curly. Everybody has things like that.”
“I…” Sanji pauses. “Something like this happened to me and Zeff before. Except we were less lucky. We didn’t wash up on an island, we ended up on a tiny rock in the middle of the ocean. We were there for…” A shiver. “For a long time. There was nothing to eat, so at one point I had to eat—uh—insects, to survive.”
I actually have survival instincts, Sanji had said. Zoro hadn’t thought anything of it, but now those words have alchemized into something else entirely, something with weight. He doesn’t dare to ask how long a long time was, just like Sanji didn’t ask who the someone very close to Zoro was. They haven’t known each other forever, but they’ve known each other long enough to understand the things they can say aloud to each other, and the things they can’t, and the things they just don’t have to.
“Usually I don’t get that freaked out by bugs anymore,” Sanji says. His breath hitches. “But—just—being trapped like this, all this rock everywhere, listening to the—the sound of the water outside, just—it felt like, for a second, like I was back there, and I—I couldn’t—”
“You’re not there,” Zoro reminds him, because he feels Sanji could use the reminder now. When Sanji’s breathing continues to come ragged and shallow, Zoro reaches out and picks up one of Sanji’s shaking hands before he even really knows what he’s doing. It’s just an instinct he has, like fighting, like breathing, like reaching for Sanji when he thought there was danger.
Sanji’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t try to wriggle out of Zoro’s grip. Zoro takes this as an invitation to press his own thumb firmly into the center of Sanji’s palm. He can feel the indent of the lifeline there, and resists the urge to trace it up and down.
“Look,” Zoro says. “You’re here. With me.”
Sanji’s breathing slows, his eyes studying Zoro’s hand against his own. He looks away, and for a moment Zoro is sure he’s going to pull his hand back, but he doesn’t.
“Here with you sucks, too,” Sanji murmurs without any real conviction, and despite himself, Zoro laughs.
#
The storm stops all at once, just as quickly as it began. One moment Zoro is curled up against the cave wall next to Sanji, muscles cramping to fit into the tiny space, listening to the rain and thunder outside and thinking There’s no way this will ever let up and wondering how the hell they’re going to get out of this, and then the next moment beams of sunlight are streaming into the cave mouth.
Sanji’s all too eager to scramble out of the cave. Zoro follows after him, and just as he’s emerging from the rock, he hears Sanji say loudly, “What the fuck.”
After being holed up in total darkness for hours, Zoro is unprepared for just how bright it is outside; his eyes instantly sting with tears, and he has to force them shut against the blinding, all-consuming whiteness of the sunlight. But when his vision finally adjusts enough for him to open his eyes, he sees exactly what Sanji was reacting to.
The storm clouds have completely vanished, and the sky is an unrecognizable shade of serene, cornflower blue, sprinkled with the sort of puffy white clouds that only accompany good weather. But it’s not just the weather that’s changed.
All around them, the landscape has completely transformed. The rocks from yesterday are gone, replaced by lush green vegetation. Tall palm trees sway in the gentle seabreeze. The only evidence that it’s even the same island as before is the dampness left over from the rain, making the sand soft and the plant leaves dewy.
“It’s all different,” Sanji observes. “None of this was here before, right? How is this possible?”
“It’s the Grand Line,” Zoro replies. “Anything’s possible.”
“Can’t exactly argue with that logic. Still.” Sanji bends down to brush a cheese plant’s waxy leaves between his fingers, like he’s testing whether it’s actually real or not. It must be, because when he stands back up, his expression is dubious, on edge. “I’ve never seen anything like this. An island that can completely change in a day.”
For both their sakes, they don’t waste any time trying to discuss it or theorize any further for now. More important is gathering their bearings, finding a place to set up camp. They discover a sturdy palm tree on a nice shady spot on the beach, not too close to the tide, where they decide will be their primary base for the time being. Sanji suggests they use the tree to make a lean-to shelter, and although Zoro wonders—lean to what?—he just grunts and nods.
Neither of them dare to speculate when the Merry might get here—whether they actually need a shelter. They could be rescued before the end of the day. They could also be here for, well, a lot longer. Better to err on the side of caution.
“Now’s probably the best time to look for something we can eat,” Sanji says. “We don’t know when another crazy storm might roll in, if it happens as fast as last time. Are you hungry?”
Zoro’s stomach growls at the mere mention of food. “You have to ask?” he grumbles.
Sanji laughs. “I’ll go see what I can forage here that’s edible.”
“I’ll come,” Zoro offers, but Sanji’s already shaking his head.
“You are going to stay right here,” he says. “One of us should stay on the beach so we remember where this spot is.” Thoughtfully, he adds, “And I don’t want you wandering off into the jungle and getting yourself lost.”
Zoro’s blood boils. It’s actually sort of a relief—it was about time they returned to their usual programming. “I’m not gonna get lost, dumbass.”
“No you are not,” Sanji agrees cheerfully, “because you’re going to be right at this spot when I come back. Don’t fall on your swords or anything while I’m gone.”
“Maybe you should find a different spot for a shelter in the woods and never come back.”
“As if you’d last a day on your own.”
“As if you would.”
After Sanji leaves, Zoro sits in the sand for exactly three minutes before his patience wears thin. There’s no way in hell he’s sitting here playing house while Sanji goes and does all the interesting stuff. Every part of Zoro wants to hit the woods and look for something or someone to hunt, but he knows Sanji’s right, he’d never be able to find his way back before nightfall.
Still, Zoro’s itching to make himself useful, doesn’t matter how. So without wandering too far off the beach, he begins collecting whatever he can find. He’s never made a shelter before; the closest thing was probably the mock fortress he and Kuina built out of mud and sticks as children, one time when they were playing war, before he knew a thing about the real deal. He picks up anything that looks even remotely useful now—fallen tree branches, sticks, leaves, rocks—and hauls everything back to their marked spot on the beach.
On his way back, he finds what looks like a coconut and picks that up too. He unsheathes Kitetsu to cut it open when he freezes at the blinding glint of sunlight off of the blade.
He has—an idea. Which is only a good thing about fifty-five percent of the time, but Sanji isn’t around to discourage him, so at least he’s free to fail without risk of humiliation or mockery afterwards. From his pile of assorted sticks, he parses out a small handful of thin, dry tinder, then angles Kitetsu’s blade until the sunlight strikes in a tiny, concentrated pinprick against the sticks.
By the time Sanji returns, the fire is burning steadily, Zoro standing beside it like a proud mother. “I made fire,” Zoro announces.
Sanji quickly trains his expression into neutrality, but there’s the briefest unfiltered second where his eyes are wide and awestruck and disbelieving, and Zoro mentally catalogues it as his favorite expression from the cook he’s seen to date. Memories can be good, sometimes.
“I can see that,” Sanji remarks. “Not bad, marimo. How’d you pull that off?”
“Used Kitetsu to reflect the sunlight.”
“Huh. Like that glasses trick. That’s pretty smart for someone with rocks for brains.”
“Hey,” Zoro snaps. “You were the one whining about starting a fire, weren’t you? There’s your fire.”
“No, this is good. The smoke will make for a good signal in case Merry or anyone else comes by.” Sanji grins. “And we’ll be able to have roasted nuts in our salad.”
At this, he sets down a makeshift bowl crafted from a piece of hollowed out tree bark. Inside is a bustling assortment of wild fruits and vegetables that don’t look like much now, but Zoro has no doubt Sanji will be able to transform them with his magic.
“I found a coconut, too,” Zoro offers, gesturing.
Sanji looks down at it and his eyes grow wide. “That? Did you eat it already?”
“Didn’t have the chance yet.”
“Don’t.” Zoro’s caught off guard by the sudden severity in Sanji’s tone. “Don’t eat anything here that I don’t give you, okay? I don’t recognize all of the plants here. And we don’t know for sure if they’re even normal, with how weird everything else on this island is.”
Zoro glares, feeling oddly defensive over his coconut, the one thing he’d contributed to the food pile. “How do you know your stuff is edible, smartass?”
“I just do,” Sanji says simply. “Between us, only one of us has had culinary training his entire life. You really want to debate this topic with me?”
Zoro does, actually, and would happily debate any topic with Sanji, thank you very much. But he’s also aware that Sanji is the one who’ll be preparing tonight’s meal and every meal afterwards indefinitely in Zoro’s life, so he shuts his mouth and doesn’t argue further.
“Whatever,” he says. “You gonna make your stupid salad or what?”
They split up the work. Zoro lets Sanji borrow Wado to slice up the produce he’s gathered while Zoro starts to build their shelter by Sanji’s instruction. They finish at roughly the same time—Zoro builds a respectable framework of branches and leaves, and Sanji serves the wild salad he’s made on plates of bark.
As Sanji starts babbling about which fruit he used to make the dressing for its acidic, tangy flavor to pair best with the profile of the rest of the dish, Zoro takes it as his cue to tune him out and shoves a fistful of the salad into his mouth. It tastes incredible, no surprise there. Zoro thinks, Only him. Only Sanji would be able to do this, create a gourmet meal from virtually nothing. Sanji watches him while he eats, surveying his reaction closely.
“How is it?” Sanji asks, his way of saying he does care, at least a little bit, about Zoro’s opinion.
“It’d be better with protein,” Zoro replies, his way of saying it’s very good.
After they finish their meal, they use the rest of the daylight to add a couple more things to the shelter—a leaf canopy to collect evening dew, woven palm frond mats to sleep on. Then they both curl up in the shelter for the night.
Here, in the darkness, it’s not so difficult to pretend that they’re back in their quarters at the Merry. It’s not so unlike every other night Zoro has spent lying across from Sanji and listening to the sound of him breathing.
That sound, every inhale and exhale, sometimes feels like the only reminder Zoro has that Sanji is real. Sometimes it can be hard to believe, with everything Sanji’s able to do, with how often he defies the impossible.
Zoro knows he can be an idiot, but even he knew from the first time he ever saw him at the Baratie, putting his shoe through an offending diner’s teeth and serving a lady consommé all in the same bat of an eye, that Sanji was a particularly special human being. You don’t have a person like that in your life without having them mean something fierce to you. So when Sanji joined the crew, naturally Zoro hardly knew what to do with himself. It’s one thing to witness a miracle—how the hell do you live with one?
Like this, Zoro supposes, as he watches Sanji’s chest rise and fall in the dark. One breath at a time.
#
Within a few days, the island transforms once again, although not so drastically this time. Zoro and Sanji are taking a walk together through the woods when Sanji suddenly stops to point out a stream that wasn’t there before.
The water in the stream is clear as glass, so when the fish dart past, they’re brightly colored as pieces of candy. Every scale is visible, some of them catching the sunlight and reflecting odd holographic light back up through the water’s surface.
At the sight of them Sanji makes an incredulous, giddy noise, halfway between a squeal and a high, pealing laugh. He races forward and drops down to his knees in the dirt, bowing his head to get a better look.
“No way,” Sanji breathes. “Mossy, come look!”
Zoro strolls up behind him, arching a brow. “I can see from here,” he replies dryly. “Fish. Cool.”
“Not just any fish. These are coral mirrorfish,” Sanji emphasizes, as if any of those words mean anything to Zoro. “You can tell by the way the scales reflect—like a mirrorball—and they have those massive dorsal fins. I’d recognize one anywhere. Zeff used to keep one in an aquarium at the Baratie, but we were never allowed to cook it since they were too rare. So we just had to look at it swimming around every day. His prized possession.” There’s a glimmer in Sanji’s eyes, not just from the stream. “I have literally dreamed of cooking these things.”
There’s something in the way Sanji says this, with that overwhelming swell of emotion, that makes Zoro feel the same way he does after a good fight: giddy, adrenaline-drunk, like the whole world is his to conquer. Zoro decides within this second that there is absolutely zero way they’re walking away from this stream without a mirrorfish for Sanji to cook. Dreams are not something the Straw Hats take lightly.
Zoro pulls Wado from his belt and levels the blade straight down, holding the hilt eye level so he can peer at the fish like he’s looking down the front sight of a gun. “What are you doing?” Sanji asks over his shoulder.
“What’s it look like?” Zoro says. “Spear fishing.”
“Pretty sure you need a spear for that, dumbass.” When Zoro doesn’t budge, Sanji makes a squawking sound and exclaims, “Are you serious? You’re just going to scare them all away!”
“Shut up and let me concentrate, curls.”
To Sanji’s credit and Zoro’s surprise, Sanji actually does shut his mouth, backing off to give Zoro space. Zoro takes advantage of the silence to recall the day he did this with Kuina. After she’d caught her own fish, Zoro had made multiple futile attempts to copy her until finally Kuina sat him down to demonstrate.
You can’t just line it up with the blade, she told him. You have to understand where the fish wants to go. It’s all about anticipation.
It’d be easier if they weren’t all swimming away, Zoro huffed.
Well, that’s how everything works, Kuina had laughed. Everything swims away. What matters is that you keep fishing anyway.
Zoro waits. He spots one particularly large mirrorfish—easier target, more for Sanji to cook—and decides, this is the one. He watches it swim in slow, lazy circles for some time, studying its movement and its speed until he feels he knows it intimately. Then he anticipates and brings the sword down. When he lifts the sword back out of the water, a mirrorfish is impaled on the blade, still flopping with the last of its life force.
A self-satisfied grin spreads across Zoro’s face as he holds the fish up for Sanji to see. “What was that you said about needing a spear?”
“Lucky shot,” Sanji comments, but he’s clearly way too thrilled to sound even slightly derisive.
The fish cooks beautifully, made even better when Sanji crusts it with crushed nuts and pairs it with a tapenade of herbs and fresh wild fruit. “Pretty good work,” Zoro comments without much thought.
He regrets it instantly when Sanji’s head perks up. “Did you just give me a compliment?”
Zoro’s ears burn. “Not you. I’m saying we don’t make an awful team.”
“Maybe not,” Sanji says. He thinks for a moment. “If you had to be stranded here for a year—”
“Not gonna happen, idiot,” Zoro snaps.
But Sanji shakes his head with an irritated huff of breath. “Would you let me finish? I’m posing a hypothetical question, marimo. If—if you had to be stranded here for a year—who on the crew would you choose to be stranded with?”
Zoro finishes the last of his fish and grumbles, “Not answering that.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Stupid question. We’re all crewmates. We don’t have favorites.”
“What a lie,” Sanji clucks. “You have a least favorite. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out the opposite.”
“I don’t have a least favorite.” At this, Sanji gives him a peculiar, expectant look, and Zoro sputters, caught off guard: “You? You think you’re my least favorite person?”
“Anyway, I wasn’t asking you to choose favorites,” Sanji says, expertly dodging the question. “It’s not a matter of how much you like the person. Being stuck with someone for that long—you’d want to kill anyone. It’d have to be someone you’d never want to kill. Like Nami or Robin.”
“They might want to kill you,” Zoro points out.
Sanji gives a dreamy sigh, flopping down onto his back on his palm frond mat. “I couldn’t think of a better way to go.”
“Well, it’s a good thing we’re not going to be here for a year,” Zoro says again. “The Merry should be here any day now.”
“Right.” There’s a brief spell of silence. Then Sanji says, “Although—with this island being so difficult to live on, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just as difficult to find. It’d explain why there’s nobody else here; it doesn’t seem like people find themselves here every day.”
Zoro narrows his eyes. “So you doubt Nami’s skills as a navigator.”
This makes Sanji sit up. “Of course not,” he snaps. “I would never.”
“That’s what you’re saying,” Zoro shoots back. “You’re doubting her. You’re doubting the rest of the crew and their ability to help her. You’re doubting me.”
“How am I doubting you?”
“You think I hate you enough to kill you here? That’s really what you think of me?”
“Don’t sit there and act like we’re the best of friends,” Sanji retorts. “You and I both know that out of everyone on the crew, the two of us are the least likely to survive together. We’re immiscible.”
Zoro scowls. “Immis…”
Sanji scoffs in a way that suggests Zoro just proved his point. “Like water and oil,” he clarifies. “We don’t mix.”
Zoro tries not to let the words sting. It’s no secret that the two of them don’t have the easiest relationship on the crew; the majority of the time they’ve spent together thus far has consisted of insults and shouting matches and spontaneous spars. But there’s still been the moments in between, when the two of them would go out whale-watching during a sleepless night, or exchange mindless jokes while washing dishes together. There’s still been every moment Zoro has pretended to nap out on the deck so that he could watch Sanji smoke against the railing, studying the way his golden hair swept over his eyes, the impossible way his mouth curled around the end of a cigarette.
Zoro swallows and says, “We’re gonna be fine. Neither of us are dying or killing each other, curly.”
Sanji lies down on his mat again, his blonde hair spilling inches from Zoro’s ankle. Zoro hears him mumble darkly, over the crackling of the fire, “That’ll take a miracle.”
#
The stream is gone within a few days, and it starts taking more resources with it. One day all of the citrus fruit trees are gone; the next, the red squash, and the sprouts after that. It’s like an Elbaf Giant has seized the whole island in one tremendous meaty fist and squeezed it dry; the sand dulls, the plants lose their color, the air becomes thin and arid.
“It’s happening again,” Sanji says grimly. “All of the wildlife is changing too. We’ll have to find new things to eat.”
They split up, Sanji heading into the woods to look for any salvageable produce while Zoro heads down to the shoreline in search of fish. He walks along the tide for nearly an hour. By the end of it, the only discovery he’s made is a small tidepool that’s completely vacant.
The sun is already getting low when Zoro returns to camp. Sanji is waiting there, standing by their tree with an odd, strange expression, like he’s lost somewhere deep in thought and can’t find his way back.
“Nothing,” Zoro grumbles. “Found a tidepool, but there was nothing in it. What’s the point of a tidepool with no damn fish?”
Sanji blinks a couple times, slowly, like he’s half-asleep. “Tidepools usually don’t have fish,” he replies, after a pause that lasts too long. “Here. Eat this.”
He hands over a woven bowl with a small portion of cut fruit inside. Zoro puts a slice of something pink into his mouth. It’s bitter; slim pickings since their last meal, clearly. “You’re not going to eat any?”
“No. Not hungry. I… feel weird.” Sanji stumbles suddenly, then frowns, like he’s confused by the sight of his own feet.
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel weird,” Sanji repeats, slurring. His eyes are glazed over, not fully seeing. “Think I might have messed up.”
Then, without warning, his eyes roll back and he collapses against the tree.
Zoro curses loudly and drops the plate of fruit to catch him beneath the arms. Sanji’s already sweating through his shirt. When Zoro places a palm against Sanji’s face, heat radiates off him like a furnace.
“Shit,” Zoro mutters. At the very least, Sanji stirs slightly at the touch, lashes fluttering. “Cook, you’re burning up.”
“No, I’m—c-cold.”
Objectively not true, but Sanji is shivering like a leaf, so it’s not like telling him otherwise will help much. Leave it to Sanji to argue even while out of his mind with fever. Zoro pulls Sanji toward his chest and attempts to tamp down his panic at how pliant and limp Sanji’s gone. “When did you get this sick?”
“Not—’s not that kind of sick,” Sanji says hoarsely, voice muffled against Zoro’s shirt. Zoro lowers Sanji until he’s lying down in what he can only hope is a comfortable resting position. Not that Sanji looks even remotely comfortable, with his pallor and the twitching eyes and the shivers wracking his body. “It was the y’llow one. I think. I’m pretty sure.”
Scowling, Zoro pulls the bandana from his arm and uses it to mop some of the sweat from Sanji’s curly brow. “What?”
“I didn’t give you any. I had a feeling it was bad, so. I didn’t. But I—I didn’t think ‘t was this… this—don’t touch it, okay, marimo?”
“The yellow—are you talking about fruit?” Zoro realizes.
And then it clicks. That’s how Sanji was so confident that all the food he was giving to Zoro was safe. This whole time he’d been using himself as a guinea pig. “You poisoned yourself.”
“Wasn’t—trying,” Sanji gasps. “Told you. Messed up. I—I didn’t think it—”
His shoulders lurch violently, and Zoro sits him up just in time to direct his vomit away from the shelter and their food. After what feels like an eternity of listening to the cook puke, Sanji finally goes completely boneless in Zoro’s grip, head lolling against Zoro’s shoulder.
“Cook,” Zoro hisses. He jostles Sanji once, hard, in an attempt to jolt some kind of awareness into him, but it’s no use. He can feel Sanji’s fever burning even through the fabric of their clothes.
Zoro wishes Chopper were here. Scratch that, he wishes anyone else were here—out of everyone on the Merry, he’s probably the least equipped to deal with something like this.
He wracks his brain for any solution and manages to recall the time they discovered Usopp’s allergy to pokonuts. Usopp had been in a similar state then, feverish and clammy and unable to stand straight. Zoro remembers Chopper racing through the Merry with a bucket of water and a rag, crying, We need to get his fever down!
Get the fever down. That seems like a good first course of action. Zoro carefully lays Sanji’s prone form down on the palm mat beneath the shelter before hurrying back down the beach, to the water.
Bending down, Zoro soaks his bandana in the cool seawater, then turns to head back up. He’s met with a sharp gust of wind, kicking sand up into his face. He splutters, blinks the dirt from his eyes enough to see that the landscape has shifted once again. From here on the shoreline, the entire island looks like one barren desert; all of the plants and trees have shed their leaves, and now it’s sand no matter where he looks.
Zoro fights his way against the wind and back up to the shelter, which is doing a surprisingly good job of keeping most of the sand and draft away. When he crouches down beside Sanji and lays the damp fabric over his forehead, Sanji gives an involuntary shudder, moaning faintly.
“Don’t. Please,” Sanji protests. When his eyelids crack open, his eyes are panicked, but unfocused. Delirious. “Don’t—stay away from me—”
“Just me,” Zoro tells him, but Sanji hardly seems to hear him. Zoro picks up Sanji’s limp wrist and presses his thumb into his palm as hard as he dares, just like he did back in the cave, what feels like an eternity ago. “See?”
Sanji’s eyes stare back up at him, foggy and fever-bright. A few seconds pass. Then the fog seems to clear ever so slightly, and he mumbles, “Zoro?”
Zoro nods.
“Think ‘m sick.”
“Yeah, idiot, whose fault do you think that is?” Zoro mutters, although he can’t muster up any real heat behind the words as he brushes Sanji’s damp hair away from his eyes.
“You can leave now.” Sanji’s eyes slip shut. “I won’t watch you go. ‘S okay.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad. After he put me away, he left. So did my brothers.” Sanji sighs faintly. “‘M used to it.”
Zoro’s hand freezes over Sanji’s face. Sanji has never spoken about a dad before. As far as Zoro was concerned, the old chef at the Baratie was Sanji’s father. But there’s something about the shape of the word on Sanji’s lips, tight with fear and pain, that makes Zoro think Sanji’s biological father is a different story. Someone who hurt him. Someone who left.
Zoro means it down to his bones when he tells Sanji firmly, “I’m not going anywhere.”
#
If Zoro’s count is accurate, it takes nearly twelve agonizing hours for the poison to flush itself from Sanji’s system. Twelve hours of Sanji mumbling incoherently to people that aren’t really here. Twelve hours of Sanji choking on oxygen, coughing up bile, shivering in pain.
Twelve hours of Zoro wondering whether he was watching Sanji die slowly in front of his eyes with no way to stop it, other than intermittently replacing the damp bandana on his forehead and turning him over so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. Twelve hours is a long time to sit with that. Long enough for Zoro to consider what it would really mean if this killed Sanji.
He spends the time tormenting himself with his own imagination, picturing how he might bury Sanji’s body. He imagines the Merry arriving on the shore only to find Zoro alone here next to a sandy grave. He imagines the faces of his crew, broken, wrought with despair.
What he can’t imagine is anything after that; life aboard the Merry without Sanji there. No meals, no obnoxious swooning, no scent of hastily put-out cigarettes in the entryway of the washroom.
When Luffy first invited Sanji on board, there was no part of Zoro that could imagine a life coexisting with someone like Sanji. Now, Zoro realizes entirely too late, there’s no part of him that can imagine life without him.
Sanji’s fever breaks around the same time he seems to have ridden out the worst of it. While Zoro is replacing his cold rag, noticing that the cook’s face doesn’t seem to be quite as hot as before, Sanji’s eyes crack open. For the first time since yesterday, there’s lucidity and recognition in them. The sight alone makes emotion swell high as a tsunami in Zoro’s chest.
What Zoro wants to say is, Thank god and I was so fucking terrified and I don’t know what or who I’d be if you weren’t here tomorrow. But he can’t—of course he can’t. So instead he frowns, as if Sanji’s existence is an inconvenience to him and not the center of all gravity, and he asks gruffly, “You alive in there?”
“Think so,” Sanji croaks.
“Can you sit up?”
“Of course I can,” Sanji snaps.
But when he goes to push himself up, his arms tremble and give out halfway, and Zoro has to grab him and lean him up against the tree. Even that little movement has Sanji panting from exertion. “Just ask for help, idiot.”
Sanji shoots him a dirty look, but he accepts the water that Zoro gives him, managing a few small sips. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Zoro informs him flatly.
“I didn’t know that poison would be so potent,” Sanji says defensively. “Most toxins just make your mouth go numb, or give you a headache. That fruit wasn’t normal.”
Zoro tries not to think about the implications behind this—that Sanji’s already ingested multiple other poisons of varying severity. Probably would have kept doing it in total secrecy, too, if not for this one. And Zoro never would have even known.
“We didn’t have to eat any fruit,” Zoro starts.
“Then what would we have eaten instead? Sand? Rocks? Your body needs nutrients to survive, moron.”
Blood rushes to Zoro’s face, indignant. He’s endured plenty of pain and discomfort in his life without complaint. “I don’t care about going hungry—”
Suddenly Zoro’s head is being yanked down, and he realizes it’s because Sanji has seized him by the collar. Even in his state, the cook’s grip is no joke.
“Don’t say that,” Sanji hisses through gritted teeth, and the venom in his voice is enough to make Zoro’s mouth snap shut. “Don’t you ever say that. Do you have any idea what it’s like to starve? Not just go hungry for a day or two. I mean starve. Your hair starts to fall out. Your skin starts sagging everywhere. You lose the ability to think straight. You stop feeling like yourself. You stop feeling like a person.”
It goes unsaid that this is all clearly taken from firsthand experience. Sanji endured all of this before. At some point on that rock with Zeff, Sanji stopped feeling like a person. Looking at the hollow darkness in Sanji’s eyes now, Zoro wonders dreadfully if he ever remembered how to start again.
Sanji releases Zoro’s shirt and turns away to face the ocean. “I told myself I’d never let that happen to myself or anyone else again,” he finishes. “I won’t apologize for that.”
“Then we should both do it,” Zoro says. “Test for poison.”
Sanji glances back over his shoulder to hold Zoro’s gaze for an incredulous beat. Then, he scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. That defeats the purpose of testing in the first place. At least one of us has to make it back to the Merry.”
“And you think that shouldn’t be you.”
A breeze blows Sanji’s hair over his eyes. “They’d be fine without me.”
“That ship would fall apart without you.”
“There are other cooks. It’s a big ocean. Probably better cooks than me, somewhere.”
Zoro doesn’t even think before he reaches out and slaps Sanji on the back of the head. Not hard, but hard enough to make Sanji jump and cry out, “What the hell, asshole! What do you think you’re doing?!”
“Knocking some sense into your shitty brain,” Zoro grumbles. “You’re lucky you still look like hell or I’d actually kick your ass.”
“I can still kick yours,” Sanji bites back, but Zoro ignores him.
“Listen, because I’m only gonna say this once. You’re important to the crew. Not because you’re a good cook. Because you’re you. You could wake up tomorrow and forget everything you ever learned in a kitchen, and everyone would still want you around. Got it?”
Sanji’s lips press into a firm, discontented line, like he doesn’t quite believe it. But, at the very least, he acquiesces: “Fine.”
“Fine,” Zoro agrees. “So if we have to, we’ll test for poison together.”
“Then we both die.”
“That’s the whole point. We’re already here together, aren’t we? We can die together. We can live together too.”
Sanji cups his hand over his mouth and stifles a small, colorless laugh. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Because it is,” Zoro huffs.
“Yeah,” Sanji says. “Maybe it is.”
#
Time begins passing quicker than Zoro expected. The island still transforms nearly every day—a new rock formation here, that hill disappearing there—but the drastic, dangerous shifts in weather and landscape cease. It’s consistent enough for Sanji and Zoro to build somewhat of a steady routine; during the day, they look for bodies of water—rivers, ponds, streams—where they might find fish or any other animals to hunt. When they’re not searching for game, they’re collecting wild fruit and vegetables, sticking only to what they recognize.
Just before the sun goes down, Zoro uses his swords to get a fire going, and Sanji will cook up whatever they’ve gathered today, and they eat together while watching the sun sink over the horizon. Afterwards, they lie down shoulder-to-shoulder in the shelter and watch the stars emerge in the night sky and they talk until they fall asleep. They talk mostly about inane things, the kind of things that make all of this seem smaller and further away. Like their friends, their favorite and least favorite foods, the types of women they like.
“You have to have a type,” Sanji says. “Everybody has a type.”
“I don’t,” Zoro says. “Everyone I’ve slept with has been different.”
“Bullshit. There’s got to be something they all have in common.”
“What’s yours?”
“Easy. I like smart women.”
Zoro snorts. “Right. Who carry all their brain cells in their tits.”
“Have some class,” Sanji growls. “Besides, don’t act like you’re immune. Every man loves to look at a good set of tits on a woman.”
“I’m not looking at women,” Zoro says, before he can think twice about it. It’s never been a secret, necessarily, but it’s also something he’s deliberately never went out of his way to tell any of the crew. His eyes dart to Sanji’s face, waiting for a reaction.
Sanji is quiet for a moment. “Men can have tits too,” he says, thoughtfully.
“Time to go to sleep,” Zoro mutters while Sanji stifles a laugh.
“Really,” Sanji muses, “there’s a lot we don’t know about each other, huh?”
Later, as he listens to Sanji doze next to him, Zoro mentally sorts through the men he’s slept with over the years. He pictures their faces, their candlelit torsos in bed. It’s true, they’ve all been vastly different from one another; this one tall and lean, that one stocky and wide, another with long, curled eyelashes like a girl’s. Pirates, Marines, mechanics, barkeeps—nothing in common. Type. Such a stupid concept.
Then, just before Zoro’s mind drifts off to sleep, he comes to a distant, horrifying realization: They were all fucking blondes.
#
In the morning, Sanji’s palm mat is empty. Zoro’s panic lasts only a few seconds before he hears the sound of Sanji’s laughter, awestruck and giddy as a child's. Zoro follows that laugh up the beach, where he finds Sanji standing at the neck of the woods, surrounded by a vast ocean of color.
Flowers, Zoro realizes. More of them than he’s seen in possibly his entire life. They’re dense as trees, petals fluttering down overhead like rainbow butterflies. Their fragrant aroma reaches Zoro from all the way here, bright and sweet.
“Can you believe this, marimo?” Sanji exclaims with another incredulous chuckle. “The island actually made us something nice, for once.”
Zoro joins Sanji beneath the blossoming foliage, staring up at the flowers. There are more colors and kinds than he can count, petals in the shapes of bells and stars and pom-poms. “This is…” he starts, and can’t think of an adequate enough word to finish.
“Hey,” Sanji says, grabbing Zoro’s sleeve. He has that look in his eye, fervent and bright, like an idea is burning right through the center of him. Zoro likes when he gets this way, at the height of his brilliance. “Where there’s flowers, there’s fruit. I bet we could find some pretty incredible ones here somewhere.”
So they make their way down the path, stopping every now and then for Sanji to collect a flower or a fruit and explain its taste and properties to Zoro. He plucks a fuzzy, bright-green one and holds it up to Zoro’s face. “This one looks like you,” he says, and Zoro rolls his eyes because it’s easier than having to look at Sanji’s.
Sanji comes to an abrupt stop by a flower tree with pale white blossoms and large, dark red bulbs of fruit. He looks at Zoro delightedly and asks, “Do you know what these are?”
It’s hearing him say this, for about the thousandth time since they’ve washed up here, that Zoro realizes he could hear it a thousand more times and not get sick of it, really. He wants Sanji to teach everything to him. He wants Sanji to teach him even the things he already knows: he wants Sanji to walk with him through the earth and tell him what the sun is, what the trees are, the stuff that their bodies are made of.
Zoro’s throat is dry as he asks, “What?”
“Zephyr berries.” Sanji reaches up and plucks one from the tree, running a thumb over the smooth, ruby skin. “They’re an incredibly rare fruit, known for their unique biology. They’re the only fruit in the world that produces a nectar with such a dense yeast population that it’s actually able to self-ferment within a matter of hours, when crushed.”
Zoro scratches the side of his head and stares vacantly. “Which makes them taste better, or something…?”
“I think they’ll certainly be suited to your tastes,” Sanji says, pushing back his bangs and smearing bright-pink juice high on one cheekbone. Zoro’s a breath away from picking a fight, certain that this was meant as some sort of dig, when Sanji’s mouth quirks up wryly at one side. “After fermentation, ingesting Zephyr juice can increase dopamine levels and inhibit the nervous system. Makes you feel warm, fuzzy, calm.”
Zoro’s heart quickens at the description, but he doesn’t dare to get his hopes up. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” he asks, dubious.
Sanji’s reassuring grin wipes away any uncertainty. “I think we deserve to get a little drunk, don’t you?”
#
Zephyr juice isn’t just like alcohol—it’s better than alcohol. Over the years Zoro has built up a near-impenetrable tolerance for liquor, which is nice when he doesn’t have a pounding headache in the morning, but less nice when he’s actually looking to get shitfaced drunk. Only one drink of the Zephyr stuff makes Zoro feel pleasantly floaty, like his brain has taken a little detour through Skypiea.
“I haven’t felt like this after a drink in years,” Zoro tells Sanji happily.
“Quit making it sound like we’re old men.” Sanji sips more from the coconut husk they’ve used to hold the wine and sighs contentedly as he passes it back over to Zoro. “God, I needed this. Thank you, freaky island.”
“Thought you didn’t even like drinking.”
“Yeah, well, that was before my last pack of cigarettes got drowned in the ocean. Ugh. I’d literally kill someone for a smoke.”
“When we’re back on the Merry, I’ll buy you some more.”
Sanji raises a suspicious brow at him. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”
“Swordsman’s honor.”
“That’s not much.”
Zoro flicks him in the arm. They spend a minute in silence, passing the husk back and forth and taking turns drinking from it. “So,” Sanji says finally, into the quiet night. “You sleep with men?”
Zoro shoots him a glare. “Was this just your excuse to get me loose enough to talk about it?”
“Don’t get so defensive. I’m just curious. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“What do you want to know?”
“When did you figure it out?”
Zoro stretches his hands behind his neck, thinking. “I don’t think I ever really did,” he says truthfully. “I just never found girls very interesting in that way. And then it just seemed obvious.”
“Huh,” Sanji says. “Not one lady? There’s never been just one woman who you thought might be an exception?”
Zoro racks his brain. “There was one lady in the village I grew up in,” he says. “She worked the lunch line at the dojo.”
“A lunch lady?” Sanji groans. “I don’t know why I expected any different from you.”
“It wasn’t just the lunches,” Zoro insists. “She had a nice physique.”
Sanji raises a brow. “Oh?”
“She had really impressive biceps. She was able to carry all these crates of potatoes in every morning—”
“Oh.” Sanji visibly deflates. “Yeah, you really are predictable.”
“What about you? You’ve never been attracted to a single guy?”
Sanji taps his chin and is quiet for a long minute. Then he says, “Remember Luffy’s brother?—”
“God,” Zoro says, putting a hand over his eyes. As if that’ll do anything to dispel the mental image.
“He was cool, okay?” Sanji defends. “He had nice hands. And good hair.”
“Well, there you go,” Zoro mumbles, pretending he’s not even a little bit bitter about this revelation. “You’ve had an exception too.”
Sanji hums. “A couple,” he confesses, his eyes sweeping over to meet Zoro’s.
Zoro has just brought the coconut husk to his lips to drink again, but this makes his hands twitch, spilling Zephyr juice down his lips and dribbling down the side of his face.
Sanji laughs. “What are you doing? You’ll waste it all,” he says, reaching out to wipe the juice from Zoro’s skin. Sanji’s thumb traces a line all the way from Zoro’s neck, right where his jack-rabbiting pulse is, to the corner of his lip.
And then Sanji follows his thumb and presses his mouth to Zoro’s.
Zoro’s brain short-circuits. This, like the concept of Sanji being gone, is something he has never allowed himself to imagine. Of course he’s thought about it, pictured being this close to Sanji, but he always stopped fantasizing right at the point where their lips met. There never seemed to be a point; it wouldn’t be anything like the real thing, he was sure.
And he was right. Nothing he could’ve imagined would ever come close to this. He couldn’t have predicted the way Sanji’s nimble fingers twist into his hair and tug at the roots. He couldn’t have dreamed up the way Sanji’s tongue feels in his mouth, or the noise Sanji makes when Zoro pushes his tongue back with his own. Emboldened by that sound, Zoro pushes Sanji down onto the mat.
“You’re such a brute,” Sanji complains, although his flushed face and the tent in his pants indicates he’s not entirely bothered about this fact.
“Shut up,” Zoro breathes, then works on making that happen himself, kissing Sanji again. The kiss is fiercer this time, more practiced, more certain. He lets his mouth drift to Sanji’s jawbone, down the side of his neck. When he experimentally drags his teeth over Sanji’s collarbone, Sanji gives a full-body shiver that makes all the blood rush to Zoro’s cock at once. It feels like nothing short of a miracle.
Zoro slides his hand down the front of Sanji’s shirt. He’s always mocked Sanji for his tedious grooming habits, that ridiculous insistence on keeping everything trimmed and moisturized at all times. But now Zoro finds himself rendered completely fucking speechless by the silkiness of Sanji’s skin, the smoothness of his hairless chest under Zoro’s fingers. It makes Zoro mentally take back every harsh word he’s ever uttered about the cook’s self-maintenance. He wants to worship at the altar of Sanji’s straight-razor.
Without thinking, Zoro finds himself saying, sort of awestruck, “You’re so soft.” Sanji gives him a baffled look, glancing down at the front of both their pants, and Zoro clarifies: “Your skin. Like a lady’s.”
Sanji snickers a little at this, the booze making the sound lighter, less inhibited. He moves his own hand beneath Zoro’s collar, stroking the sweat-slicked hair on Zoro’s chest.
“Nothing like a lady,” he observes with a smirk. “Except for these.” He puts his hand around one of Zoro’s pecs and squeezes, fingernails grazing Zoro’s hard nipple. Zoro lets out an involuntary noise that is about as manly and becoming as he can manage while having his tits fondled by the man he’s got a crush the size of a fucking meteor on.
“Fuck,” Zoro groans, gritting his teeth and dipping his hips down towards Sanji’s. Except now both of them have grown considerably in their pants, so when Zoro’s legs close that space, he feels Sanji’s erection press up against his.
The sensation is such a shock that Zoro starts to lift his torso again, but in response Sanji lifts his own hips to meet Zoro’s, grinding upwards. The friction between their groins makes stars burst across Zoro’s vision like fireworks.
“Oh, fuck,” Sanji gasps, fingers twisting convulsively in Zoro’s hair. The sight of him—his collar undone, his lips swollen with lust, his back arching against the floor—makes all the cells in Zoro’s body feel like they’ve been lit on fire.
Zoro can’t hold himself back any longer. He slides his hand between Sanji’s legs and strokes him hard through his pants, earning himself another moan, a jerking buck of the hips. There’s already a hot dampness between Zoro’s fingers where Sanji’s cock has started to drip with precum. Holy shit, Zoro is barely able to think through the buzzing in his head, this is actually happening.
Sanji makes a wrecked, desperate whining noise, and the sound is so goddamn beautiful that it’s more of a knee-jerk impulse than a conscious thought when Zoro breathes, “God, I need you so fucking bad." While his hand works below Sanji’s belt, he continues working their mouths, intent on showing Sanji exactly how bad that is, when out of nowhere Sanji abruptly pulls back.
“Stop,” he pants against Zoro’s mouth. “We—ah—we have to stop.”
Zoro’s brain is still running a few minutes behind, abandoned somewhere around the Ace conversation. The only semi-intelligent thing he can think to say is, “Why?”
“Because,” Sanji hisses, “we’re both hard, and we’re about to do something incredibly stupid, and when you wake up tomorrow sober you’re going to wish we’d stopped here.”
“You don’t know what I want.” His hand is still around Sanji’s erect penis, for god’s sake. Somehow this feels worse than outright rejection; getting this close just to back out now, of all times. Zoro’s body doesn’t know how to handle it, can’t comprehend it, and it presents itself in a thoroughly unpleasant ache in his seeping cock.
“I know what I want,” Sanji scoffs. He pushes Zoro back to prove this point, then gets to his feet, face still flushed with arousal. “I want things to be normal when we go back to the Merry. It’s not worth the risk.”
“What risk?” They’ve already faced Devil Fruit users and Marine fleets and half the fucking World Government; surely intimacy won’t be the thing that breaks them, after everything.
But Sanji flaps his hand between them, belligerent, like this should be obvious. “Ruining everything. The crew, the Merry, for one night of stupid, horny fun. When you remember you really can’t stand me—”
“Stop speaking for me,” Zoro snaps, standing too. “You really don’t have any idea how I feel about you, do you?”
Sanji just shakes his head mulishly. “You’re just drunk, Zoro. We both are.”
“Are you scared of me leaving? Like your family did? Is that it?”
Sanji’s head whips around, eyes flashing. “What are you talking about?” he asks in a low voice.
“You talked about them,” Zoro says. “While you were sick. That your dad—put you away, then left. That you’re used to it. Is that what you think? Everyone who cares about you is just going to kick you to the floor and leave you in the dust?—”
Zoro doesn’t even see Sanji lift his foot, but in the next instant, Zoro’s flat on his ass in the sand, wheezing for breath as an already forming bruise throbs on his stomach.
“Shut up,” Sanji says. His voice is cold and mechanical, like a stranger’s, not at all like himself. “You don’t know anything about my father. You don’t know anything about me. So stop fucking trying.”
Before Zoro even has the time to get back to his feet, Sanji turns on his heel and storms straight for the woods without looking back.
#
Because nothing is easy here, a harsh, biting wind sets in the same hour of Sanji’s departure. It’s different from the sea breezes they’ve had most days—it’s sharp, nipping, razor-teethed. Zoro is dumb enough to hope that this is the extent of the environmental alterations they’ll face this time around.
Not even close. When Zoro feels the first snowflake fall on his face, he says, out loud, “Shit.” By the next hour, the wind kicks up into a full-fledged blizzard that mercilessly ravages their shelter. There’s no slow descent into subzero temperatures; all the water at the shoreline starts to freeze over in a matter of minutes.
As he sobers up, it occurs to Zoro that he’s made a grave mistake, in more ways than one. Picking a fight with the person cooking all your meals and keeping you alive on a deserted island is pretty bad. Picking a fight with the person you care about quite possibly more than anyone else in the world and then leaving them to fend for themselves in the middle of a snowstorm is probably worse.
He sets out for the woods in search of Sanji. He can barely even see where he’s going—the blizzard has already blanketed everything in a thick sheet of white. So much for not getting lost. A small voice in the back of his voice whispers that there’s a chance Sanji could already be dead by now—maybe struck by an avalanche or a falling tree—and is already buried under six feet of fresh powder. But Zoro silences that thought, refusing to let it slow him down. He can’t doubt Sanji now. If they’re going to find a way out of this, they’ll both have to believe in the other.
At the very least, the temperature doesn’t faze him at all. His cold weather training has prepared him too well for that. But every dropping degree is a reminder that Sanji hasn’t undergone the same kind of physical preparation. Sanji’s made of tough stuff, but everyone has limits. And Zoro isn’t exactly eager to relive the experience of seeing Sanji close to death.
After walking through the blizzard for what feels like an eternity, it dawns on Zoro that he doesn’t even know how big the island is. He could walk for months and never reach the end of it. Or maybe, like the weather and the geography, the size of the island itself can change too. Maybe it’s expanded. It could be the size of a desert. A whole country.
Just as Zoro’s starting to sink into hopelessness, he spots a flash of color amidst all the white. A bright yellow shock of hair that he’d recognize anywhere. His heart cartwheels against his ribcage.
“Cook!” Zoro yells.
But Sanji’s too far, the wind too loud. Zoro shouts for him again—“Cook! Curly-brow! Hey!”—shouts so hard that his lungs scrape and his throat feels like it’s going to split, but Sanji doesn’t turn around.
Zoro takes a frosty breath. Then, at the top of his lungs, he yells: “Sanji!”
He can see the moment Sanji freezes, his whole body going rigid and still as his hair billows in the wind. His head swivels, and his eyes are wide, lips parted in astonishment.
Zoro wastes no more time in hurrying across the rest of the icy plain. When he reaches Sanji, Sanji still hasn’t wiped the stupid, shocked look off his face. “What the hell are you doing?!” Sanji demands over the howling wind.
Zoro feels like all his nerve endings have been lit on fire. Every emotion is dialed to a thousand; he’s never felt all these things so intensely, all at the same time. He’s furious, and relieved, and afraid, and so goddamn in love it makes his teeth rattle. “I was looking for you!”
“I was looking for you,” Sanji shouts, just as hotly. He reaches out and brushes snow from Zoro's hair and shoulders, his touch just as fond as it is fierce. “I found a cave. I was going to go back to the shelter to take you there. Didn’t I tell you to stay put and not get lost?”
“I’m not lost, dumbass!” Zoro barks. “I found you, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Sanji says. He’s looking at Zoro now the way he did when Zoro first made the fire, wonderstruck, and it makes Zoro feel like he can do anything. Make a hundred more fires. Make fucking electricity. “I can’t believe it. We actually found each other.”
A laugh bubbles out of him, high and disbelieving. And then they’re both laughing, the kind of euphoric laughter that only comes around when they’ve narrowly escaped the jaws of something frightful, the kind of laughter that makes everything feel small and ridiculous in comparison.
“Come on,” Sanji says. “It’s this way.”
He leads Zoro to the cave he found, which is much larger than the crawlspace they used to wait out the rain on their first day here. This cave is spacious, deep enough that the snow hasn’t touched the far wall inside. Both of them practically collapse to the floor, exhausted from the trek.
“Any chance you can make fire another way?” Sanji asks. “Like, make sparks with your swords or something…?”
Zoro shakes his head. “Even if I could, it’s way too damp here for anything to catch.”
“Right. F-Figured.” Sanji is starting to shiver. Even in the dark, Zoro can tell how blue his lips are. Snowflakes have gathered in white specks on his eyelashes.
“Come here,” Zoro says, opening an arm toward him.
Sanji leers. “What?”
“You look a second away from freezing to death.”
“I’m fine,” Sanji says. A gallant attempt that might be more convincing if he didn’t say it through clattering teeth.
“Stop being stubborn,” Zoro says. “You’ll get hyperthermia at this rate.”
“It’s hypothermia, you moron. Hyper’s the opposite. I’m s–surprised you can even manage that many syllables at once.”
If this were a few weeks ago, Zoro might have taken the bait, let his temper get the best of him: Fine, have fun freezing to death, then. But he recognizes now that this is just what Sanji wants. It’s a fight-or-flight response, an animal backed into a corner, a porcupine shooting off its spikes—anything to drive everyone away. Zoro’s not falling for it so easily anymore.
“Just let me help you.” When Sanji just presses his lips together in resolute silence, Zoro demands hotly, “Is it really that hard for you to admit that you need me?”
Sanji’s head snaps up. “I don’t need you,” he hisses. “I survived on my own for a long time. I don’t need anyone.”
“Yes, you do,” Zoro argues, voice rising. “You needed me when you fell off the Merry. You needed me when you slipped climbing up the rocks. You needed me when that poisonous fruit made you sick. You need me—” he thumps his own chest, hard, emphatically— “and I need you, too. I need you to make me stronger. I need you to keep me from getting lost. I need you to make the days faster and the nights longer. Without you there’s no point to any of this, alright?”
The wind whistles outside. Sanji’s eyes dart towards the crack of light coming through the cave mouth, and for a moment Zoro thinks he might actually make a break for it just to escape this conversation.
But then Sanji crawls into the space next to Zoro. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to; this is one of those unspoken things. With a silent, tacit understanding, Zoro wraps his arm around Sanji’s shoulders and pulls him in towards his chest. He rubs his palm over Sanji’s sleeves to warm him while Sanji shakes against him.
The howling of wind dies down to a faint coo. Outside, it looks like the snowfall is easing up. How convenient, Zoro thinks bitterly, the blizzard only shows signs of slowing down now, after they’re no longer at each other’s throats or in mortal peril. And then it dawns on Zoro all at once.
“I think I get it,” he says slowly. “The deal with this place. It’s us."
Sanji squints. “What?”
“We’re the island,” Zoro says. “It changes with how we feel.” When Sanji opens his mouth to protest what an idiotic idea this is, Zoro elaborates: “Think about it. When things were good and we were getting along, we had the stream and the fish and all those flowers. Every time we fight, this place got worse. The rocks, the rain, the desert. And now this.”
Zoro can see the gears turning in Sanji’s head as he processes. He opens his mouth, shuts it, then opens it again. “Huh,” he says. “That’s… not a terrible theory.” He looks out toward the snow. “But—the weather’s still shitty right now, which means…”
“I’m not angry with you,” Zoro tells him.
Sanji blinks. “I’m… not angry with you, either.”
In an instant, the wind dies completely. The snow covering the ground outside evaporates, leaving everything cold and wet but intact. Zoro and Sanji stare out of the cave mouth, then over at each other.
“Well,” Zoro says proudly. “That’s pretty good proof.”
Sanji looks less pleased by this discovery. “What a piece of work,” he mutters, shaking his head. Then, for about the thousandth time: “You really should’ve just let me go overboard.”
Zoro clicks his tongue. “Shut up.”
But then Sanji says, as if correcting himself, “You should have just let me go.”
The words are haunted, a gulf of spectral pain hovering in the space between them. Zoro suddenly finds himself thinking about the day he challenged Mihawk in front of the Baratie. The day he was able to stand upright again and walk out to starboard, Sanji’s eyes lingered on the bandages over his chest.
You must be insane, Sanji had told him. The scolding in his voice was a thin veil for the thing that was softer underneath—it was the first time Zoro realized there might be something like care between the two of them, after all. That’s going to leave behind a terrible scar.
The thing is that Zoro has never been afraid of scars. He wears them with pride, proof of the difficult fights, history made on his skin. But Sanji, with his long sleeves and buttoned collars, is so desperate to hide his. Right now he’s trying to conceal it, but the cracks are wide enough for Zoro to see the hurt anyway.
Zoro gets it suddenly, why Sanji was so hung up over this. It was never because he didn’t want to be stranded here with Zoro. It was because he probably didn’t think anyone would care enough to follow him into that stormy ocean.
“I’d do it again,” Zoro tells Sanji, now. “I’d jump after you a million times, if I had to.” They both know it’s about the closest thing to a confession that a pirate can offer.
Sanji shakes his head, his eyes fierce with emotion. “Stupid marimo,” he says, voice wavering, “you can’t just say things like that,” and when he kisses Zoro this time around—on purpose, in spite of, because—it makes Zoro feel like he can touch the sky.
#
When they open their eyes the next morning, it’s to the distant tolling of a bell, faint shouts from afar. Zoro and Sanji sit up. They exchange a wide-eyed look that lasts for exactly two seconds before they both scramble out of the cave.
Once again, the world outside is completely different—the shore is close, for one, cerulean water greeting them just outside the cave opening. And there’s the Merry, sailing toward them, Luffy waving his arms like a madman on the masthead.
“ZORO! SANJI!” he screams. “Stay there, we’re coming!”
Sanji cups his hands around his mouth to match Luffy’s superhuman volume. “How did you find us?!”
“Easy,” Luffy shouts back. “We could see the trees from miles away!”
Trees? Zoro has time to think, then Sanji turns around and his eyes go wide. “Marimo,” he breathes, tugging Zoro’s elbow. Zoro turns too, and has to lift his head. And lift his head. And lift his head.
Trees taller than any Zoro has ever seen before skyrocket straight up into the clouds. No end in sight. Like I can touch the sky, Zoro recalls thinking to himself yesterday, and he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face.
Sanji laughs and looks at Zoro, eyes glittering. In the sun, they’re a striking shade of ocean blue. “Did you do that?” he wonders.
“We did,” Zoro responds. “Together.”
As he says this, a kaleidoscope of yellow butterflies flutters by. One of them lands on Sanji’s collar. They both look at each other, suppressing stupid smiles at the knowledge that they did this. All this miraculous beauty from the two of them.
He knows it won’t be like this forever. There will be storms and rocks and rough terrain. But there will also be so many more days like these, bright with the joy of discovering one another. Zoro feels confident that they can weather it all together. And when they walk out to the Merry, they do that together too, their footsteps in perfect unison.