Chapter Text
In an apartment building full of people with their own stories, their own lives and their own backgrounds, there is a door. You can hear laughter and chatter from it as often as you can hear arguing, though if you listen long enough, you will realise that the arguments are never (or, very rarely) malicious. In fact, if you listen carefully, you will notice that they are filled with fondness and laughter.
If you open door 302, you will frequently be met with a group of people, some of whom seem to spend more time in it than anywhere else. There is a lanky young man with shaggy hair and a straw hat (you will not see him without it), a fierce young woman with orange hair, a young man with an absurdly long nose, and a boy who looks too young to be spending all of his time around university students. However, you will eventually realise that none of these people actually live behind door 302. They are just the close circle of those who do.
It is in the rare moments of quiet that you will be able to meet the inhabitants of the apartment. In moments where you can smell a faint trace of late dinner or early breakfast, the sweet smoke of a joint; where you can hear the heaving of equipment or the soft meows of cats.
If you are lucky enough to encounter such a moment, you will become privy to a never-ending story.
The Story goes like this:
The balcony door is open, letting the last rays of summer sun into the apartment. On the balcony, two figures sit side by side, shoulders touching just barely.
One is tall and lithe, their blond hair falling off their shoulders in soft waves. It covers half of their face, but exposes the right eyebrow, which is fascinatingly curled into a spiral in the inner corner. Their right hand loosely holds a joint, while the left is absently petting a white cat sprawled out next to them.
The other has short cropped green hair, and one of his eyes is closed by a scar stretching from his forehead all the way to the centre of his cheek. He's bulky, and there is another cat, a calico, comfortably sitting on the stretch of his left shoulder.
There is a third, black cat on the other side of the balcony, out of reach from either of them.
Occasionally, there is a huff of air as the blond takes a drag of their joint. Otherwise, they sit in a silence neither of them seems inclined to break, content to let the sounds of the city below them and the purring of the cats fill the air.
The evening sun paints everything it touches golden, offering warmth more through colour than the actual heat it emits. The atmosphere seems precious, almost as if all this gleaming were real gold, rather than a mere illusion.
"Hey Marimo," the blond breaks the silence eventually, "d'you think we're like this in every universe?"
"Hm?"
"I mean. Do you think that this," they wave their hand around vaguely, "happens in all the other universes out there? You think all universes have Zoro and Sanji? Or is everywhere else just Zoro," they raise their hand again, gesturing in the direction of the other, "and Sanji?" Here their hand moves to themself, in the opposite direction.
Zoro looks at them out of the corner of his eyes for a second. Then he snorts.
"What're you on about, Curls? What's all this about universes all of a sudden?" He asks, bumping their shoulders together lightly.
The blond, Sanji, frowns."I just wanted to know what you think, 's all," they say. Then, they take a long drag and blow out the smoke in skillful rings.
Zoro chuckles. "You want to know what I think." It is more a statement than it is a question, but Sanji nods all the same. "Well, I don't really know if I believe in all that stuff about parallel universes. Can't really wrap my head around it. You really think there's a bunch of us out there, being what, pirates or something?"
Sanji doesn't dignify him with a response. Rather, they opt to blow out more smoke rings into the evening sky as silence descends over them once again. Their hand goes back to petting the cat, who purrs appreciatively. Slowly, the sun is sinking over the horizon, and there's a chill settling into the air, making Sanji shiver slightly. Zoro, in response, wraps a big arm around their small waist to pull them close and lets out a quiet hum as he feels the familiar weight of Sanji's head on his free shoulder.
He clears his throat.
"I think, if there are other universes out there… I'd be mighty lucky to have you in them. I mean, I already got you in this one." His voice gets quieter with every word he speaks. "I don't know if I have you in all of them. But I hope I do."
The sun is setting, brushing reds and oranges onto the sky like a painter, washing them out with soft blues and purples. Somewhere in the distance, a street musician starts to play a tender tune on the viola.
Sanji frees their hand from the cat's fur and seeks out Zoro's until they can intertwine their fingers with his.
"Marimo…"
"Hey, you asked," Zoro says, and it sounds like he's smiling. Then he leans his head atop Sanji's and whispers, conspiratorially, "If you repeat this to anyone else I'll kill you, Curls, but you might be the best thing that's ever happened to me."
"No, that's Wado," they huff. The white cat rests her head on Zoro's thigh and lets out a small meow. "See, she agrees."
Zoro laughs, turning his head to look at Wado, who's cuddled up between them in obvious delight. He reaches over with his free hand to scratch her behind the ears, careful not to tousle the calico on his shoulder.
"Close," he says, amusement clearly recognisable in his voice, "but not quite. Just… take the compliment, curls."
Sanji makes a non-committal sound, then turns their head slightly away from Zoro's shoulder in order to inhale another drag of smoke. They mumble something around the joint that's impossible to make out, and when Zoro lets out a confused little noise, they don't repeat themself. Instead, they turn once more to the play of colours in the sky.
The blues are deeper now, the oranges fewer but still every bit as intense. Like ember, their glow fights against the cool tones of darkness. They're not yet extinguished, and in the morning, they will come back and take over the dark of night with their fire all over again. In the distance, the musician keeps playing the viola, that same hauntingly romantic song. A couple of birds fly by, for a second accompanying the viola down below with their own song.
"You too," Sanji eventually mumbles into the comfortable silence around them.
"Wha's 'at?" Zoro grunts, traces of slumber clear in the way he swallows the letters. Sanji turns to look at him, takes in his half-asleep gaze, and smiles, before they turn back to look ahead.
"You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, too," they admit, hushed and secretive, too busy being embarrassed about this admission to notice the traces of red blossoming over Zoro's cheeks and ears.
"Sap," Zoro says, then turns to the cat on his shoulder to stage-whisper, "Enma, Curls is a sap."
"Brute," Sanji answers, and takes another long, slow drag, blowing out rings.
There's another faint chuckle, and then Zoro presses his lips to Sanji's temple. It's a simple gesture, barely a touch, and yet Sanji sinks into it all the same, buries their head more securely into Zoro's shoulder; eliciting exactly the desired reaction, if Zoro's content smile is anything to go by.
The last traces of orange slowly fade away from the night sky as the blues take over for now. Yellow-white spots like sparks appear on top of them, stubborn in their refusal to be extinguished. Sanji and Zoro press closer together, shying away from the cold.
And maybe it is only your imagination, but the steadily appearing rings of smoke seem to look a lot like hearts.