Archive of Our Own ^beta

Zoro is not lost.

It doesn’t matter how many lies Nami (that witch) spews about him having a terrible sense of direction (the buildings move, okay?), he would never, ever get lost on his way to the kendo club’s gym.

He’s just not exactly sure how he ended up in the art building.

Thankfully, he hasn’t changed into his kendogi yet and is still in his casual clothes, so he doesn’t receive any strange looks (or any more than usual at least- people tend to stare at you when you have green hair).

He frowns to himself as he turns to look out the window (how had he ended up on the third floor?), trying to make sense of where he is. The art building is underneath the gym on the map, so all he has to do is walk upwards, right? He nods to himself, turning around to find his new path.

No sense of direction, my ass, he thinks smugly. The others have no idea what they’re talking about.

It's not long before he finds himself at a dead end, and he frowns again. “Goddamn moving hallways,” he mutters to himself, and turns back around.

A familiar voice stops him, and he freezes. He knows that voice; he knows it just as well as he knows the weight of Wado Ichimonji, and nostalgic memories of his childhood dojo immediately assault him as she turns the corner and begins walking towards him.

Why the fuck is she here? Zoro thinks in a panic as Tashigi approaches him, and he finds the first room that he sees and practically throws himself into it. He would very much like to avoid another awkward conversation of “oh wow where’d you get that sword?” and “why are you staring at me like you’ve seen a ghost?” and it really doesn’t help that she bears an uncanny resemblance to Zoro’s dead childhood friend.

Unfortunately, in his haste to avoid Kuina’s doppelganger (he's not running away, he would never run away- it's just a strategic retreat), he runs into someone else, colliding face first into them at a breakneck speed.

There's a reasonable amount of cursing and spluttering on both sides as Zoro manages to straighten himself just in time to close the door behind him, effectively hiding himself from Tashigi.

The boy Zoro ran into wasn’t as lucky, and he stumbles backwards before falling over, knocking into a rather inconveniently placed stack of cans of paint (seriously, who just leaves them lying around like that?), and he hits the floor with a cacophony of metallic clacks and clangs.

Zoro takes in the scene in front of him: paint spilling out on the floor as a few cans continue to roll across it, and the boy he had knocked into- thankfully he landed on his bottom instead of his head, but nevertheless, Zoro had knocked him over and yep, he’s screwed.

“Fuuuuuuck,” the boy moans, moving a paint covered hand up to his nose and holy shit is that blood?

“Are you okay?” Zoro asks concernedly as he kneels down next to the boy, trying to get a better look at the blood that was beginning to pour out of his nose.

Said boy looks up at Zoro, only one shockingly blue eye (was that a swirly eyebrow? Zoro must be seeing things- maybe he hit his head harder than he thought) visible through a curtain of blond hair, his mouth opening in preparation (probably to cuss Zoro out), but then he just- stops. He gapes at Zoro, his one visible eye blown wide open and his mouth hanging open like a fish.

“Uh,” Zoro starts worriedly. He didn’t injure the guy or anything, right? “Did you hit your head or anything?”

That seems to knock the boy out of his shocked stupor, and he begins to look around wildly. Zoro is beginning to think he did give the other boy a concussion before he sees a painting lying on the floor beside him, a splattering of white paint covering up whatever had been on it before.

The boy he knocked over screeches when he sees it, slipping slightly over spilled paint in his desperation to reach it. It isn’t long before the boy recognizes the painting as unsalvageable, and he slowly turns to look at Zoro, blue eye blazing with fury.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he growls, and Zoro gulps.

“I’m sorry?” he offers weakly, but his words have absolutely no effect in placating the blonde, if only serving to make him angrier.

“You’re sorry?” he echoes in disbelief. “You’re sorry? God dammit it you moss headed bastard, that assignment was due today!”

Moss headed bastard?

The boy reaches up to grab his blonde hair, pulling on it in agitation so hard that Zoro’s afraid he’s going to rip it out. “Fuck, now I’m going to fail the assignment and lose my scholarship-“

“Woah, woah, woah,” Zoro cuts him off, reaching up to pull the boys hands away from his hair. “Calm down.”

“Calm down?” The blonde screeches, and Zoro winces at the volume. “How the fuck am I going to calm down?”

“You can just redo it, can’t you?” Zoro snaps back, frustration beginning to settle in. What is wrong with this dude?

“Redo it? It took me a week to finish this!”

“I’m sure if you talked to your teacher, they’d understand,” Zoro tells him, and the boy blinks at him a few times before sneering at him.

“Fine,” he hisses, and he reaches out and grabs Zoro’s arm in a deathlike grip, leaving a smear of paint on Zoro’s bare forearm. “But you’re coming with me to explain to him the mess you caused.”

The boy yanks up on his arm with a strength that could pull a lesser man’s arm out of his socket and drags him out of the classroom, throwing the door open with a bang!

Hushed whispers and wide eyed stares follow the two of them as the blonde haired boy stalks through the hallway, dragging Zoro along behind him. The boy is practically covered in a splattering of multicolored paint, and there is still some blood coming out of his nose, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

When he arrives at his professor's office, he practically throws the door open, and Zoro's eyes are immediately overwhelmed by a rather large head of purple hair and heavily exaggerated make-up.

“Sanji-boy!” the professor exclaims, looking every bit as surprised about the blonde’s appearance as Zoro looks about his purple Afro and strangely shaped chin. “What happened to you?”

“This dude,” the blonde, or Sanji, Zoro assumes, hisses. The professor just looks confused as he alternates looking back and forth between the two of them.

Zoro sighs, stepping forwards to take responsibility for his actions. As annoying as the blonde is, his anger is somewhat justified. “I accidentally bumped into him-”

“Damn bastard ran me over,” Sanji interrupts.

“And he fell and knocked over a bunch of paint in the art room. It got all over his drawing-”

“It's not a drawing-”

“So he dragged me over here to talk to you,” Zoro finishes.

“Is this true?” The professor asks, and Sanji huffs before nodding in agreement, annoyance clearly written all over his face.

The professor sighs, dragging a hand over his face tiredly. “I suppose I can extend the due date for you, since it was an accident, but the model for this assignment is too busy to come back again…” he trails off, a conflicted expression on his face.

“Make him do it,” Sanji says, jerking a thumb in Zoro’s direction. “It’s his fault anyway.”

“Excuse me?” Zoro asks, his voice rising in disbelief. Like fucking hell he has time to model for some dumbass blonde’s art project!

“He should have to clean the art room too,” Sanji adds on, and Zoro turns to glare at him. “Paint got all over the place, and it's not fair for the janitor to have to clean up his mess.”

“I wasn’t the one who knocked into it!” Zoro protests.

“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t rammed me into it!”

“Boys!” The professor interrupts their squabble sharply. “Both of you will clean up the art room, and uh-” he cuts off, looking at Zoro. “What’s your name?”

“Zoro,” Zoro answers. “Roronoa Zoro.”

“Mr. Roronoa will model for Sanji-boy’s portrait assignment. Are we in agreement?”

Sanji opens his mouth to protest, but a look from his professor shuts him up, and he scowls before nodding.

“I’m sorry sir,” Zoro says stiffly. “But I’m part of the kendo club on a scholarship, and I don’t have time to be his model. Can’t you get someone else?”

“Luckily for you,” Sanji drawls lazily, sending Zoro an infuriatingly smug look. “My hours are flexible. Just come after kendo practice or something.”

Zoro glares at the blonde, trying to do his best to stare him down. Sanji looks back at him challengingly, and Zoro can tell by his stance that the asshole isn’t going to budge.

“Fine,” he mutters, resigning himself to his fate. “I’ll model for your stupid drawing.”

“It’s not a-“

“Great!” The art professor says enthusiastically, cutting Sanji off. “Glad we got that sorted out.”

Zoro rolls his eyes, and turns to leave, now in a rush to finish cleaning the art room so he can still make it to kendo on time.

“Oh, and Sanji-boy?”

Zoro stops to look back, and Sanji turns to look at his professor curiously. “You might want to clean yourself up.”

Sanji blinks in confusion before looking down at himself, taking in the paint splattered across his body. It seems like only now the blonde realizes that there’s still blood dripping from his nose, and that he just ran down the hallway with paint all over him.

“You’ve got some on your face, too,” Zoro can’t resist adding as mounting horror overtakes the blonde’s features at the state of his appearance. Sanji looks up at him, horror giving way to fury, and Zoro takes that as his cue to slip out the door.

“RORONOA ZORO!”

…

Zoro is absolutely convinced that Sanji is trying to pick a fight with him. There’s no possible way that the blonde could be this infuriating if he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

“Hey, marimo.”

“What?” Zoro growls at him, having long since reached the end of his patience with the blonde artist.

“You missed a spot.”

Zoro stops and looks up at the blonde who is decidedly not helping him clean up the mess of paint on the floor, and instead is watching him gleefully.

There's no more paint on his face, and the blonde had apparently given up on his clothes, instead having changed into a spare pair of sweatpants and a loose t-shirt that was much too large. He had stuffed a tissue up his nose to stop the blood, and now he sits on a chair in front of an empty easel leisurely.

“Then why don’t you get it?” Zoro snarls, sending the blonde a glare that would send most sane people running. Sanji just smirks.

“Because I,” the asshole starts, pausing dramatically with a clearly faked expression of pain. “Am mortally wounded because a certain someone barreled me over.”

Zoro bites back a comment about how the blonde had been fine just a couple minutes ago when he had dragged Zoro across the art building, and instead returns to scrubbing the floor with renewed vigor.

“Why the fuck are you even here in the first place?” Sanji asks, a frown on his face. From who knows where, the artist procures a lollipop, unwrapping the wrapper with dexterous fingers as he fixes Zoro with an accusing glare.

“You’re the one who said I should clean,” Zoro grumbles, and Sanji shakes his head, popping the lollipop in his mouth.

“That’s not what I meant, dumbass. Why were you even in the art building? Don’t you have kendo practice or something?”

Kendo practice that you’re keeping me from, Zoro thinks bitterly. “Was on my way,” Zoro grunts back in response instead.

Sanji frowns. “Wha- the art building is nowhere near the gym!”

“The buildings move,” Zoro mutters, and Sanji looks at him in disbelief.

“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, right?” He asks, and Zoro frowns, confused.

“What does that even mean?”

“You aren’t seriously telling me that you got lost, right?”

“What?” Zoro practically shouts, standing upright so that he can glare down at the blonde. “No!”

The blonde only seems to take that as confirmation, a look of awe crossing over his features. “The great Roronoa Zoro got lost?” He says with a laugh.

“No! What the fuck, curly? Where’d you even get that idea from?”

At that, Sanji’s laugh immediately quiets, and he frowns. “Curly?”

Zoro just points at his eyebrow in response.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Sanji growls.

“Who the fuck even has curly eyebrows?”

“You have green hair!” Sanji snaps back.

“What’s that got to do with anything, shit drawer?”

“Drawer? I’m an artist, ar-tist,” Sanji corrects, drawing out his enunciation of the word. “And fuck you, moss head, I’m one of the best in the school.”

“Whatever you say, shit drawer,” Zoro drawls, and the outraged expression on Sanji’s face makes him want to laugh.

Of course, he’s not the one laughing when Sanji knocks over a cap of paint, “accidentally” spilling it out on the floor.

“Whoops,” Sanji says, an innocent smile on his face. “My foot slipped.”

“You have to clean this too, you know,” Zoro snaps back, reaching down to straighten the can anyway.

Sanji shrugs. “I’m not in a rush. If you want this clean anytime soon, you have to do it yourself.”

Zoro can feel his eyebrow twitch in annoyance, but he shuts his mouth regardless. I’ve just got to clean this shit up as soon as possible and then I’m free, he tells himself, reigning in his temper. Ignore him.

He returns back to scrubbing the floor and reaches out for paper towels in order to clean up the paint Sanji just knocked over. Surprisingly, Sanji is uncomfortably quiet, so Zoro takes a quick peek to make sure the curly browed idiot isn’t making any more of a mess.

His eyes meet Sanji’s, and he narrows his eyes at the blonde suspiciously. “What are you looking at?”

Sanji turns his head slightly to the side, studying Zoro intently. “You.”

Zoro gapes at him. “Huh?”

Sanji blinks, realization dawning on his face. “N-not like that, you pervert!” He sputters, a pretty blush spreading across his face. “I was just figuring out how I was going to paint a portrait of you.”

“I’m not a goddamn pervert!” Zoro snaps back. “You’re the one who said it!”

“Well I didn’t mean it that way,” Sanji huffs. “Who the hell would wanna look at a Neanderthal like you?”

Zoro feels his eyebrow twitch again, and- goddamnit how the hell is he going to put up with an asshole like this for a whole week? They can barely last five seconds before they’re at each other’s throats!

He focuses on cleaning up the last stain he can find, sighing in relief when he finally finishes.

“Well then,” Zoro says, standing up. “I’ll see you later, I guess.”

In response, Sanji holds out his hand, and Zoro stares at him blankly. Does he want me to shake it or something?

“Your phone, dumbass,” Sanji hisses. “How stupid are you?”

“Why do you need my phone?” Zoro asks, confused.

“So I can contact you?” Sanji says, his voice rising in disbelief at the confused expression on Zoro’s face.

“Oh,” Zoro mutters, and pulls his phone out of his pocket to hand over to Sanji.

Sanji looks down at the flip phone in his hand with poorly concealed incredulity. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No?”

“Like fucking hell I know how to use this thing,” Sanji huffs, shoving it back into Zoro’s hands. “Just tell me your number then. I would hope you know it?”

“I know my number,” Zoro mutters crossly. “XXX-XXX-XXXX.”

It takes a couple moments before he receives a call from an unknown number, his flip phone buzzing in his hand insistently.

“That’s my number,” Sanji states bossily. “Save it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zoro mutters. “Can I go now?”

Sanji huffs, but he doesn’t stop Zoro as he turns and walks out the door.

...

Zoro sits in the middle of the dojo floor, bending his knees under his body. His eyes are closed as he reflects on what had happened during practice that day, a clear cut image in his mind of all the moves he succeeded in making as well as the things he could bring closer to perfection.

Distantly, he hears the sound of a door opening and closing, but he pays it no mind, letting it drift away in his mind. He can feel his heartbeat begin to calm, and he continues reflecting on the day's practice.

It wasn’t a bad one, but Zoro knows it could still be better- he could still be better (his loss to Mihawk last year proves that), and if he’s going to become the world's greatest swordsman, then he’s going to need to be much, much stronger.

There’s another sound, something like a camera shutter? Just like the one before, he lets it go, instead mentally noting to increase his weights before the next practice.

Meditation was something Zoro always did, once before and once after kendo. Before to help him focus and to improve the quality of his practice, and after to reflect on both his attitude and how the practice had turned out.

He’s snapped out of his meditation by a sharp kick to his side, and he grudgingly opens his eyes to give the perpetrator an angry glare.

Sanji, like always, is immune to any attempts at intimidation, and instead pulls the lollipop out of his mouth.

“Come on, Marimo,” he says, waving the lollipop at him before sticking it back into his mouth.

Zoro rolls his eyes, getting up to follow after Sanji. He hasn't showered yet and he’s still in his kendogi, so Sanji gives him a pointed look which Zoro ignores until Sanji kicks his shins.

“Marimo,” Sanji says warningly, and Zoro sighs, turning instead to the locker room.

It wasn't long before Sanji stopped trusting Zoro to find his way to the art room entirely. After the second day of Zoro somehow ending up on the opposite side of campus and Sanji barely being able to get any work done, the blonde just decided that he’d pick him up from the gym after practice instead.

To his surprise, modeling for Sanji wasn’t difficult at all. Since all he really does is just sit there, he generally ends up just closing his eyes and falling asleep, and the curly-browed artist had just given up on keeping him awake and instead decided to paint him napping. The blonde is also much less likely to talk when he’s focused instead on drawing, and honestly Zoro is surprised by the intensity Sanji shows when painting.

Today, Zoro doesn’t fall asleep immediately, instead just closing his eyes and relaxing to the sounds of Sanji painting quietly. Zoro would honestly say that he found a lot of the quiet time he spent in the blonde presence somewhat enjoyable, but of course all of that is ruined the moment he opens his mouth.

“Oi, mosshead,” Sanji says, kicking the chair Zoro’s sitting on in order to jolt him awake. “Wake up.”

“Hm?” Zoro grumbles, opening his eyes slowly. When had he fallen asleep?

The blonde is standing above him, his hands tucked into his pockets and another lollipop hanging lazily off of his lips. Zoro notes that the blonde’s workspace is clear, so Sanji must have already cleaned up and put all of his supplies away. Sanji jerks his head towards the window, and Zoro looks out, his eyes widening when he realizes that the sun has long since gone down.

“What time is it?” Zoro asks with a yawn, mentally trying to remember how much homework he had.

“Half past seven,” Sanji answers, playing with the lollipop in his mouth.

Zoro’s stomach answers, a low growl echoing through the empty classroom. Sanji raises a curly eyebrow at that, but Zoro just shrugs, not easily embarrassed.

The artist sighs, taking his lollipop out of his mouth. “Come with me,” he murmurs. “I’ll treat you.”

Zoro, never one to deny free food, just decides to follow the blonde without question.

…

Eventually, Zoro begins to doubt whether or not that was the wisest decision as the blonde leads Zoro to a rather questionable neighborhood. The streets are dimly lit, and the buildings are definitely not in the greatest shape, but Sanji navigates his way through the streets easily.

“Where are we going?” Zoro asks, his sense of self preservation beginning to kick in as they pass a flickering streetlight.

“To get food,” Sanji responds simply, and Zoro frowns. He’s not sure what he should expect from the quality of food in this area, but he’s not really sure whether or not he should voice that opinion to the blonde in front of him. Unlike the curly-browed artist seemed to think, Zoro did occasionally think before he spoke.

Sanji suddenly grabs on to Zoro’s arm to stop him from turning in the opposite direction, giving him an unimpressed look. “How shitty is your sense of direction?” Sanji mutters under his breath, not letting go of Zoro’s arm and choosing instead to drag the green haired swordsman along with him.

They come across a man on the side of the street, his red nose from the cold. He’s holding a piece of cardboards that reads “Anything Helps” in sloppily written letters. Zoro averts his eyes to ignore him, but to his surprise, Sanji stops and starts digging through his pockets.

“Here,” he says, handing the old man a wad of cash. The man’s eyes widen and face brightens as he takes it, and then Sanji digs through his pockets again, handing him a piece of paper. “This should be enough for a meal here,” he tells the man.

Zoro stares at the blonde in shock as he comes back towards him, his arms tucked into his pockets casually as he looks up and exhales slowly out into the cold air.

Sanji catches Zoro’s gaze, immediately straightening and staring at him challengingly. “What?”

He opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say anything, a voice cuts him off. “Sanji nii-chan!” A little girl shouts, running over towards him.

At the sound of his name, a bunch of other kids perk up, coming over towards them. They were all covered in various amounts of dirt and filth, but their smiles were bright as they ran over.

“We missed you!” A boy says, tugging insistently at Sanji’s sleeve. “You don’t come and visit anymore.”

“Huh? What are you brats doing out this late?” Sanji asks, scowling as the children start gathering around him. One clings on to his arm, laughing brightly as Sanji lifts it up in an attempt to dislodge them.

“It’s Mr. Curly Eyebrow!”

“Do you have any candy?”

“I’m not sharing it with you,” Sanji sniffs, and all the children whine simultaneously.

“Please!” They beg, and Zoro can’t help but laugh at the strained expression on the artist’s face.

“Yeah, come on, Mr. Curly Eyebrow,” he teases with a grin. “Share your candy.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, stupid swordsman,” Sanji mutters, but he pulls out a bunch of lollipops (where does he even keep those?) anyway.

The kids cheer happily as he hands them out, grabbing them enthusiastically and tearing the wrappers off. “You’re the best!” A girl says as she sticks a bright red lollipop in her mouth.

At that, Sanji smiles at them in exasperation. “Yeah, yeah, get back to the orphanage before you get in trouble,” he tells them, shooing them away.

“Thank you, Sanji nii-chan!” The little girl from the beginning says with a bright smile. “Come by and play with us again!”

Sanji watches the kids with a boyish smile as they all run off chattering amongst themselves excitedly. He looks younger when he smiles, Zoro thinks to himself.

“How many lollipops do you even have?” Zoro asks him dryly after the children are gone, and the smile immediately drops off Sanji’s face into a scowl at the sound of his voice.

“Does it matter?” He snaps back crossly, and Zoro rolls his eyes at the blonde’s tone of voice.

“Sorry for asking,” he mutters. “Didn’t realize it was such a sensitive subject.”

At that, Sanji looks at least a little bit guilty. “I used to smoke in high school,” he admits. “So the lollipops are for breaking the addiction.”

“I see.”

The restaurant Sanji eventually takes Zoro to (the Baratie, as it says outside) is small with a few tables in front of the counter where Zoro can see a man with a large blonde mustache making food. Sanji pulls him over to the seating around the counter, plopping down on the bar stool as if it was the most natural thing to do in the world.

“Shitty geezer,” Sanji calls out, and the man with the large mustache gives him an unimpressed look.

“What is it, eggplant?”

Eggplant? Zoro thinks, but Sanji doesn’t seem to mind, only rolling his eyes good naturedly at the nickname.

“Give us two house specials,” Sanji tells the man, and the man just scowls at him.

“Restaurant is for paying customers only, you damn brat.”

“I pay you with my goddamn sweat and tears, just get the food, old man.”

“If you stopped giving out your money to strays, maybe you’d be able to pay for your own meal for once,” the man huffs, and Sanji opens his mouth to protests, but the man cuts him off. “Don’t tell me that man over there wasn’t you.”

Zoro follows the man’s gesture towards a familiar man in the corner who had a plate of food in front of him and was eating it with a gusto that would put Luffy to shame.

Sanji does the same, looking over at the man they ran into earlier. His voice is even when he replies. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man rolls his eyes, but turns away to go back to work, and Sanji pulls out his phone and starts playing games on it. Zoro finds himself yet again staring at the blonde in disbelief.

“What?” Sanji asks reproachfully when he catches him staring.

Zoro scowls in response, not really sure what to say. Part of him wants to ask why the blonde decided to help that man or how the children knew he had candy, but he keeps his mouth shut. He and Sanji aren’t friends, and judging by the level of hostility in most of their interactions, they probably won’t ever be.

Sanji just shrugs and returns back to his phone, scrolling through it disinterestedly. Zoro sits there awkwardly, looking around the restaurant curiously. Aside from the starving man in the corner, there’s a surprising amount of people in such a small place, all chatting happily.

His attention is caught when the door opens, a familiar redhead dragging herself over to the counter tiredly. She freezes when she makes eye contact with Zoro, but before he can say anything, he’s cut off by another voice.

“Nami-swan!” Sanji shouts happily, twirling around to bow in front of Nami with a dramatic flair.

“The fuck are you doing here?” Zoro asks her, and Sanji immediately snaps at him, kicking the legs of his barstool. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

“You two know each other?” Nami asks, sitting down beside Zoro casually.

“Bastard ruined my portrait of you,” Sanji scowls. “Now I have to draw his ugly mug instead of your beautiful face.”

“You were the model who was too busy to come back?” Zoro asks her, thinking back. Maybe Nami had mentioned something about modelling for one of the art classes a week ago…

“I practically got paid to just sit still,” Nami scoffs, taking the seat opposite Sanji. “You think I’m not going to take the opportunity?”

“You got paid for this?” Zoro demands, and immediately receives another sharp kick from Sanji.

“You’re not getting paid cause it’s your fault I have to make up the assignment in the first place,” he scowls at Zoro. “Feel lucky I’m even treating you to dinner.”

Zoro feels like he should point out that Sanji’s not actually paying, but he doesn’t particularly want the blonde to take away the food, especially since he doesn’t want to have come all the way out here for nothing.

“Why are you here, then?” Zoro asks, directing the question past Sanji and towards Nami.

Nami shrugs. “It’s cheap, close by, and the food’s good.”

“You live around here?” Zoro asks with a frown. He had known Nami’s financial situation wasn’t good, since she had revealed to their group of friends a while ago that her and her sister were struggling to pay off her late mother’s debts, but he didn’t think it was this bad.

“Sanji-kun does too,” Nami tells him flippantly, and Zoro turns to look at the blonde in disbelief. Distantly, he remembers Sanji freaking out about losing a scholarship when they had first met, but he hadn’t paid it much mind. Now, he realizes, maybe the blonde was a little justified in freaking out that much, since he probably heavily relied on that scholarship to even go to their school.

“My old man runs this restaurant,” Sanji explains, gesturing at the man with the large mustache. “I showed it to Nami-swan when I found out she lived close by.”

“Sanji-kun is such a nice guy,” Nami says in her sickeningly sweet voice she uses whenever she’s manipulating people to get what she wants. “Sometimes he even gives us the food for free.”

“Anything for you, my beautiful angel!” Sanji swoons, and Zoro looks at the artist in disbelief. The blonde’s eyes are practically hearts as he drools over Nami, and Zoro doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone with such an obvious crush.

Nami takes in his bewildered look amusedly. “Don’t worry about him,” she says. “He’s like that around every woman.”

Zoro looks at Sanji disgustedly. What an idiot, he thinks to himself, shaking his head slightly.

Sanji and Nami start talking about something Zoro doesn’t understand, so he just blocks them out, letting his thoughts wander towards the blonde beside him. Every time he feels like he has a good grip on who Sanji is, he’ll do something completely against his expectations. In the beginning, he thought he was some rich, privileged asshole, but now that he’s seen the neighborhood the blonde lives in, he knows he’s anything but. For a second, he was starting to think the blonde wasn’t as bad as he thought, but after watching the artist fall over himself for Nami, he changed his mind again.

Damn confusing curly-browed bastard.

A rather large man with blue hair and a black mustache and beard comes out from behind the counter, carrying a surprisingly good looking platter of seafood. He purposely knocks into Sanji on his way out, causing the blonde to scowl at him.

“The fuck was that for, Patty?” Sanji growls, and the man sneers back at him.

“Stop flirting with the customers and actually get shit done, lazy asshole.”

“If anyone is a lazy asshole here, it’s you, bastard,” Sanji snaps back.

“Both of you, shut up,” the man with the large blonde mustache who’s apparently Sami’s dad (Zoro guesses he can see a slight resemblance, but he still has no idea where the curly eyebrow came from) tells them as he places two platters of assorted seafood in front of Zoro and Sanji. “And eggplant, stop neglecting your boyfriend.”

Sanji immediately flushes red, though from anger or embarrassment, Zoro can’t actually tell. “B-b-boyfriend?!?” He stutters. “The fuck, old geezer, are you going blind?”

His father raises an unimpressed eyebrow at Sanji. “Isn’t he the one who-“

“Nami-swan, I bet you’re hungry, you’re definitely hungry,” Sanji rushes out, cutting his father off. “Shitty geezer, you should pay more attention to your customers, unless you really are going insane in your old age?”

His father scowls at Sanji, but surprisingly doesn’t say anything else, turning to Nami instead. “Picking up food for your sister too?”

“Yes please,” Nami says.

Sanji’s father nods. “I’ll give it to you for free for your help the other day.”

Nami grins. “Oh that? It was nothing. Getting that kind of discount is easy.”

Zoro ignores Sanji’s multitude of compliments over “Nami-swan’s brilliance” and instead turns his attention to the food in front of him. It’s some kind of assortment of seafood, he can tell that for sure, but he’s not exactly sure what’s in it. He’s never been much of a picky eater, though, so he takes a cautious first bite to test it.

What the fuck? He thinks as flavor explodes in his mouth. This is seriously good. He takes another eager bite, and then another, and suddenly there’s nothing left on his plate as he sighs in satisfaction.

“Hey Marimo, how’s the- oh my god how are you done already?” Sanji asks, his eyes blown wide open as he looks at Zoro’s empty plate.

“Told you the food’s good,” Nami says, completely unperturbed, having met the horror that is Monkey D. Luffy.

Zoro grunts in return, reaching out for his cup of water and chugging it down like it was booze. Sanji looks absolutely appalled at his actions. “Oh my god, Marimo, do you have any manners?”

Zoro shrugs. “When you live with my roommate, you have to eat fast.”

Sanji blinks at him. “Does your roommate eat a lot?”

Zoro grunts in affirmation, too full and tired for sentences.

“Does he like seafood?”

“He likes all food.”

Sanji’s eye begins to sparkle excitedly. “Then, you should take him here!”

At that, Nami chimes in. “That’s a good idea. You should invite everyone, especially Luffy. It’d be good for business.”

“Eggplant, stop trying to help me run my own damn restaurant,” Sanji’s dad cuts in, giving him an unappreciative look. “Focus on your classes.”

“For your information, my grades are fine,” Sanji snaps back at him.

His father just scoffs. “Not for long, with that kind of attitude. You should get a job too, so you can get out of my house.”

“I have a job,” Sanji argues. “I work for you, shitty bastard.”

“I’m firing you.”

“I work for free anyway. You can’t kick me out, even if you tried.”

“Eggplant,” his father says warningly, but Sanji remains unperturbed.

“Dad,” he shoots back, and that seems to do the trick; his father scowls, but doesn't say anything else.

It was a very strange interaction, but nobody else seemed to pay the two any mind, continuing on eating as if they didn’t just hear the two arguing. Zoro has the sinking feeling that he’s going to get dragged into something he doesn’t want a part of, so he just watches the two warily. Their family drama is none of his business.

I should probably get back to the dorms soon, he realizes suddenly, looking at the clock on the wall beside them. After a moment, he blinks. I have no idea where I actually am.

Nami seems to notice this as well, and as both of their empty plates are taken away, she turns to look at Sanji.

“Sanji-kun,” she starts, her voice sickeningly sweet as she flutters her eyelashes at him. Sanji immediately perks up like some kind of adoring puppy. “Can you do me a huge favor and walk Zoro to the dorms? I don’t want him getting lost.”

“Of course,” Sanji agrees immediately. “Anything for you, Nami-swan.”

Zoro rolls his eyes. “I can get back by myself,” he lies.

Both Nami and Sanji look at him, giving him matching unimpressed stares.

“Sure, sure you can,” Sanji says, nodding unconvincingly as he stands up. Nami just sighs in a mixture of disappointment and resignation.

They leave once Nami gets her food, and they part ways with a bunch of unnecessary theatrics (Sanji) and regretful sighs (also Sanji).

“You know, you can just leave,” Zoro tells Sanji after he sighs dramatically for the nth time. “Nami will never know.”

Sanji scoffs. “I would never go against a promise I made to a lady. Besides, you are my model, and I need you home safely and not halfway across the world.”

“Fuck off,” Zoro mutters, and they continue walking in an awkward silence.

It’s cold, as the days are beginning to border on winter, and it bites at Zoro cheeks, dusting them pink. Sanji is much more pale, so the blush stands out all the more on his porcelain skin, and from where Zoro is standing, he can only see his blonde mop of hair as it shadows his face.

“I really did mean it,” Sanji says out of the blue, breaking the silence. “You should bring your friends over to the Baratie. Despite what he says, the damn old geezer can really use the customers.”

Zoro grunts in response, and they fall back into silence.

“Don’t you care?” Zoro asks, his mouth moving before his brain can tell him it’s a bad idea.

“What do you mean?” Sanji asks, turning his head so that Zoro can see his eye.

Zoro coughs awkwardly. “That people know you live in a place like this. Don’t you care?”

“Having that shitty geezer as a father is something I will never be ashamed of,” Sanji says firmly, his blue eye glinting dangerously. He’s watching Zoro’s reaction, and he can’t help but feel like this is some kind of test.

So he just shrugs and says “I see.”

Sanji doesn’t say anything after, but the way his mouth curls up into a small smile makes Zoro feel like he passed.

…

Usopp arrives at their lunch table with a dramatic bang as he slams his lunch tray down. Chopper and Brook jump in surprise, Nami flinches, Robin looks up in mild amusement as Franky stops talking to her and looks up at Usopp questioningly. Luffy, as always, is completely unaffected, and eyes Usopp’s lunch tray hungrily while Zoro himself shocks slightly at the sound.

“I can’t believe,” Usopp announces, pausing for dramatic effect. “That you-“ he points at Nami accusingly “-and Zoro know Sanji and you didn’t tell me.”

“Oh! I know Sanji, too!” Luffy interjects cheerfully, extending a hand out towards Usopp’s unsuspecting lunch. “He gives me candy!”

Usopp sighs, shaking his head. “You don’t count, you know everybody. But you two-“ he says, pointing at Nami and Zoro accusingly. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

“What do you mean?” Zoro frowns. “Why’s that such a big deal?”

“A big deal?” Usopp squeaks, his voice rising in disbelief. “He’s literally the best artist in the entire school! Wait- are you seriously telling me you’ve never seen any of his work?”

Usopp immediately digs around in his bag for his phone, pulling up Instagram with a frantic fervour. “Look at this!”

The whole entire table leans forward curiously to look, blocking Zoro’s view as he attempts to grab an uninterested glance. Like he cares about that shit drawer’s stupid drawings.

“Woah,” Nami breathes out in awe. “That’s amazing.”

“He is quite talented,” Robin comments approvingly.

“What a super painting!” Franky chimes in in agreement.

“I can’t see!” Chopper calls out, craning his head to get a better view. Ussop passes the phone over to Chopper as Nami falls back into her seat, sending Zoro a glare.

“I’m raising your debt 10%,” she huffs at him, and Zoro gapes at her in disbelief. “Someone that good paints a portrait of me, and you ruin it before I can even see it?”

“What? Lemme see that,” Zoro demands, grabbing the phone out of Ussops hands from where Chopper had returned it.

It is a painting of a woman by the seashore, the sun lighting up her bare back and turning the blonde strands of her hair golden. She’s wearing a plain white dress which she has pulled up slightly to stop it from getting wet, and there are incredibly realistic waves crashing over her feet. Her face is captured in a fond smile, and Zoro can’t help but draw similarities between her and the blonde artist. Like Sanji, her long hair covers one of her eyes (though she doesn’t have a curly eyebrow), her skin is pale like porcelain, and somehow her one visible eye seemed more blue than both the sea at her feet and the sky behind her.

It wasn’t like Zoro knew anything about art, but even he had to admit that it was good. It was almost as realistic as a photograph, but there was something about the scene that it captured that made it seem less like a photograph and more like a distant memory.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” Robin asks him, an annoyingly knowing glint in her eye as she looks at him amusedly.

“It’s-“ Zoro starts, struggling to find the right words. “It’s okay.”

“Okay?” Usopp practically shouts. “How is this just okay?”

“Now, now, longnose-kun,” Robin says placatingly. “I’m sure swordsman-san appreciates artist-san’s art in his own way. Not many people are as knowledgeable as yourself.”

At that, Usopp blushes and smiles smugly, rubbing underneath his nose proudly. “Well, not many people appreciate art as much as I, Usopp, the Great Connoisseur of-“

“Wait Usopp, send me his Instagram, I want to follow him,” Nami interrupts, pulling out her own phone.

“I, as well, am interested in seeing more of his work,” Robin says, taking a relaxed bite out of her lunch.

“Me too!” Brook chimes in. “I’d be glad to support such budding talent!”

Usopp nods, pulling out his phone and typing furiously. Everyone’s phones buzz simultaneously as they receive the message in their group chat (that Zoro is not a part of because of his phone).

Zoro peers over Robin’s shoulder curiously as she scrolls through Sanji’s account. There are a surprising amount of paintings, most of them not actually of people but of places and various forms of nature. Zoro vaguely recognizes a dirty looking alleyway as part of the neighborhood Sanji lives in, but other than that it’s mostly people and places he doesn’t know.

“Oh yeah,” Nami says suddenly. “Sanji did kind of invite everyone to eat at the Baratie last night.”

“WHAT?” Usopp screeches.

“Food?” Luffy asks, his interest immediately captured.

“The Baratie?” Chopper asks, blinking at her curiously.

“It’s the restaurant his father owns,” Nami explains. She turns to Usopp with a catlike grin. “If you wanna meet him, it’ll cost you.”

Of course, the first thing Nami does when she learns her friend is a well-sought out artist is to find some way to get profit out of it.

Usopp turns noticeably paler at the prospect of doing any sort of business with Nami that involves money, and stutters out “h-how much will it cost me?”

Nami smirks. “Pay for my lunch and my dinner for the next week and fix the air conditioning at my apartment.”

“Can’t you ask Franky to do that?” Usopp asks, and he seriously looks like he’s considering her offer.

“Only if I want him to install some kind of insane anti-burglar flamethrower along with it,” Nami mutters, giving Franky a glare while the engineering major looks at her consideringly.

“That would be pretty super,” Franky admits, and Nami growls back “not a chance.”

“I wouldn’t mind meeting him,” Robin adds in thoughtfully, ignoring the palpable tension between the orange haired business major and Franky.

“I, too, am interested in meeting another artist,” Brook agrees, and Nami turns away from Franky to look at them.

“Great!” Nami grins. “Then is everybody up for tonight?”

Ussop nods enthusiastically as Luffy cheers at the idea of food.

“Oi,” Zoro mutters glaring at Nami. “Don’t just invite me on your own.”

“Oh?” Nami starts, a catlike grin spreading across her face that spells out nothing but trouble for him. “Are you really in the position to be denying me, Zoro? If I remember correctly, you owe me…” she trails off pulling out her accounting book, the sight of which Zoro pales considerably.

“Fuck, okay you damn witch, I’ll go,” he growls, not wanting to hear about his overwhelmingly large debts. Even though he’s pretty sure Nami knows he won’t be able to pay them off before he dies, she never hesitates to threaten him with it.

“Great!” Nami says with a sickeningly sweet cheerfulness, closing her book with a snap.

They all fall back into their separate conversations, and Zoro sits back and listens, paying attention despite how detached he looks.

“I got it!” Brook, who had been surprisingly quiet before, looks up from his food with a serious expression. Everyone turns to him curiously. “Why can’t skeletons play church music?” He asks, and Zoro feels his eye twitch. Not this again….

“Why not?” Chopper asks, leaning forwards excitedly. Usopp and Luffy mimic the motion, the three of them always the ones to encourage the elder musicians' cheesy sense of humor.

“Because they have no organs! Yohohohoho!” Brook jokes, breaking out into his characteristic laughter.

Zoro just rolls his eyes at his friends' antics as the whole table erupts in laughter, Luffy practically falling over with the force of his loud laughter. The whole table immediately dissolves into chaos which gets them kicked out of the cafeteria as the professors.

Zoro would never admit it out loud, but he loves his friends.

...

It’s strange how quickly Sanji just fits in with the rest of his friends, filling in a hole practically made for him that Zoro didn’t even know existed.

Luffy loves him which in all fairness Zoro should have predicted considering what the boy had said about Sanji giving him candy (giving Luffy food is almost a surefire way to be inducted into his expansive group of friends). Sanji also being the son of the owner of a restaurant is a huge bonus in Luffy’s eyes, and the boy hangs off of Sanji like a monkey, claiming he always smells like good food.

Usopp, as well, Zoro should have predicted since the boy had been practically trembling with the excitement of meeting him. They bond over art quickly, and the two of them often break off into heated discussions about stuff Zoro can barely even hope to understand.

He already knew that Sanji and Nami got along well, and considering the fact that Sanji apparently loves all women, him and Robin getting along was almost a guarantee; however, the degree at which they ended up getting along was surprising, and Robin often participates in Usopp and Sanji’s intense debates.

Chopper is sold the moment Sanji gives him a lollipop and compliments the fact that he got into college at such a young age which is surprising to Zoro since the younger boy is usually much shyer than that.

Zoro really should have seen his quick friendship with Brook coming, considering that they both shared interest in each other’s seperate forms of art (Sanji’s sizeable knowledge of music takes both Zoro and Brook by surprise), and they both share a similar interest in the “inherent beauty of the female gender”.

The most surprising of all was the way he and Franky actually end up hitting it off, and Zoro is extremely baffled by Sanji’s uncharacteristically extensive knowledge of technology which he actually seemed quite reluctant to share.

Regardless, the whole entire dinner affair knocks Zoro off guard, and before he knows it, he finds himself being caught up in Sanji’s pace. He responds to every jab Sanji makes with an equally scathing tongue, and the two of them often dissolve into their own separate world, bickering over practically anything and everything.

“Like I told you before, idiot, it’s a painting not a drawing.”

Zoro makes a face. “Whatever, shit drawer.”

Sanji makes a noise of frustration akin to a dying walrus, and Zoro can’t help the way his mouth twitches up at the sound. Damn, it is way too easy and entertaining to rile Sanji up. It’s almost cute how frustrated he gets and how quickly his pale complexion will flush with anger. Almost. Not that Zoro has ever considered Sanji cute before.

“What about this one?” Usopp interrupts, pushing his phone forwards to show Sanji one of the paintings on his instagram. Zoro recognizes it from before, the dirty looking alleyway that’s clearly from this neighborhood- not that Zoro remembers which place. “It seems pretty different from your usual style.”

Robin leans in, her eyes sparkling with interest as she studies the piece. “I thought that too,” she says in agreement. “It seems a lot darker than your usual style.”

“Ah, yeah,” Sanji says, blinking perplexedly. “That one is actually-“ he cuts off, looking around the restaurant before he finds what he’s looking for. “Right there.”

Robin, Zoro, and Usopp all startle as they recognize the painting on the wall of the Baratie. How he didn’t notice it before, Zoro has no idea, but the painting on the wall is undoubtedly the one on Sanji’s instagram. He even recognizes the little swirly S in the corner that is Sanji’s unique signature.

“It was a present for the shitty geezer,” Sanji explains. “Thought I’d paint him a picture of where we first met.”

At that, they look at him in confusion. “Where you first met?” Usopp asks, voicing their question. “I thought he was your dad?”

Sanji blinks, like he’s surprised they didn’t know. “Oh yeah, he is,” he tells them, only confusing them further. “He adopted me after he found me starving on the streets.”

What the fuck, Zoro thinks as his jaw drops and eyes widen. He feels like he learns something mind-blowing about Sanji everyday. From living in the slums to starving on the streets, Zoro honestly doesn’t think there’s anything else the blonde can say about his life that will surprise him, but knowing Sanji, there probably is.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sanji tells them, frowning. “It was a long time ago, so it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Usopp sniffs, reaching out and patting Sanji on the shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot, buddy.”

Sanji raises an unamused eyebrow at him. “Yeah, yeah, shut up, idiot. I don’t want pity from you- now, the beautiful Robin on the other hand…”

Robin laughs lightly, deciding to humor Sanji (which is something Zoro finds her doing a lot). “I am very sorry for your suffering, Sanji.”

Sanji gasps, clutching his heart dramatically as he swoons. “Your kindness knows no bounds, my dear Robin.”

Zoro finds any previous respect he might have felt towards the artist immediately erased. “Shut up,” he rolls his eyes, kicking Sanji under the table.

Sanji glares at him, switching modes from swooning imbecile to the fiery artist Zoro knows him like he’s flipping a switch. “You shut up, you stupid swordsman,” he snaps, retaliating with his own kick under the table.

It immediately dissolves into a mini fight under the table as they both attempt to kick each other as hard as they can, and Nami breaks it off almost as soon as it starts with a sharp cough and a smack to the head.

“Now,” Nami starts, standing up. “In order to celebrate Sanji officially joining the straw hats-“

“He’s what,” Zoro questions, his voice flat, and Nami pointedly ignores him.

“-let’s feast to our heart’s content!” She announces, and she’s answered by a responding cheer. He can see the cook from the other day, P-something or other and another dude with brown hair next to him wince at their volume, but Zeff has a soft smile on his face as he watches Sanji stutter in surprise as Zoro’s group of crazy friends crowds around him.

“Of course, Usopp will be paying,” Nami adds on cheerfully, and all the blood drains from Usopp’s face as Luffy starts shoveling food into his face.

“What?” He squeaks, but his voice is lost as the situation devolves into normal chaos as it normally does whenever Zoro’s friends are involved.

...

“Why kendo?” Sanji asks out of the blue on the last day of Zoro’s modeling, as he finishes up the small details on the portrait.

Zoro doesn’t even bother opening his eyes before responding, the words on his lips before he even has time to think. “I’m going to be the world's greatest swordsman.”

“Well, no shit,” Sanji replies, and that makes Zoro open his eyes to look at the blonde curiously. Sanji’s blue eye meets his, his gaze steady.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zoro asks carefully, looking at the blonde for any sign of mocking or sarcasm.

“You don’t seem like the kind of guy to settle for second best,” Sanji says easily with a shrug, and Zoro can’t help but feel a little blown away by his reaction. From everything he’s known about the blonde, he was sure that he was going to make fun of him.

“I mean why a swordsman? Sanji continues, oblivious to the mystified expression on Zoro’s face. “Why not- I don’t know, the world's greatest ice skater?”

“What about you?” Zoro challenges, knowing that he’s avoiding the question. “Why drawing?”

Sanji, by now growing used to Zoro’s blatant disrespect towards art, just sighs, and looks down at the portrait of the green haired swordsman he has in front of him, his gaze growing distant.

“Have you ever heard of the All Blue?” He asks quietly, his voice subdued and almost unsure.

Zoro blinks at him before yawning and leaning back in his chair. “Never heard of it.”

Sanji rolls his eyes. “Figures,” he mutters under his breath.

He returns back to painting, looking a little dejected, and Zoro looks at him in surprise.

“Hey, shit drawer,” he huffs. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to know.”

Zoro watches as Sanji literally lights up like a Christmas tree, and the blonde flashes him a bright boyish smile, his blue eyes wide and shining with excitement.

“It's a traveling art showcase, so rare it’s practically a legend,” he starts, his voice heavy with awe and his face more animated than Zoro has ever seen it. “Only the best artists from all around the world are featured in it, and it’s practically every artist’s dream. I want...” he pauses slightly, a slight flush dusting lightly over his cheek. “I want them to showcase my art there,” he admits, his smile shy as he looks at Zoro.

Zoro has had the fleeting thought before that yeah, Sanji can be cute, especially when he gets particularly heated up or flustered, but this? Sanji’s usually pale cheeks are dusted pink, and he looks up at Zoro through his eyelashes (fuck, have they always been that long?) with a bashful expression.

It’s fucking adorable.

Zoro clears the sudden dryness in his throat and hastily averts his gaze, hoping that it can hide the blush that’s heating up his face. Fuck.

There’s a long awkward silence before Zoro dares to look back at Sanji, but the blonde doesn’t seem to notice it; his gaze is directed down at the painting in front of him, but Zoro can tell he’s not really looking at it. The expression on his face is sad and longing- nothing like the smile he had shown Zoro a few seconds before, and Zoro can’t help but wonder once again how Sanji doesn’t get whiplash from how fast his moods seem to change.

“Hey,” he starts softly, giving into the worry that’s starting to form in his chest. He’s not really sure what else to say as Sanji looks up at him, a sad smile playing at his lips.

“I’ve been there,” he says quietly. “To the All Blue. My mother took me there as a kid. It was one of the last things we did together before... before she died.”

“Oh,” Zoro says softly, staring at the blonde in surprise. There’s this tight feeling in his chest that makes it a little hard for him to breathe as he understands the gravity of what the artist is telling him.

Zoro’s beginning to realize that he had gotten the blonde all wrong. The loudmouthed, dramatic, prissy artist is gone, and Zoro can see the hard-set determination to achieve his dream. It’s like his promise with Kuina, he thinks. Whatever Sanji just admitted to him- it’s not something it seems like he’d told anyone else before, and something about that knowledge causes butterflies to flutter in his chest.

“When I was younger,” Zoro starts slowly, swallowing uncertainly. “I went to this dojo, determined to be stronger. The man in charge of the dojo, my sensei, had a daughter.”

He looks up at Sanji, and the blonde’s blue eye is solely fixed on him, and the intensity of his expression reminds Zoro of his focus while painting. Having that gaze focused on him is not good for whatever this growing feeling in his chest is, so Zoro hastily averts his gaze once again, clearing his throat before continuing.

“She was a kendo prodigy, completely undefeated in at least two age groups above her, and I used to challenge her all the time and get my ass practically handed back to me on a silver platter.”

Zoro smiles to himself, the memory of her bokken slapping him in the face running through his mind. His smile turns rueful as he remembers the funeral, and the encompassing feeling of hopelessness when he realized she was gone. “She beat me 2,001 times, and all it took for her to kick the bucket was a tumble down a small set of stairs.”

Zoro can hear Sanji inhale sharply at his words, but he continues on with his story, forcing it all out into the open. “I promised her, in the match before she died, that one of us would become the greatest swordsman in the world. No matter what, I intend to honor that promise.”

There’s a long pause before Zoro finally decides to look up at Sanji, but the artist doesn’t meet his gaze. He reaches up to take the lollipop out of his mouth, and Zoro can see his old smoking habits come through as he looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully and exhales slowly.

“Wish I could’ve met her,” Sanji says finally, a snarky grin on his lips. “Would’ve liked to meet the woman who put Roronoa Zoro in his rightful place.”

Zoro lets out a bark of laughter, imagining Kuina and Sanji meeting. “She would probably hate you,” he tells the artist, and Sanji’s eyes finally meet his, an offended expression on his face.

“Excuse me?”

“You know,” Zoro says, gesturing at Sanji. “All your bullshit about women being weak and you needing to protect them. She would’ve hated that.”

“I don’t think women are weak,” Sanji says with a frown. “If anything,” he pauses, a strange expression on his face as he unconsciously reaches up to tug at his hair. “I’m the weak one.”

Sanji seems to struggle for a bit, his breath shaky and he doesn’t look up to meet Zoro’s eyes. His gaze is fixed somewhere else, like when he must have been thinking about his mom, so Zoro just watches carefully as the artist seems to fight himself before speaking again.

“All my life, I’ve been protected by women,” Sanji admits, and there’s something slipping into his tone of voice that Zoro doesn’t like. “They were the only ones who treated me like-“ Sanji cuts off, tugging at his hair more insistently and shaking his head like he’s getting rid of that train of thought. “I just want to return the favor.”

There’s a certain rawness to what Sanji is saying and doing; It was like someone had stripped Sanji of everything he pretended to be, and instead revealed what was underneath- what the blonde tries so hard to hide. Zoro knows he is seeing something he’s not supposed to, and Sanji seems to notice it too, his eyes immediately widening in horror as he realizes what he just said.

“Ah, fuck, Sorry, I-“ he mutters, picking up all of his art supplies in rushed movements. “We’re good for today you can just leave-“

“Hey, wait-“ Zoro starts, but it’s no use. Sanji practically throws his dirty paintbrushes in the sink, not even bothering to wash them or clean up anything around his easel.

“Sanji!” Zoro calls out, sitting up right in his chair.

Sanji freezes slightly at the mention of his name, but doesn’t turn to look back, instead he hastily picks up all of his supplies, not even bothering to put them in his bag before running out of the room. Before Zoro can say anything else, he's gone, slamming the door behind him.

…

Zoro’s always been just a straightforward kind of guy.

He’s never been particularly introspective, and he doesn’t waste much of his time thinking about feelings unless it’s somehow relative to his goal and working to accomplish it.

And maybe it’s because he’s never really felt like this before, or maybe it’s simply because he’s never really thought about it before, but maybe that’s the reason why he didn’t realize he was in love until it was too late.

...

How Zoro has managed to get here of all places when all he wants to do is go to the gym and practice kendo in peace, he has no idea, but he stands under the shadow of the art building, his feet leading him through hallways that are now familiar towards a room that where he never thought he’d actually want to be in.

Fuck, he thinks to himself as he reaches out towards the handle. Despite the fact that he can’t seem to find his way towards the gym most days, he’s somehow managed to make it here on his first try.

He slides the door open slowly, and he’s completely unprepared for the way his chest tightens and his breath is sucked away once he sees Sanji’s face. What the fuck, he thinks to himself as Sanji’s one blue eyes widens at the sight of him.

“Marimo?” Sanji asks, and Zoro’s heart flutters in his chest.

Seriously, what the fuck is with this? Zoro thinks to himself, and it’s only really now that he takes notice of the other person in the room. He looks to be around the same age as Zoro and Sanji with darker skin and heavy bags under his eyes. He’s giving him a dirty look through narrowed eyes, and a strangely protective feeling coils in his stomach. Has he been alone with Sanji this whole time? The very idea makes him weirdly irritated, so he returns the look without hesitation.

“What are you doing here?” Sanji asks, and Zoro looks back over at the blonde.

“I thought you were done with the project,” Zoro says, walking over so that he can see what Sanji’s doing. Sanji realizes that Zoro is moving over to look too late, and he fails to block Zoro’s view of the painting before Zoro gets a good glimpse of it.

It’s possibly one of the most depressing things Zoro has ever seen: a small yellow bird, its feathers matted with dirt and blood, trapped in a dark cage behind iron bars. He remembers what Robin had said about Sanji’s style a few days ago and how the painting of the alleyway had been a lot darker than his usual style, and he wonders what she’d say if she saw this. If the other painting was dark, then he has no idea what someone would consider this to be.

“What,” he starts, his voice heavy with the horror he feels at seeing such a depressing piece. “What is that?”

Sanji shifts, clearly uncomfortable with the question. Zoro watches as his hands fish a lollipop out of his pocket, and it's only now that he catches sight of the pile of wrappers around his easel.

“It’s for the showcase coming up,” Sanji explains as he unwraps the lollipop and throws the wrapper on top of all the others. “We’re supposed to do something outside of our comfort zone, so I decided to try something a little darker.”

“A little,” Zoro echoes flatly, looking down at the bird in the cage. Zoro’s not some kind of art fan like Usopp is, but even he can feel the heavy emotions coming out of the piece. Hopelessness. Loneliness.

Sanji hums, standing up and shoving Zoro away from the painting. He turns him around so that Zoro’s standing right in front of another painting. “That’s yours, if you want to see it. Why are you even here, anyway?”

Zoro avoids the question in favor of studying the portrait in front of him. As he’s learning to expect from Sanji, it’s incredibly realistic. It almost feels as if he’s looking at a photograph of himself, but it’s a little bit different. The light hits his face as if it had been captured as the sun set, and his eyes are staring down at the viewer in almost a cocky manner. His golden earrings stick out, glimmering in the light despite being in the more shadowed part of his face, and everything about him seems almost untouchable.

It’s kind of embarrassing to be so enraptured by a painting of himself, but Zoro can’t help it, wondering if this is how Sanji sees him.

“So?” Sanji asks, his eyebrows raised expectantly. “What do you think?”

“It’s, uh…” he trails off, not really sure how to put it into words. “Good,” he ends up settling on lamely, and he hears a snort from behind him.

His attention is drawn to the other guy in the room, and he scowls at him. He had almost forgotten he was there.

“Good,” the other guy repeats mockingly. “As if it isn’t the greatest painting he’s ever seen.”

“Shut up, Ghin,” Sanji says, but he’s blushing at the compliment. Anger and annoyance wells up inside Zoro, and he wants nothing more than to kick this guy out of the room. Is this what jealousy feels like? He realizes belatedly.

Sanji moves back over to the painting he was working on, sitting down in front of it and reaching out towards his paintbrush. “Don’t you have practice today, marimo?” He asks, dipping his brush in black paint.

“Yeah,” Zoro answers, and Sanji freezes from where he is holding the brush out in front of the painting. He lowers the brush, turning around to look at Zoro.

“Then why are you here?”

Zoro shifts uncomfortably, not quite having an answer to that question. Thankfully (or not?), Sanji seems to come up with his own answer, a smug smile stretching slowly across his face.

“You got lost, didn’t you?”

It’s a testament to how embarrassed Zoro is about the real reason why he came that he doesn’t deny it, only scowling at Sanji. “Shut up,” he mutters, but it’s lacking his usual bite.

Sanji puts his brush down with a long suffering sigh, getting up to wash the paint off his hands. “Don’t worry, mossy,” he says, his voice dripping with a false sweetness that makes Zoro want to strangle him. Or kiss him, he’s not exactly sure; He’s still kinda new to this being in love thing. “I’ll walk you to where you need to go.”

Zoro opens his mouth to protest or explain how he really doesn’t need Sanji to walk him to where he needs to go, but then he realizes that this is kind of the perfect excuse to spend more time with the other boy and wisely closes his mouth.

“Okay,” he agrees, and Sanji looks up at him in surprise. He seems to take his agreement for desperation and shrugs, ruffling Zoro’s hair fondly before he moves to walk at the door.

“Well, come on, then,” he says, gesturing for Zoro to follow, and Zoro sends one last look to the other guy inside the room.

He’s practically glowering at Zoro, a paintbrush held so tightly in his hand that Zoro has a feeling he might break it. Zoro sends him a smirk, succumbing to the petty feeling of victory, and the dude legitimately looks like he’s going to have an aneurism.

“Hurry the fuck up, mosshead,” Sanji snaps from in front of him, and Zoro moves to follow him.

“Who was that guy?” Zoro asks, trying his best to keep his tone light.

“Who? Ghin?” Sanji asks, turning his head to look over at Zoro properly. “He’s in my painting and Art History classes. He switched majors last year, so that’s why he looks so much older.”

“How come nobody else seems to use that room except you?” Zoro asks, trying to think of an instance where Sanji wasn’t alone in the art room and coming up blank.

“Most people just do their work in their dorms,” Sanji shrugs. “I don’t want to lug a painting back and forth between here and home, so I just stay here late instead.”

“Then how come he was working there today?”

Sanji looks a little taken aback by his sudden interest, but thankfully he doesn’t question it. “He said his roommate was being too loud or something.”

Zoro thinks back to the way the guy was glaring at him. Bullshit, he thinks to himself, but keeps it to himself, instead just saying, “I see.”

Sanji hums, but doesn’t say anything else, the two of them falling into a comfortable silence. Zoro takes the opportunity to stare unabashedly at the side of Sanji’s face, taking note of the line of his jaw and the stray hairs that blow across his face.

There’s a smudge of gray paint on his cheek, Zoro notices, and he finds himself staring at it intently. If he could just reach out and wipe it away…

CLANG!

Sanji jerks his head over to look at Zoro in surprise as Zoro runs face first into a light pole, too distracted by staring at Sanji to realize that it was coming up right in front of him.

“What the fuck?” Sanji asks, his eyes wide. Zoro watches as his face slowly breaks out into a smile, and it’s not long before he completely dissolves into laughter.

Humiliation crawls up from inside of Zoro, and he scowls, his face flushing bright red. Sanji keeps laughing, going so far as to fall down and clutch his stomach in hilarity.

Zoro reaches up to rub at his cheek where he ran into the pole, but apparently, that was the wrong move since Sanji catches the movement and falls into another fit of laughter.

“Shut up!” Zoro growls at him, but that only results in Sanji breaking out into further hysterics.

“You-“ Sanji gasps out, wiping actual tears from his eyes. “Is your sense of direction so bad that you can’t avoid walking into something right in front of you?”

“Just- shut up,” Zoro hisses, reaching out and locking Sanji in a headlock. Sanji makes this strangled sound of protest that is much better than his earlier hysterics, so Zoro keeps him in it and rubs a violent hand through Sanji’s hair to mess it up (Sanji hates people messing with his hair).

Wait, this is actually really soft, Zoro realizes, perhaps rubbing it a little more than necessary, but he’s stopped by Sanji shoving him off.

His face is strangely red, and he automatically reaches up to fix his hair, flattening it down in front of his face so that Zoro can’t see his expression. Zoro fully expects Sanji to start yelling or cussing at him, so it takes him by surprise when he just turns and starts walking instead, muttering something under his breath about stupid marimos. Weird.

Zoro looks down at his hand, kind of wishing he could touch Sanji’s hair again. What is someone even supposed to do when they’re in love with someone? Zoro wonders, the question hitting him like a bolt of lightning. Or that one time Luffy dared him to stick a fork into an electrical socket.

He imagines going on one of those cheesy romcom dates that Nami always makes him watch and shudders. He doesn’t he could ever do that sort of thing, even if it’s with Sanji.

There are some aspects of it he wouldn’t mind, though, Zoro realizes. What would holding his hand feel like? Zoro wonders, staring down at his own. Would Sanji’s hands be smooth and soft or rough and calloused like Zoro’s own? What would it feel like to hold him in his arms or shut him up with a kiss?

Zoro’s hit with a sudden pang of longing, the intensity of it surprising him. What is he supposed to do if Sanji never feels the same?

“Oi, Marimo head,” Sanji’s voice cuts through his thoughts, and Zoro looks up to see Sanji staring back at him expectantly. “Is all that moss on your head finally affecting your brain? Or did you finally lose your last braincells running into that pole?”

Zoro feels his eye twitch, and he scowls. All these feelings are making his head hurt, and it’s all stupid Sanji’s fault. Zoro kicks him in the shin when he catches up to the blonde, just because he can, and the two of them immediately devolve into a short wrestling match.

If Zoro holds on to Sanji a little tighter than usual when he gets the blonde back into a headlock, nobody will ever notice.

...

“Hey, Usopp?” Zoro asks one day when it’s just him, Usopp, and the witch in the library. Both Nami and Usopp are studying, but Zoro’s just using the textbook in front of him as a pillow.

“Hm?” Usopp asks as he scribbles something into a notebook beside him.

“Is there some kind of art show-thing coming up?”

Both Nami and Usopp look up at him in surprise.

“Uh, yeah,” Usopp answers him, looking slightly confused. “There’s one this weekend, why?”

“Just wondering,” Zoro says, turning his head away from them, but he should’ve known he would never get off that lightly.

“No, really, Zoro, why?” Nami cuts in, and the look on her face spells out nothing but trouble.

“No reason,” Zoro scowls at her. Goddamn witch and all her annoying witchy powers; honestly, it’s not human for someone to be able to smell money and lies the way she does.

Usopp sighs dramatically, resting his chin on his hand. “I really want to go, but I have that one project I need to finish that I’ve been procrastinating and it’s due the next morning.”

“Well, then, that’s perfect!” Nami exclaims, and they both look at her in confusion.

“Why?” Usopp asks, voicing Zoro’s question.

“You can go there and take Zoro with you,” Nami explains, and Zoro sends her a disbelieving look.

“I never said I wanted to go,” he protests defensively, and Nami turns one of her sickeningly sweet smiles on him.

“I’m sure Sanji-kun will be very happy that you came to support him,” she continues on as if he didn’t say anything, her eyes glinting knowingly.

Damn witch.

Usopp gets all misty eyed in the way he always does when Sanji’s art is brought up. “I can’t wait to see what piece Sanji submitted.” He says, almost dreamily, and Zoro would honestly think that he had a crush on the blonde if not for the fact that he knew Usopp already had something going on with a girl from his hometown.

Nami snorts before giving Zoro another one of those looks. “I’m sure you’re not the only one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, witch?”

Nami shrugs, and then her eyes widen comically in surprise. “What are you doing here, Sanji? It’s rare to see you in the library like this.”

Zoro jerks up off the textbook he had been lying on, whipping his head around so fast to look in the same direction as Nami that he can almost hear an audible crack. He looks around for a familiar mop of blonde hair, but is unsuccessful.

“Huh,” Nami says, a mask of perfectly crafted innocence on her face. “I could’ve sworn I saw him.”

Zoro slams his hands down on the table, earning an affronted look from the librarian. “I’m leaving,” he announces, sending a dirty look to Nami.

“Have fun~” Nami waves him off with a sing-song voice, and Usopp just looks between the two of them confusedly. “Tell Sanji I said hi.”

“Just shut up,” Zoro growls back at her, but Nami remains undeterred. One day, Zoro seethes. One day I’m gunna get her back.

He can’t help but feel a little bit thankful, however, when Nami emails him the flier for the art showcase along with when and where (don’t get lost and be late!) to meet Usopp.

Shut up, he replies, but takes a good look at the flier anyway. Damn witch and her witchy powers.

...

The art building is packed as people crowd into the gallery and wander through the hallways to get a good look at the students’ art. Usopp manages to get separated from Zoro somehow, so Zoro just wanders the building by himself, not really sure what to do.

Everyone is dressed surprisingly nicely, and Zoro feels slightly out of place with his white t-shirt and green haramaki that Nami so often calls a fashion disaster. He can see a few normal looking students, and it's enough to make him feel at least a little better about himself, especially when he sees some dude walking around in his pajamas.

He can hear snippets of people’s conversations, but everything to him sounds like people are just trying to come up with the longest and most complicated sounding words possible. There’s a voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Sanji teasing him about not being able to understand words longer than three syllables, and Zoro pushes it away with a scowl. Like anyone actually knows what juxtaposition and paradoxical appeal even mean.

After a bit more wandering, Zoro finally spots Sanji, and the sight of him practically roots him to the ground. Sanji’s wearing a tuxedo which- wow, should definitely not be legal. It highlights the length of Sanji’s legs, and it fits his body in a way that brings out his small waist. He’s wearing a blue button up under it, and Zoro decides right then and there that blue is the best color on Sanji. It makes his visible eye look impossibly more blue, and Zoro probably could stare at him like a creep for hours.

He doesn’t, though, because Sanji notices him standing there, his eye growing wide at the sight of him, and he makes a sharp beeline towards him, urgency written all over his features.

“Why are you here?” Sanji hisses, grabbing onto Zoro’s arm with a terrifyingly tight grip.

Zoro shrugs because he doesn’t really have a good excuse for the blonde. A little honesty can’t exactly hurt me, right? He thinks, so he swallows down whatever he had originally planned on saying.

“I wanted to see,” he coughs out, and he knows he’s turning bright red, but fucking hell, he’s come this far, he might as well get it over with. “Your drawing. I wanted to see it.”

Sanji doesn’t look mad at him, but he doesn’t look exactly happy either, and his eye keep flicking between Zoro and something else, clearly distracted.

Zoro turns to look, expecting to see some gorgeous woman or something else along those lines, and is surprised to see that it’s a painting instead. His mind barely registers the familiar gym and even more familiar head of green hair before Sanji grabs his face and turns it back around to look at him.

“Don’t look,” the blonde pants heavily, a distressed expression on his face. “Goddamnit Marimo, you weren’t supposed to be here.”

“Was that me?” Zoro asks instead, trying to turn back around to look, but Sanji won’t let him.

“You’re seeing things,” Sanji hisses through gritted teeth. “Nobody would want to paint a stupid Neanderthal like you.”

“That person had green hair,” Zoro frowns.

“Camie-chan has green hair,” Sanji argues back weakly.

“Camie is on the swim team,” Zoro points out. “That was in the gym. I practice in that gym everyday, curly-brow, I would recognize it.”

At that, Sanji seems to give up, loosening his grip on Zoro so that the swordsman can get a better look at the painting.

It is him, sitting in the middle of the gym he practices in every day, yet Sanji manages to make it seem like something from another world in his painting. Sunlight streams in through the open screen behind him, casting the shadows of the trees across his meditating figure. There are cherry blossoms falling down around him, but somehow none of that distracts him from the main focus of the painting: him. His eyes are closed, and the normal harsh lines of his face have softened, creating the impression of peace.

Despite what Sanji said, it can’t possibly be anyone else but him, and Zoro recognizes the swirly S of Sanji’s signature in the corner of the painting.

Fuck, Zoro thinks, his heart fluttering in his chest as he wonders what this means.

“Something outside of our comfort zone” is what Sanji had said the theme was, and it’s only then that Zoro notices the title written on the card underneath the painting.

The Dream I fell in Love with
Akaashi Sanji

“Did you-“ Zoro asks, his throat dry. “Did you draw this?”

“I’ve told you before, it’s not a drawing,” Sanji corrects him, but the tone isn’t abrasive, instead it’s half hearted. Zoro turns to look at the artist, but his attention is solely focused on his feet as he avoids eye contact with Zoro.

“But it was you, yeah?” Zoro asks again, not trusting his voice to stay stable.

“Yeah,” Sanji admits softly.

Zoro grabs Sanji’s wrist and drags him away, ignoring his scattered protests. He doesn’t exactly know where he’s trying to go, but thankfully his feet seem to know the way, weaving through the crowds without hesitation. He thinks he spots Usopp, but he’s too hyper focused on getting out of the crowds that he doesn’t really spare him a second glance.

Sanji stumbles behind him, but Zoro doesn't stop, adrenaline keeping him going. “Marimo, what are you-“

Zoro finally reaches his destination, the fateful art room where he first ran into Sanji, and much like he did all those weeks ago, throws himself inside and slams the door behind him.

“Seriously, what is-“

Zoro cuts him off, shoving him against the door and slamming his hand against the wall beside him. “Tell me I’m reading this right,” he demands.

“W-what?” Sanji stutters out, and now that Zoro knows what to look for, he spots it- the way Sanji’s eyes flicker down to his lips, the way his breath hitches as Zoro moves his face closer, and the pretty blush working it’s way up his face.

“Tell me I’m reading this right,” Zoro repeats, reaching out with his other hand to cup Sanji’s face gently.

Sanji finally seems to understand what he’s saying (honestly, for someone who complains so much about Zoro being stupid, he can be quite dense). “Y-yeah,” he says, his voice breathy.

At that, there’s nothing to stop Zoro from leaning forwards and pressing their mouths together. Zoro has never been one for words- what exactly is someone supposed to say when they see something like that? How is he supposed to translate this feeling in his chest into words?

He does his best to convey exactly what he’s feeling through the kiss, pressing Sanji hard against the wall, and Sanji reaches up and grabs onto the back of Zoro’s shirt as Zoro’s teeth land on his bottom lip and he tugs gently. Sanji makes this little gasping noise, and the sound does something to Zoro’s heart.

Zoro hasn’t really ever kissed anyone before, the most he ever did was fool around with a couple of his friends in high school, but if the noises he’s making are any indication, Sanji doesn’t really seem to mind, clutching the back of Zoro’s shirt like his life depends on it.

How Zoro does eventually manage to pull away, he has no idea, but when he pulls back, Sanji’s lips are a pretty shade of red that just makes Zoro want to kiss him again.

“Zoro,” Sanji says, his voice breathy and a little bit whiny, and Zoro can’t help but lean in and kiss him again.

“Sanji,” Zoro whispers against his lips, and Sanji makes this sound like he’s dying.

They kiss and they kiss and they kiss until Sanji starts pushing Zoro away from him, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. “I gotta- I gotta get back,” he says, his voice low and throaty, and Zoro steps back to just look at him.

His lips are slightly swollen, his hair is messy, and there’s a flush high on his cheeks. What catches Zoro’s attention the most is his eye- blown wide open so that Zoro gets an eyeful of that vivid blue.

Zoro has seen the things Sanji paints; he’s familiar with that kind of breathtaking beauty now, but none of it comes close to what he’s looking at now. He wishes there was some way he could just capture this image forever, but he thinks it must be impossible for anything to match the blue of Sanji’s eyes or the gold of his hair when the falling sun hits it like this through the open windows of the art room.

Is this how you felt when you painted me? He wonders, staring in mystification at Sanji who remains completely oblivious to his thoughts as he attempts to straighten himself out.

“What?” He demands once he catches Zoro’s eye, and Zoro can’t help the fond smile that spreads across his face.

“Nothing,” he says, and Sanji blushes impossibly more.

“Stop smiling like that,” he huffs which only results in Zoro grinning wider. “It’s creepy.”

“Why do you have to go back?” Zoro asks as Sanji pulls out his phone and uses the camera to fix his hair.

“There’s this famous art blogger coming, and she’s supposed to choose first, second, and third place winners,” Sanji explains, straightening his tie and smoothing down his suit jacket. Zoro grins at the meticulous way in which Sanji adjusts his suit cuffs- he was definitely born to wear that suit.

“You’re gunna get first, right?” Zoro asks, enjoying the flustered expression that makes its way onto Sanji’s face.

“We don’t know that,” Sanji mutters. “Miss Goldenweek is known for her abrasive criticism and her good eye for color.”

“So you’re gunna get first,” Zoro surmises, and Sanji sends him a glare.

“Why do I even bother?” He grumbles to himself, but the small smile tugging at the corner of his lips betrays him. Zoro presses a kiss to the corner of that smile, ignoring Sanji’s squawk of protest and his complaint about Zoro ruining his hair again.

“Shall we?” He murmurs, lacing his fingers together with Sanji’s. Sanji blushes again, and- damn, Zoro will never get tired of seeing that.

Sanji coughs awkwardly into his fist. “Lead the way, marimo.”

Zoro guides him out of the art room, wandering through the crowded hallways. He doesn’t remember exactly where Sanji’s painting was, but he figures he should be able to find his way over if he just follows his feet.

“Turn left- I said left marimo,” Sanji directs him, tugging his hand in the opposite direction (he was turning left, he swears).

They stop once they reach Sanji’s painting of Zoro, and Zoro can’t help but take another look. Something finally occurs to him, and he turns around to Sanji. “When did you draw this?”

Sanji freezes, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Well, I might have taken a picture of you meditating…”

Zoro feels his eyebrows shoot up, and Sanji reaches into the breast pocket of his suit. “Here,” he says, offering his phone out towards him.

The photo looks almost exactly the same as the painting, except the painting makes the moment feel much more intimate. The cherry blossoms and dancing sunlight are more exaggerated, and Zoro can feel the heavy emphasis on the peaceful beauty of the scene more in the painting.

He looks up to say something to Sanji, but finds him chattering excitedly with a little girl with brown braids and a pink hat. He probably shouldn’t bother them, so he starts looking around instead.

He remembers what Usopp had said about Sanji being the best artist in the school, and now that he looks around him, he can definitely see that. Nothing else anyone had done came close to Sanji’s, and Zoro feels pride welling up inside him at the thought.

Speaking of Usopp, Zoro’s long nosed friend pops into view as if summoned, his eyes widening once he sees Zoro.

“Here you are!” He exclaims, sounding relieved. “I was worried that you got lost again, and I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

He stops, blinking curiously when he sees Zoro’s expression. “Did something good happen?”

“Huh? Why?” Zoro asks.

“Well, you’re doing this weird thing with your face, and I think it’s supposed to be a smile,” Usopp tells him. Zoro feels his so-called good mood fade, and he narrows his eyes at him threateningly. Usopp’s eyes grow wide in terror. “Not that your smile is weird or anything! It’s just rare to see you looking so-“ he cuts off once he sees the expression on Zoro’s face. “Okay, I’m shutting up now.”

He starts looking around, freezing once he sees Sanji’s. “Woah,” he breathes out, awe written all over his face. He takes a moment to admire the painting moving his attention down to the label in the corner.

Understanding dawns on his face, and he looks between Zoro and the painting, a slow smirk beginning to form. “So that’s what’s got you in such a good mood, eh?” He asks, wiggling his eyebrows and nudging Zoro suggestively.

Zoro glares at him, but his attempt at intimidation is proved unsuccessful as Usopp pulls up his phone, snapping a picture of the painting. “I gotta send this to the group chat,” he says, typing frantically, and Zoro’s eyes widen as he realizes exactly who is on that group chat.

“Wait-“ he starts, moving forwards to snatch the phone out of Usopp’s hands, but it’s too late. He feels Sanji’s phone in his hand buzz, and he looks down to see the notification pop up.

Usopp
Sent a photo

Oh yeah, Sanji’s on it too, he remembers suddenly, but the thought isn’t enough to distract him as the reaction of the person he was dreading the most pops up almost immediately.

Mellorine
Oh?
Oh ho?
And what does our resident swordsman have to say about this?

“Nami wants to know what you have to- hey, why do you have Sanji’s phone?”

“Cause he gave it to me,” Zoro says distractedly as a string of messages comes in from the rest of his friends.

Shitty Glutton
COOL
IS THAT ZORO
THATS SO COOL
Robin-chan
Sanji really has outdone himself on this one
Brook
Did you hear about the guy who stole all those paintings?
He tried to brush it off, but I think he was framed!
Franky
That looks SUPER
Chopper
Whoa is that Sanji’s?
That’s incredible!
Usopp
Zoro has Sanji’s phone rn
Nami what does that mean?
Mellorine
He WHAT
ZORO GUVE US THE TEA

Zoro scowls, looking down at the phone in his hands. Like he has any idea how to work this.

“What are you doing with my phone?” Sanji interrupts, coming over and snatching it out of Zoro’s hands. “Honestly, you-“ he cuts off as he starts reading through the messages, blushing bright red before typing on it furiously.

“What are you saying?” Zoro demands, trying his best to look over Sanji’s shoulder, but Sanji draws the phone closer to his chest to obstruct his view, throwing a suspicious look at Zoro over his shoulder.

Unfortunately, he’s so focused on hiding it from Zoro that Usopp can just tilt his head to the side so see what he’s doing. “Hey, that’s not fair!” Usopp protests suddenly. “Don’t just text Nami, text the whole group chat!”

“You’re texting the witch?” Zoro demands, and Sanji turns away from both of them, clutching the phone tightly to his chest.

“You!” Sanji starts, pointing accusingly at Zoro. “Don’t talk about Nami that way. And you!” He turns to point at Usopp in a similar manner. “Don’t snoop on people’s private conversations like that. It’s rude.”

“Keeping things from your friends is rude,” Usopp argues, trying his best to see what Sanji is talking to Nami about.

“Sending a private picture like that to the group chat is rude,” Sanji counters, his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth cutely as he attempts to text Nami and dodge Usopp’s attempts to see what he’s saying. “Besides, don’t you have to go back to the dorms to start working on your engineering project soon?”

Usopp blinks, pulling up his phone to check the time. “Shoot, you’re right,” he admits, staring down at the screen in surprise before looking up at Sanji accusingly. “You better tell me later.”

“I’m sure Nami will be more than happy to,” Sanji sniffs. “Now, shoo.”

Usopp sighs, the assignment due tomorrow probably weighing heavily on his mind now (Zoro can relate- procrastination is a bitch). “Come on, Zoro, let’s go back.”

“Ah,” Sanji cuts through, and Usopp and Zoro turn to look at him. Sanji’s looking anywhere except at them, rubbing the back of his neck as his eyes flick up once towards Zoro nervously. “Uh, I can walk the marimo back to the dorms if he wants to stay a little longer.”

Zoro’s heart skips a beat as he realizes what Sanji’s doing, and he separates himself from Usopp’s side to stand next to Sanji instead. “Yeah, I, uh, wouldn’t mind staying a little longer to look around and stuff.”

Usopp’s eyebrows raise skeptically, and he looks back and forth between Zoro and Sanji, betrayal written clearly on his face. “Nami better tell me what’s going on,” he mutters to himself as he turns and walks away, leaving Zoro alone with Sanji.

Zoro scoots closer to Sanji, his gaze focused on the painting in front of him even though he’s not really paying attention to how it looks at all, and gently, ever so slowly, he laces his fingers with Sanji’s.

Sanji’s fingers are long and pretty- Zoro knows that from watching him paint, but he didn’t know about the small calluses on the sides of his fingers and on his fingertips that must be from holding the paintbrush so often. He sneaks a glance out of the corner of his eye at Sanji’s face, taking in the redness of his ears and the pink blush that sweeps across his cheeks.

“That’s an interesting painting,” he says, referring to the strange piece in front of him that honestly looks like something a four year old drew.

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Sanji agrees. “That’s Giolla’s. She’s got… a very unique interpretation of what defines art.”

That’s a nice way of putting it, Zoro thinks to himself, but Zoro’s always been a lot more honest and blunt than Sanji. “It looks like shit.”

“Marimo,” Sanji hisses, looking at him with wide eyes and elbowing him in the side. “You can’t just say that.”

“Why not?” Zoro shrugs flippantly. “It does.”

“I literally cannot believe you,” Sanji mutters, and Zoro can practically feel him roll his eyes.

They fall into a bit of an awkward silence, but Zoro doesn’t really mind. His hand is sweaty and a little uncomfortable, but he never wants to let go.

“Do you,” Sanji starts, cutting off awkwardly, to lift his hand up to hide the blush across his cheeks. “Do you want to walk around or something?”

“Sure,” Zoro agrees, not really caring about what he’s doing as long as he’s with Sanji. “Did you meet Miss uh,” he trails off, trying his best to remember the name. Sanji looks at him expectantly, so he gives up. “whatever her name was?”

“Miss Goldenweek?” Sanji asks, and Zoro nods in response.

To his surprise, Sanji shrugs. “I don’t know. Nobody knows what she looks like.”

“What?” Zoro asks, looking at him in disbelief. “Then how are we going to know when you win?”

“If, not when,” Sanji corrects him. Despite the fact everyone parades him as the best artist in the school, he still somehow lacks confidence in himself. “And she’ll post it online on her blog.”

“So you’re just staying here just in case you meet her?”

“That and I told Ivan I’d help clean up after this is done,” Sanji tells him. “I do kind of want to look around, though. I’ve been standing here for hours at this point.”

“Then, let’s go,” Zoro declares, tugging Sanji’s hand forwards.

Sanji eventually ends up being the one leading them around, moving through the hallways excitedly and sometimes even stopping to admire certain pieces. Zoro knows absolutely nothing about art, and he finds most of what they look at pretty boring; however, he finds himself completely enraptured by Sanji.

Like this, he’s in his element, and the excited look on his face reminds Zoro of his expression when talking about the All Blue. There’s nothing quite like watching Sanji do what he loves, and Zoro finds himself humming in agreement to all of Sanji’s excited chatter without paying much attention to what the blonde is saying, too lost in his bright expression to care.

Eventually, Sanji catches him looking, and he blushes furiously at Zoro’s expression. “Knock it off,” he grumbles, shoving a hand in Zoro’s face and pushing it away.

They stay at the showcase late into the night, and by the time Sanji finishes helping with the clean up, Zoro’s eyes are beginning to feel heavy. He feels content too, and all the excitement from before fades into a comfortable calm feeling.

As Sanji promised Usopp, he walks Zoro back to the dorms, and the two of them walk together hand in hand through the empty campus with only the streetlights for company.

“If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint,” Sanji says suddenly, cutting through the silence. At Zoro’s questioning gaze, he continues: “it’s a quote.”

Zoro nods and continues on in silence, but Sanji stops, chewing at his lip anxiously. “You get what I’m trying to say, right?”

Sanji is a mess of contradictions: he wears his heart on his sleeve, but is never honest about how he feels- he is brash and confident, but doesn’t believe himself and is riddled with insecurities- all of that should make him hard to understand. That’s why Zoro gets what Sanji is trying to say with that quote; despite Sanji being- for lack of a better word- Sanji (because really, what word could ever describe him?), Zoro understands. After seeing that painting, he understands.

The Dream I fell in Love with

Really, it can’t get much clearer than that.

“Yeah,” Zoro responds, feeling his mouth quirk up into a soft smile. Zoro’s no good with words, and he definitely can’t paint, but he still has his own language where he tightens his hold around Sanji’s hand ever so slightly.

Sanji smiles, bright and unrestrained, because he understands too.

A soft buzz echoes between them, and Sanji blinks down at his phone curiously, the artificial light casting a glow upon his face. Zoro watches as Sanji’s expression goes from curious to surprised, and then to pure unadulterated joy.

“What?” Zoro asks curiously, and Sanji looks up at him with an infectious grin.

“Look!” He exclaims, practically shoving his phone screen in Zoro’s face. “I got first place!”

Zoro scans over the phone screen, really just looking for Sanji’s name, and there it is- first place: Akaashi Sanji- The Dream I fell in Love with.

Zoro gives him a shit eating grin. “I told you you’d get first.”

“Shut up,” Sanji tells him with no heat in his voice, and it really seems more like an automatic reaction to anything Zoro says than anything else, especially since he’s grinning so widely that Zoro’s worried his face is going to split in half.

They arrive at the dorm much sooner than Zoro had expected (it usually takes him way longer for some reason), and Zoro feels his heart drop ever so slightly as he realizes he has to say goodbye.

“So,” Sanji says somewhat awkwardly as they stand outside the dorm building. Zoro turns to look at him, but Sanji’s staring determinedly down at the ground, rubbing his neck shyly. “Um, coffee tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Zoro agrees, a wide grin on his face. “It’s a date.”

...

“You’re…” Sanji trails off, looking all sorts of mystified. “Actually on time?”

Zoro frowns and looks down at his watch, carefully double checking the time. “Yeah? Aren’t I supposed to be?” He would never admit it out loud, but he had actually left earlier today, just in case.

“No, I mean,” Sanji cuts himself off, looking at Zoro like he suddenly grew a second nose. “This is the first time you’ve actually come on time.”

“That’s not true,” Zoro denies hotly, and Sanji raises an eyebrow at him.

“On our first date you were an hour late because you turned down the wrong street and went to the wrong coffee shop,” Sanji informs him, ignoring Zoro’s sound of protest. “On our second date we ended up walking around the zoo because you got lost on your way to the mall, and on our last date you somehow fell in a lake on your way to the restaurant- which might I remind you was nowhere near the actual restaurant, and we ended up eating from a random food stall on the street instead.”

“You had fun anyway,” Zoro protests, thinking back to their walk by the lakeside after. The owner of the food stall, Banban, had actually turned out to be an old friend of Zeff’s, and the food had been much better than whatever the restaurant would have served anyway.

“That’s beside the point,” Sanji argues. “I figured I’d give you the wrong time to account for the fact that you were gunna get lost since we can’t be late to the movie, but you’re actually on time?”

It’s only now that Zoro realizes that Sanji is not only in his pajamas, but he also clearly hasn’t brushed his hair yet and there are paint stains on both his hands and face.

“What time does the movie start?” Zoro asks Sanji slowly, and Sanji gives him a sheepish grin.

“In two hours?”

Zoro stares at his boyfriend in disbelief. Two hours. Two fucking hours. Sanji made him come two hours earlier because he doesn’t trust Zoro to not get lost.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sanji huffs like he’s completely justified in his actions. “You know how rarely I get to see movies in the theater.”

Zoro sighs because- yeah, that is true, and he decides to let Sanji get away with it, just this once.

“So now what?” He asks Sanji, and- okay maybe he hasn’t completely forgiven him yet.

“Oh!” Sanji exclaims, stepping aside to let Zoro into the rundown apartment he shares with Zeff. “You can come inside.”

The living room, which also functions as a dining room and a kitchen, is completely cleared out, everything shoved to the side of the room minus one easel sitting on top of a white tarp in the middle. Zoro takes a look at the painting on it, recognizing the beginning of a tree branch with pink flowers blooming off of it.

“Cherry blossoms?” He asks Sanji, moving to take a better look.

“Close,” Sanji tells him. “They’re plum blossoms. Cherry blossoms have a small split at the end of each petal.”

Zoro nods as if he understood whatever Sanji just said. Flowers are just flowers to him; the only reason he vaguely recognized them was because there are cherry blossoms outside the gym.

“Is this for school?” He asks him, and Sanji shakes his head.

“The lady a couple apartments down is celebrating her 92nd birthday soon, so it's for her.”

Zoro smiles fondly at Sanji as the blonde goes to wash the paint off his hands. Of course Sanji would do something like that.

“Give me a second to clean this up, and I’ll take you to my room,” Sanji says as he starts rinsing his paint brushes off.

Zoro watches him fondly, taking in the view of a messy Sanji covered in paint unabashedly. Sanji looks the most in his element like this, surrounded by the smell of paint.

“You have some on your face, still,” He calls out to Sanji, and Sanji blushes once he verifies that he does in fact have a streak of pink paint on his face.

“Shut up,” he hisses at Zoro while he laughs at the blonde’s expense. Sanji’s eyes narrow threateningly, and he moves towards his palette.

“Let’s see if I can make your face as green as your hair,” Sanji threatens, dipping his fingers into the green paint.

Zoro’s eyes widen in horror as he realizes what Sanji is planning, and he wrestles the palette out of Sanji’s hands, attempting to keep Sanji’s paint covered fingers as far away from his face as possible.

They wrestle around for a bit, and considering the fact that Sanji is an artist who does little to no exercise most of the time, he puts up a pretty decent fight; however, Zoro still is stronger, and eventually manages to get Sanji’s hand under the sink, washing the green paint away.

Sanji clicks his tongue in disappointment, but thankful makes no moves to try again, instead guiding Zoro farther into the apartment. There’s not much there aside from a dingy looking bathroom and Zeff’s bedroom.

Sanji’s room clearly wasn’t originally designed to be a bedroom, judging by the size of it. The ceiling is low, and the room itself is poorly lit. His bed, if the small sleeping bag and pillow could even be called that, is tucked into a corner, and a large portion of his room is completely dedicated to multiple stacks of paintings, making it seem less like a bedroom and more like a storage space.

Despite it’s drab appearance, everything about the room felt like a work of art itself. Just the way the paint stains on the walls told stories of a younger Sanji seemed like one of those things that Sanji would paint to capture the feelings of home and growing up.

“I know it’s not much,” Sanji tells him, shoving his hands into his pockets awkwardly. “But it’s home.”

Zoro reaches out and traces a strange collection of black, red, and gray paint with a few splotches of yellow and dark blue. It seems different from the other stains on the wall, more purposeful, but Sanji doesn’t say anything when he notices what Zoro’s doing.

“Do you want something to eat or drink?” Sanji asks, and Zoro turns back to look at him.

“Sure,” he says, and Sanji nods.

“I’ll be right back, then. I’ll go to see if we still have any leftovers from the Baratie.”

Zoro grunts in affirmation, taking the opportunity to look around the rest of the room. Most of the paintings are stacked in neat piles in the corner, but there are three that sit farther away from the rest, so Zoro moves to look at them.

The first one is a portrait of a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, and Zoro picks up the painting, trying to figure out why she looks so familiar.

Oh, he thinks as it suddenly clicks, remembering the painting that Usopp had shown him from Sanji’s Instagram. It was the same woman from the painting by the beach, and as Zoro studied her face more up close like this, the resemblance between her and Sanji was unmistakable.

She must be his mother, he suddenly realizes, and moves to put the painting down. He stops once he notices the painting under it, blinking down at an extremely familiar head of green hair.

“What the fuck?” Zoro actually says out loud, voicing his confusion to the empty room. It’s him, it’s unmistakably him, which shouldn’t really surprise him since he seems to be a frequent subject of Sanji’s paintings, but it’s a scene from almost a year ago when Zoro had entered a local kendo competition and ran into Dracula Mihawk in the finals.

He’s sitting with his back to the hard wooden floor, his sword raised up in the air and his face set with determination. He picks it up, touching the paint almost reverently. He can practically feel his own emotions from the painting, remembering the sting of defeat along with the unyielding determination as he swore he wouldn’t lose again.

But the match was a year ago, so why would Sanji have a painting of it? He flips it over to the back where he knows Sanji writes the date of his paintings, and practically has to double take when he sees it: the painting is also dated back a year ago, a couple weeks after Zoro lost the match.

Had he and Sanji met back then? He would like to think that he would remember meeting Sanji, but if he’s completely honest, he probably wouldn’t. He’d never been one to remember faces unless they actually mattered to him or left a lasting impression, and considering his first impression of Sanji when they met, he’s not someone Zoro would remember.

“What are you doing?” Sanji’s voice breaks through his thoughts, and Zoro looks up to see him carrying two plates of food.

Well, if he’s here, I might as well ask, he thinks to himself, turning the painting so that Sanji could see it. “Have we met before?” He asks.

He watches as Sanji’s visible eye grows comically large, his mouth dropping into a perfect o shape. “Uh,” Sanji starts, his eyes flickering between Zoro and the painting nervously. “No?”

“Then…” Zoro trails off, looking at the painting in his arms. “Why did you…?”

Sanji coughs awkwardly, placing the two plates of food down on the floor as he takes the painting out of Zoro’s hands. “Right, so you know how I said before that Zeff adopted me off of the streets?”

“Yeah,” Zoro says slowly, not exactly sure why Sanji is bringing that up now.

“I was actually planning on giving up on art after high school,” Sanji tells him, looking down at the painting of Zoro with a distant look on his face. “I wanted to pay back Zeff for all he had done for me, so I was planning on just working at the Baratie instead of going to college, and then I would take it over from the shitty geezer once he retired.”

Zoro narrows his eyes at Sanji. “That’s stupid,” he tells him. “Why would you repay him by throwing your dream away?”

“I know that now,” Sanji huffs, rolling his eyes like the overdramatic princess he is. “It’s just- the way I grew up, that kind of kindness wasn’t something you took for granted.” He pauses, hugging himself slightly. “I didn’t realize that someone could actually care about what I wanted to do with my life, and I assumed that following in Zeff’s footsteps would be what would make him happy.”

He doesn’t know much about Sanji’s life before Zeff, Zoro realizes. Sanji rarely talks about it, and when he does, it’s only about his mother. He’s never even heard Sanji mention his biological father before, but he knows that if Sanji wants to tell him, he will. He can wait.

That’s not what matters right now, though, and Zoro frowns, thinking about what Sanji said. “So what changed?”

Sanji turns to look at him, a soft smile on his face as he looks down at Zoro. “I saw you.”

Zoro can’t help the way his heart flutters in his chest at the expression of Sanji’s face and his tone of voice. He’s still confused, though, so he blinks at Sanji, trying his best to ignore the blush that was surely creeping up his face. “What…?”

“On TV,” Sanji explains, turning away from Zoro to look down at the painting in his hands, a bright blush on his face. “You were the one who inspired me to start working towards my dream again, Zoro.”

Both the combination of Sanji saying his name and what he just said had Zoro jumping up to his feet, quickly crossing the distance between him and Sanji and crashing their mouths together. Sanji happily reciprocates, placing the painting down on the ground so that he could wrap his arms around Zoro’s neck, and Zoro can’t help slipping his tongue into Sanji’s mouth, loving the way his boyfriend shudders as he licks into his mouth.

“Zoro,” Sanji breathes out, the sound almost a moan.

There are only two instances in which Sanji ever calls Zoro by his name. The first is whenever he says something particularly serious and wants Zoro’s attention which, if he’s honest, is extremely effective because Zoro will actually pay attention to what Sanji’s saying once his name slips out of the artist’s mouth.

The second, like now, is when Zoro kisses him senseless, and Sanji forgets to call him anything else.

They break apart when they hear a sharp cough, and both of them freeze and look up to see Zeff standing in the doorway, looking unamused. Zoro thinks about the position they’re in right now: they’re in Sanji’s room, Sanji’s got his back on the floor with Zoro practically on top of him, and Zoro may or may not have been in the process of slipping a hand under Sanji’s shirt.

Sanji seems to have the same thought process, shoving Zoro off and sitting up off the floor as if he could hide what they had just been doing despite the fact that his collar is askew and his lips are a very telling red.

Zeff snorts at Sanji’s attempts to play innocent. “Glad to see you finally got your shit together,” Zeff comments, and Sanji flushes impossibly redder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sanji denies, his voice all huffy, and Zoro has to bite back a snort of his own.

“As if you pining over him when you hadn’t even met him wasn’t bad enough,” Zeff continues on, ignoring Sanji. “You pining after was insufferable.”

Sanji gapes at Zeff, betrayal and shock written all over his features as he attempts to regain some sort of composure. “You- I- What-“

Zoro snickers, and Sanji sends him an offended look. “What are you laughing at?” He asks crossly, kicking him sharply.

“You like me that much, huh,” Zoro muses, enjoying the way that Sanji’s face turns an even darker red with rage.

“Shut up,” Sanji hisses, grabbing the pillow from his makeshift bed and smacking Zoro with it. “You- stupid- moss- headed- swordsman,” he growls, accenting every word with another smack of the pillow.

Zeff snorts, and turns to leave the room. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

“You get back here,” Sanji seethes, getting up and running after his father. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Zoro listens from inside Sanji’s room as the two of them break off into a loud shouting match, something he thinks isn’t a rarity in the Akaashi household. Their poor neighbors.

Eventually, Sanji comes back with a suspicious looking lump on his head and a pout on his face that makes it clear he’s sulking. Zoro is a kind and loving boyfriend, so he snickers at Sanji’s obvious misfortune.

“You shut up,” Sanji hisses at him heatedly, and Zoro gives him a shit eating grin.

“Make me.”

Sanji clicks his tongue, and that’s about all the warning Zoro gets before he suddenly has a lap full of angry boyfriend.

“Stupid marimo,” Sanji mutters against his lips, cupping Zoro’s face in his hands, and Zoro would have made an equally as scathing reply if not for the fact that his mouth is now very much occupied.

They’ve still got a bit of time to kill before the movie (which Zoro still kind of blames Sanji for), so Zoro lets him take the lead, more than content to just accept everything Sanji will give him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots the painting of him that Sanji did a year ago, and he thinks about everything that it could mean. He’s not so conceited to think that without him, Sanji never would have continued painting because he knows how Sanji feels about art, and nothing short of death could ever tear him away from that.

It just makes him feel special, to know he’s part of that world that Sanji seems to live in, the one that always seems so far away whenever Sanji gets absorbed in it.

Zoro has never been one to live life with regrets, but he hasn’t ever felt this thankful for the fact that he lost to Mihawk back then. Not only was it a wake up call to how small Zoro really was in the world of swordsmanship, but it also led him to where he is right now with Sanji.

“What?” Sanji asks, pulling away to look down at Zoro, and it’s only then that Zoro realized that he had been smiling.

“Nothing,” he tells him, wrapping his arms around Sanji’s waist and pulling him down into a hug. Sanji rests there for a moment before pulling away to look at Zoro rather seriously.

“By the way,” he starts, holding his hands up so that Zoro can see exactly what’s on them. “You have some green paint on your face.”