Work Text:
Reiju thinks her little brother is full of surprises.
She thought she would be used to it by now — standing up against their father and surviving on the sea after his escape from the Vinsmokes are no small feats, and she has since come to expect big things from this particular little brother of hers. And yet, he constantly finds new ways to impress her: becoming an infamous pirate, standing up against Big Mom, and mostly, one thing she just recently found out, having a man fall head over heels for him.
The love and devotion Sanji gets from his crew is new, but not surprising. He has always been so full of love — so emotional and compassionate it was heartbreaking to witness — that it is almost a given that he’d eventually find others who would care for him as much as he does for them. Reiju watches the little reindeer tend over Sanji’s wounds, watches the rest of the Strawhats hover over him like mother hens, and thinks, this is the family who deserves you.
But romance? She didn’t think her brother was going for that yet. Especially not with one Roronoa Zoro.
As if knowing her train of thoughts, Roronoa catches her gaze from across the deck and glowers at her. She smiles back at him, unflinching, and doesn’t back down when he approaches her.
“What are you looking at?” Zoro growls when he reaches her, low and rough.
Reiju continues to smile, undeterred. “Am I not allowed to watch over my little brother?”
Zoro scoffs. “The others may have been taken with you, but I’ve seen the way the cook is around you. I don’t trust you.”
The words sting, especially because of the truth behind it. Reiju never hurts Sanji like their brothers do, but she has always been complicit in her silence. Even until today Sanji still flinches whenever she stands too near, an instinctive reaction to a trauma he can barely control, and it pains her to think that she has a hand in that.
It is not a discussion she is ready to have yet, so she doesn’t say anything to that, opting to return to observe Sanji. During the short exchange she had with Zoro, Sanji has somehow escaped Chopper’s care, caught Usopp and Luffy stealing a huge slab of meat from the ship’s supply room, and is now threatening to kick them overboard.
She hears a chuckle, soft and barely-there, from her side.
She steals a glance to see a completely different Roronoa Zoro from the one she talked to a few moments ago. It stuns her, the way his expression softens, the curve of his smile touching his eyes, rendering him impossibly gentle. His one eye seems to track Sanji’s movement, and there’s a certain kind of longing there that makes her heart ache.
She asks before she can stop herself. “Does he know?”
The swordsman whips his head towards her so fast there’s an audible crack that’s going to hurt his neck later, and there’s surprise written all over his face, like a little kid caught red-handed with his hand halfway into the cookie jar.
So, that’s a no to her question, then.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zoro says, looking away. There’s a blush, spreading across his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears, betraying his gruff exterior.
She can’t help the grin that sneaks into her expression at the sight.
“Lying isn’t exactly your forte, is it,” Reiju teases, and her day truly is full of surprises, because Zoro flushes even further.
“Shut up,” Zoro says, hand moving towards his swords, and it would’ve been a much more threatening gesture if he didn’t look as red as a lobster. “If you say a word to the cook —”
Reiju could only wish her other brothers were so much fun to tease. “Your secret is safe with me.”
The swordsman scowls, not placated. “Very comforting,” he says drily.
They fall into another silence as Sanji starts chasing Usopp and Luffy around the deck of Sunny, Nami shaking her head at the sight. It is almost surreal, Reiju thinks, how they almost lost their lives at the hands of Big Mom Pirates only a couple of days ago, and now they’re laughing freely on Straw Hat’s ship.
She thinks of the empty shell of a brother who sat beside her during their family dinner; she tries to match the image with the lively young man across the deck, and finds herself unable to.
This is the family who deserves you, the thought appears again, unbidden, but this time it is followed by another as her gaze falls on the swordsman beside her — and this is the love you deserve to receive.
She has only seen Sanji interact with Zoro for a few days, but she already knows all there needs to know — the swordsman’s attraction towards her little brother, sure. His devotion, the way he observes from afar, the insults he throws just to get Sanji’s attention. But she also sees the other side — the way Sanji immediately relaxes at the sight of Zoro, the way his touches linger. Sanji looks more comfortable with himself than she’s ever seen her entire life; he carries himself with an air of confidence that only the swordsman can inspire.
Now, if only they would start noticing each other…
She decides she’s going to give them a nudge to the right direction, so she tells him, “you know, he talked about you.”
Zoro narrows his eye at her, ever so suspicious.
“He may not like me all that much, but the others were… they were not inclined to have civil conversations with him,” she continues. Zoro’s expression darkens at that, knowing what exactly her brothers have done to Sanji. “So he did talk with me, and your name did come up a couple of times.”
Zoro huffs, feigning nonchalance. “What did he,” he says, and pauses. Rubs the back of his neck. “Not that I care,” he adds, and stops again. “Just. What did he say.”
“That you’re a brute, and an annoying asshole, and that he felt like kicking your face most of the times. But also,” she quickly adds when his face falls, because she likes to tease but she isn’t cruel. “That you seem to bring out the best in him, as much as it irritates him to admit. That he might have been braver if you were there.”
She remembers Sanji running his hand through his hair in frustration, his voice cracking as he admitted to her — “That he wishes, selfishly, that you’d be there.”
Zoro’s eye visibly widens in shock. He searches her expression, probably trying to spot a lie that was never there. She tilts her head at Sanji in return, encouraging.
An array of emotions seem to cross the swordsman’s face in one swoop — surprise and disbelief, at first, but soon there’s something she recognizes as hope in the way his eyes light up. He looks at Sanji, back to her, before turning back to Sanji.
There’s a pause as Zoro seems to hesitate for a second, but Reiju knows that Zoro is a man who will face his fear head-on. She expects no less from the man who dares to be her brother’s equal.
“Oi, cook!” He calls out, and Sanji instantly hyper-focuses on him, everything else forgotten.
“What?” Sanji shouts back.
Zoro gestures at the galley. “I have something to tell you.”
“I’m busy, asshole,” Sanji complains, but he follows Zoro towards the galley anyways, ignoring everyone’s eyes on them. Really, it’s almost embarrassing to watch how taken these two are with one another.
Nico Robin appears by her side just as the galley door closes.
“I assume dinner is going to be late today,” Nico Robin says. It is not a question, and Reiju knows, then and there, that she is going to get along well with this woman. “I have a couple of books that might interest you as we wait. Would you like to check them out with me?”
“I’d love to,” Reiju says, and actually means it.
Maybe, just maybe, this can be a family for her too.