Chapter Text

Chapter 1: New Beginnings

In which Curly and Marimo meet for the first time. What could go wrong?

Houses and people blurred past Sanji at the speed of light, his chest felt heavy and his throat felt tight from a morning spent sobbing in what he thought was well hidden from Zeff. Little did he know that Zeff was stealing side glances at the young boy from the driver's seat. Despite knowing Sanji for two long years, he still didn’t know how to handle the boy crying.

“You okay Eggplant?” he asked, keeping his voice at a monotone octave to not feign concern.

“Hmph,” Sanji nodded.

“There was no other way, we were going to get caught. At least this way we won’t have to watch our backs every second of every da-”

“I get it,” Sanji rested his cheek against his palm, his eyes observing his blurred surroundings.

The rest of the car ride was silent. Zeff stopped stealing glances at Sanji once he realized his tears had dried up and instead kept his eyes steady on the road. They arrived half an hour later and Zeff had to shake Sanji to wake him up, the boy had nodded off sometime after their thirty-second conversation.

Sanji rubbed his eyes and looked up towards his new home.

There were kids.

Everywhere.

Sanji scowled.

Little boys and girls ran around the dojo, while others fought each other with bamboo swords. A young black-haired boy came up to Sanji and started whacking him with one.

Sanji decided he was in hell. Never had he wanted so badly to be back in France, even if that meant going back to them . Anything but this nightmare.

“Oh Zeff, you’ve arrived!” A tall man with dark hair slicked back into a ponytail appeared before Sanji and Zeff.

“Koushirou!” Zeff smiled, “It's been a long time!”

Sanji watched as Zeff and the other man exchanged a handshake and talked about old times and whatnot. He got so caught up in their conversation that he had barely noticed that the boy was still whacking him with a sword.

Sanji kicked him away.

“Wahhhh!” The boy screamed and flew away by the force of Sanji’s kick.

Neither Zeff nor Koushirou noticed, but somebody else did.

Something in the distance caught Sanji’s attention. He turned towards the front entrance of the dojo and saw a bright green head of hair. He couldn’t help his eyebrows from raising up in surprise at the obscure hair color. That’s when his eyes traveled downwards towards the owner of the moss.

He was young and looked about Sanji’s age. He wore a black dojo uniform and had three swords strapped to his right hip, he had his hands crossed over his chest and his face held a look of curiosity as he also observed the new blonde kid.

“Well, how rude of me, my name is Koushirou, I’ve heard plenty about you. Sanji correct?”

Sanji turned his gaze away from the green-haired boy and looked up at the man. “Oui.. ah sorry I mean yes. Sorry if my English…”

“No, no! Don’t worry about it buddy, your father told me you don’t speak Japanese, and seeing as I don’t know French we can both speak in English.”

Sanji winced. “I don’t have a father.”

Zeff had already told Koushirou about Sanji’s predicament and had asked his old-time friend if he and Sanji could stay at his dojo until things died down in France. Koushirou had of course agreed, he had just misinterpreted Zeff’s role to be one of an adoptive father.

The air hung heavily around the three of them.

“Well then, let’s head inside, no?” Koushirou smiled trying to ease the awkwardness and led them to the front entrance of the dojo.

The green-haired boy was still standing there, Sanji couldn’t tear his gaze away. Once they made it up the few couple of steps Sanji and the boy met face-to-face.

“Zoro, this is Zeff and this is Sanji,” Koushirou motioned to the both of them. “They will be staying with us for a while due to some unfortunate circumstances.”

Zoro didn’t say anything for a few long seconds, then the silence broke.

“You have some ugly eyebrows,” Zoro scrunched his nose and flicked it upwards towards Sanji just to make it clear he was talking about him, then proceeded to saunter off as if he hadn’t just pointed out the blonde’s most crippling insecurity.

Zoro was used to being the one who got the last word in. He was used to being the smartmouth. He was definitely not expecting the prissy-looking blonde to point out his crippling insecurity.

“Oi, watch it Marimo!”

Zoro turned towards Curly. He took in the other’s appearance. He was pale, which made his red cheeks painfully obvious. He was definitely foreign, his blonde hair and blue eyes seemed natural. He could see his collarbones jutting out from his slightly unbuttoned white collard shirt. Zoro noticed that this pretty boy was slightly taller than him, he looked at the boys' legs.

Woah, those are some long legs, is that even normal?

“Marimo?” Zoro questioned, having to tear his gaze from away from Sanji’s legs.

“Yeah, you have an ugly head of hair,” Sanji mocked, flicking Zoro on the forehead.

The two boys glared at each other.

Zeff and Koushirou looked at one another and shrugged. Boys will be boys, they would get used to each other…eventually.