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Zoro was wandering the palace, trying to find the rooms that King Neptune had given them to stay in. He had thought it was easy and dammit Mihawk had worked him half to death getting his observation haki to act sort of as a map, but it seemed to be on the fritz. Probably because they were so underwater is all.
He opened a door, nope library. Another, a room that had lots of chairs that he couldn’t understand the purpose of. A third, same. There were a lot of rooms with chairs in the place.
Then there was a room, with more chairs, and also a piano. He checked up and down the hall, no one was around. He went into the room and sat at it.
Fingers need tasks that stretch them, so that they don’t only think they are meant to grab. Mind your stretches and if you hate doing finger exercises on your own, Roronoa Zoro, there are practical ways to approach the task.
Zoro really hated the stupid finger stretches but they had improved his hands a lot, made them hurt less after a fight, so he did them. But here was one of the ways to do them that wasn’t just faking flicking water. He set his hands to the keys and began to play Bink’s Sake. Slowly, he wasn’t great, but it sounded like the song. As he relaxed, it grew better. He played it a couple times, and was pleased with himself.
“Zoro plays piano now?”
Zoro looked up, and Luffy was on one of the chairs in the room. “Yeah, just a bit. Mihawk wanted me doing these fingers exercises.”
“You work out your fingers?” Luffy giggled, “do you have tiny weights you curl with your pinkie?”
Zoro smiled a bit at the visual. “No, just stretches and I thought they were stupid.”
“All your workout stuff seems stupid to me.”
Zoro went back and played a song Perona had liked. One that was often at funerals. She said it was comforting. “I know, but with weights or sword practice, I can see the point, just going like this -“ he demonstrated “-feels stupid. But Mihawk said it was that or learn the piano. Learned the piano.”
“We can get a piano for the Sunny. Would make Brook happy too.”
“I have a few other things I can do too.” He looked at Luffy. “You want it one more time?” There was an eager nod, and Luffy was over on the bench. Zoro played Bink’s Sake once more. “You learn anything unexpected while we were apart?”
“Rayleigh didn’t like how little ‘traditional’ education I had, in between haki and fighting lessons, made me learn regular knowledge stuff too. Most of it was boring, some of it was interesting.”
“Like what?”
“Shapes in the stars, the real ones that was cool. Some of history was interesting, mostly it is just fighting or boring speeches.” Zoro grunted in agreement. “Stuff about how to understand people.”
“You understand people enough.”
“Not so much.” Luffy looked at him. “Learned Zoro loves me.”
Zoro rested his fingers on the keys, but didn’t press down. “Did you?”
Luffy poked at one at the low end and it was such a dark sound, appropriate for the moment. “Did I learn that right?”
He could lie, or brush it off as fealty, loyalty to his captain. No matter how much Luffy learned, changed during the two years, his belief that his crew told him the truth wouldn’t have changed. He didn’t have to change how they had been. Zoro looked at his fingers on the keys. “Yeah, you learned that right.”
Luffy began to press random keys, make a racket, make chaos that sounded so close to music. Zoro began to play a bit of a melody to support the noise. “When I figured that out, figured out I loved Zoro too. Rayleigh said we were both idiots, that if it were up to us we would have gone our whole lives figuring out how we are to each other that isn’t normal captain and crew.”
“Mihawk and Perona said similar.”
“Are we boyfriends?”
“If you want.”
“Do you want?” Zoro just shrugged. He didn’t know what he wanted, if it could be defined beyond he wanted him and Luffy. There was no word that adequately encompassed everything they were to each other.
Mainly because he refused to acknowledge the word soulmates even existed because their destiny was theirs not fortunes or belonging to some bullshit god that did not exist.
“Want us to be Luffy and Zoro?”
To that Zoro nodded, because of course Luffy understood. Luffy kept happily making random noise, and Zoro balanced it out.
“Everything is going to change,” Luffy said, “it already did. It’s going to be scary and amazing.”
“I know.”
“The New World.” Luffy slammed his hands down on the keys. “Let’s go!”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Zoro agreed and followed because no matter what else somethings never changed.
And he’d follow Luffy to the ends of the world.