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Two hours in the afternoon sun, cool ocean spray at his back—dozing to Sunny’s rhythm. He can feel it already.
He’s slipping his swords through the sash at his waist, hair still damp from the bath, when Franky finds him outside the men’s quarters. It’s a simple request—Super timing, bro! I need an extra pair of hands down below. D’you mind?—and before long he’s throwing his whole body weight against some bright-red, vertical piece of sheet metal as the shipwright welds it into position. There had been some explanation of clamps and angles and weights, but Zoro doesn’t remember much of it.
Even over the hiss of sparks behind him, Zoro can practically hear Sunny’s warm grass calling his name—he’d swapped watch with Robin again, knowing he wouldn’t sleep anyway, and like clockwork his body is demanding rest. And yet—when Franky beams, clapping him on the back when they both finally step away from the project, Zoro just shrugs. What is he going to do—say no?
“You were super helpful, bro!” Franky laughs, already crossing the room in one motion. “Sorry for the ask—I know it’s getting late for you.” Zoro grunts noncommittally in response, and that makes Franky laugh all the harder as he moves equipment around on one of the workbenches with his secondary hands. “Well, I appreciate it either way,” he says. “Aha! When you get up there, can you pass this on to Usopp?” As he turns, Zoro sees that he has some kind of small, metal thing in his palm, and he holds it out triumphantly.
“Sure,” Zoro replies, taking the buckle? lock? something, and Franky grins at him again.
“Thanks, bro!” he shouts, and Zoro huffs—already turning back to head on deck, waving over his shoulder with a lazy hand through the air as Franky laughs behind him.
---
Usopp and Chopper aren’t hard to find—Usopp’s voice naturally carries across the deck whenever he’s on the balcony level, so Zoro knows exactly where to go the moment his boots touch the grass. In his hand, he twists the object from Franky, but he can’t make sense of it—although that’s not unusual, really. He marvels again and Franky’s ability to make things, and how everything that Franky makes is also made up of smaller things that he’s also made. It’s a simple thing, really, but sometimes Zoro struggles to wrap his mind around it—the intricacy of it all. The detail.
As he climbs the stairs, something whizzes past his head. “Shit—sorry, Zoro!” Usopp calls, already jogging around the corner with a giggling Chopper on his heels.
“Yeah—sorry, Zoro!” Chopper echoes as they scramble to retrieve whatever they’ve just shot across the second level, pivoting around him as they run back and forth.
Zoro sighs, rolling his eye, and calls, “Oi, wait—” just as they both zip back around the corner, and he hears Usopp yell, Just come over here! We’re busy! from out of sight.
He finds them up the ladder and huddled around the raised garden bed—elbow deep in the dirt and leaves of Usopp’s pop green saplings. Chopper is furiously scribbling notes nearby, pausing every now and then to pass the pencil to Usopp, who wipes his grubby hands on his equally dirty pants and sketches whatever Chopper needs. They’re murmuring to each other, nodding along with whatever the other says, and Zoro catches snippets of numbing agent and medicinal properties and combat application as he watches them, waiting for an opening. More often than not, he’d just throw the thing at them and leave, but they’re concentrating.
After a few minutes, Usopp looks up and blinks at him, smiling a little sheepishly like he’s forgotten Zoro’s there. “Sorry! Sorry, we’re in the middle of cultivating a new—” Zoro raises an eyebrow at him, and Usopp snorts good-naturedly. “Well, whatever. What did you need?” he asks.
Zoro twists the metal bit in his palm again and holds it out to him, “’S from Franky,” he grunts, and Usopp’s eyes light up.
“Oh, shit! That’s the new—for my bag!” His whole face grins and he scrambles to his feet, looking at him like he’s done something more than just make the delivery. “Thanks, Zoro!” Usopp practically shouts, grabbing the little thing, and then he turns and dives for his satchel, already fiddling with the latch without waiting for Zoro’s response.
Before Zoro can turn, though, he feels a tug on his pants and looks down to see Chopper smiling up at him. Without thinking, Zoro crouches so they’re eye-to-eye, and he tries not to snicker at how much mud the little doctor has managed to mat into his fur over the course of the afternoon. Vaguely, he wonders if he should have waited to bathe this week—Chopper’s going to need it after this. As though reading his thoughts, one little hoof kicks at his shin. “It’s not that bad!” Chopper giggles, and Zoro resists the urge to ruffle his fur.
“What have you been doing—rolling in it?” he snorts.
Chopper just sticks his tongue out at him and holds out a basket of weeds? grass? something that’s been tied into smaller bundles with string. “No,” he huffs, indignant and utterly intimidating, “But if you’re going back down, can you bring these to Sanji?” he asks. Zoro reaches for the plants without hesitation, even as Chopper carries on, “Hopefully there are some good ones in there this week! The last batch wasn’t that great, but we tried a new fertili—”
“Tell him there’s rosemary in there! Sanji wanted rosemary—” Usopp calls from behind him, laughing a little, and Chopper scrunches his nose.
“I’m talking!” Chopper shouts back (Usopp’s, I have ears, thanks! in response goes largely ignored) and there’s a giggle in Chopper’s voice as he adds, “Yes, tell him there’s rosemary in it. From Usopp. And echinacea from me. Because he said he was going to work on improving the tea and—”
“Okay, okay,” Zoro huffs, standing, tucking the basket under his arm. “I’ll tell him.”
Chopper’s whole face lights up too, then, as he clutches at Zoro’s pant leg, beaming, “Thanks, Zoro!” Then he dashes over to Usopp, who has started to spread out the hardware from his satchel across the upper deck, disassembling it then and there. “Do you have to do that now? We were just—”
“Wait, look at this—”
There’s a clicking noise, some kind of hiss, and then Chopper yells, “Oh, that’s so cool! Do it again!” full of glee.
Zoro waves vaguely at them as he turns back to the ladder, leaving them to whatever’s captured their attention next, but he doesn’t miss Usopp’s shout even as he starts to climb down. “Wait, is he already—? Thanks again! ”
“Yeah, yeah!” he calls back, but he doubts they can hear him over their own excited yelps. As he crosses back across the second deck, he looks out across the grass—toward sleep—and sighs.
---
He doesn’t even bother knocking on the galley door—just kicks it open, already halfway through griping, “I’m not your delivery boy, shi—huh,” when he stops, blinking at the chaos around him.
Or controlled chaos, he amends, as Sanji waves a massive knife at him through the air—around the giant, bloody sea king carcass he’s in the middle of processing on the dining table. Most of the seating area is covered in heavy drapes to catch the mess, and Sanji himself is down to his shirtsleeves in the thick, sailcloth apron he wears for butchering.
“What do you want, mosshead?” the cook bites out, shoving his arms and the knife back inside the fish. He makes quick work of whatever he’s doing and tosses a pink, fleshy mass into a bucket sitting next to him on the floor—then goes back in again. “We’re not eating for another three hours and if your shitty Captain wants another—”
Zoro scoffs, rolling his eyes, and holds up the basket. “Rosemary,” he grunts, cutting Sanji off mid-sentence. “And something from Chopper, too,” he shrugs. “Echidna.”
Sanji’s head reemerges from behind the scaled body and he blinks at Zoro, squinting first at him and then at the basket he’s already setting on the counter. “Oh,” he says, then after a moment, “Echinacea, dumbass.”
Zoro shrugs, and (just to be difficult) grunts, “Don’t sneeze on the food—unhygienic.”
“It’s a plant—” Sanji clicks his tongue, “shouldn’t you know your relatives? As if you’ve got shit to say about hygiene, anyway,” he snaps, returning to work.
Zoro just gives him the finger. “Bold statement from the only guy in this room who hasn’t bathed today.”
“Do you hear yourself when you speak, or is that just a point of pride for you?” Sanji snorts, and Zoro just rolls his eye as he turns toward the door. He barely makes it two steps, though, before the cook shouts something else. “Augh, wait—”
“What?” Zoro snaps back, but he stops, anyway.
Sanji wipes the back of his hand across his forehead and then physically grimaces as it leaves a streak of greasy fish blood on his face. Zoro almost wants to laugh, but doesn’t—because watching the cook’s unfiltered misery it objectively funnier, he thinks. He knows that Sanji would play it off as no big deal if he said something, even though they’re all acutely aware of how much the cook hates unnecessary mess.
Instead, he just watches as Sanji stutters to a halt and looks down at his filthy hands like he’s trying to solve an impossible math problem, face twisted in disgust as a glob of something starts dripping down his face. After a beat, Zoro takes pity on him—he reaches over the counter to grab a wadded dishtowel and toss it at Sanji’s head, snickering all the while.
Sanji catches it without comment, then grunts in the closest thing he'll give to thanks as he sets down the knife and starts wiping off his hands (although Zoro is fairly sure he’s just moving the slime and gore around, at this point). After a moment, he snaps, “Just bring the chum down to the aquarium, will you?” and gestures to the bucket. “Feed the fish.”
“Fuck off,” Zoro gripes back, but he crosses the room anyway, already reaching for the handle.
Sanji wipes at his face, arguably making the mess worse. “Well something needs to eat it,” he says, “and it’s either Luffy or the rest of our food—” and Zoro snorts before he can catch himself. “You know he would,” Sanji sighs, and he sounds so world-weary at the thought of Luffy eating fish guts that Zoro really does laugh, then.
Sanji flips him the middle finger in return, giving up on the towel, and Zoro just rolls his eyes as he grabs the bucket—holding it away from himself just slightly because even he can admit that it reeks. And he’s just bathed. And Nami will kill him if she thinks he hasn’t tried hard enough to stay clean—something about all of them suffering when he smells like a walking punishment, he thinks, but he’s already in the habit of tuning out her lectures and can’t quite remember the exact phrasing. (Personally, he thinks he smells fine. Luffy’s never complained, at least. And clearly Sanji isn’t doing much better.)
With a pained wince, Sanji sets the dishcloth aside and returns to the fish, dismissing Zoro with a wave of his hand. Zoro physically resists the urge to dump the bucket on his head in response, and thinks he shows remarkable restraint in just turning on his heel to leave. He makes it halfway out the door, though, before Sanji yells again, drawing him to a halt. “Tell Usopp I said thanks for all the help,” Sanji yells, and Zoro rolls his eyes—then kicks the door outward as he leaves.
“Tell him yourself, jackass!”
---
When he enters the aquarium bar, Robin sprouts half a dozen arms and begins moving the impressive array of documents and books she has spread out across the floor—but he waves her off, mumbling, “’S fine, I won’t be here long.”
She smiles demurely from her perch on one of the benches, humming her thanks. She’s not alone. Brook is playing his violin softly, tucked into one corner while Robin works—and he’s somehow also looking over a sheaf of papers propped up on one of the tables. Helping her with her research, maybe, because while Zoro wonders briefly if it’s a piece of music, it looks old even from this distance.
As if sensing him, Brook looks up and chuckles—Yohoho-ing gleefully as way to let Zoro (and any of the crew, really) know that he can see him, that he’s paying attention. In the rare moments Zoro remembers it’s weird to sail with a talking skeleton, he sometimes marvels at how well Brook himself (and the rest of them, too) have all adapted to having a crew-mate without the ability to communicate with facial expressions. “Lunch?” Brook asks, tone light as he gestures outward with the bow of his instrument. Zoro must make a face, though, because suddenly Robin laughs a little, too.
In response, Zoro hoists the bucket up, carefully stepping around Robin’s things, and grumbles, “Not for you,” as he picks his way toward the aquarium ladder.
“I’m sure the fish will enjoy their meal more than you have enjoyed carrying it,” Robin says, turning back to the book in her hand even as the other disembodied arms continue to move things out of his way.
Zoro shrugs even though she isn’t looking, because it’s not terrible—just part of the day, even though he would much rather be asleep—and Brook laughs again as he returns to his song.
Zoro makes quick work of scaling the ladder and dumps the chum into the open tank, pausing for a moment to watch as everything inside whips up into a frenzy at the food. They’ve had decent luck in the last week, so the variety of colors and shapes swirling through the water is a degree more chaotic than they’ve seen in quite a while.
(And when he spots one of the fish he’d caught the day before—a little silver thing with teeth like razors—he absolutely does not care that it zips between two fish twice its size to steal a giant chunk of guts they’d been aiming for. It’s no surprise—he only bothers catching the best fish, after all. And he also does not wait to see if it gets away safely, too, because that would be stupid.)
Robin catches his eye as he begins stepping down, and one of her hands—sprouting from the back of the couch, not the two attached to her body—waves him over. “If you have a moment,” she starts, but she’s already turning away as another pair of hands start flipping through a stack of books to her left—like she knows he is going to agree to whatever she asks before the words leave her mouth. Because— fair , he thinks. He probably will.
“Yeah?” he grunts, boots hitting the floor with a thud! as he hops off the last rung.
“Ah—there it is,” she hums, then waves a little as a line of arms sprout in a trail from the book pile to Zoro’s feet and begin passing an old, worn volume palm-over-palm to him. “Would you mind taking this up to Nami? I’ve been meaning to show her, but,” she gestures again, encompassing the carnage around them. “We’ve been quite preoccupied.”
Brook chuckles from behind him, adding, “We have made quite a mess, haven’t we! Yohoho!”
Zoro huffs and bends to take the journal that’s being offered, even as Robin continues, “She will know what it is—not to worry.” Zoro nods, straightening, tucking the worn book into his haramaki so it doesn’t touch the greasy, empty bucket he’s still holding.
“Sure,” he grunts, and there’s a pause as Robin closes her eyes and hums a second time. Zoro waits, patiently watching her as Brook resumes playing.
After a moment, she reopens her eyes and smiles at him, tucking her bare feet up onto the couch as she settles in again. “She’s in the library, I believe,” she says, and Zoro nods.
“Thanks,” he says, and Robin just shakes her head.
“No, thank you.” He just waves her off with a shrug and turns to go. Vaguely, he wonders whether he’ll actually get the chance to sleep at all today. He supposes, though, the delay can’t really be helped.
---
He loops back to the kitchen and tosses the empty bucket inside, ignoring the screech he gets in return. He doesn’t pause to see what kind of damage he’s caused (plausible deniability always helps, he thinks) and instead just turns the corner back up to the balcony. Chopper and Usopp are gone, now—Zoro can hear them laughing at each other on the deck, but whether they’re testing out whatever they’d been working on earlier or simply playing, he can’t tell. Either way, it removes all possibility of a nap from the table—at least on deck. He hears himself sigh as he pushes open the library door.
The library is in a similar state to the aquarium bar, with Nami and Jinbei lost in a sea of papers, notes, and maps. They have a group of three aquatic charts pinned up on a board to the side, and Jinbei is carefully studying something on Nami’s desk while their navigator sits cross-legged on the floor, staring up at the display.
“—on’t get it! What kind of moron uses that kind of measurement? Were they drunk when they drew that? God, this is why I hate working with vernacular regions.”
Jinbei chuckles, “We can only assume it was a decision made with aesthetics in mind.”
“Aesthetics?” Nami groans. “Aesthetics?” She flops on her back, then, disturbing the paper around her—and as she leans her head toward the ceiling, she sees Zoro standing in the doorway. He raises an eyebrow at her and she just repeats, “Aesthetics!” like he should know what she’s talking about and feel similarly scandalized.
“The horror,” he deadpans, and she just sticks her tongue out at him as he reaches to grab the journal. Her eyes light up when she sees it, though, and she’s already scrambling up off the floor before he can cross the room to hand it to her. “From Robin,” he grunts, as though an old book could come from anyone else on the ship.
“Yes!” Nami cheers, snatching it up, and she’s already flipping through it as she turns back toward the maps pinned on the wall. “This should at least help with—but, augh!” she stops, then, and turns to Jinbei with an expression of almost comical frustration. “Not the measurements, though.”
Jinbei laughs, shrugging broadly as he bellows, “If you could get every cartographer in the New World to use the same standard, you’d be a miracle-worker,” and Zoro wonders if he’s the only one who can see the glint light up in Nami’s eyes as he says it. He doubts they have long before she starts singling out every other navigator they meet—forming a coalition or something else equally horrifying—thanks to whatever’s going on here.
There’s a moment of silence as Nami stares forlornly at the wall (and Zoro wonders if he can leave before getting roped into anything else) then, suddenly, she snaps her fingers, making a kind of aha! noise and spinning on her heel to point a finger at him.
Zoro blinks at her, but she’s already diving for a pen on the floor and it’s too late—her sharp eyes turn back on him before he has the sense to flee, and Zoro has the sinking feeling he’s just lost another chunk of his afternoon.
“Zoro,” she says, a little too sweet, “What’s 347 nautical miles on a one-fifteen-twenty scale.”
“Uh,” he falters, and Jinbei makes a kind of surprised wheezing noise while Nami grins at him. “527... 440,” he says after a moment, and Nami practically crows with delight.
Jinebi bursts out laughing, great guffaws that almost rock the desk as Nami scribbles furiously on an empty spot near one of the maps. “How about 79?”
“120,080.”
“And 103 on a one-seventeen-hundred scale?”
“Uh,” he pauses, then mumbles, “175,100.”
Zoro can barely hear his own answer over the sound of Jinbei’s guffaws, and out of the corner of his eye he can see the giant fishman almost doubled over, one hand steadying himself on the desk as he wheezes.
“And—oh, please,” Nami snaps, “The sooner we get this done, sooner we can figure out where the reef is. He’s multi-use!” Jinbei wipes a genuine tear from his eye and Zoro feels the tips of his ears turning red—just a little—so he flips him the middle finger while Jinbei gets his laughter under control.
“Sorry, sorry—you’re all just so unexpected!” Jinbei chuckles, and Zoro just scowls at him. Before he can respond, though, Nami is already grabbing him by the arm and pulling him over to the wall, notes firmly in hand, and the last hope he has of a quiet afternoon slips through his fingers.
---
It’s well past two when he finally escapes the library through the bathroom, climbing up the ladder and shutting the hatch behind him before Nami can pull yet another set of charts. They’ve finally finished the real project, and she’s started throwing out old conversion problems just to show him off. And to catch up on backlog work, too, she claims—so at least they’ve accomplished something. He knows she’ll keep him until he forcibly leaves, though—it’s why he never volunteers for this.
He’s exhausted, but not upset—not really. They’re crew, and he’s happy to help—not that he'd ever admit that, even under duress. Now, though, he just wants some fucking peace and quiet.
Without hesitation, he pushes open the bathroom window and grips the frame, hauling himself up and out. It’s not difficult to clamber onto the observation room roof, half because he’s done it a hundred times and half because Franky—after watching him nearly slip once—has long-since installed holds into the wood. As he pulls himself up onto the railing, though, he stops—and sighs.
There, lying on his back and soaking up the warm sun, is Luffy. His Captain has his eyes closed with both hands folded behind his head, hat resting gently to the side, and he doesn’t move as Zoro crosses the roof. Luffy looks peaceful, oddly the quietest of everyone he’s seen today, and Zoro wonders for a moment if he’s sleeping—until Luffy smiles up as Zoro leans over him, shadow blocking out the sun. He hums a little and Zoro raises his eyebrows in return.
Already, he can feel the gentle sun on his back, lulling him into the kind of drowsiness he’s been avoiding all day. With a sigh, he crouches down, and the minute his hands feel how warm Sunny’s wooden deck is he knows he’s lost the battle. Still with his eyes closed, Luffy’s grin stretches wider—like he knows what Zoro is thinking—and Zoro huffs, “Sunny’s head not good enough for you anymore?”
“Nah,” Luffy hums again in response, opening one eye to gaze up at him as Zoro leans forward, drawn to his Captain’s warmth, too, just as much as the rest of it—like a cat in a sunbeam, maybe. “I just knew Zoro would come here,” he says.
Zoro smiles, then, and laughs a little as he says, “Oh, is that right?” and Luffy beams at him, arms already reaching up to pull him gently forward. Zoro feels his fingers brush through the soft hair at the base of his neck—and Zoro follows the motion, leaning over Luffy’s face as his Captain giggles, breath tickling his eyelashes. “Is there anything you want me to do?” he says, and Luffy giggles again—then presses their lips together softly, gently, but he doesn’t stop laughing so the kiss is so uniquely Luffy Zoro feels himself grin, too.
Then Luffy pulls his face back and wraps his arms around Zoro’s neck more firmly, flopping Zoro onto his chest as they both wheeze out a breathy oof! “The sun’s nice,” Luffy chuckles, rubbing his face into Zoro’s hair. “Take a nap with me, Zoro!”
Zoro huffs out a laugh, relaxing even as Luffy giggles under him, both of them melting into the rest of their lazy afternoon. “Aye, Captain,” he breathes, already closing his eyes, and again he feels Luffy’s fingers start to run through his hair. “Whatever you need.”
Luffy hums at him, but doesn’t say anything else—just squirms until they’re both wrapped around each other on the warm embrace of the balcony, sleepy and content.
And when Zoro finally blinks at the evening sun two hours later, sprawled out with Luffy across his chest, now—the ship is still quiet, as though the Sunny herself has kept the afternoon comfortable, patiently waiting for them both to wake up.