Chapter Text
The sky is dark and clear, thousands of stars spinning away from the milky moon in glittering spirals, like gemstones scattered across a black canvas.
Zoro leans over Sunny's railing, a breeze whispering through the strands of his hair, lifting his clothes and spinning under his feet.
He curses softly under his breath, tearing at the flesh of his bottom lip, his cheeks flushed and hot.
He taps the bottom of a pen against his chin and glares out at the open water, the leaping waves rolling elegantly over themselves, shimmering under the starlight.
Zoro leans down, scribbling at the paper crushed and flattened against the railing, crossing out words and rewriting them, tearing lines through the text with his pen.
He growls with frustration, burying his face in his hands. The pen pokes his cheek, a streak of dark blue ink smearing on his skin.
"Fuck it," he growls, flinging the pen into the ocean. "Not like he’ll ever read this stupid shit anyways."
He folds the paper and slings it with all his might. It flies through the air and catches on the wind, disappearing into the dark night. Zoro sighs softly, his chest aching, fingers trembling, and turns. He lets the breeze push his chin up and dance through the golden teardrops dangling from his earlobe, metal singing softly like little windchimes.
Sanji swims deep below the Grand Line’s frigid waves, strong legs kicking hard to propel him deeper. He dives and spins, twisting around the loose rope knotted under his ribs, connected to Sunny's railing, pulling it taut to rise back to the surface.
The ocean is raucous and icy, salty froth blasting past his face as Sanji barrels through the water as fast as his limbs would take him. The chill soothes him, makes the fire in his leg subside a little.
He floats under the waves, on a still current on his back, his eyes open and burning with the salt of the water. He revels in the sight of the stars above, distorted and tinged a deeper blue with the rolling water, the edges of their light blurred and fanned out.
Moments like this, submerged and drifting below the waves, brings Sanji back to a warm, comforting place, oddly enough. Cold nights and colder water remind him of Zeff and the rest of his family on the Baratie, and the hundreds of chilly evenings he’d spent diving off the restaurant's dock, swimming as deep as his legs would take him.
Sanji nearly snorts water up his nose as he somersaults in the water, twisting and pulling himself up till his face bursts out of the frigid sea.
He shakes his head hard, glittering sapphire droplets of ocean water flying from the bright gold of his hair. Sanji inhales deeply, sucking in the cool night air gratefully.
Just as he goes to turn and dive back below the water, he's smacked in the face, hard, by something flat and thin that sticks to the bridge of his nose and clings to the moisture on his forehead.
With a shout of indignance and softly uttered curses, Sanji peels the folded paper from his face and kicks his legs hard and fast to keep his upper body out of the water. He glares at it, eyes squinted in his effort to make out the scribbled markings on the lined sheet of paper.
On the outside, in large, blocky chicken scratch handwriting, is the name Roronoa Zoro .
Sanji lifts his gaze to the railing above, the soft light of Sunny’s lit lamps like a distant star. He spots Zoro, hunched over the railing, and catches snippets of growling and angry curses.
“Oh,” Sanji laughs, turning and looking at the folded paper in his damp hands. The ocean spray has landed on the paper in some spots and turned it translucent, and the ink has bled through in some places. “Idiot must’ve dropped this by accident. Lucky bastard, should be grateful I caught it,” he sneers, and shifts the paper to one hand, clutching the rope and hauling himself up with the other.
By the time Sanji’s dragged himself back on board the Sunny’s deck, Zoro has disappeared, lumbered off to some far corner of the ship, probably drinking more of Sanji’s cooking wine.
He looks down once more at the now considerably wetter paper with a guilty wince, and he’s just about to shout Zoro’s name to come and get it; when he notices, in smaller handwriting, just below Zoro’s name…
is his own .
The S is backwards, and he obviously didn’t know what to put as a last name, so Mugiwara is hastily scribbled beside it- but it’s his name.
Sanji blinks in surprise and wipes his hand down his face, clearing the saltwater that had pooled above his upper lip and dripped down his forehead.
“What the hell?...” he mutters, sliding his drenched suit jacket off his shoulders, draping it across one arm as he makes his way to his kitchen.
He turns the lights on and sets his wet jacket atop the marble counter, the sopping material oozing a puddle of salty water around itself- though Sanji is too preoccupied by the letter clenched between his fingers to care.
His heart pounds hard in his chest and he clutches at it, panting heavy, dark blue eyes wide and confused. His hands are numb from the cold but he feels prickles of nervous sweat stabbing through the pores of his palms.
Sanji clenches his jaw and breathes. He couldn’t tell which was worse- this anxiety inducing letter to him , from Zoro, of all people; or the fact that he doesn’t know why this damn letter makes him so anxious.
He doesn't feel like the letter was really meant to find him, so there's a layer of guilt building in his head as he unfolds the paper, but it's got his name on it, so it's for him .
He steels himself, inhales, and starts to read.
"Dear Sanji," the letter starts, Zoro's handwriting almost painful to read.
"I am looking down at this paper and i dont know what to
say
write.
It feels the same as when i look at you when your being amazing and kind and other words im scared to write even tho i know you wont read this, and i dont know what to say to you to tell you i think your great. so i start fights. It is hard to
amit
..." a few words are crossed out messily, but Sanji can tell the letters underneath are misspelled attempts at other words. "admit when im scared. Im not allowed to be scared because im the Straw Hats protector. Like Luffys 3rd big brother. But i am scared. all the time every day. Im scared that something bad will happen and i cant be there to help. I cant muster up the same courege as you, shitty cook.
i thought erlier today that it would be nice to marry you. chopper and luffy and usopp would be our sons and we would have a big wedding and your stupid family would not be invited.
I feel stupid. i hate this.”
Sanji gulps, his lips pressed tight together.
The page is worried at the end like Zoro had spent a good while fiddling with it. And finally, in small print, neater than the rest of the text, Zoro had written,
“I wonder if you would ever like me back.”
Sanji has to set the letter down and grip the counter with both hands, the air shocked out of his lungs, his heart beating so hard he worries for a moment about having an arrhythmia.
“Huh. interesting.”