Work Text:
Zoro looked to his left and right. There was virtually no difference between both sides. Identical grass walls and hedges surrounded him. The rest of the Straw Hats were nowhere in sight. This concerned Zoro less than the fact that he could no longer discern where his enemy was. A stray enemy could cause them trouble later on.
“I bet you can’t find me now, Swordsman,” a male voice provoked. The voice, which Zoro assumed belonged to the small man he’d been following up until a moment ago, began cackling. Zoro looked around. There was no one visible anymore; it was just greenery.
Zoro jumped back as he felt the ground beneath him begin to shake. A grass hedge popped out where he’d been previously standing, and the other walls of greenery shifted as well. The place where the exit had been shifted from his left to his right. Zoro took one of his swords out. Grass didn’t require more than one blade. The hedges around him fell apart with ease, scattering broken grass all around him.
New ones formed in their place, an entirely different formation than before. It was disorienting. Zoro sliced through them all again. It continued like that for several minutes. Zoro cut down the grass walls, slicing in the general direction of the voice goading him. New greenery would appear a few seconds later, materializing out of the broken leaves that Zoro’d cut down. He was starting to get irritated. An opponent who couldn’t be bothered to face his enemy directly wasn’t a respectable one.
“Come out and get cut down like a man,” Zoro shouted at a hedge.
“No, I don’t want to fight you. You’re scary,” the man whined. Zoro sniffed. He was a coward then. Fighting with him wasn’t worth Zoro’s time. Zoro took out each one of his swords, intending to end this cat-and-mouse fight with one move. His opponent must have sensed the shift because pink flowers sprouted up on each surrounding hedge. Before Zoro realized what was happening, each flower bloomed, releasing a thick pink gas. All Zoro could see was pink.
Zoro quickly pulled the top of his shirt up to cover his nose. He felt fine, but he couldn’t let his guard drop. The gas could always have a delayed effect. Zoro tried to focus on listening to moving footsteps or the grating voice of his opponent, but all he heard was the hissing of gas being released. Maybe the man from before wasn’t as stupid as Zoro had initially thought.
Using his free hand, Zoro tried to feel his way around. He had noticed that the devil fruit user wasn’t strong enough to completely surround him with greenery. There was always a patch left uncovered – an exit. If he could cut through the hedge closest to it, Zoro could diminish some of the gas.
“Zoro, it seems that you’re lost again,” a familiar soft voice teased. Zoro assumed that Robin had bloomed a hand with a mouth on it onto his shoulder. He looked up, expecting to see her flying around. But Zoro couldn’t even see the sky, the gas was so damn thick.
“Unfortunately, I think I’ll have to help you from there,” Robin told him. Her breath tickled his ear. Her conjured lips were so close to his ear that he could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin. Goosebumps rose up on his arms.
“Just tell me where to go already,” he told her.
“Cut the hedge to your right,” Robin instructed. Zoro hesitated before slicing the hedge to his left.
“That’s your left,” Robin corrected. The words weren’t condescending which he appreciated.
“Why don’t you try cutting in the direction of my voice,” she suggested. Zoro grunted his agreement. Zoro shivered as he felt a sudden warmth near his other ear.
“I’ve been reading this book recently,” Robin informed, and Zoro sliced a hedge to his left.
“It’s quite good. I think you’d like it actually.” Zoro felt the ghost of her lips against the shell of his right ear and easily slashed his sword in that direction.
“Why?” Zoro asked her. He was paying less attention to his surroundings than usual, but he supposed it was alright given that he couldn’t see anyway.
“It’s about this swordsman who is on a quest.” Her voice was coming from the same direction, so Zoro kept going right.
“Sounds interesting. What’s the quest?”
“To kill the shogun and avenge his father’s death,” Robin told him from his right. Her voice had a low, beautiful cadence. Each word was said intentionally with a confidence that Zoro appreciated. Zoro quickly cut a grass wall to his right.
“A good reason for a quest,” Zoro replied.
“Yes, but he dies at the end,” Robin explained. She didn’t sound sad about it.
“Was it honorable?”
“Of course, he was a true samurai. He died at the hand of his enemy fighting for what he believed in,” Robin told him. He could almost feel the skin of her lips against him, and Zoro realized belatedly that he wouldn’t mind if they were.
“He was slashed in the chest then?” Zoro guessed, slicing through a hedge on his left.
“Right through the heart,” she purred from his left. The heat of her breath ignited something carnal in the pit of his stomach.
He swung his sword to the left. The change wasn’t immediate, and Zoro had to blink a few times to realize that he was regaining his ability to see. Both of Zoro’s ears felt oddly cold at the loss of warmth.
For maybe the first time in his life, Zoro felt disappointed at the conclusion of a conversation.
Zoro looked down, recognizing the scrawny man he’d been chasing earlier. The man screamed upon seeing Zoro, clearly not having expected him. He covered his head and cowered on the ground.
Zoro knocked him out quickly before catching up with everyone else.
Zoro pushed the door of the kitchen on the Sunny open, not expecting anyone there. It was the middle of the night, and most of the crew was loudly snoring on various parts of the ship. Zoro was on night watch and had only left the Crow’s Nest for a glass of water.
He was pleasantly surprised to find Robin sitting on the couch with a book.
“Good evening, Zoro,” she told him kindly.
“Robin,” he acknowledged. “Why’re you up?”
“I’m reading,” she answered simply. Zoro nodded. It seemed to him that books were Robin’s chosen medium to distract herself, from what exactly he didn’t know. Given everything he knew about Ohara, Zoro wasn’t sure that he actually wanted to know.
“Would you like some tea?” Robin offered, holding up a tea kettle. Zoro looked at it skeptically. Tea made him sleepy.
“There’s gin in it,” she added, smiling coyly as she took a sip. He grinned back, grabbing a teacup from the kitchen.
“I didn’t know we still had gin,” Zoro told her, sitting down on the couch beside her. She slid the teapot to him, and he poured himself a cup. It was good, a combination of green tea, honey, lime, and gin. Zoro preferred his alcohol neat generally, but gin tasted better with a chaser of some kind.
“Now, Zoro, why would anyone tell you that we still had gin? That’s like telling Luffy there’s food left,” Robin teased. Zoro chuckled.
“Fair enough.”
It was silent between them for a while as they silently sipped their respective drinks. That was one of the things that he liked the most about Robin; she was perfectly fine with silence. As long as its’ captain was awake, the Sunny was always noisy. He didn’t mind most of the time, but Zoro often found himself using either the night watch or a workout to carve out moments of silence in his day. Silence had been Zoro’s serene music of choice for a long time, but there was a newfound melody he craved more – Robin’s voice.
“What’re you reading this time?” Zoro asked Robin, placing his boots on a nearby chair and pouring himself more of her gin cocktail.
“It’s a military treatise about when to employ war strategies or avoid them altogether,” she told him. The premise sounded familiar.
“The Art of War ?” Zoro guessed. Robin raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, do you know it?”
“Dojo made us read it,” Zoro confirmed before taking a large gulp of the tea.
“Did you like it?” It had been years since he’d read it, so the details were fuzzy in his mind. He only remembered the basis of strategic thinking he’d been taught from it.
“I preferred Bushido ,” Zoro told her, recalling the other books he’d been forced to read. He knew the pillars of a samurai by heart.
There was a glimmer of excitement in Robin’s eyes, and Zoro’s heart skipped a beat in his chest as she leaned closer to him.
“I’ve heard many dojos require their pupils to memorize the principles of Bushido before even picking up a sword. Is that true?” Robin slid a bookmark inside the small novel, giving him the entirety of her attention.
“That’s true. Koushirou used to make me recite them all the time.”
“Your old teacher?”
“Yes,” Zoro confirmed. Robin hummed.
“You know more about literature than I expected.”
“I’m not as stupid as you guys think I am,” Zoro grumbled. Nami often compared him to Luffy, and given he’d seen the entirety of Luffy’s face turn red from ‘thinking too hard’, Zoro didn’t appreciate the comparison.
“I’ve never been under the impression you were dumb, Zoro,” Robin replied immediately. “In fact, I’m usually quite impressed with you, especially in battle.”
Zoro’s cheeks flushed despite himself, and he coughed.
“Thanks,” he told her, looking away. “I appreciated your help earlier today.” The words were less confident than Zoro would have liked them to sound.
“It was no problem. I like talking to you,” Robin responded with a smile.
They developed a silent routine of meeting in the kitchen and talking over some cocktails Robin made while everyone was asleep. Typically, it was gin-infused tea, but sometimes Robin made coffee with whiskey in it.
Zoro wasn’t much of a talker, but he found himself divulging more details about his life than he had with anyone else. He couldn’t tell if he was thrilled or deeply uncomfortable by it. He was erring more towards deeply uncomfortable.
Zoro placed his mug down, eyeing the title of the newest book that Robin had started. It was another one that he recognized.
“You’ve been reading a lot about samurais lately. Why?” Zoro asked Robin.
She placed the book down, placing her elbow on the table. Robin rested her head on the palm of her hand and looked at him. Zoro met her eyes, her blue ones ensnaring his own.
“I’ve been very interested in swordsmen recently.”
Zoro’s mouth went dry. There wasn’t a lot of space between them. Robin was so close that he could feel the warmth radiating off her body. Zoro could even smell her, the unique mixture of violet, cinnamon, and the pages of a new book overpowering everything else.
Every detail about her felt vivid, overwhelming.
The ache to be touched and to touch her was so visceral that it shocked him. He hadn’t felt it in years, but the feeling thrashed around his stomach like a starved beast.
Zoro’s eyes fell to her lips before he remembered himself. Robin was a crewmate, a friend. He had a responsibility to the ship, to help uphold the family that Luffy had curated for all of them. Zoro looked away. His respect for Luffy and their crew overshadowed his own personal desires, no matter how tempting.
“Maybe you should try reading about something else.”
Zoro didn’t miss the look of disappointment in her eyes.
For the entirety of the next week, Zoro spent his nights by himself. It felt different, lonely. The silence that he always craved was suddenly more oppressive than relaxing, a constant reminder of the company he was missing.
(Zoro had broken down and gone into the kitchen several nights in a row, but no one was there.)
“Luffy,” Zoro called, climbing onto the head of the Sunny.
“Yeah?”
“We don’t hook up with crew mates, right?” Zoro wanted Luffy to reaffirm his place and his responsibilities because he felt out of control.
Every time he saw Robin giggle at something Chopper did, Zoro’s resolve weakened a little bit more. Instead of dying off, his desire for her seemed to grow rapidly. Each day that passed, Zoro collected another detail about her and stored it in his mind until there were so many that Zoro barely had room for anything else. His gaze always fell on her, no matter what he was doing.
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. Why?” Luffy replied, turning to give him an odd, apprehensive look.
It didn’t shock Zoro that it had never occurred to Luffy as he continued to acquire a crew of various people that those people may become interested in each other. Zoro assumed Luffy, like most of them, didn't think anything would come from Eyebrows’ constant flirting. It was also equally possible that Luffy didn’t care if anything did.
“Didn’t want to cross a line if I did,” Zoro admitted.
“Zoro, you’re really cool and all, but I don’t like you like that,” Luffy told him, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. Zoro’s eyebrow twitched.
“I’m not talking about you, idiot,” he hissed, feeling his face flush.
“Oh good, 'cause I don’t know how gay sex works, but I guess–”
“Stop talking,” Zoro growled. He did not want to hear whatever Luffy was going to say next. Luffy chuckled, and his relief was palpable.
“As long as it’s not with me, I don’t care what you do,” Luffy told Zoro seriously. Luffy was back to watching fish or clouds or whatever the hell he did on the head of the Sunny a moment later.
“It was never gonna be with you,” Zoro clarified.
“Great. Oh look, an octopus,” Luffy shouted, stretching his head to peer into the water. Zoro had to hold on to the back of Luffy’s shirt to prevent him from falling into the ocean. Zoro often wondered how he’d ended up here, babysitting a nineteen-year-old.
After arriving on an island to restock on supplies, Zoro had elected to accompany Nami, Chopper, Eyebrows, and Robin for shopping. He wasn’t big on running errands, but he needed to buy another whetstone to sharpen his swords.
After about five minutes, Zoro had lost the group entirely. His crewmates always seemed to take the strangest routes to get everywhere. That was fine. Zoro would meet up with them after he found the nearest blacksmith shop.
On the way there, he walked by a local bookstore, noticing familiar dark hair in the window. He stopped walking, watching as Robin picked up a hardback off a display case.
There was a katana on the cover.
“That’s a fantastic read. A beautiful love story with a handsome swordsman, very spicy too if you know what I mean,” an older woman gushed to Robin, winking at her. Robin laughed, and he smiled at the sound. She had such a beautiful laugh.
“That sounds lovely, but I’m not so sure swordsmen and love stories go well together,” Robin told the woman, placing the book back on the shelf. Robin looked through the glass, and her eyes met Zoro’s. She gave him a sad smile before walking deeper into the store. Zoro’s heart sank in his chest.
He’d gone inside and bought the book a few minutes later. When they returned to the Sunny, Zoro had placed the wrapped hardback on Robin’s bed.
When he went into the kitchen to grab water that night, Robin was sitting on the couch. Zoro was relieved to see her there. Robin smiled up at him, the book he’d bought her in hand.
“This is quite a raunchy read, Zoro. Did you really buy this for me?”
“I had no idea it was that kind of book,” he admitted. He was blushing.
“So you weren’t purposefully trying to tell me that you would like me to act as a ‘sheath to your sword’?” There was amusement dancing in her eyes, and Robin was smirking at him.
“N-No,” Zoro stammered, feeling the entirety of his face flush. What the hell kind of book had he bought her?
“Well, that’s honestly too bad. Regardless, I appreciate it. Romance isn’t my preferred genre, but I do like to indulge from time to time,” she told him, taking a sip of her tea and going back to the book. It took him a few minutes to get over his embarrassment and realize the ramifications of what Robin had said.
“You were wrong earlier. Swordsmen don’t swear off romance,” he told her. Robin looked up from the book.
“Oh? I thought swordsmen and samurai were solely focused on their strength and loyalty to their lords.” There was a question in her eyes.
“It’s actually a shame for a samurai to not have multiple interests,” Zoro informed her, sitting down right beside her. Robin placed the book down and turned to face him. The movement led their thighs to touch, and the contact warmed the entirety of Zoro’s body. He leaned into her thigh, and Zoro watched as her eyes darkened.
“And are you looking to take up another interest, Zoro?” she asked him, leaning forward slightly.
“Yes,” Zoro answered without hesitating, further closing the gap between them. Zoro was close enough that he could see each dark lash framing her eyes.
“What exactly are you looking to take up?” she questioned quietly. Zoro watched as she gently bit her lip. They looked soft.
“You,” Zoro concluded. Her eyes widened slightly, but then they fluttered closed as Zoro leaned in to kiss her. Their lips brushed gently at first before finding each other again more fervently. It was intoxicating to have Robin that close, to feel the entirety of her body pressed against his. She pulled away a moment later.
“You know I really wouldn’t mind seeing your personal swordsmanship,” Robin whispered into his ear, placing her hand on his arm.
“Pretty sure it’s Luffy’s turn for night watch,” Zoro said, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her closer.
“I believe it is,” Robin confirmed.