Chapter Text
Zoro’s personal challenge for the day was to figure out if he could push a wheelbarrow with one hand. Balance, surely, wasn’t on his side, but there’s nothing that a little bit of grit and bicep strength couldn’t remedy. He was tempted to take his gloves off to get a better grip on the handle, but he’d be grumpy if his hands turned numb from the cold and couldn’t grip much at all after that. At the very least, the whole struggle was a welcomed distraction from what he was really doing. Biting his lip in concentration, he briefly tuned in to what Perona was saying in front of him.
“Don’t you just like how long this one is?”
Heaving a sigh, Zoro set the wheelbarrow back on the ground to consider the pumpkin in Perona’s arms. When his eyes reached it, his eyebrows raised in admiration. “You could carve a really tall castle into that… Or a cool sword…”
“No! No more swords!” Perona stomped her foot and huffed. Zoro half expected her to throw the pumpkin at his head, but instead she placed it gently into the wheelbarrow. “Honestly! You’re going to make this the most boring pumpkin carving ever with those lame ideas. Sanji’s gonna break up with you for sure.”
Zoro snorted a laugh as he pushed the wheelbarrow along the rows of dirt in the pumpkin patch they were at. The cold air made his breath float around him as he felt his boots sink into the dirt with every step – his smile making his frozen cheeks sting a little.
It’d been a few years since Sanji had met his family – which consisted of his weird goth father Mihawk and weird goth sister Perona – and it was still one of his most weirdly perfect and amazing memories. From then on, the idea to continue the tradition of a Halloween-themed Christmas dinner every year persisted.
And while this year was right on theme, the details were a bit different. The reason why he and Perona were gathering pumpkins in a wheelbarrow in a pumpkin patch during December was because they were going to prepare pumpkin 25 different ways to represent the 25 days of Christmas. And what made this year unique was the fact that they were including Zeff – to help make all of the food – and all of their friends – to help eat all of the food.
Or, at least that’s what Sanji believed.
“I’m surprised the secret hasn’t gotten out yet,” Perona mused out loud as she continued to scrutinize each pumpkin. “Your friends can be quite the blabber-mouths.”
Zoro rolled his eyes. “Coming from Queen Loose-Lipped herself.”
Perona wedged one of her thick platform boots under the wheel of the wheelbarrow, causing Zoro to stop abruptly with one of the handles jabbing into his gut.
“Hey. I want this proposal to go well just as much as the next guy. I have plans with my future brother-in-law.”
The ache in Zoro’s gut stuttered into a different sensation at Perona’s words – nerves, giddiness, affection. It was a convenient and practical lie that everyone was invited to this year’s dinner so that they could make a lot of food. The truth was that he wanted everyone there for when he asked Sanji to marry him, and the dinner would naturally turn into an engagement party.
“Run the plan by me again.”
Zoro felt his face go hot, realizing he’d been thinking loudly enough for Perona to pick up on it and get nosey.
“Today, we get pumpkins…”
“Check!” Perona squealed as she threw another one into the wheelbarrow.
“Tomorrow, we carve the pumpkins together because Sanji has never carved a pumpkin before, and that’s not proper for someone who’s about to be part of our family.”
“Nope!” Perona crossed her arms to form an X.
“But as we carve them, we save the inside goop for him and Zeff to start cooking all of it. Then, on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, they finish preparing all the food.”
“Love this part,” she noted with a wistful sigh.
“Then, I propose to him during dinner. He says yes. Everyone cheers,” Zoro finished matter-of-factly, completely sticking the landing.
Perona stopped so that she and Zoro could do their signature handshake.
Pulling away from each other like nothing happened and glancing around to make sure no one saw that, Zoro continued his job of wheelbarrow-pushing while Perona decided if there were any pumpkins left in the field that were cute enough to be included. They continued like that for a moment more before Perona’s nose started to run from the cold, and so it was time to head back.
“Let me see the ring,” she demanded as Zoro started up the car. He’d just finished throwing the last of the pumpkins in the trunk with absolutely no help, and she hadn’t even turned his heated seat on for him before he got inside. For all she knew, she wasn’t even getting a spot on the wedding party.
“Don’t have it on me right now,” he grumbled. Thankfully, his gloves were saving him from gripping a cold steering wheel.
Perona slumped over in the passenger seat. “Ugghh, then bring it tomorrow when we carve the pumpkins so that I can see it.”
People always told Zoro that he mumbled and grumbled too much, but if he were to ever be in a competition with Perona, he’d lose by a landslide. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as he drove out of the parking lot. “Why does it matter if you see it? Not like I’m getting a new one if you don’t like it.”
Lip trembling and all, Perona gazed out the window – her breath collecting gently on the glass.
“Is it so awful that I care?”
“Oh my God! Fine. I’ll bring it tomorrow.” As much as he knew not to give in to her, he was awfully bad at resisting, and so he relented to her request. It was a strategic move because there wasn’t a zero chance she’d throw herself out the car door at the speed he was driving.
And as if she hadn’t been about to crash out, Perona straightened up in her seat to smile and fix her eye liner in the visor mirror.
Zoro listened to her hum “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as he felt his palms grow sweatier on the wheel. As cool and collected as he was discussing the plan to Perona, it wasn’t like he was completely immune from the nerves and tiny doubts that picked away at him when no one was looking. Even though he’d been planning this for months, there was always a chance something could go wrong – something beyond his control.
He chuckled to himself, remembering the planning and plotting Sanji had gone through for their first family Halloween-Christmas dinner, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was repaying some sort of karma.
If Sanji had succeeded that day, then so would Zoro in a few days.
And he’d do it even better.
“No! Tell him no!” Zoro gritted through his teeth as quietly loud as he could, rushing to get out onto the deck and slam the door shut. Sanji was inside their apartment, nearly ready to leave and carve pumpkins at Mihawk’s when Nami had called, and of course it was about the proposal that Zoro really didn’t want Sanji to know about.
“I can’t! He’s so excited about it, Zoro; I’m not crushing his spirits!” Nami didn’t budge on the other end, as much as Zoro would’ve liked her to. “He’s already on his way now to collect them.”
Zoro sighed and leaned over the railing – the cold metal almost burning into him. “I told Chopper that no one’s allowed to bring any gifts…”
“Winter cherry blossoms are such a lovely gift for a newly engaged couple, though!”
“And if the cook says no?” Zoro repeated like he had to her many times before. “It’s too damn depressing if everyone brings gifts for something that might not happen.” His eyes peeked behind him briefly to look at Sanji through the glass door. He heard Nami snort before switching his phone to his other ear before it fell off from the cold.
“It’s on Christmas. You’re supposed to bring presents. Worse comes to worst, it’s a Christmas present.” He could practically hear the eye roll in her tone.
Zoro, making sure his back was facing the door, pouted as deeply and freely as he could when no one was looking. “But I’ll know what it was really supposed to be for…” he mumbled.
“He’s not going to say no.”
“Oh, and you’re so sure of that,” he rolled his eyes before stopping and blinking in a quick panic. “Wait. Did you tell him?!”
“Oh my god, no I did not tell him, Zoro! I’m just smart and can spot the obvious. Sanji’s going to say yes, and we’re going to have the engagement party of the century. You have nothing to worry about, trust me.”
Zoro clung to the certainty in Nami’s tone, hoping relentlessly that she was right. She and Luffy were the first to know about his plans to propose to Sanji, and he remembered the way their eyebrows shot up at the idea – how they exchanged broad, knowing grins before giving him two thumbs up. Whenever he felt like backing out, he always had them to pull him back in.
“I trust yOU!”
Zoro’s voice rose at the end into a high-pitched squeal and he almost dropped his phone over the railing of the deck. Behind him, Sanji had knocked on the glass, pointing at his watch with an angry glare to tell Zoro they were running late. Flipping him off in return, Zoro turned back around to finish his conversation with Nami before retreating back inside. She was giggling on the other end.
Zoro cleared his throat, speaking more quietly. “I trust you. Just… no gifts!”
He heard Nami collect herself before sighing. “Right. No gifts. On Christmas. I’ll see you soon, Ebeneezer.”
Zoro grunted before hanging up, closing his eyes for a moment of silent intermission and then turning around to walk back inside. Just in case Sanji could read his mind, he made sure to go straight toward his boots and jacket, averting his gaze from his boyfriend.
“Quickly, quickly, we’re running behind,” Sanji nagged behind him, fiddling anxiously with his keys.
Zoro did look at him then – a steely gaze as he started to tie his boots even more slowly.
“Screw you. I’m leaving by myself then,” Sanji huffed. He started forward toward the door, but Zoro quickly extended his leg to trip him. It caused Sanji to plummet downward on top of Zoro, and they were both entangled in an exchange of snarls, shoving, and hair pulling until they were both breathing heavily into each other, forehead to forehead.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” Sanji asked then, his hands still bundled threateningly into Zoro’s coat.
Zoro leaned more of his body weight against him, the wall leaving Sanji no other choice than to be more squished up against him. “Nami,” he answered plainly. It wasn’t an odd thing to be doing, after all. They’d been friends longer than they hadn’t.
However, Sanji’s eyes widened just slightly, and it looked like it was in fear. His eyes darted away for a split second before looking back to Zoro again. “She… say anything interesting?”
Zoro squinted at him a little, a sly smirk cracking against his face as he moved their faces closer. “Oh, lots. All sorts of stuff. Top shelf secrets.”
Sanji shifted uncomfortably, like he was trying to put space between their faces but couldn’t because of the wall. This close, Zoro could hear his teeth grinding together in anger. “Don’t know why I even asked,” he almost spat in Zoro’s face. “I’m sure you still owe her money from three weeks ago.”
“Yup!” Zoro jumped on the excuse, thankful to be thrown one so easily. He licked Sanji’s cheek to be a pest and to give him something to squirm about so he could finish putting on his boots. He hoped Sanji didn’t notice the slight quiver of his hands as he zipped up his jacket. That was the closest he’s felt to Sanji figuring something out, and truthfully he thought he might’ve pissed himself for a second there.
The nerves were quickly exalted from his body, however, when Sanji kicked him out the door to their apartment.
“Perona’s gonna kill us for being late,” Sanji muttered with cheeks already pink from the cold as they walked to their car parked outside. He slouched into the driver’s seat, making sure to turn the car on as fast as humanly possible to get it warmed up.
Zoro rolled his eyes as he retrieved the ice scraper from the trunk. “She’ll live,” he shouted up to him from the back. After he finished scraping the windows free of their frost, he assumed his position in the passenger seat and threw the plastic tool back where it belonged.
Now they were both ready to go, but Sanji hadn’t started driving yet, which made Zoro’s impatience meter signal its alarm bells.
“All this rushing and now who’s holding us up?” He grumbled, but his annoyance quickly turned to curiosity when he realized Sanji was holding a CD and staring at it like he was reminiscing about something.
“What’s that?” Zoro asked, nudging him in the shoulder to get his attention.
Sanji blinked and shook his head, breaking his stupor. He let out a small chuckle before placing the CD back into the player in the car. “I noticed there was a CD still in here, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d listened to one in the car. Turns out, it’s that recording of this podcast I bought a few years back… when I was planning out our first Halloween-Christmas family dinner. Just brought back memories.”
Sanji bit his lip before putting the car in reverse to back out of their parking spot and finally head out onto the road.
“Memories of you being absolutely crazy – ouch!” Zoro rubbed at his neck from where the seat belt had choked him after Sanji slammed on the brakes.
“Thoughtful, talented, and an absolutely perfect boyfriend, I think is what you meant to say.”
“Oh, you always know exactly what I’m thinking, babe,” Zoro teased in a sing-song voice. Sanji stuck his tongue out, pretending to gag from the pet name, but it made him smile nonetheless.
The rest of the drive was rather civil, for what they could manage. It was short, too, since Sanji was driving and didn’t take the detour into the winding forest that Zoro usually traipsed through when he was driving. Mihawk’s mansion was on the outskirts of town, tucked away behind a few sharp turns no one typically dared to take and straddled atop a hill that looked too steep to climb. Sleepovers were difficult growing up.
Once they hit dense fog, he knew they were close. Rolling down his window, Zoro smiled as he stuck his arm out the window to watch it disappear into the murky cloud.
“Must you?” Sanji grumbled, shivering a bit in his seat from the rush of cold air. His shoulders were hunched over the wheel as he tried to squint to see the road ahead.
Zoro’s smile grew as he side-eyed his boyfriend. “C’mon, curls. You’ve been up here enough times – you oughta have some affection for it.”
“I’ll have affection for it once it stops trying to get me to miss that fucking turn I always…”
“You missed it.”
Zoro pulled his arm in to clutch the grab handle on the ceiling as Sanji jolted the car to get back on the right road. The tires spun a bit in the dirt until they hit pavement again with a screech, and he couldn’t stop the laughter he was choking on as it happened.
“If I were driving, that wouldn’t have happened,” Zoro snickered.
“If you were driving,” Sanji seethed, and it was probably good the window was open because Zoro could watch his face get red with hot anger. “We’d be in BFE.”
“Nu-uh,” he countered. “We’d actually have been there by now, and you could’ve played passenger princess. Get some beauty sleep on the way.” His voice was teasing, instigating.
“Don’t make me kick you.”
“Do it. You’ll miss the turn again.”
Sanji opened his mouth with fury and then slowly closed it to squint at the road some more. Zoro felt sweet satisfaction, knowing he was right, but he didn’t catch what Sanji was mumbling in response.
“Enunciate your words, twirlbrows,” he leaned in to hear better.
“I can’t believe I’m marrying you!” Sanji shouted directly into his ear once he was close enough to inflict pain.
Zoro felt his brain sting from the volume, and it took him a moment to think clearly through the ringing in his ear, but somehow that didn’t stop the blush on his cheeks from forming.
“W-who said I’m marrying you?” He stammered, eyes wide in shock as he stared at Sanji. How did he know? Did someone tell him? Did he know the whole plan? Was it Luffy? He probably sold his secret for a single chicken wing.
“No one!” Sanji met his eyes with a similar level of panic and accompanying blush on his own cheeks. “I was just… like, one day. Maybe. Actually, probably never. Definitely not.”
“Right,” Zoro laughed off nervously. They both stared straight ahead into the fog, which was pretty close to how his brain felt at the moment – all staticky and weird. Their conversation replayed in his head distantly, now trying to figure out if it had sounded like Sanji wanted to marry him, or if it sounded like he hated the idea. When he heard his own voice ring in his head, he realized that maybe he was the one who sounded like he didn’t want to marry Sanji.
“Um–”
“Look at that! We’re here!” Sanji shouted as they pulled up to the large iron gate to Mihawk’s estate.
Usually he waited for Zoro to get out of the car to open it, but this time he sprang out of his seat almost faster than he’d unlocked his seat belt. It made Zoro swallow what he was going to say, tucking it away for later. Right now, it was time to carve pumpkins and prepare for the enormous dinner on Christmas Day.
His feet didn’t hit the driveway cobblestone like he wanted them to, but the smell of wet dirt all around him helped bring him to some sense of serenity – of being home. The looming shadow from Mihawk’s mansion covered his view in dark, haunting hues of grays and blues, and it was a beauty only a special soul could appreciate.
“You’re late!”
Zoro rolled his eyes and almost groaned. There was one of those “special souls” now, bounding down the steps toward them.
He turned around to see Sanji meet Perona where she was on the last step – making her a few inches taller than him, so he had to look up to her. Even from this distance, Zoro could see how his light blue eyes pierced through the darkness.
“My deepest apologies, dear Perona. I know how precious your time is,” Sanji spoke sweetly to her, like usual. Perona offered her gloved hand, to which Sanji planted a kiss in his custom greeting for her.
With a nasally sigh, she replied “You’re forgiven.” She blinked slowly at him, her lashes heavy with mascara. She let him look up and smile at her before yanking him up the steps by his tie. “For now!” Zoro snorted at the way Sanji tripped up the first few steps. “C’mon! It’s cold!”
Stuffing his hands in his pocket, Zoro walked toward the steps. At the door was Mihawk, who briskly nodded at Sanji as he was dragged past him. Hoping that was a distraction enough, Zoro tried to quickly make it past him too, but he ultimately wasn’t successful.
Zoro ran into Mihawk’s outstretched hand, and it felt like a metal pole to his sternum. When he pushed against him, there wasn’t even a hint of a budge in his stance to be found.
“It’s cold outside,” Mihawk stated bluntly. Zoro made the mistake of looking directly into his eyes – yellow and owl-like.
“Uh-huh,” Zoro grunted in response, trying and failing to push through his arm. His feet were digging grooves into the rug underneath him as he tried to move.
“You should be wearing a thicker jacket.”
“Ugh, I’m fine!” he almost yelled as he stopped trying to push past him, instead choosing to slouch and groan – not unlike when he was a kid.
“What happened to the one I got you?” Mihawk persisted. He hadn’t blinked once since they’d arrived.
“That long ass black trench coat? With the fur? I’ll scare my neighbors with that on. They’ll think I’m the Beverly Hills Grim Reaper.”
Mihawk narrowed his eyes – still not a full blink. “Better than you catching a cold.”
Zoro looked at him guiltily, then at the ground, then slightly past Mihawk to try to lock eyes with Perona. Miraculously, she caught his signal and stopped trying to put a bow in Sanji’s hair – even though she looked incredibly miffed to do so.
“Mihawk! Come here! I need to show you something!” Her voice traveled through the house so well, Zoro wondered how she was able to move through the walls so easily as she did to always grab their attention when she wanted to.
Zoro watched, trying not to smirk as a silent conflict occurred behind Mihawk’s gaze. It was the one time Zoro was ever able to watch him lose a fight.
“In a moment…”
“No, now!” Perona protested, the tears in her eyes practically punctuating her syllables. Zoro was going to have to carve a small teddy bear into one of her pumpkins tonight as a thanks for her compelling performance.
“I have to attend to your sister, but this conversation is not over, Roronoa.” With a flick of the back of his own long cloak, Mihawk turned to walk into the living room where he’d been summoned. Zoro kicked off his boots and shrugged off his – perfectly fine and suitable for the cold – jacket to join them.
Following the red velvet runner from entranceway to living room, he let his eyes trail the walls of his old home. In between the candelabra sconces were paintings of people he never knew but that he and Perona had crafted stories for in their boredom. Towards the end, though, was one of him in his teens, and then one of Perona around the same age, which meant he was close to the living room where he’d find the largest painting of all.
Situated above the white marble mantle of the fireplace was a 4-foot tall family portrait painted many years ago, when Perona was still taller than him and Mihawk didn’t have any gray hairs between his typical raven. They’re all looking straight ahead, stoic, as their adoptive father had taught them. Like everything else, it wasn’t your typical family photo, but it was theirs, and Zoro was proud of it.
He looked from painting to Sanji, who was starting to bring the pumpkins into the living room where the floor had been covered in sheets to protect it from what was to come. Mihawk was telling him something that was probably morbid or wry, but Sanji was smiling fully like always. The atmosphere in Zoro’s childhood home was different with him in it, welcomed. Despite whatever happened in the car, he was reassured in that moment that he was still making the right decision.
“All those muscles and you’re just gonna stand there?” Perona’s voice picked him up out of his thoughts and dropped him over the edge into icy water.
“We have a very important task to accomplish today, bighead, go grab some pumpkins!”
Zoro turned to Mihawk in a rage. “You’re just gonna let her call me that?!”
Mihawk didn’t take his eyes away from a pumpkin he was placing on the ground and shrugged his shoulders. “None of my hats ever fit you as a child…”
“Wha-!” Zoro tried to protest, but he couldn’t finish anything he was about to say with Sanji grabbing his arm to pull him toward the kitchen. After a final disgruntled huff, he let himself be ushered into away where a congregation of pumpkins were awaiting him. Lost in his thoughts, he absentmindedly held on to the two pumpkins Sanji had placed in his arms.
“If you included all that stupid hair, she’d have the bigger head…”
His words, thoughts, and breathing were cut off when Sanji kissed him abruptly on the forehead.
“You also have a moss head,” he added. With his own arms occupied by pumpkins, he not-so-gently kicked at Zoro’s ankles to get him to move back to the living room. “C’mon. Aren’t you supposed to show me how to carve a pumpkin?”
Zoro perked up at that, remembering the real prompt of the story that was hidden behind all the extra stuff.
He looked back at Sanji with a smirk. “That’s right. And you’re learning from the best of the best. No one does pumpkin carving like us.”
Sanji shrugged, looking off to the side. “Can’t be too hard… just some triangles and squares…”
The entire living room went silent around him, Zoro, Perona, and Mihawk staring at him like stone statues.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s so much more than that.”
“What grade did you get in geometry?”
“How good are you at conceptualizing negative space?”
“Do you even have a Pinterest?”
Sanji stood awkwardly, shifting the pumpkins in his arms and searching Zoro’s eyes for safety.
“Don’t worry,” Zoro laughed as he moved to grab a pumpkin from him to place on the ground. “We can start with the classic – triangle eyes, nose, and a smile.”
“No, I can do it!” Sanji turned away from Zoro so he couldn’t take his other pumpkin. “I can do anything with a knife!”
“Anything?” Zoro asked, genuinely still talking carving pumpkins.
“Barf, is that how you two flirt?” Perona chimed in unexpectedly.
Zoro felt his cheeks grow hot, and when he looked to Sanji, he found him blushing as well. But Perona had had the final blow too many times today already, and he wasn’t about to give her one more.
“Yes,” he answered her, staring straight into her eyes in his best Mihawk impression.
Perona looked back at him, and he could see her slouch ever so slightly in her posture – her eyebrows pinching together almost imperceptibly. He could tell she hadn’t been ready for that response.
“That’s… weird…” she stammered, pretending to be more occupied with the frills on her skirt.
“He won that one,” Mihawk declared quietly to her.
“Whatever, sharpen my knives please,” she pouted back.
Zoro smiled openly as he turned back to Sanji to get him started. Each person had a set of knives that had different shapes, with some being serrated and some resembling scalpels. With the sheet covering the floor, the scene would look incredibly suspicious if the pumpkins weren’t in the room with them.
Zoro watched Sanji eye the different carving utensils, and he couldn’t tell if it was confusion or concern in the furrow of his brows. It was a rare moment that Zoro was actually able to describe a utensil and its use to his boyfriend, which he took much pleasure in.
“You always start with the long, serrated knife to open up the top,” he instructed, despite the fact that Sanji probably already knew that. Still, he had a chance to teach something new to him, and it was a moment he wanted to draw out as much as possible before they started biting each other. Picking up the knife in question, he grabbed Sanji’s hand and pulled him closer.
“You just cut out around the stem–”
“It’s not rocket science. I’ve gutted a pumpkin before,” Sanji started to grumble as Zoro wrapped his arms around him from behind. His goal was to have them both hold the knife while Sanji started carving – a real Ghost pottery moment he could tease Sanji about for the rest of their lives.
“Just go with it,” he whispered in his ear, letting his smile trail lightly over Sanji’s ear lobe.
Sanji shook his head slightly, no doubt to make his fringe cover more of his blush that was coloring his cheeks. Even so, he let Zoro eclipse his hand over the knife and move their arms together to saw through the top of the pumpkin. It was a bit inefficient having two people doing it at once, but wasn’t Christmas time more about the memories anyway?
When they finally completed the circle and were able to pull the top right off, Zoro grabbed two scoops so that they could work on removing the insides together. This disrupted any semblance of romanticism he had tried to establish earlier, however, as they were constantly fighting for space inside the pumpkin – arm wrestling inside it until they almost shattered it entirely. Plus, Zoro ended up with pumpkin in his hair.
“Get it out already.”
“I’m trying!”
“Great. Now I’m gonna have to shower tonight.”
“And that would be such a bad thing?”
“This would’ve never happened if you hadn’t missed that left turn earlier.”
“Choose what you say wisely or else I’m baking that head of yours into a pumpkin pie.”
Zoro closed his eyes and laughed softly as Sanji continued to get the last stringy bits of gourd out of his hair. He should’ve known carving pumpkins with his boyfriend was going to turn out this way – messy and troublesome and perfect. It was a lot of fun drawing out a simple Jack O’Lantern face for him to carve and watching him take great care in getting every line straight. In the end, it was a proper pumpkin with a big eyes, nose, and a smile with 2 teeth poking through, and Sanji’s face couldn’t be brighter.
“There! My first ever Jack O’Lantern!” he exclaimed to the room of Jack O’Lantern enthusiasts around him. They all returned his exclamation with soft claps and head nods, each of them sending out a compliment that he did really well, and his hard work paid off.
“How are you guys doing with your pumpkins,” Sanji asked, trying to see what the others were working on. When they turned their pumpkins around, he was met with Perona finishing up a photorealistic lunar moth, Zoro carving the last of a historically-accurate hannya mask, and Mihawk having just finished recreating Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night .
Zoro watched Sanji eye his own pumpkin like he’d just won a participation trophy at the state fair.
“Hey,” he grabbed his boyfriend’s attention gently, trying to project a smile that wasn’t teasing. “Now that you’ve done your first one, you’ll only get better from here. And, from the number of pumpkins Perona and I got at the farm, you’ll have a lot of opportunities to practice tonight. Not to mention, you’re gonna be stuck carving pumpkins for the rest of your days as long as you’re with me.” He hoped that last part sounded smooth and not like he was declaring a life sentence on the blonde.
To his relief, Sanji smiled and grabbed the next pumpkin with fire in his eyes. Seeing how Zoro had just finished his own, he also grabbed another pumpkin to carve.
“Maybe I’ll make one of you and give it curly eyebrows,” he thought out loud, goading Sanji on.
His boyfriend scoffed. “At least you can make one that resembles me. A mossball is just a fuzzy circle. Wouldn’t turn out too well on a pumpkin now would it?” As if still genuinely considering it, Sanji squinted at his orange canvas.
“Heh. Says the newbie.”
Sanji whipped his head back around to Zoro with his mouth pulled into a snarl. With the challenge at hand, they both eagerly got back to work with knives in hand and bowls at the ready for the insides. As time passed, the fire in the fireplace lulled to hot embers and the vinyls of Christmas tunes played their final songs over the record player. The 4 of them had carved just about every pumpkin, with only Sanji and Mihawk finishing the last couple, and it was like they’d created a small army of melons that would no doubt line Mihawk’s driveway until New Year’s Day.
Seeing as though Sanji was going to be busy for the next handful of minutes, Zoro grabbed one of the bowls of pumpkin guts so that he could bring it to the kitchen to be sealed.
“You both finish up the last of them. Perona and I will start bringing the bowls to the kitchen. Get ‘em ready to be transported to Zeff’s kitchen.” Large bowl in hand, Zoro signaled for Perona to follow him. She pouted her lip and kept her position glued to the floor before Zoro did a kind of sibling morse code that got her to follow him. He was doing this for her, after all, and with a final eyebrow raise, he was finally able to get that sentiment across to her.
“Coming!” she finally replied, even if her right eye twitched a little as she did so.
Bowls in hand, they passed through the kitchen threshold and placed their bowls down on the counter. Zoro strained to hear the Christmas music, but it was faint enough that he couldn’t quite name the tune that continued playing behind them. He hoped that meant Sanji wouldn’t be able to hear their whispers either.
“What? What is it? Why’d you make me come here?” Perona crossed her arms and berated him loudly.
Zoro resisted pulling on one of her pigtails to make her shut up. “Quiet down, wouldja?” he hissed as quietly as possible. “You wanna see the ring or not?”
Perona straightened her scowl into that of wonder and glee, and Zoro could see her aloof façade melt away right in front of him. “I really do,” she whispered through a genuine smile.
Zoro smirked back at her before glancing behind them and smushing their shoulders together like a human barrier. To anyone walking in, it’d look like they were staring intently at a bowl full of pumpkin, not what was actually in Zoro’s hand as he fished it from his pocket. He held it over the bowl for them to admire. It was a simple silver band, no more than 4 millimeters wide to complement Sanji’s thin fingers, and the silver glittered despite the low lighting in the kitchen. When he knew Perona was going to huff about it being too simple, he angled it slightly so that she could look at the inner part of the band. He watched her eyes go wide when she saw the small patterns of ocean waves engraved discreetly into the metal.
Not that he’d give Perona the juicy details, but the thought behind the ring was that it was supposed to tell the story of their love. To others, they weren’t more than two perpetual rivals who never seemed to get out from under each other’s skin, but when they were alone, there was something between them that ran so deep and raw. It wasn’t for anyone else to understand, and it was only a language they could decipher between themselves.
“It’s good, right?” Zoro spoke up for Perona, who he knew was failing to find something negative or flippant to say.
She glanced at him while chewing on her lip and then looked back to the ring. “Let me see it,” she demanded suddenly with her fingers reaching for the ring in Zoro’s hand. She managed to grab hold of it before he could yank it away.
“What do you mean? You just saw it! Let go!”
“No, I want to hold it! Let me hold it!” She tried to pull the ring closer to her once more – their hands still hovering over the bowl.
“No, it’s not your ring! Leave it be!” Zoro pulled back, trying to keep a steely grip. They tugged back and forth between each other – their eyes locked in an angry glare. He almost didn’t hear the footsteps behind them until it was too late.
“Everything okay in here?”
Zoro and Perona quickly shoved their hands into the pumpkin bowl in front of them, submerged almost up to the elbow in gourd guts. Their heads whipped back to see Sanji walking through the kitchen entranceway with two other bowls tucked under his arms.
“Everything’s great!” the siblings squeaked back to him with smiles a little bigger than was necessary.
Sanji smiled back, albeit with a bit of confusion knitted in his brows. Strolling over to the free counter next to them, he put his own bowls down and glanced at their arms.
“Why are you hands-deep in the bowl?” Sanji chuckled softly.
“Oh!” Zoro and Perona shouted, a few nervous laughs escaping them. Perona quickly extracted her hand and hid it behind her back to blink up at Sanji innocently.
When Zoro pulled his hand out, he realized he wasn’t holding the ring anymore, and while that made his own insides run cold, he was glad that it was safely concealed behind Perona’s back. Shifting his eyes, he realized Sanji was still waiting for an explanation.
“Oh, just um… making sure it’s tenderized…” He tried not to cringe too much at what he was saying, and Perona’s nervous laughter getting louder was not helping.
“Uh-huh,” Sanji sighed, but his smile told Zoro he was shrugging it off, which he was grateful for.
Zoro grabbed a towel to wipe the goop off of his arm as he watched Sanji start to cover the bowls with their lids. They needed to be secured in order to survive the car ride back to Zeff’s kitchen where they’d be stored for the night, waiting to be turned into 25 delicious pumpkin dishes over the next couple of days.
“There are a few more bowls in the living room,” Sanji told him – a silent request for him to bring them over into the kitchen.
Zoro turned around with a grunt of understanding. Passing by Perona, he side-eyed her with a head nod, which she returned before excusing herself to go to the restroom. He willed himself to relax and for patience to reach him. All he had to do now was wait until he and Perona had a moment to be alone, and then she’d give him back the ring. They’d laugh about it being covered in pumpkin later, and Zoro would be able to return it to its proper shine with plenty of time to spare before the Christmas party. Sanji was going to be busy cooking all day tomorrow anyway. If there were any time for a hiccup, he was glad it was now.
The rest of the evening went unbothered from finishing packing up the pumpkin bowls, to lining the driveway with all of their Jack O-Lanterns, to finally winding down the evening with eggnog and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Mihawk started a fire in the grand fireplace, and its soft crackles and pops created warm background noise, and the subtle smoky smell in the air brought it all together.
As much as Zoro could’ve stayed there forever, he and Sanji were on a schedule to get all of the bowls to Zeff’s kitchen after the restaurant closed for the night. And seeing how it was already 10:30pm, they were just shy of 10 minutes before they were too late and would receive the nagging of a lifetime.
“This was wonderful. Thank you all for teaching me about the ways of pumpkin carving,” Sanji addressed to everyone with a thankful smile.
“Next year, we’re all making bunnies,” Perona declared, and she had to swat away Zoro who was trying to undo her hair bows.
“Guess I’ll have to practice so that I’m ready for bunnies next year,” Sanji said as he kneed Zoro in the gut to get him to leave her alone.
Mihawk walked over with their coats, and Sanji grabbed his with a thanks. “Keep up with the art and you’ll be a proficient carver in no time. I’m looking forward to the day you become a master,” Mihawk nodded his head toward the cook, his yellow eyes meeting blue.
Zoro grabbed his coat from Mihawk, hoping for his own words of encouragement, but Perona yanked him back by the arm.
“We forgot to place one pumpkin outside! Oh, Zoro, it’s too big. You need to help me, okay? Yay, I’m glad you agree. It’s right over there…” Perona continued talking, not letting Zoro get a word of protest in. He found himself following her orders just so that she would stop talking for one second, which didn’t happen until they were alone outside.
“Jeez, so where did you want this thing anyway?” He asked in a groan. He wasn’t able to zip his jacket up all the way before they walked outside and the night chill bit through him like he was caught in a bear trap.
“I dunno. Throw it in a ditch for all I care. Do you have the ring?” Perona rushed out.
It took Zoro a moment to piece apart her sentence with how fast she’d just spoken. “T-the ring?”
“The ring! That you’re gonna use to propose to Sanji with!” She shouted, panicked.
Zoro did drop the pumpkin in his arms then. It rolled away into some ditch just like Perona wanted.
“Shh! He could walk out at any moment – what’s the matter with you?” He tried to shout back a little quieter with his eyes darting nervously to the door. The light by the front door dimly lit his breath as it floated away from him in a huff.
“I’m making sure you have the ring and it’s not stuck in some pumpkin insides somewhere!”
Zoro blinked at her, and it finally registered that what Perona was saying was that she didn’t have the ring. Which meant neither of them had it.
“I… no, I don’t have it. I thought you pulled it out!”
“I thought you pulled it out!”
The door opened, and Sanji poked his head out just enough to call out to Zoro. “Did you guys find a spot for the pumpkin? Can you help me start to load the car up?”
Zoro slowly turned his head to look at him. “In a second. We’re almost done.”
Sanji started to roll his eyes, but stopped himself when he caught Perona nodding her head at Zoro’s words. As soon as the door clicked shut again, Zoro removed the hat off his head to scream into it.
“It’s okay!” Perona tried to console him, looking around for a solution, as if she’d be able to see one somewhere on the driveway. “At least we know where it is!”
“Do we?!” Zoro shouted back hopelessly. “All of those bowls are exactly the same. We’ve moved them around since being in the kitchen. We’ll have to open every single one to check inside.”
“Okay! Then we will!”
“When?! We can’t look now. Sanji will want to help, and it’ll be too suspicious if we tell him to go away. They’re about to be locked in Zeff’s dungeon kitchen in less than an hour!”
Perona rubbed her gloved hands together in thought. “W-well, Sanji’s gotta have a key to Zeff’s kitchen, right?”
Zoro stopped pacing for a moment to think clearly. “Um, yeah. Tucked away safely in a drawer, I think.”
“So…” Perona drawled. It was like he was watching her sew a plan together stitch by stitch in front of him. “We pretend like nothing happened. You and Sanji go drop off the bowls at Zeff’s place. You return home for the night.”
She looked up at Zoro with a glint in her eyes. “Then, really late – like 2am – you and I go to Zeff’s, get in the kitchen, and find the ring!”
Zoro stared at his boots trying to envision Perona’s scheme in his mind. It wasn’t the craziest plan in the world, save for the fact that it required him having to wait a few more hours until he could have the ring in hand again. Eventually, he sighed his agreement.
“2am. You meet me at the Baratie.” He made sure to lock eyes with Perona, and he was assured by the determined glare he received in return. Shoulders slumped, he gestured for them to walk back inside. “If we get caught by the geezer, he’s gonna kill me. I’m sure he’s been looking for a chance since I started showing interest in the cook.”
Perona dragged her feet up the steps to the front door, shaking her head. “Better than Sanji finding his ring in a pumpkin soufflé…” she grumbled under her breath.
“Ha-ha.” Zoro shot back sarcastically, still holding the door open for her as she walked inside – putting a start to what was about to be a very long night before Christmas Eve.