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Usopp awoke feeling well rested, for once. Yesterday, they had finally broken through the rough stretch of ocean he had begun to think would never end. Which meant that last night was his first uninterrupted night's sleep in over a week. He’d had a bizarre dream about aliens hosting a human singing contest, of all things. Definitely something to use as inspiration for the next saga of tales to tell the crew over dinner.
He sat up and stretched, keeping his balance in his hammock - he hadn't fallen out of it in months and he wasn't about to break that streak, especially not in calm waters like these. He felt like he was finally getting his Grand Line sea legs. Little boat trips around his home island were very different from the vast and choppy waters here, but he was slowly getting used to it. Besides, Luffy fell overboard way more than he did, Usopp was pretty much a qualified sea-man at this point. Just the ‘Brave Warrior’ part left to achieve now.
But maybe not right now. The others had all left the boys’ dormitory already, affording him a rare moment of peace and quiet.
Sanji always awoke early, years of working opening shifts at the Baratie had him rising with the larks. Luffy was not the type to wait around in bed either; once he woke up he was bouncing off the walls - sometimes quite literally. Zoro was probably still on watch; he preferred to sleep on deck during the day, kind of like a cat with the way he would nap in the sun. Chopper had likely smelt the breakfast Sanji had begun cooking thanks to his keen sense of smell, and followed it all the way to the kitchen.
So that left Usopp to his lie in. He flopped back into his hammock, taking the time to appreciate the blessed silence of having the boys’ dorm to himself. Well, relative silence. The sound of waves lapping against the Merry’s hull was hardly distracting, in fact it was close to lulling him back into dreamland. He stretched again leisurely, but this time his foot hit something solid in his hammock.
He rummaged under the blankets to try and reach it, unwilling to fully get up and forgo the warmth of his bedding just yet. With a little careful nudging using his knee and some grappling with his hand he managed to retrieve the thing, which appeared to be a package.
He blinked blearily at it, still not fully awake. The package was wrapped plainly yet neatly. There was no note, but ‘-Z’ was scratched into the paper it was wrapped in. Was this from Zoro?
Usopp shrugged. He’d find out soon enough, he reasoned. He pulled the paper off and a dark lump fell out onto his blankets. He picked it up, curious. It felt like leather, smelt like it too. It was far too heavy though, until he realised it was just another layer of wrapping. He blamed it being whatever time it was before coffee for not noticing that sooner.
He removed the leather wrapping and nearly dropped the thing in surprise. Zoro had gotten him a knife. What was he supposed to do with this? He was used to all kinds of tools: spanners and wrenches, screwdrivers and pliers, but he didn't need a knife - at least not one like this.
The blade was short but sharp, if he twisted it a certain way the light from the porthole would catch and reflect brilliantly. The hilt was solid; brown leather wrapped with waxed green string. This was not a tool, this was a weapon.
So why had Zoro given it to him?
Usopp tried to think what possible reason Zoro might have had to give him such a deadly knife. Once, a long time ago, he had read a story to the Usopp pirates about a criminal who gifted people the weapon he intended to kill them with.
…Was Zoro threatening him?
Surely not, right? They were friends. At least, he thought so. Zoro didn't talk much - not as much as Usopp tended to, at any rate. He didn't seem to feel the need to fill the silence like Usopp did. But Zoro hung out with them, laughed with them, and saved Usopp's own life more than once in the months they'd known each other.
He'd have to find out. He wrapped the knife back up in the leather, partially to hide it and partially because he didn't want to cut himself on it accidentally. He would've much preferred to receive a wrench than a murder-knife. You couldn't hurt yourself with a wrench. Well, Luffy would have, had he not been a rubber-man. That Devil Fruit must have saved his life so many times over the years, if only from his own clumsiness. Point being, Usopp wouldn't hurt himself with a wrench. This knife though, this knife looked mean.
—
He spotted Zoro making his way down from the crow's nest shortly after breakfast. Unfortunately, Zoro also spotted him and made a bee-line for him. It was too late for Usopp to dive for cover or fake a malady to get out of the situation, so he stayed where he was despite his quaking knees and churning stomach.
“Did you get my gift?” Zoro asked, stopping directly in front of him and staring at him with a stark intensity. Usopp tried not to physically cringe back from the weight of Zoro's gaze.
Did he have to stand so close?
“Y-yeah, it's really uh, really nice. Thank you!” Usopp fumbled his way through the sentence, mentally patting himself on the back for getting through it without his voice cracking.
“Good,” Zoro said, nodding before he walked away.
Zoro was definitely going to kill him.
—
He decided that the way to sort this out was to talk to the second scariest person he knew, which was why he now found himself in Robin’s company in the Merry’s modest library.
“Swordsman-san is trying to kill you?”
“Yeah! He left a knife in my hammock!” Usopp exclaimed, flailing his arms dramatically to illustrate his point. When he spoke to Robin his voice did crack a little, but she had the good grace not to comment on it.
Robin leaned forward and steepled her fingers together in front of her. She held his gaze, hardly blinking.
“Do you want him to?” she finally asked.
That made Usopp stop dead. Why did he think Robin was the best source of advice?
“Wha-no! Of course not! I like being alive, thank you very much.” Somehow, it felt like he was assuring himself of this fact, just as much as he was assuring Robin of it.
“Just checking. So how did you find the knife? Embedded in the hammock, or on your pillow?” Robin asked, leaning forward even more.
Usopp did not like how fascinated she was with the whole situation. Regardless, he digressed. When he had asked, she said she’d try to help, so he was going to let her. Even if now he was more scared than before.
“No uh, it was wrapped up, in leather and then in wrapping paper.”
Robin made a noise of consideration. “May I see it?”
“Sure.” Usopp shrugged, and offered her the knife which he had been keeping securely wrapped up in the front pocket of his dungarees.
Robin examined the knife. She turned it over in her fingers, examining it closely. Finally, she set it down on the table with a small smile edging the corners of her mouth upwards just a touch.
“Swordsman-san is not trying to kill you,” she said.
Tension Usopp didn’t realise he’d been carrying around with him bled out of his shoulders instantly. He breathed a sigh of relief, glad for a chance for his heart-rate to return to normal. Thank goodness for that. Usopp had not been looking forward to more sleepless nights.
“He is trying to court you.”
Usopp stiffened, the tension coming back like a wave crashing against the shore.
“You think- what makes you say that? Like, why me? Out of everyone, why me?” Questions tumbled out of Usopp one after the other.
Robin put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. He was quite proud of the way he flinched only a little. Her touch managed to ground him and he took another deep breath, centering himself.
“You ought to have a higher opinion of yourself, Long-Nose-san. Why not you?”
Usopp managed a small, shaky smile. He hadn’t thought of that.
“What you need to consider now is, do you return his feelings?”
“I-” Usopp stopped. Did he? He wasn't sure. Quite honestly, Zoro scared him, so it had never even occurred to him to think of Zoro as anything other than the crew’s first mate.
He voiced this to Robin, who smiled in understanding. She patted his arm gently. “You should think about it - don't reject him outright. Be sure, Long-Nose-san.”
Usopp cleared his throat and sat up straighter, trying to appear braver than he felt. His entire morning had been spent convinced Zoro was going to kill him, and now Robin was suggesting Zoro was actually courting him? Today, now that the sea had finally calmed, his life had become the tumultuous waters instead - a trade he wasn’t sure he was happy about.
“Thanks, Robin!” he said as he ducked out of the library with a wave, escaping into the fresh air on deck.
—
Usopp truly had no idea if he returned Zoro's feelings, which was why he now found himself in Sanji’s company in the Merry's little kitchen. He sat on a barstool, elbows on the countertop and his head in his hands.
“So Robin thinks Zoro is courting me, and I don’t even know if I like him back, or if he even really likes me! Robin could be wrong, right?” Usopp laughed nervously.
“Robin-chan is a beautiful, intelligent woman who has never once been wrong in her life,” Sanji said haughtily, waving his stirring spoon in Usopp’s face.
“And as for the big oaf, why the hell should I know what that mossy idiot thinks?” Sanji asked.
“No, see, that's the problem,” Usopp told him, “we know what he thinks, I don't know what I think.”
Sanji stared at him, silently raising one curly eyebrow. The judgement was too much; Usopp gave up supporting his head and let himself thunk forward onto the countertop.
“Aren't you the love-cook or something, shouldn't you be able to help me?” Usopp groaned, his voice muffled due to his face being squashed against the counter.
“I know what is in a lady’s heart. I couldn’t give less of a shit about the hearts of men,” Sanji sniffed. He turned to stir the pot on the stove behind him, clearly done with the conversation.
“Come on dude,” Usopp pleaded, “at least just tell me if you think Zoro could be into me.”
Sanji’s stirring slowed. Eventually he sighed, and spoke. “Fine. Here’s what I think: Moss-head is a swordsman, he likes swords, knives, and sharp shit. He gave you something he likes. Ergo, he likes you.”
That…made a lot more sense than Usopp’s murder-threat theory. He still couldn’t fathom it though; what did Zoro see in him? Maybe Nami would know.
A suspiciously Zoro-shaped shadow passed by one of the windows to the kitchen and Usopp barely stopped himself from letting out an embarrassingly high pitched yelp. It came out more like a garbled ‘meep’, and Sanji didn’t even turn around because of it. Success.
“OkaythanksSanjibyeSanji,” Usopp said in a rush, and darted through the kitchen’s interior door to find Nami before Zoro could come in and find him.
Even if Sanji was right, he wasn’t ready to face Zoro just yet.
—
Usopp still didn’t know what to do, which was why he now found himself in Nami’s company sitting cross legged on the end of her bed - a place safe from any possible interruptions because no one would dare disrespect the sanctity of Nami’s bedroom.
“Let me see the knife,” Nami said.
Though her wording suggested it was a request, it felt more like a demand. Usopp set the knife, still wrapped in its protective leather, on the bed between them and began nervously fiddling with the strap of his dungarees, just for something to do with his hands. He itched to tinker with something, but he had a feeling that if he were to do anything like that on Nami’s bed, Zoro would be the least of his worries.
Nami’s assessment of the blade was similar to Robin’s, however she spotted one thing Robin hadn’t.
“The hilt is in your colours,” she told Usopp, offering him the knife back, hilt first.
“Huh?” he said dumbly as he accepted the blade.
“Brown leather and green binding, you always wear these shades of brown and green,” she explained.
Usopp turned the knife over in his hands. She was right.
“Of course I’m right,” Nami said, sitting back and crossing her arms in a self-satisfied manner.
“Did I say that out loud?” Usopp asked.
“No, but you were thinking it,” Nami said easily, a sly smile on her face.
Perhaps he ought to re-evaluate his mental ranking of the scariest members of the crew; Nami was definitely in the top three.
—
Usopp sort of knew what he should do now, but all the anxiety was giving him a headache, which was why he now found himself in Chopper’s company in his doctors office. The little doctor stood on tiptoes to reach the painkillers in the jar on the shelf above his desk. Usopp would have offered to fetch them for him, but Chopper could’ve simply shifted into man-beast form if he had wanted to, so Usopp stayed where he was, sitting on the fold-out bed.
“I hope these help with your headache quickly, Usopp,” Chopper said as he offered him a painkiller followed by a glass of water.
“Thanks Chopper, I’ve spent the whole morning worried Zoro might kill me, and the afternoon worried he likes me instead,” Usopp said.
“What do you mean, of course he likes you! Why would he want to kill you?” Chopper asked, clearly shocked that Usopp would even suggest such a thing.
“Has he, has he talked to you - about me?” Usopp asked. He couldn’t imagine Zoro confiding in their doctor about something like this, but he had already recalibrated his world view several times today, once more couldn’t hurt.
“No, but we’re nakama. None of us would ever hurt each other,” Chopper said, as if it were an indisputable fact.
Though, Usopp supposed, for Chopper it was. He couldn’t imagine Chopper ever hurting any of them. Nor Nami, for that matter - her playful head swats notwithstanding - or Sanji, or Luffy. Even Robin, though he still did not know her as well as he would like to. She didn’t seem like the type to hurt them unless she had no other choice. Why would Zoro be any different?
Usopp thought back to the last time Zoro had saved his life. They’d been hiking together, looking for a stream both of them could hear but neither of them could see, in order to get fresh water for the ship’s stock. The ground was loose with gravelly dirt, made slick from the rain. One instance of wrong footing had sent Usopp tumbling, and he would have fallen into a deep gorge had Zoro not snagged him by his arm and kept him upright.
If Zoro had really wanted to kill him, he wouldn’t have saved him back then. His nakama were right. Zoro didn’t want to kill him.
Zoro liked him.
“You’re right Chopper, we’re nakama,” Usopp agreed. The way the little doctor's face lit up at his words made him feel silly for ever letting his anxieties get the better of him.
Usopp took his painkillers and left the infirmary, but not before getting a particularly fluffy hug from Chopper.
—
Usopp knew what to do, which was why he now found himself in his own company, hesitating on the Merry’s mast underneath the hatch to the crow’s nest, where Zoro was once again on watch.
After talking to Chopper he’d spent a little while thinking. Truthfully, he hadn't given much thought at all to romance beyond a teenage crush on Kaya that had never gone anywhere. The prospect of anything like that with anyone, let alone Zoro, was daunting. Robin had said that he shouldn't reject Zoro outright, and he didn't intend to.
He steeled his nerves and pushed the hatch open.
Zoro was awake, sitting on a small crate with one of his swords in his lap, polishing it. It actually looked more like he was tickling it with a cotton ball on a stick, and the whole thing looked rather pointless to Usopp.
“Usopp,” Zoro greeted.
“Hi,” Usopp said lamely, cringing internally. Why had all his wonderful conversational skills just jumped overboard, now of all times?
“Wanna sit?” Zoro asked, gesturing to another crate in the crow’s nest. They'd been brought up there so Chopper could stay on watch in his favoured form, and Nami used them to store cushions inside for when she was on watch.
Usopp accepted the seat at Zoro's suggestion, but sitting down did nothing to solve his awkwardness. Now he was all too aware of his jittery leg, and what should he do with his hands? He elected to shove them under his thighs lest Zoro see the tight grip he was keeping on the little crate.
Usopp's mouth opened before his brain caught up with it.
“So, you got me that scary knife today which made me think you want to kill me, crazy right? But I talked to Robin and Sanji and Nami and Chopper today and they said you don't wanna kill me and that I should talk to you, so I'm really hoping you don't wanna kill me and you gave me the knife because…”
He trailed off. He wanted to hear Zoro say it himself. It wasn't that he didn't believe his friends - they wouldn't lie to him - it was just that he had trouble accepting what they said might be true.
Zoro set down his sword-tickling stick and looked right at Usopp.
“I got you the knife because you need it. You're a ranged fighter, but you need something to protect you in a close quarters fight. I can't always be there,” Zoro said.
“Nami said the knife matches me,” Usopp said, trying to coax more answers out of Zoro.
Zoro just grunted.
Screw it, being a Brave Warrior of the Sea started now.
“Do you like me, Zoro?” Usopp asked. His voice came out much more steady than he had expected it to. Score.
“Luffy said if I gave you a thoughtful gift you'd-” Zoro cut himself off.
“You went to Luffy, for relationship advice?” Usopp asked, trying hard to keep the mirth out of his voice. He was now ninety-nine percent sure Zoro didn't want to kill him, but he did not want to tempt fate.
“‘m not good at this kind of stuff,” Zoro muttered.
Oh dear, he hadn't wanted to offend Zoro.
“It's okay, neither am I. We can figure it out together,” Usopp quickly reassured him.
“You mean you wanna-?” Zoro left the question hanging.
Usopp shrugged. “I don't know yet,” he said honestly, “but it can't hurt to try, right?”
Zoro smiled, a proper smile, revealing hope and a few chipped teeth. It softened his face, and Usopp smiled back easily.
It wouldn't hurt to try at all.