Chapter Text
Pudding has her orders.
The tranquillizer sits cold where it's strapped to her thigh underneath her pants. The prison guard had made a big show of feeling it up before smirking and letting her pass through the gate. It’s been nearly a week, but sometimes she feels as if the touch lingers. It makes her want to scratch at her leg until the skin rubs off.
She supposes it is the novelty of the action. She’d been prepared for a lot of things: to hurt, maim, threaten, kill. It’s what she has been built for. Seduction is a new one, though. It hasn’t been part of her repertoire so far, but she’s been told to use whatever means necessary to complete her objective.
Of course, she’s through about what that might entail. Touching another person, getting touched in return– but what had occurred at the gate had been an ugly, jarring introduction to it.
The real object of her supposed affections sits two benches away, dragging a spoon through the slop on his tray. Vinsmoke Sanji is the only one Pudding has seen who actually eats the bland mush they serve for lunch. She’s not entirely sure whether he genuinely enjoys that shit or just craves the feeling of being fed. Still, he scrapes his plate clean each time.
She supposes that enjoyment is not a precursor to completing an action. Something must be tolerated until they are done.
So Pudding will tolerate every humiliating second she is to spend in this prison, from the communal showers to the magnatized prisoner collar around her neck, until she can stick Vinsmoke Sanji with the tranquillizer and dump his body down the chute in the medical hall as she has been instructed to.
She wants to stick it in his eye. It’s a bright blue, just like the rest of his demented siblings. Only the left one is visible, the other covered by his hair, so she won’t have to waste any time deciding which one she’s going to poke out either.
Germa had demanded him alive. They had made no requests regarding which of his faculties should be left intact. Pudding knows a person can lose a lot of things and remain alive.
Sometimes, Pudding thinks that it's a shame that Vinsmoke Sanji has to go. He’s not bad to look at, all pale skin and golden hair. He keeps the small patch of hair on his chin maintained, even in prison. She wonders who supplies him with the razor.
One of his front teeth is crooked. Pudding has no idea how, a childhood accident perhaps. It irks her a bit, this imperfection. It makes him seem real, a person, instead of the carved marble statues his siblings resemble.
Rolling her eyes, she picks up her tray; she’s stalled this long enough. If she is to be the one who will accompany him to the medicinal hall when the time comes, they have to have some kind of repertoire beyond him smiling at her every time he catches her sneaking glances.
Pudding slams her tray down at Vinsmoke Sanji’s table harder than she means to. He looks up at her, brow twisted in an ugly mix of question and pity. Pudding hates that look; it’s all she’s gotten from the half rats in this godforsaken place— it’s leers from the other half, she almost prefers those.
“I don't wanna sit there anymore,” Pudding pouts. She hasn’t yet decided if she wants to be a frightened child or a desperate woman. She doesn’t know which one Vinsmoke will be more receptive to, so she balances the act for now.
“Is someone bothering you?” Vinsmoke glances at her tray for some reason, “I can speak to them if you’d like?” Like he’d spoken to that guy who’d gotten handsy with the girl from cell block 2C. Pudding hasn’t seen him around; he must still be in medical.
“No, it’s just,” she dips her head, letting her hair fall over her face, “It’s too loud there, and people keep looking.” She doesn't elaborate, lets Vinsmoke draw his own conclusions.
“Oh,” he blinks, “Well, you’re welcome to sit here,” he glances at the rest of his companions at the table, all of whom nod in agreement. Three of the five are women; Vinsmoke is starting to build a bit of a reputation. Pudding just needs to make sure she is the woman he trails after like a dog most often.
On the way out of the dining hall, she stumbles against someone, who predictably pushes back at her. She slams straight into Vinsmoke, who grasps her lightly by the arm to steady her.
“Asshole,” he mutters, “Are you alright?”
Pudding nods. Vinsmoke keeps his light hold on her arm all the way until they have to diverge towards their respective cells. Pudding almost laughs at his predictability.
This shit is going to be easy.
=
She becomes a regular at Vinsmoke’s lunch table. Heading straight there once she’s gotten her tray instead of entertaining the pretence of lingering around her own block makes. On the second day, the people at his table no longer look up in interest when her tray clatters on the table. She cannot quite bring herself to place it demurely. Her new seat is right under the fluorescents, and the table next to them is filled with rats whose enthusiasm has not been curbed by their status as prisoners of the state.
Pudding misses her old spot.
On the fourth day, the people at his table introduce themselves, their names and their crimes. Pudding smiles and promptly forgets everything they’ve said. Except for the woman who sits right next to Vinsmoke with the blackeye. Her name is Aimee; she’s the one Vinsmoke had sent a man to medical for.
On the seventh day, Vinsmoke spoons half of his sweet mash onto her tray. Why the fuck are you giving me this shit is what she wants to ask.
“Do you not want it?” is what she says instead.
“You like sweet things more than me,” Vinsmoke smiles, like it's a completely normal thing for someone to say. Though his dossier had mentioned that he spent several years working in a restaurant. Maybe noticing people’s food preferences was drilled into him like Pudding had been trained in shooting straight.
The little girl approach doesn’t seem to be working. Vinsmoke pays her attention, dotes on her in the right moments, but he has yet to trust her with any of his vulnerabilities. She finds out that Aimee is the one who supplies him with his razors and decides to change tactics.
The next cleaning day, she walks right into Blackleg’s open cell and sits herself down on his bed. His cellmate is doing push-ups on the floor. His form is terrible.
Vinsmoke seems only marginally surprised when he returns with the mop and bucket and finds her there. He greets her, but beyond that says nothing as he mops the floor of the cell, going around the cellmate but asking her softly to lift her feet when he needs to mop beneath the bunk.
The golden bracelets on his wrists glint in the light as he works. He has the standard collar that all the prisoners wear, but the cuffs are another layer of punishment. Pudding already knows how he got them, but she asks anyway.
“Where did you get these?” Vinsmoke makes an aborted motion, as if to snatch his hand away when she reaches out to take it. His hands are dry and rough but hot. The warmth of them is a startling sensation. The inside of the prison is always kept freezing, likely another tactic to keep the prisoners docile. Most species tend to get slow and sluggish in the cold.
“Little present from my stint in solitary. I, uh, don’t know if you’ve heard of that?” she has. She shakes her head no.
“Huh,” he bites the inside of his mouth, “Well, you know Aimee, right? She and her old partner got transferred in here together. Apparently, he decided that being in prison wasn’t the worst thing that could happen and started bothering her. Small things at first, but then he got physical. And, Aimee, well, she’s a sweet girl, and she helps out a lot of people, so folks weren’t too forgiving about that.”
Folks, he says, like he hadn’t broken the guy's jaw himself. Pudding widens her eyes and keeps them open, allowing them to start watering in the cool air of the cell.
“Don’t worry, he’s still in medical,” Vinsmoke takes her silence for apprehension, “And I doubt he’s going to be causing any more trouble when he gets out.”
Pudding nods, the action sending a tear skittering down her cheek.
“Are you alright?” of course, Vinsmoke notices. He’s built a reputation for noticing things about people, their habits, their diet preferences. Pudding thinks it might be the remnant of a survival skill he’d abandoned in a fit of foolishness when he’d broken into Enies Lobby. That was the stunt that had gotten his name and face in the papers. And like bloodhounds with a trail, Germa had come looking.
“I can’t stand it,” Pudding sobs, curling in on herself, “I don’t wanna be here anymore. I don’t. I don’t.”
She resists the urge to flinch when Vinsmoke rests a hand on her back. Even though her thin prison uniform it’s warm. Pudding doesn’t know why the fuck he always runs so warm. It’s got to be a fault in the wiring. All the more reason for her to get her job done and get out as fast as she can
That last part isn’t completely a lie; she really doesn’t want to be here anymore.
“Hey,” Vismoke’s hand goes up to cup her shoulder, Pudding misses the warmth of it on her back, “It’s not too awful. You got people looking out for you here. Plus, your sentence shouldn’t be that long, right? You’re in here for theft?”
“Attempted theft,” Pudding croaks. A pathetic crime for the character of a pathetic girl she’s playing.
“Yeah, you should look into talking to a public defender. If your case is good, they might take it on.” Pudding knows her case is good. Soft and full of enough holes that it was a miracle the court hadn’t dismissed it outright. Once the job is done, she’ll reapply for a review and be out with just as little fanfare as she’d arrived.
“I’ll talk to someone for you,” Vinsmoke assures her, patting her lightly on the shoulder. The touch is beginning to itch. Pudding wishes he’d let go or at least throw himself at her properly.
“Thank you,” Pudding whispers. Vinsmoke removes his hand.
For a split second, Pudding wants it back.
=
They’re returning from lunch when the central dome is broken open, glass raining down onto the floor. It sounds like fireworks as it shatters against the white tile right where their block is lined up. Pudding narrowly avoids getting cut on the face by jumping behind Vinsmoke, grabbing the back of his shirt to keep her steady as the crowd surges to avoid the onslaught.
The alarm rings out, tinging the bleached white walls of the prison with flashes of red. In the crimson light, even the most idle of the guards turn brutal. Pushing and prodding prisoners towards cells indiscriminately, their tazers and batons flashing.
“Sanji!” Aimee slips on something and is swallowed by the crush of bodies. Vinsmoke makes an attempt to go after her, but Pudding pulls him back, voice high and hysterical. She’s not going to get a better chance than this.
“Back in your cells! Back! In! Your! Cells!” The commands are spit out from the mouths of guards and by the disembodied, vaguely feminine voice over the intercom. Pudding has been placed in the same level as Vinsmoke by design, but their cell blocks are on opposite sides of the rotunda circling the lookout fixed in the middle of the prison.
“Back in your cells!” The tightening of the collar at her throat is the only sign she gets before it discharges. The feeling is novel, Pudding has never been electrecuted before. She almost watches from outside her own body, her mind fuzzy as her body convulses in pain. It’s over just as quickly as it had started, but it leaves her gasping, clawing at her throat, trying to her the collar off.
“No, don’t touch it. Don’t touch it.” Vinsmoke’s freakishly warm hands are the last thing she needs. She digs her nails into them when they grasp her hands to pull them away from where they are tugging at the band around her neck.
She feels herself gag when he presses closer, pulling her up off the floor and holding her by the arm to practically carry her up the stairs as people shout and run around them.
A blink and she’s in someone’s cell. Not her own, and not Vinsmoke’s, but her head pounds and her feet hurt as she slumps down onto the unmade bed.
“Hey,” it’s Vinsmoke again, shaking her by the shoulders, she should take the opportunity, he’s so close, and there is no one else in the empty cell around them, she should say he fell and injured himself while they ran, that the current from both the collar and the bracelets had overwhelmed him, that–
“Hey,” Vinsmoke's eyes are wide, that cold, distant shade of blue, “Hey, there you are. Listen, stay here, alright, they won’t shock you if you’re already in a cell. When the guards come, they’ll just tell you to go back to their own, so listen to them, right?”
“Right.” Pudding slurs. The tranquillizer is right there; if she moves her hands, she can touch it over the fabric of her pants.
“Good, stay safe, alright?” Vinsmoke Sanji nods at her once before he darts out of the cell, nearly colliding with the railing in his hurry.
“Wait–” Pudding can’t let him get away. She still needs to– she still needs to–
She fills her lungs as if preparing to dive underwater and stumbles after him. It’s pandemonium outside, white clad prisoners rushing through the white halls, feet slapping on the white floor as guards bark orders and the intercom blares repeatedly. Pudding can barely make out what is being said.
She leans against the railing when she sees it. A long wire trails down from the top of the dome like a single dark hair. The guard tower is in a frenzy, dark figures rushing around. Pudding watches, jaw slack as a man rappels down from the ceiling, she can barely make out the hilt of a sword strapped to his waist.
A prison break. This is a goddamn prison break.
She has a sinking feeling about who exactly is about to be broken out. She crouches and presses her face against the railing, eyes darting back and forth furiously. For a second, she worries that she’s lost sight of Vinsmoke, that he’s already gone, swept off.
There is a commotion on the level below them. A group of prisoners gather around a cluster of guards, pulling at their armour and batons. Someone lets out a triumphant shriek as they liberate a taser and turn it just as gleefully on the person they’d snagged it from.
In the middle of it all, Vinsmoke darts past the group, vaulting over the railing. Pudding watches him start to fall before he grasps the bottom ledge and swings himself onto the level below. He lands, rather impressively, she has to admit, on his feet. Barely swaying as he rushes down the hall full sprint, Pudding has to stand on her tiptoes and hook her head over the railing to watch him run past beneath her.
Pudding wonders if Vinsmoke had been aware of this. He’d certainly eaten like he was building up his strength for something.
Groaning at the effort it takes, she begins to head for the stairs. There’s no way she’s going to catch up to Vinsmoke at this rate, but at least she would have tried– a little edge off the blame Mama will no doubt place on her head.
Vinsmoke is fast. Pudding practically throws herself down the stairs to keep up with him. The level below poses a new problem; it’s packed with bodies, soft flesh in white cloth colliding with the harsh edges of armoured vests and riot shields in a game of human tug of war.
She tries to shoulder her way through and gets knocked to the floor for her efforts. Head spinning, Pudding crawls through the mass, dodging limbs. She claws her way through a seemingly endless sea of legs, nearly gagging at the heat and press of so many bodies. Even within all of the action, she is hyperaware of the way rivulets of sweat run down her body. Her eyes water and her nose drips as she plasters herself against the railing and uses it to guide herself out of the crush of bodies.
She almost falls right back over as she emerges from the other end, lungs heaving, drawing in air so hard and fast that they hurt. Everything has gone soft around the edges, and the floor is painfully bright.
She’s lost Vinsmoke.
Pudding practically tumbles down the next set of stairs. Something in her leg smarts when she steadies herself at the end, grasping the banister and using it to push herself off and into the fray. She might not know where Vinsmoke is, but she knows where he’s going.
It would be easy to say no one notices the small figure darting between bodies, heading for the watchtower, but Pudding has to fight her way forward. For each meter she advances, an amalgamation of prisoners and guards, both uniquely desperate, pushes her back two.
Her ears ring by the time she makes it to the tower, grasping at the bars of the base ladder. The action is likely what saves her, as she feels her collar constrict slightly. It’s no better the second time; in fact, the way she tenses to prepare for it almost makes the experience worse. This surge is like a thousand ants crawling up her body, biting and tearing wherever they can reach, their tiny legs tap tap tapping as they wind themselves up her neck and through her hair.
Someone screams. It might be her, it might not. She hopes it’s Vinsmoke. She hopes Vinsmoke and his shitty family and all of their shitty people in their shitty city scream until the backs of their throats rupture and they choke on their own blood.
Mama is going to kill me. It’s an awful thing to think, ungrateful, unfilial, and just on this side of treasonous. Pudding has lived a life with everything she has ever wanted but devoid of anything she had truly desired.
Mama is going to kill me. For all her shortcomings, as an assassin, as a daughter, she has never truly wanted to die. A weakness like that is reserved for cowards like Vinsmoke, who probably dream of hell and call it heaven compared to the reality they live in.
Mama is going to kill me. This time, Pudding is sure she is the one who screams as she grabs the next rung of the ladder and starts to haul herself up. The rungs themselves are made of a smooth dark metal, but every time she grasps the next one, her hands protest, burning as if they were chafing against handholds coated in sandpaper.
The upper level of the tower is blessedly empty. Pudding slides the steel bar across the door to keep it that way and crouches on the roof, keeping the wire dangling from the ceiling in her line of sight.
From the top, she finds Vinsmoke again, back to back with the man in the dark coat, as they fight through a horde of soldiers and prisoners alike to get back to the wire. The base of the wire is completely white, surrounded by prisoners who claw at it, climbing over each other to try and climb it.
It never works. A woman climbs over the hill of writhing bodies and hoists herself not two feet up before she comes sliding back down, screaming as the wire no doubt slices through her hands.
Vinsmoke and the man draw closer, clearing a wide swath. The man has a blade of some sort, flashing as he moves, keeping anyone from getting too close. Vinsmoke is his own weapon, kicking and clawing his way through the mass of white clad prisoners.
The first gunshot rings out as they reach the wire. Pudding instinctively ducks, her hands going over her head before she realizes who it had been aimed at. A prisoner not a foot away from Vinsmoke lies still on the ground, red haloing around him.
Vinsmoke freezes, but the man doesn’t, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him towards the wire. Pudding can’t see exactly what he attaches to it, but moments later, he starts to rise up the length of the wire, Vinsmoke held securely to his side.
Pudding steps up onto the ledge. She has to time this. Too soon, and she loses both her hands to the wire. Too late, and she joins the body below, the contents of her skull pooling around her.
A second gunshot rings out. Vinsmoke jerks in the man’s hold. Still, he doesn’t drop him.
Pudding jumps.
She feels the wire smack into her face before she drops down, grabbing onto the back of the man's coat. The fabric tears as he tries to shake her off, but a second arm winds around her, pressing her between the two men.
A third shot rings out, and Pudding can do nothing but squeeze her eyes shut and cling to Vinsmoke and the strange man as the three of them rise above the guard tower and through the dome.
Pudding gasps when she feels the hot air of the dessert hit her face after nearly a month. There’s something blowing air into her face, making her squeeze Vinsmoke tighter on instinct. It’s a ship, she realizes as a door slides open, revealing the winding mechanism the cable is attached to.
“Shit, shit, shit,” someone screams over the roaring of the engines as the man alights on the lip of the hold and pulls her and Vinsmoke through. They tumble in, both landing on a heap on the vibrating floor of the aircraft.
“Okay, we are going up, I repeat, we are going up!” the same voice calls as the door clangs shut so hard Pudding feels her teeth rattle, and following that, her stomach drops as the craft rises rapidly.
Vinsmoke is on the ground next to her, making soft little sounds of pain, like an animal. The man stands over both of them, regarding them with a critical eye. Up close, Pudding can make out his face. He has tanned skin and sloping features. One of his eyes has a grisly-looking scar running right through it. He looks like something right off a wanted poster, but Pudding recognizes him.
The bounty hunter: Roronoa Zoro.
He means to take her kill. The thought courses through her, hot and violent and for a second, she forgets that she is no longer in the prison nor that she has been specifically ordered not to kill her mark.
Splayed on the floor, she pushes her hand down her pants and yanks the tranquillizer free.
Vinsmoke gasps as he turns around on the floor and blinks at her, bleary-eyed, face streaked with tears.
“Pudding?”
She doesn’t even bother uncapping the thing before lunging to jam it into that single bright blue eye
=
Usopp’s job is simple.
He has the steps down, has crossed his t’s and dotted his i’s. Once a week, the center has nitroglycerine delivered, and it is his job to build the charges. He doesn’t even need to plant the charges himself. He can use a drone to do it, or, in particularly tricky terrain, write someone a check to complete the task and put in a tab with the Grand Line Health and Safety department (GLHSD).
There are plenty of psychos out there who practically salivate at the thought of placing themselves in mortal danger. Not Usopp, he just writes their checks and detonates the charges remotely after the worm has swallowed them.
It’s a nice job, if he ignores the large amount of time he spends around and handling dangerous explosives.
In fact, the most terrifying part of his job is really the characters he has to deal with when there’s grunt work that needs to be done.
That and his colleagues, who cannot do something as simple as keep track of a rogue worm that keeps brushing too close to densely populated areas for the GLHSD’s comfort.
As Usopp had predicted, the worm surfaces not two days later, right at the crack of dawn and swallows half of a weather tracking station, including part of a satellite and two of the poor sods on night duty.
Also as Usopp had predicted, the whole thing somehow ends up as Usopp’s problem, but he knows the drill. He sets the charges, preps the drones, and hires known ex bounty hunter Roronoa Zoro for the task of sloshing around in worm guts, possibly riddled with unexploded charges, to retrieve the hard-to-replace parts of the satellite and also the remains of the poor sods if possible.
Roronoa shows up bright and early, all three swords strapped to his waist. And he brings a friend.
The man, who introduces himself as Sanji and nothing else, is practically Roronoa’s polar opposite. For one, he’s wearing the proper protective heat gear for an afternoon in the desert, unlike Roronoa, who seems to think shirts are a yes-or-no question, and the answer is no. He’s tall and lean— whereas Roronoa is built like a brick shithouse— and has sharp features, concerningly pale skin for someone spending extended time in a desert, and hair the colour of sand under the afternoon sun.
It’s his eyes that get Usopp, bright blue, an almost electric colour that seems to glow under the shade of his hat.
“How long have you been doing this?” he inquires politely as Usopp maneuvers the drone to place the charges.
“Uh, all my life, really. I started out digging scrap for the receivers as a kid, then eventually learned how to build ‘em myself, and so here we are.”
“Here we are,” Sanji echoes, smiling widely. He’s a nice guy, watching Usopp work with rapt attention, shushing Roronoa when he gripes about how long it’s taking and even cheering when the worm emerges from the sand, swallowing the charges, and Usopp presses the button to blow it to high heaven.
“Is it always this messy?” Sanji sniffs when the remains start to stink in the heat, something sweet and sour that makes Usopp want to simultaneously pinch his nose and inhale deeper.
“This was a big one,” Usopp notes. Really, he doesn’t know how anyone could have missed it.
Roronoa grunts in response and starts to make his way towards the steaming corpse.
“Watch out for any leftover charges!” Usopp calls, “Sometimes they get lodged places where the signal doesn’t hit,” he explains to Sanji, “Still…”
“Nitroglycerine is nitroglycerine,” Usopp nods along. It’s only later that he realizes how rare it is for someone outside the industry to know that.
Roronoa and Sanji spend the evening sloshing around in worm guts, hauling back pieces of the satellite. Sanji brings back a tattered ribcage with the remains of a nightguard uniform and covers it solemnly with a cloth. He stands over it, as if praying.
“I used to attend a lot of funerals as a kid,” he explains when he catches Usopp staring, “Seems strange not to pay my condolences.”
Usopp, who has spent his life ardently trying to avoid any and all funerals following his mother’s, finds himself nodding in understanding. The two of them stand in silence over the blood-stained tarp until Roronoa returns with a bag full of titanium plating.
“All I could grab,” he grunts, tossing it alongside the other scrap, “Everything else is too dissolved to get at.”
Really, Usopp should check himself, but like hell he’s getting any closer to the remains. The sun is going down, which means that all the creepy night crawlies will be coming around for a piece of it.
“Did you find the other guy?” Sanji asks, face drawn in concern.
“Or girl,” Usopp corrects offhandedly. There had been a guy and a girl. He’s really not too keen on taking a closer look under the tarp to see exactly which of the two they had recovered.
For some reason, Sanji looks even more distraught at that.
“Cook,” it takes Usopp a second to realize that Roronoa is addressing Sanji, “there’s shit all left down there.”
“It won’t hurt to take a look,” Sanji says, already making his way back to the remains.
“The sun is setting!” Roronoa calls.
“I’ll only be a moment!” Sanji waves back.
Roronoa shares a ‘can you believe this guy’ kind of look with Usopp. Usopp stares back. Sanji is a decent guy, a rare commodity in the desert and in his general line of work. Usopp isn’t going to engage in bad-mouthing him.
“Moron,” Roronoa huffs as he turns around and follows after Sanji.
They search till the sun goes down, but they do not find the second body.
“You two got a place to stay?” Usopp asks to diffuse the tension as they start the trudge back, “It’s gonna be awfully hard to find an inn at this hour with two open rooms.”
“One is fine,” Zoro mutters as he walks past.
“We make do,” Sanji comments, pushing him with his shoulder. The two start a shoving match as they walk – like children – gravitating towards and away from each other like moons in orbit.
Usopp doesn’t know what possesses him, the hospitable spirit of his late mother, perhaps, but he finds himself inviting Roronoa and Sanji to stay in his little spare room when he finds out they haven’t already booked a place to spend the night.
Sanji practically drags Roronoa to wash up the second they enter the house, and Usopp prays for the state of his bathroom. Surprisingly, it's almost neat when the two emerge, and Usopp takes his turn in the shower before the water gets shut off.
When he gets out, he’s greeted with the scent of home cooking, something meaty and spicy. Which is surprising considering the empty state of his ice box just this morning. He walks into the kitchen, towel slung over his shoulder, to find Sanji at the stove, stirring a pot of something. Roronoa sits at the dining table, hat tilted over his head, likely asleep.
“Wow, umm, this smells really good?” he says as he takes the seat farthest away from Roronoa..
“Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to smell anything after today,” Sanji smiles, “But thank you.”
Sanji walks over and kicks Roronoa’s chair, which is a dangerous thing considering the man still has all three of his swords on him.
“Oi Mosshead, be polite and set the table.”
“I can do that,” Usopp rushes to stand up, but Sanji motions at him sternly to sit back down.
“No, you will sit down, and as a guest in your home for free, Mossy will do his part and get the bowls.”
Roronoa shoots him a dirty look as he gets up, but Sanji is closer to Usopp and also holding a knife, so Usopp decides he’s going to be listening to him.
“There are only two bowls here,” Usopp winces as Roronoa slams open his cabinet. He should have mentioned that.
Sanji doesn’t seem phased, he takes both bowls and fills them to the brim with something red with floating chunks from the steaming pot. One bowl is placed in front of Usopp, the second Roronoa.
“Eat,” Sanji commands. Roronoa dutifully picks up his spoon, and Usopp follows. He usually finds it hard to eat after a day in the field, but the first bite has him practically inhaling the rest of his bowl. It’s a stew, warm and spicy with ground meat and chunks of tender root vegetables. Usopp bites into something rubbery that might be a mushroom and manages to move past it; the stuff is just that good.
Sanji refills his bowl. He goes to do the same to Roronoa, but he stands up, pushing his chair back.
“I’m going to bed,” he stalks off in the direction of the guestroom without so much as a thank you.
“What a prick,” Usopp mutters when he’s sure Roronoa is out of earshot, “Thank you for all this, I didn’t even know I had anything in my cabinets.”
“I made Zoro run down to the general store,” Sanji shrugs, taking Roronoa’s seat and picking up the spoon. He doesn’t bother to wash it or anything. Usopp wonders if the water has already been shut off for the day.
He eats slowly, as if testing the flavour of the stew with each bite. After he’s done, he gathers both their dishes and starts to wash them before Usopp can protest.
Usopp dries. Really, it’s the least he can do.
Afterwards, tucked into bed, the wind whisling outside his window, Usopp thanks his mother for looking over him, then also thanks Sanji’s mother, whoever she might be, for raising such a nice, normal person.
Really, Usopp should have known. The craziest ones always look the most normal at first.
Which is how, not a year later, he finds himself, on a hovercraft, keeping an eye on the wire tension as Zoro rises through the hole in the dome with Sanji, whom they are breaking out of an actual government prison.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Usopp screeches as he grabs the wire with his glove-clad hands and heaves in the tangle of bodies, two of which go sprawling on the floor.
“Okay, we are going up, I repeat, we are going up!” Usopp slams the door shut and stumbles for a handhold as the craft rises. He prays to his mother that Franky knows what he’s doing with this second-hand piece of shit. If Usopp dies in a ship crash at the ripe old age of twenty two he’s going to haunt everyone involved forever.
He exhales lighly when the ship straightens out, and they haven’t been shot down from the sky yet.
Of course, that’s when their extra passenger tries to stab Sanji in the eye.
“What the actual fuck?!” Usopp is the closest, so he lunges forward, bodily pushing the girl away from Sanji. The vaguely pointy object she’d been holding goes clattering across the floor of the craft.
The girl is vicious, screaming and clawing in his hold. Her arms slip out of his grasp, and she lunges at Sanji again, but this time Zoro is ready. He picks her up, trapping both her arms straight along her torso. She tries to struggle, kicking and screeching, but Zoro’s grip doesn’t falter; he just walks off towards the hold.
Usopp scrambles for whatever the girl had dropped. It’s a small cylindrical object with a tapering end. He taps the cylinder; it’s hollow, it must be filled with something, a sedative or a poison. The girl hadn’t even bothered to uncap it.
Zoro returns with a welt across his face; the girl must have gotten a hit in.
“Where’s the–” he starts when there’s a scream from the hold, and Sanji starts seizing on the floor.
“Shit,” Zoro drops to his knees, hands hovering above Sanji as if he’s scared to touch him, “Usopp, what the fuck is going on?”
Usopp stands frozen, watching Sanji twitch on the ground. He lets out a low sound of pain that has Zoro placing a hand on his shoulder, then yanking it back. It’s then that it clicks.
“Oh, hell, Zoro. Zoro, move it’s the collar,” Usopp pats himself down frantically until he finds the magnet, then he leans down next to Sanji and slides the magnet across the collar around his neck. It slips uselessly before affixing to a point right over the side of his throat with an audible ‘click’.
“Hey, man? You good?” Usopp shakes his hand in front of Sanji’s face until he blinks. He practically hears the exhale of relief that Zoro lets out as Sanji groans and tries to sit up.
Usopp turns around for a second to grab a water pouch, and when he turns back to offer it to Sanji, he finds him fiddling with the magnet.
“Uhh, don’t do that, man, it’s the only thing that’s keeping you from getting zapped,” he warns. He doubts the collar is capable of discharging lethally; they were meant for punishment, not to kill, but the memory of Sanji squirming on the floor has fully imprinted itself onto his brain. He’s not forgetting it anytime soon.
Sanji takes the damn magnet off.
“Dude, what the hell?” Usopp stares as Sanji hands him the magnet back and tilts his head towards the hold.
“Give it to her.”
“No,” Zoro snatches the magnet back from Usopp and places it back against the silver collar around Sanji’s neck, “Usopp, how the fuck am I supposed to put this on?”
Sanji bats his hand away, “Cut it out, Mossy, it won’t work.”
“Like hell it will,” Zoro presses Sanji bodily to the floor as he tries to place the magnet back on the collar. Sanji arcs up to try and fight him off. Usopp thinks he should probably look away from this.
“Hah, got it,” there’s a click as Zoro slides the magnet into the right position, “Now keep it there.”
Sanji, of course, takes it right off, “Listen,” he protests as Zoro tries to grab at his arm, “I said listen, shithead.”
“It won’t work,” Sanji sighs once Zoro has given him enough space to breathe. He holds up his hands, and there is a thin, almost delicate-looking golden bracelet around each of his wrists, “I have these two as well. And they’re analogue, not magnetic.”
“Why the fuck do you have those?” Zoro snaps, snatching up Sanji’s hand to look at them, “The girl didn’t have them.”
“I got in trouble,” Snaji grimaces, “These are double insurance. They mess up your hands if they discharge often enough, which means you can kiss doing any sort of manual labour for a living goodbye. Practically kills any chance of a life after release.”
“Then how do we get them off?” Zoro swings his glare to Usopp, “Can you remove them?”
“A please would be nice, Mossy,” Sanji runs a hand through his hair, twisting the blond strands around his fingers. The bracelets shine under the overhead light. “Also, hey, Usopp. Thanks for the rescue.”
“Hey,” Usopp gives a weak wave, “I don’t know, I’d have to take a look at them.”
“You do that,” Zoro is still holding Sanji’s hand, “Please,” he adds awkwardly at the end.
“Can you give this to Pudding first, please?” Sanji holds out the magnet. Usopp takes it back and starts inching towards the hold.
“You’re on a first-name basis with your would-be assassin?” he hears Zoro snark.
“Shut up, moss boy.”
“Sure, but don’t come back crying to me when you get zapped again and blow all of us to bits.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Usopp sees them lean closer together and starts walking towards the hold faster.
=
As with everything that goes wrong in his life, the whole incident starts with Luffy.
“I have a friend here who can give us a discount,” he tells Zoro. The use of the word ‘friend’ should have been the first clue. Luffy makes friends with every troublemaker he comes across. Zoro thinks that bit is natural, like attracts like, after all.
But Zoro, newly unemployed, with a fresh wound across his front, and riding the high of a series of bad decisions, agrees. He has to find a place to change his bandages soon anyway.
Luffy’s friend turns out to be a bartender, tall and lanky with a rough voice and his light hair styled to cover half of his face. Zoro clocks him as a smoker within five minutes of meeting him.
He’s decent enough; he slips them dainty little tea cups full of the good stuff between the cheap beers they keep adding to their tabs.
However, Zoro’s not a big fan of the way he keeps tossing out flirty comments to any woman who stops by the bar. He gives away smiles and vapid compliments too easily. It’s irksome.
As Zoro had predicted, the waiter steps out a couple of hours later for a smoke break.
“Haha, Zoro was right,” Luffy snickers when the bartender walks back in smelling of smoke. Zoro doesn’t know why he stepped outside to smoke; half the clientele are smoking indoors.
“Right about what?” The bartender slides a glass over, and Zoro takes a sip before grimacing. It’s water, with a bitter edge of something.
“Zoro guessed that you smoke.”
“Did he now,” the bartender leans closer, even his lashes are pale, “it’s not like I go through great lengths to hide it.”
“Why step outside then?” Zoro asks, taking another sip of the nasty water to seem casual.
“Stuffy as hell in here,” the bartender shrugs, “I like to have a bit of fresh air. You both want a room? I can put it on your tab.”
“We’ll pay up front,” Zoro cringes internally as he hands the coins over. He really needs to start looking for an alternative if the World Government won’t pay him for bounties anymore.
“Wise of you,” the bartender winks, or Zoro guesses he does, he can’t tell with only one eye visible, but his face does a scrunching thing, “Pay up while you still remember what you owe me.”
“Sanji wouldn’t cheat us,” Luffy says cheerily as he forks over for the room.
“You never know, times are hard around here, people are desperate,” the bartender, Sanji, shrugs, “Who knows what I might do for a spare coin in my pocket?”
“He says that, but at his last job, he kept on getting in trouble because he fed people for free.” Luffy whispers, which for Luffy means he says it in a normal person’s talking voice.
“Okay, that’s it, I’m cutting you both off,” Sanji swats at Luffy with a towel, “Shoo. Go to sleep, then tomorrow morning you can get the hell out.”
Zoro groans out loud, but he can’t deny he’s excited to sleep in an actual bed tonight. Plus, Sanji had been right, the bar is quite stuffy, filled with the smell of smoke, drink, and the lingering scent of unwashed bodies.
When they reach their room, Zoro doesn’t even bother taking off his belt before collapsing on the bed. The whole place stinks of stale smoke, and the mattress has more lumps than a cliff booby’s nest, but it’s the best he’s gotten in a while.
“Zoro, don’t sleep, you have to change the bandages,” Luffy reminds him, “I don’t know how to do them.”
Zoro nods, and the next time he opens his eyes, the bartender is standing over him, frowning.
“What the f–” he tries to get up, but strong arms hold him down.
“Don’t worry, Zoro,” Luffy’s breath is hot in his ear, “he’s just gonna help. I asked him to.”
“You should be paying me for this shit, really,” the bartender mutters. Zoro tries to recall his name. Sabi? Sandwi? No, something with an S.
“Sanji,” he finally gets it.
“Yes Mosshead?” Sanji asks as he cuts away the old bandages. Zoro still feels warm and pleasantly sleepy; must be the alcohol.
“Mosshead?”
“Yeah, cause of your hair.”
Zoro feels Luffy tug at a tuft of his dyed hair. It’s one of the only indulgences he allows himself. He’d started dying it when he was younger to try and stand out amongst the other bounty hunters, get people to take him seriously. Now he just keeps it up because he doesn’t quite remember what he looks like without it.
It’s a harrowing thought; he’s already lost to Mihawk and been disfigured for it. It would be even stranger if he wakes up one day and can no longer recognize himself in the mirror.
Sanji is gentle, stripping away the bandages and making a sympathetic noise at the state of the stitches, “How in the hell were you sitting upright with this?” he mutters when he hits a tender spot applying the ointment and the muscles in Zoro’s torso jump without his permission.
“I’m used to it,” Zoro looks up. The ceiling is stained, but he imagines it must have been white at some point. This seems like a small place for someone like Sanji. “It’s the cost of my dream.”
“What is your dream?” Sanji is wrapping new bandages now; his hands are hot where they brush against Zoro’s sides.
“To be the greatest swordman in the four blues,” he used to say in the world, but Kuina had corrected him, ‘What if they find another planet?’ she’d argued, ‘Would that mean one of us has to be the best there too? No, we should start with the four blues first.’
“Seems like a stupid dream, if it leaves you in this state,” Zoro winces as the bandages are pulled tighter.
‘No more stupid than you, to be slowly suffocating yourself in this place,’ Zoro wants to say, but when he opens his eyes again, the waiter is gone, and Luffy is a warm, solid weight against his side, draped artfully so as not to aggravate his wound.
Zoro closes his eyes.
The next week, the whole bar burns down with Sanji inside.
=