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Sanji leaned against the rail, forearms resting along the sun-warmed wood.
The smoke of his cigarette curled lazily upward before the breeze caught it and pulled it out over the sea. He lifted his cup, porcelain warm against his palm, and took a measured sip.
Perfect temperature. Perfect balance. Bitter enough to wake the tongue, smooth enough to linger.
Ah.
The ocean stretched out before him, endless and calm, sunlight scattering across its surface like someone had spilled a chest of coins beneath it. From nearby drifted the scent of flowers — thick and sweet, almost salacious in its richness. The fragrance tangled with salt and smoke and tea, layering the air until Sanji felt pleasantly full just breathing it in.
He was alone on deck. Just wind, water, and the soft creak of the ship minding itself.
The crew had spilled onto the island hours ago, chasing supplies and a promising lead on a rare map that had sounded suspicious enough to be real. Sanji had volunteered to stay back to guard the ship, had sighed and rolled his shoulders and made it sound like a burden someone noble had to shoulder.
It wasn’t.
It was bliss.
A gull cried overhead. Sanji tracked it lazily as it wheeled once, twice, then folded its wings and dove, slicing cleanly through the air before striking the water in a sharp splash. A heartbeat later it burst back up, triumphant, a silver fish writhing in its beak.
Sanji exhaled a thin stream of smoke, squinting against the sun as it caught on the gull’s wings.
It was almost time to start making the welcome-back drinks for the girls.
He pictured a tall, narrow glass pulled straight from ice water for Nami, its rim brushed lightly with citrus and sugar, just enough to sparkle. Fresh tangerine juice, hand-squeezed, shaken hard with chilled white rum and a whisper of elderflower liqueur. He’d strain it clean, no ice chips, then top it with a thin curl of peel twisted just right, maybe an edible blossom resting against the glass.
Robin would get something quieter. A short tumbler, heavy in the hand. He’d steep dark tea low and slow, fold it into a honeyed syrup, then stir it with aged whiskey until the surface went perfectly smooth. No shaking. Elegant. Restrained. Just like her.
And snacks, of course.
For Nami: Candied nuts with just a hint of heat. Fresh fruit cut into precise, jewel-bright shapes, juices catching the light.
For Robin: Warm olives infused with citrus peel. Soft cheese drizzled with honey and cracked pepper. Thin slices of toasted bread arranged neatly.
Sanji adjusted the details in his mind, refining the balance of the spices, the presentation, and the timing – until he could picture the way their expressions would shift when he set everything down just so.
Pleased with himself, Sanji inhaled again, slow and indulgent, letting the air fill his lungs. Yes, he had not been mistaken earlier: There was a familiar note beneath the flowers. Warm skin and citrus and something electrifying. It tugged at him, the ghost of Nami’s scent riding the breeze, sweet enough that his chest loosened around it…
…and then the world ended.
The stench hit him like a physical blow.
Rot and iron and wet fur baked under a merciless sun. Old blood gone sour, guts torn open and left to stew. The heavy, cloying sweetness of decay layered over something animal and rank, like a stable that had been set on fire and then drowned.
Sanji gagged.
His stomach heaved, breath tearing out of him in a broken wheeze as he bent forward over the rail, eyes watering violently.
“—gh—fuck—”
He retched again, dry and helpless, lungs burning as he fought to drag in air that didn’t exist anymore. The scent clung, relentlessly , coating his tongue, his throat, every breath a fresh assault.
He spun around, already furious — and saw Zoro strolling towards him.
“Fuck,” Sanji rasped, voice wrecked. “Absolutely the hell not — did you marinate yourself in a corpse?”
Zoro, dirt-streaked, expression vaguely pleased, was dragging something behind him by one leg, leaving a dark, smeared trail across the deck.
Sanji’s eyes dropped. Regretted it instantly.
Brown fur slick with drying blood. Hooves jutting at the wrong angles. The body was half-torn open, ribs caved, entrails… things… visible in a way Sanji very much did not want to process.
“What the…” He gagged again, violently, stumbling back a step. “What the fuck is that?!”
Zoro shrugged. “It attacked me in the jungle. I killed it.” He glanced down at the mess, then back up. “Thought you might be interested.”
Sanji stared at him, hand clamped over his mouth as another wave of stench rolled over him.
“Interested,” he echoed faintly, before wheezing again. “I am going to die.”
The smell was everywhere now. It soaked into the deck, into the air, into him. His carefully planned drinks for Nami and Robin disintegrated in his mind, replaced by the overwhelming certainty that nothing would ever smell clean again, that this reek would follow him to the grave.
“Get it—” gag “—off the deck,” Sanji choked, pointing blindly. “Get it off the ship before I throw you and that thing into the ocean!”
Zoro frowned, mildly offended. “You’re being a little dramatic.”
Sanji made a gurgling sound and immediately had to swallow another retch when he tried to attack. Getting closer and that was simply not survivable.
“I swear to god,” he rasped, “I will kill you out of self-defense if you take one more step closer with that unholy abomination.”
The stink only deepened because Zoro stepped closer after dropping the leg.
Sanji actually saw stars.
“Aren’t you into cooking weird things?” Zoro asked, genuinely curious and maybe a little offended.
Something in Sanji’s chest snapped and there was a feeling like hysteria bubbling up through the constriction. Was the goddamn idiot sincere?
“Is your nose destroyed from all the alcohol you consume?” he wheezed. “This is clearly inedible!”
Except—
His brain, traitorous and brilliant and entirely unhelpful, jolted into frantic motion. Wait. Which island is this?
His mind rifled through maps, climates, scents, half-remembered passages from obscure cookbooks and travel logs he’d devoured years ago. Tropical latitude. Floral density. Hoofed fauna. That smell… rank, yes, but also… specific. Not rot alone. Something else layered beneath it, something his instincts were already trying to categorize.
Sanji froze, one hand still clamped over his mouth, eyes narrowing as realization crept in through the fog of disgust.
“…You fucking idiot,” he said slowly, dread and dawning understanding twisting together.
Because if his memory was right – and gods help him, it usually was – then this… this unholy abomination might not be inedible at all.
It might be a rare and precious treasure: A Blossom-Rot Mirehorn.
A creature so foul-smelling that most people never got close enough to learn the truth. Its flesh, once properly cleaned and treated, was rumored to be impossibly tender, infused with the very floral compounds that made the island bloom so obscenely. A delicacy mentioned only in the margins of ancient cookbooks and the footnotes of mad explorers’ journals. The kind of ingredient chefs whispered about and never expected to actually see.
Sanji swallowed hard, still gagging, still horrified… and already imagining what it could become.
“Go take a fucking bath,” he snapped, blocking his nose with the crook of his arm.
“I’m a bit hungry,” Zoro replied, as if that were even remotely relevant.
“I said, go take a fucking bath!” Sanji yelled, voice cracking around the stench.
Zoro shrugged.
Then — because the universe clearly hated Sanji — he started to undress. He was very quick. The shirt was tugged over his head in one economical motion and dropped unceremoniously next to the corpse before Sanji could even draw breath.
Oh come on.
Sunlight slid over bare skin, over the map of scars he already knew existed but had avoided cataloguing on principle. Broad chest, cut lines of muscle, the easy, unselfconscious strength of a man who trained all day and all night.
Sanji made another strangled noise he would never, ever acknowledge.
“Don’t undress in front of me!” he exploded, half-turning away while still trying to keep Zoro in his periphery to prevent further disasters. “Don’t you have any basic sense?!”
“What has got your panties in such a knot?” Zoro muttered, shaking his head. “We’ve seen each other naked a thousand times.”
That was absolutely, definitively not true.
Sanji always looked away. Always. Eyes snapped to the ceiling, the wall, the horizon… anywhere but the swordsman. He timed baths like battle plans, made sure steam, curtains, towels, bathrobes, anything existed between him and anyone else with skin. Privacy wasn’t optional; it was survival on this ship.
“I have never—” he choked on both the word and the smell, “—looked at you, and I am not starting now!”
He pivoted fully toward the sea, arm still clamped over his nose, voice wrecked and furious.
“Just… jump overboard, scrub yourself with sand until you bleed, and for the love of all that is holy, don’t touch anything on your way down!”
Zoro muttered a string of obscenities about lousy cooks and overreacting and “perfectly fine smells,” but he did as he was told. There was a splash. More swearing. A brief, blessed thinning of the stink.
Sanji took a steadying breath through his elbow – immediately regretted it – and set about arming himself.
He bound a cloth across the lower half of his face, dousing it with clover and crushed herbs until it smelled green and sharp enough to fight back. He took off his suit jacket and vest and hung them carefully on a peg. He pulled on a pair of cheap gloves and already mourned them. Rubber boots. Apron. Another layer of willpower. Several knives.
“Right,” he muttered, voice muffled. “Come on then, you fucking disaster.”
He stepped closer to the carcass.
Even prepared, the odor hit him like heat off a forge. He squinted at the mess, brain flipping through procedures – how to isolate glands, how to trim contaminated tissue, where to start without making the situation unimaginably worse. His hands hovered, then withdrew, then hovered again.
He was still deciding where to make the first cut when movement ghosted at the edge of his vision.
Sanji stiffened.
A very familiar silhouette resolved in his peripheral: broad shoulders, dripping water, absolutely no sense of shame.
“You are not standing there completely naked behind me,” he said through his scented cloth, voice perilously calm. His ears were burning beneath his hair.
Silence. Then a careless, “No towel around.”
Sanji closed his eyes for one long, murderous second.
“Get. Back. In. The. Water,” he hissed, pointing without turning his head. “Or at least behind a – barrel – mast – cloud – anything that counts as cover!”
Heat crept up the back of his neck, entirely unrelated to the sun. He hunched further over the carcass, as though it could shield him from sight and from the indignity of all of this, trying very hard to focus on rot, hooves, and professional pride.
“One look at you and I knew you were a prude,” Zoro said lazily behind him. “Prissy-ass cook.”
“Don’t touch your clothes!” Sanji roared without turning, voice cracking.
“Eh? You crazy?”
Sanji spun, snatched up the reeking pile of fabric in two gloved handfuls before Zoro could reach them, and marched them straight to the rail. He heaved them overboard in one decisive motion.
They hit the water with a wet slap.
“There,” he said viciously. “Burial at sea. Fitting.”
He ripped off his apron, thrust it out behind him without looking. “Take this. Then go and put fresh clothes on.”
There was a faint, incredulous huff. Something warm and dripping took the apron from his hand.
“Happy now, Your Highness?” Zoro drawled a moment later. “I’m covered.”
Sanji did not look. Absolutely did not. He stared murder at the carcass instead.
A pause – then something soft and damp thumped against his shoulder. Zoro had tossed him back… his bandana, freshly wrung out and clean of gore.
“Trade,” Zoro said. “Don’t lose it.”
Sanji caught it on reflex, scowled at it like it had personally offended him, and tightened it around the herb-scented cloth over his face.
Better.
Water dripped. Footsteps retreated toward the hatch.
Sanji exhaled, squared his shoulders, and finally set a hand on the knife at his belt.
“Right,” he muttered to the carcass. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
###
When Zoro returned to the deck shortly after, the scene that greeted him looked like something torn straight out of a history book – illustrations of ancient land battles, with bloodied bodies piled high and lone figures still hacking away at what was left.
Sanji had already cut several parts off the animal. The planks around him were slick with water and darker things that definitely weren’t water. He was covered in blood up to the elbows. Bits of something clung to his chest. His pretty clothes were clearly ruined… and he wasn’t throwing a fit?
Zoro tilted his head, eyes narrowing as he took him in.
He had only ever known the cook neat to the point of irritation: perfectly styled clothes, even after most fights, suit straight, hair in place. Smeared from top to bottom with blood and grime, he looked far more interesting.
Sanji looked up, a flat, unimpressed look over the rim of his blood-smeared face, Zoro’s bandana covering his lower face. The visible skin around his eye was streaked crimson.
“This would work way better with a sword,” Zoro muttered, eyeing the mess.
Sanji bristled. “Touch my carcass and I’ll cut your hands off.”
Zoro snorted. “With your small-ass prissy knives? Not likely. Let the real master handle this!”
Sanji narrowed his visible eye. “Say that again.”
“Oh, gladly,” Zoro said, stepping in, boots slipping slightly on the gore-slick deck. “You look like you fought a sea monster with your tiny little knives and lost.”
Sanji didn’t bother replying. He kicked.
Zoro blocked, slipped, recovered. They collided hard – elbow to ribs, fist to shoulder, a knee answered with a shove. The deck worked against both of them, slick with blood, their footing uncertain.
They broke apart just long enough to breathe, then crashed together again. Zoro went down in the end only because the deck gave way beneath him, sliding through gore and stopping in a heap against a crate. Something cold and stringy slapped against his arm.
He lay there for a second, chest heaving. The cook, he noted with satisfaction, hadn’t fared any better. Sanji was on his back a few feet away, swearing under his breath as he scrabbled for something solid to haul himself upright.
“Go clean the deck,” he snapped the moment he managed it.
Zoro blinked. “The hell? Am I your slave now?”
“You fucking sullied it,” Sanji shot back, stepping in until they were nose to nose.
“Ugh – gross!” Zoro gagged, jerking his head back. “You stink so bad.”
Sanji exploded, words tumbling out in a rapid-fire stream of insults, threats, several anatomically impossible suggestions, and then he rushed forward.
The deck chose that moment to assert itself.
Sanji’s foot slid. Zoro reached out on reflex, either to shove him back or steady him, and they tangled instead, momentum carrying them both down in a graceless heap. The impact rattled the crate again, curses echoing as they hit the deck with a resounding thud.
They lay there, staring up at the sky.
“We need to clean this up before the others get back,” Sanji muttered at last. “Or Franky will not recover.”
Zoro huffed in annoyance, thinking about the screaming, the slipping, the catastrophic overreaction. “Yeah,” he said. “Agreed.”
They filled several buckets with foul-smelling scraps and viscera, hurling insults at each other the entire time.
Sanji peered into one of the buckets and grimaced. “Not sure even a fish would eat that.”
Zoro shrugged. “Of course they’ll eat that.”
He hauled the bucket up and dumped it over the rail before Sanji could intervene.
The water churned – then went eerily empty. Schools of fish scattered in all directions. The shadows beneath the surface thinned, vanished… and then a few reappeared, floating belly-up.
Zoro stared. “…Huh.”
Sanji pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look at what you’ve done, you moss-headed prick.”
“There’s nothing the sea won’t swallow,” Zoro claimed.
The sea, apparently, disagreed. The mess bobbed sadly along the hull, bumping against it now and then like it didn’t know where else to go.
They scrubbed hard, sweating and cursing, slipping now and then and blaming each other every single time. When they were done, the deck looked as if nothing had happened.
Zoro dropped the brush with a clatter. “I’m starving.”
“Go take another bath,” Sanji said flatly as if he hadn’t heard him.
Zoro looked him over slowly – soaked, stained, shirt and trousers ruined, hair a disaster.
Sanji followed the look down his own clothes and grimaced like it physically hurt. “Yes. I will also take a bath.”
Before Zoro could smirk, Sanji had already stripped off the ruined clothes, gathered them up, and vaulted cleanly over the railing, aiming well clear of the floating horror still clinging to the hull.
There was a splash, then silence.
Zoro blinked once. “…Show-off.”
He always looked when Sanji was naked – part curiosity, part habit, part stubborn disbelief that something that lean could kick like a cannon. Until he hadn't figured out how it was possible he would keep looking.
He jumped in after him.
They swam to the shallower side and set to work again, rinsing off blood and salt, scrubbing at their clothes with seawater and sand, muttering insults the whole time. When they were clean, they turned on each other and glared.
“Go first,” Sanji said. “Get dressed, go away and leave me a towel.”
“No,” Zoro shot back. “I got dirty again only because of you.”
Sanji snorted without humor. “Dirty is your natural state. You didn’t even notice the stink.”
“I noticed,” Zoro said.
“Liar.”
They hovered in the water, neither moving.
Zoro jerked his chin toward the far ladder. “If I go first, I’m standing right there when you climb up.”
Sanji’s visible eye narrowed. “…Like hell you are.”
“I will stare,” Zoro said calmly, “the entire time.”
Sanji’s jaw dropped a fraction. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
A long silence. The waves slapped the hull. Somewhere, a gull laughed like it knew things.
Sanji swore under his breath, then gathered his clothes and swam for the ladder on the other side of the ship like he had fire in his ass.
Zoro watched him go, satisfied that he’d won this round.
###
Sanji dressed carefully. He chose a clean white shirt and a pair of black trousers. A fresh vest followed and a new blue tie he left loose at his throat. Thankfully, the earlier shirt and trousers could be saved. They were stained, yes, but it was nothing a proper dry cleaning in a real town couldn’t fix.
On deck, he treated the bandana: rinsed in fresh water until the salt was gone, smoothed flat, edges weighed down with a spice tin and a mortar so it would dry straight.
He glanced, unhelpfully, toward the ladder.
Zoro had not yet reappeared. The towel was draped over the rail, large and obvious.
Sanji turned away to get to work.
He set up the grills along the open stretch of deck, low charcoal braziers arranged in a neat line, heat zones staggered, airflow accounted for.
The Mirehorn waited in its parts.
The heavier cuts – dense, sinewed muscle that would need time to loosen – had to go on first, well away from the hottest coals. They needed steady heat and patience. The flank strips were narrow and tight-grained, the kind that could seize if pushed too hard, so he would watch them carefully. The shoulder pieces were broader, with just enough marbling that they might soften if he didn’t get greedy with the heat. The smaller medallions from deeper along the spine looked delicate, the sort of cut that could turn tough in seconds if mishandled.
Sanji moved the pieces on and off the heat again and again, never letting any one cut sit too long. Lift. Rest. Turn. Slide it back to the edge, not the center. He shifted coals with the tip of the tongs, opened and closed vents, chased the temperature constantly, hands hovering close enough to feel the change the instant it drifted.
Salt went on when the surface was ready to take it, dissolving into the fat as it rendered. A thin brush of butter followed later, reduced until it carried nothing but depth. He watched the meat closely – the surface tightening, then easing, then tightening again – and pulled it back just before it seized.
From the corner of his eye, he caught movement at the ladder.
He almost dropped a piece – heart lurching, pulse kicking hard and stupid against his throat.
Wet footsteps tapped across the deck towards him.
“I’m fucking starving,” Zoro growled. “How much longer?”
“We’re waiting for the others,” Sanji said, eyes glued to the meat so hard it was a miracle it didn’t catch fire. “I’ll rest these in the oven at sixty until then.”
Zoro’s stomach growled – deep and violent. For one ridiculous instant Sanji’s brain screamed sea monster attack before realizing the sound came from Zoro.
He sighed. “Fine.”
He lifted one of the smaller medallions, slid it onto a wooden board. A last brush of glaze – steady hands, thank god – and he held it out.
“Eat slowly,” he said – finally, against his better judgment, glancing sideways.
Hell no.
The towel was slung indecently low on Zoro’s hips. Water traced lazy lines over his chest, catching in scars, vanishing beneath terrycloth like it had somewhere important to be.
Sanji forgot how to swallow.
Zoro, blessed idiot, didn’t seem to notice, so focused on the food he was. He leaned in, fingers brushing Sanji’s knuckles and…
The meat was gone.
Sanji stared at the empty board, then at his crewmate.
“…The hell?”
“That was tiny,” Zoro said, licking a drop from his thumb. “I told you. I’m starving.”
“This meat,” Sanji growled, voice climbing against his will, “is super precious. It is so rare that–”
“Uh-huh. You can thank me later,” Zoro nodded. “Now I need more.”
Sanji opened his mouth to shout at him and nothing came out. He made a strangled noise instead and spun back to the grill. Sanji had to crush, with real effort, the reflex to feed anything that was hungry immediately.
“I’ll make you onigiri,” he snapped. “That's more suited.”
Zoro scowled. “But I want that meat. I brought it.”
“That,” Sanji hissed, gesturing sharply with the tongs, “does not mean you get to suck it straight off the grill like a starving sea monster. You will wait.”
“Then don’t wave it under my nose,” Zoro shot back. “Only dickheads do that.”
“You don’t have a nose. You have a black hole.”
“Good,” Zoro said. “Put the meat in it.”
Sanji made another undignified noise, somewhere between a growl and a prayer for patience. “You’ll live five more minutes.”
Zoro crossed his arms, muscles bulging. “No, I’m dying.”
“Good,” Sanji said sweetly. “But die quietly.”
They glared at each other.
Until Zoro’s stomach growled again – loud and very accusing.
He jabbed a thumb at it. “See? Proof.”
Sanji refused to look anywhere above Zoro’s sternum. “Proof you’re an idiot.”
Zoro leaned in, clearly about to argue more, and Sanji could smell him, him, no sour sweat and alcohol and all that, and it smelled …
Voices drifted from the beach. Laughter. Luffy yelling.
Sanji exhaled like a man reprieved and took several steps back. “Finally.”
Zoro relaxed. “Great. Now I’ll be fed.”
“I told you to be patient,” Sanji said, and the word came out steadier than he felt.
He slid the next cuts off the heat to rest, schooling his expression back into something calm and professional.
Zoro stretched, arms over his head. The towel shifted.
Sanji barked, “Hey!”
Both of them froze.
“…Hey what?” Zoro asked.
Sanji stared very hard at the grill. “Nothing.”