Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The Strawhats were headed toward stardom,” Brook announces from his interviewer chair, causing the soundstage to dip into a watchful silence that makes the lights feel brighter, and the mic on Zoro’s collar feel heavier.

“Your first album dominated airwaves, charts, and Grammy nomination lists,” Brook continues on. He glosses over Zoro’s stiff frame before taking another subtle peek at the notecards in his hands. “You’ve opened for legends. You’ve headlined a soldout tour. You’ve set trends and new precedents while breaking records and plenty of rules…”

Zoro swallows hard. He thought Brook doing this interview would make it easier, but nothing about this is going to be easy.

“And then…” Zoro grumbles for him, chest thumping in double-time. It’s all bass, too—the kind that will drown out anything except the truth.

“...and then, 5 years ago, everything came to a halt,” Brook finishes gently.

Which is all Zoro’s fault.

He’s the reason why the band’s music is stuck in time, the reason why most of their fans have trust issues—if they didn’t come with those already—and the reason why Sanji isn’t here.

“The Strawhats went on ‘indefinite hiatus,’” Brook says with air quotes. “Despite interview requests and pressure from fans, each member has refused to give a concrete answer on the reason behind the band’s fallout.”

Zoro winces. “Technically, I spoke on it.“

“Ah yes,” Brook says, chuckling. He makes a big show of holding up one of the notecards in his hands. “Five years ago, when I asked what happened to the band, Zoro Roronoa, drummer of the Strawhats, told the press that ‘nothing happened.’”

Zoro almost grins, but he catches Nami’s stern glare from offstage, near one of the cameras, and thinks better of it.

“So today, on the band’s 10th year anniversary, we’re finally going to give the world the answers they’ve been looking for,” Brook confirms.

And that’s all Nami’s fault.

Turns out, all it takes is an expensive Docuseries offer to make Nami ready to air out all of their dirty laundry.

She’s the reason why he’s on this soundstage, but at least it’s cool. One of their first band logos—a sloppily drawn skull and bones in a big strawhat—flies behind him and Brook on a giant flag. The designers even managed to replicate the drum kit he used during their first show as a prop behind him—down to the bottle of Jameson he used to shatter with his sticks during the last song of the night before that time he almost lost an eye.

He has to wear special contacts now. It is what it is.

Nami is also the reason why his hair is green again, after finally just recovering from years of bleach abuse. She’s the reason why he’s stuffed in this ‘blast-from-the-past’ from their early concert days—a cropped, sleeveless white dress shirt that strains across his chest and a loose, barely knotted black tie that hangs around his neck.

It’s… bittersweet.

“But before we get into the gossip, let’s start over,” Brook says, wiggling his eyebrows. “When did you know the Strawhats had something special?”

This time, Zoro does grin.

“When Sanji joined the band.”

“He’s a cook?” Zoro asked, raising an eyebrow from his favorite spot on the practice room floor. The sunlight from the one, lonely window always kept him warm—even in this old record store attic. There wasn’t much insulation, just bare wooden floors and walls. “What the hell does a cook know about music?”

Luffy continued strumming his unplugged, red electric guitar at the front of the room. The hollow notes fell blunt with potential, but he couldn’t get them to sing—not yet. This was just Gear One, the first of several solos that would put his guitar playing on the map.

“He said he wanted to see the world, so I said he should join my band,” Luffy said after missing a note in his riff. He shook his head at the mistake, black hair flopping into his eyes and straw hat slipping off his head to rest around his neck. “He’s got a funny way with words and he says he can play a little guitar.”

Nami and Usopp shot each other a glance from their shared spot on opposite sides of the windowsill.

“So you haven’t even heard him play?” Nami asked slowly. She looked up from where she was fiddling with her reflection in her compact mirror, fingers touseling through short, red hair.

Luffy twirled before plucking at his strings again. “Nope!”

“Great,” Usopp mumbled, knocking his head against the windowpane. His bandana slipped forward, almost blocking his eyes.

Zoro crossed his arms over his chest. “What do we even need him for?”

“Harmonies and rhythm,” Luffy said as he circled the room, still plucking and playing. “Usopp’s great on bass and too versatile to keep on second string, and I can’t focus on my solos until we fill that spot.”

Usopp perked his head up. “Great… idea!” He corrected. “That’s what I meant earlier.”

“He can also help with the songwriting,” Luffy added on the cusp of another note. His fingers flubbed the set up.

The note fell flat.

“What?” Zoro asked, chest constricting as he leaned forward.

Nami and Usopp stiffened.

“He can help,” Luffy repeated, finally letting his guitar hang in favor of narrowing his eyes at Zoro. His gaze was absolute, but his smile was kind as he walked over and kneeled down beside him. “You’re the words, but we need a sound.”

Zoro sighed.

He had a point.

Zoro had notebooks full of songs—words that resonated, metaphors that sang, and feelings he couldn’t articulate in any other way. But once the band got together to try and make his lyrics into music, they struggled to pick a melody and struggled with originality, opting to mimic their idols instead of creating something new.

He thought it was just growing pains. They’d been getting better, especially with Usopp as a new addition; his knowledge of composition elevated them in ways Zoro didn’t think they’d reach this fast. But even he knew, in the back of his mind, that they weren’t there yet.

He just didn’t think he was the problem.

“So give him a shot, yeah?” Luffy asked, tilting his head in a way that meant there was no room for negotiation.

“Whatever,” Zoro grumbled before looking away.

Luffy only laughed. “That’s the spirit!” He shot up from the ground with a clap of his hands. “You guys are gonna love him!”

Nami sent an unconvinced glance Zoro’s way before gesturing back at Luffy. “What’s his name again?”

The practice room door opened before she could speak.

Zoro smelled their new member before he saw him—cigarette smoke and citrus. Grainy and tart. The scent made Zoro wrinkle up his nose in distaste, but the sight was even worse: Long legs, belted pants, and a preppy, tucked in button down underneath a tan duster jacket. Their new member had his guitar case strapped to his back like a dork, forcing him into a hunch. He looked like a straight-A-student from the neck down, but the small, blond pony tail at the back of his neck ruined the image. Stubborn strands still managed to escape the ponytail, forming a shag of unevenly cut bangs that covered one side of his face. That left one blue eye to swim in hesitation, crowned by a curly eyebrow with a black vertical eyebrow piercing.

He looked like a prick.

“Sanji!” Luffy yelled in greeting, startling the jumpy cook as the door swung shut behind him.

“Luffy,” Sanji greeted, nodding as he took a slow glance around the room. His eyes fell on their instruments first—a half constructed drum set, a hastily bedazzled microphone, a beat up bass guitar, and a keyboard with m&ms on the keys. He pulled a small smile at the sight, but it was replaced with a frown as soon as his gaze slid over Zoro.

“That’s Zoro,” Luffy pointed out. “He’s the drummer.”

Zoro gave Sanji’s slouchy frame another once over. “And the songwriter,” he added with a huff.

Something clicked behind that solemn face. Sanji’s frown transformed into a smirk as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “So you’re the guy that needs my help,” he said slowly. “Got it.”

Usopp whistled as Zoro’s jaw clenched.

“You need help,” Zoro said, sneering. “Cutting your bangs with safety scissors isn’t a suitable replacement for therapy.”

Sanji’s gaze sharpened. “And pounding away at your junkyard drum set isn’t a suitable replacement for anger management classes,” he spat. “And yet, here we both are.”

In their practice room. For the music.

They locked eyes. Zoro met his stare with even more intensity, and Sanji refused to budge.

So maybe music was the cook’s medicine too, but that didn’t mean they had to share the same syringe.

Luffy stepped between the middle of them despite the distance keeping them apart. “Good,” he said. “You two found something in common!”

Usopp stood up from his seat and waved his hands around. “That was them having something in common?!”

“Don’t bother deciphering it,” Nami said, sighing. “This is our life now.”

The sound of Nami’s voice made the cook spin on his heel.

His entire demeanor changed.

With each step toward the windowsill, his posture straightened and his chin lifted. False confidence spilled out of his fingertips as he stopped in front of her and took her hand in his own. “And you are?” He asked, voice slippery smooth, before leaning down to press a kiss against Nami’s hand.

“That’s Nami,” Luffy interjected, although no one spared him a glance.

Nami looked down at her new predicament before raising an eyebrow at Zoro. “Did that just happen?”

Zoro snorted. “I see tons of love-sick ballads in your singing future.”

Sanji straightened up. “So you’re our vocalist,” he hummed. “If your voice is as beautiful as you are, then I’m in for a treat.”

“Oh, the fans are gonna love you,” Nami snarked as she slipped her hand out of his grasp. But there was a slight twinkle in her eye, one that added a bit of truth to the words.

“I thought I was supposed to be the ladies’ man,” Usopp whined, puffing out his chest.

When all eyes in the room turned on him, he shrunk.

“You run away screaming from women,” Nami deadpanned.

“He runs away screaming from everything,” Zoro mumbled.

Luffy skipped over to Usopp and placed a hand on his shoulder. “As long as you don’t run away screaming when we get on a real stage, it’s fine!”

Usopp paled. “Right.”

“You could always wear a mask or something,” Sanji suggested after finally ripping his eyes away from Nami.

“I considered that,” Usopp said, chuckling nervously as he looked at the floor.

“And?” Sanji pried, but not unkindly.

Usopp shrugged before meeting his gaze. “I guess I want my own legacy,” he said quietly. “Usopp’s legacy: not attached to anyone or anything else.”

Sanji transformed again, face relaxing and posture loosening as he nodded. “I get that,” he said with all the weight of a person who truly did.

“He plays bass,” Luffy noted, grin growing as he looked between the two of them.

“And keys,” Nami added.

“And all of our instruments,” Zoro mumbled as he hauled himself off of the floor.

“And anything else you can think of,” Usopp boasted, which—for once—was pretty true.

Sanji looked to Luffy for confirmation before blinking in surprise. “Wow, okay. What about a saxophone?”

“Ugh,” Zoro groaned as he joined the rest of the group by the windowsill. “Of course the lover boy jumps straight to a saxophone.”

“And of course you jump straight to being a prick,” Sanji sneered, whipping his head around to face him properly.

Zoro stepped forward. “Better than looking like one.”

“Says the mosshead,” Sanji assailed while staring him down. Instead of taking a step forward and crossing the point of no return, he opted for leaning in too close—just enough to be aggressive. Just enough to reveal the storm brewing in both eyes, one unwavering and the other shrouded by unpredictability. They were like whirlpools, dangerously mesmerizing.

Zoro shoved him back before he could get sucked in. “Whatever, curly brow.”

And this time, Sanji looked close to violence.

Blue irises turned navy, and his body went rigid.

The sign of a fight flipped a switch and made Zoro’s heart race. His hands clench into fists.

A smile crossed his face, feral and unforgiving as Sanji’s curliness furrowed into barely constrained anger. Out of all of Sanji’s personalities, this was the best one. It felt the most honest; all raw emotion, the kind reserved for first heartbreaks and great songs.

But before Zoro could strip Sanji’s soul bare with a satisfying punch to his pretty face, Luffy stepped between them once again and pushed them physically apart. Zoro’s combat boots squeaked. Sanji’s dress shoes clacked.

“Curiosity is good,” Luffy said, nodding at both of them. “Let’s put it in a song instead.”

Zoro and Sanji both stopped glaring at each other to snap their attention toward Luffy.

“What?” Zoro barked as Sanji took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” Luffy continued. “We play a song for Sanji so he can see what he’s working with, and then you and Sanji write a song and come back to us.”

Nami tilted her head in consideration. “Not bad. Let’s give them 30 minutes to write a song,” she agreed. “Then they have 15 minutes to teach it to us and we play it.”

“A great idea, Nami,” Sanji gushed. “I’m in.”

Luffy clapped his hands together. “Great, let’s do it!”

“You’re not even gonna ask me?” Zoro asked incredulously as Nami and Usopp shuffled over to their instruments. The microphone took center stage while Usopp’s music station took the left, leaving Zoro’s drums in the back and Luffy’s position to the right. He never stayed there anyway, though.

“It’s good for the band,” Luffy said before swinging his guitar back around to his front. “You’ll see.”

“And I do play sax, by the way,” Usopp added as he picked up his bass.

Begrudgingly, Zoro trudged over to half of his drumset as the familiar sound of amp crackling and microphone feedback filled the room. They were all already warm. Had been for… who knows how long. Hours passed by like minutes in the record store attic, especially when they took breaks to fantasize about the life they could have if they spent more of that time practicing.

“Aright,” Luffy announced, accenting the word with an electric strum that pierced through the air and rumbled beneath their feet. He turned toward Sanji, who opted for leaning against the middle of the windowsill, and grinned. “Any requests?”

Zoro rolled his eyes as he fiddled for his drumsticks. “Something without a saxophone, maybe?” he said before sticking a third drumstick in between his teeth. He found the indents with ease, biting down into the comforting grooves and letting himself relax into his seat.

“You need a chew toy in order to play your drums?” Sanji asked, voice shaking with bubbling laughter. “Are you serious?”

Zoro bared his teeth at him. “It’s punk rock.”

“Oh my god,” Sanji wheezed. His whole body lurched forward as he laughed, chaotic chuckles bouncing off the walls. The sound was raspy and naive—like it had just learned to crawl alongside a clumsy smile, timid like sunrise.

And, for the first time in his life, it put Zoro at a loss for words.

“Okay, Punk Moss,” Sanji mocked, tossing his head back as his laughter divulged into hiccups. The new angle revealed his long, slender neck and an Adam’s apple that bobbed with each chuckle.

Zoro swallowed hard as Nami and Usopp both snickered. At least Usopp had the decency to try and hide it, though.

“The hair dye and three earrings is making a bit more sense now,” Sanji said on the come down. “Is that the band’s style?”

“At least I know who I am,” Zoro stammered between the drumstick in his mouth. “You look like a hungover flight attendant who’s on the run.”

Before Sanji could straighten up and offer a rebuttal, Luffy interrupted with innocent strumming. The melody was hopeful, but tortured. “We haven’t settled on a sound yet,” he answered innocently. “Zoro’s really into the punk thing. I’m into the classics.”

“Blues rock and soul are my favorite genres,” Usopp interjected. “I’m also really into that psychedelic and progressive stuff, but I play and listen to pretty much anything.”

Nami twirled the cable of her microphone around one of her nail-bitten fingers. “Mostly pop music. A little alt and indie rock, a little R&B,” she said into the microphone. The words sang despite being spoken. “But I’ll listen to any vocalist worth their weight.”

Sanji took all of the new information in with a nod.

“You?” Luffy asked excitedly.

Sanji’s eyes flickered toward Zoro before landing back on Luffy. “Classic rock, mostly.”

Luffy jumped. “See! Connecting us more already!”

“But I can get a little folky,” Sanji admitted as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “A little jazzy.”

“Nice,” Usopp said with a grin.

“And glam rock is cool,” he mumbled, looking down at the floor.

Nami turned around to smirk at Zoro. “Another thing in common?”

Zoro and Sanji met each other’s eyes again. They both squinted at each other but didn’t say a word.

“Well, I’m glad to have some more pop influence on the board,” Nami said, shrugging.

Luffy’s smile stretched even wider. “Okay I can’t wait any longer. Let’s do a cover…. uh, the one that’s like—“ he paused to pick through a simple melody, just the first four bars. The first 2 notes alone were enough for the band to nod in recognition and get themselves ready.

“One… two… one, two, three, four!”

Music flooded the room, desperate and with something to prove. They’d perfected this particular song, Luffy’s riffs clean and brisk with Nami’s vocals forward and floaty. Zoro kept them in time with snares that bit and cymbals that roared, Usopp laid a steady foundation with bass that bounced and covered them like a shield, and together they soared.

It was the best they played together in a while.

So when Luffy’s final note vibrated in the air like a question, they all turned to Sanji with breathy gasps and racing hearts.

Only to discover his eyes were closed.

“So?” Luffy asked once the room fell into its usual quiet. He let his guitar drop, undeterred by Sanji’s seeming lack of interest while the rest of the band sent disbelieving glances toward each other.

The question snapped Sanji out of his stupor. He opened his eyes, shook his head, and pushed himself off of the windowsill with a smile. “I want in,” he said as he shrugged the strap of his guitar case off of his shoulder. He locked eyes with Zoro and nodded back toward the corner he’d found him in earlier. “C’mon, let’s go write a song.”

Zoro spat his drumstick out of his mouth, letting it rattle on top of his snare drum. “Don’t make telling me what to do a habit.”

Sanji snorted as he placed his guitar case on the ground. “Try mentioning that again when you haven't just spit out your toy on command.” The delivery lacked the same harshness from earlier, though—less fearful and more amused.

Zoro was much less capable of knowing how to deal with that.

“This is going better than I thought,” Luffy said, laughing as he lifted his guitar over his head and placed it on top of his stand. “Let’s give them some time alone.”

“Uh,” Usopp wavered, glancing in between Sanji and Zoro. “What if they kill each other?”

Nami flipped the switch on her microphone. “Ten bucks says that Zoro throws the first punch.”

Sanji pouted as Usopp set his bass down and mulled over the odds.

“Nah,” Usopp disagreed after giving Sanji a quick once over. “Sanji will probably trip him first.” Nami and Usopp both shook hands on those odds as they headed toward the door.

“Thirty minutes!” Luffy reminded them as he swung open the exit. Usopp and Nami filed behind him, and then the door slammed shut with a bang, leaving Zoro and Sanji to themselves.

Sanji didn’t bother breaking the silence that followed. He squatted down on the floor, paying Zoro no mind, before unzipping his black guitar case. Inside lay an old, ratty acoustic guitar that matched the rest of the band’s makeshift instruments. It was well loved with chipped paint and slightly crooked strings.

Zoro cleared his throat as he made his way over. “She got a name?”

Sanji looked up in surprise. “Do your drums have a name?”

“Only the snare, right now,” Zoro said as if it were obvious. He took a seat onto the floor, if only to avoid the curiosity of those blue eyes angled up at him. “Wado Ichimoji.”

“Is that supposed to be edgy?” Sanji asked, unimpressed.

“It’s supposed to be Japanese, actually,” Zoro said with a roll of his eyes, gesturing to himself. “And I didn’t choose the name. I inherited it.”

Sanji spared a glance toward the mismatched drum set. Wado was the show-stopper of the group, a glossy forest green with gold hardware that shined. “Why only the snare?”

“It’s the only drum I always plan to keep in my kit,” Zoro said with finality. No need to dive into all the sappy details. “We’re all a little sentimental about our instruments.”

“Well mine doesn’t have a name,” Sanji mumbled as he freed his guitar from the case. Finally sitting down properly, Sanji took a breath before resting the instrument in his lap and giving it a good strum.

The chord fluttered, warm, thick, and sweet like a layered dessert. Zoro was used to Luffy’s playing, which always rang bold and free despite the tone or the emotion, but this was different. It made his stomach drop and his heart ache for something he couldn’t have.

Zoro tried to hide his surprise, but Sanji’s slight chuckle meant he hadn’t done a good job.

“Belongs to my old man though,” Sanji said as he met Zoro’s eyes again. He smirked as he strummed the next chord, smooth like trickling water. “I guess I’m ‘borrowing it.’”

Zoro sucked his teeth as his gaze fell to Sanji’s hands. They were long and slender, with callouses seared into his fingertips—a rough contradiction that mirrored the man himself. Sanji’s fingers shaped the chords with a flexibility most people would kill for, stretching across the frets with the grace and precision of ballet. He didn’t even have to look.

“Tell me more about everyone’s instruments,” Sanji mumbled as his playing fell into a natural rhythm. “We’ll write about that.”

“About instruments,” Zoro said slowly, unable to tear his eyes away from the vibrating strings.

Sanji shook his head. “About home,” he corrected. “What it feels like.”

His playing shifted. Smooth strumming turned blunt—staccato. Sweetness soured into bitterness, and each chord shriveled with loneliness.

“What it sounds like,” he added quietly.

But when Zoro looked up to meet his gaze, Sanji’s playing came to an abrupt stop.

“I get these feelings I can’t put into words,” Sanji admitted, sighing.

And Zoro had words he couldn’t put into sound.

Choosing to ignore how right Luffy was, Zoro lifted his hips to dig into his pocket. He pulled out a small, leather bound notebook underneath Sanji’s watchful eyes and thumbed through the pages. He had something for that haunting sound Sanji just played. He had something about all of their instruments too.

“Nami grew up near a tangerine farm,” he mumbled as he found one of the pages he was looking for. Lyrics about peeling back layers, and bleeding blood orange greeted him in scratchy handwriting. He’d been sitting on this one for a while. The melody he’d tried was too simple; too innocent. “She covers all her mics in orange gems to match her hometown.”

“Aww,” Sanji gushed. “She’s so cute.”

Zoro swallowed the distaste in his mouth and pressed on. “It should sound bright.”

“Not specific enough,” Sanji said, scoffing. “Suns are bright, and headlights are bright, but they’re not the same sound.”

“But you know what I meant,” Zoro said, groaning.

Sanji strummed a D chord—bright and airy. “That’s what you meant, but it’s not what you want,” he said before suffocating the sound. “What are the lyrics?”

Zoro refilled the request by tossing the notebook at his chest—careful not to hit his guitar—and grinned once Sanji flipped him off.

He took a few seconds to read it, eyebrows furrowing and lips parting. “Your handwriting is shit,” he scoffed as he tilted the page to get a new angle.

“You’ll get used to it,” Zoro snapped. “I don’t like reciting my work. I’m not a poet.”

Sanji pursed his lips. “You sure about that?” He said it like it was supposed to be a dig, but there was newfound respect in his eyes when he spared Zoro a quick glance in between his reading. “You don’t want bright. You want something citrusy.”

“Citrusy,” Zoro repeated incredulously. “What does that even mean?”

Sighing, Sanji set the notebook down next to his lap. “Just listen.” He closed his eyes as he readjusted himself around his guitar, fingers cupping the strings with ease, before strumming a single chord.

Citrus—overly ripe.

The chord hung like it was seconds away from going rotten, wavering between major and minor. The next one did the same, and then the next one packed a punch—loud and sharp. It drew the sides of Zoro’s mouth in like a lemon too tangy and it made his tongue sore. But the final chord offered reprieve, sliding into a sweet spritz that lingered.

It was perfect.

Zoro bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from admitting defeat.

Sanji kept going.

His strumming turned melodic, notes bursting around syllables of the words Zoro wrote. He could hear them so clearly: Nami’s voice sliding over the notes with a little bit of blues, and a stalky bass line from Usopp that could give homesickness its roots. And the drums. He could see them—the map of his strikes across his tums and the succinct simmer of his hi-hat.

They had a song.

Acting on impulse, Zoro reached for his notebook at the same time Sanji opened his eyes. Vulnerable blue locked onto persistent grey and everything came to a halt. Silence replaced the song, closeness replaced their unknowingness, and they both froze in place.

Shaken by each other’s gaze and trapped by the music between them, Zoro couldn’t even bring himself to breathe.

Then, finally, Sanji caved.

His eyes flickered to Zoro’s hand, which was closer to Sanji’s thigh than a stranger’s should be. It didn’t really feel like that, though. Not when Sanji had been able to place why Zoro had anger-induced bite marks in his drum stick from one fleeting glance, and Zoro had been able to chalk up Sanji’s uneven bangs to the same emotion that inspired his haunted guitar playing from one harsh glare.

“I’m gonna guess that means you liked it?” Sanji said, clearing his throat as he met his eyes again.

Zoro scrambled to bring his notebook to his chest before putting a respectable distance between them again. Once situated, although not unfazed, Zoro tore a blank page from the back of his notebook and slid it over to Sanji. “It was decent for a curly-browed prick,” he said, grunting. “Transcribe the notes.”

“Don’t make telling me what to do a habit,” Sanji mocked. He took the paper anyway though, and hummed when Zoro passed over a pen from his pocket.

“Let’s just make this one about Nami,” Zoro thought out loud as he uncapped his extra pen. “And then we go down the line later. Usopp’s song next?”

Sanji smirked. “Sounds like the moss wants my help.”

Zoro sneered but didn’t bother to deny it, too in the zone to come up with a comeback. Pressing his notebook into his knee for leverage, he began to scribble. “We need a bridge for this one. Nami gets catty if there isn’t a bridge.”

“Pre-chorus?” Sanji asked over his own writing, using the guitar as his table. Then he paused. “No, actually. It’s better if—“

“We cut to the chase,” Zoro mumbled in agreement. Brain firing on all cylinders, he struggled to jot down one thought at a time. He was a mess of rhythms for Usopp’s bass, a cacophony of ideas for the song’s structure, and a storm of hope for a future that suddenly seemed a lot more achievable. “Luffy will take that melody. He’s gonna Luffy it up though.”

A laugh bubbled out of Sanji. “Is that good?”

Zoro nodded, not even sparing him a glance. “Always.”

They worked in silence after that. Creative silence—the kind full of experimental plucking, off-center humming, and frantic-page flipping. Zoro didn’t look up until the lyrics sang. He didn’t move until Usopp’s groove etched itself inside of his brain, and he didn’t unclench his jaw until his drums thumped to the beat of his own heart.

“Done,” Zoro said breathlessly. He looked up from his notebook to be greeted with an amused stare, open and shameless. Sanji didn’t bother to hide the teasing grin on his face.

“You’re not as scary as you think you are,” Sanji pointed out.

Zoro scowled. “And you’re not as mysterious as you think you are.”

Sanji raised an eyebrow in challenge, which only meant Zoro had a point to prove.

Scoffing, Zoro turned to a new page in his notebook and indulged the voice that’d been nagging at him ever since Sanji strummed that isolating tune of home. The lyrics came easy. Once his hand connected with the page, they flowed. He wrote of cages. Of starvation—that kind that ate away at the heart instead of the body. And then, without bothering to edit, Zoro ripped the page and slid it over to Sanji.

He took his time reading this one.

Sanji stared at the page, straight-faced, as seconds passed and Zoro’s chest raced into slight panic. Maybe it was too harsh. Too familiar. They’d just entered this partnership and Zoro was already crossing boundaries.

Fuck.

He really did want this to keep going. He wanted someone to read his mind with strings and throw insults his way to keep him in check. He wanted to be challenged by someone who described sounds like tastes, and he wanted to spiral into the only thing that had ever made sense to him with someone who felt the exact same way. Someone who knew that music was medicine. Someone who knew that music was protection, that music was—

A sniffle snapped Zoro out of his rumination.

One look at Sanji revealed red, watery eyes—but only for a flash. He ducked his head down as soon as he noticed Zoro’s gaze and let his hair act as a feeble curtain.

Bile rose in Zoro’s throat. His hands twitched, unsure what to do.

“I’m keeping this,” Sanji said, voice small as he folded up the page with one hand. “Stupid moss.”

Which did nothing to assuage his guilt.

But then Sanji had the nerve to snort, head still hanging low. “Worry clashes with your whole aesthetic,” Sanji sneered. “You’re really not scary at all.”

“Whatever,” Zoro mumbled, but the words managed to untense his hiked up shoulders. Sanji wasn’t running away—not yet.

As if confirming his thoughts, Sanji played his lonely melody again. He marked it like a test, notes quiet and rushed as he shook his head. He only met Zoro’s eyes again once he finished.

“Words to sound,” Sanji promised. It felt like one, too. A promise that Zoro’s words resonated and a promise that Zoro hadn’t fucked up. A promise to enter this new journey together.

So Zoro met his promise with his own.

“Sound to words,” he instilled, engraving the phrase onto his tongue.

“We clashed, and that’s how we clicked,” Zoro says, wrapping up the memory of the first time the Strawhats started to feel like a band. “It made everything click. We all played the song together and picked a band name that day.”

He’s more comfortable now, leaned back in his chair with his legs spread as wide as he can manage. The documentary crew doesn’t feel so watchful anymore, and the anecdote from his past even makes this get up from his 20s feel natural again. He almost expects the weight of a worn notebook and three pens in his cargo pockets. All that’s missing is cigarettes and—

His easy smile falls.

Talking about Sanji is always easy… until it isn’t.

“You two wrote Tangerine Dreams in 30 minutes?” Brook asks as he leans forward in his seat. “The song regarded as one of the best debut singles from a pop-punk band in the last decade?!”

Zoro smirks, shrugging his shoulders. “We had something special.”

“I think that’s an understatement,” Brook says through a full-bodied laugh. “You and Sanji were unstoppable as a song-writing team.”

“Our songs wouldn’t be what they were without the rest of the group’s input though,” Zoro says. “Luffy’s guitar playing always took it somewhere else. Nami would do something like add a breath in the phrase, or stress a certain word over the other, and that would give the song new life. And then Usopp was basically our composer and our producer. He’d edit Sanji and I’s work instrumentally, come up with those complex harmonies, and then add all of the toppings in the recording phase. Somehow he always knew exactly what the song was missing—“

“Like a steam whistle?” Brooke asks, raising an eyebrow.

Zoro chuckles at the reference to one of their most popular songs. “Exactly. That’s the kind of antics that got him those Grammys.”

He can’t help the pride that swells in his chest every time he gets to speak about Usopp. They have all been able to maintain their own versions of success post hiatus, but Usopp’s been building that legacy he’s always dreamed about: a five-time Grammy award-winning producer and the owner of his own record label. He’s beloved by the idols he used to nerd out about at the record store, and now he’s producing their records. He’s everything Zoro knew he could be. Sometimes, just typing Usopp’s name into google will give Zoro something to smile about on a rough day.

Not that he’ll ever say it to his face, though. That’s what songs are for.

“Well you would know,” Brook says, snapping him back to the topic at hand—which was supposed to be about him. Zoro stopped seeing things like that a long time ago, though. “You’ve got three Grammys of your own.”

Zoro resists the urge to grimace at the reminder. Two out of three of those awards are sitting on a shelf in his New York apartment, collecting dust, while the last one lays somewhere in the basement of his house upstate.

“It’s an honor,” he says through gritted teeth, earning an eye roll from Nami that he picks up from the corner of his eye. He’d almost forgotten she was there, too, but now it’s hard to ignore her stern stare and crossed arms from just behind the camera.

The look isn’t just about her Grammy-less-ness though.

“The truth,” she mouths as soon as they meet each other's eyes properly—which was the deal.

If they’re going to do this—especially without Sanji—then those are the rules: The whole truth.

It was a request from the recluse himself, sent to Luffy in a handwritten letter that featured script as curly as his eyebrows. Considering none of them expected him to entertain the docuseries idea at all, it was the least they could do to honor him in his absence.

Luffy’s hopeful enough to think all of this will bring Sanji back, but Zoro knows better. He hasn’t given up waiting—Zoro will never give up on Sanji—but he has given up hoping.

Zoro tries to shake the heartache out of his mind.

“Well, two of them are an honor,” he amends with a wince. Good thing he doesn’t care much about the Academy’s ass-kissing politics. “The last one doesn’t count.”

Brook shifts in surprise, but manages to piece it together. “This year’s Songwriter of the Year award?”

Zoro sends Brook a stiff nod, and Nami’s encouraging smile from the sidelines manages to push him forward. “I didn’t win with a Strawhat song,” he mumbles. “I didn’t win with Sanji.”

The award is still an amazing accomplishment. He knows this. He knows. But it’s not the same. The only thing allowing him to acknowledge the win is that half of the songs he wrote and sold last year were all about Sanji.

“It must be hard not having your songwriter partner around anymore,” Brook suggests, but there’s a glimmer in his eyes that feels too close to the truth. “You probably spent a lot of time together.”

“We all did,” Zoro grunts. He looks down at his lap so that he doesn’t have to spot Nami’s disapproval, but that doesn’t stop her glare from searing into his skin. Technically, he’s not lying. He’s avoiding. The only way he’s going to get through this interview is if he can keep it light for as long as he can.

“But he made his decision,” Zoro confirms, mostly to himself. “He says he’s happy being away…” from music. From his friends. From Zoro. “…and that’s all I can ask. I have to respect that.”

That felt… anything but light.

Zoro wills his jaw to unclench and begs his teeth to stop looking for something to sink into. The fabric against his skin starts to scratch, his knee starts to bounce, and his heart starts to race.

He takes a deep breath.

Closing his eyes the same way Sanji used to, he focuses on the music instead—the hum of the stage lights and the mechanical click of old studio equipment. He listens to the way the pins on his cargo pants click with each jolt of his leg, and if he tries hard enough he can imagine he’s pressing down on the pedal of his bass drum behind him. He uses that lifeline to slow the tempo of his tapping until his heart follows suit.

When he opens his eyes again, Nami is on his side of the stage. She has one hand tentatively raised and one foot pressed forward like a knight in paper-clip chainmail. Zoro still can’t believe she’d started a fashion trend with a makeshift paper-clip crop top back in their 20s, and he especially can’t believe the costume department got her back in it again, this time elongated and draped over a tight dress instead of a tiny bikini.

Worry looks even worse on her than it ever did on him.

It’s definitely not helping those wrinkles in her 30s.

Zoro smiles at the observation.

He definitely does not smile at her concern.

Feeling more composed, Zoro turns back to the camera to make sure it’s still rolling. The crew behind the lens look just as alarmed as Nami, but he can’t really blame them.

He used to bully interviewers. He used to mumble about how ‘the music spoke for itself’ while sitting shirtless and mean because he didn’t want to wear the itchy lapel mics. He used to say whatever was on his mind, no matter how brash or dense, because he was arrogant and fearless—but the more accurate word is ‘naive.’

Twenty-one year old Zoro would think he’s an anxiety-riddled loser; but twenty-one-year old Zoro didn’t know what it was like to lose everything he ever loved, and have it all be his fault.

“We don’t stop unless I break a bone or something,” Zoro warns everyone. If they pause, he won’t be able to continue. “Nami’s not the boss of me anymore. Don’t listen to her.”

That gets a laugh out of the director and a few PA’s, at least.

Nami takes this chance to rush into the shot and smack Zoro upside the back of his head, earning relieved sighs and chuckles from anyone else who didn’t find Zoro’s original reassurance convincing. “Don’t scare me like that,” she hisses into his ear, but it’s hardly threatening.

Zoro just shoos her away before nodding at Brook. “And don’t go easy on me. I know what I signed up for.”

Brook settles back into his chair, smiling before giving a signature, “alright!”

With that, the tension breaks. Nami travels back to her post, Zoro readjusts his clothes, and the director resets.

“Ready when you are.”

Brook falls right back into the flow.

“Your dynamic with Sanji always made headlines,” Brook says as he eyes his notecards. “You’d drum over his solos onstage. He’d steal your sticks before a show. You two got into a fist fight outside of a lounge—twice. And yet, you two have never spoken unkindly about each other.”

Zoro can’t help but smile at those memories. “The opposite, actually.”

“You’ve described him as ‘unfairly talented and crazy in all the right ways,’” Brook quotes with a chuckle. “And he’s described you as ‘the most intense man he’s ever met, in all the ways that matter.’”

“Clearly, I’m the better wordsmith,” Zoro says as his heart lurches.

Laughing, Brook sets the cards back down into his lap before asking, “So what’s the truth? What was your relationship really like? What did it take to maintain a songwriting partnership that produced such a strong impact on the genre?”

Zoro’s mouth speaks for him before he can stop himself. “Everything,” he admits, voice cracking around the word. Still, he keeps going.

“It wasn’t easy. Clearly. But that’s music, you know? We were messy because we were vulnerable. We had to be, even when we were too young to grapple with all the ways we were undoing ourselves on the page,” Zoro says carefully, taking a second to collect his thoughts. “We opened each other's wounds and didn’t know how to mend each other back together. We thought it was worth it, though. We thought understanding each other was the only path to sonic honesty.”

He shrugs around the words as if it’s that simple. When, in reality, nothing about their relationship has ever been simple. But…

“That’s why the music sang.”

“Can you just shut up?” Sanji mumbled, words muffled by the cigarette in between his lips. He had one leg dangling outside of the practice room window as he puffed poison into autumn air, leaving his sock-covered toes to swim in sleepy sunset. “I’m tryna think.”

The sight made Zoro wrinkle up his nose. He hated when Sanji straddled the windowsill like that. He hated those damn cigarettes too.

Sighing, Zoro slumped farther into the groove of the windowsill from where he was sitting opposite the blond. It was a tighter squeeze for him, more of a lean with only half of his body propped up on top of the surface, but it was Sanji’s spot. So when Sanji got like this, seven cigarettes into a writing session with one hand pulling at his hair, Zoro had no choice but to follow.

“You’re not trying to think,” Zoro mumbled. “You’re trying to run.”

“Fuck you,” Sanji sneered around his vice. “I can’t stand being near you.”

“And yet, here you are,” Zoro fired back without hesitation. He could deal with Sanji’s anger, and his sadness, and his grief—just as long as he kept coming back.

Sanji tugged at the ends of his hair again. It’d gotten longer, pony tail reaching a little past his shoulders after finally fighting the urge to pick up his scissors. He always pulled a few strands to the front in order to cover his face, and he liked to let it down onstage.

“I know—“

“No, you don’t,” Sanji snapped after turning to face him. Those eyes glared at him for the first time in the last hour. “But you keep trying to fix me anyway.”

This again.

Zoro’s hands itched for something to hold. Everything was too far out of reach, especially his notebook. “I’m trying to fix the song,” he corrected.

“It’s the same shit!” Sanji agonized, eyes flooding with all the emotion he kept trying to smoke away. “You know that. You’re the only person who knows that.”

And he knew it too well—how the lines between their trauma and the score blurred each time they pushed each other to the brink of unravel. How being around each other was a reminder of everything they didn’t like about themselves, but there was still no place either of them would rather be.

They’d been stuck on Sanji’s song for three months now. A new record—much to Zoro’s dismay. Zoro’s home track on the album had taken two months of kicking and screaming, and tons of property damage. It was supposed to be straightforward. He’d thought he was straightforward. But the minute Sanji had started asking questions about Wado and Kuina, and Okinawa and Los Angeles, and pried into how Zoro never referred to Mihawk’s snowy manor as home, Zoro spiraled. He was just a collage of everyone who’d ever left and every place he’d been forced to leave—walking evidence of someone who wasn’t good enough to know the meaning of the word ‘stay.’ He couldn’t hide it, either. Not from Sanji; not from the music.

And those two were the same.

Zoro had never hated Sanji more than when they worked on ‘Demon on the East Coast.’ He couldn’t stand all of the man’s sympathy, and all of his willingness to go along with all the excuses Zoro made to cling to him for support when he shouldn’t have. Like all the times Sanji brought him dinner to their writing sessions because he knew he wasn’t eating, and every time Sanji’s insults got a little less harsh because he knew Zoro’s ego was already bruised from being chronically not good enough.

So he had to be good at this. He had to be useful.

But fixing the song…it just made Sanji feel broken.

Zoro wasn’t sure where that left them. Well, he did. It left them three months into a song with no signs of progress, and daily standstills where Sanji filled his lungs with cancer and wanted Zoro near but not close.

At least it was better than wanting him gone.

“I’m trying,” Zoro said finally. But even he didn’t know what he meant.

Sanji blew another puff of smoke into the sky. “I know,” he said, which made Zoro feel like he really did. “I just need space.”

Which they’d tried the last time Sanji had asked for it, but that only led to long phone calls and even longer car rides in the Jeep that Zoro’s suspended license wasn’t allowed to operate. There was no joy in riding around in it without Sanji’s feet propped up on the dash anyway, though.

“What do you really need?” Zoro asked.

This got Sanji’s attention. He considered Zoro for a moment, looking him up and down in his usual uniform—a band tee with the sleeves cut off and cargo shorts with ink stains on the pocket—before putting his cigarette out on a nearby ashtray.

“You remember when you told me about Kuina?” He asked as he swung his leg back inside of the room. Darkness had crept up on the sun, sweeping in with a chill.

Zoro flinched at the memory. “We said we weren’t going to talk about that.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Sanji said, scoffing against the slide of the window as he pushed it shut.

“It was to me,” Zoro mumbled.

Sanji rolled his eyes. “All you did was cry—“

“It’s not about the crying,” Zoro huffed, heart beating first.

Waving him off, Sanji trudged over to their nook in the back of the room where they’d jammed in a small wooden table and two chairs. The surface stayed piled high with notebooks, scraps of paper, and pens. Sometimes they’d leave out a deck of cards if they got really stuck or really bored.

Instead of taking a seat at their ‘desk,’ though, Sanji took a seat on the wooden floor next to the radiator instead. Zoro’s spot. The one he liked to blame for his ‘bratty posture.’

“You need to get over this whole ‘showing weakness’ thing,” Sanji grumbled as he spread his legs out in front of him.

Weakness.

Zoro knew a lot of words, and that one didn’t come close to how he felt about That Night. No words did.

Tentatively, Zoro followed his lead and took a seat next to him, bumping their shoulders together as they got settled.

“You already know all of my weaknesses,” Zoro grumbled back. “It’d be stupid to try and hide them from you.”

Sanji ignored the comment in favor of fiddling with one of the silicon rings on his finger. Refusing to divert from the original topic, he took a breath. “Did it help?” He asked.

Did it help.

Zoro brought his lips into a straight line.

It’d helped more than anything ever had, and more than anything ever will.

Zoro had tried writing about That Night a dozen times over. The words were scribbled in the back of a notebook he kept hidden from Sanji, and he could never get them right… The way Kuina tears always burned coming down, full of salt and remorse. The way he had clenched his jaw so tight he thought something would pop, and the way his teeth had groaned at a pressure too large to crush.

And then the thing he couldn’t name.

The way Sanji had noticed his distress and acted within seconds, thumbs raising to the sides of Zoro’s face and pressing into his jaw until it loosened in his hold, and the way he’d continued to cup his face after. Zoro wished he could’ve seen Sanji’s expression through the blurry fire in his eyes, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Sanji had pulled him into his chest as soon as his lips parted, and had held him like he was worthy of softness.

But the worst part had been the way their hearts synched in time as soon as they made contact, and the way it made more sense to Zoro than music ever had.

“Why?” Zoro asked eventually, voice cracking as he brought his knees to his chest and rested his arms on top.

Sanji huffed. “Because maybe it would help.”

The suggestion bounced around in Zoro’s brain, looking for a safe place to land—but an idea like that was nothing short of dangerous.

When Zoro didn’t say anything, choosing to stare at him instead, Sanji ducked his head down. “It’s not that big of a deal,” he repeated. “In fact, it’s the least you can do if you’re gonna keep forcing me to confront all of the shit I’ve been trying to—”

Zoro cut Sanji off with a yank of his ponytail.

With the hair tie obtained between Zoro’s fingers, strands of blond spilled over Sanji’s shoulders and fell around his pissed off face. He’d never admit it, but he looked cool like that—like a rockstar.

“What the fuck is your—“

“Shh,” Zoro said before he lost his courage. His hand twitched before tugging on the collar of Sanji’s shirt and pulling him close, remnants of smoke tickling his nose and scratching his throat in the brief moment their cheeks accidentally grazed each other.

But it didn’t last long.

As soon as Zoro extended his legs, Sanji fell into his lap with trepid eyes that gawked up at him silently.

They both didn’t say anything.

Zoro wouldn’t have been able to find the words anyway, mouth too dry at the weight of Sanji’s heart in his lap.

Luckily, his hand moved despite his inability to produce a coherent thought.

No one had taught Zoro how to be gentle, but he managed it for Sanji, rough fingers carding through golden waves of history and rubbing at the base of his scalp. He didn’t need to wait long to know if he was doing it right. Sanji’s reaction was immediate—a low groan that made both of them blush and Zoro’s eyes flicker to literally anything else.

“Your forehead is huge,” he stammered, grasping for any sense of normalcy.

Sanji leaned into his touch. “And you have meat hands,” he mumbled lightly.

“I hate you,” Zoro grumbled as he scratched at a spot near his crown that made Sanji hum.

“I hate you too,” Sanji said, but it came out as more of a purr. “These last few months, I’ve hated you so much.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to finish the song.”

“I know.”

Sanji squeezed his eyes shut. It gave Zoro a chance to take a peek at him again, taking in the sight of furrowed eyebrows and pouty lips.

“When you get the chance to run away from a fate like mine,” Sanji whispered after a few seconds of Zoro’s slow petting. “You don’t stop running.”

And that was the problem—Zoro’s weakness.

He wasn’t sure if he knew how to stop chasing.

“The more you get to know someone important,” Zoro says over the empty silence on set. No one moves. “The more you unravel yourself.”

He pauses around his words, giving himself a second because the next part took too many years to work through, and even more time to admit.

“And sometimes the person you do all of that uncovering and digging for… sometimes they just can’t be the person that gets you out of the hole you’ve dug,” he says quietly. “Even when you want them to be. And even when they try their best.”

The words float over the room.

Still, nobody makes a sound.

Cringing, Zoro makes the mistake of meeting Nami’s eyes. They’re filled with shock and betrayal, glowering at him with questions Zoro can’t bring himself to answer—even though he can’t blame her. She didn’t know how deep their connection went or how far back it started, and she never got the chance to see them at their best.

“That sounds…” Brook finally speaks up, leaning forward in his seat to eye Zoro carefully. “Intimate.”

The documentary crew takes a breath as Zoro resists the urge to laugh.

“My therapist prefers the word ‘codependent,’” he says weakly, earning a small smile from Brook. “But sure. We didn’t really see it that way at the time, though. We thought that was just us.”

Brook doesn’t miss a beat—but it’s what Zoro asked for.

“And what were you two?” He asks innocently enough.

The implication of the question creates a new silence on set, expectant like a bomb that’s counted all the way down to zero but still hasn’t bloomed. It sends goosebumps down Zoro’s spine and makes his ears burn hot.

He’d known they’d get here eventually.

Too bad he hadn’t had that same hindsight about their relationship when they were younger. He knows there’s no fixing the past, but putting a name to it all might’ve lessened some of their problems.

“Complicated,” Zoro tries answering, which earns him a warning squint from Nami. He’s sure she wouldn’t be so eager about sticking to the truth if she knew just how deep this rabbit hole went, though.

Still quick on his feet, Brook rephrases the question with a tilt of his head. “Well, who was he to you?”

And Zoro can’t help but smile.

He looks directly into the camera for this one:

“He’s the love of my life.”

Sanji looked good.

And Zoro was finally willing to stop lying to himself about it.

“Will you stop fiddling?” Zoro said as he eyed Sanji’s reflection in the dressing room mirror. There wasn’t anything else worth looking at when Sanji had his hair down, thick blond starting to drape over his back. “This is as good as your curly ass is going to get, and you’re just going to have to live with that.”

But the man only got better with age.

The more shows they did, the more Zoro got to see Sanji with his sleeves rolled up, shirts unbuttoned just enough to show off a chest full of hair and the layered necklaces lucky enough to rest upon it. Today’s concert shirt was black and silky, today’s vest was maroon to match Nami’s dress, and today’s pants were tight.

Zoro struggled to keep his gaze above Sanji’s waist.

“Do you have to keep cropping all of your shirts?” Sanji said through a snarl, eyes flickering below Zoro’s waist instead.

“It looks cool when I’m drumming,” Zoro defended. He raised his arms to prove a point, allowing his cropped, boxy white tee to lift and reveal a generous sliver of his abdomen. The shirt usually came off about halfway through the second song anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Sighing, Sanji turned to properly face him. “And this is the best you can do tonight?”

Tonight—their first time opening on a real tour that wasn’t just local dive bars and a circuit of outdoor signups.

It was a big deal.

Shanks had finally deemed them worthy enough to play for his band after years of Luffy’s hopeful insistence. The deal was three shows in the tri-state area—all legit venues with booths to sell their hastily burned EP’s from the one recording session they’d done in the attic. They’d decided to tease 3 original songs on the tape in preparation for the album, and their labor of love was doing well. Well enough through word of mouth, anyway, and whatever Bandcamp was.

But if tonight went well, they had an opportunity to form a real fanbase. Something they could build; something they could see.

They were finally getting out of their sleepy, small town.

And the farther they got away, the more Sanji bloomed.

“We need to have a band meeting on style,” Sanji grumbled as he gestured for Zoro to come closer with a ring-covered finger.

Sighing, Zoro followed his command and joined him at this side. Sanji’s fancy stage shoes gave him an inch over Zoro, which never failed to piss him off, but he wore them too well to stay mad for too long.

In the mirror, they looked like they were playing two completely different concerts—Sanji all dark and suave, and Zoro all mean and dangerous with his three earrings, three drum sticks, and a bandana tied tight around his bicep. He liked the contrast, though. He liked that they made sense anyway.

“Did you even bother to tend to the moss?” Sanji asked as he continued to look him up and down.

Zoro frowned as he mussed the green mess on top of his head. It was extra fluffy today, humidity not doing him any favors, but it didn’t look bad. “The bandana will cover it,” he began, but the words got caught in his throat when he found Sanji’s gaze angled on his exposed hips.

“Your boxers are showing,” Sanji said after he’d been caught, cheeks growing pink as he met Zoro’s eyes again.

Zoro looked down at where his cargos had slipped, dipping in the front to reveal the band of his boxers and too much of the maroon cotton below. “Belt’s too big,” he mumbled. “Can’t help it.”

“Excuses,” Sanji said as he reached into his pocket for his lighter.

Before Zoro could wrap his head around it, Sanji’s hands were on him, gripping his waist and sending a flurry of heat down his spine. He almost squeaked—almost—but he forgot how to breathe entirely when Sanji undid the leather belt and pulled it tighter.

“Here good?” Sanji asked as he poked the metal contraption into a spot in the leather that didn’t have a notch.

Zoro could only nod.

So Sanji continued, making a decent indent in the leather before looking back up at him again. “Hold it steady.”

They swapped hands. Zoro gripped the belt, happy to have something to gain his bearings, as Sanji dug in his pocket for a metal key. After pulling it out, Sanji locked eyes with Zoro before flicking open his lighter and lighting a flame. His smile was contagious and crazy as heated up the thin metal.

Zoro couldn’t help but copy it.

“Do it.”

And with that, Sanji pierced the hot tool through the leather and made a clean window, blowing on his handy work as he smothered the flame.

Zoro’s entire body shivered at the heat of Sanji’s breath, and every nerve in his body gasped. He had to do a double take to make sure the fire was actually out, brain unable to tell the difference between the pulses of electricity in his gut and the threat of real danger. Zoro wasn’t entirely convinced there was a difference, though.

If Sanji noticed his internal mayhem, he chose to ignore it, opting for buckling Zoro back up and pushing the new slack into one of his front belt loops instead.

He didn’t stop there, either. Sanji’s hand only gravitated to Zoro’s ear, fiddling with his earrings and untangling two out of three of them from each other with light hands that tickled.

Zoro made a sound this time—couldn’t help but gasp and flinch against the fluttery touch as his whole face went red.

Sanji broke into light laughter, eyes widening at the new revelation. “You’re ticklish?” He asked with a lingering hand.

Zoro didn’t bother pushing him away, even though his skin still buzzed from where Sanji had just touched him. “I’m not,” he said, but the words sounded as unconvincing as their truth.

“Right,” Sanji said, huffing in amusement as he slid a finger along his jawline and slipped it underneath his chin. Zoro squirmed around the soft caress, lips twitching as Sanji grazed the skin with a feather-light touch. “Because that wouldn’t be very punk rock of you.”

Somehow, Zoro burned impossibly brighter. He was used to Sanji touching him by now, but not like this. Not in the ways that could push them past the point of no return.

But Sanji seemed hellbent on taking them there, gripping Zoro’s chin between his thumb with a taunting grin that would’ve gotten anybody else killed. “Don’t mess up out there,” he teased as their eyes met. “Or I’ll kick the shit out of you.”

The words barely registered. Zoro felt wobbly despite Sanji’s firm hold. He begged himself to hold Sanji’s gaze despite the loud rattling of his heartbeat in his ears, but eventually the pull of Sanji’s lips won.

He was close enough to—

“Is this all it takes to shut you up?” Sanji asked, disbelieving in a way that was far too honest. His tone was light. His eyes were soft. And they flickered carefully over Zoro’s lips as well.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Sanji wasn’t supposed to… they definitely shouldn’t…

And yet.

Sanji leaned in. Zoro’s heart swelled.

And the door to the dressing room swung open.

“Guys!” Luffy yelled, barging in as Sanji and Zoro scrambled to place enough platonic distance between them. “We’re on deck in five! Isn’t that crazy? We’re finally here! Everything’s about to change…”

They both let Luffy’s excited rambling ease the tension between them. Zoro finally caught his breath as Sanji went back to fiddling with his own clothes, turning the chemistry between them into a low thrum instead of raging flame. Flickering glances kept it alive, though—shy eyes, pink cheeks, and smiles with meanings only the two could decipher.

“Show time!” Luffy yelled as soon as a stagehand knocked on the door.

And Sanji came alive.

He always did, up onstage. His posture changed. His confidence soared. And he became someone else.

Zoro never got tired of watching him. He should’ve spent more time focusing on the crowd tonight—the biggest and most enthusiastic audience they’d performed for yet—but he couldn’t. Not when Sanji was commanding the stage from his left like he belonged.

Sanji liked to play his guitar just below his belt, drawing attention to his pretty hands and the shift of his hips when he walked with Zoro’s rhythm. He treated his instrument like a lover, picking those strings with a passionate knowingness, and cradling its neck as the chords whined and came undone. It was mesmerizing, and infuriating, and hot.

Zoro loved it.

He loved when Sanji tossed his head back mid-song. Loved when he propped his leg up on his amp and strummed with precision, sweat dripping down his neck and hair sticking to his forehead. He loved when Sanji ran his fingers through his hair, and when he winked at the crowd, and when he got a little flirty with the fans near the barricade, kissing their hands and keeping dirty eye-contact as he riffed on his guitar—just to see them squeal. And he loved when Sanji got a moment to pause, catching his breath with parted lips, and couldn’t resist the urge to pull out his ear-piece. Every time he got a glimpse of how loud the crowd roared, he always smiled from ear to ear.

Fuck. Zoro loved it.

But his favorite moment of every show, without fail, was the last song of the night—a cover song that Sanji backed Nami on with vocals. Usually Usopp took most of the vocal harmonies, but the scratchy, rawness of Sanji’s voice suited this one.

It was their song. Notably, for the ending that never failed to drive the crowd wild.

“C’mon Sanji,” Nami purred into the microphone. She stood on one side of the stage while Sanji graced the other, both grinning at each other as whistles from the crowd spurred them forward. The lights were bright. So bright, Zoro couldn’t make out where the audience began and where it ended. It was much easier to focus on Sanji, who looked like a dream doused in blue light.

At her words, the song slowed.

Luffy finished his chord, Usopp cut his strumming, and Zoro brought his drumming down to a slow thump of his bass—a heartbeat.

Catching his breath, Zoro kept his hands steady and his eyes locked on Sanji.

Then, like clockwork, one sweet, lustful note rang from Sanji’s guitar and sliced through the anticipation in the air.

Zoro matched him, speeding up the tempo at his lead.

And then Sanji took his first, sauntering step toward the middle of the stage.

He earned squeals with each slow lurch, and Nami met him with a dance of her own, gliding with a sway of her hips to Sanji’s pining riff and Zoro’s eager drumming.

Nami and Sanji met in the middle.

And then Sanji got down on his knees.

Zoro’s pulse raced as Sanji played at Nami’s feet, watching as those blue eyes looked up at her and those teasing, tempting lips smirked at the rush of whistles from the crowd. He couldn’t look anywhere else. He couldn’t pretend to hide how much he envied Nami right now either, even though it was all just a part of the show.

Whatever.

It might’ve been their song. But it was Zoro and Sanji’s duet.

So when Sanji’s notes swam, Zoro dove. And when his chords wavered, Zoro’s cymbals crashed. They played like two people who didn’t improvise this outro every time they played it, but Zoro knew Sanji like the back of his hand, anticipating his moves before he managed to make them.

Well, most of the time.

Because tonight, he hadn’t anticipated Sanji to accentuate his last note with a turn toward Zoro, an even wider smirk, and a wink.

It tripped him up so bad, Zoro missed the last beat.

And Zoro didn’t usually miss.

The crowd cheered too loud to notice, applause hitting his ears like one continuous knock—but the Strawhats definitely caught it. Luffy even ran over to inspect him as he stood up from his drums.

“You good?” Luffy mouthed over the commotion, concerned rather than disappointed. He held out his hand for Zoro to take, and gave it a reassuring squeeze once Zoro accepted the help off of his platform.

Zoro grunted once his feet hit the stage. “Sorry.”

“Ew,” Luffy said, waving away the sentiment with his free hand as he used the other to tug Zoro forward for bows. They picked up Usopp along the way before joining Sanji and Nami at the front, hands interlocked with a bond that only they shared.

The applause was still going strong, and the sea of people was even more overwhelming up close. It was enough to choke Zoro up. Adrenaline was probably the only thing keeping him upright.

“My name’s Luffy!” Their leader yelled to the audience, starting their call off.

Zoro’s chest swelled with pride. “Zoro,” he rasped.

“Nami!”

“U-Usopp!”

Sanji leaned forward just enough to catch Zoro’s eye in their lineup.

Another pulse of electricity ran through him.

“Sanji.”

“And we’re the strawhats!” Luffy announced as they raised their conjoined hands in the air.

They all took a bow.

And then another.

And another, crowd still unrelenting, until an angry voice in their ear piece threatened to kick them off.

Laughing, The Strawhats tumbled back into the wings, hand-in-hand with wide smiles on their faces. Luffy was yelling something intangible, Usopp’s hand was still shaking at Zoro’s side, and Nami was crying—full body sobs, although she’d never looked happier.

Zoro didn’t get his peek at Sanji until all of their commotion led them backstage, and the narrow hallways tore the band’s hands apart. He purposefully hung back until Sanji came around the corner.

And the sight stopped him in his tracks.

Because Sanji was a wreck. A beautiful one. He looked like he’d just gotten out of a car crash, steps staggered and eyes bewildered as if he didn’t know where he was.

Until his eyes locked with Zoro.

Sanji rushed forward. Zoro met him in the middle. They stood suspended in time, commotion from the crowd growing distant and the empty darkness of backstage creating their own little bubble.

“You messed up,” Sanji began.

But Zoro was too hyped up on adrenaline and magic to bother wasting anymore time.

“Shh,” he hushed before eliminating the space between them, cupping Sanji’s face, and crashing their lips together.

The world fell away.

There was just Sanji’s lips and the belonging that coursed through them. The rush made Zoro’s knees weak and warmth spread through him as soon as Sanji kissed back. They were eager and sloppy—teeth clicking together and tongues clashing. But it was perfect. It was everything.

They fell into each other. Maybe it was the exhaustion of the show or the exhaustion of all the feelings they’d been hiding for too long, but it forced them onto the ground in a heap of their own passion. Still, they kissed even through the impact and the resounding giggles of the ridiculousness of it all.

Zoro’s hands tangled in Sanji’s hair and Sanji’s legs got tangled in Zoro’s. The position was awkward, Sanji half-straddling him with one leg over his hip and the other hooked underneath his thigh, but it couldn’t make them stop. Sanji’s lips were too addicting. Too soft. Too perfect.

He loved them.

He loved Sanji.

Fuck.

Everything was about to change.

Fuck, fuck, fuck—

“Moss,” Sanji said, laughing as he pulled away for breath.

Zoro froze, hoping everything he felt wasn’t too obvious. Because if Sanji knew that Zoro… if he knew the truth, he was going to run.

But that didn’t happen. Not tonight, anyway.

Sanji only smiled at him. “I’m gonna kick your ass so hard tonight.”

“That was the beginning of it all,” Zoro says, ears burning as he catches a glimpse of the jaw drops from some of the documentary crew. “Our connection obviously got more intense, but we never really labeled it, so there was nothing to tell.”

This earns him another eye roll from Nami, who looks five seconds away from interrupting with her own account. Too bad this isn’t her story.

“We didn’t exactly hide it either, though,” Zoro adds for her benefit. “Maybe we were a little more touchy in band meetings. Maybe we showed up places together despite being invited separately. Maybe the crew caught one of us coming out of the other’s motel room more than once when we were on the road… but we were still us.”

Brook blinks at him before making a show of dropping the note cards. They flutter to the ground as he shakes his head in disbelief. “I can’t say I expected the interview to take this turn,” he says with a chuckle. “But I’m loving it.”

Zoro shrugs. “Probably better this way, since that idiot isn’t here to tell his story.”

Brook seems to know better than to ask where Sanji is, thankfully, and crosses one leg over the other. “But he’d probably want you to have the chance to tell your own story, too.”

“The music speaks for itself,” Zoro says, unable to stop himself from taking the bait as the documentary crew smile with exasperated expressions. “But seriously. Everything you need to know about me is in everything I’ve ever written, and everything else about me is simple:

“I want to be the world’s greatest drummer and I’m still working towards it. I don’t measure that in awards—that kind of thinking is for elitist assholes who care more about the noise than trying to make good music out of it. For me, it’s about learning and mastering every style until I can define my own genre.”

Brook humors him with a raise of his hand, and Zoro indulges him with an amused nod. “What’s the last style you learned?”

“Samba,” Zoro answers around a grin. “Just came back after training in Brazil for 6 months. Luffy ended up joining me down there on my last week, actually.”

“Training?” Brook asks, raising an eyebrow. “Luffy captioned those photos as a ‘bro-trip.’”

Zoro smacks his hand over his face before fully eyeing Nami off-camera. Luffy always posts shit online without his permission. “Do I want to know?”

Nami grins at him before whispering something to the director. They exchange a few words before Nami pulls out her phone, taps her acrylic nails across the screen, and walks over to Zoro with the evidence.

“The back of your head is in most of them,” she says, snickering as she leans over his shoulder to show off Luffy’s Instagram feed and his millions of followers. The post has way too many slides, most of them featuring pictures of food, and Zoro is somehow in each one. Sometimes his tattoo sleeve gives him away in a scenery shot from their hike, and sometimes his earrings dangle in the corner of Luffy’s passenger-seat selfies.

“What is the point of that?” Zoro huffs, but he can’t help but smile at Luffy’s insistence in including him.

“Oh, this one’s cute,” Nami admits as she swipes to the photo on the last slide. In this one, Luffy and Zoro are standing at the top of Corcovado Mountain with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. Their grins are as big as the Christ the Redeemer statue.

Zoro can’t help but smile all over again. It was the first time someone had ever spotted Zoro and Luffy together, and asked to take a picture for them. The band being on hiatus for so long, and Zoro’s hair reverting back to its natural color, helped him get bombarded less, but the two could still rarely go out together without being stopped. It was a cool change of pace.

“And the comments are even better,” Nami says before biting her lip.

One tap into the comment section immediately wipes the smile off of Zoro’s face.

“Why the fuck is everyone calling me ‘grandpa?’”

Nami tosses her head back in a cackle as Zoro snatches the phone out of her hand. Below the comments from all of Luffy’s celebrity friends are fans gushing about ‘how nice it is to see Grandpa out and about.’

Zoro snaps his head up to glare at Brook. “Do you know about this?”

Brook raises his hands up in the defense, but his attempt at hiding his laughter says otherwise.

“You were the first to hit your 30s!” Nami says in between her laughter. “That’s what happens when you’re the oldest.”

“I’ve only got a few months on Sanji!”

“The antenna of your flip phone is literally peeking out of your pocket in that photo,” Nami points out.

Zoro sinks further into his seat. “I don’t like distractions when I’m training,” he grumbles.

“And you never post on social media—”

“Because I’m always training!” Zoro emphasizes.

Before Nami can retort, the director gets their attention with a signal behind the camera.

“Sorry,” they both mumble, sending a fresh wave of chuckles through the documentary crew as Nami scurries back out of the frame with her phone.

Brook smiles at Zoro fondly. “You’ve always centered drumming as your first passion in interviews and press,” he notes, getting right back to the point. “But how does the songwriting fit? Did you have the same goal of being the best?”

Zoro takes a second to consider the question. “Drumming is my dream. Songwriting is my thing,” he answers, nodding once the words feel right coming out of his mouth. “It’s not the same and I don’t put the same pressure on my writing that I do on my drumming. Less depends on its success, and that’s probably why I like it so much. It started as a way to express myself and I just happened to be good at it.”

“It started that way,” Brook repeats. “So what did it become?”

Oh, this guy is good.

“A lifeline?” Zoro says, sighing around the word. “Oxygen? I don’t know. I tried to quit writing after everything went down with the band and all that did was serve as a way to punish myself. I don’t feel like me when I’m not writing.”

Brook nods. “So your friends roped you back into it?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Zoro says, chuckling. “Usopp sold me on a sob story about how he needed help with his label and I was the only one he could trust to spitball song ideas with—which was a lie. But it only took one studio session to make me remember how much I missed it.”

“Sounds about right,” Brook says knowingly.

“And then when Nami’s debut solo album flopped—“

Nami flips him off. Zoro gives it right back.

“I knew I was going to have to be the one to help her join the rest of us in Grammy land,” Zoro continues with a cheeky smile. “And those writing sessions inspired solo writing sessions, and then Luffy being Luffy convinced me to shop them around… and now we’re here.”

Brook gestures toward him with both hands. “Here—a three time Grammy Award winner, a world renowned drummer, and a critically acclaimed songwriter with his own brand of whiskey.”

“You know what they say, gotta diversify that portfolio,” Zoro says, snorting.

“Which you use to fund your philanthropic efforts?” Brook hints.

Zoro can’t help himself. “Giving back is very pop punk,” he mocks.

A few people huff fondly at his joke, but Zoro knows Sanji would laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world.

“Hey,” Brook says through a chuckle. “Getting arrested at protests is pretty punk rock.”

Zoro grins at the memories. Nothing ever came close to the satisfying crack of punching a bigot’s face in at 7 o’clock in the morning.

“That’s everything I’ve been up to in the last five years,” he says with finality.

Brook considers this with a tilt of his head. “Then let’s go back a few.”

To Sanji. To the fallout. To the end.

Zoro grips onto the arms of his chair.

“You and Sanji,” Brook begins again. “And this new connection. What was it like in the beginning?”

Zoro relaxes, but only slightly.

“Good,” he answers honestly. “When it was good, it was good.”

Zoro woke up to whiffs of lemon shampoo, and stray strands of gold that tickled his face. He didn’t bother opening his eyes. The weight of Sanji in his arms was the only thing worth focusing on. That, and the slow crackle of his sleeping breath that hit Zoro’s bare chest in a steady rhythm.

He pulled Sanji impossibly closer, burying his nose further into that mop of hair. The room was cold but they were both warm. Warm like the blooming spring outside of his hotel window, and warm like the busy song of birds chirping.

If he kept his eyes closed, he could pretend they didn’t have any responsibilities for the day. He could pretend that Sanji crawling into his bed last night, fully clothed, was a normal occurrence and not something he had to cling onto with desperate hands. He could pretend that he didn’t want more, and that this was enough.

He could pretend that he was enough to stop Sanji from searching for more.

“Are you trying to suffocate me?” Sanji rasped against his chest, putting an end to Zoro’s delusions. His claws found Zoro’s back and scratched, earning a loud hiss.

“Do you have to be so fucking violent?” Zoro seethed as he loosened his grip from around Sanji’s waist.

Sanji pulled back to look up at him, unimpressed. “Do you have to be so clingy?”

Zoro’s playful expression faltered. It was too early in the morning to hide behind his usual protective stoicness.

“In bed,” Sanji added as he fully untangled himself from Zoro’s grasp. The linens shuffled underneath the weight shift, comforter sliding down far enough to reveal the way Zoro’s only uncut t-shirt hung loose on Sanji’s body and slipped off of his shoulder. He rubbed at his eyes as he sat up. “It’s like you're auditioning to be my weighted blanket.”

“You came to my room,” Zoro mumbled as he eyed Sanji’s messy hair. His bed was the only other place Sanji let it down.

Sanji turned toward him with a small smile, and his eyes softened. “Because I like the face you make when I piss you off in the mornings,” he said, tone too smooth not to forgive. “You get all pouty.”

“I’m not pouting,” Zoro lied.

With a roll of his eyes, Sanji leaned down to capture Zoro’s poked out bottom lip in between his own. “You’re pouting,” he mumbled after pulling away.

Zoro was quick to chase after him, sitting up so that he could meet him with a proper kiss. He never got sick of the butterflies in his stomach whenever their lips met. “Good morning,” Zoro hummed after he got his fill, words buzzing with a love he wasn’t sure he could keep hiding.

“It is,” Sanji said, eyes flickering between Zoro’s gaze and his lips again. “Damn,” he whispered before covering it up with another peck. “You taste like my favorite song.”

And then they were kissing… again. Over and over, like a record kept on repeat. Sanji found his way onto Zoro’s lap and Zoro’s hands found their way into Sanji’s hair, kisses soft and light like the morning sun.

Zoro wasn’t sure how he ever lived a life without Sanji’s lips. He wasn’t sure if he could ever go back.

“Someone’s gonna feel that way about our songs,” Zoro said a little too earnestly, catching his breath as he pulled away to drum a pattern on Sanji’s clothed thighs.

Sanji’s eyes lit up as he traced the beginnings of the Sakura tattoo sleeve on Zoro’s bicep. “Almost makes all the pain worth it,” he said quietly.

All of the album’s songs were finally done—including Sanji’s. “Prison Escape.’ They’d made the song cyclical, like a never ending loop, and sometimes it made even Zoro forget where it began and where it ended. The process had been just as hard as it’d been a few years ago, but this time they had this. Them. The thing that made shedding clothes feel like shedding skin, and made a ticking metronome sound like a beating heat.

“What time do we—”

“Eleven,” Sanji said, chuckling. “And the studio isn’t far. So we might have time to—”

Zoro pursed his lips. “You can’t force me to go sight-seeing with you.”

“We’re in New York City,” Sanji said, accentuating his point with a poke at Zoro’s chest. “How are you okay with wasting time in bed?”

Wasting time? Zoro knew about wasting time, and this wasn’t it.

Zoro reached up to tuck Sanji’s hair behind his ear. “City’s overrated.” But he’d seen how Sanji’s face lit up as soon as they’d stepped out of Penn Station, and he saw the way he eyed the chaos and the smog like a potential alibi. If their studio session went well today, and their album sales went even better, they’d probably all end up moving here. Zoro didn’t care for the theatrics of this place, but he wouldn’t mind following Sanji anywhere if it meant he could get him to settle down.

“Makes sense you’d rather be in nature with your brethren,” Sanji sneered, eyes flickering up to Zoro’s freshly-dyed hair. “You’re gonna go bald if you plan on keeping this up forever.”

Zoro shrugged. “You’ve got enough hair for the both of us.”

“For now,” Sanji said. “I’m gonna cut it one day.”

Zoro raised an eyebrow, remembering Sanji’s previous addiction to kitchen scissors.

“I’m gonna get it cut,” Sanji said as he slapped Zoro’s shoulder. “When the good days out number the bad days. I’m gonna get it cut.”

It was hard to imagine Sanji without the mane he’d been growing, but Zoro was convinced he could make even a hat with a ball strapped on top of it look good. He just kept getting more handsome. More sexy. More gorgeous.

“Looking forward to it,” Zoro mumbled as he twirled a strand of it around his finger.

Sanji bit his lip. “You won’t miss it?”

“I might miss pulling on it,” Zoro said slyly, earning a slap to the face that tickled more than stung. “But I’ll be alright,” he said through laughter.

A chime from Sanji’s cellphone cut him off before he could retort.

Sanji sent Zoro a death glare before scrambling off of his lap—and not without jamming his foot into Zoro’s abdomen for good measure.

He got to the nightstand on the last ring and picked up his cellphone with a sigh, eyebrows immediately furrowing.

“Usopp, calm down,” Sanji said slowly. He sent Zoro a concerned glance as he rounded the bed, looking for his slippers.

Zoro pointed toward the radiator and got a gracious smile in return.

“You don’t need your wristband to play well,” Sanji insisted as he shrugged his feet into blue cotton. “No, that’s bullshit and you know it.”

Something Usopp said made Sanji stop in his tracks.

“If you ever say that again—” Sanji said, voice wavering as his shoulders hitched.

Concern swelled up in Zoro’s own chest. A tight tension filled the room.

“You’re the most creative person I know,” Sanji said incredulously. “You have to stop getting in your own damn way!”

This again.

Zoro’s heartbeat thumped loud in his ears. Usopp hadn’t had one of these spirals in a while, not since the last time the stakes had gotten raised. Being in the city… recording their album… they should’ve seen this coming.

“I’m coming over,” Sanji barked before hanging up.

Zoro swung his leg out of the bed. “Do you need me to—”

“He needs talking down,” Sanji said, shaking his head. “The truth would just fall on deaf ears.”

“But he’s—”

“I’ll get him to that studio, even if I have to drag his ass,” Sanji promised as he pulled his hair back with a scrunchy. “If you don’t hear from me in an hour can you—”

“Is it already packed?” Zoro asked, mind already envisioning Sanji’s guitar case and his practice bag.

Sanji nodded, and then furrowed his eyebrows. “Shit, I guess I forgot something too. I might need—”

“I packed extra strings,” Zoro said as he stood up and crossed the space between them. When Sanji just stared, Zoro shrugged. “Noticed you needed them.”

Sanji huffed in amusement. “God, I love you,” he mumbled before pressing a swift kiss against Zoro’s lips, and spinning on his heel toward the door.

Time stopped.

Zoro’s world stopped.

His ears rang and his vision blurred and his pulse rattled in his chest.

He didn’t think Sanji would ever say it. He didn’t think he’d ever get a chance to say it either, not without pushing him away.

Sanji loved him, and it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

Fuck. His heart was doing backflips.

He didn’t have to hide it anymore. All the ways he wanted Sanji and all of the plans he’d already made with him in mind. He could be enough for him. They could really do this.

“Sanji,” Zoro called, voice raspy and feet wobbly as Sanji paused in his tracks, hand already on the door handle.

The sound of his name got Sanji to turn around in surprise, but he looked otherwise unfazed. “You look like you’re about to pass out,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows as he took a step closer. “Look, I’m sure it’ll be okay—”

Zoro shook his head, cheeks and ears burning hot. He searched his brain for words but couldn’t come up with any—at least none as important as the three glaring ones.

Fuck. Maybe Sanji hadn’t meant them. Maybe it was just a spur of the moment blip.

Sanji rushed forward, blue eyes starting to shimmer like alarms. “Zoro?” he asked, voice cracking around his name.

Zoro’s throat grew tight. Fuck. He wasn’t going to cry about this, was he?

Tears answered for him, eyes swelling with salt that burned.

This was killing him more than he’d thought.

Sanji’s thumbs found Zoro’s cheeks and swiped away the tears. “What’d I say?” Sanji asked frantically, searching Zoro’s eyes for an answer until he seemed to find it.

The realization made his eyes go wide.

“Shit,” he cussed, snatching his touch from Zoro like he was poison.

Zoro squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his hands into fists. For once, he wished that he could be happy about something without it being taken away.

“Moss…”

Zoro shook his head again, this time harder. Sanji needed to talk down Usopp. Sanji didn’t need Zoro’s love.

“I’m fine,” he barely managed, words floating at a whisper. He took a step back and ducked his head down until his emotions evaded him. “Usopp isn’t, though.”

“Neither of you have a reason to be upset,” Sanji said as he grew closer, raising Zoro’s chin up with his finger. “Look at me.”

Slowly, Zoro peeled his eyes open through the sting of his emotions. And Sanji greeted him with scared, watery eyes.

“I meant it,” he blurted out. “I love you just as much as I hate you and I always have.”

The phrase sank in.

And it was so ridiculous that it made Zoro laugh.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Sanji yelled as Zoro doubled over in a relieved, chaotic cackle. “I’m leaving. I hate you—”

Zoro tugged at his shirt to get him to stay, and tried his best to collect himself.

“Sanji,” he breathed out, straightening himself up so he could properly look him in the eyes. “I love you more than song.”

And he always would.

Brook teeters at the edge of his seat, blinking back tears. “How romantic,” he says wistfully.

Zoro chooses to ignore the sniffles in the room as he squirms in his seat. He can’t make eye contact with Nami either, face flushing too hot to risk it.

“Honeymoon phase didn’t last too long,” he says bitterly. “We dropped the album in December, later that year, and then everything went to shit.”

“You guys blew up,” Brook supplements before adding, “the band blew up, I mean.”

Zoro cracks a small smile at the joke, nodding. “Despite all that fantasizing about our dreams, we were completely unprepared to handle them when they actually came true. One day we were nobodies and the next day we were superstars. We suddenly had all of this access, and everyone suddenly had access to us.”

Brook settles back into his seat with a serious expression. “Like when Sanji started to make headlines.”

A shiver runs down Zoro’s spine.

He turns to Nami, dry-swallowing as her expression hardens and her arms fall to her sides.

This will never be their story to tell—so Zoro isn’t going to tell it. Not all of it, anyway, even though Sanji gave them the okay.

He grounds himself with a breath. “It took me 4 years to learn about Sanji’s past,” he says carefully. “And even then, it was through the music. I didn’t need to know all the details. I felt them, and somehow that understanding was even deeper.

“In contrast, it only took 2 months for the world to find out about Sanji’s past,” Zoro says through clenched teeth. “And another week after that for that prick to find him.”

He closes his eyes, flinching at the memories.

“I don’t know what that man said or did to our Sanji. But after that day, he changed.”

Zoro woke up in the middle of the night to an empty bed and the chirp of his ringtone—both reserved for Sanji.

But Sanji rarely stayed the night anymore, and he hardly ever called.

Fumbling, Zoro knocked over the choir of beer bottles on his night stand as he reached blindly for his cellphone. His fingers gripped around the device and answered the call on the last note.

“Mmm?” Zoro grunted in greeting, head still face down in the pillows of his lonely bed, and his lonelier apartment, as he held his phone to his ear.

“Mossy,” Sanji’s voice slurred with affection.

The only time he ever heard that nickname anymore was when Sanji got too drunk to pretend he meant nothing to him. Otherwise, he did a hell of a good job at keeping up the facade.

“M’m at the Snake Lounge,” he said amongst the chatter of a crowd. “These pretty women that brought me here… they’re working with the paparazzi—” a hiccup cut through his speech “—and I had a little too much to drink.”

Zoro’s grasp on his phone tightened as his jaw clenched, teeth grinding together hard enough to squeak. “I guess I’m the only person you know how to reject.”

Silence crackled on the other line.

And then came a small voice.

“I’m sorry,” Sanji stammered. “I hate you. I miss you. Can you get me out of here?”

Zoro’s heart betrayed him. It always did, when it came to Sanji.

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get there,” he mumbled, caving once Sanji’s words soothed his frustration and made his stomach flutter. “And get some water in your system.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Sanji said, words slipping and sliding. “Moss for brains.”

Zoro’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “See you soon, curls.”

He waited until Sanji hung up before flipping his phone shut, lifting his head, and squinting at the glowing analog numbers from his alarm clock on the nightstand.

2:27 a.m.

This wasn’t the latest one of Sanji’s calls but it was the 3rd one this month—which would have been more annoying if the other alternative didn’t end in seeing ‘Party boy Sanji’ plastered on another tabloid for the 3rd time this week.

Groaning, Zoro rolled out of bed and fumbled for his things in the dark. City summer heat was unbearable, even overnight, but a black hoodie and a blue beanie were his best shots at avoiding recognition these days. He shrugged on the items before grabbing his keys, maneuvering through the rest of his place, and exiting through the front door.

An empty hallway greeted him with a hum.

Sanji had once described that noise as contemplative and savory, but Zoro just thought the buzz was tired.

All he ever heard was that constant, hiccuping drone. It followed him into interviews and hung over his shoulder during photoshoots. It replaced the music in his head and the rhythm in his heart, and it made all the fame sound like noise. Never-ending. Never-meaningful. Never-enough.

But he’d rather be numb than hurting.

The thought of Sanji’s pain spurred his footsteps down the hall and toward the stairs. They’d found out the same time as the world did:

Sanji had been smoking, and partying, and drinking, and running ever since. All attempts to talk went nowhere. It just made him shut down and made him spiral.

He wasn’t showing up to band meetings. He wasn’t showing up to songwriting sessions. And he wasn’t showing up at Zoro’s door.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was that time he went to visit Sanji and ran onto Judge on the way out.

Of course, Sanji didn’t want to talk about it.

Once down in the lobby, Zoro nodded toward the doorman at the front desk and fought embarrassment as the man stood up to lead him toward the back entrance he exited through everyday.

He called a taxi, rested his head on the window as they drove past busy streets, and then asked to get out a block earlier to avoid the paparazzi. From there, all Zoro had to do was flash his ID to the bouncer and step inside.

It didn't take long to find Sanji.

He was sitting in a corner booth, seats padded with brown leather to compliment sage green walls and the renaissance paintings that hung from them. Sanji had his head dropped, staring at a gold rimmed wine class full of clear liquid. His face was shrouded by a single candle that lit shadows across his skin and illuminated his jewelry—silver rings on his fingers and chains that dangled from his neck. He was caught in thought, lips frowned, and eyes far away with his shirt half undone. Devastation and hopelessness swallowed him whole.

But he still looked like art.

Zoro swallowed his longing before making his way toward the wreck. But as soon he took his first step forward, Sanji snapped his gaze toward Zoro, as if he could hear the crunch of his combat boots over the music and the crowd. Zoro wouldn’t put it past him either. He was sure he could recognize the sound of Sanji’s breath over a silent phone line.

“There’s my drummer boy,” Sanji said, eyes lighting up once Zoro slipped into the other side of the booth. He seemed a bit more put together than he had over the phone, but not by much.

Sanji offered his hand, but Zoro reached across the table for his glass instead and took a sip.

Water.

Zoro relaxed slightly.

“Do you have to look at me like that?” Sanji slurred, eyes looking at and past Zoro at the same time.

“Like what?” Zoro asked once he set the glass back down onto the table.

Sanji wrinkled his nose up at him. “Like you wanna ask if I’m okay.”

“Trust me, I know better,” Zoro mumbled as he pushed the glass back toward him. “Finish this, then we’ll go.”

Sanji shook his head slowly. “If you knew better, you wouldn’t be here.”

The words carved themselves into Zoro’s chest. He gritted his teeth against the sting. “And yet,” he said bitterly.

“Here you are,” Sanji said before breaking into sad, bone-chilling giggles. “Trying to save me. Trying to fix me.”

This again.

It always went back to this.

Zoro leaned forward, pointing an accusatory finger. “You called me!”

“Because I wanted to see you,” Sanji whined. “And I wanted you to see me. But you don’t, anymore. You just see… you just see a burden.”

No. Sanji saw Zoro’s love as a burden—but Sanji wasn’t sober enough to have that conversation.

“You’re mad at me,” Sanji said quietly. He rested his elbows on the table and leaned in, squinting those hazy blue eyes. “I’ve never seen you this mad at me.”

Zoro clenched his jaw. “Please, just drink the water—”

“C’mon, admit it,” Sanji said, words wobbling. “I deserve it. I’m mad at me too.”

Zoro stood from his seat.

“I know I’m hurting you,” Sanji mumbled, head tilting down. “I’m not trying to. I don’t want to. I don’t know how to stop causing trouble—”

The awareness somehow made it hurt worse.

“Sanji,” Zoro said harshly, getting those far away eyes to focus on him. “I’m not doing this with you right now.” Not here, too drunk and too monitored to be honest.

Sanji gestured toward him with a loose hand. “See. You’re not even listening. You’re too busy worrying about me.”

It was the worst possible moment to look away, but Zoro couldn’t help but turn to the group of women whispering to a man in all black nearby. The glint of his camera lens against the light was the only motivation Zoro needed to step out of the booth, grab Sanji’s wrist, and pull him upright. Sanji stumbled out of the booth, but Zoro kept him steady with a hand around his waist.

He hadn’t touched him in so long. The weeks felt like years.

“Where’s the—”

Sanji looked up at him with flushed cheeks and pointed weakly toward the back entrance.

Of course he felt it too. The thing that kept pulling them together. The thing that made all of the pain worth it.

Zoro ignored the buzz in his own chest and put all of his focus into the task at hand. It didn’t matter that having Sanji back in his arms made him feel alive again, and it didn’t matter that his lips still looked tempting, even when the words coming out of them cut deep like a knife.

“Your place or mine?” Sanji mumbled as Zoro got them out of the main club area and down a narrow hallway, past the bathrooms. Bass and synths faded into empty thumps and darkness encroached, leaving a trail of flashing lights in the distance.

Zoro slung Sanji’s arm over his neck as they stumbled, and pulled him closer by the waist. “You’re drunk.” They passed by the kitchens before turning a corner. A grey, metal door stood at the end of the hall. Zoro picked up the pace.

“And you’re hot when you’re mad,” Sanji said with a chuckle. “Too bad it’s ‘cause of me.”

Zoro ignored him. Just a few more steps and they could get far enough away from this place to call a taxi, and then—

“Fight me instead, then,” Sanji insisted. “C’mon, you know you wanna.”

Zoro stopped in his tracks, right in front of their escape hatch. His pulse raced as he turned to get a good look at Sanji, eyebrows furrowed with betrayal.

“Don’t do that,” he said, seething. “I’m not gonna let you turn my love into a punishment.”

Sanji frowned. “See. I keep making you mad. I deserve it.”

Zoro pressed his lips into a straight line before shoving open the back door.

The roar of a headline-hungry crowd ambushed them. Zoro and Sanji winced against a brigade of flashing lights as they tried to push their way through, but they couldn’t see a thing. Just bodies. Just pulses of light. Just each other.

“Fight me!” Sanji yelled above the roar, eyes locked onto Zoro’s above the chaos.

Zoro lost his grip as paparazzi got between them, splitting them apart on two sides of the small courtyard. Most of the nuisances gravitated toward Sanji, pushing him into a corner, but Sanji didn’t seem to care. He only cared about Zoro, pushing and shoving to get closer despite the resistance. Photographers clawed at him, pulling at his shirt and asking for comments.

Shit.

Less guarded, Zoro searched around for the exit—a gate that let out into an alleyway, and then one long block.

“Please!” Sanji’s voice rang out, loud and clear above everything else. “Hurt me!”

That was it.

Zoro snapped.

He pushed his way over to Sanji, shoved aside the aggressive idiot waving a camera in front of Sanji’s face, cocked his fist, and delivered one satisfying punch.

A body fell to the ground.

Everyone went silent.

Sanji looked between Zoro and the crumbled up photographer on the ground, who had his hand covering up his surely broken nose. Groaning, Sanji bent down. “That should’ve been me!” He yelled in his face before kicking him in the ribs.

And the flashes started up again.

Having had enough of this, Zoro picked Sanji up and tossed him over his shoulder. His fist ached but not as much as his heart. Not as much as Sanji’s yelling, or his pain, or his insistence on self-revenge.

He got a tight grip on Sanji and ran for it, through the gate and down the empty, foggy alleyway. He turned right once the alleyway gave way to the street, and didn’t stop running until he was sure they were safe—no following footsteps or drifting eyes. He was so caught up in his head, so caught up on the adrenaline, that he didn’t notice Sanji’s sniffles until Zoro turned down another quiet alleyway and the city whine turned into dangerous silence.

“I’m sorry,” Sanji mumbled as Zoro set him down.

One step back revealed defeated, red eyes and quivering, lonely lips.

Sanji pressed his back up against the wall and knocked his head into the brick. “I’m just trouble,” he said shakily. “I’m so sorry.”

Zoro just needed a minute to catch his breath. A minute to—

“I keep hurting you,” Sanji choked out as he reached for Zoro’s bruised knuckles. He ran his fingers over the tender skin, and Zoro hissed. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that I’m doing this to you,” he said with fresh tears rolling down his face. “I try to leave you alone and I can’t even do that right. I’m so fucking selfish—“

“You know what?” Zoro snapped, cutting him off with a huff. He couldn’t take this anymore. If Sanji wanted a fight, he was gonna get one. “I am mad.”

Sanji’s mouth shut. He raised his head to eye him, blinking in surprise.

Stepping back, Zoro shook out his hands and closed his eyes. Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he started to pace the small space, back and forth. Steady. Like a strong, stable rhythm.

“I’m mad at you,” he said again, hating how true it was. Hating how it felt on his tongue. Hating how good it felt to say it. “I’m mad at you for pulling away every time I ask if you’re okay. And I’m mad at you for thinking that I want to fix you every time I try to help you. You make my care feel like judgment and you make my worrying feel overbearing…”

He came to a stop, opening his eyes to meet Sanji’s guilty ones. “And it makes me feel like shit,” he admitted, words crashing like cymbals. “Fuck, every time you run, it makes me feel like nothing. Like I’m not good enough for you, and I never will be.”

A sob tumbled off of Sanji’s lips.

Zoro closed his eyes again. It was too much. The noise did something awful to his stomach and the look on Sanji’s face was enough to bring him to his knees. But he needed to say this. They were never going to be able to move forward if he didn’t say this.

Picking up the tempo, Zoro started his pacing all over again. Bass pounded in his head, and a hi-hat kept him grounded.

“Being deprived of you makes the world go monotone,” he choked out. “I can’t sleep unless you’re by my side. Beer is the only thing that gets my mind off of you. I’m irritated and jumpy all the time, ‘cause the whole world is talking about you and I can’t do a thing about it. I can’t even be there for you while you’re reliving some of the worst years of your life, ‘cause everything I say and do is wrong. And I’m always five seconds away from scaring you off.”

Zoro paused again. Took a second to breathe while the beat of his heart escaped him, running fast and loud.

“The more sad I get over you, the more distant you get,” he huffed. “‘Cause you can’t stand to see me like this. You can’t stand to see me punished by all the ways you’re trying to punish yourself. So eventually, you feel so guilty that you come back around. And I make it easy.

“You have the key to my place and the key to my heart and you let yourself in whenever you please. You get into my bed and into my clothes, and make me yours. You kiss me stupid and read my mind and see my soul and remind me why I love you so damn much,” he rushed out, throat growing tight. “And then you remember that that’s the problem—that I love you, and you can’t stand it!”

The words echoed.

Zoro didn’t give them a chance to settle before he locked eyes with Sanji again, rushing forward until he stood right in front of him.

Sanji dropped his head, avoiding his eyes, but Zoro doubted he could see much through his tears anyway.

“And then you run away again,” Zoro said quietly, breath louder than the words. “And you spiral, out all night trying to drown out all the noise you won’t share with me anymore, until it gets bad enough to call me up and I show up in all the ways you hate, and the cycle starts all over again.”

The music goes out. Zoro drops his head.

“We’re killing each other, Sanji.”

And yet.

Shaky hands cupped Zoro’s face and determined thumbs pressed into his jaw, pressing until the tension in Zoro’s face melted into sadness.

Zoro tried not to cave, but Sanji’s touch was magic. It made everything and nothing okay.

“But I love you,” Sanji said brokenly, staring at Zoro with all the words he couldn’t say. It was in desperate, wide eyes and hands that held him like a promise. Eyebrows raised in surprise but jaw set in resignation. “I love you so much.”

Zoro leaned forward to rest his head on Sanji’s shoulder, heart lurching at the words. The tears came as soon as his face hit the cotton of Sanji’s shirt. “I know,” he mumbled.

Sanji wrapped his arms around him, one hand rubbing his back and the other cradling his head as he sniffled. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he cried.

“I know.”

Zoro buried himself deeper into Sanji’s warmth and let himself be coddled. He was so weak for this man. Always would be.

“I’ll do better,” Sanji promised. “I love you more than I hate myself, and I always will.”

And with that, the cycle started all over again.

Zoro isn’t sure what to say.

Especially because Brook is crying in his seat, hands clutched at his chest, as tears roll steadily down his face. “Tell me that wasn’t the end,” he says with a sniffle.

“That wasn’t the end,” Zoro says plainly. “Some things got better. Sanji really did try.”

Brook scoots to the edge of his seat. “But?”

Zoro shrugs, lips unable to fight a frown. “It’s like I said before. Just because you want something to work out doesn’t mean it can. He had a lot going on and not all of it was about me.”

“Even though you’re soulmates?” Brook suggests, smiling hopefully.

Zoro had always found that term corny, but nothing else came close to describing the way he and Sanji completed each other. Too bad their triggers were perfect matches, too.

Brook must see the hesitation on his face, because he chuckles as he leans back into his seat. “Muscians… artists,” he begins with a flick of his wrist. “The connections we make with the world and the people in it, they’re intense. Transcendent. So when you embark on that intimate process of turning your experiences into art with someone who sees life the same way you do, you form this connection few understand. It’s on a different plane.”

The words swell in Zoro’s chest, warm like his memories of Sanji.

“You can call it soulmates, or say you were each other’s muses, or whatever you want to call it,” Brook affirms. “But it sounds like you had something really special.”

This, Zoro can get behind. He smiles to himself before glancing over at Nami, who stands still and naive near the director. He could’ve warned her about what’s about to happen, but it’s way more fun this way.

“We thought so too,” Zoro says, nodding at Brook. “We thought the love we had for each other could survive anything, including our growing list of problems. So because we were young and stupid, and hyped up on nicotine and whiskey and sex, we thought our love was enough to get us to the altar one night in Vegas.”

Brook’s jaw drops and Nami has to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.

Zoro can’t help but laugh, smiling from ear to ear as Brook scrambles to pull it together and the documentary team gawk.

“You two got married?!”

“What if I got another piercing?” Sanji asked through a puff of smoke. He tried his best to angle away, but with no window and no desire to unwrap himself from around Zoro on the dressing room couch, it was a lost cause.

But Zoro didn’t mind. He’d take all of Sanji’s second hand smoke if it meant he’d get to witness him first hand, and not through all the screens he put up.

Not bothering to look up, Zoro sunk deeper into the couch, scooting so that the back of his head could rest farther down Sanji’s bare chest instead of the itchy dress-shirt fabric on his shoulder, and Sanji’s legs could have a break from stretching wide enough to accommodate him. “Industrial would look hot,” he mumbled. “Or a helix.”

Sanji swung a skinny jean covered leg over the back of the couch, giving Zoro more room, and let his other leg drop to the floor. He still kept a free hand around him, thumb caressing the exposed skin of Zoro’s hip, just above the waistline of his shorts. Zoro’s belt and Sanji’s shirt buttons were somewhere on the floor with their combat boots and dress shoes, casualties to their attempts at coming down from post-show adrenaline high. It was either that or fighting—and they’d done enough of that.

“You’d look hot with a tongue piercing,” Sanji hummed. “But you’d just end up hurting yourself with it.”

Zoro wrinkled up his nose as he reached up to twirl some of Sanji’s hair between his fingers. “You don’t know me,” he teased.

Sanji laughed, vibrations shaking throughout both of their bodies. “I’m convinced I knew you before I ever even met you.”

“Alright, Romeo,” Zoro mumbled, but he couldn’t hide the redness singeing itself onto his ears.

Sanji brushed his fingers along the tip of one of his ears, just to prove a point, and laughed louder once Zoro flinched and gasped at the ticklish touch. “God, I never get tired of that.”

Reddening, Zoro sat up out of his embrace and turned to face him with a glare. “I let you get away with too much.”

Sanji’s eyes softened. He smiled, lips quivering around the movement. “You do.”

Zoro didn’t bother denying it. He held out his hand instead, and Sanji took it like a promise. “What about a tattoo?”

Sanji considered it with a tilt of his head, sending messy strands of blond in front of his face. “That feels more like your thing.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Zoro said as he leaned back, pulling Sanji with him. He relished in Sanji’s giggles as Sanji crawled on top of him and rested his head on his bare chest.

Sanji held out his cigarette and Zoro plucked it from him, snubbing it out on the ashtray on top of a nearby coffee table. His hands gravitated to Sanji’s scalp afterward, fingers massaging near the base of his neck and earning an indulgent groan.

“It’d have to be small,” Sanji mumbled as he wrapped a hand around Zoro’s forearm, thumb smoothing lightly over the almost finished sleeve as Zoro worked. Sakura branches transformed into palms, lush and green, before going barren with twiggy oak and snow.

“You wouldn’t want anyone to see it?”

“Only you,” Sanji said without hesitation.

Zoro tried not to melt. “You’re sappy today.”

Sanji picked his head up to look at him. This time, his smile came easy. “I just finished playing the second to last show on our sold out tour with an idiot I love more than life itself. I think I get a pass.”

Zoro copied his smile. “The crowd was—“

“I know.”

“And we played like—“

“I know,” Sanji said, biting his lip in excitement. “When we’re on stage, all of the bullshit just…”

Zoro let his eyes flicker over to the newspaper on the copy table. The Vinsmoke name was once again sprawled across the top—but not because of Sanji. An investigation of Judge’s private life had led to an investigation of his business practices, and those were just as evil.

“I know,” Zoro said, sighing as he smoothed Sanji’s hair down.

Groaning, Sanji laid his head back down. “I need to legalize that name change.”

“We’ve been busy,” Zoro said in his defense. But truthfully, it was unlike him to procrastinate on something so important.

Sanji didn’t say anything for a while. They fell into a content silence, just the sound of their breaths synching while the dressing room whirred with heat.

Then, quietly, Sanji picked his head up with shy eyes. “We’re in Vegas, you know.”

Zoro sucked his teeth. “I made sure I said the right city when I addressed the crowd this time!” Then he paused. “I did, right?”

Laughing, Sanji sat up and moved Zoro’s leg off of the couch so that he could sit properly. “You did, baby.”

Baby.

Zoro’s heart beat wildly in his chest. “What the fuck was that?” he yelled a little too loud.

“You liked that,” Sanji noted, tone teasing but eyes going wide with surprise. He raised a hand out to cup Zoro’s face, but Zoro slapped it away with a displeased grunt.

“We’re in Vegas, so what?” Zoro huffed, trying to get back to the topic at hand.

Sanji squinted at him as if to say this wasn’t over, before pursing his lips and fiddling with his rings. “I was just thinking, I’m not completely sold on Sanji Blackleg… it’s a cool stage name but…”

Zoro usually didn’t have such a hard time reading Sanji, but he was at a loss. “Curls, what are you asking?”

Sanji shifted his gaze back toward them, blue eyes open and vulnerable. He took a breath. “What about Sanji Roronoa?”

Sanji Roronoa.

Zoro stopped breathing.

And then he must've blacked out.

Because when he came back down to earth, Sanji was sitting in his lap with his hands cupped around Zoro’s face, eyes full of concern and hope.

“Shit, I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Sanji rushed as he closed his eyes. “It’s a big deal. It’d be a big deal to me too, I’m not just doing it for the name change. I’ve thought about this a lot—”

He’d thought about this a lot.

“Fuck, I’m not explain this right,” Sanji said, groaning as he tilted his head back. “There’s just not a future I can see without you in it. I know I don’t always act like it but I do want that with you… you know, you as the thorn in my side. And things are different now anyway. I did all of that running and the bastard still found me so there’s not much to do but stay and fight. And I’m fighting for you, Mossy, I really am. I’m trying. I know I’m not perfect but I don’t know anything else. I’m not tryna make excuses—fuck. I’m just saying that my faults have never changed how much I want you. How much I think of a version of us when the good days out number the bad and—”

Zoro rested his hand over Sanji’s and gave it a squeeze, forcing himself to focus on the earnestness in his eyes instead of the fire in his own heart. “Ask me?” He said, cutting him off with a small voice. It was pathetic but he needed to hear the words. Fuck, he’d never thought he’d hear Sanji say them.

Sanji’s face lit up. Eyes sparkling and smile as wide as the day he first met him. He laughed, giddy and nervous before he crawled off of Zoro’s lap and tugged him to his feet.

Zoro didn’t know what to do with himself once Sanji dropped to one knee. His entire body burned like a hot air balloon, only seconds away from floating off the ground. He felt the strain of his cheeks from a smile too wide, but he couldn’t bother to hide it.

Fuck. This was happening.

“Mosshead,” Sanji said, looking up at him with watery eyes and a wide smirk. “Will you marry me?”

In every single lifetime. Over, and over, and over again.

But instead he just nodded. It was all he could do. Nod fast and hard.

“God, I love making you speechless,” Sanji said, full of awe as Zoro pulled him to his feet.

Zoro lifted him up into a hug and spun them around.

“I love you,” Sanji said.

I love you. Simple.

And it meant more to Zoro than any other time Sanji had ever said it.

“I love you.”

They repeated the words so much over the next few hours, that the night became a blur.

There was the ‘I love you,’ at the courthouse, once they spent an hour filling out an application and another hour waiting for their marriage license, right before closing.

And then there was the ‘I hate you’—which meant the same thing—when Sanji suggested they get hitched at the Punk Rock museum.

Another ‘I love you,’ as they held each other’s hand over the buzz of tattoo guns. ‘Words to sound,’ written in Sanji’s handwriting, engraved on Zoro’s left hip; ‘Sound to words,’ written in Zoro’s handwriting, engraved on Sanji’s right hip—forever attached. They’d get rings later, but this would do for now.

And there was one more ‘I love you,’ when they went to a thrift store in search of tuxes, and had a surprisingly easy time finding a good fit. Sanji left in a maroon number with a black shirt and a white tie that was down right sexy, and Zoro left in a miss-matched combo that somehow worked—white jacket, waist coat, and tie over a navy blue pants and a shirt. The best parts were the chains attached to the buttons.

“Thanks,” Sanji said into his phone, smiling at Zoro before hanging up.

They’d gotten a limo—because why the fuck not—and it was hard not to jump Sanji’s bones in the long, leather seat. He even had his hair down. Fuck. How dare he look like that. How dare Sanji look like his husband.

“The museum said they can bring us around back and give us 15 minutes in the chapel without causing too much commotion, but only if we pay them extra. And they’ll sign NDAs, but only if we pay them extra,” Sanji explained. “But we need an officiant.”

Zoro groaned as he leaned his head against a cool, tinted window. The ride of the car was so smooth, he barely felt a bump on the road. “I thought this eloping shit was supposed to be easy. How do we get one of those?”

A voice at the front of the vehicle cleared its throat, and sunglass-covered eyes peaked into the rearview mirror. “I’m an officiant!” The driver offered.

Sanji and Zoro glanced at each other before scooting closer to the partition.

“Yeah?” Sanji asked.

The driver nodded. “It’s a good side hustle. Comes super in handy,” he said, grinning. “You’d be surprised how often.”

Zoro raised an eyebrow at Sanji, and Sanji shrugged.

“Alright, great—“ Zoro began.

“I can also do it in an Elvis accent,” the driver offered before clearing his throat again. “But that costs extra,” he said in an awful, raspy impression.

“I think we’ll pass,” Sanji said, wincing.

Zoro bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. “What’s your name?”

“Franky!”

And that’s how Zoro, Sanji, and Franky ended up at the altar of The Punk Museum’s chapel in Vegas.

“I think we should let him do the impression,” Zoro said, grinning with his hands intertwined with Sanji’s.

Sanji leaned forward and stepped on Zoro’s foot, discreet enough to go unnoticed but hard enough to cause unpleasant pressure. “If you let a shitty Elvis impersonator marry us, I will walk out on you,” he sneered into his ear before pressing a kiss against his cheek.

“So, dudes,” Franky said as Sanji straightened, clapping his hands. “How’d you fall in love?” His voice was as big as his bulky stature and as loud as his red Hawaiian shirt, out of place against the black, velvet curtains that covered the walls, and the waning candles that took up every free bench in the small room like a shrine.

Zoro and Sanji had considered filling one of those benches with the rest of the band, but one look at each other had confirmed the same desire: they wanted something that was theirs and only theirs. And that same thought spurred their decision not to bring a photographer, tired of having their lives imprisoned by a lens. This was their day. Their love.

“Long story,” Zoro said as let go of Sanji to point at one of the employees by the back door. “And we’re on a time limit. So if I were to tell it properly, we’d run late.”

“Cool, cool.” Franky nodded. “You’ll just tell me on the ride back to your hotel. Wanna jump into vows?”

Sanji spared Zoro a glance before turning back toward Franky. “We didn’t write any so—“

“Actually,” Zoro interrupted, giving Sanji’s hand a squeeze before reaching into his breast pocket. He pulled out a small, folded and weathered piece of paper and handed it to him with a timid grin. “I wrote this for you a long time ago.”

A long time ago, over months and years. All of those words he had for Sanji that he couldn’t put a name to, even back then, and all of the feelings he had for Sanji, even now. This was their song.

Sanji’s eyes widened as he looked between Zoro and the paper in his hand. It only took him a second to snatch it up, hands working furiously to unfold the page.

“Did you want to read it out loud or—” Franky began.

Sanji raised his hand to quiet him, eyes scanning over the page. “He’s not a poet,” he mumbled absentmindedly, too focused on the task at hand.

Zoro bit his lip as Sanji read. They’d done this a hundred times before. Sharing lyrics with Sanji was like breathing, but it hadn’t felt this personal in a long time. It had never been this nerve-wracking.

And then there it was—those same red eyes Zoro had seen the first day they met and the first day they connected. Except Sanji’s tears were falling freely, and he didn’t feel the need to hide.

“Bastard,” Sanji said weakly, shoving Zoro hard enough to make him stumble.

Zoro only grinned, finding his footing. “I mean every word.”

“I know you do,” Sanji huffed before kicking him for good measure. “It’s like you’re trying to kill me!”

Zoro hissed, but the burn of his shins couldn’t detract from how light he felt. This was the best reaction he could’ve gotten.

“I’m keeping this,” Sanji threatened, waving around the note.

Zoro just shrugged. “You’ve already had it for a long time.”

His heart. His soul. His love.

Sanji let out a frustrated yell as he shoved the note into his own pocket. He grabbed at Zoro’s hands and held them tightly, squeezing until his knuckles turned white. “Franky,” he rushed out.

“Yuh-huh?”

Which was just Elvis enough to earn him a death glare.

This time, Zoro couldn’t help but laugh. He was all giddy, needing something to do with himself. Preferably, that would be kissing Sanji—some time soon.

“Marry us,” Sanji said with pleading eyes. “Say the stupid words and drive us back to our hotel so I can show this stupid seaweed how much I love him.”

So Franky said the words, and Zoro didn’t hear a thing. All that mattered was how Sanji was looking at him, like he was excited for forever, and the sound of their synched heartbeats as they tumbled into something honest—something all their own.

“Fuck yes, I do,” Sanji said, squeezing Zoro impossibly tighter.

Zoro chuckled fondly. “Forever, I do.”

“Congrats my dudes! You may—”

They rushed forward before Franky could finish.

And it was just like the first time.

Heat, and sparks, and promises. Grabby hands and a tumble onto the ground. Lips that refused to part, a love that refused to quit, and a once in a lifetime connection.

“We had to be on the road at 6am right after that,” Zoro says, smiling sadly. “So we only got two hours to ourselves before we had to face the rest of the band. I thought for sure they knew something was up. They kept asking us all these questions about where we went and what we got up to.”

One look at Nami’s dropped jaw proves it had just been paranoia, though.

“I just kept telling them that nothing happened,” Zoro says, chuckling through the words as he looks at Brook. “And it became an inside joke between me and Sanji. Sometimes, instead of ‘I love you,’ we just said ‘nothing happened.’”

Brook shakes his head in disbelief, eyes beady as he processes everything Zoro had just said. “You didn’t get any photos from that night at all?”

“There was one,” Zoro admits quietly. “Franky took it on a disposable camera.” In a booth, in front of a gallery wall of legendary Punk albums. The photo has Sanji with one leg in Zoro’s lap, foot dangling between his legs, and Zoro with one hand on his thigh, holding him close. Zoro’s lips are pressed against Sanji’s cheek, and Sanji’s smile is the brightest he’d ever seen. “Sanji has it, though.”

And Zoro would kill to see it just one more time.

He hopes, at least, it brings him good memories instead of dust bunnies—even if that’s all Zoro will ever be.

Brook lets out a heavy breath. “I have to address the elephant in the room.”

Yeah. It’s his job.

Nodding stiffly, Zoro prepares himself for the inevitable.

“The band went on hiatus just two months later,” Brook says solemnly. He interlocks his fingers together and considers him with a frown. “Following rumors of a fight between you and Sanji at the Grammy’s.”

Zoro’s jaw clenches.

“The last known fight between you and Sanji,” Brook says empathetically. “So what happened?”

Zoro closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“I fucked everything up.”

“And the winner for best new artist is…” Boa Hancock, tonight’s host, announced on the Grammy stage. She paused for suspense, but Zoro didn't bother to get his hopes up. He already knew the answer.

Not the Strawhats.

That was the story of tonight—loss, after loss, after loss.

Zoro couldn’t hide his disappointment for the life of him. Neither could Sanji, but ‘pissed’ was probably the better word.

“You’ve gotta fix your faces,” Usopp mumbled from Zoro’s right. “The cameras keep zooming in on us.”

Good. Because they knew it was bullshit, probably.

They’d been invited here, shoved into formal wear, and forced to shmooze executives and other vaguely important white people, just to sit in a crowded room for two hours and choke on their losses.

Zoro wished he had something to chew on—or something to punch. Like one of the Recording Academy’s inept board members, who clearly knew nothing about music.

He knew his lack of ‘expressional discernment’ was going to be the topic of every tabloid in the morning, and that he’d look nothing short of butthurt and entitled, but this really was—

“Bullshit,” Sanji gritted in between his teeth. With each anxious bounce of his knee, his theater chair squeaked.

They’d all listened to their competition in each category. Zoro had a lot of respect for their peers, but the Strawhats’ body of work was objectively the best contender for every single nomination. They’d spent four long, grueling years perfecting this album until it sang, and it was getting treated like—

“Bull-fucking-shit,” Sanji huffed, knee bouncing faster.

Even if Zoro wanted to calm him down, there were too many eyes on them for that to be a good idea.

So the night went on.

They lost more awards. Sanji grew more irritated. And Zoro… Zoro just couldn’t ignore the small voice in the back of his head that reminded him of how much he wasn’t good enough.

The losses were his fault.

They had to be.

Zoro was the drummer, the one that was supposed to back everyone up. He was the words—the story. The hook. And he hadn’t grabbed anyone.

He failed.

And he let everyone down.

“C’mon moss,” Sanji huffed, voice snapping Zoro out of his rumination. “Show’s over.”

And sure enough, all of tonight’s attendees were up and out of their seats. Zoro looked around, trying to regain his bearings, as loose chatter and laughter bombarded his eardrums.

Usopp patted his shoulder, standing up to join the migrating crowd. “We’ll get ‘em next time.”

The walk to the exit was just as much of a blur as the half of the award show Zoro had missed by being in his own head. One moment, Nami was using his shoulders as a crutch to slip her heels off, mumbling about needing a drink, and the next moment, Luffy was by his side with a tight-lipped smile, nudging their shoulders against each other in solemn silence. It wasn’t until they got to their driver, and Usopp mentioned something about wanting to drown his sorrows by watching 10 Things I Hate About You, that Zoro noticed Sanji was missing.

He stopped in his tracks, holding up sidewalk traffic, and looked around the busy drop off/pick up area of celebrity limos and vans with furrowed eyebrows. Cool, February air numbed his throat as looked around for blond.

“Where is he?” He asked, voice tight.

Nami, Usopp, and Luffy all looked at each other before looking back at Zoro.

“We thought you knew,” Nami said, squinting her eyes. Her dress was long and red, and she rolled her shoulders back as if she’d rather be wearing anything else.

“Yeah,” Usopp agreed. “I saw him walk off but I figured he just wanted to go fanboy.”

Zoro frowned. Sanji hadn’t been in the mood to fanboy. He’d been in the mood to destroy something.

“I can go look,” Zoro said, stepping back on his foot.

Nami shook her finger. “You’ll just get lost—“

“It’s Sanji,” Luffy cut in, shrugging his shoulders. “He’s got it.”

Zoro didn’t wait to hear another word. He took off, footsteps brisk as he shoved his way back through the wave of exiting celebrities. Shoulders clipped him and dress trains shrieked beneath his feet. But Zoro didn’t stop until he was through a tunnel and back into the halls of the main venue.

He walked a bit, waiting for crowds to thin as he made his way past marble hallways and airy, high ceilings. Then, when he couldn’t walk any further and the excitement of the night thinned into a dull buzz, Zoro turned a corner.

And there was Sanji—tucked into a small passageway with his back leaned against the wall in a classic tuxedo.

But he wasn’t alone.

An older man with silver hair and a scruffy beard took the opposite wall, posture tall and dominating. He smirked as he spoke, but Zoro was too far to make out the words. He could only go off of Sanji, who had his head angled down and his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Shit.

He was pissed.

At the sound of footsteps, Zoro turned back around the corner and did his best to look like he hadn’t just spied on his husband—but it didn’t matter. The old man cleared the corner like he knew Zoro had been there all along, sending him the same evil smile he gave Sanji before walking off in a flurry of clicking soles.

Zoro’s throat went dry. He didn’t know why.

But he knew that if he asked Sanji about it… it would only go south.

“Zoro,” Sanji barked, tone darker than Zoro had ever heard before.

It chilled him to the bone.

“Come here.”

Swallowing hard, Zoro stepped out from behind the wall and stepped into the passageway underneath Sanji’s seething glare. “Don’t talk to me like that,” Zoro hushed, looking around before stopping in front of him. Sanji’s eyes were just as dark as his tone—dark blue raging in a stormy sea.

“I’ll stop talking to you like that when you stop fucking stalking me,” Sanji raged, but at least he had the decency to try and keep his voice down. That didn’t make the sting of the words echo against the walls any less, though. “Can you stand to leave me alone for 5 minutes?”

The assailment was enough to leave Zoro’s legs wobbly, forcing him to take a step back. His heart knocked on his chest. “Do you always have to take all of your anger at the world, and at yourself, out on me?” Zoro yelled back.

Sanji didn’t let the words faze him. Zoro wasn’t even sure he’d heard them. Sanji just pressed forward instead, cornering Zoro and shoving at his chest until his back hit the wall. A cool shock hit Zoro at the impact, breath growing thin. But Sanji remained steely and cold as he fixed his lips to deliver a final blow.

“If you had spent less time worrying and obsessing over me—trying to fix me—you would’ve won a fucking Grammy!”

A silence settled over them.

Zoro’s heart pounded so fast, he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything. There was just numbness and exhaustion—the kind that had been killing him slowly.

“Shit,” Sanji whispers. His eyes lightened, face softening into desperation and remorse. “I said that wrong. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Panicked hands reached out to cup his face, thumbs already angled to smooth out his jaw, but Zoro slapped them down.

And then he pushed Sanji away.

Stumbling, Sanji reached out to Zoro to regain his balance, hand gripping at the arm of his suit.

And Zoro ripped those long, slender fingers right off of him, preparing himself with a blow of his own.

The worst part about arguing with his other half, was that they both knew exactly where to punch.

They locked eyes. Zoro took a breath. And Sanji flinched, like he already knew what was coming. Like he’d spent the last five years trying to get them here, and he’d just been waiting for Zoro to finally break.

“If you think my life would be so much better without you in it, then take your own advice and leave me the fuck alone!”

“It’d been a long day,” Zoro insists. He tries his best to blink the tears out of his eyes, but that doesn’t stop them from burning. “Fuck,” he says underneath his breath as he tilts his head back, not wanting the camera to see. He brings his hands up to his face and covers his eyes. “I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t mean it.”

He knows the power of words, knows how much they can hurt, and he’d said it anyway. He’d hurt him anyway.

Heels click against the silence of the set, and the scent of tangerine engulfs him from behind. Nami pulls Zoro’s head against her chest and rests her chin on top of his hair. “I know,” she whispers.

Zoro only moves when the embarrassment of being coddled outweighs his heartbreak. He peels off of her with a weak, but grateful smile, and Nami pats him on the head before retreating back out of the frame.

Once he readjusts himself, cameras still rolling, Zoro gets the courage to finally look back at Brook. “I got drunk that night,” he begins again, “I passed out in my empty bed, and by the time I woke up around noon the next day, Sanji had quit the band.”

The words settle over the floor. No one moves an inch.

“I don’t know what he said or how he did it,” Zoro says shakily. “That’s a question for the others.” And a story he never wants to hear.

Brook nods, thinking everything through. “Sanji quit, but the band is on hiatus?”

“Sanji quit the band, stupidly believing that we would go on without him,” Zoro corrects. “And the band is on hiatus, patiently waiting for him to come back.” Improving themselves, trying to be the best they can be.

“I see,” Brook says, smiling softly. “So when the press kept asking you questions about the band’s hiatus and you said ‘nothing happened,’ you were telling us exactly what happened.”

Zoro nods, smiling a bit to himself. “That we loved each other. And it destroyed us.”

But damn. Zoro would do it again. Not over—he’d never want to start all over. Their past was theirs and it was messy, but it was beautiful. He just wants another shot.

“So what happened next?” Brook says as he leans back into his chair. “You all went pretty silent for the rest of the year after the announcement.”

Zoro snorts. “Depression. Debt,” he rattles off before a bitterness creeps onto his tongue. “Divorce.”

Brook eyes him for a moment. Then a knowing smirk crawls onto his lips. “You two aren’t divorced,” he accuses cheekily.

From the roll of Nami’s eyes offstage, it’s clear she doesn’t believe it either.

Zoro can’t help but match Brook’s expression with a smirk of his own. “Maybe I used the divorce papers as a coaster. Maybe it’s the only thing I’ve ever refused to sign.”

And maybe Sanji never took him to court over it, even after Zoro’s lack of reply had stretched on for years.

Brook laughs as he props up his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “But where does that leave you and Sanji?”

“We don’t talk.” Zoro stiffens. Not since that day. Sanji changed his number and the others won’t give it to him.

“But you’re married,” Brook says incredulously. “Doesn’t this complicate your love lives with others?”

Zoro crosses his arms over his chest.

He looks right into the camera.

“If that idiot really wants to divorce me, he’ll just have to crawl his ass out of whatever ditch he’s been hiding in and come say it to my face.”