Archive of Our Own

“Oh my God, I love your hair!”

Sanji looked up from the apples in the Fresh Market produce section. Zoro, babysitting the cart on the other side of the display, blinked at the young lady smiling at him from the bananas. “Oh, thanks.” Sanji smiled, hiding it by unspooling a produce bag from the roll. Zoro ran a hand over his faded teal top. “My boyfriend did it.”

My boyfriend. Sanji’s heart thumped like a blow to the head. The young lady started, then beamed. “Oh! That’s so cool! Is he a hairdresser?” Zoro nodded, mouth quirking, eyes flicking Sanji’s way. She laughed, rifling through the bananas. “Is he any – well, he must be good, look at you!” She grinned, mousy hair wisping from the cold drizzle outside. “Where’s he work? Maybe I’ll see if he can do anything about this rat’s nest.” She laughed and tugged on her ponytail. Sanji winced as he dropped apples in the bag – no, darling, don’t do that.

“Ask him yourself.” Zoro looked more intentionally at Sanji. “Oi, Blondie, stop being creepy and say hi.” Sanji made a face and twisted the bag closed on his apples, sauntering around the display. Zoro jerked a thumb at him as he approached, nodding at Sanji’s potential new client. “Talk to him. I’m just the Barbie doll.”

“Oh!” She beamed at Sanji, eyes roving over his whole thing and doing the mental calculus he had watched dozens of well-meaning straight people perform ever since his hair grew past his pierced ears. “Hi there!”

Sanji smiled, dropping the apples in the cart. “Hello, darling.” He shook out the nerves living in his elbows. “I apologize for him,” he said, hip-checking the buggy so the handle rammed into Zoro’s bent stomach. Zoro wheezed and glared. Sanji fluttered his eyelashes at him. Zoro flipped him off. The young lady giggled. “You’re looking for a hair appointment?”

“Oh – I mean…” She fussed with her wisps. He bet she had never had a flattering cut in her life – not with that texture. “It might be nice? If I could finally make this look like something, maybe my mama would get off my back about it at Thanksgiving.” Her smile crinkled, dimples showing. She had a wonderful smile that deserved a proper frame. “Only if you’ve got availability before then, of course!”

Sanji fell into business talk, fishing a salon card out of his wallet and making mental notes for when she got scheduled. He could squeeze her in on Thursday, maybe. Thanksgiving was the week after that, after all, and then he would have to go to the chateau to schmooze with the Charlottes and…

Wait.

Zoro frowned at the groceries in Sanji’s trunk, hiding under the door from the light rain. He could carry one more bag inside, but which one? Which would be the easiest to grab around the five already draped along his arms?

“Hey, asshole.” Zoro grunted, wiggling the handles of one of Sanji’s stupid tote bags on his left wrist. “What’re you doing for Thanksgiving?”

Zoro frowned over the fur lining of his hood at Sanji, who was lounging against the split post fence dividing the potholed dirt road to the Straw Hat cabin from the raging river below. Did he enjoy being wet and cold? “Huh?” Sanji didn’t look at him, fiddling with his lighter, watching the flame flicker in the rain.

Zoro sighed, hitching the groceries to better spots on his arms so the padding on his coat negated their cut. “Hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “Last year I had to work during it, but with the way things are going at the escape room, that’s fucking out.” He trooped to the fence, pausing in front of Sanji’s too-casual lean. Sanji lit a cigarette, hair over his eyes. Ah, hell. “You want to do something, don’t you.”

Sanji shrugged, turning to the side so he didn’t blow smoke in Zoro’s face. The cold fog of his breath puffed out with the tobacco. “I guess… This is the first time I won’t be beholden to the whims of the Charlotte clan in – God.” He tipped his head back. Zoro’s eyes caught on his Adam’s apple. “Years.”

It always came back to that bitch. Zoro rolled his eyes and hefted his slipping groceries, face twitching when a raindrop landed on his eyebrow. “Yeah. We can figure something out.” He sighed. “C’mon, help me get this shit inside before Nami chews my ass for letting her ice cream melt.”

“You have no respect for the fairer sex.” Sanji put the cig in his teeth and pushed off the fence so he could take two bags from Zoro. Their hands brushed, damp skin cool in the November mountain air, but the idiot kept his face turned aside. “You don’t have to waste your holiday with me,” he muttered. “I’m sure Zeff will take me – he always needs help at the soup kitchen.”

Zoro scowled and swung the bag on his forearm into Sanji’s head. Sanji yelped, staggering with the hit. “Marimo! That hurt!” He scowled. “That better not have the eggs in it!”

“Who cares?” Sanji kicked at him. Zoro swung the bag again, but Sanji ducked under it. The milk and orange juice in there whipped Zoro all the way around, mud squelching under his boots with his complete spin. “I told you I was gonna beat your ass when you got like this!”

“Like what?”

“Like–” Zoro growled and kicked a rock at him. “Bitch sad!”

“You motherfucker!” Sanji kicked the rock back. It whistled past Zoro’s hip, rolling down the incline to the main road. “That’s not what’s happening! I’m just trying to make plans!”

“That’s exactly what’s happening, you shit!” Fuck it. Zoro shucked the bags onto the steps of the cabin and lunged at his dumbass boyfriend. Sanji yelped and danced away, hair lifting with a cold gust. Zoro snatched his jacket by the tail and yanked him in, grabbing his face with one hand. Sanji glared at his hood, cheeks squished together into pufferfish mode. His cigarette plinkoed to the ground.

Zoro shook his idiot until Sanji actually looked at him. “You’re out,” he growled, like he’d had to at least twice a week for the last month of this fucking relationship. “You don’t have to care about what that family thinks anymore. Got it?” Sanji’s eyes blazed. Zoro snarled. “Got it?”

Sanji sneered. He tried to wrench his face out of Zoro’s grip, but Zoro dug in deeper. “We can do whatever the hell we want for the holidays,” he growled, not letting this shit hide behind his wind-tangled hair. “Any of the holidays. We can help Zeff at his soup kitchen, do fucking shit, make up our own bullshit, you can cook for Luffy – hell, we can go track down Mihawk in Cambodia if you want.” His fingers shook with the force of his grip. “But don’t you dare think we’re not doing it together.”

Sanji’s eyebrows drew together. “You’re so dumb.” His tension sagged, his posture held up by Zoro’s palm under his chin. He blinked, lashes wet from the rain. “Let me go,” he mumbled.

Zoro held it another beat, then eased his grip. Sanji flipped his hair back and rubbed his cheek, looking into the trees. “Okay, marimo,” he rasped. “If that’s what you want.”

Zoro rolled his eyes, stomping back to his discarded groceries. “Don’t pretend like you don’t want it,” he shot back. “Stop trying to act like it’s just you in this, got it?” He threaded his arms through the tote bag handles, still half-up from their stiff tension. “Dumbass bitch.”

“You have such a way with words.” Zoro ignored him and dragged the groceries inside. He really hoped that bag hadn’t had the eggs in it. He had enough on his plate today.

Sanji swept his station after his last client, the salon buzzing around him. It was Wednesday – his new early-end day. He didn’t want to clock out before four one day a week, but between Iva and Zeff tag-teaming him about being ‘concerned for his mental health’ or whatever and Luffy guilt-tripping him into pregaming before trivia, he didn’t really have much of a choice. The thing he hated most about it was that they were right – it did make him feel better to hang out with Zoro’s friends on a regular basis. They probably wouldn’t stick around once Zoro got sick of him and bailed, but he would take it while he could.

“Boy.” Iva sat down in his chair. He scowled and swept over her feet. She didn’t blink at the bad luck and watched him through his mirror. “Caroline told me you put yourself back on the calendar next week.”

Sanji grit his teeth. “I forgot I still had it off,” he admitted. “Well – I’m not going to my – well. My plans changed.” Why was this fucking him up so much? He hated going to his in-laws’ sprawling hunting chateau on Watauga Lake for the whole long weekend, putting up with bad babytalk Parisian French, too many people in one big-but-not-big-enough house, constant veiled comments about how he looked and dressed and acted, hissed arguments in Pudding’s childhood room. He had gotten over her months ago. They hadn’t spoken since July. Why was he so hopeless?

He swept hair into the dustbin. “I’m staying in town this Thanksgiving,” he told her. “Didn’t see the point in leaving money on the table.”

She hummed in her annoying, holier-than-thou way. “Uh-huh.” She picked at her nails. “That boy of yours keeping you company?”

Fuck her. “We’re figuring it out,” he stole from the man himself. He emptied the dustbin and looked at his own reflection in the mirror. The face of a man who had a boyfriend – a boyfriend who wasn’t scared to tell a stranger that fact in a small town grocery store. Was Sanji that brave? “Hey, Iva.”

“Yes, sugar?”

Fuck, this wasn’t the right time or place for this conversation. He rearranged his clipper guards in their drawer. “Was it easy?” He swallowed. “Finding someone, keeping someone, when you – you know.” He waved a hand at her whole thing. “Turned into you.” He winced. “You know what I mean.”

Iva’s day-old makeup crinkled. “I do, sweetheart.” She crossed her legs the other way, low heel tapping in the air to the low radio in the background. “It took some time,” she said. “Had a lotta false starts, and there’s some very…” She shook her head, smirking to herself. “Very odd men in the world.” She picked up the brush he had left on his rolling tray. “But it’s about the destination not the journey, yadda yadda.”

She rubbed a flat hand over the bristles, watching them bend and spring back. “We’ve had our rough spots, don’t get me wrong.” She grinned. “Oh, I’ve put him through so much shit.” She shook her head. “But I wouldn’t trade that man for the world.”

Sanji curled the cord tighter around his clippers. “How did you know it was the destination?”

“You don’t.” He looked at her. She smiled. “You just keep wanting another day with them that’s better than the day before, and doing everything in your power to make that happen.” She sipped her tea. “Don’t overthink it, sweetie,” she told him. “Trust him a little bit – and try trusting yourself a little bit, too.” He sneered at her. She grinned. “And get the hell out of here,” she ordered. “I’ll let you be on standby for walk-ins on Tuesday next week, but if I see one bad tattoo in my shop past Wednesday, I’m driving you to Zeff’s myself.”

“Soulless harpy.” He slammed the clipper drawer closed. Iva cackled.

Zoro kicked his boots up on the front desk, leaning back in the shitty office chair taken from the trash. “Hey,” he said to Usopp. “Are we doing anything for Thanksgiving?”

Usopp hummed, not looking up from Reddit on his phone. “Dunno.” He tugged at the pirate bandana Luffy made them wear for the stupid gimmick of their winter business, an escape room propped up in an empty storefront in the historic downtown part of Johnson City. “My cousins in Pigeon Forge have a whole thing I usually slide on down to, but it’s a whole affair…” He hemmed and hawed. “Y’all’d probably be welcome there,” he said, “but I dunno if I want to do that to y’all.”

Zoro huffed. Usopp grinned, dropping his phone to the marked-up counter. The players inside the escape room poked around a pile of ropes and shit on the webcam display on the shitty laptop tucked under the lip of the counter. There was absolutely fuck all to find there, but Zoro didn’t really care to give them a hint.

Usopp was by the mic connected to the Bluetooth speakers hidden in the stupid snail figure attached to the wall in the room, but he didn’t notice their plight, too busy giving Zoro his daily dose of bullshit. “Finally realized it’s next week, huh?”

Zoro shrugged. “Blondie’s freaking out about it.” Usopp made a face. Zoro smirked. “Yeah, exactly.” Zoro knocked his head back, the trash chair creaking ominously. “I dunno,” he groaned. “The fuck is a holiday, anyway?”

“Triple time, in my experience.” Zoro held out a fist that Usopp bumped after a moment. “Guess we’ll be closed… should probably check with Nami on that.” Usopp scratched his chin. “I know she’s trying to get up to her sister’s, but I think they’re having logistical issues.”

Zoro grunted. Not his problem. Usopp checked the time and groaned. “A’ight, let’s kick these clowns out and head over to Wild Wing. If they ain’t figured it out by now, they never will, bless ‘em.” He snatched up the mic and cleared his throat before unmuting it, putting on his cartoony pirate accent to tell them their time was up in some kind of character.

Zoro groaned and sat up, holding the counter in case the chair tried to dump him again, tugging his stupid fucking eyepatch down from his forehead. “Yeah, yeah.”

Sanji came back to their trivia table, sliding onto his stool and going for the beer pitcher in the middle of the table. Fuck, he needed a third drink tonight.

Luffy bumped against his side as he finished his pour. Sanji tilted his head at his boyfriend’s best friend. “Yes, baby?”

Luffy shrugged, watching as the other three kept arguing about the answer Sanji had already turned in. “It’s November.”

Sanji smiled. “It’s been November for a while.” Luffy flapped his jacket collar for a breeze. It was hot in the crowded bar, and most people had already taken off their outer layers, but Luffy kept his on. Sanji hadn’t seen him without it since the first orange leaf had fallen, actually. It was a cool jacket – vintage, black leather, flames embroidered up the sleeves – but it didn’t really fit his style. Or maybe it did. Maybe Sanji didn’t know him as well as he thought. It had only been a month of scraping food into this kid’s mouth every time Sanji stayed the night in their cabin, after all. No one knew everything about someone in that time.

Sanji pressed back, skin jumping. Was it okay to touch another man who was definitely just a friend and not a client like this? He wanted to keep his distance, like Usopp did, but Luffy made sad eyes whenever Sanji tried to pull away, and Zoro didn’t give a shit. The two of them were worse with each other, actually. Was Luffy gay? Sanji still couldn’t tell. “Got a problem with November?” Sanji asked Luffy’s distant stare.

Luffy frowned, yanking one of his jacket pocket zippers up and down, tassels jangling. “It sucks.”

The song over the bar speakers ended. “All right,” the trivia host said into her microphone. “So round one, question three…” Luffy pushed off Sanji’s arm, circling the table to his spot. The half of the bar actually playing moaned and gloated over the answer, then focused in on the next question.

After their team argued about it and sent Zoro off to run their answer to the host, Usopp snapped and pointed at Nami with a fry. “Right! We’re gonna be closed on Thanksgiving, right? Zoro and I were talking about it.” They were?

Nami groaned, flopping on the high top table. “I want to be,” she said. “But we’ve had a few requests for bookings, and Noji’s being useless about plans.” She rolled her forehead along the coated wood. “Like, I get that she’s got a new baby and there’s a lot on her plate, but can’t she just tell me if I can visit or not? Why is this so hard?”

“Well, I vote we don’t open up even if we are all in town,” Usopp said, raising his glass before a gulp. “Let’s take a damn day off and fry a turkey or whatever.”

“Like fucking hell I’ll let y’all do that!” Sanji yelled at him, nerves spiking. Usopp grinned across the table. Sanji tossed a napkin at his smug face. “Y’all all’ll set off another God-be-damned forest fire and still undercook it!”

The others all looked at Luffy like Sanji had stepped in it. Huh? But Luffy just shook like a dog and grinned at him. “Sanji should cook for us!” he chirped, eyes a little manic. “I want Sanji’s food!”

Sanji rolled his eyes, powering through the tension at the table and the hypertension in his temples. “Neither of our places are good for hosting.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Unless y’all suddenly get a real table or my place sprouts a dining room, we’re stuck.”

“Dream on, Blondie.” Zoro dropped a hand on Sanji’s thigh as he came back, leaning across the table to reach for his beer. “I’m just glad I’m not on fuckin’ patrol for once,” he said into his glass. “I hated pulling people over on a holiday as much as they did.” Sanji looked at the hand on his knee. Wide, strong. Very much a dude’s hand. Sanji put his own over it, running his thumb over the cracked knuckles. Zoro glanced at him.

“Oh, boo hoo, your cop life was so hard,” Nami griped, chewing on a cold chicken finger. “Get over it.”

“Fuck off.” Zoro snapped his teeth her way. She sneered back. Sanji grabbed his wrist and held his stupid man in check.

Luffy stuck his tongue out, grimacing. “As long as I don’t have to go to my dad’s,” he moaned. “Gross!”

Sanji frowned. Luffy had a dad in his life? Well, he was new to the group, so–

The other three all rounded on him. “Your dad?”

The song ended. Luffy stuck out his tongue even more. “And my stepmom.”

“Your stepmom?”

“Okay, friends, the answer to round one, question four…”

Mornings were a hectic affair at the Straw Hat cabin. Nami always took too damn long in the bathroom, Luffy kept trying to eat raw eggs, Usopp screeched and fought with the wild animals he refused to stop feeding, and Zoro was awake. At least they let him have the second-biggest bedroom to himself once Sanji started coming over, although that did fuck all to make Zoro’s long-haired Chihuahua of a boyfriend relax. Whatever hillbilly clobbered this “house” together in prehistoric times hadn’t cared about soundproofing, and Sanji was a nervous prude who would barely even cuddle when other people might know about it.

At least he did stay the night instead of trying to drive down their shitty mountain road in the dark and wrapping himself around a sycamore tree. A fifth body in this stupid house wasn’t exactly a calming presence, but at least the chit was useful.

Sanji slid a steaming coffee mug on the table by Zoro’s elbow. “There you are, darling,” he murmured, a fuzzy arrow shooting through Zoro’s head. “Sorry it took a bit.”

Zoro blinked up at him. Sanji’s hair was a mess, roots seeming even darker from the morning sun streaming in from the windows overlooking the river drop, tangled on the shoulders of one of Zoro’s hoodies. He hadn’t shaved or put his earrings back in yet. He smiled.

Zoro scowled and grabbed Sanji’s waist before he could flit away. Usopp yelped on the back porch, something large and metallic clattering down the long steps to the forest floor below. Luffy cackled at him. Whatever Sanji was cooking snapped on the stove. Nami’s offkey warbling filtered from the shower upstairs.

Sanji made a little noise, hand landing on Zoro’s head as he pressed his face into Sanji’s stomach. “Yes?” Zoro hummed, nosing under the open flap of his high school hoodie to the warm pocket of air at his hip. It was so fucking cold lately. Sanji sighed, running his fingers through Zoro’s hair. “Will you let me style this later?” he asked.

Zoro hummed again. “For a price.” Sanji tugged on his ear. Zoro lifted his chin, looking up his long torso. Sanji quirked an eyebrow. Zoro let his lips part, sticking his hand between Sanji’s sweats and underwear.

Sanji snickered, color high on his face, squishing Zoro’s cheeks hard enough to bruise Zoro’s skull. “Insatiable.”

Zoro ripped his head out of Sanji’s hands, then went right back to his chinrest on his abs. “We’re in a new relationship,” he drawled, the hoodie zipper rattling against his temple with every syllable. “Aren’t we supposed to be insatiable?”

Sanji’s smile twitched. “You have a point, marimo.” He glanced around. Zoro’s nose wrinkled. Stop looking for other people, jackass.

No one was there, of course, so Sanji cupped Zoro’s face, gently this time, and bent over to kiss him. Zoro pushed a little out of the kitchen chair to meet him halfway, palming his ass for balance. Sanji hummed, facial hair scraping Zoro’s cheek and chin.

Sanji pulled back after a long press, rubbing their chilled noses together. “Good morning, my darling.”

Zoro slow-blinked. Hmm. Yeah. “I think we’ve got time, if we start now.”

Sanji hummed, mouth scratching over Zoro’s brow. “Time for what?”

“Sex.” Sanji yelped and dropped him. Zoro sat back down with a hard thump, smirking at a splotchy-faced Sanji. He squeezed the ass he was still holding. “Insatiable, remember?”

Sanji scowled and flicked him on the forehead. “Wishful thinking – I’ll burn the bacon if you keep that up.” Zoro wrapped his other arm around Sanji’s waist, nosing his shirt (shit, that was also Zoro’s) up to mouth over Sanji’s hairy belly. Sanji squeaked and struggled, but Zoro held on tighter. Sanji laughed. “Zoro!”

“Hey! Get a room!” Fucking hell, Usopp.

Sanji struggled for real. Zoro sighed and let him go, glaring at the mood-ruiner at the back door. Usopp startled and scurried back outside, yammering about suing for damages or whatever. God damn it. Zoro had worked hard for that laugh, and now Sanji was a knot of stolen clothes and prickly tension flipping bacon across the room.

Fuck it. Zoro got up, floorboards creaking as he circled the tiny kitchen table, propping against it as Sanji overworked breakfast. “Hey.” Sanji hissed. “You know he’s just teasing us, right?” Zoro stretched for his coffee without looking away from Sanji’s tension. “They don’t, like, actually care about what we get up into.”

Sanji huffed. “Forgive me for wanting to keep my private life private.”

“Oh, go to hell.” Sanji whirled, glaring at him. Zoro glared right back. “You’re just embarrassed.”

“Wha–” Sanji dropped the spatula on the counter. “Am not!”

“Repressed Catholic.” Sanji squawked, kicking Zoro’s ankles. Zoro raised his eyebrows over his perfect coffee. “Prove I’m wrong, then.” He adjusted his lean, opening his hips, setting his mug aside. Sanji’s eyes blazed through the stringy curtain of his hair. “No one’s here, Blondie.” Luffy’s loud laugh and Usopp’s Daffy Duck yodel carried from under their feet. The shower water was still fucking running. “Just you and me.”

Sanji growled and stomped into Zoro’s space, crowding him against the table. Sanji snarled at him from an inch away. “You’re the worst.”

Now that’s what Zoro’s talking about. Zoro opened as Sanji attacked, mouths working, teeth clacking. Zoro slid a hand into Sanji’s hair, holding him close. Sanji whimpered. Something boiled in Zoro’s belly. Something burned…

“Shit!” Sanji yanked away and spun to the stove, flicking the burner off under the smoking pan of bacon. Zoro licked his sensitive lip. “Go brush your teeth,” Sanji growled to the countertop. “You taste like shit.”

Zoro rolled his eyes and grabbed his coffee. Nami was still in the bathroom, so he couldn’t even if he wanted to. “Get used to it,” Zoro said instead. “I’m not above exposure therapy.”

Sanji stomped his fuzzy-socked heel. “Is that a threat?”

Zoro grinned. “You bet your fucking ass.”

“Hey, old man,” Sanji called, “where’d you hide the fucking food processor?”

“Up your skinny ass!” Zeff shot back from his chair in the living room. “You better not be cooking up in there, tite chou!”

Sanji rolled his eyes and found the blade for the processor in the spice drawer. Where the hell was the actual container? “I’ve gotta make sure you don’t starve yourself with your own incompetence!” Sanji snapped back. “D’you got any almonds in this joint?”

Zeff’s old man chair creaked. “What on the Holy Mother’s head are you tryin’ to do in here, boy?”

“Cobble together a sauce to save your dry-ass chicken.” Zeff stomped into the kitchen, glowering in the way where his stump was killing him, but he was too stubborn to take off his leg for the night. Sanji scowled. Zeff fell into a kitchen chair more than sat. Sanji kicked the popping gas oven next to the prep counter. “How long are you planning on cooking this for, anyway?” Sanji grumbled, digging through Zeff’s cabinets for the second time. The old man wasn’t disorganized – he was too professional for that – but sometimes the organization only made sense when your moustache grew long enough to braid it. Sanji despaired for the mental health of his staff. “Until it’s ready for Thanksgiving?”

Zeff frowned at him. Shit motherfucker. “That’s the fifth time you’re brought up the idea of Thanksgiving today,” he drawled, Cajun tongue fattening up. “Preoccupied, cher?”

“Fuck off.” Zeff didn’t blink, staring Sanji down over his beer can. Sanji turned his back on the face that made him come out at fourteen and own up to his first cigarette, poking around in the produce drawer for a bell pepper instead. “Just forgot I don’t know what I’m doing, s’all.” There it was. A green one, but he could make do. He grabbed a cutting board from the stack behind the sink. “I’m fine.”

Zeff left a beer-long pause on the ground. “Well, I’m sure my boys would appreciate a pretty pair of extra hands hanging ‘round.” Sanji flipped him off behind his back with one of those pretty hands. “That boy of yours got any plans?”

Sanji scowled and yanked the seeds out by the stem. “We’re fixin’ to talk about it.”

Zeff grunted. “Good.” Sanji tossed the seeds in the compost bin under the sink. “Y’all best stop fixin’ to and start truly talking ‘bout bringing him ‘round here for supper soon,” he threatened. “I wanna meet the kid my kid picked for his rebound.”

“It’s not a rebound.” Or was it… No, definitely not. Right?

Zeff huffed. “Whatever you say, cher.” Sanji frowned at the chopped pepper. “If he ain’t, then why’re you tryin’ so hard to hide him from me?”

“I’m not hiding him,” Sanji replied. Oh, the processor container was probably above the – yep, above the fridge. Weird ass geezer. “I just – it hasn’t happened yet, that’s all.”

“Make it happen.” Sanji marched to the pantry to look for nuts. “But not at Thanksgiving,” Zeff kept on, loud enough for Sanji to hear through the open pantry door. “We got too much shit going on without adding on meeting your goddamned boyfriend on top of all that kerfuffle.”

Sanji rolled his eyes as he pawed through Zeff’s dry goods. “So gosh-darned picky,” he groused. “Should I just bite the bullet and invite him over now?”

Zeff didn’t respond. Sanji glanced at him around the pantry door and saw the evil glint in his eye. Sanji’s heart dropped. “No. No way–”

“Thanks for the ride.”

Nami grunted, whipping a left on yellow-red that Zoro would have pulled her over for in a past life. “Not like I had anything better to do on a Thursday than watch you get shot in the driveway by your boyfriend’s overprotective father.” She shook her head. “Y’all are crazy,” she sighed. “Doing a meet the parents on a whim barely a month in? What’s wrong with y’all?”

Zoro shrugged. “Blondie’s idea, not mine.” He fiddled with the buttons of the shirt she forced him into once he explained why he needed a ride into town at dusk on a random weekday. “Meeting the parents is a big deal, huh?”

“Yes, oh my God, you Neanderthal – move, bitch!” She made a face at the car that was taking too long to turn right in front of her. “It’s terrifying – haven’t you done this before?”

Zoro frowned. “No.” Her hands slid down around the wheel to tuck along the bottom. Zoro shifted in the passenger seat. “Gay dating in the South – I mean, it’s possible to get serious, but…” He shrugged. “Not my style.”

She drummed her fingers on the wheel in time with the old rock song on the radio. “Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that one.” He cut his eyes at her. She kept looking at the road, face set. “You’ve been hooked on that guy as long as I’ve known you,” she said, dropping into a rasp. “And – ugh. Don’t make me–” She bared her teeth at the mild traffic. “You’re – a good boyfriend,” she forced out. “God only knows how or why, but you are.” She shrugged. “Maybe getting serious is your style,” she said. “It just wasn’t your ex’s…” She frowned. “Do you have exes, or just an ex?”

Zoro made a face. “Neither?” He crossed his arms. “I’ve never been… much of a boyfriend guy,” he told the road. “Just people I used to sleep with that I don’t see anymore.”

“God, you’re depressing.” She turned into a neighborhood. “Well. Meeting the parents is a big deal – meeting the family is a big deal.” She shoved his arm. “Don’t fuck it up.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He slouched, crossing his ankles on her dirty floorboards. “Not like I’ve got parents for him to meet.”

“You’ve got your sister, right?” she prompted. “A sister who actually wants to see you?”

Hmm. He looked at her. “Nojiko’s still being a bitch, huh.”

Her face shuttered. “Shut up.”

Zoro watched her profile flit by in the passing streetlights, the almost-winter twilight closing in outside her car. “You know it’s her loss if you don’t go up to Kentucky, right?” he said. “Fuck her if she doesn’t want to see you.”

Nami’s mouth quirked. “I know, right?” She sucked her lips in. “Yeah, fuck her.” Zoro frowned. She squinted at the house numbers, then skidded to a halt in front of a brick ranch house with Sanji’s car in the driveway. “Oh, look, we’re here!”

“Nami…”

She flapped a hand. His temper spiked. “Worry about me later,” she said, smiling at him like it hurt. “You’ve got to meet the parent!”

Zoro stared at her for a beat, then sighed and unbuckled. “Suit yourself. Thanks for the ride again – I’ll get Sanji to take me home.”

“If you go home.” Zoro glared at her. She grinned and tossed his phone at him from the cupholder. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Zoro stomped across the brown grass while she waited on the curb, tugging his coat closed against the intruding wind. Fuck, but it got cold up in the mountains. Why had he picked this place on a map when he got the fuck out of Atlanta again?

The front door banged open, glass shuddering in its frame as it hit a brick wall. “Marimo! You’re here!”

Zoro blinked at Sanji, his hair up, a comfortable shirt on, a bit of something gross-brown flecked on his cheek. Zoro tilted his head. “You asked me to come?” Sanji breathed like a Gothic heroine. Nami’s engine idled on the curb. Zoro frowned. “Was… was I not supposed to?”

“No – no, yes, of course–” Sanji shook his head, some hair falling from his loose bun. “Sorry.” He sighed. “No, come on in.”

Zoro pursed his lips, but came up the front step, waving Nami on from the threshold. Sanji stepped aside so he could enter, still fidgeting. This bitch.

Zoro laid a hand on Sanji’s waist as the glass door closed behind them. “Blondie, relax.” He brushed their cheeks together, mouth trailing over Sanji’s earrings, metal on his tongue. “I’m not breaking up with you just because your dad’s a hardass who decided he doesn’t like me.” He licked the brown streak of whatever Sanji was cooking. Pesto? Since when was pesto brown?

Sanji huffed, rubbing the cleaned spot with the back of his palm. “Asshole. I’d be breaking up with you.”

“Y’all all better not be thinking ‘bout getting busy in my foyer,” a thick Cajun accent snapped.

Sanji jumped. Zoro pulled away normally, nodding at the older white man sitting in the resplendent leather armchair across the living room, a beer in one hand and prosthetic leg kicked up on the opened-up footrest. “Sir.”

Sanji’s dad grunted. Zoro knew that Sanji was adopted, but if he hadn’t already known that, he would have absolutely spent his whole life thinking they shared half of their DNA, no problem. “Interloper.” Sanji squawked.

Zoro shrugged, sticking his hands in his coat pockets – oh, right. “You’re entitled to your opinion, I guess.” Sanji choked harder. Zoro fished out the jar and – no, everyone who knew his name in this state would murder him in the street if he tossed it at him.

He crossed the living room and handed Usopp’s last minute offering to the old fart. “Thanks for having me over,” he said. Zoro may be blunt and never had a real relationship in his life, but he wasn’t a complete fucking idiot.

Sanji’s dad tilted his head at the Mason jar, shaking the bright red powder. He spun the lid off and smelled it, heavy eyebrows shooting up. Zoro smirked. “It’s my housemate’s uncle’s dry rub,” he explained like Usopp had at the front door on his way out. “He’s an old Black guy from Greensboro, so he knows what he’s doing.”

The old man grinned at him as he put the lid back on. “Can’t trust none of the white folk around here to season shit,” the white man said. Zoro gave the point to him – he had eaten his old station’s Halloween potluck offerings, after all. “Good to see you’ve got a few manners under all that hair.”

Zoro shrugged. “I’m Asian and Southern,” he said. “I got the idea of a hostess gift beat into my head before I could speak.”

Sanji’s dad barked. “Ain’t that the thing!” He traded the jar for his beer. “Beer’s in the outside fridge,” he said, water-blue eyes twinkling. “Help yourself, then pull yourself up a chair and talk at me, cher.”

Hell yeah. Zoro headed for the glass door to the backyard, but Sanji grabbed his elbow and dragged him the other way, marching through the kitchen to the mud room. Sanji slammed the door shut – shit, had Zoro fucked it up–

Sanji grabbed his face and smashed their mouths together, nails digging, buttons dueling. Oh. Well, then.

Sanji pulled away before Zoro could really reciprocate, peppering kisses all over Zoro’s face. He caught his own fingers more than Zoro’s skin. Zoro was totally fine with this situation. “You’re – the fucking – worst–” He smacked a wet one on Zoro’s hairline. “Oh, I could just eat you up, you wonderful man.”

Zoro grumbled, hands resting on Sanji’s waist, ears hot. “It’s Usopp’s spice mix, not mine,” he had to point out, frowning at Sanji’s beard. “I mean, I was just gonna get Nami to stop by an ABC for a six-pack on the way down, but…”

Sanji rubbed their noses together. Zoro bubbled. Sanji sighed. “God, I adore you.” He grinned in Zoro’s face, bleached sunshine through a shower.

Zoro reached up to thumb a squeezed tear away. Sanji hiccupped. Man, how bad had the old man and the ex-bitch gotten along to make him happy-cry over thirty seconds of polite conversation? Shit.

Zoro flicked Sanji’s cartilage cuff. Sanji chimed Zoro’s earrings in response. Zoro smiled.

“Y’all better be leaving room for Jesus in there!”

They sprang apart like they were caught hugging at a middle school dance, even though the old man hadn’t moved from his easy chair. Sanji tugged his shirt free of non-existent wrinkles while Zoro straightened the hood of his coat. He glanced around the garage… oh, that must be the outside fridge. Not actually outside, but whatever.

He went to get a beer while Sanji bickered with his dad like he bickered with his boss, doors slamming. Zoro rubbed the damp spot on his forehead, hiding his stupid grin behind a fridge door crammed with Coors Lights and unlabeled brown bottles. Wonderful... He liked that.

Sanji stared at his phone as the grits bubbled and thought about his former almost-in-laws.

He really had done a good job putting Pudding and her family behind him. He had. He hadn’t liked them that much, and they hadn’t liked him. He wasn’t straight and didn’t pretend to be; he was a Katrina refugee who hadn’t had the decency to move back to Slidell once the floodwaters receded; his only family that mattered was a grumpy, disabled restaurant guy who gave as much of a shit about them as he gave about profits… and he refused to get sucked into the family business.

The Charlottes had tried to fold him into the arms of Totto Bakery right after graduation, since he was the only boy in their high school’s home economics class that wasn’t (only) there to meet girls. He had almost caved, but Zeff had talked him down, painting a vivid, terrifying image of a life stuck in a commercial bakery’s test kitchen and decades of Southern family business politics. It was the right call, which Sanji never told Zeff, but God did it make every Charlotte family gathering even more of an exercise in patience. No one turned down a job offer from Big Momma Charlotte and lived to hear the end of it. It was misery… but the family wasn’t all loud hair and veiled comments.

His phone screen darkened. He tapped it awake, lighting up his text history with Chiffon. This one of Pudding’s cousins was sane. Normal. Historically, one of his favorite people. The only fond memories he had of the Charlotte chateau were walks through the woods with Pudding, quiet evenings on the back screen porch with overpriced bourbon and Pudding’s older cousin Katakuri, and simple kitchen talks with Chiffon, cooking and cleaning while the rest of the family watched football.

Sanji knew that part of breaking off his engagement was losing not just his fiancée, but all of the Charlottes. He hadn’t mourned it. But… today. It was the week before Thanksgiving, he couldn’t remember how long or at what temperature Chiffon cooked her green bean casserole, and he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to text her about it like he would have six months ago. They hadn’t spoken since Easter, well before he and Pudding officially called it off, even if their relationship had been rocky for – well. Quite a while. What kind of story had she fed her Smoky Mountain sharks of a family? Did Chiffon hate him now?

The screen turned off again. He splashed a bit more water in the grits and stirred it in. He should leave her well enough alone. Even if she didn’t hate him and was the most reasonable of the Charlottes and lived in New Jersey, she still talked to her family. Even casual contact from him was bound to make the circuit at the chateau. He could look up a recipe on the internet that was close enough to hers, no matter how much the idea offended him on a deep, molecular level. He could stay away.

Shuffling and groaning echoed from his bedroom. Sanji didn’t turn as Zoro stumbled into the kitchen, only wearing a borrowed pair of Sanji’s sweats and seafoamy hair cowlicked to high heaven. “Mornin’,” he yawned. He slumped over Sanji’s back, face shoved into his hair. “S’ya ‘akin’?”

God, he better be grateful that Zeff already adored him. “Just grits and coffee today.” Zoro whined. Sanji huffed. “What, were you expecting a full spread? We both have work in an hour, darling.”

“Y’d’it ‘fore we were da’ing.” He yawned in Sanji’s ear, wrapping around him like a badly-cut overcoat. “’Iked that.”

Sanji blinked. “You remember that?”

Zoro grunted. “Course.” He nuzzled in, breathing deep through his nose. Sanji still didn’t know what to do with this early morning Zoro, barely verbal and handsy as all get-out, who smelled his hair and forgot consonants existed. “’Member e’erythin’ you feed me.”

Oh. Sanji looked into the bubbling pot, spoon straining in his grip. “Next time you’re over,” he said through the choke. “I’ll need to go shopping first.”

Zoro hummed. “S’fair.” He yawned again. Sanji heard his jaw pop. “So, t’orrow?”

Sanji rolled his eyes. “Insatiable.” Zoro grinned, flats of his teeth slimy against Sanji’s skin. He glanced at his phone, which held Chiffon’s number, the no-context thumbs-up Zeff had texted him last night while Zoro went down on him on the couch, the group text Zoro’s house had already added him to. “You don’t… are we going too fast?” he asked the glass top stove. “Maybe we should spend at least one night in our separate beds this week.”

“Bleh.” Zoro licked him like a snake scenting the air. “Stupid.” Sanji smiled, ducking his head so his hair fell over his eyes. The grits were about ready. Maybe he should cut up some scallions, to make it look a little nicer. If Zoro let him go instead of hugging his waist tighter. “You’re skinny.”

Sanji rolled his eyes. “And you’re stinky.” He nudged his elbow into Zoro’s side. “You should shower before you leave.”

Zoro shrugged. “Pirates didn’t have showers.” Sanji scowled. Zoro grumbled, pulling away at last, chill air rushing into the new space between them. “You said coffee?”

Sanji pointed at the French press on the other end of the counter, giant Tennessee Aquarium mug waiting beside it. Sanji stirred the grits a final time and turned off the burner, stepping to the fridge for a green onion. “There’s a reason we don’t have pirates around anymore,” Sanji grumbled. “Don’t you care about your customers?”

He shrugged. “That’s Nami’s job. I’m just the eye candy.”

Sanji grabbed a knife, chopping the onion on autopilot, staring at Zoro’s hip-lean on the counter instead of his cutting board. Zoro blinked in the cheap apartment lighting, blue ceramic patterned with penguins pressed to his bare chest. Sanji should buy bigger sweatpants – that thrifted ETSU pair pinched Sanji’s ankles. On Zoro, they refused to sit anywhere below Zoro’s high waist, the crotch riding up in an erotically indecent way… Hmm. Maybe he should get smaller ones, actually.

He drifted to Zoro’s side, trailing his fingers up the old, vicious scar from right hip to left shoulder, chiming the earrings at the top. He kept forgetting to ask for the story. Sanji should do that soon, while he still could.

“Eye candy, huh?” Sanji ran his hand through Zoro’s disheveled hair. Hopefully Zoro would let Sanji attack it with a wet comb, even if he didn’t relent on the shower war. “Whose eyes are you candying?”

Zoro grinned, that rare full-face one that made him look like a kid who still thought being a cop was a good idea. “That sentence is fucked, babe.” Sanji frissoned. Zoro set his coffee aside and cupped Sanji’s neck. “I don’t mind if people look,” he said, palm warm. “But don’t worry, you’re the only one allowed to touch.” He dipped in to kiss the corner of Sanji’s mouth, morning breath mild. “And same to you.” The other corner, noses brushing on the pass. “Besides, what’s the point of all your hard work if I don’t show it off?”

Bastard. “Bastard.” Zoro chuckled. Sanji shoved him away and pulled down two bowls. “Go put a shirt on and sit at the table like a civilized ape,” he snapped. “Let’s eat before the grits get hard.”

Zoro laughed. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll stop distracting you.” He slapped Sanji’s ass as he passed. Sanji yelped and kicked at his running heels. Zoro just laughed harder.

Zoro fell against the door of the only Asian market in town, blowing in like the November wind. “Fuck, it’s cold.” He fluffed the hood of his coat, craning to see which family member was behind the checkout counter today. “Afternoon, uncle.”

Mr. Kim grinned at him, setting his book aside. “Ah, Zoro!” Zoro grabbed a basket from the stack by the door. “It’s been a minute since you stopped in! We’ve got a new sake in this week if you’re interested.”

Zoro huffed. “Where’s it from?” He checked his phone for the stream of consciousness texts Sanji had been dumping on him all day, a mix of work bullshit and a shopping list for tomorrow. Maybe it was a mistake to say he wanted the full Japanese experience if Sanji was going to be this neurotic about goddamned breakfast. “You’re not trying to sneak soju into my system again, are you?” Seaweed, tofu, see what was in Mrs. Kim’s pickle fridge and get something spicy, soybeans, natto starter… oh, shit, was he going to make natto again? Fucking sweet. Guess it wasn’t just a tomorrow shopping list, then.

Mr. Kim laughed. “We’ll refine your palate one day!” Oh, right, Zoro was supposed to get lunch for the crew while he was here. He paused in front of the cup noodle display, snatching up the other three’s favorites. Mr. Kim got up to follow Zoro around the store. Damn, it must be a slow day today. He saw Zoro’s basket of cup noodles and laughed. “When are you gonna learn to cook for real, boy?”

Zoro snorted. “Don’t need to,” he argued. “That’s my boyfriend’s job.” He took a few seconds to enjoy the wicked little thrill at the phrase ‘my boyfriend’ as he dug for the spiciest cup noodle for Usopp, the words coiled around his wrists like a friendly snake. Actually…

He handed his phone to Mr. Kim. “Do you know where, like, half of this stuff is?” he asked. “I’m the errand boy today, but I don’t know where any of this shit is, if you’ve even got it stocked.”

Mr. Kim hummed, adjusting his glasses as he squinted at the texts. Shit, Zoro hadn’t checked to see if there was stuff that Sanji wouldn’t want a random old guy to read in view… whatever, he’d live. “Your boyfriend, huh? You finally gave Rita’s boy a call like I told you to, did you?”

Zoro hid an eyeroll behind a blink. ‘Rita’s boy’ was a skinny med student with an annoying laugh whose only redeeming quality was being the only other gay Asian in Johnson City. Zoro had never been that desperate. Dude couldn’t even have two beers without making a damn fool of himself.

“No, I found this one all on my own,” Zoro told Mr. Kim. He shrugged. “He’s white, but he does my hair and he knows how to make natto, so it could be worse.”

Mr. Kim sparkled. “Ooh, dating your hairdresser?” He winked. “Is he the one that turns you into a My Little Pony all the time?”

Zoro didn’t hide that eyeroll. “Yeah, yeah. Pick out the good seaweed for him, old man.”

Mr. Kim chuckled and drifted down the aisle with Zoro’s phone. “Well, shame about the white boy part,” he said, eyes flitting over his sparse shelves. Sometimes Zoro really missed the Dekalb market. “And the hairdresser part.” He pulled out two giant packs of seaweed from the bottom shelf and tucked it into Zoro’s basket, long strips sticking out to the side. “Find yourself a good doctor next time.” Next time? Zoro scowled, tongue in his teeth so he didn’t tell the only uncle he talked to in town to fuck off. Mr. Kim frowned at Zoro’s phone. “Oh, it turned off…”

Zoro snatched his phone back and unlocked the screen, but didn’t return it to Mr. Kim, reading off the next item on Sanji’s list out loud instead. Next time. Get the hell out of here, old man.

Living alone was still kind of odd. Sanji had moved from Zeff’s house into his and Pudding’s domestic bliss when they still needed their parents to co-sign the lease, which really meant shifting from one difficult-to-please taskmaster to another for a full seven years. It hadn’t even been seven months since he moved into this place, crammed with unfamiliar furniture and thrifted china. He had almost recovered from the financial dent of making this place more than a trashy bachelor pad, each new pot and pillow another pebble tossed into the gully that said they were done now. He had left her with the lions’ share of the stuff – her family had bought most of it originally, and he didn’t want to add ‘thief’ to the list of names they were no doubt calling him at the chateau. But the couch was his.

He sat down on his old red suede sectional with a sigh, kicking his socks up on the ottoman and slouching all the way flat, stemless wine glass resting on his solar plexus. It had been a long day. His first client of the day had run long, which pushed all the others late as well – not enough to reschedule, but enough that he barely had time to shove lunch in his face while Amber’s lightener processed. Not only did he have to send Zoro to do the shopping, but by the time he escaped the salon, Nami’s will and Luffy’s stomach had already dragged his groceries and his boyfriend back to their cabin in the woods. It was fine. They hadn’t made real plans. Sanji could start the natto later.

Sanji stretched for the remote, flipping through the streaming services (most of which Nami and Usopp had put on there with stolen passwords from other friends and family members during their one visit so far). What would put both of his romantic interests out of his head for an evening? None of the baking shows – that was dangerous Pudding territory. He was halfway through Midnight Diner, but that was mostly a guilty attempt to learn more Japanese food stuff for his Japanese boyfriend. He should really try to like something just for himself, not his relationships to others. Fuck. Did he like anything?

He gave up and threw on an old season of Project Runway, juggling his wine and his phone as he caught up on the things he missed while he made and ate dinner. Should he post a story of the one process video he took today as a preview for the real Instagram post tomorrow? He should rewatch it first – he took it in a hurry, it was probably bad… Huh.

Reiju texted him.

He stared at the notification, pinot noir bubbling in his chest. He sat up to put the glass on the end table, not looking away from the pink circle of her contact. He kept forgetting she had his number now. She had reached out a few years ago, right out of the blue, trying to warn him about the asteroid of their family drama entering his atmosphere. It had burned out on entry and never made impact, thank every god and spirit on the planet, but she had stayed in touch – in her own way. She called him the day before his birthday, emailed him old pictures of their mother she found while cleaning out the attic, liked his Instagram stories. Texted him around the holidays asking what she could get him for Christmas.

She meant well. He knew that. He knew that. Ugh. But every time he even saw her name, he was fucked up for a week, and this was not the time for that! Shit.

He had to tell Zoro about this. Did he have to tell Zoro about this? He had to tell Zoro about this.

He tossed his phone across the couch and grabbed his wine again. They hadn’t talked about Sanji’s life before Katrina, not really – not any more than he would have told any other client he liked. Shit, it had taken years for Pudding to even know what his birth family’s last name was. It had only been a month! It wasn’t – ugh. Ugh. Zoro already got mad at anything that resembled Sanji’s baggage from his former relationship. He didn’t even know that Sanji wanted to text Chiffon yet. How would he respond to the God-damned Vinsmokes?

Shit.

“Hey, Zoro! Your phone’s ringing!”

Zoro grunted as he pushed the porthole made out of a broken washing machine back into place. “Who gives a shit,” he grumbled. A piece of old cloth hit him and knocked his stupid eyepatch around over his ear. He growled and ripped it off. “Probably just spam, anyway.”

Nami made a little noise from the busted carnival games across the escape room. “I think it’s your sister?”

Zoro stilled. Huh. “Huh.” He looked over his shoulder at Nami, who waved his phone at him. That sure was Perona’s contact image lighting up the screen – that pink was visible from space. He shrugged. “I’ll call her back later–”

Nami rolled her eyes and answered it before he could finish his sentence, grinning as she slapped the phone to her ear. “Hi! Is this Perona?” Zoro snarled and stomped across the room, sending Usopp scrambling, knocking over his stupid intricate puzzle he was halfway through resetting. Usopp wailed, Luffy laughed, and Nami grinned wider, putting her body between him and the phone. “I’m his boss and his landlord and his best friend and I’ve heard so much about you–”

Zoro lunged. Nami screamed, giggling and cackling as they wrestled for the phone. He felt way more of her boobs than he ever wanted to touch on any woman as Perona’s tinny voice demanded explanations through the speaker, Usopp egging them on, Luffy laughing the loudest of them all. Everyone Zoro knew was an asshole.

Nami squirmed under Zoro on the poured concrete and tossed the phone at Usopp, who almost fumbled the catch. “Run!”

“Oh shit, oh shit–” Nami hugged Zoro as the little snake slithered behind the netting hiding the exit from view, stammering into the phone, “Hi, uh – sorry, they’re being silly…” The exit door opened and closed.

Nami rolled them over with a grunt and a heave and then sat on Zoro’s ribs, her bony ass digging into his liver. Zoro scowled up at her. “You’re a bitch, you know that?”

She patted his cheek. “I know.” She got off him, straightening her pirate costume. Luffy giggled and kicked his feet on the sheep lawn ornament he was restricted to during resetting. Useless little shit. Nami held out both her hands to help Zoro to his feet, using her whole weight to do it. “Why’s she calling you in the middle of the work day, anyway?”

“I don’t know!” Zoro snapped, yanking his hands away. “I couldn’t talk to her!” Nami made a face at him. Luffy giggled more.

“Hey, uh, are y’all done fighting in here?”

Zoro whipped to glare at Usopp, coming in from the main entrance now. Usopp held up both hands, one of them with Zoro’s phone in it. “She… wants to talk to you? Don’t eat me?”

Zoro sneered. “No shit she does, that’s why she called me?” Zoro stomped over, ripping the stupid device out of Usopp’s grimy little hands. Usopp skittered away. Zoro kept marching past him to the lobby, outside – fuck, not outside, his coat was in the back room. He slapped the phone to his ear. “What.”

“Well, that’s no way to speak to your much beloved sister!” Zoro sneered at the street outside the glass storefront. “Especially when you’re about to see me in person for the first time in forever!”

He stilled like Chopper in the morning. “What the hell are you talking about.”

She gasped. “You forgot?” He hadn’t forgot shit. “You promised to host me for Thanksgiving this year!”

The bottom dropped out of Zoro’s world. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I bought my plane ticket weeks ago!” Of course she had. “Your little podunk town is impossible to get to, you know that?”

He gripped his nose, slumping over the front counter. “Rona,” he groaned. “You know I live in a cabin in the woods with three other people now, right?”

“Then what’s one more!” His brow furrowed. “I want to meet your little friends – and your boyfriend, you jerk! Your stylist! Ugh, I’m so jealous!” Shit motherfucker damn. “And I’ve been abandoned by Mihawk and Moria this year,” she whined. Ooh, now Zoro got it. “You have to host me! It’s Thanksgiving! It’s family!”

God, he hated when she got like this. He banged his face against particle board. “When are you getting here,” he moaned into the counter.

“Tuesday!” she chirped. “You’ll pick me up at the airport, right? I’m coming into Asheville – that’s where the internet said was the best to fly into! That’s right, right?”

Zoro’s anger spiked again. “That’s over an hour away!”

“Zoro!” she whined, drawing it out like a baby. “Please?”

“I’m not here to entertain you!” he snapped. “I’ve got a life, you know!”

“Well, duh, of course you do!” Zoro lifted his head to glare at the camera feed behind the counter. Those fools were standing around gossiping when they had another group coming in, like, five minutes. Assholes. “Can’t I want to be a part of it, too?”

God. He rubbed his face. “Fine,” he caved. “But you’re sleeping on the couch.”

“Boo, you’re supposed to give up your bed for me! That’s what a good host would do!” Since when did she ever start to think he was a good host? “Well, I just got to the gym, but I’ll send you my flight info soon! Thanks! Love you! Pick me up on Tuesday!”

She hung up before he could tell her where to shove her gym or that he sold his car months ago to pay for boathouse repairs. Zoro growled and dropped the phone to the counter, massaging the heels of his hands into his temples. Great. How was he supposed to tell them about this? How was he supposed to tell Sanji about this?

He looked through his fingers at the cameras. Fuck, Nami was going to be pissed. Perona couldn’t know about her fight with Nojiko, of course, but this wasn’t going to make that better. Luffy was an odd ball of badly-processed grief these days, and he couldn’t drive, anyway. Sanji was going through some annoying kind of trauma regression and bitching about anything and everything under the sun all the time, and he didn’t deserve to get cross-examined by Perona’s psychology master’s degree for the drive across the mountains. Maybe…

Zoro watched as Luffy bumped into some antique flowerpot and knocked it over, shattering it across the floor. Nami and Usopp screeched at him, voices carrying through the closed door. Maybe it was time to listen to Franky and turn this place into a wreck room instead of an escape room. It’s not like anyone solved Usopp’s complicated riddles without breaking something already, anyway.

Zoro sighed and crawled over the counter enough to grab the snail mic. “Hey, Usopp!” Zoro yelled into it just to watch them jump. “Get your ass out here!”

Why was November so full of rotten days? Why were all of Sanji’s clients so needy and indecisive? Why were his coworkers so annoying? Why could no one drive in this town? Why was everything so awful?

He lit up as he walked from his parking spot to the building, smoke and breath both on the wind. It was Saturday, which meant it was his and Zoro’s Nami-appointed ‘date night’. It was a good idea, really – it got them out of the house, doing things together that weren’t work or sex, things that he should have been doing with Pudding all–

–Nope, don’t go there, don’t do it.

It was a good idea, full stop. Sanji paused at the curb beside the last car in the lot, looking up at the shiny storefront in the otherwise dilapidated strip mall. The fancy arcade bar sounded like a good idea when Nami suggested it earlier this week, but right now, in the cold of a Southern winter after sundown, wet cheese leaf litter under his boots and only the third cigarette of the day… He couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be less than stuck in a box with screaming neon and popcorn butter. But it was date night. If he had been doing date night before, he’d probably be married by now–

Ah, fuck. He would have been married by now. He forgot.

“Oh, wow.”

Sanji frowned, turning to Zoro’s voice. Zoro raised his eyebrows at him from a parking spot away, hands in his coat pockets, ears red from the cold under his faded hair. “You look like hot shit, babe.”

Sanji sneered. “Oh, you’re such a charmer.”

Zoro huffed. “Hey, I said you were hot.” Zoro waved at Usopp’s car as it drove away, crossing the last few feet to Sanji’s side. Sanji took a deep inhale of as much of his cigarette as he could get in a breath. “Bad day?”

Sanji exhaled smoke, tilting back to look at the dark sky, throat tight. “Yeah.”

Zoro hummed. “I had a shit day, too.” He bumped their arms together, but didn’t say anything else, just stood in a random parking lot in easy silence as they tried to find the stars. Sanji’s shoulders eased. God, but that place looked so loud.

Zoro swayed, pressing instead of bumping. “Hey. Wanna skip date night and go beat the shit out of each other instead?”

Sanji glanced at him. Zoro’s mouth quirked, dark eyes flashing under his stringy bangs. Sanji raised his eyebrows. “And where, pray tell, do you suggest we do that?” He gestured around with his cigarette. “At night, in this town?”

Zoro’s smile grew. “I know a spot or two.”

Sanji hooked his leg around Zoro’s neck, pinning him to the brown grass, heel on his sternum. “Your sister is coming down for Thanksgiving,” he panted, “and you didn’t mention it?”

Zoro wheezed. “I didn’t – know!” He twisted his shoulders and threw Sanji off, rolling away before surging back, slamming Sanji’s wrists to the cold earth. They breathed in each other’s faces, the distant street light in the playground’s parking lot barely a highlight on Sanji’s roots. “She says she told me about it,” he breathed, taking the chance to appreciate Sanji’s blue eyes in the starlight, “but I went back through a whole year of our texts and she’s a damned liar–”

Sanji rolled up. Zoro straddled him, folded legs on Sanji’s hips, dirt under his fingernails and pulse against his palms. Sanji stilled. That’s better. Get out of your head, Blondie. Zoro huffed. “But she always gets what she wants,” he sighed. Sanji tossed his hair and glared at him. Zoro winked. “You’ll help me, right?”

Sanji blew a raspberry at him and started struggling again. If there was one thing Zoro learned as a cop, though, it was how to keep someone on the ground. They weren’t usually facing him and it wasn’t usually this fun, but he was an adaptable dude.

Sanji bared his teeth at him, grass in his hair, nice jacket twisted up. “It’s your sister,” he ground out. “Why should I?”

Zoro grinned. “Because you’re my boyfriend,” he crooned like Nami at her worst. Sanji snarled more at him. “You’re supposed to help me out.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Sanji drew breath to argue. Zoro dipped down and kissed him instead. Sanji chirped, squeaked, settled, trilled…

The squawk of a familiar siren. Zoro gasped and sat up, squinting at the parking lot through the playground equipment. A patrol car parked in the fire lane flashed its lights at him. “Ah, shit.”

Sanji froze under him. “What kind of ‘ah, shit’ are we dealing with here?”

Zoro shrugged. “Let’s find out.” He shaded his eyes with a hand, trying to see past the headlights. “Yeah?” he called over the distant engine. “The hell you want?” Sanji hissed and kneed him in the spine.

“Shit, is that you, Roronoa?” Oh. Crisis averted. “What in the Sam hill are you doing out here, man?”

Zoro grinned. Sanji was going to murder him. “Date night.” Another knee in the back. Worth it. “Sup, Johnny?”

Johnny turned off the car, killing the lights and the engine so the general suburban quiet took over again. “Got a call about a domestic disturbance,” Zoro’s old shift buddy said. “Didn’t expect it to be you.” He trooped around the playground equipment towards them. “Where you been, man? Everyone thought you skipped town after you quit – shit, the fuck did you do to your hair?”

Zoro shrugged. “Some stuff.” He stood as Johnny picked his way across the pine bark gravel of the playground, holding out his arm to Sanji to help him up. “No domestic disturbance,” Zoro said. “Just blowing off a little steam.” Sanji grasped his forearm. Zoro hauled him to his feet. “Since when did anyone care about what happened out here, anyway?”

Johnny groaned. “Since the fucking neighborhood watch moved in across the street,” he complained, jerking a thumb at the housing complex just in sight. It did look kind of new. “They’re a pain in the ass. Sorry – sorry to you and your girl.”

Sanji whipped around, long hair flying and catching the little light there was, beard stark against his pale skin. “Excuse me?” he snapped in his lowest register. Zoro bit back a laugh. God, but he did love being gay and dating men.

“Oh – oh!” Johnny held up his hands, backing away. “Uh – the lighting ain’t – um. My bad?” Zoro grabbed Sanji by the collar of his jacket. Johnny was cool, but he wasn’t cool enough to play off assaulting an officer as ‘good fun’. “Uh – but y’all gotta get out of here,” he pressed on. “If they call again…”

Zoro waved him on. “Yeah, yeah, it’s cool, I get it. Thanks for the heads up, man.” Zoro’s arm trembled from holding Sanji back. “Nice to see you again.”

“Yeah! Um – you should swing by the station and say hi sometimes! The guys miss you something fierce. And, uh – good luck with – that?” He gestured vaguely at Sanji, then high tailed it back to his patrol car, whipping out of the cracked lot with a farewell headlight flash.

Sanji’s vibrating in Zoro’s hold turned into shaking. Damn. “You said this place was safe.”

“It used to be.” Zoro sighed, squeezing Sanji around the shoulders real quick before sliding his hand down to his elbow, tugging him towards the car. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Sanji ripped his arm out of Zoro’s hold, fumbling his cigarettes out of his pocket. “I’m not your girl,” he hissed.

Zoro raised his eyebrows. “Duh? Otherwise I wouldn’t be here?” Sanji glared fire at him, lighter flickering against the white. Zoro shrugged, sticking his hands in his pockets. “I mean, if you changed your mind now, well, sunk cost fallibility or whatever they call it. I ain’t going nowhere.” Sanji lit his cigarette, not taking his eyes off Zoro’s. Zoro gulped. “Unless… do you want me to?”

Sanji stared at him through his first puff, the cherry underlighting his features in bright orange. “It’s ‘fallacy’,” he rasped, smoke clouding his eyes. “Sunk cost fallacy.”

Zoro shrugged. “Sure, if you say so. Answer my question.”

Sanji shook his head, not quite hiding his smile behind his cigarette hand. “You’re a piece of work, marimo.” Zoro scowled. Sanji stepped in close, right shoe against the outside of Zoro’s right boot, draping his arm over Zoro’s opposite shoulder. Zoro’s hand laid on Sanji’s far hip. They should take dance lessons sometime.

Sanji held his cigarette to the side, hair falling over his eye. “The only place I want you to go,” he murmured, “is home with me.” The heat that thrummed through Zoro through their earlier sparring kicked back up. Sanji smirked and nodded at the parking lot before pulling away. “Get in the car, sweetheart.”

Zoro hopped to follow, watching Sanji’s hair swish on his shoulders. “Hey, have you ever gotten road head?” he asked. “Because–”

Yeah, he probably deserved that kick to the head.

Sanji laid on Zoro’s freshly-moisturized chest, ear to his heart, running his fingers back and forth under the fold of his pec. He swallowed. “My sister reached out to me recently, too.”

Zoro grunted. “Was I supposed to know that you’ve got a sister?”

Sanji smiled. “No, probably not.”

Zoro grunted again. “Is she on Zeff’s side or the birth side?”

Oh. Sanji’s ribs caved in. “Birth,” he barely breathed. “We’re… estranged.”

“No shit.”

Sanji slapped Zoro’s chest. Zoro tugged on his hair. Sanji burrowed in deeper, working his leg around Zoro’s under the covers. “She’s not so bad.” He stroked Zoro’s sparse chest hair. The echo through the body under him made the confessional easier, somehow. “But it’s still… not a great relationship.”

Zoro sighed like a horse. “Please tell me she doesn’t want to visit for Thanksgiving, too.”

Sanji grinned. “God, I hope not.” Zoro twisted a heavy lock of Sanji’s hair around his fingers, gentle pulls on Sanji’s scalp. “She’s just… being polite. I know that.” Another lock. “I know that.” Zoro spread his hand on the back of Sanji’s head, a heavy, calloused blanket on his brain. Sanji swallowed, biting his cheek. “But why does she always want to get me a Christmas present?”

“I dunno, guilt or something?” Zoro yawned, turning into Sanji, heavy arm flopping on top of him over the covers. “Jus’ ask for somethin’ stupid expensive you’d never buy f’yourself but actually want n’take the free money, I guess.” Sanji grinned into Zoro’s plush chest. Zoro mouthed along his forehead. “Feel whatever you feel and fuck ‘em.” He yawned again. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”

“Hey, does anyone know what the fuck is up with Luffy lately?”

Zoro looked at Nami, then at Usopp. “Are we supposed to care?”

Nami slapped him upside the head, breath puffing in the cold air. Zoro flinched away, baring his teeth at her. “Hey!”

She snorted at him, more white fog against the junkyard mountains. “Men.” She adjusted her seat on the arm of Zoro’s moldy old armchair, curling around her paper cup of hot chocolate, eyes distant between her matching hat and scarf. “He’s been off ever since we closed for the season.”

Usopp tossed the piece of trash he was looking at on the pile behind them and fished out another. “His brother died?” he tried, pitching his voice over the din of his rummaging. “Isn’t it the anniversary around now? ‘The body remembers’ and all that junk?” Huh. Was that why Zoro got all funky around February? Weird.

Nami flapped a mitten. “Yeah, yeah, but there’s something else, I just know it.” She gestured with her cup, splashing hot chocolate on purple wool. “I mean – he’s eating bugs!”

They all looked at Luffy, hanging out across the junkyard with the owner-operator, three kebabs of something in his hands while Franky hovered, bouncing on his toes with the dignity of someone forty years younger. Usopp shrugged. “Eh, that’s probably just something they make in Texas,” he said as Luffy crunched on a fried grasshopper. “It’s good protein, I’ve heard.”

Nami groaned and flopped over Zoro, elbow digging into his head. “What did I do to get stuck with so many boys?”

Someone chuckled behind them. They all whipped around – oh, Christ. Franky’s girlfriend perched on a pile of old cars and couches, a travel thermos in one hand as her purple boot bounced in the air. “Something terrible, I’m sure.”

Nami whined, pawing in her direction. “Robin! Save me!”

Robin smiled. “I believe that Luffy’s emotional struggles relate to his father,” she said, ignoring Nami’s plight because she was a smart, ruthless bitch with the business sense to power the entire town, if she cared. She didn’t, which was why she was dating a washed-up rockabilly whose greatest achievement was owning the biggest pile of trash in the Tri-City area and emergency landing a 767 on a highway once. “I’ve heard he’s been looking to reconnect.”

Usopp made a face. “And where would you be hearing that, St. Magdalena on a Hill?”

Robin sipped her coffee. “We run in similar circles.” Zoro’s neck hurt from twisting to see her. He got up, dust and dirt clapping out of the chair. Nami glared at him, riding the waves as it wobbled on the uncertain ground and its missing leg. Robin tapped her mug to her cheek. “Anyone would be a little ‘off’, as you say, if their estranged parent showed up after a lifetime of silence and demanded they suddenly become a family again.”

Nami groaned some more. “Why won’t he talk to us about this shit?” she cried. “We’re he’s friends!”

Zoro raised his eyebrows at her. “What on God’s green earth makes you think he’s going to talk about shit to anyone?” he snapped. “The only thing I’ve heard him say about his dad is that they wanna do Thanksgiving with him.”

Usopp snapped his fingers. “Oh, right, and the stepmom! Who the fuck is she?”

Robin’s smiled curved. “Oh, now that is quite the story…”

“Hey, babe!” Franky called from his grill by the office. “Come on over here and try this out!”

Robin perked up and skated down the trash heap on a random piece of cardboard, hop-skip-and-a-jumping over to her man. “What sauce do you recommend, dear?”

Zoro sighed, dropping back down into the chair and making Nami yelp and cling. “At this rate, we might as well just all go to his dad’s for Thanksgiving and see what the fuck’s up with our own eyes.”

Usopp pulled out a cool hubcap from the pile, wiping it with his sleeve. “You know what, Zoro,” he said, “I think you might be onto something there.”

Sanji didn’t have a whole lot of male clients that weren’t married to his female ones. Either the men around these parts went to Sport Clips, their mom cut it in the kitchen, or they actually had some sense and went to the only good barbershop between here and Knoxville down in Jonesborough. There were a few men on his calendar that didn’t fall into those buckets, of course – old high school friends who liked him more than they ever liked Pudding, a few of the local gays who liked a man’s touch over a woman’s or an enby’s for whatever reason, Zeff (who wasn’t allowed to let anyone touch his head that couldn’t speak French), Zoro, of course… and Law.

Sanji hummed as he tilted Law’s head down, buzzing the back of his head with the five guard. “I can’t believe they’re still harping on you for that.”

Law groaned, throat vibrating through the protruding bones of his spine. “Right? I dropped out of med school almost a decade ago. You’d think they’d have gotten the picture by now.” He drank some red wine between buzzes, their timing for booze and blades down to a dance. “But no, they’re doctors, Lammy’s a doctor, all of the cousins are in the medical field in some way or another. I’m just supposed to come to my senses and get back to school – even if there’s no fucking way any program with sense would have me.” Sanji brushed clinging hairs from his nape. “And I’ve got a whole week of that to look forward to.”

Sanji cooed. “Oh, you’re so pitiful.” Law shot him a filthy look through the mirror. Sanji grinned back. “At least they love you,” he said, oh shit. He cleared his throat. “And it’s just a week.”

Law narrowed his eyes. Sanji hated how viciously smart he could be, from the moment they first met at some shitty bar after midnight five years ago. “You’n Zoro are doing good, right?” he asked. “Not like I care, but I’ll have to deal with the damned monkey being sad if you guys break up barely a month into this mess.”

Sanji rolled his eyes. “We’re fine,” he said. “It’s just – the holidays.” He shrugged, tucking his clippers in his leg harness and pulling out his comb and shears. “We’re figuring it out.”

Law snorted. “It’s fucking Sunday, my man.” Sanji made a face. Law shrugged, sipping his wine. “Well, I’m sure the monkey would appreciate you running interference with his dad or whatever.” He frowned. “Not like I care about some kid.”

“Luffy’s twenty-three,” Sanji reminded him, not for the first time. “He’s still bothering you, huh?” he asked, reaching for his water spray bottle. One day, he would convince this tangle of string bean muscles and ink poisoning to get the full treatment, not just a trim. Maybe when his bald spot got unignorable.

“Yes.” Sanji laughed. Law shifted in his seat. “No one ever warns you that at some point, you become the old man you lusted after when you were a skinny twink,” he drawled. “God, the bar is depressingly low.”

Sanji grinned, trimming Law’s hair on autopilot. The man hadn’t wanted a new look in the… five? Six, maybe, years of Sanji doing it for him. “I don’t think I’d ever describe either of y’all as a twink,” he replied. “Is Luffy even gay, anyway?”

Law groaned, loud and long. “God, if only. Then I’d know what to do here.” Sanji chuckled. “He just wants to watch me work and stares at me like a bug on a board, but every time I try to feel out the waters…” He bugged his eyes out and stared into the mirror, a shockingly on-point imitation of Luffy at his oddest. Sanji cackled. Law shook it off, scowling into his wine. “He’s so…”

Sanji hummed, circling to Law’s left side. “To your credit, he’s weird with everyone.” Sanji huffed. “Hell, Zoro and the others have lived with him since at least this spring, and they just found out his dad lives in town, like, last week. He’s an odd duck.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Luffy sighed and knocked back the last of his wine. “Well, can you ask him what he wants from me – business or pleasure?” he groaned. “I wouldn’t ask you at all, but – Jesus Christ. This kid.”

Sanji clicked his tongue. “No promises. Now close your eyes.”

Sanji fell onto the shitty loveseat by Zoro, beer in hand, hair everywhere. “Your friends are exhausting,” he moaned into the bottle.

Zoro grunted into his own beer, shifting around so they both fit on the trash heap furniture, arm along the back, legs pressed hip to knee. “After dinner, they’re your friends.” Sanji hid a smile and kicked Zoro’s ankle. Zoro slumped against him, working a hand into his loose hair. He kicked his feet up on the old canoe Usopp and Franky turned into an ottoman/coffee table at the end of the season. “Thanks for cooking, babe,” he said, just to be annoying.

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” Sanji tucked his feet to the side, pressing against Zoro, the subtle warmth running counterpoint to the chaos in the cabin’s living room around them. Usopp was trying to do some of the random freelance design work that local small businesses sometimes threw his way, but Luffy was being clingy and bouncy, the worst of both worlds. Nami wasn’t immune to his antics, alternating between poking around on her laptop on the other end of Usopp’s couch and using it as a weapon whenever Luffy got too close. Zoro hoped Apple made the thing durable enough to fight off a gorilla, like one of those old suitcases.

Luffy saw them – ugh, cuddling ­– and lit up like a Christmas tree, bounding across the room on all fours and pushing in between their faces. “Hey, hey, Zoro, Sanji!” he yelled in their ears. “Play a game with me!”

Zoro checked on Sanji over Luffy’s nose. Yeah. “No,” they chorused.

Luffy pouted, weaseling between them and knocking them around like a Malamute insisting on being a lap dog. “But y’all!” he whined. “It’s fun!”

“Do you have a specific game in – mind?” Sanji asked, wincing and yelping as Luffy’s sharp joints stabbed them in every soft spot imaginable. “Watch it!” Zoro grunted and shoved aside as much as the person and a half space would let him, taking Sanji’s beer from his flailing hand. Sanji grabbed Luffy by the shoulders and held him out so the rascal could get the full force of his ruffled glare. “You’re just bored, ain’t ya, cher?” Bitch. He never called Zoro ‘cher’.

“Bored,” everyone said. Luffy giggled, kicking Zoro just to the right of his dick as he wrapped noodle arms around his boyfriend. Sanji sighed and adjusted his lean to allow for it. Zoro was dating a fucking pushover. Luffy hummed, snuggling into Sanji’s sweater, feet pressed into the loveseat arm on Zoro’s side. Sanji sneered at Zoro through Luffy’s curls. Zoro shrugged and gave him his beer back.

“How about we play the game ‘what the hell are we doing for Thanksgiving’?” Usopp said, sticking his tablet pen in his hair as he struggled to sit up straight on the badly-sprung couch. “I gotta tell my cousin if I’m coming down pretty soon, and I’m sick and tired of y’all dragging y’all’ses pretty little feet about it.” Ugh.

Usopp frowned at the sudden silence, just Nami’s shitty pop playlist playing in the kitchen and the winds of a winter night in the woods filling the air space. Usopp popped to his feet and clapped his hands. “Great, I’ll start! Either I drive down on Wednesday with whoever gets in the van and y’all learn why I moved away, or we go buy food tomorrow before the Food Lion runs out of everything and have a shindig right here!”

Sanji snorted, Luffy’s hair fluffing up with the gust. “And I keep telling y’all that y’all ain’t got no place good enough to cook a real meal in sight of this hovel.” His eyes tightened as he looked down at Luffy, curled up on his chest like an overlarge housecat. “I… I guess I could host,” he ventured. “Or y’all could get y’all’s good deeds in for the year and come help me’n Zeff out at the soup kitchen – they like to do a dinner for whoever shows up.” It was always interesting when the Southern overpowered the trendy hairdresser in his accent.

“God, y’all are such perfect princesses.” Zoro glared at Nami, who refused to look up from her laptop. The frames of her glasses were angled just right so he couldn’t see her eyes proper, and it pissed him the hell off. “I guess I’m not going to Kentucky after all,” she grumbled, banging on the trackpad hard enough that Zoro was surprised it didn’t crack, “so y’all can do whatever y’all want.”

Sanji crooned, petting Luffy’s hair. “Oh, of course you’re included in whatever plans we make, sugar plum.” Zoro rolled his eyes. Sanji kicked him with the only limb he had left to move. “And your delightful sister, you heathen.” Sanji frowned at him, chin on Luffy’s crown. “I should do your hair before she gets here,” he muttered, eyes flicking over his scalp. “When’s that again?”

“Tuesday,” Usopp groaned, falling to the floor on the other side of the canoe-toman, cheek on his hand as he pouted at the three on the loveseat. “Why do I have to go get her from Asheville again?”

Zoro growled. “Because I’ll beat your ass if you don’t?” Usopp stuck his tongue out at him.

Sanji hummed, ignoring the bickering. “Perfect, I’m on walk-in duty that day.” He smiled at Zoro. “Care to retread some history, darling?” Darling. Nice.

“God, y’all are so gross.” Nami sighed, stretching out in the now-empty space, setting the laptop on her belly. “Whatever, it’s not like we had any bookings, anyway.” Sweet, a day off and he got to stop looking like a sentient tie-dye shirt. Zoro gave Sanji a thumbs-up.

Sanji smiled more, then sighed, settling more into Luffy’s koala hold. “I really don’t think my place can host six people, though, as much as I’d like to think otherwise. Not well, at least.”

Fuck it. “Luff,” Zoro said, slapping the flank on his lap, “didn’t you say something about your parents trying to do something?”

Nami and Usopp glared at him. Fuck ‘em. Someone had to ask it. Luffy whined, curling tighter around Sanji. Sanji wheezed, face pinking. Dude needed to get over his issues about people touching him if he was going to be friends with this lot. “I don’ wanna,” he whined.

“Why not, love?” Sanji asked, petting his hair more. Love? Fuck off. “Like, I’m not about to judge anyone for not wanting to give their family the time of day, but…”

“Here, here,” Nami told her laptop, toasting with her beer.

Sanji smiled. “But, it sounds like he’s… trying?” He trailed off, staring out the dark windows. Hmm. Zoro should poke at that tonight in bed. “Tell me how and why I’m telling them to fuck off and I will.”

“Now that’s the spirit,” Zoro mumbled into his bottle. He laid a hand on Luffy’s calf on his lap. Luffy’s bare feet twitched. “Y’all also know that we don’t have to do anything, right?” he pointed out. “Perona can stare at the wall all week for all I care.”

“Boo!” Usopp called, hands cupped around his mouth. “Boring!”

Nami sneered, kicking a foot up on the back of the couch. “If I don’t do anything then I’ll have nothing to flex on Noji with,” she joked-but-didn’t, computer screen reflecting off her glasses. “Absolutely not.” She tossed a pad of sticky notes at Usopp’s head, making him flutter like a bug just hit him in the face. “What are Franky and Robin doing?”

Usopp laughed. “Standby flights to fucking Rome or some shit,” he replied. “Being former American crewmembers comes in clutch sometimes.”

“What? I wanna go to Rome!” Nami cried, kicking her feet like Luffy. “’sopp, carry me to Italy!”

Usopp barked. “Not on your fucking life!” The bickering kicked up again. Zoro tuned it out, draining his beer and rubbing circles around the ball of Luffy’s ankle. Sanji and Luffy were muttering to each other, Sanji still playing with Luffy’s hair, their faces inches apart. Zoro knew that hold. Sanji wasn’t getting up for at least another half hour.

Zoro looked around the room while he finished his beer. Where was… there. He folded Luffy’s legs aside like a TV tray and got up, tossing the bottle in the almost-full recycling bin of an old Amazon delivery box as he picked up Luffy’s phone, discarded on the weird built-in bookshelf. He unlocked it with Luffy’s passcode (a box) and went to his texts, scrolling down a library of unsaved numbers, skimming the previews for a conversation that looked promising. One of these had to be his dad or his stepmom. Zoro could take fucking initiative. Then maybe Sanji would call him fucking ‘cher’.

For all that Sanji had spent almost twenty years in what was known as a picturesque mountain town centered around a love of the outdoors, he had never spent as much time actually in the outside as he had since he started dating Zoro. Or, more accurately, started spending the night in their cabin in the woods.

He pulled Zoro’s fluffy hood up as he stepped out of the back door, kitchen compost bin under his arm. He paused to take as deep of a breath as the chill would allow, the crisp cold a sharp ache in his lungs. He really needed to stop smoking… soon. At some point. Definitely before the next winter, so he didn’t have to freeze his ass off every few hours to keep his hands from shaking.

He trooped down the rickety back stairs to the forest floor, limestone and brown leaves and lichen falling away to the river access. Sanji hadn’t been dragged on one of their summertime whitewater tours (yet), but he was reasonably well-informed that they ended at this point rather than began here. Instead, they shuttled their customers a few miles upriver in Usopp’s rickety-ass junkyard rescue van, hauling the rafts with them in a handmade trailer that had definitely not passed any kind of DMV inspection. It was a steep drop to the river along the rest of the bank as far as the morning light illuminated. The bedrock dipped just enough for a treacherous but not deadly trip behind this house, years of kayak bottoms scraping pine straw scratches into the limestone between the trees. It was the most Smoky Mountains spot Sanji had ever seen.

Sanji picked his way across the undergrowth to Usopp’s compost pile for his dormant garden, dumping the morning’s coffee grounds and eggshells on the decomposing matter as he took in the atmosphere. With all of the leaves fallen, the forest was a hazy collection of thin browns and grays, shot through with the odd evergreen like gray hair on a young mother. Sanji set the pail aside and leant against one of the smoother-barked trees and pulled out his cigarettes, watching the current roll by as he lit up. It was cold these days, but not quite cold enough to freeze yet. Did it ever get cold enough to fully freeze the river up here? Damn, he really needed to get outside more if he didn’t even know that basic fact. What was the name of this river, anyway?

The brush crashed behind him. He turned to see who – holy shit.

The deer froze, dark, milky eyes locked on him. A two-point buck, barely twenty yards away from him on the other side of the wash. Oh my.

The deer’s ears fluttered, the pink tag in one of them chiming. Sanji took his cigarette out of his mouth. “You must be the porch deer, right, huh?” he muttered into his hand. Sanji shifted his stance to face the animal better, slow and subtle. “Too bad,” he sighed. “Been ages since Zeff and I made venison. Would’ve been a good main course.”

The ears flicked again. The kitchen door slammed open, rattling across the distance. “Chopper!” Luffy cried, catching against the railing, beaming under three hats and two coats. “There you are!”

The deer startled and leapt away, gamboling into the trees and disappearing way faster than Sanji thought possible. Luffy slumped, pout visible from space. “Aww.” Sanji shook his head, faking a long drag. Luffy looked around and caught Sanji’s hiding spot. He beamed as much as he had for the deer. “Sanji!”

Sanji smiled. Luffy pounded down the steps – was he really only wearing flip-flops? – and sprinted down the hill in a way that made Sanji’s heart race. He stepped out between Luffy’s path and the river, arm out to intercept him before he slipped in. Luffy fetched against it like a bag on a fence, face pink under his freckles and dramatic cheek scar. “Hey, Sanji!” he said, swinging Sanji around in a full circle like riding a carousel. “Breakfast was so good!”

Sanji yanked his arm away. “Y’all needed to learn what fiber is,” he grumbled into his cigarette. “I’m just doing the raising all y’all clearly missed out on.” Shit. Sanji winced, but Luffy just blinked at him. Sanji sighed, exhaling smoke. “Did you need something, love?”

Luffy frowned. “Isn’t Zoro your love?” Sanji choked, hacking – shit, that was ash he inhaled, fuck that burned. Luffy laughed, slapping him on the back hard enough to make him stumble. “Sanji, you’re so funny!”

Sanji wheezed, kicking Luffy’s shin and missing. “You – I – shut the fuck up!” Luffy laughed more. Sanji snarled, pointing his burning cig at the idiot’s grin. “I do not–!” He sucked in a clean breath that hurt. His eyes watered in the cold wind off the water. “We’ve barely been dating a month!” Luffy shrugged. Sanji huffed and puffed. “He’s not – I don’t think he – we’re not…” He grit his teeth, face warm. “I doubt he’s a pet name kind of guy,” he didn’t answer the question.

Luffy hummed. “Have you asked him?” Sanji looked at him. Luffy smiled, no thoughts behind his brown eyes.

Sanji rolled his. “No,” he ground out. “We don’t – that’s not how we work.”

Luffy frowned. “Well, that’s not good.” He turned to face the house and cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling, “Zoro!” at maximum capacity.

Sanji winced and kicked him in the thigh. “Luffy!” he snapped. “Behave!”

Luffy laughed, spinning out of foot reach. “Nope!” Sanji lunged for him, but Luffy danced away, giggling and slipping on the leaf litter. Sanji growled, going for the attack again and snagging the fool by the collar of his leather jacket.

Luffy wriggled from the headlock like a wet fish, grabbing Sanji’s forearm and almost putting him into the ground, oh shit. Sanji yelped, heart in his throat, cigarette bouncing down the hill to pollute the Watauga (or was this the Nolichucky? Whatever). “Why, you little–”

“The fuck are y’all doing?” Zoro called from the porch.

Luffy did some complicated twist that made Sanji’s head spin to reverse the hold, wrapping both arms and a leg around Sanji from behind. “Zoro!” He laughed. “Hey, you–”

Sanji drove his elbow into Luffy’s ribs as hard as he could, teeth grit. Luffy cackled and bubbled, taking Sanji down to the ground like it was a wrestling mat. Sanji struggled, fighting to free his hands, cheek smashed on cold rock. “You little shit,” he hissed.

“Are y’all fighting?” Zoro called, heavy boots stomping down the stairs and echoing through the trees. “Without me?”

Luffy sat up and perched on Sanji’s back like a pony ride. Sanji flipped his hair back and propped up on his hands, watching Zoro approach with a twist in his chest that had nothing to do with getting absolutely trounced by Luffy’s wrestling moves. “I wouldn’t dare,” he drawled. Swished it around. “Sweetheart.”

A hitch on the bottom step. Oh. Huh. Sanji bucked Luffy off and stood, brushing leaves and dirt from Zoro’s coat and his own jeans. Zoro paused a normal distance away and tilted his head at Sanji. “Why are you wearing my coat?”

Sanji raised his eyebrows. “Because it was there?” He adjusted the hood, a familiar scent wafting up. Shit. “You probably don’t want me to smoke in it, do you?”

Zoro shrugged. “S’not too bad.” He stepped in close, fluffing Sanji’s hair so it spread over the faux fur like a mane, pulling a leaf out and tossing it aside. “Looks good on you.”

Sanji looked at the line between Zoro’s eyebrows and felt like Luffy had thrown him in the river proper. Oh no. He gulped. “Is it mine now, then – darling?”

Zoro stared at him with the full consideration he always gave even the most flippant of Sanji’s questions. “No,” he said. “But you can borrow it sometimes, if you need it.”

Sanji smiled. “How generous of you.”

Luffy slammed into Zoro’s side, sending them both stumbling and Zoro cursing. “Zoro!” he yelled way too loudly, snuggling into his sweatshirt. “Let’s go be pirates!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Zoro blinked at Sanji over Luffy’s head, arm limp around Luffy’s shoulders. “Nami’s chomping at the bit to get into town,” he said. “Y’all about ready to mosey?”

Sanji grinned and tucked his lighter in the inside pocket of the coat. “Sure thing, marimo.”

“So, are you gonna tell Usopp that he’s thinking too hard about all this, or do I have to do everything myself?”

Zoro rolled his eyes behind his stupid eyepatch. “I’ve been telling him that,” he told Nami, tapping away on Luffy’s phone behind the front counter. “He don’t listen to me for shit.”

Nami sighed, slumping over the lower desk as she watched Usopp work around Luffy through the cameras as he failed to reassemble one of his overcomplicated puzzles. Good thing they didn’t have any customers for another hour – they definitely wouldn’t be ready. Zoro huffed, watching over her shoulder as the tower of boxes fell over again, Luffy visibly cackling at him from his sheep statue. “Man, when’s the last time anyone even solved this thing, anyway?” Zoro asked. “Ain’t that the whole point?”

Nami sighed louder. “At least two weeks.” She pillowed her cheek on her crossed wrists, pouting at the laptop. “I’m starting to think we should pivot to that wreck room idea Franky keeps pitching at me,” she grumbled. “At least then we’d have something fun to do in the downtime.”

Zoro nodded as Luffy’s phone buzzed in his hand again. “I’m down for that.”

Nami cut her eyes at him without moving otherwise, watching him text. “Why’re you on Luffy’s phone, anyway?” she asked. “Sanji block your number or something?”

Zoro grunted. “I’m taking initiative,” he said like he’d been telling himself for the last sixteen hours. She hummed a question, ponytail flopping to the other shoulder with her head tilt. He waved Luffy’s phone at her. “I found his dad’s number in here and texted him about Thanksgiving,” he told her. She blinked.

He shrugged. “Well, I’ve mostly been talking to his stepmom, really,” he clarified. “Seems Dad’s not much of a talker, or a planner.” She blinked more. He shrugged again. “She seems a’ight,” he admitted. “Told her what’s going down over here with our holiday bullshit, and she’s cool with us crashing their party.”

Nami squinted like her head hurt. Fuck, Zoro didn’t usually have to spell shit out for her like this. “We’ve got plans for Thursday,” he told her, “and none of us will have to cook or clean as part of it.” He tossed Luffy’s phone on the counter until it knocked against the wall of the high counter on the customer side. “You’re welcome, bitch.”

“You made plans with Luffy’s parents,” she drawled, still not sitting up. “You.”

His cheeks warmed. He scowled through it. “Well, no one else was doing anything!” he snapped. “Y’all all were bitching and moaning and no one was fixing it, and I don’t want to spend my first Thanksgiving off since fucking high school working in a soup kitchen!” He punched the wall over Luffy’s phone. “This is the best option – as long as Luffy’s dad ain’t even crazier than him, Jesus.” Nami stared at him. He bared his teeth. “I’m not the idiot y’all think I am,” he growled.

She shook her head, slowly, considering him with somber eyes. “I don’t think that,” she muttered. “Not really.” His face had to be all kinds of red by now. She pushed up to rest her chin on her arms instead of her cheek, still looking at him. “Did you talk to Luffy about it?” she asked, her tone matching her eyes. “Does he know?”

Zoro looked away. “I was gonna do that,” he mumbled. “Once it was more set in stone.”

She sighed. “I guess everyone deciding things for others is the theme of the week,” she bemoaned, stretching like a cat, sharpening her claws on the counter, chair rolling back with the arch of her spine. “If he has a tantrum about it, I’m not saving your ass.”

Zoro grunted. “Guess that’s fair.” He checked Luffy’s phone again, but it seemed like the stepmom had gotten distracted from her reply in their conversation about food preferences. “Maybe I’ll make Blondie do it,” he said, leaning back and kicking his boots up on the counter. “Since they’re best friends or whatever now.”

“Careful, my love, for that savors strongly of bitterness.” What? Nami grinned at his bewildered look. “Pride and Prejudice is free on YouTube right now.” Zoro’s lip curled. Her eyebrows twitched up. “The Keira Knightley one?”

He huffed. “That doesn’t help at all.” Nami wrinkled her nose at him. “I’m not bitter,” he answered her actual question. “They’re allowed to be friends and call each other ‘cher’ or whatever, I don’t own him or anything.”

Nami’s grin grew. “I’ve been learning so much about you in this relationship,” she teased. “You like commitment and cuddling and pet names?”

He tore his eyepatch off and threw it at her to shut her up. She cackled and threw it back.

“Is anyone gonna help me?” Usopp yelled through the speakers, almost audible through the closed doors. “You guys!”

Zoro rolled his eyes and kicked his feet back down to the floor. “Fuck all y’all,” he grumbled, stomping off with Nami’s witch laughter following him. At least those idiots wouldn’t make observations on his goddamn love life all the damn time.

The salon was closed on Mondays. It was a pretty standard practice across a wide swath of the service industry – Zeff did it with the Baratie, for one – and since it was bad business to be closed for the weekend when your clientele had normal nine to fives, Monday was their Sunday. Sanji used to have mixed feelings about it. Pudding’s various jobs never had a schedule that aligned, so it was hard to make weekend plans together, but that gave both of them the freedom to do their own things instead. He had never looked too hard at how much they both enjoyed those days apart... Oh well. Past in the past and all that.

Of course, Zoro didn’t get Mondays off, either, but based on Nami’s envious longing at the concept, it was only a matter of time. For now, Sanji would take the opportunity for errand running without dragging a second body along for the ride.

He set his basket of bowls and brushes on the counter of the Sally beauty supply, smiling as Camie dumped her back room load next to it. “Are these any good?” she asked, scanning the barcode on the first of his cool-toned collection of a new brand of semi-permanents. “I keep meaning to try them out, but I keep forgetting when I’m actually doing my hair.” She smiled, flicking her chin-length seafoam hair out of her face. “It’s just been so sad to watch Pulp Riot go down the toilet!”

He sighed, eyes ticking over the dye boxes as he took the scanned product and put them in his waiting shopping tote. “It’s truly tragic what L’Oréal is doing to them,” he commiserated. “I appreciate y’all ordering these in for me, though.”

“Oh, of course! It’s a good excuse for us to add them to the stock for real.” She hummed along to the soft pop radio on the store speakers, bopping with the innocent energy that had almost made him try to flirt with her for real in the dark times between Pudding and Zoro. “What’re your plans for your macho man this time, then?” she asked.

Sanji groaned, pulling out his phone and opening his photo gallery. “He’s grown out like shit, as always, so I’ll probably end up stripping it a little more than usual,” he told her, flipping through – ah, there was his picture of their silly pirate outfits he took a few weeks ago. “His hair likes greens almost as much as yours, so I’m thinking a rich Kelly, maybe with some blue streaked in there.” He zoomed in on Zoro’s head and held the phone out for her to see. She leant in to look, scanning slower as she hummed and nodded. “Maybe I’ll do a bit of a spiral,” he decided as he said it, pondering the top of Zoro’s head. “Do something fun for his sister – she’s coming into town tomorrow for the holiday.” He smirked. “Can’t have him looking like shit for her.”

“I see, I see…” She tilted her head, blinking her big blue eyes. “I didn’t know y’all were friends?” she asked, tone lilting even more at the end than necessary. “Like, actually for real?”

He winced. “Ah, well – um.” He unloaded his basket onto the counter. “We’re – well, we’re dating now, actually,” he mumbled, even though there wasn’t anyone in the store but the two of them. “About a month and a half now.”

“Oh? Oh!” She blinked a bunch, then beamed her best. “That’s so awesome! Oh, I’m so happy for you!” He couldn’t hold back an answering smile. She bounced on her heels, clasping her hands together. “Oh – oh, how exciting!” She darted around the counter to hug him, swaying in place. “He must be just wonderful.”

“Oh – um, yeah, he is.” This was new. She hadn’t even hugged him when he told her he was engaged two years back. “Thanks?”

Camie bounced away just as quick as she came, grinning at him and patting his upper arms. “We were all so worried for you after – well, you know.” A last pat, and then she ran back around the counter, scanning his items with renewed gusto. “It’s so great to hear you’re moving on! And with a man – a client!” She giggled, tapping the brush in her hand to her cheek. “Scandalous!”

Sanji bit his cheek. “Good to know my love life is the talk of the town,” he drawled. She giggled again. “I can’t bear to let anyone else do his hair,” he admitted, toying with the tag he had never cut off his tote’s strap. “Especially not now that I have to look at it all the time.”

She laughed. “Oh, I can’t even blame you! You do such amazing work on him, after all – it’d be a shame to stop just because you’re seeing him!” She picked up the stack of color bowls, spinning them to find the barcode sticker. “Well, next time y’all’re both in our neck of the woods, y’all’ll have to swing on by!” she chirped as the store door chimed behind his back. “I know we’d all love to meet your new boyfriend!”

She winked (badly), then leant to the side to smile at the new customer. “Good afternoon! You looking for anything in particular, ma’am?”

“Just lightener,” a deep, vaguely familiar female voice said. Sanji turned – ah, shit. Pudding’s older cousin with the at-home platinum job and a trail of broken men behind her squinted at him – squinted harder. Shit. “Really? You?”

Shit, shit, shit. He smiled, heart hammering in his ears. “Ah – hello there, Smoothie,” he said, hip bumping against the counter. “Lovely to see you.”

She snorted, too-long bangs fluffing off her face with the gust. “Is that so?” She crossed her arms, looking down her volleyball-long legs at him. “So, you’ve gone full gay, then, have you?” His spine twisted. She looked him over from boots to hat. “Figures.”

“Excuse me…”

They both looked to Camie, who pointed with the stack of bowls at the farthest of the three aisles, customer service smile solidly in place. “All of the lightener product is over there?” She pumped the bowl stack in a sign language nod. “I’ll be over to help you as soon as I’m done here, ma’am.”

Smoothie’s glare could have peeled Camie’s nail polish off, but she flounced off without another comment, orange knit hat whipping around the curling iron display. Sanji’s palm hit the counter, elbow locked against his weak knees. Shit shit shit.

“Who’s that?” Camie whispered, ringing up the last of his supplies as fast as she could. Sanji could marry her in this moment. “Ex-client?”

He flashed her a tight smile. “Ex-almost-in-law,” he muttered back. “Pudding’s her baby cousin.”

Camie’s mouth made a lowercase ‘o’, eyebrows up into her roots. “Oh, shoot, that’s no good.” She tucked the last brush in his bag along with one of the decorative hairties at the register that he never quite had the shame to get for himself. “Well, I’ll try and make sure that she gets the worst bleach we’ve got.”

Her silly, kind, petty gesture reached out and grabbed him by the throat. He cleared it. “You’re a treasure, my dear.” She giggled.

Usopp poked his head through the attic’s trap door, nose on the sill like Kilroy. “Y’all,” he hissed, “Nami’s gone crazy down here!”

Zoro raised his beer at him, lounging across the nest of pillows and blankets that Luffy called a bed. “Why’d ya think I was hiding up here?” Luffy rolled over on the floor, Game Boy held over his head as he tapped away at the latest cast-off retro game from his weird nerd friend’s comic store gig. Zoro gestured around the glorified crawl space. “Plenty of room with us.”

Usopp glanced back down, then cheeped and hauled ass, clambering up with more speed than grace. “What’s the game theory for what’s got her britches in a twist this time?” he asked as he closed the door behind him.

“Who fuckin’ knows,” Zoro grumbled into his can, pulling his feet up to give Usopp space. Luffy’s attic wasn’t a cute nickname for a charming little upstairs bedroom – it was an attic, with no insulation and spiders in the rafters that Zoro always hit his head on as he danced around the one lightbulb hanging from an exposed wire. Luffy could have a real room – even if the bedrooms were all claimed, there were odd corners and couches in places that were actually certified for people to sleep in – but he liked the intrigue or something. The kid ended up crashing in one of their beds half the time, anyway, so it didn’t matter too much.

Usopp propped up against a pile of old quilts and camping gear, easing into it so he didn’t choke as much on the inevitable cloud of dust. “You think her sister called again?” he asked over the beeps and whoops of Luffy’s game – some kind of Warner Brothers bullshit, Zoro didn’t even know.

Zoro rolled his eyes. “What else would it be, wise guy?” He scowled at his phone, where his own sister had been badgering him all damn day about her trip tomorrow, pinwheeling between demanding to-the-minute weather reports, links to tourist shit he wouldn’t recommend to his worst rafters, and flashes of brief, genuine, self-aware remorse for what a fucking stunt she was pulling. He was almost looking forward to when she got there the next day so he could watch her be guilty in person. “S’not like we’ve got any other problems.”

Luffy rolled again and fetched against Zoro’s side upside-down, wrapping an arm around Zoro’s calf and resting his chin on Zoro’s ankle, the leather of his brother’s jacket cool on the exposed skin between sweatpants and socks. Zoro frowned. He had been trying to talk to this guy all evening about the whole Thanksgiving thing, but when Luffy got in this kind of zone, the only thing that broke his focus was food, and Sanji was busy with something with his dad tonight. Zoro had been content to wait, but maybe he should get it over with, since Usopp was a captive witness now.

Zoro caught Luffy’s kicking leg by the ankle when it got too close to his head – he did not need toenails to the face. He wanted that eyepatch to stay a part of his stupid work costume, thank you very much. “Hey, Luff.” Luffy didn’t respond, muscles still twitching like Zoro hadn’t stopped his leg. Zoro shook it side to side. “Luffy.”

Usopp raised his eyebrows at him over his phone, smile quirked. “Really?”

Zoro shrugged and drained his beer, tossing it towards the trap door and going in for the kill, tickling Luffy’s sole.

Luffy shrieked, wriggling around to protect his feet, Game Boy clattering to the floorboards. “Zoro!” He grabbed his feet and tucked them under his body, twisting in a way that made Zoro’s bones hurt. He sat up properly and dove for his game, wailing at the screen. “You made me lose!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll get over it.” Usopp chuckled. Zoro crossed his arms, sticking his foot in Luffy’s lap so he stopped squirming for thirty seconds. “I need to tell you something.”

Luffy scowled at him, curls a mess, face flushed from gaming at weird angles. “Okay? Why?”

“Um.” Shit. Nami better be wrong and Luffy wasn’t going to be mad about this, or Zoro was going to throw himself into the river. Luffy blinked at him. Usopp made a weird face behind him. Fuck it. Zoro shrugged. “I talked to your dad,” he said, temples thrumming. “And your stepmom. We’ve got Thanksgiving plans at their place, if you wanna.”

Luffy’s brow furrowed. Zoro shifted to sit up a little straighter. “I’m not sorry,” he told himself. “Someone had to do something instead of just yap about it until it was after Christmas.” Luffy kept frowning. “They seem chill,” Zoro went on through the pounding in his head. “And we’re all invited – Blondie and Rona, too. It won’t just be you.”

Luffy looked down, tugging on the strings of the hoodie under Ace’s jacket, pulling it all the way through to the end knot, then the other way. Usopp’s faces were getting worse, but Zoro stayed on Luffy. Luffy nodded, slowly, strings twisting around his fingers until the tips turned red. “Okay.” A final nod. “Okay.”

Luffy looked up at Zoro, that rare, sharp look that had found Zoro lost in the woods and changed his life forever. “You won’t do it again?”

Zoro swallowed, palms itchy, river rushing in his brain. “No. I won’t.”

Luffy hummed, eyes sliding away like rain off ice. “Okay.” He fished his Game Boy out and scooted across the attic on his butt to Usopp’s side, wrapping around the game like a clam. “You need to leave now, though.”

Zoro’s skull twisted. Usopp grimaced over Luffy’s head. “Okay.” Zoro was going to kill himself. He eased out of Luffy’s nest-bed, crawling towards the trap door. “Um…” Shit. Luffy was hyperfocused on his game again, already. Usopp’s face journey continued, but he waved Zoro on. He’d probably talk Luffy down out of being mad at him. Probably.

He eased the trap door open, wincing as it squeaked. “Well, good night, I guess.” Zoro and Usopp exchanged another weird glance before Zoro climbed down the ladder, wood creaking with each step until he was back on the floor. The trap door flipped shut overhead.

Well, shit.

Zoro stood in the upstairs hallway, staring out the dark window at the dark woods. This kind of guilt didn’t live in his throat or in his heart, but down in his belly, curled up against his spine like a feral dog getting its first bath. It was an old, familiar feeling, but he was about seven months out of practice. He didn’t like it. He wanted to kill something. He wanted to go back in time and burn his gun and badge instead of just leaving them on his supervisor’s desk, even if burning a firearm was an objectively terrible idea. He wanted Luffy to rattle down and tell him it was a joke and perch on his shoulder like a hawk. He wanted…

Shit. He wanted to talk to his fucking boyfriend.

He fumbled his phone out. Why were his hands shaking? They hadn’t even argued. When Luffy had gotten mad at him before – for taking the last string cheese, for owning him at a board game, for whatever – they just went out back and beat the shit out of each other until Luffy was laughing again. This time, though, this was…

He stared at Sanji’s text history, their recent chatter about their next day plans blurring as he refused to blink. Sanji was probably busy right now. Food banks took a lot of work, Zoro assumed. He probably wasn’t even looking at his phone. He probably didn’t even have it on him. The shit had been so wound up lately. He didn’t need Zoro having weird emotions at him, too. Zoro didn’t have weird emotions.

He took a deep breath.

“Zoro!” Nami screamed from below. “Get your fat ass down here and help me clean! This is your sister visiting, not mine!”

Zoro let it out and stuck his phone in his pocket again. It was fine. They’d see each other tomorrow. He’d be over this by then, for sure. Back to normal, solid Zoro, who didn’t make his best friend mad at him for doing shit without permission.

He went downstairs to let Nami bully him into mopping. Maybe he just needed to do some of that penance shit and sweat it out of his system, or whatever they called it. Sanji was the fucking Catholic, not him.

Sanji painted bleach on Zoro’s roots, considering the beleaguered scalp under his gloves. They had agreed the night before that Zoro would show up first thing so that Usopp could drop him off on the way to the Asheville airport and Sanji could sneak him in before any real walk-in walked in. However, Sanji hadn’t expected to pull up fifteen minutes before he usually unlocked the salon to find Zoro sitting on a bench in front of the antique store next door, huddled in his fluffy coat and staring at his boots. A quiet-but-not-tired Zoro grunted and hummed his way through good mornings and breakfast, barely even blinking at Sanji’s homemade natto. Sanji wanted to be offended, but the hard volcano glass shining back at him in his mirror was too much like the first time Zoro sat down at his station all those months ago. What had disrupted his unflappable man so much?

Sanji flipped his comb around to scratch the spot above Zoro’s left eye that always bothered him. Could he ask? Was it really his place? He usually let clients come to him with their problems…

Oh. Right. Not just a client.

Sanji sectioned off another bit of the longer hair on the top of Zoro’s head. “Something on your mind, sweetheart?”

Zoro blinked a few times, woken up from his open-eyed nap. “Huh?” Sanji rolled his eyes. “Oh, um…” Zoro trailed off, staring into mirror space. “Nah.”

Sanji rolled his eyes harder. “Don’t lie to me, marimo.” He dug the next section line deeper into Zoro’s scalp to watch him shudder. “Aren’t you excited about your sister visiting?” he tried.

“Oh – yeah, sure, I guess.” Not that one, then. Zoro sipped his coffee. “I…” He sighed. “Luffy’s mad at me,” he said in a rush, “and I think I deserve it.”

Oh? That was new. Sanji hummed and held his sardonic call-and-response in check. They had a gruff, joking-insult dynamic, sure, but even he could read a damn room. “And why’s that, sugarplum?”

Shit. That had just come out – just because Zoro was okay with the basic relationship pet names didn’t mean he’d like the sappier ones, Sanji wasn’t trying to be too much too soon – but Zoro’s shoulders settled under his hairdresser cape.

“Um… you’re probably going to get mad at me about it, too,” he mumbled, like a first grader caught putting gum in his sister’s hair.

Sanji raised his eyebrows. “Unless you slept with him or threw the couch in the river, I think I’ll be able to hear you out to the end.” He crossed his heart with his brush, not actually touching his shirt so he didn’t get bleach everywhere. “Try me.”

Zoro’s eyes flicked up, sharp for the first time all day. “You’re in a good mood,” he grumbled.

Sanji smiled. “I’m a naturally forgiving soul.” Zoro snorted hard enough to send coffee drops flying. Sanji grinned wider. “C’mon, tell me before I change my mind.”

Zoro fidgeted. Fidgeted. Oh, the poor dear. “Well – um. You know how everyone’s been whiny little shits about Thanksgiving all week?” Sanji’s eyebrows went higher, but – okay, fine. He had been a bit of a whiny little shit about it. Sanji waved him on, continuing with his bleach application. “Well, no one was doing anything about it, so I figured I might as well do it for us.”

Sanji nodded. “A wise choice, probably.”

Zoro grimaced into his coffee. “I thought so, too, but… well, the best options we had was Luffy’s parents, so… I contacted them.” He sneered. “I borrowed Luffy’s phone, found his dad’s number, and texted him about it to make plans with him and the stepmom for all of us to go over to their place for lunch. Happy?”

Sanji chewed on his tongue and his next words. “And Luffy’s mad about that.” Zoro grunted. “Why?” he asked. “Did he not know about it first?”

Zoro almost shook his head in the middle of a bleach swipe, catching himself just in time. Sanji took a deep, subtle breath. Oh, yeah. If Zoro had done that to him with Reiju… Ohhh yeah. Pound town, and not the fun kind. Zoro would never see the light of another day, for sure.

But. Luffy’s parents weren’t as… actively abusive as Sanji’s birth family. Absent and distant, sure – shitty, absolutely – but from what Sanji had pieced together from Luffy’s half-coherent complaints the other night, them wanting to reconnect with him now wasn’t the five-alarm fire that any contact with the Vinsmokes would be. They were just – a bit inconsiderate, and late to the party. Sanji could relate.

But still. “You should have asked first, my darling.” Zoro’s shoulders hunched. Baby. Sanji sectioned off more hair. Did he need to do a cut, too? Sanji usually let his shorter haired clients get a little shaggy for the winter, but Zoro’s hair was so thick that it didn’t take much to keep his skull warm. “He’s not the kind to stay mad for long, though. It’ll pass.”

Zoro stared into his coffee. “I don’t want it to pass,” he mumbled. “I want to fix it. But…”

Sanji’s heart twanged. “Oh, baby.” He finished the section and set the brush aside, peeling his gloves off as he circled the chair to kneel at Zoro’s feet, putting his hands on Zoro’s knees. “I know you meant well – mean well,” he said, seeking out Zoro’s downturned gaze. “And I’m sure he knows that, too. He’ll come around.”

Zoro blinked at him. Sanji smiled. “Who knows?” Sanji continued. “Maybe he’ll be the rare case where he actually gets to fistfight his dad at a holiday gathering like we all wish we could, and this will be the perfect opening for it.” He squeezed Zoro’s knees. “Lord knows I’d watch that.”

 Zoro’s face twitched. “He would, wouldn’t he?” He turned his coffee mug around in his hands, sticking three big fingers through the handle. “He’d probably love that.”

“Exactly.” Sanji checked to make sure they were still alone and no one was passing by the street window, then pushed up to kiss him, a solid, close-mouthed peck. Zoro sighed, warm breath on his cheek. Sanji pressed a follow-up to his bristly jaw – oh, he still needed to take Zoro’s earrings out. Maybe he’d shave him while the bleach processed, too, to make his boy feel better.

“It’ll work out, cher,” Sanji mumbled, affection spilling out in the accent he lost in middle school. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Sanji heard Zoro’s swallow against his ear, bleach in his nose. “Okay.”

Sanji smiled, then stood up straight, circling to his usual position. He tilted Zoro’s head to the right so he could remove the earrings before he put his gloves back on. Zoro’s eyelashes fluttered. Sanji rubbed circles down the hard cords of his neck, drifting his fingertips along Zoro’s jaw. Hmm. He didn’t need a shave, but it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time, either.

Zoro finished his coffee as Sanji tucked his earrings in his breast pocket and put on a fresh pair of gloves – shit, that was what he forgot to get at Sally yesterday, wasn’t it? He knew he’d missed something in the rush to get the fuck out of there before Smoothie decided he was another man who deserved to get pummeled into the groundwater. He’d hoped to talk about that with Zoro in the hours of him being in his chair, actually, but that would have to wait for a bit. He needed the life to finish coming back to Zoro’s eyes first, and it needed to stay there. Please stay there.

Sanji scooped up a brushful of lightener, finding the spot he’d left off at after a little digging. “Oh, but if you ever try to talk to my family without my knowledge like that, I’ll skin you alive.”

Zoro huffed, almost grinning behind his mug. “Does Zeff count for that?” he asked. “Or is that just about the birth bitches, whoever the fuck they are?”

Sanji pursed his lips so he wouldn’t smile back. “He’s thin fucking ice,” he decided, chin lifting. “Special occasions only.”

Zoro’s teeth flashed. Sanji’s heart thumped. “Heard.” He shrugged, waiting for a break in bleach brushing to set his empty mug on the little table by Sanji’s mirror. “I’d try to give you rules for mine, but all my birth family is actually dead, not just dead to me, and Mihawk… man, I could use some help cornering him sometime.”

Sanji smirked. “And your lovely sister?”

Zoro snorted harder. “Oh, I’ve got no say in that fight,” he chuckled. Sanji’s throat clenched, heat surging in his lungs. “She’s gonna adopt you harder than anyone’s ever done it before, if only so you’ll do her hair for free.”

Sanji cackled harder than the joke warranted, bracing his clean hand on Zoro’s shoulder. “Darling, I don’t even give you free color!”

Zoro rolled his eyes. “Okay, you tell her that, then, ‘cause she ain’t listening to me for shit.” He looked up. “Please tell her that, actually,” he pleaded. “I wanna see the look on her face.”

Sanji snickered. “You’re a sneaky little shit sometimes, ain’t ya, cher?” he teased, tugging Zoro’s ear between two knuckles before thumbing some stray bleach off his skin. “Who knew?”

Zoro’s mouth opened – closed. Lips sucked in. “That’s the second time you’ve called me that,” he mumbled.

Sanji frowned. “A sneaky little shit?”

“No. Cher.” Shit, called out. Sanji really needed to watch his tongue in both directions. He was usually pretty good about keeping things snarky and friendly-mean with other men, but – well, he was a queer hairdresser in the South. Half of his vocabulary was just terms of endearment. There was something about pathetic sad boys that made it even harder, though, and no one had ever been sadder in his chair before without actually crying. He drew breath to apologize–

“I like it.”

Sanji blinked past the heat flushing through his system. “You do?” Zoro frowned and looked at his hands. No, no, no.

Sanji reached around and lifted Zoro’s chin until they made mirror eye contact again. “Good,” he said, stamping it in place between them. “I like it, too.” Zoro’s lips parted. Sanji thumbed his cheek. “Let me give you a shave, cher,” he said. It felt a little odd to say it on purpose, but the glitter in Zoro’s obsidian chips made it worth it. Zoro’s throat worked against the side of his hand. Sanji smiled. “Make you feel good.”

Zoro cat-blinked. “Okay,” he rasped. “Sure.” Sanji patted his cheek and pushed his head down so he could bleach his nape.

The best six hours of Zoro’s life was always the rest of the day after Sanji did his hair. There was some kind of magic in the shampoo bowl – even though Sanji used the same froofy shampoo that he charged Zoro the family discount for nowadays, it always came out softer, smoother, nicer than should be possible. The bright colors right down to his scalp, the dark roots banished like the night at dawn, Sanji’s professional delight at doing his job well bubbling over into a brush of green stained on the top of Zoro’s ear… yeah, he felt good.

He looked good. He couldn’t even picture himself with his natural hair anymore, even though it hadn’t even been a year of doing this. He was never going back. He liked strangers complimenting him instead of hedging around his uniform. He liked looking a little different every time he showered. It almost made him forget how Luffy had looked through him instead of at him that morning.

The best part, though, was making his sister stupid jealous.

The door to the coffeeshop by Sanji’s salon chimed open. Zoro glanced over his shoulder and smirked.

Perona, stanced in the door in some elaborate black and pink winter ensemble, pointed at him with her whole body and screamed, “Shut up!” She stalked across the smooth concrete to Zoro and Sanji’s table, grabbing him by the shirtfront and shaking him like a ragdoll. “That isn’t fair,” she whined for the entertainment of the entire café. “You look so good!”

Zoro laughed, shoving her off. “Sure do.” Sanji made a pleased little noise over his latte. Zoro winked at him, then stood so Perona could hug him without bending over and flashing everyone with her fluffy tutu of a skirt. “Did you really fly in this getup?” he asked as lace and ribbons engulfed him.

“Oh, shut up, you big jerk!” She yanked him down to push her hands into his roots. “I had to look cute or I’d die, you know that!”

Furniture rattled around the rinky little round table. Zoro glanced under Perona’s fuzzy cuffs to see Usopp sit down on Sanji’s other side, exchanging low greetings below the racket of her hooting and hollering. Zoro pushed her away again and nodded at the other new arrival. “Thanks for not killing her,” he said as he sat back down, pressing his shoe against Sanji’s under the table again. “I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, it was a close call,” Usopp joked – wait. Was that a joke? Zoro raised his eyebrows as Usopp glowered at Perona, his usual smiley face not quite hitting its mark. “You owe me a coffee,” he grumbled. “Big time.”

Zoro looked back at Perona, but the huffing and puffing he always got for tones like that was replaced with a stern pout and narrowed eyes. “Fine.” She fluffed out her petticoats and flounced off to the counter, nose in the air. She hadn’t even asked what he wanted. What the hell had happened on that car ride?

Sanji laid a hand on Zoro’s elbow. Zoro leaned closer, still frowning at her back as she dithered over the posted menu. Had she been racist or something? “Darling,” Sanji hissed, oh shit. Zoro whipped around to find Sanji smiling like his teeth were all canines, blue eyes a little wild. “I believe you forgot to mention a rather salient detail.”

Fuck, who had been this bitch’s vocabulary teacher, anyway? Zoro frowned. “Um, you mean the goth Lolita shit?” he tried. “Pretty sure I told y’all that sometime, didn’t I?”

Sanji’s claws dug in, almost puncturing his thermal. “Your sister is trans,” he spat through sugar-sweet teeth. “Were you going to mention that?”

Zoro blinked. Oh, right. Um. “Uh.” Sanji’s lip curled. Zoro shrugged. “I forgot.” Sanji tilted back, looking to the heavens for grace. Zoro’s heart twisted up twice as much as usual. Think about the green-blue-teal swirl of your hair, not how fragile your relationships could become in a heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he asked. “I mean, like, half of your coworkers have gender bullshit going on, I didn’t think you’d give a shit.”

Sanji sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. Zoro’s brain squeezed. “Whatever am I going to do with you,” he moaned, smile curling around the shadow of his hand. Whew, fine, safe. He snatched up Zoro’s fingers and kissed his palm, eyebrows tight, eyes clenched shut. “Never change, marimo,” he pressed there, facial hair scratching Zoro’s lifeline.

“If y’all are gonna be gross, I’m leaving,” Usopp commented without looking up from his phone. Sanji squeezed Zoro’s hand before dropping it to the table, color high on his windswept cheeks. Zoro stuck his burning hand between his leg and the chair and chugged his coffee.

“What crawled up your ass and died?” Sanji snapped. Ah, there he was. “She’s not really that bad, is she?”

“I’m not talking about it.” Zoro and Sanji both looked at Usopp. He slouched in his chair, scowling at his phone, satin-lined beanie pulled low over his eyebrows, hair exploding over his hood like an overwatered houseplant. “You better be grateful I’d do anything for you, Z,” he mumbled.

“Um…” Zoro glanced at Sanji, who grimaced and shrugged. “I… am?”

“Here,” Perona grumbled, dropping a to-go cup in front of Usopp, unbuttoning her coat to show even more lace. “Just as sad and depressing as you.” What on Earth?

She dropped her coat on the chair back and sat down, finally turning the full force of her attention on Sanji and cutting Usopp out entirely. “So. You’re the boyfriend with the magic hands, are you not?”

Zoro snorted. Sanji kicked his ankle and smiled. “That’s a way to put it,” he allowed. “It’s lovely to meet you at last, my dear. I’ve heard so many stories.”

Perona grinned at him, black lipstick on her teeth. “Back at ya, babygirl.” Zoro grinned as he got to watch Sanji wrestle with his principles about never fighting with a woman in hyperspeed. Usopp huffed, burrowing into his jacket. Zoro should sic Nami on him. She’d be able to find out what stupid shit Perona said to piss him off.

Perona’s eyes darted at Usopp, but didn’t respond to the huff, putting on one of her fake good moods instead. “So! Tell me everything about you!”

Sanji laughed. “That’ll take a bit,” he said, fiddling with his mug. “I’m afraid I’ve used up most of my lunch break already.” He glanced Zoro’s way. “Perhaps we can catch up over dinner later?” he ventured.

Zoro shrugged. “Sure. We were just gonna do something at home, but if you wanna keep showing off, the kitchen’s all yours.”

“Oh! Zoro told me you’re a great cook!” She laced her fingers together and beamed at Sanji over them, fluttering her glittery eyelashes. “I’d love a chance to judge it for myself!”

“Of course you would,” Usopp mumbled.

Perona rounded on him like Zoro knew she would. “And what’s that supposed to mean, nosey?”

Usopp slapped the table. “Alright, I’m out.” He shoved to his feet, snatching up his coffee and phone, cutting his eyes at Sanji. “You’ve got a car. You can drive them around town, yeah?” He didn’t wait for a response before flicking a salute at Zoro, lips pursed. “Heading to the escape room,” he said. “Call Nami if you need something.”

Perona squawked. “My stuff is in your filthy back seat!”

Usopp rolled his eyes. Seriously, what the fuck? “It’ll get back when I get back,” he snapped. “You’ll survive for a few hours without your makeup.” He stomped out of the café, holding the door for an entering couple before stalking down the sidewalk and out of sight.

Zoro sat back and crossed his arms, raising his eyebrows at his sister. “Okay, what the fuck did you do?”

“Why do you assume it was me?” Perona shook her bangs down and flipped her pigtails behind her shoulders, jaw set. “Maybe you just have annoying friends.” The barista called out whatever sugar concoction she had ordered. She sneered at Zoro. “Go get that for me, jerk.”

Sanji chuckled and got up first, stroking Zoro’s head like a cat as he went. “I’ve got it,” he said like a sucker. “You two catch up.” Perona graced him with a toothy smile, then launched into complaining about her flight without any encouragement from anyone involved. Zoro rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone to text Nami a warning shot. Those two were gossip biddies. He’d probably tell her what happened, and then she’d tell Zoro so he could fix it before nightfall. He really didn’t need more hostility in his house right now.

Sanji watched the house dynamics through the open kitchen door as he cleaned up after dinner. Despite their combined best attempts, no one had been able to ferret out what Perona and Usopp had fought about on the ride across the mountains, but the tension was palpable at a breath. Neither of them would talk directly to each other, but they also never missed an opening for surprisingly-well-informed cheap shots over board games and pasta.

Zoro’s sister was – vivacious. Unique. Fluffy. It was heartbreaking that they wouldn’t be able to introduce her to Iva and the girls – even without the whole trans thing, Sanji knew she would fold into the salon crowd even easier than this one. Maybe if her tour around town tomorrow ended early…

The inside stairs creaked. Sanji looked to the noise. Luffy wandered into the kitchen, sticking to the shadows so no one noticed him in the living room. Sanji cocked his head as Luffy slinked to his side and leant against him like a dog begging for scraps, wrapped up with the oddly reserved energy he’d had all evening. Sanji had a guess why, of course, but Luffy didn’t know that… and yet here he was, hiding in the kitchen, with him. Even with his sadness, Sanji felt – yellow.

Sanji considered Luffy’s profile, half-buried in his leather and flame jacket. “How’re you doing, baby?” Sanji asked quietly. “You seem… low.” Luffy shrugged, watching Sanji’s hands scrub a dish. “It’s not about November again?” he tried.

Luffy hummed. “I guess.” He pressed his cheek to Sanji’s shoulder. “Can you make me breakfast?”

Sanji smiled. “I’m going home tonight,” he reminded Luffy, not for the first time. “With Perona here, it’s a little crowded.”

Luffy frowned. “What about right now?” he pushed. “I want bacon.”

Sanji chuckled. “We just ate, sugar. I think you’ll survive.” Luffy pouted. Sanji balanced the dish on the air-drying stack and stuck his scrubbrush in a glass. “How about you tell me what you want me to bring as a side for Thanksgiving?” he said. “Anything you want.”

Luffy’s chin hit his chest. “Do I have to?”

“If you don’t want me to butcher my– my – the green bean casserole that I only kind of remember how to make, then yes.” Shit, he’d never texted Chiffon. He really should, if only so he could maybe hear about what Smoothie was saying about their beauty supply store encounter to the Charlottes. But that wasn’t what Luffy was whining about.

Sanji rinsed soap bubbles out of the glass. “We don’t have to see your family at all, dear,” he mumbled. “Just because plans are made doesn’t mean they have to get done.” He set the glass upside-down on the rack and moved to the next one. “Zoro’s very sorry, you know.”

Luffy nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He nuzzled into Sanji’s sweater. “Am I bad?” he whispered. “For not wanting to?”

Sanji blinked at the dark glass over the sink. His ribs hurt. He would need to leave soon, so he wasn’t driving tired and at night. “No, sweetheart,” he said, voice catching on soap bubbles. “Not unless I am, too.”

Luffy wrapped his hands around Sanji’s elbow. Sanji rested his own on the sink edge, fingers cool and clammy on the old porcelain. “I haven’t talked to my family in – Lord. Decades. I don’t even know if most of them are alive right now.” Well, Reiju might tell him if their father died. Probably. Maybe. He swallowed, the hard cider he’d had with dinner bubbling in his gut. “And that’s the way I like it, with them.”

He dusted his cheek over the curls on his shoulder. “But… it’s not easy, not having a full family around. Simple, and the obvious choice if y’all knew what – well. Not important.” Luffy made a little noise. Sanji shook his head, tossing his hair out of Luffy’s way. “Sometimes, I wonder – it would be nice, if they were nice. If I liked them enough to have them around. If it was even possible.” He massaged his throat. “If wishes were stars and all that nonsense.”

Luffy hid his face even more. Sanji was getting off track. He scrubbed at the sauce-crusty tines of a fork. “I’m not saying yours deserve more than mine, or that you owe them anything, or any of that bull, but…” He blinked at the black. “I wonder if you owe it to yourself.”

Luffy rolled his forehead on wool, curls tangling. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “How do I know?”

Sanji smiled, Iva’s blue eyeshadow flashing through his mind. “You don’t,” he replied. “All you can do it try it out for yourself.”

Luffy sighed. Sanji wiped his damp hands on his jeans. “Tell you want,” he decided. “If it sucks ass, I promise to sneak out with you and go to Waffle House or something instead.” He grinned. “I really hope you do come, though,” he admitted. “I want to see you punch your dad. Live out the dreams of every dad-hater in the world.”

Luffy barked, rearing back to grin in Sanji’s face. “Yeah!” He squeezed Sanji’s arm, then slapped his hand to Sanji’s chest, pinky out – oh. “Promise?”

Sanji grinned and awkwardly wrapped his left pinky around Luffy’s from the back. “Promise.”

Zoro rolled over in bed, scowling at the back of his eyelids. Generally speaking, he thought Sanji’s ‘are we moving too fast?’ panic attacks were a pointless waste of time – who cared how things were supposed to go? Just do what feels right, dumbass. Even with that, though – even he knew that it was way too early in this damn thing for him to have ‘can’t sleep alone’ problems. They could still count the number of times they’d shared a bed. Zoro was famous for falling asleep anywhere and everywhere. What the fuck was his problem?

Zoro scratched his dye-caked scalp (it was always a little itchy until the first wash), then threw off the covers, kicking his way out of bed. He needed a Gatorade or something. Maybe he was just dehydrated. Maybe the knowledge that Perona was asleep on the couch downstairs was fucking with his head. Maybe he was still upset about Luffy’s whole thing. Maybe he was just… restless.

He danced around the creaks in the floorboards, socks catching threads on not-quite-splinters. He inched past Luffy’s trap door, Nami’s room, Usopp’s… wait. What was…

He paused and opened his ears. Usopp did tend to stay up late working on whatever, but he didn’t usually–

A very distinct, very familiar gasp. Oh, wow no, absolutely not, hell no. Nope. No way. Not doing that.

He ran downstairs with hearing anything else and did not look at the empty, made-up couch in the dark living room. He stuck his whole head in the fridge for the extra cold, banishing the mental image of – no, don’t do it. Do not!

He grabbed the first bottle he touched and braced on the counter, shaking like a dog to get the sights and sounds out of his head. They wouldn’t stop coming. Jesus. Was Usopp into– no no no! Bad!

He paused at the bottom of the stairs, looking up the night-grey flight like the trip to the gallows. Maybe he should sleep on the couch himself tonight, since Perona clearly – no, stop. Gross.

He made a face. Well, no one was around to judge him. He tucked the bottle under his arm and pushed his hands over his ears, walking upstairs on the balls of his feet. He kept his eyes on the floor, just in case he had even worse timing. He was almost…

Huh. Why was the bathroom light on?

He paused in front of the closed door, frowning at the yellow slash across his toes. He lowered his hands to check. Nope, they were still – whatever. Not them. Probably not Luffy, either – the attic door was the noisiest part of this house. Nami, then?

Something clattered inside that sounded like metal falling into the sink. Zoro frowned, intuition thrumming. She might just be taking a night piss… Screw it.

He stuck the bottle in his sweats pocket and knocked with two knuckles. “It’s me,” he said as low as he could without whispering. “You good?”

“Leave me alone,” Nami’s voice rasped. It sounded… wet. That wasn’t good. “Please.”

Hmm. Zoro shrugged and leaned on the wall by the door, crossing his arms. “Nah.”

“Oh, fuck off.” A muffled squeal came from down the hall. God, Zoro hoped that was Perona. He pulled out the bottle and uncapped it blindly, sipping it – ugh. One of Usopp’s weird kombucha experiments. Zoro worked his mouth, the sour taste sitting on the back of his tongue. Now he was awake. Counterproductive bullshit. Why had he even gotten up?

Things shuffled in the bathroom behind him. Zoro cocked his head to hear better. “You can’t laugh,” Nami said through the door. “You have to promise.”

Zoro opened his mouth… sighed. “Okay. Deal.”

The door creaked open. Zoro waited, but she didn’t come out. Shit, she better not be covered in blood, or he was going to kill her. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him as he turned… ah. That’s why she told him that.

Nami braced on the sink, staring into her dark-circled eyes in the mirror through jagged bangs. Those hadn’t existed at dinner.

Her throat worked. Zoro propped up against the closed door. Her mouth trembled. “I tried to do that tie-it-up-and-cut method,” she whispered, eyes shining. “Everyone swears it works.”

Zoro nodded. He didn’t know anything about that, but he did know a thing or two about spontaneous hair choices. “They’re not that–” She turned to face him, lip curled. The other side was even worse. “Uh.”

“Don’t,” she hissed. She eased her white knuckles off the sink, shaking herself, fluffing them out. Orange slivers drifted down in a thin rain. “They just need a little water,” she told her reflection. “It’s fine. Fine.”

Zoro watched her, his shitty night drink’s condensation soaking through his old sweatshirt. The bathroom wasn’t really built for two people – definitely not four – which meant he was only a foot or two away from her, even with his back pressed to the door. He could reach out and touch her. It was hard not to, like, logistically. But he didn’t.

He crossed his ankles, switching the kombucha between hands, tucking it into his dry elbow. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Absolutely not.” She shook her bangs more aggressively, eyes closed against the shedding hair bits as they drifted to the sink and the floor. Zoro was totally going to get those hair splinters Sanji always bitched about. “I just – I felt like having them. I couldn’t sleep. It’s nothing.”

Zoro raised his eyebrows. “If you really wanted them, you could’ve just asked Blondie,” he pointed out. “He’d be over the fucking moon. He won’t shut up about how much he wants to do your hair.”

She looked at him. He kept his face very straight. “Really?” She bit her lip – spat out hair. Zoro chomped on his tongue so she didn’t get the wrong idea if he smiled. “I just thought… he’s your boyfriend,” she muttered, wiping her face with her palms. “I wasn’t sure.”

Zoro wrinkled his nose. “I don’t own him,” he said. “It’s his job. I’d have to be some kind of idiot to get jealous about every bitch whose hair he touched.” She dug in the piles of shit on the counter, working the inside of her cheek hard enough that he could see her skin divot. “He doesn’t have a friend discount,” he kept going. “He still makes me pay for this, same as before.” He yanked on his hair hard enough to see it – oh shit, it was blue now. He forgot.

He pushed it back, letting the gloopy shit hold it up and back. She shook her head, shaking her bad haircut over her face. He frowned. “So what’s the holdup?”

She sighed. “You really don’t know anything,” she muttered. Zoro sneered. “Just because he’s dating you doesn’t mean he wants to be friends with me,” she said. Oh, so she was actually an idiot after all. Good to know. “Especially not enough to do his job for me, just because I’m upset that my sister is being a huge bitch. I’ve never even had a real haircut in my whole life!” She took a deep breath – choked on a hair splinter. “Fuck!”

Alright. Zoro set his kombucha on the edge of the tub and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to sit on the toilet. She wriggled and reached back for the seat cover, pushing up just enough to flip it down so she wasn’t sitting on it open-assed. He let her, then shoved her down again, pointing at her with two fingers. “Stay.” She made a face, but stayed.

He looked around the bathroom. Where did she keep her hair dryer? “I dunno how much of Usopp’s weed you’ve been smoking,” he said as he crouched to dig around in the cabinet under the sink, “but Blondie’s one of the neediest, loneliest motherfuckers on the planet.” She scoffed. There the little fucker was. “All of his friends are either his coworkers, his clients, weird old people, or a mix of all that.”

He unwrapped the cord from the dryer’s muzzle as he stood up again. “Everyone else was all wrapped up in his shitty ex’s life, so he doesn’t talk to them anymore – not that it’s much of a loss, in my opinion, but whatever, he don’t ask me about that shit.” He shoved the plug into the wall socket by the mirror. “Whatever. He wants friends so bad it might actually kill him, but he doesn’t know how to ask for that shit, either.”

“Oh, and you’re just drowning in interpersonal relationships,” she drawled, arms tight around her ribs. “What are you doing?”

“Helping. You don’t get your hair done every six weeks for most of a year without picking up on a few things.” She huffed. He investigated the controls on the handle, frowning at the tiny words swimming in his midnight vision. “You’ve seen how he reacts to Luffy crawling all over him,” he reminded her, ignoring the fistful of emotions spearing through his heart at the statement. “You think he comes over and feeds you all the damn time because he hates you?”

She blinked at him. Lord, but those bangs were fucked. Good thing his boyfriend was a miracle worker. “But that’s Luffy,” she argued, voice thin. “And he likes to cook.”

“Yeah, for people he likes.” He pointed at her with the hair dryer, finger straight along the barrel. The stock felt odd in his hand, too big and too round. Damn, he hadn’t held a gun in ages. This was a really weird time for that muscle memory to come back. “Which includes you, dipshit, whether you know it or not. He’d be all torn up to know you even thought about this shit without talking to him first.”

Nami pulled her lips in, eyes glistening, hands tucked between her knees. “You really think so?”

Zoro rolled his eyes so hard he almost capsized. “God, it’s too late for this. Close your damn eyes.”

She eyed the dryer in his hand. “You’ll wake up the whole house if you turn that thing on.”

He shrugged. “Luffy’s dead when he sleeps, and Usopp and Perona are fucking – fuck!” He slapped his forehead a few times. “Fuuuck. I said it out loud. God damn it.”

Nami snorted. “Wait, are you for real?” 

Zoro groaned. “Unless Usopp started watching porn without headphones, and Perona decided to go camping without telling anyone.” Nami chortled, knuckle against her mouth. Water spilled over her lower eyelids. Zoro did her the favor of pretending he was too stupid to notice. “I really don’t want to picture it, please stop making me.”

She giggled. “Oh, you poor dear.” She tapped her chin in a rhythm with two fingers, smile sneaking in. “Is it the slap-slap-kiss thing, or has he secretly been a chaser this whole time and never told me?”

“You can ask him that, not me.” He gestured at his own face, up-down over his eyes. She smiled and closed hers. He concentrated and flicked the switch with his thumb (nothing like a firearm), sending a loud burst of air down her face. Just a few seconds of electric screaming, and all of the clinging hair was blown off of her and onto the floor. He’d sweep it up in the morning.

He turned the dryer off and dropped it in the sink with her scissors and shit, trading it for the comb in there. “I’ll call Sanji in the morning and he’ll get this all fixed up before lunch,” he promised, combing the jagged edges as smooth as they could be. “C’mon, let’s go downstairs and chitchat so we can give Perona shit when she does the walk of shame later.”

Nami grinned. “You’re a terrible brother,” she told him. “I’m in.”

“I could never bear to put highlights on you, my dear,” he said, brushing Nami’s freshly-dried hair until it glistened. “You have the undertones of dreams, it would hurt my heart to change them.”

She giggled, clean bangs bouncing on her forehead. They were much shorter than he would have done himself, of course, but hair always grew. Zoro’s early morning phone call had been a little harrowing, but this was the kind of emergency situation that Sanji was bred for. He had managed to sweet-talk his way into the salon despite the last week of Iva’s threats, mostly due to the fact that Caroline was in charge on this slow day and had a softer hand than their boss.

He could have just done the cut in the cabin’s kitchen, of course, but – for Nami’s first ever professional hair appointment? Oh, she absolutely deserved the full treatment, and he would give it to her. The thought itself had pumped him up all morning to this moment, floating on a cloud of friendship and caffeine as he spritzed her hair with primer. Nothing could bring him down.

Nami sighed, considering her reflection. “I guess I can make do with just a haircut for now,” she allowed, “but it’d be so fun to let you go off like you do with Zoro.”

“It comes at a price,” he warned her. “As lovely as your natural hair color is, you’d just lift from an orange to a slightly lighter orange, and I’m afraid you’d be disappointed with the results.” She pouted, recrossing her legs under the cape. A final brush, the calm chatter of the quiet salon keeping his tone low and easy. “Do you want me to curl it for you?” he asked. “Make it look nice.”

“Make it look even shorter,” she fired back, shaking her new, chin-length hair so it hit her cheeks instead of past her shoulders like before. “Oh, why not? Let’s go all out.”

He smiled and plugged in his curling iron, setting it on the tray to heat up. She bit her lip. “Thank you,” she said. “You saved my ass.”

He waved her off while he began sweeping up the mountain of hair at their feet. “Oh, not at all,” he replied. “Anything for a lady such as yourself.”

“And… I’m sorry I didn’t just ask you to do it first.” He paused and looked up to find her watching him through the mirror. Her mouth twitched. “Zoro said I should have – could have. But… I wasn’t sure if we were friends like that or not. Not because of you!” she defended, cape popping up with her hands raised against potential abuse. “I just – I’m kind of bad at the whole – friends thing?” She chewed her lip. “But – I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Sanji blinked and cleared his throat. “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I – to be honest, I wasn’t sure, either.” He turned back to his sweeping, anthills of copper hairs filling up the dustbin. “Why get too attached before – well.” He gestured at the world with the broom, the hushed panic of the day before a holiday, their friends scattered around town on various errands, everything so different and the same as it was six months ago. “Life happens, y’know?”

She snorted. “Honey, I don’t think you get it. That boy’s the ride-or-die-est man I’ve ever met. Unless you dump him – and I wouldn’t blame you if you did, he’s disgusting – he ain’t goin’ nowhere.” She freed a hand to take up her seltzer can, metal chiming against the stone table along with the ding of a new client coming in the door. “And you’ve got Luffy wrapped around your finger? Babe, you best start believing in friend groups, Miss Turner.” She grinned behind aluminum. “You’re in one.” She frowned. “Hey, what’s your last name, anyway?”

He smiled as he took up the curling iron, wrapping the first lock around the barrel. “It’s–”

“Hi, San.”

His whole body jerked. Nami cried out, clutching the ear he hit with the curling iron. Sanji hissed and dropped the iron on the tray. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, dear,” he fluttered – he thought he did, at least. His body had escaped his control with two words. Nami waved him off, holding her cold can to the slight burn, grimacing. Someone laughed.

Pudding laughed.

The already-quiet salon went cave silent. Fire ants erupted over Sanji’s head, burning and crawling and biting their way to his feet. He clutched – something. He couldn’t turn around.

“I’m back in town!” Pudding’s voice said, ringing in his head like a hawk’s scream. “Thought I’d poke my nose in and see what was going on.” Boot heels clicked across the wood-stained vinyl. “How’re you doing, babe?”

Sanji couldn’t see anything. The world was swirls and colors and her voice. “You’re – not at the chateau?” someone who sounded like him asked.

“Had to run down for some groceries,” she said, mirth an undercurrent. “The fridge misses you and your lists, that’s for sure!” She laughed. She kept laughing. He dug his fingers in.

Her hand landed on his elbow. He jumped away, heels catching on the standing mat around his chair. Pudding smiled at him from a yard apart, honey brown waves laid, winter pompom hat down over her forehead, lashes on. He bought her that scarf. “Hi,” she said, warm eyes crinkling. “It’s good to see you.”

He worked his sandpaper tongue in his charcoal mouth. “You – you, too,” society said. He swallowed. “Why are you here?”

“I told you, I’m back in town. I came home for the holidays!” So she had moved to Memphis, after all. She honed in on him, eyes still laughing. This wasn’t funny. Was he dreaming? This couldn’t be actually happening to him. “I thought you might be here,” she chuckled. “You’re still such a workaholic, San. Aren’t you tired?”

“Hi there!”

They both turned to Nami, grinning up at Pudding from the chair, one single curl hanging over her pink ear. She drummed her nails on the pleather of the chair arm. “You must be Pudding,” she chirped, all of her teeth on display. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

Pudding blinked, smile stiff. “All good things, I hope.” Nami’s own smile stayed stretched. “Um… San? Would you like to talk?” She tugged on the fringe of the scarf he got her, blinking at him through her smashed-down bangs. “In private, perhaps?”

“Oh,” Nami sang, long and multi-octave. “They were right. You are a bitch!”

Pudding whirled on her. Sanji winced, but he couldn’t – brain, think faster–

“Who are you, anyway?” Pudding snapped at her, hands on her hips, smirking down at Nami. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Uh, yeah it does?” Nami gestured at her hair. “We’re busy? He’s working? You made him burn my ear?” She spun her chair and whacked Pudding in the shins with the footrest in the process, standing up and forcing Pudding back towards the middle aisle of the salon. Nami jerked a thumb over her shoulder, almost hitting Sanji in the face. “He’s my friend!”

Pudding stood her ground, eyes narrowed. “Oh, really,” she said. “I’ve never heard of you.”

“Well, I’ve heard about you,” Nami shot back, poking at Pudding with her seltzer can as a pointer. “You really think that walking into your ex’s workplace and asking to ‘talk in private’ is a good use of your time?” Those were some forceful air quotes. Maybe she was getting too worked up. They were in – public? Did this count as public? Sanji–

He touched her shoulder. Nami shrugged him off with her whole body. Pudding frowned at her, and Sanji was right back in their kitchen again, the moment after he made a joke she didn’t like. “And,” Nami crescendoed, “more importantly, mine!”

Pudding’s eyes narrowed. “What, are you his new girlfriend or something?” she said, low, and dangerous. Everyone was staring. Sanji had to – this wasn’t – “I thought he had a boyfriend now.” Shit, Smoothie was fast. Pudding glanced down Nami’s body with a heavy gaze, formless bumps under the cape. “You don’t look like that to me.”

Nami whistled. “Oh buddy, are you in the wrong building for that comment, honeybun.” Nami poked with her can again. A few drops flew out onto Sanji’s scarf. “You – wow, the audacity! You really thought you could just waltz on in here and flutter your shitty falsies at him and he’d come crawling back, didn’t ya?” she said – yelled. Sanji pawed at her, but she didn’t budge. “Well, sucks to be you, but Zoro’s a stupid good boyfriend, so hah! Keep crying about it!”

Pudding sucked her teeth in, eyes widening. “Zoro?” Her eyes flashed at Sanji over Nami’s shoulder. “I knew it.” The march of the ants erupted again. He had tried so hard…

“Seriously? You think – this bitch?” Nami almost poked his eye out again. “This guy? Oh, please.”

Sanji gulped. “Nami, please…”

“No! I’m pissed off, and she’s a pretty little idiot!” Pudding was fuming, cheeks puffed up, fists shaking at her sides. She looked lovely like that, but all Sanji felt was bug bites and hot eyes pinned on the drama. Nami stuck her can in Pudding’s face again. “You need to leave,” she hissed, “before I tell Sanji’s boyfriend that you’re here. Zoro doesn’t have any problems throwing down with a woman if she starts it.” He didn’t? Oh, he and Sanji needed to have words – focus.

Sanji tugged Nami’s shoulder, caught between her body and the crush of the salon furnishings. “Nami, please, you don’t need to do this.”

“Yeah, I kinda do!” She shooed at Pudding, advancing on her. “Gwon, git,” she snapped. “You ain’t welcome here!”

Pudding raised her eyebrows, mouth twisting into a nasty grin, pretty face flushed a dusty rose as she held her ground. “You’re just a customer.” She flipped her hair behind her shoulders. “You can’t kick me out.”

“Oh, but I can.”

Their three-person bubble burst. Pudding whirled fast enough to slap Nami in the face with her hair. Caroline crossed her arms as she leant against the front desk, leveling an unamused manager look at Pudding. “This is a place of business,” she said in her best disgruntled-customer voice. “If you don’t have an appointment, then I apologize, but we’re not taking walk-ins today.”

Pudding gaped like a smallmouth. Sanji was feeling about as useless as a fish on the shore, too. “Really?” She looked around for sympathy, but the two other stylists were ice cubes in hairstylist black, and the one client was having the time of her fucking life. Shit, this was about to be the talk of the town, wasn’t it?

Pudding’s face flushed, rose to lipstick red. Oh, no. Sanji took a step. Nami stomped on his foot and grabbed his arm.

Pudding sniffed. “Fine,” she choked out. “I see how you treat people here.” She glanced at Sanji, tears dripping down her chin into his scarf. Nami hauled him back with both hands. “See you, San.” A little, powerful smile, and she marched out, head high, and took half of Sanji’s heart with him.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Tiffany whooped, tossing her brush in the air and catching it with a flourish. “Now that was a show!” She grinned, pointing at Nami with the brush. “You’re a good egg, dollface,” she said, eyes sparkling more than her eyeshadow. “I gotta buy you a drink sometime!”

Caroline rolled her eyes and pushed off the desk, cutting her eyes at the door. “Give them a little space.” She nodded at the client, one of Eloise’s regulars, hair partially foiled and tapping away at her phone. “I apologize for the disturbance, ma’am.”

“Oh, no, the honor was all mine.” She toasted Nami with her wine and a wink. “I agree, that was quite a show! You sure sent her packing!” The others laughed, the stereotypical tittering of every Southern beauty shop. Even gay ones weren’t immune from catty bitches, it seemed.

Nami shook next to Sanji. “It did feel pretty good,” she warbled out. They laughed more.

Nami retreated into Sanji’s orbit as the salon started talking about other public breakup fights they’d witnessed before. Nami knocked her head back on Sanji’s shoulder. “Hey, Blondie,” she mumbled under the noise of delighted, gossipy old women. “Wanna go break some shit with me?”

Sanji blinked. “You know what?” he said. “That sounds incredible.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking me to a junkyard,” Perona pouted in Nami’s car’s passenger seat. “This is the worst city tour ever.”

Zoro rolled his eyes. “Stop whining,” he told her. “Be glad we left the house at all today, especially after last night.”

Perona stuck her tongue out at him, face pinking under her makeup. “Jerk. It wasn’t my fault.” She wiggled in her seat, nose in the air. “He came onto me. Actually…”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Zoro cut her off. “I already wish I hadn’t.” Zoro grimaced, pushing down the memories of the awkward morning before Luffy and Usopp went to the escape room for the day. Zoro got Nami’s keys today so that he could show Perona around while Sanji fixed her hair, but he wished he could be there instead, hanging out on the salon couch and watching Sanji work. Oh well. At least they could see each other later.

“We’re just feeding the stupid cats,” Zoro told her for the fifth time. “You can put up with it for a little bit. It don’t even smell that much, especially in the cold.”

She groaned, slouching down as much as the seatbelt would allow, ruffles and wool bunching. “Fine,” she complained more. “But I’m still going to whine about it.” She checked her phone. “Turn towards me at the next stop sign, dingus.”

Perona kept bitching and directing him through the back streets to Franky’s place, only making him turn the wrong way twice before the familiar piles of crap rose on the horizon. He turned into the driveway… frowned. “The gate’s open.”

Perona cut her eyes at him. “Is it not supposed to be?” He shook his head. She shrugged. “Well, get your gun or your swords out and let’s go prosecute some trespassers.”

“My swords are at home, and I don’t carry anymore.” Maybe he should start keeping Kitetsu in the trunk, actually. He could talk his way out of the citation. He rolled Nami’s Subaru over the unnecessary cattle gate, wheels falling into the grooves in the gravel. “Guess it’s all up to your pepper spray and maybe some vehicular manslaughter – shit. Is that Sanji’s car?”

 “Huh!” Perona sat up. “Looks like it to me!” She tilted her head at the boring CR-V parked in the beaten-down dirt by the pass in the trash mountain range. “Ain’t he supposed to be fixing your friend’s hair right now?”

Zoro shrugged and threw the car in park. “I thought so, too. The hell’re they doing here?” He killed the engine and got out of the car, hissing as winter reminded him about its presence. He opened his ears… over there.

He sauntered around a trash hill to the screaming and smashing on its other side, just in time to watch Sanji kick a broken toaster oven like the world’s least aerodynamic soccer ball, yelling formlessly as it tumbled and clattered down the heap he stood upon. Nami threw both fists in the air and shrieked back in kind, stomping her boots in the cold dirt, her – holy cow, a lot shorter – hair sticking out from her hat.

Sanji laughed, kicking a pile of plastic bottles next to him so they rattled down after the toaster oven, pins to its bowling ball, spinning in his Docs ten feet in the air. “Fuck off!” he yelled at the clouds. They opened in the way overcast days sometimes did, backlighting him in gold instead of gray for a moment, catching on his hair, his leather jacket, the brightest grin Zoro had ever seen. Nami cheered.

Zoro stuck his hands in his coat pockets, scowling through the sunshine. “Now that ain’t fair,” he called as he approached. “What’d that thing ever do to you?”

The two hooligans whipped to him. Nami beamed behind her safety goggles. “Zoro!” She bounded over to him, bouncing around him like Luffy. “Come on and break stuff with us!”

“Oh, we’re breaking things?” Perona cracked her knuckles as she joined them. “Count me in!” Nami laughed and took off her glasses to give them to Perona instead, hat askew, chattering about sledgehammers and adrenaline and her new hair.

Zoro tuned them out and watch Sanji descend from on high, jogging with the momentum until he fetched up against Zoro’s front. Zoro caught him and got kissed before he could breathe, hard and cold and toothy. Zoro gasped, and Sanji grabbed his whole head, licking into his mouth. He tasted like ash and fever dreams.

Sanji pulled back and rubbed his frozen nose on Zoro’s. “Good morning, marimo,” he breathed, fingers snarling Zoro’s hair. “I missed you.”

Zoro licked his tingling lips. “Well, damn.” He hooked his hands in Sanji’s jacket pockets, four fingers folded around their zippers. “Guess I should leave you alone more often.” Glass shattered behind them. Perona cackled. Zoro looked into Sanji’s eyes, close enough that their eyelashes almost touched. “Nami’s haircut went well, I take it?”

Sanji’s eyes crinkled. “Excessively.” Sanji rubbed his chilled palms into the shells of Zoro’s ears, skin warming between them, swaying in place. “I adore you,” he said, right the hell out of nowhere. “Do you know that?”

Zoro gulped. “Guess I do now.” Sanji smiled and kissed him again. Zoro let it happen. When Sanji left to breathe, though, he asked, “Did something happen that I should know about?”

Sanji’s smile tinged an odd color. “I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Right now, I just want to demolish some trash and make out until I can get you home and fuck you about it.”

Well, shit. Sorry, Nami, Perona and Franky’s feral cat colony were her problem now. Zoro wrapped an arm around Sanji’s waist and kissed him just as hard, cold mud squelching underfoot, chaos and destruction raining down behind them. Sanji sighed and kissed him back.

One of Sanji’s favorite things about sleeping with Zoro instead of Pudding was the aftercare. Not from Zoro – he wasn’t cold or distant or anything, but he was a useless lump of muscle until he had his post-orgasm nap. Because of that, though, he let Sanji do all the pampering he hadn’t been allowed to do for his entire sex life, massaging and feeding and moisturizing, murmured affection and slow, unscented kisses.

Zoro said it made him feel like a show pony, but also that it wasn’t bad, to get curried after a ride. For Sanji, it was soothing, the twenty minutes pressing the knots out of Zoro’s back untangling the ones in his head, finally using all of the tricks his former massage therapist coworkers had taught him through the years and watching stress melt away. Zoro liked it. He didn’t just put up with it for a few minutes, then shake him off and put her clothes back on to plan businesses that never took off, to call up one of her terrible friends to talk shit about a different terrible friend, to build Pinterest boards for everything but their wedding. Zoro just laid there and soaked it up like his parched skin took the lotion.

Sanji pressed the heels of his hands into the thick muscle of Zoro’s right side, pushing up from the waist to shoulder, hand-over-hand. Zoro’s eyelashes twitched on Sanji’s pillow. He didn’t need any help making them look dramatic.

Sanji adjusted his seat on the bed by Zoro’s hip, switching the side his feet were folded under. “The thing that happened,” Sanji began, skin pulsing in time with their shared heartbeats. “Earlier, at the salon.” Zoro grunted. Sanji bit his swollen lip. “Pudding showed up.”

Zoro’s brow furrowed. He squinted over his shoulder through a cracked, confused eye. “I thought she got her hair done somewhere else,” he said, voice raspy. “And also that she moved to the other side of the fucking state.” Sanji nodded. Zoro’s nose wrinkled. “Then what the hell was she doing here?”

Sanji smiled, hands easing up. “Nami thinks she wanted to get me back.” She was very adamant about that, actually, banging on Sanji’s dashboard the entire drive to the junkyard and screaming about the balls on that B-word. “She’s probably right.”

Zoro’s lip curled. Sanji reached up to push Zoro’s tangled, berry-bright hair off his forehead. “Honestly, I barely got a word in,” he admitted. “Nami got in her face and told her off much better than I ever could. You know, I think she might be a little pent-up at the moment?” Zoro snorted. Sanji grinned. “Caroline gave her free shampoo for it.”

“Good.” Zoro rolled over, sheets twisting around his hips. Sanji sat back to give him space. “And your response was to put your foot through a microwave and fuck the shit out of me?”

Sanji laughed. “I guess so.” He traced along the bottom of Zoro’s chest scar, adjusting the sheets so they laid better. “It wasn’t my proudest moment, letting a woman fight my battles for me while I just stood there,” he confessed. “But… she did. Without even thinking about it. I…” He gulped.

“No one in my life has ever stood up to the Charlottes – any of them – for me,” Sanji said, thoughts and emotions that had been gathering all day finally breaking. “Not even Zeff. I mean, I’m sure he would, but I never gave him the reason to, and I know he wants me to live my life outside of him, and–”

He shook it off. “I would’ve kicked his ass if he did,” he told Zoro’s scar. It had uneven, sloppy stitch marks. Had it not been done by a doctor? “My friends, coworkers – it was never their fight, and I didn’t ask, so they didn’t try. But Nami called her a pretty little idiot, and called me her friend.”

He traveled the journey of Zoro’s scar to his heart. How deep had the cut been? How close to death had he… Sanji shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. “I wouldn’t have that if it wasn’t for you,” he said, voice catching. “So… thank you.”

Zoro laid there, staring at Sanji’s face with one of his hard, unreadable looks. “Just so we’re clear,” he said after a moment, “you don’t want to go back to your ex? It didn’t work?”

Sanji’s blood pressure spiked. “Of course it didn’t!” he snapped. “What kind of – she came to my job wearing clothes I bought her just to – who shows up to a hair salon ‘just because’, anyway? Oh, it was a good thing Iva wasn’t there, or there would’ve been stronger words than ‘precious little idiot’ used–”

He hissed, slapping his palm to his temple. “She’s still a lady,” he reminded himself. “She deserves respect, and I hope she finds it.” Probably wouldn’t be useful to say that she looked good in Sanji’s scarf. She did, but Zoro naked in his bed looked better. “I just hope that she finds it far, far away from me.”

Zoro nodded. “Okay. Good to know.” He took Sanji’s hand from his chest and pressed it to his own face. Sanji stroked his cheekbone with his thumb. “Then it’s my turn to say something stupid.”

Sanji scowled. “That was not–”

“I think I love you.” Sanji choked. Zoro set his jaw, glaring at Sanji. “Like – I’m not really sure, actually?” he kept going over Sanji’s coughing. Oh, Sanji was going to kill him. “I’ve never done it before, so I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like or whatever. But…” He sneered, face flushing in the afternoon light filtering through Sanji’s blinds. “You said you wouldn’t know Nami if it wasn’t for me, but I wouldn’t know any of them if it wasn’t for you.”

He pushed his face into Sanji’s palm hard enough that Sanji had to push back. “Pretty sure I’ve been obsessed with you since the day we met,” he muttered, lips barely moving, “and if that stunt had worked and you’d dumped me and gone back to that bitch, I’d want to kill myself just as much as I did when Luffy told me to get out.” Luffy did what? “I’m not sure if that’s what loving someone is supposed to be like,” he continued, “but, fuck it, I’m calling it. I love you, Blondie.”

Sanji’s eyes warmed, his throat clenched. He worked his fingers into Zoro’s hair as much as he could with Zoro holding it captive. “You miserable man,” he choked out. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

Zoro smirked, nipping Sanji’s thumb with his sharp teeth. “Well, saying it back would be nice,” he teased, “and then you could work on my legs for a change–”

Sanji collapsed over him, shutting him up with a hard kiss. Zoro laughed and kissed back, smiling into Sanji’s mouth. Sanji was never letting him go.

Zoro had never had a problem with snooping on his friends’ phones before. He didn’t give a shit what anyone else did with their time, and phones were a waste of it, anyway. The whole thing with Luffy had spooked him away from even looking at his own phone, much less anyone else’s. But Sanji’s text tone was getting on his last fucking nerve.

“You gotta shut that thing up,” Zoro barked from his backwards chair, pulled up at the mouth of Sanji’s galley kitchen, sipping his vodka soda while Sanji prepped for Thanksgiving tomorrow. “Who could possibly be trying to talk to you that bad, anyway?”

Sanji shot him the evilest eye that didn’t involve Zoro washing his hair in hot water. “Who do you think?” he snapped back. His phone rattled across the counter. “If you tried to hit up your ex you lived with for seven years – that you had been engaged to – and her friends told you to fuck off, would you give up on her that fast?”

Zoro raised his eyebrows. “Uh, yeah?” Sanji made a face as he poured out the water his collards were soaking in, then refilled the Tupperware for another quick rinse. “I can take no for an answer, and actually believe it,” Zoro replied. “Why haven’t you just blocked her yet? Isn’t that, like, breakup 101? Even I know that.”

Sanji stared into the sink. Zoro loved that stupid little bun he put his hair in when he cooked. “She hasn’t tried to reach out in a while,” he told the dishes there. “I didn’t think I’d have to.” He rubbed his chin on his shoulder. “Besides, what if she needed – something? For her taxes or whatever?”

Zoro snorted. “Okay, that’s bullshit, even for you.” He knocked back some of his drink with an ice cube, sticking it in his cheek to melt. It was water, it counted. “A’ight, gimme.” Sanji frowned at him. Zoro stretched to put his drink on the little bit of the counter he could reach and held out his hand, beckoning with his fingers. “C’mon,” he repeated. “I’ll block her for you so you won’t be tempted to reply.” He smirked. “You pathetic sap.”

Sanji rolled his eyes, but left his wet leaves to fetch it, handing the phone to Zoro while looking at the ceiling. Zoro snagged his wrist before he could go, swiping Sanji’s thumb on the fingerprint sensor to unlock it. Sanji wrinkled his nose at him. Zoro bit the tip of his finger because he could. Sanji rolled his eyes again, but with a smile this time. “When are you going to stop being so – this?” he asked, even as he bent down to kiss Zoro’s cheek.

Zoro turned to meet his mouth instead. Sanji whimpered like a little bitch. Fuck yeah. Zoro licked his teeth. Sanji bit Zoro’s lip, pulling on it until he was out of Zoro’s reach again. “Relentless.”

Zoro propped his chin on the chair back, slumping a bit so it supported him properly. “No plans on stopping anytime soon,” he replied. “Better get used to it.”

Sanji shook his head as he washed his hands again. “Just watch it in public,” he warned. “I’d rather not test the limits of modern-day Southern ‘y’all meets all’ acceptance more than I already do.”

Zoro looked up from Sanji’s barrage of text notifications. Had the bitch been drinking all day, or just since dinner? “That’s why you’re scared of PDA?” he asked. “Fucking hate crimes?”

Sanji gaped at Zoro. “Yes,” he said like Zoro couldn’t speak English. “Aren’t you?”

Zoro pulled a face. “I could take any homophobe, any day,” he swore. He looked Sanji up and down. “And so could you.”

Sanji scoffed, rinsing his greens again. “What about a homophobe and ten of his friends?” he asked. “What about the dirty looks from the Publix cashier?”

“I’ve got Luffy for backup,” Zoro said, “and who the fuck cares what random strangers think?” Sanji blinked at the subway tile behind the sink a few times. Zoro pointed at Sanji with his phone. “Stop doing that,” he ordered. “It’s stupid.”

Sanji flicked water at him. “Easy for you to say,” he bit back. “You didn’t grow up here!”

Zoro groaned, scowling at Sanji’s phone again. Pudding. Terrible name. It had taken months to realize that Sanji talking about his fiancée during small talk wasn’t just him being weird and cutesy while relaying an anecdote to a stranger, but her actual, legal name. At least Sanji had deleted whatever shitty emojis he’d probably had around her contact name before. “We’ll work on it,” he grumbled, cheek smushed on his shoulder. “But I ain’t here to be your dirty back alley secret.”

“Wha–” Sanji dropped the greens. “Zoro!” Sanji darted to him and cupped his face, making him look up into distressed blue eyes. “Of course you’re not!” His hands hurt Zoro’s skull. “You – don’t you ever think that,” he swore. “I–”

His breath caught. Zoro watched him grapple with about five different parts of himself. “I love you.” Oh. Zoro blinked. Sanji smiled, uneven, half-hidden. “If things were different,” he swore, “I’d show you off, every day, on every street corner.” He thumbed under Zoro’s eye, gaze caught on his hair. “And maybe I will, one day.” He bit his lip. “But – can I work up to it?” His mouth twitched. “You’re my first boyfriend, after all. I’ve got a lot to learn.”

Zoro snerked. “So? Mine, too. Skill issue.” Sanji tossed him away and went back to cooking. Zoro grinned and scrolled through the texts. Okay, sue him for being a little nosey, whatever. Sanji was right. They hadn’t texted each other since they had broken up, mostly logistical stuff about furniture and leases and shit. The timestamps were a cold jump from July to today, which was a lot of one-sided cry-typing and swearing she’d change and how much her family missed him. Bullshit. No wonder Nami had gotten all up in her face. She hated people who were worse at manipulating men than she was.

Zoro blocked the contact. Should he delete it? He’d never blocked someone before. Did the phone do that when you blocked them? He backed up to check – shit, a new message. He actually hadn’t meant to click that.

He read the accidentally-opened text as Sanji broke up a hambone to put in the pot on the stove. Huh. “Man, your former-ex-almost-in-laws or what the fuck ever cannot name people normal shit, can they?”

Sanji hummed, forearm flexing as he cut through bone. Shit, how sharp did he keep his knives? Hot. “What do you mean?”

“Chiffon? Really? That’s a – oh, sure, that’s fine.” Zoro blinked at the afterimage of Sanji’s phone in his hand. Sanji hunched over it now, hungry eyes devouring the screen. Zoro frowned. “Do I have some other Charlotte to worry about?” he asked after a beat too long. “Are you only attracted to women named after fabrics or dessert?”

“Chiffon is a kind of cake, too,” Sanji mumbled without looking up. “No – no.” He blinked, spine straightening. “Darling,” he breathed. “I think she doesn’t hate me.”

Zoro frowned harder. “Who?”

Sanji laughed and did a quick spin on his heel. “She doesn’t hate me!” Not helpful. “Oh, thank the Lord. I am–” He whipped his phone up, tapping a text off in time with his little dance. Zoro watched his tongue flop around between his teeth, waiting for any of this to make sense. “I’ve wanted to – oh, this is wonderful.”

He finished the text, then tossed his phone on the counter again, snatching Zoro’s hand up instead. Zoro yelped as he almost knocked the chair over when Sanji yanked him to his feet, but Sanji didn’t care, heel-toeing in a short salsa in his stupid skinny kitchen that was not two dudes wide. Zoro stumbled along with the joy he didn’t understand, clutching Sanji, off-kilter. “Um – yay?”

Sanji laughed and splayed his hand on the small of Zoro’s back, free hands intertwined. “I can make green bean casserole and not fuck it up!”

Zoro frowned, face hot. “Am I supposed to be excited about that?” Don’t step on his toes, Zoro, you’re coordinated. You can dance. “Uh – congrats?”

Sanji tossed his head back, laughing at the ceiling. Fuck it. Zoro ducked in to kiss his neck, spinning them around. Sanji giggled – giggled, like he was wine drunk and delirious. He was so fucking weird, and he made absolutely no sense, and Zoro loved him. Maybe he didn’t really care about anything else.

Sanji hadn’t expected to be in a good mood for this Thanksgiving. He expected chaos and misplaced ennui, juggling half a dozen emotions on a teetering platter of someone else’s family bullshit. But a full day of Zoro just being there and a long text conversation with Chiffon that lasted well into the night, though, lifted his spirits like fog off the fields.

Chiffon didn’t hate him. She had missed him just as much as he missed her. She thought the breakup was a long time coming, and Pudding was a fool to lose him, and a selfish diva to try and get him back like that. Pudding had, apparently, come home from the encounter and proceeded to get messy-drunk on the back porch with some of her shittier relatives about it. Chiffon used soy sauce in her green beans and poultry seasoning in her dressing, and she promised to call him for a real chat once she was back in Jersey. Her husband was going to mail him some probably-illegal Cuban cigars as a congratulations.

Zoro loved him.

Sanji adjusted his shoulder against Zoro’s in Nami’s backseat. Usopp’s van had enough space for all six of them, of course, but Sanji wouldn’t let a cat have kittens on that carpet. Nami had screeched about how Luffy’s parents’ first impression of them could not be an Astrovan that had a superhero spray painted along the side like they were Pacific Northwest hippies and forced them all to squeeze into her Subaru. Sanji agreed with her – hell, he’d probably agree with her on everything for the rest of his life – but it meant that there were four dudes and two side dishes crammed in a space barely meant for three children.

As adorable as it would have been to sit in his boyfriend’s lap for the thirty-five minute ride, neither of them were really sized for that. Instead, Luffy rolled around on their laps like a dog, trying to sneak his hands in the food carriers when he wasn’t whining into Usopp’s braids about having to hang out with his dad.

Zoro glanced at Sanji over some loud joke Sanji hadn’t paid attention to, eyes dancing. Sanji was a balloon, bright green and full of helium. Sanji grinned back before tucking his face behind Zoro’s ear, his earrings cool on Sanji’s eye socket. This new hairdresser oil Sanji was trying out smelled good. How did it taste?

Sanji kissed Zoro’s hairline where no one else could see. Zoro squirmed, almost elbowing Sanji in the belly. Usopp cackled. The radio blared. Sanji rubbed his cheek on Zoro’s shoulder, looking out the window as the houses and trees of familiar neighborhoods whizzed by. Luffy’s feet kicked across Zoro’s legs and into Sanji’s. Sanji grabbed his corduroys at the ankles, fingers digging in between the grooves of the fabric. Familiar neighborhoods…

He looked at the passing houses on purpose this time. Huh. This was a weird coincidence… No. No way. Nami had to be lost, even though she was very proud of her former rank as the highest-rated Lyft driver in the county and never, ever got lost. There was no way. There was no way.

Nami parked on the street in front of a brown lawn, dormant flowerbeds, a wide driveway with a basketball hoop mounted above the garage door, and a two-story brick house that Sanji knew about as well as Zeff’s. “Okay, shut up!” she ordered. “Everyone get your shit together and be nice–”

Sanji didn’t listen, wrestling with his seat buckle wedged under Zoro’s ass and tumbling out of the car, deaf and blind to their protests. Oh, Sanji was going to commit unspeakable crimes today.

“Sanji?” Nami yelled after him. “What is wrong with you?”

Sanji marched straight to the front door and didn’t even knock, wrenching open the door and stomping inside. “You miserable old besom!” he yelled, starting the dogs barking, paws and claws sliding across gleaming hardwood from their beds in the den towards the impeccable white and wood foyer. “Get your ass out here and explain yourself!”

“Wha – babydoll?” Something clattered in the kitchen. Sanji kicked off his shoes into the waiting rack, barking back as the dogs jumped and yapped at the dog gate that kept them from escaping their suburban prison.

Iva came around the corner in a nice blouse and the apron Sanji got her for her birthday five years ago, holding some greasy tongs. She blinked at him with the same bewildered confusion he felt just a minute ago. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you had plans with your friendly neighborhood police officer!”

Sanji pointed at her with his whole arm, breathing hard. “You never told me you had a goddamned stepson!” he yelled over the dogs. He growled at the bitch-ass Yorkies. “Shut up, Twink!”

Iva reared back. “How did you – what on Earth?”

“Sanji!” Nami pushed him out of the doorway, shoving past him. “Oh my God – I am so sorry, ma’am, I have no idea what came over him–”

Sanji bared his teeth as the rest of the crew jostled him around, piling through Iva’s stained glass door like the Dollywood front gates. Nami begged for grace while everyone else yapped as loud as the riled-up Yorkies about food and logistics and shoes and Iva’s taste in stained glass. Sanji hadn’t looked away from Iva’s baffled face, frozen at the far side of the foyer as her home was invaded by a hockey team’s worth of twenty-somethings.

Zoro’s heat and smell paused at Sanji’s side. “What’s your boss doing here, Blondie?”

Luffy scoffed. “That’s not Sanji’s boss! That’s my stepmom!” He wrapped himself around Sanji’s other arm, glaring at Iva on the other end of hallway carpet runner. “And you can’t have him!”

Iva slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes bugging. Sanji sneered. “Don’t you even–”

Iva’s laugh brayed out, a dumb donkey caw that echoed in the cavern of her foyer. She braced herself on her knees, whooping for breath, tongs clattering to the rug. Sanji growled and shook Luffy off so he could stomp over and kick her in the shin, the crew yelling, dogs non-stop yapping. “You absolute – I hate you! I’m quitting! What the actual fuck–”

She stood up, nearly beaning him in the nose with her bouffant, and braced on the wall between two picture frames – pictures of the annual Christmas party she had been throwing for the salon in this house since Sanji was still a minor. “Oh – oh my stars,” she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes and smearing brown eyeliner across her temples. “Oh – this is the best – oh Lord.” She pounded her breastbone with a fist, hacking up a lung between guffaws. “Oh – Oh!”

“Honey?” Oh, Lord have mercy. Iva’s husband, the big quiet man with the mullet and the face tattoos and – apparently – Luffy’s dad now, drifted in from the great room. He scooped up a dog with each arm with the same severe look that he’d said his vows with at their wedding two years back, shutting the animals up the only way anyone knew how. He blinked at the collection of young people in his entryway from the other side of the baby gate. “Oh. They’re here already?”

Iva whooped again, clutching the staircase railing poles, shoving her face against them on the lowest stair she could reach from the first floor. Sanji pointed at the befuddled man with two fingers. “Your wife is an asshole,” he spat, “and I can’t wait to let Luffy beat the shit out of both–”

Iva hugged Sanji from behind, lifting him to his toes and shaking him like one of her dogs with a new toy. “Oh, this is delightful!” she wheezed in his ear. She cackled, almost bursting his eardrums. “Hah! Fantastic!”

Sanji kicked in the air, yelping, arms pinned to his sides. She set him back down, but kept him in a headlock as she beamed at their clustered audience. Zoro made eye contact with Sanji, grinning his face off. Sanji flipped him the bird.

“Oh – forgive me, lovelies,” she gasped, still laughing. She worked her fingers into Sanji’s hair, ruining the pull of his braid. Bastard. “I knew I’d get to meet Luffy-boy’s friends, but to think they’re Sanji’s, too!” She shook Sanji like a rat. “How incredible!” Luffy pouted, Usopp and Nami wrapped up in his noodle arms, also against their will. Please don’t tell Sanji that he was going to spend the whole day as a human weapon in yet another inter-family war.

She let Sanji go, pushing him towards his friends a little too hard. “Well, come on in, take your shoes off, make yourselves comfortable!” She laughed loud enough to fill up the whole house. “Seems we’ve got quite a lot to catch up on!”

Zoro had to admit, he hadn’t seen the ‘Sanji’s boss was also Luffy’s stepmom’ twist coming. It did make this whole thing a helluva lot easier, though.

Zoro hunkered over his plate as he finished up his mashed potatoes, cataloguing the table dynamics before he had to find a hiding place for dessert. Sanji hadn’t stopped bickering with his boss since setting foot in this too-clean house, concentration only breaking to remind Luffy to eat his greens and to sometimes feel up Zoro’s leg under the table.

His boss lapped it up, reigning over her table with the dignity and good humor of one of the puffy old ladies in Perona’s period dramas. She was an even bigger personality in her home than in her business, something Zoro would’ve called impossible two hours ago. Perona watched her from the other end of the dining room table with a hunger Zoro hadn’t seen on her face since they still lived together. Oh, there was no way they were leaving this house before dark.

He stabbed his last green bean with his fork. Hmm. Was this a special enough occasion to talk to Zeff directly? Zoro didn’t have his number, but Sanji had mentioned that his boss and his dad were old friends a few times. He could get her to do it and see if the old fart wanted to come over when he could break away from the soup kitchen. Sanji was all riled up right now, but once the dust settled, he’d probably be over the moon about the stars aligning over Iva’s dining room table. Having his own dad around grumbling about kids these days would be the clincher. They were all the kind of people who wanted all of their friends to be friends with each other, after all.

The food was good, at least. Zoro sopped up the last bit of gravy with a roll, shoving it in his face as he listened to the end of Usopp’s over-the-top story about a misdirected raft trip a while back. Zoro mostly remembered three days of sore shoulders after spending half a day paddling them through the deadest stretch of water in the Smokies, but Usopp added hot sauce to everything he touched. If he thought Perona was impressed, or even paying attention to anything but an elder trans with a husband and a nice house, well, that was their shit, not his.

Nami wasn’t listening, either, playing with her food and her new hair. She was probably scheming on how to convert the escape room to a wreck room without destroying Usopp’s ego. Luffy hadn’t let Zoro go since his dad sat down at the table with the gravy bowl, keeping an arm or a leg captive while glaring at his dad over his third full plate.

Dragon. What a fucking name. Had he picked it out himself in his spotty activist past to keep the government off his trail, or was it a Boy Named Sue situation? Had he been the genius who slapped those random syllables together to make ‘Luffy’? Of course, their last name was already Monkey. They came into the world already screwed, in Zoro’s opinion. Shit, what kind of asshole grandpa named their kid after two animals?

Iva pushed to her feet, drawing the attention of the table. “Well!” Luffy yanked Zoro closer. Zoro rolled his eyes and finished his beer. Iva clapped her hands together and beamed at the collective. “I’m so delighted all y’all were able to make your way down here for a spell so I could finally get to know y’all – even though all I’ve done is chitchat with the one of y’all I already know too well!” She laughed. Sanji threw his napkin at her. She stuck her tongue out at him like a kid. “C’mon, kids,” she said, starting to collect plates and silverware. “Let’s do dessert in the den and watch the dog show.”

Ugh. Gross. Zoro dallied by pretending his beer wasn’t empty, taking imaginary pulls from the empty bottle as Iva charmed Luffy with promises of chocolate pie (ew. Terrible. No thank you) and the others jumped to help clean up, ferrying dishes and glasses to the kitchen, chatter clanging in Zoro’s head like a car alarm. Why were they all so loud?

Dragon also stayed sitting, Iva shoving him back to his chair every time he tried to stand, the dogs sitting on his feet yipping away. Somewhere in that shitty hair had to be someone who helped make Luffy, right?

He looked across the table at Zoro as the room emptied with the same exhausted eyes Zoro was sure he wore, dark circles visible even through the diamondback tattoo pattern down the left side of his face. Zoro raised his eyebrows.

Dragon finished his water and cleared his throat. “So… beer and basketball?” Oh, fuck, Luffy’s dad was Zoro’s favorite person alive.

Zoro grabbed Luffy’s brother’s jacket off the back of his chair – shit, was that guy Dragon’s son, too? But Dragon didn’t seem to recognize it. Zoro shrugged and shrugged it on. “As long as it ain’t Natty Lights,” he said. Dragon grinned for the first time all day, and there Luffy was. Zoro smiled back.

“Boy, if you don’t get your skinny little ass outside and out of my kitchen…”

“I’m just cleaning up!” Sanji argued. “I’ll–”

“Don’t you dare give me that lip!” Iva snapped a dish towel and cracked him on the ass, chasing him away from the wobbly porcelain towers around the sink. Sanji yelped, almost tripping over a dog as he dodged her attacks. “I didn’t drag y’all and your friends over so you could keep hiding in the back!”

“And I didn’t come over with the intent to leave the host with all the dishes!” The sink water was still running, and the stupid little dogs were yapping again. Someone scored or something in the driveway basketball that had collected players throughout the afternoon, a mix of cheers and boos slicing through the whole house. “Besides, I think they’ve got even numbers now.”

“Oh, shut your honeyhole.” Iva slapped off the sink water and took up a dog and a steak knife to threaten him with. “For one, I didn’t use the gold plates, and dishwashers exist!” The dog – Sanji still couldn’t tell which one was Twink or Butch – twisted around to lick her chin.

Iva didn’t even blink, glowering down the length of the knife at Sanji. “That boy of yours is out there performing miracles,” she snapped, voice lower but no less intense. “My man gave up any chance of having a relationship with his boy, and now he’s out there with him, getting his tushy handed to him at basketball!” She pointed in the direction of the driveway, purple lipstick trembling. “I need you to go help him not make a damn fool of himself, and then I need you to make them do this every Sunday!”

Sanji scowled at her. “I hate basketball,” he couldn’t hold back.

“I don’t give a rat’s behind about that!” She tossed the knife in the sink, where it rattled between plates into the stainless steel depths. “You think any of those friends of yours are good at it? It’s about spending time together!”

She threatened him with a Yorkie that had a spangled collar and a purple bow holding its hair out of its eyes. The dog panted at him, laid out on Iva’s forearm like a shawl. Iva frowned. “You’ve found yourself some good people who like you, only holy God above knows why,” she said in her low-and-serious voice again. “Stop beating yourself up about how long it took you to find them and enjoy it.”

Sanji frowned harder. “I’m not beating myself up.”

She leveled an unamused look at him. “Babydoll, yes you are.” She stepped closer and squeezed his arm, the dog straining to lick his face this time. He leant away from the dog breath, but didn’t make her let him go. “You’re too young to be this sad,” she said. “Go. Have fun, get some air, get handsy with your man. Lord knows I’m going to be all over mine once y’all skedaddle.” Sanji made a face. Iva grinned. “And you better do it before Zeff gets here,” she warned – Zeff was coming over? Huh? “Or else I’ll tell him what Caroline told me went down yesterday.”

Sanji’s blood dropped. “She didn’t.”

“Of course she did!” She patted his cheek, smoothed his facial hair down with her nails. “I’m so happy for you that I could cry, I really could. And I’m happy for me.” She smiled. “My two favorite men, surrounded by people they love.” She tweaked his nose stud. “Shouldn’t you be one of those people, too?”

Sanji gaped at her. “Oh, that’s cold,” he breathed. “How dare you?”

She cackled and spun him by the shoulder, kicking him towards the front door and the shoe rack. “G’on, git!”

He paused at the threshold, scowling back at her. “Okay, but you have to come out, too! It’s only fair!”

She laughed. “Sure, sure! I’ll get the leashes and a lawn chair!” She shooed him on. “Go, give me something to heckle!”

“Oh, I’ll give you something, alright,” Sanji grumbled, but did as ordered, fumbling back into his shoes. He hadn’t dressed this morning with the idea that he’d be a seventh wheel in three on three. If one of those cloven-hooved boys scuffed his nice dress shoes, they were going to have words.

He rubbed his warm face on his sweater, scrubbing out the delayed tingles. What a bitch. That was brutal. He was going to kill her. Maybe. Well, he could at least guard Zoro into the pavement.

He stepped out the door, careful not to leave a Yorkie-sized hole as he left. He paused on the front steps, taking in a cold, deep breath. Could he get a smoke in before they–

“Sanji!” Sanji opened his eyes just in time to catch the basketball thrown at him, heart in his throat. Luffy laughed. “Play with us!”

Sanji saw red. “Don’t do that shit!” he yelled back, overhanding it right back at the annoying little twerp across the yard. Luffy giggled and caught it, then passed it to Zoro. Zoro tucked it under his arm, pausing the game as a result. The girls took the opportunity to pull Luffy’s dad aside for a quick huddle, bent in like this was a real game and not backyard bullshit.

Usopp reached down to touch his toes, stretching like an Olympian. “Oh yeah, now I’m warmed up,” he announced, pulling an arm across his body and smirking at the competition, heavy breath fogging up in the November chill. “Ready to kick some ass!”

“Blondie, you’re on our team, right?” Zoro smirked at him, rolling the ball up an arm, across his chest, and down the other. “Boys versus girls plus dad?”

“Hey, no fair!” Perona cried, shaking her fist at her brother. “He’s got fake knees and I’m playing in heels!” She kicked her foot to show her Mary Janes, skirts flying.

“Hey, I’m not that bad!” Dragon protested, grinning like his son. Luffy blew a raspberry at him, mouth curved up on the corners. Dragon laughed, winking badly at Sanji. “But I wouldn’t say no to an unfair advantage!”

Sanji propped his hands on his hips. “And what makes y’all think I’ll help any of y’all out?”

“Please!” Nami pleaded, hands clasped under puppy eyes. “I can’t lose to Zoro, it would disrupt the flow of the universe!”

Zoro popped the ball off his elbow to Nami’s hands. “Get used to it,” he told her. “He’s mine.” He hopped over the pile of discarded coats and jackets on the grass, jogging into Sanji’s radius. Sanji snickered, the brisk air flushing his exposed skin. Zoro snagged Sanji with a finger around a beltloop, hair damp at his temples. His color was running a little bit from the winter sweat.

Zoro pulled him in, kissing him in front of all of their friends. Someone catcalled, some others laughed. His touch was cold, and Sanji’s skin exploded.

Sanji squeaked and grabbed Zoro by the hips. Zoro pulled back as quick as he came, smiling into Sanji’s face. “What do you say, Blondie?” he asked, smoke of their breath mingling, clouding their connection. “Wanna help me kick their ass?”

Sanji narrowed his eyes. “Nope,” he decided. “I’m gonna kick your ass.” He spun them around and pushed Zoro onto the grass, then ran to the driveway. “Nami, my sweet! Pass it to me!”

Zoro cried out, Usopp squawked, and Luffy wailed. The girls cheered, and the dad gave him a grin and a thumbs-up. Nami chest-passed it his way, and it was game on.

“How are you still this hungry?” Nami wondered from the other side of the Waffle House booth, watching Luffy methodically work through an All-Star Special like he was an anaconda swallowing a goat. “Miss Iva had so much food. We’ve got leftovers in the van!”

Luffy grinned at her around too much waffle. “’ere’s a’ways ‘oom fo’ Wa’le Hou’!” He swallowed and stuck an entire piece of ham in his mouth. “And Sanji promised!”

“I swear to God,” Sanji moaned, dragging his hands down his face. “I promised you an escape if things went bad, which they did not! You like your dad now!” He slumped over, draping along Zoro’s side, squishing him against Luffy on their bench seat. Zoro should have taken his coat off before taking the middle spot. Sanji stole Zoro’s coffee and took a sip, not even pretending to dislike it black. “I should’ve sent you off with Law and made you his problem,” he grumbled.

Luffy rounded on him, chewing on the straw of his vanilla Coke. “You know where he is?” he asked, eyes rounding like they always did when his favorite bug was mentioned. “Let’s go, right now!”

“He’s in Trenton, you human vortex.” Sanji buried his face in Zoro’s furry hood. Zoro ignored Perona smirking at him from her mirror middle spot. Zoro scooted around so he could drape his arms along the back of the booth behind both of them. Luffy reached up and moved his hand onto his own head. Zoro scratched his curls and floated on griddle grease. Sanji wormed his arm in the dip between Zoro’s lower back and plywood. “I hate all y’all.”

“Oh, get over it!” Usopp twinkled as he ate Luffy’s pickles. “Today was a good day,” he announced. “We should do it again sometime.”

Nami nodded, smiling as the (young, male, smitten) server refilled her coffee for the fourth time. “Miss Iva certainly thinks so.” She added more sugar to her mug, stirring it with Luffy’s unused spoon. “So?” she asked him. “Did you like hanging out with your dad?”

Luffy hummed, staring into his hashbrown crumbs like tea leaves. “I didn’t get to punch him.” Zoro snorted and squeezed Luffy’s head. Nami rolled her eyes. Luffy nodded. “Next time.”

“Think they’ll want to come visit us at the cabin?” Usopp asked. Zoro frowned at how Perona was pressed against him. He was not looking forward to the fallout when that got messy. “I mean, I’d hate to make them host all of us every time.”

Sanji showed his face, chin on Zoro’s puffy shoulder, fingers worming under the bunched-up hems collected at his waist. “It doesn’t have to be all of us,” Sanji pointed out like an idiot. “Luffy can see his parents by himself.”

Luffy squawked. “Sanji, you promised!”

“I did not!” He yanked Zoro’s nice shirt out of its tuck. “That was only for today!”

Luffy pouted around Zoro’s chest. Zoro had never felt more like a sexy tree than right now. “San-ji,” he whined. “I don’t wanna be alone with them!”

“I’ve been alone with Iva for years and I’ve survived!” Zoro jumped – Jesus, Sanji had cold fingers. “Y’all don’t even have a real table!”

“You could get a real table,” Nami pointed out. “You love hosting, and you love furniture.”

Zoro snorted. “Who loves furniture?” Nami stuck her tongue out at him.

“Do you know how much a dining set costs?” Sanji shot back. “I can’t afford that!”

Zoro frowned. “Make your sister buy it,” he said. “Or she can pitch in, or whatever.”

Sanji sucked in a breath. “That’s–” He trailed off, nails scratching up and down the last few inches of Zoro’s spine. “That’s not a bad idea, actually, marimo.”

“Is your sister rich or something?” Usopp asked, scraping up melty chocolate chips from the plate he had split with Perona. “I’ve got a whole list of things she can sponsor for the escape room! An investor would make it shine.”

Nami winced. Oh? “About that…”

Usopp braced his arm on the table, leaning forward to look at her around Perona’s fluff. “What, is the lease up or something?”

She grimaced. “Well…”

Zoro tuned out the argument that Nami was going to win and turned his head towards Sanji, mouth brushing tousled blond hair without trying. “I thought I was the insatiable one,” he muttered as the volume levels rose on the other side of the table and Sanji’s fingers danced. “I’m not getting busy in the bathroom with you.”

Sanji fluttered his eyelashes at him, the fur of Zoro’s hood a delicate frame over the lower half of his face. “Where’s your sense of adventure, darling?” He snapped the band of Zoro’s boxers. “Weren’t you the one who propositioned me with a back alley?”

Zoro wrinkled his nose. “That was a joke and you know it,” he grumbled. Luffy jostled his other side as he got involved in the business fight. Zoro slid into Sanji’s side until he had to stick a leg out of the booth to stay upright. Sanji didn’t take his hand out of Zoro’s pants. Zoro liked this close-up view, where he could see the darker ring around Sanji’s irises, the threads of green radiating from the pupil. White boy eyes were overrated, unless they were on his white boy. “You deserve better than a back alley or a Waffle House bathroom.”

Sanji’s breath caught. “How romantic,” he drawled. He flipped his hair back, which had entirely escaped from the braid it started the day in, and fixed his chin’s slipping position on Zoro’s shoulder. “Are you going to be like this the entire time we’re dating?”

Zoro smirked. “Probably,” he admitted. “You got a problem with that?”

Sanji smiled. “No,” he muttered. “I don’t think I do.” And then he kissed Zoro, quiet, soft, impulsive, without checking to see if anyone was watching. Zoro kissed him back.

Sanji worked his hands into the hair of his newest client, familiarizing himself with the weight and texture he needed to wrangle for the next hour. “I’m so sorry we weren’t able to squeeze you in before Thanksgiving,” he said, pulling out a thin, limp, dark brown curl to check the full length and cuticle health against the salon light. “Did your mama give you much grief?”

The girl Sanji had booked in the produce aisle two weeks ago (her name was Rebecka, and she was sensitive about it) smiled at him in the mirror. “Oh, no more than usual,” she replied, with the same fragile chipperness she had when talking about her hair history over oranges. “We made it through, and I’m free of family obligations until at least Christmas.” She giggled. “What about you?” she asked. “You and your boyfriend have a good holiday?”

Sanji’s smile grew without his consent, wide enough to crack his mirror. She smiled more in return. “It was wonderful,” he replied. “Now, what shampoo do you typically use?”