Archive of Our Own

Sufficiently Complex Systems

The library was quiet, save for the steady scratch of a pencil on paper and the hum of the air conditioning fighting against the late August heat. Zoro sat at an old, scuffed oak table tucked by the math books section of the three-story university stacks. No one but PhD students bothered to come back there, since a majority of the material was available online.

Zoro had both physics and astrophysics texts open on the table, along with his notebook and laptop. The screen displayed a list of science fiction references - with citations - to fast space travel: wormholes, faster-than-light drives, warp speed, time distortions. Science fiction writers had been coming up with ways for people to get from point A to point B in space for as long as the genre had existed. Zoro had gotten interested in the mathematical probability that any of it was feasible, as well as the math needed to calculate how to end up where one wanted to go without ending up in collision with a comet, a dwarf star, or the remains of a Death Star-exploded planet.

He checked one of the texts again, scribbled a few more lines. Applied science was outside his expertise, but physics and astronomy were basically math wearing lab coats, so Zoro had little trouble understanding them. He shoved his glasses up, rubbed beneath his right eye, and read over what he'd written. The small katana tattoo on his inner left forearm shifted when he moved. He added a few more notes to himself in the margin, questions to ask the astrophysics faculty. He also jotted a reminder not to talk about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, or anything with the word star in it unless it was about actual lights in the night sky. He'd learned that he'd stop getting real information if he brought science fiction into the conversation.

They'd probably take him more seriously once he'd published his second book and finished doctorate number two. The first doctorate had already made him Dr. Roronoa. The first book had been on the mathematics of swordsmanship. He was already half-planning the next one, on science fiction swords – lightsabers, vibro-blades, plasma weapons – but that could wait until after the space travel dissertation.

Outside of math, Zoro had three major interests – science fiction, swords, and weightlifting. The lifting had started in physical therapy and stayed because it made him feel more solid in his own skin. The accident had taken enough from him. What it left behind – scars across his chest, ankles, and face, a dead left eye, hair growing over old damage – didn't make for an attractive picture. He'd stopped expecting otherwise.

His navy shirt stretched over his chest and thinned around his biceps. From the collar peeked the line of spaceships flying beneath his collarbone, and the edge of the biomech ink that worked around his scar. He picked up one of the texts again, the three gold drop earrings in his left ear clinking softly against one another. The notes in front of him tracked interstellar velocities, orbital drift, collision probabilities. This was the part of life that made sense. Numbers did what they were supposed to do. People rarely did.

Mihawk meant what he said. Perona did, too, even if she said ten times more and judged the world on a scale of Cute and Not Cute. Mihawk lived like he belonged in a vampire novel. Perona adored horror. Zoro preferred science fiction, mostly because he'd spent enough of his life wanting to live on a planet that made more sense.

Writing this thesis would get him one step closer. Grand Line had made room for him to keep doing his research, which was good enough for now.

A chair scraped somewhere across the room. Pages turned. Air from the vent above the stacks hissed. The summer light beyond the tall windows had gone thick and gold, bright enough to glare off the polished floor near the front of the library, but the aisle around him stayed dimmer, shadowed by shelves and softened by green-shaded lamps at the study tables. His watch vibrated against his wrist. A second later, the alarm went off in a soft sequence of tones he had chosen because it was less irritating than the default. Zoro killed it immediately, looked at the time, and closed the book in front of him.

He packed away his texts and notes into his backpack, along with his laptop, swung it over his shoulder, and pushed in his chair. Then he started for the tutoring offices in an annex connected to the library and immediately took a wrong turn between shelves on combinatorics and engineering periodicals.

He stopped after ten steps, staring at a dead-end wall of bound journals. Wrong again. He reversed course, tried another aisle, and landed beneath a mural of the school's pirate mascot instead. The accident had left his sense of direction scrambled enough that buildings still seemed to shift on him. Getting anywhere took twice as long as it should have.

He eventually found the right aisle that took him to the side of the library where the connecting hallway to the tutoring offices was located. He checked his phone, saw that he'd been assigned to room three. It was Monday night, the third week of the school year, when tutoring officially started. The schedule gave him a name – Sanji Vinsmoke – and noted that he'd taken all three of the hour-long slots. Either a freshman who had skated into acceptance with the bare minimum qualifications or an upperclassman getting a taste of the real work that came after Calculus classes were over.

The tutoring offices sat behind glass partitions, a row of square rooms with whiteboards, rectangular tables, and six chairs in case of a group session. The waning sunlight angled through the outer windows and flashed across the glass walls, painting rainbows and bright bands across the industrial tile floor. Room numbers were etched in black at eye level. Zoro found number three, opened the door, and stepped inside.

The room smelled faintly of dry erase marker and industrial cleaner. Somebody had left a writing center handout in the center; he moved it aside and dropped his bag into one chair. Through the outer windows, he could see students drifting past in ones and twos, backpacks slung low, shirts sticking to their backs from the humidity outside. A flyer for campus counseling hung crooked on the hallway board. The AC vent in the corner rattled every few seconds like it had a screw loose.

Zoro pulled off his glasses, dropped them on the table, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. The action caused his t-shirt to rise up, briefly exposing the ink near his hip. He should probably grab a couple bags of chips from the vending machine at the end of the hall. Lunch had been a while ago, and the protein smoothie he'd finished after working out, before heading to the library, wouldn't last through a three-hour session.

Zoro left his stuff and checked both ways outside the door, spotting the vending machine before venturing out in that direction. The machines were at the end of the hall, beside the main doors to the tutoring offices. A drink machine stood sentry next to the snacks. Zoro tapped his credit card against the reader and purchased an unsweetened iced tea, then ran his eye over the selections and opted for ranch-flavored Veggie Straws with the excuse of being healthy.

The third bag got stuck, of course, and Zoro set his other two bags and drink aside to tilt the machine. His biceps strained as he shifted it. The main doors opened just as he tipped it, and a student wearing pressed trousers, a pale shirt with the sleeves rolled, and an expression sharp enough to cut through glass gave him an arched look.

"You taking the whole machine?" the student said dryly. Blond hair fell over one eye, and the darker blond goatee and light mustache framed his narrow, smirking mouth. Lean build. Long fingers. Lethally hot.

"No." Zoro jerked his gaze away and gave the machine a slight shove, allowing the stuck bag to fall down to the slot. He set the machine carefully back on its feet, then snagged the food and held it up for the guy. "Bag got stuck."

"Hn. Could've just bought another bag, had it push the first one down with it." His gaze raked over Zoro. "But muscleheads usually use brute force before their brains."

Zoro's face creased in a scowl. "Didn't want four bags."

"Surprised you know how to count that high," the guy tossed off as he continued up the hall.

Annoyance bit at him, but it wasn't new. People tended to take one look at his build, scars, and face and decide he was either a dumb jock or bad news.

He bent down to pick up the other two bags and his drink. When he straightened, the blond had disappeared. Good. He didn't need the slight irritation he felt at someone hot rejecting him before he'd bothered to try anything.

He used the numbers posted outside the doors to find his way back to number three. He pulled up short outside the glass door when he saw the blond taking things out of his bag inside. Well, shit. Apparently, this was Sanji Vinsmoke.

With a sigh, Zoro pushed open the door and walked in. Sanji narrowed his visible blue eye. "Think you're in the wrong room, mosshead."

"Mosshead," Zoro repeated flatly, moving around the table.

"Your hair looks just like the moss plants in my aquarium."

Zoro dumped his snacks and set his drink down, braced his calloused hands on the back of a chair. A tattoo of a rapier ran down from his left wrist partway down his left thumb. The number 42 in the center of a triple Venn diagram sat on the back of his right wrist, and the words Don't Panic were inked on the pinkie side of that palm. "You're Sanji Vinsmoke," he said.

Sanji's gaze narrowed. "Either my reputation as a catch precedes me, or you're some sort of psycho stalker planning to try and kill me. I should warn you, I don't go down easily. I expect dinner, first."

Zoro stared at him as his brain attempted to interpret double-speak. Did he just get hit on?

"Ah, silence, the language of those on athletic scholarships when witty repartee flies overhead." Sanji set his textbook on the table, along with a notebook and pencil. "Door's behind me. You should find your correct room before my tutor arrives."

"I am your tutor," Zoro said.

Sanji snorted. "I'm here for Differential Equations, not Phys. Ed."

Zoro exhaled with irritation. This was going to be a long night. "I'm Zoro Roronoa. Your scheduling verification should list my name."

Sanji stilled for a moment, surprise flicking across his features. "No shit."

"No shit," Zoro repeated.

"You're a math tutor." The way he said it landed somewhere between disbelief and impressed. "I'm not calculating macros to bulk gain here." His gaze flicked toward the bags of Veggie Straws on the table. "Though it doesn't look like you're calculating it well, either."

Fuck, this guy had a mouth on him. "You want tutoring or not?"

"Shit. Yes." Sanji pushed his hand through his hair, gripped it hard for a second. It revealed both eyes and eyebrows, which seemed to have a swirl pattern in them on opposite ends. It made him look asymmetrical in a dynamic way that immediately got under Zoro's skin. "I need to pass this class. I need to pass all my classes, and this year's already a shitshow three weeks in."

"Then enough with the crap and let's get started." Zoro dragged out his chair, thumped into it, and opened one of the snack bags. "What are you working on?"

"Separable equations."

Zoro nodded. "You remember how to tell if it's separable?"

"It means the variables are breaking up," Sanji said, opening his notebook. "Sad, really. I thought they were the perfect couple."

Zoro's lips twitched. "Yeah. And now the x-terms and the y-terms can be on separate sides."

"What happens to the derivatives? Children of the divorce?" Sanji grimaced, sighed, then sank into the chair opposite Zoro. He looked at Zoro across the table. "You still don't look like a math tutor."

Zoro reached for his glasses and slid them on. The right lens carried his prescription; the left was plain glass. Sanji snapped into perfect focus, and Zoro felt that low pull of attraction that he clamped down on immediately. "This better?"

Sanji's responding grin was evilly delighted. "Holy shit. Can you see into outer space with those?"

Zoro leveled him with a look. "Can see you clearly failing."

Sanji laughed, a short, bright sound that echoed against the glass. "So, what - you're a nerd who does underground MMA on the side?"

"Swordfighting," Zoro said, which was true. He and Mihawk still dueled with everything from epees to bokken to shinai. Sometimes even dull rapiers, katanas, and broadswords. Though Zoro drew the line at the daggers Mihawk also favored, unless they were throwing them. That was fun.

"That… would've never crossed my mind," Sanji said, with a shake of his blond head. "Color me slightly – and I mean slightly – impressed."

Zoro drew out a veggie straw with a shrug. "Not the world's greatest or anything." That title currently went to Masahiro Miyazaki, considered the Master Swordsman of the Heisei Era, who won an unmatched six out of twelve All Japan Kendo Championships. It was Zoro's dream to travel to Japan and have a match with him, kendo skill against Zoro's math-based movements, even though Zoro knew he was far outclassed. He'd studied Miyazaki for his first doctorate, among other kendōka.

Sanji leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Tell me you're the world's greatest math tutor, and I'll let you paint me like one of your French girls."

Zoro frowned as he crunched on his snack. "Don't know how to paint, but I know math."

Sanji's lips twitched. "Guess that'll have to do."

The tutoring session went… okay. Sanji's mouth never stopped moving, sliding from insults to curses to questions to insights with barely a breath in between. For Zoro, whose preferred company was the latest math journal, it was a lot. Especially when Sanji prattled in double- or triple-speak and Zoro hadn't a clue what he was saying.

But Sanji got what Zoro was talking about when he broke it down and, more importantly, slowed down. People like Zoro could do lower math in their heads; regular college students could not. Sanji's biggest flaw was not writing every step down in detail, and that was just poor form. Even if he made up stupid stories for every line to solve equations, at least the full script was there.

Zoro also noticed the neatness of Sanji's notes. He noticed the way Sanji's aggression softened when he concentrated. He noticed the line of his throat when he tipped his head back in exasperation and the faint crease that appeared between his brows when he was close to understanding something and hated that he needed help to get there.

By the time the session ended, the sky outside the glass had gone dark, and Sanji had a firm grasp on separable equations. He sat with one sleeve pushed farther up than the other, the top two buttons undone now, hair falling slightly looser over his face. He looked less polished than when he had arrived and somehow better-looking for it.

"Well, that was torture," Sanji said as he packed up. "Can't wait for the Comfy Chair."

Zoro's brow furrowed with confusion, but Sanji had already moved on. "Would prefer to be studying Wuthering Heights in semaphore, but didn't get the choice," he said, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Thanks, mosshead. See you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"I'm scheduled for sessions with you all week." Sanji shot him a lazy grin over his shoulder as he headed for the door. "Don't steal any vending machines before then."

The door shut behind him with a quiet click.

Silence settled in the tutoring room again, broken only by the vent's rattle. Zoro stayed where he was for a moment, one forearm braced on the table, staring at the closed door.

He wanted a drink. He wanted the burn of whiskey and the dull noise of a bar where no one asked him to explain anything. He also wanted Sanji back in the chair, running his mouth, looking sharp and irritated and impossible to ignore.

Instead, he packed up and headed home. Perona had texted and said she'd ordered Thai and would watch an episode of Alien: Earth with him. He'd put Sanji in a mental box labeled "attractive things that annoyed him" to deal with another day.

Or tomorrow, apparently.

Sanji breezed into the tutoring room in a neat blue-and-black pinstripe button-down with a box of something in his hand. Zoro disliked the way his pulse suddenly sped up.

Sanji dumped his backpack on a chair and slid the box across the table to Zoro. "See the vending machine is still intact," he said in greeting, "but this is better. Hope you don't have any food allergies."

Zoro stared at Sanji for a beat. "Can't drink milk."

"Then it's not a problem." Sanji motioned to the box. "You gonna open it or what, mosshead?"

Zoro opened the lid of the cardboard container. Inside sat a panini, still warm, with cheese melting over the sides.

"Veggie panini, not vegan," Sanji said, pulling out his textbook and a notebook. "Stuck with the veggie theme, since I didn't know if you ate meat or not."

"Uh, yeah. I do." Zoro's brow furrowed as he stared at the panini. "Where'd you get this?"

"I made it."

Zoro shifted his furrowed brow to Sanji. "You made it?"

"Don't sound so impressed," Sanji said flatly.

Zoro's culinary expertise ran to microwaving things and dumping soup in a pot. "You live at home or something?"

Sanji's lip curled. "Fuck, no. Second I started college, I was out of that miserable cesspool masquerading as a loving home. I'm on Sunny third, and there's a dorm kitchen."

"Ah." Zoro took one side of the sliced panini out of the box and tried a bite. He noticed Sanji staring at him with an intensity that was disconcerting. He chewed and swallowed before asking, "What?"

"What do you mean, what?" Sanji scowled. "Is it good?"

"Yes."

"I can't tell if that's a compliment or dismissive coming from your monotone."

"It's how I talk."

"I know it's how you talk. I listened to you for three hours yesterday." Sanji tossed some napkins across the table and sat down. "Just eat, you disappointing pile of seaweed."

Zoro didn't know if that was a step up or a step down from aquarium moss. "What's today's tutoring?" he asked before taking another bite. It was very good. He hadn't had a panini in a while.

"Theory of Probability."

Zoro perked up. "I'm using that in my own work right now."

"I'm guessing you're a senior, then?" Sanji sighed. "Lovely. More to look forward to. What are you working on?"

Zoro ignored the first question in favor of the second. He swallowed the next bite of panini before speaking. "Fast space travel."

"Like NASA shit?"

Zoro shook his head. "No. Wormholes, faster-than-light or warp drives. Stuff you see in sci-fi."

"Sounds more fun than learning about foundational axioms."

"Just wait till you learn about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems," Zoro said.

"That seems like a threat."

Zoro grinned. "In any sufficiently complex system, truth and provability are not identical."

Sanji stared at him for a moment. "I think I hate you."

Zoro barked a rough laugh. It made Sanji tilt his head slightly, a slight smile on his lips.

"Finish your panini before it gets cold," he said. "Then you can dazzle me with your math pickup lines."

Zoro took another bite, wondering if Sanji was serious or not, or if he was getting hit on again, if he even had been the first time. Perona liked to tease him that he was the smartest caveman around, since he only understood bluntness.

Sanji opened his books and reviewed his notes while Zoro finished his panini. Once done, Zoro took a swig of iced tea and wiped his hands on one of the napkins. "Thanks," he said, pushing the trash aside.

"Better than Veggie Straws?"

"Yes."

Sanji snorted. "So eloquently elucidated."

"It's the answer."

"Glad to hear it." Sanji tapped his book with his pencil. "Now teach me about foundational axioms."

Zoro did, and Sanji made up ridiculous stories for each one, doodling pictures with his notes. Zoro's favorite was the Axiom of Union, in which Sanji drew three different pizzas and then created a super pizza using the combined toppings.

By the end of the three hours, Sanji understood enough that he could build on it as the class went on. Math was obviously not his strength, but he was determined enough to learn. Zoro admired dedication like that.

Sanji packed up, stretching his shoulders from sitting hunched at a table for three hours. "This one wasn't as bad as yesterday. There may be hope for tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?" Zoro asked.

"Real Analysis."

Zoro snorted. "Hardest class for juniors. Most of my schedule is booked with them every year."

"Lovely," Sanji said flatly. He pulled out his phone and spent a minute on it while Zoro bussed the trash and picked up his own things. "There. Now we're set."

"Set for what?" Zoro said.

"The semester. I've booked you through December, except for next Tuesday and Wednesday – someone's already got you." Sanji looked at him. "Don't like that you're tutoring other people. I get jealous."

Zoro stared at him incredulously. "You've booked me through December," he repeated.

"Every Monday through Thursday, six to nine." Sanji slung his backpack over his shoulder and rapped his knuckles on the back of his chair. "Good thing you're passably attractive, since I'll be looking at you a lot," he added, then sauntered for the door. "Later, mossy."

Zoro blinked at the door as it swung shut. Passably attractive? What did that even mean? Did he just get hit on again?

Sometimes he wished people came with an instruction manual.

Real Analysis involved a lot of cursing, with a side of chips and homemade guac.

"Makes sense why none of this has made sense since the semester started," Sanji said, slumping in his chair as if he'd just run a marathon. "Whose idea was it to make this a required course?"

"It's needed to understand proofs," Zoro said.

Sanji lifted his middle finger. "Proof this."

Zoro chuckled. "You're the one who decided to major in math."

"Uh, no, that was through extortion." Sanji pulled a face. "I need to get a Bachelor's degree to access the trust left to me by my mother, but dear old papa bought the lien on my mentor's restaurant. I have it in writing that I can buy the lien back if I graduate in four years with a degree of his choice. He chose math because he knew it was my hardest subject in high school. If I fail a single course, I won't graduate within the four years, and the bastard will call the lien and force Zeff to foreclose."

"That's shitty," Zoro said with a frown.

"The very definition of my father." Sanji shook his head. "At least I got to come to Grand Line while my brothers went off to the Ivy League. That's a trio of bullshit I'm happy not to have to deal with anymore."

"You guys don't get along?" Zoro didn't know what he'd do without Perona. They were close, especially now that they were adults.

"Eh. They used to beat me up when we were kids, but that stopped once they discovered girls existed," Sanji said with a shrug. "Mostly we ignored each other after that, save for the general shit talk. My father only paid attention if I embarrassed him, and I figured out the best way to avoid that was not to be there as often as possible. Got a job at the Baratie as a busboy. Met my mentor. He taught me how to cook." Sanji's lips curved into a small, warm smile. "Plan to open my own food truck once I graduate and have access to the funds."

"Why a food truck and not, like, a restaurant?" Zoro asked, curious.

"I want to be able to cook and interact with people, see them enjoying my food," Sanji said, giving him a pointed look. "Even if they only say yes when I ask if it's good."

"Maybe ask clearer questions."

Sanji chuckled, tapping his pencil like he was tapping ash off a cigarette. "Owning a restaurant also comes with all sorts of management hassles that a food truck doesn't. Staffing, licensing, insurance, and so on. Food trucks have some of that, too, but on a smaller scale. Doable, while still being more hands-on in cooking."

"Guess I'd better make sure you pass, then," Zoro said.

"Guess you'd better." Sanji shot him a grin and began packing up.

"What do you want to tackle tomorrow?" Zoro asked, as math majors at the university rarely took more than three math courses a semester.

"I'd like to go over all the material from this week again," Sanji said. "Try to hammer it in."

Zoro nodded. "Fine by me."

Sanji slung his backpack over his shoulder. "Maybe afterward, you want to grab a beer? Unless you have an early class on Friday."

Zoro blinked. "No classes. Sure."

Sanji dipped his head. "Until tomorrow," he said, and left.

Zoro watched the door close behind him, then leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He was reasonably sure he'd just agreed to a date.

Perona squealed loud enough to wake the resident dead when Zoro told her.

"Might not be a date," Zoro said, watching her do a ridiculous dance in the wide, stone hallway outside their bedrooms.

They lived in an old castle in Kuraigana, about an hour from the university, surrounded by vineyards that vanished into the dark at night. Most of it stayed clean and empty, too much castle for three people, but the main corridors were lit and marked with colored reflectors so Zoro would not end up in the wrong wing. After the accident, spaces seemed to shift on him. Mihawk had solved that the way he solved most things: thoroughly, expensively, and without patience for argument.

Perona's pale slippers slapped the stone as she spun, long pink sleeves fluttering around her like distressed curtains. She had arrived in their lives looking like that, too, all ghostly drama and sharp edges, and time had done nothing to blunt her talent for getting a rise out of him.

Mihawk emerged from his lair at the end of the corridor, looking perturbed by the disturbance. He joined them in his dark dressing gown, all severe angles and aristocratic displeasure. "What has you screaming at this hour?" he asked Perona.

It was just before eleven at night. Mihawk had donated enough money to the university to secure Zoro a reserved parking spot in the staff library lot, which mattered because finding his car in a reasonable amount of time was never guaranteed. The placard read Reserved for Dr. Roronoa, which always amused him. Optics kept the university from hiring him as faculty until he was twenty-five, but apparently optics did not prevent them from giving him a title, a pile of access, and occasional donor-display duties. So he was Mathematician-in-Residence, which sounded official enough to confuse people and still left him tutoring undergraduates for pocket money, because Mihawk funded education, not beer, tattoos, or bad ideas.

"Zoro has a date." Perona grinned widely and danced some more.

"Might not be a date," Zoro repeated to unhearing ears.

"A date," Mihawk said in his usual droll tone. "Will wonders never cease."

Zoro scowled and folded his arms. "I've been on one before."

"No, you hooked up with someone at a bar, and then spent the next month in your room writing a research article on bad first times," Perona said.

Zoro scowled harder. He had done that. But in his defense, he'd needed statistical proof that his first time had not been uniquely terrible. "This still might not be a date."

"If he dresses nicely, it's a date," Perona said.

"He dresses nicely all the time," Zoro said.

Perona snorted. "No, you dress like a man who thinks jeans count as formalwear."

They had lost that argument years ago. Perona had already done enough to his appearance. When his hair started growing back after the accident, she had declared they should dye it green. If people were going to stare, they could stare harder. She had pierced his left ear three times, too, one for each of them in their strange little family. He had kept the hair and the earrings. He had drawn the line at the rest of Perona and Mihawk's Gothic nonsense.

"Be certain to use protection," Mihawk said.

Zoro sputtered, and Perona laughed. Mihawk turned and started back toward his room without another word.

Perona smacked Zoro on the arm with a friendly fist. "We need to make sure you, at least, dress well. In case it is a date."

"I'm not wearing anything with ruffles. Or lace. Or mesh. Or corseting. Or anything that Mihawk would wear."

"Don't worry," Perona said, patting him on the head with the condescension only a sister could give. "I'll make sure you look cute."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Perona rolled her eyes and caught a lock of his hair between two fingers, examining it critically like she was about to start making changes on the spot. Zoro swatted her hand away.

Perona had picked the color. She had not changed the scarring that lay under it. The accident had left the worst of it across his ankles, his chest, and straight through his left eye. The eye itself was dead. It had taken him a year to walk properly again. No amount of muscle put on afterward through physical therapy and stubbornness changed what the damage looked like. Lifting made him feel better in his skin. It did not make him forget it.

Mihawk swept back into the hallway and returned to where they stood. "Here," he said, holding a row of six gold-foil condoms out to Zoro. "This should get you through the date."

Zoro scowled, heat climbing up his neck as Perona cackled. He snatched the condoms, folded the row, and tried to cram it into his pocket. "Please don't tell me why you have this many condoms."

"Hm," Mihawk hummed. "One can never have too much protection. The other month, while I was on my business trip, I was ill-prepared and nearly ran out–"

Zoro plugged his ears. "Lalala, not listening!"

"Horo-horo-horo-horo-horo!" Perona laughed.

He should have expected this. Mihawk had never believed in sparing him embarrassment. He had not believed in sparing him much of anything from the start, not after finding an angry kid in a park trying to teach himself swordsmanship with sticks and bad temper. Zoro had challenged him, Mihawk had put him on his ass, and then, for reasons still unclear, had come back the next day. Six months later, he was Zoro's foster father. Then his father for real. Perona had arrived a year after that, all lace and knives and lethal commentary.

Mihawk had also taken one look at Zoro's brain and refused to let it waste itself. He homeschooled him, forced discipline into the space where grief and anger had been, and made sure he learned how to use what was in his head. Zoro had become passable in everything else because of that. Math had never needed the help. Math was the one thing in the world that spoke clearly.

Unfortunately, none of that prevented his family from tormenting him now.

Zoro escaped to his bedroom suite before more familial torture could be inflicted on him.

Zoro spent the majority of Thursday holed up in the library, working on his second dissertation. His first doctorate had been in Applied Mathematics. This one would be in Mathematical Physics. If he did the one about science fiction swords, it'd fall under Theoretical Mathematics. If he went for a fourth, it would probably end up in Category Theory, about alien tech in sci-fi. As long as Mihawk was funding his studies, the university was fine with him stacking PhDs in different math areas. He'd taken the required science courses last year, and the university happily waived any other classwork since he wrote journal articles from time to time – like the one on bad first times – that credited the university. Optics mattered.

He pulled his notes closer to him, nudged his glasses back up his nose, and let the math flow through his pencil. That morning, while Perona was playing Dress Up Doll with Zoro, he'd had an epiphany on how to tie the various mathematical physics of the different types of energy systems together, bridging the different science fiction engines to one another. He realized that if he treated the vacuum not as an empty void but as a fluid manifold, the transition from a localized Alcubierre warp bubble to a stable Schwarzschild wormhole was nothing more than a simple change in topological genus.

Lost in the math, time disappeared, so when his watch alarm vibrated, followed by the soft chimes on his phone, he was startled. His body had cramped up from sitting on the hard chair. His writing hand ached. His ass hurt from sitting too long. His eye hurt from staring at notebook pages close up.

Zoro creaked and groaned as he straightened, setting his work aside. He stretched and rolled his joints, grabbed his bottled water, and guzzled it down. Getting up took effort, and he had to reach for his toes to loosen his back. He walked around the table five times to loosen up. He really should have gotten one of those smartwatches that told him when it was time to take a break, but he liked his digital TokyoFlash Kisai, where the time was hidden in a geometric pattern and he had to decode it to read it. It looked like a piece of futuristic tech.

Suitably stretched, though he needed about three more bottles of water, he packed up his belongings and headed for the tutoring offices. It took him roughly fifteen minutes to navigate the maze of library stacks until he found the doors to the annex. He dumped his bag in room three and went for the drink machine.

Sanji opened the main door as he was buying his third bottle of water. A smirk curved his lips. "Stealing the machine again?"

"No. Getting water." Zoro straightened and glanced over. Sanji wore a black vest over an orange button-down shirt, loose at the collar. He hadn't worn a vest the other three days. Did that mean he'd dressed up because it was a date?

Perona had finally settled on him wearing a short-sleeved blue button-down with a lighter blue pattern on it, along with dark-wash blue jeans. She'd styled his green hair that morning, but he was sure he'd messed it up while he was working. He should have checked in the restroom before coming to tutoring. The shirt probably fit wrong, too.

Sanji seemed to notice – hopefully not the sticking-up hair, but the fact that Zoro was dressed differently. His gaze slid over Zoro from head to toe, and the smirk turned a bit satisfied. "Ready to get to it?" he said.

Zoro nodded and walked with Sanji to the tutoring room. The door closed behind them with a soft click. Outside the glass windows, the August evening sun painted burnt orange lines across the tile. Zoro set his waters on the table, then pulled off his glasses and set them aside. He probably had bright nose divots from wearing them all day. He usually took them off and on because he spent time at the gym or napping between doing research.

Sanji unpacked his notebook and left his backpack on the other chair. "So, review. Let's see if you've actually been worth coming to this week."

Zoro said, "If you don't remember something, that's on you, not me."

"I think your distracting attractiveness holds some blame," Sanji said offhand. He gestured to the whiteboard. "Go put random questions on the board and I'll see if I can answer them."

Zoro felt the back of his neck heat. He wasn't used to people calling him attractive, and there was no doubt this time that Sanji just had. Zoro still didn't see what Sanji was seeing. He walked over to the whiteboard and uncapped a dry erase marker, using the board as something to look at besides Sanji. His mind ticked over what they'd worked on this week, and he began to write problem sets and a few blank definitions on the board.

"Start with the definitions," he said, still facing the board. "If you can't say what a thing is, you usually can't do the problem right either."

Behind him, Sanji made a quiet sound that might have been annoyance or amusement. "You really do know how to keep a flirtation alive."

Zoro's grip tightened briefly on the marker. He wrote the last term, capped it, and turned back toward the table. "Thought you wanted to review."

"I do. I do." Sanji sighed and pushed to his feet. "I've been studying my notes between classes, managed to mostly successfully complete some in-class work correctly."

"Constant review will help," Zoro agreed. He pulled his chair out, sat, and the session settled into work.

Sanji complained through half of it, as expected, but he knew more than he had on Monday and less than he wanted to admit by Thursday. He moved through the definitions quickly, got two of them wrong, corrected himself on one before Zoro had to speak, and muttered something hostile at a problem as he set about solving it. Zoro took him through the places where the week's material connected, cutting each explanation down to the bones of it. Sanji followed, pushed back, followed again. By the time they finished the review, the light outside the glass walls had thinned toward evening, the corridor quieter now, the tutoring offices settling into an end-of-day hush.

"I could one-hundred percent use that drink," Sanji said as they packed up. "You still in?"

"Yes." Zoro slid his glasses into the case and stuck them in his bag's outer pocket.

"Good. We'll go to Shakky's," Sanji said, hoisting his backpack over his shoulder.

Shakky's was a simple hole-in-the-wall bar that university students frequented, within walking distance of campus. At 9:30 on a Thursday night, it was relatively crowded with the over-twenty-one crowd – Rayleigh, the door bouncer, rigorously checked IDs – and alt-pop music blended with conversation over beers.

There was space at the corner of the bar, and they snagged the stools kitty-corner to each other, backpacks between them on the floor at their feet. Shakky came down, hair cut in a black bob and wearing a cropped spider top – Perona would love it – and they ordered two beers.

Zoro took a pull on his when it arrived, glancing around the bar. He'd been here before, usually on Friday nights when the crowd was thicker and he wanted to feel like a regular college student. Sometimes he'd exchange a few words with someone, but other than once, it never went anywhere, and mostly he'd just nurse a couple beers before heading home. The less he thought about his one-time hookup, the better.

Socialization and Zoro weren't always on speaking terms. He was usually too nerdy, too blunt, too built, or too visibly damaged for people to know what to do with him. His flat tone didn't help.

Sanji didn't seem put off by it, or didn't care. Either way, he leaned an elbow on the bar, beer dangling from his fingers, blond hair fanning over his right eye. "All right, mosshair. Tell me about you when you're not tutoring or playing with swords."

Zoro paused, then asked, "What do you want to know?"

"I don't know. Everything." Sanji pointed at Zoro's head. "Let's start with the hair."

Zoro's hand went up to flatten his hair. "What about it?"

"Why green?"

That was an easy one to answer. "My sister picked it."

Sanji smiled slightly. "You have a sister? I thought maybe you grew in a pond."

Zoro caught the dig and threw him an irritated look. "Yes, I have a sister. Perona."

"A lovely name for likely a lovely woman," Sanji said. "I have a sister, too. Reiju. A few years older."

"Perona is older than me, too," Zoro supplied, taking a sip of his beer.

"You see her often?" Sanji asked.

"Every day," Zoro said. "Her room's across the hall from mine."

Sanji's brow furrowed. "What dorm allows male and female cohabitation on the same floor? And why am I not living there?"

"Don't live in the dorms. We live at home," Zoro corrected.

Sanji's brow arched at that. "Commuter student. Don't know many of those."

Zoro lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Works for me."

"Hn." Sanji took a drink, then asked, "Who do you live with? Mom, Dad, other?"

"Just our dad," Zoro said. He remembered Sanji's talk about his own relationship with his father, how it was tense, while he had a backpack stuffed with condoms. "We get along."

"Glad to hear it," Sanji said. He shifted, changing the subject. "So, what do sentient plants do for fun?"

"Math," was Zoro's immediate answer. A second later, he realized how that sounded and reached for his beer.

But Sanji only laughed. "Put your glasses back on, and I believe it," he chuckled.

Zoro frowned slightly. "I like math," he said, a little defensive now.

"Your definition of fun and mine are very, very different," Sanji said, still wearing a grin. "But math can't be the only thing. What else?"

"I like science fiction," Zoro said cautiously. "And weightlifting. You already know about the swords."

"Knew about the weightlifting, too, with you looking like you can bench press a house," Sanji said with a smirk. "What kind of science fiction? Like Stranger Things?"

Zoro pulled a face. "Stranger Things is horror, not sci-fi."

"I stand corrected," Sanji said with a snort. "So… Witcher, then? Game of Thrones?"

Zoro's face drew worse, and he was about to correct him again when he realized what was going on. "You know those aren't sci-fi."

Sanji grinned. "Busted. But it's amusing seeing you get indignant."

Zoro huffed. "I like actual sci-fi. Modern and classics. Basically, if it's got a spaceship in it, I like it."

"Star Wars, then," Sanji said, stating the obvious one. He gestured toward Zoro's arm. "You have any sci-fi tattoos?"

"They're almost all sci-fi tattoos," Zoro said. "Unless they're swords." He held out his left arm, pushing up his shirt sleeve, revealing more small inks decorating him. Besides the rapier on his thumb, he had a small facehugger clutching his inner elbow with the katana below it on his inner forearm, a Mass Effect N7 tattoo on his outer bicep, and crossed bokkens on the inner bicep. All only a couple inches each. His right arm had the Hitchhiker's answer and quote, a minimal Starfleet logo outline under his wrist, a lightsaber running up the outside of his forearm, a Stargate Earth glyph above his elbow, and Asimov's Galactic Empire symbol high on his shoulder.

"How many do you have?" Sanji said.

"Twenty-two at the moment."

Sanji blinked. "Are they all small like the ones on your arms?"

"Yeah." Zoro fixed his sleeves. "I like the smaller ones because I can have more of them about whatever I want."

Sanji gave him a hooded look. "You're making me want to see the rest of them."

Zoro reached for his beer. "They're just tattoos."

"Yeah, but they're on you."

That was blatant enough that Zoro had no trouble understanding it. He glanced at Sanji, that low pull of desire forming. "Do you have any?"

"No." Sanji's smile grew sinful. "But you could look for one anyway."

Zoro cleared his throat, sipping his beer. The offer was there, if he wanted to take it. He had a row of condoms and no obligations tomorrow.

But he also had to tutor Sanji for the next four months, four days a week. What if the sex was as bad as the first time? It would be awkward, not to mention uncomfortable, to still tutor him.

He ran the probabilities in his head. Then he cleared his throat again, ignoring the heat pressing at him. "I'm interested, but not tonight. If that's okay?"

Sanji's expression softened. "It's always okay, moss."

Zoro was both relieved and a little disappointed. But it was a decision he was sticking with.

Sanji drank his beer, then signaled for Shakky. "Since we're sticking around, I'll get us another round. And then you can tell me about your favorite sci-fi story."

Zoro relaxed his shoulders. "I might talk for a while."

"Don't worry." Sanji leaned his jaw on his fist, looking at Zoro with a half-smile. "I'm right where I want to be."

The weeks began to slide past at a rate that proved Einstein's theory of relativity.

Being with Sanji, whether tutoring or at the bar, had become the best part of Zoro's day. Seeing him, helping him, listening to him run his mouth at the bar threw the rest of the week into better proportion. Zoro stayed keyed up over it more often than he cared to admit. Even his work was taking off. He might be done with it over the winter.

Sanji's foul mouth, his constant taking the piss, and his flirting made tutoring sessions a blast. The longer they went on, the more Sanji seemed to let go and really let it all hang out.

By the second week, he'd stopped bothering with looking put together by the time he hit the tutoring room. He dropped into the chair and immediately slouched, one leg stretched out under the table. His shirt was untucked, collar open wider than usual, hair pushed back and left that way.

Zoro glanced over the page, one hand braced on the table, the other tapping the line with the end of his pen. "Discrete random variables take specific, separate values. Usually integers. Counts. Not intervals."

Sanji squinted at the problem, pencil hovering. "Ah, so we're dealing with commitment issues. No in-between, just yes or no."

"Depends on the model," Zoro said. "But you're not getting every possible value. You're getting defined ones. Zero, one, two – like number of successes."

Sanji glanced up at him with a crooked smirk. "These are the emotionally unavailable cousins of continuous variables."

Zoro huffed a laugh.

The bar on Thursday nights became a regular thing. Sanji was gregarious. He chatted easily with Shakky, with the person who came up beside him to order a beer, with a few people he recognized who stopped by to say hello. He flirted like he needed air to breathe, but when he was prompted to join another group, he waved them off. "Sorry, I'm with someone tonight."

That pleased Zoro more than it should have.

By mid-September, Sanji had started bringing food like it was part of the session. Not snacks – actual meals, still warm, packed into containers that made Zoro's usual vending machine runs look pathetic.

"How did you even make this in a dorm?" Zoro said, twirling strands of fine fettuccine on a fork. The creamy sauce made his mouth water with every bite.

"Talent." Sanji buffed his nails against his shirt in a brag. "A real chef can take anything and cook it anywhere, and it'll be delicious. My mentor taught me that."

"Sounds like a great guy."

"He's a Grade A asshole. Treats me like shit." Sanji grinned widely. "He's the best."

Every time they circled back to Real Analysis at the end of the week, Sanji didn't even pretend to be composed about it anymore.

"This class is a crime," he said, flipping through his notes with more force than necessary, commentary running alongside the motion. "I'm reporting it. I'm filing paperwork. There will be consequences – what the hell is this notation?"

He reached across the table without looking, took a sip of Zoro's iced tea, and set it back down. "If this class kills me," Sanji added, already scribbling something down, "I'm haunting the professor. Just so you know."

Over the next few Thursdays, Shakky didn't ask what they wanted anymore. She set two beers down in front of them and moved on before either of them had said a word.

Sanji lifted his bottle. "Look at that. We're becoming predictable."

"We come here every Thursday," Zoro said.

"That's what predictable means, moss. High frequency, repeated outcome. I'm sure you've already done the math."

Another Thursday, a group from one of Sanji's dorm floors stopped by halfway through the night, loud and half-dressed for the cooling weather, all layered bracelets and campus gossip and too much perfume. One of the girls leaned on the bar and told Sanji they were heading to another place across town and he should come.

Sanji looked over at Zoro first. Zoro was still holding his beer, thumb damp against the label, not saying anything. Sanji waved them off with an easy smile. "Can't. I'm busy."

The girl followed his gaze to Zoro, took in the green hair and scar and broad shoulders folded onto the too-small stool, and gave Sanji a look full of immediate understanding. "Busy," she repeated, amused.

Sanji only smiled wider. "Very."

After they left, Zoro took a drink and looked out toward the dartboards instead of at him, still sorting through the exchange. "You could've gone."

Sanji leaned his elbow on the bar. "I know."

That answer stayed with him.

By late September, the complaints were still there, but they didn't cover everything anymore.

Sanji worked through the line, stopped, then rewrote it. "Okay, that's actually better," he muttered.

Zoro glanced over. "You separated the variables correctly."

Sanji smirked. "Don't repeat that. I have a reputation to protect."

A few lines later, Sanji dragged his pencil through another problem, paused, then went back and corrected it without prompting. Zoro had been reviewing his own notes across the table, but he looked up at the movement. Sanji stared at the page a second longer than usual, jaw working slightly. "This part actually makes sense now." He pushed a hand through his hair, still looking down at the work. "I hate that I didn't get this in class."

"Maybe you just needed a better teacher," Zoro said.

"At least a cuter one," Sanji said with a cheeky grin.

Zoro's pen stalled against the page for half a beat. Heat crept up the back of his neck, but he didn't look up. "Focus," he said, tapping the next line. "You're not done."

Later that same stretch of weeks, one Thursday found Sanji tilting a beer to his lips. "What's the worst sci-fi spaceship ever designed?" he asked after a sip.

Zoro snorted into his beer. "That's a loaded question."

Sanji propped his chin on his fist. "I'm not going anywhere."

Ten minutes later, Zoro was explaining design flaws in fictional propulsion systems with one hand around the neck of his bottle and the other sketching shapes against the bar top in condensation. Sanji watched him with his mouth curled up at one corner, interrupting only to say things like, "So that one explodes if someone sneezes wrong?" and "You do realize this level of opinion is medically concerning."

But he listened, and he didn't think it was too nerdy, and that made Zoro absurdly pleased.

And when Sanji rambled on about the intricacies of creating the perfect consommé, Zoro listened with equal interest and attention.

On the first Thursday in October, Sanji was quieter than usual after his first beer. Zoro noticed it immediately. "Something going on?" he asked, once Shakky delivered round two.

Sanji rolled the new bottle between his palms. "Just thinking about how much I enjoy Thursday nights."

Zoro looked down at his own beer. Condensation had dampened his fingers. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "Me, too."

Sanji went still for just a second, then smiled, smaller than usual, less sharp. "Careful, moss. I might get swept off my feet."

A second later, the meaning caught up with him. Zoro’s pulse kicked once, hard.

The following Thursday, the bar was fuller than usual, the music louder, bodies packed close enough near the tables that Zoro could feel the noise in his shoulders. Sanji had loosened his collar and was halfway through telling a story about nearly setting off a dorm smoke detector when Zoro cut in.

"Do you want to go somewhere with me on Saturday night?" he blurted. He'd been thinking about asking Sanji since he'd gotten the request to attend. "I have to go to this fancy dinner, and I thought maybe you'd want to go with me."

From time to time, Zoro was asked by the university to attend a funding dinner in his capacity as Grand Line's Mathematician-in-Residence. They were boring as snot, and Zoro was forced to wear a suit and talk to people. But as Mihawk pointed out, the university had offered him a faculty position once he hit twenty-five, and if he wanted it to remain open, he should stay in their good graces. Optics. It seemed the university lived on optics.

The smile that slid across Sanji's face made something in Zoro tip sideways. "I'm happy to go with you."

That was better than Zoro had let himself expect. "You gotta wear a suit."

"I think I can manage that," Sanji said.

Zoro's shoulders relaxed, and a grin tugged at his lips. Now the dinner might actually be bearable.

Zoro arranged to meet Sanji outside his dorm on Saturday night. The air was crisp, the stars out. It had only taken Zoro ten minutes of wandering to find the dorm, which he took as a good sign.

Perona had dressed him in his tailored black suit, with a hunter green dress shirt and a lighter green, gray, and black angled-striped tie. It choked him, as always, and felt tight in the arms. Someone his size wasn't the easiest to dress. He still thought the scars, his build, and the glasses made formalwear look wrong on him, but as Perona fixed his hair, she'd dubbed him cute enough to turn into a squishy, and from her that was high praise.

Sanji came down the dorm steps, looking like he was born in a suit. He wore a double-breasted black suit with a burgundy shirt and black tie. Elegant and stunning. Zoro had no idea what Sanji was doing with him.

Sanji's lips curved when he spotted Zoro. "Look at you, you sexy fucker. Dressing like a real adult. Right out of Gym Bro Quarterly."

Zoro didn't know whether to be insulted or pleased. "You look good," he said, because pretending otherwise would be stupid.

"I look fantastic," Sanji corrected, straightening his already perfectly knotted tie. "Where'd you park?"

"We're walking," Zoro said. "The thing's at the university grand hall."

Sanji arched a brow. "I didn't see anything listed on the campus events calendar."

"It's a donor thing," Zoro told him as he hit the GPS on his phone. He kept the volume low, and the GPS lady told him to proceed straight.

Sanji seemed amused by the GPS. "Afraid you'll get lost walking in a straight line?"

"Buildings move on me."

Sanji snorted softly and fell into step beside Zoro. "I'll make sure you get there, moss."

The university grand hall sat near the center of campus, built in pale stone with wide steps leading up to a set of heavy double doors. Tall columns framed the entrance, and long banners in school colors hung between the upper windows. At night, the arched windows glowed from inside, throwing warm light across the front walk and making the whole building look formal in a way most of campus did not.

Inside, the hall was broad and polished, with chandeliers overhead and round tables arranged across the floor in even rows. White tablecloths, neat place settings, and small centerpieces gave it the careful look of a staged event. Voices carried in a low blur under the high ceiling, mixed with the clink of glasses and the quiet movement of servers passing between tables.

Faculty stood in small clusters, dressed in dark suits or conservative dresses and speaking in measured tones, while donors moved between them, glasses in hand. Conversations paused and shifted as new arrivals stepped in, attention moving quickly and then settling again. Laughter came in short bursts, polite and contained. A few people glanced toward the entrance now and then, as if keeping track of who had arrived, who was worth noting.

Servers moved through the room with trays of wine and champagne, while a small bar had been set up along one wall for anyone who wanted something stronger. Zoro aimed right for the bar. He already needed a drink.

Sanji followed him, looking around at the guests. "I see a few of my professors. And a lot of people with gray hair that scream money."

"Yeah. I'm sure I'll have to talk to them." Zoro managed to signal the bartender and ordered a whiskey. "You want something?"

Sanji scooped up a wine glass from a passing server's tray with a flirty smile at the server. "I'm good."

Zoro drank his straight whiskey down like a shot, then grabbed a whiskey on the rocks to nurse for a bit. The melting ice would make the drink last longer. He blew out a breath, his eye flitting over the room. His glasses were tucked into his pocket, which meant the ballroom had a fuzz to everything. "Let's find a corner to hopefully be ignored in."

Sanji appeared amused by that. "You really don't like socializing."

"No." Zoro picked a direction and wove his way through the tables and knots of people. He got several side-eyes from unfamiliar faculty and donors. His build, green hair, and scars always made him stand out at these things.

He almost made it to safety near a pillar by the swinging kitchen doors when a voice called his name. "Ah, Dr. Roronoa. I see you have made it."

Zoro sighed, stopped walking, and tried to arrange his face into something pleasant. He turned to his left and spotted Dr. Vegapunk and Provost Sengoku standing with two unknown gentlemen. "Yes," he said as he walked over to join them.

"This is Mr. Iceberg, CEO of Galley-La," Provost Sengoku introduced. "And Mr. Crocodile of Rainbase Industries. Gentlemen, our Mathematician-in-Residence, Dr. Roronoa."

Zoro shook the hands extended. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sanji standing close, brow raised, stunned confusion coloring his gaze.

"A bit young," Crocodile said, with a disdainful look.

"Dr. Roronoa is our youngest ever to receive a doctorate, at nineteen. He now serves as our Mathematician-in-Residence. I believe you are working on a second doctorate, isn't that correct?" Sengoku said.

"Yes. Mathematical Physics," Zoro said.

Iceberg studied him with practical interest. "What's the end goal?"

"Fictional propulsion systems," Zoro said. "I'm formalizing the implied spacetime metrics, deriving the governing systems, and checking whether the resulting models remain internally consistent under constraint."

"Useful," Iceberg said.

Crocodile's gaze stayed cool. "Useful to whom?"

"To me," Zoro said.

That got Iceberg to bark a laugh. Sengoku looked like he wished it hadn't.

Vegapunk stepped in before the silence could sharpen. "There are applications, of course. Theoretical modeling often produces interesting side effects."

Iceberg lifted his glass slightly. "Well, I hope the university keeps you. People like you are hard to come by."

"We intend to," Sengoku said.

Zoro caught the shift in the room then – the conversation had made its point. He had been seen. Introduced. Evaluated. Admired in the correct quantities. Optics complete.

He inclined his head once. "If you'll excuse me, I should get back to my date."

Vegapunk looked delighted. Sengoku looked startled. Iceberg's grin widened. Crocodile's expression went flat with quick, assessing interest. From the corner of his eye, Zoro saw Sanji go very still, as if trying not to be noticed.

Zoro stepped back before Sengoku could recover enough to put him in front of someone else. "Enjoy the rest of the evening," he said, and turned away. He didn't look back until he was halfway to the pillar by the kitchen doors. Sanji was already coming after him.

"Doctor Roronoa?" Sanji said the moment they were alone. "I thought you were a senior."

"No," Zoro said, taking a swig of his drink.

"How old are you?" Sanji said.

"Twenty-one."

Sanji looked flabbergasted. "That's the same age as me."

"Something in common." Zoro flashed a weak smile.

Sanji snorted. "Probably the only thing. Holy shit, I can't believe you're a doctor."

"It's just a title," Zoro dismissed. "Doesn't mean much."

"Doesn't mean much?" Sanji shook his head. "That one guy looked like you pooped gold."

Zoro barked a short laugh. "Provost Sengoku likes to show me off like I'm a prized poodle or something."

"More like a prized perennial," Sanji said, motioning with his wine to Zoro's hair. He shook his head again. "Just how smart are you - wait, never mind. Doctorate at nineteen. Too smart to be tutoring struggling undergraduate math majors. What's a Mathematician-in-Residence, anyway?"

Zoro shifted his glass in his hand, watching the condensation bead along the side. "I do my research here, and they let me keep doing it," he said. "Sometimes I give a lecture. Sometimes I get dragged into things like this." He glanced back toward the room. "Depends what they need."

"Doctor Moss." Sanji stared at him like Zoro was a new species. "This is going to take some getting used to."

Zoro's brow furrowed. "Why? I'm the same person I was a minute ago."

"Hn." Sanji sipped his wine and didn't say anything more.

A sinking feeling settled in Zoro's gut. Here it was. The too-nerdy brush-off. If it wasn't the sci-fi, it was the math, or the way he talked, or the fact that people never seemed to know what to do with him once they realized what he was actually like. It was why he'd stopped telling anyone his status at the university when asked about his major.

His fingers tightened around the glass in his hand. He really liked Sanji, too. It hurt that this was going to be the end of it. "Maybe you should take off," he said. "I'm going to have to talk to a bunch of people about my work. Don't want you to feel uncomfortable or anything."

Sanji was quiet for a long moment, then he said, "Probably a good idea. I'm a student. This is a faculty event. I don't belong here."

Zoro swallowed past the tightness in his throat. "I guess I'll see you Monday."

Sanji finished his wine and set the glass on the nearby table. He gave Zoro a faint smile. "Yeah. See you."

Then he left.

Zoro stayed where he was, staring down at the patterned carpet, feeling like a fool. He wanted to go home.

"Dr. Roronoa, good to see you." Dr. Benn, the mathematics department chair, approached with a donor at his side.

Zoro shoved down his feelings, put on an attentive face, and did his job.

Zoro didn't know if Sanji would show up on Monday. His schedule didn't have a cancellation, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. He'd spent Sunday and most of Monday holed up in his bedroom, avoiding Perona's and Mihawk's attempts to get him to talk. He started doing probability calculations on the likelihood that he'd end up alone for the rest of his life. The numbers were not good.

Zoro sank down into the chair in room three, refreshing the scheduling app in case a cancellation showed up. He wore a black t-shirt and jeans, both of which had seen better days. He pushed his glasses up to rub beneath his scarred eye, then let them fall back into place. It was the week before midterms. His schedule would fill up quickly if Sanji bailed.

The door to room three swung open, and Zoro looked up. Sanji stood there, pale green button-down untucked, looking somewhat ruffled and out of sorts. He gave Zoro a tight look before entering the room and setting his backpack down on a chair. "Hey."

"Hey," Zoro returned. He pocketed his phone and ran his palms over his thighs. "Surprised you came."

"Still need the help," Sanji said. "And you are a doctor. May as well get it from the best."

Zoro's shoulders tensed. So it was going to be like that. He pressed down the hurt again. "Sorry I didn't say something at the start."

Sanji flicked his gaze at Zoro, then sighed heavily. "It's not your fault. This shit happens – well, no. This is a first for me. But I looked it up, and faculty and students can't have a relationship. So there we are."

"I'm not faculty," Zoro corrected. Since this was ending, at least it should end with accuracy.

Sanji frowned. "You're the Math-Guy-In-Residence, or whatever. You work for the university."

Zoro looked at him. "In-Residence isn't faculty," he said. "It means I'm based here, doing research through the university, but I'm not hired onto the faculty yet. I have a job open for me when I turn twenty-five. Right now, I'm not even getting paid, except for the occasional stipend if they want me to do a lecture. And the tutoring, but undergrads can have this job."

Sanji stared at him. "So you're not a faculty member."

Zoro shook his head. "No."

"You're just… another student?"

"Kinda." Zoro thought about it. "I'm paying for my second doctorate, so I'm just like any other student there. Just with a few different obligations. Mostly putting the university's name on journal articles I write."

"Oh, thank fuck." Sanji suddenly sank down onto the chair across from Zoro. "I thought I'd have to wait until after I graduated to start dating you again."

Zoro blinked as the words sank in. "You… were going to wait? For me?"

"Course I was, moss," Sanji said, opening his backpack and taking out his books. "For a genius math doctor, you can be dumb as a box of rocks."

Something in Zoro's chest eased. "I thought you wouldn't want to see me anymore," he said. "That I was too much of a nerd for you."

"You are a nerd on an astronomical level," Sanji said with a grin. "But you're my nerd, and one of these days, I'm going to have sex with you with those glasses on."

Heat rose up Zoro's neck and pooled low in his belly. "I look stupid in these glasses," he said, even as his brain repeated my nerd.

"Beg to differ," Sanji said, flipping open his notebook. "Now be a good doctor and help me study for my midterms next week. I got the review sheets for two of the classes."

Relief and something sharper than that pulled a grin from Zoro. "I can do that."

Midterms arrived and put the whole campus on edge. The library stayed packed late, tables full, outlets taken, the tutoring rooms bright behind glass and full of tired students trying to keep going. People moved through the annex with coffee in hand and the same tense look on their faces. Even the noise had changed. Less talking. More chairs scraping, pages turning, and low voices outside full rooms.

Sanji wasn't any better. Gone was the flirting and the lighthearted badmouthing. He fretted over the material during each session instead. "Quiz me again," he said, after a problem set he didn't get fully correct.

A couple of sessions later, the tutoring offices smelled even more strongly of dry erase marker and stale recycled air. Through the glass wall, Zoro could see students lingering in the hall with that strained, overbright look people got when they were running on caffeine and nerves. Sanji had been working for nearly an hour without much commentary, which by itself said enough. He rubbed at his temple, eyes still on the page. "Don't make it easier because I look tired. That defeats the point."

Zoro agreed to work with him over the weekend. On Friday night, after dark had settled against the outer windows and turned the glass into mirrors, Sanji sat staring at one line of work for just a little too long. His pen hovered above the page. The fingers of his other hand flexed once against the table, then went still. "One more," he said at last. "I'll get it this time."

By then, the whole campus seemed to be holding its breath. Flyers for counseling and stress management had gone up on hallway boards. The vending machine at the end of the annex looked half-emptied every night. Somebody in the room beside theirs coughed for ten straight minutes over what sounded like chemistry notes. Sanji leaned back just enough to drag a hand through his hair, then tipped his head toward the ceiling with a humorless exhale. "If I fail after all this, I'm going to be unbearable about it."

The night before one of his exams, the tutoring offices had finally thinned out. The hallway beyond the glass had gone quiet except for the occasional footstep and the soft mechanical hum of the building settling into late hours. Sanji checked his work, set down his pencil, and looked at the page. He paused, then added more quietly, almost to himself, "If I can do it here, I can do it there."

Once midterms ended, the scores would take anywhere from a week to three weeks to be calculated, depending on the TA and the number of exams to grade. But classes resumed as normal, new material given, new things to learn.

The first Thursday night back at Shakky's came with a head thump to the bar. "I hate my father with the passion of a thousand burning shits."

Zoro choked on the beer he'd just taken a sip of. "You should pass."

"Should?" Sanji peered at Zoro from beneath the curtain of his hair. "Not very reassuring."

"Can't guarantee you will. Don't have the numbers to do the math." Zoro thought about that for a second, curious about the effectiveness of tutoring math students, comparing tutoring hours, content, and passing rates. He might have to do some research and run the calculations. Write it up.

Sanji sighed loudly, straightened, and reached for his beer. "You know what I wanted to major in before my father fucked it up? French. The language of love. Completely useless, but I would've minored in business for the food truck."

"No way to get the lien back earlier?" Zoro said.

"I'm sure there's some way, but I won't give him the satisfaction of winning by default," Sanji said, taking a sip of beer. "I am going to graduate with a bachelor's in math in four years and nothing is going to stop me."

Zoro grinned at the resolve. "I'll drink to that."

Sanji tapped his beer bottle against Zoro's. "Enough talk about math. It's been the only thing on my mind since last week. Tell me what you've been up to outside of tutoring."

"Math," Zoro said dryly.

Sanji snorted. "Walked right into that one, didn't I?"

Zoro chuckled. "I deconstructed the slipspace drives in Halo this week. Think I might get a Spartan helmet tattoo next."

Sanji's mouth pulled to one side, something warmer than a smirk. "Zoro Roronoa, summed up in two sentences," he mocked. "Wait – make that Doctor Zoro Roronoa."

"Are you going to keep saying it like that?"

"Yes." Sanji grinned, unrepentant. He flagged down Shakky. "Shakky, my dear, will you please get Doctor Roronoa and myself another beer?"

Zoro huffed, shifting in his seat. "You're enjoying this too much."

Sanji's grin didn't fade. He tipped his glass slightly in Zoro's direction. "I enjoy a lot of things about you."

Zoro cleared his throat. "Same. About you."

Shakky set the beers down between them without comment, the glass catching the low bar light as she moved on. Zoro reached for his, fingers brushing Sanji's in the exchange before either of them pulled back. He took a drink, but his attention stayed where it had been, anchored across the corner of the bar. Sanji didn't look away either, the grin easing into something quieter. The bar carried on around them, but the space between them had settled into something familiar, and a little closer than it had been before.

The door to tutoring room three slammed open, and Zoro looked up from his phone as Sanji burst inside.

"Mosshead!" Sanji threw his backpack at the chair, grinning madly. He rounded the table, fisted his hand in the front of Zoro's shirt, leaned down, and kissed him right on the lips.

Zoro's eye widened, his glasses squashing crookedly into his face. His pulse picked up speed in an instant.

Sanji drew back, blue eyes bright and exuberant. "Got two Bs and a C."

It took Zoro a second to process what Sanji was telling him, too stunned by the kiss. But then a smile pulled at his mouth. "You did it."

"I did it!" Sanji released his shirt, leaning his hip against the table beside Zoro. "Now I just have to do it again in December."

"Put the work in and you may succeed," Zoro said.

"Your monotone and practicality really liven up a celebration," Sanji said, but his grin remained.

Zoro bit his tongue for a second, then went for it. "Could kiss me again."

Sanji's grin grew sly. "Liked that, did you?"

"Need more data to come to a conclusion," Zoro told him.

Sanji leaned forward, curling his fingers around Zoro's shirt again. "Can't stand in the way of the math," he said, closing the distance between them.

This time, Zoro was prepared. He brought his hand up to cup Sanji's jaw, feeling stubble beneath his palm. Sanji's warm lips slid against his own, the kiss slowly deepening as months of buildup between them finally resolved. Desire pooled low, breathing growing ragged.

When Sanji drew back, his gaze was hooded, hunger in his eyes. "Sadly, I have both a roommate and homework requiring a tutor, or I'd take you to my room and do all the things I've imagined until you passed out from exhaustion."

Zoro's jeans grew tight. "Too bad."

Sanji let him go, moving around to the far side of the table. Though he seemed confident and nonchalant, he nearly knocked over his backpack when he went to open it. Zoro was pleased he wasn't the only one feeling the tension.

Sanji got the backpack open on the second try and pulled out his notebook. "Right. We're doing bivariate normals today. Explain the covariance matrix like I'm not currently thinking with my dick."

Zoro's lips twitched. He pulled off his glasses to clean the smudges. "We'll focus on the variables you can control."

"Funny." Sanji sank into his chair, flipped open to the correct page, and picked up a pencil with a sigh. "Let's get to work."

Thursday night, they pushed through the main doors and out onto campus, the building's fluorescent light cutting off behind them as the doors swung shut. Outside was dimmer, lit in stretches by lampposts that left pockets of shadow between the walkways. Leaves skittered across the concrete in uneven bursts when the breeze picked up, collecting along the edges of the path and the base of the low walls that lined the quad. A few groups crossed the open space, voices carrying and then dropping off again as they split toward different dorms. Sanji shoved his hands into his pockets and started down the path without waiting, Zoro falling into step beside him.

"Absolute commitment," Sanji was saying, picking up a thread he'd started halfway through packing his bag. "Not one of them thought to stop. Two mattresses, held up on their sides, and they just–" he angled one shoulder forward as if bracing for impact, "–charged each other down the hall."

Zoro glanced over. "That sounds stupid."

"It was extremely stupid," Sanji said, with full approval. "One of them put on a bike helmet and declared himself a knight. Someone else tried to keep score. There was a system."

"A system," Zoro repeated.

"A lot of improbable math." Sanji cut him a grin. "You would've hated it, Doctor Moss."

Zoro huffed a quiet laugh, hands in his jacket pockets. The crisp November air nipped at his ears. They cut across the quad heading for Shakky's, grass dark on either side, the path lit in intervals. A group passed them going the other way, loud, mid-conversation, then gone.

"I didn't do any of that," Zoro said after a second. "No dorms or dorm parties."

Sanji tipped his head, glancing at him. "No?"

Zoro shook his head. "Went through the university's online program for my bachelor's and master's. Only came to campus for required labs and tests." A faint smile of memory tugged at his lips. "Mihawk sat in the back of the labs, doing his best impersonation of a judgmental statue."

"Mihawk came to your classes?"

Zoro lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "I was eleven when I did my Physics requirements."

Sanji stopped walking, and Zoro continued a few steps before he realized it. He turned back to see Sanji staring at him incredulously. "You were eleven?"

"Yes."

Sanji continued to stare. "I know you already have a doctorate, but it didn't actually occur to me that you're a damned genius."

Zoro rubbed the back of his neck. "Not outside of math. I needed to work hard to pass the humanities requirements. Got a few Cs."

Sanji let out a short, incredulous laugh and dragged a hand through his hair before moving again. "Unbelievable. I don't know if that makes me feel dumber or makes you hotter."

Zoro blinked as they started walking toward the bar again. "I don't think you're dumb. You seem competent in our tutoring sessions."

Sanji repeated wryly, "Competent. You certainly know how to sweet-talk a guy."

Zoro adjusted his stride to match Sanji's, their shoulders nearly brushing. "I'm not good at sweet talk."

Sanji chuckled. "Nice to know you're not good at something."

Zoro wasn't good at a lot of things. "Can't fix a car, either. Or cook well. Or, um… mattress joust."

Sanji shook his head, still amused, but the look he gave Zoro after held a little more thought. "So you missed all this."

"Missed what?"

"Mattress jousting. Unsupervised poor decision-making. Bad music at ungodly hours. And everything else that comes with college."

They crossed another stretch of path, the sound of their steps steady against the pavement. Zoro nudged a loose leaf off the path with the toe of his shoe. "Can't really miss what you didn't experience."

They were a block out from Shakky's now. The glow from the windows showed through the trees, warmer than the light on campus. Sanji slowed, enough that Zoro noticed.

"There are ways to make up for it," Sanji said.

Zoro glanced over. "Like what?"

Sanji held his gaze, mouth curving slightly. "My roommate's at his girlfriend's tonight."

Heat spread through Zoro – this implication he got immediately. They'd been dancing around each other all week, an underlying tension to their tutoring that only strict discipline overrode. Zoro had debated asking Sanji over to his house this weekend, but thought it might be weird. He had his own suite, but Perona and Mihawk would be there.

Zoro glanced ahead at the lights from the bar, then back to Sanji, decision already made. "Lead the way."

Sanji didn't say anything to that, just turned and started walking the opposite direction, cutting down the side path that led back toward the dorms instead of the street. Zoro fell in beside him immediately. Their pace picked up without either of them calling it out, steps falling quicker, more direct, the easy drift of the walk replaced with something more anticipatory.

They cut across the quad and onto the narrower walkway that ran along the dorm buildings. Sanji reached the entrance first, used his fob, and pulled the door open, holding it just long enough for Zoro to pass through ahead of him. The warmth inside hit, carrying the faint, lived-in smell of the building.

Up the stairs, two at a time without speaking, hands brushing the railing only when necessary. The stairwell echoed with their footsteps, then quieted again as they reached the third floor. The hallway stretched out in both directions, doors closed, light spilling out in narrow lines along the floor. Somewhere behind one of the closed doors, music played low and bass-heavy, carrying through the walls.

Sanji turned left without hesitation. A couple doors down, he stopped and used his key to unlock his room. Zoro closed the distance behind him, anticipation tightening through his chest as he watched the turn of the lock. His attention was fixed on Sanji, on the line of his shoulders, the movements of his hands.

The lock clicked. Sanji pushed the door open and reached in to hit the overhead switch. Light filled the room all at once. Two twin beds ran along opposite walls, one made with tight corners, the other half-covered in a rumpled blanket. Two desks sat across from each other, one under the window between the beds, papers stacked in uneven piles, a small aquarium on one, a mug left behind on the other. Dressers and narrow closets lined the far wall, doors shut, a jacket hooked over the handle.

The door closed behind them. Sanji tossed his keys onto the desk, the soft clatter cutting through the quiet as a lamp flicked on and cast a warmer light across the room. His coat landed over the chair, his bag dropped where it fell, movements quick but unhurried. When he turned back, the look he gave Zoro hit low and immediate, pulling a sharp, physical response Zoro didn't try to hide.

Sanji crossed the space between them without breaking that line of sight, backing Zoro into the door as his hand reached past to turn the lock, then kill the overhead light. The room dimmed, leaving only the lamp and the narrow spill of light from the window. Zoro's breath picked up without his permission.

Sanji's hands were already on him, dragging his coat open, pushing it and the bag from his shoulders like they were in the way. His hands traveled up Zoro's chest, coming to rest at his neck. Up close, his gaze had gone darker, focused in a way that left no room for anything else.

"I've wanted to do this for too long," he said before closing the distance and kissing Zoro.

Zoro melted into it, that thread of tension that had been circling them finally breaking. He wrapped his arms around Sanji, pulling him closer, feeling the full line of his body against his own. Tight, lean muscle pressed into him, the heat between them building fast, impossible to ignore. Sanji's mouth moved against his, tasting, teasing, drawing him deeper until Zoro stopped thinking about anything else.

Zoro's grip tightened at his back, answering without hesitation. The room narrowed to the press of Sanji's hands, the shift of breath, the way neither of them pulled away even for a second. Whatever control they'd kept up until now slipped, replaced by something more immediate, more wanting.

Sanji made a low sound against his mouth, pulling away just enough to drag Zoro's t-shirt over his head. Zoro exhaled sharply as cool air hit his skin, but it didn't last – Sanji's hands were already there, pulling him back in. Zoro returned it without hesitation, sliding under the thin fabric at Sanji's waist, pushing his shirt up, fingers running over the muscle he'd only imagined before. Sanji's mouth found his again, less teasing now, more intent.

They didn't slow. Clothes dropped where they fell, glasses cast aside, hands moving without direction beyond each other. Every point of contact pulled them closer until there was nothing left between them but heat, breath, and skin. The nerves Zoro had felt his first time weren't there – no hesitation, no concern about doing anything right. This felt easy, natural, and when they stumbled back to Sanji's bed, mouths and hands never leaving each other, all Zoro felt was want.

The lamp cast a steady glow across the room, catching on the edge of the desk and the curve of the wall. The bass from another room carried faintly through the wall, more felt than heard. They lost themselves in the rhythm and each other as the world outside the room faded away.

Sanji lay propped on an elbow beside Zoro, mussed in the best way. His fingers traced over the tattoos scattered across Zoro's torso. Zoro watched him through a half-lidded eye behind his glasses, relaxed and sated. Sanji had put them back on him somewhere between rounds, and Zoro had no intention of ever thinking he didn't look good in them again.

"What's this one from?" he asked, tracing the script running along one rib. See you Space Cowboy… You're gonna carry that weight.

"Cowboy Bebop," Zoro said. It was the first ink he'd gotten after turning eighteen. He'd watched the anime while he was laid up after the accident, fighting to walk again. In the ending fight, Spike's left eye was forced closed, the one that, by his own lore, saw only the present. The symbolism had hit hard at the time. Zoro had lost the same eye, and it had felt like his own present life was ending, too.

Sanji had learned most of the tattoos by now, tracing the ones along Zoro's legs and sides: quotes from Firefly and 2001: A Space Odyssey; a khopesh, claymore, and scimitar; symbols from Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, and the Culture series; and, on his hip, a little toaster with a speech bubble that read, Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite, would you like a toasted tea-cake?

They'd spent a good while naming all the spaceships flying beneath Zoro's clavicles, Sanji kissing each one until they were roused again. His second and third times had been good, and he found himself looking forward to more with Sanji. But this part, now, lying in the cramped single bed together, feeling a closeness that had been missing from Zoro's life – this was the best of it.

"I like this," he murmured, his palm warm where it rested on Sanji's thigh.

Sanji slid his finger over to run across the biomech tattoos along his scarline. "This what?"

"Us."

A smile slid across Sanji's lips, and he leaned down to kiss Zoro softly. "I like us, too. In fact…"

He twisted, reaching for his phone on the desk. He thumbed in his passcode and quickly tapped through several things. Zoro watched him with a questioning look until he suddenly had a screen in his face. "There. Now it's official."

"What is?" Zoro looked at the screen in confusion. It appeared to be a university app with a confirmation note on it.

"I've taken all your tutoring slots next semester." Sanji's mouth held a smug little smirk. "You're all mine, Doctor Roronoa."

Zoro arched his brow. "Hope you want me for more than the tutoring."

"Your tutoring skills aren't that great."

"I've run the math. Over the past two years, students I've tutored have had an average twenty-three percent higher overall score in their classes than students tutored by others."

Sanji huffed a quiet laugh. "Lucky for you, I'm not here for the numbers."

Zoro looked at him for a second, then reached up, fingers catching lightly at the back of his neck to pull him down again. "Good."

The ceremony was longer than it needed to be.

Zoro stood off to the side of the folding chairs, hands in his pockets, watching the slow procession of names and degrees. The field had been set up with too many rows, too many people, all of them shifting in their seats under the late spring sun. Families clustered along the edges, phones out, calling names, waving when they thought they'd been seen.

Zoro didn't wave, but he couldn't hold back his grin.

Sanji crossed the stage with the same easy confidence he brought into every room, shoulders back, expression controlled just enough to pass for composed. His gown swished around his calves. He took the diploma, shook the dean's hand, moved the tassel on his mortarboard to the other side, and kept moving.

Zoro watched him until he disappeared off the far side of the stage, then turned and worked his way out of the rows, cutting past the risers and onto the outer path. He switched on his GPS once he cleared the crowd, letting it guide him around the edge of the field, across the street, and down a quieter service corridor that looped behind the auditorium.

It opened into a shaded alcove set off from the main walkway, with concrete walls, a couple of metal benches, and a row of vending machines humming steadily against the heat. The air was cooler there, pulled from inside and held in the narrow space.

Zoro took a seat, checking his phone. They were meeting Perona and Mihawk at the Baratie to celebrate Sanji's graduation, with Zeff. He had a couple of messages from his advisor on his third dissertation defense coming up in a few weeks: On the Feasibility of Coherent Energy Blades: A Mathematical Approach. He knew the math was solid, and Dr. Vegapunk was interested in using his research in his theoretical physics classes.

Zoro nudged up his glasses, scratched under the rim, and let them settle back in place. He answered the texts, scanned a few articles on upcoming sci-fi releases, and skimmed the latest math journal for any interesting articles. The longer he sat, the drier his mouth got.

He got up, pocketed his phone, and went over to the vending machines. He scanned the drinks available, opting for a Smartwater. He tapped his card, made his selection, and listened to the machine whir. He heard a bump, but nothing came down into the chute.

Frowning, Zoro thumped the machine with his fist. When that didn't work, he tipped the machine forward, giving it a slight jerk to jostle his drink loose.

"Doctor Doctor Roronoa," Sanji said, stepping into his space like he always did, grin already in place. The gown hung open, tie loosened, hair a little out of place from the cap. "Are you stealing the vending machine again?"

"No. Drink got stuck." Zoro set the machine square again, retrieving his Smartwater. He turned to Sanji and smiled. "Congratulations."

"Still got to wait till the university completes the conferral, which might take up to a month," Sanji said. "Still…"

"Still…"

Sanji's grin grew huge. "I did it."

"You did it." Zoro echoed his grin. "You worked hard for it."

Sanji closed the distance between them, sliding his hands around Zoro's waist, tugging him closer. "From now on, you are the only math-related thing I want to study."

Zoro wrapped his arms around Sanji's shoulders. "I'll be happy to tutor you anytime."

Sanji huffed a laugh, the sound softening as he tipped his head in, pressing a quick kiss to Zoro's mouth that lingered just a second longer than it needed to. He didn't pull back far, breath warm against Zoro's lips, his grin easing into something quieter. "I'll keep you booked for the long term."

"Yeah," Zoro said quietly. "I'd like that."

Their lips met again, soft and slow, before they pulled apart. Sanji shrugged off his graduation gown, draping it over his arm. "Let's go, Doctor Doctor Moss. Don't want to be late to my own party."

Zoro fell into step beside him as they headed for the parking lot. For once, nothing in his head needed solving. The answer already walked at his side.

End