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It starts with a glowing rock, a screeching monkey, and someone yelling “DON’T TOUCH THAT—” right before someone else definitely touches that. And this time, it’s Zoro’s fault. Sanji will never let him live it down. Not that he ever let anything go to begin with.
“Oi, mosshead. What the hell did you do?”
Zoro’s sword is still halfway plunged into the glowing, ancient relic embedded in the altar of what was probably a cursed temple (definitely a cursed temple, if you asked literally anyone except Zoro). Said relic is now fizzing, sparking, and oozing an unfortunate shade of sentient purple that Sanji is quite certain has never appeared in nature. Or if it has, it has never had such judgmental intent.
Zoro, master of poor life choices and confident idiocy, shrugs. “It looked like a trap. I was disarming it.”
Sanji nearly combusts on the spot. “You were disarming it by stabbing it with a sword that you LICK CLEAN after battles?!”
“It’s Wado Ichimonji, you absolute broomstick. She’s special. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand, alright. I understand that when I wake up tomorrow with a second head or an inverted penis, it’ll be your fault.”
The relic, offended, shrieks in a tone that may or may not be Ancient Dead Language for “get a room.”
And then it explodes in a puff of purple smoke that tastes like soap and shame.
They wake up a few minutes later on the grass, in matching positions of indignity and regret. Zoro is sprawled like a dropped action figure; Sanji looks like a fainting Victorian aunt.
“Ow,” Sanji croaks, rubbing his temple. “What the fuck was in that cloud? Tasted like expired lavender and unresolved trauma.”
Zoro grunts, pushes himself up, and promptly falls over again. “I’m gonna kill that monkey.”
“You should kill yourself first. Put us all out of our misery.”
“Why don’t you come over here and say that to my face, curlybrows?”
“Gladly, if I didn’t think being in your proximity might give me halitosis by association.”
They both try to stand. They both fail.
“Okay, that’s it,” Sanji mutters, rolling onto his side. “The next time we find a temple with a glowing object, I’m going to seduce the trap instead. At least that way, I can consent to the curse.”
Zoro snorts. “Like anything would actually say yes to you.”
“Well, things have to be awake to say yes, mosshead. That rules you out.”
Zoro opens his mouth to retaliate, but what comes out is:
“I think about your hands when I can’t sleep.”
Sanji blinks slowly like his brain just bluescreened.
“…Pardon?”
Zoro blinks too. “Wait, what the hell—”
“You what?” Sanji hisses.
“I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I heard you,” Sanji says, flailing. “You said it out loud to me. With your whole mouth.”
“I know!” Zoro barks. “I didn’t mean to!”
“Oh my god, is this one of those truth curses?”
Zoro’s face goes slack. Then contorted in horror. “Oh no. No, no, no. I hate those. Last time I ran into one, I told Perona she had ‘delightfully tragic aesthetic taste’ and she made me model in a gothic lolita photoshoot. For three hours.”
Sanji pauses. “You’ve worn petticoats?”
“I had to wear a corset, Sanji.”
Sanji has to sit back down because he’s wheezing.
Zoro glares. “It wasn’t funny.”
“Your trauma is delicious.”
---
It takes precisely four minutes for them to test the limits of the curse. During which Sanji says, “I want to snap your kneecaps with love,” and Zoro responds, “You smell like regret and it makes me insane.”
“Okay, so we definitely can’t lie,” Sanji says, pacing now. “We’re trapped in some kind of horrifying heart-to-heart nightmare with zero verbal filter and no way out.”
“It’s like a slumber party,” Zoro mutters.
“And you’re the pillow I’d smother myself with.”
“Stop talking.”
“I can’t,” Sanji wails.
And then they both yell at the same time:
“THIS IS YOUR FAULT.”
---
Eventually, they stagger back to the Sunny. Sanji tries to avoid talking to anyone, but he passes Robin and immediately blurts out, “I read your romance novels when you’re not looking and dog-ear the steamy pages.”
Zoro, not to be outdone, walks past Franky and growls, “Your calves are goals.”
Brook leans down and says, “I don’t have a nose, but I can sense the tension. Yohohoho!”
“NOT NOW, SKELETAL MENACE.”
They spend the next several hours in quarantine (read: locked in the kitchen) after Nami gets a headache from the psychic whiplash of their mutual oversharing.
“Chopper says it’ll wear off in twenty-four hours,” Sanji says, hurling a carrot at the wall. “We just have to not talk until then.”
“I’m the strong, silent type anyway,” Zoro says smugly, leaning back.
Thirty-eight seconds later, he blurts: “I think your laugh is fucking hot and I hate that I think that.”
Sanji shrieks like a kettle and hits him with a baguette.
---
At hour six, Sanji lets slip:
“I’ve imagined sitting in your lap during storms.”
Zoro turns purple and immediately responds with:
“Sometimes I pick fights with you because I want to see if you’ll make me shut up with your mouth.”
Sanji throws himself against the counter and lets out a strangled “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?”
“IT CAME OUT—”
“SO DID YOUR REPRESSION—”
“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP MY LAP—”
“I WAS BEING THEORETICAL—”
They both pause breathing hard. The silence is unholy.
Zoro tilts his head. “So you’d want to sit in my lap?”
Sanji turns an alarming shade of crimson. “Not answering that.”
Zoro grins evilly. “You can’t lie, remember?”
Sanji opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “I will throw myself into the sea and take your brain cell with me.”
“Not before answering the question.”
“I HATE YOU.”
“I know,” Zoro says cheerfully. “But you still want to sit in my lap.”
Sanji is pacing now, like a cat caught in a thunderstorm, tail puffed, claws out, and ready to maul the next soul who tries to touch him. His hair is mussed—mussier than usual—and his hands are trembling like he's overdosed on espresso and the shame of self-awareness. His cigarette is gone, probably fell out of his mouth somewhere around the third “YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP MY LAP.”
Meanwhile, Zoro is lounging against the pantry like he owns the place, like he hasn’t just strip-searched them both in the span of thirty seconds and weaponized it into a smug little grin curling on his face.
It’s infuriating. It’s also unbearably hot.
And Sanji hates that it’s both.
“I swear to every god on every island,” Sanji hisses through clenched teeth, “if you keep looking at me like that—”
“Like what?” Zoro interrupts, voice suspiciously mild. “Like I’m picturing you in my lap again?”
Sanji emits a strangled sound that may have once been a word but now is mostly a soul leaving the body. He points an accusatory finger at Zoro, which unfortunately trembles.
“You don’t get to—this isn’t—fuck! This curse! It’s ruining my life.”
Zoro shrugs. “It’s not ruining mine.”
“Oh really? You’re enjoying this?!”
Zoro doesn’t respond. Instead, after a pause too long to be casual, he says:
“Yeah.”
Sanji stills.
“You’re—what?”
“I’m enjoying it,” Zoro says, all casual blasphemy. “I mean, not the part where you won’t shut up about sea-throwing and murder. But the rest of it? Yeah. It’s…nice.”
Sanji’s brain trips over itself like a drunk running a marathon.
“Nice?”
“Yeah,” Zoro says, eyes suddenly refusing to meet his. “It’s nice not to lie. Not to…pretend like all the stuff I feel is just noise. Like when I watch you cook and I don’t say anything because if I do, it’ll come out wrong or too much.”
Sanji stops breathing.
Zoro continues, voice lower now.
“It’s nice hearing your thoughts without the filter. Nice knowing it’s not just me. That I’m not crazy for thinking maybe you wanted this too.”
“I—” Sanji’s voice cracks. “Zoro, you can’t just say stuff like that.”
“I can’t not say stuff like that right now,” Zoro says with a helpless laugh. “That’s kind of the whole point. I’m cursed, remember?”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“I think maybe it is.”
Silence falls again. Not the unholy kind, not this time. This one is warmer.
Zoro looks up at him. “You still haven’t answered the question.”
Sanji frowns. “What question?”
“Would you sit in my lap?”
Sanji opens his mouth. Then promptly walks to the fridge, opens it, and climbs in.
Zoro waits. “You done?” he calls after a while.
A muffled, “No,” floats out between the lettuce and the scream of sexual tension.
Another pause. Another beat.
Then Sanji shouts: “YES, OKAY? YES. I WOULD SIT IN YOUR STUPID MUSCULAR, INFURIATING, SMUG-ASS LAP AND I WOULD LIKE IT, ALRIGHT? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR, YOU SENTIENT SWORD COLLECTION?!”
Zoro grins. “That was very specific.”
“SHUT UP!”
“You said muscular.”
“SHUT UP, I’M REVOKING YOUR SPEAKING PRIVILEGES.”
The kitchen is too quiet. Suspiciously, violently quiet. The kind of silence that only exists right before God’s most unhinged children set the world on fire.
Zoro is smiling like he’s just won a duel with fate itself. Sanji is standing in front of the fridge like it holds salvation and/or the ability to crawl inside and die. He looks deranged. A little windswept. He’s got that look in his eye, the one that says “I’m either about to cry or commit unspeakable flirt-violence and even I don’t know which.”
Zoro leans casually on the counter and says, “You definitely said smug-ass lap.”
Sanji makes a strangled noise that starts in his chest and comes out like an opera singer dying mid-aria.
“I SAID,” Sanji repeats, each word a gunshot, “I AM REVOKING. YOUR. SPEAKING. PRIVILEGES.”
He reaches for a frying pan.
Zoro doesn’t flinch. “Is that for hitting me or sitting on me?”
Sanji drops the frying pan. It hits the floor with a clatter and an unfortunate metaphor.
He opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then opens it again, like maybe this time he’ll say something reasonable. Instead:
“You are a menace with hot deltoids. I hope you know that.”
Zoro’s grin is devastating. “You like my deltoids?”
“Stop—talking—please.”
“Because I work on them.”
“I am going to scream into a teapot until I die.”
Zoro shrugs. “You’re the one who said ‘muscular.’”
“I also said ‘infuriating,’” Sanji snaps. “You’re conveniently skipping that part.”
“I’m just choosing to believe you meant that as a kinky compliment.”
Sanji whirls on him, face aflame. “You think everything is a kinky compliment!”
“I’m cursed to speak my truth, remember? You’re the one who gave me the power of emotional nudity.”
“Emotional nudity?” Sanji repeats, aghast.
“It’s very freeing.”
“I hope a bird shits in your freedom.”
Zoro stretches, yawns, flexes—all of which are unforgivable crimes committed in full view. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Sanji makes a noise that is, scientifically speaking, “ungodly.”
---
It’s hour seventeen and the curse still hasn’t worn off.
Sanji has tried many things: silence (failed), stuffing a hand towel in his mouth (marginally successful but embarrassing), running away (Zoro followed), and drinking half a bottle of Chopper’s calming tea (which backfired, because apparently it makes you even more honest).
Zoro has not tried anything at all. He is thriving. He’s lounging in the sunbeam by the kitchen window now, looking like a sleepy predator with nothing to prove, shirt off, smirk weaponized, and so much skin on display it’s practically a war crime.
Sanji, unfortunately, is still vertical. Barely. He’s leaning on the counter like a man too haunted by horny truths to remain upright. His cigarette is mostly ash. His will to live is somewhere at the bottom of the mop bucket.
“I hate you,” he mumbles.
“You said that already,” Zoro says.
“I hate you more now.”
“I believe you.”
Pause.
“Your voice is lower when you’re tired,” Zoro says suddenly. “It’s kind of nice.”
Sanji slams his forehead onto the counter.
“Why do you keep saying these things?”
“Because I want to,” Zoro says simply. “Because I think them anyway. Because if this curse goes away and I haven’t said them, I’ll back out of it.”
Sanji peeks up from the counter, eyes narrowed. “You’re not allowed to be sweet about this.”
“I’m trying to be honest, not sweet.”
“Well, cut it out. It’s giving me indigestion.”
“You’re the cook. Fix it.”
Sanji throws a dishrag at him. Zoro catches it, sniffs it, makes a face, and tosses it over his shoulder.
“Smells like desperation and sweat.”
“That’s you, asshole!”
---
They end up on the floor again. Not because they’re being romantic, but because Sanji tried to climb the counter in a fit of dramatic despair and Zoro pulled him down by the ankle. It was undignified for everyone involved. Except Zoro. Zoro hasn’t known the meaning of dignity since he willingly put on a crop-top yukata in Thriller Bark.
Now they’re side by side on the cold tile, breathing hard.
Zoro’s foot bumps Sanji’s. Sanji kicks it. Zoro bumps again and Sanji kicks again. It becomes a game. A battle.
Eventually, Zoro says, “Why won’t you just admit you like me?”
Sanji jerks like he’s been electrocuted. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I—you—we’re cursed, mosshead!”
“And yet I’m not hearing you say it.”
Sanji glares. “Fine. You want the truth? You want the unfiltered version?”
Zoro raises a brow. “Hit me.”
Sanji inhales. He mutters: “I like you so much it makes me stupid.”
Zoro blinks.
Sanji keeps going, words falling like dominoes:
“I like the way you snore when you’re pretending not to nap. I like the way you count your sword strikes under your breath when you think no one’s listening. I like that you always save me the last bit of meat even when you act like you didn’t. I like that you’re dumb, and cocky, and infuriating, and weirdly poetic when you’re not trying to be.”
He stops and looks down.
“I like you,” he says again, quieter now. “More than I should. More than I want to. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
Zoro is silent. Too silent.
Sanji looks up, eyes wide. “I knew it,” he snaps. “I knew you’d make it weird. I say something honest for once in my life and you just stare at me like I grew a second head—”
Zoro kisses him right on the mouth.
Sanji freezes, and then melts. Then punches Zoro in the shoulder mid-kiss and mutters, “Asshole,” without heat.
Zoro pulls back a little. Just enough to breathe.
“I like you stupid too,” he says, voice rough.
Sanji stares at him. He snorts and laughs, head falling against Zoro’s shoulder.
“Oh my god,” he mutters, “we’re idiots.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“You’re the one kissing me on the floor.”
“You’re the one who liked it.”
“…Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
They don’t. They sit there until the sun starts to dip low outside the window. Neither of them notices the faint shimmer of magic leaving the air.
Because for once, they’re not pretending. And maybe—just maybe—they won’t ever have to again.