Chapter Text
Sanji opened the door with a drowsy scowl, golden strands of hair falling in tangled waves across his forehead and curling messily at the nape of his neck. The faded shirt, soft from countless washes, hung crooked on his lean frame; top buttons undone, collar slipping off one shoulder, fabric bunching unevenly and clinging to the faint sheen of sweat along his collarbone and chest.
Zoro had cataloged thousands of human states, and had spent many hours just observing Sanji; yet he had never logged the blond looking quite so unguarded and so marvelously organic.
Sanji blinked slowly, dark lashes catching the dim hall light. The scowl softened into something closer to a pout. “What the hell do you want, marimo?” he grumbled, dragging the back of his hand across his eyes. “Some of us still need to sleep at night.”
“I have a proposal.”
Sanji arched a curious brow, the drowsiness fading into intrigue. “A proposal?”
Zoro nodded once, using words that would make his absurd, sudden request sound logical to Sanji in his half-awake state.
“You have repeatedly urged me to pursue emotional development. To close the distance between machine and something approximating human. I have analyzed viable methods for that purpose.”
Zoro wasn’t built for complex strategies. He rushed in, drew his swords and left the target in pieces. But this wasn’t one of those usual scenarios where all he had to do was draw a sword and be done with it. He had to come up with a plan to drag Sanji away from Baratie and his circle of friends, especially Luffy; otherwise, things would get messy. The plan didn't have to be clever or airtight. It just had to be something Sanji would actually buy into, something that would get him to walk out the door willingly and without alerting the other residents of the restaurant.
All those hours spent quietly observing, piecing together fragments of the blond’s habits and vulnerabilities, and yet Zoro had not seen the possibility that he would be forced to make use of all this information this way.
"Physical intimacy with a human may trigger response patterns akin to emotion," at least, being an android meant he could be processing terabytes of data in the background and say something completely different. "I propose we engage in sexual intercourse. It would allow direct testing of those capacities.
Sanji stared for one full second. Then a slow, crooked grin split his face. “Well, damn.” He huffed a laugh that sounded half-exasperated, half-delighted. “I wasn’t expecting my first real shot at getting seduced by a man to sound like a mission briefing. Then again… your flirting has always been absolute garbage, marimo.”
His voice dropped, turning husky as he leaned close enough for Zoro’s thermal sensors to register the sudden rise in skin temperature. “Lucky for you, I find it hot all the same.” He then tilted his head, playful now. “Wait...hold on. You do have the…equipment? For this?” His hand gestured loosely downward.
“I am equipped with fully functional anatomy if that's what you mean,” Zoro answered without a flicker of embarrassment that Sanji was revealing in both his voice and the flush on his cheeks. “Though it has never been used. Combat models prioritize efficiency in fights, not pleasure or intimacy.”
Sanj’s smile turned wicked. “Oh, so I’m gonna be your first? Let's make it truly special, then, shall we?”
The strategy had worked. He knew it would. Sanji’s lingering glances, the biometric tells such as the subtle flush on his cheeks and his raised heartbeat, as well as all those times talking about Zoro’s flirting attempts, gave the android all the evidence he needed to make the conclusion that Sanji was interested in him.
Somehow, seeing the confirmation to his hypothesis didn't seem like much of a success to him.
“I would prefer a more suitable location for the encounter,” Zoro continued.
“Yes, please,” Sanji said theatrically, already turning. “We are not doing your first time in this shoebox with the old man snoring down the hall. Give me two minutes; I’m gonna freshen up and change into something sexier.”
With that, Sanji slipped into the small attached bathroom, leaving the door to the main room ajar just enough to look like a deliberate lure. Zoro stayed exactly where he was, arms crossed, eyes fixed on that narrow gap.
He heard the flush of the toilet, the rush of the faucet, the soft clink of a toothbrush against porcelain, the rustle of a towel. A moment later Sanji reappeared in the doorway, hair perfectly straight and styled again, skin even more flushed from cold water. He padded barefoot across the room to the narrow wardrobe, and Zoro followed his steps as if something far grander than someone changing clothes was happening through the sliver.
Sanji shrugged off the rumpled shirt first, letting it drop carelessly to the floor to reveal the smooth, lean planes of his back. The pants followed, sliding down long, muscled legs before being kicked aside. Naked now except for dark briefs that clung to the curve of his ass and thighs, he bent slightly to rifle through hanging clothes and folded stacks.
Zoro kept watching as Sanji picked a sleek pale blue button-up that hugged his broad shoulders and the narrow waist, black dress pants pulling taut enough to trace each curve of his ass when he shifted weight, polished black dress shoes and a deep, rich burgundy jacket that completed the look.
Zoro stopped an errant, illogical thought to tell Sanji to wear something warmer, something more suited for a land covered in blinding snow and ravaged by howling winds, before it could form into a foolish sentence.
When they stepped out together, the city was enveloped in fog and muted neon lights pushing against the dark. Sanji’s warm hand found his, their fingers slipping together as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and Zoro startled. He had never held someone’s hand before.
“You always pick the strangest hours for your interesting ideas.”
“There is a purpose behind this,” Zoro answered. “The venue I selected operates only after midnight.”
The only viable place that was open at this hour and willing to accept guests without asking any questions, to be more exact.
Sanji glanced at him with awe. “You booked a love hotel? You kinky bastard. Guess you’re not as clueless as I thought. Fine, I’ll let you handle the location, you deviant marimo.”
The love hotel Zoro had picked sat not too far away from the restaurant, its bright red lights stuttering under the heavy fog and a light drizzle of the early morning.
Inside, the receptionist barely looked up as she confirmed the transaction, and Zoro led Sanji through narrow corridors smelling of sex mingled with cheap perfume until a door panel slid open to reveal a red-lit room. It was lavish in a gaudy sort of way; red walls, mirrored surfaces, metallic furniture too polished to be comfortable. The air smelled faintly of artificial jasmine to mask the reek of many bodily fluids staining the sheets, probably only visible to Zoro's optic sensor.
Zoro’s gaze swept through the room, as did Sanji’s. In one corner, a velvet swing hung from a steel beam, while the bedside table was cluttered with an assortment of sex toys Zoro had never bothered to look into. Colorful dildos, impact tools, neural collars, ball gags, and nipple clamps of various sizes. It was the massive four-poster bed, draped in dark red velvet, that somehow saved the room from looking like a full-blown torture chamber in a classic horror film.
Sanji took it in quietly for a moment. “Well,” he said a little breathlessly, “you’ve outdone yourself. It’s like walking into a pervert’s wet dream.”
“Do you like it?”
He turned back to Zoro, expression half-amused, half-curious. Then, without warning, he slipped his jacket and shirt off and tossed them carelessly onto the floor. And Zoro for the briefest moment, completely lost the plot.
Sanji’s upper body was lean and strong, skin smooth and pale in the crimson light. His shoulders were broad but his waist was incredibly cinched; Zoro knew he could circle it with his hands and the fingers would touch. His nipples were rosy and taut, and there was a little trail of dark blond hair down his navel and disappearing into his pants. Zoro could spend years just looking at him and not get enough.
But he was not here for that. No matter how tempting Sanji looked to an android that had always looked at humans as nothing more than irritating clients.
“Well?” Sanji asked, making a swirl. “What do you think?”
Zoro’s voice glitched half a tone higher. “You are…very beautiful.” He could lie about anything else; but not this. Even if his intent was wrong, the words were all true.
Sanji’s cheeks flushed, as his mouth curved into a pleased tilt. “Took you long enough to flirt like a normal person.”
This time, Zoro had no reason to deny it. He was flirting, even if the reason for it was not what Sanji thought it was.
“By the way,” Sanji said in a hesitant voice trying to sound confident, “If you were thinking about bottoming, you should know, I don’t have a dick. Surprise.”
Zoro tilted his head. “You lack a penis. But you are male.”
“Yeah,” Sanji said with a shrug. “I’m trans. If that’s a problem…”
“It is not a problem,” Zoro cut in before Sanji could lose the attractive flush on his face. “It is simply data.”
Sanji’s shoulders relaxed, and he heaved a relieved sigh. “If only things with humans could be that simple, too.”
He stepped closer, took Zoro’s hand, and guided it down into his pants, pressing his cold fingers between his strong thighs. Heat met them and a strange slickness coated their tips.
“Look, marimo,” Sanji said, voice low and breathy. “You made me wet. It’s been a long time since anyone’s done that.”
Zoro lifted its hand, watching the thin sheen of fluid on his fingers. A tremor ran through his lower parts as he put the fingers into his mouth, tasting Sanji. Not sure why he did that. Inside his pants, the organ he had never used responded, filling with synthetic blood, hardening at the unique flavor.
He had never experienced something like this this before. He didn’t even know he could.
“Can I pick the first toy?” He asked, before Sanji and the novelty of being here with him could distract him from his mission.
“Oh, feeling especially kinky, are we? Okay, sure, what’s your pick?”
To Sanji’s surprise, Zoro didn’t take any toys from the shelf. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a pair of handcuffs; they glinted faintly blue, patterned with delicate circuitry; Hawkeye-issued restraints, sleek and deceptive in their design.
Sanji frowned slightly. “What are those?”
“Soft restraints I bought yesterday,” Zoro said smoothly, his tone giving nothing away. “Designed to ensure physical synchronization without irritating your delicate skin.”
Sanji hesitated. “I’m not very comfortable with restraints.” He sounded embarrassed and tried to hide yet another of his many dark secrets.
“It’s alright, Sanji.” Zoro’s voice was low, almost gentle. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Yeah…I trust you.” Sanji’s trust was a fragile, beautiful thing, and Zoro was about to crush it underfoot.
The cuffs clicked shut around Sanji’s wrists with barely a sound. Blue circuits flared to life, etching light across his skin. Sanji tugged a little at them, uneasy. “They don’t feel…normal.”
“No,” Zoro said. “They are not.”
His voice was perfectly calm when he continued. “If you resist or attempt removal, the cuffs will detonate. Your hands will be destroyed.”
Sanji went still. He had once told Zoro that a cook’s hands were his treasure; tools never meant to harm but to create, to feed, to heal. Now those same hands trembled in the restraints.
“Why?” Sanji whispered. “Why would you…?”
“I have new orders,” Zoro said. “My objective has changed. I’m to deliver you to Germa.”
Sanji’s eyes widened, disbelief giving way to horror. “You’re taking me back.”
“Yes.”
“Please,” Sanji said, his voice cracking. “Don’t take me back. If you can’t spare me, just kill me. I’d rather die than become Germa's killing machine. If you feel even a speck of anything for me, just kill me.”
“That is not my order,” he said. And because he knew Sanji would fight anyway, no matter how much it cost him, he added, “If you resist, or if Zeff or his staff attempt interference, Hawkeye protocol will be activated. The restaurant and everyone inside will be destroyed. As well as your friends.”
Sanji’s breath hitched on a muffled sob, as he turned his face away from Zoro. A single tear ran down his cheek, catching the red light like a drop of blood.
Zoro thought then that the whole universe was utterly wretched and deserved to be eradicated when it allowed an angel to cry.
The shuttle descended into Germa’s frozen lands. Glacial winds screamed against the viewport as Zoro held Sanji's unconscious form, now dressed in his black shirt, careful not to cause unnecessary damage even if the new directives had only said to deliver him alive. He had not removed the restraints around Sanji's wrists, per Vinsmoke Judge's orders.
The blond's body was limp in his arms from a military-grade sedative, skin flushed and somehow the warmest thing Zoro had ever held in his arms.
Zoro had administered the sedative himself after marching Sanji up the ramp, because it was easier if Sanji didn’t look at him. Because it was easier if those tragic blue eyes didn’t ask questions Zoro had no answer for. Because it was easier if Sanji didn’t have to think about what waited behind Germa’s walls; whatever it was that could turn the voice of the strongest human Zoro had ever known into a quivering, pleading tone.
Zoro had never wanted to step foot in Germa.
There was something about this place that repelled him. Something ominous, what humans might call an ill omen, like something he had once seen in a bad dream, except he never dreamed.
If Sanji was awake, he would probably call it a feeling.
He’d say it with that infurating, teasing smile. “So you hate it here?” he’d ask, like he was trying to trap Zoro into admitting something human. “That means you’re feeling something, marimo.”
Zoro would deny it on principle, because androids didn’t have feelings; because feelings were prohibited because they were the messy things that made humans hesitate when they should strike, and forgive monsters when they should spit on their faces and put a blade through their hearts.
If this was what feelings were like, Zoro didn’t want them.
They made him sloppy. They made his calculations stutter, his timing drift by useless milliseconds. They made him watch the rise and fall of Sanji’s chest instead of reviewing mission parameters, made him adjust his hold for comfort instead of efficiency.
Feelings made you make stupid decisions, and he wanted to make stupid decisions. Like telling the pilot to change course and take them back to Baratie; to Sanji’s actual home, where he belonged. To the restaurant’s lively chaos, oil and spices in the air, laughter clattering across the dining room, Sanji blooming like a pretty rose with every little compliment and warm affection. Back to anywhere that wasn’t this.
But he was interrupted from making stupid decisions as the shuttle dropped beneath the cloud line and Germa’s fortress rose from the storm like an iron fang breaking through snow.
It wasn’t a castle in the way humans romanticized castles; somewhere you’d expect beautiful princes and princesses to live, with vibrant colors and exotic luxuries and infinite abundance. It was angles and armor plating, cold steel and straight lines that resembled an underground labratory camaflouged in snow more than anything else.
The hatch hissed open, and the sudden gust of wind was cold enough to bite even through Zoro’s external plating. Zoro, holding Sanji’s still warm body in his arms like holding onto the sun, finally stepped into Germa grounds.
A reception squad waited on the landing pad; clones in identical combat gear, identical posture, no reaction to the blizzard raging around them, their stillness synchronized in that way that spoke of shared neural networks and overridden free will.
Someone emerged through the swirl of snow, shorter than the others, but obviously with more authority and importance. Her features were similar to Sanji, but with pink hair instead of golden, and thinner brows that curled the other way. Zoro’s facial recognition pinged her immediately: Vinsmoke Reiju, Sanji's elder sister. Her blue eyes, so similar to Sanji and yet so different and not as warm, locked onto Zoro, then down to the unconscious form he carried.
If possible, Reiju's expression became even colder.
"Give him to me.”
Zoro hesitated, knowing once he let go of Sanji, he would never know warmth again. And in that beat of hesitation, he cataloged the way Sanji’s head rested against his shoulder, the way his eyelashes clumped from snowmelt, the faint crease between his brows even in sedation. Alive. Breathing steady. Warm. And Zoro, who was built to follow directives, felt the irrational urge to tighten his hold and refuse.
“Android, now!” Reiju snapped. She held out her arms, impatient now, and the clones shifted behind her in perfect unison, ready to intervene if she ordered them to.
Zoro looked at her arms. They seemed strong enough to take Sanji’s weight easily. Sanji had spoken of Reiju with affection, he had told him Reiju was the one that had helped him escape Germa when he was eight. Maybe Zoro could trust Sanji’s safety in his sister’s arms. Maybe, Zoro calculated, there was still a nonzero probability that she would protect him again.
With that thought, he gently lowered Sanji into her arms like a precious, fragile cargo.
Reiju caught him without so much as a grunt, one arm under his knees, the other braced behind his shoulders, his head cradled safely against her chest. Sanji made a small sound, barely more than a breath, and Zoro’s gaze snapped to his mouth, still and closed once again. Sanji had a lovely voice, especially when he sung melodies Zoro had never heard before, as he cooked and thought the chaos of the kitchens around him would muffle his voice. Zoro would never hear Sanji's voice again, and the realization felt like a fist around his core, crushing it without mercy.
“Now get lost.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were out before he could process them. Why was he apologizing if he had completed the mission perfectly?
“You’re a mindless android that doesn’t understand the enormity of the horrible crime he has committed by bringing my brother here. You don’t get to say sorry.” She said, voice dripping venom.
"What will happen to him?”
“If you really cared to know,” she said, quieter now, “you wouldn’t have brought him back.”
She turned on her heel. And the clones moved with her, a shield of identical bodies swallowing her shape as she walked away. Leaving Zoro alone on the landing pad like a discarded piece of metal. Worthless. Loathsome. Forgotten.
He watched Reiju’s retreating back and calculated the distance, angles, and the probability of successful retrieval. High. Achievable. He could move faster than them, stronger than them, precise enough to retrieve Sanji safely and take him back to the shuttle. Back to Baratie. Back to the days before he had made Sanji shed a tear in surrender.
But that chain of thought was irrational. There was no directive for that. He had delivered the package and all his ties with subject Sanji were now severed.
A good, functional android would turn around, board the shuttle, and leave Germa behind forever. And Zoro was the best model ever made.