Archive of Our Own

Surgery was once a spectator sport. 

Back before anyone knew about germs, back before anesthesia, back when agony was a given and sterility was not even the smallest blip on the horizon, people packed into a hospital’s operating theater. They clamored for a good view of the day’s amputation in a room made so cloyingly hot and packed with eager viewers that the surgeon often couldn’t even begin until the floor had been cleared. 

Sanji remembers learning this from a book he’d found on a low shelf in the library. He remembers struggling to free the heavy, leather-bound tome from its spot, wedged between things that held very little interest to him by the simple fact that they were not about the ocean or about medicine. He remembers balancing the wide, thick book across his small lap, the smell of the yellowing pages a comfort, and feeling like a scholar himself. He remembers turning each thin sheet with a caution that bordered on panic—terrified that he would tear them, that he would leave evidence of himself behind. 

While his siblings soared past him in their physical abilities—even his baby brother, to his father’s increasing frustration—Sanji’s wings spread in another direction entirely. He was the first of his siblings to speak, the first to read, the first to write his own name on paper and rush to show Mother, who called him her “little genius” and kept the first wobbling attempt at “Sanji” pressed lovingly between the pages of her favorite novel as a bookmark. While Sanji’s brothers learned to throw punches without snapping their own thumbs, Sanji read everything and anything he could get his hands on.

He read about Devil Fruits and cooking. He read about mythology and animals. He read about the ocean and about pirates. 

But after Mother fell ill, Sanji read mostly about medicine. 

It wasn’t really a shock to learn that surgery was like that, back long before even the void century. It certainly felt like all anyone was doing was watching as his mother faded away before his eyes. The doctors watched her intermittent cough turn into a constant, terrible wet rattle. They watched as her strength gradually faded until she was no longer able to carry him around on her hip, until she was no longer able to get out of bed at all. They watched her skin grow paler and paler, watched her hair turn brittle and thin like straw, watched her as she vanished in front of Sanji’s eyes. 

They took blood and did their tests and gave her their tinctures and pills. But mostly, all anyone could do was watch. 

He remembers, too, coming to her bedside shortly after reading that line in that book: surgery was once a spectator sport. He levered himself up onto her plush mattress piled high with blankets and pillows and fine fabrics that everyday seemed to swallow Mother up more and more. She’d lifted her arm so that he could tuck himself underneath it and along her side as he always did. He remembers breathing in the smell of her, which had changed so much from the floral perfume it used to be and into a distinctly medicinal scent, and asking what “spectator” meant. 

She coughed once, thin shoulders heaving, before answering, “A spectator is a person who watches something.” 

Sanji, small and yet as brave as he’d ever be, remembers replying, “I don’t want to watch you get sicker.” Had meant, but hadn’t had the words for: I don’t want to watch you die.

“Oh, baby,” she had soothed him. As Sanji had aged, she’d developed a tremor in her hands. They shook subtly when she ran her fingers through his hair. “I’ll be better very soon. We have the best scientists in the world, here.”

But she was wrong. She hadn’t gotten better. She had gotten sicker and sicker until, one day, she’d died. 

And all anybody had done, all anyone was able to do in the end, was watch. 

A stern old man in a doctor's coat lurches unevenly on a prosthetic leg towards them, dragging Luffy behind him by the collar. The man’s mustache is braided into tails that protrude from his face like splayed chopsticks, framing a frown that Zoro can only describe as intensely unhappy.

He watches Luffy stagger along by the old man’s grip, dusted with the remains of the roof he went hurtling through. He looks fine—uninjured if captive to a doctor with a peg leg and glare to peel paint. Luffy looks, as usual, pretty damn unrepentant. 

“Hi Zoro! Hi Nami! Hi Usopp!” Luffy waves. 

“You people,” the old man grumbles at them, “have got some fuckin’ nerve.” 

As Nami jumps to do damage control, all fluttering hands and hammed-up sincerity that makes Zoro want to gag, he learns that the ship Luffy launched himself into (and through, unfortunately) is a traveling hospital. Luffy, by sheer luck alone, managed to crash into the single operating room that wasn’t actively occupied with surgeons and a patient. The message is read loud and clear, though; he could have easily killed someone. 

“We’re so screwed,” Usopp whispers. He’s practically vibrating from stress. For a moment, Zoro entertains the idea of trying to get Usopp admitted; all that vibrating and sweating can’t be good for his health. He’s looking faintly green and clutching at Zoro’s elbow, as if Zoro can fix this shit. “Zoro, I don’t do well with blood. Zoro. I can’t work here,” Usopp says at a volume suited more for hysterical breakdowns than whispered conversation.

Given that this was exactly the deal Nami was trying to get them— free labor to cover repairs because they have literally no money — the old man’s gaze snaps right to Usopp. He glares at him like he could reduce Usopp to ashes with his eyes alone. 

Nami takes a purposeful step backwards and crushes Usopp’s foot under her heel, plowing right over Usopp’s squeak of pain with a breezy, “Don’t listen to him, he’s had a hard day and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We’re grateful for the opportunity to make it up to you and your staff in any way we can.” 

Witch. The last thing Zoro wants is to dick around with a bunch of sick people for weeks just to make this old shitty-beard happy. They’re pirates. They’re well within their rights to fuck off— who said they had to be moral? 

Zoro glares at Nami’s back, not that she even notices. He turns his glare to Luffy for getting them into this. Luffy just shrugs. Zoro hates that it’s kind of endearing, despite his irritation at the whole situation. 

The old man asks Nami some more questions— Can you all read? Can you write? Any medical experience? Can you hold a broom?— and eventually leads them behind a counter where a few nurses are too busy to bother even looking their way. He leads them through the floating hospital’s dizzying identical corridors at a rate that makes it seem like the walls themselves are moving. Zoro’s so going to get lost later. Shit. 

They somehow make it outside onto whatever passes for a deck on a hospital-ship. A few patients in wheelchairs are getting pushed around in the sunlight and a single guy in scrubs is smoking a cigarette by the railing.  

“Brat! Put that shit out and get over here!” the old man shouts at the smoking nurse. 

The guy turns away from the ocean with an answering bark of, “What, old man?”

He looks to be around Zoro’s own age; they’re the same height but the other guy is exceptionally lanky. He has neatly kept blonde hair and a severe scowl that is completely undermined by his stupid fucking eyebrows.

“I have some volunteers for you. Put them to work,” Dr. Old Man says. 

The stupid curling eyebrows climb halfway up to the guy’s hairline. “You’re kidding, right?” he exhales with a plume of smoke from his mouth and nose like a dragon—he hasn’t put the cigarette out. He gives them an appraising look that screams: the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit? 

“Do I look like a comedian, boy?” Dr. Old Man clicks derisively. He snatches the cigarette out of the nurse’s hand far faster than Zoro would have assumed the old man could move on that wooden leg. “Thought you fuckin’ quit.” He tosses the thing down and grinds the it out under his peg leg. 

“The day Patty gets fired is the day I quit,” Curly-Brow hisses. “What, exactly, am I supposed to have them do?” The guy looks at Zoro and adds, “Amputation via sword?” 

“Clerical, scribing, changing bedpans? The world’s your fuckin’ oyster and they,” Dr. Old Man thrusts a wrinkled thumb at them, “are your fuckin’ problem now.” 

Luffy takes this moment to wave and bound right up to the nurse with a chirp of, “Hi! I’m Monkey D. Luffy and I’m gonna’ be the Pirate King. Sorry about your roof.” 

The nurse stares at Luffy for a solid five seconds, unblinking. 

Nami whispers despairingly, “Oh my fucking gods.” 

The nurse turns back to Dr. Old Man and asks, “Am I allowed to submit this one for a psych eval?” 

Dr. Old Man laughs, slaps the guy on the back with enough force to rock him forward onto his toes, and lumbers off, probably to go terrorize the sick and dying. The curly-nurse is already digging another cigarette out of the pocket of his scrubs. 

“Alright, okay,” he starts, like he’s verbally working himself up to it, “My name is Sanji—” 

“This is Zoro, he’s my first-mate and my swordsman. Nami is our navigator and Usopp is our liar. His friend gave us a really cool ship. Her name is Merry,” Luffy interjects suddenly. Why Luffy is so happy right now, Zoro has no fucking clue. 

(It is not endearing. Nope, definitely not.)

“Riiiight,” Sanji drawls with the air of the deeply confused. “Okay. Wait, did you say liar? ” 

“You should join our crew! Be our doctor!” Luffy says, apropos of nothing. Nami makes a high whining sound like she’s been gutshot. Usopp begins to vibrate harder.

“No,” Sanji says. 

“Why not?” 

“Okay, one, I’m not a doctor, I’m a medic. Two, literally why would I? Three, absolutely not.” To Zoro, this reasoning seems airtight. Plus, the guy looks like his face was drawn by a child and if Zoro has to look at him all the time he’s definitely going to throw him off the boat. Having a face that annoying should be an automatic ticket to the bottom of the ocean. 

When Zoro checks back into the conversation, said ridiculous face is staring at him expectantly, curly eyebrow arched like it’s getting paid for it. “Give ‘em,” Sanji demands. 

“What?” 

“The swords.” 

Zoro barks out a laugh. Nami attempts to step on his feet, but unfortunately for her, Zoro’s pain tolerance is leagues better than Usopp’s. He doesn’t even blink. “Absolutely not, Curly-brow.” Nami’s heel digs in. Zoro can feel her glare like lasers on the back of his head. 

The brow twitches. “The fuck did you call me?” 

“Zoro, I swear to all the money in the world—” Nami is hissing. 

Zoro ignores her, leans forward into the other man’s face, and says, “Sorry. Doctor Curly-brow.” 

“Medic,” Curly spits. Zoro has to give him credit—Sanji hasn’t backed down. He leans in as well, close enough that Zoro can see the vein throbbing in his forehead and smell the tobacco sticking to his clothing along with something sharper and woodsy.  “This is a place of healing. I’m not having you walk around here with weapons. So hand them over and get to work, or pay for the damages your captain did to the ship and fuck off.” 

“And who’s gonna’ make me? You?” Zoro goads and watches Curly’s teeth grind together, watches that little vein jump. He’s so buttoned up, with his neat little scrubs and perfectly combed hair, clear skin, and bright white teeth. Zoro wants to get under his skin like nothing else.

“Zoro,” Luffy says. His voice is clear as a bell, impossible to ignore. He’s looking at them with an expression Zoro can’t place—something serious but unworried. 

“I will not surrender my weapons, Captain,” Zoro replies. 

Luffy hums and turns to Sanji, saying, still in that same strange self-assured tone, “Is there something Zoro can do where he can keep his swords? They’re really important.” 

Curly and Luffy stare at each other for a beat before the guy throws his hands explosively up in a loud I-don’t-care kind of gesture. “Fine,” he says, like acquiescing is costing him. “I’ll stick you on inventory.” To Zoro, he asks in a prim tone of condescension, “Can you count?” 

Zoro scoffs. “What kind of question is that?”

“You heard me. Is the inside of your head full of moss too, or can you count?” Sanji demands, crowding a hair closer, like Zoro is going to back down. The guy is a beanpole and they’re the same height. Please. There’s not a thing intimidating about him. 

Usopp says to Nami—and fuck, they’ve really got to teach the guy some better volume control because he is not whispering like he thinks he is— “Are they going to kiss right now?”  

Zoro would glare at him but he will not break eye-contact with Shitty-Brow under pain of death. He settles for gnashing his teeth instead and hopes Usopp gets the message. 

“Zoro, just do the fucking inventory and stop being difficult,” Nami hisses. She claps his shoulder and digs her nails in like a fucking cat. “The quicker we cooperate, the quicker we can move on.” 

“Fine.” Something inside of his gut twists uncomfortably at the thought of backing down from a challenge— any challenge, let alone one issued by this infuriating curly-browed idiot. 

The pleased little smile Luffy sends him only softens that discomfort somewhat. 

As Sanji leads them through the twisting, maze-like bowels of the hospital-ship, chatting—and ineffectually flirting with Nami—Luffy sidles up to Zoro and beams at him. 

“He’s gonna’ be our doctor,” Luffy tells him. 

“He said no, Captain,” Zoro reminds him. “We can do better anyways.” 

Luffy hums, unconcerned, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “No, he’s good.”

“How do you know?” Zoro asks. “He could be a terrible doctor.” 

Luffy snickers and pats him on the arm, leaving his hand on Zoro’s bicep for another beat. “Nah, Zoro will see. He’s good. I know it,” he says with uncanny confidence. Zoro gets so stuck on the feeling of Luffy’s hand on his bare arm that he forgets to object. 

Zoro wakes up. He’s somewhat surprised by this turn of events. Although he hadn’t exactly wanted to die, it had seemed kind of inevitable when Sanji had pulled him out of the ocean and onto a dingy, saying only, “Shit” when he got a good look at the wound Mihawk had dealt him. Zoro’s no doctor but he’s fairly certain that “shit” is a bad prognosis. 

When he swears his oath to Luffy—and fuck, how embarassing that all these assholes are here watching—Sanji practically slaps his hand down as soon as he’s done talking. He almost brains himself on the dull side of Wado for his troubles. 

“Can you stop trying to die for literally five seconds, asshole?” Sanji snaps. Zoro can’t exactly sit upright enough to see what Curly-Brow is doing—he can’t even lift his head, really—and he’s pretty sure that even if he could, his vision is about to go out anyways. Judging by the floating black spots and overwhelming pain, at least. 

“Asshole,” Zoro slurs. 

Agonizing pressure erupts from seemingly everywhere in his body at once. He groans and tries to curl around the hurt, even though he knows it’s probably futile and will only make things worse. 

“No, no, no, no,” Sanji chants. He blocks Zoro’s fold inwards with his own body. The pressure continues, as does the sound of shouting—Luffy, mostly—and the sound of the waves. “Stay still.” 

“Hurts,” Zoro contributes. He didn’t exactly mean to. The word just fell out. 

Sanji laughs at him, one sharp bark entirely devoid of amusement. “Yeah, no shit.” 

The world spins and stills when a hand, slick with what Zoro knows to be his own blood, catches his face with surprising tenderness. 

“I’ve got you. You’re gonna’ be fine, alright?” Sanji says. 

With the last bit of energy keeping Zoro tethered to consciousness, he spares a thought to hope that Luffy was right; he hopes Sanji is good. 

It isn’t until Luffy has defeated Aarlong that they talk again, Zoro and Sanji. Even then, it’s less talking and more shouting. 

Sanji slaps the tankard of ale Zoro had been drinking—quite happily, thanks—straight out of his hands and presses one thumb pointedly into the very bloody bandages around his wound. Zoro winces despite himself while Sanji starts screaming. Most of Curly’s tirade is unleashed at so high of a pitch that Zoro can’t barely make out anything more than “idiot”, “moss-brained”, “septic”, “fucking stupid”, and “death wish”. 

“Alright, alright, fuck!” Zoro says just to get the horrible shrieking to stop. 

“With me,” Sanji growls. “Now.” 

Zoro begrudgingly follows him to the town’s medical offices where he knows Nami is recovering as well—not because he particularly cares about what the shitty doctor wants him to do, but because he might as well check on Nami. 

Sanji bullies him into a cot while Nami hides a snicker (poorly) behind her hand. She’s still wearing Luffy’s hat and the sight of it takes Zoro entirely off-guard in a way he wasn’t prepared for. 

“Alright?” Zoro asks. 

She smiles at him. It’s not one of her I’m-trying-to-make-you-think-I’m-harmless smiles, but something softer and much more genuine. It fits her face better. 

“I’m good,” she answers. “You?”

“Yeah—”

“You will be good because I am good,” Sanji forces out through clenched teeth as he unwinds layer after layer of bandages soaked in dry blood and fuck knows what. “And who knows? I still might just kill you for the fun of it.” 

Zoro scoffs. “Like you could,” he says, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. He had no idea that the doctor could fight like that, not until he sent that fishman careening through two layers of solid concrete with a well-placed kick. And the way that Sanji had moved in the water? Faster than a fishman, even? It was shocking. 

Zoro pointedly ignores what Johnny had said to him shortly before Sanji had found and shrieked him into compliance. Johnny sidled up to him, hands in his pockets, grinning like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and drawled, “So… that nurse, huh? Pretty much your type to a T, isn’t he?” 

This statement received the response it deserved: “Fuck off.” 

“Is he always like this?” Sanji asks Nami. 

“Like what? Stupid?” 

“Hey!” 

Nami giggles. “Pretty much.” 

“Oh, great. Fan-fucking-tastic.” 

“I am right here.” 

“Mhm,” Sanji says in the tone of voice one would use to speak to a small child, “Let’s not forget why you’re here—oh yeah, ‘cause I pulled your ass out of the ocean and saved your shit.” Whatever it is Sanji is pouring across his wound burns like fire. Zoro hisses, hands spasming in the sheets on the medical cot. “No, ‘thanks, Sanji, for saving my ass’, just full speed ahead into the next fight, huh? You’re lucky you’re even able to walk right now. Unbelievable. Were you born this devoid of common sense or am I just lucky?” 

Nami, the witch, is practically turning purple in her efforts not to laugh outright. Zoro flips her off. 

“Your bedside manner sucks, Doc,” Zoro tells him as soon as he has the breath back to do it. The sting of the antiseptic and the careful prodding of Sanji’s long, thin fingers around the edges of the wound stole his voice; it definitely has nothing to do with the fact that Sanji isn’t in scrubs anymore and instead has the sleeves of his fancy dress-shirt folded up around his elbows. No. Not at all. 

(Johnny is so full of shit.)

“Medic,” Sanji corrects. “And you don’t deserve my best.” He sighs and says, “You know it’s going to scar, right?” 

“Yeah.” That’s somewhat the point. He’d faced defeat at Mihawk’s blade with honor. 

“You know you’re lucky to have lived, right?” 

Zoro shrugs as much as he can while getting some kind of cream rubbed into his throbbing, pulsing wound. Sanji flicks him on the side—well away from the injury—for squirming. 

“That’s it?” Sanji gives him a scathing look. “No comment? Happy to throw your life away for no reason, huh?” 

His teeth grind. “You don’t know anything about my reasons.” 

“No? What was that you were saying about a ‘swordsman’s honor’? Seems like a stupid fucking reason to die, if you ask me.” 

“Sanji-kun—” Nami warns, but Zoro plows over her, anger rising in his throat like bile. 

“People die everyday for no fucking reason at all,” Zoro spits. “Where are your principles, huh?” 

Sanji gives him a dry look and gestures to the bloody, throbbing mess of Zoro’s torso. “Right here, moss-for-brains.” He taps a pair of tweezers against Zoro’s pec—the one not nearly bisected. “Everybody’s life is worth saving. Even yours, despite the fact that you’re royally pissing me off.” 

“Eat shit,” Zoro retorts. His hands itch with the need to put his anger somewhere. 

“Yeah, yeah. Go fuck yourself,” Sanji replies, hands impossible gentle on Zoro’s skin. 

A few days out from Nami’s hometown, Zoro and Luffy start fooling around. 

They don’t really plan on it. It’s just something that happens. Luffy is attractive in a way that Zoro can’t quite put into words. It’s the way he carries himself, the way he fights, the way he is. 

He really couldn’t care less about what’s in his Captain’s pants; he’d asked about it before Nami, back when it was just them in a boat with hardly enough room to fit two people, let alone piss with privacy. 

“You’re a woman?” he’d asked when Luffy had first dropped trou to take a leak without ceremony. 

“What? No,” Luffy had said. 

And they’d left it at that. 

Sailing towards Lougetown, there wasn’t much to do but dick around, and the bit of privacy that Merry allowed for with all her space is nice. It’s something they start doing because Luffy is beautiful in a way that makes Zoro itch under his skin, that makes his hands twitch with an urge he can’t name, that makes him sweat and ache. When sparring turns to wrestling turns to Luffy straddling his lap with rubbery legs as tight as a vice, grinning sharp and digging his fingers into Zoro’s wrists enough to sting, Zoro doesn’t fight the instinct to lean up for a kiss. 

“Oh,” Luffy says, smiling against Zoro’s lips and absolutely ruining the attempt he was making, “Do you wanna’ have sex?” 

“Sex” in his Captain’s voice makes Zoro’s mouth run dry. Shit, if Luffy doesn’t have an effect on him like no one else ever has. His thighs flex around Zoro’s abdomen, testing. It earns him a strangled little groan from deep in Zoro’s chest. 

“If you want.” 

Luffy laughs, the long line of his throat bare and glistening with sweat, nipples hard and visible through his customary red shirt. When he says, “Yeah. I think I wanna’.” 

“You think?” 

“I’ve never done it before,” Luffy tells him, as blunt and honest in this as he is in everything. “But Zoro makes me feel good. And it’s supposed to be fun, right?” 

“If you do it right,” Zoro says. He’s never had a conversation like this before—never spoken so bluntly about it. He’d fooled around with Johnny and Yosaku—a couple of other senior students from the dojo, too—but it was always couched in innuendo and avoided as much as possible. There’d been a memorable few partners he’d had that balked at his willingness to kiss them, to suck their cocks. Some, he’d read wrong entirely, and gotten cursed out for being a “cocksucker” and worse. 

“I’ve never slept with anyone that didn’t have a dick,” he tells Luffy, hyperconscious of the absence of an erection on Luffy’s part. “You’ll have to show me what to do. Tell me what feels good.” 

Somehow, Zoro doesn’t think Luffy is going to have a problem with that. 

They start with their hands, Zoro bringing Luffy to a knee-shaking orgasm on his fingers twice before Luffy announces it’s his turn and thrusts both hands into Zoro’s pants after his cock. The next night, Zoro gets Luffy to ride his fingers and struggles not to wake the rest of the ship with his moaning when Luffy takes his dick into his mouth. They carry on like that—handjobs and suckjobs here and there, when the rigging doesn’t need tending and neither of them have anything better to do—until Luffy decides he wants more than just fingers and gets Zoro to lay him out in the crows nest and fuck between his legs. 

It’s better than anything Zoro’s ever felt in his fucking life. The wavering little moan Luffy makes when Zoro squeezes his hand between their bodies to play with his clit is enough masturbatory material to last him the rest of his life. 

They’re down in the men’s cabin, Luffy on his back on the couch, fingers digging into the upholstery until his knuckles go white as Zoro pushes in and in and in— inch after inch into Luffy’s impossibly yielding, impossibly tight hole. His brand-hot mouth is stuck on Zoro’s jaw, mouthing and nibbling at the bone when not gasping directly into Zoro’s ear. 

“Can I move?” Zoro asks when he’s sure he won’t go off in an embarrassingly short amount of time. He asks even though Luffy has been digging his heels in and nudging him to go harder and deeper the entire time. He asks because he likes to hear Luffy say yes—likes it a lot. 

“Yeah, yes, yeah, Zoro, c’mon,” Luffy chants, locking his legs even tighter around him and dragging him down until there’s no space between their bodies at all, Zoro’s wrist bent and crushed awkwardly between them, unwilling as he is to take his fingers off of Luffy’s clit.

Luffy is incapable of staying still—always squirming and writhing and pawing at Zoro until it’s literally impossible for them to be any closer. And even then, Luffy will still whine and wriggle. When he comes, his whole body locks up, tense enough to snap, and it’s the only time he ever manages to hold still. 

It is, unfortunately, at this exact moment that the hatch to the men’s cabin opens and the shitty fucking doctor comes down the ladder.

“Fuck!” Sanji yelps when he sees them, slapping a hand hastily over his eyes. “Shit! What the fuck!” 

Luffy, the little asshole, starts giggling. 

Zoro stops moving, despite the fact that he’d really like to keep moving, and groans. “What. Do you want,” he grits out. 

“Hi, Sanji,” Luffy sing-songs, unconcerned. 

“Really?!” Sanji squeaks. “On the fucking couch?” 

“Heh,” Luffy snickers, “‘fucking couch’. Get it? ‘Cause we’re—” 

“I get it!” Sanji shouts. “Ugh. I swear, if you two idiots end up with anal tearing—” 

“The fuck?! No!” Zoro shouts. He’s pulled out, much to his cock’s dismay, and is desperately fishing for his pants on the floor. 

“What’s anal?” Luffy asks. He’s gloriously naked and entirely unashamed, peering up at Sanji’s back from where his head hangs over the arm of the couch. 

Therefore, Sanji gets a fucking eyeful when he wheels around to face them from his self-imposed exile facing the wall and squeaks, “I’m sorry, what? What do you mean what’s—”  

There is a moment of great silence. Sanji stares at Luffy for a beat—two, even—and then looks at Zoro with an expression of complete and utter horror. 

His voice is very even and soft when he says, “Zoro, please tell me you used protection.” 

“What?” Zoro asks. What the fuck would his swords have to do with sex? 

He does not manage to dodge the kick Sanji lobs at his head on account of half of his blood volume still being in his dick. It hurts like a bitch. He hits the floor with a clatter, the coffee table screeching across the wood and leaving scratches behind that Zoro can already hear Usopp complaining about. 

“What the fuck, asshole?!” he shouts, elbow and side smarting from the fall and head pounding from the entirely uncalled for blunt-force trauma. 

“Don’t ‘what the fuck’ me! ‘What the fuck’ you! Fuck! Both of you, medical, now.” He stalks towards the ladder, so red he looks like he’s about to burst, “Now, idiots!” he shrieks in his horrible harpy-voice of hysteria. 

The ensuing conversation is the most deeply uncomfortable conversation of Zoro’s entire life, and this is before Sanji gets out the banana and shows them how to use a condom. Luffy seems not to care much either way, accepting the pill that Sanji wrestles up from a cabinet— “emergency contraceptive”, Sanji says, which means little to either of them until he explains that in graphic detail. 

Luffy, for his part, sits placid and unbothered, only interjecting once to say, “I’m not a ‘she.’”

“Sorry?” Sanji stops in his tirade about venereal disease, turning to Luffy with owlish eyes. 

“You said ‘she.’ ‘M not,” Luffy informs him. 

“I—okay but, Luffy, you’re female,” Sanji says as if in great pain. 

Luffy shrugs. “Not really, though.” 

Curly-nurse sits back onto his stupid little rolling stool with a heavy sigh, massaging at one temple. He says, slowly,  “Luffy, I literally just saw you naked. You’re female.” 

“Okay, but like, ‘m not a girl.”  

Sanji stares. Usually, Zoro finds the owlish “what the fuck” look endearing—he refuses to consider it cute, absolutely not. (At the moment, his irritation and embarrassment and general will to throw himself into the ocean overrides this endearment.)

“The fuck, Doc? He’s not a girl, it’s not hard,” Zoro snaps. “Aren’t you supposed to be smart and shit?”

“Gods help me,” Sanji whispers under his breath. “Luffy, are you saying you’re a transvestite?” he asks. 

Luffy shrugs. “‘Dunno. What’s that?” 

Zoro takes it back—the conversation that follows that question is the most deeply uncomfortable conversation of his entire life. His only consolation is that it seems to be equally as uncomfortable for Sanji. 

That night, Zoro climbs up into the crows’ nest for the first watch only for Luffy to join him a few minutes later. He clambers noisily up the rigging, swings a skinny leg over the rail, and arranges himself draped across Zoro’s chest like the world’s sweatiest blanket. His hair smells like salt and something familiar only as Luffy. 

It’s peaceful up here at night. When he’s alone, it almost feels like he’s the only person in the world—nothing to separate the sky and sea, just darkness stretching on and on, stars suspended all around. It feels like floating, like the quiet surety of meditation.

Luffy, restless, props himself up with folded arms, chin digging into Zoro’s chest. His dark eyes reflect the stars just as well as the ocean below. 

“Sanji sure knows a lot about sex,” he says.

Zoro snorts. “Be a shit doctor if he didn’t.” 

Luffy tucks his cold fingers under Zoro’s armpits. Once situated to his liking, he continues, “Do you think he’d be good at it?” 

“Good at sex?” Zoro asks. And shit—now he’s thinking about the shitty nurse and sex. He’s thinking about unbuttoning those stupid suits, about getting that perfect hair ruffled, about that furrow Sanji gets when he’s really concentrated on something—squinting through a microscope, stitching a wound, reading a book thicker than his head—about his hands. 

Sanji never fights with his hands, only ever his feet. He says the hands are a surgeon’s treasure. He says his hands are meant for healing, not hurting. Zoro thinks about taking those hands between his own, about having those hands on him for more than addressing his injures, about getting those gentle fingers to press bruises into his—

“Zoro’s thinking about it too,” Luffy croons, grinning like sugar wouldn’t melt in his mouth. 

“Shut up.” He can feel a blush burning on his cheeks. He hopes the dark can hide it, but knows that Luffy knows it's there anyways. “You wanna’ have sex with him?” Zoro asks, gruffer than he means. It’s not like he owns Luffy, or anything. Not like he’d even want to. They’re just fooling around. 

“I don’t think Sanji wants to,” Luffy says. He scratches his nails lightly down Zoro’s ribs and Zoro shivers with it even though the night is warm. 

And yeah—Sanji’s made it clear which is his preferred sex. He practically waits on Nami, hand and foot; flirts poorly with her at every possible opportunity. He won’t fight a woman but will act like a total fucking pervert about them if given the chance. The change in his attitude towards Luffy was pretty immediate, even in the agonizing conversation they’d had about safe-sex, and although Luffy seemed pretty oblivious to the change, it sure as shit pissed Zoro off. 

Zoro grits his teeth and aims for nonchalance. “I dunno’, you have the right parts for it.” 

Luffy makes a humming sound. Zoro can feel it vibrate through his chest and against his own, like Luffy is some sort of big rubbery cat. He bats down the urge to set his hat aside and pet through Luffy’s hair. 

“Nah, I don’t think it’s about parts,” Luffy muses. “It’s about being a woman. I’m not that.” It’s one of Luffy’s rare moments of insight—one of the times where it reminds Zoro why he’s here, why he chose him, why this. 

Luffy is fucking smart. 

Zoro grunts. He gives into the itch to touch, sets aside the strawhat gently, and gets his fingers in Luffy’s slightly-greasy hair. 

“It’s too complicated,” he says. “Who even cares?” 

“Sanji cares a lot.” 

Yeah, Zoro thinks. He really does. 

Zoro had thought he’d seen Sanji angry before. He was wrong. 

The hysterical shrieking tantrums that Zoro had mistakenly thought were anger have absolutely nothing on the sheer rage that’s coming off the nurse in waves. Sanji isn’t even fucking looking at him. 

He’s sat on his stupid little stool, Zoro’s feet in his lap, painstakingly treating the wounds from where Zoro tried to cut himself free from that candle guy’s wax. His head is bowed such that Zoro can’t even see his expression, but he doesn’t need to see it to know that Sanji is furious. 

The actual force of his anger is like a physical weight over the room, despite how his hands remain stubbornly gentle.  

“You’re mad,” Zoro blurts like a moron. 

Sanji laughs a single laugh, abrupt and forceful like a punch. 

“You don’t get to be mad,” Zoro continues. 

Now, Sanji looks at him. There’s fire in his eyes. It’s hot enough to burn himself on. 

“Oh, but you get to throw your life away? You get to be careless to the point of self-harm? To suicidality?” The rage drips off his voice, heavy and sour like Zoro’s attempts at dinner when it’s his turn to cook. 

“Who said anything about suicide?” 

Sanji takes his hands off of Zoro’s ankles. He rips his gloves off with pointed snaps. He doesn’t look at Zoro when he talks. “Do you know the survival rate on amputations? Do you know how many people die of gangrene, how many lose more of the limb to infection, even if they survive? What was your fucking plan? Cut your feet off and fight the bastard on your knees while you bled out, dragging your stumps through fuck knows what sorts of bacteria on the ground? Or, better yet, you sever your tendons but not be able to cut through your own bone? Pass out from pain and blood loss only to wake up and hear you can never fucking walk again?” 

“I—” 

Sanji’s eyes snap to him and it’s like a physical shove. He plows onward, “You don’t think. You don’t fucking think. How the fuck am I supposed to keep you alive, let alone healthy, when you don’t give a single shit about dying, huh? Am I supposed to just stand here and watch you mutilate yourself because you couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about your own life? What’s wrong with you, Zoro?” 

There’s sweat at Sanji’s brow, darkening his hairline to something more gold than blonde. Zoro watches him swallow, watches his jaw work, watches his hands clench and release, over and over. 

“Fuck you,” Sanji grits out through clenched teeth. “I need to go check on the others. If you so much as stand up—” he stops, hand on the door handle. The room is tiny—barely a closet with a desk, a cot, and a cabinet crammed inside. The stupid little stool takes up a good forty-percent of all the available space. Sanji feels an impossible distance away.

“Don’t stand up. You’ll pop your stitches.” 

He slams the door behind him. Zoro sits, frustrated and confused and half-tempted to run after the doctor and start a fight. He doesn’t understand him. 

Nami gets sick. Nami gets really sick. She lies prone and pale in her bed, sweating faster than they can produce clean towels to mop it up, speaking in disjointed, feverish fragments of conversation none of them can follow. Carue frets—is never far from the foot of her bed, head low and feathers tight and flat against his body with stress. Vivi holds her hand for hours at a time. The bags under Nami’s eyes grow in tandem with Sanji’s. 

Zoro knows it’s bad because Sanji doesn’t leave her side, because Sanji doesn’t sleep. He is up seemingly at all hours, changing out bags of fluids, making notes in his little notebook, dabbing at her neck and face with cool rags, listening to the rasping gurgle lodged deep in her chest. He rubs a cream that smells sharp and cool on Nami’s chest and is normal about it. He checks her pulse every hour with his fingers tucked gently underneath her jaw, staring intently at his watch. He combs her sweaty hair up and out of her face and murmurs to her in a low, soothing voice. 

And on day-three of her fever, he rounds up the crew and says, deathly serious, “We need to make port.” 

“Is she going to be okay?” Vivi asks. She’s afraid. Usopp is, too. Fuck, even Zoro’s not feeling too good about Nami’s chances right about now, either. He would have said nothing could take Nami out, certainly no virus—she’s too stubborn to die. Now, he’s not so certain. 

Sanji’s lips press thin. He looks like he hasn’t slept a wink in days. “She has a rare tropical virus that responds only to a specific, aggressive antiviral treatment that I don’t have. If we don’t stop to try and find it, or at least the materials I would need to synthesize it… Her fever will worsen. She’ll begin having seizures, if it climbs high enough. Her lungs are filling with fluid already and if it gets too much worse, I’ll have to intubate her.” 

“Intubate?” Usopp asks. 

“You feed a tube down into the windpipe to mechanically ventilate oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of the lungs,” Sanji tells them. His tone is utterly flat, like he’s reading out of a textbook. Zoro knows better—he’s seen Sanji quietly singing at Nami’s bedside while he painstakingly washes her hair. He can’t hide his concern, his personal investment in their wellbeing. It’s as obvious as blood in the water. 

There’s no debate. Vivi is just as determined to save Nami as the rest of them. Zoro can see it in the rigid tension of her shoulders, the jut of her jaw. For the first time, he actually looks at Vivi and sees a leader. 

She looks like she’d move mountains if she had to. 

There’s a grim urgency to the Merry that has never been there before. It’s a relief for everyone when the island—a winter one with bitingly cold temperatures and ice floats in the water—comes into sight. Zoro volunteers to stay with the ship while the others load up with cold weather gear and head out for the town.

When Zoro sees them all again, each and every one of them has some injury to speak of, though Nami is much improved and Luffy and Usopp are already out of bed and running around the old lady’s castle after some creature that Zoro hasn’t really gotten a good look at, but that appears to be a little racoon doctor. 

Even Sanji is laid up. Vivi tells him that he’d needed to have surgery. 

When Sanji wakes, Zoro pulls the chair he’d been napping in over to the cot and says, as dry as he can manage, “So I heard you tried to catch an avalanche.” 

Sanji closes his eyes again and groans. “Shut up,” he says. “Where are my cigarettes?” 

“That lady took ‘em. Remind me who said something about ‘throwing your life away’? About ‘carelessness to the point of self-harm’?” Zoro drawls. It feels good, to have the high ground on the shitty doctor, for once. 

Sanji glares at him. He looks tired, despite having slept for hours. 

“Where does ‘let myself get flattened by an avalanche’ fall on your scale of reckless behavior, Doc?” 

“For the last time,” Sanji hisses, “I’m a medic.” 

He looks so thin and tired. Zoro wants to shake him, wants to goad him into a fight. Can’t, because Sanji had surgery to put metal into his spine. Because he put himself in front of an avalanche so that Luffy and Nami could make it to the castle. Because for all his bluster about carelessness with ones’ life, apparently Sanji’s rules don’t apply to Sanji himself. 

In the cot, Sanji shivers. “Fuck, it’s cold. I fucking hate this weather.” 

“Aren’t you from the North Blue?” 

“Yeah, and it’s cold as balls there, too. Fucking hate it,” Sanji grumbles. 

“I’ll ask the racoon to put more wood in the furnace,” Zoro says. He stands to go find the little guy—he’s probably somewhere hiding from Luffy. 

“Sorry, you’ll go ask the what?” 

Sanji and Chopper get on well. This is unfortunate for Zoro, who is now constantly hounded by two people about “proper hydration”, and he can’t even shout back at one of them. Chopper is still a bit skittish around them, not quite used to spending time with so many people, let alone people that are still practically strangers. He’s friendliest with Sanji, because they’re nerds that bond over medicine, and with Usopp after Usopp makes Chopper a little desk to go right by Sanji’s in the medical office. 

Zoro likes the kid a lot, despite himself. 

He does not like Luffy’s brother. 

For one, the guy’s a real smartass. For another, he looks at Zoro like he knows Zoro is fucking his brother, and he doesn’t seem happy about it. And, oh, yeah. 

The guy is giving Sanji a sexuality crisis. 

Everytime Ace so much as opens his mouth, Sanji starts tripping over his own feet. Ace knows the effect he has on the shitty doctor and flirts with him constantly. Sanji turns bright red every time, stammering and fussing with his clothes like he’s a stupid, swooning girl, eyes always locked on Ace’s shirtless (and admittedly impressive, which is just extra annoying) chest, stuck on the sight of his tattoos and freckles. 

Luffy doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, Luffy just seems happy that Ace likes his crew. Except for Zoro, who Ace keeps staring at like he’s honestly debating the merits of burning a warning into Zoro’s flesh: HURT LUFFY AND DIE. 

Needless to say, between that and the civil war, it’s a busy fucking week. Zoro doesn’t have time to think about Sanji and his stupid gay crush on Luffy’s stupid brother. 

(He certainly doesn’t have time to be jealous.)

Vivi sets them up in a massive suite at the palace to recover from the battle. Considering how battered everybody came out of it, they’re more than happy to take her up on the possibility of some quality rest. After Sanji stops screaming at everyone and bossing the palace medical staff around until their ears are bleeding, he flops dramatically into a chair over one of the enormous windows overlooking the city. He cracks open one of the smaller panes and lights a cigarette, the cherry burning red in the near-dark. 

Usopp and Chopper are asleep, sharing the bed next to Luffy, who is snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Nami and Vivi are sharing the bed on the opposite end of the room, Zoro next to them and Sanji between him and Luffy. The girls are still awake, talking quietly underneath the covers. 

The moonlight frames Sanji oddly, lighting up half his face with an eerie white glow. His hands cradle the burning cigarette like it’s something unbearably delicate. Even his eyelashes seem to shine with light. He called himself “Mr. Prince” over the den-den. Like this, it seems oddly fitting. There’s something beautiful about him. Different from Luffy, but beautiful nonetheless. Otherworldly. 

His body is turned to face Luffy. Zoro watches him watch Luffy and falls asleep without really meaning to. 

He must drift for a while, but not too long, because it’s still night and Sanji is still sitting up in the chair by the window when he wakes to the sound of voices. An ashtray on the sill has accumulated multiple butts. Sanji’s been at it for a while. Zoro entertains the thought of pinning Sanji to a bed just so he gets some damn sleep. The shitty doctor can afford to rest; it’s not like any of them are going to die in their sleep.

“You’re too careless,” Sanji murmurs in a voice barely above a whisper. Smoke curls around his hand like a ribbon, dissipating quickly in the desert breeze blowing through the window. “You were impaled,” his voice cracks around the word. Zoro watches him bring the cigarette to his lips with a trembling hand. 

“It’s okay,” Luffy replies, soft. Soft like he is when he crawls into the crow’s nest with Zoro late at night. Soft like his hair between Zoro’s fingers. Soft like the space behind his ear, where Zoro likes to tuck his nose and just breathe. “I know I have you to take care of me.” 

Sanji makes a sound like he’s been kicked. It’s nearly a whine. “You can’t just say that,” he whispers. He sounds raw—too raw to listen to. Zoro wants to turn away but knows he can’t, not without alerting them that he’s awake. 

“Who says?” Luffy rebukes, a smile audible in his voice. 

“Your doctor, that’s who,” Sanji grumbles. He stands with a quiet groan, stubbing the cigarette out in the little dish on the sill. His free hand touches his back gingerly. Zoro doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep, but it’s certainly too long for Sanji to have been sitting upright in that chair with his back. 

He watches as Sanji takes a few steps towards Luffy’s bed and fusses with the IV, murmuring quietly to himself and making some note in the little pocketbook he’s always carrying. He fusses with the sheets around Luffy, almost like he’s tucking him in. Zoro can hear the quiet rise-and-fall of their voices, but not what they’re saying. 

“Sanji,” he hears Luffy say in a slightly louder voice. “Sleep.” 

“No,” Sanji replies. “Someone has to keep watch over you idiots.” 

Zoro watches one of Luffy’s hands, bandages glowing near-blue in the moonlight, reach up and gently catch one of Sanji’s own. “We’re safe, Sanji.” A rustling sound—Luffy moving among the lavish bedsheets. “You need to rest, too.”

Luffy tugs on Sanji’s hand. Sanji lets him, swaying forwards toward the bed like he just might fall into it. Zoro’s heart kicks hard in his chest. 

“I’m okay,” Sanji protests. 

“C’mere,” Luffy insists. 

Zoro watches Sanji slide into Luffy’s bed, watches Luffy throw blankets up around the both of them with a slight wince, watches him tuck himself into Sanji’s side with a contented sigh. 

His heart beats so loudly he’s afraid he’ll wake everyone up with it. It doesn’t. 

Eventually, Zoro sleeps. 

“I heard you and Sanji last night,” Zoro says to Luffy in the baths. Since Sanji is too embarrassed to look at Luffy’s naked body, he’s giving them a wide berth, no matter how much they all tease him for being weird about it. He, Usopp and Chopper are over on the other side of the decorative rock formation in the middle of the hot spring with the king, probably being perverts together. 

Luffy is sitting between his legs, head lolling onto Zoro’s shoulder. His face is flushed with the heat, his hair limp and wet and smelling like a rich man’s soap. Water this deep can make him woozy, so he sticks close. For a Devil-Fruit user, Luffy sure loves being in the water. 

“Mm?” Luffy hums in question. 

“You love him,” Zoro blurts. He’s not good at this. He doesn’t know how else to say it.

It feels strange, to be holding Luffy so intimately while they have this conversation. At the same time, Zoro doesn’t want to let him go. 

“Yeah,” Luffy admits, easy as anything. 

Zoro swallows. The room is so humid but his throat is so dry. “You should be with him,” he says. 

Luffy twists around until he’s peering up at Zoro, his small tits just barely peeking out from under the water line as he arches to meet his eyes. “Nah,” he says, unconcerned. “Sanji doesn’t want me, Sanji wants women. And besides, I love Zoro, too.” 

“Oh,” Zoro says, like an idiot. He feels his face flush, and not from the water. 

Luffy settles back down, relinquishing eye contact and getting comfortable again. Surely, he can feel Zoro’s heart beating a mile a minute. 

“I think your brother wanted to kill me,” Zoro says. 

Luffy cackles so hard that Usopp peers around the rock to make sure they’re okay. And—yeah. Yeah, they’re good. 

Zoro, admittedly, does not feel great about Nico Robin joining the crew. Everyone—even Usopp, whose anxiety is as reliable as his aim—seems to like her, even trust her, immediately. 

It has him in a mood—he doesn’t even want to fool around with Luffy today. The only three activities left to him on the ship besides sex are training, napping, and chores; he’s already done the former two and to contemplate willingly doing the later is insanity. So, he goes to bother Sanji—the only person not currently occupied with the show that Nico Robin is putting on with lunch preparations and half a dozen hands.

He’s sitting at his desk, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, scribbling intently in his little notebook. 

Zoro knocks on the doorframe and invites himself in. Sanji sets down his pen and spins his stupid stool. 

“Time for lunch?” 

“Not yet.” Zoro closes the door and folds his arms. He watches Sanji’s stupid brows come down in suspicion. He asks, “Do you trust her? Nico Robin?” 

Sanji blows out a breath and leans back against his desk. His long legs look especially stupid in his little stupid stool. His foot bobs up and down—he’s like Luffy; the two of them are always in motion. He rolls the cigarette between his lips. Zoro has the urge to take it, to snatch it out from between Sanji’s lips, just like Sanji’s peg-legged old man did when they first met. He doesn’t. 

“Yeah, I do,” Sanji says after a moment. 

“Why?” They were alone together shortly after she had first snuck aboard, when Sanji had insisted on looking at her stab wound; maybe she’d said something to him to make him trust her. 

Sanji rolls his head on his shoulders, stretching. He never just holds still. He says, thoughtful,“I think she’s hurting. I think she’s someone who’s in a lot of pain all of the time.” He places a hand flat over his heart— in here, the motion says. “I think Luffy, for whatever reason, eases that burden. I trust her to treasure that.” 

Zoro just stares.

Sanji adds, “Painlessness is a powerful motivator.” He spins back around on his stool, facing the desk again. Over his shoulder he tosses, “Some people, unlike yourself and our Captain, actually avoid hurting. Let me know when lunch is ready, will ya’?” 

Zoro grunts in assent. 

Sanji starts writing again. Stops and looks over his shoulder. 

“You need something else?” he asks. 

You speak of pain like you know it. I want to know what hurts you so much that it motivates you. I want to crack your head open like a melon and look inside. I don’t understand you. 

“No,” Zoro says, and leaves the way he came. 

It’s hard to get glass out of hair. Zoro will think he’s got it all—he always does—but he’s always wrong. There’s always small, invisible shards lying in wait, ready to scratch your face and hands at the slightest movement. Zoro is thinking about painstakingly picking little shards out of his hair—out of Luffy’s too, because Luffy will maybe want him to and he wouldn’t mind—when the Merry comes back into view.

Nami stopped crying a while ago, trailing quietly after them and sniffling occasionally. As they come closer to the rest of the crew, she seems to be winding herself up again. 

The crew is spread out along the grass, but it’s Sanji that notices them first. He raises an arm in a wave which slowly flags as they draw closer. He starts shouting. Chopper jumps up and runs for Merry, and Sanji comes towards them at a dead run. 

Nami dissolves back into sobs at the same time that Sanji reaches them.

“What happened?!” Sanji demands, reaching for Nami first. She bites at her lip and waves his hands off, making these awful hitched choking sounds and wrapping her arms around herself. 

Zoro can’t really make heads or tails as to why she’s so upset. Luffy probably knows, but he’s been oddly silent. 

“I’m fine, Sanji,” Nami says wetly. She stalks off towards the others—Usopp gets to her first. 

“What. Happened,” Sanji again demands. He reaches for Luffy, who goes easily, letting himself be turned this way and that by the shoulders. Chopper is bounding up to them with an emergency medical kit in his hooves; he’s become somewhat of Sanji’s assistant since he joined the crew, though Sanji insists that Chopper is a much better chemist. 

Luffy laughs as Sanji prods at the sluggishly bleeding cut above his brow. Zoro thinks it was from a thrown bottle. It was big—big enough that Luffy staggered forwards when it collided with his head. He hadn’t lost his balance, hadn’t so much as twitched. The bleeding was much worse, at first. 

“It’s alright Sanji,” Luffy assures. “We won.” 

It isn’t until later that Sanji explodes. 

He finds them—ostensibly—after talking to Nami. Zoro had thought he was angry after Little Garden, when Zoro had cut his feet. And here Sanji is, surprising him again. 

“I am so fucking furious with you,” he spits. 

He and Luffy have been sitting with Usopp in the galley—it was his turn on lunch preparation today and he’d set aside their plates—who now holds his hands up in surrender with a, “Woah, Sanji, calm down.” 

“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down,” Sanji snaps. Even Luffy seems surprised by just how angry he is. “Do you know how they got hurt?” 

“A bar fight?” Usopp answers slowly. 

“I wouldn’t call letting assholes attack you and refusing to raise a hand to stop them a fight.” 

Zoro stands up, a hand on his swords. “Alright, that’s enough, Doc.” 

Sanji surges forward all at once and shoves Zoro, once. Hard. Zoro lets him. Sanji doesn’t attack with his hands. 

“Hurt yourselves for your pride, fine. I don’t get it, but that seems to be the move around here. Whatever. But you make her—make any of us—just stand by and watch again? I walk. I will fucking leave this crew,” Sanji says, eyes locked and burning on Luffy. 

The silence stretches on and on, endlessly. Like the ocean and sky in the dead of night—the tension thick and dark, the jagged silence hanging suspended within it like stars. 

“S-Sanji,” Usopp stutters, shocked otherwise speechless.  

Luffy nods. “Okay Sanji,” he says. Quiet. Subdued. It’s not a tone of voice Zoro has ever heard from him before. It’s not one he ever wants to hear again. 

Sanji nods back, once. He glances at Zoro—why, Zoro can’t say—and without another word, he leaves. The door slams shut behind him; he kicks it closed, hands shoved deep into his pockets. 

The bonfire is enormous—bigger than just their crew could have made on their own. The Skypeians sure know how to throw a party. The roar of its burning is loud enough that it’s hard to think. The only things that are louder are the music and the commotion of people dancing, laughing, and singing. Zoro can only stay by the overwhelming heat of it for so long.

Luffy only knows one dance and it’s mostly comprised of jumping up and down and whooping. Zoro’s had a lot to drink; he can only take so much jumping.

His need for space—for some fresh fucking air to help him sober up—takes him out beyond the glow of the fire, out past the crowds, out to where the ruins are still standing. He stops where the air no longer smells like burning wood and instead smells cool and crisp with the humidity of a jungle at night. Zoro runs a hand across a crumbling wall heavily textured with time, feeling each bump and groove. He presses his face to it. It’s cool. 

He’s drunk. 

Zoro keeps walking. 

He stops again when he smells something strange—something other than dew and foliage. It smells like a skunk has recently sprayed someone, but something about it strikes him as different. Zoro follows the smell. 

He finds a ring of warm yellow light cast by a torch wedged between a gap in the blocks of some old wall. On a fallen hunk of stone reclines Sanji, head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed, smoking at something that doesn’t look like his usual cigarettes. 

“What’s that?” Zoro asks. Fuck, he’s drunk. “Is that pot?” 

Sanji cracks an eye open to peer at him, brow arched. Zoro can’t look at it too closely without getting dizzy. 

“And tobacco, yeah,” Sanji replies. He scoots over on his seat of a fallen building, making space. Zoro takes it—he’s steadier on his feet than he was, but still pretty drunk. Zoro rubs his hands through the mossy growth up the sides of the rock. It’s been here much longer than they have; it wasn’t a chunk that got loose during all the fighting. 

“I don’t drink,” Sanji offers, apropos of nothing. “Do you want…?” he offers the blunt. 

“No. I’m too drunk for that,” Zoro admits. “Why don’t you drink?” 

After a long pull—Zoro tries not to watch, he really does—and subsequent long exhale, Sanji says, “Alcohol interacts poorly with my medication.” 

Zoro boggles. “Medication? You’re sick?” 

Sanji laughs—his genuine laugh, high and loud and obnoxious—and keeps laughing, doesn’t stop. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he titters. “Just… your face. I’m fine, Zoro. I’m on an SSRI for anxiety.” At Zoro’s blank look, he adds, “Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It stops the brain from reabsorbing serotonin—that’s a neurotransmitter. Helps regulate mood. Downside is it makes one drink feel like five. So I smoke instead, if I want. Not like my lungs aren’t already fucked.” 

“And you take them everyday? That medication?” 

Sanji hums out a plume of smoke. His eyes are closed again. He’s rubbing the back of his head against the wall like a cat, fucking up his hair. 

“I’m kinda’ fucked up,” Sanji says. He says it like he’s observing the weather. 

Zoro stares at him. He’s starting to think Sanji glows in all kinds of lighting—not just the moon, but the firelight, too. Maybe it comes from inside of him—he’s otherworldly. Sanji laughs to himself and repeats, “Like, definitely fucked up.” He turns, head lolling against the wall, and stares at Zoro with his blue, blue eyes. “I’m so fucked up, Zoro.” 

“Yeah, you’re high, alright,” Zoro tells him. 

“I don’t like big crowds,” Sanji pivots. “And everyone always wants me to share,” he waggles his joint. “The quiet is nice, too. I’m used to the quiet.” 

He’s so chatty! Zoro watches him, fond, and lets that fondness bleed into his voice, “Merry isn’t that quiet, Doc.” It’s the exact opposite. Just the other day, Usopp and Chopper woke Zoro up screaming about squid or something. Shit, Usopp has one volume and it is shouting. 

Sanji snorts. “Not Merry. My mom died when I was really young and I spent a lot of time with her. She had been sick practically since I was born. As I got older, she just got quieter. Some days, she didn’t have the energy to talk at all. And I spent a lot of time in the library.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Or hiding.” 

There’s so much to unpack, there. Zoro starts with, “Hiding?” 

“My brothers,” Sanji spits the word like it’s a joke that Zoro isn’t in on, “were fucking assholes.”

“You have brothers?” Stupidly, Zoro pictures another Ace-like character sauntering into their lives and glaring at him for daring to breathe the same space as their precious sibling. 

“Had,” Sanji corrects. “Fuck ‘em. Broke my arm when I was five.” 

“The fuck?” 

“Right? Fucking dickheads.” A pause. “It was quiet in the dungeon, too.”  

“The what?” Sanji giggles to himself. Zoro stares. “You’re high,” he points out. Does Sanji even know what he’s fucking talking about? 

“Yeah,” Sanji agrees, easy. “I’m high. Why are you out here?”

“Got too drunk to keep dancin’. Luffy just…” 

“Jumps around?” Sanji fills in, wry, his mouth half-quirked in a smile.. 

Zoro groans. “Yeah. Was gonna’ barf. Needed to walk it off.” 

“And what was your plan for getting back , Marimo? Your sense of direction isn’t exactly reliable,” Sanji goads, grinning so broad it looks like it hurts. Zoro doesn’t like the idea, suddenly, of Sanji out here alone and high, thinking about his dead mom. 

“Fuck you,” Zoro says back, rote. “Curly-brow. Shitty-nurse.” 

“Asshole,” Sanji says back, not without fondness. 

Even for all the time they’ve sailed together, that one inebriated conversation told Zoro more about Sanji than months of living with and fighting alongside him did. It smarts, somehow. Sanji had brothers that hurt him, had a mom that he loved, a mom that died. Zoro doesn’t remember any brothers on the floating hospital, just the old man with the peg leg and mustache. Is that Sanji’s father? Must be, right? 

It bothers him how little he knows about Sanji. 

After leaving the sky island, Zoro can’t stop himself from watching him—can’t shake the awareness of him and what he’s doing. He’s still gross with Nami and Robin, by Zoro’s standards, but objectively he can tell that things have changed between them. He actually has conversations with them. Even more than that, he has conversations with them where he doesn’t drool all over himself.

The more Zoro watches, the more he wants to watch. Sanji has such strong relationships with everyone on the crew—much more than Zoro. It’s strange, really. Zoro would die for any of them. He’d do it in a heartbeat. But he doesn’t spend hours talking philosophy with Robin, doesn’t help Nami with the cooking anytime it’s her turn, doesn’t spend hours working with Chopper everyday, doesn’t collect random parts and bobbles for Usopp to tinker with just because he can. 

Sanji is thoughtful. Sanji is kind. Sanji cares for them in all these little, non-obvious ways that Zoro only starts to see when he knows to look for it. 

Sanji hounds Zoro about hydration—is always stalking him with a glare and a glass of water and a shrill lecture about taking care of himself. He keeps the men’s cabin clean(ish), even though no one asks him to and even though this means touching Zoro and Luffy’s dirty laundry. And Zoro never runs out of condoms, even though he always forgets to buy them when they make port. 

It makes his chest tight. It makes him remember Sanji waking up after surgery on Drum Island, pale and shivering. Makes him think about that night in Alabasta, that night that Luffy pulled Sanji into bed. Luffy, saying you need to rest, too. Sanji, stubborn and soft: I’m okay. 

In the aftermath of their escape from Enies Lobby, the night after Merry’s funeral, Zoro is supposed to be sleeping, but isn’t. No one blinks when Zoro crawls into bed next to Luffy and just… holds him. Carefully. Luffy goes easily—always does—and is using him as a pillow, bandages scratchy against his bare skin, drool going tacky on his shirt. He closes his eyes because there’s no reason to keep them open, not with everyone asleep, but is still awake when Robin gets up and quietly goes about putting the kettle on the stove. 

He’s still awake when Sanji gets up, too, and offers quietly, “Let me. Go have a seat.” 

The kettle just starts to audibly steam when the burner clicks off. Zoro hears him rummaging around, getting down mugs carefully, tearing open a couple of tea bags, the soft clinking of spoons. 

“How are you feeling?” Sanji asks. 

Robin replies, just as quietly, “Strange.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sanji says. 

A small huff of a laugh. “I’m glad to be here.” A long pause. “I’m glad to be in your care, Sanji-san.” 

Zoro can practically hear him shrug. “It’s what I’m here for.” 

“It’s so much more than that, isn’t it?” Robin muses. 

He doesn’t pay attention to the rest of their conversation. It isn’t his business. But he holds Luffy just a bit closer and thinks, I get it. Yeah.

And then it all goes to shit.

Zoro wakes up. He’s somewhat surprised by this turn of events. Although he hadn’t exactly wanted to die, it had seemed kind of inevitable. The choice was obvious: his head for Luffy’s. There was never any other option. 

Certainly not Sanji— never Sanji. 

“Tell the others that I’m sorry. Chopper will be a good doctor,” Sanji had said. His suit was torn, there was blood on his face. He was standing like his ribs were hurting, hunched inward, struggling with a lighter. He was smiling. He was fucking smiling. 

Sanji had only ever asked one thing of Luffy—one real thing. 

Zoro hit him; one strong blow to the broken ribs did it . Sanji could barely stand. He felt Sanji go limp in his arms, his face a rictus of pain and fury, beautiful even having had a building dropped on him. Beautiful. So fucking beautiful. 

Fuck, Zoro was sorry. 

But he also wasn’t— isn’t. He wakes up in more pain than he’s ever felt in his entire life. It takes all of the energy he has to even cling to consciousness; all his body wants to do is sleep. He hurts. He hurts down to his teeth. Every heartbeat is a sharp bolt of pain through every part of him and even opening his eyes is a monumental effort, but one he needs to make. 

Sanji is the first thing he sees. His back is facing towards him and he’s fiddling with an IV, notebook in hand, muttering to himself. He’s not wearing a suit, just that blue hoodie that makes Zoro want to touch him even more than usual, and he has bandages wrapped around his head. Zoro doesn’t remember him taking a head wound. 

He tries to speak but his throat is shredded raw and all that comes out is a weak croaking sound. Shit, he must have really screamed. 

Sanji whips around, eyes wide and blue. “Fuck, you scared me, you asshole,” he says. He hands him a cup of water but Zoro can’t sit up. Sanji helps him drink, leveraging him upright with gentle hands, and asks, “Rate your pain for me—one to ten.” 

“Twenty,” Zoro rasps. “Luffy?” 

Sanji sits down in a chair Zoro hadn’t noticed. He doesn’t know where they are on account of not really being able to sit up. He thinks they’re still at Thriller Bark, at least. The air smells the same—like decay and heavy fog. He thinks he can hear a party in the distance—whooping and music. Luffy, alive.

“He’s fine,” Sanji says in an odd tone. “Literally, completely fine.” A pause. “It’s been days. We didn’t know if you would wake up.” 

“Oh.” Zoro says. What else is there to say? Zoro wasn’t sure he’d wake up, either. He was prepared to die. He’d do it again in a heartbeat. 

“You don’t do that again, you understand?” Zoro turns his head as fast as he can—admittedly, not that fast, and the world still spins with the effort—and registers with horror that Sanji is crying. Fat tear tracks drip down his face, his eyes shiny and full. He makes no move to wipe them away. “I can’t…” he doesn’t finish. His hands, balled into fists and resting on his thighs, are shaking, his shoulders hunched and quivering. Tears drip off of his chin. 

“I can’t promise you that,” Zoro says. Sanji lets out a stifled little sob of a sound and ducks his head, his hair falling to hide his face. Zoro has never in his whole life felt more like garbage.

He tries, “Sanji, I can’t. I’m always going to put myself in front of you and Luffy and everyone else in this crew, because that’s my job.” He wants to reach out, wants to take one of Sanji’s precious hands into his own and hold it. He can’t. He doesn’t have the strength. He doesn’t have the right. 

“What can you promise me?” Sanji whispers. It’s a plea as much as it is an indictment. It hurts. Fuck, it hurts.

“I can promise you that it’s worth it. It’ll always be worth it, for me. Just like it’s worth it for you.” They’d both stood in front of Kuma, after all. They’d both offered their heads for their Captain’s. “Because…” Zoro swallows. He’s never been a coward; he won’t start now. “Because you’re worth it,” he tells him. 

Sanji’s head snaps up. His eyes are red and wet. Tears drip off his chin in a steady stream, keeping time with the drip of Zoro’s IV. He’s an ugly crier—he’s fucking beautiful. 

“Tell me you know you’re worth it,” Zoro pleads.

“You fucking hypocrite,” Sanji sobs. “You can’t just say that to people. They’ll get the wrong idea.” 

“What wrong idea?” That I love you? He does. That I hate you? That too. That I’d die for you? Of course. Obviously. 

Sanji snorts. He’s full of mucus from crying—it’s a fucking gross sound. Zoro still wants to kiss him, grossness and all. 

“Gee, Zoro, it sounds romantic,” He says it like it’s absurd. 

“And if it is?” 

Sanji uses sleeve-covered hands to swipe at his cheeks, drying them. His eyes still shine. He stares at Zoro like he’s speaking a different fucking language—one of Robin’s ancient ones that no one left alive speaks anymore. 

“You’re with Luffy,” Sanji says, slowly, like Zoro is stupid. “You can’t—are you kidding me right now?” His voice climbs into that hysterical pitch that Zoro hates— loves— so much, “You nearly died, you’re in a relationship with Luffy, and you’re telling me you, what, like me?” He giggles, high and baffled. 

Zoro puts as much force into his voice as he can, as wrecked as it is. He says, “I’m telling you that I love you , you fucking idiot.” Sanji goes silent and freezes, like he’s been hit over the head. Like he’s afraid. Zoro adds, hastily, “And that you should talk to Luffy, also.” He loves you too. Can’t you see it? 

Sanji stares at him, blank and afraid, for such a long time that Zoro starts to squirm. Or, he would, if he had full motor control. He doesn’t. He just lies there and hurts. 

“I can’t,” Sanji says, and Zoro’s heart hits the floor. He sounds as wrecked as Zoro feels. He closes his eyes and rubs at the line of bandages wrapped around his head. Zoro wonders what happened. Zoro wonders if he shouldn’t have said anything at all. Zoro wonders who taught Sanji that being loved was something to fear. 

“Zoro, putting everything aside—the fact that I’m not gay, that you’re the firstmate and I’m the medic, shit, just… everything—I can’t be with someone that I know is going to break my heart.”

His eyes shine when he looks back at Zoro, jaw set. He looks tired. Zoro hates himself, for that. For a lot more than that. 

“I can’t,” Sanji repeats. “I’ll… I’ll send Luffy in.” 

And before Zoro can protest, he’s gone.

Zoro doesn’t have a lot of regrets. The few he does have, he keeps close to his chest. He sent Kuina back to the dojo for real swords that night—that’s first. He confessed to Sanji before Sanji was ready to hear it—when it was maybe even cruel to tell him—that’s second.

That he didn’t tell Luffy he loved him back before Kuma found them. 

That Luffy’s brother died while Zoro was fighting fucking monkeys. 

Yeah, he’s got regrets. 

He thinks of Luffy every day and misses him more than he misses his eye, more than he would miss a limb. He thinks of Sanji almost as often; only “almost” because it fucking hurts to think about the doctor knowing that they were separated on terrible terms. They’d barely talked since Zoro had nearly died, since he’d told him he loved him like an idiot, since Sanji had reiterated that he’s straight and even if he weren’t—and Zoro has long had his suspicions about that —that he would never be with Zoro. 

I can’t be with someone that I know is going to break my heart. 

He regrets that he didn’t fucking apologize. 

“Of course he turned you down, you numbskull,” Perona tsks. She blows delicately on her neon-pink nails. She’s immobilized Zoro with her stupid fucking ghosts and painted his nails black. He feels like dirt. He feels lower than dirt. He only has her to blame for part of it.

“All you’ve done since you two met is practically die in front of him, over and over again,” she points out. Zoro is consistently surprised that she can roll her eyes as much as she does with those big fake eyelashes. They’re as long as her fingers—they’ve got to be heavy. 

“We’re fucking pirates,” Zoro retorts. It sounds like a weak objection to his own ears. 

“Uh, you are. He was a doctor first, right? They take oaths, ya’ know. ‘Do no harm’ and stuff. You,” she points at him with her claw-like acrylics, “just shrug when he says your reckless dipshit-ery is bullshit. Guy’s got self-preservation.” 

“No, he doesn’t.” 

Sanji really, really doesn’t. 

“Ugh, boys,” Perona moans. 

“Thanks,” Zoro says, dry. 

Unphased, she chirps, “You’re welcome.” 

It’s not the first time they talk about Sanji or Luffy—it’s not the last, either. 

When Zoro sees Sanji again, two years older and stronger, he feels like he’s been run through by another one of Perona’s ghosts. He even checks over his shoulder, just to be sure. It’s just that Sanji looks so different. He’s struck momentarily speechless—yes, by his beauty, because he’s still so fucking striking. But also by his own fear; what if Zoro doesn’t know him anymore? 

Sanji is taller than he was—they both are—and wider in the shoulders. He’s not a string bean anymore but instead someone with visible muscle. Gone is the impression that he’s just a kid wearing his dad’s old suits; this suit fits him like a glove and he looks even more handsome for it, despite the fact that he’s got the dumbest fucking facial hair imaginable. Seriously, Zoro’s gonna’ come at that thing with a razor in the doc’s sleep. It’s awful. 

He grins at Zoro and it’s fond yet wicked. Sanji, Sanji, Sanji, his heart pounds. 

“Doc,” he says. He expects Sanji to explode—he always has, when Zoro called him that. For the last time, he hears in Sanji’s voice, I’m a medic. He imagines falling into step with him, into one of their squabbling fights that does little but make his blood sing with the thrill of it. He wants it. Wants him. 

But Sanji doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, his smile just grows. 

“Damn right,” he calls back. With his hands in his pockets, his elbows bent, a cigarette dangling from his lips, he almost looks cool. “That’s Dr. Blackleg to you, Marimo.” 

Zoro doesn’t know what to say. He wants him, fiercely. Fuck, does he still want him. 

The smile drops off of Sanji’s face and he sighs. Zoro has the ridiculous urge to draw his swords and fight him so that they don’t have to do this. But he’s not a coward—two years hasn’t changed that. A lifetime wouldn’t change that. 

“So, we should probably talk,” Sanji says. If it’s any consolation, he looks just as uncomfortable as Zoro does. 

“We should wait for Luffy,” Zoro interrupts. It’s not just to stall—he means it. Luffy loves Sanji, too. Has loved him longer than Zoro has; maybe even loved him at first sight. 

If Sanji looks different, Luffy looks like an entirely different person. The sight of him knocks Zoro clean off his metaphorical feet. His Captain. 

For one, his tits aren’t there anymore, and a massive x-shaped burn scar takes up most of his chest and a good deal of his upper abdominals, too. He’s packed on muscle to an extent Zoro wouldn’t have believed possible, and his voice has deepened a noticeable amount. He looks great— Zoro tells him so. 

“You look great,” he says, even as they’re busy making a run for Sunny. 

Luffy, beaming, stops running from the oncoming mob, grabs Zoro by the open neck of his robe, and plants the wettest kiss imaginable on his unprepared lips. Smiling so wide it’s a wonder Luffy can even speak, he says, “Zoro looks good, too.” 

“C’mon, morons!” Sanji shouts, “You can suck face later!” 

It’s good to see two years haven’t changed this about Sanji: he’s fucking dramatic. The mob that’s chasing them is still way behind—Zoro can kiss his captain if he fucking wants. Just to prove it, he snags Luffy by the waist and plants another one on him. 

Sanji groans like the dramatic bitch that he is—Zoro loves him. Zoro loves them. They take off running again, all three of them, to the sound of Luffy’s cackling laughter. 

The necessary conversation is derailed by reunions with the others and then again by Sanji demanding to get updated physicals on each of them. When the only crewmates that are left are Luffy and Zoro—and fuck if Sanji didn’t practically have a coronary over all of Franky’s new enhancements—Zoro barges his way into the exam room, banishes Chopper, and plants himself in front of the door. 

Luffy and Sanji barely notice, as engrossed in conversation as they are. 

“Here I was all excited to offer it to you,” Sanji is saying. His eyes crinkle at the corners with a wry half-smile. “No problems? You’re liking it?” 

Luffy swings his legs back and forth off the ground, leaning back onto his elbows on the exam table. Zoro tries not to stare at his thighs. 

“‘S great!” Luffy boasts. And then, grinning, flexes an arm and gets Zoro at half-mast without even trying. “I got sooo much bigger.”

“What’s great?” Zoro asks, dumb with the need to reaquaint himself with every inch of Luffy’s body. 

“T!” Luffy chirps as Sanji says, “Testosterone.” 

“Oh. ‘S that what happened to your tits?” Zoro asks. 

Luffy laughs, unconcerned. “Nah, Law took care of those for me. Why, does Zoro miss ‘em?” he waggles his eyebrows. It’s so stupid—it’s so endearing. 

“No,” Zoro lies. “Shut up.” 

Sanji clears his throat, face pink. “So we should… talk, right? I know I’ve got a lot to apologize for—” 

“Apologize?” Luffy asks, cocking his head in the same way he’s always done. “For what?” 

Sanji looks at Zoro, furtive. “I never meant to get in between you two. I didn’t… I didn’t realize that I…” he sighs. “Look, my whole life, I thought I was one way, you know? And then, it turns out, I wasn’t. I really, really wasn’t. I’d been pining after you—both of you—and I didn’t even realize it. Couldn’t even confront it, really. I’m sorry for the way I treated you, Luffy, when I found out that you were trans. I’m sorry for coming between you and Zoro. And… I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.” 

Sanji steps closer to Luffy. He reaches out a hand, ghosting a touch ever so close to the burn scar marking Luffy’s torso in faded reds and purples. “I’m so sorry,” Sanji whispers. 

Zoro holds his breath as Luffy reaches out and cradles Sanji’s face so gently between his hands. Zoro knows how those palms feel—how warm, how rough, how soft despite their roughness. Sanji’s eyes flutter shut and open again. Zoro watches like a man once starved and now brought to a banquet. He barely even breathes. 

“Don’t apologize,” Luffy says, firm. Their Captain, their King, and he says, “I’m glad you weren’t there. I couldn’t have kept you safe. I would have lost you, too. All of you.” 

In the loaded silence that follows, Luffy brushes Sanji’s hair out of his face, exposing both curly brows and the naked vulnerability painted across his bare face. Luffy leans forward, unashamed and certain, and brushes a kiss between those brows. Sanji shivers between his hands. He looks at Luffy like he's the most brilliant, blinding light in the universe—like it hurts to look at it but it's almost worse to look away, to not have seen it at all. 

“Zoro?” Luffy prompts. 

“Yes, Captain?” 

The question coming doesn't matter. The only possible answer is anything, Zoro thinks. Anything I can give you and all the things I can’t, too. 

“You should kiss Sanji now, too.” 

Zoro feels a grin spread slowly and wholly involuntarily across his own face. Sanji leans into the press of Luffy’s forehead to his own like a man whose knees have just gone out. A quiet, desperate sound escapes him. Zoro needs to hear it again, needs to hear it closer, needs to crack open his ribcage and stuff himself full of it. 

Sanji whispers, "Why?" in a tone that is just as agonized as it is agonizing to hear.

"Because we love you, too," Luffy says back. 

The last time Zoro and Sanji talked—really talked, just them— was two years ago, back on Thriller Bark. Zoro had seen Sanji sob then, too.

Zoro is greedy. He wants all of Sanji to become as familiar as all of Luffy: wants to know Sanji’s tears like they're his own, know his hurts like they're written across his own body, know every covetous, private little piece of them. 

He steps up, taking his place at his Captain’s side, and kisses those tears off of Sanji’s face. 

Maybe he was always meant to end up here; the first-mate to the future Pirate King. After all, kings make their own rules and pirates get to be greedy. 

Surgery was once a spectator sport. 

Sanji remembers learning this from a book as a young child about to lose his mother, powerless in the face of a tragedy he could barely understand. 

As it turns out, he's not a very cooperative audience member. He has people to protect. And though they may very well break his heart by throwing themselves into the path of danger again and again, careless with their own lives in the name of their dreams, isn’t it better to have had something so good, so real, that it could break him like that rather than never having known it at all? 

The risk of a broken heart is worth the chance at a full one. This is his dream: to be the hands that keep the Pirate King and his crew aloft. 

Surgery may no longer be a spectator sport, but in caring for his crew, Sanji is never alone.