Zoro generally considered himself the best stocker in the world.
Not just at Sabaody Fresh Market. In the world.
He had evidence. Three times this month, customers had stopped to watch him work. One lady said she'd never seen anyone stack oranges like that. He told her it was all about the base layer and she nodded like he'd said something profound. He probably had.
It was 8:47 in the morning and he was in the produce section, building a very good pyramid of navel oranges. The trick was finding your flattest oranges first and placing them on the outside of the base ring so the whole structure had integrity. A lot of guys just threw oranges in a pile and called it stocking.
Those guys were not the World's Greatest Stocker.
He was lining up his second tier when he noticed the shoes first. They were nice shoes. Like, the kind of shoes that cost more than his rent. Dark brown leather with a pointed toe, not a scuff on them. Who bought produce in shoes like that?
Zoro straightened up. The guy was in a suit. A full suit, dark charcoal, with a tie the color of a good tangerine – which Zoro now knew more about than most people. He had blond hair that fell across one eye and a basket over his arm like he was going to a very fancy picnic. He was reading something on his phone and frowning at it.
Zoro had never seen anyone in a suit in the produce section. Early morning produce was mostly moms with the kid in the cart. Sometimes a retired guy who came every day for a banana. This was neither of those things.
"Excuse me." The guy looked up from his phone. He had one visible eye, very blue, and he aimed it at Zoro like it was a question. Zoro had one good eye, too, his right, which was how he noticed things like shoes first. "Do you have shallots?"
"They're next to the onions," Zoro said.
The guy looked at the empty space next to the onions. Then Zoro looked at it.
That bin had been full at 5am. He'd stocked it himself. Which meant it had emptied on his watch, which meant there was a gap in the produce section, which meant he was currently not the World's Greatest Stocker but some other lesser stocker who let bins go empty while he built orange pyramids.
"I'll check the back," Zoro said, already moving.
"It's fine," the guy said. "Don't worry about it."
Zoro stopped.
"Really," the guy said. He had a very calm voice for someone whose shallot situation was unresolved. "It's okay."
Zoro looked at the empty bin. Then at the guy. If the guy said it was okay, it was okay. "Okay.”
The guy nodded and adjusted the basket on his arm, like he was getting ready to move on. Zoro picked up one of his oranges and held it out. The guy looked at it. Then at Zoro.
"Because there are no shallots," Zoro said. “It’s one of the good ones. Flat on the bottom. Won’t roll.”
The guy looked at him for a second. Then something shifted in his face, not quite a smile but close, like a smile was thinking about happening. He took the orange. "Thank you," he said, and put it in his basket and walked away toward the international aisle.
Zoro watched him go.
His suit jacket fit him really well.
Zoro went back to his oranges and placed one very carefully on the second tier. Then he thought about the suit. People didn't wear a suit at eight in the morning to go buy shallots unless they had a place to be after. A place with other suits. He was probably some kind of businessman. Or a fashion model.
Zoro had seen fashion models on the covers of the magazines in aisle four. They wore suits and looked serious. They were always next to headlines like "The Only Suit You'll Ever Need."
He was definitely a fashion model.
Zoro thought about this through the rest of the produce section and the entirety of break. Luffy texted him a picture of their kitchen and said he found a dead plant under the sink, which Zoro didn't respond to because he was thinking.
He made up his mind sometime around 9:40 while facing the yogurt.
On his way out at ten, he stopped in aisle four. The magazines were organized by category: cooking, sports, cars, celebrity news, and then a long stretch of fashion ones with complicated French names he couldn't pronounce. He looked at the covers. Some of them had suits.
He picked up four.
They were $18.99 each.
He put two back. Put another one back. Stood there holding the last one. On the cover a guy in a white suit was leaning against a car with his arms crossed. He had a watch on that was probably also more than Zoro's rent.
Zoro did not make a lot of money stocking produce, even as the best in the world.
He bought the magazine.
It was a business expense, basically. So he knew customers better. Good customer service was almost as important as good stocking.
Zoro was on bananas when the suit came back.
Different suit this time, navy blue. Same basket. Same shoes, or different shoes that looked the same, Zoro wasn't an expert. Same blond hair falling across one eye.
Zoro had gone through the whole fashion magazine, page by page, including the cologne ads. The guy wasn't in it. It had been disappointing and also not worth $18.99.
He was back in produce though, which was something.
Zoro watched him move along the bins. He stopped at the ginger and picked up a knob of it and turned it over in his hand, checking it the way someone checked ginger if they knew what they were looking for in ginger.
"Hey," Zoro said.
The guy looked up.
"Don't touch your eyes."
The guy looked at the ginger. Then at Zoro. "I know how to handle ginger."
Something loosened in Zoro's chest. That was a relief. He'd touched his eye once after handling ginger and they'd swollen up so bad he couldn't see the expiration dates on the cheese and he'd had to go home at 8am, which was not the behavior of the World's Greatest Stocker.
"Good," Zoro said. "It would be bad if your eyes got puffy for the modeling."
The guy set the ginger down. "What modeling?"
"You're a fashion model," Zoro said. "I looked through the whole magazine, but didn’t see you. But I'm going to buy a different one next paycheck and check that one, too."
The guy was quiet for a second. He had an expression Zoro couldn't quite read, somewhere between amused and something else. "I'm not a model."
"Oh. Okay," Zoro said. It was a little disappointing. But at least he saved $18.99 from his next paycheck.
"I just opened a tea house. Downtown."
Zoro nodded like this made sense, which it almost did. He knew what tea was. He kept a box of it in the break room for when he had a sore throat, the kind with honey already in the bag so you didn't need to find a spoon. A tea house was new though. Was it a house made of tea? Was it a house full of tea? He wasn't sure how either of those would work structurally or commercially but the guy seemed serious.
The guy picked the ginger back up, put it in his basket, and turned to leave.
"Hey," Zoro called after him.
The guy glanced back.
"Wash your hands after."
"I will," the guy said. He had that almost-smile again, the one that was thinking about happening. Then he turned and walked toward the deli.
Zoro went back to his bananas.
He'd look up what a tea house was on his break.
Zoro was doing apples when the suit showed up again. Third day in a row.
Different suit this time, dark purple. Zoro was starting to wonder how many suits the guy owned. He owned seven black t-shirts and seven pairs of black jeans, one for each day of the week. He worked six of them. On the seventh day he did laundry.
The suit guy seemed to have a different system, which appeared to involve owning a very large number of suits.
"You're always in produce," the guy said, setting his basket down to look at the apples.
"I stock produce," Zoro said. "After I finish refrigeration."
"So you're not just a produce person. You contain multitudes."
Zoro wasn't sure what that meant. "I unload the truck first," he said. "Then refrigeration. Then produce."
"A whole routine," the guy said. "What time does this routine start?"
"Four."
The guy looked up from the apples. "In the morning?"
"Yes," Zoro said.
The guy looked at him for a second. Something shifted in his face. He picked up a Honeycrisp and turned it over, put it back, picked up a different one. "How long have you worked here?"
"Nineteen years," Zoro said. He took an apple out of the crate and found its spot on the display. "Two months and almost two weeks."
"Down to the weeks," the guy said. "I respect that level of commitment to an answer."
"I counted once," Zoro said. “Now I just remember.”
The guy nodded slowly like he was filing that away somewhere. He moved down the display, not really going anywhere, just moving. His basket had celery in it and what looked like a lemon.
"The tea house," Zoro said. "I looked it up."
The guy stopped. "Yeah?"
"It's not made of tea."
The guy looked at him for a second with an expression that started somewhere near confused and ended somewhere near delighted. "No, it's not."
"Or filled with tea."
"Also no."
Zoro nodded. That had been his two main theories and neither of them had been right, but at least now he knew. He placed another apple carefully into the display.
The guy lingered another moment, like he was going to say something else. Then he shifted his basket. "I'm Sanji, by the way," he said. “Since apparently we’re going to meet here often.”
"Zoro," Zoro said.
Sanji nodded. Then he walked away toward floral.
Zoro watched him go. He put an apple down in the wrong spot and had to move it.
It was his day off, which meant laundry.
Zoro used Gain detergent because he liked the idea that his clothes were advancing. Some people used Tide, which was fine, but tide was just the ocean going back and forth. And fish pooped in the ocean. Zoro didn’t want to wash his clothes in fish poop.
He sat in the laundromat on the plastic chair that was slightly shorter than the other plastic chairs and watched the TV on the wall. It was The Price Is Right. The host guy was wearing a suit. Zoro watched him for a minute. The suit was light gray. It reminded him that he'd missed Sanji's suit for the day.
Unless he went to the tea house. Then he'd know.
He thought about this while his clothes went around.
He walked home using his GPS. Some people said they didn't need GPS but those people hadn't ended up in the Walgreens parking lot on Goa twice trying to find the laundromat.
He put his laundry away in the correct drawers, which was a system he'd developed and maintained with great discipline. Black t-shirts in the top drawer. Black jeans in the second drawer. Everything else in the third drawer, which was mostly socks and his gym clothes.
Luffy wasn't home. Luffy was a firefighter, which Zoro had thought about being once. There was a written test though. Zoro didn't do well at written things, and hadn't since he was ten, when he fell out of a tree in Mihawk's vineyard and hit his head on the way down and spent four days in the hospital and came home with a sealed eye and scars and different in ways that took a while to understand. When they were kids and the other kids said mean things about it, Mihawk told him he was selectively competent, and since Mihawk knew everything, Zoro had believed him and still did. Besides, not everyone could be the World's Greatest Stocker. Luffy couldn't. Luffy once tried to stack a display of canned peaches at the store and it fell on a lady's cart. Then Luffy got kicked out of the store and wasn’t allowed to come back.
Zoro sat down on the couch with his phone and typed in the tea house. It was 1.4 miles away. He looked at the clock in the corner of his phone for a while, trying to count backwards from whatever time it opened to figure out if he should leave yet since he was walking. This took longer than it should have. He put his phone down. Picked it up again. Looked at the clock.
He decided to just go.
It was a good thing he left when he did because the GPS lady told him to turn on Shells Road and then immediately told him he was going the wrong way, which didn't make sense because she was the one who told him to turn on Shells Road to begin with. He told her that. She told him to make a U-turn. He made the U-turn because ultimately she had more information than he did, but he wanted it on record that she started it.
The tea house was in a row of old brick buildings downtown. The window had gold lettering on it. Inside he could see small tables with white tablecloths and little lamps on each one.
Zoro looked at his reflection in the window and tried to flatten his hair. It didn't flatten. It never flattened. He had green hair, which he liked. None of his friends had green hair. He'd been told it was because of gin-etics, which just meant he got it naturally, which meant it was his and nobody else's. He thought that was pretty good.
He went in. It smelled like tea and something baked. The ceiling was high and there was soft music playing that he didn't know the name of but sounded nice. A person with a neat apron seated him at a table by the window and gave him a menu card and asked if he'd like water and he said yes.
He craned his neck toward the back, searching for Sanji. He didn’t have to wait for long.
Sanji came out of a door carrying one of those tall tray things with three levels, the kind with little sandwiches on each tier. He moved between tables and set the tray down at a table with two older women who looked very pleased about it. He was wearing a brown suit. Brown jacket, brown trousers, lighter brown shirt, brown tie a shade darker.
He really should have been a fashion model.
Sanji turned and saw him. He looked surprised. He crossed the room and stopped at Zoro's table. "I didn't know you liked tea."
"I don't have an opinion on tea," Zoro said. "I wanted to see your suit."
Something moved across Sanji's face. It wasn't quite the almost-smile. It was something adjacent to it, a little warmer, gone quickly. "Does it meet your standards?"
"It's a very nice suit," Zoro said. "You look good in it."
He meant it the same way he meant everything – he didn’t say what he didn’t mean.
A little color came up in Sanji's face. "Can I get you something?"
Zoro picked up the menu card. It was small and the font was the fancy kind that took him longer to work out. He went through it carefully, moving his lips a little on the harder words. Mihawk said only fools rushed and Zoro was not a fool, and wait-people usually got impatient with him but when he glanced up Sanji was still standing there with a faint smile on his face that was not impatience.
He found one near the bottom that sounded like it was rooting for him. "This one," he said, and pointed to it.
"Good choice," Sanji said, and took the card back. "Should I bring out your tea at the same time?"
"Sure," Zoro said.
Sanji nodded and went back toward the kitchen.
Zoro looked around the room. There were framed things on the walls, old maps and botanical drawings of plants he didn't know the names of. The tablecloth was very white and ironed flat. The little lamp on his table had a cream shade.
He wondered how much tea would actually fit in here if it was filled with tea. It would have to come through the windows probably. He wasn't sure that was sanitary. Also it wasn't technically a house, it was in a strip of stores, so maybe it should be called a tea store. He'd have to ask Sanji about that sometime.
Sanji came back in about ten minutes with a small plate of tiny sandwiches without crusts and a pot of tea and a cup on a saucer. He didn’t know what the sandwiches were, but they smelled very good and were arranged carefully.
"I have to get back," Sanji said. "But I hope I'll see you tomorrow at the store."
"I'm there six days a week," Zoro said. "Four to ten. Today's my day off so I did laundry."
Sanji had that smile again, the warm one. It stayed a little longer this time before he tucked it away. "I'll see you tomorrow, then," he said, and went back to work.
Zoro watched him go, then looked at his plate. He ate one of the small sandwiches. It was really good. Better than anything he'd ever microwaved, and he'd microwaved some pretty good things. He'd have to come back.
Potatoes vexed him.
Every other produce item stacked. Oranges had the flat base layer. Apples went by color. Bananas hung or stacked depending on the bunch. Potatoes did what they wanted. They were all different sizes and shapes and didn't stack so much as lean against each other hoping for the best. Some of them had little eye things growing out of them that had to come off before they went out, which Zoro did with his work gloves on because he'd made the mistake of doing it without gloves once and he didn't know what was in those eye things but he wasn't taking chances.
He was working on a particularly difficult potato when Sanji came in.
"Morning," Sanji said.
Zoro's whole morning got better. He set the potato down. Sanji was in a gray suit today, light gray, with a white shirt and a dark tie. "You look better in a light gray suit than that guy on The Price Is Right,” he said.
Sanji stopped. The almost-smile came up and so did a little color in his face. "Thank you," he said. "I think."
He shifted the basket on his arm and moved to the potatoes, looking them over. "Are you doing anything after work?" he asked after a moment.
"Going home," Zoro said.
Sanji nodded once, a small pause in it. "Would you want to get a drink tonight? The tea house closes at six. I could meet you somewhere by seven."
Zoro took out his phone. He opened his calendar and scrolled through it carefully. He kept a calendar because sometimes he had things he didn't remember having, like dentist appointments or dinner with Mihawk and Perona. This had happened enough times that the calendar was now mandatory. Tonight was empty. He pressed the add button and typed carefully: DRINK WITH SANJI.
He looked up. "What are we drinking?"
"We could go to Franky's," Sanji said.
Zoro looked back down at his phone. Franky's was a place, not a drink. He added: BUT DON'T KNOW WHAT DRINK YET. AT FRANKYS.
He put his phone away. "Okay.”
Sanji smiled, a real one this time, not the almost-kind. Then he picked up a potato, turned it over once, and put it in his basket before walking off.
Zoro looked down at his remaining potatoes. He picked up the difficult one from earlier and found the spot it had been refusing to sit in and put it there.
It fit.
Zoro vacuumed first, then did the bathroom.
The bathroom had to be done at least once a week. This was not negotiable. Luffy's brother Sabo came over sometimes and when the bathroom wasn't clean he got a look on his face like he smelled something bad, and Zoro didn't like to think that he and Luffy had an apartment that smelled bad. He did different chores on different days to keep things exciting. Today was vacuum and bathroom day. Yesterday had been kitchen day. Tomorrow would be something else.
The only room he did not clean was Luffy's. He had tried once and something had jumped out at him from under a cup under the bed. He didn't know what it was. He didn't want to know what it was. He had nightmares for a week and that was the end of that arrangement.
After the chores he showered so he didn't smell like cleaning products and put back on his black t-shirt and black jeans. He looked in the mirror and pushed his hair down. It went back up. He pushed it down again. It did its own thing regardless of what he wanted. His three earrings shifted in his ear when he turned his head. He wore three because three was his favorite number. He had three people in his family, Mihawk and Perona and him. Luffy had two brothers which made him part of a three. Mihawk had also told him when things were hard to try three times by himself first, because sometimes he could get it by the third try, and he felt proud of himself when he did.
He watched TV for a while and looked through his fashion magazine. Sanji still wasn't in it, but there was an article about what his gym wasn't telling him. He read it carefully. It was about specific cable exercises he wasn't doing. He didn't like that his gym had been keeping secrets from him. Mihawk said if you couldn't be truthful about something you shouldn't be doing it, and his gym had apparently been doing cable crossovers behind his back for who knows how long.
He left at six to make sure he had enough time. He checked his phone before he locked the door. DRINK WITH SANJI. BUT DON'T KNOW WHAT DRINK YET. AT FRANKYS. It was still there. He closed his calendar and left.
The GPS lady told him to turn around twice. He turned around twice. He still didn't understand her reasoning on the first one but he made it to Franky's with a few minutes to spare.
Sanji was already outside waiting, still in the gray suit. Zoro's face smiled before he thought about making it smile.
Franky's had a shipwright theme, which meant there were big wooden beams across the ceiling and old nautical tools on the walls and a bar top that looked like the side of a boat. It was loud inside. They got a tall table near the window with two bar stools.
The drinks menu was on a chalkboard behind the bar. It was very long. Zoro looked at it for a while. There were a lot of choices, which was maybe why Sanji hadn't known what they were going to drink when he asked. That made sense now.
A server came by. Sanji looked at Zoro, indicating for him to order first. Zoro looked back at the chalkboard. There was a local one near the top called Steadfast. He liked that. He wanted a beer he could count on.
Sanji ordered a Barrio Blonde. Zoro looked at him. Sanji had blond hair. That made sense. Zoro might have ordered a Green if they had a Green, which he'd found out they only had in early March.
The server left. Sanji took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his stool and rolled up one sleeve and then the other. Then he leaned his elbows on the table. "So, what did you get up to after work?"
Zoro told him about the vacuuming and the bathroom situation and why the bathroom had a weekly non-negotiable status. Then he told him about the history channel show about swords, which had been very good and also confirmed several things he already believed. Then he told him about the gym article.
"It had been keeping secrets," Zoro said. "About cable crossovers. I don't know for how long."
Sanji raised an eyebrow. "I hope you reported them."
"Not yet," Zoro said, glad that Sanji understood the severity. "But Mihawk says people who can't be honest with you don't deserve your time."
"Mihawk?"
"My dad," Zoro said. "My second dad. My first dad died when I was little and then Mihawk took me in." He thought about how to explain it. "Perona likes to say he found me in a field but that's not true. It was a vineyard. And I'd eaten a row of grapes before he got there."
"A whole row?" Sanji said.
"I was hungry," Zoro said. "Do you have a dad? And a sister?"
"Surprisingly enough, I have a second dad, too,” Sanji said. “Zeff. He took me in when I was ten. Taught me how to cook." He was quiet for a moment in the way someone got quiet when they were thinking about something. "I also have a sister. We still keep in touch."
Zoro felt something settle comfortably in his chest. "What's your second dad like?"
Sanji thought about it for a second. "Loud. Opinionated. Best cook I've ever known, not that I'd tell him that. Yours?"
"He knows everything," Zoro said. "Which is good because sometimes I don't."
Sanji looked at him for a moment. Something in his face shifted, quiet and warm. Then their drinks came and Zoro's was cold and he took a sip. It was a good beer. He'd made a good choice.
Sanji picked up his beer. "How does someone end up stocking produce at four in the morning?"
"I needed a job after high school,” Zoro said. “Sabaody was hiring. I started out collecting carts and bagging. After a few years they moved me to stocking."
"You prefer it?"
"I'm the best at it," Zoro said.
"The best stocker?"
"In the world," Zoro said.
Sanji was quiet for a long second. "You know, I believe you," he said, like it wasn't about the stocking at all.
"What about you?” Zoro said. "Why did you open the tea house? Though, I think maybe you should change it to a tea store, because it’s not in a house, it’s in a store.”
A smile came up, an amused one. "I'll take it under advisement." Sanji tilted his head a little. "You're not like anyone I've met before."
Zoro thought about this. "I have green hair," he said. "That's probably it."
"That explains it," Sanji said, and his gaze was doing something that Zoro didn't have a name for. He leaned back on his stool. "I always wanted to cook. Zeff taught me the basics but I figured out the rest myself. I was working in restaurants for a long time." He paused. "I wanted something that was mine. Somewhere people could come and eat food I made and just…" He looked for the word. "Sit. Take their time. Not feel rushed."
Zoro nodded. "The little sandwiches were good. I would get them again.”
"I'm glad you liked them," Sanji said. "I made yours."
Zoro looked at him. He hadn't known that. He thought about it for a second, that Sanji had made the things on his plate and put them there carefully, and felt his whole chest go up like a filling balloon. “Oh.”
Sanji smiled again, the real one. "I'm going to keep making them for you if you keep coming in."
Zoro nodded. That seemed like a good arrangement. “I’m going to bring Luffy some time,” Zoro told him. "He likes food. We go to the Golden Buffet once a month with his brothers and Luffy eats the whole buffet."
“The whole buffet?"
"They've asked us not to come back twice," Zoro said. "But they always let us back in."
Sanji's face did something that was both horrified and interested at the same time. Zoro felt this was the correct reaction to Luffy at a buffet.
Sanji picked up his beer and found it empty. He caught the server's eye and held up two fingers. Zoro looked at his own glass. Also empty. That had gone fast.
"What do you do for fun?" Sanji asked.
Zoro thought about it carefully. "I go to the gym," he said. Then he thought about the article. "Though I'm reconsidering that right now."
Sanji pressed his lips together like he was keeping something in. "Because of the secrets."
"Because of the secrets," Zoro confirmed. "But I'll probably keep going. I go three days a week. Lifting weights is good because it's always hard and then you get better and then it's hard again in a different way. I like being challenged."
"Is that right?" Sanji said, like he was filing that away somewhere.
The server came back with two fresh glasses. Zoro waited until they were set down before he continued.
"That's why I try to read a book a week, too. The ones without pictures." He said this the way he said most things, which was just as a fact. But it was a fact he was proud of and he felt Sanji could probably tell.
Sanji leaned forward on his elbows. "What are you reading right now?"
"Charlotte's Web," Zoro said. "It's about a pig and a spider. The spider writes on her web to help the pig.”
"Is it your first time reading it?"
"Third," Zoro said.
Sanji looked at him the way he'd looked at the orange that first day, like he was still working something out. "Must be a good book."
“It is.”
"I read cooking magazines mostly. And cookbooks." Sanji tapped his finger against his glass. “Sometimes I’ll pick up a romantic thriller. I like a story where two people find each other by accident and neither of them wants to walk away."
Zoro nodded. "Charlotte's Web is kind of like that. The spider didn't have to help the pig. She just did."
"That's a good way to put it," Sanji said. He leaned forward a little more. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," Zoro said.
"Is this a date?"
Zoro thought about this carefully. He had DRINK WITH SANJI in his calendar. He was at a bar with Sanji. Sanji had asked him to come. "I think so," he said. "I put it in my phone."
"Good," Sanji said. "I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."
“In Charlotte’s Web or your romance?”
Sanji blinked. Then something broke open in his face and he laughed. "Both," he said. "If you're interested."
"Maybe after Charlotte's Web," Zoro said. "I like to finish what I start. I'm on page forty-two, so you can catch up."
"I'd better get reading," Sanji said, and looked at him over the rim of his glass. "You're easy to talk to, you know that?"
Zoro considered this. Most people didn't say that to him. Usually they got a look on their face partway through a conversation. "Luffy says that," he said. "And Mihawk. But Mihawk doesn't talk much so I'm not sure it counts."
“Most people don’t say what they mean, or they hide things or put on a show,” Sanji said. "You don't do that."
Zoro frowned. “Why would I say what I don’t mean?”
“Yeah, why would you?” Sanji seemed amused by something, but it wasn’t directed at Zoro. “It’s honestly refreshing.”
“I hope you're honest,” Zoro said sincerely. “Because I’d like you to deserve my time.”
Sanji's mouth curved. “I’ll do my best.”
Time passed the way good things did, which was faster than Zoro would have liked but not so fast he couldn't keep up.
He and Sanji got together regularly. Sometimes at Franky's, sometimes at the tea house after it closed, sometimes just walking around because Sanji said he liked to walk after a long day, which Zoro understood. He also liked to walk. He just needed the GPS lady to tell him where he'd ended up afterward.
Sanji liked to say things sometimes that didn't make sense. Like last week when Zoro mentioned he'd been having trouble sleeping and Sanji said he could think of a few ways to tire him out. Zoro had asked which ones and Sanji looked at him for a long second and then said he'd tell him later, which he never did, so Zoro was still waiting.
He was a good guy, though. The best guy Zoro had spent time with, probably. And he never got that expression on his face, the one that showed up on most people, somewhere between confused and finished. He never made Zoro feel like he was taking too long, even when Zoro had to circle back to something three times before it made sense. Sanji just listened. And then when Zoro mentioned he had strong hands from stocking, he said that was very useful information and then took a long sip of his drink.
Zoro was also starting to think about things. Kissing things, mostly. But also other things. Things he'd seen on the internet that made his face hot and other parts of him interested in a way that was hard to ignore when Sanji sat close to him at the bar and smelled good.
Mihawk had given him a talk a long time ago. He sat Zoro down and explained what sex meant to some people and not others and that Zoro would need to make his own decisions about it, but that Mihawk would always be available if he needed to talk. Then Mihawk produced a banana and a condom and explained that the banana was standing in for Zoro's penis for the purposes of the demonstration.
This became a whole thing. The banana was the wrong shape and the wrong size and the wrong color, which Zoro pointed out, and Mihawk agreed on all counts but said it was the closest available option. Eventually Mihawk handed him the box and told him to practice until he could do it without tearing one and without having to think about it.
Zoro figured out on his own that it worked better when he was hard. He also figured out he wasn't as big as a banana, which he felt was important information Mihawk could have led with.
He was standing in the pharmacy section now, after his shift, still in his apron because he forgot to take it off. The condoms were behind a locked case with fake glass on the front. There were a lot of them. Different kinds, different textures, different sizes. Some of them had things on them. One box said ribbed, which he couldn’t figure out what it meant. One box glowed in the dark. He looked at those for a long time. That sounded like fun.
The problem was nothing on any of the boxes said anything about bananas or measurements or comparisons to other things he had a reference point for. He stood there for a while trying to work it out. Then he went to the pharmacy counter.
The lady behind it got very red when he explained what he needed to know. She excused herself and came back with a guy in a white coat who looked very professional and came around from behind the counter to unlock the condom case. He took Zoro's question seriously, which Zoro appreciated. He explained the different types and that the ones without a size specification were the ones Zoro would want, which covered a standard range. It meant he could get the glow in the dark ones.
He had a date with Sanji tonight. He'd been thinking about bringing sex up, to find out if Sanji was thinking about it, too. Mihawk said the only way to know what someone was thinking was to ask them, because assuming was just guessing and he could be wrong.
Zoro was not a guesser. If Sanji said yes, Zoro already had the condoms. If Sanji said no, Zoro had the condoms anyway and could play with them himself.
He took his apron off in the parking lot and put it in his bag and got out his phone. The GPS lady told him to turn around before he'd even started walking.
They were at Franky's on a Thursday, which was in his calendar. All their dates were in his calendar. They made the next one at the end of every date, and Zoro put it in before they left so he wouldn't forget. He'd shown Sanji the month view once, and Sanji had gone quiet looking at it, at all the days with his name on them, and then said he liked that, in the voice he used when he meant something more than the words.
Sanji was telling him about his day. A bridal party had come in, six women, and they'd stayed for two hours and ordered everything on the menu twice. Zoro had learned over the past weeks that most of Sanji's customers were either tourists who were antique shopping in the historic district or bridal parties who were bridal shopping. Apparently bridaling was very hard and required a lot of little sandwiches.
When Sanji finished, Zoro put his glass down. "Do you want to have sex with me?"
Sanji choked on his beer. It was a real choke, the kind that involved coughing and going very red and his eyes watering. Zoro leaned forward, concerned, but Sanji held up one finger, which Zoro understood to mean wait. So he waited. Sanji coughed for a while. Then he drank approximately half his beer. Then he set the glass down carefully and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
His face went back to its regular color mostly, except for the pink that stayed on his cheeks. He looked at Zoro for a long moment. Then he smiled, soft, with a small snort through his nose. "You make my days better just by being in them, you know that?"
"No, but now I do." Zoro thought Sanji probably made his days better, too, in the same way a good beer and a history channel show about swords made things better, except more than that. More than both of those things combined, probably. He was still waiting for the answer to his question though. He wondered if this was like the tiring him out thing, which he was also still waiting on.
Sanji's smile went soft in a different way. His voice came down a little. "Yeah," he said. "I'd like to have sex with you."
Zoro perked up. "Great. We'll have to do that sometime." He picked up his beer. "I started the romantic thriller you recommended."
It had taken him a while to get it. The used bookstore on Syrup Street didn't have it, which he'd found out after walking there, which had taken longer than it should have because the GPS lady had opinions about Syrup Street. He'd ordered it used online after that and it took twenty-seven days to arrive, which he'd tracked carefully. When it showed up in the mailbox he'd put it directly on his nightstand so he knew where it was. But he’d already started another book, so he had to finish that one first and it took him more than a week but sometimes that happened.
"I'm on page twelve," Zoro told Sanji. "It's harder than my other books."
Sanji sat with that for a second, something moving across his face that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite something else. Then he picked up his beer. "A lot of books are harder than what you usually read," he said. "Keep going. It's worth it."
"I will," Zoro said. "I like being challenged. And if I get stuck on something after three tries you could help me figure it out. Since you've already read it."
Sanji looked at him. "Three tries?"
"Sometimes I get it by the third time," Zoro said. "But if I don't, I know to ask for help."
Sanji set his glass down. "I'd be happy to help if you get stuck."
Zoro smiled. He’d been right about Sanji from the start. Sanji was a good guy.
At the end of the night Zoro took out his phone to put in their next date like always. He found the day he wanted and turned his phone around to show Sanji. “Is this day okay?”
Sanji took the phone. He looked at the date. Then he looked at what Zoro had typed.
SEX WITH SANJI.
Zoro had picked the day before he did his laundry. Everything he’d seen on the internet showed it got messy and he didn't want the stains to set if he left it too long.
Sanji stared at him for a long moment. Something was happening in his face that involved several things at once. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and took out his own phone and opened his calendar and typed something in. He turned it around.
It said: dinner with Zoro with a small note underneath that said: stay over.
"Does that work?" Sanji asked.
Zoro looked at it. Dinner and staying over both sounded good. He had the next day off. The laundry could handle both. "Yeah," he said. He took his phone back and added DINNER WITH SANJI in front of the other part. Then he showed Sanji.
Sanji looked at it. The something that had been happening in his face settled into the real smile. "It's a date."
Zoro put his phone away. It had been a long time since he'd had a real sleepover. Luffy didn't count because he had his own room.
Sanji came into produce while Zoro was on bananas, which he didn't love, but they were better than potatoes.
"Morning," Sanji said. He had a different suit on, dark green, which Zoro hadn't seen before.
"I like that suit," Zoro said.
A little color came up in Sanji's face. "Thank you."
Zoro went back to the bananas. He picked up a bunch and found their spot on the display. It reminded him of the condoms. "I bought condoms," he said.
Sanji stopped. He looked left. He looked right. A woman with a cart was moving away from them toward the citrus. He waited until she was gone. "That's a very good thing," he said, in a low voice. "Do you have anything else?"
"No," he said. "What else do I need?"
Sanji looked at him for a second. "Never mind," he said. "I'll see you tonight." He picked up a bunch of bananas and headed toward the pharmacy section without looking back.
Zoro watched him go. Then he returned to his bananas.
It was a good day at work. He finished bananas, did the stone fruit, straightened the herb wall which always needed straightening because people pulled things out and put them back wrong. He unloaded the last of the delivery cart and clocked out at ten feeling like the World's Greatest Stocker, which he was.
Luffy was at the firehouse and wouldn't be back until tomorrow, which meant the apartment was his. He cleaned his room when he got home even though he'd cleaned it two days ago. He remade the bed with extra crisp corners, the way Mihawk taught him. He straightened his nightstand. He put the condoms on it where they'd be easy to find.
He stood in the doorway and looked at the room. Clean, organized, bed made the right way. Sanji would see it as a good place to have sex.
Satisfied, he changed and went to the gym.
It was chest and shoulders day, which was a good day. He worked through his sets with a focus that made everything else go quiet – just the weight, the rep count, the breath. He didn't think about much when he was lifting. That was the point. His mind went to a simple place where the only question was whether he could do one more, and the answer was usually yes if he'd been eating enough protein, which he had because he was prepared.
He did three sets of bench press, three sets of cable crossovers, which he now knew about, and finished with shoulder press until his arms felt the way they were supposed to feel. Heavy and warm and used.
He'd have plenty of energy tonight. He was sure of it.
After the gym he ate a light lunch, showered, and put on his black t-shirt and black jeans. He sat on the couch and turned on the TV for a bit, and then picked up the romantic thriller. He'd been on page twelve for a while. He read carefully, moving his lips a little on the harder words, and by the time there was a knock at the door he'd made it to page fourteen. That was good progress.
He answered the door. Sanji was in a dark blue sweater and dark trousers, no suit jacket, a small duffle over one shoulder and a grocery bag in his other hand. His hair was down over his eye the way it always was, brushing a little around his shoulders. He looked different without the suit. Still good. Maybe more good.
"Hi," Sanji said.
"Hi," Zoro said. He stepped back to let him in.
He showed Sanji around the apartment. The living room with the lucky couch they found on the street, which was a good couch. The kitchen, which was clean because it was a Tuesday and Tuesday was kitchen day. Luffy's closed bedroom door, which he did not open for reasons he didn't discuss. Then his own room.
"I cleaned it two days ago," Zoro said, standing in the doorway. "And then again today. Because we're having sex."
Sanji stood next to him looking at the room. The made bed. The nightstand with the condoms on it. He was quiet for a second. "You made the bed very well," he said finally.
"Hospital corners," Zoro said. "Mihawk taught me."
They went back to the kitchen and Sanji unpacked his grocery bag. He had things Zoro didn't know the names of, small and specific, and he moved around the kitchen like he moved around the tea house, like he knew where everything was even though it wasn't his kitchen. He found Zoro's one good pan and the cutting board without being told where they were.
"You can sit," Sanji said. "Or you can help. You'd be helping more by sitting."
Zoro sat. He watched Sanji cook. It was something to watch, the way he did things in a particular order, the way he tasted things and adjusted them, the way he knew when something was done without setting a timer. The kitchen started smelling very good. Warm and savory and something with pepper that wasn't too much pepper, the right amount of pepper.
They ate at the kitchen table. It was a good meal, one of the best Zoro had eaten anywhere that wasn't the tea house, and he said so. Sanji looked pleased in the way he looked pleased when Zoro said things directly, which was the only way Zoro knew how to say things.
They did the dishes together after. Zoro washed, Sanji dried, and they stood close in the small kitchen because the kitchen was small. Sanji's arm kept almost touching his arm, but not quite.
There was something in the air that Zoro didn't have a word for. A kind of quiet that wasn't empty. He was aware of Sanji next to him the way he was aware of a weight in his hand at the gym, present and specific and requiring attention.
He handed the last washed dish to Sanji. Dinner was over. Which meant sex was next.
He'd thought about it a lot going into tonight, more than he usually thought about things, which was saying something. He'd watched enough on the internet to know roughly how it was supposed to go. He knew about the condoms and how to use them. He knew it was messy, which was why tomorrow was laundry. He was prepared. He felt ready in the way he felt ready at the start of a good gym day.
He was also aware that thinking about it and doing it were probably two different things, and that Sanji would know more about it than he did, and that this was fine because that was what people were for.
Sanji turned to hang up the dish towel and found Zoro already looking at him.
"Can I kiss you?" Sanji asked.
"Yes," Zoro said. He'd been thinking about that, too.
He'd never been kissed before. He knew that going in. He wasn't sure what to do with his hands at first or where to put his face exactly but Sanji seemed to know and guided things gently without making it a thing, and then it stopped being strange and became something else entirely. Sanji's mouth was warm and tasted like dinner and something underneath that was just Sanji, and it turned out kissing was the kind of thing that once you started you understood why people wanted to do it all the time.
They kissed until Zoro lost track of page numbers and laundry schedules and everything else in his head that usually had somewhere to be. His hands figured out where to go on their own. Everything felt very warm and very close and tight in a way that was good, the way a good lift was tight, everything engaged and purposeful.
When Sanji pulled back just enough to breathe, Zoro followed him without meaning to.
Sanji made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. Then he took Zoro's hand and led him to the bedroom.
He'd thought about what it would be like. He hadn't thought about all of it.
He hadn't thought about how much there was to pay attention to, how Sanji seemed to know exactly where to put his hands and what that did, how everything built on itself in a way that made thinking very difficult and not thinking very easy. He hadn't thought about the lube, which Sanji produced from his duffle and explained briefly and practically, and which turned out to be a very good thing to have and something Zoro would be adding to his pharmacy list going forward.
He had thought about the condoms, though. He picked up the box from the nightstand and showed Sanji, who looked at them and then looked at Zoro with an expression that had several things in it.
"They have to sit in the light for a bit first," Zoro explained. "To charge up."
"To charge up," Sanji said.
"It says so on the box."
Sanji looked at the box. Then he took two condoms out, peeled off the top foil, and set them on the nightstand under the lamp, and they did other things for a while, which were very good things, and by the time they got to the condoms they had charged up sufficiently.
They did glow. Not a lot. But enough to confirm the product was working as advertised, which Zoro felt was important for consumer confidence. He mentioned this.
Sanji laughed, a real one, the kind that took over his whole face.
Zoro decided that was one of his favorite things.
Sex was messy. He'd been right about that. It was also loud in ways he hadn't entirely anticipated and involved a great deal more of everything than the internet had fully conveyed. At one point Sanji did something that made Zoro's brain go completely white and empty, which was a new experience, and very good, and he said so immediately. Sanji said he'd keep that in mind.
After, they lay in his very well made bed, which had not survived the evening with its hospital corners intact. Sanji's hand was resting on Zoro's chest, fingers across the scar that ran from his right shoulder toward his left hip. Zoro looked at the ceiling. Everything felt warm and loose and good, like the end of a very successful gym session except better. Much better. Better than any gym session he'd ever had, including the one where he'd hit a new personal record on bench press and the guy next to him had actually clapped.
He wanted to do it again.
Not right now. Right now he needed a nap first, and probably some water, and he was going to need to do a full load tomorrow, not just his regular laundry, but he wanted to do it again after all of that.
He turned his head and looked at Sanji. "That was really good," he said. "I want to do it again."
Sanji looked at him. Then the real smile came up, slow and warm. "Yeah," he said. "Me, too."
"After a nap," Zoro said.
"After a nap," Sanji agreed.
Zoro closed his eye. He was going to need a bigger box of condoms.
Zoro woke up at 3am. He always woke up at 3am. Days off included, because if he slept in on his days off he'd be tired on his next shift and tired was not how the World's Greatest Stocker operated. Mihawk called it discipline. Zoro agreed.
The room was mostly dark except for the light coming in through the gap in the curtains, thin and orange from the street. It was enough to see by.
Sanji was asleep beside him. Breathing heavy and slow, curled on his side facing Zoro, one bare shoulder out above the blanket. His hair was a complete disaster, which Zoro had never seen before. Sanji’s hair was usually very neat. This was the opposite of neat. It went in several directions and some of it was across his face.
Zoro had the urge to move it. Just to touch him. Not for sex, though he did want that, too, but right now he just wanted to put his hand somewhere on Sanji and feel him there. He'd never felt that about anyone sleeping in his bed before, mostly because no one had slept in his bed before, but he felt it now and it was a comfortable feeling. Warm and settled, like a potato finding its spot.
He was glad Sanji had stayed. He'd like it to happen again. He really liked Sanji. He was glad Sanji seemed to like him back.
His stomach rumbled. Breakfast time.
He got up carefully. He noticed a faint glow from the direction of the trash can. The condoms, still going. He was impressed. The box had delivered on its promise and then some.
He left the bedroom, used the bathroom and went to the kitchen. He got out a bowl and the Rice Krispies. Rice was one of his favorite foods in any form. Luffy kept a box of the chocolate ones in the cabinet but chocolate was one of Zoro's least favorite foods. He ate two bowls of Rice Krispies standing at the counter, drank a glass of tomato juice, and washed everything and put it in the rack.
Then he showered, doing his best to be quiet about it, and went back to the bedroom for clothes. He took the last black t-shirt from the top drawer, the last black jeans from the second, the last socks and briefs from the third. Everything else was in the laundry bag.
He unplugged his phone from the charger on the nightstand and plugged Sanji's in its place because it was at eleven percent and having a phone die was a catastrophe. His had died once on the way to the laundromat and he'd ended up at the Harbor Freight two miles in the wrong direction, which had a very good selection of tools but no washing machines and no GPS to get him out. They'd let him use their store phone to call Mihawk, which worked out because Mihawk and Perona were the only two phone numbers he knew by heart. Mihawk had come and gotten him and said that a man who could not ensure his phone was charged before leaving the house was a man who was not prepared, and that being unprepared was the only true failure. Then he drove him to the laundromat and waited in the car while Zoro did his laundry.
Sanji was still asleep. His hair was still a disaster. Zoro went to the living room.
The laundromat didn't open until seven but he never went at seven anyway because the Mexican restaurant next door didn't open until eleven and they had very good enchiladas and going to the laundromat without getting enchiladas after seemed like a waste of a trip.
He sat on the couch and texted Mihawk. I had sex. It was fun. I used the condoms correctly. Thank you for the banana talk.
He put the phone down and turned on the Smithsonian channel. How Did They Build That? was on, which was a show he watched regularly because it seemed like good information to have. Someone might ask him someday. He'd know.
His phone buzzed between the segment on the Twist building and the one on the Quarry Hotel.
Mihawk: I am pleased you remembered. Continue to practice safe sex should you do it again.
Zoro looked at that for a second. Was he going to do it again? He hoped so. Sanji had seemed into it. They'd already done it more than once, which felt like a good sign, but that was last night and this was a new day and he didn't want to assume. He'd have to ask.
He put his phone down and watched the Quarry Hotel segment, which was very good.
He heard the bathroom door at seven. Then the shower running. Then quiet for a while, and then Sanji appeared at the end of the living room in a different shirt than last night and a pair of jeans. His hair was towel-damp and curling at the ends where it hit his shoulders. He stood near the couch with a slightly uncertain look on his face, like he wasn't sure what the morning protocol was.
"Morning," he said.
"Are we going to have sex again?" Zoro asked.
Sanji's face went through several things at once, a startled sort of scramble that collided with something that wanted to laugh, and then the laugh won, a short one, warm. "If you'd like," he said. "I'm very much up for it."
"I'd like that," Zoro said. "I want to do it again. It was really good." He pointed at the kitchen. "There's Rice Krispies. I already had my two bowls. Lunch is enchiladas next door to the laundromat. They open at eleven."
Sanji looked at him with something unnamed moving across his face. He went to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of Rice Krispies and sat on the couch, folding his legs under him. He ate and looked at the TV. "What are we watching?"
"How Did They Build That?" Zoro said. "It's about engineering. This one's about the Kauffman Center. It has a curved roof that took a specific kind of steel panel to build correctly."
"Tell me about it," Sanji said.
Zoro was pleased. He didn't often get to put that information to immediate use. He told Sanji about the steel panels and the acoustic engineering inside and the way the two main halls were designed to look like opening flowers, which he thought was a lot of extra work but apparently the people who commissioned it felt strongly about flowers.
Sanji ate his Rice Krispies and listened. When the bowl was empty he set it on the coffee table and put his hand on Zoro's thigh.
Zoro looked down at it. Then at the TV. Then at Sanji's hand again. It felt right in a way he didn't have a word for but didn't need one.
He watched the rest of the show with a smile on his face.
They'd been dating for five months, one week, and three days. Zoro knew because he'd counted. He liked knowing it the same way he liked knowing how long he'd worked at Sabaody – it was just good information to have.
He'd never dated anyone before Sanji. Nobody had ever asked him and he'd never met anyone he thought about asking. He and Sanji didn't have a date every day but it was a lot of the days, and he saw Sanji six times a week in produce and sometimes at the tea house if he went there for lunch. Sanji always made him something that wasn't on the menu when he came in for lunch. Zoro had stopped trying to pay for it. Sanji never took his money anyway.
They had a lot of sex, which also wasn't every date but was often enough that Zoro had learned things. Specific things. Like that kissing Sanji's ankle in a certain spot made him laugh because it tickled, and that Sanji made a particular sound when Zoro did a specific other thing that Zoro had filed away carefully and returned to often. He was glad he'd bought more boxes of condoms. The pharmacy guy in the white coat recognized him now and just unlocked the case when he saw him coming.
Sanji slept over regularly, and Zoro slept over at Sanji's sometimes, too. Sanji's place was one room on the fifth floor of a building with no elevator, which Zoro thought of as good cardio. Sanji said all his money went into the tea house so he lived small. Zoro thought it was nice. It was clean and it smelled good, which he knew from Sabo was non-negotiable, and it had standing dividers with birds painted on them that separated the bed from the couch, which Zoro thought was a smart idea. He'd told Sanji so and Sanji had looked at him in that way he had and said thank you.
He was at Sanji's now. They'd had sex and it had been messy and he hoped Sanji's laundry day was tomorrow. Sanji was sitting up beside him reading one of his cookbooks, glasses on, which Zoro had only recently found out about because Sanji only wore them at home. Zoro had been napping but then he remembered the text from that afternoon.
"Mihawk asked if you would come to dinner," he said to Sanji's thigh.
Sanji's hand paused on the page. His face went through a couple of things at once. "When?"
"Next time we're both free," Zoro said. "We should look at our calendars."
He rolled out of bed and found his black jeans on the floor with his briefs and socks and got his phone. He opened his calendar. Just tonight's date with Sanji. They hadn't made the next one yet.
He'd told Mihawk about Sanji. Quite a bit about Sanji, it turned out. The first dinner after they started dating, back around month two, Zoro had mentioned him while telling Mihawk about the tea house, and Mihawk had asked several questions, which was unusual because Mihawk didn't like extended conversation. At the second dinner, around month four, Mihawk had asked more questions. Specific ones, about how they'd met and what Sanji did and what Zoro thought of him. Perona had sat across the table with a smirk on her face that meant she already knew something Zoro didn't. At the end of that dinner Mihawk had set down his fork and said he would like to meet this person. Zoro had said okay and then forgotten to follow up, which was why Mihawk had texted him this afternoon himself.
"I have nothing on my calendar right now," Zoro said. "We also need to make our next date."
Sanji set his book down and reached for his phone on the nightstand. He was available all next week after seven. They picked their own date first, a Sunday, because Sanji wanted to take him to a clam house and the clam house apparently had the best clams on Sundays. Then they picked the day before Zoro's laundry day for Mihawk's dinner. Zoro texted Mihawk the date.
Mihawk responded: It is on my calendar.
It was now on three calendars. It was set.
Zoro put his phone on the nightstand next to Sanji's and used the small bathroom and came back to bed. He threw his arm around Sanji's waist and pushed his face into his thigh. Sanji picked his book back up and his hand found Zoro's hair and scratched through it slowly, and Zoro felt everything in him go warm and easy.
He went back to sleep feeling content.
Mihawk lived in a castle. An actual castle, with stone walls and narrow windows and a gate that needed a code to open. It sat at the edge of the vineyard, which Zoro had eaten a row of at age seven and which now produced wine that Mihawk sold to restaurants in the city. The vineyard was very large. The castle was very large. The dining hall inside the castle was the largest room Zoro had ever eaten in, including the Golden Buffet, which had a very large room.
He'd eaten in the kitchen every time he'd come to dinner. The dining hall was new.
"He's being formal," Zoro told Sanji in a low voice as they were shown to their seats by Mihawk's housekeeper, a small efficient elderly woman named Amazon who had worked for Mihawk for as long as Zoro could remember.
"I noticed," Sanji said.
His movements were very precise tonight. Sanji's movements were always deliberate but this was a different kind of deliberate. Zoro had only seen it a few times before, usually when the tea house was very busy and Sanji was doing six things simultaneously. He wasn't sure why the dining hall required that level of attention but he filed it away.
The table could seat twenty. They were at one end of it, three place settings clustered together, which still left most of the table empty. There were candles. There were flowers. There was more silverware than Zoro knew the purpose of.
Mihawk came in and Zoro stood up because that was what you did when Mihawk came into a room, and Sanji stood, too. Mihawk was wearing all black and red, which was normal, but the jacket looked like Perona had made it. Zoro recognized her work because she sent him pictures of things she made and asked his opinion, which he gave honestly. He'd told her once at dinner that a coat she made looked like a very good crow and she'd hugged him for thirty seconds and then cried a little.
"Zoro," Mihawk said.
"Mihawk," Zoro said. "This is Sanji."
Mihawk looked at Sanji the way he looked at most things, which was for a long time without expression. Sanji looked back at him with a pleasant face that Zoro recognized as the same face Sanji used when a difficult customer came into the tea house.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Sanji said. "Zoro speaks very highly of you."
"He speaks very highly of you as well," Mihawk said. "At length. On multiple occasions."
Zoro felt this was accurate and saw no reason to comment on it.
They sat. Amazon brought wine, a red from the vineyard, and poured three glasses. Zoro looked at his. He preferred beer. Wine always tasted to him like a drink that wanted to be juice but something went wrong. He drank some anyway because it was Mihawk's vineyard and it seemed rude not to, and also because this particular wine was better than most, which he'd told Mihawk before and which Mihawk had accepted without visible reaction.
"Sanji," Mihawk said, in the tone he used when he was starting something with intention and you were supposed to listen. "Zoro tells me you own a tea house."
"I do," Sanji said. "Going on six months now."
"He suggested you rename it."
Sanji's mouth curved. "He did. I'm still considering it."
"He once suggested I rename the vineyard," Mihawk said. "He felt Grape Place was more descriptive."
"It is more descriptive," Zoro said.
Amazon brought the first course, which was a small bowl of something pale and creamy with something green. He looked at it. Then he looked at Sanji, who picked up the correct spoon from the lineup with the ease of someone who knew which spoon to pick up. Zoro picked up the same one.
It tasted good. Rich and smooth with something underneath that he couldn't identify but didn't need to. He thought about Sanji's little sandwiches, which also had things in them he couldn't identify but didn't need to. He thought about the enchiladas next door to the laundromat, which were more straightforward but equally good in a different way. Food was good. He was glad people made it.
"How did you and Zoro meet?" Mihawk asked.
"He works at the grocery store where I shop," Sanji said. "He gave me an orange."
"I apologized for not having shallots," Zoro said. He remembered it clearly because of Sanji’s suit. People didn’t wear suits when they went grocery shopping. Except Sanji.
"The shallots were your fault?" Mihawk asked.
"No," Zoro said. "The bin was empty. Someone else bought them all."
"But you felt responsible."
Zoro thought about this. The bin had emptied on his watch. "Yes."
Mihawk looked at Sanji. "Did you find the apology satisfactory?"
Sanji glanced at Zoro, something warm moving briefly across his face before he returned his attention to Mihawk. "It was the best orange I've ever had."
“It was one of the ones with the flat bottoms,” Zoro said, nodding. “Those don’t roll.”
They continued eating their soup. Zoro looked down the length of the empty table. It was a very long table. He'd never understood why Mihawk had a table this size. Mihawk didn't have people over. He had Zoro over, and occasionally Perona brought someone, but that was two people, maybe four. You didn't need a table that sat twenty for four people. He'd asked Mihawk about it once and Mihawk said it came with the castle.
"You've been together five months," Mihawk said. It wasn't a question.
"Five months, two weeks, and five days," Zoro said, because that was the accurate number.
Mihawk's eyes moved to Sanji.
"He put our first date in his phone," Sanji said, in the tone of someone who found this to be one of their favorite things. “Did the calculations a few weeks ago.”
"What is it that you find," Mihawk paused, selecting his word with the care he selected most things, "engaging about my son?"
The room was very quiet. One of the candles made a small sound. Zoro looked at his wine and thought that it really was better than most wines even if it wasn't beer.
Sanji set his spoon down. "He doesn't make me feel like I have to manage anything," he said. "When I'm with Zoro I'm not running through seventeen different versions of what I should say next. I just say what I mean and he takes it at face value." He paused. "That's rarer than it should be."
Mihawk was quiet for a moment. "And when he takes something at face value that you didn't intend at face value?"
"Then I say it better," Sanji said. "Or I realize I should have meant it at face value to begin with."
Zoro looked up from his wine. Sanji was looking at Mihawk. Mihawk was looking at Sanji. Something was happening between the two of them that Zoro couldn't fully follow but felt like one of those conversations that was about two things at once. Mihawk did those sometimes. Zoro usually just answered the one on top.
The main course came. It was a very good piece of fish with things on the plate arranged the way Sanji arranged things, in a way that meant someone had thought about where each thing went. Zoro looked at it for a second and then looked at Sanji, who was looking at the plate with a particular kind of attention he got around other people’s food.
"This is excellent," Sanji said to Amazon, who nodded and left.
"The chef trained in Lyon," Mihawk said.
"It shows," Sanji said, after a bite. "The beurre blanc is perfect."
Zoro didn't know what a beurre blanc was. He assumed it was the pale sauce. It tasted good so he ate it. He thought about the first time he'd eaten at the tea house, the small things on the plate that he hadn't had names for. He was getting better at eating things without names. He felt this was personal growth.
"Is this a serious relationship?" Mihawk asked.
Zoro looked up. That was a direct question. He appreciated those.
Sanji's fork paused for just a half second before he set it down and looked at Mihawk directly. "Yes, it is. At least on my end." He glanced at Zoro then, and his voice shifted, less formal, more the voice he used on the couch at 7am with Rice Krispies. "It is for you, too, right?"
"Yes," Zoro said. He looked at Mihawk. "I know his phone number now."
Mihawk looked at him for a moment. Then something shifted in his face that most people would have missed entirely. "I see," he said, and picked up his wine.
Amazon refilled the wine glasses. Zoro looked at his. It was better than most wine, he'd give it that. It still wasn't beer. He thought about the Steadfast on tap at Franky's and whether they'd go there after. This reminded him that Sanji had driven and his GPS lady didn’t keep making him turn around, even though Zoro swore they should’ve turned right at Renaisse.
"Zoro has a specific way of moving through the world," Mihawk said, after a while. "I imagine that presents certain challenges."
Sanji looked at him. Something sharp came into his expression, quick and controlled, there and then managed. "With respect," he said, in the tone of someone who was going to say something whether or not respect was extended in return, "I don't experience Zoro as a challenge."
"No?"
"He's the most straightforward person I've ever met," Sanji said. "He means what he says and he says what he means and he doesn't play games and he doesn't keep score." He picked up his wine. "I find that clarifying, not challenging."
"Clarifying," Mihawk repeated.
"I spent a long time in professional kitchens," Sanji said. "Before the tea house. They're political in ways that are exhausting if you let them be. You spend a lot of energy managing perceptions. Figuring out what people mean versus what they said." He looked at Mihawk steadily. "Zoro is the opposite of that. What you see is what you get. I happen to like very much what I see."
The candles made their small sounds. Zoro ate his fish and thought about professional kitchens and whether they were like the storeroom at Sabaody, which had its own politics mostly centered around who left the flat cart in the wrong place, which was always Gary from receiving and everyone knew it but nobody said it.
"Gary leaves the flat cart in the wrong place," Zoro said.
Both Mihawk and Sanji looked at him.
"At work," Zoro said. "Everyone knows but nobody says anything." He thought about this. "That's a kind of game, I think. Not saying the thing you know."
Mihawk looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Sanji.
Sanji looked back at Mihawk and didn't say anything, which was its own kind of answer.
Dessert was small and very good. The wine was almost gone. Mihawk asked Sanji several more questions about the tea house, the sourcing, the staffing, the neighborhood. Sanji answered all of them. Zoro ate his dessert and listened.
He also noticed that somewhere around the fish course, the questions had changed. He couldn't say exactly how. They just felt different at the end of the table than they had at the beginning. Less like something and more like something else. He wasn't sure what either of those things were but he noticed the difference.
"Perona will want to meet you," Mihawk said to Sanji, as Amazon cleared the last plates. "She has been asking."
"She has been texting me, too," Zoro said. "She sent seventeen question marks in a row last week."
Mihawk looked at Sanji. "Perona is a fashion designer. She is also dramatic. The two are not unrelated."
Sanji's mouth curved. "I have a sister, too," he said. "I'll manage."
Something shifted in Mihawk's expression, very slightly. "Yes," he said. "I imagine you will."
On the way back, Sanji's GPS lady told him the correct directions first, which Zoro felt was a better system than his. He sat in the passenger seat and watched the dark vineyard go past through the window.
"Mihawk likes you," Zoro said.
Sanji kept his eyes on the road. "What makes you say that?"
"He asked you questions about the tea house at the end," Zoro said. "He only asks about things he thinks are worth knowing about."
Sanji was quiet for a second. "Good," he said, in the voice he used when he meant more than the word.
Zoro watched the last of the vineyard disappear and then it was just the road and the dark on either side of it.
They got home in exactly the time the GPS lady said they would.
On the eighth month, third week, and second day, Sanji asked Zoro if he would like to move in together.
"My lease is up next month," he said. "I thought we might get a place just for the two of us."
Zoro thought about Luffy, who hadn't been around since he found his own person, a doctor named Law who was quiet in the way Mihawk was quiet, which was probably why Zoro liked him. The apartment had felt empty since then. It was fine when Sanji was sleeping over. When he wasn't, it was just empty.
"We'd have to have bills on autopay," Zoro said. This seemed like an important thing to establish early. Luffy knew about the autopay and somehow Mihawk had worked out Luffy's portion without Zoro needing to think about it. "I have the calendar for dates but I'm not great at subtracting money."
Sanji did the almost smile. "That's fine by me. We'll work it out."
"Okay, good." Zoro thought about it a little longer. "I need three drawers."
"I'll make sure you have them." Sanji leaned forward against the little table in his kitchen where they'd been eating dinner. "What else?"
"A place for my books," Zoro said. "And Rice Krispies."
Sanji's face went fond, which was a look Zoro had a name for because he'd asked. "Both important things. I'll need space for my books, too."
"And all the condoms."
A laugh fell out of Sanji. "And all the condoms."
Zoro felt satisfied. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"We can get a place just for us."
Sanji smiled, the big one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Then let's start looking."
The place they found was within walking distance of Sabaody Fresh Market. It was farther from the tea house but Zoro didn't mind. Walking was good for his health, which was maybe the GPS lady's whole plan all along, taking him the long way everywhere. The apartment was on the fourth floor of a building the Galley-La company had built, with a working elevator that Zoro mostly didn't use because the stairs were good cardio. It had one bedroom, a big window in the living room that got good afternoon light – perfect for napping on the couch – and a kitchen that made Sanji make a noise Zoro usually only heard in the bedroom.
Zoro hit twenty years at Sabaody two months after they moved in. They gave him a cake in the break room, which was good, and a raise, which was better. Sanji got him a black t-shirt that said World's Greatest Stocker across the front in block letters. Zoro now had eight t-shirts, which threw off laundry day. He put the extra one in Sanji's drawer and told him he could wear it. Sanji wore it to bed most nights. Zoro found this made him feel proud, which was a strange thing to be proud of, but he went with it.
They were in bed now. They had sides. Zoro had never had a side before Sanji. He had the right, which was closer to the door, and his nightstand had his phone charger and his current book and his water glass and the condoms. Sanji had the left, which was closer to the window, and his nightstand had his phone charger and his glasses case and a small stack of cookbooks and the lube and the other condoms, because it was good to have them on both sides.
Zoro slept in nothing. Sanji slept in Zoro's shirt and specific sleep shorts that he'd had since before they met and which had a small hole in the left thigh that he refused to throw away.
The blanket was around their waists. Zoro was on page seventy-two of his third romance thriller. Sanji had his glasses on and was reading Frog and Toad Are Friends, which was one of Zoro's, because Zoro had recommended it and Sanji had picked it up off the shelf and started it without saying anything. Zoro felt this was one of the best things Sanji had ever done.
He hit a word on page seventy-three that he'd tried three times and couldn't get. "Hey," he said.
Sanji looked over.
Zoro pointed at it. “What’s this word?”
"Inevitable," Sanji said. "It means it was always going to happen. No way around it."
"Thanks," Zoro said, and went back to reading.
Sanji went back to Frog and Toad.
A few minutes later Zoro's phone lit up on the nightstand. He picked it up. It was Perona. There was a photograph. It was a jacket she'd made, green, which Zoro noted immediately was the same color as his hair. Underneath it she'd written: for sanji. yes or no. be honest.
Zoro looked at it for a while. Then he showed it to Sanji.
Sanji took the phone. Something moved across his face. "She made this for me?"
"She makes things for people she likes," Zoro said.
Sanji looked at the jacket for another moment, then gave Zoro back his phone. "Tell her yes," he said. "Tell her it's perfect."
Zoro texted Perona back: he said yes. he said it's perfect.
Three seconds later his phone lit up with seventeen exclamation points.
He put his phone on the nightstand and went back to page seventy-three.
Zoro was building his orange pyramid when the elderly lady with the purple curls pushed her cart past produce. She slowed down when she saw the pyramid. He caught her look out of the corner of his eye. Impressed. He appreciated that.
He placed another orange carefully on the second tier.
Sanji came in at 8:35, which Zoro knew because he'd looked at the clock. He was in a black suit today, his blond hair curling past his shoulders. He'd been growing it out since spring and Zoro thought it looked very good, which he'd told him, which was why Sanji was still growing it. Zoro still thought he looked like a fashion model every time, even knowing he wasn't.
Sanji stopped at the herb wall on his way through the section. He looked at the empty bin for a moment, then came to stand beside Zoro at the oranges. "You're out of tarragon," he said.
"The shipment was missing," Zoro said. The empty bin bothered him the way an empty bin always bothered him, a gap in the display that wasn't supposed to be there. He'd already noted it twice on his clipboard and it wasn't getting any less empty. "It's been bothering me since Tuesday."
"That's too bad," Sanji said. "I was going to make poulet à l'estragon tonight."
Zoro looked at him. He didn't know what that was exactly but he knew tarragon was in it and it was going to be very good and now it wasn't happening because the shipment was missing and the bin was empty on his watch.
He reached into his pyramid and took out an orange. He held it out.
Sanji looked at it. Then at Zoro. The smile came up, the real one with the eye crinkles, and he took the orange. The wedding ring on his finger caught the light from the overhead produce section lights, which were very bright because good lighting was important for produce.
Zoro's own ring was on his left hand where it always was. He noticed it sometimes when he was stocking, a small gold fact about his life.
"I'll see you at home tonight," Sanji said.
"Okay," Zoro said.
Sanji put the orange in his basket and headed toward the bakery section. Zoro watched him go the way he always watched him go, which was until he couldn't see him anymore.
Then he turned back to his pyramid.
He still had two more tiers to build. He also needed to find the flat cart after, because it wasn't where it was supposed to be, which meant Gary from receiving had left it somewhere again, and Gary from receiving had been leaving the flat cart in the wrong place for eleven years and nobody had said anything about it and Zoro had decided this was the week he was going to say something about it.
He placed an orange carefully on the third tier.
It was a good day to be the World's Greatest Stocker.
End