Stalker

Mikan Studio sat six floors above Grand Line city, a modern sprawl that never really slept. LED billboards washed the streets in shifting color. Rideshares crowded neon intersections. Pedestrians moved fast with phones lifted like extra limbs. Inside Sanji’s workspace, the world quieted to a cooler hum – lights diffused through adjustable panels, monitors cycling through client decks and tour schedules rather than camera feeds, and the air-conditioning battling the bass leaking from someone’s Bluetooth speaker down the hall.

Sanji adjusted the collar on the mannequin for the third time, then stepped back and squinted at the effect under the studio lights. Too much shine on the lapels. The velvet from Look Three was trying to pick a fight with the sequin pants, and the pants were winning. He reached up, unhooked the jacket, and swapped it for a matte black blazer with a sharper shoulder. The silhouette snapped into place: taller, leaner, the kind of line that would make cameras fall a little bit in love when Brook stepped onto the stage. Better.

He worked as a fashion stylist in a small but viciously competitive studio in the Grand Line’s fashion district – one of four stylists who shared storage, prep rooms, and a rotating fitting space. Designers made the clothes; stylists like Sanji made them mean something. He worked with what already existed, pulling from designers, brands, and custom alterations to build full looks - assembled first on mannequins, then sharpened through fittings. Every outfit told a specific story: album moods, red-carpet personas, visual myth-making.

Robin handled movie stars, Franky specialized in reality TV chaos, Chopper did book covers and ad campaigns. Sanji owned the music world. His clients were pop divas, R&B crooners, indie darlings; people who needed looks that could survive a stadium feed, a livestream, and a close-up all at once. The studio itself was a maze of dressing rooms and rolling racks, an office corner with glass walls for Nami, and a common work area littered with open laptops and fabric swatches.

Sanji’s own studio sat just off the main floor, walled in and rigged with adjustable lights that mimicked stage conditions – cool whites for interviews, saturated color washes for concert looks, harsh spotlights that punished bad tailoring. Mannequins stood in a loose arc, each dressed in a different variation of the same concept. Down the hall, his office was smaller and messier: a cork board crowded with fabric swatches, printed reference photos, handwritten notes about venues, tour legs, and how certain materials behaved under heat and sweat.

The prep room around him was a controlled explosion of garments. Racks rolled along one wall, organized by color and concept, each tagged for different venues and lighting conditions. Shoes lined up in militant rows beneath them, polished and ready for client selection rather than camera. A table by the back mirrors held jewelry and sunglasses laid out on black felt like treasure in a pirate’s hoard. Steam hissed softly from a garment steamer in the corner, fogging the air with the faint scent of starch and expensive fabric.

Sanji moved through it without thinking, hands busy, mind ticking along a familiar track. Check seams. Check buttons. Check labels. Confirm the designer, the season, the story. Every look told a story; his job was to make sure they told the right one.

He slid a comb through his own hair by habit as he passed a mirror – blond fringe falling neatly over his right eye, part just so. His tie sat exactly where it belonged, the knot precise against the white collar. Navy suit, slim cut, waistcoat beneath in a slightly darker shade. He looked like someone who belonged backstage and on camera at the same time, and good; he’d planned it that way.

“Morning, boss.”

Usopp slunk in backward, balancing two coffee cups in a cardboard tray, a clipboard under one arm, and his phone between shoulder and ear. He managed to kick the prep room door closed with his heel without sacrificing anything to gravity. He was Black, with a lot of hair that curled well past his shoulders, and a nose on the long side that gave his profile a kind of storybook sharpness.

“That’s me,” Sanji said. “Perpetual slave to perfection and idiots. Please tell me one of those is mine and it’s not decaf.”

Usopp hung up with a muffled goodbye, dropped the phone onto the accessory table, and held the tray out. “Your second Americano,” he said. “Double shot, dash of sugar, no syrup, extra hot so you don’t complain. And no, I didn’t let Nami steal a sip. I value my life.”

Sanji took the cup, the warmth seeping through to his fingers. “You say that like she’s not the one who signs your paychecks,” he said.

“Our benevolent overlord can have my blood and tears,” Usopp said, picking up the clipboard. “She cannot have your coffee.”

The studio outside their room hummed with pre-shoot energy. Assistants moved light stands. Makeup artists ferried cases back and forth. Somewhere down the hall, Brook’s laugh carried – a high, delighted cackle that vibrated like a guitar string.

“Schedule?” Sanji asked, sipping. Coffee brushed his upper lip; he licked it away, eyes on the mirror as he straightened his tie out of reflex.

“Brook’s in makeup now.” Usopp flipped a page. “First look is the orange suit with the ruffled shirt for the seated interview. Then we switch to the all-black ensemble for the performance shots. Nami wants you on set for both in case he decides pants are optional again.”

Sanji sighed through his nose. “He is not wearing the skeleton-print shorts on national television. I don’t care how on-brand he thinks it is.”

“Tell him that.” Usopp’s mouth curled. “I’ll hide behind the rack when you do.”

Sanji shook his head and moved to the shoe rack to double-check Brook’s options: platform boots, glossy Oxfords, sneakers with glow-in-the-dark soles. His fingers skimmed leather, buckles, laces, each touch automatic and precise.

His phone buzzed in the inside pocket of his jacket.

He slipped it out one-handed, thumb swiping the screen. A notification from Instagram sat at the top – new DM. He opened it without really thinking, expecting another fan question about a posted look or a polite request for tips.

The account name was a string of random letters and numbers. No profile picture. No posts. No bio. Just one message.

You like your Americanos in the mornings.

Sanji stared at it for a second. The words sat there like they’d been pressed into the screen with a thumb. Then he huffed under his breath. “Wow,” he said. “Observant.” He tried to make it sound bored. It came out a fraction too flat.

“Talking to the boots now?” Usopp asked, not looking up from the clipboard.

“Talking to the internet.” Sanji closed the DM and locked his phone, sliding it back into his pocket like it made it gone. “Some anonymous genius figured out I drink coffee in the morning.”

Considering his feed was half styling spreads and half behind-the-scenes shots of him in various suits, local coffee shop cups in hand, it wasn’t exactly a revelation. People liked aesthetics; he gave them aesthetics. Him leaning against a brick wall in a three-piece, steam curling from a takeaway cup. Candid shots in fitting rooms with garment bags behind him and a mug on the table. It was part of the curated myth: always put together, always caffeinated, always in control.

Creepers came with the job. Fans, too. He’d had weirder DMs. A few propositions. A few people who thought “fashion stylist” meant “therapist.” One dedicated soul once sent him seventeen paragraphs about why bootcut jeans were making a comeback. Another thought he was a designer and kept mailing photos of their own clothing samples, asking for critique. He didn’t have time for another one today.

“Anything you need from me before I sacrifice myself to the god of light stands?” Usopp asked.

“Double-check the jewelry is logged,” Sanji said. “I don’t want to owe Nami anything if we lose a ring that costs more than your car.”

“Joke’s on you,” Usopp said, moving toward the accessory table. “I don’t have a car.”

Sanji smirked and went back to work.

The day slid into fast-forward after that.

Brook arrived in a riot of energy and hair – tall as a lamppost, long limbs in a bathrobe, afro gloriously enormous. He insisted on trying on every pair of sunglasses, made three skull jokes in the first ten minutes, and flirted shamelessly with every lady within five feet of him.

Sanji shepherded him from mirror to stool to mark on the floor, adjusting lapels, straightening ties, fussing with cuffs. On camera, the orange suit blazed against Brook’s dark skin and neon hair clip-ons. The ruffled shirt bounced with every laugh, and when Sanji checked the monitor, the whole look sang.

Between segments, he checked the monitor feeds for how the fabric behaved under movement and seated posture, making mental notes for alterations before the tour fittings later that week. He moved in and out of the frame like he belonged there, always one hand away from fixing something.

By the time they hit the performance look – the all-black, skull-accented ensemble that made Brook look like a rock god who had climbed out of the underworld for an encore – the hours had blurred into one long string of adjustments and approvals.

Nami appeared twice, heels clicking, tablet in hand, reminding him about budgets and reminding Usopp about deadlines. She had red hair currently cut in a flirty chin length that swung when she turned, and a sharpness to her eyes that made vendors wilt. She snapped her gum, demanded better angles from the photographer, and made a note to raise their rates for live performance prep. Sanji pretended not to hear the last part. She’d tell him when she wanted him to know.

When the final shot wrapped, the studio’s energy sagged into that special kind of exhaustion that lived at the end of a long, successful day. Lights powered down one by one. Someone turned the music off. The air felt heavier without the constant thump of bass.

“Good work today,” Brook said, waving a bony hand as his driver-slash-security ushered him toward the elevator. “I look positively alive thanks to you! Yohohoho!”

“Always a pleasure, Soul King,” Sanji called back, rolling a garment rack toward the hallway. “Don’t tear anything before the show.”

“No promises!” Brook sang, and then he was gone.

At the studio’s back exit, just past the loading bay where equipment cases waited to be picked up, the hallway narrowed. The overhead fluorescent flickered once, then steadied. The outside door sat at the end, marked STAFF ONLY.

Sanji parked the last of the garment racks and stretched his shoulders. His feet ached pleasantly in polished Oxfords. His jacket was still crisp; his tie was still straight. Little victories.

“You go ahead, boss,” Usopp said, stacking empty hat boxes in his arms. “I’m going to double-check the paperwork with the rental company so Nami doesn’t– ”

“Commit murder?” Sanji offered.

“Exactly.” Usopp shifted the boxes and nodded toward the exit. “Get some sleep. You’ve got three fittings tomorrow.”

Sanji hummed in agreement and picked up a garment bag from the rack to carry to his car. The zipper teeth gleamed under the fluorescent light, the black fabric smooth beneath his fingers. The tag dangling from the hanger read: BROOK – LOOK 2.

Another bag leaned against the wall near the door, separate from the others. He wouldn’t have left anything there. He didn’t leave things anywhere.

“Usopp, you forget one?” Sanji called over his shoulder.

Usopp’s voice came faintly from down the hall. “What? No, those are all on the rack with you. If it’s by the door, it’s probably the photographer’s.”

Sanji set the Brook bag back on the rack and crossed to the lone garment bag. It was standard studio-issue: black, zippered, hanger hook poked out the top. A white tag dangled from the zipper pull. His name, in neat, unfamiliar letters.

SANJI BLACKLEG.

His spine went still. Maybe someone from wardrobe had labeled something for him – a promo suit a designer wanted him to wear, a sample he’d forgotten he was expecting. It could have been anything, and he told himself that as he touched the tag, the paper cool and flimsy, tension buzzing low and mean under his skin.

“Someone’s trying to bribe me with gifts,” he said, because silence made room for panic. His voice came out almost steady. “Finally.”

He unzipped the bag, the sound surprisingly loud in the quiet corridor, teeth parting, fabric loosening. Inside, there was no suit. No plastic-wrapped shirt. No neatly folded trousers. No garment at all – just a hanger, and taped to the hanger, a single glossy photo.

Sanji’s fingers stalled on the fabric. The bag gaped open, mouth-like. He could smell dust from the loading bay and the faint, sour tang of concrete outside, but underneath it his brain filled in the scent of his own apartment – the  citrus cleaner, rosemary lingering from last night’s stock simmering on the stove, and the trace of expensive cologne he always sprayed near the door before going out. Because the image in front of him came from there.

The photo was of his living room. Not the curated version he occasionally shared on social media, when he wanted to show off a new plant or a bookshelf. This was closer, angled from outside, through glass. He saw himself in the center of the frame, mid-motion. Blue shirt with narrow white pinstripes, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He recognized the shirt instantly; custom piece, one-of-a-kind, tailored to his shoulders. He only wore it to go to a club.

In the snapshot, he stood by his window, one hand lifted toward the cord of the blinds. The lamplight behind him cast his reflection faintly over the glass. His blinds were half-closed in the photo – the way he often left them, just enough for the skyline to sneak through the slats. And in the corner of the image, there was a small, tilted flare of light: the flash catching on metal. 

Something cold slid neatly under his ribs and settled there. He didn’t notice he’d stopped breathing until air forced its way back into his chest all at once, a harsh pull that left him a little dizzy. His fingers tightened around the garment bag, the plastic crinkling.

“Sanji?” Usopp’s footsteps approached. “You good?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sanji said, but it came out soft, not sharp. “You couldn’t have told me if there was trash by the door?”

Usopp turned the corner, burden still stacked in his arms. “What trash?”

Sanji stepped aside so he could see.

Usopp’s shoulders hunched. The boxes dipped as he leaned, peering into the garment bag. “Is that– ”

“Yeah,” Sanji said.

He reached up and peeled the photo off the hanger with careful fingers. The tape gave with a small, reluctant tug. The picture felt tacky at the edges, like it had been handled more than once. He turned it over. Nothing written on the back. No date. No cute little note. Nothing.

“Is that your place?” Usopp asked.

“Yes,” Sanji said.

“No, I mean– ”

“Yes.” His voice snapped, sharper this time. “That’s my window. That’s my lamp. That’s me in a shirt I only wear when I’m off the clock, so unless we’ve started livestreaming my downtime for content, someone was outside my building with a camera.”

Usopp’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay, that’s… that’s creepy as hell.”

The corridor seemed suddenly smaller. The fluorescent buzz turned into a high, needling whine at the base of Sanji’s skull. He could feel the way his pulse beat behind his eyes.

You like your Americanos in the mornings.

The DM sat up in his memory with ugly clarity. Coincidence, he’d thought. A harmless observation. It could still be that. Someone could have recognized his apartment building from a reflection in a posted shot. People were obsessive; people had too much time. But the angle of this photo didn’t come from the street. The elevation was wrong – too high for a sidewalk, too close for a neighboring window. It was the vantage of someone perched on the fire escape outside his unit, waiting with their camera raised while he reached for the blinds, thinking about dinner, maybe a show, completely unaware someone was inches away in the dark.

His skin crawled. He hated that. Fear itched along his nerves, quick and bright, and underneath it simmered something uglier: anger. How dare some faceless idiot make his own space feel compromised; how dare they sneak around in the shadows like this and leave a taunt in his workplace.

“Okay, we’re calling security,” Usopp said, voice suddenly decisive. “Right now.”

Sanji half turned. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Dramatic is you refusing to take this seriously,” Usopp shot back. “This is– we have protocols for this. Nami will murder me if I don’t report it, and she’ll murder you if you try to hide it.”

He was right, and Sanji hated that, too.

He slid the photo into the inside pocket of his jacket, the glossy edge catching briefly against the lining. The movement made his fingers tremble. He curled them into a fist once, then forced them to loosen.

“I’ll tell Nami,” he said. “You call building security, see if anyone left this here on camera.”

“Right.” Usopp shifted his boxes again and headed for the office, muttering under his breath about stalkers and horror movies and quitting to become a goat farmer.

Sanji zipped the garment bag back up. The motion felt final, like closing a lid on something he didn’t have a name for yet. His control had frayed for a second – one breath, maybe two. That was all whoever had taken that photo was going to get from him. The rest, he would manage. He always did.

Nami didn’t raise her voice. That was almost worse. She just started pacing, phone in hand like a weapon she knew how to use.

“This is unacceptable,” she said, pacing across her glass-walled office as the city glowed beyond her. Her heels snapped against the floor in time with her fury. Her red hair swung at her chin with every abrupt turn. “We handle public figures. We have security in this building for a reason. If someone can slip this into my hallway, I’m going to fire a lot of people today.”

Sanji sat in one of the sleek chairs opposite her desk, fingers wrapped around a paper cup of water he didn’t really want. The photo lay on the desk between them, anchored by Nami’s tablet so it wouldn’t slide to the floor.

“For the record,” he said, “I work here. I’m not the client.”

“You are a branding asset,” Nami said, stabbing a pinned manicure in his direction. “You show up in magazines and at events with the people you style. Half our social engagement is your stupid face and your stupid ties. If something happens to you, that’s my revenue stream bleeding out.”

Sanji’s mouth twitched. “I feel so loved.”

“Shut up.” She dropped into her chair, snapped the tablet screen awake, and flicked through a few things before holding her phone to her ear again. “Yes, I’m still here. No, I’m not calm. Would you be calm if someone slipped a voyeur shot of your staff member into your building?”

Sanji listened with half an ear as she laid into the building’s security company. They’d already pulled the hallway footage from earlier. Nothing useful. No one had been in that corridor in the ten-minute window before Sanji and Usopp came through, according to the cameras. No obvious stranger, no delivery person, no one at all. Someone either knew where the blind spots were, or they were already in the building.

He swallowed, throat tight.

Panicked, stupid scenarios lined up in a row: someone in the stairwell, watching the exits; someone in the lobby pretending to scroll on their phone; someone in his apartment building, waiting against the wall in the dimly lit stairwell, lens pointed up. He shut the door on each picture as it came. Useless. He needed facts.

Nami jabbed at the end call button at last and exhaled through her nose. “They’re reviewing the feeds again,” she said. “And upgrading the damn system. On their dime.”

“Good,” Sanji said.

She tipped her chair back a fraction, eyes on him. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he lied automatically.

She arched an eyebrow.

He flared a hand. “Spooked. Pissed off. I don’t know. It’s disgusting. Whoever did it is a coward.”

“Cowards hide behind screens,” Nami said. “Cowards watch you through their phones and write shit about you online.”

Sanji thought of the DM again, phantom letters floating behind his eyelids. You like your Americanos in the mornings. He hadn’t shown her that yet. “They might be both,” he said.

She studied him for a beat. “You got any other weirdness?” she asked. “Messages. Packages. Fans getting handsy. Anything.”

He hesitated a fraction of a second too long.

Her eyes narrowed. “Sanji.”

“An anonymous DM,” he admitted. “Nothing serious. Just… a comment. About my coffee.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “Of course. Of course you didn’t mention that when you showed me the photograph of someone spying on your home.”

“It could be anyone,” he said. “Half the people who follow me could guess I drink coffee. It’s not exactly state secrets.”

“And how many of them have a custom garment bag we use here?” she asked. “Because that’s where this ends up, Sanji. Not in your inbox. In my hallway.”

He didn’t have an answer to that.

Nami pinched the bridge of her nose, then nodded once, decision settling over her features. “I’m not arguing with you about this,” she said. “I’m fixing it.”

“How?”

“Temporary security.” She tapped her tablet again, pulling up an email. “There’s a private firm two floors down that specializes in executive protection. I’m hiring from them until we know whether this is a one-off or not.”

“That’s overkill.” Sanji made a face. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“You need to be able to walk to your car without wondering which shadow is holding a camera,” she said flatly. “You need to get to clients and back. You need to sleep. You’re not actually invincible, no matter how well you dress.”

He set the empty cup down, jaw tight. He’d taken care of himself for a long time – restaurants, late-night buses, rough neighborhoods. He knew how to read a room, how to avoid trouble. The idea that he suddenly needed some hired muscle at his shoulder made his skin itch. But the image of that photo kept rising, uninvited: his own profile, relaxed, unguarded. The idea of someone close enough to catch that– 

He ground his back teeth. “Fine,” he said. “Temporarily.”

“Wonderful,” Nami said. “I love being right.”

The next morning at the studio, the dressing room felt different.

Everything looked the same – the racks, the shoe rows, the accessory table, the steam curling from the garment steamer – but an extra layer sat over it all, thin as plastic wrap and just as suffocating. Usopp hovered more than usual, eyes flicking to the door every time footsteps passed outside.

Sanji pretended not to notice. He adjusted a tie, straightened a mannequin’s cuff, and checked his phone for emails from clients. The DM notification from yesterday sat lower in the list now, half-buried beneath work. He didn’t delete it. If this turned into something more, he’d need to remember exactly what had come when.

A knock sounded on the dressing room door. Three short raps. Not staff; staff barged and shouted his name.

“Come in,” he called.

The door opened.

The man who stepped inside did not look like he belonged amid sequins and silk.

He was about Sanji’s height but took up twice as much space. Broad shoulders under a dark button-down that fit his torso a little too well to have come off any bargain rack. Sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing corded muscle and a faint scatter of scars along the skin. His body had that contained, coiled stillness that said gym regular and maybe something more.

Moss-green hair sat messily spiked on his head, not bright enough to be neon, not muted enough to be natural. It just was. Three thin gold bar earrings dangled from his left ear, catching the light as he moved.

Sanji’s stylist brain cataloged it all automatically: color contrast, line, proportion, the roughness of his hands versus the neatness of the rest of him. His not-stylist brain noticed other things – the weight of his presence, the way the air felt tighter with him standing there, the strange flick of awareness down Sanji’s spine that had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with how damn solid the man was. The man’s eyes swept the room once, quick and efficient, before settling on Sanji.

“This is prep room one,” Usopp said from behind a garment rack, peeking around it. “If you’re looking for Nami, she’s in her office.”

“I’m looking for Sanji Blackleg,” the man said. His voice was low, steady, a little rough at the edges.

Sanji straightened, smoothing his waistcoat by habit. “You found him,” he said. “And you are…?”

“Zoro Roronoa.” He stepped fully into the room and let the door ease shut behind him.  His eyes hit Sanji first – not the racks, not the mirrors – like something in him clocked person before job. The look held a beat too long to be purely professional. “Nami sent me. I’m with the security firm on four.”

Usopp made a faint squeak.

Sanji lifted his chin. “She actually did it,” he said. “I told her temporary security was overkill. No offense.”

“None taken,” Zoro said easily. “Most people don’t like admitting they need someone watching their back.”

There was no condescension in it, just observation. Up close, his jawline was even more defined, like someone had carved it with a chisel. There was a faint knot of scar at his temple, partly hidden by his hair, a detail that Sanji’s eye snagged on.

He could appreciate aesthetics in all genders. It was half hobby, half instinct: the shape of a wrist, the angle of a collarbone, the way a body held itself. This man held himself like a wall. A very distracting, good-looking wall.

“You’re ex-cop?” Sanji asked.

“Yeah.” Zoro’s mouth thinned briefly, like the answer tasted sour, then smoothed out again. “Did patrol. Some close protection, witness security. Now I do private work as needed.”

“So you babysit,” Sanji said, because his mouth got ahead of his tact sometimes.

Zoro’s lips twitched just enough to be almost a smile. “If that helps you sleep, sure.”

Usopp abandoned the safety of the garment rack and inched closer. “How does this work?” he asked. “You going to shadow him all day? Because I don’t think you’ll fit behind the clothes even when the racks are full.”

“Usopp,” Sanji said warningly.

“What? I want to know. I’m the one who has to navigate around him while I dodge hangers.”

Zoro leaned a shoulder against the wall near the door, arms loosely crossed. The posture managed to look relaxed and fully watchful at the same time. Sanji hated that the stance also drew attention straight to the lines of Zoro’s shoulders. Everything on the man looked annoyingly good, and worse, Zoro seemed to know exactly where Sanji’s attention snagged because his gaze flicked to Sanji’s face and stayed there a fraction too long before he spoke.

“I’ll do a run-through of your routine,” he said. “We’ll talk about your commute, this floor, the exits. I’ll be with you when you move between controlled environments.”

Sanji lifted an eyebrow. “Controlled environments?”

“Places we can secure easily,” Zoro said. “Here, car, clients’ places if we coordinate. Anything outside that – public streets, events – is a higher risk. That’s where I earn my paycheck.”

“I thought you just standing there was how you earned your paycheck,” Sanji said lightly.

Zoro looked at him, expression unreadable. Up close, his eyes were a dark, steady brown. “I’ll keep you safe while I’m on this,” he said.

He didn’t say it like a reassurance. He said it like a fact. Something in Sanji’s chest tightened, an involuntary response to the certainty in the man’s voice. Promises were cheap; people broke them all the time. But this wasn’t the airy oath of a flaky client or the empty vow of a PR rep. It felt anchored, and that was annoying.

“You say that to all the stylists?” Sanji asked, lifting his chin.

“You’re the first one I’ve been assigned,” Zoro said. “So no.”

Sanji’s mouth opened, then closed. He turned away under the pretense of straightening a jacket on the nearest mannequin, giving himself a second to get his expression back under control. He didn’t like needing anyone. He liked even less that a stranger had dropped a camera into his private life and stomped on the illusion that he was untouchable behind clean lines and steel doors.

If Nami’s answer to that was a broad-shouldered ex-cop with moss for hair and a voice like a locked gate, fine. He would work with it. He just wasn’t going to admit it felt, against his will, the tiniest bit like relief.

Sanji liked mornings best before work swallowed them whole. The city at that hour felt unedited; less staged, more honest. He walked the three blocks from his apartment to the corner café the same way he always did: Americano with an extra shot, suit pressed, pace brisk enough to read as confidence.

He sipped as he crossed back to his car parked on the street, slid behind the wheel, and let the heat of the cup sit against his palm.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into the fenced lot behind Mikan Studio’s building, keycard lifting the gate just long enough for him to slip through. He cut the engine and the city noise dulled to something distant. The service door let him into the building’s rear corridor, concrete and fluorescent-lit, a short walk that opened into the main lobby – marble floors, a front desk staffed by bored security, a digital directory flickering between the names of companies renting the upper floors.

Zoro was already there. Not waiting like a chauffeur or a watchdog – just positioned nearby, talking quietly with the security guard as if confirming something mundane. Sanji’s pulse kicked. He blamed the caffeine. When Sanji walked past the desk, Zoro peeled off and fell into step behind him without a word.

Sanji didn’t speak until they reached the elevator bank. “You planning to loom all day or is that just your resting setting?” he asked, thumb hitting the button.

“If I’m doing it right, you won’t have to think about where I am,” Zoro said, short, simple. His gaze flicked to Sanji’s face like he was checking for a reaction. Then, as if deciding honesty was safer than distance, he added, quieter, “But I’ll be where you can find me.”

Unfortunately, Sanji was thinking about exactly where he was – too aware of the warmth at his back, the quiet certainty in his voice. Attraction was a terrible, traitorous thing. It didn’t listen to logic or timing or self-preservation. 

Sanji stepped into the elevator when it opened, the stainless steel doors reflecting Zoro’s broad frame behind him. His gaze caught the reflection for a beat too long, admiring the cut of Zoro’s shoulders, the way he filled the space without trying. Heat crawled up the back of Sanji’s neck before he wrenched his eyes to the buttons, jabbing the six, annoyed at himself. “I had this routine long before you,” he said over the elevator's whirr. “If this person’s watching, they already know it.”

“You should change up your routine,” Zoro replied. “We don’t want predictable.”

We. Like they were a team.

Sanji huffed out a breath. “Love that you’re turning my life into a strategy exercise.”

“You hired me.”

“Nami hired you,” Sanji corrected. “I just get to suffer the consequences.”

A corner of Zoro’s mouth curved – almost a smile, there and gone.

The elevator dinged when they reached the sixth floor. Sanji stepped out first, coffee in hand, pretending he didn’t notice how Zoro shifted just enough to block sightlines from the glass wall across the hall.

Stylists noticed staging. It was impossible not to.

He pushed open the frosted glass door to Mikan Studio, and the familiar buzz of assistants, garment racks, and camera gear swallowed them both.

The new normal settled in over the next few days.

Zoro came with him everywhere he went for work. Fittings at Mikan Studio. Showrooms across the district. Client meetings in cramped offices and too-bright conference rooms. Car rides wedged between rack after rack of garment bags, where Zoro stayed quiet unless Sanji asked something practical about location, timing, whether they were early or late.

In the studio prep room, Zoro positioned himself with the same thoughtfulness Sanji used when planning a look. When Sanji pinned a hem, Zoro stood where he blocked clear sightlines from the hallway. When Sanji went to pull shoes, Zoro drifted so that his body was between Sanji and the door without ever feeling like he was herding him. It shouldn’t have mattered – just security doing what security did – but sometimes Sanji felt the air shift when Zoro stepped closer, a subtle awareness sparking along his skin. Annoying. Distracting. And far too hard to ignore.

Zoro checked reflections constantly – mirrors, windows, the polished metal base of a rolling rack. It was unsettling how closely it matched Sanji’s own habits, just aimed outward instead of inward. His gaze bounced from surface to surface with an ease that said training rather than paranoia. Twice, Sanji caught him studying the reflection of a stranger in a hallway window before the person had even reached the dressing room corridor.

During all of it, Zoro didn’t talk much.

He answered questions when Sanji asked them. Short, direct replies, no embellishment. He spoke to clients when he needed to – introducing himself, laying out a boundary in a calm tone if someone tried to drag Sanji into a back hallway alone or pressed for a private consult Sanji hadn’t agreed to – but mostly he was there as a consistent presence just at the edge of Sanji’s attention.

Sanji hated it.

He hated how his sense of control felt tampered with, like someone had tugged a thread loose where he couldn’t see it. He hated having to adjust his movements around another person’s orbit. He hated the thought that anyone might look at him and see weakness because there was a bodyguard near him instead of just his own sharp tongue and common sense.

Snark became the only outlet that didn’t feel like a concession. Zoro didn’t shut it down. He absorbed it the same way he absorbed the noise of the studio – present, unmoved, still watching.

“You always this serious,” he asked one afternoon, pinning a cuff on an alt rocker’s sleeve, “or is it a special package because I’m such a high-value target?”

“Depends on the threat,” Zoro said from the corner, eyes on the door.

“Happy to hear you rank me somewhere between a senator and a pop star.”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Oh?” Sanji adjusted the fabric, smoothing it along the mannequin’s arm. “Where am I on the scale, then?”

Zoro seemed to consider it. “Important enough that someone’s taking risks,” he said at last. “Annoying enough that you argue about the protection.”

“Excuse me, I am a delight,” Sanji said.

Zoro’s mouth flattened like he was holding something back. “Sure,” he said.

Sanji had to bite down on the urge to smile.

The second DM came on a Wednesday.

Sanji was between looks, alone in dressing room two with a mannequin half-dressed in a structured jacket. The studio smelled like fabric steam and faint perfume, the hallway sounds muted through the closed door. Zoro had gone to check the route down to the loading dock before they brought up a new batch of rental racks.

Sanji slid his phone out to check the time and saw the notification waiting. Instagram. One new message. His thumb hovered for a moment, then tapped.

The same blank account. Same nonsense handle. Same lack of profile photo or posts. This time, the message was longer.

The silver tie with the fleur-de-lis pattern is my favorite.

He stared at the screen.

The tie in question was at home. In a drawer. Wrapped in tissue paper, because he babied his accessories, even the ones that only came out rarely. Silver silk, subtle fleur-de-lis pattern woven through the fabric so it only caught the light at certain angles. He’d worn it once, last week, for a date that hadn’t been bad but hadn’t been enough, the type of evening that ended with polite smiles and the shared understanding there would be no second.

He hadn’t posted a photo of that outfit. He hadn’t worn the tie to work. He hadn’t worn it anywhere but out the door of his building and into a rideshare that had taken him straight to the restaurant. 

There was no world in which this was just a lucky guess.

His vision tunneled down to the phone for one long, hot heartbeat. Then his body remembered it had work to do.

He slipped the phone into his pocket with fingers that suddenly didn’t feel as steady as they should. The mannequin waited, blank and patient, the jacket hanging crooked where he’d left it. He reached for a pin, the small metal shaft cool against his skin, and stepped in to fix the line of fabric along the shoulder.

His hand trembled. The pin pricked his fingertip. Sharp sting. A dot of red welled up, bright against his skin. “Shit,” he hissed, more at himself than the tiny wound.

He snatched his hand back and closed his fist around the pin, fury snapping through him like an electrical arc. Angry at the stalker for knowing about the tie. Angry at whoever had watched him getting dressed for a date and decided that gave them the right to comment. Angry that a simple message could shake him enough that his hands – his hands, the tools he trusted for everything from knife work to delicate fabric – weren’t steady.

Lifetime movie. His life was turning into the cold open of a bad thriller: hot-shot stylist, anonymous messages, stalker shots of his home. Cue the cheap dramatic soundtrack.

A tissue sat on the accessories table. He pressed it to his fingertip, breath coming a little too quick for his liking. The jacket on the mannequin sagged, unpinned, mocking.

The door opened without warning.

Sanji’s shoulders went tight, a flash of adrenaline making the room skew for half a second before his brain caught up and recognized the shape in the doorway.

Zoro.

He stepped in, closing the door behind him with the same unhurried control he always had, and his gaze went straight to Sanji’s face. 

Sanji dropped his eyes to the mannequin in the next beat, refusing to let whatever had been on his expression linger. “Back already?” he said, reaching for another pin with his free hand. He didn’t trust the right one yet. “Find any lurking shadows, or did the monsters under the stairs take the morning off?”

Zoro didn’t answer immediately.

Sanji felt rather than saw him cross the room. The air shifted. The faint creak of the floor under heavy boots. Zoro’s reflection appeared in the mirror behind the mannequin, just over Sanji’s shoulder: broad torso, arms loose at his sides, gaze pinned not to the door this time, but to Sanji’s hands. 

Sanji forced his fingers to behave. He lined the jacket seam up along the mannequin’s shoulder, pinched it into place, and slid the pin through fabric. The motion was almost smooth. Almost.

Zoro’s brow ticked. Just a fraction. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

Sanji glanced at the crumpled tissue on the accessory table. A smear of red marked the white. “Pin slipped,” he said. “The outrage.” He meant it to sound careless. It came out thinner than he liked.

“Phone,” Zoro said.

Sanji stiffened. “Excuse me?”

“Your phone,” Zoro repeated. “You went from fine to pale in the two minutes I was gone and you’re stabbing yourself with pins. Something happened. Either you suddenly remembered a bill you didn’t pay, or you got another message.”

Sanji hated how easily Zoro read him, how quickly he noticed the cracks Sanji tried to paste over. Hated even more the flicker of comfort that came with being seen. His first instinct was deflection. A joke. Something about how Zoro was very interested in what was in his pants. The line actually made it to the back of his teeth before he swallowed it. The DM was a violation. Twisting it into a flirt felt wrong. He pulled the phone out, unlocked it, and handed it over.

Zoro took it with careful fingers, like it might bite. He didn’t step away. He stayed within that same circle of space, the one that had started to feel like a boundary line: safe inside, the rest of the world out. His thumb moved over the screen.

Sanji turned back to the mannequin. Fabric, not people. Thread, not strangers. He set another pin and pretended he didn’t care what Zoro saw.

Zoro scrolled once, thumb pausing over the message. His eyes narrowed – not puzzled, but lining things up. “When did you wear this tie?”

Sanji snorted. “Didn’t realize I needed to file reports on my nights out. Want me to text you when I pick a belt, too?”

Zoro didn’t rise to it. “When.”

Grinding his molars, Sanji dropped the sarcasm. “Five days ago. South Pier restaurant. A date that won’t have a sequel.”

Zoro didn’t react to the word date. He just scrolled up to the earlier DM – the one that came with the photo through Sanji’s blinds. His jaw tightened, once.

“That tie isn’t on your socials. And it’s not in any studio photos.” He spoke like he was logging evidence. “Whoever sent this was already watching your place when they took that shot. Now they’re watching when you go out.”

Sanji stabbed the pin home a little too hard. “Perfect. Just the kind of romance I was hoping to attract.” The mannequin rocked on its stand, off balance.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zoro’s reflection. The man’s jaw had tightened again, muscle jumping once. His eyes had gone very, very still, the way they did when he was assessing an exit, not a person.

Zoro didn’t ask if Sanji was okay. He didn’t make soothing noises, didn’t tell him not to worry, didn’t offer any of the empty comfort lines people loved to throw around when they were helpless. Instead, he lowered the phone, slid it back into Sanji’s free hand, and shifted his own stance.

He moved a half step closer, angling his body so that if someone opened the door, they’d see Zoro first. He adjusted his position by the mirror so his line of sight took in both the entrance and the narrow window. The relaxed ease he usually wore tightened into something more focused.

“What are you doing?” Sanji asked, because the silence pressed at him.

“Adjusting,” Zoro said. “We’re treating this like more than a nuisance now.”

“We were treating it like more than a nuisance before.”

“Now we know they’re watching your dates,” Zoro said. “That escalates their investment. People like that don’t stop on their own.”

Sanji’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth for a second. “Great,” he managed. “So I’m a project.”

Zoro shrugged one shoulder. “You’re a client,” he said. “And my word is my bond. I said I’d keep you safe while I’m on this.”

He said it the same way he had in the beginning – no dramatics, no emphasis. Just fact. It shouldn’t have meant anything. People said things all the time.

But Zoro’s seriousness wasn’t for show. It sat under his skin the way muscle did: built over time, shaped by repetition. He tightened his watchful circle without asking for permission, as if the decision had been made the second the new DM arrived.

Sanji pretended not to notice that his hands steadied as he finished pinning the jacket. He pretended not to notice the space Zoro occupied at his back, a steady presence between him and the door, between him and the narrow window, between him and whoever might be watching. He pretended not to notice the small, unwelcome thrum of reassurance humming under his irritation.

If Zoro’s word was his bond, then for now, it meant something stood between him and the shadow that watched. He’d take it. For now. He just wasn’t going to say thank you.

By the time they wrapped the last look, Sanji’s feet hurt and his brain felt like it had been sautéed in fluorescent light.

The studio clocks all lied; they said it was only a little past ten, but his body knew better. It was the bone-deep drag that came after a day of fittings, last-second changes, and a client’s manager deciding they needed a “whole new direction” for the shoot forty minutes before call time.

Lights were down in most of Mikan Studio now, the common area lit only by the glow of a vending machine and a couple of emergency exit signs. The dressing room they’d commandeered for the evening looked like a fabric bomb had gone off: garment bags hanging half-open, a couple of shoes out of formation, tape and lint rollers on the counter.

Sanji shrugged into his coat and collected his keys from the accessories table. Zoro was by the door, same position he’d been in all night – back near the frame, shoulder braced against the wall, attention on the hallway instead of the mess around them. He looked like he could stand there another six hours without blinking.

“You taking the bus?” Sanji asked.

Zoro shook his head. “Subway. Two stops, then a walk.”

“No,” Sanji said.

Zoro’s gaze shifted to him. “No?”

“I’m driving you,” Sanji said. “Come on.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“That wasn’t a question,” Sanji said. “I’m already driving. May as well take you home.”

Zoro studied him for a second, some small internal calculation ticking behind his eyes. Then his gaze dropped, briefly, to Sanji’s mouth like his attention slipped before he caught it. “You worried about me now?” he asked. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Sanji said. “You spent the entire day guarding my ass. I can at least make sure you don’t get stabbed by some drunk on public transit.”

“Doesn’t happen as often as you think.”

“Fantastic. You can tell me all about statistics from the passenger seat.”

Control where he could get it. He couldn’t stop someone from slithering into his DMs. He couldn’t erase the image of his own profile caught in a stranger’s lens. But he could decide who walked out of the building with him and how.

He flicked off the dressing room lights before Zoro could argue further.

The night outside was colder than he expected. Grand Line’s skyline glowed, a haze of neon and office windows stretching up and up. Traffic was lighter now, mostly rideshares and delivery vans. His car – a compact hatchback parked in the studio’s fenced lot – sat under a pole light.

Zoro did another one of his scans before they crossed the asphalt. Gates. Corners. The lone streetlamp at the end of the block. It was becoming familiar now, the way his focus moved. There was something oddly soothing about it, even when it annoyed him.

Sanji unlocked the car with a chirp and slid into the driver’s seat. Zoro folded himself into the passenger side, broad frame making the interior look smaller. He adjusted the seat back without comment.

“Address,” Sanji said, starting the engine.

Zoro rattled off a street name he didn’t recognize and then added, “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

“Cryptic,” Sanji said. “Very spy-thriller of you.”

Zoro didn’t even look up from scanning the road ahead. “Which one? The Bourne Identity or Mission: Impossible?”

Sanji flicked on his turn signal, unimpressed. “Please. You’re not even giving blockbuster energy. Straight-to-streaming sequel at best.”

Zoro’s mouth twitched – barely there, gone as soon as it formed – and he went right back to watching the mirrors like nothing had been said.

They drove in relative silence after that. Sanji handled the city without thinking. He slipped through yellow lights, glided past rideshares weaving for curb space, nudged around a cyclist. The radio stayed off; neither of them reached for it. 

His GPS glowed on the dash, muted brightness revealing a few turns ahead, the map slowly darkening as they left the city center. Neon bled into distance, traded for rows of shuttered storefronts and late-night diners with flickering signs. Warehouse windows passed by like blank eyes, and Sanji followed the route without needing to check the screen again.

Zoro leaned forward slightly as the blocks shifted into industrial quiet. “Left into that lot,” he said.

Sanji took the turn. A squat warehouse came into view, paint faded but the mural still bold enough to be unmistakable: Mugiwara Martial Arts, fists and a straw-hatted fighter thrown mid-punch. The building looked old, but maintained, windows dark except for the faint glow from the office upstairs.

“Don’t think it’s open,” Sanji said. “If you’re here to hit the gym.”

“Pull around back,” Zoro directed, scanning the alley as they passed the main sign.

Sanji turned into the narrow side street. The gym’s rear lot was lit by two tired security lamps and whatever glow made it over the rooftops from the main drag. A chain-link fence cut off an alley; trash bins lined one wall. The only vehicle parked back here was a midsize truck with an attached camper shell – an older one, like you’d see at campgrounds and state parks.

“Over there,” Zoro said, nodding toward it.

Sanji parked a few spaces away, engine idling.

The camper wasn’t falling apart, but it wasn’t trying to impress anyone either. Clean, no rust creeping along the edges. Curtains drawn tight over the small windows. A couple of heavy-duty locks on the back door. No decorations, no plants, nothing to say someone lived there.

Temporary, Sanji thought immediately. Not the way some people did van life – documented on social media with fairy lights and hashtag wanderlust. This was a box someone had chosen out of necessity. Efficient. Stripped down.

“You live here,” Sanji said, because his brain needed the words out where he could look at them.

Zoro answered with a quiet “Yeah,” and didn’t elaborate.

That soft, unadorned answer scraped something open in Sanji – the lack of apology, the lack of shame. It made him want to pry, to understand him. He raised a brow. “That’s it? No tragic backstory, no ‘I renounced worldly possessions’ speech?”

“It has what I need,” Zoro said. “Bed. Shower. Lock.” He wasn’t selling it or excusing it, just stating what mattered.

“At least if some girlfriend wants to cut off your balls, you can just drive away and pretend it’s a lifestyle choice.” Sanji regretted it the second it left his mouth.

Zoro didn’t flinch, but the lack of reaction said enough. He reached for the door handle. “I’ll meet you at the studio in the morning,” he said. “Same as today. Text me if your schedule changes.”

“Zoro.”

He paused, one foot already half out of the car. Turned his head.

Sanji exhaled, irritation at himself catching in his chest. “I didn’t mean that like… you know.”

“Like what?” Zoro asked. 

“Like I’m judging you,” Sanji said. “I mean, I am judging you, but mostly for the curtains. Those are a crime.”

That got the tiniest curve at the corner of Zoro’s mouth. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Text me when you’re inside.” He hesitated, like he almost regretted how personal it sounded, and tacked on, quieter anyway, “Get home safe.”

Sanji felt something warm flare traitorously in response to that faint smile. “You sure you’re fine walking ten feet to your front door?” he said. “Want me to escort you?”

“I’ve got it,” Zoro said. “See you in the morning, Blackleg.”

He shut the door and crossed the lot toward the camper, keys already in hand. Sanji watched him unlock the back, watched the door open, watched that slice of warm light widen just enough for Zoro to step through before it closed again.

The security lamps hummed. Somewhere nearby, a train horn blew, low and distant.

Sanji stared at the closed camper door, trying to picture the kind of life that ended here instead of somewhere brighter or easier. Nothing came to mind.

Then he put the car in gear, curiosity still circling him on the way out of the lot.

His own building looked normal when he pulled up.

Same brick facade. Same buzz-in panel with half-scratched names. Same flickering light in the entryway that the landlord swore he’d fix every month and never did. He parked, locked the car, and forced himself not to scan the street the way Zoro did.

Inside, the stairwell smelled faintly of dust and someone’s lingering takeout, a detail he noticed as he passed it by. He took the elevator, the hum of cables stretching the seconds thin. His unit sat on the third floor, one of four on the landing. He stepped out, told himself everything was fine. Ordinary. He should have known better.

The first thing he noticed was the rug.

The doormat in front of his door was off-kilter, rotated a few degrees from where he always left it. Not enough for anyone normal to care, but enough for someone like him – a person who measured cuffs by sight and could tell when a hanger was a millimeter off-center – to feel the wrongness like grit in a shoe. His key hovered halfway to the lock.

The second thing was the lock itself.

A fresh scratch marred the metal around the keyhole. Not huge. Not deep. Like someone’s tool had slipped and then been pulled back in a hurry. 

His heart gave one hard thud, trying to leap straight into his throat. The hallway felt suddenly colder.

For a moment, he just stood there, listening. He heard no footsteps behind him. No muffled TV from inside the apartment. No obvious sign of someone lurking. Only the faint hum of the building and the sound of his own pulse.

He forced his gaze down, scanning the floor. White paper peeped from under the door, caught where it had been shoved through the gap and trapped by the threshold. He crouched slowly, grabbed the edge of the paper, and pulled it free. Plain printer sheet. No letterhead. No watermark. Just three words typed in a clean, generic font.

Blue suits you best.

His Americano from earlier churned in his stomach.

He’d worn a navy suit today. He wore a lot of suits – it was part of the job – but there was no way to read that line and not feel peeled open. The memory of the tie DM shoved its way back to the front of his brain. The photo from outside his window. The fire escape.

The hallway seemed to press in, walls inching closer.

Part of him wanted to tear the place apart. Kick the door open, sweep every corner, every closet, every cabinet. Prove they weren’t there. Or catch them if they were.

Another part – the part that still had some faint grip on self-preservation – pointed out that walking into a potentially compromised apartment alone, at midnight, when someone had clearly tried the lock, was the kind of idiocy that got people memorial slideshows at work. 

He hated that the second part sounded like Zoro. He hated that his fingers were shaking.

He pulled his phone out, stared at the screen for a beat, then hit Zoro’s contact before he could talk himself out of it. The call barely rang twice.

“Yeah?” Zoro’s voice was the same as it had been all evening. Calm. Present.

“Don’t say ‘I told you so,’” Sanji said.

“Did something happen?” Zoro asked. No annoyance or smugness. Straight to the point.

“I’m standing outside my door,” Sanji said. “Rug moved. Fresh scratch on the lock. Someone slid a note under it.”

“What’s the note say?” Zoro asked.

“‘Blue suits you best.’”

A short silence. He could almost hear Zoro building a mental map.

“Are you alone on the landing?” Zoro asked.

“Yes,” Sanji said. “As far as I can tell.”

“Any new sounds? Doors, stairs, elevator?”

“No.”

“All right.” Zoro’s tone shifted, firming. “Listen to me. Do not open the door yet.”

Sanji bristled on reflex. “I’m not stupid.”

“Didn’t say you were,” Zoro said. “Walk to the end of the hall. Check both stairwells. See if anyone’s sitting, standing, pretending to be on their phone. Take your time. If you see anything that feels wrong, keep moving toward a populated floor.”

“You make it sound like a training video,” Sanji muttered, but he was already moving.

The hall was short; it didn’t take long to confirm what he’d already sensed. Empty stairwells. No one loitering. No weird shadows on the landings below.

He walked back, heart still beating too fast, note clenched in his free hand. “Zoro,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not seeing anyone.”

“Okay,” Zoro said. “Next, hold your phone against the door and lean your ear close. Anyone moving inside, you’ll pick up the vibration and the sound through the wood.”

Sanji did as instructed, feeling ridiculous and grateful all at once. Nothing. No shuffle. No creak. Just the faint mechanical hum of the fridge he knew was on the shared wall with the kitchen. “Still nothing,” he said.

“Then it’s probably clear,” Zoro said. “But ‘probably’ isn’t good enough for this scenario.”

“Comforting,” Sanji said, dry.

“I can come over,” Zoro said. “It’ll take me fifteen, twenty minutes. I do a sweep, you go in after. Your call.”

He didn’t push. He didn’t guilt. He laid out the option and left it in Sanji’s hands like it actually mattered what he chose.

Sanji stared at his own door. The old version of himself – the one who hadn’t seen a photo of his home taken from a fire escape, who hadn’t gotten messages about private ties – would have gone in without thinking. He missed that version. He also knew that version had existed on a lie. 

“Come,” he heard himself say. “If you’re offering.”

“On my way,” Zoro said. “Got to the lobby by the mailboxes. Somewhere visible. Don’t hover in front of your door.”

“Bossy.”

“Alive,” Zoro said. “Text me your exact unit number.” He hung up.

Sanji stood there for a second, fighting the urge to do the opposite of everything he’d been told. Then he walked to the stairwell like a reasonable adult who wasn’t trying to get murdered for pride.

He sat on the step, note still in his hand. The words stared up at him, stark and neat.

Blue suits you best.

Trapped. That was how it felt. Someone out there was drawing circles around his life – home, work, dates, clothes – while he huddled on a concrete step in the lobby waiting for a man who slept in a trailer to come walk him into his own apartment.

Protected. That was the other side of it. Someone was literally getting out of bed to cross the city because Sanji asked.

He didn’t like either word. Needing help had never sat right with him. Having no choice sat even worse. And yet, worse than that, was the fact his body had already memorized Zoro’s attention as relief, like it recognized him before it recognized safety.

But he stayed where he was, phone in his palm, wrist balanced on his knee, listening to the building breathe and counting the beats until that unmistakable green showed in the glass of the lobby door.

Sanji wanted a cigarette.

That was the first thought in his head as he left the venue’s service corridor and stepped into the loading bay air. He hadn’t smoked in years. For a second he could almost feel the familiar weight of a pack in his pocket, the flick of a lighter, the drag and exhale smoothing everything out.

He’d quit when he became a stylist. No designer wanted their samples coming back smelling like smoke. No rental house wanted to see ash near their beadwork. He’d told himself it was professional, clean, a smart move. But now his life had been flipped open like a garment bag someone else had unzipped without asking. Control felt borrowed instead of owned. A cigarette would at least calm his irritation at the whole situation.

Last night still haunted him in a way that pissed him off. Zoro had arrived twenty minutes after Sanji had called, giving quiet instructions before he walked through the apartment. “Closets are clear. No second exits in here. No one’s in here now, and they didn’t come in through the front door,” he told Sanji once done.

Sanji had hated how relief and anger twisted into something ugly in his chest.

Zoro had paused by the entry and offered, “I can stay. Couch is fine.” He said it like it was nothing, but his eyes held on Sanji a fraction longer than they needed to.

The offer scraped him raw. A part that hated being cornered, hated being afraid, hated that a stranger with a camera was starting to rewrite his routines without ever touching him. If he let Zoro stay, then the stalker had won something – forced a change, altered his home, cost him privacy. He’d rather swallow glass than hand that victory over.

“No,” he’d said,with a clench of his fist. “I’m fine.”

Zoro hadn’t argued. “Door stays bolted. If anything changes, you call.”

Then he’d left. And Sanji had sat awake longer than he’d admit, lamps on, phone face-up.

Tonight, the styling session had run late. It was at a midtown venue – one of those multipurpose spaces that hosted everything from fashion shows to corporate galas. The pop diva they’d dressed had been in rare form, swinging wildly between tears and demands, claiming nothing fit while refusing to stand still long enough for measurements. By the time they wrapped, the crew was working on fumes.

Sanji’s feet ached. His patience was a thin line stretched between his teeth.

He and Zoro left together through the service corridor, the regular exits long closed. The hallway was a long, concrete tunnel lined with equipment cases and coiled cables, lit by spaced-out fluorescent bars that hummed overhead.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Zoro said.

“You’ll walk me everywhere,” Sanji muttered.

He lengthened his stride out of sheer irritation, putting a few meters between them. Not enough to lose him, but enough to feel like he owned his own path for a second. 

The door to the parking garage sighed when Sanji pushed through. The structure was half-empty at this hour. Cars sat in scattered clusters under harsh overhead lights, leaving long stretches of bare concrete between pillars. The air smelled faintly of exhaust and cold metal. Somewhere, a ventilation fan thrummed steadily.

His footsteps echoed as he cut across the level toward his spot. The sound bounced back in a way that made it hard to tell exactly where it was coming from. For a few strides, it was just him and the hollow rhythm of leather on concrete.

Then he heard another set, sync’d to his own.

He slowed.

The echo slowed.

He stopped.

So did the other steps.

Could have been Zoro, catching up. Could have been reflections off pillars, tricks of acoustics. Could have been–

“Sanji.”

The voice came from behind and above him. A whisper. Soft, almost affectionate. His brain scrambled to match it to someone he knew, someone he liked, and came up blank.

Fear spiked so fast it made him nauseous. His back felt exposed. His palms went damp against the coffee cup he still carried from earlier, the cardboard suddenly slick. He swore at himself for reacting, for freezing in the middle of an open level with nowhere to hide – lights overhead, concrete underfoot, his back turned to too much space.

Move, he thought. Don’t stand here like an idiot. 

He picked up his pace, heading for the row where his car was parked. The urge to break into a run crawled under his skin.

“Sanji.”

Closer this time. The sound slid along his spine. He veered between two pillars, heart pounding so loud it almost drowned everything else out.

A hand closed around his forearm. He jerked away on instinct, breath jolting out of him.

“Hey.” Zoro’s voice. Low, steady. “It’s me.”

He’d moved in from the side, not behind. His grip was firm without hurting, fingers wrapping around muscle and bone in a way that said control, not confinement. He angled his body so he was between Sanji and the open expanse of the garage, eyes already sweeping the space. Sanji’s chest tightened, not with fear this time, but with something warmer, sharper, infuriatingly close to gratitude. It was stupid how safe he felt with Zoro standing there, blocking the world without hesitation.

Sanji’s fingers had gone numb. The coffee cup shook, the lid rattling faintly. “I heard–” He cut himself off, jaw locking. “Someone said my name.”

“I heard it too,” Zoro said. He didn’t look up, but his shoulders tightened. His gaze tracked the levels in their reflections: the dark glass of a parked SUV, the dusty finish of a sedan’s hood, the glint of a metal railing above.

Sanji followed the line of his own unease and caught a shape on the level above them – a person near the railing, more outline than detail. Too far to see a face, close enough to tell they were facing down in their direction.

The figure stayed just long enough for Sanji to be sure they were real. Then they retreated into shadow.

Sanji’s mouth went dry.

“Get in the car,” Zoro said, voice gone flat in a way Sanji hadn’t heard before, with no room for argument. “Now.”

Sanji didn’t reach for sarcasm this time. He dug his keys out with unsteady fingers, hit the unlock button, and all but stumbled the last few steps to his car. Zoro stayed close, a half pace behind his shoulder, body turned out toward the garage as if expecting someone to come charging in. He slid behind the wheel. Zoro took the passenger seat without waiting for an invitation.

“Drive,” Zoro said. “We talk when we’re off this property.”

Sanji did as he was told. The act of backing out, aligning with the exit lane, waiting for the gate arm to lift – it all felt unreal, like he’d stepped sideways into a movie scene he’d been mocking two days ago.

They didn’t speak until they were back in regular traffic, city lights strobing across the dashboard.

“What did you see?” Zoro asked.

“Some asshole on the upper level watching us,” Sanji said. His voice came out rough. “Not close enough to give me a useful description. Just close enough to be creepy.”

“Height? Build?” Zoro pressed.

“Tall-ish,” Sanji said. “Couldn’t tell more than that. Hood up. Or a hat. I don’t know.”

“You heard your name twice?”

“Yes.”

“Same voice both times?”

“I think so,” Sanji said. “It sounded like it wanted to be… seductive.” He shuddered at the realization.

Zoro nodded once. “They weren’t hiding tonight. They wanted you to know they were there.”

Sanji stared out the windshield, jaw tight. The streetlights blurred past in streaks. 

Zoro added, calm as ever but not casual, not tonight, “And you’re to stay where I can see you. No more getting ahead of me like that.”

“Don’t start,” Sanji snapped, heat rushing in where fear had been. “I’m not letting this bastard turn me into someone who jumps at shadows and hides behind you every time I need to get to my car.”

“Too late,” Zoro said. “They already got a reaction. What you do with it now matters.”

Sanji gripped the wheel harder. “Fantastic. Gold star for them.”

The rest of the drive was quiet. Sanji got angrier with every mile that passed. When they reached his building, Zoro came up with him without asking. The stairwell felt narrower than usual, the door to his unit heavier.

“Unlock it,” Zoro said. “Don’t go in.”

Sanji did, silently fuming. The deadbolt clicked back. Zoro stepped past him first, one hand on the doorknob, the other relaxed at his side in a way that was somehow more threatening than a drawn weapon. He disappeared inside.

Sanji waited in the hall, heart ticking too fast, listening for anything that sounded like a struggle. Nothing. Just the faint creaks of someone moving through a familiar space.

After a few minutes, Zoro reappeared. “Clear,” he said. “Same as last night. No sign of forced entry, no new gifts.”

“Thrilling,” Sanji said. “I love being considered worth the suspense.”

“You’re being considered worth the effort,” Zoro said. “There’s a difference.”

Sanji swallowed that down with the rest.

“You staying this time?” he asked before he could stop himself. It came out sharper than intended.

Zoro shook his head. “You didn’t want that last night,” he said. “I’m not pushing it now. But my phone’s on. Same as before.” He hesitated, just for a heartbeat. “They’re escalating, Sanji,” he added. “Tonight wasn’t curiosity. It was pressure. Hunting, not watching.”

The word slid into place with cold reality. Hunting. Sanji’s spine went stiff. “Then someone had better catch them,” he said.

“They will,” Zoro replied. He held Sanji’s gaze. “And until then, I’ve got you.”

The way he said it – calm, certain – made something in Sanji loosen, just a fraction.

“Lock up. Don’t ignore anything that feels off.” Then Zoro headed back down the stairwell, boots fading into the background hum of the building.

Sanji shut the door, slid the bolt, and let his forehead rest against the wood for a breath he couldn’t quite control. Then he forced himself upright. He didn’t need to check the apartment again – Zoro hadn’t missed anything – but his body refused to settle.

He moved through the apartment without purpose, just motion. He grabbed a stack of mail he’d already sorted and rifled through it again, flipping envelopes harder than necessary. He spotted a business card he meant to throw out yesterday and snapped it between his fingers before tossing it away. A lone cufflink on the counter got snapped into its case like it had personally offended him. 

The stovetop didn’t need wiping, but he did it anyway. There wasn’t a speck on the framed runway photo, but he straightened it. The lamp near the sofa was already angled perfectly; he adjusted it again, pointless and irritated.

He finally dropped onto the couch, eyes fixed on nothing. The apartment stayed quiet, too quiet, like it was waiting for him to admit how rattled he was.

Sanji clenched his jaw.

He hated feeling chased in his own home. Hated that some stranger was dragging him into paranoia. Hated that Zoro was right more often than he wanted to admit. He’d rather be angry than scared. Anger at least belonged to him.

His phone buzzed on the coffee table, and he picked it up and glanced at it. Unknown number. Every non-contact went straight to voicemail. He’d set it that way years ago, to filter out clients who thought he was on call at all hours. The screen flashed once, offering the option to “View Voicemail.” He stared at it until the notification settled, then retrieved the message.

Static for a second. Then a breath. Then his name, whispered right against the microphone, the same soft cadence he’d heard in the garage, intimate in all the ways he didn’t want. “Sanji.”

Silence followed. No background noise he could hook onto. No clue beyond his own name turned into something crawling and possessive. 

He stopped the message and didn’t replay it. Pacing was better than listening again. He moved from kitchen to couch and back, muttering curses under his breath. At the stalker, at his frayed nerves, at the whole situation that had gone from annoying to predatory without asking his permission.

His body wanted a cigarette with an almost physical ache. Something to light, something to burn, something he could hold between his fingers instead of this shapeless anger.

He stared at his hands, empty and restless, and knew two things with miserable clarity. He wasn’t going back to smoking. And he wasn’t going to pretend, not after tonight, that he was anything but hunted.

Sanji noticed the first crack when he misplaced a water spritzer.

Not lost – misplaced.

He eventually found it balanced like a stupid tiara on a mannequin’s head, a place he would never leave it. He stared at it, annoyed. He didn’t even remember putting it there. Great. 

The studio around him buzzed with its usual chaos: racks rolling past with enough sequins to blind someone, a lighting tech sprinting by while swearing about wattage, steamers coughing clouds into the air. Sanji’s co-stylists wove in and out of each other’s spaces, trading garments and borrowed tools with the speed of a pit crew – “Where’s the 38 long?” and “Hand me the teal set, not that one– yes that one!” drifting through the open space. Down the hall, someone was testing bass-heavy music for an upcoming shoot, turning the corridor into a vibrating tunnel. A photographer barked, “Again!” at no one Sanji could see.

He usually thrived in it. Fed off it, directed it, turned noise into background music. Today, it swallowed him whole.

He replaced the spritzer, forced his attention onto alterations, and tried to pretend he hadn’t spent the last thirty seconds scanning the windows instead of the lay of the lapel. His fingers moved, but his brain watched sightlines like a soldier in war.

A camera shutter popped in the next room. A test shot. Harmless. His heart kicked anyway.

Sanji’s jaw tightened. “Get a grip,” he muttered to himself, quiet enough to drown under the steamer’s hiss.

Nami appeared in the doorway, red bob swinging with the kind of impatience that came from juggling temperamental stylists and a budget report. 

“You look like you’re about to strangle a garment,” she said, arms crossed. “Do I need to pull you for an hour, or are you still sane enough to work?”

“I’m working,” Sanji said. The bite in his voice came out thinner than intended.

Nami’s gaze was assessing, not coddling. “Good. Clients don’t care if you’re having a day. They just want to look like gods.” She tapped a fingernail against the doorframe, decisive. “Take a break if you need one. No one pays extra for perfection with a breakdown on top.”

Then she turned on her heel, muttering about a vendor who had “the audacity to charge rush fees on polyester,” and the studio swallowed her whole again – music thumping, steamers hissing, fabric bags flying across the floor.

Sanji turned back to his worktable, only to notice he’d set a cufflink case in the wrong spot again. He moved it automatically, then paused mid-motion, eyes drifting toward the narrow window on the far wall. Double-glazed, sealed shut like every other corporate building window in the city. Nothing but traffic and billboards below. He rolled his eyes at himself. What, was the creep going to scale the building like Spider-Man now? Cling to the glass and snap pictures through a six-inch strip of reinforced window? Ridiculous. And the fact that his pulse still jumped again when a camera shutter popped in the next room made him hate himself a little for thinking it.

“Sanji?”

Usopp’s voice came from behind him. Sanji’s shoulders lurched before he could stop the reaction. The box of clips he’d been holding clattered onto the counter, scattering metal like spilled candy.

Usopp froze mid-step, carrying three garment bags and looking one startled blink away from dropping them. Black curls bounced messily around his face as he stared at Sanji as though he’d just witnessed a crime.

“Whoa – hey,” Usopp said, voice rising, hands held halfway up with the garment bags draped over his arms. “Friendly human approaching! With clothing! No hostile intent!”

Sanji sucked in a breath through his nose and bent to pick up the clips. “Try announcing yourself like a person and not like a horror movie extra.”

“I said your name,” Usopp protested.

“Say it louder next time.” Sanji snapped a clip shut harder than needed.

Usopp backed toward the racks. “Okay. I will project. Like a Broadway vocalist. Just… don’t throw things at me.” He hung up the garment bags, then disappeared into the chaos again.

Sanji stayed crouched, gathering scattered clips. When he finally straightened, his reflection caught in the mirror wall: suit immaculate, hair perfect, posture fine.

Eyes wrong. Wide. Wired.

Zoro was still standing by the door. Arms loose, shoulders relaxed, eyes moving. Watching window angles, hall intersections, reflections across glossy surfaces. Sanji almost snapped again, just because Zoro was witnessing this without saying anything. He turned his back deliberately, focusing on a rack of shoes. But his gaze still flicked toward the exit twice. And Zoro saw it twice.

“You’re jumpy,” he said plainly.

The blunt concern landed with a softness it shouldn’t have, drawing him back from the edge with nothing more than a look. “Thorough,” Sanji corrected. “New word for you. Learn it.”

“Already using it,” Zoro replied. He didn’t blink. “This is different.”

Sanji’s fingers tightened around a suede pump. “Oh? Your professional opinion?”

“People act differently when someone’s watching them,” Zoro said. “You’re looking for threats.”

“And you think you can stop that?”

“I am stopping it,” Zoro said, as if it were already true. “Nothing’s going to happen to you when I’m here.”

Sanji huffed out something too sharp to be a laugh. “You can’t promise that.”

“I just did,” Zoro said. “That’s not how this ends. Not on my watch.” His voice didn’t spike, didn’t harden. It was stated like a fact set in stone.

Sanji’s throat tightened before he could fight it. He looked away first, heat crawling under his skin. “You can’t control everything,” he muttered.

“I don’t need everything,” Zoro replied. “I need your routes, your schedule, your blind spots. The rest is noise.”

Noise. Like the whole studio around them, which Sanji usually worked through without thinking. Now it just made him feel exposed. But Zoro sounded sure of himself. Annoyingly sure. Sanji could either fight it or let Zoro do his job.

Sanji wasn’t a damsel. He didn’t want to want help. But fine. If believing Zoro kept his hands from shaking and his work from going to hell, he wasn’t going to argue with the results. He just wasn’t telling Zoro that.

He turned back to the clothes, jaw set. The fabric lay clean and waiting, and he’d be damned before he let some creep ruin the one place he never lost control.

By the time he made it back to his apartment that night, he was wired and exhausted in equal measure. He bolted the door, did the stupid apartment sweep again, then dumped his bag on the counter.

He changed into soft clothes. He cooked dinner without thinking. Put on a show and didn’t absorb a single line of dialogue. Checked his phone once for messages from clients, twice to make sure Zoro hadn’t texted anything new, three times without a reason.

The apartment settled into stillness around him. The TV screen flickered. His phone buzzed.

Unknown number. Straight to voicemail.

He stared at the notification until it flipped to “New Voicemail.” Then he clicked it open with his thumb and hit play.

Footsteps first. Slow. Echoing. The sound of shoes on concrete, familiar rhythm, familiar pace. His pace. Then, a faint camera click, the same sound his phone made when he snapped a picture. 

Then a breath, too close to the microphone. And a whisper landing right in his ear: 

“Turn around.”

The words slid right up the back of his neck, hackles standing on end. But he stayed facing forward, refusing to give a recording the satisfaction of a flinch. He didn’t turn. Wouldn’t. He stopped the message with a sharp tap, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. His vision blipped white at the edges, then narrowed down to white hot anger.

“Coward,” he snarled into the empty room. “You want me so bad? Try in person.” It came out sharper than fear, sharper than pride. He wasn’t going to break over a voicemail and a stalker with too much free time. He still wasn’t a damsel. He wasn’t prey. He wasn’t going to make this easy for them.

He looked at his phone again. For a second, he hovered over Zoro’s contact. Then he dropped his hand to the cushion instead, knuckles white. He stood, paced once across the room, and forced his breathing long and slow. Believing in Zoro was one thing. Needing him was another. And Sanji wasn’t going to give the stalker the satisfaction.

Sanji didn’t tell Zoro about the voicemail.

Not that night, not the next morning, not in the three days that followed. He shoved the memory of that whisper deep enough that he could pretend it didn’t follow him from room to room. The stalker already took too much – they weren’t getting his routine, his reactions, or his grip on work. If he needed Zoro’s presence, fine. But the voicemail stayed sealed in his mind, where irritation could smother it. Life didn’t stop because someone lurking in shadows wanted it to.

The new week settled into the same pattern as the last: Zoro waiting by the lobby desk every morning, falling into step without comment; the two of them navigating studios and showrooms with practiced ease. Sanji adjusted hems and pinned seams while Zoro stood like a silent sentinel nearby. It should have felt smothering. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes Sanji caught himself checking that Zoro was still in his peripheral vision, and that was its own problem.

He worked harder. Sharper. His control tightened around every shoot, every fabric choice, every chaotic moment on set. Zoro didn’t call him on it, but Sanji caught the man watching him the same way he watched potential exits – quiet, focused, as if he was reading Sanji the same way he read a room.

They didn’t talk about fear. They didn’t talk about the stalker. They talked about routes, schedules, deliveries, lunch breaks. They talked about everything except the thing slowly eating away at Sanji’s nerves.

Three days in, Sanji started to feel watched even when the windows were sealed and the blinds were down. It made him furious. The stalker had no right to twist his instincts against him. So he pushed back the way he always did: control everything he could touch, sharpen what he couldn’t, and refuse to bend.

By Friday morning, Sanji’s nerves were a wire pulled too tight, humming under his skin no matter how carefully he dressed. The city felt crisper than usual when he stepped outside – air cold enough to sting his cheeks, pavement still damp from an overnight rinse, the smell of roasted beans drifting from the corner café like a promise that normalcy still existed somewhere.

He crossed the street, shoulders squared, refusing to let the tension riding his spine show. The bell above the café door chimed as he stepped inside. Warmth wrapped around him, thick with steam and the grinding of fresh espresso. Baristas shouted orders over the clatter of tampers; a couple argued gently in line about whether oat milk actually tasted different; someone behind him scrolled a feed too loudly.

This was routine. This was his. He wasn’t giving it up for a stalker, a security contract, or divine intervention with excellent hair.

He ordered his Americano and moved to the narrow counter by the window. He let his gaze lift to the glass – not out of paranoia, he told himself, but habit. He always checked his reflection here: tie straight, lapels smooth, hair falling exactly where it should. A small moment of control before the day swallowed him whole.

That’s when something in the reflection didn’t belong.

A hooded figure stood a few feet behind him, blurred by the glass but unmistakably fixed on him. Not angled toward the pastry case. Not glancing at the baristas or their phone. Directed. Intentional. The angle of the head looked wrong for anything casual, still in a way people never were in a morning rush.

Sanji’s breath caught. He turned quickly.

Nothing.

No hood. No figure. The door hadn’t swung open; he would’ve heard the bell. The sidewalk outside was crowded with the usual commuters in suits, a dog pulling its owner forward, a cyclist weaving through too-small gaps. Nobody was looking at him. Nobody was even close enough to match the reflection he’d seen.

It could’ve been a trick of light. A shadow. A reflection caught from someone crossing behind him.

But it hadn’t felt like that. His instincts, the ones honed by years reading rooms and people and the tiny shifts in posture that meant trouble, knew better.

Heat coiled low in his chest, ugly and bright. Not fear. He refused to name it fear. Rage was better. Rage belonged to him.

When the barista called his name, he took the Americano with a polite smile. He stepped outside, pulled the chill into his lungs, and walked toward the studio with his chin high and his pace steady, as though nothing in the world had followed him here in a reflection.

Zoro didn’t need to know about this. Not yet. Not when Sanji wasn’t ready to hear his own suspicion spoken aloud.

The day churned forward in its usual chaos, the type that normally sharpened Sanji’s focus instead of fraying it. Racks rolled past in uneven streams of color, lamé catching the light in liquid sheets, crushed velvet swallowing it whole. Steamers hissed at unpredictable intervals, fogging mirrors and dampening the air. Stylists wove in and out of each other’s spaces, searching for items or inspiration; assistants shouted across the common room about missing garment bags; clients changed their minds with the kind of confidence only the celebrities could afford.

Usopp drifted past with a rack in tow, black clothes blending into the studio’s shadows, a mess of dark curls pulled back but still escaping down past his shoulders. He didn’t look up when he spoke, already halfway through a list Sanji hadn’t asked for. Times. Locations. Which vendor was being difficult today. Sanji let it wash over him. If Usopp was talking, it meant the wheels were still on.

Sanji moved through it all as if his bones were humming. If he snapped more than usual – if he corrected a drape too sharply, or redirected an assistant with a touch more bite – no one called him on it. Not even Nami. She only gave him a look over the edge of her tablet that promised she’d bill him later for emotional damages and kept going, heels clicking like punctuation marks.

Zoro’s presence threaded through the day the same way it had all week: a constant at his back, quiet but impossible to ignore, showing up most clearly whenever Sanji had to cross open space – doorways, hall intersections, the gaps between rolling racks. He shadowed Sanji across the studio without crowding him, posture relaxed in the way trained bodies were relaxed – ready without looking ready. His eyes tracked windows, doorways, reflections. A mirror would catch Zoro’s gaze briefly and Sanji could tell: he wasn’t checking his hair; he was checking sightlines. Every reflective surface became another vantage point in a pattern Sanji didn’t want to acknowledge had meaning.

It grated. And it steadied him. Annoying combination.

By late afternoon, they were already behind schedule, headed across town to a rehearsal venue that always smelled like dust and cold stage lights. Sanji drove, because he refused to relinquish control of anything else today. Zoro rode shotgun, arm braced casually against the door, gaze flicking between the side mirror and the road ahead.

The city outside slid past in uneven streaks of yellow and steel – taxis merging without signaling, cyclists threading impossible gaps, neon signs blinking half-heartedly against daylight that refused to dim. The rhythm of tires on pavement should’ve soothed him. Instead, it scraped.

“You’re quiet,” Sanji said at last, because the silence felt worse than the noise. It felt like waiting.

Zoro didn’t answer immediately. He considered something, weighing it in that maddeningly unreadable way of his. Then he gave it to him straight: “You’re being followed.”

Sanji’s hands stayed steady on the wheel because he made them steady. His pulse, however, surged so hard he felt it in his throat. He didn’t look over. Didn’t give the moment any more power than it already had.

“Right now?” he asked, keeping his voice even, almost bored.

Zoro didn’t sugarcoat. He never had. He didn’t start now. “Most places you go,” he said. “Yeah.”

It hit like a gut punch – not surprising, not shocking, but confirming. The way reading bad news was worse when someone else said it aloud. Spoken truth had weight. Spoken truth made things real.

Sanji pulled into the next parking lot without fully registering the decision. His hand shifted the gear to park in one clean motion. He stared out the windshield for a beat before asking, “Since when?”

“A few days.” Zoro’s thumb tapped the door once, controlled and quiet. “Different distances. Different angles. Same intention.” His gaze didn’t shift from the windshield. He didn’t say the other word. He didn’t have to.

Sanji’s pulse climbed high under his skin – fury first, humiliation threaded under it, and something sour he refused to name at all. His jaw tightened until it hurt. 

“So what,” he said, tone light enough to pass for casual if someone didn’t know him, “you’re telling me this creep has been tailing me like I’m a celebrity with the world’s saddest fan club?”

Zoro didn’t blink. “I’m telling you they’re invested,” he said. “More than before.”

Sanji let out a laugh, low and cutting, a sound with no humor sharpened into it. “Fantastic.”

He put the car back in drive and eased onto the street. Traffic swallowed them again, headlights sweeping across Zoro’s profile in brief stripes of gold and shadow. Sanji kept his shoulders locked, refusing to let the tension show even as it coiled tighter with every block.

Zoro didn’t push. He didn’t reach for reassurance or offer platitudes that would have made Sanji bristle. He just said, steady and irritatingly sure, “We’ll handle it.”

Sanji didn’t answer. Not because he disagreed, but because he didn’t trust the sound his voice might make if he tried.

Hours later, when the day finally spat him out at his apartment building, Sanji wanted nothing except quiet. The kind that wrapped around a room like a warm coat, the kind he could sink into without hearing steamers hissing or stylists shouting or Zoro offering calm analysis like he wasn’t dismantling Sanji’s nerves one truth at a time. His shoulders ached from hours of tension he’d refused to show, and every step up the stairwell felt like shedding a layer of the day he didn’t want anymore. 

The third-floor landing greeted him with its usual dim bulb and scuffed paint, the hum of the building’s ancient wiring rolling through the hallway like a low, tired sigh. He reached into his coat for his keys, already tasting the relief of silence, already imagining his couch and a drink and the comfort of knowing the door was locked behind him.

Then he stopped.

Something sat neatly on his welcome mat. Not dropped. Not slid under the door. Placed. Squared to the edges like someone had taken their time with it. A printed photograph, glossy enough to gleam under the flickering overhead light.

His stomach didn’t drop – he refused that – but it clenched, tight and cold, a coil of instinct bracing for impact. He crouched and picked up the photo, the slick paper catching against his fingertips.

One look and the world tunneled in.

It was him. At the café. That morning. Shot from inches behind his shoulder – close enough to see the faint thread pattern woven through his collar, close enough to capture the curl of steam rising from his Americano, close enough that whoever held the camera could have leaned in and breathed against the back of his neck. His posture was relaxed in the picture, unaware, exactly the version of himself he let exist only in safe spaces. And someone had been inches away documenting it.

His pulse spiked. His throat tightened. The hallway seemed too narrow, too bright, too exposed. This wasn’t imagination or nerves or paranoia sharpening everyday moments into threats. This was proof. Cold, glossy proof. Someone had followed him into his morning. Into his ritual. Someone had stood so close he could have felt their sleeve brush his.

Sanji straightened slowly, the photograph bending as his grip tightened around it. The hum of the fluorescent light deepened until it felt like it vibrated under his skin. He breathed once. Twice. He didn’t freeze. He didn’t crumble. He burned. Fury flared fast and clean, cutting through the first instinctual jolt of fear like a blade. If this stranger wanted to intimidate him, they’d picked the wrong man.

He stared at the picture until the glossy surface smudged under his thumb. “Okay,” he murmured to the empty landing, voice low, steady, dangerous. “Come at me, then.”

The hallway offered nothing in return – no echo, no creak, not even the usual radiator sigh – just quiet, indifferent walls and the faint hum of electricity. But Sanji felt the heat in his chest sharpen into something solid. He refused to be small. He refused to be prey. He refused to let a stranger dictate how he stepped into his own home.

He slid his key into the lock with a steady hand and let the deadbolt click back. He wasn’t telling Zoro tonight. Not like this. Not when the words threatened to get tangled with everything he wasn’t ready to name. Tomorrow, maybe. When he could shape the story without his pride getting in the way.

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, the lock turning with a satisfying finality. The photograph stayed clenched in his hand, edges warped, heat still simmering under his skin. He wasn’t done being angry yet.

Sanji woke to a sound that didn’t belong.

Not the radiator’s usual hiss, not a car passing outside, not the neighbor’s heavy-footed trek to the bathroom at ungodly hours. This was smaller. Closer. A faint scratch-scratch-scratch that threaded through the dark and tugged him out of sleep.

He lay still on his back, eyes open to the dim gray of his bedroom. The city bled in around the edges of the blinds – a sliver of streetlight, the far-off glow of a billboard, a wash of muted color that turned everything flat. His alarm clock’s red digits glared 3:14 a.m.

Scratch.

His whole body locked. The sound came from somewhere in the apartment. Not in the bedroom. The living room, maybe. 

Don’t move, some old instinct whispered. He hated that instinct instantly. Hated lying there, pulse pounding, breath shallow, while a noise in the night made him feel cornered in his own bed. He hated the freeze before the fight, the moment where fear tried to choose for him.

Sanji forced his fingers to uncurl from the sheet. “No,” he muttered. “We’re not doing this.” If he let a noise keep him pinned to the mattress, the stalker already owned more of his life than he could stand.

He slid one hand down and fumbled for his phone on the nightstand. The screen’s glow pierced the dark, turning his pupils to pinpoints. No new messages. No alerts. Just the time and the smug little Do Not Disturb icon.

Scratch.

This time louder. Metal. The unmistakable shift of something.

His stomach dropped. He pushed the covers back and swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet landing on cool floorboards. He grabbed the nearest thing that could pass as a weapon – a heavy metal tape measure off his dresser – and crept toward the bedroom door.

The hallway was a tunnel of shadow. The only light came from the thin strip under the front door and the faint glow from the city bleeding around the blinds. Every hair on his arms stood up. He paused just inside the doorway, listening.

Another sound drifted through – a muffled thud, like something being set down or knocked over.

He swallowed, throat tight. He held the tape measure in his fist, prepared to throw it. He was better at kicking shitheads than using his hands, but he hadn’t practiced any sort of martial art since high school, almost two decades ago.

He continued up the hall. The living room opened up around him, furniture turned into hulks in the half-dark. He moved slowly, tape measure cold in his grip. He scanned the darkness, looking for an intruder or anything out of place.

The pothos plant on the table was tipped on its side, dirt spilling onto the floor. And next to it, placed neatly in the space cleared by its shift, lay something he had never seen before: a pair of silk boxers – black, high-end, folded carefully – and a piece of paper sitting atop them.

There was nothing else. No person in his apartment. Nothing else disturbed.

Sanji’s heart slammed hard enough to hurt. He stepped forward. The breeze from the partially ajar window brushed across his bare arms. The note sat crisp and small, handwritten in a clean, unsettling script. His heartbeat roared in his ears. 

Wear these for the next photo.

His stomach lurched. Before his mind could spiral further, his hand was already moving. He unlocked his phone with a shaky thumb and hit Zoro’s name. The call connected on the second ring.

“Yeah?” Zoro’s voice came through low, rough with sleep but already alert underneath. Sanji heard him shift upright, heard fabric move, the faint rustle of sheets. “What’s going on?”

Sanji tried to say something glib, something controlled, but it didn’t work with the rasp in his voice. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”

A beat of silence. Then, he could hear Zoro already moving. “Tell me.”

“I think someone used the fire escape,” Sanji said. “The living room window latch is undone. The one from the fire escape. They pried it open partway and… reached inside.” His throat tightened. “They didn’t come all the way in, but they left something. A pair of silk boxers. And a note telling me to wear them. For the next photo.”

He heard Zoro inhale once, sharply. “Have you touched anything?” he asked. 

“No,” Sanji said. “Just looked.”

“Good. Step back from it,” Zoro said. A drawer opened on his end; keys jingled. “Are you in the living room?”

“Yes.”

“Bedroom,” Zoro said. “Go now. Close the door behind you.”

Sanji bristled. “I’m not–”

“I’m not asking you to hide,” Zoro said, tone firm but not harsh. “I’m telling you where you’re safest until I get there. Go.”

Sanji turned, pulse jackhammering, and moved down the hall, feet whispering over the floorboards. The apartment felt stretched thin around him – walls too wide, shadows too deep, air too cold. Every small sound made him flinch, even though nothing moved but him. He stepped into his bedroom and shut the door. The click of the latch felt too soft. Too fragile.

“Chair,” Zoro said. “Under the knob. Angle it so pressure forces the legs into the floor.”

Sanji grabbed the small accent chair and wedged it under the doorknob, throat working. “Done.”

“Sit with your back against the bed frame,” Zoro said. “Somewhere you can see the door and the window both. Keep the phone on speaker.”

Sanji dropped to the floor, knees bent, back braced against wood that felt too warm in contrast to the cold rolling through him. He pressed the phone beside him so Zoro’s voice filled the room instead of his own thoughts.

“Okay,” Zoro murmured. He was breathing harder now, moving fast. “Talk to me. Keep going. What exactly did you see?”

Sanji stared at the dark sliver under the door, every instinct begging him to get up and pace. “The plants on the table by the window – one’s knocked sideways. That’s probably what I heard. The… boxers and the note were placed right next to it.” His mouth went dry. “The latch is off. Fresh scrape in the paint. Cold air coming in.”

“What about inside?” Zoro asked. “You see anything missing? Anything else overturned?”

“No,” Sanji said. “Nothing taken. Nothing broken.” He swallowed hard, realizing this could have been much worse.

The low hum of an engine vibrated through the phone, muffled by cheap speaker distortion. A seatbelt clicked. Tires rolled over uneven pavement  “Good,” Zoro said after a moment. “Not good that it happened. Good that you’re seeing it. That you called.” GPS piped up in the background, telling Zoro to turn. “You’re doing everything right.”

Sanji pressed a palm against his thigh, grounding himself in the pressure. “It feels like he was standing right outside my door,” he said. “Watching me sleep without actually… coming in.” His voice cracked. He hated it. 

Zoro didn’t answer right away. Only the low rush of acceleration filled the silence, the engine straining as he picked up speed. Then, he said, “Sanji, look around your room.”

Sanji did. He scanned his dresser, the neat rows of grooming items, the packed closet rack, the ironing board tucked into the corner, the blinds drawn tight over the one window Zoro had made him lock the first night.

“Everything looks the way you left it,” Zoro said. “He didn’t open this door. He didn’t cross that line.”

“How do you know?” Sanji whispered.

A car horn blared faintly on Zoro’s end; he muttered something under his breath, irritated but focused. “Because people who want to watch you sleep don’t leave a message by the plants,” Zoro told him. “If he’d come inside, he would’ve pushed the window all the way up. You’d see it. He wanted you to know he got close. That’s different.”

Sanji’s lungs stuttered. “Different,” he echoed.

“Yeah,” Zoro said. “Different.”

Minutes passed in slow, hammering beats. Sanji listened to his own breath, to the faint hum of the building, to Zoro’s voice breaking in every few moments – “Still with me?” “Anything change?” “You’re okay, keep talking.”

The truck’s rumble slowed again, then cut entirely. The sudden quiet thudded through the speaker. A door opened, hinges groaning. City night spilled in: wind, a distant siren, the rhythmic slap of Zoro’s boots hitting concrete as he broke into a fast walk.

“I’m on foot,” Zoro said, breath steady but moving. “Three blocks out.”

Sanji’s grip on the phone tightened. The idea of Zoro cutting across dark streets at this hour because of him did something complicated in his chest.

“Keep breathing,” Zoro said. “Slow if you can. I’m almost there.”

Sanji tried. The air felt too thin, but he matched the rhythm of Zoro’s breathing anyway. In. Out. In. Out. The panic didn’t vanish, but it stopped climbing.

“Good,” Zoro murmured. “Stay right where you are. Don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

By the time the buzzer sounded from downstairs, the adrenaline spike had started to curdle into something jagged and exhausted. Sanji’s legs protested when he stood. He padded down the hall with more caution than he liked, checked the peephole even though no one should be there, and pressed the intercom. 

“It’s me,” Zoro said. “Door.” 

Sanji buzzed him in and unbolted the lock, stepping back enough that the chain could drop once Zoro reached the landing. Each stomp of his boots on the stairs came through the floorboards, solid and certain, telegraphing his presence even before he appeared. Zoro filled the doorway when the door swung open. He’d obviously thrown on the first things he could reach – dark, coffee-splotched T-shirt under an open hoodie, jeans that had seen better days, boots barely tied. His hair was slightly flatter on one side where he’d clearly rolled out of bed and not bothered to fix it. A duffel hung from one shoulder.  His gaze swept everything in a full, silent rotation – hall, ceiling corners, the floor, Sanji’s posture. Only then did he exhale. 

“You took your time,” Sanji said, because the alternative was blurting something worse. 

Zoro ignored the jab. “Lock the door behind me,” he said. “Then show me.” 

Sanji slid the bolt home with fingers that didn’t feel as steady as he wanted, then crossed his arms to hide it. “Over here.”

Zoro set the duffel down by the entry, toe of one boot hooking it neatly against the wall, and followed. Sanji clicked on the lamp beside the couch – no reason to remain in the dark, the guy had already been and gone – and gestured at the table by the window.

Zoro crossed the living room, gaze sweeping over the note, the boxers, the tipped plant. He leaned close enough to the window that his breath fogged the glass. “He used something thin to pop the latch. This kind of window’s trash; you’re lucky it held this long.” 

Sanji stood near the couch, arms still folded. “Lucky,” he repeated. “That’s the word we’re using.”

Sanji followed him through the apartment because staying still felt worse. He watched Zoro move from room to room, methodical, checking everything even though it didn’t appear the guy fully entered the apartment. Zoro didn’t mutter to himself. He didn’t narrate much. He just absorbed, cataloged, each detail folding into some mental map Sanji couldn’t see. 

“You’re very calm,” Sanji said at one point, because his mouth refused to stay quiet when his brain was this loud. 

“I’m not calm,” Zoro said. “I’m working.”

Sanji looked at him properly then, not as a barrier or a job title but as a person in his apartment at four in the morning. Zoro’s jaw was tight in a way that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with a barely leashed temper. His shoulders sat a fraction higher than usual, tension coiled under the skin he carried like armor. He wasn’t distant from this. He was angry.

Something in Sanji’s chest twisted.

“You’re sure nothing’s missing?” Zoro asked, when he was done. They stood in the living room again. “Or looks out of place?”

Sanji shook his head. “I checked when I got up.”

Zoro looked at the boxers on the table again, then exhaled once through his nose, controlled, sharp. “What you’re feeling is normal,” he said. “This was meant to shake you.”

“It did.” Sanji’s voice was a low rasp. He hated it.

Without warning, Zoro stepped forward, into his space. “Look at me.” He didn’t crowd him against a wall or pin him somewhere he couldn’t breathe. He just closed the distance until the faint warmth of his body registered, then lifted both hands and set them gently on Sanji’s upper arms. Big hands. Callused. His fingers wrapped easily, thumbs resting near the seams of Sanji’s T-shirt, palms anchoring on muscle without squeezing. 

Sanji’s spine went rigid on reflex. His first instinct was to pull back. His second was to lean in. Both impulses hit so fast they canceled each other out, leaving him stuck in place with Zoro’s touch burning through cotton. 

“Hey,” Zoro said, voice low and steady. “I’m here.”

“You’re here.” Sanji huffed out something like a laugh, hardly a sound. “Congratulations on discovering the obvious.” 

Zoro didn’t let go. His grip didn’t tighten; it just stayed, solid and constant. “I’m here,” he repeated. “You’re safe. He’s not in this apartment. Right now, it’s just you and me.” 

The words shouldn’t have worked. They should’ve sounded like every empty reassurance he’d ever heard – “You’re fine, calm down, nothing’s wrong” – but they didn’t. Zoro wasn’t dismissing what happened. He was containing it for him, holding the fear at arm’s length so Sanji could breathe.

But the air still stuttered in his lungs. Zoro’s hands hadn’t moved. His thumbs made a tiny, unconscious pass over the fabric of Sanji’s sleeves, barely a shift, like he was smoothing wrinkles without thinking about it. “Match me,” Zoro said quietly. “In. Out.” 

Zoro drew a breath, slow and deliberate. Sanji echoed it, felt his chest expand, then fall, through the inches of space between them. He hadn’t realized until that moment he’d been syncing to Zoro’s presence all week – footsteps, scans, the way he filled doorways – but this was the first time Zoro made it that explicit. Sanji closed his eyes and tried. In with Zoro. Out with Zoro. His lungs obeyed. Eventually. 

“That’s it,” Zoro said, without cooing or praise, just acknowledgment. “Right now, the only thing you have to do is breathe and not touch anything.” 

Sanji opened his eyes. The room tilted back into place, lines straightening, walls settling where they were supposed to be. “You always this charming at four in the morning,” Sanji asked, voice rough, “or is this a special service?” 

Zoro’s mouth curved, tiny and quick, before smoothing out again. “Don’t get used to it,” he said. “I’m still billing your boss.” There was a warmth in his gaze that hadn’t been there before, though. Barely-there softness at the edges, the kind of thing most people would miss. 

Sanji’s eye snagged on it and refused to let go. He realized, with a weird lurch, that Zoro hadn’t had to come himself. He could’ve called the firm, sent one of the other agents on nights, told Sanji to dial 911 and wait for uniforms. Instead, he’d dragged on the first clothes he could find and rushed through the city because Sanji’s name lit up his phone in the middle of the night. Professional. He told himself it was professional. It didn’t feel entirely like that. 

“Let go,” Sanji said eventually, because if Zoro’s hands stayed where they were, his thoughts were going to drift somewhere they had no business going right now.

Zoro’s fingers lingered half a heartbeat longer than strictly necessary, then dropped. “I’m taking photos,” he said, stepping back. “Then I’m calling this in. It might take a while. You didn’t have anything important this morning.” 

Sanji bristled on instinct. “I have a fitting at ten.” 

“Then you can be late to it,” Zoro said. “They’ll live.” 

“You’re very confident about rearranging my schedule.” 

“I’m very confident they’d rather have you alive and pissed off than anything else,” Zoro said simply. 

Sanji pictured the diva from last night throwing a tantrum about a zipper. He pictured Nami’s face when he told her why he hadn’t walked in at his usual minute-perfect time. The irritation that rose in his chest didn’t quite drown out the sliver of something else. “You’re not leaving when the investigators come?” he said. 

Zoro met his eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m not.” 

Sanji felt something inside himself ease. “Fine,” he said, because he didn’t have anything smarter. “If you’re going to invade my life this much, I need coffee.” 

Zoro’s brow ticked. “Want me to make a pot?” he said.

Sanji snorted, the sound almost normal. “Not a chance,” he said. “I only want to deal with one catastrophe at a time.”

Zoro’s lips did that almost-smile again as he reached for his phone. “Go sit,” he said. “Coffee can wait a minute. You’re shaking.” 

Sanji obeyed before he could argue, dropping onto the couch and watching Zoro move through his space again, now with a camera app open. Flash off, light low, careful angles that caught what happened damning detail. He hated needing this. He hated that his hands still shook when he reached for the throw. He hated that some stranger had crossed into his space and left something behind. 

But when Zoro finished, spoke quietly into his phone, and then came back to the couch – when he dropped onto the far end and sat there like he planned to stay for a while, shoulders loose but eyes still alert – Sanji felt something else thread through the fury. He was not alone. Someone had packed up their own fragile excuse for a home in under a minute, sped through cold streets, and walked into his apartment like it mattered more than a job. 

He curled his toes into the rug, dragged in another breath to match Zoro’s, and didn’t say thank you. He didn’t have to. Zoro was already acting like he’d heard it.

A full day had passed since the break-in, though the details clung to Sanji like smoke. He’d told Zoro about the voicemail, about the picture from the coffee shop. Zoro was not pleased that he’d withheld that information. “Can’t protect you if I don’t know everything,” he said with a scowl.

Sanji looked away. “I thought if I didn’t give it weight, it wouldn’t grow teeth,” he said. “Guess I was wrong.”

They’d arrived at the studio late, worked straight through fittings and deadlines, then come home long after sunset. Zoro had taken the couch without being asked; Sanji hadn’t argued, too wrung out to pretend he didn’t want Zoro there. By the time he finally crawled into bed, exhaustion had done the uneasy work of drowning out fear.

Sanji woke to stillness, the type of quiet that should have felt calming but instead settled over the apartment like a thin layer of frost. The blinds softened the morning sunlight; the faint hum of traffic below filtered through the glass. Everything looked exactly as he’d left it – his suit jacket draped neatly over the back of the couch, the mug on his night table from last night’s tea, the stack of magazines in the corner he kept meaning to recycle. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was disturbed. 

He hadn’t slept well. He wondered if he ever would again.

He pushed himself into the bathroom and let the hot shower beat down on his shoulders, trying to wash off the feeling of being observed. He shaved with careful, practiced strokes. Trimmed his goatee until the edges were crisp. Tended to his face, his hair, every part of himself until he looked like someone in control, someone who hadn’t spent half the night replaying the creak of a window in his mind.

He laid out his clothes on the bed: a pressed white shirt, slim charcoal vest, navy tie with a subtle diagonal weave. Dressing sharply wasn’t vanity today, it was armor. The vest buttoned smoothly, the tie knot tightened perfectly, and each small act felt like reclaiming an inch of himself.

When he stepped into the living room, Zoro was already awake. He stood near the window – that window – his posture loose but unmistakably alert. The couch behind him showed signs of his temporary residency: the blanket folded into near-military precision, the pillow straightened, the duffel tucked at one end. He wore a black button-up from that duffel, slightly wrinkled. He looked like someone who had slept badly but was prepared for whatever might come through that window next.

Smudges still marred the paint where fingerprints had been taken. Sanji had repotted the plant while Zoro cleaned the spilled dirt. The boxers and note had disappeared into an evidence bag. A new window lock had been installed when they got back from work yesterday. 

Sanji checked the time reflexively, then ran a hand down the front of his vest, smoothing it even though it didn’t need smoothing. He didn’t brew coffee. He never brewed coffee. His morning Americano was always bought from the corner café, part of a ritual that marked the start of his day. He clung to that thought now, to the promise of normalcy it carried.

“Heading out now?” Zoro asked. His voice was low, calm in a way Sanji wished he felt himself.

“Obviously,” Sanji said, the bite unintentional. He grabbed his jacket from the chair where he’d hung it last night and slid it on, adjusting the lapels with more focus than the motion required. “You don’t have to stand there like a guard dog.”

Zoro didn’t rise to it. “Someone broke into your apartment the other night.”

Sanji bristled, mostly at the truth of it. He smoothed the already-perfect line of his vest again beneath the jacket and forced his voice steady. “Yeah, well, nothing happened this morning.”

“That doesn’t mean nothing’s happening,” Zoro said.

Sanji swallowed, annoyed that the words hit harder than they should have. He grabbed his keys and wallet, double-checked that he had his phone. He wanted out of the apartment, out of the memory of black boxers and overturned soil. He opened the door. “Let’s go,” he said, voice brisk.

Zoro didn’t answer, instead falling silently into step behind him, close enough that Sanji could feel the presence, far enough that it didn’t crowd him. A deliberate distance. A professional one. Just enough to remind Sanji that he wasn’t alone.

That night, Zoro took his place on the couch again, stretched out with a blanket pulled over his waist. Sanji watched him from the hallway, a strange swell of conflicting irritation and gratitude tangling in his chest. He didn’t want to need anyone here. But apparently he did.

And he hated that most of all.

The next morning, Sanji launched himself into work with the fervor of a man trying to outrun his own thoughts. He reorganized the garment racks twice before lunch, rebuilding looks piece by piece – swapping jackets, changing footwear, testing how different textures talked to each other under the lights – until each mannequin told a clear, intentional story. He steamed items that were already pristine, pressed lapels flat enough to cut glass, and corrected accessory placements with a precision that made even Brook pause.

In the hallway outside the fitting room, assistants skittered past carrying armfuls of fabrics – sequins that spilled light like falling stars, velvet so rich it looked liquid, leather that whispered faintly when touched. The studio thrummed with energy: makeup artists adjusting palettes, assistants prepping racks for off-site fittings, music spilling from different rooms. The only photographers on the floor were there for Chopper’s book cover client – Sanji tried to stop by for a brief ogle of the models on Romance cover days. It should have lulled Sanji into that familiar work rhythm. Instead, every sound felt amplified. Every stray motion tugged at his awareness.

Zoro moved silently behind him, matching pace without having to try. He didn’t speak unless necessary. He didn’t insert himself into the workflow. But he was always there, a steady, immovable point of gravity that Sanji couldn’t ignore no matter how hard he pretended to.

Sanji reached for the same jacket a third time before Usopp said, “You already checked that one.”

Sanji’s hand stilled.

Usopp didn’t look at him. He just rolled the rack a few inches to the left, blocking Sanji’s reach like it was an accident, and kept talking about delivery windows.

Later, behind the camera setup, Sanji leaned toward Brook to fix a crooked cuff. “Hold still,” he murmured, smoothing the fabric. His hands worked efficiently, almost harshly.

Brook laughed gently. “You’re tense today, my friend. Even my bones can feel it.”

“I’m fantastic,” Sanji said, adjusting the cuff again even though it no longer needed adjusting.

In the hallway between sets, he hissed toward Zoro, “You can stand more than a foot away, you know.”

Zoro didn’t so much as blink. “No.”

Sanji let out a breath that was half frustration, half something he didn’t want to examine too closely. Zoro was doing exactly what he was hired to do. The problem was that every bit of Zoro’s vigilance hammered home the reality Sanji kept trying to ignore: someone had breached his space, and that violation was still out there, watching.

By the fourth day of nothing, the fear inside Sanji’s ribs had settled into something sharper. Anger was easier. Anger didn’t make him feel exposed. Anger made him feel like he could reclaim what someone had tried to steal from him.

That morning, he threw open the blinds without hesitation, letting sunlight pour in and bounce off the polished floors. If anyone was watching – fine. Let them see him living. Let them see that he wasn’t afraid.

In the evening, he cooked a real meal for the first time all week. Butter warmed in the pan until it sizzled; garlic softened and released its perfume; pasta boiled, water frothing like a rolling storm. The apartment filled with sound – music playing loud enough the neighbors might complain, utensils clattering, pans shifting. It felt alive again. It felt like his apartment.

Zoro was still staying with him. He appeared in the kitchen doorway as Sanji stirred the sauce, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t comment. He simply watched, his attention quietly anchored to Sanji like a tether. The awareness made Sanji’s stomach tighten.

“What?” he asked, unable to ignore the weight of Zoro’s gaze. “Scared he’ll critique my playlist now?”

Zoro didn’t answer. But he didn’t need to. His expression held a tension Sanji had come to recognize: a silent calculation of risks, dangers, possibilities. It was worry. Real worry. The kind that stretched far beyond a paycheck.

Sanji scowled at his pot to avoid acknowledging the flicker of warmth that rose in his chest.

By day five, Sanji’s rituals of hypervigilance began to erode. He stopped checking the new latch multiple times. Stopped standing at the window to see whether the street below felt different. Stopped glancing behind him in the parking garage. It was a fragile slip in vigilance, but a slip nonetheless.

Zoro’s vigilance didn’t falter at all. He stood by the window while Sanji folded fresh laundry, his broad shoulders blocking part of the view. When Sanji teased him – softly this time, because the apartment felt too quiet for sharpness – Zoro barely reacted.

“Planning to scowl at my window until the end of time?” Sanji asked, shaking out a shirt.

Zoro didn’t move. “Someone broke in while you slept, Sanji.”

Even with his usual restraint, something in his voice slipped, a strain that hadn’t been there before. The words landed like a cold hand pressing against the center of Sanji’s chest. His breath caught before he could mask it. That image – someone invading his home – hit him hard again. He forced the fear back down, smoothed it over with bravado like plaster over a crack.

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t since,” Sanji said, dismissive.

Zoro’s jaw tightened, the muscle ticking like he was grinding back a thousand possible replies. He didn’t give any of them a voice. But the silence itself felt heavy.

The fight came the next day – or, more accurately, the clash that had been brewing since Zoro first stepped into his life finally found its opening.

They walked to the café down the block, a trip Sanji had done alone a hundred times. The morning sun glinted off the glass buildings. Pedestrians brushed past, chatting, laughing, living their lives without the bizarre intrusion Sanji was currently enduring.

“You don’t need to guard me from Americanos,” Sanji muttered once they reached the sidewalk.

“I’m not guarding you from the coffee shop,” Zoro replied evenly.

“Well, congratulations,” Sanji snapped. “You’re still glued to my elbow.”

Zoro didn’t flinch. “That’s where I’m supposed to be.”

“Not for this,” Sanji said, volume low but cutting. “It’s a coffee, not a hostage exchange.”

Zoro’s jaw tightened. “It’s never ‘just a coffee’ when someone’s watching you.”

Sanji scoffed, walking faster. “You can’t keep treating me like I’m going to break.”

“I’m treating the situation like it’s dangerous,” Zoro said, matching his stride without effort. “If that bothers you, take it up with the guy who opened your window.”

Sanji stopped short. Zoro took one more step before turning to face him fully.

“That’s not fair,” Sanji said, heat rising in his chest.

“It’s true,” Zoro countered. “You want normal. I get that. But pretending nothing’s changed isn’t going to make him disappear.”

Sanji folded his arms tightly across his chest. “What I want is my life back. My mornings back. Five minutes where I don’t feel like prey.”

For the first time, Zoro’s expression shifted, easing into a muted protectiveness that made something low in Sanji’s chest twist.

“You will,” Zoro said. “But right now, he’s still out there. And I’m not letting him get close to you again.”

The reminder hit harder than Sanji expected, which only made him angrier. “I don’t want to be someone who needs a babysitter,” Sanji said, voice low but shaking at the edges.

Zoro stepped closer, not enough to crowd him, but enough to be felt. “I’m not your babysitter. I’m the guy stopping someone from hurting you.”

Sanji looked away sharply, jaw tight. “You make it sound like I’m helpless.”

“You’re not,” Zoro said. “But right now, you’re a target.”

The hiss of breath Sanji sucked in felt like a slap. The silence between them turned dense, filled with everything Sanji hadn’t said aloud: I want control back. I want normal back. I want you here for the right reasons, not because some stranger decided I was a target.

His hand trembled faintly when he reached for the café door. It annoyed him more than any stalker could.

The shoot ran long, long enough that by the time Sanji got home he was carrying exhaustion like an overfilled garment bag. He stepped into his apartment and let the door fall shut behind him. The space was dim, lit only by the last scraps of evening pooling through the blinds. For once, he didn’t flick on the lights immediately. He simply breathed.

Tonight, Zoro wasn’t here. He’d left after Sanji insisted – twice, then a third time – that he needed a night alone. Zoro had studied him for several long seconds before finally agreeing, though the reluctance in his posture had been almost palpable.

Sanji tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter without checking the shadows. He walked past the half-open blinds. He stripped off his shirt and changed in the bedroom without closing the door. He didn’t look over his shoulder. Didn’t check the window locks. Didn’t feel that coiled fear under his ribs for the first time in days.

His apartment finally felt like his again. The quiet wrapped around him like a warm coat. He breathed it in, savoring the illusion of safety. Almost normal. Almost peaceful.

He knew it wasn’t real. But he wanted it anyway.

The following night, once again alone with a mug of chamomile and relaxing in front of TV, his phone buzzed on the couch, where he’d tossed it earlier.

Zoro: Home?

Sanji wiped his hands on a towel and typed back, Yes. I’m fine. You don’t have to check every hour.

The response came quickly.

Zoro: I’d still like to.

Sanji let out a groan, part exasperation and part something warmer he refused to name. Zoro had an uncanny ability to make him feel watched in ways that were entirely different from the stalker – annoying, yes, but also grounding, steady, protective. It complicated everything.

He crossed to the kitchen and opened the fridge, mentally assembling a simple pasta dish – olive oil, chili flakes, lemon zest, maybe parsley if he wasn’t too tired to chop. He hummed under his breath, letting the repetitive motions soothe him.

He didn’t see the faint glint near the window, catching the reflection of the streetlight. Didn’t notice the slight disturbance among the plants, one leaf askew, soil disrupted. Didn’t see how the blinds moved in a way that didn’t match the draft.

He was tired. He was done being afraid. And when exhaustion met relief, caution slipped its leash.

Sanji paused in the hallway on his way to bed, the apartment dim and quiet behind him. A tiny prickle crawled up the back of his neck, so faint he almost ignored it. Something felt… off. Like the air had shifted when he wasn’t looking.

He rubbed the back of his neck and snorted at himself. “Get a grip, Sanji,” he muttered.

He flicked off the last living room light, stepped into his bedroom, and closed the door behind him. He didn’t check the windows. Didn’t check under the bed or behind the door. Didn’t scan the corners for shadows.

For the first time since the stalker began, he slid between the sheets without bracing for something to happen.

And just beyond the curtain’s edge, barely visible in the soft wash of streetlight, a shadow lingered – still, patient, ready.

Sanji surfaced from sleep all at once, jerked awake by a dull thump from the living room and a hissed curse that did not belong in his apartment. For a heartbeat he lay perfectly still, breath lodged somewhere behind his ribs, fear settling over him before he could order himself not to feel it. His sheets were warm, his pillow still held the imprint of his cheek, and none of it mattered because every instinct he had screamed that something was wrong.

Adrenaline surged up his spine, sharp and electric. Anger followed in its wake - stubborn, reflexive, absolutely useless against the cold fact that someone had crossed his threshold again. He forced himself to move, reaching for his phone on the nightstand with slow, careful fingers. His thumb shook once as he tapped Zoro’s name, but the call barely rang before it connected.

“Don’t talk. Hide.” Zoro’s voice came low and immediate, footsteps already audible in the background.

Sanji bristled at the command, even now, even with terror crawling down his spine. “Zoro–”

“Sanji.” Just his name, but weighted, urgent, carved through with a strain Sanji had never heard from him. “Hide. Somewhere small. Cabinet, hamper – somewhere he won’t expect.”

Something thumped faintly in the other room and Sanji’s pulse thundered so loud he felt it in his teeth. Arguing was pointless. Worse than pointless – dangerous. He moved without another word, propelled by the crack he’d heard under Zoro’s voice, the smallest fracture betraying how personal this had become to him.

The tall laundry hamper sat wedged beside his dresser, half-filled from the wash day two nights ago. He slipped the phone between his shoulder and ear, crouched down, and folded himself into the narrow space. Flexible, wiry, and terrified – he pushed himself down until he was wedged tight, then pulled the clothes over his torso and head, burying himself in cotton and denim like he was packing his own grave.

“Well,” he whispered, breath trembling despite his best efforts, “good thing I did laundry.”

Zoro exhaled sharply on the line – too sharp to be calm – like he heard him but couldn’t risk responding. “Keep the call open. Mute me. Now.”

Sanji fumbled for the screen, toggling mute with his thumb. The line fell silent, cutting off Zoro’s background noises: GPS chirping, tires accelerating hard, wind buffeting what sounded like an open window. Sanji pressed the phone against his chest and clamped down on his breathing.

His apartment shrunk around him in a way he’d never felt before. Footsteps – slow, deliberate – moved through the living room. There was a pause, followed by the faint scrape of something shifting. The air felt too thin. The cramped darkness pressed against his shoulders. His own heartbeat thundered loud enough to drown out the world.

He stayed still. One minute. Then two.

The sound of the front door unlatching sent a bolt of ice down his spine. The door opened. Closed. Then came nothing. A silence so complete it felt predatory, as if the apartment itself were holding its breath.

Sanji didn’t move. Not yet. His lungs ached from the effort of holding still. The dark was warm with his own breath, suffocatingly close.

Eventually he whispered, so faint he barely recognized the sound as his own, “I think he left.”

He didn’t unmute the call. Didn’t dare. He stayed curled in the hamper until his phone vibrated violently against his sternum, nearly jolting a yelp out of him. Zoro’s text illuminated the dim fabric:

I’m here. Lobby door. Let me in.

Sanji shoved the clothes aside and staggered upright. Everything in him rebelled at leaving even the flimsy safety of the hamper, but anger surged up to steady him – hotter than fear, sharper, easier to carry. He grabbed the heaviest object within reach: his iron. Stupid weapon. Good weight. Something to swing.

Barefoot, half shaking, he marched toward the apartment door. “Coward,” he muttered under his breath. “Creeping, useless coward.” His fingers tightened around the iron’s handle as he flipped on lights, scanning the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, every muscle tight, iron raised and ready for whoever might appear.

By the time he reached the front door, he knew he was alone. He let Zoro into the lobby, noting that the latch on his door was unlocked. 

Zoro was upstairs in moments, knocking on his door. “Sanji–”

Sanji pulled it open. Zoro’s eyes swept over Sanji in an instant – feet, hands, pupils, posture – checking for injuries. The moment Sanji let him in, Zoro went to work, shoulders squared, movements precise and methodical as he checked through the apartment.

Inside, the damage was subtle but unmistakable. The fire escape window sat cracked open again, letting in a thin line of cold air. The potted plants along the sill had been disturbed - soil scattered across the hardwood, one stem bent sharply, like someone had grabbed it for balance. A single dirt footprint stained the floor, pointed straight toward his bedroom.

Sanji’s throat tightened as he followed Zoro down the hall.

In the bedroom, the chaos sharpened into something colder. Zoro stepped through the doorway first, breath catching – quiet, but sharp enough that Sanji heard it.

A small photograph lay on the second pillow on the Queen-sized bed. The side Sanji didn’t use. Glossy. Perfectly placed. A Fujifilm Instax print – the kind Sanji used at work when he needed immediate snapshots during fittings.

It was a close-up of Sanji sleeping. On this bed. In these pajamas. Head turned toward the pillow, hair tousled, mouth slightly open, captured with the intimacy of someone who’d been close enough to touch him.

Sanji stared at the image, stomach dropping molten and cold at once. Instax cameras were nearly silent. You could take a photo without being noticed. Print it later in another room. Then set it down beside the sleeping body you’d been photographing, like an offering. Or a threat.

Humiliation and rage mixed into something volatile inside him, but underneath it – beneath every brittle layer – fear coiled tight at the base of his spine. His eyes burned, but he didn’t cry. His breath shuddered once before he forced it steady.

Zoro stepped closer, slowly, like approaching something wounded. His composure cracked just enough for Sanji to hear it in the soft break of his voice. “Sanji…”

Sanji swallowed hard. His jaw trembled before locking into place. He lifted his chin, refusing to collapse under the weight of this, or under Zoro’s gaze, which was far too full for professionalism.

“I want a cigarette,” he said.

It wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t calm. It was the only thing he could manage before he did something far more dangerous, like step into Zoro’s arms and stay there until the world stopped shaking.

They didn’t leave until the investigators finished their walkthroughs, their measured questions, their gloved hands bagging evidence that still felt raw to him. Sanji gave his statement twice, voice steady even when his stomach rolled. The decision had already been made by then, argued through once in the hallway while uniforms moved around them: Zoro flat, immovable; Sanji sharp, exhausted; neither of them actually surprised by the outcome.

“You’re not staying here,” Zoro said, like it was already decided.

Sanji let out a breath through his nose. “You don’t say.”

So Sanji packed a bag for three days. Socks, underwear, shirts, ties, slacks, toiletries shoved in without the usual precision. It was past two in the morning when they finally stepped out into the cool, hollowed air of the street.

Sanji paused by the curb, looking up at his building. The windows stared back at him, dark and blank. He hated that it already felt like somewhere he used to live.

“It’s not secure enough now that he’s been inside while you slept,” Zoro said again, quieter this time, as if repeating it made it easier to accept. “We need controlled entry. Somewhere I can see everything.”

Sanji glanced at him sideways. “You always this romantic when you relocate people?”

Zoro’s mouth twitched, just barely. “Get in the truck.”

The drive was quiet. The city thinned out as they headed toward the gym, the GPS chirping on occasion, directing Zoro’s turns. Zoro pulled around back, killed the engine, and unlocked the camper mounted on the truck bed. The door opened with a muted creak, revealing a compact interior washed in dim, yellow light.

Sanji stepped inside and took it in all at once. It was clever in a utilitarian way: cabinets lining the walls, a small sink, fridge, and stovetop tucked into one side, propane tank secured beneath. An L-shaped bench wrapped around a folding table bolted to the floor, upholstery worn smooth with use. At the far end, a double bed built above the truck cabin, neatly made, military-tight. Everything had its place. Everything was contained.

“Cozy,” Sanji said, dropping his duffel on the table and sitting down hard, arms folding across his chest. “You sure this isn’t a hostage situation?”

Zoro climbed in after him, shut the door, and locked it. The sound echoed softly in the small space. “Easy to watch. Hard to sneak up on,” he said. “You’ll be safe here.”

Sanji tilted his head, studying him. Zoro sat beside him on the bench, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. He filled the space without trying, knees braced, posture loose but ready. A wall, just like Sanji’s first impression. A wall with a pulse.

“Well,” Sanji said lightly, “thanks for not dumping me in a motel with bad lighting and thinner walls. I’d hate to ruin my sleep schedule.”

Zoro huffed a quiet breath that might’ve been a laugh. Might’ve been relief.

The adrenaline hadn’t burned off yet. It sat under Sanji’s skin, buzzing, keeping him too aware of everything – the hum of the camper’s small fan, the faint smell of oil and metal, the warmth radiating from Zoro’s arm. His hand shifted on the bench and brushed Zoro’s shoulder by accident. Zoro went still for a fraction of a second, then his muscles eased again, like he’d consciously let go of something.

Sanji noticed. Of course he did. “You’re scared too,” he said softly.

Zoro didn’t look at him. “I’m alert.”

“That’s not a no.”

Zoro’s jaw tightened, then relaxed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I made a promise.”

Something in Sanji’s chest warmed at that. Being taken seriously did that to him.

The silence stretched, thick with things neither of them said. Sanji leaned back against the bench, eyes on the ceiling, heart still racing. He hated the way fear clung to him, hated even more that he wanted something to cut through it. Cigarettes, sarcasm, a stiff drink – none of it felt big enough.

“You know,” he said, glancing back at Zoro, “sex is a great distraction.”

Zoro turned slowly. The look he gave Sanji wasn’t confusion or surprise. It was interest held firmly in check, sharpened by restraint.

“You’re a client,” Zoro said, voice rougher than before.

Sanji shrugged one shoulder. “I’m an adult. You’re an adult. We’re attracted to each other.” A small, honest smile curved his mouth. “I’ve been interested since you walked into my dressing room. Tell me you aren’t, and I’ll drop it.”

Zoro didn’t answer. He held Sanji’s gaze, something taut and unspoken humming between them. His silence said enough.

Sanji moved first.

He leaned in slowly, giving Zoro time to stop him. He didn’t. Their mouths met, tentative at first, then firmer, heat blooming where they touched. Zoro’s hand came up to Sanji’s waist, fingers curling in the belt loop. Sanji’s fingers slid into Zoro’s shirt, feeling muscle and warmth beneath smooth skin, the sharp hitch of breath that followed drawing him closer without a word.

They broke apart only long enough to shift, hands and mouths finding familiar rhythms, the camper suddenly too small and exactly right. They ended up on the bed in a tangle of limbs and quiet sounds, Sanji above him, Zoro beneath, broad body braced and responsive, gaze never leaving Sanji’s face. Everything narrowed to sensation – pressure, breath, heat – and Sanji stayed tuned to him the entire time, reading every cue, every pause. When Zoro hesitated, Sanji waited. When Zoro pulled him closer, Sanji followed.

At one point, Zoro reached up to the small compartment above the bed, opening it by feel and pulling out protection without comment. Practical. Grounded. It made Sanji smile against his mouth.

Afterward, they lay tangled together, the camper filled with the soft aftermath of movement and shared breath. Zoro’s arm rested heavy and sure around Sanji’s waist, anchoring him without trapping him. The last of the adrenaline drained away, exhaustion crashing in hard and sudden.

Sanji curled closer without thinking, forehead settling against Zoro’s chest. This time, Zoro didn’t tense at all.

Sanji fell asleep like that, wrapped in warmth and the steady rise and fall of another man’s breathing, the world held at bay by thin walls and a promise that felt, for the moment, unbreakable.

Morning crept into the camper in slow, pale layers, filtered through the small windows and the thin curtains that did their best against Grand Line City’s relentless glow. The space smelled faintly of metal warmed by early sun and the clean bite of soap. Everything was closer in daylight. Every surface, every edge. Last night’s hush still lingered in the corners, softened now by the mundane reality of a new day and the steady hum of someone moving around in a space that was undeniably theirs.

Sanji shut the bathroom door with careful fingers and leaned back against it for a second. Calling it a bathroom was generous. It was a narrow, ugly yellow room with a toilet tucked beneath the shower itself, the sort of setup that demanded you be comfortable with your own elbows. He’d managed it anyway. He’d showered fast, water skimming over his shoulders in a stream that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be hot or merely determined. He shaved at the tiny mirror attached to the door, trimmed his goatee with the concentration he usually reserved for hemming a sleeve. He brushed his teeth in the tiny camp sink wedge into the corner of the shower. Then stepped out to dress and put himself together in a way that made the camper feel briefly like a backstage dressing room instead of a controlled hiding place.

Zoro was already up, standing at the cooktop near the camper door, dressed in a black t-shirt that stretched thinly across his muscular form. His hair was damp at the ends, still spiked in that stubborn way that made it look permanently wind-tossed. He moved with measured purpose, making the small space feel organized. Eggs sizzled softly, the smell simple and homey.

Sanji paused, watching him. There was no awkwardness, no careful distance, no brittle pretense that what happened last night had been a mistake. Zoro glanced up, met his eyes, and returned his attention to the pan like it was the most natural thing in the world to share a morning after with a man he’d been hired to protect.

“You sleep okay?” Zoro asked.

Sanji rolled his shoulders once, testing the remnants of exhaustion. “Enough,” he said. “In between dreaming about cameras and waking up to realize my pillow isn’t a crime scene.”

Zoro’s jaw flexed. It was small, almost invisible, but Sanji saw it. “Eat,” Zoro said, and slid the plate onto the table like a command softened into care.

Sanji sat, hands settling on the edge of the table. The folding tabletop wobbled slightly under his touch, then steadied. He watched Zoro crack another egg with one hand, shell splitting cleanly, movement efficient. It should have been unimpressive. It was. And somehow, the simplicity of it made Sanji’s chest loosen a fraction.

“You got hot sauce?” Sanji asked, leaning over to open the fridge. It was close enough to reach from the bench, a small unit tucked under the counter. He opened it and immediately felt personally offended.

Packaged salads filled the shelves in plastic clamshells, their greens too pale and too wet. Pre-cut fruit in neat cubes. Protein shakes lined up like soldiers. A carton of eggs. Bread in a bag, sliced with that spongy uniformity that screamed grocery aisle. There were smoothie pouches, for fuck’s sake, stacked beside a tub of plain yogurt. A narrow freezer with a flip down revealed frozen bags of berries. Ketchup, hot mustard, wasabi, and oyster sauce were wedged in the door.

Sanji stared into the fridge like it should apologize. “You eat like this on purpose?” he asked, voice edged.

Zoro didn’t look up. “It’s food.”

“It’s sad,” Sanji corrected, pulling a packaged salad out and holding it up like evidence. “This is what you feed yourself when you’ve given up on joy.”

Zoro’s mouth twitched. “It’s healthy.”

“So are stairs.” Sanji slid the salad back in with a delicate kind of contempt. “This is a cry for help.”

He stood and checked the cupboards next, because the universe clearly hated him. Microwave ramen. Instant Asian bowl soups. The kind you poured boiling water into and pretended it counted as a meal. More protein powder. A jar of peanut butter. Salt and pepper, at least, which he set on the table. A bottle of sriracha that looked like it had been used exactly twice.

Sanji shut the cabinet door gently, because slamming it would only make the camper feel smaller. “You’re lucky you at least eat salads,” he muttered, retaking his seat. “If I found nothing but chips and jerky in there, I would’ve staged an intervention.”

Zoro slid onto the bench catty-corner to him with his own plate, knees braced, elbows resting lightly on the table. “You want to cook,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was an observation.

Sanji stared at the eggs. They were fine. Perfectly cooked. Barely seasoned. “I’m not cooking a full brunch in a camper the size of a closet,” he said, but his hands were already reaching for the salt. “But we can do better than this, tomorrow.”

Tomorrow meant he’d still be here. Still in this narrow space, sharing air and mornings and the quiet after sleep. His mind slid back, uninvited and unrepentant, to the night before – heat, hands, the unhurried way they’d fit together. He didn’t force the thought away. Didn’t pretend he wasn’t open to a repeat.

Zoro watched him with that steady, unreadable focus, and Sanji felt it again, a low warmth under his ribs that had nothing to do with the cramped heater. He hated how quickly his body remembered. Hated how much he didn’t hate it. Maybe even wanted it. Wanted more.

They ate in close quarters, knees nearly brushing under the folding table. The camper’s small fan hummed. The gym behind the truck sat silent, its back lot empty except for scattered leaves and the distant whine of morning traffic. Sanji chewed slowly, letting himself exist in the strange pocket of safety Zoro had built.

He nodded toward the cabinets with his fork. “So,” he said, voice casual on the surface, curiosity edged underneath. “You actually really live here.”

Zoro’s gaze held his for a beat, then dropped to his plate. “Yeah.”

“Why?” Sanji asked. “Don’t give me the minimalist bullshit. You’re not some monk.”

Zoro huffed a short breath. “Quit the force.”

Sanji’s eyebrows rose. “That part I knew,” he said. “I assumed you… I don’t know. Got sick of paperwork. Shot your captain. Something dramatic.”

“No,” Zoro said simply.

Sanji leaned back slightly, studying him. Zoro’s posture stayed solid, but his shoulders carried a tightness that hadn’t been there when he’d been cooking. It was subtle, but Sanji caught it.

He softened his tone by a fraction, kept the teasing edge as cover. “So what happened?” he asked. “You piss someone off, or refuse to play along with some TV-cop corruption plot? Didn’t take the bribe, didn’t look the other way?”

Zoro’s eyes lifted to his, steady and tired at the same time. “No big scandal,” he said. “Just… years.”

Sanji waited.

Zoro’s fingers tightened briefly around his fork. “Same offenders,” he said. “Same calls. Same victims who didn’t get protected. You arrest someone, you take them in, you do the report, and then they’re back on the street before the ink dries.”

Something in Sanji went still as the weight of it sank in.

Zoro’s voice stayed calm, but something in it went harder with each sentence, like he was forcing the words through a narrow place. “Arrested a guy who strangled his girlfriend to death,” he said. “Pled guilty. Got six years. Was out in three.”

Sanji went still. The cramped camper seemed suddenly too quiet. Even the fan sounded distant.

“A mother tied up her kid, put a bag over his head, had sex in the bed with her boyfriend next to him as he suffocated to death.” Zoro’s eyes were dull, tone flat. “She got five years. Was out in two.”

Sanji felt his stomach knot, slow and ugly.

“Thefts, batteries, drugs – all the same. A never-ending rotating door.” Zoro stared at his plate. “After a while, it felt like I didn’t matter.”

Sanji’s throat tightened. He understood that feeling too well, even if his version came wrapped in silk ties and leather pants instead of handcuffs and blood. Being useful, being replaceable, being valued only for what you provided. He knew the taste of that.

He didn’t argue with Zoro’s statement. He didn’t try to fix it with a joke. He just watched him, noticed how Zoro kept his eyes on the plate, how he said it without bitterness, like it was a simple conclusion he’d already accepted. 

“Are you okay about it?” Sanji asked quietly.

Zoro’s answer came too fast. “I’m fine.”

His voice fractured on fine, subtle but there, a thin crack in the steel. Sanji heard it. It lodged somewhere behind his ribs and stayed.

Sanji forced himself to keep his tone light, because if he pushed too hard Zoro would shut down, and Sanji wanted him open. Wanted him real. “So how does the security firm fit in?” he asked, nudging the conversation elsewhere. “Because you don’t exactly scream ‘corporate consultant.’”

Zoro exhaled slowly. The tension in his shoulders eased a notch. “Friend’s brother owns it,” he said. “Calls me in when they need an extra hand. I still clean the gym at night when I’m not on a job.”

Sanji blinked. “You clean the gym,” he repeated, like the words didn’t fit with the man sitting across from him.

“Pays,” Zoro said.

Sanji leaned forward slightly, elbow on the table. “And the camper?”

Zoro’s gaze flicked toward the cabinets, the small sink, the narrow bed. “Couldn’t afford an apartment anymore,” he said. “Health insurance on my own. Auto insurance. Food. Phone. Gas. Electric. Adds up fast. Sold my car. Bought the truck with the camper used.” He said it plainly, like it didn’t sting, like it was just math. “Now it's a phone bill and paying to dump the black tank and refill water once a week at the campground down by the highway.”

Sanji stared at him. The casual way he said it made Sanji’s chest ache. He wanted, suddenly and irrationally, to hand Zoro a key to a better life and dare him to refuse it. He wanted to tell him he didn’t deserve to live like a man who’d been pared down to necessities. The way he shrugged off his own needs as if they were irrelevant. The way his identity had latched onto the only thing that sounded like a foundation: keeping his word.

Instead, he took a breath and aimed for something lighter, because that was what Sanji did when feelings got too intense. “Okay,” he said, tilting his head. “Last question. The hair.”

Zoro’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “What about it?”

Sanji gestured at the moss-green spikes. “That isn’t subtle. You just wake up one day and decide you want to look like a fashionable lawn ornament?”

Zoro’s mouth twitched again, more obvious this time. “Undercover job,” he said. “Security at a K-pop celebrity event before you. Everyone had multicolored hair. It was… less noticeable if I matched.”

Sanji laughed softly, surprised by it. “You,” he said, delight warming his voice despite everything, “at a K-pop party.”

“It was work,” Zoro said, but his eyes softened a fraction. “Kept the color after. Didn’t feel like changing it back. It’ll grow out eventually.”

Sanji studied him for a beat, then nodded. “I like it,” he said, simple as that. “It reminds me of moss. Not in an insult way,” he added quickly, because Zoro’s mouth was already twitching. “In a… it’s a good color on you way.”

Zoro looked at him, expression steady, but something in his gaze shifted, faint and personal. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sanji said, leaning back with a small smile. “I’d dress you to match it. Deep charcoal suit, crisp white shirt, and a tie in dark forest green to pull the hair out without competing. Or a muted gold accent,” he added, eyes flicking briefly to Zoro’s earrings. “You’ve got the metal already. You just need someone with taste to aim it.”

Zoro’s gaze stayed on him, quiet and intent. The heaviness of the earlier conversation didn’t vanish, but it softened around the edges, wrapped in something warmer and more human.

Sanji felt it settle in his chest. He realized he cared. More than he should. More than the situation allowed. And in the cramped, sunlit camper, with Zoro’s knees nearly touching his under the table, it felt impossible to pretend otherwise.

The days slid by in a strange, compressed rhythm: morning light through thin camper curtains, the smell of eggs and bacon on the tiny stove, the muted clack of locks that were checked because they had to be. Then work. Then drive back. Then the small, contained world of the camper again, where everything was within reach and nothing could hide in the shadows without being noticed.

Sanji had expected it to feel temporary in the worst way. Like waiting out a storm in a place you didn’t choose, counting the hours until you could go back to real life. Instead, somewhere between the third night and the fifth, the space shifted. His bag stopped living half-zipped on the bench. His toothbrush gained a permanent place beside Zoro’s. The narrow walkway stopped being a nuisance and started being familiar, with a closeness that made him roll his eyes while he stepped around Zoro’s broad shoulders and pressed a kiss to the side of his jaw as he passed.

He didn’t say it out loud, because words made things real in a way he wasn’t ready to admit, but the truth had settled in anyway. He didn’t feel like a prisoner of circumstance anymore. He felt like someone who had chosen where he was, even if the choice had started as necessity. Lover by choice. It made his chest warm in a way that was both annoying and impossible to ignore.

Sanji learned that Zoro was quiet by nature, not from distance or disinterest, but because he preferred listening to filling the air. He stayed still while Sanji talked, eyes on him, absorbing everything, then chimed in with a question that showed he’d caught the important part, or a brief clarification that tightened the focus. It felt personal, being listened to like that. He could get used to it.

By the second evening, cooking became Sanji’s domain without discussion. They came back from work late, both of them worn down in a mutual way that didn’t need commentary, and Sanji moved straight into the camper’s narrow kitchen like it was muscle memory. Somewhere between shifts and errands, he’d restocked the place – fresh food crammed into the fridge until it was almost too full to close, vegetables wedged beside protein shakes, herbs tucked wherever they fit. The cabinets followed suit, open space filled with intention instead of emergency rations. He worked with a single pan and limited room, turning dinners into something deliberate. They ate from mismatched bowls at the little table. Zoro sat close, knees nearly touching his, shoulders loosening as the meal went on. The camper felt smaller in the best way – full, lived-in, cozy enough that Sanji caught himself thinking of it as home.

They stopped pretending the sex was casual almost immediately. Nights blurred into something intimate and unguarded. Sanji knew Zoro’s body now – how control melted into something open and earnest beneath him, how that intensity softened into trust. Afterward, Zoro stayed close, hand warm at his side, presence unspoken but unmistakable. Sanji lay awake more than once, listening to Zoro breathe, thinking about mornings that followed nights like this. Thinking about choosing it. Thinking about wanting it to last after there was no reason to stay.

By the time the weekend rolled around, the camper routine had become its own domestic choreography, enough that Sanji almost forgot why it existed. Almost. The security firm’s vehicle enforced the difference. Black SUV. Tinted windows. No attachment to Sanji. Sanji always drove, garment bags and hard cases filling the back, while Zoro rode shotgun, posture tight, eyes never still. He checked mirrors, tracked reflections, scanned the flow of the city like it might turn on them without warning. 

The drive gave Sanji time to run his checklist. Emergency pins, backup cufflinks, stain wipes tucked into the inner pocket of his jacket. Which artist needed watching, who liked to tug at sleeves when nervous, who would forget how gravity worked the moment cameras turned on. He adjusted his tie at a stoplight, checking his reflection in the mirror – sharp, composed, exactly who he needed to be tonight. Beside him, Zoro stayed quiet, black on black, hair somewhat tamed by Sanji’s hand. 

The gala on Saturday night was televised. Big production, big egos, bigger budgets. A converted theater downtown with red carpet barriers, floodlights, and fans pressed behind metal rails, phones lifted like offerings. Inside, the building shifted character. Plush seats and gilded trim gave way to cables taped down with fluorescent markers, temporary stages built over polished floors. The air carried sound before sight - music leaking through walls in muffled thumps, countdowns echoing from somewhere unseen, the low, constant hum of something expensive and live.

Backstage was controlled chaos dressed in velvet and chrome. Everyone arrived styled and camera-ready – sequins catching the light, silk and leather sitting exactly where they should – but emergencies waited anyway. A handful of spare outfits hung along the walls, garment bags tagged and untouched unless something went wrong. Makeup stations glowed under mirror bulbs, faces half-powdered and half-star, the air thick with perfume, hairspray, and the heat rolling off stage lights warming up. Sanji moved through it like a final checkmark, hands smoothing what gravity threatened, fingers tugging a sleeve back into place, eyes tracking how fabric behaved when someone shifted or laughed. He was there for the last five percent, the part cameras punished without mercy. Somewhere nearby, someone shouted for a lint roller like it was triage. Beyond the curtains, bass pulsed through the floor, the crowd a living thing pressing closer, waiting for the lights to come up.

Zoro stayed close without hovering. That was his gift and his curse. He didn’t crowd Sanji, but he was always there when Sanji turned, silent in the background, black clothes blending him into the scene. He looked wrong in the environment anyway. Too solid. Too alert. His jaw was clenched hard enough that Sanji could see the muscle tick.

Sanji caught his eye once as he adjusted the sleeve of an artist whose “shirtless with chains” look had been his idea, refined, corrected, and camera-proofed. Zoro’s gaze flicked over Sanji’s face, quick and assessing. Are you okay? Are you safe? Are you still here? Sanji lifted his chin, gave him a look that said yes and also stop it before you make me nervous. It helped, and it didn’t.

Between outfit checks, Sanji stepped aside as an assistant rushed past and leaned in close to Zoro. “You’re scowling,” he murmured. “If you keep that up, I’m not taking responsibility for what I do about it.”

Zoro’s gaze didn’t soften. “I had eyes on someone,” he said quietly. “Lost him in the crowd.”

Sanji’s fingers stilled on a hanger. “Lost who.”

“He was here,” Zoro said. “I’m sure.”

Fear flared in Sanji’s chest, bright and immediate. Irritation followed because fear always made him angry at himself. “Great,” he said, voice tight. “That’s exactly what I needed tonight.”

Zoro’s hand brushed the small of his back, brief and steady, reassurance without making a show of it. “Stay close,” he said.

“I’m literally surrounded by people,” Sanji snapped. “Where am I going to go?”

Zoro’s eyes held his for a beat, intent. “Don’t go behind anything alone.”

Sanji opened his mouth to argue, because his instincts were sharp and stubborn and allergic to being told what to do, but a security staffer in a headset cut in before he could. “Roronoa,” the staffer said, urgent. “We need you to check something. Now.”

Zoro’s head turned, eyes narrowing. “What?”

“Someone flagged an issue at the side entrance,” the staffer said. “Could be nothing, could be someone trying to slip in. We need an extra set of eyes.”

Zoro looked at Sanji.

Sanji forced his mouth into something close to a smirk. “Go,” he said, like he wasn’t swallowing down a tremor. “I’ll be fine for thirty seconds.”

Zoro hesitated. It wasn’t long. It was long enough. 

Then he moved, fast, body cutting through the backstage crowd with controlled urgency. The space he left behind felt colder immediately, like someone had opened a door to outside air.

Sanji turned back to his rack, hands busy on autopilot. Check tags. Check hang. He told himself it was fine. He told himself this was a crowded theater with cameras and staff and security everywhere. He told himself the stalker wasn’t stupid enough to try something here.

A curtain shifted behind him.

It was subtle. A whisper of fabric. A movement where there shouldn’t have been one.

Sanji’s breath stalled. He turned.

The man who stepped out from behind the curtain wore staff blacks and a low hat pulled down to shadow his face. He was average build, forgettable in a place full of forgettable people. That was the point. In his hand, held low and casual like it was a tool, was a box cutter. The blade caught the stage light in a thin, bright line.

“You should’ve worn the blue shirt,” the man said.

Sanji’s voice died in his throat. His body froze, betrayal of nerves and muscle and instinct all at once. The world narrowed to the blade as it raised. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make his mouth work.

The man took a step closer. Close enough that Sanji could smell something faint and sharp under the theater air – cleaning solvent, maybe. Sweat. Something human.

Then Zoro returned at a dead run.

Sanji heard him before he saw him, boots striking the floor hard, the sound cutting through backstage noise like a gunshot. Zoro slammed into the stalker with brutal force, shoulder driving into the man’s center mass. The box cutter flashed up in panic.

It happened too fast to stop.

The blade caught Zoro across the left eye, a sharp slash that opened skin and spilled blood in an instant. Zoro didn’t even make a sound. He kept moving, momentum carrying him forward, but the stalker’s hand jerked again, wild, and the blade dragged diagonally from Zoro’s left shoulder down toward his right hip in a single vicious motion.

Two clean lines of violence. Two sharp tracks of red.

Zoro went down.

The stalker scrambled back, slipping into the curtain gap like smoke. Gone in the same breath he’d arrived.

Sanji’s body came back online in a rush. Sound exploded around him. Someone shouted. Someone screamed. Sanji realized with a distant horror that it was him.

“Zoro!” His voice broke around the name. He dropped to his knees beside him, hands already moving, already trying to stop blood with fingers that instantly turned slick and red. Zoro’s shirt soaked through fast, dark spreading across black fabric like ink.

Zoro’s breathing came shallow, controlled in the way a man tried to keep control when control was slipping away.

“Hey,” Sanji said, voice shaking, hands uselessly pressing. “Hey, stay with me. Stay with me, you idiot–”

Zoro’s good eye found him, focused despite the blood running down the left side of his face. His jaw worked like he wanted to speak and couldn’t quite spare the breath.

Someone grabbed Sanji’s shoulder. Another set of hands took over applying pressure, practiced and firm. Sanji tried to fight them, because he needed to be the one holding Zoro together, but his arms were shaking too hard and his fingers were slick with blood and terror.

“Ambulance,” someone yelled. “Get an ambulance back here now.”

The paramedics arrived with the kind of speed that made Sanji want to cry with relief and rage. They lifted Zoro, strapped him down, started working with quick, efficient hands. Sanji stumbled after them, palms stained, suit ruined, the taste of metal and panic in his mouth.

In the ambulance, the world shrank to white walls and bright lights and the hard rattle of the road beneath them. Zoro’s hand clamped around the rail, knuckles pale. His breathing stayed shallow, controlled through pain. He was already wrapped in layers of gauze – pressure bandage strapped tight across his torso, another darkening steadily beneath the EMT’s hands. The EMT worked quickly at his face, blotting blood away from his eye before pressing fresh pads into place and taping them down with practiced efficiency, voice calm as if that might steady the bleeding too. Sanji watched it all from too close, hands useless and stained, every jolt of the ambulance a reminder that Zoro was hurt because he’d been fast enough to put himself in the way.

“You’re lucky,” the EMT said, checking Zoro’s vitals. “That could’ve been a lot worse.”

Zoro’s mouth tightened. Blood streaked down his cheek, catching in the corner of his mouth. His voice came strained, rough around the edges. “Yeah?” he said. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

It wasn’t self-pity. It was blame, quiet and corrosive, aimed squarely inward. Sanji heard it in the tone – how Zoro framed the pain like a failure instead of bad luck. In the way his grip on the rail trembled once, then tightened again, as if holding harder could undo the moment he hadn’t been fast enough.

Sanji sat on the bench across from him, hands clenched so tightly his fingers ached. He wanted to reach for Zoro. Wanted to curl into him, press his face to Zoro’s neck, breathe until his own lungs stopped seizing. Wanted to hold Zoro the way he’d been held in the camper, safe in the narrow space between walls and a promise.

He couldn’t. Not with paramedics there, not with blood still fresh and the threat still out there.

So he did the only thing he could. He leaned forward and put his hand over Zoro’s on the rail, steadying the tremor with his own shaking strength. “I’m here.”

Zoro’s good eye met his. For a beat, the ambulance noise fell away, and all Sanji could feel was the warmth of Zoro’s hand under his, the pressure of his grip, and the terrifying clarity of what it meant to want someone enough that the thought of losing them made the world tilt.

Zoro didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His fingers tightened once around Sanji’s hand, and Sanji held on like it was the only solid thing left.

Emergency rooms had a way of sanding people down to their most basic parts. Bright lights. Bleached walls. Air that smelled like antiseptic and old coffee and the faint metallic edge of somebody else’s blood. Voices clipped into codes and instructions. Wheels squeaking over tile. Sanji had dressed stars under pressure, stitched outfits back together with a safety pin and a prayer five seconds before cameras went live, but none of that prepared him for this.

He paced the narrow strip of floor inside the curtained bay like it was the only place he was allowed to exist. Three steps forward, three steps back. Avoid the hard chair crammed into the space. His hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. He rubbed them against his pants until he remembered there was blood on his skin, then stopped, then started again like that would make the feeling go away.

A nurse had given him wipes earlier. He’d used them until the packet was empty, until his fingers squeaked and the red smears turned into pale stains that wouldn’t budge. It didn’t matter. He still felt it. Warm and slick and wrong, spread across his palms.

He snapped at a tech who tried to pull the curtain back without warning. “Knock,” he said, voice sharp and clipped, even though knocking on a curtain made no sense.

“Sorry,” the tech muttered, already stepping away.

Sanji exhaled, hard. He hated himself for that, too. None of these people had done anything to him. They were doing their jobs. They were doing their jobs while Zoro lay on a gurney a few feet away with his face wrapped in gauze and his torso strapped tight in a pressure dressing that kept blooming darker near the edges.

Sanji could still see the moment like it had been printed behind his eyelids. The flash of the blade. The way Zoro had slammed into the stalker without hesitation, like his body didn’t belong to him in that instant. Like it was only a shield and a promise and nothing else. Then the blood. A bright spill coating half of Zoro’s face.

Sanji’s throat tightened. He forced it open with anger, because anger was easier than fear. Fear made him small. Fear made him shake.

He paced again, jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He hadn’t smoked in well over a decade. Now he wanted a cigarette so badly his fingers twitched.

On the gurney, Zoro shifted with a small, controlled sound – barely more than a breath – but it yanked Sanji’s attention like a hook. Zoro’s good eye tracked him immediately, dark and steady even through the haze. His face looked wrong like this. His hair had dried in uneven spikes where sweat and blood had set it. The gauze over the left side of his face was already tinged pink in places despite the careful pressure the EMT had kept on it.

A nurse moved in with a monitor lead and a blood pressure cuff. Zoro watched her hands, then flicked his gaze back to Sanji, as if checking the room wasn’t the priority. As if Sanji was. Then, his hand lifted an inch from the bed. “Sanji.”

That was all it took. Sanji closed the distance, folding Zoro’s hand in between his palms. He could see the pain in the tension of Zoro’s jaw, in the way his other fingers flexed once on the gurney rail and then stilled. “How’s your–” His voice caught. He swallowed. “How’s it feel?”

Zoro’s mouth twitched like it wanted to make a joke and couldn’t find the energy. “Like I got cut,” he said. Flat. Honest. Stubborn.

A doctor pulled the curtain aside a fraction and stepped in. She looked tired in the practiced way, hair tucked up, sleeves rolled, badge swinging. “Mr. Roronoa,” she said, already scanning the chart, “we’re going to take you for imaging and then get you cleaned up and sutured. You’ve lost a lot of blood. We’re starting a transfusion. We’ll also need ophthalmology to assess the eye.”

Sanji’s stomach went cold, sharp and fast. He didn’t like the word assess. He didn’t like the way she said eye, like it was a separate problem from the rest of him. He didn’t like any of this.

Zoro nodded once, clipped. “Do it.”

The doctor glanced at the medication list. “We can give you something stronger for pain while we do this.”

“No,” Zoro said immediately.

The doctor paused, pen hovering. “You’re going to be here for a while. Suturing the face and chest isn’t comfortable.”

Zoro’s gaze flicked to Sanji again. He swallowed once, Adam’s apple bobbing hard against his throat. “Need my head clear,” he said.

Sanji’s temper surged up so hot it made his vision blink. “Why?” he demanded, voice tight. “So you can watch the ceiling tiles in high definition?”

Zoro’s good eye narrowed a fraction. “So I know what’s happening.”

“So you can keep guarding,” Sanji snapped before he could stop himself. 

The doctor’s expression stayed neutral, but her eyes flicked between them with the faintest hint of understanding. “We’ll compromise,” she said. “We can give you something lighter. You’ll still be awake. You’ll still be oriented. But it’ll take the edge off.”

Zoro hesitated, jaw working. It wasn’t fear. It was calculation. He glanced at Sanji like he was waiting for an answer that wasn’t his to give.

Sanji clenched his hands into fists. “Take it,” he said, low. “You’re not proving anything.”

Zoro’s mouth flattened. Then he nodded once. “Fine.”

They started the transfusion while they waited – IV line taped down, a bag of dark red hung on a pole beside the bed. The sight of it made Sanji’s skin crawl, not from squeamishness, but from the brutal reality of it. That blood wasn’t Zoro’s. It was someone else’s, poured into him because Zoro had bled out on a theater floor trying to keep Sanji from getting touched.

He pressed his fingers to his own wrist and felt his pulse hammering, furious and alive. He hated it. Hated that his body kept going while Zoro lay there pale under the lights.

They wheeled Zoro out for imaging and brought him back, and time did strange things in between. Minutes stretched thin. Sounds sharpened. Sanji watched the curtain sway each time someone passed and tried to breathe like a normal person. It was stupidly cold, as if a freezer were pumping directly overhead.

When Zoro returned, the staff moved with more urgency. They cut away the ruined shirt, exposing bandages wrapped tight across his chest where the blade had tracked diagonally. The dressing was thick, layered, already marked with seeped red despite the pressure.

Sanji turned his head away for a second and hated himself for it. He forced his gaze back.

A nurse cleaned carefully around the edges of the chest dressing, checking for bleed-through without disturbing what had been packed beneath. Another adjusted the transfusion line, eyes flicking between the bag and the monitor. The worst of the bleeding had been stopped for now; the rest would wait. Zoro’s breathing stayed shallow and controlled, each rise of his chest measured. His fingers had gone white around the rail again, knuckles standing out like bone.

“Mr. Roronoa,” someone said, and a different doctor stepped in, older, voice calm and precise. “I’m the Opthamalogist. Let’s take a look at that eye, shall we?” 

He lifted the gauze gently, and Sanji’s breath stopped. The cut on Zoro’s face wasn’t a simple line. It started at mid-forehead and ran down through the left side in a cruel, ragged slash, splitting skin and brow and cheek with a precision. The area around the eye was swollen, red and raw, and the eyelid didn’t sit right. Blood had crusted at the edges despite the cleaning, and when the doctor examined him with a light, Zoro didn’t flinch.

The doctor carefully lifted the bisected eyelid with a gloved hand, shining the light. “Can you see anything on this side?” the doctor asked after a moment.

A pause. A swallow. Zoro’s jaw tightened. “No.”

Sanji felt something inside him crack. He clutched the back of the chair so hard his fingers ached, because if he didn’t hold something, he might fall apart in a way he didn’t know how to put back together.

The doctor nodded, all professional gravity. “We’re going to do what we can to preserve structure and prevent infection,” he said. “But the injury is severe. We’ll talk more after we get you sutured and stabilized.”

Sanji wanted to scream. Wanted to grab the doctor by the collar and demand a different answer. Instead, he swallowed it down until his throat burned.

Zoro’s good eye tracked Sanji again as the doctor conferred with the nurse, like he could sense the crack in him. Like Sanji’s reaction mattered more than his own. Zoro’s voice scraped out, low. “Don’t.”

Sanji’s laugh came out sharp and ugly. “Don’t what?” he demanded, because if he didn’t bite, he might sob. “Don’t care? Don’t freak out? Don’t–” He cut himself off before he said something he couldn’t take back.

Zoro’s fingers flexed on the rail. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Sanji stared at him, disbelief turning into fury so fast it almost made him dizzy. “You’re kidding,” he said. “You just–”

Zoro held his gaze, stubborn even now. “It wasn’t you.”

Sanji’s hands shook harder. He turned away and scrubbed a palm over his face, dragging his fingers down to his jaw and gripping it like he could hold himself together physically.

The staff asked if Sanji needed to step out while they cleaned and stitched. Zoro answered for him, voice low and firm. “He stays.”

Sanji’s head snapped up. “Zoro–”

Zoro didn’t look away. “Stay,” he said, and for the first time Sanji heard how vulnerable he sounded beneath the subtle command.

So Sanji stayed.

They cleaned Zoro’s face first – irrigation, careful wiping, suction for the worst of it. Sanji watched the blood rinse away in diluted streams, watched the jaggedness of the cut become clearer under the harsh light. He wanted to look away and refused. This was the price of it. He needed to see what Zoro had paid.

They numbed the area. Zoro’s breathing hitched once, then steadied. The doctor worked in focused silence, stitching with quick, practiced movements. Thread pulled tight. Skin drawn back together where it could be. The line traced down through brow and cheek, and when they reached the ruined eye, the doctor’s hands slowed, careful, deliberate. Zoro’s jaw clenched so hard a tendon stood out in his neck. His fingers shook, then tightened again on the rail, knuckles white.

Sanji stood too close, fists clenched at his sides, nails biting into his palms. He couldn’t do anything. He hated that more than he hated fear.

The ophthalmologist left with instructions folded into a handful of clipped sentences. An appointment would be scheduled. Follow-ups. Someone would call. Soon. Later. Tomorrow. 

Then there was more waiting. Time in the ER didn’t move forward so much as it pooled. Nurses came and went. A curtain rustled open, closed again. Machines beeped with indifferent regularity. Zoro lay still beneath thin blankets, one side of his face bandaged thickly, his left eye covered completely now. The transfusion line ran steady into his arm, the bag above it slowly lightening.

Sanji stopped pacing and dropped onto the edge of the chair beside the curtained wall, elbows braced on his knees. He rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand, pressing into the ache that had settled there and refused to budge. Adrenaline had burned off, leaving something sharper behind, exhaustion edged with anger, making his jaw lock and his thoughts turn ugly.

He was worried about Zoro. Terrified, if he was honest. And he was running out of patience. Every minute that ticked by without someone doing something useful felt like a personal affront. If they didn’t come back soon – if they left Zoro lying there half-patched and bleeding behind a curtain much longer – Sanji was going to grab the nearest doctor by the sleeve and drag them in himself. Consequences be damned.

Zoro followed all of it. His head shifted slightly whenever Sanji moved, attention tracking him, like Sanji was the one fixed point in the room Zoro refused to let go of.

Eventually – finally – the ER physician returned, chart in hand, flanked by a nurse with a fresh tray of supplies. “Chest next,” she said, calm and practical. “We’re going to re-dress and close that wound.”

They moved to Zoro’s chest, peeling back the EMT bandages layer by layer. The cut beneath was long, angling from his left shoulder down toward the right side of his torso. It wasn’t a neat line. It was jagged, raw, bleeding sluggishly. Ugly, painful. So very large. The skin around it was bruised dark, swelling already setting in. 

The doctor cleaned it carefully, irrigating and checking for deeper damage, then stitched in measured sections. Needle, pull, knot. Again. Again. Closing the wound. Reapplying pressure dressings when done.

Zoro refused to make noise. He swallowed the pain until it lived in the hard lines of his face, until it showed in the tremor of his fingers and the thin sheen of sweat at his temple. 

Sanji couldn’t stand it.

When the doctor finally stepped back, Zoro’s chest was wrapped tight beneath fresh dressings, pressure layered and secured. She gave quiet instructions to the nurse – monitor the wound, watch the drain on the transfusion line, keep his vitals steady. No heavy painkillers unless absolutely necessary, by request. Antibiotics ordered. Imaging reviewed again before discharge.

“We’re not sending you anywhere yet,” she told Zoro plainly. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. We’re going to keep you here, keep an eye on you, make sure nothing starts bleeding again.”

Zoro nodded once.

The transfusion bag hung nearly empty above him now, plastic crinkling faintly as the last of it fed into the line. The nurse adjusted the drip, checked his pressure, scribbled notes on a clipboard. Someone said they’d be back. Soon. Later. After observation.

The curtain slid closed again. The ER noise continued without them – voices, rolling carts, the hum of recirculated air – muted through the fabric. 

Sanji turned on Zoro like his anger had been waiting for this moment. “You could’ve died,” he said, voice shaking with it. “You could’ve died.”

Zoro’s good eye narrowed. “I didn’t.”

“That’s not the point!” Sanji snapped, stepping closer until the bed rail was the only thing between them. “What the hell were you thinking? You don’t even know me.”

Zoro’s gaze stayed steady, stubborn even through exhaustion. His voice came out rougher now, strained around everything he was holding back. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

Sanji’s breath hitched. His mouth opened. Nothing came out. Fury and fear tangled together in his chest until he couldn’t tell which one hurt more.

Zoro swallowed, then went on. “That’s my job. That’s the only part that matters.”

Something in Sanji went still.

There it was. Clear. Brutal. Zoro’s world reduced to a single rule: keep them safe. Keep your word. Anything else was secondary, including his own body, his own future, his own damn eye.

Sanji stared at him and saw it in the way Zoro held himself even now, like the pain was manageable, like the loss was acceptable, like the only real failure would have been Sanji getting cut instead. Like that was the line Zoro couldn’t cross.

“You’re an idiot,” Sanji said, voice breaking on the last word. He swallowed hard, jaw working, trying to shove the crack back into place. “You’re a complete, stubborn, self-sacrificing idiot.”

Zoro’s mouth twitched faintly. “Heard that before.”

Sanji dragged a hand over his face. “You don’t get to scare me like that,” he said. “You don’t get to decide I can just… replace you if something goes wrong.”

Zoro didn’t answer right away. His gaze dropped to the sheets, jaw setting like he was bracing for impact. “You’d have another guard,” he said finally. “Another guy. Someone else would’ve stepped in.”

Sanji stared at him, something slow and cold settling in his chest. It wasn’t the deflection; he could handle that. It was how easily Zoro reduced himself to a slot. A warm body. A name that could be swapped out without consequence.

“That’s how you see it,” Sanji said, more to himself than to Zoro. He watched the way Zoro’s shoulders stayed rigid beneath the bandages, the way his hands stayed carefully still, like taking up space was something to be minimized. “Anyone could’ve been there. Anyone could’ve done it.”

Zoro didn’t argue.

Sanji felt the realization click into place, ugly and precise. Zoro didn’t measure himself by whether he was okay. He measured himself by whether the person he was guarding walked away breathing. Everything else – pain, damage, the fact that he was lying in a hospital bed with one eye covered – was incidental.

“You talk about yourself like you’re disposable,” Sanji said quietly.

Zoro’s mouth opened, then closed again. His jaw tightened, the only tell he gave.

Sanji exhaled through his nose, anger giving way to something heavier. “You really think the world wouldn’t notice if you were gone.”

Zoro finally looked up at him. The answer was written all over his face, even if he didn’t say a word.

Sanji stared at him, the truth settling in slow and brutal. Zoro didn’t think he was worth saving. Only that Sanji was.

That was when Sanji broke. Because somewhere between shared meals and shared silence, Zoro had stopped being protection and started being his. And Sanji couldn’t stand the thought of losing that.

“Are you okay?” Sanji asked, soft and urgent at the same time.

Zoro’s answer came automatically. “I’m fine.”

The word fractured on the way out. Just a small break in his voice, barely there, but Sanji heard it like a snapped thread.

Sanji’s throat tightened. He leaned a hand on the bed rail, knuckles white. “Stop saying that,” he said, low. “Stop acting like this doesn’t matter.”

Zoro’s fingers flexed again on the rail. “It matters,” he admitted, voice rough. Then, after a beat, quieter: “It just… doesn’t matter more.”

Sanji stared at him, heart hammering. Being taken seriously did that to him. Being cared for like this, with such relentless intensity that it cost someone blood and skin and sight, did something worse.

He wanted, suddenly and fiercely, to be the one between Zoro and everything else. To curl himself around Zoro instead of the other way around, to hold him there under fluorescent light and thin curtains and keep the rest of the world out for five stolen minutes.

“You’re going to let me take care of you,” Sanji said, voice tight with insistence. “You hear me? You’re not doing this alone.”

Zoro’s good eye held his. For a moment, something in his expression softened – fatigue, relief, and most telling, trust. “Okay,” he rasped.

Sanji let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and pulled the chair closer to the bed until his knee bumped the frame. He sat. He stayed. He clasped Zoro’s hand within his own.

Outside the curtain, the ER carried on. Inside, Sanji watched the monitor tick and Zoro breathe, narrowing his world down to those two things and nothing else.

Sunday afternoon light slanted through the camper’s small windows, turning dust into glitter. Outside, the lot was quiet. Inside, it was worse.

Zoro was sitting with his back against the seat, long legs stretched out as far as the space allowed, one arm braced along the cushion. The table had been folded away, allowing easier access to the L-shaped benches. The bandages across his torso had been rewrapped before they left the hospital, clean and tight beneath his shirt. Gauze covered the left side of his face, taped edges tucked under his hairline. He hadn’t filled the oxy prescription. Sanji had watched him toss the paper into the trash. Extra strength Tylenol sat on the counter now, the cap already loosened.

He was in pain, and it showed in what he didn’t do. He didn’t shift casually. He didn’t reach without thinking. He didn’t lean forward unless he had to. Every movement was deliberate, measured. His face held a grayish tinge; his breathing shallow.

Sanji’s hands were busy because his head was loud. He rinsed a mug that didn’t need rinsing. He wiped down the counter that was already clean. He checked the tiny trash bin to see if it needed to be emptied. It didn’t.

He picked up his takeout cup from the counter, rolled the cardboard between his fingers, then set it down again before immediately lifting it back up. Sanji popped the lid and took a quick sip. Bitter. Too hot. Not as good as the corner shop by his apartment. He leaned back against the counter and watched Zoro out of the corner of his eye. Zoro hadn’t reached for his own cup yet. 

“You’re gonna let it get cold,” Sanji said lightly.

Zoro’s eyes flicked down to the cup, then back up. “I’m fine.”

Sanji snorted. “Sure you are.”

That earned him a look – brief, unreadable. Zoro reached for the cup with deliberate care, fingers tightening slightly as he lifted it. He took a small sip, swallowed, and set it back down with a minor tremor in his hand. Sanji saw it, anger curling hot in his chest – not at Zoro, but at the stalker who did this to him. Zoro shouldn’t have been sitting there with stitches and gauze and that hollow self-blame behind his eyes. Zoro shouldn’t have been hurt.

Sanji’s voice came out low. Tight. “He’s not going to stop.”

Zoro’s eyes shifted to him, slow, wary. “We don’t know that.”

“We do,” Sanji said, and the certainty tasted like metal. “He escalated. He got into my place. He left things. He took photos. He came back. Then he hurt you.” The last part cracked something in his chest, a fracture he’d been pretending wasn’t there. “So we stop waiting.”

Zoro’s shoulders went even tighter, as if bracing for a blow. “What are you saying?”

Sanji thunked his coffee onto the counter and paced because if he stayed still he’d pick a fight with the wall. The camper gave him three steps before he had to turn. His shoes tapped over the narrow aisle. “I’m saying we go back to my apartment. Deliberately.”

He was tired of feeling fear. Tired of pretending that hiding was the same thing as being safe. Tired of not living his own life how he liked. It was time to end this once and for all.

Zoro’s answer was immediate. Flat. Final. “No.”

Sanji stopped mid-turn. He stared at him. “No?”

“No,” Zoro repeated. His face stayed steady, but his breathing hitched. “I already failed once. I’m not putting you back in that apartment like a target.”

Sanji felt his throat tighten. “I’m already a target.”

Zoro’s eyes flashed, quick and dark. “I’m not making it easier for him.”

“You think me leaving my life behind is safer?” Sanji’s hands curled into fists at his sides, nails pressing into his palms. “You think hiding in a camper is going to fix this?”

Zoro’s voice stayed low. Professional. Worse than yelling. “It keeps you safe.”

“It keeps me a prisoner,” Sanji snapped. “It lets him win.”

Zoro shifted, and pain flickered across his face before he shoved it away. “He got past me.”

Sanji’s stomach twisted. That was the sentence Zoro had been carrying since the hospital, tucked behind the gauze and the clipped replies and the Tylenol cap loosened on the counter. Zoro saw the attack like a personal failure and the injury as punishment. Sanji hated that. Hated that his self-worth seemed to be tied to results and that anything short of stopping it completely counted as failure.

“You don’t get to take this on by yourself,” Sanji said. “You got hurt stopping him. That’s not acceptable. I’m done with this shit.”

Zoro’s gaze held his, unblinking. “I’m not letting you go back.”

Sanji laughed once, bitter. “You don’t get to decide this for me.”

Zoro’s composure cracked for a moment. His mouth opened, then closed again, like he had a dozen reasons and every one of them would sound like begging. 

Sanji didn’t give him the chance to say anything. “You’re fired.”

Zoro’s eyes flicked down and back up again, fast enough that Sanji almost missed it. Something unguarded passed through his expression – hurt, stripped bare – before he pulled it back under control.

Silence filled the camper, thick as smoke. The space suddenly felt too small. Sanji’s pulse kicked hard against his ribs, his hands curling without him noticing. He waited for anger, for resistance, for something loud enough to push against.

Zoro didn’t give him any of that.

“You can fire me,” Zoro said, voice rougher now. “I’m still not leaving you alone. I said I’d keep you safe.”

“I don’t want–” Sanji started.

Zoro cut him off, still quiet. “I already gave my word.”

Sanji’s anger flared again, bright and helpless, because Zoro’s word wasn’t a comfort. It was a chain Zoro put around his own throat and then pulled tight. He turned away, because if he kept looking at Zoro’s face he would do something stupid. Something soft. Something that would undermine what he wanted – and that was for this to be done.

“I’ve made my decision,” Sanji told him.

“And I made mine,” Zoro said, holding his gaze. 

Sanji closed his eyes for a second and forced his breathing to slow. Yelling wasn’t going to solve anything. Zoro wasn’t leaving. But Sanji also wasn’t changing his mind. “Then we do it smarter,” he said.

“Sanji–”

“No,” Sanji interrupted him, firm and deliberate. “I am done. This is going to end now. No more hiding. No more jumping at shadows. We are going to set some sort of trap for this fucker and stop this.”

Zoro’s jaw clenched. He looked like he wanted to refuse on reflex.

“You’re hurt,” Sanji added, softer, because it was true and because Zoro wasn’t going to say it out loud. “You’re not going to be able to protect me like this.” He saw the wince, the look of self-recrimination in Zoro’s eye. 

Sanji’s voice steadied as he pushed on. “We bring in a second guard. From the security firm. Someone he hasn’t seen. Someone who can sit in my kitchen all night and watch the entry points while you recover.”

Zoro stared at the table, at the scuffed surface where a knife mark ran through the laminate. “He’ll notice an extra person.”

“He won’t if we’re careful,” Sanji said. His brain slid into planning mode the way it slid into a look build. Pieces. Silhouettes. Illusions. “During the day, the guard sleeps in my bed. He uses my shower. He stays out of sight.” Sanji grimaced, because it sounded filthy when he said it out loud, like they were turning his life into stage dressing, but that was the point. “At night, I do my usual thing, sleep in my own bed, it looks like I’m alone.”

“What about me?” Zoro said. He shifted, careful of his injury. “What about while you’re at work?”

“Since you’re insistent, you stay at mine, as well. Stick to the bedroom. Fight it out with the guard. Keep hidden, too.” Sanji felt like a real plan was coming together. “If I must, I’ll get someone else to be with me while I’m at work.”

Zoro’s shoulders rose on a slow breath. His face was tight with it, pain and resistance braided together. “I hate it.”

“Me too,” Sanji said. “That doesn’t mean I’m changing my mind.”

Zoro’s gaze lifted back to Sanji. There was something in it now – controlled, wary, and underneath, a fierce kind of care no longer hidden by professionalism. “Okay.”

They talked logistics until the sun dipped and the camper’s interior turned dim and close. Zoro made notes on his phone with stiff fingers, then contacted the firm to arrange for two more security – one for the apartment, one for working hours. When the plan was finally in place, the adrenaline drained out of Sanji in a slow, ugly slide. He realized his shoulders ached from holding themselves too high. He realized his jaw hurt from clenching. He realized he hadn’t eaten since hospital cafeteria toast that morning.

Zoro shifted on the couch, careful, and winced anyway. His hand pressed briefly against his bandaged chest. He didn’t look at Sanji when he spoke. “You won’t need me after this,” Zoro murmured.

Sanji’s head snapped up. Zoro’s gaze stayed on the window. “You’ll forget all this,” he said, voice low, like he was trying to convince himself. “You’ll go back to your life.”

For a second, Sanji honestly wondered if he’d misheard. His mouth opened, then closed again. Forget him. Go back to normal. Like Zoro had already decided Sanji’s future didn’t include him.

Sanji crossed the camper in two steps. He stopped in front of Zoro, close enough to feel the heat of his body, the careful way he held himself like any wrong movement would rip him open again. “Look at me,” Sanji said.

Zoro’s eyes lifted, reluctant.

“I already fired you. I don’t need you now,” Sanji said quietly. “But I wouldn’t mind having you in my life for a different reason.”

Zoro swallowed. His throat worked like the words stuck. He didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. The tension in his face changed, a fraction softer, a fraction more exposed.

Outside, a car passed, it’s radio loud enough to hear behind the gym. The sound faded, leaving the camper wrapped in a quieter hush.

Sanji’s fingers brushed Zoro’s cheek, then he shifted closer, closing the last inch between them. The kiss was brief. Gentle. More question than claim. Zoro exhaled, soft and shaky, and leaned into it just enough to answer back.

The plan was in motion. Tomorrow they’d return to the apartment and make it look normal. Predictable. Safe. They’d build continuity like a set and hope the stalker believed in it. 

But for now, it was just them.

Grand Line City kept moving even when Sanji didn’t. Traffic hissed on wet streets. Neon bled across the glass of his building’s lobby doors. The elevator still smelled faintly like someone’s takeout and too much cologne. His apartment still had the same clean citrus bite from the spray he used on the counters, the same rosemary and garlic ghost clinging to the cutting board he swore he’d already washed twice. Normal details. Familiar details. A life that belonged to him.

Publicly, the story was simple. Zoro was off-duty, recovering. Word had circulated through the agency fast – injured on assignment, stitched up, out of rotation. At work, Sanji had a new shadow in a black polo who didn’t speak unless spoken to, who scanned hallways and checked exits with professional neutrality. Zoro was nowhere in sight, which was exactly what the world was meant to believe.

At home, Sanji made sure he was seen arriving alone. He walked in with his keys in hand, head up, posture practiced. He checked his mail inside the front lobby, then took the elevator to the third floor by himself. If anyone was watching, they’d get the picture they expected: celebrity stylist, back from work, no muscle at his shoulder.

Privately, things were different. The new security, Jinbe, was already inside when Sanji came home each night. He moved into the kitchen once the living room blinds were closed, taking position in a chair angled for clean lines to both entry points. The kitchen in Sanji’s place was its own room, no windows, tucked behind a doorway off the living area; the guard had a view of the front door and the hall beyond, plus a clear path to the fire escape window if someone got bold. He didn’t sit staring at his phone. He didn’t wander. He did quiet, disciplined checks on the door, window, hallway. When Sanji moved through the apartment, Jinbe tracked him with his eyes and kept his hands free. Competent. Present. Boring in the way professionals were supposed to be.

Zoro was present, too. Just unseen. He remained in the bedroom, curtains drawn, lights set the same way they always had been. He stayed in there except to use the bathroom, not visible in the hall. He didn’t cross the living room. He didn’t step into the kitchen. He didn’t show his silhouette in the windows. Views into the third floor apartment were only from the fire escape or the street. He read, or watched something on his phone during the day while Jinbe slept; still on watch in case the stalker tried to invade during daylight hours.

Three days passed like that, measured in routines and illusions. Sanji went to work. He adjusted lapels and marked adjustments and played nice with talent who thought the world existed for them. He kept his phone in his inside pocket and kept his assistant close. He did what he always did – built looks, built stories, made people camera-ready. 

He came home and cooked more than he could possibly eat. He carried an overloaded plate toward the bedroom with a second plate clasped beneath. He stepped into the bedroom, shut the door behind him, and handed Zoro the second plate. Then he left with one plate fewer and food missing from his own, emerging a minute later in different clothes, eating as he walked like he’d only gone to change.

He set his plate on the coffee table, turned on the TV, then closed the blinds. Average night. Normal in the way it used to be. Only then did Jinbe move from the hallway to the kitchen to take his post, eating the meal Sanji had left for him there. 

He ate dinner, watched a boring show on TV beneath the soft lamp glow in the living room. He cleaned up afterward, boxing the leftovers for Jinbe to quickly reheat in the small hours of the morning. He left the kitchen light on dim. Bedroom light low enough to read by. He left a glass on the nightstand. He left a book open on the couch. He made the place look lived in, not guarded.

Sleeping in the bed with Zoro overnight was difficult now. Sanji wanted him there for other reasons, without a threat looming overhead. The intimacy of the truck camper had been traded for stiff postures and overnights fraught with tension. Zoro slept badly. When he slept at all, his dreams turned violent. Sanji would wake to Zoro’s breathing going too fast, his body going rigid. Once, Zoro came awake with a harsh sound caught in his throat, hand grabbing for Sanji’s wrist with instinctive force before he registered where he was and let go.

“Sorry,” Zoro rasped, staring at the ceiling like it had answers.

Sanji rolled onto his side, heart still banging. “Don’t,” he said, and meant both the apology and the dream. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t, but Sanji didn’t think his comfort would matter much right now.

One night, Sanji changed Zoro’s bandages in the bathroom. The bathroom light was bright and clinical, bouncing off white tile and the mirror that had seen Sanji shave and preen and fix his tie a thousand times. Now it reflected a different picture: Zoro shirtless, chest wrapped, skin marked with healing bruises, one eye hidden under gauze. His posture was careful. He tried to make it look casual anyway, like pain was something you could shrug off if you refused to acknowledge it.

Sanji set out clean gauze and tape. Hands steady. Mouth tight. He peeled back the old bandage with slow precision, kept his breathing controlled, refused to react when Zoro’s muscles tensed. Zoro’s breath caught once. He didn’t make a sound beyond that.

Sanji dabbed at the edges, cleaned the skin like they’d been told, checked for infection, rewrapped the area with firm, even pressure. He taped it down cleanly. He kept his eyes on his hands because looking at Zoro’s face – at the stubborn set of his jaw and the thin sheen of sweat – made something hot and furious rise in his throat.

Night four arrived with the same staged normality: Sanji came home, cooked, plated, put on a show. Jinbe stayed in the kitchen, lights low, lines clear. Zoro stayed in the bedroom, unseen. They communicated via muted text when necessary. Sanji lay down with his back to the door and his body tense, angry at himself for wanting to turn and press closer, angry at the fact that wanting anything right now was a recipe for disaster.

Around three in the morning, he woke up with that prickle crawling up the back of his neck. The apartment felt wrong. Too still. Like something was holding its breath. He lay there without moving, eyes open in the dark, listening. From the kitchen, there was the faintest shift of fabric and the soft creak of a chair being adjusted with care. Beside him, Zoro was already awake. Sanji could tell by the way Zoro’s breathing had gone quiet, by the way his body held itself – alert without motion. Zoro didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. 

Sanji’s stomach tightened, slow and cold. From somewhere near the entry, there was a sound so subtle it barely registered: the front lock turning. Sanji only knew what it was, because the door had a tiny squeak just before the lock fully unlatched.

Sanji’s pulse spiked hard enough to make his vision sharpen at the edges. Zoro got up swiftly, breath catching on a hiss, moving toward the bedroom door on bare feet. His hand was on the doorknob when they heard Jinbe’s voice. “Stop. Hands where I can see them.”

Sanji was out of bed by the time Zoro opened the bedroom door, peering past him down the hall. The stalker was in the entryway to the apartment, Jinbe outside the kitchen door. The low light from the kitchen provided enough illumination to see.

There was a sharp slice of motion, air cut by something thrown. A knife struck with a wet thunk.

Jinbe grunted and staggered back, boots scraping hard against tile as he absorbed the impact. The stalker surged past him without hesitation. He moved with the confidence of someone who believed the real obstacle was gone, to angle himself toward the prize he believed he’d earned. 

Zoro was already moving. He came out of the bedroom fast, faster than his body should have allowed, and Sanji saw the cost of it immediately. Zoro’s injured eye threw his depth just enough that his first step landed wrong. His chest pulled hard around the bandages, breath tearing free of him as pain flared bright and sharp. For a split second, his timing was off, half a beat slower than the man he’d been before the hospital. 

The stalker lunged, wild and desperate now that the plan had shifted, hands reaching for anything soft or vulnerable. He surged in, shoulder dropping, driving his full weight toward Zoro. Sanji’s breath caught. If the stalker had hit him clean, Zoro would have gone down.

Zoro twisted on instinct, the motion ripping a sharp sound from his throat as pain tore across his chest. The stalker’s shoulder clipped him instead of slamming home, close enough that Sanji felt the miss like a blow to his own ribs. Zoro crashed into him before the man could recover, shoulder driving into bone, the impact exploding through the hallway with a sick, solid thud. The wall shuddered. A framed photo rattled loose and hung crooked on its hook.

The stalker fought like an animal. Hands clawed at Zoro’s face, nails scraping skin. Teeth snapped inches from his forearm. He twisted, bucked, tried to slip free with slick, panicked strength. One hand found Zoro’s bandages on his face and yanked, hard enough to draw a sharp, broken sound from Zoro’s throat.

Sanji stood frozen, heart hammering so hard it blurred the edges of the room. He saw everything too clearly: the stalker’s heel skidding uselessly against the floor, Zoro’s jaw clenched tight enough to look like it might crack, the way Zoro’s breath hitched and stuttered around the injury in his chest, his movements losing smoothness by degrees.

Zoro answered by slamming him back into the wall again, forearm locking across the stalker’s throat, cutting off leverage and air at the same time. His stance widened, ugly and off-balance, compensating for the way his chest simply wouldn’t let him breathe properly. Sanji realized then, with a sick twist in his gut, that Zoro was holding the man there with nothing but stubborn force and the refusal to let go – and that if this lasted much longer, it might cost him something permanent. And Zoro didn’t seem to care.

“Call it in,” Zoro barked, to Jinbe, to the universe. “Now.”

“Already did,”  Jinbe snapped back from the kitchen doorway, one hand pressed hard over the knife wound, the other on his phone.

Sanji had come out of the bedroom without realizing he’d moved. He stood behind Zoro in the hall, bare feet on hardwood, phone in his hand like it could do anything other than tremble. His mouth tasted metallic. His whole body felt too awake.

The stalker craned his head against Zoro’s forearm, eyes flicking past Zoro’s shoulder. He saw Sanji. He smiled.

“I touched you when you slept,” he whispered, soft enough to be intimate. 

Sanji’s brain stalled. His grip on his phone failed. It slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a dull clack that sounded miles away. His stomach heaved so hard it folded him in half. He barely made it to the bathroom before vomiting, violent and humiliating, hands braced on the toilet, vision blurring. Fear and rage collided into something that stripped him down to reflex. He spat, gagged, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like an animal.

Behind him, Zoro’s voice broke. “Sanji!” It cracked on his name, a raw edge slicing through the control he’d held with both hands. Sanji heard it through the ringing in his ears. He heard it and hated the stalker more for putting that sound in Zoro’s throat.

When Sanji staggered back into the hall, wiping his cleaned mouth with the back of his hand, it was already over. The stalker was on the floor, wrists cuffed behind his back, cheek pressed hard into the hardwood. Jinbe knelt beside him, movements efficient despite the blood soaking shoulder.

Zoro stood a step back now, hands braced against the wall, breathing rough and uneven. His chest hitched around the injury, each breath clearly costing him more than he wanted to show, like his body hadn’t caught up to the fact that the threat was contained.

The stalker kept smiling like he’d done something brilliant.

Zoro didn’t hit him. Sanji realized, with a sharp jolt, that Zoro was holding himself back with everything he had. His hands shook where they pressed into the wall, knuckles whitening as pain, adrenaline, and fury twisted together inside him. He stared past the man on the floor, jaw locked, choosing restraint when it clearly went against every instinct screaming through him. It might have been the hardest thing Zoro had done all night.

Sirens rose in the distance. When the police arrived, it was loud and bright and sudden, boots in the hall, voices snapping commands. The stalker was dragged out still craning his head, still trying to make eye contact with Sanji like the connection mattered. Like it was mutual. Like he’d been invited. 

Eventually, after statements were taken and Jinbe was escorted out with the EMTs, the apartment emptied. Doors opened and shut. Voices faded. The front latch was thrown, as well as the chain. One of the EMTs had rewrapped the bandages over Zoro’s eye before they left, movements brisk and practiced, reminding him to watch for swelling and dizziness.

Sanji closed the bedroom door behind them and turned the lock out of habit. The click sounded too loud in the quiet that followed.

Zoro stood just inside the room, one hand braced against the wall. He leaned his forehead into the paint like he needed something solid to hold him up. His breathing was rough, uneven, chest hitching around the injury, as if his body hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was over. His hands shook when they dropped to his sides. Not just adrenaline. Not just pain. Something deeper. Something spent and scraped raw.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Zoro said, barely audible.

Sanji’s chest tightened until swallowing hurt. He crossed the room without thinking, the same way he had in the camper when Zoro tried to fold himself inward and vanish behind guilt. He pressed his hand to Zoro’s shoulder, firm enough to register, steady enough to anchor. Zoro didn’t pull away.

Sanji looked at the bandages, the bruises, the set of Zoro’s posture like he was still bracing for punishment. He saw it again with brutal clarity: Zoro measured it in perfection, and anything less counted as failure.

“This worked,” Sanji said, voice low and rough. “It’s over.”

Zoro’s gaze stayed on the floor. His jaw clenched like that was an accusation. “It shouldn’t have gotten that close,” he said. “I was slow.”

Sanji’s hand tightened on his shoulder before he could stop it. “You were injured,” he said. “And he didn’t touch me.” The words came out blunt, edged. “Those are the facts. Everything else is you beating yourself up because it’s easier than admitting you did enough.”

Zoro’s breath stuttered. He dragged a hand over his face, careful of the fresh bandage, then let it fall again. His shoulders sagged a fraction, like something heavy had finally slipped loose. “I keep replaying it,” he admitted. “If I’d–”

“Stop.” Sanji stepped closer, crowding him on purpose, until there was barely space between them. “If you keep pulling on that thread, you’re going to unravel yourself.” His voice dropped. “You don’t get to judge your worth by whether nothing ever goes wrong.”

“But–”

Sanji tipped his chin up just enough to force Zoro’s attention. “No buts. I’m standing here. Breathing. With you.”

Zoro finally looked at him. Really looked. His eye was red-rimmed, exhausted, the guard stripped down to bare nerves. “I was so sure,” he said quietly. “I thought if I failed again–”

Sanji leaned in before the thought could finish forming. He pressed his forehead to Zoro’s, careful of the injury, letting his weight settle there. “You didn’t fail,” he said. “It’s over.”

Zoro’s breath shuddered. After a beat, his hand came up, hovering, then resting against Sanji’s back. Light. Uncertain. Then firmer, fingers curling into the fabric of Sanji’s sleep shirt. Sanji stayed where he was. He didn’t rush it. Didn’t try to fix or smooth or redirect again. He let the silence linger, let the small room hold them, let the locked door mean what it was supposed to mean for once.

When they finally shifted, it wasn’t a break so much as a gradual unhooking. Sanji guided Zoro back toward the bed, careful, attentive, hands steady where his thoughts had been anything but. The night pressed in around them again, no longer sharp with threat, just heavy with exhaustion. Whatever came next – reports, recovery, the long unwinding of fear – could wait. For now, there was this: the aftermath, the quiet, and the undeniable fact that neither of them had been lost.

Time didn’t rush after that – it broke itself into steps and signatures and waiting rooms that smelled like old coffee. Statements were taken twice, then clarified again, then read back in voices that flattened everything into fact. Sanji sat under fluorescent lights while someone catalogued his fear into neat lines of text. Every detail mattered: the handwriting on the note, the timestamp on the voicemail, the way the lock had turned – proof that something intimate had been breached, even if the language never said home.

There were photos. A copied voicemail file handed over without commentary, transferred to evidence with careful clicks that sounded final without feeling reassuring. Forms slid across metal tables. A temporary restraining order put in place, its language precise, impersonal, and heavy with consequence – distance specified, contact prohibited, violations clearly outlined. A court date was set but not fixed yet, hovering in the future like something unavoidable rather than imminent.

Through all of it, Zoro stayed close without crowding – shoulder near enough that Sanji could feel the heat of him when the words got ugly – his hand settling at the small of Sanji’s back once, brief and steady, like a private anchor he’d never announce in a room full of cops.

Follow-up calls came in staggered intervals. Detectives checked timelines. Someone verified addresses. Someone else confirmed that the building cameras had caught more than Sanji ever wanted to see. Jinbe’s presence disappeared into phone calls and reappeared with updates delivered calmly, professionally – security protocols adjusted, coverage scaled back to daylight hours, the emergency contract formally closed now that the immediate threat had crossed into police hands.

By the time they were finally allowed to step back into their lives, the fear hadn’t vanished, but it had been broken down into things that could be handled - paperwork, conditions, waiting, names and dates written where they could be seen. It wasn’t peace, and it wasn’t closure, but it was no longer a threat, either.

Mikan Studio still sat six floors above Grand Line City, still humming with air-conditioning and ambition, but Sanji moved through it like someone who’d altered the seams of his life under pressure and decided the stitches would have to hold.

He hadn’t changed the fundamentals. He still arrived early, when the hallway outside the dressing rooms smelled faintly of cleaner and old coffee. He still wore a vest and tie on days that could have been casual, because casual was a lie people told themselves when they stopped paying attention. He still checked hems, smoothed lapels, and spoke to expensive fabric like it might answer back.

What changed was the way his awareness never fully shut off. He eyed exits without thinking. Checked who was at the coffee shop. Stopped posting anything with a window behind him. When he did post, it was delayed – hours later, curated and clean and controlled. The city was full of eyes. He didn’t owe them access.

He was still sharp-tongued. Still flirty. Still neurotic in ways that made Usopp sigh and Nami roll her eyes. He just learned to say when something felt off. Learned to ask Usopp to walk with him and not justify it. Learned that the fear of being watched would linger, irritating and persistent, but it wouldn’t get to run his life. It just meant he planned better now.

“You’re checking the door again,” Usopp said, rolling a rack of Brook’s performance jackets into the dressing room. Gold coins sewn into the jackets chimed with every inch of movement, light bursting off them in shameless little flares. “You good, or do you want me to run interference?”

Sanji adjusted a leather jacket – custom, glossy, cut sharp through the shoulder – and didn’t look up. “I’m good,” he said. Then, after a beat, “Just trip anyone who looks like they’re headed this way too fast.”

Usopp slid a paper cup toward him. “Second Americano. Dash of sugar. Extra hot. Because you’re unbearable.”

Sanji took it. The warmth seeped into his fingers. “You’re paid to tolerate me.” 

“Not enough!” Usopp replied with a laugh as he ducked out of the room.

Nami replaced him in the doorway, heels clicking, tablet in hand, eyes sharp. “Brook’s PR wants the neon look for the first segment,” she said. “They’re pushing a rebirth angle.”

“He’s been reborn more times than his album titles,” Sanji said. “Tell them no.”

“Tell them yourself,” Nami replied, then glanced at him. It was quick, but deliberate – his face, his hands, the steadiness of him. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Sanji said automatically. Then he stopped. “Better,” he corrected. “Tired. Annoyed.”

Nami nodded once. “Good. We got an update from the DA.”

Sanji’s grip tightened on the cup. He didn’t look away. “Yeah?”

“Still on a psych hold,” she said. “Trial comes after. Restraining order stands.”

“Hope the hold lasts forever,” Sanji said.

Neither of them smiled.

The day reclaimed him the way it always did. Brook arrived loud and delighted. Lights warmed. Fabric swished. Sanji’s hands stayed busy, his head loud, turning chaos into order because that was who he was.

When evening finally came, he left the studio with his jacket buttoned and his phone already open.

Zoro: Come over by nine. Don’t miss dinner.

He rolled his eyes and typed back. I’ll be there before you commit another crime against food.

Zoro: Too late. Considering ketchup on the green beans.

Sanji snorted, tucked his phone away, and walked to his car with the practiced awareness of someone who knew the world could turn ugly and still chose to step into it.

The gym sat dark and closed, the lot empty, the building reduced to a single light glowing inside. Behind it, the truck camper waited in its usual spot. Still small, still cramped, still holding the bones of a life built for practicality rather than comfort.

When Sanji let himself in, the air smelled like cut onions and peppers. Zoro stood at the tiny counter, dressed in a worn green t-shirt and jeans, chopping with careful concentration. His hair was still damp at the edges. The scar over his eye was cleaner now, stitches gone, pale against healing skin.

Sanji paused, watching. Zoro still looked like a wall. The difference was the way his posture softened when he knew Sanji was there.

“You’re staring,” Zoro said without looking up.

“I’m judging,” Sanji said, stepping in and kicking the door shut. “That dice is embarrassing.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s terrible. Move.”

Zoro nudged the cutting board over without argument. Sanji washed his hands, pulled the tomatoes closer, and took the knife. Chop. Slice. Dice. The rhythm settled him.

“You eat today?” Zoro asked.

“Barely,” Sanji said. “Brook tried on eight pairs of shoes for spiritual reasons.”

Zoro huffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Tell that to him.” Sanji glanced at Zoro’s chest, the way his movements still had limits. “How’s the injury?”

“Sore,” Zoro said. “Better.”

Sanji let it stand.

They ate late, plates balanced on the folding table. Sanji cooked too much. Zoro didn’t complain. They argued about seasoning. Sanji called him a barbarian. Zoro called him dramatic. 

They stayed at the little table longer than they needed to. The plates were empty, pushed aside, crumbs caught in the grain of the wood. Zoro leaned back against the corner of the L, legs stretched along the bench, one shoulder pressed into Sanji’s space because there wasn’t really anywhere else to put it. The camper ticked softly as it cooled, the refrigerator humming softly.

Sanji talked because the day hadn’t let him stop yet. About an indie rock frontman who thought “effortless danger” meant looking slept-in. About a last-minute change that cost him an hour and a migraine. About Nami, who’d stared him down until he drank water. He gestured with his hands as he spoke, restless, precise, fingers still moving like he could rearrange the day if he tried hard enough.

Zoro listened. Not nodding through it. Actually listening. His attention stayed put even when Sanji veered off into irritation and back again. Every so often, Zoro’s thumb brushed the edge of Sanji’s wrist, soft, present, there.

“I keep catching myself,” Zoro said eventually, quiet enough that it didn’t interrupt so much as slide in between sentences. He didn’t look at Sanji when he said it. His gaze stayed on the wall, unfocused. “Thinking that if someone still gets hurt, then what I did before doesn’t count.”

Sanji stilled. Just a fraction. “Counts as what?”

“Trying,” Zoro said. He let out a breath that sounded tired more than anything. “Like it only matters if it stops everything. If anything gets past me, then it’s the same as doing nothing.”

Sanji didn’t answer right away. He shifted on the bench, turning just enough that his knee brushed Zoro’s thigh. He reached up and set his hand at the nape of Zoro’s neck, thumb resting just under the hairline where the tension always gathered.

“That’s not how I see it,” Sanji said. His voice stayed even. No edge. No lecture. “And it’s not how I decide whether something matters.”

Zoro’s jaw worked. He stared at the wall for a second, then let his head tip back against Sanji's hand, eye closing briefly. “I know,” he said. “I just… don’t stop thinking about it afterward.”

“You didn’t fail because things went wrong, or before when people walked free,” Sanji said. “You mattered because you were there to help.” 

Zoro exhaled. “I was always trying to justify it,” he said. “When it didn’t make the difference I wanted.”

Sanji’s thumb stilled, resting warm against Zoro’s skin. “You don’t have to turn every outcome into a measure of yourself," he said. “Especially not with me.”

Zoro huffed softly, not quite a laugh. “Still feels like I should be doing something else. Something more adult. More responsible.”

Sanji shook his head once. “You don’t have to justify your place,” he said. “Not your job or where you live. None of it.”

Zoro huffed softly with disbelief. “You don’t care that I’m a minimum wage night janitor at a gym?”

“If you like it, that’s what matters,” Sanji said. “I’m basically playing with dress-up dolls on a daily basis. And don’t knock minimum wage employees, or janitors. Work is work. You do what you want to do, and I’ll support it.”

Zoro didn’t answer. He swallowed, throat working once, and his shoulders eased. He shifted a hand, laying it on Sanji’s thigh. He leaned into the contact just enough to make it clear he was staying there, that he’d heard every word and was letting it land.

Eventually, they cleared the table because it needed doing, moving around each other in the narrow space without thinking about it. Zoro washed. Sanji dried. Their elbows bumped. Their hands brushed once, twice, unremarkable enough to matter. When the light was switched off, the camper fell into a softer dark, streetlight leaking in through the narrow window.

They didn’t talk their way into bed. They just went. The mattress was still too small. The blankets were never quite right. Zoro lay on his side carefully, breath hitching once before it settled, and Sanji followed him down, fitting where he always fit. Hands found familiar places without ceremony. Breaths turned into moans. The small space amplified everything – the slide of skin, the muted protest of the mattress, the air thick with shared breath.

It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t careful in the way fear made things careful. It was slow because there was no rush. Because time had already passed and kept passing. Sanji lay close behind him, arm secure around his middle, anchoring him without pressure. Zoro leaned back into it, open, unguarded, the contact drawing a quiet exhale from his chest, foot hooked over Sanji's leg. Sanji let himself be in the moment, feeling Zoro around him, breathing in the smell of soap and clean cotton and the undeniable scent of male.

Afterward, they lay tangled, the world reduced to warmth and the small sounds of the blankets shifting. Zoro’s head rested against Sanji’s shoulder. Sanji slid an arm around him and pulled the sheet up higher over them both.

They slept without listening for noises.

Time didn’t rush. It eased forward in small, ordinary ways – nights that ended without alarms, mornings that didn’t start with adrenaline.

Sanji woke to a different ceiling than he was used to – higher, cleaner lines, paint that still smelled faintly new. The city sounded farther away here, muted by better windows and a floor that didn’t creak under every shift of weight. Zoro’s arm was heavy across his middle, warm and solid, breath slow against the back of Sanji’s neck. It took a second for the quiet not to feel suspicious. Then it settled.

The apartment was still mostly empty in the way new places always were. A couch that had arrived before anything else. A small table pressed up against the window. Boxes stacked neatly along one wall, labeled in Sanji’s sharp handwriting: KITCHEN, CLOTHES, DON’T TOUCH (USOPP). But the kitchen worked. That mattered. Sanji slid out of bed without waking Zoro and padded across the cool floor, tugging a sweatshirt on as he went.

He made coffee because there wasn’t a shop within walking distance anymore. Then realized he’d only unpacked one mug. He stared at it for a moment, sighed, and poured anyway.

Zoro wandered in a few minutes later, hair a mess, bare chested, eye still rough around the edges. He leaned against the counter like the apartment had already decided he belonged there. Sanji handed him the mug without comment.

They shared it, passing it back and forth between sips, fingers brushing on the handle, accidental and not. Zoro’s morning breath was rough and human and close enough that Sanji couldn’t pretend he didn’t notice. Sanji complained. Zoro didn’t apologize – just pressed his mouth against Sanji’s hair like that was his answer.

They got ready without urgency. Zoro dressed slower these days, careful with old injuries that had faded into pink lines and stiffness he pretended not to notice. Sanji moved around him without thinking, straightening his tuck, brushing lint from his shoulder, the way he always did when he cared and didn’t want to say it out loud.

The mirror in the bedroom was narrow, a cheap thing he planned to replace later. Zoro stood in front of it, adjusting his shirt. Sanji stepped in behind him, fixed the collar properly, fingers deft and familiar.

Zoro caught his wrist gently, stopping him. He held it there, palm pressed over his chest. In the mirror, Sanji saw him look back – one eye clear, the other marked by what they’d gone through, permanently.

“If you’re okay with it,” Zoro said, “I want this to be more. Because I want to stay – and I want you to want me here.”

Sanji watched him for a beat, warmth threading through his heart. “I didn’t say it out loud,” he admitted, voice low, honest. “But yeah. I hoped this would be an apartment for two.”

Zoro didn’t answer with words. His grip tightened just enough to be felt, thumb pressing once against Sanji’s wrist like he was anchoring himself there. He turned, slow and careful, until they were facing each other instead of the mirror.

The kiss wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t hungry or unsure. It was quiet and deliberate, mouth warm, steady – an answer to the invitation. When he pulled back, he stayed close, forehead resting briefly against Sanji’s, breath evening out like something inside him had finally settled.

They stood there for another moment, framed crookedly in the cheap mirror: the new apartment, the unpacked boxes, the early shape of a shared life taking form around them.

And this time, when they stepped out together, it wasn’t about recovery or protection or proving anything at all. It was just two men moving forward, on purpose, into something that finally felt like their own.

End