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taizi · 5 months

Text

in the mouth of the world

one piece word count: 1k written for @op-secret-santa 2023 and my giftee was @viktorclawthorne ! viktor, two of your favorite characters are zoro and sanji, and one of your favorite pairings is platonic zolu, so this is what i came up with. i really, really hope you like it !

read on ao3

Sanji is in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hair tied back with one of Usopp’s scrunchies, trying to remember if the raspberry or the pistachio macarons went over better last time. His friends inhaled them all in a matter of minutes, but Sanji can’t recall which ones went first.

In the end, he goes with mango. The fruits are ripe, cheerful orange, and their color pings as appropriate in his mind.

These pastries are finicky at best, and a punishment from god at worst, so leveling the battlefield by removing extra heat and moisture from his workstation is always step one. As a result, the room is very cool, the door propped open to let in the crisp winter air, a fan borrowed from Franky’s workshop whirring away in the corner.

Zoro and Luffy are in the galley, sitting around the scarred kitchen table—ostensibly to keep Sanji company while he works, but more likely just waiting around to see if they get tossed any scraps.

As Sanji whips meringue, he finds his attention wandering back to the two of them in time to pick up part of their conversation.

“—be anything,” Luffy is saying, spreading his arms out wide as if to encompass the full scope of just how big the concept is he’s talking about. “There are no rules and it can be as weird or funny as you want! What would you pick?”

Zoro hums, giving it some thought. A stranger might be surprised to learn it, Sanji thinks, given how severe and forbidding their first mate appears at a glance, but he is generally the first to fold when it comes to catering to their captain’s whims. This terror of a swordsman, this nightmare of a pirate, simply follows Luffy’s every step without even looking to see where it might lead, like a no-nonsense Belgian Shepherd plodding along behind a bouncy border collie.

That’s true for battle and danger as much as it’s true for shenanigans. Zoro is worth millions, is as much a killer and a criminal as any of those other Wanted men his posters are displayed beside, but he isn’t afraid to look silly. Not if it’s Luffy reaching back for him, sunny grin amped up to eleven, calling Zoro, you too! Come with me!

Zoro says, “Time, then.”

Luffy rocks up in his seat, eyes round and impressed, and says, “Time travel? Like the Fruit that Momonosuke’s mom ate, that sends you forward?”

“Mm. But mine would go backwards,” Zoro explains, leaning into the game of make-believe. “It would only work one time and it would start me back at the very beginning.”

Zoro’s birthday was a month ago, and Sanji made a dark chocolate truffle cake infused with enough liqueur that he guiltily baked a lighter version for the younger half of the crew. But Zoro had taken one bite of the boozy dessert and his eyebrows flew up to his hairline. He doesn’t usually go in for sweets, but the bitterness of the chocolate paired with the velvet smoothness of the liqueur seemed to win him over instantly.

It isn’t in their nature to thank each other openly. From as far back as Thriller Bark, the best things they know about each other are secrets kept from everyone else. But Zoro took a second piece when Robin’s extra hands offered him one, which said much more than any effusive praise would have anyway.

Just last week, it was Chopper’s birthday, and Sanji whipped up about a hundred triple-strawberry cupcakes, filled with ganache, topped with cloud-like icing and sugared fruit and sprinkles, and it was worth it for the way his little brother’s face went slack with awe when he took in the spread.

Until Robin and Vivi’s birthdays in February, there are no specialized desserts Sanji needs to prepare. His nakama will sometimes have a craving, and he tends to keep sweet things on deck for those nights when sleep is not forthcoming, for those cloudy days when it’s hard to see the sun waiting for them beyond the storm, but he rarely makes macarons just for fun.

The timing, the temperature, the moisture, all of it has to be exact, or the shells will crack, or the feet will spread, or they’ll come out hollow. It’s not a hard recipe, it’s just annoying. It’s the last thing he learned from Zeff, because he perfected every other dish on the menu well before he made a halfway decent batch of macarons.

No one asked for these. Sanji is well-aware that he doesn’t have to be standing here, sacrificing the bulk of his day to this thankless task, but he’s already in it now. The buttercream and mango curd are ready, and the shells are about to go in the oven.

“A one-time Fruit!” Luffy exclaims. Zoro could have said he would pick a Fruit that would turn his hair a different color every day and Luffy would have sounded equally as fascinated. “You would go all the way back? Do you want to change that much?”

“My Fruit wouldn’t work that way,” Zoro explains simply. “I wouldn’t be able to change anything or the future I was from where I used the Fruit wouldn’t exist, would it? It would have to stay exactly the same for me to get back there.”

Zoro doesn’t want a Fruit—neither does Sanji. They spend half their lives dragging their nakama who are already anchors out of the sea.

Besides that, Sanji wants to meet All Blue properly the day he finds her. He’s going to swim for hours and hours and barely remember to come up for air. A Fruit would only take from him more than it could ever give.

And Zoro has never cut corners when it comes to his own strength. But there’s something in his tone that makes Sanji wonder if he’s thought about this before.

“What if you wanted to, though?” Luffy asks. “Or what if you had the chance to stop something bad before it happened?”

“No changes,” Zoro says adamantly. “No diversions. I would have to live it all over again.”

Sanji remembers all the stories Luffy tells his crew about the trouble he and his brothers got into when they were children. He said there was a pâtisserie in High Town where chefs and bakers created decadent desserts catered only to the nobles. When they snuck around that part of the kingdom, a brightly-colored dessert in the display window there would always catch Ace’s eye.

Once, Sabo and Luffy broke into that pastry shop in the dead of night at the end of December, and made off with as many of those colorful macarons as they could carry.

“Ace was angry,” Luffy laughed through his retelling. “He told Sabo we were lucky we didn’t get caught and have our hands chopped off. But he hugged me for a long time after he yelled at me. The cookies were for him, you know? For his birthday! You have to have your favorite on your birthday.” Luffy had smiled as if it didn’t hurt at all when he added, “Even back then, Ace was bad at being loved. Sabo said he just needed more practice. He said that’s what Ace had us for.”

“And then at the end,” Zoro says, “when I catch up to the future, and I’m back where I started, I would have more time.”

“How much more time?” Luffy asks.

“Not much,” Zoro admits. “Maybe a few minutes. The time I took to use the Fruit before would be free for me to use differently.”

“You’d relive your whole adventure for a few extra minutes at the end?” their captain says, brow furrowing while he makes sense of it. “Would it be worth it?”

Zoro sits back in his chair, his dark eye fixed on his captain the same way sailors follow Polaris relentlessly across the fathomless sea, and says, “Yes.”

The final baking tray goes into the oven. The macarons will be ready for tomorrow night, for the party they’re going to throw at the close of the year. At midnight, Sanji will cart them out—bright orange, each of them painted with whimsical little whorls of red—and they’ll wish Ace a happy birthday, wherever he is. They’ll wish he was still here to scold his baby brother and eat stolen pastries at midnight with the people who loved him best. They’ll resolve to protect Luffy and enjoy sweets in his name.

It’ll be a good night. Luffy will be surrounded by his nakama and the open arms of the sea. If the macarons make him remember something sad, he won’t be alone. Luffy—unlike his brothers—is very good at being loved.

Sanji washes his hands, sets the timer, and then calls over, “Hey, idiots, what do you want for dinner?”

Luffy appears beside him as if summoned by a magic spell, hopping up to sit on the counter before Sanji has a chance to wipe it down, sending up a little cloud of almond flour.

“Beef!” he declares predictably.

“That stew you made with red wine that one time,” comes Zoro’s contribution from where he’s still lounging at the table.

Beef burgundy it is, Sanji thinks, hauling out his biggest soup pot. He nudges Luffy’s knee out of the way so he can close the cabinet door but otherwise leaves the young captain where he is.

“Sanji,” Luffy asks brightly, “if you could have any Devil’s Fruit in the whole world, what would you choose?”

“One that would make me a better swimmer,” Sanji replies without missing a beat, and turns his head to hide his smile when Luffy bursts into loud, ringing peals of laughter.

But that strange, tricky, highly specific Fruit that Zoro dreamed up—one that would make him relive his life and everything he’s ever done, everything he’s endured, all the pain and fear and joy and breathless wonder, all for the sake of an extra minute at the end—a minute he could use to look up at Polaris one last time and say thanks for taking me with you. You didn’t have to do that. I hope I was everything to you that you were to me—

That wouldn’t be so bad, either.

#op-secret-santa-2023 #op #opfic #black leg sanji #roronoa zoro #monkey d luffy #my writing #viktorclawthorne #title borrowed from 'cold solace' by anna belle kaufman #just in case u needed a good cry lol

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