AN: I do not own One Piece!
Here's my multi-chapter One Piece story! If you've read 'Quiet Afternoons' then you'll have a rough idea of the internal battle within Zoro :) You can read this without reading my one-shot first! I may get round to writing a shorter, cuter follow up to 'Quiet Afternoons', like I said, it wasn't initially supposed to be a prequel, it just worked well! This does have cute/funny moments too :D
Two warnings here:
1. Yaoi from the very start, yip the very start. It does get, ehem, stronger. The first chapter basically introduces the future yaoi while bringing up the relationship problems within the ship's crew.
2. This story gets pretty long, it's actually still on-going. There is a point where you may decide you want to stop because you've reached your 'ideal happy ending', but the story continues passed that and continues through 'life' – I won't be offended if you stop but I will be ecstatic if you continue to read and especially if you comment! Comments can be both helpful and encouraging to writers! ^_^
So, hope you enjoy my story! My ANs won't be as long in future :D Sorry if you don't like yaoi; you have been warned! ;P Oh, and I'll try to post sketches of various characters on Tumblr (sketcher1994 if you wanna have a nose); I may attempt to draw some scenes! I haven't tried to yet so the scenes may be terrible but hopefully I can get the characters to come out like I want them! I actually drew the cover photo for this XD it's my first attempt at drawing One Piece characters (bar Luffy's head which I drew because I was bored about a year ago and was worried I'd draw a terrible Zoro!) , but I think they came out ok :D So, the long awaited Chapter One!
Chapter One – The Spare Room
"What do you want, Marimo?" Sanji grumbled into the mirror.
Zoro stood in the bathroom doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms folded, a few feet behind where Sanji stood, his eye scanning every tempting inch of the tall, lean frame of his handsome blonde crewmate, standing shirtless with his back to Zoro by the sink as he towelled his soft hair dry. Zoro silently stepped forward, not bothering to answer the Cook's question as he closed the gap between them, and wrapped his strong, muscular arms around Sanji's exposed waist. He tilted his head forward, parting his lips slightly, and tugged gently on the cook's ear with his teeth, earning a small whimper from the other man.
"You." He breathed huskily into Sanji's ear, sending shivers down the Cook's spine while he stood wrapped in the swordsman's arms, not even bother trying to pull away from him.
"No, Marimo. We'd get caught if we tried anything in here, and Law arrives later so we can't even use the spare room, so don't bother trying to start something we can't finish. You'd only make things worse. Has the room even been made up for him yet?" Sanji asked, successfully sounding irritated at the muscular green haired man.
"No, Nami sent me to find Robin to ask her to do it; the damn woman's power's handy for that stuff. I came in here to ask you to ask her, Ero-Cook," he sighed into Sanji's shoulder, kissing it lightly, his large arms still wrapped deceptively tight around Sanji's waist.
"Still can't face her, Marimo? You know, she's not really going to snap you in half for liking her, right? And anyway, if she does actually like you too, then you can finally get off my back," Sanji teased, and received a very rewarding set of pink-tinged cheeks from the swordsman before he could hide his blush at the mention of 'liking' the older woman.
"I thought you liked having me on your back?!" He teased back, grinding his hips lightly against Sanji, causing the Cook to falter slightly, as Zoro tried to avoid the subject of their black haired female crew member.
"Well, I'd rather spend some wonderful romantic time with my Nami-swan, but rules are rules. It's always best to stick to the basics; 'no romantic attachments, it could put the crew in danger'." They could both hear Nami's voice in their heads as he repeated her straightforward, stern words that she'd directed towards the whole of the Strawhat crew a few months back.
She'd persuaded Luffy that some basic rules were necessary if they were all going to live together on the ship after two long years apart, and Luffy being Luffy just agreed with what she said, thinking that things like 'romance' were unnecessary as long as they could still fight and go on adventures together. Nami had even went so far as to point out to him that if a romantic attachment went wrong, then there could be serious arguing amongst the crew and someone may decide to leave. That set Luffy off of course, checking that no one wanted to leave the crew because 'they were all Nakama and they were on an adventure together' – much to the confusion of everyone since no-one had even considered leaving since finally getting back together after their two years apart to train.
That was why the First Mate and the Cook had arranged a little 'non-romantic' way to get out some of their 'frustrations'. A good fight usually knocked it all out of their overpowered systems, but when they were out at sea for weeks on end, they couldn't exactly let loose without damaging the Sunny, unless some poor passerby decided to challenge them; just to end up shipwrecked and lost at sea, lucky to even have their lives of course. That was happening less and less as the other pirates in the new world guarded their own territory on both land and sea, which meant the Strawhats had to find them instead of them being found by chance as they searched the islands for adventures. This meant no outlet for their frustrations. Sadly though, their 'crushes' – for lack of a better word – were also onboard the ship, unlike Usoppe's 'crush' who was safely tucked away in a mansion in the East Blue, and Luffy still showed no interest – male or female – as far as they were aware.
"Yeah, yeah, not like you'd manage to get Nami anyway, don't know what you're complaining about. That girl would rip your head off for trying anything – she already gets annoyed at your swooning unless she actually wants something. She's got you wrapped around her little finger; she's completely heartless, Ero-Cook," Zoro grumbled as he released Sanji and moved to walk out of the bathroom, now more frustrated than he had even realised he had been before looking for the stupid cook.
"I fail to see your point, Marimo. Nami-swan is perfect, but you couldn't even approach Robin-chwan, even if you were allowed!" Sanji responded, almost yelling back at his retreating form.
"Whatever, Ero-Cook – just don't try anything; you know that only means more hassle for me since I'm the one that has to damn well work it out!" He shut the door with a bang for effect on his way out.
Zoro released a quiet grunt of agitation as he made his way down onto the lawn deck before hesitantly entering the lower levels of the ship. He couldn't just go ask her to get the spare room ready for Law; he'd just have to do it himself. He let out a sigh of irritation – why should he have to do it? He had better things to do, like nap or train. If stupid Ero-Cook had just asked Robin to do this for him, or better yet, Nami could have just asked the damn woman herself, then he wouldn't be walking roughly towards the spare room to make a bed for the damn surgeon. Even if he had saved Luffy's life a few years back, why should he get a special room? Why couldn't he just sleep in the men's quarters with the other guys?!
"Zoro-san?" His head instantly emptied as he registered the tall, dark haired woman standing in the middle of corridor, directly in front of him.
She smiled at him with a slightly confused expression. That wasn't exactly surprising; the only time he went into the ship itself was to go to his bed in the men's rooms, and he didn't even use that particularly often. He couldn't even remember which one was his for that matter. He was usually the one on night watch and he'd just spend his day napping on deck after a nice, long night of training, mostly, on his own. The lawn had been a nice little touch though; it was actually pretty comfy, although he was perfectly capable of sleeping anywhere, as proved on many occasions, usually much to the damn woman's amusement. He tried to collect his thoughts as she stared at him, patiently waiting for an answer.
"Law is arriving later to check in. He's staying with us for a couple of days so the spare room needs set up; I was just coming down to deal with it." He inwardly sighed in relief that he'd managed his usual serious tone.
"Would you like some help, Zoro-san?" She smiled, turning to walk along to corridor towards the spare room, glancing back over her shoulder to see if he was still behind her, "Nami-san normally asks me; why did she send you?"
He looked away from her, avoiding her question as he walked along the corridor, close behind her. He could feel a slight warmth to his cheeks and knew she'd gotten to him again, just like she always did. She probably even knew that he was supposed to ask her to do it, but hopefully she didn't know why he'd decided to just do it himself. He followed her to the spare room and stood in awe as she elegantly crossed her arms upwards in front of her ample chest, her multiple slender arms simultaneously appearing in the room to put a clean sheet on the cabin bed, fluff the pillows and lay out the nicely folded clean blanket neatly in the centre of the mattress. It would have taken him at least half an hour but she'd done it in less than five minutes. Zoro stood with his jaw hanging slack as he stood, completely unneeded, in the doorway.
"Zoro-kun?" He snapped back to reality and stared back at her, wondering why she was giggling while she stared at him.
"Huh? What's so funny?" He grumpily turned away from her, getting ready to leave. She was laughing at him again!
"You were staring, Zoro-kun. Are you ok?" He froze...did she just say 'kun'? She always added 'san' to everyone's names, including his...he must have imagined it.
"Fine. I was just impressed by how quickly you managed that." He said in his usual tone, nothing wrong with giving credit where credit was due he guessed.
"Thank you, Zoro-kun," she replied, walking up to him and placing a hand gently on his chin to stop him from turning away from her.
He was trapped. She'd worked out that he had started avoiding her, and now she was using 'kun' to make him feel special just to try to find out why. Damn woman! She was even attempting to hold him here. He glanced at her out the corner of his eye, making it very clear that he was still wary of her. He wasn't really, and she knew it – they'd been together on too many adventures for that – but now he had a different reason to be wary of her. It hadn't been until after his battle against Kaku that he'd really started to think about how he felt about her; she'd just seemed like another one of his Nakama until he'd found himself talking to Ero-Cook after they'd set sail on the Sunny for the first time. There had always been something different about her. If she realised how frustrated she made him, god knows what she'd do. Being First Mate, he couldn't afford to have problems with her.
She kissed him on the cheek, earning a full-faced blush and incomprehensible spluttering as he was forced out of his thoughts, before letting him go and walking along the corridor towards the deck, giggling the whole way.
Hehe, hope you enjoyed this first chapter! :D I'm creating a 'hashtag' on Tumblr for sketches and I'm planning to give you a sketch with every chapter :) I actually have a one-shot for next week, so it might be a couple of weeks before you get chapter two :P I'm trying to work on some more Zorobin and Gajevy as requested, but with every one-shot written there's another week before you get another update of this! I'm already posting twice a week, and I have enough other chapters for stories for Thursdays to last a while, but after Chr*stm*s that does mean you could be getting two chapters a week! ;D If you feel like doing some sketches for this, feel free to! I'd love to see them! XD I just ask that you give them the 'hashtag' for this so that I can see them! :D
Chapter One's Sketch – Cover Photo
(#TheLifeoftheFirstMate)