Chapter 1: Life's A Beach

To reach our dreams, we must walk through nightmares.

- Anonymous

The sand was soft and warm underfoot, fine as sifted sugar. It gave evenly when he stepped onto it, moving silkily between his toes and caressing the arches of his feet. When he stood still for a moment he could feel the gentle heat of it, a billion tiny grains of sea-fragmented coral and shells generously yielding their sun-soaked energy to his receptive skin.

It comes from the Blue. Even the land here on the Grand Line is made from the sea.

Sanji stirred the sand with the toes of one foot, standing looking out at the waves rolling in over the reef further out. Pale blue sky came down to meet bright blue water, edged with white far out where the coral just under the surface threw the surf up.

The sea is making islands… For a while, anyway. Until something happens. One day the ocean floor shifts, or the currents change: and the coral loses its place near the sun and dies. And then the sea will carry the land away, little by little, till it's reborn somewhere else.

The water looked inviting. He took a few steps until he reached the waves, standing in their edges as they curled and flattened and sank into the sand. The seawater that lapped around his ankles hardly felt cooler than the air. He was tempted to wade in deeper, but that would mean rolling up his trousers further; and for now he couldn't be bothered. It was nice just to stand here, feeling his feet sink slowly into the wet shifting sand: letting the sea tug at him gently. A nice peaceful feeling flowered in his chest.

This is all right.

Beside him a pebble flew into the water with a loud plop! and a splash, throwing up droplets that spattered his trousers. Sanji felt his nice peaceful feeling cease to blossom. He let out a sigh. "It's like having a delinquent six year-old lurking about. Go play elsewhere, why don't you. This is a nice classy beach."

"I didn't hit you with it."

"Lucky for you." Sanji reached into his pocket for a cigarette and his lighter, sparked up and inhaled without turning round. A moment later, a second plop! and splash announced that this sea bombardment was ongoing. "Fuck off, marimo. I'm trying to enjoy the moment here."

"No-one's stopping you."

"You're stopping me." Sanji turned around. "Look, there's a whole perfectly good island for you to go and get lost in. This is my bit of beach. Piss off."

Zoro regarded him levelly, from where he sat on the sand with one arm propped lazily across his knee. "Who died and made you King of the Pirates? I like it here."

"I could make you not like it here."

Zoro gave him a dangerous grin. "You and whose army, shitty cook?"

Sanji considered following up on his threat, then decided that he couldn't be bothered right now. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure than kicking your ass across this island… But you're not worth it." He took a lungful of smoke, then let it out slowly. "It's beneath me to be perturbed by plant life." He turned back to the view, which was still completely and utterly beautiful.

There was a lapse of maybe a minute before the next splash came in the sea, on Sanji's other side this time. It must have been a considerably bigger stone because the water droplets came up higher, soaking into his shirt. He felt his jaw clench. "Throw one more and the next rock is coming right back at you, you irritating bastard."

The silence that followed this was not filled with the promise of acquiescence. So Sanji was completely unsurprised when after a short pause a fourth – still larger - stone winged into the water about an inch from his left leg.

Right, you fucking pain in the ass troublemaker –

Sanji reached down even as the splash began, his fingers grabbing the stone as it sank in the sea; pivoting on one foot as he closed his fingers around it, his arm coming around to hurl it back up the beach at where Zoro still sat. He aimed for that mossy green head and put some speed behind his throw. Zoro's hand blurred up in front of his face: there was a sharp whack! as the stone smacked into his palm. Sanji had had no doubts that the swordsman would block his throw. Still he was a little gratified to see Zoro's arm jerk a little under the force of the impact. Curling his fingers around the stone, Zoro lowered his hand. "That was a bit hostile."

"Not even close. But you want to shoot for hostile, go ahead." Sanji watched the stone in Zoro's hand carefully. He wouldn't put it past the damn marimo to throw it back, with interest. But after a few seconds, Zoro tossed the stone away onto the sand. Sanji relaxed, ever so slightly.

"I didn't pitch them at you. Only in the water." Zoro's tone was calm, but that was a six year-old's rationalisation. I didn't touch you, I only went near you. It was the kind of infantile playground logic that sometimes came out of Zoro's mouth, and Sanji wasn't going to allow it to pass.

"I made it perfectly clear even to a moron like you that if you carried on tossing stones you were going to get a taste of your own medicine. So quit complaining. You started it." Those last words regrettably also sounded somewhat six year-old-ish… But Sanji reasoned that when dealing with an infantile mind, sometimes you had to give it what it understands.

Zoro's brows drew down a little. "Oi, cook… Get off your high horse. It's only a little seawater. Your shirt'll dry."

Sanji drew in a mouthful of smoke; then let it curl out again as he spoke. "It's not the water, stupid. It's the fact that apart from when you're hoisting weights or asleep and snoring loud enough to kill sharks, you can't seem to exist for more than three seconds without stirring up trouble. Is it some kind of genetic deficiency? Or do you have to work at it?"

This time Zoro's brows dropped down into the familiar territory of The Glower. "I'm just sitting here."

"I noticed." Sanji turned back to face the sea. "Look… This is a nice peaceful little summer island. The sun is shining, the sand is warm, the sea is blue. We may not be here long, if the log pose resets quickly. So I plan to make the most of it. To enjoy the charms of a lovely place, devoid as far as possible of the crew of assorted lunatics that I usually have to share my living space with. And that includes you, marimo. Because strange as it may seem, I'm not in the mood for your crap. Go pester someone else. I'm sure you could work Nami up into a fight, if you try hard enough. She hasn't hit anyone for at least two days."

This time there was a longer pause; then the sound of sand shifting underfoot. Sanji glanced back over his shoulder, wary of an impending attack: but Zoro had simply got to his feet. Giving the cook a final look under still-lowered brows, he turned his back and began walking away up the beach. Sanji watched him go for a few more moments… before turning his head back to look at the sea once more. It took him a while to realise that although he was gazing at the ocean, his mind was on Zoro's angry look.

Damn that irritating bastard. He's not even here any more and he's still crowding me.

Sanji wondered what the payback would be. Because sooner or later, with him and Zoro, there was always payback. Either a quick storm of kicking and scrapping till the irritation blew itself out; or a longer drawn-out process of attrition that sometimes went on for days. And nights. That was the hell of it. Even when they were close and raw with wanting, when skin needed skin, when they could feel each other's heartbeat and shivering breath, sometimes then it still played itself out. Zoro's hand tightening so hard around Sanji's wrist that the next day there were the ghostly bruises of his fingers marking the skin. Or Sanji kissing Zoro at the angle where his neck eased into the hollow of his collarbone, then the kiss becoming a bite as his teeth almost broke the skin and Zoro let out a hiss. Pain and pleasure: settling scores.

The sea slid back and forth around his ankles, soothing, calming. Sanji took a last pull on his cigarette, then flicked it into the water.

Well, I'm not going to worry about it. That idiot had it coming, tossing rocks about. And if he tries any kind of payback, I'm ready for him.

Somewhere in one of the innermost carefully guarded corners of his heart, Sanji felt a little stir of expectation. Of anticipation. A warm, wicked little flame.

I'm ready for him.

He stayed standing in the edge of the sea until the sun began to drop close to the water.

It was way after supper time when he got back to the ship, but for once Sanji wasn't feeling especially bothered about the regularity of mealtimes. He'd cooked a gargantuan breakfast – his usual fare whenever they made landfall, setting everyone up for whatever explorations and adventures that might arise – and left portable snacks of various sorts laid out on the galley table with the cursory instruction, "Self service lunch," before he'd gone ashore. Of course there was always the risk that when he did that no-one except Luffy would get fed, but that was the crew's look-out. He was only their cook, after all: not their mother.

Predictably, Luffy was the first to appear once Sanji stepped into the galley, coming through the door with his usual hopeful grin. "Sanji! It's been so long! Is it supper time?"

"Soon." Sanji had found from long experience that as Luffy tended not to listen to the specifics where meals were concerned, it didn't really matter what you told him as long as it was encouraging.

"Me and Usopp spent all afternoon fishing. We put everything we caught where you'd find them."

"Yeah. Thanks." Sanji had had no trouble discovering the heap of assorted mismatched fish that had been crammed into a basket and left in the sink. Luckily most of them hadn't been there long enough to spoil in the warm temperatures that dominated this summer island locality; and the ones that had could be used as bait another day. "I'm gonna make yakizakana. It won't take long."

"That's good. I'm so hungry."

"I'll call everyone when it's ready." Sanji had no intention of having Luffy breathing down his neck while he was cooking. "Is everyone on board, or are some of us still wandering about ashore?"

"Everyone's back. You were the last to return to the ship."

"Right. Then I'd better get cooking." Sanji emphatically turned his back and picked up a knife.

After supper it stayed warm even once the sun had set. It didn't take Sanji long to wash up and set things to rights ready for morning: that done, he headed outside for a smoke. Nami and Robin were sitting on the foredeck with a lantern between them, speaking softly together; every now and then laughter ghosted upwards. Way up front Luffy was in residence in his usual spot on the Going Merry's figurehead. Chopper and Usopp were nowhere to be seen, each probably busy about something below decks.

Sanji walked aft behind the cabin, hearing the leaves of the tangerine trees above rustle in the slight breeze that had come up off the island once the sun had dropped below the horizon. As he rounded the corner he was unsuprised to see a figure sitting crosslegged with his back to the cabin, swords propped beside him. He kept on walking to the rail, where he leaned with both elbows, still smoking. He gave it a few minutes before asking casually, "Sulking?"

"No."

"Funny. That's what it looks like."

"I was just enjoying some solitude." Pause. "Or do you think it's just you that's entitled to such a thing?"

"I was enjoying it today, true. Until you came along."

"Allow me to return the compliment, shit-cook. Make yourself scarce."

"To quote a certain crap swordsman: 'Who died and made you King of the Pirates?' I'm enjoying my cigarette up here."

"Your cigarettes stink."

"Then hold your breath till I'm gone." Sanji took a certain amount of satisfaction in taking an especially deep lungful of smoke, before exhaling it noisily and at length. There was a long silence from behind him. After a while, Sanji asked mildly, "Are you still holding it?"

Zoro's voice spoke so close to his ear that Sanji jumped. "How else do you think I got so close without you hearing me?"

Sanji turned his head sharply, to find Zoro about six inches away. The swordsman was wearing his lazy shark grin, as he laid one elbow on the rail beside Sanji's. "Those things are going to kill you."

"This from the man who plays with swords for a living…" Sanji took another pull on his cigarette.

"I don't 'play' with swords." Zoro's grin wiped away.

"Pardon me, o mighty samurai warrior. I stand corrected. You work at swords for a living."

"I don't take the piss out of your cooking." Zoro's tone was sub-zero. "Are you mocking the path I follow?"

"Oi, no." Sanji was suddenly tired of sparring. "Stand down, marimo. Don't be such an easy mark." There was a silence, so he shot Zoro a look. "Are you going to start throwing stones at me now?"

Zoro held his gaze a moment longer, an assessing look on his face… Before turning his gaze out to sea. "No stones here."

"Mm." Sanji didn't find that response overly satisfactory. "Then am I going to wake up tomorrow to find you've dropped my favourite shirt overboard again? Because that kind of crap gets pretty old."

"Why would I do that?"

Payback. "Because it's the kind of asinine thing you do when you think you need to even up the score."

Zoro's smile resurfaced, a worrying sign. "Guilty conscience?"

"No. I wasn't the one started throwing rocks, craphead."

"Whiner."

They held silence for a minute or so after this exchange, while Sanji smoked his cigarette down to his fingers. Delicately he flicked the butt out into the warm night, watching the glowing ember arc away like a shooting star before falling down into the sea. Exhaling his last mouthful of smoke, he folded his arms where they lay on the rail. "Okay. I've finished my cigarette. Happy now?"

"Not yet." Zoro's arm wrapped over Sanji's shoulders, his hand curling round his neck and tugging him closer. Sanji held back only long enough to make it more interesting: then let himself be pulled in. A moment later, Zoro's mouth found his neck and pressed in for a kiss that was hard enough to make Sanji's shoulders hitch up. "Nghh…" Zoro's mouth fastened on tighter, until Sanji pulled back a little, hitting him in the ribs. "Oww! What are you, a moray eel? I don't want you leaving teethmarks all over me."

Zoro didn't let go of his shoulders. "Sure about that?"

"Yes. So quit mauling me."

"Make me." Zoro went in for another kiss: in self defence, Sanji turned and met him head on. There were a busy few seconds of engagement, at the end of which they broke for air. Sanji now had one hand locked onto Zoro's arm, the other fisted in the back of his shirt. "Is the word 'finesse' even in your vocabulary?"

"It could be. If you make it worth my while." Zoro was grinning again.

Sanji narrowed his eyes. "Subtle, too."

"You don't like the direct approach any more? That's a new development." Zoro slid a hand downward. "Let's just make sure."

Sanji felt the hand go straight to where his body was bearing witness that, lack of finesse or not, what Zoro was doing was working. "Iyarashii!"

Zoro gave him a slow squeeze. "How's this for finesse?"

Sanji resigned himself. Payback.