Where There Is A Key...
xXx
Yellow glow pulsed back from the spokes of the bicycle rolling fast beneath the streetlamps, along the quiet street. The bike's bell atop its handlebars flashed with it, too, giving a startled little chime at each uneven patch in the road. It was somewhere funny how Zoro could find most all of those bumps whereas he struggled with remembering the way back to Sanji's apartment.
"We're on the wrong side of the road! Go right! The other right! The other other one! Waaaah, a dead-end, abort, abort!"
Luckily enough, he had Chopper with him. Sitting on the bike frame, the boy held onto his antlered hat in panic every time the green-hair took the exact opposite route. Which was not even that often this time. Only at each turn…
"Aaaaah! Lookoutlookoutlookout, that's someone's garage! Oh god, there's ice! We're gonna diiiie!" From how the little one kept clinging to the frame for dear life, it was a wonder that he could still hold on to the goodies they had bought.
Sure enough, Zoro had a face full of fluffy pink hat as soon as they arrived at the apartment complex. That, along with the strict promise that it would be Chopper the one to steer next time.
"But I weigh twice as much as–"
"And you can forget about me when it's time to renew your driver's license!" The doctor-in-training seemed to ignore the comment, already shouting down to Zoro from the first turn of the staircase. "You're gonna hurt yourself one of these days! You asshole!"
Feet began to stomp up the stairs again and the green-hair just sighed. Only when it came out as a chuckle did he realize he was smiling. He hid it with turning into the bike shed – his short friend would probably start throwing his shoes at him next if he were to notice. With the bike safely locked up, he followed a fuming Chopper into the stairwell and up onto the third floor, three bags in hand.
And boy, did they receive a warm welcome back. Before they could even enter apartment number two, an obnoxiously loud Luffy burst out the door and tackled them both onto the hallway floor.
"Zoro! Chopper! You brought fooood!" He hooted and already moved to open a bag of chips while still sitting on top of the green haired man.
"There you are!" Usopp stepped out from behind the one-person welcoming brigade, and helped the two guys to their feet. As soon as Zoro managed to shove the bouncy idiot off himself, that is. "It was getting boring to beat up Luffy all the time in Grand Line Supernova Tournament."
"Haaaagh? Aifh beafh yfou foo!" Luffy pouted with a face full of chips.
"Jesus fuck, what's all this food?" Oh great, there came the shit-cook, bitching as usual. Stepping past them, he reached to pick up the bags scattered around, and promptly started back inside, never shutting up: "You have just stuffed your faces, you shitty bastards, so if you let even one morsel, I'm gonna kick your asses right to Santa on the North Pole!"
"Whatever, Santa's little helper," Zoro rolled his eyes.
"What was that, you mossy son of a Grinch–"
"Sanji-kuuuuun!" The blond snapped his head towards the voice calling from within so fast that Zoro thought his neck would break. "The cake is done now!"
"Coming, Nnnnnami-swaaaan~!"
The idiot then all but twirled inside, hitting him in the face with one of the bags. The one with the bottles of cola in it, damn asshole. The stupid cook was much more skillful while prancing to the kitchen around Franky and Brook, both oblivious in the middle of their karaoke duet of 'I Will Survive' in front of the TV.
"Oh come on, guys, this is not even a Christmas song!" Chopper complained, moving to hop onto the sofa behind the singers.
Zoro started padding after the others into the apartment, too, but since the munching sounds behind him didn't follow, he turned with a grumble and dragged Luffy behind himself by the back of his T-shirt. Fat chance this crossing of a rubber ball and a vacuum cleaner would leave them anything behind, so they were spared of a fast trip to the Pole. Never of Sanji's mood swings, though. That prissy fuck is just gonna rain kicks on them anyway...
Luffy's butt bounced over the threshold just as the two sobmachines started to sway arms-on-shoulders at the slow part of the song. Zoro only stopped to shake his head at them for a second, and there she was, standing right next to him, scaring the living crap out of him. Robin was nothing if not sneaky.
"Thank you, Zoro-san," she smiled at him and stepped to the entrance. "Careful now, Luffy-san. It would be horrible if your feet happened to be crunched by the door..." The hamster-cheeked guy on the floor pulled his knees up robotically, never so much as pausing his chewing, and so Robin shut the door, sparing the hallway of the grand finale of the two-man karaoke show.
"Naaaaaa-naaaaaa nananananananananaaaaaa… AhHhaHAaa…!"
The credits were barely floating upwards on the screen when Usopp leaned down to nudge Brook's shoulder. The skeletal-thin man with the gigantic afro extended the mic to him wordlessly, sounding much more as if he was yodeling than crying. The only one sobbing harder than he did was the huge tower of a man with the electric blue hair having his meaty arm around his bony shoulders.
"I'm not crying, goddammit!" Franky protested, but he took the handkerchief offered by Robin all the same, and blew his nose like a great big trumpet.
"Okaaay, old people, move aside! It's warrior time!" Usopp snatched the other microphone from the floor. After some tinkering with the game console, heroic music started blasting from the speakers, shortly before he turned and struck a triumphant pose, with several controllers in hand. "Step forward," he mimicked a booming voice, "those daring enough to challenge the mighty Captain Sogeking and his swift galley!"
"I thought we were playing Supernova Tournament," Zoro frowned. There were only a few to match him in that fighting game, but he didn't really fancy 'Laboon's Red Line Pirate Ship Race Deluxe'. Those goddamn Knockup Streams at the tenth level made him dizzy, the Shabaody terrain was full of snobby NPCs, and he kept finding the shortcuts in the game in vain, since they still took ages…
"Right, Zoro always gets lost in this one..."
Chopper looked over to him from the couch innocently, suckling on a lollipop. The little dude was soon giggling and screaming, though, when Zoro leapt onto the neighbouring cushion and started mucking up his curly hair vigorously. It was not his fault the game was just damn stupid. As if he would ever get lost.
Oh well. The ship battles in-between were fun, Zoro concluded. So after leaving Chopper to lie back wheezing, he reached for a controller and sat down proper, next to the left armrest. He almost dropped it again, however, when Brook shop up like a bolt from his sitting near his feet.
"Laboon! I'm coming for you! Yohohohoho!" His usual shrilling laughter suddenly became a weird remix, as he tried to catch and hold the controller Usopp had thrown to him between his hands. "Yohoho! Ho! Yoho! Ho! Hoho! Hooo! Ho! Got it!" He presented a huge toothy smile, holding the game control it by its string.
"Aaaand the fourth goooes…?" The long-nose waved the last remaining controller around like a lasso.
"Me! I wanna go, too!" After emptying the rest of a chips bag into his mouth, Luffy rolled along the floor to Usopp. He stretched his arms up towards him like a kid wanting to be picked up, but he got the device dropped onto his face instead. From how he started laughing, he didn't seem to mind. "Wohoooo!" He sat up with it, and with his bare toes, he dragged a full bag of popcorn to his lap like a monkey.
"Let's do thiiiis!" The long-nose grinned wide, and pulled a pillow from next to Zoro to sit on the floor.
At a push of a button, the wide pixel sea welcomed them on Sanji's wide-screen TV, and their pirate ships set sail to leave the starting line behind. Brook made up lyrics to the theme songs, Usopp made it his aim to shoot down all the targets with the help of his eight thousand little cannons, and pop-corn flew everywhere from Luffy's hooting whenever he encountered a dangerous enemy along the way, with Chopper cheering him on. Zoro was snickering to himself, too, while his first ship fight lasted. But as it happens, he seemed to have found the only glitch there was, early on in the Alabasta seas, where a whirlpool transported him to the middle of a jungle. What could he have done in this situation? He told his virtual crew to take a nap. Naturally.
Leaning back, Zoro almost felt like catching some shut-eye himself. The wild clacking of controls, mingling with the low twangs of Franky's guitar by the window, with the aroma of Robin's coffee lingering in the air, the atmosphere was rather soothing.
Rolling his head over the armrest, he caught whiff of another, sweeter scent. Right. There was supposed to be a dumb Christmas Cake later.
A small shriek from Nami in kitchen startled Zoro out of his half-asleep state. The red haired witch was walking by the kitchen table, he saw, passing the doorframe in a red blur of her dress. Squeezed to her chest were at least a dozen different tins, and one of them would have fallen on the floor if it weren't for Sanji standing there to catch it first. The blond idiot was gurgling some kind of lovesick nonsense as he handed it back to her – something Zoro's ears were spared of, thanks to the overall merriment in the living room.
He could only try to make out what the cook had been puttering with after he craned his neck a bit more. There certainly was a cake-like shape in front of him on the table, cut in half and steaming, but cream knife was still resting on the tabletop next to it. Sanji held onto a cup instead. The guy had to pull the tuft of his ridiculous Santa hat out of his face before he took a quick sip from it, his eyes never far from that particular height level that usually marked a woman's hips. Whatever he was drinking, it must have been spiked to the nines – the dumbass puckered his lips in that hilariously stupid way whenever he tasted hard booze. What the hell was Nami giving him? Damn, Zoro wanted some of it too, but the kitchen was too far away and too much in the shit-cook's domain for his liking. He was stranded on a goddamn jungle on the banks of sobriety.
When the blond took another sip, Zoro swallowed with him. He wondered what that stuff could taste like… Its color he did get to see, when Sanji snorted at something Nami could have said, and some reddish drops ran down his chin to wet his goatee.
And when the blond raised his moist fingers to his mouth, Zoro gulped for a whole other reason. First Sanji just licked them, like he would a scoop of ice cream, but then he parted his lips and sucked them into his mouth, one by one, and…
And he was looking at him. The lewd bastard was looking straight into his eyes.
What are you looking at, shitty asshole?
"Sanji-kun?"
His name sweetly uttered by his goddess was enough to wipe even the ugliest frowns off his face. His grimace gone in an instant, Sanji rushed over to the perfect woman standing in front of his stove – in his kitchen! Christmas came early this year.
"Yes, Nami-swaaan~?" He stood in her warm, loving aura – as well as the smell of boiling alcohol –, waiting with anticipation for her to turn her beautiful eyes towards him.
"You spilled your grog!" The fire in her voice was absolutely endearing as the glasses on the shelves shook with it. Her eyes were on the cup he had forgotten in his hand. Her pouty lips she then directed at him could have melted him into a puddle at her feet. "Was it that bad?"
"N-not at all!" Pronouncing the 'n' sounds felt a little harder than usual with his numb tongue. It must have been Nami-san's beauty paralyzing him, not the three kinds of booze mixed with thrice as many spices… "It's delicious!"
"I know, right?" His crimson princess announced, with innocent, sailor-like boasting. She then turned back towards the large pot over a flame, and reached for the jar containing Sanji's last three cinnamon sticks, and ever so graciously dumped all of them to the five or so more into the grog with a splat. "I can't go wrong with mom's recipe. True, she used to make it with three kinds of juice instead of alcohol, but hey, we're big boys and girls now! It's best when it stings, anyway."
"Ah… Y-yes, that's true." It must have been, if Nami-san said so.
"A refill, Sanji-kun?"
Her smile was as brilliant as a gem as she raised the ladle. Sanji couldn't possibly say no. Not even thinking, he downed the rest in his cup with a single swig and extended it for more, trembling. The steam rising from the grog poured into it started to be more hypnotizing than necessary…
"Hey, Sanji-kun," she called to him, though somehow she had gotten to his right side from the left. Can she teleport? … Am I fucking stupid? This must have been how the drunkard Marimo felt most of his sorry moss-brained life. Meanwhile, Nami leaned onto the end of the table next to the cake. Fuck, the cake. "Wanna play a game?" Her sweet smile slapped the cake out of his mind again in an instant.
"A g-game?"
"Mm," she nodded. "Who do you think will make the cola spill onto the carpet?" She pointed to the half-full bottle on the edge of the coffee table between the couch and the TV, left to itself without its cap. Among that throng of wild baboons occupying his living room…
"I hope no one, or I'll skin them alive," his frown found the shitty swordsman spread over his couch again like the damn sloth he was.
"Aww, you're no fun," Nami sounded so hurt his heart ached. But before he could have made amends, she spoke again. "Well, alright. If nobody spills the cola, you win. But if anyone doooes~"
"A bet? But Nami-san..."
"If I win, you'll take me Christmas shopping to Goldtown. On you."
"I'm in!" A shopping date with Nami-san? Sanji could have fainted.
"Uh… Okay, well, if you win," his goddess raised her hand to her neck, then lowered it in between her b-b-b…! "You can have this," she dangled a keyring in front of him, with only one small key hitting against a pink fluffy ball, smelling of her perfume…
"I-Is that…?!"
"You'll have to find out~" She winked at him, making Sanji's head swim even more.
And so happened that Sanji, for once, needed to distract himself with preparing food rather than be distracted from it, waiting for the bottle to tip - or not to tip. Most of the grog was gone and the ring of strawberries on top of the Christmas cake was almost complete, too, when there was a wail of anguish to be heard from the living room.
"Look out!" The ungodly squeak came out of Usopp.
It was barely heard above Luffy's laughing, though, who was just falling against the table from a cartwheel when Sanji leap to the kitchen door. The cola bottle trembled, swung violently…
Into Robin-chwan's hands.
"Oh my," his saving angel stood with the bottle in hand. "Luffy-san, please don't spill other people's drinks on our host's carpet." There was something sadistic about how she twisted the bottle cap back in place. It was part of her unending charm.
"Rrrrrobiiin! You saved my cola!" Franky stomped forth from the back of the room and hugged the bottle to his chest. His arm around Robin's waist soon followed suit, and whilst she chuckled enigmatically, the big bastard took his favourite stance. "SUUUPEEEER!" He bellowed, one arm up, butt sticking out. He didn't even have any of the grog as an excuse for that.
Nami-swan's hand lent warmth to Sanji's shoulder. He wasn't sure if the touch was what made him buckle under, or the one to pull him back up from his slumping at the doorframe…
"Here you go," she took his hand, making the cook happy enough to die already, but then she squeezed his fist shut around the mysterious key. She patted his knuckles. "Use it wisely~"
xXx
Whistling mingled with the noise of cars in the afternoon rush. The pink little furball flew around Sanji's right pointer finger as he strode along the street, in his best suit and coat, a bouquet of red roses and grocery bags in his left hand. This might be the best day of my life.
As he approached the apartment marking his destination, his right hand languidly thrust the key forward, only to find it didn't fit. Of course not. He wouldn't have the key to that door, nor the code for the buzzer. Stupid, stupid, stupid! He was almost sinking into despair when an old lady was startled to find him on the doorstep on her way out of the very building, but then smiled, complimented him on his suit and let him in, 'not to miss his date'.
A date indeed!
After skipping up the stairs in pairs, he straightened his tie at the top of the staircase, and leisurely walked towards Nami's apartment. Nice and slow. He would savor the moment. Getting acquainted with the paradise that was his Nami-swan's home, cooking her a delicious four-course dinner until she gets home from work, maybe take her out after…
The key was trembling in his hand. Carefully, Sanji placed it to the lock, pushed it in– No, wait, again. So he pushed the key into– Pushed the key– The key in– Get into the fucking lock, you piece of shit!
No. This couldn't fucking be happening. Could it be that it wasn't…?
Sanji didn't remember how he had gotten back into his neighbourhood after that. Shit, he had been a damn idiot! Nobody had ever said the key was for Nami's door. Even though she kept it at her b… beating heart…!
The bouquet was almost touching the ground as he sauntered up the stairs to the floor he lived on. Sighing, he fished for his keys. Would have been the joke of the century if he couldn't have gotten into his own apartment now, wouldn't it?
The door opened without a hitch, so Sanji concluded that it was still not the worst day of his life just yet and stepped inside. There was a small problem, however. When he finally found the light switch, in front of him stood illuminated a whole other room, with furniture and scents he didn't recognize. Not as his own.
He promptly leapt back behind the threshold, and then he saw; the pink fluff was hanging from the key in the door…
What in the flaming balls of beetleshit…
Frowning, the blond took a step within. The rustling of his bags seemed almost deafening as he looked and listened around. His foot got caught in something heavy lying on the floor, and it was all he could do to clutch the wall at his side not to fall on his face. He found another light switch at his hands, flicked it on, looking down to find a set of hand-weights. There were training mats against the walls, too, then laundry – men's underwear – draped over the worn leather couch… And right above that, on the wall, there they were: three Japanese swords on an antique case.
How in the gloria-singing ballsacks did he… Oh hell, just fucking great. Now he was just like that idiot lost Marimo! That damn key must have been cursed, because it had lead him straight to Retardia instead of home! Good thing the green regent wasn't home.
Too bad; Sanji itched to kick his jaw up his skull to eat his shitty mossbrain! It was all that gooseshit-for-hair's fault, all of it. Oh, he ought to just throw his fucking dumbbells out the window, cut up all his smelly underpants – wait, no, he would actually need rubber gloves for that –, spill the contents of his suitcase onto the floor…
Sanji's line of thought was cut as he stared at the suitcase right at the door. Oh, that's right. Zoro would go home to Japan for the holidays. It was why they had exchanged gifts early, on the party back at his place, with the games and the grog and the cola and the key…
The bastard would miss Chopper's actual birthday party, and Sanji had been planning that dinner for months... Damn that fucking asshole.
"Well, can't be helped, then," he muttered to nobody in particular. Putting down the bags, he peeled his gloves off. "Let's get to work."
xXx
Zoro stomped his feet a couple more times before stepping inside. If the snow kept on like it did, they would really have a white Christmas when it was time for Chopper to turn eighteen. That kid would be so happy...
After hanging his coat up, he stepped into the living room, rubbing his hands together. He thought better of it, though, and placed his cold fingertips onto his eyes aching even from the mild forenoon light of a typical winter day. Two shifts at the dojo and a night of body-guarding at the club. Not his idea of a good time.
It was the middle of December, his hands reminded him, when they started to burn up instead of shivering. He should really start wearing gloves or something. Or at least a hat. His ears started to feel as though they were thawing, as if to agree with that notion. If only he didn't always forget to dig them out from one of his–
What the...
When his eyes wandered over to the kitchen, he felt an eerie sense of paranoia wash over him. His gloves were there, on the kitchen table. Had he taken them out, after all? Though, when he entered and switched the ceiling lamp on, the light bounced back from the pair's slick leather surface. Huh? But he hadn't worn leather gloves last year. His memory couldn't be that awful.
And then, when Zoro chanced a glance onto what else lay on the tabletop, he froze. On a tray covered with an ornate kerchief awaited a copious amount of home-made rice crackers. They were snowman-shaped and the kind with fried seaweed he liked so well, but instead of the greenery being mixed into the dough, it was wrapped around their heads for hair…
First the gloves, then the crackers… Either he was severely schizophrenic and had a domestic smartass BDSM-fan side, or someone had snuck in here who had been all three.
Pondering, he took a cracker and noted that it was cold. It must have been left here hours ago, maybe in the night. And no damn burglar ever brought anyone their favourite cookies…
Nibbling on the seaweed, he directed his gaze back onto the tray, and that was when he found the edge of a white paper sheet peeking forth from under the festive kerchief. Sliding it out, he flapped it open. A note, in someone's curly handwriting:
"Hope you enjoy eating your brothers alive," it read. "The rest is in the fridge. Merry fucking Christmas and a shitty New Year, Marimo Man."
Not really thinking, Zoro leapt straight to the refrigerator and tore it open. He could have sworn it had never been as full. There was a platter of what looked to be avocado salad on the top shelf, the shrimps on top organized to form a snowflake. One shelf beneath that was a lidded pot with a red ribbon tied around its base, which he identified as a hearty root vegetable broth, and next to that was a giant plate of all kinds of roast poultry parts - the legs wearing Santa hats. And on the last of the shelves was a Christmas tree shaped cake, covered in greenish cream that tasted like green tea at first lick. And the second. And also the third.
Zoro swiftly turned to face the analog clock on the wall. What, eleven already? That meant two things – the idiot could have either been finishing in an hour, or was just starting. Fuck if he could remember the crazy bastard's working hours…
He had to hurry it up.
He almost forgot to put on his coat, never mind his gloves and hat, as he dashed out of his apartment. The ice along the walkway sometimes made it easier, sometimes harder to coordinate his running, and his watch already showed half past twelve when he finally arrived at the restaurant, wheezing two corners away. Damn downtown and its impossible winding streets…
Good, Sanji had only begun his shift. He was twirling between tables like a damn spinning top, but would just have looked like a quite angry beanstalk if he had been in his last hour. Then again, the idiot-brow didn't look exactly joyful to see him barging towards him, either, but the face he made when Zoro all but yanked him off his feet for a kiss…
It was a hundred times worth it.
xXx
No cigarette was able to calm Sanji's nerves. No ten cigarettes would have been capable of the feat; and trying would have just made him look like a duck out of a kid's cartoon. He looked comical enough, all bruised and dirty.
"You're a fucking numbskull, you know that?" He glared over at Zoro, equally as ragged, leaning against the wall next to him at the back entrance of the restaurant, staring blankly into Marimo-space like a brainless alien algae. No decent human being would burst into someone's workplace and gay-smooch them in front of everyone. Zeff kicked his ass out for a whole shitty week...
"It was payback."
"Payback? For fucking what?" Smoke flared from his nose. "For all the food your shitty kitchen had never seen before?"
"For breaking into my apartment, stupid cook," Zoro turned to look at him. Save for his all-time frown, the mosshead was wearing one of his irritatingly blank Sanji could have smashed an ice-skate into. "And for whatever else you did in there. Who knows, maybe you drank my booze, sniffed at my shirt and danced tango with it." Make that a truck full of ice-skates. "How did you get in, anyway?"
"Ah…"
Sanji padded around in his coat pockets, and grinned a bit when his fingertips brushed against something fluffy. Clanking, he pulled the small key out for the Marimo to see.
"With this!" He announced, unbeknownst to him where the triumphant air had come from. It was the key to Retardia, not even Nami-san's… "Waaait…"
The green buffoon gave a hideous grunt when Sanji introduced his back to the brick wall even more closely.
"The hell...!" Zoro shoved on his shoulders, but the cook only slammed him back one more time.
"Why in the ever-loving fuck does Nami-san have a key to your place?!" He sneered.
"Uh..." Zoro glanced to the side.
"Fucking tell me!"
"Okay, fine!" The green-head bit back, loud, then grew quieter. "I owe her money, so she borrows my car sometimes."
"Huh? But she doesn't have a license!" After the incident involving speeding on the highway in a monster truck, the whole friend circle couldn't forget that fact.
"That's why I have to drive her," he made a face as if he had just swallowed a frog. "And my doorbell is shit, so..."
"More like you sleep through it."
"Hah. You must know..." The fuckface had the gall to grin at him!
"Bullshit! Shut your shitty trap!"
"So which one of us are you jealous of now?"
"I said, shut it!" Sanji gave the asshole another slam for good measure, then spat and stepped back. "So basically, you need a living GPS, because you're too stupid for a machine, huh?"
"Hah, as if," the green asshole scoffed. "And you need a key from Nami to get your ass up to my place?"
"H-hey, not fair!"
Sanji kicked the fucker in the shin. Zoro acted like a goddamn moron in public when he kissed him, then went from stoic asshole to stupid, jealous dork and... And tomorrow he would be gone. It just wasn't fair.
He raised a hand towards Zoro's face and rubbed the green tea cream off his mouth with his thumb, about as gentle as a mule's kick.
"You have green cum on your face, idiot," he scoffed.
"So you put cum in the cake?" The guy grabbed his hand and looked into Sanji's eyes in a way that suggested that he should have known what was coming. But he only remembered when Zoro leaned his head forward as if to head-butt him, instead making their noses touch. Shittt. "You have some of it, too, y'know..."
The Marimo closed his eyes, inching closer… And Sanji couldn't move.
The cook didn't register the cold wall pressing against his back until Zoro's warm lips left his, leaving only hot puffs of breath in their wake. The idiot's ears were icy under his palms. Zoro's small smile, though, as he rubbed warmth into them with his fingers, it just made the blond so… pissed.
"So, how was it?" He took a cool breath through his mouth.
"What?"
"The food, you clump of algae." Sanji was honestly astounded how that one brain-cell in the guy's head enabled him talking.
"Ah," Zoro blinked. "I don't know."
"I can't fucking believe–! I cook a four course meal for your sorry ass and you don't even eat it?!"
"I came right here… when I saw." The green-hair scratched the back of his head, looking away; and Sanji was back to being angry again. It was anger making his head feel hot. Yep. "And it's too much for me, anyway. I'm not Luffy."
"So you're just gonna leave it?" The blond raised an eyebrow.
"If you don't like it, you could come up and help me with it. You have the day off, anyway." Zoro shrugged.
"And who's damn fault is that?" Sanji seethed mockingly. "Also, this is the worst invitation I have ever–"
"And you left your S/M gloves at my place."
"My what?!" Sanji pushed the bastard off him, then took a few steps away, with his back to him. That fucking grin on the Marimo's ugly mug was just so… maddening, that he felt the blood rush into his cheeks. "Fine, you grassy piece of shit, I'll fucking go! Just so I can slap you across the face with them."
"Okay," the way Zoro tried to hold back his widening smile was definitely not adorable. "Cool," he added, then headed for home. At least, that's what he must have thought…
"Hey, Your Mossy Highness," Sanji heard himself laugh. He pointed his finger in the exact opposite direction, of course. "Your Kingdom Retardia awaits over there!"
"A shortcut?" Zoro caught up with him, oblivious.
"Oh please," Sanji merely waved. "I even have the key."