due to some responses from the last chapter, as well as the fact that part 1 of mnm is ending and the pace is going to really start picking up, we'd like to issue this warning to everyone:

this story will get dark at times, it will get emotional, there will be violence described in detail, there will be (at times intense) moments of anxiety and depression and dissociation and hopelessness, of things not going as planned, and in the style mnm is written, it can and possibly will be jarring at the very least for some people to read.

there will also be a lot of moments of love, of friendship, of support and determination, because that's a huge part of this story.

there will also be more scenes with explicit sexual content. however, the two main pairings remain frobin and zosan. additionally, there are other pairings outside of that in this story.

if this makes you uncomfortable, if you are sensitive to these sorts of things, we recommend you stop reading mnm, because it's more important to us that you remain happy and healthy than you read this story

ultimately we are working hard to do our best with this, but it's a story about life, and life isn't always a happy story the entire time, and that is reflected in this fanfiction.


Chapter 7: December (Part II)


Well. That had been pretty different.

Usopp's hands were jammed deep in his pockets as he slushed through the snow and blistering cold once again, power-walking back to the party by himself. He should've grabbed a warmer coat when he was back at the Sunny. What the hell was wrong with him?

What the hell was wrong with everybody, come to think of it.

Back at the Sunny, Usopp had banged on the bathroom door a few minutes after he'd heard Sanji start up the shower.

"You're not going back to the party, are you!" he'd shouted through the door.

"Hell no!" Sanji had yelled back.

"You bastard," Usopp had said very loudly, and he'd turned and, ugh, woah, head rush, he was still drunk, yeah, the stairs were a bitch, but he'd made it down them well enough and grabbed his coat and left to go back to the goddamn party. Because he still had the keys to his car. And sure as shit Nami wasn't going to walk back.

So, yeah, that whole experience had been fairly... Not what Usopp had been planning on doing that night.

When he made it back to the huge party in the frat castle, which was still raging, god, Usopp spent about fifteen minutes just trying to find anybody, and after he'd momentarily given up and went to go locate a solo cup and a keg, someone grabbed him by his wrist.

"Hey, where'd you guys go! You've been gone forever!" Nami said over the music as Usopp turned around and pursed his lips together.

Where did he go, shit. He wracked his brain for something to say. He was a pretty decent liar, honestly, but it was Nami, so he couldn't just... Fuck. Of course she'd be the one to find him first. He was almost too drunk for this.

"Oh, Sanji just, uh—he wanted me to take him back to the Sunny."

"What? Why?"

Why. Shit, because, uh, "He met some pretty girl and said this place was too crowded, so he wanted to borrow my car, but he can't drive a stick, you know, so I drove them both back there."

"Really? Jeez, that was nice of you. He never brings girls back to the house!"

Usopp knew this. There were lots of nights that Sanji never came home. Even more so, lately. And also, Sanji was not secretive about hitting on just about everyone, and sometimes, once in a while, when they went out together, Sanji didn't ride back home with them. But he never had guests over, in a manner of speaking. That was pretty standard Sanji behavior. Usopp had considered this detail about him.

"Yeah, I know, but the house is actually empty for once, so, you know—"

"Gross."

"Yeah. Definitely." Usopp cleared his throat. "I'm sure she'll be gone by the time we get back."

Nami laughed. "God. Probably. Anyway, I found Luffy, and then I lost him again. Help me re-find him and Zoro." And with that, she linked her arm around his like she typically did when they were in a crowd and pulled him along.

Usopp took a deep breath, relieved and in the clear.

The rest of the party went exactly how he'd hoped it would. Lots of shouting and dancing and drinking and being sloppy as hell, and Usopp didn't have to think much about anything. Let Nami take the wheel for a while. They'd found Luffy easily enough, and eventually, after a long time, they finally ran into Zoro, who may have actually been all the way drunk.

Zoro didn't say much to them. But he wasn't much of a rowdy partier.

Nami agreed to drive them home, which was good, because Usopp was not sober even a little bit, nope, and he had panicked a little when they were walking out to his car, because he'd said to Nami and everyone else earlier that he'd driven Sanji back home, but his car was parked in the exact same spot, shit, but Nami didn't notice, thank god. She was the only one he had to worry about.

Usopp had barely made it back to his bed once they were home. Everyone was exhausted. There was no Thousand Sunny after party. Even Luffy had just gone straight to the couch and passed right out.

The next morning, Usopp squinted his eyes open and felt fucking awful. He should've chugged water before he fell asleep. Or eaten something. He laid in bed for ages, thinking about how horrible his mouth tasted and how he should probably just get up and get something to drink, but he wound up rolling over instead.

Shit.

He couldn't fall back asleep because his stupid body was hard-wired at this point to wake up this early, he knew it was probably somewhere around the crack of dawn, but there was little he could do about it. Over a year of working at that little coffee shop and dragging himself out of bed at five in the morning was absolutely to blame.

After a while of trying and failing to convince himself he was still sleeping, and that he wasn't awake at all, Usopp finally drug himself out of bed, more or less falling onto the floor rather than standing up.

With some concentrated effort, he got himself all the way on his feet and to his bedroom door and took a deep breath and—oh shit, he knew that smell. Okay. He could probably stomach Sanji's cooking. That may help.

When Usopp was halfway down the stairs, he paused, his brain suddenly being flooded with memories from last night that had apparently failed to register when he was first waking up.

He and Sanji had come back to the Sunny. Oh yeah.

And then...

Usopp stared down at the shitty carpeting on their stairs—the only place in that house to actually have any carpeting, oddly enough—and tried to figure out what in the hell that was. That whole... Jesus, he had kissed Sanji, he had...

Usopp abruptly sat down on the stairs.

Was that a normal thing that happened with people? Usopp had always been kind of a loner, he didn't have a lot of friends growing up, which was fair, he was kind of obnoxious when he was younger—but no, did people do that in college? Usopp was in his twenties and he'd really only slept with one person his whole life, and really, before living at the Sunny, he never drank that much in his life, and he didn't really know where the hell to go from here, shit.

Did he fuck up? Did he make a really stupid, idiot mistake, like he was fucking prone to doing, and ruin one of the very few friendships he'd managed to maintain for a while?

Usopp stood up and walked down the rest of the stairs, because there was really only one way to proceed, and that was forward.

When he got downstairs, it looked like Sanji was just finishing up, and he'd cooked a shitload, awesome, and he didn't even really notice Usopp slowly approaching the counter/bar.

"Good morning," Usopp said tentatively, clearing his throat a little, and Sanji whipped around to face him, a lit cigarette between his lips.

"Oh—morning, shithead. You sleep well?"

Usopp nodded a little, eyes trailing down to the feast right in front of him, and Sanji slid a plate into his line of vision, and he took it without hesitation. "I slept well enough. I didn't barf."

"Proud of you."

"Yeah," Usopp looked back up at Sanji in between filling his plate with lots and lots of food and man, Sanji had made everything extra greasy, like the man just knew how bad everyone would need it. "Did you sleep alright?"

"Like a fucking log."

Usopp looked away from Sanji again and turned to go back to the table. That'd been an obvious lie.

Sanji's eyes were bloodshot and his voice was scratchy and hoarse, and he looked worse than he had the previous night, which was impressive. Usopp was used to Sanji looking pretty put together. So it was all the more evident.

Leaving his plate at the cherrywood table, Usopp wandered to the fridge to find something to drink—chug—and he watched Sanji from the corner of his eye. With clearly little interest, Sanji grabbed a single piece of toast, spreading some kind of jelly on it, and he walked back to the table and put out his cigarette and took one bite, and then he dropped the piece of toast back on his plate and rubbed his eyes.

Usopp closed the fridge once he had a bottle of water, because that was probably the smartest thing to drink at the moment.

"So," Usopp said as he slid back into his seat at the table across from Sanji, pointedly not making direct eye contact, as that was a little much at the moment, "do you have any plans for the day?"

"I work at, uh... fuck, five," Sanji said, talking more to his toast than to Usopp. "Not looking forward to it."

"Yeah, I wouldn't be either. Well, it's pretty early, isn't it?"

"As hell."

"I haven't even looked at the time," Usopp said, eating slowly. His body hurt, like he was sore, and all his joints felt stiff. It was still better than throwing up, though.

"I haven't either."

"Well. You probably have a while left to sleep. Er, sleep more, I mean. You look like you need it," Usopp said, pushing a sausage link around his plate.

Sanji snorted and took another bite of his toast, setting it back down on his plate again. "Do I? I could probably sleep for a month, I think."

So. This whole conversation was pretty... normal. Normal enough. It wasn't awkward, anyway, so that was a win in Usopp's book.

Okay. Cool.

Usopp didn't say much else for a minute, because he was too goddamn tired, and because it was hard to get complete thoughts through his foggy brain. There was just Sanji there, talking to him like nothing had changed, and that was nice, that was a relief, but there was also the whole issue of Sanji looking like shit and clearly being bothered over something, and Usopp was about to just outright ask what the hell was going on, but he stopped when he heard the sound of heavy clunking shoes coming down the stairs.

Sanji also heard it, apparently, and he looked over at the stairwell for just a second. And then he stood up suddenly, and he pushed his plate with half a piece of toast to Usopp and said, "Finish this," and walked straight over to the couch and grabbed his jacket that was draped over the back of it.

"Where are you going?" Usopp asked.

"Anywhere," Sanji mumbled as he walked past him, pushing his arms through his jacket sleeves, and Usopp didn't say anything as Sanji slipped out the front door while Zoro came down the stairs, yawning loudly.

Usopp pushed more food around his plate and waited.

It took a moment of Zoro still waking up to notice all the food on the counter/bar, and once he saw it, he looked over at Usopp, and then around at the otherwise empty room.

"Where's... you know what, never mind, I don't care," Zoro said in his husky morning voice, and he loaded up his plate and sat down across from Usopp, where Sanji had just been a minute ago.

Usopp took a bite of the toast Sanji had commanded him to finish and considered a few things.

"You're up early," Usopp said with his mouth full, reaching for his bottle of water that was already about finished.

"I don't get it either," Zoro replied, stabbing a bunch of hash browns with his fork.

"Are you not hungover at all?"

Zoro shook his head some. "Not really."

"Are you some kind of superhuman that doesn't get drunk?" Usopp asked, because honestly, it sort of seemed that way.

"Fucking got drunk last night," Zoro grumbled, making a face at his hash browns.

"Oh yeah? I didn't know that was even possible for you. What prompted that?"

Zoro looked back up at Usopp, and Usopp struggled to deal with the initial shock of how intense Zoro could be sometimes.

"Nothing."

Okay, it was nothing, jeez.

Usopp let his eyes drift around the room, trying to mentally move on from that, and then he suddenly said, "Didn't Luffy pass out on the couch last night?"

"He's gone."

"Gone?"

"Around, I dunno, maybe six this morning, I heard his phone go off about twenty times. Then I heard his little scooter pulling out. And then I passed back out."

Usopp wrinkled his nose. "What were you doing awake at six in the morning?"

"His goddamn phone woke me up," Zoro replied, obviously annoyed over the whole thing.

Maybe that's why Zoro was in a mood. Or maybe not.

Usopp frowned. Maybe he was being paranoid. Most likely.

Zoro didn't say a whole lot else, but in all honesty, Usopp really valued the comfortable silences he and Zoro could slip into. And it was too early to talk much. And Usopp was getting a weird, intense vibe off Zoro, and he wasn't touching that one.

So Usopp finished his breakfast and washed his plate and trudged back up the stairs. And then he stood there in the middle of the hallway, looking back and forth between his room and Nami's.

He went and collapsed back onto his own bed.

And then he laid there, awake, for another half hour.

Fuck. What the hell was going on.

Unless Usopp was going crazy, and he was pretty sure that, now that he was sober, he was not crazy—he was pretty sure that Sanji was losing his shit over something. That was pretty obvious at this point, it was easy to see just by looking at him, and that was probably where the whole... string of events that occurred last night came from, knowing Sanji. It'd make a lot of sense, when Usopp put the pieces in order. Sanji wasn't the type to have a long talk and hug it out—rather, he was more like the kind of person that blamed himself and self-destructed.

And Zoro was in a... funk, maybe. But that could've been anything. Weird, though, because Zoro had seemed pretty happy lately. School stuff was going well for him, for once, it seemed. Maybe Zoro and Sanji had a big serious fight. Lover's quarrel.

Usopp snorted. Well that would be about par for the course, wouldn't it.

Luffy was gone again, and who knew when the hell he'd come back. Was nobody ever going to bring that up? Usopp had mentioned it once, ages ago, maybe in August or September, and Luffy had avoided the question. Usopp had cooked up about a thousand scenarios for Luffy's secret double life. Every time Luffy left like that, Usopp imagined him running off to be an FBI agent, or a mob boss, and everything in between. But apparently nobody was going to outright find out what Luffy did.

So. Okay, fine.

And then there was Nami, and out of everyone, she was the most blatant to Usopp. He could see the stress in her face, and he could hear the exhaustion in her voice, and with how often she was gone, coming home way late most nights—Usopp knew her work schedule, and he knew she didn't work that goddamn much. Not that late in the night. So what the hell?

Usopp took a deep breath and figured he should probably file all of this under the "None of Your Business" category in his mind.

They were his friends. The first group of friends he'd ever had, really. He'd always wanted something like this, growing up. He'd wanted to feel included, and like he was part of something, like he had a family. He would watch other kids with their friends and wonder what it was like to be a part of something like that. And so, even after only... jeez, what, four or five months, he'd grown so attached to those idiots. And he wanted to help them. Because they seemed like they needed it. But he had absolutely no idea how to go about doing that.

Usopp wished there was a schematic for friendship.

He wondered how Chopper was doing.

He stared at the ceiling, re-counted all the tiles for the trillionth time, and he sighed because he couldn't fucking fall back asleep.

He sat up, threw his blanket back, grabbed his pillow, and walked straight across the hall and into Nami's room.

Holding his breath, and he didn't know why he was trying to be so quiet because she wasn't the lightest of sleepers, Usopp gently clicked her door closed and walked over to her bed and pushed her blankets into a big pile on top of her and fell down next to her, laying on his back and re-acquainting himself with her ceiling tiles. She had eight more than he did.

After a couple seconds, she rolled over and threw all her heavy blankets back onto him—ugh, they were too hot, he didn't know how she could sleep like that—and she tossed her arm over his chest and wiggled over until her head was in its spot right under where his collarbone met his shoulder, and her hair was all up in his face, and he sighed and closed his eyes again.

He could kind of feel his arm already starting to fall asleep beneath her, and he took a deep breath, and you know, he didn't care—he didn't care about his arm or the too-hot blankets or anything else, really, and that was probably what he was starting to get addicted to. When he was with her, all the other shit—it didn't matter, and he didn't care, not even a little, like all that anxiety and that general feeling of "oh fuck" just slipped away, and he opened his eyes and looked back up at the ceiling and said, "You're my best fucking friend."

Nami's voice was muffled and scratchy as she mumbled, "Same."

Usopp shut his eyes again and smiled and thought about how he wished he could freeze time and not change anything and soak this up as long as he could, indefinitely, because this shit was never permanent.

He fell asleep before he could finish another thought on the matter.

Against his deepest wishes, the days slipped by him.

And wasn't that always the case with vacations.

Usopp hadn't even realized it was Christmas until the day was halfway over with. He'd spent most of it with Zoro. Luffy, Nami, and Sanji were all gone that day.

And when Chopper had come back in town, Usopp had picked him up from the train station and asked him a hundred questions and never really left him alone. Apparently Usopp had missed him a little.

The house was empty when they made it back home, and Usopp had followed Chopper into his room and kept on yapping until he was finally kicked out over Chopper being super tired from traveling and probably also listening to Usopp yammer on.

Damn it.

The Sunny felt empty, and likewise, Usopp did too, a little bit.

He hadn't envisioned their winter break to be very much like this at all.

The day before New Year's Eve—New Year's Eve Eve?—Usopp sat with Nami in her room, both of them on her floor with her laptop sitting on the single desk chair in the room, and they were watching some shitty movie they'd picked on a whim on the internet, and they were absolutely surrounded by Chinese food.

They got way more than they should've. Whoops.

Well, they couldn't help it—they'd both decided that they wanted Chinese food. And not Chinese food prepared by some five-star chef; they wanted crappy Chinese food with extra soy sauce and MSG. So they'd decided to secretly get some take-out, and not let Sanji find out, and once they started ordering, they'd accidentally just sort of... panicked and added everything they could think of onto their order.

"Oh, we should get rangoons. Oh—and egg rolls, also. I don't know, a large?"

"And pot stickers, we have to get those."

"Oh, and, uh, like, a half-order of lo mein?"

"Please can we get the sesame chicken, please."

It went on like that for a minute.

They didn't talk about how much it cost them.

So they sat there, a feast of Chinese food that they were going to have to figure out how to hide in the back of the fridge because there was no way they were going to come close to finishing, and Usopp was goddamn content.

"Open your fortune," Nami said to him, throwing him his allotted Chinese fortune cookie.

"I can't. I didn't finish everything. It doesn't come true if you don't finish your entire meal," Usopp informed her as the cookie hit him in the face.

"Oh, shut up and open it," Nami replied, already cracking hers open.

Usopp looked down at the cookie in his lap and sighed really loudly at her blatant disregard for fortune cookie law and opened it.

All things come to him who goes after them.

He chewed on his bottom lip as he read it. And then he looked up at Nami and—

"What's yours say?" she asked.

"You can't read it or it won't come true."

"Okay, no, I know for a fact that you can have other people read it. You just can't say it aloud."

Usopp was about to explain that, no, she was obviously getting her fortune cookie lies from someone spreading false information, but before he could, she leaned forward and snatched his fortune from his hands.

He watched Nami read it with her head dipped down, frowning at it, like she wasn't pleased with it, and she mumbled, "This isn't even a fortune, it's like a dumb proverb."

"Will you convince everyone to be together for New Year's Eve?"

Nami looked up at Usopp suddenly with a ridiculous expression on her face.

"Uh, what?"

Fuck, that wasn't how Usopp wanted to approach that question. But honestly, he'd been thinking about it for a few days. Just. He had meant to ask her in a much better way instead of suddenly blurting it out after being inspired by a goddamn fortune cookie.

"Well, it's just that, uh—" Usopp felt his face growing red, and he wasn't trying to be like this, because it was Nami of all people, and he could probably tell her just about anything, so what the hell, god, why was this so difficult, "—I've noticed that, um, well, everyone's been gone a lot lately, you know?"

Nami sat and stared and waited for him to continue, and shit, he was doing his best not to flounder.

"And, I mean, I'm not trying to get into that right now—I just mean that I think that it'd be, uh, nice if we were all together. For New Year's. Chopper's back now and we haven't all done something together in, uh... a while. I mean, I know there was that big party—"

"Yeah, that party was kind of nuts, anyway. Too many people."

"Agreed." Usopp's memory drifted back to the party in question. "That party was fucked up."

"Was it? Why?" Nami asked.

Usopp cleared his throat. "Er. No reason—the point here is that we all haven't done a thing in a while, and so, uh. We should. So you should convince everyone to do something together."

Nami furrowed her brow a bit. "Why me?"

Breaking eye contact, Usopp shrugged. "I think you're the only one that can get everyone to go."

Nami seemed to consider this for a moment. "You're probably right, honestly." She smiled at him. "Okay."

Luffy had been easy to convince. Well, it wasn't like they even had convince him of anything. But they'd gone to him first, and he'd told the both of them that Law was having people over, so that settled it. Law's frat worked well. That creepo tended to keep things more on the down-low.

So next was Chopper, and with Luffy added to Team Peer Pressure, he caved easily enough.

"Then that only leaves Zoro and Sanji," Nami had said as she stood with Usopp and Luffy outside of Chopper's bedroom. Both Luffy and Nami had their hands on their hips, contemplating their course of action, and Usopp was deeply amused that they both had the innate feeling that this would be a bit of a challenge.

"I'll just tell Zoro he should go when he gets home from work tonight," Luffy decided.

Luffy had always been a man of little planning.

Usopp was a little surprised that Nami was fine with that, honestly. But leave it to her to have it all figured out already.

The three of them passed the time by watching Luffy's newest additions to his documentary collection, and Usopp and Nami caved and told Luffy about all their Chinese food just because they knew he'd help them get rid of the evidence before Sanji could even get home.

And they were correct, because when Sanji walked through the front door past one in the morning, there were several empty boxes of Chinese food safely out of sight in the trash.

"Sanji!" Nami perked up from her spot on the couch, and he immediately turned all his attention towards her.

"Yes!"

"Come watch these documentaries with us," she said, scooting to the side of the couch and making room between herself and Usopp. Luffy grinned at Sanji from his spot on the love seat.

Sanji looked so damn tired.

His smile was forced.

"Let me get out of this gross uniform first," he said.

Sanji ended up grabbing one of his bottles of wine from the corner cabinet in the kitchen, and he shared it with the rest of them while they wasted time, and Nami kept Sanji engaged. It was subtle, but Usopp could see it plain as day. She kept asking his opinion on things, and nudging him with her elbow, and basically keeping him awake and on that couch as they marathoned Luffy's documentaries through the night.

It was funny to watch the struggle between Sanji desperately wanting to pass out but also wanting very much to eat up all the attention Nami was feeding him.

Usopp could relate.

When Zoro finally got home from his overnight shift of toy store shelf stocking, Luffy wasted no time.

"Zoro!"

Zoro raised his eyebrows as he stood in the doorway, pulling his gloves off his hands. He probably hadn't expected so many of them to still be awake.

"Yeah?"

"Come to the New Year's Eve party with us!" Luffy almost shouted.

Zoro snorted and walked past them and into the kitchen, towards the fridge.

"Oh yeah—Sanji, you should go with us!" Nami said with her sweetest smile, leaning into him hard, bringing her nearly-empty glass of wine to her lips.

Sanji looked down at Nami, almost a little frozen. "Er—a party?"

"Yeah, we're all going for New Years Eve tomorrow night," Nami replied, practically resting her chin on his shoulder. "You should definitely go."

"Um. Uh, yeah—" his voice cracked, "—I can probably go."

"Probably?"

"Well, I was going to go somewhere, but, I mean, if you're going to be there and—"

"Zoro!" Luffy cut in, raising his voice above everyone else. Usopp looked over the back of the couch at Zoro, who was in the middle of rolling his eyes and cracking open his beer. "You have to come with us!"

Zoro almost laughed. "No."

"Why not!" Luffy was not pleased with Zoro's answer in the slightest. "We're all going to be there, even Chopper."

Zoro sat down on one of the metal stools. "I see that. I just don't want to." He took a drink of his beer while Luffy frowned at him. "You all like going out more than me."

"But it's New Year's Eve," Luffy insisted, like that really mattered, balling his hands into frustrated fists.

Nami twisted and looked straight at Zoro from over the back of the couch.

"Is it because Sanji's going?"

Usopp pursed his lips together, and he didn't know exactly why he held his breath all of the sudden, but the brief pause in conversation after Nami said that was heavy.

"I—" Zoro wrinkled his nose at Nami. "No. I don't care what that idiot does."

Sanji lit a cigarette and kept his eyes on the documentary, his face totally neutral, and Usopp didn't say a fucking word.

"So you don't have a good reason not to go," Nami concluded.

"I just said I don't want—"

"Don't be an asshole, Zoro," Nami interrupted.

"Yeah!" Luffy yelled, backing her up immediately, and Usopp could see Nami smiling a little as he echoed, "Don't be an asshole, Zoro."

Zoro glared straight death at the both of them and there was no way Usopp could do what those two were doing at that moment.

"Fine," he grumbled, and Luffy cheered and Nami grinned at him and flipped back around in her seat. Usopp couldn't help but smile at their victory. Sanji didn't say anything.

A little later, when Usopp and Nami were upstairs brushing their teeth together in the bathroom, Usopp had said, "Man, you killed it. They all said they'd go."

"Of course they did," Nami said, spitting into the sink.

"Why'd you do that, though?" Usopp asked, reaching for the little glass they kept in there and filling it with water.

"Do what?"

"The thing with asking Zoro if it was about Sanji."

Nami took the glass from him and rinsed. Once her mouth was clear and her teeth were all sparkly clean, she said, "With the way he's been lately, I didn't think he'd go unless I backed him into a corner. And an easy way to do that is with Sanji."

Usopp tapped his chin. "Interesting. They're like the two sides of a magnet."

"Ooh, great analogy, Usopp."

"Thank you, Nami."

She smiled at him and he grinned back and they made their way, finally, to bed.

And the next night, at the party... God, the party.

"Trafanta!"

When they arrived at Law's frat, Luffy had jumped out of the car, bounce-jogging to the front porch where Law was leaned back on one of the patio chairs they kept there. The way he was so casual in his posture, it was like he seemingly didn't even feel the biting cold as he sat there with a bottle of liquor and what was probably a joint because Usopp was pretty sure that the soon-to-be Dr. Trafruitloop wasn't a cigarette kind of guy.

"Luffy," Law had said in his creep-silk voice, not bothering to get up as Luffy bounded up the stairs and stood in front of him, grinning, and Law handed Luffy the bottle as the rest of them trudged up to the porch. Rather than a decent greeting, Law had just looked up at them and said, "Luffy's friends."

"Yeah, I brought the whole crew!"

"Nice to see you, too, you fucking weirdo," Sanji said as he walked past, opening the front door to the loud music and laughter inside.

"Please," Law said as he raised a hand, waving it airily and widening his eyes at nothing, "make yourselves at home."

Usopp followed Sanji inside, trailed by the rest of them, and the party was... well, pretty ideal, really.

It wasn't full of drunken hoards of people. There were a decent number of people there, yeah, but they were actually mostly all people Usopp had met at least once or twice. Like some of the guys in Law's frat—Shachi and Penguin and Bepo and all them. And plenty of other familiar faces, too, and it was kind of funny how social circles overlapped sometimes.

Usopp realized that all the tenants of the Thousand Sunny probably made up their own little circle, with the way people recognized them as a group.

It was a good feeling.

After only a few minutes of being there, Usopp started gravitating towards Nami, just out of habit, and then he stopped, momentarily conflicted with that insecure feeling of "am I the annoying friend that shadows people at parties?" until she grabbed his wrist and pulled him along downstairs, and she pushed him into a chair at a table of people playing a drinking game, and okay, okay, it was Nami, don't be stupid.

Nami and, through her tutelage, Usopp were both pretty damn good at drinking games when they teamed up together.

Damn good in the sense that they were intentionally awful at all the right moments for a while and drank as much free alcohol as they could in a short amount of time. And they were also really good at stumbling away from the table half an hour later, with Usopp well on his way to piss drunk and Nami clearly pretty tipsy, arm in arm.

"Did you know," Usopp said as they pulled each other back up the stairs, intent on finding their other roommates for some reason—they'd just suddenly decided that was their new goal, "that before I met you, I'd only been drunk, uh... not that many times. Like ten? Maybe? Or five, I don't know."

Nami laughed. "Where's the fun in that?"

"True, I have learned this. You are my most fun friend, definitely," Usopp said, nodding to himself over the revelation. Before the Thousand Sunny, Usopp didn't really... live a whole lot. And now, he felt like he was along for the ride. And he liked that feeling.

"You're my..." Nami looked at him, pausing on the stairs and leaning against the railing. "You're my, uh..."

"Am I not your most fun friend, wow, thanks a lot," Usopp scoffed, walking past her, and she grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

"No! I mean. It's just hard to fit you into a single word right now."

Usopp turned and she smiled a little and, god, all was forgiven forever.

Back upstairs, they found Chopper and Sanji and Luffy sitting with Law and a few of Law's frat buddies, and Sanji looked pissed.

Upon approaching the table where they were all sitting, they found Sanji leaned back hard in his chair, an ankle over his other knee, and he had his wallet out and looked miserable.

"Sanji, I feel like it's your fault, at this point," Chopper was saying, and Luffy laughed.

"He's the asshole making all these stupid fucking bets!" Sanji shouted at Chopper, reaching for a bottle of beer.

"You're the one that keeps taking them, though!" Chopper returned, and Sanji gave him a nasty look.

"Normal people shouldn't be able to do the things this fuckface is doing," Sanji almost growled at Chopper.

"So?" Law asked, interrupting them, and Sanji's eyes snapped to Law's. "Five dollars says I can bend a cigarette to a ninety degree angle without breaking it."

Sanji leaned in his seat and dug out his pack and pulled a single cigarette from it, almost glaring at the thing, and he flexed it a little and chewed on his lip.

"Don't do it, Sanji," Chopper warned.

"Yeah, if Trafundraiser says he can do it, he can totally do it," Luffy added, sitting right next to Law, almost bouncing in his seat.

Sanji looked from them back to his cigarette, and he bent it a little and ended up snapping it almost immediately, and he hung his head and muttered a string of curses to himself, tossing his broken cigarette on the table.

Usopp glanced over at Law, who was quite possibly on the brink of a very knowing smirk.

"Fine!" Sanji shouted suddenly, looking up, and he threw his pack of cigarettes at Law. "Do it, just fucking do it, I know you can, just take my five dollars and show me how."

Law actually caught the pack and took one cigarette from it, throwing it right back at Sanji, who didn't do as good of a job at catching it.

Usopp could feel Nami lean on him and whisper, "Have you figured out how to do it yet?"

He rubbed his mouth while he watched Law fish in his pocket for something. Usopp was a little drunk to be thinking about this sort of shit. He couldn't do riddles right now.

Law pulled a lighter from his pocket. And then he took Sanji's cigarette and pressed the end of the paper side against his tongue and held it there for a second.

Sanji gave him a very clear "what the fuck are you doing, you creep weirdo jackoff?" look.

Usopp had gotten pretty good at reading Sanji's facial expressions over the past few months, with how many times Sanji had just given him looks instead of outright saying things. It was a pretty effective form of communication, honestly.

After the tip of the cigarette was all wet with Law's spit, he turned it around and stuck the filtered end in his mouth, like a normal person, and took a minute to light it. It was wet, so clearly, it took a moment, and—oh!

"Moisture does it," Usopp said under his breath in Nami's ear, and she nodded.

"You got it."

Law took a few long and slow drags off the cigarette and pulled it from his lips, and then, very slowly, using both hands and being very gentle, he started bending it right in the middle. And true to his word, the cigarette didn't break at all.

Sanji looked pissed.

Once he was finished, Law took one more drag off it, which looked pretty hilarious, him smoking a cigarette bent at a total right angle like that, and he said to Sanji, "You owe me five dollars."

Sanji stood up abruptly, counting out five singles from his wallet as he said, "You're an asshole, and you're too fucking tall, and your name is stupid, and you can take your dumbass bar tricks and fuck yourself with them." He dropped the money on the table and grabbed his beer and walked past Usopp and Nami, towards the back door, shaking a new cigarette from his pack.

Law came very close to actually laughing as he stubbed the cigarette out in the nearest ashtray and pocketed his money.

"Your name really is stupid," Luffy said in conclusion after Sanji stormed off, and Law quickly turned his head and narrowed his eyes at him. Luffy raised his shoulders at Law in an over-exaggerated shrug. "I've known you for years and I don't even know your first name!"

"It's Trafalga—"

"Yeah, you keep saying that, but that still doesn't really tell me what it is."

"I..." Law looked as flabbergasted as a person could manage to appear, really.

Nami slid into Sanji's vacated seat, and Usopp hesitated. And then he made a quick decision and spun on his heel, opting to follow Sanji outside to the front porch.

When the cold air hit him, Sanji turned, and he yanked his cigarette from his mouth upon seeing Usopp and said, very loudly, "That was utter bullshit, right?"

Usopp nodded, letting the front door swing closed behind him. "Oh, definitely." He paused. "Well, actually, it really wasn't bullshit—Law pulled moisture through the cigarette, which made it more bendy. It makes sense, really. Pretty smart, when you think about it."

Sanji glared at him.

"I mean," Usopp looked around, anywhere other than Sanji, "it was total bullshit, fuck that guy."

He could hear the hard exhale of Sanji's breath as he laughed just a little and said, "You're an idiot. Why the hell did you follow me out here? It's freezing."

Usopp had a definitive reason for following Sanji outside, but instead, he shuffled his feet and said, "Oh, I dunno. Nami took your seat and I was standing awkwardly so I sort of just walked away. And I have no idea where Zoro is. So. Here I am."

Sanji visibly stiffened and then relaxed, and he plunked his beer down on the snowy porch railing, and he absently flicked his cigarette a few times in a row while he stared at the ground. And then he pitched it into the yard and pulled his wallet from his back pocket, and he opened it and pulled out what could only be a joint.

"Want to smoke this with me?"

"Sure."

This could work in Usopp's favor.

They stood and passed the joint back and forth, and Usopp watched the snow fall in the light of the streetlamp at the end of the yard, and he got pretty goddamn stoned pretty fast, wow.

He waved his hand when Sanji offered it to him again. He needed to concentrate. He'd gone out there and stood in the freezing cold for a reason, after all. He took a deep breath and said, "Sanji."

"Usopp."

"Are you okay?" Usopp looked over at Sanji, finally, and Sanji didn't look back at him. Instead, he watched the street, where Usopp's eyes had just been.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

Sanji snorted. "I'm sure."

"It's just that you've been gone so much, and, uh, lately, you've been looking pretty... sleep-deprived, I guess, and, I don't know, you—"

Sanji spoke over him, halting his momentum and his speech in place.

"Don't read too much into shit that doesn't mean anything."

Usopp closed his mouth and let his eyes fall.

"Sorry."

"What the hell are you sorry for—"

"Well what else am I supposed to be? You're acting so fucked up lately—you all are, actually—and everyone says it's nothing, it's always nothing with you guys, so what the hell!" Usopp shouted suddenly, and then he pursed his lips together and curled them inwards, biting down, because whoops.

Sanji took a slow rip from his joint, looking like he was considering Usopp's words, and after taking a deep breath and exhaling very slowly, he said, "Everything's fine on my end, so don't worry about it."

Usopp's shoulders fell.

"Alright, fine."

Sanji offered Usopp his joint one more time, and this time, Usopp took it.

"Go worry about Nami," Sanji said, and he sounded fairly sincere about it.

Usopp raised his eyebrows. "Nami?"

"You and I both know shit's going on with her."

"Well. Yeah."

Sanji lit a new cigarette and frowned back out at the street. "She's more important, anyway."

Usopp didn't say anything, partially because he was high and he couldn't find the words, but mostly because, deep down, he agreed.

"Anything that can bother someone like Nami for more than a minute," Sanji continued after a few seconds, "must be something significant."

There was a lot of truth there. Usopp took a final hit of Sanji's weed and handed it back, and he shoved his hands, which were completely numb, into his pockets. "I will. I mean. You're right, I'll try to talk to her."

"Good." Sanji gave him one of those crooked grins that made him look like the goddamn delinquent he was, and Usopp wanted to laugh at how quick he could flip on that switch. Sanji clapped him on the shoulder, and his grip was so strong, and he rattled Usopp back and forth as he said, "I leave our most beautiful and perfect roommate and friend in your very capable hands, Usopp."

"Thanks?"

"I believe in you."

Usopp rolled his eyes. "I'm going inside. Stay out here and freeze."

"Will do," Sanji said as he took a drag of his cigarette, still holding his mostly-finished and still-smoking joint in his other hand.

Usopp pushed the front door open, and as he walked back to go find Nami and everyone else, he replayed Sanji's words in his head. Either way, he'd fully intended to talk to Nami about what the hell was going on, whether Sanji wanted him to or not. But now, fuck, it felt like he had an obligation.

Well. He did have an obligation, didn't he. He was her friend.

Usopp couldn't find her at first. He couldn't find anyone, actually. Everyone in that house was starting to get a bit drunker, a bit more rowdy, the closer to midnight it got. He nabbed a bottle of Blue Moon from an orphaned six-pack sitting on a countertop as he made his way to the stairs.

He found Chopper with Zoro upstairs, sitting at a table, the two of them being cheered on as they chugged their beers. Zoro finished way before Chopper, and he slapped Chopper on the back in congratulations when he finally managed to drink his entire drink, and Chopper nearly fell out of his chair.

Usopp smiled and moved on.

When he finally did find Nami downstairs, she was surrounded. By a lot of guys. Tall, good-looking guys. And that was pretty normal, honestly. She was so pretty. And her smile was, like... it was so bright. And she was good at being the center of attention. She was one of those people that had that sort of natural magnetism. People were drawn to her.

Usopp stood back and drank his beer and watched her. He couldn't really help it. He liked looking at her.

She noticed him, though, standing way back there, past tons of people, and she straight up walked away from the conversation that she was probably the subject of, leaving all those guys standing there super awkwardly, unsure of how to react to her abandonment.

"Usopp! I was looking for your earlier! You just disappeared, so I—look what this nice person named... Brian? Ryan? I don't know, but he gave me this whole bottle," Nami grinned, holding up a full, unopened fifth of vodka, and Usopp's stomach kind of turned because he knew he'd be drinking a lot of that with her.

"Why'd he do something as nice as that?"

"Because guys like to think they can trade alcohol for other things that I'm never going to give them ever in their entire lives?"

Usopp grinned. "You are the most cunning individual I know."

"He's the one who said I could have the whole bottle, it's his fault."

"Oh, I agree entirely."

Nami raised her eyebrows and looked down at the bottle in question. "Should I give it back?"

Usopp snorted. "Hell no."

They twisted open the bottle, and they took preliminary shots, and they both made the exact same semi-horrified expression over the taste, gasping for breath once they'd swallowed it down. They shared the rest of Usopp's beer in a hurry, trying to rid their mouths of the burning aftertaste of cheap unflavored vodka.

"Let's find soda."

"Good idea."

They slipped away from the basement, away from Bryan or Ryan and the rest of those guys, and they navigated through groups of people towards the fridge upstairs, and they found the soda they'd hoped was there.

"I feel like it's okay to take this soda because Law tries to act like he's not our friend when in reality, he's at our house, like, once a week," Nami said as she pulled a couple cans of Coke from the fridge door.

"I feel like that's an excellent point," Usopp agreed.

They each took another shot, this time properly chasing it by chugging their sodas.

"He's totally our friend, I don't make the rules," Nami said, wiping her mouth.

They drifted around, and they wound up in some chairs in the corner of one of the larger rooms on the main floor, right next to a giant indoor potted tree or bush or something, passing the bottle back and forth and watching everyone. Like they usually did at some point during parties.

"Hey, Nami," Usopp said after a few minutes, and she looked over at him. "Tell me what's going on with you already."

Nami pulled her knees up to her chest, chewing on her bottom lip. "I don't want to."

Usopp rolled his eyes. "Don't be such a child."

Nami let her head fall back, resting it against the back of her chair.

Usopp didn't push her any further for the moment. It was surprising enough that she actually admitted something was going on in the first place, so easily. Maybe she'd drank more than he thought. Or maybe she was just as tired as she looked lately.

"If I tell you..." she began, looking up at the ceiling, and Usopp had to strain to hear her against the noise of the party, "... I don't know. You can't tell anyone."

"I mean, that's fine—"

"I'm serious."

Usopp straightened his back a little. "Uh. Okay?"

She looked over at him and narrowed her eyes, like she was warning him of something. And then she held out her hand for the bottle of vodka, and Usopp gave it to her.

"Not tonight," she said, her voice level as she unscrewed the cap and leaned over to grab the can of Coke she'd set on the floor.

"Nami—"

"Just not right now. I'll... I'll tell you tomorrow. At the start of the new year. I'll tell you." And then she took a fat swig of the gross vodka, and Usopp grimaced a little.

"Alright."

She handed the bottle back to him. "Just drink this with me and... let's just have fun tonight. Let's just get real fucked up tonight, you and me, and we'll worry about everything tomorrow."

Usopp nodded and looked down at their bottle that was already almost half gone. "You got it."

Well. That was some sort of huge victory, probably. Not as painful as he'd thought it'd be. But then again, it'd taken him, like, over a whole month to get her to admit anything was wrong at all. So he didn't know how much of a win it really was.

But then, after he took a shot big enough to match hers, because he wouldn't be outdone by her so early in the night, he saw her looking at him. She was smiling a little.

"Let's have the best New Year's Eve either of us has ever had," she said, and Usopp accepted her invitation.

They didn't separate from each other at all that night. They followed each other, grabbing at wrists and linking arms, leaning and tripping over each other. Usopp breathed in the rush of alcohol and sudden drunken decisions and Nami.

Nami was... Nami was a lot of things, to Usopp. She was his best friend, yeah, but she was more than that. Or something. It was hard to describe or explain.

In a way, she was... she was excitement. She was impulse. She was laughter that brought tears to his eyes and left them rolling down his cheeks. She was all these things he'd never really had in his life, that he'd never experienced, up until he met her. She was a state of total independence, and she was adamant, and to him, in his mind, she was adventure.

He'd never met anyone like her.

She was maybe the strongest person Usopp had ever met. She was totally fearless.

She was beautiful, and she was mean in the best ways possible, and nice in the worst ways imaginable. And Usopp was really glad she'd walked into his life one sweltering afternoon in late August.

Looking back over the past year, Usopp compared the person he'd been in January to the person he was at that moment. And he knew, he was different from who he'd once been. And all of it—the way he cussed more, and the way he drank a lot more, and the way he slept so much less and saw so, so much more of life—all of it was Nami.

They finished their first bottle of vodka, and Nami led the hunt for more. Usopp held onto the hem of her shirt, letting her drag him along, and then she stopped suddenly and spun around. He nearly ran into her.

"It's almost midnight!" she said, looking at her phone and then holding it up in his face, like three centimeters away from his nose, like he could read something that close. He pulled his head back a little and squinted at the time on the screen. They had, like, a whole half hour still.

"It's, like, slowly approaching midnight."

"Whatever, we just have to make sure we're together when midnight happens."

Usopp blinked, and he knew how bloodshot his eyes must've been, because it burned to keep them closed for long. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"Is there some kind of… midnight thing…"

Nami stared at him like he was an idiot. And that was fine, he was pretty used to that expression by now.

"If we're together at midnight, then we'll be together for the rest of the year, dummy."

"Ohh, I wasn't aware of that. Okay." He leaned slightly and grabbed her hand, threading their fingers together. "Do not lose me, I am getting very drunk."

She squeezed his hand and grinned. "I won't."

She didn't let go of his hand until they found a group of people standing around the bottom of the stairs, crowded around Luffy and Trafrownyface Law, who were both giving each other the most obstinate looks Usopp had ever seen on either of their faces.

They found Zoro and Chopper standing in the group, and they walked up to them.

"What's going on here?" Nami asked, standing on the tips of her toes, trying to see over everyone.

"Drinking contest," Zoro said, explaining it in his usual vivid detail.

"Okay?" Nami looked like she was about to hit Zoro.

"The two of them," Chopper cut in, pointing at the stairs, "are about to race to the top."

Nami and Usopp looked past all the other people jammed together at the bottom of the stairwell. On every other step, there were two shot glasses filled with some kind of dark liquor. And at the top of the stairs, there were two identical glass mugs filled with deep amber beer. There were thirteen stairs, so six shots for each of them and a beer to finish.

"They're both going to throw up on each other," Usopp said, making a face at the blatantly straight-forward challenge at hand.

"Ideally," Zoro said, smiling a little as he watched both of them.

"How the hell did Luffy get Law to agree to this?" Nami asked, folding her arms.

"They have some kind of bet going on," Chopper informed her. "If Luffy wins, he gets a grotesque amount of meat from Law's work."

"What if Law wins?" Usopp wondered, eyes drifting back to Law and Luffy.

Chopper shrugged and smiled a bit. "He won't say."

Nami laughed and Usopp shook his head, and one of Law's friends—Shachi—stood on the stairs and shouted at everyone to shut up.

Surprisingly, the room obeyed.

"I think the rules are pretty obvious," Shachi started out, grinning. "First man to finish all the booze laid out before him wins."

Everyone cheered, and Nami cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted Luffy's name. Usopp joined in her cheering, and Chopper did too, and Shachi had to shut everyone up again so he could actually start the race.

"Alright! We go on 'go,' gentlemen. Not on one. This is America, we go on go."

Law and Luffy both looked at him like he was stupid as hell, and Shachi made a bit of a face—what little face could be seen from under his ugly hat—and raised his arm.

"Okay! Three!"

Both Luffy and Law looked back at the stairs.

"Two!"

Usopp could see the clear resolve on both of their faces.

"One!"

Obviously, both of them were deeply motivated to win.

"Go!"

Usopp screamed Luffy's name along with the rest of his roommates that were standing there. Even Zoro yelled for him.

They were… almost evenly matched. But Law was, shit, downing his shots like they were water, and Luffy was coughing a bit, but they both made it to the top of the stairs at nearly the same time. Luffy had both his hands around his glass mug, and Law gripped his with one tattooed hand, the other clenched in a fist, both of their eyes squeezed shut as they craned their necks back together and chugged their thick beers.

Law won by maybe two or three gulps.

All the people around Usopp were shouting, cheering, jumping up and down, and Usopp was yelling too, just to be making noise along with everyone else.

Both Luffy and Law made faces like they were concentrating really hard on not throwing up, and Usopp wanted to barf just having witnessed how much they drank in the span of maybe a minute, and then Luffy suddenly turned towards Law.

"You cheated!"

Usopp could hear him well enough, now that the crowd was dispersing to other areas of the house, with the show being over.

Luffy made a move like he was about to shove Law down the stairs, but Law caught his wrists in place, and for the first time in Usopp's life, he saw Law smile.

Luffy wrinkled his nose and squinted at Law. "We're doing that again, and this time, you'll—"

Usopp could also hear Law, and maybe it was also the first time he'd ever heard Law raise his voice above his weird creepster smooth-jazz-radio-DJ volume level of speaking.

"Like hell, you pathetic loser."

Luffy glared up at him. "We're going to re-do it! You just won because you're way taller! So you have an advantage!"

"How—"

"Also! I'm going to throw up, where's the bathroom!"

"We're upstairs. You know where the bathrooms are."

"Oh yeah!"

And with that, Luffy spun on his heel and trotted off down the hallway, and Usopp laughed at the whole thing until Nami started pulling him away.

They were off on their own again, but there was purpose behind their movements, and it didn't take Nami very long before she found two beers for them to work on. Shitty beers. In a can. But free, so whatever.

"Usopp, it's almost time, shit," Nami said, looking at her phone. "We need to find everyone!"

Nami and Usopp ran back upstairs, taking them two at a time, and they found most of the people at that party crammed into the biggest room on the main level. They could spot everyone—Chopper and Zoro with full shot glasses in their hands, and Sanji was across the room, laughing with someone Usopp didn't recognize, and Luffy was back in action, seemingly totally recovered.

"Ten!"

Nami whipped around and turned to Usopp.

"It's starting!"

She yelled this at Usopp as everyone else in the room shouted, "Nine!"

The year was suddenly ending.

"Eight!"

"This was maybe the best year of my life, starting in August," Usopp blurted suddenly, like he was being rushed.

"Seven!"

Nami bent over hurriedly and set her beer on the ground, and she popped back up just as quickly, and she put both her hands on Usopp's cheeks and grinned. He smiled back at her, because that was all he could ever do when she made that face, and she leaned forward and kissed him. He dropped his can of beer on the ground, and he heard the aluminum clatter against the hardwood.

"Four!"

Shit, Usopp lost a few seconds there.

"Three!"

He'd never really felt so.. god, so incredibly happy. Never in his life.

"Happy New Year, Usopp!" Nami yelled at him as she pulled away, her hands sliding down his neck before she withdrew them entirely, she was smiling so hard, and he reached forward and wrapped his arms around her, folding them over her shoulders, hugging her tight to his chest.

"Two!"

"Happy New Year, Nami!" he shouted back in her ear, just as everyone started jumping up and down and toasting their drinks together and hugging and kissing each other. He could feel her arms squeezing tight around his back, and he couldn't wipe the grin off his face if he wanted to.

"One!"


Half an hour until midnight and it already felt like Zoro had been there for decades.

Zoro hadn't wanted to go to the goddamn New Year's Eve party. What he'd wanted to do was something more along the lines of drinking beer alone in his room, because that was really all he felt like doing for the past week or so. Lots and lots of beer. And sometimes whiskey. And work. And that was it, that was all he wanted to focus on.

"I actually have a class with Nami and Sanji this coming semester!" Chopper was telling him in his excited I-was-drunk-within-twenty-minutes-of-getting-here voice.

"Cool."

Zoro didn't really care. He was trying to be nice, but god, he didn't care. And he didn't want to think about the classes he signed up for next semester. Which started really fucking soon. Fuck.

Well, at least fencing would be starting up again, too. The one thing still going well for him. Jeez.

"Yeah, Sanji and Nami both had a history elective they needed to take, so they asked me if I wanted to sign up with them! I can't imagine being in a class with them. The class is weird, too, I think?"

"Is it?" Zoro was trying to act like he was engaged, really. He sipped his beer and stood with Chopper, surrounded by lots and lots of people at Law's frat. He should probably start drinking more. Judging Usopp and Nami's composure, Zoro had a feeling they were going to be doing a fraternity sleepover that night.

"Yeah, it sounds pretty interesting, actually! Non-Western Civilizations, I think? I don't know, Sanji insisted we sign up for that one."

"Oh yeah? Why was that?"

Why the fuck did Zoro even ask, was a better question.

Chopper giggled a bit to himself—he was the only giggler at the Sunny, really, but it was grossly fitting—and he said to Zoro, "Oh, Sanji said the professor is smoking hot."

Right. Why the fuck did Zoro even ask.

Chopper did do a pretty spot-on impression of Sanji's accent, though, and Zoro cracked a smile despite himself.

"I'm going to go find us a couple shots to do at midnight," Zoro said, starting to turn away from Chopper.

"Wait, no, I really don't—"

"It's New Year's Eve, you're obligated," Zoro cut him off.

Chopper made a face at him.

"Get over it and go find Luffy. He's in this room somewhere." Zoro looked around for Luffy because he knew he'd just seen him not long ago, returning from successfully barfing the results of his race against Law.

"Fine." Heh. Poor Chopper. He hardly fought it anymore.

Zoro slipped away to go find liquor because at this point in the night, and at this point in his life, also, he really couldn't drink too much booze. And also because he wanted to get away from Chopper for a minute. Just… just for a minute. Just to breathe. He didn't really give a fuck about New Year's midnight traditions. He wasn't even sure if taking a shot at midnight even was a tradition, but it sounded legit in his head.

Stupid fucking Sanji.

God, what the fuck, he hadn't even been thinking about anything having to do with Sanji, and yet his goddamn brain just defaulted back to him. It was a fucking nightmare.

He couldn't stop thinking about Sanji. It was frustrating. Well. It was goddamn infuriating, but Zoro was trying to keep his cool about it.

He probably shouldn't have gotten so emotional at Sanji. While he certainly didn't regret a word he'd said to that dumb prick that night, Zoro sort of wished he wouldn't have seemed so upset. That was like… showing he cared more than he really did.

He definitely didn't care very much. Not about Sanji or about what'd happened. It was dumb. But he didn't care.

Zoro scanned various countertops for unattended bottles of liquor to borrow. He should've brought his own bottle or two, but fuck, he hadn't planned on going to this stupid party. But Nami, dammit, had done that thing she did, and she'd called him out like she was goddamn good at doing, and…

God damn it. He really did care. He fucking cared.

He didn't care about Sanji, no, not fucking anymore, at least—but he cared that Sanji had played him so hard. He cared that Sanji didn't care. Fuck, he cared that he literally hadn't even seen Sanji since that dumb Christmas party, up until Zoro had walked into the Sunny a little over twenty-four hours ago and saw him sitting on the couch between Nami and Usopp. And he'd only glanced at him. Just for a second. It was almost weird, actually seeing him there. Looking like he'd been run over by a bus.

That night in the bathroom of the frat castle Christmas party, Zoro had said some shitty things to Sanji, because they were fucking true. And then Sanji had just upped and disappeared for days. And Zoro knew he could only be so many places other than work. And that was fucked up.

Sex wasn't as meaningless to Zoro as it was to Sanji, and that, really, was the foundation for the whole fucking shitty situation.

Zoro found a few shot glasses sitting by themselves and grabbed two of them.

If Zoro was going to be absolutely honest with himself, then maybe, yeah, in another world, things could've been different. If Sanji wasn't such a shitty fucking person that acted like a super decent human being one minute and treated him like trash the next, and if he didn't try to fuck half the planet for shits and giggles… then maybe Zoro wouldn't have reacted exactly how he did in that stupid goddamn bathroom.

And that was admitting a lot, even to himself.

But. God damn it, Sanji could be such an okay person. So what the fuck, was all that a lie? Was all of his bullshit ultimately backed with selfish intentions?

Zoro wouldn't fucking doubt it. Sanji was a fucking bitter asshole when he wanted to be. And it was hard to fake that shit.

Whatever.

Zoro finally found a bottle of rum and just grabbed the whole thing, and he kept wandering around, looking for Chopper.

Sanji had done a great job of making himself scarce for the nearly the entire duration of the party thus far, which was totally fine by Zoro.

A little weird, though. Weird that Sanji wasn't just retaliating with malice like Zoro would expect from someone as shitty as him.

Maybe he was avoiding Zoro outright.

Either way, it didn't matter.

Zoro weaved his way through people for a couple minutes until he found Chopper. It always took a minute to find that kid. He was kind of short.

"Chopper!" Zoro shouted, getting his attention, and he shoved one of the shot glasses into his hand.

"Damn it, Zoro," Chopper groaned, but he held his glass out either way, and Zoro filled it to the brim with the rum he'd found.

"Just take it, nerd, Happy New Year," Zoro huffed, filling his own shot glass.

He glanced around the room as everyone started doing the whole countdown-to-the-New-Year thing.

Usopp and Nami looked happy. And Luffy was grabbing Law by the front of his shirt. Chopper was eyeing his shot with some level of dread.

And then Zoro saw Sanji.

He hadn't been looking for him, really, but when he saw him on the other side of the room—Sanji was looking straight at him, and Zoro's stomach kind of dropped.

Sanji didn't look angry or anything. He had some kind of expression on his face, but hell if Zoro could read it.

Fucking people around him screaming how many seconds left in the year.

"Six!"

God, it was the first time Sanji had even so much as looked at Zoro since that night, he realized. He was standing with a group of people Zoro didn't recognize at all.

One of them nudged Sanji's shoulder, and his face went back to neutral, back to controlled, back to fake, and he looked across the room at Zoro for just a second longer before turning away from him.

"Five!"

Sanji slapped that dumbass smile back on his face and grabbed whoever he was standing next to by the arm, grinning at him.

"Four!"

He was standing next to some guy, some guy who was noticeably taller with red hair, and Zoro looked back down at his shot glass.

"Three!"

Fucking… idiot.

"Two!"

Zoro craned his neck back and downed his shot in one hard swallow.

"One!"


a/n: agh and thus ends part one of mnm~*~*~ and im p sure we broke 100k words or so, so lemme just say wow thank you for reading this far, it means the world to us, and your support is like the best thing that exists! thank you so so so so much forever !