It was December 21, the winter solstice and a gloomy Sunday morning. Sanji was in that tiny town near home getting groceries. As he walked down the sidewalk he could hear the church bells ringing or maybe they were just recordings of church bells, he wasn't really sure. Maintaining a huge church bell sounded difficult, or maybe it was easy. Who knew?

This little town had about seven Churches within a few blocks. There was actually a place were you could see four churches around the corner from one another. Churches made Sanji very uncomfortable, they were just sort of creepy. People standing up and badly singing songs to the tune of a brilliant organ or piano player. Fuck guitars, he could listen to piano music all day. Piano players were much more interesting to watch too. He wondered briefly about which instrument was harder to play. The piano seemed like it would be harder, the organ was defiantly hardiest.

Such lovely music to such outdated lyrics. He remembered as a child being forced to going to a church once, not by Zeff but by some friend of his he scarcely remembered. While he was stuck there he flipped through the song book and looked at the dates of when the songs were written, some of them were over 400 years old. You would think they could make something better, but then again a lot of the congregation was filled with people who looked about 400 years old.

Some churches were okay, like the ones that were peaceful and accepting but then there were the doosies. Like the big church on the hill. Tons of people went there to listen to some prick go on and on about politics, and god's wrath, and a lot of conservative ideals. It was such a hit that they played the sermons over the radio on Sundays. It was one of those places were a normal person would walk in and be like "what the fuck?", the sort of place that goes "yeah, women should probably just never leave the kitchen", and the sort of place that bread unhappiness. Those were the places Sanji couldn't stand.

They brainwashed small children with developing brains using their hypnotic methods, like 'close your eyes and pray with me' it sounded suspiciously like 'close your eyes and listen only to the sound of my voice'. Yeah, churches were creepy.

What kind of place teaches people to hate other people. Well, that doesn't apply to every church, just the douchey ones, and the government could fall under that category as well. If you take that book written by a bunch of dirty, uneducated men living in the desert as the literal truth it can lead to some prettyradical ideas. Sexism, slavery, creationism, and homophobia. All terrible things. Sanji felt conflicted about calling creationism a terrible thing but it was sort of mind blowing that people believed it. Creationist made his head hurt and there was absolutely no way of swaying their belief. Evolution is a wonderful thing, it may be a theory but so is the theory of gravity.

Slavery was just totally evil, nothing more to be said about it. The bible was used to justify slavery which is pretty fucked up and horrible.

Sexism was another terrible thing. Sanji had been called sexist a few times but he stood by his ideas that he did not see females as beneath him, he just believed it was his purpose to make their life was carefree as possible. The idea that women had to stay home, had to look after the kids, had to make themselves pretty, had to keep quiet about their opinion, that they weren't smart enough... Yada yada yada... Was not an idea he found appealing, women should defiantly not be repressed.

And then the homophobia, so much homophobia. Sanji didn't really get how it was supposed to be a sin. Apparently god just said it was bad and didn't give any reasoning, which was kind of bullshit. What the fuck? It was ingrained into so many people it was sickening. In the last twenty years there had been a major series of steps in the right direction but it was still pretty shitty sometimes.

This sort homophobia could lead to some serious mental issues as well. If a person grows up in a homophobic environment but discover that they are gay it could be pretty stressful. It's not like it's a choice. Sanji knew that for a fact. When he was eighteen he met Zoro and they had a rough start. Lots of denial at first, then the frustration and panic, which lead to avoidance and more violent outbursts than usual, and then there was begrudging acceptance.

Luffy was actually the one to introduce them. At the time Sanji was in collage studying business and culinary arts and Zoro in the police academy. Luffy met Zoro when he was on his way to visit Nami and the marimo was lost. He of course would not admit he was lost and refused to ask for help, he just let Luffy drag him around. The straw hat wearing boy liked him so it was inevitable that he should meet Sanji.

They met outside a convenience store where Luffy had gone in to buy who knows what kind of shitty off brand snack. Not a very romantic meeting, but then they never really were an overly romantic couple. Sanji was a bit of a romantic but the marimo had the emotional range of a rock so he just had to suck it up sometimes.

Anyway, they started a fight right there in the parking lot and the store cashier threatened to call the police. Luffy found all of this absolutely hilarious so he brought the two together as often as he could. So they started hanging out with friends which somehow lead to them hanging out together by themselves. That is when things started to get into uncomfortable territory.

Sanji wasn't sure quite how it happened for Zoro but he found himself thinking about the idiot more than was necessary, every time he caught himself he would squish down any emotions involved. However, it didn't really help. There would be these weird intense moments of eye contact that made him forget what he was thinking about and sent his mind in a downward spiral toward something... Weird.

One night the two of them were sitting on a curb because they were waiting for Luffy so they could go see some stupid movie when there was another moment of intense eye contact and gravity seemed to malfunction, pulling them together. That is when Sanji went into full fledged denial mode, running away and avoiding all topics relating to green haired morons.

After a few weeks of succeeding in his task Zoro stalked him down and tried to hound him into confrontation, a task which left him with a foot shaped bruise on his chest. Despite the hostility he would show up at least once a week to try to get the blond to talk to him.

Things came to their tipping point when Sanji had spent about a month and a half ignoring him. Sanji was so frustrated he just attacked the moron with as much force as he could muster. Sometime during the fight Zoro kissed him and Sanji's brain, without his consent, decided fuck it, denial is for pathetic losers. From that moment on they were a thing. Sanji was never quite sure what to call them. Lovers sounded gross, boyfriends sounded too childish, partners was weird, significant others sounded too formal, they were just sort of "a thing" to him. Two people who just happened to be in love with each other. Once the denial and confusion was out of the was they were quite happy in their weird little way.

Sanji was lucky enough to have friends and family who didn't give a shit about who he was with, male or female. He could hardly imagine what it would be like to have parents or friends who were so astoundingly homophobic that he should have to hide this from them. It did not sound healthy at all. Who care who anyone else has sex with, honestly? There were people out there who married someone straight in order to hide who they are, that is just fucked up and it must be incredibly lonely. It seems like something that should not be happening in the modern world. And don't even start on those fucking pray away the gay people. They can all go fuck themselves.

Sanji sighed, religion was weird and he didn't get why people listened to some two thousand year old book. People did insanely stupid shit two hundred years ago, let alone two thousand. It was absurd to believe that these people somehow knew best. The more he thought about it the less sense it made. Ugh.. Things would be so much easier if America wasn't such a religious country. For fuck sake 42 percent of Americans don't believe in evolution, then another 31 percent believe a god guided evolution to the way it is today. Fucking insane, and this wasn't some fucking shitty survey taken by some shady company, it was a fucking gallop poll. Statistics could be seriously depressing sometimes.

Fuck the universe, he had to stop thinking about this before his head exploded.

XxxX

A/N: Off on a tangent again : ) my Christmas decorations are finally up because I'm calibrating Christmas today. My Christmas schedule is kind of fucked up this year.

Thanks.