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Chapter 49

Almost (Part 2)

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"You're back early," Nami said as a greeting, and she sounded surprised. She wasn't expecting him there, just as Usopp hadn't been expecting him to come back at all that night. The thought should have set alarms in his head, but he put it at the back of his mind.

Zoro scowled at her. Her eyebrows shot up.

"Are you tipsy?"

"Nah."

"Convincing. That's Terevera's star drink, isn't it?" Nami sat down in front of him and poured herself some water, casual as ever but clearly trying to read him, which meant she must have realized that something was amiss. "What's the occasion?"

"None of your business. What are you doing here?"

He thought he sounded steady. He hoped he was right.

Nami raised her hand in the air, glass of water in it, as if Zoro was an idiot for not figuring it out himself. "I was thirsty. What about you?"

Zoro shrugged, casual, calculated. "I was thirsty too."

"Yes, right. When you're thirsty you drink pretty much anything in the pantry except for this drink," Nami countered, unimpressed and pointing at Zoro's nearly empty glass. "This, you drink to get drunk. What happened?"

"Again," Zoro growled, fixing her with a glare. "None of your damn business."

"Except that you look like you are about to cry and I'm a nakama who cares enough to make it her business."

Blunt. No traces of her wanting to rile him up or being the witch Zoro was convinced she was, just Nami caring enough to make it her business indeed. It hit Zoro like a slap. He'd had enough with the nakama's duties topic tonight, he didn't need any more of that.

"I don't look like I'm about to cry," he snapped, too rough and too harsh to be talking to someone who wasn't at fault at all.

Nami had the nerve to roll her eyes. "Okay, true, let's rephrase this, you don't actually look like you're about to cry. You're too stubborn to let tears even think of forming in your eyes, I'll give you that," she placated, and she was also admitting another truth, because there truly was no shine to Zoro's eye and there was no knot in his throat that made him feel he would cry, there were none of those signs and Zoro didn't feel like crying; it wasn't even a matter of pride, but a matter of fact. Zoro was about to place his attention elsewhere when Nami completed her thought, and her tone came out as soft. "But you look like you want to."

Rage. He couldn't possibly be looking this fucking pathetic and weak, that wasn't him.

"I don't want to cry," and his tone came out as deadly, both for her and for himself, a reminder that crying wasn't an option no matter how much Nami thought he may want or need it. There were limits to how weak he could allow himself to become, and crying because he was scared and more lost than he'd been in his life wasn't one of his allowances.

Nami didn't even flinch. She simply held her hands in the air, strangely accommodating to every one of Zoro's outbursts.

"I'm just saying, you look like you could use a shoulder to lean on or someone to listen to you," she insisted anyway, because she may be acting tactful out of nowhere (that Zoro could think of), but she was also stubborn and if she thought she had a point to make she'd become a pain in the ass for Zoro to suffer want it or not.

Zoro groaned. He didn't need Nami's kindness either. He didn't need kindness right now, not from Sanji, not from Nami, not from anyone, period. What he needed was for someone to punch him in the face and awaken his missing brain cells so that he'd stop being the biggest idiot he'd ever had the disgrace to deal with.

"I don't need any of that."

He should be standing up and leaving, but he was a bit more than tipsy, dangerously close to drunk, which he still wasn't used to handling, and he had nowhere else to go unless he wanted to lock himself in a room full of snoring men and being unable to sleep or go back to getting lost in the city. Going back to Sanji was sure as hell not an option.

Nami sighed and went down another path. Zoro wished she hadn't.

"Where's Sanji?"

Fucking hell.

He stomped his desperation away with a bout of anger.

"Why the fuck does everyone always assume we come in a goddamn pack?!"

Nami recoiled the moment Zoro's fist hit the countertop, but the surprise painted on her face shifted to understanding faster than lightning and Zoro cursed himself to hell and back for letting her get a read on him that fast and easily.

"Did you two fight?"

Zoro was seeing red. Nami wasn't asking out of the need to feed her daily gossip dose, he knew that, and what he'd heard in her tone was seriousness and worry, but he'd lost his patience and his composure the moment that I love you had left his mouth, and he was everything but stable regarding any topic that concerned Sanji.

"Not everything I do is about him, can you drop that?!"

He sounded scary and he probably looked terrifying as well. Anyone else would've already retreated to safety if only to avoid provoking him further, but Nami had dealt with enough of his shit to know that as much as he yelled at her he wouldn't actually make her pay for whatever was wrong with him, so she didn't budge.

"So you did fight," she concluded, tone even.

Zoro dropped his head on the countertop with a rattling thump and a frustrated groan, knowing a lost battle when he saw one, everything in him deflating into resignation and a valiant attempt to control his murderous urges.

"No, we didn't. We didn't fight," he countered once he thought he had a chance to sound steady, although he couldn't keep the weariness from seeping into his voice.

No, they hadn't fought. Nothing further from that.

"Okay," Nami conceded, sounding like she believed him. "Where is he, though? Last time I saw you tonight you were with him in that bar."

"He's staying in town for the night," Zoro droned. He wanted this conversation to be over, so he might as well follow her lead for a while until she got bored and dropped it. Resisting would only make this lengthier.

Silence. Zoro knew she had assumed something wrong out of what he had said by the time he lifted his head and saw her looking at him with some sort of pity and a hesitation that kept her from speaking whatever was in her mind. It made dread fill him like a bad knee-jerk reflex.

"What's that face for?"

"Are you okay?"

His stomach twisted the moment the question hit too close to home and he found out that his most honest answer was that he wasn't. He wasn't okay at all.

"Why'd you ask?" he tried to avert it.

"… is he staying with someone?"

Zoro's eye widened as he realized why Nami was asking and what exactly Nami had assumed had happened. That Sanji had stayed in town and Zoro was here because Sanji had found someone else to spend the night with, and that, in Nami's books, amounted to a solid reason for Zoro not being okay and drinking alone at shit o'clock at night to drown his dejection. Meaning, and here's the worst part, that she already knew or at least suspected that Zoro felt something for Sanji, their physical relationship (which he knew for a fact she knew about for a fact) aside.

Meaning that, although she got the absolute wrong picture about what had actually happened that night, Nami had him figured out.

Oh God.

Something like defeat washed over him. It wasn't even a flash of a fright anymore. He would've jumped at the chance to defend himself and erase any kind of assumptions Nami had made about his feelings, but he slowly came to terms with the fact that it would be useless because there was nothing but truth behind her suspicions and Zoro was already goddamn tired of keeping it in for no one but his ugly traitorous brain to see.

He was exhausted, that's what he was. Of putting deadlines to everything he did with Sanji because he was selfish and scared and of not meeting them precisely because he was both selfish and scared. Of keeping major truths in when his general nature had always been to let them out, of feeling weak when he'd always fought to be the strongest, of fighting so damn hard to keep himself composed when his mind was the most torn apart in two directions than it had ever been, leaving him in that shitty limbo that he was starting to realize was more of a curse than a breather. Of loving a man he wouldn't allow himself to love because things were more complicated than that, or perhaps because he couldn't help but make them complicated, but it's not like that made much of a difference once 'complicated' was thrown into the equation.

He was exhausted. And he was drunk.

So he allowed himself an actual breather and said fuck it to everything that kept his mouth shut when someone tried to offer help. He'd allow himself that much, he could justify it with him being drunk and confused, then he'd compose himself and not allow another crack to his cultivated persona until this was all over. Then he'd pick up the pieces and see what he could do with them, but that would come later.

He vaguely wondered if this hellish keep-the-mask-in-place game he'd been playing lately was anything like what Sanji had been feeling like back in The Rock.

"He's not with anyone else," he said as he straightened up for the sake of at least not looking pathetic. "I just came back earlier." And with that he might as well have admitted to everything Nami had been assuming Sanji and him had been up to, both his tone and the phrasing forming a confession for her to decipher or pretend she hadn't understood. "And stop sounding concerned, you're giving me the creeps."

There. That had sounded a bit more like him, he could be proud.

Nami stared at him with her glass half-way to her lips and her eyes wide in surprise. If she'd been expecting any kind of actual conversation going on between them, she had definitely not seen the part were Zoro got rid of all of his bullshit and spoke some honesty coming. It took a few seconds for her to visibly concentrate and put the glass down, careful, like she feared harsh movements would make Zoro go back to spouting denial left and right.

"…okay," she murmured, and that was her way to tell him she took his words for the confession they were. There was no pretend-games to play anymore, and that shocked the both of them enough to keep them silent for a while, Nami not asking anything and Zoro keeping to himself while he ordered his thoughts and wondered if it was worth it. If the advice of someone that wasn't his own confused brain's was worth him opening up the way he was about to do.

It didn't take that long for him to acknowledge that keeping this issue between his brain and himself had brought him nowhere he wanted to be standing; it had only made things worse because he couldn't make his own damn mind and there wasn't an ounce of objectiveness left in him to assess the shitty situation he was in anymore. And he felt stuck, he felt thoroughly stuck and like he was about to fuck up no matter what he did, so perhaps he did need a change of strategy. Some objectiveness being thrown his way, someone who helped him talk through the confusion swimming in his head and perhaps make some sense of it for Zoro to be able to see the whole picture and engage some decent decision-making.

Never in his life would he have imagined that Nami, out of all people, would be the one he'd finally cave to for something like this, but he had never pictured himself accepting the need of external help either, so there wasn't much he could say about that other than accept the hand being tended to him or not.

And he was so tired that he accepted it.

It took him a while to form the words and even longer to kick them out of his mouth in some sort of order, the fact of sharing his feelings and thoughts and emotions feeling like the biggest effort he'd made in his life, but he told himself to stop being a coward and went for it.

"What do people do with feelings?"

He didn't mean to sound like a five-year-old asking something he was still too young to understand, which only added to his mortification, but letting that question out made him feel bare and vulnerable as well, so he took the embarrassment in stride and looked elsewhere, accepting that he wouldn't be liking this whole process but that he might as well give it a shot given how everything else had worked disastrously.

Nami stilled in her seat, more than a bit surprised by the fact that Zoro hadn't beaten around the bush and had gone straight to the difficult questions that left him more open and readable that she'd ever expected Zoro to let himself be. Difficult questions that had difficult answers she didn't know how to give.

At the very least, though, everything was on the table now. The question had been general, but it had been the loudest admission Zoro had ever made in his entire life and Nami took it for what it was.

And it was grave enough that she took her time to think it through, choosing her words carefully.

"That depends. Romantic feelings?"

Zoro glanced at her and looked away again, shrugging. He was mortified. It was no secret that he'd rather be anywhere else right now, but he was making an effort and Nami would have found it adorable if it wasn't because it was Zoro and the situation at hand was serious (it had to be; Zoro wouldn't be bringing this up with so little nudges if he wasn't, at the very least, desperate).

She sighed, downed her water and poured herself a glass of Terevera's star drink. If they were going to have this personal conversation she'd need the alcohol. Zoro silently pushed his own glass towards her, agreeing without words and looking in desperate need of that drink's help to go through this.

God, if someone had told her a year ago that she'd be playing Zoro's personal love counselor she would've laughed at their face.

Yet here they were.

Well, this was awkward.

She looked at the ceiling in search for inspiration while Zoro busied himself gulping down the golden liquid that was supposed to make this a bit more bearable. Nami followed suit and stared hard at Zoro.

"Okay," she sighed. She tried to sound categoric when she spoke. "We're having this conversation, right? We're both acting like adults and I'm assuming you won't try to kill me when morning comes and it gets to your head that I was the one manipulating you into doing this."

Zoro glared at her, and Nami couldn't tell who felt more out of their depth out of the two.

"Look," Zoro spat, trying to control his temper but failing miserably. Being drunk obliterated the control he had on his emotions, that was a fact Nami could consider confirmed, so she prayed for patience and remained poised as Zoro continued to talk with that awful scowl directed her way like everything was her fault. "I want this to be over as fast as possible, so let's have this goddamn conversation already and then pretend it never happened, yes?"

Nami glowered back at him and followed his lead when he took another long gulp out of his drink, slamming their glasses down right after. Okay. They were doing this like the two grown-ass adults they were. Nami sure as hell hadn't signed up for this but heaven knows Zoro needed her right now and she'd been poking her nose too much in his and Sanji's issues for her to step back now.

"What do people do with feelings?" she repeated out loud, falling back into seriousness and mulling it over.

Zoro physically flinched as soon as he heard his own question repeated out loud. Nami tried not to roll her eyes at how dramatic he made this all seem. She'd keep it simple and stick to the basics, she decided. It wasn't a secret that Zoro's brain must have already been making this way more difficult than it needed to be.

"Okay, this is not going to sound helpful," she warned him. "But that depends a lot on the person."

"Yeah, no, that's not helpful," he groaned.

Nami made it a point to ignore his negative comments. "It depends on what reasons people have to set them aside or cherish them, what weights the most. But, a lot of times people act on them."

Zoro stared at her. He looked pissed off. At her, at his life, at pretty much everything around him, but he was listening. "And by act on them you mean…"

Nami shrugged. "Confessing or dropping hints here and there to be confessed to depending on how you want to go about it, I guess. Test the waters, see if it can work or not."

Zoro made a face like he'd just licked the sole of his shoe, suddenly defensive. "No."

Nami deadpanned. "No, what?"

The swordsman shook his head several times and put some distance between him and the countertop, looking like he wanted to get up and leave. He wanted to. It was a reasonable answer, the one Nami had given him, but it wasn't for him. Confessing wasn't an option, he'd already decided that. His only option was walking away from it, and his only doubts laid on how to do that in a way that hurt the least possible both for him and for Sanji's pride.

Nami tried to read around his demeanor to try to discern what on Earth was wrong. She knew Zoro was in denial, but damn, if he was going to be acting like this she might as well be talking to a wall.

"Zoro," she called him. Luckily, Zoro wasn't drunk enough or in enough denial as to not pay attention to her once she demanded it. She made sure he was looking at her before she spoke again, careful as she could get to make sure that the opening Zoro had allowed her stayed open. "You asked me a general question and I gave you a general answer. People act on their feelings because they tend to want to be happy. There's also people who don't do anything about it or push them away, but then again I don't know what on Earth makes them not want to pursue it to start with. And, if there's reasons, they are important enough to name and weight them, else we are running blind here."

Zoro stared at her and read between the lines. Let's stop pretending we are talking about a hypothetical case because we both know we are talking about you, she was saying. Give me a background I can understand or I can't help you, she was telling him. And he understood her, and he felt weak again because there was only so much baring himself he could normalize before he felt small and vulnerable and not where he wanted to be.

He buried his face in his hands.

"Acting on them doesn't work for me," he told her, throwing care and half-veiled truths through the window. They were talking about him, so he better start addressing the issue properly. It came out as a groan, but it was feeble. "I'm not going to pursue this, that's what I'm saying."

Fuck. That's the first time he'd said it out loud. And it was like ripping a thousand band aids from his skin at once, just that it kept stinging afterwards and it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Why?" asked Nami, blunt and to the point.

He should have known Nami wasn't going to coddle him or spare him the hard questions he'd dismissed too fast in the privacy of his head so that they wouldn't tempt him to do anything stupid.

"I asked the wrong question," Zoro chewed out, scrambling to dodge the answer Nami was looking for before it got too personal. The way he'd asked it invited people to think he was open to the possibility of embracing his feelings, which he'd never been, not for a second. And the fact that Nami had brought that possibility up and was currently asking him why the hell not made him want to throw up, because that's not a question he had addressed. The question he'd been giving answers to on his own had been why do I need to stop this, and there's a difference between that and why shouldn't I pursue this. "What I meant to ask is if there's a way to obliterate feelings," he amended, and it was bitter and angry and everything he couldn't be towards anyone but himself. "How can I make them go away?"

And now this was all about him, no generalized questions that tried to cover up his pride despite it being translucently clear who they were talking about. And that's how Nami knew they had reached the very roots of the problem and the source of Zoro's pain. It was strange, seeing him like this. This lost and anxious and desperate to get out of a situation he probably didn't know how he got into. It made some sort of sisterly sympathy awake in her, one that would be enough for her to cut him some slack and pamper him through this… if only she hadn't been too busy not buying Zoro's bullshit for a second. Zoro was at a very, very low point regarding his emotional stability and Nami was worried about him, sure, but she was worried and cared enough that she wasn't going to allow pity to keep her from pushing where he needed to be pushed. Zoro was a grown adult and he could deal with Nami not letting him duck around the important issues here.

"Okay, you have reformulated your question. I'm not reformulating mine. Why do you want them to be gone? Why aren't you pursuing this?"

Zoro cringed, looking like he was a breath away from either yelling bloody murder at her for pressing in that direction or fleeing the galley altogether. He didn't yell, and he didn't flee the galley. He just looked smaller, as big and bulky as he was, while trying to make sense and build an argument that was strong enough to sound convincing when said out loud.

He sagged in his seat, eye fixed on her shoulder. Nami waited.

"Because he'll make me weak."

He. There was definitely not any masking reality anymore. Zoro had opened Pandora's box and all of the truths were out there for Nami to see. Each and every one of them. The existence of a relationship between them. The existence of his feelings for Sanji. The fact that it was Sanji he had feelings for and not some anonymous someone they'd both pretend they didn't know the name of.

And with that box open, words flooded the space between them much more easily, not filtered or thought through. Nami was getting what Zoro himself got, ugly truths and reasons that sounded better in the privacy of his head than out loud.

"Because feelings are not for me, Nami, I can't deal well with them and they'll only slow me down. They're a burden I can't afford. And because I don't want to reduce him to a goddamn weakness of mine."

Silence.

"They need to be gone," Zoro insisted, and he sounded every bit as desperate as he was feeling to get that message across, to make it mean something that would convince him to step back once and for all.

When Nami didn't answer he looked up at her, and she looked honest-to-God sad. And Zoro had to look elsewhere because he couldn't take staring at her expression when he himself had been trying to fight raw sadness away with anger and frustration and confusion and everything else that wasn't the sadness he knew came with putting Sanji aside.

A few moments passed until Nami's expression evened and she went back to being categoric.

"We're talking about Sanji, right?"

His eye snapped back at her, feeling more hurt at the name being thrown into the conversation than he was angry or outraged. She hadn't needed to ask. They both knew who this was about. But his name came like a punch in the face and Zoro realized Nami had probably intended that question to be exactly that. A punch in the face. A wake up call, perhaps.

He was already trying to backpedal, but Nami pushed forward, determined.

"Zoro, answer me. We're talking about Sanji, right?"

Zoro tried to rip the hurt away from his expression, filling it instead with a very pissed off vibe as he grumbled and looked elsewhere, letting mortification dawn on him and show because any of that was better than the pain that came with admitting it out loud.

"You know damn well who we're talking about," he spat, glaring a thousand daggers at her see if she stopped being an asshole. Just that they both knew she was being an asshole for his own good, but Zoro was ready to ignore that in favour of feeding his anger and let it replace the hint of sadness that had threatened to invade him for a moment.

"Tell me yourself," Nami replied, stubborn.

He should leave. He should send this intervention to hell and walk away while he still could. At the back of his mind he was starting to be grateful it was Nami and not Robin trying to dissect his mind and his heart, because if this was a nightmare, involving Robin would have been hell.

He should run out of –

"Yes, fuck, yes, it's Sanji. Are you happy now?! Did you need to be an asshole about it?!" he yelled, throwing his hands in the air and drilling a hole in Nami's forehead with his worst glare.

Instead of looking like she felt sorry, Nami suddenly looked like she was about to make Zoro feel sorry, and, shit, this was all so unfair. Zoro wasn't equipped to deal with any of this bullshit, and he should have known better than to throw himself in this mess, but it was too late because Nami was already talking over his outrage.

"Great. Now we're speaking. We're talking about Sanji," she concluded. Zoro didn't like the tone. "Now then, let's consider your reasons. Did I hear you say that you didn't want these feelings because they would turn Sanji into a weakness?"

Ah, fuck. This was going downhill.

"Look-"

"Sanji?" Nami repeated, both eyebrows raised as if to express the what the fuck part of it all.

"Don't patronize me," he warned with a pointed finger at her.

"It's funny, because you say that as if Sanji isn't someone who can protect himself better than any of us can, or as if he would allow himself to be used as anyone's weakness to start with. Do you hear yourself?"

And she had a point. Of course she had a point, of course she made way more sense than Zoro did, but –

"Sanji doesn't need you to –"

"I don't want to lose him, alright!"

Ah, great. There went his composure. His hands were trembling on the countertop, which they had hit with too much force. Nami stared back at him, taken aback by his outburst and the honesty behind it.

Zoro was seething. Not because he was angry with Nami, because she wasn't saying anything but the truth and that's the exact same thing he would have said if someone had made that comment about Sanji, but because the same war that had been playing out in his brain was now being voiced out loud and everything became more visceral with the freedom of letting it out in the open, and it was hell for him to have to hear it all over again. He hated how he had to scramble with words to make them make sense to someone else who wasn't himself, and he hated the fact that one part of his discarded arguments were being played out by someone who wouldn't buy half the bullshit Zoro fed himself to make his point, which suddenly made everything more difficult than it had ever been in his head.

"When I say he'll become a weakness I mean I will make him a weakness to myself," he growled, hands balling into fists to keep his train of thought stable enough to make sense. "I know he wouldn't let it happen, but this is not on him, this is something I'll do to myself. I…"

He looked around the galley, trying to focus. Nami was listening, half shocked at his rawness and not trying to cut his tirade, so he kept going on, hoping he'd convince someone, anyone. With a bit of luck, Nami. With the intervention of a miracle, himself.

"I have lost someone important before," he managed to get out, and now he was looking at his open hands in search for eloquence and a comfort that weren't coming. "And I'm not enough of an ignorant idiot to not know what losing someone I lo– someone I have feelings for can do to me. I'm not good with anything remotely emotional and, no matter how indifferent people might think I am to everything, I'm not good with loss. Which is why I fight my hardest so that it doesn't happen, so that I don't lose anyone important to me. You don't understand, I – loss makes me a mess."

Nami's eyes softened, because he hadn't said it out loud but it was there in the air between them: that his nakama were important to him. That he'd fight to the death for each and every one of them and that their loss wouldn't come without scars for Zoro, no matter how he always acted like he didn't give a damn. But it's not like he needed to say that. That was something they had known all along. So Nami didn't comment on it.

His next words burned his throat as he pried them out.

"And I'm not ready to have someone in my life whose loss might as well break me."

There were hands on his faster than lightning, and Zoro hadn't been expecting how warm they were, how they made him feel a tiny bit less strangled, even when nothing was steady for him. Not with those confessions flying out of his mouth and destroying the image he'd been so careful to build for himself, showing instead his weaknesses and fears to one of the last people he'd ever thought he'd ever show them to.

He blinked up at Nami, at loss as to what to say anymore. Nami stared at him for a few seconds, made sure he wasn't crumbling or anything of the kind, and then glanced at their hands, where her fingers started drumming against Zoro's skin at the same fast pace she tried to order her own thoughts. She was kind enough to drag it out for a while so that Zoro had time to compose himself again before she started talking. She looked at him dead in the eye by the time she did.

"Long story short, you're scared."

Zoro broke eye contact. There were only so many shameful things he could bear to admit about himself out loud in one night.

"You're afraid of how vulnerable those feelings – not Sanji – can make you, so you're placing your bets on cutting this short before it gets worse, am I right?"

Zoro shook his hands free of her hold, uncomfortable but much more put together than he was a few minutes before.

"I don't want to have to deal with them. I never planned on having them, not for him, not for anyone, and the only thing they are for someone like me is a burden," he told her, way more resolute now that his chest wasn't clenching around hidden truths. "Look, you're going to want to give me a counterargument for that as well – yes, Nami, you will, I wasn't born yesterday, so stop playing innocent, you need to tune your matchmaker impulses the fuck down – but the thing is – oh, shut up," he growled when Nami tried to open her mouth again to protest.

She looked reluctant but thankfully kept her replies for later.

"The thing is I can't afford them. I have a dream and a reputation that make it a risk to be standing next to me. Just like everyone in this crew does, yes, but my dream makes me a target and requires me to stay sharp at all times. I don't have time to be dwelling on feelings I never even wanted, nor do I have the ability to stop anyone from becoming a target to get to me. And I sure as hell don't want to have to stop in my tracks because I have someone I care so much about that everything I do I do it with him in mind because I can't help that. Hell knows I've tried, but I can't. It's been a while since this mess happened and I haven't been anywhere near functional, Nami. I am a mess, and it shows, and my training regime has been going to shit along with my whole goddamn self-control; and I don't even want to think how the hell I'm supposed to operate on the battlefield if I can't fucking focus and I have half my mind put on his side of the battle because I'm hopeless enough that it keeps hitting me that I don't want to lose him even though I know our lifestyle comes with the very real possibility of losing every single one of you in the blink of an eye!"

Nami blinked at him several times, processing everything that was coming out of Zoro's mouth faster and louder and angrier the more he talked, no breaks to breathe between words. Boy, was that man frustrated, he could use a break. Shame it wasn't Nami's job to give him one.

"In other news, not only are you afraid of those feelings and what loss attached to them can do to you, but you also consider them a hindrance to do everything else you want to do in your life."

"They are a hindrance. They are a fucking pain in the ass; I can't remember the last time I could sit down and fucking relax without hell breaking loose inside my brain," Zoro spat, fueled by his own built-up anger.

"Only because, for how much you talk about wanting to obliterate them, you're full of shit and still haven't done so."

Zoro stopped mid-sentence to gape at her. Nami raised a judging eyebrow.

"Am I wrong?"

Zoro sputtered before he gathered himself enough to come up with intelligible words. "How do you-"

"Because you're drinking your ass off alone in the galley asking me for advice and every single thing you've been saying until now sounds like you are still trying to convince yourself," Nami answered, matter of fact, not an ounce of pity for his state peeking through her tone. "How long have you known it for?"

"What?"

"How long have you known that you love Sanji?"

Zoro stood up and his taboret fell to the ground. He looked positively wounded. Nami couldn't find a single fuck to give. She had no time for drama, much less coming from Zoro.

"I don't – "

"You don't love him?"

Zoro opened his mouth and closed it. Nami began to understand how he'd made this whole situation this complicated with how bad he'd reacted to that word – love – attached to Sanji's name.

"Don't use that word," he growled.

Nami tried to gather all of her patience. That man couldn't deal with emotions at all, alright. There was little work they could do with Zoro's irrational fear to attachment and the very core of the idea of 'love' being regarded by him as Satan himself. But she could try. Zoro didn't need kindness and understanding nods. He needed someone to verbally punch some sense into him, let him see things without being blinded by the veil of his own fears and biases and then decide whatever the hell he wanted to do, but Nami sure as hell wasn't going to let him make this decision without thinking it through and recoiling at the very mention of the word love.

"Can you sit down?" she requested him, gesturing to his fallen seat with an expression that said 'I'm being a saint and patient to a fault, so you'd better humor me before I sock you in the eye'.

And Zoro was truly a mess, as he'd said, because it only took him some pacing around before sighing and doing as he was told, only half of the fight he held left in him by the time he did. Any other time he would have just called her a witch and left.

"You want an objective view on this, that's why this conversation with me is happening at all, right?"

"… right."

"Great. Now, how long has it been?"

Zoro looked like he wanted to quit and disappear forever, as far away from this torture as he could, but he shook his head and ended up resigning to the consequences of his own choices. He was supposed to be an adult and he should start acting like one.

"About three weeks. Since I realized, I mean."

Nami nodded. "I may be wrong, but was it the day after we ran into Smoker?"

Zoro looked at her like she'd grown a second head, his expression something close to horrified, and justifiably so. "How the fuck–"

"I was looking," Nami shrugged. "And, if it's any consolation, I was as surprised as you probably were."

"Surprised is putting it very lightly."

Nami smiled, vaguely amused. "Okay, I was surprised, you looked like death had knocked on your door, which sort of starts making sense now that I know we are dealing with a phobia of yours."

"It's not a fucking phobia!"

"Semantics. It's still something that terrifies you, which is why this is all so complicated."

Zoro let his face plop on his open palms with a groan. "I need a break."

"No, you need to focus. Now, back to the topic, it's been three weeks and you've been listing down all of the reasons why you don't want any of this and need to get rid of it like you're talking about the plague, yet you haven moved a single finger to make it stop even when dragging it out is clearly messing with your head and making it insufferable for you and now me, you're welcome. Have you, by any chance, stopped to think why?"

What she got as an answer were lots of blinking and the dumbest confused face of Zoro's repertoire.

"If you hate this situation this much and want these feelings this little, why haven't you ended it yet, Zoro?" Nami insisted, not having the least bit of clemency towards him. "Because last time I checked, that isn't your style. You don't hesitate to cut the roots of anything you've labelled as a problem, and you sure as hell don't drag it out for weeks until the problem makes a home out of your brain."

Well. Harsh as ever. Troubling point made, thank you, Nami.

"It's not that easy," Zoro attempted.

"Oh, no? Why? I take it the problem here is that you're in some sort of relationship with him which only makes things harder for you to move on. If you had already done everything you can to get rid of these feelings you hate so much you wouldn't be like this," she gestured towards his frankly sad appearance. "If you had already done everything you can it would suck because you'd be waiting for these feelings to disappear, but you wouldn't be tearing yourself down to the seams like you are, which means you are half-assing whatever sort of decision you think you have already taken."

Zoro needed a break. He didn't even have it in him to be embarrassed about the fact that Nami had spoken about their relationship out loud like it was a fact; he was too busy trying to figure out how on Earth Nami had managed to get a read like that on him like it was no one's business.

"Am I right?"

"You're insufferable."

"Okay. So I'm assuming you're still in a relationship with him, then," Nami concluded. "I get that the part where you have to get over him is pretty bad in itself, and that's not easy, but how is finishing whatever you have with him before it gets worse 'not that easy'? I took you for someone who appreciates the talent of self-preservation."

"Hold on," Zoro's head was spinning and he was confused and, again, he needed a goddamn break. "Weren't you trying to talk me out of ditching all of this two minutes ago?"

And it was confusing, because now she sounded a hell of a lot like she thought Zoro was an idiot for not finishing it earlier.

"Oh, believe me, I'm still trying, but I'm also trying to get my point across. Let me summarize again: if you think it's that bad and you want all of this to be over so bad, why don't you take the first reasonable and obvious step towards moving on and end what you have with him? How on Earth is it taking you three weeks and this many headaches when you usually obliterate 'hindrances' faster than you blink?"

Holy fuck, did Nami have no qualms frying Zoro's brain cells even when he was at his lamentable lowest?

"Slow down, shit, I'm trying to keep up with you!"

"It's not that hard."

"But it is! I can't just come out of nowhere and tell him it's over without an explanation, it can fuck things up faster than he kicks at me when I make him mad!"

Nami waved her hands for him to stop. "Okay, no, we're not doing this."

"We're not doing what?"

"You don't get to soliloquize the Bible with a list of reasons as to why you want to get rid of what you feel and only spew out bullshit about the reasons why it's hard to."

"Soli–what?"

"If you are going to give an excuse as to why you still haven't moved a single finger to start moving on the way of leaving this all behind, at least be as honest with yourself as you have been with the reasons why those feelings are not worth it."

Zoro stared at her like a gaping fish. "And what do you want me to say?!"

"The truth! That the reason why it's hard is because you love him!" Nami yelled back, throwing her arms in the air and looking for all she had like a very exasperated mother trying to talk some sense into her dense son. "It's the reason why you are running away to start with, sure, but it's also the reason for every single one of your doubts, it's pretty obvious. You didn't need me to tell you for you to know that, Zoro, you're not stupid."

Zoro reared back, feeling cornered. "Don't put words in my mouth."

"Do you want to know what I think?"

"No."

"I think that you have been so caught up in everything bad that can come out of you loving him that you never stopped considering the good things that came with it. You're so caught up in all the ways these feelings can fuck you up and using them to fuel your reasons to leave that you haven't even been considering the fact that perhaps the reason why it's so hard is because the part of you that's not acting like a coward knows that leaving this right now means leaving everything good you could have ever gained from this, and maybe that's not something you'd actually want to leave behind if you'd stop to think about it for a minute instead of bathing in angst and denial!"

Zoro pointed at her. A warning. "Don't you dare project on me what you'd like to happen."

"I am not. I am being objective, which is what you need and what you wanted. And I'm telling you, you've been weighting all the cons and ignoring all the positives. Good luck with trying to take a decently solid decision with that."

Zoro didn't have anything to answer. He didn't even have the capacity of formulating an answer, not when Nami's shitload of words were stabbing his brain from all angles. He noticed they were both standing by now, and he realized he was agitated out of his mind. He used a few seconds to calm down and went back to his seat, motions careful and restrained so that the inner equilibrium he was merely maintaining wouldn't crumble. Who would've known that having the same exact conversation he'd been having with his brain with Nami would be this exhausting. Well, he certainly hadn't been as stubborn when it came to defending arguments against his bullheaded position (hell, he hadn't even tried), and it had been easier to at least settle for a 'no' to everything Sanji had come to represent, even if the part where he was supposed to let it begin to end had never been put into practice.

And now Nami was giving him a very solid reason as to why. One that sounded more like the truth than what he'd like.

He was surprised at how fast he came up with a counterargument the moment he managed to focus again. It was even more surprising because he could feel himself at the brink of being officially drunk, and that didn't often come with clarity attached to it, but he must have been pretty hell bent on getting his point across.

"Fine. You've pointed out how I'm forgetting the whole positives crap and haven't put it in the equation. Fair enough. Now, let me point out, and I am putting all of those sappy and corny and cavity-inducing good outcomes into the equation, that that isn't worth shit when he won't give a damn."

It was Nami's turn to fall silent. Zoro didn't relent.

"Say I lost my mind, ignored every single reasonable and wise reason to put this mess aside, and actually decided to pursue something with him instead of getting rid of it. What do you think comes after that?"

God, why was he sounding so bitter? Why was following that hypothesis and voicing it out loud like stabbing at himself with every single word that came out of his mouth?

"What, then? Do you think he'd just accept it? Give me everything good you say comes with the deal?"

There was a sarcastic smile tinting his features, one that spoke of disbelief, as if the mere idea that something like that could happen was hilarious. All Nami saw was sadness, darker and hollower the more his sceptic smile grew.

"Do you honestly think he would love me back?"

Nami wasn't answering. Zoro didn't need her to. He'd finally said the word and putting Sanji as the subject of that verb when directed to Zoro had sounded ridiculous even to himself. Everything inside him had turned into liquid dread, and he didn't even know how all of that sorrow had managed to slip back in him when he'd been fighting to keep it out so hard. He let out a laugh, one that was intended to sound amused but came out as acrid and poignant.

"If that's where your whole point was laying on, I'm sorry but that's as far as you can get," he informed her, sounding hollow, still smiling as if he'd won a battle something in him wished he hadn't. "Even if I weighted the positives and decided to give it a try I'd be met with a kick in the face. He and I had a deal, you know, and this," he gestured at himself, at the wreck he was, at all of the unwanted love he held inside, "wasn't part of it. Not only would he reject me, but I would fuck up every single thing that we have ever shared as mere nakama. So no, Nami, I'm not pursuing these feelings."

And they were back to square one. A hell of a ride with so many detours and spirals that Zoro just knew he'd walk out of the galley with a terrible migraine, but they were back at the starting point and Zoro's decision was still the same, just that now he had dared to glimpse at everything good love would have brought to him if he had lived in a fairy tale, and now it hurt even more to do what he had to.

"You don't know that," Nami told him, quieter but not less convinced. She looked like she'd rather be staring at anything that wasn't Zoro's terrible, terrible face, still looking like he'd been told a cosmic joke and still failing to conceal the fact that it had cracked him further.

Zoro sighed and waved at her for her to drop it, trying with all his might to appear like he wasn't affected, like this wasn't a big deal, like he didn't care and like it didn't hurt.

"Nami. Let's not sugarcoat it, yes? I fell in love with a man who can't love me back. He wants a family, a wife and a few kids and his restaurant, and that's a life I'm not remotely equipped to give him, so whatever we have now is as far as we'll ever get and it has an expiry date, be it me who stamps it down or time itself. And that's fucking fine, because I already knew that and it's how things were supposed to go from the beginning." He said fine like there was coal in his mouth, and every bit like he didn't mean it, although he was trying to convince himself that he did. "But that doesn't matter nor is it something for me to weight, because I don't want this anyway. I want it to end, Nami, that's what I want," he was sounding weaker by the moment, his voice losing step. Only to pick up through the next statement until it ended in a shout. "I want these feelings to be gone so that things can come back to normal and I can stop being a mess, and that's why I am asking you how the hell I am supposed to make them go away!"

Next thing he knew Nami was getting up, and that was fine too, because he'd dragged her into this and he had treated her like shit and he needed to be alone anyway, so he let her go and sunk in his seat, defeated and feeling nothing like himself. That was another reason why he wanted to put an end to this. He didn't like the person he became when his lack of control over his feelings took over every single one of his carefully crafted walls.

He sucked in a surprised breath when he felt arms surrounding him until he was wrapped in a hug from his left side, his temple coming to rest against Nami's collarbone. Alcohol was making itself present in his body, and he was so tired that he didn't even process how awkward her hold felt or how awkward he should be feeling about this.

He was exhausted enough to know his walls weren't going to be built back up anytime soon that night, and Nami had already seen him at his lowest, so he let go again, and his eyes closed in a pained gesture as he tried, and oh did he try, to find some sort of comfort in Nami's hug.

He sounded so incredibly small when he asked "Is love supposed to hurt this much?"

Nami's breath hitched the slightest bit, her own heart clenching at that awful question brought up in that awful tone. That wasn't Zoro. That wasn't Zoro at all. Or perhaps it was and he'd never let himself fall as low as to acknowledge that that was him as well.

She didn't think he expected an answer, but she gave him one anyway.

"That depends."

Zoro snorted, still sounding weary and bitter. "It always depends, doesn't it?"

"It does. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes you're lucky and it doesn't. Sometimes it hurts before it gets better and sometimes it goes the other way around," she told him. "But I think that the reason why people still want it is because everything good it has to give outweighs the hurt it can bring with it sometimes."

Zoro tried not to think of everything good love had to give, knowing all too well that this time around it didn't have anything to give to him but hurt. He sighed and Nami let go of him, breaking the awkward moment between them and putting in some distance that they both were thankful for. She sat at the stool next to his, facing him as Zoro stared at the countertop wondering how the hell he'd stooped so low as to actually have had that conversation with Nami.

"Do you want me to be very honest with you?"

He finally stared at her, raising an attempt of a humorous eyebrow and managing a small smile that was both supposed to be sarcastic and a thank you. "I don't think you'd give me a choice. Am I going to like it?"

"No."

"Oh, great. I've always loved me some good news," he groaned, going back to glowering at the countertop but not looking half as irritated as he'd tried to pretend he was. There were still the remnants of that smile in his lips, and Nami tried to count that as something good she'd managed to scratch at that night. "Shoot."

Nami mulled it over for a while, probably weighting down if it was worth her bringing it up, but there was no use to keeping things without saying when everything else had been said already.

"I think he might be it," she finally stated. Zoro stared at her, confused. "I honestly believe Sanji might be it for you."

Zoro went from confused to very confused in the span of a second, something heavy dropping in his stomach at the implications of what Nami was saying.

"What?"

He knew what. He knew what she was saying and he was dangerously close to agreeing without blinking, but he still tried to pretend he didn't get it, if only to prevent the weight that particular truth brought with it from falling on his shoulders yet.

Nami's fingers drummed on the wooden surface as she put her thoughts together, trying to ignore the fact that Zoro might take this like a punch on his face in favor of reminding herself that Zoro needed to hear this as well. This was getting too personal too fast and she really hadn't signed up for this, and the last thing she would have ever imagined was her sitting down right here right now having this conversation with Zoro, but they seemed to be on a roll, so she let it roll.

"In all honesty, I had never thought you were capable of loving. I never bought the whole, oh, he's asexual theory some people assumed, but I honestly never thought you had it in you to love someone… that way. When things started getting weird between you and Sanji back in The Rock-"

"Was it that obvious?"

Nami deadpanned. "Like a gigantic neon light waved from the top of Red Line."

Zoro groaned and ran a hand down his face.

"Long story short, when all of that insufferable tension started growing between the both of you my hopes were set on you two fucking once and for all –"

"Oh for fuck's sake!"

"- and calming the hell down, see if all of that testosterone started to chill. Don't look at me like that, I'm not the only one who's ever thought that you two needed to get laid together instead of going all peacock on each other, and that comes from way before The Rock, even if I never thought of it as a real possibility before. My point: there's been sexual tension hanging in the air since both your prides took offense on each other's very existence."

"That's not true, what bullshit are you vomiting right now?"

"Swear that you had never, not even once, gotten a boner while fighting Sanji, swear it on Wâdo. Go on, I'm waiting."

Zoro couldn't believe his ears nor could he swear shit on Wâdo because Wâdo would turn against him in his sleep and play his death off as an accident if he told such a fat lie on its sheath. He knew there was a reason why he'd always hated that witch.

"See, you can't. Now, back to the point and let me be serious because I'm trying to be."

Patience. Someone give him patience and a way to tame the murderous intent building up in him.

"The point was that after The Rock I kind of saw something coming between the both of you, and it took you so long to just get it that I almost took matters into my own two hands if it meant un-burying you two from denial."

"You didn't almost take matters into your own hands, you stuck your nose where it didn't belong more times than I can count and you bought us goddamn condoms."

"You're welcome. The thing is that I expected that, but I didn't expect you developing actual feelings for him," and with that came back the seriousness and Zoro's quiet. "A certain amount of affection and everything both of you claim you're too manly to feel, yes, but not that. I wouldn't have seen it coming in a thousand years."

"Tell me about it," Zoro grumbled, no humor in his voice.

"It hit me that day after meeting Smoker. I saw you looking at Sanji and at first I didn't know what was going on because I had never seen you look at anyone like that, and then I got it, and I remember asking myself how on Earth that had happened because I had never believed you were even capable of an emotion like this."

"Cut to the case," Zoro rushed her. He didn't want to hear this. He didn't want a reminder of how he had felt or looked like the day everything he thought he knew came crumbling down. Nami had asked herself how on Earth that had happened? Zoro was still trying to answer that goddamn question himself.

"It got me thinking. And it made sense."

"Did it."

"I'm not bullshitting you, Zoro, don't look at me like that. It did. It makes sense. I didn't think you could feel that way, but if you had to end up falling in love with someone then it had to be Sanji."

"Give me a break," he sighed, looking elsewhere and feeling something heavy weighting down at his heart as he tried to pretend he didn't feel a thing.

"No, think about it. You're not like a lot of people, Zoro, earning your friendship let alone your trust is very hard. We have it now, but even we had to work through it to earn it. I'm not being bitter about this now nor am I trying to make you feel guilty for anything, but both when I or Robin left the crew you were the first to accept that the crew had been betrayed, you played the devil's advocate because someone has to in situations like this, and you fall into that role faster than the rest. And you fought alongside Luffy anyway when both rescues happened, but both times you had half a mind set on believing the betrayal was real until you were proved something different. Am I wrong?"

It stung. But it was the truth.

"No."

"What I'm getting at is, and I promise I'm not trying to be fatalistic here, that I don't think you can find love in a harbor or out of a chance encounter like a lot of people do. I think that for you to love someone you have to trust them, at the very least, and that's not something many people earn from you, much less someone you meet for a few weeks somewhere before setting sail again."

"What does that have to do with-"

"You and Sanji share something more than trust. I don't think I have ever seen a bond as strong and… special as the one you two have, and I have believed that from long before The Rock happened. You'd put your life in Luffy's hands, you'd sacrifice it for him, and there's a level of trust there that not many people can understand, and you trust us to have your back, but there's something different in the bond you share with Sanji, and I think even you should realize this. And it just makes sense that it was Sanji, Zoro, it does. If you had to end up feeling that way there was only one relationship strong enough to let feelings like that bloom, and it's the one you have with him."

Zoro didn't have anything else to offer as a reply. He couldn't. Not with how loud those words resonated within himself like only the rawest truths do.

And it made him feel so helpless, because of course it had been Sanji. Not seeing it coming sounded more stupid now than it had ever sounded in his head. With Sanji being fire and Zoro being consumed by it every single time he got anywhere near him, he should have known there was only one way this was headed when he'd thrown himself into the flames. In retrospective, believing they could keep it physical had been his dumbest failure of judgement in his entire life.

With Sanji, it always got out of hand. When he hadn't yet shared the intimacy he now knew with him, he was already gravitating around him, already holding so much respect for him and admiring him so much to the point that about half of his day revolved around him seeking Sanji's attention either to take it away from the ladies or to earn himself a fight, because he had a problem with it being elsewhere. The way he had gotten absolutely obsessed with his wellbeing when he'd thought they were losing him back in The Rock should have been enough of a hint that whatever he had with Sanji was something he was already terrified to lose. Hell, even before that Thriller Bark had happened and Zoro still had the image of Sanji standing between him and Kuma ingrained in his brain, and he'd been scared shitless then too because he didn't want to lose him no matter what.

Getting closer and into lovers' territory, and getting to know sides of Sanji he hadn't known before which ended up mesmerizing him, was bound to turn the way he gravitated around Sanji into the attachment he'd never wanted; him seeking Sanji's attention turned into jealousy; his obsession with him had morphed into devotion; and the respect and admiration he had once felt had inevitably ended up being called love.

And he'd been an idiot for not seeing how fine a line he'd been walking since way before the first doubts appeared, stranded in a godforsaken island with Sanji fading away and the urge to yell come back ripping through Zoro's sanity because he couldn't stand the thought of losing him.

He had to hold his head with his hands, realization hitting him with the force of a gigantic Marine fleet.

He'd been doomed from the beginning.

Nami was right. She was so right that Zoro began to doubt that the deal not existing and them not having committed the mistake of kissing would have made a difference. It had to be Sanji. Getting physical and getting to know how fantastic of a lover Sanji could be if given half the chance had only rushed things in that direction, but Zoro wondered if, at the end of their journey, everything wouldn't have amounted to this anyway.

Perhaps Zoro would have never been put in a situation where he had to name what he had with Sanji or figure out what he felt towards him. Perhaps what he felt towards him would have never gotten loud enough for him to have to wonder what it was, perhaps it would have stayed quiet so that Zoro didn't get a chance to get rid of it before it fully bloomed. Perhaps he wouldn't have had the epiphany he'd had one morning over onigiri, after so many times being inside of him and wanting to say things he didn't know how to word, after so many times of watching his nose crinkle when he laughed because he got the chance to see him laugh more if he tried. Perhaps Zoro wouldn't have thought of calling it love and so his feelings would have never had a name he feared, but at the end of the day he would have never been able to love anyone else, whether he knew that it was because his feelings laid elsewhere or not.

And it was so goddamn tragic, the fact that he had never stood an actual chance, the fact that this would have happened anyway, that Zoro ended up wanting to cry for real. He laughed instead, face buried behind calloused hands that weren't enough to hold him together.

"Shit," he whispered, and this time it was defeated. No mask, no nothing.

"Zoro, listen, it's not the end of the world," Nami nudged him, ignoring his almost break-down so that it would be easier for him to gather his composure back. "Zoro, look at me."

"What," he snapped, bitter. Nami was right. God, Nami was as right as she'd ever be, but now Zoro's world was crumbling with a reality he'd much rather still ignore, thank you Nami.

"Don't use that tone on me, I'm trying to help," she scolded him.

He found some of his fight back along with the inherent annoyance that bloomed every time she spoke to him like that.

"You do realize I'm still trying to process all the shit you just threw at me, which is a lot and a bit on the heavy side of the fucking emotional department, right?" he barked.

She had the nerve to wave his indignation away and Zoro felt the need to break things. He hadn't felt that in a while. That was good. Better than numbness. At least that was like him.

"I said everything I said because I want you to understand that the odds are that if you push this away now you probably won't find it again years down the road. Both of us know you won't stay in a fixed place for long enough to build the trust you'd need, let alone something like what you have with Sanji, even after this is all over and we all go our separate ways. Again, not to be fatalistic, but this might be your only shot at this, and you need to weight that too."

"I told you that I don't want to give it a shot! If I don't find it ever again, then I'm good. Great even."

Nami let out a long-suffering sigh that made Zoro's patience waver.

"You say that now, because you've got big dreams and too many adventures waiting out there for you to bother wanting something like that or regarding it as anything other than a hindrance. But in the future-"

"In the future the cook will still say no," Zoro cut her, matter of fact.

He didn't notice he'd just called Sanji 'the cook' for the first time in the whole conversation. He didn't notice his helplessness dissolving into the general annoyance Nami awakened in him, and Nami was fine with it as long as he was back to being himself bit by bit. Seeing as he was slowly pulling himself together and was less of the wreck he'd been during half of the conversation, Nami threw delicacy through the window and slammed a fist on the table, scaring the crap out of Zoro because he hadn't seen that one coming.

Nami would have laughed at his priceless reaction if she wasn't too busy calling Zoro out on his shit.

"You. Don't. Know that!"

Zoro blinked his shock away and went back to fighting her on this. "Yes, I do! What kind of misplaced brain cell makes you even consider that the cook would –"

"Neither you or anyone around you expected you to fall in love with anyone at all, yet you, with all of your stupid manliness and bullheadedness and your freaking emotions-can't-touch me bravado – you ended up falling in love like a high schooler!" she yelled at him, planting a finger in the center of his chest. "Now, say genius, what makes you have any authority to say that you know for a fact that the same can't happen to him?"

"He wants a wife!" he countered with a wild gesture of his hands that made it clear that he didn't understand how she couldn't understand that part.

"And I want a golden castle filled to the brim with gold for me to bathe in, but we don't always get what we want!"

"You're talking out of your ass."

"So are you. I'm not saying Sanji will ask you for marriage come morning, but you can't say he can't love you back like it's a matter of fact either. You sure as hell won't know unless you try."

"I don't want to try!"

"You're full of bullshit," Nami sentenced, staring at him like a disappointed mother would.

Zoro considered the pros and cons of getting rid of one of his nakama and pretending it had been an accident. Unfortunate drowning. She tripped and fell face first on his swords. A shame, truly.

"If a part of you didn't want to try, this whole drama wouldn't be happening and you wouldn't be tearing yourself to shreds over not knowing how to end this despite claiming you want to."

Fuck. Why did she have to make sense? That's not where Zoro hoped this conversation would be going. He had attempted to reach a certain amount of peace of mind through a third party's reassurance that, yes, this was all a bad idea, he had fucked up but he still could make things good, and he needed to get his shit together and cut ties before it got worse and then work on the damage control. He had expected to walk out of the galley reaffirmed in his decision to end things, not with Nami yelling at him to give it a shot instead.

"Okay, look. Look at me," Nami shook him and Zoro complied, scowling more than he had in his entire life if only to get across a very big, very heart-felt, mental fuck you. "Don't you glare at me like that after all the holy patience I've had with you tonight."

Zoro didn't stop glaring. Nami went on with her monologue.

"Listen. If you tried – say you tried – if you do and he says no-"

"It will be a mess."

"It's already a mess, it can't possibly get worse, stop interrupting. If you try and he says no, you've got things finished for you. Then you can work on moving on like you want to, and if you need help I can help you through it because God knows it will be hard if you have to live in the same ship with him for the next foreseeable years."

"Comforting."

"Don't give me that attitude. That's exactly how it ends anyway if you follow through with your plan, only that worse because you will have never given yourself the chance to tell him and that's going to make the whole cicatrizing process harder. I can assure you, it's very difficult to move on if you are carrying a secret this big in your bag."

She was right. Again, she was fucking right, and Zoro hated her for it.

"Now, though. Say he feels the same way."

Oh, he wouldn't, but that wasn't an argument he had hopes of even finishing before Nami tore him to shreds.

"Then every single thing I listed down for you to understand that this will become a weakness I don't want will follow."

"Well, then you freaking deal with it, you're an adult. He's only going to become as much of a weakness to you as you let him be. And I'm sorry if this is harsh, but if Sanji were to die tomorrow the loss you're so terrified of going through would happen no matter if you're with him or if you haven't allowed yourself to be, because you already love him and pursuing it or not doesn't change that part no matter how hard you try. So, if everything you don't want to happen is going to happen anyway, I say fuck it and fight for the positives as well. Live a little!"

A flash came to his mind for the second time that night of Sanji standing between him and Kuma, determined and barely holding himself straight, pretending everything was cool while he all but threw his life away to protect both Zoro and his dreams. He remembered his own sword knocking Sanji out with a desperate urge to keep him from doing anything stupid. He had already given up on his own dream (the one he now claimed he needed to preserve at the cost of throwing his feelings away) to protect Luffy, and he'd had no doubts, he hadn't even regretted it. He gave it up once more and with an even firmer resolution in Sanji's name. It hadn't taken much convincing to abandon everything he'd been fighting for if it meant he kept his nakama – his captain, the self-sacrificing bastard that was Sanji – safe and alive. He hadn't needed love for that. He was already ready to give up every single thing he claimed was important to him for them, not only Sanji. The hindrance argument was struck down faster than he would have liked.

And, true enough, whatever pain and hollowness followed Sanji's loss if it ever came would happen anyway because his feelings were what they were no matter if he acted on them or not.

Zoro ignored everything inside of him chanting along with that, screaming at him to fight and, indeed, live a little. He knew better than that, he had already talked himself through this and Nami's beautified vision of reality wouldn't change a thing. It wouldn't. It… If only she wasn't right. If only that scolding alone wasn't lifting a nameless weight off his tired shoulders to replace it with a hope he didn't want to feel.

"Have you considered starting a career on poetry, because you sure as hell know how to spew bullshit and make it sound pretty-"

Nami slapped him.

And Zoro shut up.

Someone had finally done what he'd been hoping they'd do; hit him to install some common sense in that mutinous brain of his. He simply hadn't predicted that what would be slapped into his face was hope instead of the harsh pessimistic reality Zoro had painted for himself.

"Have you calmed down now?" Nami asked, hands on her hips and looking like she had very little patience left.

He had. He had calmed down. There was something wild still bubbling beneath his skin, a sort of restlessness he couldn't quite scratch away, but the desperation and the dread were gone and his resolve had crumbled only for him to find he could breathe a bit easier now. He wasn't embracing Nami's optimism and he still thought that the whole theory about Sanji maybe, possibly, remotely feeling something for him was utter bullshit, but he wasn't alone with his ghosts and fears anymore and the whole weight that his initial resolution had carried with it had been lifted off his shoulders, and it didn't cloud his judgement anymore. He couldn't make promises, and three quarters of him still thought it was better to end things soon and without the bigger fuss Nami had suggested, but at least he didn't feel like he was asphyxiating anymore.

After the bumpy introspection Nami had guided and helped him through came a weird acquiescence that every bad consequence he'd been fearing was already in the game, so there was little to nothing he could do about it except for picking up the pieces as he went, and that was so much simpler than trying to keep all of them together while walking on a thin string. He didn't have to worry about hurrying anywhere or panicking because everything he dreaded would catch up with him if he didn't act on it right now, because it had already caught up with him and there wasn't any more preventing he could do, and that took a shitload of work off him. What he could do now was think with a clearer mind with less losses at stake, because once you've lost something it's lost already and you may be able to find it back but there's sure as hell no more frantic grabbing or jumbling you have to attempt to keep yourself from losing it.

He now could sit down and make a proper decision on what to do with his feelings and with Sanji, one where everything would be taken into account and it didn't feel like deciding equaled running.

If, in the end, he still thought he'd be better off if he put an end to it, he could sit down and think about how to do it in the least damaging way possible because he wasn't in a desperate hurry to deal with his demons, and a slip-up where he ended up telling Sanji how he felt didn't feel as off-limits now as it had up until that moment, when the idea had never even been an option for him to weight. He'd much rather not go through that, but if it happened he felt more equipped to deal with it than he had hours before, and it would be ugly but it didn't terrify him half as much.

Whatever he decided, he would try his best to mend his losses and minimize the damage, for him and for Sanji, and he'd deal with whatever they had left the best he could.

All of that in mind, yes, he was calmer. For the first time in weeks, he wasn't terrified of something he now knew he could have never controlled. The only thing he was still scared of was losing Sanji, that fear was real, but that only meant he'd have to try his damnest to not let that happen. But, for the rest? It was scary, and it was huge, and it felt like too high of a mountain to climb and too big of a fall to take, but at least he wasn't scared of himself, nor was he half as scared as he had been of the mere idea of loving someone. It was scary, but not terrifying and the embodiment of evil, neither was it a source of desperation he didn't know how to fight. It was what it was and it was still too big an emotion for Zoro to know how to handle without hurting himself in the process, but it was better.

It was better, and no matter what happened it could get better. He would only fuck things up if he wasn't careful, but he could try to make that right too. Whatever he chose, he could try. Then he'd see.

Zoro raised his head to look at Nami, cheek stinging and painted red where she had hit him.

"I am calm," he told her.

She smiled. "Good. Now be a good boy and think about what I have told you. Don't write it off before giving it some serious thought."

"Thank you."

Nami sputtered and blushed in utter embarrassment. His whole face turned an unhealthy shade of red, mortification hitting him with a two-second delay.

"Okay, tonight never happened," Zoro concluded, glaring at her like he'd consider murder if she dared not agree.

She pulled herself together and managed a petulant scoff in the name of tradition.

"God forbid you burst a vessel shall you ever be reminded of my gracious kindness and how many thank yous you owe me from now until your dying day."

"Get the hell out of here."

"No need to tell me twice," she countered, turning on her feet to leave the galley. She stopped in her tracks to face him again, a bit more serious.

Zoro physically recoiled a few centimeters and made a face. "Wasn't this over?"

"I just wanted to say, you said Sanji would kick your face if you ever told him how you feel. That everything you have as nakama would go to hell. Do you honestly believe that?"

He stared at her, shoulders sagging and stomach twisting with warmth that wasn't welcome.

"It's not what we agreed on," he tried to reason, weakly.

"Forget what you agreed on. I can't believe you have an agreement to start with, oh my God, but forget that. Do you really believe Sanji would belittle your feelings and make it about himself? Let everything else get lost?"

Silence.

"I think he respects you too much for that. And I think he's too kind and cares about you too much to not be the one trying his hardest to bring it all back to normal if this goes wrong."

Zoro stared at his hands, quiet.

"I agree that there's several ways you can fuck this up, but telling him you love him isn't one of them. If you get a no it will suck and it's going to be complicated, but I don't believe for a second that you two wouldn't be able to work it out and go back to what you were before. I don't know about you, but he would try his hardest. You said you don't want to lose him, and I'm convinced he doesn't want to lose his best friend either, whether feelings are involved or not."

Warmth. Warmth spreading everywhere inside him like wildfire, flashes of Sanji's smiles with a crinkle on his nose, his challenges, their fights, onigiri snuck here and there, Sanji standing between him and Kuma and looking for all the world like giving his life for him wasn't an issue. Childish bickering, taunting, being tipsy enough to drop hostilities and hang their arms around each other and sing at the sky along with the crew as late-night parties happened, quiet conversations or simply shared silence; all of those moments scattered before and after they had started fooling around, all of them there since pretty much the beginning.

He hid his face behind a wrist, elbow resting on the counter.

"Don't say embarrassing shit like that. I'm not… that."

Friends. Is that what they had been before everything started getting complicated? He had never stopped to regard Sanji as anything more than… than what? He called him a rival, and a nakama, but he had never labelled him as anything else, perhaps because he wasn't sure what exactly what they shared was or what it amounted to.

It was probably too late to be realizing that what he had with him amounted to everything he could ever hope to share with someone, name that bond what you may. It was probably too late to fight the wave of fond that warmed everything inside of him.

"You get embarrassed way too easily," Nami dismissed. "Your reputation won't suffer because of you having friends –"

"Fuck off," he growled, straightening and glaring at her to make her shut up before she embarrassed him further.

"Yes, yes, I'm done now," she waved dismissively. "Good night."

"It never happened!" he threatened again the moment her hand reached the doorknob.

She turned around to send him an evil smirk. "We'll see if the sum of your debts I have noted down in my books agrees with that."

Zoro stood up and pointed at her with one of his swords, killing intent oozing from him.

"Don't you dare!"

"Mind the interests~~~"

And she closed the door in his face.

"You witch."

The door opened again and Zoro almost dropped his sword in disbelief, because enough is enough.

"One more thing."

"What," he demanded, wary.

Her expression was both serious and soft when she spoke next.

"Whatever you do, Zoro, please remember to be kind with him," she drew a small smile. "He's not at fault, okay? You'd be making a mistake if you assume you got the short end of the stick here."

Zoro stared at her, trying to read her but way too tired to be understanding anything at all.

"Where are you getting at?"

"I'm just saying, it's not only you who's risking being hurt here. Keep that in mind."

"That doesn't clarify – "

"That being said, this was an extra piece of advice, so I'm adding it to your list of debts. Have a good night."

"Oi!"

The door was slammed shut before he had the chance to raise his sword again, leaving the galley in silence and Zoro alone with his thoughts, a bit more than a bit tipsy, and with a heart ten times less heavy than it had been when he had come in. His brain, though. His brain needed a break.

He stared at Wâdo in confusion, but he got no answers.

TBC


A/N:

Alternative title: Nami owns this ship