I don't own anything but my ideas.

Completely, Utterly, Entirely

"What's to the north of Shanks' territory?"

Zoro looked up at Sanji, trying to figure out at first if the cook was serious and then giving him a flat look when Sanji continued to look at him curiously.

Sanji made an annoyed face after a second of blank staring, rolling his eyes. "Can you find me a map, maybe?"

Zoro shook his head, turning back to the sandwich in front of him. Honestly, who knew sandwiches could be this good? Was there anything this guy couldn't turn into a five-star meal?

Sanji crossed his arms dubiously. "You don't have a single map here."

"I don't understand them. Don't leave enough on my own to ever need them. Anytime we travel, Nami or Usopp drives."

"I mean here as in the city here, dumbass."

"Nope."

"You're kidding."

Zoro shook his head again, mouth full of the amazing explosion of homemade cornichons, paper-thin roast beef, a mayonnaise sauce that was so good there was no way Sanji had bought it at the store, lettuce, and more things than Zoro's taste buds could identify. But he didn't give a shit; it tasted good and he was hungry.

"No need, we don't get tourists here. No way to accommodate them, nothing to see, nowhere to put them, and too much to hide. And the people that leave here know where they're going or they aren't planning on coming back. All of our economy is based off of weapons, underground fighting, some stores in town, that sort of thing. Shanks didn't want prostitutes at first, but now they register with him, make their own money, have to use protection and get testing, so they're around too."

Sanji let out a slow breath, shoving the last of the dishes into the dishwasher along with the plate from his now-empty sandwich plate. "This really is a dead city."

Zoro didn't feel the need to answer to that. The sandwich was too damn good.

"Fine," Sanji shook off the monkey wrench in his plans, rounding on Zoro with his arms crossed. "I want to know where we are and where I can get to around here. This city only has so many food places and I can't find a bunch of ingredients I need."

Now it was Zoro's turn to roll his eyes. "Who are you expecting to show up at our door? I highly doubt the queen would ever show her face here. Just the air in this city would mess up her prissy clothes; there's still a ton of grit from all the bombing."

"I take pride in my work," Sanji returned easily, taking Zoro's plate out from under him and sticking it in the dishwasher before he set it to run. "And I need some things. Like black truffles, saffron, daikon, and basil. Avocados would be nice too, and decent oranges."

"Basil?"

"Exactly! How do you not have basil here?! It's basil for Christ's sake!"

"Whatever. Were you gonna go today?"

Sanji nodded, and Zoro noticed as he stepped around the counter that his shoes were already on. "What do you have here for transportation? And before you offer, I don't want your death trap."

"It's just a bike—"

"It's a poorly-balanced, weighed-down, racing machine of death that literally rockets you through the air toward your destination and turns everything around you into an obstacle that could kill you."

Zoro stuck his fingers in his mouth one by one, sucking off the rest of the sauce. He watched from the counter as Sanji slid on his jacket and pulled a scarf off of the rack. Was it already that late in the year?

"I guess you could borrow a car."

"Me? Oh no, marimo. We. We are going out to explore around the city. Put your shoes on."

"Nope."

"Yep."

"Why do you need me? It's not like I'm going to help anything."

Sanji gave him an evil grin, tucking the end of the scarf into his coat before he fished for his pack of cigarettes to transfer them from his pants to his coat pocket. "Because you're my ticket back if we run into trouble."

Zoro raised an eyebrow, catching his jacket as Sanji tossed it to him. "I'm your what?"

"You're my… call it a chaperone. If I leave now with no one watching me, how many red flags do you think that will raise? I'd have to be stupid to think Shanks' people aren't still watching me and waiting for me to make my move as a mole."

"…Well, yeah, but—"

"I'm going now. Want to see how far I can get on my own before they drag me back underground in chains and put me away for the next gladiator fight?"

Zoro groaned, his head dropping back against his neck. He'd really been looking forward to pushing his workout to the limit today, especially after sleeping in from the fight last night and the celebration afterwards. "Can't you call someone—"

"See ya later, marimo."

"Wait!" Zoro barked as Sanji walked out the door with a carefree wave, smoking happily to himself. Zoro fumbled himself into his coat and slid to a stop next to the closed door, yanking his boots on and tripping himself on his untied shoelaces as he scrambled out the door. "Shit cook!"

Sanji pretended not to see him, looking for something in his pockets as the door to the elevator started to slide closed behind him. Zoro growled and jumped forward, catching his foot in the door just before it closed. He grunted as it clunked against his ankle, but drifted back open, letting him in to glare at the cook. Sanji looked back innocently, like he was genuinely surprised.

"Oh, you're coming?"

Zoro grumbled to himself and bent down to lace up his boots, mutterings of "shitty cook" and "fucking curly brow" drifting up along with the other unintelligible words. Sanji smirked to himself and fixed his hair to make sure it was hanging correctly in front of his eye, something he'd been doing more and more compulsively as of late.

Every once and a while he would pull his bangs back in front of the mirror, generally after a shower so the water wouldn't irritate his eye—especially because he still couldn't feel most of it to tell if it was injured. The murky white that covered his eye had turned a dusky grey over the past few weeks, entirely obscuring his pupil from view. He looked like an alien from some planet that had never evolved to process light, and every time he saw his whole face his stomach churned. He'd spent the first two weeks here agonizing over the possibility of his sight never returning in that eye, and now that it had been eight weeks and there was absolutely no progress being made, his mind had decided that being disgusted by it was the better alternative and the next best stage in his… grieving process. Or whatever.

Looking at his eye made his muscles lock up and his fingers twitch. It made his toes curl and his spine beg to twist—to fly through the air and severely injure something—to make something hurt as much as he had hurt that unbearable month in captivity. If he'd been at home, Zeff probably would have been the recipient of his rage. Zeff was always too good about taking his lumps with Sanji and then dishing them back tenfold after he'd calmed down. Here…

Zoro didn't deserve it. Zoro, and Luffy, and Chopper, and Franky, and Brook, and Nami-swan, and Usopp… they'd all taken him in in a heartbeat. There had been no question about saving his life. Questions about where his loyalty was had followed, but he could tell from the way the tiny doctor had cried over his injuries even from the first time Sanji had woken up that there was never a single consideration to leave him or let him die.

He owed them too much. They were good, genuine people and they didn't deserve his anger for something they had no control over and still worked so hard to accommodate. Sanji wasn't their problem, but they'd taken him in as their own and made him their problem.

So when he looked in the mirror and saw a monster comparable to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, his fangs extended just from anger and he thanked every god he didn't believe in that Zoro was a warrior and would never turn down a fight.

Sanji looked down to where Zoro was finishing his laces, still grumbling to himself. The elevator dinged as they reached the first floor and the marimo stood, scowling heartily and refusing to look at Sanji. Sanji smirked again as the brute stalked out of the elevator first like an alpha leading the pack, even though he knew he had to listen to the intellectuals (Sanji) before he could actually do something.

Zoro would never know just how many times he'd saved Sanji's sanity by just being there for him. He was the light to Sanji's fuse. Not exactly a perfect relationship, but Sanji was a regenerating powder keg, and sometimes it seemed like there was no way to keep his explosive residue from leaking over—if it didn't burn off every once and a while, one of these days he would explode. And the results, especially in a city fresh from a war that knew exactly how vampires behaved and what to look for, would have been devastating—for him, for Shanks for taking him in, for everyone under Shanks, for those under Shanks' protection, for the city, and everyone tied to this weird-ass family. Killer flashed through his mind, and how insanely protective Zoro was of his little brother. No, he could never lose control. He would never let it happen. He may be a vampire, but—

Not vampire. NSPH. Negligible senescent porphyric humanoid. He had to get used to thinking of himself as such. The people of this city, ironically enough, got twitchier about calling him a monster than he did. …And he wasn't a monster, not in the traditional sense of the word at least. He wasn't allergic to garlic and crawling around in the shadows of night looking for pretty young women to prey upon (he shivered at the though), but he was definitely a threat to the humans around him.

Sanji smirked to himself as Zoro—still grumbling to himself—used his body sort of like a battering ram to push open the incredibly heavy front door. He raised a hand to grab his cigarette and hide the smile, lest the idiot turn around for whatever reason.

Sanji wasn't exactly sure why he'd cajoled the idiot into coming along. That was something he hadn't yet found the courage to tackle. That was a big box in his mind, filed under "Fuck This Shit," and he had no desire to open it up quite yet. Zoro just… calmed him. If Sanji was a raging tide, Zoro was a jetty, strong and immovable and able to take whatever Sanji dished and still stand up to him and fight back.

Zoro was something, that was for sure. In a way, he almost reminded Sanji of—

"What are you doing?"

Sanji stopped outside the front door of the building as Zoro picked his helmet up off of his bike. He'd called the swordsman stupid at first for leaving the motorcycle out here so unprotected, but it had occurred to him after a while that probably everyone in the city knew who it belonged to and would never dare take it, because those that would take it wouldn't get half a block away before people that felt indebted to Shanks and his crew would find it odd that someone else was riding the great Zoro Roronoa's bike.

Zoro turned to give him a look, clearly asking how stupid he was. Sanji felt his shoulders tighten at the expression; a kneejerk reaction to being around the dickhead for so long.

"I'm putting on my helmet," Zoro said slowly.

"I know that, fucker! Why are you putting on your helmet?!"

"…Because it's stupid to ride without it."

"That's not—!"

"Look," Zoro cut him off, climbing onto the bike and knocking the kickstand back, "Law was crazy about this stuff when I was younger. Always wear a seatbelt, always wear a helmet, never drink and drive, don't take candy from strangers; I got in the habit. Just shut up and get over here."

"I'm not going over there! Why the hell are you—"

Sanji growled as Zoro gunned the engine to life and drowned out his yells, beckoning Sanji over like he fucking owned him or something.

"I'm not getting on that fucking thing!" he screamed around Zoro's loud revving. Zoro gestured to his ears and shook his head. He flipped the visor down over his face, but not before Sanji caught the shit-eating smirk on his face.

"I SAID I'M NOT—"

Zoro shrugged, gesturing to his head again and sat back, patiently waiting for Sanji to come over. The cook planted his feet and stuck his hands in his pocket, puffing heavily on his cigarette now. He was not pouting. But he was going to need a new cigarette soon. Zoro sagged a little and quieted the engine.

"What, shit cook. What is the problem."

"I'm not getting on that fucking thing!"

"I know it's scary the first few times, but I'm not a bad—"

"I'M NOT SCARED, ASSHOLE!"

"Really? You look pretty nervous to me."

"FUCK YOU, THAT THING IS LIKE ONE OF THE HORSES OF THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCOLYPSE! I'D HAVE TO BE AN IDIOT NOT TO HAVE RESERVATIONS!"

Zoro sighed to himself and turned the key, silencing the engine again. He leaned back on his seat and pushed the visor open again, leveling Sanji with a hard glare.

"Do you want to try and convince Franky to let us take one of his cars? This is a city, and a dead one, not a lot of people have vehicles. And we can't take Shanks' in case he needs them."

Sanji shifted, recalling the blue-haired whacko's obsession with his giant toys. Maybe if he threatened not to make a favorite meal of his for a while they could just have the clunker piece of shit… which honestly might have been more dangerous than this motorized execution chair. Ugh.

"I'll drive slow, alright? Just come on. I don't know how far you're planning on going outside the city, but you don't know where we're going and I sure as hell don't so we'd better save out enough daylight hours to make it back." And with that he snapped the visor back down and cranked the key, filling the streets with the echoing roars of the bike.

Sanji growled to himself and sucked in a huge breath. Not to calm himself down, it was to use up the rest of the cigarette. So he could have another one. Also not to calm himself down.

Damn. It'll blow out in the wind anyways.

"Come on, shit cook," Zoro held out his extra helmet, waving it at him impatiently. Sanji ran a hand over his eyes and quietly said his goodbyes to the world before he stepped forward and took the helmet from Zoro, sliding it over his eyes. He swung his foot over the back seat, determined not to falter and give the moss-head more to tease him about, but as soon as he was firmly seated on the bike, he found his arms locked tightly around Zoro's middle and his face pressed into the impossibly strong back.

This was happening way too often. The fact that the idiot calmed him at all was a problem in the first place; that he was willingly giving into it was another kettle of fish. Stinking, rotting, fly-infested, toxic, week-old fish. Maybe Zeff was right; he did have an addictive personality. That was the only sane explanation he could find right now for why he was currently wrapped around the brute like a fucking new bride.

Fucking Christ.

Zoro's voice was muffled considerably through both helmets and the way Sanji's ears were jammed up against the padding in his from how he'd crammed himself into the grooves in Zoro's back, but he managed to make out Zoro's, "Ready?" and nod his head in response.

Zoro shifted, kicking the bike to life and Sanji jolted as it roared, and then Zoro shot off down the street like a missile, swinging so low around the first corner that Sanji was sure he'd lose paint on the side of the helmet. The bastard was doing it on purpose.

Sanji growled as he felt the chuckle in Zoro's ribs and dug his nails into the idiot's front, making him jump at the sudden stabbing sensation. Zoro took mercy on him after that and only skidded to a halt at the first intersection, leveling out and letting Sanji get his heart rate back under control. Even whizzing as fast as they were down through the other cars on the road, Zoro kept the bike steady enough that Sanji felt himself pulling back—while still keeping a firm grip on Zoro's coat—to look around and watch the city pass by.

Traveling at four-hundred-million miles an hour or not, the city was an impressive sight for something that had been raised in only a couple of years and was still largely under construction, and soon Sanji was even taking his eyes off of the road to gape at the buildings above him and how tall they were after only three years. Idly, he wondered what the population was here; there were almost no newcomers—it was such a protective cult here, he doubted they'd just let anyone in—and the population had been decimated during the bombing and the vam—NSPH invasion. Maybe ten thousand or so people. It was a small city, only like six miles, so walking from one end to the other shouldn't have taken him more than an hour. The city used to be much bigger, but without help from the government, their budget had forced them to rebuild up instead of out. If nothing else, it would make air raids more difficult in the future from how close together and tall the buildings were.

Zoro blinked as he felt Sanji's front lean back into him, the cook's arms shifting to find a comfortable position around his middle. Zoro let himself have the grin because it was hidden by his helmet and no one would ever see.

And the idiot put up such a fuss.

-oOo-

Zoro looked back confusedly when Sanji tapped his shoulder excitedly, gesturing towards something on the street up ahead of him. Unable to see anything of interest and knowing that he wouldn't be able to hear Sanji over the wind, he pulled off to the side of the road, coasting to a stop so he could look back over his shoulder properly. Sanji had already yanked his helmet off of his head and was grinning hugely up at one of the buildings in front of them.

"Is that an aquarium?"

Zoro looked back to the sign above them where Sanji's one good eye was trained. That's what the sign said. "Yeah, I guess. So what?"

Sanji bounded off of the back of the bike, long legs flinging over the seat and onto the ground before Zoro had even noticed he'd moved and had the option to protest. "Let's go in!"

"Seriously, cook? Aren't we trying to get food?"

"We're trying," Sanji corrected, combing his fingers through his bangs to make sure that the fringe hid his eyes after being stuck under the helmet, "to learn the area outside the city. If I happen to cross some more things off of my list in the process, awesome, but I've never been in an aquarium before and I haven't been this close to the ocean since my old man and I got off the boat here."

Sanji took off for the front doors of the aquarium, so in a hurry that he forgot he was still holding the helmet and did a double take when he realized it was still in his hands, tripping over himself as he ground to a stop. Zoro chuckled and shifted to lean the bike straight up, balancing the weight better. Sanji turned back for the bike to put the helmet on the seat and paused again, noticing that Zoro hadn't moved an inch and didn't seem to be planning on it any time soon.

Sanji dropped his head back in annoyance before leveling Zoro with what the swordsman was expecting to be a glare, a show of authority and a threat to not make him onigiri for a month unless he came, but was instead closer to… a plea. That made Zoro stop.

Sanji gestured uselessly towards the building behind him, an antsy spring in his movements. He didn't seem to know how to convey that this was really important to him. Or even if he wanted to convey it to Zoro. Maybe he'd been hoping the swordsman would just do it so he wouldn't have to divulge this about himself.

Sanji made a sound at the back of his throat, exasperated and imploring, and Zoro found himself straightening unconsciously at the request. "Please, marimo? Come on, we won't take long—I haven't seen anything remotely close to the ocean in ten years!"

Zoro groaned and pulled the key from the ignition, sliding his helmet off his head and moving to clip it to the seat. He wasn't really annoyed, but Sanji was… cute like this. And it gave Zoro a funny twitter in his chest to know that he was able to make the idiot happy, even for something stupid like this.

"Fine," he grumbled. "Just not too long, ok? We'll never get back if we have to find our way home in the dark. I really don't want to have to owe Franky for coming to get me again."

"We won't!" Sanji assured him quickly, dashing over to add his own helmet to the seat. "I promise, we won't, I just want to see the fish. And the water will be nice—do you think they have one of those giant open tanks?!"

Zoro ducked his head, pretending to fiddle with the bike so he could hide the smirk that was pulling at his cheeks. Damn cook.

-oOo-

The main room of the aquarium was filled with columns that stretched ten feet above their heads to the ceiling. Each column was filled with plant life and fish from different corners of every ocean that reflected the dim blue lighting off in wisps that danced across the tiled floor. The floor itself was made to look like the ocean floor with fake shadows of turtles, sharks, and other creatures swimming about. The room looked like something out of an underwater futuristic society with hollow columns that acted as windows into the outside world, and Sanji had never looked so at home.

Zoro watched him drift from column to column, looking the insides up and down, taking in every fish, every plant, every life form, every change in lighting, all of the facts listed outside the columns, like he was a little kid and had just entered a marine life phase.

Sanji's hair had taken on an odd blue tinge along with everything else in the room, and his dark suit shone iridescent navy as the black reflected the blue. The only thing of him that hadn't changed was his eye, and Zoro's breath still caught slightly in his throat every time the cook turned around and Zoro could see clearly just how closely the color mimicked the blue of the ocean water.

Zoro stepped quietly up to Sanji's side, his hands firmly in his pockets, lips pinched tightly together. Even with everyone else drifting around them, the aquarium was so quiet that it felt like much more of an intimate moment than it was supposed to be. Sanji looked up from where he was crouched and face to face with a vibrantly striped fish, and the fish darted off at the sudden additional person. The cook didn't seem bothered by the loss and watched it go, turning to give Zoro a small smile before he realized what he was doing and ducked his head to look at another fish. Zoro scowled and turned his head sharply away, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets. But the way Sanji moved was too spellbinding, and soon his gaze was trained on the cook again, watching Sanji's cold exterior melt as he followed the fish around the column with his eyes.

"…What are you looking for?" he murmured. Speaking too loud felt like a sacrilegious act in here for some reason, but Zoro wasn't sure if that was because of Sanji or the place itself.

Sanji shrugged, patting himself down for a cigarette before he remembered where they were and ran his tongue over his lip where a cigarette normally sat instead. Zoro's mouth went dry at the sight and he chewed lightly on the end of his tongue, fighting the urge to mimic the movement.

"…It's stupid."

"…What?"

"…Just… looking for fish that aren't supposed to be in this tank. All of the columns are separated out by areas in the world; I thought if I could see a fish here that wasn't supposed to be here it might give me a clue to where All Blue is."

All Blue. Sanji had mentioned it once before—to reassure Zoro that his dream wasn't stupid when Zoro was explaining Mihawk and felt a particularly strong blush radiating up in his cheeks. He'd said that if achieving Zoro's dream was like winning the lottery, than achieving his was like finding water on Mercury. An ocean where all the life of the marine world congregated in a place that created a chef's heaven; Sanji had been set on finding it ever since he'd broken out of the facility the first time.

"…Has it really been ten years since you've seen the ocean?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing, I guess. Just seems like you'd want to get back there sooner; when you're in here you don't look like you'd want to live on land at all."

Sanji chuckled to himself at that and straightened back up, leaning away from the tank. Zoro watched his tongue flick out again over his lip—this subject always made him touchy and whenever it was brought up, it came hand in hand with a dose of nicotine, so the fact that he was still talking about it even without a cigarette had Zoro reverting to how he acted when Sanji first started talking: silent until Sanji needed a small, probing question, and then just hopeful that the cook would continue.

"…The first time I got out, Ze—err, my old man"—Zoro blinked, locking in on Sanji's slip, but the cook carried on like nothing had happened, though the tenseness in his shoulders gave away his uneasiness. He'd almost given away a substantial key to his origins.—"always talked about the ocean. He told me story after story of the huge blue waters that stretched so far you could sail for days and days and never hope to see either side of it, filled to the brim with every kind of nutrient and flavor to cook with. …For a kid that had just seen the light of day for the first time in years and had never really used his hands, the idea of something so… liberating and with so many opportunities to advance skill sets…"

Sanji's voice was strong even without the cigarette, and Zoro was in something of a trance, drifting closer and closer with every word out of Sanji's mouth.

"And then after I was taken back and my old man rescued me again, we got on his boat and left. It was too dangerous to stay on land anywhere close to the facility, so we left and we sailed for a year, feeding ships we passed, picking up cooking techniques wherever we docked, learning the life of sailors and sometimes pirates—who occasionally we had to fight to get off of our boat again but most just left after we fed them."

"Pirates?" Zoro snorted. He didn't realize how close he was to Sanji. Something about the lighting in the room, messing up his vision. Sanji rolled his eye.

"Yes, pirates. Not swash-buckling, plank-walking, beard-burning, arr-ye-matey pirates, but pirates in the sense of the technical definition. They just take hostages and hold up ships and cruise liners, with guns these days instead of scabbards. You're the only weirdo I know that still uses swords."

Zoro snorted again, a totally different tone in his voice. He put out an arm above his head, resting it against the glass and leaned his head on his forearm, turning slightly to keep watching Sanji, who had gotten close to the tank again to watch the fish. In the back of his mind, he registered that they were pretty close, but nothing in the foreground of his brain was signaling that it was a problem and the thought went unchecked. And from this closeness he could see everything of Sanji, something that felt so deep and primal—considering how protective the curly-cue was of his personal space—that moving away would have felt like chickening out right as you were about to put your hand on the head of a king cobra. Everything in him screamed "unforgivable" at the idea.

"He started telling me about the legends of All Blue then, and then laughed at me when I swore that I would find it. I knew the bastard wanted to find it too, but he's always been a little more realistic then me when it comes to what you can and can't do." Sanji chuckled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. "Apparently… I don't have a very good track record for doing what I'm supposed to."

"I'll say." Zoro's voice sounded heavy, and he tracked the flinch in the sharp shoulders as the cook registered Zoro's breath on his cheek. All in the span of half a second, Sanji's eyes widened slightly and then closed back down again; his shoulder's tensed further and then relaxed completely, unintentionally straightening him out; his toes shifted like his first reaction to the invasion of space was to lash out, but stilled after that; and his head drifted forward and came to rest against the glass of the tank next to Zoro's. Zoro's breath left him in a rush—the cook was completely, utterly, entirely relaxed for the first time since he'd woken up in the hospital here.

Sanji was still and Zoro waited patiently, pattering heart rate taking off like maraca when after a good, solid minute, Sanji's head started drifting to the side, the vibrant blue eye raising slowly to meet Zoro's deep green ones. The cook was turning towards him—!

"Excuse me, sirs."

Sanji was gone so fast that neither Zoro nor the guard standing behind them saw him move. Zoro did see the guard jump at the sudden appearance of Sanji's head level with his own as the cook snapped up straighter than a ruler, but he recovered pretty quickly despite the scare. Sanji's good eye was as wide and bright as the tanks, his mouth closed tightly, and Zoro could see every faze of comprehension wash over him all too clearly. Reality was kicking in again, and the shockwave was knocking Sanji off of his feet.

"You can't lean against the glass."

"Sorry," Sanji rasped, already gone and halfway across the room toward the glowing "Exit" sign over the gift shop doors. Zoro's lips pinched tighter together, and his dark glower found the guard before he could remember to keep from making a scene. He'd be fucked if he got arrested here, more so because Law and Kid would kill him than anything else, but it would still create a pool of shit to wade through. The guard, a poor kid who was probably just trying to pay for school, jumped for a second time at the glare but held his ground.

"Sir—"

"I heard you," Zoro growled, pulling away from the tank to follow after Sanji. He just hoped the cook got over himself and slowed down before Zoro lost him and any chance of using daylight to find their way back to the city was shot.

-oOo-

The air back on the bike was thick, despite how fast Zoro was going in his annoyance. It was so awkward between the two that Sanji didn't even seem perturbed by the speed as they careened through the streets. The cook had had a bare minimum hold on his waist since leaving the aquarium and didn't seem to be game to grab ahold any time soon. Zoro was grinding his teeth, listening to the grating noises in his mouth and trying to concentrate on that to keep from getting more annoyed.

Stupid fucking idiot and his stupid fucking job and his stupid fucking timing and fuck the stupid fucking aquarium and—even though the aquarium had been what opened Sanji up so much in the first place—fuck the stupid fucking—

Blue and white lights flashed suddenly out of the corner of Zoro's eye and he sucked in an annoyed breath, bike wobbling as the cook whipped back around to see the police car trailing them. Zoro's eyes flicked down to the speedometer and he swore loudly, though it was drowned out by the wind.

Zoro closed his eyes for a second and counted backwards from ten, trying to keep from grinding a hole right through one of his teeth, blowing out the breath he'd been holding when he reached one.

Fine. Whatever.

This license better hold up in their system or I will fucking kill Usopp—

Zoro blinked as he felt the pressure tighten around his middle and something warm lean into his back, looking back over his shoulder to see that Sanji hand anchored himself to him. A quick glance down told him that the cook had locked his impossibly strong legs around the bike too.

…Well, the cook must have been pretty used to running too.

"Driver, pull over and turn your engine off."

Zoro felt a grin split his face and leaned down into the bike, Sanji moving with him to meld to the bike's form, and Zoro yanked his fingers off of the handbrake and gunned the engine.

He tore off down the street, siren wailing to life behind them as the cruiser began its pursuit. Sanji's grip tightening around him only made Zoro's heart rate race in his chest and he revved again, whipping around a corner into a residential area so fast they came close to touching the ground.

Zoro felt Sanji shift behind him, moving to look back at the cruiser as it fishtailed down the street after them. Sanji moved again, looking around them and squeezed Zoro's left shoulder hard just before the next intersection, just like Robin did. Zoro was grinning like a hyena now and turned, tires squealing against the pavement as they raced around the corner. Zoro swung the bike like a pendulum, barely straight up and down from the last corner before Sanji squeezed one of his shoulders and he tore around another, the sounds of the police cruiser getting farther and farther away the faster they turned.

A car rolled around a blind corner and through a stop sign suddenly in front of him and Zoro sucked in a breath, yanking the bike to the left. His heart jumped into his throat as the grip on his shoulders was suddenly gone and one horrible image of Sanji's head smashing open against the ground flashed through his head. He tightened his grip on the handle bars, whipping back around to see what he'd done when the cook's body slammed back into him from behind, gripping him so tight that Zoro was having trouble breathing, and Zoro whirled back around barely in time to see that the car was still coming and swerved sharply, the car's horn blaring as they slammed on their brakes, and Zoro took off down another street.

His heart was like a jackhammer in his chest, and he could feel Sanji's hand shaking slightly against him, the cook's helmet pressed painfully into his shoulder blades. Sanji wasn't directing him anymore. Zoro gritted his teeth and turned off onto another side street and around an orange fence marked "construction", drifting slowly to a stop. He had to pull over.

The bike rumbled gently as he rolled it down past where the pavement ended and dirt surrounded where the house going up. He pulled it into a nook in the foundation where the owners must have been saving room for an addition later and killed the engine and turned his lights off, even though it was still evening and no one would have seen them driving by. He pulled his helmet off, letting Sanji keep his anaconda grip around his ribs as they listened, waiting, and a minute later the siren came into range, growing closer and closer before the cruiser sped past the house and off down the road. Zoro relaxed after that and rested his helmet on the handlebars, sliding the keys into his jacket pocket before he craned around to look down at Sanji. The cook had stopped shaking, if nothing else, and Zoro was going to take that as a plus.

"That," Sanji breathed, letting go of Zoro to lean back and yank his helmet off, "is why I don't ride these fucking things."

Zoro said nothing, heart still thudding heavily now that he didn't have to concentrate on driving and that image of Sanji's blood splattering across the road could play in a torturous loop in his mind. Sanji swung his long legs over the back of the bike and walked away slowly, patting himself down for his pack of cigarettes and lighter. The cook found a comfortable place to stand next to the foundation and lit up, breathing in deeply as he looked over the open frame of the two-story house.

Zoro shifted uncomfortably, trying to find some un-assholish way to breach the fact that they had to get back on the bike to go home. Maybe he should just let Sanji finish the cigarette. Or a couple. Or—

"Hey!" he called as Sanji walked up the steps suddenly and disappeared through the frame where the front door would have been in the half-finished house. Zoro scrambled off of the bike and dashed up the stairs after the cook, groaning when Sanji was nowhere in sight even in such an open building.

"Cook!" Zoro crossed the threshold, leaning around what would have been corners to find the cook until he came to a larger room lined with metal piping and wires that splayed across the walls and ceiling. Sanji was standing in the middle of the wood shavings, surveying the layout with the cigarette held casually in his fingers.

"I'm thinking granite counter tops," he gestured vaguely and Zoro blinked, glancing around and trying to find where he was looking. "Grey would work best with the cherry cabinets. But we'd have to do tile flooring, anything else would look tacky against the dark wood."

"…Huh?"

"And then over there," the cook waved his hand toward the far wall where a hole was cut out for glass double sliding doors, "some really nice dark golden curtains. Floor length."

"You high, cook?"

Zoro watched the cook as he meandered across the room, taking in the walls, the floors, the doorways to other rooms—everything he was imagining there to be around them. Zoro looked around again, just incase he was the one who'd almost died on the bike and was just hallucinating now.

"I want ceiling-high shelves here," Sanji stuck the cigarette in his mouth so he could use both hands now. "The same color as the cabinets, and with enough space for big pots and my cookbooks."

Zoro sighed to himself, scratching at his scalp uneasily before he said, "…Only… if the colors work with the tile behind the sink. You know, on the wall."

Sanji looked back over his shoulder, hands still out to gesture to where the shelves would have been, to blink at Zoro curiously and Zoro shrugged, scratching the back of his head. He wasn't good at this sort of thing. "You know… it'll look really weird otherwise."

Sanji was still for another moment, and then slowly cracked a smile before he turned back to the far wall and nodded. "Yeah, you're right. But I think the grey countertops will match the blue tile, so we don't have to worry about that. We'll have to be careful about the color for the floor though, it's easy to pick clashing colors if you don't want to use the same colors."

"Grey might be nice for tiles."

"It's not too much with the counters?"

"…I don't know, I don't think so. I'm not really good with colors; you're better with that."

Sanji wasn't looking at him, but Zoro could see from how relaxed his shoulders were that this was calming him down and guessed that from the way the cook had suddenly moved to grab his cigarette that he was hiding a smile. Zoro let himself have the victorious smirk, especially after such an awkward start to their ride home. The sky was growing darker outside, but Zoro had no desire to leave yet. Maybe getting lost with Sanji would be fun; they'd make it home sooner or later.

Zoro found his way to Sanji's side and they drifted into the next room, Sanji pointing out a spot on the wall between two large windows.

"Great-Grandfather Banban's portrait could go there; it'd go nicely with a suede couch."

Zoro shook his head. "We better get a leather couch, or Odama will get fur all over it. I'm not getting rid of that cat; he's too old, no one will take him so we'd have to put him down."

That made Sanji laugh. "Why is that thing still alive anyways? It's the crotchetiest fifteen-year-old cat in existence. All it does it eat and scratch the furniture and shit in the tub when we go away for a couple of days. But I don't know about the leather. Zenny, Moore, and Minchey always chase it everywhere, and dog claws are much bigger than cats'. If they jump up on the leather it'll tear really easily."

"I don't want wool."

"Gross. No. That would be the worst for the summers around here; all that heat. I guess we could do textured cotton, something that we could vacuum so Odama could sit his touchy ass wherever he wanted and it wouldn't matter."

Zoro grinned at that, nodding. "You think we could get a surround sound system in here?"

Sanji thought for a moment, reaching up to take his cigarette from his lips. "I guess I could put in some overtime at the office. The pharmaceutical companies have been sending in more samples anyways and they want me to advertise to patients that come in for their prescriptions."

"Odama will be pissed that you're not here."

"Maybe he'll choke from anger."

Zoro faked a gasp and leaned over to knock into Sanji with his shoulder, making the cook stumble slightly. "I've had that cat since college!"

Sanji grinned evilly and blew smoke in Zoro's direction. "Whatever. I'm not paying for the damn thing's meds."

"You always liked dogs better."

"Hell yeah I do, why do you think we have three colossal Irish Wolfhounds? We're going to have no room to live here ourselves with them."

"And you're expecting me to take care of them while you're at work, I guess."

"Well yeah, you run a small gallery with some artists no one knows about yet and openings are only at night. You have enough time for them."

Zoro snorted. "A gallery, huh? What type of art?"

"Whoever isn't selling enough to be desperate enough to ask you."

"So you're the breadwinner of the house."

"Well I know stress gets to you, so you just relax at home." He gave Zoro a shit-eating grin. "I'll take care of the rest."

"Whatever, cook. Let's just see how your colossal Irish Wolfhounds get by without me taking care of them when I leave because I'm not appreciated."

"You always do this. You're such a diva."

-oOo-

After getting home, Sanji had gone up for a desperately needed shower following such a long day of being whipped through the air like a bullet. He was pretty sure for a while there that his hair would never be affected by gravity again; the wind had done too much damage.

He padded down the stairs of the apartment, rubbing a towel over his dripping hair and heading for the kitchen. The clock that was visible through a peephole in the towel around his head said 11:26. Sanji groaned. They hadn't even had dinner yet. Next time they went out, he was investing in enough maps to make up an atlas. The idiot swordsman couldn't have found his way home if kidnappers called and told him he had three days to get to his apartment before they killed one of his friends.

Sanji chuckled to himself, imagining the brute pleading with them to let him say goodbye over the phone because he might not make it and did a double take after his gaze passed over the kitchen. Sitting on the far counter was a small fishbowl with deep blue sand and a couple of plants. Four fish swam lazily through the water, one white with green splotches like a cow, one yellow with flowing fins that resembled tentacles, one grey with a white underbelly and needle-like teeth, and one that looked something like a tiny whale. Upon further inspection, Sanji could see that none of the fish should have been in the same bowl at all, as they were all found in different corners of the ocean.

Sanji pulled back and ran his finger over the top of the glass, where the mini-cow swam over and nibbled at the top of the water like he'd put food in. Sanji, spying the container of fish food next to the bowl and telling himself he'd start a feeding schedule tomorrow—Zoro wasn't stupid enough not to feed them—dropped a couple of flakes in the water and watched contently as the four fish darted around, swallowing flecks of food as they floated about.

…Maybe he'd make Zoro's favorite tonight, even though it was so late.

A smirk found its way onto Sanji's face and he pushed the towel on his head back to his shoulders, leaving the fish for the moment and heading towards the fridge.

And he even went out and got back before I got out of the shower. Maybe he hired someone to help him find his way. Where is he anyways? Is he sleeping? He better not be, he hasn't had dinner.

Sanji ignored the tiny part of him that hoped Zoro wasn't asleep. Evenings were always the best time to talk to the swordsman, he was most relaxed after a good workout at the end of the day and would say a lot more unprovoked.

And the moment today at the aquarium was filed under "Fuck This Shit" and shoved into a dark corner of Sanji's mind. He cooked better when he wasn't focused on stupid shit like that.

-oOo-