Zoro's not usually one to worry about what to wear one a date. For a start he doesn't go on a lot of them as most people find the 'not gonna have sex with you' thing a deal breaker. Zoro's okay with that really because it saves him a lot of time when the assholes screen themselves out of his dating pool. Either way it's usually pretty easy, nice jeans, nice shirt, job done. But he's not really sure what the right clothes for a date to another planet are. He goes back and forth on it and figures that he'll dress as if he was going to go out doing fieldwork or collecting herbal supplies like his first year botany teacher always insisted on even though they could just buy what they needed at the supply store.
When he summons Sanji he's wearing a kind of nice shirt, though it's not the one he'd put on before as he'd managed to get ketchup on that one when he'd eaten his dinner. Unmarred by his dinner are his black trousers and thick boots. Sanji shows up looking flawless but in fairness his clothes are magical and he's an incubus, so it's not really fair to compare them.
"I think I've found the perfect planet. It's not even radioactive or anything!" Sanji says gleefully, his red spade-tipped tail lashing through the air happily.
"How thoughtful." Zoro says only half sarcastic.
"Do you want to go now or is there anything else you want to take?" Sanji asks him, shoving his hands in his pockets. Zoro's not entirely sure how Sanji is managing that because those black skinny jeans may as well be painted on, though Zoro supposes that if you can magically put clothes off and on then there's no need to worry about being able to get into or out of them.
"I've got everything." Zoro answers. He has. Out of habit he had picked up his house keys earlier but Sanji is hardly going to take him across space and then back again but then not put him in his own home is he? He's got a bag with water in and a jacket in case it's raining and little food in case they're wandering for ages and get hungry, but he doesn't need anything else. In honesty he could probably go without that stuff too, but it's better to have things and not need them than need them and not have them. He is of course carrying his sword at his waist and if Sanji disapproves of the weapon then he doesn't say anything.
"Let's go then!" Sanji says brightly and his broad smile shows off his too sharp teeth. He's holding his hand out for Zoro to take and for a moment Zoro just looks at him. Sanji seems innocent enough, if unreasonably pretty. If it wasn't for the horns and tail Zoro could mistake Sanji for human. He's not human though, he's a demon, an incubus.
"Just to be clear," Zoro says slowly, reaching out but not taking Sanji's hand just yet.
"If I take your hand you're going to pull me into a hell dimension, then out again to an alien world that I have no means of getting back from on my own or even really surviving on alone. And I'm trusting you to not leave me in hell or stranded on another world and to instead take me back home safe and sound. Is that about right?" He asks, looking from Sanji's hand to him.
"Don't you trust me?" Sanji says, sounding slightly hurt and his hand lowers a little.
"Apparently I do trust you." Zoro answers with a shrug and takes Sanji's hand. Sanji's expression brightens considerably.
"And don't worry, we're only gonna be in the hell dimension for half a second, I just need to be there to pop out and back out onto this new planet." Sanji says dramatically.
His hand tightens on Zoro's and with a flash of fire Zoro feels himself fall through the floor in his home. Around him is a flash of bright red and then before he can see anything in it, it's gone. After that he's met with an entirely new landscape.
He's standing on a rock in the middle of what appears to be a field, not the agricultural kind but a natural one. The plants that make up the field are for the most part red, red like maple leaves in autumn. Here and there are small flowers of purple and yellow, they look unfamiliar to him but they could still reasonably belong on Earth. Convergent evolution is a wonderful thing. Beyond the field are trees that are tall and mighty, he has no idea how old they must be but without humans there to cut them down they are probably a lot older than most on Earth are. Their bark is black and the thick looking leaves are a deep red as well.
"What's that sound?" Zoro asks, his hand flying to his sword. There is a humming sound, something lower than a bee's buzz but far louder.
"Calm down, it's the sound of the most highly evolved creature on the planet. It's not going to hurt you, I did my research." Sanji says with a dramatic sigh.
The blond holds a hand up to silence Zoro and the sound grows closer and louder. The creatures are flying low, the sound comes from the beating of their wings as they lazily come out of the forest. They bumble over the red grass-like plants and pause here and there. Zoro crouches down to look at one up close as it flies over and settles on a plant near him. If he had to describe it he'd say that it's somewhere between a moth, a hummingbird and a lobster. It's articulated in the same way as a lobster but has relatively fast flapping wings like a hummingbird all down its sides. When they land to do whatever it is that they're doing on a plant he can see that the wings are thin and fluttering with dusty patterns on like a moth.
"There's a team of demon nerds that go from planet to planet noting things down about them, what the atmosphere is like if there is one, if there's any life and if so what it's like. There are a fair few planets with life on like this, but nothing like Earth." Sanji says softly, crouching down next to Zoro as they both look at the creature.
"Do you know how amazing this is?" Zoro asks in wonder as he looks at Sanji.
"Human scientists are still trying to find planets that have so much as single celled life on it, let alone something as incredible as this!" He says gesturing at the creature, the plants, and the trees as well as the rest of it.
"Well, how does it feel to be the first human to see an alien then?" Sanji asks him with a sparkle of amusement in his visible blue eye.
"Incredible." Zoro answers honestly and peers at the creature again. The little green flying lobster-hummingbird-moth thing flaps its tail lazily. It's not afraid of him at all, but then why would it be? No creature like him has ever harmed a single one of them. He intends to keep it that way. As he shifts his balance he feels his phone in his pocket and slowly takes it out. He opens the camera on it and pauses, looking across at Sanji.
"Hey, go ahead. Just be careful where you keep those I guess. I suppose you could say it was an illusion spell or something if someone asked you about it." Sanji says thoughtfully.
Zoro takes a picture of the creature and then the field surrounding it.
"Come on." Sanji says, jumping off of their rock and into the red grass, he holds out his hand for Zoro again and he hesitates once more. This land is completely unspoilt by humans but… well… he supposes that he did come here to explore and it's not like he's going to screw up the whole planet on his own is he?
He leaps off and follows Sanji through the field. He's careful not to touch anything with his bare hands if he can avoid it, even though he really wants to touch everything. Plenty of teachers from several disciplines, botany included, have drummed into him the rule of 'if you don't know what it is, don't grab it'. It's good advice here at least. Everything on this planet is literally alien to him and it's a good idea to start slowly when it comes to touching things to make sure that his body doesn't react badly, no matter how badly he wants to throw himself into the red grass and roll down a hill on it like a kid.
"How do you know about this place?" He asks, following after Sanji.
"I told you, we go looking for worlds that-" Sanji starts to say.
"No, no, I mean how do you know about this place? You're an incubus and unless you're boning those things I can't see a reason for you to have known about this place." Zoro points out as they go into the forest and start walking.
"Oh. I got my hands on some star charts and information about the planets, atmosphere and stuff like that. Since you said that you wanted to go somewhere I've been trying to find a place. I've been checking them to make sure they're okay, there was this amazing one where all the trees glowed at night!" Sanji says wistfully.
"Why did you choose this one then?" Zoro asks curiously and touches the trunk of a tree before he remembers that he's not supposed to be doing that. It feels like regular tree bark to be honest, still he takes his hand back and wipes it quickly on his trousers and resolves to keep an eye on his skin just to be sure.
"Well, luckily for you I checked out that glowing planet and I don't know if it was because it was night but that planet was radioactive, even though the chart said it wasn't. You don't even want to know what I had to do to get my hands on a Geiger counter, though you're lucky I did." Sanji tells him.
Zoro narrows his eyes and tries to work out if he does want to know what it is that Sanji had to do.
"What… did you have to do?" He asks warily and Sanji pauses and looks around at him.
Zoro is worried that Sanji put himself through something awful and unpleasant but Sanji doesn't look traumatised, in fact Zoro's worried expression seems to amuse him as he gives him a sharp toothed smile.
"No, I mean that you don't want to know. I can shapeshift and I don't mean glamour I mean actual shapeshifting. I can't do anything huge and I can't do it for long but uh… humans don't have enough limbs or bend in the right places to do that. So you don't want to know, it'd probably creep you out." Sanji says with a shake of his head.
The blond pauses to look at him though, tilting his head thoughtfully.
"Don't give me that look like your sizing up what parts of me you could remove or add to so that you could do whatever it was that you were doing. I was just concerned about you was all." Zoro grumbles and moves past the demon.
"You were worried about me?" Sanji asks in a small voice and when Zoro turns around Sanji is looking up at him in wonder.
"I was worried that you'd gone and put yourself through something you didn't want just to do something that'd make me happy. I don't want you to do that." Zoro tells him and Sanji's eyes go wide.
"I didn't, it was fine. I'm not used to humans being… I didn't expect that you'd be concerned." Sanji says quietly.
"I like you, you idiot. Why wouldn't I be concerned?" Zoro tells him. He's caught between feeling awkward and flattered that Sanji is so touched at him being concerned and on the other hand being really angry that this is apparently rare enough that Sanji didn't even consider that he might feel that for him.
He's standing on the hillside that they're climbing up, looking down at Sanji who is a few paces behind him. The demon seems to be trying to get his mouth around an answer, but it's taking a few moments.
"Can I kiss you?" Sanji asks in a quiet voice.
Zoro doesn't even tell him yes, he just comes closer and kisses him. The demon, the genuine incubus that has been seducing people out of their souls for a living clings close to him like a kiss is still something so unbelievably intimate. From the star struck look on Sanji's face afterwards it seems like that is exactly how it feels to him.
"Look," Zoro mutters as the kiss ends. "I don't usually say shit like this because I'm not good at sappy sentiments and I don't see the point when someone knows but… I guess I need to say it."
He looks slightly down at Sanji and sighs, this is going to feel embarrassing, it's like he can feel the heat of his embarrassment radiating backwards through time it's so bad.
"I like you and I care about you, I don't want you getting hurt just to do something for me. I know that this is pretty new and all but I still don't want you having to do things you really don't want to for my benefit. Or at all actually." Zoro says uncomfortably. This kind of thing really isn't his forte.
"Okay, I really need you to kiss me again after that." Sanji says firmly and leans up for it, essentially kissing Zoro before he gets the chance to do it first.
When Sanji pulls back Zoro can see that Sanji's hair is more unruly than it was before and not because Zoro has somehow messed it up. Sanji's hair is curling in different directions, not as wildly as he knows that his hair does naturally but it's a lot closer and it's darker too. Sanji is closer to how he really looks.
"Come on, let's get moving." Zoro tells him and pulls him onward.
The pair of them spend the next three hours wandering around the planet and heading up a very large rocky hillside that they had decided on. They talk about a whole bunch of things, films, music, famous people who have sold their souls, but Zoro avoids the topic of Sanji's day. Usually on a date you'd ask how the other person's day was but Zoro doesn't really want to hear if Sanji was doing his incubus thing and if so how many souls he took. Similarly when Sanji asks about his day Zoro sidesteps with vague answers about his classes, he skips entirely over his as yet unwritten and now late essay on how to kill an incubus. He's not going to write it at all, that's the decision that he's come to.
"Did you ever do that thing with the wards? On your friend I mean." Sanji asks just as Zoro had been moving the topic away from school.
"Oh, Usopp? Yeah, I managed to set up a ward that would put off selkies, only I set it a little too wide and it irritated my friend Robin, she's part siren. So… I passed but now Robin is pissed at me. I still don't know why it caught her, sirens aren't sea creatures even if lots of people make that mistake." Zoro answers and scrambles up the steep incline to the next larger chunk of rock sticking out of the slope.
"Maybe she has something else in her too." Sanji suggests and leaps upwards, catching the rock and then jumping again up to the top.
"Zoro get up here, the view is great and the sun is about to set!" Sanji says, his voice floating down to Zoro.
"Well the view sucks from down here." Zoro mutters irritably and claws his way up a little higher before grasping the flat rock surface at the top and hauling himself up with less grace that he would admit to.
From where he's stood right now he can see for miles and miles around and he can appreciate just how high they climbed. He settles down on the edge of their rocky outcrop and looks around at this alien place in the fading light of its sun.
He can see the tall trees with their thick and stiff red leaves, he's seen them up close and they're almost like the thick leaves of some cacti. There are other kinds of trees too with different shapes and foliage that he hadn't seen on the way up. In the distance he can see a winding river, it does appear to be water but he'd be very interested to test it and see just what it is. He wonders if that river leads to an ocean somewhere and what that ocean would be like and just what little creatures might live in it are. Sanji said that the lobster-hummingbird-moth things were the highest evolved kind of life here but he also said that they mislabelled a planet as not radioactive when it was so there's a possibility that there is something big and cool and dangerous out there and if there is he so badly wants to find it. There are so many things that he could do here, places to explore, things to test and discover. He could spend a whole lifetime doing that here and barely scratch the surface.
"I wonder if humans will ever discover this planet." He says aloud as the thought occurs to him.
"They might see it but they'll never come here, not unless humans start being able to travel like we do. Even if a rocket left Earth right now to get here it wouldn't get here before that sun ate this planet and then died as well." Sanji tells him and sits down beside him.
"No other human is ever going to come here. This planet is yours as far as I'm concerned." Sanji says and pulls one knee up to his chest and rests his arms on it as he too looks out at the landscape.
Zoro stares at him. He is… the only human who'll ever come here. Sanji is probably the only demon that will as well, if demons are mapping out the universe bit by bit then they're likely not coming back. The universe is huge and if they plan on doing it then they're not going to come back just for fun are they? So this whole world…
"You're giving me a planet?" He asks in wonder.
"Well, you can't take it home with you or anything, but yeah. I'll take you here whenever you like." The demon answers casually, as if it's no big deal and as if Zoro had just asked him to drive him just around the corner.
Holy shit.
He shoves Sanji back from the edge of the rocky ledge and climbs into his lap and kisses Sanji hard and fiercely. Sanji makes a surprised noise and his hands catch hold of Zoro's hips out of reflex.
"For the record, giving a guy a planet definitely beats flowers or chocolate or… I don't know, a fucking watch or something. That is an impossibly big thing to give someone." He says and kisses Sanji again. Sanji looks pleased if a little confused. He looks like Zoro thinks that he would if Sanji reacted with overwhelming glee at being given an umbrella or something equally trivial.
"I'm glad you like it." Sanji says happily and Zoro climbs off of his lap and sprawls on the rock, leaning up on his elbows to look at Sanji.
"I love it." Zoro answers honestly. He's not usually one for effusive praise but then he's not usually gifted with entire planets!
"Hey, the sun's setting." Sanji notes and Zoro looks over and sees the moment when the sun dips below the horizon.
"What's the name of this planet?" Zoro asks, blinking away the after images of the sun from his eyes.
"Oh… it doesn't have one really. It's got a number but that's just so they know where it is, it's more of an address than it is a name. You should name it!" Sanji tells him cheerfully.
Zoro thinks for a little bit. Planets are usually named after gods but naming something after a god is both something that's boring for having been done before but also a bad idea. Naming something is important and sticking the name of a god on something can be a big magnet for attention. So he either comes up with some nonsense name or names it after something that he doesn't mind being aware of this place.
"I'm going to call it Planet Sanji. Because it's weird and I like it, just like the person who gave it to me." Zoro says brightly and Sanji squints at him. Zoro can see him weighing up whether he's more annoyed or flattered. He figures that he breaks even because Sanji doesn't melt into flutters but nor does he try and kick him.
The two of them sit in a comfortable kind of silence as the night sky darkens slowly. He sees the spade tip of Sanji's tail twitch now and then on the flat rock near Zoro. On impulse he reaches out and touches it carefully. It doesn't move or jerk away and Sanji doesn't say anything so he supposes that at the very least it doesn't hurt. The skin on it feels kind of textured like a fingerprint and the thin tail that it's attached to feels smoother, more like the inside of Zoro's palm. He looks up and sees Sanji watching him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to- I shouldn't have-" Zoro apologises hastily but Sanji just shrugs.
"I don't mind. You're not trying to pull on it so it's fine." Sanji tells him easily.
"People try to pull your tail? But surely it's connected to your spine, that'd hurt!" He exclaims, sitting up.
"They do, it is and it does." Sanji mutters unhappily.
"That's really shit." Zoro offers his condolences. That would feel like someone trying to pull your head off of your neck. He guesses that people Sanji has sex with assume that because it's there then they can just get their hands all over it and do whatever they like to it. He hopes that Sanji's never been injured that way.
"I guess it's not a mistake people make twice, huh?" He says slowly, a grin creeping onto his face. He should probably really disapprove of Sanji stealing souls but he's not really stealing them. He's taking them. Incubi can't do anything to anyone if they haven't consented first. Obviously they don't really play fair about it but still, they agreed. Besides, people who hurt Sanji and sold their souls to him don't really make Zoro feel sympathetic towards them.
"Definitely not a mistake they make twice." Sanji agrees with a sinister smile. Sanji's tail wraps around Zoro's wrist and he keeps his hand still and just appreciates the touch.
Zoro looks up at the sky, now that the sun has fully set and without any light from it or light pollution from people he can see what feels like all of space. He can see the distant hues of what must be the galaxy that Planet Sanji is in. He can see hundreds of thousands of pinpricks of light from far away stars and he thinks that he can see another planet out there, it looks a little bigger and brighter than the other stars in the sky, so it might be one.
His eyes wander over every inch of the sky, there's so much to take in up there and he can't stop his mind from reeling with the beauty of it. Even if these stars can be seen from Earth, and from what Sanji said it's possible that they might not be, no one else will ever see these constellations from this angle. It's just him and Sanji.
He feels the prickle of awareness at being watched and when he looks over at Sanji in the faint starlight he sees Sanji abruptly jerk his head away and look upwards as if he had been watching the stars all along. Planetary gift or not Sanji isn't quite as smooth as he thinks he is. Zoro decides to be nice and not say that.
"I wonder which way Earth is." He says quietly, as if somehow speaking loudly might disturb the beauty of the sky above them.
"You're the one with the magic finding spell on your hand." Sanji points out and Zoro slowly raises his arm. The hand in question is attached to the wrist with Sanji's tail wrapped around it. The demon's tail uncoils and slides over Zoro's skin in a way that reminds him of a small and delicate snake. He turns his hand so it runs over his fingers and Zoro tries to imagine what that feels like for Sanji.
He holds his palm up flat before him and thinks of home, he thinks of wanting to go there. A green arrow appears above his palm, floating in the air. It tilts and points upward but slightly off to the right. He holds his hand up to his face and tries to get right behind the arrow so he's looking right at where Earth is.
"Right there." He says.
"Do you want to go back?" Sanji asks him.
"I think I want to stay here a little longer with you, unless you need to go?" He says, a bit concerned that Sanji might be wanting to leave.
"I think I can stand to stay with you a while longer." Sanji answers airily. Zoro laughs and falls backwards so that he can stare up at the starry sky a little more comfortably.
"You're pretty good at this romance stuff for someone who's never done it before." He tells the demon with an amused laugh.
"Really?" Sanji asks and Zoro can hear the hope in the blonde's voice. Zoro laughs, making his body move slightly against the flat rocks of his planet and yet Sanji asks if he's really any good at this.
"Yeah, really, you curly browed idiot demon. Now come stare at the stars already or do you need your glasses?" Zoro sighs and tugs Sanji backwards by his fancy looking shirt.
"I can see distance just fine, moss-faced idiot." Sanji tells him primly and settles down gracefully at Zoro's side.
Yeah, Sanji is definitely good at this dating thing.