A/N:

So, like, I was NOT planning to be gone this long. Truly. We have been here before and I apologize once again.

I come bearing chaos and, uh, fruit salad.

The absolute biggest shout-out goes to CC for co-writing quite a few sections of this with me because sometimes we just need a dash of insanity to get anywhere. Thank you for always brainstorming and indulging my crazy!

Anyway, lots of gay stuff! I hope y'all enjoy 3


"Honestly, I think cars are scared of everything. We just can't hear them scream through the mufflers."

Franky raises a hand, easing into Chopper's space in an attempt to remove the lollipop from his mouth. "All I'm hearing is that Dum-Dum number thirty-two is where we draw the line, babe."

Chopper snaps his teeth shut with a growl. "Let me fucking live!"

At least, that's what it sounds like he says as Franky yanks harder.

"Live without diabetes, please."

Wiggling to escape, Chopper kicks his discarded pile of white, gnarled sticks. They scatter across the floor, likely spreading hours-old saliva on the carpet. Hancock eeps and sweeps her legs onto Robin's lap to avoid them.

The book gets sandwiched between leg and chest with a soft thwap. Reading interrupted, Robin raises an unimpressed eyebrow. Hancock raises one back, though Zoro can tell she's nervous by the twitch of her lip— which, how the fuck could he possibly know that, what?

"Alright, then," Robin sighs.

She pulls the limbs closer to her stomach for a more comfortable fit, folding book-heavy arms over Hanock's shins like a makeshift seatbelt across her lap. She doesn't look up even as the other girl balks at her.

Zoro snorts and returns to looking out the window, glad that Sanji is passed out and missed that interaction. At least his tension with Nami seems to have been mostly resolved by the time they returned with their treasure chest of gnomes.

Boredom is not their friend on a long drive to—

Huh.

Zoro has no fucking idea. Hancock's town? Have they not passed that by now, or did the supernatural detours slow them down? Is that drop off still in the cards?

The thought should not feel disappointing.

In the driver's seat, Usopp glances over his shoulder and wordlessly screams at the sight of the lollipop-stick mess.

Nami forces his head back in the direction necessary to avoid crashing the van. "So what you're saying is we need a muffler for Usopp."

Ace raises a finger. "I just want it noted that I have always favored muzzling Usopp."

Luffy blinks at him. "Muffling."

"That's what I said."

Mark that down as the one thing he wishes Sanji did hear if only to see him combust. Still, he's not touching it with a twenty-foot pole made of lollipop sticks. "Hey, so, what the hell are we doing today?"

Luffy beats his palms on his knees in a drumroll. "Gnome date! Dating gnomes!"

Franky heaves a giant woven basket from under his seat. He opens one flap and tugs a red hat just far enough for manic blue eyes to stare over the rim.

Nami returns the vacant gaze with suspicion. "Why are we keeping the gnomes in picnic baskets?"

"I didn't want to take them from their natural habitat."

She waits, either for an epiphany or a shred of common sense, both of which are equally unlikely. "...alright, I've got nothing."

"Picnic baskets are the most common kind of treasure chest. Just ask Luffy."

"It's true!"

Zoro is disgusted by how much warmth the interaction gives him.

"Huh. I've never had a picnic," comes out of his mouth before he realizes how idiotic and pathetic that sounds.

Half of the van turns to him in scandalized shock while the other treats it like a crime against humanity, giving him wobbly pity-stares.

It shocks him that Sanji is the latter, and Hancock is somewhere in the middle with a sheepish smile.

Nami sighs. "I wasn't going to entertain this, but…" She sighs again, but can't mind that much otherwise she wouldn't offer. "Someone find the nearest grocery store and park?"

"On it!" Ace salutes her, already tapping away at his phone.

Sanji jabs a finger into Zoro's face, making him flinch back. "Prepare for the best first picnic of your life, Marimo."

He slaps his hand away and, oh, right. It's Sanji and food. He's weird as shit about just feeding Susan, so of course he's being weird about this. "I just want you to know that this is the most threatened I've ever felt by you."

"Not even when you thought I poisoned your cupcake?"

"It looked too gay for me to be truly worried."

Sanji's face does something complicated that Zoro can't read for the life of him, but he shakes it off easily enough. "All I'm hearing is that I subconsciously understand your shitty taste. Which means this will be the best picnic of your life."

"Heaven in a box!" Luffy shouts with a grin so wide it looks like it hurts. "Sanji's food really is the best."

Rather than smirking as he expected, Sanji's cheeks darken, his hand twitching. It eases toward the pocket where he keeps his cigarettes, but he darts a glance at Usopp and ruffles through his hair instead.

"It'll have to be pretty simple because we don't have a mobile kitchen here, you know?"

"Still the best." Luffy shrugs.

The rest of the van chimes in with some form of agreement and it's always good and you always make it work.

Sanji's shoulders hike toward his ears. "Sappy little shits," he mutters, head turned resolutely toward the window.

Zoro is so close to making fun of him for it but the inability to take a compliment is painfully familiar, so he just— doesn't.

It's probably better left alone.


Sanji lays out enough sandwich-building shit on the park's table to feed a small village. Or perhaps a circus crew, wherein Merry headlines as the obligatory clown car.

They all shuffle around the splintery thing, armed with paper plates as Ace and Robin set up the picnic blanket nearby. They place the gnome basket dead center, Furby delegated to a corner the wind keeps lifting. Zoro gets distracted watching them pull out the named, re-named, and re-re-named ceramic horrors, clustering them on a portion of the blanket.

Chopper nudges him to continue making his sandwich.

"Sorry, they just look like they're setting up a ritual."

"We're the sacrifices," the smaller boy replies, heaping a monstrous helping of marshmallow-fruit salad onto his plate.

With that ominous statement, they all settle on the blanket in a circle to complete the ritualistic ambiance. Luffy plops down last, placing a plate of potato chips on the empty basket like an offering to the gnome-gods.

Everyone collectively shrugs. It can't hurt.

A bird chirps in a nearby tree, heard only because silence overtakes the group for once as they all stuff their faces. And— okay, fine.

It's a pretty good fucking sandwich. And he'd probably fight someone for this stupid fruit salad. He ducks his head, not wanting that curly idiot to see the slight smile he can't help. Because it's nice. It's annoyingly nice to sit here with everyone in comfortable silence eating more-than-decent food.

Although—

Zoro pushes his hair out of his face, then nudges Luffy's knee with a scowl. "I shouldn't have let you talk me into growing this shit out."

Luffy pouts. "But it looks so cool. I knew it would!"

Ace pats his backpack, ominously stating, "You can use fireworks to remove hair."

While intriguing, the thought of blasting his bangs off in a way that's just as likely to kill him as solve this tiny problem seems a bit excessive. Unsure if it's an actual offer, Zoro opens his mouth, as though to say what the fuck. For better or worse, nothing comes out. He closes his mouth again.

Hancock does not have the same issue, eyeing him like if she just stares long enough, it might make sense. "Do you know this from... experience?"

"Naturally."

Nami massages her temples. "There is nothing natural about that situation. Ever."

"Okay, but—" Usopp tilts his head in consideration. "By that measure, you could remove a lot of things with fireworks."

Sanji snorts, bumping his shoulder, though it mostly turns into leaning on him when he doesn't tilt back into his original spot. "Too much hair? Fireworks. Seen a spider? Fireworks. Pesky neighbor?" He pauses. "Fireworks."

"I've brought you myrrh," Luffy whispers, making Zoro scrunch his eyebrows.

"Mur der," Chopper says, swiveling his head dramatically toward them.

Franky gasps. "Judas, no!"

"What the hell is wrong with you guys?" Zoro asks as everyone bursts into giggles.

They abruptly stop and look at him like he spat on them. But more in a— sad way. Sadness and pity for how disgusting he is.

Sanji actually tsks at him. "You're like one of those dogs in the ASPCA commercials."

"Well," he says, remembering the patter of rain on a doghouse roof, "I've lived like one."

Oops. He should not have said that so candidly.

Each of their expressions begins edging toward more sincere concern. The theme of the day seems to be him finding new ways to depress his friends with just his existence.

Zoro takes a giant bite of his sandwich, staunchly refusing to say anything further on the subject. His eyes land on—

"Did we always have a lawn flamingo?"

"The only good bird is a fake bird," Robin says.

"Ri-ight..." Sanji says, cracking the tension with his indulgence. "Or does the gnome curse spontaneously generate redneck yard merch? Should we be expecting a kiddie pool next? Lawn chairs?"

"Man, I hope so." Ace pops another grape into his mouth, not bothering to swallow as he continues, "Lawn chairs want so badly to be beds and it's my job to encourage them in their endeavors."

Nami rolls her eyes and answers Hancock's confused glance. "He means he accidentally got folded into a lawn chair once."

"Instant yoga, just add water." He hums. "It was surprisingly comfy, if not traumatizing."

"Also," Robin chimes in, "it's a moot point. Birds aren't real."

Hancock snorts. "Says the girl with the bird-name."

Robin sends her a look that all but screams really? She gives them the prim sniff their lowly selves obviously deserve. "Bold of you," she says, "to assume I'm real."

Well, she's got them, there. "Toucan, mandoline, toucan," Zoro says with accompanying golf clap, to Hancock's visible distaste at his butchering of all things French.

"Even Furbies? Because I think those birds are a little too real, bro."

Usopp scoffs at Franky's assessment. "That thing is not a bird." He looks toward the neon eyesore and squeaks. "...Guys, why does Ace's Furby have a knife?"

"I don't know, but one of the gnomes has the shovel."

Which means it somehow acquired it when, presumably, none of them brought it along as a utensil for their side of fruit salad.

Luffy laughs, only to shrug when they all look at him, flopping sideways to make Zoro's lap his pillow. "It makes him feel safe."

Nobody asks how he knows that.

Zoro, loudly, so as to be heard in this world and the next, says, "The first cursed or arguably sentient object that touches my swords gets yeeted from the van and handed over to Izaya at the nearest opportunity."

Chopper frowns. "Does that go for Mariana too?"

"Especially Mariana." He loves her dearly. Truly, he does, but even he has boundaries with his pocket-sized poltergeist.

"Is anyone else concerned by the vast number of cursed objects we're acquiring? I'm getting very concerned by how they're outnumbering us."

Ace puts a finger to Usopp's lips as he hushes him. "Fear of possession doth not friends make…"

Usopp's eyes get ten percent wider, head shaking in mute protest.

"Freddie in one corner, Jason in the other." Chopper boxes the air. "Ding-ding!"

It's a much more exciting imitation of the strong, inexplicable gust of wind that knocks one of the gnomes over. A flake of red chips off from its contender's pointy hat. The impact causes the un-chipped gnome to face-plant and slip from the blanket.

It's hard to name a winner.

The only one that got in a hit begins tumbling down the hill, which Zoro would argue is a worse fate.

"It's like live-action stop-motion." Ace throws his arms straight up in the air. "Gnome-one gets left behind!"

He flings himself down after it, a freckled Tasmanian Devil on goose-shit splattered grass.

"Pardon my French," Hancock says, "but what the fuck?" She shakes her head. "No. You know what? I give up."

Zoro has a single piece of advice and it's the only thing that gets him through each day. "Just let it happen."

"That's not Jason," Luffy belatedly corrects. "That's the Babadook!"

He snorts. "That attack was called Move, I'm Gay."

"How the fuck do you not know basic Vines but you know Brandon Rogers?" Sanji shouts, plucking a piece of lettuce from his sandwich and lobbing it at him.

Wet and slimy, it hits his nose and bounces onto his lap, where it assaults Luffy's scarred cheek.

"It's raining salad!" he yelps, drawing a laugh from Chopper and Franky.

Zoro maintains uncomfortable eye contact with Sanji as picks it up and shoves it into his mouth.

"Really?" Sanji's face screws up in disgust. "Was that good for you?"

"Tasted like…" he smacks his lips, feigning contemplation. "Hmm. Pettiness and the ashes of my childhood."

Chopper's laughter is loud and borderline hysterical. "Zoro, no."

"Zoro, yes," Robin counters.

Ace finally reaches the bottom of the hill and hits the mucky pond with a scream.

Nami sighs, standing up and turning toward the table. "I'll go get the net."

She heaves a great sigh, lifting various objects and grumbling about lost van keys.

Zoro doesn't want to know why they'd have a net big enough to catch an entire human, but suspects Luffy is not estranged from its usage. And, honestly, the answer is probably cryptid in nature.

"I should start saying that when I shove the unworthy out of my path," Hancock says airily, taking a sip of her iced tea.

"That…" Chopper angles a fearful look at her. "That you're going to get the net?"

She pauses in consideration. "Well, maybe. But the move, I'm gay would be better."

Zoro can definitely see her doing that.

A choked sound comes from Sanji. He sits up a bit more from where he's all but slouched into using Usopp as back support. He blinks rapidly at Hancock.

"You're gay?" He glances between her and Luffy in confusion, which turns into a strange sort of disappointment as he goes back to raking an assessing eye over her. "But—"

She laughs in his face. "I'm a raging bisexual, thank you."

Slight hope reignites in his eye. "So—"

"No," she interrupts with the tone of someone running through a boring checklist, "I am still not interested in dating any of the men here, including you."

Sanji wilts, heaving a sigh as he slumps back on his long-nosed human chair. Usopp jets upward, face screwed up like he just ate a lemon, and Sanji falls backward with a yelp.

He towers over them all for a heartbeat before stammering, "I just remembered I have the keys in my pocket!" and bolting toward Nami.

Nami, whose calculating gaze lands squarely on Hancock's relaxed posture. She doesn't say anything, but she does drag Usopp behind her on their venture back to the parking lot.

Somehow, even with the awkward tension, it's— anticlimactic.

Which is stupid, because fuck knows none of them need that drama. But the blond noodle isn't as devastated as Zoro thought he'd be, given how off the rails everything went not even a week ago due to his adoration for her.

He looks more poleaxed by Usopp's abrupt departure, still frowning up at the sky. His repeated glances toward Merry give him away, although he guesses that could be because of Nami.

Ugh. What a tangled mess he's so glad he doesn't have to sort.

It certainly makes him more appreciative of Luffy actually communicating about the Kissing Thing, which is— absolutely wild.

He doesn't think either of them is the picture of emotional intelligence, but here Zoro is, Luffy's head in his lap as he watches all of this with a detached sort of interest and an occasional tug at Zoro's shirt for another ripped-off piece of ham. There's literally a pile of reserved ham on his plate, this is ridiculous, he doesn't even remember doing that—

Anyway. Here they are, and there Usopp goes.

"Fuckin' bonkers," he mutters.

Luffy nods, giving his knee a cursory pat.

It directs his gaze to whatever the fuck is currently happening in front of him and his fruit salad.

"Luffy…"

"Mmm?" Luffy hums.

"What are you doing?"

"Making a squirrel ladder," he says, like that should be obvious from the mess of shoestrings and Chopper's abandoned slobber-sticks.

"Right, of course."

Zoro debates for a good solid minute whether to ask or not, while Luffy cheerfully ties knots around the ends of the lollipop sticks and everyone firmly focuses their attention on food and/or gnome violence. It's obvious he has no backup here. Fine, then. "Can I ask why you're making a squirrel ladder?"

"Sure~!" Luffy chirps, and then nothing else.

I walked right into that one. "Why are you making a squirrel ladder?"

"There's a well over there. I'm making it to help squirrels get out if they fall in."

"You are aware squirrels regularly climb… trees, right?"

Luffy nods absently, head still perched on Zoro's knee. "But trees are not wells."

Franky replies with a sage nod of his own. "Truly, no truer words have ever been spoken."

Hancock's sigh is so deep it reaches all the way down to Zoro's soul. "Just another Tuesday, huh?"

That, of course, draws Sanji from his mope enough to pile on with, "No truer spokens have ever been worded."

Chopper looks up from his sandwich, eyes squinted. "No worder tueses have ever been… Ever been…"

"Flamingo!" Ace cries distantly in victory.

"Yeah, I'm almost positive that wasn't where I was going with that."

"Better question," Sanji interrupts. "Whose shoestrings are those?"

"GUYS!" Usopp cries, putting their investigation on hold. "I CAUGHT A FISH!"

"That's great!" Zoro shouts back, and he already knows the answer to this question, but still. "...Did you get Ace?"

"...DAMMIT!"

"I can't—"

"No, no. Just wait."

And one minute later, to the sounds of mysterious squawking. "GUYS! I CAUGHT AN ACE!"

"Guys!" Ace shouts. "I caught a fish!" A pause. "AND a flamingo."

"Tell me," Hancock starts. "Tell me he means a lawn flamingo."

"Where would he even get a real flamingo?" Sanji waves his cigarette in a puzzled motion. "Aren't those indigenous to, like, jungles and shit?"

Hancock wordlessly gestures to their merry band of cursed objects.

"Point."

And squishing up the hill he comes, like a creature from the Black Lagoon. The fish looks like it now belongs to the flamingo, tucked under Ace's arm as though it's not an oversized, mystical chicken. Which is just— are flamingos even small enough to hold? He also failed to mention the cattails clutched in each fist, a catch of their own even if pointless. Although, the flamingo doesn't have much of a point either.

"We're not keeping it," Hancock says first thing.

"But—"

"No. Birds—"

"Aren't real."

"There, you see? Aren't real, and also not allowed in the van, I'm sure. Unlike snakes or lizards in tanks, birds—"

"—aren't real."

"—poop everywhere. If we didn't keep the penguins, we're not keeping a flamingo."

"THANK YOU!" Nami practically sobs as she follows Usopp back to the blanket. "Finally, someone other than me gets it!"

Hancock freezes, then spares her an oddly shy smile.

Ace remains pouting. "But it's a magical flamingo."

"We have enough magical objects! In fact! We already have a magically appearing—" Hancock stops abruptly, all at once, staring at the empty spot she'd motioned grandly to. "... Somebody tell me that the mysteriously appearing lawn flamingo didn't turn into an actual flamingo. Someone tell me that."

Zoro loudly sips his drink, so that it makes that obnoxious sound that can only be made when you sip a drink down to its last dregs. "I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing. No flamingos, no gnomes."

Ace shrugs, reluctantly setting the flamingo down. "Hey, when you don't keep a close eye on these things..."

They all side-eye it as it galavants off into the sparse bushes in the distance.

Once he finds it safe enough to look away from their newest averted creature of mayhem, Usopp actually hisses at him. "No."

Franky takes it upon himself to start putting the gnomes back in the picnic basket. "Food party over, I guess." He glances around him in confusion. "Didn't we have seven of these little dudes? I counted six."

Nami shudders. "I don't even care. This is becoming the worst picnic I've ever been to, let's just go."

When they finally shuffle back into Merry like the clown car she is, waiting on the middle seat is a wet gnome on the back of a lawn flamingo.

Zoro distinctly hears Hancock mutter, "No flamingos, no gnomes."

Luffy yells at them from all the way down the hill. "WAIT! I didn't get to set up my squirrel ladder!"

Everyone gives a long-suffering sigh and doubles back to bear witness to one last shenanigan.

"I'll get the duct tape," Franky says.

They congregate around the well in half-impatient silence as Luffy holds the ends of his deformed creation. To Zoro's honest relief, Hancock looks like she's falling less in love with Luffy and more into fond annoyance the longer they stand here indulging him.

"Why is it so..." she wrinkles her nose, "long?"

"Didn't know how tall squirrels are."

Everyone hums in a yeah-okay kind of way because that's actually the most thought-out part of this entire venture.

Franky slaps some duct tape on it and they all stare for one too-long minute.

"So, is that it?"

Luffy nods. "It's just a— contingency plan?"

Sanji turns around and begins walking away first. "I'm impressed you even know that word and can use it correctly. Let's go check into our next shitty hotel before a fucking demon crawls out of there instead of a squirrel."

Usopp squeaks. "T-that would never—"

The well, from somewhere deep within, growls.

Zoro is man enough to admit that he absolutely books it up the hill with everyone else because fuck that, we just gave it an access route, no matter how flimsy and slobbery.


Salome slumbers next to Susan in the reptile tank, evidently loving the heat lamp more than the body heat from someone's shoulders.

Hancock crosses her arms. "I have been betrayed and forgotten."

Zoro definitely knows the feeling.

"Would you like a cursed pet? I think it's too late to go back for the flamingo though."

"It's like a Chia Pet—" Franky wiggles his fingers to demonstrate the appropriate heebie-jeebies "—but evil."

Chopper flicks him. "Bold of you to assume Chia Pets aren't also evil."

"Anything is evil if you try hard enough," Robin says, grabbing her duffle bag and hauling the van door open once they've parked.

"C'mon, Zoro," Luffy drags him by the hand, "we'll get our stuff later. It's dinner time."

"We just had lunch!"

Sanji snorts, following them out with Usopp and Hancock in tow, somehow carrying both her luggage and his own because he's a fucking weirdo pack-mule. "He resets every thirty minutes. You don't know that yet?"

He waddles past them at an alarming speed, presumably trying not to drop all the shit he's juggling.

Ace pats Zoro's shoulder on his way by. "Bottomless pit is a very accurate descriptor for Luffy's stomach."

"I'll be out here for a little while, bros!" Franky shouts, still inside the van.

Chopper hops out alone, buckling under the weight of their bags until Zoro swoops in and takes at least Franky's.

Luffy pouts, recognizing this as a detour to stuffing his face with whatever is on the room-service menu.

Zoro rolls his eyes. "Five extra minutes at most, you goblin."

"Does he even realize how much they charge for that stuff?" Nami voices, crossing her arms as they trudge to the front desk. "I'm going to start a debt tab for you two."

"Me?" Zoro balks. "It's not my fault!"

She refuses to answer him no matter how many times he protests. Hancock laughs at him, mean and loud, all the way to their neighboring rooms.

The door slams and he surrenders all hope and money in his wallet to Nami when Luffy orders five cheeseburgers not twenty minutes later.


They've been in the non-park part of town for one hour. Just one. Zoro cannot fathom how Franky managed this in one goddamn hour. The few of them that forgot their bags run into a slight hiccup.

A new bookshelf lurks in the back corner of the van, beckoning them closer with its glossy cherry-wood finish. Upon further inspection, it's bracketed to the wall.

One Chia Pet perches, deceptively innocent, on the top shelf. Susan and Salome's tank stretches across half of the bottom, presumably because they are also—

Pets.

It's a Pet shelf, Zoro realizes, and just barely does not collapse on the ground in a fit of laughter. His throat makes a really weird noise as a trade-off.

"Franky—" Usopp stops there, face slowly melting into resigned acceptance over the continued defacement of his van.

The man in question gives the wood a hearty slap. "Built a bookshelf."

They stare at him blankly.

"Built a bookshelf, nailed it to the wall, got some glue..."

Endless silence answers him because Chopper and Luffy aren't here to shriek about how cool!

"This is Chia Shrek and he belongs to Hancock now. The first of many." When nothing, still, comes of this declaration, he gives in and asks, "What's wrong?"

A wild laugh springs from Nami. "I'm just coming to terms with the fact that if we're ever arrested, we're all going to spend the rest of our lives in an insane asylum."

Ace pats her on the back. "Look on the bright side! We won't be locked in with the orderlies, they'll be locked in with us! "

"...Why do I find that comforting? I should in no way find that comforting." After a moment, she reaches up and pinches him, making Ace withdraw his hand with a yelp. "Also, don't touch me, arson boy. You smell like pond water."

"Bros!" Franky gasps. "My shoelaces are gone!"

Zoro has a feeling those are in hell now. He just hopes they won't need to have another funeral for things that go on their feet.


Press F to pay respects to the well-dwelling demon. Press any other key to continue wandering into the dense fog of uncertainty.