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“You didn’t have to jump in front of the damn thing!” Sanji snapped, following Zoro down the Sunny’s hallway like a well-dressed shadow. “You ever think about using your brain before your body?”
“Didn’t have time to think,” Zoro grunted, barely glancing back. His shoulder was wrapped in layers of bandages. “Just reacted.”
“You never think, mosshead!”
Zoro stopped so suddenly Sanji nearly walked into him.
“Would you shut up already?” Zoro growled, spinning around. “You’re acting like I wanted to get stabbed!”
“I’m acting like someone who gives a shit when their dumbass husband–”
Sanji froze.
Zoro blinked. “What.”
Sanji’s brain short-circuited. “What?”
“You just said ‘husband.’”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
Sanji’s ears turned pink. “You misheard.”
“I have excellent hearing.”
“You have brain damage.”
Zoro narrowed his eye. “You just called me your husband.”
Sanji crossed his arms. “Well, maybe I eventually would, if you weren’t always throwing yourself into danger like a suicidal sea cow!”
Zoro tilted his head. “You want to marry me, cook?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You pretty much did.”
Sanji was full-on flushing now. “It was hypothetical.”
“It didn’t sound hypothetical.”
“It was completely hypothetical.”
Zoro smirked. “So you’d marry me.”
Sanji shoved him. “If I ever did, it’d be out of pity.”
Zoro snorted. “Like you aren't obsessed with me.”
“I’m burdened by you.”
“You kissed me this morning.”
“You melted into it!”
They were toe to toe now. Then Zoro said – too casually – “We could do it.”
He blinked. “Do what.”
“Get married.”
Sanji’s heart did something traitorous. “Don’t joke.”
“I’m not.”
He stared. “You’d really marry me?”
Zoro shrugged. “We already share a room. Fight like we’ve been married twenty years. You cook. I do the heavy lifting. We’ve got the domestic part down.”
“That’s the most unromantic proposal I’ve ever heard,” he muttered, hiding his face in one hand.
“You saying no?”
Sanji peeked through his fingers.
Zoro wasn’t smirking anymore. He was just watching him – quietly, seriously, like Sanji was something he’d already chosen long ago, and this was just the paperwork catching up.
“…No,” Sanji said softly. “I’m not saying no.”
Zoro stepped forward. Pulled him in by the waist. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Sanji leaned his forehead against Zoro’s, smiling despite himself.
“You’re such an idiot,” he whispered.
Zoro kissed the corner of his mouth. “Takes one to know one.”
From down the hall, Luffy’s voice echoed: “Are you guys kissing again?! Gross!!”
--
Sanji muttered, “Alright. We’re doing this. Fast. Like ripping off a bandaid.”
The plan was simple:
- Steal the Sunny’s tiny rowboat.
- Find a local officiant.
- Get married in a five-minute ceremony.
- Be back before Luffy noticed dessert was missing.
Unfortunately, that plan failed almost immediately because Luffy was already in the rowboat, fishing.
“Are you guys going on a secret date?” he asked, holding up a suspiciously sad-looking fish.
“No,” Sanji said flatly.
“Yes,” Zoro said at the same time.
They glared at each other.
“It’s not not a date,” Zoro grumbled.
“We’re not calling it that,” Sanji snapped.
Luffy squinted. “Wait. Are you guys getting married?”
Zoro opened his mouth to reply.
Sanji kicked him in the shin.
“Absolutely not,” Sanji said quickly. “This is not a wedding. There is no wedding.”
“Oh,” Luffy said, nodding slowly. “Got it.”
Sanji started to relax.
“…So it’s a secret wedding.”
Sanji facepalmed so hard he nearly fell off the boat.
Somehow, they made it to the port town by mid-morning, Luffy bribed into silence with a promise of lots and lots of barbecue.
Zoro was in charge of finding someone to officiate. He returned twenty minutes later with an old man named Hachi who may have once been a priest, and was currently wearing a floral shirt and drinking out of a teacup that definitely smelled like sake.
“He asked if we wanted a ‘fast one or a dramatic one,’” Zoro reported, deadpan.
Sanji was still adjusting his collar in the cracked mirror of the dusty little inn room. “We’ll take the fast one. You’ll screw up anything longer.”
“I can say vows.”
“Please. You can barely say good morning without growling like a constipated dog.”
“I’ll say better vows than you.”
“Oh, really?”
Zoro watched him from the doorway. “You know, we don’t have to do this today,” he said.
Sanji glanced at him in the mirror. “You backing out?”
“No,” Zoro said simply. “Just saying. We’ve waited this long. I can wait a little longer if you want it to be more…”
“Romantic?”
Zoro shrugged, stepping into the room. “Yeah.”
Sanji met his eyes in the mirror. “We’re pirates. Rushed and chaotic is our version of romantic.”
Zoro snorted, pulling him in for a kiss. “Fair.”
The priest cleared his throat behind them. “Should I come back later?”
They both froze.
Sanji turned, flushed. “Right. Sorry.”
Zoro rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s just… get on with it.”
They stood under a crooked arch of hanging flowers, just outside the inn’s back garden. Chickens wandered freely. The air smelled like sun-warmed stone and something vaguely burnt.
It was perfect.
“Do you, uh…” Hachi squinted at a rumpled card. “Zoro… take Sanji to be your partner in this life, through storm and sea, so on and so on?”
Zoro looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Yeah.”
Hachi blinked. “That it?”
Zoro scowled. “What else do you want?”
Sanji rolled his eyes. “God, you’re terrible at this.”
“Then you do it better,” Zoro shot back.
Sanji turned to him, took a breath, and said, “Of course I take you. I’ve already been taking you, every day, in every fight, every stupid half-smile, every night we shared the same damn bed and pretended it means nothing.”
Zoro stared.
Sanji’s cheeks flushed.
“…So yeah,” he muttered. “I do.”
Zoro was quiet for a long second.
Then said, “Okay. Yours was better.”
They were pronounced husband and husband, and the moment it ended Robin stepped out from behind a tree with a book tucked under one arm.
“What a lovely ceremony,” she said.
Sanji choked. “HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?”
“Since the part where you were arguing about who would have the better vows,” she said. “Please don’t mind me.”
Zoro frowned. “We’ll never hear the end of this, will we.”
“Oh no,” Robin said, gliding into one of the chairs. “You will not.”
By the time they returned to the Sunny, the entire crew already knew.
There was confetti. A cake. A banner with the words “GUESS YOU IDIOTS ARE MARRIED NOW.”
Nami collected her winnings from the shipwide betting pool. Brook sang a love ballad that made Zoro threaten to jump overboard. Jinbei gave them a book on maritime tax benefits for domestic partnerships.
Later, the party died down. Zoro and Sanji stood at the rail, just far enough from everyone else to pretend they were alone.
Zoro nudged his shoulder.
Sanji nudged back.
“You regret it?” Zoro asked.
Sanji stared out at the water, the wind in his hair, the laughter of their found family behind them, and the ache in his chest that wasn’t an ache at all.
“…No,” he said. “I think it’s the best terrible decision we’ve ever made.”
--
“Still think we should’ve gone to a proper island,” Sanji muttered, adjusting the rolled-up sleeves of his linen shirt like they were to blame for everything.
Zoro squinted at the map. “It says ‘secluded paradise.’ What more do you want?”
“It also says ‘populated mostly by goats.’”
“So we’ll eat well.”
Sanji resisted the urge to scream.
Their ‘honeymoon’ – a word Sanji refused to say aloud – had been the crew’s idea. Which should have been their first red flag. They’d gifted them an envelope marked ‘For Your Sanity (and Ours).’ Inside: ferry tickets, island coordinates, and a voucher for one night at an inn that promised ‘rustic charm and natural intimacy.’
They’d arrived to find:
The ‘ferry’ was actually a small boat with a single hungover sailor.
The ‘inn’ was a goat farm.
And ‘natural intimacy’ meant no plumbing.
Also, a goat had eaten part of Sanji’s pant leg on arrival.
“We are going to have a very serious conversation with them when we get back,” Sanji said through gritted teeth, swatting away a goat trying to chew on his shoe.
Zoro, meanwhile, was lying in a hammock between two palm trees, looking like he was having the time of his life. “This is the best trip ever.”
Sanji threw a sandal at him. “Do you know what honeymoon means?!”
“Yeah,” Zoro said lazily. “It means I get to nap without Luffy tackling me.”
Later that evening, Sanji tried to salvage the romance.
He cooked dinner over a fire pit: grilled fish, foraged greens, and even uncorked a bottle of wine he’d bartered off the sailor with a bento box and a veiled threat.
...All while fighting off goats with one foot. “I swear if one more of you touches my skillet I’m making kebabs.”
Zoro showed up halfway through the meal with a stick and a massive bruise on his arm.
“What the hell happened to you?” Sanji asked.
“I fought a goat,” Zoro said.
“…Why.”
“It challenged me.”
Sanji blinked. “It challenged you?”
Zoro sat down like this was perfectly reasonable. “Headbutted me out of nowhere. Felt like a duel.”
Sanji stared at him for a full ten seconds. Then poured himself an extra glass of wine.
That night, they shared a single lumpy bed in a room with no door and at least one chicken nesting in the corner.
“Didn’t think I’d spend my honeymoon with livestock,” Sanji muttered, yanking the thin blanket up.
Zoro shrugged. “They’re better roommates than Luffy.”
There was a pause.
Then Sanji said, quieter, “Still not the worst night I’ve ever had.”
Zoro turned his head. “Yeah?”
Sanji looked at him, the way his hair fell over one eye in the moonlight, the cut on his cheek from the goat, the sleepy, content curve of his mouth.
“…Yeah,” Sanji said.
They made it exactly halfway through breakfast the next morning before the goats rebelled.
Sanji stepped outside to find their bags scattered, the wine bottle shattered, and their clothes being eaten like haute cuisine.
Zoro stumbled out after him, rubbing his eyes. “Did we miss a raid?”
Sanji pointed a trembling finger at the herd. “Your duel was a declaration of war.”
A goat locked eyes with Zoro. Pawed the dirt.
Zoro narrowed his eye. “Round two.”
“No,” Sanji said, physically dragging him back. “We’re leaving. Now. Before someone gets headbutted into a concussion.”
“I can take it.”
“Like I care!”
They escaped on the same rickety ferry they’d arrived on, covered in hay, dirt, and goat saliva. Sanji refused to speak for the first hour of the return trip. Zoro ate crackers and sulked because he “didn’t get closure.”
Back on the Sunny, Sanji collapsed into a chair, covered his face, and muttered, “If anyone says the word ‘honeymoon’ to me again, I’m throwing myself overboard.”
Zoro sprawled out beside him. “Still better than dying alone.”
Sanji peeked at him from between his fingers. “…Barely.”
Zoro bumped his knee under the table.
Sanji kicked back.