Archive of Our Own ^beta

This was supposed to be fun. And Sanji was not having fun.

“Eat my dust, Twirlybrow!” Zoro called behind him, voice mocking.

Sanji clenched his teeth and seethed. The stupid piece of moss was a few paces ahead of him, and the wake he left behind from his jet ski felt like a taunt. Sanji pressed on the throttle and urged his own jet ski forward, leaning in close to the handlebars, feeling the salt-spray whip against his face.

He was so going to win this race.

#

A summer beach day with the whole gang back together in their old stomping grounds? Sanji jumped at the idea, quickly, eagerly, the moment Luffy brought it up in the East Blue group chat. He hadn’t seen everyone since winter break, which wasn’t a terribly long time, but even three years into college, it was still weird to go from seeing everyone every single day at school for nearly seven years to seeing them just a few times a year.

So yes, Sanji was excited for the beach trip. Luffy said he made friends with a cool lifeguard named Franky who was going to let them borrow his jet skis, and they were going to make a day out of it.

He spent the preceding afternoon making sandwiches for everyone, packing three for just Luffy, wrapped neatly in cling film. Usopp said he was bringing Kaya, and Nami said she was going to bring her girlfriend for everyone to meet—if it lasted, that was. She seemed to move onto a new flavor of the week at a rate that left Sanji half envious, half confused. Her time management skills were seriously something else.

But he wasn’t supposed to think about Nami and her girlfriends for too long. According to her, he owed her five bucks every time he did. She would just know. And he already owed her a lot of money. He shuddered.

Anyway, Sanji was greatly looking forward to it. Yeah, he saw Usopp all the time since they were roommates, but that was different than having the whole group together.

For some reason, he forgot about the Zoro factor.

#

The beach was going swimmingly, pun intended. It was the ideal weather for it, the sun a perfect circle above, the cloudless sky only out-blued by the ocean itself.

Luffy was still as short as ever, though he didn’t seem the least bit concerned at not having hit his growth spurt yet. Sanji knew Usopp was putting in hours at the gym between classes, and he had to admit, the guy looked good. Kaya looked even better next to him, sporting a wide-brimmed sun hat. And Nami was, of course, as radiant as ever, flanked at her side by Vivi.

“We already know Vivi,” Usopp complained when they showed up together, matching sunglasses perched atop their heads. “You don’t have to re-introduce her to us.”

“Well, you don’t know her as my girlfriend,” Nami said loftily, unfolding her beach chair. Next to her, Vivi giggled.

“Yes we do,” Luffy interjected, appearing behind Usopp’s shoulder. “You guys were on again-off again, like, all the time in high school! You’re back together?”

“Leave them be!” Sanji snapped. “They don’t owe us an explanation! Sometimes love works in funny ways…right girls?”

“Right, girl,” said Nami.

“Nami…” Sanji winced.

“Thanks, Sanji,” Vivi smiled, unbothered by the speculation. She sat on her towel, applying sunscreen serenely.

“Sanji!” Nami snapped her fingers and pointed at the cooler a few feet away. “Seltzer me. You know the flavors I like.”

“Yes, Nami!” Sanji scrambled to retrieve her beverage.

“I got it,” Zoro said, already by the cooler cracking open a beer. “Heads!” He tossed a fresh can of cherry flavored seltzer water at Nami, who caught it one-handed without looking up from her book.

Right. Zoro was here too.

“I would have gotten it for her,” Sanji scowled.

Zoro ignored him, chugging down his beer. He tilted his head back as he finished it off. Jesus.

“Well, you didn’t. Tough shit,” said Zoro when he finished his drink, wiping his forearm across his mouth.

“Tch. Asshole.”

Zoro stuck his tongue out. Immature fuck.

Sanji stomped back to his beach chair. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t mad.

“I thought you said you were gonna try to get along with him,” Usopp said when Sanji sat down again.

“I never said that. I said I wouldn’t let him ruin my day.”

“Right,” Usopp said lightly. Everyone knew not to bother dealing with their antagonistic relationship anymore, but Usopp had the patience of a saint. “Good luck with that…”

Sanji ignored him. He was not going to let Zoro ruin his day, damn it!

But…he just couldn’t help it.

When they set up the beach volleyball net, Nami forbade Zoro and Sanji from being on the same team—their combination in high school gym volleyball had been deadly—but that left Zoro to spike the ball down in front of Sanji’s face multiple times, hard enough to get grains of sand kicking up into his eyes.

Zoro just smirked behind the net, which was aggravating.

When they grabbed ice cream from a vendor that passed by—Luffy got no less than four ice cream sandwiches while Sanji stuck with an orange creamsicle—Zoro took too long to eat his vanilla cone. It started dripping down his wrist and he had to start licking it off his skin to catch the trail.

But a lot of it still wound up running down his arms and falling to the sand, which was irritating.

When they were making a sand throne for Luffy so he could be King of the Beach, Zoro got interrupted by a toddler who ran up to him looking for his mom. He was completely stone-faced when he held the kid’s hand and brought him to the lifeguard tower. The young mom was already there; she was a total smokeshow who practically threw herself at Zoro for returning her kid. She was openly ogling Zoro’s body, for God’s sake!

But Zoro turned away from her and headed back to the group. Annoying as hell.

When they all finally got in the water, they played chicken—Usopp and Kaya against Zoro and Nami against Sanji and Luffy, since Vivi was too captivated by the book she was reading to join them. And Sanji and Luffy won, purely because Luffy was nuts, using his arms and legs as wildly as possible to knock Nami and Kaya off balance. Sanji couldn’t even crow about their victory for long; Nami dragged Zoro under the water with her when she tumbled down.

He emerged and he was fucking glistening, and then he splashed Sanji with a faceful of saltwater as payback. Which was infuriating.

So yeah. Sanji was not doing a very good job of not letting Zoro ruin his day.

He sat back in his beach chair with his towel draped over his head and around his shoulders to shield from the sun, decidedly not mad. Not mad at all.

Franky was a huge dude with blue hair and giant arms wearing a speedo, and the moment he came to drop off the jet skis, Luffy and Nami took them to go racing to the sandbar and back, trying to see who could make it faster. Sanji didn’t participate, only because he started to unpack the lunches he brought for everyone, figuring they’d all be hungry after their activities. He wondered if one sandwich was enough for Zoro…the guy had seriously bulked up in the past semester…

Actually no, scratch that. He should be grateful Sanji brought him anything at all.

A shadow fell over him on the picnic blanket, where Sanji was unpacking the cooler with the food. He followed the trail upwards with his eyes—of course it was Zoro, looming over him like some kind of monster.

“They’re back,” Zoro announced, his arms crossed.

Sanji shielded his eyes with a hand over his brow. “Can you get away from me? You’re going to drip all over the food.”

“Nami won.”

“Of course she did, I always knew she would.” He jabbed Zoro in the knee. “Get off!”

Zoro stepped off the picnic blanket, but he didn’t walk away. “Let’s go next.”

“Can’t you see I’m busy? Get Usopp or something to go with you.”

“He’s asleep.” Zoro jerked his thumb behind him, where Usopp was indeed asleep on his beach towel, sprawled in starfish position while Kaya nervously hovered, applying more sunscreen to his face so he wouldn’t burn.

“Then get Luffy to go with you.”

“He’s bummed he lost, he doesn’t wanna do it anymore.”

“Then go with Nami!”

“I’ll lose against her…”

“Oh my God, you are such a child. Just go alone then, for fuck’s sake.”

“Tch. Whatever. Should have known you were too scared to face me. Sore winner.”

“Uh, more like you’re the sore loser,” Sanji pointed out. He was on his feet, somehow.

“Why don’t we race, and then we’ll find out who’s really the loser?”

“Ugh!” Sanji threw his hands in the air. But he couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t. Zoro always, always managed to stoke the competitive fire in him, more than anyone else in the world. “Fine! But if everyone goes starving, it’s your fault.”

“I’ll take care of unpacking and passing around the food, Sanji,” Vivi said cheerfully. Behind her, Nami watched the exchange through her dark sunglasses. When Vivi glanced at her, she held up her hand and rubbed her thumb against her middle and index fingers.

Sanji didn’t know if that was some kind of lesbian code or something, but Vivi turned back to him with a wide smile on her face. “Don’t worry, Sanji. I’ve got it covered! I’ll save some for you both.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to do that…”

Behind her, Nami clapped her hands together. “Chop chop!” she called. “I’ve got bets placed, Sanji! You better not let me down.”

“Yeah, come on, Curly. Don’t let her down now,” Zoro taunted.

“Oh, you piece of—”

Zoro was already taking off, and Sanji had no choice but to follow him. He called another thank you over his shoulder at Vivi.

“You’re gonna regret pulling those moves during chicken,” Zoro said when they both straddled their jet skis.

“Me?! That was all Luffy!”

“Oh, don’t pretend like you weren’t just dying to win against me.”

“Shut up! Eat my dust, Mosshead!”

And Sanji took off without waiting for Zoro to finish getting situated, pressing down the throttle, letting the wind whip through his hair. He cackled when he heard Zoro’s noises of outrage behind him.

#

Zoro was ahead of him now, damn it, how did that even make sense? How was he going so fast? They were on the same waves, riding the same type of jet skis.

Sanji stood up in his seat to lean over the handlebars, urging the jet ski to go even faster, practically airborne on the waves as he raced after Zoro. He was right on his tail now, the ocean spray whipping into his face, the wind carding fast and strong through his hair. The water was sparkling blue and the sun was sizzling hot and, despite himself, Sanji was smiling wide.

“You’re cheating!” Sanji yelled, hoping his voice would carry over the engines and the wind.

Zoro glanced over his shoulder, his three earrings reflecting the light. He, too, was smiling wide. “How am I cheating? I’m just better at this than you!”

“That’s what you think!”

Zoro just laughed, urging his jet ski along. They were coming up on the sandbar, but Sanji…he wasn’t ready to turn around. He didn’t want to stop yet. He was finally having fun.

Like he could read his mind, Zoro yelled, “Let’s keep going!”

“Are you sure?”

“You scared?” Zoro looked over his shoulder again, grinning, the wind blowing his short hair all the way back from his face.

Sanji grinned right back. “As if!”

They careened past the edge of the sandbar, out to where the waves were choppier, rougher, wilder. It was undoubtedly more fun; they went faster and faster, nearly jumping over the surf, fully airborne at times as they raced along. It was thrilling. Sanji was laughing, he realized. His cheeks hurt from it. And Zoro was too, pealing out over the sound of their jet ski engines revving.

At last, when the main beach was but a tiny speck in the distance, Zoro started slowing down. Sanji mirrored him, until he finally came to a stop while Zoro continued to circle. Then, Zoro whirled around and skidded over the water, his jet ski coming to bump nose to nose against Sanji’s.

He tossed his head, shaking water from his hair. “Not bad, eh, Eyebrows?”

And then Zoro smiled. The sun beat down overhead, illuminating his tan skin, shimmering with saltwater and sweat, his green hair saturated dark and shining, looking picture perfect against the blue sky and even bluer water. His eyes were curved upwards, and he had a dimple that indented on the right side of his mouth when he smiled.

Sanji’s heart, entirely without his permission, skipped a beat.

And then it rammed into overdrive.

Ah, shit. There it was: the source of all his troubles, back once again.

#

So yes, Sanji had discovered some key things about himself since the beginning of the year that he was hoping would fade when he went back to school. But now that summer was here, now that Zoro was here, there was really no more denying it.

It went like this: the last day of winter break, Sanji sort of accidentally went to second—maybe even third?—base with Luffy’s older brother.

It was honestly an accident, and not his proudest moment. But he’d spent weeks grappling with certain…thoughts. Thoughts about the Mosshead, after hanging around him for all of winter break. Thoughts that made him question whether or not he was interested in guys in general, or if it was just Zoro specifically who was driving him nuts.

And on the last day of winter break, he happened to be milling around Luffy’s place late enough for everyone else to have fallen asleep. Ace came wandering in at some point, Sanji ended up telling him about his anxieties, Ace offered to lend a hand and help him test the waters, and one thing sorta led to another.

And it went pretty well, in the beginning. Ace was nice to look at, had impeccable manners, and he was a good kisser. Sanji was feeling pretty good—he didn’t mind being bi, he was just glad it was all figured out and didn’t have anything specifically to do with the Mosshead. Except when things got a little hotter and heavier, suddenly Ace’s black hair turned short and green, his freckles disappeared, his shoulders got broader…

Anyway, Sanji had to leave after that.

Like, he had to leave leave. He and Usopp were making the trip back to school early in the morning, and when they got there, Sanji threw himself into his work in an effort to distract from the fact that his mind kept wandering back to that night…and it wasn’t even Zoro he had kissed! But he kept on thinking about it like it was.

Damn it all. Damn it all to hell and back.

#

“Wait,” Sanji said once he got his heart rate back in control. He was still breathless and smiling. “Who won?”

“Shit. I don’t know,” Zoro said. “I forgot about the race…”

Sanji had, too. It slipped from his mind, whipped away by the ocean and the wind. The shore was so, so far away. Even the sandbar was hard to spot.

“Whoever makes it back to shore first wins?” Zoro offered.

“Works for me.”

And then they were off again, though their pace was decidedly slower than when they dashed out here, practically flying. That was fine by Sanji; he was reluctant to go back. He almost wished he could stay out here with Zoro, where it was just them and the water. Especially while Zoro was in such a good mood. On land was where things got complicated…

The further they sped, however, the stranger and stranger Sanji started to feel. He could see the sandbar up ahead, but somehow it never seemed to get any closer, even though he could feel the waves bumping along under his jet ski seat. He knew they were moving. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him—was he really that loath to return to the beach?

He was just about to call out to Zoro when he felt a fat droplet of rain land on his back.

Within seconds, the sky was overtaken by a dark curtain of clouds, vast and gray and all-surrounding. The downpour started instantly after, and the change was so great and sudden that Sanji automatically let go of the throttle, leaving him stationary in the water.

A clap of thunder sounded overhead, and the waves started to roil, swelling great and large.

“What the fuck?” he muttered, wiping rainwater from his eyes. Ahead of him, Zoro was stopped as well, ‘til he rounded about and came up next to Sanji.

“What the hell!” Zoro yelled, barely audible over the torrential rain lashing against the ocean surface. “Where’d all this rain come from?”

“Forget about the race, let’s head back!” Sanji shouted.

“What?!”

“I said let’s head back!”

“I can’t hear you! I think we should head back!”

“That’s what I said!”

“Huh?!”

“Argh!” Sanji pointed back towards the direction of shore, gesturing with his head that they should head back.

Zoro gave him a thumbs up. Big idiot.

Sanji tried as best he could to keep close, but the waves were so rocky now that it was difficult to even keep balance on his jet ski. He was nervous to press down on the throttle any faster, and the rain was making it hard to see even two feet in front of him. Everything looked the same in all directions, just rain and ocean and storm clouds. Except for Zoro’s green head, which was like his beacon to follow.

When a wave so big and forceful crashed into him and threatened to practically knock him from his jet ski, like a bowling ball grazing the side of a pin, Sanji started having second thoughts.

“Oi! Mosshead! Zoro!” he tried yelling to Zoro, who was just up ahead. “Stop! We have to stop!”

“Huh?!” Zoro was barely audible through the storm’s din, but at least he slowed down.

“It’s too dangerous! Let’s go to the sandbar and wait out the storm!” Sanji shouted.

Zoro stuck his thumb out again, signaling he heard him. Except…fuck, which way was the sandbar? Were they even going the right way? Sanji thought they were, but the current had shifted with the storm winds, and he could no longer tell. Nor could he see the shore, but that was because the rain was like a solid sheet in front of him, splashing up the surface of the sea, a strange mixture of salt and fresh rainwater.

There was no choice except to keep going, he supposed. The jet ski still had half a tank of gas. That was good. He wiped the water from his eyes and urged himself forward, keeping a steady grip on the handlebars so the waves wouldn’t knock him over.

The storm took on a new level of rage. This wasn’t just a thunderstorm anymore—this was a full on typhoon, angry waves tossing, the sky shaking with terrible thunderclaps followed by flashes of lightning.

In one of the split-second flashes, he thought he saw something looming up ahead. It was land. The shore! The view was gone with the lightning now, but he thought he remembered seeing trees. They made it.

It was odd only because that meant they were back on the beach, not at the sandbar at all, but Sanji wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He wondered if Nami and Vivi and Kaya were okay—the others had better make sure they were taken care of in the storm. And he hoped none of the food got ruined by the rain.

But he got ahead of himself, thinking about things that awaited them ashore. He felt it more than he saw it, before he turned around: the presence of a giant, giant wave, rising up out of the sea like a monolith. He felt it in the pull of the waves, sucked backwards as if magnetized. And when he looked over his shoulder, it was too late.

“Zoro!” Sanji tried calling out, wanting to warn him. “Zoro!”

He gripped the throttle as tight as he could, trying to urge the jet ski along faster like it was a racehorse that needed coaxing—but it was no use.

The giant wave came crashing down, taking Sanji into its violent undertow.

#

When Sanji coughed, saltwater burbled up out of his throat. He sat up and hacked, feeling the burn of it come up his pipes as he spit up a good amount of water from his system.

He blinked, staring at the dark spot on the wet sand. Sand. He was on the beach? They made it back?!

It was still raining hard, and it was dark as if it were the middle of the night, not an ounce of sunlight to be found through the oppressive pall of the thunderheads.

Did they crash land on the beach? Did they make it to the sandbar? He didn’t know, but he was just glad to no longer be out on the water during such a storm. Fuck—weren’t lifeguards supposed to be watching out for that sort of thing? They should have put up red flags if it wasn’t safe to go out on the water. And it was definitely not safe.

Fuck. Zoro. Sanji whipped his head around, searching for him. Luckily he wasn’t far, sprawled out half in the tide a couple feet away. He ripped his life vest off, soaked to the bone as he trawled over until he was on his knees, hovering over Zoro’s unconscious form. His life vest was completely missing.

Shit. Did he take in a bunch of water like Sanji had? Sanji slapped him about the face, and Zoro groaned. His airways sounded clear, so Sanji slapped him again, harder.

“Mm—m’awake. Five more minutes, though.”

“You idiot!” Sanji hissed. “Wake up! Wake up!” He clapped his hands together over Zoro’s face. Zoro groaned again and batted his hands away, so Sanji gripped his head on either side and shook it as hard as he could, hoping the rattling of Zoro’s stupid brain around his skull would be enough to rouse him.

“Alright, alright, I’m up!” Zoro complained, shoving Sanji away. When he sat up, he finally seemed to realize where they were, and their circumstances. His scowl disappeared as he blinked around. “Oh, shit. Are we back on the beach?”

“I don’t think so,” Sanji said. Nothing here looked familiar. In fact, the beach looked wild and overgrown, just a small strip of sand before it turned thick and viney, nothing like the scenic, well-maintained East Blue beach.

Zoro got to his feet. Their jet skis were nowhere to be seen, and the rain didn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. In fact, the downpour seemed only to increase in intensity.

“Let’s get out of this storm, and then we can figure out what to do,” Zoro said.

“Where, though?” The more Sanji looked around, the more he realized that this was neither the sandbar nor the East Blue beach. How far off course had they strayed, exactly?

“I don’t know…”

Sanji felt exhausted, worn down thin and bare. From being tossed about in the tide, he guessed. They could take cover in the trees, at least, which would shield them from the rain somewhat. He turned and started heading towards the forest, away from the shoreline, too tired to even explain his thought process to Zoro.

Zoro didn’t ask either, and they ventured into the dense trees and vines together.

It didn’t take long to find a spot to take shelter; as soon as they stepped into the forest, a narrow cave entrance jutted out from a giant boulder attached to a steep hill that rose upwards.

“Come on,” Sanji said, and he ducked into the cave. The exhaustion was nearly all-consuming now, an unnatural lethargy settling in his bones. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and close his eyes.

Zoro was right behind him, and Sanji wondered if they had both hit their heads crashing onto the beach, or something. You weren’t supposed to go to sleep if you had a concussion, he knew that much, but it was too hard to resist. The only saving grace was the fact that the temperature hadn’t dropped too much, the summer humidity still present through the storm.

The cave floor was grimy and littered with dead leaves, but without another word, Sanji laid down, still sopping wet and all. In his blurry peripheral vision he saw Zoro do the same, and then he was dead to the world.

#

It was warm when he closed his eyes. Sanji remembered this because he thought ironically about how at least they didn’t have to worry about hypothermia once they passed out.

When he woke suddenly though, he was shaking uncontrollably. It was incongruous, because he could feel that the air was still warm, but that didn’t stop the chill that had sunken deep into his bones. Like he was sick with a fever, he couldn’t control the shaking in his body, still half-asleep and just as fatigued as before.

There was one pressing need that rose up above the others: Zoro. Against all logic, everything in the universe was telling him that if he could just get to Zoro, he would be cured and all would be settled.

He could barely make out anything in the dark of the cave—had night fallen, or was it still storming?—but he dragged himself along the ground, seeking out Zoro blindly.

Zoro apparently was of the same mind. Sanji could hardly see his features through the dark, only his silhouette, but they reached for each other in unison. Hands were around his upper arms, then his shoulders, while he held on anywhere he could—Zoro’s chest, his neck, his back.

It wasn’t enough. He didn’t understand it, but it wasn’t enough. His teeth were clicking together from the force of their chattering, and he could feel the way Zoro’s skin was covered in goosebumps too, muscles trembling with cold.

He dragged himself the rest of the way forward, or perhaps Zoro pulled him—he could no longer tell. But, relying at this point on touch alone rather than sight, he found himself hauled on top of Zoro’s body, their legs tangling together. His face was somewhere near Zoro’s chest, and his back was curled into the circle of Zoro’s arms.

They breathed twin sighs of relief. Sanji was practically gasping from the comfort it afforded him, the shivering subsiding almost immediately.

He didn’t even have the sense to question it, the world blurry and hard to understand. Like it was a camera lens with water droplets on the surface, everything distorted. All he knew was that being close to Zoro was the only thing that made sense right now.

Without thinking, he nuzzled his face into the side of Zoro’s neck, at the juncture of his shoulder. Then when that wasn’t enough, he pressed his lips there, keeping them open, moving them along the skin without doing anything more. Zoro made a sort of small humming noise, his hands finding Sanji’s bare back, pressing them even closer. His palms were somehow scorching. It was the greatest feeling ever.

Now that the shivering was gone, Sanji found the veil of sleep settling over him once again. It was comfortable like this, draped on top of Zoro. He didn’t overthink it. In fact, he didn’t think about it at all. His mind wasn’t capable of any more than just feeling, and responding based on that.

Sanji closed his eyes. Under him, he could already feel Zoro’s breathing evening out, turning deep and regular. The steady, reliable sound of his heartbeat. The rise and fall of his chest beneath Sanji’s chin. All he knew was that it felt…right.

Between the unnatural drowsiness overtaking him and the even metronome of Zoro’s heart, Sanji dropped off into slumber.

#

He awoke with the distinct feeling that something was off, but he couldn’t tell what.

His head was buried on top of some scattered leaves. One of them was stuck to his cheek. He made a face while peeling it off. Gross. Then he sat up, surveying his surroundings.

What happened?

The jet skis, the storm, the island. He remembered that much, but things got fuzzy after that. He sort of recalled dragging his way over to the cave, and then…some brief, unfocused flashes of what came after. Being cold. Then the feeling of hot hands pressed against his back. Warm skin under his cheek, under his lips.

Okay, maybe that part had been a dream. Wouldn’t be the first, so…whatever.

The cave was empty. Where the fuck had the Mosshead gone?

When Sanji got to his feet, he noticed that there was something tied to his pinky finger. It was barely visible to the eye; the only reason he could even perceive it was because of an intrinsic feeling that rose within him. He held his right hand up to his face, inspecting it.

There was something there, looped around his little finger, just below the nail. It was some sort of…hair? A string?

Sanji stepped out of the cave and into the light so he could get a better look at it.

Whatever it was, it was about as fine as a single strand of hair, and it was translucent like a fishing line, except for the way it shimmered when he turned his wrist just so in the sunlight.

So weird. At first, he wrote it off as a piece of debris from the ocean or the cave or something like that. But when he tried to pull it off, he knew without even having to tug too hard that the thing was not going anywhere. It was like trying to pull his own fingernail off; he didn’t have to do it hard enough for it to become painful to know that it simply was not budging, not unless he wanted to lose a body part.

Well, if it was so thin, maybe he could just snap it. But when he tried that, it was to the same fruitless result. The thing simply refused to break, no matter how hard he tugged.

It became clear that this was not a normal piece of string.

“What the fuck,” he said flatly to himself. The thin thread extended all the way down to the forest floor, pooling near his feet.

Sanji tried picking it up, and it rustled along some of the leaves on the ground, extending out.

It was…going somewhere.

Overtaken by curiosity, Sanji began to follow it, picking it up as he went.

The thread led him out of the forest and back to the beach, where the sun was full and high in the sky. Shit, was it already that late in the day? What exactly had possessed him to sleep for that long? Maybe he really was concussed.

The translucent string continued along the beach, lifting up out of the sand. Sanji followed it a few yards down the shore, around where he and Zoro washed up.

Curiously, he didn’t now have a bunch of excess thread to keep in his hands. Where he followed, the thin line seemed to automatically retract, instantly shrinking into a length that had plenty of slack to it, pooling on the ground. He could feel no elasticity in the thread when he tested it; it just simply became a manageable size all on its own.

What the fuck. Was he going crazy?

After the shore, the thread led back into the forest, a little ways away from where they had originally entered. Sanji followed it once again, trying to flip through different explanations in his mind for what this thing was and how it worked.

He continued into the trees, led by his right hand held out in front of him so he could see the faint line as it trailed the forest floor.

It didn’t take him long to get to its final destination. There was a thicket of soft vines hanging from some branches, bracketed by tree trunks that rose up as a sort of threshold.

The thread led past the viney curtain. Sanji brushed it aside and stepped into a small clearing, surrounded by trees like it was its own, private little area.

Zoro was there.

He was standing in the middle of a small, running pool in the center of the clearing, splashing water down his face, letting it run down his neck and chest. And he was positively glowing, dappled with sunlight with the way it was shining down on him through the leaf canopy.

What the hell.

Zoro shook his head, swiping his hair back from his face, his eyes closed, and Sanji gulped.

The thread was slack at his feet, but it led into the pool of water, faintly shimmering on its surface, before it connected straight to Zoro’s hand.

When Zoro opened his eyes, he immediately spotted Sanji.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” He climbed out of the pool, back onto the grassy ledge, water beading and dripping down his body. His very nice body. Jesus.

Sanji just stood there for a second, dumbfounded. But he found his footing again quickly.

“What are you doing out here, you idiot?”

Yeah. Annoyance. That was familiar—definitely the move.

Zoro frowned. “You were still out when I woke up. I left to go try and find our jet skis, but they weren’t anywhere. And then I tried to come back to the cave, but…” He trailed off, averting his gaze, his mouth an unhappy slash.

“But you got lost,” Sanji said, filling in the blank. Zoro made an annoyed noise, looking off to the side. Right, so he definitely got lost. “And you found this place and decided to conveniently go for a swim?”

“You’re not hurt or anything, are you?” Zoro asked, plowing forward without answering. “You seemed, like, passed out. I tried to wake you up, but I couldn’t…I mean, you just refused to wake up. Even when I moved you, you stayed asleep.”

“What do you mean, when you moved me? You moved me while I was sleeping last night?”

Zoro scratches his cheek. “Uh…”

Sanji felt himself go cold. Was…all of that touching not a dream, then?

No, no. It had to be. Zoro was probably just being a shit, as usual. Anyway, all of this was besides the point.

“What were you doing in there?” Sanji asked, gesturing towards the pool. Anything to distract from the weird fucking string hanging from his finger, connected to Zoro’s finger. If Zoro wasn’t going to bring it up, then neither was he.

The water was clear and running, originating from a rapidly rushing creek that stopped to swirl new water into the basin before it got carried away downstream.

“I was thirsty,” Zoro said, “and then, I don’t know. It just looked so inviting. You should try.”

Sanji stared at him. “We don’t have time to splash around! We need to be figuring something out instead!”

“Figuring what out?”

“Uh, the fact that we’re stranded on a random island? In case you haven’t noticed, this definitely isn’t the East Blue beach. Where the jet skis went? The sooner we find them, the sooner we can just get back on them and get out of here.”

Zoro rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, having a safe fresh water source seems kind of important, don’t you think? Pretty critical for survival, I’d say.”

“It’s been hours,” Sanji said, ignoring his point. “Shouldn’t someone have come for us already?”

“Well in case they don’t, I guess it’s a good thing we have water, huh?”

Sanji screwed up his face and shoved Zoro by the shoulders, just to be annoying. Zoro answered right back, grabbing on to Sanji’s wrist so he could shoulder into his side.

“Hey! What the fuck?”

“You started it!”

Sanji got a fist into Zoro’s hair and tugged hard. The other man grunted, and answered by biting the meat of his shoulder, not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to fucking hurt.

“Ow! Watch it, green bastard!” Sanji screeched. He slapped Zoro on the chest, trying to push his larger frame off.

“You watch it,” Zoro ground out, trying awkwardly to sweep a foot under Sanji’s ankle to get him off balance.

“Hey—what the shit—” Sanji tugged on Zoro’s hair again before giving up and scratching a line down his back, leaving angry, red marks in his wake. Zoro’s knee was currently digging into the small of his back, and he fought to stay on his feet.

He wasn’t even sure why they were fighting like this. They didn’t have a good reason, and they haven’t tussled like this since…well, not since way before college. It was utterly childish. And it was utterly thrilling.

Even though they were at odds, biting and scratching and kicking like street cats, something deep within Sanji settled into place at the fact that they were touching. He hadn’t even realized anything was amiss, but now that he was jutting an elbow into Zoro’s abdomen, he realized how right it all felt. How warm he was suddenly.

Zoro immediately took advantage of Sanji’s lack of focus for that one split second. He maneuvered them, spinning Sanji around and shoving him hard. Sanji went stumbling back on the grassy bank, straight into the pool of water.

There was a small opening in the tree canopy right in the center of the clearing, and the sun practically shone directly into it. When Sanji went tumbling back, he flailed his arms about, and the translucent thread caught the sunlight for a brief flash. It shimmered like tinsel, arcing high into the air.

Zoro looked at it. Sanji saw him look at it.

Oh, shit.

His back hit the water, and then he was under. Before he could surface, he felt Zoro jump in beside him, the cool water rippling outwards.

“What the hell,” he sputtered when he emerged, wiping water out of his eyes. “What was that for?”

But Zoro was smiling. And Sanji realized he was smiling, too. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the water was strangely invigorating. It was the exact right temperature, cool and crisp against the summer sun, refreshing among the humidity.

“See?” Zoro said, as if he already knew what Sanji thought about the water. “Nice, right?”

“Whatever,” Sanji said mulishly. Zoro just laughed. Sanji tried to ignore the way the sound sent something pleased down his spine.

“Drink it,” Zoro insisted. “You must be thirsty, right?”

It did look appetizing, for whatever reason. So Sanji cupped his hands and brought a palmful of water to his lips. It was just as cool and refreshing sliding down his throat as it felt around his body, and Sanji went back in for another deep drink, finding that he was actually parched from all the saltwater and sand. He could feel the fresh water melting it away, clearing up his system.

“Good?” Zoro asked. He was still smiling. His earrings dripped water down onto his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Sanji said, trying not to make obvious the way he was making all these observations about Zoro that he really shouldn’t have been.

Between them, the thread floated in the water. Sanji could see it dancing in the current, just as translucent under the surface as it was in the air. Zoro wasn’t looking at it this time, and Sanji couldn’t tell what he thought about that. He was sure Zoro was going to bring it up when they both broke the surface, but he hadn’t said anything…

Sanji hoisted himself back up onto the bank and shook his hair out. It was a good thing they were both in their swim trunks, he supposed. Made it all easier. He heard more than saw Zoro climb up after him. His presence made the hairs on the back of Sanji’s head stand up.

“So.”

Sanji stiffened. Was he going to bring it up? The strange thread connecting them. Sanji knows he saw it.

“I kinda need to tell you something.”

Here it comes, Sanji thought.

“I sort of have my phone here.”

Sanji relaxed. Then he stiffened right back up again, whirling around.

“You what?”

Zoro shrugged. “It was in my pocket when we washed up here, but it was dead. I think from being waterlogged. When I woke up, I left it by the beach to hopefully dry out…”

“Why,” Sanji said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “would you bring your phone to our jet ski race—on the ocean—in the first place?”

“Hey, if it gets us help, then it’s a good thing I brought it,” Zoro pointed out.

Sanji couldn’t really argue with that, so he just grumbled under his breath.

#

“There is no way your phone is still working after all the shit it’s been through,” Sanji said as he led them back to the beach. He had one hand wrapped around Zoro’s wrist, tugging him along, because the other man felt the constant need to veer off course. Even though the path back to the beach could not have been more straightforward.

Between them, the thread was the shortest it had ever been, just a tiny length arcing between their pinky fingers. Not taut, not dragging on the floor, just there. Sanji was hyper aware of it, even though he could hardly feel it tied around his finger.

He probably didn’t need to hold onto Zoro’s wrist anymore, after the amount of telling-off he’d done each time Zoro tried to change directions, but he held on anyway. Just in case.

“I dunno,” Zoro said behind him. “Luffy once told me he put his phone in the wash and it still worked afterwards.”

“What—how?”

“He said he stuck it in a bag of rice after and that fixed it. But we don’t have any rice here, so I buried it in the sand.”

Sanji stopped in his tracks, and Zoro bumped into him.

“Whoa, watch it, Curly—”

“You buried your phone,” Sanji said. “Please tell me you thought to mark it with something.”

“Relax, my guy. I put some sticks on top of it to be able to tell.”

“Sticks…”

They were at the edge of the treeline, the beach right ahead of them through a patch of bushes. Below their feet, the ground was just beginning to turn sandy, intermingling with the beachgrass and vines.

Around them, broken sticks and twigs were littered across the sand, all the way until the surf.

“You stuck it in the ground straight up,” Sanji said slowly, “so we’d be able to see it. Right? You did that, right?”

He heard Zoro scratch his head. “No, I put two sticks on top, crossed over each other. You know, like, X marks the spot.” Sanji’s grip on Zoro’s wrist tightened. Zoro tried to pull it away, but Sanji wouldn’t let him. “Hey, what gives?”

Sanji tightened it further.

“Oi—Sanji! Hello, earth to Sanji?”

Finally, Zoro tugged himself free, coming up to Sanji’s side and rubbing his wrist irritatedly. Between them, the stupid fucking thread hung limp, lifting softly in the ocean breeze.

“Let’s just,” Sanji said between gritted teeth, “find your stupid fucking X. Do you remember where you put it?”

“Yeah, it was right around where we exited the cave.”

Sanji didn’t even know why he asked, because knowing Zoro, that could be literally anywhere.

“Should we split up and look?” Zoro asked.

“No,” Sanji said emphatically. He was absolutely not letting Zoro go off on his own. Although—would the string…lead him to Zoro…no matter where he went?

He quickly squashed that thought.

“Just…follow me. It’s one thing if we can’t find your phone, but it’s another if I can’t find you, Mosshead.”

Surprisingly, Zoro didn’t protest and stuck by Sanji’s side. Sanji, meanwhile, stomped towards the beach, resisting the urge to curse out loud because of how annoying and uneven the ground was now that the give was soft with sand. And there were so many sticks and little pieces of debris and plant life that it made it annoying to walk.

Whatever. At least the sand actually was dry here. Although he wouldn’t put it past Zoro to bury his phone in wet sand, leaving it to get carried away during high tide.

“I wanted to take a picture,” Zoro said as Sanji scanned the ground, trying to watch his step so he didn’t accidentally mess up Zoro’s supposed X. “That’s why I brought my phone.”

“Huh?”

“Like…after I won the race against you. I wanted to take a picture of us.”

Oh. That was…

Sanji’s ears felt hot.

“That would have never happened. I obviously would have won against you.”

“Heh. Maybe in your dreams, Curls.”

Sanji coughed. He didn’t really want to talk about his dreams that involved Zoro. His pinky finger felt like it was pulsating, and he didn’t know if it had to do with the way his heart was beating, or…maybe the damn thing was cutting off his circulation. That had to be it.

“Why would you want that, anyway?” Sanji asked, keeping his gaze focused on the ground as they walked. They were going in the complete opposite direction of where the cave was, but that was on purpose. Sanji knew Zoro too well to assume otherwise.

“We don’t really have any pictures of just the two of us,” Zoro said plainly.

Sanji tried not to choke on air. “Didn’t know that was something you wanted.”

“You don’t really know much about what I want, Curly.”

“Apparently not,” Sanji hissed, even though he could feel a flush creeping up his face. He was glad his back was turned to Zoro. Oh shit, was the nape of his neck turning red, too? It did that sometimes.

“Anyway,” Zoro continued, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his swim trunks, “I just thought it would be nice to have one. My bad.”

Sanji didn’t really know how to respond to that, so he didn’t. His little finger was burning hot. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the thread glimmering more intensely, like it had a fucking sparkly filter on it or something. He ignored it. That seemed to be a good strategy so far.

They trekked along the beach for a few more minutes, sticking close to the shaded treeline and looking for the stupid X. At this rate, they might end up walking the circumference of the entire island. Where the fuck had Zoro put it?

“No way you actually buried it outside the cave,” Sanji muttered, squinting into the distance.

“Huh? I thought we were outside the cave,” Zoro said behind him.

“No, no, we are,” Sanji lied. Shit. Maybe he was wrong.

“I swear I didn’t go far,” Zoro insisted. “Damn, where is it…”

Sanji was about to give up and have them double back and check out the beach area in front of the cave—for real this time—when Zoro jogged ahead of him with a triumphant “ha!”

“Don’t tell me…”

“Here it is!” Zoro got to his knees, crouching in the sand while Sanji stood nearby, his arms crossed. There indeed was a little X in the sand formed by two sticks. To Sanji, it looked completely indistinguishable from the detritus surrounding them, like nature had just placed them that way. He raised his eyebrows, but Zoro was already digging, scooping out handfuls of sand that he unceremoniously dumped right on Sanji’s feet.

“Hey, watch it!”

Zoro just snickered and continued to dig, so Sanji kicked some of the sand back in the hole just to be shitty.

“Oi, cut that shit out.”

“Don’t dump sand on me, idiot moss!”

“I’m fucking digging for the phone that’s gonna save us, dumbass!”

Sanji kicked some more sand into the small pit Zoro had dug out, and Zoro answered by flinging some loose sand over his shoulder, aiming squarely for Sanji’s body this time. Except the wind happened to pick up right then, carrying a decent amount of sand right into Sanji’s face and eyes. He spluttered, turning away.

“What the fuck, Zoro!” He could feel the grit of sand on his tongue, the sting of it in his eyes. He dug his knuckles into them fruitlessly, trying to get the grains out, spitting onto the beach at the same time to rid his tongue of the grainy specks.

“Oh, grow up,” he heard Zoro mutter behind him. If Sanji’s eyes weren’t all fucked up from the sand, he would roll them so hard. Fucking cactus head.

When he finally got the sand out of his eyes and mouth, he turned around, an unhappy grimace fixed into place and ready to tear Zoro a new one.

Zoro, however, happened to unearth his phone at that very moment. He turned around, brandishing it with one hand above his head.

“Look, Sanji! I got it!”

He was beaming, and the sun looked like it was shining directly on top of him.

Sanji’s insult died on his tongue.

God damn Zoro. Being all cute and smiley and glowing in the sun and shit. Damn him, damn him, damn him!

“Good job,” Sanji said weakly, after a while. Zoro was trying to shake out the last of the sand grains from the edges of the screen and inside the charging port. “Does it work?”

“Lemme see.”

Sanji honestly didn’t have much hope for the phone. How could it survive a swim in the ocean and being buried in the sand? Frankly, Sanji wasn’t even sure that was an effective method for drying electronics the way rice was.

But then Zoro got to his feet, staring at the screen in his hands as it lit up. “It works! Holy shit, it works!”

At an instant, Sanji was at his side, peering around Zoro’s shoulder at the device.

Indeed, the phone was on the power-up screen. “Holy shit,” Sanji echoed. Oh, thank fuck, they were saved.

The phone turned into Zoro’s home screen, which was wallpapered with a picture of—of all of them—Zoro, Sanji, Luffy, Usopp, and Nami. It was a barbeque they had in Zeff’s backyard right before they all went their separate ways for college. Sanji remembers taking it; it took them forever because Zoro kept stepping on his toes, definitely on purpose, and they kept arguing about that.

In the end, their arguing made it into the photo—taking up the back row, the two of them looked like they wanted to bite each other’s heads off, hands fisted in each other’s shirt collars.

Before Sanji could think anything of the home screen photo, Zoro quickly opened the dial screen.

“Aw, shit, I don’t have any service,” he said. “And this thing’s got like, three percent battery…”

“Try anyway,” Sanji insisted, not letting that strike down his hope just yet.

“Okay. Who do I call?”

“Call the authorities, you idiot! Wait, no—call Nami!”

“Calling Nami.”

Zoro opened his messages, clicked his chat with Nami—it was the most recent one, what the fuck?—and opened her contact page so he could dial her.

He put it on speaker, but there was no point; sure enough, the phone stayed on the outgoing call screen for a few moments before the words “Call Failed” followed by three beeps flashed on the screen.

“Let me try,” Sanji said. He reached for the phone, snatching it out of Zoro’s hands before Zoro could do anything about it.

“Hey! No, give that back!”

Zoro lunged, but Sanji danced out of his way. He needed to try for himself. He was already clicking the numbers onto the dial screen, the emergency service number this time instead of Nami. Maybe emergency calls could still go through. Sanji knew they operated on different cell towers if necessary, and this felt very much necessary.

He put it on speaker, and Zoro stopped his flailing for a second as they both listened, waiting with bated breath for the call to go through.

But it never did. The same thing happened, the call failure screen flashing after a few seconds of no ringing.

“Shit,” Sanji said, still holding the phone in his hands. It might as well have just been a brick, now. Out of pure muscle memory, he swiped out of the phone app, and the screen reverted to the next most recently opened application.

Zoro’s messages with Nami.

“Alright,” Zoro said, his arm swooping in from above and snatching his phone out of Sanji’s hands. “Well, that was a bust. What are we supposed to do now? Should we just keep looking for the jet skis? I was never able to find them.”

He was rambling. Sanji had never heard Zoro ramble before. His back was turned, the wind from the tide tousling his hair.

“Yeah,” Sanji said after a beat. “Let’s keep looking for the jet skis. Maybe they washed up further from where we landed.”

He hadn’t been able to get that good of a look, but the last thing Zoro sent to Nami was something along the lines of “I told u to stop making bets out of my life, you witch. See u tomorrow tho.”

Further above that, Sanji couldn’t read the conversation before Zoro took his phone back. But he’s sure he saw his own name in the text bubbles more than a few times.

#

The beach went on for a deceptively long stretch. That in itself wasn’t disturbing; what was disturbing was the fact that Sanji, for the first time, took in their surroundings past the beach and forest itself, looking out on the water.

There was nothing but the ocean. It was a clear day, so the horizon stretched on for miles and miles.

No land in sight, nor any markers like buoys. No silhouette of the familiar old windmill that usually rose up a few miles south of their beach spot. Nothing but endless sea on all sides, the waves rougher and wilder than he knew them to be on the coast of the East Blue, whose surf was gentle on account of the sandbar.

Where the hell were they, exactly?

“Zoro,” he said, trying to ignore the way the thread between them was floating in the breeze, contracting and expanding. “What do you remember about crashing here? Like…you’ve never seen this place before, have you?

“Eh? I mean, I remember the freak storm. That shit was crazy. And then…there was a giant wave, right?”

“Yeah, it knocked us out and we woke up here.”

Zoro looked at him strangely. “It knocked you out. I grabbed you from the water and swam us here after that,” he said. “And then I passed out.”

Sanji stopped walking. “You what?”

“Yeah. I guess you were out cold if you don’t remember any of that.”

“So wait, how did you know to come here?” Sanji asked, ignoring the way his skin felt tingly and strange at the idea of Zoro having saved him. It made him furious, of course, that he hadn’t been the one to save Zoro. Among other things.

Zoro shrugged. “I just saw this place appear. Better than chancing it in the waves or trying to get back on the jet skis, so…I swam. But not too far, which is why I think the jet skis could have washed up, too.”

The revelation made Sanji’s head spin. Not only at the thought of Zoro dragging him along the waves through that terrifying storm current until he passed out from exertion once they were both safe, but also at the fact that this place seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

But mostly at the thought of Zoro saving him.

Naturally, he lashed out.

“This is all your fault!”

Zoro stopped walking, his face twisting. “My fault? How the fuck is this my fault?”

“Because,” Sanji said, jabbing his index finger in Zoro’s face, “I was following you back to the sandbar! I should have known you were taking us way off course!”

“Me?! I couldn’t see shit in the storm! I was just going back in the exact direction we came from!”

“Coming from you, that could mean literally any cardinal direction ever. You’d jump straight in the air if someone told you to go north.”

Zoro scrunched his face up. “Shut up!” he hissed, denying any and all allegations of his sense of direction being complete shit. Just like always. “If you thought I was going the wrong way, you didn’t have to follow me!”

“And leave you stranded all by yourself? I don’t think so. You’d never find your way back all on your own!”

Zoro looked like he wanted to shove him, or hit him, or something. Sanji almost welcomed it. Ever since this morning, he felt the strange urge to be touching Zoro, always. Their earlier fighting, then his hand around Zoro’s wrist…

But Zoro just made an annoyed tsk noise and stalked away, continuing down the beach.

Sanji, of course, followed.

The further they walked, the stranger Sanji thought this whole thing was. Not even counting the damn string he was hallucinating on his finger, there was something fishy going on. Like, this island was way too big to be uncharted. He had never heard of such a place existing anywhere in the East Blue, nor was it on any map that he knew of. And he and Zoro just physically could not have traveled that far off course from the mainland, even if it was in the wrong direction, in the span of time they were on the jet skis.

“Zoro,” he said. Zoro didn’t turn around; Sanji could tell he was listening, though. He almost didn’t want to say it, but he felt compelled to. “This might sound crazy, but…somehow, I don’t think we’re in the East Blue anymore.”

Zoro grunted. “Oh yeah? Then where?”

The gravity of their situation started to really hit Sanji. What was he thinking, worrying about the stupid string and the way stupid shirtless Zoro glowed in the stupid sunlight? They were stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere, with no phone and no means of transportation. Unless they found the jet skis, but even then, he had no idea where they were and which direction to go to get back to the mainland. It couldn’t be that far, he told himself, based on logical reasoning.

“I have no idea. But it’s probably best if we find those jet skis sooner rather than later.”

It turned out that it was ‘sooner’ after all; in front of them, there was a sharp bend in the shore, the view ahead cut off by a series of small, bare cliffs dotted with trees, ending in a straight drop to the sand below.

The beach past the cliffs came into view bit by bit as they followed the curve of the shoreline, until at last, it was fully unveiled.

Sanji and Zoro both stopped in their tracks, taking the time to simply stare, because they were met with several things, each more unbelievable than the next.

First, their jet skis.

One of them was drifting aimlessly in the tide, following the even tempo of the surf rushing in, then going out again. The second one lay in pieces in the sand, broken bits of glass and plastic flung out from the main body, which looked bent out of shape and waterlogged.

Second, the broken down husk of what Sanji could only describe as…an old-timey pirate ship.

It was about the same height as the cliffs they just rounded past. Its wood was rotten and barnacle-covered where the tide met it, frayed pulleys and riggings all tangled in its yellowed sails, which sagged limp and torn from the masts. He could tell it was a pirate ship because the flag on the uppermost roost was black, with the skull jolly roger symbol visible against it even as it hung tattered.

Third, behind the broken down pirate ship lay the skeleton of what Sanji could only describe as…a monster.

It was enormous. It almost looked like a giant fish skeleton, only with bones that curved in a manner suggesting a colossal rib cage rather than flat like a fish in lined up rows. It was sun-bleached and brittle-looking, appearing as old as the pirate ship itself, but it was undoubtedly massive, dwarfing the ship in both height and length.

“Uh,” Zoro said.

“Uh,” Sanji answered. “Okay, I definitely don’t think we’re in the East Blue anymore.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“Fuck if I know!”

“Are we…” Zoro paused and licked his lips, like he was nervous to say it. “Are we in Jurassic Park?”

“Oh my God, be serious.”

“How can this be any more serious?!” Zoro retorted, gesturing at the skeleton with an urgent arm. “You look at that and tell me that’s not a fucking dinosaur.”

“It looks more like some kind of fish to me…”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were an archeologist all of a sudden.”

“You mean paleontologist?”

Zoro scowled. “Whatever.”

“Well at least we have a jet ski now,” Sanji said.

Zoro just rolled his eyes and started wading into the surf to retrieve the lone jet ski before it floated off for good. Sanji trailed into the water after him, letting it wash in around his shins, then his knees, as the tide rolled in. The water was strangely warm, perhaps heated by the sun that beat down overhead. Shit, his shoulders were probably burned to hell and back by now. No chance to reapply sunscreen in a place like this.

“Do I look like a lobster?” he said to Zoro as they each got ahold of a handlebar to drag the jetski back to shallower tides.

Zoro squinted at him. “Huh?”

“Like, am I burning up? I just realized I haven’t applied sunscreen in hours. Neither of us have.”

Zoro looked at him, blinking. Then he coughed and looked away. “Uh, no. You look normal.”

“Small mercies, I guess.”

With one hand each on a handlebar and the seat of the jet ski, they pulled it out of the tide and onto the wet sand so they could inspect it. It looked relatively undamaged, unlike the other one.

“We should probably test it out before we take it all the way out anywhere,” Sanji said.

“Huh. Yeah. Plus it’ll use more gas with the two of us on it.”

Oh. Sanji hadn’t thought about that. They’d have to both…sit on the single seat…

Zoro was already straddling the seat, legs on either side.

Would…Sanji be sitting in between that spot, when they actually drove it out on the water?

He shook his head quickly, dispelling the thought.

“Wait!” he cried. “Don’t take it anywhere, moron! I’ll drive back, you’re going to get us even more lost and then we’ll, I don’t know, fucking die at sea. For real this time.”

“Relax, man. I’m not taking it anywhere, just testing to see if it still works.”

Sanji watched with a pinched expression as Zoro fiddled with the keys, which were still in the ignition. He pulled them out and then reinserted them just to give the whole thing a fresh start, Sanji guessed. Then, ever so carefully, he squeezed down on the throttle on his right hand side.

…Nothing happened.

Zoro squeezed down again, harder this time.

Still nothing.

“C’mon,” Zoro said under his breath, leaning forward in the seat, as if the motion might convince the jet ski to move. He squeezed down on the throttle as hard as he could. Sanji could see his knuckles turning white. But still, the engine made no noise.

“It’s broken,” Sanji said, feeling like there was a stone sinking in his stomach. Between them, the translucent thread jostled like a jump rope as Zoro banged his hand on the side of the machine, like he sometimes did with his ratty old video game console to convince it to start up again. “Give it up, Mosshead. We’re fucking stuck here.”

Zoro made a frustrated noise and finally got off of the jet ski, stepping back into the sand. He ran a hand through his hair, making the line between them grow and flutter.

How ironic. Here was something that made sure Sanji never lost track of Zoro again, conveniently in a place where they lost track of the rest of the world. Or maybe the rest of the world would lose track of them.

Not a very comforting thought.

“Don’t you wanna try for yourself?” Zoro asked, gesturing to the useless jet ski.

Sanji shrugged. “Nah. I watched you do it.”

They looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Was it time to, like…look for food? Build a shelter? That kind of thing? Sanji felt grim at the prospect.

“I mean…it’s still only been a day,” Sanji said finally, just to break the silence. “They’re definitely looking for us at this point, right? The authorities or whoever. Maybe if we could find some way to signal them…”

“It’s only been a day?” Zoro frowned. “Why does it feel longer?”

It did feel longer than a day. Sanji only said that because in his logical mind, he knew that they only spent one night in that cave. The darkness of the storm and the exhaustion afterwards really messed them up, but still.

“Okay,” said Zoro, looking like he’d come to a decision. “C’mon. I’ve got an idea.”

They got out of the surf, and Zoro started leading them up the beach, straight towards the pirate ship and the monster skeleton,

“Wait, wait,” Sanji called, jogging up next to him. “Don’t tell me you want to go over to that thing! It gives me the creeps.”

“Not the skeleton,” Zoro clarified, “but the ship. I mean…it was a ship, after all, right? It could have some kind of old-timey flares or something like that. Or other stuff we could use. Compass, map, whatever.”

“Oh, that’s…actually a good idea,” Sanji said. “Huh.”

Zoro rolled his eyes. “Don’t act so surprised.”

#

They made their way to the broken down pirate ship. Up close it was that much more towering, with no way up to the main deck other than some dubious-looking rope hanging from the side that looked ready to snap at any given moment, infested with dead seaweed and rot.

There was, however, a hole around the other side of the ship, on the same side as the skeleton of the fish-dinosaur-thing. The hole in the ship matched a crack in the jaw of the beast, Sanji noticed.

“Hey, maybe they had gotten into some kind of epic battle,” Sanji said, fixed on the fissure running along the upper jaw on the skeleton, all the way up to its empty eye socket.

But Zoro was already climbing inside the hole, away and out of sight.

Irrationally, Sanji panicked, his heart going into overdrive—shit, knowing the Mosshead, he was going to go and get himself permanently lost inside this old pirate ship wreckage, somehow. He was about to call out for Zoro, but then he looked down. Oh, right.

The string. He could follow the string.

He ducked inside. It smelled of rotten wood and saltwater, and the entrance took him directly to some kind of storage area in the bottom-most section of the ship.

The string glimmered even in the low light of the ship, the path only visible by the cracks of sunlight that filtered in through slats of broken wood.

“Zoro,” he hissed, not sure why he was keeping his voice down. “Zoro!”

“Over here,” Zoro called from an adjoining chamber, up a dubious-looking set of rickety stairs. Carefully, Sanji crept up them.

Zoro was inside what appeared to be a set of bedchambers, poking around some shelves. He gestured with his chin at Sanji. “You take that side of the room and I’ll take this one. Faster that way.”

Sanji began inspecting the various mildewy items strewn about. “Now that we’re in here, I’m not so sure we’ll find anything useful…how old is this thing? Did they even have flares back then?”

“No clue. Maybe a map, then,” Zoro said, digging through a chest.

There was a desk on Sanji’s side of the room and a small two-drawer nightstand next to an empty bunk. Maybe this was the captain’s quarters? He rifled through the desk drawers, which were empty of anything particularly useful. There was a broken pocket watch and a flask of some kind of liquid he did not want to open stuffed inside the drawers, as well as a few letters that weren’t particularly interesting when he scanned them.

The stand by the bunk, however, proved a little more fruitful. There was an old leather-bound book inside that Sanji extracted. However, the writing was too smudged to make out properly in the low light of the cabin.

“Hey, come check this out,” he said to Zoro. “You find anything on your side?”

“Nah. What’ve you got?”

“Not sure…hold on, let’s go out here.”

Sanji carefully exited the cabin so he could stand on top of the landing, where there was a beam of light shining through the broken wood above. Zoro crowded in close to him to see the book, enough that Sanji could feel his body heat against his arm. Between them, the string glittered once again.

He flipped open the book to a random page. A yellowed, folded up piece of parchment fell out this time. Zoro caught it before it fluttered to the ground and unfolded it, holding it under the light off to the side of the book while Sanji flipped through the pages, scanning them for anything useful.

Captain’s Log: Day 251

The Sea King has not let up on our tail. Crew is getting restless. Our log pose is pointing in another direction entirely by now, but every time we try to change course, the Sea King is at it again. Hoping to shake it after some cannon fire today.

Captain’s Log: Day 252

Land spotted. Summer island, looks normal. Crew is proposing we draw the Sea King there and finally face it instead of trying to outrun it. Would feed us for the next leg of our journey if we won, but it’s a big one. Not sure we will all make it. Going to try anyway. That’s the Grand Line for ya. Everyone here knew what they were signing up for.

Captain’s Log: Day 253

Coming up on the island later this morning. Appears to be uninhabited. Prepare to meet your maker, Sea King.

That was the last page that had any writing on it. The rest of the book was blank, about half of it still untouched by ink.

“Hey,” Sanji said, eyes still fixated on the page. “I think whoever was on this ship tried to fight that giant creature out there…and I think they lost. What is this place? What is that thing out there?

“I have no idea,” said Zoro next to him. “So, I know I’m not the best with directions, but even I can tell this map is fucked up. The world doesn’t look like this, right?”

Sanji looked at the unfolded parchment Zoro was holding. It was a map drawn in faded ink, unprofessional and sketched out by hand. In the middle of it, there was a large stretch of land that vertically bisected the page, the words “RED LINE” written across it. Horizontally, there was another similar stretch, this time drawn in dotted lines, with the words “GRAND LINE” written on top of it.

“Hey, that’s written here too.” Sanji held up the open book to the last day of captain’s logs he was reading, pointing between the words “Grand Line” written on the page and on the map. “That’s the Grand Line for ya,” the captain had said.

Zoro folded up the map again, frowning. “What does that mean? We’re in the Grand Line, whatever that is? How did we get here?”

“I don’t know. It’s just not possible for us to have gone that far,” Sanji said. But deep down, he felt there was some truth to the matter. He didn’t know where the Grand Line was or if they were there, but he got the sudden feeling that they were far, far from home. Or maybe it wasn’t sudden at all. Maybe he only just now began to accept it.

What the hell was happening?

Before either of them could speculate any further, there was an ominous rumbling sound from above, like the cracking of old, rotten wood. In the blink of an eye, some of the rafters holding up the deck came crashing down, unable to handle the slightest change after decades of no movement whatsoever.

“Whoa!”

Zoro grabbed onto Sanji’s arm to pull him out of the way. Simultaneously, Sanji pushed Zoro by the shoulders, trying to do the same. The effect of that was Zoro’s back against the wall outside the cabin, with Sanji’s face smushed into Zoro’s neck, their torsos pressed flat against each other. Around them, the dust from the collapse settled, a wider beam of light now shining down on them like a spotlight from above.

Sanji felt hot all over. Zoro’s earrings were brushing against his brow. Between them, the thread felt like a livewire, hanging off of the clutch Zoro still had around his upper arm.

“We…better get out of here,” said Zoro slowly. He wasn’t moving away. Sanji could feel it against his body, the way Zoro’s chest rumbled when he spoke.

Sanji jumped back, feeling mortification wash over him. “This was a bad idea!” he accused, falling back to his usual method of defense. “We shouldn’t have come in here, idiot! This place is gonna crumble at any minute.”

“Whoa, watch it,” Zoro said, instead of rising to the bait. He shot an arm out again to Sanji’s shoulder, steadying him before he tripped right through one of the gaps in the rickety planks below them. The spot where their skin touched felt scorching. “Come on, let’s get going.”

Sanji’s lip twitched. Zoro wasn’t fighting back?

Instead, he was finding his way back down the steps, which were littered with broken wood and debris from the rafter collapse. He offered a hand up to Sanji silently.

Sanji blinked.

“What are you doing?” He tried not to sound suspicious.

“Helping you watch your step?” Zoro raised an expectant eyebrow.

Tentatively, Sanji extended his hand, putting it into Zoro’s as he went down the rickety, rotten steps. Zoro’s hand was warm and dry, a welcome contrast to the summer humidity and general dampness inside the ship. Their pinky fingers were so close that there was barely any visible string between them. Still, it shone in the sunlight when Zoro steadied his path down the steps.

Sanji very quickly snatched his hand back once he was down, flexing and curling it into a fist at his side.

He felt his face going redder and redder as they picked their way around broken planks of wood, back towards the hole that led out to the beach. Stupid Zoro. What was that? Acting all…gentlemanly. What the hell? That wasn’t what they did. They were supposed to bitch and fight and get physical.

“Of all places and all people,” he said acidly behind Zoro, concentrating very hard on the way the nape of Zoro’s neck bent so gracefully into a set of broad shoulders, “I had to be stuck here with you. It’s just my luck.”

Zoro, for some reason, didn’t pick up their typical repartee. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all, so Sanji had no choice but to continue looking at his neck, feeling something gnawing against the inside of his stomach.

#

The sun was starting to set on the beach when they made it back out. How had the entire day already passed?

The moment they were a few feet away from the pirate ship, Zoro rounded on Sanji. Something in Sanji lit up—so things were normal between them. That was good.

But his small moment of respite was quickly dashed when Zoro spoke and what came out of his mouth wasn’t a childish insult.

“We need to talk.”

Sanji clutched the captain’s log book to his chest like it was a shield. “Huh?”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Zoro said.

Sanji squinted at him. “What? No, I haven’t! We’ve been together practically this whole time.”

“Not on this island, I mean. Before that. In real life.”

Sanji’s defenses immediately went up. “This is real life, moron! We’re trapped on a deserted island! We’re literally stuck in the punchline of a joke right now!”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Zoro repeated, stubborn as all hell. Just like always. “Are you mad at me? Did I do something?”

That stopped Sanji short. Do something? No. No, Zoro wasn’t the one who did anything. Except, perhaps, spend more time than ever talking to Sanji over fall semester and during winter break, thus triggering…the incident…

“N-no,” Sanji stammered. Shit. He didn’t mean to sound like that.

“Then why are you mad at me?” Zoro demanded.

Because you look like that, Sanji thought. Because you look like that and you act like that. And I like it. I like it so much.

“I’m not mad at you,” he insisted.

Zoro stared at him head on, unblinking, as if the force of his gaze could penetrate Sanji’s skull and unravel his thoughts. “Every time I think we’re getting along, you start snapping at me. Like the old days. And I just can’t help but respond, you know?”

“Can we focus on the bigger picture here?” Sanji pleaded, hoping they could get away from the subject entirely.

“Screw the bigger picture,” said Zoro. “This beach trip is the first time you’ve really interacted with me since last winter. I thought we—I don’t know. I thought last year, we finally…”

Sanji’s mouth went dry. “Finally…?”

“Put our petty shit behind us. We were, like, spending all this time together on the phone…and over winter break…”

Ah, yes. And then Sanji’s freak out happened.

“Then when I finally got Luffy to gather this trip together to go to the beach, it’s like we’re back in high school. I just don’t get you! Why so hot and cold? It’s driving me crazy!”

“Because—because—”

“Because what?”

Sanji’s words felt stuck in his throat. There was something tremulous inside of him, rising up and buzzing in his head. He didn’t know what to say without putting all his cards on the table, his horribly embarrassing cards, and then Zoro would laugh at him forever and ever, their lifelong feud automatically lopsided for the rest of time, because how could Sanji ever have equal footing to stand on after he revealed that he had a terrible, humiliating, giant crush on Zoro?

He imagined surging forward, grabbing Zoro by the shoulders, and mashing their faces together. It wouldn’t be perfect, of course it wouldn’t, Zoro’s lips were all chapped from the sun and the salt and he probably would be too rough to begin with, but Sanji wouldn’t care. It would be enough, just to feel him, to get his hands on that tanned skin, his mouth on Zoro’s.

Between them, the thread seemed to hum. Sanji wondered if Zoro could feel it too, the way there was low static running all up and down its length.

He was going crazy, he decided. He was losing his mind. Zoro was still looking at him all expectantly, with his eyebrows raised, a strange kind of clarity in his eyes that made Sanji seriously consider saying fuck it and doing exactly what he imagined.

He stepped forward on the sand, still clutching the captain’s log to his chest. He actually was losing his mind, after all.

Zoro took a step forward as well. Between them, the length of the thread grew shorter and shorter, until it drew a vertical line between his hand curled around the worn leather of the book and Zoro’s, which had reached out as if to touch him. On the face, on the shoulder, on the waist, Sanji didn’t know. He had a sinking suspicion, suddenly, that he knew what the string was all about.

He held his breath and the world went blurry and strange, completely fuzzy around the corners—his leg suddenly felt like it was on fire, and he blinked hard because he thought he saw something at Zoro’s waist, three sword hilts inside a red sash—

They were suddenly showered by a downpour of saltwater. It stung his eyes and got in his mouth and they jumped away from each other, spluttering and coughing. The log book fell to the sand below, pages ruffling in the wind.

“What the fuck!” Zoro wiped his eyes, but Sanji was looking out at the water.

There was another splashing noise, and he thought he saw something on the surface. When it appeared again, he got a better look: it was the back of a a great, spike-covered creature that broke the surface, arcing like a gargantuan snake before it ended in a giant tail that flipped up through the waves, then slapped down again, hard enough to shower them with a second wave of seawater.

“It’s…one of those things,” Sanji said, stricken. “The monster. A Sea King?”

Around them, night was falling quickly, the world turning purple-pink as the sun slid beneath the horizon.

“Let’s go,” Zoro said, their moment forgotten. “Before it comes back here and decides to grow legs.”

#

Night fell around them as they made their way back to the cave. Sanji wasn’t sure if it was because of the dark or because he was well and truly losing his marbles, but the string between them seemed to grow less and less transparent, no longer an ephemeral, shimmering thing. Now it was more solid than ever. Sanji could feel it, could reach out and pick it up if he wanted to.

Another thing that grew less ephemeral were his memories of the previous night. The all-consuming need to touch, to hold, in order to stem the cold. He was sure now that it hadn’t been a dream at all.

With equal parts trepidation and anticipation, he entered the cave, wondering if the same thing was going to happen tonight. He didn’t feel cold, though. In fact, the air was still quite warm despite the lack of sunlight.

“Should we build a fire, or something?” he asked, sitting with his back to the cave wall, hugging his knees.

“Are you cold?” Zoro asked. He was sitting opposite Sanji, a distinct air of awkwardness around them.

“Not really. Are you?”

“No. Not right now…”

“Well, what about a bonfire? On the beach as a signal for any ships or helicopters or something. So they can spot us.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

“And we could use it to cook, too.” As he said the words, something suddenly dawned on Sanji. “Hey, aren’t you hungry? We’ve been here for a whole day and we haven’t eaten anything.”

Zoro frowned. “Huh. No, I’m not. Are you?”

Sanji shook his head. He hadn’t even realized his lack of hunger until now. He hadn’t really felt thirsty, either. Not since…they drank from that mysterious pool…

He shook his head again. Something about this island was so off. The huddling, the string, the pool, the monster, the pirate ship; the worst part was, Sanji wasn’t even sure the string had anything to do with the island itself, if his theory was accurate. He couldn’t think of any other explanation, though.

He thunked his head back against the cave wall. “What if we die here and no one ever finds us? We have no idea where this is, after all. It’s definitely not the East Blue anymore.”

Zoro scoffed. “We’re not gonna die, Sanji.”

“How do you know that? Do you know how to survive on a deserted island with no food and a giant sea monster stalking us?”

Zoro was silent, so Sanji took that as a no. But then he said, “Well, good thing I found water.”

“Oh, yeah. Your freaky water. At least we have that, it’s not supernatural or suspicious at all.”

“Huh?”

“You haven’t felt hungry or thirsty since you drank that water, have you?”

Zoro thought for a moment. “No, I guess not. But is that a bad thing?”

“About the bonfire,” Sanji said, ignoring Zoro’s question. “What if we build it and…we get found?”

Zoro raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that kind of the whole point?”

“I mean,” Sanji said. He paused, afraid to say the words aloud, but then barrelled on anyway. “What if we get found by the wrong people? What if we get found by whoever lives here? In this world…”

Zoro was silent. Sanji couldn’t make out his features across the cave very well, everything shadowy and dark. Outside, there was only the distant sound of the waves crashing against the shore. No bugs, no rustling of animals. Wasn’t that strange?

“Please tell me you’re thinking it too,” Sanji whispered at last. “Please tell me I’m not crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” Zoro said. “You know, back there, on the beach…I thought I saw…” He hesitates, like he’s unsure he wants to continue.

“Yeah?”

“Like…your leg looked like it was on fire…”

Sanji’s mouth fell open. “I felt it,” he said in a rush, leaning forward. “For just a second, I thought I felt it!”

“You did?”

“Yes! And you were wearing three swords around your waist. Like, full katanas. Like a loser!”

Zoro squinted. “Huh? How does that make me a loser? That sounds cool as fuck.”

Sanji ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “This doesn’t really solve our problems, though. Actually, it makes them worse. That pirate ship—what if that’s what this world is like? What if we got sent back in time? I don’t want to get found by a bunch of dirty, old-timey pirates.”

“Well, it’s that or be stuck here forever,” Zoro said. Sanji considered this. Would it really be so bad? They didn’t seem to need food. Or to use the bathroom. That was a pretty good deal…but then there was the matter of the sea monster…and the fact that they were utterly alone.

“Maybe this is all a prank,” Sanji said. “Maybe there are cameras everywhere, secretly filming us.”

Some prank. If that were the case, how did the damned string factor into it all?

“Yeah, I don’t really know what the point of this prank would be. Like, what’s the joke? How long we can last before we get killed? And how does this,” Zoro held up his hand, showing off the string, “play into it?”

Sanji stared at him. A beat passed.

Then he was scrambling forward on all fours, getting up in Zoro’s face, holding up his matching hand with the thread hanging loose on his pinky finger.

“You,” Sanji hissed, shaking his hand in Zoro’s face. “You knew about this? You can see it?! You could see it this whole time?!”

Zoro looked properly sheepish. “Uh, yeah…”

“Why didn’t you say anything?!”

Zoro’s mouth flattened into a flustered line before he regained himself, pressing forward. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating! I thought I was going nuts!” It was only a half-truth, but it was good enough for now.

“Maybe we both are,” Zoro argued. “Maybe it’s like, shared psychosis.”

“So then why didn’t you mention it?”

Zoro rubbed the side of his neck, sheepish once again. It was too dark to be able to fully tell, but…did his cheeks look darker? Was he…?

“I…was afraid that it would make you even madder,” Zoro confessed. “Being tied to me, or something. So I didn’t say anything. But you seem to be mad at me all the time, anyway…”

For a minute, Sanji was stunned. Oh…that was actually kind of sweet. He felt heat rising to his own cheeks, matching Zoro.

Finally, he sat back on his heels and mumbled, “For the last time, I told you I’m not mad at you.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do I feel like things are different between last year and now?”

Sanji huffed. “Well for starters, we’re stranded on an island, and I have this freaky, clear string attached to me, connected to you, so I can think of a lot of reasons why I might be a little off.”

Zoro blinked. “Clear?”

“What?”

“The string. It’s clear to you?”

“Um, yes? Getting less clear, though. Why, what is it to you?”

Zoro blinked again, furrowing his brows. He swallowed once, the movement bobbing his Adam’s apple up and down.

“It’s red.”

Sanji’s mouth fell open. He looked at the string between them, laying limp against the cave floor, then at Zoro, who was looking at him like…like…

He couldn’t help it. He launched himself at Zoro, like he wanted to on the beach, like he wanted to for months, sealing their lips together.

Zoro inhaled sharply through his nose, falling backwards onto the ground. Sanji went with him, bracketing either side of Zoro’s head with his arms, refusing to part their faces. And then Zoro’s arms were around his back, fingers threading through his hair, getting the string all tangled up in his locks, and he was kissing back.

It was wonderful, it was passionate, it was everything, the feel of Zoro’s open mouth under his, being able to breathe him in, feeling him skin to skin. As much as the string connecting them was tangled in his hair, Sanji felt something in his chest unravel, coming apart so that it was no longer knotted up and stuck.

When they parted for air, Zoro looked just as dumbstruck as Sanji felt. Suddenly, the world went blurry all around the edges again, and through the static, Sanji felt drawn to Zoro, helpless to resist the pull of their mouths to each other.

They kissed again and Sanji was lost.

So lost, in fact, that strange images flashed in his mind. They were on a ship, newer looking than the wreck they found, but still some kind of wooden thing with a strange patch of grass built into the deck, the smell of salt in the air. Then they were fighting, legs and swords flying, but somehow never actually hitting each other where it counted. They were having a beach party, the usual group of them plus some more people Sanji didn’t recognize, Luffy clamoring at his side for meat. He was finding Zoro standing in the middle of a rocky field, three swords at his side, covered head to toe in blood, panic rising in his chest. They were in a cramped cabin, close like they were now, their foreheads pressed together as they embraced, and Zoro was whispering vows and sweet words into his ear.

The world blurred further, the thread between them burning hot. Next to his ear, Sanji felt a soft breeze followed by a strange whooshing noise, but he was loath to part from Zoro, too caught up in the feel of him.

Zoro, too, was in no hurry to break their kiss. His hands cupped Sanji’s face gently, thumbs brushing circles beneath his ears. Sanji felt so stupid. All his defenses, all his walls. It was no wonder Zoro couldn’t see through them.

There was a coughing noise to their right, towards the cave entrance, but Sanji ignored it.

Then someone spoke. “Oh, of course. Took them all day, and now they can’t get enough of each other.”

At the voice, Zoro shoved him off roughly, suddenly, and Sanji landed flat on his bottom on the cave ground. “What the hell!”

Standing there, just within the cave entrance was…himself. Both of them. Two different versions of Zoro and Sanji.

“What the fuck?” Sanji said, dumbfounded.

“It took them way longer than we thought it would,” the other Zoro said, crossing his arms. He was wearing a green robe with a red sash tied around his waist, three swords at his hip. Just like Sanji thought he imagined…except that he was also missing an eye. What the hell?

“What the hell is going on here?” Zoro demanded—the real Zoro, the one sitting on the ground with him. “Who are you? Why do you look like us?”

The other Sanji rolled his eyes. He was wearing a dress shirt and a suit, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “We are you, dummy. We thought you’d get your shit together way faster than you did. We’ve been stuck in your boring world for over twenty four hours!”

Sanji’s head was spinning. Next to him, Zoro was similarly struck. He blinked hard. Behind the other Zoro and Sanji, the cave entrance was no longer a cave entrance at all. Rather, it was…the beach. Their beach, the recognizable silhouette of the windmill in the distance. The entire gang was there in the stand, gathered around their beach chairs—Nami, Vivi, Usopp, Kaya, Luffy—waving their arms over their heads, grinning at them.

“What took you so long!” Usopp called.

“You guys! The other Zoro and Sanji are super cool!” Luffy shouted, jumping around in the sand.

Nami made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and stuck her tongue out. “You guys owe me a lot of money when you get back here!”

Behind them, Franky was scratching his head, his sunglasses perched atop his blue hair. “Does this mean I’m not getting my jet skis back?”

Zoro and Sanji looked at each other. Above them, the other Zoro made an impatient noise.

“Let’s get moving, you two. This thing’s not gonna be open forever! You have a lot of figuring out to do between the two of you, if the flashes we saw are anything to go by. God, were we as stupid as them?”

“You were, probably,” the other Sanji smirked. The other Zoro scowled.

“Shut up, shit cook.”

“Make me, shitty swordsman!”

Wordlessly, Sanji and Zoro got to their feet. Through the portal, Nami, Luffy, and Usopp were gesturing with their hands, urging them to come through.

“Alright, go on, get outta here!” The other Zoro jabbed Sanji in the back with the hilt of his swords. “Back to your boring world.”

“Ow! Watch it, loser!” Sanji snapped, unable to help himself.

That made the other Zoro laugh. “I guess some things don’t change,” he said, shaking his head. Next to him, other Sanji snorted.

There was a string connecting them, too, Sanji noticed. Tied between their pinkies, perfectly mirroring the one between himself and Zoro, brilliant crimson and shimmering in the sunlight behind them.

“C’mon,” Zoro said, tugging Sanji forward by the wrist. There was a look of wonder on his face, amazement and disbelief and affection all rolled together.

Sanji pulled his wrist out of Zoro’s grasp, only so that he could fold their hands together instead, and then they went through the portal, back out onto the beach.

The moment as they both stepped back onto the beach, the portal was gone, the only thing at their backs the familiar stretch of calm East Blue water.

“Some race,” Zoro said quietly, his shoulder bumping into Sanji’s. His thumb brushed back and forth over Sanji’s knuckles.

“Yeah…”

As their friends rushed forward to clamor all around them, Sanji looked down at his and Zoro’s joined hands. The string was gone now, but he remembered the color it had turned right before they stepped through the strange portal.

It was red.