Chapter Text
Zoro didn’t pay any attention when Sanji submitted a few of his photographs to some magazine contest. The cook does a lot of stuff like that, mailing opinion pieces and recipes and whatever else back to all the magazines he subscribes to; glossy, flashy things with pictures of idyllic countryside parties and white sandy beaches on the covers. Occasionally he gets into arguments with other similarly engaged readers on message boards or blogs or whatever, and complains to Zoro when the internet speeds at Ivankov’s resort can’t keep up with his attitude. Or maybe the blogs are something else. Sanji has tried to get Zoro to start one, talking about growing his platform and selling more photos online, but it seems like a lot of work, and kind of soulless or something. Sure, he’ll do some quick event gigs to make money, but Zoro prefers selling his real photography to people who are here, and know what he’s showing them. He gets sales from the business cards set out in Mihawk’s studio, and word of mouth, and that’s enough for him.
The point being, Zoro did not think anything of it when Sanji asked him if he could send a couple of Zoro’s shots to this contest thing. Nothing ever comes of stuff like that, right? Zoro’s never won anything in his life.
Until now, apparently.
“Look, mud man!” Sanji excitedly says, shoving his magazine in Zoro’s face. “They even published them!”
Zoro scowls at the page, where one of his waterfall landscapes and a few thumbnails of his macros - thumbnails, honestly, you can’t see any of the details, and that’s the whole point - are laid out next to some European cityscapes and other random travel photography.
“So what?”
“So , you won second place!” Sanji rolls his eyes and waves the letter that arrived with the magazine. Definitely the kind of thing Zoro would have recycled without opening, with its impersonal plastic-window envelope and corporate return address.
“Great. You get another year of this junk for free or something?”
“As if I would bother telling you about that,” Sanji sniffs. “Besides, I won a three-year subscription for my tropical cocktail recipes last fall.”
“Then what’s the big deal, curly?”
“You really weren’t listening when I submitted these for you, huh? It’s a vacation sweepstakes, moss for brains.”
Zoro goes back to sorting through some of the photos he took on his last canoe trip. Gorgeous weather, the blues of the lakes and sky almost as crisp and awe-inspiring on his screen as they are in his memory, plenty of interesting, stubborn plants eking out a living on the exposed rock and thin dirt along the shore. Trips like that restore his soul, even as short as this one was, but for the first time he can remember, Zoro felt like there was something… not missing, but something that could still be even better yet. He loves the solitude, the silence of a well-timed paddle stroke cutting through the water without a sound, but the resort is too busy this time of year for Sanji to join him, and once or twice, Zoro missed the ceaseless rumble of the cook’s strong voice.
“ - not first place, that was a trip to the French Caribbean, which, I definitely wouldn’t want to make anyone French put up with you, so I guess it’s better this way - You really aren’t listening, are you, bastard?”
“Should I be?”
“Only if you care about the all-expenses-paid beach resort vacation that your shitty photos won!”
“Wait, really?” Zoro blinks.
“Yes!” Sanji throws his hands up, waving the magazine in Zoro’s direction.
“When?”
“Early next year,” Sanji says, much more quietly. “If you think we’ll still…”
Is this just a summer fling? Zoro hopes not. He hasn’t let himself think about it. “Of course we will be,” he grumbles. “That’s the best time of year to leave the frozen tundra, anyway. Can’t wait.”
How could he say anything else? Sanji beams at him, and Zoro already knows that his damn smile will be more of a factor in beating the winter blues than any dumb, sandy beach.
~o~
Zoro likes winter up here. Sure, he tends to go south to the cities for at least part of the season, but there’s undeniable beauty to the thick blanket of snow over the woods, and the untouched expanse of it across the lakes. Fewer people brave the below-zero temperatures to see it, but Zoro likes that just fine too. It’s peaceful. Usually.
It’s different this year. Sending Sanji back to the cities at the end of the summer frankly sucked, and Zoro feels impatient about the passing of time in a way he never has before. Phone calls, even video calls, just aren’t the same as having the damn cook next to him, reeking of the resort kitchen and crunching unpleasantly on cheap lollipops as he tried to quit smoking. Zoro hated the sugary, artificial taste of the awful things only slightly less than Sanji’s cigarettes themselves, but now he’s tempted to buy a bag every time he goes through the grocery store.
Giving the cold one last chance to sink into his bones before he flies south like a damn retired snowbird, Zoro snowshoes out into the woods to an abandoned trapper’s cabin the day before he’s due to leave. The snow is untouched beneath the trees, fresh as of only hours earlier, and it’s hard to tell whether the flakes drifting through the air are the tail end of the snowstorm or just dislodged from the silent branches above him.
It feels good - the cold, the still air, the unrelenting quiet and solitude of the winter forest. Zoro hasn’t lost this, and he’s sure he never will, but he’s still eager to get away for a while. On the trek back, his snowshoes feel lighter on his feet and the freezing air in his lungs seems easier to bear, as every heavy step takes him closer to seeing Sanji again.
~o~
They’re meeting at the airport and flying south together, and even driving five hours just to go through the hassle of getting on a plane can’t temper Zoro’s excitement. He gets turned around trying to find the counter to pick up his boarding pass - all the remodeling they’ve done lately, you’d think the airport would be easier to navigate - and gets pulled aside during security because he forgot to empty his water bottle, but finally, finally he makes it to their assigned gate. At least he remembered to put his multi-tool in his checked bag.
Sanji jumps out of his seat as soon as he spots him, and Zoro knows he’s grinning like a loon as the cook runs up to him. They hug for a few long moments that make the intervening months feel like nothing, and over Sanji’s shoulder, Zoro spots some teenager with a fading dye job smirking in their direction.
“We’re boarding in minutes, marimo,” Sanji hisses, the nerves in his tone drowned out by the strength of his arms around Zoro. “Thought you were gonna stand me up.”
“For my vacation? No way,” Zoro scoffs.
Sanji kicks him in the shin, but it barely even stings, so Zoro can tell the cook isn’t really annoyed. They get in line to board, Sanji fussing with his phone to bring up his boarding pass and close it again over and over, and Zoro is so distracted by watching his long, sure fingers that it takes him a while to even look at the phone itself.
“That’s -” Zoro blurts, making Sanji twitch.
“What?”
The cook’s lock screen is a photograph in shades of gold and brown, with white splashes floating above the muted background. It’s a photograph of milkweed seeds blowing across a field against the afternoon sun late in the fall, and Zoro can picture the black-eyed susans going to seed and the round bales of hay in the distance perfectly, because he took that photo. Sent it to the cook on a long drive with Perona, and he can’t remember if Sanji even said anything about it at the time, because of course they started bickering over text about how Zoro should be chauffeuring Perona everywhere instead of the other way around, but here it is now.
“I sent you that.”
“Yeah,” Sanji says, giving him a weird look. “You send me lots of stuff.”
Zoro does not have time to worry if that was pejorative, because suddenly they’re at the front of the line scanning passes and juggling bags and squeezing down the aisle of the airplane, shoving their things into the bins and falling into their seats. So much more of an ordeal than necessary. Long drives are easier, but this one would have been a little too long even for Zoro. At least the flight was paid for.
“I didn’t realize you liked that one,” Zoro says, once they’re finally settled.
“What one - oh. Yeah, I guess,” Sanji reflects, cheeks slightly pink. “I mean, I like all of them. I change it a lot.”
“Change it? Pictures of pretty girls, or something?” Zoro teases.
“ No ,” Sanji hisses. “I - I save all your photos. Don’t let it go to your head, marimo.”
They flip through Sanji’s phone for a while, and Zoro is surprised by how many of the cook’s saved pictures are things he sent him. It doesn’t take long to skip back to the last few days before Sanji left, and the picnic the cook insisted on having, for the romantic parallels with their first meeting, or whatever.
“Send me that one,” Zoro demands, jabbing at a picture of the two of them on Sanji’s stupid picnic blanket. For all the time they spent together over the summer, there aren’t many pictures of them, between Zoro’s preference for remote locations and Sanji’s ability to distract him.
Sanji isn’t much of a photo guy. Sometimes he’ll text Zoro pictures of food he’s made, at all hours of the day, and Zoro will pine hungrily over them for a few minutes, but doesn’t tend to save them to his phone. The only photo with that honor - though he’s not stupid enough to set it as anything Perona might see and thus be able to tease him over - is a selfie Sanji sent of himself wearing a sweater he stole from Zoro’s closet.
He saves that information to share at a later date. It’s hard to guess whether Sanji would blush and get all shy about it, or throw a fit in the middle of the airplane.
The rest of the trip is uneventful. Stepping out of the airport into the subtropical humidity feels a little like getting smothered, but Sanji insists he’ll get used to it, so Zoro only complains a little. He falls asleep in the rental car - Sanji insists on driving the whole way, despite the road being essentially a straight line - and when he wakes, certain for a moment that having the cook next to him is merely another dream, they’re pulling up to the imposing gate of the private resort.
Inside, it’s… nice. Their suite is a little detached cabin thing, all whitewashed walls and pastel trim, and the cook coos over it endlessly while Zoro wanders around outside. They’re right on the beach, a pristine, raked stretch of white sand without so much as a clump of seaweed washed up on it. A little ways down it, a crooked palm tree leans out over the water, and Zoro shudders as he imagines how many poorly-composed photos of kids and honeymooners climbing that thing must be floating around out on social media.
The resort has a large pool with a winsomely shabby tiki bar, and their stay includes breakfast delivered every morning, plus a golf cart they can drive up and down the paved path along the beach. At the end of the main drive, there’s a pier out into the shallow, crystalline water, and a shack where guests can rent sea kayaks and other recreational watercraft for an hourly fee that makes Zoro’s eyes bug out.
When the resort’s gates closed behind their rental car, it felt like handcuffs snapping around his wrists, and by the time he’s paced the circumference of the exterior wall, Zoro understands why. The entire place is perfect. Spotlessly manicured lawns, whimsically shaped bushes, and bright flowers trained to cover any hint of blemish. Nothing to do but relax and enjoy the sunlight.
Zoro makes himself lift his camera from its place hung around his neck, and snap a photo of the lawn stretching back to the beach in front of him. It looks like something out of Sanji’s damn magazine. Completely soulless. A closeup of a multi-colored bougainvillea beside their little cabin turns out slightly more interesting, giving Zoro a chance to think about the angle and how the composition of the pink and white blooms will balance, and then Sanji pops his head out the door.
“We even have a kitchen!” he chirps, startling a little lizard off the patio. “Hungry?”
“I could eat,” Zoro says, as if he’s not desperate to get some of Sanji’s cooking after months apart. The cook scowls at him, tries to trip him when he comes through the door, and generally acts just as insufferable and amazing as Zoro remembers. They’re going to have a great time, for sure.
~o~
The next morning, Sanji drags Zoro to the beach before anyone else is awake, staking out what the fussy idiot claims are the best beach chairs. It’s fun for a while. Zoro can’t deny that the ocean is beautiful, even if he can’t seem to find any character in it the way he can his lakes back home, and he definitely can’t complain about spending the day with Sanji in swimwear. The cook has a goofy oversized shirt and big hat to protect his pale skin, and Zoro gets to help him re-up on sunscreen every couple hours.
By noon, he’s bored. They’ve splashed around in the shallow water, raced each other up and down the beach, wandered over to the pool to get some fruity drinks, and lazed around in the sun for about as long as Zoro can stand. Not because he’s overheated, but simply because he’s not used to sitting around doing nothing .
He sits around doing nothing a lot, actually; waiting for the perfect shot out in the woods takes a lot of patience. But that is nothing like this , aimlessly lying around while giggling couples and screaming kids prance up and down the beach, with the crashing waves loud in his ears. Helping Sanji reapply sunscreen is the highlight of his afternoon, but the cook must be sensing something in Zoro’s body language as he does, because he squirms around on their shared beach towel to look at him, making Zoro smear lotion all over his silly swimming shirt.
“You hate it here,” Sanji frets.
“I don’t hate it,” Zoro grumbles.
He hates it a little.
“We’re supposed to be relaxing, but you’re -” Sanji cuts himself off with a hiss. Zoro is glad of it. It feels like the edge of a fight; feels like it might turn into a worse one than the playful arguing they usually share. He does his best to paste a smile across his face, knowing it probably only looks like he’s baring his teeth.
“Just not used to sitting around. I’ll get the hang of it.”
“Let’s go swim again,” Sanji suggests, equally forced. “Bet I can do twice as many laps around the pool as you can, mossy.”
Damn curly-brows is right, not least because Zoro keeps getting distracted by the sight of him slicing through the crystal-clear pool water like some kind of magic water nymph or whatever the fuck. They get a few races in before a family of what feels like a dozen feral children shows up.
Sanji gets a nosebleed when Zoro gets out of the pool to lounge on one of the reclining chairs with another rum-and-whatever, so they head back to their cabin. This is nice, just the two of them away from prying eyes, with crisp white sheets and all the time in the world. Even as night falls, the heat of the day holds on, making sweat jump more readily to their skin than Zoro is used to, but it’s not like they weren’t going to get there anyway. Being with Sanji at all is much more important than the where of it, so Zoro puts the unfamiliar sound of the wind in the palms outside out of his mind.
~o~
Strong winds the next morning keep some of the less intrepid vacationers off the beach, and Zoro wanders out to the end of the pier, enjoying the hint of bite in the breeze. A few frigates are coasting in the steady blow, big, beautifully streamlined birds. Zoro is used to eagles swooping over the lakes for fish, but despite the similarities in their diet, the shape of these seabirds is entirely different.
He doesn’t have his tripod, but the frigates are close enough that he can get a few good shots without the extra stabilization. Their bodies are dark against the blustery sky, sleek enough that they almost look like stylized paintings rather than real creatures. The photos are nothing like the ones he takes of birds back home, but Zoro is satisfied with them, and goes back to their cabana feeling more settled in his own skin.
Sanji is cooking breakfast, happily complaining about the poor variety of ingredients available at the resort’s tiny supermarket-slash-gift-shop, so Zoro perches on the counter next to him and steals a kiss.
“Don’t wander off too far,” Sanji grumbles, with a wide smile on his face. “It’s a big ocean, marimo, you might float away to who knows where.”
“Can’t even get out of this resort; I’m not gonna vanish into the sunset,” Zoro retorts.
“Still wouldn’t put it past you.”
Zoro manages about an hour after breakfast of lazing around on the beach before he has to move. Joining the kids with their plastic buckets roaming around the exposed flats at low tide makes him feel a little silly, but it’s hard to stay self-conscious in the face of the fascinating new creatures revealed by the retreating ocean. The cook isn’t as interested in sea cucumbers and stranded cowfish, but when Zoro glances back toward shore, he catches Sanji watching him with a soft-eyed smile.
“Having fun out there?” Sanji teases, squinting up at him with one hand shading against the sunlight when Zoro comes back for some water.
Teasing or not, the cook is happy enough to lean against him and scroll through some of the pictures Zoro has taken, both of them peering at the tiny camera screen with their heads close together. The minutiae of the tidal flats is new to him, but Zoro feels connected to it in a way he hasn’t managed with the sweeping ocean views and bright white sand.
“Y’know, mossy, as long as you’re running around like a little kid, I overheard one of ‘em yelling about crabs,” Sanji says, discreetly pointing at a group of boys being dragged off for lunch by their mother. “Came booking it out from behind the boathouse with something in his hands, and his mom screamed.”
Zoro perks up, making Sanji laugh. “Crabs?”
“This is how you know I love you,” Sanji solemnly tells him. “Inside information on critter sightings.”
“I knew anyway,” Zoro says.
Sanji splutters, shoving his head away. “Shut up.”
“Better get some more sunscreen on, prissy cook,” Zoro snickers. “Looking pretty red in the face there.”
The cook kicks at him, so Zoro catches his leg and places a kiss on the knob of his ankle, before Sanji manages to roll them both off the beach chair with his flailing. Buoyed by the promise of crabs, he leaves Sanji to shake the resulting sand out of his towel, and trots off to the end of the resort’s property.
Behind the watercraft rental and storage, there’s a surprisingly large stretch of empty space. This end of the beach isn’t quite as picturesque, and it’s blocked off by the boat landing’s dock besides; between the buildings and the resort’s high wall, there’s nothing but scrubby plants clinging to the sandy ground. A few nondescript little plovers take flight as Zoro approaches, but otherwise, everything is still.
Zoro is not deterred. Crouching low, he follows a clear path of sand through some of the taller bits of scrub brush, keeping his eyes trained on the untended ground.
Something moves. Zoro goes still, and a rounded, white shell trundles across the sand beneath the nearest shrub, the spidery tips of tiny legs just barely visible. A grin breaks out over his face, and Zoro just watches the hermit crab go on about its business, making a delicate little trail like miniature snowmobile tracks as it drags its shell along.
With that, it’s like his eyes have trained in on a secret, and suddenly, Zoro can see those neat tracks winding determinedly all across the open spaces. Doggedly straight lines, diverting only to avoid such large, insurmountable obstacles as half a coconut husk, or the remains of a conch shell, or a hole dug by some bored child.
Kuina always wanted the big shot, as a kid running through the woods with her first camera. A leaping deer, or better yet, a bear; something dramatic, something that would make her father look twice, take her seriously. Zoro has learned to appreciate the forests they loved so much in different ways, by looking harder than most people ever do. He’d like to think she would be as excited as he feels now, watching the busy little crabs appearing from beneath the brush. They’re not eye-catching like an alligator or some flashy sport fish, but they’re so real , perfect down to each tiny claw.
Picking one up, Zoro looks at the rich purple of the larger claw it uses to block the entrance of its shell, smooth and glossy compared to the weathered nacre of its second-hand home. Might be almost time for a new one; the crab barely seems to fit. When he sets it back down, it waits for a few cautious minutes before stretching out and trundling away, unconcerned by Zoro’s presence as long as he isn’t moving.
The noises of the resort fade away, from the crashing of the waves to the bored drawl of the teenager renting the boats, and Zoro sets about changing his camera lens and finding the perfect angle. Each crab is gloriously unique in its own right, with all their different shells and busy, tiny lives, all going unnoticed in this forgotten patch of sand.
“Still out here?” Sanji’s voice rings out in the quiet, breaking through Zoro’s concentration. He looks up, blinking, and realizes that the sun is setting, and stiffness is setting into his back from hunching over for so long.
“Just look at them,” Zoro says, waving his hands at the most recent pair of crabs he’s been watching. He can’t think of what else to say, how to explain why he cares so much, but he doesn’t have to; the cook ambles over and crouches down beside him, bumping their shoulders together.
“Huh. Glad I didn’t steer you wrong. Get some pictures you’re happy with?”
“So many,” Zoro fervently confirms.
“That one has a pretty shell,” Sanji comments, watching quietly with Zoro for a few minutes.
“Bet he thinks he’s hot stuff,” Zoro snickers. “The most handsome crab in the whole, what, fifty feet of this empty yard?”
“His kingdom,” Sanji intones, and they both laugh. “Want to leave them to it and get some food, mossy?”
The hermit crabs retreat into their shells as he and Sanji get up, looking like nothing more than flotsam in the sand. There’s probably something poetic to say about that, but Zoro isn’t much of a words guy.
They have dinner in the resort’s restaurant, tucked away in a booth where Sanji can bitch about the overpriced food and kitschy atmosphere. He’ll still eat every bite, of course. Zoro pulls out his camera while they wait, taking a few silly pictures of Sanji and his gimmicky cocktail before the cook asks to see some of his afternoon’s photos.
“It’s all crabs,” Zoro warns, but the cook just grins.
“I realized. C’mon, show me what you saw.”
That’s why Zoro is happy to do it, and let Sanji see even the uncurated, raw state of his camera roll. Sanji looks at his photos and understands them, instead of just seeing a hundred images of very similar crabs against ungroomed sand. The cook gets what Zoro is trying to say, by trying to take one perfectly framed portrait of the common little creatures. The thousand words Zoro isn’t eloquent enough to say still some across loud and clear, to him.
“I went a little overboard,” Zoro grumbles.
“Did you know,” Sanji says, “that if a hermit crab finds a good shell that’s the wrong size, it will wait around until more of them show up, and then they’ll all trade shells until everyone has a new one?”
“That’s adorable,” Zoro blurts, not self-conscious in the slightest about it.
“Cooperative little shits,” Sanji grins.
The moon is rising over the ocean when they come out, and the pier is empty, all the vacationing families gone to bed. Sanji holds his hand as they walk out onto the pier, sitting beneath the little canopy to look out over the reflection of the moonlight on the water.
It reminds Zoro of their first sort-of date. Different water, different sky, but the butterflies in his stomach are the same, hardly daring to believe he’s lucky enough to be sitting here with Sanji.
“Not so bad after all, is it, mossman?”
Zoro hums, contently squeezing Sanji’s hand in his.
“I mean, I know it’s not what you’d choose, but -”
“I’d come back,” Zoro says. “I would go anywhere with you.”
It’s just the truth. If the fierceness of Sanji’s kiss as he falls into him is any way to measure, the cook understands that perfectly well. Maybe next time they can find out if Sanji will say the same thing in a log cabin in winter.
