Chapter 21
Sanji could feel the cold from the rainstorm creeping into the apartment. His skin was still a bit damp from the extremely hot shower he took with Zoro earlier and the howling wind and thundering rain on the window just made it all the more tempting to pull his damn bipedal heatsource under a blanket and block out the world.
Maybe after dinner.
He'd been in such a rush to get to cooking that he'd not bothered drying his hair properly. It was probably going to frizz and curl like crazy once it settled, but as Sanji stirred the food in the pan and let the warmth and smell ward off the cold, he realized for once he couldn't care less about his hair. A shudder travelled down his spine as droplets from soaked golden locks slid down past the neckline of one of Zoro's oversized shirts and down the blond's back.
He was just wearing it because there was no way he was going to dirty a new shirt of his own just to take it off when he went to bed. It had nothing to do with the smell or the feeling of the shoulder seams around his upper arms and the short sleeves bagging just above his elbow. Zoro never used this black galley-la company shirt anyway; Sanji hadn't seen him wear it once since they started sharing a room.
He'd been making dinner awfully late this past week. It wasn't good for their digestion. He'd have to put down a 'no sex before dinner' rule if this persisted. Sanji's phone vibrated on the counter, and Sanji pressed the button without picking it up, flicking a finger on the screen to read the new message.
'I have bought them young-master! They should arrive Monday at the latest.'
Sanji chewed on his lower lip for a bit, itching for a cigarette as he typed in his reply one handed.
'Which one did you swap out for the pirate?'
Sanji pressed send, absentmindedly adding spice to his dish with his other hand. He remembered seeing one of the pirate outfits online while choosing the costumes, and if Zoro wanted pirate he could have pirate. Sanji was fond of pirates too actually. Something about freedom and the ocean just got his blood pumping. He'd always liked the sea.
"Oi! Cook, can you try calling my phone again?" Zoro's voice came from the bedroom and loud clatter of their furniture being moved grated on the little patience Sanji had left. Zoro had been looking for his phone since they got out of the shower. Clearly it wasn't in the apartment.
"I already called it twice." Sanji stated, tapping the spatula on the pan as he covered it and took it off the heat. "Now stop tossing the furniture around, the people below us will complain." Sanji rolled his eyes when the thump of something heavy, possibly the bed, seemed to rattle his spice cabinet.
"I might have left it at school, but they've locked it down by now." Zoro appeared in the doorway with an annoyed furrow on his brow. His upper body was still covered in bites and bruises and Sanji's skin flushed slightly in embarrassment from the sight alone. He'd messed up that time, there was no way Zoro could cover up all those marks.
"You just figured that out now?" Sanji scoffed, pointing at the cutlery drawer without giving Zoro a second glance. "Set the table moss brain, you can get your phone tomorrow."
Sanji split the food onto two plates as Zoro promptly hunted down cutlery for both of them. When the food was on the table the damn mannerless Neanderthal tossed Sanji a fork and a knife across the tiny table, and Sanji was forced to catch the rattling cutlery with a slam of his hand before they fell to the floor.
Was this really the bastard Sanji was in love with? Sanji sighed and shook his head, watching Zoro rummage around in the cupboard for glasses. Once successful, the moron turned and hit his knee on the cheap kitchen table as he sat down. The impact jolted the cutlery off the table, sending Zoro's knife hurtling to the floor only to be caught just in time between Zoro's ring and pinkie finger.
Sanji tapped his fingers on the cheap, white polished table top. They had to get a new kitchen table and chairs. Something sturdy that wouldn't jump and jolt and creak when Zoro used them. It probably wouldn't be worth it to spend money on upgrading their shitty campus furniture, since they only had one semester left here.
Outside, it was pouring down heavier than earlier, with the occasional flash of lighting bursting its way through the curtains on their one rattling window. Sanji rubbed his cold feet together as he ate, he was even wearing socks and he was still so damn cold. He didn't understand how Zoro could just sit there and eat wearing nothing but boxers. Damn his shitty high body temperature.
Sanji slipped his feet between the hollow metal rod legs of the table, placing his feet flat on top of Zoro's bare ones. The swordsman's feet twitched slightly but didn't withdraw even as Zoro glared at him from over a forkful of couscous.
Sanji's phone vibrated loudly on the counter and the blond reached over to get it, breaking his own 'no phone at the dinner table' rule as he flicked his finger over the screen to unlock his phone.
"Why are your feet constantly ice cold, Cook?" Zoro grumbled, chewing on his food, while Sanji tried to put on his most innocent expression as he opened up Duval's message. Zoro grinned perversely, his feet shifting under Sanji's as the swordsman spoke. "Is it because all your blood is constantly in your-"
Suddenly lightening flashed and the lights went out. The apartment was completely dark apart from the cell phone light on Sanji's features, and then thunder rumbled through the sound of rain.
"-dick?" Zoro's voice came from the darkness and Sanji turned his cell phone to illuminate the confused expression on Zoro's face and a gleaming metal fork half buried in a stem of broccoli. The two of them got to their feet and opened the door, joining the small mob that had formed in the hallway.
The eerie collection of half bright and fluorescent cell phone lights through the dark of the hallway illuminated the confused or annoyed faces of their neighbours. They looked a bit like will o' the wisps, moving and swaying with the movement of their owners.
"The power is out on the entire east campus!" One guy exclaimed, stating the obvious much to everyone's chagrin. A few girls and a guy shrieked in terror as lightening flashed through the window at the end of the hall, momentarily causing long black shadows to dance across the walls. Sanji and Zoro stepped out into the dark, listening to the murmur of their neighbours grow more and more agitated.
"Oi cook, don't we have a bunch of candles in the junk closet?" Zoro breathed hotly into the blonde's ear, sending shudders down his spine as Sanji turned to look over his shoulder. Zoro's dark silhouette behind him had an eerie glow from the faint light of Sanji's phone. His earrings glittered at the side of his jaw and Sanji was suddenly overly aware of the fact Zoro was standing in the hallway practically naked and covered in hickeys.
"I think we do, go get a bag, marimo." Sanji pushed Zoro back inside their dorm room and pat his hand on the counter, looking for his lighter. "- and put on some shitty clothes, pervert!" Sanji hissed at his nearly nude idiot, who mumbled something from deep inside the top cupboard high above their tiny fridge.
"I think I found them-" Zoro said, pulling out a bag and squinting at it through the dark. "No wait, these are chips. Oi, Cook! I CAN'T find them in here. Why do we have so much JUNK?"
"Let me." Sanji huffed, lighting himself a cigarette and elbowing Zoro to the side with a chip bag crinkle. After raising his phone to the shelf and illuminating the contents, the low angle was still too awkward for him to see anything deep inside. "I can't see the back."
"Here." Zoro's arms were wrapped around Sanji's hips, Sanji clung to Zoro's head in a death grip and tried his hardest not to yelp as he was raised high into the darkness and almost had his head bashed into the corner of the cupboard. "Do you see now?"
"WARN ME before you do that, moss brain!" Sanji hit the top of the greenhead spitefully, grumbling to himself as he turned to look into the cupboard. After a few seconds of squinting into the mess of their cupboard and moving things like batteries, a small bags of nails and screws and a broken radio aside, Zoro seemed to have gotten bored and was now burying his face in the side of Sanji's stomach.
It was all a bit romantic really, Sanji saw the large bag of tea light candles far in the back, but he ignored the discovery to savour the feeling of Zoro's brow furrow against his side. The dark room and strangely misshapen embrace had the air tense with something, and Sanji's heart was hammering in his chest as Zoro pulled away to look in Sanji's direction through the darkness.
"Cook-" Zoro's voice was rumbling and contemplative, almost absent minded as if he hadn't finished thinking the rest of the sentence through. Sanji swallowed audibly, the flutter in his chest becoming unbearable as he turned his phone towards Zoro's serious face. Strange, half-baked shadows highlighted the furrows on Zoro's forehead and his eyes seemed to glow.
"What?" Sanji urged, his voice low and his fingers tightening around his phone.
"Are those my chips?"
"..."
"I'm sure I bought a bag of these exact chips about a month ago." Zoro huffed in annoyance, his nose tangling awkwardly in the side of Sanji's shirt. Well his shirt to be exact. "They disappeared and I assumed Yosaku ate them. Why were they in the junk closet?"
Sanji stared at the other man in a mix of insult and disappointment. "Because they are JUNK FOOD obviously and you know how I feel about mass produced, trans-fat ridden, sodium covered pieces of SHIT."
"You are such a fucking food snob." Zoro buried his head back into Sanji's side with an annoyed groan, and Sanji frowned at the bastard before dropping the large bag of small round candles on his head.
"You should be thanking me moss brain." Sanji hissed angrily, squirming to try to get out of Zoro's half embrace. "If you want snacks you can just let me know and I'll make you something that won't make your stomach try to squirm its way out of your ass to escape."
There was tense silence for a moment before Zoro's brow furrowed again.
"Is that my shirt?"
"You weren't using it, now PUT ME DOWN SHITTY MARIMO!"
Their dispute soon devolved into a miniature fight where Sanji ended up wrapping his legs around Zoro's chest tightly enough to hamper the swordsman's breathing, sufficient for him to let go. Sanji backed away from the other man through the darkness, clutching the bag of candles to his chest.
"You stay here while I go share these candles with the lovely ladies suffering in the dark." Sanji managed to work his way around the kitchen table, hitting his knee on the kitchen chair as he struggled to make his way out of their room through the darkness.
"I'll come too-"
"There is NO way I'm going to look for you in the dark if you get lost. You get lost on this floor when the lights are ON." Sanji shook his head, turning his phone to illuminate Zoro's agitated frown. "Don't even try denying it. Besides you look like something pulled right from a porno, put on some clothes, people are going to see the marks."
Before Zoro could make any attempt to claim he didn't get lost, Sanji turned his phone to the door and carefully made his way out of their room, stubbing his toe on Zoro's bag and hissing in annoyance when he could hear Zoro chuckling from the kitchen.
Out in the darkened hallway, people were huddled in groups with their cell phones talking and complaining about the power outage.
"My cell phone battery will go out soon!"
"I can't access the internet; I was in the middle of a video-"
"I was in the middle of shaving my beard now It´s half-"
"It's way too dark!"
"Do not worry fair maidens, your light in the darkness is here~" Sanji swooned before he awkwardly clenched his phone in between his elbow and side and lit his lighter, dramatically lighting a candle and passing it over to a thankful looking girl who balanced it delicately in her open palm. He lit and passed out several candles to people gathered in the hallway, walking between rooms and knocking to ask their fellow neighbours if they needed a light, getting softly spoken 'thank you'-s and relieved sighs as reward.
After knocking on every single door on their floor, Sanji dropped his lighter into the almost empty bag of candles and started the slow stumble down the hallway, narrowing his eyes at each bronzed plate as he illuminated the tags trying to find his room number.
"Do you need directions, curly brow?"
Sanji frowned, closing his eyes and sighing audibly as he slowly turned in the direction of the voice, raising his phone to illuminate Zoro's smug looking face as he was leaning on the doorway about six doors down. Sanji rolled his eyes at the other man, making his way over and confirming the room number with a flash of his cell phone.
"It seems like you managed not to get lost. Good boy." Sanji gave him a condescending pat on the green head as he entered the room, snickering to himself as Zoro growled in agitation as he closed the door.
"I'm not a DOG." Zoro barked angrily, turning Sanji's hand so the phone illuminated the bag. "Oh, you left some for us, I wasn't expecting that." Zoro smirked and pulled a candle out of the bag, digging his hand back in for the lighter. Sanji frowned at the other man and purposely moved the bag out of the way to make Zoro's life a little harder than it had to be.
"It's not like either of us are afraid of the dark." Sanji grumbled, not willing to admit that he had indeed forgotten to make sure that there were some candles left for them. Zoro lit two of them and placed then on the kitchen table, pulling the bag out of Sanji's hand to shake the one last candle out.
Sanji sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for Zoro light the last candle and placed it on the coffee table. Once the room was barely illuminated, the swordsman sat down and turned to his, now cold, food. Sanji's brow twitched in agitation, this shitty blackout had minimized the full potential of their eating experience.
"Don't sulk, it's still good." Zoro resumed his eating as if nothing had happened. Sanji rolled his eyes, as if he was going to let food go to waste just because it was cold. It was just a bit annoying that his first candlelit dinner with Zoro had cold steamed vegetables.
That's right, this was a candlelit dinner, even if neither of them was properly dressed, and the howling wind was the only music they had. Sanji smiled into his mouthful. Even though it was during a blackout it was still romantic. Not that Zoro had a single romantic bone in his body to appreciate it with, the ill- mannered, tasteless pile of moss that he was.
They finished eating in silence, partly because Zoro seemed to be enjoying his meal too much to bother talking, and partly so Sanji could sit there and bask in the one sided romantic atmosphere of the flickering flame's soft glow on their skin. Deciding there was no point in waiting with the dishes, Sanji moved a candle to the counter and started washing, smiling to himself when Zoro took up his position beside him to help.
"Here, Zoro." Sanji passed a plate through the dark, not letting go until he felt Zoro pulling at it in a secure grip. They only had three matching plates and he didn't want to risk another one of them breaking. Sanji continued washing, cueing Zoro in to when there was something to dry with a hum or his name. Zoro was apparently struggling to keep up, muttering under his breath.
"You don't have to say my name every time." Zoro grumbled, struggling to fit his giant marimo hands into the glass he was drying. He seemed to give up, forcing the fabric into the glass and twisting it to get the water out. "How do you do it so fast anyway?"
"There's just the two of us." Sanji shrugged, passing the last fork to Zoro who failed to take it off his hand immediately without his cue. "I've had plenty of practice; I earned most of my allowance washing up an entire restaurant's worth of plates as a teen."
"Did you spend it all on porn and cigarettes?" Zoro teased as he fumbled around putting the forks and knives into their correct slots as Sanji sat down on the couch. The packet of cigarettes was on the table and Sanji wasted no time tucking one between his lips before he absentmindedly patted himself down for a light.
"Cigarettes and cookbooks actually." Sanji furrowed his brow, looking up as Zoro reached out across the table with the lighter in between his scarred and rough fingers. Sanji smirked as he leant forward, cigarette wiggling teasingly between his lips. "There's free porn on the internet."
"Shitty perverted cook." Zoro smirked as he scraped Sanji's lighter, holding it out for Sanji who stuck the tip of his cigarette into the flame, lighting it up as the shadows from the flickering glow danced across their features.
"Says the perverted plant." Sanji moved over, quite obviously making room for Zoro on the couch next to him. Zoro took the hint, cushions and springs creaking from his weight as he let himself fall onto the abused furniture. The same couch they had sex on less than 4 hours ago. The bottle of lube was even still on the floor. He had to remember to stash that somewhere later.
"So what do you want to do now? It's too dark to try to read and there is no internet." Sanji exhaled, watching the flickering candlelight reflect on the soft white smoke. He really should open up a window, but the rain was hammering the glass so loudly and letting in the howling wind would only make him colder than he already was.
"We could watch a movie." Zoro suggested, moving a bit to the side to allow Sanji to tuck his fett into the couch. His large brow furrowed when Sanji burrowed his toes into the warmth under his thigh. "Keep your icecube toes to yourself shit cook-"
"My laptop is too old though, it can maybe handle 30 minutes without being plugged in." Sanji said as casually as he could, fighting back a shitty grin as he purposely poked and prodded at Zoro's warm side and stomach with his cold feet. "And my external needs power too."
"My laptop can handle a few hours." Zoro grumbled, focusing on trying to grab Sanji's ankles with large warm hands. "But I have no movies on it. I have a few DVD's Saga lent me. They're mostly Samurai flicks though."
Sanji paused in thought, staring into the darkness of the room absent mindedly long enough for Zoro to catch his ankles. Apparently Zoro had been expecting him to struggle, since Sanji's lack of resistance made him eye Sanji in confusion.
"If you're not in the mood for samurai flicks, there was one that had general martial arts in it too." Zoro suggested and moved his hands to cover the top of Sanji's sock-clad feet. The warmth soaked into the farbic and spread all the way to Sanji's bones. "-other than that all I have on my computer are training videos and a few documentaries on swords and history."
"You're such a nerd." Sanji muttered under his breath, flicking the ashes off his cigarette into the ashtray and watching the embers burn out. "How long have you been friends with Saga?"
The question caused Zoro's expression to make this illegally adorable double take of confusion. Sanji instantly regretted asking when he saw the top corner of Zoro's mouth arch in a fond smile. There was a sudden rush of jealously sliding down his back and burrowing deep in his gut.
"We were friends as kids. He came to the dojo every day." Zoro shrugged slightly, running his hands up Sanji's legs and over his shins. Rough fingers tangled in Sanji's leg hair in a bizarrely comfortable scratch. "Then he moved away, then I moved away, and then we both ended up here."
"Sounds like the plot of some cheesy romance novel." Sanji muttered, glaring at the floor. He was lucky he was assigned a room with Zoro. He wouldn't have gotten this close if he hadn't been forced to interact with the bastard every day. Why hadn't Zoro requested a room change to Saga though? Wouldn't it be normal for old friends to bunk together once they were reunited?
The entire thing sounded suspiciously like one of those childhood romance books Sanji remembered reading a lot of in secret when he was a teen. Did Zoro maybe have a reason as to why he'd rather not share a room with Saga? Sanji jolted from his thoughts the moment he realized Zoro was smirking at him, eyebrow arched and cheek squished as he rested his face in his palm.
"What are you staring at moss brain?"
"You're jealous." Zoro smiled the widest, most shit eating grin Sanji had ever seen on a human being and it instantly riled him up in possessive anger and embarrassment. How dare the green haired bastard imply such an outrageously irrational thing!
"I AM NOT." Sanji hissed grabbing Zoro's cheeks and squishing his face together vengefully. Zoro's laughter sounded ridiculous coming from between crushed lips but for some reason Sanji got the feeling Zoro wasn't taking him seriously.
"That's good because you got nothing to be jealous about." Zoro managed to wrestle his face free of Sanji's fingers, rubbing at his sore cheeks. "There's nothing like that going on with me and Saga. We're just friends."
Sanji bit the inside of his cheek and narrowed his eyes. He wasn't sure if Zoro was really that dense or if he had just been seeing things that weren't there. Maybe it was a little of both. Zoro couldn't find a casual flirt if it was glued to his large forehead and Sanji was maybe over analyzing Saga's behaviour. Maybe.
"That better be the truth." Sanji reclined back into the couch, burrowing his feet back under Zoro's thigh and sulking like the grown up he was.
"I'm not the one with a fanclub shit cook." Zoro grumbled, frowning at Sanji with a jealous tick in his eye. "You do realize that all those people who buy your posters most likely jerk off all over them?"
"It's just pictures! The alone time of total strangers is none of my business!" Sanji's face reddened, Zoro saying this so brazenly was awkward. He didn't want or need the mental images of Duval or Gin going to town over his website, and he hardly believed lovely pure ladies would do something as dirty as masturbate to pictures of him in a dress.
"It just pisses me off." Zoro huffed, resting his feet on the coffee table like a Neanderthal, jolting the flickering tea lights. It would be funny if his ankles caught on fire. Damn jealous, perverted bastard. He had no right to lecture anyone. Sanji knew Zoro had done the exact same thing at least once. He'd heard him. He'd seen the internet history.
"At least I'm not sauntering around half-naked and sweaty like you do with the sword-club." Sanji snorted condescendingly, tossing his lighter on the coffee table and frowning at the marimo. It did piss him off that Saga had probably seen Zoro soaked and naked more often than he had. "At least I'm not showering with my 'fanclub'."
There was a slightly awkward silence after that and, for a second, Sanji was sure he'd won their little argument. Zoro grimaced at him, glaring at the front door before reclining backwards into the couch and letting his hand roam over the tattered cuffs of Sanji's sweatpants.
"I don't. Why do you think I take showers at home all the time?" Zoro pinched the bridge of his nose, looking like he was about to get a massive headache. "If I shower at school I make sure everyone else is gone."
"I thought you said the water was always so cold." Sanji paused at that, looking at Zoro who looked a bit angrier over this whole silly argument than he'd been expecting. There was a grimace and a sigh from Zoro, who rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. What reason would Zoro have to avoid showering with the others? He had absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.
"Half the guys in there are so uncomfortable with me that they refuse to shower at the same time as me." Zoro huffed, frowning at Sanji before suddenly becoming extremely interested in a loose thread at the cuff on Sanji's pants. "Rayleigh tore them a new one for it, but I got sick of them tip toeing around me like they expected me to jump them in the showers. So I just... stopped."
"What? Do those guys really think you'd just..." The hair at the back of Sanji's neck bristled in anger. How DARE those bastards tip toe around Zoro like he was some sort of a sexual predator?! He was going to beat the shit out of every single one of them given the chance, those damn egotistical shits.
"They apparently don't get that just because I like men too doesn't mean that I like ALL men like some sort of rabid animal." Zoro growled angrily, his expression darkening and his shoulders slumping slightly. "I have standards... and taste."
It was a little jarring to see that someone as blunt and forward as Zoro could have problems beyond his control to fix. He'd never given Zoro's circumstances much thought. He himself spent most of his time trying to excuse or cover up the fact he might like men, while Zoro didn't seem particularly keen on playing any charades with who he was.
"I had no idea." Sanji forced his voice to sound relatively casual, his blood raging in his veins as he contemplated just how difficult it would be to find out exactly which self–absorbed, homophobic bastards had hurt his marimo's feelings, and just how much trouble he'd get into for bashing in all their teeth.
"That was the plan. I was sure you'd react like they did if you found out." Zoro chuckled darkly, scratching at his jaw as he stared into the darkness. "I was sure that you'd be packing your stuff within an hour." Zoro's eyes flickered over to Sanji's, holding his stare in such an intense way Sanji felt his entire body stiffen.
Now it all made a little more sense. The way Zoro had seemed so angry at himself that night when Sanji confronted him in the bathroom. The way he'd tried to explain and make up excuses that had seemed so unlike Zoro. Sanji could still remember the way Zoro barged into the bedroom, he'd probably been expecting Sanji to be packing his bags; instead he found him wearing a dress.
Now he could somewhat understand Zoro's reluctance and disbelief. The way Zoro had asked if he was going to change rooms suddenly weighed so heavily on Sanji's heart it felt like it was going to burst. Shit. The worst thing was that if Sanji had found out about Zoro playing for both teams, he honestly couldn't be sure what his reaction had been.
He'd like to think he would have stayed, at the time another man's preference was none of his concern after all. But he couldn't be sure. He honestly could not be sure he wouldn't have changed rooms.
He could have missed out on this, he could have messed up so badly and he'd never have known.
He could have unknowingly stomped all over Zoro's heart and then remembered it as a time he dodged a bullet.
The thought made Sanji sick to his stomach.
He didn't know what he could say. He wanted to apologize for what he could have done, but he hadn't done anything. He wanted to apologize for Zoro feeling like he had to hide this from him all this time, but it wasn't his to apologize for. Instead he scooted closer; keeping his feet buried in the couch under Zoro's thigh as he hugged his knees close to his chest and leant over to plant a kiss on the side of Zoro's mouth.
"I'm happy." Sanji kept his forehead against Zoro's temple, listening to his own heart beating as if it was chasing away the heavy could-haves. Through some amazing coincidence, this perfect chain of events had started and caused all these pieces to fall into the exact places they had, leading to him sitting on the couch in the dark, thinking about how lucky he was.
The corner of Zoro's mouth raised slightly as he turned his head, tilting just enough for their noses not to collide as he planted a chaste kiss on Sanji's mouth, barely catching the blond's bottom lip between his own and pulling ever so slightly at it as he pulled away.
"Me too." Zoro's voice was low, barely a whisper against the shell of Sanji's ear. It sounded like a mix of relief and exhaustion, but most importantly, it sounded honest. It sounded like Zoro genuinely meant it, his brow eased as he nuzzled the side of Sanji's head, golden earrings tangling with subtly curled blond hair as both of them took a moment to breathe and listen to the hammering rain on the window behind them.
"Hey, Zoro," Sanji hummed, pulling his feet free from under Zoro's thigh and planting them firmly on the floor. He stood up while keeping their heads together, wrapping a hand around Zoro's neck and clawing gently at the back of his neck. "-let's watch one of your super boring sword documentaries."
"The only boring thing around here is your face curly brow." Zoro huffed as he got up, putting out two of the three candles and bringing the last one with them as they made their way over to their bedroom. Sanji grabbed the covers and pillows from his bed on the others side of the room, tossing them into Zoro's face as the marimo fumbled his laptop open.
While Zoro grumbled under his breath at the horrid bright glare of the computer screen, Sanji tucked all the extra covers against the wall for padding. and after a few minutes of arguing with each other over whether they should use the covers or not the two of them sat awkwardly tangled on the small bed, their hands touching in a completely unintentional way as they engaged in a silent competition of 'who can stay awake the longest'.
Sanji won.
Thanks to Mistress Hasty for being the beta for this chapter!
(more to come, possibly very soon.)