A/N: Finally! The last chapter! I never expected this little one shot to become anything big, let alone for so many people to enjoy it. Thank you all for you support and hopefully, I'll see you guys around on my next projects!

Sanji has gotten used to his days off. He didn't really find them all that appealing before, but there's just something about being able to wake up after the sun.

It feels refreshing.

He gets to actually prepare himself a nice, full breakfast from scratch instead of hurriedly grabbing one of his make-ahead breakfast cups or oatmeal muffins. He gets to keep wearing the loose grey sweats and white muscle t-shirt he slept in and not give a fuck. He gets to waste time on Netflix—he doesn't really watch anything, since he spends two hours just browsing—while munching on popcorn.

Basically, he gets to laze around and do abso-fucking-lutely nothing, and to someone that has been working at the same job since they were ten years old, it is glorious.

Until he realizes that it's barely been three hours since he woke up and he's completely bored out of his mind.

"Fuck!" he groans out loud, laying upside down on his couch with his legs dangling over the back and his hair grazing the floor. "I'm so bored!"

He stares at his ceiling, then sighs and rolls around to grab his phone from between the cushions and pulls up Zoro's contact information. His boyfriend is at work, so he won't answer any texts, but that doesn't mean Sanji can't text him.

He spends a few minutes looking for the perfect emoji, then decides it's useless because Zoro has an android—and not even a Samsung, he has a freaking Google phone—and his emojis always look fucked up, and ends up simply sending 'I'm bored'.

He checks the time and groans when he realizes that the clock has only moved up two minutes.

"How do people do this free time shit?" he mutters, exiting off Zoro's text thread to look at all the conversations he has. He's been a lot more social since meeting Zoro, mostly because Luffy keeps sending out group texts that has his phone dinging in the middle of the night with the most random texts Sanji has ever read.

"I could hang out with Luffy," he muses, hovering over the kid's name. "Or I could call Ace."

But Luffy's probably partying it up, or terrorizing some diners at some random buffet. He's a guy of simple pleasures. And Ace…is out on a date, fuck. Sanji forgot all about it: he met some older guy a couple of weeks ago and has been really excited about hooking up with him for some time now.

"Fuck it, I'm going to work," he mutters, throwing his phone on the couch before swinging upright. Zeff will probably complain all day long, but Sanji has mastered the art of tuning out his father whenever he's being annoying.

He climbs up his stairs and heads straight to his closet. He's not planning on spending too much time in the kitchen, so maybe he can skip out on his chef whites and wear something more suitable for the dining floor.

Something like a tan suit, toned down with a Henley, and comfortable boots instead of his usual black leather shoes.

He quickly finds the perfect suit, a light-colored European cut, and pairs it with a white Henley that will keep him looking dapper as fuck, but not as if he's planning on going to a ball gown.

He has a little more trouble finding the perfect shoes. He knows he has a pair of light-brown Chukka boots that will complete his look, but he can't find them! His closet is not enormous—though it is bigger than Zoro's—but it has a lot of compartments. And most of the time, he ends up shoving things he doesn't use very often to the back of his top shelf, like winter clothes during the summer and vice versa.

Maybe he put them up there?

He has a couple of boxes at the forefront—empty, but he's positive they will come in handy someday—then a bunch of fleece blankets folded up and stacked on the left. They smell a bit damp, like all clothes smell when they spend too long locked up, so he throws them in his bed to remind himself to wash them. Behind that, he has a three office boxes, all marked Baratie in black.

They're pretty far back, but he can spy another box behind them that he's sure is where his Chukka boots are, so he stands on the tips of his toes and stretches his hand as far as he can to grab the very edge of the box, trying to move it close enough that he can grab it. He can't quite reach it, but he doesn't want to walk all the way downstairs for his step stool, so he just…jumps.

"Aha!" he exclaims in triumph as his fingers grip the box handle tightly. And in that same moment, his Ikea shelf decides that it was not meant to hold 140 lb. blonds, and breaks. Sanji falls flat on his back as the shelf gives and dumps all of its contents on top of him.

"Fuck!" he groans, shoving the boxes on top of him, and rolls to his side. He takes a moment to figure out what hurts, but once he's sure he didn't get seriously hurt, he sits up and stares at the mess around him.

His Chukka boots are not there, and it is only then that he remembers Ace borrowed them.

Suddenly, getting out of his comfortable clothes and going to work seem like such a hassle.

He pushes the white shelf off to the side with his foot, then crosses his legs and actually looks at the items that fell down with him. The three office boxes busted open during the fall and their contents are scattered all over his floor; it's a lot more stuff than he would've expected.

He's not really sure what those boxes were doing in his closet, since they were labeled 'Baratie', but…is that a blockbuster video case? He quickly grabs the old relic, studying the generic blue ticket-stub cover. It's actually very well reserved, though the bar code on the bottom is fading a little. He opens the case, grinning when he sees the Toy Story 2 DVD inside.

The movie came out when he was five, about to turn six, and he still remembers begging Zeff for it. They rented it the day it was released on Blockbuster, watched it that very night, and kept renting it for like a two weeks straights. He's not really sure why he has a Blockbuster movie case, though.

He looks at all the other things that came out of the boxes—old photo albums, old clothes, a few toys, some random objects, key chains, little figurines, an iPod Mini he got when he was ten, some books—it's basically his entire childhood.

His old man probably snuck these boxes in when he moved out of the Baratie. How come he never noticed them?

"Lorie!" he exclaims, grabbing the yellow duck plushie that used to be his best friend when he was younger. He actually got it weeks before his move to the U.S., and despite being totally embarrassed at the fact that he slept with a plushie, it really did help with the transition.

Well, that was probably because he named it after his favorite singer at the time, Laure Pester.

He traces the twin curly eyebrows Zeff drew on the toy with sharpie, after the third time Sanji came home from school complaining that his classmates made fun of them.

"Oh man, I missed you," he whispers. He hugs the toy to himself with one arm and gets up. He wants to go through all of the stuff he has here, organize it a little and spend some time reminiscing, but he first needs to fix the shelf, put up the clothes he laid out for work, and put the fleece blankets in the dirty bin. It's not full enough to warrant a trip to the laundromat yet, but he should change a couple of dollars into quarters later on anyway.

The one of the office boxes ripped during the fall, and another bent weirdly where it hit the floor, but Sanji has a couple of FJÄLLA boxes he bought at Ikea because he thought they would look pretty stacked in his living room as some sort of decoration, but since they're empty they only really serve to make him look obnoxious. They're quite big and more sturdy than the office boxes, so they'll work better to keep his precious childhood memories protected.

He's picks up everything from the floor and throws it on his bed to organize later, then climbs down the stairs to grab the Ikea boxes when there's a knock on his door. He frowns and stares at his door, debating whether he should open it or just pretend he's not home and go back upstairs.

A second knock and he groans in frustration, knowing the manners his father instilled in him won't let him ignore a third knock. He places the two boxes on his couch, picking up his forgotten phone in the process, and goes to the open the door just as the third knock sounds.

"What do you want?"

Zoro blinks at him, then frowns. "Well, nice to see you too, honey."

Sanji blinks, staring at him. He's not dressed 'formally' per say, but he looks a lot more classy than his usual jeans and t-shirt. His hair is combed back and artfully messed, a few strands stubbornly still tickling his forehead. His shirt is semi-translucent and way too small for him, so it stretches across his broad chest and amplifies his sculpted torso, leaving nothing to the imagination. His pants are also more of a tight-fit than he usually wears, hugging his thick thighs and well…everything else.

"What are you wearing?" Sanji demands. "Are those chinos?"

Zoro looks down at his clothes, scowl deepening. "I had a meeting with the School Board and Nami forced me to wear this."

"The School Board?" Sanji asks curiously.

"You know, about the project I'm working on," Zoro explains. "I expected it to run longer, so the school got a substitute for my class, but we finished quite early. And then I read your text and decided to drop by."

His text? Ah, that's right. He stares at Zoro, trying not to state too much, and silently reminds himself to tell Nami not to post any pictures of Zoro wearing this outfit on her blog. It's too much.

"Are you gonna let me in or not?" Zoro snaps, surprising him.

"Geez," Sanji snaps back, stepping back to let Zoro through. "I'm busy, you know."

"Doing what?" Zoro asks, dropping his bag on the couch. "You're still wearing your pajamas."

"They're not pajamas, they're just clothes I sleep in."

"So pajamas."

"That sounds like a little kid wearing a spiderman onesie."

"You're making my point."

"Fuck you," Sanji snaps with no real heat. "Grab those boxes for me," he adds, pointing to the Ikea boxes as he walks towards his room. "I'm organizing my closet and you're helping me, since you decided to come bother me."

"I thought you were bored. I came to entertain."

"Your hair is hilarious, though I'd still rather do this," Sanji says just as they reach the top of the stairs, pointing at his bed.

Zoro raises an eyebrow at the mess on his bed, placing the boxes on the edge of the bed as Sanji walks around him to sit cross-legged on it.

"What is all this?" he asks curiously.

"Found some boxes with stuff from when I was a kid," Sanji explains, leafing through a worn book. It's in French, an old paperback copy of Le Petit Prince, a book he enjoyed reading with his mother. The pages are yellowing and brittle, a few of the words faded, but he can still remember snuggling next to his mother in bed at night, listening to her quiet voice with his eyes closed while she ran her fingers through his hair.

He closes the book and looks up at Zoro. "I'm just going through it, throwing out what's old and organizing it a little better."

Zoro stares at him, his eyes flicking to the book in his hands before he sighs and places one of the boxes on the floor, the other one still on the bed. "What you don't want can go in that one," he says, pointing to the one on the floor. "And we'll keep what you do want in here," he finishes, patting the box on the bed as he slips off his shoes. He moves to sit next to him, cross-legged like Sanji, and grabs a long, hardcover book.

"That's my old yearbook," Sanji says, leaning closer to Zoro as he opens the book. "Year of 2010."

"You were a junior?"

"Sophomore," Sanji corrects. "That is actually the year I met Ace. I'm sure he's in one of these pictures," he adds, flicking through the introductions towards the student life section. "I think he's in more of these than I am, and he's didn't even go to my school."

"Don't worry, it's the same in my yearbook," Zoro says, snorting as Sanji points out Ace on a picture of both them in the school cafeteria. The only reason why the picture was taken was because Ace was 'dating' the captain of the cheerleading squad. Ace and Sanji are the only guys in the picture, surrounded by beautiful girls dressed in miniskirts and crop tops. "Are you keeping this?"

"I bought one each year…I think I'll just keep the one for senior year," Sanji says, grabbing the white and black book. "You know, I won Best Dressed four years in a row."

"I won Best Looking senior year," Zoro retorts, grinning at him.

"Clearly your school was for the blind."

"Excuse you, my awkward phase was in junior high, and after that, it was smooth sailing."

"Oh my god, junior high was horrible for me," Sanji groans, putting the yearbook aside to grab a smaller, bright blue book. "Not only did I have a horrible, thick accent, I had the worst case of acne ever invented."

"You did not!" Zoro laughs, quickly looking down at the picture Sanji points out. "Holy shit!" he exclaims, laughing. "Are you…are you wearing makeup?"

"No!"

"You are!"

"Shut up," Sanji snaps, trying to pull the book out of Zoro's hands. "It's just foundation."

"And eyeliner. Were you an emo?"

"What? No! It was just…you know, what people were wearing," Sanji mutters, defeated. He wasn't technically emo…he doesn't even really know what that entails. "Look, kids were jerks in school and the only friends I had liked to wear all black and skip class. I didn't skip class, but there's never anything wrong with wearing black. It looks good on anyone."

"Hm-hm. Who's this guy?" Zoro asks, pointing to the other student in the picture.

"Shit, that's Gin!" Sanji exclaims. Gin used to be his best friend in junior high. Actually, he was the first person that really started talking with Sanji and didn't make fun of his eyebrows or his accent. They didn't go to the same high school, so he lost contact with him after a couple of years. "Oh man, I haven't seen him in so long. I wonder what he's up to now?"

"So you're keeping this one?"

"What? Oh yeah; this one and senior year," Sanji says, grabbing the two books to place them on the box. "And I'm also keeping Lorie," he adds, placing the plushie between his legs.

"You own a stuffed animal?"

"Got a problem with that?" Sanji snaps, but Zoro only shrugs.

"Oh boy, is this a tamagotchi?"

"Yes, and it died from old age," Sanji says. Zoro clicks the center button but nothing happens. "It probably doesn't work anymore. Trash bin."

"Cruel."

He has a lot of stuff, more than he'd realized. Zoro enjoys poking fun at him over his collection of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, until he gets distracted by the full-sized poster he has of 'N Sync.

"You were like five when they were famous!" Zoro laughs. "You liked them?"

"Excuse me, I was a child of taste," Sanji snaps. "I really got into them when I was twelve, after they split up…now I know why I thought Justin was so hot."

"He is hot…but not really my type," Zoro shrugs.

"I thought you were into hot blonds," Sanji says, smirking when Zoro gives him a deadpan look.

"Actually, I prefer brunettes. But you'll do."

"Fuck you. Oh look! These are from when I visited the Eiffel Tower!"

He has a bunch of pictures from when he was younger. He's actually surprised at how many of them he has, especially of the time when he lived in France.

"Is this your mom?"

Sanji glances at Zoro, then down at the picture in his hand. It's a picture of his mother when she was younger, definitely before she had Sanji. She's smiling at the camera, standing in front of what looks like the Musée d'Orsay, wrapped in a thick, black woolen coat.

"Yeah," he whispers.

"She's really pretty," Zoro says quietly. "You really resemble her."

Yeah. She has brown hair and chocolate eyes, but they have the same big eyes and slender frame. The same pale skin and long neck. The same small mouth and sharp jaw. The same bright smile and asymmetrical, curling eyebrows.

"This was probably when they were dating," Sanji murmurs. "I wonder why Zeff would give it to me..."

"Maybe he thought you'd like it," Zoro answers . "You should frame it."

Sanji blinks. "Y-yeah. I should. But…just put it with the others for now."

Most of the stuff he has are pictures. He finds a couple of composition books filled with old recipes that he decides to add to the collection he has downstair in the kitchen. He also founds the old blazer that was part of his uniform when he attended private school, back in France. He decides to keep that, only because it's adorably small and in surprisingly good condition.

Old movie stubs, an old watch, baby shoes, a deflated soccer ball, a couple of medals, some school diplomas…most of it, things that he doesn't need but remind him of his younger days.

And then, the most embarrassing pictures of all: Prom.

"Ace was your prom date?" Zoro asks, looking at the picture of an awkward Sanji standing next to a grinning Ace outside of the Baratie.

"No, Ace went with me to prom, but he wasn't my date," Sanji snaps. "I just…didn't have a date. But I really wanted to go, and Ace was always down for a party, so…we rode together. To save gas, you know."

"Right," Zoro snorts. "I'm pretty sure Ace totally wanted to bone you."

"He did not!"

"He has that look in his face."

Sanji glances at the picture. Ace has his arm wrapped around Sanji's waist, holding him closely despite Sanji's clear discomfort. He's smiling widely, facing the camera, and one hand is holding up the piece sign. "Ace is just touchy. He knew it bothered me, so he did it."

"No, Ace had a crush on you, but you were totally oblivious," Zoro corrects, putting down the picture to pick up another one. "You had fun?"

"It was alright," Sanji shrugs, looking at the group photo. Sanji got to sit with a bunch of other people—half of which he had never met—mostly because Ace was pretty popular.

"You sure about that?" Zoro asks, looking at a third picture showing Sanji sitting alone at the table, staring at the dance floor as Ace danced with a group of girls (and a couple of other guys).

Sanji hesitates, then shrugs. "That was the night I slept with Conis."

Zoro glances at him in surprise. "The one—."

"Yup. Lesbian."

"Oh."

It was honestly a horrible night. He had gone with the hope of finding a nice girl to dance with, only to be ignored for the majority of the night as Ace hogged everyone's attention. He sat at that table for hours, watching everyone else dance, and got turned down multiple times. And then, Conis had started talking with him.

He had talked to her a couple of times before, and she was a nice girl. They danced and laughed, talked about the university she was going to attend and about Sanji's decision to stay at the Baratie. She was…sweet. And when she asked if he wanted to leave early, he didn't even hesitate to say yes.

And then, of course, it had all gone to hell.

"Let's throw these photos always then," Zoro says, distracting him.

"No, keep them," Sanji says. "Ace might want a couple of them."

Zoro hesitates, but places the photos on top of everything else in the box, then drags it down to the floor next to everything Sanji will be throwing away. Sanji waits until the box is on the floor to wrap his arms around Zoro and drag him down on the bed, his arm snugly wrapped around his chest.

"This was fun," Zoro says and Sanji snickers.

"You're only saying that because you enjoyed making fun of my young self."

"I can make fun of your old self, too, curly," Zoro says and smirks down at him. "Nah, you were cute as a kid."

"I know," Sanji grins. "Got any pictures of you when you were a kid?"

"Probably," Zoro says. "Didn't take much with me when I moved in with Robin, but I bet my father still has them somewhere."

"Sometimes I think it would've been awesome if we'd met in high school," Sanji murmurs into his shoulder.

"I don't," Zoro says, scowling. "I was an asshole in high school. Would have probably never told you half the things I told you when we started texting."

Sanji moves to lean on his elbow, resting his head on his hand to look down at Zoro. "Be honest, when we first started talking, you were only looking for sex, right?"

"I mean, I'm still looking for sex," Zoro jokes, wincing when Sanji smacks his chest. "Yeah, I thought we could hook up. But in my defense, I doubt anyone would think anything else with you sending such a perverted picture."

"It was not perverted."

"You were naked."

"You couldn't see anything!"

"I could see enough."

Sanji rolls his eyes, momentarily distracted by the contour of Zoro's stomach underneath his fingers. Even relaxed like he is now, Sanji can feel every dip and curve.

"Can I ask a question?"

"You just did—ow! Damn, yes, ask!" Zoro snaps, rubbing the skin Sanji pinched.

"This is serious, mosshead," Sanji snaps. "Why did you start talking to me? I mean... you didn't know me and you're not the type to just start sharing deep secrets with strangers…but you told me things even Luffy and the others don't know… through text, on top of it. Why's that?"

Zoro frowns thoughtfully. "I guess…I thought you were interesting."

"Interesting?" Sanji asks skeptically.

"Yeah. I mean, just through the picture, I knew you were hot. Thought you probably had suitors waiting in lines for you, but you were also kind of shy. And then I found out you were a chef, and you did martial arts. You seemed…smart. And funny. And it always took you ages to respond after I complimented you; you were probably blushing like crazy, right?"

"No," Sanji lies, definitely not pouting.

Zoro smiles. "I guess…it was just easy. I'm not a liar, but I've never had anyone ask me about my life. The people I hooked up with, they didn't care about knowing me. Even if they said they wanted a relationship, they were more interested in me learning about them, not the other way around. But you were nosey as hell. You wanted to know everything."

"Shut up! I wasn't nosey," Sanji snaps. "You kept asking questions about me, it was only natural to ask about you."

"Like I said, you were pretty interesting," Zoro says, looking up at him. "Do you regret being so honest?"

"Of course not," Sanji answers. "I don't regret anything about us."

Zoro grins and pulls him in for a soft kiss, but Sanji quickly deepens it. He lets Zoro mark the pace, but pushes him back to lay on top of him, his hands on either side of Zoro's face, his body perfectly snug against Zoro's.

He can feel something pressing into him and he starts to sneak a hand down between their bodies, smirking when he feels Zoro's breath hitch.

"Sanji," Zoro moans, closing his eyes and in that moment, Sanji chooses to wrap his hand around the item that was pressing into him and pull.

"You were squishing her," Sanji declares, grinning widely when Zoro opens his eyes to stare at Lorie. "Pervert."

Zoro's eyes widen and his face blushes a deep, bright red which clashes so horribly with his hair, Sanji can't help but burst out in laughter. He falls back on the bed, laughing so hard that after a few seconds, he starts gasping for breath.

"You're an idiot," Zoro snaps, still blushing. He snatches Lorie from his hands and throws her in the box - which has everything Sanji's keeping - before moving to sit between Sanji's legs, letting them lay on his thighs. He will deny it for years to come, but he's totally pouting. "I thought…you're an asshole."

"Sorry," Sanji says, breathless as Zoro leans his weight into him, his hands coming up to hold Sanji's wrists down.. "I had to do it."

Zoro's hold on him tightens, his lower lip jutting out a bit more, before he loosens his grip and leans back. "Whatever. I'm gonna go grab a—."

"Hey," Sanji interrupts, wrapping his legs around Zoro's waist before he can lean too far away. "I meant that, you know. About having no regrets."

Zoro's eyes widen and he licks his lips. "So…you mean…?"

"Yeah," Sanji whispers. "Kiss me."

And Zoro does. It's slow and innocent, a drag of lips across his own. His tongue licks at his bottom lip but doesn't delve in, a sweetness to his touch. His hands are on Sanji's hips, his grip careful yet certain… still, Sanji can feel Zoro's restraint.

It's almost like an afterthought, the gentleness in Zoro's touch. Something that comes second nature to him. Sanji certainly doesn't need it, he's not made of glass - and more than safe, it makes him feel cared for.

"Zoro," Sanji murmurs against his lips, and feels Zoro's fingers dig into his skin. "I love you."

The kiss stops immediately and Zoro pulls back to stare at him, but Sanji doesn't feel nervous.

For the very first time in his life, Sanji doesn't regret admitting his feelings.

"You don't have to say it back," he tells the still dumbfounded Zoro. "It's okay if you don't feel the same way…I just wanted you to know I love you."

Zoro closes his mouth and swallows hard, his gaze suddenly heavy. "I'm not gonna say it," he says and Sanji nods. He expected that. Can't say that he's not disappointed, but he understands.

"I've never said it before, to anyone," Zoro continues, surprising him. "I don't know how it's supposed to feel, if what I feel right now is love or just affection; and if I say it right now, I'll feel like I'm only saying it because you said it."

"It feels like—."

"No," Zoro interrupts him, shaking his head. "I want to figure it out on my own. So that when I do say it, I'll mean it a hundred percent. So that you won't ever have to doubt the way about I feel about you."

Sanji swallows thickly and nods, afraid that if he opens his mouth, no words will come out. He didn't know it was capable to feel so happy about a non-confession. But Zoro has given him hope for the future, for their future. Hope that one day, Zoro will love him as fiercely as Sanji loves him.

"It's okay if you don't want to do this anymore," Zoro says, looking down to where their hips join.

"Are you kidding me?" Sanji snorts, tightening his legs around his waist and pushing him back so that in one, swift movement they've switch positions, with Sanji now on top of Zoro. "It's fine if you don't want me to tell you how love feels, but that doesn't meant I don't get show you."

Zoro grins, his eyes darkening as his hands ghost over the sensitive skin of Sanji's thighs, his fingers playing with the hem of his pants. "Hmm…well, I am a visual learner."

Sanji snickers and leans down to kiss him, conveying everything he's feeling right now—his hope, his happiness, his excitement, and his trust—in that simple touch.

A/N: As always, a huge thanks to Zosanlaw for beta'ing :)