ZoSan: The Flower

Chapter 42 - Sanji

A/N: 500 reads?! WOW!!! Thank you so much, everyone! I never thought this would get this far. Thank you to everyone who reads, votes, comments, saves, etc! Special shout-out to my new repeat voter, ThatOneANBU!   (But also, this is the one chapter I'm not super proud of and can't seem to figure out how to fix and still keep it as what is needed. So you guys are getting two chapters today, in hopes that you'll forgive the sub-par writing on this one!)

The next four days were hard for Sanji. Not because he regretted his decision to care for his swordsman — on the contrary, he'd rather liked their current routine. Zoro was walking on his own now, but often joined him in the galley while Sanji was cooking, watching him cook or helping to chop vegetables. He'd even gotten to show Zoro how to make the spicy seafood pasta that was Sanji's 'guilty pleasure' food. They'd gotten in a few more make-out sessions, and Zoro was taking plenty of naps, one of which had been on Sanji's lap. It was kind of nice. The Heart Pirates seemed to come and go between the connected ships as they pleased, and had actually been great help the one time they'd been attacked so far.

It wasn't any of that making Sanji's life difficult. It wasn't even Zoro's knowledge and too-easy acceptance of his past. No, it was that comparison Chopper had shown him of the worst and the end that kept circling through his brain, accompanied by his own questions about the nature of love. He still didn't understand, but he wanted to. He wanted to give Zoro a proper answer, but to do that, he had to understand it properly.

He wasn't accustomed to research or reading, but he really wasn't sure anyone on the ship had ever been in a romantic relationship, so he couldn't exactly ask for advice. Instead, when Zoro fell asleep, he headed down to the "study" where most of the books that Robin, Nami, and Chopper collected were homed. No one was in there, which he was glad for because he didn't want to have to explain what he was doing.

He read through title after title, trying to guess from each the contents of the book. He knew, for instance, that Nautical Knots and Their Uses was probably Nami's or Franky's and wouldn't have the answers to his particular questions. Nor would any of Robin's history books about various countries and cultures. If it had words he couldn't begin to guess at pronouncing, it was probably Chopper's. But finally he found a slim volume with a promising title: Lovers and Beloved. If I'm lucky, it won't be some weird erotica.

He was almost shocked at the thought. Wasn't he supposed to like that stuff? Hadn't he always? But now he had more important questions to answer, and sexual gratification for the simple sake of sexual gratification was actually far enough from his mind to hope this book wasn't for that. Huh.

He sat gingerly in the chair and opened the book to the table of contents. The third chapter was titled 'Love vs Everything Else: How to Tell When It's Real', which sounded so much like what Sanji needed that he was somewhat suspicious of it. But it didn't stop him from turning to it and beginning to skim. Finally a section jumped out at him.

'The PIECES Method

Perhaps the easiest way to tell all these various needs and feelings apart from love is to use the PIECES evaluation. This consists of six different criteria, with each explained in detail below. Treat these as different lenses to view your feelings or relationship through. A strong love will hit each of these criteria easily.

PASSION: Perhaps the easiest criterion, this refers to both sexual and emotional attraction. Does the other person excite you? Challenge you? Do you feel more alive around them? If you usually feel bored around your love interest, then it may not be the strongest love. There are ways to fix this, though, that will be covered in Chapter 10.