#crew fic!! with a dash of zolu and everyone having a good time

[thychesters]

#wipwednesday! sneaking some writing in on my lunch break today as opposed to scooting in here at the literal eleventh hour. zoro's off in the corner getting plastered and living his best worst life. i'm sure he's also respectful and aware, but for the sake of argument he's also not going to let some no-name guy tell him how he's supposed to drink his booze. (which i also just recently learned myself regarding sake!) and i know canon has them downing barrels, but i wanted to get the man drunk, not give him alcohol poisoning. i promise this is all relevant too. i'll tell you later as a treat. / text under the cut

He finds himself alone on the deck at some point, third bottle of sake loose in his fingers, though he can’t pinpoint where exactly he split from others and it raises his hackles. His next swig is a near-miss, a trail sloshing out the corner of this mouth and he scrubs it away with the back of his hand. Once, maybe some four islands removed from Shimotsuki, he pissed a no-name guy off at a no-name bar for not drinking sake the proper way, and he’d grimaced at the first pull followed by the next because it all went down the same way, didn’t it. And the man had told him he lacked appreciation, that he didn’t savor anything, and then he’d turned his ire on the poor barkeep.  Zoro looks down at the bottle, throat burning and muscles loose and thinks he appreciates it just fine. He makes a short, derisive sound in the back of his throat, fingers itching for Shusui like she might be of aid. Zoro pivots on his heel, boot squeaking against the polished wood to dart back down the stairs, and starts when he finds Chopper approaching him. There’s a concerned set to his snort; his head tilts. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to sneak up on you—I didn’t think I could do that…” “Fine,” he says, because it’s been his favorite word for the past forever. Everything is fine except it isn’t, but none of them have to know that. Chopper digs a foot into the grass, kicking up cool dirt. His nose twitches as he scents him. “Have you been drinking?” he asks, and Zoro narrows his eye at the one Chopper and then the other that swims into existence next to him for a split second. Does that sometimes, doesn’t he, likes to asks questions he already knows the answer to. Must have gotten it from Usopp and Sanji because they do that to Luffy all the time when they catch him doing something stupid. The neck of the bottle is smooth beneath his thumb. “You really want an answer to that?” Chopper doesn’t hum—or maybe he does, or maybe it’s that whining noise he’s picked up from Nami or that throaty grunt he does when he’s not paying attention. Today’s been too quiet. His stomach churns and then Chopper taps his hooves together. “You were laughing, I was worried.” “Why would that worry you?” There’s a little drizzle in the air, which means the men’s quarters is going to reek of garlic and wet fur. “You don’t really sound like you—you don’t laugh like that.”