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Beautiful people come to the Baratie all the time, and Sanji is accustomed to his less-than-subtle reactions to them. Women who make him bat his lashes and puff out his chest, hardly breathing between words to get his lines out right. Men who trigger his fight or flight, shoulders squaring up to hide the way they make his ears burn.
He’s easily affected, he knows this. Has perfected using anger and charming professionalism to hide how he’s swooning, head spinning too fast to react naturally on the spot.
Today, he’s made to serve again, and he’s whispering his lines to himself on the threshold of the kitchen. A gorgeous redhead has entered the restaurant, and Sanji needs words on the tip of his tongue so as not to swallow them whole. He checks his smile in the shine of a glass bottle, breathes out, and starts ahead.
And he freezes. In the middle of the restaurant, a bottle of wine in arms, staring wide-eyed at a dazzling man, with sparks in his eyes and tousled hair and the type of smile that takes the strength from Sanji’s knees. Sanji’s breathing in his lines and pumping them through his veins, heart seizing, the brilliant bell of the man’s laughter ringing through his ears at last, rowdy and deep and dark and Sanji turns his back on the whole table.
Breathes in, and out, and in, and out, and foregoes his script to spit out whatever words choose to come.
He’s speaking to the redhead, he’s pretty sure, with sweat running down his neck as the man with green hair watches on in his periphery, and Sanji’s voice is rougher than normal as he pledges his loyalty with a flower as his token.
His brain has blanked, and there’s nothing to help him.
The man — Zoro, he knows now. Roronoa Zoro — takes little offense to his flustered quiet, rowdy and confident from the very first second, and Sanji’s considering pleading the case to Zeff to let him stay, if only because he’s had three minor heart attacks since the swordsman plowed into his restaurant, and he fears for his health should he stay with him more.
He’s not wrong to. Mihawk, the warlord, shows up not long after. The man with the grin is on his feet to fight him before Sanji can ask what he’d like to drink, and the two fight well.
Sanji’s brain is returned to him when he parts from the man, and still he can’t look away. Shuddering at the passion the man exudes as he raises his swords, and losing all his thoughts when he’s pierced through.
It leaves him with thoughts aplenty by the time he too is washed back up to Baratie, beaten bloody but still swinging until the Don Krieg pirates leave. Then the captain is asleep on deck, and Zeff is watching him knowingly as he lifts him up to get him somewhere dry, where the other pirates brought the swordsman.
They make space for him without any fuss, and his eyes roam to Zoro immediately.
He puts the captain down atop a plush chair, where he curls into himself and snoozes on. Then Sanji steps towards the swordsman.
He is, beyond doubt, the most wounded of them all. The slices along his chest look deep enough to have broken ribs, and his lips have lost all colour. He lays completely still, bleeding through bandages. No sign of life to him at all.
Sanji’s eyes widen, and he walks closer, eyes on the bandages. They do not move at all, no expansion and no contraction, no evidence the man is still breathing, and Sanji hisses and stalks over.
“Not after all that,” he murmurs, hand flat upon the man’s bandages, uncaring for how it might cause pain. “You’re not dipping, hey, stay here.” He leans down without thinking, his own breath hot over the swordsman’s mouth, feeling no other sign of life. So he parts his lips, and blows.
The swordsman’s chest expands with it, a shaky motion, and Sanji drags in a breath to blow again, this time remembering to block Zoro’s nose. Again, the swordsman’s chest rises, and this time the air leaves him with a wheeze. Sanji laughs, frantic, and sits up to grin. “You’ve got it,” he promises, gathering both hands atop the man’s ribs to start pushing in earnest, neglecting to watch the motion of the man’s eyes.
He presses down, quick and sharp with all his might to get the fucker’s heart beating. Instantaneously, the swordsman yowls with agony and tears him off, sending them both sprawling to the ground. “What the fuck?” Zoro yells.
“You’re alive!” Sanji boasts right back, too happy with the resurrection to panic over Zoro’s moaning.
“Was!” The swordsman hisses, hugging his legs to his chest. “The kiss was more than good enough, you didn’t have to shove your hand inside my chest,” he whines.
Sanji’s sensing something wrong here, sitting up a little higher. “Huh?”
“I mean,” Zoro explains, “the whole kissing me awake thing was very sweet, if not weird. But you didn’t have to-”
“You weren’t breathing!” Sanji yells. “CPR!”
“Hell I wasn’t-”
“CPR,” Sanji yells again, scrambling to get his feet under his butt, raising himself up. “No kissing here! No waking! Just some good old-fashioned resuscitation with-” Sanji’s cheeks are inflamed, and he hurries to his feet, “great, effing, results. So, now then,” he nods, eyes on the roof, and swings around to flee.
Coincidentally, Zoro groans really loudly, and painfully, the minute he turns. Sanji sighs, and looks back.
Zoro has sat up too, bleeding way worse than before, grimacing with his hand atop the sofa they had laid him to rest in. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sanji hisses, bullying himself back into Zoro’s arms to raise him up, uncaring for how he whimpers. “We’re never speaking about this again, by the way.”
“I called it sweet!” Zoro moans through a wince, and Sanji rolls his eyes and starts tearing off the bandages. His heart is thundering in his ears.
“Your chest wasn’t moving so I panicked, and that’s all.” The bandage comes off quick, and it doesn’t take Sanji long to find more.
Zoro huffs when he splays his hand over him to wipe away the freshest spill. “Never heard of CPR starting with the mouths before.”
Sanji goes even warmer, sealing his lips tight as he wraps the bandage around the swordsman, almost happy with the wince he incites. “Well you’re dumb, then,” he whispers under his breath, clenching his jaw as the swordsman chuckles.
Sanji gets more used to it, the longer he spends on their ship. Zoro’s not that hard to be around.
They never do speak of the CPR-incident, but they have other conversations, all quiet and calm and leaving Sanji’s ears pounding in ways he’s strangely unfamiliar with. The swordsman is exceptional, and he eggs Sanji on, but not in any ways that ought to call for such reactions.
It is clear from the very beginning, though, that the two of them have some things in common. A magnetic pull between them, an understanding of violence for violence’s sake. A bloodlust, perhaps.
They’re friendly.
Were, at least, until Zoro made that one, gnawing, rude little comment about Sanji’s inability to catch his own prey, and Sanji made a promise he’d find something way bigger than Zoro could dream up.
It’s fun, if he’s honest: little garden, while filled with monstrous, godawful bugs, has a type of humid air and wet grass and green sceneries that Sanji has never seen before. It’s freeing to wander by himself.
He winds up with a lizard. A massive, inhumane freaking lizard, and as he drags it along the ground, pulling it by its tail, he’s imagining Zoro’s stunned face, his grovelling posture, the sparkling eyes he’ll direct Sanji’s way as he praises the massive beast he’s brought to heel.
He drops it behind some forest when he hears his crew’s voices, for no particular reason: it’s not as though he plans to drag Zoro into a private spot or something later, because that would be weird, and they’re friendly.
Zoro’s sat without any dead animal near his person, and Sanji chatters on with his crew smugly. Only when they start talking about leaving does he bring it up. “Oh, by the way,” he grins, eyes locking with Zoro’s, and he knows immediately the swordsman knows what he’s on about. “You’ve not forgotten about our challenge, have you?”
Zoro’s smug, fake-casual face has Sanji’s chest burning. “Oh, that,” he says, as though the spark in his eyes had not revealed his remembrance far before this moment. “I won.” The certainty has Sanji’s grin growing razor-edges. “I bagged a rhino.”
Sanji huffs haughtily, stepping closer, and Zoro’s eyes sparkle as he reaches for a sword. “You think a tiny little rhino is gonna cut it? You should see the monster I’ve brought.”
“Bring it,” Zoro goads, sword half out of his scabbard, and Sanji flushes with warmth and nods quickly.
“Oh I’ll bring it, I’ll bring you to your knees.”
“You wish, Curly,” Zoro’s standing up, head to head, the bloodlust of the two of them pooling together to a puddle of something ever more intense, electric tangents pulling them together.
“Marimo,” he hisses, and then he turns around. “Thirty seconds, and then right here!”
“You got it, shit cook!”
No private corner, no hidden trail through the forest to hear Zoro’s praises, but Sanji is fuming as he stands upon his lizard, before the ship, eye-to-eye with Zoro who stands upon his own ridiculously-sized rhino, both fuming and yelling and bashing the other, and Sanji did not know he had so many foul words about the swordsman, but yelling in his face is too satisfying to stop.
“It’s sail time!” Nami yells, and Zoro’s face is fully shoved into Sanji’s when he turns his head to yell, “of course, Nami dear!” right back.
Zoro’s breath is on his neck, and if anger hadn’t run him hotter than a furnace already, he’s sure hewould have flushed something fierce. “You cut ‘em with your stupid swords,” he tells Zoro, before jumping down and pacing back to the ship’s kitchen.
“They’re not stupid!” He hears, before he slams his door shut.
It’s an hour or so later when Zoro deems to drag it all in, beautifully cut pieces of rich and red meet, arms bulging with the weight he’s carrying. Sanji, cigarette between’s his lips, huffs an anatomically correct heart of smoke and sets forward to help the swordsman carry it.
“Took you long enough,” Zoro grumbles.
“No, marimo,” he grunts when he lifts a few rolls, just slightly set back by their weight. “You took long enough,” he explains, “and therefore I’m helping.”
“Shitty cook,” Zoro repeats, and Sanji grins victoriously.
When the meat is in place, he slides down against the wall in the storage, Zoro right next to him. “My load takes more space,” he tells Zoro, squinting at it.
Zoro huffs, shoulder against Sanji’s, buttocks on the floor. “As if. And, mine weighs more.”
“How’d you decide that?”
“Your is all bone, curly-brow. Mine’s all good and tender meat.”
Sanji elbows him, pulse rising with — with agitation, and Zoro grasps his wrist before he can do further damage. “I’ll have you know I know a thing or two more than you about — what are you doing?”
Zoro’s squinting at his hand like Sanji had the meat, sliding his fingers up Sanji’s palm, fitting their hands straight. Palm to palm, fingers lined up, and Sanji’s throat has locked up. Zoro hums, happy, and Sanji tries to swallow, throat dry.
“What?” he spits, and Zoro turns to him with a shit-eating grin.
“Mine’s bigger,” he says, gloatingly.
Sanji frowns, and looks back to their hand. Indeed, Zoro’s fingers are pudgier, and Sanji swears that’s the only reason his fingertips extend a millimeter beyond his own. He means to snatch his hand back, but Zoro’s fingers curl around his own, keeping the grip tight. He can do little more than glare.
“Means our hands fit best like this,” Zoro explains, grin still blinding Sanji’s periphery. Sanji, heart now thundering confusedly, huffs an offended breath and tugs at his hand harder, loosening Zoro’s hold. “Huh?” Zoro groans, dumbly.
Sanji snatches his hand back and raises his nose at him. “That’s a stupid fucking comparison, is all.”
“We can hold the other way ‘round if you want,” Zoro acquiesces, taking hold of his hand anew. This time, he uses his second hand to wrap Sanji’s around his own, smiling all smugly down at how they fit together.
Sanji frowns, confusedly. Like the five stages of grief, he stares wide-eyed down at their hands, and at Zoro’s happy little flush. It’s just some stupid competition, he thinks first, heat ebbing into anger as he eyes Zoro. This is — it’s not hand-holding, Zoro doesn’t even know the appearance of what he’s doing, surely it’s not that. Right?
Sanji feels so hot with conflicting emotions it almost passes through his eyes, a wave of strange emotion that tickles his lashes. And then, shutting his eyes, Sanji knocks his head back against the wall. Fuck, he thinks, Zoro really wants to hold his hand.
“The other too,” Zoro dictates, then takes it, swinging both of Sanji’s hands within his own, thumbs gliding over rough skin. “Didn’t think you’d be so scarred,” Zoro says, and Sanji fears he’s stopped breathing, thinking yet again that this man will bring him to the brink of a heart attack before long.
“Nah,” Zoro answers to that, teeth glinting. “You taught me CPR, remember?”
Sanji makes an undignified, embarrassing squeak and slips down against the wall, eyes scrunched shut. Zoro, the bastard, laughs and delves down with him.