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It is Zoro’s job to notice things; a glint out on the horizon, a stranger hovering too closely in a crowd, the change in the air when something is coming. He notices the little things too; when Nami is close to running out of cartographer paper, when Usopp’s too in his own head, when Chopper needs to rest because he’s been too busy fussing over everyone else. It’s his job, and two years hasn’t changed that.
Somewhere nagging at the back of his mind, he thought maybe he’d forget the way the Sunny feels, the way his bones settle on deck when he’s surrounded by the crew. Zoro’s been up to his eyeball in stupid monkeys, in Mihawk’s training regiment, in Perona’s constant meddling. It felt too much like something before the Straw Hats, something dormant shaken awake by circumstance. The boat ride back to Sabaody had had his nerves chewed near raw, an anticipation in his boots, an itch he couldn’t scratch.
But he’s settled, now, back to what he would call home. Depths beneath the surface of the ocean, but he feels at ease. The familiarity of the deck and those aboard; and the little things he tends to notice.
Sanji is keeping to himself in the galley. He’s been over reactive to everything since they reunited, can barely look at Nami and Robin without drowning in his own nosebleed. Even Zoro, after climbing down the mast of the ship he’d mistaken for a fishing boat, was met with Sanji grabbing the edges of his robe and tucking them into each other.
“How’d you become so damn indecent since you were gone?” As if he hadn’t said that through a reddening handkerchief.
“Speak for yourself,” Zoro sneered. “And it’s hardly any different than what I used to wear.”
After a harrowing escape from Sabaody, though, Sanji had tucked himself away into the galley and hadn’t returned back to deck since. Zoro assumes it’s to take stock of all the food he bought, backpack bulging with all varieties with the promise of new recipes to share with everyone, but it’s been too long for that. With everyone settled on deck, awestruck by the sights below the surface, Zoro makes his way to the kitchen.
He finds Sanji leaning against the island counter, cigarette hanging from his lips, withering away to ash as he focuses on the long scroll of paper in one hand. The other is anxiously twirling a pen between nimble fingers, and Zoro knows his instincts were right. Something’s up with him.
“What, did Chopper banish you here after you couldn’t keep it together in front of the girls?”
Sanji graces him with a glare between his bangs, but goes back to focusing on the paper in hand. Zoro shuffles in his spot, a little pout most certainly not forming on his lips, before going over to the cabinets in the back. He’d left Mihawk’s haunting abode with one of his wines, and as he strolls over to get it, he makes sure to go behind the island counter to take a peek at what Sanji is so preoccupied with. Squinting, it looks like the grocery list, but the scribbles on it indicate he’s been using it to keep the number of their stock.
“Don’t—” he hears Sanji warn as the cabinet squeaks open.
“It’s my stash, relax,” Zoro says, grabbing the near black bottle with the blood red label.
“Not before eating something,” Sanji finishes, pen wiggling back and forth between his fingers.
“Cook me something then,” he huffs, pulling up next to Sanji. The bottle hits the counter with a thick thud as Zoro bumps his hip almost accidentally against the other’s. “Or join me for a drink.”
Sanji rolls his eyes and turns his head to meet him eye to eye. “We are sinking to the bottom of the ocean, I’m not drinking. You shouldn’t be drinking, put it back— where the hell’d you even get this?”
He squints at the ornate bottle as Zoro brings it up to his mouth to bite the cork out, mumbles an answer around it, “Mihawk.”
Sanji’s eyes grow wide. They haven’t had the time to talk about how they spent their two years apart, but Zoro’s never thought about how surprising it must sound to say he spent two years with one of the seven warlords. Not to mention, the one that nearly sliced him in two in front of Sanji’s restaurant. There’s a sparkle of scrutiny in the one visible blue eye as his focus goes from the whole of Zoro’s face to the new scar across his left eye.
“Hm,” is all he says, a frown tugging at his lips.
“Want a glass?” Zoro offers.
“I’m busy,” and Sanji turns away from him again, pulling up his paper.
“You’re stressed,” mentions Zoro.
“And we’re traveling ten thousand meters into the ocean; one of us should be sober.”
Zoro weighs the snippy counter that if he drinks alone, they’ll still both be sober - or at least functioning-ly tipsy at worst for Zoro - but there’s a strain in Sanji’s whole body that tells him that their usual push and pull won’t be met right now.
And maybe Zoro was a little fearful of that too. Two years away from the most complicated thing he’s ever had may or may not have kept him up some nights, on top of not knowing where the entire crew was. Seeing Luffy in the paper gave him some ease, and getting Mihawk’s first hand relay of information was a bonus the others most likely didn’t have.
But then there’s Sanji. They never got the chance to talk about what happened at Thriller Bark, and if Zoro has his way they never will. It’s different, though, when the weight is tangible between them, and when they can be alone with their own thoughts for two years. Zoro isn’t sorry for what he did, he’s only sorry they hadn’t had enough time between that incident and Sabaody to heal properly, then things might’ve turned out differently. He can’t change the past though, there’s no point in dwelling on it. Whatever transpired, it's now that matters, and right now Sanji is stressed out but not about Zoro.
It’s definitely about the food. He was with Sanji when he bought their supplies for this trip, he knows exactly how much they have, and it’s more than enough to make it to Fishman Island. If it wasn’t about the food, though, he’d be stress cooking.
“The stock’s fine,” Zoro says before downing his glass of wine. It’s bitter, but it hardly touches his tongue as he knocks it back akin to a shot.
Sanji stops twirling his pen around to jab it into the meat of one of Zoro’s pecs, but doesn’t stop reading down the list. “You let me be the judge of that, idiot.”
Zoro’s good with numbers, and based on that they are fine, but Sanji’s good at thinking up all the different ways they could be not fine in regards to food and suddenly the numbers don’t matter. He doesn’t know the entirety of it, but Zoro’s gotten a few glimpses into Sanji’s thing about food, has heard him drunkenly mumble to Zoro over the island counter about it. Zoro gets the jist of it, respects it to a degree because it’s really just another facet of helping protect the crew.
Sometimes, though, Sanji overthinks and then that’s when Zoro needs to step in. The problem is, he isn’t sure where they stand anymore outside of nakama, but Zoro’s never been one to step around eggshells.
With his free hand, Zoro snatches the paper out of Sanji’s fingers. The blonde reaches for it, stretching forward as Zoro pulls it further out of reach, leaving him room to sweep a boot under Sanji’s legs. He stumbles, near falling, but Zoro catches him in the crook of his arm, hoisting him easily over one shoulder and ignoring the indignant yelp Sanji lets out. With his other hand, Zoro grabs the glass and wine bottle from the counter, and with his bundle of things goes over to the couch near the dining table.
“Put me down, you offensive mold spore!” Sanji shouts, beating a fist into Zoro’s firm back. Zoro doesn’t miss the pause, the appreciative noise in the back of his throat, before punching his back again.
He’s unceremoniously dumped onto the couch, sprawled out and winded before Zoro settles down next to him, swinging his legs over Sanji’s lap to cage him in. It isn’t as if Sanji couldn’t get out of the predicament, but it’s about the message. Sanji does not look pleased.
“Mihawk had better have imparted some legendary sword fighting knowledge to you, because he clearly didn’t give you any lessons in manners,” he deadpans.
“I was too busy fighting a bunch of monkeys,” Zoro clarifies, filling his glass. “No time for manners.”
Sanji blinks at him before deflating, leaning back until his head melts into the back of the sofa. “Wow.”
He humors Zoro for a bit, not pushing him off or arguing for the time being. In a way, he almost looks about as relieved as Zoro feels, as if the same insecurity plagues him too. He finishes his cigarette, leaning forward to squash the butt of it into the ashtray in the middle of the table, and in the same motion Sanji tries to reach for the paper Zoro still has in his hand. Without looking up from his drinking glass, he hides it behind his back.
“Childish,” Sanji clicks his tongue, grabbing at the collar of his robe. “ Zoro. ”
Zoro sighs, sliding his good eye over to Sanji. “It’s stressing you out.”
“It’s stressing me out not to look it over.”
“It’s fine,” Zoro says over his cup, and when Sanji opens his mouth to rebuttal, he cuts in, “We have enough food.”
Sanji lets out an awful, frustrated noise in the back of his throat and shakes Zoro free from his grip. A hand comes up, fingers curled and ready to pull at his shaggy hair, but he tries to smooth the motion over by pushing his hair back and searching for another cigarette instead. Zoro watches him quietly, sipping on his second glass of wine, vice for vice. The lighter clicks and hisses to life as he cups a hand around the flame, pockets the trinket and sucks in a long, indulgent breath. On the exhale, he leans his elbows on Zoro’s propped up knees, resting his chin in the palm of his hand.
“What if we don’t?” He mumbles, almost to himself.
Zoro lets the question settle. It doesn’t seem like the type of question he’s meant to answer, so he drinks until the wine is gone from his glass again.
Sanji rubs a hand over half his face. “What if I didn’t get enough? It’s been two years; people change diets, Luffy probably eats more than ever, I haven’t had to think about how stocked the kitchens are. We’re going to be thousands of meters deep in the ocean, anything can go wrong, and the last thing that needs to be a problem is food.”
“Cook,” says Zoro. “We are surrounded by fish.”
“That’s not the point!” Sanji snaps. The hand is back to start pulling on his hair and Zoro watches the internal struggle as Sanji tries not to. “We shouldn’t have to fish, I should have bought enough!”
“You did,” he says simply, and Sanji levels him with a look that says he doesn’t appreciate it. Zoro reaches out for the hand that’s about to dig into his scalp, wraps calloused fingers around a pale wrist. “You did.”
Zoro pulls the hand towards him and brushes wine stained lips against the knuckles. He waits for Sanji to snatch his hand away, scandalized, going right back to square one, but he doesn’t. His fingers twitch, but Sanji doesn’t do anything except hide his face behind his fringe, smoke wafting out from beside it. Zoro greedily takes the opportunity to press a few more kisses to his hand. He missed this, and he doesn’t realize how much until now.
Two years fighting off the most intelligent animals Zoro has ever had the misfortune to come across and living under a government sanctioned pirate’s roof with a ghost princess didn’t leave much room for thought. When it did, he’d meditate, because more often than not those thoughts would churn to anxiety. He couldn’t worry about his crew because there was nothing he could do for them other than persevere. So he did. Every now and again, though, Perona would needle him about the Straw Hats, and rarely he would indulge. He missed them something awful in a way he never knew he could, and Sanji? If Zoro wasn’t trying to distract himself from the tightness in his chest, he was training and hoping Sanji was doing the same, the thought of reuniting to spar on the deck of the Sunny spurring him on.
They’ve barely argued since returning to Sabaody though, too busy, too something. Zoro thought he’d have to work for the softer moments, but all it took was a little manhandling. Having Sanji’s hand in his, pressing warm lips to warmer skin, tracing his veins with his thumb, being allowed to, Zoro feels content. Like everything is going to be okay, food and world government and watery depths be damned.
“And if you didn’t, that’s fine too. We can manage, we have before,” he says into Sanji’s skin. “You’ve probably got every backup plan clogging up your brain if the worst happens.”
Sanji snorts. “Of course I do,” he spreads his fingers out in the hand Zoro is holding. “I have a five step contingency plan if we start running out of food.”
Zoro’s eye widens a little, impressed but also a little surprised.
The thumb, forefinger and middle finger curl down and Sanji explains, “Three of them are different rationing plans, and the fourth is for scavenging.”
His ring finger goes down, leaving the pinky up. Zoro stares at it expectantly, then meets Sanji’s eyes. “And the fifth?”
Sanji doesn’t answer right away, and when he does it’s with a shrug and vague, “Worst case scenario.”
“Which is?”
The cigarette between his fingers burns away in their silence, and as the little finger folds down, Sanji doesn’t meet Zoro’s gaze when he says, “Cannibalism.”
It makes perfect sense, but Zoro still can’t stop the little oh that escapes him. “You’ve really thought of everything.”
“It’s my job to,” Sanji says. “But it’s also my job to make sure we never get to that point.”
Zoro hums, and says nothing else on the matter. He readjusts his grip on Sanji’s wrist so that he’s cradling his hand, thumb pressing into the meat of his palm soothingly. It makes sense, but Zoro’s never thought about it. He’s supposed to protect their crew, but food has always been Sanji’s domain. In a way, his own protection, and their purposes overlap briefly.
So it makes sense to wonder who would go first, to guess who it would be. “I wouldn’t fight you on it, if it came to that.”
Sanji tilts his head at him, expression scrunched into some kind of surprise and maybe a little hurt. “You wouldn’t?”
“No. You know what’s best for the crew in that regard,” Zoro noses at his knuckles.
Sanji slips his hand out of Zoro’s, not quickly, but not slowly either. It hangs in the air like he doesn’t know what to do with it until he settles it on the table in front of them. He blows out a billowing mouthful of smoke and turns away from Zoro as he’s reaching to refill his glass a third time.
“Okay,” he says plainly, and then again with a more conflicting tone, “Okay, great. Good. And here I thought I was gonna have to beat you unconscious just so I could cut off my leg.”
The wine bottle is tilted until it’s almost spilling liquid, but Zoro stops, his grip around the neck tightening until it whines under him. His single good eye swivels back to Sanji, narrowed and scrutinizing.
“ Whose leg?”
The heat of the question gets Sanji to look at him again, twirly eyebrow cocked. He motions to himself with his cigarette, “ My leg.”
Silence settles in the galley, thick with tension. Outside, Luffy is laughing about something he can see in the distance, the crew is meandering, the ocean bubbles around them as they go deeper, deeper, deeper still. The light is barely penetrating this far down, and the portholes in the galley have darkened to near black. Only Sanji’s cigarette and the one swinging lantern above lights the room, and just barely. They don’t need a lot of it, though, not when they can feel the heat of each other’s glare like a furnace. The ship creaks softly in juxtaposition to the way they grow explosively loud at the same time.
“You thought—”
“Why is it you—”
“That I was gonna use you—”
“Who is sacrificing himself—”
“It’s my job! ”
“You’re the cook! ”
“Yes, I am! That’s why it has to be me!” Zoro opens his mouth to argue, but Sanji shoves him hard enough that he catches himself on his elbow to keep from tumbling off the couch entirely. “If you want to be a martyr so bad, you can wait until there’s another big enemy trying to vaporize us all again, but feeding the crew is my responsibility. ”
Oh. “You’re still mad about that.”
“No,” Sanji says, like a liar. “I’m mad because you thought I was going to feed you to the crew.”
“Well it can’t be you,” says Zoro, without thinking.
“And why not?”
“Because!” Zoro says angrily, and stops there because the rest of that sentence is the sort of complicated that would get him in trouble if he didn’t think about it first.
And that’s part of the problem; he has thought about the rest of that sentence. Not in this particularly unique instance where they’re arguing about who to eat in a worst case scenario, but why it can never be him when it comes to any worst case scenario.
“Excellent argument, marimo,” Sanji drawls, stubbing out his cigarette.
“Who the hell’s gonna cook you if you’re first to go, then?” Zoro manages.
“Oh my god,” Sanji says, exasperated. “I’m not just going to kill myself and leave you guys to figure out how to cook an entire dead body. I said before, I’ll cut off a leg first.”
Zoro looks down at Sanji’s lap, his neatly pressed slacks hidden in the shadow of the table. “Those are your weapons though.”
“I’ve got another,” he shrugs. “And I can always get a peg leg to replace it, Zeff can still kick ass just fine with his. Or ask Franky to build me something, I dunno.”
Zoro frowns and pulls himself back upright into a sitting position. “And if that’s not enough?”
There’s silence again, lighter this time but not by much. For a moment, Zoro thinks that maybe the other hadn’t thought that far ahead, but Sanji leans back until he’s cushioned by the couch, rolls his head until he’s looking right at Zoro.
“I have a little book I keep with every way you can cook a human, which organs to avoid, suggested seasonings, wine pairings,” he admits. “I wrote it when I was fifteen. I’m going to give it to one of you so that if it comes to it, you can use every viable part of me to survive.”
Suddenly, the drunken little mumblings about Sanji’s thing with food are looking a little bleaker. Zoro doesn’t know what to say, so Sanji cuts the stunned silence with a humorless laugh.
“Not that you’ll have wine. Or much seasoning, I imagine. I dunno why I wrote all that.”
Coping, Zoro thinks and thinks Sanji knows that too. He still doesn’t know what to say. That’s the thing about Sanji. One minute, Zoro will be trying to help him distress and then before he knows it Sanji is telling him how he’s been planning to eat himself since fifteen. Just in case.
This is the man he’s chosen to share the most complicated thing with in life.
“Okay,” is all Zoro can muster. “It still can’t be you.”
“Right, okay. It should be you,” Sanji snorts. “I guess you’d get lost less if I took one of your legs.”
“I’m being serious,” he says, unamused.
“Me too,” Sanji sports a wide, shit-eating grin.
He laughs again at Zoro’s pouty huff, this time with a little more mirth and Zoro thinks it’s worth it to be teased if it uplifts his spirits. The realization hits that he probably hasn’t done the best job at making him relax, not for lack of trying. It’s not like Zoro meant to get on the morbid topic of cannibalism, and much like in life his conversations, too, get a little lost. Now that they’re here though…
“Sorry, we should—”
“How would you cook me?”
Sanji blinks. “What?”
Zoro’s busy with pouring himself another glass of wine, unsure of what his face is doing and not trusting it at all to look as neutral as he’d like it to. “Wanna know how you’d serve me, if you had to.”
Glancing over, Zoro can almost practically see Sanji’s brain short circuit and reset itself before his expression settles into a frown.
“There is no situation where I’m going to do that.”
“What if I died?”
“Then we’d fucking bury you at sea, you moron,” Sanji flails his hands uselessly in front of him. “What— what, you think I’m going to take that opportunity to go ‘well, meat’s meat’ if any of us die?”
Zoro shrugs. He’s never thought about what comes after death. He thinks about the act of dying a lot, maybe too much, because to die without purpose is to fail in all the things he’s promised to do and he can’t have that. Dying in Thriller Bark would have meant failing in his promise to Kuina, but succeeding in his promise to Luffy. There’s that funny gray area between the two he doesn’t like to look at too often, but that’s the way death is. It’s strange, and he hates it, fears it, maybe, to a degree, but afterwards, he doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s never had to think about what his friends would want to do with him if he ever died in their presence. It’s surreal to do it now.
“I wouldn’t mind,” he says, sparing another fleeting glance at Sanji. “Would you, if I wanted that?”
“I—”
If he’s being honest, being buried out at sea sounds lonely. It’s death, and Zoro shouldn’t, literally couldn’t, be concerned about loneliness in that state, but putting him in a box and watching him sink until the darkness of the ocean swallows him up is kind of sad. Growing up in Shimotsuki Village, Zoro would often visit Kuina’s grave. He rarely said or did anything besides paying his respects, but sometimes he’d sit there for hours just to exist near her. Zoro likes to think she’d appreciate it. You can’t really sit next to someone if they’re out in the middle of the ocean.
Zoro supposes he could ask the crew to just keep him until they can find a memorable place to bury him on land so they could visit, but instead he’s sitting in the darkness of the galley asking Sanji if he’d cook him up like a lunatic. There’s something a lot less lonely about that prospect, all things considered, and maybe he’s a little fucked up for thinking that.
Sanji makes a distressed noise and when Zoro turns his attention back to him, he’s got his face buried in his hands. “We haven’t seen each other for two years, and one of the first things you ask me is how I’d fucking eat you? ”
“I’m just curious,” Zoro defends. “You brought it up.”
“I did not! You barged in here with the express purpose of bothering me while I was busy!”
“I came in here to help you relax, shit cook.” Which, was a spectacular failure given Sanji looks two seconds away from having a conniption. Zoro sips at his wine and tries again. “Look, it’s a survival thing, I get it—”
“You really don’t.”
“—to a degree. No one wants to be in that situation, but if we ever were, you don’t need to treat it like some awful thing. Not if it’s me,” Zoro clarifies. “Think of it like preparing someone for their last rites. It’s a gift, to be tended to like that in death. You put a lot of thought and care into each meal, so just… do the same thing.”
It’s about as articulate as Zoro can get, and Sanji seems to give it thought instead of biting his head off. He rests his hands on Zoro legs in his lap, picks at the fabric of his pants, frowns in that way where he’s trying to be mad but he’s actually giving a stupid idea the time of day. Eventually he leans forward on the table and hides his face in the fold of his arms, sighing loudly.
“You won’t think I’m weird?” Sanji mumbles.
“I already think you’re weird, cook,” Zoro grouses into his glass. “And I’m literally asking.”
It takes him another minute to muster the courage to pull himself out of his arm fort, sit up straight and pretend like he’s looking Zoro in the eye.
“Okay, but this is the actual definition of a hypothetical. There is no circumstance where I feed you to the crew over me,” and Sanji clearly elects to ignore the sound of Zoro loudly and obnoxiously sipping his wine in disagreement. “Shut up. I mean it.
“I’d still start bottom up. You’re a stubborn bastard, you’ll still be the world’s greatest without a leg, and as annoying as you can be I won’t kill you if I don’t have to. For you, we’d start off with a nice spicy soup made from your bones,” Sanji says, patting the toe of Zoro’s boot. “It’s mostly root vegetables and the texture is a little thick because of the boiled bone, plus it’s healthy. I think you’d appreciate it.”
Sanji moves his hands over to his shin, just above Zoro’s boot and squeezes. “Your legs… have gotten thicker. There’s, uh, different cuts we could use, multiple different meals—”
And eventually, Sanji gets into a rhythm, the kind that Zoro secretly likes to listen to. He’s talking about food, how to prepare it, cook it, care for it; he’s talking about Zoro like that. His hands trace muscle lines and up the sharp jut off his bone up to his knee, and talks about all the ways he could be served. All the ways he could help the crew, how Sanji would make sure not a single part of him is wasted, every inch of him is important.
It is genuine curiosity, and getting Sanji on a different topic of food is always a good distraction for him, but—
“If I had the time and the resources, of course, yours thighs could slow cook in a honey garlic reduction—”
Maybe two years is longer than Zoro thought without Sanji’s hands on him, hearing his voice that’s only gotten raspier, watching him smile and talk with his whole body and this was a mistake. Maybe Sanji’s exasperation was warranted, maybe this shouldn’t have been the first thing they talked about upon reuniting. Zoro likes to think it wouldn’t have mattered; they could have fucked in the storage closet, wrestled on deck, had this conversation months from now, he’s still sure he’d react the same.
It’s the tone; Sanji never talks to him, about him, like this. Not even the girls, but Zoro’s never wanted to be talked to like that either. There’s no detachment when Sanji talks about this. There’s thought to every dish; would Zoro like this, would he appreciate being used in this way in death, would he be happy. It’s a little weird that it’s the topic of cannibalism to bring it out of him, but Zoro will take what he can get when he can get it.
He lets Sanji’s voice wash over him, does not flinch when his hands skirt up his outer thigh, and listens and thinks. Zoro thinks he might be jealous of all the perishables in the kitchen. Sanji says he could easily wring four or five rationed meals out of his thighs alone and Zoro feels proud. His wine is forgotten about, has been since Sanji started, and he sets it down on the table before he spills it on himself. Sanji says his glutes would make a magnificent roast, and Zoro hides a twitchy smile in the heel of his hand.
They should talk more, maybe. Like, have a normal conversation about what they admire or generally enjoy about each other. But they’re twenty-one each and still stunted in that department, likely will be for a while, so this is the compromise. Roronoa Zoro getting half hard listening to Sanji talk about all the ways he’d prepare him to keep their crew from starving.
Good god.
Sanji’s hands squeeze the meat of his thigh before dancing up to his soft middle, and pauses. The tent in his pants is probably noticeable.
“Are you,” he starts and stops, tries again with a boiling anger. “Are you even listening? ”
“Yes,” Zoro breathes behind his hand, quickly to abate Sanji’s temper but also because he doesn’t want him to stop. “I’m definitely listening.”
Sanji narrows his gaze, fingers twitching around where thigh and hips meet. He’s considering, and Zoro allows him that time. This is obviously serious for him, and if he wants to kick Zoro into next week that’s fair. Sanji bounces his leg like he wants to set Zoro on fire, but they just sit in the darkness of the galley. The temperature is declining around them, but Zoro feels hot to the touch.
“Your ribs—”
Sanji does not move his hand away from the junction of Zoro’s hips, and he can’t help the sigh that escapes him when Sanji continues, eye shutting in content.
Zoro’s never thought much about food before Sanji. There are few things he dislikes, but at the end of the day, food is food and what he can get is what he’ll eat. Even onigiri crushed beneath the boot of a marine, crafted by a local young girl who only wanted to say thank you for sticking up for her. He understands her kindness, but it isn’t until Sanji joins their crew that he understands what it’s like to be the object of that kindness day in and day out.
It isn’t obvious, and Sanji pretty much does everything he can to make it seem like it’s more a chore to take care of the men on the crew than anything else, but someone who doesn’t care doesn’t go out of their way to learn all the little things about everyone’s eating habits. Even before he and Zoro began their relationship, Sanji made sure to make Zoro his favorite cold drinks to keep him from passing out in the heat of the deck while he worked out, but would bring it to him with an attitude and a chip on his shoulder. Desserts were made with fruit and cut through with different accompanying flavors, Zoro is asked on shopping trips to taste different kinds of food to test their sweetness on his own tongue. Zoro remembers the first time he’s presented with a small platter of treats, the single strawberry in the middle of his yogurt cut in the shape of a heart.
It’s a kindness that is overwhelming, a kindness Zoro has no basis for comparison. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to have a parent feed him something comforting and warm when he was sick, if ever at all, he only knows food as fuel to keep going, an exchange of service and favor. When Sanji flippantly leaves a plate of perfectly crafted onigiri for him in the crows nest, it feels like something he doesn’t have a name for, and his chest feels close to bursting.
“Is this about the eating part?” Sanji asks, voice carefully neutral.
Zoro shakes his head, not trusting his voice, but the answer is nothing less than a resounding no. He doesn’t know how to say it’s about how Sanji would treat each part of him like the most precious thing in the world, and while he wouldn’t be alive to know a gentler touch and softer words, just knowing that it would be the reality of things is enough. To be cared for, to be doted on; Zoro may find Sanji’s antics towards women obnoxious, but there’s a part of him somewhere that knows he certainly wouldn’t stop him if Sanji tried to act like that towards him. He’d grouse, sure, and frown and grumble, but there’s no denying that he’d lean into the same touch Sanji would use to prepare his uncooked flesh before putting it in the oven. Zoro just doesn’t know how to ask, and he hopes in some weird way Sanji might understand from all this.
“Okay,” says Sanji, and it sounds like relief. “So your shoulders—”
The hand that’s been resting at Zoro’s hip finally moves up, taking its time to get to the aforementioned shoulders. It passes by his dark red sash, dances up the hem of his robes, briskly touching the ribs he said he’d braise earlier, fully palms the meat of his pectoral that would be fantastic in a coconut curry. The hand traces his trapezius muscle from where it joins at the neck down to where it meets the deltoid, raising goosebumps in its wake, and explains three different ways he could cut him up and serve him.
Sanji tilts more towards Zoro as he talks, cants his hips and moves his free hand to the opposite side of his hip the previous hand was resting. He squeezes the meaty flesh there, reveling in Zoro’s new weight gain and idly, Zoro wonders if he’s as jealous about who's been feeding him as much as Zoro is jealous about who Sanji’s been feeding in their time apart. His thumb lazily rubs close to his dick, twitching enough that he knows Sanji didn’t not feel that.
“—and maybe use the leftover for a bolognese sauce— you are un-fucking-believable, you know that?”
“I’m listening,” Zoro assures, but his voice is strained with control. “You’re making bolognese with my—”
“Shut up,” snaps Sanji, bullying his way between Zoro’s legs. “Shut. Up.”
Zoro opens his eye and lifts his head from where it’s resting on his palm in time for Sanji to snatch his wrist away, other hand fisting his robe. He can’t tell if Sanji means to shove him away or pull him closer, so he goes nowhere and lets a leg fall off the couch to make more room for Sanji to crawl between. They meet in the middle, but the reason for it is still a mystery to Zoro until there’s teeth biting at his lips, a tongue running against the indents. Zoro opens his mouth easily, greedily, tasting the wine on the back of his tongue, tobacco at the front.
Sanji’s hands are on him like he doesn’t know what to do, where he wants them to go. As far as Zoro’s concerned, he’s never known what to do with them, always edging close to something gentle, intimate, rough, and then pulling back at the last minute. It’s obvious he wants to squeeze at his pecs, grab at the soft skin he’s developed around his waist, run his fingers through his hair, hold his head close until Sanij’s kissed all the air out of his lungs, but it’s different two years down the road. What was once insecurity is now frustration, an overwhelming sensation that’s bowled over and now there’s too much and Sanji doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Zoro hungrily presses into the kiss; he knows what he wants, it’s been a mounting want for two years. While he still may not know where he stands with Sanji, he at least knows this; they are kissing and Sanji hasn’t strangled him. Yet. His fingers are flexing into his robes like he may want to, but he’s also kissing Zoro like he’s trying to eat him whole the way he says he doesn’t want to. It feels like they’re kissing at the crossroads instead of picking a goddamn direction.
Eventually Sanji’s hands reconnect to his brain, and they slide up Zoro’s chest until they’re grabbing his face, pushing him away while Sanji pulls back, but not far. Their breaths mingle as they try to catch it, cheeks flushed red. Zoro leans forward to kiss the corner of Sanji’s mouth, and the other gets close enough to rest their foreheads together, brushing noses.
“I don’t,” Sanji begins, voice cracking. He swallows and tries again, “I don’t want to make you into a bolognese sauce.”
“Okay,” Zoro pants. “Pick a different recipe.”
“I wanna suck your dick.”
Without any further fanfare, Sanji ungracefully knees his way backwards on the couch. Zoro’s mind is reeling, his dick twitching in his straining pants, which is all the more confusing when he gasps out an almost fearful no.
Sanji freezes and looks up at him, face twisting into an expression Zoro hates. “No?”
Zoro swallows. “No, yeah… yes.”
“Which is it?”
They were just talking about the hypothetical of eating Zoro to survive, something so hypothetical that Sanji made sure to let him know that it was never, under any circumstance, happening and Zoro is pretty sure watching Sanji swallow his dick is going to make a blood vessel burst. But he really, really wants Sanji’s mouth on him, in any way, and a small voice in the back of his mind says that includes eating him.
“Yes.”
Zoro lolls his head back as Sanji descends, taking great interest in the ceiling of the galley. He wastes no time grabbing Zoro by the hips and propping him up on Sanji’s knees, creating a space to pull his waistband down. There’s no comment about his continuous lack of underwear that Zoro expects which only proves that they’re equally as keyed up as the other. There is, however, a steady stream of muttering under Sanji’s breath and an awful lot of groping at the soft muscle around his middle. Zoro glances at him, the ruddiness of his face that he can barely see beyond the shadow of his fringe, and silently preens at the approval of his new bulk. Something wet hits just to the left of his belly button and Zoro chuckles as he tilts his head back again, listening to Sanji swear.
“Pervert.”
A hand grabs his dick, almost a little too harshly, and Zoro groans deep in his chest. “Look who’s talking. Hard as a fucking diamond after I went on about preparing you like a feast.”
Sanji sniffles, no doubt wiping the back of his hand under his nose to stave the bleeding long enough to wrap his lips around Zoro’s dick and god— god, if Zoro had had to jerk off to the thought of this one more night he might as well have thrown himself overboard. The hesitance that Sanji once had whenever they did this in the past is long gone, Sanji barely kisses the head before he’s taking him in from tip to root in one go. It’s still sloppy and uncoordinated, and he’s trying to take too much too soon, but Zoro has to shove his knuckles into his mouth to keep from moaning too loud.
It’s as messy as it is enthusiastic. Sanji whines through his nose as he lets Zoro’s dick sit on his tongue, in his throat, lifts up but not off as he makes sure his lips hardly ever leave him. It feels somewhere close to worship, just like his words before, but now it’s tongue and lips, spit and the greedy sound of Sanji moaning around his dick. His free hand squeezes every bit of skin he can get his hands on; Zoro’s shapely thighs, his abdomen taut now with tension, the ribs that would be deliciously sticky over a grill. Sanji tries to get his attention by slapping his side, and Zoro doesn’t know how else to let him know there is nothing he’s paying attention to more than the man between his legs.
“ Zoro, ” Sanji says, wet and hoarse, lips mouthing his name against his foreskin. “Look at me.”
Zoro sucks in air through his teeth because he doesn't want this to end so soon. In all fairness, they don’t have all the time in the world and Zoro should be outside helping keep watch for any deep sea predators. If they don’t get outside soon, people will come looking for them. All things considered, it’s much easier to explain a blowjob at the dining table than what they had been doing previously.
Biting until he can taste blood on his fist, Zoro looks down at Sanji through his lashes and nearly comes right there. Red in the face, eyes wet, lips smeared with a mix of pre-cum and saliva. His nose has started to bleed again, or maybe it never stopped. Sanji meets his gaze with an open mouthed kiss to the head of his dick before swallowing it inch by agonizing inch. One of Zoro’s hands shoots out to rip him off, because he will come, but Sanji slaps the hand away and pins it to the back of the couch.
Zoro shuts his eye and sees stars. He bites the meat of his palm to muffle the moan that rips out of him as he comes down Sanji’s throat. And Sanji, bless him, lets out a blissful sigh as he doesn’t waste a single drop.
Their breathing is overloud in Zoro’s ears, maybe loud enough for the crew to hear them outside, but he hears the distant jeering of Luffy somewhere on deck and he relaxes, melting into the couch.
“We don’t—” Sanji starts.
“Yeah.” Zoro finishes.
Because it would really just be easier to never bring up the one time Sanji blew Zoro on the couch after being turned on over their conversation on situational cannibalism.
Sanji tucks Zoro back into his pants after catching his breath, but doesn’t move off him quite yet. He rests his head in the divot of Zoro’s hips, thumbing along the hem of his pants before rearranging his limbs so he can drape himself over Zoro completely, and Zoro wastes no time keeping him there. His arms encircle Sanji around the waist, across his back, and he notices just how wide he’s gotten since the last time they saw each other. He realizes how much he missed being close to him, in any aspect, but Zoro likes this the best. Two years without Sanji comes crashing into him like a ton of bricks, and he realizes that can’t happen again. He squeezes his arms around him until Sanji makes an aborted little noise.
“It can’t be you,” Zoro says into the fringes of Sanji’s hair tickling his chin. “It can never be you. If you tried to feed yourself to us, I’d eat every piece of you and wouldn’t share you with the rest of the crew.”
Zoro feels more than he hears the hiccup in Sanji’s breathing, but the blonde remains silent. A hand snakes its way up between them, up Zoro’s neck, fingers tracing along his jawline and up to where his earrings rest. They dance along the metal to make them jingle, up the shell of his ear to the jut of his cheekbone, and there the forefinger and thumb come together to meanly pinch the skin.
“Mushy marimo,” Sanji scolds with no real heat. “That’s the single greediest and most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”
Sanji lifts his head up to dig his chin into Zoro’s chest, frowning up at him as he pulls at the skin on his cheek. Zoro grumbles wordlessly and it shakes a soft laugh out of Sanji, letting go and scooting up to kiss the little red mark on his face.
“Okay,” he says. “Then I’ll just work twice as hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
And Zoro says, with all the confidence in the world, “By eating me first.”
This time, the rest of the crew does hear them quarrel as it explodes out the galley door when Sanji literally kicks Zoro out and over the railing.