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The faucet is running. It’s driving him crazy, the constant rush in his ear. He knows about their saltwater filter, like conceptually, so it’s not like it’s a waste, but that doesn’t stop the niggling thought. It’s a heavy whooshing downpour right beside his thrown-back head. It’s a tease, reminding him of the rain they’ve yet to receive all these weeks they’ve been marooned on the ship. The same torturous whoosh of the Sunny’s bow rolling easily through the current and endless expanse of ocean, the sound of the waves lapping at its sides, and the rush of blood in Sanji’s ears, watching the idiot grow roots on their lawned deck, sprawled and half-naked, sweat glinting off his tanned skin like sunlight off the sea.
Though as much as the sound irritates him, it’s putting in overtime right now. And Sanji can’t get a hand behind him to turn it off.
The moan erupts from his chest, his stomach muscles quivering with the sudden sound. He muffles it at the last moment with his bicep, biting the taut skin there. The noise escapes him anyway. It comes out whiny through his nose and lingers in the surrounding space. Shit.
What if they heard that? It’s late now, but he sent tea up to the library only a couple of hours ago. Granted, she hadn’t been there when they’d come up the ladder, but what if his lovely Robin is still up and about? It’s not like their washroom is a particularly private place. Hell, it’s not like their locks even work all that well.
Shit. Did they lock the door?
Below him, a stiff laugh rings out. Sanji snaps his head up. Through narrowed eyes, Sanji peers down at Zoro sitting seiza at his feet, eye glinting, his bottom lip tinged pink and still shiny with spit. He’s unmoved by the harsh look and really seems all too amused in general. Sanji’s got the hand of his unbitten arm threaded in Zoro’s hair. Both of Zoro’s are otherwise occupied. The right one’s down the front of his pants, knuckles pushing back on the zipper. Sanji doesn’t have to guess where the other one is.
“What?” he snaps out.
“You expecting someone else?” Zoro’s voice is gravelly, and he lets the sound of it do exactly what he knows it will. Sanji ignores how his traitorous dick twitches in Zoro's palm.
It does not go ignored by Zoro, whose smirk grows a half size. He licks at where the base of his cock meets the open slit in his boxers, his bright grey eye never straying from Sanji’s gaze. “Relax, cook. It’s locked.”
Zoro lets his tongue trail all the way back up his cock and then swallows him down to the base with barely a breath in between. Sanji jerks so violently, he knocks the shower head off its hook. It eggs Zoro on, and he starts a pace that never returns the breath to Sanji’s chest. Fuuck. Fuck. The moans spill out of him faster than his hand can catch.
When he slows down, he stays so deep his nose brushes the hem of his shorts and the soft skin of his lower belly. He grips Sanji’s ass so tightly, he’ll feel it the next solid kick he lands. His throat contracts when he swallows, and he slackens his jaw as though he’d given Sanji any room to thrust forward. He tries it anyway. The noise is slick and obscene, and the pearly gleam to Zoro’s eye has Sanji squeezing his eyes shut. He’s gonna come. So close. So close. Fuck, it’s— He’s—
All the breath escapes his chest in one punch to the gut. The noise he makes isn’t too far off. “Fucking fuck you.”
“Oh, sorry. Were you close?”
It’s said facetiously in a throaty rasp that has Sanji’s stomach muscles flexing. He’s sat back on his knees again, looking all too pleased with himself. A wicked smirk pulls at the plush bottom lip his tongue swipes across. Sanji’s dick bobs in the air like it’s beckoning him back, still wet from the wonderful mouth that had been there only moments ago.
It takes Sanji some time to form noises that aren’t whines. “I’m gonna beat your ass,” he threatens weakly.
Zoro snorts. “You couldn’t beat yourself off.”
Zoro moves back in mouth first. His warm breath tickles along the side of his cock. The hand that had been squeezing Sanji’s ass trails up beneath his shirt, rubbing languid circles into his lower back. Zoro’s lips ghost the length of his cock, just barely there, and the fingers Sanji has in Zoro’s hair drag their blunt nails through his scalp.
At the last moment, Zoro swaps his tongue out for his incisors, carefully dragging them upupup every ridge on his cock, teasing their blunt edges. The hard feel of enamel shocks the sigh out of his chest. Sanji grabs tight in Zoro’s hair and pulls—not enough to hurt, just enough to feel. Zoro gives easily, grey eye blinking back up at him, nonplussed.
“Watch the teeth, mosshead,” he grits out, heart rate rabbiting. “I swear I’m gonna—”
“Gonna what?”
It’s distracting just how good-looking he is. Insane that it took him two years to realize he wanted to do something about it and a month later to actually do it. He could kick himself for every hour not spent making out with this idiot.
Zoro’s cheeks are ruddy, his lips rubbed raw. The broad of his chest is bare, and sweat drips between his pectorals and disappears beneath his haramaki. That glint in his eye is predatory. The hand down his pants hasn’t stopped moving once. It has all thoughts of Sanji’s aching, unflagging cock sent temporarily to the recesses of his brain. It takes everything in him not to join him on the floor and slide an accompanying hand down the front of his pants. Mm.
It’s the running tap that brings him back out of his stupor.
“Need I remind you we don’t actually have all night,” Sanji warns. “Locked door or not, someone will find us.”
They haven’t made landfall in a couple of weeks. In both of those weeks, not one time they decided to fool around has someone not walked in. Not once have they been uninterrupted. He’s not sure if the stir-craziness is making them more reckless or what, but there's no question of if anymore—it’s when. And when someone finds them, he’d like some smidgen of plausible deniability. Not his cock stuck straight up and open to the elements, swaying in the wind like a weathervane. He still can’t look Franky in the eye after the last time.
Zoro tosses his head to the side. To someone else, it could look like he’s considering what was said, but Sanji knows that vacant look well enough to know that means he’s wiping his ass with it. He takes Sanji back in hand, but his grip is loose. It’s an entirely purposeful lack of pressure or speed or anything, really. Just enough to keep Sanji hard and wanting.
“Maybe. Probably not for a while.”
Yeah. Right. Sure. And Sanji’s gonna take his word for it.
The slow roll licks frustration up his spine. Petulantly, he taps his socked toes on the floor. “Oi. What're you even doing down there? I know you didn't forget how your mouth works.”
Zoro’s quick to flick his eye back up at him. “Is that how you’re asking me to keep going?”
Sanji swallows. “I’m not asking.”
“Not yet.”
Sanji’s eyebrow twitches. He mulls over all possible repercussions of kicking the mosshead through the bathroom door and down the library stairs. It might piss him off, which would be worth it, but if it wakes anyone else on the ship, Zoro would win. He’d sit there in the broken floorboards, smirking like the cat that caught the canary.
Sanji looks down at him, posed between his knees. The expression already isn’t too far off. He’s trapped the bird, and whether it chews its leg off or gives itself over in concession makes all the same difference to Zoro. Such a predatory look from someone on their knees, one hand unabashedly pulling himself off. The other one on Sanji slows but never stops. Dating this man has been an exercise in patience.
It’s the look in his eye, the deliberate movements of his hands, that has Sanji clenching his teeth. This is a dare. He’s daring him. This barely sentient piece of plant life really thinks Sanji’s going to back down.
“Zoro.”
Zoro looks up the length of Sanji's body, lingering on his lower body and where a trail of hair disappears into the waist of his unzipped slacks. “Cook,” he says, smug.
Fuck, he hates that stupid, stupid, attractive face.
The flat of Zoro’s tongue laps his tip, and Sanji stutter-steps around a thought. His mouth opens, brain wheeling through a million thoughts not conducive to communication. He snaps his jaw closed with a snick, licks his lips, then starts again. “You—”
The door opens so slowly, Sanji thinks for a moment he’s hallucinating it. Then Nami’s orange hair peeks through the gap, and it’s very real. Very, very real. Oh my god.
“Oh my god.”
She freezes halfway through the doorway. There’s a stricken expression on her face as her eyes flit from the sink to Sanji. By the time she makes it to Zoro, it’s utter horror.
“Oh my god!”
With a harsh slam, Nami’s on the opposite side of the door. “Out. Kitchen. Now.”
What. The fuck.
Zoro’s tongue clucks against his teeth. “Whoops.”
Zoro and Sanji sit on opposite sides of the kitchen table with Nami at the head, like children ready to be chewed out. Sanji, the archetype of a grade-A student, has his head hung, shame burning red-hot up the back of his neck. Across from him, Zoro’s splayed out like the delinquent he is. His eye flicks from the dirt beneath his nails to the grout in the walls, then to Nami’s face. She doesn’t look back at him. Her eyes stare unseeing into the far wall, hands pressed to her mouth like she’s praying. Which she might be. They’re so fucked.
It takes her a while to speak, and Sanji wrings his fingers beneath the table. It’s never been this bad before. Zoro looks like he could be lounging on a yacht right now.
She looks seriously at Sanji. “I’m really disappointed, Sanji-kun.”
K.O. Sanji can feel his heart splinter and break, falling from his chest to the floor beneath the warped, salt-stained oak and Nami’s perfectly painted toenails. Far away, he feels the skin of his forehead against the kitchen table. Zoro’s chair creaks as he sits up, his voice less harsh but no less indignant.
“Look, okay, it was my fault, I--”
Nami stops him short. “It was quite literally both of your faults. Which is why you both owe me.”
At the sound of potentially making it up to her, Sanji perks up, ready to be of service. Zoro’s eye roll is audible, but he’s still not looking. Getting back on Nami’s good side starts now.
“Well,” she clarifies, “you will owe me. I don’t want a peep from you two until the next island. If that happens again, you each owe me your bounty to the berry. I think you can control yourselves until then.”
Zoro’s jaw drops, but Sanji’s already nodding. “Are you--”
“Anything, Nami-swan. We won’t even touch-”
Zoro’s head swivels back to him like a dog watching a tennis match. “Won’t touch?” Zoro interrupts, aghast.
“We’ll barely even look at each other,” Sanji continues. He doesn’t have the time for the marimo’s hysterics right now. He’s got an altar to kneel at.
“Whatever you need to do,” she says, getting up from her chair, eyebrow still twitching. “Just let me take a fucking bath in peace.”
With that, she escapes from her chair and exits the room, leaving Sanji with Zoro and the consequences of his own actions.
Zoro crosses his arms. He’s still shirtless from earlier, and his meaty biceps sit neatly beneath his pecs. He quirks an unimpressed eyebrow at Sanji. “Won’t touch, huh?”
Sanji cuts an eye at Zoro. His attempts at seduction will go unmentioned. “I was serious about that, marimo.”
There’s a moment of silence as Zoro watches him, taking in his expression. Eventually, he snorts and looks away. “Yeah, right. You won’t last the day.”
“Guaranteed I last longer than you,” Sanji bites back. He feels something in equal parts excitement and frustration start to build in his chest. Sanji tips his head back to watch Zoro down his nose.
Sanji watches Zoro’s gaze get sharper. The tip of his tongue pricks a canine. “Oh yeah? Guess we’ll see about that.”
“Guess we will.”
If the mosshead thinks he’s winning this, he’s got another thing coming. One of the many, many things Sanji has that Zoro doesn’t is unyielding patience. It’s something he’s had to have, given all the buffoonery he deals with on the ship. And for Nami, the pool overflows. If she says she doesn’t want a peep out of them, then Sanji will make that sacrifice for her a thousand times over. Her sanity is what keeps the ship afloat.
Besides, Zoro’s going to break. He knows it.
⋆༺𓆩⚔𓆪༻⋆
Sanji stretches out against the ship’s taffrail, watching the waves get swallowed beneath the hull. Behind them is nothing but ocean and sky—miles and miles of blue for as far as he can stretch his eyes to see. There’s a good breeze back here, hidden behind the aquarium. It cools his forehead and nape, where his hair has already started to cling and curl. Drops of sunlight bead the swaths of cerulean hills stretched in every direction, and they reflect the heat back into their oven of a ship. It’s hot now, and they’ve only been adrift in the Sunny for a few weeks. If this slow roast keeps going on like Nami-san says it will, he’ll be a disembodied puddle in a matter of days, and they’ll have to whisk him, like egg whites, back to stiff peak-y life.
On a long inhale of his cigarette, Sanji lets the smoke burn in his lungs and burn out the shaky feeling lingering in his fingertips. He crumples the empty box in his fist and shoves it back into his pocket. That pack was supposed to last him the month, and now he’s got the last one burning between two fingers. The issue is he’s been smoking them like they’re going out of style. He’s not looking into the reasons why, either. Sanji just needs the nicotine to do its job so that he can do his. He’ll have to search the cupboards for the rest of the stock he knows he has holed up somewhere.
He stays out there until the sun starts to lower in the sky, creeping in on the horizon. It’s not late enough in the afternoon for the sun to burn the skyline, but for a crazy man who cooks for a captain with an appetite the size of a starved crew, it may as well be midnight. Sanji sighs out his smoke and stamps out the cigarette burning at his knuckles on the taffrail. He puts the stub in the same pocket as the carton and walks back through the aquarium to get to the kitchen. Time for dinner prep.
On the main floor, the lawn is surprisingly quiet. Chopper and Luffy are starfished on the grass, the straw of their finished drink dangling in their mouths. He doesn’t see anyone else out there frying themselves in plain view of the sun. Even their trees are notably free of mossy undergrowth. Hm. He’s probably in the crow’s nest lifting weights or something. Maybe burning off his remaining energy or pretending meditation does something.
Okay, Sanji knows he’d agreed to nothing, and trust, he’s not regretting that decision at all, but. Well, wow, nothing really means nothing, huh? Like, they don’t even kiss. Hell, they barely fight. It’s like a weird arguing thing that leads to long looks and pointed fingers until someone breaks, then Zoro holes himself up in the crow’s nest, and Sanji cracks open another carton.
Which is fine, obviously. Sanji knew what he was signing up for. It just feels like they’ve regressed back to their pining days. In the few days they’ve been doing this, every wayward glance has Sanji fingering a cigarette. He’s not used to not touching Zoro whenever he wants or kicking him. Or kissing him.
Sanji doesn’t stick around the deck. If they’re finished with their drinks now, he’s got a couple of hours, if he’s lucky, before someone bursts into the kitchen and demands dinner.
He bounds up the stairs and pushes open the door to the galley. Once inside, he freezes. Like he’d heard his name called, there Zoro is, sitting at the bar like Sanji’s a paid bartender, his swords in hand. Zoro’s head swivels when Sanji walks through the door, and Sanji fights the urge to jump. He’s not sure that he likes that look in his eye.
“You get lost?” he asks, only half kidding.
Zoro looks blandly at him. “Funny.”
Sanji thought it was pretty funny.
He doesn’t let the suddenness of Zoro’s arrival throw him off his original mission. The cabinet below the sink is where he finds his smokes, tucked behind an old wine bottle. While he’s down there, he pulls that out, too. It’s a good one for coq au vin or a bolognese.
“If you came for sake, you’re out of luck,” Sanji says, shooting him a look. “Those reserves have to last us ‘til the next island.”
Zoro lets out a low hum. He places all but one sword carefully on the ground, letting them rest gently on his stool. The one he leaves resting on his lap is pretty, with a white saya and tsuka to match. Wado. “Which is when exactly?”
Sanji turns from him and towards the stove. “You know I don’t know that.”
“And the witch?”
“Don’t call her that,” Sanji chastises, digging a pot out from the cabinet beside the burner. “Nami-san doesn’t know either.”
Another hum, this time short and disbelieving. What does it say about Sanji that he’s become proficient in Zoro’s more caveman, nonverbal proclivities? Sigh.
Pots prepared, Sanji now turns to the fridge for the vegetables and marinating meat. Out of habit, he casts an over-the-shoulder look at the door before punching in the code.
“What’re you doing?” Zoro asks.
He loves him, but what else is Sanji ever doing in the kitchen? “Getting a head start on dinner,” he says instead. “Anything you want?”
“Anything you make.”
Sanji fights not to preen at that. Complain as he might, Zoro would eat anything he put in front of him then ask for seconds. Even still, compliments are far harder to pull out of him without probing or some unabashed fishing. It’s a lightning strike when it happens naturally, and it feels just the same.
It’s only when he spins back around to where Zoro’s sitting that he finally notices what’s lying in front of him. In all fairness, it could have been there when he’d first walked in, and he’d just not seen it. At the time, he was a bit preoccupied with his no-contact, long-distance boyfriend sitting on his kitchen stool.
It’s a small glass bottle. The liquid inside is a very pale yellow, almost clear. It’s sat beside a handful of cloths, and the saya Zoro must’ve removed from Wado when his back was turned.
Sanji lays the meat out on the counter and pauses. “What’re you doing?” he asks against his better judgment. He knows exactly what Zoro’s doing.
“Cleaning my swords.”
Cleaning his swords. He should’ve told Zoro to get out when he'd first seen him. Just the way he'd said it sends a spike of heat through his lower belly. There’s something wrong with him. Cleaning his swords is a perfectly normal activity. Regular upkeep and whatever. He can’t remember the last time he's seen Zoro clean them, actually. No, wait. He definitely does. That… well.
He chooses not to dignify that with a response. Instead, he turns his back to him again to set the flame on the stove.
Sanji clears his throat. “Do you have to do that here?”
“You got a problem with it, cook?”
He whips back around. Zoro’s got the cloth out and has it poised on the length of the sword. “No,” he says, like a lying liar.
“Good.”
Then his hand starts to move. He starts at the tsuba, low down at the hilt, and then slowly makes his way up. There’s no inch of steel left untouched. The sword is gleaming with oil already, another thing Zoro must have done when his back was turned. It’s just enough to catch the overhead light in the kitchen, and it pulls out the startling grey waves rippling down the edge of the sword. The oil diminishes with every long stroke as the cloth pulls away any excess.
Momentarily, Zoro’s distracted. His long eyelashes are lowered, watching every swipe his rough fingers make along the flat of the blade. He’s ensnared in it. Sanji watches as his thumb presses harder, deeper into spots that must need it, watches when he twists his wrist and runs it up its spine. Sanji watches and watches because he can’t look away.
This is stupid. It’s absolutely stupid, and what’s even stupider is how stiff his pants are getting. He’s half-hard right now, barely a quarter of the way through dinner. It’s just that it’s done so methodically and carefully. Zoro knows exactly what he’s doing—his fingers carefully choose the tool he needs, stroking it with purpose. Unbidden, scenes of the last time he’d cleaned his swords around Sanji come flashing back to him. It had taken days to rid the smell of the choji oil from his fingers and the taste from his tongue.
Ever the mindreader, Zoro flicks his eye up to meet his. There’s something dark there, blowing the pupil, and it strikes Sanji all at once that Zoro does know exactly what he’s doing.
With that thought, Sanji snatches a knife from the block and starts to flay the seasoned meat.
“Everything alright over there?” There’s a twinge of humor to his voice that Sanji doesn’t appreciate.
“Peachy,” he says shortly.
He has to turn off the stove. It’s going to burn anything he drops into it now. Sanji hears a soft sigh of sound, accompanied by the sharp click of Wado’s tsuba meeting its saya. There’s no need to look up to be sure—Sanji's heard the sound a million times before and will hear it a million more.
Whatever he’s doing, it’s irrelevant. Sanji digs in his pocket and pulls out the carton he’d just scavenged. Flicking it open, he grabs one of his pre-rolled and pops it into his mouth. He tosses the box onto the counter haphazardly, choosing, instead, to root for his lighter. He’d just used it to light the stove; it couldn’t have gone that far. Sanji endeavors a bit too far to the right, and his index brushes the half-hard dick he was attempting to ignore. The sudden rush of feeling has him jolting, and his elbow knocks the carton off the edge of the wood.
Sanji swears to himself. At least it wasn’t the meat. He reels to catch it, sure he’ll make it before it hits the ground, but then it doesn’t. A hand scoops it midair and holds it out to him, all tanned skin and unkempt nails.
Zoro raises an eyebrow, the same smug smirk adorning his lips. “You sure you’re ‘peachy?’”
He’s way too close. Sanji can see every freckle on his face, can see the defiant eyelashes pushing in a different direction. The worst being that damn dimple. It’s small and pinned to the side of his mouth, and it only makes its appearance when he’s being particularly cheeky or impertinent in a way that makes Sanji want to strangle him or kiss him or everything in between.
Sanji snatches the box and wheels to him, wielding the same paring knife. “Get out,” he tells him, apropos of enough.
“You’re—wait, are you serious?”
Sanji gives him a sharp look. Well, as sharp as he can when his body’s already reacting to the distance or lack thereof.
Zoro has the audacity to look affronted. “Fine,” he huffs.
He rounds the bar haughtily, grabbing his swords on his way out. It’s only when the door swings shut that Sanji lets himself take in a deep breath, fingers gripping the edge of the countertop. This is temporary. They’ll reach an island in a matter of days, weeks at the most, and then everything will be as it was. He’ll take a nice cold shower when dinner is over and forget this ever happened.
A moment longer to let the kitchen’s dry air and dreams of kung-fu dugongs tame the bulge in his shorts, and he’s ready for dinner. All thoughts of hot, annoying marimos are unmoored and left adrift. Sanji snatches the lost lighter and lights his cigarette, dropping the meat in the pan simmering at a low flame. This is more important, he thinks, taking a long drag. Zoro can try his bullshit another day, but he won’t lose focus.
⋆༺𓆩⚔𓆪༻⋆
Sweat sticks Sanji’s collar to his neck and drips steadily down the length of his spine. He’s tempted to remove the whole shirt, but if any more buttons come off, he’ll be no more caveman than the marimo, and his kitchen deserves some semblance of propriety. At least the stove is off. With the way the weather has been going lately, Sanji can only take one oppressive heat machine in an enclosed space. On the far side of the wall by the door, the oven hiccups. It leeches said hot air into the kitchen, seeping into the surrounding space. It’s hardly had a break all day—as a result, any vents or fans Sanji has turned on to circumvent the stifling heat are proving useless. All they do is recycle the heat and threaten to cook Sanji alive. Anything not below deck is subject to spontaneous combustion.
With the increased heatwave that Nami-san correctly (per usual) predicted, Sanji can’t be on the deck for too long. For that and no other reason. It’s left him holed up here in the kitchen more often than not, sweating out his weight in water. He’s prepped for the next week, just in case they’re stranded at sea for much longer. All plans for their dinners, desserts, and midday snacks are compiled in his notebook, its seams bursting and beginning to tear near the spine.
Sanji sets the finished glaze he’d been stirring aside and runs his sticky fingers through his damp fringe. It’s a brief reprieve. The sweat slinks past the crease in his eyebrow and pools above his cheekbone. He tugs once at his damp hair to soothe the itch in his scalp, then again just to tug it. His other hand drums its short nails on the counter. When it tires of that, it twitches for his cigarette carton and meets an empty pocket. Sanji spots it on the counter across from him and realizes, in the time he thinks to grab it, that there’s already an unlit one trapped between his teeth.
A loud knock on the door interrupts all thought. The door creaks as it’s opened, slow enough that there are only so many people it could be. Usopp’s head pops through the doorway before the rest of his body. His eyes are squeezed shut, anticipating an unwelcome surprise, like a spider or a murder scene. Sanji watches his dramatics banally from behind the kitchen counter. Eventually, Usopp pries open one eye, but he fastens it steadfastly to the ceiling. Slowly, it inches down the cabinets and hanging pots to where Sanji stands, unimpressed.
Both eyes fly open. “Oh, uh,” he starts, expression bashful. “I thought, uh… anyway. You are… alone?”
Sanji blinks at him, then raises an eyebrow. “Yes, Usopp. Do you see anyone else here?’
His answer drops Usopp’s shoulders an inch, and he creeps in through the door enough to let it swing closed behind him.
Sanji can’t blame him. It’s not like he’s kept count of all the times the boys have walked in on them, but if there were a running tally, Usopp would most likely have a few more ticks in his box. Be it night watch changes or bathroom breaks or Usopp’s penchant for being up late, it always seemed to be him. Truthfully, Sanji’d just tried to forget whenever it happened or deemed it an inevitability of living in such close quarters. It’s not until now that Sanji realizes he can’t remember the last time Usopp has been in here outside of meals.
“Are there more snacks?” Usopp asks now that he’s sure everyone’s modesty is intact.
Sanji snatches up his lighter from where it lies next to his new pack. He leans an elbow up on the counter, lighting it. “You’ll eat what I give you,” he says through a cloud of smoke.
“We did.”
We. Guess Usopp drew the short straw. He should’ve known—this has Luffy written all over it.
Usopp’s big eyes peer into Sanji’s narrowed ones. His lip juts out in a pout, and he holds his folded hands beneath it, palms pressed together in prayer. If this is the route they’d intended to go, they should’ve chosen Chopper instead.
Sanji turns away, pulling in a deep breath from his cigarette. He considers the finished bowl of glaze sitting in front of him, spinning it from side to side to see the flakes of ginger stir. He could take the treats out of the freezer. They’d taste better the fresher they are, plus the drawer is quickly approaching max capacity. If he clears out some space, then he could make an ice cream treat tomorrow. Sanji’s fingers flex. Or maybe later. For dessert.
“Fine,” Sanji decides, “but if you leave any food at dinner, I’ll shove it down your throat.”
The threat sails square past Usopp’s nose. “Great! Thanks!”
He gives a wide grin and then disappears back out the way he came, much faster than his entry. Somehow, his absence leaves the kitchen feeling smaller. Sanji rolls his shoulders, shifting the way his sweat-sticky shirt sits on them, and makes for the freezer.
It’s weird that the idiot outside didn’t already clue him in. These days, all Zoro does is sit out there. Shirtless, more often than not, and dripping sweat from sitting plainly in the magnifying glass of the sun. He snaps more, too, itching to fight and then backing off when Sanji gets closer. Backing. Off. It frays the thin rope of Sanji’s sanity.
He doesn’t come into the kitchen anymore. No one does. At dinner Zoro sits across from him and doesn’t look up. On the rare occasion he’s listening to someone speak, he’ll eat slowly, spoon dangling between his lips. Or his tongue laps at the rim of the utensil or peeks out the side of his mouth. Last night, he’d licked the spoon clean, the flat of his tongue laving the shallow bowl, and Sanji’d had to excuse himself from the table.
At the end of dinner, Zoro had put his dishes in the sink, and Sanji hasn’t seen him since.
The popsicles sit in molds on the bottom of the freezer. They’re separated by Strawhat, the color of their sticks a clear marker to help Sanji tell them apart. The boys’ recipes vary their popsicle colors by a shade, so color-coding the sticks is the best way to keep them differentiated.
Sanji has to work fast to get them out so they’re still their whole, unmelted self by the time they reach the crew. He pops them out a bit, just to make sure they’ve solidified well, and then he sets them back inside to serve them in their molds. He’s not taking any chances. The popsicles steam in the warm air, already threatening to melt. When Sanji’s sure he’s got both trays secure, he weaves around the bar and pushes out the kitchen door.
The ladies are first, to be extra sure they receive their dessert in the best state possible. He knows they’re upstairs--Robin had rung for tea no more than a half hour ago.
Brook is with the lovely ladies upstairs in the aquarium, enjoying some tea. Franky’s in the energy room beneath them, and he takes full caution descending the stairs with the tray in his hand. Once he’s passed the heart-shaped fruit popsicles out to Robin and Nami and the generic, phallic-shaped ones out to the other two, he pushes through the aquarium door and back out to the lawn for the rest of the boys.
It’s then he notices someone’s missing.
Usopp, Luffy, and Chopper are on the lawn, running around like a group of maniacs, wielding water guns. Jinbe is sitting on the lawn watching them, laughing heartily. But there’s no moss. Huh. Guess that explains whatever that was with Usopp in the kitchen. Sanji hands them their desserts and makes a point to outwardly discard their cheers and thanks, smiling small to himself when they take a break to gnaw on their new treats.
It’s weird that the marimo’s not here. Sanji rolls his nubbed cigarette between his front teeth, tapping an offbeat pattern on the popsicle mold. Unfortunately, there’s only one other place he could be.
Sanji’s careful when he climbs the rope ladder to the crow’s nest. Thankfully, there’s only one popsicle left, but he’s on borrowed time. The sun bears down on him at its crest in the early afternoon. He’d prefer not to deliver soup with a stick in it, just for his own pride as a cook. Even so, he’s sure slush has begun to accumulate at the bottommost part of the mold.
He switches from the rope to the wooden ladder and knocks twice, firmly, on the latched door into the room. For a moment, there’s nothing. No dropped weights or padded footsteps echo through its metal carpet and cushioned flooring. Maybe he’s sleeping? He thinks to just open the damn thing—Zoro’s not wasting any food on his watch—and before he can, Sanji catches a soft noise above the silence. Breathing. Faint and far away but unmistakable. Vocal and almost reedy.
It’s gone as soon as it’s heard, and the sharp snap of the latch undoing quickly takes its place. Zoro pulls open the hatch and looks down at him, face even. He’s topless--no surprise there--with a towel hung loosely on either side of his neck. His hair is mussed and long overdue for a cut, but it’s the only thing askew about him. Save maybe his haramaki that sits a half inch higher on one side than the other.
Sanji pops his head into the crow’s nest and takes a look around. Weights are off their rack, like they’d just been used, and there’s a towel laid out on the floor. Zoro watches him the whole way up the ladder and still when they stand on even ground. One reason Sanji avoids coming up here is that it smells so strongly of Zoro that it never fails to leave him winded. Even though every member of the crew comes up here on their hour for watch and that every so often Zoro finds elsewhere to plant roots, the smell of Zoro is so thick here he could taste it.
The warmth of Zoro’s presence is really the only one that holds any comparison to that of the kitchen. He’s a radiator. At first, it was nearly impossible to sleep beside him for any length of time, but he’s gotten used to it in recent months. Well, he had. They haven’t slept together in any capacity for at least two weeks. Two weeks, and his sleep is already shit. Even if he manages a miraculous five hours, he’ll still wake up groggy and cold everywhere.
Sanji bites down on his cigarette filter and turns his attention back to Zoro. “Were you asleep?”
“No,” Zoro says, voice husky. Sure sounds like he was.
Sanji hums low and long, like he doesn’t believe him, but he’s not willing to argue the point.
His eye is low-lidded, too, and it makes the hairs at the back of Sanji’s neck tingle. His chest rises quicker than it would in sleep, but his gaze is far more languid. The left side of his face is tinted a blotchy pink, as though it’d been pressed to something, and Sanji wants to touch him there. His desire for Zoro in any way, least of all touch, is no longer a startling feeling. It runs like a river, hot and steady, as an undercurrent to everything he does. He wants to kiss him, wants to drag his lips along his cheek and chin where his stubble has started to grow back. Even though he’s worked out, Zoro won't shower and shave until tomorrow, which means he’s gross, and sickeningly, Sanji wants him all the more.
Zoro sighs, but it’s breathy, with less heat and frustration. “What d’you want?”
“Don’t be rude, mossy. I brought a snack.”
It’s then that Zoro seems to notice Sanji had brought something at all. Sanji passes the popsicle to Zoro soundlessly. It’s a peanut butter and banana blend, kept sweet but not too sweet.
Zoro takes it carefully. “Thanks,” he says.
“Don’t mention it,” he replies, caught off guard by the soft gratitude.
It has already started to melt, despite his best efforts. It’s melty towards the top, and when Zoro flips it right side up, all the liquid flows to the bottom. In attempts to catch it, Zoro licks a clean stripe up the side, and Sanji straightens, his spine a metal rod in a lightning storm. Zoro carries on, oblivious, tongue trailing along the tip where it’s started to concave.
He can’t tell how long he stands there watching him eat the damned thing. The filter of his cigarette is ground into nothing between his teeth. The live wire that had been snaked through his nervous system the moment they started this stupid bet is competing with his body’s preexisting electrical signals. He can’t get his heart to listen to him, can’t get his fingers to stop twitching. Offhandedly, Sanji looks up at Zoro’s face for a brief moment and is ensnared in Zoro’s dark gaze.
That’s it. His feet turn him before he can think to give them the command. He’s got to get out of here. Back to his kitchen cell until his body can start listening to him again. He has to win this terrible bet and show Nami-san and the marimo who really has the superior self-control.
The hatch is still open. He can make it.
“Sanji.”
Sanji freezes. A shiver runs up his spine. Fucking marimo.
He doesn’t look back. He debates running now, weighing it against the blow to his pride.
Zoro’s closer--he can feel it. It’s a buzz beneath his skin anytime he gets within a certain distance of him—the same feeling that helps Sanji find Zoro when he wanders. It’s as though all the cells in his body pull them towards each other. He’s always felt that way, like they were born to clash, like one couldn’t exist without the other.
Over his shoulder, Sanji asks, “What?”
“Sanji,” Zoro says again, like the first time wasn’t enough. His voice is deeper, gravelly. “D’you wanna know what I was doing? Before you came.”
Sanji attempts a sardonic laugh, but it’s more air than sound. They’re not on even ground anymore. Maybe Zoro’s still in the crow’s nest, but Sanji’s on the rope ladder, blowing aimlessly in the wind. “It wasn’t sleeping?”
“No.”
Sanji wheels back around. Zoro’s still watching him. The top of the popsicle is bitten off.
“D’you wanna know?”
No. He’s sure he doesn’t, actually. Does not want to know at all.
Sanji can’t find the breath needed to speak. All he can do is watch the popsicle drip its semisweet liquid onto Zoro’s fingers. Some slips past and pools in his palm. Zoro licks it off his fingers slowly, his sinful tongue pink against his tanned skin. He turns his attention to the base where most of the melting has occurred, then flicks his eye back up to Sanji as though in an afterthought. He holds Sanji’s gaze and licks his lips.
“I was touching myself.”
Sanji inhales sharply. “Zoro.”
“I was.” Zoro steps closer. Sanji can feel the heat of his body; his arms and chest are dewy with sweat. “D’you wanna know what I was thinking about?”
“No.”
Zoro presses on like Sanji hadn’t said anything. “I was thinking about that time in Wano, before Onigashima. No one else was around. We snuck off in the forest, and you pushed me against the tree so hard you tore my obi. Do you remember that?”
Fuck. Of course he remembers that. Sanji presses his lips in a straight line, his chest rising quicker with each breath.
Zoro hums, deep in thought. “And your kimono was so loose I could slide my hand right up your thigh and stomach. And you fucked me so good. You were so loud I was sure the crew thought someone was dying.”
A smirk curls Zoro’s lips. Sanji swears he can feel his breath on his neck.
“You’re wasting food.” Sanji’s voice comes lower than he’d expected it to.
Zoro blinks in surprise, then looks back to the popsicle steadily melting in the open air. He brings it to his mouth, and Sanji watches as it slides past his tongue and then down further, until his fingertips, held tight to the top of the stick, touch his lips.
He sucks so hard on the frozen treat that it wobbles on its stick and then slides right off, the sound wet and filthy. Zoro’s cheeks bulge around the greater half of what was left, and then he deposits the clean green stick onto Sanji’s serving tray. Sanji watches him chew and then swallow it, a dimple poking out as his tongue works.
When he’s finished, he lolls his tongue out, presenting his clean mouth. Sanji’s knees wobble.
“I’ll see you for dinner, cook,” Zoro says, eye glinting with mischief.
With that, he turns from him and starts stretching on the far side of the room. Sanji staggers at the dismissal. Did he just—
Oh. Oh, this is not over.
First, a quick trip to the bathroom, but tomorrow, oh, he’s got something for Zoro.
⋆༺𓆩⚔𓆪༻⋆
Sanji wakes up the next morning with a crick in his neck. The pillow beneath him had shifted while he slept, and his hands are numb from where they’d supported his head in its stead. He’s up earlier than normal. In the hammock across from him, Luffy sleeps soundly, mouth wide open. It’s quiet in the room beside the sound of obnoxious snoring, and Sanji starts to move carefully out of the bed, not ruffling the sheets much, before he remembers. Zoro’s soft snoring can be heard just beneath Luffy’s noise, coming from the hammock below Sanji and definitely not beside him. It explains the chill creeping in on his side of the mattress.
His sock-clad feet hit the ground first, soft enough not to wake anyone else. He stretches out the tension in his neck and back and flexes his fingers in attempts to regain feeling. And to shake out the sleep that still keeps in his shoulders and eyelids. Nothing a shower won’t take care of. Damn, it’s weird waking up alone. He’s not usually this tired when he wakes up.
Last night, he had lain awake staring at the ceiling well into the hours nearing dawn. If he’d chanced a look out the porthole, the sky’s dark blue would have already begun to lighten in preparation for the sun’s rise over the horizon.
Sanji’s eyes had burned fiercely, but they’d refused to stay closed for long. He’d picked at a loose thread of his comforter, brain whirling through meal prep and health regimens and anything he could immediately control. A new sound interrupted his thoughts. A different, scratchy one that only meant one thing this late.
The door opened to reveal Zoro, freshly retired from his watch. He shook awake Usopp, who was lying in a pile on the floor farthest from him. He and Chopper had never made it to bed last night and had felt entirely content passing out right there on the floor. Zoro murmured words too low and far for Sanji to hear, and Usopp mumbled back, rubbing the remaining sleep from his eyes. They both watched him go, trudging the whole way, his blanket trailing behind him in a last-minute grab.
Their hammock shook when Zoro lay back down for the final time. It creaked as his full weight settled and then swayed them both so gently that Sanji could almost be convinced it was the waves. He was back. Sanji didn’t move, listening to Zoro’s breaths beneath him even out.
Zoro’s voice had come deep and raspy from disuse. “Go to sleep, cook.”
It wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t quiet either; his tone carried in the stillness of the room. It was sure, with no room left for argument, as though he’d known. Just known as well as if he’d seen it himself, as though he’d stood precariously on the side of his hammock and peered into Sanji’s like a child.
Of course, he whisper-cursed Zoro out at the demand, tempted now to push how far he could keep himself awake, but the sound of Zoro’s voice, the knowledge that he was here and back in the room again, had already nudged something inside of him. Something came loose in his chest and softened his flow of breath with the added weight to their hammock. He’d fallen asleep in one after that, so suddenly he hardly remembers his eyes closing.
He’s up now, earlier than usual, because he has a plan. A time-sensitive plan, so he wastes no time walking out of their bunkroom and across the deck into the galley.
Usopp is still up. He and Robin were the last two on watch, and they sit now in the kitchen chitchatting in lowered tones. Sanji boils a pot of water for them and begins breakfast. It’ll have to be an easy day. He starts with the rice cooker, grabbing and reassembling the basin from where he’d left it to dry last night. He pours in as much rice as can feasibly fit and then stirs in the rest of the water.
Once the automatic timer is on, Sanji steeps Robin’s tea, choosing some fresh green tea leaves from the cupboard. There’s some filleted fish and miso soup in the fridge that he can add to breakfast. He’s quick to cook what he can, leaving the bigger dishes to simmer.
Now that everything’s set, he hands Usopp and Robin their teacups and then dashes back out the door to grab the shower stuff from his locker.
When he walks back into the men’s quarters, Zoro’s still asleep, mouth open like he’s trying to swallow the top bunk. He sleeps splayed out, too, with one hand off one end of the bed and a foot off the other. Zoro’s only ever peaceful when he’s sleeping. Beside the scar, sleep lines split his cheek where he’d pressed too hard to the pillow. He runs hot, so his sleep shirt is rucked up with a hand, his one blanket banished to a lip in the wooden hammock.
Zoro also doesn’t stay asleep for very long. If Sanji’s lucky, he has about an hour before he wakes up. Sanji pulls out his towel and razor and then begins the long ascent to the showers.
Most of their shower things are already kept in the bathroom. That way, they don’t lug their shampoos—or, in Zoro’s case, hand soap—all the way up the aquarium stairs. The climb doesn’t seem to take too long today. Sanji lets the water heat up while he lays his towel somewhere dry. It’s early enough, and therefore cool enough, that Sanji can still take a hot shower and feel clean. This is his favorite time to shower, and when he has the time, he takes advantage. And he and Zoro would really take advantage before, considering there was also the lovely fact that the crew was rarely up this early.
Well, rarely.
Sanji hops into the shower when the water’s ready. He might be a little early. Zoro’s probably just beginning to wake up. His breath will grow shallower, and his chest will begin to rise a bit faster. He always stutters over an inhale when he’s waking up, like his body is restarting. Then he’ll lie in bed half-awake for a moment, blinking whatever dream he’d had the night before out of his eyes.
If Sanji’s got time, he might as well wash his hair. He pulls out the matching shampoo and conditioner that Nami-san had gifted him on one of their last stops. It’s citrusy and sweet and reminds him of the yuzu he puts in meringues and fruit tarts. It’s his favorite. He works the shampoo into his scalp and then rinses it out, repeating the same steps with his conditioner.
Okay, that’s probably enough time. Sanji turns off the tap and reaches for his towel to dry himself off. He uses the same one for his hair and dries it distractedly, looking at all of his shower accoutrements. Now, how to go about this. Sanji drops the towel over the showerhead and picks up the shaving cream like he’s never seen it before. It can’t be any different when it’s not used on his face, right? Like there aren’t some preexisting rules he’s not privy to?
Hesitantly, Sanji sprays the can into his hand, adding a bit more than usual to make up for the extra area. He’s never actually shaved his legs before, but he figures, how hard can it be? Sanji applies the spray foam in his hand directly to his leg, lathering the front where he sees the most hair and then around the back of his calf too, just in case.
He props a leg up on the lip of the shower basin—his right leg, which gives him a better vantage point of the door—and grabs the razor he placed next to his soap and begins shaving. He goes to start near his knee, but he hates that angle, so he switches to his ankle. Hm. Interesting. The razor glides easily through the shaving cream and leaves a strip of his pale skin hairless. He feels like a new man.
Sanji flicks the excess foam into the shower, then cleans off the blade with the pool of water collected in a washing bowl beside him. When he deems it good enough, he starts back again at his ankle. He pulls a long stroke beside his last one, up the ridge of his shin. It comes out just as clean as the last. Sanji runs his fingers against the hairless skin. Wow. It really is soft.
Even though he was expecting it, Sanji still startles when the door opens. There Zoro is, face leaden with sleep. He’s holding a ratty towel and nothing else, his hand frozen where it rubs at his eye. Sanji looks at Zoro. Zoro looks at him. Then he looks down. Sanji is as naked as the day he was born. His propped-up leg leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, just miles and miles of pale skin and bare legs. All according to plan.
Zoro blinks once and then not again. His eye is glued to Sanji’s exposed leg and where the razor meets his shin, then it moves higher, by his knee. Hook, line, and sinker. Sanji puffs up internally. He goes to say something intentionally charged. Maybe something like, “Did you need something, marimo?” or “Get lost?” Yeah, that’s good--
The door slams shut.
Huh?
Sanji stares at the empty, marimo-less doorway. What the--
Is he… leaving? Sanji’s out the door after him before he even realizes it, towel snatched off the shower at the last minute. He flings open the door, skids across the tiled floor, and finds Zoro escaping down the ladder. Sanji grabs the top of the ladder to keep from falling. He’s dripping water everywhere. A trail of suds and shaving cream has followed him from the bathroom.
Zoro is back down the ladder and halfway to the library when he finds him. His forehead rests solidly against the highest rung his head can reach.
Sanji’s brows furrow, using the break to catch his breath. “Moss, what the fuck?”
“Fuck off, cook,” Zoro whines.
He whines. Zoro’s fists are clenched tight on the rung, obscuring either side of his face. Sanji’s breath trips in his chest. His lips still taste of conditioner.
“Look at me,” he says, then again, stronger. “Zoro, look at me.”
Zoro’s back stiffens along his shoulder blades. It takes him a moment, but he looks up. A thin ring of grey is all that’s visible of his iris—from this far away, all Sanji sees is black. Red licks the sharp jut of his cheekbones, a ruddy crimson muddled by something more than sleep. He looks like a tiger or another big cat poised on a tree branch, surveying its quarry. He looks… Well, he looks like he’s starving.
Sanji watches him from the top of the ladder. It would take one word. Maybe two. And Zoro would bound up the remaining rungs between them. He’s so good, so good, but so obvious. The ladder post squeaks under his tightened grip, and he lets the feel of it ground him. “I—”
“Sanji!” a voice calls from downstairs. It’s loud enough that everyone on the ship can hear it, as was its intention. Luffy. “Food!”
Shit. The food in the kitchen is left unsupervised. The shaving cream slides down his calf into the puddle of soapy water beneath him. He should finish his shower. He really needs to make it downstairs, though, before everything is gone. What’s Zoro--
“Oi. Where are you going?”
Zoro is climbing back down the ladder. He’s looking away again. “To keep Luffy outta the kitchen.”
It’s unfair what that does to his chest. Sanji lurches forward, his hold on the bannister being the only thing keeping him from doing something very stupid. “We’re not done here—”
The bastard keeps moving anyway. He must’ve rolled his eye or scoffed because Sanji gets a sudden urge to wring his neck. “Get downstairs quick, cook. I can’t hold him off forever.”
With that, he reaches the library floor and slips away.
A draft from up the ladder chills Sanji’s damp, bare legs. What just happened?
Sanji drops his forehead against the back of the hand holding onto the ladder. His knuckles dig in near his damp hairline. The pressure takes his mind off the mildly humiliating fact that he’s still naked, standing between both doors to the bathroom. It’s all that stupid idiot’s fault. Just break, damn it.
Okay. He needs to go back to the drawing board.
⋆༺𓆩⚔𓆪༻⋆
After dinner, everything moves slower. The ship is as calm as it’ll ever get, with some of the crew choosing to linger on the deck or in the observation room. The galley is only ever occupied by himself and the unlucky soul that gets selected for dish duty. Anyone safe from the monster’s jaws wisely keeps a wide berth just in case Sanji changes his mind.
He’d just started wiping down the counters when Zoro had come in. He had plopped down on a bar stool within seconds, and had fallen asleep before Sanji could lower his jaw to give him the what-for. Zoro had seemed a bit drowsy at dinner, but the sun has a way of doing that. He’d figured he’d nap before his watch tonight, but not once had Sanji given even the slightest indication that the kitchen could be his personal bedroom. Not that it matters or that he hadn’t been expecting it.
Sanji flicks water at the sleeping marimo. Zoro gives no indication that anything had happened at all, his chest still rising and falling with the same even breaths. He’s been spending more and more time here over the past week and a half. Zoro can blame the heat, but Sanji’s seen him out there in worse, sweating like he owes the devil a debt. Sometimes he sleeps; most times they’ll talk, or fight, which is essentially talking for them. The days have been hot and slow-moving, and it’s an easy distraction from the seemingly endless rocking of the ship. Recently, Sanji’s gotten really good at throwing rocks at him; he can hit the mole beside his wrinkled brow on the first try almost every time.
“You’re staring,” Zoro mumbles through the arm pressed against his mouth.
There are two unruly locks of hair poking out from Zoro’s bangs. As long as his hair’s gotten now that Sanji’s not cutting it, they still don’t reach halfway down Zoro’s forehead. They stick up proudly in the air, swaying with every breeze let in through the porthole. Sanji’s tempted to tug on them but doesn’t.
“Hm? Am I?”
Zoro’s eye opens, and he looks up at Sanji from where his head is lying. Sanji has both hands elbow-deep in the soapy water of the sink. After all this time that Zoro’s been lying here, he still smells like soap. Much nicer than the kind Sanji’s using for the dishes. It’s not heavily scented either, but it’s clean and smells like his clothes. It’s Sanji’s favorite.
Sanji quirks an eyebrow. “You just take a shower?”
“Mm.”
His last one was less than a week ago. “That’s early for you.”
“‘s hot.”
Hotter than every other day on this ship? “Hot enough for you to brave soap? I might have to thank the sun myself.”
Zoro’s hand comes slow, but it flicks him off nonetheless.
Sanji laughs, shaking off the plate he’s finished rinsing and then hanging it on the rack. In front of him, Zoro starts to get up. He stretches his arms out first, all the muscles in his shoulders and back rolling with him. His fingers are next, flexing far enough that he could reach the tap. Zoro’s so cat-like sometimes, it’s funny: the long naps and ravening looks. Sanji loves to drag his nails through Zoro’s hair and feel his breathing even out. He’ll pull at the short hairs at Zoro’s nape and watch his head fall back, a low, pleased noise starting in his chest.
Zoro groans in his stretch, then props his head up on his palm. He still looks like he’s fighting off sleep. He has an early watch tonight at the same time as Sanji. They’ll each be on either end of the ship, not long after Sanji finishes up in the kitchen. He wonders if that’s what Zoro’s waiting for.
Sanji rummages through the bottom of the sink for the dirty dish he knows he put in there. Zoro blinks sluggishly, watching Sanji remove the plate from the water. The smell is even stronger when he’s upright, spilling from him in waves. His body feels it in spades. It’s a pulsating, humming thrum that simmers in his veins. Sanji slides his front teeth over his bottom lip. “Zoro,” he says. “C’mere.”
There’s a lull, like Zoro’s not sure if he heard right. The light in his eye sharpens, but he still sits there, eyeing Sanji warily.
Sanji huffs. “It's not a trap, idiot. I'm serious. Come here.”
Zoro lingers a moment longer before sliding off the stool and lumbering around the bar to Sanji. He’s careful to keep his distance, and Sanji would laugh if he didn’t think it’d chase Zoro away.
“Grab me a cigarette, would you?”
Of everything he might’ve asked, Sanji can tell that’s not what Zoro was expecting. He looks for a moment to Sanji’s pants pocket, and Sanji can’t fight the smile this time. He inclines his head toward the opposite end of the bar, where his half-empty pack and his lighter sit side-by-side.
Ever the good boy, Zoro does as he’s asked, grabbing both items and returning promptly. He fiddles with the cardboard top of the carton, then scoops a cigarette out. There’s only so far Sanji can turn to face him with both hands in sink water, but he does his best. They’re close enough now that Sanji can get the whole nine yards of Zoro’s smell; well enough, he may as well have been in the shower with him. He washed his hair, too—there's a citrusy smell lingering behind his ears.
“Other end.”
Zoro flips the cigarette between his fingers the right way this time and then presses it between Sanji’s parted lips. He’s so careful. His fingertips don’t brush Sanji’s mouth, but it’s a near thing. They flit as far away as they can get, deterred by the one degree of separation. Zoro watches where Sanji’s teeth hold the rolled paper, as if to be certain it’s not going to fall, and watches it still once his hand has fallen away. Sanji gestures the cigarette in the direction of his lighter, and Zoro raises his other hand.
No doubt Zoro’s seen him light it a hundred times before, but it still takes him a couple of tries to turn the lever. When he gets it lit, he cups his hand around the flame, and Sanji leans in, meeting him halfway. Sanji backs away again when the end is caught, just far enough that the smoke is blown far from Zoro’s face. Reluctantly, Zoro closes the lid.
“Thanks, baby,” he says, smiling around his cigarette, smoke still spilling from his lips.
Zoro’s inhale is short but audible. “Don’t call me that.”
It’s a little hard to take him seriously when he isn’t meeting Sanji’s eyes. “Why? ‘Cause you like it too much?”
Finally, Zoro pries his gaze away from Sanji’s mouth and meets his amused look with an aloof one of his own. The look in his eye gives him away, though. It always does.
“Is that it?” Zoro asks.
“No,” Sanji decides. “Grab me my ashtray, too, would you?”
It might be too far of a push, but shoot for the stars and all that. Zoro scoffs and turns back to the counter. “Grab it yourself, cook.”
“Fine.” He shrugs artlessly. “Then you come wash the dishes, and I’ll smoke, since you’re loitering in my kitchen, anyway.”
“Get Brook to do it.”
“It’s your night.”
Zoro pauses, then looks at him. “No, it isn’t.”
He’s right—it isn’t. Or rather, it wasn’t, before this afternoon, but after a quick chat, Brook caved, though really, he hadn’t needed much convincing.
Sanji smiles, wolfish, around his cigarette. “Oh, but it is.”
The grand reveal of why the hairs on the back of Zoro’s neck have been stuck upright, no doubt, since he awoke leaves him far more resigned than angry. Zoro must’ve showered all the fight out, or he’s just perfectly used to Sanji’s penchant for keeping him on his toes. The only trick he’d had up his sleeve was forcing his tired marimo to spend an extra hour with him. And see just how many buttons he can push in the meantime, but that goes without saying.
Sanji pulls his hands out of the water once Zoro takes the spot at the sink beside him. He dries them on the dish towel cast aside by the stove and grabs his ashtray while he’s over there. The rack clatters as Zoro puts a clean dish on it, muttering under his breath.
“What’re you grumbling about over there, marimo?”
From this angle, all Sanji can see is the taut line of Zoro’s back. He’s rolled the sleeves of his robe up, and water drips from his forearm to his elbows. Sanji moves closer to get a better view, resting a hip on the counter beside him. When Zoro turns, an irritated frown pulls at his mouth.
He looks from Sanji’s hands to his face. “You couldn’t have gotten your own cigarette?”
Sanji shrugs innocently, flicking his cigarette ashes carefully in the tray. “You looked bored,” he says, then adds with a grin, “Plus, it tastes so much better when you get it for me.”
Zoro doesn’t let a second go by. He flicks the wet bowl in his hand at Sanji, letting the pool of water collecting in the bottom splash him. Sanji saves his lit cigarette first, holding it high out of the danger zone, and the sudden angle twinges his wrist. All the water he doesn’t manage to dodge hits the ground in a puddle.
“Oi! You’re cleaning up all the water you spill.”
“Oops,” Zoro says with a snicker.
Menace. Does kicking count if it’s technically his shoe hitting him, and not his hand, necessarily? Not that he should be arguing semantics. He knows what Nami-san meant.
Sanji lets the silence sit, watching Zoro continue with his washing, this time uneventfully. He straightens out the dishes that start keeling over at Zoro’s brute force, and starts drying and putting them away when it gets crowded on the rack. Sanji starts with the dishes, since they can all be stacked and placed in the same cabinet. Most of the pots he’s already washed and put away, so whatever remains was used for dinner. He bites on the filter of his cigarette and starts drying a larger serving plate.
Zoro tilts his head over at him. “Your wrist still bothering you?”
The suddenness of the statement gives him pause. Sanji blinks down at his hand and rolls his right wrist. He'd twisted it, pulling a bit too hard on one of the cast-iron pots. He'd been nursing it some at dinner but hadn’t expected anyone to notice.
“It’s a little better now,” he says. “I put some ice on it.”
Zoro nods, shaking out a plate into the sink. “You should use that hot-cold pack.”
Chopper had given him the hot-cold pack after a sprained muscle some number of months ago, and Sanji has accidentally-on-purpose forgotten to give it back. Chopper must know it's missing by now, but it's also been so long that who knows. In the grand scheme of things, one missing hot-cold pack probably means more good than bad. Reducing injuries and all that.
“I couldn’t find it.”
“…Hm.”
Sanji doesn’t like the sound of that hum. “Hm? Have you been using it?”
“It’s good for after workouts.”
Sanji laughs incredulously. “I know it’s good for workouts. I've been telling you for months to use it.”
Another pout. Zoro sucks his teeth. “Then why are you nagging me?”
Why is he--? “Because it’s mine, marimo. You're meant to ask before you take things that aren't yours. If you had any sense of manners, you'd know that.”
Zoro gives a long hum, which effectively means he’s dismissing the entire thing. Sanji rolls his eyes and sidesteps just in case he decides to get handsy with the bowls again. The rest of the kitchen is cleaned up in short order. Sanji puts the rest of the dishes in the rack away and runs a rag across any small spots along the counter he missed the first time. Zoro’s draining out the water in the sink when Sanji comes back from the fridge.
“Here,” he says, placing a carafe beside Zoro. “For helping with the dishes.”
The boozehead's whole face lights up when he sees it, tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth. He cursorily wipes his hands on his thighs and grabs the bottle off the counter. There are few other times that Zoro looks so content. It’s mildly, like on the slimmest margin, not the worst thing to look at.
Zoro quirks an eyebrow, smiling at Sanji slyly. “You just don’t want me to tell Chopper on you.”
He’s assuming he’s talking about his wrist and not the hot-cold pack that he would just as easily find some way to blame on Zoro. But also, there is no way this hypocrite is talking to him about hiding injuries.
Sanji narrows his eyes. “Shut up and drink the sake before I change my mind.”
“Thanks, baby,” Zoro says, his eye glinting with mischief.
Sanji’s heart trips like he’s fifteen peering over the Baratie counter. “You think you're cute.”
“You think I'm cute.”
Something else Sanji will neither confirm nor deny. As obvious as Zoro is, Sanji’s never been great at hiding it either. It’s most evident in the overwhelming patience he has for him these days. And Zoro can see right through him. His eye is melty, softening the grey stone.
He’s warm, too. The fresh smell of Sanji’s soap carries over the thick smoke of his cigarette. His green eyelashes drop low and lazy like evergreen needles. Sanji smiles despite himself. He really couldn’t get tired of looking at him.
For a second, it’s like nothing has changed. That’s why it doesn’t shock him when it happens.
Zoro pulls the cigarette from Sanji’s lips as easily as when he’d inserted it, and leans in. It’s just a second, maybe half that, but Sanji’s sure he’s going to kiss him. His eyelashes flutter shut for a heartbeat, lulled by Zoro’s soft breath on his cheek.
It’s habitual. So routine, it doesn’t trip any alarm. They go to meet in the middle like they always do. Sanji breathes in deep through his nose, centimeters apart, and it’s that, and Zoro’s even match of breath in response, that has the air cut clean off at the neck. Sanji flinches like he’s been hit and snaps a hand out to catch himself at the edge of the sink.
The cold plunge into reality leaves him gasping for breath, his chest rising so quickly he wonders distantly if he should be worried. Zoro has moved too, but not far. Not far enough. Sanji watches his fingers hold against the countertop, tastes the stale smoke lingering in his mouth. He doesn’t look up. Not until he’s made acutely aware of the harsh breathing echoing his in the room.
“Sanji.”
He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. Sanji’s eyebrows knit, and the fingers on his other hand twitch by his thigh. In. Out. Sanji looks up.
The quick rise and fall of Zoro’s chest is the first thing he notices. His robe has fallen open, the sleeves held precariously on his shoulders, and his pecs move with every shallow breath. He’s still got Sanji’s cigarette burning between his fingers.
When Sanji finally moves his gaze up, Zoro’s already watching him. His eye is a black hole that swallows up any half movements Sanji makes. The rise in his chest, his tongue wetting his dry lips, his fingers pulling at a loose thread on his slacks. Whatever cables connect Sanji’s jaw to his brain have been crossed and recrossed so many times it’s left them frayed and distorted. He wants to say everything he can’t say, and it clogs up his brain and the back of his throat like word vomit.
Zoro doesn’t say anything either, but Sanji hears him like he’d shouted. He’s close enough he could reach for Sanji’s face or lapel or belt loop and still leave a bend in his elbow. Zoro doesn’t do any of that. He swipes the sake off the counter and leaves, Sanji’s cigarette still burning. Sanji watches him the whole way out until the door swings shut behind him.
In the silence, the rasp of his breath seems even louder. Sanji bites hard at the inside of his lip, then soothes it over with a swipe of his tongue. The soft skin at the apple of his cheek still tingles. He’s not getting any sleep tonight. His cigarettes aren’t going to help the buzz in his fingertips this time.
⋆༺𓆩⚔𓆪༻⋆
It’s a dot. Barely a speck in the distance, but Nami-san’s sure.
“We’ll be there by nightfall,” she says amidst the cheers and dancing.
Luffy stands proudly on the deck, grinning, all too pleased with his spotting. The news has brought the entire crew out, unsurprisingly; Jimbe peers over the topmost deck, Zoro leans on the foremast beside Sanji.
And Sanji… Well, he’s exerting enough energy just keeping his jaw closed. Nightfall. Tonight. He would never doubt Nami-san, and he doesn’t, but after all this time, it’s just--it’s taking a while to sink in.
In terms of rations, the island couldn’t come soon enough. He’s portioned and squirreled away what he can, but Luffy has a unique penchant for eating them out of house and home. He’ll just have to hope the island is teeming with fresh fruit and meat.
In terms of everything else, well…
Sanji runs his front teeth along the plush of his lower lip. Beside him, the moss shifts, and it sharpens Sanji’s mind to the slimmest point, fuzzing everything else out around the corners. What if it’s not an inhabited island? He can…find food…anywhere, of course. Obviously. And that’s what’s really important. He’ll just…invest his time into that, and then after…
“We don’t know what it looks like yet,” Nami says, eyeing Luffy, “so don’t go getting any ideas.”
Luffy already looks like he has a couple of them.
A snort comes from beside Sanji, closer than expected. It restarts his pulse like Zoro had pulled the ripcord. Instinctively, he darts his gaze to the side, then back once he regains the reins of his wit. Sanji watches, unseeing, the speck on the horizon, ignoring the steady burn of a gaze smoldering the short hairs on his face. It spreads across the line of his shoulders, and Sanji fights the urge to lean all the way into the fire and let it engulf him.
Nami sighs. “Sanji-kun?”
Sanji snaps his head to Nami at the sudden address. She’s already looking at him expectantly. “Hm? Yes, my sweet?”
“Are you taking Zoro?”
“If I’m-- I-- what? I’m sorry, c-could you repeat that, darling?”
Nami raises an eyebrow. “The kitchen supply? Are you taking Zoro to help restock?”
Oh. “Oh.” Sanji shifts away from the mast. “Uh, yes. Probably.”
She clasps her hands, mollified. “Fantastic. So then we all have our jobs.”
No idea what the jobs of the rest of the crew happen to be, but if Nami-san says it’s sorted, then he’ll leave it in her capable hands. Sanji closes his eyes and breathes a deep breath in and out through his nose. How is knowing worse than not knowing? It’s given his veins free license to cook him from the inside out.
With less input, his haki flares, subconsciously cataloging the movements of the crew around him. Something shifts, like a loose platform beneath his feet, and Sanji’s eyes snap open in Zoro’s direction.
In the midst of the chaos, it seems Zoro is taking the opportunity to disappear. Sanji watches as he weaves through the crew and escapes into the men’s quarters. Sanji is after him before he can think twice about it, his feet moving long before he gives the command.
Sanji’s on him before the door to the room can hit the jamb. He doesn’t let any time pass, doesn’t let the sense come creeping back in. He corrals Zoro against the wall, careful not to touch, and Zoro goes with far less complaint than usual. He’s all heat, roaring like the blood in Sanji’s ears. It’s much harder to convince himself not to lean in now, and Sanji’s feet stumble forward the half-inch of empty space left.
He licks his lower lip, trying not to think of the foot between Zoro’s legs or the string between them pulling tighter and tighter. “Think you can handle the next few hours, marimo?”
Zoro looks squarely at Sanji from in between the arms bracketing his head. When he smirks, it’s all teeth. “I should ask you that. You’re wound tighter than your eyebrow.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Zoro hums. “I guess we will.”
In the small space, Zoro steps closer. He presses ahead, cocksure, and Sanji’s heart strains against his chest, nerves already in overdrive. He stretches out to his fingertips in an attempt to keep the distance, and it leaves him unbalanced. Zoro isn’t dissuaded. He stops, nose just shy of Sanji’s, his grey eye calculating. Sanji presses his lips together. They’re only ever this close for one of two reasons, (sometimes two of two,) and both involve touching. His chest quickly rises and falls, the fabric of his T-shirt threatening to cross the demarcation line.
The left corner of Zoro’s mouth crooks up, and he falls back. He’s gone as quickly as he’d moved forward, ducking beneath Sanji’s arm and making for their bathroom door. It’s a half-bath, tucked behind the outside stairs. Sanji watches him the whole way—watches him pull open the door, watches it swing open, and then watches it stay that way, the wan light on in the small room. It acts as the beacon Zoro had intended it to, the warm light spilling into the room.
Oh, he wants. Fuck, does he want.
Sanji clenches his teeth and spins towards the door. On his way out, he petulantly avoids stepping on the wooden flooring the bathroom light illuminates.
No, he’s fine. This is okay. He’ll just… take inventory? Yes! Exactly. He’ll go to the kitchen and take inventory for the next however many hours it takes and ignore literally everything, especially the tingle in his nose and his growing problem below his--
Someone slams into Sanji’s chest just outside the dormitories, and Sanji shrieks. He manages to catch the person by their shoulders, and a shock of red hair eyes him, confused. “Nami-san!”
He hadn’t even noticed her getting closer. Sanji mentally curses himself for being so preoccupied.
Nami doesn’t seem fazed. She’s not looking at him either, her eyes glancing over either side of Sanji’s shoulders. “Wait, where’s Zoro? I could’ve sworn he was right next to you.”
Sanji thinks about that accursed door and feels his heart rate pick back up. “Oh,” he says nervously, waving it off, “you know him. He’s around. Growing off a wall.”
Nami eyes him. “Mhm,” she hums, but doesn’t push it.
Her expression looks particularly catlike as she considers him, arms folded. Should he move out of the way? If she’s looking for Zoro, then he’s definitely in the way of their quarters. Not that he’d let Nami-san deign to step foot there and grace that filthy room with her presence. He should just go get him. Something about the way she’s looking at him roots him to the spot.
“Look,” she starts, and Sanji’s back straightens, “I just wanted to say I’m proud of you guys. I really didn't think you could do it. Like, at all. But you proved me wrong.”
Sanji blinks. It takes him a second to figure out what exactly she’s talking about, and then it slaps him across the face. The bet. All words have escaped the vacuum of his brain, but he manages to jerk his head in a nod, feeling a flush burn its way up his jawline and into his cheeks. Somehow, this is even more embarrassing than the first time Nami-san had pulled them aside.
Shame stirs in his belly and burns him from his forehead to the tips of his toes. Not of Zoro or their relationship, but of the inadvertent offsetting of the crew. He and Zoro have been dating for a while. Like after he’d come back from hell-on-earth, a while. It’s only been after Wano that they’ve seemed to have this… problem. Everyone just kept walking in on them. Were they maybe a bit pushier? He guesses, but you only come back from an unrecognizable death once. He’d thought… Well, he’d hoped it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
Hearing it from Nami-san…
Nami nods with Sanji and takes that as answer enough. Sanji watches as she passes him, heading for the stairs, and then stalls.
She turns her head, speaking to him over her shoulder. “Oh,” Nami says sweetly, a small, conniving smile stretching her lips, “and don’t take this for me caring about what happens in your sex life, but if it happens again, I’ll triple what you owe me.”
Sanji swallows. It’s a hefty threat, settling on his shoulders with the added weight of their whole conversation. Nami-san has absolutely no idea what they’ve been doing all this time. All that matters to her is that she hasn’t seen any of it. No one has. The past few weeks have probably been idyllic to anyone not named Sanji or Zoro. Sanji rubs between his eyes. Nightfall, huh?
…
They dock on the island just before dusk settles. The sky burns up orange and pink in the setting sun, and it sets fire to the lawn, tinging the tips of its grass a fiery red. They all gather in the amber grass, finalizing the plan.
It’s inhabited—hooray! They can see buildings as they approach, small villages built into the mountainous land. Lights from the buildings closest to shore gleam, separated by long divots that are undoubtedly dirt roads. Roofs pop sporadically out of the thick brush the further back they look.
There’s one, solitary dock to drop anchor at, but they’re not exactly friendly to pirates, so they sail along the opposite side, stopping just before the coral can dig holes in the hull. It’s not a marine base—another hooray!—so Luffy is allowed off-leash, but under direct supervision. They don’t have to draw straws, as Robin and Usopp had pulled the short ones earlier. Franky volunteers to stay with the ship, and everything is set.
Sanji smokes against the railing, watching the crew unload. It’s warm for dusk, but certainly cooler than the nights they’ve been getting the last month. Summer islands bring long days and short nights—even so, he estimates they’ve only got a couple of hours before the dying sun sets completely. He wonders what that means for the vendors, if they pack in early or stay a bit later to accommodate tourists. He’s really curious about the forest. Tropical islands usually bear the sweetest fruit.
Luffy’s the next one off, flanked by Robin and Usopp. He waves at Sanji from the dock, and Sanji flicks his ash out into the tide and waves back. They all plan to meet back here by sunset. Sanji wasn’t asked if he’d be joining them, and truthfully, he couldn’t give a good answer.
The squeak of the floorboards behind him gives Zoro away. The sleeve of his open shirt brushes his bare arm as he passes by. It’s the first Sanji’s seen of him since this afternoon.
He’s wearing an outfit befitting the heat—a seersucker shirt unbuttoned, lest he go an hour without flashing innocent ladies, and shorts. Sanji’d found a chain among his jewelry when he’d been getting dressed this afternoon. It’s longer on Sanji, but the links are subtle and not yet stripped from sea salt. He’d hesitated, fingering the clasp, and then tossed it on Zoro’s hammock before he could rethink it. It sits on Zoro’s collarbone now, the gold settling nicely against his bronze skin.
“Let’s go, shit cook,” he says, halfway down the gangplank, as though Sanji hadn’t been waiting for him.
The village is much larger than it seems from the sea. The buildings grow on top of each other, lined in neat rows of shops and inns. Even in the dim light, children play along the cobblestone roads.
His original worry, though, seems to be founded. Many stores have already turned off their lights. The vendors that do remain on the street are low on stock, if there’s anything at all. The fishermen are expected back first thing tomorrow morning, and all fruit pickers have retired for the night. They all assure Sanji that the quality will be much better in the early afternoon, but he can’t help himself from picking a few of the more bruised and unlikely to sell.
Zoro is quiet beside him. He grumbles a bit at carrying food he deems unappetizing, but doesn’t say much apart from that. He doesn’t touch him. Which, whatever, since Sanji hasn’t touched him either, but Sanji’s the one undergoing a morality crisis over here—what's his problem?
Sanji exhales a slow stream of smoke through his nose and watches Zoro out the corner of his eye. It would be so easy to reach out and touch him right now. To poke the crease in the side of his mouth that pulls when he’s thinking too hard, to drag him closer with a finger through his belt loop. …what then? He crosses the line and acknowledges the bet is over, and then they rubberband back to where they’d been a month ago. He can’t promise it to himself, let alone to Nami-san.
If it was Zoro who did it, Sanji wonders if it’d be easier to justify. His self-control gets a bit wobbly when Zoro’s involved, not that that’s any justification; it’s just the truth. He loves when they relinquish control to each other; he loves it even more when they don’t, when it’s pried from their hands, teeth gnashing.
He wants it; he wants it every day, touching and pulling and caressing included. He’d just also like to never ever have a conversation about their sex life with Nami again. But he’s not sure how to balance the two. Not when just walking beside Zoro has his knuckles clenched white in his pockets, nails pressing crescents into his palms.
It takes Sanji a moment to realize that Zoro has stopped. Frantic, he twists his head back around to where he last remembers seeing him. It only takes a second for that wayward marimo to end up on the opposite side of an island. He’s ready to search, but Zoro’s barely a foot away, staring longingly into the building beside him. The bracketed wood sign posted above the door reads Taphus Tavern.
Sanji snorts. Typical.
“Shirking your duties?”
Zoro cuts an eye at him. “Give it a rest. There's no one out here.”
Not much he can say to that. He’d been hoping at least one booth might still be up, but it’s clear they’d called it a while ago. It might actually kill him to agree, though. Not when torturing Zoro brings him such sweet, sweet pleasure. Sanji tilts his head, his face screwing up as he pretends to think. Give in or tout him around town some more?
“Screw you,” Zoro snarls. “I’m going in.”
Sanji scowls back but doesn’t argue. He has done a fairly good job as his pack mule this evening, however brief. “Fine, but don’t get lost.”
Zoro flicks him off as farewell, grocery bag in the other hand. As the door opens, sounds of laughter spill out into the empty street. It’s accompanied by a soft, buttery light that most of Zoro’s shadow blocks. He doesn’t linger long and disappears with everything else, shut behind the heavy door.
Silence is left in its wake. Sanji watches the tip of his cigarette burn out—a pinprick of light amongst the candles and lamplights flickering along the street and in windows. He can hear the noise from the pub, faint but unmistakable, now that he knows what to listen for. It echoes off the stone pave and buildings, a tinny, distorted sound. Sanji wonders if the crew is inside, or if they’ve made it back to the ship by now. He wonders if they’re waiting for them.
Sanji flicks the petered-out cigarette onto the ground and mashes it beneath his heel. It’s been long enough.
When Sanji’s cigarette peters out, he stamps it beneath his heel. The pull towards a warm room full of beautiful women and enough noise to drown the doubt is too enticing to pass up. With a solid push to the door, Sanji’s swallowed up by the tavern.
He doesn’t see Zoro when he first walks in just by nature of how crowded it is inside. How they hadn’t heard the noise earlier and halfway down the street is beyond Sanji. People are pressed close together around high tops and low tables, chatting and laughing, steins in hand.
Sanji nudges past a group of people for a seat at the bar. He flags the bartender down, ordering something in a glass with a long stem to keep his hands occupied. While he waits, Sanji casts a quick glance around the room. Damn. He should’ve been more worried about Zoro getting lost. Someone could get lost looking for the bathroom in here. For a not-so-average person like Zoro, that means he could get lost walking the ten steps from the bar to his seat.
Especially after a night spent drinking, Zoro can make the walk home an hour longer. He doesn’t get drunk, not really. His cheekbones flush, his smiles come easier, and he’s grabby. Tipsy, Zoro’s way less inclined to conventional moral standards, like public decency, that he only agrees to sober because he has to. In public, he might try, but on the ship, all bets are off.
The bartender slides the wine glass over, and Sanji takes it eagerly, already spinning it from the base. He pulls some loose beri from his pocket to pay and takes a long, bitter swallow of the dry wine. Maybe he should’ve gone for something stronger. If he’d been asked at the start of this stupid whatever he and Zoro have been doing the past three weeks, how it would’ve ended up, not in his most pitiful nightmares would he have imagined here.
Of course he misses him. It’s an inconvenient and annoying truth that he’d already processed months ago, lying in a frilly bed with a lacy pink bed skirt. Sanji misses him when they’re apart. Duh. He should be locked up in a cage somewhere or shoved in a straitjacket for liking and wanting more of that shitty swordsman and his poor manners and bathing habits. They’ve spent so much time apart, and it sucked every time. What he didn’t know is how much worse it is to miss him when they’re together.
He thinks of Nami’s not-so-indirect ask that maybe they could be a bit more normal about each other. And he would give Nami-san anything if he could—he'd walk on broken glass to give her a drink, he’d swim the calm belt, or scale Zuneisha—but, embarrassingly, he has no idea how to do that.
A glass slams down beside Sanji’s wine, shaking him from his stupor. It’s a full shot glass, the drink inside topped with whipped cream. Sanji can’t stop looking at it. Is this a joke?
“I didn’t order that,” Sanji says to the bartender, eyebrows furrowed.
The man barely looks twice at him, motioning somewhere to Sanji’s right. “It’s from the guy down the bar.”
Truthfully, Sanji already knows what he’s going to see before he sees it. With the amount of people crowding the bar, Sanji only catches his grass patch of hair from the back. It’s a wonder how Zoro had even managed to see him. Sanji strains farther and notices his back is turned because he’s in conversation with some random person sitting at the bar.
Leaning in a bit further, Sanji sees that it’s a guy. He’s leaned in way closer than normal conversation warrants. He has a hand resting on the bar between him and Zoro; the other one floats menacingly. Sanji swears he can see it happen before it does. The man eyes Zoro’s earrings, his hand reaching out to touch, and Sanji’s out of his chair in record time.
Between Sanji’s reaction and Zoro’s, the hand never makes it.
A sharp kick sends the man and his chair barreling past a group of onlookers. Sanji couldn’t care less what happens to him.
Sanji rounds on Zoro, stepping into the spot he’d vacated. Zoro’s got a hand already resting on his swords, watching Sanji’s poorly concealed rage. “What the fuck?”
The earrings sway on Zoro’s ear unharmed, the same warm gold as the chain around his neck.
Zoro’s face twists as his eyebrows pull inwards. He looks like Sanji had just asked him to perform neurosurgery. “Huh?”
Sanji can’t seem to keep his thoughts straight. He needs another cigarette. Or five smoked back-to-back. “Why…? Why is he-- Why did you--?”
Zoro’s voice has gained an edge. “Why did I what?”
“You let him touch you.”
“Like you wouldn’t?”
That sucks the air from Sanji’s lungs. Suddenly, he can’t be in this room, surrounded by strangers he cares significantly less about. He turns his stare from Zoro and pushes back out the pub door, into the night.
He doesn’t get far.
The door swings open with a slam as Zoro follows hot on his heels. “What the fuck is up with you?”
Sanji doesn’t look back. He can’t deal with this right now. Not like this. “Fuck off, marimo.”
“Why are you being so weird?” His voice is much closer. “The bet's off. We’re on an island.”
Sanji stalls despite himself. They’re halfway back to the ship now, stopped where they’d seen the children playing. The lights for the shops are all out, though those in the windows of the inns remain.
“What? Nami’s dog can’t man up and talk to me,” Zoro says, voice sharp. He’s stopped walking, meeting Sanji only a few paces behind. “You’re being such a—”
Without thinking, Sanji spins around to face Zoro. He stares at him, daring the next words to come out of his mouth. “A what?”
There is no dare that Sanji has given Zoro that he has ever turned down. “A coward,” he finishes.
Sanji strikes first with his right foot. It’s quick, in between the flicker of the streetlamps, and Zoro meets it with steel. By the time he’s pulled back, Zoro has two drawn, one in either hand. He strikes again before Zoro can draw his third. He switches feet and spins around for the next. Zoro parries all of them, and uses his advantage to swing. It grazes Sanji’s nose; if he’d had a cigarette, it would have been split in two.
The rattling cage splits open. They push harder, hits come faster. Sanji’s pulled into the tide, meeting the push and pull with leather and the cotton fabric of his long pants. This is what he wanted. They keep so close neither of them can land a hit half as easily as it would be if they’d just back up.
Sanji kicks just to feel the pressure of Zoro’s parry, pushing back against the muscles in his thigh. In every swell, Sanji watches his face change, his eye bright, his lips fighting a smile. Zoro cuts toward Sanji’s face, nearly taking a chunk of his hair. Sanji’s leg swings, but it’s his thigh that almost hits, knocked out of the way by Kitetsu’s hilt. On its way down, Sanji stomps Zoro’s foot. Entirely on purpose. Zoro hisses and punches Sanji’s shoulder back. He moves to avoid the next one, and it's comical how quickly Zoro puts his swords away and commits to fighting dirty.
He blocks Sanji’s knee thrusts with his palm and the side of his forearm. Zoro doesn’t slow down. When he pushes, it’s heavy-handed, and makes Sanji stumble back into the alley behind them. It’s small, built for easy passage between streets, and certainly not for two overgrown young men taking their personal, sexually tense issues out on each other.
The lighting is far dimmer in the alley. It shades Zoro’s face, splitting his arms and broad chest in shadow. It makes him look like a wild animal, stalking Sanji into a corner. When he moves in, Sanji’s ready for him. He feints towards his midsection and ducks down to his ankle, aiming a hit for the back of his knee. Zoro moves his leg out of the way in time and advances. He steps wide between Sanji’s open legs and uses the disruption to bump him backwards.
The alley wall is unforgiving. Zoro doesn’t let him readjust, barely lets him breathe. He pushes in right after him, using a hand to hold him against the wall. Sanji’s chest strains against Zoro’s grip. There’s no room for any plausible deniability of how much the fight has worked him up. For Zoro, either. His bare chest beads with sweat, dripping down his neck, past where the chain sits below his clavicle.
Zoro leans in close, nose ducking by Sanji’s throat. The way he chases him is reflexive. He’s quickly losing the plot, and the lack of oxygen to his brain is a contributing factor.
Zoro watches him through his lower lashes. His head almost rests on the wall to the left of him, warm breath puffed against Sanji’s cheek. It’s too much. Zoro runs warm on the average day, but in this warm air after a fight, he’s a muggy sauna. The heat seeps from his skin and slow-cooks him.
He should touch him. Right along his neck where the chain sits on skin. The feeling isn’t as staggering as it has been. He could. Heat pools in his gut and stirs slowly, then pauses with a realization.
Zoro’s still not touching him.
The fingers in his shirt never graze skin. He doesn't kiss him. Doesn’t even try. Something clicks in Sanji’s brain. Steeling his resolve, he leans as far back as the wall allows and delivers a swift kick to Zoro’s sternum. It’s strong enough to back him up, and he hits the opposing wall with a grunt.
He doesn’t wait for Zoro to look at him. The words need to come out now before they get stuck forever. “It’s not just about Nami-san. I want them to stop walking in on us.” It’s affecting the crew, goes unsaid because Zoro knows. Sanji knows he knows, has probably known since before Nami had ever pulled them aside.
Zoro straightens against the wall, rubbing his bare chest.
“Yeah. Okay.” Zoro looks up at him. “We’ll figure it out. Together. Stop keeping stupid shit to yourself.”
Sanji wants to kiss him. Sanji wants to kiss him, and he’s going to kiss him. Zoro watches him come closer, eyelids lowered. When he gets close enough to touch, Zoro stops him with a hand. Sanji drags his gaze back up from Zoro’s mouth to meet his eye. Zoro curls his fingers in his shirt but still keeps him held at that distance.
“Ask.”
Sanji’s jaw drops open. “You can’t be serious.”
He looks serious.
Sanji’s jaw works. “Mosshead--”
“Bad start.”
This feels like revenge. A petty revenge Zoro is absolutely capable of.
“Zoro.” Sanji grinds his teeth. “Can I…” Touch? Kiss? All of the above?
Zoro looks all too pleased with himself, watching Sanji’s suffering evenly and amused. “Can you what?”
Oh, this asshole. “Fuck you.”
“Throw in a please, and you're halfway there.”
“Please.” His cheeks burn. Not holding eye contact would make this better, but Zoro might just make him repeat it. “Can I touch you?”
Zoro’s eye flashes. His breath hitches, too; Sanji watches his chest skip over a beat. He’d laugh at Zoro clearly biting off more than he can chew, but he’s pulled in by the neckline, and then his mouth is otherwise occupied.
Sanji moans into Zoro’s mouth, a guttural noise squeezed from the crack in his chest. Once he starts, he can’t stop. The small noises just escape from him, echoed in Zoro’s content hums. Any free skin Zoro touches, he earns a groan. His fingers slide from Sanji’s collar to the small of his back. He carelessly hikes up his shirt from where it’s tucked into his waistline to get at the skin beneath. His hands are hot, searing the skin of Sanji’s back. Zoro tucks his fingers beneath his belt, then stretches up Sanji’s spine, fingering the ridges of his vertebrae. Sanji moans like he’s been touched for the first time in his life.
His hands can’t stay still. He cups either side of Zoro’s face, fingers dancing across his three teardrop earrings, then behind his ears to the chain’s clasp and the damp hair growing there. Once he’s back there, he remembers the whole head of short-cropped grass that’s free real estate. Sanji tugs at it and swallows Zoro’s ensuing groan. He can’t get enough of his mouth, of his skin. His thumb pulls at Zoro’s chin to get him to open wider, licking past his teeth and up against his tongue.
Sanji goes to step closer and wedges his thigh between Zoro’s legs. Zoro jerks his hips. He’s still got his hands on Sanji’s back, and he digs his fingers into his waistline to drag Sanji closer. To get him to do it again and again until they're rutting up against each other like a pair of animals. Sanji breaks the kiss to breathe, and ends up mouthing along the side of Zoro’s face. He licks at Zoro’s ear, then down again to his neck, biting kisses along the hard line of muscle.
Zoro has a hand buried in Sanji’s hair. He’s muttering bit-off curses and what sounds like pleas. He grips Sanji’s ass and grinds. Hard. Sanji bites around a moan, and Zoro spasms. That’s enough.
“Off,” he says, fingers flying for the loose cloth around Zoro’s shoulders that can barely be considered a shirt. “Off.”
Zoro shucks it, and it falls unceremoniously to the ground. His pants go next, joining his shirt on the cobbled floor.
There he is. With his shirt off, Zoro’s tanned arms and chest are on full display, lines of muscle rippling through every shuddering breath. Sanji licks his lips and tastes iron.
Zoro gives him a look like he’s laughing at an inside joke. “You’re not worried about someone walking in?” he asks, tongue literally in cheek.
Big words from someone one strong grip away from coming.
Sanji sheds his shirt, nearly pulling off the buttons. “Shut the fuck up. Please, please, shut the fuck up.”
That makes Zoro actually laugh, so Sanji decides to shut him up himself. He tosses his shirt somewhere near Zoro’s, biting at Zoro’s lip for the cheek. Zoro’s still smiling when they kiss, and it slows the pace of the tangy kiss down. Zoro tugs at Sanji’s belt, and Sanji lets him undo it, pulling down both his shorts and pants underneath at once.
Sanji’s been hard for the past five minutes. Zoro eyes him hungrily, reaching for his cock and pulling him off slowly. Sanji whines and catches himself with a hand against the wall. Zoro takes advantage and moves in, nibbling along the column of his neck. Sanji skates his hands down Zoro’s sides and palms his ass. He can feel Zoro’s smile against the skin of his neck. It’s all muscle, like the hard lines of his abdomen. Sanji dips to run a finger around his rim and—
“What… Did you—”
Zoro shrugs, nosing beneath Sanji’s jaw. “We landed on an island. Wasn’t really a guess.”
Sanji slips two fingers inside him, and holy fuck. He’s stretched enough for three. Sanji wonders when he did it. If it was this afternoon, when he’d disappeared into their bathroom. Sanji wonders if he’d walked in, would he have seen him, one foot on the toilet seat lid, fingers disappearing inside of him. Zoro’s face always twists up so sweetly when he stretches himself, cheeks pink and lips bitten red.
Sanji groans and grips Zoro’s thighs. He doesn’t give any warning before lifting Zoro off the ground, a bracing hold on his lower back.
Zoro’s thighs tighten around Sanji’s waist, his gasp thin and reedy. “Fuck.”
He lets Zoro readjust his weight, so he can remove a hand from his waist. Sanji holds his newly freed one in front of Zoro’s mouth.
“Spit,” Sanji commands, and Zoro does.
He strokes his cock, slickening it as best as he can, and then lines himself up to Zoro’s hole. Zoro’s fingertips grip at Sanji’s shoulderblade, his hips primed to move. Sanji whines as he presses in, slowly; as prepped as Zoro is, it’s been a while since this afternoon.
Zoro has none of it, and drops his hips to bottom out. His moan echoes off the walls, scratching his throat as it’s voiced. Sanji’s hips jerk, whining around the tight pressure.
“Move,” Zoro groans out, voice husky. “Fucking move.”
“No ‘please,’” Sanji quips through gritted teeth, but he raises Zoro up from his hips and then drips him back down.
He sets a punishing pace, watching Zoro’s head fling back, his pecs bouncing through every jerk and thrust, chain swinging. Sanji wrenches him away from the wall, trying to keep his head from splitting open, and Zoro curls back around him, thighs and calves tight as he helps raise and drop his hips. He whines little punched out noises into Zoro’s ear that quickly drags Sanji closer to the edge.
“I’m—I’m gonna—“
Zoro’s whine sounds squeezed from his chest. “Me first.”
Sanji licks the blood and sweat from his top lip. “Yeah? You first, baby? Can you say please?”
Zoro’s hot and sweaty. When he speaks, his words are whispered against Sanji’s skin. “Please. Please make me come.”
Sanji moans and worms a hand in between them to pull Zoro off. It takes barely a few strokes before Zoro’s spilling over his fist. He groans, throaty, his head rolling back, and Sanji can see the glassy look in his grey eyes, the heartbeat pounding in his jugular. Sanji follows quickly after, grinding deep into Zoro, muffling his moan against the meat of Zoro’s pec.
When they’ve both come down, Zoro squirms, oversensitive. Sanji lets Zoro back down slowly, and he has to catch himself before standing. He leans against the wall for a second to catch his breath, and Sanji ducks in to kiss him. It’s long and wet and still metallic from Sanji’s nosebleed. When they pull back, Zoro licks it from his top lip.
“Mm,” Zoro hums, like he’s savoring the taste. “You definitely lost, by the way.”
Sanji blinks, startled by the sudden turn of conversation. “I lost?? You— We’re on an island! There’s no more bet!”
Zoro snorts and bends down for their pile of clothes. “Yeah, but you were losing your fucking mind, cook. No way you could’ve gone another week.”
“Me?” Sanji grabs the shirt as it’s flung at his face. “Maybe if you kept your grimy hands to yourself, then we wouldn’t have had the problem in the first place.”
It’s not lost on him that they’re arguing this stark naked on a public street. Alley. Same thing.
“I’m not the one with the exhibitionism kink.”
Now that’s a laugh. “The hell you aren’t. I know you left that bathroom door unlocked on purpose.”
Zoro turns back to Sanji, a glimmer in his eye. He leans in close, mischievous, and Sanji swallows. “How about this, then, huh? I bet you couldn’t not put out for a whole month.”
A whole month? Without sex? He could do that.
“You’re on.”
Zoro’s gonna break first. He’s sure of it.