Chapter Text
The tower is not one Zoro knows, surrounded by sweeping green fields and flowers, its glass structure reflecting the sunlight of the bright blue sky. It’s ugly and perfect, with no haze or ocean salt or grit from dust or sand, something straight out of one of the cook’s frilly romance novels he not-so-discreetly borrows from a too-knowing Robin. A light breeze sweeps through Zoro’s hair, a false mockery of the real way wind messes with battle.
He frowns as he checks that his swords are at his side. Wado, Sandai Kitetsu, Yubashiri.
Yubashiri is in peak condition, not yet destroyed by that damn Marine, and that’s how Zoro knows this is a dream. He hasn’t gotten to replace her yet.
They're fastened to his side in some sort of leather strap contraption that wraps around his waist to replace his haramaki. He still has his boots, though they are up to his knees, and his gray pants are baggy underneath a dark green tunic.
It’s a stupid outfit, but it’s functional.
Dreams aren’t controllable, though he usually dreams of things he’s seen before, places he’s been. He doesn’t remember every dream he has. They’re not important, most of the time. He trains in his dreams, having worked to maximize meditation even in his sleep.
(Sometimes, though, he has nightmares involving Kuina or the crew, nightmares of him losing his path due to sacrifice. He remembers those. They’re realistic enough that he recognizes his own powerlessness, so he can wake and train harder and become stronger. Motivation. Intention, really. Even in sleep, he knows that.)
He rolls his shoulders, tests the weight of each sword with a small shift of his arm. Good.
The battle earlier had been a shitshow. The idiot cook losing so badly in a fight with a woman—Zoro’s only appreciation of that fight being that the woman seemed to really hate the cook and his curly eyebrows—leaving Zoro to deal with her after they both were already cut up and bleeding. He’d won, but he woke up in the infirmary after apparently having been dragged back by the moron who got them into that mess.
Awake, Zoro’s torso is covered in bandages. The cook isn’t much better off, scraped up and down his arms and legs, bleeding from his side. He’d apparently had Chopper handle Zoro’s wounds first, then had passed out from blood loss in the kitchen when no one was looking.
The fucking moron.
Zoro needs to train. If he’d been conscious, he could’ve had Chopper handle the cook’s injuries first. He could have protected that idiot.
At least he isn’t injured in this dream.
He practices his sword forms. His feet slide, hands finding their positions without thinking, and his blades whisper through the air. One swipe. Another. He changes stances, keeps his breathing even, slices, builds tolerance in his muscles.
Minutes, or what feels like them, pass.
The wind stays the same. The sun stays stuck in the same spot above the glass tower, too high and too steady. Zoro’s brow twitches. He pauses mid-motion, blades angled down, and stares at the sky. The sun isn’t moving. Time isn’t moving.
That’s not normal, even for a dream. His dreams usually play by lazy rules—familiar places, familiar fights, memories mashed together until he wakes annoyed and sweaty, usually because of Luffy—and this doesn’t follow.
He glances back up at the glass tower, then shrugs. Glass doesn’t belong in a field of flowers. It shimmers too much in the sunlight to be unnoticeable, so there’s got to be something worthwhile up there. Maybe he’s supposed to climb it.
Whatever. It’s a dream. He has nothing better to do. Standing around in a dream is a waste of time, and climbing the damn tower is likely the next thing to do in a dream with unanswered questions.
The tower’s surface is clear enough that he can see distorted shapes inside, even with the sun beaming too brightly off its surface. There are holds set into the glass—roughened little ledges that look carved, meant for him to grab and use to climb—and they’re placed with purpose, since glass is meant to be smooth. Scratches run alongside them, and it gets his blood rushing.
Someone has climbed this before.
Zoro’s mouth curves into a predatory smile. Maybe there’s a worthy opponent at the top. If there’s a fight at the top of the tower, he’s ready.
His dream starts to make sense.
Time passes as he climbs—the field drops away beneath him, green and bright and annoying, and the wind shifts cooler as he climbs higher, as does the sun as it drops little by little in a way it hadn’t when he’d trained in the field; he hears nothing but his breathing and the faint sound of his boots catching on the holds—so he must be doing something right. Good.
He reaches a window ledge, where the glass smooths into an open frame that leads into the tower’s interior. He shifts his weight, placing a hand on the edge—
And something comes fucking flying at his head.
“The hell?” He ducks easily, and he hears the damn thing whiz past his ear, ruffling his hair and jostling his earrings, before it speeds toward the ground below. He glares at the culprit trying to kill him. “Fuckin’—Dartbrow?”
Curly eyebrows. Blond hair with a too-long fringe on the left. A pretentious, judgmental face. Said cook glares at him, crossing his arms underneath the bodice of a blue dress the same shade of his eyes.
The cook looks. . . A dress.
Damn. It’s definitely a dream.
“Dartbrow? Who the fuck are you? Fucking. Mosshead.” The cook stomps a foot to the floor of the tower. Metal rattles as it slaps the glass. Zoro stares at the cook’s skirts. Underneath, he’s chained to the tower. The hell kind of dream is this? “You’re not a knight.”
“You’re kidding.” Zoro can’t help his laugh. A dream cook in a fucking dress, waiting for a knight in shining armor, chained to a glass tower like a dumb damsel. It definitely suits him. Zoro’s blood pulses, and he ignores it. “Were you hoping for a prince, you royal pain-in-the-ass?”
The dress is the antithesis to the cook, who normally covers up a lot with his prissy dress shirts and suit jackets. So much skin is visible, so Zoro has to force himself not to look at whatever his dream has conjured. With its wide skirt and the lace designs at the fitted bodice around his tiny waist, the dress highlights the cook’s slender body well. The sleeves come off his shoulders, which Zoro hasn't had the chance to notice before, and they are pale and kissed with freckles. These off-shoulder sleeves threaten to fall lower every time he moves, and Zoro glares at them for being so impractical. The idiot can’t kick well in a dress, can he?
He shoves the thoughts aside when he feels heat pooling in his stomach. No need for dumb ideas about the cook’s unreasonable clothes taking away from the present. They won’t help him get stronger.
The cook’s face is red, down to his chest. “Who. Are. You.”
He doesn’t know what kind of dream he’s having, but if it’s embarrassing for the cook he’s all for it. “The hell’re you wearing, princess?” The dress is unreasonable for their sparring but there’s nothing wrong with it or the cook in it, other than it making Zoro feel weird and warm.
“I’m not a princess,” he sniffs, turning up his nose and making his off-shoulder sleeves slip lower. “I’m a prince.” Fucking Mr. Prince, every damn time. He jerks his sleeves back up with an annoyed tug, but it doesn’t stop the neckline from revealing more of his chest. Zoro hadn’t understood the heat he’d felt before. He thinks now, it’s curiosity. He never sees this much of the cook’s skin. “Not that it matters to you, since you’re clearly not a knight.” He glances at Zoro’s clothes with clear disdain, before eyeing his swords. It’s the cook’s calculating gaze.
Zoro grins. “Wanna fight?”
“Is that why you’re up here?” He rolls his eyes. “You climbed a glass tower in the middle of Germa Kingdom because you wanted. . . to fight the guy inside.”
Well. He would’ve preferred to fight a monster, like one of the dinosaurs in Little Garden or a dragon from Wano, but the cook is still a fun fight. Neither of them are injured here. “I guess,” he shrugs, “I’m stuck fighting a princess.”
His curly eyebrow twitches. “Stop calling me princess. I happen to like this dress, you brute.”
“You’re wearing—” Zoro stops himself before he mentions the dress. His eyes keep catching on it and he hates that he’s aware of how it clings at the waist, how it exposes his shoulders, how it forces the cook to show his shape, a shape Zoro can’t stop noticing and his body is reacting to, for some reason. His cook shouldn’t—
“Say it, Marimo. You think I shouldn’t wear it.”
No, you can wear that on the Sunny, too. Wear it for me. Zoro’s jaw clenches. Those thoughts don’t make sense. “No.” The cook seems okay with the dress in this dream, so he doesn’t fucking care. He stares at the cook’s arms, bare of the bandages adorning them in reality. “Shut up.”
“I’ll shut up if you tell me who you are and why you’re here,” he says, looking confident for someone in a damn ballroom gown.
“Really.”
“Really, shitty swordsman?” he mocks. “I’ll show you how it works, since your pathetic algae-infested mind can’t understand basic questions. Vinsmoke Sanji, at your service.” He curtsies, revealing his little ankles, the left one chained. “And you are?”
“Vinsmoke?” The word sounds arrogant and somewhat familiar on his tongue. Has he heard it before? What a stupid name.
“Yes, Vinsmoke. You’re clearly not from Germa Kingdom.” He eyes Zoro’s hair disdainfully. “Only know one bastard with the confidence to pull off mossy couture. Why are you up here if you didn’t want to ransom the weakest Vinsmoke?”
Zoro laughs again. His dream is so, so fucking stupid.
In what world would he imagine a cook who doesn’t know him, a frilly princess dress, a stupid-ass tower? With any semblance of control of the dream, the cook would mainly exist for him to beat during training. There’s no other reason to imagine someone so damn annoying. He really doesn’t like the guy; he makes Zoro feel things he doesn’t understand, and he’s always flushed afterward. Embarrassment and anger, probably.
“I’m your prince,” Zoro says, deadpan.
“Fine. I can figure you out easily.” His smile is venomous. “You’re a big stupid swordsman, and you got lost in Germa Kingdom, so you climbed a damn 300-foot tower to fight what was at the top. Missing anything?”
Zoro hates when the cook reads him so easily, but he feels a sense of pride in climbing a 300-foot tower so easily. He got some training in after all. “A pretentious Mr. Prince every time, right, dartbrow?”
“Well the prince isn’t fighting a confused little mossball, so get out.”
Zoro takes a step closer without thinking, hand on Wado.
The cook stiffens, flinches. He lifts his leg to kick, but he doesn’t, while his arms raise to protect his face and his eyes track Zoro’s movements. Zoro’s stomach drops. The cook fucking flinched.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” Zoro demands. His cook doesn’t flinch. Not because of him. He grips Wado, the sound of the swords’ scabbards clacking loudly in the empty glass of the tower.
He tenses and seems to bite back the scathing response he has planned, instead straightening and continuing, “I’m assuming, then, that you’re a lost fool and not part of the military or trying for ransom.”
Zoro rolls his eyes.
The cook’s visible eye stays on Zoro’s swords, and when he swallows, Zoro’s eyes track the movement. “How sharp are your swords?” He twists his hands together, licking his lips. His voice drops. “Could they cut steel?”
“Obviously.”
“Good!” His eye flashes bright. The cook grabs fistfuls of the layers of his skirt and tugs them upward. Zoro’s attention is hard and immediate, and he’s thankful this is a dream because. . .
The cook reveals his bare calves, delicate ankles, dainty blue shoes. His thighs are pale and trembling, and Zoro has the sudden urge to tear the damn skirt higher. Curiosity. That’s the warm feeling. Since the cook doesn’t usually dress like this.
The chain cuffs around the cook’s left ankle tightly, and the skin around the area is red and irritated, rubbed pink and raw.
His stomach twists, heart racing like it does in battle, and he sets aside the feeling. Curiosity doesn’t feel like that.
Zoro snorts, looking away. His mind is narrowing down to details that have nothing to do with fighting, and he can’t have that. No time for distractions, even in a stupid dream. “Showing me your underwear, pervert prince? Not interested.”
The idiot freezes, and his mouth parts. Then his face flames red. “Can you cut the chain or not, asshole?” he spits. “Or was all that talk for show?”
Cutting a chain is straightforward. He pushes off the ledge of the tower window and nods, ignoring the stupidly hopeful look on the cook’s face as he bunches up his skirts and raises them much higher than they need to be raised. Zoro ignores the dark blond hair on his legs, the creamy flesh of those powerful thighs, the pretty little bulge just at the apex, and he’s strong enough to pull Wado from her sheath.
“Actually!” The cook’s grip on his skirt tightens. His eyes dart to Zoro’s hands, to the other swords at his hip, then to Zoro’s face. “Do you really know how to use that? You’re not just some idiot seaweed-head who got lost and found some swords?”
He crouches, studies the chain link by link, placing a hand on the cook’s ankle. The chain’s thick, but it’s not seastone. Simple. “Yeah.”
“But why do you need three unless you’re compensating for something? I could do it—”
“Talking a lot for someone chained up in a dress.” Like the cook would ever use his precious hands for something like brandishing a sword.
The cook, in this weird dream princess form, looks pissed. “I’m not weak, you shitty swordsman!”
Zoro doesn’t deign the stupidity with a response, shrugging and slicing through the chain easily, directing a proud smirk at the moron doubting his skills.
(It’s Zoro’s dream, so why isn’t the cook looking at him in awe?)
The cook looks at the broken chain and then at the sword in Zoro’s hands before bolting toward the window, desperately gathering the layers of skirts in his hands so he can climb. He grabs the window ledge and hauls himself to the edge, sounding pathetic in his desperate gasps.
The realization hits them both at the same time.
With that amount of tulle and fabric, finding footholds will be a challenge. Zoro knew the thing was impractical.
The cook looks back to Zoro, looking stupid with the sleeves of his dress slipping down his arms, the way he’s gathered so much fabric to reveal his calves. “Cut this.” He makes it sound like he’s doing Zoro a favor by demanding it, and Zoro does not follow orders from a twirlybrowed moron.
“No,” he decides, ensheathing Wado and crossing his arms.
It’s a fucking dream. The cook is a princess here, and Zoro came here for a fight, for further training. There has to be some kind of battle that comes from freeing the cook. An angry king? A guardian beast to fight? There’s no benefit to letting the dream cook leave.
“You absolute bastard!” Fabric swishes loudly against the glass as the cook drops back into the tower, furious. “I thought all you brutes knew how to do was cut things!” He storms into Zoro’s space, close enough that Zoro can smell his cigarette smoke and cologne, and he shouldn’t. He’s close enough that Zoro’s body reacts before his brain does, heat low in his gut, attention catching on the line of Sanji’s pink lips.
Weird. Why is he looking there?
Zoro shifts his attention to assess the solitary room in the tower. There’s a bed shoved against the far wall, a small table with a single chair, a pile of well-read books near a partially empty bookcase, and a basin and hose connected to the wall. There isn’t a kitchen, or closet, or. . .
The cook raises a leg and plants it at Zoro’s chest, arrogant and demanding. Zoro’s blood feels hot. “You cut the chain, so you can cut the dress.”
“Tell me what’s going on.” He glances at the blue shoe on his chest, the way the skirt hides nothing in that pose. He grins, back in familiar territory. Riling up the cook is so easy. “Princess Vinsmoke.”
The cook blushes, and as he tries to fix the dress he’s wearing, one of his sleeves slips lower. The cook is startlingly skinny in this dream, easily bruised skin and clear signs of starvation obvious on his collarbones and cheeks. It aligns with the tower not having access to food. “I’m stuck here,” he grinds out, shoving the sleeve upward, “and that’s all you need to know.”
Zoro’s hand moves to his swords instinctively. “Piss off the king with your shitty attitude?”
“Nothing to worry your moldy little head about.”
Zoro’s eyes narrow. The cook seems genuinely hurt, which isn’t something that usually comes from their verbal sparring. He isn’t sure if it was the comment about the dress, his defensiveness about being weak, or the comment about pissing off the king, but he resolves not to say anything further about those things. He’d been sure the trading of insults wasn’t truly acerbic, but he’s missing a lot of the context of this dream cook’s story, starving in a high tower.
The cook looks. . . and clearly fights fine in the dress. And he may have flinched, but he isn’t weak. Zoro knows the cook knows that. But the idiot definitely pissed off the king because he has to know he has a shitty attitude.
Said shitty attitude comes from a mouth that curls into a nasty smile. “Tell me. Why are you here?” He’s slightly smaller than Zoro, in this dream. He’s paler than he should be, thinner, and the blond of the top of his head reaches under Zoro’s eyes. He’s still a pretentious, arrogant little jackass. And Zoro knows how to deal with those. “Are you really just a wandering swordsman?”
Zoro grins meanly and pats the top of the cook’s head with all the condescension he deals with when the cook throws him his meals last, when the cook snidely ignores him so he can insult him to other people. “’M’here. To rescue the fucking princess.”
“You asshole!” There is nothing but fury in the cook’s eyes as he jolts back. “Don’t fucking touch me!” His hands shoot toward Zoro’s waist, where his swords are hooked onto the leather band. Zoro has little time to register the movement, the way the cook’s fingers find the hilt of Sandai Kitetsu and yank her free.
“Hey!”
“If you won’t. . .” But the cook isn't a sword-wielder, and he doesn't have the strength or resolve to overpower Kitetsu’s curse, not like Zoro. He doesn’t respect the blade, and Kitetsu doesn’t like that. He’s in an appropriate stance for wielding, though. “I’ll make you.”
Seeing the cook hurt himself with Zoro’s swords. He doesn’t like it. It’s not. Allowed. Any spilled blood is his to take the blame.
Zoro’s protectiveness of the cook overpowers the hot urge to swordfight with him and see him move—it would be better in those prissy suits that hug his legs, but he’s not opposed to seeing him fight in the dress—and he draws Wado and his unbroken Yubashiri to quickly disarm him, Kitetsu clattering to the glass floor loudly.
“You’re not a swordsman,” Zoro says, but his gut is churning.
The cook gives him a dirty, hate-filled glare and bolts for the window anyway, clearly deciding the risk is worth it, and Zoro rushes forward, grabs him by his idiot little waist before he can make his way down, yanks him back from the window where he’ll fall to an uncertain dream death.
“No! No! Let go of me! Fuck!” He kicks backward at Zoro, squirming and forcing Zoro to tighten his grip on the cook’s waist, feeling him gasping as the grip becomes too tight. “Are you my father’s mercenary? Did you free me to kill me?”
“If I wanted you dead,” Zoro releases him, annoyed, something cold and unknown to him settling in his gut, “you’d be dead.”
The cook looks at him with watery eyes and bolts, cut skirts flaring behind him before he’s grabbing the window ledge and—
—Sanji doesn’t want to huff his third cigarette of the morning, but he’s in a weird mood, and it isn’t just because he’d woken up in the infirmary wrapped in bandages—his left ankle hurt like hell when he put weight on it, nearly faceplanting in his move from the bed to the door—but because he’d had one of those dreams again.
(He sees dresses when they shop, but he doesn’t need them. He’s their dashing gentleman cook. His suits are just fine.)
Stress smoking about dreams isn’t something he’s proud of. But he dreams too often about Germa, and he can’t help but love the romanticism of someone else saving him, and out of love, though he doesn’t devalue anything Reiju did. He can’t help but think of himself in these fairy tales, sometimes. He isn’t always the princess, but. . .
Well. He isn’t supposed to want to be in that role. So he dreams, and in his dreams he gets to try on dresses and feel pretty and close to his mother and have Zoro look at him with appreciation.
Even though he isn’t supposed to, he’s always been curious about dresses, lingerie, all the soft things that emphasize femininity—of course they’re perfect on his beautiful angels Nami and Robin, on any lovely lady he’s met, like Vivi and Conis and—and his mother had always said he was pretty and that pretty and soft things are to be treasured and he is worth treasuring.
(She’s the only person who will ever think so, and she’s dead.)
In Germa, he’d only had the chance to try a dress once. He’d been four, and Reiju had allowed him to try one of hers, though it was large on him. And oh. The soft of the fabric. The flutter of the skirt around his little ankles. The hug of the material at his waist, still plump because he’d been fed regular meals, then.
She’d been emotionlessly cruel when she told him he wasn’t normal for wanting to try it, reminding him that their brothers were looking for more excuses to exclude him, then telling him that “you look pretty, though, like mom.” Like their mother. Sanji had lit up. He never asked her to try a dress again, and he stopped mentioning how he loved his mother’s dresses when he saw her, but his mother never stopped complimenting him.
Sanji’s eyes water, and he puffs on his cigarette. He misses his mother so damn much.
He isn’t supposed to want these things, and even though it was a dream and no one is going to know, it feels like a betrayal of who he’s supposed to be that he still longs for it. And he certainly doesn’t deserve anything he wants. Judge made that abundantly clear when he’d been small, when everything he did was weak and his brothers’ taunts started feminizing him to hurt rather than in the kind way his mother had meant.
With Zeff, it was inadvertent. It was in how obviously masculine Zeff is, how gruffly he treated men and Sanji, how he told Sanji that men are shit and women are on pedestals. And Sanji agreed, eagerly; men are shit and Sanji is a man. And if women are on pedestals then Sanji, the weak and pathetic failed man of Germa couldn’t be near them. Men only understand violence, and Sanji’s a man so that’s what he deserves, and that’s what he gives.
Sanji’s been doing well so far. He is the cook, and he cooks. His crew needs him to be strong so he can fight for them, protect them. It gives him a job beyond cooking, so they need him.
And Zoro needs him to be tougher so he can keep up with their fights, so Zoro can practice. Zoro didn’t take too well to him when he’d tried to talk to him in Cocoyashi during the celebration party, rolling his eyes and mocking him wanting to dance. Zoro did seem to enjoy his company in Little Garden when they’d started their dinosaur-hunting competition. Sanji can be what Zoro needs from him.
Zoro, who just exudes confident masculinity with his broad shoulders and muscular arms and his stinky musky sweat and how he is so stupid he doesn’t understand or care about other people’s opinions. Sanji’s nothing compared to that.
(Sanji is thankful he never had to show Zeff that truth of himself, disappoint him further. If he’s lucky, he can find a woman somewhere on the Grand Line and he’ll never have to tell Zeff about his feelings for Zoro. He’s a man and men are shit and he definitely isn’t supposed to want Zoro. So he doesn’t.)
He bites his cigarette, careful not to break it, and sighs. It was a dream, and Zoro didn’t really see him in that blue dress, but he can’t help but imagine the dream differently. Zoro’s featured in his dreams before, usually in fairy tales or romantic settings but sometimes even on the Merry or the Sunny, or even the Baratie. When he does, his steel grey eyes look at Sanji with reverence.
(He thinks Zoro looks at him like that, sometimes. When he’s cooking, or when he’s training and Sanji steps out to serve snacks. It’s wishful thinking, but it’s nice.)
Zoro would see Sanji in that blue ballgown and he’d be clumsy about it, one large hand gripping his waist, the other running his rough, calloused, beautiful fingers down Sanji’s exposed clavicles, to his flat chest, to feel his heartbeat.
He’d tell Sanji he was pretty, and then he’d capture Sanji’s lips—
He stands abruptly, putting out his cigarette before going to the sink to wash his hands and start preparing breakfast.
He winces when his sleeves rub the bandages from the fight yesterday. He’s fine. The tower was a dream, and his dreams are his alone. He isn’t supposed to want these things, and wanting them makes them real and proves he doesn’t deserve them.
Losing himself in his cooking, he is able to shove his memories of the daydream aside and instead focus on his truest love, cooking. He crafts an excellent spread of the women’s favorites, with slightly less attention but no less care to the steak and eggs for the men and the waffles for Chopper. It’s one of his better breakfast options, he thinks proudly, yawning as a wave of fatigue hits him.
As the sun starts to light the galley, his crew mates start trickling in.
Sanji is gruff with the men—though not as rough as usual, since his wounds from the fight are still aching, his waist in particular feeling like someone had tried to squeeze his organs out of him—but he beams when he sees Nami’s familiar orange hair, styled, as always, to perfection.
She enters the galley in a pretty dress, a pale pink with thin straps, snug around her ample breasts and her waist before flaring out prettily near her mid-thigh. What does it feel like to wear, he wonders. Sanji flushes, wiggling in excitement when he sees her. “You look divine today, Nami-swan! The dress looks so good with your hair! You radiate true beauty and poise and. . .” Nami waves off the attention, as humble as ever, and she focuses on the breakfast spread waiting for her, offering her thanks.
“Too early for your shit, Cook.” Zoro stomps into the galley, as disgusting and barbaric and stinky and handsome as ever. He’s scratching under his haramaki at his abdomen where Chopper’s bandages are wound tightly.
Sanji feels a surge of guilt for putting Zoro in that situation. He couldn’t hurt the Devil Fruit user because she was a woman, and Zoro had to take the brunt of attacks after Sanji had been nearly incapacitated. He’d been the one to drag Zoro back afterward.
That wouldn’t have happened if Sanji weren’t so useless. He tries to be useful to the crew, doing chores and trying to protect them because he loves them, but he’s just a cook, and he can’t harm a woman. For his crew, he should have defended himself better. He hadn’t even gotten to hear about her Devil Fruit power, deafened by the ringing noise in his head at the mention of his eyebrows, his name, her hatred.
Coupled with that failure, the fairy tale weakness of his only adds to Sanji’s stress.
“You’re spewing shit all the time and you don’t see me complaining,” Sanji sneers, like he doesn’t rant to or about Zoro when he has free time. “Nami looks beautiful today and deserves to be appreciated and admired and I’m only—”
“Stop perving on her, kinky cook.” Zoro glances at Nami, staring at the dress that Sanji had too obviously been admiring, and then he sneers at Sanji, a mean curl at his lips that normally wouldn’t make Sanji feel this way. But after Sanji spent several hours ruminating far too long on the dream and that dress and Zoro looking at him. . . Sanji grows cold. “‘S’just a dress.”
Zoro is observant but doesn’t always know what to do with his observations, and Sanji is an emotional fool and reveals too much. He wonders if he’s too obvious, and he dials it up more, just in case. Zoro can’t know he wants. . .
“That dress is wasted a disgusting mossball like you, since you can’t see how it heightens Nami-swan’s natural beauty!” He forces himself calm as his heart twists and then beats too rapidly in his chest. “Your empty skull has no appreciation for beauty or the finer things,” he spits, crossing his arms and hiding his wince when the bandages at his waist pull. “Sit down and shut up. I’ve had enough of your mold spores for one day.”
Zoro watches Sanji all through breakfast. His steel gaze is not easy for Sanji to read, for once, and he distracts himself by paying extra attention to the women, making sure their drinks are always full and their plates are always warm. He only has to kick Luffy four times and Usopp and Franky once, and he kicks Zoro twice just because he can. Nami and Robin don’t get kicked, of course, and Chopper is watching Zoro and Sanji too closely because of their injuries, so he doesn’t want to hurt the little doctor.
Sanji makes sure to snicker at any conversation that makes fun of Zoro, throwing in a comment or two, while praising his lovely ladies as they talk about their plans for the day. Zoro’s staring doesn’t stop. He tells Chopper to recheck Zoro’s bandages “because he’s a musclehead and sweat all over them.” Zoro switches to a glare and he has the nerve to throw back “well the lovecook’s fucking limping” which Sanji thought he’d been hiding well, so he kicks Zoro again and gives his portion of eggs to Luffy.
Annoyed his picking at Zoro’s mood isn’t working, he’s quick to clear the table of empty dishes, moving quickly so Zoro can’t keep appraising him for whatever it is he’s looking for. His left ankle continues to throb.
He’s mad about the fight yesterday. Sanji’s weakness to women is why he called out his compliments to Nami, because his weakness is what led to them both getting hurt. Injuries can’t hold Zoro back from confrontation, either, and Sanji steels himself for a fight.
Luffy eats everything off the table quickly enough that breakfast is both too long and not long enough for Sanji, and he watches with dread as everyone clears out except for Zoro, who is waiting at his seat with his arms crossed.
Shit. Sanji likes fighting Zoro but when he’s the reason Zoro’s hurt, he’s not going to worsen that too much.
“Volunteering to do the dishes, Mosshead?” Sanji sneers, then yawns as he pulls out another cigarette. “Fine by me.”
“Sure, but.” Zoro doesn’t stop his staring—Sanji knows Zoro doesn’t enjoy eye contact unless it’s for a purpose, so he looks away—instead scowling. “You’re.” He waves a hand, like it explains everything.
It doesn’t explain shit. Weak? Useless? A damned mess of a cook?
“Yeah, well you’re.” He gives Zoro the middle finger and shoves his cigarette into his mouth.
“You’re twirly today.”
The fuck does that mean? Moments like this are rare with Zoro, where he gets straight to the root of something Sanji’s obsessing over and deals with it an awkward but no less honest way. He doesn’t want to talk, though. Zoro doesn’t agree with things unless they’re true, and Sanji doesn’t want to hear his blunt admission that Sanji didn’t pull his weight yesterday.
“Wow, the caveman speaks,” he mocks, twisting his face into something mean. Defensive, really. “You. Dishes. Now.”
Zoro’s scowl deepens. “This about the witch.”
Sanji is torn between high-pitched protesting—Zoro has always been able to understand Sanji well; even without full context, he always seems to know when something might hit close to home and he always pulls back just enough that Sanji isn’t insulted—and sticking with this argument as a distraction. “It’s about how rude you are! Why do you not understand how important it is to treat the ladies like the goddesses—”
“Thought I said it was too early for your shit, shit cook.”
“It’s later now, dipshit,” Sanji points out, petulantly, because Zoro’s smug little smile makes him weak at the knees.
“So it is.” There’s a look on his face that’s both knowing and confused, a weird combination that isn’t unusual for Zoro but doesn’t fit the situation. “She say somethin’ about yesterday?”
Sanji doesn’t want to address this. He’d prostrated before her and begged for forgiveness and took her punches until he’d been dizzy, and he waited until she’d left the galley to cry about his failure. He’s not doing that for Zoro.
Never thought I’d find a damn Vinsmoke out here.
What a fucking fight. . .
“You got something to say about it?” he spits anyway, unable to resist Zoro’s taunting. He blows smoke in Zoro’s direction, trying to smirk, and oddly, yawning instead. Guess the dream kept him from sleeping well. His injuries still hurt like hell. “Thought the shitty swordsman would be excited to fight a swordswoman. How’d you get so banged up?”
Zoro does react to that, jolting to a stand and pressing a hand to his white sword, Wado.
“Thinking is clearly a difficult task for you, Marimo, and you should leave it to those of us with braincells.”
“Your ladies then,” Zoro says seriously, as he makes his way past Sanji to the sink. He’s really going to do the dishes? Sanji’s traitorous heart flutters. “You’re a lovesick moron so it’s definitely not you.”
Sanji scowls; he can’t deny the women are the smartest in the crew. “I’m smarter than you,” he snarks, snuffing out his cigarette and rolling up his sleeves, revealing his bandages, some starting to bleed through. He bumps his hip to Zoro's so he can handle the dirty dishes and Zoro can dry, shivering at the contact with Zoro's hot body. He always runs so hot. Fuck. “I know actual words beyond, booze, swords, fight.”
Zoro snorts. “What else matters?”
They’re silent for the first few moments, comfortable and at peace with their rhythm of washing and drying. They are loud and violent with each other more than they aren’t—because that’s how men communicate, and Sanji is a man, and men aren’t supposed to want anything else—but they have quiet moments.
Zoro watches him cook sometimes, between naps. And he has a blanket up in the crow’s nest that he brings out when one is asleep and the other is on watch. Sanji makes him ramen for breakfast when he’s hungover, which is subtly shown by the pull of his scowl.
It’s hard not to want someone like that, who cares so intrinsically and doesn’t even realize, because Zoro has made it clear he does not like Sanji.
(Who would?)
Zoro ruins their peace and fucking grunts. Sanji is about to pick another fight so he doesn’t have to hear about yesterday’s fight, but Zoro asks him a question, instead. “You read those fairy stories when you were little?”
Sanji nearly drops the plate in his hands with the strange question. “Fairy tales? You’re asking about fucking fairy tales?”
Zoro shrugs, and they’re standing so close Sanji feels the movement. His body is so different from Sanji’s, wide and broad and hot. “Sure. Didn’t read much at the dojo.”
“What’s bringing this on, Mossy?” Sanji leers at him before smiling mockingly. “Thinking about a princess for yourself? No one would want you when their castles have enough moss already.”
Sanji can almost feel Zoro’s exaggerated eye roll. “Weird dream last night.”
“Tell me about it,” Sanji grumbles, fighting off another yawn. “Dreamed of being a knight or something?” He doesn’t like that Zoro had a similar dream as he did. It makes him feel watched, and he has too many secrets to be revealing to Zoro of all people. He knows it’s a coincidence, but anxious paranoia isn’t easy for him to quell. “Well, like I said about Noland, I grew up in the North so my tales wouldn’t be the same as yours.”
“Any with a tower?”
Sanji stops washing dishes to stare at him now, unfounded anxiety swirling in his chest, bubbling to his throat. “What.”
Zoro meets his stare but doesn’t seem concerned. There’s no way Zoro had the same dream as Sanji, because then he would have seen Sanji in his dress and that would mean he knows Sanji isn’t normal and wants things he isn’t supposed to and maybe he really did find Sanji disgusting and weak for wearing it and his comment earlier was really directed at—
“If I knew fairy stories would prove you’re a fucking moron, I’d’ve brought them up earlier,” Zoro says flatly, pulling Sanji from his thoughts. “Shitbrains.”
“Fuck you, jackass!”
“Snailbrows!” He shoves his shoulder into Sanji.
“Useless turd!” Sanji shoves back harder.
“Nosebleed!” Shove.
“Cactushead!” Shove.
“Fuckin’ troll.” He elbows Sanji, jamming into his sore waist. “Usopp was telling me.”
Oh. Usopp. Sanji is going to break his nose for the unnecessary stress. “Well,” he elbows Zoro harder, smiling sweetly at his glare, “there are a lot of those. Sometimes a princess is locked in the tower, and sometimes a dragon is waiting at the top.” Zoro snorts, and Sanji gives him a dirty look. “Don’t ask if you’re not actually interested, shithead. I have better things to do than talk to you.” He shoves a plate into Zoro’s hands.
“I’d kill a dragon.”
You’re a big stupid swordsman, and you got lost in Germa Kingdom, so you climbed a damn 300-foot tower to fight what was at the top.
Shitty dream.
“You would.” Sanji elbows him as he hands him the next plate.
A dragon, though. Zoro would win easily and would be so smug about it, his goofy proud grin that lights up his whole face and makes Sanji remember the exact moment his unsuspecting heart twisted for a moldy mossball. He’d bring the dragon to Sanji. Sanji’s never seen any recipes with dragon meat before, but surely it would be edible. They’d share a meal of dragon kebabs, maybe. Peppers would go well with it. With side salads and—
“You more curious about the dragon stories? Trying to steal my job and feed Luffy?”
“Like I’d want your prissy job.” Zoro nudges his shoulder, more roughly than Sanji’s prior elbowing, making his own wounds from the prior fight sting. Sanji kicks his calf in retaliation, though he doesn’t use full strength since Zoro had been injured worse and it had been Sanji’s fault. “Why’d a princess be in a tower?”
“Loads of reasons, I suppose. You really didn’t have much of a childhood, Mosshead, spending all that time getting your skull knocked open. These are child stories!” He almost wants to laugh at himself. “She could be a prize, or she might need to be protected.” Sanji yawns. Fuck. He needs a nap. “Or it could be for control, if her family doesn’t like her.”
Zoro nods. “All reasons to save her.”
“My mom used to tell us these stories,” he continues, thinking of her kind gaze and her smile. His hands tremble on the dish he’s holding, voice softening as it does when he thinks of or talks to women. “She liked the romantic ones best, so they always had happy endings.” He can’t help but feel wistful thinking of those days, when they were still too young to start training and they all would sit at the foot of her bed and watch, enraptured, as she told them about princesses and knights and magic. Sanji had been the only one to cling to those stories, after. He wanted a knight to protect him.
“Sounds nice.”
“Yeah.” His eyelids feel heavy, like thoughts of his mother are making him too comfortable, and he blinks rapidly to stay awake. “Which story were you looking for?”
“Dragon one,” Zoro says seriously, and Sanji laughs.
“Only one thing ever on your empty mind and it’s fighting.” He can’t help the fondness in his voice.
“I have to train to be the Greatest Swordsman.”
He’s had dreams before, of confessing to Zoro that seeing him stand for his ambitions at the Baratie had changed something in him, that Zoro’s steadfast nature and desire to protect are inspiration to him in so many ways, that he feels Zoro’s love and dedication even if Zoro doesn’t love him.
He tells Zoro more of his mother’s stories of dragons in towers, yawning more and more, until Zoro pulls him from the sink and directs him to the couch, where Sanji nods off almost instantly to the warmth of Zoro’s hand on his cheek.