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More Than Acquaintances
The cook, Zoro had learned, cared deeply about everyone. Everyone. He gave a stranger on the street the same attention he gave one of the crew. It didn’t matter whether they offered any kindness back. At Whiskey Peak, before they knew the town was crawling with Baroque Works, Sanji ended up behind the bar because the bartender looked tired. Who did that?
Zoro put people into two categories: threats and non-threats. Sometimes a non-threat became an acquaintance. Lately, he might consider his crewmates something close to friends. Except for the cook. The cook confused him. One second he was being a flirty dumbass with Nami, the next he was maybe, possibly, coming on to Zoro, too.
Zoro didn’t flirt. He thought it was stupid. If he was interested, he said so. If he wasn’t, he said that, too. He expected a drink at minimum and kept a sword within reach.
But the cook kept saying things to him that started as barbs and ended with winks. A smirk after he said something clever, then the tip of his tongue between his teeth. A sarcastic retort followed by a suggestive lift of his brow. It made Zoro feel strange, heat gathering at the back of his neck. It also kept almost making him smile, which would not do, because then the cook would think he had won.
Then, on the way from Little Garden, Sanji pushed past teasing and into blatant heat.
“Damn, I could’ve made sushi out of that!” Sanji said, as the island-eater slowly sank beneath the sea.
“No, you couldn’t,” Zoro said, leaning against the Merry’s rail.
“I take on fish every day.”
“Not ones that size, you don’t,” Zoro said with a scoff.
Sanji smirked at him, tongue poking out. “Don’t you worry about me and size.”
Every part of Zoro caught fire. He felt the color climb up his neck, over his face, to the tips of his ears. Sanji looked delighted at first, pleased with himself for getting that reaction. Then his eyes dropped to Zoro’s mouth for a second before lifting again, darker now, and he leaned in to murmur, “Storage room in an hour. If you want.”
Zoro did, but he shifted on his feet, cleared his throat, and said nothing.
Sanji’s mouth curved in a knowing smile, then he turned and answered something one of the others said. Zoro kept his eyes on the Grand Line and felt anticipation burning low in his gut.
He had expected Sanji to talk during sex. The man never shut up under ordinary circumstances, and Zoro had assumed that would carry over into bed. But Sanji was quiet except for the occasional gasp and a few murmured words of encouragement. Sex between them was all hands and mouths and breathy exhales, moving against each other on a nest of blankets with afternoon sunlight filtering through the porthole above. Sanji knew what he was doing, and Zoro got the full benefit of it until thought dropped away and pleasure took over.
His swords were within reach, but he forgot about them when Sanji shifted his leg higher, found the right angle, and stars burst behind Zoro’s eyelids.
At dinner that night, Sanji sat close, arm stretched over the bench, hand brushing Zoro’s shoulder while needling him about the dinosaur. Zoro fought the smile that kept trying to show.
Then Nami got sick, and Sanji stopped looking at Zoro altogether. Zoro understood the worry – he was reluctantly concerned, too – but it was as if he had stopped existing. Sanji did not even snap back when Zoro made a cutting remark about a meal.
It hurt. Zoro hated that it hurt. He hated that feelings had gotten mixed into this at all.
So he pulled back. Kept his words short. And when Usopp snapped at him on Drum Island, while Luffy and Sanji tried to help Nami, Zoro thought, to hell with this. Better to keep things at acquaintances than let them turn into anything else.
After they set sail again, Zoro made himself scarce. He trained, handled whatever chores needed doing, found places away from everyone to nap. He ate as fast as possible, spoke as little as he could, then left the galley the moment he was able. They had a new shipmate now, Chopper, a reindeer doctor Zoro would deny feeling protective of right away. Zoro was not going to let anything else happen there, either.
It was the sixth day of cold, rough seas as they sailed from Drum toward Alabasta. Zoro stood in the crow’s nest bundled in his guard coat, watching the dark horizon. It was late. The stars were out. The moon was only a crescent. Cold air bit at his ears.
He heard someone climbing the rigging and gave it a brief thought, since he still had an hour left on watch. Then Sanji’s head appeared above the rail and Zoro frowned. He moved around the mast and put his back to him as Sanji climbed into the crow’s nest. He said nothing.
Sanji ignored the message. Wrapped in his leather jacket, he stepped up beside Zoro, pulled a beer from his pocket, and offered it over. Zoro took it, because it was beer and he was not an idiot. He popped the cap on the rail and drank several swallows.
Sanji produced a second beer and opened it the same way. He leaned his forearms on the rail, bottle hanging between his fingers, looking out over the empty Grand Line. “You okay, mosshead?” he asked, with no lead-in.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Sanji glanced at him. “You’ve been avoiding me. Avoiding all of us. Don’t think nobody noticed.”
Zoro tipped the bottle to his mouth with a shrug. “I’ve been training.”
“No. You’ve been hiding.” Sanji turned to face him. “What’s going on in that green head of yours? Something from Drum? Is it Chopper?”
“Chopper’s fine,” Zoro said. “I’ve just been busy.”
“Bullshit.” Sanji fixed him with a look. “Come on. It’s me.”
Zoro met his gaze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sanji looked thrown for a second, then his eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what it means.”
Zoro took another drink and moved to the other side of the crow’s nest, turning his back again. “It was just a fuck. Don’t read more into it.”
“If it was just a fuck, you wouldn’t be acting like this.”
Zoro’s shoulders tightened. “I’m not acting like anything.”
“You’re acting like someone pissed in your porridge and now you’re giving everyone the silent treatment.”
Zoro kept his mouth shut and tried to ignore him.
“Fine. Whatever. Sulk, then.”
“Didn’t want to talk to you in the first place,” Zoro muttered, taking another drink. “Go back to your precious Nami and leave me alone.”
A shoe scraped the side rail, then came down on the floor again. Silence hung there for a beat before Sanji said, in disbelief, “You’re jealous.”
Zoro scoffed. “I’m not jealous.”
Sanji came to his elbow wearing a wide, delighted grin. “You are.”
“Fuck off.”
“No, I want to talk about this.” Sanji leaned his hip against the rail, eyes bright in the dim light. “Mr. Just-a-Fuck is jealous because I’ve been paying attention to Nami.”
“Am not,” Zoro said, and that at least was true. It was not jealousy. Not exactly.
“Listen, I’m not interested in Nami like that.” Sanji paused. “Or maybe I would’ve been, if she’d shown any interest back and wasn’t a lesbian probably hooking up with Vivi in her cabin right now.”
Zoro’s thoughts stalled, then turned over slowly. That explained a lot.
“Besides, you’re the one I’ve been hitting on since the Conomi Islands,” Sanji said, nudging him with the neck of his beer bottle. “I finally thought I got somewhere, and then you started freezing me out. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Something in Zoro’s chest shifted at that. “You were not hitting on me,” he said, even though he had suspected it.
“Oh, yes, I was. Pretty blatantly.” Sanji grinned, quick and bright. “You’re fun to wind up. I kept trying to get a smile out of you, and for the record, I spotted it plenty.”
Heat climbed into Zoro’s face. He kept his head turned away. “You’re an asshole.”
“Hn, yes,” Sanji said, amusement in his voice. “Now tell me why I shouldn’t pin you against that rail and have my way with you.”
“Because I don’t want to get hurt.”
The words went out into the wind and came right back at them. Zoro hunched over the rail, beer bottle gripped in both hands. He had not meant to say it, but keeping his mouth shut would have trapped him in something worse.
Sanji was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want that either,” he said, his voice serious now. “And if I did anything that made you feel that way, I’m sorry.”
There was that caring part of Sanji again, the part Zoro knew meant it when he apologized instead of offering empty words. “It’s no big deal.”
“If it were no big deal, you wouldn’t be avoiding everybody,” Sanji said. He nudged Zoro with the bottle again. “Listen. I like you. I wouldn’t mind taking you in the storage room again. But if that’s not what you want, I’m good with that. It won’t change the fact that I like you. Even if it stays at friends.”
For a moment neither of them said anything. Sanji didn’t press. That more than anything made Zoro believe him.
Zoro took his time thinking it through. Did he really want to risk more than acquaintances again? Usopp had apologized, too, back on Drum. And Zoro was secretly dying to get to know Chopper. And now that he knew about Nami and Vivi, he wanted to give Nami a little bit of shit over it.
He glanced at Sanji, who was watching him with patience and a trace of hope. Sanji had climbed up here to check on him, with no assumption that they were done with each other. He had come because he cared.
“I only sleep with people who buy me a beer first.”
Sanji’s smile spread, slow and sinful. “Good thing I brought you one, then.”
Zoro took another drink and turned his attention back to the sea. “Got another hour on watch.”
Sanji shifted closer and pressed in behind him, one arm sliding around his waist. He nosed against Zoro’s ear, making his earrings chime, breath hot against his earlobe. “Meet you in the storage room?”
Fire ran up Zoro’s spine. He made a low sound in acknowledgment and leaned back against him for a second.
Sanji left him in the crow’s nest with both beers, his own nearly full. Zoro drank only his. When Usopp came up to relieve him, Zoro handed over Sanji’s bottle as his own form of apology. Usopp looked surprised, then pleased. “Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it,” Zoro said, and climbed down from the crow’s nest.
He met Sanji in the storage room, blocked the door, stripped off his clothes, and climbed into the makeshift bed with the cook.
And if his swords ended up a little too far away, he didn’t care.
End