Chapter Text
“Marimo!” Sanji’s call prompts Zoro to look up from the tankard of sake he’s guzzling.
“What the hell do you want?” he grumbles as a hand clamps down on his shoulder.
Sanji grins at him, clinking his own large tankard of sake against Zoro’s before taking a massive swig.
“Oi! Careful, cook,” Zoro shouts, remembering the last island they were on, when Sanji had passed out at the local bar and Zoro had had to carry him back to the ship.
“Share a drink with me, mosshead,” Sanji says, nodding at their emptied cups. “Lots to celebrate,” he adds, wiggling his curly brows and leaning in close enough that Zoro gets a whiff of sake warm on his breath.
Zoro won’t say no to booze, even though he’s sure the cook has had far too much to drink already. He wraps a hand around Sanji’s forearm to steady him and leads him to a tent filled with large barrels of alcohol. He pours out a brimming glass for himself, then fills up Sanji’s cup halfway. Sanji glares. “Hey! What’s the big idea, mosshead? You’re cheating me of my sake!”
“I’m not cheating you, I just don’t want to carry you off to bed when you pass out later!”
“I’m not going to pass out, you oaf!”
“Yeah, right,” Zoro snorts.
“Ungrateful bastard! Of all the countless times I serve you alcohol on our ship, and the one time I want a drink, you don’t even have the decency to pour me a full glass!” Sanji yells, his fingers twisting in the front of Zoro’s kimono, forehead pressed up close.
“I’m doing this for your own good!” Zoro retaliates. But he has to admit, Sanji is right. He sighs, and fills the rest of Sanji’s glass.
Sanji grins. “That’s more like it,” he says, merrily clinking his tankard against Zoro’s. Zoro smiles in spite of himself.
They toast, and Zoro immediately downs his drink, pouring himself a second as Sanji chugs his way through his own tankard. Drops of sake escape the corner of Sanji’s lips and trail their way down into the vee of his kimono, where a tiny swirl of hair peeks out from between his sturdy pecs. Zoro tracks the movement, sake spilling over his hands when he realizes he has allowed his glass to overfill. He sucks up what he can from the rim of his tankard and then downs the whole thing easily. When he resurfaces, Sanji is watching him intently, eyes searing into his.
“What?” Zoro asks with a scowl, ears heating up under Sanji’s rapt attention.
But Sanji just cocks his ear to the side. His visible eye narrows. “Is that…music I hear?”
Zoro strains his ears enough to make out the faint growl of Brook’s guitar, accompanied by a sweet, plaintive twanging. “Yup,” he confirms with a nod, turning to pour himself another drink, before Sanji is wrapping both hands around his arm and pulling him out of the tent.
“Let’s dance, mosshead! Come on!”
“What the hell! I don’t want to dance !” Zoro protests as Sanji drags him through the festival tents, the music growing louder as they go. Eventually they reach the area where Brook and Hiyori play together - a bright, upbeat tune that has people happily dancing below them. Sanji drags Zoro forward and immediately starts swaying to the music. Zoro watches him, Sanji’s lips pulled wide in a smile, eyes closed, the colorful festival lights glowing in his soft blond hair. Then Sanji opens his eyes, and he makes a grab for Zoro, pulling him into the crowd of dancers. Sanji’s hands grip Zoro’s wrists, and he waves them side to side in time with the beat.
“See, marimo? Dancing isn’t so hard,” he croons, smirking.
“I didn’t say it was hard to dance. I said I didn’t want to,” Zoro grumbles. But he can’t deny, it’s a nice song. It feels good to give in to the gentle rocking sway, to let Sanji guide his movements as the music washes over him. Here, the aftermath of the battle seeps out of his bones and is taken over by laughter, raucous shouts, and a simple two-step rhythm.
“Still don’t want to?” Sanji asks, pulling Zoro in close and pressing one hand to the small of Zoro’s back. Zoro’s breath catches at the immediacy of the movement, electricity tingling at the small, warm spot where Sanji’s fingers splay over his back.
“I guess it’s fine,” he mumbles, still uncertain as to why he allows Sanji to continue moving him across the dance floor. He glances over to find that Sanji has moved his hand from Zoro’s wrist to entwine their fingers together, in a relaxed, comforting grip. Something about their movement feels effortless, like when they fight, and the rest of the world falls away, pinning him down to three simple points of contact: his feet on the ground, their foreheads pressed together, the clang of shoe on steel. But this time it is their hands, intertwined, and the searing spot where Sanji presses his hand to the small of his back. The song ends. They separate.
“That’s enough dancing for me, shitty cook.”
“Good. You can’t dance for shit, mosshead,” Sanji says, grinning, cheeks flushed pink in the lantern light. “I’m off to find myself a lovely lady for the next dance.”
Zoro rolls his eyes, already craving more booze. “Yeah, you do that.”
-
A little while later, Zoro is back to downing tankard after tankard of sake and enjoying himself immensely, when Hiyori comes up to him, her smile hesitant as she asks if she can speak with him in private. Zoro bids farewell to the folks he was busy toasting with, and follows her out of the tent.
“I want to apologize,” Hiyori says, blinking up at him with those big, green eyes.
“For what?” Zoro grunts. He has no clue what she would have to apologize for. He had already forgiven her for moving his swords without permission when he was passed out earlier.
“For my interest,” she continues, blushing. “In you.”
“Hah? What are you talking about?”
“My…my advances,” she says. “I had hoped to win your affections, but I didn’t realize that you were already involved with Sanji-sama.”
“The cook? What about him?”
“You two are…together, are you not?” Hiyori asks, her eyebrows coming together to form the slightest crease in her perfectly smooth forehead.
“Together how?” Zoro says. Sure, he and the shitty cook liked to spend time together from time to time, but-
“As in, you are in love with each other,” Hiyori says in a rush. “Am I wrong?”
Zoro’s mind goes blank. Hiyori’s bright turquoise hair swims in and out of focus as he tries to make sense of what his ears must have misheard just now.
“HAAAH?” is all his mouth manages to form, loudly and incoherently.
Hiyori backs up slightly, eyebrows pinching together as she scans his face. “Ah. Perhaps I was mistaken.”
“Me and the COOK?!” Zoro practically bellows in her direction.
She winces. “I was mistaken. I apologize,” she says for the second time that night, bowing so deeply that her long, flowing hair brushes the floor.
“Me and…the cook?” Zoro questions again, his mouth dry at the thought. “That would… never happen.”
“I see now. My apologies,” Hiyori says a third time, deepening her bow until she’s almost folded in half.
Zoro gets his bearings again and hauls her back up to standing. “Look. there’s no need for you to apologize. For any of it.”
Hiyori blushes, smiling softly down at the floor and then back up at Zoro with those eyes of brilliant emerald. “Oh,” she says, her pink lips forming a perfect round ‘O’ as she does so. “Well, then I-”
A resounding crash suddenly rings out from behind Zoro and he swivels around to find Sanji, scowling down at a broken bottle, sake seeping out across the floor.
“Idiot,” Zoro grumbles, immediately striding over to the cook to share some choice words about wasting good alcohol.
Sanji is busy sopping up the mess, collecting and wrapping the glass shards in a towel. Still he manages to glare at Zoro as he approaches.
“I saw you talking with the beautiful Hiyori-chan, marimo,” he growls. “You better not have disrespected her with your brutish tendencies.”
“You’re the brute, spilling booze all over the floor,” Zoro grumbles, baring his teeth.
“Hiyori-chan’s beauty and charm is wasted on a grassy gorilla like you!” Sanji retaliates, pressing his forehead into Zoro’s and grinding down his molars in response. Zoro can feel the veins in Sanji’s forehead pulsing against his own, and Hiyori’s words suddenly echo through his mind: “you are in love with each other. Am I wrong?”
He jerks himself away from the cook, and Sanji’s angry expression falls for a moment before resuming his glare. He whips out a cigarette and bites down hard on it, lighting it without taking his eyes off of Zoro. Hiyori’s words do not leave his mind as the two glare at each other. It almost makes Zoro want to turn tail and run, to escape the consequences of whatever she has noticed between them, but Sanji’s gaze burns. It weighs Zoro’s feet down like lead, electrifies his spine, and forces his gaze right back. He can’t look away. He doesn’t want to.
“Damn cook,” Zoro grunts out loud. “You’re really pissing me off tonight.”
“You piss me off every night, asshole,” Sanji sneers, removing his cigarette between two delicate fingers to release a trail of smoke into the air. He breathes out, bittersweet, like he cannot bear to let it go, yet efficient, out in a single puff before he’s wrapping those rough, pink lips around the overworked roll of paper and tobacco once more.
“What’s with you, mosshead?” Sanji asks, jolting Zoro out of his trance. “You want one?” he grunts, offering the box of cigarettes from his pocket. Zoro stares at it, then back up to Sanji, who watches him now with lips pursed, golden hair catching wisps of light as he jerks his head in offering. Has Zoro always looked at the cook this closely? For some reason, this feeling, this careful watching of the cook, strikes him as familiar.
When Zoro says nothing, Sanji breaks eye contact, scanning the floor for more stray glass shards, and Zoro finally finds himself grounded back in reality.
“No thanks,” he grunts, brusquely, before turning tail and running, now that he is squarely out of reach of Sanji’s fiery glare. Hiyori’s words echo in his mind. Ice claws its way into his quickened heart.
He does not love the cook. There is just no way.