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With a snarky smile, Sanji could go on for hours about his favorite moments on the ship—aside from making his beautiful Robin and Nami their meals: Zoro’s naps.
He was still, he was quiet . Sanji never had to hear any of the swordsman’s idiotic babbling, and the cook could rest easy knowing if Zoro went unwatched for a moment or two, he would remain in place.
Keeping his own mind from wandering was another story.
~~~
The sun burned brightly in the sky, her rays dancing across the rippling sea. It was a calmer morning on the ship—as calm as things could get with this crew, anyway. Sanji knew without a doubt that by noon everyone would be screaming and fighting as usual, so he liked to savor these slower moments.
Sanji stopped in his tracks before he could make it to the Sunny’s railing, a large, loud piece of moss placed in his favorite smoking spot.
He clicked his tongue before taking another drag of his cigarette. Figures the Marimo would manage to be a pain even in his sleep.
As he continued to stare, Sanji noticed a faint blush had bloomed across Zoro’s cheeks, spreading onto his ears. What, was he drunk in his dreams too? Sanji smirked to himself at the thought.
He failed to notice the matching blush creeping up on his cheeks, or the way his heart leapt at the possibility that maybe…just maybe he could be the one to make that blush come about.
“I bet I could make him blush better than that,” he mumbled to himself, because of course he could. Not that he wanted to, obviously. Zoro was… Zoro : lazy, dirty, oafish. He was everything Sanji wasn’t, and those differences rubbed salt into his wounds. They were unbearable. The thought was more to prove the point that Sanji could pull anyone—from the most stunning of ladies to a dirty piece of moss that annoyed him to no end.
“Not that you’d even realize if I flirted with you anyways,” Sanji continued, his frown deepening. He inhaled, blowing his cigarette smoke in Zoro’s direction before letting his gaze drift off to the horizon.
Because of course Zoro wouldn’t notice. Of course his morass of a brain couldn’t pick up on a single hint Sanji dropped over the months.
Not that those hints meant anything, obviously. They were more like…a test. A test to see just how blunt someone had to be before the swordsman noticed any flirtatious behavior, and clearly the answer was horrifically so. It was a step down from screaming ‘I have romantic feelings for you’ into his face, quite honestly.
A very, very tiny step down.
“...Twirly.”
Sanji choked on the smoke stuck in his lungs.
“Scaring me to death? So we’re sinking that low now, are we?” Sanji weakly scoffed, coughing into his jacket sleeve. Figures the moss would fuck up a good smoke, wouldn’t he? More salt rubbed into his wounds, only now they were being rubbed in his eyes too. The taste of tobacco lingered exactly where it wasn’t supposed to, and Sanji could feel the smoke churning inside him, searching each of his organs and veins for an escape.
Sanji pulled himself off the banister, shifting his weight onto his right leg as his left leg struck a few inches above Zoro’s hair. His gaze soured as he leaned down to meet the swordsman’s face, cigarette rocking between his teeth as he spoke.
“I never thought you'd be so pathetic, Mosshead. Did all that sake finally give you brain poisoning?”
Sanji’s eyes narrowed at Zoro’s silence. He leaned in closer, eyes darting across Zoro’s face like flies on a carcass. The swordsman might as well have been a carcass when he slept.
When he slept…
“Sanji…”
A field of red swept across Sanji’s cheeks, his ears burning a bright shade of pink. He felt the air in his lungs escape all at once, his heart begging to follow as it leapt out of his chest.
The sound of his name on Zoro’s lips in such a vulnerable, raw form was something so beautiful, something Sanji wanted to keep for himself, to hold, to cherish, to love until the end of time.
It was the same feeling as when his mom would call his name, genuine happiness in her voice, genuine love in her smiles.
Sanji suddenly became very aware of the cracks in his lips: deep, dry, yearning for moisture. He removed the half finished cigarette from his mouth, then licked his lips to shallow the cracks.
He let out a scoff, purposefully rolling his eyes to rip his gaze away from the sleeping swordsman, to look somewhere else. Anywhere else.
His fingers danced around the end of his smoke, now too burned down to be used any more. Nevertheless, Sanji always found a comfort in the way their cylindrical shape brushed against his fingertips. It was warm, constant. Unlike people, cigarettes had no way of hurting you, not really . People could make all the claims they wanted about how they coated your lungs in a black cocoon of cancer and death, but, really, weren't there worse things to worry about? With all the pain and heartache Sanji had suffered through, the sweet, warm kiss of nicotine in his lungs was like a breath of freedom from worry, from pain, from yearning.
Yearning.
His eyes met Zoro’s still body once more.
The cigarette butt fell to the deck, Sanji’s heel snuffing out the last of its life.
Was a kiss from Zoro any healthier than a smoke? Sanji supposed he’d never know, not at this rate.
With a weight in the back of his chest and a light blush still lingering on his cheeks, Sanji sat himself against the Sunny’s banister, hands dangling lifelessly off his knees.
“You can’t keep getting my hopes up like this,” Sanji sighed, speaking out to the other side of the deck.
Various fluffy shapes danced in the sky. Sanji lips curled up into a subtle smile at the thought of laying on the deck with his Nami or his Robin, letting his heart be soothed by the sound of their voices as they pointed up at another cloud no one could quite pinpoint, claiming it to look like something more than it was, something better.
His smile fell at the hole he felt in his chest. A frown deepened at the thought of the beautiful moment with someone else. Someone larger, someone louder…
…Someone like Zoro.
“Dammit, I need another smoke,” Sanji hissed to himself. He fished his hand into his jacket’s breast pocket, fingers blindly dancing on the box’s surface until they latched onto the lid’s lip and tossed it open.
Fingertips finding comfort in the familiar shape of his addiction, Sanji placed the cigarette between his teeth as he began to reach for the lighter in his pants’ pocket.
And just before they could touch the cold metal, a weight pressed itself onto his shoulder.
Sanji’s heart nearly jumped out of his throat.
“Mmnn…” Zoro’s head bobbed up and down as he tried to find a balanced position to rest in. His body was warm and heavy, like a weighted blanket that constantly tempted Sanji to pull over onto himself.
“Curly…stupid Curlybrow…” Zoro mumbled through lazy lips. Sanji watched closely—far closer than he would have liked—as Zoro’s mouth rose into a scowl.
Sanji sighed. Bright blue eyes fell onto the swordsman’s unkempt green hair.
He inched a hesitant hand closer and closer to the top of Zoro’s head, his eyes frantically scanning the deck once, then twice over to ensure no one else would ever know of the actions Sanji was even contemplating of performing. Sure enough, it was just them.
Just them and the clouds above.
Sanji’s hand inched closer.
“Onigiri.”
Then it froze.
“...What?” Sanji’s response was practically silent.
The silence of such a tense moment was interrupted by the loud rumbling of the swordsman’s stomach.
“...niri.”
“I heard you the first time, you oaf. But you’ll have to get off me if you want me to make you anything.”
Zoro was still, silent. His chest rose and fell like the rolling ocean waves.
Sanji’s eyes fell down to Zoro’s scar, then his nose, then his lips.
He removed the unlit cigarette from his mouth.
Fighting back the shocks of anxiety coursing through his every muscle, he quickly placed a hand under Zoro’s jaw, tilting it upwards just slightly before pressing a kiss on Zoro’s lips.
The sensation that surged through Sanji's body was far better than any cigarette he could even dream to smoke. It was a wave of relief, a roar of freedom. It made Sanji hungry for Zoro, hungry for more of his taste.
But that was for another time. For now, he had a job to do. No matter what the Marimo was to him—nakama, lover, enemy—Sanji was his cook, and it was his job to feed anyone who was hungry.
Sanji lightly propped Zoro back up against the banister, as though none of this had happened, as though Sanji had never left his mark on Zoro. He rose and smoothed out his suit. With a second—now successful—attempt to grab his lighter, Sanji lit up his fresh smoke before making his way back to the galley.
He hadn’t lingered long enough to notice the blush blooming on Zoro’s cheeks, or the soft, genuine smile growing just beneath it.