Chapter Text
Sanji had stopped just within an arm's reach, and Zoro waited patient for whatever he had that would serve as a come-back. He took the cigarette from his lips with two fingers, like he so often did, and Zoro’s eyes didn’t follow it. Instead they stayed on his mouth, watched the smoke pour from his lips in a fast and steady stream until it dissipated. Sometimes he did it more slowly, more relaxed, but this time he forced it out quickly and then followed it up with speech.
“I know you think you’re hot shit,” he finally said, looking Zoro in the eye, and there was only one eye but was dark blue and lighter around the pupil like a vicious ocean wave, the kind you try like hell to fight but ultimately drown in, “but I’ve only seen you in two fights so far, and you were pathetic during both of them.”
Zoro’s jaw dropped open, and it took a moment to come back from being mesmerized by his face to be outraged by his words.
“Asshole,” Zoro knew how to play this game, he reached out and grabbed the knot of his tie and tugged him closer to look him straight in that eye. He would not be intimidated.
“I’d like to see you fight a warlord and not almost die,” Zoro was, perhaps, careful not to spit all over his face when he spoke. Not only because that was gross but also because some part of him, though currently on the back-burner, still definitely wanted this guy to want to fuck him. “I’d like to see you fight an octopus weirdo while injured from it and not die too!” Zoro pressed, then amended, “actually, I’d prefer it if you did die.”
Sanji grabbed his hand by the wrist while he was still speaking, his fingers were long and the touch was firm and aggressive but their texture was soft, refined. It should have been a turn off that made him seem weak but Zoro knew he wasn’t weak, and instead just wondered what they would feel like in various intimate situations.
“I fight injured all the time,” he threw Zoro’s hand away with more force than Zoro would have expected him to be able to, and Zoro thought he’d step back but then he immediately grabbed Zoro by his collar and dragged him closer with it. “I kicked that manta ray guy’s ass after my organs got crushed!”
“Because you’re an idiot who jumped in the water with a fish man,” Zoro couldn’t effectively reach the tie knot with his non-dominant sword arm so he just messily grabbed the side of the cook’s collar to pull on it.
“You’re an idiot who tried to fight a warlord to the death without ever having stepped foot on the grand line!”
Zoro shoved him back, perhaps becoming slightly affected by the rude remarks.
“If I killed you right now I could just say a dinosaur ate you and no one would question it,” he said, tempted to draw his swords, but the cook was just taking a drag.
“It would be adorable if you tried,” he said, and Zoro felt his blood start to boil. This skinny kitchen goblin was really underestimating him just because he’d only seen him in two specifically difficult fights. He knew that despite their differing specialties he could fight circles around this asshole, and there was only one way to prove it to him.
So draw his swords he did, and while he wasn’t the slightest bit worried about the outcome of this fight, he was slightly disoriented and unnerved by the way the shit-eating grin he got just before his swords clashed with feet made his chest get tighter in the best way.
***
“We should really get back to finding food,” Sanji said as he straightened his jacket, and as Zoro sheathed his sword.
“You mean get back to seeing who can bring back the biggest monster?” he’d broken a sweat, but only slightly, and he was sure the cook did too. It had ended in a draw but he was satisfied in having established that he wasn’t a pushover. He didn’t need nor want to actually cut the guy’s head off to prove a point.
“Right,” Sanji agreed.
“I’m going to win,” Zoro added, and apparently that wasn’t welcome because he earned himself not so much a kick but a shove using the bottom of his foot which resulted in his back hitting the tree behind him, and the foot still pressed against his chest.
“Maybe you can take down a monster ten times your size,” Sanji said as he pushed harder, “but you’ll have to find one first, and you don’t seem like much of a hunter to me.”
“Says the guy wearing a suit," Zoro shoved the foot off, "in the middle of a prehistoric jungle," he felt triumph when it caused Sanji, whose balance was compromised due to his hands being in his pockets, to stumble forward and nearly fall into him. Zoro caught him at the shoulder on reflex to stop them from colliding, and Sanji raised his head and met his eye.
It was really the fault of the cigarettes he smoked, they’d made it so natural, since the first time Zoro saw him, to zero in on his mouth any time you looked at him. He did it so often that he didn’t even think to stop himself this time, nor to look away in a timely fashion. Maybe, for a moment, he even thought the desire would be returned and he’d get what he wanted. Maybe when the other man didn’t immediately move out of reach, instead stayed there, breath seeming to catch like he’d noticed the situation, Zoro thought it would be welcome.
“Uh, no…” came the awkward, guttural sound from the other man’s throat as he tapped on Zoro’s hand to release his shoulder, because the grip on it had tightened exponentially while he was leaning in.
“Shit,” Zoro released his held breath, bowed his head to force his eyes away, and sunk lower against the tree just to move their faces as far apart as possible.
“So,” Sanji said, the implications of the last second and a half very apparently not lost on him, “you’re…”
“What?” Zoro muttered, but knew what he meant.
“Well, I’m not,” Sanji said, and cleared his throat, “just in case you thought…”
“I didn’t,” Zoro said, rolling his eyes, “I don’t,” he laid the statement down. Clear, plain, and simple, and then he walked. He wanted to walk to the edge of the earth and then off the side of it. Instead, he was stuck on a boat with the guy for quite possibly the rest of his life, and if not then most definitely a substantial portion of the near future.
“Just remember, if you come back empty-handed, I win,” Sanji’s voice called out to him from at least ten feet back, the ten feet he’d allowed Zoro to get before he stretched what Zoro chose to interpret it as an olive branch. “Didn’t you tell Luffy you’d never lose?” He stuck out his tongue and then took off over-excitedly into the forest.
Zoro was definitely going to win, all embarrassing things aside. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t also in huge fucking trouble with this beautiful kitchen-dwelling dipshit.