The first time was somewhat of a perfect storm as far as Sanji was concerned. The precise set of improbable circumstances, entirely innocuous on their own, combined together in precisely the right amounts and timings to produce a rare and unthinkable event.
The first and perhaps the largest factor in this perfect storm was that it had been months since the ship had touched land, as such they were running low on food and Sanji's nerves were frazzled and all of the crew were desperate to get off of the confinement of the ship. So, subsequently it had been months since Sanji had seen any women, barring of course the company of the two ladies on the ship. Sanji was a young man and as such he had certain needs when it came to the opposite sex, one of those needs involved being around ladies that he had at least a remote possibility of sleeping with. And, deluded as he could be, the ladies on his ship did not fit in that category. In fact they almost made it worse, it was like being stranded on a desert island with no food but having a cookbook with you, you could drool over the nice pictures of food all you like but it wouldn't make you any less hungry and it certainly wouldn't feed you.
Of course Sanji rarely got lucky with the ladies, a fact that it pained him to admit, he got struck down about nine times out of ten.
…okay! So more like 19 times out of twenty. But still, it was the possibility that he needed. So needless to say that when the Thousand Sunny started approaching land Sanji's sex drive was running at a million miles an hour. And he was desperate to leap off of the boat and start wooing pretty ladies.
The second factor in the perfect storm happened the be the bad streak of luck that Sanji had that first night on land, he easily tried to charm his way into bed with around twenty women but was turned down with varying levels of politeness every time. So when Sanji eventually dragged his sorry self back to the ship with more than just his tail between his legs he was feeling overly sexualised and incredibly unfulfilled.
The third ingredient in the recipe for disaster was that the recent events of Thriller Bark were still rolling around his head relentlessly. Zoro had attempted to throw his life and his dreams away in a desperate bargain for the sake of his crew, for their dreams. This in itself Sanji could have dismissed, after all, they were all committed to the idea that Luffy would be the pirate king, and if any of them were forced to choose then every member of the crew would lay their lives down for that cause. But when Zoro had rejected Sanji's own attempts to make this bargain in his place it had said something different. It hadn't just said that Luffy's dream was more important than Zoro's in his mind, but that Sanji's dream was too. He went so far as to knock him out to save his dream. A fact that Sanji wasn't massively happy with, but he argued that he was focusing on the warlord as his enemy not his own nakama, so the fact that Zoro had so swiftly knocked him out meant nothing.
Still… Sanji had to admit that out of all of the dreams that the crew had, his was potentially the most unachievable. Luffy could be the pirate king, and there was already a world's greatest swordsman out there to defeat and the whole world was just waiting for Nami to map it. All his nakama had to do was to go out there and make it be them that achieved those goals. Even Usopp's dream of becoming a great man and a great pirate was so subjective as to be easily attainable with time. But when your goal was to find a place that most believe did not or could not exist, then it was entirely possible that you could spend your whole life chasing a fiction. His dream either was or wasn't possible and that depended entirely on factors outside of Sanji's control, he couldn't train for it like Zoro and he couldn't achieve it slowly with each new island traversed like Luffy and Nami did. Either it existed or it didn't and there was nothing Sanji could do about it but hope that it did.
But Zoro hadn't cared about that, he'd bet his own life on the dreams of Sanji and the rest of the crew. And that meant something.
Sanji wasn't sure what it meant or entirely how he felt about it. And neither he nor Zoro had spoken a word about it, and Sanji had ensured that the rest of the crew didn't know. Because the last thing that Zoro had made his sacrifice for was praise or to indebt the rest of the crew to him. But the whole idea was still rolling around in Sanji's skull like a marble.
So when he got back to the ship to find it apparently deserted (factor four of the perfect storm), he thought that he'd have some time to think. That was until the twin factors five and six appeared in the form of Zoro sitting in his kitchen. The fifth ingredient to that perfect storm was a new invention of Usopp's, he'd managed to take a series of sound dials and record the music from their last party on them, and then he'd invented special headphones that connected to them. He'd given them to Zoro who'd been using them almost non stop for the past two months which was one of the main reasons why he'd not been fighting much with Sanji, apparently the ability to literally tune the rest of the crew out had made Zoro fairly mellow and unirritable. And Sanji's new found pleasure of being able to stand near Zoro insulting the hell out of him whilst the marimo was completely oblivious had been more than enjoyable. Zoro was sitting in the galley wearing them now, and because of that he'd not heard or noticed Sanji enter the room, as such what factor five bought him most of all was time to appreciate factor six.
Factor six was a strange one, Zoro being shirtless was far from usual, though usually when Zoro happened to be shirtless he was sweating away from training and ended up stinking up the place. Which Sanji loudly and frequently objected to. However this was different, from the swordsman's slowly drying hair and the rivulets of water running slowly down his spine Sanji guessed that he'd just recently bathed or showered. And without the stench of workout sweat clinging to him Zoro without his shirt on was… not unpleasant.
Sanji stood stock still at the door watching the swordsman. He watched as a droplet of water formed on the tip of a small spike of green hair, he stared as it dripped onto the shell of the back of Zoro's ear. The droplet made it's way down until it came into contact with the swordsman's piercings, it seemed to meld with the metal for a second before the bead of water reappeared at the tip of the gold bar hanging from his ear. It hung there for a few tantalising seconds before dripping onto Zoro's shoulder and making a race for it down his back, over the curve of his shoulder blade and down the dip of his spine before vanishing into the fabric of Zoro's black trousers.
Sanji found himself wondering why Zoro hadn't noticed him yet, okay so he couldn't hear him, but Sanji had seen Zoro detect enemies blinded in battle in such a cacophony of noise as to make it impossible to distinguish any individual sound. He could sense the aura of an enemy instantly without sight or sound as an aid. Sanji wondered with a shudder that came from nowhere whether then Zoro knew Sanji's aura by heart and had automatically filed it away into a list of people he trusted unthinkingly. The scene in Thriller Bark played again in his brain as he stood there frozen in the presence of Zoro.
Sanji had wondered whether or not those things on their own would have been enough to start events rolling, but with some consideration he'd concluded that if he'd not seen and realised what he did afterwards then events would never have played out the way they did.
The final piece of the puzzle that Sanji noticed followed from the observation that Zoro was eating and that Sanji hadn't cooked anything. Everyone was supposed to have eaten out today, but Zoro had evidently not left the ship at all as he'd been on morning watch and was still here now at midnight. This led to one crucial fact, one idea that changed everything.
Zoro had cooked in his kitchen.
At first panic had spread through him and his head had snapped sideways to check his beloved kitchen, but nothing was out of place, nothing was broken or damaged. There was one pan soaking in the sink and the cutlery draw was slightly ajar, other than this and the fact that Zoro was presently eating Sanji would have been oblivious to the fact that his kitchen had been used at all. Zoro slowly raised another forkful of food to his mouth, Sanji had never seen him eat so slowly, but then again there was no Luffy here to steal his food. Zoro removed the fork from his mouth, the quiet sound of teeth rasping against metal sending a thrill down Sanji's spine.
Sanji inhaled deeply, he could smell tomatoes and rice and… something else, spice… chilli perhaps? That wasn't a simple thing to make, that didn't take two minutes and one pan… that took ingredients and tools and seasonings. Sanji stared at his kitchen, everything had been cleaned and put away in its proper place. How… how did Zoro know where everything went? Had Zoro done this before in his kitchen? Zoro knowing where everything in his kitchen belonged and treating it with the respect it required felt incredibly intimate. In fact intimate was exactly what it was. This was akin to the surprise one would feel in bedding a new lover and suddenly finding out that they know every inch of you already, that they know every place to touch and press and kiss to unravel you perfectly.
Sanji couldn't be sure if it was this precise thought that created that perfect collision of events, but he knew what happened next. He'd cleared the distance between himself and Zoro in two long strides and kicked his chair back and smacked the headphones from his head in one smooth move. Zoro just had time to yelp a protest with a mouth full of food, which somewhere in the back of Sanji's brain had still irked him, before he pressed his lips to Zoro's.
Zoro's mouth had been closed at this point and Sanji had felt the tangible pause and the flutter of Zoro's eyelashes on his cheek as the swordsman blinked and slowly swallowed his food. Sanji felt the muscles on Zoro's neck move under his hand as he did so before he took a breath through his nose and opened his mouth into the kiss.
Sanji of course leapt upon the chance as he explored the new and unfamiliar mouth with his tongue, still tasting the meal the Zoro had cooked in Sanji's kitchen. Part of his brain excitedly noted that, yes, that had been chilli as he climbed into Zoro's lap without breaking the kiss. He had fisted his hands into still damp hair and pressed their chests together not caring that he was soaking his shirt, only caring that Zoro was kissing him back.
After that Sanji had been lost in a blur of Zoro-based sensations as he'd slowly explored every inch of Zoro and touched every place that there was to touch. He'd been consumed by a haze of hormones and pheromones and kissing and sex and ohgodyes. The thing that had in retrospect surprised him was how compliant Zoro had been, he'd never thought before about what sex with Zoro would be like but if he had ever considered it he would have advanced the idea that it would be rough and hard with both of them fighting for dominance and it'd hurt like hell but it'd feel really damn good. He'd not have expected Zoro to coax that amount of ecstasy from him that he had done or for him to be so calm, almost languid in their lovemaking, because god that hadn't been a quick fuck that had been slow, precise and intimate lovemaking. Not that Zoro had been passive in the whole affair by any means, he'd done his fair share of exploring and touching too, but they'd not fought each other like they did with everything else.
They'd both fallen asleep exhausted afterwards, Sanji had no idea how long they'd been at it, but it'd felt like a blissful eternity. When they both awoke they'd wordlessly stumbled down half dressed into the men's bunkroom and fallen asleep in their separate hammocks.
Neither had spoken a word about it since. Not out of shame or anger, it simply hadn't been mentioned.
And Sanji had thought that was the end of it. It had been a perfect storm of events that had led to that night, as such it was unlikely to repeat again. That was part of the definition of the term after all. Sanji in fact thought the term was inaccurate as he watched Zoro slowly and definitively work through a series of sword stances on deck, his muscles moving as slowly and strongly as they had that night. Sanji thought that perhaps Zoro was more like a bug bite, it was the kind of thing that wiser people would have warned you against scratching because it'd only make it itch more. But of course he'd not listened because how the hell could something itch more than that? He hadn't considered that he could want Zoro more after that night than he'd wanted him in that moment, he'd thought that watching that water trail down his back and seeing him eating in his kitchen was the pinnacle of how much he could desire someone. After all, how could he possibly desire Zoro more than he had in that moment? He'd thought it was a perfect storm. As Sanji stood at the porthole in the kitchen, his cooking preparation forgotten as he watched Zoro through the window a thought occurred to him.
He'd been wrong.