"Tu me manques," he whispers into the muffling crevices of his pillows. There are no nasty insults, no deriding nicknames, and no remnants of a previous fight. Just a few words with a tone of trying to mask the quivering in his chest, maybe even tinted with a few hints of breathlessness. They were words that that acted like the ocean with tides slowly creeping up the shore one millimeter a wave. The waters played the part of his heart, gathering the audacity to even lick at the sand.
"I miss you."
"Did you say something, cook?" he responded on the other end. His voice is as brusque as the land. Grounded and bastionary, his voice does not waver simply because he wills it not to. Rather, he cannot falter, for others live off the land. It would not do for the land to quake.
He does not understand the the romance language, and Sanji cannot say it in their common tongue. The words lose their flavors if they are altered too much, and Sanji knows all too much about flavor. They come from his native language, the one that speaks to his heart. The words have no meaning if he explains. Sometimes he wishes that Zoro could speak the language, or at least understand it. Their common tongue was too direct, too boorish for Sanji's taste.
"Nothing. I think I'm going to call it a night. See you tomorrow, marimo," he says with a sigh.
"Yeah, I guess." Sanji smiles. Zoro was never one for words. "I miss you, you know?" Zoro says with an audible smile. Sanji doesn't know whether he's embarrassed for himself or for Zoro.
"Shut up, you idiot. Go to bed, or something." Sanji doesn't wait for a reply before hanging up.
Maybe he didn't want Zoro to understand his language. Maybe he says all those ridiculous things because Zoro couldn't understand. It saves the two of them from facing whatever that was between them. Perhaps what Sanji really wishes for is a language for Zoro to call his own, so he can say everything he wants without Sanji understanding. It would be what Sanji likes, indirect and foreign.