A/N: Oops, I started yet another (albeit much shorter) thing because I really needed something a lot less serious to work on. Enjoy? :X


Dropping his pen onto the desk in front of him with an inaudible sigh, the hollow clack of plastic against wood echoed off of the plain, undecorated walls surrounding him. One form down, a million left to go. And nobody to split the load with, of course, as per usual.

But working alone wasn't the worst, Zoro figured; people didn't work to make friends anyway, right? They worked to work, simple as that. Even so, he seemed to be the only one in the whole damn office that felt that way.

His co-workers maintained an unparalleled level of ear-splitting rambunctiousness all day long. Every single day. Consistently. Had he ever the mind to remember by the time he went home at the end of the day, he would have dropped some money on a pair of ear plugs ages ago. But by the time he had the chance to hit up a store or something, he was always so exhausted that he couldn't manage to do a damn thing but sleep until the next day rolled around.

Rinse and repeat.

It wasn't a bad life, though. His job was reasonably fulfilling, paid well, and even let him blow off some steam sometimes. If they were fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough, depending on who you asked) to end up with a client that didn't pay their dues, that was.

"Hey, Zoro, help me settle a bet."

He raised an eyebrow at this; someone in the office actually knew his name? That was news to him; nobody had actually used it before as far as he could recall. Well, nobody other than Luffy, at least. That hyperactive guy, who'd recruited him to the office in the first place, was habitually friends with everybody, Zoro included; the others, however… not quite so much. Though, for the record, mostly from his own lack of trying.

But Luffy hardly counted at the moment, since that sultry falsetto coming from the hallway couldn't have possibly belonged to him.

He looked up to his door, only to find that it was ajar and hosting that one suspiciously well-dressed blond guy that worked a few rooms down from him; the one with the weird eyebrow and silky, meticulously styled hair. But his appearance was really all Zoro had to go on. Shit, what was his name? Kanji, or something like that? That sounded right to him, at least. He'd only ever heard the guy's name used a couple of times in meetings; they hadn't ever actually been introduced properly, had they? The man was completely and utterly a stranger to him.

Which was why, when he suddenly found his chair spinning to the side with the rather sly-looking blond leaning toward him, hands dexterously placed on either armrest, it took a few moments for Zoro's mind to properly process what was happening.

"Touch me."

So much for formulating a reasonable first impression. "...Sorry, what was that?" A mixture of smoke and spice assaulted his nose as the man settled over him, his weight tipping the chair ever so slightly backward. He was close; really fucking close.

"Are you stupid?" he sneered, tipping his head to the side with an incredulous expression like Zoro's response had been the most absurd thing he'd ever heard. "Don't make me repeat myself, just do it."

"...Can I ask why?" The other man's already frustrated inflection hinted that no, he really couldn't, but hell if Zoro wasn't going to get more specific information out of him anyway.

"I already told you; a bet. Shit, you're really kind of slow, aren't you?"

Rather than Zoro being slow, it was clearly the other man that was going way too fast, here. There were a ton of pertinent details missing from their conversation thus far; but, all things considered, he really didn't care. With an irritated sigh through his nose, he swatted the man's arms out of his way and spun back to his work. "Fuck you, I'm nothing of the sort; you're just crazy. Go back to work, already."

"I finished mine for the day."

"Well, I haven't." For fuck's sake, he really, really didn't have time for this.

"Hm… Alright then, how about this," the stranger started, tugging Zoro's chair back in his direction with a surprisingly respectable amount of force. A small smile tugged at his lips, but the bubbling frustration in his one visible eye was palpable. "If you play along, I'll take half of your document queue."

If nothing else, that had certainly managed to pull Zoro's interest. "Where, exactly, did you want me to touch you to help with this… 'bet'?" He asked, peering back up at the man with a "go on" sort of look.

"Just-... I don't know, my face or something. Doesn't matter. I don't really have all day, come on."

Why he actually complied, he had no fucking idea. Maybe he'd just been taken off-guard by the authoritative tone that he wasn't used to hearing; or perhaps it was just because he didn't feel like being bothered any longer. He was falling for some sort of bait, whatever it was, but it was so beyond bizarre that it almost deserved his conceding, in a way. And it wasn't like the simple action was costing him anything, right?

Against his better judgment, his fingers traced over ivory skin, too perplexed and weirdly reluctant to touch completely. He was a fair bit softer than Zoro had been expecting, though he sure as hell wouldn't admit it. To have done so would imply that he'd bothered to give it any thought, and he absolutely wouldn't confess to anything of the sort.

With barely any force at all, he dragged his nails across the man's cheek, then his jawline, only stopping with a jolt to pull his hand back when the blond, for some reason, actually closed his eyes and leaned into his touch.

But his eyes had snapped open almost as soon as they'd fluttered shut, gaze locking onto Zoro's with a half-flustered, half-mortified expression.

Well, that was fucking weird.

There was a slight tint on his cheek; either delicate from the pressure he'd placed on it or something else, he couldn't be sure.

"Ah, I didn't think-..." There was a long pause, and his lips pulled into a tight line. "Well, I won. So that's enough, then. Later."

Won what, exactly? And who was supposed to be the loser? Releasing his grip on the chair with enough vigor to make it wobble slightly, the blond snatched a portion of the paper stack from his desk. He left as quickly as he'd appeared, leaving Zoro behind to try to make sense of the experience all on his own.

Working alone wasn't the worst, but working with a bunch of nutcases certainly might've been.

xxx

Another day, another six or so hours spent in a room so unreasonably frigid that its temperature rivaled the tundra. With eyes glossed over from boredom, Zoro glanced at the time on his laptop. Two hours left.

When the office's relaxing, albeit short silence was interrupted by a loud clatter and a thump from somewhere down the hallway towards the break room, Zoro didn't think much of it. There was an exasperated-sounding exchange, muffled only partially by the walls, but he couldn't make out any of the words. Not that he ever could. Not that it mattered.

He could preemptively feel the headache set in the moment he heard his doorknob rattle.

"Hey, Zoro, let me borrow your shirt."

"No. What happened to yours?" he asked dully, eyes unwavering from the paper on his desk. After a few days of putting up with the blond's abrupt wandering in to ask outlandish questions, he'd opted not to invest too much of his attention in whatever inane bullshit he was spouting anymore.

"What do you think? Luffy happened," he grumbled in a lower tone. The door closed behind him with a soft click. Zoro made a mental note to check if the lock on it was broken later. "I can't wear this, it's soaked. Help me out, already."

"That's not my problem, is it?"

Like some sort of petulant child, he let out a throaty groan and slumped against the door with a rattled thud. "Oh come on, you usually wear an undershirt beneath yours, don't you? So it's fine, isn't it?"

Zoro had half a mind to ask how on earth he could have possibly known that, but he was fairly certain he didn't want to know. Finally raising his gaze from his work with a frustrated sigh, his breath caught in his throat.

Water on a white shirt; of course it fucking had to have been that. The fabric was just barely transparent enough in it's dampened state to reveal the tint of his skin underneath; the image it offered was more or less a carbon copy of something straight out of one of Zoro's half-assed, middle-of-the-night fantasies, for fuck's sake. How the hell he'd managed to get so messy due only to "Luffy" was completely beyond him. There had to have been three or four separate spills on his torso alone; his pants, thankfully black and thusly still presentable, seemed to have fallen victim on top of that as well.

The situation seemed almost planned out, and Zoro wouldn't have put it past him. However, the telling glower on his face hinted that he was probably mistaken about that. Maybe. But the man was right, he very well couldn't walk around like that all day, that much was obvious.

"...Fine," Zoro grumbled, standing from his chair. Dragging the knot of his tie down to pull it from under his collar, he tried with all his might to ignore the subtly prying eyes as he removed his shirt. The blond was watching him; he sure as hell tried to make it seem like he wasn't, but the effort was wasted on someone as perceptive as Zoro. "You know you're going to have to ditch yours if you want to use mine, right?"

"A-ah, yeah, I suppose that's true," he coughed, averting his eyes to the floor with a crooked frown. He made short work of the slippery buttons, and shrugged the fabric off of his shoulders with an inward grimace. "Shit, your room is cold. Why is it so cold?"

His arrant bitching, as it were, fell on deaf ears. Gods, the blond's build was impeccable. Even Zoro, in all his usual apathy, couldn't help but stare; every damn muscle was sculpted to perfection. The other man didn't really seem to him like the type to work out much, but apparently he'd been dead wrong in that assumption; those abs were self-evident.

And that slender curve of his waist into his hip bones… fucking hell.

The man's visible eyebrow raised and he opened his mouth to speak, but Zoro shoved the clothing into his hands before he had the chance to taunt him for staring or say anything else undoubtedly offensive.

The blond simply snorted at the gesture, putting it on without skipping a beat. The sleeve length may have been right, but the rest of the measurements proved to be a bit much for him, if only just a bit. He left the top few buttons undone to hide the fact that the neck was too loose, but it didn't really help his case all that much. Although Zoro would never admit it, the sight was sort of cute.

The man's eyes slipped shut for a second, shoulders tensing ever so slightly. Was he inhaling Zoro's scent? As if on cue, his expression twisted into something that almost could have been described as a pout, and his nose twitched imperceptibly. Yeah, there was no way he was imagining that.

"...This fabric is awful," he grumbled, rubbing it between his fingers with a look of disdain. "You wear this all day long? How do you stand it?"

"If you don't like it, give it back." How could any one person complain so damn much? You'd think it was in his job description, for how consistently ungrateful he was proving to be.

"...Hm. Maybe you're not as much of an asshole as everyone thinks, marimo," Zoro wasn't sure whether to be more irritated by the statement itself or his apparent new nickname. "I'll bring this back to you tomorrow. Thanks!"

Zoro's stomach churned a bit at that last part. Well… maybe, just maybe, that stupid blond wasn't as inconsiderate as he'd initially thought.

But, damn it, now he was even colder than before.


A/N: To be continued soonish. As always, let me know if you want more and I might just be able to slam it out faster. ;T