Zoro didn't know how to talk. Zoro didn't know how to communicate. And, at the moment, he was perfectly aware of it. On the few occasions he had traced this path which constituted of endless hours, locked in the flying metal thing also known as an airplane, it was always the same. Silent farewells at airports, thousands of wet, homesick and frustrating miles.
"I love you."
Always the same words spoken so easily by the romantic cook and always the damn feeling that he should have said more than he said, that he couldn't express himself verbally as he should, as the other deserved. He wanted to say it. Damn, sometimes he felt he wanted to scream it. Why then the trouble?
Well, Zoro had always been a man of few words. It could even be said that he spoke more in grunts and "tscs" than in Japanese. He was monosyllabic, practically speaking through some sort of caveman dialect. Everything he said was always direct and honest, lazy, sparing words and saliva. In his native language, of course. In English, the language he used to communicate with Sanji, the proportion of words spoken was even less because of the lack of security in his vocabulary. Nor was he one of the most articulate people in the world to talk about what he felt, even a little shy the convinced brute was. And an embarrassed brute is a silent brute. The recipe for disaster culminated in the absurd will to challenge and butt heads with the cook at all times possible.
Zoro held his phone in his hand. His eyes fixed on the screen and the last stupid insults he had exchanged with Sanji the day before just before he took off from France when the blond showed a minimum of concern for him and his trip back home. In reality, he blushed like an idiot, but he chose to respond as if he did not care at all. Zoro couldn't even communicate through texting. He couldn't finish a conversation. He did not know how not to try to make up one more topic, another word, another stupid petname for Sanji. He looked for reasons to annoy him, insulted him for nothing, became dramatic. He found ways to irritate him; because he knew he would answer. He saw Sanji in everything he read, in every image on his timeline. And he saved everything to send at the right moments. He saved a picture of a 3-Michelin-star restaurant kitchen, saved a picture of a puppy dressed as a chef, saved a beautiful image of the sea. But he ended up sending only those with the intention to mock him and are guarantee of irritation. He saved a nice photo of a dish from some fancy restaurant and this could even had been the start of a friendly conversation. But he sent it with the caption "hey, do this for me" and Sanji told him to go to hell. The funny thing is that Zoro sent it because he really wanted it really, just thinking about eating his food was mouth-watering. But he couldn't communicate properly. Or maybe Sanji was the one who couldn't, that dirty mouth shit cook. And he calls him a shit cook, but he'd love for him to cook for him. He pokes fun with his eyebrows, but thinks his face beautiful. He curses his perversion, but it's always jealousy. But he didn't know how to communicate.
He didn't know how not to try to have the last word. And he never really wanted it to be the last, actually. He wanted Sanji to respond, and he would respond again, and again, and again. Zoro never wanted to finish talking to him. He filled his world. He made him mad, he annoyed him like hell. He warmed and comforted him. Looking at him was like looking into a kaleidoscope, with every possible and imaginable emotion. His cheeks were not red. Not at all. His face was perfectly normal, there was absolutely nothing flushed about them. His heart couldn't be quieter. It's not like he made Zoro feel things. That's stupid.
The plane flew over an immensity of blue, blue so ironically the color a certain someone's eyes. Looking into Sanji's eyes was one of Zoro's favorite things. Not because they were beautiful or something, of course. But because... communicating without words was necessary in the dynamics of the two. Look into each other's eyes, essential. Like the windows of the soul they are, they could read and convey more than any elaborate phrase, than any capricious letter, than a verse with the richest rhymes. Looking deep in those blue irises, sometimes huge, sometimes slender giving way to a large dilated pupil, would be infinitely more helpful than the best sentence Zoro could babble in his broken English.
If one thought about it, it wasn't hard to see they often communicated by other means. Their mouths didn't even need to utter words, wet kisses said plenty. Especially when they were salted with tears that none of the two liked to admit were shed. The surprisingly apparent marks on Zoro's dark skin cried out, "Mine." The permission for such marks to be left would read: "Yours". Sanji's touches using hands so important to touch another body. His long fingers ran down all the length of bronze skin until they were stopped by Zoro's hand, which carried them to his mouth and placed chaste kisses on each fingertip yellowed by cigarettes. The hands that held the pale fingers were rude, coarse, but they tried their best to gently touch the paler skin.
Zoro shivered as he plunged into his thoughts about the blond. He was sure he wasn't at all cold, but he still felt his waist for his jacket which was always there, until he remembered that it actually wasn't with him. Sanji couldn't shut up about his bad taste for fashion even for one single day, but this apparently did not stop the blond from stealing his favorite jacket when Zoro was there. And the thing looked horrible on him, because the jacket wasn't even close to being good looking in the first place. Not that Zoro cared, of course, the job of a bloody coat was to warm one's body, so that was the only requirement this piece of clothing should fill, dammnit. But on Sanji... it looked so strange. It was a little big for him, especially on his arms and back where he was far less muscular than Zoro, which was odd to see on someone who practically only wore tailored suits, millimetrically adjusted to his slender body. The jacket was a shade of mossy, because apparently Zoro had some kind of green obsession, and the color didn't fit the cook's style, didn't match with anything in the dégradé palette of the chef's wardrobe. Zoro did not understand Sanji's interest in wearing his jacket at all. Until he got a blue sweater from him the day he left, which Sanji stuffed into his backpack with the excuse that he could feel cold on the flight. Idiot. First, it was not even cold. Second, he would stop all of his arms blood flux by using something with such thin sleeves. But he accepted anyway. And now sitting on the plane holding the blue thing, he understood. Because he loved that goddamn sweater. Just like him with his jacket, that was one of Sanji's favorite pieces, one of which he often wore. And just looking at it made him almost start to smile silly and spoil his always impeccably indifferent features. And it had his scent. Not the smell of any of the thousands of perfumes that that vain cook owned. The smell of his body. No, for the thousandth time, Zoro was not blushing. He was a grown man, stoic and serious, of course he would not get a hot flushed cute face because of the smell of a low rank stupid pervert. His low rank stupid pervert. And now Zoro wanted to be able to sneak under the airplane's seat and never leave.
When the plane stopped on the ground, he looked at the cell phone's screen, looking for the signal bars. When they seemed to come back to life he opened the texting app.
"Cook." He typed and sent it quickly. Trying to hide from his cell phone, as if Sanji could see his cheeks flushed from France.
"Hmm?"
"You know, right?" Yeah, that would be harder than he thought.
"What?"
"That."
"Develop it, algae." It's not possible that he didn't understand, it's not as if Zoro had been vague or anything...
"That thing."
"..."
"You don't need me telling you the whole time, right?..." Zoro typed nervously. This was ridiculous.
"That you love me?"
"Hm" Zoro agreed reluctantly. He was about to turn off his cell phone with shame.
"lol"
Okay, now Zoro was sure the chef knew how red he was. That asshole.
"Sanji."
"No, I don't, idiot."
"Good."
"Besides, you already say it every day."
Zoro frowned. The cook could only had finally gone insane. He was sure that he hadn't said those awful words of embarrassment ever, let alone every goddamn day.
He just didn't know that Sanji was not talking about words.