Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you lovely readers!
Life was what you made it to be - that was firmly Sanji's belief, and one he had stuck by all his life - and as a man who had gone from having next to nothing as a child, to now being one of the most successful restaurant owners in the country through only diligence and hard work, he was pretty convinced he had the right to say it. He wasn't self-righteous, per say...more he knew where his assets lay, and wasn't afraid to acknowledge them. Determined, competitive, and ambitious by nature, and handsome, athletic and suave in character...popular among the ladies, and disliked immensely by most men...yep, sounded like Sanji.
Nevertheless, the chef couldn't care less - he had no intention of actually caring about the opinions of his jealous male counterparts, and generally had little to no interest in his fellow, non-female species...that was, until he developed a fixation.
It wasn't like all his previous infatuations (could he even call it that...?). Those were all centred around beautiful, feminine features, voluptuous curves, plunging V-line dresses and sparkling eyes...it was second nature for Sanji to drool over the women that walked past him every day - on his way to work, while he served his customers, and every waking minute in between. It was, to the cook, natural - an innate ability to love a woman unconditionally based on his morals and principles alone. It was such a major part of the man, that when Sanji actually realised that the person he was currently obsessing over was a GUY, he nearly had a panic attack.
He was a ladies man. He loved women. He adored them - the way they laughed, their mannerisms, their soft hair, their figures...his life revolved around complimenting them; making them feel loved. He lived for his precious ladies.
So just...
Why?
Time after time, the blond found himself pacing back and forth on his smoke breaks from cooking to just ask himself.
What the actual fuck?
He didn't even know the man for god's sake! Not really anyway. The cook saw the mosshead nearly every day, running for hours on end around the city, training his body in the park...hell, he'd even run into him once at the gym a few blocks away from his apartment!
Come to think of it, Sanji mused, that had been when it had all started. So what was it about the man? The green hair? The tan skin? That...attitude of sheer confidence and assuredness he gave off?
Letting his thoughts run for a moment, the cook let his mind drift to wonder what kind of person this fixation of his actually was. The guy sure had an intense vibe about him, and a deep scowl nearly always on his face, but Sanji somehow didn't feel like he was a hostile person, and in general he prided himself on being an accurate judge of character.
So...intense, definitely. Serious? Very likely. Mysterious? No questions there. Insanely fucking hot with his bloody tan skin and rippling muscles? Yep.
More often than not, this was roughly when Sanji would short-circuit his line of thought in favour of something more digestible.
Because he was most certainly not gay. Nope.
That knowledge didn't stop him from watching though - watching and secretly waiting for the perfect moment to force the two of them to finally meet.
Snow crunching audibly beneath his feet, Sanji slowly dragged his limp, work-tired body along the street. It was already pitch-black now, the sky dark except for a few dimly glimmering stars, but the Christmas lights strung up on either side of the road gave the cook the light he needed to make his way home.
A slight gust of wind swept down the street, ruffling the loose locks of hair hanging in front of his face. Shivering involuntarily, Sanji hurriedly drew his coat closer around him, and buried his chin further into his blue scarf.
"Shitty, fucking cold..." He muttered, cursing the weather out for his tiredness after a long and stressful December day at work. It was the Christmas period at the restaurant, and it sure as hell showed in the number of customers ordering traditional Christmas meals (which, as his luck would have it, were often the most complicated and difficult to make.) The chef loved his job to pieces, but damn was it hard sometimes.
Carrying on briskly down the pavement, he briefly considered breaking into a jog to get home that much quicker. He lived about a twenty minute walk away...just as he thought this, he felt the tell tale slide of his shoe on ice, and nearly went crashing down to the floor. After a fair bit of cursing and flailing, he managed to regain his balance, and instead carried on down the street more carefully, having resigned himself to the slow, cold, tiresome trek to his apartment.
Rounding a corner at the end of the brightly lit street, and moving further and further away from the shops emitting christmas bells and songs on the main street, an idea struck him, and he crossed the road into the park, planning to take a shortcut through the eerie, dead playground just so he could be home that much quicker.
"Fuuuuck," Sanji cursed, his pace picking up as another gust of icy wind tore through the layers of his coat. A violent chill racked through his limbs, so strong that his body convulsed slightly under the impact. God, where was he, the Arctic?
Oh, how he longed for a warm bath, a mug of hot cocoa..so warm, comforting, sweet...
With his mind swirling with these mesmerising thoughts, and his conscious brain blocking out the cold with images with illusory warmth, Sanji was already power walking through the empty playground within the park, when he saw him.
There, lit only by the golden, dim shine of a street lamp, was the man he'd spent so much time thinking about, hands about to grip the metal monkey bars in front of him.
The cook was so stunned by what he was seeing, he stopped abruptly, his legs no longer moving. He just stared, peering at the man standing a little way off.
Was he so hung up on the guy that he was imagining things?
Catching the sight a green hair under the edges of a black beanie made the cook sure - it was the marimo alright, he'd recognise that colour hair anywhere. But that wasn't all he recognised. He'd spent enough time watching the man working out around the city, that that god-like physique was a dead giveaway.
Sanji watched as the man hung momentarily from the monkey bars, before smoothly pulling his body upwards, above the equipment, and into a handstand, strong fingers gripping the metal tightly.
The blond just watched - how could he not? So much was fucked up with this situation...first of all, it was nearly one o'clock in the morning. Second of all, it was freezing. And that just made the third ridiculous thing even worse - the marimo was shirtless.
The cook watched the tan body as it contracted, muscles rigidly holding the clearly heavy man in a dead straight vertical line above the bars...slowly, Sanji moved closer, careful not to let the frost under his feet crunch too loudly. He didn't even stop to think that what he was doing was fucking creepy - stalking a man in the middle of the night, watching him intently as he worked out...it was just so easy, the mosshead's face not even looking anywhere near him as he showed his back to the approaching chef.
Moving forward further, Sanji could almost, almost touch that body...
Even as close as he was now, the cook couldn't discern even a single tremble of a muscle under the obvious strain of so much weight...not even when those muscles shifted, tensing even tighter as one arm was lifted up. Even with his entire body weight on one arm, the man held himself completely still. For what felt like the longest time, the two remained motionless and silent - one deep in concentration, the other silently watching and observing the body in front of him, the rigid arms, the tightly muscled back, the firm round ass...
It was as he felt his mouth dry up that the cook came back to his senses at last, his arm extended with fingers about to brush softly across a perfect back.
What the fuck am I doing?! Shit, fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck!
Turning around abruptly, Sanji whirled around, away from the sight in front of him, mind intent upon leaving immediately. He was a perv and a officially fucking weirdo. Fabulous. But it was okay! All he had to do was leave, and this man-crush-thing of his would never even have to know he was there! He'd just go home now and-
The cook had actually seen the black ice as it glinted momentarily in the lamplight, but he just wasn't quick enough. For Sanji, it all happened in slow motion: that feeling as the sole of his shoe slid smoothly across the ground, the way his arms flailed around desperately trying to right himself before he was noticed, and the sharp shout that left his lips as he realised it was too late, and that this was going to fucking hurt.
Falling backwards sharply, the cook's upper body struck the ground hard, and a loud thud reverberated through the night.
For a moment, as the silence and stillness of the surrounding park returned to him, Sanji was hopeful that by some fucking miracle, this idiot had dismissed the sound of Sanji's head cracking on the floor as nothing of importance. In fact, that was all that the cook cared about in that second - the pain in his skull and the wet feeling of blood running down his neck were insignificant.
Had the mosshead heard him? Had he noticed? Please say...
"Oh shit! Oi! Oi, are you ok?!"
Noooooo
Sanji hadn't even realised that his eyes were still screwed shut, his body still lying cold and where he fell on the icy floor, but as he lay there, the reality of his situation hit him, and he opened his eyes a crack in curiosity to face the true horror of this humiliating reality.
His life was officially over. He had been outed as a stalker, a perv, a creep...and a gay one to boot. Ok, he was done, there was no fucking way he was facing the muscle head now. He'd just lie there and play dead. Sorted!
"Oi! Hey, blondie, you awake or what?"
"..."
"Shit, you're fucking bleeding!"
Nope, not reacting. Not. Even. Listening.
"Hey! Wake up! Oh, fuck..."
Hearing scuffling beside him, the cook held his breath, trying to calm his raging heartbeat. Adrenaline, embarrassment, and for some odd reason, arousal at the sound of that voice were coursing through him, and he was terrified the guy was gonna hear his heart beating from wherever the fuck the marimo was now. The cook listened carefully as the hurried shuffling moved away from him.
Just as planned, he thought, that's it greeny, just go away and don't come back...
Though normally clever and intuitive, Sanji's assumption was that once the guy realised that the cook was 'dead', he'd flee. After all, that was what strangers were like - they didn't give a fuck about others in trouble, and were only concerned that they didn't have hassle in their lives. So naturally, this man would do the logical thing, and leg it away from the scene for Sanji's poor body to be found in the morning. And that would be dandy. Just perfect. So all the cook had to do was wait...
Suddenly, heavy footsteps came thundering back towards him, and the cook heard the man's clothes scrape across the tarmac as he sunk down at Sanji's side heavily.
What the hell?! His panic rising, the cook's heart rate sky-rocketed as heard the heavy, worried breathing next to his face.
Oh no no no no! Holding his breath, desperate for this to all be just a bad dream, the cook's mind was still desperately scrambling to find a way out of this mess when-
"Holy shit, you're not breathing!"
Before the cook even had a chance to react, two strong hands gripped his face - one tilted his head back, the other grabbed his chin, and a pair of warm, wet lips locked over his.
A.N/ This is just something that popped into my head and I HAD to write it before the flow left me and...I just have no idea...so, if you guys have any feedback, I'd love to hear it! Happy holidays everyone!