Author: kajamiku
Fandom: One Piece
Disclaimer: One Piece is not mine so I won't say that it is
Pairing: Zoro x Sanji
Summary/Notes: It's a great wonder how many things people do in that kitchen. So where did the butter go?
Where Did The Butter Go?
Vivi had broken her arm. She'd been leaning on the wooden rail near the bow – just as he had said not to, he reminded himself – and it had given way. She'd fallen and almost drowned because the only person out there had been Chopper.
In his usual panicked manner, Chopper had tizzied himself out of real coherency and dragged the others out to help rescue her. Now Luffy and Chopper were playing cards on the deck, Nami was in her room with the injured girl, talking to her and working on her map, and he, The Great Captain Usopp, had been left with the job of repairing the bow railing.
Half way through his work, Usopp came to a particularly difficult part, where the repairs needed to be done on the outside of the ship, and the hammer he was using was far too heavy to allow him to lean over to do it. He had another hammer but, predictably, he hadn't brought it out with him. Sighing and feeling particularly put-upon, he climbed slowly to his feet and stretched out his arms. He was a little stiff from crouching as he nailed the lower planks into place and, really, the walk would be a good break.
Luffy and Chopper's game stopped him for a while, and he tried in vain to batter the real rules of blackjack into Luffy's head before he moved on. At the top of the stairs down to Nami's room he had heard Vivi's sounds of pain as Nami tended to the many cuts and bruises she'd gained and decided against visiting her. Finally, he found himself at the kitchen door. He reached out his hand to open it, wondering distantly where he had left his tools after he used them last.
He stopped however, fingertips on the door handle, when he heard a voice yell, "Butter!" Usopp froze in place at the tone. It sounded like Sanji was in a bad mood… He pressed his ear to the door to see whether the cook was bad enough that he wouldn't be allowed inside. He needed his other hammer, but if Sanji was pissed… it might be better to wait.
"Butter? You want to use butter for lube?" Came Sanji's voice again, and Usopp wondered who it was he was yelling at. The answer came quickly enough and the inventor squatted down outside the door in shock.
"Well, do you want to be the one to go down and get the jar?" The unmistakable deep voice of Zoro echoed out to the eavesdropper and Usopp tried to get his brain to think clean thoughts and imagine something sensible in the kitchen that would require 'lube'. Inside the room there was a pregnant pause, and then a sigh of surrender. Usopp assumed that it would be butter or nothing and tried to convince himself that what would come next would be something that would make him feel stupid for having even considered the thoughts hovering in his brain. Then –
"Fuck! What'd you do that for?" Zoro's cry of pain made Usopp press his ear against the door even harder to hear the answer. "Putting your cigarette out on my ass… Look, look that's gonna leave a mark."
"Well then, it's a good job it's in a place only I'll see it." Sanji sounded smug. Usopp tried not to imagine what was going on in there, but still couldn't bring himself to move.
"Bastard." Little more than a growl, it made the hairs on the back Usopp's neck stand on end. Why couldn't he move? Now would be a good time to move! If he stayed any longer he risked a loss of sanity, hair and quite possibly a painful bruise on his head after he passed out. Plus a loss of fingers if he was caught…
"You love it. And look; here's the proof." Usopp's soul was long gone. "Hey, shit-head your hands are fucking cold!" Sanji snarled and there was a dull thump from the room beyond the eavesdropper's hiding place.
"If you don't shut up and take it like a man I'm gonna use a fucking carrot instead of my cock and you can live with the nickname 'shitty rabbit' for the rest of your life!" It was now quite obvious what was going on in the kitchen and, vaguely, Usopp wondered how often they did this and how sanitary it was. They ate in there and everything. He hoped they weren't doing it on the table…
Then came a barrage of sounds, human and the creaking of wood being put under strain, that made Usopp's ears bleed from the obscenity of it. Moans and groans and grunts and panting leaked from a room, which Usopp decided wasn't nearly sound-proofed enough, that served to disturb the poor spying pirate far beyond anything even faintly resembling sanity. He shot to his feet, stood up straight and walked mechanically away from the kitchen door, his eyes watering and his teeth gritted.
He bumped into Nami going in that direction and, when she asked whether he knew where Sanji was, immediately grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away to the bow, to where he definitely wouldn't be able to hear his ship-mates going at it like rabbits, to tell her precisely why it would be best not to disturb them.
Though perhaps he would be a little less crude than they had been, this needed to be explained before something terrible happened.
The hammer could wait until later.