Just a short chapter this time - I have 4-5k words of the next chapter on the go, but I still need to write the middle bit so I figured I'd post the first couple scenes just to post /something/!
Sanji raises a lit cigarette to his mouth and inhales; takes aim and blows the smoke towards the horizon, burning with a golden-orange early morning light. A chill winter breeze blows the smoke away at once, turning it quickly from a cloud into misty tendrils into nothing at all.
Sanji, sitting in a wooden outdoor chair padded with a stuffed cushion, taps ash into the tray on the chair arm and looks, frowning, at Zoro.
He says, "I'm not buying a gun." He hopes Zoro will let him leave it at that, but there's a persistent look in the man's eyes and the way he leans, arms crossed, on the wrought iron fence running around his uncle's balcony tells Sanji that he has an idea in his head and he's not letting go simply at Sanji's say-so.
"Maybe not a gun," Zoro shrugs, "just… something."
"Like what – a bloody great big sword?"
Zoro glares. "It might be smart for you to get yourself some kind of weapon."
"Maybe," Sanji says. "But how am I gonna pay for something like that? It's not like I can cook my debt away. I haven't been able to work as usual, either, with all that's been going on." And I've lost a lot of potential income because of it, he thinks angrily. Over the last week he'd received several messages from customers asking to set up meetings, and to each had replied with the same thing: "sorry, I've left the city, not sure when I'll be back. text again in a week or so."
He'd received only one reply to this message. Gin had sent him the sad face emoji and the words "everything O.K.?" which Sanji had stared at with a lump in his throat for a minute before answering with a thumbs up emoji and an assurance that yes, he was doing just fine. Gin had been one of his first regulars – a skinny, dark-eyed French-Arab man who, Sanji suspected, had a background with some rough people, but who always tipped high and who once, to Sanji's surprise, had left their hotel room after ordering Sanji to stay and wait and had returned twenty minutes later with four cartons of Chinese food.
Zoro is nodding, his gaze fixed, though unfocussed, on the ashtray at Sanji's elbow.
Finally he looks up and grins. "I think I know where we can go, and how we can pay."
And just like that, Sanji's agreed, somehow without strictly agreeing. Later that afternoon he enters the kitchen to the pathetic roaring of a boiling kettle in its last throes, finding Zoro at the bench pouring scalding hot water into a massive blue mug. Within moments the room becomes infused with the aroma of cinnamon and ginger; the smell of chai tea.
"I've set up a meeting with my contact. We'll leave at dusk," Zoro says.
Sanji raises one eyebrow. "Your contact?" he says, sarcasm edging into his voice. At once he imagines a balding man in a dirty white vest top, a chronic smoker with nicotine stained fingers and a dark back room piled high with illicit weapons. There'll be a cash exchange and a quick parting of ways. Just business, he thinks – and then, feeling a small surge of anger: Probably someone that damn swordsman met through his connections with Tatsuya.
Clearly annoyed at Sanji's tone, Zoro grimaces and leans against the stove, the steaming mug of tea cupped between his hands. "We'll have to leave the city to meet him," he says. "It's a 90 minute drive."
"But an hour and a half would take us to…"
Zoro nods. "Tokyo."
Sanji looks sideways at Zoro. "You do know the way, right?"
"For the last time, you damn dartboard: shut the hell up," Zoro growls. It's gotta be the sixth time at least that Sanji has asked him this since they pulled out of the driveway. Sanji's enjoying the steady reddening of Zoro's ears, the angry tick in his temple, the tensing in his jaw. Never mind that Zoro is driving – Sanji's having fun.
"Or what…" Sanji mutters.
"Or I'll eject you from the goddamn car."
"You'll need me to get us on track once you get us lost –"
"I said shut it!"
"Make me!"
Not one to back down from a challenge, Zoro does his best; taking one hand from the wheel he leans across Sanji and, without looking, grabs the handle and releases the catch on the passenger door. He ignores Sanji's protests and grabs his elbow, roughly shoving him towards the open door. The side of Sanji's head smacks the window as his side collides with the edge of the armrest, eliciting an unbidden gasp of pain from between his lips. The wind has yet to catch, though it won't be far off – the door shudders as chilly drafts of air batter at the frame, creeping into the car to swirl around Sanji's feet. Zoro pushes harder and the door gives. It swings open as they crest the hill and merge with the traffic on the freeway. Zoro is impossibly fast; all of this happens within seconds, and suddenly Sanji can see the hard tarmac rushing by beneath him, white lines passing in ordered frenzy for those few moments that Zoro leaves him hanging there, his only thought that he'd neglected to buckle his seatbelt and that Zoro is the only anchor between him and the moving car. Then the vice grip on his arm tightens further, almost unbearably, and Sanji finds himself once again upright. Blinking wind-tears from his eyes he slams the door, staring ahead at the mass of oblivious traffic for all of two seconds before he turns on Zoro.
Zoro shouts out – no words in particular, more of a general yell – as Sanji lunges across to him and claps a hand over his eye. Zoro grabs Sanji's wrist at once, tearing his hand away. He fixes him with his ineffectual golden Cyclops glare before turning his attention back to the road.
Maybe Zoro had planned on verbally ripping Sanji a new one, maybe not; either way he never gets a chance to tell him off because the tears in Sanji's eyes have turned from wind-tears to tears of mirth. Still holding the door handle, still feeling the outside air's chilly fingers on his head, quite sure that his hair is a windswept mess and quite unsure that Zoro's plan had always been to pull him back in, Sanji bursts into laughter. The car becomes full of it. It drowns out the tinny noise of the radio and the concerned and slightly agitated beeps still coming from behind them.
And when Sanji stops, gasping, his eyes streaming and his cheeks scarlet, he looks over at Zoro and sees that Zoro is laughing too, and that sets him off again.
Afterwards, struggling for a decent breath of air and feeling an unfamiliar ache in the back of his throat, Sanji leans back and angles his head at Zoro. Grinning, he says, "You're a madman."
"I would have done it, you know," Zoro says – the words are menacing but his tone is not, and he's smirking slightly as he checks the rear-view mirror and settles both hands on the wheel.
"That's the first time I've seen you laugh properly," Sanji says suddenly, the words getting past him before he's checked them at the door. Fervently wishing that he could send them back inside, Sanji averts his gaze from the swordsman and waits.
Zoro shifts uncomfortably in his seat, saying nothing.
Moving as though desperate, Zoro turns up the volume on the radio; it broadcasts static, disembodied voices intermittently interrupting the wash of white noise. Around the car the city is falling away, office buildings inching from view behind them as to the west the sun sets over a landscape of empty industrial lots, huge open spaces of concrete peppered with large machinery and shipping containers standing still and waiting for the dawn of the next working day. Sanji watches all of it go by without seeing it – instead he's hearing Zoro's dorky laugh, seeing his eye tightly closed (dangerous, as he's driving, but he'd kept the car on track, so no harm done), his head bent forward, a grin spreading over his face like a burst of autumn sunlight after a heavy rain. Damnit, Sanji thinks. Damnit, damnit, damnit!
Silence has clapped down on the car like a heavy lid, and the more and more Sanji tries to think of something to say, something to lift it away, the less and less the words will come to him. Beside him Zoro clears his throat and Sanji jumps, as if reacting to a gunshot.
"I'm not sorry, you know," Zoro says quietly, not looking at Sanji.
The knowledge of what the man means immediately alights in Sanji's head; without context or precedent, Sanji knows without a doubt what Zoro is referring to, and though that familiar anger flares up inside him he clamps it down and simply says, "Oh?" He stares straight ahead, willing his hands not to clench into fists.
He feels rather than sees Zoro glance at him. Sanji's own not-so-distant voice speaks within his memory: Eye on the road. Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitches up, but only for a second.
"No," Zoro says, strongly now. "I know it's caused you a world of trouble – and for that I guess I do feel some guilt – but for me… it worked out in my favour."
Angry words whip-crack through Sanji's head –
"Trouble" –
He guesses –
Some guilt –
As if –
He guesses? –
Selfish bastard –
And yet…
And yet Sanji feels like maybe he understands. Like maybe, amazingly, he gets where Zoro is coming from.
"I'm sort of… glad I met you," Zoro says. He soldiers through this admission with a suicidal carelessness.
"I know you're having a moment here," Sanji says, "and it's really sweet and all – but why this, why now? Weren't we done with this bullshit a week ago?"
"I thought so too," Zoro says, having the gall to shrug. He's acting like it's no big deal now! Stoic bastard, I'll –
"I've never liked Tatsuya," Zoro continues, "so I'm glad that this is where my treatment of you has led me. And I know I ruined your life, but –" But! Sanji screams inside. Fucking bastard! But! "– I was mostly alone before I met you. However you feel about me, and vice versa, when it comes down to it, I like having you around."
Sanji isn't sure what he'd been expecting the "but" to be, but it's not that. Like a dissipating morning mist his anger falls away, to be replaced by a deep clarity. He's just like me.
Zoro clears his throat again. "It's good… to have people. People you can trust."
Sanji thinks, Damn him. The thought is tired, without much conviction. "The last thing I needed," he says quietly, "was a way to relate to you. It sure as hell doesn't make any of this easier on me." He's the cause for all this – never forget that. He's not your friend.
"Like I said," Zoro says. "I'm not sorry."
"Yeah, I get it," Sanji says, pulling the mirror in front of him down and setting about fixing his hair. "You have no conscience. I'm just an excuse for you to kill your boss." He knows he's acting flippant; he also doesn't care.
"I don't need you for that," Zoro says, voice a sharp-edged sword. "I don't need you for any of this, except…"
"Except that I'm something to do now you're out of work," Sanji prompts. Zoro gives a stiff nod. "Most people pay me for my company," Sanji says, admitting defeat to his fringe and reaching into his jeans pocket to withdraw a plain black hair clip. He scrapes his fringe back and clips it to the top of his head, checking with the mirror for stray strands. Satisfied, Sanji puts the mirror back in place and turns to Zoro, who is watching the road as if he hadn't been watching Sanji through that whole process.
"I've decided that I don't care," Sanji says, matter-of-factly. "Use me for whatever. It's occurred to me that I've gone past the point of giving a shit about your motives – all I want is for Tatsuya to be gone so I can start getting my life back."
Zoro shoots him a quick sideways look. "Use you?" he says, frowning, the side of his nose twitching – a tic which Sanji chooses to interpret as disgust.
Sanji glares at Zoro, and turns to the window. Not what I meant, he thinks. Definitely not.
Silence descends over the car again, though it somehow lacks those tense undertones of before. It's as though with every conversation we have, Sanji thinks, there's a switch, a reaction – we fight, and ten minutes later we're admitting something else – another secret, another onslaught of feelings… Sanji sighs. The static on the radio flickers, voices coming through stronger and stronger until the car is filled with the chipper voice of a female weather reporter. The sun has almost fully set; only the tiniest stripe of orange now shines on the horizon, and Sanji calmly watches as it fades to nothing.
He remembers something Zoro had said earlier; something about Tatsuya. "Hey," he says quietly.
A simple "Hm?" is Zoro's answer.
"Why do you dislike Tatsuya?"
"Oh," Zoro says, as if he'd been expecting the subject to come up. Suddenly embarrassed, he lifts a hand from the wheel and scratches the back of his head. "He's impersonal," he says, "like one of those department store mannequins. It's difficult for me to follow a man I can't relate to; a man whose motives I can't immediately grasp, whose actions always feel… like they lack emotional conviction."
Zoro taps his fingers on the wheel as Sanji stares, slightly open-mouthed.
"That's not what I would have guessed, but okay," Sanji finally says. "I think I can see what you mean."
Zoro nods. "You've met him," he says. "Maybe you gauged it yourself, in some way."
"Our meeting was very brief," Sanji snorts, "and consisted mostly of him throwing me into pieces of furniture."
"That I saw," Zoro smirks. "Brutal."
"But I think… I did see something – or rather a lack of something."
"A lack of passion," Zoro offers, quietly.
"Yeah."
The silence that falls then is absolute, and it follows them all the way into Tokyo.