Authors note: Ok, this chapter is shit. I've tried to write it several times, but it just ends up being this messed up thing with OOCness and what not. So I'm apologizing in advance for anyone who's still reading this. I might re-write it some time, as I want to do with all of the other chapters I've written, but we'll see what happens. It is also pretty short and not very eventful, but it has to be that way, for the story to move on in the direction I want it to.
Also, I'm sooooo sorry for keeping you waiting this long for this chapter, I know I promised I wouldn't let you wait forever for chapters anymore, but my life keeps screwing me over, so bare with me ok. I'll try posting the next chap sometime this spring and then maybe some more during the summer.
#6
"Hey man, sorry I'm late"
He really had tried to get to the roof on time, but as he was on his way out Kaku had called him out wanting to talk about what was going on. He had said it was nothing, which of course Kaku hadn't believed, so he had ended up saying that he just had a lot of shit on his mind at the moment, which was the truth. Kaku hadn't been exactly pleased with that answer either, but probably knew enough of what was going on in the east right now to let it be, so instead of arguing further, he had told Zoro that if he ever needed to talk he knew where to find him.
Kaku, as Zoro had found out was actually one of his teachers who knew enough of what was going on out on the streets to let a lot of the bad shit he got himself into at school just slide. He did however regularly talk to Zoro when he noticed something was off with him. Today was no exception. So Zoro had nodded and said that if things got shittier he would come by then, and had so run off to meet Sanji, a bit behind schedule, which was why he had ran the whole way to the roof and ended up five minutes late. As he was running all the way he had hoped that Sanji was still there, and had almost sighed with relief when he found him sitting by the wall with a cigarette in his mouth looking totally carefree. He almost envied the guy for being able to look so chilled out, when he was having a fucking hard time with everything.
Sanji cocked his head in his direction "Yo, yourself. I'm impressed; you actually managed to get here, almost on time" he jeered.
"Oy! I was gonna be here on time hadn't it been for a damned teacher wanting a word before I left class." He had to play this one of, he had a reputation to uphold here, and saying he had a chat with Kaku didn't sound right, so again he went into his bad-boy personality, it was like he had multiple-personalities he could actually control.
"So you were up to no good again," Sanji took a good inhale from his death stick, and blew the smoke out slowly, "well I couldn't expect anything else really."
Was the bastard trying to insult him? Seriously, he didn't get into that much trouble, did he? "No, I didn't get into any trouble, again. Why the fuck does everybody think that I've always done something bad when I talk to a teacher?"
"Well sorry to inform you grass-head, but you do know that you have a major reputation for being this schools biggest troublemaker right?"
"Excuse me? What the fuck did you just call me curly?!"
"Geez, are you that slow, you fucking moss ball, and the fuck you calling me curly for?"
"HaHa very funny, and yeah, curly, cause you know that eyebrow of yours, shouldn't that be studied in a laboratory or something?" So long trying to be nice, if the idiot wanted a fight he'd fucking get one.
"Says the guy who dyes his hair green, why the fuck do you do that anyway? It looks fucking ridiculous!"
"I don't dye it! It's natural you moron!"
They were standing nose to nose now; how that had happened Zoro didn't know. One minute they were staying a few feet apart, well Sanji had been sitting against the wall, and the next they were like this. He could even feel the cigarette smoke surrounding them. Sanji's eyes had trailed to his hair, disbelieving what Zoro just said no doubt.
As they both realised how close they were staying they took a step back, re-establishing some sense of personal space between themselves again.
"Yeah sure that's not dyed" The sarcasm was literally dripping from his lips. "Whatever, let's do this shit, I've got work in an hour." And just like that both forgot about their argument, the thought of the project felt like being pierced by a shard of ice, and definitely set a damper on the heated moment.
When he'd cooled down he shot a look over in Sanji's direction, "Fine whatever, have you given a thought of what roles we're gonna take?" He had tried thinking of it, but he hadn't come up with a good solution. Maybe the sibling thing, but he had to check with blondie first.
"Well I've tried thinking of it, but neither seems like a good option. The closest I've come is the sibling thing, but I'm an only child, so I don't know how siblings act. How about you, got a better idea?"
"I was thinking the sibling thing too, but I'm an only child as well, so I wouldn't know anything about that either. But what I do know is that I'm not up for being spouses, or parent and child for that matter. Mainly because I can't picture us being lovely-dovely towards each other and the parent and child thing just sounds ludicrous in my mind."
"So siblings it is then, you know any siblings we can mimic?" Sanji was tapping his fingers against his temple, probably in deep thought trying to think of someone they could mimic or use as a reference point.
"Well Ace and Luffy are the only ones I know personally, but they're um, weird."
"HAHA, I know right, there's no way in hell I could try and mimic Luffy in a million years!"
"Yeah, wait you know Luffy?"
"Um yeah, he keeps coming to me for food during lunch, he's a sweet kid and all, but he can be a bit over enthusiastic at times."
"So that's why he'll suddenly disappear during lunch, no wonder he never tells us where he's going."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Ah, well Luffy might live in Alubarna, but he knows a lot about what's going down on the sides, and you being from the north and us being mostly from the east, let's just say that he knows when to keep his mouth shut."
So the blond knew Luffy, it didn't really come as a surprise to him; Luffy had this incredible knack of becoming friends with all sorts of weird people, either that or being hated by them. He could become any ones ally and not even realize it himself. It was a rare gift in Grand Line, not many could become friends with people from all sides of the city.
Sanji nodded, "Yeah, he acts like a seven year old, but with some things it's like he's wise beyond his years or something." Then he shook his head in resignation, "Anyway, I'm not going to mimic them, they're crazy!"
Zoro nodded and agreed to that, and then he sat down with his back against the wall, thinking about what they were going to do now. Neither had any knowledge of how it was to be siblings, except for what they had observed of Ace and Luffy's behaviour towards each other, and that would only end in disaster. He did feel like his friends were sort of like his family, his nakama, but he didn't know if that qualified as being siblings or not. He rubbed his temple and groaned. Why should this be so fucking hard? Fucking bitch ass project.
Sanji who had sat down too, at a safe distance from Zoro, was deep in his own thoughts as well, not knowing what was safe to say and not. He light up another cigarette and kept thinking about the project, could it even be done without anyone getting hurt in the process? And by anyone he was thinking of himself, he was the one who had the most to lose in all of this, wasn't he?
"I have no fucking clue of how we're gonna do this, but one thing is certain about this project, we have to spend time together to manage the hour achievement, and I guess we take it from there." Sanji mused aloud, not really aware he was speaking.
Zoro looked at him, "You have a point there" then back at the sky. "We'll meet up when we can, and see what happens after that." Spending time with Sanji could become a serious problem he knew that. If anyone found out about it he'd be in deep shit, not that he already was, Sanji was from the North for fucks sake. But just the possibility of anyone, even Luffy finding out about this, Ace would find out and then probably behead him or something. He could be putting his entire life on the line with this fucking project, was it even worth the risk? Fuck, he didn't know anymore, but there wasn't much else to do now, he would have to just follow through and keep his head down, and if it came to it, take the consequences later.
Sanji flinched when Zoro had answered his seemingly quiet musings to himself, not really expecting to be heard at all. But he agreed with himself, it was the best plan they had now. They didn't know each other, and as much as Sanji hoped it would remain like that, he knew he didn't have a choice but to eventually get to know the other guy. What he knew was going to be hard, especially over time, was not letting Zoro see how much pain he was constantly in. Which as of now was his biggest fear, because if people knew he were in pain, there would be a shit load of questions, questions he wasn't ready to answer.
They sat in silence for a while after that, it wasn't awkward or anything, it was actually quite comfortable. Neither wanting to break the silence and it was mostly because both were so lost in their own thoughts. Zoro for his sake was trying hard not to let old memories stir up again, as they had been doing all day since he got the project. For Sanji it became a battle against his emotions not to have a break down again, thinking of what was going to happen later when he got home.
After a while Zoro started thinking about what he had observed of the blond earlier, there were a lot of questions he wanted to ask him, but he'd just met the guy, and this wasn't something you could just ask on a whim, he knew that. What really annoyed him though was that he wanted to know at all, and it wasn't any of his business what the guy was up to. "Hey..." There was however some things wanted answers to.
Sanji who had been so lost in his thoughts about how he was going to survive this night, had barely heard him, but registered that he was being spoken to, "Hmm, you say anything?"
"Um yeah, since we're doing this project and all you know, we should probably, um... try to get to know each other a bit more, you know trivial stuff that won't come back and bite us later or something..." He trailed of, he should have thought this through some more, fuck he'd never been good with articulating sentences and stuff, now he just sounded like an idiot.
Sanji was sure he had visibly paled when Zoro said get to know each other, he was sure that was the moment where the guy would start asking questions he didn't know he could answer, but as he trailed of he noticed that Zoro was just as unsure about all of this as he was. It wouldn't hurt telling him trivial things right, as long as they laid down some ground rules first, would it? "Oh, Yeah... I guess that's true, as long as we're both clear on dropping a subject if it can't be talked about or whatever."
"Fine by me, this is Grand Line after all, so shall we have five questions?"
"Five questions?" Sanji laughed, why didn't that surprise him? "Um, sure why not, you can start and we'll take turns."
Zoro hadn't expected Sanji to laugh at that, it didn't offend him which he found strange, but he guessed it was because he found it to be a more pleasant sound than he had imagined, and for some reason he realized that this wasn't something the blond did often.
Still a bit stunned by the sudden show of emotion from Sanji, Zoro tried to gather his thoughts in order to figure out a question, "Um ok, so what job do you have after school?" Zoro didn't know why he wanted to know that, but it was the first thing he could think of that was probably safe.
"I work as a chef at a restaurant," Sanji was pleasantly surprised by the question, he had expected something else, and on the thought of work he was suddenly reminded that his shift started at 4, he was going to be in deep trouble if he were late "Shit what time is it?" He frantically searched for his pocket watch, when he managed to get it out of his pocket it read 3:40pm. "Shit, Shit, Shit Zeff is gonna kill me."
Zoro was also quick to act as he realized he was late too, "Fuck, Igaram is going to kill me." How had he managed to lose track of time like this? This wasn't like him at all.
They got their stuff together and started to hurry down to the school yard, Zoro was going to the detention hall and Sanji to the parking lot, which was in the same direction thankfully. As they walked quickly down the stairs Sanji turned his head towards Zoro, "So when are we meeting up again?"
Zoro barely caught what was being said; his mind was racing trying to figure out a plausible lie for being late, but failing miserably. "Um I'll meet you on the roof tomorrow at lunch or something, we can try and piece together a better plan then."
Sanji nodded "Sound good, cya then."
"Yeah, cya"
Zoro tried to ignore the fact that Sanji seemed to be in a lot of pain as they went their separate ways, as he had more pressing matters to focus on right now, like his fucking detention, and how to explain why he was late. It didn't even cross his mind to bolt out of there and skip it totally, he'd given a promise for fucks sake, and he hated to break them, no matter how trivial or annoying they seemed. He also had to message Koshiro that he would be late for the session with the kids, damn another promise broken there.
So taking out his phone and texted, /got detention, gonna be home a bit late/ while he half walked, half ran to the detention hall wondering who else was there today.