Zoro is asleep. It's a happy dreamless floaty kind of sleep. It's good, it's peaceful and it's also been taken from him. Someone is knocking at the door and it is still dark out. Robin never wakes him up this early, in fact Robin almost never wakes him up period. Over many years they have come to a long understanding about this.
"Someone had better be dying or someone WILL be." Zoro growls, pushing himself up and out of bed, stumbling upright and snatching up his swords.
He pulls his door open a little too forcefully and glares out. Sanji is there in a white shirt and white trousers.
"What." He grits out, his tone more threatening than questioning.
"Come on, get up." Sanji says brightly.
"NO." Zoro growls and slams the door shut.
The knocking resumes but Zoro ignores it and falls back down face first on his bed. Eventually he hears the door creak open and Sanji sneak in. A hand touches the middle of his back and Zoro freezes, memories of Sanji painting him flashing through his mind.
"Come on, I want to show you." Sanji wheedles.
Zoro turns his face and glares halfheartedly at Sanji.
"It is fucking early. When are you even up at this shit fucking hour? You don't even talk to me without coffee." Zoro groans and shuts his eyes, trying to shut out the brightness of Sanji's smile.
"I'm ALWAYS up at this shitfuck hour. Move your useless thick head and get up now or... or... or I'll fuck you." Sanji snarls at him.
Now that has Zoro awake.
"You'll what?" Zoro asks horsely, his head snapping up from the pillow and eyeballing Sanji in shock.
"I'll fuck you." Sanji repeats smugly. Zoro blinks at him slowly.
"I... I don't think that's right. What did you mean?" he says carefully.
"I'll... fuck you? Uh... I'll kick your ass." Sanji tries again. Zoro squeezes his eyes shut. It is far too early for this, but it's awake now so he may as well do what the man who just inadvertently offered to fuck him says.
"You'll fuck me up. That's what you meant." Zoro explains wearily. Dragging himself out of bed and throwing the nearest clean shirt on and then pulling black trousers on. Huh, he'd been talking to Sanji in just his underwear and didn't even notice. He must be tired.
"That's what I said." Sanji protests from behind him.
"No. It's really not." Zoro sighs and looks for his boots. Where did he kick them off and why can he never find them in the morning?
"What did I say?" the prince asks curiously. Zoro pauses, one hand on a newly found boot.
"Ask Usopp." He answers, feeling far too grumpy to be charitable. He hears Sanji huff and walk off, but apparently he hasn't gone far.
"Oi! Usopp! What does 'I'll fuck you' mean?" Sanji yells out of the door. Zoro hears the sound of liquid being sprayed across a large surface followed by some very enthusiastic choking and coughing.
Zoro makes his way to Sanji and leans against the wall next to him so that he can watch Sanji's face. Usopp finally answers in Baratian with a little coughing and Zoro gets to watch up close as Sanji's eyes widen and a look of mortification crosses his face. Sanji woke him up all kinds of awfully early so Zoro is more than happy to let himself grin as darkly as possible at Sanji's linguistic misfortune.
"I hate you." Sanji snarls and jams his elbow into Zoro's shoulder.
Any sane person would think that kind of statement would exempt Zoro from having to go along with Sanji to wherever and whatever he woke him up for, but apparently not. Sanji grabs Zoro by the arm and yanks him forward. The two of them proceed out of the wing of the palace that the four of them have been occupying in seclusion and into the palace proper. He's not so fond on this area, it's bigger and more formal, he doesn't know who he might run into and he tends to get lost in areas as big as this where the insides all look the same. His stomach tenses in a hot flutter when he remembers Sanji slightly drunkenly explaining the paintings and decorations to him, he'd like to do that again.
He's pretty confused when Sanji drags him into the bustling kitchen, but he's fine with that, it's early and he can happily eat breakfast. It's only when Sanji calls out a gruff 'hey old man' that Zoro snaps to attention and holy shit the King is cooking in the kitchen with the servants. Zoro's royalty isn't precious about servants and royalty, people choose the job and it pays well, they're viewed as people doing just another job. It's pretty different to how Zoro's seen everyone else in this country except for Sanji and Usopp treat servants though. In Baratie he's seen them be almost invisible, but perhaps that's just Sanji's stuck up relatives and guests. Even so, Zoro can't imagine his father in their kitchen with the cooks and servants actually working up a sweat to do this kind of work.
"You're late shitty eggplant." the King berates Sanji without even looking up. He's doing something complex looking with pastry. Zoro bristles a little at Sanji being insulted but he smooths himself down mentally quick enough, Sanji had told him that they were just like that.
"No shit, you've not gone so senile enough to forget how to tell time. I'm so proud." Sanji drawls back and Zoro fully relaxes again. It's interesting hearing Sanji be insulting in his own language.
"Besides, I decided to pick up a special delivery of dumbass today." Sanji adds, flicking Zoro a look over his shoulder.
"Oi! I heard that!" Zoro barks in Baratian and Sanji gives him a look that says that he's good and aware that he heard that and it was deliberate too. Zoro considers the merits and demerits of punching Sanji in the kidneys in front of his father. Probably not a good idea.
"If he's in here then he's going to work." the King says firmly, waving a hand in Zoro's direction. Sanji makes a dismissive grunt and then turns to Zoro, pulling him off slightly away to a freer part of the kitchen. Zoro wants to ask why on earth the King and Prince of the kingdom are down here but Zoro suddenly has a better question. He's never seen where the food that is in their room in the mornings comes from. He's never seen servants bring it in and now he's considering that it might be Sanji.
"Do you do this every day?" Zoro asks incredulously.
"Too much emphasis Zoro." Sanji says with a shake of his head as he pulls down bows and ingredients, measuring things out into the large steel bowl with barely a thought.
"What did I say?" Zoro groans, Sanji's stupid language and stupid tone of voice.
"Uh... do this for... all time?" Sanji translates roughly into Zoro's language with a pained frown.
"But yes, in the mornings I am being here." Sanji answers, Zoro doesn't bother to correct him.
"Okay, today you are going to make bread. It's all there, so go." Sanji says with a shooing motion with his hands and turns to walk off.
Zoro looks helplessly at the bowl and then to Sanji's retreating back.
"Sanji!" Zoro calls out, loud enough for Sanji to hear him but hopefully not loud enough for everyone to do so. It's not a total success though because a few people eyeball him. Sanji raises a stupid eyebrow but walks back towards Zoro. Zoro keeps himself in his native tongue because like hell does he want everyone in the kitchen hearing this.
"I've never... made bread before." He admits quietly. Sanji tilts his head at him like a curious bird and there's a small smile on his lips that Zoro doesn't know how to interpret. He's pretty sure that Sanji is internally laughing at him. Maybe. Either way Sanji comes back a little to help out.
"Just stick your hands in and..." Sanji trails off, making a mixing and kneading motion with his hands. Zoro looks warily down at the bowl and prepares to put his hands in and go for it but Sanji slaps him on the arm hard enough to sting.
"WASH." Sanji barks out at him and Zoro grumbles and trails him to the sink where he diligently scrubs his hands before returning to his bowl. Sanji is flitting about the kitchen doing other complex things and barking orders at the chefs in the kitchen, along with Zeff. The two of them seem to run the place and Zoro finds it endlessly fascinating to watch. Baratians are known for their culture of food and dining, along with their plentiful crops and fresh fish. The reliable and high quality food of the kingdom was half of the reason that he and Sanji got into their arranged marriage in the first place.
He's procrastinating on his own task though and so he returns to staring down at the bowl and its contents. He has no idea how this mess of water, flour and... whatever other junk Sanji put in here will be bread but he trusts the other man. Warily he puts his hands in the mixture and squishes it around between his fingers. The thing almost instantly becomes fused to his hands and refuses to get off. It's as if all of the liquid in it just stuck to his hands and even though he keeps jamming his hands at the dry flour on the bottom of the bowl it's done nothing to dissuade it from sticking to him. He eventually manages to peel enough of it off of his hands to get more flour in there but it's a stupidly long process and he's pretty sure that he's screwing it up.
"Your hands were wet when you put them in, right?" Sanji asks suddenly from behind Zoro, making him jump slightly.
"You said wash!" Zoro argues back defensively. Sanji doesn't argue and instead gets Zoro to rub his hands together as if they're cold and he's trying to warm them up. That peels most of the mixture off of him and Sanji adds more flour. Sanji elbows him to the side a little and quick as lightning he gets the dough out of the bowl and into a perfect round ball through some kind of magic.
"Wash your hands, then come back." Sanji orders him distractedly as he tosses the ball of dough from hand to hand and squishes it between his hands. Zoro does as he's told but with added water the dough stuck to his hands turns into adhesive slime which no amount of scrubbing seems to dislodge. Finally he gives up having done his best and returns to Sanji.
"Hands." Sanji says, barely glancing at him. Zoro holds them out thinking that Sanji's gonna inspect them, but instead the blonde dumps a handful of flour on them which quickly drops onto the work surface below.
"Shit, sorry." Zoro apologizes hastily. Sanji brought him down here to... well, he's not completely sure, but probably to introduce him to another part of his life. Instead of fitting in though Zoro is making a mess of it all and looking highly incompetent to boot.
"For what?" Sanji frowns at him and drops the ball of dough onto the flour. Oh, apparently Sanji meant to flour up Zoro and the table at once.
"Okay, like this." Sanji says and kneads and stretches and paws at the dough in a way that's almost a little... hot. His mind skitters into this idea of just how amazing that'd feel on his back after training and he wonders if he'll be able to convince Sanji to do that to him ever. Probably not any time soon, and it's not like he's going to make a fool of himself by asking, but it'd be really nice.
"Okay, you do that, I'll be back." Sanji says easily and wanders off to do something else. Zoro watches him for a moment as the long legged prince walks and weaves through his kitchen, dodging people and obstructions like a reed in the wind in a way that reminds him of how nimble Sanji is when they spar. Though his opinion on the prince has been slowly changing since they got married he's starting to seriously think that he misjudged the prissy looking man that he assumed him to be at first sight. Sanji is devastatingly competent at the things that he wants to be and he's a mix of confusingly earnest and flippant about things. He's never sure what to think of the man.
Even after the ball he still doesn't know what to make of Sanji. The man admitted that, like Zoro, he has no idea how he feels about the two of them except that it's better than when they first met. They'd kissed that night, really kissed. He'd cornered Sanji by his bedroom wall and they'd kissed until they were breathless. It was amazing but... he has no idea if it means anything or what it might mean. This isn't love but it might be like. Even if, in contradiction, he often doesn't like the man much because of how annoying he can be.
He scowls down at his bread dough and tries to imitate Sanji. He's not technically very skilled but he does have enough strength in his hands and arms to do a reasonably good job, or so he hopes. It's a really large amount of bread dough though and he has no idea what Sanji is going to get him to do with it. Zoro glances around the kitchen and sees one or two other people making bread only they're making way more and doing it with unbelievable precision. One of those people happens to be Sanji.
He watches the blonde yank a huge armful of dough out of what can be more accurately termed a tub than a bowl of any kind, it's even resting on the floor, and dump his armload on the steel counter. With some thin flat blade he deftly slices the thing apart in a way that makes Zoro wish that Sanji was a swordsman of some kind. The blonde takes the chunks of dough and then two handed makes two separate round balls of dough, kneading a pulling on each one with a hand each. Zoro's own hands still into idleness as he watches the muscles in Sanji's forearms flex and long strong fingers exercise their power. The blonde is rapidly dropping these balls of dough onto sheets of heavily floured fabric and scoring little crosses into the top of them as he does so, making Zoro's mind flash to the scored rolls that often accompany their breakfasts in the mornings. The man moves fluidly and seamlessly as if he's been doing this his whole life, as if he was born to do this, Zoro considers that both are probably true.
"You done staring or should I wait some more kid?" a voice barks at him, the words like Sanji's but lower and gruffer. Zoro jolts and sees Zeff, no, the King, standing way too close to him for comfort. How had he not noticed him coming over? Oh yeah, the attractive blonde being skilled in a way that makes Zoro's chest swell with some misplaced pride. After all, what does he have to be proud of? Sanji's skills and accomplishments are his own. But he knows why really. Sanji is his now and seeing just how strong and skilled he is makes Zoro glow with glee at getting to be with someone like that.
"Any time." the King says flatly and Zoro reddens at having lost his attention to the other man again.
"Sorry." Zoro answers quickly in Baratian.
"Move over." Zeff says, moving into Zoro's space. Zoro lets go of the bread dough and watches with interest as Zeff slices it up and braids it into a long knot together, drops it on a tray and dusts it lightly with flour before walking off with it towards the oven.
Zoro stands there awkwardly alone for a moment before his flour dusted husband comes to his side, beaming and happy from his work.
"Come on, put those stupid muscles of yours to use." Sanji smirks and leads him across the room to a medium sized machine bolted to a steel table at the corner of the room. On the other side of it is a huge cart on wheels which on closer inspection is filled with oranges and grapefruits.
"You," Sanji says, grabbing a knife off of a magnetic strip and handing it to him with a gesture to the machine. "will cut those up and make juice from them with that and putting it into those glass pitchers there. Ruin the knife, waste fruit or spill the juice and I will stab you."
Zoro thinks that Sanji isn't entirely serious, but only because it'd make a mess in his kitchen.
"I can handle a blade." He snaps back, whirling the knife effortlessly around his fingers. It's not too different from the daggers that he had when he was younger and the trick is the same. Sanji watches him with suspicious eyes but eventually kicks him in the knee.
"Get to it." Sanji orders and struts off.
Zoro pulls a face behind his back and gets to work with the citrus fruit. He was right in that it was oranges and grapefruits, but there a few weirdly red oranges in there and some lemons too. He gets about as many as he can on his area before turning his attention to the machine. It has two levers, one vertical and one horizontal. The vertical one seems to operate a hollow dome that goes down over what even Zoro can recognize as a juicer and the bottom horizontal one seems to turn the juicer thing. Weird. He's seen hand juicers at some point, not that he's ever used one, but he's never seen a whole contraption like this.
He positions a pitcher underneath the spout and crushes half an orange with the top lever, it doesn't go all the way down until Zoro puts more strength into it and then rotates it in place with the side to side lever. Curiously he lifts up the top lever again to remove the fruit and is pleased to see that he got everything out except for the rind of the fruit. The few seeds that were in there seem to have been caught by a large sieve under the juicer which has let most of the fruit bits through, clever. About ten oranges in he can see why Sanji was making a crack about his muscles as he can feel the pleasant burn of use in them. It's not a workout and it's not taxing but he can certainly understand that other less trained men might find this tiring. He checks out the rest of the cooks in the room and sees that all of them are pretty muscled in one way or another.
He continues his process of cutting fruit until his space is full, then mercilessly crushing the fruit into juice and repeating until all of the pitchers are full and all of the fruit is gone. With his job done he wanders over to Sanji who is busy piping some kind of yellowish thick cream like substance into pastries with great speed and precision. The blonde looks up at him in surprise.
"You're done already?" Sanji asks with raised eyebrows. Or eyebrow as Zoro can only see the one.
"Yes." Zoro responds smugly.
"You better not have fucked it up." Sanji says with a frown and gently rests his nozzled bag on the side.
"Sure you don't wanna say that in my language? You could be insulting me or seducing me." He teases in his own language, he doesn't need the rest of the room hearing him. He doesn't actually know if Sanji knows the word for seducing but from the furiously mortified look on Sanji's face the blonde has got the message clear enough. Before Zoro can react in the crowded space Sanji's foot comes out and snaps harshly into Zoro's hamstring, nearly dropping him to the ground as the nerve momentarily dies. He stops himself with a hand in Sanji's collar, nearly yanking him down with him and strangling him too.
"Augh, you swirly browed asshole!" He spits, rubbing his leg and swinging for Sanji's head with the other hand. The blonde ducks it easily, Zoro wasn't really trying to hit him after all.
"You dog faced moron!" Sanji snarls back in his face.
"You self important shit stain!" Zoro retorts, his nose pressing against Sanji's.
"I'm gonna ram my foot so far up your ass that-" Sanji starts threatening, but it cut off by a rapid fire laughing shout from one of the cooks in the room. Because of the noise, the speed and his divided attention he doesn't hear what the other man said at all. It also occurs to him that the two of them had dropped into Zoro's own language as they do whenever they argue, so the switch doesn't help either. Apparently Sanji got the message though because his cheeks have gone slightly pink and the way that he grits his teeth sours Zoro's mood. Great, more of Sanji not speaking his mind, that's just-
"Shut your fucking mouth or I'm gonna come over there and rip your tongue out of your head and burn it!" Sanji snarls back in pitch perfect, superbly pronounced words that you couldn't tell it's his second language and a few short months ago he didn't speak a word of it. Right now Zoro could swear up and down that Sanji was born in Zoro's city and not this place. He's perversely pleased at Sanji's filthy mouth.
"I have no idea what you just said." The cook laughs and Sanji flips him off instead and stomps over to the juicer.
Sanji peers into the pitchers, looks at the discarded fruit rinds and the machine and after some consideration turns to Zoro with a bright smile.
"You did a pretty good job." Sanji says in a somewhat surprised tone, making the whole thing a pretty backhanded compliment but Zoro will take it.
"Start serving in the east wing, you two start dishing up the cold meats, oi PATTY IF THAT BREAD IS BURNING I WILL SET YOU ON FIRE!" Zeff says and ends up yelling across the other side of the room. Cooks scatter and run across the kitchen, carrying out orders swiftly in staggered services for different areas across the castle.
"Stay here. Stay." Sanji orders him quietly and he picks up a large round serving tray, easily a meter in diameter and starts loading it up from station to station with all of the usual things that appear on their table. Sanji is inexplicably balancing the whole thing on one hand, no matter how heavy it seems to get as he loads it up with juice, bread, pastries, cooked meats, eggs and a thousand other different little things. Zoro watches as Sanji's bicep flexes to hold the weight of it like it's nothing at all, making Zoro's pulse quicken in interest.
With everything loaded up and Sanji across the room the man flicks him a glance and whistles to get his attention. He's lucky that Zoro is so impressed with the whole cooking thing and his one handed weight carrying that he doesn't mind being whistled for like a dog too much. Careful to not bump into any scurrying cooks or get underfoot of any of them he makes his way to Sanji's side as the two of them slide out of the room. The King calls something to them as they leave which in the cacophony of the kitchen and the still somewhat unfamiliar tongue is lost on Zoro. Sanji however jolts and goes a particular shade of pink that Zoro is starting to like. He doesn't say anything back but instead stuffs a cigarette between his teeth and lights it, taking in an angry puff and breathing it out through his nose like a particularly annoyed dragon.
When they return to their isolated wing of the palace they find that Robin is up in the kitchen, drinking coffee with two empty mugs at her side. As soon as she sees them she smiles and fills them up. Sanji whirls the large tray down off of his shoulder and hand onto the table top without spilling a drop. He sets everything out just so and then slides the tray off to the side between two cabinets in the kitchen. The blonde drops into his chair, snags a still warm pastry and eats it eagerly before draining half a mug of still scalding coffee in one go. He yawns, loud and jaw cracking, and Zoro realises why he'd assumed that this was Sanji as he first got up. No, this is Sanji tired after several hours of frantic activity first thing in the morning.
"So you helped out in the kitchen this morning Zoro." Robin says with a smile. It's not a question, it rarely is. Robin is in the business of knowing, not of asking.
"I don't think I helped much." Zoro answers with a downturn of his mouth. If he wasn't a prince and Sanji's husband he's pretty sure that he'd have been turfed out of the place for being in the way. That said, if Zeff wanted him gone he probably would have been made to leave. Zoro catches himself, he shouldn't be thinking of the king as Zeff, he's still the King. But... he's his father-in-law too so maybe it's okay.
"You helped." Sanji corrects him and slaps Zoro on the back of his hand with the bread knife. He pulls back a cloth from the braided loaf of bread that Sanji had him make and the King finished for him. Zoro hadn't seen him put it on the tray earlier, he didn't know that Sanji had brought it with him. Then again it seems that Sanji and his father are far more invested in their culture of food than Zoro had originally thought, so it's unlikely that Sanji would want to inflict Zoro's creation on anyone else. Zoro doesn't think that he did a terrible job, he didn't drop the dough on the floor and it still looked okay when the King put it into the oven, but he knows it'd be a disservice to the skill of all of those in the kitchen if he was to assume that his first time would produce results comparable to theirs.
Sanji begins to cut the bread just as Usopp walks into the room and settles himself at the table. Robin says something to Usopp in one of their shared languages that Zoro and Sanji don't speak. The translators are clearly talking about the two of them as if he and Sanji weren't sitting right there in front of them. He knows that they're talking about the breakfast from their hand gestures towards the food and it's got to be more than simply talking about what there is to eat or the sole fact that Zoro helped make it this morning. That could have been said in either his language or Sanji's. No, they're talking about something more and Zoro really wants to know what the hell is so important.
He feels Sanji's eyes on him and spies the blonde watching him through the curtain of his hair. Their talking had irritated Sanji before, enough so that Zoro had stepped in on the other man's behalf but it seems this time that Sanji is almost checking whether or not Zoro's bothered by it or not. Zoro sighs through his nose and shakes his head minutely. Sure it irritates him a little but he's known Robin for years and years, she's always been secretive in any language so this isn't really anything new to him. He distracts himself with coffee as Sanji slices up enough bread for everyone and then butters each slice in quick succession, the bread still warm enough to melt the butter after a few seconds.
Unusually for Sanji he doesn't offer everyone else food before himself and instead bites into his first slice of bread before anyone else does. He chews it thoughtfully, his eyes shut and for some stupid reason Zoro finds an uncomfortable prickle of nerves raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He doesn't care about what Sanji thinks of it, the blonde was the one who made him cook it in the first place, and he did all of the measuring and the King was the one who baked the thing. All Zoro did was mix the dough up amateurishly and roll the dough around. He doesn't care what Sanji thinks of it. He has nothing to prove. He doesn't. His thumb runs back and forth over a fading band of ink on his forearm without even looking at it, his digit smoothing soothingly over the pattern.
"It's good." Sanji says after a moment or two. He bites through a piece again and looks at the cross section of the cut whilst he continues chewing, his eyes running over whatever kind of information he finds in bread. Zoro pulls a plate of a few slices towards himself but he still can't take his eyes off of Sanji.
"A little heavy maybe... but if you've never kneaded bread before... I should show you again some time when it's not a rush. You did well." Sanji smiles at him brightly.
Zoro grits his teeth down hard on the bread in his mouth and stares down at his plate whilst Sanji offers the bread to Usopp and Robin, getting them to sit down and eat rather than just stare at the two of them. Zoro swallows thickly. He's fine with being attracted to Sanji because, really, who wouldn't be? And he's pleased that Sanji is so much more than he'd first assumed, he's a fighter, he's proud but he's humble and dedicated too. All of those things make him happy to be with the other man but now and then he says things like this and Zoro's heart aches and his breath catches. It's terrifying. He's fought in battles and not felt a shred of fear for himself, he's had people threaten him and fight him. He's won fights and he's lost but he's never felt so intensely out of his depth as he does with Sanji. Sometimes he doesn't even realise how deep in he is until afterwards. When Sanji painted him he'd felt almost meditative and surrounded, like Sanji was an ocean and he was just floating in it. But when he thinks back on it now it's legitimately unnerving just how effortlessly Sanji is able to affect him. He's not sure that he likes feeling this out of control but a part of him knows that it's only going to get more so, he can feel it.