Okay, let's start earning that M-rating a little, shall we?
As expected, carrying the few dozen boxes of sake upstairs had little effect on Zoro's endurance; cleaning up the mess they'd made, on the other hand, had been a whole different beast altogether.
Sanji had very obviously been trying his damnedest to make the process as difficult as he could, constantly spewing annoying crap like "Oi, those papers don't go there!", even though Zoro was sure they did, and "You're in my way, shithead!", even though there was more than enough room for them both to work just fine. Honestly, it was a damn miracle they hadn't instigated another brawl and ended up wrecking the other side of the room as well. But they'd managed to get the job done in record time, who even fucking knows how, and made it upstairs just in time for Shanks' meeting to begin.
Unlike Zoro's run-of-the-mill office (and most of the rest of the building too, to be fair,) the conference room was lavishly decorated. The wooden chairs around the table were cushioned thickly with red velvet; just like something out of a stereotypical mobster flick. His shoes sunk into the plush, pillowy carpet underneath his feet as he sat there; it made the one in his apartment feel like bare concrete in comparison. Even the walls were blanketed with framed art and fancy tapestries, lined from end to end with glass display boxes full of business-related treasures. In his opinion, it was so cliche it was almost tacky; but apparently the boss liked it that way. More power to him, Zoro figured, leaning back in his seat as he studied the ornate model ship that took up the entire center of the table.
On the other side of the replica vessel, Sanji sat with his elbows propping him up over the rosewood. The lollipop stick that he'd so generously shoved in Zoro's mouth before had since been replaced with an unlit cigarette, which was being equally as demolished between his grinding teeth as the former had been. To say he still looked miffed would be a drastic understatement.
The blond's attitude was at least somewhat warranted; he was out a few days' worth of pay because of their little scuffle, after all. Zoro had offered to try repackaging the salvageable sake for him to take home, to soften the blow to his wallet at the very least. But he'd refused, claiming that he "would never risk swallowing fucking glass shards like some sort of goddamn vagrant". Fine, then; Zoro would just take it home for himself. At least he tried, right? But his good intentions had apparently been lost on Sanji, if the way the man continued to stare him down without so much as a single blink were any indication.
"Alright, let's get down to business," Shanks started, pulling Zoro's attention away from the man across the table for a moment. The boss was skimming through some notes in a white folder, as he tilted his chair on its hind legs to prop his feet up on the table. "I'll try to get past the boring stuff as quickly as possible... First off, we should probably address the huge, gaping crater that magically appeared in the parking lot a few days ago. Luffy, do you have anything to say about that?"
Seated to Zoro's left, Luffy shifted awkwardly in his chair. "Me? Nah, I dunno what you're talking about..." Oh, yeah, that was totally believable.
"Is that so?" Shanks stifled a laugh and raised an eyebrow in the straw-hatted man's direction. "Because I could have sworn I had a witness that says otherwise."
"What?! No way!"
Zoro let out a quiet sigh through his nose, stealing a glance at the clock as he absentmindedly tried to calculate just how long this damn thing was going to take. Too long, he decided, bitterly shifting his line of sight away from the minute hand that refused to move.
When his gaze turned back forward, Sanji turned to face him as well. The expression he wore was still completely unreadable, and for once the ambiguity had nothing to do with the fact that half of his face was obscured behind that soft-looking sheet of gold; rather than that, it was just... strange. He seemed annoyed, but not as angry as before; focused, but not pleased in the slightest. He looked like he might've been trying to figure out how many different ways he could torture Zoro with the empty water glass sitting upside-down on the table next to his elbow. For the record, the answer was a resounding zero.
Zoro would have had dozens of comebacks to a look like that, in any other situation. But sitting there surrounded by their co-workers in the midst of a heated argument about the parking lot, he could do nothing but stare back at Sanji in silence.
"I'm telling you, it was aliens!" Usopp exclaimed, flailing energetically. "They zapped a crater into the ground right in front of our eyes!"
Zoro folded his arms over his chest, mirroring Sanji's look of displeasure. This conversation clearly had no place for either of them, and their little staring contest was very obviously going nowhere. There were a million things he wanted to ask, most of them snarky or insulting on one level or another, like "What crawled up your ass and died?" or "Do you realize how stupid you look when you frown like that?", but none of the questions that popped into his mind felt like enough. There was a bigger, more important query that really should be asked, he came to realize, watching the blond's head slowly shift into a questioning tilt in his direction. Checking to make sure he was still off the boss' radar, he grabbed his pen without a sound, carefully writing a message upside down in tiny print on the paper in front of him for Sanji to read. "What do you want from me?"
The other man's brow furrowed at this, lips parting almost imperceptibly as he perked up a bit, lifting his chin from his hands. He mouthed the words silently as he read them, another one of those admittedly interesting habits that Zoro had picked up on. He did it whenever he skimmed texts on his phone, or when he stole papers from Zoro's desk. More times than he could count, Zoro had caught the blond reading e-mails over his shoulder after being tipped off by the sound of lips parting in an inaudible whisper next to his ear. But even after getting caught in the act nearly half a dozen times in as many days, that habit of his was apparently impossible to break.
After reading the message, Sanji's chin sunk back into his propped-up hands, and he untensed. Whatever it was he was thinking about, it was a hefty deliberation; he pulled his lower lip between his teeth, eyes shifting up and down Zoro's form carefully, before he finally turned his gaze off to the side with a microscopic smirk.
Moments later, Zoro felt something touch his foot.
Not like a bug or something; as it shifted up from the tip of his shoe to rub his ankle, he noted it was soft. And warm. And wet. He sucked in a sharp breath; holy shit, it was Sanji, stripped of his shoe and clad only in a sock that was still a little damp with either sweat or spilled alcohol, he wasn't sure which. Zoro's foot reflexively twitched in the other man's direction, and Sanji's visible eyebrow raised in interest, eyes flickering across his face in search of something. He quickly pulled his foot back toward his chair, inwardly berating himself for having that kind of literal knee-jerk reaction rather than shock to whatever the hell was going on there.
"Roronoa, is there a problem?" Shanks chimed into their silent conversation with a hint of amusement, folding his arms back behind his head as he crossed his legs on top of the table. All eyes in the meeting room save for a certain singular one turned to him with a questioning look.
Yes. Yes, there definitely is. "No," he managed to choke out, frustratedly running a hand through his hair. "I'm good, go on."
The boss stared at Zoro for another awkward moment, likely making a mental note to bother him more later if he knew Shanks even slightly as well as he thought he did, before flashing him a bright smile and turning his attention back to Luffy and Usopp. "Okay then, sure thing. So, about that hole… The two of you are going to fill it tonight, right?"
"Whaaat, but that's so hard! Can't we just call a professional to do it?"
"Nope. You two need some discipline, and this is how you're gonna get it."
As the three of them continued their offhanded banter, Sanji's foot shifted up inside the hole of his pant leg, exploring the bare skin underneath as far as the stiff fabric would allow. His toes and the arch of his foot curled around the other's tense, unmoving leg, sliding slowly down, then back up again, as if to test the waters. Zoro gave an involuntary shudder, biting hard into the side of his hand as he shot a glare to the other side of the table. If that was supposed to be an answer to his question, he didn't understand it in the slightest; but if the shit cook picked up on his confusion, he didn't seem to care much, opting to continue driving him to the edge of madness with a few well-placed caresses rather than finding a more understandable way of explaining himself. Zoro stared him down with a pointedly wide-eyed look, to express the most potent "What the hell are you doing?!" message he could manage to send him without looking like a complete idiot to anyone else in the room.
The other man, slowly and casually as to not draw attention to himself, dragged the finger that had been resting curled around the contour of his cheek over to his lips, holding it there for a few moments before he shifted the hand back under his chin and returned to looking intently at the windows.
What, "be quiet"? Is that what he was trying to say?
"All right now, Zoro, don't take this the wrong way," the boss chuckled, looking him over skeptically with a hint of honest concern. "But you look like you're about to have an aneurysm. If you need to take some time off and head out early, I really wouldn't have a problem with filling you in on the meeting details later."
Zoro subtly stretched his suddenly rigid, tense shoulders and shook his head, sinking back from the table and lower into his chair to feign some semblance of nonchalance. "Er… There's no need, please continue."
The blond sitting on the other side of the table grinned smugly at this, eyes still glued to the windows with an unfocused gaze. Nobody else in the room seemed to notice the way his shoulders shook with a silent laugh, but Zoro sure as hell did. Where, exactly, was he going with this?
As if on cue, Sanji's foot slipped out from inside his pant leg, his toe tracing a small circle around Zoro's ankle before drifting up along the solid bone of his shin. The man sat perfectly unmoving from the waist up, regarding him with an audacious, half-lidded "Come on..." sort of look. He was waiting for something. For what? For him to break, to make a sound? Well, the curly-brows was shit out of luck; that wasn't going to happen.
After a moment Sanji seemed to pick up on his stubbornness, giving a practically inaudible huff as he shifted his attention back to their rambling boss. But as Zoro waited and waited for him to stop his incessant touching, assuming the strange challenge or whatever it was to be over, Sanji simply continued onward, circling his knee with a ghosting touch. He resisted the automatic urge to groan, neck straining to keep his head from rolling back against the top of his chair. Be quiet. All right; he could do that. Taking a deep breath in through his nose, then out through his mouth, he steeled himself and turned back to face the rest of the group as well.
But before he had the chance to really catch up to the conversation, he heard the door to the room creak open, and promptly felt the heat of the other's foot jerk away from his leg. He turned to inspect the source of the noise curiously, inwardly refusing to acknowledge the bit of irritation he felt bubble up inside him at the sudden loss of contact. The tiny space between the opening door and the wooden frame revealed a hesitant Chopper peeking through, holding something steamy in his tiny gloved hands, and Zoro's annoyance quickly deflated. "Excuse me, Mr. Shanks, I have that latte you wanted...!"
"Oh, Tony! Glad to hear it! Is it still warm?" The older man asked, twisting in his chair to face the door directly.
Chopper nodded, swiftly scrambling inside to set the cup in his hands on the table next to the boss. "Yes sir. It kept my hands really toasty the whole way here… But if it's not to your liking, though, I could put it in the microwave in the break room!"
Shanks took a tentative sip, and turned to him with one of his typical bright smiles. "Nah, it's perfect! Thanks, buddy, I really needed that. You did good!"
Chopper perked up immediately, squirming gleefully with his hands cupping his cheeks. Zoro was very quickly getting used to watching the kid's silly displays of excitement, but they were still as entertaining to watch as ever. "Really? I mean, being appreciated doesn't make me happy, bastard...!"
"Sure, got it," the boss gave a hearty laugh, ruffling the kid's hair. "If I recall correctly, you have a lecture in a few hours, right? Why don't you take the rest of the day off?"
"Is that really okay?" He blinked, pausing mid-sway to regard the boss with almost sparkling eyes.
"Yeah, it's no problem! There isn't much left to be done, anyway."
"Alright, well… I guess I'll go get some homework done, then. Have a nice afternoon, guys!"
"See ya later," Zoro spoke up, still in high-spirits over the kindness the kid had shown him earlier that day, nodding once with a half-smile in his direction. Tony looked surprised at first, checking over his shoulder as if he thought Zoro could have actually been talking to someone else, then gave him an extra wide, toothy grin and waved excitedly before running off.
"Bye, Chopper!" Luffy called after him, and Zoro could just barely make out a muffled "goodbye!" from the hallway beyond the door. He was admittedly a little envious that the kid got to leave early, but he definitely deserved it. Studying medicine was serious business, after all, and it was impressive enough that Chopper had time for them at all in the first place.
"Okay, where were we?" Shanks muttered mostly to himself, shifting a pile of papers in front of him around as he idly sipped at his drink. There was a long pause, and Zoro spared another glance to the clock on the wall. It'd been a whole ten minutes since the last time he looked. Great. Exhaustedly, he buried his face in his hands and tried without success to rub the nerves in his face back to life. He stayed like that a moment longer, inwardly debating whether or not to take a ten-second power nap behind the wall of fingers hiding him from sight, before the feeling of being watched caught his attention.
The curly-brows was once again very obviously watching him out of the corner of his eye, trying far too hard to look aloof. There was a hint of red tinting his cheeks that was impossible to miss, but could easily be blamed on the room's unreasonably humid temperature; however, Zoro knew better. He smirked incredulously, tilting his head to the side in a way that loosely translated as, "What, you're pissed that I stopped paying attention to you for five damn seconds?"
Apparently picking up on his silent message just fine this time, Sanji snorted under his breath, rolling his eyes and gripping the armrests of his chair to readjust himself. Zoro saw it coming a mile away when a foot pressed against him again; but as cotton-clad toes drifted mischievously from the back of his slightly bent knee up toward his inner thigh, he nearly spat all over the table in shock. The foot was drifting up so high, but somehow Sanji's leg was completely avoiding bumping the table and drawing attention to them. Did that man's flexibility know no bounds? He had half a mind to peer under there, if only to figure out how the fuck he was contorted in such a manner.
"Mm, let's see here… So, Accounting, how are we doing this month?"
"We're pretty far in the green, as expected," Nami replied as she thumbed through a folder of papers on the table, pulling out a single sheet to hand to the boss. "In that regard, we're fine, however..."
"...There's a problem?" Shanks finished for her, scratching the back of his head idly with a slight frown. There was a look in his eye that hinted that he'd figured as much already.
"Yeah, that's one way of putting it."
"Well, that sucks. What seems to be the issue?"
Zoro's eyes fluttered shut as the intruding foot rubbed in slow, sensual circles on the inseam of his pants. Much to his frustration, though somewhat relieving at the same time, it was quickly becoming impossible to pay attention to the meeting at hand. He could detect every minuscule movement, every single microscopic crack of the man's joints as his toes flexed and wiggled. The way he applied pressure, then took it away, then pressed forward again slightly lighter in subtle rhythm was downright diabolical.
The worst part was, it felt awesome.
Fuck it, he didn't care if the turn of events didn't contextually make any damn sense; he'd just call Sanji out on his shit later. Sinking down in his seat, he gave a challenging roll of his hips against the man's foot, pulling an inaudible gasp out of the man on the other side of the table as he jerked his foot away. His visible eye studied Zoro for a moment, apparently caught in between a state of disbelief and embarrassment. Had he really not expected him to go along with it? Not that Zoro could blame him, really; he was having a hard time believing it himself.
As if reading his mind a few moments delayed, Sanji scowled and dug his toes in between Zoro's thighs with renewed vigor, sporting the sort of face that practically screamed, "Challenge fucking accepted." A second foot made its way up to join the first, and Zoro nearly had to choke back a throaty moan as his chest wound up tightly in response.
"Ah, Croc should know the rules better than anyone... We'll have to let him know he's blacklisted until his fluffy pink friend decides he's willing to play nice." Shit, what were they talking about? He'd completely zoned out and missed something important, judging by the way Shanks' fingers were drumming so steadily on the tabletop.
"I agree," Sanji chimed in emphatically, subtly shooting Zoro a victorious smirk as he continued his ministrations. His upper body was as still as a marble statue, despite how thoroughly his foot was twisting and rubbing against him under the table. "We should make a visit, don't you think?"
"Mm, I suppose we should…" Shanks hummed, his head tilting back as he stared at the ceiling in thought.
It was almost impressive how nonchalant Sanji appeared from his viewpoint across the table. But Zoro was none too pleased with the prospect of being the only one of the two of them to be stuck on the receiving end in their irritatingly one-sided and completely spontaneous battle of sorts. Without bothering to follow suit and take his shoes off, he promptly ran his foot into where he assumed the man's ridiculously long legs met the rest of his body under the table; not enough to hurt, but enough to wipe the smug look right off of his stupid, chiseled face. Zoro could just barely make out a very Sanji-like growl from across the table, and took a quick glance around the room to see if anyone else had caught it; of course they hadn't. A brief look of shock melted into pained pleasure before Sanji steadied himself against the table and regained his calm and collected smile, leaning on his elbows to feign interest in the topic at hand. "Preferably, we should make that visit sooner than later... so we can catch them while the iron's still hot, if you catch my drift," he added, eyes flickering to Zoro's for a split second.
"Huh, you sure are in a good mood all of a sudden… I thought for sure you'd be sulking over your pay deduction all day," Shanks mused, his serious, contemplative expression softening in good humor. "But you're right, though. Go call Franky for me and send him over there, would you?"
Sanji's eyes hung on Zoro for a brief moment longer, seeming to dejectedly absorb their mutual exchange of foot-frottage for the short time it lasted before nodding and shifting his chair away from the table. The sudden absence of contact left an unpleasant chill in its wake, and for the first time ever, his departure actually left Zoro feeling a little uncomfortable. "Sure thing, boss," he replied in an airy tone, slipping out of his seat. "I'll get right on it."
Zoro watched on in a slight daze as he smoothly made his way to the other side of the table, side stepping a glass column and a stack of wooden chests, and sliding out the meeting room door with that typical spring in his step as he left. He didn't miss the subtle glance Sanji gave him over his shoulder as he shut the door behind himself, nor did he miss the heavy sigh coming from the hallway that the blond likely thought had been muted by the walls.
That was the last time Zoro so much as heard Sanji's voice for seven days.
To those unregistered reviewers who have been leaving such kind words despite the fact that I can't direct message them a response, allow me to reply here… *clears throat and yells from the top of a mountain* THAAANK YOUUUU!
And, as always, see ya next time!