Snack Time #2: Howl
Seeing the gym's nameplate from the corner of the street, Sanji gripped the straps of his backpack tighter. His bag was heavier now than usual, but what the hell. He would rather die before binging on shitty junk food again after workout, just because it was the closest takeaway thing available. And it didn't exactly kill him to cook a little more for dinner than usual...
The shitty green asshole was nowhere to be seen on the premises, as usual. However, when Sanji tried to turn the key in the lock of the main entrance, it didn't seem to yield. Weird. Had they changed the lock? Better not… Sanji didn't feel like paying for a broken door. Hmm, what if it was just stuck?
"Whoooa shit shit shit!"
After firmly pushing down the doorhandle, Sanji fell right inside through the door that had unexpectedly swung open, and banged against it as it collided with the inner wall loudly. Ow, his nose! Jesus fucking shit!
Sanji pushed himself back from the door, gave it a hard, strict stare, then kicked it shut. So. Already unlocked, huh? That could have only meant one thing, however impossible it seemed...
Following up on his suspicion, Sanji made his way towards the east wing of the gym, instead of his usually frequented training hall in the northern part. Yep, the lights were on in the kendo hall. With its windows and sliding doors shut, it looked like one giant paper lantern. Okay, it was actually kinda pretty. Not very practical, and really fucking out of place in the gym, but still pretty. And imagining that clot of horseshit Zoro, dressed like Cho-Cho-san, dancing and prancing about inside… That had just made his evening, Sanji decided, only mildly wheezing.
There already was a pair of worn-looking trainers on a mat near the door. Sanji slipped off his own dress shoes to put neatly beside them.
"Oi, Madame Marimo," Sanji unceremoniously slid the training hall's door open, "you in… here…?"
He quieted down, however, after spotting the figure sitting in front of the small shrine at the back of the hall. It had to be the shitty mosshead, all right. Nobody in their right mind would have ever worn a patch of grass as hair. He was sitting perfectly still, not even turning around to the sound of door opening, with his back straight and his legs crossed. Was he actually… meditating? Huh. Who would have thought the fartbrain was religious.
Slowly letting his bag slide onto the floor, Sanji approached the strangely solemn-looking Marimo. Zoro's arms were crossed as well, he could see, and a sword hilt was peeking out over his shoulder. Were training swords supposed to have such an ornate hilt, though...?
Sanji could get close enough to crouch directly to his left side. Either the moldbrain was so into it he didn't take note of his approach, or just sucked so badly at focusing that he had left himself wide open like the unbearable fucktard he was. Sanji could sneak all the way around him to face him! Such a fucking loser dipshit. Wait a sec, was that a belly warmer around his waist? Pfft, holy shit, modern day kendo grandpa... Okay, a closer look at the sword in the asshole's arms made it pretty clear that it was the real deal. He brought a real fucking katana? Jesus take a shit, what a shitty show-off…
"Ma~ri~mo~ Wakey-wakey," Sanji called, still squatting in front of the green asshole.
He even waved his palm, an inch away from his nose, but the shitty bastard just didn't as much as flutter his eyelid. Not a flinch, not a burp, nothing. Was that germ-ridden morsel of gooseshit ignoring him now? That was how it was, huh?!
"Oi!" Sanji stood and prodded the shitstain's shoulder with his toe. "I said, wake up! Hey!" This fucking pot of rancid algae salad…!
Nope, the next shove wasn't really a shove anymore. Served the shitty asshole right! Funnily enough, Zoro didn't move to dodge; he simply toppled over to the left, and only seemed to want to move when his sword loudly clattered against the tatami.
"Ngh… Huh…?" he groaned, blinking his eyes open. Then he yawned. He fucking yawned! Had the fuckface fallen asleep while meditating?! What the ever loving shit?! "Ah," the green bastard glanced up at him, infuriatingly oblivious, "it's you."
"'It's you,' my ass! Who did you expect, your fairy fartmother?! Why the hell were you asleep in that position, you sorry excuse of a swordsman?! And here I thought you were actually doing something moderately respectable for once! Man, was I naive!"
"Shut up, will you? So noisy..." Zoro sat upright and scratched his head, grabbing Wado Ichimonji and yawning again. The swirly bastard was still making no sense at all. Same old, same old. "I was sleeping."
"You don't say, moss-for-brains! I could figure that out on my own! The question is why you were sleeping in a meditating pose with a shitty fucking sword as a damn teddy bear!" Sanji's head was already boiling over and they haven't even started yet. Today's sparring would be a tough one again. Perfect.
"This is a shinto shrine, smartass. You're not supposed to meditate here. Not that it matters. I don't believe in any god."
"Who cares what god a ball of moss doesn't pray to?!" Wow, this guy really had a knack for getting unnecessarily pissed-off. Even when he wasn't drunk.
"I got off work two hours ago and didn't have enough time to go home to sleep. So I took a nap here," Zoro explained with a sigh. "There. Satisfied?"
"Two hours?" Sanji raised his ridiculously curly eyebrow. That wasn't the point, damn idiot… "You live that far?"
"Uh, at the residence park district. Why?"
"That's, like, fifteen minutes from here," Sanji made a face that said he was looking down on him more than was required to look at someone sitting on the floor. "So it is true," and his face just kept turning into an even uglier, cunning grimace. "You have as much sense of direction as the hearty clump of moss that you are! That's hilarious," and he roared with laughter, that damn bastard! "Little lost Marimo boy, afraid to go home…!"
"Like hell!" Zoro sprang to his feet, tucking Wado into his haramaki. "I don't get lost!"
"Oooh, look at meee! I don't get looost, I only take shortcuts~" the shitty cook mocked and flailed his arms around like a damn idiot.
"Shut the hell up! So what if I wanted to be the one waiting for you this time?!"
Oh. Okay, that came out kind of strange...
"What the-?" Not even that blabbermouth Sanji could produce a snappy remark. Damn him, of all the times he could have lost his snark… "Whuh…?" So was the idiot's face flushing red because he was getting royally pissed again, or was he…?
"Uh…" Hold on, was Zoro getting embarrassed now?! Ugh, that damn…! "'Cause why should you always get to choose the training grounds? Shitty unfair cook," he finally grumbled.
Sanji's expression didn't change, though. The idiot was just standing there, staring at him, with that wide-eyed, flustered expression that didn't really help Zoro decide if he should prepare for a furious roundhouse kick or… Or another kind of assault, and… Shit, he found his gaze drift to the side, what the heck…
And then...
"Haha…!"
Sanji was sporting a wry smile, but otherwise stayed rigidly still. Right before he snorted loudly and burst out laughing, clutching his stomach with both hands. That little…!
"Hahahaha! This is priceless!" the bastard wiped actual tears from his eyes. "Not only do you get lost all the fucking time, you're butthurt about always being late?! Of fucking course I'm going to choose the room if you don't show your face on time!" And in just a second, he switched over to looking ready to explode on the spot! "You pathetic glob of green snot! What do you expect me to do? Stand around and wait for you, like some sort of fanatic schoolgirl in a mini skirt with a lovey-dovey lunchbox?!"
"I don't wanna hear this coming from you, you damn pervert!"
"What did you just call me, you single-layered roll of shitpaper?! It's not like I'm the one prancing around without my shirt all the fucking time!" Who was the shitty Marimo to call Sanji a pervert? That motherfucking mossball was checking out his gym shorts and thought he didn't notice, Sanji just knew it! That disgusting son of a dried barfstain!
"What was that? You take off yours in here all the time, too! And you have no right to call me a perv after what you did at the party in the Zombie Night!"
"Oh, you mean where I beat you to bloody shit?" Sanji smirked.
The shitty swordsman was back to looking like an overripe tomato, along with the green leaves atop his head. Perfect for pureeing to a bloody red pulp. With a sack of rocks. And a toilet seat. And some kicks, for good measure.
"That fight wasn't fair, and you now that!"
"Well duh! I was fucking wasted," Sanji agreed. "But I kicked your sorry ass all the same, didn't I?" he boasted.
Well, to be perfectly honest, only the most horrific details came back to him about the party, right after Robin-chwan's talent show. And there was picture evidence that he was wearing… glitter and… Nonono, Sanji wouldn't fucking go there! That never happened!
So, anyway, since Sanji remembered less than squat about the party, he was only 99% sure he had won. What else could have happened, from how battered the stupid green bastard had looked the day after? And because Sanji could have kicked his ass with just his little toe, of fucking course. Why else would the stinkin' Marimo be fuming out of his ears about it otherwise? The asshole was such a sore loser…
"You cheated!"
"Whaaat?!" How fucking dare he…?!
"You heard me! First you drank yourself prom-queen wasted-" What the shit was he talking about? "- and then you went ahead to wreck shit in the toilets, threw a damn hissy fit when I tried to stop you, and then you-!"
"Blah blah fucking blah, you rotten pile of kelp! Nobody wants to hear your shitty lame excuses for having your ass handed to you!" And Sanji definitely had enough of the asshole reminding him of that fucking party… "We came here to fight, yeah? So guess what, mossbrain! Your stinkin' ass's trip around the world is gonna happen again! Really fucking soon!"
"Yeah? And there you are, standing around and wasting your spit all over the place! You're so full of crap!"
"You shitty Marimo head…!"
"Come at me already," Zoro's hand flew to his sword hilt, "you fucking bastard!"
Zoro flicked Wado Ichimonji's hilt loose from its scabbard with his thumb. Flinching the slightest bit, Sanji's gaze noticeably dropped to the flash of steel. The prissy cook's right foot instinctively slid back on the floor, even if the bastard stubbornly only allowed it an inch. The look of a man that had never faced a katana before. Zoro let a grin slip onto his face. This should be good.
"Ha! Bet you've never even used that thing before. You shitty show-off," Sanji was back to his stupid little sneer soon, however.
"And what do I win if I cut you to ribbons?"
"Yeeeah no, fat chance," that haughty little fuck wrinkled his nose and flapped his hand about. Angry Bird. He was a fucking Angry Bird. "As if your lame ass could even land a hit at me with that! You abominable grass sucker!" Look at that stupid idiot. Zoro had to admit, the shitty cook was pretty amusing when angry.
"Huh. Admit it, you're scared shitless," Zoro taunted. Maybe if he pissed the damn sissy off enough, he might flap his arms some more and take flight... "But don't shit in your pants, stupid cook. I'm gonna use the back of the blade, just for you."
"That's fucking it, you shitty fartbreath swordsman! I'm gonna kick the living shit out of you, make you eat it and make you thank me for the fucking meal!"
Sanji charged forward so hard that the wooden floor was burning beneath his feet. Lightning quick, he whipped his leg in the air, wanting nothing more than to kick that asshole Marimo's shitty grinning head to the curb. He was so fucking dead…!
Zoro saw the kick coming, that fucking shithead! Sanji's leg swung through air with nothing to break his speed, and he spun right over the green fuckface's head, to land wobbly and with his back to the shitty bastard. Another steely click threatened from behind, and Sanji could barely twist away from the slash. Strands of loose hair fell into his eyes, and he couldn't see shit, but he felt it in his bones that he had about one second to bend back more, touch the ground with his fingers and flip back from the next sword strike flashing his way.
The floor burned under his bare feet again as he slid back, then stopped in a crouch. Sanji reached up to get his bangs out of his eyes. And when he held his hand away, whole locks of hair fluttered down between his fingers, and there was suddenly much more light invading his vision…
"You crazy fucking shithead!" No way the back of a sword could have been that sharp, that fucking cheat!
"Hah, so you have two dartboards on your face! And here I thought you couldn't look more like an idiot if you tried!"
And Sanji could see the mutant green gorilla uncomfortably clearly in front of him, slashing that shitty piece of metal like he owned the fucking place, laughing his stinkin' ass off! Oh, what a delight it would be to see the shithead battered into tiny pieces and made into a fucking shashlik…!
"Well, nobody in their right mind would ever look at your shitty mug, even if you had a target drawn on it!" Sanji stood. "And methinks you don't need that ugly broccoli-head of yours!"
After another one of his idiotic speeches, Sanji jumped in for another attack. One erratic kick flew towards Zoro's head after the other. He was surprised the stupid bastard hadn't likened his scalp to a damn football yet. And what else really surprised him was how Sanji could keep going on being royally pissed all the time without ever getting tired of being a lanky, flailing, screaming knot of compressed pure rage. That didn't mean Zoro wouldn't stop trying to exhaust him. He jumped and twisted away from the blond's next high kick, crouched down onto the floor to deliver a sweeping cut to his shin, and followed with his eyes where the cook's spinning jump would let him land. Then it was time for pursuit. Quickly, Zoro turned around to deliver his next blow aimed at Sanji's upper body. The blade caught the skin of the bastard's arm in a thin red streak before he could whirl away.
Then Sanji came sliding back in to try and knock Wado out of his hand with a low kick. Heh, as if it was that easy. Zoro simply swapped the hilt over into his left hand, swinging down towards the floor, but Sanji's leg was still coming down on his right hand, and the impact deterred his strike to crush a dent into the floor instead. Shit.
"So this is what you call a fair fight?!" the damn cook screeched, huffing as he leapt away from a sideway slash. "I'm not even wearing any shitty shoes!"
"How's that unfair? I'm not wearing any, either!" Zoro reasoned, jumping after him.
"Fuck you, you cum guzzling batshit bastard!"
If that rotten hairy asshole insisted so fucking much, fine! Two could play that shitty game!
Sanji flipped into a handstand from the next blade-strike towards his upper body. Fuck if the smelly bastard would make him use his arms again. Did he really think Sanji wouldn't fucking notice?!
All there was left from that position was to gain momentum with swinging both his legs up, then roll back all the way to the kendo hall's entrance. The look on the moldhead's face when he realized what he was aiming for was priceless. Sanji showed him his teeth in the nastiest grin he could muster, slipping into his shoes.
"Ohho..." Zoro swished his katana to the side. The growing smirk on his ugly visage was making Sanji's stomach churn and tighten. And his blood boil… "So we're going all out, eh?"
Instead of charging, though, the shitty Marimo stepped over to the closest side wall. And just like that, he hooked his foot around the two other katana that so happened to be lying around propped up there, and hauled them both up to catch in his right hand, before he stuck them into his ridiculous belly warmer next to the empty white scabbard of the first one.
"What the flying pigeon shit is that getup supposed to be?! Three swords? Fucking three?"
"Yeah," the asshole just shrugged and unsheathed a second sword. "Three-sword style is my speciality," he looked about as proud of himself as a three-year-old squatting over his first spiralic pile of poop.
"You can't even hold that many," Sanji slapped the doorframe in desperation, repeatedly, "you conceited armada of powdered bullshit! Where do you put the third one, huh? Through your left eye socket?! Up your mangy ass?!"
Zoro only scoffed at that, and then, as if to answer Sanji's question, he raised the white sword up and… He took the hilt between his fucking teeth?!
"That's it? That's your oh-so-great technique? Using your sword as a shitty dog bone?!" Sanji dearly wished to wake up, since that day couldn't possibly be more than a crazy fucking dream… "You couldn't even swing that thing without knocking your own damn teeth out!"
"Damn swirly-brow," the shitty Marimo's empty hand moved to pull the third sword free from its scabbard. "Worry about your own teeth!"
"How can you even talk with that shit in your mou-?! Hey!"
No more playing nice. The two katana ready in his hands, Zoro wasted not another second to attack that prissy blond right where he stood, in the dojo door. Shit, no, wait, the doorframe would go with it, damn-!
"Gh-!"
Blades clattering against each other, the sword points halted a mere breath away from the wooden frame of the shôji. But it wasn't Zoro stopping them on time. No, pushing against their crossing point was a leather shoe, with a bent leg countering its force with fearful strength. The shitty cook parried his swords with his damn shoe…?!
"Ha!," the cook snorted. "Now you won't have even the," he shifted his weight into his defending leg, "abandoned pile of," bent his knee and let the swords go further, before, "shit of a chance!" Sanji called out, kicking forward so fiercely that he pushed Zoro back along with his swords. Shit!
The hilts threatened to be twisted right out of his grip, so Zoro had no other choice but to back off and retract his weapons. He had no time to catch his breath, though, for Sanji's leaping, flying kick came crashing down on him, and he would have had to wear a dent instead of a head, had he not thrust his crossed swords up to ward himself. His bent knees absorbed most of the impact, but damn, it hurt like hell! The bastard cook really meant business this time.
Zoro couldn't hold back his growing smirk. Oh yes. This was gonna be fun.
"Orrraaaaa!"
Zoro gathered all his upper arm strength to push back against the kick, and finally forced the cook to back off with a cross-cleaving attack. Sanji's shoes squeaked on the wooden floor with his hard, stomping landing, then again when he moved to charge, firing a series of aerial kicks to clash against the backs of Zoro's blades; a dozen warded off, but just as many of them hitting home.
A hundred times the three katana sang in the air and a thousand kicks whistled, sweat and blood and dents were strewn on the floor, and both of them went down crashing, too, more times than they bothered to count. Sanji was covered in cuts and bleeds, and his T-shirt went to ruin along with one of his shoes cleaved in half, while Zoro was black and blue all over, with a dislocated jaw and broken toenails. And yet, they were both on their feet, gasping for air. Laughing to themselves as they exhaled…
Stomping his naked foot forth, Sanji moved in for an attack. First a high-kick he already knew the algae-head would knock aside, but that collision gave him just enough zest to swing that leg back onto the ground, and bury the other one in the asshole's side, hard. Zoro coughed and stumbled away, that shithead.
As soon as the Marimo regained his footing, though, he came on strong, slashing one sword, than the other, then spun around to make all three of his blades a threat. And maybe they would have been, for some weak-ass loser. But for Sanji? Child's play.
Sanji was about to stylishly spin away from one of the grass-brained asshole's double-strikes. He thought he heard a sound… A ripping kind of noise. He was just about to ignore it, too, but as it turned out, he had to find out the reason, whether he liked it or not. The issue having been that his non-shredded shoe suddenly became kind of airy. And light. By the time Sanji could look down, the shoe sole that had come loose had already twisted awkwardly under his foot, and of fucking course he had to trip in his own feet and fall back onto the floor like a shitty comedy relief out of a fucked-up kids' show. Fuck Sanji's life, seriously. Fuck it so fucking hard.
Well, at least the stinkin' Marimo was so ridiculously startled by the whole ordeal that kicking the swords out of his hands was like putting frosting on a cake. However, apparently, that freed up the fartface's hands to grab after him!
After yet another glorious fall onto his ass, Sanji had his hands full with a slobbery face and a stinky sweaty neaderthal chest trying to choke him with his bio weapon grade stench. Once he could get his feet beneath the slimy bastard's stomach and hauled him the fuck off himself. However, when he crawled over to keep the rancid cumsplurt on the floor, the fucker grabbed his lower arms and wouldn't fucking let go! Ow, those cuts were starting to hurt like a motherfucker...
"Oi oi! I'm- not buying that- you- do- judo, too, you- shitty- gorilla samurai!"
"Give it up!" Zoro demanded, straining his arms back, red-faced. "Agh! Shitty cook!"
"Like fuck I will! Gnh!"
Sanji gasped as his back slammed onto the hard wooden flooring again. But fuck if he'd let the asshat do as he pleased. He kicked the abominable mossbrain's stomach, then toppled him over, but the fucktard shoved him backwards with his mutant arms and jumped over him to pin him down. Sanji had to head-butt the piece-of-shit swordsman several times to gain the upper head again. And once he snared the green shit-eater's arms with his legs, victory was his.
Oh? So the damnable son of lawnmower satan still didn't have enough yet? His slimy brute fist was gripping Sanji's hair so hard it could have drawn tears. His fucking basalt forehead was already bloody from headbutting, was he really big enough of a shitty idiot to-?
Zoro's grip yanked Sanji's head closer, but the expected impact never arrived. The attack proved to be much more dangerous. Much more defeating.
The tiny smacking sound was so out of place Sanji could have screamed from it, and when the pressure on his head subsided, he sat up so abruptly that his head reeled from it. His lips were tingling where Zoro's had nipped at them just before. They still were when he touched his fingertips to them. Prodded them. Started clawing and rubbing them with force…
"What… What did you…!"
Sanji couldn't breathe. It wasn't happening. It couldn't be fucking happening…!
"We're even now," Zoro declared. His stare was unflinching as his lisp curled up into a smirk. "You owed me."
"Owed you? Fucking owed you?! What the ever-loving shitfuck are you babbling about?!"
"You cheated first, so now I used your own trick against you," the shitty fartbreath offered. Making no fucking sense!
"At the Zombie Night, you idiot. Yeah-yeah, you don't remember. But you ki-"
"Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You crazy perverted Marimo head! I'm gonna fucking kill you!"
Sanji's eyes popped wide open, like a damn maniac! He whirled his torso to the side with amazing speed, and slapped his palms down on the floor so hard that even listening to it hurt. And with Zoro's arms held tightly in his folded legs, the crazy cook just went ahead and threw Zoro up in the air, and then sent him rolling and slamming into the wooden pedestal of the altar, with incense sticks crumbling and falling all over him. And Sanji was already standing over him, landing a powerful kick into his stomach.
"You fucking-! It's you, it's-! It's all your shitty fucking fault!" the blond was shrieking, determined to make minced meat out of him!
Zoro needed to gather his all into his arms to grab the bastard's foot and stop it, and another well-timed move to snatch Sanji's wrist and tear him off his one supporting leg to the ground. The cook bounced right back up, shooting both his legs towards Zoro's groin, from which he rolled away from just barely. His heel pushed against Kitetsu's hilt on the floor, aiding him in parrying the next kick flying his way. Sanji kept on charging, kicking, screaming, chasing Zoro back and back, until he was in the dojo door. What was the shitty cook up to?!
The gym hallway was as unlit as they had left it. Zoro had trained outside at night before, but the narrow, pitch black hallways, with a rampaging Sanji on the loose posed a new kind of challenge. The walls suffered dents and scratches of all kinds of origins, they fought up a stairway and back down again, slammed against doors, stumbled on carpets...
When Zoro's flailing hand finally found a light switch, the east wing bathroom's tiles almost blinded them with their whiteness. Sanji's spinning kick sent Zoro keeling over the sink digging into his aching abdomen, and he tripped and fell into one of the showers to dodge the next one.
"Aaaaahhh! Cold! Fucking cold! Fuck fuck fuck shitty fucking fuck, fuck you, fuck!"
It took a full-blown stream of icy cold water right into his face to get the cook to snap out of whatever was driving him deliriously mad. The screaming, drenched blond caught on very soon, however, and Zoro received his own dose of cold shower, biting all the way down to his bones. And a new kind of fight began. Whenever one of them was trying to step closer, the other supplied them with an icy spray in the kisser. The cook's skin was red all over from the cold, his lips blue, but still he kept on aiming that damn shower head Zoro's way with his scrawny, shivering arms, and Zoro had no choice but to discard his own shower head, withstand the stream and push forward, like he had been forced to during trainings in the mountains, years ago.
"Snap out of it!" Zoro all but ripped the shower head out of Sanji's hold, and sent it coiling and spraying all over the bathroom floor. "You kissed a total stranger, yes! Because you were drunk on booze and high on goddamn adrenaline, and because you're an idiot!"
"Shut your shitty damn-!" the bastard was banging his fists against the tiled wall behind him in his rage.
"You shut up for once!" Zoro had enough of this garbage! "Nobody saw, I got even with your sorry ass, it was a stupid, sudden, physical thing! Okay?! Snap the fuck out of it, you giant sissy!"
He was panting by the time he finished, and his throat felt scratchy. It had been a long time since Zoro had to scream like that…
For a long while, the only sound in the room was the still running shower head snaking around on the floor. Sanji was staring straight at Zoro's face, not saying so much as a 'shit'. Zoro felt like he should say something more; it was an unknown kind of pressure, welling up inside. But the release of said pressure came out as a yelp when Sanji suddenly ducked down, grabbed the tangled shower head and directed it straight into Zoro's face, who stumbled back coughing and gurgling.
"That's for the shitty speech, oh mighty sensei of the body! I can't believe you called me a fucking sissy!" and Sanji was back to yelling his head off. Strangely enough, his strained, pissy voice fell as relief onto Zoro's ears…
"You damn little-!"
"Get yourself cleaned up, shithead," the cook commanded and threw the shower head over for Zoro to catch, "or I won't fucking feed your smelly ass."
"What? You brought food?"
"Uh, yeah? I'd rather be caught dead than eat another slice of that garbage they sell at the corner shit-buffet."
"Yesss!" Zoro found himself grinning wide. "I'm so damn starved!"
"W-whatever, just get your ass under the water already, I'm getting my bag," the cook jabbered and all but leapt out of the shower. Huh, he must have been freezing his balls off, that stupid bastard.
The process of showering was a quiet one. Right after Sanji ceased his yammering about Zoro not having any soap or any other cleansing product on him, calling him a stinking gorilla wart for not showering after working out, and blah blah, various nonsense like that. The damn priss even boasted with bathing every day! For fuck's sake, who even did that?
So after Sanji had forced some of his shower gel onto Zoro, the gym's bathroom soon filled with warmth and steam. The freezing water had kept him awake and alert pretty well, but hot water was making Zoro terribly want to go home and into his bed… He fought the urge to lean face-first onto the shower wall and sleep there.
"Hurry it the fuck up," Sanji spat, stepping out from his own cabin. "I wanna eat and go the shit home."
"Yeah yeah," Zoro just grumbled back. He was too sleepy to even argue with the idiot right then, and that was saying something...
Usually he didn't bother, but seeing as Sanji tied his towel around his waist after he was done rubbing through his uh, cropped hair, Zoro followed suit and covered up, too. Things were tense between him and the stupid cook all the time, so that wasn't exactly news. But this atmosphere… It wasn't the usual I'll-kick-your-ass-to-mars-and-back, or the if-you-try-something-I'll-scream-your-ears-full kind of vibe washing off the idiot. Zoro's intuition could come up with nothing for what it was. And it was making him… cautious.
"Goddamn shithead, you were really trying to filet me with your overgrown kitchen knives..." Sanji fumed. Zoro watched him trace his fingers over the cuts he suffered, mostly shallow, but he scored some bigger ones, too.
"Your own damn fault," he approached the shit-cook at the mirror, ruffling the water from his hair with his palms. "If you weren't flailing all over the place like a damn rubber chicken, I could actually have hit you with the blunt side."
"So you're putting the blame on me for being a shitty noob with sword fighting now? Fucking really?" the damn bastard quipped.
"Sure," Zoro rolled his eyes. "'Noobs' get weapons licences all the time."
"Well duh! Watched the news recently, shithead? Pretty sure you have a wanted poster lying around somewhere, stinkin' Marimo swordsman."
So Zoro hadn't had a decent sparring partner to use his katana on since… In a very long time, okay? So what? He wouldn't give the curly-brow the satisfaction of admitting to it.
"Whatever, stupid cook."
The irritating series of wet stomps along the floor signaled that the unfriendly neighbourhood moss-patch was making his way out of the bathroom. Sanji felt the warm brush of steam against his back as Zoro stepped past behind him, and even though his body didn't start cooling just yet, he still shivered from it. And somehow, his hands on the sink balled up into fists…
The drowsiness was knocked out of Zoro quite literally. The shitty cook's elbow jammed into his side sharply just at the junction of the bath and the lockers, and he crashed against the stone archway with his shoulder.
"Agh, oi! You still wanna fight, you damn bastard?"
Why the fuck did Sanji not use his legs instead? This way the green buffoon only needed to reach out, yank him by the arm, then shove him against the opposite side of the arch! Stupid, stupid, stupid…!
Zoro's back slammed against the stone this time. Of course the damn cook's knee was buried in his stomach where he had the worst sore spots...
However, the green asshole promptly reached to grab a hold of Sanji's thigh, as well as his shoulder, to flip him around and press his face against the wall. Hah, as if Sanji would go that easily. He knocked his head back against the fucker's big nose, shot his heel forcefully against his hard fucking shin and shoved a palm against his disgustingly ripped chest to get him to stumble back…
But Zoro was on him the minute the stupid bastard turned around, knocking the air out of his lungs with how hard he shoved…
… and fuck it all to freezing hell, Sanji couldn't move away! The fartbreath's arms were just grossly strong! Ugh! How he hated the fucking moss-for-brains bastard! He hated his pot ugly mug, his stupid brainfarts he called words, his ridiculous way of fighting, his gorilla strength, his shit-eating grin, how Sanji's shower gell smelled better on his shitfucking skin and…!
… And Sanji was on a rampage, pummeling Zoro with fists and knees and feet wherever he could reach, hitting Zoro so hard in his aching stomach that he was seeing stars…
… and the shitty bastard finally let go of him, grunting in pain. And that was when Sanji forced the stupid Marimo against the side of the archway once again, pressing him back by his chest and forehead, wheezing, huffing, victorious…
… and Sanji's face was so close Zoro could see faint freckles around his nose, taste the smoke on his breath...
.. and of all of the shithead's stupid faces, Sanji hated this awkward, blushing one the most…!
The dismantling blow, that night at the back of the Zombie Night - that had been a drunken, messy tumble of tongues and lips, tasting of puke, booze and spearmint chewing gum. The hasty, impulsive nip of Sanji's lips on Zoro's was much more sober, shaky. But still uninvitedly hot.
Sanji pulled away almost immediately. His breathing seemed almost more laboured than before. Zoro watched the cook's Adam's apple quiver, then bob up and down with his swallow…
"It's… It's physical..."