Zoro didn't usually consider himself a lucky person, whilst he did occasionally get the odd lucky break (like meeting Luffy), on the whole his life wasn't massively lucky. Things weren't ever easy for Zoro and things didn't often go his way, especially the things that he really wanted. So when facing the opportunity to explore the long, soft and deliciously exposed expanse of Sanji's neck Zoro considered himself a lucky man.
It was perfect, better than he'd ever imagined it. He could feel the strong muscles under Sanji's oh so soft skin. He bit against Sanji's skin, careful to keep on the pleasurable side of pain. Unfortunately his enthusiasm was starting to get the better of him so he wasn't surprised when Sanji shoved him for more than likely biting too hard. He grinned against the cook's skin and pulled him closer by tugging on his tie forcefully. Sanji writhed against him before punching Zoro in the gut, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to get Zoro's attention for sure.
Zoro almost thought that was a rejection until the cook's leg shifted on his hip, levering Zoro closer to Sanji and pressing their hips together. Apparently Sanji punching him in the stomach didn't mean 'no' but rather 'come closer', and Zoro could definitely deal with that.
He groaned as the cook arched his back, pressing more of his wonderful flexible body against Zoro. Zoro firmly refused to pray to or believe in any god, but this stroke of divine luck that had Sanji pressed up against him was making him seriously reconsider.
Sanji's head thunked back against the wood of the door, his face flushed and perfect. Zoro worked his hand up the back of Sanji's rumpled shirt, he loved the fact that the cook who was usually so perfect was letting Zoro crumple and muss his clothes like this. He trailed his fingers up the hot flushed skin of Sanji's back, delighting in the way Sanji's back would arch under his touch. Moreover his touch actually made Sanji whimper and if that wasn't hot then Zoro didn't know what was.
He rained kisses down on Sanji's jaw and pressed his lips to Sanji's temple, trying to convey through his actions just how much he'd always wanted this and just how grateful that he was to have Sanji here against him. Sanji was saying something now that sounded hesitant and nervous, Zoro hoped that Sanji wasn't trying to say that this was all a mistake, he wasn't sure that he could stand being with Sanji like this and then having the cook back out on him. He couldn't lose this now that he had it. He breathed Sanji's name, half begging and half pleading, he needed to tell Sanji the truth.
Zoro wasn't an especially eloquent person at the best of times, much less with a hot, writhing blonde pressed sinfully up against him. So he felt that his explanation of his immense and long lasting attraction to Sanji was ill-conveyed, he certainly felt that it didn't get in all the nuances of his adoration of their relationship, they way that they fought and the way that Zoro wanted them to end all of their fights like this. His words certainly hadn't seemed to motivate the cook who had frozen in his arms. He decided that words could go die and he grabbed the cook by the tie and yanked him into a bruising kiss.
When Sanji groaned into his mouth and hooked his legs around Zoro's waist and clung to Zoro like a drowning man to a life raft he felt somewhat satisfied that Sanji had gotten the message. Sanji tangled one hand in Zoro's hair and fisted the other in Zoro's shirt, Zoro smiled ferally against Sanji's mouth, oh yeah, the cook had got the message.
Apparently deciding to take control, the cook toppled them to the floor and held himself a few perilously tempting inches above Zoro. The swordsman took in every detail of Sanji then, his flushed face and ragged breathing, his longing look and lips red from kissing. Zoro thought that in that moment Sanji looked like everything that Zoro had ever wanted, all wrapped up in one perfect blonde package just for him.
But instead of leaning down to Zoro the cook stood up suddenly. Panic shot through Zoro's veins like poison, Sanji was leaving! He couldn't let him! He had to stop him!
"SANJI!" Zoro yelled reaching up after him.
It took a moment for Zoro to recognise the darkness of the bunkroom. After that Zoro felt the familiar terrible feeling that, yes, once again that had all been a dream. He felt hollow to the pit of his stomach and cursed his mind for torturing him so with things that he could never have.
"Jesus Zoro! Sorry I woke you but you didn't have to yell at me!" Sanji hissed at him.
Zoro's eyes widened and he stared at what little of Sanji he could see in the moonlight streaming into the bunkroom. The cook was standing in the dark not too far from Zoro's hammock, apparently having been halfway through putting his socks on. He couldn't quite make out the cook's face clearly but he was fairly sure that the blonde was glaring at him.
With creeping horror he realised that Sanji had been right there when he'd been dreaming of him, what had he said? For the love of god what had he said?
Suddenly the light clicked on and everyone in the bunkroom who wasn't Luffy groaned and shied away from the too-bright-light.
"What," Franky rumbled, his voice still gravely from having just been woken up, "is all the yelling about?"
There were some groans of agreement from the other hammocks. Zoro froze, what could he say? What could he possibly tell his nakama?
"I was getting ready to go cook breakfast and I guess I woke Zoro up, the bastard decided to yell at me." Sanji snorted, shooting Zoro an icy look.
Zoro just blinked back, was Sanji lying or was that what he really thought had happened? That he'd snapped at Sanji for waking him up rather than calling his name from a dream?
"Seriously?" Franky groaned, flopping back in his hammock.
"Now you woke all of us up." Usopp grumbled, glaring at Zoro through squinted eyes. Above him Luffy snored, no one was surprised at this, you could jump on Luffy's hammock with him in it and not wake him up.
"Out! Both of you!" Franky snapped and clicked the light off.
Zoro sat frozen in his hammock whilst Sanji tied his laces in the dark by the door. Zoro only realised that the others were serious about kicking him out when Usopp fired a shot in his direction in the dark. Zoro felt it whiz by his head and jangle his earrings, he was under no illusions about that shot being a warning shot rather than a miss. Even half asleep and in the dark Usopp could still shoot him, and apparently planned to if Zoro didn't go.
"Okay, okay." Zoro hissed and crawled out of his hammock and pulled on a shirt. He knew that he couldn't find his boots in the dark so he just followed Sanji out of the men's bunkroom in the dark barefoot.
He stood on the lawn deck of the Sunny, briefly enjoying the feel of grass between his toes. It was still dark out, not even near morning, so he had no idea what Sanji was doing up so goddamn early. Usually the cook would get up an hour or two before breakfast, but if that's what the cook was doing now then he had no idea when exactly Sanji was expecting them to eat.
He could see Sanji slightly better in the clear moonlight on the deck. Sanji's slender frame looked almost like a silhouette because of wearing so much black. The cook was already in the three piece suit with his tie perfectly knotted, Zoro was at a loss for how Sanji was able to dress that fancily in the dark. Zoro wasn't sure that he could even make himself look like that under full light with several hours and a mirror.
He watched as Sanji patted himself down again for his lighter, the unlit cigarette held between his lips. For a moment Zoro longed to touch Sanji, to be able to run his hands over the cook's body just as the cook was doing now. He ruthlessly squashed that urge. The cook that was standing next to him was completely separate from the one in his dreams, completely separate from the one that always kissed him back and didn't hate him. He really needed to keep the two distinct in his mind or else lines that should never be blurred would get blurred.
Zoro felt a stab of spiteful happiness that he had Sanji's precious lighter in his pocket, if he couldn't get what he wanted then why should the cook be allowed to?
After a few seconds Sanji huffed irritatedly and stomped off to the kitchen. For a loss of anywhere else to go Zoro followed him. The warmth and the light of the kitchen would certainly be preferable to the dark and damp lawn deck at this time of night.
Sanji didn't bother to hold the door open for him and if Zoro hadn't have caught it then the damn thing would have smacked him in the face. He rolled his eyes and decided to sit on one of the bar stools by the kitchen counters, the same place that he'd sat yesterday when Chopper and Sanji had decided to torture him.
He absently looked at his wrist, you could still see Sanji's finger marks in red blotches on his wrist.
Sanji flicked the burner on the stove onto a low heat and carefully bent down to light his cigarette. He inhaled slowly and Zoro watched with some fascination as the cook's muscles obviously relaxed, he exhaled a stream of smoke from between his lips and stretched happily.
"Well what do you want marimo?" Sanji snorted, raising a curled brow in Zoro's direction. Clearly Zoro wasn't welcome to lurk in his kitchen after being kicked out of the bunkroom. But suddenly a vague sense of déja-vu and for some reason he could almost taste sushi in his mouth.
"What's that look for?" Sanji asked, apparently having noticed Zoro's pause.
"Nothing, I just feel like I've been here before." Zoro frowned and tried hard to grab onto the memory that was like smoke in his mind. Sanji gave him a 'you're an idiot' expression.
"Yeah, this is the galley, it might look familiar even to someone like you who can get lost in a straight line." The cook said as if talking to a stupid child.
"Shut up, shit-cook. I meant I had déja-vu." Zoro snorted, trust the cook to be an ass at the worst time. Now Zoro couldn't recall the memory.
"Oooh, big words." Sanji snickered.
Zoro ignored Sanji and shut his eyes. He could almost see Sanji in front of him, shirt slightly crumpled with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Sanji was talking but he couldn't place what about, but he remembered food. Sushi? Yes, he remembered sushi.
"Sushi?" he murmured thoughtfully. Apparently Sanji had heard him because he rolled his eyes at Zoro.
"I don't care how much you like my sushi, I'm not making it for breakfast." Sanji snorted as he took ingredients out of the cupboard. Zoro bristled, the cook was so damn annoying!
"Who ever said that I like your stupid sushi? Your cooking sucks!" Zoro shot back.
Whatever Zoro had been expecting Sanji to do at that remark wasn't what happened. Sanji turned with one hand on his hip and a catlike grin on his lips.
"And here I thought that you might have been getting your memories back." Sanji grinned at him.
Zoro just stared dumbly at the cook. The blonde looked at him for a moment more before pulling his cigarette from between his lips with his long fingers as he leant over on the counter so his face was almost uncomfortably close to Zoro's.
The cook smiled and at least had the consideration to blow his long stream of smoke off to the side rather than in Zoro's face.
"Let me guess," He started as he rested his chin on his hand and looked Zoro straight in the eyes. Zoro could still smell the smoke on his words and that was doing funny things to his nerves. Out of habit he glared at the cook.
"Your déja-vu was something to do with being in here, sitting right where you're sitting and getting sushi that I cooked for you. That sound about right?" The cook said with a small smirk and tilted his head slightly to the side.
"How…" He'd only begun to speak when Sanji cut him off again.
"Because, little mar~i~mo," Sanji replied dragging out the syllables of Zoro's nickname, "that was a memory, not a half remembered dream or something."
Zoro's eyes widened at Sanji's phrasing, his mind reaching back to that oh so realistic dream that had gotten him kicked out of the bunkroom in the first place. But no, that had been a dream. And he was fairly sure that Sanji hadn't realised he'd been dreaming when he called Sanji's name. The déja-vu however was becoming more real and solidified at Sanji's words, if it was a memory then it was coming back to him.
"You remember now? That medicine that Chopper gave you had you stoned." Sanji smirked as he straightened up and starting making bread dough.
Zoro frowned, he couldn't remember being out of his mind on whatever it was that Chopper had given him. He did vaguely remember talking to the cook whilst he made sushi but he couldn't remember what about.
"What do you mean?" He asked, folding his arms defensively on the counter top.
Sanji looked up at him as he stirred the bread dough, combining the water and the flour mixture into something that in Zoro's opinion didn't look like it was ever going to be bread. He seemed to study Zoro's face for a while before his mouth pinched into the small pout that Sanji seemed to get when he was deliberating something.
"Okay." He eventually said with a sigh. He turned the bread dough out onto the floured surface and kneaded it for a moment before speaking again.
"This stuff that Chopper gave you, it seemed to have different effects every time. Sometimes you'd be drunk and uncoordinated, sometimes it'd just knock you flat out for a few hours, and sometimes… like that time, it messed with your brain a little. You seemed to say everything that came into your head." Sanji explained as he pushed and pulled at the dough. Sanji grinned up at him after a moment.
"It was kinda funny to be honest." The cook snickered and went back to kneading the dough.
Zoro sat in quiet horror as he contemplated this idea. He knew that he'd be in deep trouble if he'd spoken every thought that he'd had about the cook in the time that he'd been in the kitchen today. What on earth had he said? He was guessing that he'd not done anything as rash as expressing his desire to kiss the cook senseless but still… he had other things that he'd rather that Sanji didn't know.
"What did I say?" He asked after a while. Sanji half shrugged and added some more flour to the board.
"You were mostly all over the place really. Changing topics all the time, non-sequiturs, it was a little like talking to Luffy. You begged me to make you sushi for one thing." Sanji smirked.
Zoro grunted at that, he didn't like paying the cook compliments about his food, it just inflated the cook's already too large ego. But he supposed that confessing that he'd never eaten better sushi than Sanji's in his life wasn't too terrible and mortifying a thing to admit to. All the same though, he had a feeling that Sanji was going to rub that one in for a while and use that knowledge against him. Even if that was the case, it wasn't like Zoro could do anything about it now so there was hardly any point in worrying about that.
Sanji smiled at his own dough and placed it carefully in a suitably sized bread tin before draping a tea towel around it to let it rise.
Sanji gave him a measured glance out of one blue eye as he washed his hands.
"Do you want to know what else you said? It wasn't anything terrible, but I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't say it to me now. Do you want to know or do you want me to just forget about it?" Sanji asked carefully as he dried his hands off and fixed the swordsman with a measured stare.
Zoro frowned at that, if he didn't know what he'd said then how could he know whether or not he wanted to know or not? And anyway he was surprised that the cook hadn't already been teasing him with whatever it was that he'd said in his drugged state, Sanji had teased him with less in the past. The cook was behaving oddly indeed.
Zoro sighed, he supposed it was better to know than not. At least that would put him and the cook on a level playing field.
"Tell me." He grunted and settled down in his chair for some serious embarrassment. But again the cook didn't seem to be leaping at the chance to humiliate him, it was very strange.
"You asked me if I liked you." Sanji stated simply, and watched Zoro like a hawk. Zoro fought very hard to keep his face at some level of neutrality until he could find out just what the cook, or rather, what he himself had meant by that.
The cook apparently took Zoro's silence as a cue to continue.
"You said that it seemed like I hated you, and you pointed out that despite all the fighting that you don't hate me." Sanji continued.
Zoro could feel himself starting to redden. He was embarrassed both at having said that to the cook and at the fact that when given drugs he went all mushy on the cook. He was grateful that he'd never allowed himself to call the tangled mess of feelings and urges that he had towards the cook anything serious like love or else who knows what he would have said.
"And for the record, since you don't remember my answer," The cook continued, apparently not having noticed Zoro's mortification.
"I don't hate you. You're annoying, you're rude and you have poor personal hygiene, but I don't hate you. I don't always like you all that much, but I do respect you even when you're not my favourite person at the time. Under all your irritating traits you're not that bad, and I suppose that I'm glad that you're my nakama." Sanji muttered going red himself.
Zoro was fairly sure that he was at least as scarlet as the cook, if not more so. He and the cook were talking about their feelings? Had he somehow fallen into some parallel opposite-world? In fact on levels of weirdness this about compared to all of the people with freaky powers that they'd seen so far on their journey. Sanji talking about his feelings for Zoro? Oh yeah, the Grand Line was a strange place indeed.
The awkwardness between the cook and the swordsman was hanging thick in the air with both men an uncomfortable shade of red. Eventually Sanji laughed nervously.
"Okay, so. Let's not… talk about that. Again. Ever. Because you're starting to clash with your hair and I'd rather jump overboard than repeat that again." Sanji muttered scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably.
"I- agreed." Zoro nodded sharply. He might be interested in removing Sanji's clothes from him but that didn't mean that he was going to stand about discussing feelings with him.
"Since this conversation can't get much worse, did I say anything else?" Zoro asked after a moment, he supposed that he would be better off getting all the awful details out in the open sooner rather than later.
"Not much." Sanji shrugged as he stubbed out the smouldering ends of his cigarette in his ashtray.
"Just your usual accusation that I let the ladies walk all over me, which I might add is completely stupid and no, I'm not having that argument with you again." Sanji added curtly and turned around to pull a few more things out of the cupboard.
Zoro rolled his eyes at the cook's back, Sanji was a complete idiot for letting those damn women manipulated him all of the time but it was obvious that Sanji was never going to smarten up about the whole situation. And if Sanji wanted to be a moron who was Zoro to argue with him?
A thought occurred to him, he knew why he'd woken up when he had and that he was only in the kitchen now because the others had kicked him out of bed. But that didn't explain why the cook was up so damn early.
"Why the hell are you up so goddamn early anyway, shit-cook?" Zoro demanded.
Sanji sighed and gave Zoro a flat and unimpressed look over his shoulder.
"Don't you ever listen to a damn thing that Nami says, moss-brain?" Sanji asked with another deep sigh.
"No." Zoro snorted. He didn't even have to think about that answer. Unless Nami was saying something important that would stop the ship from capsizing and killing them all he generally ignored her.
"Then you'll just have to wait and see won't you marimo?" Sanji replied with a dark grin.