There were many things in life that Sanji loved; women, cooking late at night, fine dining, crisply pressed suits, kicking ass. All of those were things that he loved immensely. This however was always an exquisite pleasure, one that he fairly frequently was treated to but was always incredibly brilliant each time. It was the moments leading up to, and of course, the exact moment that Zoro was forced to admit that he was lost.
The marimo had decided to take him out to see the city for the day, he had thought it might do Sanji's memories good. Not that Sanji was going to tell him that his memories were coming back just fine, thank you very much, but it was better than being supervised all of the time. He'd dragged Sanji from place to place excitedly describing either the history of that part of the city or pointing out places where memorable things with their nakama had happened. Occasionally Sanji saw glimpses of scenes that he'd been there for, they were overlaid over the real world like faded photos with a muted soundtrack. If he tried to focus on them too hard though they slipped from him. Zoro had started dragging him in a new direction about half an hour ago, enthusing about a surprise that he wanted to show Sanji.
So here they are, standing on a street in the middle of London with Zoro looking slightly perplexed, as if the city itself had somehow connived against him and twisted itself to make him lose his path. Zoro glances down the side streets and frowns, apparently they're not the streets he was expecting. He twists and looks past Sanji back the way they came. Sanji bites his lip, relishing the moment.
"You're lost." He proclaims with a grin so wide it hurts his face a little. Zoro tenses for a second, as if Sanji had actually thrown something more than an accusation at him.
"I'm not lost, Sanji. I've lived here since I was sixteen, I know my way around." Zoro replies haughtily and gives Sanji a look that suggests that he doesn't know what he's talking about. As if he'd done something ridiculous like try to tell Zoro how to handle a sword or something.
"Oh, I see. So, you know exactly where we are then?" He goads, leaning his arm casually against Zoro's shoulder. Zoro looks a little uncomfortable and glances around at the buildings as if for clues.
"Of course. We're on… Clipstone Mews." Zoro declares smugly. Sanji doesn't even need to turn around to know what just happened.
"Well done genius. You can read that street sign behind me. Any idea where Clipstone Mews is?" He prompts.
"I'm not lost, I'm sure if we just keep walking I'll find my bearings." Zoro huffs unhappily.
"Ah! So you admit that you are lost!" Sanji exclaims loudly, making Zoro flush delightfully red with annoyance.
"No! Let's just keep going!" he snaps starting to stomp off. Sanji however catches him by the elbow, taking some sympathy on the man he suggests another solution.
"You've been lost for ages, I can tell. Just walking blithely in any direction isn't going to help." He sighs and continues before Zoro can interrupt him with another obviously wrong assertion that he's not lost.
"Look, there's a shop over there. I'll go in and buy a map, then we can get to wherever it was that you were trying to take me." He says and saunters off across the street before Zoro can protest or stop him, he knows what Zoro is like with asking for directions so it's better not to give the man a choice at all.
Inside the shop he buys a white book with the words 'London A to Z' on it. Inside are lots of maps of the city, both distance and close up and a helpful index of street names. He's already finding their street when he makes his way back to Zoro. The man clearly isn't happy but obviously couldn't bring himself to storm off and leave him on his own, which leaves him standing stock still with indignity rolling off of him in waves, it'd be sweet if it wasn't so funny.
When he finds the right page with their street on it he sidles close to Zoro and holds the book so that they can both see it. Zoro's eyes scan the page but Sanji finds himself distracted. Zoro's only wearing a light t-shirt, it is summer after all, but even through that he can feel the heat coming off of Zoro and where his bare arm touches Sanji's own it feels like it warms him down to the bone. He's never been a very touchy feely person with people, except pretty women of course, but somehow over the last few days the boundaries between Zoro's personal space and his have dissolved completely. Evidently Zoro doesn't feel that Sanji is getting in his space as he seems as calm and natural as can be.
Sanji looks at Zoro critically whilst Zoro looks slightly bewildered at the map and mutters about not understanding how they ended up where they are. He tries to imagine what he would think if he met this Zoro as a complete stranger, if he'd not known the Zoro that he does. He wonders how he would react to this gentler Zoro, a Zoro who doesn't feel the need to… what was that phrase he used? Pull his pigtails? He looks at Zoro's face carefully. Tan skin, dark eyes, perhaps if you were feeling in a particularly poetic mood you might even be able to describe his jaw as chiselled. His cheekbones were certainly attractive, defined without being too obvious. The hair was undeniably a stupid colour, there was no getting around that. But… if you were used to it, as Sanji was, then it was easy enough to look past that and see that Zoro was actually rather… handsome.
Sanji was still torn over this morning, the kiss had been… pleasant. Well, pleasant wasn't quite the word. It had felt almost right, natural even. As if it was something he'd been designed to do, like breathing. And Zoro's tantalising touch after that had certainly played havoc with Sanji's blood pressure. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea to let Zoro do it again, or to make an advance himself. It was a tempting proposition, here was a man who knew exactly how to get him going, he'd had years of learning to pick it up after all. There wouldn't be any fumbling or uncertainty from Zoro.
But suppose that his theory was right, that he'd been swapped with the Sanji that belonged here. Would that be getting Zoro to cheat? Zoro wasn't the kind to do that and he'd been hurt enough by having it done to him. Although on that note Sanji wasn't sure that his counterpart deserved someone like Zoro after the way he'd behaved towards him, perhaps it would give him a taste of his own medicine. And Zoro really was tempting… perhaps he should just shove Zoro against the wall of the building to the side of them and slide his hands under that white t-shirt and- Sanji realises all of a sudden that Zoro is looking at him with a slightly irritated expression on his face. His brain helpfully informs him too late that Zoro had been saying something.
"Uh? Sorry?" he ventures. Zoro rolls his eyes despairingly.
"I said, we're going to go to the station and catch a train to where we're supposed to be. So you can put away your silly tourist map, I know where I'm going." Zoro declares condescendingly and confidently leads the way in the direction they'd been heading originally.
For a few moments Sanji does follow Zoro, until something in his head niggles at him that something is wrong. Curiously Sanji glances back down at the map and pauses. What had Zoro said again?
"Wait, what station?" He asks looking up at the swordsman.
"Great Portland Street station. It's right in the direction of that big tower." Zoro declares pointing up to a big tower that's just visible over the tops of the buildings. Sanji glances down at the map book in his hand again, the station and the tower are both on the map. However…
He looks up at Zoro with a snarky grin. Zoro's arm slowly falls down to his side again and he slowly glances back up at the tower as if expecting it to have moved to trick him. His brows furrow slowly.
"But that way is-" He starts and wisely cuts himself off before he can give a compass direction that is disastrously wrong. Sanji bites his lip to stop himself from laughing.
"Shut it blondie." Zoro snaps, smacking him on the back of the head as he walks back past Sanji in the right direction this time.
Eventually, with a lot of redirecting from Sanji, they end up on an incredibly packed street of London. Zoro drags him a little way down the road before stopping outside a massive bookshop.
"You lost again moss-head?" he snorts.
"No, this is where I wanted to take you." Zoro replies irritably.
Unconvinced Sanji glances up at the bustling bookshop again, nope, it's still a bookshop. Why on earth would Zoro take him here? Neither of them are massive readers and this isn't the sort of place that holds enough interest for Sanji for it to make sense for Zoro to bring him here. Apparently bored with Sanji's skeptical looks Zoro grabs him by the arm, shoots him a sly conspiratorial look and drags him inside.
Sanji is dragged through the packed shop by Zoro who weaves around bookshelves and people alike. Eventually Zoro comes to a stop in front of the cooking section. Sanji finds himself instinctively bristling at that, is Zoro saying that he can't cook or that he's bored with what he's been cooking? Okay, so he's not exactly been feeding Zoro haute cuisine the last few days but he's not been phoning it in either.
"Close your eyes!" Zoro grins, stepping in front of him. Sanji starts to protest but Zoro is firm on his demand. With a put-upon sigh Sanji closes his eyes and listens, he can hear Zoro pulling a book free from the shelf. He feels a little worried in the noisy hustle and bustle of the rest of the shop that someone's going to knock into him with his eyes shut. The marimo pulls Sanji's hands forward and plunks a heavy book in his hands. Sanji opens his eyes and gasps in wonder.
The book is blue and white with gold writing at the top saying 'Sanji's kitchen'. The book is a glossy hardback that looks both professional and expensive. On the cover is a picture of him in a blue chef's outfit with a charming grin on and a balloon whisk in his hand with stiff whipped cream in it. He's surrounded by cooking equipment in a fancy blue kitchen.
With his jaw hanging open he flicks through the book, it's filled with beautiful glossy pictures of dishes that he recognises. There's close up shots of his food looking quite frankly beautiful, there's pictures of him hard at work cooking, not even noticing the camera. In the backgrounds of some of the shots he can see pictures of his friends artistically out of focus, he recognises one of Robin's hands holding a spoonful of rich looking soup. The book is full or recipes that he remembers cooking, recipes where he's taken inspiration from several dishes and made his own. He spies a chocolate and coffee dessert that he invented for Robin and an orange chicken dish he made for Nami. Every dish in here is one that he created from scratch or where he spliced several recipes together to make something unique, it's all him. The book is beautiful and all his. He... he wrote a cookbook.
A memory starts coming back, it feels soft and warm, like it's a memory that he's looked over hundreds of times before.
He's in the Baratie, it's just him and Zoro. Zoro's eating Sanii's special Thai curry that he invented himself and Sanji's leaning against the bar cleaning glasses and taking bites of his own curry from a bowl. Zoro looks younger, Sanji remembers that he was nineteen here but he doesn't look like the nineteen year old Zoro that Sanji knows on the Grand Line. He looks younger than that Zoro, skinnier too with less muscle. He's got a bruise blossoming on his cheek and rips in his clothes, Sanji knows somehow that this was after the fight with Arlong. He and Zoro have barely known each other two months and Zoro's still healing from that gash in his chest that the psychotic swordsman gave him. Regardless of his injuries Zoro and the rest of his crazy friends, who are now rapidly becoming Sanji's friends, had rushed off to rescue Nami from Arlong. Everyone else has gone their own way tonight, Nami and Luffy to hospital to see about her shoulder, Zoro's two buddies have disappeared and Usopp has gone home. It's just him and Zoro and he's not had the heart to let a man go hungry, he never has.
"This is really good, where did you learn to make this?" Zoro asks sleepily, his cheek resting tiredly in his hand as he feeds himself with a fork from his other hand.
"Didn't." Sanji grunts and stacks the last clean glass in the drying rack.
"You mean you made this yourself? Invented it?" Zoro asks with a curious tilt to his head. Sanji hums affirmatively around a forkful of curry.
"You should write a cookbook or something, if you're the only one who knows this recipe then I bet people would pay to learn how to make it." Zoro says with some enthusiasm as he looks at the curry on his fork with a hint of admiration in his eyes.
"Shut up, idiot. You have to be famous and really good to write a cookbook." Sanji says dismissively. It's a stupid pipe dream, no one would buy a book written by him, he doesn't even know how to write a book. It's stupid to even think of such a thing.
"You've got it backwards, dumbass. You write the book and then you become famous. As long as you keep your stupid mouth shut and let your food do the talking you'd be fine." Zoro snorts as if Sanji is a moron.
Sanji is floored, Zeff and the others never say anything all that great about his food, he gets more insults than compliments to be sure. But Zoro actually thinks that he could do something amazing like writing a cookbook.
"Don't… don't be stupid. Who'd buy it anyway? Even you wouldn't buy it." Sanji says dismissively expecting a flat no and a laugh from the man, perhaps this is a set up for a cruel joke.
"Hah, sure I would. I'd buy ten and get you to sign 'em, then I could eBay them and pay my rent for ages!" Zoro grins deviously.
Sanji blushes, Zoro in a round about way is saying that not only does he think Sanji is a good enough cook to write a cookbook but also that people would buy it, and that they'd be popular too. Enough so to make him famous enough to have his autograph worth something! That's one hell of a compliment, even if it is wrapped in about six different insults.
He looks at Zoro and… it's like he's seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time. The man is brave and attractive with a good heart, he's got good friends and apparently thinks that Sanji can do anything he wants to.
"Go out with me. We could go to a bar or something." He says on impulse.
"I'm tired, I'm beat up and probably bleeding from a tonne of busted stitches. Don't you have booze here if you want to drink?" Zoro groans and experimentally rubs his chest where Sanji knows the bandage is.
"No, stupid. I meant somewhere else another night. Or we could get coffee if you'd prefer. Go out with me." He reiterates because Zoro is clearly not getting the picture.
Zoro's eyes widen and his fork freezes halfway between his plate and his mouth. The two of them stare at each other in silence for a few moments, of which Sanji feels less and less comfortable with each passing one.
"You… want me to go out with… you? On a… date? With you?" Zoro manages to choke out wide eyed. Sanji winces at that because, ow, harsh much?
"Hah, never mind, I clearly misread you. Forget it." Sanji laughs bitterly and backs up, he grabs his half-empty bowl as an excuse to go back into the kitchen and away from Zoro.
"Ah! No!" Zoro yelps and Sanji feels a hand snag the back of his chef's whites. He pulls forward away from Zoro, his face flushing with embarrassment. He doesn't want to have to look Zoro in the face after being a disbelievingly rejected.
"Ow! Fuck!" Zoro yelps in pain behind him, his grip on the back of Sanji's jacket tightening.
Sanji pauses and turns. As he does so Zoro eases back off of the edge of the bar, his chest had smacked into it when Sanji kept walking and Zoro kept holding on. The man winces in pain and gingerly touches a hand to the middle of his chest, his other hand absently slides down to Sanji's forearm. His grip is loose but still able to tighten in a second, as if Zoro's afraid that he might dash off at a moment's notice. Zoro pulls his hand back and Sanji spots the fingerprint of blood having soaked through his shirt and the bandage below it.
"Shit, busted a stitch." Zoro mutters to himself.
"Holy crap! We need to get you to a hospital!" Sanji gasps and rounds the bar quickly. He tugs Zoro's t-shirt up despite Zoro's protests and sees that the bandage on Zoro's chest is rapidly filling with blood.
"Wait, did you mean it? Do you really want to go out with me?" Zoro asks, apparently unconcerned by bleeding to death.
"What does it matter? Come on, I'm taking you to hospital!" Sanji yells almost hysterically, tugging Zoro off of his seat and out to the back of the restaurant to where he has his car parked. He's trying to work out the quickest route when Zoro suddenly stops cooperating and stamps to a halt. When he turns to see what's up Zoro is giving him a stubborn look.
Mentally he replays the conversation until he comes to what Zoro last asked him.
"Yes, I want to go out with you if you don't bleed to death! Now get in the car!" He orders, dragging Zoro out the back and to his blue car parked in the alleyway. He unlocks the door and bundles Zoro into the passenger side. He quickly darts around to the driver's side and fires up the engine.
"You know, you really should do the book thing. 'm surprised you haven't already, I thought all cooks wanted that." Zoro slurs slightly. Sanji glances at him worriedly, Zoro is starting to look a little paler than he'd like.
"Very few cooks are good enough for that. It's… I'm not good enough for that. I mean, I'd love to but it's such a crazy impossible dream that… it's pointless going after it." He says, desperate to keep Zoro talking. The man needs to stay alert.
"Hey, you're good enough. If you've got a dream you should go for it, that's what dreams are for." Zoro says sagely. Sanji rounds a corner quickly, making the tyres screech and Zoro slump to the side and thunking his head slightly on the window.
"It doesn't work like that, and I've got obligations to Zeff, I can't just-" He starts to protest with a frown.
"If you don't go for it I'll get out of the car." Zoro threatens and reaches for the door release. Sanji stares wide eyed at him, Zoro is just the kind of guy who's crazy enough to pull a stunt like that.
"OKAY! Don't touch that! I'll do it, I'll try!" Sanji yelps. Zoro grins smugly and slumps back bonelessly in his seat with triumph written all over his face.
"You don't really need to drive me to the hospital you know." Zoro says weakly and looks at him with half-lidded eyes.
"I just need to sleep it off. I'll be fine." Zoro yawns and closes his eyes.
"You can't sleep off a hole in your chest, idiot!" Sanji snaps.
Zoro doesn't answer.
"ZORO? Wake up!" He yells, shaking Zoro with a free hand. They're about two minutes out from the hospital, less if he pushes the car as fast as it can go.
Zoro doesn't respond, his head lolls against his chest.
"I'll fucking kill you if you die on me asshole!" Sanji curses vehemently and pushes the accelerator to the floor.
"Hey, are you okay?" Zoro prompts, waving his hand in front of Sanji's face. Sanji rapidly snaps to, dropping out of the memory. A dull ache is thudding behind his eyes at the effort of remembering but it's nothing compared to how bad it was before when every memory of Zoro kept forcing itself into his brain.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little… overwhelmed I guess." He mutters and looks back down at the book. Obviously Zoro survived, so he supposes that he kept his end of the bargain and wrote the book. He feels a proud little flutter in his chest. People own copies of this book, people cook what he cooks. He's taught people, inspired them.
"It's a big deal. That book was your big impossible dream, and you did it." Zoro smiles at him fondly.
"Hah, the funny thing is, you didn't even let yourself think about it before we met. But as soon as Luffy heard about it he wouldn't let you stop doing it, he told Zeff and convinced the old man to drop your hours so you could work on it. I think he wanted to write one when he was younger so he was really pleased to see you going for it. Usopp did all the photographs, Nami helped fund you to get you started and Robin pulled some strings with a few people she knew. Luffy of course took on the heavy burden of testing all of your recipes." Zoro chuckles deeply.
Sanji is… speechless really. He wouldn't even have thought about this sort of thing but… the idea really appeals. He could really touch people with his food, he could do his best to ensure that everyone could cook to the best of their abilities, emphasise quality ingredients and a love for food.
"It's… a shame you don't remember it. But, you were thinking of writing another. Travelling the world to find recipes from all over the place and getting to see the world too, a big adventure." Zoro grins at him.
Oh but that is tempting. He's always enjoyed picking up new ingredients on the Grand Line but he's always been too wrapped up in Luffy's dream and the danger of the Grand Line to really study the cooking in all the places they go to. Here that wouldn't be a problem, he could really stretch his culinary wings.
"But, what about you? Surely I wasn't planning on leaving you behind?" He gasps horrified at the idea. Zoro had helped this other Sanji achieve his dream, he'd supported him and helped him make it real. And this other Sanji treated him like crap, he wouldn't put it past that shitty bastard to just leave Zoro here and travel alone!
"What? No. My work can go with me, it's not like there's a shortage of work in my field. And it's not as if there's no dojos elsewhere either, I can continue teaching too if I wanted. I'll go where you lead." Zoro smiles at him.
"That… that sounds really great actually." He manages as he clutches his cookbook to his chest and tries to ignore the lump forming in his throat.
He looks back up to Zoro but Zoro isn't looking at him, he's looking over Sanji's shoulder with suspicious eyes. Zoro cranes his neck to see… whatever it is that he's looking at and his eyes widen suddenly. He clamps his hand on Sanji's shoulder and jerks them both back behind two sideway bookshelves, he shoves Sanji back against the end of the bookshelf and glances warily around the side. Sanji recognises the look that Zoro is wearing, the hard set jaw, the scowl and the fierce eyes; it's how the Zoro that he knows looks an awful lot of the time, it's Zoro's dangerous situation face.
"What is he doing here?" Zoro mutters, more to himself than anyone else Sanji suspects.
"What's who doing here?" Sanji hisses quietly and glances around the bookshelf. Right in the middle of all the casual shoppers is a blonde guy wearing a massive pink feather coat and big purple and white glasses, that's just the kind of weirdo Sanji would expect to see back home, not here.
"That guy, Donquixote Doflamingo. I've been trying to track him down for forever and now he shows up here?" Zoro explains quietly and narrows his eyes at the man around the edge of the bookshelf.
"Well, who is he? He looks like a complete freak." Sanji says raising an eyebrow at Zoro.
"He's a crime lord, if you can believe it. He controls pretty much everyone, at just a flick of his hand he's got henchmen all across the city doing his dirty work. He controls people like no one I've ever seen, his reputation is infamous, he can turn lifelong nakama against each other, he gets a real kick from it too. The guy's a nutjob and I know that one of his cronies is behind the missing kid I'm looking for." The marimo explains and edges them around the other side of the bookshelf to keep out of the man's view but still so Zoro can spy on him.
"Missing kid?" Sanji asks with a frown.
"Yeah, but what's this guy doing here of all places? Hah, I told you that wherever I went there was work." Zoro laughs without much humour.
"Work? What is it that you actually do?" he asks looking up at Zoro. It's hard to believe that he's not asked until now but it hadn't seemed especially… relevant. He tries to call up a memory to tell him but nothing comes.
"I find people that need finding." Zoro answers absently and pulls his phone from his pocket. Quietly he snaps a picture of Doflamingo browsing the true crime section and selects a number that even upside down Sanji can read as 'Smoker'. Zoro sends the picture and stuffs the phone back in his pocket. Sanji tilts his head and tries to think, Zoro finds people? But he works for Smoker, and smoker is a marine so…
"So you're what, a bounty hunter?" he asks with a frown, that's a bit of an unnerving parallel between his own world and this one.
Zoro's eyes snap to him with a scowl, the same displeased scowl that the Zoro he knows has whenever the bounty hunter thing is brought up, then he says the same words that the Zoro he remembers has said before whenever people ask.
"I never called myself that, I just did it a few times for the money."
But then he adds; "No, I'm… I guess you'd call it a Private Investigator. That's what it says on the door to my office at least. I find people, I help people in trouble. And this guy is big trouble."
Sanji doesn't know what to make of that so he leans around the bookshelf again and spies Doflamingo sauntering over to the counter with his purchase. He has a bit of a psychotic grin on his face that sets Sanji's teeth a little on edge just looking at it. After that he wanders out of the shop. He hears Zoro breathe a sigh of relief and he finally steps back and stops pressing Sanji into the bookshelf, he kind of misses the man's warmth against him.
"I need to tail him okay? Get in a taxi, one of those black cars, and tell them to take you to the Baratie. Zeff can keep an eye on you. Will you be okay, can you manage that?" Zoro asks eyeing him worriedly. Stupid over protective marimo, worrying about him all the time when he should be worrying about his own neck.
"I can manage. But isn't that guy dangerous? Shouldn't I come with you?" Sanji presses feeling concerned for the very unarmed man before him. He doesn't like seeing Zoro walking around without his swords, it's not right.
"Hey, I was made for danger. Ordinarily I'd be happy to have you with me, but you're still not yourself. Go to Zeff, I can handle this." Zoro grins before leaning in and pressing a kiss to Sanji's temple. He pulls back and darts out of the shop after Doflamingo.
Sanji stays leaning against the bookshelf and gives himself a few moments to collect himself. He glances down at his book in his hand and back up at the door that Zoro and Doflamingo just left through. So much for a completely safe and boring world.