Sanji inspects the list that Zoro has written for him. The ship is docked outside of a small town on a winter island so Sanji is dubious about their prospects of gaining fresh fruit and vegetables, nonetheless he's still going to look for them. He and Zoro have spent the last half an hour making up a list of things to look for in town with Sanji going through his supplies and listing out the things that they needed to get. Zoro's job was to write them down.
The swordsman stands, leaning against the counter in a picture of casual nonchalance, but Sanji can read the way that Zoro's got his hands stuffed in his pockets, the way his shoulders are tight. He's more nervous than he's letting on.
"You keep reversing some letters. See, you've got 'string deans' here instead of 'string beans'." Sanji says, pointing the mistake out.
Zoro leans in and squints at the paper.
"I don't... write it for me, I can't see the difference." Zoro scowls, though Sanji knows that it's at himself rather than Sanji.
The cook obliges, writing the word next to Zoro's attempt. He does it in his neatest handwriting too, just so that Zoro can see it as clearly as possible.
"Ugh, it's a stupid mistake, I ought to-" Zoro hisses angrily, leaning back away from the paper, clearly seeing his error now.
"Knock that off shit head." Sanji snaps, kicking Zoro in the ankle.
"Hm... you've got a couple of spelling mistakes here but I think they're genuine, you probably would have made them before. Frankly most people can't spell quinoa, and zucchini isn't much easier either." He concedes.
"You've got a few confusions between c and k too... otherwise the list is good." He says pleased. A week ago Zoro couldn't write or read at all, now he's just a few spelling mistakes away from being back to his normal self.
Zoro however doesn't seem anywhere near as pleased, glaring at the list like it personally insulted him. Sanji kicks him again, this time in the back of the calf and hard enough to make Zoro's knee buckle slightly under him.
"Will you cut that out?!" Zoro snarls at him, getting right up in Sanji's space.
"No way, if you're gonna beat yourself up then I don't see why I can't join in." the cook says primly.
"Funny." Zoro retorts and stuffs the list in his back pocket.
"C'mon, we're burning daylight here and I want to get as much of this as we can." Sanji orders, throwing some large baskets at Zoro's face and leading the way out of the galley with the grumbling swordsman at his heels.
Sanji is surprised at how normal everything is between them. Zoro's not acting as if nothing happened and Sanji's caught the swordsman looking at him thoughtfully more than once. There's also a tension between them that there wasn't before. Whilst close proximity to Zoro's body used to make Sanji hot and bothered it now makes both of them tense. Sanji doesn't know if Zoro is going to get closer or not and Zoro doesn't look any surer about it than he is.
What Zoro isn't doing is making Sanji repeat his confession again, he's not making jokes about it and he certainly isn't treating Sanji like some poor wounded animal that he might injure. It's pretty much the best outcome Sanji could have hoped for.
A wave of longing runs through him and his pace slows a little. Okay, he's lying to himself. The best outcome would have been Zoro returning his feelings, Zoro telling him something sweet like he'd felt the same but never said. Or, you know, indicated it in any way at all.
Zoro kicks him in the ass.
"Move." Zoro barks and pushes past him to Sanji's side. He seems to sense that something is amiss though and his eyes catch Sanji's. He quickly looks away, he doesn't want Zoro to see what he's feeling. He should be happy with how things are, not wishing for things that he doesn't deserve.
Zoro is still watching him thoughtfully and Sanji does everything to look anywhere but him. Hm, maybe his shoes need shining they look a little bit scuffed. Oh, hey, that is definitely Zoro's hand on his chin, tilting his head up to look at him. Sanji's heart flutters in his chest, throwing deluded thoughts and fantasies at him.
Zoro doesn't kiss him, of course. Instead the golden eyed man just pins him to the spot with a searching look.
"I- heh, I was just miles away, off in thought. It's nothing, come on." He says uneasily, pulling away from Zoro's grasp and walking quickly towards the town.
"Usopp." Zoro calls after him, making Sanji freeze.
"Did you just get my NAME wrong?!" Sanji demands indignantly. He's usually unphased by Zoro's mistakes but getting his name wrong hurts.
Zoro frowns, biting his lip and shaking his head.
"Not... not your name. Was looking for a... shit, what's the word?" Zoro mutters angrily, his speech slipping under stress. Sanji pauses, waiting for Zoro to get it right.
The other man's brow creases and he tilts his head back, looking at the cloudy grey sky that hangs over the island, as if it has the answers. All it holds is a threat of snow, not a word that Zoro is looking for. Zoro's mouth works, silently trying on words and rejecting them as not the one he was looking for.
"Liar." Zoro eventually says, looking right at Sanji. The cook feels his cheeks redden.
"I think that's a little harsh against Usopp, using his name instead of liar, he's not that bad." Sanji mutters, dodging the real subject.
"You lied." Zoro restates.
"Fine. I wasn't lost in thought but you know what I was thinking about!" Sanji snarls and turns on his heel marching into town. From Zoro's footsteps on the crisp winter frost he can guess that the other man is right behind him.
"I don't." Zoro says quietly, catching up to him.
"Fucking guess then." the cook mutters. Okay, so everything isn't completely normal, but for the most part it is.
Zoro looks at him. He doesn't look like he feels guilty and his face doesn't read pity either. Sanji doesn't know what that look is. Zoro seems to be sizing him up, but for what he doesn't know. Perhaps he's trying to gauge whether or not Sanji's going to burst into melodramatic tears. Which he absolutely is not thank you very much.
"I think the market's this way." Sanji says quietly, pointing in the direction that he's pretty sure they need to go.
"You sure?" Zoro asks dubiously, squinting at him and looking around.
"Oh hey, guess who's sense of direction we're not following. Yours! You win a prize of being ignored. We're going this way." Sanji says with fake enthusiasm. Zoro scowls at him and 'accidentally' clips him with a basket as they go around the corner. As they are mature adults this does not descend into a shoving match with both of them trying to trip the other up. Both of them would deny it to anyone who would dare accuse them otherwise.
As it happens the market was not in Sanji's direction and, with much wandering, it turns out to be in the direction Zoro had suggested originally. Smugness oozes off of Zoro and Sanji says nothing.
The market is cold and mostly bare, though it's under cover and somewhat warmer than the outside. There are few people in there but not many. Sanji was right in his suspicion that there aren't many fresh vegetables or fruit for sale, he wishes that he'd been wrong though. Those that are for sale are looking a little pathetic, although their winter root vegetables look great. Parsnips and turnips no doubt sweetened to perfection in the frost. He gathers as many of them as he can use before they go off. Some vegetables have clearly been grown indoors, tomatoes and small peppers, though they are far more expensive than Sanji deems reasonable.
The rest of their fare appears to have been traded with other islands and as such carries an extortionate price tag. He is standing before a green grocer, arguing over the price of green beans. He resents having to deal with bastards like this. The two grocers running the stall are middle aged greasy men, one with a pot belly and five day stubble and the other with a dirty grease covered shirt. He's not making any progress in his haggling when it happens.
"Oi, boy, what do you want?" the greasy shirt wearing greengrocer barks in Zoro's direction. He must think that because Zoro is waiting in front of the stall too that he wants something as well.
Zoro opens his mouth but nothing comes out, so instead he shakes his head and gives a weak and fake smile. Sanji continues his argument with the other man, if he breaks his flow now then he'll never be able to haggle a price that won't make Nami drown him the moment he shows her the bill. Even so, he keeps an ear on the goings on beside him.
"No what? I'm talking to you, what do you want?" The grocer demands, his voice starting to veer into the territory of irritated.
A few abortive sounds come from Zoro's throat and the swordsman steps back, still shaking his head and trying to indicate that he's not in line, that he's with Sanji instead.
"What, the guy can't talk? What is he, some kind of retard?" The guy who's been haggling with Sanji asks, losing interest in Sanji and instead looking at Zoro.
"Oi! Don't fucking say that you shit bag!" Sanji snaps furiously. The grocer grins.
"He is, isn't he. Or else why would you be talking for him?" The guy smirks nastily.
"It's none of your fucking business but no, he's not, and even if he was you can't just-" The cook argues, defending his nakama and... and his love.
"Hey... wait. I recognise you. You're that demon pirate... Roro-something." The other greengrocer says, squinting at Zoro.
"Oh shit, yeah! Roronoa Zoro, the famous pirate hunter. He's on that straw-hat kid crew, the one the marines are after so bad. Hah, wonder if they know that he's a retard!" The man crows.
"Shut the FUCK up!" Sanji snarls.
"Well, maybe he's one of those savant things, can't talk or do anything but can swing a... a... sword..." The other greengrocer trails off, his sentence dying in his mouth as Zoro's sword is suddenly pressed to the hollow of his throat.
"I wouldn't move if I were you, or swallow too hard. I also wouldn't suggest opening your goddamn mouths again, not unless you want your heads to be relocated to the floor or possibly a pike." Sanji drawls. Zoro's hand is rock steady and his other is on the hilt of a different sword, clearly ready to give the other the same treatment or to cut this guy's head of scissor style.
"H-hey, tell him to back off. Get him under control." the first one says, his wobbly jowls trembling in fear.
"Hah, even if I could do that, I wouldn't." Sanji laughs and throws a tomato up in the air from where he'd been weighing it in his hand before. He deftly catches it and drops it into one of Zoro's baskets at the top.
"Oi, you need to pay for that." The man says, his eyes narrowing at Sanji.
"Hm, see, no we don't. Not after your shitty attitude. You ought to think yourselves lucky that Zoro's not cut you from balls to brains, which disappoints me because I think you deserve it. So in fair exchange I think we'll settle our haggling match this way: we get to take the supplies we need in exchange for Zoro not decapitating your buddy here and also for having to listen to your shitty opinions." Sanji says lightly and drops the rest of what he needs into another of Zoro's baskets whilst the swordsman glares death at the grocer.
"Okay Zoro, I think we've got about all that this crap market has to offer. Wanna head back then go to a bar?" Sanji suggests brightly, turning to Zoro.
Zoro doesn't move though, his blade still against the throat of the man who so insulted him earlier. He growls deeply and leans forward a little, the blade puncturing the skin, letting a thin ribbon of red run down his dirty shirt.
"Unless you do want to stab him, but if you're gonna do that then get on with it, we 'ain't got all day." Sanji huffs, his hands on his hips.
Zoro finally pulls his eyes off of the man and onto Sanji. He breathes out, short and sharp and pulls his sword back. He flicks it in the air, splattering the small amount of blood onto the frosty cobble flooring before re-sheathing it as naturally as breathing.
The two of them saunter off a fair way and out into the town before Zoro pulls him into an alleyway, dumping the baskets with only the most perfunctory amount of care before leaning against the cold stone wall and shutting his eyes.
Sanji watches, his hands by his sides in tense fists as Zoro's expression melts from one of rage to one of despair and anger. He bites his lip so hard that Sanji thinks he might bite through it, he runs his hands through his hair in a subconscious gesture of calming himself, but it doesn't work. Zoro's mouth starts to tense, his teeth gritted around words that he can't form right now, so Sanji just waits for Zoro to talk first.
"Why?" Zoro finally spits out, his voice tight with rage.
"Why?" He repeats again, but this time his tone is more hopeless, defeated.
"I don't know. You didn't miss anything though, talking to them was fucking awful." Sanji smiles weakly.
Zoro shoves him in the shoulder angrily, he doesn't like being patronised. Sanji takes it, he kind of deserved that even if he was just trying to make light of the situation.
"I don't know why, I don't get brains at the best of times and from what I understand your case is really unusual and hard to predict. There's a reason that Chopper is watching you rather than predicting what's going to happen, no one knows." Sanji sighs, rubbing his forehead.
"All I know is that your speech isn't as good around lots of people and it's even worse when you're stressed out or emotional. Being around a whole group of people that you don't know that are harassing you is a recipe for disaster, it's gonna happen." he continues quietly.
"Laughed." Zoro forces out, his fingers clenching so tight in his fist that his knuckles start to go white.
"Oh fuck them, they stopped laughing real quick when you got your sword out." He snaps feeling angry, not at Zoro but at the reminder of those bastards who dared to laugh at Zoro.
Zoro sighs and glares at the ground. Sanji falls silent. Zoro still looks tense and angry, so though he wants to reach forward and touch the other man, to embrace him, he's sure that it won't go down well. Not just because of their difference in affections for each other but because getting close to an angry Zoro is about as wise as trying to force a cat into a bath, it works out well for no one. Zoro still clearly has more to say but he's not going to pry and press him, just because Zoro can't talk so well right now doesn't mean that he's not allowed his privacy. If he doesn't want to share what's in his mind then he has every right to keep it to himself.
"Marines." Zoro says to Sanji's shoes, his shoulders dropping.
Sanji's brow furrows. The marines? Those men weren't marines, so what does that mean? If he's worried about them telling the marines that Zoro threatened them then... well... he's already got a dead or alive bounty on his head for way worse than that. So that's not it.
His mind snaps to the idea, connecting Zoro's last statement with this one. Those guys laughed, so what about the marines. Will the fearsome Zoro, the demon hunter, the man whose swords can slice through buildings and bisect ships, will he be a joke now? Will they think of him as a mute idiot rather than a foe to be feared?
He changes his mind about touching Zoro, sliding his hand around the back of Zoro's neck and bringing his forehead to the top of Zoro's bowed head.
"If the marines underestimate you for this then that's their mistake. Besides, it'll give some of those idiots a nasty shock if they think this makes you less dangerous." He says softly to him, his voice so quiet that no one but Zoro could hear, even if they were close by.
"You must have scrambled your brains a little you know, because I know you Zoro and this isn't right. The Zoro that I know doesn't give a shit about what anyone thinks of him outside of his swordsmanship. That's the reason that you look like a man who got dressed in the dark whilst drunk and possibly blind. That's why you're rude and coarse and why you don't bathe anywhere NEAR as much as you should." Sanji tells him, a smile creeping onto his own face.
"The only people whose opinions you care about are your nakama's and even we don't get a full pass on changing your mind on anything, you just listen to us and choose to ignore us most of the time. I think the only person outside of us whose opinion you give a shit about is Mihawk, and he doesn't strike me as the most normal man himself, so I think you're ok there." He reassures him. Zoro laughs, his shoulders shaking as he does.
"See?" He smiles at Zoro.
The swordsman leans back against the wall, putting them at a more or less even height again, though with how Zoro is leaning against the wall he's still a little below Sanji's height. It feels odd because that isn't the way the two of them are, they're supposed to be the same (shut up, Zoro isn't taller, he ISN'T). Sanji doesn't keep his hand on Zoro's neck as he moves, instead he keeps it more or less still, not out of thought just... he doesn't move it. Because of this he goes from having his hand on the relatively neutral back of his neck to something far more intimate, the side of his throat and the corner of his jaw.
Zoro looks up at him, dark gold eyes and perplexingly black lashes, shouldn't they be green too? Sanji's kind of frozen in place, his lungs halted between breaths and his heart caught between beats. Zoro's so close and he just... he could. He catches the movement as Zoro's eyes go from his eyes and to his mouth. They flicker there before going back to Sanji's eyes. He gets to see up close in stunning detail how the slightest blush starts on Zoro's dark tan skin.
Zoro opens his mouth, to speak with but nothing comes forth. His eyes drop to Sanji's lips again and he hears the slight intake of breath. Sanji watches numbly as the redness that balances on the highest point of Zoro's cheekbones gets redder. Roronoa Zoro is thinking about kissing him. Right at this very second that thought is going through Zoro's head, he can see it.
Sanji's brain stutter stops, wrong information fed in and the whole system glitching. Does Zoro want to? Is that why he's thinking about it? Or is he just aware that Sanji wants to kiss him first, or that he might? Is he embarrassed about that knowledge or...?
Zoro breaks eye contact, whatever it was that he was thinking he's decided to shelve for now. Sanji takes his hand back, stuffing them both in his pockets and scuffing his shoe on the floor. Why did he do that? Why, what... agh!
"What now?" Zoro asks, his voice apparently having decided to come back now. Sanji looks at him again and he's standing up to his actual height now.
"I- um." Sanji says, his voice being the uncooperative one now.
"We'd better get back, Nami will want to see the bill and uh... I should... put the stuff away." He mutters out, rubbing the back of his own neck and looking down at the baskets on the floor. He reminds himself that Nami will be pleased that they got some stuff for free, she'll no doubt approve more when she knows what kind of thing it was in punishment for. He tells himself that if he's thinking about that then he's not thinking about the way that Zoro looked at his mouth twice and the desperate wish that he'd just kissed him. But his brain is an excellent multitasker.
Zoro grabs some baskets and before he can grab the rest Sanji snatches them up, keep to have something to do with his nervous hands. The two of them exit the alleyway and Sanji leads the way back to the ship. They get barely ten paces before Zoro speaks.
"Sanji." He says. Not shit cook, not just 'oi', not any other insult or anything. His name. It wasn't rare for Zoro to use his name before his injury, though he preferred insults, but since then Zoro's taken a perverse pleasure in almost never saying Sanji's name. Only now he is saying it. Sanji freezes in place, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Is Zoro going to bring that moment up or...?
"Thanks." Zoro says simply, though the word carries weight to it.
"Nnh, you're... don't mention it, 's the truth." He mumbles awkwardly, trying not to look at Zoro as he leads the way. The rest of the journey is uneventful, save for Sanji's racing heart.
The rest of the conversation happens when the two of them are putting away the food that they bought. Zoro's handing him the beans when he says it.
"You, well, you and Chopper both... said stress makes this... makes this worse." Zoro says a little unevenly. Sometimes even when Zoro gets the words right his sentence still doesn't flow quite right, it sounds a little unnatural on the ear.
"Well, yeah, it seems to as well. Remember when you couldn't talk in front of anyone but me and as soon as you were put on the spot you clammed up? But now it's no big deal and you can talk fine." Sanji answers from within the depths of the fridge. If he rearranges the milk and the jam here then he can get the carrots in their plastic bag there...
"So maybe I should... should... ship?" Zoro guesses. Sanji pulls his head out of the fridge and shoots Zoro a confused look, one that Zoro is almost matching. He seems as perplexed as Sanji is about the word.
"Train." He amends. Ah, that's a mistake type that Sanji doesn't see as much of any more. Zoro thinks of a word that has several meanings and can't quite nail it down, so his brain grabs something in a related category, in this case the meaning of train as transport instead of practice and uses a related word in the wrong category; ship.
"How?" Sanji asks, curious as to the answer.
"I 'unno. Tell you about something stressful?" Zoro shrugs and passes Sanji a can of tinned tomatoes unthinkingly. Sanji resists the temptation to throw it at his head. He is not going to refrigerate something canned and unopened. Zoro then hands him a bag of fresh chicken fillets. That goes on a lower shelf of the fridge.
"So... you're thinking that if you can smoothly make it through telling a stressful event then you can talk under stress?" He says, thinking aloud.
"Yeah." Zoro agrees.
"I don't know, it'd be worth a try but I can't see it working all that well. You talk about painful stuff sometimes but you gloss over all of the real stressful stuff, the meat of it you know? Those are the really stressful parts, reliving how you felt and what you were thinking." Sanji explains, standing up and shutting the fridge door. He takes the meat that they're not using tonight or tomorrow and starts to load it into the freezer.
"I don't do that." Zoro protests, kicking him in the knee.
"You do. But fine, tell me... hm, tell me about the time you nearly cut your own feet off." Sanji asks, trying to scan his memory for a stressful event whilst missing out the ones he thinks that Zoro will consider the worst. Getting Zoro to start out by talking about his loss to Mihawk may well be like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
"Everyone was getting frozen in place with the... uh, white... burning... solid... ah! Wax. So everyone was stuck and we needed to get out and I tried to cut my feet off, but I didn't manage to and then it all turned out okay in the end. Then I got them stitched back on." Zoro explains easily.
Sanji rolls his eyes and shuts the freezer door, leaning against it.
"See, that's what I'm talking about. You cut out all of the details, you didn't say what it felt like being stuck there or what pushed you to the point that you thought a self inflicted amputation was a sensible solution. You didn't tell me how it felt and what kind of pain it was. It's not stressful." He huffs, Zoro's not getting this.
"Well you do it then!" Zoro snaps angrily, his arms folded defensively.
"Ok... feel my pulse first." He commands. Zoro frowns at him but reaches for Sanji's neck. His fingers press into the pulse point at the side of Sanji's neck, to the side of his jugular. He feels it for a little while to measure the speed of Sanji's heart before pulling back and raising a curious eyebrow.
Sanji breathes out, trying to ready himself for what he's about to say.
"Okay, when I was a kid and I was still really new at cooking I managed to screw up. I was with Zeff by this time and whilst he's a great chef he's not that gentle a teacher. If I got shit wrong he wouldn't hold back, he was fond of yelling or giving me a kick to the head if I wasn't quick enough to dodge. I turned out a good cook for it, but it wasn't fun at the time." Sanji starts, trying to picture the scene in his head.
"It's always so noisy in the kitchen, everyone shouting and yelling over each other, trying to get everything done on time. Zeff wasn't about to waste food to let me practice so whatever I made was going to go out to a customer, not just to us but to a real paying person. I was terrified of getting it wrong and I couldn't bear to let Zeff down, I had to prove myself. I was making breaded chicken strips, there was other stuff on the side but someone else was making that, I can't remember who." He continues, he remember so much of it clearly but other details are lost on him, faded by time.
"I'd made sure that the chicken was cooked and the breadcrumbs had stuck really well, but I was convinced that something was going to go wrong and I could feel Zeff watching me from across the room. I went to serve up the first one and I guess my hands were shaking out of nerves because the piece that I picked up slipped out of the tongs that I was holding and landed back in the boiling oil with a splash. I didn't even see it happen it was so fast, but this splash of boiling oil came out of the pan and hit my skin, right here." He says, holding his hand out to show Zoro. He can still see it a little even now, a slight lightness of the skin in the join where his thumb meets his hand on the top.
"I wasn't as used to pain as a little kid and it hurt so badly. It was worse than it being anywhere else because it was my hands, I couldn't damage them and there I was, first real dish for a customer and not only had I fucked up with my mentor watching but I'd hurt my hands too. Before I could do more than scream Zeff grabbed me up and shoved my whole arm under this freezing cold water, washing the oil off before it could burn me more and fixing the burn up. I was crying but I don't know if it was out of shame of failing so badly or pain or what. It took over a month to be fully healed and every day I saw the mark on my hand and it hurt me, long after all the physical pain had gone."
He notices as his story comes to a close that at some point he'd wrapped his arms around himself, holding himself against the pain of reliving that memory. He shakes his arms apart and reaches for Zoro's, he takes his hand and pulls it to his throat, guiding Zoro to his pulse again. It's faster, Sanji can feel it himself without seeing the way that Zoro's eyebrows raise in alarm.
"See the difference? Unless you can tell a stressful memory in that way then this isn't going to work." He says uneasily and tries to calm himself down by distracting himself with rearranging spices. As he goes to reach for one of the spices though Zoro grabs his hand, pulling it closer to himself. The swordsman peers at it, trying to see the mark. He traces the very faint outline with his fingernail. The worst of it long since faded as Sanji had aged from a child to a man, getting faded as his hands grew.
"It was a long time ago marimo, I'm fine." He mutters, taking his hand back from Zoro's warm grip. Zoro doesn't look as convinced though, and perhaps he's right a little. He picked that memory for a reason, it still stresses him out after all.
"I felt like I had a hangover." Zoro starts, his voice making Sanji jump. He's leaning against the sink and looking at Sanji. He frowns suddenly though.
"I don't know, maybe. I've never had a hangover but I guess it felt like that, or hit in the head. I couldn't focus and it hurt, so I didn't notice right away that I couldn't understand people." Zoro continues, his speech just fine. A cold shiver runs up Sanji's back when he realises just what memory that it is which Zoro is recalling for him.
"But then everything sounded so odd. It still sounded like..." Zoro trails off, frowning as he tries to put it into words. Sanji's not sure if it's stress or just trying to get it right. As much as he's worried for Zoro he finds that he really wants to hear the rest of this story, he doesn't know what it was that Zoro was hearing, what it was like for him before.
"Like hearing another language, words but no..." Zoro trails off, snapping his fingers to try and pull the word forth.
"Understanding?" Sanji suggests.
"Yeah, it sounded right though. I knew it was me, not you." The other man says with a sigh, his hand coming up to touch the plate on the back of his head. Sanji's stopped noticing it now for the most part, he doesn't know how aware of it Zoro is. Does Zoro touch it and think about how it changed his life? Does he feel insecure about the fact that everyone can see that he was injured and in a sense how injured he still is?
He remembers Zoro's comment about the marines and wonders if that had crossed his mind at all before he mentioned it. Zoro's not an egotistical kind of guy, but he's got pride. That in itself worries Sanji, he's seen men do very stupid things indeed because of pride.
He should be paying attention to what Zoro is saying though. He wonders what it must have been like, hearing voices and having no understanding at all. How did Zoro know that they weren't all playing some kind of awful prank on him. Obviously they wouldn't ever do that but how did he automatically know the difference? Was it some kind of innate sense or did their voices themselves tell him?
"So what? You recognised our accents or the pattern or... how did it sound?" Sanji asks with a frown.
"Mhn..." Zoro makes a non committal noise and leans against the sink, staring down at the floor with a frown. A feeling of worry spikes in Sanji's chest.
"Are you having trouble talking? Is it getting worse? Because if this is too stressful you can-" Sanji starts, not wanting Zoro to stress himself out too much. It was his dumb idea in the first place but he doesn't want Zoro to hurt himself just out of a desire to prove that his idea was a good one.
"No, asshole. Just... thinking." Zoro snaps at him irritably.
"Oh." Sanji says, a little embarrassed. A thought creeps across his mind and he smirks at Zoro, leaning into his personal space.
"No wonder you're taking so long marimo, I could see the gears slowly turning in there." Sanji teases.
Zoro flings his arm out to the side and the back of his hand smacks loudly into Sanji's chest with a jolt that stutters the laugh coming out of Sanji's mouth.
"Ok, when you're in a bar that speaks your language." Zoro starts, rubbing his chin as he talks.
"As in, the people in the bar around you are speaking your language?" Sanji questions, Zoro's statement not being entirely clear.
"Yeah. So you can tell it's right, but you can't hear what people... what they... fuck... what they're saying." the swordsman manages.
"So it's..." The word seems to fail Zoro.
The swordsman sighs and rubs at his face with both hands, the breath coming forced out of his fingers. The worst thing is that there isn't really a word for what Zoro is describing, it's a pretty abstract concept for something which Sanji thankfully has no real way of relating to.
"It's just all..." Zoro tries again, making a complicated hand gesture behind his head, his fingers making snarled up patterns and indistinct shapes.
"Like background noise?" he suggests.
"Yes! But it's a thing of sound all... flowing together. I can't pick out words it all just..." Zoro scrunches his hands together.
"You couldn't separate words and understand them, huh?" Sanji says sympathetically.
Zoro seemed so isolated at the beginning and at the time Sanji understood why but now he has a better idea of what it felt like, what Zoro heard when they tried their hardest to talk to him.
"Whenever I tried to think of a word I could but as soon as... it just vanished. Couldn't even think-" He says with a shake of his head.
"I tried to say- nothing would come out and... and it was... felt like choking. Just... in my throat I-" Zoro says, his voice coming out almost as if he's hyperventilating around it. Sanji watches him, he isn't quite that far into panic yet but he is more unsettled than he usually ever is. Sanji doesn't know if it's the stressful memory or the fact that his speech is deteriorating so fast that's getting to him. Either way he's not going to let this go on if it gets much worse.
"And when I did get- it was wrong and I KNEW that but- but- had to. Something- anything. Like throwing up... all letters and-" Zoro says, shaking his head. His grip on the edge of the sink is getting white knuckle tight and Sanji edges a little closer to him.
"Then he- uh- hat... scar- fuck... Luffy shouting and-" Zoro continues, forgetting even his captain's name. Sanji frowns, this has started to go too far. He leans over and places a hand on Zoro's shoulder, Zoro shakes him off though, gripping the sink with both hands.
"Shouting at- no- I- thought I was- that I broke... promise- dy-dying." Zoro stumbles out. He is hyperventilating now, there's no two ways about it, he's visibly starting to shake too.
"Okay, alright Zoro. Stop." Sanji orders him, moving before the pale swordsman and placing his hands on both of his shoulders. Zoro's arms come up and his hands wrap around Sanji's forearms, his grip tight and his nails digging in like he's holding on for dear life.
"Come on, let's sit down. With me... okay." He says soothingly, kneeling down and taking Zoro with him. Zoro goes unevenly, almost losing his balance and eventually just leaning into the cupboard underneath the sink and just sliding down its door. He sits on the floor, his legs spread haphazardly with Sanji crouching between them.
Zoro looks up at him, eyes wide in fear and his mouth opening with no sound coming out. He's trying to talk and can't and in the process is scaring himself and stressing himself out more, he's not going to be able to get a word out like this and it'll just keep getting worse.
"Okay Zoro, just listen to me. Can you still understand me, don't talk just nod or shake your head." he says with calmness he doesn't feel.
Zoro stares at him, his eyes searching Sanji's face. His hand comes up to Sanji's mouth, his fingers touching Sanji's lips with trembling fingertips. Either Zoro can't understand him right now or he's finding it really hard to. This is beyond bad.
Sanji tries to keep calm, he has to keep calm. Zoro was just telling him that when Luffy freaked out on him he'd thought that he was dying. That's terrible enough to warrant a hell of a lot of thought but right now isn't the time. Right now Zoro needs him and he needs to be calm.
"Breathe." He says, keeping it simple. Zoro traces the pattern on Sanji's mouth and Sanji repeats it again for good measure.
"Br-ea-the." Zoro forces out, breaking the word into odd syllables.
"You've got it. Do like I do, ok? Breathe in." Sanji says and holds one hand up. He breathes in slowly and theatrically, counting off to four on his fingers. Then he holds his index finger on his other hand up to his mouth, almost as if to indicate quiet and counts to four with his fingers, holding his breath. Then he breathes out for four seconds, counting it out on his fingers. He waits for four seconds, again counting them out on his fingers.
Throughout all of that Zoro just stares at him in confusion, his chest rapidly rising and falling as he breathes short panicky breaths in and out. When Sanji starts his second round though Zoro seems to get it. His in breaths are shaky and he can't quite make it to four, but Sanji goes with it, modifies it to three seconds in, holding for three and so on. Eventually they are both able to make it to four together, chests rising and falling in calming synchronisation.
"Okay, you're doing really well." Sanji says, his words smooth and soothing. Zoro swallows thickly and then nods. He points at his own ear and then to Sanji. It's mime and Sanji doesn't like it but he does like it's message.
"You can hear me again." He translates. Zoro nods, his eyes shut and the strongest scowl on. He leans into Sanji slightly and awkwardly crosses his legs so that he's sitting almost as if he's meditating. Sanji's has to switch from kneeling to crouching on his toes to accommodate Zoro's shift but it's okay.
He rubs wide soothing circles on Zoro's back, from the bottom of his ribcage to the top of his neck and as wide as the breadth of Zoro's torso. He circles around and around, enough that the skin on his palm starts to feel tingly with too much sensation. Zoro leans forward and rests his arms on Sanji's raised knees, dropping his own head onto his folded arms. His breathing slows to normal but Sanji can still feel just how tight Zoro is, like a rope pulled so hard it's starting to fray right before it snaps.
"You're ok." He assures him.
"'m weak." Zoro says, voice shaking but thankfully back.
"Uh-uh. I try to protect weak people but I don't really respect them. You're not weak, you're strong. Being stressed out and then not being able to talk and understand all over again would make me wanna hurl from being so scared. I count the fact that you didn't upchuck on my nice shoes a victory." Sanji smiles weakly and rubs Zoro's back a little more, smaller movements though this time. His hand is settled between Zoro's shoulder blades and he's rubbing under and down Zoro's spine with just his thumb. He feels the laugh that he can't hear, a sharp huff of breath that Sanji knows well enough to be a sign of Zoro's quiet amusement.
"Worked. The stress." Zoro says in short grammatically incorrect sentences.
"Yeah, making you stressed out does fuck with your speech, but I'd rather you didn't nearly pass out in the process. Though, I suppose at least you've got a benchmark now and you can pretty much only go up from here so..." Sanji trails up with a shrug.
"Yay." Zoro says in the flattest most sarcastic voice that Sanji has ever seen. He looks up from his resting place on his arms to do it though.
"I'm serious though, I'll help you stress test this thing for you if that's what you want, but you've got to promise me you won't push yourself this far. This is... this is like training to injury." Sanji explains with a frown. Zoro's nose wrinkles in distaste at that idea.
"Yeah, see, you wouldn't treat your body like that. You listen to it, so the same applies to your head. Don't burn out and get a panic attack on me like that. It's bad for you and it's bad for my fucking heart, you're gonna give me grey hairs here marimo." he says, trying to lighten the mood.
"Hmm." Zoro hums thoughtfully and reaches out to Sanji's hair. He combs his fingers through it, the feeling of his fingers running through Sanji's hair enough to send sparks up his spine. That is until Zoro plucks one out of his head.
"Oi!" Sanji rebukes him, clapping a hand to his stinging scalp.
Zoro takes the hair to his eyes, it's blonde of course, but he pretends to examine it thoughtfully.
"You're ok." Zoro teases him, flicking the hair back at him.
"You're an ass. Show me your hands marimo, I want to see if you're still shaking." Sanji demands leaning forward to take them in his own hands.
There's a slight tremor there, but Sanji isn't sure he'd have spotted it if he wasn't looking for it. He bites his lip thoughtfully and turns his attention to Zoro's cheeks, he's not pale anymore either, in fact there's even a little bit of redness starting to return to his cheeks.
"You're a lot better. Let me just..." Sanji leans in a little more, his legs tilting forward so that his crouched legs are against Zoro's folded ones, his knees almost to Zoro's hips.
He reaches his hand out and presses it right over Zoro's heart. It's still a little fast. He knows that Zoro's athleticism is insane, even for their incredibly strong crew. It was a little thing that Chopper did when he joined the crew. He tested each of the crew as they were waking up, before they got out of bed, to see what their resting heart rate was. All of them had low heart rates, a sign of a strong heart. Zoro's however was the lowest. Sanji had teased him at the time of course, saying that even Zoro's heart was lazy.
At the moment through Zoro's heart is going far faster than normal. Not as worryingly fast as it could be, not fast for a regular person. It's normal though he supposes, considering what Zoro's just-
The swordsman leans forward and at first Sanji thinks that Zoro's fainted, not something that he needs. But he's not. He swoops in faster than Sanji can process and, oh, hey... he's... kissing him. Or rather, their lips are pressed together but Zoro's not really doing anything and Sanji's too confused and stunned to even move.
Zoro pulls back after a split second. As soon as he moves though Sanji's entire system boots up again and screams at him that Zoro just KISSED HIM. He gasps and follows Zoro, moving to kiss him this time and in earnest. He hears Zoro gasp though and his head pulls back so fast and sharp that the edge of his repaired skull hits the steel rim of the sink hard enough to send a loud ringing clang out of the basin.
"Shit." Sanji curses, pulling back.
He stares at Zoro and sees that Zoro's face is set in a kind of horrified terror, not unlike Usopp's face right after he's broken something of Nami's or Franky's and knows that it's going to end badly for him. It's an 'oh shit' expression. Sanji grits his teeth and shuts his eyes, turning his head slightly away from Zoro. Now he's having to remind himself to breathe.
"That was just an impulse huh?" Sanji asks, opening his eyes to look at Zoro. Zoro's hands are over his mouth now, probably in shock at what he just did but some part of Sanji feels like maybe Zoro is defending himself against Sanji reciprocating. That thought feels like an icy knife to the heart. He tells himself sharply that Zoro wouldn't mean it like that, he wouldn't, Zoro trusts him and he's never given him reason to do otherwise.
"You didn't mean it, just adrenaline?" He guesses and Zoro starts to nod but pauses, his face pulling into an expression of regret.
"Yeah. Thought so." Sanji stands up with a sigh. He steps well out of Zoro's space and leans against the counter, his head resting on the spice cupboard door. He had wanted Zoro to kiss him, dreamed of it even, and now he has and it was a mistake. Just a fleeting adrenaline high stray thought turned into an action, one immediately regretted.
Zoro gets to his feet a little unsteadily, probably a little lightheaded from before. Sanji doesn't look at him though, he's too busy staring down at his chopping board and thinking about being careful what he wishes for. Zoro's hand lands in the crook of his elbow and Sanji lets himself be tugged around to face Zoro. The swordsman's expression is almost pleading, but for what Sanji doesn't know. For him to listen? But Zoro's not saying anything, or at least not right now. Pleading for forgiveness for doing something so impulsive and thoughtless to Sanji's feelings? Zoro doesn't manage to say anything for a while and to be honest he looks like he doesn't even know where to start.
"I'm sorry." He eventually manages.
Sanji feels something inside him snap. Like an elastic band pulled too far finally giving in or the feeling of a bone breaking under too much force.
"Don't you fucking DARE!" He yells, shoving Zoro back hard.
Zoro reaches for his swords and it's a good thing too because Sanji lashes out with the heel of his foot. His shoe connects to two of Zoro's crossed blades, he's not drawn wado yet, this is purely defensive.
"I don't NEED or WANT your fucking pity for this, or anything else!" Sanji snarls at Zoro, pushing back against him harder and managing to make Zoro's feet slide further along the kitchen floor. Rage and hurt giving him strength.
"You dragged how I feel out of me, I didn't WANT to tell you because the last thing I wanted was your pity. Poor Sanji and his pathetic fucking feelings!" He roars and spins into a kick that Zoro blocks with the flat of his blade.
"Said sorry!" Zoro insists. Sanji sees red.
"You know what? Fuck you." He hisses, pulling back. He backs up along the kitchen, the two of them stuck in the meter and a half wide gap between the two counters on either side. There's no sidestepping here, just attack or retreat.
"You splattered your brains out on a rock and I never once pitied you. Nothing changed for me, I didn't want to pat you on the head and pity you or say well done for trying. Damn near everyone else did but not me! And don't fucking kid yourself by saying that's not the reason you started talking to me again, I trusted you enough to push you because I didn't pity you." He shouts. Okay, maybe this is a low blow but he needs to get Zoro to understand just how godawful being pitied by Zoro is.
"YOU!" Zoro snaps, pointing a finger in Sanji's direction.
"Me WHAT?" the cook yells back. Zoro sheathes his swords and pushes his way back into Sanji's space. He catches his hand, palm to palm and then he pushes his thumb up, against Sanji's fingers and pushes them back. Not enough to hurt, not even enough to be a threat, just a reminder. Zoro raises an eyebrow at him; get it?
"That was me being selfish, I couldn't lose you again. And in my defence you know I was misinformed, that's not my fault." Sanji mutters, looking down at the floor.
"I know." Zoro answers, lightening some of the heaviness in Sanji's chest.
"But it wasn't pity, my point still stands. If you start pitying me for this I'll die. I'd rather you did anything than that, break my face in anger or pretend I never said anything just not... not that." Sanji says in a strangled voice.
Zoro lets him go and growls in frustration, his hands fisting in moss green hair. He bares his teeth in anger, though Sanji has a feeling that it's facing inwards rather than at him. He's trying to say something and can't, it's not fair of Sanji to leap ahead in this argument when Zoro can't talk under stress. They just proved that after all. God he's such a jerk, why does he-
"Not FOR you. FROM me." Zoro chokes out, his words making no sense.
Sanji frowns and looks at him, turning the words over in his mind. Zoro's telling him that he's wrong, but how? What does Zoro mean, not for him. Not sorry for him? Zoro's saying that he's not sorry for Sanji, so not pity. But what does he mean by 'from me'? He's saying sorry from him? That doesn't make sense.
"Shit thing to do. Shouldn't." Zoro continues, sentences broken.
"You're... you weren't sorry for me, you weren't pitying me for how I feel." Sanji guesses. Zoro's face lights up and relief seems to wash over him, Sanji can almost track the movement of the emotion across Zoro's whole body. He relaxes, his hands drop out of his hair and Sanji sees the tense breath flow out of him.
"Shouldn't have done... not until I'm sure about- I don't know how I-" he explains.
Sanji laughs flatly, that's the dumbest thing that he's ever heard. Sure, it's a nice thought. Zoro's not wanting to jerk around with his feelings until he comes to a conclusion and that's nice. That's what he had been doing up until then, that's why not much had changed between them. But Zoro kissing him isn't something that can be undone, there's no point in locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. God, that's the kind of thing that Zeff would say, a stupid metaphor. But there's no taking back what he just did. Not in an awful kind of way but he's done it now. Sanji can't get un-kissed, it doesn't work like that.
"That's fine, but you just did. So you ought to know how you feel." he points out. It's true though, he doesn't want it to be. He wants Zoro to keep thinking about how he feels because then the possibility is still there, however small, that Zoro wants him. It's hope and it's all Sanji has.
"What? No! I don't!" the other man insists, like Sanji is a fucking dumbass for even saying it.
"Sure you do! You kissed me and it did nothing for you! If it had done then you would have felt something, the fact that you didn't gives you your answer! I could go out there and kiss Franky if I wanted, I don't want to but I'm physically capable of it and if I did it'd do nothing for me because I don't like him like that!" Sanji yells in exasperation.
"Didn't count!" Zoro says, shaking his head and pushing his hands against Sanji's shoulders, pinning him to the wall as if Sanji would escape if he didn't keep him right here.
"Jesus fucking christ Zoro, we're not five! You can't have take-backs on this sort of thing!" Sanji says, slapping his palm to his forehead. This conversation is getting frankly ridiculous and the fact that Zoro has him shoved up against the wall like they're preteens arguing and threatening doesn't help.
"Was too quick! Hadn't time to feel anything!" Zoro argues, his speech nearly back to normal but still with words plastering over the cracks of absent ones.
"You were the one who pulled away dumbass and I think that-" Sanji starts, but gets interrupted yet again.
Zoro makes this noise, this exasperated and irritated noise. If Sanji had to sum up their entire relationship that noise would do pretty well. It says 'dear god you frustrate me so fucking much'. It's all of their friction put into a one syllable wordless sound. An 'uuuuugh' of mismatched personalities which are so opposite but so identical.
Zoro rolls his eyes whilst he does it but before Sanji can snap at him or argue Zoro leans in and kisses him again.
Sanji's brain fizzes like champaign and all rational thought bubbles away. This is nothing like before. Where that time was a chaste and sudden press of stunned lips, an impulsive stupid gesture on Zoro's part, this is a different creature altogether.
Zoro's hands go from holding him in place to really touching him. One hand comes up to Sanji's jaw, sliding along the bone so that the heel of his palm is at the edge of Sanji's jawbone by his ear, his thumb up on Sanji's cheekbone and moving softly whilst his long calloused fingers slide into Sanji's hair. When Zoro's other hand moves from Sanji's shoulder to the wall behind him, letting Zoro lean in and press his chest along every line of Sanji's then the cook gasps into the kiss. Zoro, as always, presses his advantage. Like Sanji retreating in a fight Zoro moves to fill the space and exploit the move. Their kiss goes from closed to open mouthed, Zoro's air mixing with his own as the two of them half kiss and half clash.
Sanji reaches out and grips Zoro's hip, pulling him closer as if to get rid of any space between them. He feels like he'll fall apart if he doesn't have as much of Zoro against him as possible, holding him together and keeping him whole. Sanji must be falling, how else can he feel so weightless?
This is everything like fighting and nothing like it. A stark contradiction in meaning that fits just right. Like their fights this is filled with the same push-me pull-you routine, knowing each other's space so well that neither of them has to think about how it works. Logistics isn't an issue, he knows Zoro's strength and habits as well as his own, he's studied them and Zoro has done the same back. This is why they fight each other every bit as well as they fight other people, back to back in an unrivalled force. He never gets caught by Zoro's blades because he knows how he'll move and Zoro knows where he'll be. The swordsman never gets kicked because the two of them navigate their space flawlessly. This is just like that, no need to think about how to get each other closer or how to make the kiss deeper, they both just do it.
But at the same time this is nothing like fighting. None of the adrenaline rush of a fight could possibly compare to this. In a fight there is aggression, obviously, but here it's gone. He knows as easy as breathing that if he pushed Zoro away that this would be over, no fight, no question. Zoro isn't taking from him and neither is Sanji, they're doing this together and it doesn't work just one way.
He can hear himself, he's whining and gasping into the kiss and though Zoro remains silent he speaks well enough with his body. The grip in Sanji's hair is getting tighter and Zoro's gone from just leaning in to bodily shoving him against the wall. Sanji could take his feet off the floor and not move an inch.
But eventually he does move, Zoro pulls back, slowly but naturally. The kiss stops and the two of them are left, forehead to forehead, panting from excitement and prioritising excellent kissing over breathing. That was unquestionably the best kiss Sanji has ever had in his life.
"Ah, fuck." Zoro mumbles. "Didn't want to- not 'til I was sure."
"You still don't know how you feel? But- that can't just have been me there, right?" Sanji frowns, panic starting to claw inside of him.
"Quit putting words in my mouth." Zoro argues, pulling back and smacking Sanji in the side of the head.
"You said you weren't sure!" Sanji argues. Zoro had said that, how else was he supposed to take that?
"I wanted to make sure I felt- that wasn't just owing." the other man says, pulling back complete now and rubbing the back of his neck uneasily.
Sanji's mind takes an age to kick in and process what Zoro just said, but when he does it his him like a tonne of bricks.
"You're doing this because you think you owe me? For what? For helping you speak again?" Sanji balks, wide eyed in horror. No way! He wants Zoro to want this because... well... because he wants him, not because he feels like he owes him for something Sanji did out of care and respect of him.
"Hope not! But that's why I wasn't SURE, dumbass. Didn't want to do that to you... or me." Zoro groans and smacks Sanji in the arm.
"Oh. I thought you weren't sure about... about seeing me like that." he murmurs, starting to feel very, very stupid.
"I don't know. Maybe. I didn't before all... before..." Zoro halts, gesturing to the back of his head.
"But- didn't know you as well, didn't listen to you or stop arguing long enough to-" Zoro gestures fruitlessly.
"So you don't know if it's because you owe me or because it's real." Sanji concludes.
Zoro nods and Sanji considers this. He chews his lip in thought.
"I didn't know if there was some fucked up reason for me starting to like you. Like... you needing me or something. I really don't think it is but, I don't know, I guess the worry kind of lingers." Sanji admits uneasily. He doesn't want Zoro to think that it's a likely situation but it had more than just crossed his mind. He remembers the kick in the gut feeling he had when Zoro started being able to talk around other people and when Franky and Brook were able to help him. That hadn't made him like Zoro any less though, he'd just been selfishly worried that it meant that Zoro could never forgive him and be okay with that.
"It's hard to... to pull them apart. What happened and... this." Zoro agrees, gesturing to the space between him and Sanji.
He suspects that it's not that Zoro doesn't know a word that could describe what's going on, but more that he's hesitant about putting a label on it. That's something that he can appreciate, though not a problem that he has. After all, he blurted out that he loved Zoro right to his face, so he's not exactly got much else to hide.
"Maybe it doesn't matter, if we can't separate this from what caused it then... maybe we just go with it." Sanji suggests hopefully.
"It matters to me." the other man asserts, straightening up and shoving his hands in his pockets with a sigh. Zoro turns to leave the kitchen, leaving Sanji with a heavy and worried heart.
Zoro pauses midway between him and the door out of the room. He turns, and looks at Sanji softly.
"Thanks for... the breathing thing. And... you know." Zoro mutters, not making eye contact.
"Eloquent as ever, moss brain." Sanji teases.
"Fuck off." Zoro shoots back, it should be mean but the pair of them are grinning at each other like idiots. There is of course the possibility that they are both idiots but if that's the case then he's happy like this.
"I meant it though, don't push yourself that far again. There's training yourself and then there's hurting yourself and I'm not gonna participate in the latter, you stupid, shitty, moss brain." He says firmly. If Zoro has any intention of deliberately doing that again then he's not going to be even vaguely supportive.
"I got it. You'd stop me anyway, I trust you. I'm gonna go have a nap." Zoro says offhandedly and wanders out of the room, oblivious to the fact that his casual declaration of easy trust hits Sanji just as deep as the blade through his chest did.
The mark that Zoro left on either side of his torso itches, it's just healing but it reminds him of just how bad things can get with Zoro. Just because they're nakama doesn't mean that he can't fuck things up. The two of them never communicated perfectly before Zoro's speech went awry. It'd be all too easy to do that again and fuck this thing up before it's even begun. His head is telling him sensible rational things and he needs to keep that in mind. His heart however is just replaying their kiss over and over again. He hopes they get to do it again, sometime soon, right now would be nice...