Have you no idea that you're in deep
I dreamt about you near me every night this week
How many secrets can you keep'
'Cause there's this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow
When I play it on repeat
Until I fall asleep
Spilling drinks on my settee

(Do I wanna know?)

If this feeling flows both ways
(Sad to see you go)
Was sorta hoping that you'd stay
(Baby we both know)
That the nights were mainly made for saying
things that you can't say tomorrow day

-"Do I Wanna Know" Arctic Monkeys

XxxX

They managed to get a parking spot not far from the Baratie. After parking the car they started toward the restaurant. Before they went in Sanji turned to Zoro.

"Before we go in I feel I must say that I don't know what will happen but whatever it is, I claim no responsibility," he said very seriously, his face held the expression of someone about to subject themself to something very painful.

"That's reassuring, thanks," Zoro said uneasily.

With that they pushed on inside. It appeared not to be an especially busy day at the Baratie. Sanji felt very comfortable walking through the doors but the presence of Zoro was throwing him off. Patty was the first to spot them, he was busy being the greeter and when he saw them he looked shocked.

"Sanji!" he exclaimed, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I'm back, loser. Don't yell, you'll upset the customers," Sanji scolded cooly.

"Does Zeff know?" Patty asked at a softer volume but his expression was no less obnoxious.

"Of course Zeff knows," the blond scoffed, "We planned all this out like two weeks ago. It's good to know that he didn't bother to tell anyone."

"Who's your friend there?" Patty asked, turning his gaze to Zoro.

Sanji fought the urge to somehow hide him behind his back. Something about that tone made him feel overly defensive of Zoro. "He's no one, don't bother him," he hissed pushing past the greeter and back toward the kitchen. On their way a few of waiters going in and out gawked at them.

Inside people were bustling around, shouting, and cooking. Normally if he walked into the kitchen like this Sanji would start screaming at them but right now he needed to find Zeff and he was most likely in his little back office.

Sanji grabbed Zoro's wrist and dragged him toward the office, ignoring anyone who called out to him. He knocked once on the door and then walk inside. Zeff was sitting at his desk writing something down. He looked up when his door was shoved open.

"What are you doing in here, brat?" Zeff drawled, going back to whatever very important thing he was doing.

"I'm telling you that I'm here. Thought you might want to know," Sanji stated dryly.

"I didn't want you here in the first place," Zeff growled at him, the ungrateful bastard.

"Well, I don't give a shit, you've got me now. I can take over for whatever joker you've given my job tomorrow." He wondered how badly they'd messed things up. His ego was telling him that no one could do a better job than him and his insecurities were begging him to validate his worth and talent.

"What, you think I'm just going to let you have your job back after you left?" Zeff scoffed.

Sanji huffed in irritation, "I'm back now and I'm positive I'm better than anyone else here."

He smirked, and finally lifted his eyes to the two people in the room, "Not better than me, little eggplant."

Sanji stiffened at the nickname, and tsked at the implication of the words although he knew they rang true. "Whatever. I'm going to start bringing stuff up to the house. I'm going to kick your employees if they get in my way."

"Not so fast there, eggplant, who's this green haired guy your holding hands with?" Zeff asked, his eyes on Zoro.

They weren't holding hands but Sanji hadn't let go of Zoro's wrist. His grip was actually quite painful. Sanji dropped the contact like he was burnt. "This is Zoro, he's going to be my manual labor for the day," he said quickly.

"Oh, did you go off and get a boyfriend while you were gone?" Zeff snorted with a raised eyebrow, there was nothing more satisfying than humiliating Sanji in the way that only a parent could.

"What? No! Shut the fuck up! Don't do this to me!" he pleaded, placing his hands over his ears to try blocking out the embarrassment.

"Because that sounds like a very boyfriend like thing to do," the old chef continued, "This calls for a proper introduction."

"No, no it doesn't. We have to go now," Sanji said, his voice ever so slightly higher with panic as he tugged on Zoro's arm.

"Oi, you, boy." Zeff pointed at Zoro, "Don't break his heart, he's very delicate and he'll come crying to me. I don't want to have to deal with that shit." Zoro could defiantly tell where Sanji had picked up his attitude from.

Sanji looked positively horrified, "Okay, no. Goodbye. Zoro, move your ass," Sanji shouted, shoving the cackling swordsman out the door.

"That was-" Zoro began through his laughter, looking back at the office.

Sanji stopped him, "Just shut the fuck up, don't even look at me. I hate that guy."

"But you're so much alike," Zoro pointed out, snickering at Sanji's sour expression.

"Kindly shut the hell up before I hurt you. Let's go get my stuff." He stomped off to the truck to start getting things unloaded.

It took maybe forty-five minutes to get everything inside. The time was filled by a lot of sideways glances and raised eyebrows from the Baratie staff. Zoro wasn't sure if these were about the fact that he was here or if they had to do with how Sanji had left. Either way it was weird. When all that was said had done it was twelve thirty, lunchtime. Sanji sighed at this realization, he wished that he could cook for them but what with his just arriving and the fact that he had someone with him would make that inconvenient. Then again Zeff probably hand enough food in the fridge upstairs to make something decent and he didn't want to deal with anyone right now.

Sanji looked through the fridge, looking for something substantial and convenient. Eh, sandwiches would be fine for now. Zoro stood around in the doorway looking awkward. It was making Sanji nervous.

"You," Sanji pointed to him dramatically, "go sit down." He shifted his finger to one of the wooden chairs in the little dining room area.

Zoro dragged over a chair and sat down. "Why don't you just order something from downstairs?" he asked.

Sanji scoffed at the ludicrous suggestion, "Don't be silly, my pride will not allow it."

"Fair enough. Are they always so chaotic?" When they had been walking by Zoro had seen the chaos lurking in the kitchen, the cooks in there looked more like convicts than chefs.

"No, that's why I have to knock their heads together," Sanji explained, rolling his eyes. They weren't that bad, but then again he was used to their behavior.

"I can see why you would take a less stressful job for a while," Zoro mused, leaning back in his chair. It was interesting to watch Sanji interact with the people he had grown up around. He could see where he got some of his mannerisms from. Not the most conventional home but Zoro got the feeling he grew up being cared for whether he knew it or not.

"I don't know, it seemed not stressful enough most of the time but I grew up with that. I guess a break was probably good for me. It's kind of weird to be back, you know. Especially with you here." having Zoro here was like picking a character out of a movie and sticking them in a different movie. It was kind of cool but something about it felt off.

"Mm, it is an interesting place. I think this is the fanciest restaurant I've ever been it." He'd never wanted to go into a fancy restaurant anyway.

"That's probably because if you weren't with me you'd be thrown out." Sanji knew that he wouldn't really be thrown out but he would probably get some snooty looks from the classy people around him.

"Do I not fit the dress code?" He asked gesturing to his jeans and hoody. It didn't exactly scream 'look how fucking fancy I am'.

Sanji looked at the outfit very closely. "Not exactly, but you wouldn't look like yourself in a fancy outfit."

"I'd look so cool in fancy clothes that your eyes would melt just from looking at me," Zoro announced, jabbing his finger at Sanji to capitalize on his point.

"Is that right? Care to test that theory? I get the feeling you would look like a mobster in a fancy suit." That didn't mean he wouldn't look good, he was avoiding the point.

"I would test it but I don't have the money for blow on a suit that I would wear just to prove a point." And he doubted that he would fit into one of Sanji's, they had different builds.

"Fine, next time you are wearing a suit call me and I will come check you out... That sounded weirder than I thought it would." Sanji made an awkwardly apologetic face.

Zoro snorted, "Now I think that you secretly think I would look good all dressed up."

Sanji stuck out his tongue, "Think what you want, that doesn't make it true." He held out the finished sandwich to Zoro. "Savor this sandwich, it is the last food I will be making you for a while, if not forever," he warned.

Zoro made a disappointed sound, "Are you planning on disappearing as mysteriously as you arrived, this time for good?" he whined.

Sanji's brows furrowed. "I don't think I mysteriously showed up, I just became Nami's bartender. That's not exactly very mysterious," he reasoned.

"I guess not but you're pretty mysterious." he asserted, taking a bite of his sandwich. Merciful heavens, Sanji must be a food god because no one could make a regular sandwich taste so good.

"Am I?" Sanji wasn't one to call himself 'mysterious'. Charming or slightly insane, maybe, but not mysterious. It sounded too douchey.

"Yeah, you're really weird and you have a weird history. You're like a mystery novel waiting to happen." Zoro thought Sanji was mysterious but maybe that wasn't the right word. He was evasive at times and there was always that feeling that he wasn't telling the whole truth about himself. He couldn't think of a better word, plus this one sounded dramatic.

"Some story that would be. Am I really that weird?" He sounded upset at the assertion that he was indeed mysterious.

"Yes, you are," the green haired man confirmed, "So before you return to the mist, are there anymore weird things about you that I don't know?"

Sanji wrinkled his nose, "Nothing I feel comfortable sharing. Hell, I usually don't feel comfortable telling people half the stuff I've told you." He was scratching his neck again.

Zoro groaned, trying to illicit a reaction, "Great, now that is going to bother me for the rest of my young life."

Sanji looked incredibly uncomfortable, "You really want to know?" He asked cautiously.

"Yes." Zoro nodded seriously.

Sanji stopped eating and rubbed his neck in an aggrivated way. "Um, well, after I came back from being kidnapped or whatever I displayed some... Chaotic behavior, they just thought it would pass and everything would be fine but it just kind of stayed like that for a while."

"What do you mean?" In interesting development. It could not be entirely unexpected they Sanji had suffered some emotional traumas as an after effect of his absence from all known record.

His eyes were fled to the floor, tracing patterns on the hardwood panels. "I would freak out over everything and I couldn't relax, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. That sort of thing. Zeff's told my therapist that I was always kind of like that, this just magnified it and they wanted diagnose me with borderline personality disorder, which I still say is bullshit but I will not deny that I was being a little... Crazy. Of course, that's not the official term because they always start by saying you're not crazy when they think you are. Anyway, they wanted me go get diagnosed by a specialist but I refused to go and Zeff didn't make me."

"What did you do then?"

"I-" he hesitated, "I- mostly bottled it up to the point of explosion. I felt like something was seriously wrong with me when I came back. I felt like I didn't fit in my skin and I just wanted to tear it off and sometimes I would get this feeling like things were moving underneath it. So one day, when I was home alone I took a knife and I tried to make myself feel better," he said carefully, all too aware of how terrible that sounded. Fuck, he wished he could go back and fix things but that's not how time works.

"I made a cut here," Sanji pointed to an area just under the right side of his rib cage. "It hurt a lot but it did make me feel better because I thought I could feel something in there, I tried to get it out but obviously there was nothing there. So then I made a cut on my face," He pulled back his bangs to show a thin scar starting at the side if his nose and ending halfway to his cheek. "The whole time I was like scratching gashes into the back of my neck with my fingers." Just like what he was currently doing.

Back then he had been extremely agitated. That weird feeling was building up inside of him so he had at first curled up into a ball to try to escape it. He bit a deep cut in his lip and his nails were tight against the skin if his neck, slowly tearing it. He tried to calm himself, honestly he did, but all he wanted to do was writhe on the floor. Rational thought seemed to be a too far distant idea. He couldn't do this, he had to make this feeling go away.

That was when he had made his decision to try something else. That was when he went into the kitchen and retrieved on of the less fancy knives. He didn't want to use one of the good ones for something like this, he respected them too much even now when he was on the edge of falling apart.

The bathroom had seemed like the most logical place to go for this. He could do it in the shower and wash it down the drain but at the time he wasn't thinking like that. All he was thinking of was using the mirror to watch what he was doing. He pulled the door behind him. It didn't shut all the way but he didn't care because no one else was home anyway. Pealing off his shirt, he looked down at the place where the skin felt tight. With only a minute's hesitation he made the cut. It didn't hurt at first, not really. His adrenalin was pumping and he had a high threshold for pain. It wasn't deep enough so he tried again and he started to feel the pain.

Blood was starting to flow in thick lines but now it was deep enough. He stuck his fingers into the open wound, it was extremely painful but through determination and probably madness it did not stop him. But his fingers met nothing but flesh, no foreign objects, only flesh. The more he tried to find something the more upset he got. Tears were blurring his vision, he pulled his hand away and clenched it into a wet fist. Then in a quick, frantic motion he flipped back his hair and made the cut on his face. It was clean and deep, the blood started to spill right away.

He hadn't even had a chance to explore the wound when he heard the footsteps that could only belong to Zeff and his prosthetic leg. He froze. What could he do? Nothing. There was no way to cover this up. He could only stay frozen in horror as the footsteps neared him. He had left the sink running with water, he didn't even remember turning it on in the first place. It was a suspicious sound and it had lured Zeff to push open the bathroom door all the way and see him in all his mad glory. Crazy, he was crazy and he couldn't do a thing about it.

Back in real time Sanji spoke casually and with a bored clarity. "Anyway, Zeff showed up and caught me holding a bloody knife, looking like a crazy person and thought I was trying to kill myself. Which I wasn't but no one will ever believe that so they put me on suicide watch anyway. So yeah, I'm pretty fucking crazy and now I think you know everything." That wasn't true but Zoro knew as much as he was willing to tell. Sanji was a good little liar when he wanted to be, if only he had been born with the gift instead of going through the pain of having to learn.

Zoro was quiet for a long time, he felt that dropping feeling people get when they've just heard something horrible. It was two steps away from panic but it didn't feel much less unpleasant. After a moment he organized his thoughts enough to formulate a response, even if it wasn't a very good one. "I'm not really sure what to say to that without sounding insincere or annoying," he admitted with a pained expression on his face.

Sanji laughed, "At least you have the balls to admit it." He couldn't begin to explain how frustrating it could be to get so many sympathetic looks.

Zoro cast him a quizzical glance and reached out to pull Sanji's hand from where it was clawing into the back of his neck mercilessly. He was met by slight resistance but upon noticing that he was resisting Sanji let his hand go limp in the swordsman's grasp.

"Have you always done that? Or did it start after all that stuff happened?" He was curious to see if this was a response to the stress or just a quirk etched into his brain.

"I've always done it. It got way worse after but it was always a thing as far back as I can remember. I had a elementary school teacher who would always yell at me for it but I couldn't stop and her yelling only made me want to do it more. There is a fuck ton of scar tissue on my neck now, which is why I always wear shirts that cover the back of my neck." He would grow out his hair but that would make him look even more girly and he liked the haircut he had now. Even if he'd had it nearly all his life, it was familiar and comfortable.

"That sounds like an OCD thing."

Sanji shrugged, "Maybe, I don't know. I never listened to my therapist so I wouldn't know."

"Did they ever try anything weird like hypnotherapy to get you to remember things?" They always seemed to do things like that on Criminal Minds. Sure it wasn't exactly hypnotherapy but it was still in its essence the same thing and it seemed like total bullshit.

Sanji laughed, "They tried but while it was happening I started to have a panic attack and backed out. We didn't try again after that."

"Was it weird?"

"I think I half fell asleep and then I started to freak out, I don't know what happened."

"Well, at least you are one of few people I will ever meet who have actually been hypnotized."

"Not as interesting as it sounds."

"Eh, that doesn't matter it's still interesting. The most interesting thing I think I've ever seen was back in high school when I watched this kid, who I'm pretty sure went to jail for drug charges, put a firecracker inside a snake's mouth. Oh wait, no, I was nearly chopped in half. That's probably the most interesting thing that's happened to me. Nearly forgot about that." Idiot.

"Correction, the most interesting thing that happened to you was meeting me," Sanji said, jabbing a finger at himself. "You are going to look back one day and think about how different things would be if we had never me. Mark my words."

"Wow, you must thing you're something else," Zoro scoffed.

"I am, thank you very much. I did get you to come here after all, with zero protest, in fact. I am a life altering event, admit it!"

"You are not. You are just a little part of my life and you can't deal with it."

"Well, I hope that's not true because then I would feel very upset and you might trigger one of my dramatic mood swings if you aren't careful," Sanji warned although he had a smile on his face which he was trying to suppress.

"It's okay, I will absorb it up with my powers of stoicism."

"Ugh, whenever I hear the word stoic I always think of a old stone stature of an expressionless Swedish man meditating in the middle of a thunderstorm."

"How the fuck does your brain function? Why is that the first thing you think of?"

"I don't know. Whenever I look at pictures of tiny frogs I want to put them on my face and let them jump around on me."

"That is even weirder than the last thing you said."

"I'm letting out all my weirdness onto you before you go and I have to go back to being a hardass about stuff. And just so you know, I wouldn't really let frogs jump all over my face unless they didn't have bladders because I don't want to be covered in frog pee."

Zoro was giving him a look of utter disbelief. Sanji ignored him and took bite of his sandwich.

"Hey, marimo, I want you to try to guess my favorite food."

Zoro made a face like he was enduring some eternal torment. "Why would you make me guess something like that? There is no way in hell that I am going to know something like that. You probably like something fancy and weird," he said with a venomous glare, "Something a peasant like me wouldn't know about, let alone understand."

Sanji smiled, "You are correct but I still want to hear your guesses because they will make me laugh."

Zoro groaned, "Fine. Raspberry ice cream." He remembered Sanji saying something about raspberry ice cream.

"That is up near the top, but no."

"Some kind of weird bug on a stick."

"I would die before I ever ate a bug. Thinking about it makes me sick."

"Fish."

"That's kind of close."

"Eels."

"Nope."

"Giant squid."

"Nope."

"Fucking fried unicorn, I don't know. I'm never going to guess so just tell me!"

"Spicy seafood pasta." Sanji grinned.

Zoro rolled his eyes, "Oh, I'm sorry, I should have known."

"Your guesses were shockingly not that bad."

"That's because I'm awesome but why would you ruin pasta by making it spicy and putting seafood in it?"

"What, you don't like spicy things and seafood?"

"No, I like both of those things, just not together."

"Well, it's amazing and I'll have to make if for you at some point just to prove how right I am."

"You do that." There he went, threatening to cook for him again.

"I will, and it will be awesome. You will immediately become addicted."

"Great, I already preparing myself for detox and you offer me harder core food. Someday I'm going to wake up outside a fancy food place after having begged for scraps because of your stupid cooking."

Sanji had stars in his eyes, "That's the best complement you've ever given my food!" he exclaimed.

Fuck, that actually was a complement, he hadn't meant for it to be. Regardless as to how it was taken it was an accurate statement. Sanji's good food had made everything else seem duller by comparison. It really wasn't fair.

Zoro shifted uncomfortably, glancing away. "Whatever," he said brisk manner, not wanting to dwell on the slip up.

Sanji would have none of that. "Because I will be away for an extended period of time I think that you should just come out and say how amazing you think my food is. You know, as a farewell gift, to make me feel better." He grinned impishly.

"To boost your ego? I don't think so. You will have to torture a positive response out of me."

"Aw, marimo, you're breaking my heart here, that is expressly what Zeff told you not to do."

"Oh, are we going to acknowledge that now? Because I thought that you just wanted to forget that ever happened. I mean, I'm pretty sure most of the cooks downstairs think we are together but I wasn't going to say anything. I'm sure you'll get hell for it once I'm gone." Zoro smirked imagining the torture they would put him through.

Sanji grimaced. "Alright, fine. I'll shut up."

"Good."

"So, I think it would be pretty awesome to have control over gravity," Sanji said not thirty seconds later.

"Dammit, cook! You just said that you were going to shut up like two seconds ago!"

"I can't help it! I can't stand the awkward silences!"

"I'd take awkward silence over your blabbing," Zoro said with a glare.

"I think you are lying," Sanji challenged, "If you didn't like listening to me then you would make me shut up."

"I would but I'm being nice because you're going away."

"Ugh, when you say it like that I feel like I've been drafted for the military to go fight some foreign war or something."

"Not quite that extreme." Zoro said with an amused expression on his stupid face.

Sanji sighed, his eyes trailing over Zoro's face. "Dammit, I think I might actually miss you, you bastard. You better fucking text me or I swear I will hunt you down. I remind you that I am fucking insane so you should be worried," he threatened.

"Psh, if just chop you in half if you stalked me down and brake into my house." Sanji wasn't a real threat. If it came to that, Zoro was confident that he could take him down.

"Just text me and that won't be necessary."

"Alright, fine," he glanced down at his watch, "I guess I should actually be leaving soon. Not much else for me to do here." They were both done eating and Zoro had done his requirement of being a pack mule.

"I guess not," Sanji sighed, grinning half heartily. "But I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to spend a few extra moments in my presence."

Zoro smirked in amusement, "Noted, but I think I should go before you convince me to stay." And that was a real danger for whatever reason.

"And why would I want you to stay?" Sanji challenged, leaning forward slightly.

"You tell me." Zoro raised his eyebrows like he was waiting for a response.

Sanji rolled his eyes and scoffed, "Whatever, let's go." He lead them down the stairs and through the door, outside to the uhaul truck, which Zoro would be taking back as his transportation.

They stood facing each other. It was time to say goodbye, not for good hopefully, just for a while. Sanji was glad they were out of view of the Baratie windows because when they were walking out here Patty made kissy faces at them before he tripped over Sanji's leg, which just happened to end up in his way. Funny that. He was glad that they would not be witnessing this goodbye. Why did they have to be so embarrassing?

"So this is goodbye then," Zoro said, his tone and face showed indifference but Sanji felt like he was at least a tiny bit sad, maybe just a little.

"Yep, this is goodbye for now. Don't think that you won't be seeing from me again," Sanji threatened, "I promise that I will once again rise form the dark mists from whence I came."

Zoro smirked, "I'll be sure too keep an eye out for any dark mists then."

"You should probably have been doing that anyway. But yeah, good." He paused, "Okay, final farewell time. Down to business, super serious. I feel like I should hug you but that would be really weird and awkward." Just thinking about it made him want to squirm.

"You're right, that would be very weird and awkward. I feel like it would be one of those too long hugs that make you want to die." Those hugs were the the worst kind. They were hard to watch and twice as hard to be a part of.

"Right?" Sanji agreed, "And a handshake would be even more awkward because it's like acknowledging how uncomfortable we are given the situation. So, I've decided I'm going to do something even more weird and awkward." Because that's what Sanji did. He took uncomfortable situations and multiplied the uncomfortableness by a factor of four.

"What-" Zoro didn't have time to formulate a working sentence before Sanji stepped closer and kissed him on the cheek. It happened very fast, only brief contact, and then the blond was running away. "Oi, wait!" the swordsman called out in bewilderment.

Sanji did not turn, he instead shouted, "La la la, I can't hear you, I'm running away now! Later, Zoro!" As he waved his hand in farewell over his shoulder.

Completely stunned, Zoro watched him disappear into the Baratie. He took a deep breath and started the truck. He had absolutely no idea what the fuck that was, let alone what to think about it.

XxxX

A/N: I love when you guys guess at what's going on :) it's hard to keep it bottled up.

Do I Wanna Know is the song that I feel sets the tone for this story. Plus, I'm a little obsessed with the Arctic Monkeys right now. I tend to do that.

Also, quirky Sanji is quirky, awkward romance is awkward and as it seems is not always as it seems ;)

Thanks.