Maldoror (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} maldoror_gw) wrote,@ 2007-02-11 09:15:00 |
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One Piece Fic: Like Steel for Chocolate, Chapter 2
Title: Like Steel for Chocolate
Author: Maldoror
Rating: Up to light R
Pairing: SanZo principally, as well as a secondary Luffy/Usopp (there's no particular significance to the direction of those slashes.) A third pairing crops up briefly, but I'llscar surprise you with that when it appears ^_^
Warning: Big fat massive SPOILERS for various episodes up to manga ep. 440. I also play fast and loose with the OP-verse physics, introducing something that may or may not be alchemy or faint sympathetic magic.
Summary: Sanji's cooking has reached a whole new level. It's almost uncanny. Especially when his thoughts and emotions somehow get into the mix along with the rest of the ingredients.
AN: A hacking cough + sore throat o' death + jackhammer-like sinus infection; RL using up all my time until late at night; my husband - the light of my life, honest - deciding out of the blue that my PC needs an extra Mb of RAM and then proceeds to add it and break said PC...oh yeah, it's been fun. I hope this chapter's up to par, if not, for once I firmly blame Fate and not myself.
Chapter 2: Battalion Breakfast
The day started off with a bang. Literally. When sleepy Straw Hats went to investigate, it turned out that Usopp had spent most of his night working on some new kind of projectile, and had fallen asleep at his workbench with a candle on one side and gunpowder on the other. Good thing he'd gotten considerably tougher these past few months, and as for the eyebrows, Luffy drew him some new ones with a felt-tipped pen, as well as a moustache, a goatee and the start of a monocle before Usopp could stop him.
Sanji didn't bother going back to bed, and went to shape and bench the bread he'd made last night. He was feeling a bit guilty at having broken one of Zeff's rules - and cross at himself for caring what a shit-geezer like that had to say about anything. So what if he'd cooked while he was angry- or absolutely furious and a little hurt, for that matter? He was an excellent chef, he could turn out superb food whatever the circumstances, and the dough looked good. As a matter of fact, it looked superb; risen to perfection, and once in the oven, the smell lured in his nakama from all over the ship and he didn't even have to ring the bell.
He kept a discreet eye on the lovely ladies as they lingered over a breakfast of bread, jam and a tangerine for Nami, and the usual straight black coffee and an apple for Robin. They talked in whispers, smiling - or giggling, in Nami's case, causing Sanji's blood pressure to spike. He would love to know what they were discussing so intimately, but he was too much of a gentleman to eavesdrop. He wouldn't be able to overhear anything anyway over the sounds of Luffy chewing his laborious way through the large haunch of not-so-tender mutton Sanji had deemed good enough for their captain.
For the rest of the crew, breakfast was the usual in-and-out affair; they came in, grabbed what they wanted and left again, between course corrections, training and sundry chores. Sanji kept an eye on the table and made sure there was plenty of rice, meat and veg for the traditionalists amongst them, baked cereals for a bleary-eyed but contented Chopper, more coffee for Robin-chan...
"Hey, dude." Franky was the last to come in, scratching his belly above the line of his speedos (Sanji's increasingly pointed remarks about what should be worn around ladies had gone unheeded). "There any of that bread left? Usopp said it was fantastic."
"Sure," Sanji drawled, gesturing at the table, "there's-...where did it go?"
With great synchronization, Sanji, Franky, Nami and Robin looked down at the empty platter, then over to the captain's seat and then up to the remaining two-thirds of the loaf about to disappear into the abyss of Luffy's mouth.
The plate sailed through the air like a discus and caught Luffy just as his jaws were about to clamp shut. He went straight over backwards, the loaf tumbling to the floor.
"Luffy! Who said you could take all of it?!" Nami shouted, hand still poised after that beautiful throw. Since this was Nami-san, Sanji could admire her grace and precision without thinking quite so much about the broken plate or the bread on the ground.
"Huh?" Luffy blinked up at the ceiling- then did a "Whoa!!" and a snake-like dodge to get away from Nami's lunge.
"I was going to have more of that!" Nami screamed at him, giving chase. "You always do that! Every single time! Do you know how much it costs to feed you?!"
"Oh dear, Nami seems to have quite lost her temper," Robin mused. Sanji felt a shiver of delight run through him. What a great sign of progress! What a beautiful name to fall from such beautiful lips! Naaamiii, ahh- but thrill aside, Robin was right, Nami did indeed sound furious, more so than usual.
"Isn't that their normal song and dance?" Franky asked, grabbing some scones.
"No, it's definitely more serious if she mentions money," Robin wisely explained over the noises of a vicious Luffy-hunt going on outside.
Sanji picked up the loaf and dusted it off, but Franky was no longer interested. Damn, no way was this much food going to waste...hmm, bread pudding?
There was a loud crash from outside. The three nakama exchanged a look and went to investigate.
"Shit. Well, that's fixable," Franky said, still chewing on his breakfast. Luffy and Nami had apparently not noticed the winch they'd lopped off in passing. The dreaded pirate Straw Hat Luffy, current bounty 300 million, was running for all he was worth with a look of alarm on his face that he'd not had when facing a Shichibukai, an angry god or a lunatic Zoan bastard with a pigeon.
Sanji noticed Usopp standing in their wake, staring at the damage. He assumed his nakama was rigid with fear - Sanji would be, if he was anywhere near Nami-swan's righteous fists of fury, but instead...
"Damn it," Usopp said, softly, and then suddenly shouted, "Damn it! Can't you be careful?! Do you want this ship to go the same way as the Merry?! Don't you care?! Kaya gave me that ship- I- I'm such a- a d-disloyal dog I can never face her again anyway but now I don't even have her ship anymore and I don't- I can't even-" The rapid words tangled up into an incoherent noise, and he spun on his heels and ran towards the gun deck.
"Okay...did anybody else completely fail to understand that? Who's Kaya?" Franky glanced at Sanji.
"Girl back home, from what I was told. The one who gave us the Going Merry. I'm not sure what he meant by-"
"Oooh, is this going to be a tragic tale of love, separation and broken hearts?"
"Well-"
"Someone needs to talk to long-nose, see if he's okay. I'll go get my guitar."
"You do that," Sanji said to the cyborg's back. Robin-chan had already left, to try to intercept the Straw Hat lynching party.
Sanji cleared up breakfast, since everybody had had their share. He put the dishes in the sink and went to dump the peelings into the new-fangled compost-thingie Franky insisted they use for reasons relating to the lawn.
A gunpowder explosion, a fight, the weather still a bit stormy...he should have realized that the morning was only going to go downhill.
"Hey- watch it!" Sanji almost dropped the bucket of peels when the idiot charged around the corner of the forecastle and nearly ploughed right into him. Great, just what he needed. He'd avoided even looking at Zoro this morning, busy at the counter when the other man had shown up. Zoro had eaten some rice and a slice of bread folded over a piece of ham with his usual speed, and was gone by the time Sanji had run out of things to do near the stove. Sanji felt flickers of last night's mood at the edge of his urbane calm, but damned if he was going to let the marimo know he'd gotten under Sanji's skin in any way.
...Why was Zoro staring at him like that? Eyes narrowed to slits...Sanji had the oddest impression that he should be looking at a black bandana instead of ugly moss-green hair.
"You're in my way," Zoro said, tone dead flat.
"Huh?" Sanji countered, which wasn't up to his usual level of repartee, but the unexpected hostility in those words had distracted him.
If anything, Zoro's stare intensified. "You're always in my way."
"It's a bloody small ship," Sanji said with a shrug, standing right in the middle of the causeway and damned if he was going to move aside now. Let the marimo give way.
"No, all the time." Zoro had never looked at him like that before. Sanji must have really pissed the dumbass off, which wasn't a problem in itself, except that he couldn't figure out what the hell he'd done. "Always there. Always reliable, always so damn strong- except when you're getting your ass handed to you by some chick. Nami told me what happened in the Tower of Justice, you could have died - how pathetic are you?!"
Sanji blinked at the way that last had been barked, and then he blinked again as he tried to fit the beginning and end of that diatribe into a cohesive whole. "What? If you're going to pick a fight, at least try to make some sense." Though they hadn't had a serious fight for- hell, for ages, even the tiff after the Groggy match had only been adrenaline and combative spirits-
Zoro's fist hammered sideways into the forecastle wall hard enough to imprint the dark wood, and this wasn't even remotely amusing anymore. "I don't have time to look out for you! I have to rely on you! And you're always there!"
Sanji had been on roller coasters with fewer sudden switches than this conversation. "What?!"
"You're distracting me!"
"How the hell am I doing that, fuckwit?! I’m just walking along here!"
"It was bad enough when you were too stupid to notice what I felt! I'd gotten used to your pathetic skirt-chasing and everything else. So stick to that! Stop caring all of a sudden! Stop distracting me! I don't know what you think you're feeling now but it's not going to happen!"
This was so out of the norm, as well as out of the blue, that Sanji could only wildly hope the flaming idiot swan-guy had snuck on board and was playing with Sanji's head.
"Oi, marimo-kun, did you finally lose whatever brains you had? One of us isn't making sense here, and since you’re the one with the big mouth flapping-"
Zoro's eyes glinted. "Don't you dare pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Not after all your fucking questions last night. Find out what you wanted, did you?"
Sanji tensed, the plastic bucket creaking between his fingers. Questions? Uh-oh, had Zoro guessed what- no, surely not. But damn, that would explain why he was so angry.
...Except that this wasn't the anger of a heterosexual male feeling threatened by another man's attention, it was-...Sanji had never seen Zoro in quite this state before, but he'd spent months with the guy, knew the body language. It was like watching a wounded, blinded tiger lashing out at anything around him. It made something inside Sanji writhe in turn.
Sanji's instincts were primed, what with having a highly trained and thoroughly dangerous swordsman snarling in his face, so he spotted danger coming from an entirely unexpected direction and threw himself to one side before his conscious mind had time to even go 'uh-oh'. But Zoro -well damn, Zoro must have really been distracted, because the man with the Grand Line's greatest set of reflexes didn't even turn at the commotion behind him before Luffy barreled right into his back.
"But I didn't eat it!" Luffy hollered, stampeding towards the forecastle rail, arms lassoing out to catch the mast beam. Nami hurtled past the two men as if they were part of the decor, leaving silence in her wake.
Sanji swallowed. What-...stupid instinct...had made him put out his hand to stop Zoro from measuring his length on the deck...?
Thanks to the fingers wrapped around his elbow, Zoro had caught himself against the forecastle wall, face inches from Sanji's and bearing an expression that blended equal parts of anger and astonishment. A plastic bucket rolled into the Sunny's pitch at their feet, scattering tangerine peels along the deck.
He could hear the rasp of Zoro's breath. Sanji should be stepping back, he was going to get punched. He still wasn't sure why, but he was definitely going to get punched if he didn't let go now.
It was a weird noise, weirder yet to hear it from Zoro, because it sounded oddly like a snarl of resentful defeat. A hand grabbed Sanji by the collar - knew it, he's going to punch me, thought Sanji - slammed him back against the forecastle wall and a mouth mashed down on his.
Sanji didn't even have time to think whatthefuck, much less say it; he was given a shove that sent him staggering back two steps, and then he was watching Zoro stomp off towards the stern without a backward glance.
After a few seconds frozen to the spot, Sanji finally thought to look around for witnesses. Luffy was in the rigging, staring down at Nami in the way a treed cat would stare down at a rottweiler. Robin had her back to Sanji, trying to calm their navigator down. Sanji couldn't see anybody else. He turned away and walked back to the kitchen, the bucket forgotten behind him.
He cleaned up, scoured the plates with a sponge, raked a cloth across the table - mind boiling with so many thoughts nothing coherent was coming out. He finally fetched up in front of the counter. Lunch. He'd make lunch. It was only ten in the morning, but if he wasn't cooking then he didn't have a good reason to stay in the galley, and he wasn't going to leave until the world started to make sense again. The kitchen was his territory. He felt safe here- not that he was afraid of anything, fuck it all, but this was the center of his stability and he needed that right now.
Noodles. Sesame noodles with sliced vegetables.
What the hell had that been about?! The son of a bitch kissed me!
No. Concentrate on lunch. Cook first, think later.
Sanji was a first-class chef and had great pride in his abilities, but that was too tall an order for anyone. Which was why noodles were such a good choice. An easy dish he could cook in his sleep. Couldn't possibly screw that up, whatever the circumstances.
His hands worked, sure and strong, showing no sign of inner confusion. Sanji felt his mind grow gradually calmer and start to sort things out.
Think about this. He had to think about this. He knew Zoro. The guy had a simple mind which had mastered the wonders of Bonehead Logic: the logic that was perfectly reasonable once you eliminated common sense and the fear of pain and death. Sanji had been observing Bonehead Logic up close these past few months and within its parameters, Zoro always made perfect sense. So this too had to have some form of rational explanation. In fact, Sanji had the lurking presentiment that it did, that it formed a coherent picture, he just wasn't sure he wanted to look at it...But he wasn't a wimp. Sanji stood at the counter and sliced julienne out of Chinese lettuce and meaning out of words with the same sharp cutting motions.
The stuff Zoro had shouted, the conversation they'd had last night, the - chop chop chop - the kiss.
The water was boiling. Sanji put aside the lettuce, turned off the heat and scattered the potato-starch noodles into the pot. Stirred. Let his fingers hover above the steam, but they still felt cold. He rubbed them together. The lid clanged as it sealed in the saucepan's heat, but the sound was muffled, his ears full of the echoes of angry shouts.
'Don't you dare pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Not after all your fucking questions last night. Find out what you wanted, did you?'
The intuition he'd had clutching that bucket came back to him. Okay. Okay...Apparently Sanji's worst fears had come to pass, utter humiliation was just around the corner, Zoro had figured out- well, it wasn't clear what he'd figured out exactly from that brief exchange, but in hindsight it'd be pretty easy to turn Sanji's series of questions into 'are you single' and 'are you into men' which, even by Sanji's standards, wasn't that subtle a come-on. Sanji resisted the urge to hit himself over the head with the cutting board and ploughed on.
That'd be an excellent reason why Zoro was furious, but it didn't explain the kiss, if it could be called that when the only thing that had kept it from being a punch was a lack of knuckles. It had fleetingly occurred to him that it might have been a taunt, a crude 'here's what you can never have', but now that he was thinking about it, no. Just...no. Vindictive petty gestures just weren't Zoro's style.
Which meant...
A whole tangled boil of feelings were creeping up on him, and he couldn't avoid them. Shit...
Sanji dumped the noodles into the sieve; instincts cultivated over the years on the Baratie had been keeping an eye on the time while his mind was otherwise occupied. He put them in a bowl warmed with the cooking liquid and grabbed a spoon without looking, words whistling through his mind like shrapnel from an explosion.
'It was bad enough when you were too stupid to notice what I felt!'
'I don't know what you think you're suddenly feeling-'
'Stop caring all of a sudden!'
...If he was reading this right, Zoro had actually guessed pretty much all of it, up to and including what Sanji was feeling...Stupid. Stupid. He'd forgotten that searching look Zoro had given him yesterday evening at dinner, as if he were reading him like a book. Sanji had been trying to conceal his unwanted epiphany, but he'd also just had his whole life turned on its head, and they could read each other pretty damn well...And then he'd tried to be subtle with his stupid questions.
But Zoro hadn't been mad last night; prickly, yes, defensive, oh yes, but not angry. Sanji wasn't sure why Zoro was so furious now, but another conclusion was hovering in Sanji's mind, overshadowing everything.
'So someone has caught your attention?'
'Why the hell are you so goddamned curious all of a sudden?'
'It was bad enough when you were too stupid to notice what I felt!'
'-but it's not going to happen!'
Sanji stirred the sesame oil into the noodles with fast, jerky motions with which he'd paddle a sinking skiff to shore. Did that mean...what he thought it might mean...? But surely- he and Zoro were always arguing, and Zoro started at least half the fights. Not that fighting had stopped Sanji from, um, harboring unwanted feelings for his nakama, but Zoro was made of stronger stuff, and he wasn't interested in guys. Right? Sanji would have noticed if he was. For sure. Then again, he hadn't really considered it before yesterday, so maybe he'd overlooked something...? Of course, now that he was thinking about it, there might be some indications that maybe Zoro did swing that way. Yeah, subtle clues such as Zoro's total lack of prurient interest in bikini-wearing crewmates -and a fucking kiss! How dumb are you, you stupid blind cook?! Fuck! Fuck it all!
'You have a thing for pain.'
'I sure do, Sanji, I sure do.'
'I've got more important things to put my energies in, cook.'
'-it's not going to happen!'
...There was something wrong.
There was a lot massively wrong right now, in his life, in Zoro's too if he was correct, but right here, right now, there was something wrong at the end of his spoon.
Sanji stared at it. Then, with a deliberate motion, he lifted it from the bowl. The pasta came too, a large, tangled mass larger than his head knotted all around the spoon, trembling in noodly elasticity as it dangled in one huge blob with every appearance of an impaled jellyfish.
Sanji stared at it and wondered what Zeff would say. The thought made him wince, and the mass wobbled.
"What the hell is that?" Zoro asked at Sanji's shoulder.
Sanji quickly dropped the spoon and the stuff back into the bowl without glancing up at the source of his problems. Well, most of his problems, and what problems might conceivably be called his own could easily be blamed on the moss-head as well, just for being him. Even the noodles. Somehow, those noodles were Zoro's fault too.
"Get out," Sanji said in the voice he used for food wasters. Zoro was not allowed to bring his attitude and his problems and himself into Sanji's kitchen. Not now.
Zoro and his problems failed to depart, but at least he hadn't brought his attitude. When Sanji decided he was sufficiently composed where he might be able to look at Zoro and not kick his teeth in for reasons ranging from the noodles to that mindjob of a kiss, it was quite a different marimo than half an hour ago that greeted his sight. Zoro looked a whole lot calmer. He was also soaking wet. His expression, as he stood there dripping on the floor, was that of a swordsman who had an unpleasant task ahead of him - and this from the guy who'd looked only mildly discomfited when he'd stitched himself up after Mihawk had nearly chopped him in half. But he didn't turn away from Sanji's glare, he faced his nakama squarely and stared him straight in the eye.
"I guess I deserved that," he said. "Look-"
"Which part of 'get out' did you not understand?" Sanji growled. "Was it the 'get' or was it the 'out'? Tell me, and I'll draw you a diagram, you shitty-"
"I'm sorry."
Oh, that's just not fair, Sanji thought, feeling his righteous noodle-inspired anger deflate like a balloon.
Zoro continued to look at him, though it wasn't clear what he expected Sanji to say to that. It'd just been two words, and Sanji would love to overlook them and go on being really mad and kick the bastard out, but if there was one man on board who knew the cost and impact of an apology, it was the one who'd just tendered it, and Sanji couldn't ignore that.
He gave his noodles a stir just to have something to do. Zoro's fingers were tapping the white katana, he noticed, the only indication that Zoro wasn't quite as calm as he appeared. The thought that Zoro had been armed earlier and made no move towards his ever-ready weapons, or used his fists or attacked Sanji in any ways apart from the kiss, floated around Sanji's mind without finding enough in the wreckage to connect with.
"You...uh, you really don’t go for girls, do you," Sanji finally said, staring down at the bowl.
"No, I don't. I like men, and even though you're not the sharpest tool in the box, I still can't believe it took you this long to cotton on to that," Zoro answered with his usual approach to diplomacy. "The girls figured it out almost immediately, even Vivi. So has Chopper. Don't know about the others and I don't care either way. It's nobody's business, and certainly not yours. It's not like it matters, because I told you last night, I have a goal and I won't let myself get distracted."
There was a short, stiff silence, and then Zoro said: "You...distract me a lot. Ever since you managed to kick me to the deck that first time. Strength is something that I- never mind. I tried ignoring you, I tried fighting with you, I tried to remember you're a womanizing prick- in the end, I just considered it training for my focus and concentration." From the sour way he said that, he hadn't been all that successful, and Sanji felt - confusingly - mildly gratified that at least he was an almighty distraction.
"I love women," Sanji heard himself say, as if he needed to reassure himself on that point.
Zoro snorted rudely. "No, really? I think everybody from here to bloody Skypiea knows that, love-cook. But...I'm not wrong about this, am I...Last night, when you jumped down my throat for liking your soup and then you shot out of your skin when I touched you- and that's not all, suddenly a whole lot of funny little details I'd noticed without really paying attention all added neatly up. I came to a funny conclusion. You don't just like women, do you. Do you," he added a bit more heavily when Sanji stayed silent.
Sanji glared at the stove's splashboard. Zoro was not allowed to know that. Not even Zeff knew that, or at least Sanji fervently hoped that was the case.
"And there's more, right? I figured something else out, when you came and asked me all those questions. All those personal questions. Like you suddenly cared about the answers. Personally. Or am I completely, widely off the mark?" Zoro's look was as sharp as his swords and about as comfortable for the person on the receiving end.
Pride wouldn't permit Sanji to confirm it; his honesty stopped him from denying it. He said nothing and stabbed the noodles with the spoon a few times, scowling.
"Yeah, that's what I figured. It never occurred to me that maybe you slept on both sides of the bed. But that's none of my damn business either," Zoro added sharply with a cut-off gesture. "I’m thinking you aren't all that happy with feeling this way towards me either, because you certainly don't act it. We both know the score. We're pirates, we have more enemies than we can count, we're stuck on the same ship, we've got ambitions that would kill lesser men and could damn well kill us too; we can't afford to lose our focus. So...yeah, I shouldn't have shouted at you. Or kissed you. I didn't like you pretending you didn't know what the fuck I was talking about, but still, that was way out of order. I don't know why I got so angry all of a sudden." Zoro sounded honestly baffled and still angry, though mostly with himself. "I thought I'd gotten used to what you do to me...We'd been getting along okay these days, too. I...hope I didn't blow that..."
"Dumbass. Like I'm not used to ignoring half of what you say," Sanji muttered without having to give his answer any particular consideration. Some things were that obvious. Idiot marimo.
The silence stretched while the noodles, if this was possible, got even further entangled. Sanji eventually jerked into motion and flipped the bowl's convoluted contents onto a cutting board. He proceeded to slice the mass into little bite-sized bits. Wherever his knife fell seemed to leave a knot, so at the end, the distinct pieces still wrapped around each other and looked like bits of barbed wire. Charming.
"Has it calmed down out there?" he asked while he chopped. His voice in the kitchen sounded surreal after that harsh and reluctant confession. Damn, to think that only yesterday morning, it was so obvious where they stood in regards to one another. They were both firmly convinced that the other was an idiot for a variety of reasons, but a reliable idiot who could fight decently and who didn't need looking after. Sanji missed that already.
Zoro turned away a little and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "Yeah. Nami threw Luffy overboard. I had to fish him out. Franky says something's gotten into Usopp too. He did look pretty down when I saw him, though not that much more than usual these days. Nami's chilled a bit now; she says we're heading towards some more bad weather later today, and the static electricity's got everybody on edge."
Sanji would love to blame the weather; seemed like he was doing that a lot these days. But Nami-san's anger was justified, he thought loyally, and it hadn't been that much greater than usual. Usopp's outburst had been bizarre, but he'd been more upset than outright angry. Zoro's reaction had been several orders of magnitude greater. A wounded, somehow helpless anger. It still made Sanji's insides twist into knots to think of it.
"Lunch is going be ready in about half an hour. We'll make it early and take the afternoon to ready the ship for the blow."
"Sanji-"
Sanji shook his head violently, fair hair brushing his face. No. Don't say it. Nothing's going to happen anyway, so what's the point. You were so furious. So was I last night. Even when it looks like we might almost have a thing for one another, we still end up fighting. What does that say about us?
None of this needed to be said out loud. Nami and Robin would have undoubtedly gone to talk it over in their cabin, but Zoro and Sanji were guys. Communication was for pansies.
The silence that followed was...not awkward, because, ironically enough, they were now exactly on the same wavelength. But it was heavy, like a steel door swinging shut on a possibility. Oh boy, another fun meal ahead. Sanji didn't want this. He wanted...he wanted to fight with Zoro like before, when they didn't know there might be something between them that wasn't going to happen for a bunch of reasons, and-
"Ship ahoy!"
Both men looked up briefly towards the aft porthole, but the warning wasn't followed by a shout of 'It's the Marines!', so Sanji returned to the one problem he had a chance of doing something about. He poured a little more oil into the noodles and shook them to see if that would untangle them. No luck.
"AGH! Ghost ship! It’s a ghost ship!"
"Ghost ship?" Sanji and Zoro said at the same time.
"That was Usopp's voice-"
"Has he been drinking?"
"It's got skeletons and it's black all over and it's got skeletons hanging from ropes and the guys on it have skulls instead of heads-" and at that point Usopp ran out of breath for anything more than a panicked squawk.
...Well now...that was timely. Sanji felt his thoughts flee from murky feelings and thunder down reassuringly familiar channels. And he liked the way Zoro started smiling, that upturn of one corner of his mouth and the light of anticipation in his eyes now that good old violence was afoot once more.
"I guess that merits investigation," Sanji murmured, putting a lid on the noodles. He'd warm them up again later, make some sauce and put them together in a mix-and-stir casserole. Then he'd fervently pray that Zeff never, ever heard about any of this.
"Never fought a ghost before," Zoro said thoughtfully. There was a series of little click; one of the katana being thumbed in and out of its scabbard.
"Neither have I. First time for everything." Sanji took off his apron and hung it by the door before following Zoro out to meet these undead to whom he owed a big solid favor.
An hour later, the noodles were still all tangled, but cut up fine, they were easy to eat, and the ladies found them highly original. Sanji still thought they looked like bits of barbed wire, but maybe that qualified as innovative. The sauce he'd quickly made to go with them was really good, to his surprise, and everybody was full of praise for their cook who could turn out such an excellent meal despite highly unusual circumstances. Though in this instance, the circumstances was just an attack by enterprising and intelligent pirates who'd thought of putting the Triangle's reputation to good use. They'd been way too easy to beat up, since they'd principally relied on greasepaint and fear. An amuse-bouche, really.
The Sunny entered the Florian Triangle that afternoon, not that anybody paid that much attention to the event. Relationships on board seemed needlessly complicated that day. People went about bumping into each other's edges and then apologizing and then bumping again. Sanji stayed above it all, quite literally; it was his turn in the crow's nest and boy was he glad of it. He stared out at the ocean and dreamed of finding the All Blue, and of having all his nakama around him when that happened...They'd like his fish just as much as anybody else who might or might not have been that little bit more special to him. And the idiot marimo would be there too, eating way too fast and maybe muttering 'not bad' from time to time, so really, Sanji hadn't lost anything.
He didn't think about the kiss. No, not even a bit. It had been a terribly crappy kiss - hell, he'd had kicks in the teeth that were cuddlier - and anyway, it wasn't going to happen.
TBC...
Link to Chapter 3
Next chapter hopefully out in 2-3 days, depending on how busy real life remains.
Title: Like Steel for Chocolate
Author: Maldoror
Rating: Up to light R
Pairing: SanZo principally, as well as a secondary Luffy/Usopp (there's no particular significance to the direction of those slashes.) A third pairing crops up briefly, but I'll
Warning: Big fat massive SPOILERS for various episodes up to manga ep. 440. I also play fast and loose with the OP-verse physics, introducing something that may or may not be alchemy or faint sympathetic magic.
Summary: Sanji's cooking has reached a whole new level. It's almost uncanny. Especially when his thoughts and emotions somehow get into the mix along with the rest of the ingredients.
AN: A hacking cough + sore throat o' death + jackhammer-like sinus infection; RL using up all my time until late at night; my husband - the light of my life, honest - deciding out of the blue that my PC needs an extra Mb of RAM and then proceeds to add it and break said PC...oh yeah, it's been fun. I hope this chapter's up to par, if not, for once I firmly blame Fate and not myself.
Chapter 2: Battalion Breakfast
The day started off with a bang. Literally. When sleepy Straw Hats went to investigate, it turned out that Usopp had spent most of his night working on some new kind of projectile, and had fallen asleep at his workbench with a candle on one side and gunpowder on the other. Good thing he'd gotten considerably tougher these past few months, and as for the eyebrows, Luffy drew him some new ones with a felt-tipped pen, as well as a moustache, a goatee and the start of a monocle before Usopp could stop him.
Sanji didn't bother going back to bed, and went to shape and bench the bread he'd made last night. He was feeling a bit guilty at having broken one of Zeff's rules - and cross at himself for caring what a shit-geezer like that had to say about anything. So what if he'd cooked while he was angry- or absolutely furious and a little hurt, for that matter? He was an excellent chef, he could turn out superb food whatever the circumstances, and the dough looked good. As a matter of fact, it looked superb; risen to perfection, and once in the oven, the smell lured in his nakama from all over the ship and he didn't even have to ring the bell.
He kept a discreet eye on the lovely ladies as they lingered over a breakfast of bread, jam and a tangerine for Nami, and the usual straight black coffee and an apple for Robin. They talked in whispers, smiling - or giggling, in Nami's case, causing Sanji's blood pressure to spike. He would love to know what they were discussing so intimately, but he was too much of a gentleman to eavesdrop. He wouldn't be able to overhear anything anyway over the sounds of Luffy chewing his laborious way through the large haunch of not-so-tender mutton Sanji had deemed good enough for their captain.
For the rest of the crew, breakfast was the usual in-and-out affair; they came in, grabbed what they wanted and left again, between course corrections, training and sundry chores. Sanji kept an eye on the table and made sure there was plenty of rice, meat and veg for the traditionalists amongst them, baked cereals for a bleary-eyed but contented Chopper, more coffee for Robin-chan...
"Hey, dude." Franky was the last to come in, scratching his belly above the line of his speedos (Sanji's increasingly pointed remarks about what should be worn around ladies had gone unheeded). "There any of that bread left? Usopp said it was fantastic."
"Sure," Sanji drawled, gesturing at the table, "there's-...where did it go?"
With great synchronization, Sanji, Franky, Nami and Robin looked down at the empty platter, then over to the captain's seat and then up to the remaining two-thirds of the loaf about to disappear into the abyss of Luffy's mouth.
The plate sailed through the air like a discus and caught Luffy just as his jaws were about to clamp shut. He went straight over backwards, the loaf tumbling to the floor.
"Luffy! Who said you could take all of it?!" Nami shouted, hand still poised after that beautiful throw. Since this was Nami-san, Sanji could admire her grace and precision without thinking quite so much about the broken plate or the bread on the ground.
"Huh?" Luffy blinked up at the ceiling- then did a "Whoa!!" and a snake-like dodge to get away from Nami's lunge.
"I was going to have more of that!" Nami screamed at him, giving chase. "You always do that! Every single time! Do you know how much it costs to feed you?!"
"Oh dear, Nami seems to have quite lost her temper," Robin mused. Sanji felt a shiver of delight run through him. What a great sign of progress! What a beautiful name to fall from such beautiful lips! Naaamiii, ahh- but thrill aside, Robin was right, Nami did indeed sound furious, more so than usual.
"Isn't that their normal song and dance?" Franky asked, grabbing some scones.
"No, it's definitely more serious if she mentions money," Robin wisely explained over the noises of a vicious Luffy-hunt going on outside.
Sanji picked up the loaf and dusted it off, but Franky was no longer interested. Damn, no way was this much food going to waste...hmm, bread pudding?
There was a loud crash from outside. The three nakama exchanged a look and went to investigate.
"Shit. Well, that's fixable," Franky said, still chewing on his breakfast. Luffy and Nami had apparently not noticed the winch they'd lopped off in passing. The dreaded pirate Straw Hat Luffy, current bounty 300 million, was running for all he was worth with a look of alarm on his face that he'd not had when facing a Shichibukai, an angry god or a lunatic Zoan bastard with a pigeon.
Sanji noticed Usopp standing in their wake, staring at the damage. He assumed his nakama was rigid with fear - Sanji would be, if he was anywhere near Nami-swan's righteous fists of fury, but instead...
"Damn it," Usopp said, softly, and then suddenly shouted, "Damn it! Can't you be careful?! Do you want this ship to go the same way as the Merry?! Don't you care?! Kaya gave me that ship- I- I'm such a- a d-disloyal dog I can never face her again anyway but now I don't even have her ship anymore and I don't- I can't even-" The rapid words tangled up into an incoherent noise, and he spun on his heels and ran towards the gun deck.
"Okay...did anybody else completely fail to understand that? Who's Kaya?" Franky glanced at Sanji.
"Girl back home, from what I was told. The one who gave us the Going Merry. I'm not sure what he meant by-"
"Oooh, is this going to be a tragic tale of love, separation and broken hearts?"
"Well-"
"Someone needs to talk to long-nose, see if he's okay. I'll go get my guitar."
"You do that," Sanji said to the cyborg's back. Robin-chan had already left, to try to intercept the Straw Hat lynching party.
Sanji cleared up breakfast, since everybody had had their share. He put the dishes in the sink and went to dump the peelings into the new-fangled compost-thingie Franky insisted they use for reasons relating to the lawn.
A gunpowder explosion, a fight, the weather still a bit stormy...he should have realized that the morning was only going to go downhill.
"Hey- watch it!" Sanji almost dropped the bucket of peels when the idiot charged around the corner of the forecastle and nearly ploughed right into him. Great, just what he needed. He'd avoided even looking at Zoro this morning, busy at the counter when the other man had shown up. Zoro had eaten some rice and a slice of bread folded over a piece of ham with his usual speed, and was gone by the time Sanji had run out of things to do near the stove. Sanji felt flickers of last night's mood at the edge of his urbane calm, but damned if he was going to let the marimo know he'd gotten under Sanji's skin in any way.
...Why was Zoro staring at him like that? Eyes narrowed to slits...Sanji had the oddest impression that he should be looking at a black bandana instead of ugly moss-green hair.
"You're in my way," Zoro said, tone dead flat.
"Huh?" Sanji countered, which wasn't up to his usual level of repartee, but the unexpected hostility in those words had distracted him.
If anything, Zoro's stare intensified. "You're always in my way."
"It's a bloody small ship," Sanji said with a shrug, standing right in the middle of the causeway and damned if he was going to move aside now. Let the marimo give way.
"No, all the time." Zoro had never looked at him like that before. Sanji must have really pissed the dumbass off, which wasn't a problem in itself, except that he couldn't figure out what the hell he'd done. "Always there. Always reliable, always so damn strong- except when you're getting your ass handed to you by some chick. Nami told me what happened in the Tower of Justice, you could have died - how pathetic are you?!"
Sanji blinked at the way that last had been barked, and then he blinked again as he tried to fit the beginning and end of that diatribe into a cohesive whole. "What? If you're going to pick a fight, at least try to make some sense." Though they hadn't had a serious fight for- hell, for ages, even the tiff after the Groggy match had only been adrenaline and combative spirits-
Zoro's fist hammered sideways into the forecastle wall hard enough to imprint the dark wood, and this wasn't even remotely amusing anymore. "I don't have time to look out for you! I have to rely on you! And you're always there!"
Sanji had been on roller coasters with fewer sudden switches than this conversation. "What?!"
"You're distracting me!"
"How the hell am I doing that, fuckwit?! I’m just walking along here!"
"It was bad enough when you were too stupid to notice what I felt! I'd gotten used to your pathetic skirt-chasing and everything else. So stick to that! Stop caring all of a sudden! Stop distracting me! I don't know what you think you're feeling now but it's not going to happen!"
This was so out of the norm, as well as out of the blue, that Sanji could only wildly hope the flaming idiot swan-guy had snuck on board and was playing with Sanji's head.
"Oi, marimo-kun, did you finally lose whatever brains you had? One of us isn't making sense here, and since you’re the one with the big mouth flapping-"
Zoro's eyes glinted. "Don't you dare pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Not after all your fucking questions last night. Find out what you wanted, did you?"
Sanji tensed, the plastic bucket creaking between his fingers. Questions? Uh-oh, had Zoro guessed what- no, surely not. But damn, that would explain why he was so angry.
...Except that this wasn't the anger of a heterosexual male feeling threatened by another man's attention, it was-...Sanji had never seen Zoro in quite this state before, but he'd spent months with the guy, knew the body language. It was like watching a wounded, blinded tiger lashing out at anything around him. It made something inside Sanji writhe in turn.
Sanji's instincts were primed, what with having a highly trained and thoroughly dangerous swordsman snarling in his face, so he spotted danger coming from an entirely unexpected direction and threw himself to one side before his conscious mind had time to even go 'uh-oh'. But Zoro -well damn, Zoro must have really been distracted, because the man with the Grand Line's greatest set of reflexes didn't even turn at the commotion behind him before Luffy barreled right into his back.
"But I didn't eat it!" Luffy hollered, stampeding towards the forecastle rail, arms lassoing out to catch the mast beam. Nami hurtled past the two men as if they were part of the decor, leaving silence in her wake.
Sanji swallowed. What-...stupid instinct...had made him put out his hand to stop Zoro from measuring his length on the deck...?
Thanks to the fingers wrapped around his elbow, Zoro had caught himself against the forecastle wall, face inches from Sanji's and bearing an expression that blended equal parts of anger and astonishment. A plastic bucket rolled into the Sunny's pitch at their feet, scattering tangerine peels along the deck.
He could hear the rasp of Zoro's breath. Sanji should be stepping back, he was going to get punched. He still wasn't sure why, but he was definitely going to get punched if he didn't let go now.
It was a weird noise, weirder yet to hear it from Zoro, because it sounded oddly like a snarl of resentful defeat. A hand grabbed Sanji by the collar - knew it, he's going to punch me, thought Sanji - slammed him back against the forecastle wall and a mouth mashed down on his.
Sanji didn't even have time to think whatthefuck, much less say it; he was given a shove that sent him staggering back two steps, and then he was watching Zoro stomp off towards the stern without a backward glance.
After a few seconds frozen to the spot, Sanji finally thought to look around for witnesses. Luffy was in the rigging, staring down at Nami in the way a treed cat would stare down at a rottweiler. Robin had her back to Sanji, trying to calm their navigator down. Sanji couldn't see anybody else. He turned away and walked back to the kitchen, the bucket forgotten behind him.
He cleaned up, scoured the plates with a sponge, raked a cloth across the table - mind boiling with so many thoughts nothing coherent was coming out. He finally fetched up in front of the counter. Lunch. He'd make lunch. It was only ten in the morning, but if he wasn't cooking then he didn't have a good reason to stay in the galley, and he wasn't going to leave until the world started to make sense again. The kitchen was his territory. He felt safe here- not that he was afraid of anything, fuck it all, but this was the center of his stability and he needed that right now.
Noodles. Sesame noodles with sliced vegetables.
What the hell had that been about?! The son of a bitch kissed me!
No. Concentrate on lunch. Cook first, think later.
Sanji was a first-class chef and had great pride in his abilities, but that was too tall an order for anyone. Which was why noodles were such a good choice. An easy dish he could cook in his sleep. Couldn't possibly screw that up, whatever the circumstances.
His hands worked, sure and strong, showing no sign of inner confusion. Sanji felt his mind grow gradually calmer and start to sort things out.
Think about this. He had to think about this. He knew Zoro. The guy had a simple mind which had mastered the wonders of Bonehead Logic: the logic that was perfectly reasonable once you eliminated common sense and the fear of pain and death. Sanji had been observing Bonehead Logic up close these past few months and within its parameters, Zoro always made perfect sense. So this too had to have some form of rational explanation. In fact, Sanji had the lurking presentiment that it did, that it formed a coherent picture, he just wasn't sure he wanted to look at it...But he wasn't a wimp. Sanji stood at the counter and sliced julienne out of Chinese lettuce and meaning out of words with the same sharp cutting motions.
The stuff Zoro had shouted, the conversation they'd had last night, the - chop chop chop - the kiss.
The water was boiling. Sanji put aside the lettuce, turned off the heat and scattered the potato-starch noodles into the pot. Stirred. Let his fingers hover above the steam, but they still felt cold. He rubbed them together. The lid clanged as it sealed in the saucepan's heat, but the sound was muffled, his ears full of the echoes of angry shouts.
'Don't you dare pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Not after all your fucking questions last night. Find out what you wanted, did you?'
The intuition he'd had clutching that bucket came back to him. Okay. Okay...Apparently Sanji's worst fears had come to pass, utter humiliation was just around the corner, Zoro had figured out- well, it wasn't clear what he'd figured out exactly from that brief exchange, but in hindsight it'd be pretty easy to turn Sanji's series of questions into 'are you single' and 'are you into men' which, even by Sanji's standards, wasn't that subtle a come-on. Sanji resisted the urge to hit himself over the head with the cutting board and ploughed on.
That'd be an excellent reason why Zoro was furious, but it didn't explain the kiss, if it could be called that when the only thing that had kept it from being a punch was a lack of knuckles. It had fleetingly occurred to him that it might have been a taunt, a crude 'here's what you can never have', but now that he was thinking about it, no. Just...no. Vindictive petty gestures just weren't Zoro's style.
Which meant...
A whole tangled boil of feelings were creeping up on him, and he couldn't avoid them. Shit...
Sanji dumped the noodles into the sieve; instincts cultivated over the years on the Baratie had been keeping an eye on the time while his mind was otherwise occupied. He put them in a bowl warmed with the cooking liquid and grabbed a spoon without looking, words whistling through his mind like shrapnel from an explosion.
'It was bad enough when you were too stupid to notice what I felt!'
'I don't know what you think you're suddenly feeling-'
'Stop caring all of a sudden!'
...If he was reading this right, Zoro had actually guessed pretty much all of it, up to and including what Sanji was feeling...Stupid. Stupid. He'd forgotten that searching look Zoro had given him yesterday evening at dinner, as if he were reading him like a book. Sanji had been trying to conceal his unwanted epiphany, but he'd also just had his whole life turned on its head, and they could read each other pretty damn well...And then he'd tried to be subtle with his stupid questions.
But Zoro hadn't been mad last night; prickly, yes, defensive, oh yes, but not angry. Sanji wasn't sure why Zoro was so furious now, but another conclusion was hovering in Sanji's mind, overshadowing everything.
'So someone has caught your attention?'
'Why the hell are you so goddamned curious all of a sudden?'
'It was bad enough when you were too stupid to notice what I felt!'
'-but it's not going to happen!'
Sanji stirred the sesame oil into the noodles with fast, jerky motions with which he'd paddle a sinking skiff to shore. Did that mean...what he thought it might mean...? But surely- he and Zoro were always arguing, and Zoro started at least half the fights. Not that fighting had stopped Sanji from, um, harboring unwanted feelings for his nakama, but Zoro was made of stronger stuff, and he wasn't interested in guys. Right? Sanji would have noticed if he was. For sure. Then again, he hadn't really considered it before yesterday, so maybe he'd overlooked something...? Of course, now that he was thinking about it, there might be some indications that maybe Zoro did swing that way. Yeah, subtle clues such as Zoro's total lack of prurient interest in bikini-wearing crewmates -and a fucking kiss! How dumb are you, you stupid blind cook?! Fuck! Fuck it all!
'You have a thing for pain.'
'I sure do, Sanji, I sure do.'
'I've got more important things to put my energies in, cook.'
'-it's not going to happen!'
...There was something wrong.
There was a lot massively wrong right now, in his life, in Zoro's too if he was correct, but right here, right now, there was something wrong at the end of his spoon.
Sanji stared at it. Then, with a deliberate motion, he lifted it from the bowl. The pasta came too, a large, tangled mass larger than his head knotted all around the spoon, trembling in noodly elasticity as it dangled in one huge blob with every appearance of an impaled jellyfish.
Sanji stared at it and wondered what Zeff would say. The thought made him wince, and the mass wobbled.
"What the hell is that?" Zoro asked at Sanji's shoulder.
Sanji quickly dropped the spoon and the stuff back into the bowl without glancing up at the source of his problems. Well, most of his problems, and what problems might conceivably be called his own could easily be blamed on the moss-head as well, just for being him. Even the noodles. Somehow, those noodles were Zoro's fault too.
"Get out," Sanji said in the voice he used for food wasters. Zoro was not allowed to bring his attitude and his problems and himself into Sanji's kitchen. Not now.
Zoro and his problems failed to depart, but at least he hadn't brought his attitude. When Sanji decided he was sufficiently composed where he might be able to look at Zoro and not kick his teeth in for reasons ranging from the noodles to that mindjob of a kiss, it was quite a different marimo than half an hour ago that greeted his sight. Zoro looked a whole lot calmer. He was also soaking wet. His expression, as he stood there dripping on the floor, was that of a swordsman who had an unpleasant task ahead of him - and this from the guy who'd looked only mildly discomfited when he'd stitched himself up after Mihawk had nearly chopped him in half. But he didn't turn away from Sanji's glare, he faced his nakama squarely and stared him straight in the eye.
"I guess I deserved that," he said. "Look-"
"Which part of 'get out' did you not understand?" Sanji growled. "Was it the 'get' or was it the 'out'? Tell me, and I'll draw you a diagram, you shitty-"
"I'm sorry."
Oh, that's just not fair, Sanji thought, feeling his righteous noodle-inspired anger deflate like a balloon.
Zoro continued to look at him, though it wasn't clear what he expected Sanji to say to that. It'd just been two words, and Sanji would love to overlook them and go on being really mad and kick the bastard out, but if there was one man on board who knew the cost and impact of an apology, it was the one who'd just tendered it, and Sanji couldn't ignore that.
He gave his noodles a stir just to have something to do. Zoro's fingers were tapping the white katana, he noticed, the only indication that Zoro wasn't quite as calm as he appeared. The thought that Zoro had been armed earlier and made no move towards his ever-ready weapons, or used his fists or attacked Sanji in any ways apart from the kiss, floated around Sanji's mind without finding enough in the wreckage to connect with.
"You...uh, you really don’t go for girls, do you," Sanji finally said, staring down at the bowl.
"No, I don't. I like men, and even though you're not the sharpest tool in the box, I still can't believe it took you this long to cotton on to that," Zoro answered with his usual approach to diplomacy. "The girls figured it out almost immediately, even Vivi. So has Chopper. Don't know about the others and I don't care either way. It's nobody's business, and certainly not yours. It's not like it matters, because I told you last night, I have a goal and I won't let myself get distracted."
There was a short, stiff silence, and then Zoro said: "You...distract me a lot. Ever since you managed to kick me to the deck that first time. Strength is something that I- never mind. I tried ignoring you, I tried fighting with you, I tried to remember you're a womanizing prick- in the end, I just considered it training for my focus and concentration." From the sour way he said that, he hadn't been all that successful, and Sanji felt - confusingly - mildly gratified that at least he was an almighty distraction.
"I love women," Sanji heard himself say, as if he needed to reassure himself on that point.
Zoro snorted rudely. "No, really? I think everybody from here to bloody Skypiea knows that, love-cook. But...I'm not wrong about this, am I...Last night, when you jumped down my throat for liking your soup and then you shot out of your skin when I touched you- and that's not all, suddenly a whole lot of funny little details I'd noticed without really paying attention all added neatly up. I came to a funny conclusion. You don't just like women, do you. Do you," he added a bit more heavily when Sanji stayed silent.
Sanji glared at the stove's splashboard. Zoro was not allowed to know that. Not even Zeff knew that, or at least Sanji fervently hoped that was the case.
"And there's more, right? I figured something else out, when you came and asked me all those questions. All those personal questions. Like you suddenly cared about the answers. Personally. Or am I completely, widely off the mark?" Zoro's look was as sharp as his swords and about as comfortable for the person on the receiving end.
Pride wouldn't permit Sanji to confirm it; his honesty stopped him from denying it. He said nothing and stabbed the noodles with the spoon a few times, scowling.
"Yeah, that's what I figured. It never occurred to me that maybe you slept on both sides of the bed. But that's none of my damn business either," Zoro added sharply with a cut-off gesture. "I’m thinking you aren't all that happy with feeling this way towards me either, because you certainly don't act it. We both know the score. We're pirates, we have more enemies than we can count, we're stuck on the same ship, we've got ambitions that would kill lesser men and could damn well kill us too; we can't afford to lose our focus. So...yeah, I shouldn't have shouted at you. Or kissed you. I didn't like you pretending you didn't know what the fuck I was talking about, but still, that was way out of order. I don't know why I got so angry all of a sudden." Zoro sounded honestly baffled and still angry, though mostly with himself. "I thought I'd gotten used to what you do to me...We'd been getting along okay these days, too. I...hope I didn't blow that..."
"Dumbass. Like I'm not used to ignoring half of what you say," Sanji muttered without having to give his answer any particular consideration. Some things were that obvious. Idiot marimo.
The silence stretched while the noodles, if this was possible, got even further entangled. Sanji eventually jerked into motion and flipped the bowl's convoluted contents onto a cutting board. He proceeded to slice the mass into little bite-sized bits. Wherever his knife fell seemed to leave a knot, so at the end, the distinct pieces still wrapped around each other and looked like bits of barbed wire. Charming.
"Has it calmed down out there?" he asked while he chopped. His voice in the kitchen sounded surreal after that harsh and reluctant confession. Damn, to think that only yesterday morning, it was so obvious where they stood in regards to one another. They were both firmly convinced that the other was an idiot for a variety of reasons, but a reliable idiot who could fight decently and who didn't need looking after. Sanji missed that already.
Zoro turned away a little and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "Yeah. Nami threw Luffy overboard. I had to fish him out. Franky says something's gotten into Usopp too. He did look pretty down when I saw him, though not that much more than usual these days. Nami's chilled a bit now; she says we're heading towards some more bad weather later today, and the static electricity's got everybody on edge."
Sanji would love to blame the weather; seemed like he was doing that a lot these days. But Nami-san's anger was justified, he thought loyally, and it hadn't been that much greater than usual. Usopp's outburst had been bizarre, but he'd been more upset than outright angry. Zoro's reaction had been several orders of magnitude greater. A wounded, somehow helpless anger. It still made Sanji's insides twist into knots to think of it.
"Lunch is going be ready in about half an hour. We'll make it early and take the afternoon to ready the ship for the blow."
"Sanji-"
Sanji shook his head violently, fair hair brushing his face. No. Don't say it. Nothing's going to happen anyway, so what's the point. You were so furious. So was I last night. Even when it looks like we might almost have a thing for one another, we still end up fighting. What does that say about us?
None of this needed to be said out loud. Nami and Robin would have undoubtedly gone to talk it over in their cabin, but Zoro and Sanji were guys. Communication was for pansies.
The silence that followed was...not awkward, because, ironically enough, they were now exactly on the same wavelength. But it was heavy, like a steel door swinging shut on a possibility. Oh boy, another fun meal ahead. Sanji didn't want this. He wanted...he wanted to fight with Zoro like before, when they didn't know there might be something between them that wasn't going to happen for a bunch of reasons, and-
"Ship ahoy!"
Both men looked up briefly towards the aft porthole, but the warning wasn't followed by a shout of 'It's the Marines!', so Sanji returned to the one problem he had a chance of doing something about. He poured a little more oil into the noodles and shook them to see if that would untangle them. No luck.
"AGH! Ghost ship! It’s a ghost ship!"
"Ghost ship?" Sanji and Zoro said at the same time.
"That was Usopp's voice-"
"Has he been drinking?"
"It's got skeletons and it's black all over and it's got skeletons hanging from ropes and the guys on it have skulls instead of heads-" and at that point Usopp ran out of breath for anything more than a panicked squawk.
...Well now...that was timely. Sanji felt his thoughts flee from murky feelings and thunder down reassuringly familiar channels. And he liked the way Zoro started smiling, that upturn of one corner of his mouth and the light of anticipation in his eyes now that good old violence was afoot once more.
"I guess that merits investigation," Sanji murmured, putting a lid on the noodles. He'd warm them up again later, make some sauce and put them together in a mix-and-stir casserole. Then he'd fervently pray that Zeff never, ever heard about any of this.
"Never fought a ghost before," Zoro said thoughtfully. There was a series of little click; one of the katana being thumbed in and out of its scabbard.
"Neither have I. First time for everything." Sanji took off his apron and hung it by the door before following Zoro out to meet these undead to whom he owed a big solid favor.
An hour later, the noodles were still all tangled, but cut up fine, they were easy to eat, and the ladies found them highly original. Sanji still thought they looked like bits of barbed wire, but maybe that qualified as innovative. The sauce he'd quickly made to go with them was really good, to his surprise, and everybody was full of praise for their cook who could turn out such an excellent meal despite highly unusual circumstances. Though in this instance, the circumstances was just an attack by enterprising and intelligent pirates who'd thought of putting the Triangle's reputation to good use. They'd been way too easy to beat up, since they'd principally relied on greasepaint and fear. An amuse-bouche, really.
The Sunny entered the Florian Triangle that afternoon, not that anybody paid that much attention to the event. Relationships on board seemed needlessly complicated that day. People went about bumping into each other's edges and then apologizing and then bumping again. Sanji stayed above it all, quite literally; it was his turn in the crow's nest and boy was he glad of it. He stared out at the ocean and dreamed of finding the All Blue, and of having all his nakama around him when that happened...They'd like his fish just as much as anybody else who might or might not have been that little bit more special to him. And the idiot marimo would be there too, eating way too fast and maybe muttering 'not bad' from time to time, so really, Sanji hadn't lost anything.
He didn't think about the kiss. No, not even a bit. It had been a terribly crappy kiss - hell, he'd had kicks in the teeth that were cuddlier - and anyway, it wasn't going to happen.
TBC...
Link to Chapter 3
Next chapter hopefully out in 2-3 days, depending on how busy real life remains.
