in which Zoro takes the blame for not paying for the food at the Baratie (sequel to Sanji witnessing the riceball incident in Shells Town)
Ribeye steaks piled one on top of the other, a massive helping of mashed potatoes with boatloads of gravy, salads, soups, and fancy dishes with names Zoro can't pronounce — all made up the massively long order list that he knows Luffy has not a single Berry to his name to pay with.
Zoro looks around the place, tuning out the story of the giant goldfish that Usopp has told them before, his eyes resting on the blonde waiter flitting about and flirting with every woman at every table.
Sanji was his name. Zoro didn't recognize it. But when he arrived to their table and saw Zoro, it looked like their resident waiter recognized him. Zoro's reputation in the East Blue is not a laughing matter, so it didn't bother him at first. But the way Sanji stared at him, wide blue eyes and with a touch of a smile on his lips, told Zoro that there's something a lot more than recognition swimming in that man's head.
He can't put a finger on what it is exactly though. It's driving him crazy.
"Waiter, can I get a beer and something for my friends?"
Sanji turns to him and nearly steps back in shock. Zoro quirks an eyebrow, confused and a little annoyed. He wore his best clothes today (Captain's orders). And he's pretty sure he even took his mandatory once-a-week bath before they went inside (Nami's orders). Still the waiter looked at him like Zoro had grown a second head. Like he couldn't quite believe his eyes.
"Maybe there really is something wrong with your eye," Zoro muses, crossing his arms as Sanji quickly straightens his posture and shoves his hands into his pockets. "Got a problem with me, waiter?"
Sanji coughs out a laugh. Zoro notes with narrowed eyes that there is the slightest tint of pink coloring his cheeks. Is he blushing? The fuck?
"None at all, sir. I think I was just seeing things." The look in the waiter's eyes betrays his statement but Zoro chooses to say nothing. With a practiced smile, he turns back to Nami and asks her how she'd like her water that makes Zoro stare at him this time like he's grown a second head.
"And um..." Zoro is surprised Sanji hasn't left yet and is once again directly addressing him. "We have a few specialty riceballs not on the menu today. I'll bring them out... on the house."
Without even explaining what the fuck that meant, Sanji turns on his heels and beelines straight for the kitchen.
"I think Nami's boyfriend might be yours too, Zoro." Usopp teases him with a snicker and the glare he gives him is sharper than the blades of his swords.
Now, here Zoro is, letting Ussop's words affect him more than they have any right to as he downs his third bottle of beer.
The specialty rice balls haven't come out yet. Zoro's starting to think it's just a sick joke. But he doesn't let it get to him. Or tries to. Why offer free food when you can't deliver on it? Fucking ridiculous. And no, it's not like he suddenly craved rice balls when the blasted waiter mentioned them. That's not it at all. Bullshit.
"Didn't the waiter said he's coming by with rice balls?" Zoro finally snaps and the conversation his crew was having died down immediately at his statement. Ah fuck. He probably should have just kept his mouth shut because Nami was now looking at him with a shit-eating grin not entirely unlike the one he gave her when he teased her before the meal.
"How would you like them, oh great swordsman?" She teases with a glint in her eye. She cups her cheeks with her hands in delight at the irritated snarl Zoro gives her.
"With or without seaweed?" Ussop chimes in.
"Cubed or crushed?"
"Fuck off," Zoro hisses between his teeth. Nami and Ussop share a look before bursting into laughter. Zoro looks over at Luffy who was swinging his feet and obliviously sipping his milk. When Luffy makes eye contact with him, he just tilts his head with wide blank eyes and it makes Zoro question all his life choices.
"You wanna ask him?" Luffy says, already clamoring over the booth and waving at the object of Zoro's unexplained irritation. Zoro sinks into the seat as Sanji approaches with the bill for their meal.
"Your bill, sir."
"Zoro's asking if you're gonna bring the rice balls you promised." Zoro just stared up at the ceiling and thought of a million different ways to cut a hole into the floor so that the ocean could take him.
There is a headache inducing silence that follows Luffy's question. Zoro can't help but finally look at the waiter and he doesn't know how to explain the feeling that bubbles up when they make direct eye contact. Maybe it's indigestion. It's probably indigestion.
Instead of bringing up the damn rice balls, Zoro just grabs the tray with the bill from Luffy's hand. Just as expected, his annoyingly endearing captain put down an I.O.U for the ridiculously long list of food they ordered. Several possible scenarios could happen from this. And Zoro doesn't want to think about Luffy wreaking havoc in someone else's kitchen.
With a deep sigh through his nose and a knowing look at Nami, Zoro wrote down his own name in place of Luffy's.
"Zoro, what—" Luffy almost took the bill back when Zoro stood up and handed it directly to the waiter, who looked just as dumbfounded as the rest of them.
"If your head chef's got a problem with that, he can talk to me directly. Tell him that for me, won't you?" Sanji takes the bill, reads what's written, and there's a phantom lurch in his chest that happens when Sanji looks up at him and smiles. Zoro doesn't want to describe it. He'll allow himself to firmly believe that it's a side effect of eating too much food. It's indigestion. You're just constipated. Never mind that the feeling is most prominent in his chest and not his stomach.
"Of course, sir." Sanji purrs and the sound runs like a cold river down Zoro's spine. There's a hint of mischief in the gleam of his visible eye. Every instinct in Zoro tells him it's dangerous. He should take his crew out of here, onto the Merry, and run.
But he stays rooted to the spot, wrist limp on the hilt of his sword, as he watches that damn waiter walk away from him.
"WHO THE HELL IS RORONOA ZORO?!"
The steady routine of washing the dishes helps quiet Zoro's racing mind.
It's a very welcome distraction. The clinking of the ceramic against metal utensils provides a cacophonous symphony that helps drown out all of Zoro's waking thoughts. The sooner he starts to think, the sooner he starts to notice how that stupid fucking waiter has just been sitting at the table behind him, cursing Zoro with his mere presence.
Scrub scrub scrub...
"You sure you don't want any help?"
Scrub scrub rinse...
"No."
Scrub rinse dry...
"I really have nothing better to do."
Zoro's eye twitches.
"Good for you."
A long silence follows this and Zoro thinks the waiter finally gave up. That was until...
"Are you still mad about the rice balls?"
"Oh my god!" Zoro nearly slams a pile of dishes onto the floor. He turns to Sanji, who is just casually smoking at the table, and stomps over to him. Once he was right in front of him, Zoro snarls at him, one hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Talk about those damn rice balls one more time, I'm gonna chop your head clean off for them to use in tomorrow's ramen stock."
Sanji blinks, then turns his head to the side to blow smoke away from Zoro. Zoro tries to convince himself that he isn't staring at the way Sanji's lips purse around the cigarette in the process.
"I can still make you the rice balls," Sanji says without a single ounce of fear in his body. "I just couldn't do it while the old man was around." He then stands up and steps around Zoro with a practiced grace. "Are you willing to wait ten minutes?"
"I'm not hungry," Zoro hisses but his stomach betrays him with a loud grumble. He's been washing dishes for so many hours. He probably missed dinner.
Then, as Zoro straightens his posture, Sanji does it again — he smiles and Zoro doesn't know what to do.
"Sit." Sanji gently nudges a chair out with his foot. It lands perfectly in front of Zoro at a perpendicular angle. "I'll have them out in five."
"You said ten minutes." Zoro found himself saying, only to be contradictory. Sanji laughs this time and the resulting smile pierces Zoro's heart with a million cursed swords.
"When someone's hungry, I feed them." Sanji says simply and that's the statement that ends their conversation. Zoro still refuses to sit on the chair, instead finding himself gravitating towards the counter that Sanji was preparing his ingredients at and leaning against the marble.
Before Sanji found them at their table, he brought down a marine and a fearsome pirate with just his feet. Zoro was fascinated by his fighting style even if he didn't want to admit it out loud. But he's always been curious. Especially now, with Sanji whipping out the sharpest knives and using them effortlessly as Zoro would wield the Wado Ichimonji.
"You're good with knives," Zoro says before he could stop himself. Sanji chuckles.
"Of course, I am. I'm a chef. Best one in the East Blue."
"What's a chef doing waiting tables, then?"
"Cause I was kicked off the line this morning. It's a weekly occurrence, nothing special." The way Sanji scrapes his ingredients into a bowl betrayed how he felt about it despite his nonchalance. "I can cook better dishes than everyone in this damn kitchen but Zeff refuses to acknowledge that. It's always 'your food is crap', 'slice those carrots thinner', or 'needs more fucking oregano—"
Sanji throws the knife onto the cutting board, its tip now embedded neatly straight down the middle. It stood perfectly still, like it was afraid of what Sanji could do if he added more pressure. Zoro raised an eyebrow, looking up at the now irritated cook with a smirk.
"Sorry," Sanji mumbles, taking the knife and cleaning it carefully with a cloth. Zoro says nothing. He just props his elbow on the counter and places his chin into his hand as he watches Sanji in his element. Eventually, it's down to just shaping the rice balls with his hands and Zoro asks the question that poked at his mind during Sanji's mini outburst.
"If you're so dissatisfied cooking here why don't you just leave?"
Sanji pauses. His head is down, his blonde fringe obscuring one eye as his fingers twitch against the rice ball.
"It's not about that."
"Yeah?" Zoro leans as close as he could get with the counter between them. Sanji still refuses to look up. "A hot-headed cook who claims to be the best in the East Blue settling down here — where he is not head chef — is as contradictory as it gets."
"You don't know–" Sanji snaps but stops himself immediately. He looks up to glare at Zoro through narrowed eyes. "You don't know why I still stay."
"Enlighten me then, cook." Zoro leans his hip against the counter. "Because really, someone as good as you claim to be has got to have some ambitions. Dreams." Zoro holds the man's gaze. "Do you hate the old man?"
"No!" Sanji counters immediately. "The man fucking raised me. I owe him my goddamn life!"
"Owing him your life isn't the same as giving up your life to work at a restaurant that barely lets you cook."
"You don't know shit!" Sanji nearly slams his fist down on the counter, pointing a finger at Zoro with his face beet red. "This restaurant was his dream—"
"But is it your dream?"
Silence. Total utter silence.
Where color is nothing but a dark void of black and grey, a sea of blue greets him from the pages. Vivid pink skies and tangerine mangroves burst to life. All types of fish swim in his mind's eye but if he reaches out to touch them, it certainly should be real. A phantom breeze kisses his cheeks and water laps at his feet. He's drowning but he swims in delight. He's falling but he feels the clouds cushion him with warmth.
There is a vast ocean out there, one that contains delicacies and species from all four seas. Creatures of every kind, spices that have never been tasted.
The All Blue.
In Sanji's world of black and white — he strives to find the one place that's in screaming color.
There are tears in Sanji's eyes before Zoro could comprehend what was going on. But he wipes them away before he can get a good look at him. The kitchen was quiet around them. The only sound peeking through was the faint music from the bar outside. Though Zoro's heartbeat was louder in his ears than his own breathing.
But he could hear each footstep Sanji takes, the scrape of the plate as it's pushed in Zoro's direction, and the click click of Sanji's lighter as he helps himself to another cigarette. Zoro looks down and sees the rice balls presented in front of him — three heaping helpings, all coated in a different topping, all different flavors.
Zoro takes one.
And it's the best rice ball he's ever had in his life.
"I have a dream," Sanji murmurs, cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. One glance and Zoro could see that whatever his dream is... it still burns like molten lava in the heart of this chef. "I'd just rather give up on it than die searching for mine."
Zoro swallows, turns around, and takes the cigarette from Sanji. The ashes fall into his palm, its embers dimming as he squishes it between his fingers.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Zoro says, looking up to make eye contact with Sanji. He can see it almost immediately — the longing for something that seems near impossible to achieve, the acceptance that it's hopeless — but Zoro sees it, clear as day, that the flickering flame of hope still shines in Sanji's eyes. That he's just waiting for his sign to let it once again consume his soul in a roaring fire, brighter than even the sun could be.
Zoro wants to see him shine.
"Come meet my captain," Zoro instinctively wraps his hand around Sanji's wrist. Surprisingly, Sanji doesn't pull back. "I think he'd really like to get to know you."
Sanji doesn't protest.
Zoro takes the rice balls to go.
Never waste food.
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