Work Text:
Zoro doesn’t think he’s seen the cook go for more than a handful of hours without a cigarette. Not that he’s been paying attention, of course. It was just that from the day they gained Sanji as a crewmate, it seemed like the smell of tobacco and cloves took up a permanent residence in Zoro’s senses. It permeated every aspect of the Merry. And there wasn’t much he could do on a small ship in the middle of the ocean about it.
Bastard.
It wasn’t even just the smoking that got under Zoro’s skin. The damn waiter looked so fucking hot while doing it, too, and it wasn’t fair. Not that the swordsman was even willing to entertain that thought, of course. Whether he was cooking, fighting, or simply leaning up against the Merry’s railing, Sanji was simply (and infuriatingly) the embodiment of casual grace. Before the blonde, all of the people that Zoro encountered with a smoking habit were disgusting. Bottom of the barrel types that usually also reeked of piss and stale beer. But Sanji was damn near religious about his hygiene — he showered daily and always wore those ridiculously pressed three piece suits.
Asshole.
At least it was easy enough to ignore him when they were actually doing things off the ship. Supply runs, exploring, or even celebrations with locals that the crew helped all proved to be both figurative and literal breaths of fresh air for Zoro. Tonight happened to be one such occasion: tomorrow morning, the crew was going to split up and go their separate ways across Upper Yard. Nami was gonna try and get the lost treasure, Luffy was gonna try and fight God, and the rest of them were going to help in whatever ways they could. But for tonight, a feast was in order.
Zoro watched on from a fallen log as Luffy, Chopper, and Usopp danced around the huge bonfire with some of the wolves they’d befriended. He took another swig from the bottle of booze he’d stowed away in his backpack and exhaled contentedly. Everyone’s spirits were high, they’d eaten a delicious meal courtesy of the love cook (not that Zoro would say as much out loud), and the swordsman could feel the undercurrent of anticipation for tomorrow’s fight thrumming in his blood. Tonight was shaping up to be a pretty good night.
That was until the familiar aroma of cloves and tobacco wafted towards him. Zoro didn’t even have to look up to know who decided to take a seat next to him on the log. He also didn’t attempt to hold back the roll of his eyes as he turned his head to look at the cook, who was presently withdrawing his pack of smokes and lighter from cut-off pants that were no less pressed than his normal ones.
“Can you sit literally anywhere else?” he groused.
Sanji’s swirled brow lifted in what appeared to be appraisal. “And here I thought mossy growth on a log was benign. I just needed to get off my feet for a while.”
“And smoke your death sticks near me? No thanks.”
An incredulous laugh bubbled up from the blonde as he tucked a cigarette between his teeth. Zoro hardly understood what was so funny before Sanji flipped the cardboard box towards him. It was mostly solid cream colored, save for the crowned jolly roger logo in the center and the black banner above it. And the brand name in big black letters beneath the grinning skull did in fact read ‘Death’.
Zoro blamed the heat on his face on the booze and the fire he was sitting near. For all the weeks they’d been sailing together, he’d never bothered to even think about learning the brand of the stupid cigarettes that the cook smoked. And now the damned waiter thinks he pays attention to little stuff like that about him.
Brilliant.
“Why do you even do it?” Zoro asked as he took another swig from the bottle in his hand.
“It helps relieve stress,” said Sanji, flicking the wheel of the lighter deftly with his thumb. “It can help me be more alert, I more or less grew up in it, sometimes it can be a comfort thing.” He raised the tiny flame to the end of the cigarette and inhaled, letting the end catch fire before closing the lighter again and blowing out the smoke. “Take your pick.”
“You sure you don’t just have an oral fixation?”
That damned curly brow lifted again. “Says the one that developed a fighting style to keep a sword in his damned mouth.”
“Chopper says it’s bad for your health.”
The cook blew out another mouthful of smoke, lips curled into a grin. “Listening to the doctor’s advice would be a first for you, Marimo~”
“You’re definitely of more use to the crew breathing normally, Shit Cook.”
Sanji’s brow twitched and he opened his mouth as if to retort back, but he seemed to think better of it at the last minute. Instead, he took another drag from his cigarette, slowly inhaling and holding the smoke within him before blowing it out in a steady stream. He looked like he was debating whether or not to say something. Zoro shrugged to himself and averted his attention back to his bottle.
“If you must know, it started when I was young,” the blonde finally said. Zoro snapped his gaze to the other man’s face. “Twelve or thirteen, maybe? I don’t exactly remember. The damn geezer was getting on my ass about something or other and called me a brat. For whatever reason, that time he said it, it really got under my skin. I was a teenager, not a kid anymore, so why the hell was he still insistent on treating me like one?”
“So, what, you started smoking to stick it to your old man?” asked Zoro, a smirk dancing across his lips.
“Do I not look the type to question authority or something, Mossy?” Sanji fired back. “Need I remind you that we’re both pirates?”
Fair point.
Zoro shrugged and raised his hands in a show of mock surrender before taking another sip of his booze. For a few long minutes, they both sat quietly, neither seeming to want to break the spell that had fallen over them. The ever-present veil of smoke seemed less of a nuisance, even, given the bonfire that was still blazing close by. Eventually, Sanji was the one to speak back up first.
“What about you and your alcohol, then, if we’re gonna talk about bad habits?” The blonde gestured to the bottle with the fingers his cigarette was held between. “When’d you start that?”
The swordsman let the question linger in the space between them.
“Dunno,” he finally answered honestly. “Didn’t start ‘til a few years ago. Chasing pirates and collecting bounties was how I fed myself. One day, Yosaku got me a bottle of beer with dinner and I drank it. I liked it so I kept up drinking after that.”
Sanji snorted. “That’s just like you, Marimo. No deeper meaning, no real rhyme or reason, you just did it.” Zoro instinctively reached for one of the swords at his belt but the blonde waved a hand. “It’s not a bad thing,” he continued. “It just shows that you’re someone that doesn’t worry too much about the little stuff in life.”
If Zoro wasn’t mistaken, that almost sounded like praise coming from the love cook. He didn’t entirely hate the way that it prickled at his skin and made him feel warm all over. They sat for another minute or so before the swordsman voiced the question that had been gnawing at him since perhaps the day Sanji officially joined the crew.
“What’s it even like?”
Sanji shrugged. “Smoking? It’s just like breathing, I guess, but with a little added rush to it.”
“A rush?”
“You wanna try it, Marimo?” The blonde extended his nearly finished cigarette to him and Zoro vehemently shook his head.
“I’m not curious enough to actually smoke that, Curly,” he said, wrinkling his nose and scooting the slightest bit away from Sanji. That garnered a laugh from the cook.
“Alright, what if you didn’t smoke it? Are you still curious?”
“The hell are you on about, Shit Cook?”
The twinkle in Sanji’s eye was surely just a reflection from the bonfire. He moved closer to Zoro on the log and took the last draw from his cigarette. As if in slow motion, Sanji leaned forward until their lips were barely a hair’s breadth apart. The swordsman felt frozen in place as Sanji cupped his cheek with his free hand. The blonde applied the slightest bit of pressure with his fingertips at the hinge of Zoro’s jaw, and on instinct, Zoro’s mouth parted slightly. Sanji took the opportunity and gently, but deliberately, exhaled his mouthful of smoke past the green haired man’s lips.
He didn’t mean to swallow. The intake of breath was more from surprise than anything, Zoro hadn’t meant to take in that smoke. And yet, here he was. The smoke seemed to burn hot in the back of his throat and he choked on it, turning his head away from the blonde to cough. What the hell was the damned ero-cook thinking?!
“The hell’s wrong with you, Dart Brow?” Zoro sputtered.
Sanji just smirked like the cat that got the cream and dropped the butt of his cigarette on the ground, crushing it beneath his shoe.
“You said you were curious, Marimo, but didn’t want to actually smoke it,” he said, tilting his head to look at the swordsman better. “Could you feel the rush?”
Zoro finally caught his breath enough to consider the question. Maybe his head felt a little bit lighter than before? But was that to do with the smoke he inhaled or the new proximity of the blonde? He huffed out a breath and lifted the bottle in his hand back towards his lips for another swig, pausing partway through the motion. A wild, fleeting thought crossed his mind: he could give the love cook a taste of his own medicine…
“Maybe a bit,” answered Zoro noncommittally. He shrugged and grinned at his crewmate, shaking his nearly empty bottle side to side. “Nothing like good booze can do for me, though.”
“You’re full of it.”
“What, you don’t believe me, Shit Cook?”
This time, it was the blonde that lifted his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just saying that what you have right now isn’t even what you would consider the ‘good stuff’. I find it hard to believe that your drink does more for you than one of my cigarettes would for me.”
“You wanna find out?” asked Zoro, the corner of his mouth curved in a smirk.
“You’ve already drank most of it, Mosshead, that’s not gonna do anything for me.”
Zoro exhaled a laugh. He emptied the last swig of alcohol into his mouth, holding it there as he set the bottle on the ground and moved closer to Sanji on the log. The blonde’s visible blue eye was wide at the realization of what was happening as Zoro mirrored his previous posture, cupping Sanji’s jaw with one hand and bringing their faces close together. At the firm pressure of Zoro’s fingers, Sanji’s mouth fell open and the swordsman slotted their lips together, passing the liquor from his own mouth to the cook’s.
Was it bold? Definitely. Was it risky? Absolutely. But did Zoro care about the consequences at that very moment? Not in the slightest. Especially not when Sanji swallowed what he was given without hesitation and chased after the taste of the booze against the green haired man’s lips. Zoro reciprocated in kind, moving his hand to the back of Sanji’s head and licking into the blonde’s mouth.
It was hard to say how long the two of them devoured each other, but Zoro found that the longer they kissed, the less he cared to find out. Sanji kissed the way he fought: gracefully, but with an edge. His strong hands grasped onto the swordsman’s shoulders as he fought for control of their kiss, but much like the way they sparred, Zoro simply refused to back down and met him for everything he had.
Eventually, Luffy’s voice broke them from their isolated little bubble.
“Sanjiiiiii! Meeeeaaatttt!”
Sanji jumped back from Zoro, face as pink as the absurdly patterned shirt he had on. His eye flitted around rapidly to gauge whether or not any of their other crewmates might have seen them. From the way his posture relaxed, it seemed like he deemed them to be in the clear. The blonde pointedly avoided Zoro’s gaze as he rose back to his feet and pulled his pack of cigarettes back out of his pocket.
“This didn’t happen,” he said. And before the green haired man could reply, Sanji was making his way back over to the absurdly large pot he’d cooked dinner in to get their captain more food.
Zoro just watched him go. He raised a hand to his mouth, tracing the pad of his finger over his lips that he swore were still tingling from being connected to the cook’s just moments ago. He scoffed to himself and shook his head incredulously, wishing he had another bottle or two more of booze to distract himself. For all the vices he could have, he feared that Sanji might soon become his favorite if he had his way.