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“What did you just say?”
Sanji is staring at him, mouth agape. The cigarette he’s been smoking falls freely onto the floorboard, and Zoro distantly wonders if it’ll catch fire.
“I said,” Zoro repeats, slowly, as if Sanji was a little kid. “I would like to kiss you.”
“Right,” Sanji says, voice raising a few notches higher. “I must’ve misheard. I thought you said you wanted to kiss me.”
“I did.”
Sanji seems to choke on nothing. He opens his mouth, seems to think better of it, and closes it again. His eyes dart a few times towards the door, as if he seriously contemplates making a run for it, but he eventually meets Zoro’s gaze again.
He seems to settle on a question. “Why?”
What a stupid question. For all his insults about Zoro being the brainless one, the Cook can be really dumb. “Because I love you.” Duh.
Sanji makes a sound at the back of his throat that’s halfway between a scream and a shriek, and Zoro kind of wishes Sanji would use his mouth for better use. Like kissing Zoro, for example. Or at least telling him no, so Zoro can finally move on and stop getting distracted by the way the Cook’s lips curl around those favorite cigarettes of his.
Things that aren’t asking even more stupid questions, he thinks as Sanji asks another, “Why?”
Zoro scratches his head, feeling exposed all of a sudden. “I dunno. We fight well together, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else with my back, and you’re annoying as hell but you make me want to be better. And I guess, you’re,” he makes a helpless gesture at the Cook. “You.” He shrugs. “I really want to kiss you.”
Sanji flushes a bright shade of red and it’s really unfair, because Zoro wants to kiss him more now. “Do you not have an ounce of romance in all those muscles?”
Zoro frowns. “Do you want me to say some lines? Because I,” he scrambles for the scrap of paper in his pants pocket, “I asked Nami about it –”
Sanji visibly perks up at the mention of Nami’s name, and Zoro hates him a little for that. “You asked Nami-san for help?” He blinks. “Wait. Nami-san actually helped you?”
He pulls out the crumpled paper, and glares at it. “She made me pay for it, that witch.”
“Don’t call her that,” Sanji says, but the reply is mostly instinctive. “What’s on that paper?”
“Romance. Well, some lines, about –“ he quickly skims the paper – he didn’t think he’d need it, and hasn’t actually read it yet. “Roses,” he picks out some words, “some stuff about – your eyes, and the ocean, and the sky – fuck it.”
He scrunches the paper and strides across the galley. Sanji watches him, wide-eyed, but he doesn’t step away, and Zoro takes it as a good sign. He drops the balled paper to the ground and slides his hands up Sanji’s shoulders, along his neck before framing the Cook’s face in his hands.
“I love you,” he says it again. Mostly because it’s true, but also because no amount of romance – the stupid fancy lines about the sun and the sea and Sanji’s eyes – can explain it better than those three simple words. He has always been himself with Sanji, and that’s one of the reasons he likes to be with the Cook – to turn into a person he isn’t for the sake of romance is to strip away the best parts of his relationship with Sanji. “I think that’s a good enough reason to want to kiss you.” He sighs, exasperated but fond. “Can I?”
Sanji blinks up. He seems flustered, moving his hands like he doesn’t know what to do with them, before placing them over Zoro’s hands.
“Okay,” Sanji mumbles, and before Zoro can fully process that response, leans in for a kiss.
Zoro grins against Sanji’s lips. Fuck romance. He’s better than some dumb lines after all.