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"So hey, Zoro. What's your favorite food?"
The swordsman blinked, looking up at Usopp from where he was going through sword forms on the back deck. "Onigiri. You ain't figured that out yet?"
"Figured it out from what!? Is that why your attack is named that?"
"For fuck's - dumbass, that's Oni, Giri," he pronounced carefully, separating the syllables deliberately.
"So then how would I know?"
"You're around here fishing half the time the cook brings out snacks. You pay attention to nobody but yourself?"
Usopp flush-flustered at that - and balked, a little. Of all the people to accuse anybody else of being self-centered -
But then, he thought, that was just the face Zoro put forward, wasn't it?
"Is your snack really onigiri every day? I thought it was coincidence that's what it always was when I'm out here; Sanji usually shakes things up."
"Day 'n night," Zoro agreed, continuing his next set of forms.
"And you don't get tired of it?"
"You think I wouldn't have bitched the cook out for being lazy if I did?"
"So do you think he's being lazy?"
"Ugh! You're putting words in my mouth. If he was being lazy I'd have bitched about it. Nah, he's just figured out what I'll always eat."
Usopp's mouth fell open. That was... a lot more positivity than he thought he'd ever heard Zoro say about Sanji. Admitting the cook had gotten something right?
"You mean you won't just eat anything put in front of you?"
"I wouldn't eat trash if that's what he fed me. I'm not Luffy."
"Luffy doesn't think anything Sanji makes is trash! That's why he wanted him as cook."
"Luffy doesn't think anything anybody makes is trash. And that's not why he picked the curlybrow. Don't be dense."
...More things about pots calling kettles all kinds of colorful nicknames.
"No? Why would you pick a cook if not for their expertise?"
"Dunno. But that's not what Luffy's like. He could've picked anyone on that boat to bully, but he picked out the pain in the ass for a reason." Zoro shrugged one shoulder without breaking stride. "Hell if I know what it is. But Luffy picks people, whether they like it or not, 'cause he likes the people. It's not like he was on the lookout for a sniper when he wanted you on board. That's just how it shook out."
This was a whole lot more conversation than Usopp had bargained for, expected. But now that he was here, it was fascinating. The swordsman made a big show out of not giving a damn. Slept through snowstorms. Ignored most of what was said to or around him. Apparently, though, ignored wasn't the same as didn't catch.
"So what's Sanji made before that you wouldn't eat?"
"You don't see me making a beeline for the galley when he announces dessert, do you?"
"I don't see you making a beeline for the galley, like, ever."
Zoro snorted, but there was just enough mirth in it to hear, a little slant to the line of his mouth.
"Sure. But it's not like I make a habit outta being late to meals either."
"So... you do like his cooking?"
"You really that dense? What'd I say about not eating trash?"
"Okay, okay, fair. It's just..." Usopp gestured vaguely. "You just say anything he makes is 'fine.'"
"Yeah. You think he'd let me live it down if I ever said a good word about him? Fuck that. I get enough words put in my mouth and enough shit assumed about what I say on the regular anyhow."
Usopp hummed thoughtfully at that. "I mean, you don't often say much. People kind of have to infer."
"Yeah. Least if everybody makes up their own shit I get a chance to refute. You say one wrong thing and everybody holds onto it like a dog with a bone forever. Pass."
Usopp, thought, suddenly, that he had a much deeper picture of Zoro's inner workings than he ever had before.
"You can say it."
"Huh?"
"You make up a lot of shit. But that doesn't mean you don't know a lot of true shit all the same. You can say it."
"...It's harder to get people to let it drop when you're an omega, huh?"
"You got it."
"So how come you're talking to me this much?"
"Because whenever you blurt shit out, it's shit you made up, not somebody else's details. Iunno. Because you're a beta? Whatever it is, you don't get my hackles up."
"I'm... touched, I guess."
Zoro snorted. "Yeah, yeah."
"So what don't you like?"
"Chocolate."
It was hard not to take personal offense at that! "Everybody likes chocolate!"
"'Everybody' likes nothing. Shit's too sweet for me."
"Do you like anything sweet?"
"Not really. 'S all cloying and sticks to your teeth."
"...I guess that makes sense, being that it's you."
"You got it. What're you so curious for, anyway?"
"No reason!" Usopp's dismissive handflap was so vehement that Zoro would've been a fool not to be instantly suspicious. "Kind of polling everyone!"
"If it's on behalf of the cook and you say one word about anything I said I'll gut you like a fish."
Usopp made a strangled noise through the back of his throat and the highest pitch of his nose at the same time. "Wouldn't dream of it!"
---
"Oh you know the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, Sanji-kun."
"I don't wanna think about getting to ANY man's heart, Nami-swan, must you?"
"You don't want to, but you are already."
Sanji groaned, grinding his face against the wood of the galley table.
"And I know thinking of him as an omega instead isn't making it any better for you, because he's still a man..."
"And because he'd gut me if I ever dared think of him as an omega instead or first, dear heart, and I'd deserve it."
Nami softened a little. All the pain in the everything that Sanji was, and for all that he spent half his time being more lolling tongue than person, the chivalry was really there, under it all. The real chivalry, the kind that didn't just hold doors for women, but softened the alpha in his scent with pheromone-laced colognes to keep himself from overpowering omegas by accidental presence. (The kind that spent the money out of his own funds to wear that cologne every day, even when they were weeks out at sea between ports, to keep from butting his scent too hard against their omega, even if Zoro could handle it if he didn't.)
"Besides. How am I supposed to romance with food a man like him who'll eat whatever I set in front of him and call it all 'fine'?"
"I'm working on that part. But you've got to work on your manners."
"Nami-swan, please, if I said a single kind word to him after all these months of how we've been, I'd never hear the end of it. He'd throw it back in my face."
"You really think so?"
"A man as stubborn as him? I can't think of any other outcome."
"Sanji-kun... I don't think you've got the right picture of Zoro at all."
The cook finally lifted his face from the table, curious, to meet Nami's eyes. "How do you mean?"
"Between the two of you, you're the more stubborn one by a mile."
Sanji actually spluttered. Couldn't come up with a response.
"Think about it. You dig in your heels and yell and curse at anything that threatens your picture perfect Love Cook image, don't you? - Well, anything that isn't a lady."
Color flooded into the cook's face. Nami-swan wasn't wrong - seldom if ever was, of course! - but, "That barbarian - "
"Goes with the flow, Sanji-kun, regarding anything that isn't you."
Silence.
"He lets Luffy clamber into his lap when he's napping without batting an eye. Redirects anything he's doing to catch a wayward toy when the younger boys get too rowdy and send something flying toward the edge of the ship. Takes his turn for dish duty or laundry, picks up the slack when sails need furling, hauls up our entire anchor with his bare barbarian hands, without complaint. He gets angry when I tease him about his debts, when Luffy almost gets himself killed, and when you insult his intelligence. Which is every time you open your mouth around him. If you asked him to do something nicely - I mean, at this point he'd probably look at you like you had five heads, maybe ask if you'd hit one of them. But he might actually do as you asked, since you asked, instead of calling him shiftless or brainless or whatever variation on a green plant you picked out this morning."
Sanji found his jaw working, a tension in it he hadn't known was there, but felt suddenly as though it had been there, lurking in the tendons and the roots of his teeth, for what seemed, all at once, like decades.
He was a shit excuse for a love-cook, wasn't he?
"Sanji-kun..." He found a hand on his shoulder. Sucked in a breath, abruptly finding the weight of all that tension in the grinding of his teeth, willing his eyes to take back the tears threatening to fall. Worked to get a grip back on his scent as he waved a hand as though wafting away smoke.
"You don't have to worry about me, Nami-swa-"
Oh.
Oh, there went all those tears, streaking down his face.
When was the last time he'd been hugged by somebody other than Luffy, whose hugs were often barely hugs at all?
He couldn't recall.
But he found all his noodling on the floor and his hands gripped into the back of Nami's shirt.
---
"Hey. Zoro."
The swordsman paused.
The hey was placid, not combative for once, and he'd been ready to just grunt an acknowledgment of the cook's presence, a noncommittal and bland thanks for his afternoon snack.
But the statement of his name - the use of his name - was placid, too.
He looked over his shoulder, the next curl of his weight bar a little slower, and found the cook actually standing there looking right at him, waiting, without the spark of challenge in his eye or the downturn of brows harsh enough to wrinkle his forehead and bridge of his nose.
Zoro put his weights down.
Turned, to face the other man directly, a hand coming to rest on his swords in comfortable familiarity rather than preparation. Just resting. Not tucking a thumb against one's tsuka with readiness to pop it out of its sheath.
In full view of him, eye to eye with him, Sanji pulled in a steadying breath through parted lips. Stepped forward to close the space between them a little further, bring the covered tray up between them.
"A - peace offering. For starters."
Zoro's brows rose.
"And. And a little more than that. If it's okay."
A beat. Zoro reached forward to take the tray; as soon as the weight was in his hands, Sanji caught the cover off it himself, stepped back with a little bow. The motion would have made Zoro's hackles rise if it hadn't come with everything else before it; if he had been certain from a context devoid of anything but the cook that a bow like that was a mockery.
Instead of tensing up, he felt his face go a little slack.
Felt, too late, the slip of his scent, eddying all his surprise and a little perfunctory warmth between them with the ocean breeze.
Onigiri, as usual. More than up to Zoro's standards, as usual. Suddenly, well beyond those standards, nearly double the size with the rice still just-warm enough to smell, an artful trail of sea king sashimi spun along one side of the plate, and kanji cutouts in all the nori wrappers: Blade. Power. Nakama.
There was warm sake ready at one side of the plate. On the other, a smaller serving, barely bigger than a saucer, of a looser, longer grain white and yellow rice, with a brown sauce full of shredded meat on top.
The sauce was poured on in the shape of a damn heart.
It smelled strange. Good. Spicy, nutty, hints of chicken and garlic, and...
He looked up, finally, making eye contact, befuddlement written all over his face. The cook was pink.
"It's a mole," he explained, and god, his voice was a croak. He lifted his free hand, the one not holding the cover, and held a loose fist in front of his mouth as he cleared his throat. A beat. Retrieved the broken eye contact, and pushed forward. "It's a mixed sauce. Spicy. There's a little chocolate in it, but... I'm hoping, prepared like this, you might like it."
Silence, for a long moment. All the unease in the world stood between them, almost solid, as neither, really, dared breathe.
Zoro's hands shifted. He settled the tray across the spread of this left hand, strong and steady, and picked up with his right the small fork next to the small plate. Stared, for a seemingly endless beat, at the unmistakable symbolic shape of the thing that currently pounded in his chest and throat, sauced on top of rice and smelling like a hearth fire and uncertainty. He almost didn't dare disturb it, but, at length, he slid his fork beneath a scoop of rice and chicken and mole, lifted it to his mouth, and took a bite.
It took him a long moment, rolling the taste around in his mouth, before he could chew and swallow.
Finally, feeling the color in his cheeks start to rise to meet its match on the other, he lifted his gaze again, made eye contact, and - hesitantly - managed, for the first time:
"It's good."