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Zoro's eye finds the floor first. Then, after the initial fuzz from sleep clears to the muted alertness that they’ve stopped moving, to a glossy boot.
Mild irritation kicks in when he’s mapping up the long, long leg pressed against his, he follows upstream past a blazer-clad chest. One more flick up and over a scruffy chin to finally land on half a face covered by blonde hair.
They stare at one another. Zoro blinks. The guy blinks back. The irritation disperses like mist and settles into something else entirely, suddenly. Without much forethought, he opens his mouth and says:
“You’ve got funny eyebrows. Looks like coiled poop.”
Eyebrows’ eyebrow does a funny thing when he can’t decide what face to make. Insulted, disbelief, and a level of forehead-creasing incredulity not unfamiliar to Zoro. It calms to impassivity when the blonde gives him a once-over. Zoro waits.
Satisfied, the man crosses a leg and then points, “Bodybag. Shirt stain. Scar over one eye. Weird hair.” His accent becomes thicker as if he’s cursing in his mother tongue. “Don’t talk to me about looks, mosshead .”
The blonde's mouth curves in the opposite direction of Zoros, growing wider when his falls to a frown. The fog of irritation turns into a downpour and Zoros soaked in it.
He’s no longer having fun. There’s a random stranger bumping elbows with him, who doesn’t seem to care that he wants to knock that curly brow off the shitty face it belongs to.
And mosshead, really?
He clucks his tongue, “They’re for my swords.”
He says this instead of any of the swirly-adjacent insults that want to pour from his mouth; one hand falls to the bukuro carrying the three katanas at his side. He isn't sure why he's explaining himself to some asshole, but he is.
The guy's answer is a face that falls so flat Zoro falters, a face that says he isn’t any more convinced by that, like at all.
“Ah, my mistake.” he drawls, painfully sarcastic.
Huh.
And it's strange but Zoro wants to laugh. The blonde is rude and his eyebrows are ridiculous but laughter catches in his throat nonetheless, and nearly overflows. He knows it'll be loud and boisterous. It’s strange.
But, Zoro's contrary and he can’t help but feel like he’d lose somehow if he did. So, he doesn't.
Instead, he offers a challenging smile that's reflected back at him.
“Zoro.” He holds out a hand.
The man takes it. “Sanji.”
They fall silent as passengers start to board the carriage. Zoro watches them pass, some sit nearby at a respectable distance. Still, he’s bothered by it.
“ ‘Sides,” Zoro begins, now more curious than he is annoyed. He gestures to himself, then to the blonde, as if replaying the push and pull of their previous conversation. “you sat next to me.”
He raises a brow, an unspoken question.
Eyeybrows is uncertain for a moment but quickly settles for a shrug, “You looked uncomfortable and I thought: Well. I’ve got a working shoulder, don’t I?”
That gives Zoro pause, it’s unexpected, contradictory even, given his display in attitude so far. He lets out a huff of air, a laugh, possibly. Maybe, underneath the ripples of his own exterior, a smile too.
Now that he’s mentioned it, Zoro's neck is a bit stiff.
“Yeah, metro’s a shit place to nap.” Zoro agrees. Refreshing, he thinks.
The blonde, Sanji, nods. A sympathetic, I’ve-been-there-before nod. Then he sighs heavily, as if he's the one whose nap was disrupted. But his eye is bright and sparkling when he asks: “Do you want to sleep on my shoulder?”
“Sure, swirly-brow.”
Zoro crosses his arms and lowers his head onto Sanji's shoulder, who complains about the name but quiets once Zoro closes his eye. He smells like ocean and cigarettes. Somehow, it’s fitting.
The metro lurches forward.