Work Text:
Sanji woke up when it was his turn to take watch. It was the middle of the night, and Robin’s turn had just finished, so he made his way towards the deck. The fresh night air was a relief from the stuffy atmosphere of the men’s quarters. They were near a summer island, and the warm weather was starting to become more noticeable.
The rest of the crew was already sound asleep, except for their resident annoying swordsman, Sanji noticed. Zoro was training on the deck, lifting weights. The night breeze couldn't keep Zoro from sweating, his hair stuck to his brow.
Actually, now that Sanji payed attention, his hair looked longer than usual. That mosshead wasn't particularly concerned with his appearance, preferring practicality over style most of the time.He kept his hair short and out of his face, mostly because it was better for fighting.The only hint of some sort of interest in how he looked were the three golden earrings the man never took off.
He made his presence known by lighting a cigarette, the wind carrying the curls of smoke away.
"What are you doing at this hour, marimo?" he drawled.
"What does it look like, shitty cook?" Zoro grunted, not looking at him and still lifting those monstrous weights. Sanji watched a drop of sweat roll from his jaw before catching himself and averting his eyes.
A minute passed, and Zoro dropped the weights and let out an annoyed huff, running a hand through his hair to get it away from his face (unsuccessfully).
Sanji came closer to him and non-chalantly brushed a stray sweaty lock from his forehead with the hand currently not holding his cigarette, startling Zoro.
"Your hair’s getting too long. Leave it like this for some time, and you might start sprouting leaves," he teased, blowing smoke in his face with a smirk when he just stared at him with an annoyed frown.
Zoro made a grab at him, but Sanji dodged and put space between them, still smiling. It was so easy to rile the man up, but he could say the same about himself when it came to Zoro.
"None of your business," he replied, going back to his workout.
After a beat, and before Sanji could stop himself, he offered, "I can cut it for you if you want to."
Right after the words left his mouth, he wanted to inhale them back in. He wasn’t sure if this was a normal thing to offer between them. Scratch that; it definitely wasn’t normal. Sanji was still testing the bounds of this weird, unspoken relationship they had going on. Making out in the supply room when no one was looking was allowed, but was offering to cut the mosshead’s hair going over some implicit limit? He sure as hell didn’t know.
Zoro paused and lowered his weights. He looked at Sanji with an emotion he couldn’t recognize, but before the cook could start sputtering out excuses to save his dignity, he replied, "Are you really offering?"
Sanji was taken aback; that wasn’t the reply he was expecting. To be honest, he didn’t know what he had expected. He still didn’t understand how the stupid mosshead worked.
"I mean, yes. You can’t fight like that, clearly," he said matter-of-factly, changing the weight from one foot to another, betraying his attempts at covering up his surprise.
Zoro didn’t seem to notice the conflicting emotions running through Sanji, and just placed the weights on the floor.
"Well then, I guess."
Sanji recovered from his surprise and told him to sit down on the deck while he went to gather supplies. He decided to just do this outside, where the heat was more bearable. When Zoro was around, it always seemed to get warmer.
When he came back, Zoro was sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, arms and legs crossed, and the towel he was using before draped over his bare shoulders.
He felt stupid for being so nervous about this. It’s not like he hadn’t cut his nakama’s hair before, it wasn’t that big of a deal. But he knew this was different, even if he would let Luffy slingshot him from the Merry before admitting it.
Taking a final drag of his cigarette, he threw the remains over the ship’s rail and set a stool he had taken from the kitchen behind Zoro to sit down.
He got comfortable, his legs bracketing Zoro’s sides so he could access his head better, and warned before starting, "I’m going to have to wet your hair to cut it, and don’t you dare move when i start cutting or I’m kicking your face in."
"Just get on with it, cook," he grunted.
Sanji didn’t reply and just started working. He sprayed his hair like he usually did, combing his fingers through the locks to properly wet them. Zoro’s hair was thick, but surprisingly soft for a guy who didn’t even shower every day.
Zoro barely reacted to his ministrations; the only sign of something was the slight way his shoulders relaxed after a couple of minutes.
Sanji dried his hands and grabbed the scissors. "Here I go, keep still," he said, softer as to not break the quiet atmosphere, something very rare between them.
Snip, snip, snip. Sanji watched as the green locks fell down, the sound of the scissors and his own breathing the only things breaking the silence.
When he got to the shorter hairs covering Zoro’s nape, his fingers brushed the skin there, and he felt Zoro’s shoulders tremble a little, as if a shiver had run down his spine at the contact. Sanji smiled a bit to himself, but decided not to tease him. Zoro didn’t comment on it, but his ears were a little red with what he assumed was embarrassment.
That was when a thought hit Sanji. Zoro, one of the most guarded, closed-off men he knew, was trusting him with this. He was trusting Sanji, the man with whom he bickered every day, to hold a sharp object near his head and not slice off his neck.
He felt oddly proud at that, a pleasant feeling blooming in his chest. He knew their fights weren’t as serious as they made them seem at first, but this felt like a new development.
The man still annoyed the fuck out of him, but it was nice to know he trusted him enough to do this.
He finished cutting the last strands, and ran his fingers through his hair to check for anything he had missed. If he took longer than was strictly necessary, Zoro didn’t need to know.
"All done," he announced, putting the scissors away. He walked around the stool to face Zoro, who had kept his eyes closed during the whole process and only cracked them open when Sanji was in front of him.
He raised one hand to scratch the back of his head, feeling the short hair there, and made a noise that Sanji hoped was one of approval.
"You are good at this," Zoro observed, a hint of a question in his voice.
"Ah well…" He took out a new cigarette and lit it, taking a drag and letting the smoke out. He continued, with a bit of a joking tone, "The Baratie staff weren’t the most elegant group of people, you might say. I had to make do on my own if I wanted to look as proper as I do." He wasn’t lying about that, but that wasn’t the whole story.
Zoro was looking at him with that same expression from earlier, the one that Sanji couldn’t decipher. But before Sanji could dwell on it, Zoro decided to interrupt his thoughts once again.
"Yeah, you do look proper. Like a proper idiot." In any normal situation, that would have made Sanji’s annoyance boil, and they would have started one of their usual arguments, but Zoro wasn’t wearing his usual shit-eating grin. His smile was soft and knowing, and Sanji couldn’t think straight. He felt his face heat up and turned around, his feet guiding him towards the crow’s nest.
"Ungrateful bastard," he said, biting the cigarette still between his lips, the sound of his annoyed steps breaking the peaceful silence of the night. "You are insufferable, marimo."
He heard Zoro’s low chuckle and then, more earnestly, "Hey, Sanji."
His actual name coming out of the swordsman’s mouth made him stop in his tracks. He turned his head around to look at him, that infuriating expression still on his face, but a hint of embarrassment could be seen in the way he avoided his eyes when he spoke. "Thank you. For the haircut."
Sanji turned back around and started climbing the ladder.
"No problem."
Stupid fucking marimo.