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"Oi oi don't fuckin' crowd me!"
"I am not crowding I am inspecting!"
"You're gonna inspect my fist from a close distance if you don't back off."
"You're gonna burn the sauce - "
"Here then," and Sanji found the wooden spoon slapped into his chest, with the galley door clacking shut before he could find the breath to yell about tomato stains on one of his nice shirts.
Rote and instinct had him stirring the pot before it could burn (with a new, clean spoon, thank you, hygiene dictated), and only a few moments later did he heave out a deep sigh.
Went and put your foot in it again, eggplant.
At dinner, no one, not even Luffy, asked if Zoro had had any hand in the meal, despite any and all earlier conversations about each of the crew (excepting the captain) taking lessons in at least the basics, just in case. The rest of them had all seen the swordsman beat furious feet for the crow's nest maybe twenty minutes into prep time, and Luffy... Who knew. Maybe someone else had managed to bend his ear and pre-beat some propriety into him. Small blessings, either way.
What was not a blessing was the stormy look on the swordsman's face during the entire meal - what of it he stuck around for - nor the fact that he excused himself from the table early, unceremoniously, and without seconds. Sanji's heart thudded and flopped uncomfortably in his chest, and he tried not to make eye contact with anyone for the next few minutes, until conversation picked predictably back up.
Extra rice, the practical voice in the back of his head pinged, and he slipped to the corner of the galley between doling out helpings to start a new go of the rice cooker. Zoro was the second biggest caloric vacuum on the ship, second only to the rubber trashcan and far outstripping the next closest contenders, so if he bailed out early, it wasn't because he wasn't hungry.
It was because Sanji was an asshole, and the least he could do was show up in the crow's nest during Zoro's watch that night with double the usual amount of onigiri, each filled with more than the usual amount of fish, and a bowl of miso besides. One still-stormy grey eye glanced his way when the hatch opened, then swiveled back away. The strides of Zoro's repetitions with his massive weights didn't so much as stutter.
Sanji sighed again, trying not to make a production out of it, as he climbed fully into the nest. "Brought your snack."
"I noticed."
Sanji winced.
Usually, even when the mosshead was feeling particularly acerbic, there was that rote, ingrained, martial artist politeness with a curt thanks. Even two years and change ago, when they were still circling each other like wolves, territorial, all politeness cursory and curtailed. Even that second landing on Sabaody, when they both had that same shitty need to feel each other out all over again.
"Look, I'm - "
"It's fine."
Sanji blinked. It most certainly was not fine, not with the hard set of Zoro's jaw, not with the continued complete refusal of eye contact, not when Sanji had managed to skitter the other man out of the damn galley twice with a single shitheel behavior.
"Don't lie about it."
"I'm not lying about anything."
"Then what new definition of 'fine' did you just write into the damn dictionary?"
"The one where I don't feel like listening to your apology."
...Ouch.
Sanji opened his mouth, managed nothing, closed it again, and shook his head.
"Alright. I'll just. Leave this here then."
No response. Not even a grunt.
Sanji's skin itched.
"Look - "
"Why are you still here?"
Oh for the love of - "Oi, that's not fucking fair, moss-for-brains - "
"Neither is making me partner in your need to explain yourself. I'm pissed. I don't wanna hear it. Get out."
"Fine! I was just trying to say if you don't wanna come to tomorrow's lesson I'm not gonna hunt you down about it! Fuck!"
Oh sure, now the swordsman was slowing down the clanging repetitions of those damn weights to turn his way, but no, nuh-uh, Sanji was not going to put the other foot in it, and if Zoro didn't want to hear from him, the fastest way to keep from making a full and entire ass of himself by taking that attention as bait or worse was to just jump out of the fucking nest and let Sky Walk break his fall. Fuck. Shit. God dammit.
Unfortunately, all that meant was that he was now fully too keyed up to go the fuck to bed, get some damn rest before breakfast, so that left him with the exactly one option of getting prep started right now. His menu was already planned, and tomorrow's agenda was full of a lot of meals and pickling and fucking et cetera of ingredients he wanted to use or prepare for longer storage before they started to turn, so if he was going to be going to bed in an hour or six when he finally calmed the fuck down, that meant either losing sleep before a long day of extensive prepwork, or prepping now and sleeping in. Not that sleeping in made him feel great about himself either, but he'd need his head on straight for making the last island's remaining fresh milk into yogurt without ruining it, among the other sixty steps he had scheduled meticulously into tomorrow's (today's) plans.
Now, preparations and chainsmoking. Tomorrow, canning and fermentation and boiling himself in the bath.
Two full days to stew himself about when the mosshead would fucking let him talk to him again, fucking shit.
Or, so he thought.
"Can I help?"
"H-wha?"
Sanji - did not spin away from the stove brandishing a ladle like a lunatic and sucking on the butt of a spent cigarette, exactly, but only by sheer force of frazzled will.
He did blink into a full second's space of goddamn befuddlement before getting words back onto his tongue.
"I thought you weren't talking to me?"
He suppressed simultaneous urges to groan and kick his own ass. Magnanimous.
Thankfully, the moss's response was an eyeroll rather than anything more cutting, figurative or literal.
"I said I didn't wanna hear from you, last night. There's a difference."
"...Ah."
Surely he could have come up with something more intelligent to say, had he fucking slept yet, but his frazzled nerves had hauled him by the belly button straight through breakfast (where at least Zoro had both stayed for the whole meal and left a completely bare snack plate in the sink) and into boiling and pickling. Sleep would come between lunch and dinner, while things were steeping and brining and nothing except maybe him had a literal fire under it. But also, Zoro both was correct and hadn't explicitly stated that he now felt like hearing out of the cook at all, and since Sanji was on fully the wrong end of the bullshit this time, he wasn't about to start shit over it.
It was so hard not to be a dick, though, when he was running on no sleep and the other man's response was to arch one sharp, expressive eyebrow and respond with an entirely unhelpful, "Well?"
Deep breath. Rein it in, frazzled lunatic.
"Well, what, exactly?" he responded as absolutely evenly, politely, and cautiously as he could physically manage, full with deliberate rising intonation and a careful intentional scent-push of standing down.
Both those arching brows rose up, and Zoro's constant presence of deliberate enormity receded. His shoulders didn't un-square, exactly, but that copious East Blue Demon aura of his diminished in a way Sanji didn't think he would have been able to describe with words alone.
"Do you want help?" Zoro clarified, repeating his initial sentiment without any bite at all.
Sanji, in contrast to the other's inimitable something, deflated physically, wan smile on his face, and ran fingers back through his hair. "Yeah. Thanks. Appreciated."
Zoro's nod was... not cautious. Not really. Just that same indescribable little bit less than the huge presence he usually wore (and wore well) and filled up the whole space around himself with. Occupied, wholly.
"What is all this?" The words broke Sanji out of his wistful, sleep-deprived reverie.
"Preserving. We're twelve days out of port, so the most delicate produce we haven't yet eaten is going to start losing nutritional value, soon."
"Ah."
Sanji blinked. He half expected he'd hear prying questions about that.
Zoro snorted at him, one corner of his mouth quirked up. "My village was a little ways inland, you know. I've been preserving fish since I was like, eight."
Sanji gaped. Zoro laughed at him.
"You really are a piece of work, you know that?"
"I didn't even fucking say anything this time!"
Zoro cocked that goddamn brow again. Sanji sighed.
"Look. I know I was an ass yesterday but I gotta say I don't know which idiot thing out of me pissed you off this much. Throw me a bone?"
He didn't like the look of the shit-eating grin on Zoro's face.
"I'll get that apology, first."
"Oh, fuck you." Toothless. "I'm sorry. Really would like to know what I'm apologizing for, all the same, but I am sorry for whatever the fuck I did that threw you off that hard."
"Hmm," Zoro responded at first, as though considering.
"Oh come on!"
This time, Zoro's laugh was a bright thing that lit up the whole galley around them both. Bastard, being that mirthful about getting Sanji's entire goat.
"Fine. This?" Zoro gestured at the pots on low simmer on the stove, the freshly steam-sanitized jars glittering on the counters in the sunlight slanting in through the windows. "This shit, you fucking killing yourself out of getting every possible microgram of optimal whatever out of everything in the store room. That's important. But none of it tastes like the fresh shit. Lemme finish," and Sanji clicked his teeth shut before he fully realized he'd opened his mouth. Zoro shook his head, looking more world-weary than Sanji would have expected, and winced inwardly to realize that he did that. "Nobody expects it to, either," Zoro clarified. "So maybe don't have a conniption that the whole fucking crew's gonna judge your cooking when you're supposed to be teaching somebody else, huh? They're gonna know anything that's not up to standard is on me and not you. As long as it doesn't involve me burning down your kitchen or poisoning the whole pot, fuck's sake, lemme fuck up a little."
Sanji couldn't help but stare. Zoro... wasn't wrong. Some stupid little panicked child-sized Sanji voice in the back of his head incredulously protested you WANT to make mistakes??, but adult Sanji, even sleep-deprived, knew it was his own stupid perfectionism poisoning that pot. And Zoro's, for that matter, the day before. Zoro could obviously see the contrition, the recognition, in him, and nodded, like he was already accepting the apology Sanji hadn't articulated out loud yet. Sanji half wondered if his scent control was compromised by his exhaustion, if he smelled like he had his tail tucked between his legs.
"I'm not gonna ruin dinner because I don't know what the fuck 'deglaze' means, alright? It's just gonna taste less pretty than yours."
Damn him, his exhaustion, every inch of him that hungered constantly for praise as achingly as his stomach had hungered on that rock, and especially this bullheaded fucking omega who'd never had a good word to say about his cooking before this very minute, and double damn the pink feeling in his chest that felt like that warm bath he desperately needed and sounded like a thousand knowing okama cackling gleefully at him, but hearing the bastard call his food and the taste of it pretty brought a flush flooding his cheeks and a grin speeding to his mouth until his fucking face hurt.
Zoro goggled at him for half a second before things obviously clicked, and the frown scowling over his whole face did nothing to hide his own flushed color. "Shut up," he growled, waving the smoke hearts out of the air around the cook's head before spinning on his heel and stalking over to the counter like the vegetables on it had offended him personally. "You want any of this cut pretty you get over here and give instructions or it's all just getting small enough to fit in the damn jars."
"I'll skin you if you try it," Sanji responded automatically, but couldn't keep the delight out of his voice or his scent, couldn't stop himself from taking a deep breath of the nectarine-sweet smell of heart-thumping embarrassment coloring the mosshead's neck.
"What'd I say about crowding me," the mosshead muttered.
"I don't think you mean it today," Sanji grinned, crowding Zoro right up against the counter and sluicing arms around him to put careful fingers on the backs of the big, muscular ones holding a bit too-tight to a kitchen knife and a bell pepper. "But I'll try to be a little more conscientious all the same."