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The waiter’s fucking with him.
Zoro is — very sure of this. Sure in the way he is always sure, travelling only in straight lines, understanding the world a second ahead of time, believing in his gut that anything can be understood, can be killed.
The waiter, the cook, he’s been doing these things. From the get-go, essentially, but getting worse day by day, now sailing out from the Conomi Islands and just the five of them on this boat that used to feel a lot bigger. Small things, things Zoro can’t label, can't fight, but things that leave him half-stumbling and frothing inarticulate rage, the rest of the crew not even noticing, and Sanji — smug, it must be.
Because he’s getting away with it.
Because he’s fucking with him.
It’s this thing he keeps doing with his face. Zoro doesn’t always get people, but he gets bodies, knows how to read them, pre-empt them, hurt them. He doesn’t get this. This thing that Sanji is doing and Zoro can’t react, each time, can’t do anything. He doesn't know how to fight back.
Like with the barrel, with the sail, with his arm around Nami watching Luffy kick his way out of the rubble. Chatting on happy and slack with Usopp, fishing slouched on the railing, shoeless, shirtless, Luffy clinging to his arm, and the way Sanji peers down at him, doing that thing he keeps doing, trying to fuck with Zoro, trying to — beat him, somehow, at something. Trying to win some game that Zoro doesn't even know the rules of.
He’d realised at that party. The way Sanji’d looked at him, straight on and deliberate, easy, warm as summer sand. The way their fingers had touched, the heat of it next to the cold plate. The way Zoro had tried to push, rile him up, to get that stupid face off his face, and the way it had just come back. The way Zoro had come back.
The way he keeps smiling at him.
It’s some kind of tactic, it’s gotta be. Sanji’s — doing something, up to something. Not to be trusted. He tries to warn the others, but Luffy just laughs and Nami and Usopp look at him with twin blank expressions, turn quickly away to whisper at each other behind their hands.
Fine. So the waiter’s got the others fooled. That just makes it all the more important that Zoro doesn’t let him win.
It should be easy. Zoro’s never going to lose again and this, this idiot with his idiot hair and his pressed shirts and his cufflinks, he’s no match for Zoro. It should be easy.
It’s not easy.
Meditation, training, focus — Zoro knows how to do this. He thinks about fighting and about Luffy and he thinks about this fucking waiter, not-thinking about him. Infiltrated, right under his skin. It’s staggering, walking into the kitchen and finding him there, kneading dough balanced on one leg. The way Sanji looks at Luffy, at all of them. Smiling, soft crinkled eyes, silver-blond and blue, easy slope of his shoulders, little cock of his hip against the counter. The roll of his wrists and the trim of his hips.
Zoro’s not meant to get pissed like this, not meant to feel anything he didn’t allow himself to feel. But Sanji grins dimpled at him across breakfast and it’s all Zoro can do to glare hate back at him, the food not even sticking in his throat cause it’s annoyingly fucking good; Sanji laughs as he hands him his lunch and it lurches through Zoro; Sanji smiles this smile, every meal, all day, which has to mean something, has to be part of some wider plan, because otherwise, otherwise —
The kitchen is unsafe. Refuge, so Zoro sticks to the deck now. The sunlight out there is solid enough to lean against, summer island heat sucking in, and Zoro sits with his back to the mast, the kitchen door in sight. So he knows when he’s coming. So he’s prepared.
He’s got Sanji's routine down now, knows the circuits of snacks and drinks, how he wakes up first and goes to sleep last, how long he spends doing whatever evil thing he does with each crewmate, but it still knocks Zoro out a bit when the kitchen door kicks open. He finds himself squeezing his eyes shut quick, like a kid, like something monstrous is creeping a hand out from under his bed.
Zoro breathes, forces his mind to forms and functions, to the most recent flaw in his footwork. For a moment it’s enough to see it, but then he’s thinking of Arlong Park, if you had him, then I wouldn’t have got him , and that stupid face again, half-smile cocky and calm, hands in his pockets, and when he opens his eyes, the monster is there.
Sanji stands over him, blocking out the sun. It makes the deck feel like a different world, Zoro dizzy all of a sudden, pupils stretching in the new dark, Sanji outlined gold. He’s got a plate of onigiri balanced on his fingertips, his other arm tucked carelessly behind his back, like he’s just playing at waitstaff, like he doesn’t even care. Smiling in the shadow he’s created again, like it’s all one big fucking joke, only Zoro still can’t figure out what the punchline is.
“Don’t want your fucking food,” Zoro grumbles, has to say something, and Sanji just beams down at him and it — hits Zoro like a sword in the gut. Which is a feeling he’s recently become very familiar with.
“Everyone wants my food,” Sanji says easily, sets the food down, careful, delicate, handles the plate like Zoro does his swords, and it’s another thing that makes Zoro crazy, he’s going crazy, nothing’s even happening and he’s so pissed. “It's delicious.”
Sanji straightens back up and leans back against the rails, casually watching Zoro and Zoro’s attempts to not look at the onigiri and not look at him in clear, casual amusement. Zoro hates him. Wants to punch him. Stupid childish shit he didn’t even do when he was a child, pull the bastard’s hair and bend his fingers back and spit in his mouth —
No.
Not that one.
Eyes shut again, without even meaning to. Horrible, unknown time, trying to control his wolfish heartbeat, his breathing, and when he opens them again, the waiter is still there, leaning all easy and relaxed back against the railing, eyes on Zoro and a cigarette hanging lazy from his lips, gilded in the sun, pale against the sky.
What a fucking bastard.
Saying it before he’s thought it — “Fuck off already.”
Sanji just looks mild and amused at Zoro, dragging smoke from the cigarette, breathing it out. Doesn’t respond, the sun now lurching back over his shoulder onto Zoro, blinding, and Sanji smiling still, which, just, fuck.
Fuck him.
“Stop doing that,” Zoro snaps.
Innocent tilt of the head. “Doing what?”
“That.”
The smile grows, flashing white teeth around the cigarette, eyes slanted and soft and secret. No tension at all, nothing for Zoro to pick at or pick up on, only a body leaning like liquid gold in the sun, and that game he’s playing with his grin.
“Shush, mosshead,” Sanji says, annoying voice, annoying goddamn face, and then, when Zoro finally reaches for an onigiri, “Good boy.”
Zoro freezes. Sanji keeps on smoking, wide uncomplicated smile, but Zoro’s chest is cut open again, like Sanji’s got a foot on his throat, flushed-hot all over and nothing to do with the sunlight at all, defeated, he’s pretty sure, completely fucked, and Sanji tips his head back to blow smoke into the summer air, one long exhale, exposing his neck, dropping his head back down to beam boyish, brilliant, right in Zoro’s fucking face.
He’s fucking with him. He must be fucking with him.
…Is he fucking with him?
“I know what you’re up to,” Zoro says, low, almost croaked. Stuck half-reaching for the onigiri, staring mindlessly up at him. Lost.
“Eat your food,” is all Sanji says, hums, leans back on his elbows, smiling slow and sweet as syrup, something warm and wriggling in Zoro’s belly, below his scar, and just —
Just.
Fuck this guy.