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For all that he appears to be a man made of nothing but hard, sharp edges, Sanji has learned over the years that underneath his rough exterior, there is a remarkable amount of softness which makes up the core of Roronoa Zoro.
Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise him; no one truly hard and heartless like people who don’t know better assume Zoro to be could have made a home for himself on the Straw Hat crew, much less become its unflinchingly loyal first mate. But it does; because Zoro is soft in ways that defy expectation, ways that sometimes leave Sanji reeling for how contrary they run to what Zoro appears at first, uninformed glance.
For one thing, his hair. When the ogre actually bothers to wash it (which is still far too infrequently, even with Sanji’s pointed intervention), that stupid, greasy green mop transforms into a soft bed of sea grass that Zoro, quite frankly, does not deserve. The first time Sanji sunk his fingers into Zoro’s hair after it was freshly washed he nearly had an aneurysm out of jealousy, unable to believe the soft, almost downy texture brushing over his fingertips. It takes Sanji four to five different specialty products to turn his fine, corn silk locks into something worth styling, and here Zoro is with naturally thick and luscious hair that somehow hasn’t been destroyed by his godawful 3-in-1 soap-shampoo-conditioner. It should be illegal for Zoro’s hair to be as soft as it is when the bastard doesn’t even appreciate it, and if not for the fact that Sanji gets to sink his fingers into it (usually) whenever he pleases, he’d be tempted to shave it all off on principle.
(Also, when it gets long enough and the weather outside is humid, it starts to curl at the ends. Sanji kicked the shitty swordsman overboard the first time he found out that particular tidbit of information, and Zoro still pretends he doesn’t understand why. Bastard.)
His skin, for another, which is almost more surprising and unfair than the hair thing because Sanji has seen Zoro use dish soap as face wash before. But then again, unlike his hair, Zoro’s skin isn’t unmarred. His body is nothing if not a temple built from years of accumulated blood, sweat, and scar tissue, and there aren’t many places left where the great swathes of golden tan skin remain unbroken. Not all the scars are as evident as the jagged lines across his chest or bisecting his eye, but if he gets in close enough, Sanji can almost map a version of the night sky with the constellation of little white nicks that cover nearly every inch of Zoro’s body.
But the areas in between those rough, raised lines, stretched over the swell of muscle or the jut of bone—those places are surprisingly soft. The broad expanse of his unmarred back. The soles of his feet (which are ticklish, no matter how ardently Zoro insists otherwise). The stretch of flank on his left side between the top of his hip bone and the bottom of his ribcage. The inside of his thighs, not that anyone besides Sanji will ever know that. But perhaps Sanji’s favorite is how soft his right cheek gets when the marimo’s been sun-warmed by napping out on the Sunny’s deck, heat lingering beneath the surface that flares when Sanji tries to run his knuckles across it—or even more daringly, his nose.
Zoro’s muscles—which for all intents and purposes should be as hard as rocks—can actually go soft too. Sanji knows that should make sense, at least from a physiological standpoint; muscles aren’t hard unless they’re flexed, but so rare is Zoro’s body actually at rest that his entire frame can seem eternally rigid and unyielding. And certainly it is, when he trains or spars, or in the heat of battle; those moments when he needs to hone himself into the weapon that protects his crew, and the moments when that weapon needs to strike. But on the infrequent occasion that Zoro actually lets himself be at ease, those hard planes will go back to the underlying softness of their natural, relaxed state.
Sanji still remembers the first time he touched Zoro in one of those rare moments, how easily what he thought would be nothing but solid mass gave way under his touch. It reminds him of bread dough, or freshly pounded mochi. When Sanji wants to tease, he’ll poke at Zoro’s sides and tell him he’s getting squishy, which usually gets him a scoff and fond stink-eye as Zoro asks whose fault that is, and Sanji will grin, guilty as charged.
Because it’s not just muscle packed onto Zoro’s frame; there’s fat there too, fat that Sanji’s cooking helped put there, that he’s proud to have put there. Zoro was little more than lean, corded muscle when they first met, and one of Sanji’s first self-imposed tasks as the newly appointed cook of the Straw Hats was to turn all that stringiness into proper bulk. Most people think that bulking means nothing but adding muscle, but most people don’t know nutrition like Sanji does, don’t understand that bulk without some fat is little more than show dressing; muscles built for the sake of appearance rather than any real strength. And real strength is what Zoro needed—still needs—so Sanji has always made sure that his plate is balanced properly, full of protein and carbs and fat.
Now Zoro wears the excess around himself like a protective layer, custom built by Sanji’s hard work and care. And sure, it makes him a little squishy in places; but underneath that squish is a power and strength unparalleled by any except Sanji himself (and Luffy, of course). Sometimes enemies look at Zoro’s frame and assume the fat there means he’s gone soft, as if the presence of love handles somehow negates the fact that his biceps are as big around as their entire heads. It is always immensely satisfying to watch Zoro show those people how wrong they are, and more than once Sanji has dragged him off the battlefield afterwards so he can express his feelings on the matter properly.
His smile. Not all the time, because Zoro puts up a good front of those hard, sharp edges, even amongst his own crew. But there are times in between the wide, shit-eating grins and feral displays of teeth where Zoro’s smile becomes nearly the softest thing about him. Sanji catches them most often in the moments where Zoro doesn’t know he’s being watched. A lazy afternoon on the deck with Chopper and Usopp. Listening to Brook play a soothing melody surrounded by dim twilight. Wrapped around the head of a sake bottle at yet another victory party, even as he keeps an ever dutiful eye open for trouble.
Even rarer are the soft smiles that Zoro means for people to see, the memories of which Sanji hoards like gold inside the treasure chest of his mind. The kind of smiles given in the quiet moments when it’s only them, the barest lifting at the corners of Zoro’s mouth that still manage to bring forth his dimples, usually followed by him pressing his lips to Sanji’s own.
And oh, his lips. The mosshead’s lips have absolutely no right to be as soft as they are given how little Zoro does to take care of them. Sanji can’t even count the number of times he’s tried to beat the concept of lip balm into Zoro’s algae-infested skull, but it never holds. They’re constantly dry and chapped and sometimes even bloody, both from the sun and sea spray as well as the stress they endure from practicing his santoryu. The first time they kissed it was in the middle of a fight, and Sanji thought for certain it would feel like pressing his lips to a piece of hardtack, dry and crumbly and unpleasant. He hadn’t accounted for how plush Zoro’s lips would be underneath their layer of weathering—which in his defense is nearly impossible to know without actually touching them because of how tightly Zoro usually has them drawn, in his characteristic frowns and trademark feral grins and holding Wado clamped between his teeth. All that had led Sanji to expect a hard, thin line of a mouth, and instead Zoro’s lips gave way under his like fresh made butter, soft and pliant and a little salty from his sweat.
They’ve shared many kisses (and more) since then, and now Sanji knows the feel of Zoro’s mouth almost better than he knows his own, but it still surprises him, just how soft it can be. Like when Zoro drags it across the curve of Sanji’s cheek or the line of his knuckles, the jut of his collarbones or the hollow of his throat. Softer still when they trace the swirl of Sanji’s eyebrows (the right is Zoro’s self-proclaimed favorite), something he only does in those moments when he’s cracked open his ribcage to share the softest part of him all—the sweet, tender thing that is Zoro’s heart.
This, at least, is not surprising—not to anybody that actually knows Zoro. His soft heart is what earned him the honor of becoming Luffy’s first crew mate, bared as it was in full earnest when he ate a gift of trampled rice balls and said to tell the girl who made them that they were delicious (a story that made Sanji himself softer than a marshmallow the first time he heard it, insides full of syrup and knees weak like gummy candy). By the standards of all conventional logic and reason, Zoro’s heart should be the most vulnerable part of himself, and yet Sanji has never seen Zoro treat it as such. He wears it on display everywhere, from the decks of the Sunny on the calmest days to inside the eyes of the worst, raging storms. It is his strength and his ferocity, his loyalty and his devotion. It pumps the blood in his arteries that fuels his battle tempered body, and Zoro has given both over wholly to his captain and his crew. What should be a terrible weakness is instead shown without fear, as though Zoro is just daring the world to try and hurt this softest part of himself.
And the world tries. Tries and tries and tries, but they don’t succeed because it can’t be done. Sanji knows, because he tried too. Got as close to breaking it as anyone ever has, by Zoro’s own confession. But it was Zoro who gave it to him in the first place, and holding it in his hands—the soft, sweet, tender thing that was all Zoro had to give…
It made Sanji want to try being soft too.
He’s not good at it, not in the way Zoro is. Germa saw softness as weakness and while Sanji will never be a Vinsmoke again, sometimes those early lessons of his fraught childhood stick with him in ways he doesn’t even realize until years later, when the monsters wake up to rear their ugly heads. Zoro is hard on the outside with a soft, squishy center, but Sanji is, in many ways, the opposite. Beneath the thin veneer of his gentlemanly charm lies a brittle layer of fear that clings to the kinder core within, like bad toffee stuck to teeth. Sanji hates it, and yet it’s been a part of him for so long that he doesn’t know if he could live without it, scared that to let it go would somehow be even worse.
And so he holds on, even when he knows he shouldn’t. His heart is as soft and tender as anyone’s, but sometimes Sanji feels as though it’s enshrined within layers upon layers of shattered glass; and while he only ever means to cut himself upon the shards, their hard, sharp edges make it awfully dangerous for anyone who gets in too close.
It’s lucky then, that Zoro doesn’t mind the danger. Revels in it, even, as a challenge to overcome rather than a warning to be heeded. After all, what are a few little cuts to the world’s (future) greatest swordsman?
Sometimes Sanji still has trouble believing it, that anybody could care about him this much, this deeply. That someone as soft and strong as Zoro could ever want someone as sharp and broken as him. But Zoro does, and in the moments when he’s cracked through the brittle layer of fear surrounding Sanji and his mind is quiet for once, it’s really not so hard to see why.
Because for all his own inherent softness, Zoro is—at heart—a man who loves sharp things.