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mm just a quick thing bc i've been thinking a lot about something @saschapainintheass has been talking about on discord (and on here???)

x

When Sanji opens his eyes, the first thing he notices isn’t the thick cloud of antiseptic surrounding him, or even the way the pain roars back to life under his breastbone. The first thing he notices, actually, is the smell of yuzu sharp enough to cut through the lingering haze of painkillers and the steady simmer of something that is unmistakably dashi. He clocks bonito and kombu before he’s even really found the names for them; the kind of quiet, foundational smell that means someone’s taken the time to do it right.

He sits up too fast and the world tilts, hard. Bandages pull tight across his ribs where the fight with a bunch of shitty, overzealous Marines had caught him by surprise three days ago – his own fault, he knows: he’d been too focused on keeping the polearm away from the kid in sight that he’d misjudged a Marine’s reach. The last thing he remembers is the grimy floor of the alleyway rushing up to meet him and Luffy’s voice cracking somewhere above, high and frightened in a way that makes something ugly twist in Sanji’s chest even now.

Three days.

He shoves the blanket off with clumsy hands and staggers out of the bunk like a man possessed, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process for how long it takes his head to right itself. Every step sends a throb through his side and the hallway feels longer than it should, the Merry’s familiar hush too loud in his oversensitive ears. He keeps one hand on the wall and refuses to think about how much he’s already leaning, or how the nausea’s rising thick and relentless at the back of his throat.

The galley door’s open, afternoon light slanted across the bench in deliberate gold bars, thick with dust motes that turn slow circles in the air. Knives sit in their block by size, cutting boards still stacked according to grain and the sink empty and dry. There's a pot steaming on the stove, the smell of it so clean and familiar that he pauses in the doorway, taking the moment to catch his breath and realign his expectations.

At the bench, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, Zoro's proportioning sashimi with a frown. He’s got Sanji’s second best yanagiba in his hand (the one with the slight curve he likes) and is moving in long strokes until each slice of yellowtail comes away nearly translucent, almost glassy, the flesh catching the light like pearl. Zoro lays them in a little fan on a ceramic plate with a mound of grated daikon, pale and fine as new snow. He doesn’t look up.

“Looks like you survived,” he drawls, the same way he does first thing in the morning, usually, before the world can find something to pick on them for. “Sit before you fall on your face and undo Chopper’s hard work. You know Usopp hates it when he cries.”

Sanji’s mouth opens and closes, before he clears his throat. “What the fuck’re you doing?”

Zoro sets the knife down with a little click and wipes his hands on a tea towel, finally glancing over properly. The afternoon light turns the brown of his eyes briefly gold. “Thought you got stabbed, not blinded.”

“That’s not –” Sanji’s voice cracks so he clears his throat, tasting faint traces of blood and vomit, maybe. “That’s not what I meant, asshole. Just figured you’d all be boiling seawater or something.”

“They tried that already,” Zoro returns mildly. He turns back to the fish to start on the next fillet with the same unhurried precision, blade whispering through flesh. “Luffy wanted to eat the fish raw and whole, said the bones were extra crunch. Nami threatened to throw both of them overboard and take her chances.” There’s a tiny, almost invisible twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I took over after that.”

Sanji stares at him, the knot of it hitting him all at once, almost as heavy as the ache in his ribs. Three full days of meals for five growing, fighting, endlessly hungry pirates. He glances at the inventory slate hanging by the door, updated with neat tallies in Zoro’s awful handwriting – how many portions of rice are left and how much fish is remaining. THe numbers look precise and conservative, the kind of careful accounting that comes when you’ve learned the hard way what happens when you run out.

He lowers himself onto the nearest stool before his legs can just. Fold. The wood is warm from the sun and his ribs ache in deep, pulsing waves but his pride aches worse, somehow. “You never said you could cook.”

“I can feed people.” Zoro’s knife never stops. The yellowtail falls in even pieces, each one the same thickness as the last. “There’s a difference. Besides, what’d you think we did before we found you? Eat the mast?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t put it past Luffy. How’d you… guessing you didn’t grow up in a restaurant.”

Zoro snorts and then he’s quiet for a long moment, the only sound being the blade through flesh and the burble of the dashi on the stove. Steam rises in fragrant threads and the light shifts as the Merry rolls over a swell, gold sliding across Zoro’s forearms to catch on the scars that map the history of every fight he’s ever walked away from.

“Lived alone a long time before Luffy,” he says eventually, like he’s commenting on his clothes instead of the years that shaped him. “Learned real fast that if you want the fish to last, you don’t waste any of it.” He turns the fillet with careful fingers, finding the next angle. “Also learned rice’s cheap and filling and you can stretch it forever if you’re careful with the water.”

He plates the last of the yellowtail, setting the knife aside. There’s a pause, something quieter settling into his voice for a moment. “I can do clean cut.s Used to make it for myself a lot. Quiet. Focused. Kept my hands busy when everything else was… loud.”

Sanji watches him, catching on the way his shoulders stay loose even while talking about things that should be heavier, probably – what sounds like years alone and the kind of cold and hunger that teach a person how to survive on what they can catch and keep. The faint, almost fond way he looks at the plate of sashimi like it’s something private he’s let slip into the open without meaning to.

“And you never said anything?”

“Eh.” Zoro finally looks at him properly, eyes steady and unguarded. “You showed up. No point.”

Sanji’s throat feels tight, even as he glances around the galley again, tidy with the kind of deliberate order that comes from someone who’s had to be self sufficient for a long time and has maybe never quite stopped. Someone who also understands that a clean bench and a sharp knife and a correctly measured pot of rice can be their own kind of survival. Their own kind of quiet. “It’s good,” he says finally.

Zoro’s mouth twitches again, almost a smile this time, small and crooked and gone almost as soon as it appears. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it.”

“Obviously.” But he stays sitting there while Zoro finishes plating the rest of the meal, watching the blunt competence make it look almost simple. His eyes keep wandering back to the way Zoro’s hands move, broad and scarred and capable of breaking a man’s jaw or slicing fish so thin the light shines through it. The afternoon unfolds around them as Zoro picks a spot in the sunbeam to peel daikon, all shoulder and elbow and wrist ad release, exact and measured, like a kata he’s run so many times the body no longer needs the mind for it.

“You should be horizontal,” he says after a minute. “Chopper’s going to have a heart attack when he finds you.”

“I’m horizontal enough.” Sanji’s own voice comes out rougher than he wants. “Besides. Someone has to make sure you don’t ruin my knives.”

Zoro snorts and finishes the last daikon, before grating it with the same unhurried focus. The sound is almost meditative, maybe: Sanji finds himself matching his breathing to it without thought. He watches the flex of tendon in Zoro’s wrists and the quiet strength in the way his fingers brace, and how everything about him looks settled, somehow. It’s different to that coiled readiness he carries on deck or on shore, and worlds away from the hard focus of sparring.

“You like this,” he says eventually, sure of it.

Zoro’s hands don’t pause. “S’useful.”

“That’s not what I said.”

There’s a longer silence, the grater still moving, and when Zoro finally answers his voice is quieter, almost thoughtful, like he’s turning the words over first. “Same motions. No surprises. You do the work and the work gets done.” He glances at the growing pile of grated daikon, then back to his hands. “Feels like training. Just… for something that doesn’t try to kill you after. Body remembers the pattern. Mind gets to shut up for a while. S’not like it’s difficult. Numbers don’t lie.”

Sanji hums, considering it against the way he’s seen Zoro move through motions in a brawl, or when he’s trying to deadlift the world and against the way he’s seen Zoro measure by eye and weight a hundred times, now.

He sets a pot of rice on the stove, lid tilted the way Sanji prefers so the steam can escape without making the grains gummy. Sanji pushes himself upright with a wince and limps close enough that the heat from the stove brushes his good side, and close enough to see the faint sheen of steam on Zoro’s collarbones where his shirt’s come loose. His hands look different, in this context. Less like weapons and more like proof of work done carefully, over and over, until the body’s learned how to be gentle as well as strong.

“Stop.” Sanji nods at the bottle. “Less, Moss. You’re making the tare for fish, right? If you put that much in now it’ll overpower the ginger. Do half first.”

Zoro glances at the bottle with a scowl but, without argument, he pours half of what he’d initially intended. The soy hit the small pot with a soft sound and Sanji watches as he tastes it, face scrunching up a little. The silence between them stretches until all Sanji can hear is the soft buzz of the stove’s flame and the distant hush of the Merry’s, and finally the quiet catch of Zoro’s breathing as he considers the flavour on his tongue. Then, he adds another careful splash and tastes it again, nodding like something’s settled into place behind his eyes somewhere Sanji’s can’t reach. “Makes sense.”

Sanji stares at him.

One of Zoro’s eyebrow hikes. “What?”

“Nothing.” Sanji leans against the bench, ribs protesting, and crosses his arms carefully. “Just didn’t expect you to actually listen.”

“You know more about this than I do.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Pointless not to use it.”

Sanji feels something small and unexpected turn over in his chest. “Uh – hey, add a pinch of sugar, yeah? Soy and ginger can get aggressive on their own so little sugar makes them behave. Lets the fish taste like itself instead of like the sauce.”

Zoro shrugs and throws the sugar in, peering at the way it melts through. When he tastes it again his mouth soften. “Better.”

Sanji stays where he is, watching the unhurried rhythm of Zoro’s hands as he moves onto the next task, checking the rice with a fingertip and adjusting the flame by a fraction. Sanji had expected competence, sure. Survival skills, maybe. Functional meals that kept the crew from complaining, if he really had to think about it. He doesn’t know that he expected this in particular – the ease and the quiet interest and the way Zoro’s treating every small correction like it’s a simple fact of life to be absorbed and understood. He definitely wasn’t expecting softness in the set of his shoulders when the kitchen’s warm and the work’s simple and no-one needs him to be a swordsman for a little while.

Sanji shifts his weight, ignoring the pull in his side and bites his lip. “Try a drop of mirin next time you make that tare,” he says after a while, voice lower than before. “Just a drop. It’ll give it a little shine without adding more sweetness. Makes the fish look better on the plate.”

Zoro just nods, clearly filing the information away, and reaches for the knife, and Sanji, for once, doesn’t feel the need to take anything back.

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