[One Piece][Zoro/Sanji] Quitting's Easy (One-Shot)

[insaneidiot]

Title: Quitting's Easy
Fandom: One Piece
Pairings: Zoro/Sanji, with a lot of crew member antics (plus hints of Luffy/Nami)
Genre: HIJINKS. I.e. humour.
Word count: ~10,000 (WRYYYYY)
Spoilers: Only for crew-members. Pre-Water 7.
Warnings: Sex, casual violence, over-excitable italics, Sanji's potty mouth...
Notes: Omg, I'm posting something, this is so exciting! Although it's not Boyband!X... or the sequel to This Starless City... or those meme fics I promised... uh... Sorry guys, I finally read OP and it ate me whole. But at least I finished SOMETHING, right? The big problem is that I have the attention span of a flea, and everything I write these days is so LONG that half the time I get to about 5000 words and get distracted... This is inspired by a combination of my anti-smoking sentiments, the hilarity of Sanji quitting smoking and the DOUBLE hilarity of imagining what would happen if he went around sucking on a lollipop all the time like in the censored American dub version. XD Title from the saying, "Quitting smoking is easy - I've done it heaps of times!"
Summary: Sanji decides to quit smoking. This is not quite so easy as he thinks it will be. Also, his crewmates (excluding Robin and Nami, of course!) are assholes. >:|

It started as a day just like any other; Sanji was hanging around in the lounge, on hand should Nami need morning tea, and Nami was working on her sea maps. There was nothing to particularly distinguish it from most other mornings, until Nami said, “Sorry, Sanji-kun, do you mind not smoking in here? There’s poor airflow so the smoke hangs around for hours and gives me a headache…”

“Of course, Nami-san!” Sanji answered promptly, grinding out the butt without a moment’s hesitation because it was Nami asking, and he could never bear being responsible for causing his sweet angel to suffer, now could he? If she didn’t want him to smoke inside the lounge, it was no hardship - well, okay, it was a little hardship given he smoked so much the withdrawal started to set in after about an hour, but nothing Sanji couldn’t cope with for the sake of a beautiful lady. He could go outside to smoke, after all.

Little did he know that this was just the beginning.

“Hey, Sanjiii,” Luffy said out of the blue later around lunchtime, “what does smoking taste like?”

Sanji blinked, somewhat startled by the non sequitur. “Huh?”

“Well, Sanji’s always smoking,” Luffy explained, with a thoughtful frown. “So I wondered if it tasted good. Like meat.”

Nami sighed. “Don’t bother, Luffy, it just tastes like smoke.”

Luffy made a face. “Eeeeh? But that’s gross. Like when that smoky guy from the Marines turns into smoke and gets all in your face, ewwww.”

Nami laughed. “Exactly! And girls won’t like it either, you know. Kissing a smoker tastes like kissing an ashtray,” she said flippantly, and Sanji felt the blood drain away, leaving him surely ashen-faced from the twin shock of Nami-san kissing other people and Nami-san not wanting to kiss smokers!

“Hah? Who’s Nami been kissing that smokes?” Usopp said, echoing Sanji’s internal wail, only in a totally inappropriate tone of mild confusion rather than the utter despair that should have accompanied that string of words.

“Can’t be that perverted love-cook, or we’d never have heard the end of it,” Zoro commented, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed behind his head and a smug smirk plastered across his stupid face that Sanji would be itching to kick off his face at a less serious and world-shattering moment.

Across the table, Luffy was scratching his head, looking baffled. “Hey, Nami, how’d you know what kissing an ashtray is like? Have you kissed an ashtray? Why?”

Who cares about that part, you idiot captain?! Sanji screamed in his head, still too frozen with horror to form the words out loud.

“It’s just a phrase, Luffy,” Robin explained gently. “She means that when you kiss a smoker you can taste the flavour of their cigarettes and it’s off-putting.”

DONK. That was the sound of a stake being nailed through Sanji’s heart. Not Robin-chan, too!

“Ohhhh, I see, I see,” Luffy said knowingly, insensitive to Sanji’s inner turmoil, and contemplated this for a moment. “Eh? But Nami, I don’t -”

“SHUT UP IDIOT,” Nami said loudly over the top of him, her hand slapped over his face and muffling a word that sounded vaguely like ‘smoke’, and darted a threatening look around the room that just dared anyone to so much as open their mouth. The (completely adorable!) expression of homicidal intent turned slightly alarmed when she reached Sanji, though. “Um, Sanji-kun? Are you alright? You’re kind of looking a little… puce…”

“Oh my god, what’s wrong with him?” Chopper squeaked in abject terror, eyes swimming with panicky tears. “Sanji! Sanji, are you hurt? Is he going to be okay?!”

“You’re the doctor,” Usopp pointed out. “Shouldn’t you know?”

Chopper stared at him in wide-eyed horror for a moment before the tension drained out of him slightly. “I’m the doctor,” he repeated uncertainly, and then, “That’s right, I’m the doctor! He’s just in mild shock, he’ll be fine. Eheheh.”

Sanji just let out a low-pitched moan. That’s what Chopper thought, but this wasn’t a matter for doctors: Sanji was going to die of a broken heart.

The irritating green-haired lump of muscle ruining Sanji’s view of the women rolled his eyes as he walked towards the door. “No one’s ever died of a broken ego, moron.”

Had Sanji said that out loud? Well, whatever, it was perfectly possible. Just because that moss-head couldn’t understand the true depths of anguish and-

Hang on. Ego?

“What was that, you shit swordsman? Come back here and say that to my face-!”

Zoro smirked, jumping down to the deck with a solid thud as his boots hit the boarding. “You think you can take me, dart-brow?” he called back over his shoulder, and Sanji snarled.

“I think I’m going to kill you, marimo!” he yelled, vaulting over the rail after the asshole in a kick aimed straight for the back of his head. Zoro spun around quickly, drawing Kitetsu and bringing it up above his head in one swift motion, grunting slightly as Sanji’s heel struck the blade.

“Hah,” he said, pushing forward so that Sanji was forced to back away or stumble. “I’d like to see you try-”

“IF YOU TWO DESTROY THE DECK, I’M DESTROYING YOU!” Nami yelled from above, and Sanji turned to wave to her with a big smile stretching his cheeks.

“Sure thing, Nami-swan~!” he carolled, and turned quickly to block the sword slicing towards his head, felt the vibrating collision shudder up his leg.

“Don’t get distracted, moron,” Zoro told him, bloodthirsty grin on his face, and Sanji met it with a mocking quirk of his eyebrow.

“Maybe if you did something worth concentrating on,” he taunted back, swinging his leg at Zoro’s side, and the fight was on.

While the fight had distracted him, Sanji had hardly forgotten his heartbreak that easily. His spirit had taken a serious hit on discovering that women didn’t want to kiss smokers. At least, Nami and Robin didn’t, and as they were Sanji’s standard for the perfect goddess, this was a problem to say the least.

Brooding about this on his way to pick up food stocks that afternoon, Sanji was so caught up in these gloomy thoughts that he walked right into the middle of a gang of lumbering buffoons on his way to pick up food stocks, and… well, being the unwashed kind of thug that took exception to Sanji’s superior class, they picked a fight. Sanji was right about in the mood to kick somebody’s face in at that point, so he was perfectly happy to oblige.

It was hardly his fault. They started it; he just finished it. Even if he might have encouraged them slightly when he called them boneheaded lunks who were overcompensating for their tiny dicks by ganging up on their obvious betters.

Whatever.

They were just riff-raff, nothing more than a slight disruption in his shopping excursion and certainly nothing worth getting excited about, but Chopper still insisted on checking him over when he got back to the ship. Sanji knew by now that it was futile to argue - damn tanuki could be a persistent little shit when it came to his duties as ship’s doctor - so he sat down and rolled his sleeves up to let Chopper dab at the shallow nicks with antiseptic. Sooner he gave in, sooner it’d be over and he could get back to preparing dinner.

When he realised Chopper was going to take longer than he’d hoped, Sanji sighed irritably and pulled a fresh cigarette out of his pocket only to catch the reindeer giving him a funny look.

“What,” he growled, making Chopper jump in fright.

“Nothing! Nothing!” he said hurriedly, but the way his eyes darted to the cigarette in Sanji’s hand made it pretty clear what he was thinking and Sanji scowled.

“This had better fucking not be the smoking is bad for your body lecture,” he said darkly, because smoking was his crappy life choice to make and he’d made it and he didn’t need any more fucking well-meaning interventions or he’d kick the sorry asshole into next week. (Unless it was a woman, in which case he’d grin and bear it, but not even the fairer sex could make him like it.)

“No!” Chopper squeaked, shivering slightly, and then scrunched his face up in a troubled way. “Well, yes. I mean, smoking is bad for your body. But I was just thinking… aren’t your hands really important to you?”

Sanji’s brow scrunched up at that apparently random statement. “Yeah, so?”

“Well… nicotine turns your fingers yellow,” Chopper said, brimming with earnest helpfulness. “Sometimes they get gangrene and fall off?”

This conversation was the latest in a long line of reasons why Sanji hated the universe.

“It’s bad for your teeth, too,” Chopper added after a moment.

Sanji stared at him. And stared some more. And then he stubbed out his cigarette, because somehow he didn’t feel like it anymore.

Fucking crewmates. What the hell was this, pick on Sanji’s smoking habit day?

The final straw came late that night, when a certain dumbass wandered into Sanji’s kitchen looking for a post-training energy boost.

That wasn’t the weird part. As ship’s cook, Sanji’s job was full-time; aside from the regular three meals a day, he was permanently on call to make snacks for the girls, keep Luffy constantly fed and make sure brawny idiots who insisted on ridiculous training regimes had enough protein and didn’t end up with low blood-sugar.

It was a depressingly thankless task and Sanji would much rather be crafting delicate desserts for the ladies, but someone had to do it and it was against Sanji’s principles to let a man go hungry, no matter how much of an irritating asshole they might be.

Up until now, however, he had at least always been assured of the fact his genius was appreciated, if not to its full extent.

“What was that?” Sanji choked, certain he must have misheard, because there was no way that bastard had actually dared-

“I said it tastes like ash,” Zoro repeated in a matter-of-fact, dickhead kind of way, and Sanji felt his spine stiffen. “You should be more careful with your cigarettes or stop smoking while you cook, fancy brows, it’s not the first time.”

Sanji’s jaw ached from grinding his teeth too hard together. “My food,” he spat out, “does not. Taste. Like. Ash.”

“You probably just can’t taste the difference,” Zoro said dismissively through a half-chewed mouthful, the cretin. “Since your mouth must always taste like ash.”

Sanji narrowed his eyes, about five seconds away from justifiable homicide. Nobody fucking insulted his cooking and got away with it. “You’re still eating,” he pointed out coldly, but that bastard just shrugged like the fact that Sanji’s heel was about to bash his skull in was no big deal. Fucker.

“I didn’t say it’s not good,” he said. “Just not as good.”

One day, Sanji vowed as Zoro deflected what would have been a particularly nasty kick to the head, one day he would kill that shitty marimo bastard.

The thing was, Sanji mused as he tried to sleep over the snoring of his ill-mannered bunkmates, originally he had started smoking for two reasons.

The first had been the thrill of teenage rebellion; he’d wanted to piss off the old man, and, well, he’d certainly achieved that - “You wanna ruin your tastebuds and hack up a lung? Eeeh, you shitty little punk?!” - but Sanji was willing to admit that it had been a rather cut off the nose to spite the face kind of deal.

The second reason was, of course, to pick up chicks. Not only did it make him look suave and badass, it drew attention to his mouth and hands.

Thus his dilemma. The first reason had become much less of a driving factor since he’d left Baratie - for a start, Zeff wasn’t around to yell at him for it, and maybe Sanji was reaching a point where he was old enough to not do shit just to get on the old man’s goat, anyway. As for the second reason... if Nami-san and Robin-chan didn’t want to kiss smokers, then what was the point?

The very foundations of his existence were shaken.

If he wasn’t smoking to attract women, what was he doing it for? Sure, it was a habit, but he wasn’t going to keep smoking just because he’d started, dammit. Smoking as part of his image was one thing; smoking because he was addicted was just lame. Sanji refused to be beaten by anything, least of all his own damn body.

“Right,” he muttered to himself, steeled with a determination not entirely unrelated to how much that fucking muscle-brain would rub it in if he found out that Sanji had given in to a weenie addiction. This was going to be easy: Sanji was notoriously bad at giving up. He’d kept smoking all these years through all those attempts to make him quit; now he just had to apply the same dedication to not giving up on his own attempt at quitting. Simple.

He was quitting first thing in the morning.

Right after this cigarette.

“I am saying this once, and only once,” Sanji announced after breakfast. “I’m giving up smoking. Anyone who brings this up again or even mentions the word cigarette can kiss their face goodbye, because I’ll be using it as a welcome mat. I’m sure the ladies are far too polite to ever stoop to such a thing, of course.”

Zoro rolled his eyes and mumbled something into his rice about drama queens that Sanji graciously ignored. Chopper was looking at him with shiny-eyed delight, but seemed smart enough to realise that saying anything that could be construed as ‘I told you so’ would be a bad idea, because he just kept shovelling food into his face, although at a considerably slower pace than certain other people.

“Sanji’s gonna stop smoking?” said Luffy around an enormous mouthful, wrinkling his nose. “Woooaaah, that’s so weird.”

“The passing of an era,” Usopp intoned, “the end of a legend-”

Sanji scowled. “I am not defined by my smoking habit, assholes!”

“That’s what all the addicts say,” Usopp said sagely, then meeped and quickly hid behind Zoro when Sanji glared at him.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Robin said warmly, reminding Sanji that there were ladies present and this wasn’t the time to flatten Usopp into a pancake. “Good luck, Cook-san!”

“Ah, Robin-chan, your sweet blessing is all I need,” Sanji sighed, grateful for the ray of beautiful sunshine in the midst of all these uncultured morons. “If I can get you anything - seconds, perhaps, a frappe, my eternal devotion -”

“No, thank you, I’m fine,” she said, smiling slightly. Sanji gave a mental shrug; it was no more or less than what he expected, but it never hurt to try, after all.

“In that case,” he said, sitting down at his own place at the table, “I’m on break. Anyone other than Robin-chan or Nami-san who wants more can get it for themselves.”

“Anyway, Sanji-kun,” Nami said, as Luffy inhaled an entire plate of bacon beside her, “I agree with Robin, I think it’s great.”

Now, this was more like it. “For you, my sweet Nami-san, I will surely succeed!” he promised, determination buoyed by his female support.

“Glad to hear it,” she told him. Sanji would have replied with the appropriate gratitude had he not at that moment caught sight of the idiot next to her. Luffy’s expression was unusually contemplative as he munched on his fifth giant-sized helping, which was generally a bad sign. This was confirmed when he opened his mouth and words came out.

“But why is Sanji,” he started, until Sanji stuffed a drumstick somewhat viciously down his throat and the question trailed off into a muffled, “MMMM’S GOOOOD!”

Nami sighed. “As I was saying,” she said, with that pointed, steely voice of authority Sanji so adored, “since Sanji-kun is making an effort, you idiots are to be on your best behaviour and not make things harder for him, am I understood?”

“Why are you looking at me?” Zoro demanded, because he was a heathen with no class and no idea of how to treat a lady. “I didn’t even say anything!”

“And you’d better keep it that way,” Nami told him, lovely eyes narrowed in a way that threatened hefty debts. Zoro scowled and slouched down in his chair with his arms crossed, but even that oaf knew better than to mess with Sanji’s angel when she meant business.

If this was what Sanji could expect, giving up smoking would practically be heaven. Aah, Nami-san and Robin-chan, cheering him on and cleaning up the louts Sanji called crew on his behalf! Granted, Sanji had a slight twitch in his fingers and his mouth felt weirdly empty, but he would endure much greater hardship in the name of love. Quitting was going to be easy.

By dinnertime, Sanji had a headache, longed for a smoke, and hated everything that wasn’t pretty and female.

“Hey Namiiii, I think Sanji’s kind of grumpy today,” Luffy said loudly from outside the galley, not even trying to keep his voice down. Sanji gritted his teeth and thought seriously about kicking his captain’s head in as he scrubbed violently at a stubborn spot on his frypan.

“Shh, Luffy, leave him be,” came Nami’s much more dulcet tones. “He’s having a bad day.”

Nami-san was an angel, descended from the heavens to make Sanji’s world a better place.

“So are you always going to be this cheerful to be around from now on?” Zoro asked idly when Sanji fumbled some cutlery in the sink and hissed a string of invectives at the loud crash they made. “Because if so, you should just go back to smoking your death-sticks and stop making the rest of us suffer.”

Sanji shoved a dripping plate at Zoro’s chest and gave him a foul look, imagining in lurid detail all the ways he was going to kill the bastard once the washing up was done. “Get drying, or get out.”

Zoro gave an amused snort, but gave no further comment. Sanji scrubbed harder, thinking dark thoughts with each brutal jerk of his arm about stabbing the stupid asshole. Stab, stab, stab…

Not that Sanji would ever actually do it, of course. He might cut his hands by accident, and then where would he be?

He’d thought, in theory at least, that the first week would be the worst and it would be all downhill from there.

Yeah. In theory; Chopper told him that the withdrawal symptoms were probably going to last for about a month. That was fine. Sanji could handle a month of this, even though he was beginning to feel like he was going crazy.

Over the first fortnight, he had contemplated cooking Chopper twelve times, almost brutally murdered Usopp at least fifty, and lost count of the number of times he’d tried to kick Zoro and Luffy’s stupid heads in. He’d even yelled at Nami and Robin a few times, which was just unforgiveable, and yet his fuse was so short right now that the slightest provocation would send him spiralling into the depths of misery or, more often, flying into a homicidal rage. His hands twitched constantly towards his pockets for a packet he’d long ago tossed overboard, and his lower lip was starting to get tender from how much he’d been chewing on it in lieu of his usual cigarettes.

Quite frankly, Sanji’s nerves were frayed right down to the bone, and everyone except those two morons had figured out by now that it was a smart idea to tread lightly around him or better, not at all. Zoro and Luffy refused to take a hint, however. In fact, Zoro even seemed to relish the increasing intensity and frequency of their sparring matches - which in Sanji’s current mood would be closer to death matches if that asshole weren’t so inhumanly strong and thus capable of taking it - because Zoro was a freak.

By the third week, the homicidal mood swings had abated somewhat, but the twitching in his fingers and the uncomfortable urge to chew on something just wouldn’t quit, and so while the uncontrollable reflex rage was gone, Sanji still found himself pretty pissed off and frustrated, pretty much all of the time. (Mostly he’d managed to limit the violent impulses to Zoro by this point, although anyone who asked him how the quitting was going - i.e., fucking Luffy, repeat offender - was asking for an instant roundhouse to the jaw.)

After nearly a month of going out of his head with the intense longing for a single puff, Sanji decided his pride wasn’t worth it and went to ask Chopper for some kind of assistance, or at least an estimate on how long this was likely to take.

The results of Chopper’s examination did not impress him, however.

“The physical addiction should have worn off by now,” the tiny reindeer told him, shivering slightly in the face of Sanji’s glare. “Nicotine exits the system of even most average people after a month, and with your metabolism… none of the tests show anything.”

“Then check again,” Sanji snarled. “Because this sure as fuck doesn’t feel like nothing!”

“Um,” said Chopper, tugging the brim of his hat down over his eyes. “There’s a, um, psychological component to addiction- bodies don’t like breaking patterns once they’ve established them?”

Sanji’s eye twitched.

“So you’re telling me,” he said slowly, letting the words roll around his mouth, “that this is all in my head?”

“No!” Chopper squeaked, holding his hooves up in front of him like that was going to protect him from Sanji’s stew pot. “No! Not… not exactly?”

Sanji crossed his arms, feeling a scowl coming on. “Then what, exactly?”

“Just, you’ve smoked a lot, for a long time,” Chopper said carefully, inching around so he was close to the door, presumably just in case. “So your body is in the habit of c-certain motions, and it associates that with things you used to smoke while doing.” Which was pretty much everything. Chopper didn’t say that, but the implication was loud and clear. “So, so when you cook, or fight, or do things that are part of your routine, your body thinks that smoking is part of that routine and gets confused when it isn’t!”

This was better than “you’re imagining it”, which is what he’d thought Chopper was trying to say at first, but not much. It was humiliating, was what it was. There was no way Sanji could afford to lose to a craving out of habit!

“So what do you suggest, Doctor Chopper?” he said, a little sarcastically but actually really wanting an answer. It was a sign of how intimidated Chopper was feeling that he didn’t do his usual wiggle of delight and paper-thin denials of happiness at being called Doctor, instead digging his hoof into a jar on the counter and grabbing something out of it.

“Have a lollipop?” he offered timidly, holding one out. Sanji stared at him long and hard, unsure how to react to that. All evidence suggested that the little doctor was serious; Sanji’s frayed nerves screamed KILL, his somewhat under-exercised conscience pointed out that Chopper was just trying to help, and the rest of him was kind of baffled.

“A lollipop?” he echoed, in his best what the fuck? voice.

“W-well, it’ll give you something to do with your hands and mouth,” Chopper explained, a little lamely. “And it tastes good?”

Sanji stared some more.

On the one hand: a lollipop?

On the other hand, the kid had a point.

“Oh, what the hell,” he sighed, and held his hand out. “Gimme.”

Sanji had been fully prepared to kick some assholes in the head for laughing about the lollipops. He had been expecting it; he had almost been looking forward to it.

He was completely nonplussed when the expected mockery failed to arrive.

Of course he’d known the girls wouldn’t be rude; they had better manners than that. Nami hadn’t said a word on the matter, and Robin had only mentioned in passing that it was a good idea. Sanji was counting that as a win, even if she had declined with a smile when he’d offered her a taste.

Chopper obviously wasn’t going to comment, since it was his idea in the first place, and Usopp had better honed survival instincts than that, but Sanji had been primed for Luffy to stuff his foot into his oversized mouth and Zoro to be his usual asshole self and call him a pansy, or something. Instead, Luffy had taken one look at Sanji sucking on a lollipop and demanded one of his own, and Zoro…

Well, Sanji wasn’t quite sure what to make of Zoro’s reaction. The stupid marimo just stared, with this totally idiotic look of confusion on his face. Not to get Sanji wrong, the guy usually looked pretty idiotic, but he’d outdone himself this time, which took some doing. It was like his tiny pea-brain couldn’t handle the concept of Sanji with a lollipop.

“What,” Sanji snapped, when he got sick Zoro standing in his way while he was stuck waiting for the dumbass to either move aside or say something inevitably stupid so Sanji could just kick him and get it over with already. “It’s a lollipop! Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one before?”

“Huh?” Zoro said blankly, and that was it; Sanji had had enough of this idiocy. He kicked the moron in the face and, when Zoro still didn’t move, walked over the top of him. It was that shithead’s own fault for not dodging, anyway.

Really, that was just plain weird.

Things were looking up somewhat since the lollipop strategy had been put into motion. Stupid as it was, Chopper’s idea had actually had some merit: Sanji really was going less stir-crazy now he had something to occupy his hands and mouth with. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, of course; he still ached for a beloved cigarette and could admit to still being grumpier than usual, but by and large, it was an improvement.

Not that Sanji could be blamed for his less than stellar mood. Lately Zoro kept invading his kitchen and sitting around watching him while he worked, like the lazy waste of space he was, and it was getting on his nerves.

“Would you just get out?” he said irritably, once it became apparent Zoro had no purpose in taking up space in Sanji’s galley, not even sharpening his stupid swords. “You’re annoying.”

“Uh,” Zoro said in a dazed voice, then jerked his eyes up to meet Sanji’s glare with an almost guilty-looking flush on his cheeks. “Sorry, what?”

“I said,” Sanji repeated, cross and a bit garbled around the lollipop, “get out of my kitchen, dumbass.”

“Uh, yeah,” Zoro mumbled, and - there was no other word for it - fled from the room. Sanji stared after him in bewilderment, having no idea what had just happened.

Seriously, what the fuck was his problem?

If Sanji had assumed Zoro’s weirdness was just a temporary aberration, he would have been sadly mistaken, because if anything, the moron just got weirder. Usually if he looked at anyone, particularly Sanji, he’d stare them straight in the eyes like a challenge, but Zoro’s gaze always seemed to be drifting off in the direction of Sanji’s chin these days. His response times had slowed to a crawl: he kept missing his cue to hurl insults back when Sanji had just paid him out, and the last few kicks had actually landed without being dodged or blocked. He also seemed to have this perpetually confused and dazed expression on his stupid face whenever Sanji saw him, which made him look even dumber than usual.

Frankly, Sanji was beginning to suspect there was seriously something wrong with him, but he was hardly going to ask Chopper; someone might think he was actually worried about the stupid bastard.

Whatever the reason, though, it was fucking annoying. Zoro seemed to be alternating between loitering around in an obnoxious fashion and doing his best disappearing trick - not that Sanji was looking for him or wanted to run into the asshole or anything, but he knew when he was being avoided. When his kitchen was conspicuously free of marimo sake raids (but not Luffy meat raids, unfortunately), he hadn’t tripped over an idiot napping in inconvenient passageways in days and the view from the galley was no longer obstructed by stupid sweaty macho men (who obviously had way too much to prove, if they felt the need to train that much), it made him suspicious of what Zoro was up to.

That shitty swordsman was going to drive Sanji fucking loopy, and he couldn’t even have a cigarette to calm his nerves!

Maybe that was it, he thought darkly. Maybe it was all a huge, elaborate plot to sabotage Sanji’s attempt at quitting. He wouldn’t put it past the idiot, if only he thought Zoro was capable of coming up with such a cunning and fiendish plan. (From the man who thought cutting his feet off was a viable means of escaping. Right.)

That was all irritating enough, but what Sanji would not stand for was anyone messing around in the sacred hallowed grounds of his kitchen, so by the time Zoro broke the third plate he was supposedly washing, Sanji wasted no time in booting him the hell out with extreme and violent prejudice and hollering at Usopp to get his fucking arse in here.

“Why me?” Usopp whined, once Sanji had finally managed to collar the little shit and drag him back to the kitchen. “It’s Zoro’s turn to wash dishes!”

“Zoro,” Sanji said, in a perfectly calm and reasonable tone that made Usopp shrink back against the wall in trembling terror, “is currently incapacitated by his rampant stupidity. Since he apparently can’t touch chinaware without smashing it right now, he’s banned from the galley and stuck to eating on plastic dishes out on the deck for the foreseeable future. You’re next on the duty roster. If you have a problem with this, you can bring it up with the shithead marimo. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yessir!” Usopp squeaked, diving for the sink, and Sanji gave a satisfied smirk. That was more like it.

They worked in silence for a while, Sanji idly contemplating how much he would fucking kill for a smoke right now, and, to try and distract himself from that, how fucking much Zoro was annoying him recently. Except that backfired, because then his desire for a cigarette increased tenfold.

“Fucking marimo,” he muttered to himself, smacking a measuring cup down on the bench with slightly more force than strictly necessary. Beside him, Usopp jumped, almost fumbling the carving knife in his hands.

“Um,” Usopp said tentatively. “Sanji?”

“I mean, what the fuck is his problem, anyway? He’s fucking useless lately,” Sanji continued grumpily, ignoring the longing glance Usopp was casting at the door. “Keeps getting in the way, but you can’t find him when you need him to actually do something, oh no. Can’t even be trusted to wash the fucking dishes anymore.”

Usopp put the knife down carefully and sidled a few steps away. “Uh, yeah… Sanji…?”

“Not to mention it’s like he’s forgotten where my fucking eyes are,” Sanji complained, since if he was going to bitch he may as well go through the full laundry list of complaints. “Where the hell does he think he’s looking, anyway?”

“UM, ABOUT THAT,” Usopp said loudly, and then cringed when Sanji glared at him.

“What.”

Usopp coughed. “Uh,” he said awkwardly. “I think… he’s distracted by your mouth?”

Sanji stared, certain he’d misheard. “The fuck?” he said after a while, when Usopp just kept fidgeting and not saying anything.

“W-well,” Usopp began, trying to sound authoritative but missing the mark badly with his terrified stutter and wobbly knees, “you see, the thing is, there’s the fact that you are always sucking on a lollipop lately, and some people - not me, of course, you know I would never get taken in by such a thing, but some people might get a little side-tracked, you see, so what I am trying to say is, your giving up smoking is very distracting for Zoro, and-”

Having got the general gist of what Usopp was trying to say by this point, Sanji tuned out the rest of his babbling to focus on the issue at hand here, namely that… what, the little brains Zoro had were dribbling out his ears because he saw Sanji’s mouth wrapped around a lollipop?

“-so Nami said that someone had to do something since at this rate Zoro might end up chopping his own arm off because he’s not paying attention and then where will we be, but then I drew the short straw-”

Sanji took this concept and contemplated it from all angles. One of the reasons he’d taken up smoking was to draw attention to his mouth, it was true, and he supposed he could see a lollipop achieved the same effect, if not better. That explanation almost, almost made sense… if it were anyone but Zoro. The moron didn’t have a libido; it was like he channelled it all into lifting those ridiculous weights. Sanji found it pretty hard to conceive of the idea of Zoro even understanding what innuendo was, let alone applying it to him.

“- and really, it’s not my fault, but Nami says you can’t kill Zoro either because we need him, and I know you’re mad but maybe you should take it as a compliment, but anyway you need to do something about the lollipops because otherwise we’re probably all going to die and-”

“Yeah, right,” Sanji scoffed when he reached the end of his train of thought, interrupting the rambling stream of jumbled up nonsense Usopp was still spouting. “Good one, Usopp. If you’re going to keep up the lying, you should learn to make them a little more believable.”

“- please don’t kill me,” Usopp finished, and then: “Uh, what?”

“Sure thing. Zoro’s so distracted by my mouth he can’t fight,” Sanji repeated to himself, snorting in amusement. “I’d pay good money to see that. Or better yet, see his expression if you said that to his - Usopp?”

Usopp had slid to the floor with a thump and was now lying there like a pile of wet noodles, whimpering pathetically. Sanji rolled his eyes and nudged the shivering lump hard in the side with his toe.

“Oi, get up,” he said. “You haven’t finished the washing up yet.”

“I’m going to die,” Usopp moaned, muffled into his arms. “Nami’s going to kill meeeee.”

Honestly, this crew. Sanji was surrounded by idiots.

When Sanji was feeling pissed off, he usually did one of two things, if not both:

One; chain-smoke a pack of cigarettes.

Two; try to kick the crap out of something or someone, usually the marimo because Sanji could be fairly sure he wouldn’t accidentally kill the bastard (and if he did, Zoro would probably deserve it).

One was currently out for fairly obvious reasons. Two, on the other hand, was an attractive prospect, especially since Zoro was one of the main sources of Sanji’s irritation right now. Not that he wasn’t always, but particularly now. Added to the constant building twitch of wanting a fucking cigarette, just how much he was getting fed up with the constant sickly-sweet syrup taste of boiled candy (and talk about ruining his tastebuds, this was way worse than the cigarettes had ever been) and the fact the his lollipops (fine, Chopper’s, but they were Sanji’s now) were running out, he was definitely spoiling for a fight.

Generally the easiest way to arrange this was to march up to wherever that moron was lazing around, yell, “OI, ASSHOLE!” and bring a heel slicing down towards his face, so that was exactly what Sanji did.

Zoro’s forearm shot up to block without him even bothering to open his eyes. “Aaaah? What.”

“Fight time, shithead, get up or I’ll kick your kidneys in,” Sanji informed him.

“You can try,” Zoro shot back, but he was already rolling to his feet with two swords in hand, so apparently he had no intention of backing out of this. Sanji swept his leg towards the back of Zoro’s knees; Zoro jumped it like a skip rope and quickly slashed out towards Sanji’s side, which Sanji flipped back in a handspring to avoid. While the urge to do violence was still thrumming in his veins, there was something almost soothing about this, about the rush of blood in his ears and the burn of oxygen in his lungs as he gulped down air, about the brutal and yet graceful dance of back-and-forth between them where neither one really laid any damage on the other.

It was nice and normal and routine, and Sanji should’ve known he’d jinx it by thinking that, because one moment they were fighting like always, and then the next… Sanji was just licking the melting syrup off that stupid lollipop before it ran down his throat and choked him, which was hardly enough to slow him down in a fight, but Zoro had that stupid stunned carp face again and by the time Sanji heard the clatter of swords hitting the ground, it was too late: the kick had connected, snapping Zoro’s jaw back and sending his body skidding across the deck, smashing through everything in its path and sailing over the edge to splash into the ocean.

Sanji had had enough frustration built up that he’d put a lot of force behind that kick, but he had assumed that Zoro could take it. He hadn’t exactly seen this coming.

There was a thump from the sundeck as Luffy’s rubber jaw literally hit the floor. “WOOOOAHEEE! Zoro got the crap beaten out of him by Sanji! Awesome!”

“HOW IS THAT AWESOME?” Nami shrieked, on the verge of hysteria. “I knew this would happen! What are we supposed to do if Zoro does that in a real fight, huh? USOPP! I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO TALK TO SANJI-KUN!”

“I did! He didn’t believe me!” Usopp wailed. “It’s not my faaaaault!”

“Oh dear,” Robin said mildly. “I think someone ought to pull swordsman-san out before he drowns.”

“Shit,” Sanji said blankly, and then, a moment later as the situation sank in a little more, “Shit!”

Robin, Chopper and Luffy couldn’t swim, and Nami and Usopp were panicking too much to try, which left Sanji. He was hardly going to be responsible for Zoro drowning to death, of all ridiculous ways to die, so he kicked off his shoes, threw his jacket and tie to the deck and dived in after the stupid, stupid bastard.

“I cannot,” Sanji huffed, as he hauled Zoro up out of the water with some helping handholds from Robin, “believe. How fucking dumb. You can be,” punctuated by the thud of Zoro hitting the deck and Sanji collapsing beside him.

“HE’S TURNING BLUE!” Chopper screamed, having apparently joined the chaos while Sanji was going marimo-diving. “CALL A DOCTOR! CALL A DOCTOR!”

“You are the doctor!” Nami and Usopp yelled in tandem, thumping him over the head.

Chopper blinked his big watery eyes, rubbing gingerly at his new tender lump. “I am?” he said dumbly, then, “I AM THE DOCTOR! Hold on, Zoro, I’m coming!”

Sanji lay back and stared up at the sky. Distantly he was aware of Chopper running over to fuss about Zoro’s person next to him but he phased it out, trusting Chopper to do whatever it was that needed doing. It seemed, he reflected idly, that Usopp might in fact have been telling the truth after all, would wonders never cease. In which case, what a hell of a time for that pea-brain to discover hormones. Sanji had no doubts in the absolute wisdom of the lovely Nami-san: at this rate, Zoro’s stupid caveman instincts were going to get them all killed.

Sanji sighed, and took stock. His clothes were soaked and sticking to him. There was salt-water drying on his skin, making it itch. He wanted his fucking cancer-sticks, and Zoro was a fucking moron.

Life was so much easier when he used to smoke, dammit.

Chopper had managed to get Zoro to spit up all the water he’d ingested and start breathing again, but the moron was still passed out so he’d been carried to the boy’s cabin to recuperate. Sanji had volunteered to keep an eye on him - with strong overtones that this wasn’t a suggestion, so nobody had argued - and now sat next to the couch acting as a makeshift sickbay bed, one arm curled back behind his head and crossed ankles propped on the edge of the cushion. He twirled the stick of the lollipop absently as he sucked on it, contemplating what to do with Zoro when the moron woke up.

Just don’t kill him, okay? Nami had told him sternly when she’d left the room earlier. His monster strength comes in handy sometimes and he still owes me money!

Of course, Nami-san! Anything for you!

So that cut down one of the options, although he supposed it would have been a waste to save Zoro’s life just to kill him again. Satisfying, though…

No, he’d promised Nami.

Not killing didn’t rule out kicking Zoro around a bit to make himself feel better, though, and Sanji was definitely still more than a little pissed right now. It was a pretty attractive option, and if Zoro wasn’t exactly in a position to fight back… well, that was his own damn fault, wasn’t it.

On the other hand, however, Sanji hadn’t forgotten exactly what he held over Zoro’s head right now, and that had the potential to be even more satisfying. Here was the guy whose entire life was focussed on the obsession with fighting; the guy who was so close to asexual that he wasn’t even tempted by Nami’s naked body, which was clearly just not natural. And yet, the sight of Sanji sucking on a damn lollipop made him lose his head and throw the fight entirely. Sanji could bring him to his knees, and he’d barely have to lift a finger.

He wouldn’t lie: the idea of having that much power over the dumbass made him more than a little smug. Loathe as he was to admit it, he knew he’d never match Zoro’s brute strength. The man was fucking inhuman, and then he had all the preservation instincts of a lemming, which meant he kept on throwing himself off all these impossible cliffs and clawing his way back from the brink through sheer bloody-minded determination until he just got stronger or died trying. Sanji couldn’t beat that. He wasn’t sure he wanted to; he was way too smart for that kind of lunacy.

But, he mused, however strong they might be, the base creatures known as the male species were inevitably driven by two things: their dicks and their stomachs. Zoro, as it turned out, was no different from any other man in this regard. Someone in charge of both of these things, now…

Well. Sanji certainly knew who won that power balance.

The question was, of course, what he was going to do about it. Despite what his crewmates probably assumed, Sanji was not diametrically opposed to sex with men, as such. He preferred women, of course. They were soft and pretty and smelled nice, each one a precious gift to be protected and treasured. Even women who were sharp-tongued like Nami or used to fighting like Robin could be hurt by a stupid boor of a man who didn’t know his own strength. Men, on the other hand, didn’t need that consideration. They were rough and hard-edged and foul; they could handle themselves. If they couldn’t take what Sanji threw at them, they weren’t worth his time anyway.

But for all they lacked the elegance and grace of the female form, men held their own fascination and charm. As a cook, Sanji knew all about presentation; there was beauty in most things, if you knew where to look. While it wasn’t the same as the effortlessness of feminine perfection, there was sensuality to the precise and powerful sweep of a man’s body in motion, a raw magnetic attraction to the posturing of an alpha male who knew his own strength and wasn’t afraid to use it.

“Nnnnrgh,” the idiot on the bed groaned, rudely interrupting Sanji’s train of thought.

“So you’re awake, then,” he said dryly, curling forward over his bent legs to lean closer and smirk at the patient.

“Mm?” Zoro mumbled, eyes slitting open with a befuddled and half-asleep look on his face. “San…?”

The moron trailed off, gaze drifting down towards Sanji’s mouth as though he couldn’t help himself, and Sanji rolled his eyes. It was kind of obvious, now he knew what he was seeing. He was a little disgusted at himself for not noticing sooner.

Sanji grabbed Zoro’s chin and jerked it up, none too gentle. “Hey, asshole, my eyes are up here,” he said sharply, garnering a definitely guilty flush in response as Zoro met his glare.

“Uh,” Zoro said, eloquent as ever, and cleared his throat. “What?”

Sanji didn’t say anything, just waited until the other man began to look nervous, and then, once he was sure he had Zoro’s absolute attention, Sanji clamped his back teeth down hard on the lollipop in his mouth with an audible crunch.

Zoro flinched.

Sanji bared his teeth in a savage grin, revelling in the knowledge that he finally had the bastard right where he wanted him: trapped under Sanji’s finely shod heel. Leverage was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

“Now,” he said conversationally, “let me make this clear to you, shithead. One, we have a nice, civil chat about how I am apparently now banned from sucking lollipops because you can’t keep it in your damn pants. Two, I kick your arse, because that sorry excuse for a fight did jack shit to work off my tension. Or three: we have sex, which will release a lot of nice happy endorphins and make me far less inclined to kill you for ruining my day.”

Zoro stared at him stupidly. “Huh?”

“Which will it be?” Sanji prompted. “Come on, marimo-head, I’m pretty sure even you can work this one out.”

When Zoro didn’t say anything, Sanji sighed and made as if to get up when a hand shot out, grabbing his wrist in an iron-hard grip. “Are you serious?” Zoro demanded suspiciously, and Sanji shrugged.

“I don’t know, am I?” he said cryptically, because half the fun of this was in winding Zoro up. “Guess you’ll just have to try and find out, won’t you?”

He tugged his wrist back experimentally to test Zoro’s grip and see how the moss-ball would react. Zoro growled, which he couldn’t deny was at least a little hot, and yanked down hard, dragging Sanji down on top of him. Sanji struggled, because he was hardly going to make this easy, but not as violently as he could have been. He didn’t make any serious attempts to brain the idiot, anyway. Even Zoro should be able to work out that signal.

“You are serious,” Zoro confirmed, like he wasn’t fully sure he believed it yet, but maybe the idiot could be taught after all because he didn’t question it again, instead wrestling Sanji onto his back, crushing him with his heavy bulk and pinning his wrists above his head. Sanji jerked his hips up in token protest, but didn’t try to flip them over; the couch was too narrow, and while kicking Zoro to the floor would be amusing in any other circumstances, that wasn’t really what he was trying to achieve right now. Besides, he was curious about what Zoro would do next.

“Careful, don’t forget you just got the crap kicked out of you,” he taunted, quirking his eyebrow in mocking challenge, and Zoro snorted.

“Like anything that piss-weak is going to make a dent,” he said scornfully, but before Sanji could yell - he might not be a brute like Zoro, but nobody fucking called him weak - the asshole smashed his mouth down over Sanji’s, sealing his protests in a punishing kiss.

Sanji snarled and bit at him in retaliation, but Zoro just bit back, rocking down hard so that Sanji’s breath whooshed out of his lungs and into the other man’s mouth with a grunt. Zoro’s fist twisted in Sanji’s hair, yanking his head back as far as it would go to suck and bite a stinging trail down the column of his throat. Sanji hissed, pulling at stupid algae-coloured hair that was too short for a proper grip, and dug his knees hard into Zoro’s sides.

“Stop leaving marks, bastard!” he huffed out, squeezing his legs around Zoro’s hips like a vice as he bucked up against the unyielding restraint of Zoro’s body. In response, Zoro pushed Sanji down into the couch cushions even harder, sinking his teeth into the juncture of Sanji’s neck and left shoulder with the jangle of earrings.

“Mother FUCK!” Sanji howled, arching his back and kicking at the small of Zoro’s spine with his heel violently enough that it should bruise. Zoro laughter panted into his ear, and if anything the bastard’s hold only tightened.

“I’ll do what I want,” he said smugly, voice rough and gravelly with sex, and Sanji would make sure the shithead paid for it in spades later but right now it sent a shiver of anticipation down his spine. This struggle was getting even more vicious and competitive than one of their fights, and Sanji was so turned on that he could barely see straight.

Zoro took advantage of Sanji’s moment of distraction to tear at his shirt, pulling it apart in brutishly impatient yanks that ripped the buttons from the material, probably ruining it beyond repair in the process.

“You’d better fucking pay for that later, shithead,” Sanji hissed, hands digging into the muscles of Zoro’s back and twitching as Zoro’s teeth scraped over his collarbone and down over his chest. “Some of us actually pay attention to how we dress. I’m not having you destroy my entire wardrobe!”

“Blah blah, whatever,” Zoro muttered, barely sparing Sanji’s complaints a second’s notice as he licked a broad stripe over the reddened skin. “So prissy.”

“Just because you have no sense of class, doesn’t mean we all - mmmrh mmmrr mmph!”

“Stop talking,” Zoro said in an annoyed tone of voice, like Sanji was the one being unreasonable here. Sanji glared up at him and bit down hard on the big hand muffling his mouth, tasting the strong tang of metal and salt on Zoro’s palm. There’d been a hint of it in his mouth, too, but it had been overpowered by the briny flavour of seawater.

Despite Sanji’s teeth digging into his hand, Zoro didn’t cry out or even have the decency to wince. In fact, the bastard had the gall to grin and press down a little harder before he pulled his hand back.

“Enough wasting time, let’s do this,” he said, sitting up to tug his ratty white top over his head and toss it carelessly to the floor. Sanji stiffened slightly when he caught sight of the angry pink scar tissue slashing across the idiot’s chest; he’d seen it more times than he cared to remember, but every time it was accompanied by a brief chill of incredulity and almost fear at how far this man was capable of going. It never seemed to bother Zoro at all, but the stupid reckless asshole seemed to go out of his way to collect scars in stupid macho ways so clearly he wasn’t in his right mind anyway.

“Hey, dart-brow,” Zoro said sharply, snapping Sanji out of his moment of contemplation and back to the present. “Nobody’s getting off if you just sit there staring.”

“Sorry, I was just distracted by your ugliness,” Sanji sniped back, defensiveness translating into the sharp side of his tongue, but it seemed Zoro wasn’t listening anyway, because a moment later a hand was shoved very abruptly down his pants.

“H-hey!” he choked. Zoro gave him this totally confused frown like he had no idea what Sanji’s problem was now, and… Sanji thought about complaining about how Zoro had no manners and should stop manhandling him, but then he wasn’t really sure why he was bothering. Zoro would never get it anyway, and it was all the same anyway in terms of the end result.

“Don’t think I’m going to just lie here and let you have everything your own way, asshole,” Sanji retorted instead, because at this rate he was going to get caught up in Zoro’s pace and like hell he was going to stand for that. Zoro leaned down so their chests brushed together, hands planted either side of Sanji’s head, and stared straight into Sanji’s eyes with a really self-satisfied twist to his mouth.

“Sure you’re not,” he agreed, in the kind of way that was calculated to really piss Sanji off, but before Sanji could say anything Zoro’s head dipped and teeth nipped sharply at the shell of his ear, making him flinch in shock.

“Go on then,” Zoro breathed into his ear, sending an involuntary shiver through Sanji’s body. “Prove it.”

This asshole was going down, Sanji thought grimly, and rolled his hips up into Zoro in a sensual twist. Zoro had brute strength on his side and, okay, maybe a little in the way of animal magnetism, but nobody was more flexible than Sanji (unless they were made of rubber, which was cheating, anyway), and he knew how to use his body. Zoro would be begging for mercy by the time he was done.

For all Zoro’s arrogance, it didn’t take long before Sanji could see his arms shake slightly, feel the small tremors down the idiot’s broad back. Zoro’s face was hidden in the curve of Sanji’s neck, so he couldn’t see Zoro’s expression, but he’d bet it wasn’t quite so smug now. Zoro was making little abortive grunts that he muffled by biting down on Sanji’s shoulder. It was around the same place he’d bitten before, and still tender, but the pain got mixed up with the other signals Sanji’s body was sending and translated into a frisson of heat, making him swear and scratch red lines down Zoro’s back with his blunt fingernails.

That was apparently the tipping point for Zoro: he gave a short, stunned whuff of air like he’d been hit hard in the solar plexus and completely crumbled, panting and shuddering and practically crushing Sanji when his full weight collapsed down on top of him.

They lay like that for a minute or so, Zoro utterly still except for the heaving of his chest and Sanji squirming but trapped under the oaf’s body like a lead blanket. Sanji was hot and uncomfortable in all kinds of ways, his lungs squashed and Zoro’s wrist digging into his pelvis, but most of all, he was still hard and frustrated and if Zoro left him hanging, he swore to himself, he was going to take that fuckhead’s own katana and slit his damn throat with it.

Thankfully, Zoro apparently had enough presence of mind left to shift slightly to the side and start working his hand again, and in the end, it only took a few more minutes before Sanji’s body seized up in sensory overload, leaving him curling around Zoro’s shoulders and clutching at his back before he went limp against the couch.

For a long moment, the only sound was the wheeze of their laboured breathing, slightly out of sync.

“That was pathetic,” Sanji said eventually, when he could form words again. “I mean it. What the fuck.”

Zoro’s head shot up with a look of outrage, twisting to glare at Sanji.

“Shut up, dart-brow!” he snapped, ears turning red. “Like you lasted much longer!”

There wasn’t much Sanji could say to that, because it was true. In fact, given that the moss-head had been struggling with building sexual frustration for a good week or so now and presumably had much less experience in dealing with it than Sanji did, it was seriously embarrassing, so he decided that in this case discretion was the better part of valour and kept quiet.

“Shove off,” he said instead, when Zoro’s head thudded back down on his shoulder. “You’re heavy, asshole.”

“Mmrh.”

Sanji’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better not fucking fall asleep on me, you giant oaf,” he warned, but Zoro just gave another caveman grunt and Sanji didn’t have the energy to kick him, let alone throw him off.

Fucker.

Sighing, Sanji lazily dug into his pocket for a cigarette, not really thinking. When all his fingers hit was the last lollipop, however, a jangle of discord intruded into his pleasant post-coital haze and he groaned.

Orgasms were better with cigarettes, damn it.

“What,” Zoro muttered.

“Fucking nothing,” Sanji said, grumpy all over again, and that was just a shameful waste of an orgasm if there ever was one.

Zoro made an exasperated noise and dragged back the arm slung over Sanji to do something involving that stupid haramaki. Sanji couldn’t really see what it was and nor did he much care, but a second later Zoro grunted and slapped something down on Sanji’s chest, all the while never really bothering to rouse himself from his half-nap. “Here.”

Sanji frowned. “What…?”

“Emergency rations,” Zoro mumbled into the couch. “You threw yours overboard. Kept those just in case.”

A pack of smokes and a lighter. For fuck’s sake.

“Didn’t want you to fucking snap and kill us all in our sleep,” Zoro added, by way of explanation. Sanji considered kneeing him in the balls for assuming Sanji wouldn’t be able to hack it, except right now he was still feeling too mellowed out and grateful to finally have a fucking cigarette to bother. Maybe later.

Later, Sanji was out on the deck having a smoke when Nami came up to talk to him.

“Nami-san,” he greeted her with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

She rested her arms on the rail, looking out at the sea. “I just wanted to say, it’s probably for the best you’re smoking again,” she said. “I mean, it’s still not good… but Zoro being like that is a lot worse for everyone, so.”

Sanji chuckled. “Typical moron,” he agreed.

“Just so long as you don’t smoke so much inside,” she said playfully, looking over her shoulder to grin at him, but then she turned bright red, eyes flicking down to his neck and quickly away. “And, um… tell Zoro to take it easy, okay? It’s no good if we fix him up only to have you out of a fight.”

She turned and walked away quickly, before Sanji could stammer a word of protest. His hand flew to his neck in horror when he realised what she’d been looking at, at which precise moment that caveman sauntered outside looking far too fucking pleased with himself.

“Pansy,” Zoro said smugly as he walked past. “Knew you couldn’t hack it.”

Sanji’s eye twitched. Kill. Kill kill kill -

He took a deep breath.

No, he had a better idea.

“Oh, Zoro,” he said, poisonously sweet, and one hand pulled the last lollipop from his pocket, twirling it around his fingers as the cigarette dangled forgotten in his other hand. “Why don’t we have a sparring match? Since I’m quitting again, apparently.”

Zoro blanched.

“Never mind,” he said quickly. “Your smoking is for everyone’s sake. Don’t do that.”

“Damn fucking straight,” Sanji said, and took another drag on his beloved cigarette, blowing the smoke into Zoro’s sullen face.

Sometimes, Sanji loved his life.