A Bad Idea (or No Means Yes) 2

[meunda]

Title: A Bad Idea (or No Means Yes)
Rating: M(eek!)
Chapter: 2
Summary: Zoro has decided that having sex with Sanji would be a BAD IDEA for several reasons. Sanji doesn't agree.

Back aboard the relative safety of the Sunny Zoro was hard at work avoiding Sanji. Every time he saw the man Sanji looked furious and Zoro wanted to wait until that rage had subsided a little bit from the man’s frame before dealing with him again. Like many of his plans it could have been great if it were not for one small detail, the detail in this case being that, unlike Brook, Zoro had to eat. And unlike everyone else on the ship that Zoro could have potentially avoided, Sanji was the cook. This unfortunately meant that if Zoro wanted to continue eating at any point in the future he would have to face Sanji. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Sanji didn’t keep the kitchen locked at night. And yes, he’d checked. And if he didn’t know that breaking into said kitchen would only make Sanji madder then he might have considered it. Starving to death was looking pretty good right about now, but he knew that Sanji would never forgive Zoro or himself if that happened regardless of how the cook might feel about him at the moment.

When he does eventually sidle into the galley that night because he doesn’t even have the guts to miss a single meal Sanji glares daggers at him but doesn’t throw him out. This doesn’t quite console Zoro, he wouldn’t let his worst enemy go without food. But he says nothing and sits quietly in his seat. Sanji’s movements around the kitchen have become sharp, he doesn’t bang saucepans down or clatter cutlery because Sanji treats his equipment with more care than that. But he can see the tension in the man’s back and the way that his teeth are clamped tightly down on the end of his cigarette.

Sanji puts Zoro’s plate down with a little more force than necessary and Zoro might say thank you if he thought that it would do anything other than piss the cook off more. They all eat quietly, even Luffy is hushed under the oppressive atmosphere. Afterwards he slinks out of the kitchen again, feeling as pathetic as a declawed tiger.

“Geez, what did you say to piss him off so much exactly?” Franky asks on deck with a sigh of relief at being out the kitchen.

“It doesn’t matter.” Zoro answers with a shrug. He doesn’t want to tell anyone. He feels bad about what he said but confident that what he did was for the best, even if he could have found a better way to say it.

“It totally matters. What happened?” Franky presses. Zoro glares, he’s not in the mood for an inquisition.

“I know it matters, I meant that it’s none of your business.” He snaps and stomps off feeling sorry for himself.

He’s grateful that he has his own bedroom on the Sunny, he’s not sure that he could have survived this ordeal in the shared bunkroom of the Merry. He’s not entirely sure that Sanji is above kicking Zoro out of his hammock whenever he feels like it in this mood.

That night when he dreams he dreams of Sanji on the beach and what he could have had if he had kept his mouth shut and not said the worst thing that he could think of. When he wakes he’s achingly hard and can still feel the ghost of Sanji’s fingers and lips and tongue all over him.

He somehow struggles through the next couple of days without Sanji killing him, perhaps on the silent truce that as long as Zoro does not say anything to Sanji or look at Sanji at mealtimes then Sanji won’t drive his shoe through Zoro’s face. To be honest he’d somehow feel better if Sanji would just kick him, because kicking him would make Sanji less angry and Zoro is desperate for Sanji to be less angry at him. But no, this anger isn’t the usual shouting, screaming, kicking rage that he’s used to, this anger is silent and deadly and quite honestly very worrying.

Each day at least one member of the crew asks him what happened between him and Sanji, ask what the fight was about or what was said. Zoro tells them nothing at all and he can tell from their persistence at asking him that Sanji must be doing the same.

After a week and a half everyone except Robin has asked and Sanji’s anger at Zoro is not fading like the swordsman had hoped. Eventually Robin does come up to him, her arms folded angrily and her face stern.

He eyes her warily from his resting place at the foot of the mast, he doesn’t like her when she’s angry, especially not when her arms are that close to being crossed. He does still remember what she did to Franky and that wasn’t even malicious, Robin is not above hurting people.

“It was nothing.” He answers even though she’s not said a word and just stood there looking at him.

“That’s not true at all.” Robin answers with a glower that sends shivers down his spine.

“I’m not going to tell you anything.” Zoro says flatly, he figures that it’d best to be upfront in the hope that Robin will go away and not harm him.

“You don’t need to.” Robin says darkly.

Zoro is about to open his mouth to question that odd response when Robin continues.

“I already know.” She adds narrowing her eyes at him.

Zoro feels his jaw drop open and he hastens to close it as he sits upright sharply. Surely Sanji wouldn’t have told her, even if he had told anyone surely it wouldn’t have been one of his ‘lovely ladies’. But Robin could be crafty at prying things out of people, perhaps she managed. The silence stretches on for a few more moments with only the sounds of the waves breaking filling the air around them. He watches her for a moment more and considers his position, Robin is certainly not above lying and he’s not going to blab just because she tricked him. He’s about to call her a liar when she forges on with her accusation.

“I can’t believe that you could say that to him. Sanji is beyond furious, and hurt too. I would have thought that you of all people would know better.” Robin snaps. Zoro shrinks back for a moment, the woman can be very menacing at times at it is now that he remembers that she was once an assassin.

“I don’t think he told you anything.” Zoro says slowly as it occurs to him that whilst everything she said might be true it was vague. And Zoro knows that he might not be the sharpest sword out there mentally but he’s not by any means dumb.

Robin looks shocked for a moment, as if she’d not even thought that he might possibly say that.

“You- you are both so stubborn and pigheaded! I can’t believe the pair of you! Why is it that with men the moment sex comes into the equation you all become idiots?!” Robin says angrily, her voice getting loud enough to be a shout and Zoro would rather that no one else heard that.

“He told you?!” Zoro yelps out of disbelief, he’d thought Robin had been just bluffing! He can’t believe that Sanji would open his big mouth! He thought that Sanji might be too angry or to ashamed of the fact that it had been Zoro’s lap rather than that of some pretty girl like Robin to say anything. All he knows is that he needs to shut her up right now, the last thing that he wants is Robin yelling precisely what that treacherous Sanji told her where any of the crew could hear her.

After a split second he catches the predatory smile on her face and he realise that he’s been well and truly conned.

“No, but you just did. So you may as well tell me the rest before I torture it out of you for your own good.” Robin purrs dangerously and crouches down next to him.

“You are evil.” He accuses weakly and wonders if she tried this tactic on Sanji first, he wonders if he was the only one dumb enough to fall for it.

“So I’ve heard. Tell me everything Mr. Swordsman or I might have to hurt you.” She smiles sharply.

So he does. He knows that she’s determined enough to actually torture him about this and he doesn’t trust that the rest of his nakama will be able to resist stopping her either on the basis of curiosity or trying to mend his and Sanji’s ‘bond’.

So he relents and tells her about him getting drunk when he knew he shouldn’t, about Sanji joining him also drunk. He skips some of the details about what exactly Sanji was doing to him but gives her the general picture, not on account for Robin’s virtue because he knows that she’s not innocent by any means, but because he doesn’t want to talk to anyone about it. He doesn’t want Robin to know every detail because he considers what he and Sanji had on the beach to be private at the very least, even if he’d been forced to cut it shorter than he really would have liked. And a little part of himself that he doesn’t want to think too hard about wants to keep that part of the memory untouched and precious.

Eventually he meekly tells her what he said, although he can’t meet her eyes when he repeats it.

Robin’s eyebrows shoot up at that before lowering into a scowl.

“Why on earth would you say something like that to him?” She asks in a quiet and dangerous tone of voice. He shifts uncomfortably under her scrutiny but she clearly isn’t going anywhere.

“Look, he and I would be a bad idea. We’re nakama, and we both need to be on this ship. If something had happened then it’d go terribly wrong sooner or later and one of us would have to leave the ship. So I had to stop him somehow, and, hey it did stop him.” Zoro explained rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

Robin looked at him levelly for a few moments.

“That.” She said after a while, “Is by far the stupidest thing that I’ve ever heard. Did you not think that what you said to him would be more certain to break your bond as nakama than some half-baked affair you two might have with each other ever would?”

Zoro considered this, at the time he’d not been thinking clearly. Except for that he couldn’t allow he and Sanji to go along that path because it could only end in heartbreak and one of them having to leave the Sunny and any chance of them fulfilling their dreams behind.

“They’re just words Robin. We fight all the time, this… isn’t any different.” He answered reluctantly. True, he said the most shocking thing that he could think of at the time, but they were just words. Sanji was forever insulting him, so this was no different.

“You can’t believe that’s true Zoro, surely?” Robin sighed in exasperation.

Zoro looked over at her crouched on the ground next to him, she probably meant well, but she couldn’t understand this situation.

“It’s just a fight. He’ll calm down eventually. And afterwards when he’s forgiven me he won’t want to do that again, so it’ll stop this happening all over again. Problem solved.” He explained feeling sure of his answer.

Robin looked at him strangely and stood up with a huff, she put her hands on her hips and stared fiercely down at him.

“Apologise to him, or you won’t be nakama any more. I mean it.” Robin ordered and turned on her heel and stalked away angrily.

Zoro shook his head and leant back against the mast with his eyes shut. She was wrong, Sanji would forgive him sooner or later, he always did no matter how hard they fought. Things would go back to the way they were and he’d never have to worry about finding a drunk affectionate Sanji in his lap again.

Zoro resolutely ignored the pang in his gut at that last thought and forced himself to sleep.

Zoro awoke slowly to his chest being shoved about by something hard, for a moment he thought he could feel Sanji’s boot heel pressed firmly on his chest above his heart. But instead he opened his eyes to see Usopp prodding him with the flat end of the bristle-less broom from a distance. He scowled and snatched it out of Usopp’s hand and thwacked him on the top of the head for good measure.

“What?!” He snapped feeling a surge of irritation from nowhere. Usopp flinched back.

“Sanji says it’s dinner time and that he’ll kill both of us if you don’t show.” Usopp answered. Zoro grunted and stood up, stretching the kinks in his back out from sleeping against the mast where Robin had left him earlier.

“The stupid cook could have just come and gotten me himself.” He pointed out grouchily, his bad mood still clouding his mind for a reason that he couldn’t quite place his finger on.

“Only if you wanted him to kill you. I think he’s actually getting angrier since your fight, did you say something else to him?” Usopp asked looking sidelong at Zoro with curiosity written clear all over his face as he climbed the steps up to the galley with Zoro not far behind him.

“I’ve not said a word to him.” He replied grouchily. And it was true, he’d remained completely silent around the cook. He knew full well that anything he said to the cook could set the man off so he thought it safer to say nothing until Sanji was in a better mood. But was what Usopp said true? Was the cook angrier than before? It was hard to tell as he spent as little time in the man’s company as possible since the incident on the beach, but he didn’t think so. Surely people got less angry as time passed after fights, not more. But then again, what did Usopp know about anything?

He shrugged his concerns off and followed Usopp into the galley and sat down silently in his usual seat. Sanji noticed their entrance of course, but said nothing except to huff irritatedly in their direction.

He at in silence but paid careful attention to the conversations swirling around him. The galley had returned to its usual loud state after a few days, there was only so long that the oppressive atmosphere hanging between he and Sanji could dampen the spirits of this crew.

Robin and Nami were discussing a book that they had been reading between them, apparently a murder mystery novel. They had been reading it one chapter at a time, passing it from one to the other and the two girls were in a curious huddle trying to work out who the mysterious murderer was.

Franky and Usopp were discussing a potential alteration to the ship’s cola engine, Usopp apparently having had an idea to potentially improve it, Chopper had curiously waded into the discussion by asking whether or not any change might also be applied to Franky himself. Luffy was too busy stuffing food down his mouth to talk and Brook seemed to be trying to out-eat their captain at that point too. Which just left him and Sanji sitting on opposite sides of the table saying nothing to anyone.

Sanji hadn’t been entirely silent like Zoro himself had, but he’d not been engaging in conversation with anyone over dinner unless he was directly spoken to. Zoro watched Sanji out of the corner of his eye and tried to gauge whether what Usopp said about Sanji being angrier than before was true.

The blonde was eating his food, not that Zoro had been expecting him to be avoiding it or anything, the cook was too precious about wasting food to do that. But… there was something in the way that he was eating that was strange, something listless and joyless to it. Sanji’s shoulders were still taut with tension, a tension that Zoro had expected to start dissipating by now.

If the cook knew that Zoro was looking at him then he didn’t say anything or give any indications that he knew. In fact Zoro had been quietly observing the cook for so long that dinner was now over, Usopp’s plate was being passed in front of him and grudgingly Zoro put it on top of his own and passed the stack along again.

The room was filled with the quiet chatter and soft clinking of cutlery that came with the of clearing up after the meal. Luffy and Chopper had already bounded off and Franky and Usopp were chatting and slowly making their way to the door.

Normally by now he’d have made his escape from out of Sanji’s space but Robin’s words still echoed in his ears. Would he and Sanji stop being nakama just because of what he’d said? He needed to find out, no matter how angry Sanji would be.

“It’s my turn to wash up.” He announced and the rest of the room froze.

Sanji, who was already in the kitchen area of the galley running water into the sink froze with his shoulders high and tense. Nami and Robin paused where they were at the end of the table looking from Zoro to Sanji warily. Robin flashed Zoro a small smile and then quietly led Nami out of the room. Usopp and Franky still hovered where they were though.

“Oh no, don’t fight. Not in here, my poor ship…” Franky whimpered. Usopp tried desperately to shush him but it was too late.

“OUT!” Sanji shouted, slamming his hands down on the work surface. Franky and Usopp flinched and ran out of the room with a terrified squeak.

Zoro briefly considered that Sanji might have been directing that ‘out!’ at him, but he chose to ignore that possibility and stood up calmly and rounded the table to get to Sanji. He had questions damnit and he wasn’t going to leave until Sanji gave him an answer.

As he got closer to the cook he noticed that his hunched shoulders were shaking and his knuckles were practically white with how hard he was grabbing the edge of the sink. Zoro was just musing on what to say when Sanji spoke unexpectedly.

“Look.” Sanji gritted out, not looking up at Zoro.

“I am fantastically aware of how you feel about me. What you… think of me.” He began. Zoro tried to resist rolling his eyes because, really, Sanji didn’t. But he wasn’t about to correct the cook when he’d gone through so much strife to make sure that nothing could happen between him and the blonde ever again.

“So just… save it. And get out of my kitchen.” Sanji ordered, the long curtain of blonde hair obscuring Zoro’s view of his face.

Zoro hesitated, Sanji clearly didn’t want him there but he still had a question that needed answering.

“Are… are we still nakama?” he asked hesitatingly. He needed to hear Sanji’s answer, he needed to be sure that Robin was wrong.

Sanji’s head snapped up at that. He turned and suddenly Zoro was confronted with Sanji’s menacing blue eye right in his face.

“WHAT?!” Sanji snapped so loudly that Zoro actually took an instinctive step back. The cook’s fists were balled tightly at his sides and for one irrational moment Zoro worried that Sanji might punch him despite how much he treasured his hands.

“Are you fucking KIDDING me?!” Sanji screeched furiously, stepping further into Zoro’s space and causing him to take another step backwards.

“I would sooner cut off my own leg and walk around with a goddamn peg leg like that shitty old man than be nakama with YOU.” Sanji snarled jabbing Zoro in the chest with a long finger.

“I thought I hated you before but my god I was wrong. I loathe you. The one and only reason I’ve not kicked you overboard is because it’d upset Luffy and I made that man a promise and I’m not about to break it over your dumb ass.” The cook hissed, his one visible blue eye narrowing dangerously.

“But do I like you? Are we nakama? Zoro, I assure you, I wouldn’t so much as piss on you if you were on fire.” Sanji stated, his mouth twisting into a disgusting snarl.

Zoro felt ice flow through his veins. Robin had been right, he’d gone too far and caused precisely what he’d been trying to prevent. Sanji no longer wanted to be nakama anymore! He had to do something.

“Sanji! Please-” Zoro pleaded as he grabbed Sanji’s black suited arm.

He didn’t even see the kick coming and he wondered vaguely if Sanji had been holding back on him all the time in their fights so far. He most certainly felt the blinding pain erupt in his ribs though, shortly followed by the crash of him hitting the far wall at speed. He crumpled in a heap on the floor and struggled to force his body to breathe.

Finally he choked a breath into his lungs and promptly coughed it straight back out again along with a fair amount of blood. He barely had time to process the shock of what had just happened before a strong hand grabbed at the back of his shirt and he found himself hauled up and face to face with Sanji again.

Had this been a real fight with an enemy he knew that he could cut them in half right now, but Sanji’s furious cold blue eye in front of him reminded him that this wasn’t some enemy, this was someone who was supposed to be nakama. His hand didn’t so much as twitch towards his swords and he allowed himself to hang in Sanji’s grip and blood dribbled down his chin.

“Get. Out.” Sanji hissed. The cook flung the door open and threw Zoro outside and slammed it loudly after him.

Zoro didn’t bother to get up, he didn’t care if his nakama thought that he’d just had his arse kicked by the cook. All he could think about was that he’d really screwed up and he needed to fix this and soon, whilst it still could be fixed.