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Sanji didn’t expect to still be the only one in the auditorium when he ordered the first movie ticket earlier, even if he did grab a seat for the latest showing on a weekday, but he also didn’t expect to be let go by the girl he was seeing.
(They had met at the grocery store, talked for five minutes about the meal she was going to prepare later that evening with the rare ingredient he helped her grab from a top shelf. It was love at first sight. And then she waved at him, a gold band on her left ring-finger, as she headed for another man’s arms. Heart wrenching.)
So now he’s at the movie theatre, screening room void of another soul, and watching a chick flick. This is usually how he gets his spirits up after a bad break.
What isn’t lifting his spirits, though, is when some idiot walks into his theatre and starts lumbering around like a jackass. He’s twenty minutes late to the film, and, despite clearly staring at his ticket, can’t seem to find his seat.
Sanji grumbles to himself angrily, trying to ignore the oaf and continue watching his film — Sit literally anywhere, asshole, you’re ruining my sulking time — but eventually gets pissed off enough to offer his assistance when the man some how zigzags from top to bottom row for the 4th consecutive time.
“Oh, my fucking— do you need help?” Sanji barks, scowling at this stranger.
As soon as he turns to see who’s spoken to him — green hair, tan skin, sharp teeth showcased beneath a spreading grin — the confusion previously etched into his brows fades away. “Oh, nah, I’m good,” he says, and promptly begins to step right over the seats (Neanderthal! Barbaric animal with no manners!!) while making a beeline for— the seat right beside Sanji.
He drops himself down all too comfortably, and Sanji is actually baffled enough to kick this stranger in the thigh. “Um, hello?? I’m sitting here.”
The man grins even wider at him, and curse everything, he’s kind of cute — in an intimidating, ruggedly handsome, unnecessarily ripped kind of way.
—Seriously, who needs arms that big?? And why, why, are they trapped in a short sleeve compression shirt?
Sanji is just starting to realize that, no, that is actually not a compression shirt, but rather a poor T-shirt hanging on for dear life in a miserable attempt to conservatively cover up dense muscles and bulging pecs, when—
“So am I.”
Sanji blinks, gaze snapping back up to the steel grey eyes watching him. “No, you’re not. Go find somewhere else to sit.”
“But these are the best seats in the house!”
“Which is why I purchased this one! Find your own seat!”
“This is my seat,” the man — Sanji has decided to call him Marimo due to the mossy green of his hair — waves his ticket under Sanji’s nose.
Sanji takes it, scrutinizes the combinations of letters and numbers on the ticket, then frowns. “This isn’t your seat,” he says petulantly, then points to the one directly beside him on the other side. “That is.”
Marimo glances between the seat he’s currently using and the seat on Sanji’s other side, before shrugging and situating himself more comfortably in the one he’s already invading. “That seat’s too lonely.”
Sanji glances over and realizes that, by lonely, this Marimo means the seats aren’t connected like a love seat. Or, more accurately, isn’t connected to his seat like a love seat.
His cheeks heat — ire, no doubt — and Sanji leans over to hiss at the man as if anyone else is in this theatre — as if they wouldn’t have already ruined their cinema experience by now with all their arguing. “Listen here, Marimo—!”
“Marimo?”
“Y-yeah. Sea moss.” He gestures around his own hair as an explanation.
“My name is Zoro. Roronoa Zoro.”
“Okay, James Bond. I don’t care what your name is!”
“Fine, call me whatever you want, Curly, but Roronoa is my surname. It’s Japanese.”
Sanji slaps a hand over his exposed eyebrow and gives an affronted gasp. Of all the nerve! “My name is Sanji!”
Zoro — Marimo, whatever — blinks at him. “Sanji? Just Sanji? Who do you think you are? Beyoncé? Rihanna? Zendaya?”
Sanji frowns, then finds himself settling back into his seat beside this aggravating mossball of a man with a huff. He paid good money for this seat. He’s not going to lose it because some asshole sat beside him and refuses to leave.
“No, I’m not an iconic black woman. But, though I don’t really have a last name — not anymore, at least — I do go by Blackleg. It’s.. a tribute to someone important to me.” Sanji doesn’t know why he even bothered to answer, or why he explained that much, but he can feel Zoro’s gaze on him — intense and warm, searching and calculating, scorching yet simultaneously gentle — before he looks away with a huff.
“Whatever,” he says, no doubt going for flippant, and he’s just sassy enough to make it work, but Sanji still catches the sliver of understanding there.
How profound for a sentient piece of grass, to know when to drop a subject.
They continue to watch the movie in silence. Well, at least for all of two minutes.
“What’s going on?”
Sanji groans and rolls his eyes. “Maybe you should have thought about that before coming into the movie 20 minutes late!”
Zoro blinks. “20 minutes?” He checks his phone. “It’s been four and a half hours.”
Sanji balks. What, he was supposed to be here for one of the previous showings?? “Is that supposed to be better?” he whispers back, voice and ire weakened by his shock.
How can someone be so unorganized? It’s almost fascinating.
Zoro shrugs. “I.. got turned around on my way here.”
“Oh,” Sanji says, recalling the nonsensical directions Zoro had been walking in while trying to find his seat. He even left the theatre once or twice, and Sanji had assumed he got the wrong movie, but nope, the guy’s a donut. “So you got lost.”
Sanji must strike a nerve, because Zoro’s sun-kissed cheeks start to turn red as he vehemently protests. “I don’t get lost!”
Again, Sanji is left thinking this man is cute.
“You sure about that, Mosshead? You seemed lost just looking for your seat.”
“Listen here, Dartbrow—“
“DARTBROW!”
“— I got here just in time for this showing, didn’t I?”
“Dartbrow…” Sanji grumbles to himself as he pets at his eyebrows. And the idiot didn’t even get to this showing on time! That’s the whole point! “Suffer. I’m not telling you shit about the movie. Figure it out yourself, you stupid hawksbill turtle.”
How unfortunate that Sanji actually likes the endangered species of turtle, even if Hawskbills are known to get a little lost during migration. Turtles are just so cute; how can he not?
Zoro shrugs. “Do you even know what’s going on?”
Sanji rolls his eyes. “Of course I do—“ He looks up to find the main character kissing the best friend of who Sanji thought the male lead was, and realizes he’s also missed a lot, thanks to the talking seaweed someone thoughtlessly planted beside him.
Great. He forgot to wallow and suffer; watching the characters of the film slowly fall in love while he mourns the good old days (minutes) spent with his lady. (Jagi, he thinks her name was. At least, that’s what her Korean husband called her. She had called him Jagiya, though, so maybe it was their last name? Maybe spouses do that, in Korea. Sanji was too heartbroken to think much more on the subject at the time.)
Sanji groans, and does so again when Zoro sticks his grubby little hands into his popcorn to steal a handful.
“Why, you—!”
Zoro flashes an innocent smile that’s so disarmingly charming it makes Sanji falter before he can kick him into oblivion for his thievery. “Whattt? I’m hungry, and the concession stand was impossible to find. I just gave up.”
Sanji frowns, not bothering to mention that the concession stand is literally attached to the ticket booth. “You’re hungry?” he asks quietly.
Zoro gives him a confused look at the sudden softness of his tone, but doesn’t mention it. “Yeah, I just said that.”
With a sigh, Sanji hands Zoro his popcorn, comfort snacks, and drink. “Here.”
Zoro blinks. “Curls, I don’t want all of—“
Sanji shakes his head. “I can’t stand the thought of letting anyone go hungry, sentient lettuce or not. I’m a chef, I’ll have you know. It’s my life’s passion to feed, so eat.”
Zoro frowns, then settles on situating the snacks between them. “We’ll share, yeah?” Sanji doesn’t respond beyond a shrug, but he can feel Zoro watching him even as he turns back to the screen. “Thanks, Pretty Brows.”
“Why, you— you— just shut up and watch the film!!”
Zoro cackles at Sanji’s flustered outburst, his scorching gaze still settled on him doing nothing to lessen the sudden heat situated in Sanji’s cheeks. “Let me get your number, after this.”
Yes, Sanji thinks Zoro is definitely trying to make him blush even deeper. And worst of all, it’s working.
“Why, so you can lose it?” he retorts, trying to regain his cool composure.
And then Zoro is in his face — tan skin, green hair, sharp teeth of glowing white, pillowy lips, three gold earrings chiming where they dangle from his left ear, his poor T-shirt only loose around the neckline and giving Sanji a peak at glorious pecs — and Sanji thinks fuckkkk, he’s more than just cute. He’s hot.
“So we can go out sometime, obviously,” Zoro says. It comes out easily, too, like it’s so normal for him to be picking up a random guy at the movie theatre. “I wouldn’t dare forget you or your number. I’m really good with numbers, actually.”
Sanji frowns, feeling overwhelmed, and sticks up the middle finger on his right hand. “How about this number?”
Zoro snorts. “Your jokes are horrible, you know that?” Sanji doesn’t have time to bark at him before he continues. “I like you, Prettybrows. Let’s go out.”
Sanji is melted into a puddle, far more flattered than he really ought to be, but this guy — his conviction, the intensity of his gaze, the compliment to his eyebrows that seems random, but must be because Zoro realized Sanji’s a bit self conscious about them — he makes Sanji feel utterly frenzied. And because of this — not at all because Sanji’s into the idea — he takes the man’s phone from his lap and angrily thumbs his own number inside.
“Now leave me alone, I’m trying to actually watch the movie.”
Zoro sits back in his seat with a triumphant grin and takes a sip from Sanji’s drink. Sanji tries not to think of it as an indirect kiss as his cheeks burn flaming hot red.
Zoro’s POV
Seven Hours Prior
Perona sent Zoro to watch some movie.
They had a whole fight about whether or not it was worth the hype she was giving it (she took Mihawk to see it the week prior and hasn’t shut up about it since), and she argued that maybe Zoro should actually watch the movie first before running his “big, fat, filthy mouth”. And so Zoro set out to find the theatre.
Four Hours Later
When Perona pulled up in Mihawk’s car alongside Zoro, where he had been gunning down a random street completely outside of the city, he blushed but didn’t say anything as he begrudgingly got in the passenger seat.
“Lucky for you, there’s still one showing left,” Perona told him as she made a U-turn. “You’ll be late to even that one, but you should be able to catch the gist if you pay attention.”
Zoro still didn’t answer, and stared petulantly out the window as his big sister dropped him off at the theatre like it was daycare.
“I’ll be back to pick you up in two hours. Please, for the love of all things cute and spooky, don’t go anywhere else. It was hard enough finding you just now.”
“I was, like, right behind the theatre. It’s not my fault you took the long way driving here!”
“Whatever you say, brat. Don’t get into trouble.” Zoro got out of the car and turned to leave. “Hey, Zoro! I love you! Stop pouting!”
“Rona, just leave! You’re embarrassing me!”
“Fix your shirt!”
“Rona!”
“And your hair!”
“Perona! Go!”
“Fine,” Perona said, sporting a pout of her own. She puffed out her cheeks, big black eyes wide as saucers as she rapidly blinked thick lashes at him.
Zoro cracked far sooner than he’d like to admit.
“Fine, fine, I love you, thanks for helping me get here. Now go.”
“Bye, Zoro!” Perona called as a cheerful smile settled onto her face.
Zoro rolled his eyes, but still waved at her over his shoulder as he turned to continue into the theatre. “Bye, Rona.”
When he got to the ticket booth and saw that there was only one other person watching the film, Zoro laughed to himself, then bought the ticket right next to them, just to be a little shit.
Later That Evening
Mihawk’s Manor
Who would have thought Zoro would end the day with a bruise to the thigh, a new list of personally curated nicknames, a light verbal sparring match, and the phone number of the hottest guy he’s ever met. He’s almost happy enough to admit to Perona’s smug ass that he got lost, and would do it all again with a smile on his face.
She keeps laughing (“Horohorohoro!”) to Mihawk over wine about how, when she picked Zoro up from the front of the theatre, he was blushing and staring after some pretty blond as he got into his car.
“Oh?” Mihawk asks. “You’ll have to bring him over, some time, Zoro. It intrigues me that someone has caught your attention in such a short span of time. Is he strong, by chance?”
Zoro, still blushing just as fiercely while shoving away Perona’s manicured fingers as she picks at his hair and tells him he needs a haircut before his next date, only groans. “Yeah, he is.” He massages the bruise on his thigh. “Whatever, I’ll tell him about your interest. You’re both so annoying.”
Mihawk, satisfied with this answer, says “Marvellous,” then takes another sip of the wine he makes at his own vineyard.
“I told you the movie was good and you should go see it!” says Perona.
“Fuck off, Rona, your movie was ass,” says Zoro, before pulling her into an affectionate headlock and rubbing his knuckles over her head.
“Zoro! My hair! Mihawk, help!”
“Marvellous, I believe this year’s grape harvest was our best yet. I will have to make notations of what we did differently.”