/🪽𝙴𝚗𝚔𝚎𝚕𝚒-★

He does not look at the reflection in the steel bench while he says it and definitely does not notice that his own hair’s tied back at the nape with a dark ribbon now because it’s long and streaked with just enough silver that it falls in waves, that there are fine lines at the corners of his eyes from squinting into kitchen lights and grinning too much, that his jaw’s the same but his expression has mellowed into something that scares customers less and staff more.

He goes to charm the diners and check everything's okay, greeting regulars and newcomers alike until the back door bangs open fifteen minutes later with a gust of sea air and ego. Zoro steps back into the restaurant like he owns the place, hair a little mussed and shirt a little more open at the throat, forearms faintly scuffed. There’s the tiniest smear of blood on his collarbone that is, frankly, illegal.

He looks annoyingly good. Sanji pretends not to notice any of it. 

The restaurant catches that detail like a dropped coin: every table within eyeshot goes just a touch quieter. A few necks crane. Someone at the bar actually starts counting under their breath – ten, nine, eight – because they’ve been here before and they know exactly how long the swordsman can walk without his knee giving up. Sanji feels it before he sees it: that wrong hitch, that faintly off rhythm. The same way he can tell when a sauce has caught the barest edge of a burn before anyone else can smell it.

He sighs. “Don’t you dare sit in my dining room like that. You’re gonna depress the customers.”

Zoro heads for the bar anyway, because he has no survival instincts left at all, apparently. “I won.”

“You limped,” Sanji shoots back. “Like a grandpa who missed his nap.”

“I did not limp.”

The entire restaurant, as one, watches his left knee fail a little on the last step up to the bar. A few people hide smiles behind their hands and Sanji arches an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. C’mon Mossy, park it. You’re scaring the furniture.”

Zoro drops onto a bar stool with an involuntary grunt and then immediately pretends he didn’t grunt. “Floor’s uneven.”

He’s trying for nonchalant and it almost works, if you ignore the way he’s sitting carefully, weight angled away from his right leg, shoulders tight in a way that means something hurts and he’s pretending it doesn’t.

Sanji leans in, bracing his hands on the bar, and lowers his voice. “What did you pull?” he asks, and the concern only bleeds into the word pull a little.

Zoro scowls. “Nothing.”

“Hamstring?”

“Fine.”

“Knee?”

“Fine.”

Sanji narrows his eyes. “Back?”

Zoro hesitates for a fraction of a second too long.  “It was one swing. Kid ducked weird.”

“You swung weird,” Sanji corrects. “Because you’re old and your joints hate you now.”

A nearby table chuckles. Sanji doesn’t even pretend not to hear it.

Zoro bristles. “I’m not old.”

“You’re making noises when you sit down,” Sanji says. “That’s the cut-off, sweetheart. Once you groan sitting, it’s over. Pack it in. Start buying comfortable shoes.”

“I always groan when I sit down,” Zoro snaps.

The waiter from earlier – the one who came to fetch Zoro for the duel – edges past with a tray of empty plates, trying and failing not to look guilty. Sanji catches him with a stare. “You. How bad did he show off?”

The kid goes pink to the roots of his hair. “I, uh, Chef, he was very… stylish?”

Zoro grins, shameless. “See?”

“And then,” the kid adds, because he’s new and doesn’t realise he should stop talking. “He twisted weird when he blocked that overhead strike and I thought his spine made a noise –”

“It did not,” Zoro says, offended.

“And then he told the challenger he was just warming up and won in like three moves.” The kid looks starry-eyed. “It was really cool.”

Zoro smirks. “You hear that? Cool.”

There’s a flustered scramble in Sanji’s brain at the excitement, visible on his face like a storm trying to decide whether to break. “That’s…” he coughs and tugs at his tie just for something to do. “You’re such an idiot.”

“You married me,” Zoro reminds him.

“Against my better judgment.”

“So whose fault is that?”

Sanji snorts but he’s smiling now, small and crooked, that private one Zoro gets more than anyone. “Still yours,” he says, poking Zoro in the side. “I refuse to take responsibility.”

His knees are kind of aching in that dull way that means he worked sixteen-hour days in his twenties like an idiot and his body took notes. He thinks about how Zoro should look out of place in a restaurant like this but never, ever has. He looks like he owns the floor he walks on.

“Anyway,” Sanji adds, voice dropping a notch, softened by fondness he’d rather eat glass than name. “You know I don’t mind, right? It’s okay to take it a little slower, Moss. We both know you’re old as hell now.”

Zoro snorts. “You planning to trade me in for a newer model?”

Sanji makes a face like he’s bitten citrus pith. “Please. I don’t have the energy to train another man from scratch.”

Zoro gives him a flat look. “Train.”

“Housebreak,” Sanji amends, halo-bright. He’s expecting the usual elbow, the muttered shitty cook. Instead, Zoro’s hand comes up, surprisingly gentle, and catches his wrist mid-gesture, warm. His thumb brushes over the paper-thin skin there, where the veins show pale blue and a pulse beats steady and familiar. Sanji feels it jump when Zoro’s thumb presses down before, in an act of unprovoked romance so casual that it still somehow make Sanji’s brain short-circuit for a second, Zoro lifts his wrist and presses his mouth to it. A slow, deliberate kiss, no teeth, no show, just heat and softness lingering at the fluttering point of his pulse.

For a moment, the restaurant noise blurs around the edges.

“You’re one to talk,” Zoro murmurs against his skin. “You’re the one stealing all the good genes.”

Sanji’s grin is instant, sharp as a filleting knife. “So you admit I’ve aged better?”

Zoro groans. “I admit you spend three hours a day on skincare.”

“Discipline,” Sanji says smugly, slipping his hand free only so he can wag a finger in Zoro’s face. “You could try it sometime.”

“Pass.” Zoro scans the room, eye narrowed with lazy contentment. “I like my wrinkles. Makes me look dangerous.”

“Baby,” Sanji says, patting his cheek. “The apron does all the work.”

He sidesteps a passing waiter with a practiced twist of his hips and glides toward Table Six, where there’s a family of four who’ve become regulars without even seeming to realise it. The older woman in the middle has short grey hair, lipstick perfect, pearls bouncing as she laughs. Sanji remembers her anniversary last month, the way she’d teared up over the bouillabaisse, the generous tip folded under her saucer.

“Everything alright over here?” Sanji asks, voice smooth, turning the charm up just enough to sparkle but not blind.

She lifts her glass and smiles, eyes crinkling. “We were just saying, Chef, it’s very charming watching you two bicker. It keeps the soul youthful.”

Sanji feels his soul leave his body, stage left. He flashes her a dazzling smile anyway, because muscle memory is a hell of a drug. “I apologise for the disturbance, madam,” he purrs. “Dessert’s on the house.”

“Oh, don’t you dare apologise!” She waves him off and her husband nods like he’s been thoroughly entertained by their last five minutes of ambient marital sniping.

As Sanji steps back Zoro’s presence folds into his side like a tide coming in. Not touching, but close enough he can feel the heat of him through the crisp cotton of his shirt.

“We could settle this properly, you know,” he says, low enough only Sanji can hear over the dining room buzz.

Sanji’s pulse trips but he plays dumb anyway, because some habits are forever. “Oh?” He arches an eyebrow. “You want to argue right here, now? Get the entire dining room to vote on who’s aged better?”

Zoro shrugs one shoulder, eye half-lidded and annoyingly fond. “I want a count.”

“Of what, exactly?” Sanji keeps his tone light, but he can feel the ground tilt under his feet in that familiar stupid way it always does when Zoro’s attention locks in like this.

“Number of people who’ve seen you first thing in the morning,” Zoro says like he’s discussing wine pairings. “And still think you’re the hottest thing on the ship.”

Heat punches into Sanji’s cheeks, traitorous and immediate. “That’s a… very small sample size, Mosshead.”

“Exactly.” Zoro smirks. “I’m the specialist here.”

Sanji glares at him but Zoro’s expression doesn’t budge. The anger’s fake, the heat isn’t. His heart’s trying to punch a hole through his ribs and the staff are absolutely listening with both ears while pretending to polish silver.

Then Zoro’s gaze flicks down to his mouth. The room shrinks around that tiny point of focus. “Let’s compare properly.”

Sanji swallows, throat suddenly dry. He glances around and where half the regulars are pretending not to stare with the worst poker faces he’s seen off a card table. The line cook on expo is physically leaning out of the pass to watch. He clears his throat and raises his voice. “Petra, you’re in charge for a bit.”

Petra pokes their head out, grinning like she’s been snapped to attention. “Yes, Chef,” she calls back, chipper and unbothered, the voice of someone who absolutely knows they’re being promoted so her bosses can go make out.

Sanji turns back to Zoro, lips quirking at the edges. “You’re not dragging me out back like some bar brawl. We’re respectable now.”

“Who said anything about dragging?” Zoro asks, tone edging toward a growl. “I’m walking. Proudly.”

“You’re impossible,” Sanji mutters. “You’re insufferable. You snore now, did you know that?”

“You drool,” Zoro counters, without missing a beat.

“I do not.”

“You do when you fall asleep on the sofa.” Zoro’s mouth curves. “Sometimes I have to tilt your head so you don’t drown.”

Sanji’s outrage is half real, half performance, all energy. “Take that back.”

“Make me.”

Oh. Oh, there it is. The spark that’s been there since the Sunny, since knives and swords and stupid bets and bruised ribs and stolen shirts. Softer now, banked under years and trust and joint tax returns but still there, bright and reckless and wanting an excuse.

Sanji scoffs. “Fine. Come on, old man.” He hooks his fingers in the front of Zoro’s shirt and yanks. There’s a chorus of muffled cheers from the kitchen he pretends he doesn’t hear as he steers Zoro through the swinging door with practiced ease, sidestepping a busboy carrying a tray of glasses, nodding to Mattias at the dishpit, ignoring the smirk on Petra’s face as she presents a perfect creme brulee with a flourish of: “I’ll send someone to knock if the building’s on fire.”

“Five minutes,” Sanji warns the room at large.

“Liar,” Petra murmurs. 

Sanji kicks the office door shut behind them. The tiny room looks like it always does at the end of a shift: coat hooks overloaded, paperwork stacked in controlled chaos, the small window cracked open to let in a slice of sea air. There’s flour dust on the floor, a spare apron draped over the back of Zoro’s chair, a photo of the old crew on the shelf: Luffy mid-leap, Nami mid-yell, all of them younger and stupider and somehow the same.

“You really wanna claim either of us aged better than the other?” Sanji asks, backing Zoro toward the filing cabinet with light, deliberate pressure. The metal bumps Zoro’s lower back; he doesn’t resist. “You lose your one remaining brain cell?”

Zoro looks him over slowly. Sanji can feel it like a touch: the pause at the silver in his hair at his temples, the laugh lines etched at the corners of his eyes, the scar along his ribs that peeks when his shirt pulls. The flour on his sleeve, the ink smudge on his fingers from signing invoices.

“Yeah,” Zoro says finally. He looks like he means every syllable. “Yeah, I did. But only because I got to watch you do it.”

Sanji’s breath stutters, catching in his chest. It’s ridiculous how one line can still hit like a blow, even after all these years of knowing this idiot is secretly made of poetry and stubbornness in equal parts. “You’re such a sap.”

Then he grabs Zoro’s jaw and kisses him, slotting into place like a sword finding its sheath. Familiar and new every damn time – years of practice behind the first press of lips, years of wanting under the way their mouths open against each other. garettes he thinks Sanji doesn’t smell. Zoro answers with the easy hunger of a man who has nothing to prove to the world and still wants to prove everything to him. His hands come up, one bracing on the cabinet behind him, the other finding Sanji’s waist, fingers digging in just enough to make him feel owned without pinned and Sanji hums into his mouth, satisfied. The filing cabinet rattles and papers slide sideways and Zoro laughs against his lips, short and breathy. Sanji steals the sound with a sharper kiss, teeth catching Zoro’s lower lip in quick retaliation.

Zoro’s answering noise is low and rough, half groan, half there you are.

Sanji keeps it messy on purpose; he likes Zoro a little off-balance, likes the way his grip tightens when Sanji deepens the kiss, tongue sweeping in to taste, to tease. Likes that he can feel the exact moment Zoro’s focus shifts from banter to his muscles loosening, mouth going softer, then hungrier.

“Fuck,” Zoro mutters against his lips, hands flexing at his waist.

“Language,” Sanji says, biting the word into his mouth. “Family restaurant.”

“Closed,” Zoro points out, then catches Sanji’s bottom lip between his own, sucking just enough to make Sanji’s knees suggest compromising life choices.

“Almost closed,” Sanji corrects, voice gone rough. He slides his hands up, fingers threading into the streaked hair at the back of Zoro’s head, tugging gently, angling him where he wants him. Zoro follows the pull with embarrassing eagerness for someone who used to posture about being the strong silent type, chasing Sanji’s mouth like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to hunt, the same single-minded intensity he used to reserve for sword forms and impossible promises.

Sanji’s back bumps the desk, edge digging into his hips. A stack of invoices goes sliding to the floor with a soft papery shuffle. The little office fills with the wet sound of kissing, the creak of furniture, their mingled breathing getting rougher.

“Chair,” Zoro mutters, half-shoved into Sanji’s throat.

“Filing cabinet,” Sanji returns, fingers tightening in his hair. “Stay put. I like you where I can reach.” He nips Zoro’s jaw, just below the ear, then follows the line down to his throat, tasting salt and soap and the faint ghost of cologne he pretends not to notice Zoro using on special nights. Zoro’s hand clenches at his waist; his head tips back, throat bared, an invitation Sanji will never, ever get tired of accepting.

“Still think you’re the specialist?” Sanji asks, words ghosting against his pulse.

Zoro’s laugh turns into a hiss when Sanji bites a mark just above his collar. “I know I am,” he says but it’s ruined by the way his breath stutters. “Sample size hasn’t complained yet.”

Sanji pulls back just enough to look at him, at the grey in his hair, the scar across his eye, the stupid, stubborn mouth swollen from kissing. The lines at the corners of his eyes that are as much from laughter as from squinting into the sun. The way he’s looking back, like Sanji is something to devour and something to protect, all tangled together.

“Yeah,” Sanji says softly. “You aged alright, Moss.”

Zoro searches his face, something thick and bright moving behind his gaze. “You too,” he says. “Better than alright.”

Inside the little office, with its smell of paper and spices and the salt-heavy breeze sneaking in through the cracked window, two idiots who somehow survived long enough to collect laugh lines and scars and a stupid amount of shared everything lean into each other. Sanji presses their foreheads together, breathing the same air, thumbs smoothing over Zoro’s jaw. Zoro’s hands rest at his waist, fingers splayed, holding him like something precious and perfectly ordinary.

“C’mon,” Sanji says eventually, voice soft but steady. “Back to work, old man. We’ve got a restaurant to close.”

He pulls the door open to the sound of staff wolf-whistling and regulars pretending they weren’t absolutely listening in. Zoro follows him out, shirt a little rumpled, mouth a little swollen, eye bright in that way that makes Sanji’s stupid heart feel twenty again. They step back into the hum of the restaurant together, still bickering, still laughing, still choosing this, each other, this life, this ridiculous, wonderful now.

x