phosphenes (n.) zoro x sanji [roommates au]

chapter 33 - feuillemort

s/n: first love/ late spring - mitski

"Everything was screaming;
the sea, the wind, my heart."

- Yann Martel,
Life of Pi

[ zoro ]

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"
He squinted, trying to make out the pale, foggy outline of the blond.
He looked like a ghost in the dark.

He heard the blond chuckle incredulously. "What the fuck, Marimo? I'm supposed to ask you that."

His finger were carding through his golden hair as his voice turned sharp. "What the hell are you doing in front of my dorm?"

The tanned boy frowned hard.
"Isn't this my dorm?"

The blond shook his head and laughed again, this time sounding much lighter. "It's amazing how your shitty sense of direction can get even shittier."

"I'm not," He muttered, his face burning.
"-lost."

"Sure, idiot Marimo." Sanji snickered into his fist as he opened the door to his dorm.

As his twinkling blue eyes sent him to an ice bath,
it made the tanned boy think that he's in a dream cooked up in a drunken stupor—a fantasy created by a Sanji-deprived self.

"Wanna..."
The blond tilted his head to the open doorway. "-come in for a drink?"

Then he suddenly clicked his tongue, interrupting himself. "Or maybe just a dessert. You look like you've way too many."

"Got to get rid of the pudding I made in the fridge anyway." He murmured offhandedly as he waited for the tanned boy's response.

Zoro wanted to say tons of things in reply—'Are you a dream?', 'Why the hell have you been ignoring me?' and 'You look like you're crafted out of moonlight.'—and the like,
but none of them could bring him to reject Sanji.

The blond frowned impatiently at his silence, but he left the door open for Zoro. Sanji knew that tanned boy too well— that Zoro would follow him
even down to hell.

This hell looked empty and white, like a bigger extension of his old room. Zoro heard glass clinking in the kitchen and some shuffling, as he stood awkwardly in the doorway, not knowing how much of him was welcome.

There was a huge black painting that hung over the living room and he stared into it, finding the oily varnish refracting the greens of his hair.

His neck erupted in freezing cold and he jolted and cursed in shock—Sanji had pressed the jar to his skin.

"Eat this and sober up, Marimo." Sanji passed him the cold jar of pudding and a spoon, smirking at his reaction.

As they sat, digging into the custard, the blond spoke casually and made small talk as if they were still like before. "Made these for Luffy but I secretly saved some for myself."

"...That idiot has a rubber stomach or something. He ate like, 25 at once."

The blond continued with a light chuckle. "Had to pry the 26th one away from his hands and
kicked him out of my dorm."