Archive of Our Own ^beta

Zoro turned his key in the lock for Sanji’s apartment and hesitantly opened the door. The lights were still off, which was a good sign. He knew that the blonde was at work today, and would be until late, but he still wanted to be cautious. Shuffling the bag of groceries he held higher in his arm, he fully opened the door and shut it behind him with a soft click. 

“Curls?” he called out. “You here?”

The silence he was met with was enough of a verification that the apartment was empty. Zoro more surely walked in, toeing his shoes off at the door before flicking the light on. Sanji’s apartment wasn’t big, but it was cozy. Plush, worn furniture with crocheted blankets thrown over the backs courtesy of his mother. Photographs of outings with friends decorated just about every wall. Assorted bookcases sat beneath the photos, laden with everything from cookbooks to biographies to bodice rippers (even though the blonde would vehemently deny that he owned the last ones). 

The kitchen, however, was Sanji’s pride and joy. Being a chef, he ensured that what meager space he had in his home to cook with was fully stocked with ingredients and fitted with top of the line appliances. Every surface was meticulously cleaned and every utenstil carefully organized. Zoro made his way into the room that his boyfriend considered his sanctuary and laid the groceries on the counter, sighing. This was going to be interesting.  

Today was his and the cook’s six month anniversary. How the two of them had ended up together after being at each others’ throats since freshman year of university was both beyond them. If Zoro asked Nami, though, they were the last two to figure out how they felt about each other. All of their little fights and sparring matches over the years eventually culminated into a drunken make-out session at a party half a year ago, and the rest was history. 

Sanji had felt awful that he had to work a double at his father’s restaurant that day, but Zoro assured him that they could always do something to celebrate the following day. The blonde was disappointed but acquiesced, not having any idea that Zoro planned a surprise for him to come home to. The green-haired man normally wasn’t one for grand romantic displays, but Sanji was absolutely a romantic at heart. And he was always the one cooking for other people — even if Zoro’s cooking skills weren’t nearly as good as his boyfriend’s, Sanji deserved someone to cook for him every once in a while. 

And Zoro had done research! Something he barely did while getting his degree! He wanted to try and cook something that seemed to be low-effort for a beginner, but that would still read as classy and something that had at least some thought put into it. That was how he landed on lasagna and garlic bread: Italian food was almost inherently date food, right? Not to mention, it was basically putting a bunch of stuff in a pan and throwing it in the oven, so how hard could it actually be?

The answer was much harder than Zoro had initially anticipated. 

The béchamel sauce alone took him three tries to finally get right. The first time he tried, he burned the butter and flour mixture before he could add the milk; the second, he added all of the milk at once and the sauce never thickened the way it was supposed to. How did the damned swirly brow make cooking look so effortless all the time?! He was grateful that he’d allotted several hours for himself to try and get the meal right since it took nearly an hour for that whole endeavor. 

The meat sauce was a whole other bear to deal with. Zoro liked to think that his skill in being a kendo instructor and a competitive sword fighter meant that he had a decent skill with blades. But that thought was squashed after he managed to cut his knuckle with one of Sanji’s nice kitchen knives while carefully dicing an onion. Thankfully he hadn’t bled onto the actual food, but it still hurt like a bitch — both physically in cleaning the cut, and emotionally to his pride. He dug around in Sanji's bathroom closet for bandages and grumbled when all he could find were cartoon sea creature ones. Those were probably bought with Chopper in mind when he and Robin visited. Still, it was better than nothing.

Then came the meat prep itself. The recipe Zoro found called for ground beef and Italian sausage in equal parts, but in removing the beef from the butcher packaging, a chunk of it fell out of the Styrofoam tray and onto the kitchen floor. And in the time it took him to properly clean and sanitize the floor from the raw meat, the sausage/beef mixture that he had put in the pan to brown started to smoke. He managed to salvage the pan and take it off the burner before it burned too much, but it definitely left a slightly acrid smell in the air. 

By the time he’d added the marinara sauce to the pan with the meat and onions, store-bought sauce to cut down on time and further frustration, it actually smelled pretty decent. Zoro filled a deep pot with water to boil the lasagna noodles in and he went to salt the water like he’d seen Sanji do countless times before while cooking. What hadn’t happened countless times before, though, was the top falling off of the salt and half the damn shaker getting dumped into the pot before Zoro could stop it. He had to pour all of the water down the sink and start again.

It felt like the world was conspiring against him at every turn. But finally, after nearly 3 hours of prep time for something that claimed to only take 40 minutes to prepare, Zoro was pretty proud of the final product that sat in the baking dish on Sanji’s stove. The noodles themselves might have been a bit mushier than he’d have liked, but they still held up enough to be layered with the sauces and cheese mixture. He set the oven to preheat and pulled out his phone as he waited. There was a notification that Sanji had texted him about a half hour ago. Probably during his break. He put in his passcode and opened his conversation with the blonde. 

Swirly Brow 💛 [6:42 pm]

I swear the damned geezer is trying to kill me 😭

Zoro snorted to himself and typed out a reply.

Marimo 💚 [7:05 pm]

why do u say that?

He hadn’t anticipated his boyfriend to respond to him right away, so when his phone buzzed right as he slid it back into his pocket, he startled a little. Pulling the device back out, he couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face at seeing Sanji’s contact name again. 

Swirly Brow 💛 [7:05 pm]

He had not one, but TWO large parties this morning!

And then he had the NERVE to tell me that I was falling behind on the dinner rush when it was Luffy’s fault for not running dishes fast enough! 

Marimo 💚 [7:07 pm]

sounds rough, i’m sorry 

how’re u still free rn tho?

Swirly Brow 💛 [7:07 pm]

Smoke break. I needed a breather. 

You still coming over later?

Marimo 💚 [7:08 pm]

yeah, if that’s still okay

i can let myself in if i beat u home

Swirly Brow 💛 [7:08 pm]

Sounds good, see you in about an hour, mon chou 💕

Marimo 💚 [7:08 pm]

see u curls 

Just as Zoro sent that last text, the oven beeped at him to signify that it was done pre-heating. He exhaled and opened the oven, carefully sliding the lasagna onto the rack. He closed the door and set a timer on his phone for 45 minutes. Part of him knew he probably ought to clean up the mess of dishes and utensils he’d left in his wake, but another part of him was exhausted from his cooking misadventures.

Zoro made his way into Sanji’s living room and sprawled out on the couch, groaning as he sank into the familiar, plush cushions. He double checked his phone to ensure that the timer was still counting down properly before letting his eyes fall shut. He’d just nap long enough for the lasagna to cook. 

He must have been more tired than he’d anticipated, because the next thing he knew, the sound of insistent, high-pitched beeping woke him up. Zoro yawned and reached for his phone to silence the alarm. He opened his eyes blearily and saw that there was still just over 12 minutes on his phone timer. That was when the smell of smoke hit his nostrils. 

Jolting awake, he bolted for the kitchen, wincing at the stronger burning smell that was coming from the oven. Zoro grabbed one of the chairs from the dining set and, moving on instinct, stood on it to fish the battery out of the still-beeping smoke detector on the ceiling. Chucking the battery onto the counter, the next step was actually getting the burning food out of the oven. He dismounted from the chair and he grabbed oven mitts from the top drawer by the stove, quickly throwing the door to the oven open. While the lasagna wasn’t actively on fire, a plume of dark smoke exited the oven, making him sputter and cough.  

“Marimo?!”

Shit. 

In the panic of trying to not burn his boyfriend’s apartment down, Zoro must have missed the sound of the blonde coming home. He whipped his head to the doorway and there stood Sanji, still in his white button-down and black slacks from work. His eyes were wide with panic, seeing the messy state of his kitchen and the smoke coming out of the oven.

“What the hell happened in here?!” coughed Sanji, waving his arm in front of his face to try and clear more of the acrid air.

“I don’t know!” Zoro called back. He threw the charred remnants of the dinner he’d worked so hard to prepare onto the stove and used his hip to shut the oven door. “I followed the recipe as best as I could, I made sure I set a timer, I don’t know what went wrong!”

Sanji crossed over next to the green-haired man in a matter of seconds, looking at the digital display on the oven before hurriedly shutting the appliance off. He also switched on the range hood for good measure, the fan whirring to life to clear the smoke. 

“What on earth were you cooking at 450 degrees?!” 

“Huh?” Zoro shucked off the oven mitts and checked the paper recipe he’d printed out and left on the counter. “The recipe said to set the oven for 375°, so that’s what I did!”

The blonde looked as if he wanted to strangle the other man. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose before taking in a slow breath through his nose and letting it out through his mouth. 

“The oven was set for 450°,” said Sanji patiently, but with an edge. He emphasized every word as if he were speaking to a child and opened those blue eyes back to Zoro. “I just turned it off myself. Is there a chance you put it in wrong?”

It was definitely possible. Given how Zoro had fared with the rest of the meal preparation, that would be the cherry on top. But he’d been so careful! He’d double checked the timer and everything and —

“The timer,” he breathed out.

“No, Mosshead, the oven was set for 450°. You didn’t even set the timer on the stove.”

Zoro held up the paper recipe again. “No, I think I might have accidentally set the oven to 450° because the timer was supposed to be set for 45 minutes. That’s the only thing I can think of because I made double sure that the timer on my phone was right.” He averted his eyes away from his boyfriend and hung his head. “I’m really sorry, Sanji. I just wanted to try and do something nice for our anniversary.”

For a long moment, Sanji was silent. Every worst case scenario was going through Zoro’s head, and he was terrified that he might get broken up with then and there. He heard shuffling and then a deep sigh before he felt a warm hand on his shoulder that made him flinch.

“I know you didn’t mean to,” murmured Sanji. “I’m just glad you’re okay and my apartment is still standing.” He took a knife from the wooden block beside the stove and prodded at the charred remains of the food. “What was this supposed to be anyway?”

Zoro raised his head meekly to look his boyfriend in the eye. “Lasagna…” 

A half smile quirked at Sanji’s lips. “You tried to make me lasagna?”

“Yeah…”

The cook set his knife down and gently plucked the paper that was still clutched in Zoro’s hand free. He scanned over it silently and made a noise of what sounded like curiosity. 

“You must have put a lot of thought into this,” mused Sanji. He removed his hand from Zoro’s shoulder and pointed to hand-scrawled notes in the margins of the page. “You made conversions in case you couldn’t find the right measuring cups and spoons. And you even wrote out how to pronounce ‘béchamel’ — was that in case I asked about it?”

“Yeah,” repeated Zoro, exhaling a sigh of his own. “I know you felt bad that you had to work today, and you deserved something special since you’re always the one cooking for everyone else.”

The smile on Sanji’s face grew fonder and he leaned in close to plant a gentle kiss on the green-haired man’s cheek.

“Even if it all went to shit, nobody’s gone through this much effort for me before. Thank you, Zoro.”

Zoro gave a soft smile of his own in return and moved to kiss the blonde on the lips. It was chaste, but Sanji returned it, cupping Zoro’s cheek and brushing his thumb over it. 

“Now,” Sanji said, stepping back and stretching his arms over his head. “You know how I feel about wasting food, but I’ve been up since 5 a.m. and I'm willing to look the other way just this once. I'm gonna go shower, change, and have a smoke in that order. I want that biohazard thrown out, those dishes cleaned, and takeout ordered in the time it takes for me to do those three things.”

“Yes, chef,” grinned Zoro, pulling his phone out of his back pocket. “Any preferences?”

“You pick,” shrugged the blonde as he made his way towards the hall leading to the bathroom. “Oh, and Marimo?”

“Yeah?”

Sanji turned his head back towards his boyfriend.

“In the future, stay the hell out of my kitchen.”