Zoro is sprawled back on his own bed, wearing nothing but his boxers and Sanji is trying his best not to stare.

"I still don't understand why Nami is bankrolling this whole thing, she gave you what $800? As if I didn't owe her enough money." Zoro says. The movement of his adam's apple as he speaks makes Sanji feel… weird. Instead, he focuses on the wardrobe of new clothes in front of him.

"She said it wasn't to be added to your debt, she made it sound like she was losing some kind of deal with Robin. I didn't ask. All I know is I have to help your incompetent ass and return anything you don't use." Sanji explains.

"What does Robin even have to- you know what, I don't even want to know." Zoro sighs from behind Sanji.

Sanji slides his fingers over a pair of sleek black trousers, starkly pressed to look extra sharp. Black was a classic for a reason. He pulls the pair off of the hook and throws it at Zoro.

"Put those on and don't remove the tags." Sanji commands him.

Zoro rolls off of the bed and slides into his new black trousers. They are tight, not so much so that Zoro can't comfortably do the button up but they were clearly made for men without Zoro's musculature. He can see every hill and valley in Zoro's impressive thighs, not to mention the swell of his ass which unfortunately draws the fabric awfully tight around Zoro's… well. If Sanji didn't already know what kind of underwear Zoro was wearing then he could certainly describe it from this, hell he could probably tell an interested bystander a good deal about Zoro's dick.

"Take them off." Sanji says, his throat dry.

"Why? They fit." Zoro protests.

"Just because you can get into something doesn't mean it fits. Do what I tell you, I'll get you the next size up. I anticipated this." Sanji says smartly.

Zoro huffs in irritation, and his hands go to the button, and he starts to undo the pornographically tight trousers. Sanji's heart seizes, and he whips around to face the other way and stare at the clothes hanging up. It's stupid, Zoro was just in his boxers so seeing him get back to that state shouldn't be flustering but it is. Perhaps because it calls to mind the sense of what could be, of the other context that Zoro could be stripping for him.

As he stares unseeingly ahead at mixed wool blends, he silently admits that there might be a… a thing with Zoro. He hates it, and he hates himself. Maybe his upbringing was very masculine and macho, and perhaps he has some biases that he needs to hammer out, all that is well and good but it doesn't help this. He's always been attracted to women and only women. Women and Zoro. He hates it because it suggests that he doesn't know himself as well as he could, that he doesn't have as firm a control over himself as he should. It doesn't even make sense because if he was going to be into men he's sure that he would have a more refined taste than just Zoro.

He hates Zoro for it, and he knows that it's irrational to do so and that makes him angrier, and the whole thing spirals. It's not poor oblivious Zoro's fault that he's the only guy who gets Sanji hot under the collar. Nevertheless, it's made their whole friendship volatile and prickly, despite the fact that when Sanji can resist lashing out at Zoro he's actually a really great guy. He's got a sly sense of humour but he can also laugh at dumb shit, he's Sanji's double in the perpetual mission to bail Luffy out of trouble, and he's a great drinking buddy. The fact that he's desperate to plaster his naked body to every inch of Zoro's is incidental and to be ignored.

Sanji forces himself to get his head together and grabs the appropriate size up from the last one and hands it to Zoro.

"So do you think they've made some kind of bet or something?" Zoro asks Sanji as he slides into this garment.

"About what? Whether I can make it through this without strangling you with a tie?" Sanji asks, raising an eyebrow at Zoro.

"Hah, no. Robin would never take a bet that stupid, there's no way you can get through this without strangling me with a tie." Zoro laughs brightly, and Sanji smirks too.

"A man can only take so much of your terrible personality at once." Sanji sighs in a long-suffering manner, albeit an overly theatrical one.

"Can I wear these, then?" Zoro asks, holding his hands out.

Sanji looks him up and down thoughtfully. The cut of the trousers is nice and though they hint at the muscles underneath he no longer looks vacuum sealed into them.

"Sit down, I want to see how they fit that way." Sanji instructs Zoro, and the man does as he's told. The trousers don't bite into Zoro's midsection, nor do they show off half his ass and the hems don't rise halfway up his shins either.

"Looks good, stand up and turn around." Sanji tells him and Zoro sighs and stands up.

"Bonney's not going to be staring at my ass, cook." Zoro says but obediently turns around anyway.

"Just shows what you know." Sanji retorts mindlessly. He's sure staring at Zoro's ass because it looks fantastic in these clothes. And there it is, that stab of a reminder that Sanji is here helping Zoro get ready for a date with someone else. Sanji is wrapping a present that he wants for someone else and trying to be happy about it.

"Just because you're a pervert with your dates doesn't mean everyone's like that." Zoro says mockingly.

"Whatever." Sanji mutters because it plays better than the retort of 'you're so hot you changed my sexuality, of course your date will stare'.

"Shirt and tie now." Sanji says, looking into the wardrobe at the array of choices he picked up. He's a little dismayed at how many things with blue on he picked up, he doesn't want to send Zoro out looking like him or send him out with Sanji's own signature colour plastered on him like a back-off signal.

"I can do this on my own, I can dress myself. I really don't see what Nami and Robin insisted on this for." Zoro grumbles and nudges Sanji out of the way with his hip. He grabs several things and starts haphazardly putting them on.

Zoro shrugs on a green shirt that he already had and a bright emerald tie that Sanji had bought and turns to Sanji expectantly.

"You look like Saint Patrick's Day threw up on you, take that all off." Sanji says and looks back into the wardrobe.

"And, since we're on the subject of your fashion crimes I am confiscating this purple shirt." Sanji informs Zoro and takes the dress shirt out of the wardrobe. Again, one of Zoro's own belongings and not something that Sanji chose. He's only seen him wear it twice, but that was more than enough.

"What's wrong with that shirt? You have shirts in that colour, and it's the same cut as all the other shirts here!" Zoro protests and tries to grab it back.

"Yes, but I get to look dignified in aubergine and purple jewel tones. You, on the other hand, have green hair, and it makes you look like the goddamn Joker. I ought to do the world a favour and burn it. Put this on instead." Sanji commands, throwing the purple shirt away and instead pressing a crisp white shirt to Zoro's chest and handing him a tie to go with it as well.

"I could have picked this for myself, it's just white." Zoro says sullenly and tugs the shirt on with a smooth flex of muscles that Sanji resists touching.

"You do not get to criticise." Sanji tells him and catches him around the back of the neck with the tie and pulls him close. He starts doing up the tie in a showy trinity knot, it'll be a nice echo of his three earrings.

"How are you even doing that? And is this tie black? I could have chosen that." Zoro says defensively.

"No, it's got a green shine to it. It's subtle, something which you so clearly lack." Sanji says sharply and goes to the box that he has in the cupboard. He pops it open and sees that he got the right one first time. Two cufflinks shine back at him, and he plucks them from the case and catches Zoro by the wrist and sets them in place.

"These are black glass with a green sparkle to them, they're classy, so no complaining or losing them." Sanji says.

Now he just needs to choose a jacket for Zoro. He thinks that it'll have to be the black one, the jackets were more expensive so he couldn't get as much variety as he could with a shirt. This black jacket has a black silk lining, but he wishes it had a subtle green hint to it like the tie and cufflinks do. Oh well, it'll be fine.

Zoro's hand catches in the back of the t-shirt that Sanji is wearing, and it feels like another papercut to his heart. He's not wearing a suit, he's not dressed up, and Zoro is because Zoro is going on a date and it's not with him. In all the time he's known Zoro he's never, to Sanji's knowledge, gone on a date before and now he chooses to do so with her? What if he's with her forever? What if Sanji missed his chance?

"You really put a lot of effort into choosing all of this, didn't you?" Zoro asks him after a moment, oblivious to Sanji's agony.

"Of course I did." Sanji answers as calmly as he can manage. He squirms out of Zoro's grasp and pulls down the jacket from its hanger. He helps Zoro into it wordlessly, and then he turns the other man to the mirror.

He gets to watch the surprise on Zoro's face and the wonder as he looks himself over and sees how transformed he is. It's not like there's anything there that wasn't there before. A good suit can do wonders for a man but it's not actually magic, Zoro's fantastic body serves him well here. But he's tastefully dressed with flattering colours and cuts, and he looks like everything Sanji has ever fantasised about him and more. It's not for Sanji though, and it hurts like a twisted knife. He looks Zoro over in the mirror and feels several more knives stab into his back.

This was deliberate.

Not deliberate on Zoro's part of course, but on Nami and Robin's. They must know how Sanji feels, they're perceptive enough and this is meant to force him to face his feelings. Maybe if Sanji is charitable it's a reminder that if Sanji does nothing with those feelings then Zoro someday may be in a relationship with someone else permanently. However well intended it feels like a betrayal from them.

"You don't like it?" Zoro asks, looking over his shoulder at Sanji. They're close enough to kiss. He could, but he shouldn't and won't.

"No, I like it. You look great, I was just thinking about…" Sanji's brain desperately searches for a lie.

"Shoes," he says lamely, "you still have the nice dress shoes from Vivi's gala, right?"

"In the back of the hallway closet where I kicked them off that night, yeah." Zoro answers.

"They're what you need for this, I'll get them." Sanji says quickly and strides away. He needs to get Zoro off to his date before he does something stupid like confessing.

He opens the hallway closet and searches for the shoes and tries to force his feelings down. He tries to remind himself how stupid he is for having feelings for Zoro when he's never had them for another man, he's laughably inexperienced there, and he wouldn't know what to do with Zoro if he had him. He reminds himself that he doesn't know if Zoro even would be interested in Sanji. He clearly has an interest in women if he's going on a date with Bonney, so basic statistics suggest that he won't be interested in Sanji. So he should just… keep his mouth shut.

He stands up with Zoro's dusty shoes in hand and an ache in his heart. He cleans them off as he returns to Zoro and hands them over. Zoro sits on the edge of the bed and takes them from Sanji and puts them on.

"You're taking a taxi to the place, right?" Sanji asks as Zoro neatly does the laces on the shiny shoes.

"Yeah. Are you saying I'd get lost?" Zoro asks, looking up from the knot on his last shoe.

"Absolutely. And it'd be rude to keep a lady waiting as your dumb ass navigates them there." Sanji replies, more comfortable in their habitual bickering.

"You're an asshole. Do I look good now? Can I go?" Zoro asks, holding his arms out as if to show off all of himself.

"You… you look good. Go on. I'll clear up all the mess from the packaging." Sanji offers.

"You don't have to." Zoro says with a frown. God, Sanji wants to kiss him. He always hopes that his suits have this effect on other people, but it's painfully devastating when it's turned on him.

"It's fine, you wouldn't want to bring your date back here and have that mess of packaging and shirt clips all over your bed. The plastic ones, whatever they're called." Sanji rambles to avoid thinking about Zoro taking his date to bed.

"Thanks." Zoro says after a second or two. He tilts his head a little at Sanji and grins.

"You didn't even try to murder me with a tie." Zoro teases.

"Oh, well, you can just owe me one then. I'm sure I'll want to strangle you with a tie in the future when you do something fucking dumb. I wouldn't want to make you late for your date." Sanji chuckles.

"Was that a pun on being late? As in 'the late Mr. Roronoa'? You've been spending too much time with Brook." Zoro accuses.

"You have no proof that was a pun, go already." Sanji insists, shoving Zoro towards the door. The man relents and walks over there. He collects his keys, phone and wallet and then hesitates at the door, his hand on the handle.

"Thanks again." Zoro calls and then leaves.

With that Sanji is alone in Zoro's apartment.

He ambles about, picking up discarded tags that he had pulled from things when he decided that Zoro was going to wear them. He collects those plastic shirt tags and saves receipts for Nami. He sits down on Zoro's bed and does his very best not to think about how messed up this whole thing is.

Barely thinking he takes out his phone and texts Nami.

Why would you do this to me?

He squeezes his eyes shut and vacillates between feeling like he should have said something a long time ago and trying to force himself to be glad that he resisted because if he gave in he'd surely ruin everything.

His phone pings with a message from Nami.

Because you can't stay in denial. I'm sorry.

Sanji only just resists throwing his phone out of the window. Only just. Instead, he gathers up his things and leaves Zoro's home and heads to the bar near his home instead, now is not a time for being sober.