Chapter Text
Zoro, exhausted and sweaty, groaned when he saw the elevator. That damn fire. He figured that it would be back to running as normal sometime between his leaving for the gym at the crack of dawn and him returning to the apartment complex a little after eight.
Instead, all he saw was a red closed for repair sign. Zoro closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was a man, a fighter, he did not lose his shit over a broken elevator, no matter how inconvenient it may be.
His tired arms pulled at the concrete emergency exit door and he began his ascent up the stairs. If only Koushirou didn’t end class with a round of conditioning, Zoro’s jelly legs wouldn’t be stumbling up the seven flights of stairs. It’s not, necessarily, that he minded walking home after a good day of training, just that he wanted to be home now and not five minutes from now.
But he kept trudging up the stairs, overwhelmed with the growing suspicion that something was waiting for him. Not a roommate, and definitely not a hot piece of ass, but a treat nonetheless.
Tumbling out the concrete staircase proved worth it. In front of his door, the door closest to the stairs, was a plate covered in plastic wrap. He squatted next to the package. Cookies, maybe? It was too well covered to tell.
Zoro's calloused hands quickly ran over the top and bottoms of the plate. No note this time. Both quickly and far too late, Zoro whipped his head around to see if there was any trace of the mysterious deliverer, but the only thing he saw was the community board showing off various apartment residents‘ pets.
Groaning for real this time, Zoro pushed his sore body up, making sure to bring the plate with him. A turn of the keys later, Zoro was in the dark of his apartment.
“Daddy’s home!” He shouted into the empty apartment, laughing both at the idea of someone rushing to come treat him and the fact that, yes, he was technically the man of this house. His homemaking definitely showed.
There was a padded mat in front of the television, where a couch would be, and a white plastic table in the corner by the balcony. No posters. No curtains. No fancy towels or rugs. Just Zoro and his stuff. It’s not like it mattered really, he barely spent any time in the place beyond the seven to eight hours it took to sleep and wake up. He didn’t need it to be homey for him to feel at peace.
Zoro carefully placed the plate on the sad plastic table. Although it was all the same to him, homemade deserts didn’t hurt.
He didn’t bother trying to rip off the plastic wrap off with his bare hands. He had tried that with the first two mystery packages, before accidentally launching Banana pudding into his face and decided maybe that wasn’t the best option. Instead, he grabbed the scissors like a civilized man and cut through it. Huh. It looked like some kind of bread. Not bothering to change utensils, Zoro cut off a small slice.
It was, of course, delicious. A chewy texture and sweet crust with flavor he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It definitely wasn’t chicken, or broccoli, or rice – the three things Zoro had the best culinary hold over. He chuckled at his own joke. This mystery cook using vegetables to make a desert, imagine!
He threw the remaining piece into his mouth and cut off another before making his way to the fridge where there was no mystery.
Until a month ago, Zoro ate the same thing pretty much every day. Eggwhite oatmeal in the morning. Chicken, rice, and broccoli for lunch. Chicken, rice, and broccoli for dinner. He had a protein shake a day, but opted for the pre-made store bought ones unless it was a special occasion. And because he didn’t want scurvy, and because a little sugar before a roll never hurt, he always brought a handful of tangerines to the gym.
It’s not that he didn’t want to eat other food! He loved some good culinary exploration whenever the boys from the gym invited him out. He had just never learned to cook pretty much anything else. Having lived with bodybuilders, boxers, and, of course, martial artists for as long as he was old enough to cook, there wasn’t a big diversity of recipes to learn from – not that he had ever been the one cooking for the apartment. Now that he lived good and truly on his own, it was all but too easy to fall back on old favorites.
Besides, he was a fighter. He woke up the same time every morning, ran the same 4 miles every afternoon, trained at the same place everyday, and sleep at the same time every night. He wasn’t adventurous about anything, he thought as he put his plate of chicken, broccoli, and rice into the microwave. But also, he nibbled on sweet bread, maybe that was wrong. It probably wasn’t exactly safe to eat whatever mysterious desert landed on your front door step.
He hadn’t even known why he had done it. Maybe it was the note “New to the building, baked too many…” attached to the carefully stored plate of cookies, a note which Zoro had taped to the side of fridge. Or maybe it was the fact that cookies sure beat another night of only CBR. Beside, anyone who dropped something off on his doorstep would have to be another resident of the building or they would not have been allowed up, and who in the complex would want to poison him?
And so he ate the mystery cookies and they were fucking good, salivate in your mouth while you’re still eating them type-of good. Zoro ended up bringing the rest of the cookies with him to the gym the next day, and even Kuina, who had been absolutely appalled to hear that he had done something so stupid admitted that they were delicious.
So three days later, when the dreaded banana pudding showed up in front of his door. Yeah, he was going to eat it.
The microwave dinged. Zoro tried to pull out his dinner, but instead burnt himself on the hot plate. Damn. He peered into the steaming microwave to see that the micro wave did in fact dry out his chicken, again.
When it was finally cool enough to touch, Zoro brought his dinner to the sole plastic chair around his dining room table. Placing his plate next to the bread, he began to dig in.
It had been mostly fun, some irregularity in an otherwise routine life. As long as he was poisoned, no harm! Especially not when he found himself having a reason to leave the gym that did not include two sheets and a pillow. Waiting in the elevator or running up the stairs, he wondered if there would be something in front of his door today.
When dinner was over, Zoro did the dishes and placed the rest of the bread in the fridge. Google said bread last longer if you refrigerate it.
Stumbling his way into the bathroom, the soreness of the day finally hit him. It wasn’t the satisfacting shake of a workout well done, but the bone-biting tiredness and burgeoning bruises that left him wanting to take a nap on the shower floor. He didn’t. Instead, he powered through, like he powered through everything, washing his body like the well-oiled machine that it was.
In the haze of the extreme exhaustion and steam, Zoro’s mind wandered back to the mystery cook. It had to be someone in the complex, but why hasn’t they left their name or their apartment number? And why was the baking all the damn time?
Zoro got carried away with the fantasy of the mystery cook’s true identity.
They were definitely a nice old lady who couldn’t get out of the house much on account of a bad hip. Zoro groaned, he had been thrown directly into his own hip that day. But she baked so often because she once had a house full of grandchildren, even now that they have grown up and moved away, her habit stuck. When Zoro finally catches her, she might even ask him what his favorite desert is and start to bake it. He turned off the water. She might even invite him over for dinner.