i think you might be sick of but i’d love a first kiss for them! soft or not soft idm!
i am never sick of first kisses i would write 1000 first kisses i think about first kisses all the time i love them your honour
x
It should be over.
The last of the enemy’s a heap of meat and armour where Zoro dropped him, smoke dragged in ragged strips between broken pillars. Luffy’s laugh punches holes in it, bright, hoarse, still riding the high while Usopp’s yelling about his ‘4,000,000,000-kill shot’ while Chopper’s little voice is going shrill about blood pressure. By any sane measure, the fight’s done.
It’s just that Sanji’s body doesn’t believe it.
His hands are still buzzing, every nerve lit up like someone shoved lightning into his bones and forgot to flip the switch off. His leg hums with leftover heat crawling under his skin with nowhere to go, like a storm trapped in muscle. Every breath tastes like iron and ash and that scorched edge of things that used to be buildings.
He lights a cigarette on autopilot, the spark jumping too big – bright, hungry, ready to roar down his calf. He swallows it back with a tiny clench of his jaw and the heat skitters up his shin and coils frustrated behind his knee.
“Oi! Sanji!” Luffy hollers from somewhere beyond the haze. “We won!”
He isn’t. He’s just standing in the middle of the ruin, shaking at a frequency nobody else seems to hear, hands itching for something that isn’t another body to hit and isn’t not-hitting anything at all.
Across the plaza, Zoro braces a boot against a toppled column and yanks his sword free from a seam in the stone. His shirt’s torn open at the shoulder, blood seeping through in a lazy dark bloom and his hair’s plastered in wild, wet spikes with sweat and someone else’s life; there’s a smear of red across his mouth where something got close enough to regret it.
He should look wrecked. He looks right in a way that’s almost obscene.
He rolls his neck and the vertebrae audibly crack, one-two-three. His chest’s still moving too fast, breath dragging in deep, controlled pulls like he’s manually forcing his lungs to behave while his eye’s sharp and somehow not here at all. still halfway inside the fight, tracking threats that are already dead. Shusui’s edge is blushed pink in places. He wipes it once on his leg – practical and automatic – and then, without even really looking at what he’s doing, drags his tongue along a streak.
It’s efficient, probably. Unthinking. Just another way to clean steel.
Sanji feels it like a hand closing around his throat from the inside.
The little spark he’s been tamping down flares viciously. He watches the tip of Zoro’s tongue catch the last of the blood, watches the cut of his jaw as he follows through, watches his throat flex around the swallow. Sanji’s pulse misfires at it, heat spiking hard in his chest in a bright, stupid yes that has nothing to do with good sense and everything to do with the way Zoro stands there, like a personal shrine to bad ideas.
Zoro’s gaze flicks up and hits him.
For a long, thin second, the noise from the rest of the crew goes flat and far away. The smoke, the bodies, the broken buildings are all just… background. All that’s in focus is the line between them: Sanji with a cigarette already burning too hot between his fingers and Zoro with his sword still open, blood drying against his skin.
Sanji drags in smoke. It scratches his throat, does nothing. His voice still comes out wrong when he opens his mouth, low and hoarse and steady in a way he doesn’t feel. “Moss. Walk.”
Zoro’s eye narrows, more instinct than thought. “If this is you dragging me to the doctor I’ll –”
Sanji jerks his chin at the skeleton of a side street with its half-collapsed walls, a strip of dirt, a wedge of shadow out of sight of the plaza. “Not to the doctor.”
His leg tingles, fire itching for somewhere to go. His fingers twitch around the cigarette like they’d rather be in someone’s collar. He doesn’t wait to see if Zoro follows as he starts toward the alley, smoke curling behind him, heart still pounding way too hard for a man whose fight is technically over.
He knows Zoro’ll come, he can feel it, like the pull of a magnet behind his ribs, like the way steel knows the weight of another blade before it hits.
The alley’s mostly empty, just one broken cart, a few chunks of stone, a wall that used to belong to a shopfront before somebody with three swords redefined its load-bearing capacity. he ground’s still radiating heat in places, warm through the sole of Sanji’s shoe. It smells like burnt wood, cracked stone and that hot copper tang of fresh wreckage that sits on the back of the tongue and won’t wash off.
Sanji flicks his cigarette away and grinds it under his heel. The ember smears out in a brief, angry comet.
“You pick the most romantic spots,” Zoro drawls as he turns into the alley but his voice is rubbed raw, as frayed as the edge of his whetstone. “What, planning to lecture me where Chopper can’t see?”
Up close, the wrongness of still going is worse. Or better. Depends which part of Sanji you ask.
Zoro’s muscles are ticking like he’s chewing on the last of the fight. His fingers flex near his hilts in restless, automatic pulses – seek, grip, release. The cut at the corner of his mouth has dried into a dark line, dragged down toward his chin. There’s a smear of blood on his throat, half his and half not, crusting at the edge of a pulse that’s still hammering.
Sanji’s hands twitch but he doesn’t reach. He raises his guard instead, palms open, weight rolling onto the balls of his feet. The stance slides into his body like an old habit, older than flirting, older than any of the lies he tells about himself. This is the one language he’s never had to translate.
“Five minutes,” he says. “No witnesses.”
Zoro stares at him for a beat before the corner of his mouth curls up, slow and sharp and mean in a way that hits Sanji right in the chest. “You asking for a rematch?”
Rematch. As if every time they’ve ever collided hasn’t been this. As if Sanji doesn’t file those spars away in a different drawer than other fights.
He makes himself scoff. “If you’re gonna vibrate hard enough to shake the Sunny apart I’d rather you do it where Nami can’t invoice us the damages.”
Zoro’s grin widens, all teeth. “You really think you can take me like this?”
Sanji’s heart kicks hard at the like this: blood warm, wrecked, still riding the edge. He kicks the air once, just enough to let the flame whisper up his calf. He drawls: “Oh, I’m counting on you being a mess. You’re always sloppier when you’re high on your own bloodlust.”
Zoro’s eye tracks the line of fire like a cat following a string. There’s a quick flash of something - want, challenge, recognition? God knows Sanji doesn’t have the vocabulary for the exact shade, he just knows it’s familiar and dangerous and aimed right back at him.
Then Zoro draws Shusui and Sanji shakes his head, automatic, a rough jerk. “Kitetsu,” he says firmly, teeth in the request because Kitetsu doesn’t pull punches, doesn’t let him get away with shit. Zoro looks surprised, maybe, but his mouth twists and he opens Kitetsu instead.
“Fine. Come get it, then.”
They hit each other like they’re trying to beat the world back into place.
The first clash is an impact more than a move, Sanji’s heel driving for Zoro’s ribs with all the leftover fury of the fight behind it. Kitetsu snaps up to meet it with a gunshot crack, its steel ringing up through Sanji’s bones in a sharp singing pain that anchors him more than it hurts. Heat flares where hot edge skims cold metal and a few angry sparks spit off his boot top die on the stone.
Zoro doesn’t absorb the blow. He hurls it back, shoulder bunching as he shoves, a full-bodied heave that drives Sanji off his line.
Sanji lets the force spin him so he can pivot hard on the ball of his foot and ride the recoil. His other leg whips around, flame snarling to life along his shin, aimed high at Zoro’s shoulder like he wants to take him off his feet or take his head off – whichever comes first, really. Unfortunately, Zoro drops under it at the last second in a fast, ugly duck that isn’t dojo-pretty and doesn’t need to be. The kick scythes over him instead, a blazing arc that kisses his upper arm instead of his neck. Cloth sizzles and splits. When Zoro straightens, there’s a strip of furious red skin showing through the tear.
“Watch it,” he grits, teeth bared.
“Or what,” Sanji growls back, already coming in again. “You’ll bleed on me?”
The alley churns with the noise of them: steel smashing against leather, boots grinding grit into the gravel, the hollow boom of bodies hitting walls that have taken too many hits already. Dust kicks up around their feet. A loose stone, cracked earlier by some bigger explosion, finally gives way under Zoro’s heel and skitters sideways and Kitetsu swings up just in time to turn aside Sanji’s knee before it caves his chest in.
They’re not pulling like they do with anyone else. They’re not trying to impress or spar neat or to work on their form. They are trying very sincerely to hurt each other, just… not enough to break anything that won’t heal in a day.
Sanji darts in close for once, feinting a knee to the gut just to see if he can rattle Zoro’s guard. Kitetsu’s hilt slams down to block but the angle’s bad, the space too tight and the guard clips Sanji’s knuckles on the way through, a sharp, clumsy crack. Pain flares bright across his hand as he jerks it back, swearing viciously. Blood wells up fast over the first two knucklesbefore it starts to run, a thin red line snaking down toward his wrist.
“Fuck,” he hisses.
He doesn’t get time to shake it off: Zoro’s already there, one big hand snapping out to catch his wrist. His grip is iron, fingers closing just hard enough to make Sanji’s bones creak. For a second Sanji thinks he’s going to wrench his arm, throw him, something normal.
Instead, he tilts Sanji’s hand so the bloody knuckles face up, exposed between them and swipes his thumb straight through the smear of red. The touch is fucking obscene in its casualness, in the way its slow and deliberate, not a grab or a strike. He drags across split skin, pressure enough to sting, gathering a thin shine of blood along the pad.
Sanji’s whole body jolts. “Oi!”
Zoro brings his thumb to his mouth and drag his tongue along the pad in one unhurried stroke, eyes never leaving Sanji’s. Sanji’s stomach drops. Heat flashes through him so fast it’s almost nausea. “That’s disgusting.”
“Please,” Zoro drawls, thumb still pressed to his own lip for a second like he’s considering another pass. His eye glints, sharp and intent. “I've had worse.”
Sanji’s heart’s pounding for the worst fucking reason, shock and fury and something he absolutely refuses to name tangling in his chest. “You don’t lick people in a fight!” he snaps, kicking at him more to break the moment than anything.
Zoro snorts, parrying on instinct. “Tell that to my blades.”
The worst part is the way he looks pleased with himself. Not smug but something darker, nastier, like he’s filed Sanji’s reaction away next to the way he flinches from lightning and lights up at a good cut of meat.
“You think that’s funny?” Sanji snarls, heat crawling up the back of his neck. “Use your tongue on me again and I’ll shove it so far down your throat you choke on it.”
“Promises, promises,” Zoro smirks and Sanji’s next kick aims for his ribs; he doesn’t care if the other man feels it for a week.
From there the fight gets worse.
Sanji’s leg is a livewire now, heat coiled along bone and muscle. Every swing feeds it, every impact sending a punishing jolt up to his hip. He feels raw and sharpened, stripped down to fire and motion and that nameless pulse under his ribs that’s been beating louder ever since Zoro’s mouth brushed blood.
Zoro meets him there. His movements are a fraction too fast, a fraction too cruel, like he hasn’t entirely shut the door on the battlefield behind his eyes. His footwork’s still good but it’s overclocked, tired; clean technique with the edges frayed off. Kitetsu whistles through the air close enough that Sanji can feel the air tear on his cheek as it passes, the hairs on his arm prickling in its wake.
Sanji drops low, sweeps for Zoro’s ankles but Zoro jumps the leg with a grunt, bringing the sword down in a two-handed slash that would’ve split a cannon. Sanji rolls under it, shoulder crunching against broken masonry, and comes up with a kick that slams into Zoro’s side hard enough to thud his back into the opposite wall.
Zoro rebounds, laughs once, short and breathless and mostly snarl. There’s blood running down his forearm now in a thin line where some earlier cut’s reopened and his eye’s clearing around the edges, losing that thousand-yard emptiness, focusing with a kind of horrible relief on the target in front of him.
Good, Sanji thinks viciously. Stay here.
Every blow and every near miss strips another layer off their nerves, sawing down the edge of their shared adrenaline from knife sharp to something they can actually hold without cutting themselves open. The ruined street, the bodies, the smoke – everything shrinks down to this ugly little strip of alley and the idiot trying to knock his teeth out.
He’s almost proud of himself for thinking this counts as self-care.
And then he fucks it up.
He feints left, baiting the sword high to spin in on a pivot, flame roaring brighter up his leg. It’s meant to be a clean kick just above Zoro’s hip, a good solid slam to crack him back against the wall and maybe, finally, knock his brain fully out of kill-mode.
The problem is, Zoro moves with him, stepoing in instead of out and it's just half a pace but it's enough that Sanji’s heel lands wrong. The impact hits half across Zoro’s side, all the force of the kick and all the focused heat of Diable driving straight through meat. The fire flares on contact, hungry, licking higher before Sanji can yank it back.
Zoro’s breath rips out of him in a low, raw sound and Sanji’s stomach just – flips. He jerks the flame back so violently it feels like someone yanked a burning cable out of his calf. His planted foot skids a little on loose stone as he staggers, balance jolting, heart slamming up into his throat so hard it hurts.
“Fuck,” he rasps, reaching without thinking, fingers snatching at Zoro’s shoulder to steady him, to steady himself, the taste of iron and smoke and that goddamn thumb-on-tongue image all tangled up in one hot, feral knot in his chest.
Zoro’s already moving, hand snapping out like a trap and fingers clamping firm on Sanji’s ankle right where the heat was, thumb pressing in exactly over the thin, tender strip of bone. THe grip’s too tight to be reflex and too deliberate to be casual.
Sanji jolts, balance still lurching; his leg is still half-braced against Zoro’s side, knee slotted awkwardly against hip. “You idiot, that wasn’t –”
“Don’t,” Zoro grinds out.
His fingers tighten and it should hurt, probably, but Sanji’s nerves are still crackling from the backlash, skin hypersensitive, the phantom burn fizzing along his toes. Every instinct says pull back, cool down, stop –
But Zoro’s hand is steady. Heavy. The weight of it pins more than just his ankle; it pins the moment in place.
Sanji can feel him shaking, a full-bodied tremble that runs through Zoro in thin, controlled lines, like he’s clamping his jaw around a growl and it’s leaked into his muscles instead. For the first time since the fight ended the swordsman drags in a breath that sounds like it actually hits his lungs. He sucks it between his teeth, chest hitching once, then again. His eye pulls itself into focus by degrees, like someone’s hauling him in on a line.
“Feels –” Zoro manages, voice rasped down to wire. He swallows, his throat working around the word like it’s hot. “Feels good.”
Oh.
Oh.
Sanji’s pulse spikes so hard he feels a little sick with it. The ugly, electric thrill of it crawls up his spine and unfurls behind his ribs like a grin he doesn’t dare show. “You're so fucked in the head” he whispers, voice dragged raw and fascinated.
“Big talk,” Zoro bites back, frayed. “For a guy that just branded me on purpose.”
“I didn’t –”
“You held it.” There’s a new, sharp edge under his words now, nothing to do with the burn. His thumb presses down, right over the jump of Sanji’s pulse, not gentle. “I felt you. You had a window to pull out and you let it cook.”
Sanji’s mouth goes dry because, yeah, it’s fair. He felt the moment to stop (clear, clean, a neat little exit point) and watched it glide past. Watched himself step over the line instead of away.
Zoro doesn’t let go of his ankle; he yanks. Sanji stumbles a step in, momentum doing half the work while Zoro’s other hand shoots up, grabbing his belt to haul him that last inch with ugly, efficient strength. They slam together,Sanji’s knee knocking Zoro’s thigh, crowding the space there until there isn’t any space at all.
Everything is too much: the heat coming off Zoro’s body, the sting of his own fire still trapped under his skin, the steady latch of fingers on his ankle and belt. They’re lined up in a way that has nothing to do with stance or leverage and everything to do with the fact that neither of them has ever learned how to want quietly.
“Still think this was about the Sunny’s repair bill?” Zoro mutters, voice rough enough to scrape.
Sanji’s laugh comes out more like a dragged-in gasp. His hands move without consulting him, hooking over the hard caps of Zoro’s shoulders, fingers digging into muscle tight as cable. He feels the tremor there too. “I think you needed a fucking outlet.”
“And you volunteered.” Zoro’s mouth twitches, humourless and hungry. “Idiot.”
“Look who took the hit,” Sanji snaps and the part of him that isn’t on fire notes, distantly, that they’re both insane. He should pull back now. Check the burn. Downgrade this from catastrophic to just plain stupid. Instead, he tips his chin forward, closing that last fraction of space like it’s a dare and Zoro meets him halfway like he’s been waiting for that cue his whole fucking life.
It’s a collision, at first – jaws, teeth, the hard crack of their mouths smashing together with all the finesse of a thrown bottle. Sanji’s teeth knock Zoro’s until a fresh smear of blood bursts warm and metallic across their tongues. Zoro makes a noise that’s less a sound and more a bite, surging in like he’s taking back territory, mouth opening.
Sanji doesn’t yield. He meets him and pushes right back, teeth catching Zoro’s lower lip, hand sliding up from his shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers locking into damp green like a bracket. He drags him down and forward, pinning him to the wall with his own body weight, forearm a solid bar across Zoro’s chest.
Zoro’s grip on his ankle slides up, knuckles skimming hard along the back of his calf, over the tender hollow of his knee, then catching high on his thigh. His hand lands there with ugly intent, thumb digging into the burn-ache screaming up from his leg. He pulls Sanji flush, hips snapping forward in one harsh, thoughtless roll.
Heat slams up Sanji’s spine in a straight line.
There’s nothing practiced about it, nothing polished. They’re terrible at this in a way that’s perfect: messy and desperate and still fighting even as they’re kissing, like neither of them knows how to touch without trying to win. Stone grinds under their boots as they scrape for better leverage. Stubble burns along Sanji’s jaw where Zoro drags his mouth sideways for a second, panting, before finding kissing him again. A low noise keeps breaking out of Zoro’s chest every time Sanji shifts, something like a snarl and a groan, something like he’s trying very hard not to beg.
“Sanji,” Zoro growls into his mouth, words catching on teeth and breath, more vibration than syllables.
“Yeah?” Sanji pants, dizzy, high, fire everywhere and nowhere, nowhere for it to go but here, in this.
“Don’t you dare –”
“Dare what,” Sanji taunts, because of course he does. The hand still braced on Zoro’s shoulder slips lower, sliding over battered muscle, along the jagged edge of scorched cloth. His fingers find the border of burned skin by feel alone to press right there, fingernails scraping over it just enough to make Zoro’s whole body jolt against him.
Zoro’s head tips back against the wall with a dull thud. He laughs, a wrecked bark that sounds ripped straight out of his chest. “Asshole,” he rasps, equal parts accusation and praise.
“Only for you,” Sanji shoots back before he can stop himself. It comes out rawer than he means, a stupid little truth flung into the space between their teeth.
Zoro’s eye snaps back to his, wide and bright. Whatever restraint was clinging to the edges of him snaps like wet twine: he hauls Sanji in by the thigh and throat in the same motion, grinding up, deeper, harder. Sanji’s knees go weak; the only reason he doesn’t slide down is because Zoro’s grip on him has gone possessive, almost bruising.
It’s a livewire straight into Sanji’s brain, the way he can feel the wild staccato of Zoro's heart, the way he scrapes his nails over the scorched patch of skin again and again. Each pass reshapes Zoro’s face, lashes flickering, jaw tightening, mouth going slack on a breath before he bites down on another groan.
He’s right at the edge of forgetting his own name, the crew, the island, everything that isn’t this fucked-up little circuit they’ve built between fire and blood and teeth and –
“Uh, guys?”
Sanji jerks like someone stuck a knife between his ribs. The word skids into the alley from the mouth of it, high and horrified, thin as a thrown stone and they both freeze, instincts slamming the emergency brake hard enough to give them whiplash.
Usopp’s got one hand splayed on the cracked wall, eyes about three sizes too big for his face. He’s gone pale under the freckles in a way Sanji has only ever seen when someone says bounty hunter or cannon.
For a heartbeat no-one moves. Sanji can feel Zoro’s chest still heaving against his, can feel his own fingers still pressed into burned skin. Sanji realises exactly what this looks like at the same moment Zoro’s fingers spasm on his hip and they jerk apart like someone’s cut the rope between them.
Usopp makes a noise Sanji has literally never heard a human throat produce. It starts as: “Oh –” and ends in a strangled squeak that would be funny if Sanji’s heart weren’t doing its best to vacate his chest via his mouth.
“I, I, I was – I’m –” Usopp flails, taking in every incriminating detail: the wrecked clothes, the matching bloody mouths, the fact that Sanji’s hands haven’t quite figured out where to go yet.
“Ever heard of knocking?” Sanji snaps, way too loud, voice cracking right in the middle.
“We’re outside!” Usopp yelps, face blazing. “On an island, in a war zone! What the hell would I knock on, common sense?!”
Zoro coughs, once, like he’s trying to clear gravel out of his throat, trying to school his face flat like nothing hurts and nothing weird just happened. He’s doing a terrible job, frankly. There’s a smear of Sanji’s smoke-scent still on his neck, a very obvious bite mark at his jaw and his mouth is redder than anything short of murder.
“Calm down,” he grunts, eye deliberately sliding past Usopp to some arbitrary point on the opposite wall. “We were just… sparring.”
Usopp’s stare goes flat and disbelieving. “Sparring doesn’t involve tongue.”
Sanji chokes. “Shut up, oh my –”
“I didn’t see anything!” Usopp insists, which is a lie on par with Luffy saying he’s not hungry. “I saw nothing! I’m blind! I’m a bat! I’m – I’m going back to the ship forever, goodbye!”
He spins on his heel so fast he nearly trips over his own feet, then bolts back the way he came, yelling: “I found them but I didn’t see anything, nobody ask me any questions ever!”
Neither of them move after Usopp runs, not at first. The echo of his footsteps ricochets off the alley walls and then drops out, leaving only their breathing: Zoro’s, harsh and ragged and Sanji’s, high in his chest, like he’s just taken a hit he didn’t see coming.
Reality hits like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.
What the fuck are you doing?
Sanji’s stomach just falls. The heat that had been coiled low in his spine curdles into something sour, shock, fury, shame, all of it aimed straight inward.
He shoves – just plants both hands on Zoro’s chest and drives. Zoro’s back smacks the wall again and he lets out a low grunt. “Oi –”
“We’re done,” Sanji snaps and it comes out too loud in the small space, edged like broken glass. He sounds pissed and he is but the person he’s really furious at is wearing his own shoes.
Zoro blinks, eye still wild but trying to lock onto this, onto now. “What?”
Sanji can’t stand that their bodies are still in the same orbit, that he can still feel where they’d been pressed together. He takes a hard step back but that feels worse, like ripping off a bandage that’s welded to skin. He chops the air between them with one hand like he can cut the moment in half. “That was fucking insane.”
Zoro looks at him like he just suggested they surrender to the Marines. “Insane because Usopp walked in?”
“Insane because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place!” Sanji snarls. His hands won’t stop shaking. He wants a cigarette so badly he could chew the pack. “We were fighting, Zoro. We were bleeding!”
Something ugly flashes across Zoro’s face. “You think that was just a fight to me?”
“I think I burned you and liked it,” Sanji fires back, voice spiking. “I think you grabbed on like you wanted more. I think… I think we clearly can’t be trusted alone when you’re still smelling like battlefield, fuck.”
Zoro pushes off the wall, coming closer. Not charging, but there’s nothing careful about it either. “Sanji –”
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharp enough to cut.
Zoro stops but he’s still too close. His shirt is scorched open over the patch of angry red where Sanji’s heel kissed too hard. The burn looks bad now that Sanji’s not riding the high of doing it, edges puffy and skin an ugly shining pink. It makes Sanji’s stomach twist. Zoro follows his gaze, then looks back up, jaw clenching. “You gonna lecture me about safety now, seriously? After you lit me on fire and then tried to climb me about it?”
Sanji flinches like he took a hit. He grits out: “That’s exactly my point, asshole. How d'you not see the problem? Because I sure as hell do, I see it everywhere.”
Zoro’s fingers flex at his sides, restless, like they’re looking for something to grab – hilts, an ankle, a belt. “Yeah? Spell it out for me, Curls, ‘cause from where I’m standing the only problem is we got interrupted.”
Sanji’s temper spikes, bright and vicious. It’s easier to ride that than the sick, hollow feeling gnawing underneath it. “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? Hit it harder.”
“It was working,” Zoro shoots back, stepping in again before he can stop himself.
Sanji’s already moving, anger and panic blending into one sharp motion to plant a hand dead centre on Zoro’s chest and shove him back again, harder. Zoro’s shoulders thump the wall twice, dust sifting down.
“Don’t,” Sanji says, quieter now but much, much worse. “Do not try to pick up where we left off.”
Zoro’s eye narrows. “You telling me you didn’t want it?”
Sanji’s whole body flares hot, then immediately cold. “That’s not the fucking point.”
“Looks like the point from here.”
“Of course it does, you one-track meathead,” Sanji snarls. “You think if you want something hard enough that makes it simple. It doesn’t. It just makes it dangerous.”
Zoro’s mouth twists. “To who.”
“To both of us! You think I liked –” he gestures helplessly at the burn, at Zoro’s mouth, at himself; there’s too much to point at and not enough fucking hands. “You think I’m okay with the fact that I nearly cooked you and then kept going because you looked at me like that and suddenly I couldn’t tell the difference between…” His throat closes around the rest.
Zoro stares at him. Some of the feral in him is still right there, coiled under his skin, but it’s gotten teeth marks in it now, bitten down on, held tight. “So you can’t or won’t?”
“Both,” Sanji throws back, nearly a hiss.
Zoro’s jaw ticks. “Why.”
“Because I’m not…” Sanji has to stop and drag breath in through his teeth, the rage fraying around the edges. “Because apparently I don’t know when to stop once you start looking like you’re going to float right off the damn planet. Because I shouldn’t be anyone’s fucking tether when I’m this fried. Because if we keep doing this right after a fight then we’re gonna be fucked, Zoro, and we'll kill each other for real and then what?”
That knocks Zoro back a fraction; his expression goes briefly, horribly naked. “You think I’d hurt you.”
Sanji laughs, sharp and incredulous. “I think you already do and I think I let you.”
Silence hums between them, thick and volatile. The ruins at the alley mouth could be on fire again for all either of them notices. Zoro’s hand twitches once toward Sanji’s collar but aborts halfway and he makes a frustrated noise, low in his throat. “So we just… what. Walk it off?”
“We walk it back,” Sanji bites. “We walk out there like normal idiots who got in a stupid post battle argument about structural damage. You let Chopper yell at your burn before it gets worse. I go scream into a pot and pretend it’s stress relief. We do not treat each other like punching bags that fuck back.”
Zoro flinches. Just a little, but enough. Some of the heat drains out of his face, leaving him looking older, worn around the edges. He glances down at his own hand, at the faint arc of a scorch mark on his wrist where Sanji’s flame brushed past. When he looks back up, the hunger’s still there, but it’s behind glass now, banked hard.
“Okay,” he says finally. The word sounds like it tastes bad. “Not like that.”
Sanji’s shoulders sag a centimetre, regret and relief twisting together under his ribs until he can’t tell one from the other. “Good, great. Fucking… fantastic.”
Zoro huffs out a humourless breath. “Doesn’t mean we’re done,” he adds, because he’s him. Stubborn to the bone. “It just means next time we don’t get there by accident in a pile of rubble.”
Sanji wants to say there won’t be a next time. The lie rises up, hits the back of his teeth and dies there, strangled by the memory of Zoro’s mouth on his, the way his hands had finally stopped shaking when there’d been a jaw under them instead of empty air.
He can’t make his tongue form the words.
“Go find Chopper,” he says instead, voice rough. “That burn’s going to blister like hell if you leave it. He’ll kill both of us if you show up like that at dinner.”
“You gonna tell him what caused it?” Zoro asks, mouth pulling into something halfway between a smirk and a grimace.
Sanji feels his ears go hot. “Tell him there was… collateral damage, he’ll believe that. He knows you.”
Zoro snorts, a small, reluctant sound. “He knows you, Cook.”
“Yeah, well.” Sanji drags a hand down his face. It comes away tacky with drying blood. “He doesn’t need to know this.” His voice drops, dangerous in a different way. “No-one does.”
Zoro’s gaze sharpens. “You ashamed of it?”
“Yes,” Sanji says, instantly, too fast. Then, quieter, traitorous: “No.”
Zoro’s throat works. He looks like he wants to push, to pry, to pick at that crack until it becomes something else. “Fine,” he says, finally, before he picks Kitetsu back up and slides it home with automatic care. He studies Sanji for a moment longer before he goes, like he’s trying to memorise this exact version of him – blood at his mouth, hair a mess, eyes too bright.
Sanji waits until the alley has swallowed him, until the clink of his swords fades and the background noise of the crew seeps back in at the edges. Only then does he let himself sag forward, palms braced on his knees, breath coming in short, furious bursts. He still feels wired. The fight never got its clean end. The… whatever that was didn’t either. Both have been cut off mid-motion and left to spin inside him like blades with nowhere to land.
He wants to chase after Zoro and slam him into the nearest solid surface.
He wants to kick himself into the sea.
Instead, he straightens, checks his hands and forces his legs to move.
He walks back toward the others with his mouth tasting like smoke and iron and the worst idea he’s ever had. His stride’s steady. His smile, when Luffy hollers his name, is sharp and almost normal.
He can feel Zoro somewhere on the ship like a pulled muscle.
Not like that, he tells himself, over and over, like repetition can make it true.
For now he tries very hard to believe it.
& a mini epilogue beat, just for kicks bc i had extra time:
It’s hours later before Sanji lets himself be alone. The island’s lights are a drowsy blur on the horizon now; the worst of the smoke’s blown off. Everyone who isn’t on watch has either passed out or decided to keep celebrating in ways that will result in at least three hangovers and one mild concussion.
Sanji’s in the galley with the lamps turned low, sleeves rolled, hands sunk in soapy water. He could’ve left the dishes for morning but he can’t sit still long enough.
The sink’s full of plates that don’t need scrubbing anymore and he’s been washing the same bowl for five minutes, circular motions so automatic his wrists ache. His leg keeps twitching like it wants to spark so he clamps his heel down on the floor.
Everytime his brain slips, it slides right back into that alley. Into Zoro’s back hitting stone. Into the taste of blood and smoke. Zoro’s mouth opening under his, that ragged demand in his voice –
Sanji dunks the bowl under harder than strictly necessary and scowls at his reflection in the water. “Get a grip.”
The universe, predictably, responds by sending him the exact opposite; he knows it’s Zoro entering before he looks up. “Kitchen’s closed, Moss. Come back in the morning if you want a snack.”
“Didn’t come for food,” Zoro says, voice perfectly level.
Sanji clenches the bowl until his knuckles go white. “Amazing. You lost your sense of direction and your survival instinct on the same day.”
He hears the slow thud of boots on the boards as Zoro comes in with absolutely no attempt at stealth or apology in the stride. Just Zoro, existing. “You gonna keep talking to the dishes or do I get a turn?”
“Depends,” Sanji says, too light. “You planning to bleed on my floor again, or just traumatise more of our friends?”
Zoro snorts. “Usopp’ll be fine. He already thinks we’re freaks.”
“Because we are,” Sanji says, sharper than he means.
The footsteps stop behind him, close enough that he can feel the warmth at his back and close enough that if he leans back a few centimetres, they’ll touch.
Sanji does not lean.
The sink’s reflection shows him just enough: Zoro’s chest in the half-dark, bandage peeking where his shirt’s been stripped down on one side for Chopper’s work. The faint shadow where the burn sits under gauze, right where Sanji’s heel landed.
Zoro drags in a slow, long breath. “You mad about the alley or mad we got interrupted?”
Sanji’s hand slips, the bowl clattering against the sink with a loud stupid sound. He drops the sponge. “Take a wild fucking guess.”
Zoro doesn’t move. “Sanji.”
There’s something in the way he says his name that makes Sanji’s shoulders knot up. He turns the tap off and the sudden quiet is deafening.
“You got patched up?” he asks because that is at least something he can handle. “Burn, side, whatever else you decided not to mention while you were busy licking your sword like a lunatic.”
“Chopper yelled,” Zoro says. “Put stuff on it. Said I was an idiot. He also said I should avoid heat on that area for a while.”
Sanji’s face goes hot. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”
Zoro shifts, just enough that Sanji can feel the air move. “Making sure you know I meant it.”
Sanji finally turns and gets Zoro, somehow even closer than he thought, eye clear now. Dark, yeah – Zoro is never not a little stormy – but not blown out, not riding that feral post-fight high anymore. Whatever wildness was chewing at the edges of him in the alley has banked down to coals. There’s still heat there, Sanji’s not hallucinating that, but it’s focused. Collected. Like Zoro’s put it somewhere he can reach for on purpose instead of drowning in it.
“Meant what?” Sanji makes himself ask even though every inch of him already knows where this is going. His voice scrapes on the way out.
Zoro looks at him like he’s offended by the question. “That I wanted it, that I still do. That I’m not…” he grimaces, clearly searching. “Not sorry it happened. Just sorry it got cut off like that.”
Something inside Sanji twists on itself. Shame, probably. Lust, definitely. The brittle little shard of hope he keeps pretending he doesn’t carry, snapping against his ribs like a loose button. He chews on his own lip until it stings, something he can anchor himself to. He feels ridiculous, standing here in his own galley like a kid getting caught with a cigarette behind the school.
“Normal people have post fight debriefs about tactics,” he mutters. “Strategy. Maybe trauma.”
Zoro shrugs, slow. The movement makes the bandage Chopper taped over the burn on his side flex and Sanji’s gaze catches on it before it skitters away. Zoro’s expression doesn’t move much, but there’s a faint, incredulous tilt to his mouth. “We’ve never been normal.”
Sanji barks out a laugh that hurts. “No shit.”
The ship creaks lazily around them, wood settling as waves slap the hull. The world’s still turning like nothing in the alley happened at all.
“We can’t just –” he starts, words tripping over themselves. He gnashes his teeth. “We can’t just pick this up, Zoro. It doesn’t… work like that.”
“You’re still shaking,” Zoro hums, cocking his head.
He’s not wrong: Sanji’s hands are trembling with a fine, relentless vibration running through his fingers like there’s a hummingbird trapped in his skin. He hadn’t noticed. Or he’d noticed and refused to name it. “From the fight,” he says, too fast.
“From the alley,” Zoro counters, calm.
Sanji’s jaw locks. “Drop it.”
Zoro’s mouth tightens. “If I thought you actually wanted me to, sure.”
That hits harder than Kitetsu ever has. Sanji feels it, right under the breastbone: that awful, naked sense of having been seen correctly when he’s spent years cultivating the exact opposite. Flirt enough, grin enough, talk enough and nobody looks too close at what’s actually going on under your ribs.
Zoro looks anyway.
“Zoro –” he starts, and doesn’t know what sentence he’s even reaching for. An apology? A joke? A no?
“I’m not asking for a rematch right now,” Zoro cuts straight across him. There’s a tiny curl at the corner of his mouth, like he knows how insane that sounds and is saying it anyway. “I’m not asking you to burn me again. I’m not asking you to fuck me against your spice rack.” His gaze slides, briefly, to the shelves over Sanji’s shoulder, then back. “Would be interesting but I’m not.”
Sanji’s breath stutters. He prays Zoro doesn’t notice, knows he absolutely does.
“What I’m asking,” Zoro continues, voice steady. “Is if you actually don’t want this or if you’re just scared because it was messy.”
Sanji’s fingers curl against the bench edge hard enough that his knuckles pale and he knows he could lie. God knows he’s lied for most of his life, about what he wants, about who he wants, about how badly. It’s second nature to wrap honesty up in a bow of bullshit and hand it to people like it’s the real thing. But Zoro’s already looking straight past the wrapping paper and Sanji, for all his cowardice, has always been equally tired of choking on his own performance.
“I liked it,” he mutters. “Obviously I fucking liked it. That’s the problem.”
Zoro’s shoulders ease a fraction, like some battle he’d braced for didn’t land. “Then it’s not a problem.”
Sanji laughs once, sharp. “It is if next time I forget to pull the flame, idiot. It is if I enjoy hurting you. It is if I start needing you half-dead for it to work.” He hears his own voice and wants to flinch away from it.
Because that’s the rot, right there: the idea that anything he wants must be dirty by default. Tainted. That he can’t have a thing without ruining it. That wanting – the raw, greedy kind, the kind that doesn’t have a Nami-swan or a Robin-chwan fig leaf slapped over it – is cruel by nature. Zoro stares at him like he’s just announced the sky is green.
“You think that’s what I want?”
“You said it felt good,” Sanji throws back, desperate. “You held on.”
“Because you were there,” Zoro says, slowly, like it’s the most obvious thing he’s ever said in his life. “Not because it hurt.”
Sanji snorts, brittle. “You made some very interesting noises for a man who’s apparently not into it.”
Colour creeps up the column of Zoro’s throat, slow and undeniable. “Yeah, because this idiot cook had me pinned to a wall with his thigh between my legs,” he growls. “You could’ve been made of ice and I’d still –” He cuts himself off with a grunt, jaw working. “Point is, it wasn’t the pain. Okay, it was a little bit the pain but it was mostly because it was you.”
For a second, the floor tilts as Sanji’s stomach does a complicated, nauseating thing, part swoop, part drop. If it were just some feral post-battle monster in Zoro’s skin, fine. Sanji could file it under heat of the moment and never look it in the eye again. If it were just his own gross, half-dead heart latching onto the nearest warm, violent thing after a fight he could chalk it up as another personal failing, add it to the pile, and walk away.
But you, Zoro says, like the variable isn’t the blood or the alley or the timing.
Like the constant is Sanji.
“Look,” Zoro continues and his voice gentles in a way that should be illegal on this ship, should be illegal on him. “We can figure out… whatever that was. We can swear off doing anything right after a massacre if that helps your brain.” His mouth crooks. “We can save the alleyways for actual fights.”
A hysterical little bubble of laughter gets stuck in Sanji’s chest. “You negotiating terms with me now?”
“Yeah, because I don’t want you deciding we’re done just because we scared you once.”
There it is. The knife, right between the ribs. Sanji stares at the floor. On one side of him is the awful honesty of his body when Zoro’s mouth hit his, when that thumb came away bloody and Zoro licked it, when the burn made him jolt and still hold on. The part of him that thought: finally. Finally something that feels like the way they fight – too much, too sharp, too alive.
On the other side of him is years of drilled-in rules and shame. The voice that tells him he doesn’t get to have that, not with him. Hell, not with anyone.
“I can’t –” he starts, and the word tastes too much like defeat. He swallows, tries again. “Not tonight, I can’t do… more of that tonight.”
Zoro doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t roll his eye or scoff or call him an idiot. He just shrugs. “Okay.”
Sanji’s head snaps up. “Okay?” The word sounds ridiculous in his own ears. He hadn’t realised he’d been bracing for a fight until there wasn’t one.
Zoro’s gaze is steady. “Tonight you freak out and I let Chopper yell at me some more and we pretend Usopp died of embarrassment somewhere. Tomorrow, or next week, or whenever you’re not shaking like a damn leaf…” His mouth quirks. “We talk again. If you want.”
If you want.
Not you owe me. Not we already started. Not you led me on.
Sanji feels something in his chest that’s been coiled there for years loosen, just a fraction and realises, abruptly, that when he thinks about wanting Zoro, he never, ever pictured a version where Zoro wants him back with this kind of patience. He’s imagined all kinds of awful, electric, violent scenarios.
He’s never let himself imagine being shown the brakes and told he can use them.
“I don’t know what this is,” he admits, voice low. It feels like pulling teeth. “If it’s just… adrenaline and – and you or if it’s something else or if I’m just fucked up enough that it feels like a good idea.”
“Could be all three. We’re disasters.”
“Great. Very reassuring.”
“Go to bed,” he mutters. “Or I’m going to end up feeding you in here and we both know how that ends.”
Zoro grins, small and sharp, but he starts backing towards the door. “Think of the bright side: we could really mess with Usopp.”
Sanji groans. “Absolutely the fuck not.”
Zoro laughs, just once, and slips out, leaving Sanji standing there a long minute, his heart doing a silly little lurch in his chest. The hum of the ship comes back in and he looks at his own hands. They're still shaking, yes, but he drags in a breath and reaches for the next dish.
x
me, at any given time: but how can i incorporate my beloved usopp???
I just saw someone say "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" as an argument for boycotting AO3
Babe AO3 is a nonprofit. They do not exist under the ethics of capitalism. Fanfiction is legal because no money is ever exchanged around it. (All the money given to AO3 is used to maintain their servers and pay their lawyers to help keep fanfiction legal.)
Fanfiction is one of the few things in this world - probably the one singular form of entertainment that does not exist within the confines of capitalism. So by your own logic, even if you hate some of the content on AO3, it's inherently the only ethical thing to consume in the whole world.
I decided to redraw Sanji/Zosan as statues, mainly because I am kind of obsessed with them at the moment + plus just a regular Sanji.
To be honest, I kind of like the sketch better than the colored, but I figured I'd post both. The Pygmalion and Galatea drawing also sort of spawned a Zosan au based on the myth. The basic gist of the au is that Zoro is an art student with a focus on sculpture, and while in an art slump he creates Sanji, who comes to life. Who knows if I'll make any more art for it, but it was fun to think about.
My submission for the lawsanlaw anthology of 2024
If the text is too hard to read, I put it in the alt text as well :)
This was so much fun to do.
My initial submission grew so much in size that I wouldn't have been able to finish on time. I WILL finish it though, just on my own time without the stress, haha.
Thank you for reading, I hope you liked it :)
2087
germansingergirl
areudirty
dededos
annaxmalina
