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The steel of Wado Ichimonji is cold against his throat.
Even without the blade breaking skin Sanji can feel the bite of it, the razor-sharp edge that is just one twitch away from cutting him open, from severing his head from his neck and ending it all in one strike.
On the other end of the sword, the idiot swordsman is staring down at him, one amber eye, narrowed in concentration.
I’ll make it swift, the bastard promised.
It would be a lot fucking less ridiculous if he wasn’t barely standing, hadn’t been swaying on his feet when he’d walked up to him, if Sanji didn’t know that it takes the man all of his willpower to keep the blade in his hand from shaking – how Zoro’s standing in the first place he has no idea, but if the moss-head is anything he’s stubborn as a mule.
“You you, cook?” he grunts, eloquent as usual. Maybe he should give him some slack for how much blood he’s lost and how Chopper’s magic medicine must have fucked up his system, but then Sanji wouldn’t be Sanji.
He’s learned to appreciate being himself over the last 24 hours.
“Are you seriously asking me that?” he snaps, patting down his suit for a smoke. “If I’d say yes, you’d do what? Let me go my merry way and slaughter you once you’ve turned your back on me?”
His lighter, that he got before Punk Hazard – and fuck, it feels like that was ages ago – didn’t survive the battle with Queen. It’s dented in multiple places, and even if Franky could salvage it somehow, it’d be more effort than it’s worth, considering…
He brings the cigarette down to where he has crossed one leg over the other, bends his knee to his chest and lights the smoke with a flare of his foot.
The edge of the sword slips up an inch so it’s resting just beneath his chin and Sanji instinctively raises his head to avoid getting cut.
With how bruised and smeared with blood the idiot swordsman’s face is, it’s hard to say if he’s glaring at him or simply a wrong move away from passing out. Chances are 50/50, you can’t ever be sure with Zoro.
“Want me to stab you to test it instead?” There’s a sardonic edge to his words, and Sanji doesn’t doubt for a moment that if he was up for it, he’d actually start a fight now, like the giant man-child he is, like it’s just another day and this was just another fight.
He’ll be caught dead before he admits that he almost slips, feels the corners of his mouth lift just a millimeter before he covers the expression with a scowl.
“You have trouble standing, idiot,” he rants, pointedly running his gaze up and down the battered moss-head. “The only thing you’ll be stabbing today is the bed… with your nose, when you trip into it after I’ve carried you to wherever we’re sleeping, because I’m sure as hell not gonna watch you drop dead at my feet again.”
Zoro blinks. Wado’s tip still digs into his throat.
Sanji slowly brings the smoke to his lips, takes a deep drag, ignores the bite of the steel on his skin. He’s good at that, ignoring things that hurt.
They’ve never talked about Thriller Bark.
“You’re sure bitching like yourself, curly,” Zoro finally grumbles, and it’s just mocking enough not to sound relieved.
His lone eye follows the movement of Sanji’s fingers when he takes the cig away from his mouth and languidly exhales a cloud of smoke, savors the burn of it when it travels up his windpipe, the familiar motion more soothing than any balm could be.
With a scoff, the swordsman pulls the katana from his throat, steady as a rock, his free hand closing around the sheath when he puts the white swords back into its scabbard.
“And how the fuck did you-“
Whatever he was gonna complain about gets lost in a wet cough when the bastard takes one step towards Sanji and collapses.
He’s been expecting it, catches the useless bull of swordsman with one arm under his shoulder and the other slung around his middle, takes most of his weight and lets Zoro rest his forehead against his collarbone. It’s on the left side, where most of his suit has actually survived the encounter with Queen.
“Know that you’re gonna fall over?” he finishes the other man’s sentence, and this time he can’t stop the hint of a grin from slipping into the words. “Just a hunch.”
Zoro growls against his shirt.
“Conceited fucker!”
His voice is as just vicious as Sanji is used to, but he’s dead weight in his arms.
It’s easy to adjust his grip and hold him steady, his hands splayed across the swordsman’s back and shoulder, the coat stiff with blood under his fingers – it wasn’t like that, before, and it’s scary to have that strength now, to wield that power, but he is himself.
If it will help his nakama, will let him carry a burden he couldn’t have otherwise, he’ll bear it. Not gladly, no, but he’ll do it nevertheless.
“Don’t choke on those big words, moss-ball,” he sneers against the head of green hair that takes up most of his vision, but it’s just a beat too late to sound natural.
For once, Zoro doesn’t comment.
He’s still conscious, but for all Sanji knows he could pass out on him any minute. From how Chopper was babbling about the aftereffects of that pill it’s some serious shit, and if he’d have to make a guess the only reason the brute is still standing is sheer fucking stubbornness.
“We gotta find the others,” he points out the obvious for lack of something else to say, his eyes scanning the battlefield around them for any sign of life.
“Want me to give you directions, curly brow?” the useless heap of a swordsman retorts. His breathing is labored against Sanji’s chest, but he doesn’t need to see his face to know that he’s smirking.
“Want me to drop your sorry ass, idiot swordsman?” he counters, rolling his eyes.
The thing is that – no matter how much he hates it or denies it or bitches about it – Zoro knows him. They’ve fought side by side too often, been through too many bloody battles together, not to have picked up on the ticks and quirks of the other.
“Know you won’t,” the man calls his bluff, and the only thing Sanji can do about it is to mutter a bitten-off insult against the bastard’s green hair.
Instead, he lets his haki spill out, closes his eyes and opens his senses in an attempt to find the rest of their crew.
The sheer number of people inside Onigashima made using Observation haki useless before, but now only the strong and the lucky remain, and between those it’s easy to find them all, the main group clustered around Luffy, with Brook and Robin elsewhere beside some figures he can’t place, at the very edge of his vision.
“Found them.” He tabs his fingers against the swordsman’s back to see if he’s still conscious.
Zoro grumbles something unintelligible in reply, but his left hand moves over his side, curls into the material of his suit jacket and grips tight.
“Blood’s not your color, cook,” the moss-head mumbles against his collarbone, his voice so low that Sanji has trouble understanding him, needs a second to fit the words together in his mind.
It’s Zoro who’s covered in blood, though, not him. The dark green color of his coat has turned to a reddish brown with matted blood, and he can’t even tell if it’s his own or King’s – his suit, by comparison, is relatively intact but for the massive tear over his right shoulder.
For a tense second he thinks that the idiot must be hallucinating from the blood loss, then Zoro tugs at his jacket again, this time more insistently.
What’s he- oh.
“That’s burgundy, you stupid caveman,” he tuts, but surprises himself by how fond he sounds, almost warm beneath the snark.
“Same shit,” Zoro mumbles, his voice slurred.
He’s barely holding out, the muscles of his back clenched tight beneath Sanji’s hands. A few more minutes of standing around and he’ll be out cold in his arms.
“So how do you wanna do this, mossy?” He loosens the grip of his right hand, shakes the ash off the cig that’s almost burned down while they’ve been talking, and brings it up to his lips to take a deep drag.
Zoro predictably groans at the nickname, the top of his head tugged under Sanji’s chin. His neck and throat vibrate with the sound.
“Piggy-back?” he asks just to see the swordsman’s reaction.
“Fuck off, curly!” The insult holds more malice than he’d thought him capable of, given that he’s one wrong move away from blacking out. “I’ll kill you.”
Sanji lets the butt of the cig drop to the ground and grinds it out with his heel. With his second hand free again, he adjusts his hold on the dead weight of the Strawhat’s swordsman.
“Bridal carry it is, then.”
Before the moss-head can open his mouth to protest, he’s crouched down, slung his arm under his knees and picked him up like he weighs no more than Nami-swan. The motion pushes Zoro’s head up against his shoulder, his left hand splayed on Sanji’s chest, fingers digging into his black shirt in a grip that would’ve been fucking painful a day ago.
The swordsman makes a gagging sound that he’s pretty sure is at least half mortification.
“Not a word,” he hisses from between clenched teeth.
Sanji doesn’t pay the threat any mind but starts walking – the feral tiger in his arms doesn’t even have the strength to open his eye anymore, this isn’t a fight they’ll be having today.
“Sleep, idiot.”
It doesn’t even take ten steps before Zoro is snoring softly.
He carries the sleeping swordsman towards the rest of their nakama, his bloodied form pressed tight against his chest, just like he did after Thriller Bark. It’s something they won’t talk about later, like they didn’t talk about Kuma, like they didn’t talk about so many other things.
It’ll be like everything else between them.
Unsaid.