Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sanji learns about grindylows when he’s six years old and he uses seafoam as a sling for his rebroken arm.

Niji is the catalyst of sinking ships—sharp rocks, bruising waves, almighty storms that do not heed to any sailor’s prayer. He’s swept up Sanji in violent winds and tossed him to insatiable waves, never once stopping at riptides to consider the whipping motion of black and blue as not a jolly roger, but an arm all too mangled to fight against the Storm.

“It’ll eat you,” Niji sings. He looks like one of the sharks from a picture book Sanji had read some time ago: blue and grey, and sharp, jagged grins.

“W-What? Who?” Sanji scrambles away from the water’s edge, closer to his brother. Familiar violence—sickening solace in the eye of the Storm.

“There’s these things called grindylows.” Niji inches forwards; arcus clouds propel him, lightning crackles in the cadence of the winds. Sanji’s surprised his goggles don’t melt under the stress of electricity. “They’re water demons. You get too close to the water and they’ll grab you, drag you in ‘till you drown then eat you.”

“But who’d ever want you?” If Niji is born from tempests and ghost ships, then Yonji is the fruit of it’s destruction: serpents with ends so sharp they can part seas with a simple flick, behemoths whose howls are so loud they sink islands—kingdoms if it wants; creatures of skeletal armadas just prowling below the surface—always lurking, all seeing, ripping and eating and annihilating. The Creature latches on to the Storm’s cackling with bloody seasalt fingers. “You’re worthless, no good for anybody.”

“A failure, that’s what you are.” Niji strikes, a crackling in the air as a boot etches spiderwebs into the bone of Sanji’s arm. “A joke to the family name!”

A tsunami looms over Sanji and he can’t help but cry, “Shut up, you’re lying! They won’t get me!”

There’s a chipped piece of a cruise ship between Yonji’s jaw, torn by the Storm’s ferocity, a grin so wide it can swallow the moon. “They’re going to hear you then you’re going to die.”

Sanji swallows a sob. The salt on his face is indistinguishable—either it’s his tears or the sea’s act of defiance, a caress of her hand to ground him. He digs his fingers into the sand to scratch apologies and prayers to the depths.

He shakes his head, sand whipping between the three. “They won’t, they won’t!”

If they are the ocean’s wrath, then Sanji is the offering for the Jagged Rocks to shred; the Bruising Waves to conceive the ocean’s galaxy of splintered wood; the Divine Storms to curse and ignore his prayers in favour for the pearly, broken hope tucked into his chest—take the gold and gems, replace with the skeleton of sinners and failures and the likes of You.

Seasalt clings to the brow of sweaty foreheads and sizzles in the blood soaked fists. The Storm and Creature slink back to their corners of the sea, laughing up a cyclone as the typhoon drags him further to the gallows in a glory of purples, blues, blacks, and reds.

Sanji waits for the grindylows to get him.

They never do, and he doesn’t know what that means.

The seafoam is replaced with a sling.

Niji and Yonji tell him about the Leviathan, and Kraken—freaks like him that would scatter his guts into the waters just because they can. How the Leviathan is a serpentine sea demon with teeth larger than mountains, sharper than the blossoming ache between Sanji’s ribs. Yonji digs a heel into his chest and boasts about the ancient squid that can easily tear him limb from limb, its dozens of arms circling around him and sucking on the marrow of his person as his bones pierce through his skin. Ichiji drawls on about a monster with wings so wide it eclipses the sun and moon. It has an abundance of tentacles protruding from a mouth marred with whale bones and sailor’s rosaries, and has sinewy arms from tearing universes apart. It’s a God whose servants crunch between its teeth.

His mother holds him close, wiping away the salt from his eyes with a caress achingly familiar. She tells him about the manifestations of Fear—titans that once walked Earth and the tales left in their footprints. Stories strung together with kelp and silky seafoam, reefs growing legends in its beds, and an echo of myths whistling from the great trenches. She murmurs about the Ocean’s heart, a vast, incomprehensible thing so divine, even the Heavens couldn’t keep because its love is so heavy it would bring down the sky.

“Though Atlas was condemned to uphold the constellations, he couldn’t bring himself to be the root of the Sea’s heartache. And so, he let the Pearl fall, to love again and again until the world is swallowed in its entirety.” 

Sanji casts eyes bluer than the Ocean’s Heart itself. “Somebody is holding up the sky?”

When she smiles, starfishes appear at the corners of her mouth and sea agate stones brim at her eyes. “Mhm, Atlas, one of the titans.”

Sanji takes that moment to think, pressing his unbandaged arm against the beat of his mother’s life. The ba-dum reminds him of skipping stones. He frowns, looking like all his six years. “And when he dropped the heart… it must’ve been big, right? Like dropping a big stone in the garden pond?”

“Oh yes. It’s heavy for a reason,” She chuckles and it reminds Sanji of wind chimes and drizzling rain, a soft, welcoming twinkle patter. She brushes a thumb at the bandage beneath his eye. “When he gave it back, everything cried. The ocean, the Heavens—its love is too large to carry. The ocean cried so much that a big, big flood happened.” She cradles his face, her touch carrying a fraction of the ocean’s love in her hands. “So, while Atlas held up the sky, a little angel held back the flood.”

“An angel?” Sanji gasps. He readjusts himself in her lap, latching on to her words lest he drowns.

“The Ocean’s love was so great, a little sea angel was born from it,” she explains further, wrapping shaking arms around him. Her smile never wavers. “His wings were made from seafoam and his hair the colour of the most beautiful reef’s sand. He held all the Blues in his eyes and his smile was crafted from pearls and all sorts of gems.” She combs thin fingers through his hair, brushing out the knots of his adventures beyond the walls. She curls her finger at the ends and Sanji leans into the touch. “And that little angel is you.”

Sanji pauses, ever so doubtful of the notion he is more than his brother’s words. But she is mother, she is home, and how can he ever doubt her foundations? She sculpted him from sandstone and marbles, brought Gods to their knees to simply borrow Divinity and weld it into the fractures of his skin. She’s sacrificed her mortality just so he can have a taste of blue.

And so he spends days cooped up in the library, washing ashore on tales about asrais whose skin is so cold it burns, mermaids with scales so bright sailors say praise to new goddesses, temptress sirens chanting hymns laced with bladed quarter notes. He surfs over pictures of beasts with glowing, red eyes and horses so translucent candlelight steals its ink. Fingers trace the outline of women with fishtails and a God clutching a trident so large one sweep would end Germa twenty times over. He stands in the sea of knowledge, all contained in a land so far from home.

He finds a small book in the top left shelf farthest from the door. A healing arm curls around the dusted cover as if it’d bob away and get lost in the sea scattered at his feet. The front has seashells indented beneath the title and he smooths over the letters, soaking in the leather with the thirst of a dying fisherman. He plops himself underneath the open window and skims over the yellowing pages. Citrus and old age lingers in the air.

The Umihaki Disease is a sickness in which the victim suffers from internal drowning due to unrequited (one-sided) love. Earliest symptoms include sea salt build up in the throat, and coughing of blood. First stage of the Umihaki Disease is the expulsion of seawater. If left untreated, the victim will soon start to cough up sand, seashells, seaweed, coral, and in extreme cases, fish. The cure to such disease is either: the object of the victim’s desire returns such feelings, or surgical removal (45% success rate). However, the latter will also remove the victim’s feelings for their love. Unable to complete either results in death.

He tucks this knowledge away amongst the other piles of books he hasn’t quite understood. He finds another book and learns about Atlas and his daughter Calypso. He places them close to his heart, just tucked below a swelling wound shaved down from surging waves.

He raves about mermaids with hairs speckled with seashells, sea horses big enough to fit a saddle on its back, and an underwater city lost long, long ago. His mother smiles through it all, eyes brighter with every ramble and stuttered excitement.

Then he tells her about the love-sea disease, drowning for someone who may not do the same. He asks her why does the sea do that, why does the sea take? Why is it so full of monsters and loss? And he pauses, remembering the citrus in the air as yellowing pages cocoon him with images of sailors’ puffy bodies with bulging, white eyes and mermaids with sand leaking from their gills. His voice wobbles with the unrelenting waves beyond the kingdom.

“Will it take me too?”

And his mother holds him closer, opening up her chest to bury him amongst the other treasures she keeps. She promises him that the ocean would not let any of their own suffer, my little sea angel. Her chest opens further and a gleaming pearl glistens under Sanji’s admiration. The sea will always give you what you need.

Sanji nods, easing the words next to Atlas. He holds it up with the weight of the sky so light on his shoulders.

He makes a promise to the titan when they leave him kneeling at her grave.

As you hold up the sky, I will hold back the flood.

He imagines piddocks blooming from his mother’s back. She’s there with him as he holds—pushes back with fervor, the Ocean’s heart intertwined with his mother’s love. She holds it back with him, and the weight put upon his shoulders feels just slightly bearable.

Monsters hear his oath to Atlas, his mother’s wishes weaved into the proclamation, and emerge from the Flood only to mutilate his wings. Leaves him floundering, mouth agape in a silent plea ‘I am sorry, I’m sorry I’ll do better, I’ll be stronger’ to someone who cannot hear, a red sea dripping from his back and hardened seafoam fragments in his hair.

He had promised, pledged to them at her grave with lips bloody and a foot fractured, to fly next to Atlas—to be strong, worthy of his title, to be enough. And yet he still falls, the monsters’ words protruding from his back, butchering his stomach, flooding his head. Unworthy, unlovable, UnVinsmoke—how can you think to be enough to bear the name when you break under our heels, you have failed us like you always do, but most of all you have failed her and you will continue to fail those around you, you are nothing.

He pictures the man with waxed feathers falling from the sky, swallowed by the sea. How he had flown, wings open and untamed to embrace the sun, being the first to ever taste the sky and sea at the same time.

He never got to fly as far as Icarus. He had only gotten to know how cold the sea can be in the form of an iron helmet and bone breaking strikes.

He’s able to fly again when Reiju sobs, licking the salt of the sea and the tears from both their eyes.

The sea is broad.

He shifts his feet. Spreads his wings, ignores the ache in his bones, in his chest.

You’ll definitely find kind people someday.

Shakes off the flakes of blood, and smooths down jutting bones with a touch inherited from his mother.

Run.

He soars.

Sanji’s eleven years old when he remembers sea demons who live in cold waters and drag little children into the depths until they drown.

The memory doesn’t deter him from hanging so close to the edge. He looks down and wonders if they can reach him from below, wrap their spindly tentacles around his ankles and pull him in. He wouldn’t make much of a feast as he is nothing but pearly white bones, and grey skin pulled so taunt it fuses with the marrow. Perhaps he’ll turn into one himself—cold, slimy flesh and prickling teeth that the insides of his cheeks would always be bleeding. He’s already eating his body, all gangly limbs and childhood failures—what’s the difference?

Or maybe his legs would give out, shrivel up and meld into one dry, bony appendage with his feet splitting into fins. The vertebra at his neck would cave in, rip away the flesh, and make room for gills already clogged with ash. The cracks in his skin would become scales, translucent webs that stretch across his body akin to ghoulish marble. He’s draped across a rock waiting for a ship, he’s just not sure how close he is to hissing a warbling treble and sinking his teeth into flesh just for a taste of salvation.

He ponders on the thought of sirens experiencing this. When no ship could be found or sailors managed to break out of their spell, have they ever sat upon a rock and allowed their body to betray them? Would their tail shrivel up and split into two legs, all bone, no papery skin, because their scales have been peeled off to stave off the festering parasites growing in their veins? Or when the hunger overcame in shredded fins and scratched out gills, have they ever betrayed their own?

Sanji looks behind him to where the old man sits, fruitful treasure just hidden by the slope of the hell they sit on. He looks down at his nails, brittle and some gone. He gnaws on his cheek feeling the ache of dry bone meshing with flaking flesh.

Yes. They have.

The chore boy appears as bivalves, just another shell washed (or crashed more like and hell—that should’ve been enough to tell him that the boy is more than another thing to be swallowed by the East) ashore the Baratie that would leave soon; be it on his own accord or whisked away by the incoming tide, Sanji has seen them all. But then the boy curses at the sea, at the pirate too big for the East Blue to contain, at him for his recklessness—the geezer killed a part of himself for you to live, don’t spit it back at him, and soon Sanji learns that this bivalve is anything but ordinary.

The chore boy is the Glory of the Sea named Monkey D. Luffy—all intricacies graphed so deep into his skin that if you were to peel back the canvas, you’d find even more rarities carved into the boy’s bones. He’s a walking anomaly with a smile so wide it’d take more than ink to capture its radiance. He carries a straw-hat with him, crowned upon a tangle of black hair, and he holds it higher than the sun—higher than Atlas himself. And if the boy lifts higher than Atlas, then he should push back harder, spread his wings wider, dig his soul into the wall of water until flesh is consumed and bone is splintering.

That thought should scare him—the easiness, the hope Luffy plucks from the scabbed bits of his heart is fucking terrifying. He should just drop the rarity back where he belongs before he consumes and drags the Glory down to Icarus’ grave, but then Luffy looks at him, really looks at him, and he looks back and knows. He also knows the boy’s hair must be some type of sea urchin because not once does he ever let go of the hat.

If the boy is one of the sea’s many gifts, then the algae clinging to his back is a curse. He must be one of Phorcys’ children, some other estranged child abandoned in a sailboat to which the sea accepted, because it doesn’t take a navigator to see the monster rippling beneath tissue. Where eyes rest, aging fury stares back. It’s the sort of violence that’s been passed down for centuries, growing with every battle; singing to the cries of the fallen, feeding white lilies with blood bath. Another Ancient One, perhaps—or an undiscovered creature that hides in trenches and only surfaces once every millennia.

However, he didn’t expect to feel the same affinity for this child of Phorcys; to pour sea salt into the bleeding cracks in his façade just to carry the same pain as the Glory of the Sea; to scream unbridled, imploring for this sea monster to give up on your ambitions.

Not for me, but for the Sea, for him.

A strand of green hair untucks from the man’s bandana and the Creature lurking in the depths of his mind latches onto that moment of vulnerability. Sanji is horrified. The Glory of the Sea wails.

But the damn sea creature just grits his teeth and grins, even curses the sea with his own resolve and accepts death with a flourish.

Monster, he sneers, digging his nails into the chipped railing.

Sanji stretches his wings until they brush against the unmarred skin of the man’s back, guiding him into the waters to rest next to the ancient one.

Not Phorcys’ children, Sanji learns at Arlong Park with his ribs shattered in his hands, blood smeared across his mouth, and the swordsman crumpled by his feet with a familiar grin breaking through the waterlogged fatigue. Not him.

Just a sea monster, just Roronoa Zoro.

For a fleeting second, he had thought he looked like Thetis’ own.

He has crossed the threshold of the galley when he finds Zoro lounging underneath the porthole, sunlight catching his wisps of green flora. In its rays, the patchwork of green resembles fresh laurels upon aging leaves instead of the withering clumps of moss. The particles ablaze in the light frames his resting face, kissing the sharpest angles of his features—precise, measured cuts made from the sharpest of swords. His katanas, the roots of his entire being, rests beside him.

He remembers the story of the man, a boy more like, who was said to be the greatest warrior of his generation. Whose hair was threaded by gold to which held sanctitude in the locks. How his spear had sung hymns from its tip as he lured his men’s oath’s into battle. His feet never brushed the earth as he had his mother’s bruising waves push him forwards. She had never let him drown, but then.

(There were two boys with ripe figs in their hands. One made of memories, the other of sunlight. Together, they were luminescent—hot and sweet, an ambrosia no God could obtain. In each other’s arms, they are eternal.)

He was the greatest, even in death—even when an arrow pierced through his heel and the choir had stopped singing to only start howling. 

Sanji wonders what the swordsman’s hymns would sound like when he’d perish. He thinks he almost heard them at the Baratie and at Arlong, thunderous in his ears and poison in his veins. He recalls hearing scraping rocks and screeching gulls, the clashing cymbals made from the finest steel. Amidst the verses, he swears he had heard trees fall. But they all abruptly stopped, and he is left to doubt if the man can even die at all.

Zoro opens his eyes and catches Sanji hovering at the door. “What?” His eyes are carved of stone, freckled over with soil and the blood of others.

Can you even die? Where is your Achilles heel? If I were to brush against that white sword, how much red would you leave in your wake?

“Thought you’d be at the stern, you know… photosynthesizing and all,” Sanji shrugs, rolling the dart to the corner of his lips.

Zoro tracks his movement, eyes narrowing until they are sharp, stone arrows. “Photosynthesizing?”

Sanji gestures to his hair, feeling the stony points embed his stomach. He exhales, watching the particles swirl and become swallowed by the wooden walls. “Like moss.”

Laurels are at the tip of his tongue, but saying so out loud feels intimate—something only he should know and keep in the cavities of his chest.

Zoro brushes his fingertips over the strands and snorts, “Honestly was expecting broccoli or seaweed—moss is new.”

“Nice to know mine's unique.” Sanji shoves his hands into his pockets. He walks towards the kitchen, his head running through a valley of long grass, weaving between oak trees whose leaves are never-ending, and finding a crown of honour flourishing on top of a swordsman's head.

“Nah, it’s still stupid.”

Sanji turns around with a blade penetrating through his teeth, but stops, eyes falling upon the unsheathed white sword. It glimmers in the sunlight, swelling beautiful and sturdy in callused hands. With the blood it has shed, the sword is alive—brilliant and thrumming in its wielder's lap. There's something holy in which Zoro thumbs the blade; an intimacy of which Sanji cannot quite discern without the flesh of his fingers blistering from its veneration. Because there is something wedded in the grooves of Zoro’s hands, akin to an unshaken promise to someone long ago. It tells Sanji it is more than just living, just a heartbeat.

“That’s the one you put in your mouth, right?” Sanji leans against the counter, hands grappling for the peaches he had left earlier.

Zoro hums, the muscles in his arms tensing with every move to wipe down the sword. “Wado.”

“Hope it’s sanitized every time you do that.” Sanji doubts it. He doesn’t know why he had asked, but then the grips of Wado had unraveled and lashed out, slithering down his throat, snaking around his vocal chords, and plucking at them until he started spewing half-strung together words.

Zoro looks up at him this time, a smirk cracking the clay.

Sanji grimaces, “That’s disgusting—fucking unsanitary, you brute. I really should’ve expected that from you.”

“Why’d you ask, then?” Zoro doesn’t look away so neither does Sanji.

“I assumed you would’ve at least kept it clean everyday.” Sanji gestures to the blade. He blows a plume of smoke, satisfied by the swordsman’s scowl. “She’s special to you, no?”

It’s the way he phrases it that makes Zoro pause infinitesimally. Sanji still catches the way his fingers flexes, holding back the urge to strike with the sword instead of his words. Sanji holds back a smirk of his own.

“They all are.”

“But Wado means a lot more.” Sanji tilts his head, certain in his own words. The plucking in his throat ceases.

Zoro is the first to break eye contact, eyes falling to the sword. When he looks up again, it’s to dig the stone arrows deeper into his chest. Sanji stands undeterred, the nicotine buzzing in his chest. There’s a story in his eyes, etched into the stone and stark in the light. Sanji doesn’t try to uncover what it is, however. His hook has already caught the corner of Zoro’s mouth so all he needs to do is wait; to see if the other will slit open his stomach or spill his own guts. It’s the latter.

The swordsman briefly talks about a girl who has—had—a dream of becoming the best, someone who was able to stand with him, against him, for them. Kuina, who had beaten him 2,001 times, then slipped under his skin as quickly as she had gone and now lives in his hands; all calluses, rough, and jagged—molded by the 2,001 ton sword gifted to him to carry for them both.

He remembers his words: A scar on the back is a shame for a swordsman.

He wonders if the swordsman knows about that one small blemish that bears a ton on shoulders.

He learns, rather quickly, that Roronoa Zoro is all things ugly in the East. Seaweed brain, mosshead, muscle junky with poor manners and no sense of human decency, and directionally challenged for God’s sake—how the hell did he survive before being swept up in Luffy’s current, something he’ll never understand.

As he stands with him, gazing up at their captain locked in Roger’s pillory dozens of feet from the ground, he doesn’t say those words. Instead, he shoves those thoughts into the cracks of his molars to save for later. He sucks the filter of his cigarette and blows a steady stream of smoke from bitten lips, gluing those remarks to his tongue. They taste of seaweed.

Hold back the flood he remembers, eyes locked on Luffy’s straw hat. And you will hold up the sky.

Zoro catches his attention as he ties the bandana around his head. Eyes as dark as the Storm, all too intense, too wide, deadly. Sanji just nods and quickly looks away.

Roronoa Zoro is—

He crushes the filter and spits out the ash, already fumbling for another stick.

Not Phorcys’ children; not Thetis’ kin—but enough.

They sail out to the Grand Line—Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Nami, and him.

He cooks, and he fights.

Absolutely no mushrooms for Usopp (he had made that abundantly clear when Sanji had asked, fending off the marksman’s flailing arms), tangerine drizzle cake for Nami after a spring island, copious amounts of meat (and discrete vegetables incorporated into the meals) for Luffy, and assemble a proper diet for the mossheaded monster so he won’t run himself thin.

A gigot to make those kneel, a party table kick to finish off crowds of somebodies, then a collier followed up with a mouton shot to the chest of men twice his size. For once, it doesn’t feel as if the grindylows can reach him from here.

Speaking of grindylows, the swordsman grunts through a mouthful of garlic fried rice and waves an empty plate in his direction, his own way of asking for seconds.

Sanji kicks him. Zoro blocks it, his earrings making a sound akin to raindrops and windchimes.

Sanji scoops him more rice, a little more than necessary, ignoring the laurel branches that reach towards him.

Zoro grins of all things, bits of food shining through his teeth. Sanji thinks he hears his earrings laugh.

Sanji kicks him again. Zoro continues to block it.

The flood eases inconsiderably.

Usopp is a shin-bone tibia, that much he is certain. Nami-swan is of course the queen conch shell, so sought after for its beauty, that they're becoming scarce (If you asked him what she actually is, really asked him, he would say the hundred-eyed cowrie shell because the polka dots truly look like eyes and Nami always sees).

He concludes Zoro is a venus comb, no—a lambis violacea. Whatever shell is the most infuriating. And ugly.

He looks to the head of the Merry where the mosshead swings his swords—bare chested and drenched in sweat, looking like an angry ape that broke into the paint shop. He thinks about the venus comb and the lambis, and decides they don’t deserve to be compared to that.

And yet he pretends to not stare by flipping the serving tray; ignores the glistening sheen across the man’s shoulders, the flexing of his back, the slight curl of the hair at the back of his neck as sweat collects in the gentle slope of skin. His swords are almost putty in his hands, an extension of him crafted of steel clouds, black waves, and oak trunks. When it glints in the sunlight, he hears thunder cracking with every slice and sees lightning surge with every jolt. The blades lash out, swift and precise like the serpent that can slice islands in half with a flick of its tail. His steps are calculated, measured in a way that Sanji can see what Zoro sees—dozens of enemies surrounding him, weapons poised and ready to strike.

Sanji wonders if he’s in the mix; if Zoro is picturing his knees bent, bangs framing the tilt of his head as he shifts his feet. There’s a retort groaning against the blade of Kitetsu. He can already taste the steel weaving through the smoke and pouring into his throat—not lacerating the skin, but sliding downwards and nestling into his chest, cool yet teasing at the crease of scabs with a reverence. He can picture both of them dancing, feet barely gracing the deck as they twirl, slice, flip over each other to a ballad of clashing metals, scuffling heels, and moaning wood.

Sanji whacks the tray against the railing after Zoro pivots and the smooth expanse of skin is on full display. The swordsman pivots again and fixes his gaze on him, never once faltering in the complicated swings—practiced, sure, and strong. He’s barely heaving, and Sanji realizes he has stopped breathing all together.

“Getting lost, curly?”

He rests the tray on one of the deck’s tables and leaps over to Zoro, foot already poised to strain against a familiar blade.

Kick harder for his father. Hold back the flood for his mother.

He kicks faster, flies higher, cooks with his heart on his sleeve. And he fights just for himself.

The sword with the black scabbard, Yubashri Sanji remembers bitterly, clashes with the sole of his foot. Zoro grunts. Sanji scoffs.

In the distance, he hears the windchimes and raindrops again.

He doesn’t dwell on it.

“Oi.”

“Quit whining.” Sanji punctures the skin, slides the catgut through, and repeats.

Zoro flinches, nails digging into the wooden chair. Sweat catches the sunlight, all over his face, his neck, dripping between his fingers. He mumbles something unintelligible, mouth pinched and formed into what Sanji assumes is one of the many names he’s dubbed him. In return, Sanji stitches his left shin, methodical, practiced, sure.

He dabs rivulets of blood that comes with every flinch—ignores the stains on his own fingertips, a brand under his nails. He licks his lips and tastes salt, an indistinct edge of iron following the taste, but he brushes it off as the chewed flesh of his cheek.

When he spares a glance at Zoro, inhaling sharply through his nose and exhaling just as faint, he sees him watching just as intently. Hazel eyes, dazed from the blood loss, have abandoned the aging fury in favour of something just as dangerous. Sanji swallows, fiddles with the catgut, and continues stitching the skin.

He mumbles insults into the wounds, laps the gashes with a touch softer than his words. He pierces the unspoken utterances from Logue Town and something else—new, vulnerable, uncertain—into his flesh, like the words would infuse into the other’s veins and crawl it’s way up until it dies in Zoro’s throat.

The sea, the ocean, is not a forgiving God. It takes, and It abandons. It gives until it’s too much—until you are swamped with Its love and wrath, and all you can do is swim and soar, either perish like Icarus or kneel like Atlas. But then he catches a glimpse of Zoro, shins split open and dripping red into Oceanus’ ichor, tainting the blue with a glaring fuck you, and thinks this is a man that can be the Flood.

Sanji moves onto his right shin, unrolling a new pack of catgut to write into his skin.

This fight doesn’t take more than half an hour, but it takes twenty years off his life.

It’s routine at this point. Pause what you’re doing, get to position, knock enemies overboard, then resume to your previous activities.

Sanji sends five marines flying overboard with a poitrine. Swiftly stopping a sickle coming from his left, he quickly sends that marine to join his friends. He lands back on his feet and leaps to the lower deck to finish off the rest. He hears Luffy’s whooping from below and snorts.

To his right he hears Zoro let out a chuckle of his own and Sanji looks up, momentarily distracted. Zoro looks up as well, locking eyes with Sanji, grinning like the demon he is.

Zoro doesn’t even look flattering right now. There’s sweat, blood, and marine viscera smudged into the heel of his boot. His bandana is still unwashed after his workout last evening. The haramaki has twinning grease stains around the bottom with a splatter of blood seeping into the mix. My God—Sanji’s sure he sees a severed ear caught on his collar, and yet—

The windchimes and raindrops are deafening.

“I got one up on you,” Sanji breathes because that’s all he can do right now.

The grin is replaced with a challenging smirk. “Not for long.” and Zoro slashes through another marine.

“Fucking algae monster,” Sanji grumbles and drives a foot into a marine’s jaw. He flicks off two broken teeth caught in the folds of his trousers.

In the end, they were evenly matched as Luffy got the last one.

“Next time,” Zoro yawns, crossing his arms above his head, closing his eyes, and leaning against the mast. There’s still a smidge of blood smattered on the toe of his boot.

And if Sanji comes out from the bathroom with a wet towel, ‘accidentally’ dropping it on top of the stained boot then swiping it up more deliberately than he needs to, well.

Between the sea and him, he supposes. Like all things.

Of course it begins with the sea.

He’s cutting steaks into thin slices when he feels something bubbling in his throat. It catches the insides, unrelenting with its hold on the walls and merely digs deeper in response to him clearing his throat. He fills a cup of water, gulps it down, and slams the glass onto the counter once he’s done. The bubbling doesn’t go away. He fills another glass and washes it down again. There’s salt, this time.

He keeps refilling his glass, but the saltiness that is left behind is still ever present. He passes it off as the ones he’s using for the dish.

But then dinner rolls around then soon comes to an end, and the itch doesn’t go away. He thinks he overdid it with the salt, and asks the girls for their opinion. Nami shakes her head and chirps, it’s great! Vivi clasps his hand in hers and beams it tastes just as amazing as you always make it. And it’s Nami, she wouldn’t lie about things like this, and Vivi is a princess—lying seems beyond her—so he leaves it at that.

As soon as the door closes, he scrambles to the sink. It’s burning in his chest now, reaching into his lungs and squeezing until he’s heaving, tears lining his eyes as he’s bent over the sink with towers of dirty dishes looming overhead, trapping him, protecting him, who knows—he doesn’t because he’s too busy dry heaving into the drain to notice anything but the growing ache flooding his chest, seeping into his lungs, filling up his throat and then—

He hacks up transparent, bubbly liquid, retching and spluttering into the sink as he thumps a fist against his chest. BUM, BUM, BUM. Skipping stones on fucking water of all things. A breath escapes him, catching on something soft brushing his bottom lip and when he pulls a shaking finger away, he sees thick, dense foam wrapped around his pinky. He forces an inhale and there—there’s the bitter aftertaste of salt and iron coating his palate instead of the sour, acidic bile of dinner.

The realization crashes like a breaking wave.

The little pile of books the little him didn't quite understand has toppled over, one book flipping open to fan out the sharp citrus scent of dread.

“Fuck,” he hisses, spitting the rest of the foam into the sink. A pebble size seasalt tumbles into the drain. “Fuckin’ mosshead is paying for this.”

The sea is not a forgiving God.

Chapter Text

When it’s worse, when the iron and salt overrides all thought, he grabs Nami, Vivi, or in some cases—Usopp.

He offers them the role of taste tester without ever saying it, and they answer just as wordlessly. He brings vinaigrettes to Nami’s lips, extends a spoon of caramel to Vivi’s waiting mouth, passes a forkful of key lime pie to Usopp’s cautious hands, and in return they tell him praises. Sometimes it’s little changes.

A bit salty. Needs more salt. Is it supposed to be this salty?

It’s always salt. He can’t escape it. He feels it scraping his throat, shredding his taste buds, overflowing through unshed tears. They accumulate at the bottom of his lungs, stroking the organ with reverence. He starts to find residue in the knots of his ties, hidden in his breast pocket, home under his nails. 

The lingering scent of his heartache wafts to his nose until it’s all he can smell. So to give him momentary release, he bleeds. When he hacks a little harder, coughs a little gruffer, leans a little further until his forehead brushes the faucet, red trickles and mixes with the foam. And then, the tang of the sea is washed away by the aroma of humanity dripping sluggishly from his face. It lasts for an hour at least.

He manages, still. The toppled pile books with the citrus scented leather is organized but now laid open to push a familiar ache into his bones—ghosts of healing wrists and finger shaped bruises. More waves of knowledge lick the island he finds himself stranded on. The words about Atlas and Calypso lie next to the sea-love book, freshly plucked from another scabbed crevice near his heart.

He imagines Calypso, daughter of Atlas, keeled over the shoreline to offer apologies in the form of seafoam and bubbling water. Her Love is nowhere to be seen, already gone, but her love is in the stains of her dress, in pools of polka dotted dark sand, in the tears leaking from her eyes. They are spelt out in kelp, mangled and shredded but the admission is as clear as beach gemstones.

Calypso’s love stems from abandonment, rounded and dull from fighting to live, while Sanji’s bleeding heart is so sharp, a single declaration would pierce him. 

When Nami leaves the galley after plucking a pinch of sea salt from his collar, he doesn’t make it to the sink. Instead, he retches into the floorboards. His hands claw at the wood, feels it splinter beneath his nails, digs his knees into the floor until it starts to tatter the fabric. His chest pushes up emptiness from the pits, steals the tiny knives swimming in his lungs, shoving all of it into the narrow passage of his throat. When he leans back, salty tears dripping from his eyes and mouth shaped into a trembling groan, he feels something different—something rougher and more gravelly than the crystalline hidden in his teeth.

He looks down and sees small piles of sand at his knees.

The doctor finds sand on the winter island. Not near the sea like the books say, but in the mouth of his recent patient. A blond man, barely older than he is. Has a cracked spine and some broken ribs. If he doesn’t move as much as he did earlier, he’ll be fine. The sand, however, starts a new worry. There’s chunks at the back of his throat, in the webs of his lips, in between his teeth. He finds more in the drenched pockets of his coat and in the folds of his scarf.

He brings it up to Doctarine who frowns and whisks the man away. He busies himself with tending to the girl and looking out for the other boy. It takes an hour or so before Doctarine comes out, wheeling the dazed patient with her. The sand dotting his lips are gone, but some are stuck on his eyelashes.

“Umihaki,” Doctarine says after the man, a boy more like with the way he curls into himself, slips into unconsciousness. The young doctor quickly translates it to ‘sea’ and ‘to throw up’. She throws back a bottle and exhales loudly, fixing the boy with a troubled gaze. “The ocean’s punishment for a pirate who loves more than the waters.”

The reindeer looks at him too. He reaches out and fans away the sand from his eyes.

There’s a doctor, a talking reindeer, and the first proper conversation they have after he wakes up from the chase is—

“You have Umihaki,” the reindeer, Chopper, states like he didn’t know why he’s coughing up seafoam, seawater, and fucking sand.

He turns away, still pushing himself up despite the reindeer’s protests. “I know.”

A hoof pushes him down, and he allows himself to give into the doctor’s fretting. The reindeer moves the blanket up to his shoulders. “There’s surgeries for it, I’m sure if I can—”

“It’s okay, thank you.” Sanji looks at the doctor, eyes warm yet vacant. Not quite there, instead trying to fight off the chill in his bones. Images of asrais come in flashes, bits of information pushed to the front from old habits.

Skin so cold, one touch will burn. If ever under the sun, they will turn into a puddle.

He shifts the blanket so no skin is exposed. He wonders if a winter deity had turned him into an asrai to spare him in the avalanche. And because he definitely pissed off some deity at some point in his life, Luffy speaks up by his head.

“Why is the sea hurting you?”

Sanji almost wishes for the disease to drown him there and then.

He looks up and sees his captain perched on the bed frame, head turned to one side and looking back with eyes too intense, too wide, not deadly, but—almost.

“It’s… not,” he settles on, not wanting to carry out the topic further.

But it’s Luffy, and Luffy is his captain, is the Glory of the Sea so he should know, but Sanji can’t bring himself to cry apologies.

It’s not he who speaks again, but the young captain with a frown on his face.

“The old lady said it’s because you love someone more than the sea,” Luffy states. The frown eases into a hopeful line. “Just tell Zoro!” The bandages wrapped around his arms, across his chest, flexing at his fingertips, smiles as well.

Sanji jolts up. "Zoro?" The warbling windows and the roar of the wind competes with the raindrops and windchimes.

Luffy’s smile doesn’t falter. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

Sanji wants to laugh because it's absurd, ridiculous, and true. It is him when it shouldn't because there are things to be left unspoken—things impossible and tenuous that he doesn't dare breech. 

He leans back, hair brushing the underside of Luffy’s sandals. His heart is roaring, louder than the typhoons, a tsunami, the cyclone. It’s its own disaster. “What makes you think it’s Zoro?”

“Because you’re you… and he’s Zoro, and you two just...,” Luffy gestures wildly, filling up the chasm in his head, saying it like it’s obvious which shouldn’t be because he’s made sure to hide the evidence of this one-sided love. Buried his heart in the sand where his mother lies with angel wing shells bracketing her figure. Sanji chokes on sand as Luffy says much too softly, "You never collide, you merge."  

“Luffy.” The name deserves more than the pleading in his voice. He bunches the blanket in his hands, not daring to look up because then—he’ll fall again and he can’t bring anyone with him. He shudders. “I can’t.”

He ignores the trembling in his hands in favour of the trembling in his throat. He coughs and then he’s hunched over the side of the bed with a bin shoved to his face. He spews seasalt, spits out venomous seawater, gags on the grain of sand slowly dribbling from his mouth. There’s a hand and hoof patting his back, bracing his shoulder, easing the strain in his ribs. None of them feel like the familiar grooves always wrapped around a sword.

Seafoam comes in the form of tears as he feels the ghost of a hat hovering over his head.

Chopper comes with them, not as emergency food, but as their doctor.

Cherry blossoms spill from the sky and create its own sea of pink—soft, tender, tasting of new. He wonders what it’s like to drown in such benevolence, to cough up cotton candies instead of dull greenish foam. Blow a stream of sweetness other than the overwhelming evidence of love not returned. Have the grit of earth revive him instead of killing him. But he is not born from land—he has crawled his way out of the currents and kept swimming towards the sky with the hardened seafoam swelling from his back, propelling him forward until the horizon came and the Flood screamed at him.

Things of the earth did not love him, and Zoro is sculpted of clay, limbs of brilliant stone while soil spills into the roots of his soul.

He’s still cold despite his clothes being dry and the warmth of the crew surrounding him. Usopp and Luffy shove chopsticks up their noses and dance under the glowing pink sea above them, cheering and prancing around the ship like they hadn’t just recovered from a fight with an exiled king. Chopper laughs, a full bellied, child pitched noise that spreads across the crew. 

He joins in, bent over and shaking, and then so does Zoro. The swordsman leans back, brushes his shoulder with Sanji’s, and doesn’t pull away. The reaction is immediate, no preamble yet he supposes that’s what their relationship is built upon. No steady introductions, just collisions and bloody grins.

(He ignores what Luffy had said about a merging. Those are meant for better things.)

Warmth seeps through his coat, worms its way past the folds of the cold exterior, and digs its way into his chest. It comes as spilling waves, gentle, gradual—something his body isn’t meant for. He is made to withstand the violence of the Storm, of the Creature that will never leave. He is meant for all things but kindness and softness and comfort and holiness. They made sure of that.

Zoro moves further back until an arm slides against his, then turns, still smiling—squinty eyed and lips molded into a smile so pure and boyish on his face. A gloved hand brushes a slit of his exposed wrist. The warmth curls up his arms, around his neck, kisses the stitches in his back. He doesn’t remember returning the touch with a hand on Zoro’s shoulder, watching the clay mold around his fingertips, allowing only once for the thing not of the earth to touch something as natural as him.      

He imagines spilling his soul right there and then to the swordsman. See how quickly the smile would go away. How his lips would shift into disgust like a fish hook caught the corner of his mouth and pulled, digging into the flesh until it poked out the other end. How his anger would be scalding, and he wouldn’t even need to touch to kill him. As he bleeds an All Blue for the man, Zoro would splatter his confession with a single strike from his teeth, spat out like his name was a curse.    

But then the Zoro with gloves the colour of fresh soil beams brighter, holds a little steadier, warms even faster.

And Sanji can’t help but beam back, thinking he doesn’t mind being reduced to a puddle if it meant to burn under that smile.

He sits in the galley with sand and seawater cupped in his hands. His throat is raw, always tasting of blood and burning with the evidence of unrequited love on his tongue. Chopper gave him medicine to cope, bottles and bottles of herbs at the ready because the little doctor cannot let his patient, his new friend, be consumed before his eyes without any sort of relief.

Sanji feels guilty for being unable to push back any harder. He’s supposed to be the one to carry the Flood; hold it back, sacrifice his wings, his lungs, take the seafoam and water and spit it out into something beautiful like his mother said. He can’t spare any of the weight on the crew, on Zoro most of all. The physical ache of unwanted affection so pronounced that he will drown—the threat of death at the precipice simply because Zoro saw him as nakama? He can’t put him through that, to be an unwilling lover tethered to a lover all too willing.

He imagines himself back on that rock, legs a tangled mess of bone, belting out a tune that cuts as deep as the hunger. How his pleas would reach the swordsman’s ears and once within his grasp, he’d simply drag him down. Away from his dreams, his ambitions, all because Sanji wants to carry something other than the flood, give Zoro the ocean’s most precious gems even if it meant Sanji would face Its wrath once more.

All because he loved him a little more than the sea.

The tale of Calypso and Odysseus floats back to the surface, a murky story of a sea nymph who loved so much while Odysseus belonged to someone else. He remembers the reckoning, the heartache consuming the both of them. How Calypso forced him to love her because she wanted—needed him to. He will not do that, he will not be Calypso.

He knows this is unhealthy, punishing himself with the one thing that supposedly brings people joy. Pushing his body further to the limit, transcend Icarus and the Ocean’s Heart all together, but.

Moments where he and Zoro put aside the bickering, shoves Calypso and Odysseus back underwater. Bits where inside jokes are in favour instead of the snarky remarks; minutes in which they sit in the crow’s nest during the dead of night, warm bottles of alcohol and tea exchanged; memories of battles, Sanji at his backside with Zoro ready at hand, become so vivid he thinks the disease has finally taken him.

Zoro is not Phorcys’ children or Thetis' kin. A monster? Yes. A demon? Absolutely. But Sanji sees how this demon holds a haven in his hands and weds loyalty—thick and blazing—around his heart. He clenches his beliefs between his teeth just as hard as the white sword, and when he truly believes in something, someone , he bares his fangs and makes sure that thing knows. Bites into their chest, their lungs, their hands; smothers the doubt with cruor—not with the violence he carries in his palms, but of the credence they earned.

Zoro may be an insufferable, unhygienic bastard a good majority of the time, but there are moments where he smiles at Usopp’s tall tales; he lifts Chopper onto his shoulders for whatever reason; he shifts in front of Nami whenever danger seems to rise; and he accepts Luffy’s antics with a bellowing laugh. He bears the title Demon of the East Blue in his swords, in the bodies he litters behind, but to them—to him—he is Zoro, marimo, nakama.

Far from the horrors of the sea, but just enough.

The water in his hands has dried and all that’s left is clumps of drying sand. He leaves the galley, hands hidden in his pockets to hide the proof of his love, and makes way for the stern. He stands at the railing, looking over the place that borne him. He pauses, mouth open as if to cry. Then, it clicks shut, tasting two different seas on his tongue.

He tosses the clumps of sand back into the water. His penance.

In return, the ocean tries to kill him for the second time.

(When he swivels on his heels and swiftly breaks for the washroom, the gurgling of water interrupting his moment of solitude, he doesn’t notice the pair of hazel eyes following him, a tangerine falling from her grasp).

He hates the sand inside and outside his body.

The sun is just as unforgiving as the sea, robbing them of any moments of rest. The group is spread out with Luffy and Usopp at the front, Vivi and Nami in the middle with the camel, Zoro dragging Chopper behind him, and he and Ace shuffling at the back. There isn’t much conversation exchanged besides the girl's murmurs and Luffy’s inevitable bemoaning.

Ace hums beside him looking unaffected by the heat. Damn him for looking so put together while he trudges his feet through the desert, the texture reminding him of his chafed throat. The older brother has carried a suave presence around him from the moment they met, and it shouldn’t surprise Sanji how easy it is to warm up to him, but it does. When he thinks of brothers, he pictures monsters of red, blue, and green with talons crackling with electricity and blood dripping from their claws, their boots, threaded into their clothes—the rippling of the Kraken, Leviathan, and Cthulhu evident in their skin. He sees cold cells, broken bars, dead mothers. He hears failure, worthless, a mistake, deadbeat, useless, unlovable. He feels tentacles and blindingly sharp fangs puncturing, maiming, suffocating. He tastes dead rats, cold metal, broken wings, salt, iron, so much fucking blood he’s swimming in it, drowning.

But he looks at Ace, sees the affection worn on his wrist, leaking from his eyes whenever Luffy is mentioned, and doesn’t see any of the monsters. He almost weeps, this is a brother?

At that moment, the ocean betrays him. He feels the telltale signs rising quickly to his throat. This time, he feels something slashing at his insides. He swallows, pays little mind to the sharp, blinding pain it brings, and pinches his thigh to keep him upright.

“Need to… go,” he mutters, a shaking breath punching past his lips. He quickly swipes seafoam from the corner of his mouth. There’s a stark red mingling with the soft white.

He doesn’t wait for Ace’s acknowledgement, and ignores the slight shift in Zoro’s shoulder as he surely hears the strain in his voice. Sanji breaks away from the group, running down dunes, sliding along the sand as he holds back the water threatening to spill while he’s still in sight.

He finds a rock, not big enough to completely hide behind but enough, and empties his stomach. He vomits, trying to dislodge the lacerating pains climbing up his throat, catching his teeth. Iron has become a friend to him, and yet he can never find any comfort in the taste. This is no different, the iron overpowering the salt this time, and shit—that’s never happened before. Not when it’s being expelled from his mouth. He buckles, falling into the mess, but he couldn’t care any less with the violent retching and staggering pain starting to engulf him.

The water is pink and warm, he notices through his puke induced daze. So is the foam, although the spots are more harsh surrounded by white and mint green. He feels sick, not because of the disease, but because the touch starts to soothe him. Under the glare of the sun, the seawater is almost a welcoming hug.

But then he sees something jutting from the foam, and when he plucks it from the ground, he takes back those thoughts immediately.

“You know… in some cultures, scallops symbolize beauty.”

Sanji jerks his head to his left where Ace stands. His gaze is pinned to the dispersing seafoam where his blood fuses with the softness. Sanji wipes his mouth where he’s sure red still stains.

He licks his lips, making sure to get rid of the foam and sand that lingers. “Yeah well.” He sniffs, turning the scallop shell in his palms. It’s still covered in his blood, bits of foam clinging to the surface, a soft brown under the sunlight. He looks back at Ace who fixes him with a look that he does not deserve. “There’s nothing pretty about drowning.”

Ace hums in agreement.

They stay there in silence, the buzzing of the desert doing most of the talking.

“Does anyone else know?”

Sanji picks up another shell, this time a striped cone shell. “Chopper and Luffy.”

The unspoken question hangs between them, heavier than the humidity of the desert. Sanji spits out the rest, just sand and bits of seashells, and stumbles to his feet. Ace is at his side in an instant, a cloth in one hand while the other wraps around his forearm. Normally, he would’ve shoved the person away, exclaim he can take care of himself, but he’s tired, and he feels lacerations in his fucking mouth, so talking is the last thing he wants to do.

(It’s not because this is a brother , this is Luffy’s brother who holds him higher than any brother has for him).

They join the group a little later with not many questions about his whereabouts. Ace hovers, a bottle in one hand, a cloth in another, and Sanji wonders what it’d be like to love Ace—to create an ocean for the devil fruit user whose powers are based on fire. How touches would be exchanged, if the bickering would extend from a place familiar and strong. Would his back be as unscathed as Sanji’s hands? Would his stomach be as simple, easy and soft opposed to its external appearance? Would the flickering flames be as familiar as the coolness inhabiting his ribs, the flat edge of devotion scraping at the layers and layers of bitter history? 

The fuzzy feeling doesn’t come no matter how much he ponders on the thought, because Zoro notices the hovering, the stiffness in his shoulders, and instead of giving him complete shit for it, the swordsman hovers back a little more, and studies him a little harder. When he stretches, a hand brushes Sanji’s shoulder, a solid force while he stumbles on his feet. He still refers to him as shit cook, curlybrows , and Prince—bumping heads and halfhearted swipes—and Sanji responds with his own list of names—idiot swordsman, Marimo, kelp brain—exchanging kicks and sharp witticisms.

Ace watches them, smiling knowingly. He hands the extra bottle to Zoro and hovers a little less.

He examines the seashell dials with a buttercup lucine lodged in his teeth. He sees lavender conches, coffee bean cowries, snowy spirals laid out before them. Other varieties he doesn’t know the name of litter the floor. Conis holds her own buttercup lucine in her hands, fingers rubbing the texture with a gentleness he can never possess. He massages his own shell by rubbing his neck.

“There’s so many! I wonder if we can make our own from below,” Usopp gushes, collecting a bunch into his hands. Chopper and Luffy flicker their gaze to him. He ignores them in favour of finishing their bento boxes.

Go ahead, I have a lot to offer he wants to say, caustic and dying. Wants to show them the collection he has grown since Alabasta, bare and bloody and broken; his cut up mouth turned into a sneer, fracturing the façade, allowing himself to succumb and let the weight finally crush him. Instead, he arranges a sliced boiled egg into a circle.

Then a fight with The White Berets ensues, they prepare to leave, but suddenly they’re separated and he, Luffy, and Usopp have to go through something called The Ordeals.

He feels the lucine shell shatter in his throat after a blow from Satori has him sprawled across the root of a tree. He swallows the fragments instead of spewing them out.

The bonfire reaches the treetops. Wolves of the forest gather around and dance with them, and just for a moment, Sanji forgets about the stinging in his mouth from the shattered seashells he forced himself to consume. He brings the soup to his lips, washing down a painkiller Chopper had provided once the doctor saw a trickle of blood dribble from his mouth. Earlier, when they were alone, Chopper examined him and gave him seven stitches inside his left cheek and two more at the right side of his tongue.

“Not a lot of solid foods for now or else the stitches can tear.”

He sips the soup harder than he should.

He watches as the youngest three of the crew twirl around the fire, exchanging partners, stepping on paws, howling louder than the pack that found them. He sees Robin sitting next to Gan Fall who leans heavily against the log. Nami has her hair tied into a loose ponytail as she flickers her attention to each part of the map. And Zoro—

He watches him chug back a large bottle of alcohol, the hard lines of his throat bobbing, forehead glistening from the heat. His cheeks are flushed a soft pink and it reminds Sanji of the button up he's wearing. The goggles around Zoro’s neck are foggy from perspiration and if he squints hard enough, he sees a fine sheen pooling at his collarbones as he strains his neck to out drink one of the wolves. He sees him exhale, slamming the bottle down with the smug grin plastered to his face. Alcohol dribbles from the corner of his mouth, slipping along the sharp jut of his jawline and dripping into the fabric of his tank top. 

He wants to be disgusted, he really ought to be because the manners of that man are slim to none, but then Zoro catches him looking, and raises a brow—challenging, and mouth jerked into a funny line. He raises his empty bottle and fucking cheers to him from across the campground, mouthing “ Shit-cook ”. Without meaning to, Sanji leans forward, letting those words worm its way into the soft crease of a budding smile.

Really—what has he become to puke an ocean for him.

Sanji wants to cheer his own bowl of soup then flip him off for his display of idiocy, but the unmistakable prickling starting in his chest only allows him to give a lurching, off putting hand gesture before he spins around and books it out of the grounds. He just hopes (not prays, because he’s starting to get sick of priests, Gods, deities, and titans) no one has noticed his abrupt departure as he sprints towards the Merry where no one can hear him cough up a new Blue.

He barely makes it to the edge before keeling over, thumping his chest, raking the ground with blunt fingernails. There’s starfish in his eyes, multitudes of pink, blue, purple, yellow spinning, making him gag harder. Sand and broken shells crunch in his grip. The water makes a soft sploosh as it streams into the clouds while the seafoam simply floats, mixing with Skypiea’s version of the sea. There’s the onslaught of iron overflowing his taste buds and he makes a footnote to come to Chopper about needing more stitches and trying to find another way to expel the disease without bleeding out.

“What the fuck.”

Sanji doesn’t stop gagging on sunray venuses even when the familiar grooves of a hand clasps his shoulder and clutches his waist. Hands that have been crusted with enough blood to create one whole war; fingertips that grip 2,001 tons of ambitions, holds him steady, upright. They’re warm, rough just as he imagined if not more callused. They rub his back, massage the base of his neck. Zoro’s unaware he’s folding around the seafoam wings, stroking the waves—firm, resolute, and dare Sanji say, gentle.

He spews broken bits of a cone shell into the palm of his hand, tangled around a stitch that came loose. Something else, slimy and chewy, slithers around his mouth. He thrusts in two sandy fingers, and pulls out a strip of seaweed. He tries not to convulse as it wriggles up his throat and curls around his uvula. Zoro doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t know whether to be thankful or horrified because fuck, shit, fuck it’s Zoro seeing him, a poor heap of delicacy, striped naked and laid bare for his ridicule.

The mockery doesn’t come, however. Sanji didn’t realize he had closed his eyes until he feels the rough pad of a thumb brush over his one exposed eyelid. He snaps his attention to Zoro who is kneeling next to him. His face is inscrutable under the moonlight, but even with the help of a torch, Sanji’s sure he still wouldn’t be able to tell what he’s thinking.

He drops the seaweed at his feet and spits globs of sand and broken stitching into the clouds below. The only sound between them is his rasping as he tries to catch his breath.

Steady, tame, keep it back, fly higher.

The grip around his shoulders tightens. “Cook.”

Sanji studies a pale shell by Zoro’s foot. It’s an angel wing.

And then Zoro grabs his chin, jerking his face towards him. “Cook.”

Sanji’s mouth twists into a grimace, shoving away the burning grip. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” Zoro sounds almost hysterical, and Sanji wants to entertain that thought—swipe the blood and salt spattered around his mouth, cock his head, and preen, teary-eyed and manic. But then he sees righteous, fervent anger in his eyes and stops himself. Memories of a great swordsman and a bloody knife abruptly resurface so Sanji drowns it in the small patch of pinking spit by his own fists. Zoro huffs through clenched teeth, “This is—you’re…”

He opens and closes his mouth and Sanji stops himself from laughing.

“It’s your turn to spit something out, idiot,” he snipes, shifting so Zoro’s touch is less searing.

A vein in Zoro’s forehead bulges. Mini-Marimo Sanji muses. The swordsman has the gall to fist his shirt into his hands, eyes wild, narrow. “You’re the fucking idiot. This is that love-drowning disease, isn’t it? Where you chuck up seashells and shit 'til you die?”

“Ah so the algae does have a brain cell.” Sanji refrains himself from rolling his eyes. He seizes Zoro’s wrist and ignores the moisture overflowing from the single touch.

He doesn’t have much time to brace himself before Zoro yanks him forward. The seashells shatter under his knees, and he watches as the angel wing snaps under Zoro’s foot.

“Don’t be an asshole right now—just tell them, get it removed.” Zoro’s hands are stiff against his collarbone. A thumb grazes the jutting arch, a touch so rarely shared between them that Sanji is sure this is one of their firsts. 

Sanji grins—bitter, weary, his own set of wings flaring alongside his withering lungs. Screw that anger, he’s fucking sick. “Oh, are you scared for me, mosshead?”

And Zoro shoves him away like he was the one burning him, like he was keeping his head underwater. They are back on solid ground, the tenderness from that touch now thinning at their feet. 

“I knew you were stupid, but not this stupid,” Zoro hisses. There are words trapped in his teeth. Sanji can see them churning and grasping at the cracks of his mouth, but the swordsman just presses his lips into a thin line and pins him with a glare.

“I’ll deal with it.” Sanji brushes the dirt off his knees as he sits back, relaxed for once, eager for the anger to start exhausting him.

Zoro sniffs, leaning against a rock. His gaze never leaves his. “Does Luffy know?”

Sanji nods. No use in hiding anymore. “Since Drum.”

Zoro clenches his jaw and finally breaks their dance, studying the broken angel wing near his foot. “Who else?"

“Chopper, obviously.” Sanji spits out another glob of blood, tongue running over the reopened wounds. Zoro watches him, eyes tracking the way his tongue pushes against his cheek just to feel something other than the growing nausea of being flayed open. He scoffs and stretches his mouth to show the steady ooze of blood. “Wouldn’t want to bleed out before I drown, now.”

Zoro grumbles, “Get it checked again or—”

“I know, I will Marimo-kun ,” he snorts, seeing the prominent twitching vein from using titles. “Ace knows too.”

Zoro frowns, “Ace?”

“I started spitting seashells since Alabasta. He caught me the first time it happened. It was scallops.” Sanji shrugs.

It’s Zoro’s turn to snort, “Of course you know what shell it is.”

Sanji’s quiet for a moment before replying, soft and unsure, “I always know which ones they are.”

Zoro falls silent as well.

The roar of the bonfire is just as loud as they left it, the flicker of orange and red still glaring in the shadows of the forest. Sanji watches as the silhouette of wolves and his nakama dance, unbeknownst to what’s happening just metres away from them. 

“What’s this one?”

Sanji snaps his attention to Zoro holding up the angel wing. The way it’s pinched in his fingers reminds him of Drum where Zoro had plucked a stray cherry blossom from Chopper’s hat and placed it in his hoof. All smiles, a gentleness reserved for the youngest.

He forces an inhale. “Piddocks—commonly known as angel wings.”

Zoro hums, “They do look like wings.”

“Hmm, leave ‘em,” Sanji exhales and staggers to his feet. He fumbles at his pockets and pulls out his cigarettes and lighter. He sticks the cig between the downturn of his lips and is about to bring up the lighter before remembering Chopper’s warning about smoking with fresh cuts inside his mouth. He gnaws at the dart instead. He glances at Zoro, scowling at the shells still in his hands. “Those were in my lungs, dumbass. Don’t play with them, it’s gross.”

Zoro doesn’t acknowledge him, just shifts his attention to the drying seaweed curled where Sanji sat and back to the seashells in his palm.

“Tch.” Sanji rolls the dart in his mouth, feeling the material soak up the blood. He makes for the campground but not before stopping, back still turned to the swordsman. “Think you can find your way back, Marimo?”

“Shut up.” Yeah.

He doesn’t believe him but walks away regardless, heart collapsing at his feet, not once turning around to see Zoro untie his bandana and swaddle the shells in the folds.

Chapter Text

There are varieties of aches that he has come to know: ones that comes as ashes, barely having the chance to sully before melting into soft, wilted petals; and those that are ceaseless in its journey, heavy with the sort of weight to be measured in increments lest it snaps your ribs like love-me-or-love-me-nots.

This ache that takes him hollows him out—guttural in its integrity; a riverbed of clay that reshapes itself and the place cemented under his veneer into something of oozing magma; all surging, scalding bumps to suffocate everything in its path. Because magma doesn’t just burn, it drowns; and the rage that is just as hot, just as ferocious in its bloodlust, absolutely swamps him.

This is an anger he has likened storms and sea creatures with.

Sanji watches their fight with fragments of a shin-bone dragging itself through the callusing dips of his knuckles, the thews of waxy skin pulling apart like dough; sludge of the sea crumbling as the glory of the sea clashes with the dregs of the splintering Merry and a friend already slipping through the cracks in his skin to seek solace in the creases of bedrock.

Usopp leaves, kicking up remnants of seashells and sand. The salt on Sanji’s lips are not just from the sea.

He has faced wicked torrents that slashed him open. Left him breathless and torn, sinews entangling with the kelp and tugging at driftwood; pouring all things red and vitreous into the water; never overt. But even that has never left him feeling so at sea, his legs feeling as though they are growing barnacles from the pores—all wicked, defined slices spitting salt into his veins, fueling the rage with a twisted, oceanic sense of gusto.

Nami cries, so does Chopper, and he watches in agony as their Glory of the Sea cries too; head bent, angled in a way so the tears meet precisely at the centre of his chin and soak the remains of their home.

The world floods, starting from the axis.

He feels it before he sees it. The bulk of the dead zone morphing into something viscous and feral, climbing over the cobbled walls and seastone borders. The uneven surface of broken, withering things chipping away his flesh, whittling at the seafoam appendages protruding from a back scarred by the creatures of the trenches (of brothers who never got a chance to be brothers, to be humans; to learn that a hand to a cheek can be done with blinding tenderness, not from the raw, infernal reality).   

When he sees it at the skyline, blocking the navy dusk with its own harsh blue, he finds his station under the swelling beat of its rage, and braces for the fall.

And when it does—ravenous, cruel, eager for their bones and organs—there is a presence at his side, known through the gentle flutter of a bandana tied around the trunk of wood he has come to find laurels adorning.   

They declare war on 170 countries, fight the government’s most feared assassin group, get Robin back, experience the horrors of the buster call, and are saved by Merry.

When they’re sprawled across the deck, finally being able to breathe, Sanji allows himself to smile. His face hurts, his whole body does really, and his leg especially burns because that was the first time he’s ever used diable jambe to that extent so no wonder there’s spots of first and second degree burns crisscrossing the limb.

He sits up, a cigarette already clenched between his teeth, and surveys the rest of the crew. Nami and Chopper have their arms wrapped around Robin who embraces them with an equally tight hug. The pantsless cyborg hovers nearby, already starting to warm up to their archaeologist which he can’t fault him for. Luffy is still unable to move, but his smile is still as bright, voice still loud and laughter just as warm. Usopp, or Sogeking, sits close by but not as close as he wants to. Despite that, it shouldn’t take some time before they return to what they were.

And then he turns to Zoro. When they finally lock eyes, he lets himself smile a little bit brighter, opening his chest a little wider. The red that he spills into the sea is a soft, smouldering pink.

Zoro returns the favour with a mellow upturn of his lips, the squint of his eyes faint but he sees it nonetheless.

Instead of stone, his eyes are summer sand. 

Sanji thumbs the cone shell still intact in his pocket, the lustre of it allowing him to fly back to his place next to Atlas—batting away monsters with the sweep of his wings and fucking soaring .

(He doesn’t notice the remains of a green coral sprinkled between his lapels)

He compares the fin to one of the pink trouts with a broken flipper. He thinks of offering it to the fish, giving back to the sea as another form of atonement for simply loving just as much as It does, but his chest begins to convulse and he feels the buildup of water, seaweed, fragmented shells and coral, and squirming fish flooding all thought. The amends die as quickly as the air being robbed from his lungs. He slumps forward, a hand braced on the glass while the other hawks into his palm.

His apologies dribble between his fingers, but they are droplets compared to the ill tempered waves that seem to be hellbent on becoming his bedding. Seafoam springs to the corners of his lips as the remaining shards continue to strip his tongue of feeling. Coral clatters at his feet, shells freckle the bench padding, and a waterfall continues to weep into the tiles. He rubs his nose with his handkerchief, ignoring the streak of dry blood he had missed when washing the material earlier, and sags into the cushions.

A red fish, a tiny thing that he could’ve easily mistaken as a blood clot, flops in his open hand. He closes it into a loose fist, feeling the cold scales mark his palm with frantic jerks. Its mouth kisses his skin, sneaking its way between his fingers to join the fray scattered on the floor. He watches with fascination as it plummets, meeting its end in the curves of a dosina. He realizes after it had stopped moving, that it was a small koi fish he had vomited.

He spits a glob of red into his hand and finds a tinier koi wriggling in his makeshift pond.

“You’re worse.”

Sanji lowers the koi into the small puddle on the floor, taking his time to fiddle with his abandoned stick resting in the ashtray. When he’s upright again, he frowns at Zoro hidden in the covers of the doorway. There’s a beat of silence as they continue to stare, a rogue wave hovering over the both of them—inevitable, catastrophic, grievous.

“I’ll…” He sticks the dart in his mouth, rolling it around and ignoring the tender cuts still oozing with the love fishes. He takes it out and spits half of a koi into his lap. Deal with it. Continue loving. Drown for—

He settles on, “cope.”

Zoro emerges from the shadows with a towel in his hand. He chucks it to him with more force than necessary, but Sanji has anticipated his anger—his skin also thrumming to exchange verbal and physical blows to forget the All Blue betraying him—and catches the cloth with a remark tugging at his lips.

“And ‘to cope’ is to what? Drown?” Zoro stops where the leaking puddle subsides. It curls around his boot, but he doesn’t move away. His lips are pulled back, teeth looking as tall as mountains and sailors rosaries winded around his tongue; but despite that, (and he hates him, he hates him so much he wants to kiss him until they’re whittled into the peach-pit core of it all), his eyes are still as vivid as the sand under the sun. “Let yourself die? Endure this whole thing, turning into a portable aquarium, 'til you fucking implode and become food for the fishes?”

“No.” Yes because he doesn’t know what it’s like to live without love. He is born from the Ocean’s Heart, like his mother had said, and he wears such on his sleeve, in his eyes, in his teeth, in his hands. He moves where the waves take him, loves where it can fill. He is given the chance to behold the Ocean’s purest form, absorb the universe’s most treasured gift and fall in love with the love. He is given the blessing to be human, and what is more human than loving? And how more human can he be by loving and dying for Zoro, most of all.

“Then what?” Zoro steps forward, avoiding the explosion of coral and shells between his feet. His movements are wild yet controlled, cavalier but at the same time, meticulous. A hand rests on the hilt of a sword. Wadou Sanji remembers fondly. “You know about the cures. You either tell them, get it removed, or die.”

Sanji crushes the burnt out stick in his hands, hiding the betrayal of unease in his tight hold. Then what he wants to say, spread his hands and display his finality with the same flourish he has come to associate Zoro with. Then what he wants to snap, spewing seaweed into the blistering wounds, koi between his teeth, some dead, some barely living at all. Then what he longs to scream, finally cursing the Storm, the Creature, the Ocean for burdening him with the weight of Flood of all floods—for teaching him how to love through unlove, for thrusting him into the universe and telling him to fly next to Atlas even before he can learn his name, his purpose (to be the third, emotionless—loveless—soldier or to be human, his mother’s child, his own).

Rather than divulging in his desires, he spits out clumps of sand and seaweed into the ashtray and wipes his mouth. He locks eyes with Zoro, the reflection of the aquarium vibrant in his scowl. He opens his mouth to tell him off, this is my bed and I will drown in it; I will not anchor you to me like that, or something along those lines (a bitter, fuck off really), but then his words turns into gargles and he’s retching to the floor, hacking up the evidence of the profound thing he has come to loathe yet adore even more.

The tenderness from Skypiea comes tenfold, the swordsman’s touch earnest and possessing a sort of sincerity Sanji has yet to see, and isn’t that a damning thing—Zoro holding him steady as he confesses at his feet, teetering on absolute ruin, feeling Icarus’ last moments in his chest. Pink sea water dribbles from his mouth and to Sanji’s horror, sees it sprinkling on to Zoro’s boot. He should shove him away, wipe up the mess, and pretend this never happened, but the heat of Zoro’s palms on his shoulder and on his chest—his heart—stops him. He chokes on a sob, pretending it’s another cone shell instead of facing the fragility of it all.

Even after he stops coughing, Zoro still holds him, his grip tight like that delicate thing that has risen will float away. But it won’t because it’s ponderous and they are both beginning to capsize. Just for a moment, Sanji lets him, allows himself to taste what it is like to drown under the bulk of his heavy hand, and sinks into the embrace. He realizes slowly Zoro’s tracing something along the outlines of his shoulder blades, the graze soft and barely there, but the ghost of it burns. It’s crescent shaped, something that flutters, close to feathers, and oh—he does not want to expose himself further.

Zoro mumbles into his hair, but Sanji doesn’t catch what he says, so he grumbles, “Speak up, can’t hear you.”

Zoro is quiet for a moment, still tracing a wing onto his back, before replying—movements stilted and a finger paused at the base of his neck. His voice is soft, a drop in the ocean. “How worthy is this person to have you drown for them?”

A thousand-and-one soldiers the thought rises immediately. All the gems in the ocean, be spared from the Flood.

More than the Ocean’s Heart.

He wants to say how they make the ocean seem so little; how it hungers for their power by pressing itself against their sides to try and have an inkling of what it is like to be sure and known. That no thing such as the sea can take something as living as them—you.

When that one day where the Flood wins, Zoro would still be standing; scathed and pruned, yes—but no more less than solid. That is what it is like to have the earth honour you.    

Instead he bows his head, letting the ash in his hand fall to the floor and pile on top of the dead koi. He straightens up when the uneasy silence starts to choke him, the top of his head brushing underneath Zoro’s chin like a fleeting kiss, a drifting current. His mouth stretches into a sardonic smile. “Not like you’d understand, moss for brains.”

Zoro doesn’t comment although Sanji feels the bob of his Adam's apple, swallowing the remarks and burying them in his chest—acidic, serrated words that surely would’ve struck worse than all three of his swords. His shoulders stiffen and Sanji prepares for the blow.

The question that comes is a hushed, cracking whisper that cuts deeper than any tectonic plate.

“Your hands—even if it costs you your hands, would they still be worthy?”

He thinks of Zoro at the Baratie, years younger and carrying perdition on his back. He remembers Arlong Park with Zoro’s wounds in his hands, splattered at their feet, his epiphany pinched between his teeth. He dwells on Little Garden, the man’s shins nearly sliced off as Sanji had realized he is in fact the earth’s burning core. He dredges up every island, every adventure experienced together, the scars they carry as one—his eulogy .

The answer, the full admission now spoken out loud, is fatal.

“Yes.”

Zoro holds him a little longer.

He is profound and brash and all things Zoro should hate, but.

Zoro looks at the broken wings in his hands, shattered months ago by his own foot, which really feels like a millennia. He gazes out the window to the kitchen where he’s sure Sanji is stuffing all sorts of crushed shells and tiny fish into the drain. He wonders how long the Cook has become acquainted with the sea, to know it so deeply it fills his lungs with its ‘gratefulness’. He dwells on the times the Cook has fled from the crew, the edge of salt peeking from his lips, seashells shredding his excuses as he retreats to the kitchen or washroom, spewing sorry’s into the pipes.

Of course the romantic idiot would succumb—not quite but it’s damn near close—to the love disease, the universe’s cruel joke of loving at all. To love is second nature for Sanji. He had noticed that at Cocoyashi, seeing the Cook with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, cheeks a cosmic pink (because he has never seen that kind of rosy before. Simply calling it pink would be disingenuous) and sitting across from him at that party. He had looked at him, studying the constant jitter of a leg or a fluttering hand—how he moved when he did not, filling the space with his thoughts: unspoken and only for him. He watched him gaze on, smiling at Usopp perched on an impromptu stage and tapping a rhythm on his knee; placating the anxiety wrung around his hands when he saw their navigator finally have something to smile for; and sighing at their captain’s eating habits, although the grimace on his face was followed by an edge of fondness. They were new, youthful and naïve, and yet he saw him open up his chest and carve individual spaces of each of their smiles—not next to his heart, but inside and on top of a blistering wound containing a history unwilling to surface.

He had wondered then what made that wound so large, vicious and cruel in its size and purpose, and how Sanji had managed to tower over it all (or if he was standing at all). But then he got to know him in his scars and how they drink moonlight—disappearing then reappearing vividly distant under the glower of the sun; in his kicks by differentiating each melodic swing accompanying the time signature; and in his hands, familiarizing himself with the petal veins, resolute and fierce—only made to give, never take. He understood then, at Drum when he had heard of the sacrifice to ensure Nami and Luffy’s safety (and the recent one on the Sky Island through Usopp’s rambling mouth. He had felt earthquakes erupting from his very core, unsure of its intent and aim).  

When Sanji loves, he loves with his all. It’s in his eyes, the way a single blink will sear fucking poetry into your skin; in his hands where he creates, moulds devotion—his soul —into what he does; in his feet, bloodied and constantly bruised from habouring blow after blow—to shield and to defend. He loves in his smile, the softness of spring stitched into the upturn of his lips.

He is love, and isn’t that a twisted thing—to kill the very thing the Heavens have bestowed on humanity.

Zoro lays the broken wings in front of him. They’re pure as lilies, wax in the moonlight. He runs a finger between each crack, a sick maze of divinity now shattered on the floor of the crow’s nest. He shifts each piece, picking up each with the gentleness he’s expressed only twice, and rearranges them until they’re whole again. Unable to fly, and yet still beautiful.

He wonders if he could glue them together. For what he doesn’t know. For who—he strides towards the window again and finds Sanji leaning over the railing.

The moonlight shields him from further scrutiny but Zoro can still see the tremble in his hands, the faint shimmer of seafoam at his mouth. He’s cupping something in his palms, studying the thing with the ghost of a smile on his lips. It’s unnerving to see how much Sanji has come to know, love, the sea. With what it has done, one would expect the Cook to detest it, burn the whole thing down if he could, but Zoro sees Sanji entwined with the sea and how a different kind of sea (one that is loving, isn’t parasitic, is worthy of being with Sanji) rushes through his veins. To take one from the other is almost a sin—dishonourable, sacrilegious.

Zoro isn’t a religious man. He has cursed at a ‘God’ once or twice, so to take Sanji away from the sea should be easy, but.

Sanji shifts and Zoro sees bobbing red dots in his palms—tiny, dead koi fish from his lungs. And then he tips his hands forward and they both watch the sea accept the offering.

Always giving, stemmed from his love.

Zoro wants to jump down, gather Sanji in his arms and shake him until the disease is leaking from his ears. He wants to yell, demanding ‘How? How can you give so much to the sea even though you will get nothing in return? How can you drown for this one person when you have been the one dying—always giving, yet you are the one that suffers?’

But he knows the answer, and he hates it. Not the unfathomable humanity that makes up who Sanji is, but the principles the Cook swims in.

The sea can be an unforgiving God, but Zoro is a bitter, vindictive man.

He’d separate seas, no—drown the damn ocean with his own damn hands if it means something, anything to—

A deep, raspy cough cuts through the air.

He watches Sanji retreat to the kitchen, a hand clamped over his mouth, and something in his chest—guarded, heavy, loud—seizes his own throat. 

Now isn’t that profound and brash.

“Wait, wait you damn bastard!”

Sanji staggers, can barely stand as one ankle is a hulking purple, and Zoro can only gape in newfound horror as he stumbles towards them. Zoro sees his chest rattle, fighting down the discordant fits of blood and the abundance of love that have surely shattered in the explosion. His mouth must be a jumble of reds, pinks, and blues, but his voice is firm; his own anchor, unwavering, hellbent, and steady. There is something underneath those words, though. The consonances have already started to crumble as the vowels desperately try to hold them together. The stress of his enunciations are garbled, swallowing the something down with the rotten aftertaste staining the air. They’re both stiff, caught up in the storm bearing over them.

But Sanji still limps to them, to him , his posture solid and resolute. He stands tall as always because he is Love, he is Sanji—strong, steadfast, stubborn. He has never looked more stunning.  

Zoro barely comprehends the Cook shuffling in front of him, protecting him, offering up himself, and isn’t that a sight—watching the Cook express his precious love in a place reeking of death and loss. He is always an apostle to the scythe. 

“Tell everyone I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye.”

And it is that word, that farewell laced with a bitter tang instead of the warm, almond high Sanji's words always carries, that kills him. The something he couldn’t comprehend comes with such a suddenness it feels like he’s the one drowning.

Sanji always had that effect.

Zoro lurches to his feet, an unfamiliar sort of selfishness starting to climb up his chest; born from the realization that is just so cataclysmic he nearly falls back down. That selfishness, a surety so devastating, is lodged deep in his throat, tasting of iron and salt and feeling like hot wax dripping into the filling chasm in his chest.

“I guess you’ll have to…” 

Zoro lifts Shusui, a prayer on his lips. He is not a religious man, but . 

“Find another cook.” There’s a smile in Sanji’s words—a finality, his homage. 

And Zoro honours him in between his ribs, in his own hands, by withholding the urge to catch Sanji as he falls, his grasp on Zoro’s arm faltering and lying limp in the debris. 

Chapter Text

The hours sputter by, shadows of minutes swallowed by the surfs, merging into one nameless puddle.

Sanji releases a wet cough.   

This grief that holds him goes back to the first breath he ever drew, chest relearning the scattered bob of nature’s own exhale and inhale. Formless in its afflictive way, shifting and never true—never one to become stagnant. It is always moving, wasting its energy begging to be fed, canines digging into his flesh like barnacles does to the riverbanks. It is the one thing he hesitates to feed, thinking of the monsters that are inured in the folds of a bloodied tongue.

This hesitancy kills him; to nurture the grief that shouldn’t be as abrasive—he shouldn’t even entertain by offering his flesh like his skin would not leap apart at the mere brush of its fangs—should not be in his hands of all things. But it is, and instead of casting it aside, he presses this grief over the opening in his chest and pushes it in until the crenate edges are wedged between his sinew and the sludge he bathes in. Something wet gushes forwards, but he cannot discern whether it had fallen from his eyes or dripped languidly from his mouth. However, anything that he weeps will taste like salt, and therefore should not matter.

He brushes the cuts along his palms and pretends they are only the creases in his skin. 

He realizes this grief, how it laps on shores and imprints itself in its grains, had witnessed those who can split the earth like eggs. Old and knowing it is, this type of desolation that clings to him like ocean-weed. Hangs off his shoulders and winds around his legs, sliced by the rocks he bares his soul to with a reverence. He should have known this grief would haunt him longer than any other loss has. 

He remembers how Zoro stood at the dividing mark between the soil and the sea, and how the sun never stopped to grovel for its loss of something so great (He cursed at the ground, at the sky for never appreciating him to the fullest. And for once, his feet hurt). It continued to live and so did he, but Sanji still wants to scream until the moon started to die itself.           

He fiddles with the shell in his hands, pressed into his palms after carving a hole into the sky to scream at Atlas or whoever cared to listen. Do not take him he had coughed into the dusk, face wet with salt. He belongs here and here alone. He shall continue bathing in the horizons, watching the sun rise and the moon fall and feel what it is like to have the stars rest in the dimples of his cheeks. You cannot take him. Not yet, not ever.

He was met with the whispers of windchimes, pattering rain, and a cackle as thick as mud.

The mockery is a trochus and has a soft, silvery sheen to it. Under moonlight, it gives off a mint green. He places it next to Zoro as if the heftiness of it would shatter him. It could, possibly. Then again, it’s Zoro, that’s ridiculous—fucking absurd that he couldn’t handle the bulk; but it isn’t the weight that he’s worried about, not really.

“It’s because of Zoro, right?”

Sanji swivels to face Nami. She smiles, consoling him with the mere twitch of her lips, but her words leave him anxious, digging under his skin to caress the overflowing fury with a touch too kind. Her eyes are fixed to the shell resting by Zoro’s closed hand.

“I don’t know what you mean, Nami-san,” he croaks, rubbing at the bandage around his neck. It chafes him, but he is so used to suffocating that he welcomes it. He supplies a small smile of his own, hoping it’d be enough. “Did you need anything?”

She sits next to him, a hand wrapping around his wrist and tugging. He lets her, watching as she reveals the livid, red lines standing stark against the pallor of his skin. She clucks her tongue and reaches across from Zoro to grab some medicinal cream.

“It’s fine, my dear.” He gently pulls his arm from her grasp and curls it around his waist. She fixes him with the look and he smiles wider, hoping harder. “ I’m fine.”

“I never knew you were capable of lying to me, Sanji-kun.” Her voice has an edge to it—not mad or irate, but forlorn and concerned. The bottle of cream rests in her palm, an offering to him if he so chooses to indulge her further.

He wilts at that. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay.” Nami pats his shoulder, the fingers teasing down to tug his arm from around his waist. She rotates the rest of his wrist and exposes even more of the raw skin. She tuts again and begins to apply the cool cream over his forearm. “You both will be.”

Sanji flickers his eyes to Zoro, unstirring, fixed to the makeshift bed. Something ripples, grey and dull beneath the wrappings. He holds in a snort: the swordsman becoming the sword. A shudder follows. Zoro never missed striking him where it’d ache. He watches as a piece of clay becomes dust, a shard taken from his chest where his own hand lain. He nudges the trochus away. This is what the ocean can use against him.

“Hey, gimme your hand.”

Sanji darts his eyes back to Nami who’s reaching out to dislodge his hand from his hair. She places it on his lap next to his throbbing arm, rubbing circles into his wrist with a rhythm hidden in the motion. He ignores the pulsating ache around his temple in favour of watching the navigator then grab both limbs. She doesn’t say anything, and he realizes she’s still waiting for his answer.

“It…” Sanji swallows, ducking his head to study the fading pallor of Zoro’s skin. He nods, a jerking, biting motion that leaves him lightheaded. “How’d you know?”

Nami hums, “I had a hunch around Little Garden. Then one day I saw you throw chunks of wet sand overboard and started choking on something and it just…” she gestures vaguely between the two. “It just clicked what was going on thereafter.”

Something vaguely sounding like the Creature, Storm, and the Waters bruise his ears.

Sanji swallows a shard. “And it being... him ?”

She snorts and he sags further, “How couldn’t it be? You butt heads and scream at each other until you’re hoarse, but anyone can see…” She trails off, her lips twisted into a soft, warm smile. Her eyes are focused on Zoro’s chest this time, sketching out memories Sanji can’t reach for.  They’re above the water, in the sun and glowing with a scalding ferocity whereas he has an anchor wrapped around his neck, desperately clinging to bits of sea-drifts to stay afloat.

“See…?” He prompts, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. It takes her a moment to answer, each second an extra weight to the noose around his neck.

“You look at him differently.” She settles on. The words splinter the driftwoods and the anchor drags him past the Merry. He can barely hear her as the whine of water surrounds him. “You look at all of us differently because you love us in your own way, but with Zoro ,” she chuckles and he doesn’t miss the fond, teasing inflexion in her voice. “You don’t just look at him. You hold him in your eyes, and keep him there like he’d float away.”

Sanji is silent, remembering a saying about a merging, so Nami prattles on, flickering her eyes to study the lump of shells stuck in his throat, “You see in him, with him, all of him, really—it’s… it’s scary, sometimes.” She thumbs his sleeve, her eyes never leaving his even when he averts her gaze. “You love with your best, but your love for Zoro… I’m sure it could shred the earth down to the very core—sink the moon itself if you so choose.”

“ Oh .” The revelation pulls him into an abyss he’s unsure he can swim out of. He focuses on Zoro’s face, tracing the bandage wrapped around his head, and says softly, “it’s that obvious?”

“ Sanji-kun ,” Nami snickers, “Brook had asked Robin and I how long you two were together. You should’ve seen his face when we said you two are still in the pining stage.”

(You think together would be like the sand he walks on , she observes through her waterfall of citrine-kissed hair. She sucks in a breath as Sanji clears his throat. Rough, coarse—only there to greet your pruned skin with bladed grains meant for things to be damned, but you are wrong . She follows the stuttered rise and fall of Zoro’s chest, counting the pale scars cared for before their doctor came on board. Sanji’s hands are always meant to give, after all. Because somewhere between the bedrock and water—where river-slit eases the histories the land had failed to protect—it was then that he had decided to engrave every earthly thing with your name. While the tides strike, he will split seas apart to syphon the weight you think you deserve and he will continue doing so to prove the Ocean wrong. You are what She cannot be, and his love runs deeper than the sea beds—of the earth entirely.

She shakes her head and gently scratches the dry blood smeared into wrist, trying to ignore the blatant confession kissed into his skin. Idiots, the both of you.)   

For the first time since gargling devotion, Sanji tries to fall out of love.

Zoro wakes up and the first thing he does is ask for booze and Sanji thinks it should be easy to at least dislike him, to carve him out of the place in his heart and leave him in some dry-rots. To push him out of his head, scratch out his own eyes because seeing Zoro means to look at him—perceive him the way Nami says he does, and that is another admission written into the grit between their hands.

He brings him meals only when needed, stands by Chopper’s side as the on-call nurse, and stabs insults into his wounds because he needs Zoro to resent him unconditionally. He crushes the green trochus and leaves it at his bedside. Dips poison in his jabs, and tries —God does he try—to kill this part of himself: the piece inside of him that aches to breathe alongside Zoro because for comes in the form of peridotites, stealing the whispers in his lungs; and together is covered in the shavings of sapphire gemstones.

An arrowhead of stone strikes home when he finds himself bundled in the post-battle’s mist. It does not feel as familiar as the ones that were warmed over by the sun; nor does it resemble the freckled summer soil that weaves through its stony veins. This is a smooth blade, honed to the earth’s finest form of eloquence. It is just as bright, just as bold as the ones he nestles beside the lambis and venus, but it does not hold the same type of steel he knows. It is an ancient thing, scarred and unscarred—battered yet flawless. He cannot list the countless times he has ever truly wielded such a blade, but never has he turned it on himself.

Garnet crusts at the neck from its delicate, precise strikes that flay him open. Blood dribbles from wounds he hadn’t bothered to tend to for they could only be closed by the one who had given them. He kneads the taut skin of his chest and feels more of himself become crystalized around those incisions. A weight or an armour, serving the same purpose; birthed from the same flesh. What better way to understand then to present what is inside. 

He presses at the memory of the ache he had borne back in that city on water. Swollen, bruising—its origins from under tides and in the first layer of crust. It still thrums. Mercy does not come easy from the sea; that is a fact he carries since the first time he had soared. It will only come to those who clamour for its open palm, and he has never tried to pry open its fingers and fit himself between its depths. He merely spread his wings and stepped deeper beneath the surface—the coolness of the sand burning his feet and the ocean’s weight making slit of his sinew.

A thought slips at his feet, and he laughs. It hurts. His stitches pull firm, but he plucks at them, pure notes that hang strangely among the debris. Always looking for those who can give the most, who will shrink at its blistering certainty. The ocean for all its swelling hubris, braided from bones that once had a heartbeat, yearns for its worship. It has sailors on their knees, their hands pressed together above their heads to practice timidity. People of small islands offer their fairest maiden, and their most supple cow to fend off floods. Fishermen hang bones of their greatest catch around their necks as if it were their child. Even the leviathans know where their limit lies. But he, holding something just as ethereal—just as tremendous in the simple utterance of it alone—wades through its torrents with the same amount of certainty that hides underneath the bottom of the ocean’s ledge.

He is to hold back the flood? Fine, he will do so unwaveringly because he is one of those creatures that has roamed beside gilded ichor, all the while pouring carnal blood within its murk. 

What is lodged in his throat is not just seashells and seaweed, but a conviction welded from the clay he had stolen from Zoro’s face when he had cupped his cheeks to wipe away the streaks of blood. He always wondered what the hardened line of his jaw felt under the mould of his hands. He found out it fits perfectly against the curve of his palm, warm and hard like everything else about him.

The things of the earth did not love him, but not once did that clay crumble under his touch. 

He cups a pond of koi in his bloodied palms with the detritus from his lungs surrounding him. The windchimes have never sounded so at ease.

Sanji comes back inside from crushing coral into the wreckage of Thriller Bark and finds Zoro sound asleep, a hand clutching one of the pieces of the trochus he had left. He hesitates before placing the small fragment of a yellow scotch bonnet on the hilt of one of his swords. Which one, he isn’t sure because there is the tip of a finger brushing against the back of his thigh and he flees like the morning tide. 

(He wakes up and finds a small, yellow shell resting on Wadou. From his long escapades concealed in the shadows of conchology pages, he vaguely remembers skimming over a mollusk with scotch in its title. Callused hands catch the intricate lines and he smiles, placing a broken piece of the trochus in the concave grooves.

Chopper finds him holding the two to his chest, the bandages around his chest and shoulders lying haphazardly on the ground. The little doctor yells at him but doesn’t try to take the shells away.)

Where does the ocean end he had asked, weaving her hair into an intricate shape in the palm of his bandaged hand.

Where does it start? she had murmured in turn, the medicine wedging bruises beneath her eyes.

He remembers quieting for a moment, counting the fluttering beat trapped in her wrist. It was weaker compared to a few days ago. The tolling bells that were bright and limitless were then stagnant, unstirring despite the wracking coughs that shook her skeleton (and to see such between her ribs than to imagine was something devastatingly beautiful). He tried to sway them with a furrowed brow, a cheek squished between his teeth, and eyes resembling the pearls she had worn, offered to years ago by a hand as rough as sandstone. She did say he always made the sweetest expressions. He watched as the pale bells lurched only slightly.

He mulled over the question for days, never able to cough up his own thoughts and keep them on his tongue. They managed to escape him like hot springs.

In the end, she never got to tell him. He never thought about it again, until now.

Where does the ocean end?

He watches the edge of water collide with the night, an inky smear across the canvas of black. He fingers the dart, using it to trace the merging of coal to obsidian in a steady line like he had seen Usopp do with his own charcoal. The line ends far to his right where it is simply air to be seen. He traces it back and stretches his arm far to his left, muscles straining as he branches towards the water. Wisps of smoke spiral along the invisible line and are stolen by the moonlight splayed across the uneven surface.

Does it end there? He drags his arm through the air, back to his right. The dying cigarette sways steadily in his grasp. He gives it a twirl, the smoke becoming thick at the motion. The bumpy circle of grey becomes still, its threads curling into a silver face of petal smooth skin. It steals the moonlight from the ocean to mould its own bed of hair, and there are nacre shells in what he supposes are to be eye sockets. The face shimmers, gliding towards him with quartz between their teeth, and amber leaking from their eyes. They are smiling, expression bright, the upturn of their clay lips pure as crocus flowers. He reaches out, the shaking pads of his fingers brushing over their lips. He curls them as if he could scoop the answer from their tongue. Or does it end here?

Their mouth opens, allowing him to press his index into the cold hollow of their face. He’s only able to trace a name before the face vanishes into the starlight. His index comes back soiled, a strand of moss under his nail.

He folds the butt into his tin can before fumbling for another. His mouth is full of steel and salt, tasting of greens and freshwater alike. He nurses the cigarette close to his lips as if the face would come back and he’d be able to latch on to their throat and snatch the answer from there. How would it be? Would it tear apart like newly made slip, its texture allowing the words to fuse once more and press against the roof of his mouth; or become ribbons in his maw, their meaning pooling in the jut of his collarbone? He sucks in the smoke, and the answer comes to him, wet and heavy.

The waters lash at his bare feet. Where they struck comes a stinging weight. He kicks his feet, flinging bits of seaweed as a firm declination. They answer him silently, swallowing unsaid words with looming waves. Wind from the east comes and soothes his soles, lapping at the salt caught in the folds of his pants, in between the fractures of his skin. They cradle the sand from beneath his nails and whisks off into the night, their palms stretching far into the abyss. Something between the grime takes off too, but he doesn’t try to fill that void. A fragmented murex does it for him.

Above, the moon broadens. The moonglades unfurl, rippling to that monotonous hum that clings to the ship. Like a dancer , he smiles softly. He holds up the cigarette in a toast before inhaling. He exhales, his own company an elegant silver, and then—nothing.            

He peels away from the shadows as his dancer blooms into more moonlight. “What’s the occasion?”

Sanji doesn’t cry out. He had heard the uncharacteristic thumps coming from above, Zoro made sure of that. He taps off the embers. “You take a wrong turn again, mosshead?”

Zoro’s footfalls stop a few feet behind him. He remembers that day in the aquarium, how feathered foam trembled at a gentle touch (and how just hours later he would feel as though his skin was being lifted from its bones as Zoro’s own trembling fingers grappled for his neck, a ghastly white unveiled in the sunlight. He vomited after Chopper carried him off).

He disguises his shiver as a shift into a new position. One leg hangs out of the fourth docking system room.

“You go here often,” Zoro says, voice a near murmur but still rumbles through him like a hurricane.

“Needed—” and he pauses, searching through the ocean mist for an answer that would not burn. He huffs, “... Space, ‘s all. Go away.”

“You go here often,” Zoro repeats, sitting beside him. His legs are bent to his chest so he can rest his elbows on his knees. Instead of facing the ocean, he leans against the frame, observing him.

“ Fucking —okay, how’d you know I’d be here?” Sanji looks to the horizon. A finger knocks against the ashtray. He tries to wipe away the ashen hue beneath his eyes until colours swarm into the dark sky. 

Zoro is quiet for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the auric jewellery wink as the swordsman bows his head as if to merge back into the shadows. He sniffs, “You go here when you feel as though you need to give penance.” 

Sanji snorts, “I go where I please.” He rolls the cigarette between his index and middle finger and scoffs, “and besides—we’ve only just gotten the Sunny. This is my first.”

“I’m not talking about physicality,” Zoro replies, voice as heavy as boulders. Sanji can feel the mass. He tests its weight and decides to let it crush him only slightly. Zoro clears his throat, looking beside him. “I’m talking about the distance between you and the ocean.”

Sanji freezes. His own voice becomes layered like the brine. “And who are you to judge it's depths?”

Zoro’s features twist into something of wrenched tree roots. He rubs a hand over his face, tugging sharply at the bandage around his head. A record for how long he's worn them, Sanji muses.

“You bare your skin to the creatures like you’re nothing more than a ball of dough.” Zoro catches his eye and holds him there. He scoots forwards, his foot knocking against the ashtray. A stub tumbles out but neither pays it any mind. Zoro gnaws on his words and spits it between them, “you measure your worth by the volume of your bones that wither on the ocean floor; by the miles of currents you can shred through before you're simply meat.”

“But you'd still offer yourself up because you don't think you've done enough.” Zoro has come closer, the whites of his teeth shimmering like piano keys. The tune it carries leaves faint welts on Sanji’s skin. A hand rests near his bandaged foot. “You come to the ocean when you feel defeated—when you feel as if the only way to truly hold value is to be a martyr even if by someone else’s hand.”

“You’re a fucking jackass,” Sanji hisses, nudging away the hand. His own shake in the comfort of his lap. “You want to speak to me about sacrifice, then what the fuck was that?”

His eyes become slits of rivers, tongue seeking the shells he buries. “Nothing happened? You were the sacrificial lamb. You were the one I found, more man than ever. You were the one I had to drag, your fucking bones poking through your skin, wondering if I was too late and you—” He heaves. He swallows the murex, asking for a few more minutes. He shouldn't have tested those weights. “—you nearly fucking died, asshole, and you want to talk to me about sacrifice?!”

Zoro meets his glare head on, as always. There’s a flicker in his eyes, but the stars steal it before Sanji can understand what it is. His voice is slow, subdued so that it wraps around him to harbour the winds. “I did so because I understand my value. Do you even have an inkling of your worth?”

Sanji breathes, lungs protesting. The moonglade wriggles in anticipation. Embers tickle his knuckles. Zoro exhales.

“You don’t.” Zoro’s eyes never change its intensity but Sanji nearly splits apart.

“I do,” Sanji snaps. His hands are still shaking, he realizes when putting out the dart. He goes for another and Zoro watches patiently as the cherry illuminates the withering lines marred into his skin.

“Then why did you try to leave?” Something profound seeps through Zoro’s voice. The ocean slaps against the hull, trying to reach for that fervent thing, and Sanji sways his foot in warning. Zoro continues in one breath, face as still as stone, ignorant of the ocean’s cresting ire, “you embrace death like fire to wood. You want to burn while you are drowning”

“You did too.” 

“I wasn’t saying goodbye, though.”

“In case you've forgotten, shithead.” Sanji cups the uneven bob of his throat. He goes to knock at his chest where seashells twirl. There’s a grin carved into his face. “I've already made a cocktail for the grim reaper to take their fill.”

“And because of that, you don’t think you're anything worthy.” For once, Zoro looks intimidating. His words drop like stones into the water instead of skimming his surface. “No—even before you started spewing shells into your hands, you’ve sought atonement like that’s all you know. I see how you tend to our scars and neglect your own. And you don’t think I’ve noticed how you latch onto those cigarettes like it were a lifeline? That without some way of killing yourself, you don’t hold any meaning? Is that what you’re trying to prove? That you can be useful? That you’re alive? You truly think you don’t deserve to—”

“Stop talking like you know me!” Sanji thunders. The ocean hums, pleased. He runs a hand through his hair, nails digging into the scalp to fight off the ghost of iron. He swallows a cry. “I’m not the one who left pieces of me back in that graveyard.”

“No, you're not,” Zoro shrugs. His eyes have never left his face. “But you wish it was you.”

“Oh punaise, shitty swordsman—I’m dying.” Saying it aloud shreds the stitches in his mouth. He stumbles to his feet. The can tips over, the ash and stubs swept away by the scattered thumps of his foot. He digs into his pocket and tosses a bonnet to him with the intent for it to burst in his palm. “You’re not. Do the math.”

Zoro rises as well, the pale shell a stain in his hands. When it shimmers above the silvery waves, Sanji flinches. Zoro clenches it, forgoing anger with something damning. “You’re doing it again.”

“What I’m doing is being rational,” Sanji retorts, throwing up a hand. “Whatever happened to your ambitions, hmm? Greatest swordsman in the world and all that. I don’t remember the requirements involve being dead.”

“And what about yours?” Zoro steps forwards. Even in the ill darkness, he seems to command the light. It leaves Sanji dizzy. He flickers his gaze to his clenched fist before returning to meet wide eyes. “You’re to find the All Blue, and yet you were so willing to throw it all away like it was worthless.”

There is sand in Sanji’s mouth. Abrasive, suffocating. “You were ready to throw away yours.”

“Not like you,” Zoro whispers above the waves. “Why do you believe that I am worth so much more than you?”

There is a flood he carries—has lifted since sinking to his knees, begging the earth to see her one more time—but never has it felt so oppressive. He sucks in a stuttered breath. What greets him is salt. “A dead man does not hold much value.”

“You’re not going to die. You’re not dead.” Zoro reaches for his arm, but he steps away, closer to the ocean. Zoro pauses, the flicker in his eyes coming and going like the tides. He sounds almost frantic and it aches, “Cook—”

“Shut up,” Sanji doesn’t sob but it's close enough. He thumps his head against the framework, a hand in his pocket, the other flattening the butt. He tries not to look at Zoro who seems to demand his flame. You’ve already taken it. “I can't—You—I'm done. Just, drop it.”

“Nah.” Zoro stands across from him. Something raw takes form in the corner of his mouth. “Let me carry it, just a little longer.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Sanji rolls his eyes. The motion makes him dizzier.

“I’m glad it was me.”

Sanji raises a brow. The stick falls to his bare feet, ash becoming snow between his toes.

“And especially glad it wasn’t you.” When Sanji stares at him—dumbfounded, scared—Zoro finds himself thumbing the bonnet piece that was left on his sword. Sanji follows the motion, breath hitching. He brings the other piece next to it, and isn’t surprised it fits. He tries not to smile, but again—he is just a man, after all. “Sanji, I’m so thankful that it wasn’t you, because whatever you’re trying to prove, you don’t need to. You’ve already done it.”

“You can’t say that,” Sanji whispers. Rheumy sockets become so bright they seem to glow from within. Zoro remembers pearls and gemstones and quartz and things that can be cupped in supple hands, and is glad that his are shaped for things that are to be wielded. Sanji’s gaze continues to pierce into him. “You don’t know what you’re saying, you don’t—”

“Sanji—” He can’t believe how tender the name sounds on his tongue. He wants to say it again, and again, and watch it never lose meaning.

“Why are you here?” Sanji slams his back against the skeleton of the ship, looking to jump. Instead, he then starts to pace. Arrhythmic. “You’re supposed to be resting, you’re still injured—God knows what you’ve been doing all day without any of us to kick your ass back in bed. For all I know, you didn’t even bother changing your bandages because of fucking course you wouldn’t, you’re a fucking barbarian whose self-preservation is as handy as his sense of direction.”

“I want to show you your worth.” When Zoro reaches out again, Sanji wavers. Sand on the shore seeking the lashings of water. He’s just a brush away from the gentle slope of a covered elbow, the faded fabric tickling his skin. He rushes, “I want you to understand—only if you let me. Please.”

Sanji eyes the bow of laurels and wonders how something of the Greats can regard him with such piety. He doesn’t remember nodding.

Strong fingers wrap around his wrist like they were something to be honoured. They do not falter when skin brushes against skin, when a naked shoulder presses against undertows. The back of their fingers meet by their own gravitational pull. Has clay ever felt this warm? 

“Look.”

Sanji follows where his hand traces the horizon. He sees the ocean sucking in the frigid air and the luminous stars until they are shadows of wax upon an onyx field. But he also sees the pearls of moonlight freckling the waters—drawn on by hands that know its weight. He turns to Zoro momentarily and sees him ablaze—golden, warm, swift. He strikes the ocean with a smirk, and he is reminded he rather drowns in that light.

Zoro turns to him, but he has already turned back to the world before them. “Now look there.”

A thumb presses under his chin, tilting his gaze upwards. The moon is at its peak. He wonders if Atlas can feel it at his fingertips.

“Here.”

A finger joins, bringing his focus behind them. The docking numbers twinkle in the dark.

“Now here.”

Then the thumb dusts his lips, pulling him back to where they stand. He looks at Zoro and finds his eyes as deep as earth.

“Why…?” Sanji swallows. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not good with words—with these things.” Zoro casts his gaze downwards. “Thought it was better to show you.”

“I don’t…” He blinks away salt. “What?”

“Your worth, it… it can’t be contained.” Zoro winces at his stumbling, but the words do not lose their purpose.

Sanji’s never been this horrified.

“You don’t think you’re worth it?” Zoro’s fingers find their way to his arm. The bonnets are tucked somewhere in his pockets, and Sanji wants to swallow them just so he can spit them up in smaller pieces. But Zoro still holds him like he's precious, and he doesn't dare think of cutting a channel into that solid force. “Sanji, the reason you don’t see your worth is because it’s all around you.”

Harsh waves crash against the adam-wood. They remain unmoving despite the surging wrath. Something dwindles in the shadows of Sanji’s ribs. 

Zoro shuffles just slightly. Sanji can feel the heat of his palm through his hoodie—another drop of stone to where his bed lies. “You, who feeds his heart to whoever asks. You, who turns something dull into something fucking incredible. You, who carries what were to be my scars on my back, on your chest, around your legs because I trust you wholeheartedly.”

A gentle eruption, he feels. He stifles a cough, the remnants of shells becoming stardust. Drowning, he thought, was a blaze draped in darkness. But this? This is fire—this is what it's like to be burned by his hand alone.      

“You’ve been an unyielding force for all of us. And most especially.” Zoro’s grip becomes fierce. There is a twist then a pop, and the water within starts to sink. “You are my equal, and that already weighs more than any goddamn flood that tries to take us on.”

“Zoro…” Sanji breathes, the sound throbbing fresh on his tongue. It doesn’t taste of seaweed, not anymore. They are shriveling along with the koi—charred, crushed by the pebbles placed so carefully in front of him. "Zoro.”

“Sanji,” he answers in turn. He watches his breath kiss the corner of Sanji’s mouth. “I—”

“You don’t.” Sanji fists his shirt, struggling to push him away but all strength puddles at his feet. He longs for the salt on his lips. “This isn’t you talking.”

“It is,” Zoro replies easily. His hand tangles in the bunched fabric around his collarbone. A knuckle brushes the skin. “It’s me right now, not whatever haunts you. It’s me right now, saying—”

Sanji’s hands ache from where they stroke heated skin. He chokes, feeling the last of the koi turn into air, “No, no—this is the disease. It’s manipulating you. You don't.”

Zoro’s grip holds firm. It keeps him upright, pushed against the frame so he is to focus on the shimmering of water above him. Has he always been that close to the surface—just a refracted shallow away?

A kiss to the roof of his mouth, the seafoam sinking into the curve of his tongue.

“You know me. You know how I won’t give in so easily.” He hates him because he’s right. He hates him because Zoro’s looking at him like he isn’t just a creature of the water, but something of marble that is incandescent. The hand around his collar cups his neck. It does not collapse. He hears the hiss of sand become nothing but gentle. “You’d know me anywhere.”

I would know you a thousand times over. I would know you without touch, by the simple path to the heart alone. Not cut by necessity, but tended by a promise.   

I would know you down to the fucking pit of it, I would, I would, I do.

Zoro smiles, inching closer. Despite the bandages, he looks made anew. Another inhale, and Sanji breathes. Depolluted, cleansed, intoxicated all at once.

At the edge of the shoal, there is a man who sculptures seek an audience with. Laurels frame a face that sunbeams cannot bare. He cracks the watery surface, ripping away the ocean-weed that binds another. A steady hand reaches down, one of equal intensity clasping his. He pulls.

The Creature shrinks. The Storm is thrown to silence. The Waters shatter. The last cup of seawater evaporates.    

And Sanji reaches halfway, rising like the spring sun, and meets Zoro at the centre.

Their separation isn’t a complete division. Remainders glow in the darkness, dancing along their skin, tended to by inexperienced hands.

Sanji’s lips buzz, but do not sting for Zoro made sure that they were to only hum from promise. The other’s thumb sweeps across his lips as if tasting him from touch alone. And Sanji inhales and it doesn’t hurt. His fingers creep to Zoro’s neck; of course, that’s where flesh should belong, on solid ground. 

Zoro had braced himself for the fall, remembering stories of earth shattering unions where they were clumsy and awkward. But when he pressed his mouth to Sanji’s, he only felt himself bloom—stem thick with devotion, roots reaching deep into his soul. He takes solace in the fact that Sanji fills up the sky with everything he has ever failed to know. He’ll learn it all again and again, just so he can shape that name to its most honest form and hand it to him raw.

“You taste like salt,” Zoro murmurs, thumb brushing the curl of whitewashed hair. The ghost of stitches linger on his tongue. His grip stiffens.

“And you taste like blood,” Sanji scoffs, tracing his jaw. He squints, his voice coming out soft. “What’re you thinking about now?”

“I’m sorry.” Zoro presses his forehead to his. His eyes trace where scars would thrive along his lips. “Took me too long to realize.”

Sanji makes another sound, a small amused hum that makes Zoro frown. 

“It’s not your fault.” He tilts his head, eyes still ablaze, lips still a pure pink. He presses forward making Zoro wince, and he huffs a laugh, “we’re both idiots.”

“Yeah.” The agreement spills quietly between them, barely able to reach the ocean before Zoro tumbles again, “you’re the biggest idiot I know and I couldn’t be happier.”

He reaches for the hollows in Sanji’s skin and mumbles, “I want you to know your worth, even if it’ll kill me—I want you to know that you are everything and more.”

Sanji swallows, a small wet noise escaping his throat before he nods.

And Zoro kisses him like he is.

He is twenty-one years old when he learns where the ocean ends.

He leaves the rejoicing pirates, tankers of booze in each hand, and heads for the shores where the moon touches the tree-line. Finding him doesn’t take much effort, strips of bandages snake across the sand where he sits, eyes closed, leaning against a fallen tree.

When he sits beside him, it's silent and loud all at once.

“Here.” He digs a shallow dent into the sand to place their tankers. In a familiar dance, he lights the cigarette trembling in his mouth.

Metres away, the ocean makes a whining noise. The echoes of pirates brush its surface while the stars above resemble ash.

“You’re still you.”

Sanji doesn’t turn to him.

“Yeah.” The smoke dies in his throat. “Still me.”

Zoro shifts. His words are even, but he has always managed to graze him with a sharp edge. “You’ll always be you.”

Sanji tries not to look down, he really does, but.

But.

“You left me on Zou.”

“I did.” The cigarette dangles carelessly in his hand.

“To face them by yourself.”

His heart nearly bursts. “That too.” 

“And when we finally got you back, you tried to leave again.”

A soft, broken exhalation.

“Through my own hands.” His voice never wavers.

And Sanji deflates. “I fucked up, I know, and I owe you an apology. It was stupid and reckless and asking that of you wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have put you in that position, ‘cause—”

“Sanji.” When Sanji turns to him, he wonders why it is not him who always gets lost when that brilliant colour of his eye blinds him. Zoro runs a hand through his hair, tousled and surely muddied. “Yeah, I’m fucking pissed.”

Sanji’s bones ache. The skin around his neck thrums.

“I know you’re still not there.” Zoro darts his attention to where golden wristlets had kept him tethered to a land that was never home. A new flame ignites, murderous and all-consuming. “And that it’ll take more time for you to understand completely, but.”

His gaze meets his, so open, uprooted.

Sanji only nods because he doesn’t have enough words to milk out the white-hot truth.

“Tell me,” Zoro’s voice takes on a frantic sort of edge, and Sanji greets him with words he knows they both can carry.

They come spilling out like a waterfall, gleaming sickly under the black sky. He navigates through an ocean's worth of pain. How early on, he had surpassed the Storm, his hands pruned and broken; took on the Creature with nothing but his flesh to be offered; and the Waters, filling the places where soft things were to be borne with a whirlpool of hellish longing. He speaks faintly about the Flood, how it had scraped the stars to inherit the type of violence that would tear down the world (The sound of a splintering handle does not flee either of their thoughts). He shows him his scars and the places where old yet new scabs have been peeled like ripe fruit. He wades through the currents where ocean shelves harbouring his fears had risen, and how the Glory of the Sea had washed up at his feet (and how he had dared tried tainting something so holy, felt as though begging will never be enough to repent and and and). And he whispers about a woman who had taken a feathered, delicate thing into her even more fragile hands, and given him a chance that the trinity of the ocean's anger had never got to learn.  

It all capsizes—messy, blotched memories that sinks into the channel between them.

Zoro reaches across the gulf, cupping the dampness on his cheeks with a hand carved from reverence, and leaves impressions of love into the sandy surface of his skin. 

“I love you,” Zoro says hoarsely into the crown of his head, skin damp. A thumb traces one of the white cut across his bottom lip while the other hand is clasped over a shoulder blade.

Sanji latches on to his waist, tucking his face into the curve of his neck. “I love you too.”

Where does the ocean end ?

He uncurls his hand where a waxed angel wing rests. (“You kept it?” “Been meaning to give this to you for a while” “Why?” and Zoro peered down at him, a halo of moonlight trickling through his hair, and he knows).

He looks up at Zoro. He peeks behind him, for once seeing what lies beyond the sea salt capped tides, and all he sees is him.

It ends here.

The flood starts to sink.