Work Text:
His back seizes up, and Zoro drops the barbell beside him, straightening up. Somewhere in his back twinges with the upright movement, buried beside his shoulderblade outside the reach of his fingers.
The best he can do is grin and bear it, ignoring his frustration at even finding himself in the situation in the first place. He guesses it’s as good a time for a break as ever, moving his head to the side to stretch the muscles in his neck. The pull is slow and just borders the edge of painful, his eyes slipping shut as he breathes through the feeling.
His head moves for the other side just as the below door to the crow’s nest opens. He stills immediately, watching a blond head pop up out the floor. Zoro snorts. He should’ve known. There are only two people who come in without knocking this early in the day and one of them is currently harassing a tattoed stowaway on the lawn.
A tray of onigiri follows closely behind Sanji’s head, and Zoro watches it intently, barely refraining from licking his lips. As Sanji makes his way up the ladder, the strain from twisting around finally catches up with him. Zoro’s eye twitches with his back, spinning back around.
If Sanji notices, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he makes his way around Zoro and places the plate down in front of him. Ignoring the good-smelling food in front of him, Zoro turns to eye Sanji expectantly.
Sanji stares back at him silently, his arms crossed in front of him. Zoro’s stare remains, and eventually, Sanji sighs, pulling the bottle of sake out and placing that in front of him as well.
“You’re so predictable, you know that,” Sanji says.
Zoro hums delightedly. “So are you,” he adds, going straight for it, ignoring Sanji’s dig of “Hungry?”
Zoro eats in silence for a little bit, and Sanji backs off, moving to open a window. If he couldn’t sense Sanji in the room, he’d know he was there by smell alone, the cigarette he lit lingering in his periphery. Sanji does this sometimes; simply takes up space around Zoro. He’d be loathe to admit he found it even the slightest bit comforting, but Sanji doesn’t need it verbalized to know.
Zoro rolls his shoulders and tries to focus back on his sake. Sanji moving closer again makes that increasingly difficult, the smell of cigarettes curling around him and snaking through the room. He’s made it through his first onigiri when the palm of his hand makes contact with Zoro’s back, the smell of cigarettes still sitting heavy in the room.
Zoro ignores him in favor of the rest of his sake. He can feel Sanji’s presence heavy over his shoulder, his hand skimming down his back then up the nape of his neck, grazing the short hair there. His fingers tangle in it and tug at the back of his head, not enough to hurt.
“You were taking a break?” he asks conversationally, and Zoro grunts in reply.
Sanji drops his cigarette on the floor and stoops slightly to put it out, crushing it beneath the ball of his foot, no doubt incurring the future wrath of Franky.
There’s something in the tone of his voice that has distant bells ringing in Zoro’s head, but he dismisses it almost immediately, too focused on his food and the feeling of Sanji’s fingers. Said fingers glide further down the flat of Zoro’s back, well and properly distracting him.
Zoro hums into his onigiri, leaning into Sanji’s movements, his deft fingers aimlessly exploring his back. Them stalling over his shoulderblade has him faltering into a bite, and he has a split second to prepare for the feeling of two fingers jabbing into the most sensitive part of his back.
Zoro flinches away from the jolt of pain. "Ah! Bastard,” he hisses, annoyed at how easily Sanji figured him out.
“You’re injured.”
“No,” he says immediately.
Sanji finds the spot twice as fast this time, pressing in with his thumb.
“Shit! Fucking cook,” he snaps, swatting Sanji’s hands away. Sanji barely pays him any mind.
“Stop lifting so many weights if you can’t handle them, marimo,” he goads, and Zoro grips onto his undercurrent of worry to keep from throttling him.
“I’m fine,” he grits out.
“Don’t look fine.”
“Well, I am,” he says, swallowing the last of his snack.
Sanji hums lowly, like he doesn’t believe a word but he’s agreeing for the sake of argument. How magnanimous. Zoro ignores him, scowling down at his sake. Sanji breaks the silence after a little bit. “D’you want my help?”
Zoro pauses and then turns to look at him for the first time since Sanji'd come up the ladder. His face is relatively unchanged, his thumb rubbing circles over the spot now. Zoro’s still wary.
“Help how?”
Sanji makes vague grabby motions with his hands, and Zoro frowns, trying to decipher them. Sanji seems to refuse to give him any more context clues, growing redder the longer he stays silent. Zoro lets him cook a bit longer before deciding he’ll just leave it up to him and nods.
Sanji nods back and motions to Zoro’s robe. “I can't do it with this on,” he says.
Zoro huffs but strips. He’s still not entirely sure what it is, but he pushes one arm at a time through each hole regardless. He notices Sanji watching him the whole way, and when he slides the garment off his shoulders, the fabric catches on Sanji's thumb, still grazing his shoulderblade. It takes a beat for Sanji to pull away and let it fall completely, exposing his skin to the stale air of the crow’s nest.
Zoro smirks and snickers at his reluctance, turning to face forward. Sanji flicks the back of his head and pushes his back down, making him hunch over his folded legs. Zoro goes easily, content to find out what’s going on.
He, thankfully, doesn’t have to wait long. Sanji starts high up on his shoulders, his thumbs massaging the sore muscles in firm, circular motions.
A low, harsh noise is expelled out his nose, and he sinks his weight into his thighs, shivers racking down his spine with every pointed press and push.
The accuracy with which Sanji pinpoints each knot has Zoro’s eyes slipping shut, losing himself in each shift of Sanji’s hands. He’s silent but the scent of cigarettes lingers around him, soft hums escaping his lips when he’s particularly focused.
His body is putty beneath him, Sanji molding his muscles like rolled dough. Down his shoulder blades to his lats, Sanji never ceases movement, the second knuckles of his fingers squirming between the gaps in his ribs.
Each slow circle steals words from Zoro’s mouth and thoughts from his brain, pleasure erupting in shivers throughout his body.
What he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall or seeing it through Sanji’s eyes, his lithe fingers pressing into every canyon and crater on Zoro's skin.
They trail downwards, unblemished skin on unblemished skin, down into the small of his back. Harsh circles rub outward, a thumb nesting itself in the ridges of his spine.
Zoro sighs and falls forward a bit more, shifting his forearms to the floor when his thighs protest under the weight of his torso.
His eyes creak open and he catches sight of the backs of his own hands, cracked and calloused. Each knuckle has its own scar, faded from where blades have missed the hilt. His palms are no different, thin slices bisect from split-second choices and mistakes.
He knows how different they are from Sanji's firsthand. Has compared every square inch ad infinitum. The length and width of each finger, his trimmed nails cut and clean, Zoro's bitten off when they grow long enough to pierce his palm.
He loves holding them, watching them, knowing them. He loves their role as an extension of him; ruthless, caring, kind. And he loves the way they look against his skin.
Sanji’s hands creep back up to his neck. This time, when he ghosts over the previously sore spot, Zoro moans, the majority of the sound breathed through his nose.
Sanji slides his hands back down and creeps them around his stomach, resting his chin on his shoulder. “Better?” he mumbles.
Zoro grunts, still somewhat beyond words. Instead, he watches Sanji's hands against his stomach. The fingers of his left hand scratch what of the scar across his torso they could reach. They trail up and down, never straying farther than the full, restricted motion of his wrist.
Zoro’s fingers slide over Sanji's and bring a hand up to his mouth, leaving a lingering kiss on two of his middle-most fingers. From there, kisses move everywhere but are pressed especially to his palm.
The tips of Sanji's fingers grace Zoro's cheek, and the feeling lingers when he pulls back. The difference in scarring is stark with their hands pressed this close together. He’s never really spared his own hands a fleeting thought; he needs them to train and to fight and to eat and to drink, but beyond that, it doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, happens.
But compared to Sanji’s… it's different. Sanji manages to protect the crew with his hands in a different way than Zoro does, his hands as scar-free as Zoro’s are riddled with them.
(And it’s stupid but he kind of loves it. Knowing what it means to Sanji and who he is and what he does.)
Sanji seems content to let him examine them, watching with an even gaze. “You should take better care of your hands, moss head,” he muses.
To what end, he thinks. They'd get cut back up before long; split-second decisions aren’t exactly beyond him.
Sanji doesn’t seem to be looking for a reply either, and for good reason. Really, it'd be an exercise in futility; Zoro’d have a better chance of taking care of himself.
Sanji presses a kiss to the meat of his shoulder then over to the nape of his neck. A warm feeling sneaks up his throat and leaves Zoro staring at Sanji’s hands a bit longer, something akin to pride settling there.
It’s in all the ways they work to protect the crew, the family, they have. Even in the way their scarring seems to mirror each other’s, as proof they can fight and protect what matters to them and the people closest to them.
Zoro buries his cheek in one of Sanji’s hands, hunching lower to brush his nose along his palm.
Sanji laughs, not needing words to hear what Zoro’s saying. “Aw, my sentimental marimo.”
“Fuck off,” he grumbles out but he doesn’t do much to refute it.
Sanji’s amusement is palpable but there’s something softer in the edges that Sanji couldn’t hide from him if he tried.
It’s why them getting together was so easy; they've always been able to understand the smaller, unsaid things. Largely, their personalities clash, laying together like oil on water, but fundamentally, Sanji’s one of three people he trusts with more than his life.
“Mm,” Sanji hums, his thumb rubbing against his face. They sit there in silence together for a moment before Sanji slowly peels himself away.
Zoro takes a deep breath and stretches once he’s extricated himself, and leans back on his elbows to watch Sanji watch him.
It’s a bit embarrassing for Sanji how often Zoro catches him staring. He’d point it out if he knew Sanji wasn’t going to have a fit and attempt to stop doing it all together. Zoro likes it way too much.
Sanji runs his hands through Zoro’s hair, tugging a bit at the ends again. It’s then Zoro realizes his hair’s gotten a bit longer, capable of more of a tug than he’s used to.
“You’re overdue a mow,” Sanji points out, working his way back to the trap door and grabbing the empty plate along the way. “Don’t make me track you down tomorrow for it.”
Zoro grunts half-heartedly and lays his back on the cool wood. He really does feel much better, the ligaments he tugs on giving easily. He rolls his back a couple times to test it out.
The euphoria of his relaxed muscles gives easily in to sleep, and Zoro falls asleep easily with a soft smile on his face, the feeling of Sanji’s fingers still lingering.