Work Text:
I love you, his mind screamed, the thought tugging at the edge of his consciousness, burning at the foot of his movement. The words lingered on the tip of his tongue, teetering at the swallow of his throat, threatening to spill out from the air of his lungs. I love you. In the solitude of the night, when his only company was the steady rise and fall of sleeping figures, when the lines of the swordsman’s face softened and adoration coursed through him like stormwind on a ship, there was suddenly an unyielding desire to lay his heart on the makeshift bed his swordsman was lying on. To say, perhaps to the rest of the world, perhaps even to himself, I love you. I have loved you for so long I forgot how it felt to be free.
In the end, what came out, instead, was, as always—
“You idiot.” A breath, barely even more than a whisper. A tired smile, undoubtedly fond. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
Fuck, he thought, I'm in love with him.
And if that wasn't on brand of him, to fall for the most impossible man possible, to be in love with someone he never even thought of having. To be in love with someone on death’s door, whose life was hanging by a thread in front of his eyes, and from something he could have shouldered for him in his stead.
Oh, to be in love with a man he didn’t deserve. To be in love with a man so much greater than him.
He would rather die than ever let that man know, he thought. In the same breath, he would gladly admit it himself if it could somehow bring the man back that instance.
Damn it all, he really had it bad.
Sanji lit his cigarette and didn’t take a drag. He dared a glance at the man whose side he hadn’t left for the past few hours and felt the words running through his teeth again, lumping at the wall of his throat. Memories of the swordsman offering up his life stuck at the forefront of his thoughts, the blunt of his sword at the bones of his gut, and the tear of his white shirt at the blue of his eyes.
The cigarette sat between his teeth, and again, he felt the desire to expose his own bleeding heart. To tell the quiet that would soon die out, to tell the first hint of sunlight through the broken windows, I love him. I love him, even when I don’t deserve to.
In the end, what came out, instead, was, as always—
The smoke blurred away and melted into the sunlight, and Sanji stood up to prepare breakfast.