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Truth be told, they shouldn’t have been sparring.
The sun sits right on top of them, crushing the day flat until the air over the deck wobbles like it’s about to peel away, every nail in the planks radiates heat back up through bare feet. The sea’s a blind circle of hammered silver around the Sunny and there are no islands, no Marines, no horizon worth staring at.
No real talking, not since Whole Cake. Just… noise.
“Perfect training weather,” Zoro had said, because he’s an idiot and pain still feels like proof of life.
Sanji had snorted, cigarette crooked at the corner of his mouth. “Perfect weather for a nap. Or for actually drinking the water Chopper leaves you instead of using it as a hair product.”
“Didn’t know sunshine made you cowardly,” Zoro had replied, rolling his shoulders until everything clicked. That old itch crawled under his skin: the need to move, to hit, to be hit. “Afraid of sweating through your little suit?”
“Afraid you’ll pass out after three steps and I’ll have to explain to Chopper why I let the world’s worst swordsman die of heatstroke,” Sanji had snapped, but his eyes were already narrowing in that way that meant he was mapping angles, lines, exits.
So they clear a patch of deck and agree on no swords, no knives, nothing sharp. Just fists, feet and the promise of bruises. Robin disappears below with a book. Nami stretches out nearby to monitor but really she’s tallying how many new dents they put in her ship and – okay, maybe she’s monitoring Sanji. Luffy and Usopp hang off the figurehead, a two-headed gargoyle chanting for blood.
It starts light, technically. Zoro feels it in the clean slap of foot against forearm, in the satisfying sting across his ribs when Sanji lands a proper hit. The cook is always fast but today he’s faster, motion edged with something jagged. Impatience. Or something that wants out.
“You’re twitchy,” Zoro mutters, breath just starting to come rough. He catches a high kick on crossed forearms and feels Sanji’s weight drive down through him, bone ringing. “Kitchen out of tea or something?”
“Maybe I’m just bored of kicking you in the same place,” Sanji shoots back, pivoting off the block and coming in low. Zoro hops back so that Sanji’s heel just clears the sweep by a hair.
The blows speed up as Sanji’s footwork scribbles tight, frantic patterns on the deck, like he’s trying to outrun something that only exists in his peripheral vision. When Zoro probes, testing openings, Sanji’s counters come a fraction too hard. Not wild yet but strong enough that each impact rattles all the way up Zoro’s arms.
“Hey,” Zoro says suddenly, ducking under a hook. “You sleep at all?”
“Don’t start,” Sanji snaps, too fast, too sharp and there it is. The crack down the middle of the banter. “You’re the one who spends all night married to the mast.”
Zoro almost trips over his own feet at the way Sanji says married, like the word tastes like blood. Like something he barely crawled away from. “At least I stop to rest when I’m half-dead.”
“You,” Sanji says, drive loading into his next step. “Have never stopped anything in your life.”
They collide in a flurry that blurs sound and shape, Zoro’s body reading the angles before his brain catches up. When they break to circle again Sanji’s shirt is plastered to his spine in dark patches. His collar hangs open, exposing a throat that’s working too fast. There’s a tight, ugly set to his jaw that has nothing to do with exertion.
Zoro’s grip shifts on nothing, hands empty and wanting a sword. “How many nights is it now?” he asks. “Since Whole Cake. Since –”
Sanji’s heel whips up, faster than thought. Zoro gets his forearms up but the force still knocks him sideways, boots skidding. “You wanna bring that up now?” Sanji snarls. “On deck, during sparring, in front of everyone?”
“Who’s listening?” Zoro shoots back. Nami’s got her sunglasses down, pretending to nap and Luffy’s yelling fight fight fight like he doesn’t know any other two-syllable chant. The world’s shrunk to heat, sun, the drum of boots on wood. “They know you’re an idiot, they know I’m an idiot. Nothing new there.”
“Yeah?” Sanji laughs, short and serrated. “That it? I’m an idiot, so I should just shut up and be grateful I’m still alive, right? Grateful I didn’t fuck things up worse?”
He comes at Zoro again, grace stripped down to something brutal, precision wrapped in rage and that rage riding every kick like extra weight. Zoro catches the next one on both forearms and holds, heel grinding meat and bone until it hurts. He leans into it because he doesn’t know what else to lean into.
“I didn’t say that,” he grits. “I said you need to sleep.”
“Funny,” Sanji breathes, twisting, trying to yank his leg free like he’d rather tear muscle than stay still. “Zoro Roronoa preaching self preservation. What, you get religion?”
“I got tired of watching you burn yourself down,” Zoro snaps and it costs more air than any block.
Sanji freezes for the barest, fatal fraction of a second and that’s all it takes.
The heat hits first. Then, a heartbeat later, the air between them turns into a visible shimmer that Zoro feels wash over his forearms, followed by a sudden, roaring wall that curls the fine hairs on his skin. The smell of singed cloth slaps him in the face.
Then the fire comes.
Diable Jambe roars up around Sanji’s leg and it’s not the tight precise column Zoro knows, but a flare, wild and overfed. It climbs past his knee, white at the core, orange at the edges, tongues of flame licking for anything they can eat. The temperature spikes so hard, so fast that Zoro’s forearms go from hot to screaming in a single breath.
“Sanji –” he starts.
Sanji’s gone sickly pale under the flush, pupils blown like a cornered animal’s. “Shit!” he breathes, raw. “Shit, shit!”
Zoro releases his grip to drop back but Sanji’s balance’s already shot and when he jerks his leg away he overcorrects on the slick radiating heat of the deck. His foot only grazes Zoro’s side, a glancing blow, but the flame clings, greedy and catches the cotton of the haramaki and climbs in a hungry streak.
Pain detonates along Zoro’s ribs, bright and absolute. His breath punches out in a rough, low grunt, not dignified, not controlled, just dragged out of him. His knees hit the deck hard enough to rattle his teeth.
“Zoro!” Luffy’s voice slices the air, too high, shocked.
Sanji’s fire cuts off. One second it’s devouring oxygen and the next it’s gone, ripped back by a brute force snap of will that leaves the air around his leg smoking. Sanji staggers forward, hands jerking out like he’s about to grab Zoro but his hands flinch back from Zoro’s burnt shirt like they’ve got knives for fingers. His fingers curl in on themselves. His mouth opens, closes, opens again, nothing forming.
The smell catches up: the delayed, nauseating wave of charred fabric, cooked cotton, and under that, thin and awful, the sour-sweet edge of seared flesh. Zoro breathes through his nose, steady, because the band around his ribs is made of knives now. Pain crawls and hisses along his side, down both forearms where he held Sanji’s ankle.
“Oh,” Sanji whispers, sound fraying at the edges. “Oh fuck.”
“I’m okay,” Zoro says because someone has to say it or Luffy’ll be in pieces. He keeps his tone flat, edged in annoyance because he knnows Sanji listens to that better than kindness. “You tryna roast me for dinner, cook?”
It doesn’t even dent it.
Nami’s hand shades her eyes. “What the hell just happened?”
“Yo! Chopper!” Usopp makes a sprint for the infirmary and Sanji’s boots scrape as he takes a single step back. Just one, just enough to open that old, familiar gap Zoro’s been watching him put between himself and the crew ever since he came back.
“Don’t,” Zoro grunts without looking up.
“Don’t what?” Sanji’s voice comes out shredded and small. He’s standing like someone hammered him to the deck, his torso tilted toward Zoro but every muscle in him pulling away. His face looks suddenly carved, too sharp at the edges. Sweat that was simple exertion a minute ago is shock now, cold and clammy under the sun and his bright blue eyes are locked on Zoro’s side, on the black, curling edges of burned fabric where the haramaki’s eaten through, on the angry slick of red beneath.
Zoro grits his teeth until his jaw clicks. “Don’t run.”
“I just set you on fire,” Sanji hisses and the laugh that rides the words is nothing like his usual showy cackle. It’s cracked clean through, splintered. “Excuse me if I don’t feel like standing here admiring the handiwork.”
“It was an accident.”
Sanji snaps, his voice jumping. “Do not do that. Do not you of all people accident at me while you’re on your knees breathing like that.”
Zoro snorts despite the way his side throbs. “You think this is breathing bad? You should’ve seen me after Kuma –”
Sanji flinches like he took a blade to the ribs and Zoro shuts the hell up.
Chopper hits the deck in a clatter of hooves and medical gear. “What happened? Why does it smell like a burnt ham?”
Nami points. “He overcooked him.”
“Oi,” Zoro mutters but there’s no bite to it.
Chopper skids in beside him, hands everywhere: pulse, pupils, ribs. His voice is high and panicked. “Shirt off! No – slowly! Actually, Sanji, help him sit up, carefully –”
Sanji doesn’t move.
Zoro rolls his eye and grunts, forcing his legs under him. Every stretch of damaged skin complains as he shrugs out of ruined shirt and haramaki one-handed and Chopper hisses like a kettle when the full extent of the burn comes into view. It’s not catastrophic, Zoro notes in the detached, practical part of his brain that always shows up for damage reports. It’s just a hand-span patch of skin across his ribs, angry and shining, halfway between livid pink and glossy white. Admittedly, the edges are already bubbling with blisters but his forearms are uglier: uneven bands of red and damp, where Sanji’s ankle and flames kissed them. Chopper prods, muttering about dermal layers and scarring and infection and idiots who don’t know when to stop.
Zoro lets him. Pain’s easy. It’s clean. It’s something he can put his teeth around.
“Is he gonna be okay?” Luffy calls down from the rigging, hanging upside down like a distraught bat.
“He’ll live,” Chopper says briskly, smearing cooling ointment that stinks of herbs and menthol. Not worse than the burnt flesh, though. “But this is serious. No fighting for a few days. No lifting heavy things. No getting it wet”
“Curls,” Zoro drawls, eye on the mast ahead. “If you’re gonna lurk at least make yourself useful. Get Chopper some water.”
There’s a sound, small and strangled, like Sanji just bit through his tongue before the scrape of boots and the clatter of glass. A canteen lands next to Chopper’s kit with more force than necessary, sloshing.
“Gentler!” Chopper yelps. “He’s injured.”
Sanji makes a sound that’s almost a laugh but has too much marrow in it. “Yeah,” he says, hollow. “That’s the problem.”
x
The others don’t leave right away: Luffy has to be bribed with snacks and a promise that Zoro will live and still be fun to fight later. Usopp lingers, eyes big, until Nami catches his ear and drags him off with orders about checking lines far away from the idiot fire pit. She watches Sanji the whole time.
Chopper finishes wrapping a thick bandage around Zoro’s torso, snug enough to hold the salve in place and keep the skin from pulling and it feels like someone’s cinched him with rough cloth and ice. “Burn ointment every four hours and you tell me iuf it blisters worse. Don’t scratch. Don’t pick. Don’t soak it in sake. I mean it.” He swivels. “Sanji.”
Sanji jerks like he’s been shocked. “Yeah?”
“You’re on application duty,” Chopper says, no room for argument. “He’ll half-ass it and I don’t trust him. And you need to monitor how hot your leg gets in combat! That flare-up wasn’t normal. If your fire is changing then we need to know.”
Sanji’s face tries to twist into a scowl and gets stuck somewhere half-formed. “Yeah,” he says again but the word comes out quiet, like it’s been stepped on.
“Every four hours,” Chopper repeats, giving them both one last hard doctor stare before he gathers his bag and trots off, muttering about stupid strong humans and adaptive flame outputs.
Silence drops like a second sail and Zoro flexes his fingers, testing the drag of bandages on his forearms. The tug, the itch, the constant sting are all familiar notes in a language he’s fluent in. Pain doesn’t lie. Sanji, on the other hand…
He’s sitting on the far side of the mast, spine pressed to wood like he needs something solid to keep him vertical. One leg folded, one stretched, the ring of singed fabric around his thigh making a rough halo. The skin underneath is fine, of course, it always is. Sanji’s body knows his own fire in ways that aren’t fair, to be honest. His hands rest palm up on his knees, fingers splayed like he doesn’t trust them not to move if he lets them hang. The fingers themselves are steady. The knuckles are white. Bone-white.
“Not talking suits you,” Zoro says eventually because apparently he does have a death wish.
Sanji’s head snaps up. His eyes look like cracked glass, bright, brittle, nothing solid to hang onto. “Oh, I can talk, I can say plenty. Like how I nearly ruined your arm.”
Zoro glances at his wrapped forearms. “You aimed for my ribs, not my arms. I blocked. That’s on me.”
“Oh, great!” Sanji snarls. “We can split it fifty-fifty, then. My leg turned into a fucking kiln and you decided to hug it. That’s so fucking comforting.”
Zoro shifts, biting down on the wince as bandaged skin pulls. “You gonna keep yelling from over there or you coming closer so I don’t have to shout back?”
Sanji stares like Zoro just suggested they practice juggling swords over a fire pit again. It went so well last time. “You’re burned.”
“Yeah.”
“Because I lost control.”
“Yeah.” Zoro doesn’t look away. “And?”
Sanji’s mouth flattens. “And I could’ve cooked you alive, you absolute moron.”
Zoro shrugs. “You dragged it back.”
Sanji explodes up to his feet like the deck’s shocked him, pacing the short distance the beam allows, then slamming his hands down on the rail until the wood creaks under the force of it. “You don’t get it, Zoro. It’s not just kicks and flashy party tricks anymore. It’s –” He gropes at his chest, like there’s a word lodged between ribs that he’s trying to rip out. “It’s like something under the skin. Moving. Waiting. And when I’m pissed, when I’m –” He stops. The word he doesn’t say hangs there anyway. Afraid.
Zoro clocks the fast shudder of his shoulders, the flicker of something old and poisonous behind his eyes. He pictures it before he can stop himself, Nami’s hushed whispers filling in the blanks. Metal cuffs. A prison dining room dressed up as a wedding. The sound of Luffy’s voice in the rain.
“When I feel like that,” Sanji says, quieter now. “It gets worse. I get hotter. I feel like if I stop moving I’m gonna go off. Like if I keep hitting things maybe I can outrun it. And then today I almost –”
“You didn’t,” Zoro cuts in, sharp.
Sanji laughs a jagged, awful sound that makes Zoro’s skin crawl. “You know what real burns smell like? Not ‘oops, touched the pan’ burns. Flesh. Hair. I do.” His silhouette’s all clean, cruel lines against the hard glitter of the sea. “I’ve spent my whole fucking life making sure I never did that to anyone. That I never… that this only ever landed on people who deserved it. And then I look down and see your skin blistering and all I can smell is them. Him. That fucking kitchen. That fucking –”
The word chokes off on an inhale that sounds like it hurts and Zoro hauls himself upright because he can feel where this is tilting. The air’s changed, gone thin, sharp, like it does right before steel comes out of a sheath and he knows this isn’t just about the burn. It’s about the thing that’s been wedged between them since Whole Cake, growing mould and knives while they pretended they were fine.
“It was an accident,” Zoro says, voice level, lungs already bracing for the hit.
“Sure,” Sanji scowls, icy. “Just another one for the list, right? Just another fuck-up.”
There it is: the thread Zoro’s been studiously not pulling. He was going to leave it, he really fucking was. He wasn’t there. He didn’t see the forest, the rain, the way Sanji’s blows landed on their captain. He only got it secondhand through Luffy’s rueful grin, through Nami’s clenched jaw, through Chopper’s watery rage.
Sanji’s bruises. Sanji’s silence.
Zoro’d swallowed all of it, filed it in the same drawer as every wound he didn’t take himself. Useless anger. Old ache. Something that keeps his sword hand restless at night. “I never said you fucked anything up.”
“No,” Sanji agrees coldly. “That’s the problem.”
Zoro’s brow creases. “What?”
“You didn’t say anything,” Sanji snaps and for the first time all day there’s honest, live heat behind it. “Not a fucking word. Even Brook managed a shitty pun about weddings and funerals and you’ve just been walking around like a – like a fucking grave with legs.”
“I haven’t –”
“Oh, give me a fucking break,” Sanji snarls, shoving off the rail to face him. “You expect me to believe Roronoa Zoro, king of opinions and pointy arguments, has nothing to say about the cook who bailed on the crew and left your captain for dead?”
Zoro’s jaw ticks. “You want me to yell at you for it?”
“I want you to say something!” Sanji throws back. “Anything! You think I don’t know you were pissed?”
The problem is pissed doesn’t touch it. Pissed is spilled drink, stolen cigarette and what Zoro felt hearing the story was something uglier, heavier. A sick, helpless fury that sat in his gut like a stone. The words come out harsher than he intends. “Why? You didn’t get enough lectures over there?”
Sanji flinches, sharp and involuntary, and Zoro hates that he notices. Hates that he knows the shape of Sanji’s flinches now: what’s from ego, what’s from bone-deep shit someone else carved into him. “My lectures came with exploding cuffs and threats about my loved ones dying. Thought maybe this one’d be lighter.”
Zoro looks up at the sky for half a heartbeat, like there might be patience up there. There isn’t. He grits his teeth and grinds out: “So, what, you want me to stand here and say that you hurt Luffy so I’m mad’? Fine. You hurt Luffy. I’m mad.”
Sanji flares. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I don’t know what you know!” Zoro snaps. “You didn’t give us a say, you just left.”
The wind kicks up like it’s been listening, shoving at both of them. Sanji’s hands curl at his sides, fingers twitching like they’re remembering cuffs. His voice drops to something rough. “So what was I meant to do, huh? Invite you all to a nice family reunion? Hey everyone, pack your bags! We’re going to a murder tea party where my brothers want to dissect you, my father wants to explode you and my new in-laws want to kill my captain as a wedding favour! Sounds like a fuckin’ great holiday.”
“You were meant to tell us.”
Sanji laughs, that gutted sound again. “Tell you what? That my own blood decided I was a useful piece of bait? That they think I’m so fucking worthless they had to strap bombs to me to make sure I didn’t run? What was the move then? Give me one good goddamn plan where that ends with all of you alive and my old man not redecorating the Baratie with Zeff’s head.”
Zoro is quiet just long enough for the wind to shove at the silence. He says, finally: “You think you’re the only one who knows how to bleed for someone? You’re not special. You’re just the only one suicidal enough to do it alone.”
“Alone was the point,” Sanji spits. “Alone meant safe. For you.”
“Bullshit.” Zoro’s hands fist, bandages pulling sharply, and Sanji flinches all over again. “We were in the second you walked off that ship, Sanji. You know that, that’s what a crew is. You ran thinking you were hauling the blast away from us and all you did was make sure we couldn’t see where the hell it was coming from.”
“So what, you’re mad because I didn’t hand you a target?” Sanji demands. “Because you missed out on a fun little war?”
“I’m mad,” Zoro says, voice rising despite his best efforts to keep himself, to keep this bottled. He’s been keeping it bottled for days. Weeks. “Because they hurt you and I wasn’t there.”
Sanji stares at him like Zoro just ran him through with language. His voice breaks on the first syllable and he swallows like it cuts. “You – you don’t get to say that like I’m some kid who got roughed up behind the bar. I knew what I was doing.”
“Did you?” Zoro tilts his head. “You knew how far Luffy’d go for you?”
Sanji looks away so fast it’s almost violent.
“You knew he’d drag himself after you half-dead,” Zoro presses on, voice dropping back to something awful, something dragged out of him. “You knew he’d starve himself waiting. You knew he’d stand there and tell you to come back and you knew you’d hit him with every shitty thing your old man ever taught you about yourself until he was bleeding for it. You knew all that?”
“Stop,” Sanji says, quiet and flayed.
“You knew,” Zoro insists because this is the splinter he can’t pull out any other way. “Or you didn’t. Which is worse?”
“Stop.”
“Why didn’t you trust him!” Zoro explodes. “Why didn’t you trust us? You think we’re that weak? That we’d fold that easy? You think any of us would look at you and think oh well, guess he’s more trouble than he’s worth! Who the fuck put that in your head?”
Sanji’s breathing is wrong now, too fast, grabbing at air that won’t stay. “I thought that you’d live if they killed me! I thought if I made the trade and smiled for the cameras then at least it’d be contained! At least my shit wouldn’t drag all of you down with me. I thought if I just went back where I belong you’d be – you’d be free!”
Zoro stares at him.
“What?” Sanji barks. He’s standing there like he’s bracing for a physical blow. “Say it. Say it was the wrong call. Say I’m selfish, say I fucked up. I fucking know that already! The least you can do is tell me you’re as pissed as I am.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Sanji lets out something between a laugh and a snarl. “Wow, thanks, fuckin’ revolutionary insight –”
“You’re an idiot,” Zoro cuts across, stepping in. “For thinking there’s any version of you that belongs in that house.”
Sanji’s mouth snaps shut.
“You make it sound,” Zoro says, voice gone slow and dangerous. “Like there’s two worlds and you’re some piece that can be slotted back and forth. There isn’t. There’s here, this ship, this crew. That’s the world you picked.”
“You didn’t see –”
“I don’t need to see it,” Zoro bites out. “I’ve seen enough, I know which way your feet point. You belong here because you said so. That’s it. That’s the math.”
Sanji’s eyes shine, not from the sun. He tips his chin up anyway, stubborn even when he’s shaking. “Yeah? And what about when belonging gets everyone killed?”
“Then we die together,” Zoro says, blunt as blade. “Still better than you dying alone thinking you were just a bad investment finally getting liquidated.”
The wind roars in the rigging, making the Sunny’s bones hum. When Sanji swallows it sounds like it hurts. “You think that’s noble? You think that’s romantic or something, all if we go then we go together but it’s not. It’s what they drilled into me, Zoro. It’s the only math they taught me that made sense: my body in, everyone else out.”
Zoro catches the hem of Sanji’s coat, fingers knotting in the fabric and Sanji jerks like he’s been grabbed by a guard instead of a friend. Zoro exhales steadily, nose wrinkling at the strong scent of the ointment lingering in the air. He keeps his voice low now. “And you didn’t think to let anyone else into the equation?”
Sanji makes a sound that sounds like it cuts his lungs. “Oh, right. You were gonna show up with your swords and what? Fight the World Government on a wedding cake? You can’t even find the front door without a guide. You get lost on a dock.”
“You didn’t give me the chance,” Zoro breathes. “Didn’t give any of us the chance. You decided our limits for us. You decided what risks we were allowed to take, what we were allowed to lose. You did the same shit you scream at me for in every fight: saw a threat and decided to handle it alone. You just dressed it up as you deserving it because you’re, what, trash?”
That lands: Sanji flinches like Zoro’s driven a thumb straight into an old bruise. Zoro keeps going, because stopping now would be worse. He chooses his words carefully, deliberately, because he always has when it’s mattered and this – this matters more than anything, right now. “You didn’t trust us enough to believe we’d pick you, whatever the cost.”
Sanji’s voice drops to a rasp. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s true.”
The deck feels smaller now, Sanji’s chest moving too fast, pulling in more air than there is space for. “Luffy was…” his voice fractures, rebuilds crooked. “Luffy was bad enough. Do you have any idea how much I wanted to stay down?”
“Yeah,” Zoro says quietly. “I do.”
Sanji’s gaze snaps to his. “You weren’t there.”
“I know that look. Seen it in a mirror my whole life.” He steps in, until their foreheads almost touch, until their breath mixes hot and salty between them. “Difference is I don’t think I’m the only shield anymore.”
Sanji stares at him like that’s the cruelest thing he’s heard all day.
“You should’ve let us stand with you,” Zoro says. “You should’ve let me stand with you.”
“What if you died?” Sanji whispers.
“What if you died?” Zoro throws back. “What then? I’m supposed to just… keep going? Cook’s missing, oh well, guess he evaporated? You think I’d leave that alone? I’d have dragged myself to whatever hellhole they stuffed you in and torn it down from the inside. You didn’t keep us safe, you just kept us blind.”
Sanji’s fingers twist in Zoro’s shirt again, but this time they stay there. “You’re saying all this now that it’s over. You didn’t walk into that hall. You didn’t listen to them talk about my life like a business expense. You didn’t have to –”
Zoro grabs a curl of blonde and tucks it behind an ear, letting his fingertips trace the curve of it, letting him have the flash of surprise across Sanji’s face. The hitch in his breath. “Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t. That’s what keeps me hearing myself breathe in the dark, that you got carved up by people who said they owned you and I wasn’t there to tell them they were wrong. So yeah, I’m mad you left. I’m more mad they touched you. I’m more mad I didn’t get to put more of them in the ground. I’m…” He swallows and it feels like glass. “I’m hurt.”
Sanji’s eyes flare. “You’re hurt.”
“Because you were gone and I didn’t get a vote. Because you decided it was better for you to go back to hell than to let me stand at the gate with you. Because you looked at the worst place you’ve ever known and thought yeah, that’s where I go when I’m not good enough for my crew.”
The ship creaks around them, a low, uneasy sound.
“I didn’t think I… deserved it,” Sanji says finally, the words bare and ugly. “You. This. Any of it.” His hands jerk, pulling Zoro closer instead of away. “Any second someone does the math and realises the return on investment isn’t worth it then I wake up back in that room.”
Zoro hates that room more than any battlefield he’s actually set foot on.
“Whole Cake wasn’t just about Zeff,” Sanji goes on, voice stumbling faster now that it’s moving. “If I just… did what they wanted, maybe they’d let you all go. Maybe you’d be free. Free of the idiot cook who keeps dragging bounty posters and assassins and fucked-up family drama onto your deck.”
Zoro stares at him like he’s truly, spectacularly dense and oh god he is. “You think I want to be free of you,” he says slowly. “You think that’s the prize at the end of all this?”
Sanji’s gaze cuts away for a second, before Zoro tips his face back. His voice comes out a whisper. “I think it’d be easier to live without me than to keep dragging me out of the holes I dig. That’s all.”
“Maybe,” Zoro says. “If I gave a shit about wanting easy but I don’t. I want you.”
Sanji’s jaw works but nothing comes out, even as pink climbs his throat, even as his whole body tenses.
“You pissed me off,” Zoro continues. “Scared me, sure, but guess what? I still count you when I wake up at night. I still listen for your shitty, lopsided footsteps. That’s the mess you left me with.” He exhales, long and slow, like finally setting down a weight. “So no. I’m not gonna pretend Whole Cake didn’t happen just because it’s easier for you if I keep my face blank when you remember it.”
Zoro steps in until there’s nowhere for either of them to go but forward and presses their joined hands flat to Sanji’s chest where his heart hammers like it’s trying to crack bone. The wind claws at their coats, trying to pry them apart. It doesn’t manage it. “You want me to yell at you? Here it is. Don’t do that again. Don’t leave like that. Don’t decide for us and sure as hell don’t decide for me.”
His eye burns. He doesn’t blink. “I gave my loyalty to Luffy with my eyes open,” he says. “I knew what it meant. I knew it meant dying for his stupid choices, I chose that. You don’t get to sell my life behind my back and call it a favour. That’s not protecting me, that’s stealing from me.”
Sanji’s breath shudders. “Stealing what?”
Zoro shrugs, small, vicious and lets himself take Sanji’s hand, lets himself run his thumb over the knuckles. Feels the way the hand trembles in his. “My right to stand between you and the knife.”
For a second it’s so quiet Zoro can hear the blood moving in his own ears.
“You’re unbelievable,” Sanji says eventually, his voice thick, frayed. His hand jerks like he doesn’t know what to do with it and Zoro grips tighter, holds harder. “You’re actually mad I didn’t let you get tortured with me.”
“I’m mad,” Zoro corrects calmly. “That you didn’t trust that I wanted to.”
The Sunny rocks, a long slow sigh under their feet. Somewhere below, a door bangs and somebody laughs, distant and unaware and here, Sanji leans in until his forehead touches Zoro’s, just a bare, hot press of bone-to-bone. His voice scrapes coming out. “I’m mad that t worked. That that’s the world I came from.”
“Good,” Zoro says. “Stay mad. Aim it at the right targets this time.”
Sanji snorts something that might be a sob, if they’re being generous. Then, carefully, he lifts their joined hands and presses his mouth to the back of Zoro’s knuckles, clumsy and quick and so stupidly gentle it makes Zoro’s ribs ache in entirely new ways.
“I’m sorry,” Sanji says into his skin. “For making you hear it all secondhand while I walked around acting like nothing had changed.”
Zoro’s free hand finds the back of his neck, thumb fitting into the dip where skull meets spine. He feels the tremor running through him, all the way down. “Don’t be sorry. Just… be better.”
Sanji snorts, thick and shaky. “You’re so fucking romantic.”
“Shut up,” Zoro mutters. “Or I’ll really start a fight.”
“That a promise?”
“Yeah,” Zoro says quietly. “It is.”
Zoro feels Sanji’s breath against his knuckles, feels the words settle between his bones like a new kind of scar. They stay like that for a moment, foreheads together, hands pressed between them, the wind clawing uselessly before Sanji shifts, just enough that his gaze drops and catches on the edge of bandage peeking from under Zoro’s open haramaki. The colour drains from his face again. “I really – your arms, your side –”
“Oi.” Zoro’s thumb presses lightly into the back of his neck in warning. “Don’t start.”
“How am I not supposed to start? You’re wrapped up like a damn rice ball because I couldn’t keep my leg from turning into a furnace. You’re gonna scar.”
Zoro blinks. “You wrap rice balls?”
Sanji stares at him like that’s insane. “Are you – you’re going to feel that every time you breathe for a week, at least. I know burns, Moss.”
“Sanji.” Zoro tips his head, catching his eye, pinning it right there. “I’ve gotten worse for dumber reasons.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Sanji demands. “Oh good, I’m just in the top five attempts on your life, not number one, what a low fuckin’ bar –”
“First off, we’re pirates, the bar’s underground. And you’re not even on the list. You’re the idiot who hit me on purpose, yeah. You’re also the idiot who yanked the fire back before it cooked my ribs. Both things are true.”
Sanji’s mouth twists. His fingers twitch like they want to touch the bandage and don’t dare. “Does it hurt?”
“Yeah.” He waits for Sanji to flinch, then adds, deliberately: “It’s fine.”
Sanji lets out a sound that’s almost a laugh, almost a curse. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I didn’t say it didn’t hurt,” Zoro counters. “I said it’s fine. Pain’s my problem. The fire part’s yours.”
Sanji’s jaw clenches. “Believe me, I’m aware.”
“I mean really yours,” Zoro says, slow, so he can’t dodge the meaning. “You heard Chopper. This isn’t nothing. It’s changing. You tell him everything. How it feels. How hot. How fast. You talk to Robin if he needs books. You don’t shrug it off and pretend you can handle it alone.”
Sanji’s shoulders hike defensively. “I said I’d monitor it –”
“You monitoring you is what got us here. You white-knuckling it because you’re scared of scaring us. I’m not doing burns like this because you’re too proud to just say your leg’s acting weird.”
Sanji looks away, out over the water, at nothing. His throat works. “You really think it’s that bad?”
“I think it’s strong,” Zoro shrugs, honest. “Stronger than it was. I think that’s not automatically bad. But strong and secret? That’s when people get dead. BUt you pulled it back even when your head was fucked up and your temper was worse which tells me you can control it. So you’re gonna learn how. With help. Not just… trying not to feel anything so you don’t go off.”
Sanji gives a helpless, bitter little smile. “Now you sound like Chopper.”
“Good,” Zoro snorts. “Means I’m right.”
A gull screams somewhere overhead. The sea shivers under the hull.
Sanji’s gaze slides back to his burns. “I still shouldn’t have –”
“Don’t,” Zoro warns and there’s enough steel in it that Sanji’s mouth snaps shut on the apology. Zoro eases his grip on Sanji’s neck, thumb rubbing once along the tense muscle there. “You wanna be sorry then be sorry about the part where you thought you had to handle everything alone. Not about this. This I can carry. That shit? I’m not letting you do it again.”
Sanji scoffs, eyes suspiciously bright. “You’re infuriating.”
“You like me that way,” Zoro says and for once it’s not a tease: it’s just a small, true thing laid between them.
Sanji snorts anyway, because god knows he doesn’t know what else to do with something that naked. “Apparently.”
Zoro lets their hands drop but he doesn’t let go. He’s not going to until someone makes them and, even then, he’s going to keep reaching. “C’mon, ointment duty. Doctor’s orders.”
Sanji makes a face. “You really want me near your burns after that performance? That’s either deep faith or a death wish.”
“Both,” Zoro returns, deadpan. “Besides, if you screw it up then Chopper’ll yell at you instead of me. That’s a win in my books.”
Sanji laughs, properly this time, even if it catches a little. “You’re such an asshole.”
He doesn’t pull away when Zoro starts walking, though. Doesn’t let go of his hand, either. They move slowly across the deck, the late light sliding over them, lashed together by bandage and stubbornness.
x
Later, in the small quiet of the quarters the world’s gone and shrunk down to wood and light and the soft snore of a sleeping captain. Sanji kneels beside Zoro with the jar of ointment in hand.
“Four hours on the dot,” he mutters, more to himself than anything. “That damn reindeer’s worse than Zeff with a new recipe.”
Zoro huffs, lying on his side, bandages loose around his ribs so Sanji can get at them. The air’s cool on the exposed skin; he can feel the heat coming off the burn even now. He feels Sanji’s hesitation more than he sees it, a tiny stutter in the way his shadow leans and grunts. “If you’re gonna hover, do it over here. It itches.”
Sanji rolls his eyes but the corners are soft. He dips his fingers into the salve, warming it between his palms before he touches Zoro’s side, as careful as he is with knives and dough. The first press is feather-light, then firmer as he feels the way Zoro doesn’t flinch.
“You really know how to make a man feel treasured,” Sanji murmurs but his touch is reverent. His fingers trace the border of heat and intact skin like he’s memorising it, like he’s punishing himself by learning every centimetre of damage. “Tell me if it’s too cold.”
“It’s fine,” Zoro says and this time it almost is. The salve cools then burns then cools again, sinking in and Sanji’s fingers are strong and sure and everything Zoro’s been wanting. For years, if he lets himself think about it.
After a while, Sanji’s shoulders drop half an inch and some of the tightness bleeds out of his back.
“You know,” Zoro muses, eye drifting half-shut. “If this is the price of you actually touching me without a shoe then maybe I should pick more fights with your leg.”
Sanji flicks his side above the burn, the kind of casual affection Zoro would dismantle entire armies for. “You ever get hurt like this again because of me, I swear I’ll –”
“Sanji.” Zoro opens his eye. “Look at me.”
Sanji does, hand frozen mid-smear.
“I’d rather take the hit and have you standing next to me than watch you burn alone because you’re scared of what you might do.”
Sanji stares at him for a long beat. Then he exhales, slow and grim. “Fine. I’ll talk to Chopper. Properly. Not just… nod and then ignore half of what he says.”
“And Robin,” Zoro adds thoughtfully. “She likes weird cursed power shit. She’ll have ideas.”
Sanji’s mouth twitches. “Yeah? You volunteering to be my emotional support swordsman during those talks or am I flying solo here?”
Zoro considers it. “If you faint or start an arguement I’m carrying you out,” he says finally. “That’s the deal.”
Sanji shakes his head, but there’s something warm and stunned in his eyes, like he can’t quite believe he’s allowed this. He finishes with the ointment and rewraps the bandage with the kind of neat efficiency Zoro’s never managed on himself. When he’s done his hand lingers, palm spread over Zoro’s ribs, feeling the steady rise and fall.
“Still here,” Zoro smirks.
“Yeah,” Sanji sighs, his thumb stroking once along the edge of the bandage, like sealing something in place. “Stay that way.”
“Only if you do,” Zoro mutters back automatically.
Sanji leans down and presses a quick, soft kiss to the bandaged skin, right over the worst of the burn, a counter-curse. His voice’s hushed. “I’ll work on it.”
He slides down to lie beside him, careful of ribs and wraps, their shoulders pressed together in the too-small bunk. Zoro can feel the faint warmth of Sanji’s leg where it rests against his own, just heat, no flame. Controlled. Held.
“Wake me in four hours,” Sanji mumbles, already half-under.
“I will,” Zoro lies. He listens to Sanji’s breathing even out, slow and human and alive, and stares up at the dark curve of the ceiling. His side aches. His arms sting. His knuckles still remember the feel of Sanji’s mouth on them and that sensation wins out against the rest, that’s the one he carries into the night as he lets his eyes close.
The burns’ll heal. In his chest, something else has already started to.