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"I'm from the North Blue.", he says, casual in his admittance- it feels like learning something arcane, something not meant for mortal ears. He exhales smoke, hooded fox-eyes bright and knowing in the dim light of a midnight with no wind. He taps his ash, he stretches his legs before collapsing so gracefully into piles of rhythm and violence and hums to himself, "...I'm not much attached to it, though. Not in any way that matters."
Zoro makes a noise of acknowledgement, "Explains why you can be such a frigid bitch of a man."
Sanji throws a shoe without malice, Zoro snickers when it bounces harmlessly off an arm only to thud against the floor with it's weighted heel. Sanji rolls onto his back, sprawled on the deck as he watches the moon slowly settle at it's apex while he blows smoke the color of muddy slush and permafrost into the air; it whorls and curls over and under and upon itself in toxic fractals. He watches it, blue reflecting the cold moonlight in his eyes as his hair tucks itself into more natural waves from the salty sea air.
Zoro watches him- the peace of the moment stretching and reaching like sweet mistletoe along the winter's edge; his grip on his swords tightening ever so slightly as Sanji lounges like a vision, like a wrapped offering on an altar he refused to acknowledge.
[There are stories, in the auld North, of the Gods they spoke to before the churches came- before the crucifixes, before the white collars and calvary violet. God of war and queens of the lost; beautiful creatures wearing men's faces with eyes like stars and hair like gold and silk.]
Sanji hums to himself, getting to his feet and walking in strange silence to the deckrail to lean over it- the sinuous lines granted by his survival and style of battle moving almost fluidly through the moonbeams and shadow spaces; and Zoro swears there's a trail of light behind him- a comet's tail or meteor's glow, something impermanent and burning eternal while still too delicate to touch. A man made of half-tempered glass, liable to shatter if one only knows where to strike.
The precise only destroyable by precision; a Rupert's Drop of flesh and blood, a tear of crystal and poison.
Sanji looks over a shoulder.
"Mosshead?"
[White berries, green leaves- a carved shaft piercing through a beating heart and all the world mourns; in that story, there is one who denies grief- one who refuses to shed a tear for the boy-man-holy light that dies with the touch of thorn and carved arrowhead. You wonder if that is how he, too, dies.]
Zoro blinks himself back to reality, frowning almost audibly, "What."
"You're staring."
"At the moon, obviously."
Sanji snorts, waving a hand that holds a cigarette between the first and middle finger like a meditation's gesture, "Whatever you say."
And Zoro watches, and wonders- and aches. He aches with the shared burden of knowing; knowing that forever is something not promised to their kind- their coldness cannot exist forever, they burn too wild for it to get a hold in a world made of papier-mache and broken promises.
...But what if it could? But what if it could- what if the swordsman could get to his feet, close the thousand miles of distance in seven league steps and grab the cook's arm, make him face him. Tell him all the ponderings- the way he taps his shoe against the ground to knock away boneshards and bloodstains, the way his wallet-chain rattles like shrine-chimes to chase away the cold and dark and devilish and empty. The way he smiles like crescent moons with eyes bright as the polished prayerbeads Zoro remembers.
Oh, but what if they could create a forever, just for a little while, just long enough to memorize the taste and touch and sound of each other and become a single being instead of equal halves of a whole?
[Mistletoe and flax-gold. Spears and arrows. Permafrost and cool spring rain. You yearn to taste the mythos that created him, trace the roots of his soul with scarred hands and hungry tongue; taste the prayers he could create with his smoker's rasp and wickedly blue eyes. Oh, how you yearn for his grief and how it tastes with the sweat on his skin.]
Sanji hums to himself- a song Zoro doesn't recognize. Regular and repeating; something archaic and familiar; stuck between prayer and conjuring and Zoro watches and listens and sinks into something like a trance. Sanji is away and gone now- swaying as he smokes and his footsteps glide over the deck; scars over the tops of feet and up his ankles; the crooked shirt with two buttons flicked open where the tie is missing showing the lines of the scar left behind when he stood against nature's might dressed as a man shimmering against the skin like peachflesh. Pink and pale, blood watered down in the snows he does not claim but drench his spirit all the same.
He is beautiful; and Zoro aches behind his ribs, at the bottom of his belly where the forgefire of his desire and dedication intermingle like molten metal, like a liquid alloy.
And Sanji is picking up a half empty bottle of wine- stashed when he closed the galley for the night. He picks up a half empty bottle of wine and thumbs the cork away-
[How lewd the action with so holy of hands, manicured nails and soft skin lined with the soft white spiderwebs of mastery-]
And he puts the neck to his lips and drinks deep; his throat bobs and a drip of deep red buds at the corner of his mouth like blood, like a sacrifice, and runs down his skin as his eyes close halfway and his brows knit together in silent appreciation of the sweetness, the tart tease against a vulpine tongue pinked and sharp. The narrow tuck of his waist and the eternity of legs like folded steel, legs honed sharp and deadly as the weapons Zoro grips desperately to as the ghosts woven into the very scabbards whisper for him to act, to do, to reach out and grip tight to steady muscle and steeled sinew.
[A beautiful boy, a beautiful man- beautiful in the way the Northern Ways were in the stories of Before Times; a beautiful tragedy, born to die as he learns to live and breathe in a world that promised such kindness but gave only cruelty. Mistletoe through the heart, a sword through the belly; a little death.]
"Zoro?"
The swordsman clears his throat, looking away as his tan face heats slightly; as his cheeks go ruddy and Sanji stands like an uncoiled spring; an unloaded gun, a thousand promises of passion and violence in a silk shirt and tailored slacks and lightning scars and secrets.
"...I should head up to the crow's nest, finish the night shift. Don't follow me, nosy ass cook."
"Fat chance- I have to be up even earlier to start the oven and bake our bread; I'll doze up there and you can bitch me awake when your shift ends."
"Fine.", snaps Zoro, exasperated. They climb in silence, nothing but the whisper of wind picking up as the moon begins a slow descent into the horizon before Zoro pushes the door to the crow's nest up and open; as they clamber in to the much warmer lookout and the swordsman silently begins his nightly routine; muttering to himself about weights and progression and focuses in disjointed half-sentences as Sanji yawns wide; foxfang canines bright points in the well lit room. Sacred hands run through golden hair, scratch at a scalp as the cook shivers from the sensation and he slinks to piled blankets and pillows folded and stacked in one quadrant of the area and begins building a-
[Building a pyre, a bridal bower, an offering circle; and you want nothing more than to accept, to bow your head and take the sacrament of a world made of ice and violence that he carries in blood and bone and loneliness so potent you know it must taste sweet on the tongue.]
- place to drop down onto, a haphazard pile of unsanctified geometry as he burrows into blankets and pillows and lounges as he has a final cigarette. Sanji watches Zoro begin his usual routine- eyelids heavy and body relaxed as he half dozes and exhales stormclouds and smoke.
And Zoro watches- he watches and burns from the inside out as Sanji grinds out the stub of the cigarette and casts off a silk shirt and his belt with a soft hum of mild exhaustion; pulling a blanket up to his waist and relaxing further into a strange kind of comfort- humming the song from earlier as blue darkens in relaxation. He looks like a painting, like something crafted by hands blessed and cursed in equal measure and those eyes finally close as breathing evens out into a slow, soft rhythm. A song without words, keeping the time so his pulse can sing back to the world that left such familiar marks on him. Scars that Zoro knows intimately, shares without them knowing it. Abandoned and once-loved, found and twice-shy.
Sanji huffs in his sleep. Zoro carefully settles the weights he was using on the floor and creeps closer; predatory and falling fast as a greygold eye softens in its gaze as he reaches out, runs his knuckles along Sanji's side and watches the stretch; thumbs just under the flare of a ribcage holding a heart too heavy for a single man to carry, and yet-
[Golden boy, born for death, built of secrets and sacrifice and a silence that undercuts his laughter.]
-and yet he carries it, carried him once. Carried him in arms that trembled and begged him to breathe just a little while longer as the shadows threatened to swallow a swordsman whole.
Zoro leans down, presses dry lips to Sanji's temple, and closes his eye as he breathes in the scent of the chef- bergamot and citrus, blood and wine.
And Zoro retreats, trying so hard to swallow the tangle of ivy and belladonna in his throat where the honesty gets caught; where the barbed wire and expectations strip his words away into fond mockery.
He doesn't notice a blue eye open, staring at his back, a twitch to the corner of a mouth; and then the chef sleeps, while the swordsman hones his strength in the quiet.