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“I'm in love with you.”
It's said with all the joy of a man facing the gallows, and a stare set resolutely to the horizon. It’s the only thing Zoro had to say after calling Sanji over, only explanation that he ‘had something important to tell him.’ Sanji stands there, blinking, for ten whole seconds- maybe he even counts them.
Then he bursts out laughing.
Zoro clenches his teeth. It should be easy to weather what he was already prepared to face. Still, when the laughter goes on for ten more seconds, he snaps. “It's not that funny.”
Sanji wipes a tear from his eye, sneering. “No, actually, it really fucking isn't! I just can't believe how much of a complete dickhead you are!”
Zoro finally turns. “Oh, and what the hell is that supposed to mean? Do my feelings offend you that much, perv-cook?”
“Oh, please!” Sanji jeers. He looks like hell. “If you're in love with me, I might as well admit I'm in love with you, too! Actually, that sounds perfect.” He levels an unreadable stare back at him. “I’m in love with you, Zoro.”
Wado is swiping for him before Zoro can even think. She’s of course blocked by a foot in the same blink. “Now who's being a dickhead, huh?!”
Sanji just grins like he's crushing something between his teeth. “Yeah, that's what I fucking thought.”
And so it goes, blow after blow traded.
It’s a week later, and they're arguing about it again, because that's all they ever seem to do anymore. Zoro wasn't even trying to piss him off this time, just offering to help with dishes.
“Oh, why, because you're so in love with me?”
Zoro nearly throws a sword at him in white-hot rage. “Will you quit it with that, already?”
“You're the one who needs to quit it. I keep telling you it’s not fucking funny.”
“Why, because you’re so in love with me?”
“That’s what I said, wasn't it?”
“You laughed at me!”
“Because I didn’t know what else to do, you ass!”
“Who laughs when they get confessed to?”
“Who uses being in love as a fucking punchline?”
And he's had it. He’s snapped a few times already, but the tension is too much, carrying the heavy iron weight in his heart is too much, having the raw wound constantly prodded and mocked is too much. He won’t have his pride continually stomped on, over and over- not anymore. He grabs Sanji by the shoulders and shakes him. “It wasn't a fucking joke!” he roars.
Sanji pushes him back. Zoro lets him, if only because he looks actually shocked for a second, like he miscalculated-
Before shaking his head and yelling some more. “Don't grab at me, you'll stretch my shirt!”
“You-!” Zoro clenches and unclenches his fists in front of him with a momentary desire to throttle the man.
He doesn't finish talking. He has no idea what he even means to say. What can he say? Sorry you hate me so much? I wish you wouldn't play with my feelings like this? I miss when arguing with you felt like less getting my heart ripped out and stomped on?
He must be silent for too long, because Sanji lets out a noise between a sigh and a growl and- there's something high and a little hopeless there, maybe. He isn't looking at Zoro anymore, just finishes smoothing over his shirt and hikes his shoulders up, hands in his pockets. “Just don't… don't do this anymore.”
Zoro hopes Sanji can't actually see how his heart shatters, because it sure feels like a physical thing. He might've flinched, even. He can’t tell, because all he can register is how Sanji just told him he doesn’t even want him to try spending time with him anymore. He’s too repulsed, too disgusted with Zoro even to share space with him, even to accept help doing a chore they’ve always done together.
Somehow, what remains finds its way up his throat and out of his mouth as, “So you can’t even be near me anymore?”
Sanji looks like he gives himself whiplash with how violently he turns and explodes at him. “I could if you’d just fucking meet me halfway for once!”
Zoro huffs. “Right.”
“I’m really trying here, Zoro, I just-” his face twists, scrunching like he's bitten into a week-old lemon. “This is hard for me, okay? You know it is. And I'm sick of you using it against me. It- it actually really fucking hurts, alright?”
Suddenly, the world has flipped over, and Zoro barely stays on his feet. What?
“It's just plain cruel, and I don't know what I expected from you, but it wasn't for you to stoop that low. Thought maybe you were better than that.” And there's that expression again, that teeth-crushing grin, and Zoro is starting to think it's more like Sanji chewing on himself, like a tied dog gnawing its leg off. “Guess that makes a fool out of me.”
Oh.
Hope and grief crash into each other in his chest and the rest is left drowning. Possibilities swim through his mind, one after another- that maybe there’s a chance, that maybe this is all a big misunderstanding, that maybe, maybe, maybe. Again, somehow Zoro stays on his feet through it, but this time he finds a singular thought out of the wreckage and wields it like a purpose.
Maybe fuck this, actually.
“Wait-” Zoro says, which doesn't mean anything because Sanji isn't actually moving. “Just wait a second. Hold on.”
Miraculously, he does.
Zoro breathes like meditating. “I'm really not joking.” Sanji snorts. It ticks another box, adds more weight to the side of maybe. “Cook. Sanji.”
That gets his attention. Maybe.
Zoro looks him in the eye. “Do I look like I'm joking to you?”
Over the course of a minute, Sanji’s face goes through a slideshow- incredulousness, searching, suspicion, realization, hesitance- before landing somewhere closed off. He looks away and doesn't say anything.
Zoro doesn't look away. He wants to step closer, but something stops him. There’s the tiniest hesitation in the back of his mind, but it’s almost nothing compared to the slowly mounting wave of realization. “... You weren't joking either, were you?”
Nothing. Then, the tiniest shake of his head.
Fuck.
Zoro feels his hand lift, lets it hover in the air between them, not sure what he wants. He shifts his weight forward, then back. More words spill out before he knows what they'll be. “Do you still-?”
“Fucking-” Sanji cuts him off with a swear that sounds downright agonized, and he looks it too- like what Zoro just didn’t finish saying actually stabbed him. His next breath inward, short and sharp, sounds like he's forcing it past a blade in his chest. “You know I do. You know.”
“I don't,” He’s quick to correct, stomach swirling cold and dreadful as it all clicks into place. Actually- “I didn't. I didn't know anything.”
“Great,” Sanji says, but it doesn't sound great at all. “Great.”
“I said hang on,” says Zoro. “I meant it, Curls. Really.”
Sanji doesn't move a muscle. Zoro doesn't blame him, can hardly believe what the cook said himself, but-
“Let me show you.” He braces himself. Sets his jaw like he did a week ago. But suddenly that doesn't feel right, doesn't feel enough, and finds himself adding, “Please.”
Maybe it's the magic word, maybe it's the pleading tone Zoro was surprised at having come from himself, but Sanji finally meets his eye, and Zoro thinks, there you are. Suspicious, perhaps, but there’s a curtain yanked back at his earnest plea, and it reveals something wobbly and deep.
He steps forward. Sanji doesn't step back.
His heart shudders. Then, with every ounce of resolve he has, Zoro finally lets himself do what he wants.
He comes close enough to place his hands on his shoulders again, this time not grabbing, but holding. He stares at Sanji’s clavicle, because that's easier to look at than the brief glimpse of raw, wet confusion he saw in his eye. He lets his hands trail down to Sanji’s forearms, and with all the longing in his heart, bows his head and rests his own forehead on the cook’s chest, right where he can feel his heart beating.
It’s soft. Gentle. More caress than anything. It’s every goey, weak part of Zoro’s heart bared plainly. It’s a little bid for acceptance.
Neither of them moves. Actually, Sanji isn't even breathing. Zoro squeezes his left hand around Sanji’s arm, just once, and feels his chest get all full and liquidy like it does sometimes around the stupid curly-browed blond. There’s an edge of grief to it that he can’t help- for all his certainty, there’s still doubt, and an idea that this is all he can have. The other side being that maybe he could’ve had more, and sooner, if Sanji weren’t a monumental idiot.
If Zoro also weren’t a monumental idiot.
Sanji breathes in very slowly. When he finally breathes out, it's with a very quiet, punched-out, “Oh.”
Zoro closes his eye. “Yeah.”
Another breath passes. “Oh my God?”
Zoro huffs.
“Oh my God,” Sanji repeats. “You were serious. You actually- oh my fucking God.”
“You can stop that now.”
“Shut up, you absolute- you fucking-” Sanji’s voice actually cracks, and Zoro can feel his hands rise up and then drop a couple of times, vague and nervous with it. “You can't just…”
Zoro feels something tug in him uncomfortably at the note of uncertainty. There's suddenly the idea that maybe he’s fucked up here- pushed too far, been too soft and vulnerable. It latches on and doesn't seem to want to let go. Something like fear. Zoro also doesn't want to let go, though.
That's too bad, because Sanji pushes him away.
His heart breaks again.
He looks up from the shock of it, the sheer raw pain, and sees something similar in Sanji’s eye. He's looking right at him this time. Zoro doesn't know how else to feel about it except really, really bad.
“I'm s-”
“I'm so sorry, holy shit, I'm so fucking sorry,” Sanji is saying, overwriting Zoro’s one apology and doubling it.
The whiplash is getting to him now. “What?”
“I'm sorry,” Sanji repeats for the billionth time. “I was- holy shit, I was such an asshole.” He runs a hand through his fringe, tugging on it. “You were just being honest with me- you confessed to me, and I just fucking- I- I laughed at you.”
Zoro blinks. “Actually, yeah, what the hell was that about?” he really wants to know.
“I told you, I didn’t know how to react, I- I really thought you were joking,” he explains. He looks no less distressed. “God, that- I just kept poking at it, didn't I? What the hell is wrong with me?”
“I wonder that about you every day, now stop that,” Zoro grumbles. “It's fine.”
“It's not fine,” Sanji insists. He sets him with a tense, desperate look. “It hurt you.”
Zoro hates that not only can he not argue with that, but that Sanji can see it so clearly on him. He huffs and looks away. “No.”
“No?” Sanji disbelieves. “It didn't hurt to have someone you-” he stops there, like he's just realized what he's saying. He amends, “To be rejected like that?”
“No,” Zoro lies.
Sanji looks at him. He can feel it. When he chances a glance, he looks like someone with everything to lose, and that-
Zoro sighs. “Okay, maybe a little, but-”
“So I'm sorry!” Sanji says a bit wildly. “I'm sorry I did that.”
“Never asked you to be sorry, cook.”
“Well, I am.”
They look at each other.
Eventually, Sanji sighs deeply. His shoulders drop, and his head follows- the picture of shame. “I really fucked this up, didn't I?”
Zoro raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Why are you taking all the credit? I confessed first.”
“That doesn't-” Sanji’s head snaps up. Better. “This isn't a competition!”
“If it was, I'd win, though,” Zoro shrugs.
“You-!”
“That's besides the point, anyway,” he continues. “I don't care if you think you fucked up.”
Sanji has nothing to say to that for a second, stubbornly noncomprehending. “Okay?”
“So,” he leans forward, “stop looking like a kicked puppy.”
“I don't- you-” Sanji growls. “I thought you liked me or something, what the hell is this?”
“I do.”
The force of the admission hits them both a quarter second after he says it. Zoro feels his face flush.
“I mean- if- if that's fine with you.”
Sanji barks a laugh, but this time it doesn't feel cruel. Zoro sees it for what it is now- there's no bite to it at all. He’s nervous. “Yeah, sure, it's- yeah. Fine by me.” His own face turns pink. Cute. “I. Uh. Y'know. Me too. Also.”
Zoro feels something light bubble up in him. He's grinning before he can stop it. “Really?”
“Oh my God, shut up,” Sanji says, but he's smiling too.
He can't help it- he snickers, then he can't seem to stop. “You like me. You've liked me this whole God damn time.”
“Shut uhuhup!” Sanji says, laughing too. He swats his shoulder. It doesn't hurt at all.
The both of them stand there, tittering like wine-drunk girls, for a few minutes. It feels good. It feels like this is how it should always be. Zoro wants more, forever.
Eventually, Sanji sobers enough to get that kicked-puppy look threatening to return. “I'm still sorry.”
“And I still don't care,” Zoro groans. “Seriously, give it a rest.”
Sanji honest-to-God pouts, and it should not be nearly as fuzzy-feeling-inducing as it is. “At least let me make it up to you somehow.”
Zoro considers this. Then he grins. “Alright. You can make it up to me.”
Sanji lights up, before sinking into suspicion. “Wait a second-”
Zoro leans forward, all taunt. “That is, if you're man enough to kiss me.”
Sanji blinks at him. His lip quivers, corners threatening incredulously upwards. “Was… was that you trying to flirt with me?”
Zoro’s good humor evaporates like water in Alabasta. “You- I'm trying, here, okay!”
This time when he laughs at him, Zoro doesn't feel anything but a rush of affection. Maybe looking stupid isn't so bad if it makes Sanji blush and smile like that.
“Alright.”
It's Zoro’s turn to blink. “Hah?”
“Alright,” Sanji repeats, and his lips are still quirked up and his cheeks are still flushed and he looks just one side of unsure, the other daring. “I'll make it up to you.”
He steps forward. Zoro doesn’t step back.