Sabo Masochism

It’s too easy, falling into the rhythm. Step, kick, pivot; Zoro’s blade comes down where Sanji’s foot just left. Someone charges and Sanji’s leg is already snapping up, catching the guy under the chin and hurling him back into the reach of Wado’s waiting edge. Another tries to flank them and finds Sanji’s heel instead, then Zoro’s boot, then the wall.

They aren’t even thinking about it. That’s the worst part because Sanji knows how fights usually feel. There’s fear, tension, calculation, you do what you have to. They’ve all got blood on their hands at this point. It’s just part of the job.

This doesn’t feel like that, though. This feels like… like music. Like his body has been waiting for exactly this tempo, exactly this partner, and finally, finally gets to move.

A man with an axe charges at Zoro’s blind side but Sanji’s already there, sliding into the path, shin smashing into the attacker’s ribs. He feels something give, hears a wet wheeze and before the man can topple Zoro’s sword is driving through his shoulder, pinning him to the air for a heartbeat.

“Keep up,” Sanji tosses out, because his mouth is on autopilot when his brain starts to short.

“You’re the one lagging!” Zoro fires back automatically, even as he wrenches his blade free and uses the same motion to parry another strike and, really, Sanji shouldn’t be this aware of him. Not in the middle of a fight. Not of the way his muscles bunch as he swings, or the way his teeth flash when an opponent proves marginally more interesting than average or the low, pleased sound he makes when a combination lands just right.

Cut that out, he tells himself savagely, twisting midair to take a spear on the sole of his shoe and flick it out of someone’s hand.

Then someone shouts: “BRING OUT THE MONSTER!” from further up the street, and the air changes. The enemy crew surges. At the top of the hill, a bulkier man steps into view, flanked by a couple of fighters whose haki Sanji can actually feel. The captain, probably. Big halberd. Big bounty on his head, if the flyers were right. Big ego, definitely.

He locks onto Zoro like he’s already got him on a hook.

“Roronoa Zoro!” he bellows. “We’ve heard of you! They say you can turn into a demon!”

Zoro’s shoulders go still and Sanji feels the shift like a drop in pressure. It’s not like he hasn’t heard the stories himself at this point. He’s definitely heard Luffy mention something about ‘Zoro turned so cool, he had three heads!’ and Usopp making terrified noises. Seen the aftermath in reports and rumours. He’s never seen it in person and, right now, he’s not sure he wants to.

The big man levels his halberd. “Let’s see if the tales are true.”

More enemies push in around them, corralling them toward a wider square. The Sunny’s distant on the other side of town, behind warehouses and docks. It’s just them here, for the moment, no captain, no sharpshooter, no doctor on standby.

“You should sit this one out,” Sanji mutters as they’re forced backward, side-by-side. “You already look like hell.”

“Like you’re any better,” Zoro replies but there’s a new edge in his voice. Sharp. Focused. His hand tightens on Wado’s hilt. “Stay out of my way.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Sanji tries to keep his breathing steady. Tries not to feel that sick, anticipatory spark in his chest of fear and eagerness and… something else, something he’s never quite been able to name.

The enemy captain charges and the first clash is pretty standard, by all accounts: haki on metal, shockwaves, stone cracking under their feet. Zoro meets the halberd with all three blades and slides backward under the impact. Sanji flings a kick into someone rushing him while keeping one eye on the main fight. Zoro parries. Steps in. Cuts. The captain’s fast, for a man that size. His haki’s thick, dark, practiced and one of Zoro’s strikes slides off the armour altogether, barely biting.

“Damn,” Zoro snarls. “Annoying.”

Sanji takes a slash on his cuff, using the opening to catch the attacker in the jaw. Somewhere on the edge of his awareness he hears Zoro’s breathing deepen. Sees his stance shift wider, grounded, as if he’s deciding something.

“Oi, Mosshead,” Sanji snaps. “Don’t you -”

He doesn’t get to finish the sentence because the whole world tightens. The sound drops out, momentarily, like someone’s sucked all the noise into a single point around Zoro’s body. The hair on Sanji’s neck lifts and his legs want, against all reason, to take a step back.

Then Zoro moves, not like before. Before he was fast, lethal, sharp. Human. Now… now Sanji’s eyes blur trying to follow. For a second Zoro’s outline smears and triples, one, three, one again. It’s like a bad print misaligned or three frames of motion overlaid wrong before it finally resolves into something that isn’t resolution at all.

Three heads. Six arms. Nine blades.

Sanji blinks hard but it doesn’t help. The extra arms are half there, transparent, like the air’s decided to remember a shape but hasn’t fully committed. The extra faces are his and not-his, wearing expressions of grim focus and something older, hungrier. The street can’t decide where to put the shadows and they shiver around him in a way that makes Sanji’s teeth ache.

The men around them feel it, he can tell. Their footing falters. Eyes widen. Someone whispers a prayer, someone else a curse. The captain hesitates, just a fraction, but Zoro doesn’t. He takes a step and it’s like a tide rolling in as Asura presence swells, brushing at Sanji’s skin like cold water and hot breath all at once.

Sanji is suddenly, viscerally aware that if Zoro turned, right now, and decided he was the enemy instead –

He’d have to put up a hell of a fight. The thought punches straight through him, terror and something white-hot threading together in the same instant and then Zoro attacks and Sanji forgets how to breathe.

It isn’t that there are actually nine swords. There can’t be, it’s physically impossible. But the effect is real enough: every swing, every cut, leaves an afterimage, trails of blade arcs that all seem to land. The captain swings his halberd in a wide, sweeping arc, haki flaring black and Zoro steps right into it, Asura-shadow following half a beat ahead. There’s a clash of lightning and thunder and then the halberd is in pieces, the captain stumbling backward under the force.

Three heads turn in unison. Six arms adjust their grip. Nine blades, not all solid, but all dangerous, come up as if guided by a single thought.

It’s brutal. Clinical. Beautiful.

Sanji watches the captain’s armour blossom in red lines, one after another, before the man realises he’s been cut. His knees hit the ground. His face hits the ground. He stops moving and the rest of the crew just – breaks. Some run outright, tripping over their own. Others throw down weapons and back away, eyes gone wide with the kind of fear Sanji’s only seen when people encounter things they don’t have words for.

Zoro takes one breath. Another. Sanji should be relieved, should be – but he can’t stop staring. His heart’s hammering like a trapped bird and his mouth is dry, his palms damp. He knows he should be cataloguing threats, making sure no-one’s sneaking up on them, checking if Zoro’s hurt. He doesn’t move.

Because up close, the Asura form is – he doesn’t have a word for it. Wrong, yes. Terrifying, absolutely. Sacred, in the way lightning is sacred if it hits the tree you’re standing under. Every instinct he owns is telling him this is dangerous, this is above you, this is not meant for hands like yours to touch and somewhere under all of that: I want it.

The thought is obscene. Blasphemous. Honest. His fingers twitch as Zoro turns, finally, those three overlapping gazes landing on him. The central eye narrows, the other two tilting with it. Killing intent rolls off him in a wave that surges right up to Sanji’s boots and stops short like an obedient dog.

“You hurt?” Zoro asks. His voice comes out layered, like two others are speaking under it and deciding not to.

Sanji’s laugh is too high. “You asking if I’m hurt when you –” He gestures at all of… that.

“Answer the question,” Zoro demands, but there’s a flicker of confusion, of discomfort. The Asura shape is flickering at the edges now, like a candle in a breeze.

Sanji should say he’s fine and leave it at that. He should go back to the Sunny. He should not step forward, into the pressure, just to see how it feels but he does it anyway. The air thickens as he crosses some invisible threshold, his skin prickling as his lungs feel like they’re trying to pull air through water. Every part of him is screaming wrong wrong wrong and he can’t stop.

Up close, the phantom arms are worse. He can see the suggestion of muscle, the way the non-metal blades catch the light without really being there, can see the way they hum, silently, the way a room does after too much noise.

“Sanji,” Zoro says, a warning.

Sanji looks up into the central face, then deliberately into the other two, one by one. And grins. His voice has gone low and a little unsteady. “I get it now.”

Zoro’s brows knit. “Get what?”

“Why everyone runs. That’s…” He laughs under his breath, half-horrified at himself. “That’s terrifying.”

“Then back off.”

Instead, Sanji takes another half step in and he can feel the phantom arms twitch, reacting, adjusting their balance around Zoro like invisible counterweights. The sheer sense of mass here is insane. Zoro hasn’t moved his feet; Sanji feels like he’s stepped too close to an oncoming train and it’s somehow holding still out of politeness.

“I said,” Zoro starts, jaw clenching. “Back –”

“Why?” Sanji cuts in and he doesn’t even recognise his own voice. Breathless. Lighter than it should be. “You gonna cut me?”

The silence is sharp. One of the phantom hands flexes beside Zoro’s shoulder, like it wants to and Sanji’s pulse stutters. His body interprets the jolt in all the wrong ways.

“You wouldn’t,” Sanji drawls and the part of him that respects reality knows he’s pushing something dangerous now. The rest of him is barreling straight through. “If you wanted to you would’ve done it years ago.”

Zoro’s mouth twists. “You don’t know what this form –”

“No,” Sanji agrees and he doesn’t know which devil sits on his tongue when he says the next part: “But I know you.” He steps right up to the edge of the Asura shape, to Zoro himself. Close enough their boots nearly touch and everything in him is buzzing. Fight-high, fear-high, something-else-high, all tangled. From this range he can see the sweat at Zoro’s temple, clinging to the line where real skin meets whatever the hell this overlaid thing is. His gaze drops, unbidden, to Zoro’s hands, real, scarred, gripping hilts so tight the knuckles are white. The phantom ones hover, fingers slightly curled, like they’re waiting.

Sanji thinks, wildly, I want to know what it feels like to have all of those on me at once.

“Drop it,” Zoro says, tighter. “It’s done. Fight’s over.”

“Oh, I saw. Very impressive. Very scary. Very…” He swallows, because the word he wants is hot and that’s fucking insane. “Effective.”

Zoro’s eye narrows more. “You’re bleeding.”

Sanji glances down at the cut on his forearm. “Huh,” he says, genuinely surprised. “I’ll yell at them later.”

“Sanji.” Zoro’s voice digs in, deeper, edged. “You’re too close.”

Sanji meets that threefold gaze and says, soft and razor-quiet: “Then move me.”

Something flickers, deep in the Asura form. Like a shadow agreeing with him before Zoro does. He grinds out: “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

Sanji steps even closer, right up until the toes of his boots knock into Zoro’s. Tilts his chin up. Feels the weight of that impossible presence bearing down on him, pressing against his skin like a storm trying to turn him around. He doesn’t turn. “You think I’m gonna let you scare me off?”

He sees it land and Zoro moves before Sanji can blink, a real hand fisting in the front of his shirt. The phantom hands shift, bracing against empty air, ensuring whatever happens next doesn’t topple Zoro too. The world blurs, stone and sky and gore smearing together for a second as his body’s swung, yanked, dragged. He’s pushed into a wall in the next alleyway over, shoulder first, back scraping rough stone. Before he can recover, there’s another impact, hard, broad, full-bodied, as Zoro follows, pinning him there.

The Asura form follows too, not all the way. The extra heads are there, edges fraying. The extra arms are most definitely there, faint outlines of hands bracketing the alleyway around Zoro’s shoulders, wrists, hips, like the world made space for them to exist. From the street they’d just look like silhouettes tangled in an argument but here, in the alleyway, it feels like being caught in a net. Sanji sucks in a breath because the wall’s cold at his back and Zoro is hot in front of him and the air between is just. Nonexistent.

“You want distance now?” Zoro asks, very quietly.

Sanji laughs, and the sound comes out all wrong. “You dragged me out of a perfectly good public street to ask me that?”

Zoro’s real hand slams into the stone by his head, caging him in. The phantom counterpart hits a fraction of a second before, cushioning the blow from becoming a crater.

“Stop,” Zoro hisses. “Think. You’re high on the fight.”

“So are you,” Sanji scowls and it’s true. Up close, he can see it: the dilation of the pupil, the hitch in the breath, the way the Asura form isn’t fading as fast as it should, clinging to him like it doesn’t want to be dismissed yet. He should be unnerved by that.

He is. He’s also –

“You’re really not scared,” Zoro says and there’s actual wonder in it, under the irritation. “You’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

Sanji’s heart is doing weird things. “What, of you? Please.”

“Of this.” Zoro jerks his chin slightly, indicating the spectral arms crowding the stone. One thin hand hovers near Sanji’s shoulder, not touching. Another curls at Zoro’s side like it’s itching to grab something. Him. “You saw what I did to them.”

Sanji flicks a glance past Zoro, to the opening of the alleyway where the square is still, for the moment, empty save for fallen men and murmuring air.

“I think that’s the problem.”

Zoro’s eye sharpens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sanji rolls his shoulders as much as the wall and Zoro’s body allow. He makes a face like he’s tasting something he shouldn’t.“Means it was… effective.”

“Stop saying it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re… impressed.”

Sanji grins, teeth sharp. “I am impressed.”

The words hit like a blow; the nearest phantom hand spasms, fingers splaying wide against the wall by his head. The air feels like it’s dropping ten degrees and spiking ten degrees at once. Zoro’s jaw works, muscle ticking. “You’re gonna make me do something stupid,” he mutters.

Sanji lets his gaze drop, slow, down over the lines of Zoro’s throat, the notch of his collarbone, the shoulders bunched under bloodstained fabric, the real hands braced on either side of him, the ghost ones twitching just a breath away from his skin. All those hands that were so efficient at killing people ten seconds ago.

He wants them all over him.

“Newsflash. You’re not the only one.” And because there’s no point pretending otherwise anymore, he tilts his head, bares his throat just a little, and says, voice gone raw: “Go on, then. Scare me.”

The alleyway is suddenly, impossibly, quieter than the graveyard of the square. For a heartbeat, nothing happens, Zoro just stares at him, air thick enough to chew. Sanji can feel his own pulse banging against his skin like it’s trying to make a run for it.

Then a hand lands on his chest, flat and there, right over his sternum, and shoves. Sanji hits the wall fully this time, shoulder blades biting into stone. The shock knocks a grunt out of him but before it can turn into a word another ghost hand snaps shut around his wrists and slams them up against the bricks, over his head. The other arm follows a breath later, pinned just as firmly. He’s spread wider than he needs to be, shoulder joints protesting, chest open.

A third hand curls around his throat and Sanji’s breath just – clips.

The grip isn’t crushing but it’s fucking solid, thumb hooked along the side of his neck, fingers spanning the front, warm and unyielding. He can still breathe, but suddenly every inhale has to pass through Zoro’s palm. There’s no such thing as unconscious breathing anymore. Each one is a choice: take air, feel the pressure, accept it.

His body reacts like it’s wired to do just one thing: lurch. His hips jerk forward, into Zoro, away from the wall but the hand at his throat doesn’t budge. The ones on his wrists tighten, pinning him flatter.

“Curls,” Zoro says and the way he says it isn’t a warning this time, it’s a check. A line in the sand. His face is close now, too close. One real, two ghostly, all of them fixed on him. On his throat, where a pulse is jumping wildly under that grip. “You scared yet?”

Sanji knows he should be. Everything in him’s lit up, every childhood instinct about danger and force and what happens when someone gets their hands on you like this. His chest is tight, his head buzzing, his legs unsteady. He feels half wrong and half more alive than he has in months.

“I –” he starts, and the fingers at his neck flex, cutting the word in half. The sound that comes out instead is small and raw and not something he’s ever made in a spar.

Zoro’s eye widens, just a fraction. “That…” His voice scrapes. “That didn’t sound scared.”

Sanji swallows. The hand at his throat feels it, tracking the slide of muscle, pressing just firmly enough that his next breath comes quicker, sharper. His voice comes out wrecked and rough already. “Try harder.”

The hand on Sanji’s chest shifts, its fingers spreading wide, thumb hooked into the dip of his collarbone. It cages him there, a second line of restraint. The grip at his throat tightens enough that the edges of Sanji’s vision fuzz for a heartbeat before his lungs drag the world back in and his whole body jumps. If this were anyone else, he’d kick them clean into the next street. If this were anyone else, he wouldn’t be here. But it’s Zoro, and the Asura, and the alleyway is suddenly the only place on earth this could happen.

Zoro’s real hand comes up, overlapping the ghost one on his neck, until calloused fingers slot into the same grip, grounding the impossible in something Sanji knows. That combination, unreal and very real hand stacked over the same vulnerable place, does something catastrophic behind his ribs. His heart slams so hard he thinks, absurdly, he must feel that.

He must, because Zoro sucks in a breath like he’s just been hit.

“Oh,” Zoro says, like he’s surprised, his voice dropping out of its usual register. “You like this.”

Sanji could lie. He could shrug it off, spit some insult, kick his way out and pretend this never reached under his skin. Instead, he shifts his weight, leans into the hold, lets his jaw angle up so that the hand has more space to fit, more throat to claim.

“Yeah,” he croaks. “So what.”

For a moment everything stops: the wind, the noise from the square, even the slow flicker of Asura’s extra heads. It’s like the whole world pauses to acknowledge the line he just crossed. Tiny hairs along his arms stand on end, skin prickling. Up close, the phantom arms are barely visible, the suggestion of muscle, the shimmer of blade edges, traces of light where they move. They look half unreal. They don’t feel unreal.

“Don’t,” Zoro warns quietly. “This isn’t gentle, Curls.”

“Did I ask for gentle?” he croaks and Zoro’s lip curls. All three mouth-shapes twist together into something half-sinful. The real Zoro lifts his actual hands, the ones Sanji’s used to, and grips Sanji’s hips. It’s overkill. It’s completely unnecessary. There are already too many hands on him and that’s the fucking point. He’s pinned in six places at once and still wants more.

“Still not scared?” Zoro asks and the echo in his voice makes it unclear which head is speaking.

Sanji’s laugh comes out shaky. “You gonna keep asking or actually do something about it?”

Zoro’s annoyance flashes, bright and fast. Good. Sanji likes him better like this, off balance, teeth bared. One phantom arm in his lower back tightens, pulling him flush against Zoro’s chest while nother slides up his spine, fingers splayed between his shoulder blades, pressing him in place like he’s something precious and stubborn. Sanji’s knees wobble and his voice comes out rough. “Careful, people might get the wrong idea, Mossy.”

The hand on his throat tightens one deliberate notch and Sanji’s whole body lights up like a live wire. The alleyway disappears. The town disappears. It’s just pressure and pulse and the roar of his own blood in his ears and his jaw wants to drop open but the grip keeps it half-closed, turning his next breath into something sharp and broken. His heels scrape uselessly against the ground as he tries to find leverage that doesn’t exist.

“You already have the wrong idea by thinking I’m the dangerous one,” Zoro grinds out, close enough that Sanji can feel each word vibrate through the fingers at his neck.

Sanji laughs, or tries to. It tears out of him as a ragged exhale, more exposed than anything he’s ever let anyone hear. “You gonna shut me up or not?” he croaks. “Because so far all I hear is –”

Zoro doesn’t let him finish, he crashes in like another hit. The kiss isn’t a lean or a slide or anything that belongs in the same category as nice. It’s collision, pure and simple: mouth smashing onto mouth, teeth catching, lips splitting on impact. Sanji’s skull knocks the wall again and the phantom palm at the back of his head is the only reason it doesn’t crack him open. For a split second his brain blanks, stunned by the sheer force of it before everything in him surges toward it.

He drags a breath in through his nose, feeling the choke of that hand turn it thin and shoves that air straight into Zoro’s mouth, meeting him with a hunger that’s got nowhere else to go. His pinned wrists flex uselessly, his fingers claw at nothing. The only things he can move are his mouth and the trembling line of his body and he uses both, angling his head as much as that grip will allow, chasing Zoro’s mouth like he’s been waiting for this since forever and only just realised.

Zoro makes a low wrecked sound against him, part growl and part something too close to a groan, and the hand at Sanji’s throat holds him exactly where Zoro wants him. The one on his chest slams him harder into the wall, ribs protesting. Their bodies grind together with the sheer inevitability of no space left, every tiny shift translated into rough friction and heat and Sanji bites him.

He doesn’t plan to. It’s just – Zoro drags his lower lip between his teeth, and something in Sanji snaps. He lunges up into it, teeth closing on Zoro’s lip hard enough to make him hiss. The fingers at his throat spasm, tightening just a fraction, dangerously close to too much, and then loosen like Zoro’s dragging them back by force.

“Fuck,” Zoro breathes against his mouth and it’s not clear if it’s a curse or a compliment.

Sanji’s panting now, every inhale a negotiated truce with that hand, every exhale spilling into Zoro’s mouth like he doesn’t remember how to breathe any other way. His head is buzzing, his vision too sharp and too blurred at once, and all he can think, over and over, is: oh. oh. this. it’s you. of course it’s you.

Zoro bites a little, pulls back a fraction, stays close enough that Sanji can feel his breath on his sore, swollen lips. “Still want it?”

Sanji laughs, wrecked. “If you stop I’ll set you on fire.”

The middle head, the real one, dips again, kissing him harder this time. The side heads tilt close, and though there’s no contact Sanji feels their presence like heat on his cheeks, like almost-breath at his ear. His world shrinks to salt and warmth and pressure and the low, satisfied noise Zoro makes when Sanji bites his lip again. A hand finally drifts up, tangling in his hair, tilting his head just enough that Zoro can change the angle again. It’s eerily gentle, too gentle for something that looked like a god of slaughter ten minutes ago.

It’s intimate in the wrong way and exactly the right type of wrong.

“You’re out of your mind,” Zoro breathes when they part, foreheads almost touching. His hands, his real hands, are still on Sanji’s hips but he others have migrated: one on his spine, one on his shoulder, one cupping just under his ribs like it’s feeling the way he breathes. One stays on the centre of his throat even as Sanji’s lungs drag in air greedily. His legs feel a little unsteady, but he refuses to show it.

“You’re the one with extra limbs,” he rasps. “Don’t project.”

One of the phantom hands at his back flattens, shoving him an inch closer again, like it hates the idea of space. Sanji swallows, and the fingers near his throat feel it. The hand there flexes, not tightening just yet, just… aware.

“Sanji.” Zoro’s voice drops. No nickname, no insult. Just his name, heavy in Zoro’s mouth, like it’s never been before. “These hands move on their own. A little. Once I start.”

“Is this all?” he murmurs, fingers curling lightly in the front of Zoro’s haramaki as if he’s bored, as if he isn’t being held in six places at once by something that should not exist. One of the phantom hands on his ribs tightens, in warning, in reflex. Sanji feels the faint tremor in it. Not the Asura’s. Zoro’s.

“Curls,” Zoro grinds out, three voices dragging over each other. “You don’t get what you’re playing with.”

The spectral fingers at his thigh flex and it starts as testing, he can tell, like Zoro’s checking if his weight is real, if his bones hold like they should. The grip slides lower, under the curve of his thigh, thumb ghosting the inside of his leg in a way that makes his breath hitch. “Oh. You’ve been holding out on me.”

Zoro swears, harsh and bitten off, all three mouths moving a fraction out of sync. He grits his teeth, jaw tight. “This isn’t –”

Control. He means this isn’t controlled and Sanji can see that now, up close. The strain along his neck. The way his real hands aren’t sure where to go because the phantom ones have already claimed every obvious place. The flicker in his eye that isn’t fear, exactly, but isn’t comfort.

He loosens one of his hands from Zoro’s shoulder and traces his fingertips up, over the line of his throat, to the edge of his jaw. Just to feel the way Zoro swallows under the touch and the hand at his neck tightens, just enough to remind him who’s technically in danger here. Another slides a fraction higher on his waist, dragging fabric, mapping skin.

“Don’t,” Zoro growls, three voices overlapping so the word vibrates against Sanji’s chest. “Stop tempting it.”

“Tempting who?” Sanji’s grin goes sharper. His pulse is everywhere at once. “You? Or this?”

His heel brushes Zoro’s hip and the hands holding his thighs clench. Zoro’s eye squeezes shut for a heartbeat. When it opens again, it’s all pupil, all black. “Both.”

The admission hits Sanji harder than any kick to the chest but he doesn’t – he can't think about it because the real hands shift, pressing him further into the alleyway wall instead, Zoro’s thigh sliding between his, hands moving his legs easily. Sanji’s breath punches out of him but before he can suck it back in Zoro’s all over him, four, five, six points of contact again. The one on his shoulder tightens occasionally, like it’s testing how much pressure his bones can take while the one braced under his ribs keeps adjusting its grip in tiny increments, learning the shape of him. The band at his throat shifts minutely every time he swallows, tracking the movement with unnerving precision.

Sanji’s eyes half-close. “That all you got?”

Zoro’s hands – his real hands – crush him so fast his teeth click. His spine jars but one of the phantom palms cushions it at the last second, absorbing what could’ve been pain and turning it into something else entirely: shock, heat, a jolt of adrenaline that shoots straight through him.The hand at his throat shifts its angle and pushes his head back, baring the long line of his neck and Sanji’s pulse spikes so sharp it feels like it might crack his ribs from the inside.

“Zoro,” he says, and it comes out almost like a warning, almost like a dare.

“Shut up,” Zoro growls and kisses him again. There’s nothing exploratory about it this time: Zoro sinks his teeth into Sanji’s lower lip just enough to sting, then licks the hurt away like he owns it and Sanji makes an ugly little sound, hands flying up to grab at anything, shirt, skin, phantom shoulders that don’t quite exist. One of the ghost arms catches his wrist mid-reach, fingers wrapping all the way around it, holding him there against the rail like he’s been shackled.

Sanji laughs against his mouth, the sound shredded. “Since when do I do what you ask?” The wall digs into the small of his back but he arches into it anyway, caught between the brick and Zoro and the press of too many hands. It hurts in a way that loops back around into pleasure, something sharp and clean that cuts through the static in his head.

Zoro’s breath leaves him in a sharp exhale, somewhere between exasperation and hunger. The hand on his trapped wrist slides up to his forearm, thumb pressing into the tender muscle there, testing how easily it could snap. Another arm wedges between him and the rail, pinning his other hand back as he flails for purchase, until both his wrists are caught, arms spread just a little, enough to make his chest feel exposed.

The palm at his throat tightens, not enough to cut off air, but enough to compress the sound in his voice. Words get stuck, breaking down into groans and breathless little curses.

“Z –” he tries.

The fingers under his jaw press, cutting the syllable short.

“God,” Zoro hisses, eyes squeezed shut, like he’s wrestling invisible chains. “They really want to –”

Sanji’s head thunks gently against the wall, phantom fingers cushioning the blow. His whole body thrums against the constraint, every muscle coiled. “Then let them,” he grinds out.

“Don’t say that,” Zoro warns and it’s maybe the most honest thing he’s said yet.

“Why?” Sanji manages, lips swollen, breath catching where that hand tightens and loosens. “You afraid of what you’ll do?”

Zoro’s laugh is short and bitter. “I’m afraid of how much you’ll like it.”

The worst part is: he’s not wrong. The phantom thumb brushes lazily along the line of Sanji’s throat, feeling his pulse rabbiting there. The hands on his wrists flex, tightening just enough to remind him how easy it would be to break something. Instead, they hold him perfectly, brutally still.

Zoro surges in again, kissing him like he’s trying to drown out his own warning and Sanji meets him halfway, biting when he should yield, dragging a ragged sound out of Zoro’s chest that could be a groan, could be a growl. The ghost arm at his back slides lower, fingers splaying over his lower spine, dragging him tight to Zoro’s body like it’s trying to prove a point and, god help him, Sanji really fucking likes the point.

The palm at his throat presses in a little harder, closing down and his next breath stutters as the protest dies in his mouth before it can get out. All that emerges is a rough, broken little noise that isn’t even a word.

Zoro hears it. All three of him.

“Too much?” Zoro grits but the way he asks is all wrong, like he’s asking if he can push further, not if he should stop. Sanji’s whole front is pressed to Zoro, chest-to-chest, hips pinned. He couldn’t move away even if he wanted to.

“Don’t you dare,” he rasps, voice scraped thin around the pressure on his neck. “Don’t you – fucking – dare back off now.”

Zoro’s eye flashes. One of the phantom thumbs, he doesn’t even know which hand it belongs to, slides up, pressing into the hollow just under his jaw, right where his pulse slams against skin and his vision sparks at the edges for half a second.

“Stubborn idiot,” Zoro mutters, but there’s no heat in it. Only something low and rough and painfully fond. “You’ll say anything to make this worse, huh.”

Sanji’s grin is all teeth. “You complaining?”

The hand on his throat answers for him, tightening just enough that his next inhale has to work for it. It brings something hot and ugly-pleasant curling low in his gut.

“Look at you,” Zoro says, and Sanji realises hazily that he already is. That he hasn’t shut his eyes once, not when the hands grabbed, not when his back hit the wall, not when Zoro bit his lip hard enough to make him taste blood. “You like this. You like that it’s me.”

One of the spectral hands on his wrist shifts, rolling his arm subtly so the tendons flex under skin and Sanji can feel the calculation there: this much twist, this much pressure, this is where it would snap. The grip stops just shy of real damage, hovering in that sick, thrilling sweet spot. Later, his forearm will be ringed in finger-shaped shadows and he already knows he’ll touch them, press his thumb into each one and remember.

“Course I like it,” he bites out. “You think I let just anyone manhandle me?”

The side mouths twitch, almost amused. The main one curves up slowly, like a blade being unsheathed as Zoro leans in, close enough Sanji can feel the rasp of his breath over his damp mouth and his gaze drops to Sanji’s neck, fixed, hungry. “That’s gonna mark.”

Sanji swallows on purpose. “Good. Make it obvious.”

Zoro makes a rough sound, somewhere between a curse and a laugh. “You want the others asking questions?”

Sanji lets his head loll back further, baring more skin. “You gonna answer them?”

He doesn’t get to see Zoro’s full reaction because one of the phantom fingers digs into the side of his neck, right over a vulnerable little bundle of nerves and his eyes roll close on instinct as heat bolts through him, shorting out the next taunt on his tongue.

“There it is again,” Zoro says hoarsely. “That face.”

Sanji wants to tell him to shut up. Wants to tell him to keep talking. What comes out is a punched-off sound when Zoro’s real hand joins the phantom one at his throat, calloused palm fitting over the ghost and pressing down a little harder. For a brief, electric second, it’s too much. His body jerks against the hold – reflex, reflex, move, breathe –

The grip loosens instantly.

Zoro’s eye snaps to his, sharp. “Sanji.”

“I’m fine,” Sanji spits and he is, he is, the starburst behind his eyes already receding. There’s a wild, bright flutter in his chest now that feels vile and perfect. “I said I’m fine. Don’t you dare stop.”

Zoro searches his face, all three of them, like he’s looking for something that would make him pull back but he clearly doesn’t find it. There’s no steady footing in his voice. “You’re unbelievable.”

Sanji tilts his head as much as the hands allow, and for a moment, just a moment, relaxes everything, lets his body hang in the restraint, lets the support at his back and throat and wrists carry his weight. Zoro’s eye widens a fraction like he feels that shift, the trust in it, the surrender that isn’t really surrender, just belief. Sanji’s toes barely catch the ground: most of his weight is held up by that grip and he knows, knows, that Zoro could snap him in half like this. Fold him over, crush the breath out of him, send him tumbling into the gutter, the sea, fuck, anywhere.

His thighs tremble. A sound breaks from his throat, forged from frustration and exhilaration and something caught between, something feverish.

“You done?” Zoro asks, voice rough.

Sanji’s lungs burn. “Not even close.”

The next move is ugly yet completely on brand: he twists just enough to get his shoulder loose from one ghost grip and snaps his head sideways, teeth closing on the nearest thing he can reach, part of Zoro’s real forearm. He bites down hard, hard enough that Zoro jerks, swearing, and for half a heartbeat one of the restraining hands flinches. He pulls back, slow, and licks the indent.

Sanji looks at him, takes in the tension in his jaw, the sweat at his temple, the way his hands shake a fraction under all that control and, sure, he could say stop. He could say it’s been enough. Instead, he grins like he’s sawing through his own lifeline and the grip on his thigh tightens, dragging his leg up and hooking it momentarily over Zoro’s hip to keep him close. Phantom fingers dig into the muscle hard enough that he yelps, the line between pain and something else blurring out. One of the phantom hands lifts from his hip and slams into the mast beside his head, close enough that he feels the reverberation through his skull. It looks, unmistakably, like a punch that missed him by a hair.

“Keep mouthing off,” Zoro mutters under his breath.

Sanji tilts his head, throat pressing harder into that hold, testing the limits of his windpipe. His vision narrows. “I am very clearly –” he swallows and feels the fingers there flex around it. “Not the one losing control here.”

Zoro’s fingers twitch where they hold Sanji’s throat, hips, wrists. Asura hums around them, restless, aching for more and Sanji leans into it, into all of it, and smiles like a man who’s found his favourite way to get hurt.

“Again,” he says and every hand on him answers.

“Greedy,” Zoro mutters. It’s unclear whether he means him or the thing wrapped around them both. Maybe both. “You don’t know when to quit.”

Sanji’s mouth twists, ruined and pleased. “Neither do you.”

He goes to test his knees but they’re not really participating anymore because all the work is happening in his back and shoulders, in the flex of his ribs under that hand. That’s fine, that’s okay, god knows he’s spent enough of his life being upright and useful. He can hang a little.

“You’re holding me,” he says and even he hears how wrecked it sounds. “I’ll be fine.”

It hits Zoro somewhere. All three heads tilt, like he took a blow. The hand at his throat squeezes down until sound’s no longer an option. Not long, not dangerous but long enough that the entire world tightens around that pressure. His body lights up, every nerve misfiring, everything in him screaming push, move, survive –

He doesn’t push. He pours the panic straight back into Zoro’s grip. Every frantic pulse under that palm is him saying I trust you I trust you I trust you in the only language they understands. His vision swims. The edge of fear is real now, sharp and bright and very, very clean but just when it starts to tip the hand eases. He rips in air so fast it burns.

“There,” Zoro growls, like they’ve proved a point neither of them had words for. “That what you wanted?”

Sanji wheezes out something that might be a laugh. “You’re getting closer.”

“Fucking –” Zoro bites off the curse and Sanji twists, just enough to get his mouth next to Zoro’s ear. The other two phantom faces slide closer, making a sort of halo of teeth and intent around his skull.

“Zoro,” he rasps, voice raw. “Look at me.”

He can tell how much effort it takes: the middle head turns, the other two a beat after, all three pairs of eyes dragging down his face, his throat, his chest, every place they’ve put hands.

“I’m not some civilian,” Sanji goes on, words scraping over a throat that’s going to be mottled purple by morning. “You’re not gonna break me by grabbing a little too hard.”

“A little?” Zoro echoes.

“Okay, a lot,” Sanji amends, huffed. “Point is I can take it. You won’t scare me off.”

There’s a beat where nothing moves and then every hand on him clamps down at once. Not enough to truly hurt, maybe, but enough that his body panics on reflex again; his muscles jerk, trying to buck, twist, get purchase. With anyone else it’d start a fight but with Zoro, like this, all it does is make the holds firmer, more precise. He feels his own strength thrown back at him. Every flinch pushed into the wall. Every movement translated into a grip that says stay.

His heartbeat climbs into his throat. His breath gets loud in his ears. It’s too much and somehow exactly enough.

“Stop fighting,” Zoro snarls.

“Make me,” Sanji spits back, voice shredding.

The phantom hands on his wrists shift, pushing his arms higher up the wall and stretching his shoulders until the burn sets in. The one at his neck slides to the side, thumb pressing along a tendon, compressing just enough that his jaw aches to open. The hand at his hip drags him flush into Zoro’s body and every breath rubs bruises against solid muscle.

All Sanji feels is wanted in a way that scares him more than the choking ever could.

A low sound rolls out of Zoro’s chest, frustrated, hungry, half-horrified with himself. “You’re worse than I am, you know that?”

Yeah,” he pants. “Scared?”

The middle mouth curls, sharp and delighted and doomed. “I’ve never been scared of you.” He leans in and kisses him like he’s trying to prove it, all teeth and heat and the taste of blood and salt. Sanji answers with the last of his coherence, biting back, pushing until the edge starts to go. Not the hands, not the extra faces, not the weight of Asura… that lingers. But the edge of it, the killing sharpness, blunts.

Sanji feels it as the thumb at his throat eases off just a fraction, enough that his next breath doesn’t hitch. The grip on his hips loosens from clamp to hold. The fingers around his wrists shift. It takes Zoro a second longer to catch up, but his forehead comes to rest against Sanji’s shoulder, right above the freshest bite. His breaths are still too rough, like each one is dragged over broken glass on the way out.

“Okay,” Zoro mutters, muffled against skin. “That’s… that’s enough.”

Sanji chokes on a laugh, still pinned. “You saying that for me or for you?” and feels Zoro’s mouth twist against his shoulder.

Slowly, like a storm uncoiling, the Asura peels back. The phantom arms don’t vanish all at once because that would be too clean, too kind. Instead, they fade in layers, pressure lightening on his wrists first, then his ribs, thenhis neck, like someone’s dialed the world’s gravity down notch by notch. The last to go is the broad palm at his spine and by the time the extra heads blur and dissolve, leaving just one, Sanji’s knees have started to shake in earnest.

He doesn’t fall, if only because Zoro doesn’t let him.

“Hey,” Zoro says, real voice now, no echo. His hand – human, calloused, blessedly normal – cups Sanji’s cheek, thumb brushing along the corner of his mouth where his lip is split. “You with me?”

Sanji takes a breath that burns on the way out. “I’d be more with you if you weren’t pressing me into the fucking wall like a wanted poster.”

Zoro snorts, relief clearly snaked into it, almost imperceptible. His hands slide from Sanji’s wrists to his shoulders, then down his arms, checking. Not gentle, but focused, like he’s cataloguing damage.

Sanji watches his face because – he’s seen Zoro after bad fights before. Split open, half-delirious, laughing with blood in his teeth. This is different. There’s a kind of… stripped look to him now, like he doesn’t quite know what he’s just done, only that it was too much and Sanji is still in front of him. Zoro’s fingers pause over one wrist, thumb pressing into the already-sore muscle. “Did I…?”

“It’ll bruise,” Sanji shrugs. “Good. I like the colour.”

Zoro’s eye snaps up to his. “Don’t.”

Sanji’s smile flickers. “Don’t what. Joke?”

“Don’t act like it doesn’t matter.” Zoro’s grip tightens, before it forces itself to relax. “I lost it. That wasn’t –” He cuts himself off, jaw clenching. “I could’ve –”

“You didn’t.” Sanji leans in, crowding his space right back. “You didn’t.”

Zoro looks like he wants to argue but he doesn’t. Instead, his gaze drops to the bite on Sanji’s shoulder, the blooming red-purple at his throat, the smudges starting under his skin. His voice comes out quieter. “Does it hurt?”

Sanji considers this. Everything aches: his neck throbs in time with his heart, his shoulders feel like someone’s snarled fingertips straight through to bone. His lungs are still trying to decide what a normal rhythm is. “Yeah. And I liked it.”

Zoro stares at him like he’s spoken a different language. “You’re insane.”

“Maybe.” Sanji shrugs, winces at the pull, and grins through it anyway. “But I knew exactly who I was asking for this. You think I don’t know what you’re capable of?”

“That’s the problem,” Zoro mutters. “You do.”

Sanji reaches up, fingers curling in the front of Zoro’s shirt, tugging him down until their foreheads touch. Closer than a fight. Closer than a kiss. “Look at me. Am I broken? Missing any limbs? Face rearranged?”

Zoro scowls. “No.”

“Then congratulations.” Sanji’s voice softens, scraped raw but steady. “You did it. You went right up to the edge and didn’t shove me over.”

Zoro grinds his teeth. “You don’t understand how easy it would be.”

“And you don’t understand,” Sanji fires back. “How hard it is for me to trust anyone with that.”

Zoro goes still as the words hang between them, heavy and truer than anything else tonight. Sanji exhales, finding that the fight’s gone out of him in one aspect and doubled in another. “You know how many people I’d let put their hands around my throat like that?”

Zoro says nothing.

“You,” Sanji answers for him, voice tight and sore. “End of list.”

There’s a long moment where the only sound is the distant hush of the town and the screech of gulls overhead. Somewhere, someone laughs at something, distorted and oblivious, Zoro closes his eye for a beat and when he opens it, some of the jagged panic has drained out, leaving something rawer. He has to swallow before he can get the next bit out. “I didn’t hate it.”

Sanji exhales a startled breath that might be a laugh, if it didn’t hurt so damn much. “No shit.”

“I mean it.” Zoro’s voice grates. “Having you like that. It doesn’t… usually feel like that. It’s just about cutting. About ending things.” His fingers flex uselessly at his sides. “With you it was…” He trails off, his expression twisting like he’s trying to force the right words out through a space that’s never had to make them before. “Not just violence It felt like… you were mine. For a second.”

Sanji’s heart does something stupid in his chest. “And that scares you.”

Zoro’s eye flickers. “And what about you, huh? You’re not scared?”

Sanji thinks about it, honestly. Thinks about the moment the world narrowed to breath and fingers and teeth, the way his reflex screamed move and he chose stay instead. The way some deep, ugly-honest part of him lit up under the pressure like a struck match. “For half a second. When it went black at the edges.”

Zoro’s hand twitches toward his throat like he wants to check, to see so Sanji catches it midair and presses it there himself. Holds Zoro’s palm against the bite and the bruise and his pulse. Warm. Real. Alive. “I was scared,” he repeats. “And then I heard you.”

Zoro frowns. “I wasn’t saying anything.”

“Exactly.” Sanji’s mouth crooks. “You always shut up when you’re focused. You were paying attention. You stopped when you thought you’d gone too far, you adjusted. You held me up.”

They stand like that for a long moment: Zoro’s hand at his throat, no pressure now, just contact and Sanji steady on his feet only because Zoro’s other hand is still at his waist. Sanji leans in, just enough to brush their noses. “I’m okay.”

“You’re bruised.”

“I’m okay,” Sanji repeats, firmer. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

Zoro searches his face, like he’s looking for an angle, a lie, an escape clause but Sanji knows he won’t find one. Slowly, his shoulders drop and a fraction of the tension drains out of his neck. His thumb moves in a small, absent-minded stroke against Sanji’s skin, like he’s soothing himself more than the cook.

“If this ever is too much,” Zoro says, voice low, serious in a way that doesn’t leave room for mockery. “You say stop, not later, not joking. Not after. You say it and I don’t care if Asura’s halfway through a swing, I’d cut my own arms off if I have to.”

“Okay,” Sanji says quietly. “Deal.”

“And if you…” Zoro hesitates, then pushes on. “If you decide you don’t want it anymore. This. Any of it. You tell me that too.”

Sanji’s first instinct is to scoff or to retort, to deflect, to say something like as if I’d change my mind once I’ve found something this good but he doesn’t. He manages, hoarse: “Promise.”

Zoro’s hand leaves his throat, finally, sliding up to cup the side of his face instead. It feels almost too normal after everything else. “Good,” he mutters. “Because if you keep letting me like this, I’m not gonna pretend it’s just for fun.”

Sanji blinks and heat floods his neck for an entirely different reason. “Yeah?” he asks, voice gone a little too light. “What is it then?”

Zoro scowls at him like he’s asked him to solve math. “It’s…” He gestures vaguely between them with his free hand, encompassing bruises, bites, phantom memories of hands. “It’s us.”

Sanji swallows. His throat is tender and the movement hurts but it feels right. He leans in on purpose this time, slow, no power behind it, no teeth. Just a mouth meeting a mouth, soft and steady, the kind of kiss that would look almost chaste to anyone who hadn’t seen what came before and Zoro exhales into it, like something in his chest has finally been allowed to drop.

When they part, Sanji’s eyes are bright, but not from lack of oxygen this time.

“You’re carrying me to bed,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Zoro snorts. “You can walk.”

“Maybe! But you’re the one who wanted to leave marks so you get to deal with it.”

Zoro rolls his eye but his hand’s already sliding down to Sanji’s hip again, fingers fitting neatly into the fresh bruises like they were made for them. “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters and Sanji lets himself lean, just a little of his weight, just enough to make it real.

Zoro takes it without complaint.

x

Here’s the song used. Its slowed and reverb Somewhere Only We Know by Keane

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