Welcome to the Shadows, darlings

Sanji’s rhythm is infuriating as hell. He doesn’t attack like a swordsman, unsurprisingly. He moves like flame catching from one surface to another, all strikes and recoils and vanishes. He changes track midair after lying with the angle of his shoulders and jumps into retreat, except the retreat’s secretly an attack half the time. Zoro finds he spends way too long blocking the kick Sanji’s convinced him is coming instead of the actual one, which is a brutal learning curve.

The third time they spare Zoro blocks wrong again and takes a particularly spiky kick to the side of his head. He wakes up on his back with Luffy crouched above him. “Wow, you looked dead!”

“Shut up.”

Sanji stands a few metres away, cigarette already back between his lips, looking way too smug. Zoro points at him. “Again.”

Sanji stares at him and then smiles, sharp, like a knife drawn halfway. “Try to stay awake this time.”

Zoro does, barely, and that’s how the real pattern starts. For a while, he tells himself his fixation with sparring Sanji makes sense because Sanji fights differently than anyone else on the crew. Luffy’s all instinct and impossible angle,s, his rubber body turning every law of combat into a joke while Usopp fights with distance and panic. Nami’s too similar to Zoro, it turns out, but Sanji fights like someone whose whole life has been honed towards it.

It’s undeniable that fighting Sanji makes Zoro better… but it’s also undeniable that Zoro really, really likes it.

He likes the impact of Sanji’s strength and the bright flare of pain when a kick lands and he likes the shove of being moved by someone who clearly enjoys moving him, and he likes each time he’s punished for misjudging a strike. He likes the way Sanji’s face changes when he stops performing for everyone and starts paying real attention; the way those blue eyes narrow and the way his mouth thins. Zoro likes being taken seriously by him. Even worse? He likes taking Sanji seriously, too. The realisation of this creeps up on him a little too slowly, if he’s honest. It takes Sanji sweeping his leg out from under him during a rainstorm on some unnamed island for it to smack him over the head. Sanji plants one foot beside his head and drawls: “Yield?” and it feels like the best moment of Zoro’s life.

He spits mud and blood from his mouth and kind of laughs, because Sanji sounds pissed but his eyes are alight. “No.”

Sanji’s grin flashes white in the rain. “Good.”

There’s another time on the Merry at drawn, when the rest of the crew’s still asleep and the world's made only from pale mist, when Sanji comes up to the deck to smoke and finds Zoro training. Zoro expects him to sneer and leave but the blonde watches for a while, silent in a way that makes the back of Zoro’s neck prickle.

“Your left side’s slower than normal,” Sanji says eventually.

Zoro lowers a sword. “Like hell it is.”

“Fine, whatever.” Sanji flicks the cigarette overboard. “Stay wrong.”

“Prove it, then.”

Sanji considers him from across the way. He’s barefoot — that’s what Zoro remembers later, stupidly. Bare feet on floorboards slick with dew, wearing an expression like Zoro’s offered him a gift and a trap in the same hand. He ends up proving it: Zoro’s left side is slower. By the time the sun clears the horizon Zoro’s got a bruise spreading along his ribs and a split lip and Sanji has a shallow cut on one cheek from where Wado grazed him. They stand opposite each other, breathing hard as the morning light spills gold across the deck, both of them smiling like idiots and pretending not to.

“Better,” Sanji allows. “You’re welcome.”

He comes back the next morning at the same time, and the next and the next and by then Zoro’s already given up on pretending this isn’t the best part of his day. Violence, he knows, isn’t the only language they share but it’s the first one that doesn’t need a translation. Zoro’s always known how to speak through force and pressure and through the honesty of impact. A fight strips away the soft lies people tell with their mouths, he figures. Nobody can fake timing. Nobody can flatter their way through a lock. Nobody can offer pretty towards in place of balance or breath or intent. Combat’s the body telling the truth, and he knows that Sanji understands that on the same level.

Sanji, who lies constantly and who smiles like he's putting on an afternoon play and who flirts like a shield and turns every feeling that matters into smoke before anyone can catch it. Sanji tells the truth when he fights, and Zoro listens. The first time Sanji breaks thorough his guard properly, Zoro feels a grin split his face before the pain hits. The first time Zoro adjusts fast enough to catch Sanji’s ankle and Sanji twists midair to compensate, using Zoro’s grip as leverage, Zoro feels his stomach drop in a hot, secret trill before he cops a foot to the face.

The first time Sanji pins him… well.

They’re sparring in a clearing on an island where the trees grow red leaves and the air stinks of fermented fruit and Zoro’s forced him back towards a fallen tree trunk, thinking he’s cut off one line of escape at least. Sanji takes the trunk as a step instead, lunging himself high to hook a leg around his shoulder and Zoro turns too slowly, surprised, and gets a knee between his shoulder blades for it. He ends up facedown in the leaf litter with Sanji’s heel planted between his swords.

“Dead,” Sanji says, breathless and triumphant.

Zoro scowls. “You’re too light to pin anyone, asshole.”

Sanji presses down, sending pain flashing hot along Zoro’s side — and then something else hits him, too, so sudden and violent it knocks any remaining air right out of his lungs. He’s hard, instantly, full and aching against the ground like his body’s completely betrayed him in the span of a single heartbeat. The shock of it’s so sharp he nearly chokes on it, heat flooding his face. His ears burn. Every nerve in his body seems to light up at once, from the pressure of Sanji’s weight to the simple fact that Sanji has him.

Sanji shifts his weight, pressing down a fraction more just to prove the point and Zoro has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making a sound, before the other man finally eases off. “Get up, Moss. You’re not actually dead. Yet.”

Zoro doesn’t move straight away. He stays there for three mortifyingly long seconds, trying to will his body back under control and when he finally flips over he stares at the red canopy above them with his heart pounding in his throat and his skin still buzzing. His hand holding his sword is trembling, the other one clenched tight enough that his nails dig into his palm, fabric of his pants feeling obscenely tight.

Afterwards, when Sanji’s brushing dirt off off his own pants and complaining loudly about how they’ll never find the rest of the crew again at this rate, Zoro stays quiet as his mind replays the exact second the pin landed and the helpless rush of arousal that’d crashed through him like some kind of wave.

He starts testing it. He still blocks the dangerous blows — anything that’d actually break bones or split skin open too badly. But the heavy shots? The shoulder checks and the close range knees and the times Sanji gets him against a tree or the ground again? Those, he lets through on purpose. He sees the opening sand chooses not to take them, because he wants to know what Sanji’ll do with the space. He wants to feel the same hot drop in his stomach again and wants to know if it was a one time freak accident or if this is just… him, now.

Sanji seems to hate it and love it in equal measure. Zoro can tell by the way his anger sharpens everytime Zoro takes a hit he could’ve blocked. “You’re letting me hit you,” he snaps one afternoon, after driving an elbow into Zoro’s ribs hard enough to make him grunt. His eyes are narrowed and suspicious, his face a little flushed from the spar. “What’s wrong with you?”

Zoro just grins at him, a little too feral. “Then make it worth it.”

Sanji stares at him, the air around them warping a little. That happens sometimes, now, where the fight kind of tilts without warning until the space is suddenly too full of everything Zoro can’t name, but associates with the heat of Sanji close enough to feel before impact. The knowledge that Sanji can get him flat and the even worse knowledge that half the time Zoro wants him to.

Sanji’s eyes narrow and he hits harder, the next combination driving Zoro backwards across the deck. There’s a sharp kick to the thigh that he halfheartedly blocks and a spinning heel that clips his shoulder and a knee into his gut that sends him reeling. Sanji’s hand fist in the front of Zoro’s shirt, using the momentum to shove him backwards into the mast hard enough that the wood groans. Zoro’s head knocks against it, stars busting behind his eyes, and he laughs. Sanji freezes, knuckles hard against the swordsman’s chest. He’s close enough that Zoro can count the exact hitch in his breath and that if either of them moved a little their mouths would brush.

Trapped between Sanji’s body and the mast is too much, almost; the pressure of the wood against his back and the heat of Sanji against his front sends his pulse hammering so loudly he’s convinced Sanji can hear it.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Sanji demands hoarsely.

Zoro’s own voice comes out rough and ruined. “Try harder.”

Sanji’s grip tightens and it’s like they’re suspended in time as the whole damn world just continues around them — stupid and bright and completely unaware that Zoro can’t focus on anything except Sanji’s hands in his shirt and the thin line of space between their mouths and the fact that he’s so turned on his skin is throbbing like a second heartbeat. The blonde’s face goes through confusion and alarm and then dawning, horrible calculation, the dangerous understanding that he’s been holding a leash without knowing the was even a leash in his hand.

Then Sanji yanks him forwards and just fucking. Throws him.

Zoro hits the deck on his back, knowing full well he should’ve rolled. He stays there sprawled for a beat, ribs lit up with pain and heart beating in a mix of pain and pure exhilaration. He watches Sanji stalk after him with that annoyed face, mouth slightly open, and the want that crashes through him is almost humiliating.

He wants Sanji’s strength, wants the force of him and the pure, focused fury that turns every kick into some kinda statement. He wants the way Sanji’s body becomes an answer before that mouth has even decided what lie to tell, wants to be knocked flat and know exactly who did it. He wants Sanji close enough that every point of contact has to be chosen, wants the line between danger and trust drawn by a heel stopping an inch from his throat and the knowledge that Sanji could finish it anytime he wanted to. He wants that grip on his hips, wants that same rush of heat and wants Sanji to use it. He wants to be overpowered so thoroughly that there’s nothing left to do except take it — take the hits and the weight and the control. He wants Sanji’s knee in his back and Sanji’s hand around his throat and Sanji’s fingers working him open and Sanji’s voice telling him exactly when to come. He wants to be handled like he weighs nothing, like the only thing that matters is whatever Sanji decides to do with him next and the worst part — the part that makes his face burn — is how badly he wants Sanji to know. He wants Sanji to look at him and see the way Zoro’s body lights up everytime he’s forced down and the way he stops blocking on purpose just to feel it again.

He wants it so much it feels like it’s going to eat him alive.

Sanji drops into a crouch beside him, a hand catching Zoro’s wrist to pin it somewhere near his head and Zoro’s hips lift into a stupid, involuntary roll upwards, seeking more and the movement's so fucking obvious and shameless that it feels like being shot, maybe. He kills the move instantly, locking his shoulders and bearing his teeth in something that isn’t quite a grin, but the damage is done. He knows Sanji felt it. He knows Sanji saw it.

Sanji’s face goes blank for a second, then red and then furious again, which is better. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Zoro flexes against his grip, testing the strength of it on purpose. Sanji just presses down harder and the pressure of that single point of contact sends another hot spike of arousal straight through him. He doesn't respond, because what the fuck can he even say? They both know what he looks like right now.

Sanji’s expression suggests he might actually kick him in the head, and Zoro half hopes he will. Instead, he lets go and stands up, brushing imaginary dirt off his hands like he just needs something to do with them. “Training’s over.”

Zoro stays where he is for a long moment after the other man leaves, glaring up at the sky with his heart still pounding and his dick still way too invested for his liking, the ghost of Sanji’s grip burning against his skin. He wishes he knew what to say to make Sanji come back. He wishes he knew how to ask for it again.

He does what he always does when a desire gets too big and just trains harder, learning Sanji’s openings with the devotion of someone studying a scripture he wants to deface with his own messy handwriting. He learns when Sanji overextends on wet surfaces and that Sanji’s right side is stronger but his left side’s meaner and that insulting the soup gets a different kick than insulting the souffle, and that mentioning Sanji’s past is forbidden unless Zoro wants the fight to end abruptly and coldly.

He learns Sanji’s tells: a cigarette a lowered means genuine interest and a sigh means he’s pretending to be bored. One eyebrow lifted means Zoro’s made a mistake and both feet stilling means Sanji’s already decided on how to punish him for it. Sanji learns him too, apparently. He starts figuring out when Zoro wants to be hit and when he needs to be stopped, which bruises are harmless and which ones make Zoro slower the next day. He learns that Zoro will keep going and going until someone else makes the call for him. Sometimes, Sanji will stop suddenly, breathing hard, and spit: “Enough.”

Zoro’ll snarl: “Not your decision,” but Sanji will leave anyway, and Zoro, furious, will realise twenty minutes later that his knee’s killing him.

He likes to think of himself as simple and in some ways he is. Strength matters and promises matter and the crew matters. Sanji complicates things because fighting him isn’t just fighting anymore. Losing isn’t just losing. Being thrown down isn’t just impact and the urge to get up stronger — it’s trust, also. Zoro doesn’t give the back of his neck to people, ever, but he gives it to Sanji. It’s there in the middle of a spar, when Sanji circles behind him and Zoro lets the moment last longer than he should. It’s there in how he trusts the raised leg not to crush his throat and trusts the kick to stop at damage instead of dead and trust in the hands that never strike, but sometimes grab his shirt or his shoulder or his wrist, guiding the fall so he hits deck instead of railing, bruised instead of broken.

He seeks it out openly enough that even Luffy comments on it.

“Are you tryna lose?” He asks one afternoon, hanging upside down from the rigging while Zoro tightens the wraps around his wrist.

“No.”

“You look happy when Sanji kicks you overboard.”

Zoro pulls the wrap too tight and nearly cuts off feeling in his hand. When he looks up, Sanji’s standing in the sunlight with one hand on his hip and a cigarette glowing in the other. He feels his blood settle into readiness. “Try not to miss.”

Sanji rolls his eyes. “Try to not to enjoy it so much.”

The first kick comes fast, but Zoro blocks it which means the second comes faster. Sanji’s heel drives into his ribs hard enough to knock him sideways, enough for Zoro to stay where he lands just to feel the echo of Sanji’s strength travelling through muscle and bone. He doesn’t even try to hide the way his breath shudders. There’s no point, these days: they both know what this does to him.

Afterwards, the bruises themselves become their own kind of problem. He finds them one-by-one while the rest of the crew’s still moving around them. At breakfast he sits with his back to the wall and presses two fingers into the deep mark on his ribs while he listens to Luffy argue with Usopp, the pain flaring sharp and clean. He holds it there until his eyes water a little, then lets go and keeps eating like nothing happened. Later, while checking the wraps on his swords, he digs his thumb into the darkening bruise on his thigh until the muscle jumps under his hand and his breath catches. When he’s on watch he leans against the railing in the dark and works his fingers into the mark on his shoulder, than the one low on his side and back to this ribs again, cycling through them like he’s checking stocks or something. Every press sends a little heat of spark down his body and by the time his shift’s over all he can think about is how badly he wants Sanji to put new ones on top of the old. When Sanji walks past him in the hallway later, Zoro has to shove his hands into his pockets so he doesn’t reach out right there and in the shower he stops pretending completely, digging his fingers into the worst of the marks until pain spikes and his hips stutter, until he’s panting against the tile and stroking himself in time with the throb of every bruise, pain and pleasure tangled so tightly he can’t tell them apart.

To say it gets worse after Enies Lobby would be an understatement: the truth is that Zoro becomes fucking unbearable. The crew’s stronger and their enemies have become stronger and the world ahead has teeth large enough to swallow them whole, so everyone’s sharpening themselves all the time. He tells himself it makes sense to ramp up his own training. Luffy disappears into the rigging and comes back with new ways to break physics and Nami studies and hones her skill until even the storms look nervous around her and Usopp tinkers and invents miracles out of scraps while Chopper experiments with forms that leave the deck buckling underneath him. Robin’s hands bloom faster and Franky rebuilds himself and the ship whenever inspiration strikes

Sanji, on the other hand, learns to burn.

The first time Zoro sees Diable up close in a spar it does something permanent and inadvisable to the inside of his skull. He’s only seen it in battle so far but in a fight there’s too much else happening to pay proper attention. In a spar, though, there's nowhere else for Zoro to put his attention except Sanji.

The fire’s real and snarling, licking around the clean black line of his pants to turn the air gold and red and violent. Sanji’s body becomes a moving blade as flame. crawls around the shape of his calf. He snaps: “Block this, Moss.”

Zoro absolutely does not block it.

He tries, maybe. Possibly. Technically, if anyone really forced the issue. Wado meets Sanji’s burning foot with a scream of steel against heat, pain shooting down Zoro’s arm from the sheer force of the impact as the sword blanches in his grip. His boots skid back across the boards, smoke curling wherever Sanji’s kick’s grazed the deck between them. The next impact drives him back further, hard enough to slam into the rail as heat explodes through his side. For one perfect breath he can’t tell if the pain’s from the force or the fire, only that Sanji put it there and his body’s reacting the way it always does. The laugh comes out so shocked and rough it’s almost breathless.

The deck goes quiet around them as Sanji lowers his burning leg. “Seriously?”

Zoro’s lungs aren’t interested in language right now, so he sneers instead and Sanji’s expression turns murderous.

Before Diable, Zoro had liked Sanji’s strength in a way he could pretend was still sane. He could think about the kicks and the precision and the energy and the way Sanji could pin him and it was embarrassing, sure, but manageable as a whole. It was a bruise here and a sprain there and, sure, okay, maybe the occasional awkward moment in the crows’ nest with his hand shoved down his pants while he replayed the exact second Sanji’s weight had settled over him, but it was still manageable. Diable makes the problem impossible to ignore because it’s now also about heat and risk and the air changing around him as Sanji becomes something bigger than himself. Everytime the flames burn Zoro feels the whole world narrows as Sanji’s leg arcs towards him like a falling star — and Zoro steps into it like an idiot, each and everytime.

“Why?” Chopper demands after one spar, standing on a crate so he can bandage Zoro’s forearm. “Quit moving towards the fire!”

“Need to cut it.”

“You didn’t cut it! You got burned! You smell like cooked meat!”

Sanji, passing by with a tray, snorts. “More like overcooked.”

Zoro grins as Chopper wails. The rest of the crew handle it just like they handle every other Sanji-and-Zoro related problem.

“Foreplay,” Nami calls it once, counting coins at the table and Sanji chokes on his cigarette so violently that poor Chopper starts climbing his leg in a panic. Zoro doesn’t choke — he just freezes in his chair, face flushing so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t combust on the spot. All he can think about is fucking himself open last night with his free hand scraping over the burn marks Sanji had left earlier in the day, so. It's not exactly a winning argument.

Nami looks up with a dangerous tilt to her mouth. Robin isn’t far behind and Usopp, sensing danger, tries to dissolve into thin air. Sanji’s red faced and furious even as he splutters. “Excuse me?”

Nami doesn’t even glance at him. Her eyes stay locked onto Zoro, sharp as needles. “Ah. That’s interesting.”

Zoro stands abruptly, ears burning. “I’m training.”

“Aw, with your boyfriend?”

Sanji makes a sound like a kettle dying, maybe. “That is not —”

“Rival,” Zoro snaps, grabbing the first word that comes to his flustered brain.

Robin smiles into her tea. “A classic trope, it has to be said.”

Sanji kicks Zoro out the galley door exactly twelve minutes later and Zoro keeps the bruise for a week, insufferably pleased about it. There’s a mark across his hip from a kick he nearly avoided and chosen not to, and redness on his shoulder from when Sanji had gripped him hard on the last island as they fell through several floors chasing after Franky. There’s a nice scorch along his collarbone where Diable had come too close — his favourite, so far. He presses it every chance he gets, at breakfast and on watch and in the shower with Sanji’s name between his teeth.

Franky catches him staring at a bruise in the quarters a few days later and just backs out with both hands raised. “Wow, super none of my business!”

Luffy pokes a purple mark on Zoro’s ribs during lunch, just above his haramaki, and whistles like he’s proud. “Sanji did that one.”

Zoro slaps his hand away before Sanji can hear, even though it’s probably pointless. The blonde's never been stupid, unfortunately: he understands that Zoro likes fighting him and that Zoro’s seeking him out with increasing shamelessness. He knows that Zoro trusts his strength and likes the way it feels, but Zoro doesn’t think Sanji understands the scale of it, exactly. He probably thinks Zoro is, at worse, deeply fucking weird about pain and respect and being beaten by people he considers strong, but he probably doesn’t understand that Zoro’s built a whole fucking system around the exact second Sanji decides to stop pulling the kick and that Zoro dreams the sound of Diable igniting and that he can’t get off anymore without feeling Sanji somewhere on his body. He probably doesn’t understand that everytime Sanji asks again? Zoro has to bite down on an answer that would ruin them both, something filthy and true and far too honest.

Then Thriller Bark happens and then Saboady happens and then they have two years apart and come back with everything worse, because they’re both worse. Sanji’s flames burn hotter and his kicks carry more weight, like his body’s learned a whole new language. Zoro comes back with one eye closed and the rest of him more dangerous for it — he moves less, for one. Before, Zoro’s strength had been loud in its hunger, all forwards motion and collision. Now, he can stand still and carry just as much momentum. His swords come out faster and his guard’s tighter and, still, their first serious spar after they reunite reorganises Zoro’s whole world. Zoro draws Wado and Shusui, and Sanji’s eyes flick down. “And Kitetsu.”

Zoro smirks. “Yeah? Earn it, then.”

Diable lights and the fight that follows is less a spar and more like an apocalypse unfolding. They move too fast for Usopp to narrate, which is probably for the best. Sanji comes in low, fire licking up one leg and Zoro meets him with crossed blades as the whole deck shudders. Sanji pivots out of the lock and snaps a kick towards Zoro’s head, Zoro ducking just in time to bring Shusui up for the next strike. Sparks scatter across the boards like thrown stars. Sanji laughs, sharp and surprised, and Zoro’s blood sings at the sound. It feels like some kind of horrible, perfect proof that they’ve both returned with more to give each other.

Zoro presses in harder and Sanji punishes him for it, a kick slipping past his guard to catch him square in the stomach. Zoro’s breath leaves him in a rush as he flips back, boots tearing grooves into the deck as pain blooms. He straightens slowly, grin already forming.

Sparring hits a whole new level, after that. It happens every few days, whenever weather permits or whenever injuries allow, whenever Sanji’s temper and Zoro’s hunger meet in the same middle narrow space and turn the air to tinder. It starts so easily it’s almost criminal, with a glance or a word or a lazy stretch after training that exposes a bruise Sanji left three days prior. It's beautiful and pathetic and Zoro doesn’t doubt that everyone knows what it does to him. Luffy figures it out in Luffy terms, which means one afternoon he watches Sanji kick Zoro through a stack of crates and sees the way Zoro smirks, and he hums. “Oh, you like it when Sanji wins.”

Zoro snorts, shrugging as Sanji’s face goes crimson.

The culmination, when it finally comes, is Kitetsu’s fault. Or maybe it’s Zoro’s fault for continuing to underestimate Sanji. Hell, maybe it’s Sanji’s fault for changing the rules and suddenly bringing his fucking hands into play, hands that have never entered the combat language except for balance or gesture. Both of them are still bruised fro a fight with bounty hunters only hours prior and, technically, this spar isn’t meant to happen. Chopper’s expressly forbidden it, in fact, but god knows neither of them has ever respected medicine when pride’s involved.

It begins with Zoro calling Sanji’s new kick slow and Sanji, who knows damn well it’s not slow, looks up from lighting his cigarette. “Say that again.”

Zoro does. The cigarette never reaches Sanji’s mouth.

The air shakes everytime they clash, Sanji’s fire leaving heat haze in his wake. Zoro’s blades cut through it anyway, pressure rolling off him in dark waves. They know each other too well now for easy openings — every strike becomes a conversation in a dialect only they can follow. Sanji feints high and catches the kick low, while Sanji uses it to throw his other heel towards Zoro’s shoulder. Zoro lets it land and Sanji snarls about it, plainly furious. "Quit messing around!”

The next kick is vicious enough to rattle his goddamn teeth but he drives forwards anyway, swords blurring until Sanji spins out of range, sending fire arcing dangerously close to Zoro’s face. It’s a split second, but that’s all it takes to upend him: Zoro turns on his heel to avoid the burn and Sanji pulls Kitetsu free from its sheath, smooth and seamless, landing three paces away with it held in his hand like he has every right to it.

Zoro’s entire body forgets the fight because Sanji with a sword — his sword — looks devastating. The cursed blade sits dark and wicked in his hand, Sanji’s fingers wrapped around the hilt with none of the reverence Zoro expects but all of the danger Sanji brings to every clash. The fire still crawling up his leg paints the steel in gold and red; he looks like something that shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the same space as Zoro’s self control. His mouth goes dry, every mark Sanji’s ever left on him seeming to light up at once. For one long, catastrophic second he just stops, the whole world crowding tightly around the sight.

A dangerous little smile cuts across Sanji’s face. “Like what you see, Moss?”

That’s enough for the freeze to shatter into a pure, full throttled aggression. He comes in hard, both blades flashing — he needs to do something with the heat boiling under his skin or he’s going to do something far worse. Wado and Shusui carve through the air in a brutal combination that would kill most opponents, probably, but Sanji meets him head on and he’s good. He’s not Zoro by any means and thus not even close to the years of obsession and muscle memory that live in Zoro’s hands, but he’s good enough that it matters. Kitetsu moves in his grip like he belongs there, dark and hungry and answering the same violence Sanji usually puts into his legs. He uses the sword the way he uses everything else, with spite and angles and that fluidly vicious creativity that keeps forcing Zoro to adjust. The first clash of Kitetsu against Wado sends a jolt through Zoro’s body as the cursed blade bites. Sanji twists with the contact, using the momentum to bring his burning leg up in a nasty arc that Zoro only manages to somewhat block. Heat sears across his shoulder, so he snarls and presses in harder.

They tear across the deck in a blur of steel and fire. Everytime Kitetsu meets one of Zoro’s swords, something in Zoro’s chest tightens and everytime Sanji lands a kick or a cut Zoro can barely stand it. A slash from Kitetsu opens a line across Zoro’s bicep and Zoro’s breath stutters. Sanji follows it up by dropping low, sweeping Kitetsu down at Zoro’s legs so that he has to jump, landing heavy, and take a flaming heel to his ribs for the trouble. He staggers, blocking the next strike with Wado at the last second, but the force of the blow jars his shoulder and for a moment they’re locked with Sanji’s fire still burning between them. Zoro’s concentration fractures at the fierce look on his face and Sanji uses the opening instantly, shoving off with a kick.

Zoro slams against the railing, hard, Kitetsu’s tip coming to rest against the hollow of his throat a second later, only just breaking skin. Sanji’s breathing hard, looking at Zoro like he’s still deciding if he wants to finish it right here and Zoro stares straight back up at him, chest heaving, every nerve in his body lit up with the fact that Sanji just took him out with his own damn sword, hard and flushed and panting. Sanji’s face goes through another rapid, complicated series of expressions, shock and fury and something hotter and more dangerous, before he locks it down.

Zoro slips forwards, even though he knows he shouldn’t: his ribs are screaming already, but the thrill of Sanji looking at him like that is so sharp Zoro can barely think past it. This time, neither of them hold anything back. Sanji fights like he means to end Zoro, fire flaring hotter and meaner along both legs, hotter than he’s used in a spar before. Kitetsu flashes in short, brutal beats that force Zoro to give ground almost immediately, the first real exchange opening up a split along Sanji’s thigh from Wado. Zoro blocks the next three strikes, barely, and then takes a knee to the stomach that folds him for a second. Sanji doesn’t let him recover — he catches Zoro in the side with a spinning kick that lifts him into the air and sends him crashing into the ground. Zoro tastes blood on his teeth but shoves off to meet the next blow, dodging a flaming instep with a grin.

The next blow’s enough to wipe the grin off his face and white out his vision, a heel landing on his thigh a burning howl as Kitetsu’s hilt finds his solar plexus. Zoro staggers, and then Sanji sends him down onto the deck, Sanji’s foot planting on his chest to press. Zoro’s hips tip up against the pressure; he can’t help it. The movement makes Sanji’s eyes flash as he drops into a full pin, straddling Zoro’s collarbones, weight settled heavy and deliberate across his upper buddy. One hand lands beside Zoro’s head and the other holds Kitetsu angled away as he shifts forwards, just enough for his thighs to squeeze against the sides of Zoro’s neck.

Zoro’s breath goes thin and shaky, the pressure of Sanji’s neck painful and perfect all at once, warm and strong and controlled. He can feel every shift of Sanji’s body and the little edge of breathlessness makes everything sharper and hotter and better. His hands twitch against the deck, but he doesn’t try to throw Sanji off. He doesn't want to.

Above him, Sanji’s face is still flushed with his eyes wide and a little wild, blood on his chin and smeared in his hair. His squeezes his thighs a fraction tighter for emphasis and Zoro bites back a groan. “This is what you’ve been wanting, right?”

It’s not a question, not really, considering they both know the answer. He’s looking at Zoro like he needs to hear it aloud anyway, like the surprise is still settling and he needs proper confirmation before he does anything else with the knowledge.

“You want to be handled,” He continues, quieter now but no less dangerous for it. “You want to be roughed up. You want someone strong enough to make you take it.”

Zoro has just enough air to answer, because he needs this to be clear. He needs Sanji to know. “Just you.”

Sanji goes perfectly still, gaze searching Zoro’s face, taking in the way Zoro’s so obvious beneath him even while struggling to breathe. “Just me,” he repeats, almost to himself, and he inhales deeply. “You’re such a fucking problem.”

Zoro’s mouth curves, slow and wrecked, even as his eye nearly rolls back from his good the controlled breathlessness feels.

Sanji stays where he is for a moment, thighs still bracketing Zoro’s neck before he slowly, carefully, starts easing the pressure. He shifts back just enough that Zoro can take a breath, and Zoro’s hands move before he can stop them. They come up carefully to settle on Sanji’s thighs — the muscle under his palms is almost unbearably warm and firm, still trembling faintly from the fight. He expects Sanji to knock them away, but Sanji doesn’t move. He glances down at Zoro’s hands on him, mouth opening a little, but he lets it happen and the permission’s so unexpected that Zoro’s breath catches all over again. He strokes upwards with care, deliberately mapping the line of Sanji’s thighs through the fabric. He wants — god, he wants — to drag Sanji further up, to get his mouth on him right here on the deck, to taste him, to make him come apart while the rest of the ship’s still somewhere nearby. The fantasy hits so hard and so vividly that his mouth waters, so he does the next best thing and keeps his hands moving, voice ragged from being choked.

“I like it,” he mutters, the embarrassment of admitting this out loud overtaken by the way Sanji’s eyes widen. “You know I do.” The angle’s awkward with how close Sanji’s sitting, clumsy and limited, but he presses his thumb into the heat of Sanji through those awful pants, firm against the damp fabric. Sanji makes a punched out sound so Zoro does it again, a little more sure this time, dragging his thumb in a desperate, imperfect grind that has Sanji shuddering. “Everytime you get me down. Everytime you leave something on me. I want —”

Sanji’s free hand slides into his hair, gripping tight enough that Zoro has to bite down on the noise that wants out. He’s almost rocking into Zoro’s touch now and Zoro’s almost lightheaded with it, dizzied with how badly he wants to work his way under that waistband to feel exactly how affected Sanji is. And then Sanji’s head snaps up, eyes cutting towards the gangplank long before any sound reaches them, that sharp Observation of his catching the shift in the air the way it always preludes Zoro’s actions in a fight. He pulls back all at once, kicking off Zoro’s chest with zero grace. The sudden loss of weight and heat’s almost painful, and Zoro blinks up at him with surprise; Sanji looks like he’s trying to memorise the picture of this image, expression a complicated mix of residual want and pure, logistical annoyance.

Zoro pushes up onto his elbows, still breathing hard, palm still warm from where it’d been touching the other man. Frustrating burns through him, too — they had been so close — but underneath it something brighter and more dangerous is already burning.

“Sword,” he manages, voice uneven. “Give it back.”

Sanji glances at the blade in his hand and then back at Zoro’s open hand, an unreadable little smile breaking out on his face. He lifts Kitetsu to lean it back against his own shoulder. “Yeah? Earn it, then.”

It’s a threat and a promise all at once and Zoro stays half upright in stunned disbelief as Usopp’s voice finally carries properly across the deck on his approach, bright and oblivious.

“I’m just saying! If we left them alone this long they’re probably either dead or —”

Zoro watches Sanji’s back as he walks off with his sword, the frustration still lodged in him, but it’s tangled now with something that feels a hell of a lot like hope. He drops back onto the wood and drags his hands down his face, heart still pounding. The almost sits bitter under his tongue, but the promise of a future sits sweeter, and that? He can work with that. He can work Sanji up. He can get him alone and push until Sanji wants to kiss him — even if it’s just to shut him up — or until Sanji wants more than that. Until Sanji wants to pin him down again and keep him there without an audience. Until Zoro’s earned it.

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