Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece and -
Z: YOU LEFT THEM WITH SUCH A SHITTY CLIFFHANGER! You devil woman, some people thought we were dead and then you don't update for over a WEEK?!
S: Don't speak to a lady like that, shitty marimo!
...yeah, listen to him, Zoro! Don't speak to me like that...ehh..sorry
Zoro felt everything in his small world creak. His vision was gone, his hearing drowned out in the rush of his own blood, but he could feel the creaking of his confines under external pressure. With a deep breath, he pushed and tensed his muscles, flexing from biceps to triceps and everything between. The creaking continued, growing more and more strained, until finally Zoro was about to give in - he was not Luffy, he could not rip apart steel with sheer willpower, it was impossible, and then
snap.
The chains that bound him did not break, but shattered instead, falling like scraps of destroyed fabric on the floorboards of the deck, jangling against each other as they landed amongst bullet fragments and broken blades. At the sensation, Zoro found the strength to open his eyes. He looked up at his opponent, whose eyes were fixed downward at the remains of the metal at the swordsman's feet.
"How?" the man grunted.
Zoro scoffed. "Kicks strong enough to break steel, huh?" He shook his torso to dislodge the last of the constraints and pushed himself to his feet. "You really should be more careful where you aim, then. I guess I should thank you."
His opponent watched warily as Zoro reached for his swords, taking a stance, but adding, "You're half dead, Roronoa - it hardly matters if you are free now."
The swordsman pressed a hand to his beaten in chest, the wounds underneath the skin still searing with pain, his internal bleeding leading him to blossom giant flowers of bruises across his torso. He could feel the cracked bones and was aware of the fact he could hardly drag air into his lungs anymore. But at the man's words, he couldn't help but laugh. "Half dead?" he said. "Maybe." He raised Wado Ichimonji and placed it between his teeth, and then untied the bandana on his arm, wringing it out from blood before securing it on his forehead. "But that also means I'm half alive...and that's more than enough for me to kill you."
The words aggravated his opponent, who charged and raised his leg to rain down a kick, but his movements were painfully slow to Zoro's eyes. He even had time to frown at the bulky strength in the man's legs - Sanji's lean muscular structure was much better suited for such fighting techniques. His enemy was slow, inflexible, overburdened, and weak. He blocked the kick with the edge of one blade, and the sharpness of Shuusui bit into the man's callused foot, keeping him locked in the position with a leg in the air. From underneath his bandana, a sadistic grin spread across Zoro's face.
"You are full of openings," he told the man. He had a moment to watch the eyes across from him grow wide in surprise, but before a retort could be made, Zoro spun, creating a scythe of blades in the air, twisting upward - it was a current that caught his opponent up in it, a tornado of cutting edge that tore apart the man from Achilles tendon to jugular artery. Zoro sheathed his blades in one fell swoop as he staggered away, not watching for the heavy impact of the bleeding mass as it hit the floorboards and crashed, down through the deck, further, until he eventually landed many levels below.
"There is somebody in this world..." Zoro coughed up a smattering of blood and wiped it away, "...whose kicks are far stronger than yours." He glanced over his shoulder at the broken deck behind him, and then cast his eyes around for the missing cook.
"He's a pain in the ass, though," the swordsman added, and he stumbled away in search of his lover.
ZOSAN
Sanji came into awareness that he was being kissed. He would have smiled had he the energy for it, but right now he was floating in a haze of half-finished thoughts on the edges of consciousness. He sensed the touch on his blood-and-wine lips and for once, he did not imagine a woman at the other end...he saw Zoro, tender care in his dark eyes as he imagined the swordsman brushing away a strand of his blond hair, running his knuckles down the side of Sanji's face, coaxing his lips into a kiss. The cook sighed and began to sink into the sensation...
...those lips aren't Zoro's.
Fighting the blackness that threatened to smother him, Sanji forced his eyes open and watched as they widened in horror around the image they found. His assailant was so close he looked blurred, but Sanji could see the side of his hideous face as he pressed his thin, chapped lips toward the cook's own, his sharp tongue licking and tracing over the crease between Sanji's lips. With the sight, Sanji felt his gut roil in agony as it tried to dislodge any meals from that day, he felt his skin crawl as though a thousand spiders had landed on him, he felt the urge to wash out his mouth with acid and fish oil, anything to get rid of that taste... He felt disgusted, violated, trespassed upon, and above all of this, he was furious.
The cook felt his arm move - he lifted it and snatched a heavy handful of the man's hair, pulling him back from Sanji's own face with a sick smacking sound. The man's eyes drew to the size of dinner plates as he realized that the cook was still conscious. Sanji narrowed his own eyes and a darkened shadow overtook his face as he began to stand, his other hand reaching out and deftly snapping the wrist that held his sword, cracking the bones. The sword clattered, useless, to the floor. The cook kept his left hand threaded in the assaulter's hair as he rose, eventually lifting the man off of his feet.
"That's bad manners," he informed the man, who was writhing, trying to free himself, reaching for his sword with his good hand. Sanji scoffed and tossed the man, flinging him like a rag doll against a set of barrels, which shattered on impact. The swordsman lay in the wood scrapings, dazed, staring at Sanji who approached him, lighting the crushed cigarette he had stuck in his mouth.
"And I'll have you know, you son of bitch..." Sanji said, taking a drag, "...that I'm a taken man, so you need to keep your distance."
His opponent looked up at him with hazed over eyes, cradling his broken wrist. "So you are fucking Roronoa, huh?"
These words did nothing to quell Sanji's anger, and only served to fuel it. He raised his leg in the air, clothed in the black of his pants, so long it seemed to disappear from vision, an executioner's axe pointing at the sky - "No, you shitty bastard, I'm married."
And he lowered it, bringing to down with the force of a train concentrated on one fine point, the hub of his heel, which sent the man crashing down through the floorboards, opening up a hole in the ship, and the man went further still, down until he hit the water below, sinking with his broken jaw disfiguring his ugly face even more still. The cook leaned over the hole and spit into the water.
"And he's a better swordsman than you'll ever be. Compared to him, your sword is a piece of shit."
Fight done, Sanji went to wipe his taxed hands on his pants, which he found were stained wet with red wine. He frowned and then tucked them in his pockets, still smoking his cigarette, sloshing up water as he walked to the stairway. The cook looked behind him at the mess and commented aloud, "I guess I should get everybody off the ship I'm sinking..."
He placed his foot on the first stair and the world seemed to spin, all going black at once. He blinked and fought to stay conscious, but the blood loss was too much, so his leg gave out. Half-kneeling on the stairs, he placed his hands out in front of him, holding himself up with his feeble arms, and looked up the passageway toward the light. Sanji could still hear the fighting and the rampaging up there - raised voices, clashing steel, the smacks of flesh hitting flesh.
Then there, in the doorway, was the silhouette, and the cook felt his stomach drop. The man had two swords drawn and was descending the stairs already at breakneck speed. The cook had no more energy left and was sick of fighting swordsmen that the stupid moss boll should have handled by now. He placed his elbow on his knee and began to push himself up, saying - "where's that shitty swordsman when you need him."
The darkened figure stopped short halfway down the stairs and sheathed both of his blades. Sanji snorted - the guy didn't think he was even worth enough to fight with his blades? He watched as the man walked down slower now, taking one step at a time, until a single, callused and tanned head appeared at the edge of Sanji's vision.
"Miss me, curly cook?"
Sanji's blue eyes followed the hand to the ripped arm with pounding biceps, then the scarred shoulder, and finally, up his broad neck to the perfect, angular face he was looking for - a man with tufted green hair, dark eyes, and a cocky smile that made the cook want to kick him through a wall. He lifted his own hand and placed it in Zoro's own, feeling the fingers of the swordsman close around his, as he said, "Like hell I do, you fucking marimo. Why are you here? Got lost again?"
Zoro pulled Sanji up and looked up him and down. "Why are you covered in blood? Got another nosebleed?" he teased. But despite his remarks, he wrapped his strong arm around Sanji's waist, holding him close so that way they could work up the stairs together, one step at a time.
Sanji frowned at the swordsman, who limped as they stepped up and was breathing heavily. He slipped his own arm around the man, lending Zoro his support as well. "Just a third rate swordsman who needed to jerk off more."
Beside him, his favorite swordsman laughed, tossing his head back - his loud laugh, honest and bright and carefree, a laugh that he rarely showed, and usually only when he was drunk. It was breath-taking to Sanji, as he watched the man's eyes light up, free from all that heaviness and seriousness that often clouded them. "I had a guy who couldn't kick to save his life."
The cook wanted to taunt back, to make fun of the fact that he spoke little of an opponent who had clearly rendered him internal damage. He wanted to slap Zoro on the back where it must be hurting, and he wanted to trip the man and get him wet in the waters seeping up from below. None of it was cruel and nor would it have mattered in the long run. But Sanji found his hands were doing very different things at the moment. They were raising, shaking, again - he needed to stop shaking, how could he cut vegetables like this? - and finally landed on either side of Zoro's face.
The swordsman's smile faded slowly as Sanji grabbed him, and after it did, the amusement still ghosted there for a second or two. He watched like a hawk as the cook grasped him, calculating, Sanji knew, each muscle movement, so he knew where the cook was going to go before he did so. And that was why Sanji wasted no time in leaned forward and landing his own lips on Zoro's in a chaste, quick kiss.
As he pulled back, he watched the swordsman's face for a reaction, but there was none. Nervous, voice sputtering, Sanji heard himself say, "Sorry, had this awful taste in my mouth."
And that was when he realized that he was pressed up against the wall of the stairwell, water playing with the hems of his pants, callused hands pressed into each of his shoulder, one digging painfully into his wound, and before him leered the face of Roronoa Zoro, who looked strained to the point of madness. Zoro started to laugh, and then he shook his head, growling, and for a moment looked as though he was about to break down crying.
"You stupid shitty cook," Zoro chuckled under his breath. "God, I fucking hate you so much, you have no idea..." Sanji watched as he clenched his fingers together, trying to compose himself, attempting to wind himself back together. Eventually succeeding, Zoro looked up, eyes blazing with some sort of determination that the cook couldn't place.
"I'm not looking for a fuck, Sanji," the swordsman growled out. "I don't want a late night blow job in the kitchen or a hand job in the hold." He gripped Sanji's good shoulder and slammed him against the wall as if to make his point clearer. "I...I don't know what happened in my absence to you or between you and the other me..." his face twisted into a heavy grimace as he continued, "but something did happen to me while I was away." He looked up and met Sanji's eye, and then took one hand and pushed back the cook's hair from his brow so he could see both of them, both seas of blue, topped with mismatched eyebrows. The swordsman could not help but pause and smile tenderly at the handsome face in his hands, a face that was looking at him with unconcealed shock.
"What happened was that I realized I -" he choked on the words, but forced them out in the form of a whisper, "I love you." Zoro shook his head, trying to dislodge his fear, and placed a finger over Sanji's lips to keep him from talking. "And not like nakama or friends or rivals or anything - I mean, as in...as in..." he cursed, "as in I think you are wonderful and rare and precious...you're like everything that's good in this world in one person, one beautiful person, and...no, no that's not right, it's more like..."
Zoro cupped Sanji's face in his hands, letting his thumbs rest right underneath Sanji's blue eyes, and stared into them for a moment, trying to find purchase, trying to find the right words to say, but all he felt was that he was falling in deeper and deeper in the oceans that lay there, the writhing tides of emotions and beauty and everything that Sanji had to offer, because Sanji could offer everything in the world, almost like -
"Sanji, you're my All Blue."
Sanji gasped audibly, and then started growling, wrapping his fingers up in Zoro's short green hair, clenching so hard it probably pulled at the roots. "Tell me you're lying," he insisted. "Tell me this is dream. I can't take having my heart broken again."
But Zoro would have none of it - those hands that gripped him were actually pulling him forward, those lips that denied him were actually begging to be kissed, and he knew, deep in his soul, that they had already decided, that it had already been resolved between the two of them, and somehow, they had both known of each other's feelings without speaking it. So it was without another word, with water up to both of their knees now, that they crashed into each other, like a wave on the shore. The wave broke, white foam spewing, coating the land with its salty waves, drenching the sand and eroding it deep back into the infinite ocean. They kissed, but it was more than that, much more as their tongues tried to do what their souls could not, dancing together, touching and tasting and entering one another. They did not kiss like a man and a woman, or like any two other lovers in the world, but rather like two pirates, hard warriors of the sea, who took without regret and left nothing but destruction in their path.
"Zoro..." Sanji breathed out between the kisses, his hands still gripping the nape of the swordsman's neck, driving him deeper into his body.
"Sanji..." Zoro gasped, his hands now on the cook's waist, becoming stained with Sanji's blood as he caressed the tattered remains of the man's shirt.
"No, marimo, really," Sanji gently pushed the edge of Zoro's shoulder, and they broke apart. "The ship is sinking."
Zoro looked down, and saw the water getting dangerously close to his hips, rising steadily - he heard the commotion above, now oddly coming to a lull. There was no more cannon fire. It almost sounded like the enemy was trying to retreat. "Huh," he commented. "I guess we should go."
The cook smacked his lover upside the head. "You think, idiot moss ball?"
The swordsman just laughed, as though no disaster in the world could bother him now. He kept one hand on Sanji's waist and pulled, and the cook complied, slipping his arm back around Zoro's hip, and they started their awkward ascension back up the steps, working in time together to support each other in their injuries.
"You taste like wine," Zoro commented off handedly.
Sanji chuckled. "I kicked a barrel open."
"You wasted alcohol?"
"Oi! That's not the issue here!"
Zoro cast a look over his shoulder and the hold below, which was completely immersed. "I wonder if there's anymore booze down there..." he said longingly.
"You are not going back for booze."
"Says who?"
"Says me, now get a move on."
The swordsman frowned. "You aren't my captain."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Sanji looked at him through one eye, trying to send Zoro his most withering glance. "I don't want to pull the card, Zoro. It's too soon to pull the card."
"What card."
"The I won't have sex with you if you do that card!"
"Yohohohohoho!"
Both men's eyes flashed only five steps upward, at the entrance of the stairway, where a tall, thin skeleton was framed by the sunlight, twirling his cane and tipping his top hat. Brook flashed them a wild grin and then pointed the tip of the cane over their shoulders at the rising waters below.
"That's a scary thought, Sanji-san!" he joked, "But what's scarier is that water rising up! Looks like this ship is about to sink!"
"You think?" Zoro growled at him, stomping up the last few of the stairs with Sanji in tow.
Sanji reached the top and raised a leg to place it against Brook's throat, pinning up against the doorframe. "You, pervert skeleton!" he snarled. "You heard nothing of that conversation!"
Brook looked away whistling. "How can I hear when I don't have any ears? Yohohohoho!"
"I'm going to kill him!"
"You can't, I'm already dead!"
"Shitty skeleton!"
From deeper on the main deck they had just reached, Luffy smiled, steadying his hat on his head as he watched his crew converse in the doorway. Both of his star crew mates looked a little worse for the wear, but it was nothing Chopper couldn't patch up. What worried him was the fact that both Zoro and Sanji were very wet from the waist down...
"Did you guys go swimming?" he called over the injured bodies strewn between them.
Zoro looked up at his captain, then down at his condition. "No, the ship's sinking."
"WHAT?" Luffy yelled. And then he fell back, leaning on the rail for support, clapping his hands. "Great idea, guys! Come on, let's get off and then sink this ship!"
Those of the enemy crew who were still conscious were tied to the mainmast, screaming and crying for mercy. "No!" they called out, "Don't do it, please! We won't take the blond guy, just let us live!"
"We aren't going to kill you," Robin said smoothly, tightening the knots that secured them to the post. Sanji noted the disgusting man named Lee was in the middle of his men, completely unconscious, drool dripping from his broken mouth, a nasty, bloody bruise overtaking his face. "We're just going to sink the ship you are on. If you manage to untie yourself and then swim to safety, you will survive."
She wiped her hands lightly on her skirt and tapped his chin with one finger. "It's highly unlikely, though. You'll probably die."
This did nothing to appease the enemy crew, but Robin could care less, as she had already turned her back and begun to walk away. "Captain, could you -"
"Yosh!" Luffy turned and stretched a leg out, creating a bridge back to the Sunny, where Franky was making some SUPER poses at them, congratulating them on their victory, and Chopper was jumping up and down on the railing, doctor's back secured on his back, biting his lip nervously.
Brook, Robin, and Usopp all crossed - the latter taking his time, tripping once and stumbling for a good minute before he regained balance - but Zoro lingered behind, and Sanji, questioning it, lingered also.
"Marimo?" the cook asked.
"Go on ahead, Luffy," Zoro said. "Sanji and I will get back on our own." He cast his eyes around the crew and the ship. "Besides, you can't swim." And then, in a surprising gesture, he lightly clapped the cook's shoulder. "And this is our ship to sink."
Luffy looked over his shoulder at the two men behind him. "You guys are better now, huh?" he asked.
Sanji scoffed and rolled his eyes, which his captain took as a yes.
"It's not going to be easy," Luffy commented. "We don't live safe lives. And pirates don't get married." He shrugged. "Normally, at least."
"Since when were we normal, Captain?" Zoro asked with a cocky grin.
"And easy is boring," Sanji responded. "Right, shitty swordsman?"
"I don't know, I get the impression you're pretty easy, curly-cue, if you know what I mean..."
"Oi!"
With a laugh and the sound of rubber snapping, their Captain took their bickering and banter as a sign that they knew what they were getting into, and he took his leave, flying back toward the deck of the Sunny and hitting Nami straight on, which would probably be detrimental to his health in the long run. Meanwhile, the two left on the deck faced each other, understanding clear in their eyes as they made contact.
"Hold on," Sanji said. He walked toward the men tied to the mast, who cowered at the sight of him, but the cook made a straight line for Lee. He tucked his hands in the man's pockets, and pulled out a thin slip of paper, which had the name Blackleg Sanji written on it in a messy scrawl. He stumbled away with it between his two fingers and held it up to Zoro. "Want it?"
The swordsman shook his head. "Burn it," he said, indicating Sanji's lighter. "I don't need anything in the world to help me find you."
The cook grinned, pulled out his lighter, and lit the paper on fire. Both of them watched as the piece went up in flames, and Sanji did not drop it until it nearly seared his fingers, and then he cast it into the ocean, where it sizzled, and disintegrated into nothing more than ash and dust. He then climbed up on the railing of the main deck and tapped his shoe on the wood. "Hurry up, marimo, before I bleed out over here."
Zoro nodded, and drew his swords, placing one between his teeth. He walked to the other end of the deck, and then pivoted, facing the cook, and charged straight at him. Sanji grinned, watching his lover move, and he knew exactly when to step, exactly how the swordsman was going to land on the arc of his foot - and as he did so, Sanji kicked, sending the swordsman high, up into the sky, propelled by his kick. He stayed for a moment to see the beautiful, artful way that Zoro danced with his swords, to watch the beginning of the movements that would soon wreck the ship he stood on, before he closed his eyes, and allowed himself to fall backward into the sea, knowing that both the ship and the swordsman would be joining him soon.
And he did. Sanji disregarded the crashing and cracking of wood, the split ship sinking to its death meters from him. He ignored the men who struggled to free themselves and grab planks of flotsam to stay afloat. He closed his eyes and let the feeling of the sea wash over him, the tickle of a fish's tail playing over his bare, wounded torso. He left his arms float freely in front of him, and very slowly opened his eyes to the blue world surrounding him. He saw the wreckage in passing, and emerging from it, a toned, beautiful, tanned man, his green hair tossed by the currents, his hands empty of his swords now.
The cook smiled as Zoro's hand touched his own. They both fought to hold their breathe as they looked at each other, between two ships, one the defeat of their enemy, the other their home and the place of their family. Once up on the surface, they knew it would be a long way toward forming a new life, a life together, and a lot of hard work. But they could not bring themselves to contain the excitement that welled between them right now, the thrill of finding something they never knew they needed or even wanted.
Fingers now intertwined, bodies close together, their lips brushed each other, and Sanji kicked them both toward the surface, toward the sun.
Disclaimer: Not the end. Falling action, brosters. Cool your jets. I'm moving back to university, so I've got a lot of things going on.
I know this chapter is sort of all over the place, I expect you guys to be dissatisfied, and I apologize, but it just sort of came out this way. I guess I'm loosing my touch. Meh. Read and review regardless!