Until You Will Laugh Again

A fan fiction by Crystalbluefox

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Chapter 3

Absorbing the Taste

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Vivi looks at Zoro expectantly, her high heels clicking impatiently against the marvelled floors, arms crossed underneath her large bosom.

"Don't lie to me, Zoro, I can see it when you does, and when you does it, you know how angry that will make me. What do you need that loan for? It's unusual for you to actually come and even want a loan in the first place." One blond eyebrow rises expectantly at him, as she awaits his answer. Zoro sighs, scratches his neck nervously, but then surrenders and grabs a block with paper and her pen to write it down. It would sound crazy if he ever spoke it out loud. Vivi tries to read his scribble scrabble from upside down, but with no such luck. As he slides the block and pen back to her, he leans back against the chair and awaits her judge.

Vivi is a sweet woman, but a devil if you ever dared lying to her. It was just that there were some things he didn't like to discuss with her, since she were one of those few people who had seen and even survived an encounter with those there had literally ripped her mother into pieces, right in front of her eyes. Vampires. She hated them as a plague, but ofcourse no one had ever believed her. She was just a child with a lively imagination. Her own father had even scolded her for even saying such things about how her beloved mother passed away. She had been "hit by a train", and it was "tragic" that Vivi should see that at age five, but all the other stuff was nothing but brutal lies… or so they said. When Zoro and Vivi once met, and when Vivi once figured out what he was doing for a part living, she told him and did everything in her power to help him to "slaughter those murderess!"

"Of course." Vivi whispers, rips the two sheets of papers off and puts them through the paper shredder, there hungrily eats them and rips them to smaller pieces. The raucous machine silences right after there is no more paper to 'eat'. "You know you don't have to take a loan for such things, Zoro."

"I can't burden you with constantly borrowing money from you, it's not fair."

"I don't mind, Zoro, and you know it. Things like that is not even a question to be asked for, you just have to come-"

"No, Vivi. I can't take more moneys from you. Just, give me a loan. I will figure out how to pay it back." He ensures her, both knowing that such a high sum will be hard for the man to ever pay back again. But Vivi finally gives in, puts her check book away and finds the right papers to fill out.

She stops in the middle of her writing, then sighs as she looks disdain down at her paperwork.

"What?" Zoro asks, not liking the grimy line forming on her temple. Vivi sighs again, moves some papers around before glancing up at the man sitting right in front of her, for then to stare absently at her pen.

"It's just," she starts carefully, and Zoro then knows what it is about. He hates these talks, since it always forms a lump in his throat so big that he barely can breathe "I was suddenly thinking of Sanji. It's almost eight month, Zoro, eight months since any of us has seen anything of him, and-" Her voice quivers, people around in the bank starts giving them looks. This isn't good.

"Vivi, maybe we shouldn't-"

"You know? Zeff keeps on saying that Sanji is somewhere in Germany to some scholarship in cooking, that he has gotten this great job at the same time of teaching some "lousy green-beans who thinks that they can cook"."

"I wanna live and see the world. Ya know?" Sanji's ocean-blue eyes shines back at him with childish joy, a smile as large as the sun is bright. A Sun. Sanji is one big sun above the sea. He swings his arm out to the open sea before them "Travel around, learn from the different cultures, and then, I guess, one day I want to settle down for then to open a little coffee shop or something."

"You always lives to pleasure others, when will you ever start to pleasure yourself?"

Sanji had looked back surprised at him back then, like he had said that he was born a woman but took a gender switch operation, or that he had become pregnant, like him Arnold Swarzenegger in that movie called *'Junior' that came out last year. Then, right after, the man had laughed, hard and loud, head back and laughed up to the sky.

"I find pleasure in pleasuring others," he had said right after that, staring right out onto the dying sun, can of beer in one hand, lying on his back, arms behind to hold his body up, legs stretched so far out that they were dangling over the cliff they were sitting at. For some reason Zoro could remember that day clearly. "It would kill me if I used others to pleasure myself or if I put myself in the first row before any others."

That spoke volumes for why Sanji always seemed to look so miserable whenever he showed up. He hated to use other people for his own good. That was why he always tried to pull the time out as much as possible, no matter how much it would hurt him.

"That's good for him, isn't it?" He jumps slightly in his seat as the petite woman slams her hands hard down onto the desk. Now they got everyone's full attention.

"Sanji doesn't want to be educated on some school like that! Sanji wants to travel around and learn from the different places that he visits! You and Zeff, you're both the same! You both act's like he's still around or like none of you cares a shit about him suddenly disappearing!"

"That is honestly what you self believes in? Really? His own father doesn't care about him?"

"You don't care about him!" She accuses, one painted blue nail pointing him in the face. Her grey pupils is quivering, tears threatens to fall at any moment. She still loves him, even though she was the one who quitted it between the two of them. "Sanji would never disappear like that without giving us any knowledge of it. He would never do such a thing!" Her hand lowers down, for finally to search up to her mouth as she sits back into her chair, holding back a sob, to keep her words under control before she speaks up again, this time low enough for only the two of them to hear. Some of her co-workers has already went up to the main office to get the bank's leader, who also is this young woman's father. "I'm so scared about if something horrible has happened to him. I'm… I got this feeling that, something bad has happened to him, but-"

"Sanji is a strong man." He reassures her, making sure to make a big pressure on 'is'. Vivi nods, barely keeping her feelings under control.

"I know, but-" she swallows hard, biting her lower lip "It just doesn't look like him, all this disappearing, going somewhere else and not telling us anything about it, like he, want to disappear, like he… don't care… and it's my… Sanji… Sanji loves his friends. He loves the life, why would he then do such a thing?" Vivi looks pleadingly up at him, like she expects him to know the truth, and he does. More than she ever can imagine. But he can't tell her, he never can. Only one person can, when he feels like the time is ready.

The last words she says stabs harder than anything. Sanji had always been a lively guy who always was there for his friends, who laughed, who enjoyed life. Knowing how far Sanji had fallen since then –eight months. It was almost not possible to believe. He unconsciously looks down on his wrist where white stars covers his skin; bite-marks. Sanji's bite-marks. If they ever knew...

"Sorry," she says, drying a tear away and looks embarrassed down at the paper in front of her "I'll give you that loan."

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It is supposed to be cold out here, but he can't feel it. It is supposed to blow a strong wind right now, but he does not let himself get bothered with it. It is nothing, nothing compared to what pain he feels inside, what craving there rips his insides apart. What little there was left of him has disappeared in that horrible pain, before his mind went dark and all what he could see, hear and feel was that endless hunger for that.

Blood.

He sits still as a statue on top of the building's roof, staring down at that window that he knows so much about, awaits for its owner to return.

A waft of a familiar smell carries by the wind. He sniffs the air, stands up and walks casually to the other side of the building's roof. Lips pulls up to show two larger pointy fangs and two smaller right underneath, like a preditors, as he catches the sight of the one he had been waiting for.

Now, dinner is served!

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Zoro leans his head against the elevators doors, while the machine brings him up to his destination. It had been a tiring day, especially with that idiot babbling about his too many stories there undoubtedly were nothing but lies, while he showed him his new "inventions". God, he even had to threaten that man in the end, before he would shut the fuck up. His ears were still crying for all that talking they had suffered through. Usopp was okay, but hell he could talk your ears off if he wasn't stopped in time. Robin, that witch, who supported the kid with continuing to invent all those crazy gadgets that wouldn't be allowed in normal stores, had just been standing in the background snickering into her hand. Had his dismay for those stories been that obvious? Bitch!

The elevator finally reaches his floor, though it is only five blocks up. It feels like hours before it gets there, more likely because it is an old machine there barely can hold itself together. The doors creeks and howls as they opens and he strolls directly to his own door. He stops. Zoro looks over his shoulder, sensing that something is out of place. Then he sees that it is his front door; it's not locked and stands just a bit open, around the keyhole there is a lot of deep scratches. Had someone tried to break in? Was there someone inside of his apartment in this very moment? He reaches carefully for the door handle for not to scare whoever would be in there, but then, he senses it again. That odd feeling, the feeling of being watched, of something being out of place, it didn't come from inside of his apartment, but outside of it, here, right now, somewhere really close.

He turns his neck fast to the left, only to be met by Sanji's smiling face greeting him. He sighs in relieve "God, you scared me there, Blondie." he says, but yet he can't seem to shake that odd feeling off him. Something is wrong and it happens from the moment the blond opens his mouth.

"Hello Zoro," he greets almost too happily "would you mind to let me in?" darting out a tongue he licks his lips, wetting them almost like a hungry tiger looking straight down on its prey. There is something wrong with the way he speaks, the way his lips moves, there is something hypnotic the way he speaks, sensually, tempting on a way there set all of Zoro's mental alarms to ring out loud, but yet it is like he can't hear those loud noises. "I'm pretty hungry right now." It's not a request, it's a demand, a demand that almost makes Zoro unconsciously to answer, there almost makes him to open the door and tell the blond to "come in". But just as he catches himself to say those words, he immediately knows what there is wrong.

Sanji's eyes are dangerously red, dark blood red, around them the skin is dark, his skin is almost white like the skin of a dead man ready for his casket, he looks like a man ready for his own funeral, yet his eyes gives him such a gleam, that he almost looks demonic. He barely manage to rip himself out of the spell and turns around to get away, but of course, the blond is way too fast and stands right in front of him in a blink of an eye. He has gotten way faster than he normally was, than what a controlled vampire normally is. In a state like this, if he got blood, Sanji would be uncontrollable. Said blond smiles with that unnatural wide smile. "Don't be a bad boy," he says, tilting his head to one side, punctuating his suspicions of that the Sanji he knew, is gone, for now. Zoro tries to make a run the other way, but of course the blond stands there as well barely a quarter of a second later "we gonna have dinner now, know what we gonna have?"

"Sanji, you're not yourself." he says grudgingly, trying to back a bit away instead, the blond only tilts his head the other way in answer "I told you not to wait this long! It'll only kill you who you are!"

"But I feel so much free," the blonds' voice suddenly says right behind him, moving lips almost touching his ear. When the hell did he move again? Shit, he's too fast! "It felt like I was burning up at first, from the inside, Zoro, from the deepest cores of my insides. Burning like a hungry fire. But now," Zoro freezes as he feels a tongue licking its way up his throat "I feel so at ease, because of you. Because you are here, now, with me."

There is only one second of pause before Zoro rams his elbow into the other's chest, it is almost like ramming it into a brick wall, almost. Sanji stumbles only a little and he gets enough room to turn around to meet him face on. He throws a fist into the man's face, then another and another; Sanji takes them without defending himself, and that is bad. If he is just taking the punches he throws at him, the blond is too numb to not only sense anything but that strong thirst, but too numb to who he is, to his own soul. He hammers a fist into his cheek there normally could break bones, but here it does nothing but to turn the face the other way around. He crouches down, arms pulled back like an arrow in its bow, the string pulled as far back as it can stretch before it gets released, throws out, moves forward and hammers into the blonds' chest like a ram battering into a closed gate, forcing it open. Sanji stumbles back, even groans at the impact, and it is enough time that he needs to stick his hand into his bag and-

Sanji is suddenly over him, pushes him to the floor with him on top. He hits his head hard against the floor, the bag skits enough away to be just out of his reach. He throws an arm above his face, just in time to block the blonds' attack; he looks like a wild animal, he sounds like a wild beast as he hisses out sending chills down Zoro's back, making him freeze up and even shudder in fear. The blond is blinded for all kind of reasoning and only haves one goal in mind; his blood. Two fangs bites brutally into his arm, tears it open. He just barely bites his own tongue to keep himself from screaming. He doesn't have time for thinking, he has no time to make any sane decisions as he feels how the blond bites harder down, hungrily drinks the oozing blood from his body. He makes a hard jerk as he pulls his arm free, tearing the wound even more open, Sanji hisses at him for his lost.

He reaches out for his bag, forces his body to move closer as he tries to get the gun with that serum in it that he just had bought, but his arm gets caught, an almost white hand holds it in place above his head. And then, he feels a searing pain as the blond vampire bites into his neck, more brutally than before, lapping the blood into his mouth. Zoro screams loud in pain and wiggles underneath the body on top of him in an attempt to get free, it hurts, and then he gets a feeling that he hasn't felt before, not in this kind of situations. It is lust, pain and lust, as if he's being shown a glimpse of nirvana, as if being happily drunk. And it's not a good sign, he knows it happens to victims when they gets bitten in the throat, because it's closer to the brain and because the bloodstream goes directly from there and into the heart. It's to give them the false imagination of that it's not that dangerous, that everything is okay, only to calm the body so the assaulter could feast from its victim in calm peace. But Zoro knows better, therefore it honestly scares him when his mind tries to convince him that everything is okay, even though he can feel how fast his system is emptied, how fast his body is drained from every little blood it contains. He tries to find a clearing in his clouded mind and throws up a knee, but the body above doesn't even budge. Shit! Sanji's too far gone by now! Zoro attempts to rip his arm free again and finally, success as the blond vampire is completely absorbed in savouring the blood. Not wasting another second he grabs the gun in the bag, flicks the secure off in one swift movement, puts the barrel to the others neck and pulls the trigger.

There sounds a soft 'thhup' as the needle breaks into the skin and forces the liquid into his bloodstream. The body above him halts abruptly, stiffens, before it falls heavy down on top of him, fully unconsciously. He can't move, he's too weak to even push the body off of him and can do nothing but to lay there, await for the other to wake up again to move away on his own. But, Zoro doesn't even know if he can even last that long, not this time. This time, this time Sanji took too much and it's still bleeding. Robin told him something important, something that he should tell Sanji the next time the blond would drop by, perhaps it would calm the blond down and make him get his portions of food regularly. But… guess that wouldn't happen now.

His hand with the gun drops to the floor, his eyelids feels heavier than they ever have felt before. He is aware of his shallow breathing; it was getting harder to breathe, it was getting harder to get his lungs to work properly, and he was getting tired. So immensely tired. His body was starting to feel numb, only his throat thumbed a little, at the large wound, oozing out more of his precious blood. Shit. Was this it? Was this really it?

'Sanji, you bastard.' God how the man would regret the moment he wakes up; if the product really would work the way that longnose promised it to work. He couldn't leave Sanji. The blond needed him. It was his fault for not being aware of that something was wrong in the first place. It was his own fault for trying to make a run, instead of just taking that step into his apartment. He would have been untouchable there. What the hell had he been thinking? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Damn it." His eyes closes, everything turns dark, his heart beats painfully in his chest, or it should have, he can't feel anything, he can't hear anything anymore.

And then, he falls into that dangerous peaceful 'sleep'.

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To be continued

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Info:

* The movie 'Junior' came out in 1994, with Arnold Swarzenegger and Danny DeVito as the main characters. I can only recommend people to go watch it, it's a good comedy Where DeVito gets Swarzenegger into this crazy experiment of trying to get pregnant by some chemical drinks. And then the movie follows how a man goes through those nine months and to finally have to give birth to a child. The whole experiment of course are illegal, but Devito doesn't care and neither does Swarzeneggger in the end. He want to go through it to prove that it is possible.