Daz hands are on him, moving him around, his voice telling him what to do. He doesn't want to think, not about anything, not about Sa- no. Daz has always been a genius when it comes to running Zoro's thoughts out of his head, hell that's half the reason that Daz was the guy that he called in the first place.

"Clothes. Floor. Now, Zoro." Daz says sharply, snapping his fingers and pointing down at the floor.

Zoro sighs and peels off his sweat drenched clothes and drops them on the floor by his side.

"Get." Daz snaps his fingers, though he's not even looking at Zoro now. Zoro doesn't move.

"Don't make me repeat myself, Zoro. Get in there and try not to brain yourself on the tiles when I'm gone." Daz orders. He's leaning on the wall outside the bathroom with his hand pointing towards the shower. Zoro grunts and does as he's told, it's easier that way. He bats the shower curtain out of the way and steps under the shower spray. He doesn't bother doing anything with it to close it all the way behind him. Daz has seen him naked more times than Zoro cares to count and perhaps it doesn't matter anymore anyway. Does it? Maybe it does. Shit, this is exactly the kind of thing that he doesn't want to be thinking about right now.

He presses his tired hands against the wall and lets his head drop forward, the spray of the shower beating down on the back of his neck and down his shoulders. He hears the metallic clink of his belt buckle scraping up off of the tiled floor and Daz's retreating footsteps.

Zoro scrubs his hands through his hair, shower gel or maybe shampoo lathering up until he decides that it's enough and dips his head back under the pounding spray. His mind flicks to the drunken shower that he had when Sanji showed up and picked up the pieces of his life after it'd been shattered thanks to Daz. Hah, now he's doing the same thing in reverse. Only he's not drunk. He feels like he's drunk but that's almost certainly the dehydration. Not that Daz hasn't tried to do something about that. The man half choked him with a liter bottle of water the moment they got through the door. Apparently running for three hours straight without stopping or drinking and not wearing sensible running clothes isn't a good idea.

Even as he tries to just focus on scrubbing himself down his mind still can't drop the memory of Sanji being there with him the last time that he was around Daz. Sanji had been so careful with him even though Zoro had all but wrecked himself and his place. Sanji had been his best friend and Zoro had gambled it all on something more and lost.

He slaps the tap off and stalks out of the shower, knowing that if he stays there he's likely to punch the shower wall in anger. He'd been so stupid to think that he could make it work and seeing the whole thing crash and burn had hurt him, it'd made him lash out in ways that he'd always despaired about in other people. When the guys that he worked with at the school despaired about their relationships blowing up he'd always wondered why they got so emotional. If a relationship failed then surely it wasn't going to work, besides these people fell into dating other people all the time, so what was the big deal? But now with Sanji... well. Now it feels like his world is breaking down and maybe now he gets it. Maybe Sanji is right, maybe his is broken. Though Sanji had quickly denied that word it's clear as day that's what he meant. Sanji feels what normal people feel, Sanji understands how romance works, the guy practically breathes it. Sanji was right to point out that Zoro's got to his age only to start getting an idea of what love might be like.

But... is that really right? It's not like he doesn't care about people. He loves Sanji, he does. He'd do anything for him, he thinks that he's amazing, even the parts of him (the many parts) that piss him off are still part of Sanji and he would never change them. Well okay, maybe he'd change Sanji's nagging about Zoro's formal clothes, but that's it. There is nothing wrong with buying work shirts at the supermarket damnit. Despite himself the smallest of smiles flickers onto his face, uneven and almost fighting not to fade off. The look on Sanji's face when he'd realised that ALL of his shirts were cheap was priceless.

Maybe that will never happen any more. The small falls off of his face.

"Drink." Daz calls and a bottle bounces off of Zoro's head.

"Fuck, Daz! Don't just throw things at me!" Zoro snaps, grabbing the energy drink up off of the floor.

"You're lucky I'm just throwing drinks at you after you drag me out to find you in the next town dehydrated and looking like hell. Especially considering how we parted last time we met. I don't exactly owe you anything." Daz argues and Zoro winces. Daz has a point.

The larger man heaves a sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose as if trying to stave off a migraine. He turns and pulls open the large fitted wardrobe that dominates one wall of what was Daz and Paula's bedroom. The doors fold open and Zoro can't help but notice that one side of it is conspicuously empty. Another relationship that Zoro has ruined.

"I'm sorry about Paula." Zoro says quietly. Daz pauses and then looks over his shoulder at Zoro.

"I know you didn't make me bring you here to tell me that." the man says flatly. He turns around and throws clothes at Zoro. They're pajamas. Zoro gets why when he shucks his towel off and pulls up the bottoms of the pajamas, not only is Daz stupidly taller than him but it also means that his hips are so much bigger but thankfully the drawstring means that Zoro can tighten them so they won't just fall back down. The shirt ends up halfway down Zoro's thighs and the sleeves reach his elbows, he feels like a little kid in adult clothes. It's easy to forget how monstrously oversized Daz is when he's not around.

"Drink that, you're probably still dehydrated. You can also tell me why you were that far away from your place in that bad shape and why you called me and not a cab. Even you don't get that lost by accident." Daz says, taking the towel up off of the floor and hanging it over the bathroom door. Zoro settles on to Daz's bed with his legs folded and takes a drink from the bottle of blue sports drink, it's probably supposed to have a flavour of some kind of fruit but blue is probably more accurate. Sanji would probably look at the ingredient list and...

Sanji.

"Sanji and I broke up. I think." Zoro says to Daz's black bedsheets.

"The fact that you started dating is news to me. Though I had a feeling that you might start. What happened?" Daz asks, sitting down opposite Zoro, his weight pitching the mattress slightly.

"Am I broken?" he blurts out, looking up at Daz. The other man stares at him in utter befuddlement at the confusing question. He should probably provide a little context.

"Sanji's got this thing where all of his relationships go to shit because he falls for people too hard and too fast, or that's what he says. He says that people never love him as much as he loves them and then they bail on him, or cheat on him. So part of the reason I hadn't wanted to go anywhere with him was because I knew that he couldn't deal with that happening to him again." He says, turning the bottle around and around in his hands.

"I thought that I felt strong enough for him so that it wouldn't happen to him this time, that it would work and he wouldn't feel like that." Zoro frowns as he continues talking. He starts to pick the label off of the bottle, starting at the top of the seam and working his way downwards until he has a about a fingertip width of it unstuck.

"Did you change you mind then?" the other man asks neutrally. He doesn't sound judgmental or especially supportive. Daz has always been great at listening, he often doesn't offer much of an opinion one way or the other but still Zoro finds himself talking. He's always had the excuse of mind blowing sex lowering his inhibitions but that clearly isn't the case right now. Daz threw him in the shower the moment that he got in, they certainly haven't got in each others pants since Zoro walked through the door.

"No I didn't." He answers with a shake of his head.

"So you started dating him." Daz guesses.

"Yeah. Well, I thought so. Maybe." Zoro frowns. Sanji said that he thought that they'd been dating too. So did that mean that they had been dating until then? But Sanji used the past tense even then before their argument got worse, so it was over now, right?

"You thought so? What does that mean?" Daz interrupts.

"I didn't ask right away, things just... happened." Zoro admits, feeling like that particular choice was dumber each time he explains it to someone.

"I know, it was stupid not to ask first. But I did ask. I thought for sure that we were, I'd taken him on a date and we'd... we hadn't had sex yet but... yeah." Zoro shrugs. It's odd to be weirded out at discussing his sex life with Daz, considering all of the things that Daz has done to his body and had Zoro do to him. It's not as if he's bashful talking about other people either, he and Daz were always completely honest when it came to discussing their other partners. Daz's testing rules had been so strict that Zoro had to talk about it. But talking about Sanji like this feels wrong.

"So you asked and what happened?" Daz questions him.

"He said that he thought that we were dating too." Zoro answers and takes another long gulp of his drink before returning to picking at the label.

"And?" Daz prompts, a little impatiently now. Zoro should probably get to the point.

"But then he got all... I don't know. He kept asking me why I thought things mattered and if I was giving my own answers or if I was just repeating what I thought I should be saying. I didn't get why but then he told me that he wasn't sure if I could be in love with anyone ever, at all. He wanted to know if I was even capable of it." Zoro says tightly and rips a strip of the label off of the bottle. It tears diagonally and he rips off another strip and another.

"That... is a really shitty thing to say to someone. This is why you asked me if you're broken?" the other man says, his voice sounding terse and angry and Zoro realises that it's on his behalf.

"He didn't say anything that wasn't true. I never got why people did relationships when they could do what I did, that way they got sex and people who care about them, they didn't have to be the same people. And maybe I'm just making myself feel what I think I should just because I care about Sanji and I think that he deserves that." Zoro says with a scowl and peels off more of the label, dropping bits like confetti onto the bed sheet.

"But I don't think that's what I'm doing. And I said that even if I didn't feel exactly like him then it shouldn't matter as long as I was happy and he was happy. But I don't know, I've never felt what I feel for Sanji before but it feels real, but maybe I'm just- hah. He said that I was confused. I tried to throw him out when he said that, it pissed me off so fucking much but he wouldn't leave and then the argument got nasty so I left I just... I just ran." Zoro tails off, the label in shreds and his grip on the bottle crushing it slightly.

Daz sighs softly and leans over, pulling the bottle out of Zoro's hands.

"Zoro look at me." Daz says firmly, lifting Zoro's chin with his finger until Zoro is actually making eye contact with him.

"Even if you are aromantic, which I think is what Sanji was getting at, you're not broken. Okay? That's important. You're not broken." Daz says slowly.

"A romantic? I'm not- Sanji's the one obsessed with romance, not me." he says with a frown and Daz looks actually pained by what he says.

"Okay, I'm not going to go through sexual identities 101 with you, you can do your own research. All I'm saying is that romantic attraction is like all other things, it's a spectrum. Some people aren't interested in romance at all, it doesn't appeal to them, they don't get it, whatever. Some people are practically obsessed with it and fall in love with damn near everyone, like Sanji it seems." Daz explains.

"So you're saying that he's right, at least a little bit." Zoro says quietly. Daz looks at him, full lips pinched as he huffs another breath through his nose in deliberation.

"Look, I'm not here to give you relationship advice. Frankly I couldn't care less about that brat. I do care about you." Daz says with a sigh and throws the bottle across the room so it lands in the bedroom bin perfectly.

"You don't need to work out what you are, you don't need to put yourself in a box just because people tell you that it's easier to. If you feel like you're in love with him then you are, if you don't think so then you're not. It's no more complicated than knowing if you wanna fuck someone or not." Daz explains with a shrug.

"It feels pretty complicated." Zoro mutters unhappily and runs his finger over the pattern in the bedspread. It probably says something about his state of mind that he's thinking of Sanji right now and not the time when Daz fucked him right here. He's playing over in his mind everything that he said to Sanji, the hurtful things that he said. He regrets it already but he did warn Sanji not to keep pushing him and Sanji started it. He groans and puts his head in his hands as he remembers his own words 'I don't give a shit who started it!'.

"I said some shit that I shouldn't have. I wanted him to hurt too." Zoro admits shamefully.

"Not very mature Zoro, but I think we've all done that before. Come on, you need to eat too." Daz says with a huff of laughter and pulls Zoro to his feet by the collar of his shirt. Zoro would usually object to Daz continuing to manhandle him but as before it's easier just to have someone else tell him what to do, his own decisions haven't been great lately after all. Daz steers him into a chair and leaves him there.

Zoro stares at the wall unhappily. Does this mean that he and Sanji are broken up? If they are then will they still be friends? He's unsure on both counts and that thought alone is enough to make it feel like someone's yanked out all of his internal organs. He buckles over and rests his head on the table that his chair is tucked up against. Whether it's romantic or platonic Zoro needs Sanji. That ought to scare him but he's needed him for a long time. He can't lose him, he's not sure that he can cope without him. Losing everything that he has with Sanji, everything that he ever had, it hurts on the same level that Kuina falling into a coma did.

"It hurts." He says aloud as Daz returns with food. It's junk food mainly, some fruit in there but mostly junk. He knows that it's supposed to be getting his energy back, sugar and quick carbs, but even so Sanji would pitch a fit about it.

"Yeah, it does." Daz agrees and eats a cold slice of pie and pushes the other towards Zoro. It's chicken surprisingly, Zoro had expected something sweet but protein is good too. He misses Sanji, he misses his cooking. God, is he like those guys who just let their partners walk all over them because they're too weak to snap themselves out of something that isn't working?

"Do you know what would help this situation?" Daz asks with a grin.

"Alcohol." Daz tells him before Zoro can answer. Zoro is fairly sure that this is a good answer, alcohol solves lots of problems.

"Do you think that we're over? That we're not dating now?" He asks, knocking back the glass of whiskey the moment that Daz finishes pouring it.

"It sounds like it to me Zoro. Believe me, I'd know." Daz answers, muttering the last bit bitterly.

"I'm really sorry about her, I mean... not FOR her but for you. I know she meant a lot. Also vodka would be better, I don't wanna waste your whiskey." Zoro says and stuffs half of an apple in his own mouth and bites into it.

Daz returns with whiskey and says nothing about Zoro's apology. Daz fills up Zoro's glass with vodka this time and Zoro alternates between drinking and eating and the more he drinks the more he thinks of Sanji. He keeps going back and forth on the idea of him. On the one hand if he had never kissed him then he wouldn't be in this situation, he would just be harmlessly longing for his best friend. Maybe he could have got over it if he had ignored it, it might have taken months or even a year, maybe more. But... he could have got past it. Maybe.

"What if he was right, or... almost an'... and if he is then maybe he was the only person I could love? What if... if he was it?" He blurts out as the thought occurs to him. Daz looks at him over the top of his glass of whiskey, he hadn't changed to vodka. Zoro realises that Daz had been watching him before that.

"You can't pin all of your hopes on one person. It's a bad idea." Daz tells him and glares at his glass. Zoro refills his own. Obviously Daz's mind is on his ex and not Zoro's problems, but that's perfectly reasonable. He supposes that having him there reminds Daz of his lost love.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to come here.

He wants to ask Sanji to take him back but he's not sure that he should. He hurt Sanji deliberately and he's not better now than all of Sanji's jerk exes. Even if Sanji takes him back won't it most likely be because Sanji always falls into relationships that are bad for him? Zoro supposes that that now includes him.

He never deserved the chance that Sanji gave him. He should have respected Sanji's wish to not have another shit relationship. He'd thought about it so hard and weighed it up and he'd figured that he could be good enough, but when he'd kissed Sanji that first time he wasn't thinking hard enough about what was good for Sanji, he was thinking about the fact that he wanted to be with Sanji so bad. He had wanted to wake up to him and hold him close and watch Sanji's things and his life move into Zoro's world. He never got any of that.

"You're crying, you idiot." Daz tells him, kicking Zoro in the ankle. Zoro stares up at him because that's just the kind of thing that Sanji would do.

"I need to go see him." Zoro says as the idea rolls through his mind. One way or another he needs to see Sanji and apologise. He stands up and the world spins. Zoro looks down at the bottle of vodka on the table, was that bottle so close to empty before?

"I'm gonna call Robin." He declares and moves towards the phone on the table by Daz's front door.

Daz catches him by the arm and pulls him away, turning Zoro to face him as he does it.

"Don't." Daz says, looming over him. He's got that commanding voice on, the one that Zoro used to seek out just to get his brain to shut down. It'd be nice to not think right about now.

"No, I gotta. Let me go." Zoro says, shaking his head and pulling at his arm. Stupid Daz with his stupid giant hands and strong grip.

"You should stay here. We could have something, we did have something. Fuck all of that being in love with someone bullshit, you and I both know it just gets our hearts broken. Let's stick together and stay with a sure thing." the man offers.

"I'm not a quitter, no matter what I'm gonna... gonna talk to him." he tells Daz, shaking his head and regretting it as it makes him woozy.

"I drank too much." Zoro mumbles and he really doesn't say that very often.

Daz grits his teeth and snorts out an angry breath from his nose. Zoro thinks he looks a little bit like an angry bull. Daz opens his hand and Zoro nearly topples over with the sudden change. He goes towards the phone and starts dialing. The numbers go a little blurry so he closes one eye and continues. The first number isn't Robin's but when he tries again he gets her.

"Robin, come'n pick me up. Please?" He says down the phone.

"Zoro? Zoro are you drunk?" Robin asks him and he can hear the sound of her moving, of keys being collected.

"Alcohol helps me think about things. Is Sanji there? I need... need to talk to him." he asks hopefully.

"It really doesn't help you think better and no, he's not. I'm almost at my car, where are you?" Robin questions him and he hears the distinctive beep of her car lock.

"I'm at Daz's." Zoro says, rubbing his face with his hand. Wow, the longer he's standing there the drunker he feels. Drunker? More drunk? What the fuck happened to his tolerance, Nami's never going to let him hear the end of this.

"ZORO!" Robin shouts at him and Zoro jumps.

"What?" He asks with a wince. Robin almost never shouts.

"I was talking and you weren't... oh just give me ten minutes and I'll be there." Robin says.

"Oh! And bring clothes!" Zoro blurts out but Robin has already hung up.

Zoro puts the phone down and turns around to look at Daz. Daz looks angry.

"You owe me something at least." Daz says darkly. His thick arms are crossed and he's closer than he was before. Zoro can smell the whiskey on him.

Zoro considers his reply.

"Fuck off." He tells Daz succinctly.

"You'll change your mind when he tells you to do that too." Daz snaps at him and Zoro winces. He supposes he deserves some last painful barbs thrown at him today after his behavior. Daz turns and storms off.

Zoro stumbles over to the sofa and falls face down on it. What is he going to say to Sanji? Sorry is a good start, but where to go from there?

I'm sorry I said terrible things. I'm sorry I made it personal. I'm sorry that I can't talk to you properly. I'm sorry that I became another bad relationship for you. I'm sorry for everything.

He wants this all to go away and if the way that his head is thumping then it just might.

"Zoro!"

That's Robin's voice in his ear and her hand on his arm shaking him.

"Robin... hi. That's quick." He says and his voice sounds slightly slurred to his own ears.

"Why is he this drunk? Why did you get him this drunk?" Robin demands coldly, looking around at Daz.

"He was dehydrated still. That's not my fault, he ran the whole way here. He said he was running for hours." Daz responds. Robin's grip gets tighter on his arm.

"S'okay, he gave me water too." Zoro says, sitting up and wincing as everything spins. How does he feel like he's teetering between drunk and hung over already?

"Zoro... Zoro where are your clothes? Why are you wearing his?" Robin asks him, looking up into his eyes from where she's crouched on the floor.

"Mnh, had a shower. Daz made me. Can we go?" he answers, standing up unsteadily.

"Why- he made you-" Robin's voice stops. Suddenly she's facing the other way and staring at Daz.

"No one will ever find your body when I'm done with you. You'll be in bits." She tells Daz in her iciest voice. Zoro realises what she's saying when Daz starts to argue back with her. Zoro frowns, he should be listening.

"-said no anyway!" Daz snaps.

"He's DRUNK! You shouldn't even have been asking, he can't consent to anything like this!" Robin... Robin is actually shouting. Aside from shouting to get people's attention or to be heard he's never heard her shout.

"I'm fine, fine. Nothing happened, c'n we go?" he asks, leaning onto Robin's shoulder. Robin rubs one cool hand along the back of his neck and he's shepherded out of Daz's house and into Robin's car. He fails to duck enough and smacks his forehead against the roof a little.

"Ow." He says unhappily, rubbing his head.

"You're a disaster. Why did you come here, do you know how stupid that was? Were you intending on sleeping with him Zoro? What about Sanji?" Robin says and her voice isn't angry anymore, it's just disappointed. That's far worse.

"Oh shit, Sanji's gonna think that... I jus' wanted to be somewhere you wouldn't find me!" He says desperately.

"Well done, I didn't think you'd be this stupid." Robin says sourly and turns a corner. Zoro's head bumps against the glass. Fuck, his head hurts.

"Are you sure nothing happened Zoro?" Robin asks. Zoro shuts his eyes. He can just... the car is making him a little dizzy is all... if he just closes his eyes then he won't have to see where they're going. That'll make it better.

"Zoro?"

Yeah... better.