Sanji sat under the cold spray of the shower like it could do something to make him feel better- to not be feeling like this. The water spat at the bite marks on his collarbones, the hickeys on his neck, stinging them and causing the pain to flare back up. Usually it was a nice pain but this time it was unpleasant and wrong, so so wrong.

His heart was still elated from the sprint he'd made from Zoro's house to get here. He'd fumbled at the lock and slide bolt with shaking hands and stripped the wrinkled clothes off him and thrown them violently aside as he'd stepped straight into the freezing downpour.

"Oh God..." He sighed and ran a palm over his face, pulling his hair against his skin with moisture. His mind was a mess of irrational thoughts and memories, each one leaping to be the first he'd come to. He settled for the biggest one; the big main problem.

Sanji had never liked the term 'fuck buddies' but that's what he and Zoro were, 'friends with benefits' he supposed but that phrase sounded old and outdated nowadays. It had happened pretty much spontaneously at a party at Luffy's. They'd both made the rules of the contract pretty clear: Sanji wasn't looking for a relationship and neither was Zoro- this was just for release as and when they needed it.

It worked pretty well for a majority of the time, Zoro was great in bed and though he may get lost on the streets, he never got lost in the sheets. It was fast but thorough sex in the beginning but over the recent months Zoro had started to change. He thought nothing of it at first except that maybe Zoro didn't want just a quick fuck all of the time so Sanji went along with it as the others touches got softer and more gentle and the sex became more like lovemaking than anything they'd done before.

And Sanji had quickly fallen into it. Zoro remained for his part silent on the matter and the blond soon found himself spending most nights over at Zoro's house and not leaving until evening the next day whereas before it was sex then leave after a shower. And Zoro kept getting ever the more softer. There were the few days where it was rougher sex but for the most it was languid and long and touchy and almost meaningful in a way.

The blond felt a little ashamed to admit he'd enjoyed it, all the attention and the gentleness of it all. By then he'd realised things were changing but he was in too deep, drowning in it, and Zoro was being so perfect and everything he'd never known he'd wanted and he let himself be carried away by it all, swooped off his feet in Zoro's tenderness.

But tonight he'd drawn the line. Tonight he'd been smacked in the face by the reality of what was happening when Zoro had held him close and shook and through his fractured moaning he had managed to croak out to the blond, "Love you... Love you, Sanji..."

And Sanji was shaken like he'd been placed in the epicentre of an earthquake, rattled and shook up with a force not even the Richter Scale could measure because Zoro loved him.

The man had opened himself up to him and Sanji had panicked. He'd wriggled out from under Zoro and pushed him aside, grabbing his stuff whilst Zoro was momentarily dazed from his high, and slipped into his clothes and ran. Ran away. All the way home because nothing was ever meant to happen because of the sex.

He ran away from Zoro and his love.

Sanji sunk down in the shower unit, back against the hard tiles on the wall and murmured, "He loves me..."

And the words scare him.