Zoro/Sanji Post Thriller Bark
I've been thinking about Thriller Bark AGAIN so much lately and about how I've never really written anything for them post-thriller bark. So I wrote this little thing, which doesn't feel like enough for my AO3 so I'm just putting it here. Rated M. Tags for uhhh... nonchalant discussion of death?
If I were to post this and give it a title, it would be World's Most Sword-Swinging Shithead
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“Hey, what the hell are you doing here, shouldn’t you be lying down still?” Sanji’s spoke in a slow drawl and lazily waved the spatula at him.
“I’ve been lying down for days,” Zoro dragged his feet walking in.
“Yeah, and you were even more almost-dead than you were at Baratie, so bad dog, go lay down,” he pointed the spatula into the corner for some reason.
“Not tired,” Zoro mumbled, still moving toward him.
“I didn’t say sleep, I said lay down, at least until Chopper clears you to move around,” now he was waving it toward the sky, and with his other elbow raised with his hand on the skillet handle, it gave Zoro the perfect opening to hug him around his middle from behind.
“Wh-wha?” Sanji flailed and struggled for just a second before Zoro let him go.
“Why’d you do that?” Sanji was now holding the spatula with both hands and pointing it in his direction like it was a longsword.
“Because I was almost dead,” Zoro said. and he made a point not to step that far away. In fact, he was close enough that Sanji was able to hold the spatula just under the jut of his chin.
“You’re saying you suffered brain damage, then?” Sanji asked, and his face turned comically sympathetic, “you poor, poor thing…” he caressed Zoro’s cheek with the spatula in a degrading manner.
“Cook,” Zoro growled, grabbing the spatula and shoving it away, “let’s not fuck around right now,” he didn’t intend for his words to come out the way they did. He heard himself, low, hoarse, maybe a little needy, and he saw the expression on the cook’s face change like he’d heard all of that too.
“I want to be with you,” Zoro had no choice but to carry it home, “even just once.”
Sanji’s expression had gone from silly to surprised and now to serious with his brow furrowed, eyes darting around Zoro’s face like he was trying to read some secret hidden within it. It was like he was worried that if he said anything in line with what Zoro was getting at it would be some kind of “gotcha!” He was still reading this like some kind of competition, like some game he was at risk of losing. Zoro wasn’t in the mood for it.
“I almost died,” Zoro’s voice cracked.
“I know that better than anyone, jackass,” Sanji responded through clenched teeth, apparently out of jokes.
“So?” Zoro said, moving closer so their foreheads bumped. “Don’t you want…?” he trailed off, closing his eyes and feeling Sanji ever so slightly press back against him. It was there in a thousand secret looks and just-a-little-longer-than-necessary touches. Something was happening between them, since Skypeia at least, and Zoro was sure it wasn’t one-sided. He was also sure that the damn cook’s mind was a conundrum he might never be able to solve, so he didn’t have a clue if this approach would work.
Sanji still hadn’t responded, but when Zoro opened his eyes his were shut, like he too was just quietly feeling it, their closeness. Zoro wondered how long it would take him to actually verbalize his position, but decided that perhaps he didn’t need to. If he didn’t want to say it, then Zoro could help him around that.
His lips were already only inches away, all Zoro had to do was tilt the orientation of his own head so their mouths touched instead of their foreheads. He started to move, slowly, until he was close enough to feel Sanji take a deep breath inward. When their lips met, it was the slightest ghost of a touch, but Zoro felt an urge to lift his hand and place it flat against the left side of the cook's chest.
His heart was pounding, so fast and loud and Zoro didn’t realize until he could feel it, that he could also hear it.
“Cook,” Zoro voice was weak against his lips.
The response he got was arms around his neck and a searing kiss as the cook surged into the kiss and tugged Zoro close to him. Their hips bumped and Zoro felt the hardness against his thigh for just a moment but he chased that feeling, crowding the cook back against the counter and pinning his narrow waist under the press of his abs and rolling his hips up so Sanji could feel that he was in a similar, or possibly more severe state.
The kiss broke then, Sanji broke it, but didn’t otherwise move, he just looked into Zoro’s eyes with surprise on his face. His expression looked foggy, but like there may have been something akin to reservation far beneath a cloud of desire in his glossed over-eyes and kiss-swollen lips that hung open to accommodate little puffs of breath.
Then a new emotion swept over that face, one Zoro was intimately familiar with: rage.
“Do you remember what you did, you son of a bitch?” Sanji hissed, arms unwinding from around Zoro’s neck, fingers instead viciously curling into and pulling the collar of his shirt instead.
“You knocked me out, threw me aside, left me there without a word while you went off to die,” he spat, literally spat, Zoro could feel the wet drops hitting his face, “and then when I woke up I had to be the one to try and find you because no one else knew why you weren’t there. I went looking and the whole time, every corner I turned I thought I’d see your bloody, mutilated, crumpled corpse somewhere dead—,”
Zoro placed a hand gently on the side of his face and it stopped his ranting.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Zoro said, earning a hardened glare, “but I’m still alive, somehow. And I do have a choice about what to do next, that’s why I’m here.”
“So, what, you realized you forgot to cross fucking me off your bucket list so—,”
“Cook,” Zoro interrupted, calm, because he didn’t want to be like this. Not right now, just this once, he needed it to be different.
“I know,” Sanji croaked, “but I don’t want to have to rush this, okay? Whatever it is, I don’t want to force it, I want to feel like we have all the time in the world. I want—,” he stopped, and looked Zoro in the eye, expression serious but no longer with anger, “—I need more time,” he said.
Zoro’s heart twisted in his chest.
“So just don’t fucking die, okay? Don’t you have to become the world’s most sword-swinging shithead?” He snapped again, “…fucking idiot…” he grumbled, and then Zoro watched him start to unravel, remained still as he collapsed enough for his head to fall and rest against Zoro’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Sanji whispered against him.
“For what?”
“Saving Luffy, and all of us, and…” he muffled the next word by pressing his mouth against Zoro’s skin but Zoro heard it, “…and me.”
Zoro kissed his hair, then released a heavy sigh into it so the strands on top of his head fluttered around.
“So, about my bucket list…” Zoro mumbled.
“No,” Sanji drew back, and looked him in the eye again, “not right now for a million reasons, starting with because I’m literally in the middle of breakfast,” he gestured toward the simmering happening on the stove, “because I can’t look at you right now without being pissed that you tried to leave, and because I’m going to need to be more than a line on a bucket list, jackass, but if that’s what I am then I’ll stay uncrossed just to keep you alive.”
“More?” Zoro latched onto just one word and pressed for explanation, and Sanji’s eyes widened.
“Ah, well…” he wiggled free of any of Zoro’s extremities and turned around to face the stove again, removing the lid and starting to stir.
Zoro released the breath he’d been holding and a relaxed smile crept over his face as he slowly wrapped his arms around the cook from behind again.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” he said, and squeezed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sanji muttered, “now go back to bed.”
fin
More of my bullshit at https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patchratt
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I'm a big fan of Sanji trying to offend Zoro in some way and Zoro just turning it into the most romantic and devoted thing ever without realizing it.
Sanji: All men are dogs. All you do is drink, eat and piss me off.
Zoro: I also love and devote myself like one. And I would die like a dog for you as well. No matter how much you kick me, I'll always come back.
Sanji almost dropped his tray.
Sanji: Why are you like this? It's like you're trying to make me pick a fight with you!
Zoro: What can I say? I crave your attention in every way. It's the highlight of my day.
Sanji: You're drunk. How many bottles have you finished already?
Zoro: I can't remember.
Sanji: One day you'll forget your head somewhere.
Zoro: Not if I have you holding it.
Sanji: What???
Zoro: I trust you'll handle me gently, I'll stay in your care...
Sanji: It must be hard being this stupid, huh?
Zoro: Not with you, you make everything hard in life!
Sanji: Yeah, well you can leave my life, it'd be easier without you too!
Zoro: Ha! Fat chance. I'm not letting go of one of the most interesting things here, you're stuck with me for life, curly.
Sanji, taking a step back to think about what the other just said: ... hah.. hah... uh... what are you, proposing to me?
Zoro, seriously considering it: Maybe I should. I already planned to spend the rest of my life with you...
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