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He finds Zoro, as always, in the crow’s nest.
Barely a day back on the open ocean after two years apart, and Sanji is glad to find some things never change. The sky is blue, the Grand Line is ever more dangerous as they head into the New World, and his directionally challenged swordsman will, unfailingly, make his way to the very top of the Sunny at some point during the day.
When he clambers his way up as the sun is setting, he’s greeted by a meditative silence instead of the clanking of weights as he’d expected. Zoro sits facing away from him, the broad, unmarred expanse of his bare back rising and falling with his steady breaths. A light sheen of sweat glistens on his skin, though Sanji isn’t sure if it’s from a workout already ended or just the heat of the day.
He remains still as Sanji approaches him, and Sanji would think he’s being purposefully ignored if it weren’t for the calm radiating from him and the peaceful, almost serene expression on his face.
“Shit cook,” he greets when Sanji folds his legs and sits beside him, and Sanji bites back a grin.
“Mosshead,” he replies, and Zoro’s mouth curls up at the corner.
Some things never change.
But some things certainly do, he muses, and he reaches out a hand to trace his thumb along the newest addition to his swordsman’s collection of scars, cupping his stupidly handsome face as he follows it from brow to cheek. Zoro lets him, leaning ever so subtly into his touch and nuzzling into his palm. Sanji’s chest aches with longing.
Gods, how he’s missed him these last two years.
“I leave you alone for five minutes and you lose an entire goddamn eye,” he sighs, playfully rueful to hide the full depth of his concern, though he knows Zoro sees right through it. “How did you even manage it, moss?”
“Pretty easily, actually,” Zoro quips back, but he doesn’t elaborate, and Sanji doesn’t press.
The bitterness in his tone is easy to hear—bitterness over yet another reminder that he isn’t strong enough yet, that he’s still too weak.
It’s preposterous, really. Sanji knows no stronger man than his swordsman, if not in physical strength then certainly in his resolve and will. He remembers the promise Zoro made to their captain that day so long ago now— I will never lose again! —and he knows there isn’t a single force in this world that could ever make him break it, because Zoro never breaks his promises.
Sanji also knows, however, that his silly mosshead is still a man, and a man sometimes has insecurities that no amount of strength of heart can fully purge. He’d be a hypocrite to claim otherwise.
So instead of pressing for details and dredging up uncomfortable memories, he simply shifts until he’s sitting in Zoro’s lap, stubs his half-smoked cig out on the sole of his shoe, and leans in close to place a featherlight kiss on Zoro’s eye, right on the scar.
Zoro exhales heavily, the tension and nearly imperceptible trembling in his body leaving him in a rush, and Sanji accepts him easily into his arms as he slumps forward. Strong arms wrap around his waist, clinging to him as he drops more kisses on Zoro’s face, wherever he likes.
“It amazes me,” he murmurs between pecks, “just how strong you are, my handsome moss ball. And if you ever tell the others I admitted it, I’ll sauté you in my next sauce.”
Zoro’s laugh huffs against his throat. “Wouldn’t want them thinkin’ you’re soft on me or anything.”
Sanji brings their lips together, kissing him slow and deep. Fuck, he’s missed this. “Glad you understand.”
His swordsman hums against him, letting the kiss linger for a beat before pulling away. He leans their heads together; Sanji’s hands caress along his cheeks, fingers playing with his earrings.
“I don’t feel strong,” he admits after several long moments of quiet between them. “Two fuckin’ years training to get better, to get stronger, and it feels like all I have to show for it is a missing fuckin’ eye.”
His hands smooth up Sanji’s back, then back down, clinging to his shirt as he presses his face into Sanji’s neck. Hiding away, hiding his shame.
“How can you look at me and think I’m strong?” he whispers, so soft Sanji wouldn’t have heard it if he wasn’t breathing the same air. “How do you see my scars and see anything but my failures?”
Sanji pulls back enough to encourage Zoro to tip his head up, looking into that dark eye that never fails to draw him in. He cups Zoro’s face in his hands, making sure he can’t look away.
He offers his swordsman his sweetest, most playful grin. “Pretty easily, actually,” he parrots, laughing when Zoro rolls his remaining eye. He presses another kiss to Zoro’s forehead. “Just the fact that you even admitted that to me is exactly how I can look at you and call you strong, you dumbass. Weak men don’t acknowledge their weaknesses.”
“Still,” Zoro says, “I just...”
“You just nothing, mossy,” Sanji says when he doesn’t seem capable of finishing. He bumps their noses together, kisses him again, brushes his lips along his jaw. “I have scars, too. Would you call me weak for them?”
Zoro makes a pained noise as Sanji starts kissing down his neck. “That’s not the same, curls—”
“Isn’t it?” Sanji sucks at the soft skin over his pulse point until a bruise forms and then trails further down, kissing the top of his chest scar. “I got them protecting the crew, same as you. What makes you so special?”
“I’m supposed to be better, ” Zoro rasps, distraught—no doubt because he knows his argument doesn’t hold up. Poor baby, Sanji thinks.
Sanji sits up straight again, forcing them to make eye contact. Zoro’s eye glimmers faintly—refusing to cry.
“You are strong,” he says, with all the conviction he has. Zoro’s lip trembles. “You’re the strongest man I know. There is no one better. Not for this crew—” He kisses the scar on Zoro’s face again. “—and not for me. Your scars are a testament to your strength, Zoro. If they show a failure of any kind, it is the failure to give up. And I, for one, adore each and every one of them, even if I hate the thought of the pain you had to suffer for them, because as much as I hate you,” he smiles, wiping away the tear that finally falls down Zoro’s cheek, “I love you, you insufferable pile of seaweed.”
Zoro hiccups a laugh, shaking his head. “You sure got a way with words, love cook. Can’t believe I ever fell for your charm.”
“Bold words from the man who has admitted to me out loud that he fell for me while I was humiliating another man,” Sanji shoots back. He sniffs primly, pretending to turn his nose up, but doesn’t fight it when Zoro turns his face back towards his own to kiss him.
“Got me there,” he chuckles. “You were the hottest fuckin’ thing I’d ever seen. I still think about it.”
Sanji brings one hand to Zoro’s throat, gently curling his precious fingers around it. “We could always reenact it.”
Zoro leans into it briefly, his cock twitching under Sanji where he still sits in his lap, before pulling away. “Maybe some other time,” he says with a smirk. His hands on Sanji’s waist trail down and around to his ass and squeeze.
Sanji grinds his hips down, heat beginning to stir in his belly at the look his swordsman is giving him. “Another time, then,” he agrees, resting both hands on Zoro’s strong shoulders and pushing until he lies down. “For now...”
For now, he just wants to feel Zoro alive and warm, refamiliarize himself with each dip and curve of muscle he hasn’t been able to touch in two years. Sanji traces his fingers over his bronzed skin beneath his robe, loosening it and pushing it off so that Zoro’s massive chest is on beautiful display under him. He caresses over the scar, from shoulder to hip, then back again. Zoro hums softly, closing his eye and tipping his head back as Sanji leans down to mouth the path his fingers were taking.
“It’s unfair how handsome you are,” he murmurs, kissing down Zoro’s sternum. His fingers trail up and down Zoro’s biceps, cresting over his shoulders and coming to flick playfully at his nipples.
Zoro bucks up beneath him with a low groan. “You’re one to talk. Can’t ever get anything done with you walkin’ around lookin’ like a wet dream all fuckin’ day with those mile long legs of yours.”
Sanji squeezes said legs around his swordsman, rolling his hips to drag their crotches together, building the burning heat between them. Zoro’s arousal is prominent even within his pants and Sanji grinds against it, moaning softly as his core tightens with pleasure. Zoro’s hands grip his hips and encourage him to go harder, faster.
His lips find more skin to kiss, leaving a dotted path of love bites in their wake as he makes his way back up to his mosshead’s mouth. “You’re so good to me,” he breathes, feeling the way Zoro presses up into him harder and swallowing the whine he gets. “My beautiful mossy knight in green haramaki.”
“Shut up, curls,” Zoro groans, biting at his lips to quiet him. Sanji laughs into him, breaking the kiss to drag his lips over the blush-warm skin of his cheeks.
“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”
“And you’re killin’ my boner, babe.”
Sanji rolls his entire body in the next grind, smirking at the choked curse he gets as he humps over the stiff length pressed into him. His swordsman is so on edge he’s practically begging for it. “I really don’t think I am.”
It takes little more than a few more sensuous grinds of his hips to bring his lover to pleasured heights. Zoro’s eye rolls into the back of his head as he crests into orgasm, fingers digging bruises into Sanji’s hips, and Sanji milks him for all he’s worth with just the drag of his own crotch against him, humming his own pleasure when he feels wet warmth seeping into his slacks beneath him and whispering tender praises into his flushed skin as he comes back down from the high.
“So lovely for me,” he murmurs into his swordsman’s jaw, nipping a kiss into the hinge. “My sweet moss ball. Light of my life. Every moment with you is contentment and peace.”
“You’re full of shit,” Zoro snorts. His hands caress up and down Sanji’s sides before one creeps between them toward Sanji’s crotch. “You’ve been thinkin’ about kickin’ my ass for two years now, don’t lie to me.”
“I would never,” Sanji laughs, head tipping back as strong, thick fingers slip into his pants, reaching for him. Pleasure coils in his gut, on the verge of bursting. “Fighting with you is the greatest pleasure in my life— oh —!”
The look on his swordsman’s face says Is it, though? and Sanji can’t even smack him for it because the hand working determinedly between his legs is pushing him closer and closer to his own peak. His hips grind into that heavenly touch, faster and faster, and then he cries out as he tips over the edge, body shaking with the shocks of it coursing through his veins.
Zoro eases him out of it, bringing him down to his chest and fluttering kisses over his cheeks. Sanji hums at the attention, letting his heartbeat even out again, and rests against his swordsman.
It’s quiet between them for several moments. Calm, peaceful. Sanji lets it settle into his blood as the desire and the arousal are sated and slip easily away.
“I missed you,” he says into the tranquility. “Gods, I fucking missed you so much. ”
Zoro’s lips press into his temple. “Missed you too, sweetheart. Thought about you every godsdamned day.”
Sanji tips his head up so their lips meet. “Me, too.”
They don’t move from the floor of the crow’s nest for a good long while—long enough that the sun has tucked itself below the horizon and the stars have come out to play and Brook comes to take over the night watch. He sees them off with a jaunty cackle and a look that’s too knowing for not even having a face, but Sanji can’t bring himself to feel any embarrassment or shame at his own disheveled appearance.
He’s back with his swordsman after two long years, and he’s going to enjoy every minute of it.