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Zoro and Sanji are having sex.
Or, well, they’re going to.
Currently, the two of them are rolling around the floor of the crow’s nest.
It’s a half affectionate, half aggressive wrestle, breathless laughter and tangled limbs. Zoro is on top of him right now, easing more and more of his weight onto Sanji and his knee between his thighs and his tongue into his mouth, and Sanji likes that. The weight, more so than the kissing. Not that Zoro’s a bad kisser, Sanji just kind of wishes he’d put his tongue back into his mouth.
They haven’t done much of…this, or anything really, since getting together. They share a bunk most nights, and they bathe together and bicker and steal kisses in corners, and there’s been a little heavy petting. Zoro has gotten Sanji off through his slacks, and Sanji let Zoro rut against his ass while he did dishes once.
But tonight the Sunny is docked in calm waters, the crew is out enjoying the island, and Sanji is ready for the real thing.
Zoro had been fine doing it anywhere, be it the couch in the aquarium or in the bathroom or up against the door of the pantry. Sanji had not been fine with that. So now the crow’s nest has become a literal nest of pilfered pillows and blankets.
“So?” Zoro asks, looking down at him with a smug little smirk and soft eyes.
“So?” Sanji parrots.
“‘S this how it’s gonna be?” He nods down at them, moving his knee purposefully between Sanji’s legs.
He spares a thought to it, of Zoro under him, Sanji meeting his hips in a rhythm, but…Something sits under his skin, something odd and uncomfortable that makes him want to curl into a ball. He does like when Zoro lays his bulk on him in their bunk, it makes him feel safe.
He wants that.
“Yeah…yeah.” He hopes the hesitation is unnoticable.
Zoro gives him a look then, one that’s hopelessly soft, and Sanji melts. It reminds him that Zoro wants this, wants him. A little spark of warmth ignites in his belly.
Being wanted is a novel thing.
And he wants this, Sanji reminds himself, as Zoro sits back and unbuckles his belt, untucking his shirt to get started on the buttons.
Sanji doesn't really know what's wrong with him. An unsteady feeling has been chasing him all evening, like he’s lost his sea legs. The cold feeling in his chest and the crawling under his skin have to be just nerves for his first real foray into sex. He’s hoping he gains his footing soon.
If Zoro is on top, Sanji won’t have to do anything anyway, just lay there and get it over with so he stops feeling so unsure, just take it and enjoy while Zoro takes the lead and takes his fill, and Sanji realizes that’s probably not a very nice way to think about his partner. Zoro isn’t using him, it’s mutual – they aren’t even using each other at all, they love each other, this is the natural progression of a relationship, he’s probably made Zoro wait too long honestly–
“You with me Curls?”
He snaps out of his spiral to find Zoro’s hands paused on his top button, fingers warm against his throat.
Sanji swallows, tries for a smile and hopes it’s a seductive one. “Yeah, Mossy.”
“We don't have to do this right now you know. I told you I’m fine with waiting.”
Zoro really is terribly sweet.
But the blankets are already up here, and the crew will be back in a few hours, and Sanji has been wanting to lose his virginity since he learned it was a thing to lose. He’s already years older than he thought he would be for this, already too old really. Waiting for the right person, is what he said. Sanji has always had romantic notions of intimacy and a long term partner, and a pirate’s life never left much room for that.
But then Zoro came along. Zoro is the right person. He’s strong and trustworthy and has a great rack for a guy, and if they can almost die for each other surely they can fuck.
Sanji reaches up and wraps his arms around Zoro’s neck. “Awe, is little Marimo not feeling up to snuff tonight?”
Zoro squints at him, but there’s a spark in his eye now. He pops the last button and leans down to kiss his now exposed collarbone.
“How are you for prep?”
“I’m good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Sanji, in fact, has not eaten all day. It wasn’t even purposeful on the whole bottoming part, it’s just that he’s been planning this night since the island showed up on the log pose two days ago, and there’s been an odd turn to his stomach since, keeping his meals light. “I even have lube.”
He divests the little jar of coconut oil from his pocket, presenting it proudly to Zoro. It may be from the pantry, but it’s body safe, smells good, and is edible. That’s sexy, right?
Zoro takes the jar from him, flushes, then rummages around in his haramaki, until he comes up with a neat little vial of clear fluid. The bottle is actually quite fancy, smooth blue glass and a decorative stopper.
“I, um, actually picked this up a few islands ago, since we were kind of talking about it and…” he looks away, blush dusting his tanned cheeks, “I know it’s your first time and I thought, you know, you deserve the good stuff.”
Sanji looks up at big strong blushing Zoro, and feels a war start inside him.
Zoro bought him lube. Zoro knows this is a big deal to him. Zoro’s been thinking about him, about this. It’s enough to make Sanji forgive him for suggesting they do it on the kitchen floor.
This is Zoro doing the fluffy romantic shit Sanji reads about in his pulp novels. How could he be nervous about sleeping with a guy like that?
“You wanna try it out?” Zoro asks.
Right. The concept of lube means the concept of lubing up his asshole, for the concept of Zoro’s dick.
“Yeah,” Sanji says, shuffling out of his shirt, “but I don't want to get any on my clothes. And you get naked too so we’re even.”
“Yes, Chef.”
Zoro lets his robe fall off and shimmies out of his haramaki. When his pants fall, he’s predictably commando, and half hard.
If he could, Sanji would spend hours mapping every curve and ridge of Zoro’s body. He’s gotten to a few times, in the bath and in their bunk, hands playing with the fat that sits over muscle and counting scars, carefully massaging a smooth, unmarred back. But they’re supposed to be having sex right now, so he shelves all that for the pillow talk later.
They’ve seen each other naked plenty of times, so Sanji doesn’t know why his legs try to twitch closed when Zoro pulls off his slacks, or why he misses his shirt.
Maybe they can do this under the covers.
The last of their clothes gone, Zoro’s eye travels hungrily down Sanji’s body until it reaches his navel, and then he frowns.
He frowns.
Of all the possible times and places to frown, doing it while looking at your partner’s freshly exposed dick is probably the worst.
And no, Sanji’s penis hasn’t exactly gotten the memo yet that this is fun sexy time and not nervous flaccid time, fine, but does Zoro not like it? He’s seen Sanji naked loads of times and never had a problem with it. Does he think it’s too small? Does that even matter if it’s not going in his ass anyway?
“Mossy.”
Zoro seems to realize he’s been scruitinizing Sanji’s crotch far longer than is polite. His stupid beautiful grey eye snaps up to Sanji and looks at him with a stupid soft expression that leaves him feeling inadequate and decidedly un-sexy.
“You good Curls?” Even his voice is stupid and soft as he runs gentle hands up Sanji’s sides, carefully avoiding his stupid soft penis that by all accounts should be enjoying the action by now.
Sanji doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have a voice or a reason as to why, now that finally getting off with the person he loves is presented on a platter, he’s shrinking away from it. Literally.
Zoro tries for sly, tickling up Sanji’s ribs as he smirks at him. “You nerrrvous?”
“I’m not nervous! It’s cold up here!” It’s definitely not, the island they’re at has a warm summer breeze and tropical beaches.
“I think I can fix that,” he probably tries to wink, but the effect is ruined by only having one eye. Zoro sits back on his heels and dribbles lube over his hand, rubbing his fingers together to spread it around. He props Sanji’s legs more comfortably over his thighs, then reaches down. The lube, at least, is warm from sitting in Zoro’s haramaki. His hand is calloused but his touch is gentle, and Sanji feels out of his body as he watches Zoro run a slick hand up his shaft.
It’s a good image, in theory. The moonlight softens all their edges, the lube giving a suggestive glint. Zoro’s broad thighs splay Sanji’s legs open, and his hands, tan in contrast to Sanji’s pale skin, work over his flesh in a way that’s soothing and seductive. Sanji supposes his own body is fine too, looking down at it, even if he’s growing increasingly self conscious of how much body hair he has.
If he doesn’t picture it as himself, if he sees it as a scene in one of his magazines, this kind of thing should really get him going.
Zoro moves, bracing an elbow by Sanji’s head and leaning down to kiss a line from his throat to his pec, laving his tongue over a nipple. Sanji shivers.
This is different than lazily making out and grinding against each other, or the time Zoro had cupped him through his pants. Over the clothes stuff had just felt safer, which was an utterly ridiculous notion. Nothing about his boyfriend touching his dick should feel dangerous.
Sanji realizes he’s been holding his breath the same moment he realizes he should probably be making noise.
Despite the uneasiness churning in his gut, there’s warmth there too. It’s hard not to get hard with Zoro’s large slick hand carefully coaxing him to full mast.
He has to focus, he can’t just lay here like a limp fish.
Zoro does something with his thumb, pressing the sensitive underside of his head and running it up and over his slit, and Sanji sucks in a breath, stomach jumping. He exhales a soft noise, trying to push the sound out of his chest. It feels embarrassing. Living on a ship you learn to keep yourself quiet, and he’s never been that noisy anyway.
But they’re alone now, and this is sex, and Sanji needs to let Zoro know that he’s feeling good, because he is feeling good, because Zoro is his partner and under the clothes stuff is definitely not intimidating and–
Zoro’s fingers brush against his asshole.
Zoro untucks himself from Sanji’s shoulder to look him in the eye. His neck feels damp. Sanji probably has several hickeys now and he didn’t even notice.
“Okay, Curly?”
His hand travels back up his shaft again, collecting lube, before sliding back down between his legs.
Sanji nods. “Uh huh.”
He pulls Zoro in for a kiss, mostly to distract himself from the odd feeling of wet fingers tracing around his asshole.
He’s played with himself once or twice, sure, but never really got anywhere with it. It just seemed like too much mess and effort, and he preferred jerking off anyway.
But here he is with Zoro’s middle finger pushing at his entrance, so maybe he’s finally going to get the point.
It slips in, and Sanji makes another noise, half for show and half because it startles out of him. Zoro’s fingers are thicker than Sanji’s and tough with sword callouses, but the lube eases the rough edges and encourages Zoro to slide in slowly.
Zoro sits back up, seemingly entranced by watching his finger slowly disappear into Sanji.
Sanji misses his warmth, wishes he would lay back overtop of him. He doesn’t know if he likes Zoro watching this, watching him, it feels like he’s being examined rather than pleasured.
His thigh twitches, trying to close, and Zoro puts a hand on it, running his thumb along the sensitive tendon that runs along his inner thigh. Sanji is sure it’s supposed to be soothing or sexy, but he just feels exposed and trapped, like Zoro is pinning his legs open.
Another finger rubs against his hole, pushing in.
Sanji tries to take even measured breaths but his chest jerks in a shallow staccato.
“Zoro-” He’s too open like this, all his soft parts exposed, Zoro leant back on his heels and Sanji’s thighs splayed open. The only part of Zoro he can comfortably reach is his knee. He wants Zoro back over him, some false sense of security.
“Shit, you’re tight,” Zoro says.
That’s a compliment, right?
He’s not saying it like it is.
His hand finally moves from his thigh to slide up Sanji’s abdomen, petting over his belly and up his flank like Sanji is some animal he’s trying to soothe. The thumb of his wet hand presses into his perineum.
And then Zoro is above him again, leaning down and running kisses up his neck and jaw, nosing behind the shell of Sanji’s ear.
“Gotta relax for me, Curlybrow.”
With Zoro close again Sanji can hide himself in his neck, sucking in a deep breath. He smells like sweat and the soap Sanji forced him to use in the bath earlier. He forces himself to take deep breaths, relaxing slowly around Zoro, and the second finger pushes its way inside.
It’s weird. Not bad or painful, just weird, so Sanji doesn’t understand why it feels so wrong. It’s foreplay, it shouldn't feel wrong, he doesn’t want it to feel wrong.
He starts to sink away, searching for that familiar feeling of everything going numb and the world dulling around him. His body isn’t his own, just for now. He just has to lay here.
Zoro moves slowly, pumping in and out, spreading his fingers, sometimes curling them inside him.
Sanji doesn’t feel a thing. He just has to lay here and let Zoro do this.
Zoro’s fingers brush something inside him and Sanji is ripped back into his body with a jolt, a lightning bolt of pleasure shooting through him.
He feels Zoro grin against his shoulder and Sanji’s face scrunches up, Zoro targeting that spot again and again.
It doesn’t–
It doesn’t feel good.
The pleasure churns in his gut like an upset stomach. His dick twitches and his body jerks, caught between enjoying and trying to get away from the sudden onslaught of sensation. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like feeling out of control of his own body’s response.
He wants Zoro out of him.
But that’s stupid, Zoro’s supposed to be in him in a much bigger way very soon, and Sanji asked for that. This is supposed to feel good–it does feel good. His body is responding to it. He just needs to focus on the pleasure instead of the wrongness.
He clenches down around Zoro, at war with the intrusion and the arousal. His heart pounds. Why is this happening? Why is this wrong?
Zoro comes up from sucking a mark into Sanji’s neck, teeth scraping gently along the way.
“Hey, hey,” he kisses the corner of Sanji’s mouth, bumping their noses and foreheads together.
Sanji needs to control his face. His eyes are scrunched closed and his grimace probably isn’t very sexy, and he wants Zoro to turn away again so he can hide in his neck.
Zoro kisses him again, a firm thing that coaxes his mouth open, and Sanji likes kissing, he does, but honestly Zoro’s mouth tastes a little too much like mouth and his tongue feels weird, pressing against his own.
“Breathe, Sanji.”
Hard to do with a tongue down your throat, Sanji thinks.
He sucks in a deep breath through his nose, one that’s mostly just Zoro’s exhaled oxygen.
“Feel weird?”
Sanji can’t do much but nod. Zoro moves his fingers in a slow drag.
“Never played with yourself before?”
“Not really.”
Zoro’s breath comes in a quick huff, like a laugh, and he kisses him again. “Think you can take one more?”
Sanji doesn’t, honestly. Zoro rubs his index finger against Sanji’s entrance, prodding along the other two.
This already feels like too much, too uncomfortable. But Zoro is going to be much bigger than three fingers, and this is just–this is just the prep, the foreplay.
He has to get through this.
In his head, Sanji holds tightly all the lewd scenarios he used to imagine, Zoro’s hips pressed against his, Zoro close as he can possibly be, Zoro praising Sanji’s body and how good Sanji feels. He tries, desperately, to hang onto the arousal those thoughts try to spark, but it’s a feeble thing against the cold that's coiling in his gut in place of any ember.
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice sounds small in his ears.
Sanji focuses on anything but the third finger pushing inside him, focuses on Zoro’s smooth back, on the short sweaty hair at the nape of his neck, on the bit of stomach he feels on him, soft with fat Sanji put there and sturdy with muscle. He ignores the drag of Zoro’s cock on his thigh and the insistent press of fingers inside him.
He finds himself staring at the ceiling. Zoro’s hair tickles his chin occasionally, so he must be somewhere by his throat or chest.
He just has to lay here.
The briefest flash of gold sparkles in the corner of his vision. The moonlight casts soft shadows over the wooden beams. His eyes look for faces in the wood grain and trace them, over and over again. The Sunny rocks gently. Zoro moves his fingers.
Over and over again.
He just has to lay here.
There’s a slick sound and the fingers are gone, leaving him feeling strange and hollow. Zoro leans back to rest Sanji’s legs over his thighs again. His eye casts around before he leans over to snatch up a spare pillow.
“Here, lift your hips.”
Sanji does not want to do that.
He complies anyway, mind too numb to argue. Zoro spares the time to dribble more oil over his fingers and slick up his own erection.
Sanji stares at him detachedly.
Zoro has a nice body. Zoro has a nice penis. Zoro is going to fuck him, and all Sanji has to do is lay here and let it happen. And once Zoro is in him and on him, Sanji will come back to his body and everything will feel good again, it will feel like sex is supposed to feel.
He wants this.
Wants Zoro leaning down over him.
Wants Zoro settling heavy between his thighs.
Wants Zoro’s hand braced by his head and lips on the corner of his mouth, as he looks down and leans down and lines himself up with Sanji’s entrance.
Sanji wanted this.
“Okay?” Zoro asks.
Sanji wishes he would stop asking and just do it already.
The hot blunt head of Zoro presses against him, and despite how much he wanted this, his body freezes, locking up against the intrusion.
Zoro doesn’t force it, just eases off and rocks his hips a little.
“Curls, you gotta relax for me.” The words are quiet and spoken into the corner of Sanji’s mouth. His lips are numb and useless when Zoro tries to kiss him, unresponsive to the gentle touch.
Sanji draws in a deep, shuddering breath, willing himself to relax. He can’t be failing this, can’t be messing it up when they’ve come so far.
Zoro pushes against him again, and Sanji feels sick.
There is a hand on his face, brushing his cheekbone.
“Sanji-”
“Just–I won’t break. Just put it in.”
Zoro leans back, away from him, and Sanji doesn’t want to look. He recoils when he does, his heart sinking like a ship in a storm at the concern he sees on Zoro’s face, at how Zoro seems to be reading his face quicker than Sanji can control it.
“That’ll hurt you.” Zoro says.
Isn’t that fine?
“Isn’t it–doesn’t it hurt a bit anyway, for your first time?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Zoro pulls away even more now, and the weight of him is gone, both from between Sanji’s legs and off his chest. His lips are pulled down in a thin line.
“It isn’t supposed to hurt. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Sanji almost feels like laughing.
Sex isn’t supposed to hurt. Sex also isn’t supposed to feel like he’s being crushed under his partner and like he wants to pull his skin off and like he wants to hide in the pantry where no one can touch him, until this all goes away. It isn’t supposed to feel like he never wants Zoro, kind beautiful supposed-to-be-sexy Zoro, to ever touch him again.
Sanji swallows around a sharp pain in his throat. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are.”
Inexplicably, he feels his lip tremble.
“Shit, Sanji–Shit.”
Zoro sits up hastily, reaching his hand out in an aborted movement before stopping and wiping his hand on his stomach, leaving a glistening trail of lube. “Just, hang on.”
“Zoro, I’m fine,” Sanji tries. His voice cracks.
It’s no use. Zoro’s dick, which Sanji really should be excited about, honestly, is already going soft, and he has one leg in his pants. Sanji notices dully that he isn’t even hard himself anymore.
“Sanji,” Zoro says. He looks at him with a dark expression, features stony with anger, with disdain. It’s such a far cry from the soft bedroom eyes he had given him earlier, cheeky and wanting and happy. Zoro looks at him with all the pity Sanji probably deserves.
Sanji’s heart sinks in his chest as he sinks back into the makeshift bed, feeling sick now in a different way. His face burns.
Zoro steps to the trap door and turns to give Sanji one last look.
“Just, hang on,” he says.
And then he leaves.
Sanji is left, naked and cold, propped uncomfortably ass-up on a pillow with lube cooling between his legs.
What’s wrong with him?
What’s wrong with him?
He covers his face, fingers slinking up to grip at his hair. He’s pathetic. He couldn’t even make love right, couldn’t fuck right. He doesn’t even fault Zoro for leaving, probably jerking off in the bathroom right now because his own boyfriend wouldn’t put out.
And Sanji is still just laying here, pathetic and bare and wet, the lube drying sticky between his legs.
Moving feels like a monumental thing. Weakly, he tugs the pillow out from under him and sags down to the floor.
He should put his pants back on. He should go back down to the deck, find Zoro and offer to try again, offer an apology hand-job, do a better job of hiding whatever the fuck this is.
The trap door rattles, and a mossy green head emerges, Zoro following it awkwardly. He has a glass held precariously in one hand and a bundle under his arm, a rag thrown over his shoulder.
Sanji sits up as Zoro moves stiffly towards him, pulling a pillow in front of himself in a very belated display of modesty.
“Isn’t it a little early for aftercare?” Sanji laughs wetly.
Zoro crouches before him, sets the water down and holds out the rag, and doesn’t laugh along.
Sanji takes it. There’s probably no point in convincing Zoro to try again, if he’s already having Sanji wipe himself down.
It’s one of the nice hand towels from the kitchen, Sanji realizes, shaking it out, and it’s been soaked and rung out with warm water.
Zoro pointedly looks away while Sanji cleans himself off, as if he wasn’t just three fingers deep inside of him.
A set of clothes are passed to him next, pajamas he knows must have been taken from his own locker. Sanji takes them numbly. He was supposed to spend the night naked. He was supposed to have his walk of shame down the mast in the crumpled clothes he wore yesterday.
Now he stands five feet apart from Zoro with clean pajamas and glassy eyes, and it’s probably the farthest from sexy he could possibly be.
He wants to float away again. He feels like he’s waiting for punishment, but all that comes is Zoro pushing the cool water glass into his hands and crouching down to fuss with the sheets.
He drinks. It dislodges the lump still stuck in his throat and wakes him up a little, and by the time he’s finished Zoro takes it from him and ushers him to lay down on the rearranged bedspread. Sanji goes pliantly, unsettled by Zoro’s silence and this turn of events.
Is he supposed to sleep up here? Is this so Zoro can have the bunk to himself, guilt free?
Are they going to try again?
Sanji stiffens under the blankets Zoro tucks around him, but Zoro makes no move to touch him.
Zoro’s face is often guarded, but there are times when he lets the mask fall, when he softens and allows Sanji to see his true expressions. Sanji has gotten used to it lately, his unabashed laughter, his pouting, his vulnerability.
Now he wears an impassive mask, staring down at him, and Sanji feels pinned all over again.
Zoro makes a small noise in his throat, and a crack appears, a minute pinch between his brows, lips downturned.
Sanji feels sorrow strike his ribs. He knows that face.
Zoro is sad.
“Uh, can I come in?” He nods at the little bed he’s made. His voice sounds small.
Sanji stares at him, incredulous. His heart squeezes. He flips a corner of the bedding down.
Zoro hesitates still, eye downcast, shuffling his feet, “...can I touch you?”
Something wells up inside Sanji. He forgets the discomfort from just minutes before, the heartache and confusion. He wants to wipe that look off his face, wants Zoro, his stability on a stormy sea, back in his bed.
“Yes.”
Zoro sighs like it’s some great relief to him and slides in, finally folding Sanji into his arms and burying his nose in the crown of his head, breathing deep.
Sanji greets him with the same relief. He feels dizzy, the whiplash of feeling so wrong under Zoro to this. Sanji feels a tide swell inside him, heavy and threatening, the pressure of a squall pressing at his eyes and throat.
How can this feel so much better?
When the tears come, he can’t stop them this time.
Zoro startles at the first wet sniff, petting Sanji’s hair back to see his eyes, damp and clogged with tears, nose running and lip shiny from being bitten.
“Curly?!”
Sanji shakes his head. He can’t, he can’t. He is almost sickened with the overwhelming relief of being in Zoro’s arms, fully clothed, under the covers, simply being held.
“I’m sorry,” he sobs, voice thick and broken. He’s sorry he couldn’t go through with it, sorry he’s ruining their night by sobbing into Zoro’s chest, sorry that he’s so pathetic, and so fucking thankful that Zoro is the kind of man who will lay here and hold him through snotty tears when he should be getting laid.
He really deserves better than Sanji.
Zoro just grabs his hands away from where they clench in his hair, grips the back of his head and pulls him in, and Sanji has never felt anything better than shoving his nose into Zoro’s neck.
Eventually, he finds it within himself to pull away, exhausted and spent. He wipes futilely at his face, palming away tears and snot and spit. God, he’s disgusting.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, when he finds his voice, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Zoro says. His voice is a deep rumble.
Sanji doesn’t think that’s true. Because there is something wrong with him, there has to be. He just broke down in tears after barely getting through second base with his boyfriend whom he loves very much.
Zoro tucks errant strands of hair behind Sanji’s ear, taking in his dishevelment. “Did I…” he trails off, swallowing, “did I do something?”
Sanji looks up. There’s a large wet patch on Zoro’s skin and he’s looking at him with a heartbroken face that Sanji has never seen before, and he feels awfully, horrendously guilty.
“No! No, Mossy, it’s not–” he scrambles for words, “no, you didn’t do anything. It’s not you.” How does he even begin to fix this? He rubs at his eyes, seemingly endlessly damp.
What a romancer he is.
Zoro takes his hand and wipes away more tears with his thumb. “Well then what happened, Curls? Did I hurt you?”
“No, no, you were good, it was good, I just…” Sanji turns his face away into the pillow, “I just got overwhelmed, I guess.”
He can hear the frown in Zoro’s voice. “Sanji, that wasn’t just overwhelmed. It’s okay if you’re not ready.”
Sanji should have been ready. He’s known for being the perviest guy on the crew. He’s making this hard, being difficult.
Why wasn’t he ready?
He rolls out of Zoro’s grasp and onto his back, covering his face with a hand again. The pressure of his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose and digging into his eye sockets is grounding.
“I know tonight went horribly, but I want–for you–I want to try–” thoughts come back to him unbidden, the memory of floating away from his body when he should have been sharing something so intimate, the stomach dropping sickness when he felt Zoro trying to push into him.
He doesn’t know if he could do it again, but he can’t lose Zoro over something like this.
His hand is taken and pried away from his face gently, thumb brushing over his knuckles and squeezing.
“Sanji.”
He opens his eyes. Zoro is leant above him, painted in shadow, the moon glittering in his single pupil. He looks as serious as a promise.
“You mean more to me than sex.”
Sanji has to bite his lip hard to keep it from wobbling.
Zoro squeezes his hand again. “I just want to make you feel good. If sex doesn’t make you feel good, we won’t do it.”
“But don’t you need it? Don’t you want it?”
“Sanji. I love you. I love you whether or not you ever touch my dick again. If we keep doing the sex stuff we have or we stop completely. If you ever want to again, I’m here, but don’t do it just because you think you have to. If you love me, don’t hurt yourself for me. I would never ask that of you.”
By this point, Sanji is in tears again, doing very little to stop the quiet sobs that bubble up in his chest. He just can’t fathom it, being this lucky, being this understood. Zoro said it so simply that there was no room for argument, and Sanji loves arguing with Zoro.
He doesn’t have to have sex if he doesn’t want to.
He never has to have sex if he doesn’t want to.
It’s a thought he never would have entertained, not in a million years or a million leagues of sailing on the sea. A tension Sanji never knew he was holding escapes from his chest like a sigh, and he’s left feeling like he’s floating in the ocean, weightless.
Zoro holds him in his arms, pressing their foreheads together, a gentle hand on his nape. He sighs when Sanji quiets down again, sniffing mightily.
“I knew something was up but I thought…I shouldn’t have let it get that far. Don't let me do that again,” he knocks his head against Sanji’s, “I only want to do what you want to do.”
Sanji nods and runs his thumb along Zoro’s earrings so they chime.
They lay together until Sanji’s tears have dried out, until their breathing merges and their limbs tangle into one. The Sunny cradles them in her gentle, steady rhythm.
“I feel like I ruined our night,” Sanji says into the quiet.
“Fuck off with that, I get to spend time with you, I’m happy.”
When Sanji kisses Zoro this time, salty and smiling, it feels natural.
“You wanna go take a bath?”
“Two baths in one night, Marimo?”
“Hey, the things I do for you Curls…”
Sanji laughs, and it feels like breathing, like swimming, like sunshine and salt soaked air.
“Yeah, I’d like that.”