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In the days before they had Chopper, Sanji doctored them.
Zoro remembers vividly, how barely before he had met the man those long fingers were digging in his flesh, his blood staining sleeve cuffs forgotten to be rolled up. Catgut wire going in, and out, and then a roll of bandages appearing in the corner of his vision. When he woke up they were on their way to getting Nami, and the person serving lunch had shaped the precise line of scar on Zoro’s chest with his own hands.
That was the first warning the swordsman got- that this cook was going to be just a little on the side of more .
-
Then on little garden, his shins.
“Fucking idiot.” Sanji whispers it, as if to Zoro’s skin, like it might stem the bleeding. The needle moves in and out.
Zoro bites down on the rag in his mouth, finding the white place in his mind where the pain can't reach if he tries hard enough. Sweat runs down his neck, and Sanji dabs at the cuts with a cold towel. Saltwater bites into him like an animal, and he grunts.
“Sorry.” Again, whispered, like he doesn't expect the swordsman to respond, or even hear him. Like some sort of prayer.
Maybe the cook thinks he’s too out of it to hear. But the pain has gone to a numbing kind of burn, keeping him awake rather than forcing him under. He’s more present than ever at the way Sanji’s fingertips graze the skin of his ankles, gently. Blood soaked.
Was this nakama? Besides the unquestionable loyalty to Luffy, was this the other part of it- the care? To be tended to, not out of obligation, but on some level of want? After all, Sanji hadn't waited for anyone else to volunteer, had just taken Zoro by the arm and sat him down. Maybe there was something to the combination of nakama and Sanji that fell into the line of specific tenderness. Holding a soup bowl with just the tips of his fingers and laying if before everyone in one smooth, elegant motion. Offering bread and butter on an open palm. Holding a sterilized needle steadily.
“Idiot.” Said so softly, jarring Zoro back to the place beyond the haze of pain. Said bitterly, contradicting the gentle press of a cloth to blood. Maybe he’s hallucinating, with the way the lit candles make Sanji’s hair glow. Like something just a little too beautiful.
-
Every scar seemed to hold two stories rather than one. The first of the inflicted wound, and a lesson to be gained. Move faster, be stronger, do not underestimate. The second was the repair, and by whose hands touched him and in what ways. How Zoro would never forget the difference between Sanji patching his carved open chest and the doctor from Nami’s village who redid the ripped stitches. How the lines on his shins were uneven not because the cuts were, but because Sanji had spent over 4 hours on them and grown tired, hands steady, pattern not so much.
And he thinks about it often, how these marks on his body are partially Sanji’s marks, and forever at that. He thinks about the word nakama, moving it around in his mouth, watching the way Usopp stops flinching at everything. When Luffy says my nakama , does it mean the same for everyone else? That almost terrifying devotion that was growing day by day? Written on all of them in some form, like the scar on Nami’s hand where she had chosen to stab herself over Zoro. Or yet unseen like the things in a light, perfect broth come to boil.
A cut on his arm, not deep enough to scar, wrapped in pristine white cloth. Tied tight and neat in a knot that looked complicated, Sanji’s deft fingers working on yet another of Zoro’s wounds.
“When the hell are we gonna get a doctor?” The cook grumbles, inspecting his own work. His other hand holds Zoro’s elbow, touch like something burning. Zoro realizes that the cook still smells of tobacco even when he isn't smoking, but he doesn't hate it at all.
“When Luffy finds the right one.” he replies easily. Sanji drops the bandaged arm, and something in Zoro mourns.
“Be nice if he found the right one before you bled to death, marimo.”
There's something on the tip of Zoro’s tongue in response to that, but he swallows it. Sanji isn't a doctor, despite his ability to get them by. He doesn't enjoy cleaning and patching them up, it was obvious by the way he grimaced and furrowed his brow every time.
“Can't handle a little blood?” Zoro mocks, trying to get at the thing in his chest and unfold it. He can't figure out what's lying in wait there. Sanji raises a brow.
“I’ve lost half my wardrobe to your blood, asshole.” But there's the hint of a smile on his face, like it wasn't all that bad. Nice shirts be damned.
His palm smooths over the white of the bandage, and Zoro watches with rapt attention, a little too aware of the way he was falling down a hole not to be climbed out of.
-
They get a doctor though, something which aches like a loss reverberating inside Zoro’s chest. That's not to say he doesn't love Chopper immediately, because he would die for the reindeer in a heartbeat. He carries the kid around and he can't believe he's carrying some kid around, but everyone has their weaknesses and Chopper has very, very big eyes.
“I heard Sanji did the stitching for these?” Chopper asks, pointing at the lines on his shins with a popsicle stick.
“And this.” Zoro says, gesturing to his chest. “Some of it.”
Chopper's eyes go wide, and he leans in, darting back and forth between observing the grotesquely large scar on the swordsman’s chest, and the strange parallel ones on his shins.
There’s an odd sense of pride at the slight awe on the doctor’s face, marveling over Sanji’s untrained work. It was a strength, surely, that the cook possessed the skill to be able to do this thing which Zoro himself hadn't even been able to do. And any strength of Sanji’s is a strength of the crew, and Zoro, as his equal, is proud.
“It's good to know he can help me, if I need it.” Chopper murmurs, writing something down on a chart. On the table are a few more organized piles, one with the cook’s name on it.
Sanji had been injured in an avalanche, according to Luffy. Tried to sacrifice himself apparently. A stupid thing to do in front of their captain, really. Zoro had seen the man rubbing at his back earlier, hunched over with a tight look on his face. It makes a question rise in his throat before he even thinks to stop it.
“Does the cook have a lot of scars?”
Chopper blinks up at him in surprise, and then glances at Zoro’s chest again.
“Not...really? I don't- I’m not supposed to discuss other patients though. Um, sorry.”
Zoro nods, feeling stupid, and embarrased for no good reason. Chopper takes it all in stride though, going through the other motions of examining him, testing his reflexes, listening to his heart. It's not nearly enough to distract the swordsman from the thought of scars on pale skin, of lines someone else stitched, of an unknown history there. Like a closed door that Zoro wants to open.
“Deep breath.” Chopper urges gently, and Zoro obliges.
-
He takes careful, careful note of Sanji after that.
Of the way he moves (graceful) and the way he acts (strange). Of the tiny movement in his shoulders when he's cooking, and the way he moves his hands when he talks sometimes. Of the way he smiles at little nothings, and it's dangerous, really, this thing Zoro is doing.
There is a scar on the cook’s left middle finger, right on the tip, and a larger one on his right thumb. He thinks there's one just below his wrist, a splotch of white, maybe from hot oil. Gripping his own hands under the galley table, Zoro has to force away the urge to fold back that buttoned cuff. As if Sanji would allow that.
On the Sky Island the cook wears a short sleeved shirt, and it's the most skin that's ever been on display before. It's a stupid looking shirt, but that doesn't stop Zoro from staring. There, on his wrist, is indeed a burn gone to scar, revealed like a secret. It's nearly indecent.
Almost in opposition, Zoro wears clothes that cover his scars. Or, the scars that matter . The scars the cook- took care of. He’s wondered before if the cook even views these things like the swordsman does, that those parts of him were claimed, in a way, by Sanji. Written in his skin and signed with a signature. Property of- but probably not. Probably, the cook tells Zoro to put on a shirt when he’s training because it's nothing close to pretty. Reformed, puckered skin.
Neither of them seem to have acquired new scars by the end of the trip, and Zoro is thankful. He’s trying to keep track of the marks on Sanji, and new ones would only confuse him. But there's still that tiny one, that infinitesimally unimportant burn mark on his wrist, and god. Zoro wants nothing the way he wants to touch that one, single thing.
-
They go to islands. They fight marines. They steal treasure and laugh and throw parties and go on and on and on. Every single day that passed solidified the fact that if Zoro had to pick the moment when he fell in love, he wouldn't be able to.
It was an event of the everyday. The simple action of a smile, or a comment, or a kick. Time flowing smooth as silk and Sanji slipping further and further inside Zoro’s chest. A gradual type of fall, even if the landing was still rough. Grimacing, Zoro thinks about the landing, which is inevitable. He’s not subtle, as is evident by everyone's looks . Usopp and Luffy giggling at the table like children every time the swordsman gets up to help with dishes. It’s past the point of embarrassing.
Obvious as it is, the cook doesn't let on that he knows how Zoro feels. Either he’s dense enough to not actually notice, or he’s giving his sparring partner a courteous blinde eye. Whichever it is, the swordsman is grateful to be able to continue on, watching and wanting, until he's told to stop.
They continue going to islands and overthrowing governments. This time they do it for Robin, and a shipwright, and Usopp. They say, louder than any god every could, fuck you, they’re ours. From the top of a tower they yell this is what nakama is . This is what our family does.
And it's nice for a while. It's good. Sanji wears short sleeves on hot days, and Zoro doesn't bother with attempts at not looking. There's a still-healing cut near his elbow, pink and delicate looking, despite how tough the man is. As if even an injury can look soft on the cook. Hopelessly, Zoro thinks about running his fingers up to its edge, leaning in and-
They sail to a place called Thriller Bark, and Zoro learns the exact extent of his love. How it takes shape on Sanji in a bruise. How it takes shape on Zoro in sacrifice.
-
He’s had a dream before, where Sanji is bent over him, sewing his chest back together. He knows it's not a memory, because in this dream, Sanji finishes his work and then places one warm, careful hand right over where Zoro’s heart beats. And they stay like that for a long time, watching each other, as the cook claims what was always his.
Waking with a start, and then a cough, and then a groan, Zoro finds himself alive and in Chopper’s care, not the blonde’s. There's a lot of commotion over it, because apparently he’d been out for a few days and that wasn't good. More importantly than all that, Sanji is pissed .
He practically throws the soup he has to deliver, stomping out without a backwards glance, silently fuming. Zoro hobbles out of bed, making it as far as the threshold of the galley before Chopper tosses him back in bed.
“You’re such a fucking asshole.” is the first thing the cook says to him after days of seething silence.
Zoro doesn't say anything for a moment. He’s been noticing a few changes since he woke up- something about the near-death experience making him see colors just a little brighter. Now, he drinks his fill of Sanji, and the way he looks beautiful in a new light. Even tired, with his shirt creased and brow furrowed.
“I’m in love with you.” Is the way Zoro decides to respond to that.
Sanji has one second of confusion, then surprise, as he’s yanked by the end of his tie into a frankly awful kiss. Their teeth hit each other, and Sanji accidentally jabs his elbow into Zoro’s ribs, which, in his injured state, is very painful. It doesn't stop the kiss from being the best Zoro’s ever had, and he thinks the kick he’s about to get won't change that either.
The kick doesn't come though. Instead, Sanji gets on the bed , knees carefully framing the swordsman’s sides, and tilts his head to make the kiss something far from awful.
“Such a fucking asshole-” Sanji says each word between kisses, words harsh and low even if his actions are careful. He kisses Zoro with an intenseness that wants rough, hard pressure, but holds back. Zoro grips the back of the already rumpled button up, making sure to express very clearly that the cook isn't allowed to go.
Chopper walks in on them just as Zoro starts thinking about the convenience of already being in a bed, the reindeer screaming his head off about internal injuries. Sanji is effectively cowed, and, horribly, shooed out of the room.
Zoro falls out of bed trying to follow him, and the doctor sedates him.
-
No one seems surprised when Zoro very openly closes the distance between him and Sanji. He presses himself right next to the other man when they’re sitting down, and trails him no more than one step behind into the galley. He takes Sanji’s hand in his when he’s close, and doesn't let go. The blonde seems taken aback by it all.
But Zoro’s seen death twice now, and he understands too well how fleeting everything is. He wants to take what he can while he can, and so when Sanji so much as glances at him, Zoro is there, taking opportunity. Wrapping his arms around the cooks slim waist from behind, watching him stir vegetables, or do dishes, or cut fruit.
The scar on Sanji’s back is a small, perfect line. It sits low on his back, no more than the length of a finger. The bruise on his stomach that Zoro left has faded to an upset yellow, and when the swordsman kisses it in apology he barely touches it. There is also a spot near his collarbone, and Zoro remembers this injury that became a scar- a bullet that almost landed, and a gunman who died by Wado’s blade. On Sanji’s calves are the most scars; little lines that hide in plain sight, and Zoro kisses all of those, too. He presses his lips to that one burn mark on the inside of the cook’s wrist, like he’s always wanted to.
And then he kisses the places where there weren't scars, but there were injuries. His throat where blades had been. His chest where canons had been aimed. His arms where enemies had tried to grab. The spots no one saw, maybe not even Sanji himself, but Zoro knew from watching in battle. He has been called to worship in this way, and so he kneels gladly.
Sanji seems just as keen to touch- to place his hands where his hands had once been. Tracing the line on his chest like he’s trying to memorize every curve.
“Chopper’s work would have been cleaner.” Sanji murmurs.
Zoro lifts one pale hand in his grasp, kisses the fingers gently.
“I like that it was you.”
Blue eyes rise to meet his, something so tender in them it nearly sweeps Zoro away.
“I love you too, marimo.”
He falls asleep to the cook stoking his hair, talking in a quiet, sweet voice about the markets of the upcoming island. Someplace called Sarbody.
-
Two years do not come and go gently. They are painful, dragging things that hurt at every opportunity. They are long, and not to be defeated by anything other than patience, and so Zoro trains and waits and waits.
Mostly though, he remembers. He closes his now singular eye and traces in memory the lines on Sanji’s shins. The cracked skin on some of his toes. An almost perfect ‘x’ on one knee. Zoro can replay entire events based on the evidential scars on the cook’s body- entire islands that led to a single starburst mark. The difference in a pre-Chopper stitch and a post.
Touching his own scarred eye, he wondered if there would be many new marks on the cook as well. It’s a terrible thing, to imagine missing these pieces of history happening, but not the worst. After all, Zoro will find them all and learn them all. He’ll sit on Sunny’s lawn with his head in Sanji’s lap, hold his arm and go tell me about this one, and this one, and that one. He’ll look up at the cook’s face and see something so gentle it’ll run him through, and he’ll fall in love for the hundredth thousandth time.
-
Sometimes he marvels over a time before Sanji- at a place in his life when he lived without what he now had. At entire stretches of years where he thought solitary life was for him, and softness could not reach his skin. It’d taken no more than a touch to realize that the tenderness given to him was a gift beyond everything he’d known.
No one had ever touched him gently before. And why would they- pirate hunter, demon of the east, first mate to a future king- he looked every part the man who did not know gentleness. But Sanji is gentle with him, is patient, is deliberate in the way he holds Zoro’s jaw like he is holding something made of glass. He reads how these things are still new for the swordsman, how they can be startling and maybe even frightening. How it makes Zoro pliant just by the slightest graze of fingertips. And maybe Zoro had always needed this; both someone to treat him softly, and someone who allowed that softness returned. A place to fall into after bloodshed, where, clean and warm, Sanji already had his arms open. Where pirate hunter did not exist- only Zoro .
Sanji leans forward, brushing his lips along the new line where Zoro’s eye had once been. One hand slips into the swordsman’s, and the other is placed above the scarred chest. His lips continue on, to Zoro’s brow, then his ear.
“I missed you so much it hurt.” He whispers, right next to the three gold earrings. Zoro squeezes his hand.
He has 2 years worth of love congested in his throat and chest, and it makes it hard to swallow. In another place, in another time, he might have cried over the sheer amount he was feeling. Turning his head, Zoro leans in to kiss the spot just above Sanji’s cheek, nearly shaking.
He lifts Sanji’s wrist, finds the familiar dot of too-pale skin, and brushes his lips to it. Like a promise. Like love, gentle and lasting.
-
Love hurts. He’s known this, of course- what with the heartache of wanting what he thought he couldn't have. But somehow it hurts even more to have and then not to have, because he’s gotten a taste of what it was like. It's a wound that will not scar, will not even close, really. It just- stays open. Bleeding.
But Sanji does come back to them the way Luffy promised, and that means everything. It means the world even if the stars and moon are still missing. Zoro stands in an outside sort of space, where he is nakama, but unsure if he’s anything more. He’d say out loud that he could get used to that again, live his life without mapping his way across Sanji’s skin under lantern light, but it’d be a barely passable lie. It’d be easier to give up water. To give up food.
Fighting is what he does best, so he fights. Gets himself well and fucked up in a few different ways honestly. It feels kind of good. Not as good as fighting the cook, but at least like this there’s a place for the hurt to go.
He dreams, feverish and aching from blood loss, about Sanji. Of course he does. The way his hair looks in sunlight. The way he smells sweet after baking. The look in his eye when Zoro tells him he loves him. There is a scar behind his ear, hidden by his hair, and Zoro only found it by accident really. Woke up in the rare early hours before even the cook had stirred, their legs intertwined on the spare futon in the galley. And it was such a tiny, insignificant little thing, but he knew all the tiny insignificant things about the cook, had kissed every one of those small, unimportant marks. Had given his love to them, and counted them, and memorized them. His love was still there, under Sanji’s skin, living side by side with every scar, trying to keep warm.
Touching his chest, he imagines the cook’s love stuck inside him, impossible to be returned. It's a comfort, to think he has this thing in him, even if Sanji feels differently. A love that becomes a treasure, in a place where there had once been pain.
-
He holds Sanji's wrists delicately, examining.
If they’re careful, and apply the ointment Chopper gave them, the marks from the cuffs will fade. Sanji thinks he deserves them- of course he does. Zoro could tell him he’s an idiot for the rest of his life and it still wouldn’t knock sense into him. As if his worth could be anything less than the sun's light and the sky’s size.
Maybe some pain is just too much. Everyone has a limit, and Zoro doesn't want to see Sanji reach his. That’s why he remembers to check the condition of the cooks pale skin every day, all the time. For once, be the one to tend to his wounds.
“I can do it myself.” Sanji says, probably the 6th time. Zoro doesn’t even respond.
Instead he dabs the bandages with the ointment, wrapping slow and careful motions around and around. He secures the right, then the left, and then he kisses both hands because he’s not one for praying.
“Why are you being like this?” He says, and Zoro can only blink at that.
What else would he be like? Angry? He’d been angry, but he’d been angry because he was sad and hurt. And then he saw that Sanji was sad and hurt, had been for a long time probably. Had grown up with plenty of that in his bones like it's be fed to him by the gallon.
If Luffy had taught Zoro anything it was the lesson of nakama. It was understanding how significant it was to share a burden. That bringing your own people to a fight makes you invincible and that fighting for yourself isn’t nearly as rewarding as fighting for someone. So he took all his sad and hurt and then he took some of Sanjis sad and hurt and decided to lift it. Decided to tend to it and wrap it in clean, dry bandage.
“Because I love you.” He replies, simple as the truth is.
Sanji bites hard at his own lip, looking away. “That doesn't excuse what I did.”
“I’m not excusing it. I’m accepting it.” The swordsman lifts a hand, gently tilting the cook’s face back to his own. “The same way I accepted all of you to love. Even the stupid stuff.”
Sanji blinks rapidly, the sheen of his visible eye telling. An unsteady, but genuine smile pushes at the corners of his mouth, and he leans into Zoro’s hand.
“I love all your stupid stuff too, marimo.”
Lifting the cook’s wrist again, Zoro presses his lips to the bandage there. Where something is finally healing.
-
After Kaido, after the 20 or 30 something broken bones, they start the count all over again. From head to toe, looking for where scars would form right beside the old, known marks.
“You’re going to be more scar than skin if you keep this up.” Sanji says, unlit cigarette nearly falling from his mouth. He runs a calloused finger along Zoro’s collar bone, and the swordsman thinks he’d be fine dying from something so tender.
Sanji had sewed him up, just a little, since Chopper and Law had been who knows where. A few places on his arms and torso. Zoro thinks of them as something like fingerprints.
“Whenever I see this,” The cook says, drawing his knuckles down the thick line on Zoro’s chest. “I think about how you changed my life. Right from the start.”
I think about how you reached inside me and pulled something out, Zoro thinks. I think about my blood on your fingers, my life in your hands.
“It's always been yours.” He replies, softly. Holding Sanji’s hand to his chest, over his scar. Over his heart.