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Davy Backs are a joke. But they’re a fun joke.
“Look at these legs,” Foxy sneers. Zoro’s starting to like the guy, like some sort of testament to their ongoing explorations.
He was like a breathing memorabilia in sorts, perhaps.
And that red nose was growing on him.
Foxy, insistent on beating them, was the pillow between the darker mights of the world. He was the softer bits of fun they needed sometimes.
He allowed them to forget the intricacies of the government and all things terrible.
Luffy huffs, arms folded.
As if Foxy could beat them at a kicking contest. Truly the man must be at his wits end, or scheming something comedically clever.
The newest crew member he’d won two fights ago had legs throbbing in muscle, thighs thick from excess weight training. He was a good looking fellow, but he was out of his league.
“The cook’s are better,” Zoro mumbles through a mouthful of rice, sitting there betwixt Robin and Franky in the grass, Chopper chewing through a sweets bag in his lap.
Sanji twitches in his direction, smoke slack at the compliment. Luffy smiles. “Hell yeah he’s better! Sanji can kick twice as hard and twice as fast!”
“Strawhat, this is a contest of speed and precision. Roma here is from the long-leg tribe,” Foxy grins, Porsche giggling behind her gloved hands, “there ain’t nobody in this world that can beat a long-legged man!”
Robin smiles obligingly. “What’s the game?”
She’d beaten him in the first round in a battle of terminology. They’d recovered some sort of professor, had thought him the smartest in the world. Robin had smiled obligingly then as well.
The second round hadn’t gone as smoothly.
“Speed and precision! That over there,” he points at his far-flung ship, at a speck just atop it now being shifted about by his crew, “that’s the Power Ralley 3.0! Fastest ball shooting machine in the Grand Line! Your cook must deflect every ball and knock them into the barrels beside him. Each ball is a point, and every time he gets hit, a point is deducted. Every wasted ball is a point deducted. One leg only, switching or dropping the leg is a point deducted!”
He seems utterly pleased with himself, grin wide and bright.
“Seems like the game is more fouls than it is wins,” Nami says accusingly. “So what, he’s just going to stand there on one leg and try not to get pelted? Your man has a longer reach!”
“Cook’s legs are plenty long, quit your whining,” Zoro snaps though his food, waving the navigator off. “Stop making excuses for him and let’s get on with it.”
He doesn’t think it’s such an odd thing to say, not even when he thinks back on it later. But Usopp tilts his head a bit and the shitty cook just kind of stares at him.
“Well? C’mon, we gotta win Brook back right? Let’s get going, I wanna drink.”
The cook clicks his tongue, grumbling about stupid plants and the crowd ignites with cheer as that machine is rolled across the lawn, large barrels situated on either side of the two contestants.
Sanji balances on his good leg, hands calmly placated by the fabric of his pockets.
The other man stands four heads taller just past him.
“C’mon Sanji,” Luffy cries out, hands cupping his mouth, “you got this!”
Brook laughs in nervous excitement. “Mister cook, I’m terribly excited to come back. Good luck!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sanji mutters, puffing out a few streams of smoke.
Zoro plops down once more beside Franky, who’d concocted himself a lawn chair from the splintered wood of the second round. Chopper clambers atop the cyborg’s lap instead this time, Robin watching intently with Nami, though she lacked the concentrated creases of the navigator's face.
Luffy and Usopp bellow about still, waving flags before they’re shushed by that bastard referee.
The hush builds, and Zoro watches Sanji, watches him as he stands there taut and still. And then something shifts, and he realizes the cook is glancing at him. He barely has time to deflect that ball, grunting as it skims the rim of the barrel and balances away, rolling along the green.
“And the Strawhat’s cook Sanji starts off in the negative— ouch! What a way to begin the match!”
Nami cries out in agitation, Luffy frowning accusingly as Zoro hollers— “What the hell cook! Pay attention!”
Sanji bites back whatever he’s about to say, grumbling all the while.
He seems to take out his anger on the next one, nearly busting the bolted wood of the other barrel with the force of his kick. The rounds shoot off faster with each succession, going from one ball to three in no time.
The cook never fails to best himself, never fails to grow alongside Zoro.
Zoro thinks it would be kinda lonely if he did.
There’s something about watching him there, his jaw a bit rougher, his shoulders wider, his hair wilder. He’s grown, and Zoro admires that.
He enjoyed watching them, watching Chopper morph about with a smile, watching Usopp pluck his slingshot proudly, Franky with his constant surprises bottled up in those shiny new arms of his.
So watching Sanji there, legs flinging about with deadly, black accuracy, polished shoes glinting in the sun, it gave him reason to work harder.
He would always appreciate the bastard for that, for not being left behind and leaving Zoro alone.
Sanji’s eyes glance at him once more, though he seems to be fighting it.
“Mister cook,” Robin calls out in good humor, “you’re so flexible.”
Zoro snorts, Chopper clapping his little hooves. “And so strong,” the little reindeer adds on with a squeak, “our Sanji is the best!”
Sanji bite down on his smoke in a happy laugh, tapping three balls away successively.
Zoro’s got his elbow to his knee and his chin to his palm, watching those artful legs weave about in slim motions— he stops a ball only to balance it atop the toe of his shoe, flicking it into a barrel.
“Now you’re just showing off,” Zoro smiles a little, and the cook glances at him once more.
“For the ladies, of course,” Sanji retorts easily.
The machine starts to rev, and soon enough a torrent of blurs assault them, the long-legged man talented still as he fished a good few of them with clever hooks of the feet, missing others. Zoro watches as Sanji balances on that one leg, breathing a bit heavier now and he might be swearing under his breath, lips moving minutely.
“The cook is handsome like this,” Robin says beside him, in good humor, “don’t you think? Doing what he does best?”
“I think I like cook-bro’s cooking a bit more than I like his legs,” Franky laughs.
“Hm,” she seems to hum in consideration, “sure, but seeing him out there, in a competition of manly honor— seeing him hold himself so well against an opponent with a natural born advantage, it’s a good look to him, don’t you think?”
Overcoming the law of natural selection. Zoro can understand. So he doesn’t hold back his agreement, though it might not be in words. Robin seems to understand well enough.
“Though, I must say, he looks even better when he’s given in.”
Zoro furrows his brow at that, watching the woman as she continued on. “Kuma all those years ago, he’d forced Sanji to give in. I might’ve not have seen it, but from what our dear musician says, it was a very good look to him.”
Zoro frowns. “What are you getting at?”
She smiles, eyes wrinkling. “Can’t you remember, swordsman? The way he’d looked then, in desperation, in resignation, in acceptance.”
Robin was a caricature of bad fairytales, a woman he loved in friendship and battle, but an oddity all the same. She leaves him with one last thought before the round is called.
“He accepted that if he were to ever die, it’d be for you.”
“He was doing it for the captain,” Zoro says through the whistle.
“The captain has you, will always have you. And so you will always have Sanji.”
“Well woulda look at this,” the flying announcer shrieks, “they’re out there counting the balls now— it looks like a close call folks!”
Zoro doesn’t need to hear it. So he uncorks the liquor and allows Brook to sob into his drink when he’s released.
Foxy takes it all in good stride, hanging about for a bit as Luffy digs into his emergency food supply.
“Entertained?”
Sanji’s shadow looms over him, Zoro cocking a brow up at him mid-drink. “Huh?”
“You were trying to throw me off you pickled bastard, weren’t you? Looking at me like you were!”
Looking at him like what?
Sanji huffs, kicking grass at him before making to stalk off towards the food stalls— but Zoro grasps his leg, taking another quick swig. “Get back here and talk straight.”
Robin entertains the doctor, Franky balancing Brook atop his shoulder.
Zoro can feel that leg muscle twitch beneath his hand, and it interests him suddenly. So he grabs just a bit higher, and Sanji is growling, yanking it away only to plop down alongside him irately.
“So what you drinking there, bastard,” he says instead.
Zoro offers him the bottle.
Sanji’s thighs seem to flex from exertion, and Zoro absently reaches over to feel them. Sanji stills, bottle pressed to his mouth as he watches Zoro curiously.
“I’m impressed, cook,” Zoro’s saying, “you sure can pack a lot of muscle in there, huh?”
"How the hell do you think I go about crushing skulls like I do,” Sanji seems to catch himself.
Zoro leans into his space, brow furrowed. Chopper had been redirecting Zoro’s exercises after a few concerns about his momentum between swings.
“What do you do?”
“I—” Sanji swallows, lowering the drink, “like workout? I don’t do anything special, just, probably same as you. Zoro—”
He’s red, why is he red? Zoro peers up into his face, frowning.
“You can stop with the hands now, you bastard,” the cook mutters.
Zoro doesn’t really feel like backing off. In fact, he feels the licks of a challenge bubbling up. So he tugs on Sanji’s legs, moving him ever so closer, the cook grabbing at the swordsman’s shoes as they dig into his thighs, their knees knocking.
“I’ll stop when I feel like it,” he counters childishly.
“You bastard, it’s my body!”
Zoro gives him a slant grin.
“According to Robin it’s actually kinda mine.”
That stops Sanji, his brow furrowed.
“Robin—? How the fuck do you figure that?”
Zoro’s hands find themselves higher, up where the flesh was soft and warm on the inside of those thighs. The noise of the festivities just beyond the field grow, fire crackling in the daytime sky.
“She said you’d die for me, cook, so that means I own you in a way, don’t it?”
Sanji wets his lips, leaning back still so as to not be too close.
“My lovely swan reads too much fiction.”
“Or maybe she reads too much into a situation,” Zoro snorts somewhat agreeingly.
A shadow looms over the both of them then, Robin smiling down eerily upon their forms. “What was that?”
Zoro holds tight onto Sanji before he gets any funny ideas about flailing away from him. Robin laughs cheerily then, and Sanji kicks Zoro’s cot that night before bed angrily, face flushed.
“All that power bottled up in such slim shapes,” Robin says from over her book. Zoro swabs his sword in oil, ignoring her odd words.
“Power that he’s garnered from years of training and abuse. What would it be like, I wonder, to hold that power in one’s hands? To be able to control something another has worked so hard to hone? To have them willingly give such dedication away at a mere touch?”
She’s just as witchy as the navigator. Zoro frowns at his reflection in the metal.
“To be able to make such things quiver in weakness—”
Zoro taps the cotton against the blade— witchy, witchy woman.
“Zoro!”
The first mate gives him a look that warns him against any noise. The aquarium light has been dialed down low, a muted blue that reflect the mild light of the moon in the window.
All is quiet.
Zoro’s hunched over the cook, one hand pushing up on a thigh until Sanji is forced onto his back.
“I swear I’ll have your fucking balls battered up on a plate if you don’t fucking explain yourself right this minute!”
How easily he could move them, how soft they were under his fingers. “They’re strong in a fight,” he murmurs, Sanji stilling so as to listen, “but so pliant in a bed.”
Sanji’s breathing a bit harder now, suddenly, eyes on him. And then he mutters, albeit hesitantly: “This isn’t a bed.”
Zoro leans over him, pushing against his leg further as he does so, loving the tautness of the muscles as the knee folds compliantly over Zoro’s shoulder. “And yet still here we are.”
Sanji’d give his life for him, he’d give him control of a power he’d meticulously cultivated from necessity and painful endurance. Zoro’s eye sharpens on the cook.
Sanji’s flush now, nails digging into the red cushion below him. “Zoro,” he breathes, “if this is some sort of control kink I won’t be happy, I won’t be used like this—”
“No,” Zoro laughs softly, lips on those below him, smiling against that parted mouth, “no, this is just me, realizing that I’d give you all the same damn things. You can have my head even if it costs me my ambition, can have my swords even if it costs me my dream. You can give it as good as you can take it, right cook? You’ve been like that since day one. So take it. Give me your strength, and I’ll give you mine. Do whatever you want with it.”
That shuts him right up, throat bobbing from the force of his thoughts. Zoro’s fingers knead into the flesh, wanting nothing more than to remove the expensive fabric that stretched across it so tauntingly. He bites softly there, nuzzling into the heat. Sanji’s breathing hiccups in surprise, hands finding short tufts of green.
“What’s gotten into you,” is all he can manage to grit out, tugging a bit as Zoro backs off, only to peel at his shirt. Sanji is down there, looking for the world like he’s already been ravaged, hair mussed and lips wet.
“Shit,” Sanji picks at his own jacket, nimbly snapping through the buttons as he partially hefts himself up to toss it. “Okay, fine. We’re doing this then,” he rambles nervously. “We’re doing this,” he repeats once more.
Zoro tries not to tackle him in amusement, but he kinda does anyway, tugging at those pants until it’s only warm flesh and hard muscle beneath him.
He licks at it, those witchy words in his head still. Such power bottled up beneath his hands, and it wasn’t even his, though he held this much control over it. He bites skin and soothes it over with his tongue, Sanji whimpering as he shifts about constantly, Zoro’s name on his lips in quiet gasps.
“Cook,” Zoro growls against the other's tented boxers, “what do you say?”
“Yeah,” Sanji seems to understand him perfectly well, and Zoro likes that, he really does. “Yeah, completely yours.”
Zoro mouths at the warm fabric, Sanji groaning, muffling himself against a pillow as he holds it against his face, breathing it in every time Zoro runs his tongue teasingly along the length of those striped boxers.
“Me too,” Zoro murmurs, fingers dipping below the waistband as he tugs those off too. “I’ll give you all my strength right here,” he says, “I’ll give you everything I got, shitty cook, just you.”
Sanji’s sobbing into that damned pillow when Zoro twists his fingers inside, knees caging Zoro in with a quivering strength that has Zoro unsteady with pure want.
“Fuck, just—” Sanji swallows, “just do it already!”
Zoro has no way to really ease it in, Sanji biting into the pillow as he claws at Zoro’s arms. His legs are all muscle now, strung so tight that Zoro can see the definition of all that hard work in the shifting shadows of the aquarium.
“So fucking gorgeous,” Zoro grunts, thrusting in as Sanji cries out. “Look at you like this, Blackleg Sanji, spreading his famous legs for a swordsman from nowhere.”
Sanji huffs amidst the groaning. “The first mate of the future Pirate King’s got his dick inside the ship’s cook. That sounds like a far more interesting sto—” his words stutter with an especially hard thrust, one that he swore scraped his inner most being, “story,” he manages to breath out, glancing down at the man with a heavy gaze.
“Stupid fucker,” Sanji breathes, “ain’t got no right looking as good as you do right now. Shouldn’t be so hot, having some jackass inside me like this— but shit, Zoro, Zoro I can’t, I can’t even fucking think straight shit.”
Zoro picks up speed, a wet echo that drowns the sounds of the tank beside them. Sanji grapples for anything to hold onto, crying out though he did his damnedest to keep quiet. Zoro hunches over him, dragging his dick out before shoving in as deep as he can, Sanji moaning out a beautifully explicit curse as Zoro grunts his appreciation at the warm release that floods his veins.
“You bastard,” Sanji’s legs seem to twitch tiredly, “you came inside. Feels fucking strange.”
Zoro tugs at a flushed ear with his teeth, muttering a small mine that shuts the cook up, Sanji following softly after.
The cook and the swordsman, the strongest men in the future Pirate King’s crew.
Completely weak against each other.
“My my,” Robin flips a page, “aren’t we just simply glowing today.”
She glances up at the swordsman, the sun warm on the deck.
Zoro heaves another weight.
If he was going to give the cook all of himself, then he’d better make sure he was equivalent to the cook’s weight in worth.