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Luffy sits and waits for Zoro, which is unusual.
His presence in the crow’s nest during Zoro’s training regimen is not uncommon. In fact, Luffy has been an increasingly frequent workout partner. While the repetitiveness of weightlifting is torture to Luffy’s attention span, he often shadowboxes—and that’s the only word Zoro has to describe the erratic noodle moves Luffy will occasionally practice while Zoro works with his weights. It doesn’t have the disciplined, meditative feeling of a kata. And while it involves a lot of fantastical combinations and looks goofy as hell, it’s also not quite playing, either, because Luffy really is thinking through moves and how to push and manipulate his body.
(It took Zoro seeing Gear Second in the fight against Oars to finally understand what all of that dumbass-looking sumo squatting and frog jumping had been about after Luffy’s encounter with Aokiji.)
Sparring sessions have multiplied since the Sunny became part of their crew. They cannot pit themselves full tilt against each other on the ship, and part of Zoro craves that. Luffy is an always-adapting opponent—strong, fast, and brutal before he even developed his gears. It’s impossible to have the same fight twice with him, and Zoro is itching to fight against Gear Second, to submerge completely in instinct and bloodthirst because he won’t have time to think with something that fast coming at him. Instead, Zoro relegates himself to one sword and Luffy sticks to close combat. The spars are still savage—the little bastard has used his teeth more than once—and leave Zoro bruised and aching but sharpened.
Even more often, Luffy exercises only nominally while he talks Zoro’s fucking ear off. He fills him in on what everyone did on the ship while he was napping or training before entertaining him with some eccentric fusion of about five different stories or memories (Zoro can never tell which) and at least three highly detailed recountings of meals he’s had either earlier in the day or ten years ago. He doesn’t mind it, even likes letting Luffy’s voice and words sit on his ears like a balm on his skin while he slides through his self-developed kata.
The point is, Luffy always barges in and occupies every last bit of space, filling Zoro’s head with bright chaos.
He doesn’t sit against the wall and watch Zoro workout with quiet expectation.
Zoro ignores him. He knows his captain well enough to suspect that his unusual behavior is related to the aftermath of Thriller Bark. And, well, nothing happened.
Still, Luffy’s presence buzzes in the back of his mind with every weighted squat jump and agonizing chest press. When he’s doing one-armed rows, he feels Luffy’s eyes pinprick between his shoulder blades. When he does a plank—something that usually has Luffy gleefully running and jumping onto his back—Luffy’s silent regard is like a rope at his throat.
(He can’t stand it, not with the echoes of Luffy’s pain and fatigue singing in his blood and tattooing the underside of his skin. To have Luffy shredding him with his gaze while the memory of his agony balloons against Zoro’s ribs until he feels like he might split from the inside out, he can’t bear it.
But he does bear it, because there’s nothing to bear. Because nothing happened.)
“Do you want to spar today?” Zoro prompts eventually, trying too hard not to let the tension in his jaw and shoulders be heard in his voice.
“No.”
The short answer, neither happy nor angry, is almost as unsettling as the relentless waiting.
Zoro sighs, drops from his plank and to his back for sit-ups—
—pain erupts like fire, like concussive force and the cold-hot sensation of a sharp, sharp blade sliding his skin open and it hurts, it hurts—
—he breathes through the pain and, worse, the memory—
—ruined buildings and green grass, the smell of earth above everything, the taste of copper on his tongue and red, red, red bobbing like a curious balloon before him—
—he breathes through the fear.
(He will never, ever be strong enough to protect them, to hold them close enough so they don’t fall, and he will never be strong enough to keep his promises—)
(“You got a problem with that, Pirate King?”)
“Not going to tell me what you had for your snack?” He asks and pretends like he’s panting from talking and not from forcing his body into oblique crunches.
He’s trembling, muscles spasming, wounds pulsing hot and feverish with his racing heartbeat but he can’t stop—to stop is to die and he has to get stronger.
“Mm,” Luffy says, dismissive. Zoro sighs, resigned, because Luffy is never dismissive about food. He closes his eyes.
Red, red, red—bobbing curiously like a balloon, like a lure on the water, right before it hooks into Zoro’s mouth and pulls him red and screaming from the shell of his body until there’s nothing left but hollowed-out promises—
He opens his eyes. They scratch and burn. He’s so tired.
(Every time he closes his eyes he sees red. Every time he closes his eyes the song in his blood gets louder and louder.)
“Heard Twirly bleating about some sort of fruit smoothie from here.”
“Mm,” Luffy hums again, followed by a, “yeah”.
And that pisses Zoro off, he’s been pissed off. He wants to be even angrier at Luffy’s vigilant presence, he wants to rage at it, let a little bit of the red, red, red inside of him pour out and burn. What right did Luffy have? How dare he come in here and—and—expect Zoro to just—
Well. He doesn’t know, does he? What Luffy wants, what he expects of Zoro, here, in this moment. And Zoro has no intention of asking. He sighs, and decides to stand. He’ll swing the weights, practice his sword strikes. So he can be faster.
(Faster than a hand that can repel everything.)
He gets to his feet without showing too much weakness. His wounds stretch and he tastes blood behind his teeth but that’s—that’s a normal feeling, these past couple of days. He can no longer tell if it’s real or a memory, or if the flavor of Luffy’s pain will always fill his mouth until there’s no room left for Wado Ichimonji between his teeth.
It goes a little sideways when he takes a step towards his weights. Literally. The crow’s nest tilts and his stomach lurches. His face goes cold and clammy and red, red, red washes through his head, behind his eyes, and his vision goes dark with a buzzing he can taste. He’s going to fall and, no, he can’t fall—
—if he falls, he dies. He knows this with every last shred of his consciousness and sanity. He can’t fall, even when the red, red, red immolates him. He can’t even bend his knees—
He’s falling anyway, can feel it even if he can’t quite see it. His arm flails out, grasping for anything because he cannot fall, he’ll die if he falls and there are too many promises to keep—
Luffy catches him.
It’s a gentle hold—because Luffy is capable of crushing kindness. Zoro doesn’t know what he does next, time slouches together in the red water buzz in his head. But he becomes aware again standing in the middle of the crow’s nest with Luffy insinuated against his side, one of Zoro’s arms slung over his shoulders, and his knees folding as he puts his entire weight on Luffy.
Luffy doesn’t fall. He doesn’t even bend.
“I can stand,” Zoro mumbles. “I won’t fall.”
“I know that,” Luffy says firmly. “Zoro is strong.”
(He will never, ever be strong enough to protect them, to hold them close enough so they don’t fall—)
“I can walk.”
“You are walking,” Luffy points out because Zoro is, technically, walking as they make their way to the bench. His toes drag the floor, his legs too tired and drained to do much else. He’s relying entirely on Luffy to keep him upright and moving.
Zoro grunts because what else is there to say? Arguing with Luffy is a pastime in redundancy. And it’s not like Zoro can say what’s really on his mind—
(your touch is red, red, red and it’s licking into my skin, meeting up with the echoes of your pain still knocking around inside of me, and I’m scared you’ll press on me on all sides until I’m nothing but a shell, until I disappear completely into you, I’m scared that I won’t mind that)
(I’m tired and I’ll never tell you what happened, because nothing happened, this is just the duty I owe, the oath I swore and nothing more, nothing happened, butt out and mind your own fucking business)
—yeah. It’s not like he can say any of that. Or, he could. But he’s not sure if he wants to. And he’s so, so tired.
His legs give out right as Luffy’s helping him sit on the couch, so it’s more like a poorly-controlled crash. Everything is sore, everything burns. It pulses through him like a heartbeat, until he feels like he’s made up of pain and agony rather than flesh and bone. He hunches over, swallowing back a gasp, swallowing back a choked-off scream.
(There’s nothing to scream about because nothing happened.)
Hands hold onto his shoulders, push them down from around his ears, forcing them to relax. His body spasms, igniting a chain reaction of pain and red, that’s all he can take. He’s going to split open before Luffy, muscles and sinew are going to unravel like a gory thread at Luffy’s feet and Luffy will see, he’ll see that there’s nothing left inside, not even anger, just red, red—
“Zoro.”
Air rushes into his lungs like he’s been drowning. He breathes and shudders through it, swaying forward like he’s going to hurl, like he’s going to pass out, but he does neither of those things because his head bumps against the soft, tender flesh of Luffy’s lower belly. Luffy’s hand cups the back of his neck, fingers idly massaging into the ridges of his skull. The pain doesn’t lessen, but the hurricane of confusion and red and panic starts to recede from the damaged edges of his consciousness.
He matches his breath with Luffy’s. In and out, slow and steady, until the blood beat of his drumming heart drains from his ears and hushes in his wrecked, trembling chest.
Inhaling one more time, he lets it out, and he almost feels normal. He almost feels like nothing happened. His body is a study in pain, but that’s not new—he’s walked beside it for years now, even more frequently in the past several months ever since he was tied up on that cross and a boy with a pretty smile stepped out of the rippling sun like a mirage.
Luffy tugs gently but insistently until Zoro tilts his chin to look Luffy in the eyes, face framed by rough, scarred fingers. His earrings clink and chime as they roll over the curve of Luffy’s hand.
It’s unbearably intimate—unbearably gentle. Zoro hates needing the gentleness, hates that it soothes the echoes of Luffy’s pain inside him. Luffy’s eyes are wide as he studies Zoro, shining such a rich dark brown it makes his weary mind think of a warm glass of stout ale. He absently licks his lips, searching for a taste.
“You haven’t told me what happened,” Luffy says.
Zoro swallows, mouth too dry to say it again. Nothing happened.
“So, you probably don’t want to.”
Luffy’s hands, his scent, his skin surrounds him. Press on him and suffocate him. But this time, he doesn’t feel like he’s losing himself in another’s being. He just feels anchored, kept in place so he can watch the hurricane pass him by without it sweeping him along.
“Zoro is strong,” Luffy says and Zoro wants to laugh. He’s too tired. He wants to fall back into the bruises of his sleepless eyes and sleep—
—Red, red, red bobs like a curious balloon in front of him and he knows if he touches it, the balloon will sink inside him, keep expanding, press him until he’s a thin imitation of himself, and he will never be strong enough—
(If he can make a cut to get the red to pour out, will there be anything left?)
“You are strong,” Luffy says again. “And I know you did something that I couldn’t do.”
Zoro stays silent. His throat is too tight to talk, and besides, there’s nothing to talk about.
Luffy doesn’t look disappointed, or pitying. His expression doesn’t change at all. He looks at Zoro the same way he always does—with trust and confidence, with a smile crinkling the corner of his eyes even when it doesn’t stretch the corners of his mouth. He knows Zoro, it feels like he’s known Zoro from the inside out the first time he laid eyes on him while Zoro still fumbles to learn all of the surprising turns in Luffy’s character.
Like now, Luffy seems as unknowable as the depths of the sea. He’s not pushing for answers, though Zoro hadn’t thought he would. But he’s also not giving Zoro any space. He came to Zoro, he waited for him, and that’s Zoro’s role—to be pulled into Luffy’s orbit, to always find him.
“You’re hurt,” and here, Luffy’s voice cracks, just a little, even though his expression doesn’t. “You’re still hurting.”
“I always get better,” Zoro finds himself saying, voice so raspy it sounds like a whisper.
Luffy’s fingers tighten around his head. “You always get stronger.”
And there’s that faith in Zoro that he doesn’t deserve.
(He’ll never be strong enough to protect them all, much less reach his ambition—)
But, he supposes, just this once, like so many times before, he can trust Luffy’s faith. Let it fill him up in the absence of his own. Zoro’s already carrying his captain’s pain. What’s the burden of a little bit of hope to him?
Luffy must see something break in his expression—Zoro doesn’t know what or how, it feels like he’s been frozen for ages, too tired to even blink—because he lets go of Zoro’s face. He keeps one hand cupped to the side of his neck, fingers idly scratching at the hairline at the base of his skull, and Zoro’s too wrung out to stop himself from leaning against that hand.
He blinks, and it’s all too heavy, his head is too heavy. Before he knows it, he’s leaning forward, head resting against Luffy’s stomach again. It’s embarrassing, it feels too vulnerable and weak in a way he can’t describe, but—
Luffy’s alive, he’s alive and awake and breathing, and Zoro’s somehow alive, too, and he can’t tear himself away. He hates the red singing in his blood, hates the buzz of fear in his head. But he doesn’t regret it, not when he can press his ear against Luffy and hear his heartbeat.
Luffy snickers, seriousness gone like a cloud burned by the sun, and runs a fingerpad along the shell of Zoro’s pinkened ear. Teasing him about his blush without saying a word.
“Cute ears.”
Well, screw sentiment. Zoro reaches up and viciously pinches Luffy’s side. He squeals, incredibly ticklish, bending over Zoro and laughing so loud it swells painfully in Zoro’s sore head. He doesn’t mind it, though. Just grins and pinches another tender spot until Luffy’s laughter fills up the crow’s nest.
“Hey,” Zoro huffs, pulling on the red striped button-up hanging open and baggy off of Luffy’s slim shoulders. “This is mine, you thieving little shit.”
Luffy leans back, tears beading on his eyelashes, light freckles disappearing in the red flush in his cheeks. “Finders, keepers,” he says airily. “Pirate’s code.”
“Screw the code, that’s my shirt,” Zoro huffs, pulling harder at the material. “Keep your grubby fingers off of it.”
“Finders, keepers,” Luffy sings again, his hand on the back of Zoro’s neck like a claim on more than just his shirt. “Besides, it smells like Zoro.”
“And now it’s going to smell like rubber and old grease,” Zoro grumbles, mutinous. “If you don’t lose it when you fall in the ocean.”
“Hey!” Luffy cries, indignant. “I never fall—” he breaks off in peals of laughter when Zoro pinches him again.
“Liar,” Zoro says. “You’re such a handful already. Do I have to worry about my shirts now, too?”
“Mm,” Luffy hums, coming down from his tickle-induced high. “Only when I miss Zoro.”
Zoro blinks, eyebrows drawing and pulling at the bruise on his temple.
“I’m right here, Luffy.”
Luffy hums again, watching his fingers play with Zoro’s earrings. “You’re getting there.”
Zoro closes his eyes and all he sees is red, red, red until Luffy gently places his thumbs over the delicate, sore skin of his eyelids.
“Sleep, Zoro,” Luffy says. “It’s been two days. You’ve missed twelve nap times already.”
“Hey,” Zoro huffs, blinking blearily when Luffy moves his thumbs. “I don’t take that many a day.”
“Sure you don’t,” Luffy agrees indulgently in a way that has Zoro lazily pinching his side again. Luffy dances away from his touch, and Zoro would fall forward except Luffy keeps a hand on his shoulder as he sits down next to him.
He’s not quite sure how it happens—if Luffy pulls, or Zoro just falls all on his own—but suddenly Zoro’s head is on the pillow of Luffy’s thigh and he’s curled facing the back of the couch, bare toes tucked into the cushions. Luffy’s still fiddling with his earrings, humming some inane and off-key song.
“Luffy,” Zoro sighs, eyes already slipping closed. “I don’t have time for this. I have to…”
“Sleep. Maybe you’ll be back when you wake up.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Zoro sighs, rolling further down the slope of Luffy’s thigh until his face is pressed up against the red striped shirt. He breathes in, but all he smells is Luffy. “‘m right here. And I have to keep working. I need to—”
“Sleep.” It’s a command, this time. An immovable force couched by a soft voice already slipping through Zoro’s fingers and fading away into darkness. “Sleep.”
So, he does.
.
.
.
(The shirt doesn’t get washed before they disembark on Saobody, but Zoro wears it anyway. It has grubby little fingerprints along the bottom hem, but it smells like Luffy.
By the time he wakes up on Kuraigana, it only smells of earth and fear and red, red, red.)
end.