Dance With Me

Sanji looked like he was having a great time, and it was starting to piss Zoro off. There was something about the way he was being passed from woman to woman during the island's festivities that irked the swordsman beyond all reason. He watched the Strawhat crew's cook as he danced with the happy civilians, smiling and laughing without a care in the world to the upbeat sound of the band's performance.

Sanji definitely knew how to dance—his body moved like he was made for it—and Zoro found himself comparing his graceful movements to when they fought with one another, noting that the motions weren't much different at all, just less aggressive. He'd seen the cook dancing and fighting many times, and it never ceased to excite him, but he was so deep in the pit of denial about the reason why that he sometimes wondered if it would ever be possible to climb out.

The party was lively, the booze was good, and the company was spirited and accommodating to the pirates who had saved their little village from the group of ruffians who had set up camp in their once peaceful hometown. It hadn't been a difficult fight, but the citizens had thrown them an enormous block party anyway. Zoro watched from the sidelines, taking large swigs from a flagon of beer with a disinterested countenance that masked his true scrutiny of that damn cook.

Sanji was migrating closer to Zoro now, swapping dance partners with each verse of song, and swinging his hips in time with the rhythm. An inexplicable impulse pulled Zoro from his chair as the blond neared him in the crowd—he didn't know what possessed him to do it, but he cut into the line of dancing woman before he knew what he was doing and caught the cook's hand on one of his turns.

Zoro reeled Sanji in, spinning him like he'd seen the other man do a hundred times, and suddenly the two of them were moving in perfect synchronization with only the smallest moment of hesitation from Sanji when he caught sight of his green-haired partner. Zoro's brain shut off the moment the blond's fingers had closed around his—the swordsman's body simply moved as if he were in a trance, alternating between following and directing Sanji's motions as they took turns leading the dance.

Sanji was quite aware of the incredulity of their situation, but he had grabbed Zoro's hand automatically and followed through with the required turn before he had fully registered who his new dance partner was. He would have stopped and snapped something rude at the swordsman had his surprise not been so paralyzing—it was less so the fact that he was dancing with Zoro that shocked him; rather, it was the inconceivable notion that the green-haired bastard was actually a good dancer.

The two men were effortlessly twirling and stepping in harmony with the other's movements as though they were professional dance partners rather than bitter rivals. It was so unexpectedly coordinated that the surrounding partygoers immediately gave them a wide birth to extend the reach of their turns. Sanji had completely tuned out the growing audience, meeting Zoro's gaze for the first time during a particularly intimate brush of their bodies. They were moving so quickly through the steps that it was almost like they were fighting.

That gave Sanji an idea. He dropped into an abrupt backbend over Zoro's arm, hoping to throw him off with the unexpected addition to the routine, but the swordsman wasn't phased in the slightest. A warm hand gripped the back of his thigh, helping him to complete the flip and recapturing the cook's hand as he came out of the bend. A grin broke out on their faces in unison, and the dance quickly evolved into a complicated series of handstands and lifts as Sanji showed off his unique fighting style in a less aggressive display. The new moves required a fair bit of contact—hands roamed around waists and under thighs as Sanji's lithe figure was wrapped around and over the swordsman's broader form in impressively artistic contortions of his flexible body.