san junipero (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sanjunipero) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bakerstreet2018-08-10 01:06 pm
sanjunipero) wrote in bakerstreet2018-08-10 01:06 pm
Entry tags:
Heaven is a Place on Earth~
San Junipero is a lively, bustling seaside town. It's both a popular vacation destination and a lovely permanent residence. The days are always long, the weather is often perfect, there's always your favorite song playing on the radio.
During the day, the sun shines and the carefree residents spend their days lounging on the beach, perusing the strip or spending private time in their homes. At night, San Junipero transforms into a party town. Booming bass fills the clubs and echoes out into the streets, the once carefree residents become boisterous and jovial, dancing and drinking long into the night.
And everything set to the backdrop of a beachy paradise.
What San Junipero really is, however, is a simulated reality in which the minds of the dead, or dying, can be uploaded to the TCKR Systems Cloud Server as alternative versions of their younger selves forever; and which the living can visit for up to five hours per week.
While there is no real concept of time in San Junipero (the days on the calendar may change, but residents and visitors do not age.), the program itself rotates through the decades.
how to play:
☆ Comment with your character, your prefs, etc.
☆ Clarify if you are aiming for a specific decade. This meme is shipping and gen friendly!
☆ Reply to others!
kylo ren ( STAR WARS ) ota
James Buchanan Barnes | MCU |
Steve Rogers | MCU |
Gonta Gokuhara | Danganronpa V3
Gamora | MCU | OTA
Camina Drummer | The Expanse | OTA
Pepper Potts | MCU | OTA
Angel Evangelista ( Pose )
Duo Maxwell (Gundam Wing)
Gaige | Borderlands 2 | OTA
sanji | one piece
i'm good with him being either a permanent resident or a visitor, and flexible with the decade. also good with canon Sanji or AU. i am NOT caught up on OP so would prefer to avoid info beyond fishman island and i veer toward AU with characters introduced post-time-skip. ]
no subject
[ He remembers Sanji's face clearest of all. ]
[ Nothing happened, he'd said. Sanji didn't need to know. No one did, or does. As long as all of them are safe. As long as Luffy is there to lead them. ]
[ I'm trusting you to take care of them, he'd said next. Sanji's expression is the one thing he regrets. He still isn't sure whether the blond wanted more to kill him or cradle him. He wishes he'd had the strength left to kiss the stupid cook before everything went black. ]
[ It's such a small thing, but the hardest adjustment he's had to make here is wearing sandals again. When the hell was the last time he wore open-toed shoes just to walk around? He doesn't even own protective boots here, because there's no point. He has soft leather shoes for the nightclubs, but the rest of the time? The rest of the time it's either the sandals, or like now, the sandals cast off onto a beach towel several meters up from the surf. There's nothing to fight here, but there's also nothing about the place that prevents him from keeping his swords, as long as he doesn't get the bright idea to attack anyone. Why would he attack the dead, or their visitors? ]
[ No, now he's just doing his katas in the cool, wet sand, the edge of the dropping tide lapping his toes as he does his turns and strikes in the sunset. Most of the island is lively, but there are always quiet spots, places to get away and just be. If he has to be dead, at least he died for a crew who loved him enough to send him here. ]
no subject
He failed at trying to keep him alive, too.
Guilt assaults him on a daily basis, even unprompted, even when Sanji isn’t thinking about him. (But…shit…is Sanji ever not thinking about him, really?) It’s a sharp pain, sometimes catching him by surprise, choking him when he takes a drag on his cigarette, making his hand shake when he cooks so he ends up over-seasoning. It’s constant.
At the moment it has him stumbling, almost tripping over his own feet like a drunkard as he leaves one of the several bars he’s checked tonight. He steadies himself against the building, frustrated as hell and knowing he’s running out of time. He could be anywhere, not just in a different bar but in a different time – the possibilities are damn near endless. Under different circumstances, this place could certainly be called heaven but right now, for him, it’s much more like…well.
He needs a break. He needs a moment to think and to breathe; he’s going to lose his mind if he keeps going like this with no real plan other than blindly searching wherever booze is served. It obviously isn’t working and every time he leaves San Junipero, he’s so angry at himself, at his failure, and that anger follows him for days when he’s already dealing with so much. He needs to refocus.
The sea, he knows, is close. He can hear the waves, smell the salt of the water, familiar and comforting, and it draws him to the beach, his usual shoes shifting into sandals as he goes from the hard street to the soft, giving sand. But the peace he’s seeking to calm himself, pull himself together, is not what he finds.
Of course he's here. Of fucking course.
Seeing Zoro…just doing his katas by the water like…like normal, like this is just another island and their ship is docked nearby and everything is fine, they’re all fine and unbroken and happy…it feels like the wind is knocked out of him. It fucking hurts but also heals, just a little – seeing that, at least somewhere, he’s whole and moving and not completely gone.
But gone enough.
And all that frustration, that anger? It isn’t solely directed at himself. But Zoro hasn’t been there to receive any of it. Until now.
He barely knows he’s running but the swordsman is getting closer and closer, his legs growing hot though not ablaze when one swings out, his sandal flying off to hit the idiot swordsman in the head first. ]
no subject
[ And with everything else gone, his focus only on the familiar, it doesn't strike him as out of place when a certain thrum of pulsing energy and fire hurtles into close range in the field of his observation haki, one foot whirling for his head. He ducks the sandal automatically, reflexively, his hands coming up automatically to block -
wait
shit - !
- Shusui and Kitetsu drop from his grip before either of them can slice into the sole of Sanji's foot, leaving him with no time to cross his forearms instead. Sanji's kick knocks his arm right into his face, sends him flying back to crash ass-first into the sand in the same moment his first two swords thump serenely onto the beach. He tastes blood in the back of his throat, feels it trailing down out of his nose, as he reflexively pulls Wado out of his rattled teeth. (At least he didn't slice his arm open.) His pants are smeared with wet sand and his bandana's askew and he doesn't give a shit, all that matters is - ]
Sanji.
[ He doesn't even notice that he's calling the cook by name. ]
no subject
Get up.
[ His bare foot attacks the sand instead, sending a gust of it at the knocked down swordsman, his glaring eyes a hard, furious blue. ]
I’m gonna kick your ass a hundred times over.
[ The red dribbling from his nose is a start. But he can do better. He can bloody the man up all he fucking wants and it won’t matter. He won’t die since he’s already…
Since…he’s…
…shit.
He fights against the instinctive urge to squeeze those glaring eyes shut, the fire in them blurring with the sudden sting of tears. Unbidden, unwanted, but it can’t be helped. He hasn’t openly cried since the moment he felt Zoro go still and unbreathing in his arms. The moment that plays in his head repeatedly, every day, like a nightmare he can’t escape from even by being awake.
He feels the tears building up fast, but he ignores them, as he ignores the slight break in his voice. ]
Get the fuck up.
no subject
[ There's nothing he can even think, not with that fury in every line of the cook's body. The sand from that kick scatters over him and stings his face and aside from instinctively shutting his eyes he doesn't even move. Opens them as soon as it settles, no words or instincts or emotions in his head or his chest, just the vivid picture of the cook in front of him, the blue of his eyes all the more intense in contrast to the bruise-purple shadows stark down one side of him, the other a flare of violent sunset(fire) orange. ]
[ His hand comes up without him consciously moving it, rubbing the back of it under his nose, across his lip, smearing off some of the blood. He glances down without thinking and his vision goes black on the edges as his pupils contract to pinpricks, hyperfocused on black-red smeared on his skin. He hasn't seen blood since he got here. Hasn't seen his own, his own blood, the red smeared on his skin darkened half-black with the low light of the sun. Like the black-red smeared in that crater all around him, darkened half-black-brown as it soaked into the dirt. The black-red smeared sticky on his white shirt, darkened only because there was so much of it. When he could feel his skin ripping open from the inside, expelling the same thing smeared on his hand in this tunnel of vision, vivid red with the oxygen he's not getting enough of now as his heart pounded in his chest and his head and his throat. When his stomach clenched and twisted inside and he forced all his attention on not throwing up on himself, only to choke up vivid red from the oxygen he's not getting enough of now as his lungs clenched and ruptured and vivid red smeared on his skin as it trailed from his nose and his mouth and his eyes and his ears rang with the force ripping through them and drowned out the screaming he could only feel soundlessly in his throat except when it choked up vivid red from the oxygen he's not getting enough of now -
He's not shaking. He's not shaking. He's not shaking. He's not shaking. He's not shaking.
He's not shaking.
He's not shaking when he lifts that hand to grasp his dislodged bandana, smear it down his face to rub sweat
not tears not tears not tearsand sand and black-red off his skin. He's not shaking when he jabs Wado into the wet sand so he can stand, stumbling but he's not shaking as he finds his feet. He's not shaking as he pulls the knot from black-redfabric and reshapes it, and he's -- actually
briefly
visibly
not shaking
when he ties it firmly back around his head, by perfect practiced rote, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, just settling it where it belongs, pulled low enough that with the shadows from the contrast of the setting sun Sanji won't be able to see his eyes (just the reflection of not tears shimmering under the eye closest to the horizon)
and then back to Not. Shaking. when he almost misses Wado's hilt with not shaking fingers as he pulls her back into his hand. His voice is not shaking when he finally finds words again (new words not the ones echoing and crashing back and forth in waves of black-red that are not pinched too-tight in his throat and not shaking -) ]
Put your shoes back on first, shitty fucking idiot.
[ He's not shaking. ]
no subject
This silent sight of him now is so much worse than just a few moments ago, the fluid, familiar motions of a routine that made him look alive, and Sanji almost regrets interrupting that. Only almost, because he's still so fucking livid. The words finally spoken elicit a growling reply in the back of his throat as he kicks his other sandal off at Zoro's stomach in defiance. Don't tell him what to do. ]
What do shoes fucking matter? You can't hurt me!
[ Slice up the soles of his feet, cut off his toes, it won't matter. Jab the hilt of a sword into his side again until the last bruise Zoro gave him returns full force. It won't be there when he comes to, alone. ]
You're dead, you asshole!
[ ...Saying that hurts more than anything.
It's a word he's been avoiding, even in his own thoughts, and just like that, the heat in his tensed legs is snuffed out, though anger still courses through him. There's a sound, sobbing, somewhat hysterical, wrenched from his chest that he refuses to acknowledge but his hand flies to his face, claps over his mouth to keep another from escaping. His head tips forward until both streaming eyes are hidden by his hair. Shit...shit, he wants to kill him and he's right fucking there but he's dead. He's fucking dead. And though Sanji's anger is strong, at this weak, awful second, his grief is even stronger. ]
no subject
[ He can feel the blood still trickling from his nose, down over his lips now, and he doesn't have the strength to lift his hand again. He can taste it in the back of his throat, and he's more violently aware of that now that he's seen the color smeared over his hand, but he doesn't have the presence of mind to tilt his head forward so his nose stops draining back as well as forward. He can't do anything but
but not
but shake. ]
[ His first footstep drags in the wet sand and his toes mash under his weight and he almost topples. The second one drags but makes furrows in the beach instead of crushing at tendons and bones. By the third he's stopped feeling the sand. After the fourth he loses count. He can't feel anything. He can't see, and his whole face is wet but all he can think is blood. Doesn't remember what tears feel like. His vision is just a blue shape in the near field of his haki, and his sensation is just wet running down his face, and his ears hear nothing, and his balance is a whirl, and taste and smell are just copper instead of salt and seaweed and the encroaching pleasant stink of low tide. He doesn't think of that blue shape as getting closer so much as getting bigger. ]
[ Bigger until it encroaches into all of his vision, and he doesn't notice closing his eyes because there's no change. He just reaches out and catches that thrumming aura by the shoulders and pulls it close and then sensation comes hurtling back because it - he - Sanji - is warm, warmer than the beating sun has been any day he's been here, and all Zoro can do is clutch that heat to his chest and acknowledge, as more than just a passing thought, that he's fucking shaking and he can't stop. ]
no subject
He hears Zoro moving, dragging footsteps in the sand, and he curses, moves the hand off his mouth to swipe at his eyes, however uselessly. He can see that all three swords have been left in the sand but that means nothing; his legs are still tense and ready to strike. But –
Hands on his shoulders. Hands that he knows well, knows can easily wield both strength and gentleness. Pulling him into an embrace he doesn’t expect. And he wants to struggle against it but he never thought he would feel the other man again. ]
Don’t you fucking touch me – [ His only resistance, gritted out between his teeth, because he’s too damn weak to fight this. He needs it. He needs to hold him, needs to hold this body and – unlike the last time – feel it holding him back. Feel him breathing, even if it’s only the appearance of breath. Feel him shaking. Just feel him.
He clutches at the swordsman’s back and when he buries his face into a trembling shoulder, there’s no blood this time, only the wetness of his unceasing tears. He takes in an angry, grieving, guilty, everything, shuddery breath and releases it in another thick sob. ]
Zoro.
no subject
[ Not cook. Not dartboard. Not idiot. No insults. Just that name. ]
[ His arms tighten and he isn't sure how (if?) he's still standing because he can't feel anything but Sanji's body heat and two sets of tears and the touch of Sanji's clothes against his bare skin and a vague, far-off weakness in his shaking knees. He's. He's accepted dying. He accepted it as soon as he was woken in that center, asked what he remembered as much to check the upload data as out of courtesy. What would have been the point in not accepting it? ]
[ But he's not at peace with it. He doesn't think he will ever be at peace with it. He broke his promise to Kuina. He left his crew behind. ]
[ At least he didn't break his promise to Luffy. He wasn't defeated. He didn't lose. He just didn't survive the victory. ]
I miss you.
[ He doesn't even realize the words are in his mouth until they've fallen out. ]
no subject
He misses the fights. All of them. The stupid ones over nothing at all, and the ones that ended with the need for ship repairs. The insults traded back and forth like a game, without ever escalating into anything more. The knock-down-drag-out brawls that left them sore and satisfied. All the times they called it a tie or didn’t call it anything at all, one never really besting the other.
And after all those fights, when he truly needed to not be bested… When it was most important, he wasn’t fucking strong enough. ]
You bastard… [ He manages to speak clearly, somehow, through the tears. Nails digging into Zoro’s back, pressing himself closer even as he curses the other man. ] You were supposed to let me go instead.
no subject
[ But he still holds, still shaking, and he welcomes those nails digging into his skin because they feel real, realer than anything here has up until this son of a bitch almost broke his fucking nose. He didn't even notice how unreal it all was until this, until he was knocked down and half-dizzy and he wasn't dealing in just the vaguely familiar but with something finally, finally in focus. ]
Who would've fucking fed everyone? Don't give me shit, you're the best damn cook any crew could have and I should've fucking told you that every fucking meal you shit bastard don't - don't fucking tell me you should've died there, I'll kill you every time you come here.
[ His grip only tightens as he speaks, hands clenching tighter in Sanji's clothes, snot mixing with the blood still dripping from his nose as he weeps, finally, finally crying for the first time since he came here, finally having some way to feel those emotions because he can feel Sanji in his arms and fucking god he feels so real. ]
I'd fucking do it again.
no subject
[ Whenever they hear that title spoken – world’s greatest swordsman – all they’ll be able to think about is what could have been…would have been, if… If he’d been just a little stronger. Tried harder. He knew what was at stake, he knew, and yes, maybe there was a part of him, a sliver of him that thought as he blacked out, this son of a bitch survives everything – ]
Now I have to live with the fact that you’re not there and I am, you fucking selfish bastard!
[ He feels everything choking him up again, his throat tight, a sharp gasp as that guilty pain in his chest makes it hard to breathe. He’s angry at Zoro, of fucking course he is, but he’s so much angrier at himself. And he’s fairly certain he will always be this angry at himself.
He closes his eyes once he can inhale, exhale, without issue again. The tears are slowing but not stopping, the bare skin of Zoro’s shoulder is wet and salty as he keeps his face pressed there, unwilling to move, to let go, regardless of how this would look in any other situation. Regardless of how it would likely never even happen in any other situation.
Right now, he feels like he could stay holding on to him until the moment he’s physically ripped away from this place. ]
Like just living without you isn’t shitty enough already for me. [ He amends that, quickly, before he admits to more than he already is. ] For all of us.
no subject
[ Despite everything, despite the pain in Sanji's voice, that's easy to say. It's easy because it's true, and no amount of his own pain or Sanji's or anyone else's will change that. It hurts, god listening to Sanji like this hurts, and he knows the words will hurt him more, but it's the truth, and he's never shied from the truth. ]
You can call me selfish if you want. I still did this for you. For Luffy. For everyone.
[ That's also the truth, but it certainly isn't the whole picture of it. He'll get there. The rest of the truths aren't so easy. ]
Listen to you. [ He considers pushing Sanji back just enough to look at him, but... he never thought the blond would be holding him like this, and after this moment, he's not sure he ever will again. ] Isn't it selfish to blame me that you have to keep fucking living? [ Instead of pushing, he lifts his hand to rest on the back of Sanji's head, fingers just skimming into the top layer of hair to feel, to hold. ] It's not like I'm glad I'm dead, asshole. I'm just glad it's not any of you.
[ I'm glad it's not you. ]
no subject
Making him the fool here, really.
The swordsman’s words do little to quell the storm of tangled, raging emotions inside him, but he does gain some control over himself, tears finally coming to an end behind closed eyelids. And only his scoff is shaky, voice unwavering when he replies, bitter sadness on his tongue. ]
Fine, so I’m selfish. Should I be thanking you now? [ Because he isn’t fucking going to! No one asked him to die in his place. Of course he doesn’t want to be dead, but he doesn’t want Zoro dead either, he doesn’t want any of this, but between one or the other – ]
…I don’t just blame you. [ May not blame him at all, honestly, deep down. All he did was succeed at what Sanji had decided, and failed, to do himself. The fingers in his hair send a silent shudder down the back of his neck, his spine; his eyes open, wet and barely focused as he gazes over the man’s shoulder, settling on the sight of Zoro’s abandoned swords. ] It’s on me that you’re here.
no subject
Don't you fucking dare!
[ In a continued exercise of this son of a bitch he's always fought with, tooth and nail and foot and sword and biting snarling word, bringing him more fucking pain in minutes than he's felt in the weeks he's been here, Sanji's reached into his chest and gripped his heart in both hands hard enough to dig in nails until it bleeds. ]
Don't you dare take that on yourself! I chose to live and die in my own fucking way, remember? Don't take that out of my hands! Don't you take my fucking decision and make it your doing!
[ His throat hurts, another pain disused and confused by distance, so he doesn't realize he's not just yelling, he's screaming.]
Bastard! You think I could just watch you die? You think I was just going to sit back and let him take you away? That I could've lived with myself?
[ Sanji's tears have slowed but Zoro's are streaming faster and hotter than ever. His chest is tight and his hand hurts from gripping that shirt too hard and for the first time in weeks he vaguely feels alive but only enough to feel like he's dying all over again. ]
so many italics
He spits blood onto the sand before turning narrowed eyes to the other man, blazing through the lingering sheen of moisture. ] What about my fucking decision? The one you took from me?
[ He moves to grasp the swordsman’s wrist, a tight grip that whitens his knuckles even though he knows he can’t pull Zoro’s hand off if he insists on keeping hold, knows he can’t match the bastard in upper body strength. But he can match him screaming, every furious word scraping against his throat on the way up. ]
I was ready to do anything, take anything, to keep you alive! And instead I had to watch you die! And I have to keep watching you die, in my head, every goddamn day, knowing I had a chance to save you and I couldn’t! How am I supposed to live with that?!
no subject
[ There's nothing to say or do because he's dead. He's not even sure this is the afterlife, really; is his soul here in this digital space or is this just a simulation built on the wiring that fired through his head in synapses instead of copper? He's dead. ]
[ He's dead and there's no coming back, there's just this. This ugly truth finally staring him in the face, reminding him that there was an other side to the last thing he saw. That when he wishes he'd had the strength left to kiss that stupid face, that stupid face had to watch the last of his strength fall away. ]
[ Fuck. ]
I didn't want to die.
[ The words are low but they're out, and god, he feels dirty for saying them. Selfish. He's always been ready to die for his ideals, his convictions. For Kuina. And ever since that idiot child wearing a straw hat broke him from stockade, he's been willing to die for every single nakama to be added to their ragtag crew of broken fucking misfits. ]
I didn't want to die.
[ Shut up. ]
I thought I was strong enough to save everyone.
[ Shut up! ]
I should have been strong enough.
[ Idiot. ]
I should have been strong enough but I couldn't even take off his arm. And then you were in front of me barely fucking standing with your fucking legs shaking - your legs shaking, you, how could - I couldn't just let you -
[ Shut up shut up shut up - !!! ]
I didn't want to fucking die and I DAMN WELL DIDN'T WANT YOU TO SEE IT!
[ FUCK! ]
[ There's nothing for it now. There's no words for this, no words because instead there's just that not-shaking again that's just been fucking shaking all along. Just shaking too intense to hold back, to ignore, to say it's not happening. Like everything from that day is crashing down again, vivid with the knowledge that Sanji had to see him standing there and then see him fall, and god, why couldn't he have been stronger? Why couldn't he have held on? Why the fuck does Sanji think he went halfway through the wreckage of the damn castle if not so none of them had to see him fucking die!? ]
[ There's nothing but that shaking, that shaking and that pain back in his throat from screaming, sobbing without words, the pain in his hand because his grip is convulsive and his knuckles are white and those are the only things he knows, he doesn't know where his other hand is doesn't know if the sun has finished setting doesn't know if he's upright or if Sanji is even still there or if it's just that handful of shirt, because everything is just like that day, everything is just shaking and screaming and pain. ]
no subject
Shit, this is far worse, far more painful than any punch the man could throw at him. More painful than anything, more than the guilt that lives in him, perhaps permanently, and more than the anger that he still wants to stew in, still wants to express but – ]
Zoro…
[ He feels himself crumbling as soon as those first, quiet words come out. There’s no helping it. His heart is too compromised, his composure shot since he arrived here, since he saw him – and long before. He’s already so broken, eyes already so wet, there’s no point in attempting to keep anything together.
And fuck, he wants to be mad but he doesn’t want this. ]
Shit, don’t… [ His hand loosens around Zoro’s wrist, instead moving slowly, soothingly up the swordsman’s arm, smoothing over the skin, struggling not to tremble himself. ] I know. [ His voice is barely above a whisper, a distinct difference from the fiery, seething shouting. But any louder and his words run the risk of becoming fresh sobs. ] I know you didn’t.
[ Of course he didn’t want to die; Sanji can waste his energy on yelling at him, blaming him for things he shouldn’t, but of course he knows that. Sanji didn’t want to die, either, but he would have, in a heartbeat, and he would go back in time if going back could change everything – even if it would mean putting Zoro in his place, beating himself up even more than he is now…at least he’d be alive.
But…he isn’t. He isn’t alive. What’s done is so fucking done and no amount of regret and anger and crying and screaming will ever change that. God, this isn’t what he wanted, remembering this when he leaves here will hurt as much as remembering him fall. Shit, even with that horrible memory, even in his death, Zoro will always remain one of the absolute strongest men he’s ever known, one of the strongest to ever fucking exist, and Sanji never wanted to hear him doubting that strength.
Shit, what is he doing?
As his touch settles at a broad, shaking shoulder, he takes Zoro’s free hand with his own, as if the curve of his fingers around it can quell the tremors, make up for the pain in both of them. Maybe it won’t do anything, mean anything, but he’s not letting go until he has no choice. ]
I wasn’t gonna let you die alone.
no subject
[ Just screaming and shaking and pain. ]
[ That's all he knows, for what feels like days, just like the last time. Rending him apart and choking off his breath and clenching convulsions in his muscles and retches in the back of his throat, and the only difference this time is there's no blood. ]
[ ...Except... ]
[ Except that's not quite true. ]
[ Something else is different. Something - something dim - clenched in his -
- fuck.
Sanji's stupid tie. His stupid shirt. ]
[ His stupid... hands. His stupid hands, touching him so tenderly. His stupid shoulder, suddenly pressed under Zoro's blind, aching eyes. Stupid. Stupid everything. Stupid bastard here like he can change anything, could've changed anything, like Zoro would ever have let him... ]
...Gghhk...
[ No. No he doesn't want to hear that. ]
[ Stupid. ]
[ What good did that do? This shitty cook and his shitty sentimentality, what'd it matter whether he died alone or not, if this was the price, if Sanji had to... ]
[ If Sanji had to... ]
I d-
[ Stop talking you fucking idiot. ]
I didn't want...
[ What good is this doing anyone now? ]
I d-didn't want you to watch me die, you asshole.
[ Fuck... ]
I didn't want to do this to you...
[ Some first mate he is. Was. Too weak to live, too strong to go before he could hurt the cook like this. ]
Fuck.
[ It's too much. ]
[ He stayed on his feet during every horrific second of that bubble sinking into him, during every screaming breath, while the captain's pain and suffering transferred to him. (God, what kind of first mate is he not to be able to match his captain wound for wound?) But this? This, with those hands touching him here like they never did, like he never would have allowed, while he was alive... ]
[ He can't take it. That pain blowing blood out through his very pores he could take, but this pain ripping open his heart instead, he can't - he just fucking can't, and his knees buckle, both hands clutching at the cook as he collapses in on himself, capsizes in the sand. ]
Sanji...
[ Fucking coward, he is. He had to be dead to be brave enough to break their stupid posturing protocol and call this man by name. Fuck. Fuck him. Fuck him for being like this. ]
no subject
[ Sanji goes down with him; he has to, if he doesn’t want to let go, and he doesn’t ever want to let go. Knees sinking into the sand, he tries to hold the other man up as well as he can, like he did before when the body he held was bloody and lifeless and so heavy. ]
Zoro – stop.
[ He doesn’t mean the shaking, or the tears. Or the pain. As much as he would like it to, that can’t just stop, and Sanji’s sure his own pain never will. He means the halting, heartbreaking words, speaking what he knows, what he’s so quickly regretting throwing in Zoro’s face.
He can’t be angry right now.
Well – that’s not true. He can, and he is. He’s angry that he’s here, in this place, angry that’s it’s the only way to be with the swordsman now, angry that he took his presence for granted and so goddamn angry that he never…
He’s angry that it happened, however it happened, and he always will be. But he can’t take that out on his fucking dead nakama. ]
I’m sorry… [ It comes out a hoarse whisper, an apology not often given but, shit, he came into this all wrong. ] I didn’t…I never wanted to see…
[ He, however, can speak as haltingly as he wants. It’s the only way he can with everything he feels, everything he wants to say but won’t, choking him and spilling wordlessly from his eyes.
He wanted to see Zoro get back up again. Like he always had. Like the day he resurfaced, gasping, in bloodied water after being sliced open by Hawk Eyes. He wanted it to be like that, he needed it to be because there are so many other things he wanted to see, too.
He wanted to see Zoro go against Mihawk, again, and win. He wanted to see him there when they all reach their dreams, he wanted to share All Blue with him. Hell, he wanted to see him do whatever next…crazy, stupidly heroic thing he would undoubtedly do, he just wanted to see him to live.
But he didn’t. And Sanji had to see what he never wanted, never even thought he would have to see. But…but he…
( He remembers being on that rock when his food ran out, thinking that the days of starvation would never end, facing the prospect of dying there, alone. And maybe dying alone is what Zoro would’ve preferred but Sanji would never want that for him, for any of them. )
If he’d woken up only mere minutes later, he would’ve found him already dead.
The memory he has is agonizingly terrible but if seeing it happen is the price he had to pay to avoid the far worse alternative… ]
But if…you had to die… [ And his voice, already so tight, so strained, breaks because fuck, he didn’t have to, he didn’t. He holds him impossibly tighter and he has no idea how he’s speaking, how he’s even breathing through all this pain, and no idea how much time has passed and how much he has left and he has to come at this differently, he has to, no matter how much anger there is. ] …I would rather it be in my fucking arms.
no subject
[ (He doesn't even believe in God.) ]
[ Why this? Why now? ]
[ Why is he here like this, knees of his shorts mashed into the wet sand, still clutching that fucking tie and - and clinging onto Sanji's hand like he wants to break his fucking fingers and damn him but he can't stop even a little bit. If he lets go Sanji will disappear. ]
[ And it'll only be for a week, or until the week resets, or whatever, but he'll be gone and Zoro will be alone in the sand dying all over again. ]
[ Dying... alone. ]
[ Sanji tells him to stop but he chokes on a fresh round of sobs, hating himself and this place and this cook and the world and Moria and Kuma and the navy and government and even hating Luffy for taking so much on himself and never saying a fucking word about it to anyone the son of a bitch -
he would have done the same but that isn't the point and it doesn't make him less angry- ]Don't... don't you say sorry to me...
[ Zoro likewise doesn't know how this mess of spit and snot and swollen tongue and jaw that aches to his ears is forming words like it's still a mouth but it's all he's got because nothing else works, just like that day nothing else works and he can't move a fucking muscle because everything is pain and he's so weak -
. . . !
- weak enough that his heart stops, and so does his sobbing, and so does the tight clench of his jaw that he only now feels was hard enough to make his teeth ache. ]
[ He can't handle tying the two halves of that sentence together, the if and the unspoken then, cannot dare let them occupy the same space in his head if he doesn't want to vomit but he can hear the second and let it echo and ripple and reflect in his head like wake on water kicking back from the shore and just think about those words, those words spoken like fucking music from the cook's mouth (he's never cared much for music but maybe he's just never heard it like this) and realize
abruptly
violently
with a sudden surcease in his shaking -
really, genuinely, truthfully not. shaking...!
- that he has that, now, here, in this place he suddenly no longer hates. ]
[ He's not alive. But he's in Sanji's arms. ]
[ And if he's in Sanji's arms and he has the consciousness to realize it then fuck the pain and fuck this stupid weakness he's three fucking thousand times better than, because here in Sanji's arms he can tighten his grip and push himself up and do what he couldn't do that day - starting, somehow, with unlocking his fist from that stupid tie - and cup the blond's jaw in his hand and almost fall on him to kiss him. ]
[ It's clumsy and blind and his face is covered with sand and tears and sweat and blood and spit and snot but he doesn't give one single solitary goddamned hermit of a fuck because for once, for once in all the weeks and months since they've met, he can clutch that hand and touch this skin and kiss the cook full on the mouth no matter how stupid and how late and how selfish it is because what the fuck is Sanji going to do? Kill him? ]
[ Even if this breaks everything nothing about them could possibly be any more broken. ]
no subject
But…why would he imagine this?
He’s thought about how his first kiss with Zoro could go for so long. From the unlikely fantasy of the slow, gentle touch of their lips under the romantic glow of the fucking moon or the aquarium bar…to the admittedly more realistic possibility of him snapping during their fights, shutting up the man’s stupid mouth with a violent, bruising assault of teeth and tongue…and every scenario in between.
This was never one of those scenarios.
But it’s happening, he realizes when that second passes, real – as real as anything is in this place. He hisses at the pressure to his busted lip but doesn’t shy away from it. He takes it, takes the messiness, the imperfection and the shitty timing, takes it all and chases it, returns it. He can feel his fingers numbing a little in the strength of Zoro’s grip but it doesn’t fucking matter, nothing fucking matters but this. It isn’t how he imagined it, isn’t how he wants it, but this…here…is the only way he’ll ever get it.
His free hand takes Zoro by the nape of his neck, keeps him there, the desperation in his touch matched only by the sob that somehow stays, hard and painful, contained in his chest as he kisses Zoro back, fully, unhesitating and unwilling to pass up this only chance. Despite how it’s given to him. How badly it hurts. ]
no subject
[ There is no part of Zoro that doesn't care but every inch of him tries not to, ignores the fresh tears tracking down his face so he can just have this, even if just this once, the taste of cigarettes and blood and the sweet slip of tongue against tongue. ]
[ He kisses Sanji until he can't breathe, keeps kissing him because he's goddamn dead anyway so what does it fucking matter - kisses him until he chokes, until his throat closes on a sob to answer Sanji's only his doesn't stay down far enough. His lips break away like breaking bone and he fails to rein in the sharp sound of a snivel, cracks a curse across those lips. ]
[ And then worse, because he's so weak, he presses his mouth against the other again but manages only a few wet, messy smacks before this time he breaks it with something that he knows will shatter them both like that dream of his once shattered both swords in his hands. ]
I love you.
[ The screaming voice in his head that's been calling him stupid is gone, dumbfounded and dead and with nothing left to say, because there's no point after this where stopping and shutting up will ever matter again. ]
I'm a coward and I'm sorry for that but I fucking love you. Should have told you... I wanted to do that... [ That kiss. That kiss that he ventures a pass at, one more time, tilting his head so their lips brush as he talks. ] I wanted to do that so many times... I wanted to d-do that when you found me but I couldn't even lift a hand to touch your face... [ Admitting that weakness... admitting now that there was really nothing he could do, no way he could overcome... it kills him but he's already fucking dead and Sanji deserves to know. ] Can I do this? Am I still allowed to love you if I'm dead?
no subject
Their blood, blood they drew from each other, mixes on his tongue along with their spit, their salty tears, their combined need for this act, for the frantic melding of their mouths. But he can distinguish between them, can single out the taste of Zoro himself, a taste he'll study on all the nights he can't sleep, like a dish he craves to recreate but never fucking will. He can only taste it now, so he keeps on kissing him because what does breathing even matter here, for either of them, when he can dig his fingers bruisingly into Zoro's thick neck and hold on, try to keep it from ending.
Fingers that dig in harder when Zoro’s lips leave him, followed by a rough, ragged gasp for air that may sound, a little, like don’t, because, fuck, don’t. Don’t stop this. He’s vaguely soothed when they return, though he knows this will plague him. This will hurt him like everything else hurts but fuck he’s wanted it for so long and at least kissing isn’t speaking. At least it isn’t words, honest and halting, ripping his heart out piece by fucking piece, at least it isn’t him saying something like –
I love you.
There’s no sound this time when the other’s mouth is gone, though his lips stay parted, frozen, his eyes wide and streaming. No breath, no voicing the don’t that’s now loud and screaming inside his chest, and fuck.
Don’t, dammit, don’t –
But his confession doesn’t end, he keeps fucking talking, and Sanji doesn’t want to fucking hear it, not like this.
Stop –
He wants to draw back from the brush of those lips that just seconds ago he wanted to keep on his. He wants to shake his head away, wants to reject this, because no, the kiss was already too much so no, this isn’t allowed, it isn’t fucking fair. ]
Zoro, you… [ His voice trembles, like the hand that threatens to fall from Zoro’s neck the way it slid slowly down his arm that day, the day it happened, when he couldn’t hold on. ]
Why would you – what am I supposed to do with that, you asshole, I – I can’t – [ He can’t love him the way that he wants to, the way he could have when Zoro was alive but he was always too goddamn scared. He can't. Not when he has to leave here, when he has to go back and this just becomes something else to make him feel even angrier and more broken and full of so much fucking regret. He can't do this, he can't take it, he has to live with it, bastard. ] What’s the point in saying it now?
no subject
[ It's maybe the worst thing he could possibly say, here, in San Junipero, where among everyone who cares and connects and touches there's likely to be someone whose life wasn't saved. Because Sanji couldn't save Zoro from his own decisions. Because there was no saving him from that cyborg, from that island, from that depth and breadth of Luffy's suffering that Zoro chose to take on himself. ]
[ But that's not what he means. ]
You put me here.
Sanji you put me here where I can still see you - fuck, just being here let me know someone made it out of there alive... I may be fucking dead but I'm still here, and I can't... I can't stay here alone until the end of time and have you not know.
[ Coward. ]
[ He could have held on. Could have kept his mouth shut, another ten or sixty or a hundred years, until the Cook gets himself killed or dies of old age and is inevitably sent here himself, enough people who love him and enough people he loves to get him here, for him to want to be here where he can love everyone for all time. ]
[ But that's just it. Sanji gives his love so freely and has so much flowing back into him in return, even if it's not the kind he thinks he wants. There's no way... if Zoro just let him go, Sanji would find someone else without knowing. Would come here with that someone. And Zoro would have to live forever watching that and pretending to be happy and wishing he was truly dead. ]
'm saying it now because if I can't tell you -
I'd rather be in hell.
[ Sanji can still find someone else. He has his whole life. And Zoro has all of San Junipero. He'll move forward eventually. That's fine. But he can't stand just leaving this and never having either of them know. ]
I'd rather be in hell than have to stay here forever and not tell you.
[ His lips are still so close to that mouth and god he just wants to fall into the other man in the sand and kiss him until his clock for the week runs out. ]
You deserve... you deserve everything I never gave you but you at least deserve to know I never hated you.
h-happy birthday sanji ??
That the man would rather be in hell than not tell him – it’s genuinely the most romantic statement ever made to him, and he can’t properly appreciate it. Not now. Not like this. Instead of delighting his heart, the words clench around it, squeezing it so terribly he’s almost convinced it’s stopped. For all that would matter, here, where he isn’t sure he’s even actually existing. ]
Idiot… [ His voice is hoarse, the tears still steadily coming, and he draws back just enough for their mouths to not be so close, so there’s no temptation of their lips brushing together when he talks. ] I already knew that. [ He might’ve thought Zoro hated him once, in the beginning, but it wasn’t long before he realized how improbable that was. Maybe they were never the best of friends, maybe they drove each other entirely crazy, but they were nakama. …They are nakama, always, even in death. ]
I never hated you either…at least not until this fucking moment. [ He doesn’t mean that, because it wouldn’t be fair. Just as his anger over everything, everything that’s happened, isn’t for Zoro alone, he can’t resent him solely for this. He’s just as much to blame for every missed opportunity, every kiss he didn’t take and touch he didn’t give and words he never even tried to say. He could’ve had the man, had his love, when they could’ve enjoyed it, alive and together, if he hadn’t been so afraid of it, hadn’t cared so much about shit that didn’t matter. Could’ve had what they both deserved.
His hand leaves the back of Zoro’s neck so he can scrub at his face with the heel of his palm, not that it will do much good. He doesn’t know what good any of this will do, really, for him especially, but… He takes in a harsh, shuddered breath, still holding the other’s hand in his and hoping it will make it easier to say…what he’d honestly planned to keep to himself for the entirety of his life. ] Shit, Zoro. [ His other hand drops from his wet cheek so he can look him in the eye, as he should, when he tells him. ] I…
[ It’s there on his tongue, the last thing he ever expected to say when he came here, but –
then, it’s gone.
And so is he, too soon, completely vanished from his kneeling spot in the sand. ]
no subject
[ There are a thousand cliches other people might feel, might find appropriate, but no, Zoro doesn't feel like dancing. What he does feel, finally, is that he's no longer a captured ghost in a quiet limbo in between hollow and still bleeding. ]
[ He's at peace with being dead but he will never be at peace with dying, and yet, hearing that? He no longer feels like San Junipero is just a coil of copper where his brain fakes being alive and other sparks fake interacting with him. Because only Sanji could have ever said that to him and made him believe it. ]
[ The rest of the sentence comes, but it doesn't hurt. Because Zoro doesn't believe it. ]
[ He believes Sanji is angry and god he believes Sanji has every fucking right to be angry, but he doesn't believe Sanji hates him for this. If it turns out he does... Zoro can handle that. He can live with that, as much as being here is living. ]
[ He can handle being an idiot and he can handle Sanji being angry at him for the rest of his life, because at least they both know neither of them ever felt the bile they sometimes faked too well. (After all, if they hadn't faked it as well as they had, then it wouldn't have taken this to break the seal.) ]
[ It's harder to handle Sanji's hand pulling away, and his own jerks in an aborted move to reach for it. Watches Sanji wipe at his face and wants so badly to run his thumb under that eye, brush away some of those tears with all the tenderness he should have given the blond instead of snaps and snarls and swords. He only doesn't because Sanji's still angry and he's allowed to be. ]
[ But he still holds the other hand too-tight, and he can feel with every heartbeat and breath that Sanji makes no effort to pull it back. ]
[ His own eyes are still wet and red when Sanji meets them, but it doesn't matter. He goes completely still to see that blue so close, can see every detail, count the lines and colors (so many blues and greys and a streak or two of gold, all beautiful and handsome as hell) in those irises. Can see the depths of the other man's eyes doubling the reflections of the sunset on matching tears, and feel like maybe his sobbing is less a show of weakness if Sanji meets him there. ]
[ Sanji's mouth opens and Zoro hears as clearly as he doesn't, lost in being this close but rapt with attention all the same. His hand is so tight on the other's it's long crossed over into inappropriate, but Sanji's not pulling away and Zoro just wants to hear - whether it's admonishment or judgment or rebuke or (maybe but not likely) something else entirely - he just wants to hear - ]
[ But there are no words there to hear, and that tight grip is now a fist, no skin there but his own. ]
[ Instead of brilliant blue eyes, dull blue-purple shadows, darker in the divots where Sanji's knees were a breath ago. ]
[ Just a fucking breath ago, a breath full of words Sanji didn't get to finish. ]
[ There's a blankness of importance, where Zoro knows that everything is purple shadow because the sun is gone, gone like Sanji is gone - except the sun will be back in twelve hours -
that sounds like such a long fucking time
- but he doesn't give a damn if the sun never rises again or if shadows change their mind and turn forever from purplish grey to yellow-white and everything starts to look inside out. ]
[ That doesn't matter. ]
[ What matters is those two divots in the sand, where Zoro puts his fingers first - when he can force them to unclench, to admit there's nothing there between them - and his forehead second, bending double and pressing his face into the sand that's already night-cold. ]
[ Tears don't come. He feels like he's run out of them. And they don't mean anything, anyway, do they? Not if only the dead and no one are here to see them. ]
[ The sea wind brings a chill. The other residents and visitors will be cozying up, heading inside, building fires and counting stars. ]
[ He's going to stay here. ]
[ Right here. ]
[ He's going to stay in this spot until Sanji comes back. ]
[ Whether that's a week or a year or never. He's not going to stray and risk them missing each other again. Like Sanji might have in the weeks since Zoro's been a permanent resident here. Like they both have, before that, for all the months since they met. ]
[ It's not like he'll die from starvation or exposure or thirst. He's staying right here. ]
no subject
It takes days to calm his anger over being unplugged from the server early – anger he was immediately able to take out on the marines that surrounded the building after catching wind that members of the Straw Hat crew were inside, leaving a record number of men bloodied and bruised by the time he was done. Anger that he, subsequently, struggled to manage without lashing out at the others once they set sail again. It wasn’t their fault, after all, they couldn’t have known…
He tells them very little. He tells them he found Zoro there, tells them he’s just as much a bastard dead as he was alive. Tells them…nothing of much depth. Tells them nothing to explain why he’s always on edge or lost in thought or why he spends so many nights awake in the galley remembering the taste of tears on his lips.
He can’t tell them until he gives Zoro an answer.
He can’t explain any of it, why he so desperately needs to go back, so when they reach the next island, find the next center, he doesn’t fight for the next turn. He can’t, not without giving a reason, not while knowing that everyone else wants to see him just as desperately. Luffy, Nami, Usopp – they all get to go while docked. The next week, next island, it’s Chopper, Robin, then Franky.
If nothing else, he’s given plenty of time to try and sort out what he’s feeling. What he wants. Not that it helps much. He’s still angry at Zoro too, enough that it’s hard to imagine there’ll come a time when he won’t be, at least on some level. Still a little angry at himself. Can he really do this, start something that, under normal circumstances, should be a wonderful, thrilling thing? Something he should’ve done, should have at least tried for when they could’ve enjoyed it, when it wouldn’t have come with all this anger and guilt and such deep fucking loss.
But can he just let it go? Can he move on? Can he accept what Zoro has given him but not return it, save his heart for someone else, something else that’s less heavy than this? Easier than this?
He isn’t any closer to deciding anything with any certainty when his chance comes again.
It’s Brook’s turn, really, but when the newest crewmember, who seems to know a little too much, offers it to him, Sanji doesn’t hesitate to take it, gratefully. Doesn’t hesitate for a second until his feet are at the edge of that beach, where Zoro has been for everyone else’s visits, where Sanji knows he will still be for him. Pauses when he sees him there, facing the sea, and feels that same punch to his gut that hit him the first time around. May hit him every time.
If he does this…if he tells Zoro that he loves him…that is it for him.
There’ll be no women. No settling down or marriage once dreams are met and all the adventures are had. No growing old with someone. Just this. A handful of hours once a week, or less, in this place, until he dies too. What kind of way is that to live…?
The seconds go by as he stands there and he feels them, slipping away, time being wasted like the rare quiet moments between them that he let pass without touching Zoro, kissing him, or telling him – ]
Zoro – !
[ He calls to him from where he stands, wanting to go to him, wanting to run to him like he did before, only not to kick the crap out of him this time but to throw his arms around him and hold him again for as long as he can possibly can, but he can’t.
He can’t do anything until he finally fucking tells him – ]
I love you.
bella swan | twilight | ota
i would say she could be either role but given her luck, she's probably a resident. but i'm flexible! ]
cassian andor || rogue one || m/f
jyn erso || rogue one || ota
padmé amidala naberrie | star wars
cosima | ORPHAN BLACK