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Wa’s night sky is never clear. Winds and microclimates and smoke from bonfires. Clouds of all kinds roil across like they’re being chased, so thick Zoro sometimes thinks they’ll leave traces on the moon. Tails sharp like wet paintbrushes, darkness dripping from the tips.
Still, they separate fast too, so that the moon streams through like warning flares. And in the dense dark woods of this part of the country, the light turns Hiyori’s hair near-white. She’s wearing it down tonight, in waves still damp from her bath, that Zoro’s only staring at because she’s hiding behind them. Making a big show of tuning her instrument in the silence after his question, hands trembling over the strings. In the same silence rings faraway laughter. Toko and Tama, and that sounds like the cook yelling in his kitchen voice.
‘No,’ she says finally, voice a drop on a river. ‘I don’t. If there was one, I don’t think he’d have let all this happen.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Zoro replies after a swig of his sake. The cup presses into the soft earth when he puts it down. ‘I mean, I don’t think there is one. But if there was, I don’t think it’d be in his contract to— be nice.’
Hiyori laughs, brings a hand up to her face. Zoro still can’t see it. ‘What a crude way to put it, Lord Roronoa.’
Then she takes a deep breath, and plays half a tune, like she’s sounding out a thought. A sad one, the strings plucked gently as if they’re broken. The notes barely rise into the air before dying out, and she doesn’t try any new ones.
‘Sorry,’ Zoro says finally, reaching for the bottle again. She’s the one who brought it, and it must be from the dead Kurozumi bastard’s kitchens because it tastes divine. ‘And thanks. Should’ve opened with that.’
‘Thanks for what?’
Divine. Better yet straight from the lip, though it must scandalise her. Zoro wipes the corner of his mouth and answers. ‘You don’t believe in God but you still starved yourself for me to wake up.’
‘Who says that was for you?’ Hiyori finally looks up. Face bare of any paint, so that the shadows under her eyes are clear, the scars. Bright tears that slip over when she draws her legs up to her chest and leans her head on her knees. She’s nearly a decade older than him but feels younger, as young as she was when everything was ripped from her. Slip, slip, stain on silk. ‘It was purely selfish, Lord Roronoa.’
‘You gonna stop calling me that?’
‘No.’ She smiles, lips trembling around it. ‘And if you must know, I actually broke my fast half an hour before you woke up.’
Zoro raises an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’ Hiyori smiles wider. ‘He stirred first. I knew then that you would live too.’
*
When Zoro was a child, he’d always take longer than the others to go up a flight of stairs. Not because he was scared— not even after— almost the opposite.
He’d never said it to anyone. Even at ten he knew better than that, than asking do you ever want to fall backwards when you’re on the top stair? Let the air wash over you and push you down? Just to see what’d happen. Just to see how he’d fall down, right down, and slice through the air, sticking the landing.
*
The next evening, they bathe in their own chamber, second-best of the palace because they wouldn’t take Hiyori’s. Yamato’d started saying something about Zoro staying with the princess, but one thundering look from Kikunojo stopped him mid-sentence.
Their bath is nothing compared to yesterday’s springs, but still takes up a third of the room, so hot even pressed up against the outer wall as it is, that the steam warms the window-glass, diffusing moonlight into a grey wash that fades into gold when it meets the lantern they’ve set on the wet floor. The water gives way to the dark wood of the tub, all the deep dark scars Luffy’s sporting from this round of hell.
Zoro wipes one at the base of his skull where his hair begins, that Luffy scratched open by mistake earlier and let bleed into the collar of his robes. The washcloth comes away dull maroon, almost catches on neighbouring stitches, but Luffy doesn’t flinch. Only shivers when Zoro trails water over the clear skin; that tickles, he huffs, then laughs as Zoro does it again, tightens the arm he has around Luffy’s stomach, pulling him closer. All the knobs of his spine pressing up against Zoro’s bruised sternum, their curves made for the lined hollow of his chest.
‘Tickles,’ Luffy says again. ‘Your breath.’
Zoro lifts his damp hair out of the way and blows on his nape, makes him squirm. Bites at that bone, his favourite, licks clean sweat and thrice-diluted blood from it. ‘Does it?’
Luffy pinches his thigh in reply, leans back into him, head against shoulder to block his access. Half his face is moon-grey, the other half warm orange. One set of lashes silvered, the other frail and dark like shadows, his scar softened under them. Zoro licks the peak of his cheekbone, breathes in the unfamiliar lavender of the soap where it’s concentrated under his ear, damp and too-clean and thick like the steam wrapping around them. He inhales again, long and deep, lets it out in a sigh before reaching for his bottle.
The sake’s even better than it was last night, bottle so wet it almost falls from his careless grip. Cold and light and thin, just what he needs.
He presses the bottle to Luffy’s neck, laughs at the yelp it earns him. ‘Why’re you so annoying tonight?!’
‘Am I?’ He must be. Nothing’s enough tonight. ‘Must’ve picked it up from Yamato.’
‘Jealous,’ Luffy says, eyes still closed, smug. ‘You want him in here?’
‘Kaido’s son?’ Zoro scoffs. ‘I’ll pass.’ Squints. ‘Maybe later.’
‘We’re leaving in two days.’
‘Later than that. We’ll see him again.’ And Momonosuke, and the little ones. Something tells him it’s not over yet. ‘Anyway, no. Not jealous.’
‘Jealous.’
Zoro grins against Luffy’s temple, digs his fingers into a rare stretch of unhurt muscle over his stomach. ‘Not jealous.’
‘You are.’ That sounds serious, and when Luffy opens his eyes, he looks it. He turns around in Zoro’s arms, sends water over the edge of the bath, colours switching sides so that his scar goes silver this time. The bottom edges of his hair are wet, spiked, dripping down his collarbones. The mottled bruising on his torso is so dark Zoro can barely tell his ribs apart, his navel, his small dark nipples; only the Marineford rip glistens clear. ‘You’re jealous you didn’t get to see me.’
Well.
The sake is cold, light. Thin. Luffy looks serious, not smug. He’s asking a question.
Zoro reaches out and trails a knuckle over his childhood scar. Silver. White. ‘Come on, captain. Time for dinner.’
*
(In the morning, morning as Zoro scarfed down his second bowl of rice, Nami’d just finished hers. Slower than usual because she’d managed to do something to her throat in battle, so that she kept wincing with each swallow. It made Zoro angry to look at, so he kept his eyes on his food.
‘I suppose you don’t want to know what he looked like,’ she’d said after working half a cup of tea down. ‘That night.’
‘Nope,’ Zoro answered. He’d already heard enough, vague, awed descriptions flying here and there, barely enough to piece together half a picture and it was still too much. Eyes, laugh, hair. White. Kidd and Law’d held their tongues about it, though Law, when he got a minute alone with Zoro, had looked at him grave and dark, and said it’s beyond you now, Roronoa. Even you. ‘I don’t need to know.’
‘You’ll see it when you do, is that it?’
‘Yeah.’ Ginger tang of soup, the brine of mackerel. Zoro’d held his tongue, too, this morning. So that he wouldn’t say something stupid like I’ll see it when I deserve to.)
*
After dinner Kaido’s idiot son decides it’s a great time to play capture the flag in the forest, because that’s not what they almost died trying to do days ago or anything. Lanterns strung from bowing branches, swinging in the bursts of wind that this or that guy’s haki sets off, or kicked off when the cook gets too into the game.
Zoro’s been tasked with guarding the flag because no one trusts him in the woods at night, which is fine with him. Back against a trunk, a bottle and rice balls on his spread coat, and a nap until one of the enemies gets here. If they make it past Law’s navigator, that is, who’s been walking the perimeter like he’s getting paid to do it. Law himself had refused to join the game, staring at Yamato and Luffy with such arrogant disgust that even Kidd lost it.
Kidd was the one who suggested it, actually. Splitting captains and crews, so that Luffy’s ended up with half of the Hearts and Kidd’s masked first mate, whose occasional laughter keeps giving his position away, though they’re all pretending not to hear it, or it’d spoil the game. And Zoro’s on this end of the woods with Nami, Robin and the cook sent out to capture their own fucking jolly roger from whichever poor fuck’s being made to guard it, and has no idea what’s coming. Even from here Zoro can hear Blondie’s leg cutting through the warm night air, almost parting the clouds.
He’s almost dozing off in all that lulling roar— yelling, screeches of laughter, the occasional sound of sparks and curses and Nami shrieking oh my God, a spider— when it happens. Half a second, but enough to make him straighten up, the hair on his nape rising, teeth clenched so hard they ring.
A beam of pure white light flashes for half a second from the northern woods, going all the way up to the sky, and this time the clouds split to make way for it. It’s so brief Zoro can’t even trace it to its end before it’s gone, but another second later the ground trembles, just one quiver.
Zoro’s in a crouch by then, fingers splayed over the damp grass, chest thumping as he looks wildly around himself. There’s— it’s—
‘It’s all right,’ the Heart navigator whispers. Zoro narrows his eyes, looks up at him, and only realises he’s broken out into a sweat when the action makes a drop roll down the bridge of his nose. ‘We’re safe.’
‘How d’you know?’ Even his voice has gone hoarse.
Just then comes Chopper’s whiny, affronted voice. ‘No fair, Luffy!’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Luffy sings back, though he doesn’t sound it. There’s a different laugh to his voice, the ring of it somehow— Zoro swallows. ‘Didn’t mean to, promise.’
‘That’s right,’ the Mink says, still in that gentle whisper. ‘It’s the first time you’re seeing it, so your haki must be going crazy. Captain’s did too, that night.’
‘Seeing what,’ Zoro says, but he already knows.
*
Nothing else could provoke such a primal response, have his heart in his throat like this. That laugh, that white. Striking all the way into the sky like nothing he’s ever seen. Making him question, for half a second, the visible universe.
*
Luffy gets the flag, of course he does, though Bepo puts up a big old fight for five brave minutes against his royal haki, and Zoro for thirty seconds longer. That’s all it takes— thirty seconds between Luffy leaping past the shivering white slump that is Bepo squeaking fine, fine, and his dirty hand ripping the bright red flag off its post.
Zoro starts counting the seconds when Luffy leaps at him, and it’s easier to do than usual with how time slows, Luffy curling its reins in a single fist, dragging all its horses to a crawl, so that even the cawing of the night birds drops in timbre. A long low note resonating through the woods as Luffy comes charging, his wide grin a crescent in dark velvet, teeth slicing through the green as he laughs. That gleeful one, indiscriminate of victory— a war, a game, a sweet stolen from the kitchen. All the same to Luffy, no matter who’s before him. Marines and lions, or the only man stupid enough to be his lover.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ Luffy sings, even as Zoro pulls his swords out and thinks of days ago, when he’d seen another crescent rip through the roaring darkness of the battlefield. But that was nothing— nothing at all, compared to this. The blazing, thumping, demanding roar of being in danger, real danger. Four seconds in and they’re both animals, Zoro with three claws, trying to threaten more than cut, swing more than hit. Luffy, having none of it anyway, one leg wrapped tight around Zoro’s waist, the other stretching around his chest, hell pressing light into his throat so that every breath of the wet air burns. Brat, Luffy; through and through, cackling even as Zoro drops a sword and roots a fist in his rough curls, tugging like children would. ‘Ow, Zoro, you ogre—’
Sixteen seconds in, Zoro wrestles him into the ground, Luffy shrieking like it tickles, legs snapping back to their usual length and kicking into the air, catching Zoro in the ribs and making him snarl. ‘You little freak—’
They really should’ve made Nami keep watch. But then again, no one was counting on keeping Luffy away from the flag. The game’ll only get started once he grabs it, actually, because he’ll have to pass it to someone else if he doesn’t want to be tagged holding it, and there’s no way he can escape Zoro’s clutches now. He knows it too, half-laughing, half-sulking as he stretches an arm all the way to the post despite Zoro’s weight on his torso, and twists the flag off the bamboo.
‘Yamato!’
‘Got it!’
‘Oh, no, you don’t—’ That’s Bepo, and then Zoro senses both his and Yamato’s presence scrambling away from their clearing.
And then nothing but the birds returning to a lighter song, and crickets, and Zoro’s heart hurtling itself against Luffy’s.
The drumming recedes.
Just the two of them now, and the game out of their hands. Still Zoro sits on on his heels and locks his knees around Luffy’s ribs, still he curls both fists around Luffy’s sweaty, grimy upper arms. They’ll need another bath, a dip in the river, maybe. It flows from a glacier, Hiyori was telling Zoro the other day, so—
‘Kiss,’ Luffy says. Zoro executes. Lips soft and warm, breath as damp as the jungle itself, tongue wet and eager. ‘Let me up.’
‘Not a chance,’ Zoro murmurs. He can still hear screaming from the other end of the woods, and what sounds like one of Robin’s final fuck-off moves. Game’s still on. He doesn’t put it past Luffy to knee him in the crotch and make back north. Even though that looks like the last thing on his mind right now, with the way his lips are parted, eyes wide and happy staring up at Zoro, at the canopy of the trees past him, and finally, at the sky. ‘What’re you looking at?’
‘Let me up,’ Luffy says again. ‘Wanna touch.’
‘Nice try.’
‘See how you like it when I have you tied up.’
He swallows a shiver. ‘Yeah?’
‘Oh, Zoro likes that.’ Waxing-moon grin again, that smug little giggle of his. ‘Should I tie you up? You’ll stop sulking then?’
‘Now you’re just teasing.’ But Zoro’s smiling despite himself, despite the second shiver that goes down his spine when he thinks to minutes ago, that beam of light. Thinks to nights ago, that scythe; nights from now, when he could— be given it all. And do nothing but receive it. Do nothing but fall backwards. ‘You want to tie me up?’
‘Let go and find out.’
Not a chance. But somewhere deep in Zoro heat licks up once, then twice. At the sight of Luffy pressing into the ground, the streaks of earth on his bare collarbones, where bruises are changing colours. At the rise and fall of his chest under Zoro’s hand, the beat of his heart, somehow the same as the rush of Zoro’s blood in his ears earlier. At the reminder that if Luffy’s prone right now, it’s because he wants to be. Because if he didn’t—
‘Zoro,’ Luffy says, quiet. Quiet as death, suddenly, not a hint of a smile. ‘I said let go.’
Not just danger. Not the kind they face every day of their lives, every minute. The shivers, the hair on the nape of his neck, the way the jungle is falling silent around them as if trying to erase itself: Zoro’s heart in his throat is fear. Freezing, fragile; so thin it can slip unnoticed and slice his bones through to the marrow. White like the white he saw earlier, endless violent light.
He wants to drink it. Luffy knows.
‘And if I don’t?’ Zoro rasps.
And Luffy, because he knows and because he is generous, lets him have it— just one sip. Just a breath, as the grass flattens in a frightened circle around them, as even the cicadas stop.
Luffy looks up at him, and those wide clear eyes of his flash red, and Zoro’s the luckiest man in the world. There’s nothing to do for the burn in his core than to stoke it, so he lowers himself on Luffy, and slots their legs together in the damp sharp grass, and kisses him again, this time with teeth. And claws, and bones.
*
Zoro washes alone. Heads to the river while Nami orders the others to the baths, I’m not having all of you drag mud into the banquet hall tomorrow, poor Momo, you already ruined his first attempt to host one and other complaints trailing off as he strips.
The water is cold constant movement. Needles of ice crashing into his skin every second, so that he takes a long swig more to keep warm than anything else. Shudders as it goes down smooth, reminds himself to ask Hiyori to pack the Sunny well with everything she’s willing to spare him. And he’s no fool, knows how much that everything could amount to, that she’ll never ask for an exchange.
Zoro drinks, and scrubs. The moon turns his skin pale, and though he should have no memory of its wet gleam on his blood that night on the battlefield, he can almost taste it in the back of his throat. The busy sky, the thrumming war. And the scythe.
‘Careful,’ he hears, as he breaks the surface of the bubbling water. ‘You might not feel it, but you’re too weak to stand temperatures like this for long. You have five minutes before you pass out.’
‘Now I’m going to make it to six just to spite you,’ Zoro grins. Turns to face Trafalgar, barks in protest at the flask he’s holding before realising it’s his own, the Hearts’ jolly roger carved into its silver front. ‘Thought you were asleep in your coffin already.’
‘We need to talk,’ Trafalgar says. He’s settled on a boulder, Kikoku balanced behind him, thick black shawl tight around his skinny shoulders. ‘You saw what he did earlier.’
‘No idea what you’re talking about.’ Zoro cups the water in his hands and trails it down his chest, scrubs with the heel of his hand. The raised line of his scar feels sharper than usual. ‘Why were you even watching? Thought you were too cool for—’
‘Roronoa.’ All right, not in the mood to joke. ‘You weren’t there.’
‘Oh, believe me, I know.’
‘You weren’t there,’ Trafalgar presses. ‘He can’t— transform like that whenever he wants. And I know you have a death wish, but it could really kill one of you. It could kill him.’
Zoro closes his eyes, goes back under. The night isn’t quite as black in the river; the moonlight somehow plays all the way to its bed, glimmering and coursing through the earth and past his eyelids, so that he can almost see it shine even in the one he’s lost. A play of singing light, what stars might feel like if they rained down to earth. He holds his breath for them, until his head starts to spin.
When he comes back up, the world is suddenly lonesome. Suddenly he’s at the top of a staircase.
‘Surgeon of Death,’ he says, and Trafalgar rolls his eyes, closes his flask after a long swig. ‘What, you feared for us that night?’
When he doesn’t answer, Zoro holds a hand out. After a moment the flask lands on it, freezing steel. The whiskey scorches his throat on the way down, but it’ll take him to the six-minute mark.
‘It won’t,’ he says, voice rougher. Suddenly he has a death wish. ‘I won’t let it.’
‘You weren’t there,’ Trafalgar says, a third time, and yes, Zoro knows. Zoro fucking knows. ‘You can’t even imagine what it’s like.’
‘Then let me see for myself first,’ he grins out. ‘Yeah? Quit trying to— sell death to me.’ He’s been close a hundred times, enough times to tell.
‘It’s not death I’m trying to sell,’ Trafalgar says. Takes a deep rattling breath that Zoro can hear over the river, lets it out into the dense, tense sky. ‘It’s God, Roronoa.’
*
In the end, Luffy doesn’t. Need to tie Zoro up, that is, because there’s never been a day in their lives together that Zoro’s disobeyed a command, when the command itself isn’t disobey. Like the challenge Luffy threw him last night, daring him to say what if I don’t, and Zoro, helpless to it.
Their second-to-last morning in Wa dawns blistering hot, every cloud splitting and disappearing before the sun, which comes through the windows of the courtroom in beams so thick Zoro could touch them. It brings out shards of a different shade in Luffy’s dark eyes, something closer to what they flashed last night, as if now that the wind’s stopped blowing, they can settle enough for Zoro to look beyond the deep brown of the surface into the low flame under.
Yes. Luffy, as he swallows huge bites and laughs at jokes and puffs his cheeks at whatever someone’s yelling at him about, is just an animal in wait. Has been since Zoro got back to their chamber last night, the air too humid to dry the river water off his shoulders, so that he had to rub a cloth over himself before getting into bed. And he’d known Luffy was awake, of course— knows every breath of his— but still hadn’t expected the slant of his half-closed eyes, the set of his jaw, the quiet smile. Like it was another game, which everything is to Luffy. Game, thrill, chase.
No, Zoro hadn’t expected it— and hadn’t expected not to expect it. Hadn’t realised how life-ending it’d be to discover that Luffy could still surprise him.
It’s a game to him. Zoro sees it in the way he forgets about everything, then remembers when he looks up and they meet eyes, and Luffy gets that small smile on his face again. Sees it in the way it disappears just as quick, replaced by his usual grin, their world only theirs for a moment before opening to let everyone else in, though Zoro’d give anything to barricade the doors.
He can’t, so he drinks. A cup for every time Luffy looks at him, another for every time the sun lands on his hair and brightens it for a second. It’s not the first time Zoro’s leant against a pillar and made an evening out of watching Luffy exist, but the heat to it is different. Brighter. More golden. The pride running through him is sharper, closer to arrogance, swooping higher with every reminder to the rest of the court that he’s the first mate. That those words mean more and more with every passing day.
It’s different, and Zoro only understands how when the sun’s already setting on their lunch-turned-tea, and the hall starts emptying. Only then does he realise that he’s spent the entire day watching Luffy and no one else, the strength of the trance only hitting when it actually lifts. Zoro hasn’t been this unaware, this unobservant, since before Kuraigana— this careless.
Vaguely, he wonders if this is what being drunk used to feel like. But then everyone’s scattering off for the evening, and he’s lost sight of Luffy, and the cicadas are starting to sing again.
*
The waning moon’s still bright enough to set pale fire to the bed. Zoro, because he’s never disobeyed a command, not from Luffy— and so not from anyone who counts— is quiet and tight in the middle of it, soles planted on the hard mattress and hands wrapped around his own wrists above his head. But his hips rise of their own accord, or on the command he can see in Luffy’s eyes, their glinting yes falling on him like rubies.
Zoro gathers the rubies. Makes a rosary of them, winds it around both their necks when Luffy reaches down to kiss him. He tastes like blood and wine. Horrible, and the only thing Zoro’d ask to drink in his last hour on earth. The only thing he missed, regretted, when he saw that scythe rise through the jet black night. Wine and his lover. Standing on top of the stairs and Luffy waiting at the bottom, the depths of the sea that’ll never claim him, and so never claim Zoro.
Do you ever want to fall backwards when you’re at a height?
He’d asked Luffy once, huddled in the crow’s nest. Zoro was gone on something infernal they’d stolen from an island that was more forest than town, that one drag of was enough to send you to hell. In the starlight, Luffy was a sleeping beast, eyes closed and haki keeping watch.
Like when you’re on top of a flight of stairs and you wanna just lose your balance?
Zoro’d blinked, then laughed. Yeah, like that.
No, Luffy’d answered. No fun because I know you’d catch me. You make things like that boring.
Fuck off, Zoro’d grinned. Take that back. I don’t make your life boring.
Didn’t say life. Said danger. I always have to go find something even crazier to do so that I can keep you on your toes.
So it’s the opposite? You’re less bored thanks to me.
Huh. Luffy’d cracked an eye open, and of course it was bright and alert, the starlight on his scar. You’re right, actually. But— you could never bore me. But because of that, you make life boring. Do you know what I’m saying?
‘Zoro.’
The waning moon is still almost full outside the window, so Luffy eats it up. Rough curls blocking out the light in splinters, the curve of his neck a perfect line of darkness against the stained white. Like this Zoro can barely see him, only the shape he cuts out into the world, and the faintest edges of gold from the paper lamp on the floor.
No, Zoro can’t really see him— only the thin red line around the ink of his irises. It glints every time he tilts his head, in perfect concentration as he sinks down on Zoro’s straining cock, inch by blazing inch in one constant, slow slide. Arms looped twice around Zoro’s legs to brace himself, thighs stretching impossibly open the way they always do, and not even a tremble. Zoro feels all these things instead of seeing them, and feels them because he knows. Has done this so often it’s in the makeup of his body now, like there might almost be grooves in his flanks for Luffy’s knees, divots in his calves. Seams in his shoulders.
Now more than ever, with that scythe so close. Ready to carve a new shape out of him, the last one. Zoro’s generous lover.
He blinks it away but Luffy’s already caught him. ‘You’re not paying attention.’
‘’course I am.’ Or he’s trying, with Luffy around him like a vice, always the only feeling in the world, especially when he moves, and when he doesn’t.
‘Aren’t so.’ Petulant now, because it’s all a game. ‘Not gonna show you if you’re not looking.’
And Zoro doesn’t fight for it. Doesn’t try to explain that there’s no such thing as not looking when it comes Luffy, captain’s orders or not. That there’s no start or end because it’s not an action, not like breathing or speaking or sleeping. It’s a trance. Always there, like birds and fire and last night’s river. Last night’s wine. Zoro always slips into it without knowing, or has lived in it forever. Has come from it. Will return to it when he falls backwards.
When he dives.
‘Zoro.’
‘Yes,’ he says. Then thrusts home, so fast, so deep, that it forces a deep stunned moan out of Luffy, the red of his eyes spreading past his irises so that it almost swallows his entire gaze, bare, blazing blood. It throws a thorn in Zoro’s throat but he keeps their eyes locked as the first white tendrils start from Luffy’s temples, winding slow, haunting, graceful, around the youthful black of his hair. Like this is ageing him somehow, even though the smile on his lips says otherwise, the way it’s spreading wider, more teeth to it, and—
‘Now you’ve done it,’ Luffy laughs, and every hair on Zoro’s body rises.
Animal fear, rising up his throat like freezing smoke, like moonlight distilled into the cold sake of the river, or like the river, the entire river, drunk too fast and too deep, as Luffy’s hair turns a perfect pearly white. Even on his arms, his calves, even the trail of thickening curls leading to his cock. Even, Zoro realises, his lashes. Each stroke of them, so that their shadow on his skin makes no sense anymore, for something so dark to come from something so light, for it to be grey and not tinted crimson like his eyes.
Zoro swallows, and swallows, as he watches Luffy uncoil. Grow just a bit taller, lither, like a tree reaching up, hungry endless arms leaving Zoro’s legs and trapping his hands instead, winding around Zoro’s thundering pulse so tight his blood might just cut off. And it might as well, because—
Because—
‘Zoro,’ Luffy sings, and even that sound has half an echo to it, like his thoughts are voicing themselves before he can get to it. ‘Are you looking now?’
Zoro, on the other hand, has no voice left. Still he finds one. ‘Yes.’
Yes, he’s looking. At every thread of Luffy that he gets to see, so wild, so naked, so unearthly. The way the light almost seems to bend around him, like it recognises something stronger than itself and doesn’t want a fight. Nothing would want a fight against Luffy like this, his bright eyes and wide grin, and his body, more beautiful than any body that ever lived and moved. Not of this world. Or— but Luffy’s got his arms twisted and pinned to the bed, and then he’s moving.
No, Zoro thinks then. He is of this world, can only be of this world. Zoro’s world, because no one from outside could know how to move like this with Zoro inside him, tight, glorious, knowing heat. No one but Luffy, who’s still himself, if more himself. More laughter, more strength. More Zoro’s, as he leans down for a blazing kiss and giggles into Zoro’s open, panting mouth like he’s pleased with himself. More bratty, too, the unbelievable thing. Are you looking, Zoro? Zoro. Zoro. ‘Zoro.’
He’s looking. Hungry endless arms, cold, delicious fear. Luffy, knowing, around him as he braces one boyish hand on Zoro’s sternum and puts all his weight on it, almost cracking both their bones as he rides Zoro. Still Luffy, more abundant in his sighs and moans, eyes wide open and cutting through the air into Zoro’s. It doesn’t feel new— it just feels more. More beautiful, more urgently everything. Luffy is more everything than he already is.
When they come— always together when they’re like this— the windows shatter with a fantastic sound. Such a light fills the room, for a moment Zoro almost believes they accidentally dragged the moon down to earth. Wouldn’t put it past Luffy. Wouldn’t put anything past Luffy, a god Zoro could get on good terms, so terribly is he lacking in holiness.
Yes, Zoro thinks, even as he groans and gasps through his orgasm. This god he could reach. This god he could need. This distance between him and Luffy. Something he can close, defeat, touch. Somewhere he can go when some enemy’s sword ends up splitting his heart, somewhere he can land when he falls backwards under the swing of the scythe. God-hungry suicidal, perfect.
This is always how Luffy was meant to make him feel. In love and awe. So beautiful it’s fearsome. So killing it’s gorgeous. So—
‘Stop it,’ Luffy says. He’s lying on top of Zoro and not a care about his weight, and he’s yet to turn back, but the echo’s gone from his voice. ‘I’ve never heard you think so much. You’ll start bleeding out your ears.’
Zoro barks a hoarse laugh, bites Luffy’s cheek for the quip. ‘You’re right. Thinking too much. Too many words.’
‘It’s because I was so cool just now. You’re trying to figure out if you’ve ever seen anything like it before. You haven’t. You’re trying to give it a name. You can’t. Now stop thinking.’
‘Now that’s the smartest I’ve heard you sound. Bleeding out your ears too?’
‘I’m hungry.’
Of course he is. But there’s glass all over the floor and even a god needs to watch his step, and Zoro’s not about to be the world’s worst guardian. So he sighs and shoves Luffy off— ‘Oof, Zoro!’— and looks for the washcloth he was smart enough to leave by the bed.
It’s covered in glass too. Zoro’ll just have to kill anyone who sees him on the way to the kitchen. ‘Back in ten.’
‘I want that meat they said they’re serving tomorrow. And a bowl of rice. And—’
*
I don’t bore you but I make your life boring? Bedtime for captain.
No, stop. I mean it. See, sometimes, someone’ll do something, or something’ll happen, and I’ll think— you’re not Zoro but it’ll do. You know?
*
‘And Zoro!’ he calls from the bed just before Zoro slides the door shut. ‘The sweets!’
Even gods, Zoro reasons, have their cravings. Especially gods.
*
Especially gods of light, and gods of death.
Were you not a drunkard, Ghalib, we would think you a saint.