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It starts by accident. Merry’s a small ship, there's only so much privacy they can give each other. Zoro’s been spending more time training than ever, and training tends to leave him riled up and restless, an itch under his skin.
When he was travelling alone it hadn't been an issue. If he got riled up from fighting or training he could just take care of it. He’s never been embarrassed by his body or its functions, he doesn’t give a shit – jerking off's just another thing to take care of, like eating or pissing or sleeping. You ignore the need until you can't, then you handle it. No problem.
He kinda forgets that on the Merry it's not so simple.
So when he pulls his dick out late one night in the men's cabin after stumbling into his hammock, fully dressed and still damp with sweat from running through drills until he couldn’t keep his arms up anymore, he doesn’t even think about the fact that he's not actually alone. That he's sharing his living space with other people now, people who get annoyed when he leaves his dirty clothes on the floor or when he pisses over the side of the ship, and who probably wouldn't take too kindly to him openly jerking off like this in the men’s cabin while they sleep on in the dark beside him, blissfully unaware.
No. He’s exhausted, muscles aching, half-delirious from the punishing drills he’s been putting himself through, and his mind is empty of every thought but one: Dracule Mihawk.
It feels like he's been thinking of nothing else for weeks. He thinks he might be going crazy.
He trains all day in his quest to improve, to grow stronger as Mihawk instructed, trying to bridge what feels like an impossible distance between the two of them and their respective abilities. Then when he can’t train any longer he sleeps and dreams of him, hears that decadent voice in his ear every night, rich and plummy. “Fighting isn’t all about strength, little Rabbit.” Then he wakes up and trains again, harder, better. Imagines Mihawk watching him with barely concealed disappointment, leaning against the mast and drawling “Is that all you can do? I'm wasting my time.”
It makes Zoro insane, the way Mihawk had spoken to him back at the Baratie. So fucking condescending, like the skill Zoro had spent his life honing meant less than nothing to him. It makes him angry. It makes him want to prove himself. It makes his dick hard.
So he pushes himself until every muscle in his useless body whines at him in pain, aching and weary, and his mind is full of Mihawk’s sneer, the way he'd rolled his eyes at Zoro like he was nothing but a rather amusing annoyance, a little frog croaking in a well. The cruel set of his fucking gorgeous mouth. His bare chest, all that flawless skin – no scars, no marks, not even a bead of sweat to interrupt the creamy smoothness, fuck.
Had Mihawk ever been so much as scratched by an opponent’s sword at any point in his life? Zoro can’t imagine it.
He’s exhausted, he can barely keep his eyes open and sleep’s tugging him down like gravity but he’s too keyed up tonight to let it pull him under right away. His dick twitches, needy in his hand. He has to do something about that first, or he’s going to lose even more of his mind than he has already.
His palm is hot from holding a sword for hours, the skin red and abraded where he’s developing calluses on top of calluses, and when he squeezes himself in that palm the ache runs so deep it becomes sweet and brittle, like a high pitched note sustained too long. He pushes into the sting. He's a mess already; sweaty, dick leaking. He runs the pads of his fingertips through the stickiness and breathes out harshly through his nose.
Briefly he thinks he sees something stirring out of the corner of his eye, hard to make out in the darkness. But it’s hard to focus on anything that’s not the sensation of his not-quite-slick-enough hand stroking down his dick and back up again, or the image of Mihawk he’s holding in his mind.
He imagines the warlord standing over the hammock and watching him, looking down on him with a bored expression on his face. Imagines his sinful mouth curling around the word “Filthy.”
Zoro’s trousers are open and shoved down just enough, and he wasn't wearing a shirt while he was training so his torso is bare – he enjoys the idea of baring himself to Mihawk like this, being seen and judged, being filthy for him. He runs his other hand over his own naked skin, feeling for the small ridge of Mihawk's scar on his abdomen and then following it with his fingertips all the way up to his collar bone.
It’s fully healed now, it doesn’t hurt any more. Zoro tries not to think about how much he dislikes that.
“Don’t worry, Rabbit,” he imagines Mihawk saying, indulgently. “I'll give you so many more before it's time for you to defeat me.”
Fuck, he thinks. Fuck, yeah, that – he wants that. Wants to be run through again, wants it to hurt, wants to be marked. He wants to bleed for Mihawk. It's like lightning up his spine. He grits his jaw and starts thrusting rhythmically, makes his fist tight and uses his tired muscles to fuck up into it. Thinks about Mihawk stabbing him with his kogatana when they’d fought, the wet squelch of it in the muscle of his chest. He imagines that little tease of a dagger thrusting into him again, over and over in the same rhythm as he’s fucking his fist, pushing in and in and in to Zoro’s body. Imagines coming like that, being fucked by the blade, blood slicking the way. His breath stutters. He hears the rustle of someone turning over in their hammock.
He finishes after only a handful of thrusts, hot and wet on his belly, and pictures Mihawk looking down on him with disdain. “Quite an appalling lack of self control, Rabbit. What a disappointment.”
Exhaustion rushes in almost immediately. He falls asleep without bothering to clean himself up.
He doesn’t think anything of it until after breakfast the next day, when he's eaten and showered and he's about to head out on deck to start warming up for another day lifting weights and running drills, when the cook stops him in the corridor outside the bathroom with a hand to his chest.
“Don’t touch me,” Zoro says, automatically.
Sanji snorts incredulously. “I'm getting a lecture on boundaries and personal space from you, am I? That is rich.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He lowers his voice, casting his eyes up and down the corridor like he’s worried they might be overheard. “It means, moss dick, that I heard you wanking in your hammock last night like some kind of fucking pervert.”
Huh.
Zoro cocks an eyebrow and looks him up and down. “Sounds like you're the pervert. Maybe mind your own business next time.”
“Shut up. You think I want to see you with your dick out?”
Zoro laughs. It’s honestly impressive that the cook has gotten to the age he is with this level of prissiness intact – acting like the sight of another man’s dick is gonna kill him, for fuck’s sake. Didn’t he live on that restaurant ship with, like, at least a dozen other men? Surely this can’t be the first time he’s accidentally caught sight of something he wasn’t meant to.
“Don’t like what you see, look away.”
Sanji gives him a look that would wither a lesser man. “That’s not how this works.”
“On a ship this size? It definitely is.”
“Is not.”
“Oh right, so you never jerk off, is that it?”
“I…” Sanji blushes and casts his eyes up and down the corridor again, and Zoro fights back another laugh. “I don't jerk off in front of other men.”
“Neither do I. I wasn’t jerking off in front of you. I was just jerking off and you happened to be there.”
“That’s the same thing!”
“No it’s not.” Zoro’s got no interest in exposing himself to people who don’t wanna see him, like some kind of creep. But he’s also not embarrassed by his body and its natural functions. They’re all adults here. “Look, I didn’t realise you were awake. If you wanted me to stop then you should’ve said something.” He grins. “Guess you were too busy enjoying the show – in which case: you’re welcome, pervert.”
“You are impossible. How would you like it if I just whipped it out in the middle of the cabin one night?”
The thought of that brings Zoro up short for a moment. He cocks his head, considering it. His eyes run over the long length of the cook’s body again, lingering this time, slow and appreciative.
The cook makes a little noise in the back of his throat, and Zoro’s grin widens. He leans in closer, closer enough that he can murmur right into the cook’s flushed red ear. “Try it some time and find out,” he says. Then he turns and stalks his way up to the main deck, ignoring Sanji’s outraged sputtering behind him.
Mihawk is there leaning against the stair rail, arms crossed, hat dipped low over his eyes. “Flirting with the chef?” he enquires, idly, as Zoro passes by. “And here I thought you were serious about improving enough to beat me.”
I am serious, Zoro thinks at him. Why else would I be imagining you berating me for getting distracted?
“I’d rather be berating you for your footwork.”
Zoro unsheathes Wado and takes a deep, steadying breath. Mihawk peers at him from under the brim of his hat, yellow eyes fixed unerringly on his hand where it grips the hilt.
“Try to impress me this time, little one.”
Everything Zoro does, everything he has done since he was a child, has been to impress Dracule Mihawk. He sinks into a guard position, takes a slow count of three, then lets the movement flow through him. It’s soothing, working through well-rehearsed forms that his body knows by muscle memory. He feels his mind start to clear as he does it, the restless thrum inside him gradually growing still as a calm sea.
By the time he’s finished running through his warm ups, Mihawk is gone.
*
When he staggers into bed that night, he’s hard again.
He’s not actually a dick, so he doesn’t intend to do anything about it. Exposing himself to people who aren’t into it really doesn’t do it for him, and Sanji’s already bitched at him about it once today. He looks like he’s asleep, but he had the previous night, too, so Zoro doesn’t trust it. He turns onto his belly and forces himself to ignore the sugar-sweet ache of his dick. He’s the master of his own body.
“Is that what you tell yourself?” Mihawk’s voice whispers in the back of his mind.
*
You’d think the cook would be grateful for Zoro’s forbearance, but instead he’s even more of a bitch than ever. He drops Zoro’s plate in front of him at breakfast with as much carelessness as he ever lets himself manage when it comes to food, not meeting his eyes, and sulks his way through the meal. He snips at Zoro throughout the day, arguing with anything he says or suggests, making petty little digs at everything from his body odour to his training.
“You’re dropping your elbow, shithead,” he mutters while sweeping past with a tray of drinks.
“I don’t give you cooking tips,” Zoro replies. “So you can shut the fuck up about my form.”
“He’s not wrong, though.” Mihawk is standing far too close to Sanji, looming over him with a curious expression on his face. He looks like a lepidopterist about to pin out a new specimen.
Zoro scowls at him. “You can shut up, too.”
Sanji gives him a weird look over his shoulder, and Zoro realises he probably shouldn’t have said that out loud. “You had too much sun, moss head?”
“No,” Zoro replies automatically. Though, in truth, it is a punishingly hot day, and he’s been out on deck training without a break for hours now. The weather’s fucked in the Grand Line, it seems. They pass through areas of heat and cold that are so localised it’s starting to give Nami stress lines between her eyebrows trying to safely sail the ship through it all. Zoro makes sure to point this out to her as often as he can, because he’s a good friend like that.
The cook rolls his eyes. He doubles back a few steps and sweeps a tall glass off the tray he’s carrying. “Here.” He holds it out to Zoro. Condensation beads on the glass. “Water. Drink it, and try not to die of heat stroke.”
Zoro holds his gaze for a moment, ignoring the prickle of sweat at his eyelashes. Then: “Fine,” he says, and takes the glass.
It’s deliciously cold. He drains it in one series of too-greedy gulps, and feels Mihawk’s eyes on his throat the whole time.
*
He’s not jerked off in three days, and it’s becoming a fucking problem. The training works him up and there’s no release, just a relentless build and build of tension that makes him feel like he’s gonna go off if the wind blows just right. It’s a small ship – the bathroom’s in constant demand, the showers are communal, there’s no damn space. He’s half tempted to ask Nami if he can use her room while she’s busy during the day, but he gets the feeling if she knew what he wanted to use it for she’d gut him with his own swords.
He’s lying awake at night running through meditation exercises in an attempt to make his traitorous cock behave when he hears it: a rustle of bed sheets, and the shift of a hammock as a body stirs, then stirs again.
He blinks open his eyes. It’s dark enough that he can barely see, the only light the moonlight filtering in through the portholes along one side of the room, but he can just make out the movement when one of the hammocks shifts, swaying a little with the movement of the person lying in it. There’s quiet for a moment, then a soft sound like a sigh. Then the immediately familiar sound of skin on slick skin.
Fucking hell.
Zoro's stomach lurches with sudden, dizzy arousal as he realises that that's the cook’s hammock. Hypocrite, he thinks, as he watches the telltale rhythmic movement of someone jerking off in the dark.
“What are you complaining about?” a dark voice whispers in the back of his mind. Mihawk’s voice. “What is this if not tacit permission for your own indulgence?”
Zoro swallows loudly in the dark. He thinks about the cook’s hands, his long fingers brushing against Zoro’s when he’d handed him that glass of water, warm against cold. Thinks about that hand wrapped around the cook’s cock. Is his cock as long and skinny as he is? Is it as shapely, as gorgeously formed? He can hear it. He’ll never be able to forget the rhythm, the pace, the knowledge of exactly how the cook likes to touch himself – slower than Zoro, by the sounds of it, slow and teasing. Delicate, he thinks. Fucking… dainty, like his pretty fingers on a kitchen knife. Wet, like he’s slicked himself up with something. And the noises he’s making, like he can’t hold them back; breathy and sweet.
Fuck it. Zoro shoves a hand down his pants.
He thinks he’s gotten away with it at first, like maybe the cook’s too involved in what he’s doing to notice. But Zoro’s barely gotten a few good strokes in when he hears the movement on the other side of the room pause all of a sudden.
He stops, too. Holds his breath for a second. Then, after a moment’s pause, lets it out again as slowly as he can manage. He hears Sanji’s answering breath, heavy, almost panting, like a conversation from one set of lungs to another.
“I honestly despair of young people these days,” Mihawk murmurs from somewhere in the dark of Zoro’s subconscious.
Zoro ignores it. He strokes his cock again, just once. Slow. Pre-come beads at the tip, making a wet sound when he strokes back up – like a throat full of saliva. On the other side of the room, Sanji’s breath catches.
Ohh, this is a bad idea. Really fucking stupid. Zoro’s heart is in his mouth, pounding rabbit-quick. He strains his ears trying to hear any tiny sound, strains his eyes trying to see in the almost-black.
When Sanji starts jerking himself off again, he feels it like a hand on his own cock. The movements are exaggerated, louder, easier to make out, and Zoro’s just delusional enough to believe that it’s intentional. That Sanji’s letting him see and hear it.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, the word coming out of him unbidden, more breath than speech.
He touches himself again, picking up where he left off, and he’s not sure why but he finds himself trying to copy Sanji’s movements, letting him set the pace for both of them.
It’s so good. So much better than his solitary, perfunctory session the other night. Even with this steady, slightly too slow rhythm Zoro’s right on the edge in moments. He doesn’t bother trying to hold back. He bites his lower lip to keep from moaning and lets it all spill out of him, lush and helpless.
When he stops trembling he hears Sanji follow him over, breath going stuttered and plosive and then dissolving into heavy, open-mouthed gasping, the obscene sound of his slick hand on his cock suddenly stilling.
Shit, Zoro thinks. What the fuck was that?
But for once, Mihawk seems to have nothing to say.
*
They don’t talk about it. But it’s less weird that Zoro would have thought it’d be.
The next morning there’s a moment of awkwardness at breakfast, neither of them quite seeming to know where to look or what the fuck to say to each other. But then the cook slides a plate of onigiri across the table with a smile Zoro can only describe as shy.
It’s momentarily breathtaking, and Zoro finds himself smiling back before he can stop himself.
“Thanks,” he says, quietly. “This is my favourite.”
“I know,” Sanji says, like he thinks Zoro’s an idiot. Then, gentler: “You’re welcome.”
And just like that, the awkwardness is gone. And somehow the bad atmosphere from the last few days has fucked off, too. Things are back to normal again – no bitching, no weird tension. Just the usual lighthearted back-and-forth bickering Zoro’s used to.
It’s more of a relief than the orgasm had been.
*
It becomes a routine. After the lamps go out, when everyone else is either asleep or on watch, they jerk off. It doesn’t matter who starts it – sometimes it’s Zoro, sometimes it’s Sanji – but every time the other one joins in as soon as they hear that telltale stirring in the dark.
Zoro’s started stringing his hammock up a bit closer to the cook’s. Making sure the porthole shutters are wide open to let in the moonlight. He grows adept at discerning shapes and motions in the dimness. Meanwhile his apparition of Mihawk prowls around the small cabin like a panther, lit by his own internal light.
“Did you know that he fingers himself when you do this?” he says, slouched against the wall by the cook’s hammock. Zoro’s brain is immediately flooded with the mental image – the cook’s long, slim fingers pressing inside, two or three at a time, greedy and too-quick, slippery with whatever it is he uses to slick the way when he strokes himself off – and he comes in a rush, unable to hold back the broken half-moan that stutters its way out from somewhere deep inside his chest.
“Still going to tell me you're not distracted?” Mihawk drawls.
Zoro closes his eyes, and pretends he doesn’t still see him behind the shut eyelids.
*
It’s an unfamiliar sort of intimacy, sleeping in the same room as three other guys. Luffy sleeps in the same clothes he wears during the day, like Zoro. His long skinny limbs dangle out of his hammock at improbable angles. Usopp always sleeps in the same pair of sweatpants, well worn to a threadbare softness, and a tee-shirt that’s a few sizes too big. While the cook… Zoro’s never known anyone, man or woman, who likes clothing as much as the damn cook. He’s got more clothes than Nami, and his sleepwear is all soft pastels in soft fabrics, brushed cotton pyjama pants that hang from his hip bones, clingy tank tops that look like they’ve been painted on to his chest, a pale yellow oversized cardigan that slips off his broad shoulders. Everything about him is so cosy and tactile that it makes Zoro’s fingers itch.
He can’t stand it. Can’t understand how anyone could bear to be so soft – especially Sanji, who Zoro’s pretty sure has been through as much hard shit as any of them.
By contrast, life has sharpened Zoro like a whetstone, made him a perfect knifepoint, all steel and razor edges. And he’s always been proud of that, worn it like a badge of honour. Mihawk’s the same, he’s sure of it – sharp, uncompromising. Everything Zoro has always wanted, everything he’s always wanted to be.
So why can’t he look away from the cook’s softness?
“Are you really pretending not to know?” Mihawk asks. He’s lounging in the empty hammock in between them. “How disappointing.” He manages to sound both bored and condescending all at once. It makes Zoro’s belly clench with heat.
Sanji is curled up in his hammock, entirely oblivious to the apparition Zoro’s idiot brain is conjuring in the hammock beside him. He’s reading the paper, long legs in those baby blue pyjama pants all tucked up in front of him, pink toes peeking out under the hems. The low lamplight makes his cardigan look like it’s glowing, like sunlight on lemons, even more yellow than his hair.
There’s only the two of them here in the cabin tonight; Luffy’s on night watch and Usopp’s working on his latest invention down in the hold and said he wanted to finish it before going to bed, and that they shouldn’t wait up. Zoro should be sleeping. He’s lying on his back under his blanket with his swords tucked into the hammock at his side, and he knows he should be sleeping, he does. But he can’t quite bring himself to close his eyes.
It’s the first time the two of them have been alone together in the cabin before lights out, and it’s weird. Zoro can smell the tension in the air like lingering cigarette smoke.
Sanji turns yet another page of the newspaper. It crinkles obnoxiously loudly in the quiet room. “Huh,” he says, “did you know it’s Mihawk’s birthday today?”
His gaze flicks up to meet Zoro’s. Zoro holds it, carefully not looking at the figment of his imagination lounging in the middle bunk between them. “Yeah,” he admits. “I know.”
He doesn’t know why he feels embarrassed to admit it. Dracule Mihawk is one of the most renowned people in the entire world, it’s not weird to be aware of his birthday. He makes no secret of the date. Every year in the paper they do some sort of article or feature about it – back at Shimotsuki village Zoro had had a collection of them in a box, carefully clipped from the papers each year.
“You are such a fan boy,” Sanji laughs. “It’s fucking adorable.”
“I’m not a fan boy. I’m his rival.”
Sanji shoots him a condescending look over the top of the paper. “Right. So you didn’t have his wanted poster up on your bedroom wall at any point?”
Zoro feels his cheeks flood with heat. “Shut up.”
“Oh look at that blush! You did, didn’t you?” Sanji crows. “This is amazing.”
Between them, invisible to Sanji, Mihawk slowly raises an eyebrow.
Shut up, Zoro thinks at him.
“I said nothing,” Mihawk replies.
Sanji licks his pink lips. “I bet you jerked off over it.”
The words land like stones in the still water of the cabin. The air feels thicker in an instant. Heavier, like a strong pair of hands pressing Zoro down onto his back in the hammock.
For a long, suspended moment they stare at each other across the space between them.
“Well?” Mihawk says. “Did you?”
Zoro sees him from the corner of his eye. Bare chest, trousers low on his hips, the tantalising shape of his unfathomably well-defined obliques curving around from the side of his abdomen and down under the waistband.
“What if I did?” he replies, to both of them.
He sees the cook swallow. “Hey, I’m not judging. That is one handsome man.”
“Didn’t think you noticed handsome men.”
Sanji pulls an unimpressed face. “Perhaps if there were any handsome men around to notice, you’d have seen me noticing.”
Zoro huffs a laugh at the implied insult. “Maybe you need to lower your standards. Mihawk’s a pretty high bar.”
Mihawk smirks. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Rabbit. And in this case, you’re flattering the wrong person entirely.”
“What?” Sanji grins. “You don’t think he’d be interested?” He very deliberately lowers his eyes to the paper again, where presumably there’s a picture of Mihawk along with the usual fluff about his birthday and career. “Doesn’t say anything here about whether blondes are his type.”
“You want to fuck Dracule Mihawk.”
Sanji shrugs easily. “Fuck. Be fucked by. I’m easy.”
“Nothing about you is easy.”
Sanji bursts into a peal of giggles, and Zoro’s hands clench around nothing.
“Are you really that shocked that I like men?”
“Kinda,” Zoro says, honestly. “You're always making an ass of yourself over women. And didn’t you have a tantrum just the other day about accidentally seeing my dick?”
“Oy, just because I like dick doesn’t mean I wanna be jump-scared by it at any given moment.”
“I guess that's fair.”
“Thank you.”
Zoro watches him in silence for a moment. “Doesn’t seem to be a problem lately, though.”
There’s another weighty pause. Dangerous. They don’t talk about this.
Sanji licks his lower lip; a small, quick movement that Zoro’s pretty sure is entirely subconscious.
“Yeah, well,” he says. “You said I should try it some time. Figured I’d take you at your word.”
“Right.” Zoro remembers telling him that. ”How would you like it if I just whipped it out in the middle of the cabin one night?”
“Try it and find out.”
“And what did you find out?” Zoro asks, now.
Sanji smirks. “That you can’t wank for shit.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
He laughs, and curls his knees up even closer in front of himself. “You're always rushing it. Like we're racing to the finish line.” His gaze drops to Zoro’s chest – bare, the blanket only coming up as far as his navel. “It’s a fucking waste of a beautiful body to treat it like that. An insult to the meat.” His gaze is heated. Amused. Dirty.
“It's just jerking off. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
“See, what did I tell you? You're rubbish at this.” He picks up the newspaper and folds it in half, then raises it so Zoro can see the picture of Mihawk they’ve used. He stares out of the page at Zoro, stone faced and judgemental. “Don’t you think your man Mihawk makes a big deal out of it when he's getting himself off? He looks like the type.”
“Don’t talk about him like that.”
“Or what?”
Mihawk sounds amused when he tips his head in Zoro’s direction and says, “Defending my honour, little one?”
I'm not fucking little, he thinks.
Mihawk’s amusement only deepens.
“C'mere,” Sanji says. He beckons Zoro over with his pretty fingers.
“What?”
“Come here,” he repeats, enunciating more clearly. “Jesus, what’re you scared of? I'm not gonna bite.”
“I’m not scared,” Zoro snarls. He eyes those beckoning fingers like they’re challenging him, then topples himself out of the hammock and onto his feet.
He's painfully aware of how visible his erection is like this, tenting the front of his trousers. Sanji doesn’t mention it, though. “Come here,” he says, again, blue eyes darkening, and he wriggles around on the hammock until there's a small space beside him. As soon as Zoro’s close enough he reaches out and grabs him by the arm, and tugs him forward sharply enough that he half-falls into the hammock beside him.
It's pretty fucking cramped. When Zoro finally gets himself situated they’re pressed body to body, Sanji spooning up behind him. He bends one of his stupid long legs over Zoro’s like he's trying to pin him there to stop him from running away.
He’s still holding the picture of Mihawk.
“Here,” he says, tucking the folded newspaper up against the side of the hammock right in front of Zoro’s face.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a chance to recreate your misspent youth, wanking over the greatest swordsman in the world.” Zoro feels a hand settle gently on his waist. The picture of Mihawk glares at him. His cheeks flush with heat.
“You really have no shame, do you?”
“Hm. I seem to remember someone telling me that it’s just jerking off, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal.” Sanji’s hand creeps further forward, down to the front of Zoro’s trousers. Zoro’s face is burning. He holds his breath – Sanji undoes the front fastening. “Here, baby, let me help you.”
It’s so stupid. But at that word, baby, Zoro’s spine just… liquefies. He sinks back into Sanji’s arms, boneless, his eyes heavy-lidded.
“That’s it,” Sanji murmurs against the sensitive skin of his neck. And he reaches in and draws Zoro’s cock out, holding it gently in his hand.
“Fuck,” Zoro breathes.
“I heard you say his name once, you know. One night while we were…” He trails off. And Zoro spares a moment to think it is utterly wild that he’s so shy that he can’t even finish that sentence, and so dirty that he’ll summon Zoro to his hammock to jerk off in his arms to a photo of another man.
Sanji lets go of his cock to catch his wrist, and tugging it closer until Zoro can take himself in hand. He starts to stroke almost without thinking, pure muscle memory, like running drills on the deck.
“Do you think about him every time?” Sanji asks.
Yeah, Zoro wants to say. And no. I think about him watching us. I think about you.
He can feel the shape of Sanji’s hard cock pressing into his lower back through those stupid soft pyjamas. He presses back into it and moans, hand speeding up on his dick.
“Ah, ah,” Sanji tuts. He covers Zoro’s hand with his own and forces him to slow down again. “Thought we agreed that Mihawk’s a man who’d appreciate doing this right.”
“Doesn’t matter what he’d appreciate. He’s not here.”
“Isn’t he?” Mihawk’s voice purrs, from somewhere near Zoro’s ear.
Zoro swallows, and closes his eyes. You’re not actually here, though. You’re a figment of my imagination.
“Semantics.”
“But if he was here,” Sanji says, “wouldn’t you want to make it good for him? Really put on a show?” He shifts his legs until they’re between Zoro’s, Zoro’s thighs parted around them, and something about having his legs open like this sends an electric shiver up his spine. “After all. It is his birthday.”
“Fucking hell. You are filthy, cook.”
“So I’m told. I’m also fucking fantastic at picking out birthday presents.” The plush softness of his yellow cardigan tickles Zoro’s bare skin. “Keep going, nice and slow,” he instructs, and Zoro doesn’t even consider disobeying.
For a moment his hand strays lower, and he cups the fragile weight of Zoro’s balls in his big hand. “You are so pretty, moss, you know that?”
Part of Zoro is offended by the word pretty. But the rest of him just wants Sanji to keep going, keep touching him like this, cradling his achy balls while Zoro strokes his cock. He could come like this, he thinks. He could come so fucking easy.
“Not yet,” Mihawk murmurs. “Be a good little rabbit and do as you’re told for once.”
Sanji’s hand releases him, and moves up his body instead. He makes an appreciative noise as he fondles the peaks and valleys of Zoro’s thickly muscled chest, the kind of noise Zoro could imagine him making while feeling up a girl’s tits.
“Fuck me. So pretty.”
“I’m not pretty.”
“Don’t argue while I’m making you feel good, baby.” Zoro hisses when one of his nipples is taken between two fingers and pinched, warningly.
“Shit,” he pants. His hand starts to speed up on his cock, it’s beyond his control.
“Oh sweetheart,” Sanji croons. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” He holds Zoro tightly in his arms and thrusts against him, the bulge of his erection rubbing against the very top of Zoro’s ass.
“Yeah,” Zoro gasps. “Fuck, yeah, let me feel it.”
“Keep looking at Mihawk, baby. You’ve got to give him his present.”
Zoro feels like he’s unravelling. Like he’s being held between a rock and a hard place – Mihawk’s impenetrable gaze in front of him, Sanji’s soft clothes and hard dick grinding into him from behind.
“Good boy,” Sanji pants. He thumbs at Zoro’s sore nipple, until it’s puffy and red and the sensitivity of it is painful.
Zoro whines at the back of his throat.
“Do you think about him touching you like this? D’you imagine him fucking you, Zoro? Fuck, if he was here do you think he’d just watch us doing this, or do you think he’d join in? Maybe he’d tell us what to do, he seems bossy like that. And you’d like that, wouldn’t you, love? Being ordered around by your warlord? He could give you notes on your performance. Give you a fucking score out of ten. Then he could wank off onto your pretty face and leave the mess for me to clean up.”
“Shit, Sanji, I’m gonna come.”
“Keep your eyes open, sweetheart, keep looking at him.”
Zoro tries, god help him. He keeps his eyes on the grainy newspaper photograph in front of him as the pleasure burns through him, and his cock jerks and spills all over his hand and stomach, slippery and hot and copious.
Afterwards he goes limp in Sanji’s arms. Sanji cradles him tight and coos nonsense in his ear, and fucks up against him until he comes too, going stiff behind Zoro and moaning in his ear, rocking his hips through it, rubbing the wet patch that’s rapidly spreading on the front of his pyjamas against Zoro’s bare skin.
They sleep like that, in the one hammock together, too warm and too close, not enough space to do anything but twine together in each other’s arms. It’s gross. It’s uncomfortable.
It’s the best night’s sleep Zoro’s ever had in his entire fucking life.
He wakes the next morning to a pair of amber eyes staring at him intently in the early morning light that’s slanting in through the portholes.
“I like him,” Mihawk announces.
“Great,” Zoro mumbles, turning his face back into the warm skin of Sanji’s neck. “Good to know.”
“Tell him I’m expecting an equally beautiful gift for my next birthday, will you?”
Zoro gives him the finger. Under him, Sanji stirs.