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If someone had asked Zoro before he met Sanji whether or not he actually enjoyed having sex, they may have been surprised to hear the answer was not really, no.
Not because it didn’t feel good—it was sex, that was kind of the whole point—but because having to engage in it when Zoro’s libido got too wound up to keep ignoring was a nuisance he would rather not have had to deal with. Time spent having sex was time not spent on his regular training, and if it weren’t for the fact that sex was at least a pretty good workout when done correctly, he probably wouldn’t have bothered with it at all. The main problem (at least from Zoro’s perspective) was the general lack of even halfway decent partners. Very few men could actually give Zoro what he wanted in bed, which was a fight; his logic being that if he was going to have to waste time on sex, then Zoro at least wanted it to be a challenge, something he could use to channel the energy and aggression he would otherwise have been throwing into his normal training.
But most of the guys that wanted to sleep with Zoro expected him to do all the work while they just lied there (which was both aggravating and boring), and the rest simply couldn’t match him for sheer physical prowess, so even if they were willing to fight Zoro for control, he always won. He preferred those encounters because they at least did the job of getting him off, but finding the right kind of man for it was tedious and annoying and most of the time, Zoro would rather have been doing almost anything else.
The point was, Zoro had sex, but it was something he did because his body occasionally demanded it; to say he enjoyed it would have been a gross overstatement. He tried explaining this to Sanji once, sometime during the three days they were stuck anxiously waiting for Luffy to wake up after his fight with Crocodile, and Sanji had become so incensed at the idea that Zoro didn’t actually like having sex that they ended up physically fighting about it, the scuffle only ending when Zoro dared to yell at the shitty cook, “Okay asshole, why don’t you show me how it’s supposed to be done then, if you think it’s so fucking great!”
In all honesty, Zoro had thought Sanji would be too chicken shit to rise to such obvious bait, so he was shocked when the cook had shoved him roughly up against the nearest wall and proceeded to give Zoro what was undeniably the best handjob he’d had in his life up to that point. And yeah, Sanji had completely freaked out afterwards (though not, Zoro liked to note, before he let Zoro return the favor by sucking him off) and he avoided even looking at Zoro for several days following, but the trick to dealing with Sanji when he got too in his own head about something was simply to figure out which buttons he needed pushed. Find the right combo and soon Sanji would come back out kicking and ready to fight again—or fuck, as was more frequently becoming the case between them.
So yeah. Regular sex was a nuisance. But if someone had asked Zoro whether or not he enjoyed having sex with Sanji specifically, he would have answered with the most emphatic hell fucking yes he could possibly give.
Because sex with Sanji? Sex with Sanji was fucking great. The cook gave as good as he got in bed, so not only did Zoro get the fight he always wanted, sometimes he even lost. He’d thought in the beginning that he would be more upset by that, but losing to someone who had actually earned it gave Zoro a kind of sweet satisfaction that sank all the way down to his bones, made him warm and pliant and eager in a way he never would have expected. Struggling for control with Sanji until the cook finally got the upper hand and shoved him into the mattress (or a wall, or the floor, or whatever other handy surface happened to be nearby) before fucking his brains out made Zoro feel something that was hard to articulate, other than the fact that it was good and he always ended up wanting more.
He assumed Sanji felt the same way or he wouldn’t have kept coming back, which is why it was a surprise when one evening, as they were aggressively making out in the new Thousand Sunny’s blissfully secluded crow’s nest, Sanji pulled back when Zoro raked his nails down the cook’s back and snapped, “Would you stop that?”
Zoro did immediately, a deep frown overtaking his face. “What?” he demanded, annoyed that Sanji’s tongue was no longer being shoved down his throat. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few scratches, twirly-brow.”
“Fuck off, I’m not afraid of anything,” Sanji shot back without missing a beat. “I just don’t want sex to always mean looking like I got mauled by a tiger afterwards.”
Zoro smirked. “You think I’m rough enough to match a tiger?”
“That wasn’t supposed to be a compliment, dipshit.” Sanji sighed and rolled off of him, leaving Zoro confusingly bereft. He sat up as Sanji reached into his discarded suit jacket for a pack of cigarettes, hand automatically going to the opposite pocket so he could hand Sanji his lighter.
“I thought you liked it rough,” Zoro said, trying to keep his voice neutral even as a sudden spike of concern shot through him that Sanji hadn’t been enjoying their whole crewmates-with-benefits situation as much as he had; even if the sex was fan-fucking-tastic, he didn’t want to keep doing this if Sanji wasn’t also on board. “You’ve never complained before.”
“I do like it rough, I just… I don’t know.” Sanji flicked the lighter open and lit up, taking the time to inhale a slow drag before continuing. “That’s the way we always do it. Don’t you ever want to try anything different?”
“Different how?”
“Different like not drawing blood or giving each other bruises.”
Zoro cocked his head, considering this. “Not really,” he said after a moment. “I like the blood and the bruises.”
Sanji snorted. “Of course you do, you fucking masochist.”
Zoro couldn’t really deny that (though he still wasn’t sure he believed Sanji’s assertion that no, most people did not in fact enjoy ‘just the right amount of pain’ during sex), so instead he offered up, “Look if you want to try something new, just say so. There’s no point in us doing this if I’m the only one enjoying myself.”
“Didn’t say I wasn’t enjoying myself, marimo,” Sanji said, reaching out to flick his forehead sharply. Zoro slapped the hand away with a scowl, even as the knot he didn’t realize his stomach had twisted into eased. “Just that I want to switch things up a bit.”
Sanji took another drag off his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly so that it curled through the air in front of him. There was a slight furrow to his brow and his bottom lip was between his teeth, which meant he was thinking about something, though Zoro couldn’t tell yet whether it was the good kind of thinking or the kind of thinking that meant Zoro would end up needing to drag him out of his own head. Either way, Zoro crossed his legs and watched Sanji carefully, valiantly ignoring his insistent boner as he waited to see where Sanji’s brain was taking him.
When a minute or two had passed and Sanji had neither spoken nor started freaking out, Zoro carefully asked, “Did you have something in mind?”
Sanji’s frown deepened, which was actually a good sign; if Sanji was starting to overthink, he would be getting huffy and irritated instead.
“Maybe? But it’s not—I don’t think it’s the kind of thing we should do here. I’d like… more privacy.”
That got Zoro to raise an eyebrow. The Thousand Sunny already had way more privacy than the Going Merry had ever afforded them and they’d made copious use of the fact that the trapdoor to the crow’s nest could actually lock since sailing from Water 7 a few weeks prior, so the fact that Sanji wanted even more seclusion was both surprising and intriguing.
“Okay,” Zoro said, nodding slowly. “So we’ll get a room on the next island?”
He said this carefully as well, knowing that Sanji sometimes got weird about that because he didn’t want the rest of the crew to know what they were up to, which Zoro thought was stupid because with the exception of the newly inducted Franky and maybe Chopper, they definitely already did. Nobody said anything because Zoro and Sanji had yet to bring it up openly, but there was a reason no one questioned anymore why the two of them continued to bunk together at every port stop they made, despite their ostensible hatred of doing so. But there was a time and place for pushing back against Sanji’s hangups, and Zoro could tell this wasn’t one of them.
“… Yeah,” Sanji agreed after a long moment. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
Zoro watched his throat bob as he swallowed, which meant whatever Sanji was thinking of had him a little nervous. That was even more intriguing to Zoro, but it also meant he was going to have to tread lightly around the cook until they made it to the next port; Zoro could still rile him up, but only so far. Otherwise he’d risk a freak out.
Not for the first time, Zoro wished he could simply reach into Sanji’s stupid twirly-browed head and pull out whatever was in there that made him so damn scared sometimes; but he couldn’t, so Zoro simply had to be patient. He wasn’t quite sure yet why he thought the shitty cook was worth that kind of effort, but he did, and Zoro was never one to question his own instincts.
“Okay,” Zoro said with a firm nod. “Now get back here, I wasn’t done.”
Sanji rolled his eyes, muttering something under his breath about shitty marimos and their shitty demands, but he went easily when Zoro tugged on his arm, sliding into his lap and slotting their lips together with a contented hum. He clearly wasn’t in a mood to fight so Zoro won this round, triumphantly keeping Sanji’s hips pinned to the floor while he sucked him off, but he made extra sure to keep his nails in check while he did.
They were lucky enough to make landfall only a few days later, on a pretty autumn island where the log pose would take three days to reset. Zoro dutifully bitched about having to be Sanji’s pack mule as he was dragged through markets and local shops to stock up on supplies, even though the truth was that Zoro enjoyed these little excursions of theirs. There was something incredibly satisfying about seeing Sanji in his element—picking through produce, assessing the quality of local artisan products, haggling over prices with some vendors, hitting up others for free samples and recipes. That last one was especially important to Zoro, because within those casual conversations there were occasionally little pieces of himself that Sanji let slip through.
Listening to the cook chatter away had taught Zoro a handful of important things about him, like the fact that he hated dark, cramped areas (from a sad decline to tour a cheese cave), or that he really liked a fruit called lingonberries (from a delighted comparison to a town’s specialty jam), or that his mother was dead and Sanji missed her terribly (from swapping stories a with baker whose own mother had recently passed). It wasn’t that Sanji didn’t share these kinds of personal details with the crew, but Zoro had come to realize that there was a distinct cutoff point in Sanji’s childhood close to when he had joined the Orbit as a kitchen boy. Anything after that point Sanji spoke about fairly freely, but anything before was held extremely close to his chest and only brought out on accident or with extremely careful prodding.
There was no such information to be found on today’s trip, but that was to be expected. As evening approached and their errands began to wind down, Sanji was getting progressively more nervous about whatever he had in mind for ‘switching it up’ later; Zoro could tell by the way his throat kept bobbing and the sheer volume of cigarettes he was plowing through. He didn’t think it was the kind of thing that could be dealt with by riling up the cook’s anger, so instead Zoro fell back on another tried and true method for getting Sanji out of his own head—making him horny enough that he stopped thinking about anything else.
This was easier said than done, because while it was pretty easy to get Sanji horny in general, he was sometimes recalcitrant about being horny for Zoro specifically and he wouldn’t always rise to obvious bait like a bared chest and carefully stretched or flexed muscles. But today when Zoro complained about being hot and opened his shirt (even though it wasn’t and his nipples were paying the price for being exposed to a chilly autumn breeze; the fucking sacrifices he had to make for twirly-brow sometimes), Sanji’s gaze lingered unapologetically on his pecs and Zoro felt the way Sanji traced his biceps with his eyes as Zoro hefted full bags and crates to bring back to the Sunny. By the time they’d unloaded the day’s haul onto the ship and were heading back into town to look for food and lodging, Sanji kept finding excuses to get close enough to Zoro so that his fingers could brush against the bare skin of the swordsman's spine, and Zoro knew he had him hooked.
They found a small, cozy inn to stay at and had a simple but tasty dinner of a local rabbit stew with a few bottles of wine that went down easy before retiring for the night. As soon as Zoro had locked the door to their room and set his swords aside he was being pressed back against the wall, Sanji’s mouth hot on his throat while his hands immediately found their way to Zoro’s chest.
“You’re such an ass,” Sanji muttered, nipping his neck at the same time he pinched a nipple, a move that went straight to Zoro’s cock and had him half hard within seconds. “Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing when you decided to start parading your fucking tits around earlier.”
Zoro couldn’t help but smirk. “Did it work?” he asked, and when Sanji let out an irritated huff against his shoulder, Zoro laughed. “Exactly. Check and mate, cook.”
“Shut up,” Sanji groused, but he was already sliding a thigh between Zoro’s legs so he couldn’t have been too upset. Zoro rolled his hips a few times before threading a hand through Sanji’s hair, yanking his head up so he could kiss him, slow and deep. The cook made a pleased hum, letting Zoro work at his mouth with soft licks and gentle nips, moaning quietly when Zoro took his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Okay, stupid love-cook,” Zoro murmured when he finally pulled back. “What’s this idea of yours?”
Sanji blinked at him, looking confused for a second before a red flush began blooming across his face.
“Right,” he said, throat bobbing with a nervous swallow. Zoro brought his hands to Sanji’s waist and started rubbing soothing circles into the divots he found there, while at the same time resuming the slow roll of his hips against Sanji’s solid thigh. “How would you feel about a… challenge, of sorts?”
Zoro grinned. “I like challenges.”
Sanji nodded, but his throat bobbed again, so Zoro leaned in close enough that he could drag his nose along the line of Sanji’s jaw until he reached his ear, where he drew the lobe between his teeth and sucked gently.
“So if I told you to… to keep your hands to yourself while I touch you,” Sanji continued after a moment, voice just a little breathless, “you’d be okay with that?”
Zoro pulled back, looking at Sanji with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, of course,” he said, because he didn’t want Sanji to think he wasn’t up for something new, but he also couldn’t help adding, “Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, though.”
He braced for Sanji to get huffy or embarrassed by that, but instead the cook’s mouth pulled up into a lazy, perpetually crooked grin (the natural result of how often he kept a cigarette held on one side of his mouth), and he practically drawled his next words, which were, “I don’t know, mosshead. You get awfully clingy during sex.”
It took everything in him for Zoro not to let out an indignant sputter.
“Clingy?” he repeated, aghast at such a blatantly false accusation.
“Mmmhmm.” Sanji stepped back, still grinning as he pulled out his lighter and a pack of cigarettes. “Took me a while to figure out because you hide it as all of those scratches and bruises you like so much, but you can never keep your hands off me for more than a couple seconds whenever we fuck.” He kept his hand over his mouth as he took his first drag, a look that meant Sanji thought he knew something Zoro didn’t and was clearly amused by it.
“Fuck off, dartboard, I am not clingy,” Zoro snarled, blood heating in a way that was mostly anger, though the thrum of arousal still lingered. “Touch me all you like if that’s what you fucking want, I’m not gonna lift a finger for you.”
Sanji let his hand drop a little so he could blow smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “You sure about that, marimo?” he asked, leveling Zoro with a gaze that said he clearly didn’t believe him.
“Sure as shit,” Zoro shot back. “I’m not even gonna take off my fucking clothes for you. You want me naked? Do it yourself.” He lifted his chin defiantly as he crossed his arms over his chest, silently daring Sanji to make his next move.
For a long moment the cook simply continued to puff away on his cigarette while Zoro glowered at him, but finally he said, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. You might be able to keep yourself from touching me, but that means I’ll have to ask you to move around if the rest of this is going to work. And we both know how you feel about taking orders from me.”
“Says who? I can take orders from you just fine, asshole, as long as they aren’t stupid.”
It was only once the words left his mouth that Zoro’s brain actually registered what he’d just said, and he became painfully aware of the fact that he’d fallen into a trap. What trap he wasn’t sure, because Sanji’s ‘challenge’ to keep his hands to himself still didn’t seem all that difficult, but he could tell from the way the cook’s eyes lit up that Zoro had done exactly what he’d wanted him to. Goddamnit.
“Oh yeah?” Sanji said, clearly taunting. “Then get onto the bed and lie down on your back.”
He gave Zoro with an expectant look, and Zoro had to grit his teeth against the urge to tell Sanji he could go fuck himself. He knew following his orders was what Sanji wanted from him, which obviously made Zoro want to be defiant; but more than that, he wanted to prove Sanji wrong. So Zoro stomped over to the bed and threw himself onto it, keeping his knees bent over the side so his dirty boots wouldn’t touch the sheets (Zoro didn’t care, but Sanji had a thing about making unnecessary work for hotel staff; something about solidarity in the hospitality industry).
“There,” he snapped, turning his head to glare at the asshole cook. “Now what?”
Sanji took a final pull off his cigarette before putting the butt out against the bottom of his shoe and flicking it into a nearby garbage can. Then he came over and knelt by Zoro’s dangling legs, not saying anything as he unlaced the swordsman’s boots and pulled them off along with his socks. Zoro lifted his head to watch irritably as Sanji took the completely unnecessary time to arrange them neatly by the end of the bed before toeing off his own shoes and then sitting down on the edge of the mattress, far enough away from Zoro that they weren’t touchin. It was incredibly aggravating.
“What’s the fucking hold up?” Zoro growled, and Sanji paused in removing his sock garters so he could look back at the swordsman. There was a small, smug smile curling at one corner of his mouth that made Zoro instantly suspicious.
“Feeling needy for me already, marimo?”
Oh, Zoro realized with an annoyed jolt. So it was a waiting game. Whatever. If that was the case Zoro had plenty of patience to spare. Definitely more than Sanji did. If the point of this whole thing was to wait, he could fucking wait.
“You wish,” Zoro said, letting his head fall back and shifting to get comfortable on the sheets, since apparently he was going to be here for a while. “Just wondering if that twirly brain of yours finally got too twisted up to keep working.”
“Like you’ve got any right to accuse me of having a brain that doesn’t work right, you sentient house plant.”
Sanji returned to the process of taking off his socks, then moved onto his suit jacket and shirt. Zoro had to bite his tongue when the bastard actually took the time to go hang them up in the fucking closet, refusing to let Sanji know he was starting to get antsy. He had patience, sure, but having to exercise it so deliberately was making it wear thin faster than Zoro had anticipated. It was a bigger relief than he wanted to admit when Sanji finally returned to crawl over him on the bed, bracketing Zoro’s thighs between his knees before sitting back on his haunches, staring down at him with a clearly simmering hunger that despite his current irritation with the stupid cook did all sorts of lovely things to Zoro’s stomach.
“Sit up for a second,” Sanji instructed, and Zoro complied, though he continued to glower until Sanji’s fingers finally brushed against his skin when he went to push Zoro’s shirt off his shoulders and slip his haramaki off. He fought the urge to sigh when Sanji trailed a hand slowly over his chest, though Zoro couldn’t stop the shiver that ran through him when a thumb brushed teasingly over one nipple; an oddly gentle touch compared to what Zoro was used to, which was Sanji pinching and twisting until they ached with a sweet, sharp edge of pain.
Sanji repeated the motion, and Zoro shivered again. “Do you like that?” the cook asked, voice low and sultry.
“What do you think?” Zoro replied instead of giving a straight answer, because he actually… Wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. The teasing sensation was good, but it also wasn’t enough, which Zoro thought he should have been annoyed by. And he was, sort of. He wanted Sanji’s hands on him more firmly, wanted those long, steady fingers pressing bruises into his hips and raking red lines along his back. But when Sanji brought both his hands to Zoro’s chest and continued gently thumbing at his nipples, it brought an undeniable curl of heat to Zoro’s gut, though not the kind of heat he usually had; more like the banked coals in an earthen oven than a blazing fire.
It was… interesting.
Sanji grinned crookedly down at him. “I think you refusing to answer properly says more than you want it to.”
Zoro’s glower returned in full force. “It’d be better if you were tugging on them,” he snapped, but that only made Sanji laugh.
“Yeah well, too bad for you, shithead,” he said, leaning down to capture Zoro’s mouth in a slow, heavy kiss before he could get out a retort. Zoro let his eyes slip shut in contentment, hands halfway up to bury themselves in Sanji’s hair before he remembered that he was supposed to be proving a point. He tried to drop them without Sanji noticing, but apparently the cook had been watching because Zoro felt that stupid crooked smile curling against his lips.
“See?” Sanji taunted as he pulled back. “What did I tell you?”
Zoro scowled. “Didn’t fucking touch you though, did I?”
“Not yet. But we’ve barely started.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Zoro muttered under his breath, and that made Sanji laugh again.
“What’s the rush, mosshead?” he asked, letting his fingers trail along the fall of Zoro’s earrings before he sunk a hand into Zoro’s hair and tugged his head back so he could begin mouthing at the exposed line of his neck. “We’ve got all night.”
“Are you seriously asking me what the rush for sex is?” Zoro asked incredulously, breath hitching as Sanji scraped his teeth gently along his throat. He tilted his head to the side in an invitation for Sanji to latch onto his preferred spot at the junction between Zoro’s neck and shoulder, but Sanji only paused there briefly for a wet, open-mouthed kiss before he was pulling back, looking down at Zoro curiously.
“You’ve really never taken it slow before?” he asked.
“Why would I?” Zoro replied, brow furrowing in confusion. “Isn’t the whole point of sex to get to the orgasm?”
Sanji quirked one twirly eyebrow at him. “Guess you’ll find out,” he said, and Zoro barely had time to wonder what the hell that was supposed to mean before he was being pushed back against the mattress, groaning as Sanji moved forward so he could slot their hips together and begin a slow, steady roll.
Pleasure seeped into Zoro’s abdomen at every brush of his cock against Sanji’s through the fabric of their pants, though it wasn’t anything close to the kind of friction Zoro wanted. His hands twitched against the sheets as he fought the urge to hook his fingers through Sanji’s belt loops and bring him closer. Part of him wondered whether or not it would be easier to hold out if he twisted them into the soft cotton, but Zoro shoved that thought to the side before it could take root. He didn’t need to hold out, damnit. Zoro was perfectly fine not touching the stupid cook.
Sanji had begun making his way down Zoro’s chest, mouthing along his collarbones and taking the time to press a series of kisses against the long line of his scar before moving on to his pecs. He sunk his teeth into the ample swell of muscle there, but the bite was a lot softer than usual, over before it could even begin to sting. Then Sanji’s mouth closed around one of Zoro’s nipples and Zoro didn’t bother holding back his moan as he arched into the touch, eagerly seeking out the wet heat of Sanji’s tongue as he pressed it flat against one nub before slowly dragging up and then down, over and over again.
The other Sanji continued to brush with his thumb in the same motion as before, and the banked embers in Zoro’s stomach flared with each teasing touch, a low but steady thrum of arousal he wasn’t entirely used to. Normally by now he’d have his fingers buried in Sanji’s hair and his whole chest would be aching from scattered bites and nipples worried aggressively between teeth. Part of Zoro wanted to snap at the cook that he didn’t have to be so fucking gentle, but Sanji already knew that, which meant he was doing this on purpose.
Was that what his whole plan was, to take it slow and sweet? It wasn’t how they normally did things, sure; but Zoro didn’t understand why that would have made the stupid cook as nervous as he’d been earlier. No, there was something else going on, something to do with the no touching rule and the trap he’d fallen into about taking orders. Zoro just wasn’t sure what.
“Am I allowed to talk or are you gonna make me keep my mouth shut too?” he couldn’t help but ask, trying to inject some venom into the question but failing miserably as Sanji took a nipple carefully between his teeth and tugged, causing Zoro’s voice to crack on the last words.
“You can talk as much as you want, marimo,” Sanji murmured once he let go, breath ghosting over a still wet nub, sending a delicious pulse down Zoro’s spine as it hardened from the sudden burst of cool air. Unconsciously, he bucked his hips, trying to seek out the hard line of Sanji’s cock he could feel pressed against his hip, but that caused Sanji to rise up so that they were no longer touching, leaving Zoro frustrated and confused.
“Oh come on,” he snapped, trying not to twist his fingers in the sheets from the sudden loss of contact. “You can’t tell me that qualifies as touching.”
“My idea, my rules,” Sanji said as he pulled back from Zoro’s chest, hovering over the swordsman on his hands and knees. His face was red and his eyes a little glassy, which was Zoro’s favorite look on him; all that was missing was the kiss-swollen mouth. “But…”
Suddenly Sanji’s brow furrowed, and he drew his bottom lip between his teeth. Zoro was instantly alert, keeping a careful eye on the line of the cook’s throat as he prompted, “But?”
His fingers clenched in the sheets when he saw Sanji swallow—rules be damned, Zoro was going to touch him if he started freaking out, and if the shitty cook didn’t like it then too fucking bad. But it only happened once before Sanji spoke again, albeit with more uncertainty than Zoro was used to hearing from him.
“But if you’re… good,” Sanji said, voice catching slightly on the word ‘good’, like he wasn’t sure it was the right one to use, “I’ll let you touch me later, okay?”
Zoro felt his own brow furrow. “Good?” he repeated.
Sanji swallowed again, but he nodded resolutely. “Yeah,” he said. “Good.”
Zoro wasn’t sure he understood what Sanji meant by that, and he opened his mouth to say so, but then something strange happened.
A feeling opened up at the back of his skull and began dripping slowly down his spine, warm and sweet and slow like honey. It took Zoro a moment to recognize it as the same feeling that seeped into his bones whenever Sanji got the better of him during their usual rough-and-tumble sex, the warm satisfaction of a well-deserved loss that made Zoro much more pliant and eager than he normally was. It was a good feeling, one he relished every moment of whenever it happened, but it had never shown up like this before. And it had definitely been triggered by Sanji saying the word ‘good’.
Huh.
“… Okay,” Zoro said slowly, still confused but not nearly as irritable as he’d been only a moment before. “I can be… good.”
It should have felt weird to say, because on the list of things Zoro could be, ‘good’ probably didn’t even crack the top twenty. But as soon as the word left his mouth, that warm honey feeling surged down Zoro’s spine and poured over the banked coals sitting in his abdomen, and suddenly his chest was full and his brain was buzzing and Zoro didn’t understand why but he knew he liked it. He liked it a lot.
Maybe the stupid cook had been onto something with this whole weird idea after all. Not that Zoro was going to admit that.
The feeling only grew as Zoro watched Sanji’s eyes light up and a crooked grin spread across his face. “Yeah?” he said, bringing one hand up so he could cup the side of Zoro’s face, brushing a thumb tenderly across one cheekbone. “You gonna be good for me, marimo?”
Suddenly the warm honey feeling was everywhere—in his bones, his veins, his lungs, his fucking heart—and Zoro had to nod his assent because he didn’t trust his voice not to crack if he spoke.
What the fuck was happening?
Sanji leaned down to kiss him with agonizing slowness, taking the time to enjoy Zoro’s mouth like it was a fucking meal. The hand that had been on his cheek slid down, fingertips trailing from his chest down to his stomach following the gnarled line of his scar before coming to rest lightly against the obvious bulge in Zoro’s pants. The urge to buck up into that touch and finally get some friction going was so strong Zoro’s breath caught with it, but he managed to keep his hips still, and Sanji let out a pleased noise against his mouth that made the warm honey feeling inside Zoro’s stomach pulse.
Sanji gave Zoro one final, lingering kiss before rising up so he could begin taking the swordsman’s pants off, a task that was done with the same infuriating lack of speed as the rest of his clothes had been. It wasn’t even a relief when his cock was freed, because Sanji didn’t touch it; instead Zoro had to endure the feeling of it sitting heavy against his stomach, surprised when he realized the head was already wet and sticky. They’d barely even done anything, why was Zoro already worked up enough to be leaking?
Sanji had to step off the bed to finish removing Zoro’s pants, smirking when Zoro swore at him as he also grabbed the discarded shirt and haramaki and took the time to fucking fold all the items of clothing and put them away in the closet along with his own shirt and jacket. “What the fuck, you bastard,” Zoro breathed out furiously, glaring as he followed Sanji’s path around the room. “I don’t need my clothes put away!”
The shitty cook raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were going to be good,” he said, far too lightly, and Zoro had to bite his tongue against the noise that tried to rise out of him as his stomach clenched, because it felt like a fucking whine and no goddamn way was he letting Sanji hear that.
“You said I could talk as much as I wanted,” Zoro reminded him when he felt like he could speak, though his voice was way too hoarse for his own liking. “That means I’m gonna complain, shithead.”
Sanji’s brow furrowed for a moment before he shrugged. “Fair enough,” he agreed, laughing when Zoro took the opportunity to flip him off. “Can you move up the bed? Towards the pillows.”
Zoro continued to glare at him as he complied, rearranging himself until he was starfished out on top of the sheets, head cradled by an absurdly fluffy pillow because Sanji had expensive taste when it came to inn rooms. Sanji returned to the bed and crawled over him, capturing his mouth in another lingering kiss before he once more began to move his way down Zoro’s body with painful slowness. Zoro was tempted to clamp down on all of the noises that wanted to escape him just to mess with the asshole, but as pissed as Zoro was at him for whatever the fuck this was, he still didn’t want Sanji freaking out and he knew the cook responded well to audio feedback. So Zoro let out all his soft gasps and quiet moans and the occasional hissed curse as Sanji continued pressing wet, heavy kisses against his skin in a downward trail.
He paused at Zoro’s pecs again, because of course he did. This time Sanji laved his tongue against the opposite nipple from earlier until Zoro was fighting not to squirm and arch into the touch, because he wasn’t sure if that was allowed and the same part of his brain where the warm honey feeling was flowing from told him that he needed to follow whatever stupid rules Sanji had laid out or he wasn’t being… good. Which made Zoro want to pick Sanji up and hurl him bodily across the room as much as it made him want to stay right where he was and not move a muscle, and goddamnit what the fuck. What the fuck.
“Haven’t you groped me enough for one night?” Zoro groused at Sanji, trying to distract himself from his own spiraling thoughts.
The gust of air from Sanji’s irritated huff made his nipple harden pleasantly. “You know how I feel about tits,” he shot back, and Zoro counted it as a win that he sounded just a little bit petulant.
“I keep telling you these aren’t tits; they’re pectorals.”
Sanji snorted, fitting his whole hand around one mound and squeezing pointedly. “Feels like a tit to me.”
“They’re not big enough to be tits,” Zoro countered, mostly so that he’d have something to think about besides the intense urge he kept having to sink his fingers into Sanji’s cornsilk hair, or grip his bony shoulders, or just fucking touch him. Which wasn’t being clingy. It was perfectly natural to want to touch someone during sex. Sanji was just being a dick.
“They’re absolutely big enough to be tits,” Sanji said with another pointed squeeze. “Just because they’re not bouncy doesn’t mean they don’t count.”
“Since when do you like non-bouncy tits?”
“I like all tits, you moss-for-brains ogre,” Sanji scoffed and then muttered under his breath, “Should have known better than to not make you keep your mouth shut.”
“Sucks to suck, twirly-brow,” Zoro taunted, making sure to keep his body absolutely still so Sanji couldn’t accuse him of breaking the other rules, even though his hands were now fully twisted into the sheets from how hard he was gripping them. “Deal with it.”
“You’re such an ass.”
“Takes one to know—”
He got cut off by Sanji shoving two fingers into his mouth, which had Zoro letting out a punched-out noise of satisfaction. His gaze flickered up to the cook’s beneath the curtain of his lashes as he pressed his tongue against the pads, one eyebrow raising in a silent question. Sanji’s breath hitched, and then he nodded. Zoro moaned happily and immediately got to work, sucking noisily and curling his tongue around the digits. Sanji’s fingers were long enough that they could reach almost all the way back to his throat, and Zoro groaned loudly when he pressed down on the far back of Zoro’s tongue. The swordsman didn’t have anything close to a gag reflex left after years of practicing his santoryu style, but Zoro got a thrill from the threat that he’d still choke if pushed far enough, and the only thing better at bringing that feeling out than Sanji’s fingers was his cock.
“You gonna fuck my face?” Zoro asked around them, not bothering to hide his eagerness at the idea. The first time they’d done that Zoro had come untouched as soon as Sanji spilled down his throat; embarrassment over how much he enjoyed it seemed like kind of a moot point after that.
“Nope,” Sanji said without missing a beat, laughing at Zoro’s crestfallen look.
”Why not?” he demanded as Sanji withdrew his fingers, telling himself he definitely sounded irritated and not at all like he was pouting.
Despite his red face and glassy eyes, Sanji still managed a smug smirk as he replied simply, “Because that’s not what we’re doing tonight.”
Zoro bit back the urge to ask what the fuck they were doing then, because he didn’t want to give Sanji the satisfaction. Instead he stayed resolutely silent as the cook once again made his way down his body with a trail of heavy, open-mouthed kisses. Normally this would have been accompanied by a fair amount of biting (Sanji’s oral fixation giving him the desire to put his mouth everywhere it could reach rather than specifically on cock the way Zoro’s did), but like everything else so far this evening, Sanji kept it slow and gentle.
That didn’t change when he finally reached Zoro’s dick, pressing a wet, lingering kiss to the leaking head, and Zoro inhaled sharply at the jolt of pleasure that shot up his spine as Sanji continued to mouth teasingly down the length, with tiny, suckling kisses and brief swipes of tongue. It was good, but it wasn’t nearly enough, especially with how keyed up Zoro already was. He couldn’t help the frustrated growl that crawled out of his throat as he lifted his head to glare down at Sanji, only for his breath to catch as he realized the cook was watching him from beneath the fall of hair covering his face. Sanji maintained eye contact as he moved up the line of Zoro’s cock the same way he’d gone down, until he was back at the tip, flicking his tongue teasingly against the slit as he drew it into his mouth.
Zoro’s heels dug into the mattress with the effort it took not to buck his hips at that. Sanji must have been waiting for it, because he let Zoro’s cock fall back against his stomach so he could flash him a crooked grin.
“Good,” he said in a low, pleased voice, and Zoro’s stomach flooded so strongly with the warm honey feeling that he couldn’t even tamp down on the embarrassing noise he made. Sanji let out a happy little hum in response, and to Zoro’s absolute horror, the warm honey feeling doubled in its intensity, expanding out and filling his whole torso until he was practically drowning in it.
What the fuck. What the fuck. What was this? And why the fuck was it doing it for him?
Zoro let his head fall back, gritting his teeth as he forced himself to stare up at the ceiling and not at where he could feel Sanji getting back to work on his steadily leaking cock. The light, teasing touches were like a summer breeze against the honey-coated coals inside his stomach; enough to make the embers flare brighter, but not enough to set them alight. It was incredibly frustrating, and yet somehow Zoro was more turned on than he had been in ages. His fingers ached with how thoroughly they were twisted into the bedsheets, his chest was starting to heave a little with the force of his breathing, and there was a noise he kept making that came from somewhere high in the back of his throat which sounded suspiciously like a whine, or worse, a whimper. If not for the fact that every time it happened he got a similar answering noise from Sanji, Zoro would have been tempted to gut himself on one of his swords over how pathetic and needy it made him sound.
“Cook,” Zoro finally gasped out after Sanji had been teasing him for what felt like ages and Zoro’s insides were coiled tighter than his stupid twirly eyebrows, “Are you gonna keep playing with me all night or are you going to get fucking on with it.”
That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because it made Sanji laugh and sit up, which meant he was no longer touching Zoro’s cock. The sound Zoro made upon the loss of contact was horrifying.
“What do you think, marimo?” he asked, sitting back on his heels with his knees spread and maneuvering Zoro’s legs so his thighs were resting on top of Sanji’s, the silken smooth feel of Sanji’s trousers against his fever hot skin reminding Zoro that the curly-browed bastard wasn’t even naked yet.
What Zoro thought was that he was going to lose his goddamn mind if this went on much longer, but hell would freeze over before he admitted that out loud. “This can’t possibly be that good for you,” he tried instead. “How are you gonna get off if I can’t touch you?”
Sanji laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, mosshead,” he said as his hands splayed themselves across Zoro’s inner thighs, nails scratching just enough against the sensitive skin there to be ticklish instead of stinging. Zoro nearly bit through his lip with the effort it took to keep himself still at the sensation, which was so light and teasing that it made him feel like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.
“If it’s good for you, then it’s good for me,” Sanji continued, voice deceptively casual, like he wasn’t doing his damndest to make Zoro spontaneously combust. He paused and then added, “Of course, if the challenge is too hard for you, we can stop.”
For possibly the first time in his life, Zoro wondered what it would be like to be the kind of person who wasn’t competitive to a fault. They probably wouldn’t have even landed themselves in this situation to begin with, much less find themselves spitting, “Fuck you shithead, have I broken any of your goddamn rules yet? This isn’t hard, it’s just fucking annoying!”
He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it, but fuck if Zoro was going to take it back. Instead he leveled Sanji with the worst glare he could possibly muster, which would probably have been a lot more effective if Zoro hadn’t been sprawled out on the cook’s lap, flushed and panting and dripping pre all over his own stomach. For a moment Sanji just blinked down at him, and then an unapologetically wicked grin stretched wide across his face.
“You want me to make it harder?” he asked, and if not for the sheer unabashed delight in his tone and the fact that the back of Zoro’s skull with still overflowing with the idea that he needed to be good and being good meant being still, Zoro would have slugged him just to wipe that stupid smile off his face. As it was, all he could do was bring both hands up to flip Sanji off with a defiant lift of his chin.
“Do your worst, shit cook,” Zoro challenged, well aware that he was signing his own death warrant but unable to even consider backing down now that the gauntlet had been thrown.
Sanji let out the most pathetic and delighted noise he’d made all night and swooped down to kiss Zoro headily, which Zoro told himself he only allowed because it pressed Sanji’s stomach against his aching cock and brought enough temporary relief that Zoro moaned unabashedly into the cook’s mouth.
“Fuck,” Sanji swore when he pulled back, eyes bright and glassy and filled such joyful anticipation Zoro felt some of his irritation ebbing away, which was a whole different kind of annoying. “Fuck, okay, just—hold on—”
He pushed Zoro’s legs away and rose up on his knees, undoing his belt and shucking off his pants and boxers with a lot more urgency than before, which at this point Zoro found more suspicious than gratifying, though he was pleased to see that at least Sanji’s pretty pink cock was weeping just as much as his own. But Sanji didn’t pay it any mind as he descended upon Zoro again, this time fitting his hands around the back of Zoro’s thighs and holding them open so he could mouth wetly along the inside seam of his leg. He licked a long line up Zoro’s swollen length when he reached it, and Zoro nearly yelled at the wave of pleasure that roiled through him, but the contact sadly didn’t last.
”You still wanna be good for me, marimo?” Sanji asked, and suddenly Zoro’s whole head was suddenly buzzing with the warm honey feeling and he could barely think straight.
“Will you quit fucking teasing me if I am?” Zoro asked, desperate enough that he didn’t even care if his tone came out bordering on pleading, though he was slightly mollified by the truly pathetic noise it punched out of Sanji in response.
“Yes,” he all but whined, deep blue eyes fever bright with want. “Yes, if you’re good for this next part I’ll stop teasing. I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll fuck you so good you won’t be able to feel your legs tomorrow.”
Zoro’s whole body shuddered at the thought of how incredible that was going to feel if he could just get through whatever the ‘next part’ was. “Then yeah,” he groaned. “Yeah, I’ll be good.”
The honey-coated coals in his stomach flared so sharply at his own words that Zoro’s vision went a little fuzzy around the edges. The sticky sweet buzzing in his head slowed his thoughts enough that Zoro didn’t even realize he was being manhandled into Sanji’s lap until he was suddenly face to twirly eyebrow. He blinked, and then the reality of his position hit him full in the chest and Zoro just let the whimper out because fuck.
“Fuck,” he repeated out loud, because he was in Sanji’s fucking lap and he wasn’t supposed to touch him. Once he recovered from tonight, Zoro was going to skin the shithead alive and then feed him piece by piece to a pack of sea beasts. “Fuck you, you evil bastard, are you trying to kill me?”
A damp gust of air passed along Zoro’s collarbone as Sanji tucked his face into Zoro’s neck and laughed. “You said you wanted it to be harder.”
“I know,” Zoro shot back. “Doesn’t mean I can’t realize that it was a fucking dumb decision.”
Another laugh, and then Sanji was kissing him, messy and deep, tongue bullying its way into Zoro’s mouth with no finesse. The closeness brought their cocks together, and Zoro’s hands flew to his own thighs, nails sinking into the meaty flesh just so he’d have something to grab hold of, the urge to draw Sanji in and rut against him until he came so strong it burned.
“Last chance to back out,” Sanji murmured against his lips.
“And give you the satisfaction? No fucking way, dartbrow.” Zoro drew in a shaky exhale at the familiar sound of lube being uncapped; he hadn’t even realized Sanji had grabbed it already.
Sanji hummed, leaning back a bit so he was resting more against the headboard. “Can you rise up on your knees?” he asked after a moment, and Zoro obeyed without thinking, gnashing his teeth and groaning at the loss of Sanji’s cock pressed against his own.
“Yeah,” Sanji breathed once he was up, though Zoro’s legs and core were already so shaky he wasn’t sure he’d actually be able to stay that way. “Yeah, just—stay just like that. I’m going to finger you, and if you can keep your hands to yourself through that, then you can touch me and I’ll fuck you however you want. Okay?”
He reached out to cup Zoro’s face, pinky trailing through his earrings while his thumb brushed over Zoro’s cheekbone tenderly. Zoro moaned softly, desperate for the contact while also having to fight the urge to bury his face in Sanji’s hand.
“I’m holding you to that promise about not being able to feel my legs, fuckwad,” he managed to get out, voice hoarse and breathless with the effort of holding himself back. “And if you don’t come through I’m gonna chop your dick off.”
Sanji laughed. “You would never,” he teased as he coated his fingers with a generous amount of lube. “You like it too much to do that.”
Zoro had no answer for that, mostly because his legs nearly gave out when Sanji reached around to press slick fingers against his rim. He’d never cared that much for fingering in the past (mostly seeing it as a necessary nuisance to get to the main event) but getting fingered by Sanji was something else entirely because he knew damn well how to use them. Before Sanji, Zoro hadn’t even known it was possible to get off just on someone’s fingers, and now he was worried he might come from a single one as it slipped past his tight ring of muscle and was buried up to the knuckle. Which would admittedly be a relief from the personal hell Zoro was currently being subjected to, but despite the fact that Zoro had never been this achingly hard in my life, his cock practically purple with how swollen it was and weeping so much it almost looked like he had already come, he found himself wanting to hold on until Sanji was fucking him for the release.
Because even though Sanji hadn’t said as much, the warm honey feeling burning in his gut told Zoro it would be better if he waited. That coming now would run contrary to his ultimate goal of being good, which made absolutely no goddamn sense but by now Zoro was too far gone to question it.
Sanji slipped a second finger inside him, his other hand stroking up and down Zoro’s flank with a touch too light to really be satisfying. “Fuck, Zoro,” he breathed as Zoro moaned at the stretch, struggling not to grind down as Sanji began to pump in and out. “Do you have any idea what you look like right now?”
“A fucking mess?” Zoro guessed hazily, which at this point was about as good a comeback as he could muster.
“God yeah,” Sanji groaned, the hand on Zoro’s side coming up to grope one of his pecs. “Beautiful, messy marimo—I knew you were gonna look good wrecked but this is—fuck.”
He twisted his fingers just so and Zoro cried out, toes curling at the burst of heat that swept through him, setting all of the warm honey feeling still oozing through his veins alight. “Fuck!” he yelled when Sanji did it again, very nearly breaking as he fell forward, only to catch himself on the headboard at the last second, the wood creaking with how hard Zoro was gripping it. The honey-soaked coals in his gut weren’t just coals anymore; now his entire body was ablaze, pleasure raging through him like a forest fire, trying to consume everything in its wake.
Sanji added a third finger, twisting and scissoring in ways meant to melt Zoro from the inside out. Zoro squeezed his eyes shut and let every noise he could fall from his lips, mostly to try and block out the way Sanji was running his own mouth, sweet praises and filthy adorations that only came out when he was reaching the end of his control. It was a small comfort to know the cook was just as much of a mess as Zoro was, but it was also driving the swordsman wild and making it that much harder for him to keep his impending orgasm at bay. He felt so good that it hurt, a delicious, sweet, aching pain that was so different from the sharp stinging kind he was used to. It filled his lungs, sunk down into his bones, wrapped tight around his heart until Zoro felt like he was going to burst from how fucking good it all was, and suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Sanji,” he croaked, eyes fluttering open so he could look down at the stupid, shitty, bastard cook, whose nose had begun bleeding as he stared back with something like reverence in his deep blue eyes. “Let me touch you. Please.”
Zoro had never begged for anything during sex before. He’d never had to. But he needed his hands on Sanji more than he needed air and if he didn’t get that right now, Zoro was pretty sure he would actually keel over and die on the spot.
Sanji made a noise like a wounded animal, withdrawing his fingers with a wet squelch so he could surge up and wrap his arms around Zoro, bringing him back down onto Sanji’s lap.
“Yeah,” he choked as Zoro let out a high-pitched whine, his own arms coming around Sanji’s torso and drawing the cook in as close to himself as Zoro could get. “Yeah, fuck, you—you’ve been good, Zoro, you’ve been so good, how—how do you want it?”
“Don’t care,” Zoro moaned as he buried his face in Sanji’s neck, running his hands everywhere he could reach along the cook’s back. “Don’t care, just—need you, please—”
He cut himself off with a choked cry as he felt the blunt pressure of a cock head against his entrance, and then Sanji surged up into him, burying himself to the hilt in one fluid motion before immediately pulling out so he could rock back in. It was frantic and messy with no rhythm to speak of, but that didn’t matter because Zoro wasn’t going to last much longer anyway. He simply clung onto Sanji for dear life as he rolled his own hips, trying to match the erratic thrusts as best he could. That warm honey feeling and the sweet aching pain were still burning through him, reaching down deep into places that Zoro hadn’t even known existed, threatening to consume him whole.
He felt Sanji’s hips begin to stutter against his ass and Zoro clenched down, knowing he was close and wanting to at least make the bastard come before he did. But then a hand was threading through his hair, tugging his head back, and Zoro had just enough time to appreciate how absolutely wrecked Sanji looked before the cook was gasping out, “Come for me, marimo? Please?”
The words had barely left him before Zoro was throwing his head back, mouth open in a soundless scream as he came so hard he blacked out.
He was dimly aware of Sanji burying his face against his shoulder as his own movements ceased and he spilled himself while still inside Zoro, but the swordsman didn’t really come to until he felt the warmth of Sanji’s spend begin leaking down his thighs as the cook pulled out. Zoro blinked hazily back into reality and found himself slumped over in Sanji’s lap, forehead resting against the cook’s shoulder as he murmured soothing nonsense against Zoro’s temple, one hand carding through his sweat-soaked hair while the other traced soothing patterns along his back.
“Still with me, mosshead?” Sanji asked.
Zoro gurgled something unintelligible in response.
Sanji chuckled, though it sounded strained, like he was having a hard time gathering his own thoughts. Good. Fucking bastard deserved it. “Sorry I couldn’t hold out long enough to make you not feel your legs.”
Zoro only let out a soft hum in response, comfortable and content enough to start falling asleep right where he was. If Sanji had a problem with that, too fucking bad. He was the one who had reduced Zoro to this state, he could be the one to deal with the fallout.
The edges of his consciousness were just beginning to fade when he heard Sanji say, “Zoro? Are you… Was that okay? I mean, did you like it?”
There was a thread of apprehension in his voice that made Zoro want to hit him, because he knew that tone and Zoro fully did not have enough brain left to deal with one of Sanji’s freakouts right now given that Sanji himself was responsible for melting it out of his ears.
“Curly,” Zoro mumbled against Sanji’s shoulder, putting every last shred of thought and sanity he had left into wrangling up some semblance of cohesion, “I don’t know what that stupid brain of yours is trying to get you to overthink right now, but tell it to fuck off. It was good. I liked being good.”
He hadn’t actually meant to add that last part, but it slipped out before Zoro could stop it and honestly, he didn’t really care. There would be a time and place to examine everything that had happened tonight, but it wasn’t while he was warm and content in Sanji’s arms following a round of absolutely mind rending sex. Right now all Zoro wanted to do was pass out, but he fought the siren call of sleep until he felt Sanji’s body relax against his.
“Okay,” he whispered as he pressed the crooked curve of his smile into Zoro’s cheek, the sensation a little wet because his nose was still bleeding. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Zoro slurred as sleep began to claim him, holding off just long enough to add, “But you owe me a back breaking in the morning.”
The last thing Zoro heard before drifting off was the soft sound of Sanji’s laughter, and the warm, honey sweet affection in his voice as he answered, “Deal.”