Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sake explodes out of Zoro's nose.

He's vaguely aware of Luffy blinking down at her suddenly drenched chest, but is also admittedly a bit distracted by his own tears and the burning in his nostrils.

Luffy is generous enough to wait until Zoro's done wheezing before offering, "Neat new trick?"

"Shut it," Zoro growls, wiping his face into his shirt at the shoulder. She laughs raucously, ignoring Zoro's mournful look at his now empty tankard. What a waste of fine sake...

Why did he waste it again.

Oh, right.

"What the hell," Zoro says accusingly, and Luffy cocks her head.

"What d'ya mean? It's just a question," she nods, before pausing. "Unless it was a Bad Question? Ace says some people have questions they don't wanna answer sometimes. You don't have to, if you don't wanna." She nods more vigorously this time, though it's mostly at herself for remembering what Ace told her.

"It's not a...Bad Question," Zoro sighs, then curses when Luffy lights up.

"So?" She grins expectantly.

Zoro's eyes pass over his chosen captain. He takes in her straw hat, her sparkling eyes peering through dark messy hair, her small, round face slightly flushed from grinning so hard. He follows her long neck, defined clavicles, strong shoulders, and then her chest, which glistens with rivulets of brown sake he'd just expelled. Larger droplets are moving along the impressive swell of her breasts, either to melt into and stain the edges of her straining red vest, or disappearing into the depths of her cleavage, which glints like there's no doubt a decent amount of sake already pooled there.

Usually, Zoro doesn't care much for boobs. He doesn't care much for anything on anyone in terms of physical appearance to be honest, except for whether they're carrying a blade and look like they know how to use it. In fact, he thinks this may be the longest he's ever stared at or contemplated boobs in his whole life, unlike a certain stupid blond cook.

They're nice, on Luffy, he decides. Though Luffy would be equally nice without, if she had a more dude-like body, he supposes. Most likely they're nice boobs because they're on Luffy, because Luffy's always the exception when it comes to whether Zoro cares more than he should or not.

Unbidden, Zoro thinks: he'd actually really like to bury his face in her chest right now, to lap up that sake. That'd no doubt be really nice.

He subtly shifts his legs so Luffy doesn't see anything twitching down there.

Except the movement apparently draws Luffy's attention, because she suddenly flomps from the deck next to Zoro right onto his legs, her chest showcasing just how supple it is as it molds itself around his knees. Zoro cringes and hopes she doesn't come up any higher, and tries to draw his legs up to cover his extremely interested crotch, which only results in driving one of his knees between her cleavage.

The feeling of her boobs around his knee is really nice, he thinks. Really distracting, too. Makes it real easy to imagine them around other things...

"Zoro! Do you wanna kiss me?" Luffy demands, thunking her chin down on said knee, arms looping casually around to keep her there. She'd apparently assumed that his thoughts had gotten as lost as Zoro himself is sometimes prone to, and well, she's not wrong.

Right, kissing.

Zoro forces his mind away from her boobs, to look at her lips, which are turned down in a pout. They're not particularly small for her face, and Zoro's seen them open wide enough to swallow an entire shark whole. They still look ridiculously soft and bouncy, just like the rest of her, and the slightly darker flush of pink there looks Nice.

Zoro doesn't usually think about whether things are cute or not, he's honestly not even fully sure what cute is. But whatever it is, Luffy definitely must be it, he thinks.

No, he hasn't gotten lost again. Yeah, he wants to kiss her. He doesn't need to, but it sure would be nice.

His dick seems to agree whole-heartedly, and Zoro tells it to please shut the fuck up.

But, Zoro thinks, Luffy surely must be thinking about kisses to the hand, or maybe cheek or head. Not on those fuckin' cute lips that he's suddenly finding just as distracting as her boobs were--which oh, right they're still down there too, and still sandwiching his knee, and Zoro belatedly realizes that Luffy must have crawled onto his legs to wipe the sake on his pants bc he's getting a bit of a stain down there, and okay he spilled the sake on her in the first place so that's fair enough...

Right, kisses.

Zoro scowls at the thought of the cooks' daily hand-kissing ritual. It's not like he's jealous, he doesn't get the point of that "gentlemanly" crap, but he doesn't particularly like the thought of them touching their mouths to Luffy's hand, or any part of her, really. Thatch, he'll forgive, because the older man does have a bit of restraint and is refined enough with the gesture. And, he's been teaching Zoro how to use Haki on his blades, which is extremely useful even if Zoro's been bad at it so far, so Zoro finds his presence as a whole a lot more agreeable.

The stupid blond cook though, the way he grabs Luffy's hand and mashes his face in it like a desperate wild beast in heat...the hairs on the back of Zoro's neck stand on end just thinking about it. It's gross.

Zoro wants to kiss Luffy, but not like that. He's not like the cook. He...

He cares about her deeply, he supposes, as uncomfortable as such a sentimental admission is. And he figures kissing sounds like a more pleasant way of expressing that than dying for her, though he's certainly willing to do the latter as well.

Luffy's opening her mouth to ask again, when Zoro speaks first.

"Yeah, I want to kiss you."

Her mouth closes with a small click.

"Oh, okay."

She lets go of his knees and rolls back onto the deck, her flukes fwapping the wood to flip her belly-side up. Zoro raises a brow at her lackluster response.

"Okay?"

The dark line between her lips twists a bit as she frowns, her eyes wandering among the clouds floating overhead. Zoro notices that her chest is no longer sparkling with sake, though he can still smell it lingering around her.

Zoro waits patiently. If Luffy wants to tell him, she will, and if not, she won't. She can't lie either way.

"...Sabo and Ace told me some weird things, and now I can't stop thinking 'bout it. The kissing stuff."

Zoro wants to groan because of course it's the damn Revolutionary brother. He doesn't mind him, and respects him because he's clearly strong, but Zoro also smells Trouble from him in a way that he doesn't from Ace, at least with regards to stuff like this. And apparently that Trouble has manifested itself in the form of poking the sleeping lion of introducing Luffy to kissing (and possibly beyond, Zoro thinks with dread).

"Do you want to kiss me on the mouth? Or somewhere else?"

Zoro barely stops himself from choking again, and his hope that Luffy meant something a little more platonic dies a pathetic little death.

"Wherever you'd want," he manages to say, and he does mean it. He'd like to kiss her on the lips, sure, but if she'd ask for it, he'd kiss her hand too without hesitation. It's not the same as the moronic curly brow, he assures himself. For him it'd be more like...pledging fealty, as a warrior, not a hopelessly horny pervert.

That actually sounds pretty great, now that he thinks about it, and Zoro's impressed despite himself. Yeah, that'd actually be a pretty darn awesome reason to kiss Luffy's hand. With the added benefit of touching her.

"Hmm," Luffy continues to frown, and now a hand's reached up to prod at her own lip. Zoro's eyes are glued to the movement of her bouncing her pointer finger on her plush lower lip. It squishes in, and the soft flesh on either side balloons out a bit, the hint of moisture on it glinting at the movement. Luffy's finger removes pressure, and it plumps right back to its original shape, with a little jiggle that Zoro can't tell if he's imagining.

It looks so damn soft, far softer than any part of a human has any right to be, and maybe it is because she's rubber after all. Zoro can't look away.

"Ace said I can't just kiss anyone on the lips, it's special," she murmurs, mostly to herself.

Now she's captured her lower lip between her fingers, and is pulling it down. It stretches obscenely, showing off her gums and tiny little lower teeth, before she lets it go and it returns to its place back within the confines of her face with a distinctly inhuman snap.

"I dunno why I can't," she says, and her pout looks ridiculously exaggerated as she tugs on her lip again. It snaps back into place.

Ah, Zoro thinks. He finally knows what this reminds him of. It reminds him of people who play with rubber bands, stretching and snapping them. Except, it's not a rubber band, it's a lip, but he supposes it must act the same way because well, Luffy's a rubber mermaid.

"Why is it special..."

Snap, goes Luffy's lower lip. Luffy's skin doesn't get as red from stretching as most people's, but there's now a noticeable bright tint there from the repeated teasing.

Snap. It's definitely jiggling now, every time it smacks back into her face, all bright and shiny-like.

Fuck, Zoro thinks. He wants to take that lower lip in his mouth and suck.

"Hey Zoro," Luffy's lower lip--he means, Luffy says, and Zoro feels a slight wave of vertigo as he comes back to himself. He shudders--for a moment, it was like he was possessed by the spirit of Pervy Cook.

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever kissed anyone? On the mouth."

Zoro thinks, but it's really hard to think about any mouth other than Luffy's. "I guess? Maybe a few times, when I was drunk. Don't really remember."

Luffy frowns. "You don't remember? But wasn't it special?"

Zoro winces and realizes that he's probably just fucked up whatever safeguard Ace must have made up to keep Luffy from just kissing everyone silly. Ah well, it's not his job to be her chaperone. "I dunno. It wasn't special to me, but I guess it should be special. It can be special for you."

Luffy looks extremely dissatisfied with this answer, and Zoro finally realizes what's going on. Luffy was given a half-assed explanation about kissing, which categorized it as a Mystery Thing. Then, she was told that one kind is Special, which of course makes her curious when she otherwise would have dismissed it. Right after that, she was told she can't just do the Special Thing, so now she's drawn to the forbidden fruit, for the sole reason that it was forbidden.

What the hell are you thinking, Zoro silently curses the Revolutionary, who's no doubt Plotting something.

"Kissy kissy, kissy kiss," Luffy mumbles to herself, still playing with her lower lip like she craves giving it contact. Zoro finds it extremely distracting.

He may not know what Sabo's thinking, but this isn't a terrible situation for himself, Zoro realizes. He finds himself licking his own suddenly very, very dry lips.

The movement doesn't go unnoticed by Luffy, who suddenly flips onto her front, her chest bulging impressively as it flattens against the deck, before she uses the momentum to bounce herself up onto her arms.

"Zoro, I wanna kiss you, can I?" Luffy announces, with the exact same surety as when she says she's gonna eat that meat.

Zoro's mind has frozen, but he hears himself say, "Go ahead."

Zoro feels more than he sees, because suddenly Luffy's close, arms resting with familiarity across his shoulders, along with something pressing with far less familiarity against his cheek. It's soft, bouncy, and heated from being tugged so much, and just the slightest bit moist.

It's over in an instant, before Luffy's pulling away.

"I can't kiss you on the mouth right now," Luffy says, and she sounds a bit disappointed.

But she still kissed him.

Luffy kissed me, Zoro thinks.

Suddenly everything's too hot, and rapidly getting hotter.

Zoro wonders if it's Ace, coming to roast him alive. He can't even blame him, if that's the case. But Ace is nowhere to be seen.

She kissed me.

"Zoro?"

Luffy's voice sounds far away, because all Zoro can think is...

Fuck.