Chapter Text
Zoro was hungry. Luffy could see it, because he might have been an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid, and he knew the shape of the desire in the swordsman’s eyes when he looked at him. He knew hunger better than almost anyone, and Zoro's stare was that of a beast which seeks to devour him.
He loved it, obviously. He reveled in it, the piercing blade of Zoro’s focus making his neck prickle and his insides burn. Luffy teased him and watched the way his tongue rolled over the points of his teeth, wicking away the saliva from looking hungrily at a meal. He swore his heartbeat changed tempo when Zoro looked at him like that, turning from a steady beat into a thunder of steps, rumbling like the earth before an eruption, and he would feel alive the same way a king feels alive on his throne when Zoro flashed his twisted, wicked smile. He chased it with reckless abandon, leaping ever closer to the jaws of a beast just to feel the brush of heat against his heels.
When Zoro touched him, it was like the first bite of a mango: explosive, rich and unmistakable, sweet enough to make his stomach swoop, leave his chin overflowing with juices, and whenever Zoro dragged him from the ocean under his arm, Luffy would lick the seawater off his own lips and taste nectar.
He could have made up better excuses to touch Zoro. He didn’t. Couldn’t help it. When he’d first found him, he was starving, they were both starving; Zoro for blood and flesh and Luffy for someone to break the silence, to make him un-alone, and so he ate greedily.
He wanted to touch Zoro, all the time, forever, until he died.
He just wasn’t really sure how.
“You wouldn’t know what to do with a lady if one fell in your lap, you idiot marimo.”
“Like you would? What are you gonna do, gut a fish on her? Dice an onion?”
“I would never--”
“Neither of you would have a clue what you’re doing,” Nami said.
“I would!” Sanji’s hand shot up. “I would, Nami-swan. You know, if you ever--”
“Another word and I tell Luffy to eat you.”
“Hwaht?”
Luffy looked up, swallowing a bone. Around him, the crew were drunk and relaxed, rocking in time to the Merry’s body on the waves, bottles of booze and plates of food scattered across the table and at least a few decks of cards mixed up on the floor. They’d bumped into some guy with a thing who rotted stuff, or something like that, and he’d ended up fermenting all the fruit in the hold, so it needed to be drunk to make room for new groceries at the next island. At least, that’s what Nami said. But Nami also liked drinking almost as much as Zoro, and Luffy didn’t really care. The food was good, and the drinks were interesting, and the crew was happy.
“Luffy, you know what I mean. There’s an instinct in every man. It’s just a fact of nature!”
“An instinct to be an idiot, maybe.” Nami muttered. “Just for that, you owe me another bottle. Gimme.”
“Right away, Nami-swan.”
She pointed at him. “Luffy has no idea what you’re talking about, either. Look at him.”
He waved. “Hi, Nami.”
“Yeah. Hi, Luffy.”
“Usopp,” Sanji said desperately. “You-- you’re a fellow man. A great man of the sea. Surely you know what I mean.”
Usopp, who had spent the last however long (time enough for Luffy to eat three plates of meat, two bottles of juice-wine, and four fried cutlets, however long that was) staring blearily at a half-upside down hand of cards, nodded.
“Definitely. I know everything about it. In fact, I wrote the book about it! Seven volumes. Better than anyone ever has.”
Nami drank. “Right. Now then, Usopp, can you describe this so-called ‘instinct’ to us, please?”
“The what? Oh, uh. It’s… an instinct, huh? Well, instincts are just… natural, right? Like eating! Wanting to eat stuff counts as an instinct. Everything does that. Also, running away, which I do because I’m prer-- pruh-- perfectly designed for survival. Wait, are we still playing poker?”
“He’s saying it’s-- it’s an instinct like divine hunger! An animal impulse, the same as eating or sleeping. It’s something you just know how to do. At least, I definitely know. How to do it, that is.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Luffy paused, fatty boar rib an inch from his mouth, suddenly paying attention.
“Hungry?”
“Yes! Yes, exactly. You do know what I mean.” Sanji lay a hand over his forehead with a dramatic flourish. “Sometimes, you find someone you want to be so close to, that your heart yearns so sharply for, it’s like starving to be apart. And when you’re finally together again, you find your bodies suddenly just know what to do to become even closer, and you--”
“Sanji wants to eat girls?”
“What? No! Of course not!”
Nami snorted into her drink. “No wonder you can’t get a date.”
“No, seriously, are we playing poker? Just because if we are, I’m winning.”
Usopp dropped his cards on the table. Two were not poker cards. One was a cracker, which Luffy immediately ate. Yet as the table around him descended into chaos, Luffy found himself strangely fixated on Sanji’s words, so distracted he barely took two things off Usopp’s plate while he wasn’t looking.
An animal impulse. Starving to be apart.
Luffy was hungry a lot. People told him he had a bottomless appetite, but it was just that he liked to eat, and he didn’t like to be hungry. But the unfortunate reality was that he was hungry more than he wasn’t. It turned out people wanted to get paid a lot for food, and Luffy wasn’t very good with money like Nami was, so before he’d met her (and later Sanji, who at least tried to make sure he wasn’t hungry) he would sometimes go days looking for a good meal. Now, he wasn’t hungry as often, but he was still often hungry. Sanji and Nami liked saving food and money, and they insisted that if Luffy ate as much as he wanted to, they’d all go bankrupt and starve within the week. He didn’t really get it, but that’s why he’d found his crewmates to handle that part anyway, so he at least tried to listen. Sometimes.
It was easier when there was something to hunt. In the jungle when he and his brothers were small, he hunted and he ate so he wouldn’t be hunted and eaten in turn. If you can kill it, you can eat it. Everything was food if you were strong enough, and so the three of them became the strongest beasts in their jungle, and they ate. Everything wants to eat something. This was the way of the jungle, and all the animals had agreed. Was that instinct?
In his hand, the flesh around the boar rib was soft, yielding to his fingers and teeth. Warm oil and meat juices dripped slowly down his wrist and onto the dishes on the table, spots of red spattering over the bones he’d already picked clean. With his mouth still hovering just an inch away from the surface, he could feel the leftover heat radiating over his lips, gums itching in anticipation and stomach twisting impatiently. Always, always hungry.
He looked at Zoro.
Zoro was actually a little drunk, pink-cheeked and pouting into his cup to find it empty again. At least two or three of the barrels they’d drained so far Zoro had taken care of himself, but the fruit wine seemed to be stronger than they were used to, turning them all loose and clumsy, and for once Zoro was no exception. He looked bored, though. Nami was no longer playing drinking games and Sanji wasn’t fighting, so it seemed Zoro had stopped being interested in anything they had to say.
Luffy, on the other hand, was suddenly very interested in what Zoro had to say.
“Zoro!” he shouted, tripping over a few of the chairs around the table-- maybe it had been 3 bottles of juice-wine he drank earlier-- and landing in a sprawl at the swordsman’s feet, still chewing. “Hey. Hey, Zoro.”
Zoro raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oi.”
“Are you hungry?”
His gaze slowly tracked up to the food still stuffed in Luffy’s fist, occasionally dripping sauce onto his boots. He tilted his head at it, considering, and shifted the set of his jaw like he was rolling his tongue over his palate. Shrugged.
“Mmh. Not really.”
Which just wasn’t true. Because Luffy knew the look of a hunger that would not be sated, and Zoro wore it like he were on the brink of starvation. This simply wasn’t the right hunger, not the one Luffy was looking for. But then again, Zoro didn’t care about his meals the same way Luffy did; he was more interested in the chase, the blood, the violence and the danger. He could care less what happened to his prey after it died. If Luffy was the victory and the feast, then Zoro was the hunt and the slaughter. Luffy liked to eat. Zoro liked to fight.
“Hey. Do you wanna fight instead?”
Something in his previously drunken gaze sharpened, and Zoro was looking straight at Luffy again, the silver ring of color in his eyes thinner than it had been a moment before. The fine hair on Luffy’s neck began to stand. Yes. This was the hunger he was looking for.
“Now?”
“When Zoro doesn’t fight, he gets hungry. Right?”
Luffy swore he could hear the blades of Zoro’s swords rattle against their sheaths where they lay beside him. There was a shifting in him as natural as the cresting of a wave, incremental until it was all at once, taking the shape of a predator as comfortably as the wine taking the shape of his cup. He considered for a moment.
“Mmh. Guess so.”
The inside of Luffy's mouth still tasted like honey glaze and blood, walls of his cheeks slick with liquid fat. The lingering taste of iron from the meat on his tongue was never going to be enough. What did he want? To become even closer. There was a sharp aching under his fingertips, an itching to rip and tear, to pull apart the mango's fragrant rind and sink his teeth into wet, yielding flesh. Was this his body knowing what to do?
“And? Is Zoro hungry now?”
The way he looked at Luffy became something entirely different than it had been a moment ago, focused so precisely he could feel the blade of his swords carving over wherever he looked. Zoro’s gaze flayed him open in a long and steady path down his body, then cut him back up to his hair again. Lingering at his throat.
Everything wants to eat something.
He pulled his lips back to run his tongue over his teeth the way that made Luffy's insides turn outward, white like the picked-clean bones on the table, shiny with spit and almost too-large for his mouth. Years of carrying swords had pushed them all to point outwards like the fanged jaw of a devil. Luffy wondered what it would be like to climb inside, to pull the teeth out and swallow them instead, to make a home for his tongue in the empty socket of Zoro’s mouth where the taste of iron was so much sweeter. The swords slid into their place at their owner's hip, and his pulse started to sing, body coming to life in pursuit of finally being sated. Hunting, hunted. Hungry, starving.
Zoro set down his cup.
“Yeah.”