This was a tumblr meme prompt for a drabble that grew legs and ran off, but oh, anon, what a spectacular can of worms we have here! The prompt being LawZo, and, "I think I'm in love with you and I'm terrified." There are so many things to say on this subject, and so many ways that I could write it. This is just one of many directions this could have gone. Actually, considering the nature of these two, this actually turned out so much shorter than it could have been. :P

I really hate the formatting on this site. Aaaugh. Oh well. I hope you guys enjoy!

You cannot go into the water.

As a devil fruit-user, the water will weaken you, the water will drown you. The ocean will take you down, fill your mouth, your lungs with salt, rush through your ears so that no one, not even yourself, can hear your shouts. You can not survive in the water for long.

But from the outside, there is nothing more perfect, tranquil and complacent, rolling from one shore to the next. Always changing but always the same, the swirling and dancing waters. Reflecting the sunlight, reflecting the moonlight. Blue during the day. Black at night. It has always been with you, the ocean, it is your constant companion moreso than any other body on this planet.

Yet moving, moving, moving, stirring and sweeping across its vast plain, it is never the exact same tune you hear night after night when it sings you to sleep, lulling and bye-ing, and never the same soft, wispy roar of a greeting as you open your eyes every morning. But the difference to each sound is only perceptible to those who want to see it. Who want to recognize something else, some new and foreign quality every time as it cleanses the air, and the dirt and sweat of the day from your skin.

Without it, you might become dry, cracked, thirsting. You may as well be dust.

But if you are wounded, it will sting you.

Like a beast that senses blood, it might bite.

But you love it.

But you are in love with him.

If you get too close, too immersed, you will sink. So down, so far, that the light shining upon you from the above world will escape into pinpricks of dancing motes as you struggle to escape an undertow that can't be fought against, no matter how you try to thrash your useless arms and legs. Because your strength is gone. It has fled you. And you are lost.

And all it would take is a single hand reaching out for your own, reaching out to never let go, to bring you back up to the distant surface. With it, maybe you could survive this.

In the arms of a man who is just like the ocean with eyes like forever, turbulent yet stalwart, pressing up against you in powerful waves.

And you are afraid of how he makes you feel so suddenly weak.

It is night.

Zoro is a shadow beneath the ocean's depths, circling and navigating the flimsy currents as they slosh lamely against the sides of the ship. You watch him from the railing until he surfaces from his late night swim with shiny drops of water falling from his saturated hair - deep dark green when wet - drip-dropping, slip-sliding down his half-naked, hard body in small rivulets between the topography of his large muscles. Gorgeous. Perfect. The way he glistens under the pale, fragile moonlight.

"Law," he calls for you, and you answer readily, owning the moment that he reaches out for you and touches you with freezing cold, wet hands and the urges to shiver fall so very still.

He doesn't need to know what he/the water does to you.

"Feeling better?" you ask instead and allow a smile, a lie, to light up your expression. "You look refreshed. I would have joined you, but..."

The look Zoro gives you with his two eyes - the way the brows crease above both his open eye and the one scarred closed - is one of calm understanding. Whenever it is just the two of you alone, he always has the look of a man who never has any true criticisms for anything, however much as he always complains - the look of a man who is too passionate and prideful. To the extent that you could end him right there if you wanted to, skewer kikoku through his heart and he would not fault you for it, nor ever hold a grudge. The kind of gaze only offered by someone too vast to ever truly be moved or touched by anything, yet he allows you in all the same.

"I know. Don't worry about it."

Beneath the cold and wet clothing, you can feel his warmth beneath as he pulls you in closer, life ebbing under your fingertips as they splay over his ample chest, taking measure of his heart beat. Always strong. Always steady. The legs of his pants are soaking into your jeans as you pull each other close enough to where your thighs brush; his ankles drip and drip salt water all over the wood of the deck.

The human adult body is comprised of sixty-five percent water on average. Yet, when he takes your hands away with his own and squeezes them gently, you've never felt this flooded before. Never felt so inundated.

Learning how to stay afloat in one's own body is never an easy feat.

"I'm not worried," you hear your own voice say, cocksure, "I was never much of a swimmer, even before I had my power. Where I grew up, the nearby reservoirs were dangerously cold, so I actually never properly learned how."

Looking down at him into his one eye, you can only see yourself drowning in its reflective surface every time. Black, like the sea at night.

"Well, it's never too late. You're probably not that heavy, so I could carry you if you want to give it a shot... but you'd end up having to rely on me completely." The unspoken question is so innocent and ingenuous that anyone else might find it heartbreaking to say anything but 'yes'. Anyone else, but not you. Maybe it would be different if you hadn't broken your heart yet yourself already with a dose of the reality that this was never truly going to work out between you two, just to speed up the process. Just so it could be done on your own terms. Move on in your own way when you inevitably part ways. But then...

You aren't sure whether to be annoyed with his suggestion or pleased - he knows that he's asking you to put your life in his hands and trust in him completely, but to what end? It's quite the risk just for a little bit of fun. The water will invariably weaken you. He could let you slip, let you down; he could end up hurting you more than he knows. Yet, you cannot fully judge the purity of his intentions, so you save your reproach and settle for the far-too-typical, neutral emotional response and shrug before walking away to find a private place to brood without giving him a direct answer. And Zoro, being Zoro, follows because he doesn't fully understand.

He doesn't understand because he's never been given the chance.

He doesn't understand because you don't know how to explain.

Because you're scared shitless of how you really feel. You're scared of taking that plunge.

But still he follows, he does.

Zoro always comes for you.

The sound of him dressing in the dark is usually sensible, but in a way, each rustle of cloth is too loud and repulsive in your ears. There's a part of you that wants to reach out and stop him because you don't know if you could stand to see his retreating back yet another night. As it is, watching his broad shoulders move, highlighted by a tiny sliver of moonlight through a dusty porthole as he tugs on his boots, makes something within you ache too deeply to look at him.

Another part of you is the one at fault for always pushing him away.

Because people always give terrible advice like 'listen to your heart' but...

Ultimately, it's only one organ among many, not smart enough alone to know how to not fuck itself over.

That's how you ended up in this mess in the first place, leading him into a dank and dark room used for storage before impulsively - tactlessly - shoving him up against the nearest wall and attacking his mouth with a heated, passionate kiss. Too passionate, almost too violent, maybe, to be as simple as a 'kiss'. Sloppy and uncoordinated and rough, but he didn't mind, hands running over your body and up your torso before shoving into your hair, knocking your hat carelessly onto the floor as the clothes began to go down with it.

He loves every moment of this.

That's what you wanted to feel.

What you always want to feel. So very desirable to a man who should have no use for things falling categorically under something as mundane as 'lust', but he does anyway because he can't seem to help himself. Consumed and devoured, swallowed up in his passion for nothing and no one else but you. It is that exact kind of power over him that you crave.

That willfulness.

His strength.

An endless potential.

The stark simplicity of it.

You want all that makes him Zoro to be just as much yours. You need him to need you. And with the sounds he'd made as he leaned his body upwards and draped a thigh over your hip to grant you leverage enough to lift him up and drag him down with your naked bodies pressing together, seamless, it was more than adequate to fuel the fantasy.

Yet, now you feel empty. Lost at sea. Sinking.

So heavy with nothing that you are left submerged.

Too frustrated before. Too pent up and too liquid inside. It didn't change anything, pouring all of that feeling out into him until he was full, satisfied, up to the brink in contrast to your echoing hollows.

In the end, is it ever worth it?

While wondering this, you roll onto your side and sit up from your makeshift bed of mildewing canvases, then pat the floor for your own scattered clothing.

The air feels heavy. Fraught.

Humid, too, pervaded with the scent of sex. In your mouth, you can still taste of the salt of the sea from where you'd licked it from his throat, down his jugular, feeling his pulse soar through heated skin on the tip of your tongue. It wasn't the cheapest fuck you'd ever shared, but it came close. Though meaningful in its own right.

You suppose it always is. Every time just as gripping as the first. Never old or tiring or mundane, nor ever really the same. The only consistency is in the way that he always puts everything else aside the moment you begin, focusing on the acts entirely as he groans with certain enthusiasm with each of your vigorous thrusts, from slow, rotating undulations to the more that he's always begging for. In each and every sound he makes, every word he says, you chase after them with bruising amounts of passion.

You love running your hands all over his body, reveling in how eagerly he gives it to you, how he grinds back against you so hard that you sometimes have to grip his hips harder than you'd like just to keep him from toppling you onto your back. Every single one of his movement is powerful and graceful, all animalistic, erotic choreography. Draping yourself over his splendid physique, feeling his chest heave beneath your palms, mouthing at his impressive pectorals as you nearly double over on top of him and watch his swollen dick bounce between his legs.

Feeling his muscles contract and squeeze the life out of your cock as you ejaculate inside him is a transcendent experience. But it never ends there, driving inside of him deeply, repeatedly, for a carnal finale just after the first euphoric hit of orgasm the brain. If he hasn't gotten off at least once by that point, he usually does then in shuddering, stuttered out gasps that extend into long sighs as he suffuses your bodies with his liquids.

The faces he makes. The sounds. His breath. Surreal. Unreal. Being inside of him feels like coming to life for the first time, feels like dying, feels like being wrapped up in a wet, soft, velvety cocoon and emerging with a set of wings, carrying you up on cloud nine.

The inevitable plummet back down to reality from repeated inseminations is always a jarring one.

If he at all notices how vulnerable, how open and easy to read you can become when you lose yourself like that, he's never said as much. But then, he's a lot more raw in the moments after he finishes than you are. A little more human. A little more exposed. Not fragile, per se, but...

Aftermaths have never been your strong point, nor finding the right words to convey the feeling that has you so conflicted, constricted, and consumed.

The silence drags on and on between the two of you in strains like it could snap at any moment, and not even the sound of the sea singing white noise to midnight can save it.

Now he has overstayed his welcome at your side, and he knows that.

But you can't stand the thought of him leaving, either.

"Zoro-ya... " you eventually murmur, finding your voice somewhere in the pressure closing in on your chest from all sides.

He turns at the waist to look at you now, and whatever expression he might have is subdued in the darkness. "Hm?"

"What am I to you?" you ask, candid and forthright. There's no reason to evade this any longer. The answer is too important, could change so many things - could put so many years of holding others at arm's length to rest if it is the right one.

Before saying anything, hands reach out, clasp. His grip is certain, steady, pulling you forward to ease against him. And for a moment, with his thick and warm arms around you, the weight on your lungs eases, and your ribcage aches as the cartilage relearns its ability to expand around them.

Air rushes in.

"You... I don't know what you are. I've never done this before," he quietly admits; that makes two of you, doesn't it? But you know that it isn't the same page as yours that he's reading that line from. This isn't just about sex. This is your heart calling, tentative, unskilled, with a sort of newness that has you reeling and careening, receding back into old patterns of estrangement.

How you're supposed to think now, how you're supposed to feel, and how you're supposed to react - it's all one large mystery that you've been playing by ear. Until the moment came when you realized that the way you felt went far too deep to ever be redeemed, to ever be acceptable to your variety of logic. Falling for him is just one mistake you can count among the many as you feel the heat of his soft sigh on your shoulder before he rests his forehead upon it, thinking. His sweat-damp hair moves when you breathe out - flattens when you press your lips to it.

"What do you want to be, Law?"

That isn't answer that you looking for.

Enemy, ally, friend with benefits, boyfriend? None of these choices matter to you. If not already the man that he loves, nothing else is good enough.

In all of Zoro's good intentions inside of that big beautiful heart of his, you are only suffocating and suffering the consequences of both of your actions.

So much that you can hardly breathe. It's too painful to try. So, you stop.

"Nothing," you say, and roll back onto the floor over the lump of your scattered clothes.

Nothing.

You shut your eyes and wait. Wait for him leave. Wait for sleep to come. Wait for the feelings to finally dry out...

Becoming too emotional here, now, would require too much self-admittance.

The Thousand Sunny was a sturdy and well built ship. Fit for a pirate king, or a world's greatest swordsman, perhaps, but not for you. Where there was warm wood, you would rather there have been cold metal against your inquisitive fingertips, a vacuum in which you can seal yourself deep below the ocean's surface into the operating theater of your Rooms. Even the infirmary there was not clinical enough for you, with a preference for knives and hands-on methods than their tiny, furred physician's penchant for herbal curatives and soothing balms.

Unsettling.

Feeling/seeing the ocean and its undulations. That constant should have been of some comfort, but instead was very lonesome without the voices of your own crew echoing the well-confined halls of your ship.

You didn't come upon the swordsman seeking a bit of solace. That wasn't what it was about.

He was sudden, unexpected, like a storm.

Mere weeks ago, there had been no surprise when the navigator approached you for information about the new world and what you had witnessed thus far in its weather patterns. But you did not expect Zoro's company with it, nor his personal interest in your pirating career and the lofty places that it has taken you; the sorts of islands you'd seen, the battles you'd fought and won to make it onto higher and higher ground, your name reaching the farthest corners of the four oceans and Grand Line alike. When you spoke, he listened. Asked only the most pertinent questions. Not reading into anything, no pointless asides, yet could discern more from your experiences than anyone else just by reading at the lines between, and gave miles of rejoin with the language of his body. Subtle and unspoken.

A silent dialogue flowing between you through the beginnings of a precarious bond.

Trafalgar Law, I want to know who you are.

Like that, he could speak your name with just a look in his eye, and you'd never heard it said any louder and clearer before than by his voiceless methods. So simply monosyllabic. Law. So provocatively put. Law.

He called to you, and you answered to him unflinchingly.

You suppose it was chemistry. The attraction, you knew, was mutual and immediate. So much that you began to say things in certain, vague ways to purposefully provoke the use of his actual voice. To know if the sight of your name on his lips looked as good as it did in how he expressed it in his quiet attentions. And as the day dwindled into dark, the subjects you broached gradually deepened.

Deepened.

And deepened.

Until you were telling each other your secrets. Running down the list of them from the small and light ones, dwindling into the far darker territories. From how just the sight of their cook's eyebrows sets Zoro on edge (you couldn't help but laugh), to how the acoustics in your submarine's shower are too perfect that no one can resist singing in it at least a little bit.

("Let's hear it, then, Torao," he'd said.

"No." The response was firm and quick.

"That bad, huh?"

"Not at all," you said, leveling him with a coquettish smirk, "That good, actually.")

From your past and his, your dreams and his dreams, and the people who have left this life who you are both carrying on for in their stead (it felt good to say this without any deeper need to explain yourself, to know that you were speaking to someone who truly understood).

From admitting to his virginity to your offhand lack thereof - from words nuanced with casual flirtation down to the filthy, more obscene things he'd never voiced aloud before; manipulating him further and further by way of language into spilling every little detail that others could not/would not ever see. Exhilarated with the trust he gave, how he'd look away with his brows pinched in shy embarrassment.

The way his skin would adorably go a touch pink with each new confession. The way he'd swallow when you spoke in turn, tension in his thick, pristine throat. Going breathier than usual when he painted his mental pictures from the sultry images you posited.

You saw him war with himself, unsure.

And then you saw his gaze fall upon you with gradual surrender.

You thought you had him where you wanted him, but when the contexts of the subjects changed, when his 'i've always want to try's turned into a specific list of things that he imagined you doing to him, what you failed to notice was that you were the one wrapping yourself around his every word - wrapping yourself around his fingers. Accidental self-capitulation. You clung to their tips, imagined rolling them in the soft of your mouth between the dialogue until the moment when you both stopped talking and started doing.

When you lunged, he responded immediately and met you halfway there. You hadn't kissed anyone that way, that passionately, in years. Not since you were so much younger, a teenager still, and even then, as if you weren't half as jaded nor pervaded at an early age by the thoughts of an adult mind - always demanding rhyme and reason and logic for everything, unable to shut off and just enjoy. Somehow, it was so easy to just lose yourself into that raw, perfect moment with his lips against yours, firm, yet soft, and his body inviting and warm.

You held each other for hours and hours throughout multiple cycles of before and during and after rather furious and satisfying sex. You came until you couldn't anymore, until your body ached too much to keep going. It was hard to resist the way he moved in the dark, dim lamp light flicker-flitting on his golden skin, shimmering with fat drops of male sweat. Outlined hollows, stark shadows, like carved sandstone shuddering both above and below your body as you maneuvered him on his knees, into your lap, and then onto his back to watch his expression contort with pleasure. With everything he gave and gave and gave, and you gave back tenfold, exploring all of his ins and outs, beginnings and endings and the whole of his inbetweens.

The fire in him always seemed to rage so hot and bright, and it burned into you from the start like a new scar - like a brand new tattoo.

Until the waters had inevitably begun to run cool. Days came and went, some more intimate than others. Confusion set in. Doubts ran the outcries of your body language hoarse until the motions become unsteady and uncertain.

Your heart sped and sped until it seized up entirely just from the way he looked at you.

Because the words 'I think I'm falling in love' have been sitting on the back of your tongue, but feel largely unpalatable. If you spit them out, you stand to lose too much if it scares him as much as it does yourself. But if you swallow them down, you'll be forever sick with the aftertaste of 'what if', and of everything left unsaid.

There is no middle ground here. It's all or nothing, isn't it?

Sink or swim, somewhat might say (and no crueler words could be spoken).

Surely, there's another way out of this.

Because, when a devil fruit user is already sinking, the only other option is to struggle. And wait. Wanting. Hoping. For a strong hand that might be there to intervene. To pull you back up from the waves battering your tired body, shaking you apart on their swells. A means to release the stagnant breath in your lungs with fresh, clean air.

Zoro always comes for you. You know that.

Because he, too, is probably hoping. Wanting. Waiting.

For that grasp to finally be reciprocated.

The moon is large and nearly full, seeming so deceivingly close as though you could reach out and wrest it from the sky, cupping its enclosed rabbit into the palm of your hands. Keep it close, keep it warm and safe as it paints the world surrounding you a soft and eerie grey, and the ocean shimmers white.

Zoro was looking at you all day. Not saying anything, but just looking.

Whatever he sees in you is a mystery. The two of you are a lot alike in many respects, but that doesn't always mean much of anything, does it? Even still, its strange how the qualities that one already possesses can also fill in the gaps of everything they never knew they were lacking.

Maybe it is the difference in context of how those things manifested that make them feel so right and so necessary. The reasons for strength, resilience, courage, weakness, so on...

He, unlike you, a medical doctor at heart, is purely a fighter.

But this is not a battle. Nor is there a treatable wound or sickness on this proverbial field.

The moonlight shines down on you, turning your skin cool shades of blue and grey.

It begins to crawl and prickle over with gooseflesh skittering up your arms, your senses trying to tell you in their own way, sans kenbunshoku haki, that Zoro is watching you again. His eyes are sifting over your healing wounds like fingers running through sand, tracing over bulletholes and bandages.

When you turn your eyes to your peripheral, raising a brow at him in question, his gaze quickly drops and he tries to find himself busy elsewhere until he thinks that you aren't paying attention again.

You wonder sometimes if he isn't like the rabbit, farther away from you than he truly appears.

You're nearly to Zou, your time with this crew and your alliance with them is coming up on its expiration date, when things finally fall into place. And you know that this probably isn't by coincidence. When suddenly, in front of everyone, Straw Hats and Barto Club alike, Zoro lurks up on you from behind and slides his hands into your back pockets.

You stiffen as you feel his lips touch the back of your neck before he puts his chin on your left shoulder, opposite of where kikoku rests, as typical.

This public display is a little embarrassing, and kind of annoying... but you also can't help feeling a small tingling of pride that this man would come to you so shamelessly, open with his affection. Because whether or not you value your discretion - which you do, in very a large way - it has nothing to do with his own. So long as you don't give anything up of your own accord, no reaction, no mind given, no show put on to the crew members who look away from the two of you meaningfully. An archaeologist's knowing glance. The few Zoro-fanboys whose expressions fall desolate, heartbroken. And a raucous, flailing, annoying Mugiwara-ya who starts laughing and hollers loudly, "Wooooooo, go get him, Torao!" and the urge is there to walk over and punch him in the face, but that would require more effort than it's really worth.

You throw a meaningful scowl over your shoulder and the swordsman pinches your backside in reply, and you can catch just enough of his own expression to know that it's slightly impish. He's smiling. You could be smiling back, but your dignity is far too offended for it, and with a distinct lack of Straw Hat blood and/or vital organs decorating the wooden grains of the ship, particularly along its disturbing figurehead, you lack the motivation.

"What do you want, Zoro-ya?" You probably shouldn't, but you reach behind you and tousle his hair, mostly because you know that he doesn't like it. Because if he's going to be annoying, then the only options you have are to get angry, ignore him, or become annoying right back. The latter seems fair.

The token, huffed sounds he makes when he's disgruntled are too good to pass up, and to your delight, he doesn't let you down.

"Nothing now," he says, voice a tad nettled, yet it doesn't stop him from repositioning his hands into your front belt loops and hooking them there comfortably. Nor does it stop him from pressing his muscled chest into your back.

"Mm, I could get used to nothing, if that's what this is," you reply quietly so as to not be heard by anyone else as you lean back comfortably against him, almost by instinct; seeking his closeness may have become an involuntary habit. "I'm sure that you have heard the saying that 'nothing lasts forever', so I have to wonder where that leaves us?"

Where, indeed.

You know without the need to look at him directly that his expression has fallen into one of deep thought.

Every now and then, the members of the joined crews milling about Bartolomeo's ship are furtively glancing in your direction, unable to stave off their odd mix of expressed curiosity, amusement, jealousy, or subtle hints of disdain - like they'd never once seen a man hold another man before as more than platonically. As more than a brother. As more like a lover. Is it really so strange that even the swordsman, Roronoa Zoro, and the captain of the Heart Pirates, Trafalgar Law, have found a connection in each other?

But you find that you don't truly care what any of them are thinking. None of these unwanted spectators have any place or position of note in the long run, in the thick of things, and they certainly won't matter come tomorrow.

Yet another remindment that your time with him is running out.

You know that you're almost out of time; you also know better than most people that not a single moment is built to last forever, and yet... just for a minute... it's nice to think otherwise. To believe that you're not going to have to leave his grasp on you until you feel ready, until it feels right. But reality will spare you no such kindness, it never has, and it isn't about to start here. That's not the way that life works.

It took all of your adolescence to forget what it was like to love someone so much, to need someone so much, to hurt so much when they were gone.

And then there was Zoro, unraveling all of your hard work in the blink of an eye. Breached all of your carefully built walls - may as well have waltzed right the fuck into your wide-open gates with all of his self-assured, arrogant swagger, and let the high tides wash in with him, burying you in his wake.

Up to your neck in doubts.

Surely, given time, your strength will return to you.

Surely, this is just a temporary set-back.

(You both know what loss is like, and you both better than that - but at least there is the consolation of knowing that somewhere out in the world, always and everlasting, this man will be alive and well, and there are so few things in existence that could ever stop him fro pressing on. He is nearly infallible. And maybe, that's why you're capable of coveting him as fiercely as you do. Maybe, surely, you have some tiny shred of faith left, however fragmented and long forgotten).

Eventually, you hear him come away from his own thoughts with a soft exhale before pressing a kiss to the junction between your shoulder and throat, and then another a little higher up, higher again, then again until the tip of his nose bumps your pierced earlobe. You can feel him speak against your skin, feel his voice hum beneath it, low and breathy. And you bite into your lower lip because the deck of this ugly ship is not the place for showing its crew an obvious erection in your tight jeans. "If the saying is true, then just tell me that I mean nothing to you, and I'd be the luckiest man alive."

Your body tightens up, as does your chest, your heart halting for moments in its function. You nearly drop kikoku as you spin on your heel, grab a handful of his shirt with your free hand to pull him in and kiss him deeply. In front of everyone. You don't care, don't care, don't really care at all who sees, what anyone wants to think, because his lips are hot and strong and pervasive and soul-soothing all at once, and they belong to you. And if no one else had understood that already, they certainly had an eyeful of the truth now.

'What do you want to be, Law?'

'Nothing.'

And nothing lasts forever.

If forever is what he truly is searching for, then forever is what you want to be.

Perhaps if you don't make your own name in bold print in the history books, going down in them as the ardent lover of the world's greatest swordsman (that he will achieve this is without doubt), sounds fairly lofty in its own right. Not exactly ideal... but not too bad, either.

The noise around you has fallen into a shocked sort of quiet as you make out with each other, shameless and unabashed, but you keep it short and sweet. There's no need to be over-the-top when the message was already clearly conveyed to the one man alone meant to hear it, laying your heart out bare to him in the only way that you actually know how.

When you part and his dark eye opens up at you, he looks dazed, but thoroughly smitten.

He's too good to resist holding onto, all handsome and nubile, resilient and willful.

Love looks good on Zoro.

"Law, just jump already, I've got you."

"Why are you being so impatient? The water isn't going anywhere, you know."

It's late at night again, the moon is full, and you're half-dangling from the side of the The Going Luffy-Senpai from a thick length of cargo netting. Below you, Zoro is waiting as he treads the calm waters, waiting for you to join him in an endeavor that is one-thousand-and-one types of a terrible idea. You're not scared, but rightfully trepidatious - it is outright stupid for anyone to swim in the oceans of the new world, let alone a devil fruit user who cannot survive in water at all. But when he came to you again and asked... somehow, you found yourself agreeing.

That it had come up only seconds after he'd pulled his mouth off your dick, and you were half out of your mind with the kind of orgasm only he could give you, that may have had a little to do with your temporary lapse of judgement. You'd spent the better part of the night fucking. And it's always fucking no matter how you go about having sex, even when you're being slow and gradual, kissing each other madly, exploring each others bodies with silky sweetness - what others might call love-making. But the way Zoro's thickly-muscled body pushes and pulls and heaves against you in your every coupling is so obscene, so dirty, that it could never be anything but pure fucking.

He was in your lap, riding you senseless while you focused on kissing the moans from his lips when his second orgasm hit before you'd even had your first. After taking a moment to recover his breath, he slowly slid off of you and dropped to his knees, placing his head between your thighs.

And his mouth - that fucking perfect mouth and all of the skill Zoro possessed with it - was likely going to be the death of you, especially in knowing where your dick had just been and how little he seemed to care as he swallowed it all down between kiss-swollen, indecent lips.

You're not sure that there's a man or woman alive who could deny Zoro anything, anything, under those circumstances.

And that is how you ended up where you are now, still naked, and he is still waiting for you. When your foot tentatively comes down and your toes skim the surface of the ocean, the feeling of weakness is almost immediate.

Your body unravels.

Slumps. And you fall.

And Zoro is there to catch you, arms corded with hard muscle reaching out, murmuring wet words that garble as water sloshes in your ears. And you sputter at the surface as he tries to find the right way to keep the encumbrance of your dead weight up above it without dragging himself down too far.

Doing this with a devil fruit user for enjoyment rather than attempting to drag one miserably back aboard a ship or shore without worrying over personal comfort was new to him as much as yourself.

But you know that he'll get it down eventually.

You can trust his strength. Because it is your own, too. You can feel safe with him.

Before long, you are draped on his back securely, body as liquid and boneless as the cold water surrounding you as he lazily propels you both through darkened waters.

Green hair, highlighted by moonbeams, sways drowsily in your immediate vision like a soft bed of turtle grass until you close your eyes. It's almost relaxing if you don't try to struggle. If you don't try to move, just be at rest and allow Zoro to do all of the moving for you.

You will not be drowned like this... not by the sea, not by your feelings. Your lungs are clear and you can breathe in the cool, sea air freely, feeling the salt lap at your skin; Zoro against you, his bare skin so much hotter than the surrounding temperature. Yet, you hate that you are left so weary, drained, and sapped of all energy.

That your body feels heavy, useless, and refuses to respond to any of your commands.

But this show of trust is to make him happy, so you tolerate it. And you can admit that it's unfathomably beautiful out here from this vantage, when you can feel the waves caress your sides without being pulled down by the threat of them, without needing to fully appreciate the danger they mean to you.

The ocean stretching out around you is so endless. Vast. Eternal. The source of all life and death and beginnings and endings. Every cycle found its start in this place.

The whole world starts here. Everything connects here.

And you two are like nothing at all to it. Less than insects, less than amoeba, not even pinpricks to its infinite darkness.

Spending one's life at sea has a way of putting things into perspective.

"You look hot when you're all wet," he tells you when you're back on board the ship, and you're laying on your back, drenched, with a lap full of swordsman. His hands are running through your water-saturated hair, and you're almost afraid of what he's doing to it, but the tingles of a thousand nerve-endings are dictating a newfound inability to complain. "You're even hotter when you can't move."

When he shifts his hips a certain way, you can't help but smirk.

Because you could say the same to him, thinking of all the moments when you've had him pinned beneath your weight, burying yourself inside of his body as sweat runs down his impeccable pectorals and abs. A thought that never ceases to leave you breathless, almost in awe at how good he takes your cock as his solid body flexes, un-flexes, bows and bends and writhes within your steady grasp.

"Careful, Zoro-ya. I have energy enough to be very unpleasant, if need be. And if you think I'm going to be a bottom for you as a parting gift, you're sorely mistaken," you say, using what little mobility you've regained to wrap your arms around his middle and down to cup his muscular ass into your hands. It's toned yet pliant beneath your fingers as they sink into his damp flesh, absolutely perfect, and you're cognizant of how completely yours it is in a way that makes your body heat spike and your dick twitch with interest. "Maybe eventually. Maybe. But not tonight. Though, in a way, I am a little bit jealous of you in that respect - I am fully aware of my own sexual prowess."

"I'd say you were being conceited if I weren't fully aware of it too." His deep, heavy voice is practically a moan receding into the sound of the ship rocking softly atop the ocean as he presses himself against you in deliciously slow, intentional movements. A sigh escapes you as you feel your thickening erection slide along the underside of his own. "I want whatever I can get from you, Law."

"I know that you do."

Because you're in love with me, you want to say, but it isn't necessary. You don't need any validation. You don't need to be scared. And you embrace that feeling of reciprocity fully, however fledgling and tentative it is to you both.

Instead of saying anything further, you slip one hand between the two of you to encircle both of your cocks together, knowing that the swordsman isn't going to last long if the indecent expression on his face is anything to go by. You're both slightly damp with sea water, and he's overcome by a full-body shudder the moment that you stroke against slick heads, and he's dripping a mess of clear pre-cum all over your fingers.

"Nnn.. dammit, Law... fuck."

You could get off on watching him like this without burying yourself into the tight heat that you long for (and are too exhausted to pursue, but the night is still young, isn't it?), tremoring above you, leaning down to trace the shape of the large tattoo on your chest with his tongue - swirling along its heart-shape - thrusting erratically into your hand, losing all of his careful control.

You could get off on this. You can. And you do. Quickly going to pieces beneath him and your own jerking fingers. You shake apart, tremble and tighten and arch as you cum almost lazily, groaning with satisfaction as the first and second spurts hit his chest, and the following land on your stomach and hand. Messy.

Zoro's even messier in the end. But you don't mind.

You're too tired to move and he's just too good at licking up after you to not let him be of service, and you kiss him in appreciation as he lays down next to you on the deck, sweaty and quivering with aftershocks.

Sigh.

"Mmm..."

Sigh.

Breathe.

"I do love you, Zoro-ya," you tell him as you wrap yourself around him from behind, pulling him close and tight to your chest. He takes your hand into his own and kisses its palm before he resettles into the spoon of your body. Intertwined pieces, interlocked parts, dispersed across the wooden deck of someone else's ship. "You're the first thing I've ever wanted just for myself alone in... more years than I can even remember."

He likely already knows, but you didn't tell him for his sake.

You feel suddenly weightless.

Light washes over you like a tidal wave.

And with it - with him - certainly, you've become stronger.

"Oi, Law..."

"Hm?"

"We'll see each other again soon."

You don't need time to mull it over to know that he's speaking the truth, even if it is months or years that you are apart. Yours will be the kind of relationship that needs work, a lot of trust, and a lot of faith in each other, and it will be so hard at times... you know you're going to miss him on some days more than others, more than should be humanly withstandable. But you also know, ultimately... you know... you won't forget this.

Here. Now.

It will always be true that you cannot survive in the ocean's waters.

But he will always be with you, hold you up when you can't breathe, and you will figuratively do the same for him in all of ways your power and capability surpasses his in their own right.

If not in person, then in spirit, there are intangible things left between you that you can grasp a hold on. Just as surely as a cut-out, still-beating heart withheld in the palm of your hand.

The memory of a strong pulse quickening against the splay of your fingertips pressing into hot, sweat-slick skin.

The memory of the breath he gives when you hold him tight and close.

The memory of the way his body highlights in bronze hues when the horizon lights up the sea with its first brilliant shocks of pinks and purples and oranges, and-

you'll never forget, against the lips you kiss
the promise whispered that this is going to last.