Work Text:
"What's wrong with it?"
"Everything. Luffy, I said no. Just, no." Zoro states bluntly, glaring at the horribly familiar monstrosity nestled snuggly on his captain's head. The wig reeks strongly of burnt plastic and more subtly of blood, thanks to all the fiery abuse that both it and its new owner endured during the final Davy Back battle, and the damn thing's got the charm of a dead rat.
"But Zoro~"
The swordsman steels himself against Luffy's pouty lower-lipped expression of gloom, his own lips pressed in a thin bloodless line. He hates telling the younger pirate no, especially when those pleading puppy-dog eyes turn on him, but if he doesn't put his foot down now, he's sure to regret it later.
"You deaf, dumbass? I said no! I'm not touching you 'til that stupid piece of shit's out of my sight."
Sighing as though heavily put upon, Luffy rakes the only Foxy Pirate souvenir he bothered to keep from his tousled head and gives the huge mass of black curls a forlorn look before he lets it drop to the floor beside the sofa. "Okay, okay..."
"See, much better," Zoro hums as he curls calloused fingers around Luffy's waist and reels him closer, the corners of his mouth turning up in smug satisfaction as his captain's breath hitches audibly.
xxx
Some time later, when they're sprawled together on the floor with sweat drying on their bare skin and their hearts slowing from a gallop to a leisurely trot, the swordsman rolls his head to the side and finds himself staring directly at the discarded synthetic hair. The thing resembles a freaking mutant dust bunny, he muses as one hand absently caresses his dozing captain's back.
Luffy stirs under his touch, drowsily opening his eyes and following Zoro's gaze. "It kinda looks like a giant meatball. A burnt one."
"Heh."
"I want to eat a giant meatball."
"Oi, quit drooling on me."
Luffy blinks, his eyes losing the glazed look that filled them at the thought of so much meat. To Zoro's relief, he also closes his mouth, shutting off the waterfall cascading down the swordsman's collarbone and shoulder. "Sanji should make giant meatballs for-"
He's interrupted by sharp rapping on the closed emergency exit that connects the men's quarters to the women's, followed by Robin's clear voice. "My apologies for the disturbance, but Doctor-san and Nagahana-kun are quite adamant that Sencho-san join them for a game of tag. I'm currently restraining their efforts, but I strongly recommend that you both locate some clothing."
Luffy trills in delight and scrambles for his shorts, prompting grumbled sarcasm about the similarities between morons and magnets from the older pirate beneath him. Zoro refuses to budge until the excited younger man accidentally stomps on his stomach, at which point his griping sharpens to cursing and he relocates to the relative safety of the sofa.
"Jeez, how the hell do you still have so much energy?"
He's long accustomed to his captain's boundless enthusiasm, so it's a rhetorical question, really, and Luffy treats it as such, flashing a huge grin in the swordsman's direction before he bolts up the peg ladder and flings open the hatch. He fairly explodes through the opening and disappears, hollering for their nakama and leaving Zoro staring at the blue patch of sky floating overhead and feeling vaguely annoyed that the idiot's forgotten to close the door. Again.
"Damn it, Luffy..."
The swordsman seriously contemplates just ignoring it - the sofa's comfy and there's a nap beckoning - but knowing his luck, someone will glance in and then he'll have Nami screaming at him for being immodest and adding more interest to his already staggering debt, and then the shitty ero-cook will call him an uncouth bastard and start ranting about how he's traumatizing-
A disembodied hand and arm abruptly sprouts from the ceiling and reaches through the hatch to swing the door closed, saving him the trouble.
"Thanks, Robin," he mutters grudgingly, although his tone holds a note of warning that he still doesn't entirely trust the historian, regardless of his captain's unhesitating acceptance of her.
"You're quite welcome, Kenshi-san. It's no trouble at all."
She falls silent then, and he yawns and tucks folded arms behind his head, closing his eyes.
"Kenshi-san?"
He cracks one eye open, glaring at the emergency hatch above the sofa. "What?"
"One question, and I won't bother you again," Robin promises and takes his silence as acquiescence when he doesn't respond. "Why did you insist that Sencho-san remove his wig?"
While he certainly wasn't expecting her to raise the subject in regards to the damn poof of hair on the floor beside him, Zoro's not the least bit surprised at the subject of her query; the woman's an ex-assassin - or so she claims, although he's not so sure about the 'ex' part - and he's automatically assumed from the very beginning that she's got eyes and ears all over the ship.
Privacy's next to impossible on a ship like the Going Merry anyway, not with six people and one reindeer tripping all over each other sharing two bedrooms and one tiny bathroom. Personally, he thinks it's also pretty overrated, although he could definitely do without all the screaming and flailing that inevitably accompanies anyone dumb enough to saunter into the anchor room without knocking first.
Or the storage deck. Or- oh, hell, who's he kidding, there's no safe place on the whole damn ship, considering how Zoro nearly clawed his own eyes out the other week when he walked in on the shitty cook jerking off in the pump closet after Nami harassed the swordsman into drawing water for her bath. When the punches and kicks and pieces of deck finally stopped flying, he'd spent the afternoon nursing multiple lumps thanks to the witch being pissed about her continuing lack of water and Chopper being pissed about treating all the new scrapes and bruises and Usopp being pissed about being forced to complete yet more repairs to their already battered ship.
Okay, so maybe privacy's not quite as overrated as Zoro thought, but he's still not particularly surprised or even that disturbed by Nico Robin's sprouting eyeballs on the underside of the men's quarters coffee table and the below-decks mast while he's screwing his captain on the floor (although next time he might poke one of said eyes on general principal, just to see what happens).
"If it was just about him looking stupid, I wouldn't give a shit-" he snorts, apathetically regarding the blinking orbit that's just appeared on the back of the sofa. "-but have you listened to the way he talks when he's wearing that damn thing?"
"Ah, might I be correct in believing that you're referring to the 'aww, yeah'?"
The historian's smooth voice sounds incredibly bizarre spouting those words, although he's sure it would send the cook into perverse convulsions of delight. Zoro doesn't trust her further than Usopp could throw her, but the swordsman can't help being amused by Robin's dry wit and utterly deadpan sarcasm.
"There's no way in hell I'm listening to him yell that shit during sex," he tells the watching eye, grimacing as he stretches and pops a vertebra or two. "One way or another, that fucking afro's gotta go."